Hermione
She loved her House, and was proud to be a Gryffindor, but honestly they were insufferable on nights when they threw a quidditch-related party. There hadn’t even been a match yet and they still decided their stickball game was justification to deafen every resident of the Tower.
Why this game was so bloody important to so many of her classmates Hermione would never understand.
“How are you reading right now?”
Hermione jumped a little, and found that Neville had sat down next to her at her table in the corner of the common room. “Practice!”
“What?” he half-shouted back, leaning closer.
With a frustrated noise that probably only she could hear over the shouting, stomping, laughing music-playing, alcohol-drinking riot of the Gryffindor commons, Hermione cast a muting charm, and the noise abated. “Oh, thank Merlin,” said Neville. “I was getting such a headache.”
“You could go upstairs.”
He shrugged. “And let this all get out of hand? Not like Ron’s doing anything to help.”
Hermione felt her face sour. Ron hadn’t even been there when Hermione and the fifth- and seventh-year prefects had gone to chivvy everyone under fourth year to their beds. Nor had he noticed when she stopped Collie Patron from spiking the punch with firewhiskey and Merlin only knew what else.
Hermione had learned to turn a blind eye to sensible drinking amongst the fifth years and up, but putting hard alcohol in something people would reasonably expect to be nonalcoholic was unfair and the opposite of sensible. And yet Ron hadn’t seen the problem. Had, if anything, laughed.
“Anyways,” she said with a sigh. “Practice. I’m far too accustomed to reading in the middle of utter bedlam.”
“That’s a talent, that is,” Neville said with a grin. “I could never. Drink?” He produced a flask. “It’s an herbal wine from our cellars. Bit stronger than average but not on firewhiskey’s level.”
Hermione hesitated, then, with a twirl of her wand, conjured two delicate glasses. “Why not.”
“You’re terrifying,” Neville informed her, pouring.
“What’s really going to be terrifying is Draco’s mood if they lose.”
“Trouble in paradise?” Neville said.
“Not… trouble, exactly, but he’s always very… moody,” Hermione said. “God, I feel bad even saying this.”
Neville patted her on the shoulder. “You’re allowed to, you know, not be perfectly positive all the time.”
“Yeah,” she said, sipping the wine. It was strong, but the burn of the alcohol balanced out with a sharp herbal aftertaste. “Oh, this is nice.”
“Thanks. One of my ancestors made a bit of a hobby out of it. Was thinking of giving it a try myself,” Neville said. He nudged her shoulder. “Draco?”
“It’s… well, like I said. He can be moody. Very… up and down. I’m not very good at recognizing it,” Hermione said into her wine glass. “Sometimes I think he thinks it means I don’t care.”
“He can be a lot more emotional than he likes people to think,” Neville agreed.
Hermione shook herself. “Well. It’s not as if it’s really a major problem. We’ve been getting on better since—I told you about that argument we had? It helps, planning things out in advance, and I’ve been trying to be more… present, I suppose.”
“I don’t figure it’s ever easy,” Neville said. “And you two both have strong personalities. You’re bound to clash sometimes. What matters is probably that you’re nice to each other even when you’re trying to sort things out.”
Hermione smiled at him. “You’re much wiser than most wizards your age.”
“Oh, well.” Neville blushed. “If that was true I don’t know that I’d be single.”
“Is there someone?”
Neville hesitated.
A sudden burst of noise, even through her muffling charm, drew Hermione’s attention. She turned and immediately winced: Ron was up on a table, dipping Lavendar backwards while snogging her soundly, to jeers and catcalls from the rest of the House. Someone had conjured a rain of rose petals to fall on them. Several others appeared to be spraying water or grains of rice out of their wands at the couple.
“Oh, bugger,” Neville said, half-standing.
“Get a room!” Seamus bellowed, grabbing Ron around the legs; with a shriek, Lavender toppled backwards into the waiting arms of the crowd, and Ron was dragged down, laughing. And just like that, the show was over, the party moved on.
Hermione dropped her face into her hands. “Merlin. He’s a bloody prefect.”
“I can curse him so his bollocks shrivel up,” Neville said, sounding far too eager. “Theo showed me a version that wears off after a few days.”
“No,” Hermione sighed. “Save it for McLaggen if he doesn’t get his head on straight. He doesn’t always care if a witch wants his hand up her skirt.”
“Bit late for that.”
Hermione turned on him. “You didn’t!”
Neville didn’t bother trying to hide his unbearably smug expression. “I did. Why d’you think I learned it in the first place?”
“Oh my God, I’m surrounded by barbarians,” Hermione said in mock despair.
“Drink up,” Neville said, topping off her wine glass. “Then our barbarian ways won’t seem too horrible.”
Theo
The Soothsayer project couldn’t have possibly been going better. Its third episode had gone out only a few days prior, and already dozens of letters had come pouring back in, first to the anonymous post box Harry rented and then forwarded in shrunken bundles to Pansy.
Theo read his copy in the middle of the Slytherin common room so that as many other students as possible would see him with it and wonder. Pointedly, he allowed himself to emote, just a bit—enough to suggest it was his first time reading its contents. In truth, he had helped edit Mason and Iris’ history of magical censorship, and also seen an early draft of Hermione and Justin’s incisive, systematic accounting of the problems Muggleborns faced when coming to Hogwarts and the many ways the school let them down.
Dumbledore was going to absolutely hate it. Theo couldn’t be happier.
“Pansy thinks we ought to start printing some of these letters to the editor,” Harry said, dropping down into a seat beside him. Theo, having felt the privacy ward going up, didn’t react more than a lifted eyebrow. “It’ll certainly inflame things. A good portion of them are completely outraged. If we set the next one up to show how people are reacting to the way Hogwarts is run…”
“It’ll go far,” Theo agreed. “Breakfast?”
“Yes, let’s go ostentatiously read it in public and discuss like we’ve never seen it before,” Harry said with the wicked smirk of his that Theo knew so well.
The Soothsayer had gone out several days prior, but it took some time to circulate among students, and so it was still attention-drawing when Harry and Theo sat down and Theo whipped out his copy of the paper over toast and eggs. “Give me the last section, I want to see the bit on the Ministry’s use of propaganda,” Harry said loudly enough to be overheard by one or two Ravenclaws.
“Here you go.” Theo handed it over with an internal smirk. That had been one of Pansy’s best pieces to date.
Su Li leaned over the gap between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables. “Oi, Harry, is that that new paper that’s been going ‘round? I keep hearing about it but it’s so hard to get my hands on a copy.”
“You can borrow this one when we’re done,” Theo said generously. Never mind they had another two dozen downstairs waiting to be left around the castle ‘accidentally.’
She beamed. “Thanks so much!”
Theo went on reading and occasionally bringing up a point from Hermione and Justin’s article as the Great Hall slowly filled. He spotted several other Soothsayers making their way up and down the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables, and even one or two over with the Gryffindors. An improvement over yesterday.
A sudden hush drew his attention to the front of the Hall. As usual, having to look directly at Albus Dumbledore made Theo’s heart beat faster and the iron tang of hatred fill his mouth. It was something he avoided doing when at all possible.
“I know you are all undoubtedly eager to rush off to your classes,” said Dumbledore with genial warmth that made Theo want to rip his teeth out the Muggle way, “but I must ask a moment of your time so that I may address these unfortunate rumours about Hogwarts’ inclusivity.”
Across the table, Pansy’s eyes had gotten fractionally wider. Could Dumbledore really be this stupid?
“We few of the Hogwarts faculty strive to create a welcoming environment to those of our students who come from nonmagical families. We do all that we can to ease the no doubt challenging transition from a Muggle childhood to a magical education. I beseech you, therefore, to put little stock in any claims to the contrary put forward by this Soothsayer. At my advanced age—” Dumbledore winked and smiled conspiratorially— “I fancy that I have accumulated a rather weighty degree of life experience, and I promise you, the words of anyone too cowardly to put their name to their opinions are not worth your consideration.”
Whispers broke out like locusts swarming as soon as Dumbledore sat back down and dismissed them to go to their classes. Harry and Pansy traded a significant look, which Harry then turned on Theo: they couldn’t talk about it here, but they were all of one mind.
Harry
“That,” Pansy burst out, “was so stupid.”
“I know!” Harry hadn’t felt this, well, delighted in quite some time. He flicked his wand at one of the Knights’ Room’s braziers and sent its fire roaring to life. “Just like Umbridge, really. That one little speech makes sure everyone will read it now.”
“We have to do the letters to the editor next time,” Pansy said.
Harry nodded. “I agree. C’mon, the others will be here soon, let’s get the fires going.”
By the time the rest of the inner circle of Vipers trickled in, he and Pansy had got the flames in the braziers dancing merrily, and strengthened the witchlights burning on the walls. A simple breeze charm kept the air fresh.
Blaise was the last of them. “You won’t believe what’s happened,” he said without preamble.
“What? Sit down, you’re looming,” Daphne added, kicking at an empty armchair.
“The Board of Governors have convened an emergency session with Selwyn,” Blaise said gleefully. Theo’s eyebrows went up; next to him, Neville whistled softly. “Dumbledore rushed off just before classes let out for the day. Hasn’t been seen since.”
“And you know this how?” said Pansy, sounding almost offended.
Blaise blew a kiss at her. “I have my ways, Pansy darling.”
She was unimpressed. “Have you really? Like what, precisely?”
“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”
“Thank Merlin we haven’t got any of those, then.”
“Oi,” said Neville.
Theo patted him on the head. “You’re very gentlemanly, Neville, she didn’t mean it like that.”
“Bugger off,” said Neville, swatting at his arm, but he was smiling.
“Selwyn will likely step up his efforts soon,” said Daphne calculatingly. “I wonder how long before Binns is out.”
“Hear, hear,” muttered Justin.
“He’s been asking me questions lately about what a cultural awareness course for first years might look like,” Hermione said. “I expect that’ll be one of his new plans. Especially after this.”
A burst of affection warmer than the braziers spread in Harry’s chest. They were his, the Vipers, his, and happy, and at peace. They knew each other. They were comfortable together.
Pansy slanted a private smile at him, as if she knew what he was thinking. She probably did. She knew him well enough, and Harry wasn’t bothering to mask his emotions right now, or at least not very much.
A few years ago, Harry would never have believed he could have such a thing. Yet here he was. Here they all were.
Severus
“Albus won’t be coming,” Minerva said briskly, “so we’d best get started.”
“What? Where is he?” demanded Vance, one of Severus’ least favorite Order members, which was saying something.
Minerva’s lips were even more pursed than usual. “He is in talks with several of the school governors regarding the rumours that have been making their way around.”
There was quite a bit of general grumbling about the Soothsayer and how bad it was making Dumbledore, Hogwarts, and the entire political Light look. Severus personally had some suspicions as to the new paper’s origins but so long as he had no proof he had no obligation to share them.
And if he was actively avoiding situations that might provide him with proof, well, that was his business.
Thorne spoke over the din. “It’s got to be a Death Eater thing.”
Because no one other than a Death Eater could possibly disagree with you. Severus managed to avoid rolling his eyes by staring fixedly at a knot in the Weasleys’ ancient kitchen table until the urge passed.
“Let’s hunt down whoever’s running it and make sure they know what’s what!” said Dillonsby loudly.
“Hear, hear!” This from Vance, who, along with Robards and Dillonsby, had been one of the most hotheaded voices at these little meetings. They were being particularly unrestrained tonight. Did they not remember that there were Aurors sitting at the table? Not to mention the bloody Minister for Magic?
Sideris and Cornfoot chimed in with their agreement, and Shacklebolt stirred. Ah, there we go. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘show them what’s what,’” said the former Auror, “but it isn’t actually illegal to print and distribute a newspaper, provided it has the right licensing.”
“Well, does it?” said Thorne aggressively.
Shacklebolt glanced at Mafalda Hopkirk, who shrugged. “I can investigate,” she offered.
“Thank you,” said Shacklebolt.
They wouldn’t find anything. Whoever was behind the paper was clearly organized, intelligent, thorough, and in possession of substantial resources. Something as obvious as a printing license would not be the thread that unraveled the whole tapestry.
“We need to discuss the Wizengamot,” McKinnon began, but Robards cut off the older Auror with a harsh jerk of his hand and, “Bugger the Wizengamot, what are we gonna do about the Hillards, eh? They’re just gone!”
“Wh—all of them?” said Diggle, clearly startled. At the foot of the table, the ancient Kierney Towler stirred; the Hillards were Towler cousins, not on the Wizengamot themselves but still a relatively respectable family. And it was significant that the recent raids had not been solely directed at families with a voice in the legislature. Perhaps it was simply meant to instill fear so that when the Death Eaters came knocking people like Towler rolled right over.
“Do you know, Severus?” said Andi in a soft but cutting tone.
“No,” Severus said. He did not allow himself to react as every eye in the room swung to him. “There have been raids of late, but if I am told of the targets, it is only in the aftermath.”
“Well, find out,” snapped Sideris. “What good even are you if you can’t tell us who they’re going after?”
A rumble of agreement passed through the younger Order members clustered near her and Thorne. Severus waited dispassionately for it to die down. “I’ve already shared everything I know with Albus.”
Shacklebolt cleared his throat. “Some of which he has passed on to me. Those of you who work in or around the Ministry—” he looked to Fenwick in particular— “should be alert to any attempted robberies or illicit access attempts made on the Life Records offices.”
“Why?” said McKinnon, startled. He looked at Fenwick. “Isn’t that just birth and death records and so on?”
“As we’ve already discussed, You-Know-Who has been working on swaying votes on the Wizengamot to his side.” How Shacklebolt managed to pull all their attention to him without raising his voice was beyond Severus. “However, before he fell in ‘81, he made a few mistakes—killed people widely believed to have no Heir, only to find that a somewhat distant relative was eligible to claim their seat and oppose the Death Eaters’ legislative agenda. Severus?”
“If he has access to those records, he will know who he can kill with impunity, whose families have previously unknown branches to use as leverage, and who among his followers may be eligible to claim a currently dormant or contested seat,” Severus said flatly. Some days it was difficult to remember why he couldn’t simply storm up to the castle and exorcise Cuthbert Binns. If not for the bloody ghost, maybe more of Severus’ comrades would have the civics knowledge to figure these things out for themselves.
Andromeda was the exception, but that was no surprise. “Those records are confidential and highly warded. Even the archivists can’t access them without getting permission in triplicate, and the Unspeakables oversee the wards tracking entry.”
“It is unlikely,” Severus agreed, “but the Dark Lord is highly resourceful, and Albus agrees with me that it is a pressing concern.”
Shacklebolt thanked him. Largely a pro forma gesture, Severus was sure, to model a certain level of decency, but appreciated nevertheless, and Severus allowed himself to hope that had smoothed things over.
“There are still non-Wizengamot-related attacks being carried out,” Andromeda said mildly, and his hope went out the window.
“Severus cannot risk ruining his cover poking around after that information,” said Fenwick, who Severus appreciated as one of the more sensible, if not even-tempered, people here. “Albus would—”
“I don’t see Albus here, do you?” Robards retorted.
That drove one of Severus’ eyebrows a few millimeters upwards. Outright challenge of Albus’ leadership was not what he had been expecting tonight. If the rumors of Hogwarts’ mistreatment of Muggleborns had been planted to undermine the Headmaster then that plan was succeeding posthaste.
“Albus is managing more pressing problems than your petty disagreements,” rumbled Pluto Dearborn.
Shacklebolt cleared his throat. “One thing I did want to discuss tonight was the Death Eaters’ attempts to infiltrate the Ministry. I fear they’re making progress… nothing concrete, but some unusual promotions and unexpected retirements, mostly in the DMLE and Transportation.”
“Do you think they’re going for the FNA?” Andromeda mused.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. The only places where they have had difficulty are the Office of the Minister and the Wizengamot Administration—I’ve personally rebuffed multiple private meetings requested of me by certain high-ranking officials and Wizengamot members known to sympathize with the traditionalist political bloc.”
“Imperius?” growled Moody from the corner, from which he typically watched all and spoke little.
“No. They know we’re doing regular checks of high-level staff, including myself. I believe they’re hoping to sway me using more mundane methods. There have been a few comments, in general meetings or internal memos… I’ve made it clear I won’t be bought, nor will I look the other way regarding bribes in the Minister’s Office. I worry that if we lose the Wizengamot, the rest of the Ministry, one way or another, will be persuaded to look the other way. The Minister’s Office staff are holding out, but if they can’t work with me… I’ve been followed several times in Diagon or near my home. Someone tried to hex me outside a restaurant last week. And then there are these.” Shacklebolt pulled a small bundle of parchment from his pocket and tossed it on the table, where it fell apart, revealing itself to be a number of small scrolls wrapped together.
The gathered Order members passed them around. Their unhappy exclamations alerted Severus long before he got his hands on one of the notes that their contents weren’t pleasant.
Watch yourself, said one of them, in the bland handwriting of a standard Dicta-Quill. Another read Don’t start a fight you won’t win. A third: No house is inflammable. Sleep tight.
It was, Severus reflected grimly, as the Order began discussing strategies to reinforce the stretched-thin and half-untrustworthy Auror Corps, a typical tactic of the Death Eaters. Since the late fifties, when the movement had first begun to militarize itself, it had used rumors and threats at least as much as actual violence. With the Ministry’s propaganda piled on, fear of the Death Eaters grew out of proportion to their actual deeds, fear which the Dark Lord then turned to his own benefit to cow any who resisted him.
Doubtless one or two of Shacklebolt’s neighbors already knew about the threats. If they didn’t, by morning someone in the Ministry would, given the multiple Aurors and Ministry employees present. From there the rumor would grow and mutate and spread on swift wings. Not even the Minister is safe, people would tell themselves.
The Dark Lord had enough informants within the DMLE that Severus didn’t need to listen with much care to this conversation. He paid attention, of course, but not as closely as when Thorne brought up the list of his surveillance targets, a plan which McKinnon and Shacklebolt had hesitantly agreed to.
Privately, Severus was quite sure that the surveillance would escalate to outright violence if it hadn’t already, but if anyone else thought the same they weren’t speaking up.
Shacklebolt, McKinnon, and Tonks excused themselves soon after. It was late enough for their departure to be plausible but Severus doubted he was the only one to notice the duty-bound law enforcement officials among their ranks thought they shouldn’t be hearing this. It really was legally dubious to essentially stalk one’s fellow citizens no matter the extenuating circumstances of war.
And it was a war. No one could call it anything else at this point. The Ministry liked to overstate the degree of Death Eater violence as ever it had but that did not mean there was no violence at all. Disappearances. Threats. Bribes and imperius curses. Yes, Severus remembered very well how war with the Death Eaters went, and he knew Thorne was fighting it in exactly the wrong way. One fought fire with water, or with sand. Not with more fire burning on a different fuel.
Harry
“Ah, Harry, welcome, welcome! Do come in, close the door—would you care for a ginger snap?”
“No, thank you, sir,” Harry said.
“Are you quite sure? They’re delicious—really do snap!” Slughorn levitated the tray into a tantalizing waggle at Harry’s elbow.
Harry smiled and took one. “Well, all right then.”
“That’s the ticket! Come, come, have a seat.” Slughorn settled into the brocade armchair he always used by his office’s fire and beamed, lifting the journal Harry had left with him a few weeks prior. “I must say, Harry, I’ve rarely seen such ingenuity in a student!”
“Oh, thank you, sir, that’s very generous of you to say.” Harry pulled on the smile he preferred to use with professors, a combination of pleased, humble, and confident that never failed to charm them, and took the other armchair. The tea service on the table perked up in his direction. Harry told it, “Dash of milk, no sugar,” and sat back while the teapot started pouring.
Slughorn set down his own tea and held out the journal. “It’s hardly generous to assign you the credit you deserve. Why, the modifications you’ve made to the breaths-ease potion? Simply revolutionary!”
Harry’s teacup floated in his direction; he took it and sipped. Mmm. Nice herbal blend. No buzzing aftertaste of a potion. Slight lingering slick of lipids from the milk; expected, no hint of poison-related curdling or bitterness. Not that Slughorn would try to kill him, but it paid to be careful.
“I’m afraid I must beg your forgiveness,” Slughorn went on, and Harry lowered his teacup, fully alert now, “for sharing a few of the notes in this journal with an old associate of mine.”
“Oh?” said Harry, with precision.
“Yes, Tyron Gatlin—” Harry almost choked on his own saliva— “a Master based in the United States, I believe specifically its southern region—he was most impressed!”
“He’s a parselmouth,” said Harry. Keeping his tone even took work. Tyron Gatlin was a notorious recluse and took apprentices only rarely. He hadn’t even been on the list of people Harry was considering contacting. Obviously he was annoyed Slughorn sent any of his work anywhere without permission, but if it got him in the door with Gatlin—
“He is indeed! Oh dear,” said Slughorn, completely misinterpreting Harry’s reserve, “I do hope that will not be a problem—I had thought, given your own ability—”
“It’s no problem,” Harry assured him. “I’m only surprised. I believed Gatlin unwilling to take students who had not at least completed a few years of their apprenticeship.”
“It is as I said. Your work is already that of an apprentice seasoned by a year or two of work. He is duly impressed.”
Harry let out a controlled exhale. Gatlin. He might get to work with Tyron Gatlin. Barty was going to lose his entire mind. “I think I can forgive you having shared the work this once, sir,” he said with a self-deprecating smile, though he wasn’t joking.
“I had hoped as much,” Slughorn said with a chortle. “Here you are, Harry, he sent this letter along for you—it was the breaths-ease potion I shared, though not all of the modifications you made, not enough to reconstruct it.”
“I’m honored by the opportunity to work with him,” said Harry. Probably he should say thank you, but in this context, when he would mean it— “Really, sir, you’ve done me a service.”
That would suffice.
“Of course, of course.” Slughorn looked pleased as anything. “I do hope you will remember me, when you’ve moved on to new and greater things across the pond! It’s not every day one finds a student as brilliant as you.”
“I don’t know if I’m brilliant,” Harry demurred. “It’s taken me a great deal of work to get where I am. And I’ve been lucky in my friends.”
Slughorn studied him closely. Too closely. Why? “Friends? Like the Nott boy you mentioned?”
“Among others. Hermione Granger, Daphne Greengrass, Blaise Zabini—all of them are excellent potioners and good friends of mine for years. I hope you’ll keep this between us,” Harry said with a wink, “but Hermione brewed polyjuice in our second year.”
No need to get into the context of that decision.
“Did she really!” Slughorn let out a belly laugh. “And it worked?”
“Lasted the full hour—granted, on twelve-year-olds, not adults, so perhaps it would have been less effective on a larger body, but yes.”
“Truly extraordinary. She was your friend then?”
Again with a delicate emphasis on friend. Maybe unconscious. What was Slughorn’s game? “My childhood taught me many things,” Harry said carefully. Perhaps a bit of tactical vulnerability was in order. “Trust was not one of them. It was here at Hogwarts that I learned to let people in. Were it not for my friends, I wouldn’t be who I am now.” Slughorn watched him closely. “I don’t think Slytherins are hateful by nature, sir. Only perhaps more judicious in their trust than most.”
“Well said,” Slughorn whispered, and for a moment so nakedly emotional that Harry nearly looked away, uncomfortable. Then it was gone and the jovial professor back—a mask all along? Or only in this moment? “I daresay you will achieve great things, Harry, very great things, and your friends alongside you. I’ve found the same to be true, myself!” Now a gesture around the room, at photographs and valuables obviously given to him by dozens of people. “We lift one another up, eh?”
“Indeed we do.” You are using me, and I you, Harry thought, and we both know it.
Such a Slytherin kind of quid pro quo.
Slughorn was annoying but Harry could respect someone who played the game so well.
“Go on, then, go on, it’s near to curfew—if you hurry you may be able to dispatch a reply to Tyron tonight,” Slughorn said with a wink and a wave that opened the door. Wandless, silent. Not a particularly powerful example of either, but considering how few people ever managed even this sort of simple physical manipulation without their wand…
“I’ll do that. You have a wonderful evening, sir,” Harry said.
A few more pleasantries were exchanged before he could fully extricate himself. Only when he was several paces down the corridor did Harry open the envelope and skim Tyron Gatlin’s missive in the light of a ball of light conjured to move with him as he walked. It was brief and to the point. Blunt. A refreshing change after Slughorn’s effusive mannerisms. And—
Harry smirked, folding up the letter with brisk movements.
Gatlin noted what Slughorn evidently had not. The adaptations to make breaths-ease more effective could, with just a few tweaks, have the exact opposite effect, forcing the drinker’s airways to swell shut and stay that way. Harry had never used it for that purpose before, but if he wanted to… And, tellingly, Gatlin didn’t seem to be moralizing about such a possibility at all. Just observing it.
Obviously studying with him had enormous potential.
The storm of rumors regarding Dumbledore’s meetings with the Board lasted for days. Harry did his best to stay out of it, having no desire to be seen as fanning the flames, tempting though it was. Instead he focused on homework and the flurry of political and financial correspondence that required his attention on a daily basis. It wasn’t as bad as it could be—he could still handily complete class assignments without needing help—but it was more than enough to keep him busy. Especially with the Wizengamot’s concerning shift towards its ideological poles. Prophet reports were thin on the ground, but from what Harry could decipher, the Death Eaters’ attempts to threaten and coerce swing seats towards their faction were alternately working or driving people straight towards the other side.
Samhain was a welcome point of relief in the midst of all this. Justin and Hermione both joined this year, for the first time, using a general purpose ritual each of them had fiddled with to make it more personal. Harry kept an eye on them, since it was their first time drawing the runes Barty had warned him never to fuck with, and then settled down in his own circle. Lost himself, for a few hours, in the embrace of his family magic and its comfort-pride-love.
It knew him. It held him. It strengthened him in return for the honor he showed it. Harry walked out of the ritual space feeling more sure of himself than he had in a while.
He carried the surety with him as November blew in on a string of clear, gusty days. Leaves blanketed the grounds in every shade of red and gold. It was a beautiful sight during quidditch practice, though the wind put up a challenge.
Gatlin sent a preparatory series of written projects that took two feet of parchment just to list. Pansy laughed at him when Harry unrolled it and he couldn’t even blame her. Not when he now had to look over his schedule and figure out what he could cut back to make room for this.
“I can’t believe you just did that.”
Harry shot Theo an annoyed look. “Really? You can’t? At all?”
Theo grimaced. “Okay, fine, yes, I get that Gatlin’s just that good. I’ll be fine with Babbling alone. Not even a little bit bored.”
“You’ll manage,” Harry said cheerily.
“I’m going to learn a language you don’t know,” Theo said, “on purpose. And then I’m going to learn spells in it and I won’t teach them to you.”
“Oh no,” Harry deadpanned, “my heart is broken, however will I—”
He cut off in the same instant Theo’s head snapped up. Both of them orienting in the direction of the scream.
They burst into motion. Harry’s magic flexed. Ate the sounds they made as they ran. Their wands leapt to their hands between one stride and the next. Side by side they flew in silence down the staircase the sound came from. Burst from it when it ended a story below the Runes classroom.
Harry took in the three students on the ground to his right and summoned a shield. They were wounded. Danger might linger. A shift at his back was Theo scanning the hall the other direction; a tap on Harry’s shoulder told him that way was clear, and he darted forward, keeping the shield up in front of him, knowing Theo would be at his left shoulder.
“Homenum revelio,” Theo whispered. Then, “Nothing. Just those three.”
“Fuck.” Harry dropped the shield and moved to check on the students on the ground. Kids, really. Not a one of them was big enough to be older than third year. Two Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff, judging by their ties; Harry didn’t recognize them.
“All prank spells, looks like,” Theo said.
Harry nodded. Incontinence if the smell was any indication. One’s face was covered in blotchy lime-green pimples. All three had been stunned but he was willing to bet when they woke up there would be other spells in play.
“Send a patronus to Pansy,” he said with a sigh. “Ask her to get Pomfrey. Rennervate.”
The Hufflepuff twitched. Sat bolt upright and screamed again. “Hey! Shhh, stop it,” Harry said, “I’m not going to hurt you—”
The scream cut off. Harry revised his estimate of her age downward. A first year, probably. Tall. Terrified.
“My name’s Harry,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“Teresa,” she squeaked. Voice coming out in a high falsetto that made her clap a hand to her throat and turn bright red.
“I can fix that. Would that be okay?”
Slowly, Teresa nodded.
Harry cast a countercharm to what people liked to call the soprano jinx and made an encouraging go on gesture at her. “T-Teresa Foster,” she said, pitch normal, and promptly burst into tears.
Oh, hell, Harry had no idea what to do with that. “It’s okay,” he said. Fuck, now she was just crying harder. “Where’s Neville when you need him?”
“Nice going,” Theo said, clapping a hand to Harry’s shoulder. “Patronus is off. What now?”
“We fix them up if we can.”
Between the two of them, they woke the two Ravenclaws, cast charms to clean up the results of the incontinence jinxes, and stripped away a string of spells.
Harry was properly brassed off by the time Pomfrey showed up at a near run. “Someone hexed them thoroughly,” he told her in a clipped tone. “All three got hit with incontinence. We also found the speak-your-mind, soprano, limerick, and oedipal jinxes.”
“I’m not familiar with that last one.” Pomfrey paused in her spellcasting to glance up from the three huddled, silent students.
“Makes you cry out for Mummy whenever you get emotional,” Theo said.
“Foster here would’ve had dreams along the lines of going to class and realizing you’ve forgotten your clothes,” Harry added.
Pomfrey finished casting diagnostics and pulled chocolate bars out of her pocket. “Here you are, dears, have one each, it’ll help. Do you happen to know the incantation for this oedipal jinx, Nott?”
“No, Madam, I’m sorry,” Theo lied with a perfectly straight face.
She harrumphed. “More’s the pity. Hopefully—ah, there’s Albus now. Headmaster,” she called, “we’re just along here.”
Bugger. Of course she’d called for Dumbledore.
“Headmaster,” Harry said politely. He locked eyes for a fraction of a second with Pansy, who’d followed along at Dumbledore’s heels, alongside McGonagall and Snape. Pansy’s pursed lips said it all.
“Mr. Black, Mr. Nott,” Dumbledore said, nodding to them. The twinkle in his eyes dimmed as he looked over the scene. “I see. Poppy?”
“These two,” Pomfrey said, “removed all the spells before I got here, quite a good job they did of it too. You wouldn’t happen to know the oedipal jinx, would you, Headmaster?”
“I—”
“It’s a prank spell that’s been going around,” Snape interrupted smoothly. “As I understand it, strong emotion will cause the victim to say something along the lines of ‘I want my mummy.’ Rather unpleasant.”
“And do you know the incantation? It’ll be easier to remove in the future if—”
“Perhaps we ought to ask the students who removed it,” said Dumbledore.
Harry stiffened.
“We’ve already said we don’t know,” Theo said. His voice was respectful, unbothered, but behind his back Harry could just see Theo’s hands flexing.
Dumbledore’s eyes narrowed. “Yet you removed it anyway?”
“One doesn’t need to know the spell to end it, with broad-effect countercharms,” Harry said.
“And which one did you use?”
Do not curse him. Do not insult him. Do not— “Brosnahan’s Counter. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry said, turning to the mediwitch.
“Oh, yes, very good choice. Five points to Slytherin—that one’s rather tricky,” Pomfrey said. “Feel better now, dears? Yes? Very well, come along—”
“One moment, Poppy. If I may ask a few questions? It would be best to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.”
Pomfrey frowned, but nodded. “Alright, Albus, make it quick. I’d like to get these three back to the infirmary for a better check-up and some rest.”
“Of course.” Dumbledore smiled warmly at the three targeted students. “Did any of you recognize who did this? Such an irresponsible use of magic will not be tolerated here within Hogwarts.”
Well, that was just completely false.
The students shifted and looked uncertain.
Dumbledore softened his face and tone. “Please understand, while you may fear other students’ reactions, your silence will not protect you from bullies. It only protects them.”
“We didn’t see them,” says one of the Ravenclaws, a weedy boy with red-blond hair. “They were older blokes, I think. Just sorta jumped us.”
“They said mudblood,” Foster added quietly.
Harry blinked. She hadn’t mentioned that before, but then, he hadn’t asked, too busy trying to counter the various spells on the three of them.
“Did they,” Dumbledore said. He turned back to Harry and Theo with a much colder expression. “And you two young men just so happened to come across them moments later?”
“We heard a scream, and came running,” Theo said. “Whoever did this was gone when we got here. All three of them were on the floor, stunned. Harry rennervated them while I sent Pansy for help, and then we worked together to strip the prank spells off.”
“They helped us,” Foster said, “and anyway I definitely heard a witch’s voice, so it can’t have been—”
“A witch like Miss Parkinson here?”
“I wasn’t with them,” Pansy said.
“Albus, really, you can’t be suggesting Parkinson got all the way to my office from here in that short a time span,” said Pomfrey.
“I sent a patronus for her. Pansy wasn’t anywhere near here.”
The Headmaster turned heavy eyes on Theo. “My boy, please do not tell tales.”
Snape took a step forward, visibly incensed. “Do you mean to imply—”
But Theo had already cocked an eyebrow at Harry, and Harry had already nodded in return, and Snape stopped talking when Theo flicked his wand and incanted, “Expecto patronum!”
Silver light bloomed. Settled in the shape of an ashwinder coiling through the air. It lifted its head towards Dumbledore and rippled in the manner of Eriss when she was threatening to bite someone, though patroni made no sound.
Dumbledore faltered.
“Tell Albus Dumbledore my name,” Theo instructed it. The patronus crossed the short distance between them in a flash. An echo of his voice rang through the corridor— “Theodore Nott” —and then it faded away.
“Well, that settles that, I should think,” said Pomfrey. She gestured at the three younger students and began to herd them away.
Dumbledore wasn’t done. He still faced Harry and Theo squarely. “And what were you two doing in such an out of the way corridor, well after classes were over?”
And okay, Harry had had enough of this. “We both work privately with Professor Babbling. She will confirm that we were in her classroom two floors up, and the time we left. We heard someone scream from the Runes corridor and followed the sound down that staircase there,” Harry pointed, “and by the time we got here the perpetrators, as Theo already explained, were gone.” Dumbledore opened his mouth but Harry wasn’t done. “You’re welcome to check my wand if you want. You won’t find any of the spells on those kids cast from it.”
“Mine as well,” Theo said.
“Spells we now have no way to examine in the hopes of tracing the perpetrators.” Dumbledore held up a hand when Snape opened his mouth. “Please, I do not mean to imply that you two are responsible. It is only natural that a young wizard might come upon some one or other of his peers getting up to,” Dumbledore’s cheek twitched, “mischief and attempt to protect them from consequence.”
Harry lifted his head and met Dumbledore’s eyes dead on. Occluded. I dare you. “I assure you, Headmaster, if I knew who’d done this I would tell you. Theo and I decided against letting them sit here miserable or unconscious until a teacher showed up when we were more than capable of removing the spells on them.”
McGonagall’s nostrils flared. “Mind your tone, Black.”
“Oh, I am,” Harry said. Snape’s eyes narrowed in warning.
Dumbledore gazed steadily back at Harry and Theo. Not a flicker of legilimency brushed against Harry’s mind but he maintained his shields all the same. Occluding so hard he began to feel floaty and detached.
“Enough,” Snape growled. “Go ask Bathsheba if you want to confirm, Albus, but both of them have spoken to me of their lessons with her before. Nothing more than circumstance connects them to this situation. Black, Nott, Parkinson, with me.”
“Excuse us, Headmaster,” Theo said in a voice just this side of taunting, and Harry smirked briefly as they turned to follow Snape. He didn’t even care if Dumbledore saw the flicker of expression.
Harry was done playing nice with the rotten old bastard.
Snape waited until they were in a portrait-less stairwell to say, “Do not underestimate Albus Dumbledore.”
“He hasn’t got a wand to curse with and he knows it,” Harry retorted before either Theo or Pansy could. They’d both fallen in at his shoulders; Harry couldn’t see their faces but he knew they were both looking back at Snape with equal certainty. Uncompromising. His words to Slughorn about trust came back to him with a bludger’s force.
“He is a powerful enemy.”
“I have several of those.”
Snape exhaled through his nose. “Very well. I wash my hands of it.”
“Yes, Professor,” said Pansy politely.
“Off with you. Stay somewhere public,” Snape said, waving a hand at them, and Harry wasted no time doing exactly as he said, continuing briskly down the stairs towards the entrance hall while Snape turned back to do Merlin knew what. Convince Dumbledore not to put them all in detention, hopefully.
Pansy sighed. “So somebody’s after Muggleborns.”
“One of the Ravenclaws is from a family I know,” Theo put in. “Majmudar. Father’s done business with them.”
“So two out of three?” Harry said.
“Must be. Both their surnames sounded Muggle, anyway.”
They lapsed into uneasy silence.
“Things are getting worse,” Pansy said eventually.
It was true, and Harry wasn’t sure who to blame. Umbridge hadn’t helped. Too many of the blood purists had only been emboldened by the Inquisitorial Squad, and not just the students who wore those stupid little badges; all it took was some authority lent to the idea, and—
“Seaton,” he said abruptly.
Theo seemed to have followed the same line of logic. “He’s certainly nasty enough.”
“Right, ‘cause we’re so nice,” Pansy murmured.
“I have plenty of better reasons to be nasty to people than their blood status,” Theo said scathingly.
“I wasn’t disagreeing.”
Harry schooled his expression; they were nearly to the entrance hall, and it was almost dinner, people would be around. Really, they might as well just go in and sit at their table now, instead of walking all the way down to their commons and back. “Let’s just hope it was an isolated incident.”
It wasn’t.
A rash of similar attacks spread across the school in the next week, as many students, emboldened by the Soothsayer, spoke up about the problems Hermione described in it, and others got louder about their resistance. Nor was it just nasty jinxes in crowded or out-of-the way corridors. Hermione found a note reading Go back where you came from wedged into her schoolbag one day. Someone painted Magic thief! on a portrait of Nobby Leach, the first Muggleborn Minister for Magic. And Veronica, white-faced with rage, told Harry how some kid told her who cared if the witch hunts started back up again, since it was the Muggleborns who’d get caught first.
The idiocy of it all grated. Harry pulled Graham aside, got the name of the snot who taunted Veronica, and turned the younger Vipers loose on him, but it wasn’t enough to just stop individual bullies. He could terrify people into avoiding direct action against those of his Vipers who were Muggleborn, but on a broader level it was impossible to jinx every blood purist in the school, nor would that actually fix the problem. Vandalism of Leach’s portrait upset Hermione as much as the note she got.
And this kind of stupidity hurt their economy, hurt people in Riasmoore under Harry’s protection, hurt Harry’s future, hurt anyone’s efforts to stymie the chaos Voldemort wanted to unleash on them all.
The problem was the lack of coordination. Seaton definitely wasn’t helping—Harry was certain he was one of the people hexing Muggleborns in the halls—but it wasn’t like every single bit of casual cruelty spreading around the school happened on his orders. Most of it had nothing to do with Seaton or even his friends. And a good chunk of it came from houses other than Slytherin, though predictably, Dumbledore believed otherwise, judging by the increasingly judgmental way he regarded the snakes during meals.
Sometimes Harry felt like Umbridge’s presence last year had opened a Pandora’s box of problems, and deep down, he wasn’t entirely sure they were solvable.
Harry had to turn his attention to quidditch as the year’s first match drew near. It was, unfortunately, with Gryffindor, meaning everyone was on edge and the inter-House rivalry at its worst. He put word out within Slytherin that anyone on the quidditch team was to have company at all times. Aria Crosse, the only Muggleborn among their ranks, was still part of the tight-knit group from Ginny’s year, so he didn’t have to worry about her—every Slytherin that age cohort was a Viper and they moved as a pack even when Hogwarts wasn’t a half step away from open warfare.
Still, he didn’t like the way Seaton watched her. Watched Veronica, also, and some of the few other known Muggleborns in the House. Harry warned Rio to give Seaton and his friends a wide berth but they weren’t the only dangers. Just the worst ones.
Harry pushed the team hard at their last pre-match practice, and everyone dripped with sweat by the time he called a halt, which was a miserable state of existence in the chill November wind. Well, except the alternates; they were up at the castle working on strategy, and they’d meet the rest of the team for a chat after they showered.
Still, their spirits were high—everyone was flying well. “We’re going to kick arse this weekend,” said Celesta as they jogged for the locker room.
Harry opened its door and held it for his team. “Don’t gloat too much, you’ll just hand them ammunition.”
“I’m not an amateur,” she sneered at him.
“No, but you are a sore loser,” Harry called after her, earning a crude gesture held up over her shoulder. Ginny, at her heels, cackled.
Harry made sure to give a smile, shoulder clap, or complimentary word to everyone of his teammates as they filed past. They all grinned back at him. Graham in particular all but glowed in response to the praise. “Remember your potion!” Harry called after him, getting a thumbs up from the kid he’d started to see as more than just a ward.
Pomfrey had started all the quidditch teams on a new muscle restoration potion to be taken after practice in order to reduce the risk of cramping. At first, they’d been prone to forgetting it, but when Harry shut the door and moved to follow them, he saw only one vial left on the table in the lounge. He swiped it and knocked it back between one step and the next. Its familiar chalky taste spread over his tongue and coated his throat. Blech. Never got any more pleasant.
Last into the showers, he made short work of stripping to his pants and grabbing a clean robe. Celesta, likewise wearing only bra and pants as sweaty as Harry’s, blew a kiss in his direction as she stepped into the nearest shower and changing stall. Harry rolled his eyes back at her. They both knew the flirtation was a joke, but she’d been doing it more and more lately, for reasons that escaped him.
The drum of hot water across his neck and shoulders swept thoughts of Celesta and witches and quidditch and just about everything else away. Harry leaned his forehead against the chill tiles and just enjoyed it.
Very hot water. Too hot. Almost scalding, really, which was odd because these showers were self-adjusting, he’d never known them to fail, and why was his skin so weirdly tender—
That was when Harry registered the ever-so-faint berry-sweet aftertaste on his tongue that should not be there.
He all but blew the door off its hinges. Stumbled out into the shower room on legs that didn’t want to work. Thumps came from the other showers. Bad ones. Harry’s magic flexed and roiled around him. In unison the other doors all slammed open, and he saw every member of the team, his team, in pain, several already on the floor, others dragging themselves out of the stalls, including Graham—
Catalogue the symptoms. His eyes scraped over them. Their limbs twitched. They rubbed their eyes. Fell to the floor. Celesta had her wand out and was casting healing charms in a shaking voice. Repeating one of them two, then three times, then again, a charm specifically meant to counteract muscular problems.
Harry’s mind flashed over the muscle regeneration potion, which he had of course studied when Pomfrey announced they’d all be taking it. How in the fuck would you twist its purpose—it was little more than a nutrient supplement—
Several things clicked. Fuck. Fuck, this was—he had minutes, at most.
“Expecto patronum,” fuck it all, he could already feel his throat muscles weakening, “Theo Nott, locker room, poison—”
His direwolf patronus was gone in a second. Harry turned. Ran on fawn-weak legs for the lounge and the store cabinet beyond it. Which was locked. Hinges reinforced. Lock too. It looked like it had been melted into the frame around the edges. Whoever did this—
Blindly, Harry reached for his magic, pulled—
The cabinet door screamed. Dissolved, abruptly, into dust at his feet. Leaving an irregular hole. Harry’s arms didn’t want to work. He pulled his magic into his body. Pictured it burning through the traces of poison eating at his muscle fibers. Reinforcing the tissue. He had to keep himself standing long enough to make an antidote and he had to make sure it didn’t permanently damage muscle formation in the meantime.
Merlin, his arms were noodles, limp and fumbling. He dropped several of the things he wanted. Swore when the storage closet yielded only a rattling empty box where he had stashed several bezoars months prior.
Well. Fuck that.
Harry closed his eyes. Concentrated. Shut out the pained moans of his teammates. Summoned his bag from his locker in the other room. Then, because he doubted he could catch it, he banished it onto the lounge table, staggered over, dumped two clumsy armsful of stuff on top. At least one vial broke. Whatever. No time, no time—
No cauldron, either, nor fire, nor time to make a proper potions base. Harry could barely hold his wand securely enough to transfigure a cauldron out of a pillow. Made it entirely iron, fortifying, and it would mean a weaker potion but he didn’t have to fix this completely, just buy them all time.
“Aguamenti,” he hissed, casting in Parseltongue for extra power, and then “caloriose,” bringing it to a boil in an instant. Also a shortcut. No time, no time. He dug in his bag for the emergency kit he’d been carrying around since last year with Umbridge. Threw it open on the tabletop.
There—the antivenin for Eriss he kept on hand at all times. One dose. Harry knocked it back. Her venom targeted the muscles. It wasn’t perfect but it would help him hold on long enough to brew something.
The kit had three vials of generic healing potion. All went into the cauldron. His mind raced along interaction tables as he fumbled among the stuff from the storage cupboard. Can’t use rosemary, not with what’s in the healing potion. Turmeric, that was a possibility. He dumped in half a jar of it from the closet. Operating half by guess, half feel. Then the bezoar—no time to integrate that properly, either, he just held it in his hand and slammed magic at it until it pulverized all at once into dust like the door, then poured the dust in, and then transfigured a stirring rod out of a quill and all but threw it at the potion.
One stir, two, more, and he wasn’t sure if it was his arm or his magic moving the stirring rod, only that it was moving, only that he could feel the ingredients blending as best as they were ever going to. Harry wrapped his hands in magic and picked up the cauldron.
It was hot. Boiling, in fact, even through the magic, and he was using so much wandless power right now, he didn’t know how long he could keep it up, between forcing his body to function and making the potion and now this, but he had to, so he lifted it, breathed in, out, magic on his tongue, magic on his lips, and poured it down his own throat.
Fuck—
All he could do was try to bring the temperature down. He tasted iron, fire, turmeric, poppy. A gargling groan of pain wrenched itself from his throat and some of the potion went down his trachea instead. Fire in his lungs, in his stomach. But—
It was working. Not healing the damage but at least slowing it down.
Harry resolutely didn’t drop the cauldron. Held on instead and forced his legs to move. His eyes wouldn’t focus right. Fuck, that was a muscle response, wasn’t it? What if—
No, he couldn’t think like that. It would heal. It would. He made himself believe that with every step he took. It would heal.
His teammates were scattered around. Celesta and Draco best off—Draco had an empty box at one elbow, the kind bezoars came in, and Celesta was still chanting her healing charm nonstop. Ginny had picked up the charm too. Always a quick study, Gin.
Graham first.
Harry hadn’t stopped pulling heat out of the potion, and tested it with a finger—tolerable, if only just. “Swallow,” he ordered, tilting the cauldron to Graham’s lips.
A convulsion. That bad already? Harry gritted his teeth, pressed one hand to Graham’s throat, and thought swallow. The normal charm for this wouldn’t work, it acted by stimulating the muscles themselves. Instead Harry just slipped pure magic into the tissue and made it move. A crude imitation of what the body did so naturally, but it worked; he felt the heat of the potion under his palm through Graham’s skin, saw none of it dribble out the sides of Graham’s mouth even as Harry forced his body through four rippling movements of its esophagus. That would hopefully be enough.
Aria next, then Ginny, then Draco and Celesta and Noah, his Vipers. Then Sonia. Millicent at least retained enough control to swallow under her own power, which made sense; she had more muscle than most of them relative to her body mass.
Harry forced the last of the potion down Millicent’s throat. Let the transfigured cauldron fall at last from his numb fingers to the floor. He looked down. His hands were blistered and red. First, maybe second degree burns. Poppy dulled the pain and the broad range healing potions should help minimize scarring and sensory loss. Good thing too. He needed his fingers for potions.
And spellcasting. Where was his wand?
Still in the other room, probably. Harry tried to stand up. Couldn’t. Also, he was seeing double. Hmm. That wasn’t great.
“HARRY!” someone shouted.
Oh thank Merlin.
Harry hung on long enough to see Theo’s face.
Then he let himself pass out.
“—healing rate—”
“Tell me what he drank—”
“—sample!”
“OPEN THIS BLOODY DOOR—”
“Someone restrain him!”
Red—
Mmm, he was very floaty. This was nice. Harry hadn’t slept this well in a while. It was like all his worries didn’t… matter…
But they did, actually. They mattered a lot.
Why didn’t he care?
Where was he?
Light. He could make out light, blurry and muted. The world wasn’t coming into focus like it should. Harry breathed in, out. Relax. Heard a distant murmur of voices, smelled crisp herbal cleansing potion. Hospital wing.
“‘Lo?” he croaked out.
“Harry!” Someone shifted to his right, very quickly. Harry knew that voice. Sirius. His godfather took his hand, visible only as a blurry blob leaning over the edge of the bed. “You there?”
“Where… else?” said Harry, throat working oddly. Why was he so—weak—
Memory returned in a rush. His whole body tensed up. “It’s okay, shhh, hey, no, please calm down—Harry? It’s okay, really, please don’t make them stun you again, it’s me, you’re safe here—”
Right. Hospital wing. Sirius. “Stun me?”
“You, ah, wouldn’t hold still earlier. Severus had to stun you,” Sirius said.
“Glasses?”
Harry couldn’t quite stop a full-body shudder at the thought of just… lying here. Weak, blind. Helpless. “How… how long?”
“A couple of days. You’ll be here,” Sirius said, quickly, “under wards—only family and people I personally key in. Healer Taleb’s very good. Private. Signed a strict contract and everything. He’s staying here at the school until you’re in the clear. I, er, contracted him to look at the others also.”
“How are they?” said Harry, forcing himself to lie back and relax.
Sirius let out an audibly relieved breath and squeezed Harry’s hand. “They’ll be okay. Fawley, Malfoy, and Ginny will be out of here by tomorrow—sounds like Fawley knew some charm that worked against it and Ginny copied her. Which, by the way, casting a brand-new healing charm on herself, repeatedly, under that kind of duress?” He whistled. “Whatever you’re teaching those kids is bloody well working. Um, oh, Malfoy had a bezoar from the sound of it, which figures. The others… they’ll take a little longer to recover. Graham was—trying to crawl,” Sirius’ voice cracked, “we’re not sure where, he hasn’t woken up yet, but—he might have done permanent damage to his legs. I don’t know the details of the rest of them. Not my wards.”
Graham.
Harry closed his eyes. Better darkness than a tauntingly blurry world. “Who?”
Silence.
“Sirius—”
“They don’t know, alright? They don’t—the vials all had a delayed-action cleaning charm on them. Vanished any traces of the poison. Severus got a trace out of blood samples but whatever slapdash fix you came up with was already working by the time he got there. It’s impossible to know what exactly happened. Let alone who did it.” Sirius lowered his voice, squeezed Harry’s hand again. “You probably saved their lives, pup. Or at least kept them from spending years in intensive care. That poison was a nasty piece of work.”
“You’re distracting me,” Harry said to the darkness behind his eyelids.
Sirius sighed. “Harry—”
“Tell me.”
“Dumbledore is saying it was a prank,” Sirius said quietly. “It caught the whole quidditch team. None of you will be able to fly for a month minimum. They’ve put Ravenclaw up to play in your place, but with the lost training time, potentially a couple of you out for longer than that… and if this had worked, not one of you would be flying for years. Maybe ever.”
“This,” Harry breathed, “was no prank.”
Sirius shifted his weight. “I know. I think Dumbledore does, too, but—Harry, the panic if this got out? If people knew a whole bunch of students almost died? Parents would freak out.”
Yeah, Harry was putting pieces together in his head too. He shut his eyes. “And there’s a possibility the Death Eaters would spin it as violence against purebloods. Almost everyone in that room was a pureblood.”
“Merlin’s saggy balls,” Sirius muttered. “You don’t think it was…”
“No. This wasn’t a student’s work, Sirius. We just got lucky Snape’s such a paranoid bastard he keeps a potions supply cabinet in the quidditch lounge of all places. Lucky I was there, too, Slughorn and Gatlin say I’m already brewing at a post-Hogwarts level, and even then—” Harry gestured at himself. “The best I could do was keep the damage from being permanent.”
Or at least—Harry didn’t let himself look at the other beds—he hoped he had.
Conversation with Healer Taleb and Madam Pomfrey only confirmed that it couldn’t possibly have been a prank. It was too sophisticated. Too clean. Someone modified a basic muscle regenerative into one of the most fast-acting and insidious toxins he’d ever heard of. Even Snape couldn’t reverse-engineer it; Harry had had some ideas, desperate and half-baked, but nothing like a complete understanding, he’d have to sit down and try to figure that out later—
And they’d modified it so well Harry hadn’t noticed a damn thing was off until that aftertaste kicked in.
The cleaning charm on the vials. The skill required to break in and replace the muscle potion. The storage cupboard not only locked but melted into its frame—not that he could bring that up, not without blowing way beyond the bounds of what he could explain as accidental magic induced by stress—and emptied of bezoars.
All that saved them was Harry’s and Snape’s paranoia. That was it.
Pomfrey and Taleb had questions about the antivenin they had found in his system. Harry told them it was a proprietary brew he purchased after the Triwizard Tournament and had been carrying around ever since. It was an adequate explanation for Pomfrey, who didn’t have the specialized potions knowledge to identify antivenin brewed for a specific snake. Taleb on the other hand looked at Harry like he wasn’t quite convinced.
Whatever. If he pushed, Harry would tell him, and trust whatever confidentiality contract Vanessa had given Sirius to hold Taleb’s tongue. It wasn’t like Harry intended to hide Eriss from the world forever.
Finally, the healers let him alone, and cleared him for visitors.
“I’ll give you a minute,” Sirius said, and stepped away. Harry closed his eyes and listened instead of trying and failing to see. Rustling curtains. A murmur of voices. Footsteps, more curtain rustling, and then—
“Harry?”
“Pans,” he said, reaching out blindly. A hand found his. Smooth skin, slightly clammy. She’d been worried. “Who else?”
“Just a few of us,” said Theo. “Nev, Daph, ‘Mione. Blaise is… busy.”
Harry frowned. “He okay?”
There was a careful pause before Theo said, “He’s upset.”
“By?”
“He’ll tell you later,” Pansy said. “Pomfrey said only four or five at a time, anyway.”
“Let us worry about Blaise. Oh, Harry…” Hermione trailed off into a whisper. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“For a given value of okay,” Harry said drily.
She sniffed, poked him in the arm. “Arsehole.”
Theo gasped theatrically. “Hermione Granger, watch your language!”
Laughing hurt. But it was the good kind of pain. The kind that told him he was still here, still breathing, still surrounded by his friends. Harry didn’t try to hold it back.
It took a fifteen-minute argument, all of which Harry overheard, to convince Pomfrey that he was better off if someone stayed with him ‘round the clock. In the end only Healer Taleb’s agreement persuaded her to cast aside her usual rule of no visiting hours after curfew. “He needs to relax if he’s going to heal,” Taleb said firmly, “and he will not relax unless he feels safe—”
“My infirmary is perfectly safe!”
“Madam Pomfrey, you know as well as I the feeling of safety is not always concurrent with the fact of it.”
Theo took the first shift. “She can be offended all she wants,” he said as he settled into a chair next to Harry’s bed. “As long as she doesn’t try to keep us out.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Harry said. His voice was thin and weak, still. All of his muscles on the edge of giving out. The sleep potions tugging at his awareness didn’t help—he’d been fighting them with the kind of instinct that didn’t just turn off. But with Theo here he could… let go.
“Of course,” Theo said. “You’d do it for any of us.”
Yeah, I would, Harry said, or maybe just thought, because the potions were pulling him u n d e r—
He woke, and it was dark. Natural dark. Night. Harry licked his lips. Dry. “Theo?” he croaked.
“Lumos.”
Harry relaxed. “Blaise, hi.”
“Water?”
“Yes.”
A brief murmur, conjuration probably, and then Harry’s bed shifted, tilting so he sat mostly upright. Taleb had given him another dose of the potion keeping his eyes nonresponsive; Harry could only just see the glass Blaise held out well enough to grab it, at which point it promptly slipped through his fingers. “Fuck.”
“It’s fine. Here,” Blaise said, lifting the glass, and oh, this was so fucking humiliating, Harry was going to find whoever did this and kill them.
Blaise’s hands were steady, and his stabilizing touch to the back of Harry’s head light and clinical, a barely-there press of fingertips from someone who knew exactly how much it cost Harry to accept this kind of help.
Swallowing took effort, but gravity helped, as did his thirst. For the most part Harry just tried not to inhale the water Blaise carefully gave him one sip at a time.
“Good?” said Blaise when the glass was empty.
Harry evaluated. The idea of trying to get up and go to the loo… “Yeah, no more for now.”
“Right.” Blaise moved away. There was a soft click, presumably of the glass being put down.
“I hate this,” Harry said to the blur of his friend.
Blaise sighed. “I know. It’ll get better.”
“Theo said you were upset earlier?”
“It was nothing.”
Harry turned his head. Well, rolled it sideways, really, which on top of the fact that he couldn’t focus his eyes probably diminished the threat, but Blaise knew him well enough to interpret it anyway. “Don’t lie,” Harry said. “If you don’t wish to tell me, that’s one thing, but do not lie.”
“I… it… Harry, do you know how close you came?” Blaise whispered.
“I wasn’t going to die.”
“No, but—if not for Eriss’ antivenin, and your wandless magic, you never would have been able to throw together an antidote. If not for your paranoia you wouldn’t have had a bezoar and multiple doses of healing potion on hand. No one knew you carry that stuff around.”
Not entirely true. Blaise hadn’t known. Theo did, and Neville, since both had helped Harry work out what preservation charms worked best on his emergency kit, but that was irrelevant. “You’re saying it came down to chance that I didn’t suffer any permanent damage.”
“Yes.” Blaise was quiet for a few seconds. “Harry, this was no prank.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” he said harshly enough that Harry forgot himself and tried to focus his eyes again, which yielded exactly nothing. “I mean this was a professional’s work clean enough that any other student would’ve been helpless and the person who did it will never get caught. I would know what that takes.”
Harry said slowly, “Do you think you know who it took?”
“I—will need to investigate,” Blaise said.
Even functionally blind, Harry knew Blaise was hiding something. But— “Alright,” he said. “Be careful. Whoever did this… is not an enemy I want to underestimate.”
“Yeah,” said Blaise, and again there was just something so wrong about his tone, tense, subdued. He wasn’t concerned. Not for himself, anyway. Not like anyone normally would be when planning to lean on their family connections with the magical world’s lethal underbelly to investigate an extremely calculated assault on their friend.
Unless Blaise believed himself protected.
Why? People too afraid to touch the Zabini heir? That would make sense, Harry supposed. Lia Zabini was terrifying. But it didn’t explain why Blaise sounded so unhappy.
“Don’t get hurt,” Harry said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. “Unless the real target was someone else on the quidditch team—”
“Doubtful,” Blaise scoffed, sounding more like himself.
“—then whoever it was wanted to ruin me. The House of Black has lots of enemies. More than I know of, for sure. I don’t want any of you getting dragged into this.”
Blaise rolled his eyes. “What, are you a Malfoy now? Not everything is about you, Harry.”
“Then what else would it be? The only people who hate me personally aren’t remotely competent enough to pull this off. Thorne would go for, I don’t know, a curse in the back somewhere. He wouldn’t bother trying to set it up to look like a prank gone wrong.”
“Too true,” Blaise said. Another weighted pause. “You should rest.”
Rest. Right. Rest, now? Blaise was hiding something and he wanted Harry to rest?
Paranoid, Harry told himself, because if he couldn’t trust Blaise, then—
But it wasn’t like his paranoia ever listened to logic, was it?
“Yeah. Thanks,” Harry said, taking care it sounded sincere, and rolling his head back upright. “Mind lowering the bed?”
Blaise obliged, and Harry shut his eyes. The backlight of the lumos vanished. He deepened his breathing, relaxed his body slowly, and feigned sleep for the next few hours, until a rustle of fabric and murmur of low voices told him Blaise had been replaced by someone else.
“Harry? It’s me,” Daphne whispered.
Daph. Safe. Harry sighed and let himself slip off.
His stay in the hospital wing lasted three days, not two, of mind-numbing boredom. No books. Existing in a constant state of blurred-out blindness. Monotony broken by his friends’ and godfather’s efforts to cheer him up—and even Sirius’ stories about wild nights out with Vanessa and Ian and their friends got repetitive after a while.
Taleb and Pomfrey wouldn’t let him take the floo to St. Mungo’s to visit Noah and Millicent, who had to go there for more intensive treatment. Nor did they allow him to move around enough to see Graham, who was still in the hospital wing, but on day two, when he could at least walk with assistance, Harry just waited for the healer and mediwitch to be busy and climbed out of his bed.
“This is going to go badly” said Neville, who was his self-appointed guard at that hour.
“Not if you help me,” Harry shot back.
Neville sighed. But he did grab Harry’s wand and steady him while Harry charmed the chair his friends had been using during their vigil to walk along with him and support some of his weight.
“Coast clear?” Harry asked.
“Yep,” Neville said, sticking his head out of the curtains. “Graham’s just one over.”
Sometimes it still startled Harry how well his friends knew him.
“You know, you could just sit in the chair, instead of walking,” Neville added. “Pretty sure you’re not supposed to strain yourself.”
Harry scowled at the chair. What would he do, the next time something like this happened, if he couldn’t walk? What would he do when Seaton picked a fight or he heard screaming from a stairwell? What could he do right now if someone came through the doors and tried to curse him or Neville? He couldn’t walk, let alone duel. Helpless. Not useless, he had had that thought exactly once the day before and cut it off at the pass, but definitely helpless in the face of real, present dangers, of which there were many.
But there were very good reasons why pushing his muscles too hard too soon was a terrible idea. And—he closed his eyes—he wasn’t alone.
Harry groped for the edge of the chair-blob until he found its arm, and then shuffled around it on jelly-weak legs until he could sit down. Even that little movement left him trembling and spent. Harry hung onto his wand and on impulse cast amplius auri.
“Should you be doing that?” said Neville in the breath-soft whisper they had all learned to use when someone had that spell going. To his spell-enhanced ears it was as clear as McGonagall’s lecture voice.
“They damaged my muscles, not nervous tissue,” Harry said at the same volume.
Cloth rasped over skin and the Neville-blob moved. A shrug, probably. Harry sifted through the rest of the auditory information flooding his brain. There was a buzz from Pomfrey’s office indicating conversation going on behind sound-distortion wards. Irrelevant. Sleep-slow breathing from, he counted, two places. “Who else is here?”
“Aside from Graham? Hufflepuff kid. Potions accident. The door’s closed and locked.” Neville rested a hand on Harry’s shoulder for a second. Removed it just before the touch would have gone from soothing to grating. “Harry, it’s fine. You’re safe here.”
“I know,” Harry said quietly, turning his face up toward where his friend’s voice came from. And— Neville deserved this, so he made himself say, “Thank you,” even if it was so quiet Neville probably had to read his lips.
He wasn’t sure but he thought Neville smiled. “What are friends for?”
“I’m pretty sure,” said Harry, ending the amplius charm and setting the chair to moving, “that most students don’t need their friends to occasionally play bodyguard.”
“You’re just special.”
Harry jabbed a finger in Neville’s direction. “And you have been spending too much time with Theo. You were not always that snippy.”
“I’ll have you know it’s the exact right amount of time,” Neville said loftily, and Harry laughed, enjoying, just for a second, the pretense of normality. They both knew it was a lie. But it was a lie they needed.
Especially when Neville tapped his shoulder and he heard rustling fabric, letting him know the chair’s slow, careful movement had brought them to Graham’s curtained-off corner of the infirmary. Harry flicked his wand and made the chair turn. Directed it forward until Neville tapped him again to tell him to stop. Curtains rustled again but this time Harry paid no attention. He was too busy trying to interpret the vague color-blur of Graham lying in the bed.
“He’s asleep,” Neville whispered, coming around Harry and sitting down in the visitor’s chair next to Graham. “I don’t think we should wake him.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m just.” Harry reached out one trembling hand. Patted the bed where he thought Graham’s arm was, but got nothing.
Neville caught his wrist and gently moved it, laying Harry’s fingers over the lump Graham’s hand made under his sheets. Harry bit his lip. Helpless.
“My vision isn’t normally this bad even with my glasses off,” he said quietly, as a distraction.
“Really? How many fingers?” Neville said.
Harry showed him a two-finger salute. “You tell me.”
Neville laughed under his breath.
“It’s probably because my eyes won’t focus,” Harry muttered.
“Well, the potion only affected muscles, right? Nothing else.”
“Yeah.”
It should be fine. He should recover. Taleb was confident about his ocular muscles, at least, all the tiny intricate connections responsible for motion tracking, pupillary dilation and contraction, blinking, depth perception, and focus. The strain Harry had put on his arms and legs and abdomen, however, from moving around, brewing, carrying stuff—not to mention the magic-resistant scar tissue in his mouth and throat, which was apparently what happened when you drank near-boiling potion—
He needed to stop thinking about this. Harry opened his mouth and said the first thing that came to mind. “Blaise was hiding something.”
On second thought, this was not necessarily a better conversation topic.
Neville hesitated. “Pansy noticed.”
“Oh?” That was news.
“We’re… keeping an eye on him.”
“You don’t approve,” Harry said slowly.
Neville huffed. “Would you care if I didn’t?”
That was—not entirely unjustified, if Harry was honest. “Yes.”
“Sorry.” A motion that looked like Neville bringing a hand up toward his face. “Shite. I—look, I just don’t like—he’s one of us.”
“I know. I don’t like it either.” Harry waited.
“I don’t want to think he could’ve been involved,” Neville said at last.
“Involved is pushing it. I don’t think he had anything to do with the poisoning—just that he knows more than he’s telling. It’s not that he isn’t entitled to his privacy, but…”
“If he knows something, then he might be able to help prevent it from happening again,” Neville finished. “And if he doesn’t share then you don’t know what vulnerabilities you have. I get it. It’s just—fucked.”
On that they could agree.