24: Blood of the Covenant

Padma

Wine, in Padma’s opinion, was a stupid thing to be serving to a bunch of underage magicians. And yet here Slughorn was with bottle after bottle of it set out on the sideboard free for whoever wanted to try some.

Parvati, across the sumptuous boudoir into which Slughorn had transformed the potions professor’s office, had a glass in her hand. Her second of the night, if Padma’s observations could be trusted, which was generally the case.

“What’s wrong?” Anthony said quietly at her elbow. “You look a bit peaky.”

“Nothing. Just thinking.” Padma smiled at him.

Anthony laughed, a warm and ringing sound. “The Ravenclaw curse.”

“Mmm,” said Padma, sipping at her punch, charmed free of any alcohol as a protection against what she was quite sure was the inevitable attempt of some student or other to spike Slughorn’s punch bowl.

That kind of juvenile stunt was, she had to admit, funny. Padma a year ago would have laughed and potentially even helped plan a prank herself, though she’d have gone for something else. A bit of babbling brew, diluted so as to be nearly harmless, just loosening people’s lips a little bit more than they might otherwise have done—now that would be funny and quite a bit more tactful than alcohol.

Anthony drank as well, emptying his glass of Argentinian red. “Another?”

“I’m alright with this for now.” Padma tilted her glass.

“Back in a moment, then.” Anthony kissed her lightly on the cheek and was gone, weaving through the other students towards the table of drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

Padma stayed where she was. Slughorn’s little pre-holiday fête had been much busier than this, with assorted impressive adults around so that Slughorn could ply his trade in connections. She assumed that had been a one-off permission, because today, the attendees were only students, albeit a rather larger group than she understood had been the case at the start of the year.

Their Potions professor did not waste time, it seemed, adding to his collection.

Unsurprisingly, the Boy-Who-Lived was the crown jewel in said collection. Padma glanced at him, or more precisely, at Parvati, who’d come as Jules’ plus one to this thing, and who was busily charming Slughorn in the midst of a knot of people clustered around a low table and a bunch of poufs.

“Quite a spectacle, aren’t they?”

Padma twitched and nearly spilled her drink. Brown fingers caught hers just in time, keeping the glass upright. She looked up at their owner.

“Careful there,” said Blaise Zabini, with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes.

“It’s rude to sneak up on people,” she said tartly, pulling her hand back.

“Oh, of course, pardon me.”

Padma started to lift her glass to her lips and then, remembering whose son he was, thought better of it. “I’m surprised you’re not over there in the spectacle yourself.”

Slughorn’s laugh boomed through the room. His myriad rugs, throw blankets, and wall hangings softened and swallowed the sound. Padma glanced over—Jules appeared to have said something funny, sitting there with a cocky little grin while the rest of the group laughed and Katie Bell said something back with lots of hand waving.

“I wouldn’t be welcome,” said Zabini. “Rather too many lions over there at the moment.”

“Mmm.” Maybe Anthony would bring her back another drink anyway. But no, Padma could see him at the side table, waylaid by Hermione Granger. She refrained from rolling her eyes, though it was a near thing. The two of them could go on about assorted academic topics without a pause for hours. No chance now of Anthony remembering to come back to Padma within the next ten minutes minimum.

“Why aren’t you over there?”

Padma set her punch down with rather too much force. Nearer them, a cluster of people that included that one arsehole seventh year Slytherin shuffled, several of them glancing towards the sound. Padma held an expression of unruffled hauteur until they looked away again. “That’s my business, Zabini.”

Her business, and absolutely none of his. Padma’s family complications were between her and Parvati alone.

“Oh,” Zabini said, a little too theatrical to be sincere, “my apologies. I did not mean to overstep.”

Padma snorted. “I doubt that.”

It was Zabini’s turn to blink and pause, knocked onto the back foot. Padma smiled at him with all her teeth.

Still, he wasn’t a Slytherin for nothing, and recovered almost instantly. “And people think you’re the demure sister.”

“Quiet doesn’t mean shy.” Padma glanced at Anthony again. Still deep in conversation with Granger, and they’d been joined by a seventh-year Hufflepuff. “If you’ll excuse me?”

“Collecting a wayward date?”

“Refreshing my glass,” said Padma, daring him to point out that it was still easily half-full.

He didn’t, instead easily moving with her as she stepped from her safe position off to one side and around the nearest group of Slytherins. Padma wondered if she imagined the vicious look Seaton sent towards Zabini or the resentful way that one Hufflepuff witch was looking at Slughorn and Jules.

“Anthony?” Padma said as they drew near.

“Padma! Sorry, I got distracted.” Anthony grinned at her, with that gap-toothed good-natured smile that inevitably melted away any irritation you had managed to muster up towards him.

“Happens to the best of us. Granger,” Padma said in greeting, and then shifted to look expectantly at the other witch, who she vaguely recognized but couldn’t recall meeting before.

“Melinda Bobbin, it’s a pleasure,” said the Hufflepuff placidly.

“Padma Patil.” Now she remembered the name. The Bobbins were in enchantment or some such thing; Padma’s parents had contracted with them once or twice.

Zabini had drifted around to stand next to Granger, and leaned down to murmur something in her ear; Granger’s posture and attention sharpened, and the cant of her shoulders towards Zabini indicated a complete comfort with his presence in her personal space, reminding Padma that both of them were in the same close circle of friends.

A circle of friends currently missing their centerpoint. The whole school knew Harry Black hadn’t come back on the train after the holiday, and why.

“Have you been to one of these little gatherings before?” Bobbin said to Padma.

“Ah, no.” Padma tried to ignore the speculative way Granger was looking at her—the Gryffindor wasn’t as good a liar as Zabini, or maybe she just didn’t bother.

Bobbin nodded. “Goldstein mentioned you are good with potions?”

“Yes.” A burst of noise pulled Padma’s attention to the side. Slughorn had got up from the group that included Jules and Parvati, and begun making his rounds of the room, which contained over two dozen students at this point, from across fifth year and up; today was one of the less intimate Slug Club nights. From what Padma had heard they were often smaller.

Oh, right, she was supposed to be making small talk. “It’s one of my favorite subjects,” Padma added; surely that was a suitably banal contribution to this, well, verbal exchange. She wasn’t ready to give it the dignity of calling it a conversation.

“I’m passable. More fond of arithmancy myself.”

Padma made an assenting noise and side-eyed Anthony who, bless him, took a hint and jumped in with a question about Vector’s seventh-year project assignments in that class. Granger didn’t join in this time. She was still watching Padma, though Zabini had drifted to the side and was now perusing the hors d’oeuvres with a faint moue of disdain.

Why were they so interested? What did Zabini say to Granger? Padma did a bit of social arithmetic and decided that she could safely leave without causing offense within the next fifteen minutes, thank the gods. She wasn’t sure that having such pointed interest from that particular group of her peers was a good thing.

A burst of noise came from the large group of people who’d coalesced around Slughorn. “What about you?” Bobbin said, raising her voice over it, to Padma.

Only Padma wasn’t listening, because that was not normal cheerful party noise. Oh no. That was the choking rasp of—

Her hand was in her little bag before she had time to think. Fingers curling around what she needed from it as she darted around several of Slughorn’s low-slung sumptuous furniture oddities to the source of the noise. Several well-placed elbows got two older students out of her way.

Padma went to her knees hard enough for pain to jar all the way up her spine. She ignored it. Slapped the clumsy groping hands of a fourth-year she didn’t know out of the way, tuned out the frightened shocked screaming and noise around her, and stuffed a bezoar into the mouth of the student convulsing on the floor.

“Vulsgorge,” she heard, and, recognizing the charm, held the student’s jaw shut with all her strength while the spell forced his muscles through the contractions that made up a swallow. Once, twice, his throat rippled under her hand, and then the jerking of his limbs slowed.

Cautiously, she let go. He was still deathly pale—a Hufflepuff, she let herself recognize now, some seventh year whose name escaped her—but his breathing looked more even.

Only then did Padma let her own held breath release. Hopefully she’d… stabilized him enough, at least.

Sounds started filtering back into coherency. She looked up and around. Most of the group that had been clustered up here, laughing and happy, hung back now, several people sobbing and others flushed or gone pale with shock. A Slytherin witch had spilled wine down the front of her robes.

“Merciful Merlin,” Slughorn whispered. Sweat gleamed on his bald pate, and his hand trembled as he reached out without moving to set his glass of a dark brown drink on a table to the side. “My… my dear girl…”

“Expecto Patronum,” rang out a crisp voice, and as everyone twisted around, startled by the burst of silver light, “go to Madam Pomfrey, tell her a student’s been poisoned in Slughorn’s office—”

Everyone in the room got a good look at the patronus, a big cat of some kind, cheetah if Padma had to guess, though it was harder to identify an animal’s coat pattern when it was entirely shades of silver. Large paws and ears gave the impression of adolescence before it turned and flung itself headlong through a wall in a burst of uncanny speed.

The magic snapped Slughorn out of it. He shook his head sharply, as if casting off a fog, and broke into motion himself, calling out for them to not touch Bidderot—presumably the student on the floor—while running for his private quarters.

Padma felt rather dazed herself. It was only just sinking in that someone had been poisoned. Presumably on purpose.

Voices were rising in shock and fear and anger. Accusations. Theories. Questions—who had drunk what, was it safe, were they all going to fall ill—

“Enough!” This was Granger: a voice mocked as shrill and nagging when they were younger was now sharp and commanding, slicing through the room like a knife. “Everyone, please do not drink or eat anything else, and find a seat near you. Watch the people around you for symptoms of early onset poisoning and speak up if you think you or someone else looks ill.”

For a moment, Padma thought she might be ignored— but then Bobbin said in a shaky voice, “Good idea, Granger,” and tugged another Hufflepuff toward one of the settees, and then several of the younger kids who Padma knew ran in Granger’s circle did likewise, and just like that the dam broke.

Padma shifted unsteadily back onto her heels. Merlin. She’d just watched someone almost die. A student, within Hogwarts.

They were at war, yes. She knew that. She was not naive. But it was one thing to have one’s eyes open to the death and danger in the outside world—another thing entirely to watch a schoolmate almost die in the place where they were supposed to be safest.

She felt someone draw near and kneel beside her. Looked over—Zabini, dark eyes intent, studying Bidderot carefully. “Can you find his drink?”

“What?” Padma forced her mind to function. “Yes. Drink, right. Of course.” Sensible of him. She looked around, keeping half an eye on Zabini, who appeared to be taking Bidderot’s pulse manually.

A number of drinks and plates had spilled when people panicked, especially close to Bidderot. Padma took a few seconds to find a stray wine glass that, based on the stains, had hit the carpet next to where Bidderot fell and rolled or been kicked to the side under a bookshelf that backed up to a sofa. She cast an impervius charm on her hand before reaching out to pick it up.

“Here.”

Padma looked up. Two anxious faces, Ernie MacMillan and his younger House mate Alys Meurig, peered down at her, Ernie holding out a small glass vial.

“Thanks,” Padma said, and, delicately twisting her wand, siphoned some of the wine that remained in Bidderot’s glass into the vial. It wasn’t much. About a drachm if she had to guess, and certainly not pure, but that was alright, it was safely sealed now in a freshly conjured vial and someone could test it later to find out if there was indeed poison, and if so, whether it had been in his drink.

Slughorn and two others had joined Zabini by Bidderot when Padma turned back to them. The students were Bidderot’s House mates, she thought, though everyone was mostly out of uniform tonight, so Padma couldn’t be sure. “He should be fine,” Zabini was saying, crisp and cool, while Slughorn worked over the downed wizard, carefully dripping something green into his slack mouth and watching in between drops for some reaction Padma couldn’t discern. “Pomfrey’ll be here soon, and there’s little a bezoar can’t counter.”

Bezoars absorbed the poison and stopped it from causing further damage, but did not heal what had already been done. Padma didn’t mention any of this. Whether Zabini was trying to be nice—doubtful—or to prevent a panic—more plausible—it served a purpose by comforting and calming Bidderot’s friends.

Zabini looked up at her as Padma took the few steps back to their small tableau, and rose, dusting his hands off. Slughorn and the two anxious friends of Bidderot’s ignored him. “Find it?”

“Wine.” Padma didn’t mention the vial in her pocket, but handed him the glass and the scum of liquid on the bottom that she’d left behind. “Don’t know if this is what did it.”

“I might,” Zabini muttered, rising, grabbing the glass, and starting to cast over it, wand twitching through various enchantments, a few of which Padma thought had to do with poison detection but most of which went way over her head. It figured. Black Widow’s son, poison… simple arithmetic.

Granger, meanwhile, had organized some sort of recording effort, going around and getting everyone to write down what they had eaten and drunk tonight while the memory was fresh. Clever. It kept the group distracted and would be a valuable reference later if anyone else fell ill.

Padma looked down at her hands, realized her wand was still out, and slid it back into its holster, feeling numb.

Was this really happening?

Granger approached her determinedly. “Patil?”

“Yes? Oh. Of course.” Padma took the parchment offered to her. “I… I haven’t had much.” Where even was her original glass?

“Anything you remember helps,” said Granger, turning to survey the rest of the room the way a general looked over their troops doing drills. “Thank goodness you had a bezoar, by the way. Do you always carry one?”

“How direct,” Padma said, amused despite herself.

Granger shrugged, rueful, and turned to face Padma, evidently satisfied that her scheme with the parchments would take care of itself. Even the older students who didn’t care for her, including that arsewipe Slytherin with the pointy face, were complying, though a few of them looked annoyed about it. “I’m a Gryffindor, we’re efficient.”

A Gryffindor who had been close friends with some of the most snakey of all Slytherins for years, Padma thought but did not say. If ever there was a Gryffindor she’d expect could play the slippery wordplay game it’d be Granger.

Then again, what harm could it do, answering the question? “Only since the… the incident with the Slytherin quidditch team,” she admitted.

Granger raised one eyebrow. “You mean the… prank.”

“Prank,” Padma said with some disdain. It had not been a prank, of that she was sure, though the Headmaster’s reasons for covering that up, and the affected students’ reasons for going along with him,were unclear. “Yes. It—was clear to me that we are not as safe inside Hogwarts as one might like.”

“No,” said Granger, eyes sharp, “we aren’t.”

Padma looked down at the parchment in her hands and began to write out what little she’d had to drink tonight in lieu of answering.

The noise level in Slughorn’s expanded office suite had begun to rise again as people recovered and conversation picked back up, shocked voices telling and retelling the story of Bidderot’s collapse, their own fear, their speculations and worries. Reassuring each other. Soothing others’ fears and in so doing their own. So it was easy for Zabini, as he looked up from the wine glass with a grim expression, to speak softly and be heard by Granger and Padma alone: “It was poison.”

Air hissed out through Granger’s teeth. “Intentional?”

“Poison doesn’t wind up in glasses on accident,” Padma muttered.

Both of them flicked glances at her. Somehow Padma didn’t think they had forgotten she was within earshot—which meant they didn’t mind her overhearing, or even actively wanted her to do so. She looked blankly back at them: Padma could even fool her sister with her poker face sometimes. These two didn’t stand a chance of cracking it.

“But he might not have been the target,” Zabini said, and Padma couldn’t identify what he did with his body language but there was a distinct shift and she was suddenly, again, included in a conversation that was firmly between three people, not two-and-one.

“So identify the vintage,” Padma said impatiently. “If you can, that is.”

“If I can,” Zabini scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“She’s got a point, Blaise. It seems like no one else had any of that bottle either,” Granger pointed out. “Can you look..? It might… wander off… if the person who laced it is here tonight.”

His haughty, handsome features were, Padma thought idly, perfectly sculpted for contempt: the sneer that crossed Zabini’s face was nothing less than a work of performance art.

Granger turned back to Padma with an exasperated face as Zabini spun on a heel and stalked over to the drinks table. “Slytherins. Present them with a dare and they jump without even thinking.”

“One could say the same of you lions.” Once again Padma found herself unwillingly amused. Parvati had complained often over the years about Granger, but Padma thought she and her sister’s roommate could get along well, given the chance.

The door to the offices snapped open and rebounded off the stone wall with a sharp crack. Several people jumped and shrieked, and Granger spun quicker than Padma would’ve expected, wand slipping snake-quick into her hand; Zabini did the same, and though he was nearly twenty feet away Padma saw the way he and Granger oriented toward one another in perfectly unconscious teamwork. A memory rose unbidden to her mind, of a snowy road and a scream and a similarly seamless response, Greengrass and Black and their friends switching instantly from students to soldiers.

But today the interruption was just Madam Pomfrey, arriving at a full run, her olive green mediwitch’s robes flaring around her ankles, and Granger and Zabini relaxed so quickly one might easily have missed their reaction.

“Horace?”

“He’s stable,” Slughorn said, sitting back and mopping his brow with one sleeve, “it’s some sort of corrosive poison, I think—”

“Merlin,” Pomfrey muttered, but she wasted no time setting to work over Bidderot, casting a series of quick spells and then nodding sharply. “Right. He can be moved. I’ve sent for Albus and Minerva, they’ll be here shortly—you and you,” she pointed at Bidderot’s friends, “come with me.”

Padma, Granger, and Slughorn stepped back to make room for Pomfrey to conjure a stretcher and carefully shift Bidderot onto it. He let out a half-conscious groan in the process, and Padma winced.

“Well,” Granger sighed, rolling her wrists out, wand back in its holster as if she and Zabini had not reacted to Pomfrey’s arrival with the situational awareness of professional duelists, “that’s that sorted… the Headmaster will be here soon, I suppose we should just wait.”

“Shall we sit?” Padma suggested.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Granger followed her over to a sofa where Anthony, shocked and quiet, had settled. He leaned forward with a piece of parchment held loosely in his hands like he’d forgotten it was there.

“You alright?” Padma asked her date softly, resting a hand on his shoulder as she sank onto the cushions next to him.

“Hm? Oh.” Anthony startled slightly, and smiled at her, strained. “Yes, I… that was amazing, Pad, how did you…”

“I’ve carried a bezoar since that incident with the Slytherin quidditch team.” Padma leaned back and let Slughorn’s deep overstuffed sofa cradle and swallow her. Merlin, she was tired. “I’m just glad…”

Anthony shook his head. “Brilliant. Oh, here, Hermione—” He leaned around Padma to hand his parchment to Granger. “That was a good idea.”

“Thank you.” Granger took it back and rolled it neatly up. The scroll vanished into a pocket. Padma looked closer at the Gryffindor. Saw a detached, almost glassy cast to her eyes. Was Granger occluding? It would make sense. She must be very good, Padma thought, to function so well socially and simultaneously hold herself at such a remove. Padma herself was a good intermediate occlumens but couldn’t occlude seriously while also carrying on conversations let alone navigating a situation like this one with Granger’s air of, well, command.

Parvati had always been the more social of the two of them, she thought with a pang, and reached half blindly for Anthony’s hand. He wound his pale freckled fingers through hers immediately and hung on.

A few minutes later, Zabini came and joined them, and had a murmured conversation with Granger that Padma didn’t try to overhear. Anthony’s hand was warm and dry in hers, and the sofa was soft, and she didn’t want to move, possibly ever.

Someone just almost died. In front of her eyes. In a professor’s quarters at an informal student dinner.

This fucking war. First it set off problems at home and now it had followed her back to school, crawled into Hogwarts and made a mockery of the safety this school was supposed to offer. Padma was not a naive child: she didn’t think that the conflict would just politely stay confined to the people who actually wanted to fight it. Bad things happened in wars. Still, she felt oddly betrayed, anger and helplessness clawing at her from the inside out.

She stirred after a few minutes when Anthony tugged at her hand. Slughorn was going around the room casting some kind of diagnostic charm on people, shining wandlight into students’ eyes to check pupil dilation, and muttering to himself about pulse rates and inebriation. Right. Potions masters all had to have at least a mediwix certification. Padma held still when it was her turn, and was relieved when Slughorn merely nodded, indicating she was fine, and moved on to checking Anthony. Granger and Zabini likewise came up clear.

Dumbledore and McGonagall arrived while Slughorn was busy checking that no one else had been poisoned. McGonagall briskly took charge, organizing the students to get a list of everyone who had been present, then awarding Granger twenty points for quick thinking with the records of food and drink consumption and Padma fifty for her quick thinking with the bezoar.

And that was it. Names taken down, parchments collected, heads counted and their health confirmed by Slughorn, everyone present was sent off to bed with a pat on the head while the adults took care of things.

The stream of students carried Padma out of Slughorn’s offices and into the corridor, where she found her feet moving too slowly, people passing by on either side. Anthony gave her an odd look but slowed as well to stay with her.

“That’s it?” Padma finally said. “Just…”

“They are the adults,” Anthony pointed out. “They know what they’re doing.”

Padma smiled humorlessly. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“Both.”

“And how’s that going for you?”

Their linked hands swung between them. It was a comfort, touch, and right now Padma couldn’t bring herself to give a shite whether the rumor mill decided she and Anthony were dating; they weren’t and it was no one else’s business if she wanted to hold hands with her friend, and who cared if her parents caught wind of it and started making noises about a contract? Everyone had bigger problems right now.

“Not great,” Anthony admitted, drawing Padma back out of her thoughts. “It’s not like they do much, generally.”

“Is anyone?” she said, and then winced, because there was altogether more of her bitterness audible than she’d intended.

Anthony grimaced and then looked shifty. “We could… find out.”

“What?”

“Like…” He gestured around at the empty corridor, quiet and still both ahead and behind them. “We could go back? Listen in on… see what they’re…” He trailed off in the face of her incredulous stare. “Or not.”

“No, that’s not—I’m just surprised you suggested that,” Padma said, “you’re usually more, ah—”

“Of a rule-follower? Well, usually the rules make more sense,” he said, aiming for a joking tone and not quite hitting the mark. “Don’t you want to know?”

Of course she did. But— “What good will it do? They probably have wards up—and what if we get caught?”

“Well, if you don’t want to—” Anthony said crossly.

“No, I—” Padma scuffed her foot on the floor. Remembered Amma’s voice, Don’t you want to be safe? and Parvati shouting Not when so many others aren’t! and the retort from Appa that silenced both his daughters: What could you really do? It was kindly spoken, kindly meant. A reasonable question. What could a couple of barely-seventeen-year-olds do in a war that adults were already losing?

It was no more Padma’s nature to give up than it was her sister’s. Even if what Parvati said to her later that night, in private—You can’t be quiet forever—had cut deeper than any of their parents’ well-meant worry.

But Padma didn’t want to be loud, and she didn’t think that meant she had to do nothing either, and it was with a stubborn anticipation of I told you so known only to siblings that she turned to Anthony and said “I do want to. Let’s go.”

“Right,” he said, grinning, with a bravado Padma knew he didn’t really feel. “That’s the spirit. Cadwallader’s?”

“That tactic’s better with three, isn’t it?” Padma said. She ignored the churn of nerves and excitement in her stomach. She wasn’t twelve anymore, sneaking out of her dorm at night and giggling later about the thrill of it. This was real.

“Fair point.”

“We could do the Yang Distribution,” Padma suggested, “if you know it?”

“Oh, yes, that’s perfect.” Anthony drew his wand. “First or second cast?”

“Go ahead, I know the second series better.”

Padma stood still while Anthony worked his way rapidly through a series of spells cast on them both. The Yang Distribution was one of dozens of formalized spell-sequences tailored for different numbers of casters, every spell cast in relation to its fellows to maximize efficiency, minimize the interference that some spells could have on one another if cast on the same target, and avoid other complications like trying to maintain two finicky enchantments at the same time. Coming up with new sequences was a bit of a game in Ravenclaw, mostly fun and at times deeply competitive. If Padma recalled correctly the Yang Distribution had been invented by a Ravenclaw student in the sixties for the purpose of sneaking around with his friend unseen. It was designed for two people, each casting on both themself and the other, distributed between them such that no two spells in either the first or second part of the sequence would conflict with each other.

It took less than thirty seconds—even with sequencing, there were only so many complex enchantments one could cast at once without problems—for Anthony to complete his portion. Padma counted to five, to make sure all the spells had settled well, and when Anthony nodded to her she started casting herself. The sequenced incantations fell lightly from her lips, a letter here or there altered to improve the flow and guide the magic into its links, each spell loosely connected to the one cast just prior.

She ended the sequence with a quick widdershins twist of her wand, unwinding the magic’s thread from it. The spells settled. Anthony’s half would keep them unseen, unheard, unscented; the second sequence, Padma’s part, worked broadly to alert them both of nearby people, amplify their hearing, and deflect other ward-alerts or alarm spells.

Hands linked, wands out, they began to walk back towards Slughorn’s office, moving swiftly and trusting the magic to keep them hidden, though they hugged the wall: they weren’t ghosts, and no amount of invisibility would protect them from someone walking slap bang into them.

They hadn’t come far since leaving the office. It took only a minute, two at the most, until they were slipping back around the last corner and Slughorn’s office door came into view, Padma’s heart pounding in her chest and a fire of guilty little glee making her stomach turn over—See, Parvati? she wanted to say—It’s not just you who wants to do something—

Magic rippled. She and Anthony both stopped as awareness bloomed in their minds of other magic that Padma’s alarm-spells had brushed up against. What kind of magic it was, though, eluded Padma. That was another problem with sequenced spells; your sense of what your magic was doing weakened, which could be disorienting to people used to casting well-developed single charms with strong and specific effect.

Before she could make headway interpreting the feedback, though—

A silver shimmer in the air sprang to life and she staggered: one of her enchantments was a latent shield charm, and it had just deflected something. A strong something. Anthony had to catch her and haul her backwards until Padma could get her own feet working again.

“What?” he hissed; the Yang would keep their own words private, so long as they both spoke softly.

“I don’t—”

Another spell shot out of the darkness down the hallway. A finite. It tugged at the edges of the Yang Distribution sequence but fizzled out uselessly in the face of the complex interwoven charms.

“That’s not the professors,” Anthony whispered.

Padma staggered again, gritted her teeth and concentrated. Someone was trying to tear down her charms—and doing a bloody good job of it too, they couldn’t just—

“Fuck,” Anthony said. Padma glanced at him. Her friend’s face was strained, his skin ashy, from which she concluded that whoever they’d found was likewise trying to peel apart the first half of the Yang. Which would render them visible.

Fuck indeed.

Padma grabbed Anthony’s arm, turned around, did her best to start moving them both back the way they’d come. The thrill had curdled into sick fear. Getting into serious trouble was all the excuse her parents would need to say she wasn’t responsible enough for this, and Padma couldn’t leave Parvati in Hogwarts alone—and that was assuming it was just usual school kinds of trouble, and not—

The world went white.

Padma blinked. She was staring at the ceiling. How did…

Two faces came into view. People standing over her. It took a second to force her eyes into focus, at which point the faces resolved into those of Hermione Granger and Blaise Zabini, peering down at her with, respectively, confusion and amusement.

“Hi,” Padma said, and sat up. Her head spun. She resolutely ignored it.

“That was a fascinating bit of magic,” Granger said. “Was it supposed to knock you both unconscious when it fell?”

Both? Anthony. Padma flinched and looked around. Found him on the floor a few feet away, just beginning to stir. “No, it wasn’t,” she said flatly.

Which was the last and most severe drawback of spell sequencing: it tended to go poorly if the sequence was broken from outside rather than taken down by its casters.

She scooted over to Anthony and tapped him on the shoulder. “You there?”

“Mmmuh,” he said.

“I’ve a bit of invigorating draught,” Zabini said, sounding amused, “if you want it.”

Padma glanced up at him with an eyebrow raised. “Would you go around accepting random potions from someone who is at best a friendly acquaintance?”

“You wound me, Patil.”

There was a rustle of movement. From her position on the floor, Padma could see what robes would normally hide, which was that Granger had just stomped on Zabin’s foot. “It’s just invigorating draught. I promise,” the Gryffindor said, glaring at her friend.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Zabini added.

Granger was, Padma reminded herself, a friend of Anthony’s, and Padma could think of no reason why Granger or for that matter Zabini would wish them harm. “Sure. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” said Zabini with a wink.

Padma took the small vial of potion he handed over, uncorked it, and sniffed, uncaring whether her caution caused offense. But it was indeed a plain invigorating draught, as far as she could tell, so she carefully tipped a few drops onto her tongue and waited.

The rush of energy came almost immediately. Padma swayed again even though she was still sitting down. Felt her heart rate pick up and the jelly-like weakness vanish from her muscles. “Well brewed,” she said, managing to keep her voice steady.

“He’s annoyingly good at potions,” Granger agreed. “You should give Anthony some if you don’t want to get caught in the middle of the hall, though. It can’t take the professors much longer in there.”

Right. Padma rose to her knees and dosed Anthony—three drops and no more, after which she immediately re-corked the potion and leaned back, because—

He sucked in a breath and jackknifed up to a seated position. “Whaaaa?”

—that might happen.

“Welcome back.” Padma rocked back onto her heels and from there smoothly to her feet, tossing the vial back at Zabini as she did so; he caught it one-handed and it vanished back to wherever he apparently just kept a stash of common potions at hand. And probably some uncommon ones too unless Padma missed her guess.

Anthony shook his head, and then scrambled to his feet, bouncing in place. “Hermione! Were you eavesdropping too?”

“What’s wrong with him?” Padma snapped, turning on Granger and Zabini. “He only got three drops—”

“Three drops of what—oh.” Anthony made a smacking sound. “Invigorating draught, right? Yeah, I’m a little sensitive to it.”

“Oh, Merlin.”

“Pad, we have to write this down,” Anthony said, “I don’t think there’s any record of what exactly happens when the Yang Distribution specifically gets pulled down—Hermione, did you two break it? Can you tell me what spells you used and in what order? Actually I think we should do a more detailed debriefing—and an experiment later, of course, under more controlled circumstances, to see if this is replicable—”

“Anthony,” Padma said.

He blinked. Pressed a finger to his forehead right between his eyebrows and visibly took a deep breath. “Right. Yes. Sorry. Leaving? Leaving.”

“Leaving. Yes.” Padma hooked an elbow through one of his and started towing him back towards the stairs that would take them up out of the dungeons. Embarrassment heated her cheeks. And anger too—that they’d been caught, that it came to nothing—

Of course Zabini and Granger weren’t content to just politely stay back and pretend the whole incident never happened. No, they had to start walking with Padma and Anthony, like they were all one group of happy friends, like this was planned and normal.

Then again, they could be one another’s alibis, if such a thing became necessary.

“So why were you sneaking up on the professors?” Granger asked after a few seconds of walking.

“Wanted to do something,” Anthony said. He’d gotten the potion-induced energy rush under control but his fingers were drumming a fast beat where they rested on Padma’s arm and sweat sheened his brow and neck. “Sick of the adults being useless.”

A look passed between Granger and Zabini, so fleeting that Padma nearly missed it.

“What were you two doing?” Padma said.

There was a pause.

“Having a conversation,” Zabini said finally.

Anthony leaned around Padma to stare at the taller Slytherin. “Riiiight.”

“No, we actually were.” Granger ran a hand through her hair, which was much frizzier and much less contained than it had been earlier in the evening. “You’re right, the adults were useless, and…”

“I hoped to find out what he’d been poisoned with. But our esteemed Headmaster—” okay, Zabini had to practice his sneers in the mirror— “kept it. For their own investigation.”

The vial of wine was heavy in Padma’s pocket.

“What would you do if you knew?” Anthony said, sounding, in Padma’s opinion, entirely too interested.

“Report it to the DMLE, of course.”

Padma snorted. “Granger, bit of advice for telling convincing lies, don’t answer quite so quickly.”

A smile dripping smugness slid onto Granger’s face. “I can lie when it matters.”

“You’re evading my question.”

“She is,” Zabini said with maddening cheer. “Not very well either, ‘Mione, you’re slipping.”

“Am I? Hm. Well, to answer your question, Patil, what we’d do would depend on what kind of poison was in the wine. If indeed there was poison in the wine at all.”

Zabini slung an arm around Granger’s shoulders. “And whatever we were to do, it would certainly be more than Dumbledore and his ilk. But of course,” he sounded genuinely irritated, “Slughorn took what I siphoned out of the carpet fibers, so this is all hypothetical.”

Maybe it was the potion in her veins, the small dose of magical energy giving her just the slightest push. Maybe it was the frustration and helplessness boiling over, or the stress of nearly seeing someone die. Or maybe it was just the specter of Parvati that made Padma open her mouth and say, “What if it didn’t have to be?”

Harry

It was a good thing that these dormitories didn’t have smoke detectors in them like the ones at Muggle boarding schools.

“Theo,” he said, voice even.

Theo’s eyes popped open, and then widened at the sight of the flames curling up the folded parchment in his hands. “Shite—”

“Extinguiro. Be more careful.” Blaise snapped his wand back into its holster with the same level of vitriol as had filled his tone.

Theo tossed the parchment to the floor. His expression had gone flat and dead, edged with malice like the parchment was with scorch marks. “I didn’t notice.”

“Clearly,” Blaise sniffed.

Harry catalogued the muscle jumping in Theo’s jaw, the too-still tightness of his shoulders, the way he would not so much look at either of them. “Blaise, enough. Theo—”

But whatever he was going to say was lost in the slam of the dormitory door.

He, Blaise, and Theo stood stock-still, frigidly impassive while Crabbe stomped over to his bed and began to rummage in the trunk. Harry bit the inside of his cheek until it bled. Blaise had come storming in, furious, and thrust that parchment at Harry, and in reading it Harry had gotten so distracted he apparently forgot to put a fucking lock charm up.

The mutually-ignoring-each-other truce they had with Harry’s least favorite dorm-mate had grown strained this year and it was markedly worse since Harry came back from Yule. Crabbe liked to stare at them with a mean look in his thuggish eyes that reminded Harry all too well of Dudley when he knew something that was about to get Harry beaten and locked in the cupboard for a week.

At the moment that look was nowhere to be seen. Just Crabbe riffling around on the floor now. Was he looking for his shoes? Harry could just see a pair of them, peeking out from under Crabbe’s bed, carelessly kicked into the shadows by the night table—

“Oi,” Crabbe said, eyes caught on something, “that yours?”

Harry followed his gaze to the parchment on the floor by Theo’s feet. His heart sank.

Search abandoned, Crabbe snatched it and started to laugh. “Found one, eh? These’re funny, they are—”

“Factually incorrect is what they are,” said Harry with a calm he did not feel.

“At least someone’s saying the truth about Mudbloods,” Crabbe said, and—

Harry cast without speaking or thinking. Hex splashing into the other boy’s shoulder and knocking him onto his arse with a yowl as his whole arm went limp and pin-and-needle pain shot through the limb. “You—!”

“Think before you continue that sentence,” said Harry, voice soft, wand aimed steadily at Crabbe’s forehead. “In fact, you should think twice, in general, before you use that word in front of me. Are we clear?”

Crabbe scowled and rose, unsteadily. “You ain’t all you think you are, Black. You’ll get yours.”

“Maybe. But not from you.” Harry looked pointedly at the door.

“That means leave,” Blaise said helpfully when Crabbe didn’t move. He rolled his wand between his palms, not quite aiming it yet, but still plainly threatening.

Crabbe spat on the floor. Turned around and, holding his limp arm stiffly by his side, stormed back out.

“We have to do something about him.” Blaise summoned the parchment off the floor. “And this.”

“I know.” Harry pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a pressure headache coming on. There was only one group of students who’d do something like make and spread a pamphlet supporting the whole blood supremacy shite, going well beyond ability over blood territory into arguing that Muggleborns were acceptable only if they could assimilate, that they couldn’t assimilate because they were left with their Muggle families, and that the proof could be seen in how few Muggleborns lived in magical communities— and the worst part was that it was a strong case, written to appeal to the idiots like Crabbe as well as smarter people who shied away from outright blood purity rhetoric.

Fucking Seaton. He wondered if the girls had made progress on their plans to get close to him. Identifying someone to use as an access point was key.

He looked up at Theo, opened his mouth—

Theo tore his eyes away from Harry’s, spun on his heel, and followed Crabbe out the door in a whip of black school robes.

It felt like Harry had just been punched in the gut.

Theo

In and out. One and two and three—

Breathe.

The fire in his hands surged on each inhale, sank on the exhale, a flower furling from bud to blossom and back again every few seconds. Theo’s half-closed eyes saw nothing beyond the slowly pulsing glow of it. This had become his latest trick, a shallow grasp at control that only mostly worked.

In his mind he saw the parchment going up in unconscious flames in his fingers, saw the frost and anger limning Harry right before Crabbe interrupted them. And why shouldn’t Harry be angry—this, this bullshite was everywhere lately, a door flung wide as people got tacit permission to say things they wouldn’t have a year or five before, reassuring each other each step along one or another of the many roads that ran towards blood purity.

All roads lead to Rome. That was the saying, once upon a time. In the present world all roads led to the Death Eaters, or at least, all the ones Theo could see.

Breathe.

If he hadn’t left Theo knew he would have snapped. Slipped. He couldn’t afford that. Even so, it had taken monumental effort to redirect himself outside into the frigid winter afternoon rather than following Crabbe the way he wanted to, following the other boy and finding somewhere secluded without portraits to interfere while Theo taught Crabbe a lesson—

The fire leapt. Theo leaned back and let it burn and fought his breath back into its long slow rhythm.

How do you like me now, Father? he thought savagely. All grown up, perfect self control just like you wanted, right up until the madman you sold yourself to broke it—how’s this working out?

“Theo?”

Theo’s hands tightened into fists, fire wreathing them instead of snapping hungrily towards the voice like his first instinct had been. “Nev.”

Neville came all the way into the greenhouse and shut the door behind him. “You, er, maybe shouldn’t be lighting fires in here.”

“These plants would probably kill me if I let fire near them,” Theo said with dark humor and not a trace of exaggeration.

“Still.”

There was something next door to disapproval in Neville’s tone. Theo looked up at him and, though it felt like inching closer to the precipice he danced on, reached for something true. The words came out choppy. “It’s incentive to stay in control. I wouldn’t—they’re yours. I wouldn’t hurt them.”

“Oh, Theo.” Neville’s face softened. He stepped around to the bench where Theo sat and sank down at his side, unhesitant, undeterred by the wandless fire burning in Theo’s hands. “I know you wouldn’t, really. It’s just.”

“Greenhouse safety protocols. I know.” Theo exhaled and held his empty lungs still and watched the fire snuff all the way out.

“I don’t mean to…” Neville grimaced. “If it helps—”

“Hey.” Theo bumped his shoulder into Neville’s. “I like that you care, alright? It’s fine. I mean it.”

Neville studied his face for a few seconds and then broke into a small grin. “If you insist.”

“I do.”

“You could, uh, show me that sometime? Outside maybe?” Neville said. “I’ve only really seen Harry…”

“Sure.” Theo thought about it. “Not… right now.” Not when whatever restless recklessness had woken over Yule snapped so close to the surface.

“Yeah, of course. Whenever you want.”

Theo leaned slowly back against the greenhouse wall and closed his eyes all the way. Neville’s steady warm presence at his side was a comfort. Reassuringly solid even if Theo couldn’t borrow his surety.

They sat in silence as the minutes stretched out. Theo focused on breathing and on Neville and slowly felt the shattertight tension in him unwind.

When the silence ended it was Neville who broke it, typically direct. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It implies there’s just the one thing,” said Theo, not bothering to pretend he didn’t know what Neville meant.

“Any of it, then.”

Theo fought with himself for a few seconds. Found his mouth saying half unbidden “I think I’m angry with Father.”

“For?”

Draw him closer. Vulnerability begat trust. Theo’s heart did something painful. “He—when I was small, he saw—what I’m like. What I am.”

“You’ve mentioned,” said Neville neutrally.

“He taught me to keep a lid on it. Not show—people. To know where the lines were. Are.” Theo fell silent.

“But…?” Neville prompted after several heartbeats of quiet.

“He didn’t have to encourage it,” Theo said through numb lips. “He didn’t have to—and now I’m—” no, he couldn’t give voice to any of the possible ways to end that sentence, he redirected and his voice came out a low and vicious hiss— “I could have been normal.”

Anger bloomed and broke harmlessly against the humid quiet of the greenhouse.

Theo breathed.

“Do you wish you were?” Neville said cautiously.

The fuck kind of a question—Theo pushed his first reaction aside. “I don’t know. It would be… easier. I wouldn’t be—a liability.”

“You’re not a liability.”

Theo rolled his eyes. “Neville, I appreciate it, but tactically, I am a liability. That is just fact.”

“No.”

A glance to the side showed that Neville had sat up straight and turned to face Theo, alive with conviction as sure and straight as a sword’s edge. “No,” he repeated. “Other people trying to exploit you doesn’t make you a liability. That’s on them. Is Hermione a liability? Was Sirius?”

Everything in Theo stopped

and started again less than a breath later.

“No,” he said, and his voice came out even.

They stared at each other.

“You don’t agree,” said Neville, shoulders slumping a fraction.

Theo couldn’t honestly deny that, but— “I see your point.”

“I’ll take that,” Neville said with a wry grin. He pressed his shoulder against Theo’s and stayed there, leaning. “And for what it’s worth, Theodore Nott, I don’t think there’s any world in which you could ever be normal.”

“No?” said Theo, his own smile taking him by surprise.

“Nah. You’re—” Neville, Theo saw with some delight, was blushing— “special. You’d always stand out.”

“Why, Neville, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you liked me,” Theo said in his best ironic voice (and resolutely ignoring a pain that split all the way down to the core of him) as Neville took his hand.

“Well,” said Neville gravely, “you are, for once, wrong, I’m afraid to say. Because I do like you. Rather a lot, as it happens.”

How like a Gryffindor to be so direct, Theo thought, but then Neville leaned in and kissed him and Theo’s hands came to rest on Neville’s waist and everything fled his mind but this, this, this—

Harry

Letters blurred and swam across the parchment. Harry blinked hard. His eyes refocused on Tyron Gatlin’s sharp, sure handwriting.

…need a third distillation of extract of neddarwoll juice…

He had already read this sentence. Twice. Harry breathed through his nose and flattened his hands to the tabletop, thumbs out to hold the edges of the scroll flat, grimly dragging his gaze back up to the beginning of the paragraph.

The feedback Harry received from Gatlin was invariably brilliant. Incisive and insightful. Deserving of Harry’s full attention. He had to get through this latest entry in their correspondence tonight, it had already been a week and if Harry fell any further behind he’d never catch up—as it was he’d been cutting corners on all his homework and missed an assignment in Transfiguration, costing Slytherin ten points—

He’d lost the thread of it again.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut and counted to ten. Maybe if he had another tea—but caffeine didn’t always help him concentrate, and regardless, a tea at this hour meant he would sleep badly.

No. Bad idea. He’d just have to slog through it. Harry refocused on the letter and tried to ignore the shake in his hands.

…interesting insight with respect to the influence of the new moon. Research why one might need a third distillation of…

An ache in his fingers made itself known. Harry blinked. Realized he had zoned out again in the middle of the same paragraph, and that his hand had crept back into his pocket, wrapped tight around hard metal that bit into his skin.

He couldn’t stop himself taking it out. Not for the first time. Not for the last. When his hand uncurled red lines ran along the inside of his hand where he had been clinging to the compass. It popped open with a faint click.

Four needles hung steady in the case. Graham. Veronica. Dylan. Rio. They were safe, they were nearby, they were here.

The fifth spun aimlessly. Jittering at random. Harry tightened his hand enough that it stopped shaking but the needle still wandered.

His chest felt tight, and he couldn’t breathe.

Sirius.

Nothing had changed since the last time he took the compass out and stared at it.

He didn’t know what he’d expected.

He couldn’t make himself put it down.

The rustle of cloth in the entrance to the Knights’ Room made him twitch. Harry snapped his head up, half reaching for his wand before he registered the sight of Pansy, Justin, and Neville, and made himself let go.

“—and then I said—What are you still doing up?” Pansy cut herself off midsentence to stare at Harry.

“Working,” said Harry, immediately disliking the defensive edge to his voice. He forced his shoulders to relax.

“You said you were going to sleep after the Ancient Runes essay.” Justin’s tone was easy but his eyes were sharp on the parchments strewn over the table in front of Harry and the compass still visible in his hand. “It’s way past curfew.”

“I… lost track of time.” Not strictly true but close enough.

Pansy made a doubtful noise. “Ready to go, then? I can walk down to our commons with you.” Her eyes dared him to say no.

“I just have to finish this letter first.” Harry’s hand did not want to let go of the compass, but he clicked it shut and set it decisively aside.

His friends exchanged loaded glances. Harry swallowed back his anger; did they think he couldn’t see them doing so?

“You’re going to drive yourself into the ground,” Neville said after a few seconds, when it became apparent no one else meant to speak up. “You—Harry, what all are you even working on?”

As if Neville didn’t know? Harry’s jaw tightened.

“You have to let some things go,” Neville continued, and that was too much.

“Yeah? Like what?” Harry snapped. “I have responsibilities as Lord Black, can’t let any of that go; I’m a student, I can’t exactly skip out on my fucking homework; I’ve got the kids to look after and a quidditch team to run and all my friends are falling apart and now there’s fucking apparition lessons coming up,” he stabbed a finger blindly at the tabletop, where a copy of the notification of said lessons was mixed in with everything else he had out, “and let’s not forget the Soothsayer or my apprenticeship or the murder attempt or, you know, the fucking war that everyone’s pretending hasn’t already started!”

“We talked about this!”

“That was before!”

Harry was on his feet before his shout finished ringing around the room. A heavy silence fell in its wake.

“Harry,” said Neville quietly. “You can’t save everyone.”

An inarticulate noise climbed Harry’s throat and he swallowed it back down. It wasn’t about saving people but how the fuck was he supposed to explain that?

Justin put a hand on Neville’s shoulder. “Can you at least try to delegate a little more? You… you know you can’t keep this up.”

“I have to,” he said, and jerked his hand in a sharp motion when Neville opened his mouth again. “I have to, alright? Drop it.”

Pansy murmured something under her breath to the boys. Justin frowned and Neville looked unhappy, but they subsided, Neville in particular making a visible effort to look away and uncross his arms.

“Well… I just wanted a pepper-up from the stores before I turn in,” said Justin. “Mind if I…”

Harry waved in the approximate direction of the potions cabinet. The rest of them stood in silence, unmoving, for the brief time it took Justin to cross the room and rummage around for the potion he wanted.

Vial in hand, Justin turned around and eyed them. “I think this is the point where we all go to bed, yeah?”

“I need to sleep,” Neville agreed. He shifted his feet. Looked at Harry. “I… sorry if I…”

“It’s fine.” Harry forced a smile. “We’ll talk tomorrow, alright?”

Neville nodded, expression saying he didn’t quite believe Harry but knew better than to push. He wished Pansy and Justin a goodnight and left.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Justin said, pausing by the door. “He’s just worried.”

“I know.” Harry busied himself shuffling his parchments into order on the table.

Justin sighed. In his peripheral vision Harry saw him look at Pansy. “Coming?”

“Yeah…” Her attention flicked to Harry, heavy on the back of his neck, but he kept his head down and didn’t react. “Yeah, let’s go, I’ll walk you down to your commons. Harry… don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t.” Harry’s voice came out steadily enough. He stared blindly at the tabletop until the sounds of their departure had faded.

Fatigue dragged at him. It would be so easy to follow. Go after his friends, catch up with Pansy on the walk back to the commons, sit down for a few minutes before going to sleep at a normal hour.

No. He couldn’t. Helplessness battered at his ribs from the inside. Crawled up his throat and sank in until he could feel his heart beating when he swallowed.

Grimly, Harry sat down and pulled Gatlin’s letter back to himself. Just this. If he could just finish this he would call it a night.

The compass gleamed mockingly in the corner of his eye.

Several days went by in which Harry hardly saw any of his friends outside classes. He wasn’t avoiding them, exactly. Just… looking for time on his own. Time in which no one would worry about if he was working too much. Time in which he didn’t have to fight the brittle edge of his temper.

Okay, fine, so maybe he was avoiding them a little. As long as no one confronted him about it Harry would keep on doing as he pleased.

Still, they were his friends, and the Vipers were his too, and they would worry more if Harry just completely vanished, which might mean more scrutiny or even a genuine intervention as opposed to the impromptu one Pansy, Justin, and Neville had staged the other night. Neville had not stopped looking at Harry with frustrated concern. He seemed to think he was being subtle about it, which most other times Harry would’ve found amusing and endearing but in his current state grated like sandpaper on an exposed nerve. So when Celesta made a pointed comment, Harry dropped a note in the journals that he’d be in the Chamber studying for the evening if anyone wanted to drop by and say hello, and made his way down through the ancient tunnels with only a little trepidation.

The alacrity with which people showed up told him clearly Celesta had the right of it. Everyone from second years to seventh seemed to want a quick word, or ask a trivial question, or tell him some anecdote. Thank Merlin none of them tried to offer condolences. Harry suspected one of his year mates had put the word out not to bring it up. That was the sort of thing Pansy or Justin would have thought to cut off at the pass. He’d had all the condolences he could stomach at the burning and after McGonagall had offered stiffly sincere sympathy on his first day back it took hours for the remembered smell of ash to fade.

None of the Vipers brought up the more pressing problems that weighed on them all, either, for which Harry was doubly grateful. He could just sit in an armchair to the side of the room and work through a fairly mindless problem set assignment for Arithmancy. He’d never have the facility with numbers that Justin and Hermione and even Daphne had acquired over the years but the cold detachment of maths made for a good distraction. And of course, in Arithmancy, there was generally a clear-cut right answer, unlike, he thought, spelling away a splatter of spilled ink, anything else in his life.

With effort, he fought off the bitterness that bubbled up in his throat and turned his focus back to the problem set. To the people around him. To the things he could do.

However pointless it felt at times.

He hadn’t even been able to save—

No.

Focus.

Slowly the number of people in the Chamber grew and the atmosphere shifted from a quiet murmur to a comfortable social buzz. Voices echoed oddly off the tiled walls and pools of still water; someone had gotten a Muggle record player going in a corner though it wasn’t particularly loud; people dragged furniture around as they flowed between pockets of conversation. Spells went off and the odd rush of laughter rose over the general noise.

Pansy came and sat with Harry for a while, saying little and working on a Transfiguration assignment at the same table. She rested a hand on his shoulder for a heartbeat as she stood to leave but didn’t press for more. A brief conversation with Celesta, Draco, and Jordan about the quidditch team’s prospects and practice schedule formed another interlude that asked little enough of him in terms of either emotional or intellectual effort. After they left, though, dispersing to other corners of the room, no one else came to sit with him, and Harry drank in the peace of it as best he could, resolutely ignoring everything else that battered at his mind and in particular the sharply relevant possibility of Voldemort finding some way to access the Chamber from outside Hogwarts. He was a Slytherin; it wasn’t implausible, and he to know the Chamber had been opened at some point given the events of Harry’s second year.

But that too was a problem for another time.

For now, Harry had equations to solve and his friends were here and safe and he could see Theo sitting with Hermione and Everett and Harry’s best friend had a genuine smile and—

A subtle vibration and a pulse of magic from his pocket nearly stopped Harry’s heart.

He wanted nothing more than to grab for it immediately but couldn’t. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was in any way unusual, or at least no more so than Harry had already been lately, making him suddenly glad that the Chamber had gotten so busy and that he had in fact been avoiding company for the last few days. Between those two factors no one appeared to make particular note of Harry quietly gathering his things and slipping out of the Chamber proper.

Worries about Voldemort somehow spying on the Chamber kept his only slightly shaking hands from his pockets even once he was in the apparent privacy of the corridor. Harry forced himself to wait until he made it all the way back to main school to duck into a broom closet, pile every warding and anti-eavesdropping spell he could sustain at once on top of himself, and finally, finally pull the journal out of his pocket.

For a split second he couldn’t make himself open the cover. Harry looked at his own knuckles, pale with the force of his grip on the journal’s spine, occluded, and flipped it open to the page that gleamed with a new message.

It wasn’t one of the Vipers. The handwriting was unfamiliar to him, and took a second to parse, but once he had, Harry momentarily forgot how to breathe.

Fuck. He had to go. He had to go now. Harry squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers to his temples and allowed himself a few seconds to be briefly, passionately hate the fact that he was a fucking student and by all rights stuck here. Bottled up in a nice safe castle while the adults went about the real work.

Safe. Ha. Now there was a joke.

Luckily Harry could get out of Hogwarts on his own, if he needed to. It was risky. If he was caught or if anyone noticed his absence there would be questions he absolutely could not answer. And the best departure point was absolutely not some random broom closet.

Harry tore down his warding spells in a careless rush and left the tattered edges of decaying magic in his wake. Someone could notice that the broom closet had been warded to high hell and back if they felt like it, that wasn’t his problem.

A decrepit, abandoned office of some kind on the third floor by the Astronomy Tower was better. No portraits could be found in this back corridor to see him checking random doors and the thick layer of dust on the floor said no one had been here in forever. Harry went with subtlety this time and carefully drew a runespell onto the doorjamb with his finger and a touch of concentration. This kind of subtle, passive magic went unnoticed by most detection spells, but if he broke off a splinter of the doorjamb and tied the other end of the runic spell to it, he’d be able to tell before he came back if anyone else had entered the room or remained inside. In that case Harry could use the secret passageway from Honeydukes to get back into the school. It wasn’t his preference—other people knew about and might use that tunnel, not least of them Jules, and there was also the risk of getting caught breaking into the store—but it never hurt to have contingencies.

And—he was stalling.

Harry reached up to the portkey he’d worn constantly since… that night… and activated it.

Force hooked around his lumbar spine and yanked it through his stomach. Harry tucked in his elbows and kept his eyes shut. Portkey magic spun him around in nauseating circles, drilling through space for an endless few heartbeats before his feet slammed hard into wooden floors.

The comforting embrace of the Grimmauld Place wards barely registered. Harry was moving before his dinner stopped trying to make a reappearance. He thundered down the stairs, which sensed his urgency and contracted underfoot. In no time at all he’d hurtled into the kitchen and nearly crashed into the edge of the hearth in his rush to grab floo powder. A pause to steady himself—it was never a good idea to jump into the floo off balance—and he threw a pinch of sparkling powder down.

Green flames roared.

Harry stepped into their reach and said the name of his destination and knew he was traveling only by the floo’s sickening spin because its usual crackling roar was drowned out by the thunder of his heart.

It spat him out into a rather ordinary sitting room. Harry automatically scanned his surroundings but registered no threats and didn’t bother looking closer. The house was quiet, but not with the hollow absence of inoccupation. Harry took a few uncertain steps forward. “Hello?”

“One moment!” a distant voice called.

Harry set off in its direction immediately. He’d only gotten a few steps down the hall before he heard the drumming of feet on a staircase and a head popped out of a doorway up ahead. “Harry—good, good, this way—”

“Healer Taleb,” Harry said, his voice somehow coming out steady. “Is—”

“Yes, yes—come on up—”

The healer turned on a heel and led the way back up the staircase. Harry followed as closely behind as he could without being rude. Taleb’s urgency was contagious, and besides, Harry was at a loss for words: a dozen questions bottled up in his throat and stuck there behind the most important one, which was the one question he couldn’t bear to ask.

Taleb led him into an upstairs hall. A collection of photographs, some still and some moving, hung on the walls. Harry caught glimpses of Taleb at various points in his life, as well as assorted other people, presumably family and friends, as he passed. The magical photographs watched him go by solemnly. A few waved.

“In here,” Taleb said, pausing by a door at the very end of the hall. Harry could feel the wards on it from three feet away. The hair on his arms stood up. “Harry…”

“Just—let me in.”

Taleb nodded. “You’re keyed to the wards. Go on. I’ll give you a few minutes—ring the bell by the door when you’re ready to talk.”

Harry steeled himself and reached for the door. Stepped through. Shut it behind himself. Realized belatedly that his eyes had closed of their own accord and forced them open again.

Two lamps glowing with charmed light cast the small bedroom in soft yellow-white light. Harry could not have been made to remember a bloody thing about the room under cruciatus: his attention was immediately and wholly consumed by the bed and the figure in it.

Grey eyes met his and a wan face turned up in a smile Harry had thought he’d never see again.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Sirius.