A Lexicon of Serpents

Chapter 4: Fire

Alastor Moody, October 20, 1943

"You know, Dung, I seriously think Riddle has it in for me."

Dung, fumbling his shirt buttons and bleary-eyed with morning, spares me a glance.

"You mean you've got it in for him."

I roll my eyes and start stuffing things into my bookbag. The two other boys in our year, Sven Carmichael and Caradoc Dearborn, have already clattered down the stairs, aiming for breakfast. I'm waiting up for Mundungus, who's never quick in the mornings. He leaves his shirt a few buttons spare--doesn't bother with a tie either, unless a teacher tells him off for it--and reaches for his trousers.

"Look, I didn't tell you last night 'cause I forgot with all the work, but I think he tried to booby-trap that damn toad."

"Cor, do tell!" Dung starts hopping around like a mad thing, shirt-tails flapping, to get into his trousers.

"Dumbledore gave the toad back to me after class." I settle my bookbag on my shoulder and lean against a wall as Dung contorts himself. "When I went back to the bathroom to reverse the transfiguration, I got my pants and trousers back, but something else came with 'em. Funny little flat stone."

Dung pauses and looks at me again.

"What was it?"

"Not a clue. Only thing I could tell was that it was magical, damn powerful too. So I owled it back to him. If the bastard's going to set me some booby-trap, it can damn well blow up in his own face."

"Hunh." Dung, victorious in the battle of the trousers, scares up a pair of socks--they roll nervously from his trunk and cower by the bedstead--and plunks himself down to put them on. "Heard back from him?"

"No. He's probably planning something else." I look out the window at the early morning sun glinting in the dew beneath Gryffindor Tower. "Damned if I'll let him catch me flat-footed," I mutter.

"Good luck, then," says Dung gruffly, and reaches for his shoes.

Halfway to breakfast, Dung drops back into a corner with a wicked grin to murmur enticingly to a stink bomb, and I waffle as best as I can along the balcony and try not to attract attention. The smelly little blob floats out above the crowd, to the squints and giggles of a few keen-eyed Gryffindors, and darts, fast as a Snitch, down the back of Henry Warrington's robes. I watch surreptitiously as Dung melts quietly away from his hiding spot and nurse a plan.

"Oi, Dung!" Time to make like we just spotted each other, so I hurry to his side, then lower my voice to a whisper. "Can I borrow your cloak tonight, after dinner?"

"Right after dinner? What for?"

"Quidditch espionage."

Dung's grin resurfaces in full force.

"Oh, that should be fun. Just report back to me, eh?"

"But of course."

It's against the rules to spy on the locker rooms and strategizing of other teams, and it can be quite the advantage if you pull it off, so everybody tries, some more for the one reason than the other. Dung makes a constant habit of it--so constant that he'd be in terrible trouble if he were caught one more time, so I and a few others have been doing it recently. Minerva's the best at it, of course, but I've never been caught either.

"I think I'll let Minnie have a gander at Hufflepuff their next practice, eh? See if she can get any reports on their new Seeker."

Dung's eyes dance; then he looks quickly at me.

"Why Slytherin, then?"

I shrug.

"Want to know if they've heard more than us. They've got Riddle--if anybody could do top-notch Quidditch espionage, it's him. Want to know if they're scared."

"Good point."

"Plus I get to spy on him."

Dung thumps my back.

"Mixing business and pleasure. I knew there was a reason I liked you, Al."

I snort.

"Watching a batch of stuck-up reptiles mooch about in towels is hardly my idea of pleasure, Dung."

He snickers. "Except for Kylee, of course."

"For the love of--! Even you have better taste in girls than bony evil little fourteen-year-olds..."

~~~~~

If this weren't so fun, it'd be bloody torture.

The cloak helps, it truly does. But I'm still wedged up between a few supporting spells in the corner of somebody else's changing room, next to the hamper full of dirty towels, trying not to breathe too loud. The supporting spells help too--brace me up, give me something to lean against so I don't shift around and betray myself. There's always the chance that somebody'll detect 'em, but they're not what anybody's going to scan for first if they're suspecting espionage. They'd look for some sort of concealing charm, silencing charm, that sort of thing. Nobody expects you to actually have a cloak. God only knows how Dung does. I've never dared ask.

Avery and Riddle show up first, talking strategy. I perk up a little from the haze of waiting--always have to catch myself from moving too much when somebody first shows up.

"...against Hufflepuff?" I hear Riddle say as they enter. Riddle's got that juiced-up Shooting Star of his slung across his back, silver-white with its white ash wood and incongruous against his school robes. Avery lays his Cleansweep across one of the benches, where it hums softly and settles.

"They've got a new Beater, too, I've heard. But he doesn't seem to be much to worry about. They pulled him out of reserves when Trevors decided he was too busy with O.W.L.s. The vaunted Hufflepuff work ethic, I'm sure." Avery pulls their green Quidditch robes out of the closet as he speaks, and Riddle unslings his broom, and they start stripping.

"That might leave the Manxes enough breathing room to concentrate the Bludgers upon their Seeker."

"Just what I was thinking."

"Anything I should do about their Seeker?"

"Besides knock him out of the sky?" says Avery with a sly little smile, and Riddle lets out a little snort of a laugh. Hard to dislike Avery violently, from what I've seen of him, but hard to like him. He has an amazing way of fading into the background. Avery the chameleon. Doesn't seem to be an effective captain either, though I imagine it's hard to out-captain Riddle. Really, God only knows why Avery is captain. Maybe Riddle decided he'd leave one of the school honors for us mortals. "Anyway, he's only a second-year," Avery adds with a shrug, and delicately undoes the buttons on his shirt cuffs.

Riddle pauses and sets his shirt down, the crisp fabric folding awkwardly to the bench. "I heard it's a girl."

"From who?"

"Justin. He didn't tell you?"

"No. The git. Does he know who?"

Riddle shakes his head and sits down to start undoing his shoes. "No. They're trying to hush it up even in their own house. But if it's true it's a second-year girl there are only four possibilities, and Brocklehurst apparently fell off her broom before she even left the ground--"

They're interrupted as Manx and Manx burst into the room, jostling each other noisily. But I'm already continuing Riddle's line of thought. I don't remember one of the Hufflepuff second-year girls, except that I'm pretty sure she's not Brocklehurst, and only vaguely remember another, with dark pigtails, who was rather a fair flyer--Keenan, perhaps. Everybody remembers Hooch, of course, because nobody can miss a girl with white hair and yellow eyes, but nobody seems to know anything about her--the girl's a cypher. You'd think we'd know if she was interested in Quidditch, at least...

Even if we know it's a girl. Who the hell is Justin, anyway? Justin Nott? Nobody talks to Justin Nott, certainly not someone like Riddle.

Red Manx is banging on the other door. "Kyleeeeeeee, you in there?"

"Oi, Mierka-darling, come on out!" his brother adds. Riddle and Avery ignore them. There's a harsh shout from the door I can't decipher, and then the other door opens and Gringorson comes in. He lumbers on the ground, I've noticed, hulking about with large robes and long arms. Usually the people who are really at home in the sky are slim little things, birdlike, the classic Seeker build; but here we have an ape who's better off flying than walking. He has a plain enough broom, certainly, just a run-of-the-mill Cleansweep--Avery has a Seven, at least, a model implementing some of the recent developments in racing brooms. But even Gringorson's cheap pole with twigs seems to grant him a liberty and speed he can never achieve on the ground.

Somehow it vaguely frightens me to see so natural a flier on another team. Riddle isn't a natural. He's good, hell, but he forces it from the first. I wonder if he forces everything.

Then Smithley comes in and immediately starts trading insults with Kylee through the inner door, and utter chaos reigns for some minutes. When Kylee finally emerges from her own room, tying her half-long dark hair back even as she kicks the door open, everybody but Avery and Riddle gathers around her, and I begin to wonder if insult-trading and ferocious teasing is a peculiarly Slytherin way of flirting. Or perhaps they're just leading her on--she is only fourteen, after all, and squawks and turns up her nose when black Manx turns his back to her, sheds his clothes with a flourish, twitches his rear, and waits for his brother to drop his Quidditch robe over his head. Avery and Riddle are also talking, but too quietly for me to hear properly over the din of Kylee and her circle. And that's probably the strategy. I grit my teeth in frustration. So much easier spying on the Ravenclaws, organized and disciplined as they are, or the Hufflepuffs, who chatter like hell but always settle down and line up for the actual strategy talks.

Still, I keep my eye on Avery and Riddle in hopes of something useful. Riddle has settled on the bench with his back to me and his Quidditch robes open and puddled about his waist, and Avery is hovering about him, wand out, touching patterns across Riddle's back and whispering. I recognize what it is, although not the particular pattern--we do it ourselves. Drawing-up rituals like that, summoning and strengthening the energy of one's body, are another Quidditch illegality, along with espionage, but Fustusson would have to be a lot stricter to actually stop us from doing them. Avery finishes with a flourish of his wand, and Riddle stretches like a satisfied cat, and I have to suppress a shiver as I abruptly notice his movement, notice all that bare skin, and follow every line and muscle in his back. Hell. He should not be that beautiful.

What is he doing to me?

I shove it all aside and focus. Riddle turns to Avery with a slight smile, and draws his robe back up over his shoulders and arms and fastens it properly, then says something and pulls out his wand and starts sketching something in midair, as if demonstrating a variation. This, too, I've seen before in our own changing rooms; Johnny Dobson has a particular obsession with drawing-up rituals and is constantly seeking to improve the ones he knows. Figures Riddle would know everything about them too. The pattern he's is drawing out is peculiarly complex, and I give up on following it after a while, and it's quite impossible to hear what he's murmuring over the continual racket from the other end of the room.

Then, even as he continues weaving the demonstrative charm, his eyes dart around the room, then settle right in the corner near the dirty towels. Right on me.

Damn!

I clench both my hands into fists, desperately wanting to hex the bastard and run, and force myself to remain still and silent, helpless. Not yet. Can't dare reveal myself for this--could be just a coincidence...

Then, too late, far too late, I notice the slight tingle down my spine. It takes all the control I have to keep from jumping up and cursing aloud right in the middle of the Slytherin changing room. He's casting something, disguising it somehow as a drawing-up spell, and I feel it slide round and seize me just as he makes the last flourish and relaxes his wand hand with a shift of the long muscle up his forearm. I clutch my wand in my pocket so hard my hand shakes and try to remember every spell I know, but there's nothing I know that could hurt him that doesn't need an incantation, nothing I have a chance of casting without. Not good at wordless magic yet, and I spontaneously swear to work on it until I fall over.

"What was that double-hitch?" Avery asks quietly.

"Thought somebody was there," Riddle answers, smirking with his mouth and glaring with his eyes--again straight at me. "But there wasn't."

"I...see," says Avery, and again that pale little smile of his.

He might as well have said it aloud. Don't retaliate and I'll let you escape. Bloody hell. Bloody sodding hell! If it were just me I had to worry for I would hex him in a moment. Duel him right here and now in front of his bloody team. Maybe I'd even have a chance to give Kylee a weasel face while I was at it. I don't care how much trouble I myself might get in. But I can't. Never mind the disgrace to Gryffindor, the disgrace to my own captain and team--if they find the cloak...

Can't risk it. Can't risk it. Can't lose the cloak--and, hell, if they thought it were mine it would be bad enough, but if they found out it was Dung's he'd probably be expelled. I bite my lip so hard I fear I might bleed.

They're waiting. They're even waiting for me to choose. Lure me out or send me skulking off like a coward--either way, he wins. I want to set him on fire. Riddle looks slowly over to Avery, letting the silence for my answer stretch, and then, when he's dangled the bait for as long as he likes, he gives a little shrug, and Avery raises his eyebrows.

"Team!" Avery bellows, and Riddle turns with a sharp swish of green and reaches for his arm guards. "Time to get in line, you lot!" Avery strides over to break up the circle around Kylee, and Riddle slides up the sleeves of his robes and wriggles his fingers into his gauntlets and carelessly tightens the laces, and I tremble with rage between my magical braces and force myself to let go of my wand before I set something off by accident. The other five swagger up in a line, and Riddle joins them, and Avery raises his broom and waves it in the air like an oversized conductor's baton.

"Standard practice," is all he says. Not getting any more information out of this lot. There's a final spate of chaos as whoever doesn't have them yet grabs arm guards and flying shoes and brooms. I could still move. I could. But I force myself to remain still. It would be a disaster. Then Avery opens the door and they all file out in a swaying billow of reptile green on the ten-minute walk to the pitch, and then I'm alone.

After a few long moments I slide out from between the bracing spells and dissipate them with a whisper, then stand trembling and still cloaked in the empty room.

"Incendio!" I bark under my breath, and the dirty towels go up in flames with a stink of scorched cotton and Slytherin sweat. Untraceable, just an accident or a prank, I tell myself, and leave with a soft click of the door, and duck into a bathroom nobody's in to slide off the robe and hide the silvery stuff under its mundane twin, and hurry off to the library to try to figure out what the hell he did to me.

~~~~~

An hour and a half later, when Dung finds me, I'm staring at myself in our own bathroom in Gryffindor Tower, no more enlightened than I was when the bastard hexed me in the first place.

"Al." Dung pokes me in the shoulder; I can see his face in the mirror. "You good?"

"Riddle cast something on me."

"Hell," he says, with considerable feeling. "He caught you?"

"I think so."

"What, he didn't see you with the cloak off?"

"No. I think he knew I was there though. He was looking straight at me."

Dung rolls his eyes. "True bloody love. Do you think he'll turn you in?"

I shake my head. "'Sides, if he does, you didn't put me up to it."

"I'm still your friend, dingbat." He punches me affectionately on the shoulder. "I don't want you screwed over for spying."

"Thanks," I mumble, and turn away from the mirror. Dung, wisely, gives me a few minutes to simmer before he follows me into the main dormitory.

"What do you think he cast on you?"

I let myself fall backwards into my bed.

"I don't know. I spent the last hour in the library, looking up all the lingering hexes and curses I could think of and doing anything I could to try to figure it out, and it wasn't any of them."

"Maybe it was just a detection or identification charm."

"From Riddle?"

"Well, he does seem to have a bit of a soft spot for you." Dung flashed a toothy, face-splitting grin. "Charming your pants off and all."

The only response that deserves is a pillow to the head, which I give him. He tosses it back at me with a laugh.

"Damn it, Dung, who knows what kind of magic Riddle can cast? Maybe he got some sort of a lock on me with that stone even before I sent it back, ten to one he knows stuff that isn't even in the normal books, and I don't want to risk trying a disenchanting until I have some idea what I'm dealing with..."

Dung pulls up a chair next to where I lie and straddles it backwards.

"Then tell me what you do know, Al."

"Riddle doesn't know who the new Seeker is."

"Bloody hell," says Dung, with interest. "If he doesn't..."

"You did hear about their new Beater?"

"Jackson?"

"So that's the name. Avery and Riddle don't think he's anything to worry about."

"Well, they've got the Manxes."

"True."

"Did they say the Seeker was a second-year too? Because that's what I heard from...ah...my sources."

I laugh weakly and drape an arm over my face. "Second-year, yes. Riddle heard it was a girl."

"Really?"

"From a Justin."

"Nott? That's crazy."

"That's what I thought."

"Second-year girl... Well, Keenan, probably, if that's the case."

"Is she the one with the dark pigtails?"

"And how much do you know about the hair of second-year Huffles, Al?"

I brandish the pillow menacingly. "I remember her being a good flier, but I wasn't sure of her name."

"Keenan, yes. Brocklehurst's clumsy beyond belief and Hooch is just weird. I don't remember the fourth one, but I would have noticed if she flew well."

"Hm."

"Riddle could be mistaken."

"I suppose."

"Shall I leave you to brood in peace, then?"

"Damn it," I mutter under my breath.

"Is there anything I can do?" Dung asks softly and with utter gravity. "I mean, I know--"

"About a tenth as much about real curses as I do?"

"Mm."

"Haul me off to the hospital wing if I explode?"

"Something like that. You want me to get back at Riddle?"

"No. This is my affair."

"Figured. Thought I'd ask, though." He touches my arm. "Sorry, mate."

"It was my idea," I mumble.

"I know."

I hear him rise and leave, and then I roll over with a groan and curse myself for ten kinds of an idiot. Even interspersed with the drawing-up demonstration... I should have been more careful. I'll be more careful.

And try not to think about anything else. Like the fact that Riddle seems to be turning me queer.

God damn it all.