30: Blood of the Covenant

Theo

When you wanted to run faster, or learn a new spell, you practiced. This, Theo figured, was the same: if he wanted to learn—re-learn—control, he needed practice.

So he practiced. Eriss, when Harry wasn't around, still understood enough English for Theo to make basic requests and explain himself, and indicated that she wouldn't tell Harry what they were doing so long as Harry didn't directly ask her. Harry should have no reason to directly ask her, either, as long as Theo was careful, so Theo agreed to that.

It also wasn't the worst thing in the world if Harry found out. This wasn't a secret, exactly. Just shameful.

Eriss caught rats and mice for him in forgotten corners of the dungeons like she used to for Harry to practice the Unforgivables, and Theo sat still, and stared at her prey, bleeding, staggering as her venom spread necrosis through muscle and sinew. When he was a child Theo did not understand restraint. Father had showed him, then, the importance of not yielding to his baser instincts. He felt a child again now, with reason a distant thing, a tether frayed to the breaking point. He sat and he stared at them and he breathed in the dust, breathed out the provocation. Twice the temptation was too great, and he found his wand in his hand, "Crucio" slipping from his lips before he caught up to himself, and both times Eriss struck, as agreed, snapping her prey's neck with a quick twist of muscle she had learned though she was not, by nature, a constrictor snake. Both times, Theo dropped his wand from nerveless fingers, and thrust his hands into his hair, furious at himself.

He kept trying. Thread by thread he re-wove his control. Rather than reach for his wand he let fire lick up his fingers, or conjured frost to creep up his arms in lacy spirals, a shock and distraction that called him back to the present, to his purpose.

It would, he knew, be harder with people. Theo had nothing personal against these random rodents. If he had a human target in front of him, especially someone he didn't like, helpless—

There was no good way to practice that in advance, at least not without getting help from another of the Vipers, and it was bad enough he already needed Hermione's help with the occlumency. Harry had bigger problems than Theo right now and any of the rest of them who might be able to help either wasn't someone Theo could trust with this or was, like Harry, already worked to the bone. Theo was a liability and everyone in the Vipers knew it. Theo had to find his own way to rectify that situation.

So throughout the day, when he wasn't doing anything else, Theo half-shut his eyes and pictured it—remembered that time last year when he found Graham screaming in an upstairs hall and wrenched screams from Graham's tormentors instead, remembered the pure, clear satisfaction. Or—however he flinched from doing so—he went back, in his mind, to Yule, power-drunk, ancient magic coursing hot in his veins, the cracking rush and relief of letting go. Of needing no restraint. He pictured it and in his mind he tried to imagine: lowering his wand. Stepping away.

Most of the time, even in memory, he couldn't.

But he had done hard things before. He had learned hard things before.

Today he sat in a dungeon room again, but not alone—Draco, in another conjured chair, hunched over pages of notes and mumbled to himself, writing feverishly. His presence grated. Theo couldn't maintain the kind of control he needed to practice even in his head, not with Draco constantly talking just too low to make out the words, which meant any attempt would just be Theo fantasizing, and that was the opposite of what he needed to do here. Though he supposed that practicing self-control in the face of boredom, frustration, and worsening annoyance was its own kind of valuable experience. He did arithmancy in his head, instead, the complex equations Hermione insisted he practice to the point of instinct, and called little fires in and out of existence on his fingertips while he did. Whenever he slipped a digit or missed a step he had to start over, which added to the frustration, which just meant this was better practice. Or so he kept telling himself.

At the point where his mind began to feel like an overcooked noodle he gave up and slumped into his chair. At least now he was too brain-dead to even have much of a temper.

This room was still boring as shite, though.

"How much longer?"

"He'll be here," Draco snapped without looking up.

"That doesn't answer my question. I have things to bloody do, you know."

"Oh, like what? Got someone's pet kneazle bleeding in a cage somewhere?"

Evidently Theo hadn't run out of temper quite yet. He felt himself go still and fought the sudden crackle of violence and rage.

Draco watched him from the corner of one eye.

"You bastard," Theo said lowly, once he could speak and not let loose a curse.

"Just making sure." Draco shrugged and looked back down at his notes. "If you're going to snap and curse him this'll all be for nothing."

"I hate when you're right."

"Well," Draco smirked, "no wonder you're always in such a bad mood, then."

Theo kicked a leg of Draco's chair. Draco's quill slipped and scrawled a blotchy line across several rows of runes. "Hey!"

"Wanker."

Draco aimed a scowl his way but just as quickly turned his attention back to the parchment. He charmed the line away carefully, one millimeter at a time, to leave the runes underneath intact, which at least kept him quiet for a few minutes in which Theo stared at the ceiling and let his mind, blank for once, drift.

"How do you handle it?" he said, startling himself almost as badly as Draco, who twitched again. Theo hadn't meant to say that.

"Handle what?"

Well, since the words were already out there— "Yule."

That earned him a third flinch, more violent than either before, though on the plus side Draco wasn't actively writing this time so his notes didn't get fucked. On the minus side he knocked his whole ink bottle over and was occupied for a minute frantically trying to recover the ink and get it back in the bottle while also filtering out any dust it picked upon first contact with the floor. Since that had pretty much been Theo's fault, he grudgingly got his wand out and helped, and reflected, while he did so, on how apparently he had a hitherto unnoticed masochistic streak. Nothing else could explain why he would voluntarily open this line of conversation.

Once they'd gotten as much of the ink as they were going to back in the bottle, Draco corked it with care and turned a magnificently contemptuous scowl on Theo. "That was pure handmade Chinese ink solution specifically crafted to be used for runework that needs minimal gradations in the lines you write. And now—" He shook the bottle for emphasis— "it's got dust in it!"

"I'll buy you a new one, Merlin, take that stick out of your arse."

"Actually what you'll do is give me the galleons so I can place an order myself. I don't trust you to source adequate quality." Draco chose not to address the theoretical stick in his arse. "I don't—" A wary expression, hunted, shoulders hunching slightly. "I don't think it affected me as much."

"But it did affect you," Theo pressed.

"Well—yeah. It affected everyone there, obviously… I like this too much," Draco finished abruptly, waving a hand around.

It took a moment for Theo to work out what he meant: this whole situation with the Imperius and Tyller Wengrow, their unwitting puppet. He half-smiled without humor. "Control, hm? Your father must be so proud."

"I don't much care what my father thinks," spat Draco with a flash of temper that vanished as soon as it had come. His shoulders slumped again and he rubbed a hand over his face. Theo decided not to tell him about the streak of ink that transferred from one finger to Draco's forehead. "He… Theo, he… he got us into this mess, and—"

Whatever else he'd meant to say was lost as the door swung open with a creak and Wengrow stepped inside. Here was their classmate turned into a doll, helpless, and Theo's fingers twitched, but he'd put his wand away again and he was still worn out from earlier and also Draco was here, Draco before whom Theo refused to shame himself by losing control, so he shoved his traitorous hands into his pockets and ran through exponent tables in his head.

Draco's face tightened with the concentration of giving Wengrow more specific Imperius instructions. It took a light touch with the curse to maintain it while letting someone go about their business as usual, though one of the reasons they'd chosen Wengrow was his dull personality and mediocre academics, meaning "business as usual" became quite a bit easier to fake and quite a bit fewer people would bother to pay attention to him in the first place. It took a certain knack, beyond that, for abstract direction with the curse towards objectives like Serve my interests to the best of your ability or Carry out your life as normal rather than, say, Go steal this specific item and then return to me. Any fool Death Eater could do the latter. Much as Theo disliked admitting it, only a select few could regularly manage the former, and Draco seemed to have inherited whatever it was about Lucius that put him at the top of what Father had indicated was a very short list.

In proximity like this, though, Draco did need some more particular instructions, not only Sit in that chair but Speak the whole truth to any question we ask and You want to do as we say while also leaving enough of Wengrow's mind intact for him to coherently answer said questions.

Once Draco had Wengrow where he wanted, he gave Theo a nod, and they set up a fresh, never-before-used DictaQuill to transcribe before launching into the questions they and Pansy had worked out in advance. Where did Seaton like to spend his time? Who were the people Seaton trusted most? Who did Seaton spend the most time with? Who did Seaton want to get close to, socially?

Wengrow's answers were… a mixed bag. He confirmed that Seaton was behind the pamphlets full of anti-Muggle and anti-Muggleborn drivel appearing anonymously around the school, but the Vipers had already guessed that. Hearing it from the hippogryff's mouth, so speak, was helpful, but didn't change much. Theo found the list of names more useful but here Wengrow's mediocrity worked against them as much as it did in their favor: Seaton didn't consider Wengrow any kind of real confidant, more like a lackey, and Wengrow could tell them who Seaton spent time with but not how Seaton felt about those people, and could only guess at who had Seaton's real trust. And forget more complicated questions like What does Seaton want. Those just earned obvious pablum like "To put purebloods back in charge" or "To get rid of Muggle influence in Hogwarts," delivered in the dully toneless voice of the Imperiused, which just made it that much more boring to sit through. And to top it all off Wengrow flat-out couldn't tell them things like where the hell were they even keeping whatever printing press or device they were using to make their pamphlets, because Seaton, or someone, had been smart enough to enforce at least some amount of secrecy oaths, and the Imperius could override those but not protect the victim from the penalties of oath-breaking. The Vipers couldn't exactly let Wengrow go wandering around the school stripped of his magic or whatever else the penalty was. The best bit of information they got out of Wengrow was that he'd heard about some small gatherings that Seaton liked to host and that had people in them who Wengrow didn't know—recruiting, or seeking like-minded fellow students, was the impression, and Draco reinforced an Imperius command for Wengrow to find out more about those gatherings if possible.

Theo was nearly ready to climb out of his bloody skin by the time they got to the end of their questions. He dove readily into Wengrow's mind when Draco gave him the signal, and, though Wengrow, being Imperiused, put up basically zero resistance, Theo made no attempt to be gentle as he worked legilimency plus a Memory Charm to carefully erase this whole conversation. He wrapped things up with one last vicious twist of the older Slytherin's mind to make sure no new memories would form in the next few minutes, and withdrew.

"Really?" Draco said tiredly.

Theo rubbed his dry eyes to refocus them and, once he lowered his hand, saw immediately what Draco was talking about. "Whoops." Admittedly his last push had been perhaps more vicious than necessary but he hadn't quite thought it'd be bad enough to give Wengrow a nosebleed.

"Now we have to fix that and clean him up… Do you remember any healing charms, or—"

"I'll do it." Theo briskly ran through some charms to clean up the blood, stop any more from leaking out, and stabilize any psychic bruising he'd left behind, though not entirely. Wengrow could suffer through a headache for the rest of the day. Especially given his Imperius-induced inability to, for example, go to Pomfrey, which might prompt a deeper health check and turn up signs of a recent Obliviate.

"He's too out of it to remember anything new for a while. Turn him around, maybe, and deafen him," Theo said.

Draco did so. Now that Theo knew to look for it he could see the signs: Draco set himself a bit too readily to the task of puppeting Wengrow around, and when he turned back to Theo, his eyes gleamed with the high of complete and total power. Though he sought that high through different means, Theo could relate.

"Those gatherings are a potential way in, if he can learn more," Theo said instead of anything that might result in more conversation about Yule. "And we could put a tracking charm on him."

"We'd never be able to actually work out where he is in the school with a tracker," Draco argued. "It's too big and it doesn't exactly follow normal fucking spatial geometry."

"True." Damn. If Draco kept being right this much Theo might need to—

"Unless…" said Draco slowly. "Where's that Map of Harry's?"

Theo straightened. "Oh, that's a good idea. I'm pretty sure it's in the Knights' Room with the rest of the stuff we brought up from the Chamber. Should I—"

"Yeah. We can take turns watching on it," said Draco. "Outside classes, anyway. Anita confirmed Seaton's lot aren't regularly cutting class for whatever this is."

It was as good a plan as any. Theo hummed, thinking. "Right. Send him back to the common room, tell him to find a reason to wait twenty minutes—that'll give us time to get to the Knights' Room—"

"Give you time," Draco interrupted, "I'm seeing Hermione after this—and aren't you meeting Harry to work on your insane languages study?"

"We didn't set a firm start time, it's fine—you go meet Hermione and I'll get up there and get the Map and watch—"

"Yes. Okay." Draco nodded. His eyes said the gesture was for himself and not for Theo, an assertion he needed to make. Probably his insecurity eating at him again but Theo was interested in Draco's problems only in a technical kind of way and didn't bother asking. "You go on, then, so he doesn't get a glimpse of you—I'll send him on his way in a minute."

Theo threw him a mocking salute and all but ran from the room. Away from Draco's insecurities and Wengrow's provoking, docile passivity. Away from—

Yule.

It had affected Draco. But Draco was standing there, more or less in control of himself. Meanwhile Theo kept fucking incinerating his homework in fits of rage when he couldn't find the right source to cite or redid the same arithmancy problem half a dozen times without getting the right answer. When Harry or Daphne had accidental or unconscious magic slip their fingers it tended to come out as cold. Theo was pretty sure that if that was his tendency, instead of fire, when he wasn't paying attention, he'd have given himself goddamn frostbite by now, instead of the relatively easier to heal damage that happened when he got so lost he forgot to keep his fire from burning him.

Father had been right when he told Theo: Control will always be harder for you. Theo knew that before, abstractly. Now he knew it with an intimacy that could never be unlearned. All of them broke this year. Theo just broke worse. And now here he was picking up his pieces, scrabbling at glass shards while things spun away around him. The world couldn't wait, Harry couldn't wait, for him to figure it out. Theo knew that and didn't blame anyone for it except maybe, in the most private depths of his mind, disconnected from any other memory or thought, the Dark Lord. Theo knew that and he could breathe and watch Daphne and Hermione and Pansy and Neville and Justin rally to Harry's shoulders in the spaces Theo could not stand. Theo knew that and his stomach churned with an ugly slow-bubbling satisfaction to see Blaise also cut out.

Draco, though. Draco had always been weak. Draco had been at Yule, too, Draco should be just as broken, but no. It was Draco who had been given a task from the Dark Lord. Draco had a gift for the Imperius and Draco had a relationship he could make public and Draco had two still-living parents and, lately, Draco had Harry's trust on top of everything the fuck else.

Theo only let himself think these things when Draco was not in the room. It wouldn't go well, otherwise, not for either of them.

He stuck to back passages and twisting, too-steep stairs on his way to the Knights' Room, moving faster to make up for the longer route, all to stay out of other people's way. On a weekend evening students would be out and about, reveling in the lessened supervision, and Theo did not want to bother arranging his expression into something publicly palatable right now, Theo wanted to go stare at the Map and stop thinking.

At the Knights' Room, he almost growled the password at the statues, who shifted and let him through, and stormed into the room, and then he stopped and felt kind of like screaming, because who the fuck should be here already but Blaise.

"Oh," said Blaise. "Theo. Hi."

"Blaise," said Theo in a voice so flat you could do a topographical painting of it all with one color. He avoided eye contact and went directly to the trunk full of a jumble of random enchanted shit and books and half-finished class projects and whatever else had been thrown in here to move up from the Chamber. Hermione meant to index it all, he remembered, with Justin's help, but not gotten around to it because of research projects she wouldn't discuss, her occlumency, and then the whole CWS disaster.

"What are you looking for?"

Merlin, it wasn't enough for him to be here, he also had to try for conversation? "Map," said Theo.

"It's in the cabinet. Warded cabinet. Daph made a rule if you take anything out of the jumble trunk it can't go back in there."

Theo made a vaguely affirmative sort of noise and, abandoning the trunk, went to the warded cabinet where they kept anything potentially valuable or volatile or both, such as Harry's potions stash and the runes projects Theo picked at in his spare time, and of course the Map, being a unique and nearly priceless artifact.

Ugh. He had a question, but that would require he actually talk to Blaise. Theo found the map, spoke its passphrase, turned around, and said, "You used it last?"

"Hm? Yes."

Blaise was, as a general principle, difficult to read. He'd have learned to be out of necessity even if his mother had not explicitly taught him the skill, and she had, in fact, spent quite a lot of time doing exactly that. Theo didn't really expect to see anything concrete in Blaise's expression. He got… not a lot. More than nothing. A micro-twitch of a singular eyebrow. A hair-thin hesitation before the Hm?

"Watching anyone in particular?" he said. Eyes steady on the boy he, until recently, trusted more than almost anyone. Voice light enough to pass as making a joke.

A shrug from Blaise. Was Theo imagining tension hidden under that fluid movement? He didn't think so. "Just keeping an eye on things. I worry about the kids."

Not a lie, Theo was pretty sure, but that answer was, at best, a partial truth. He pulled heat and magic away from his hands, back and down into his lungs, and breathed it out: the Map might be resilient but he didn't want to test that against the fire that wanted to flicker to life on his fingers.

Blaise looked at him through insouciantly half-closed eyes, which might have been a better mask if Theo didn't know Blaise did that to hide other expressions. "You all right there?"

"No," Theo hissed. "No, I am not all right. We all know why—why I can't be—but you at least should be standing with him."

"Have you been breathing Harry's potions fumes again?"

Oh, that one stung. "You know what I think?" Theo tipped his head and gave Blaise his blandest smile. "I think you're almost as much of a liability as I am, lately. I think you know more than you're saying."

For the first time Blaise showed real anger. His expression hardened. "Don't compare us, Theodore. We are not the same."

 "Well, that I can agree with." Theo let the smile fade, let his face slip into sharp, chilly focus, and readied the knife. "Of the two of us, at least I'm honest about why I can't be trusted."

They both heard Blaise's too-fast, cut-off inhale. Got you, Theo didn't quite say out loud, but he knew the sentiment showed anyway in the satisfied half-smile that tugged at his mouth.

"We all have problems," Blaise said. A cruelty moved in him that Theo had not often seen come to the surface, a falling away of doubt, fear, compassion. "You're not fucking special just because everyone knows what yours are."

You think I want them all to know? But to say that would just be another weakness shown. Theo widened his smile instead. "How long do you think you can lie," he taunted, "before Harry gives up on you? Thought about that yet?"

Judging by the tiny flinch he earned, yeah, Blaise had thought of it, and didn't appreciate the reminder. For just a second it looked like Blaise might draw his wand. Theo breathed a champagne sparkle of anticipation. He teetered on a knife-edge of violence, fingers curled to release his wand from its holster. Ready.

Blaise broke the stillness, looking away and stretching, catlike and indifferent and just a bit too deliberate to be real. "This has been fun. Let's not do it again. Enjoy your…" He waved a hand dismissively at the Map as he stood. "Stalking, I suppose."

"We all do our part," because apparently Theo couldn't resist one last twist of the knife.

But neither could Blaise. Just inside the entrance, he glanced back over his shoulder and said softly, "How long can you be a liability before he cuts you loose to save the rest of us?"

Blaise was smart. He'd timed it to be gone from the room before Theo had time to recover from that particular sucker punch.

"Coward," said Theo to the empty air.

 Not that he blamed Blaise for it. Theo scared himself, these days. Theo didn't want to know what he'd have done if Blaise stuck around after saying that. Because it wasn't wrong, was the problem. Harry was a Slytherin. Self-preservation was one of the highest mandates for any of their House. Harry knew loyalty down to his bones, like Theo, like Hermione or Draco or Neville, even, but at the end of the day, Harry would give up on one for the sake of all the rest. That's what it meant to wear his shoes. That's what it meant that they all knew the Vipers answered to him. That's why Theo could never take his place: Theo admired Harry's brand of pragmatism, but he didn't share it.

At the end of the day Theo would damn all the rest of them, for Harry's sake, and the only thing that might stop him was knowing that Harry wouldn't want him to.

So he didn't go after Blaise, as much as he wanted to; and above the anger and resentment he was grateful to Blaise for leaving and giving Theo that sliver of separation necessary to keep control of himself; and below it all, way down in the back of his mind, Theo sent up a desperate plea to Merlin that he could figure himself out before he became wholly, not just partly, a tool in Lord Voldemort's hand.

He went to the table.

He looked at the Map.

He emptied his thoughts of Blaise and of Dark Lords and of wars, and found Tyller Wengrow's name, and focused just on that little dot moving at the head of stylized footprints that faded out in its wake. Tyller Wengrow had left the Slytherin common room already and set off for the above-ground levels of the castle: Theo was just lucky that his little verbal fight hadn't been too much of a delay. He thought about what Draco would say if Theo got so distracted he missed Wengrow's rendezvous, and winced.

Maybe he could find Neville after this. Write down in the journals where Wengrow went and who he met for Draco to see later and then find Neville on the Map and go corner him for a few minutes of peace and quiet. Or a few minutes of snogging. Theo could appreciate the merits of both. Even if Neville was with people, studying or whatever, even if it kept them both out after curfew, Theo bet it'd just take a note in the journals to draw Neville out with him into Hogwarts' dusty halls. The Map would make things even easier. They could escape, for a little while, into the pocket of safety that they made in their secret, spare moments together, turning some random old room into a sanctuary.

Then, before his eyes, the little dot marked Tyller Wengrow turned a corner and vanished from the Map.

What?

Theo pulled the Map closer and squinted. No, his eyes weren't playing tricks. It had gone. Quickly he scanned the rest of it for any sign of Seaton, or for that matter Collywode. Nothing. Nor, he noticed, with twisting uneasiness, could he see Rosier anywhere. He went over the whole Map again, carefully, level by level, section by section: Hogwarts was a big place and if people's dots weren't moving one could miss them in a densely inked area. But no.

Merlin. Okay. So that was—good to know. Theo cast a quick "Tempus" and made a note of the approximate time Wengrow had vanished and what corridor he'd been in. So much for getting to see Neville tonight. He'd have to just sit here and watch for any sign of where the missing students reappeared. At least knowing the point where Wengrow faded out was a start… unless they used anti-surveillance spells tied to a person or object rather than a place, and took randomized routes to their meeting point, and the corridor where Wengrow disappeared didn't matter in the slightest. But that would also be good to know. If they had to do it the old-fashioned way, creeping along invisibly to tail someone, well, that carried risks that had until now been deemed not worth it, but at some point they might have to try.

A pair of names caught Theo's attention. He raised one eyebrow and half-grinned at the sight of Pansy and Justin's dots close enough to overlap slightly, tucked away near the Hufflepuff dorms. Good for them. Good, in particular, for Pansy, who Theo envied and admired and resented by turns: Pansy could have so easily become a liability just like him if not worse but she'd walked away instead. Given it all up. More or less. Technically Theo could do the same—but what that would mean for Father, for the House of Nott, for everything he grew up believing mattered most—

He could not leave his father and his House vulnerable to the Dark Lord's rage. He could not.

He understood Daphne: her parents had their own jobs and preoccupations but their family's assets, the work of generations of Greengrasses building on one another's efforts, that meant something to her mother and in turn to her, and it pained her to think of losing it all. Pansy baffled them both.

Where was Daphne, anyway? Theo let his eyes drift over the Map, and eventually found her holed up with Neville and—he raised his eyebrows—Parvati Patil, Susan Bones, and Dean Thomas. That was an… interesting group. He knew Daph had been getting along with the Gryffindor Patil twin, though, who shared a House with Hermione and Neville, and also Thomas. And Thomas had been friendly with Harry's circle back in first year and sort of second, Theo recalled. They were studying, maybe. Or working on some kind of lesson plan for their extracurricular defense club they thought they kept so secret. Theo stayed away from it on purpose but he couldn't entirely remain unaware that it happened or that a number of Vipers disappeared from the public parts of the castle several times a week along with any sign of anyone close to Jules Potter. Two plus two. If Theo couldn't solve a puzzle that simple he should just quit Hogwarts and fuck off to live in a hut in the Swiss Alps.

Jokes, even at his own expense and in the privacy of his own mind, were a welcome levity of late: Theo smiled to himself and relaxed, just a bit, into amusement.

He was still smiling when his eyes landed on another trio of names and the expression froze on his face.

There, in an old classroom not too far from Snape's office, though Snape himself was in the staff residential suites at the moment, Theo saw: Julian Potter, Ronald Weasley—and Hadrian Black.

Harry

Magic flexed at him as his journal lit up with an incoming note. Then again. And again. The fourth ripple of magic against Harry's senses came halfway through the process of extricating the thing from his bag. Then there was a pause. Though this was what passed for normal in his life, a chill went down Harry's spine. He flipped the journal open with more urgency than usual and turned pages until he came to the one with unread missives.

Jules's page.

Harry skimmed what was written there and his eyes widened. Merlin. Okay, so that uneasy chill was completely justified.

He grabbed a quill, scrawled out a quick response, and in one movement rolled off his bed and snatched up his bag in the hand still holding his quill. Thank fuck he kept his potions things organized: it was the work of a moment to get his kit from his trunk, full of all his tools and ingredients save the most specialized that never left the lab in Grimmauld Place.

There were no other Vipers in the room; he'd been waiting for Theo to get back from helping Draco, but— "Goyle," he said sharply.

The other boy looked up with the sudden panic of someone trying to remember if they'd fucked up recently.

"Something's come up. If Theo comes back, tell him my notes for our runes work are in the nightstand." Everyone in their dorm knew what you'd get for poking in Harry's things if his wards didn't know you, so there was no real risk of Goyle or Crabbe, if Goyle told his sometimes-friend, rooting around to look themselves.

Goyle mumbled an affirmative, and eyed Harry with badly hidden anxiety until Harry had left the room. Harry disliked including him in anything but needs must, and they were roommates, and anyway if Goyle deliberately didn't pass on a message that would be a useful indicator of more malicious sentiments than Harry was currently aware Goyle felt, so… it could be worse.

In the hall and through the common room he held himself to an easy walk. It was still before curfew, technically, though not by a whole lot, and Harry wasn't a prefect—he didn't have permission or reason to be out late. No one paid him much attention, though, not that he could tell. Only once he'd gotten to the corridor did he begin to run.

Thank fuck Jules had the sense to pick a place Harry knew: fourth classroom off the south dungeon stair with the painting of O'Malley the Moping. And also thank fuck it wasn't too painfully far from the Slytherin dorms—though also on an annoyingly indirect route between their common room and the rest of the school, so unlikely for anyone else to come upon them.

Harry's lungs began to ache. Merlin, he'd got out of shape—skipped too much quidditch. Only so much he could do lately; only so much time in the day. At least it didn't slow him down too badly now. He skidded around the last corner and got to his destination out of breath but still on time.

A quick shove sent the door flying open; he slipped through, and kicked it shut on his heels, and looked up into the business end of a wand.

"Harry." Jules lowered the wand again as fast as he'd raised it, eyes wild, hair wilder. "Fuck. Can you—"

Harry, who had barely paused in the first place, was already moving past him to the table on which Ron Weasley lay, pale and still save for weak, intermittent convulsions. That did not look good. "I can try," he said tersely. Several diagnosis spells narrowed down the problem: poison rather than curse, delayed or… held off somehow. Odd. "Ward the door and tell me what happened."

His hands flew over his potions kit while Jules talked. Cauldron, tools, basic ingredients. Jules had gotten a box of chocolates in the mail, he said, and the basic spells turned up nothing of note, but he hadn't tried them yet when Ron asked, that evening, if he could have one—

"Did you bring the chocolates?" Harry cut in.

"Wh—no, bloody—should I have—?"

"I don't need them." Though having samples would've been easier. Another quick diagnosis spell and Harry grimaced; really? More nerve agents?

Jules went on: within a minute Ron went pale and shaky, within two he'd begun vomiting, and within five, by which point he and Jules had left Gryffindor and begun walking to the infirmary, his legs gave out and muscles collapsed to involuntary trembling. Meanwhile, sal ammoniac came to a fast boil in the bottom of Harry's cauldron and filled the room with fumes he ignored, well used to weird potions-related smells. Jules gave Ron a bezoar—

"You carry bezoars now?" Harry's eyes darted up to Jules ever so briefly.

"Well yeah. Don't you?"

Harry had to concede the point. Yeah, he did, and he encouraged the rest of the Vipers to do the same.

"I got him levitating and—Pomfrey's good but she's not this good, not with curses and whatever, and I don't bloody know how to get to Snape or Slughorn this late, and—if I made a huge fuss, if another student gets hurt like this in the school—"

"Yeah," Harry said. The whole student body knew Dumbledore had been meeting with the Board of Governors weekly. A select subset of the student body knew a bit more than that, enough to be concerned about who the scandal-averse Board would appoint if Dumbledore got sacked. Thanks to Neville's gran, they knew things were holding for now, but that might not last.

Another student. Attacked—poisoned. Coincidence?

There—first dose, done. Harry decanted it, swirled it rapidly around and pushed a bit of wandless cooling magic at it to boot, enough to save Ron's throat from temperature burns, and deftly tipped it into the redhead's slack mouth with one hand. With the other he pressed his wand to Ron's throat. "Swélgan."

The swallowing charm caught before Ron could aspirate any potion. Muscles rippled. Harry cast a quick Anapneo to clear his airways of any lingering fluid just to be sure, vanished the remnants in his cauldron, and poured a half liter of distilled water in to heat up.

"Is he…"

"He'll live," said Harry. "You were fast with the bezoar. Likely saved his life." Ginger and turmeric, ground together. Adder venom—just a dash, diluted in vinegar, mix in—enough to make a paste. His hands flew through familiar motions: grinding, measuring, pouring, mixing. "First potion will boost his nervous system, buy me time. This'll be more refined. Clear the poison out completely, more or less."

"Poison? So it's not a curse?"

"Yes."

Jules swore. "The chocolates were sent to me."

"One step at a time," Harry said. He eyed Jules's barely-contained frenetic energy. "If you need to be doing something—monitor his vitals. Heart rate and blood pressure."

"Right. Yeah, okay."

Jules got his wand out and cast the charms—no pause to figure out which ones would do what Harry asked, and if he lacked Daphne's or even Justin's familiarity with them he didn't fumble the casting either.

Harry left him to it and focused on the next stage of antidote. When he could he cut his eyes over to Ron: some color had come back to his skin, and the convulsions had stopped, replaced now by a fine tremor he thought caused by weakness rather than an active nerve toxin. Having identified the primary attack vector on the body Harry had fortified Ron's nervous system against it. Now he carefully put together a more aggressive counter that would strip any foreign potions-based effects from Ron's body. It would make any further healing potions pointless for at least twenty minutes afterward, and so could be dangerous; if a potion like this wasn't good enough, if it didn't negate enough of the toxin to prevent further damage, you'd be stuck with healing charms until it wore off and even those would have limited effect.

Anxiety radiated off Jules in waves. It broke and washed over Harry's calm and couldn't really touch him. He brewed with steady hands and dosed Ron, when it was done, without hesitation.

"That's it?" said Jules, when Harry didn't reach again for the cauldron.

"For now." Harry charmed his hands and cauldron clean and set about tidying things up. Not putting it away—he may need to start working again in a hurry if things went wrong—but Snape and Barty and his own long practice had drilled it into him: never, ever, ever leave your workstation uncleaned. "I'll want to monitor him for a bit—I assume you aren't worried about curfew—?"

Jules scoffed.

Yeah, that figured. "Then we'll just be sitting here until that last potion does its work, or he wakes up, whichever happens first. Vitals are still fine?"

"Steady." Jules's face pinched with concentration. "His heart rate's high, but not… not too bad."

"Good. The second potion I gave—it'll nullify any other potions influences in him. Best I could do without knowing exactly what was poisoning him in the first place. And no, you didn't fuck up by not bringing the chocolates, I probably couldn't have spared the time to reverse engineer it." Having them might have helped, if anything turned up in a rapid diagnostic scan, but if this poison was as sophisticated as the one that got the Slytherin quidditch team that was unlikely. Besides which, Jules had said they checked the chocolates and found no sign of anything wrong. At least as sophisticated as the one that nearly killed Harry a few months ago, then, but not as fast-acting, if they'd had time to leave the tower and start walking before Ron was too hurt to walk…

In which case, what was the point?

"Who would've done this?" said Jules. "They were sent to me, yeah, but even if I ate one, unless I ate it completely on my own somewhere, people would notice me collapse." Evidently he had been thinking along the same lines as Harry. "Unless I guess they meant me to survive it, and have to get help. Noisy help. Cause-a-huge-fuss help. Dumbledore might not be able to keep it quiet if… if I were the one."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know you're the specialest of special little boys," said Harry, with no real bitterness, either expressed or felt. He canted a crooked grin at Jules to make sure his brother knew it. Others fawning on Jules got annoying as anything but Jules himself… wasn't an arse about his fame.

Anymore.

Jules made a face back at him. "Prat."

They looked at each other, banter but no malice hanging in the air, for a few seconds too long to dismiss. A slurry of words clogged up in Harry's throat. Snowglobe-shaken, they couldn't settle, spinning by in swirls of gratitude and relief, fondness and wariness, I'm glad I could help and We should have always had this and Do you mean this? Can I trust— Nothing coalesced into an actual sentence he could say. He broke eye contact, looked down to check on Ron again.

"I could, er. Go get the chocolates now?" Jules suggested.

Harry's head snapped up. Right. "You brought the Cloak?"

"I've been carrying it around more or less all the time, lately."

Along with a bezoar, and who knew what else. Jules really was full of surprises lately. "At this point it can't hurt, if you're sure you can avoid getting caught."

And there was that patented Gryffindor arrogance, cocky grin, flashing eyes. "I'll manage," said Jules, reaching already for a pocket.

Harry watched him disappear, then the door open and close seemingly on its own. Maybe it was Potter arrogance. One could argue Harry had inherited his share too, however differently he expressed it—though on the other hand the Blacks were hardly known for their humility either.

Now that Jules was gone Harry cast his own charm to check Ron's vitals. Holding steady. Over a minute of silent monitoring, his heart rate continued to improve, dropping back to a normal resting range and strengthening from the fast, frantic rabbit-beats of a body spilling over with panic and pain. Unconsciousness eased into something closer to true sleep. Harry let the charm lapse and worked a quick rune-spell with ink and parchment, pressed it to Ron's throat where the sheen of sweat would provide a weak anchor holding both parchment and magic in place. If his vitals skewed too far out of range the spell would go off and let Harry know, freeing Harry to think about other things while he waited for Jules to come back.

Small and isolated, the room didn't have much in it besides the main table currently supporting Ron, rickety chairs scattered randomly, a dust-choked threadbare rug, and, along the back wall, a few old supply crates. Harry poked through those. Nothing but mothballs, spare rolls of parchment too old and rotted to use, a box of cheap quills likewise so brittle with age the vanes nearly crackled to the touch. No using those. Harry vanished the lot and levitated the crates into a pile next to the table. One ad hoc transfiguration later and he had a desk that would last for an hour or two—good enough.

Harry tossed a cushioning charm at the seat of one of the old chairs, dragged it into place, and sat down. From here he could keep Ron in his line of sight and still work on whatever else he had in his bag, which was… actually a lot. His fingers flipped past books, scrolls, notebooks. Homework. More homework. Correspondence—absolutely not; Harry lacked the patience for diplomatic replies right now. He had things to review and plans to finalize for the Ostara Wizengamot session but those were all complex enough to require more time in a single stretch than he had. Then his hands stilled on a bundle of financial reports from Riasmoore… Harry grimaced, but made himself pull that out: it needed review, however tedious.

The reports he got now had changed compared to the terse, rote style that characterized the previous fifteen to twenty years of reports he had gone back through when Sirius adopted him. Riasmoore's council members put them together in absence of a seneschal or treasurer hired by the Blacks; they had, very obviously, been giving away the absolute bare minimum required for a decade at least. Those figures tallied only the things that directly pertained to the Blacks: rents paid, property transactions completed, expenditures drawn from the funds allocated for Riasmoore's well-being. Appendices noted birth, death, and handfasting records, again in the barest possible terms: name and date, no more. Not even cause of death.

Now that they knew the Blacks were paying attention again—and now that Harry had proven himself inclined to not be an arse, as he had been informed by the Reeve in no uncertain terms—they included a lot more information. Total Floo tolls from the tavern. Profits and losses from businesses that opted to send him such. Earnings, employment, and cost of living figures some of them had done the legwork to collect across their respective tithings. A note, in the Reeve's old-fashioned script, that no one new had moved to Riasmoore this month, as she had written at the bottom of each such report since last summer. These were not things that the Blacks could insist to know—not information the townspeople broke any agreements by leaving out. But the extra context meant he could do more, and more effectively.

Harry read the numbers, looked at the totals, and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. In summary: fuck.

Even without every business in Riasmoore choosing to include its financials in these reports, even with at most half the tithings having reliable numbers on the financial state of the people in them—even then the picture that formed was a bleak one. Every month came with narrower margins. Thinner pickings. Pricier goods imported, less to spare for the tithe to the Blacks.

For the third time since Harry met with the Reeve, he reached for parchment and sealing wax, and wrote to Gringotts to authorize a higher percentage of the town's tithes redirecting back into its communal funds. The Reeve and the Council dispensed those as they willed; audits done the previous summer indicated nothing out of line and Harry had no reason to think that had changed. The Blacks had more than enough in their vaults already—that gold would be more useful if sent back to the town.

Not that Sirius would've thought to do so, whispered a nasty corner of his mind. Nor Arcturus.

Harry felt his face tighten. Letter to Gringotts sealed and ready for post in the morning, he sat back, let his eyes rest absently on Ron and his hand begin to spin his wand around. He could only do so much. The Wizengamot could only do so much at once: no single statute covered most or even half the different aspects of Riasmoore's financial problems. Given the old families' insularity and the unofficial nature of any townships like Riasmoore that existed outside of ancestral noble land, he couldn't be sure, but logical extrapolation and anecdotal experience alike pointed to these problems being broader than Riasmoore itself.

In a normal year Harry would be managing alliances, mapping solutions, leveraging resources: starting to chip away at the multitude of interacting issues affecting Riasmoore. In a normal year the impending Ostara session would get something done, maybe, instead of everyone's time being taken up by the Sedition Act coming back up for debate and concern about Azkaban and deepening political divisions.

No chance that a big reform would pass. If Harry wanted to get anything done in this session he had to keep it small enough to be relatively uncontroversial… and he had to keep his proposal from diverging intolerably far from the Death Eaters' goals.

What did Voldemort want? Eradicated Muggle influence. Permanent split between Muggle and magical worlds. Control—in part for its own sake.

Harry's eyes narrowed. Hmm…

"Guh buh wha…" said Ron, and jerked one arm around. His head tipped towards Harry. A bloodshot, frightened stare landed on him. "Hah!"

"Calm down," said Harry. "Jules brought you here. You ate some poisoned chocolate." Under the lip of his makeshift desk he readied his wand to cast a lethargy charm.

Ron didn't make him use it. "Hrrrgh," he said, unhappily, but didn't keep thrashing around. And his expression was alert, aware.

"I need to do some diagnostics. Don't panic." Harry brought his wand up into sight now, telegraphing his movements more than necessary. Ron's eyes tracked the wand with wary habit the earliest Vipers had all developed too, those who'd spent the longest doing dueling drills and practicing to defend themselves. Good to see the DA's meetings weren't for nothing.

His diagnostic charms turned up no alarming signs. Stabilized blood pressure—still low, but higher than it had been, and his heart rate was steady. Magic crawling along nerve cells and leaping between synapses returned a slew of information Harry parsed out into certainty that Ron's nervous system would be fine. Some damage lingered. Nothing irreparable.

"Ow eugh ut?" said Ron, and then thumped his hand on the table. "Ugh!"

"You're looking fine." Harry put his wand away and sat down again, leaning back in the chair. "You took some nerve damage. Motor signals in particular are going to be fucked for a bit—I'm pretty sure that's why you're having trouble talking. If you try to get up I'm going to have to spell you so you hold still, so… don't try."

Ron made a grumbling sort of noise and tipped his head again, with emphasis, towards Harry. Presumably he'd be staying put. Harry threw him a mocking salute and then went back to his paperwork.

All of two minutes went by before Ron got bored. "Whaa iz duh," he said, each garbled word forced out with careful effort, and flailed a hand in Harry's direction.

"Politics," said Harry. He was pretty sure Ron asked What is that and if Ron had meant something else that was his problem: Harry was very sure Ron did not want Harry casting any legilimency in his direction to find out for sure. "The tenants on the Black family's lands—"

A scoffing sound.

"—are getting short-changed by the Ministry," Harry went on, squashing irritation, "and I want to do something about it."

He counted to seven seconds before Ron huffed and then said "Mm?" with a questioning upward tilt of tone.

Good to know Ron tolerated boredom as badly as Jules or Hermione. Harry launched into an explanation of the problems assailing Riasmoore. However much this may not be Ron's wheelhouse, he wasn't an idiot, and by all accounts was a sufficiently clever strategist to kick arse up and down Gryffindor Tower at chess, so Harry figured he'd be able to follow. Ron showed no signs of confusion, anyway, which was enough for Harry to keep going.

The door opened again to Harry musing aloud about whether lowering the fees on specialty or imported goods or reducing Floo and Knight Bus transport costs would be a better first step, if he had to pick. Jules swirled the Cloak aside and stared at the two of them.

"Ron got bored," said Harry by way of explanation. "He's conscious. Can you talk yet?"

"Yuh," said Ron. "Jules." It came out slurred, but recognizably Jules's name.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Nerve damage. Fucked up his motor control. He'll recover." Harry checked the time. "I'll give his system a bit longer to stabilize and then if we dose him with a nerve regen potion he'll be fine by… well, in an hour or two he can walk back, with help, and by morning he should be able to function well enough to seem normal. I wouldn't recommend you do any dueling or quidditch for at least a couple weeks, though, and you'll want to keep taking the nerve regenerator, Ron, to make sure the damage heals all the way."

"Eww," said Ron.

Jules went over and poked Ron in the knee. "He means thanks."

"I won't claim to be fluent in Gryffindor," said Harry dryly, "but I can generally translate things that simple."

That drew a laugh from Jules and a clumsy rictus grin from Ron, before Jules sobered. "Really, though, Harry… thank you."

"I'm glad I could help," said Harry, and, somewhat to his own surprise, he meant it.

Faced with the imminent possibility of his friend's death, Jules trusted Harry.

He flicked his wand and summoned a chair over for Jules. "It's going to be a bit before he can walk, you might as well sit down. You brought the chocolates?"

"Yeah. Here." Jules passed them over as he took a seat. "You think you can figure out…"

"With a sample? Absolutely. Well. Unless it's got its own sort of self-destruct hex in place, in which case no, but even then I'll get something. Those kinds of hexes work, but if you take a potions approach to analyzing the trace compounds left behind, instead of relying on charms…"

"Ssssswod," said Ron.

"You should be grateful I'm a swot," said Harry dryly. Another grin. Less clumsy than the last, too. Ron was visibly improving.

Harry ran a few analysis charms over the chocolates, but didn't pick up anything out of the ordinary. Whoever did this was clever enough to evade Jules's impressive grasp of curse-detection magic. Unsurprising that they'd also be clever enough to disguise their work from the types of spells specific to the potions field, which looked not for harmful effects or known classes of curse or poison, but for specific ingredients, magical resonances subtler and less defined than those produced by wand spells, or lingering physical changes associated with the effects of a potion.

Right. This was going to need to happen the hard way.

"Mind if I keep these?" Harry tapped his fingers on the box. "It's going to take me a few hours of work and quite frankly I don't have the mental energy for that tonight. Also I need to sleep."

"Go ahead, yeah," Jules assured him. "Er, do you need all of them? I was just thinking, if we need, I don't know, evidence…"

"Fair point." Harry tipped two of the poisoned chocolates out of the box and into a sample container from his potions kit, already labeled with the international standard symbol for Dangerous Substance. "That'll keep them in stasis. Container is meant for potentially harmful potions shit so it charm-locks to a specific person—if you're the one to cork it no one else in the dorm will be able to get into it on accident."

Jules did so carefully and stowed the container in an inner pocket of his robes. "Merlin."

"Yah," said Ron.

With a sigh, Jules scrubbed a hand over his face. "Are you working on… that doesn't look like homework there."

"It's not. I've been reviewing financial reports I get from the people who live on the Black family's lands… I'm trying to put together a proposal for the Ostara Wizengamot session that will help and that has a chance to actually pass an open vote."

"I hate politics," Jules said, with feeling. "Thank fuck Roger and Ethan have been juggling most of that… do you need…" He paused, then grimaced. "Gotta be honest, neither of them would like voting your way, but depending on what it is you put forward, I could insist. If I agree with it, anyway."

Harry half-smiled. "Right now what I'm thinking is a program to subsidize Floo access and ward maintenance for anyone living outside the official Ministry recognized magical districts. It'd help with the problems my tenants are having, and households like yours, Ron, who live near Muggles but might not be lucky enough to have a warding expert in the family—" Ron grinned again— "and it'd be some kind of help to parents of Muggleborns dealing with the new child welfare requirements."

Jules and Ron's faces darkened in unison. Thanks to Neville and Hermione, Harry knew they were well aware of the problem and had been worried too.

"I don't object," said Jules, thinking, "but—that CWS thing—can't the Wizengamot just…"

"I don't think anyone has the votes," Harry said. "I've been trying to find a way, Hermione too, but honestly most of the swing seats won't see it as a problem. Technically the policy doesn't even mention Muggles, or first-generation magicals, and the argument will be that just because they happen to live closer to Muggles doesn't mean they should be held to a lower standard of care for their children, or of safety…"

"'ingsley?" Ron said, poking Jules with a clumsy but accurately aimed sweep of his foot. More motor control improvement—good. Harry checked the time, got up, and started brewing a nerve regeneration potion for him to take, with extra to last at least another day or two.

"I asked Ethan," said Jules. "There's not a lot Kingsley can do, I think. It's still in line with what CWS is supposed to do… They got the Public Services Office to approve funds for it, apparently, and unless someone can prove what they're doing is a, how did Ethan put it, gross mismanagement of public resources, that's just kind of a thing they can do."

Harry nodded. "That's about what I've been able to figure out, yeah…"

"I guess what you're saying would help." Jules's fingers worried at the hems of his robe sleeves. "Send it to me once you have something written up?"

"I will." Harry did some mental re-calculating and came up with an answer that he was inclined to like. He thought he could get enough of the swing votes, and that some of the moderate traditionalists would be drawn to vote for it on separatist grounds. But the Potter seat voting for his proposal too, even without James acting as the de facto leader of his whole voting bloc—that would appeal to some of the light votes who would otherwise knee-jerk reject anything put forward by the House of Black.

Banking on the Potter vote would be too risky. But if he could persuade Jules—

"'arry," said Ron suddenly.

Harry looked up. "Mm?"

"Mmmugg'orns. In Slyth'rin."

"Yes, there are some," said Harry, with care.

"'o they…" Ron cut off with a frustrated noise and flailed an arm in Jules's direction. "'ell him? Safe houses."

"Oh!" Jules sat up a bit straighter. "Right, yeah—Harry, listen—Ron and a few others have been setting up a list of places Muggleborns can go this summer, if the CWS thing comes down hard on their parents—the Diggorys, Weasleys, some others—if you know of anyone in Slytherin who can't go home when school lets out, underage or not…"

Harry fought to keep his eyebrows from climbing off his face. Things were better between him and Jules lately, and sending some of the Vipers to join the DA had started breaking down barriers; still, he wouldn't have expected…

"I'll let you know if there's anyone," he said. "Right now there's… we've been prepared to do something similar, but a lot of my friends—let's just say they can't provide a safe residence for a Muggleborn right now."

Jules made a face, and Ron a snorting sound that conveyed a sentiment along the lines of Yeah, no shit.

Harry nodded to them. "Yeah. Exactly. Thank you for the offer, though."

"Of course," said Jules. He smirked a bit at Ron. "Don't send anyone to the Weasleys if you can help it, though. Their spare room used to be Ron's bedroom and it's still plastered Chudley Cannons orange—"

"I wouldn't want to inflict that on anyone," said Harry solemnly. "Well. Maybe Voldemort."

"'oldemort," Ron burst out, "in orange—Cann'n un'form—"

There was a pause, in which they all digested the mental image of Voldemort in Chudley Cannons quidditch robes.

"So Jules," Harry said, pointing at his brother, "you're the resident expert on prank hexes, right?"

Jules snorted. "Merlin, if I tell Moody I want to use that as a dueling tactic—"

"Hey, it might work—it would surprise everyone, you can't deny that," said Harry.

"Maybe he'd even get the—the Cannons' luck—fall flat on his arse—" Jules lost the battle for composure and burst out laughing. It caught Ron up too, and Harry, as much from sheer release of tension as anything else, found himself laughing with them, leaning on the table while his potion bubbled away and letting himself go.

Getting a dose of nerve regeneration into Ron accelerated his recovery significantly. Harry insisted that Jules and Ron stay at least until Ron could string together words without sounding drunk or drugged. For the sake of stimulating Ron's recovering motor nerves and also keeping himself from passing out, he also made an effort to talk the whole time—primarily about quidditch, which was safe and, conveniently, about as complicated a subject as Harry felt able to deal with right now.

Curfew had long come and gone when Ron stood up, walked a straight, if careful, line, and read the first sentence of a half-finished essay in Harry's bag out loud clearly enough to satisfy Harry. He packed up all the excess nerve regenerator he'd brewed, gave Jules instructions for getting more— "I assume you have ways to get things in and out of the castle," he'd said dryly, to which Jules just grinned—and sent them on their way under the Cloak.

Harry had no such convenient way to sneak around, but he didn't particularly need one: unlike Jules and Ron he didn't have to cross an entire castle from here to his common room. He kept his steps light and an amplius auri charm active. No sound or hint of other people reached his magically enhanced ears, though, and he made it back without incident, turning the final bend in the corridor with some relief, thinking already and eagerly of his bed. "Foxglove," he told the wall, and the hidden door rumbled open.

As he stepped through and the entrance shut him in to the relative privacy of the common room, Harry let out a sigh and a bit of tension. It was nearly three in the morning. By now the place should be empty. His rommates, once he got to the dorms, would all be asleep. Nothing between him and a good sleep now. Still, habit pulled his eyes into a quick scan of the room, tracking over empty chairs, fire banked and dark in the hearth, black glass windows into the lake, and…

Magic rippled on his skin. Harry stopped short, blinking. Between one step and the next he'd crossed a ward boundary—wards of silence and deflecting attention, experience told him, familiar wards that he too knew how to cast, that he had learned to cast first with— "Theo?"

With his best friend, who could be seen, now that Harry was inside the ward, sitting very still on a footstool. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring right at Harry.

"Draco and I went to see Wengrow this evening," said Theo. He did not otherwise move.

Instinct prickled: Harry would have drawn his wand, then, if this were anyone but Theo or maybe a few other people.

"I needed to sleep four hours ago," Harry said, when Theo did not immediately continue. "Get to the point?"

"We put a tracking charm on him," said Theo, "and then I went up to the Knights' Room to get the Map out."

Harry's heart skipped a beat.

"I meant to just watch Wengrow. Double-check what the tracking charm told us. Funniest thing happened, though. Wengrow just disappeared off the Map."

Was this all? Or had Theo seen—

"Which I thought was bizarre," Theo went on, voice flat and even, "so I went over the whole Map, just to make sure he didn't find a way to apparate somewhere else, or who knows what. Didn't see any sign of him. I did see a few other things of note. Mainly you holed up with Potter and Weasley."

Fuck.

In the dark room Theo's eyes were hidden, unreadable. "Harry—what's going on?"

Why are you asking? Worried about me? Or probing for something to tell Voldemort? Harry clamped his mouth shut: that would not be a helpful response. Damage control. He—

"They know I don't want that sedition bill passing," he said. Strain crept into his voice, genuine exhaustion, sincere anger at the bill that would probably pass and the Wizengamot too fractured to stop it. He had to find a plausible lie and he had to sell it better than any other lie he'd ever told, because if Theo found out about Jules then Voldemort would find out, and then Harry's whole delicate house of cards would come crashing down. "Weasley ate some poisoned chocolate—Potter didn't want the professors to find out, so—he told me if I didn't help he'd make sure all his allies vote it through at the Ostara session."

Theo came to his feet in one fluid motion. Harry smelled smoke. "The bastard."

"It's done now." Harry slid his fingers up under his glasses and pressed them against his eyes. "It's done and—it is what it is." He forced a smile. "Merlin knows we're not above falling back on coercion…"

"He's using you," Theo said. "Harry—"

"No, don't—"

"I can deal with it. Listen." Two steps and Theo was close enough to reach out and touch Harry on the elbow, never holding on, never forgetting how much Harry hated that. His gaze met Harry's with a desperate, silent please that he'd never say aloud. "Listen—if you just let me, I can make sure they—"

"Theo—"

"I can make sure they don't bother you—"

"Theo, stop."

This time, hearing the ring of command, Theo stopped.

"Don't," Harry told him. Merlin fuck. This too, on top of— "The fuck would you even do? Kill them in their dorms? You'll just make this worse. Stay out of it."

Theo opened his mouth. Drew breath to speak.

"Do not," said Harry, "make me tell you twice."

Slowly, Theo closed his mouth again, and, even more slowly, tipped his head in a nod.

Harry waited a few seconds to make sure it sunk in, then twitched his arm, knocking Theo's light touch aside. "I really need to sleep. Are you going to stay out here, or—"

"Don't wait up," said Theo, and in a quick twist of movement he'd slipped around Harry, his wards shredded to pieces in his wake.

The door rumbled open, then closed again. Harry didn't turn around to watch him go—didn't move until silence fell again and he was the only person left in the room.

"Fuck," he said aloud.

Merlin, the Map. Harry forced his feet back into motion. He'd—not forgotten about the bloody thing, but overlooked it, specifically the risks it posed to the compartmentalization he needed to sustain this year. Since the twins first gave it to him he'd let his close friends use it freely, and since the inception of the Vipers it had tended to remain in their common spaces, first the Knights' Room and then the Chamber and now the Knights' Room again. What did Harry care who used it when?

Except now he had to. I have to stop slipping up like this.

Harry crept across his dorm, listening to Goyle snore and Draco shift around in his sleep, until he reached his bed and the permanent sound-dampening wards on it that kept him from waking them up on accident. He changed on autopilot. Decided fuck it, he could shower and clean his teeth in the morning—right now he just needed to bloody sleep.

One thing Theo had said stuck at him, though. Wengrow just disappeared off the Map.

Harry had never known the Map to fail.

Such failure wasn't inconceivable. All kinds of wards and enchantments could hide or disguise people's presence—the Map was an unusually powerful artifact, tied, he suspected, into Hogwarts's own wards somehow, and it bypassed any such that Harry had ever tested it against. That didn't mean magic capable of fooling it didn't exist.

Seaton's apparent access to such magic was interesting. A good clue. Granted it did mean they'd probably have to follow Wengrow on foot and in person, which introduced greater risks, but at this point Harry was sick of fucking around so if that became necessary, that's what they'd do. And if Seaton could figure out how to fool the Map—Harry could, too.

In the meantime he would just have to make sure the Map was safe in the hands of someone he could trust anytime he met with Jules. Daph might be best. And he should check in with Hermione about occlumency progress. Theo got worse every passing day, and eventually, things would have to give.

Later, though. Harry lay down and forced his eyes to close, his shoulders to relax. He could take care of that in the morning. Once he'd slept—and before he found time to do a full breakdown of the poisoned chocolates, and write Vanessa about a draft Wizengamot proposal, and check on Veronica, and go see Draco, and—

Stop it, he told himself, and reached, with effort, for occlumency exercises, ingrained enough by now into habit that he could force his mind to clear.

Between one heartbeat and the next, he tipped into deep, dreamless sleep.