Ann had barely made a pretense of consulting Hermione about it. After announcing that a theme had been decided (A Midwinter Masquerade, despite the fact that the event would happen closer to Christmas), and the dress code had too (Semi-Formal to Formal, no school robes, masks required), she’d spouted a cursory: What do you think, Hermione?
His friend's only criticism was that it lacked relevance to Muggleborns at all, to which Ann replied, It's only a theme for the décor; collaboration between the members is meant to infuse it with its intended meaning.
Harry, for his part, found himself unceremoniously saddled with designing and constructing a winter-themed archway for the entrance to the Great Hall. His team was an eclectic mix of people from different Houses who were largely unsuited to the job: two Hufflepuffs that Harry only knew because of Quidditch (Dominic and Riley), a quiet fourth year Gryffindor whose name he still couldn’t remember, Eddie Carmichael, and… Luna, who had, oddly, shown up to help decorate despite never having never attended any of the previous meetings.
“She’s beautiful.”
Luna was, of course, talking about the flower and ribbon adorned skull hanging from the top of the archway like a dolled up gargoyle. Draping a white cloth behind the thing like a veil, she hummed to herself, oblivious to the rest of the team’s horrified attention.
She’d yet to properly answer how or where she’d acquired the horse skull.
“It’s ghastly, is what it is, Lovegood,” Eddie muttered, hands on his hips. “I thought we agreed that we were going to do something yule-themed: Some ivy, holly, pinecones, a bow or two-- y’know. Normal! ”
“It has got ribbons on,” Riley pointed out. Eddie glared at her.
“This is very normal,” Luna told them, wistful. “Haven’t any of you gone wassailing before?”
Harry tilted his head, staring into the eye holes of the suspended specter. “Is it, er… meant to be a thestral or something?”
A puzzled expression draped itself over Luna’s features as she blinked a few times, lips pursed. “I hadn’t thought about it like that before,” she admitted, her voice going dreamy. “But it would be appropriate. Very good thinking, Harry.”
“Um…” he faltered, trying and failing to come up with a way to dodge the compliment.
“Point is,” Eddie cut in, “there’s no way Rochford is going to approve this.”
"Too bad," was all Luna said. Harry wasn’t sure if she meant to imply she was disappointed, or that she didn’t care in the slightest; her tone was inscrutable.
"Well, I rather like it," Dominic commented. "Lends a morbid air."
“It’s definitely… unique,” Riley remarked.
Harry's attention was almost wholly captured by the thing; there was something mesmerizing about how bizarre it was. "Is it… something to do with Muggles, then?"
“I’m not quite sure,” came Luna’s melodic answer, her smile oddly tender for someone gazing upon something so gruesome. “Though I suppose that would explain why no one but my father and I go wassailing around Christmas time.”
"What is that, even?" Riley wondered, shifting her stance.
"Caroling, basically," Eddie sighed, extremely put upon. "Except weirder."
“Father’s barely standing by the end of it,” Luna reminisced and, although it sounded fond, Harry couldn't help feeling like that statement was even stranger than her usual fare.
"Uhm," the little Gryffindor piped up, his arms crossed over his thin frame. "I don't really… I mean it's not…" He pressed his lips together, grimacing. "Ah. It's… uhm."
He was really struggling, and while the Hufflepuffs seemed disposed to be patient, Eddie was not. "Merlin, spit it out already."
The boy's eyes were downcast as he said, "Sorry, I-- I… sorry, uhm. I, ah, don't really… like it. The-- the horse, I mean."
Harry offered the boy a sympathetic frown. "You don't have to like it," he assured him. "Everyone's opinions are important to making this thing happen, yeah?"
Dominic nodded, and Riley said, "Honestly, having that thing staring down at everyone coming in might scare them off."
"That's exactly what I've been saying!" Eddie cut in. "Take it down this instant, Lovegood!"
The little Gryffindor boy shrank away from the heated atmosphere that was brewing, but Luna herself remained remarkably serene in the face of it.
Harry, however, couldn't let this stand. "Will you just calm down, Eddie? You don't have to be an arsehole to get your point across."
"Who's being an arsehole?" was Ron's bland question as he sidled up to their group, his team apparently disbanded for the day.
Harry, somewhat tempered by his friend's arrival, let out a sigh. "Nobody. Hopefully, anyway." His glance at Eddie was pointed, and the boy folded his arms with a huff.
Ron watched this exchange with some amusement. "Right well, are you lot just about done? I'm starved and--” He suddenly reared back. “Merlin's bloody balls, what in hell is that?!"
Riley laughed while Dominic explained, "Lovegood's contribution to the décor."
"Looks like a ruddy demon sent to put a curse on us all," Ron muttered as his eyes traced the thing's ghostly silhouette. Then, he suddenly smiled. "Which, I mean-- If that was the idea, then good on ya!"
"It's not," Harry remarked with an eyeroll. "But I assume things aren't really going well on your side?"
Ron dropped his bag beside Harry's, scowling as he went. "These Slytherin bints must think we're going to have a fancy eight course meal or something the way they go on. The house elves know how to cook! We don't need to hire some wanker from France! "
Eddie’s reply was blithe. "Well, why not? They want this event to actually be credible, don't they?"
“Besides, Hermione’s not exactly in the business of taking advantage of house elves, Ron,” Harry tacked on.
His friend briefly scoffed, but otherwise didn't respond to that before announcing, "Yeah, well-- anyway, back in a tick; I'll just leave this here while you finish up."
Harry turned to nod toward Ron's things on the ground beside his. "Yeah, I've got it."
When his friend had disappeared through the door, Harry turned his attention back to the task at hand. Placing his hands on his hips, he expelled a breath. "So. The uh… What do you call this thing, Luna?"
“Mari Lwyd,” she answered, the previous excitement in her voice notably absent.
"Right. Mari… Lwyd," he repeated, his pronunciation awkward. "We've got two for, and two against, looks like. So-- that makes me the tiebreaker."
Eddie scoffed. "You can't be serious-- "
"Look, I don't know much about wizard customs," Harry snapped, irritated, "but this is clearly something Luna's family does. Just because it's different from your traditions doesn't give you the right to be a prat about it."
Riley sighed through her nose. "I suppose that means you're in favor, then?"
Well, he was, but that accusation made him feel like now wasn’t such a good moment to say so. “I figure-- we could meet in the middle, yeah?” was Harry’s diplomatic reply, mind racing to find an equally diplomatic solution. He glanced Luna’s way. “I mean… it already looks a bit like a mask, so maybe if we covered the rest of the arch with all sorts of them, it wouldn’t seem out of place to other people?”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind the company,” Luna mused. “It’s a nice idea, Harry.”
Riley shrugged. "Maybe."
"Fits the theme, at least," Dominic pointed out. "Even you can't argue against that, Ed."
The boy certainly seemed as if he'd like to; his expression was sour when he said, "Do what you want. Clearly that's what you lot were going to do anyway."
Ignoring his attitude, Harry turned to the other Gryffindor boy. "What do you think?"
He shifted, uncomfortable under the weight of their attention. "I… I guess that… it would be fine."
"Right, then," Harry announced, his attention catching on the next group to pass them by. He spotted Cleo among their number, but her gaze was distant and preoccupied as she filed out the door with the rest.
Distracted, he continued, "Let's, ehm, be sure to let Ginny know we'll need to use some of the extra masks from their team, yeah?" Harry's intent gaze followed Cleo, who was nearly out of the room; he hurried his next sentence to its conclusion. "Hey, I don't mean to skip out on clean up, but there's something urgent I need to--"
"Oh, something urgent, eh, Potter? Wouldn't happen to be a girl, would it?" Dominic teased.
Harry looked away from the door to scowl at the boy. "Don't be ridiculous," he groused, slinging his and Ron's bag over his shoulder. "I'll see about getting some other supplies to decorate the masks, and we'll put it all together tomorrow, yeah?"
A chorus of agreements met him, ranging from enthusiastic to grudging. He briefly held up a hand in goodbye to them all, his legs carrying him swiftly toward the door.
However, Luna accosted him before he could reach it. “Harry?”
The small of her voice was somehow able to stop him dead from across the room. Mid-stride, he hesitated. "Um. Yeah…?”
Luna’s demeanor was calm as she approached. It was hard to know what to expect with her; the fact that she was wearing patchwork red overalls over a jumper with the word ‘Summer’ sewn on it, yellow, lemon-shaped beaded earrings, and large Spectrespecs hanging precariously from a hairpin made from a small sock didn’t quite help him in making any predictions. And so, it was with a vague trepidation that he regarded Luna, her unerring serenity belying the momentous words which next came from her.
“Would you like to go to the Ball with me?”
Harry stared at her. As much planning as they were doing, the fact that he would have to attend the Ball itself had been far from his mind. He was acutely aware of the fact that the rest of their group were standing a mere few meters away, and that Cleo would be harder to find the longer he stood dumbfounded, but he couldn’t help it. Of all the people he might have expected to hear this from, Luna was the very last.
“Er…” He frantically tried to sort out the connection between his brain and his mouth, but to no avail. His voice cracked on a panicked inquiry, “... Why? ”
That wasn’t at all what he’d meant to say, but… There it was. He’d largely gotten used to politely declining solicitations from younger years, and he’d practiced lukewarm pleasantries to exchange with flirtatious, starstruck fans, but this? Did… did Luna actually like him? He’d never once considered the possibility, had never once considered her to be anything more than a pleasant sort of person that he saw occasionally, and that thought made him feel inexplicably guilty. Should he have been paying better attention? Would she be angry if she knew he’d hardly thought of her that way? Was he taking too long to answer? What should he even say?
The overwhelming uncertainty caused a red flush of heat to creep up his neck. “Sorry, ah…”
He floundered for a way to turn around the awkwardness he’d brought to the conversation, but her reply cut his thoughts short.
“Is that no, then?”
“What?” Harry exhaled. “No, uh-- I mean, no, it’s not a no, but… I thought…?”
“You thought what?”
“I don’t know,” was his honest answer. He sighed at the ground before looking back up at her, scratching the back of his neck.
“Okay,” she returned, breezy, as if she’d hardly noticed his awkwardness at all. “So would you like to go with me?”
“Yeah,” he answered, the word falling from his mouth more easily than he expected. Then, he ventured, “As… as friends?”
Her head canted. “Of course we’re friends; did you think I’d ask you if we weren’t?”
Her misunderstanding drew a small, haggard smile from him. “No, probably not.”
She seemed completely oblivious to the stragglers nearby who had begun suppressing laughter at the exchange. “Okay. That’s all. Bye, Harry.”
“Er… bye,” he said to her back as she walked away. Embarrassed, Harry ducked out of the room as quickly as possible, ignoring the whispers that followed after him.
Out of sorts, he scanned the hall for Cleo, though she was probably far ahead of him by then. Harry stepped up to the railing, looking downward and trying to steady himself, when he spotted her; there she was descending the stairs, tall enough to tower over a group of second years traveling the opposite way. He jumped to action, flying down the first staircase with practiced ease before he reached the one she was exiting. Quickening his pace further to catch up, Harry called, "Hey, Cleo!"
She was so startled at the sudden address that she flinched, head jerking in his direction. It was only when she realized who was calling after her that she seemed to settle, her pace slowing to a halt on the stairs. “Yeah, Harry?”
It was only then he realized he hadn't really thought out exactly what he wanted to say. "Erm…" He scratched behind his ear. "Are you… heading to dinner?"
“Oh, uhm.” Her face scrunched up as she looked toward the ground. “I wasn’t, actually. Uh--”
"I didn't mean to, er… Well, I don't want--" To put you out, he was going to say, but just then the staircase they were standing on dislodged from the bottom platform, swinging them in an extended arc toward the western corridors.
Well used to the castle’s various surprises, neither of them lost balance, but had instead lost some amount of awkwardness between them. Harry spoke first. "Right, um. Didn’t really expect that--"
She laughed, at least. However, her response was more serious, “Sorry, Harry. Wasn’t meaning to be weird. I wasn’t… going anywhere, really. Just, uhm. Thinking, I guess.”
"Yeah," he replied, moving to step down to more solid ground. He half-turned back in her direction. "Then, have you… got a minute? To talk?"
She peered at him, obviously concerned. “Are you okay?”
He didn't have the first clue how to properly answer that; his reply was meandering. "Yeah, it's just-- I've been meaning to meet for a while, but you were gone for a week and a half, and I've had my detentions, and things are… busy--" He grimaced at this umbrella term for all his skiving off and general weirdness of mind. "And… Well. You know."
“If it’s about the fight,” she prefaced, joining him on the veranda. “I’m really sorry. I wish I’d dealt with that conversation better. I didn’t want to argue with you or make you feel like I thought you were a bad person.”
"I…" Harry's disbelieving laugh stuttered out of him, unexpected. "What? Did you just steal my apology?!"
She raised an eyebrow. “Not really stealing if I owed one as well.”
"Well-- you haven't got anything to be sorry for!" he declared, the mirth lingering on his face. "I'm the one who overreacted."
“We both got really heated and it wasn’t productive,” she asserted, diplomatic. “Obviously the subject matter had a lot of personal meaning to the both of us."
"I still shouldn't have jumped to conclusions, or said what I did," Harry admitted, sobering. "So… I'm sorry too."
“Thank you. I forgive you.”
In that moment, he couldn't help but be reminded of his talk with Remus. "You don't have to," he echoed the man’s words, the somber memory lending a hush to his voice. "But thanks."
Her expression was unreadable, but strange. “We can both try harder in future to discuss these kinds of things without getting angry at one another. Sound fair?”
"Yeah, suppose so," Harry said with a small, relieved sigh.
Her accompanying sigh was distracted. “Great."
Harry peered at her with some concern. "Um, forget me-- Are you okay?"
“I don’t know,” she answered, gaze going to the towering staircases above them.
He paused, considering. “Do you… want to talk about it?”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”
Harry frowned, his gaze drifting toward the ground. "Yeah. I get it."
“No, like,” she objected, shifting awkwardly on her feet. “I mean--”
"You don't have to--"
“Would… I don’t know--” Cleo’s hands delved into the pockets of her robes as she leaned back against the railing, buzzing with nervous energy. “--would you call yourself the kind of friend who knows how to tell someone when they’re being a massive idiot, or do you assist in the idiocy?”
Harry stared at her. "Um. Is that a trick question?"
“No.” She made a face. “I think.”
"You do know that the first year I was here, my friends and I snuck into a forbidden wing of the school to catch someone in the act of stealing the Philosopher's Stone, right?"
“No?” She squinted at him. “There’s a real Philosopher’s Stone?”
"Well-- yeah. Of course?" he stumbled, perplexed. "And-- I mean, you know that it was me and Ron who went into the Chamber of Secrets to save his sister, right?"
Her expression was incredulous. “What? I thought Professor Lockhart had… I don’t know, claimed to have figured out where the chamber was, and went in himself?”
"Oh, he went in, alright," Harry lightly groused, rolling his eyes.
She frowned. “What?”
“Nothing,” he dismissed with a grimace. “But I mean, guess I just thought people knew what we were up to. Dumbledore gave us points and everything.”
“Harry, no offense, but beyond the whole… celebrity thing, I guess, I haven’t really known you as anything other than a pretty unremarkable kid,” she informed him. “There was that parselmouth nonsense... and, like I know you struggled with the Dementors, I suppose? Malfoy wouldn’t shut up about it. And I know I was surprised when Dumbledore called your name out of the Goblet of Fire but--” The breath that fluttered out of her mouth was half amused, half apologetic. “Sorry, you just never seemed like you got up to much?”
Harry blinked. “Well, that’s… new,” was his dumbfounded comment. He couldn’t decide whether he ought to be relieved or disappointed.
“I mean-- there were rumors,” she amended, her arms moving to cross over her chest. “But, all of those sounded pretty silly? I mean, you weren’t in a serious love triangle between your best friend and that… one guy who was here during the Triwizard Tournament…?” Her brow furrowed. “Forgot his name. The Slavic one.”
He suppressed a groan. “Krum. Viktor Krum. And no, we weren’t.”
“So, you know,” she ambled on, “I didn’t really take much stock in what weird things people said about you. No offense.”
“None taken,” he remarked. “It’s just… weird to think, you know? I’ve met so many strangers who just know things about me that I forget that I’m… really not that important, to some people.”
She very pointedly looked away from him. “Well, uhm. This is really getting far away from my question--”
Harry backtracked. "Right, ehm. Well the point is, if you're looking for trouble, then I've got quite enough of it to go around."
She grimaced. "Saying it like that makes it sound like I shouldn't be enabled…"
In the face of her uncertainty, Harry asked point-blank, "What's this about then?"
There was a protracted amount of time where she considered him, the weight of her stare pulling heavily at him as if he were being picked apart. It went on so long that he began to feel antsy. His mounting discomfort prompted him to fill the silence with greater and greater urgency, but just as he was about to succumb, she shifted against the rail, breaking eye contact to look over her shoulder.
"Not here."
In a matter of minutes, they had sequestered themselves in one of the solitary rooms on the northern end of the corridor. Harry had never been there, but it appeared to be a music room of some sort, filled with handwritten sheet music on parchment, a scattered collection of instrument trunks, a small piano, and a large terrarium full of toads.
When Cleo faced him, her expression was grave. “I need you to understand that what I’m about to tell you is extremely privileged. I shouldn’t even be telling you, really.”
Harry set his bags down carefully beside the dias, watching her closely. "Okay. I… understand," was his concerned reply.
There was a significant pause after, where he observed a large swathe of expressions pass over her face. She paced nervously and aggressively across different parts of the room, never hovering in one place for too long. Every so often, she turned in his direction with a look so dire he thought she’d reconsider the matter entirely.
However, eventually, she settled. Perching herself up against a nearby table, she let out a massive gust of a sigh. “There’s a patient at the hospital I’ve been working with for…” Her eyes rolled to the ceiling as she considered this and sighed again. “I don’t know. A month now, I think. She’s had a really rough go of it.”
Harry situated himself on the floor in front of her, his back propped against the wall. "Is she… okay?" he ventured, unsure what to say.
“She is now,” Cleo answered, clasping her hands together in her lap. “Her initial intake had to do with the obvious splinching injury she’d been found with. But it was really apparent after the first Dittany treatment that her injuries spanned so much more than that. She was malnourished, she had extensive magical injury with signs of Cruciatus, so many fractures, just the abundant evidence of--” Harry tensed when her voice cracked. She scowled hard into it, a few moments passing before she spoke again, tone hardened. “--sexual abuse. It was just. Horrible. We had no idea if she’d even recover.”
Hearing that made Harry feel unquestionably strange. The image of the bellhounds’ rotting corpses, their master splayed on the doorstep, was as clear in his mind as the first moment he’d laid eyes on it but… Haunting as that memory was, it paled in comparison. He’d endured Cruciatus himself, but he’d never quite considered that torture took other horrific forms, the likes of which had the capacity to drive people like Neville’s parents to a permanent stay in St. Mungo’s. The level of depravity required to do something like that to another person was… awful. This. This was what the enemy was capable of. What the Order was fighting against. This was what the Boy Who Lived was supposed to put an end to.
The thought was paralyzing. He wasn’t ready. Dumbledore had said as much. But-- he had to be! Every moment he wasted sitting at Hogwarts caused unimaginable pain to other people, yet there was nothing he could do!
His pause after her words was getting excessive, he could tell. Harry took a few breaths, trying to find his voice again, and squeezed his hands together so tightly that it hurt. “Um. Then it’s… I mean, it must be… dark wizards, right?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she admitted, fidgeting. “I don’t really know many of the details. No more than what she’s already told me.”
His gaze fell to his lap, a frown pulling at his mouth. “Okay.”
“She’s a really good girl,” Cleo lamented, choking up a little. “Not really kind but, really free in her own way. Fiercely herself. Not afraid to say what she thinks. But very sweet when she needs to be. She’s just a kid too, you know? Just barely out of Hogwarts.”
“Don’t think Death Eaters much care how old you are,” he remarked, his tone suddenly biting.
“No,” she responded. “Probably not.”
Harry sighed, purposely relaxing his fingers, which had begun to ache. “Do they, er… know who did it?” he found himself asking. “The Aurors, I mean?”
“That’s the thing,” she broached. “There’s a lot of confusion about… who, I guess. She doesn’t know their names and like-- I don’t know, I was only there for one conversation when something at the hospital went tits up the other week, but… they clearly have her memories. Yet this Auror was insinuating that it was possible she’d been ‘tampered with’ or that she was confused about who had her, and she was screaming about how the person wasn’t dead, or… I don’t know--”
He grimaced. That was all a bit hard to follow. “I don’t really, ah… know much about how memories work.” Since Snape taught me next to nothing, his mind supplemented.
Perhaps picking up on his uncertainty, her expression became apologetic. “Sorry, uhm-- it’s all really complicated. I’m kind of explaining it weird.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?” Harry prompted, quiet. “What happened to her?”
“No--” Her mouth twitched. “I mean, yes, it bothers me, but…”
“What?”
“It’s going to sound insane.”
Harry sat up a little straighter to look her in the eye. “I really doubt that.”
Her cheeks puffed up as she held and then expelled a loud, apprehensive breath. “We were walking together,” she started, staring down at her hands. “It was her first time, which is a huge milestone in her recovery. But in the middle of it--” She paused momentarily. “At the time I had no idea why someone like Narcissa Malfoy was allowed in the hospital, but I guess she was there for some sort of business. And while we were walking, we saw her. And just seeing the woman caused her to have this massive meltdown. Completely and totally out of control. The other Minders nearly had to restrain her with magic. It took forever to calm her down.”
Narcissa Malfoy? What did she have to do with it? Harry crossed his arms over his knees. “I mean, she is the wife of a Death Eater,” was his flat retort. “That ought to be enough to send anyone screaming.”
“That wasn’t the weird part, though,” she continued. “She wasn’t freaking out because it was Narcissa Malfoy -- she was freaking out because it wasn’t.”
Harry blinked. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Cleo floundered. “Because I tried to rule out the usual suspects -- I asked her if it was someone impersonating her in Polyjuice, or someone using Imperius on her; every time it was an emphatic no. She kept insisting that it was Narcissa while also not being Narcissa. I don’t know what that means.”
He took in a tense breath, fingernails digging into his arms. His words came in a rush, like they were being squeezed out of him. “Maybe it’s possession.”
“That’s…” The girl’s countenance grew fearful. “It-- I mean… Do you think something like that is even possible?”
“Yeah.” His tone was grave. “It almost happened to me. ”
“Wait, wait,” she stopped him, leaning forward. “What are you talking about?”
He fidgeted. “Last year. At… at the Ministry. Dumbledore, uhm.” He probably shouldn’t mention Occlumency with Snape. Or his visions from last year. Or… Well. Maybe he shouldn’t have been talking about any of this, full-stop, but... This was important, wasn’t it? And if Cleo had trusted him this far, then the least he could do was offer the same in return.
“Last year, Voldemort was trying to get in my head,” he told her. “He wanted to use me to get some information in the Department of Mysteries, and when he’d finally managed to trick me into going there, it was an ambush. Professor Dumbledore dueled him, but then he tried to take control of my body, and it was…” Harry sighed, looking at the ground. “He nearly managed it, I think. It… it was like my body was melting-- the pain was so unbearable that I wished I’d die but I couldn’t move, and that creature--” He scowled. “It was my mouth and my voice, but it was Voldemort’s words, telling Dumbledore to kill me if he dared…”
He hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, he’d been so caught up in his grief for Sirius, but Harry found himself shivering at the memory, repulsed.
“How, though?” she pressed, her voice markedly gentle. “Before he was in physical proximity to you, he was already in your head. How?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They said he was able to use Legilimency, that we had some kind of… connection through my scar that allowed him to do it without eye contact."
“So Voldemort had a conduit,” Cleo observed, her eyes darting to his forehead briefly. “But… Legilimency isn’t a kind of magic that allows for possession.”
Harry shrugged. “I guess? All I know is that it happened.”
“Regardless… I don’t think Narcissa has the same connection you do to Voldemort.”
“Well, it’s the only thing that makes sense, doesn’t it?” he mentioned. “I mean, if she’s not Imperiused or Polyjuiced, then what else is there?”
Her frown was pensive as she began to pace in place. “I don’t know?” she mused. “That’s kind of the entire point, isn’t it? I have no idea what she meant, or what could possibly be going on. In your situation, it was pretty clear that Voldemort had some sort of… access to you. I don’t know if that’s the same for Narcissa.”
“Then, what are you going to do?” Harry asked, uncertain.
“I promised her I would get her out,” Cleo told him, shrugging. “No one in that room…” She grimaced. “No one believed her. But I do. If Violet says she’s in danger, then… I believe her.”
“Okay, then--” He froze, mind stuttering to a halt as he stared up at her with wide eyes. Bits and pieces of things she’d said replayed in his memory amidst a fog of surprise. “Wait… Violet? ” Harry questioned, voice laden with focused intent.
Even amidst her frantic pacing, Cleo answered him with an apologetic, “Yeah, sorry-- that’s her name. I should’ve been clearer--”
He felt something dangerously close to hope. “Sorry but, is her last name--” He stopped, the unnerving patter of his heart making it difficult to continue. He took in a deep breath and tried, “This is going to sound-- I mean, uh--” He swallowed. “Violet-- as in, Violet Ayers? ”
She stopped to stare at him, expression overcome with shock. “You know her?”
Harry was up off the floor immediately, a wave of… something crashing into him with the force of a stone wall. He felt all at once like laughing and crying, his chest tight with some foreign, unfathomable emotion. Jumbled, he paced away from Cleo and toward an empty desk, staring blankly at the tabletop.
He heard her somewhere behind him. “Harry?”
His expression must have looked truly haggard when he turned in her direction, since her voice grew even more gentle, “Are you okay?”
He didn’t have an answer, staring at her for a prolonged moment before he said the only thing he felt able to. “I thought she was dead.”
“Oh God,” she gasped, hands reaching out toward him briefly before retracting, uncertain. “Harry, I’m so sorry. Were you her friend? Had no one told you yet?”
His confusion settled slowly. “We… we weren’t friends, really,” he managed, though he felt it inadequate. “I hardly knew her… I just, ehm-- I can’t really…”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand--”
Finding the words was easy; it was saying them that was difficult. “I thought…” His eyes darted about, restless. “It’s… it’s my fault, I… I thought she was dead because of me.”
“How-- ” Her expression twitched. “Harry, how in the world would it be your fault--?”
“I delayed the investigation,” he confessed, his chest unbearably tight. “He-- He said I’d… wasted a lead, that-- that she might not come home to her parents because of me--”
“Investi--” She stopped again before gently grabbing him by the upper arm. “What are you talking about?”
Tears began to prick his eyes, then, and he jerkily pressed his palms against his face as if to push them back, heaving a muffled sigh between them. “Sorry, I’m…” A second sigh, and he lowered his hands, shoulders dropping with them. “I don’t know how to feel. I thought she was dead, but now she’s not, and-- That should be a good thing, but…”
“But?”
Harry looked up at her. “How can it be a good thing that she was suffering, and I could have helped prevent it, but I… didn’t? ”
“Harry, I don’t know how you could possibly think that you could have prevented it?” Cleo tried, blatantly puzzled.
He wasn’t even sure himself. The world seemed more vast and unquantifiable than ever before, his outings with Snape only further driving home how inadequate he truly was to the job of saving it. “I… can’t say much,” Harry prefaced, cautious. “Nobody’s really supposed to know this, but-- Violet went missing two months ago, and I’ve been helping with the investigation sometimes. But I… got in a fight with her dad and we had to leave early, without barely asking her parents any questions, and it was over the stupidest thing--”
“Why were you even--?!” she started, sounding so heated that Harry bristled, leaning away from the hand that she still had on his arm. She caught herself, taking a breath.
“Listen to me,” she ordered, grappling his other arm to face him squarely at her. “None of this is your fault.”
On edge, he lurched out of her grip, his distress plain. “She could have died! ” Harry protested, as if it were irrefutable proof of his wrongdoing.
She didn’t approach him again, but her gaze was intent and severe. “I don’t know how you got involved and I’m not going to force you to explain,” she told him. “But I need you to understand, Harry, that it’s not in your ability to save everyone. And that your failure to do so is not a reflection of you as a person. Everything Violet has gone through, the responsibility lies in the hands of the man who took her, who abused her, who tortured her-- and him alone.”
He blew out an unsteady breath. “I’m the Boy Who Lived,” he recited, toneless. “It is my responsibility. If I don’t put a stop to this, who will?”
“Literally everyone else around you,” she argued. “Defeating an absolute evil like that is the job of an entire community. Not just one person.”
The prophecy told a different story entirely, but he couldn’t say that. Instead, his mouth sealed itself shut, arms crossed tightly as he stared at his and Ron’s bags across the room.
Her sigh felt heavy to his ears. “Nevermind. The paramount thing is that Violet is stuck in that hospital and this "Narcissa", whatever she is, is coming back on Saturday. More infuriatingly, the Aurors are refusing to do anything substantial to prevent it.”
Harry, glad of a distraction from his turbulent thoughts, looked back at her. Assessing, he said, “So, no choice but to get her out. Where would you take her?”
“I don’t know -- I didn’t have a planned out, rational thought about it,” she confessed. “I impulsively said it. I have no idea where I’d take her or how I’d even get her out in the first place.”
“I’ll help you,” Harry said without a single second of hesitation. “We can get her out together.”
“How, though?” she questioned. “Have you been to St. Mungo’s? That place is a complete fortress and-- God. With the amount of Minders and Healers constantly on rounds, there is no way she can just disappear without it causing some sort of uproar.”
“They’ve got a Floo, yeah?” he pressed on, determined. “And you work there? You can just say you’ve been told to take her out somewhere and leave--”
“She’s a spell damage patient and the subject of an ongoing investigation,” she objected immediately. “There is nowhere outside the hospital where she is supposed to go. Her parents aren’t even allowed to see her.”
Harry paced away from her along the line of wooden music stands. “Then-- she just has to disappear. Disillusionment? Or-- I have er, an invisibility cloak? You can lead her out that way.”
“She can’t walk on her own yet,” she countered. “And her condition is too fragile for complex magic to be cast on her.”
“Well…” He was losing steam. “I don’t know. Can you Apparate in the hospital?”
“I can’t Apparate, much less Side-Along, and even if I could, there are Anti-Apparition wards to prevent patients from being transported that way unauthorized.”
He was quiet for a minute, thinking. “There has to be something. Some way to get her out, quick as possible, and without injuring her more than she already is.”
There was a moment when Cleo’s expression lit up, then just as suddenly darkened, her hands jerking up to cover her face. “Fuck.”
His attention latched on to her. “What?”
Her voice oozed from behind her palms, sounding almost like a whine. “My portkey.”
“You have a portkey?”
“Connected to Snape’s office. It’s how I get to work.”
Harry frowned. “Well, that’s good, right? It’s a way out. You’d just have to bring it to her, not a lot of magic involved that would hurt her.”
“It’s connected to me,” Cleo explained, her fingers raking themselves over her cheeks and down to her neck. “When she goes missing, they’ll be able to trace it back to me.”
“Oh.” His gaze fell to the floor. “Oh.”
His shoulders drew back when she suddenly squatted to the ground, holding her head at her knees, hands squeezing the back of her neck. “Shit.”
“Are you okay?”
It took her a good few moments to answer, watching the methodical rhythm of her hands rubbing the back of her neck, soothing. “Don’t know.”
Harry watched her, concerned.
“Just--” There was a significant pause as her fingers dug into her throat, the grip tight enough to look painful. She let out a loud breath and her fingers relaxed. “Trying to come to terms.”
That sounded ominous. “With what?”
“Nothing,” she suddenly answered, standing to her full height. “I’ll worry about it later.”
He fidgeted. “Okay.”
Her postured tensed, expression bordering on suspicious as she looked at him. “I’ll do it, you know. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I’m not,” Harry clarified, quirking his head at her. “It’s just… if you’re going to get in trouble with Snape, we can find another way.”
“Snape is the least of my worries,” was her cryptic assertion. “Besides, there isn’t. You know that.”
“There has to be. Magic always makes options.”
“If you know of any, say so now.”
He faltered. “Well, I don’t. But Ron and Hermione could probably think of something.”
“What--?”
“My friends-- We have to tell them. All together, we could figure it out, and you wouldn’t have to deal with anyone tracing anything back to you.”
“That’s not--” Her sigh issued loudly from her mouth as she leaned back against a nearby table. “Nevermind. But I’m not too keen on telling more people about this. It’s bad enough I got you involved.”
“You can trust them,” Harry assured her. “They won’t say a word.”
“This is insane--”
“You can trust us,” he repeated with emphasis. “Promise. We’ll do whatever it takes to protect Violet and you.”
For a while she simply looked at him, prolonged and pointed enough for him to begin to feel uncomfortable. She looked like she was thinking -- about what, he didn’t know. But eventually she broke eye contact, gaze floating to the ceiling as she crossed her arms. “Where and when, then?”
There was an urgency to his gait as he crossed the room. “Thursday, on the grounds. I’ll have to let them know tomorrow.”
Her lips twisted. “Not exactly private, is it?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Her head tossed back and forth as she considered this. “Besides these empty classrooms? The most private place I know is The Haunt.”
Harry was distinctly puzzled. “What is that? ”
She made a face. “Sorry-- the Slytherin… place I took you last time we were together.”
“Didn’t seem very private to me,” he mentioned, remembering all the looks he’d gotten on his way out. “But then again…” His gaze was drawn to where his and Ron's bags were slumped on the floor. “I think we could make it work.”
Her voice emerged over his shoulder. “And how do you figure that, exactly?”
Harry stooped down, uncovering the familiar little blue flower in Ron’s bag. The longer he stared, the more his resolve strengthened.
His choice was hasty, but decisive. He pulled it out of place and hid it within his own bag.
“You’ll see.”
Unexpectedly, Malfoy came to class the next day.
Harry was cutting apart his pickled bat intestines when the Slytherin strode into Potions twenty minutes late, his arrival disruptive only because the room was so deathly quiet. A few heads turned in his direction, Harry's included, but Malfoy swept a glare across his empty workable, not looking directly at anyone.
Harry turned back to his potion with an anxious frown; it was at the fermenting stage, the brewing process well underway. He had to wonder why Malfoy had decided to show up at all. As it was, the extended N.E.W.T. class usually only barely covered the time needed to complete their assigned potion, and that started him off at a severe disadvantage.
And yet, Snape apparently had nothing to say about it.
Harry cast a furtive glance at Cleo. She was busy with her own potion and did not look in his direction. While she was studious as always, Harry's attention was heavily wavering in light of Malfoy's appearance. He'd been counting on his still being laid up in hospital, but now…?
Snape passed by the workable; Harry froze on reflex, but the man continued on, approaching the Slytherin section of the room. He stopped in front of Malfoy's station, voice pitched low but plainly audible in the small dungeon classroom, "See me after class."
The blonde's expression twitched with annoyance, but all he said was, "Yes, sir."
And that was all. They both returned to their own business, nice as you please. Similarly, Harry returned to his, but his mind was whirring. Snape had, perhaps, granted him just the opening he needed. It was a risky time limit, but… He couldn't let it go to waste. Now was the best time to strike, while he was still recovering. And especially after witnessing Ron the night before, doggedly inquiring after every single person in the common room about if they'd seen his ward, waiting for another day wasn't going to be an option.
Lost in thought, he lifted a hand to place another sliver of bat intestine into his potion-- Wait, shit! How many had he put in?! His hand stuttered, eyes scrambling across the table to count how many were left.
Five. He jerked his arm back, placing the ingredient back on the tabletop and blowing out a breath. Close call. Lifting his eyes to the hourglass at the head of the room, he caught Snape watching him, gaze intent. Harry’s stomach twisted as he looked away. He’d rather not risk drawing the man’s ire-- nor risk him finding out just what Harry’s extracurricular plans were.
Class time passed in silence, with not even the bubbling of cauldrons to keep him company. Each burner was set low, their particular potions requiring a lukewarm climate. The Potions classroom was similarly temperate: Snape did not prowl about, did not sneer at anyone, and in fact did not address any student at all unless they prompted him first. Harry might have called it peaceful, if not for the dreadful quiet. He tapped his fingers against the tabletop at practiced intervals, the action helping him keep track of the recipe, but even that slight noise felt disruptive. At one point, he swirled about his potion a bit too vigorously, and the small, tinny clang of his stirring stick against the edge of the cauldron was loud enough to draw some displeased stares.
Two hours passed slowly, painfully, but once they were finally over Harry had completed an actual potion without interference, and with minutes to spare. He’d… actually done it! Properly memorized a recipe and created it! There was some atrophied part of him, the part which had long been battered by Snape’s infinite criticisms, that was just the tiniest bit proud. Harry couldn’t help but admire his hard work, the Dreamless Sleep potion shining up at him with a lively purple hue.
Sensing that Snape might, perhaps, be waiting for an opportune moment to strike, Harry had earlier plucked an extra vial from the supply closet. He bottled up two portions of his work, saving the second in case some ‘accidental’ mishap destroyed the first. For his plans to work out, he needed to get out of the classroom as soon as possible, but his grades were of equal import; he’d lost a lot of ground after not turning in an essay and being absent so many times in a row.
Approaching the professor’s desk, he placed his vial down with a small clack and turned to leave. Unfortunately, yet predictably, Snape did not let that stand.
“Mr. Potter.”
Frowning, he turned back around, careful not to look at the man directly. “Sir?”
“Where is the rest of your potion?”
Harry stared at his vial, noticeably less full than his classmates’. “That’s all I have,” he lied.
Snape’s stare burned into him. “Is that so.”
“Yeah.” He clenched the strap of his bag, anxious.
“You are, of course, aware that potions brewed in class are not for personal use,” the professor said, his tone disapproving.
He was losing precious seconds. In the interest of being more direct, Harry chanced meeting the man’s eyes, hoping he’d either let the matter go or start up the humiliation already. Best to get it over with instead of drawing it out.
“Yes, sir,” he recited, mechanical.
Snape stared at him, expression unreadable. Then, the unexpected: His gaze broke away, turning his attention back toward his writing. Dipping his quill, the man dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
Harry couldn’t believe his luck. Relieved, he turned on the spot to head out the doors, but in his rush, he bumped directly into Hermione, causing some of her books to clatter to the floor. “Oh, er… sorry,” he murmured, stooping to pick up what he’d toppled. She curtly shooed him away before he could grasp a single one, bending over at the waist to collect the books against her stomach before standing up straight again.
Her silence caused a familiar ache to form in his chest. "Ah, Hermione?" Harry prompted suddenly, his mouth working on impulse. "Can we… talk later?"
“When?” she sighed, sounding put upon. “I have a study group after dinner.”
He was acutely aware that the classroom was still full, his discomfort mounting. "Uhm it's… it's really important."
Harry noticed Cleo glance their way as she cleaned out her cauldron, but she thankfully said nothing. Hermione followed his eyes that direction before scowling. “Okay… so let’s go talk now--”
“No, I… I can’t now, and besides--” He hesitated. “I need both you and Ron to be there.”
She sighed again. “Harry--”
“I know you’ve been--” He cut himself off as Malfoy passed by them on his way to Snape’s desk. Not keen to talk about this with an audience, Harry pressed, “Please. Just meet us in the common room tonight, and we’ll find a place to talk. Okay?”
Her stare was grim and remained affixed on her stony expression until it broke, eyes drifting toward the ceiling as she exhaled. “Fine.”
Harry nodded, though it was a listless, wavering sort of motion. “Okay. I’ll… see you later?”
She turned from him, walking away with a mumbled, disinterested, “Bye.”
The passage to the Slytherin common room refused to appear.
Harry cleared his throat before reciting again, "Top of class."
Nothing happened, which was ridiculous because he'd just heard a girl come through and use that exact password! He'd even checked to make sure he wasn't touching Ron's flower ward when he said it, on the off chance that was the problem, but clearly it wasn't. Even though the Slytherin common room had no portrait to guard it, was the wall still somehow able to detect who was Slytherin and who wasn’t? Did it recognize his voice or something? Perhaps if he knew more about warding he’d be able to decode the mystery, but, despite whole class periods of Defense dedicated to it, the material simply hadn’t stuck in his head.
With a huff, Harry paced in front of the entrance, annoyed that he'd have to wait for another person to come by. This time, it ended up being a group of three boys -- fourth years, probably -- who were incredibly rowdy. Harry heard them laughing long before they rounded the corner.
The tallest of them cackled, “So, how ‘bout it, Nate? Everyone’s dying to hear your password.”
“I said no,” retorted the second boy. “Not happening.”
“It really is about Amy, then,” the third teased. “I knew it--!”
“You lot don’t know your arse from your elbow,” the second informed them all crisply. “Unlike you, I’ve got proper aspirations.”
“That’s offensive, that is,” the first one complained.
The third boy just rolled his eyes. “Just say it, you buffoon. We haven’t got time to wait around.”
“No!”
With an exasperated sigh, the first one stepped up. “It’s useless; we’ll never convince him. Keeper.”
The passageway opened, and the other two snickered. “Funny how you don't even bother to keep yours a secret. Don’t you think it’s time you changed it?” the second boy said. “You’re never getting on the Quidditch team.”
“And you’re never going to get Amy to look twice at you.”
The mean laugh and waspish reply that followed was cut off by the wall falling closed behind them. Harry was left in silent contemplation, a horrible thought creeping up to him: Did every single Slytherin have their own unique password? It was absolutely mental, but it had to be, right? Each password tied to each specific student… Harry would think the whole system bizarre if he hadn’t come to expect this sort of thing from Slytherins.
Overly complicated, the lot of them.
Once Harry knew that no amount of knowing passwords was going to make a difference, he took a different approach. One that brought him uncomfortably close to the pair of Slytherin girls who arrived next. He drew as close to their backs as he dared, his footsteps sounding very loud to his own ears, but there was no need to worry about detection; the ward in his hand, along with the cloak draped about him, eclipsed his presence almost entirely. The girls didn’t even look over their shoulders as they whispered yet another password at the wall and entered, Harry tailing swiftly behind them.
The Slytherin common room was both the same and different than he remembered. To start, it was a lot more crowded. Harry had to flatten himself against the wall immediately to avoid someone's passing. The noise in the room rivaled Gryffindor, though the culprits seemed limited to a handful of boisterous people rather than all the inhabitants at large. And, despite the fact that December had just barely arrived, there were already Christmas decorations scattered about, too stylish and tasteful to have been placed by house elves.
A few things hadn't changed much at all, though. Namely, the oppressive feel of the place. Everything was shadowed, moody. Dark leather wingbacks, serpentine shapes undulating in the rugs, emerald draperies with clasps of silver, ceilings black as night, windows tinted with an outlook into the gloomy undercurrents of the lake. Though the common space was larger than Gryffindor's, it felt smaller, making the amount of bodies present feel like… too much.
Overwhelming as it was, he knew he needed to stay focused. He made it across the room without too much difficulty, staying to the sections where students were sitting, calm and motionless, locked in conversation or study. He found himself stuck when a girl began vigorously pacing in the space between a line of students hovering over a tense game of cards and a corner that was occupied by a small, furtive group. The latter contained people he recognized.
It was that Ann girl and the rest of her lackeys, alongside… Rhys Urquhart. The boy had his arm slung across the girl’s shoulders, legs crossed, looking about as relaxed as Harry had ever seen him.
“He’s bold, that’s for certain,” Urquhart remarked in a manner that suggested only a casual interest, glancing up briefly from the book on his knee.
In contrast, his girlfriend was animated with the force of her indignation. “Merlin, I can’t believe he wrote you like that!” Ann exclaimed with a disbelieving chuckle, her hand swaying in front of her face as if she were shooing something away. “What an ugly little proposition.”
The pacing girl, which he then recognized was one of the twins, had the offending letter clutched in her hands, mumbling a morose, “It’s not a proposition, it’s an order. He has told them we’ve been secretly engaged for two years. But we haven’t. And I don’t want to move to France--”
Ann sat up with such vigor that Urquhart’s arm was jostled off her shoulder. “Then don’t!”
“I have to; they believe my virtue is… compromised. Mother is so upset, and-- and Eliza said I shouldn't complain because they are very rich--”
“No matter how advantageous the match, it simply won’t do,” she insisted, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. “There are quite enough rich men in Britain for anyone’s liking! Listen-- you must tell your father that French weather will make you terribly ill, and that you cannot bear to be parted with your sister. Say your heart will be unmendably broken to be alone and friendless in a strange country, and you will never speak to him again if he allows it! Then, the quarrel will go between your parents, and you hardly have to be involved.”
The other girl huffed a worried sigh. “But, I don’t want to disown my father…”
“Of course not! And when he calls off the marriage, you can say you were so caught up when you wrote that letter, and that all is well and he is utterly forgiven. But not a moment before you get your way, understand?”
Urquhart spoke up again. “Isn’t that a touch gratuitously underhand? Flora, why not just refuse the man outright if you find him so repulsive?”
“Mother would be frightfully angry if--”
Flora stopped pacing, turning their way, giving Harry an opening to pass through. He did so carefully, not bothering to listen to the rest as he slipped through the shadowed doorway which led to the dormitories.
He’d been in the common room before, but beyond was new ground that was a lot more new than he'd expected. Unlike Gryffindor, there was no split indicating separate dorms for different genders, no staircases, no signs to show which years inhabited which space; instead, he was confronted with a single dark hallway, along which were two lines of identical doors that stretched as far as he could see. So many, in fact, that he suspected there were far more rooms than there were Slytherins. Cautious, he tried a nearby door and found it, predictably, locked. The further he advanced, the more he could see the hall branch off into various cul de sacs and tributaries, the corridor seeming to meander in whatever direction it pleased. All along the walls was door after door, each the same as the last. Endless and utterly indistinguishable.
Harry was struck with a hopeless sort of dread. He was never going to find Malfoy's dorm room in this mess.
The sound of his sigh burst into his ears like a windstorm, and he put a hand to his forehead, the pointlessness of this endeavor weighing on him. Just his luck that even Slytherin architecture was made to thwart him. The very thought of going back through the common room to get out was exhausting… He couldn’t bear the thought that there might be evidence of dark magic right there in Malfoy's possession, just waiting to be found… and by his inaction he was letting it go to waste. No-- Harry absolutely had to see for himself. He knew something needed to be done, else he'd go mad, but exactly what was unclear.
He had one more idea. Just the one, and it was probably his worst one yet, but it was his last chance to make something of his efforts. And besides, he'd already come this far… With that thought in mind, Harry made his way back toward the entrance.
He didn't have to wait long to put his hastily-constructed plan into action. In a stroke of luck so advantageous that he marveled at it, Malfoy himself appeared on the scene not ten minutes after. The Slytherin's expression took Harry aback: he looked enraged, but his face was contorted strangely, in a way that Harry couldn't define. The boy's footfalls came fast, and he passed by Harry's invisible form with such haste that he had to jog to catch up.
Malfoy made several sharp turns, so quick and clumsy that he repeatedly caught his shoulder on the corner of a hard stone wall, swearing under his breath. Harry tried to keep close at his heels, but another quick idea forced him to pause at every intersection. He plucked petals from the flower ward to stuff them between the stones in the wall-- his ticket back out of this labyrinth. He hated to maim Ron's ward, but he wasn't exactly brimming with alternatives.
After five abrupt turns and a long walk down a straightaway, Malfoy halted in the center of a curved hall. The door in front of him looked the same as all the others, but with a disgruntled sigh, he cupped his hand over his mouth against the doorframe before whispering something indecipherable. The door before him clicked open, and, frantic, Harry scrambled to slip into the room after him.
He almost made it, but Malfoy, in his high dudgeon, decided to slam the door behind him, bludgeoning Harry's ankle in the process. The door bounded back open into the hallway, slamming against the wall and as he muffled a shout with his hand, the pain radiating up his leg -- the same one he'd broken only a month ago -- he tried to limp a safe distance away.
Malfoy's voice was right behind him. "Is someone there?" he barked. Harry froze and, when he turned to look, he witnessed the boy peer suspiciously out into the hallway, wand drawn. Then, keeping very still, his eyes swept across the entryway, passing over where Harry was hunched. He kept his breathing shallow, not daring to move.
The boy's wand slashed through the air, and Harry flinched. "Revelio Maximus!"
Magic sizzled around them, and Harry noticed something glow briefly bright blue in the Slytherin's pocket. Then, he could only watch with wide eyes as Malfoy advanced one step toward him, then two...
"Ugh," the boy suddenly expelled a breath. "It's just the stupid--!"
He snatched a glowing quill from the bookcase beside Harry, his expression giving way to pure irritation. With a single jerky motion, he went back to close the door with a loud bang, and threw the quill into his bag so roughly that Harry suspected he'd cracked it in two.
His ankle was throbbing, but he had to get up and move if he didn't want Malfoy to run into him; the boy's movements around the room were frenetic and unpredictable. Gritting his teeth, Harry slowly rose to his feet, sticking himself in a nearby corner to wait.
And wait he did. Five minutes passed, and Malfoy had ceased his wandering, opting instead to sit at a nearby writing desk, rolling over his wand in his hands over and over. Ten passed, and he was rifling around in a drawer for a potion Harry didn't recognize (not that he was particularly skilled at identifying them at a glance anyway). Malfoy drank it in shuddering intervals, disgust lining his face, before he put it back in its place, covering it with a messy stack of parchment. After fifteen had gone by, Malfoy had shed his school robe and was laid spread eagle on the bed, staring at the ceiling with unfocused eyes.
Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty.
Harry had plenty of time to examine the room. The style of its fixtures was about as fancy as he expected, but that was the extent of his predictive accuracy. The bedframe, wardrobe, bookcase, end tables, writing desk, and window frame were all polished ivory which gleamed in contrast to the dark stone walls. The bedding was plush, the pillows a navy blue on the large bed, and the floor rug extended nearly the length of the whole room. There were candelabras of pure white floating about, a moving landscape painting so large it covered an entire wall, and a fake view out the window of some kind of manor house. Every bit of the room was festooned with ornate decoration and fine craftsmanship.
But. Aside from the room being artfully arranged, the place was a disaster area. The wardrobe was ajar, but hardly any clothes were hanging in it anyway; they were all scattered and piled up on the floor, including the robe Malfoy had abandoned earlier. The writing desk -- once white -- was now rife with ugly black marks where ink had been spilled, and was cluttered with old parchments and books, crumpled or worse for wear. The bedding was slumped halfway off the edge, one pillow left abandoned on the floor, and the sheet was tangled into a knot. There was Slytherin paraphernalia thrown around on odd surfaces: a scarf shoved in the bookcase, a pennant haphazardly hanging from a floating candle holder, a Quidditch jumper stuffed at the foot of the bed… It was a strange mixture of posh and chaotic that Harry couldn't rightly make sense of, no matter how long he looked at it.
Forty. Fifty. One hour.
Harry's poor legs were aching by then, his injured ankle complaining at him, but he wasn't sure if it was safe to move. Malfoy had remained motionless for ages by then. Was he not going to go to lunch? It must be nearly over already, but Malfoy made no move to leave. Rather, he looked to be settling in; Harry had counted on his eventually leaving, but… What if he didn't? Would Harry have to wait until curfew to sneak out? How was he supposed to even leave this room? What if the door required a password from the inside too, or if by opening it he tripped off some kind of alarm? What then?
This plan is unbelievably stupid, he thought to himself, more an acknowledgement than a realization. But-- He was here now, so he may as well make the best of it.
Malfoy didn't move as Harry crept forward, the flower ward in his hand becoming a little sweaty under his nervous grip. The Slytherin's eyes were closed, but he wasn't asleep; there was a persistent furrow to his brow, and his fingers twitched in an irregular rhythm.
There were still some things glowing blue in the room, since Malfoy had never ended his Revealing spell. Harry had spotted a few knickknacks here and there: a set of spelled quills, a large goblet inlaid with emeralds, a few magical textbooks, a little glass decanter with seashells in it, a few of Malfoy’s cloaks… but, having had quite a chunk of time to observe the space, it was odd that not much had stuck out to him. Of course, he had no idea what he was looking for, but he'd figured he'd know it when he saw it; dark magic, in his experience, was not particularly subtle. And yet, there was nothing that looked particularly suspicious; it was just a normal, if richly furnished, room. No cursed statues, no mysterious bubbling cauldrons, no creepy contraptions like he'd witnessed in Borgin and Burke's… just regular stuff that he'd expect his dorm mates in Gryffindor to have lying around.
Not much to search, either. His trunk and wardrobe were thrown wide open, and a surreptitious peek into the adjacent bathroom revealed nothing more than soap and toothbrush. Looked like his plan was doomed to be dead on arrival; there really was nothing to see. If Malfoy possessed any dark magical objects, then they weren’t kept in his room.
Frustrated, Harry heaved a small sigh. In almost the same instant, Malfoy sprang into a sitting position, alert.
“Who’s there?!” he questioned, wand out. A rush of anxiety flowed through Harry -- had Malfoy actually heard him? A panicked glance at the ward in his hand revealed that it was still mostly intact, save for a few petals, but Ron had also mentioned that it was a work in progress… He held his breath, moving slowly away from where he’d made the noise.
Unfortunately, the room was a minefield. There were so many things on the floor that he was bound to knock into one of them. And Malfoy, alert as he was, saw the exact moment that his foot caught on a discarded pair of trousers.
A Stunning Spell sizzled past his shoulder, hitting the wall, mere centimeters away from him. This was bad. Really bad. If Malfoy’s spell really had connected, there was no telling what he’d do with Harry once he had him. Belatedly, mortifyingly, he realized they were completely alone there, and Harry hadn’t told anyone where he would be or what he was doing. And if Malfoy really was a Death Eater now, as he’d long suspected… then Harry had delivered himself directly into the lair of the beast.
He didn’t have time to feel fear, or even admonish himself for stupidity; he just had to get out. Now. But escaping without being recognized was looking to be a more and more impossible feat. On the bed between him and Malfoy, he spotted a small, silver object buried beneath the tangled sheet. A pocket watch, looked like. Maybe if he could just grab it and throw it somewhere, it would be enough of a distraction that--
The instant his hand left the confines of the cloak, Malfoy saw it. “Flipendo!”
Thankfully, he was just a hair’s width faster. The spell was absorbed by his Protego as his fingers closed around the pocket watch.
His fingers fumbled around the watch’s edge as he positioned himself in the furthest corner of the room, arm at the ready to throw the thing once Malfoy drew too close. However, in his clumsiness, the watch face clicked open against his palm.
And something changed.
He observed it in the angular profile of the other boy’s face before he felt it inside himself; the way Malfoy’s gaze seemed to sharpen, the corners of his lips tightening into a horrible scowl, wand arm slashing outward, like a threat.
Harry had gone toe to toe with Malfoy many times before, but none of those times had ever felt quite like this. His fear mounted at a pace and intensity that threatened to immediately overwhelm him, his breath coming in a quick staccato that threatened to give his position away as the other boy swept across the bedroom.
Eventually, though, it wasn’t enough. When the first loud Expulso careened to an empty corner of the room, shattering a vase into pieces, he knew it was over.
No time to think of more plans. Malfoy’s lips were already poised on another attack, and Harry lurched forward, barreling into the Slytherin’s chest. He stumbled back, surprised, and in that brief opening Harry rushed past him toward the door, desperately hoping it would open. Miraculously, luck came through for him a third time. He careened into the corridor, not pausing for a moment’s breath before he was running at full speed down the hall.
Malfoy was only a step behind him. “Potter!”
He kept going, following the flower petals he’d left. Thank Merlin he’d thought to use them, else he’d have gotten lost for sure. Within thirty seconds, he’d reached the door to the common room, throwing it open before flattening himself against the inner wall of the corridor. Malfoy ran past him into the throng of gathered Slytherins, most of whom fixed their astonished scrutiny at his frenzied behavior. A minority of others, seemingly used to Malfoy’s idiocy, kept on with their activities, unperturbed.
His attention darted about the room wildly, searching, but Harry went the opposite way back where they’d come from. Navigating the space unseen during Malfoy’s tirade was an impossibility he wasn’t willing to brave; secluding himself back in the hall seemed like his only option.
The wait was far from peaceful, however. He could hear quite a commotion in the common room as Malfoy raged, his shouts so loud and unintelligible that they shook the walls. Some of the Slytherins shouted back, others threatened to get Snape involved, and a few fled to the dorms, muttering amongst themselves about his wild behavior, but Harry shrank away deeper still into his hiding spot, terror escalating. There was no calm; his sense of dread deepened with every second, knowing the longer he stayed, the more likely he was to remain trapped.
And if Snape showed up--
He didn’t want to think about it.
Ultimately, Malfoy spent a good two hours outside before he returned through the dorm entryway, looking ashen and bone-weary as he walked past where Harry sat. It was impossible for him to even savor the relief; his sinew quaked and trembled in his frame, worn down under the exhaustion of his anxiety. Even as the danger abated, his terror was nowhere near slated. It was impossible to feel safe.
But at least he could move.
His limbs shook terribly as he slunk to his feet, his fingers wrapped in a death grip to keep his cloak affixed to his body. His other hand grappled the useless pocket watch painfully in his fist, as that arm shakily anchored the ward against his side. It felt like an eternity before he took his first step to survey the Slytherin Common Room.
The place was a mess, but he wasn’t in the mood to notice to what extent Malfoy had turned the place over to find him. The parlor area was practically empty and Harry took his first tentative, slow steps toward the entrance.
It wasn’t until he was face to face with that empty patch of wall that he’d realized the scope of his second problem: There was no getting out, at least not until someone else opened the path.
His hands clenched as he let out a breath.
Fuck.
He felt a sharp pain in his palm and nearly recoiled; thankfully his Seeker-honed reflexes prevented him from dropping any of the precariously held objects on his person. But as he slunk to the nearby wall, he shifted the pocket watch in his hand to a more comfortable position between his fingers. His other hand loosened itself from his cloak and went to rub at the red indentations on his skin.
Stupid thing.
His thumb smoothed over the butt of his palm as he flipped the watch cover closed against his wrist.
And then he felt it again.
A heaviness he didn’t realize was there unburdening itself from his frame, so sudden and dramatic that he almost fell forward from the force of it. For the first time, he took a breath and the cool sensation of relief shimmered over his overwrought muscles. His heart slowed. His mind settled.
And for the first time, his eyes focused on the scratched, tarnished surface of the trinket he’d been carrying. For the first time, he realized he recognized it.
Before he could properly process his thoughts, the doorway appeared and a couple more people on their way in from dinner passed. Harry rushed and stumbled behind them to get outside.
His cloak had drifted halfway off in the midst of his running, but he hardly cared. There were places he needed to be, people he absolutely had to talk to. He’d barely had a moment to think, but his instincts rarely failed him. He had a hunch about this.
And if he was right-- Well. Then luck was definitely on his side.
Normally, Harry wasn't much for materializing the Room of Requirement. Neville had been their resident expert at it last year, though sometimes Ron or Ginny would help out, on account of their having both more detailed imaginations and more rigorous convictions to make specific demands of the room, and Harry had happily left that task to people more suitable than him.
Now, though… He dared not ask. The frosty atmosphere between their trio compelled him to have a go at it, despite the discomfort. He didn't want to inadvertently make things more difficult by sparking an argument between Ron and Hermione, who were standing so far apart at the end of the hall that two whole people could fit comfortably in the void.
Harry passed by the patch of wall in unbearable anxiety. Things were so weird between them… It felt more pronounced than ever now that they were alone like this, nothing to distract from the tense silence. They'd hardly exchanged four words between them, Hermione's mien pensive where Ron's was aloof. For their relationship to have atrophied this badly, he must really have not been paying attention. The guilt turned his stomach, but he had to focus if he wanted the room to do what he wanted.
On his last pass, a door appeared, much to his relief. But, when they opened it, the scenery was unexpected, to say the least.
The whooshing sound of running water filled the hallway before the rest of the sight could sink in: the grass covering the whole inner area, stopping abruptly at the entryway; the hexagonal, cream-colored gazebo in the center of a pond; the wood bridge leading them across the water, laden with vines and wildflowers; the little enclosed glade surrounded on all sides by gentle waterfalls which rippled the pond water like it was folded silk.
"Blimey, Harry," Ron commented straight off. "What did you wish for, a romantic holiday?"
He scratched behind his ear, feeling vaguely embarrassed. "I just asked for a place to meet where we wouldn't be bothered," he excused himself. "I thought it might give us the D.A. room."
“Well, we were ultimately bothered there,” Hermione pointed out during a casual stroll toward the gazebo. “So I can’t fault the Room for not wanting to use it again.”
"Yeah, but you have to admit it's a bit… much," Ron countered, dragging his feet along the grass.
Harry pulled the door closed behind them, and, when he did, it promptly vanished. He drew in a startled breath, staring. Well. At least he knew it would appear again when they needed it. The Room had never let them down before, after all.
His friends were more or less settled by the time he joined them at the gazebo. A bench curved around the inside, and Ron had taken up residence at one end while Hermione took the other. They both looked up at his approach, expectant.
"Right, ehm," Harry began from his position in the middle, arms crossed and eyes fixed to the light wooden slats at his feet. "There's… a lot to tell you, and it's… Well. Not really sure where to start off."
"The most important part, perhaps?" Hermione suggested.
They were all important. And, unfortunately, all likely to take a while to explain.
His discomfort must have shown in his face since Ron chimed in, "Or the easiest. Whichever works."
Harry sighed. "Okay. So it's like this-- I've been er… I know I haven't really said much about the Order missions…"
"Thought you said there wasn't much to tell?" Ron questioned, leaning his elbows on his knees.
"There's… I mean, Snape didn't let me do very much, yeah, but… there's this girl. We were looking into her going missing."
Hermione’s head canted. “I remember you saying as much.”
"Yes, but…" He faltered. "I thought she was dead for sure. Voldemort captured her, and she was missing for weeks, but she escaped, and she's in St. Mungo's now, and--"
"Hold on, mate," Ron interrupted. "You-Know-Who got this girl? Himself? Hasn't he got cronies for that?"
“Let him explain, Ron!” Hermione chastised him.
He shifted his weight, restless. "Thankfully, Voldemort's not in my head anymore, so I don't know why he was there, I just know that he was," Harry mentioned. "But the point is, she managed to get away, and yesterday, Cleo told me--"
"Oh, it's 'Cleo' now, is it?" Ron groused, his lips twisting.
“Ron,” Hermione warned.
Harry wasn't going to argue that one, instead continuing, "She told me that the girl, erm -- Violet is her name -- she said that the Malfoys were involved with it."
Hermione let out a hum, her expression contemplative, and Ron said nothing at all as he stared at his knuckles. Harry had expected more of a reaction, but perhaps it was better that he was allowed the room to speak.
"Malfoy's been absolutely mental this year, and Dumbledore refuses to do anything-- Snape hasn't lifted a finger for months, obviously, so… I've just been down to the Slytherin dorms."
Hermione’s tone was full-on admonishing. “Harry--”
Ron’s was too, albeit for an entirely separate reason. "Oi! And you didn't invite us?!"
"Sorry, the cloak's not so roomy as it used to be, Ron," Harry pointed out with a wry smile.
“That’s not--” Hermione covered her face with a loud, long-suffering sigh. When her hands plopped down back onto her lap, her eyes focused on him, slightly narrowed. “What were you thinking?”
The mirth faded quickly from his face. "I was thinking that there was something dodgy about those fights he's getting into, and I was right."
At that, he pulled the watch from his pocket, brandishing it as if it were a badge. " This is how he's been making people attack him. He's had it all year, I'd wager, but nobody bothered to search him, even though I knew it was dark magic--"
“How?” Hermione challenged.
Harry hesitated. "Well-- I don't know how, but it's got this--” He grimaced, trying to sort his thoughts. “Well-- when you open it, it's like… it's in your head, messing with your emotions. Like everything you feel is about ten times worse, and I'm telling you, it's exactly the same as that time before. When…" He looked away, not particularly wanting to bring that day up, now that it came to it. "Y'know," he ended lamely.
Hermione seemed perturbed at the mere mention of the incident. Ron, however, held out a hand. "Can I see it?"
Harry gave it up readily enough. "Whatever it is, even Dumbledore wasn't able to detect it--"
“Imagine that,” Hermione jabbed.
Harry frowned, but it was Ron who responded. "Suppose it would have to be a ward to have continuous function…"
"Can you do the er… what's it called? Ostendo?"
"'Expanding' the ward, it's called.” He hovered his wand over the cracked and broken watch cover, his lips moving minutely as he whispered something under his breath. Then, “Doesn't seem like it works."
"Maybe it’s got a password? Like yours?"
"Maybe…?"
"You two seriously think that you can sniff out a dark magic that the Headmaster could not?" Hermione interjected, aghast. "Need I remind you--"
"Well, he's not actually seen it yet," Harry countered. "But he said dark magic leaves traces, and this didn't--"
"Might not be dark magic then?" Ron suggested, eyes still on the watch.
"I mean, it has to be, since it made me attack Malfoy--"
“It didn’t make you do anything,” Hermione argued, rolling her eyes. “And haven’t you paid any attention to what Professor Tenenbaum taught us about dark magic? It’s not just ‘magic that makes you do something bad.’ It’s focused preternatural catharsis. The Dark Arts are a means to harness unfathomable power as ancient as life itself.” She leaned back against the bench, a scoff rattling deep in her throat. “And if you’re seriously suggesting that Malfoy is skilled enough to pull that off in such a way that even the most well-renowned wizard in all of Magical Britain couldn’t detect it--”
Ron shot her a look as he cut into her sentence. "Nobody's saying Malfoy actually made this thing--"
Harry raised both his hands. "I know what it is, I mean-- Snape even said as much when I asked about my mum's ward, but--"
“But what?” Hermione questioned hotly. “How do you explain that this dark magic has been making everyone cry havoc against Malfoy without Dumbledore catching notice?”
Ron blew out a breath. “Dumbledore’s not all-knowing, Hermione. Even he didn’t know there was a great ruddy Basilisk running about in the pipes, or that Moody was actually a Death Eater who kept the real Mad-Eye locked up in a trunk the entire year. So you can’t assume there’s nothing going on just because Dumbledore doesn’t know about it.”
“Look, I even talked to Urquhart about this,” Harry mentioned. “He doesn’t know what happened to him, either. Said he completely lost control out of nowhere. So there’s got to be something going on.”
“You even--” Hermione stopped herself, visibly flustered, before sucking in a breath. “So… you interrogated Urquhart and then infiltrated Slytherin, somehow, without telling us--”
“Yeah, honestly mate,” Ron said, leaning forward. “Slytherin’s a bloody fortress. How’d you manage that?”
There was a clear excitement to his tone, a vicarious glee in hearing the daring tale brought to light, but at that moment, Harry felt a terrible dread. To explain how he’d gotten the watch would also mean admitting to his thievery. But... as much as he’d fully intended to come clean with Ron, now didn’t seem like the proper time. Things were going so well for the three of them right now; it was finally starting to feel like old times, like they were a team again. And he just knew the truth was bound to ruin whatever tentative reconciliation they’d achieved.
Resolved, Harry replied in a carefully blasé manner. “Just a bit of invisibility and dumb luck, really.”
Ron laughed. “Oh, come on. You can’t expect me to believe it was simple as that.”
“No Polyjuice, no back up, no anything,” Hermione observed, sounding bitter. “In a common room overseen by Snape? No, it can’t be as simple as that.”
“I snuck into the common room behind some other Slytherins,” he explained, trying not to bristle at her tone. “The last time we went in, we were twelve. Now, I’ve got five years of Quidditch reflexes to help me dodge people; it’s not that unbelievable I could manage myself.”
Hermione didn’t seem impressed. “And then?”
Harry glowered. “Well, if you don’t believe me, then--”
Ron interrupted him with a wave of his hand. “Don’t mind her. I just want to know how you got a hold of this.” He peered at the watch again. “Where’d you even find it?”
“Malfoy’s room,” he answered, purposely vague.
“His…” Ron’s face screwed up in disgust. “Wait-- are you telling me he’s got a private room?”
Scratching the back of his head, Harry snorted. “Yeah. All of Slytherin has, actually.”
“All of--! You’ve got to be joking!”
“How did you even find his room?” Hermione pressed. “Their dorms are designed to be a labyrinth.”
Somehow, he wasn’t surprised that she knew that. Still, he didn’t particularly like how suspicious she sounded. “I followed him, obviously,” he divulged, crossing his arms. “He came through not long after I got there.”
“So you followed him into his room,” she repeated.
Ron rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to make it sound creepy, Hermione.”
Her head snapped in his direction. “I’m not.”
“Malfoy’s a right twat, so who cares about his privacy,” Ron mentioned, caustic.
“That’s not why I--”
Harry was quick to forestall them. “I wasn’t there to spy on him. I just wanted to have a look around.”
“And looks like you found what you were looking for,” Ron said, tapping the front clasp of the watch with a finger. Then, a look of contemplation overtook his features. “Come to think of it, how’d you know what you were looking for? Kind of hard to cast revealing spells without getting caught.”
Unprepared for this sudden line of thought, Harry said the first thing that came to mind. “Well, Malfoy had it on him, so I figured I ought to have a look.”
The intensity of Hermione’s stare was staggering. “On him?”
Too late, he realized the implications of what he’d just said. “Well-- I just meant, it was… nearby. He, uh, put it down.”
Ron’s expression shifted closer to confusion. “Malfoy was still in the room with you?” he questioned slowly.
“No,” Harry lied automatically. “He left. And erm…”
“If he was keeping it with him to start fights, why would he go all the way to his room just to put it down, and then leave?”
Hermione’s eyebrow raised. Harry cleared a throat that had suddenly gone dry. “Who knows why he does what he does? Maybe it was just for safekeeping.”
A small clicking sound cut through the air, Ron having just figured out how to work the mechanism. The case sprang open, revealing the lightly scratched but ornate watch face. There was a suspended pause, in which the lines in Ron’s brow deepened before he turned his gaze directly at Harry.
“How did Malfoy not hear you, Harry?”
Silence. He had no idea what to say. He’d run out of excuses.
“They’re private rooms, so the door was probably locked. You had to have been right behind him to get in.”
This was bad. “Ron, you should probably--”
“Hard to cast spells or move around in a closed space to search,” he talked over him. “You’d be caught if you so much as breathed too loud, yeah?”
Desperate, Harry cast a quick look at Hermione. Her arms rested primly in her lap, expression gone entirely blank.
“Yeah… Now that I think of it, Snape’s almost caught us loads of times after curfew. One tiny noise is all it takes for him to sniff us out.” When his gaze returned to Ron, his friend was openly glaring at him. “So, tell me. How is it you and him were in the same room, and he didn’t hear you at all?”
This was the exact opposite of how Harry would have wanted this exchange to occur. With a sinking feeling, he knew he had to try to set things right while there was still hope of salvaging the situation. His voice was beseeching when he said, “Ron, I didn’t--”
“Give it back,” Ron interrupted him, suddenly standing, his open palm outstretched toward him.
Hermione’s eyes followed the jerky movements of Ron’s body. “‘It?’”
Harry stooped to grab his bag, digging in it with a solemn air. “I was already meaning to--”
“Save it,” Ron demanded, sounding properly angry this time. “I just want my ward back.”
He found it in the very bottom, sandwiched beneath one of his textbooks. What was left of the flower’s petals were battered and bruised, and the stem was deeply creased in the center. With a grimace, he handed the thing to Ron, not meeting the boy’s eyes. Quite suddenly, the shame deluged him all at once, and he murmured, “Sorry, I didn’t, er… Thought I’d put it in a different pocket…”
For a moment, the room was deathly quiet, even the continuous noise of running water muffled by the weight of their silence. Then, when Ron spoke, his tone was very dark. “You destroyed my ward.” Harry looked up to find Ron staring at the mangled flower in his hand, lips pressed into a thin line.
He sucked in a tense breath. “I-- I’m sorry…”
“You took it without asking, lied about it, and then smashed it to bits.”
“I didn’t mean to. It’s just-- Hermione was right. It’s like a maze in there, and I didn’t want to get lost on the way back, so I thought taking off some petals would be fine--”
“Are you fucking dim, mate?” Ron snapped, his hand curling into a fist around the flower’s stem. “It’s a ward foundation. It’s what you attach the spells to. Pick it apart, and you destroy the whole fucking ward. How hard is that to grasp?”
“I didn’t know that!” Harry shot back, defensive.
“I’ve been working on this for a solid month, but now I have to start over because some arsehole wanted to swan off to Slytherin--!”
Harry heard Hermione’s voice below them, the quiet uptick in her tone imploring for clarity. “Harry? What is he talking about?”
"Yeah, Harry," Ron repeated, mocking. "What am I talking about?"
Harry cast his guilty eyes to the floor. "It's just a thing he was making for extra credit," he mumbled.
"Just a thing?!" Ron bellowed, irate, before Hermione could form a reply. "This project counts for my half-term grade!"
She was quick to turn to him. “What?!”
Ron directed his glare at her. "Yeah, I know, it's so bloody shocking to you and Harry that I'm doing actual schoolwork for once, I get it--!"
“That’s not--!” she shouted. “I just--!” Suddenly, Hermione was facing Harry, a harsh breath pummeling out of her. “Harry! How could you do something like that?!”
He tensed at the accusation in her voice. "I was just going to use it once and give it back! I didn't know it would stop working!"
"You shouldn't have used it at all!" Ron hollered. "You know what? It's all making sense, now. You took it last night when I left my bag with you. I've been fucking mental all night, asking absolutely every person in the world, and then looking for it all day today, and here you had it the entire time!"
Well that made it sound like he'd done it all on purpose! "I was just talking to Cleo, and saw it in there!"
"Oh, it's just Cleo this and Cleo that with you nowadays, isn't it?" Ron spat. "What, did she put you up to this, then?"
"No!" Harry shot back, fists clenching. "And suspecting her for every little thing only makes you look stupid, Ron--"
“What’s he supposed to think?” Hermione balked. “Because now I have questions too. You promised me you were going to tell me if you were using Cleo as a means to find out what Slytherin was up to!”
"I-- I wasn't--!" Harry denied.
"Then what the hell is this?!" Ron demanded. "You're even mates with Urquhart now--!"
"He's not my friend!" he objected. "I just wanted to prove that Malfoy was forcing people into fights!"
Hermione grit her teeth. “Not this again--”
"Why won't you believe me?!" Harry challenged, angry. "All anyone's done is look at me like I'm some monster, instead of paying attention to what Malfoy’s doing! This watch proves I'm telling the truth!"
"All it proves is that you'll step on whoever you like to preserve your precious golden boy image!" Ron snarled.
“The watch hasn’t done anything!” Hermione demurred. “If it did what you said, both Ron and I would be attacking you right now.”
His gaze snapped to the watch, which was still open in Ron's clenched hand. It ought to be working by now; Malfoy had flown into a rage almost immediately before. "It is! It has to be! I tested it, and-- and none of us were angry before he opened it--!"
"Yeah," Ron mocked. "It's all the watch. How could we be so blind? Clearly, it's nothing to do with you being an entitled piece of shit!"
"Stop!" Harry demanded, an ugly feeling beginning to swell inside him. "You have to shut the watch-- now! It's just making everything worse--!"
Hermione’s hands clenched at her sides. “What’s making it worse is your complete inability to take responsibility for anything you do!”
“That’s not true--!”
Ron snorted. “Yeah? What do you call this, then?!”
“I said I was sorry!”
“You’re not!” Ron erupted, jabbing a finger in Harry’s face. “If it’s to do with the bloody war, you think you’re justified in everything!” Ron’s posture was too reminiscent of Vernon; Harry took an automatic, flinching, step back, but his friend continued to advance, his shouting only growing louder. “You just run straight into danger, not sparing a single thought for anyone else!”
“Are you kidding me?!” Harry responded in kind, that ugly feeling bubbling ever higher inside him. “All I ever do is think of other people!”
“Bullshit! You tore apart a month’s worth of work like it was nothing--!”
“Saving lives is more important then your stupid prank for Tenenbaum--!”
He didn’t realize how close Ron and him had stepped up to each other until Hermione was between them, arms outstretched. Notably in Ron’s corner, her eyes were blazing as she stared up at Harry. “Stop it!”
He didn’t feel like he could. The terrible rage inside him had nowhere to go but out. “Anything we do is either an affront to you, or you can’t be arsed to care! And you get mean and petty about it like everything we accomplish is offensive to you. We see all these people who are suffering and dying out there, but here’s you-- throwing a tantrum about some daft little school project!”
He saw the movement coiled in his friend’s posture long before impact, but wasn’t fast enough to evade it. In the space of one heated breath, Ron’s fist caught Harry square in the jaw, the pain arriving the instant he staggered back.
Ron’s expression was absolutely livid. From his hunched position, Harry could see how tense he was, the crazed look in his eyes; the only reason he hadn’t continued the assault was because Hermione was blocking the way. She’d turned toward him, bracing her hands against his shoulders. Furious, he spat, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare talk down to me, treat me like I’m the one at fault here just because you can’t manage to fucking think before you act!”
Hermione pled, “Ron, please--”
Harry righted himself, braced for another attack, but it never came. With a frustrated growl, Ron wrenched himself in the opposite direction, crossing to the other end of the gazebo with heavy footsteps before leaning over the rail. His back was to them, shoulders wound tight, and Harry absolutely hated it.
“Running away, is it?” he found himself saying. “Typical.”
“Don’t,” Hermione seethed, rounding on him.
“Why are you even defending him, Hermione?!” Harry demanded, his arms shaking with the force of his anger. “He’s been awful to you--!”
“So have you!” she cried. “And frankly, the way he’s treated me is between him and me. It’s not some bloody trump card you can play to prove a point! Especially when you’re outright refusing to acknowledge how awful it was to steal and destroy his project! It clearly meant a great deal to him, and you don’t seem to care at all!”
“Of course I care! But it was just a mistake!”
“How in the world was it a mistake?!”
“I didn’t know it would stop working--”
“But you still chose to take that chance!” Hermione argued, harsh. “You chose to take it from Ron’s bag without asking! You chose to risk it by entering the Slytherin common room without a plan! You decided that trampling all over Ron’s friendship was worth getting this worthless little trinket!”
“It’s not worthless, it’s dangerous!” Harry retorted. “Ron has to close it--!”
Ron jerked around to face them. “I don’t have to do anything!”
“Give it to me!” he demanded, hand outstretched.
Ron’s scoff was loud. “Piss off, Harry! I’m done--”
“If it’s so worthless to you, then give it back!”
“You’re missing the whole fucking point--!”
Suddenly, without hardly giving it a thought, Harry’s wand was in his hand. Ron’s reaction was immediate, brandishing his own with a determined tilt of his brow.
Hermione did a rapid spin in Ron’s direction. “Put your wand down and give him the stupid thing back!”
“Tell him to put it down first!”
“He’s not going to listen!” she protested. “Put it down! He’ll actually hurt you--”
"Stop saying that!" Harry yelled, her words cutting him deep. "I just-- I just want--!"
Honestly, what was the bloody point in trying to explain? They didn't believe him-- actually thought he was going to fucking hex them, for Merlin's sake! He was only considering it now because they were acting absolutely insane!
It would be easy. Just one Expelliarmus, and he could get the ruddy thing while Ron was disarmed. His wrist flexed before he extended it again, his mouth poised on the spell.
However, there was a sudden jolting sting that radiated up his wand arm as it was awkwardly lifted upwards and over his shoulder, held in place by Hermione’s hand as the entirety of her body pressed up against his side, pushing him away.
He was barely able to register the surprise of it before his irritation settled, white hot, at the back of his neck. He tried pulling his arm away. All he managed to do was to pull Hermione with him sideways as he struggled. “Let go!”
“No!”
“Hermione!”
His anger mounted the more he pulled. Hermione moved with him, her nails digging into his wrist as she twisted his hand back up against his shoulder. “You’re not doing this again!”
He grunted loudly when he bent back as he pulled, dragging Hermione up on her toes. “Stop it!”
“Harry!”
She was losing some purchase. He pushed forward, yanking his forearm down. “I mean it!”
“No!”
He felt a rush over his eyes; the next few moments functioned in horrible missteps: Hermione losing her footing, her grip slipping down to his elbow; Harry’s anger flooding up through his shoulder, lifting his arm high enough to give one final push.
There was a dull pain against his elbow as it collided against something that elicited a fleshy, sickening thump. Hermione’s fingers slipped away, feet carried with her as she fell to the ground, her palm suddenly cupped over her mouth and nose.
When the blood slipped under her chin, he felt something close to a disgusting amount of satisfaction. A feeling that couldn’t make itself stick; no affinity. It slipped away, nebulous, as his blood chilled in his veins. As his stomach churned uncomfortably. As his panic took over, so much stronger, so much more authentic. He felt himself snap back into place, like waking up.
Ron's accusatory look sobered him even further. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Harry? She's bleeding!"
Ron was knelt beside her in a second, though the comforting hand he lifted to her back never made contact, frozen in uncertainty. Harry, however, could only stand in stunned silence.
He felt sick. What… what was wrong with him? Why had he pushed her like that? He'd really hurt her. A pit began to form at the base of his lungs, through which air began to escape him in droves. His mind was a fog. "I'm sorry," was his horrified, impotent whisper. "I'm… I'm sorry--"
Hermione’s wrist swiped under her nose, spreading the blood across her cheek. “Are you?”
"Yes," he insisted, his voice sounding too loud in the room. "Of course I am--"
“Whatever, Harry.” She sniffed hard and he almost gagged as she started coughing at the taste of her own blood. Seconds later, she recovered, smearing more rivulets across her face as she frustratedly swiped the back of her hand against her nose.
“You don’t believe me,” Harry intoned, hollow.
“‘Course she doesn’t believe you,” Ron jabbed. “You’re so busy blaming everyone but yourself that you won’t even listen to anything we're saying!”
It was the watch, he wanted to say, but the sight of his friends, angry and hurting right in front of him, stopped him. “I’m sorry,” he told them instead, trying to sound less desperate. “I’m listening now, okay? I promise--”
“No offense, Harry,” Hermione uttered, deadpan. “But I don’t put a lot of stock in your promises at the moment.”
The pit inside him grew even larger, rendering his reply breathy and weak. "What…? What do you mean?"
“What else?” she scoffed. “You’ve yet to make good on any of your promises, so why the hell would you start now?”
His gaze darted around her face, distressed. "I really didn't use Cleo for information. I-- I didn't mean to do that, anyway; she's just… my friend--"
Ron snorted. "Great."
“What about attacking Malfoy? Ron’s project?” Hermione listed, teeth gritting as she tilted her head back. “Not even telling us about any of this? What were you thinking?”
“I-- I just thought…” He faltered, shoulders tense. “After what Cleo said, it just felt like life or death, and… and I wasn’t sure how to tell you since we’ve been fighting so much--”
“That doesn’t even make sense, Harry,” Ron called him out. “You and I haven’t been fighting until just now. So you had every reason to tell me what you were up to.”
Harry couldn’t deny it, but neither could he provide a better explanation. He’d felt certain before that he was better off going it alone, but he couldn’t really understand why either.
“You’ve been like this ever since the Ministry,” Hermione accused. Her expression contorted briefly before she turned her head and spit something red and nasty into the grass. “You’ve completely locked us out. Now you’re doing god knows what for the Order and everything else we used to do together completely alone now.”
“It’s not like that,” Harry protested, looking at them both. “I’ve just been… getting caught up in the moment, and--”
“No, she’s right,” Ron cut him off. “You used to tell us everything. You used to treat us like we were a team, because we were. And you knew if you were really in trouble, we’d come for you, because... Well, we’ve done it today, haven’t we? No matter how bad things get, we’ve always had each other’s backs… But you’ve barely talked to us all year.”
Harry wasn’t sure what else he could say. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Hermione sighed. “You’ve said.”
“You… still don’t believe me.”
“That’s not--” Hermione’s eyes rolled up to the sky as she let out another loud sigh. With jilted, jerky movements, she finally produced her wand from her robe and conjured a handkerchief into the blood-stained mess of her palm, wetting it with a harshly whispered Aguamenti. “I don’t-- I mean, I’m not really--” She faltered as she aggressively wiped at her hands, her cheeks, her nose. “I don’t want to be mad, you know?” She sniffed hard and grimaced, folding over the bloodied cloth to a cleaner, underside portion to keep rubbing away at her lip. “It’s just-- do we have to keep pretending that we’re not all thinking the same thing?”
Harry froze. The sudden question sent his mind spinning; even Ron gave Hermione a wary look. He too must have picked up on the ominous undercurrent of her words, but it was Harry who prompted, “What is it we’re meant to be thinking, exactly?”
“That none of this is working?” she stated, incredulous, like it bothered her that she had to say so at all. “That this -- what we have together -- is fundamentally broken?”
“What?” he questioned on impulse, that pit in his lungs growing ever wider. “What does that even mean?”
“You’re seriously going to pretend that you haven’t noticed how bad everything’s been the past two years?” When he didn’t answer, she quickly grew exasperated, leaning forward as she scowled. “We aren’t eleven anymore. We’re a lot older and a lot different. Are you two really going to tell me that you haven’t noticed?”
Harry didn't know how to respond to that, but Ron lifted his head, saying, "Of course I've noticed. Be a bit daft not to."
"That doesn't mean anything's broken," Harry found his voice, though it sounded more forlorn than he liked. "That's-- I know it's been hard since-- since Voldemort came back, but we've grown up together, and of course we've changed some but… what's wrong with that? Why is that a problem?"
“Because they aren’t just trivial differences!” Hermione exclaimed. “Maybe they are to you, but not to me.”
"We've always been different from each other, Hermione. That's what makes us a good team," Harry argued. "So I… I don't see how that's a bad thing."
“Oh, you can’t?” she mocked, her scowl deepening. “What about S.P.E.W.?”
"What about it?" Harry asked, breathless.
She appeared breathless too, but for an entirely different reason. “That’s why.” She looked like she wanted to point, but her hands were too busy wringing the bloodied handkerchief. Her voice went about the accusatory work. “You don’t take me seriously. Neither of you do. Especially you, Ron.”
Ron reared up slightly. “What--?”
“You don’t!” she barked. “Or are you going to act as if the past two years of constantly deriding me, devaluing my projects, and treating me like nothing more than a glorified nag have been some gigantic fluke?”
Harry took a step forward, earnest. “We do take you seriously--”
Her shoulders went tense. “Can either of you name one thing that you like about me, as a person, that isn’t rooted in some utilitarian function?” Hermione seethed. “Or can you even look at me, as a person, and say with certainty that you’d be my friend, even if we never worked together or went on some sort of adventure ever again?”
“Of course we would!” Harry protested, effusive.
Ron’s answer was subdued, if a little accusatory. “I suppose you’ve finally written us off, then.”
Hermione’s glower was fierce. “You did it first.”
He scoffed. “I’m not the one who’s been avoiding my friends all year.”
“Yeah, because I’ve chosen to avoid you.”
“You have,” Ron argued alongside a frustrated sigh. “I barely see you except at meals, and sometimes not even then!”
Hermione let a sharp breath escape her nose, allowing an unseemly bit of dried blood to plummet to her skirt. “Yes, imagine the fact I’m not exactly keen on spending time with someone who constantly treats me like I’m nothing more than an annoyance!”
“I don’t! Or I wouldn’t have if you’d just listened to anything I had to say after I dropped Prefect--”
“Listened!” Hermione balked. “Implying you’d even talk to me? Actually tried to be vulnerable? When?!”
“How could I, when you were never around?! Even before you started actively avoiding us-- it’s your nine classes, your study groups, your sodding clubs! Not a single damn word, even after the Ministry. It’s like you barely cared we existed except to lecture us about how irresponsible we are!”
“No offense, but fuck you, Ron,” Hermione uttered, breathless and livid. “I was struggling just as much and I don’t remember you running to check on me, either.”
Ron huffed and looked away, his fingers tensely laced in front of him.
“Besides,” the girl vented, her eyes pointedly going to the grass, “it’s not like I could tell you anything. Not when I already knew what your reaction would be?” Her mouth twitched in a grimace that died halfway through. “I know both of you thought it was stupid, but S.P.E.W. meant a lot to me. And all I gleaned from the aftermath was that neither of you gave a damn about what I believed in, much less what was going on with me. That it’s safer to keep my mouth shut and deal with these things on my own.”
Harry’s stomach twisted painfully. He knew all too well what she meant. However, it was Ron who spoke first, “I didn’t think it was stupid--”
“Could have fooled me,” was Hermione’s caustic remark.
“Well, mostly,” he backtracked. “Look, I get it, I was a right arse about it, but it’s just-- the elves don’t want to be freed--”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about--”
“Point is-- just cause or not, what’s the point of pursuing it when there’s a bloody war going on?” Ron said, shaking his head. “If we don’t get rid of Voldemort, then leading a house elf revolution will be a colossal waste of time, and--”
“God you’re so--” Hermione covered her face, a loud, frustrated whine emanating against her palms. Seconds later, her hands dropped back to her lap, and she addressed Ron again, “I’m not fixating on S.P.E.W. specifically. I’m referring to what it meant. See, this is what I’m talking about. You don’t take me seriously! You see everything I do as naive and frivolous; as if I have no idea what my position in this war is, as, you know, a Mudblood?”
Ron’s expression twitched, darkened, in response to the word. “I’ve never called you that--”
“Don’t you get it?” was her terse rejoinder. “That’s how they see me. That’s the entire point of this war!”
There was a whole heap of discomfort evident in his voice, which had suddenly gone a little weaker. “Yeah, I’m not saying it’s--”
“Ron, it’s not you they’re after. If Voldemort wins-- if this purism movement gains any more traction than it already has, it’s not you they’re going to… enslave, or forcibly register, or-- or put into camps, or… ultimately--” Her breath caught as tears flooded her eyes again, reddened and irritated. They pooled and remained there as she stared, unblinking, at her knees.
“Hermione…”
She gritted her teeth, the scrunch of her face pushing her tears precariously close to falling. “Just-- please stop. I understand what’s at stake in this war more than you can even begin to fathom.”
Ron sat in strained quiet for a moment, arms crossed tight over his chest. The pause was too long for Harry; he wanted to say something. Anything that could mend things, could help them reconcile in some small way.
But he could think of nothing to say. And Ron’s manner was altogether defeated. “So that’s it, then? We’re finished?”
Hermione raised her head to stare at him, the handkerchief gripped tightly in her blood-stained fingers. She’d looked so full of conviction before, but now… She just looked dejected. Shaken. Alone. The fight was still in her, but Harry could finally see the toll all this was taking on her, the damage that their absence and negligence had wrought. In light of that, her next words were all the more surprising.
“Nothing’s over yet,” Hermione asserted, her voice terribly quiet. “Just-- something has to change, or it will be. E.A.R.W.I.G. is all I have now, and--”
“It’s not all you have--!” Ron’s reply rushed out of him in an instant.
“I mean it’s all I can do!” she cried, her throat betraying the first hint of a sob. “This is the only way I can fight, Ron! After the Ministry--” Harry watched helplessly as her body trembled in its first sign of fear and distress, her tears flowing earnest, the most pained he’d ever witnessed. “I was completely useless. I’m not a soldier, not like you two. I could’ve died, and everyone I care about could’ve died because they wouldn’t leave me behind. Do you get how much that terrifies me? Just knowing that I couldn’t last, that I became a burden on everyone-- it… it just--”
She hunched over, a few loud sobs muffled against her knees as she pulled them up to her chest. Harry cast a quick glance at Ron, who looked absolutely stricken, before obeying his own instinct to move. Dropping to his knees beside her, he placed a hand gently on her shoulder, suddenly feeling like crying himself, though he resisted the impulse. Moments later she emerged, tear stricken and red faced, her voice hiccuping on the waves of her weeping: “Bu--... But-- I have to-- to do s-something! An-- And E.A.R.W.I.G.--” She breathed in sharply. “E.A.R.W.I.G. is all I know ho-- how to d-do-- and… an-and I-- I’m terrified to d-do anything that would… alienate an-anyone because of… wh-what happened with S--.. S.P.E.W. and-- so when Ann… and I c-can’t fight back be--... because I don’t w-want it to be like last time--”
“It won’t,” Harry assured her, his free hand clenching with the force of his conviction.
“It already is!” she sobbed. “Th-This stupid bloody-- Ma-Masquerade! It’s-- It’s thrown e-everything off track! An-And... I tried-- I did! I tried-- I tried to make her st-- stop! But people.. An-- and they agreed … and I was-- I was sc-scared that if I did-- did anything to ruin it... everyone would-- leave... like last time and… An-And if I can’t d-do E.A.R.W.I.G., how can I do anything and--”
“Hey, hey-- Hermione…” At that, Ron approached too, his address both soothing and uncertain. “What are you talking about? There’s loads you can do that we can’t--”
“I can’t!” she screamed, completely unhinged. Her breath came out in heavy pants. “I can’t! I can’t! I can’t--!”
A terrible feeling overtook Harry then, a feeling of anguish and fear so all-encompassing that it was like drowning-- and what was worse was how familiar the sensation really was. There was something about it so reminiscent of what had happened with Remus, of what had happened at the cottage, that he flinched back, his hand losing contact with her shoulder. At the same moment, Ron appeared to do the opposite, his own hand going to rest on her back.
“Hermione, it’s okay--”
Her legs straightened, so violent and sudden that the two of them were forced to move so they weren’t kicked. “I don--... I don’t kn-know what to do…” she cried. “I-- I know-- I wasn’t… That I ignored-- and... na-- and judged, but... an--.. And I’m sorry-- ... I didn’t-- m-mean to--... I didn’t... know what to do and-- and I d-didn’t want to hu-hurt you- an-and… an-and I-- I love you and-- and I can’t-- I can’t-- ... lose-- ... Because everything-- ... and I know-- I didn’t… I-- wa-wasn’t there... and you-- you needed--... and-- I’m sorry--”
Ron’s eyes were wide when he looked at Harry, clearly at a loss. But Harry, coming to his senses, suddenly felt as if he knew what needed to be said. “Breathe,” he urged her in a voice that was quiet, but firm. “You just need to breathe, okay? You-- you haven’t done anything wrong. Just… We’re here. We’re here, and it will be okay.”
Taking this cue, Ron swept his hand across her shoulder blades. “You… you don’t have to worry. We’re not going anywhere…”
Suddenly, her arms were wrapped around Ron’s neck, the entirety of her frame buried into him as her sobs came out in horrible, soul wrenching screams. So loud, even as they were muffled against the mass of his robes, that he felt the whole of his body heat and tremble as if he were holding Hermione to him in the same way Ron was.
The sound was unbearable; to hear it was akin to physical pain. There was something horrifying about the force of her reaction, a sense that this wasn’t just her agony ringing in their ears, but rather a manifestation of all three of their thoughts and feelings. A collection of their deepest torments, unutterable yet inextricably woven together. Overwhelmed, Harry didn’t know if he ought to reach forward or shrink away. His own breaths rattled out of him disjointedly while tears stung at his eyes.
Ron had both arms wrapped tightly around Hermione, but his expression was similarly haunted, gaze pinned to the grass. He held her there for longer than felt humanly possible, until her body exhausted itself in its despair, and she slowly began to quiet, the last of her sobs issuing forth in longer, slower intervals before they stopped.
In the silence that followed, Harry spoke, barely louder than a whisper. “I’m sorry… This-- everything-- It’s my fault.”
Ron turned a glare in his direction. “Not everything’s about you, you know.”
“I know,” Harry breathed, swiping away tears with the back of his hand. “I know. But it’s… I should never have gone to the Ministry. I should have listened to you. And most of all, I… I should have been paying attention.”
When Hermione spoke, it was with a voice that was inordinately exhausted. She looked as if she were about to pass out on Ron’s shoulder. “Harry… We all really… weren’t paying attention to each other. It’s not just… you.”
“But… you’re my friends,” he emphasized, as if that alone explained it all. “I should trust you and, and be there for you, but I’ve just been doing nothing this whole year. All I’ve been doing since we met is just-- leading you into danger. But it’s… it’s not an adventure anymore-- We’re not children. People are dying all the time, and Sirius is gone, forever, and I can’t bear the thought that everyone I love will disappear because of me.”
Ron’s tone was softer when he stressed, “It’s not because of you; it’s because of Voldemort. And when you finally put that maggoty piece of shit in the grave, where he belongs, we’ll still be right there with you. Because you didn’t force us into harm’s way, Harry, we wanted to be there. Because--” At this, he gave Harry a pointed look. “We’re your friends, and we trust you, and we intend to be there for you. As you said.”
Harry sighed, staring at his hands. “I’m sorry about your ward, Ron. Really.”
His friend rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”
“I mean it--”
“I know, I said,” Ron insisted, his expression hardening. “Just don’t do it again.”
Harry nodded, solemn, before continuing, “And Hermione, I’m sorry I haven’t been talking to you. I’m… sorry I’ve been so bad at keeping my promises.”
“I just got… scared…” she admitted, eyes half lidded. “You really think it’s... the watch?”
His eyes were drawn to it then, the thing having fallen completely out of his mind. There, a few feet away and dropped in the grass, was the silver pocket watch, open-faced. Wordlessly, he stood to retrieve it, the little thing feeling weighty in his hands. Was this truly the source of all this rage and heartache? Despite his earlier convictions, looking at the lifeless clock hands and the burnished shine of the metal, he found it difficult to believe something so small could cause so much trouble. Harry pressed the two ends of the watch together, and, with an anticlimactic snap, it finally closed.
The effect was instantaneous. Ron’s brow unknitted, Hermione’s shoulders drooped. Harry felt his chest expand, like the pit which had formed there no longer existed. The air was breathable again, and the sound of water rushed into their ears for the first time in a long while.
Harry stared at his friends, a knowing look ghosting over their faces. “There’s more to talk about,” he said. “but… tomorrow. Let’s do it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Hermione softly whispered.
“Right, yeah.” Ron blew out a breath. “Tomorrow.”