Ginny
She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.
Next to her, Natalie joined in the chorus of wolf-whistles and delighted hooting that swept the hall in response to Seamus Finnegan dipping Dean Thomas smack in front of the main doors and snogging him in full view of the entirety of Hogwarts. “ATTABOY, THOMAS!” someone yelled from the direction of the Ravenclaws. Some of the Hufflepuffs started throwing fistfuls of nuts at them; Dean and Seamus broke apart, laughing.
“Mr Thomas! Mr. Finnegan!” Ginny flinched: McGonagall was striding down the Hall’s center aisle in a billow of tartan robes.
By the time she reached the boys, the Hall was quiet, waiting, and Dean and Seamus had separated, standing shoulder to shoulder and utterly failing to look anything but delighted.
McGonagall’s face was out of sight. Ginny heard her clear as a bell, though, when she said, “That will be five points each for carrying on so in public. Mr. Finnegan, take three points back for resisting the urge to involve pyrotechnics in this display.”
Laughter swept the hall. “Yes, Professor,” said Seamus.
McGonagall half-turned away, paused. “And, if I may—congratulations.”
Seamus punched the air and whooped.
Things settled down after that, the boys joining their House mates at the Gryffindor table to quite a lot of back-slapping and teasing, from what Ginny could tell. She avoided her own friends’ gossiping on the subject and tried not to brood over her breakfast.
Alex elbowed her. “See, Gin? I told you it was fine.”
“What was fine?” said Natalie, because she had a bloodhound’s keen nose for secrets.
“Nothing,” Ginny said. She couldn’t glare at both of them, seeing as they sat immediately to her left and right, so she settled on glaring at her plate instead.
Natalie tsked. “No, that wasn’t nothing. What was… oh. Oh! Ginny, is this about mmmph!”
“Thanks,” Ginny said to Evalyn, who, from across the table, had spelled Natalie’s lips shut.
Evalyn put her wand down and went back to eating. “My pleasure.”
Natalie got her own wand out, stripped the charm off her face, and pointed threateningly at Evalyn. “Do not do that again. And you—” She rounded on Ginny, who stared back, unintimidated. Nat deflated. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair. Sorry. But is it about… you know…?”
“Aren’t Slytherins supposed to be subtle?” Finn said to thin air. Natalie jerked and Finn winced. “Merlin, witch, did you charm your shoes pointy?”
“Special ordered ‘em like that.”
“People were happy for them,” Ginny said softly.
Her friends all quit their bickering, which was something she’d always appreciated about them. “‘Course they were,” said Alex. “It’s, you know… in the old days you could blood adopt a kid, you know? And it wouldn’t matter.”
“Nowadays people just quietly take the ‘fidelity’ bit out of a handfast contract or ‘accidentally’ find themselves with custody of a kid they had with some foreign pureblood.” Natalie rolled her eyes. “But you’re not an Heir so, seriously, even the most uptight old biddy on a hunt for grandbabies wouldn’t care if you ran off with another witch.”
“Great-Aunt Muriel might,” Ginny said sourly.
Finn snorted. “Maybe not. She’s a Prewett, isn’t she? Old blood there. Dunno what went wrong with your mu—sorry, that was out of line.”
“Mum just… hates everything she associates with Dark wizards” Ginny said. “She’s convinced that if you like—you know, the same… that it’s unnatural, something people do for the really bloody old rituals and stuff.” Which—granted, Ginny had heard of at least a couple rituals that required sex, and most of them had at least the potential to be really nasty. But it wasn’t like she’d ever heard of a ritual specifically requiring two witches or two wizards. Was that a thing? Harry might know.
Natalie and Alex had heard this before, but Finn hadn’t really, and he made a face. “Yeah, Dad says he hears stuff like that at work sometimes. Muggle raised people, or apparently there’s some really out-there purebloods who call it a crime against magic. Is that where your Mum gets it?”
“Maybe.” Ginny poked at her food.,
“If you want to stay secret about it, that’s fine, but if you want to tell people, no one here would be rude about it,” Finn said.
“Most people wouldn’t.” Natalie nudged Ginny. “There’ll always be a couple, you know? Saw at least two of the Ravenclaws look all grossed out. There’s always someone who’ll be an arse. But you definitely wouldn’t be, like, a pariah or anything.”
That had been Ginny’s fear. Still was. But she finished her breakfast and watched the Hall and saw how Dean and Seamus were practically kings at the Gryffindor table today, which according to gossip working its way across the House tables, was because there had been running bets on how long it would take the two to snog and they’d just won a lot of people some gold for getting there before Halloween.
Maybe it wouldn’t… but no. There was still Mum to consider. If the school knew, Ron would know, and if Ron knew, he’d tell Mum. But maybe it didn’t have to be as close of a secret.
Harry
Sirius’ face swam into view in the mirror, already split by a broad grin. “Look at that, it’s my favorite godson!”
“I’m your only godson,” Harry said. “And technically also your son.”
“You’re more mature than I am,” Sirius said, which was entirely true, so Harry just smirked at him and said, “And you’d better be grateful for it.”
“Oh, I am,” Sirius assured him. “Tell me about school, pup, how’s it all going?”
Harry cast his mind back. “Pretty well. This Slughorn is, er…”
“Oh, Sluggie.” Sirius made a face. “He was always after me in school. Wanted to add me to that weird little collection of his favorites. Spend my days kissing his arse just for a fast track to the Aurors? No thank you. Got there all on my own. Guessing he hasn’t given up on collecting you?”
“Not at all. I showed him my grimoire after the last little ‘Slug Club’ dinner and he kept it for a week to look at. Nearly sent him into raptures.”
“Partly to get his connections and partly to show up Jules?” asked Sirius, who had been subjected to multiple rants from Harry on the subject.
Harry grimaced. “Yes. First of all, he knows everyone in the field, and I mean everyone, but second… seriously, how long will it take a supposed Master to realize Jules doesn’t have a bloody idea what he’s doing? Not a scrap of independent research, not one original thought. For fuck’s sake.”
“It’ll show on your NEWTs,” Sirius said. “C’mon, you know it will. In five years no one’s going to give a rusty knut about sixth year Potions prowess; you’ll be an apprentice or even a Master by then—” he waggled his eyebrows— “and Jules won’t.”
“I know. Distract me. How are things politically?”
Sirius heaved the most melodramatic sigh Harry had ever seen in five years of living in the same room as Draco Malfoy. Theatrics must be a Black thing. Their family reunions probably used to be better entertainment than P.T. Barnum’s whole circus. “I hate politics,” Sirius moaned.
“Yes, I know.”
“Arsehole. You quit school then and come home and do all this for me.”
“Not for a few years yet,” Harry said, grinning. “C’mon, it’s not so bad. You can say whatever you want as long as you say it politely.”
Sirius snorted. “Right. Pardon me, Dowager Travers, but I couldn’t help noticing your head is jammed rather far up the esteemable Lord Malfoy’s rectum; would you care for assistance removing it? That would go over well.”
“Sirius? Sirius. Listen to me.” Harry brought the mirror very close to his face. “I will pay you to say that and show me the memory afterwards. I will buy you four Firebolts and you can tie them together to make one super-Firebolt. I will trick out your motorcycle to fly to the fucking moon.”
By the time he finished, Sirius was howling with laughter, his mirror shaking all over the place. Harry laughed a bit himself. He could actually imagine Sirius saying that in his regal Wizengamot robes and with a perfectly straight face.
“Oh, Merlin,” Sirius gasped, “I might! Just to see their faces. Literally no one would know what to say. Fuck. Harry.” The laughter stopped abruptly and he stared wide-eyed at the mirror. “Wait, could you make the motorcycle fly to the moon?”
“Maybe.” Harry had been joking, but… “Or something else, anyway. If the Muggles can do it then we sure as hell can. Not for a few years, though, alright? I have enough to do already.”
“Yeah, you do. Right. Sorry. Serious topics only now.”
“That pun was old two years ago,” Harry informed him. “How’s it going with Ogden?”
“He’s a stubborn old bastard, is how. Who the hell holds a grudge this long over a fucking horse? Don’t look at me like that, alright, Abraxans are just mean horses with wings and teeth. It’s a horse. Merlin. I’ll wear him down eventually. He only started listening when I offered to buy him a prize breeding pair of Abraxans in apology.”
“You did?” Harry said.
“Yes… kind of.”
He was so bad at hiding things. Harry fixed Sirius with a patient look and waited.
Sirius sighed. “I shouted at him that I’d buy him some fucking fancy horses since he seemed to care more about that than actually doing his job. And then I stopped because I’m not supposed to lose my temper. And then he started laughing.”
Harry blinked a few times. “Well, if it worked.”
“It did! He started actually asking about the stuff I’ve been trying to draw up to change how the Aurors work, anyway. Did I tell you about Ian’s and my idea? We were out at this pub, right, and he says we should have ‘beacons’ for the Aurors, so if someone’s in trouble they can summon help real easily, and we started talking about how that would work and so on.”
“You mentioned something in a letter, but no details,” Harry said. “It sounds like a good idea. Personally I’d want to be sure the beacons can’t be tracked unless the user activates it on purpose.”
“Ian thought the same thing, yeah. Can’t believe no one’s thought of it before, right now all we have’s the spell and what if someone can’t get to a wand? Or can’t talk without being heard?” Sirius lowered his voice. “They’re already making something like that, but it’s not anonymous. You’ve heard about attacks on Wizengamot seat holders?”
Color Harry utterly unsurprised. “Whispers. You know how hard it is to get information in and out of the school right now.”
“It’s ugly,” Sirius said, all his earlier levity gone. “They’re all on people who lean Dumbledore’s way, obviously—scare tactics so far, no serious injuries. It’s being kept out of the Prophet so people don’t panic. The Order’s trying to protect them, but from what little I can tell, they’re stretched thin. The Aurors are only so much help… some of them are sympathizers, and I’m pretty sure… there’s a few who might outright stand back and watch if they showed up and found Death Eaters attacking some old witch with an inherited seat. And then there’s the problem with the enclaves.”
“What’s the problem?”
“They’re underrepresented to begin with,” Sirius said. “Usually more people live there than the few, if any, who still live somewhere like Riasmoore, but an enclave is lucky to have one or two representatives in the Wizengamot. Hazel actually thinks there’s a bunch of unregistered informal ‘enclaves’ out there pretending to be just a bunch of neighbors. The fees and shite with the Ministry in order to incorporate as an enclave are bonkers.”
“So let me guess, you’re worried Voldemort will start targeting the enclaves?”
“In one. They’re usually not as well protected as the Wizengamot inherited seats are, behind old family wards. No one’s wanting to give the enclave leaders any emergency beacons and I haven’t heard a peep about the Order sniffing around there either.”
Harry frowned. “Can we do anything… on the side?”
“What, like hire a warder to go ‘round the known enclaves and have a look?” Sirius smiled wolfishly. “Step ahead of you there, pup. Got a German firm hopping the Channel to do that next week.”
“See? You’re doing great at this,” Harry assured him. “Hiring private bodyguards is technically illegal… have any of the targeted Wizengamot members tried getting around that?”
“One or two got savvy and have a ‘personal assistant’ following them around except the assistants are interchangeable beta-circuit pro duelers from the Continent. Most of them, though, no.”
It figured. “Any progress on the Azkaban issue?”
Sirius shrugged. “There’s a vote next week on whether to forbid anyone from firing an employee for missing work for Azkaban duty. Another vote the week after about cutting down the rotations from two weeks to one. We’re chipping away at it.”
“That’ll have to be enough for now,” Harry said. “I’m concerned about the Ministry. Dumbledore has the Wizengamot, for now, but if enough people in the Ministry go over… Voldemort plays out of the extremist’s handbook. He’ll be looking to move people into place so when the time comes, a clean, surgical strike will wipe out all the highly-placed opposition and let his people take over. Or just bring the whole Ministry down.”
“That I can’t do much about.” Sirius looked away. “People still…”
“It’ll die down,” Harry promised him. “You know it will. You didn’t kill James.”
“Feels like I did,” Sirius said lowly.
“You stunned him, and he fell. No one knew what that Veil did. It wasn’t your fault.”
Sirius nodded, but he didn’t look all that happy.
Time to change the subject. “By the way,” Harry said with as much cheer as he could muster, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about animagi.”
“Hey… Harry. I wanted to tell you something.”
Harry’s eyes refused to focus on Ginny for several painful seconds. Served him right for spending three straight hours trying to decipher an old potions manuscript handwritten in maddeningly cramped Middle English. Slughorn had handed it to him with a wink and a hint that this was some sort of test, and if it was, Harry was not going to—
Right. Ginny. The silence had gone on far too long. “Go ahead,” he prompted.
“It’s… me and… I’m dating someone.”
“Okay?” Harry said, unsure what this had to do with him, or why she had apparently come all the way down to the Chamber to find him and tell him.
“A… Luna. It’s Luna.”
“You’re dating Luna?”
“Yes.”
“Congratulations.” That was the sort of thing people said when someone else got a girlfriend, right? But Ginny didn’t look especially happy. “Or… not congratulations?”
“What? No—yes, I mean. Thank you. I meant thank you. It’s a good thing. I’m happy, we’re—good,” Ginny finished, blushing the color of her hair.
“Right. I’m glad,” Harry said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
Ginny finally smiled back, much to his relief. “Yeah, I… so am I. It, er, well, it’s been going on for a while, actually?”
“Hm? Oh. Okay. Well, I hope you… didn’t feel like you had to tell me, on account of…” Harry tapped his Vipers’ ring with the end of his quill. “I’m not remotely interested in telling any of you who to date.”
“No! Nothing like that. I wanted to tell people. It’s… just… Mum would… I thought…”
Harry’s brain finally kicked in and he wanted to smack himself. Hopefully if he had been paying attention he would have caught on sooner—Merlin knew he’d had his own moment of surprise when he realized how normal same-sex relationships were among most wizards, compared to Petunia and Vernon’s hatred of “those people.” The Weasleys were old blood but if any pureblooded insulated-from-Muggles witch was going to find a reason to get weird about it anyways, it would be Molly Weasley. “Not from me, Gin. Look, I… there’s some Muggles who would be really awful about you and Luna, my relatives were that type, but I pretty much decided at age six that they were terrible people whose opinions meant nothing.” Ginny giggled. “I don’t know what exactly your mother would say, but you won’t catch any difficulty from the Vipers, or several of us will have something to say about that.”
Ginny opened and closed her mouth a few times. Then—Harry's whole body locked up. She’d thrown herself forward and was hugging him, awkwardly bent over with her arms wrapped around his shoulders and biceps. He couldn’t have hugged her back if he wanted to which he unequivocally did not.
Luckily the hug was over almost as soon as it had begun. Ginny flushed even darker red and looked at the floor. “Sorry. Just. Thanks. I’ll… be going now.”
“Right.” Harry cleared his throat. “Tell Luna congratulations, too, if you don’t mind?”
“Yeah, of course. Er… bye,” Ginny said. She left the Chamber at a walk so fast and clipped that Harry could tell she was doing her best not to run.
What possessed her to hug him? Harry did not, as a rule, hug people. If he thought about it, he had hugged… Sirius, and Pansy, and Daphne, although with Daphne embraces had happened in the course of snogging. Hugging someone for comfort or out of gratitude was… new. He might have suspected it was driven by the sort of crush teenage girls seemed to develop on boys a year or two older, but obviously Ginny was at the very least not interested in people other than Luna, and quite possibly not interested in boys at all, so that couldn’t be it.
It really could have been simply gratitude. Or affection of a… friendly kind. Harry would just have to ask… no, not Sirius, he would give Harry so much grief for this, because Sirius did not know how to let a joke die. Daphne would ask him why he would bother worrying about the why. Hermione might be of help. Or Pansy, or Neville.
Harry shook his head and returned to Middle English, which was an entirely more surmountable problem than the seemingly infinite complexities of people.
It may have only been late October, but evidently no one had told the weather that. The day of the term’s first scheduled Hogsmeade trip started with a foreboding, angry wind and looming cloud cover. Harry eyed the ceiling of the Great Hall with some trepidation as he ate breakfast. “I think I might have to go back down for a heavier cloak.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Daphne smugly, patting the neatly folded fur-trimmed wraparound cloak she had brought up from the dungeons.
Harry had sort of smirked at her for it, actually, which he regretted now, having to dash back down to his dorm as quickly as was respectable and then back up several sets of stairs to meet Daphne, Theo, and Neville at the entrance hall. He blinked at the sight of the group waiting for him. “No one else?”
“We’re the lonely singles,” Daphne informed him.
“Wait, what?”
Neville snorted and shoved Harry out the doors. “You need to pay more attention, mate.”
“Well, obviously Draco and Hermione are going together, but—”
“Pansy asked Justin to go with her,” Neville said, pausing only briefly to tug his hood up against the biting wind, “and Blaise is off with…”
“Iris,” Daphne supplied.
“Right.” Neville fell silent as they passed by Filch, who waved a Secrecy Sensor over them all (Harry rolled his eyes; as if it were difficult to fool that cheap piece of shoddy spellwork).
The weather was even worse than it had been inside the somewhat sheltered courtyard. Conversation died in the face of a cold, howling wind that would have been more appropriate for a January blizzard than an autumn storm. Harry ducked his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets; next to him, Daphne wrapped a woolen scarf around her face and tucked both hands into mittens lined with the same fur as her cloak. Theo and Neville fell in behind them on the narrow path.
Harry had never quite realized how long the walk to Hogsmeade was.
Getting to Tomes & Scrolls was a relief. “We’re not moving for at least an hour,” Neville said flatly.
Daphne snickered at him. “Can’t hack the cold?”
“My family likes it in the south, thank you very much. None of this…” Neville flapped a hand at the windows. “This.”
“My family was born for the cold,” said Theo loftily. He had gone out without so much as a hat and despite not having worn gloves seemed not to have minded the cold.
Neville elbowed him, ruining Theo’s haughty expression. “Prat.”
“Nev,” Harry called, having drifted over towards the New Releases shelf, “come and look. There’s a new Summervale out—”
Hearing the name one of the world’s foremost living Herbology experts, Neville let out a squeal that sent Daphne and Theo into fits and earned an exasperated look from the clerk, a witch named Graeme. She knew them all and didn’t seem genuinely annoyed but Harry still shot her an apologetic wave as he pulled his friends into the stacks where they wouldn’t put off any newly-entered customers.
They separated then, Daphne vanishing in the Arithmancy and Numerology section, while Neville wandered down the Herbology aisle. It was conveniently one over from the one for Potions: he and Theo exchanged a few words through the gaps in the shelves. Harry was busy hunting for any books that might make mention of the uses of rare earth metals and minerals in potions, something British tradition didn’t focus much on, and so mostly ignored them, except for when Neville passed a book to Theo for Harry about the changes growing in soil heavy with or lacking a specific mineral could cause in different plants. Harry received it with enthusiasm and wound up buying it along with a few others.
In the end, Daphne only made one purchase, while Theo, Harry, and Neville each had several books in their arms by the time they queued up by the counter. “Thanks for this,” Harry said to Neville. “I wouldn’t have thought to look at that, actually, but minerals are so tricky to work with, using a plant that grew in an area heavy in one might be a safer way to introduce it to a potion…”
“Merlin,” Daphne said. “Look outside.”
Harry and Neville broke off, following her gaze. Neville wilted when he saw that there were snowflakes just beginning to fall.
“Oh, excellent,” Theo said, having finished paying. “Nothing like a good snowfall.”
Daphne stomped on his foot. “Stop showing off. Come on, if we’re going to make it to Honeydukes we’d best go now, before the weather sends absolutely everyone inside.”
They hurried down the street to the candy shop. Harry, who lacked much of a sweet tooth, went straight for chocolate-covered and candied nuts, picked out an assortment, and then waited by the doors skimming through the book Neville suggested while his friends browsed.
He was still standing there when the door jingled open and a pair of familiar faces stepped through. “Oh, hello, Harry,” said Padma brightly, making help me eyes in his direction, which could easily be explained by the fact that she was arm-in-arm with Ernie Macmillan, who Harry knew for a fact she found distasteful.
“Padma! You look wonderful,” Harry said warmly. It was even true; she wore a burnt-orange garment halfway between a sari and a British wizarding robe that set off her skin and eyes nicely, even mostly hidden as it was beneath a heavy outer cloak of forest green and gold. But he wouldn’t have bothered saying anything if not for Macmillan.
The Hufflepuff predictably drew himself up at a perceived threat to the sanctity of his date. “Black, how excellent to see you.”
Oh, last names, was it? Harry suppressed a smirk. “And you as well, Macmillan. Hiding from the weather, are you?”
“We’re going to the Three Broomsticks for a hot drink after this,” Padma said. Her chilly tones suggested that she hadn’t wanted to stop in Honeydukes at all.
Macmillan did something Harry could only describe as a chortle. Merlin, he’d thought only old men laughed like that. “Yes, well, nothing’s quite so warming as a bar of chocolate, I find, that should carry us along! I did mention, Padma, love, I need to stop by Gladrags for a bit, I’m sure you won’t mind—?”
“Oh, dear,” Harry said with as much sincerity as he could muster, “you’ll be needing a new uniform, then?”
“What? No, I’m having a new dress robe tailored—why would I need a new uniform?” said Macmillan suspiciously.
“I suppose you wouldn’t,” Harry assured him. “It’s just, you know how it is, students and robes, I can’t tell you how often my wards ruin theirs doing some experiment or other, and you’re so often studying outside of classes.”
Macmillan clearly had no idea if he’d just been insulted or not: he did study manically, and he was proud of it; but Harry had also implied he was a child and couldn’t care for his own clothes, though of course Macmillan wouldn’t be sure whether Harry had done it on purpose—
“Well, no, then. Just a new dress robe,” Macmillan said stiffly. “Come along, Padma, I think you might like to try—”
Harry blinked in shock as he all but bodily dragged Padma away.
Theo appeared out of nowhere with a truly frightening smirk on his face, with Neville right on his heels. “Got your eye on someone?”
“Bugger off. No. We’re… I suppose associates. Potentially friends eventually.”
“Awww, moving on from me already?”
“Where did you come from?” Harry said, turning on Daphne.
His once-girlfriend laughed. “I think all three of us heard you using your scary-nice voice and came over to see what the trouble was.”
“I do not have a scary-nice voice.”
“No, really, you do,” Neville assured him. “Like, I get nervous when you use it, and you don’t scare me.”
Harry frowned. “That’s not my intention.”
“He was joking,” Theo said. “So are we mounting a rescue mission here, or abandoning her to her fate?”
“She got her sister to try and help Nev and ‘Mione work out Jules’ potions secret,” Harry reminded him. “I’m leaning towards the former.”
“We were planning to go to the Three Broomsticks next,” said Daphne thoughtfully.
Which was how they wound up getting into line right behind Padma and her date, holding a loud conversation about their plans to go to the town’s main pub until Neville impulsively and enthusiastically invited Padma along with a reference to some conversation they’d had in Herbology that week. Naturally Macmillan said something about his pending tailor appointment, and then Padma did exactly what Harry had hoped she would: she cut Macmillan off before he could get around to actually saying no with a bright, “Oh, but I would love to join you, maybe you can meet us there, Ernie?”
And she actually batted her eyelashes.
Harry did not think that that could possibly work, but Macmillan apparently forgot how to think in the face of a pretty witch, and he stuttered out an agreement.
Daphne almost immediately began exclaiming over one of the candies in Padma’s basket. Harry happened to know Daphne did actually love Pepperattles, so that was just a happy coincidence, but it kept Macmillan quite thoroughly out of the conversation until everyone bundled out of the shop and he said a stiff goodbye.
They turned towards the Three Broomsticks and walked along in silence for a few seconds. Padma broke it. “So. Thanks. Why?”
“No one deserves him,” Theo said back with a smirk.
Padma grinned, and shared some Pepperattles with Daphne, both of them hurrying to get their fingers back in gloves: the wind had somehow gotten worse and the snow was falling thick and fast now.
The Three Broomsticks was a welcome spot of warmth. They were far from the only students to have sought refuge here; Harry looked around with a frown, wondering if they could even find space.
Neville had to half-shout to be heard over the din: “I’m gonna go get butterbeers, find us a table?”
“Need help?” said Theo.
“Sure!”
“There!” Padma, said, pointing: Harry turned and saw a group of Ravenclaws getting up in something of a hurry, scarves askew and half-drunk butterbeers on the table. Padma beelined for the table straight away.
In Harry’s peripheral vision, Daphne slid her wand back up her sleeve. She shrugged when he caught her eye, and Harry grinned to himself as they caught up with Padma.
Draco
Hermione would probably kill him if she knew he was using their date as an alibi.
Honestly, Draco didn’t know why he hadn’t just told her. Probably she would just go along with it. He thought.
Fine. Maybe she wouldn’t. Premeditated murder was a bit of a stretch for someone like Hermione, with her aggressively normal and law-abiding childhood, to wrap their head around at age sixteen. Premeditated murder of their headmaster no less.
Draco watched Hermione’s mass of beautiful, riotous curls bob through the crowd on her way to the bar for more drinks. He himself made a point of catching the eye of as many people he knew as possible, raising a hand or giving a nod of greeting. Harry, Daphne, Theo, Neville, and for some reason Padma Patil had come in a minute ago, and Draco had pointedly waved at Theo so that Hermione would follow suit—with much more vigour, naturally—and that meant two more people, close friends at that, who’d have memories of Draco being there, in public, with Hermione.
Alibis. All of them.
Technically speaking Draco didn’t even have to be here today. He would’ve been better off with his original plan of slacking off in McGonagall’s class until she gave him a weekend of detention—that would be an inarguable alibi—but after his and Hermione’s argument about time together he couldn’t bring himself to muck up their plans.
Affection really did make people stupid.
Hermione was still stuck up at the bar, along with about two dozen other people; Draco craned his neck, and saw no sign of Madam Rosmerta’s tall and generous figure behind the bar. He tensed and did his best to hide it. Could it really be now—
In the back of his mind, there was a twinge. Draco flexed his magic and occlumency at the same time, and concentrated on the tie between him and Madam Rosmerta’s subdued, Imperiused mind.
She’d never seen who cursed her. Draco had made sure of that. If the curse snapped he was safe. And if it did, absolutely no one would even be able to blame him; the Dark Lord had about half a dozen Death Eaters who could sustain an Imperius chain of three or more, and two, at Draco’s age, was ambitious. It was the biggest problem with the spell. Draco could curse Rosmerta, and that was fine; but if he then used her to Imperius someone else, then the whole house of cards grew exponentially more delicate. Worse, if Rosmerta’s curse failed, or if her target shook it off, the backlash would break Draco’s hold on Rosmerta herself and potentially slap Draco with a nasty case of magical exhaustion.
Even though he’d been bracing for it all day the sudden new connection hit him so hard his vision went momentarily grey. Draco clutched the edge of the table and tried not to list to either side. Fuck. Fuck. No wonder this was… He wrangled the curse on Rosmerta into submission, and grimly seized hold of the extension of it that tied into her target. Maintaining the Imperius took a certain level of finesse, and also of what Hermione would call entitlement, but what Draco just thought was an appropriate amount of self-confidence. The point was he didn’t see any real reason he shouldn’t take over someone else’s body if they were doing such a shite job protecting it as to let him Imperius them with someone else.
That probably said something not great about Draco. Whatever. He had bigger problems. Like holding this curse together long enough for Rosmerta’s unlucky target to take the necklace to Dumbledore. It had taken Draco a week of work to contain the curse on the necklace behind an age-triggered activation. Anyone over ninety who set eyes on it would find themselves unable to look away. Dumbledore, being an occlumens, would probably be able to snap out of the fascination curse within a few seconds, but a few seconds was all that the other curse, the one from before Draco had gotten it, to set in, and by then he’d be dead on the floor.
Or he wouldn’t and this would be a perfect red herring slash full-page ad informing the Dark Lord that I, Draco, Malfoy, Am Trying My Best.
Draco spotted Hermione’s hair making its way back towards him and grimaced. Possibly the harder part of this whole plan would be making sure Hermione didn’t suspect.
Harry
Pansy and Justin had rejoined Harry and the main group for the walk back up to the castle. It was frigid but pleasant, Neville and Blaise tossing snowballs that Padma and Daphne sniped with colour-change charms, most of them laughing despite the wind— and then the scream sliced their good mood to shreds.
There was no sign of where it had come from: they were alone on the road, anyone near them lost in the whirling snow. All of them sobered up immediately, and clustered into a tight group, wands out and eyes alert. Harry went immediately to the edge of the road and his Vipers followed suit.
“Eyes out,” he said softly. “Come on.”
“What—” Padma started to say. Theo made a harsh shush sound and shoved her into line between Blaise and Neville; Justin, Daph, and Pansy brought up the rear.
Harry set off at a quick, measured clip, trusting that his Vipers would be watching their flanks and rear. The sound had come from up ahead, between them and the castle, and it made sense to investigate, but carefully.
Padma shrieked a little when the figure of a girl hovering in midair came into view. Two others were calling out frantically and trying to spell her down.
“Cover!” Harry said, and hearing shield charms going up, took off with Theo right on his elbow.
It was Katie Bell.
Theo swore. Harry took in the scene with a glance: package on the ground, something shiny poking out. Theo tossed a diagnostic charm at it and then swore again, which told Harry that it was probably a curse on the object which in turn meant this wasn’t an exterior attack and there was no danger around them. Sounds from behind indicated his other Vipers had drawn the same conclusion and were approaching but Harry didn’t have time to worry about them.
Bell was deathly pale, head thrown back and face contorted into a silent scream. Harry cast his preferred broad-spectrum curse-cancelling spell—it wasn’t the most powerful but it worked on a lot of things, and if it failed, that would tell him this curse was a complicated and finicky or exceptionally strong one.
Neither was the case. Bell’s unearthly stillness vanished and she fell; Theo and Neville caught her with simultaneous charms and Daphne smoothly conjured a stretcher for her. “What’s wrong with her!” said one of her friends. “What’s happening?”
“Go get a professor, tell Pomfrey,” Harry snapped in his Do the fuck what I say voice, the one that made Graham freeze in place when he’d been reaching for something he shouldn’t touch around Grimmauld. One of them nodded and took off at an impressive sprint for the castle. The other took a steadying breath and said, “What can I do?”
“What happened?” Harry said. Daphne, the quickest of them with healing charms, was briskly casting one after the other, though nothing seemed to help: Bell’s face was still contorted, and she was mostly unconscious, but shifting around and making faint high-pitched sounds of pain.
“I don’t know! She—she said the package was for—was a gift, and… I don’t know where she got it, I didn’t see her buy it. We… we left the Three Broomsticks and we were walking back and—I guess she was a little quieter than usual—then we just heard her scream and she was—in the air, and then…” She stopped and pressed a hand to her eyes.
“It’s cursed,” Theo said grimly, looking up from where he was crouched over the package. “A necklace. Old curse. I can’t tell what exactly it does, but it’s strong.”
“Floating?” Harry said.
“There’s some kind of… fear element.” Theo cast another diagnostic, one Harry himself struggled with, and his face went tight with concentration as he tried to sift through the knowledge it essentially dumped unfiltered into the caster’s mind. “An unspecified… instil fear in… it wants to frighten others, not just hurt the target…”
“Sounds like it was originally meant as a statement curse,” Justin said. “Like a ‘don’t touch my shit or else’ kind of deal. Messed up.”
“Welcome to heirloom curses,” said Padma, who up to this point had been standing back and watching with an unreadable expression.
Harry didn’t have the time to worry overmuch about her; none of what they’d cast was technically illegal and he knew none of those present here had had anything at all to do with the curse. He might have suspicions about who had been behind this but no evidence.
Likely Padma would ask later about the Vipers’ obviously practiced group response, but really, she was in the DA, albeit tangentially. It couldn’t be that strange to her that Harry’s ‘study group’ had been up to similar things.
A shout came from the direction of the school: they all looked up and saw Pomfrey, McGonagall, and Snape all heading their way at a flat-out run. Seeing two of Harry’s most straitlaced and formal professors kicking up their heels with their day robes and heavy winter cloaks flapping in the wind was comical enough he had to remind himself this was an inappropriate time to smile.
Pomfrey’s wand started moving before she’d properly skidded to a halt. “Someone’s tried to heal this girl. Talk to me.”
“Me.” Daphne launched into a brisk iteration of what she’d been doing.
“Five points to Slytherin for quick thinking,” said McGonagall, which was when Harry realized Pansy had been holding a weather-mitigate charm around their group for some while. She nodded back at McGonagall with a slightly strained expression. McGonagall rounded on Harry. “What happened?”
“We were coming along the lane back to school,” said Harry, “and we heard her screaming from up ahead. I used a broad effect curse-nullifier and it brought her down. We conjured the stretcher so she wouldn’t be lying in the snow and Daphne’s been trying to heal her. That’s what did it—” He pointed at the cursed necklace, which was holding Snape and Theo’s attention, both of them in rapid conversation while Snape seemed to be in the midst of another diagnostic. Harry turned to the friend of Bell’s who had stayed with him. “Tell her what you told me.”
McGonagall listened to the girl’s explanation with a horrified expression. “My word, Miss Wengrow, that—”
“Minerva, she’s stable, we’ve got to get her to the castle,” Pomfrey interrupted. “Greengrass, can you help me levitate her? I’d like to maintain this charm—”
“Yes, of course,” Daphne said, pointing her wand at the stretcher, which at once floated smoothly into the air.
“Pansy, go with them,” Harry said, and Pansy nodded, falling in at the tail of the odd procession. Her bubble of protection slid away and at once the wind hit them all with renewed fury.
Snape conjured some sort of box and levitated the necklace into it. “Go, Severus,” said McGonagall.
“With me, Mr. Nott,” Snape said curtly. Theo glanced at Harry just once before obeying.
McGonagall wrapped an arm around Wengrow’s shaking shoulders. “All of you, my office, now.”
“Are we going to say anything?” Blaise said lowly.
Harry looked up from his essay and followed Blaise’s attention across the common room to Draco, lounging in a corner with a novel and looking so obviously unbothered that it could only be an act.
The rest of them all knew why Blaise was asking. Parvati Patil had told Daphne before dinner that Jules suspected Malfoy of having arranged for the necklace to wind up in Katie Bell’s hands and had said as much to McGonagall. She hadn’t believed him, especially once the professors asked around and about two dozen people, including Hermione, who had been on a date with him, could place Draco in their line of sight consistently throughout the day. He certainly had had no time to slip off and curse anyone and he and Hermione had left the village before Katie Bell did.
As alibis went, it was pretty solid. It could only have been more solid if Draco simply hadn’t set foot out of the castle all day. Harry knew Draco was more than intelligent enough to have ensured that he wouldn’t get caught that easily.
Combined with Theo’s warning of a student with a task in Hogwarts… well.
“It can’t have been meant for Bell,” said Pansy.
“Undoubtedly she was meant to give it to someone else,” Harry agreed. “Whole plan went sideways because it was packaged badly.”
Theo’s lips pressed together. “I’ll have to write Father.”
None of them allowed their expressions to turn grim and dour in such a public space—Seaton and his crew were over in the corner, probably doing their very best to ferret out and embolden the House’s real blood purists—but of course they all felt it. Harry tapped his fingers slightly against his arm. “Will there be…”
“Unlikely. It may have even been… a failed attempt is still an attempt, and demonstrated effort.” Theo shrugged. “Not that I’ll include that supposition.”
“It’s not a very large leap,” Pansy said drily. Theo tilted his head, as if to say, not my problem.
“Don’t say anything to him,” Harry decided. “Not for now.”
Later, Harry and Blaise excused themselves. “I’ll catch up with you in a few,” Theo said, not looking up from the rune stones he was carefully engraving.
“Was that intentional?” Blaise said quietly as they walked away.
Harry glanced back. Daphne had leaned in close to Theo as if to offer what comfort he would accept. “I think so.”
Blaise swore.
Neither of them spoke again until they’d gotten back to their room. Draco was still out there playacting normalcy and Crabbe and Goyle were Merlin knew where; Harry kicked the door shut and cast locking and privacy spells on it.
“This is shite,” Blaise said miserably.
“Nothing to be done.” Harry sank onto his bed. “We have to watch Draco. I’m sure Theo will suspect but we can’t tell him or involve him in it. If he has certain knowledge of us monitoring or interfering with a plan of the Dark Lord’s—”
“Yeah. I know. Yeah. Fuck. I’ll get… Hermione. Neville can’t lie for shite. Justin—”
“Not Justin,” said Harry, knowing that Justin and Draco’s closeness would make it very difficult for Justin to keep that a secret. “Daph and Pansy, obviously. Luna’s cleverer than she lets on and she sees things others don’t. She can help. And… I’ll speak with Celesta—she’s got her finger on the pulse of the seventh years.”
“Anita too,” said Blaise. “She can keep an ear out with the staff and at prefects’ meetings.”
“Good enough for now.”
Blaise looked at him. “And if we… have the opportunity to interfere, what will you do?”
“Depends on who the real target is. I can think of at least one target within Hogwarts who I would be perfectly happy to see dead. But as for helping the Dark Lord…”
“You are walking a very thin line,” Blaise said softly.
Just for a moment, Harry let himself feel the weight of it all, and knew his shoulders had sagged. “It’s—I’ll be fine. And… something is going to have to give, eventually. Better to know in advance than get taken off guard. Right now I’m hemmed in on two sides, but if one of those falters…”
“Space to move,” Blaise agreed. “Alright. And if it’s the other target?”
“He wants to kill Jules himself. It’s not him.”
“If it was?” Blaise pressed.
Harry looked steadily at him. “Drop it.”
“You’re going to have to figure that out eventually.”
“I said,” Harry said through numb lips, “drop it.”
Blaise did.
By the time Theo joined them, Blaise had vanished behind closed bed curtains and Harry was relaxing with a book. Theo grabbed his things and disappeared to the bathroom without a word.
Harry felt a headache coming on.
You may have noticed that this week's chapter is a little short. Originally there was another scene in this chapter that needs to be here for pacing reasons but made it about 13k overall which was more than Wix will allow me to put in one post without glitches. As such, I will be posting Chapter 11, which is just that other scene, in one week on Saturday, June 18th, for Flock members. You'll get Chapter 12 as usual in 2 weeks when 11 goes up on ao3.
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