They had to have the film sent out for development, and chose a Muggle place by way of Thomas’ mother after Thomas promised she wouldn’t look at the photographs or even really care what he and his schoolmates had pictures of. The concept of such easygoing and supportive guardians was completely foreign to Harry, but he reluctantly decided he was glad for Thomas that he had a mother like that.
And in the meantime, there was, as always, work to be done. Homework, Quidditch, fixing up the greenhouse. Harry renewed his focus on magical theory and history, and spent hours buried in piles of books, scribbling ideas into his notebook.
Unfortunately, the pictures didn’t turn up anything they hadn’t already known, namely about the names and molecular compositions of the drugs used. Elias’ research indicated the problem was some kind of bad interaction between a magical body and a Muggle synthetic chemical, but none of them knew enough about chemistry to get any farther than that.
Thomas proposed borrowing some of the Muggle chemistry books he’d seen Granger carting around. Portia said there were sure to be some in the Ravenclaw common library, and she would see what she could do.
It was Thomas who finally decided to ask his mother to post a letter to a Muggle chemistry professor, asking for details about the drug, supposedly for a school project. Harry thought it was a bit of a long shot—since when exactly did adults respond to things like that?—but it was better than nothing.
***
There was another attack. No one Harry knew personally, this time, but a few days of plugging the rumor mill and he confirmed that all of the students were again from inconsequential families.
What is your game? he thought, staring at White over dinner that evening. The entire Hall was subdued, with a palpable atmosphere of fear turning the food ashy and unappetizing.
White’s face gave nothing away.
***
“Why hasn’t Dumbledore been, I don’t know, sacked or punished or something?” Thomas demanded, throwing himself down into a chair at their greenhouse table. Summer was creeping over the grounds outside, and it had taken a number of cooling charms to keep this area of the greenhouse from getting uncomfortably warm.
“He has too much influence,” Portia said gloomily.
Zacharias glanced up from his essay, seemingly unaware that he had ink on his cheek. Harry wanted to smile at the sight of the normally fussy boy looking so disheveled. Then it hit that Zacharias was probably comfortable being less poised because he considered them friends and trustworthy, which set off some strange emotional reaction in Harry’s stomach, so he stopped thinking about it.
“He gave a speech the other day, it was buried in the back pages of the Prophet, but basically he blamed the remnants of the Dark. Said that someone is targeting muggleborns but the attacks have been scattered and minor and the students are expected to make a full recovery,” Zacharias said.
“What!” Portia stared at him. “That’s… patently not true! All of Elias’ research was showing that whatever is in their systems is reacting badly with their magic. Surely it’s not that hard to figure out it’s a Muggle drug!”
“And it’s not even muggleborns getting targeted,” Theo added.
Thomas shook his head. “I can’t believe this shite. If something like this happened at a Muggle school, the Headmaster would be out before you could say peanut butter.”
“What?” Portia and Theo stared at him.
Harry sighed. “Muggle idiom.”
“Anyway,” Zach said, “Dumbledore really ought to be sacked, but he undoubtedly won’t be for some time. If ever.”
“Why do I feel like Harry is taking that as a personal challenge,” Portia said with a thin smile.
“Why, because you know me so well,” Harry said with an innocent expression.
***
“Today, we will be discussing the Statute of Secrecy.”
Harry sat up straighter. Around him, many of his pureblood classmates did the opposite, apparently bored by the topic, but the muggle-raised seemed curious.
Professor Vance tapped the chalkboard and a timeline appeared, with several unlabeled dates. Harry could place a lot of them from memory, thanks to the endless hours spent beating his brain against dense history texts in the library last year.
“The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, which took effect in 1692, represented one of the greatest collective achievements of the magical community in history,” Vance said. “It was also the last great working of its kind. At the time, it was highly controversial and seen as a radical opinion by many, but inaction had only led to thousands of lives lost in the witch hunts as well as rapidly worsening conflicts between Muggles and magicals. The most traditional magical communities worked dangerous Dark magics that Muggles viewed as threatening and that Muggle religions considered sinful or evil. While a substantial portion of wizardkind believed we would be best served by banning those practices and modernizing our use of magic, the a slim majority of British magical leaders preferred wholesale retreat. Other regional and national magical governments arrived at the same conclusion and the first International Confederation of Wizards was called in 1684 to determine a course forward. Almost ten years later, in 1692, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was signed and enacted in law and magic.
“Prior to the passing of the Statute, our government was small and ineffective. The Statute required a much stronger government to enforce and maintain it. Thus, the Ministry of Magic was born. The old Wizard’s Council was absorbed into it as the core of the Wizengamot, although its composition has altered somewhat over the years. Yes, Miss Granger?”
“The Ministry does a lot more than just regulate violations of the Statute, though, doesn’t it?”
Vance smiled. “Five points to Gryffindor for an insightful question. Yes, Miss Granger, it certainly does. As we were subjects of the Crown, the same as any Muggle, before that time, we had no separate sovereign. The Muggle King or Queen was as much our ruler as any other. Governance relating specifically to magical issues was the purview of the Council, and they maintained a strict policy of limited power for centuries, as per the original intent of Merlin and Arthur in the earliest days of what we now know as England.
“With the formation of the Ministry as a separate branch of the Muggle government, thoroughly compartmentalized and functionally independent, we realized how much good could be done with a government able to act towards the betterment of the magical community specifically. Enforcing the Statute required a police force—the original Aurors—and the use of the Memory Charm, which you will study in theory next year in Charms, if I am not mistaken. At first, the Aurors were essentially a squad of wizards with knowledge of the Memory Charm tasked with responding to breaches of the Statute. Over time, they came to enforce many of the laws passed by the new Ministry, which had to grow along with our population and Muggle technology to make sure we remained separate and safe.”
“Safe?” Goyle blurted. “From Muggles?”
He wasn’t the only one; Crabbe was clearly trying not to laugh at the idea of Muggles being dangerous and several of the Gryffindors, including Runcorn, seemed to think it funny as well.
“Oh, indeed, Mr. Goyle.” Vance flicked her wand and an image appeared on the chalkboard that made much of the class gasp. “This is a photograph of Muggle London after one of their wars, in the nineteen forties. Explosive devices called “bombs” were dropped from flying machines called “aeroplanes” in an attempt by the German military to subjugate the United Kingdom. Think of bombs as an object containing an overpowered Blasting Curse or similar explosive spell that goes off when they hit the ground.”
“Muggles did that?” Weasley blurted, staring at the devastation.
Vance nodded. “They did indeed, Mr. Weasley. There are also approximately six billion and change Muggles alive, and their population is only growing. Even disregarding their ingenious weapons, we are vastly outnumbered. If we were to be discovered, it is unlikely that either group could live in perfect harmony, especially as we have failed to eliminate the Dark and dangerous elements in our society that made us incompatible with modern Muggles in the first place. It would be both wrong and cruel to attempt to subjugate them all by force—not to mention immeasurably difficult, if not impossible. We remain hidden by necessity.”
Caius Dearborn’s hand shot into the air. “Shouldn’t we pay more attention to Muggles, though? If they have… stuff like those bombs, then we could learn from them.”
The class went off down a tangent related to the interplay between magical and Muggle technology, with some students arguing that Muggle technology was useless to magicals because so much of it was invented to be nonmagical solutions to problems magic had already solved, and others saying Muggle technology could advance the magical world. Harry didn’t pay much attention. His mind was stuck on something Vance had said earlier, almost as an aside: the last great working of its kind.
He hadn’t made much progress on Magick, as the author devolved after the relatively clear introduction into an archaic and abstract discussion of magical theory and philosophy that went half over Harry’s head. It was also a little short on evidence, as the author spent most of his time cataloguing and discussing beliefs and practices instead of defending his claims. A lot of research would be required to figure out if he was right, but—it did fit.
Why was the Statute of Secrecy the last great working of that kind? Why couldn’t more of them be created? If the great workings that predated this potential decline were still in effect, were they as strong as they had been when they were first created, or had they started to weaken too, and what would that mean for the separation of magical and Muggle worlds?
Was it possible the Statute could fail?
***
Luckily, the Easter break was approaching. Harry plowed through his classwork on the first day of the holiday and barricaded himself in the library as soon as he was done with it all. Everyone in his group save Blaise and Thomas had gone home for the holidays—Lord Nott was feeling better, finally—so he was blissfully free of distractions.
Madam Pince found him after the first two days in a back corner of the library surrounded by teetering stacks of books. “Mr. Potter?”
Harry dragged his mind away from the dense book in front of him with effort and no small relief. He peeked around the stacks and smiled at her. “Yes, ma’am?”
“What are you doing?” she said, pursing her lips at the stacks of books. Harry had done his best to keep his area neat, but there was parchment everywhere, at least three quills scattered about, and he was quite sure there was ink on his nose.
“It’s a, uh, research project.”
“Indeed,” she said drily. “I do wonder sometimes why you were not in Ravenclaw.”
Harry shrugged. “I pursue knowledge with a purpose.”
The librarian frowned at him. “What is the topic of this research project, young man?”
“Well, I, it’s for History. Not specifically, actually, it wasn’t assigned, but something Professor Vance said made me wonder… about the Statute of Secrecy and how it was created.” Harry waved his hands around at the piles of books surrounding him. There were tomes on law, on collective magic, on history, on Muggles and magicals and the Statute. But most of the history books were censored of any mention of the witch hunts. The Uncensored History of the Ministry, which he’d taken from the Restricted Section the year before, had been invaluable, but it was still only one book and it tended to focus on the bureaucracy itself and the way it had grown as Muggle population increases and technological advancements had made it ever harder to enforce the Statute. There wasn’t much on how the Statute was actually created. Technically, it was ritual magic, but it also seemed to have something to do with the Wizards’ Council, but Harry couldn’t find any actual details.
Madam Pince looked at him closely. “Mr. Potter, do you know what exactly it is that you are trying to research?”
“I… just meant to research the Statute.” And he had, to start with at least.
“One moment.”
The librarian marched away, leaving Harry blinking after her high heels and drab grey robes.
She returned a minute later, carrying a book that was ridiculously dusty and a sheaf of parchment bound into a manuscript. The book had no title, but someone had handwritten The Wizengamot Charter and Critical Magical Laws on the vellum cover of the manuscript.
Madam Pince kept her hands resting on the books until Harry tore his eyes away from them and up to her face. “This book is to be returned to me before you leave the library today. If it is even slightly damaged, you will not be permitted back here until next year. Understand?”
Harry nodded quickly.
“This,” she held up the bound manuscript, “is a permanent copy I have just made of a reference text in my possession. I am a historian, not a librarian, Mr. Potter, and my personal library rivals the Headmaster’s. You may keep this copy provided you allow no one to see it and inform no one of its origins should it be found in your possession. It is not restricted, but the Ministry prefers not to dispense the texts of its charters and laws if it can avoid doing so.” Not exactly the hallmark of what Harry considered a good or fair government, but okay. “This,” she held out a hand and a book slapped into it, “is my personal copy of Research Charms and Spells, thirteenth edition. It is an advanced reader copy set for mass publication next autumn. I expect you to learn the spells within for copying information from books for your own use and I expect you to practice them on your own books until you can perform them without causing any damage before you even think about taking those spells near anything I or the library loans you. The spells require some basic competency with casting runic spells, but based on your reading material in the past, I expect you can manage Elder Futhark runespells that have been designed by someone else for widespread replicable use. Is that a correct assumption?”
Harry was so thrown off by her fierce monologue that it actually took him a second to realize she’d asked a direct question. “Uh—yes, Madam Pince, it is.”
“Excellent. Carry on, Mr. Potter.” The librarian gave him one last gimlet-eyed glare and a thin-lipped smile before she stalked away again. Harry only snapped out of it when he heard her voice drifting back to him as she lit into a couple of fourth years for nearly spilling ink all over the library’s copy of Magical Plants of the Far North.
Hands almost shaking, he dragged the massive book around to face him and gingerly lifted the cover. The title page told him that it was called The Workings of the Wizengamot and had been published in 1906. Amanuensis Charms and Spells, while a much more approachable size, proved to be a lot more complicated than you might expect research magic to be, and Harry resigned himself to an afternoon spent learning from it.
Three hours later, he’d mastered the information-copying runespell. It was a bit tedious. He had to draw the runes on the top of a scroll, sheaf of parchment, or first page of a notebook—any bundle of paper or writing medium would work as long as it was in some way symbolically linked into one piece, even if it was just a bunch of loose sheets of paper that had been numbered—and place a quill on the first piece of blank paper or parchment with its tip on the last rune. Then he had to trace his wand in a square or circle around the information he wanted copied and speak the spell. It left behind a faintly glowing blue mark, and when the line was closed, any text, image, or information within would be faithfully copied out by the quill onto his paper. According to Amanuensis Charms and Spells, most copyright magic resisted more than five hundred words at a time being copied, so it worked best for excerpts and quotations, not copying entire books. Happily, the spell meant that the quill would complete its job by writing the title, author, edition, and page number of the source material at the bottom of the quotation. A useful and slightly shorter variant would copy a one-sentence description of what information could be found in a selected section of text—“A description of the Wizengamot’s founding,” for example—along with a citation, so he could keep a record of where in the book specific information was without actually copying it or tripping the copyright protections. Apparently, older books often didn’t have them, but anything printed since the early 1700s would be protected, and Hogwarts added the protections to any book it put in its library.
Learning the copying spells took more time than he’d expected. It was harder than the wards around his bed, which made sense, as runes had an easier time describing a physical boundary than a boundary around a discrete chunk of information. Harry tested it by sneakily summoning Cormac McLaggen’s books. McLaggen left his entire bag unattended and Harry used an entire, very mistreated, set of The Standard Book of Spells, grades 1-5, to practice on. The first one went up in flames, the second turned to an alarmingly orange pile of dust that he carefully swept onto a piece of parchment and carried to the nearest rubbish bin for vanishing, the third turned into a completely blank book that he shrugged and kept as a notebook, and the fourth one shuddered before all the words within it jumbled until it was incomprehensible gibberish. Harry was close to giving up, but then, on the last book, it worked. His quill (not the nice white one Neville gave him, but an old and battered one, since the first two he had used caught on fire) leapt to life and made a perfect word-for-word copy of a passage on the theory behind alohomora. Oddly enough, it was in Harry’s handwriting.
A quick check back to Amanuensis Charms and Spells and he learned that a new or lightly used quill would most likely copy the exact font of the source material but a heavily used quill tended to absorb the handwriting of its user and would more often than not copy it in that person’s handwriting. Harry filed that away—if he could write out what he wanted and use a stolen quill to copy it out, he could forge things in other people’s handwriting—and turned to the book on the Wizengamot.
It definitely wasn’t in the library, either the main part or the Restricted Section. Harry immediately decided that someone didn’t want students being able to learn exactly how their government worked. He didn’t have time to read it all in much detail, focused as he was on copying out of it before he had to return the book to Madam Pince, but there was a treasure trove of information inside. Most notable was the chapter on the magic that the Wizengamot could work.
According to the book, Arthur Pendragon formed the Wizards’ Council, formerly known as the Wixen Council, in 612 common era and named a number of the old noble families of the Isles to its seats. The Council retained the power to elevate other families to its ranks and/or to grant titles, both requiring two-thirds of its body to assent. This was important because Council members swore a magically binding oath when they were first appointed or ascended to their seats as Head of the family or as proxy for their family. The wording of the oath wasn’t included, but paraphrased, they swore to govern in the best interests of the magical population of Avalon, understood at the time to include all of what in modern times was known as the United Kingdom.
Arthur specifically sought to unify competing magical influences under one government. The conquering Romans had brought several branches of foreign magical families to England, who stayed when the Romans left. Meanwhile, the ancient Celts, the remnants of the resistance that had fought against Roman occupation, the druid priestesses, and other ancient magical groups had all been persecuted by Roman rule. It was complicated further by the fact that, in 612 CE, Arthur’s war with the Saxons had been long resolved and the peaceful decades that followed resulted in an influx of Saxons to the native population. The newcomers intermarried with both Muggles and wixen of native Briton heritage. Arthur named noble families of Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and local origin to the Council, and structured the oaths so that all the groups’ interests would be one as long as their families and peoples resided in the Isles. And because they were sworn to act in what they perceived to be the best interest of all magicals of the Isles, and in the interest of magic itself, they could bring immense power to bear when the body acted unanimously or in large majority. The Council was tied by Arthur Pendragon to the land, magic, and magical peoples of the United Kingdom, essentially acting as a proxy, as far as Harry could understand, for the ruling magical family, who were no more.
The last act of the Council was to vote to enact the Statute of Secrecy. Other magical governments had difficulty doing so, comparatively, since they were acting on behalf of a Muggle monarch, as was the case for the magical governments under the Bourbons, Hapsburgs, and Spanish royal family. Symbolically, they could act on behalf of magic and magical people living in territories held by the monarchs to whom they were sworn, but those monarchs could not themselves act as a conduit between the land and the local magical governments. In England the monarch was Muggle, but Arthur’s long-ago actions had bound the Council directly to the land and its magic. The Council voted by a slim majority to implement the Statute of Secrecy, and when the spell was cast globally, Muggles throughout the British Isles spontaneously forgot that magic had ever existed.
One of few things known about the Statute was that its binding wasn’t perfect. Harry copied passages about the ways dim subconscious memories of magic led to Muggle legends and folklore and superstition. However, the Council was so powerful, and the territory held at that time by the British Empire so vast, that the vote was critical in the expansion of the Statute. The Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese Empires, similarly enormous, spread the Statute throughout Central and South America as well as colonial Africa and Asia. The book wasn’t very specific on international governments, but Harry was surprised to learn that the Statute wasn’t enacted in large parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East until much later, when Muggle decolonization and development led to the formation of stable governments, usually with a covert wizarding counterpart. The ICW often stepped in to help set up fledgling Ministries in developing Muggle nations to ensure the enforcement of the Statute, adoption of which was a condition for a new magical government to be admitted to the ICW in the first place. Magical governments seemed to have managed peaceful and amiable divisions in the shadows of often hateful Muggle wars of independence; the magical governments of former Spanish colonies were functionally independent but still technically sworn to the Spanish monarch, who rarely if ever interfered with them; and Canada’s and Australia’s Ministries remained technically sworn to the British monarchs even though they too had their own government. Harry laughed when he read how during the American war of independence, Prime Minister Lord North had pressured the King to allow the American magicals to go their own way under blackmail from Minister of Magic, Maximilian Crowdy, who had known something unspecified but unsavory about North.
The Wizards’ Council was unceremoniously disbanded in 1707 and its members absorbed into the Wizengamot, which was the legislative and judicial body of the new Ministry of Magic. Seats were still hereditary, but elected positions were added. Harry thought it sounded like a bastard version of the two-house legislatures favored in Muggle governments that he’d learned about in primary. The Muggles had their Houses of Lords and Commons, but the Wizengamot was like the two Houses were all one, with about half their members hereditary and half elected. No wonder everyone said Wizengamot sessions were glorified shouting matches.
“Uh… Harry?”
He jumped so badly he knocked over an inkwell. “Scourgify!” Harry said frantically, forgetting his wand in his haste. The ink vanished, centimeters from all his notes, and he looked up. “What?! Oh. Blaise.”
“It’s time for supper,” Blaise said, eyeing the stacks of books, reams of parchment, and ink splattered on Harry’s hands. “Er… you all right?”
“Yes,” Harry said testily. Damn. He’d have to keep working tomorrow; maybe Pince would let him borrow the books again. He collected his notes into something resembling an organized stack and shoved them down into his bag along with the untouched copy of the Wizengamot Charter and its important laws. Several of the books on law and the government seemed at least a little helpful, as far as the modern Ministry and its function went, so he gathered them in a stack to check out and carefully levitated the books loaned from Pince.
“Turning into a Claw?” Blaise said. “Here, let me take those.” He snagged several of the books off of Harry’s to-check-out pile and carried them.
“Just some research.” Harry blinked his tired eyes and realized he was in dire need of both a bathroom and a glass of water.
Pince took the books back without a word, checked him out, and waved them off. Blaise helped Harry cram his library books down into the bag until even its limited expansion charm was straining and they hurried down to the Great Hall with only a brief stop at a boys’ toilet.
Since it was a holiday, the House tables had been replaced with just one long one. Harry sat across from Blaise and next to Dean–somehow the Gryffindor had become Dean instead of Thomas, without Harry even noticing–and started piling up food on his plate. He was starving.
“So,” Blaise said in a low voice. “Care to share why you were frantically researching the Wizengamot and Wixen Council all day?”
“What’s the Wixen Council?” Dean said.
Harry looked around. No one was really close enough to overhear, if they were careful, but he still wanted to be cautious. “Muffliato. Dean, it’s the government before the Ministry ever existed. In history they call it the Wizard’s Council.”
“Oh! Weird. What’s wixen mean?”
“It’s an old word for magical humans,” Blaise said, eyes glinting. “I’m curious where you learned it, Harry.”
“I read a lot,” Harry hedged. “I like history.”
“Why don’t we use it?” Dean asked.
Blaise stirred his mashed potatoes. “Harry, how good is that little anti-eavesdropping charm of yours?”
“Reliable,” Harry said, having tested it two weeks prior with Rookwood’s help. She couldn’t break it.
“Is it… I dunno, a slur or something?” said Dean uncertainty.
“Not hardly,” Blaise said. “But it’s, well, not what the Ministry line really says anymore. Once upon a time, we were wixen, like veela were veela and mer were mer. Just one of many magical races. Sure, we look like Muggles, but we considered ourselves to be firmly on the magical side of the line between magical and nonmagical species, whether sentient or not. “Wizard” and “witch” date back before the Statute when Muggles called us those things.”
“Huh.” Dean frowned. “Is that why we don’t use it?”
“Are you a Christian?” Harry said abruptly.
“Uh… no, not really.” Dean looked thrown. “I mean, my mum is, but she doesn’t like, go to church or anything. Says organized religion is just tyrants in disguise and whatnot and I should go to public school and learn evolution because people like to pretend God is dumber and the world simpler than it really is.”
That actually startled a laugh out of Harry. “I think I like your mum.”
“Why d’you ask?”
“You know how Christians like to say that God made the world and gave it to man to rule? And how man is the pinnacle of animals, et cetera?”
Dean made a face. “Yeah, you should’ve heard the argument in my primary science class the week we did evolution.”
“Well, the Statute of Secrecy coincided with a lot more Christian fervor in England,” Harry said bluntly. He’d gone hunting for mentions of the word since Flitwick mentioned it, and in Muggle Religion and Magic, another book pilfered from the Restricted Section, he’d struck gold. “That’s what drove the witch hunts and everything. For a while before the Statute, Muggles had been preaching Christianity, and the word ‘wixen’ was unliked because it implied we thought we were somehow better than or separate from the Muggles. That went against both the whole human-equality thing that was spreading across the continent and against the Christian doctrine of men being created by God. Muggles said we were claiming miracles or divine powers or something.”
Blaise nodded along. “Then, after the Statute, muggleborns grew up without any knowledge of magic at all, so a lot of them came to the magical world as devout Christians, where before the Statute they would have at least known about magic. Wixen were a threat to the monotheistic religions for a long time. In Italy, the Catholic Church killed tens of thousands of wixen in the span of a year in what we call the Plague Massacre because wixen were blamed for the Black Death.”
“Blimey,” Dean said. “I… never heard of that.”
“It was stricken from Muggle records because there was no plausible explanation that didn’t involve magic,” Blaise said. “Between Italian, northern European, Middle Eastern, and African magicals, there was no way to explain it as a purge of any one race or class or religion.”
Dean shook his head. “That’s sick. The massacre, I mean, not…”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Don’t mention any of this in History,” Harry said. “You’d get in trouble.”
“Why though? It’s history. And, I mean, it’s plausible. Not that I doubt you guys, but…”
“Dean, are your Muggle history textbooks always accurate? Or do they gloss over things that maybe make the British government not look good?” Harry asked.
“Er, well, Mum used to take my books away and explain stuff the teachers didn’t,” Dean admitted. “Got me in time-out a lot for arguing with them, actually. Not that I minded, really, I thought it was cool she knew so much.”
Harry thought Dean had gotten very lucky in his mother. “It’s like that here, too. Vance is all right, but she still more or less teaches what the winning side says is history. It… well, it could sound like intolerance of muggleborns to start talking about the negative influences of Muggle religion they’ve brought to our world,” Harry said.
Dean frowned. “Okay, I can sort of see that, but… I dunno, we should still talk about it.”
“That’s what you have us for,” Harry said, steeling himself to clap Dean on the shoulder.
Blaise smiled across the table. “Yeah, no judgment here.”
“You snakes aren’t so bad,” Dean said with a laugh.
***
The next day found Harry back in the library, with Pince’s books and a pot of coffee he’d wheedled out of the elves. It wasn’t his favorite drink but he needed to focus. The rest of the school would be coming back in just three days.
The amanuensis magic book, which was quickly becoming his new best friend, taught him a handy spell to bind loose papers or parchment into a manuscript with twine and an incantation. Harry sorted the quotes and references from the day before by topic and bound them, then kept going into the modern Wizengamot and Ministry.
The old Council had been run like feudalism enforced by reciprocal fealty oaths between nobles and the residents of their lands. Unlike Muggle oaths, magical nobles were forced by their vows to act in their people’s best interests, which meant magical lands had been popular among Muggles and wixen alike because they were overwhelmingly less likely to be exploitative. Muggles swore oaths too, and while they weren’t bound by magic, they could get kicked out more easily, so they too had an incentive to behave and follow the communities’ rules. Usually magical holdings were populated mostly by wixen, but there were enough Muggles for intermarriage to happen semi-regularly.
The Wizengamot did away with that system. As the Statute was enforced, noble and unnobled lines alike found their lands and ancestral seats threatened. It was impossible to erase whole titles from history in most cases, as interbred as the Muggle and magical aristocracy had been, so the Crown insisted that in most cases the titles be handed off to a Muggle descendant. Most families kept an empty title attached to a family name rather than a place. Oaths in the Wizengamot were changed and mimicked the Muggle oaths in various governments, where seatholders swore to uphold the Wizengamot Charter and faithfully discharge the duties of their office. Ministry department heads had to swear similar oaths, but most bureaucrats didn’t. However, every Ministry employee and Wizengamot representative had to swear a magically binding oath of fealty to the Crown, and the Wizengamot members had to do it in person. Harry raised his eyebrows at that bit: no wonder they’d had to release American magical officials from their oaths to the king. Otherwise revolt would have been literally impossible. It still was for the British magical community, especially seeing as more than half of the population was technically employed by the Ministry.
Harry took a few minutes to cross-reference this with his notes from Magick, since he didn’t carry the whole book around with him. He still had to research and verify the claims from that book but assuming they were true, then magic would have thickened around holdings with a flourishing community and positive, mutually beneficial relationships between nobles and their constituents. Magical nobles would have been rewarded for treating their tenants well and their people in return would have been rewarded for loyalty and community. Now, though, with noble holdings reduced to the lands around the manors belonging to the few families who’d had enough pull to keep their ancestral homes, almost all the land of the British Isles was technically Muggle and disconnected from magic. Again assuming the Magick author was right, it was no wonder magic was weakening.
Most of the books he’d found called magical Britain a constitutional monarchy, but it didn’t seem to be. The Minister was elected every seven years, but could also act as Praetor on behalf of the Crown on basically any pretext, which allowed them to suspend elections indefinitely. Department heads were nominated by the Minister and approved by the Ministry Oversight Committee of the Wizengamot, whose five members were chosen by joint decision of the Chief Warlock, Minister of Magic, and the Crown Liaison, an official appointed by the Committee but fired at Ministerial discretion to act as a go-between for the monarch and Ministry. The Oversight Committee more or less rubber-stamped any nominee, seeing as the members themselves were appointed or replaced by the Minister and the Crown Liaison whose job security depended on said Minister.
Probably the weirdest position was the Chief Warlock. He or she was elected for an indefinite term from the Wizengamot’s members by two-thirds vote of the body, but could only be removed from that position by a three-quarters vote of no confidence or if convicted of a crime punishable by a year or more in Azkaban. Dumbledore held that position, as well as Supreme Mugwump of the ICW, meaning he controlled the legislative and judicial body of the United Kingdom as well as oversaw the international equivalent. Technically he had sworn oaths to the Muggle monarchs too, but as the British Crown had next to no interest in the magical population provided it caused them no problems, this was largely irrelevant.
Harry was a little stunned. The Muggles had been doing very well around that period with the concepts of rights and carefully outlined government. Maybe it was the need for a government on rush order to enforce the shiny new Statute of Secrecy, but the whole magical government was incredibly haphazard. No wonder the place was rife with corruption.
“Madam Pince,” he asked when he returned the book on the Wizengamot, “where could I get a copy of this?”
“With a lot of luck and about thirty galleons, Flourish and Blotts could likely procure a copy,” she said drily. “It’s not very popular. For the most part, only actual historians have access. And before you ask, Hogwarts used to have a copy, but the Headmaster removed it from the shelves. NEWT history students can reference it with written permission.”
“What about the Hogwarts Charter?” he asked. “The book mentions it, but not what it says.”
Madam Pince looked away. “The Charter is unfortunately not available for student perusal. All inquiries regarding student clubs or rules regarding Ministry involvement in Hogwarts should be directed to your Head of House.”
“What do you mean, unavailable?” Harry pressed. “Is it illegal?”
“No… no, the Ministry says nothing about it. A copy could be obtained from them for a fee, if you write the Archive Office. But there are no copies available for staff or student use.”
Not even the staff? Harry stared at her, expecting a joke. She didn’t smile, just stared him down grimly, and suddenly he knew for a fact that she wasn’t allowed to tell him.
“Thank you for your help, Madam Pince.” Harry busily gathered his things and asked, as casually as he could, “Is there any other way I might find a copy?”
“I believe if you look around on the seventh floor near the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, there may be one lying around,” she said cryptically.
Harry stared at Madam Pince for a minute but she didn’t say a word, just looked back at him with an unreadable expression.
“Thank you, Madam Pince,” he said finally.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Potter.”
***
He found nothing on the seventh floor, though. Even finding what part of the castle she meant was hard; it turned out to be the next wing over from the one that had his greenhouse, and there was indeed a tapestry of a man barmy enough to try to teach trolls ballet. But no copy of the Charter. The only rooms on the floor were bare and cold and cramped and had no sign of what they might once have been used for. Study rooms, maybe? Since they were so small? Now they were just more of the many empty rooms gathering dust in Hogwarts’ lesser used wings. Harry wondered what had changed that so much of the castle was so empty.
***
His research project into other “great workings” had to be cut short when the other students came back. Even so, Harry had found a lot. Mass workings had been fairly common prior to the sixteenth century or so. Not easy, by the looks of it, but in various history or archaic theory books there was mention of spells involving anywhere between two and two thousand wixen. The Hogwarts Express warding project was one of them: an imprecise number of wixen in the high three digits or low four digits had lined themselves up between Hogwarts and London in the dead of night and simultaneously activated carefully placed wardstones that ran from a ley line confluence in Diagon Alley to the one at Hogsmeade, then Haugh’s Meadow. The spell, cast by all of them and powered by ley line energy channeled between the wardstones, created a long and unbroken chain of magic space just large enough for the train. Nothing could get in or out except at the designated entrance and exit points or at various maintenance entrances placed along its length, all of which were warded to the high heavens. Muggles crossing the space would simply jump across it without ever registering that it was there, even if they happened to drive through it when the train was passing. It had held since with minimal upkeep, as had the similar wards on Diagon, Knockturn, and other secret wizarding spaces in London and elsewhere in the world.
Harry was moderately concerned about what would happen if and when the warding on the train route failed.
Since the sixteenth century, though, these sorts of workings had become less and less common. There was no mention of a ritual or spell being worked since around 1750 that involved more than seven people. To be fair, it wasn’t like he’d found a single list, but poring over one book after another had turned up not a single incidence, so Harry felt like he could safely conclude it was either that no such spells had been worked or that they had but so few times that not a single academic recognized by Hogwarts or its restricted section thought to write it down.
Friday night, when everyone came back, Harry pulled Theo, Tracy, Portia, Zacharias, and Neville aside. He told Portia, Tracy, Zacharias, and Neville about the gist of the theory in Magick without mentioning the source, and then shared the results of his research. He was answered with a resounding silence.
“Well fuck,” Portia said finally.
Neville coughed but Zacharias barked out a startled laugh. He sobered quickly. “Harry, are you sure? That’s… a big claim.”
Prepared for this, Harry handed over bound stacks of parchment to each of them. “Check it yourself if you want, I put enough magic in the temporary copies to last about a week. There’s instructions in there to get a quill to write down the information for you on your own paper if you want to keep it longer. All the sources are there. If you need to look at something in the Restricted Section, let me know and I can get it for you.”
“But—wait, how?” Neville said.
“I have a thing of my father’s that lets me pass through some wards,” Harry said after a brief hesitation. He wasn’t going to explain the Cloak in detail but that much, at least, he felt he could share with these few by now.
Tracy looked up from her copy, which she’d already begun to skim. “If this is true, we are in so much trouble.”
Harry nodded grimly. “My next project is to look at the history of magical religion and holy days, but there’s next to nothing on it in the library so I’m having a hard time.” His mother’s trunk held a few books, but all of them were in either Latin or Old English, which was less than ideal. He’d already found a set of Latin textbooks in there and intended to start self-teaching it soon.
“I can probably find something in my family library,” Zacharias said.
Theo nodded. “Me too. I’ll write Father, get him to… well, I don’t know if he would be able to disguise the package, that’s not something we’re really supposed to be reading, but if nothing else I can owl them to you for the summer.”
“I’ll do that as well,” Zacharias decided.
Tracy bit her lower lip. “What is it?” Harry asked her.
“What can we do about it?” she said. “I… just, we can’t do anything about the size of the Muggle population. We can’t. There’s billions of them. And unless we expose magic, we can’t control enough of the land to make a difference. I know some stuff about warding, Harry, from my aunt. She does runic enchantments, not wards, but every runemaster has to know about wards, and they rely on being able to define something. A region, a territory, a country, a house, a person… Personal fire wards won’t keep your clothes safe but some people have found their wands, glasses, fake legs, and stuff like that get protected because they see those things as part of themselves. This story means magic is fading because we don’t honor and strengthen magic, sure, but also because we can’t if we don’t have land to tap into. Magic is part of the land. I mean, this sounds like magic was the greatest in the time of Arthur and afterwards, right? We had a magical monarch who held the whole of Britain. Even after Arthur we had the Wizard’s Council—sorry, Wixen Council—and they were sworn to the whole of Avalon and the land, based on your notes here. And the noble families directly ruled over their personal lands. But now, well, we directly control Diagon, the Ministry, Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and a few other little magical towns. That’s it.”
A heavy silence descended.
“We’ll figure it out,” Harry said finally. “First step is research, though. We have to know more.”
“We’ll help,” Neville said fiercely. “I… we’ll help.”
“All of us,” Theo said, putting a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Okay?”
Harry nodded.
***
Sitting in front of a list of his projects, Harry couldn’t help feeling a little overwhelmed. He hated it so much it was an effort not to set his parchment on fire. “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.
“About?” Raza coiled around his body in the snake equivalent of a hug. Apparently it was how they twisted together to conserve heat in the wild, and Raza had decided that if humans wrapped themselves around each other for comfort that he could imitate that behavior.
“All of this! I mean… I want to find the Chamber of Secrets, there’s snake passages all around the castle but so far none of them go to the Chamber. And there are absolutely no blueprints or records or anything that would say where Slytherin used to have his rooms or office or whatever. And then there’s that stupid comment from Pince about the seventh floor. What was she even talking about? There’s nothing up there except a tapestry and a lot of dust.”
“I couldn’t scent any magic,” Raza agreed.
“Exactly. Students are getting attacked, they might close Hogwarts if no one does anything and it doesn’t look like anyone is actually doing anything seeing as Dumblefuck is somehow pulling off a massive coverup. I wish it wasn’t my problem but apparently it is! And on top of all this, there is a disaster of literally world-ending size that I just learned about. Do you know how ridiculous that is? I’m twelve!”
“You have wanted to be a great ruler for as long as I have known you.”
Harry threw his hands in the air. “Not the point, Raza! I’m used to adults being incompetent and useless but this is seriously on a new level! Magic itself is dying and no one seems to have even noticed!”
“Riddle noticed,” Raza pointed out.
“Well, and he was a maniac, so that didn’t exactly help. I’d like to think someone being that fanatic might have woken people up a little bit, but no, instead it’s just crucifixion for anyone who even seems to think some of his less stupid ideas had merit. Probably literal crucifixion since the Ministry decided to imprison even minor criminals with soul-eating monsters.” He’d read a description of the founding of Azkaban during his research frenzy and been somewhat shocked to find that it wasn’t just rapists and other really awful criminals in the place. “And I haven’t even had time to look into the muggleborn statistics I asked Figg about over the summer, or keep pushing on my potions experiments. And, somehow, I’m supposed to be doing classes in the middle of all this!”
Raza bumped his nose into Harry’s cheekbone. “You will be fine, hatchling.”
“How do you know?” Harry closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his face. This was ridiculous, this was stupid, he hadn’t had a breakdown like this in he couldn’t remember how long—
“Because you have me, of course.”
The response was so typically Raza that Harry couldn’t help a short, harsh laugh. “True. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Nothing good,” Raza said. “Hatchling, you will find a way. You are a clever snake and that is what snakes do.”
Harry ran a hand along his familiar’s cool, smooth scales and tried to believe him.
***
“Mr. Potter, please come with me.”
This is starting to feel like a routine, Harry thought sourly as he stood and gathered his things to follow Snape. He’d spent a whole afternoon studying in the greenhouse and really just wanted to get to dinner. It was almost April, and most of his teachers were already making noises about exams, and he hated to admit it but his classwork had slipped a bit lately. It was understandable, given how many things he was trying to juggle, but Harry had forced himself (with help from Raza, who threatened to bite him if he didn’t sit down and write essays) to set everything else aside and spend a day playing catch-up.
And now, instead of getting food, he was being dragged off Cassandra knew where with Snape.
“Sir… where are we going?” Harry said, when it became clear they weren’t going to the dungeons. Instead Snape had led him towards… the east tower?
“I have told you to call me Severus,” Snape said, “and I regret to inform you… Harry, but… there has been another attack.”
“Let me guess, the Headmaster thinks it was me?”
Snape—Severus? Had he earned that yet?—smiled very tightly. “He has not indicated as much.”
Translation: he probably had at least thought about it, but not to the point of telling others about his theory.
Wait, but— “Then why am I…”
Harry trailed off when he realized they were turning up the staircase that led to the hospital wing.
Severus stopped outside the doors to the wing and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry, through what felt uncomfortably like the beginnings of panic, registered dully that Severus had very carefully stood as far away as his arms would allow and narrowed his stance to be deliberately off-balance and unthreatening. Used to dealing with twitchy touch-averse children? It worked, somehow, even with his rapidly accelerating heart rate, Harry didn’t feel unusually uncomfortable with someone else’s closeness.
“Harry… it’s… it’s someone you know, this time,” Severus said softly. “Again.”
“Who?” Harry almost whispered.
Severus hesitated. “Mr. Nott and Miss Davis, among a few… a few others.”
Harry barely heard the last few words. He tore away from Severus’ hands, slammed through the doors of the hospital wing, and found himself confronted by a number of people. Fear roared through his mind like a blank white wave and he spun in place. Looking for Theo and Tracy, or for an exit, or both, he didn’t even know.
“Harry? Harry!”
Hands, on his shoulders again. Not Severus’. Harry was half a breath from lashing out when he recognized the person’s magic, their face. Larkin. Larkin? What was she doing here?
“Harry, breathe.”
Right. Important. He sucked in a breath and found, to his horror, that almost a dozen adults had all turned to stare. There was a woman whose razor-sharp business suit screamed Muggle and whose large eyes and perky nose screamed Tracy. Harry went in that direction, Larkin following. The rest of them could go to hell.
“Young man—” Mrs. Davis began, but Larkin moved in to explain and Harry brushed past them. Other Heads of House were bringing students too, he guessed close friends of the people attacked, but Harry couldn’t care less.
He skidded to a halt when he found Tracy lying in bed. Her skin was ashen, her normally lively face slack and dull. Someone had put her in a blue cotton shift that made her skin look even more washed out.
Ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach—maybe the eggs had gone off this morning?—Harry went around the curtain between Tracy’s bed and the next.
Theo, his Theo. Harry distantly felt his spine and knees locking to keep himself upright, his hands twisting into fists in the folds of his robes. The world tilted a little bit and he remembered to breathe again. When it steadied he forced himself to take a few more steps until he was at Theo’s bedside.
Larkin came to stand next to him. “Lord Nott can’t be here,” she said softly. “He would be glad that you are.”
Harry thought he nodded. He couldn’t tell.
Across the room, he felt someone’s attention. Harry looked up. Larkin was still talking but he didn’t hear a word she said. Professor White was staring at him, specifically at him, at Harry, with eyes as calculating as any snake.
-----
Neville’s heart felt like it had somehow leaped up into his throat. Every time he took a breath, he imagined he could feel it rasping past his heart, feel his lungs straining to suck in air past the blockage. That was probably impossible. Maybe he’d got a bit of potato stuck in his throat at lunch. Neville tried to rub at his throat but nothing changed.
Ahead of him, Portia and Zach were arguing in whispers that sounded to Neville like vague hissing noises. In front of them was Harry, leading the way. He kept checking around corners and waving them all along.
And next to Neville was the reason for his nervousness. Well. One reason. Of several. They were breaking into a professor’s office, again, which was not great for his general anxiety levels. It was worse because Pansy bloody Parkinson had apparently spotted Harry on his way out of the common room and demanded to know where he was going at three in the morning, and when he wouldn’t tell, threatened to get a prefect unless he brought her along. Which was just so Slytherin. Neville didn’t know what he thought of Parkinson. He didn’t know her at all except that she often hung around Malfoy, which was not a great sign, but he also knew from Harry that Slytherin politics were weird as could be and things weren’t always how they looked. And he knew Harry well enough to suspect that if he hadn’t wanted to bring Parkinson, he’d have just nailed her with a body-bind and left her in a corner until the morning. Harry could be ruthless like that. Not that Neville blamed him. From what he knew of Harry’s childhood he’d had to be a bit cold just to handle all the awful-sounding kids he lived with. And, well, Gran liked to hold his parents up as perfect, and Neville admired them a lot, of course, but he’d also eavesdropped a lot and he knew Father and Mother both used the harshest spells Aurors were allowed.
He tripped, almost fell, and felt himself flush when Parkinson grabbed his arm and hauled him upright again. “Thanks,” he muttered.
“Mhmm.” She patted him absently on the back. “If you want to make it up to me you can explain what we’re doing here.”
Neville glared at her. Honestly, that was obvious. Did she think he was stupid? He might be a Hufflepuff but some of his best friends (it still made him giddy and a little disbelieving that they were his friends) were Slytherins. “If Harry didn’t explain, I’m not going to.”
Parkinson smiled, a quick and cutting flash of teeth. “You’re cleverer than you look, Longbottom.”
“Don’t flatter me,” he said, even though the compliment made his stomach feel warm and wiggly.
Harry waved, up ahead, and they all came to a stop. Neville looked around. They were just around the corner from White’s office.
“In here,” Harry said in a low voice. He shoved a tapestry aside and whispered something to the wall that just sounded like hissing again. It slid open and they shuffled into a very cramped space.
Harry cast a faint lumos and looked at his watch. “Any second now.”
“Until what?” said Parksinson.
“Until our diversion.”
Portia frowned. “What divers–”
A distant boom shook the stone beneath their feet. A faint shower of dust fell from the ceiling. Neville coughed so hard he almost missed Harry’s sarcastic “That diversion.” He definitely didn’t miss the sudden pounding of feet as someone ran by outside their hiding place, or the second boom that followed.
Harry counted to thirty. “Let’s go.”
They filed out of the hiding spot again. Distant shouts and crashes told them something big was going on. “What the hell diversion did you come up with?” Portia shouted as they dashed around the corner.
“I made a deal with the Weasley Demons!” Harry said.
Oh. Wonderful. That explained the explosion of chaos. And the actual explosions.
“Alohomora,” Harry said, and the door to White’s office sprang open.
“Spread out and search,” Harry said. “Quickly. The Demons said they’d come up with something big enough to draw all the professors.”
“He loosed the Demons on the school? Is he insane?” Parkinson hissed, following Neville as he went for the filing cabinets on the left wall.
Neville shot her a look that he’d tried to copy off his gran. “No one else is doing anything. Theo and Tracy are lying up there, maybe dying, and the school’s just pretending everything is fine. And we know White is involved. Just not how, exactly. We need proof.”
“The Muggle Studies professor? Are you insane?”
“The people who got attacked had a Muggle drug in their blood and White had it here! Now will you shut up and help me look?”
Some of the others looked over at Neville’s outburst, but Parkinson paled a bit and did in fact shut up and start helping him go through the filing cabinets. They found nothing interesting, though. Just tests and homework assignments for the Muggle Studies classes, lesson plans, notes from staff meetings…
“Guys?”
They all turned and found Portia waving at them from underneath White’s desk. “Come on, hurry.”
Everyone crowded around. “Secret drawer?” she said, pointing.
Neville squinted. It took a second but then he spotted a very faint line, almost invisible, just below the top drawer of the desk and above the cavity where the desk chair should go. Below the main drawer was about two inches of extra material. He’d have guessed it was just a front but when Portia pointed he realized the whole desk was that deep–much deeper than the actual drawer itself.
“Alohomora,” Zach tried. Nothing.
“Ouveris portus,” Harry snapped, jabbing his wand at it. The drawer emitted a faint whine but didn’t open. “There’s definitely something there.”
“How do we open it?” Portia said.
Parkinson glared at her. “You’re the Ravenclaw!”
“I like creatures, you twit, not—not espionage!”
“Both of you stop!” Zacharias hissed.
Neville looked away from the girls and at Harry, who had—cut his thumb?
Cut his thumb, and smeared blood along the secret drawer. Neville’s stomach fell somewhere around his feet. Blood magic, Dark magic—
Harry dragged his wand through the blood, which followed it like magnetic ink, drawing runes along the drawer. Neville didn’t recognize them. Harry started saying the words of an unfamiliar spell.
Neville’s legs unfroze and he reached out on reflex to yank Harry away.
Hands grabbed him on both sides—Zach and Portia. “Stop it,” Portia hissed, shaking him briefly. “Neville, just–stop! It’s not evil. Okay? It doesn’t hurt anyone, he can just heal his thumb in a second with episkey, it’s just a spell. Remember everything we’ve been talking about—”
“Yeah,” Neville said, his voice low and unfamiliar even to himself. “Yeah. Yes, okay, I get it, let go of me—”
His heart pounded in his ears. Neville turned away and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. Things he’d been told his whole life fought against things he had actually learned. The difference between learning something and being told something was not one he’d have even realized existed a year ago. But Harry and Zach and Theo, they had books and articles and they would find old issues of the Prophet to settle arguments and—he’d read the stuff they had, or some of it. He knew they weren’t making it up about blood magic being sometimes useful. And it sure didn’t seem to have hurt Harry just now—Neville had gotten worse cuts from gardening.
Blood magic is evil and Dark, his Gran’s voice said, and he remembered so many times one of his parents had come home talking about someone or other they’d arrested or fined or stunned for being caught or suspected of blood magic and evil things. Now, Neville couldn’t help wondering how many of those people had been trying something like the spells he’d read about that called for a blood sacrifice but did things like increase the health of your harvest or make your pregnancy easier.
“Neville?” Zach said quietly. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m… okay.” Neville lowered his hands and turned around.
Zach was still watching him warily, but Parkinson and Portia were both staring at Harry like he was a wild animal that might attack at any minute. Neville frowned down at Harry. He suddenly felt like the room was a lot… smaller than it had been.
“Harry?” Portia said slowly.
Harry’s hands were trembling. Neville inched to the side and got a look at his face. He recoiled. Harry’s expression was completely blank, but his eyes were alight, almost glowing, a shade of green that couldn’t be more different from the soothing green of a lively garden. His hands were clutching a sheaf of paper Neville recognized as Muggle.
“Volculeus,” Zach said.
The Stinging Hex hit Harry in the leg. He flinched, badly, and the heavy feeling in the air thickened.
Harry looked up at Zach. “Harry, it’s me. Zacharias,” Zach said, holding his creepy gaze without a flinch. “You know me. Know us. You’re safe.”
Slowly, the strange gleam faded, and so did the odd weight in the air. Harry took a breath that shuddered. “Right. I… didn’t mean to…”
“What did you see?” Zach said, pointing at the papers.
“I know him.” Harry’s face was still oddly blank. He turned his head down and stared at the papers some more. “From when I was a child… he’s been cornering me all year because he recognizes me.”
Parkinson frowned, but Portia and Zach looked about as horrified as Neville felt. “From… before or after you… moved?” Zach said, obviously trying not to give any specifics since Parkinson wasn’t one of their group.
“After.”
“And that’s… bad?”
“He’s a Muggle government official,” Harry said very quietly.
Portia finished the obvious thought. “So what in the name of Merlin’s saggy balls is he doing teaching Muggle Studies here?”
“Back up, he’s a Muggle?” Parkinson said disbelievingly.
“Well obviously not,” Harry snapped. “But he pretends to be one. Which is weirder, don’t you think?”
“Why were you even meeting with Muggle government people?” Parkinson said in disbelief.
Harry rolled his eyes. “My mother was a muggleborn, Parkinson, I unfortunately still have relatives in that world.”
Bloody Slytherins. Always so cagey. Then again Neville could understand why he didn’t trust Parkinson. Even if he’d obviously been considering letting her in if he let her come along today.
“Guys, we have to go,” Portia said urgently. “The diversion will only last so long.”
“Right.” Harry shook himself. “We’ve taken too long already. Geminio. Geminio. Geminio.” He kept casting seemingly at random, passing the temporary copies of the papers off to Portia, who started stuffing them down into her bag in a hurry.
Zach went to the door. “I hear people coming,” he said. “Hurry…”
Neville bit his lip.
Parkinson twisted her hair around one finger, looking around the office. “Longbottom—come here, we’ve got to put things back.”
Oh. Right, duh. Neville went to help her make sure the files were all as neat as they had been, the cabinets were closed, and the furniture was arranged just so. Hours of staring at the photographs they took the first time meant Neville had a pretty good memory of what the office had looked like before.
“Scourgify,” Harry said, just as Zach hissed, “Guys, we have to go!”
“Yeah—come on, everyone follow me—”
Harry led the way out of the room, pausing only to do something wordless to the door once they were all out, and they dashed down the hall. There was still so much panicked noise that their footsteps didn’t matter now.
Right as Neville heard someone coming around the corner, Harry skidded to the side, yanking open a hatch in the floor that Neville hadn’t even seen and dropping through. Zach and Portia followed without hesitation, but Parkinson paused.
Balls, Neville thought, and pushed her.
She shrieked a little as she fell. Neville jumped through.
“Colloportus!” Zach’s voice rang out from below. The hatch slammed shut, leaving them in darkness.
“It fades,” Harry said out of the black. “No one will see it now. Parkinson, did you really have to scream?”
“He pushed me!” Parkinson snapped.
“You were just standing there!” Neville protested.
“This is ridiculous. Lumos.” Portia’s voice was confident, but nothing happened. “Uh…”
“It’s fine. This place has magic dampeners on the walls,” Harry said.
Portia squeaked. “Harry, that’s not fine!”
“It’s fine because there’s a secret, nonmagical way out,” Harry snapped. “It’s an oubliette. They used to imprison people in these things. Hogwarts was an actual castle before it was a school; it’s meant to withstand a war. Follow my voice.”
Neville shuffled towards him until he felt a body. The height told him it was Zach. “There’s a wall here,” Zach said quietly, putting Neville’s hand on cold stone.
The walls were round and the floor smooth. Neville had never been more afraid than he was right now, trapped in whatever Harry had called this place, wondering if every step was going to send him plummeting down some bottomless hole.
Grinding stone made him jump so badly he almost fell. One of the girls swore. He heard footsteps, then “Lumos,” Harry said, and Neville almost cried when he saw Harry’s wandlight appear through a tiny gap in the walls.
He looked back. There were no holes in the floor, just a perfectly round room with walls that slanted ever so slightly inward to the ceiling above. Runes were carved into the walls. Neville shuddered and hurried out.
Once everyone had left the hole, Harry felt around the wall of the narrow passage beyond and pressed something. The stone ground back into place. “This way,” he said, setting off away from the hole to the left. How he knew where to go, Neville had no idea, since both directions along the passage looked identical.
Neville had no sense at all of time passing in the corridor, which twisted and turned and went unexpectedly up and down. Small doors led off to the sides at irregular intervals but Harry ignored all of them. Maybe they led to more prison holes. Terrifying.
Finally, Harry opened one of the side doors and showed them a cramped stone staircase so steep it seemed more like a ladder. The centers of the steps were worn down with age and use. “It opens up by the kitchens,” Harry said. “Once we’re out, no talking—the professors and ghosts will all be out in force. Everyone should go back to their common rooms as soon as possible. Portia, can you make it?”
She shrugged, seemingly recovered from the incident with the hole. “Yeah, if I get caught I’ll just tell them I fell asleep studying or something, happens to us all the time.”
Parkinson snorted and Portia glared at her.
“Good,” Zach said, cutting across their argument before it could start. “Neville, c’mon, let’s go.”
“Goodnight,” Neville said, grinning quietly at Harry. The fear was fading and in its place was exhilaration. They’d done it. They hadn’t gotten caught. And hopefully in those papers Harry copied was something they could use to help their friends.
Harry smiled tightly back. “Thanks, Nev,” he said softly.
“Anytime,” Neville said as casually as he could.
Zach grabbed his arm and dragged him up the steps, muttering something inaudible.
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