“Ten galleons’ worth of Dungbombs,” Elio Cohen said in an undertone, depositing a package on the couch next to Harry.
“Consider your debt repaid,” Harry said absently, sliding into his bag one-handed and turning a page with the other.
Cohen hovered.
Harry looked up. “What?”
“Er—just—I have another problem,” Cohen said.
A nicer person might have reminded him that he still owed Harry two minor favors and probably shouldn’t let himself get into another when he’d just paid one off. Harry didn’t bother. They both knew what Cohen owed. He sat up a little straighter but left Cohen standing. “What is it?”
On the other end of the couch, Theo grinned.
***
Professor Crouch got their attention with a sudden, jerky rise to his feet, as usual. “Today we will be reviewing the fundamentals of the Disarming Charm,” he rapped out. “It is properly classified as a charm, but like many other charms, it is a vital part of defense and so taught in this class rather than Charms. Copy your notes off the blackboard.”
“We’ve heard this lecture a hundred times already,” Tracy complained under her breath. “And we’ve been on expelliarmus for a week, I thought we’d get to do practicals today.”
Theo laughed. “You expected Crouch to actually teach?”
“Quiet down,” Professor Crouch barked, glaring.
***
Harry narrowed his eyes at Theo. The two of them had slipped off into a side corridor, and now had their wands out. “Gorgos!” Theo said, slashing his wand through the air. Harry winced when the spell hit his sternum, but other than a brief sort of cold and heavy feeling, nothing happened.
Both of them frowned. “There should be a visible change,” Theo said. “You still just looked normal. No stone.”
“Try again,” Harry said.
Grimly, Theo lifted his wand again. “Gorgos!”
***
The first quidditch match of the year was Slytherin versus Gryffindor. Harry walked the dungeons until three in the morning, at which point Raza finally threatened to bite him if he didn’t go back and at least try to sleep. “If you are tired and fall out of the sky and die tomorrow, you’ll leave me with only these stupid landplodders who can’t understand me,” he said. “That’s not allowed.”
Harry was too distracted to even argue.
Raza woke him up, too, with his tongue in Harry’s ear.
“Hey,” Harry complained, shoving him away and sitting up.
“Someone is outside your bed,” Raza said.
Harry listened, heard shuffling feet and uncertain mumblings. Good—they knew better than to just barge into his bed by this point, whoever was out there. It sounded like more people than just Theo and Goyle.
Raza’s head swung side to side, and his tongue flickered. “The landplodder who leads your flying team.”
“Quidditch,” Harry said, very softly.
“I don’t care.” Raza slid down off his chest and worked his way under the sheets. “Make it warm before you leave.”
Harry pushed warming magic into the blankets, sat up, and pulled the curtains back, thankful that he had decent pajamas now and didn’t have to worry about changing inside his curtains.
Flint was standing in their door scowling at Goyle and Theo. He switched his scowl to Harry as soon as he noticed him. “The hell kind of wards are on your bed, Potter?”
“The safe kind,” Harry said, sliding off his bed. “Isn’t it a little early for breakfast?”
“Safe for you,” Goyle muttered.
“We eat breakfast in Snape’s office and head to the pitch early, or risk getting ambushed in the halls,” Flint said. “Derrick pointed out we forgot to tell you. Be at Snape’s in fifteen.”
“Okay,” Harry said.
Flint cast a last disgusted look at Goyle and retreated, slamming the door behind him.
“This is the last time you wake me up this early on match day, Potter, or else,” Goyle growled.
Theo snorted. “Or what exactly?”
Goyle glared at him.
“No, keep talking,” Theo said, apparently sincere. “I really want to hear how you’re going to finish that thought process.”
“Shut up,” Goyle snapped, stomping back over to his bed.
Theo laughed.
Goyle whipped around and pulled his wand.
Harry ignored the impromptu duel and started getting dressed.
Goyle crumpled to the floor, moaning and covered in some sort of slowly moving yellowish slime, at about the same time Harry fastened his uniform robe. “Nice,” he said. “What jinx is that?”
“Found it in Father’s study. I’ll teach it to you later.” Theo nudged Goyle’s hand with his toe. “It’s not poisonous. I think.”
“Go tell Crabbe to have a look at him, so he doesn’t die in our dormitory,” Harry said.
Theo sighed theatrically but Harry heard him banging on the other second-year boys’ dormitory as he stepped out into the common room.
The rest of the team, sans Bletchley, was already assembled in Snape’s office. They all wore rumpled school robes and most were clutching coffee and looking somewhere between half-asleep and frantically worried. Snape himself was nowhere to be seen.
“Eat,” Warrington said, shoving a plate in Harry’s direction.
He made himself down eggs and toast and a few bites of a fruit. No one talked. Bletchley wandered in after a few minutes looking like he hadn’t slept at all. Flint’s glare was boring holes in the wall and Derrick kept muttering plays to herself. Harry ran over Seeker maneuvers in his head.
Snape stalked in, robes billowing, at eight. “Breakfast is underway. You may proceed to the pitch,” he said without preamble.
Flint stood. “Let’s go.”
Snape plucked Pucey’s mug from his grip as they passed him. For a few seconds Pucey stared at the mug, then Snape, before he realized it was empty and kept walking.
Harry was the last one out of the room, and deliberately didn’t look up at Snape.
They went out a side door he hadn’t known about yet and straggled down to the pitch. A few other students were already heading down for good seats but no one bothered the Slytherin team. Flint unlocked their team’s suite and everyone piled into the lounge and sat in more silence.
Eventually, the noise of students filling the stands overhead went from distant and barely noticeable to a dull, consistent rumble. Harry watched the minutes tick by on their wall clock and tried not to feel too nervous.
“Right,” Flint said finally, leaning forward. Everyone sat up and listened. “Strategy like we’ve been talking about.” He pointed at Derrick and Bole. “If you come off there with fewer than twenty solid hits each, show up early for practice on Monday, because you’ll be doing laps. With your weighted harnesses on. Body check the Demons if you have to, I don’t care. Bletchley, remember to watch Spinnet, she’s wicked at feints on goal. Pucey, Warrington, today’s about power. The Gryffindor Chasers are smaller and quicker in the air—we won’t be able to keep up, so pass hard and hit hard, use legal body checks, don’t let them break away and use it. Potter—I hear mixed things about McLaggen but he’s got thirty pounds on you, easy, so don’t let him get close enough to body check. Watch out for the Demons—they like going for the other team’s Seeker. You’re small and quick so you’ll be a harder target than Higgs was but still be careful.” He looked around at the whole team. “I said legal body checks and I mean it. We lost last year because we gave them a chance to call biased fouls. If one of us fouls a Gryffindor, Hooch will favor them the rest of the game and the whole school will say it was justified.”
Harry nodded along with the rest. They got the picture.
Flint cracked his knuckles. “All right. Let’s do this.”
“Don’t be nervous,” Bole said under his breath, as they filed into the changing room. “You’ll be fine. Everyone more or less goes easy on second-year players.”
Harry shot him a look as he tugged the padded harness over his head. “Who said I was nervous?”
“Everyone’s nervous their first game,” Bole said. “You should’ve seen Bletchley at his first game, two years ago. He was a mess.” He clapped Harry on the shoulder, not seeming to notice how Harry flinched away from the contact, and walked off.
Harry shrugged into his uniform robe and rolled his shoulders until it settled right. The fabric was a little heavier than he was used to, but it was tailored to fit over his padded harness without restricting his movements, and he expected the silver-trimmed emerald green would look flashy once they were in the air.
Derrick paused on her way by him. “Make sure your gloves are secure,” she said. “Higgs did his up too loosely one time and fumbled the snitch.”
“Thanks,” Harry said, making sure the straps around his wrists were securely fastened.
“Yep. Good luck, Potter.” She swung her broom up over her shoulder and headed out to the lounge.
Bletchley and Pucey were the last to assemble in the lounge. Flint looked them all over, nodded approval, and had them line up behind him in year order. Harry was so busy feeling dwarfed at the back of the line that he almost didn’t notice Flint start walking until the door opened and a rush of noise from the stadium roared in.
Walking out onto the pitch was like getting slapped in the face with a solid wall of noise. Harry inhaled, deep, and felt adrenaline flood his veins. He could get used to this.
The game went by in a blur of green and red and gold. Students screamed, beaters shouted, Madam Hooch’s whistle shrieked time and again as fouls piled up. The Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry was at its peak during quidditch games and Harry had never felt like more of a target than he did while darting through the air avoiding one bludger after another. The Weasley twins were indeed targeting him, letting their spectacular keeper stall the Slytherin chaser formations while they focused on the Slytherin team’s weakest link.
Not for nothing, though, was Harry one of the youngest seekers his House had ever fielded. He’d had too much practice dodging projectiles to be put off by the Weasley twins. Even if they were as vicious as the Slytherin beaters.
In the end, Harry spotted the snitch fluttering by one of the stands. It was packed with a mix of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors who all screamed bloody murder when he turned and shot towards them. The Gryffindor seeker, McLaggen, had followed him as soon as Harry started to move, but he was much too slow and much too far away.
Harry stretched out his hand. The snitch darted away, but he followed it doggedly, so close to the stands his quidditch robes brushed them as he turned. His broom shuddered under his hands. Harry tightened his grip and willed it forward, stretching out his fingers desperately–
Cold metal hit his fingertips and he pulled up, thrusting his fist high in the air. Wings beat weakly against his leather quidditch gloves. A wall of people in green and silver roared in happiness.
Yes, Harry could definitely get used to this.
***
“…doesn’t belong in our House.”
Harry glanced up. The voice belonged to Draco Malfoy, and the listeners were a group of third and fourth years, not especially high in the hierarchy from what he had seen but not especially low, either. It was impossible to tell how much they agreed with Malfoy’s calculated whining.
“Appalling breeding, and he’s flouted our manners and customs since his first day,” Malfoy went on. “He didn’t even bother to introduce himself properly on the first day. Just jumped in and acted all arrogant about being the Boy Who Lived.”
In his mouth, Harry’s press moniker tasted as bad as curdled milk. Harry pretended that he couldn’t hear them, even though Malfoy had deliberately positioned the conversation in the Slytherin common room so Harry would hear.
“That was the first day, Malfoy, are you really holding onto that grudge?” one of the fourth years said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Malfoy scowl. “It’s just the first example that came to mind, Cray. Obviously his mother’s blood is showing through.”
Harry paid a bit more attention to the group, and scribbled a tiny note in the margin of his textbook. Theo read it sideways and nodded almost too slightly to be seen. Tracy, sitting in an armchair to the right of Harry and Theo’s couch, visibly swallowed.
The group was all purebloods.
“What’s the point of all this whinging?” another older kid said, shifting. “I have an essay to write, Malfoy, and our families might be friends but your influence only goes so far.”
Malfoy sneered. “Of course there’s a point, I haven’t been yammering on for no reason. Potter’s a risk to Slytherin, can’t you see it? He’s a halfblood and an outsider and the bloody savior of the Light, and after the Bulstrode duel he’s walking around puffed up like a—a peacock.”
“He kind of kicked her arse,” someone said. “It’s not unjustified.”
“It’s out of proportion and it’s a risk,” Malfoy said. “He’s a risk.”
“I have an essay to do,” the same boy repeated, standing and stalking away.
The rest of the group broke up in ones and twos, splitting off, but Harry felt the eyes on him, considering and disapproving. Malfoy looked way too smug sprawled back in his armchair like it was a bloody throne, smirking at Harry.
Harry cocked an eyebrow at him and let his fingers brush not quite casually against the edge of his wand.
Malfoy paled slightly, flushed with irritation, scowled, and stalked away. Hopefully to snap at Goyle, so they’d both be miserable.
“You need to do something about that,” Theo said in an undertone.
Instantly, Harry’s eyes snapped over to him. “That sounded like you’re telling me what to do.”
To his credit, Theo hid his nerves almost as soon as Harry spotted them, and spoke in an even voice. “I’m offering advice.”
“Noted,” Harry said, relaxing slightly. Theo followed suit. Neither boy missed the relieved slump to Tracy’s shoulders. “I’m handling it.”
“Can I help at all?” Theo said very carefully.
“If you can, I’ll tell you,” Harry said, looking down at his textbook to signal that the conversation was over. Theo and Tracy were both smart enough to get the message.
***
Harry whistled as loudly as he could.
Peeves rather abruptly stopped loosening a chandelier and peered down at him. “Oooh, it’s Potty wee lad, come to play!”
“We had a deal, and I’m paying up,” Harry said, waggling a paper bag. “Five galleons of Dungbombs.”
Peeves’ eyes got comically wide and he zoomed for it.
Harry let him snatch the bag, and then pulled another one out of his schoolbag. “Here’s another five,” he said.
“What for?” Peeves said instantly.
“Target Draco Malfoy for a month,” Harry said instantly.
“Ah ah ah, Peevesie isn’t silly enough to make an enemy of the Bloody Baron, no sir,” Peeves singsonged, wagging a finger at Harry. “Naught of you, oh Potter you rotter, trying to set Peevesie up!”
Harry let a mischievous smile copied from one of the Weasley twins creep over his face. “If I can keep the Baron out of your way?”
Peeves’ interest sharpened instantly. “Potty has some tricksies, yes he does!”
“If I can get the Baron to let you be, just for Draco Malfoy, will you do it?” Harry pressed.
“Peevesie will be keeping those Dungbombs even if His Baron-bum doesn’t want to play,” Peeves said.
“I know,” Harry said. “Starting tomorrow. One month.”
“One month,” Peeves agreed, turning a somersault and then sticking one hand out.
Harry shook it, passed over the Dungbombs, and wiped green slime off his palm as soon as Peeves had zoomed out of sight.
***
The Bloody Baron wasn’t one of those ghosts that drifted around the populated areas of Hogwarts, chatting with students left and right. It was easy to track down the Fat Friar or Nearly Headless Nick, but if you weren’t a Slytherin, you’d almost never see the Baron.
If you were a Slytherin, you still almost never saw him, but Harry paid attention and he knew how to track the ghost down. There were a few spots he liked. The Astronomy Tower was one of them, and the dungeon’s lower reaches another.
It only took thirty minutes of wandering around the deepest parts of the dungeons for Harry to feel the Baron’s creeping chill. He followed it, and the rattling of ghostly chains, until he found the ghost lurking in a dead-end hallway, obviously waiting for him.
“Potter,” the ghost said, eyeing him in an unsettling fashion.
“Baron,” Harry said, delivering a bow. It felt a little stiff, since he’d only recently started to learn how from Theo.
The ghost inclined his head very slightly. Goosebumps rippled up Harry’s arms as the chill intensified. “As the Slytherin ghost, you stay neutral when it comes to our politics,” Harry said. He’d gathered as much from the older kids.
“I do,” the Baron said, taking a bit more interest in him.
“Including if we use an outsider to target an opponent?”
“Yes. Although I fail to see how I might interfere. Given that I am no longer among the living,” the Baron said, a bit drily.
Harry filed away the observation that the ghost had a sense of humor. “The outsider I’m using isn’t among the living, either.”
“Indeed?” said the Baron, his transparent eyebrows ticking up.
“Peeves.”
For just a second, the ghost looked absolutely flabbergasted. “You… the poltergeist is possibly the least reliable entity in this castle. I am tempted to report this to your Head of House simply to correct your evident idiocy before you make a fool of all Slytherin.”
“I know he’s unreliable,” Harry said. “We have a deal.”
“A deal,” the Baron said flatly. “With the poltergeist.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sir seemed to mollify the ghost a little. He recovered from his shock and scowled at Harry. “And if this deal doesn’t go as you mean it to?”
“I’ll take the consequences,” Harry said. “I’m just informing you that for one month, I’ve told Peeves to target Draco Malfoy, no one else, as part of our internal politics.”
“If that… scourge upon this school goes astray, I will step in,” the Baron snarled.
Harry nodded. “I’d expected nothing less.”
“Very well,” the Bloody Baron said with a curt nod. “For one month only, the poltergeist may wreak his havoc upon Draco Malfoy without my interference.” He considered Harry, whose goosebumps got worse, and not from the cold this time. “I must say, you interest me, Potter. It has been some time since anyone was so creative about sabotage.”
“Let’s just say I’m not quite standard issue,” Harry said with a smile.
The Baron drifted away through the wall without another word, leaving Harry to close his eyes and wrap warming magic around himself.
Theo and Tracy were waiting a few turns back up towards the surface. Theo looked completely at home in the badly-lit dungeons, while Tracy seemed slightly uncomfortable with the cold and slime that you just couldn’t get rid of down this deep. She straightened up when Harry turned the corner and tried to hide her discomfort.
“How’d it go?” Theo said.
“Permission granted.” Harry paused in front of them. “Peeves’ new target is Draco for this month only, no ghostly interference.”
“How did you… manage that?” Tracy said cautiously.
Since Harry was trying to involve her a little more, tie her a little closer to him, he turned a grin in her direction. “I already owed Peeves Dungbombs. I just offered him a little more to target our good friend Draco. Since it’s technically an extension of Slytherin politics, the Baron has to be neutral, I just needed to spin it that way.”
“Don’t get how you faced him,” Tracy said, rolling her shoulders. “He’s so creepy.”
“He’s just a ghost, Davis,” Theo said with a cruel smile. “It’s not like he can hurt you.”
Tracy shot him a scathing look.
Harry tuned out their bickering. The fact remained that he was going to have to do something about Malfoy, and preferably soon. The prat had family connections that couldn’t be denied, and with no one to make introductions for him yet, Harry couldn’t just insinuate himself with the upper years. Malfoy could, though, and already Harry could see a few of them starting to give him unpleasant sideways looks. Deciding they had an outsider in their midst might override the general consensus to leave the first and second years to themselves, and Harry knew he wasn’t ready yet for a big power play.
“Theo,” he said, interrupting Tracy and Theo’s bickering. His best—ally shut up immediately and raised an eyebrow. “Let’s see if we can’t get Malfoy and Weasley into a fight this week. Maybe once dear Draco is all upset with Peeves.”
Theo’s smile was all teeth.
***
Harry decided that a Potions accident would be a good way to check Malfoy’s arrogance, for now. There had been enough comments in the common room to convince him that one, Malfoy’s mother kept in very close contact with her son, and two, she firmly expected him to do better than the assorted riffraff of Hogwarts. Harry didn’t think there was much to their lines about muggleborns being weaker, but after a year and a bit spent watching how muggleborns treated the magical world like American tourists treated foreign cities—wide eyes, amazement, conviction that they were being open-minded while managing to learn nothing in-depth about their new culture—well, he could see where the resentment came from. A little. It wasn’t his problem though, not really, and he could use it in this case. He and Theo paired off with Longbottom and some other Gryffindor named something Thomas. Dylan, maybe, or Dean. Whoever he is, he was happily drawn into what Harry passed off as a simple prank, and he and Longbottom caused a suitable distraction by loudly arguing with Weasley while Harry levitated powdered horn of bicorn into Malfoy’s open jar of ground moonstone. They’re nearly the same color and it could be attributed to cross contamination.
Which it was, when Malfoy’s potion exploded not two minutes later. Thomas and Longbottom were bad at hiding their glee and even Weasley forgot to glare at the Slytherins while Snape vanished the mess and sent Malfoy to the hospital wing with his skin turning scaly and flaky.
Malfoy got a letter at breakfast the next morning that made his usual pallor even worse. Harry grinned into his eggs. He and Theo knew it wouldn’t shut Malfoy up forever but they’d have a few weeks, at least, of relative quiet, given that Snape had assigned him private remedial potions lessons in detention and how the Gryffindors were crowing about Snape’s godson mucking up so badly. Harry hadn’t actually known that last bit, but it made the whole thing so much funnier.
Unfortunately, it had the side effect of making the Gryffindors even less bearable than usual for all the Slytherins in their year. Mostly it was heckling and jeers, with the occasional prank hex thrown in—nothing Harry and the Slytherins in general hadn’t gotten used to already.
***
Transfiguration had always been one of Harry’s favorite and also least favorite classes. He liked the nature of it, how the best way to be good at Transfiguration was to will something to happen. There were really only a few spells in Transfiguration; the difficulty lay in understanding the theory of changing one thing into another well enough that saying the words would actually do something. It wasn’t enough to just say commutatem and expect a wooden button to turn into metal. You had to understand what wood was made of, and how it was different from metal, and at least a little of what the wood particles would have to do to turn into metal particles. After years of forcing his magic to behave with sheer willpower, Harry was quite good at this. But Transfiguration was also miserable because McGonagall seemed to think it was a personal slight that Harry hadn’t ended up a Gryffindor.
They had it with the Gryffindors, which didn’t help matters in the slightest. Harry suppressed a sigh as Neville slipped and managed to vanish one of the legs of his desk, dumping himself and his books onto the floor.
McGonagall restored the desk with a wave of her wand, lips pursed. “Mr. Longbottom, really.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Neville mumbled, blushing. Harry tried to look encouraging when Neville caught his eye but it didn’t seem to help. He settled for mulling over ways to make Neville more… functional while he got out his homework and quill. The boy was the last heir of a powerful family and had shown flashes of strength. Harry just needed to pull it out of him.
They took notes for an hour on Transfiguration theory and then were set to turning quills into forks, preferably of real silver. Harry’s first try was a bit tarnished, but his second came out perfect, and he let it lapse back into a quill while pulling out an introductory Arithmancy book and working on the third chapter.
“Mr. Potter.” He looked up as McGonagall’s leather shoes clicked to a disapproving halt in front of his desk. “Five points from Slytherin for blatant disrespect.”
“I’ve already completed the assigned task, Professor,” Harry said, eyes politely downcast.
She humphed. “Is that so? Demonstrate, if you please, for the class, and I will give you the points back.”
Harry stood up. The eyes of everyone were on him now; Neville looked particularly nervous. Harry held McGonagall’s gaze for several seconds before casting the spell as casually as he could manage.
In the place of his quill, a perfect silver fork lay, with little filigree vines winding up the handle.
McGonagall pursed her lips. Several of the Slytherins quickly hid grins, and Neville shot Harry a thumb’s up, although he hastily put his hand back down when Weasley and Runcorn glared at him.
“…five points to Slytherin,” McGonagall nearly growled, stalking off to intimidate Crabbe and Goyle.
“Really, she should’ve learned by now,” Theo muttered as Harry sat back down. They shared a conspiratorial grin.
“—can do it myself, thanks!” Weasley’s voice cut over the classroom noise as he glared at Granger.
“Voices down,” McGonagall said sternly, and Weasley settled, but he and Granger were visibly still furious.
Harry’s eyes narrowed. Opportunity. He checked McGonagall was on the other side of the room, and said, just loud enough for Malfoy to overhear, “Pathetic. Even Granger beats him to it…”
Tracy glanced from Harry to Weasley to Malfoy, and added at the same volume, “Wonder if Malfoy’s got it yet?”
Harry and Theo both shot her slightly startled looks. Usually she didn’t engage in their scheming so publicly, or of her own initiative. The quiet girl blushed but then their attention was drawn to Malfoy as he loudly began proclaiming his own prowess for having completed the spell “before some people who embarrass their birthright”. Weasley turned red as an apple.
Honestly. It was all so easy.
After class, Theo managed to shoot a trip jinx at Weasley that made him crash into Granger and send both of them toppling into Malfoy and Parkinson. The resulting scuffle blocked the classroom door, earned both Weasley and Malfoy a hex, and drew McGonagall’s ire, who took ten points from both Houses and assigned Malfoy and Parkinson detentions for firing the first hex. Harry wasn’t even sure if Parkinson had cast anything—her wand was in her hand, but Weasley’s rapidly growing nose was definitely Malfoy’s work—but it was immensely satisfying to watch Malfoy get briskly cut down by a professor always happy to believe the worst of a Slytherin.
***
Halloween arrived with a swirl of charmed bats and leering jack-o’-lanterns and suits of armor that irregularly spat candy with slightly too much force at passing students. Harry scowled at them on his way up to breakfast; after everything Theo and Portia had been telling him about the customs of Samhain, he wished the tacky Muggle dilution of a sacred holiday hadn’t followed him here. Hogwarts was his safe haven, the heart of the magical world. This was… this was profane.
The Slytherins as a whole seemed to feel the same, even the few muggleborns currently in the House. Harry saw Darius Barrow jinx a floating carved pumpkin right in its gap-toothed smile when it tried to bounce playfully off his head. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were generally pretty unbothered, as far as he could tell, but the Gryffindors were even more boisterous than usual.
It was a Saturday, which meant quidditch practice in the morning and then the potions-group-rapidly-morphing-into-a-study-group in the afternoon. Harry went to practice without any particular enthusiasm and trudged back up to the castle hours later with a damp chill spreading through both his bones and his temper. As a result, when he rounded the corner and ran smack into Weasley, Runcorn, and Granger, he was already irritable and sneered at them with a lot more venom than he usually would have.
Predictably, Weasley blew up. “Watch where you’re going, Potter!” he spat.
“Maybe don’t stand in the middle of the bloody hallway then,” Harry suggested.
He’d aimed for a reasonable tone, but judging by Granger’s face, he’d missed the mark. Damn. The bushy-haired twit scowled at him. “We weren’t standing anywhere; we’re on our way to a death-day party!”
Harry blinked at her. “A death-day party? Really? Here?”
“Well it’s not like it’s dangerous,” Runcorn said, like he thought Harry was particularly stupid.
“I think we have different ideas of what a death-day party is,” Harry said. “What exactly are you doing?”
Granger told him, and Harry felt like bashing his head on a wall, both at the smugness in her voice and the idea that they were attending a glorified birthday party. “Why, are you scared?” she said triumphantly.
“Not of what you’ve just described, no,” Harry said, gritting his teeth. “But a real death-day party is a complex necromantic ritual designed to help a spirit trapped as a ghost find their way to the next life. That would scare any sensible twelve-year-old, I expect.”
By this point he was both hungry and in a mood to hex something, so he roughly pushed past them and stalked away before they could annoy him further.
The afternoon brewing session passed with minimal hassle. Harry managed to delegate helping Longbottom to Theo so he could focus on the first years. Mercer Kershaw had brought Oriana Grader, of Gryffindor, along, meaning that Harry now had all five of the year’s orphaned students attending his unofficial club. They were quick and pretty easy to teach, which he appreciated, because it gave him time to work on his own brewing as well. Harry had three cauldrons of the same potion bubbling away this week so he could make minor modifications to each and see what the effects of more or less alkaline absorption had on the potion’s development. None of the books seemed to explain such things very well but if it was anything at all like cooking then there had to be reasons things mixed to create certain potions.
***
Nothing blew up and nobody had to go to Pomfrey with weird boils or new appendages, so they said goodbye and split up in good spirits. Kershaw and Grader slipped off to avoid being seen with Slytherins, Portia hustling them along like an irritable nanny. Longbottom and Smith guiltily did the same a few corridors from the Great Hall, both Harry and Theo assuring them that it was fine, and then Harry, Theo, Tracy, and the three Slytherin firsties wandered in last.
Predictably, none of the tables had any food that could even charitably be described as healthy. Harry picked at his pumpkin pie. “Why are they incapable of feeding us something decent?” he muttered.
Greengrass overheard and rolled her eyes. “My mother says the Headmaster thinks students will like the Muggle stuff more if it comes with all their favorite sweets.”
“And health problems,” Harry said.
Tracy got a considering look in her eye. “I wonder…” She dove into her bag and came up with a self-inking quill and scrap of parchment. A moment later, and her hastily scribbled note vanished from the table.
“For the house-elves?” Theo said, looking impressed.
Tracy nodded, and a minute later, several platters of much more substantial food started popping up around their area of the table. Harry smiled appreciatively at Tracy and saw with amusement the jealous glares it earned her from Vane and Fletcher.
He served himself a few slices of ham and a dollop of collard greens—which the house-elves had managed to make taste delicious, against all odds—and settled back into the familiar rhythms of dinner at Hogwarts. It was comforting, despite the Halloween invasion, and he found himself smiling with an unusual lack of reserve.
When they were finished, he and Theo stood up. Tracy stayed behind, saying something about a study date, but Zabini and Greengrass trailed after Harry and Theo, all of them discussing the options for extra classes made available to third years.
Zabini was just telling them morosely that he had wanted to take Divination before he heard from an upper year that the Divination professor was apparently a total hack when they heard shouting from a corridor ahead. Harry and Theo exchanged a glance before joining what rapidly became a torrent of students jostling for a view of whatever was causing the screams.
They were carried around a corner and ran up against the back of an immobile crowd of older, taller students. Thinking quickly, Harry dragged Theo over against the wall. Greengrass and Zabini followed and they all managed to scramble up, balanced precariously on the stone molding, to peer over the heads of the crowd.
What they saw made Harry’s stomach turn and an undignified squeaking noise emerge from Greengrass’ mouth.
Two students lay on the ground. One was a Gryffindor, small enough to be a firstie, and the other was a Hufflepuff Harry recognized as Zach Smith’s friend Justin Finch-Fletchley. Both, as far as Harry could tell, had wide-open eyes and were completely catatonic.
***
“So, what, they just keeled over?” Malfoy said impatiently.
Harry rubbed his eyes. The other second years had been arguing for an hour about the mysterious attack on the two students. As it turned out, both were muggleborn, a fact which had led to much whispering and many constipated expressions among the upper year Slytherins. Harry had also heard mention of something called the Chamber of Secrets, which was rapidly hushed up and which he promptly resolved to investigate when he had the time. No one trusted the younger years with such things, however, which meant they’d been going in conversational circles about the same few nuggets of rumor and information until Harry had a headache pounding directly behind the bridge of his nose.
“Something must have attacked them,” Malfoy continued, “two people don’t just pass out and go into comas on the spot.”
“But there wasn’t a mark on them, and even Dumbledore couldn’t figure it out,” Bulstrode protested. She’d overcome her seemingly implacable hatred/fear of Harry to sit with him and all the rest of the second years, lured by gossip.
Malfoy scoffed. “Well, Dumbledore.”
“He’s a great wizard,” Zabini said. “Only one the Dark Lord ever feared. You might think he’s politically the worst thing that’s ever happened, and he has horrifying taste in robes and everything else, but he’s a magical powerhouse.”
“Snape might figure it out,” Tracy said. “If it was a potion or something.”
This was not a new hypothesis, and therefore elicited nods but no lightbulbs of realization.
“We’re not going to learn anything else tonight,” Harry said tiredly, shutting his Charms text with a snap. Several third years sitting a few chairs away jumped and glared at him, but he scowled back until they dropped their eyes. “I’m going to sleep.”
Theo fell in with him without a word and they made their way back to the dorms in companionable silence. Harry chucked his Charms book into his trunk with an angry jerk of his wrist and started changing.
“What’s got you so bothered?” Theo said, eyeing him as he began to change as well.
“In the Muggle world, if things like this start happening at schools, the people in charge tend to shut them down,” Harry said flatly. He was briefly furious with himself for speaking so freely, but then he reassured himself that it was only to Theo, from whom he kept few to no real secrets.
“Ah,” said Theo, understanding dawning on his face. “They’ll figure it out, though, Harry. I mean, a student died here once, and they didn’t shut the place down.”
“Died?” Harry said, perking up. “Really? When?”
“I don’t know, about fifty years ago. My father was at school at the time,” Theo said. “I’ll write and ask him. Maybe he’ll know what they did back then, and what might make them close the school down.”
Harry felt warmed, and annoyed with himself for being warmed, at this rather unsubtle attempt to reassure him, and rewarded Theo with as genuine a smile of gratitude as he could muster. It must have been convincing, because Theo looked pleased as he clambered into bed and shut his curtains.
***
The school remained abuzz about the attack, but Harry tried his best to ignore it. Quidditch training was getting rapidly more intense as the Hufflepuff-Slytherin match approached, and on top of Flint’s brutal workouts, the sadistic captain had upped the weight on the harness Harry still wore beneath his robes. For the first week afterwards he was in a constant state of fatigue, made worse by his unrelenting dedication to studying. Theo and Portia both seemed vaguely alarmed when they found him in the library, sleeping facedown on a dictionary of runes, but Harry waved them off and insisted he’d be fine.
That evening, he and Theo were sitting in Theo’s bed, curtains spelled shut and silencing charms in place. Ostensibly they were studying but they’d gotten distracted discussing the contents of Theo’s father’s letter, delivered just that morning, while Raza napped around Harry’s neck, digesting a rat he’d caught earlier.
“He uses a DictaQuill,” Theo said when Harry asked how his father managed to write so evenly despite the pain. “Talking hurts him, but not as badly. Although for a letter this long, it can’t have been fun.”
Harry eyed the two or so feet of parchment and silently agreed. Theo’s father had written basically an entire essay. It started out with a list of defensive texts available in the library, several others that wouldn’t be but that he would have Larkin track down and owl them in a disguised package, and multiple admonishments to be extremely careful.
“He seems… concerned,” Harry said.
Theo frowned. “I’ve never heard him this worried. Whatever happened when he was at school must’ve been bad.”
Lord Nott indeed moved on and told them a story of petrifications, rampant terror, secret monsters, and talk of closing the school. Harry was significantly more frightened by the idea of Hogwarts closing than the threat of some unspecified monster stalking the halls of Hogwarts.
“He says they were basically frozen,” Theo said, squinting at the letter. “Couldn’t move or breathe or anything. Smith went to visit Finch-Fletchley in the hospital wing and said he was still, you know, alive. They’ve been forcing potions down their throats to keep them healthy apparently. They just can’t figure out why they won’t wake up.”
“Rookwood told me today brain scans indicate they’re awake but unaware,” Harry said. “So it can’t be the same thing as last time.”
“Why didn’t they have an Auror investigation?” Theo said. “Father doesn’t mention the DMLE showing up at all—just the professors searching.”
“Maybe they’ll be more logical this time,” Harry said, without much hope.
Theo just scoffed, expressing their mutual lack of faith in the Ministry, and shifted the parchment so they could read the last few paragraphs.
His father had managed to include a few hints about the Chamber of Secrets in what seemed like fairly innocuous ramblings about rumors from his school years. Harry found himself getting more and more intrigued as he read. Blood purity politics and hidden rooms… it made sense that Slytherin’s monster would be a snake if Slytherin himself was a parselmouth.
Actually, he should probably tell Theo about now that he was a parselmouth.
Harry watched Theo from under his lashes. His first… friend was sprawled back against his pillows, staring at the canopy of his bed as he spun one theory after another about where the Chamber might be and who might have attacked the muggleborns.
“There’s something you should know,” Harry said, interrupting a particularly colorful idea involving polyjuice potion and devil’s snare.
Theo sat up and eyed him. “Yeah?”
“I’m a parselmouth,” Harry said.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Harry’s hand was on his wand even though he wasn’t sure what he’d do if Theo freaked out. He didn’t know a spell to wipe memories and he hadn’t asked for a vow beforehand, even though he could have—should have.
“Show me,” Theo said.
Harry didn’t break eye contact with him as he reached up and ran a hand over Raza’s scales. “Wake up, friend. I’m showing Theo what I can do.”
Raza stirred as Theo tensed, eyes going wide at the sibilant hissing sounds. “Do I need to bite him?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Harry said.
“I wouldn’t like to. I like this hatchling.”
“I do too,” Harry said.
“What did you say?” Theo said.
Something about his bright eyes and his posture, still open and unafraid, made Harry answer honestly. “He asked if he needed to bite you and I said I wasn’t sure, and he said he likes you so he wouldn’t want to do that.”
Oddly enough, Theo’s face cracked into a delighted smile. “He likes me?”
“Apparently,” Harry said.
Theo reached out, glancing at Harry for permission, and ran a gentle hand over Raza’s scales. Harry couldn’t remember anyone ever voluntarily touching the snake even if Theo had gotten used to seeing him around. Raza let out a wordless hiss of happiness and shifted so he lay coiled in Theo’s lap.
Harry watched them, Theo completely distracted for the moment by the snake in his lap. “You’re not afraid, or disgusted,” he said quietly.
Theo’s eyes snapped up to him. “You thought I’d be—what, scared off like some Mudblood who thinks snakes bring sin?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said uncomfortably. “It’s—everyone hates parselmouths. I didn’t think you would, but… you know.”
It was as close as he’d ever gotten to admitting insecurity, or even that he cared what Theo thought of him. Something in Theo’s expression changed as he realized this and Harry felt painfully, unpleasantly vulnerable.
Before he could retreat, Theo leaned forward and cautiously laid a hand on Harry’s where it rested on the bed. Just far enough away not to make Harry flinch, just close enough to make his point. “You could never frighten me,” Theo said quietly. “You were the first person not to be afraid of me. I’d be a pretty bad friend if I couldn’t return the favor.”
Harry fought his warring instincts for a second. He felt the usual aversion to touch, obviously, the instinct to pull away from something that had only ever brought him pain—but there was a new urge, one that told him this was Theo, this was someone he’d let in a little and who hadn’t betrayed him. For some reason, he didn’t want Theo to lean away. Theo was his, and here he was, holding Harry’s familiar and pressing up against the edge of Harry’s boundaries, closer than anyone else dared get but knowing exactly how far not to press.
Slowly, Harry turned his hand so his palm was facing up and his fingers could wrap around Theo’s wrist. Theo left his hand slack, seemingly knowing that holding onto Harry in return would ruin Harry’s fragile self-control.
Under his fingers Harry could feel Theo’s pulse leaping.
“It’s incredible,” Theo said. “Your gift, I mean. You. That you—I mean, it’s been centuries since one of the Founders’ gifts turned up, and now two people in such a short time…”
“Founders’ gifts?” Harry said, withdrawing his hand.
Theo shrugged. “There’s an old legend. Slytherin could talk to snakes, but it was more than that, only we don’t know what else; Hufflepuff was an empath or something, Ravenclaw was telepathic and could astral project, and Gryffindor’s had… something to do with fire, I forget what it was. Supposedly only their descendants have their gifts, and even then only those who Magic thinks are worthy.”
“Those all sound incredibly useful,” Harry said.
“It’s rumored the Smiths are descendants of Hufflepuff, but no one knows what happened to Ravenclaw and Gryffindor’s descendants.” Theo yawned and leaned back. “We might never know. Most families have some kind of inherited gift. Things like that tend to crop up around your thirteenth birthday, though, so maybe Smith will get a wash of feeling people’s emotions by next year.”
Harry rolled his eyes and took Raza back. “He seems the least likely candidate for empathic abilities.”
“Maybe, but who knows? Magic is unpredictable.”
“Night, Theo,” Harry said, scooting to the edge of the bed.
“Goodnight,” Theo said with another yawn. “Good luck tomorrow, if I don’t see you in the morning.”
Harry grinned. “Thanks.”
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