The Riddleway Chronicles

Episode One: The One With the Demon

At some point during the final battle, the sky had turned black. Not the normal black of night that Harry Potter—or the rest of the world, for that matter—was used to, the one littered with stars and moonlight and shadowy puffs of gray cloud. Instead, it was a deep, dead darkness, a void of oily nothingness that was closing in around Hogwarts, eating what few hints of blue sky had made an appearance that day.

As Harry stood at the bottom of the staircase that led up to the school, however, his wand wrapped in one hand while his other was clenched tightly at his side, he barely noticed. All of his concentration was focused on the battlefield in front of him, his eyes searching for Voldemort’s black clad figure amongst the mass of people and wand-light.

No matter how desperately he hunted, though, no matter how hard he strained his eyes, he couldn’t find the Dark Lord.

Harry’s breath was coming in shallow gasps, through barely parted lips, and the oily consistency of the air had coated his tongue long ago. He was bruised and filthy all over, but it was the two cuts on his face that people would be most likely to notice: one on his cheek, the other on his forehead, intersecting the scar that Voldemort had gifted him with seventeen years before.

Unconsciously, he scratched at that cut, maybe because of a natural itch, maybe because of the Voldemort-induced ache that had been plaguing him all day, all week. Dry blood flaked off underneath his fingernails, but he scratched at the cut again, with more force, and a drop of blood welled up beneath the pads of his fingers. Unconsciously, he smeared it away.

He turned slowly on the bottom step of the staircase, trying to stay aware of his surroundings, looking, staring, and that was when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye: black robe against black sky, pale skin, a wand pointed in his direction. He spun towards the interloper, moving swiftly on the ball of his foot, and the two words that he needed to say to (hopefully) end Voldemort’s life were sitting heavy on the tip of his tongue, ready to be spoken.

It wasn’t Voldemort that was approaching him, though. Black robes, yes. Pale skin, yes. But where there should have been the face that had haunted his nightmares, he saw dirty strands of blond hair, a mouth that fell into a sneer more easily than a smile, and gray eyes set in a pale face, shadowed underneath the hood of a cloak.

"Malfoy," Harry heard himself say. The word was far less satisfying as it passed through his lips than Avada Kedavra would have been. His voice was hard, as cool as he knew Malfoy’s voice would be when he responded.

"Potter," Malfoy answered. There was a thin line of blood on what was visible of the pale neck, the result of a physical injury, Harry decided, rather than a magical one.

"What do you want?" Harry asked after a moment of silence. His gaze reached beyond Malfoy again, scanning, searching, hunting. The sound of a woman screaming rent the air and it turned Harry’s stomach to hear it, but he made himself ignore the cry. He couldn’t let himself wonder which side she had been on, whether or not she, too, had fallen victim to Voldemort’s darkness.

"Voldemort," Malfoy said. He turned away from Harry, scanning their surroundings, too. "Word is that he’s ready for you, that he’s waiting for you on the Quidditch pitch. He seems to think that his victory will taste even sweeter if he beats you on your home turf, and the pitch is about as home turf-like as you’re going to get, isn’t it?"

The other teen’s lip curled, showing part of a row of perfectly white teeth. His eyes were lidded with exhaustion, but even in the darkness, the gaze was cold and sparkling, like sun reflecting off of icicles. He chuffed a laugh.

"I suggested it, actually. To Father, months ago. Apparently Lord Voldemort chose to listen to him about that."

Harry had stopped listening to Malfoy, though, because Voldemort, he thought. Waiting for him. Ready.

He took another deep breath and, for the first time that day, truly tasted the taint of the air. He was suddenly conscious of the oiliness of it, the coating that covered his tongue. He swallowed heavily once, twice, trying to rid himself of the taste.

Then he swallowed a third time, just on general principles. Not from nervousness, he told himself. Not because he had entered what would probably be his last few minutes on this earth. Not because he hadn’t had the opportunity to drink a last butterbeer, or to take a last spin on his broomstick, or because he hadn’t told Ron and Hermione, all of the Weasley’s, Remus, everyone how much he loved them one last time.

Not because the last two people to see him alive were, more than likely, going to be the two people that he’d hated most during his lifetime.

"You chickening out, Potter?" Malfoy asked, his voice sharp enough to shatter Harry’s thoughts. "You wishing that you’d joined with Voldemort years ago, so that you wouldn’t have to be doing this little prophecy fulfillment episode now?"

Harry took a step towards Malfoy, so quickly that he didn’t even realize he was moving until he already had. The tip of his wand was pressed to the blond’s robes, resting directly above Malfoy’s heart.

"Never."

After he said the word, he arched his eyebrow and, just for a moment, tried to pretend that he was back in the school hallways, that this was just another episode in the infamous Potter-Malfoy rivalry.

"You wishing you hadn’t switched sides?" he asked.

"Never."

Malfoy’s eyes searched out Harry’s as he spoke so that Harry could—would—see the truth in the word. Then he reached around the wand that was still pointed at him, wrapped his hand around the back of Harry’s elbow, and gave it a firm, nearly painful squeeze.

"Go live up to your hype, Potter," he said right before he let go. "We’re all expecting great things from you, after all. Can’t have the Great Harry Potter letting us down, now can we?"

Then, just before he turned, he said, "good luck" so softly that if Harry hadn’t seen Malfoy’s lips move, he would have thought that he’d imagined hearing it. He watched as Malfoy walked away, the black of the cloak fading into the darkness again.

"The Great Harry Potter," Harry murmured to himself, and for some reason, hearing the nickname that he’d detested for so many years uttered in this defining hour made him stand up a little bit straighter, made him feel just a little bit more confident.

It was his hype, after all. It was his prophecy, his destiny, and it might be fulfilled or it might not be, but either way, it was going to happen that night.

He was going to find out now.

He took one last deep breath before he started walking across the Hogwarts grounds, dodging the stray (and intentional) curses that came his way, stepping over the bodies of both fallen Death Eaters and, he hated to see it, his comrades. He just kept walking, walking for forever and for no time at all, keeping his eyes focused on what had once been the Quidditch stands, but was now little more than a heap of broken wooden beams and torn silk.

The closer he came, the more extensive the damage seemed, and then he was there, picking his way through the wreckage. He moved under one beam, over another, batted a piece of red cloth out of his way, and with that, he had a clear view of the center of the pitch and the lone figure that stood there.

He could, he thought, just utter the killing curse from where he was crouched. He had a clear shot, after all, and if luck was with him, Voldemort would never know what had hit him. It would all be over and done with, thank you very much, the end.

It was even possible that Voldemort would do the same thing if he was the one in Harry’s position, if he was the one crouching in the wreckage of the stands, staring out at the figure in the center of the charred field.

But then again, he probably wouldn’t. Voldemort had always met Harry face to face, after all. Wand to wand. Wizard to wizard and due to some twisted logic, Harry thought, if that was the way that Voldemort was playing it, then that was the way it was supposed to be.

He had just started to move, to step out from behind the fallen beam that he was crouched next to when he heard Voldemort speak out, call his name. The raspy voice felt like sandpaper across his skin.

"Harry Potter," Voldemort called softly, tauntingly, but his voice was clear to Harry’s ears. "Harry Potter, come out, come out wherever you are…"

Harry crouched down again, watching as Voldemort slowly turned in a circle. The red eyes seemed to glow in the gloom—the darkness was deeper here than it had been near the castle—and his skin looked as if it belonged to one of those worm-like creatures that lived at the bottom of the ocean, the ones that had never seen the light of day.

"Come out, Potter," Voldemort called, his voice growing in volume. "I know that you’re here… I can smell you here…"

Indeed, he was looking directly at Harry’s hiding place. Harry could see, or maybe it was just his imagination supplying details, the slits of Voldemort’s nostrils flicking open and closed, tasting the still air.

Harry stood up again, moving as slowly and as carefully as possible. As he walked, he trained his wand on Voldemort’s figure, at the shadow that was the dip of the Dark Lord’s throat. His wand stayed steady, even as he did not, as he stumbled up and over the rubble, tripping over burnt wood strung with frayed cloth.

Voldemort smiled at him as he stepped out into the open, out onto the grass of the pitch.

"Ah," he hissed. "Harry Potter… So nice of you to join me."

"Voldemort," Harry said, biting the word off as sharply as he could. His wand hand was shaking now, from the effort of keeping the wand still, of keeping it pointed at the exact same spot on the Dark Lord’s body.

"Aren’t you supposed to say ‘Ah yes, Lord Voldemort, we meet again?’ That’s the way it goes in those Muggle movies of yours, isn’t it? You’re a fan of Muggle movies, aren’t you, Potter?"

Harry tightened his grip on his wand, fisting his other hand in the sleeve of his robe.

"Let’s get on with this," he spat. "What are we going to do? Wizard Duel? Quick-draw challenge? Whoever can get the curse out of his mouth the fastest wins?"

"You really think that you can kill me?"

Voldemort started to move towards Harry, but for some reason, much to Harry’s surprise, the closer he came, the more he seemed to diminish in size. Suddenly his skin didn’t seem to be quite so unnatural looking; his eyes didn’t seem to glow quite so brightly.

"Yes." Harry kept his voice calm, even. "I think that I can."

"Well then." Voldemort sounded rather amused. "Two wizards of equal power, settling a life-long feud. It’s the sort of exploit that epic stories are made of, isn’t it?"

He took another step towards Harry, then another. He seemed to glide across the grass smoothly, like a snake slithering towards its prey.

"You do remember proper dueling etiquette, I would assume? Or am I going to have to teach you another lesson?"

"I remember."

Harry forced the words out through clenched teeth. His brain was telling him that he should be cursing Voldemort at that very moment—the other wizard hadn’t even drawn his wand yet—but his conscience said that he needed to play by the rules. He was Harry Potter, after all. He was the good guy, and in the end, the good guy won by doing good guy things.

Or, alternatively, they didn’t win, and they died doing good guy things.

"Then come here," Voldemort rasped. "Let’s get started. I would like to declare my decisive victory and your… untimely death… sometime today."

Harry walked towards the dark wizard, making himself move one step at a time, slowly, confidently, even as the ache in his forehead grew stronger. There had been enough agony from his scar recently that he’d learned to school his features against betraying any of that pain to those who might be observing him, though. He tried to make himself smile: a cold, nasty curve of lips.

Voldemort just looked amused. His wand had appeared in his hand, from where, Harry hadn’t seen, and it was held upright, in front of him, like proper etiquette entailed. Harry raised his own wand, and then he was a mere step away from Voldemort.

The Dark Lord nodded at him, a sharp jerk of his head, and Harry forced himself to nod in return. In unison, they turned on their heels, and started walking away from each other.

One step, two.

There was a bubbling of bile in the back of Harry’s throat, a sensation that imitated the way his stomach was churning, the irregular beat of his heart. He swallowed, took a deep breath.

Three, four.

He looked towards the sky, maybe for guidance, maybe so that he could say that he’d seen it one last time. There was a small patch of sunshine in the distance, a break in the blackness, and it seemed to warm him. It was bright, a glimmer of hope in pervasive gloom.

Five steps.

Halfway to death, he thought, as that patch of sunshine was eaten by darkness again. He looked back down to the ground. He didn’t want to die, but he wouldn’t live through this duel with Voldemort, he was suddenly sure of it.

All of a sudden, it seemed to him that the most that he could hope for was to take Voldemort with him when he went. That was the only way that he could ensure his death would not be in vain, that the Wizarding world would not be subjected to an otherwise inevitable seeming future of darkness and terror and pain.

Six steps, seven.

His hands were clenched so tightly that he could feel his fingernails scoring his palms, cutting half-moon shapes into the thin skin there, drawing blood.

He didn’t want to be the good guy who finished last, he thought. He didn’t want to die because he’d followed the rules. Not at the hand of a man who had made it his business to break every rule he could. Who had not only broken the rules, but had torn them to shreds, burned the parchment that the rules had been written on, and then had let the ashes be carried away in the wind.

He felt a sudden surge of rage, a rage that called for him to toss the rulebook out the window, too. For him to be impetuous. For him to…

Eight steps.

He wanted to avenge his parents. He wanted to avenge Dumbledore. He wanted to avenge all of the lives that had been lost in this war and the previous wars, everyone who had ever known fear because of the man walking away from him. He could do that if he…

If he didn’t follow the rules. If he stopped being the good guy. If he did whatever it took to win.

He wanted to win.

His body thrumming, he swallowed heavily, and turned on the ninth step. He turned quickly, on the ball of his foot, and his wand was pointed at Voldemort’s back before he truly realized what he was doing.

He could wait, he thought. He could wait for the count of ten, for Voldemort to turn, or he could… He hesitated for the time that it took him to blink, but then, just before the tenth count, before Voldemort turned, before he stopped moving away from Harry with that slithering gait of his, Harry opened his mouth to whisper the words and said—

"Harry."

The voice was feminine, very close to his head, and he looked all around the black landscape, trying to figure out where it was coming from. But then he shook his head, because this wasn’t the way that it had gone. He’d opened his mouth and before Voldemort had turned around, he’d said those two words—

"Harry Potter." The same feminine voice, a voice that he knew that he should know. Hermione’s voice.

—and Voldemort had crumpled to the ground before he’d even had a chance to turn around and—

"Get out of here," he hissed. He batted at where the voice was coming from, looked back to where Voldemort had been standing just a moment before, and saw that the other wizard was gone, like he’d never been there at all.

"Harry Potter," Hermione said again, very loudly this time, her voice even closer to his head, if that was possible. "Get out of bed right this instant or I won’t be held accountable for what I do."

He opened his eyes.

There was plain white cloth beneath his face. He turned his head so that he could look around, so that he could try to figure out where he was. He saw three white walls, a white ceiling, a nightstand with a lamp and clock, and a Hermione standing not a foot away from him, her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.

"If you don’t hurry up, we’re going to be late," she said. "And if we’re late, we might miss some of the new student orientations or the campus tours and who knows when we’ll have time to set up our rooms."

Harry blinked at her. Owlishly.

"University," Hermione said. She jabbed her finger towards him. "Riddleway College for the Advanced Studies of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You do remember that today is moving day, don’t you? Or did someone cast a memory charm on you while you were sleeping?"

Harry blinked again, memories starting to sort themselves out in his head, and slowly he nodded. Then he looked at the clock, saw the time, and shook his head, trying to scatter the last vestiges of sleep from his mind, trying to draw his focus away from the dream.

"Why—" he started as he tossed the sheet back, away from his body. "Why did you let me sleep so late?"

"’Let?’" Hermione sounded scandalized. "Mum knocked on your door a good half-hour ago and you said that you were up. And then I came in here not even a minute ago to find you still asleep, so I called your name and I shook you and now, here we are. There was no ‘let’ about it, Harry Potter."

She humphed and crossed her arms over her chest, but there was a dancing twinkle in her eyes.

"We’re leaving in half an hour and you’d better be ready to go," she continued. Then she turned on her heel and started towards the door, but just before she stepped out into the hallway again, she looked over her shoulder and said, far too kindly in Harry’s opinion, "I hope that you were having a good dream, anyway."

After she’d gone, Harry blinked again, scrubbed his fingers over his eyes, over his scar, and smiled wanly after her.

"Dream," he said. "Yeah."

Then he stood up from the bed and started to get ready for the day.

---

Two hours into the journey, when Harry was sitting beside Hermione in the back seat of the Granger’s beige, four-door sedan, she turned to him and said, "This is going to be so wonderful, Harry. You and me, back at school, together again."

She paused for a moment, and then continued softly, "I missed you this summer."

Harry turned away from the window, from the gray, cramped Oxford streets that they were passing through, so that he could look at her. The excitement that had been radiating off of her for the entire journey seemed muted, somehow. Submerged, maybe, by her sudden earnestness.

He had no doubt that she really had missed him that summer, while he’d been living with the Dursley’s. Again. He knew that she hadn’t wanted him to go; she’d told him as much on more than one occasion. He’d said that he’d had to—after what he’d done, he’d had to—but he didn’t tell her why.

"I know," he said. He lifted one of his hands from where it had been folded in his lap and scratched at his scar, scraping ragged fingernails over uneven skin. "I missed you, too. I just… I couldn’t."

His voice caught as he spoke the last word, so he swallowed, blinked, and watched as Hermione nodded, honestly looking as if she understood the things that Harry wasn’t saying.

The things that he couldn’t say to her, to anyone.

Things that he would never say.

Because her understanding, as far as Harry was concerned, was faked understanding. It had to be, because she wasn’t him. She hadn’t done what he’d done. She didn’t have to live with the knowledge that after the Final Battle was over, when he’d been found unconscious on the Quidditch pitch, he’d been only nineteen steps away from Lord Voldemort’s prone, lifeless figure, not twenty.

He looked away from Hermione again, down at his own lap, and stared at his bitten fingernails and at the rough knuckles that bore a spider web pattern of scars from a curse that he hadn’t quite been able to dodge.

He kept staring at his hands, lightly tracing fingernail over scar, but it wasn’t until his nail had started its second circuit that he noticed that Hermione still hadn’t said anything. Suddenly, the silence between them seemed to be a nearly tangible thing. It might have truly become so if it weren’t for the low hum of the Beatles tunes that were coming from the car’s speakers.

It was hard to have tangible, awkward silences, when there was talk of Lucy in the sky with diamonds, after all.

His nail had entered its fourth trip around the scar when Hermione’s hand entered his field of vision, grasping at one of his own, stopping him.

"I know," she said. "I understand."

She tugged at Harry’s hand, until he let her move it from his lap to the stretch of seat between them. He let her fold his fingers in her own, let her rub gentle circles on the back of his hand with her thumb. He looked away from their joined hands, back out the window, his eyes damp. He blinked, several times, quickly; he snuffled quietly as Mr. Granger turned a corner.

"We never hear about this part of the story, do we?" she asked. "Usually, we only hear an abbreviated version of what happens after the Hero wins his fight; we hear the Happily Ever After, but we never hear the details. You’re living the After now, though. You’re living the details."

"I’m not a hero," Harry said, his voice was steeled so that it wouldn’t catch again. It didn’t matter, though, because Hermione ignored him, as she always ignored him when he said such a thing.

"I understand how overwhelming this all must be for you," she said. "I mean, I’m overwhelmed and I only did a hundredth—"

"That’s not true, Hermione, and you—"

"—no, probably less than that, of what you did. So I understand, okay? I just wanted to say that I’m glad you’re back. That I’m glad you’re doing this with me, Harry. That’s all. That’s all I wanted to say."

Harry let himself look at her again as she said the last words. Her lips were curved into a tentative smile, her eyes were warm, proud, grateful, and Harry’s eyes were still damp and he couldn’t stand it, so he looked past her, beyond her, out the window behind her.

It was then that he realized the buildings weren’t moving anymore, that while Hermione had been talking, the car had stopped, and that he had, in fact, arrived.

Hermione was still looking at him, though, with that oh-so-kind expression on her face, so he said, "It’s because of you. I’m here because of you."

As he spoke, Harry kept his eyes focused on the building beyond, the building that led to the place he would be spending the next two years of his life. He could see stone and red shutters, a bright red front door. He saw a small, golden plaque to the right side of the doorway that read: Oxford School of the Fine Arts.

"No, Harry, you’re the reason you’re here," Hermione said. "You filled out the application yourself, you know. I didn’t force you to apply."

Harry blinked and then blinked again. He coughed, pulling the hand that she still had grasped in her own away so that he could curl it at his mouth to muffle the sound.

"No," he said. "You just sat with me while I filled the application out, sharpened my quills for me when they broke, and then walked with me to the owl barn so that you could watch me attach the scroll to Hedwig’s leg."

He waited for Hermione to respond, to say something sharp in his direction, something self-deprecating, maybe. Maybe, he thought, she’d laugh at him, with him.

After too many moments had passed, though, Harry forced himself look directly at her again. It took more effort this time because he suspected that Hermione wasn’t going to be staring at him with an excited glimmer in her eye, with the kind look that she’d been giving him just moments before.

He could feel the tension in the air again, as if they had an elastic stretched between them, ready to snap. In his direction, of course, hurting him if he didn’t manage to diffuse the sudden strain.

He forced himself to meet her gaze, nearly cringing at what he saw. There was shuttered pain in her eyes and a frown curving her lips where there had been a smile. The color in her cheeks, which had seemed rosy only moments before, now seemed to be bright red patches on top of pasty skin.

"No," he said again, quickly. He tried to force some amusement into his voice, to make it sound as if he’d just been joking, just playing around, like the Harry of old might have played around.

"No, Hermione," he said, "you didn’t force me to apply. You just encouraged me. Strongly."

"I wanted to have company here. I wanted you to—"

She paused, obviously still hurt, obviously looking for words. Words that Harry thought he could hear in his head, words that he knew she’d come very close to saying more than once over the previous year.

Words about plans, about after the Final Battle. Words about the future.

"—to," she continued, a moment too long later. "I wanted you to do this with me. Because this is going to be so wonderful."

She smiled too widely at Harry, then, and the spread of her lips was brittle, showing too many of her perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth.

Harry swallowed, ducked his head, and said, "You’re right. It’s going to be wonderful."

There was a knot in his throat as he watched her out of the corner of his eye, waiting to see what she would do, and he couldn’t help but let out a small sigh of relief as she reached across the seat again to give his hand another squeeze. Then she pulled back fully, turning to look out her window, so that she could look at their new school, too.

"It was rather intelligent of Minister Fudge to make the entrance to the campus an arts school, I suppose," she said. "Not only will that explain why there are so many student-aged people about, for one, but also why so many of them will be eccentrically dressed." She paused, just for a brief moment, then said, "Because you know they will be."

"I mean, to the common Muggle, we’re eccentrically dressed," she continued, glancing at him over her shoulder and using one hand to gesture at her robes.

Harry looked down at his own navy blue student robes, of the same sort that they’d had at Hogwarts, just bigger, and nodded.

"We are about as normal as it’s going to get around here, I suppose," he said. Then, because he didn’t want to let silence lapse between them again, he said, "Uncle Vernon would choke and blubber and turn a magnificent shade of red if he heard me call myself normal."

Hermione snorted, rather indelicately.

"Normal is in the eye of the beholder, you know. I mean, you and I think that it’s perfectly normal to walk around in wizards’ robes, do wand work, mix potions, and recite spells, whereas he, apparently, thinks that it’s normal to have a son the size of a beached whale."

Hermione’s voice was softer, edged with laughter when she spoke, and Harry thought that maybe she’d already forgiven him for his earlier faux pas, for her hurt feelings. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful or not, because she was looking at him expectantly as she said it. Waiting for him to start laughing loudly, he thought, as he used to whenever she or Ron made jokes at his cousin’s expense. Sometime during the year before, he thought, he would have. Might have. Probably would have.

Now, though, he just smiled weakly.

Nodded.

Opened his mouth to say something, anything that would change the subject, that would keep the conversation going. Before he could, though, Hermione’s father harrumphed, drawing Harry and Hermione’s attention to the front seat, to him.

"Do you need any help getting your things up to your room, Harry?" Mr. Granger asked.

"No, sir," Harry said quickly. "I can spell my trunk so that it’ll fit in my pocket. Hedwig’s the only other thing that I have."

Hedwig’s cage was sitting at his feet and he tapped on it lightly as he spoke, his knuckles bouncing off of the thin golden bars. She blinked at up at him, clacking her beak twice, apparently not happy with either the car ride, the situation in general, or his actions.

"Nonsense," Mr. Granger said. "We’ll carry your trunk up to your room together, while Mrs. Granger helps Hermione with her things."

Then, as if to show that the discussion was at an end, he opened the driver’s side door and exited the car.

"I’m sorry, Harry," Hermione said once both of her parents were outside, unloading the trunk. "You know that my parents don’t believe in using magic for quick fixes." She paused, fingers playing with the hem at the sleeve of her robe. "It’s times like this when I find it’s better just to smile brightly and go along with whatever he says."

"No, no," he said. "It’s okay. I just thought that they would want to help you up to your room. I’ll be glad for the help. Really." He nodded, trying to emphasize how glad he actually was. Because he was. Really.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, nodding, too.

"He’s probably trying to avoid my room for as long as possible. Mum likes to decorate things. She never got to have any say about my Hogwarts rooms, so she’s relishing the opportunity to think that she has a say now. Ultimately, though, it’ll be up to me—and Susan, of course—no matter what mum says. Or what Susan’s mum says."

Harry nodded. "Neville and I will probably just tack a poster or two to the wall and call it good."

A single poster was all that Harry had packed to decorate with, anyway: the somewhat tattered Chudley Cannons poster that Ron had given him the previous Christmas.

Hermione rolled her eyes in a way that seemed to scream, Boys! and when she (fondly) shook her head back and forth as she opened the car door, it just seemed to emphasize the unspoken statement.

Then, before Harry could respond, she was outside, moving around to the back of the car to help her parents.

Quickly, Harry followed suit, opening his own door and sliding out into the cool fall air, too. It smelled of the city, but also of fallen leaves and a recent rain shower. He took a deep breath as he stood up, stretching and twisting his arms behind him as he did so, cracking his back.

When he turned towards the back of the car, he saw Mr. Granger struggling to lift his trunk out of the rather small boot-space, and he stepped around the back of the car to help. It took a little bit of maneuvering, but a short while later they’d set it down on the sidewalk in front of the school.

After Harry had helped to unload enough of Hermione’s things for a first trip, he returned to the back seat of the car and lifted Hedwig’s cage out.

"I’m sorry," he said as the owl swiveled her head out from underneath her wing, clacking her beak at him. "We’ll get you settled in your new home soon, okay? It won’t be too much longer. I promise."

She clacked at him again, but this time it had a slightly more pleased tone to it. She shook herself, ruffling her feathers, then started smoothing them out with her beak again.

"You have your papers?" Hermione asked him as she retrieved Crookshanks’ carrier from the front seat of the car. The cat had spent the entire journey riding underneath Mrs. Granger’s feet. "The one with your room number and the rest of your registration information?"

Harry nodded, making a visible show of rolling his eyes, more because it was what Hermione would have expected him to do, rather than a real desire to roll them. He pulled the folded piece of paper out from his front trousers’ pocket, and showed it to her.

"Yes, mum," he said.

Hermione glared at him briefly, but then she was turning to look at the building in front of them again.

"We should head on in," she said. "We’ve only got two hours before the welcome luncheon begins, after all. We can’t be late for that!"

Then, with Crookshanks’ carrier in one hand, and a suitcase in her other, she started for the building’s front door.

Shaking his head, Harry stepped up onto the sidewalk, Hedwig’s cage banging lightly against his thigh. He reached down with his other hand so that he could grab one of the handles of his trunk, but didn’t lift it until Mr. Granger grabbed the other.

Then they, too, started up the steps to the bright red front door of the Oxford School of the Fine Arts, leaving the world of Muggle Oxford behind them.

---

Half a block away, a man leaned back against a power pole, watching intently as the small procession entered the school.

In his early twenties, the man had blue eyes and long, wavy blond hair that was pulled back into a ponytail which ended midway down his back. With his tie-dyed shirt, ripped jeans, and the black wizard robe that was hanging open over the ensemble, he looked as if he belonged in a different place, a different era.

He stayed completely still, not even moving to scratch the itch at the tip of his nose until the bright red door that was the Muggle-side entrance to Riddleway College, had finally closed again, falling shut behind Harry Potter, the last of the four.

Then, finally, a wide smile slowly spread itself across his face and he pushed his body away from the power pole, so that he was standing up straight.

"Finally," he said, sounding nearly blissful. "Johan Madden the Third, your time has finally come."

And with that, Johan turned on his heel and, with a bounce in his step, walked away.

---

There was still a bounce in Johan’s step ten minutes later, as he walked into his basement flat and turned to shut the door behind him.

Well, he called it a flat, anyway, despite the fact that it was little more than a sparsely furnished basement room. It was only meant to be a starting off point, though. That’s what he told himself, anyway. And others.

Besides, it had everything he needed: a bed and a couch that only had some of the stuffing hanging out of it. A faux Oriental rug that he’d found sticking out of a rubbish bin a month before. Two sitting chairs to go with it. Wooden, and quite hard, but chairs none the less.

There was a fireplace in the room, also, and whereas everything else in the room could be considered either small or threadbare, the fireplace was a thing of beauty. It was deep and large, taking up a good portion of one of the walls of the room. The bricks that lined its interior were stained black, from flame and ash and potions gone wrong; a hue that contrasted sharply with the sheen of the polished oak mantle and the glow of the twisted metal hearth.

After he turned the lock on the door behind him, Johan walked across the room, to the fireplace. He pointed his wand at the logs that were laid on the hearth, muttered a quick incendio, and watched as the flames leapt to life.

He smiled as he pocketed the wand again, a smile that grew even wider as he clasped his hands behind his back and stared down at the flames, watching them as they danced and flickered and rose ever higher.

It was nearly a minute later that he acknowledged the three people that had already been in the room when he’d entered. He didn’t turn to look at them as he spoke, but he rocked back and forth on his heels as he said, "Sorry I’m late."

He could hear the soft sound of a magazine fluttering, of hands moving through air, as his three companions fanned themselves.

"God, Joe," the girl, Mel, said.

Mel was pixie-like in build, with a sharply angled face and slightly pointed ears. Her hair was short and naturally a dirty blonde, but on this particular day it was streaked orange.

She’d been curled up at one end of the couch when Johan had walked in, her shoulder blades pressed to the armrest. It was her spot, the spot that she gravitated to whenever she was in the room.

"It’s bloody hot in here," she continued. "Can’t you let the flames die down a bit, b’fore we all boil in our skins?"

Johan didn’t answer. His fingers twitched and tightened together slightly, but that was the only indication that he gave that he’d heard her.

"Toddy agrees with me, don’t you, Toddy?" Mel asked. "Martin?"

"Mel’s right, mate," Toddy said. He was lying on the Oriental rug. Johan would be able to see him if he looked down far enough, out of the corners of his eyes.

Toddy’s head was pointed in the direction of the couch, his feet towards the fireplace, and because he was a tall man, his body covered nearly the entire distance. His hair was long, lank and oily, and was fanned out beneath his head in such a way that it looked like he was lying on a thin pillow of damp hay.

"Yeah, Joe," the third man, Martin, said.

He was lying on the couch next to Mel, his head resting on her thigh.

"Mel’s right. Let the bloody fire simmer down a bit, will ya’. It’s eighty-fucking-degrees outside, y’know. You already got us here at this god-awful hour of the morning—"

"It’s eleven," Mel said. "It’s hardly morning at all, you twat."

"It’s morning," Martin said, "and that’s a time I prefer not to be intimately acquainted with, as you should well know, darling. But as I was saying, you already lured us here at this god-awful hour. There’s no need to add to our discomfort."

Johan rolled his eyes, waited a beat, and then turned around. He moved his hands so that they were clasped in front of him. Gently, serenely.

"I have good news," he said. "Very, very good news."

He smiled at them all, serenely, to match his handclasp.

"Well," Martin said. "Get on with it. Tell us this very, very good news, let us exalt over it, and then let some of the rest of us go back to bed, why don’t you?"

Johan felt his smile become just a tad bit brittle. He staunchly kept smiling, though. He said, "After you hear what I have to tell you, I doubt bed’ll be the place you want to head. I’m thinking that a trip to the Duck’s Foot is in order."

Only Mel raised her eyebrow—pierced—at the mention of the pub on the corner.

"The news is that good, Joe? Good enough to make you drink b’fore noon?"

Johan nodded. He unclasped his hands and stuck them into the pockets of his jeans.

"Today," he said. "Today is the day that we embark upon the first step of our plan to take over the world."

He couldn’t stop his chuckle of happiness. He didn’t think that Dark Lords—or future Dark Lords, even—were really supposed to smile and laugh as much as he was, but at the moment, he really didn’t care.

His loyal followers didn’t appear to be sharing in his joy, though, because they weren’t smiling. Or laughing. Instead, they were looking confused.

"But I thought that the first step of our plan to take over the world was to take out Potter," Martin said, no hint of the claimed exhaustion in his voice.

"It is."

"And the last time I checked, we were still in Oxford and he was still living in that bloody hell-hole of suburbia with those relatives of his, with that spell, whatever the fuck it’s called, that won’t let us touch him."

Johan muttered "accio Daily Prophet" under his breath and watched as the newspaper came floating across the room towards him, moving from its place on the milk crate by the front door and sailing directly over Mel’s head.

"And that would be where you’re wrong," he said. He held the paper open in front of his chest and tapped the top headline, written in four-inch type, with the tip of his wand. Orange sparkles fell to the floor.

"Riddleway College opens," Mel read out loud. "Harry Potter, other students arrive."

"Bloody hell, Joe," Toddy said. "So what that the great Harry Potter’s in Oxford? You’re out of your fucking mind if you think that we’re going t’be able to get within fifty meters of him. I mean, it’s not like we can walk into the school office, talk to the bloody receptionist, and say, ‘excuse me, ma’am, but could you point us in the direction of Harry Potter? We’re here to kill him.’"

"Not kill," Johan said. "Maim, yes, impair, yes, make him take a dramatic swan dive from grace, yes. Because, remember? We went over this? If we kill him, he becomes a martyr, and if he becomes a martyr, the people of the wizarding world will fight for his memory and then they’ll never fall into our evil clutches. If we impair him, though, the rest of the population will be so shocked at seeing him fall—they’ll be so demoralized—that they won’t know what’s hit them until its too late."

"But you’ve never told us how we’re going to maim him," Mel said. "You’ve only said, ‘Oh, leave it up to me. I’m the mastermind of this operation.’ And now you’re telling us that the key here is that we’re going to walk into that school and we’re going to go right up to Potter and—"

"That’s not what I’m saying at all," Johan said. He stuck his hands back in his pockets, letting the Daily Prophet fall to the floor in front of him. It fluttered down right beside Toddy’s leg. Johan saw him twitch.

"What I’m saying is this," he said. "Martin’s right. We aren’t going to get within fifty meters of him, but we don’t have to. That’s the key to being a Dark Lord, in’it? Delegation. I mean Voldemort, Grindewald, the like, they didn’t do their dirty work all themselves, did they? No, that’s what they had followers for, and that’s what we’re going to have followers for."

"And the followers will flock once we take down Potter," Toddy said. "But we don’t have any followers to take him down, do we? And we can’t, you just said. I’m seeing flaws here, Joe. I’m seeing great gaping holes in The Plan."

Johan pulled his left hand out of his pocket and showed his companions the golden medallion that was sitting on his palm. It was about the size of a Spanish doubloon, and it gleamed dully with reflected firelight.

"You don’t need followers when you have this," he said, lightly bouncing the coin up and down on the palm of his hand.

"You’re going to pay somebody else to do it?" Toddy said, looking skeptical.

Johan rolled his eyes. "No, you twat." He tossed the coin over his shoulder, but didn’t look behind him, knowing that it had ended up in the flames. He smiled serenely again as he waited for the gasps, the oohs and awws that were sure to follow.

Indeed, he saw Mel’s eyes go wide. He saw Martin sit up on the couch and Toddy prop himself up on his elbows. All three of them had their eyes trained steadily on the fire behind him.

"What in Helga Hufflepuff’s name is that?" Mel asked. Her voice had a slightly squeaky edge to it, and Johan could see that she’d curled her fingers as tightly around the couch’s armrest as she could.

Johan turned then, so that he could stare at the flames, too. It was startling, he supposed, if one didn’t know what to expect. The large green eyes that peered out of the flames blinked slowly, evenly.

"It’s a Veruznak," he said. He looked towards his three companions again and saw that all of them were staring blankly at him. He sighed.

"Honestly, don’t you people do any research into evil things at all? Standard Book of Demons? Page 73? You should try looking it up sometime. It’ll tell you everything you need to know."

"Well, why don’t you give us the Cliff Notes version," Toddy said, his tone dry. "Save us having to use any of our limited brain resources on reading."

"Yeah, Joe," Mel said. "Give us the short and sweet. The sooner you tell, the sooner we can marvel at your cunning brilliance."

Johan raised his middle finger in Toddy’s direction, then turned back to the flames. "The short and sweet?" he asked. "It gets inside you—rather painfully, I’ve heard—and eats your magic, just gulps it down, rather like you chubby bastards gulp down chips."

"So it’s going to eat Potter’s magic," Mel said slowly, a few moments later. "It’s going to drain him of magic so he’ll be a… squib?"

"Exactly," Johan said. "Because what could be more demoralizing to the Wizarding World than that? To suddenly have a hero that has no magical ability at all, who is no more powerful than the common Muggle?"

It took a few moments longer, but finally the brilliance of his plan seemed to sink in, because all of a sudden Mel’s, Martin’s, and Toddy’s faces all lit up, eyes dancing, wide grins spreading across their faces.

"That’s bloody brilliant," Mel said, as Toddy said, "So how’d you come into possession of this demon?"

"It owed me a favor," Johan said, because there wasn’t any need to get farther into the story than that.

Then he reached down, picked up the newspaper that was still lying on the rug, and turned it so that the front page was facing the demon. There were two pictures on the front page. The first was of the front office—or so the caption said—where a somewhat chubby receptionist was standing in front of the fireplace—the main floo entrance—smiling stupidly, Johan thought, as she waved the camera. The other picture was of Harry Potter at the Order of Merlin ceremony, accepting his Order of Merlin First Class award.

"This is Harry Potter," he said slowly, pointing at the second picture. "This is the one whose magic I want you to drain. I want you to get to him anyway you can. And after you do that, the debt shall be repaid."

There was a grunt of flames from the fireplace.

Then Johan reached into the pot on the mantle, pulled out a small handful of floo powder, and tossed it into the flames; they glowed green, but the green eyes glowed brighter still.

"Riddleway College," he said clearly. There was a puff of smoke and then the green eyes were gone. He stared at the flames for a moment, before pulling out his wand and muttering the spell to extinguish them.

He turned back to the three other people in the room and said, "So? Duck’s Foot here we come?"

Mel was already standing up. She nodded and walked towards Johan, linking her arm through his when she got close enough.

"Duck’s Foot here we come," she said.

---

Ten minutes before the welcome feast was to begin, as Harry walked into the dining hall with Hermione, Neville, and Susan all clustered around him, a hush fell over the room.

They were by no means the last students to arrive, of course. Hermione no more would have let them be late than she would have willingly forgone studying, but when they did get there, there were already quite a few students sitting at the three tables that stretched the length of the hall.

And every single one of them, it seemed to Harry, was staring at him.

He stood beside Hermione for several moments, both of them framed in the monstrously large doorway, and Harry couldn’t help but twitch and fidget as he waited for the hush to disappear. He looked down at the floor and scuffed one of his shoes back and forth across the stonework. He balled his fists in the sleeves of his robe. He took two deep breaths and he tried to will away the heat that had risen to his cheeks.

Despite the fact that he thought he should be used to the attention by now, at that moment, he wanted nothing more than to turn around and walk right on back outside.

Running was an option, too.

Or, possibly, hopping on his broomstick and flying away.

He wondered what would happen if he did either of those.

As if she sensed his thoughts, Hermione linked her arm through his, curled her fingers around the bend of his elbow, and started walking towards the middle table. When Harry looked more closely at the students sitting there, he saw Seamus and Dean, Justin Flitch-Fletchy, the Patil twins, and a few other Hogwarts students that he didn’t know as well.

That table, the middle one, was the unofficial Hogwarts table, apparently, which was not to be confused with either the Durmstrang table (to the left), or the Beauxbaton table (to the right). The students from the other countries and continents—the Americas, Africa, and Australia—were scattered between all three tables, generally sitting as far away from the three European schools as possible.

Their reluctance to co-mingle, however, didn’t stop them from staring at him, too, so Harry just kept his attention focused on Seamus, who was patting the empty spot next to him and calling, "Potter! Granger! Longbottom! Susan Bones! Finally! We’ve been waiting for you lot to show up."

Harry followed Hermione when she walked down one side of the table—but that was mainly because she’d kept her arm linked through his, which essentially meant that he had no choice in the matter.

He also had very little choice in the matter of where he sat, because Hermione sat down one seat away from Seamus and patted the empty spot in between them.

Harry sat. Then he bent forward, resting his elbows on the table, so that Hermione could lean around behind him and give Seamus a hug of greeting.

"Seamus," Hermione said. "It’s so good to see you! Did you have a good holiday?"

Harry heard Seamus begin talking quickly, excitedly, and when he glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the Irish boy’s face had begun to turn a dusky red color that grew deeper and deeper the longer he kept talking without taking a breath.

Harry listened to four words of Seamus’ speech—the "Oh, it was fabulous!"—before he tuned Seamus out.

Across the table from him, Neville was talking to Susan and Dean, with Justin dropping comments into the conversation occasionally. They, too, were all looking happy to see one another, talking enthusiastically, with lots of smiles and hand motions.

Harry sighed. He wondered what would happen if he tried to join their conversation, if the talk would inevitably turn to him and his great exploits. Or perhaps, they’d become really quiet, like so many people were quiet around him now.

He didn’t join their conversation, though. Instead, he looked around the dining hall, focusing his attention on the vaulted ceilings, on the stained glass windows that lined the walls, each of which displayed a great moment in the history of the wizarding world.

After he’d given each of the windows a cursory look, Harry turned his attention to the students from Drumstrang and Beauxsbaton, trying to determine if he saw any of those that had come to Hogwarts for the Tri-Wizard Tournament his fourth year. There was a red-haired girl at the Drumstrang table who looked vaguely familiar, a black haired boy, too, and there were three blonde girls at the Beaxsbaton table who Harry was sure he’d seen before.

He didn’t get much further in his examination, though, because the door to the dining hall opened again, and for a second time the noise in the room tapered off.

Harry looked around quickly, wondering if he’d unknowingly done something to draw people’s attention in his direction again, but then he saw what everyone else was staring at and he couldn’t help but stop and stare, too.

Because there, standing alone at the back of the room, framed by the solid oak beams of the doorway, was Draco Malfoy.

The blond was staring around the room defiantly, trying to meet everyone’s gaze with a glare, it seemed, and when his gaze locked with Harry’s, Harry couldn’t help but shiver; the glare was harder, colder, more cutting… just generally more than the Malfoy glare Harry had been so used to.

The gray eyes that met Harry’s were as shuttered as Harry had ever seen them, too, as if Malfoy had finally succeeded in building a wall between him and the rest of the world.

Harry didn’t know what to make of it.

Then, the moment was broken, because in nearly the same instant, Malfoy jerked his head away and Seamus said, "What the hell? What’s he doing here?" loudly, right in Harry’s ear.

"I don’t know," Hermione said, sounding puzzled. "He never said anything last year…"

"Why would he have?" Harry asked.

There was an edge to his voice, one that he hadn’t intended and one that he hadn’t been expecting. It surprised him, but from the look on her face, it looked as if it surprised Hermione more. She actually looked hurt—for the second time that day—so Harry swallowed, smiled as gently and as unoffensively as he could and said, "I just meant that we weren’t exactly friends with him. Those weren’t the sorts of things that we all discussed."

"But we certainly talked about it enough," Hermione said. "You’d think that he would have said something to us then. Just an, ‘Oh, I’m going to be going to there, too. Just so you know.’"

Harry nodded, but didn’t say anything in reply.

He was watching Malfoy out of the corner of his eye still, wondering whether or not the other teen was going to come to their table and sit with them, wondering what would happen if he actually did. Harry was sure that he wouldn’t, because Malfoy was Malfoy and he was still Harry Potter, his arch-nemesis, but…

Then he didn’t have to wonder anymore, because as he watched, Malfoy turned to the table that the Durmstrang contingent had claimed and sat down at the very end, as far away from every other person in the room as he could get.

"And this year was holding so much promise, too," Seamus said. "No Malfoy, no Slytherins at all, for that matter. No Snape."

"Well, we’re still without the Slytherins and Snape," Hermione said. "We only have to deal with one, singular Slytherin, and from the looks of Malfoy now, he’s not going to be going out of his way to associate with us."

"It would appear that there are still small miracles in this world, then," Seamus said. "If we had all of them here, it’d be just like being back at Hogwarts, and me Da says that half of the university experience is getting away from the things you know."

"That’s what my parents said, too," Hermione said. "They were trying to get me to apply to one of the other Oxford Colleges, but I said, ‘no mum, dad, I’m going to get my degree in Arithmancy, because that’s what I’m really, really good at, and there’s a need for good Arithmancers in the world.’ I don’t think they really understood, though."

"I didn’t think it was so bad out with the Muggles," Neville said. "When I was working at the flower shop over the summer—"

"You bloody well fell in love," Dean said. "Yes, Longbottom, we’ve heard all about it in the eight minutes we’ve been sitting here. You fell in love with a nice Muggle girl, one who happens to believe in magic without knowing a thing about you being a wizard. But you know that love colors everything, don’t you, mate? Just think about being out there all the time, with people who aren’t magical when you are, and you can’t say a bloody word about it? Harry, Hermione and I could tell you, couldn’t we? About trying to live out there without love-colored glasses."

Before Hermione could reply, because Harry knew he wasn’t going to, there was the sound of a spoon hitting the side of a glass—clink-clink-clink—and since it was magically amplified, the sound echoed around the room until everyone had quieted down.

Harry, and everyone else, looked in the direction that the sound had come from, towards the front of the room.

There were fifteen chairs set at the head table, thirteen for the professors of the various subjects that would be taught at Riddleway. One was for the Headmaster, the man in the bright red robes that was sitting one chair away from the center, and the other for Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, who was sitting in the place of honor in the very center. One of the chairs was empty, the second from the end of the table on the left side.

"Who do you think is missing?" Harry asked Hermione quietly, speaking the words out of the side of his mouth, hoping that only she would hear.

When she didn’t immediately reply, he full-on glanced at her to see if she’d even heard him. She had, he could tell, because he could see Hermione’s thinking face. He could tell that she was mentally adding things up, crossing things out, and then checking that information against the information that was in her head with regards to the various teachers she could see sitting in front of her.

"The potions professor," she said after a moment. "It has to be. That was the only professor that hadn’t been hired when they sent out the course guide. I recognize all of the other professors from the Names & Faces book that they sent out a few weeks ago."

Harry nodded, to show that he’d heard, before he turned his attention back to the head table in front of them. He saw Fudge standing up from his chair, appearing to be a little unsteady on his feet—a war injury, Harry had heard him tell people, but Harry thought that it had more to do with the Minister’s girth than anything else.

"Welcome, welcome," Fudge said. His voice was crystal clear, as if he was standing right next to Harry, speaking in his ear. Hermione had told him that all of the rooms had magically done acoustics, so that there would be no "bad seat" in the house. She’d learned that from the book that she’d purchased the day it had been made available: Riddleway, A History.

"It is my pleasure," Fudge continued, "to be the first to welcome all of you to Riddleway College, the premier educational facility in the world for advanced studies of witchcraft and wizardry."

"The only facility in the world," Seamus muttered loud enough for all of the former Hogwarts students to hear. Harry heard Neville and Justin and the Patil twins snicker quietly.

"As many of you know, the founding of Riddleway College has long been a dream of mine. When I assumed the position of Minister of Magic, I began making plans for this institution, plans that these last few years have only served to illuminate the importance of."

"He Who Shall Not Be Named," Hermione whispered. "He still won’t say his name, will he? Mrs. Weasley says that if he could, she thinks that he’d try to sweep the whole war under a rug, that he’d pretend it never happened."

Harry looked down at his hands, at his fingers that seemed to be trying to twist themselves into knots in his lap. He swallowed.

"And though the immediate danger has passed," Fudge said, "the importance of what we’re trying to do here has not. In fact, in these days of recent peace, it’s seems even more important that we take steps to educate the best and brightest of the witches and wizards in the world—you all—the best that we can. It is only through knowledge, after all, that we can overcome evil. It is only through knowing more than the enemy that we can truly triumph.

"So it is with great pride and pleasure that I welcome all of you to Riddleway."

He paused, sniffled slightly, and raised a finger to wipe at a spot beneath his eye.

"Just looking out at all of your bright faces, at all of those minds eager to absorb more knowledge, makes this truly a dream come true."

And with that, he sat down.

Applause filled the room, although it was more polite than enthusiastic, and in an effort to distract himself, Harry turned towards the center of the table and waited for the food to appear.

It was because of that that he didn’t see the small door at the right front of the room open to admit the potions professor. He didn’t know anything was amiss at all until he heard Hermione gasp, Neville squeak, and Seamus say, "Oh bloody hell!" far too loudly in the quiet of the room.

Harry whipped his gaze back towards the head table and couldn’t do anything more than blink. Because there, walking across the front of the room to where the Headmaster and Fudge were sitting, leaning down to talk to them, was Professor Severus Snape.

"What is he doing here?" Neville asked. His voice was quivering.

There was a moment of stunned silence amongst the group of Hogwarts graduates, and then Hermione asked softly, "Teaching potions?"

Neville whimpered. The rest of them just kept staring up at the front room, watching as Snape walked back to the empty chair, sat down as regally as he ever had, and scanned the assembled students. It wasn’t Harry’s imagination that Snape’s gaze rested on their table—on him—longer than it did on most of the rest of the students, the tables. There was only one place that the potion master’s eyes lingered longer, and it was out of curiosity that Harry turned too, to see what Snape was looking at.

What he saw didn’t surprise him, because Snape was staring at Draco Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy was staring right back.

What did surprise Harry was this: out of all of the Hogwarts graduates in the room, Malfoy was the only one who didn’t look surprised at Snape’s presence.

He saw, and he wondered.

---

There had been times when the meal hours at Hogwarts had been quieter than one might expect, Hermione remembered, but generally there had been good reason for it: the death of a student, the passing of Dumbledore, the sudden realization that Harry’s claims of Voldemort’s return were true.

She supposed that discovering that Snape had followed them all from Hogwarts to Riddleway could be considered a good reason, too, but… somehow it didn’t seem to merit the complete silence that had fallen over the Hogwarts graduates.

She looked down the table, at all of her schoolmates, and saw most of them looking down at their plates, listlessly poking at their food with forks, pushing beans and meat and salad greens from one edge of the plate to the other.

"This is ridiculous," she muttered and the rest of the students were so wrapped up in their own thoughts that it was only Harry who turned to look at her. He was arching one of his eyebrows at her.

"What’s ridiculous?" he asked, just as quietly.

"This!" Hermione moved her fork in an all-encompassing circular gesture, indicating most of the rest of their table. "I mean, sure, I’m just as disappointed as anyone else—I was looking forward to getting another professor’s perspective on the art of potions—but we’ve all survived Snape’s classes before, several times before." She paused, speared a green bean with her fork, then bit the tip off of it. "Plus, it’s not as if he can take any house points from us this year, as there aren’t house points to take."

She almost expected Harry to disagree with her, to shake his head and adamantly declare that Snape’s arrival at Riddleway was just the last straw, that he’d be heading back to the Dursley’s that very evening, but he didn’t.

Instead, he said, "You’re right." He nodded seriously. "That should take a lot of fun out of ragging on us, right? Besides, it’s not like we’re Gryffindors anymore, y’know."

"We’ll always be Gryffindors," Hermione said. She turned to look at where Draco was sitting, staring down into his goblet of pumpkin juice. "Just like he and Draco will always be a Slytherin. What I’m curious about is why he’s here. I mean, he knew that you and I were going to be here, even if he didn’t know about the rest of them all, and yet he chose to come here anyway. Do you think there’s a reason for that?"

"You’d have thought he’d go somewhere else," Neville said. His voice was still pitifully small, his face pale, and his lips pinched tightly together. "He hates teaching. We all know that."

"Unless he just hated teaching at Hogwarts, with all the younger students," Hermione said.

No matter the rumors that Snape had wanted the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, she knew that he genuinely enjoyed working with potions, that he was good at potions, and she seriously doubted that he’d want to deal with anything else for an extended period of time.

"This place would provide him with classes of students who at least had a cursory knowledge of what they were doing, as well as the advanced classes with students who truly wanted to be here," Harry said, obviously taking Hermione’s train of thought towards the same place that she was.

"And we’ll all be gone in two or so years anyway," she said. "It’s not like he didn’t wait seven years for us to be gone from Hogwarts. What’s another two years to have us out of his life forever?"

"He could have thought of us, though," Neville said. "He may have decided that he can deal with us for another two years, but did he give us any choice at all?"

"Snape’s never been a considerate one, has he?" Harry’s eyes were suddenly dancing in a way that Hermione hadn’t seen them dance in far too long. It was as if he’d consciously made up his mind to be amused by Snape’s sudden reappearance in their lives. She decided that it was a beautiful thing to see, to watch the shadows lift from his eyelids just a little bit.

Hermione glanced back towards the front of the room, as surreptitiously as she could, and she saw Snape looking in their direction again, as if he knew that they were talking about him. She looked back towards her plate of food quickly, speared another green bean, and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth.

"Maybe we should go talk to him after the feast is over," she said. "Maybe he’ll tell us why he’s here?"

"Voluntarily go talk to Snape? Hermione, darling, are you feeling alright?" Seamus, speaking as loudly as he could, of course.

"Well, we’re all here and he’s here and we know each other, and it just seems as if it would be the polite thing to do?"

"Since when have Snape and polite ever gone in the same sentence?" Dean asked. "I’m going to try to avoid him until I have his class—God, another class with Snape. I never thought I’d be saying that again—because the last thing I want is to hear him starting sentences off with ‘Mr. Thomas’ before I’m good and ready for him to."

"Harry?" she asked, looking for backup.

She watched Harry look back and forth between her and Dean, clearly torn by the response he felt he should give and the one he wanted to give.

"I’m not going to be able to avoid him forever," Harry said slowly, keeping his eyes on Dean. "I might as well get it over with, I suppose."

Hermione pushed her plate away, as she suddenly noticed that many of the students had already done so, and prepared to stand—as many of the students were currently doing—when Dean said—almost gleefully—"Too late!"

Hermione looked over her shoulder, back to the front of the room, just in time to see the small door that Snape had entered through close, which only seemed to illuminate the fact that Snape’s seat was empty and he was nowhere in sight.

She sat back down. "Well," she said. "We do have potions tomorrow, don’t we?"

"Please," Neville sighed, "don’t remind me."

---

Mary, the receptionist, hadn’t been at the luncheon feast. She’d wanted to go, but the Headmaster himself, Headmaster Bonbourton, had told her that she needed to stay at the front desk, in case any stragglers arrived and needed instruction on what to do now that they were there.

She was a plain looking girl, or so her Da had always told her, tugging at one of her mud-colored curls and watching as it bounced back up towards her scalp. The color of her eyes was like a murky lake, he said, but she didn’t agree with him on that. When she looked in the mirror, she always saw a spark of life there. She always winked at herself in the glass, always smiled, and in those moments, she thought that she was quite pretty, chubby cheeks and all.

She wanted to believe that her father, God Rest His Soul, would have been proud of her, finally, landing a job at such a prestigious institution. Or what would be a prestigious institution once it was a little more firmly established, anyway, but she knew that he wouldn’t have been.

He would have said, "Mary, lass. You should’a been one of the students in the school, not their bloody receptionist."

As she sat at the desk, in the Muggle building that was the front office, she could almost hear him saying the words. He would have been leaning over her shoulder, jabbing his finger through the air until he finally rammed it into the desktop. Then, he would have glared at her, as if his injury was somehow her fault.

She tugged at one of her curls, twisting it around her finger until the entire digit was covered with the thick strands of her hair. She pulled until she felt the comfortable ache of hair pulling against scalp, and then she let go.

"At least I have a job, Da," she said. The room was empty, a fact for which she was glad, because the last thing she wanted was to get the reputation for being the loony receptionist on her first day.

"And I’m here from the beginning," she said. "This job is going to take me places."

She shivered, as a chill suddenly descended upon the room, and she couldn’t help but call "Da?" because it was the same sort of chill she’d always felt whenever he’d entered the same room that she had been in.

There was no answer, though. No ghost of her father, no matter how diligently her eyes searched the shadows in the corners of the room, and it was because of that search that she saw the reason for the chill.

"You’ve never been the brightest button in the box, have you, Mary lass," she said to herself, as she stood up from her desk and walked to the opposite wall, where the fireplace that was the visitor’s floo was located.

"Now how’d you get down so low," she said. "I’d swear you were burning away just a minute ago, but… Nevermind." She pulled her wand out, muttered "incendio," and shook her head back and forth, feeling her soft curls bounce against her cheeks.

The flames started right up again, as if they’d never left off their dancing, and Mary turned her back to the fireplace so that she could start back to her desk. Before she’d even contemplated taking a step away from the fireplace, however, she heard it: the soft hiss that sounded like two words, a name. Harry Potter.

She turned around again, and she would have screamed—because there, staring back at her from the flames, were two large, slowly blinking green eyes—but she found herself leaning towards the fire, felt as if the eyes were moving closer and closer to her.

Then she did scream, shattered by a pain worse than anything she had ever known.

But when a coworker, one of the witches upstairs, came running to check on her a few seconds later, to see what the scream had been about, Mary was just sitting back down at her desk again.

"Sorry," she said. She pointed to one of the six corners of the room. "Mouse."

And if the coworker noticed that her eyes flashed green as she spoke, she didn’t mention it. Not to Mary, at least.

---

"Snape?" Ron asked. "Here? Bloody well teaching you all potions again?"

He probably would have said more, Harry thought, except that his best friend seemed to have decided it would be more productive and appropriate to bend in two and start laughing so hard that he couldn’t breathe properly, much less form words into complete sentences.

Harry stared at him, frowning. He crossed his arms over his chest, started tapping his foot on the floor, quickly, impatiently, and waited for Ron to calm down.

"Oh," Ron finally gasped, his face unusually red and splotchy, "that’s just priceless. Just when you thought you’d escaped him for forever and ever, well, no such luck. And here I thought that I’d be jealous, you lot being here without me. Now I’m thinking that I made the right choice in not coming."

He started chuckling again, rubbing at his belly as he did so, as if it was hurting him, but Harry had no sympathy for Ron at all. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Not if Ron was going to keep laughing like that, anyway.

"I couldn’t imagine having to deal with Snape for another year," Ron continued, "let alone two or three or however long it’s going to take for you blokes to get your degrees. That’s just— It’s just priceless."

Harry turned to look at his roommate, to see how he was handling Ron’s amusement, and he was gratified to see that Neville was glaring in Ron’s direction, too, even if there was a slightly amused, Neville-ish twinkle in his eye.

"Really, Weasley, there’s no need for you to rub it in," Neville said.

"Ooh." Ron took a step back, away from Neville and towards the closed door of the dorm room. "I’m in trouble now! Neville’s calling me by my last name. Save me, Harry. Save me!"

"Oh, save yourself," Harry snapped. "If all you can do is laugh at us because we’re stuck with Snape for another year, you don’t deserve saving. You want me to save you, you’re going to have to show a little bit of sympathy and respect."

Ron sobered immediately, frowning as studiously as possible, forcing the corners of his lips down so far that it seemed almost unnatural.

"Right," he said. He clasped his hands in front of him and started rocking back and forth on his heels. He coughed, cleared his throat, and said, "It’s absolutely tragic that you’re stuck with Snape for another year. You have my deepest sympath—oh, who am I kidding? It’s hilarious and no amount of frowning on my part is going to make it any less so. I’ll just share my amusement with George when I get in tonight. He’ll understand. I’m sure that if Hermione’s told him, he’s laughing just as hard right now."

Harry started tapping his foot again. The floorboards echoed hollowly underneath him.

Ron frowned deeply again. His eyes were dancing and his cheeks seemed to have turned even redder than they had been before, a telltale sign that he was truly struggling to hold back his laughter.

"Tragic," he said quickly. "Just… a true travesty. Yet another example of how little justice there is in this world."

Harry nodded at Ron, satisfied, and then moved to his bed, bracing his arms and pushing himself up onto the mattress.

The bed was taller than the beds at Hogwarts had been, with room for storing trunks and boxes underneath. Harry was unclear as to the concept of why that was, exactly, especially since they could shrink their belongings down to the size of peas, but it was the way the rooms were furnished. He wasn’t going to complain.

In addition to the two beds, there were two desks, two closets, and not nearly enough floor space, because most of it, at this point, was taken up by Neville’s trunk, which was only partially unpacked. Halfway, maybe.

Neville had arrived later than Harry had, thus he hadn’t had time to unpack his belongings before the welcome luncheon and all of the tours and orientations that Hermione had insisted they go on and attend.

"So, Ron, how’s the shop going?" Harry asked. "You and George getting it all set up? Is it going to be ready for the grand opening in two weeks?"

Ron nodded. He walked back across the room, stepping over Neville’s trunk and various strewn belongings, and snagged Harry’s desk chair, straddling it and resting his arms along the back.

"I never realized how much work it took to set a shop up," he said. "And it’s not so much the shop itself, it’s the lab in back. There are all these codes we have to adhere to, safety codes and the like, and someone from the Ministry has to come out and check everything before we open. And there are all of these Muggle repellant charms we have to get someone out to do, just incase."

"It’s sort of like Muggle buildings, then," Neville said. "Like at the flower shop I worked at over the summer holiday. They had an inspection while I was there and I remember Violet Fairbanks, the owner, frantically running back and forth, making sure that everything was up to code. Something to do with fire extinguishers and making sure that the building wasn’t going to fall down around our heads."

Ron nodded, as if he understood exactly what Neville was talking about. "George said that he and Fred did this all before, when they opened their shop on Diagon Alley, but he said that it doesn’t get any easier." He turned to Neville. "What were you doing working in a Muggle flower shop anyway?"

As Harry turned to look at Neville, the other boy seemed to expand a little bit, as if he was puffing up with pride.

"Professor Sprout suggested it," Neville said. "She said that if I ever wanted to open my own herbology supply shop, it would help to know about Muggle plants, too. They have all sorts of properties that Muggles don’t know about. And that Wizards haven’t been as keen to study, because they’re Muggle plants and all. It’s fascinating, really. Really."

"Well, then you’ll have to be doing all this stuff with safety codes eventually, when you get your shop," Ron said. "I don’t envy you, mate. Never again, I say. And you can quote me on that. If either of you ever hear me talk about opening another store, you have my permission to curse me into oblivion. Or check me for memory charms."

Harry chuckled. Then he turned towards the door to the room, because it was opening, despite the fact that no one had knocked or called through the wooden panel to request entry.

George Weasley slipped into the room, stealthy-like, as if he was being chased. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, giving Harry time to get a good look at him. His hair was mussed, his freckled face split by a smile. His cheeks were red and his eyes were dancing, and Harry knew what the first word out of his mouth was going to be, before the twin even said it. He was right.

"Snape!" George crowed. "Oh, you lot just never get a break! Hermione kicked me out of her room ‘cause I wouldn’t stop laughing." He shook his head back and forth, then frowned suddenly, looking aggrieved. "‘Nice thing to do to your snuggle bunny,‘ I told her, but she doesn’t seem to like that nickname. She just set me out on my ear that much faster."

Harry’s lips twitched. He could imagine Hermione’s reaction to George referring to himself as ‘her snuggle bunny,’ especially if he’d called himself that in front of Susan.

Despite the fact that he’d had nearly a year to get used to the idea of Hermione dating George, he’d never truly understood their relationship. While they bickered constantly in public, during the few chances he’d had to observe them in a private moment, they’d been quite calm and sweet, the picture of two young people who were very happy together.

"I don’t blame her," Ron said. "Hermione’s always had a sense of class… even if I don’t know what lapsed to make her think it could be considered appropriate to date you."

"I’m charming," George said, fluttering his eyelashes and grinning as suavely as possible. "I’m a successful entrepreneur. I’m a stud muffin and I’m her snuggle bunny. She couldn’t do any better than me."

Ron looked at Harry, rolled his eyes, and twirled his finger at his temple, mouthing ‘loony’ as he did so.

Harry just laughed. It felt good to laugh.

"Well, little brother," George said a few moments later, finally sobering. "You ready to head off? We’ve got to get an early start tomorrow, and these fine young academics have the pleasure of attending a Snape lecture. We should let them get as much rest and relaxation as possible before having to endure that, don’t you think?"

Ron nodded and stood up from Harry’s chair, shoving it back under the desk that he’d originally retrieved it from.

"I’ll see you lads tomorrow then," Ron said. "I’ll drop by after supper. Maybe you all can come on over to the shop and see the setup if you aren’t already swamped with essays and reading and the like."

"That’d be good," Harry said. He hopped off the bed, then walked to the door and opened it, in a sense ushering Ron and George out of the room.

Just before he closed it again, he heard George call, "Give Snape my best wishes, won’t you?"

Harry shut the door quickly, almost slamming it, and effectively blocking out the two Weasleys’ laughter. Then he turned to Neville and said, "They really are insufferable gits, aren’t they?"

Neville nodded.

It was as Harry climbed up onto his bed again that he realized he was still smiling. That he realized he might, possibly, have just had… fun.

---

It was half-past eight the next morning when Elvira Cunningham pushed open the Muggle Oxford-side door to Riddleway’s main office and stepped inside. She had a monogrammed suitcase clutched in one hand, her owl’s cage clutched in the other, and two house elves scuttling along right behind her, weighted down with her belongings.

She smiled at the receptionist sitting behind the desk, the one with the mud-brown curls. It was the smile that she reserved for the hired help, the smile that said, ‘I value the work that you do for me’ while at the same time saying, ‘how dare you think that you’re important enough to be in the same room as I am?’

Elvira didn’t just think that the whole world revolved around her; she knew that it did. Or, she knew that one day it would. She was destined for Great Things, after all. She was Elvira Cunningham, the beloved (and only) child of Morton Cunningham the III.

"I’ve arrived," she said. She didn’t look at the receptionist, even though that’s to whom the words were addressed. She looked down at her fingernails and picked at the rough edge of her thumbnail, then ran it back and forth across the pad of her second finger, trying to smooth it out.

When there was no answer to her announcement, she deigned to look directly at the lady sitting behind the desk, and what she saw, made her blood boil, because the receptionist—Mary; there was a name plaque on her desk— was blinking stupidly in her direction, staring at Elvira with incomprehension.

"Elvira Cunningham," Elvira said slowly, enunciating all of the syllables as clearly as possible. "I’ve arrived. To what room should I direct my house elves to take my belongings?"

The receptionist opened her mouth, but Elvira continued speaking.

"I would have arrived yesterday, of course, but I was in Africa, helping my father tame a herd of wild tigers. Nasty creatures, tigers. Have you ever been up close and personal with one? No, no, I didn’t think so. My father, Morton Cunningham the III, says that he wouldn’t dream of tackling such a task without me. My father, he’s just hopeless with wild beasts. I have somewhat of a… talent for it."

She let her smile turn somewhat feral, let her eyes glint. She watched as the receptionist flinched.

"Now," she said. "What room did you say that I was in? I do hope that it’s the single I requested, rather than that double they said they were going to give me. Can you even fathom that? Me? Living with… another student?"

The secretary started ruffling through the papers on her desk, finally pulling out a single sheet with Elvira’s name and a room number on it.

"There you go, Miss," the receptionist said.

"Thank you."

Elvira took the piece of paper gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, glaring at it until she saw that it revealed the only piece of information she’d wanted to see: the single room that she’d asked her grandfather to use all of his influence and connections and power to secure for her.

She turned to look at her house elves.

"Dimpy? Dinky? Room 106, if you will. I believe that I shall take a walk down to the headmaster’s office, to formally introduce myself. You may unpack my belongings while I’m gone."

The two house elves snuffled and shuffled their feet and then they disappeared in small flashes of light.

Elvira started for the door. Now that the receptionist had given her the information that she wanted, the woman was no longer even a blip on her radar screen. Elvira knew what she wanted from her life and she knew that to get it. She couldn’t let herself be distracted by people who just didn’t matter.

She’d nearly reached the door that led to the Riddleway grounds when she heard the secretary call after her: "Miss Cunningham."

She turned around. She was no longer smiling. She glared at the receptionist—

—who was suddenly standing right in front of her, looking at Elvira as if she had a right to invade Elvira’s personal space, as if she had a right to impose her presence…

"What do you think you’re doing?" Elvira said, her tone calm, careful, deadly. "What do you think you’re doing, standing so close to me? Do you know who I am?"

"Harry Potter," a voice said. The noise seemed to be coming from the secretary’s mouth—her lips and tongue had moved in time with the words, anyway—but the voice was much deeper than it had been before. Raspy, gravely.

"No," Elvira started to say. No, she was not Harry Potter—although she would be very closely associated with him by the end of the year, if she played her cards right. Very closely associated.

She didn’t say anymore than the ‘no’, however, because the secretary’s eyes had suddenly glowed green, and those lips had suddenly opened even more widely, and this green something was leaving the secretary’s mouth and was already tickling at Elvira’s skin, pulling at her, burrowing deeply into her, all at the same time.

She felt a pain unlike anything she’d ever known before. She screamed so loudly, she didn’t hear the mirror scream coming from the secretary’s own mouth.

And a few minutes later, when a crowd had gathered to see what all the commotion was about, Elvira was kneeling over the prostrate form of the secretary, gently pushing the mud-brown curls off of the other woman’s pale, sweaty forehead.

She said, "I don’t know what happened. One moment she was just standing here, and the next, she fell to the ground, just like she is now. Someone call the mediwitch, please?"

And in the hustle-bustle that followed, with some people running to get a nurse, and others running to get blankets and pillows and hot cups of tea, and still others turning to their neighbors to start discussing what they were seeing, no one noticed as Elvira’s eyes flashed green.

And no one heard her mutter softly, completely under her breath: "Harry Potter."

---

It was a gray morning, the air crisp and sharp, and as Hermione walked across campus, she couldn’t stop herself from shivering. She didn’t shiver long, though, because it wasn’t even a second later that George’s arm came to rest over her shoulders, gently tugging at her until she was pressed to his side, ensconced in his embrace. She squeezed herself closer still, trying to burrow into his warmth.

They were silent as they walked, moving slowly and in unison, but as they approached the administration building, Hermione leaned her head against George’s shoulder, tipping her face up so that she could look at him.

"Thank you," she said. "For breakfast this morning. That was really very thoughtful of you, to come and get me and take me out like that."

George squeezed her shoulder.

"Wouldn’t do to get your future off to anything but the best start possible," he said. "And what better start could you ask for than breakfast with me?" He paused, both in talking and in walking. "On second thought, don’t answer that."

"I couldn’t have asked for any better start than that, honey," Hermione answered, her voice as sticky and as sweet as she was able to make it sound. The corners of her lips twitched as she spoke, too, a byproduct of the giggles that she was just barely managing to hold in.

George didn’t appear to notice, though. He just pulled her even closer to him, pressing a rough kiss to her hair, and started them walking again. Walking, until they were only a few meters from the school-side entrance to the administration building and they were forced to stop because the place was literally swarming with people, some standing still at the bottom of the stairs, most milling, talking loudly to other milling people.

"—collapsed, they’re saying. Just fell ove—"

"—n’t been able to wake her yet. They’re going to take her to the inf—"

"—sick. That thing called the flu, it’s got to be. No on just falls over, Maurice. My aunt on my father’s side, well she—"

Hermione pulled away from George and quickened her pace. She looked for somebody, anybody in the crowd that she might know so that she could ask what was going on, but she didn’t see anyone. Instead, she started jostling her way through the people until she was at the front of the crowd, right by the steps.

She didn’t know that George had followed her until she felt his arms wrap around her waist. He whispered "What’s going on?" in her ear.

"I don’t know," Hermione said. "It doesn’t look as if there’s anything to see."

Suddenly, the doors to the building opened and a mediwitch came out, a stretcher hovering behind her. The first thing that Hermione saw was the limp, pale hand dangling off the edge; the next was that she recognized the face of the witch who had been sitting behind the secretary’s desk in the main room. The eyes were closed, the brown curls were lying mussed on the pillow.

"Oh my," Hermione said. Then she was forced to take a step back, to let the mediwitch and the other witches and wizards who were following behind through. "That was the receptionist. We met her yesterday, when we arrived. She was very nice, I thought." She paused, watching the path of the strange procession. "I wonder what happened to her. I wonder if she’s going to be alright?"

George squeezed her tightly. "Of course she will be, Herm. They’ve got the best mediwitches and wizards right here. You told me so yourself."

Hermione nodded, but it was more at the comforting tone of the words, rather than what George had said. She stayed where she was, watching the procession move across the campus, towards the infirmary building, until the students that surrounded her started going about their normal business again.

Until George tugged at her hand and said, "I’ve got to get back to the shop."

Even as he led her up the stairs, though, she kept her eyes in the direction the stretcher had gone.

---

Harry crossed his arms over his chest as he looked up at the clock tower in the center of the quad again, noting that only a minute had passed since the last time he’d checked. And while a single minute passing was much better than ten (because ten minutes passing meant that he’d more than likely be late to his first class at university—a class with Snape, no less) it also meant that Hermione was even later now than she had been before.

He tapped his foot on the ground—tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap—and leaned back against the stone wall behind him, trying to become as unobtrusive and as invisible as possible.

It didn’t work.

It was possible, he supposed as he watched his fellow students walk by, that a few of them didn’t notice him as they made their way into the very building that he was leaning against. Far, far more did, though.

Most were surreptitious about their noticing, just staring at him out of the corners of their eyes as they walked past, but then there were those who started whispering behind cupped hands with their companions, those that seemed to stop just short of pointing at him and saying, ‘Look! There’s Harry Potter!’ before they moved on.

He looked towards the clock tower again and sighed, because this time, not even thirty seconds had passed since he’d last looked.

"Come on, Hermione," he murmured. "Where are you? I’m not even the one who wants to be here." Then, he pressed his lips together, as if he could still stop himself from uttering that last sentence. He’d made a promise to himself the night before that he was going to try to be cheerful about being at Riddleway, he reminded himself. At least in front of Hermione. He fully intended to keep that promise, if at all possible.

That was when he heard the slap slap of shoe soles hitting pavement and saw Hermione running towards him, her book bag bumping against her hip, her hair and robes streaming behind her. As soon as she caught his eye, though, she slowed, so that she was walking demurely by the time she reached him. She stopped only long enough to link an arm through one of his, and then she started moving again, guiding him towards the entrance to the building, and up the stairs.

"Sorry, sorry," she said, sounding somewhat breathless. "I’m late, I know."

Now that he was moving, Harry sensed even more people’s eyes on him, more people noticing him. He thought that he could hear some of the whispers that were drifting out from behind those cupped hands: Harry Potter. He’s the one. Killed Voldemort. Duel. Single-handedly. Potter…

"I have a good reason, though," she continued.

"Honestly, Hermione, from you I wouldn’t have expected anything less." He stepped to the side quickly, as Hermione jabbed their linked elbows at his ribs.

"No," she said. "A really good reason. I was walking across campus with George this morning—we were heading to the Administration building, so that he could floo back to the shop—"

"When he pulled you into a corner and seduced you with his manly freckled charms?" Harry asked. "And he wouldn’t let you go until he’d kissed you breathless and that’s why your face is red and your hair is so mussed."

Hermione stopped in the middle of the hallway, forcing Harry to stop with her. She was glaring, Harry saw, so he smirked, trying to look as if he’d only been joking.

Which he had been. Really.

"No," she said forcefully. "A really good reason."

She lowered her voice so that Harry had to lean forward to be able to hear her clearly. "When we got to the Admin building, there was this crowd of students. And just as we got there, the mediwitch came out, floating a stretcher behind her, and the receptionist—you know, that really nice lady who gave us directions on how to get to our rooms yesterday?—well, she was lying on the stretcher. She was really pale, too."

Hermione shuddered and Harry guessed that there was more to the description than that. They had less than five minutes to get to class, though, so he didn’t press.

"It was horrible," Hermione said. She sighed heavily, and Harry watched as she shuddered again.

"Do they know what was wrong with her?"

"All I got from the mutterings of the crowd was that she’d passed out. That she’d had a spell. Something."

Harry nodded.

"Something wasn’t right, though, Harry," Hermione said, even more softly than before. "I could feel it. It just, something wasn’t right.

Harry didn’t know how to respond to that, so he looked away from Hermione, around the hallway. That was when he noticed that they were virtually alone.

"We need to get to class," he said. "The last thing we need is to be late to Snape’s first lesson."

Hermione nodded, then linked her arm through his for a second time, and started pulling him towards Snape’s classroom again.

The classroom was an open, airy, auditorium-style room, done up with white paint and medium colored wood chairs and desks. Harry saw Neville sitting in the middle of the classroom, off to the side, and there were two open seats next to him. He watched his roommate smile in relief as he saw them; Neville’s whole posture seemed to become less rigid.

They walked up the center aisle, then stepped across far too many students in their attempt to get to their seats. It was when Harry was sitting down, when he was looking around the room to see if he knew anyone else in the class, that he saw Draco Malfoy.

Malfoy was sitting all by himself, in the front row, in the seat closest to the door, which meant that Harry and Hermione had walked right by him without noticing. It had been a long time, Harry thought, since he’d walked right by Malfoy without so much as a hint of acknowledgment.

Then Snape entered the room, from a nearly hidden door at the front, located between the banks of windows and the chalkboard, behind the worktable that stretched nearly the whole length of the room, and the class quieted down immediately. Harry watched as Snape surveyed the room for a moment, looking down his rather large nose at all of them, even those who were sitting near the back, at the top of the room.

Again, he felt his professor’s eyes lingering on him. He didn’t meet the gaze.

"My name," Snape said, "is Severus Snape. You shall call me Professor Snape. This semester, I shall be teaching you Introductory Potions. Some of you have had the privilege of having me as your professor before. The rest of you, I ask that you forget everything your imbeciles of Professors have taught you. You are in my class now. You will do things my way."

Harry shuddered softly. He’d been so sure he’d heard the last of that voice, that he’d escaped his seven years of Snape’s classes in tact, yet here he was again.

It just wasn’t fair.

He jerked when a bit of parchment landed on his desk. Surreptitiously, when Snape asked all of them to take out their potions texts, he opened it up and saw Hermione’s writing.

We’re talking to him after class.

He rolled his eyes, but nodded when he saw Hermione glance at him out of the corner of her eye, and then he opened his text to the page that Snape had indicated they should all be looking at.

It just wasn’t fair.

---

"Well," Neville said slowly, as they made their way out of the potions classroom and into the once again bustling hallway. "As much as I loathe to admit this, or to even say it out loud, that wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it would be. Snape’s not quite so horrible when he’s ignoring us."

Harry nodded his agreement, although it could only be called a distracted nod at best, partially because he was paying attention to Hermione and the worried frown on her lips, but mostly because he thinking that it was the oddest potions class he’d ever had.

Throughout his years at Hogwarts, there had been very few constants, but one of them had been that Snape didn’t change. He just didn’t. He would be mean and spiteful, would take points from Gryffindors—especially Harry, Hermione, and Ron—for no reason at all, and that would be that.

Now, though, after the previous hour, Harry couldn’t say that anymore. Because Snape had ignored them. Completely and utterly, he had not looked them at all and had not focused any attention on them whatsoever.

"He’s not ignoring us," Hermione said. "He’s avoiding us. You saw how quickly he disappeared from the classroom after the lesson was over. It’s as if he knew that I—we—were going to go talk to him. It’s as if he was running away."

She stopped in the middle of the hallway and when Harry turned to look at her, he saw that her eyes were flashing, as they did whenever she was especially angry.

He opened his mouth, sharp words—well, of course he’s avoiding us, he’s not the sort to go out of his way to talk to those he dislikes most in this world or, Snape doesn’t run, you should know that—sitting on the tip of his tongue, ready to slip out. Then he reminded himself of his promise to be friendly and happy and understanding and he swallowed them.

Instead, he said, "Maybe he just wants to talk to us as little as we truly want to talk to him."

"It’s the friendly, respectful thing to do, though," Hermione said.

"And when has he ever been the picture of friendship and respect?" Harry countered. "Neville’s right. Snape’s ignoring us. And you’re right. He’s also avoiding us. Shouldn’t we just be happy he’s not breathing down our necks, watching our every move, just waiting to take points away if we so much as breathe in his direction?"

He watched Hermione, keeping his eyes locked with hers until he saw her nod reluctantly.

In the distance he heard the sound of a bell tolling. Hermione jumped and Neville jumped and they looked at each other and then back at Harry.

"I’ve got Arithmancy," Hermione said, just as Neville, already dashing away, said, "I’ve got to get to the greenhouses."

Hermione continued, "Are you going to be alright, Harry?"

"I think I can find my way back to the dorms, if that’s what you mean," he said, even though he knew it wasn’t. He could read the concern in her eyes, as if his happy act had failed. "I’ll be fine, Hermione. I think I’m going to go get started on our potions reading. Somehow I don’t think that his ignoring us and avoiding us is going to stretch to him giving our assignments perfect marks without even looking at them.

Hermione smirked, nodded, stared at him for a moment, and then spur of the moment-like pressed a kiss to his cheek. Then she, too, was off running, leaving Harry behind, staring after her.

---

"I don’t know if your plan is working, Joe," Mel said, looking up from the unfolded copy of the Daily Prophet that was resting on her knees.

She lifted it up slightly, then put it back down again, rustling the pages far more than was strictly necessary, Johan thought. It was an annoying sound, newspaper paper flapping back and forth, and he knew that she knew that he thought it was. That was why she was doing it, he was sure.

That didn’t surprise him, though, because way back when, when they’d been in their first year at Hogwarts, he hadn’t been the one tugging at her pigtails—or turning them into snakes (of the garden variety), as the case might have been. No, it had been the other way around, with her transfiguring his ponytail.

"And why isn’t my plan working?" he asked, turning fully away from the fire and walking to the couch. He sat down next to her and draped his arm along the top of the back of the cushions.

"Because there’s no mention of anything amiss here," she said, poking at the Prophet with her forefinger, crinkling the paper some more.

Johan cringed.

"All there is is mention of their bloody welcome feast and a word for word reprint of Fudge’s Grand Speech. As if we don’t hear enough out of him already, every bleeding day, right here on the front page."

Johan watched her bare her teeth at the newspaper; she looked a little like an oversized punk Tinkerbell, he thought. That was one thing that that J.M. Barrie had gotten right in the Peter Pan story. Tinkerbell had always had a nasty expression on her face.

"This wasn’t supposed to be an overnight thing." He kept his voice as soothing as possible. "This demon doesn’t just gulp down all your magic the moment it’s in you, you know. It likes to take its time, to savor the taste, or so I’ve been told."

"So it could take months?" Mel carded her fingers through her hair. "That’s not going to work, Joe. Once they figure out what’s going on, the Ministry will have Aurors all over the place so bleeding fast, the watchamacallit won’t be able to get anywhere near Potter."

Johan shook his head. "You’re forgetting two things, doll."

Mel arched an eyebrow at him.

He held up one finger. "One. This demon is really fucking rare here—standard it may be, but it hasn’t been seen in England in fucking centuries—and they don’t give out their amulets to just anyone. It prefers warm climates. With active volcanoes. Like Hawaii, in the Americas. Or New Zealand. They like anywhere that has the possibility of turning into fire and brimstone and ash without a moments pause."

He raised a second finger.

"And two. Harry Potter himself. Who was the student who dashed off to take on Voldemort all by himself, his very first year? Well, with those two little brat friends of his, yes, but still. And then who went on down to the Chamber of Secrets his second year? And those were just the exploits that we saw. You remember all the ones we heard about, right? There was that incident with his godfather, and then with Cedric—God rest his Hufflepuff soul—and then he dashed off and broke into the Ministry… We can’t forget his running away, too, during his sixth year. Drawing Voldemort’s attention away from Hogwarts, giving the rest of the students time to escape before a whole lot more people lost their lives." He couldn’t stop himself from laughing at that. "I wouldn’t have fallen for that trick, of course."

He paused, taking a deep breath.

"This boy is a genuine hero—or thinks that he is, anyway—fresh off of saving the world. You think he’s going to let something so small and pesky as a demon get away with jack shit on his watch?"

Mel shook her head, something that Johan was grateful for; he wasn’t sure what he would have done or said if she hadn’t.

"He’ll get that smart bird of his, Hermione Granger, to figure out what’s going on," he continued. "Then he’ll track, he’ll corner, and when the Veruznak senses Potter’s strength, he’ll go in for the kill. Or, well, maim. Squibify, as the case might be."

He nodded at Mel again, then gently ran his fingers over the top inch or so of the newspaper, the edge that was bent over her knee, towards him.

"If there’s nothing in here by tomorrow or the next day, then we’ll start to worry. They won’t be able to keep this whole incident under wraps for very long, I shouldn’t think."

He stood up from the couch then, and walked back over to the fireplace, and stared down at the flames, loosing himself in his thoughts.

---

Neville was, in fact, early for his Herbology class. Either that, or the teacher, Professor Arbor, was late. Either way, he not only had time to find a seat in the greenhouse-classroom—second row, center—he had time to unroll his parchment, uncap his ink, and decide which of the two quills on his person was the sharpest.

He even had time to draw the attention of the girl sitting next to him: red-haired, thin and willowy, not from Hogwarts, although she did look rather familiar. But that could have just been because he’d seen her at the welcome feast the day before. He’d seen a lot of people at the welcome feast the day before.

She knew who he was, though, because the first time he looked in her direction—just generally checking out the classroom—she stuck out her hand and said, "You’re Neville Longbottom, right?"

He took her hand, because his grandmother had taught him that when a lady extended a hand in his direction, the only proper thing to do was take it, but other than that, he was afraid that he was blinking rather owlishly at her. Not such a good first impression.

"Do I—Do I know you?" he asked after too many moments, when he thought that maybe, possibly, conversation might distract her enough so that he could get his hand back.

She shook her head. Her hair hung long and straight, rather like Ginny Weasley’s did. In fact, she looked a lot like Ginny Weasley. Maybe that, he thought, was why she looked so familiar.

"Amber," she said. "Amber Smith. And no, we haven’t met before. I recognized your picture from the newspaper, though. My dad, he subscribes to the Daily Prophet. We get it late, because the owls have to fly from England to New York, but we get it. I recognized you from the pictures they printed after—"

She paused, rolling her eyes around slightly, visibly searching for the correct way to say whatever it was that she wanted to say. Then she looked down at their still joined hands, blushed, and let go of Neville as quickly as if she was holding a young Mandrake, one who hadn’t finished teething yet.

"After the war?" he said.

Amber looked relieved and nodded, smiling. Some might have said that her mouth was too wide, Neville thought, or crooked, because one side ended higher than the other. She looked so relieved, though, that Neville could only think that she looked charming.

"Yes," she said. "After the war. I’ve never met someone who was on the front page of the newspaper before. You’ll have to excuse me. It’s all very exciting."

"Not really," Neville said. He ducked his head, looking down at the empty piece of parchment in front of him. He swallowed. "There were lots of us on the front of the newspapers."

"Well, it’s exciting to me," Amber said.

There was a sound from the front of the room, and it appeared that their professor had arrived. She was short, stout, and was wearing what looked to be an upside down flowerpot on her head.

"Say," Amber said, leaning close to Neville. "If we need to work in partners in this class, would you like to work with me? It’s just, I don’t know anyone else, and I’ve heard your really good at this stuff—or so the Prophet always said—and I don’t want to be one of those people who gets stuck with a random someone because I—"

"Sure," Neville said. "No, I’d be glad to partner with you." He paused. "You know, I don’t believe anyone’s ever wanted me to be their partner before."

"Oh, I can’t believe that."

"It’s true," Neville said. He nodded empathetically. "Really."

And then the conversation was at an end, because Professor Arbor started talking.

---

The one problem with Neville having fully unpacked the night before, leaving the two of them a relatively clean dorm room, Harry decided, was that there was now enough room on the floor to pace.

Because that’s what he was doing now. Pacing, from door to window, back and forth, back and forth, and then back and forth yet again.

He’d tried to start his potions reading, he really had. He’d sat down at his desk, opened the textbook up, and he’d even gone so far as to read the very first sentence of the very first chapter, but then, well, his mind had started wandering to places that he didn’t want to let his mind wander. To places that his mind had been wandering the entire summer, when he’d sat in the littlest bedroom in the Dursley’s house, alone, watching the Muggle world pass by underneath his window.

To places he revisited in his dreams.

To places he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to think about. Not now, not when he’d entered the After, not when he’d moved on. Beyond.

It was easier to keep that promise, though, when he was surrounded by other people—Hermione, Ron, Neville—than when he was sitting alone, in his room, doing Snape’s reading assignment, when he’d been sure that he’d never have to do another Snape reading assignment again.

He managed to last a full twenty minutes, before on a trip in the direction of the door, he grabbed his robe off of his bed, made sure his wand was still in his pocket, and then just continued out the door and into the hallway.

Walking outside, he decided, had to be better than pacing in his room. It probably looked less… psychotic, too, because if anyone questioned why he was walking outside, he could say that he was exploring the campus. If anyone had asked why he was walking back and forth in his room, however, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with any suitable reasons.

The air outside was thick and cool, to match the gray clouds that filled the sky. There were no glimmers of sunshine today, no rays of bright, yellow light cutting through the cloud cover.

If Harry had been paying attention to where he was going, he would have seen building after building made of old, gray and brown flecked stone, aged and worn, as if they’d been their for centuries instead of being less than three years old. He would have seen great stretches of grass, looking emerald green in the gray light, with cement paths winding their way through the lawns.

He’d been hoping that a trip outside would keep the thought that he didn’t want to think at bay, that he would be able to distract himself from his world by immersing himself in the world outside. While it wasn’t appearing to work, though, it seemed easier to deal with the thoughts and memories when he was walking aimlessly, his eyes on the gray pavement that was passing beneath his feet. Maybe it was the fresh air, or maybe his problems—his truths—just seemed less important when he wasn’t constrained by four walls, a floor, and a ceiling.

Or maybe, possibly, it was because he could see the result of his choice; he could lose himself in a world that had not fallen to Voldemort’s darkness. Because of him. Because of the choice that he’d made.

He wasn’t consciously aware of where his feet were taking him, of the time that was passing as he walked. He was moving as if in a dream, lost in thought as he’d been lost in thought for most of the summer, so it was with a start that he’d realized he’d stopped moving.

He was standing in front of the infirmary. He recognized it as such from the plaque to the left of the door: Hoodleblum Memorial Infirmary.

He took a brief moment to wonder whether he’d be spending as much time there as he’d spent in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, and he came to the conclusion that he really, really hoped not.

Then, like the sudden tickle of an itch that he couldn’t scratch, he remembered Hermione’s story from that morning, her tale of the mediwitch and the receptionist who had been floated out of the office on a stretcher. He succumbed to the sudden impulse and started up the steps, heading into the hospital building.

Before he knew it, he was in the reception area—empty. He saw a desk off to one side of the room, directly in front of the only other door, with a sign that read: Nurse on Duty. No one was sitting behind it.

Seemingly propelled forward by the sudden bubble of adventuresomeness in his gut, he walked around the desk, through the door, and found himself in an overly large hospital wing.

All of the beds were empty, their pillows perfectly fluffed, their sheets looking starched and white, with their corners perfectly straight—except for one, down at the very end of the room. That bed was surrounded by a gaggle of doctors and women in white hats. One of them, Harry suspected, was the Nurse on Duty. That bubble of impulse in his gut, the itch of curiosity that was tickling the back of his mind, pushed him forward, step by slow, quiet step, down the center aisle way.

He could hear fragments of the medics’ conversations, but only fragments, because that corner of the room seemed to be filled by a jumble of noise, everyone talking at once.

"—Just gone," a man said. "It’s just—"

A woman: "—cases of this nature bef—?"

"Poor darling, she’s going to be—"

Then one complete sentence. "Magic doesn’t just disappear, you know. It has to go somewhere."

Harry gasped, setting his foot down with a far heavier step than he’d intended. That was enough noise, apparently, to draw the attention of the doctors and nurses, because they all, as one, fell silent.

It was a nurse who turned around first.

"May I help you?" she asked after a moment. "Did you need medical attention?" Then, "Oh, Harry Potter, darling, I’ve heard you’re an accident prone young man. Did you manage to injure yourself already?"

Even as far away as he was from her, Harry could see the fake smile on her face, the fake cheer in her voice.

"No, I heard that, that—" He realized that he didn’t know the receptionist’s name. "—the receptionist had an accident. I thought that I’d come check on her, see if there was any way I could help."

The nurse was already bustling towards him.

"She’ll be fine, dear. But how sweet of you to come check on her. I know that she’ll be tickled pink when she wakes up and so, so sorry that she missed you."

She was right up close to Harry then, one of her hands wrapped firmly around his elbow, already turning him away, towards the exit of the room.

He must have had a disbelieving look in his eye, because she said, "She just had a bit of a spell, dearie. That’s all. She’ll be just fine. All she needs now is a nice, uninterrupted rest."

Then he was out the door, standing in the empty reception area, and the door to the hospital room was sliding shut behind him.

---

For Hermione, there had always been sort of a blissful excitement associated with the very first day of a new school year.

This year, especially, because not only did she have a whole stack of shiny new textbooks to read, she also had an entirely new set of professors—except for Snape, of course—and supposedly more advance versions of courses she’d had before. She’d get to emphasize what really mattered to her, even more so than she’d been able to at Hogwarts.

It was nearly idyllic.

She was standing at the front of the classroom, just one in a line of students waiting to talk to Professor Pythagorus. Just to introduce herself, in Hermione’s case, but that was when she saw Harry standing outside of the door, looking out of place and uncomfortable, worried. He was also motioning for her to join him.

Since the line she was in didn’t seem to be moving at all—one of the Ravenclaw boys was trying to explain a theory about something arithmancy oriented that he’d developed at some point in his life—Hermione stepped out of line with only a heavy sigh of regret.

She stopped regretting when she got close enough to Harry to actually see him clearly. For the first time in months, his eyes were shining with excitement. His fidgeting, which Hermione had taken for discomfort, actually appeared to be impatience.

"You were right," he said as soon as she was with him. This time, he slipped his arm through hers. This time, he was the one pulling her off in some unknown direction.

Hermione resisted the urge to say, ‘Of course I was right’ or ‘I’m always right,’ instead settling for, "What was I right about?"

"Something being fishy about the receptionist. I went to the infirmary to check on her—"

Hermione raised an eyebrow. Harry looked a tad bit guilty, she thought, but he kept right on talking.

"Okay, so I was out walking around campus," he said, "and when I passed by the infirmary, I decided to go in and check on her. There was no nurse at the desk, so I went right on in, and there was a whole group of doctors and nurses gathered around her bed. They didn’t know I was there, so I was able to overhear some of their conversation."

He repeated word for word what he’d overheard, or so Hermione assumed, because she could see a crease between his eyebrows, as he concentrated on what he was saying.

"Don’t you think that’s weird?" he asked. "You were right. Something’s going on here."

Hermione nodded slowly, not quite sure where Harry was going with his line of thought. But then it all became clear.

"I think we need to investigate," he said. "If there’s something around that’s making plain old witches and wizards lose their magic, we need to put a stop to it."

He was standing up so straight, puffed up with so much pride, that Hermione hated herself for what she said next.

"I’m sure that there’s a perfectly logical explanation, Harry."

He eyed her warily.

"What sort of perfectly logical explanation?"

"The kind where a wizard’s magic occasionally just burns out. You’ve heard of spontaneous combustion, right? In Muggles? Where one moment they’re fine and the next they’re on fire, the next a pile of ash?"

Harry nodded once, sharply.

"Well, it’s the same thing with Wizards, except that it’s their magic reserves that burn away. Some wizards think that that’s why Muggles burn up. Because they don’t have the magic for the spontaneous combustion to burn through first."

"But—" Harry started.

"No, Harry," she said. "Just because something out of the ordinary happens doesn’t mean that there’s necessarily evil behind it." It was her turn to take Harry’s arm, to lead him away from the alcove. "If you even heard them correctly, I’m sure that there’s a perfectly logical explanation. And if there isn’t, well… The medics will do whatever’s needed. They’re the best around, you know."

"But—" Harry started again.

"I know that you’ve been the hero of the Wizarding World your entire life," she interrupted, her voice sharper than she’d intended for it to be. "But Harry, you can’t save everyone. Not everyone needs saving, either. I know Voldemort has had you jumping at shadows for years, but he’s gone now, and you’re here, and you don’t have to jump anymore."

That seemed to deflate him.

"You were the one who said that something didn’t feel right about this whole thing."

His tone was sharp, almost accusing, but she just smiled at him, sadly.

"Maybe I need to stop jumping, too," she said. Then, her tone conciliatory: "Come on, let’s go see if they’ve put out the luncheon spread, okay?"

They walked in silence to the dining hall.

---

It hadn’t taken Amber very long at all to decide that she liked England. She’d apparated into the transcontinental Apperation terminal (in the Wizards Wing of Heathrow airport, the wing that had seemingly been under construction for years), she’d heard the accent, and she’d fallen in love.

Okay, so her ride on the Knights Bus, going from Heathrow to Riddleway, hadn’t been the most pleasant experience of her life, but it was big, and multi-level, and purple. Then she’d arrived at Riddleway and she’d fallen even harder. Old stone buildings, like she’d seen at some of the Ivy League schools back in the states. Rich green lawns. Boys with accents. Suzy, her friend from back home, was going to be so jealous.

She shivered as she stepped out of the library and into the cool night air. It wasn’t cold, per se (she was from New York, she knew cold), but it was enough to make her shiver. Enough to make her teeth chatter slightly.

She held her books tightly to her chest as she started walking the cement pathways back to the dorms. It was awfully dark, she suddenly realized; the moon was hidden by the same clouds that the sun had been hidden behind all day. Also, the more that she looked around, the more shadows she seemed to see: dark passageways between buildings, dark splotches under trees and clumps of bushes.

She shivered again, but this time not from the chill of the air. She began walking a little more quickly. Her footsteps on concrete were the only sounds that reached her ears.

Up ahead, Amber saw the thin archway tunnel that she needed to go through to get to the dorms. As soon as she reached the other side, she’d be able to see her dorm. She didn’t run to get there, she didn’t, but she did walk faster than she’d been walking before. Her breath was coming in quick shallow gasps by the time she reached the magically lit hallway, and she made herself stop, breathe deeply, calm herself.

It wasn’t as if she was in the middle of New York City, by herself, at midnight, after all.

She started walking again, more slowly, breathing in deeply, and exhaling slowly, because she was actually here, England, and life could not possibly get any better.

That was when she saw the girl in front of her, the blonde with the thin, wavy hair. She was balancing herself against the wall at the end of the tunnel, supporting herself with one hand, and she was stumbling as she walked towards Amber, nearly tripping over her own feet.

She was looking at Amber when she said, her voice pitiful and weak, a shadow of the voice Amber would have expected from such a girl, "Help me." Then she stumbled again, crumpling to the pavement.

Amber let her books drop to the ground as she ran to help the girl. As she knelt down beside her, she looked around, frantically, trying to see if there was anyone she could call to for help.

She saw no one.

And when Amber heard the rough, inhuman whisper of "Harry Potter," and then the sounds of two screams co-mingled, there was no one around to hear them.

---

The owl dropped that morning’s edition of the Daily Prophet in front of Hermione, but as she fed it a small bite of bacon, it was Harry who took the paper, unrolled it, and started looking through it, before Hermione could utter a word of protest.

He quickly scanned the front page, glancing at the pictures and headlines, looking for any mentions of Riddleway, the receptionist, or God forbid, himself, but he saw nothing. He flipped to the next page, then the next, repeating the process, and still there was nothing. He was just about to flip to the fourth, when the paper suddenly disappeared from his hands.

He looked over at Hermione and saw that she was glaring at him.

"My dear, dear friend Hermione," she mimicked, dropping her voice to a deeper register, in a relatively good imitation of his voice, he thought. "Would you mind terribly if I borrowed your copy of the Daily Prophet this morning at breakfast? But only when you’re done with it, of course."

She switched back to her normal voice. "Of course not, Harry. You’re always welcome to take a look at my copy of the Prophet, the one that I pay for. Thank you so much for asking. That was quite considerate of you. Was there anything in particular that you were looking for?"

Harry ducked his head slightly. He could feel a small flush of heat rising to his cheeks.

"Sorry, Hermione," he said, trying to sound even more chagrined than he actually was. He knew that she was teasing, mostly. It would only help his case if he played into it, though, he thought.

Indeed, it seemed to, because when he looked at Hermione again, he saw that she was smiling at him, brightly, her frown completely gone. Then she turned from him so that she could look at the paper herself.

"Now what were you looking for?" she asked. "I know you, Harry Potter, and you tend to avoid the Daily Prophet at all costs, unless there’s something specific that you want."

"Yeah, Potter," Seamus said. "What got your knickers in a twist this morning?"

"Nothing," Harry said, shaking his head quickly, looking as innocent as possible. He looked at Hermione out of the corner of his eye, hoping that she would understand the point he was about to make, or hint at, as the case might be. "I just wanted to see if they had any information about the receptionist, if they’d maybe come up with a diagnosis for why she collapsed yesterday."

"Ooh," Susan said, from Hermione’s other side. She shuddered. "I heard about that. That was sort of spooky, wasn’t it? I heard she had a sort of a fit and then nearly attacked a student who was checking in yesterday morning, rather than when we were supposed to, and then that she just collapsed. That would make the newspaper, wouldn’t it?"

Hermione’s smile had disappeared as soon as Harry had mentioned the receptionist, but at Susan, Neville, and Seamus’ urgings, she dutifully started scanning the paper, with Harry looking over her shoulder, in case she missed something.

"There’s nothing in there," a new voice said, and Harry looked to the redhead that was now standing behind Neville, looking at all of them. For an instant, Harry thought there was something of a feral smile on her face, a glint of… something in her eye, but then Neville was looking at her and the smile turned soft again.

"Amber," he said, looking quite pleased to see her. He turned to Harry, the rest of them at the table, saying by way of explanation: "Amber’s in my Herbology lecture."

"That I am," she said. "I thought it would be wise to befriend the smartest person in the class on the first day, that way I can leech all of the information I’m going to need to know off of him."

"Smart plan." Seamus clapped Neville on the back. "There’s no one better at Herbology than our Neville, you know."

"That’s why I was coming over, actually," she said. "I wanted to see if you’d like to get together and study tonight, Neville? Go over our notes before we have class tomorrow?"

"Of course," Neville said, but his nod was a little bit less sure than the sound of his voice, Harry thought. "That sounds like a good idea. Shall we meet in the library, then?"

Amber nodded, then she nodded at the rest of them and she’d already started to turn away, when Hermione spoke out.

"What do you know about the receptionist collapsing yesterday? Do you know anything about it? You said that it wasn’t in here." Harry watched as she rustled the Prophet around.

Amber paused a moment before she turned around.

"I know that it’s not in there because I checked this morning, but I don’t know anything much beyond that," she said. "Just what I heard around the dinner table last night." She paused. "I do know that they found another victim this morning, though, so it doesn’t sound like it was a one-time thing."

Then she walked away, and Harry turned to look at Hermione, to see what her reaction would be. He thought that maybe she’d try to blow him off again, that maybe she’d tell him that there was a reasonable explanation, some way that things could be explained without things automatically being afoot.

She was biting at her bottom lip, though, looking down at the now refolded newspaper in her hands. When she spoke, nearly a minute later, she leaned close to Harry, so that only he would be able to hear her.

"I think we should take a trip to the infirmary this afternoon," she said. "Don’t you?"

Harry nodded, smiling in relief. Just for the moment, the world seemed to have stabilized underneath his feet; he was back on solid ground again, because tracking down evil, putting things right… those were things that he knew.

"I’m sure that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this all," she continued, looking in the direction that Amber had gone, "but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to do a little investigating."

Again, Harry nodded in agreement.

---

Johan sighed as he stared at the shreds of that day’s Daily Prophet that were spread out across the carpet in front of his fireplace. The thin sheets of paper had been torn into inch wide strips, methodically shredded when it was discovered that it didn’t include the information Johan had promised that it would: namely, information regarding the progress of their Evil Plan.

He’d tried to tell them that the fact that there was no information didn’t necessarily mean that The Plan was failing. He’d tried to tell them that it could just mean that Fudge had a strong influence over the editors of the paper still and that he’d managed to persuade them not to print anything that might be considered a black mark against his sparkly new institution.

Mel and Toddy and especially Martin hadn’t listened, though. No, they’d shredded the paper—which Johan had paid for with his own knut, thank you very much—and then they’d taken a trip to the Duck’s Foot. A trip on which he hadn’t been invited.

Slowly, reluctantly, he waved his wand, muttered a few words, and watched as the shreds of paper gathered themselves into a pile and then floated in the direction of the fireplace, landing on top of the logs that were already there. The paper certainly wasn’t good for much beyond kindling at this point.

As he did that, he told himself that he wasn’t worried. Everything was going according to plan, he was sure of it. It had to be, because it had been a good plan.

Tomorrow, he’d told his cohorts. Tomorrow there would be news, there would be proof in the Daily Prophet. They’d told him that there had better be.

He tried not to think of what the consequences might be if there wasn’t.

---

It hadn’t taken Hermione long to regret suggesting to Harry that they pay a visit to the infirmary, that she’d make an attempt at talking to the now two patients. Provided that they were still there, of course. Provided that they hadn’t been shipped off to St. Mungos for closer examination.

She had, in fact, started to regret the words as soon as they’d left her mouth. As soon as she’d seen Harry’s eyes light up. As soon as she’d seen him sit up just a bit straighter. It was for those reasons, though, that she hadn’t taken—couldn’t take—the words back.

She’d regretted as she’d left the dining hall, Harry by her side. As they’d made plans to meet in front of the infirmary after their respective morning classes—Defense Against Centaur Magic for him, Advanced Topics in the History of Magic: Goblin Rebellions of the Past and How They Might Be Prevented in the Future for her. And she was regretting now, as she was slowly making her way across the campus to meet him, dragging her feet more with every step that she took.

She wanted to say that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to believe Harry when he said that something was most definitely wrong. That it wasn’t that she didn’t want to help him if something was in fact wrong. She’d be lying, though, if she said such things.

Eight years before, she’d left her world, the Muggle world, more excited than she would ever be able to put into words. Magic, she’d thought. Adventure, excitement! She’d met Harry, then, and after rough patch at the beginning of their first year, she’d embraced her role as his sidekick. It had been her destiny, she’d thought, to help him take down Voldemort. And she had.

There was a difference between that, though, she’d decided, and looking for trouble that likely wasn’t there, trouble that didn’t concern them anyway. This trouble, she was sure—if it was even trouble at all—was of the normal sort that occurred in Magical worlds. The sort that they had Aurors for. And Ministries of Magic. Things that shouldn’t concern Harry and most definitely didn’t concern her.

Harry had looked so lost ever since he’d killed Voldemort the summer before, though, ever since they’d had that wizards duel and all of Harry’s practicing had apparently paid off, because he’d won. He’d looked so lost, and then when he’d been talking to her about this, he hadn’t, so she’d agreed to help him.

As her feet took her even closer to the infirmary, she just prayed that nothing would come of it, that other people wold have already figured out what was going on and would have taken care of it. She’d had enough excitement and adventure to last a lifetime, after all. She didn’t need any more to be going on with.

Up ahead, she saw the infirmary, and to the left of the door, of the staircase that led up to the building, she saw Harry leaning against the wall, lurking in the shadows, hiding in plain sight as much as he could.

He was looking at the ground when she first glanced at him, but as if he felt her gaze, he looked up at her and waved, even if he didn’t smile.

She waved back.

"Hey," he said when she was close enough to hear him. "You ready to do this?"

Hermione nodded her assent and let Harry take the lead into the building. He trotted up the stairs, a bounce in his step that she hadn’t seen there for far too long. It almost made her stop regretting. Almost.

"You know," he said as he reached for the door, "the nurses in there are going to start thinking I have some sort of romantic attachment to that secretary girl. Two visits in two days… Next thing you know, we’ll be linked together in Witch Weekly."

Harry sounded almost amused, so Hermione glanced at him, sharply. He almost looked amused, too. There seemed to be a smile hovering at the corners of his lip, twitching there, trying to make itself a reality.

"That’ll probably be the silver lining of this whole experience for her," Hermione said. "Not very many witches would pass up the opportunity to be linked with you in the tabloids."

"Except you."

"Except me," she agreed, smiling kindly, to take any unintentional sting out of the words. "Been there, done that, no desire to repeat the experience again. Besides, I don’t think George would like that very much, do you?"

Harry shuddered. "I’d prefer not to be on the wrong side of the Weasley twins, thank you."

Then he opened the door to the infirmary building for her and Hermione stepped inside. She was immediately surrounded by cool, sterile air that had just a tint of that distinctive smell she’d come to expect in Wizard hospitals. She hadn’t ever been able to decide if that smell was the remnants of healing charms, or whether it was just an odor associated with those who were hurt or ill.

Too quickly, then, they were in the waiting room. The nurse who was sitting behind the desk peered through her glasses at them, then widened her eyes when she saw exactly who they were. Only for a moment, though, because in the time it took Hermione to blink, the woman had the common, disinterested expression of professionals everywhere firmly back in place.

"Back again, Harry dear?" the nurse asked. "Back to check on our Mary?"

Harry nodded. He was tense; Hermione could feel it.

"Has she woken up yet?" Hermione asked. "Harry was telling me about her unfortunate accident yesterday and we both wanted to come check on her, to make sure that she was okay."

She watched the nurse’s face carefully as she spoke, hoping that the disinterested mask would disappear for a moment again, and it did. She saw worry, confusion, and a slight amount of fear flit through the nurse’s eyes.

"She’s awake," the nurse acknowledged. "Aye, she’s awake."

"May we go in to say hello, then?" Hermione asked, smiling as ingratiatingly as she could. "It might do her some good to see some friendly faces."

Again, the nurse’s mask slipped back into place.

"No," she said. "No, our Mary isn’t up to seeing any visitors just yet, I’m afraid. She needs all of the rest that she can get. I do believe that she’s asleep now, actually."

There was a tightness to her lips, Hermione saw. Thin, pressed together, turning white, and Hermione knew that she was lying. She didn’t press it, though. She just smiled and nodded and put a hand on Harry’s elbow, intent on turning him away.

Then she heard the scream: high-pitched, feminine, and reminiscent of the screams that Hermione had heard on the battlefield—screams that Hermione had never wanted to hear again.

"What do you mean that my magic is gone! Do you know who I am? My magic is—"

The nurse was standing up now, tall and straight and pale behind her desk.

"I think that you’d best be going," she said. Her voice was hard as steel suddenly, cold. It was a tone that left no room for argument, which of course meant that Harry was going to argue. Hermione watched him open his mouth, saw him draw in a breath, before she said quietly, "Harry, no."

He looked at her, betrayal sharp on his face, but she glared at him until he turned on his heel and stormed out of the waiting room, not waiting for her to follow. She smiled apologetically at the nurse, then turned and ran after him.

She’d expected Harry to be halfway across the campus by the time she made it outside. She’d half-expected him to have called for his broomstick, for him to be flying off into the heavens as she stepped out the door, but he wasn’t, hadn’t. Instead, he was standing at the bottom of the staircase, staring off into space. She could see him breathing deeply, as if he was barely keeping his temper in check, so she approached him cautiously.

"I’m sorry," she said, even though there wasn’t anything that she’d done that she truly felt she needed to apologize for. It was an olive branch, though. A peace offering.

Harry didn’t look at her, just shook his head. She stepped closer.

"There wasn’t anything more for us to learn there. Not today. Not while they were going to be focusing all of their attention on their other patient, whoever she was."

"It isn’t a coincidence, Hermione," Harry said. "That’s two people who’ve lost their magic for some unknown reason. This isn’t internal combustion. Something isn’t right here and you know it as well as I do."

"I’ll admit that two cases does make the situation more dire," she said slowly. Then, "I suppose this means that you’ll want me to go to the library and see what I can find out regarding the various ways that wizards might lose their magic?"

Harry looked obscenely grateful when he turned around to look at her, nodding his head enthusiastically.

Hermione sighed, did a mental catalog of how much reading she’d planned to do that night, and finally nodded. "You get to be the one to explain to George and Ron why we aren’t visiting them at the shop tonight, though. And you get to come to the library with me and do some of this research yourself."

"Of course," Harry said. He sounded grateful, too. "Together, we’ll figure this thing out. And then we’ll put a stop to it."

Hermione didn’t say that that was what she was afraid of.

---

It was almost like being back at Hogwarts, Harry thought as he looked up from the roll of parchment in front of him and glanced around the library table, studying his friends. Hermione was currently bent over a tome that was nearly as large as she was, Ron was looking at another, far thinner one, and while George hadn’t been there for, well, any of their frantic library sessions at Hogwarts, he was there too, sitting at the end of a table, tossing a quill up and down in the air.

The table was located in an alcove in the middle of some of the stacks in the Defense Against the Dark Arts section of the library. The shelves of books stretched nearly to the ceiling and ladders rolled back and forth along each bookcase, waiting for some student to catch them and use them to reach the books on the top shelves.

Harry was still staring at those ladders when Ron looked up from his book and met his gaze. His best friend gave him a mock glare.

"You know, Harry, when we left Hogwarts, I swore to myself that I’d never set foot in another library again. I swore it—I think you heard me swear it, too. I would like this to be a testament to the depths of our friendship that I’m here now, back in a library, doing research when I’m not even in school anymore."

Hermione answered before Harry could. "Your sacrifice is greatly appreciated," she said, even as she didn’t look up from her book. She flipped to another page and dragged the feathered end of her quill back and forth across her lips.

"Also," Ron continued, "I feel the need to point out that my life was quite complete without the knowledge of how many ways a wizard could lose his magic. I’m a firm believer that there are some things I’m better off not knowing. This is one of them. For the record."

"Oh give it up, little brother," George said. "You were the one who leapt at the opportunity to help them tonight. I’ll remind you that I was the one who wanted to go to the Duck’s Foot and get a Fire Whisky, but no, no. Evil things were afoot. Your spider sense went all tingly and we just had to dash off here. You wouldn’t have it any other way."

Harry watched as George turned in his chair so that he could give Hermione a somewhat heated look. "Not, of course, that I would willingly pass up the opportunity to spend time with my best girl."

"Of course," Hermione said, turning another page.

Harry chuckled. It felt good to chuckle. He just felt good all over. Maybe it was because they were in the library, attempting to do something about whatever it was that was going on. Maybe it was because he was, for the first time since June, feeling useful again, or because he had another opportunity to try to live up to the hero’s reputation that he’d developed. To possibly earn it this time.

Whatever it was, he was actually feeling something akin to happy. Until he looked out one of the library windows, that is.

The sky was growing darker with every passing moment—it was a deep blue now, but Harry knew that it would be black in just a matter of minutes. The gray cloud that he’d been living in for weeks settled back down around him, far more quickly than it had cleared. He looked back down at the parchment in front of him, at the books in front of Hermione and Ron.

"Do we have any idea of what’s causing this yet?" he asked. "Have we managed to narrow it down at all?"

For the first time in this bout of conversation, Hermione looked up. There were lines of… something on her face. Frustration, maybe. Annoyance. Exhaustion, possibly. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d snapped at him and said, ‘Don’t you think I would have told you if we’d narrowed it down? If I had any idea of what was causing this?’

Instead she gestured at his piece of parchment and the other piece of parchment sitting in the middle of the table and said, "Some of these seem to be pretty unlikely causes, but can we full-on cross them out? No."

Harry nodded, then looked back out the window. The darkness had deepened even more in those few seconds and he shivered.

"It could be a spell," Hermione continued. "Or a demon of some sort. A wizard, maybe. Or it could just be a freak accident. We really don’t know."

"We should be out there," Harry said. "If it’s a wizard that’s doing this, we should be out there to find him. If it’s a demon, we should be out there stopping it. If it’s a not-so-freak anymore accident, maybe we can figure that out, too."

"And what if it is a wizard?" Hermione’s voice was as loud as Harry had ever heard it while they were within library walls. "What if it is a demon that goes after people’s magic? What makes it your duty to stop it? And if it is out there hunting, it’s just as dangerous to us—to you—as it is to anyone else who might encounter it."

"Then that’s a risk we—I’ve—got to take." Harry pushed his chair back, away from the table, and stood up in the same movement. "I can’t just sit here, Hermione. Not while something bad is going on out there. Maybe I’ll see something. Maybe we can get more information, enough so that we can figure out what’s going on, so that we can put a stop to it once and for all."

He couldn’t tell her the real reason that he needed to be out there, after all. He couldn’t tell her that he needed to atone for what he’d done, so he watched with something resembling trepidation as Hermione pressed her lips together until they were little more than a thin, straight line bisecting her face.

"You can’t save the world from everything," she said. "It’s not your job to save everything and everyone anymore. You had a prophecy to fulfill, you’ve fulfilled it, and this is no longer part of your job description. Do you understand me?"

"And do you understand that I can’t just sit back and let things happen?"

"More the fool you are," she countered. Her voice was harsh, pained, and Harry heard more emotion there than he reasonably should have heard for this argument.

"I’m going out there," he said, carding fingers through his hair. "If I can do something, anything to stop whatever’s going on, I’m going to. You can’t stop me."

"Fine." Hermione was pale, he saw, and he was pretty sure that she would have yelled the word, had they not been in the library.

Harry turned away from the table and started walking towards the library’s exit. He could nearly hear the three-way look that passed between Ron, Hermione, and George and he wasn’t at all surprised when he heard the sound of feet running after him. He paused, letting Ron catch up.

"So, what’s your plan?" Ron asked as soon as they were outside of the library, walking across the dark and very nearly empty quad.

Harry wanted to shrug, but that wasn’t the heroic, confident thing to do. Instead, because Ron was his best friend who had been with him through thick and thin, he said, "I’m sort of improvising right at the moment."

He glanced at Ron out of the corner of his eye as he said the words and saw that his friend was looking down at him with an aghast expression on his face.

"You’re improvising? You stormed out of the library— You yelled at Hermione because you were improvising?"

Harry supposed that the nod he gave Ron might have bordered on sheepish, but it was the truth.

"All I know," he said, "is that we don’t have enough information to be doing much good in there yet. When Hermione started pulling all of those books down and we discovered that there were so many ways for a wizard to… And she said it herself, we can’t eliminate many of the options that we’ve found thus far. We need more information." He shrugged, then nodded decisively. "We might be able to get that out here. We might be able to do some actual good out here."

Ron nodded. "Unless it’s just coincidence."

"Do you think its coincidence?" Harry asked. "Two people, two women losing their magic in a twenty-four hour period? Does that sound like coincidence to you?"

"No," Ron said, "But—"

Harry sighed. "But it could be."

"It could be," Ron repeated.

"Then it won’t matter whether we’re in the library researching with Hermione and George or whether we’re out here, doing this. Following our instincts."

He spoke with more conviction than he was feeling. For the same reasons he hadn’t been able to tell Hermione his real reasons for needing to be out there, searching, doing something besides sitting in a library, he couldn’t tell Ron why—as horrible as it sounded—he needed this to be a real problem. Something that he could solve.

They’d made it to one of the corridors that surrounded the quad, and while it was lit, the stone tunnel-like passageways that led to different areas of the campus were not. He glanced at one and saw nothing but shadows.

"Your instincts," Ron said quietly. "But I trust your instincts. And I trust Hermione’s instincts. You know she wouldn’t be spending the time researching if she didn’t think there was something to what you were saying."

"I know."

Harry stopped where he was, then walked to the head of the nearest passageway, letting his eyes glide over all of the dark corners in which Evil might be hiding. If it was hiding at all, that is. There was another corridor not too far ahead of them, the one that led back to the dormitories, and that was where the second victim had been found that morning, Harry had heard.

"Let’s go check over there," he said to Ron, jerking his head in the direction that he wanted to go. "Maybe we can find some clues as to what happened last night."

Ron nodded and they started walking forward.

---

Neville hadn’t been into the Riddleway library yet, but Amber seemed to know where she was going, so he followed her through the stacks until they came to a study table, near the Herbology section, or so Amber told him.

She set her books down on one side of the table and Neville took the chair across from her, pulling his own books out of his pocket, setting them on the tabletop and enlarging them. He also pulled out his quill, a small pot of ink, and the rolls of parchment on which he’d taken notes the day before.

"What all did you want to go over?" he asked Amber as he unrolled his first scroll, as he scanned the somewhat messy scrawl of his writing.

"Everything," Amber said. When she didn’t elaborate, Neville looked up at her, to encourage her to keep talking. Then he shivered slightly, because there was something about the way that she was looking at him… Predatory, almost.

"Well, we can discuss it all, sure," he said. "That way, if there’s anything that we don’t understand—from the readings, or from what she talked about in class—we can ask about it, right?"

"Right," she said.

Her expression hadn’t changed, Neville saw, and he felt the sudden need to do something to diffuse it. The urge to do whatever it took to make her stop looking at him like that. He tried to think of why she might be looking at him like that.

"My girlfriend," he said after a moment. "She’s a Muggle and she’s going to a Muggle university to study Botany. She wants to open her own shop after she graduates from school; wants to grow the plants herself. She’d be jealous, reading all of these texts. Learning everything that we’re learning about."

"We’re very lucky," Amber said, and after a moment her look softened. "We’re even more lucky than most wizards. How many have access to all this?" She waved her hand at the surrounding stacks. "All of this information? We’ll be among the best educated Herbologists the world has had!"

Neville nodded, mostly in agreement, but he also said, "I don’t know. Professor Sprout, my teacher at Hogwarts, did just fine without all of this higher education. And the Muggles do, too."

Amber had to know that, given that she’d grown up in the Americas, but he kept talking.

"Here, anyway, it’s quite a popular pastime for Muggles to raise all varieties of plants without this education. Sometimes, I think it would be nice to open up a shop in the Muggle world, where all I’d have to worry about is educating people on which plants belong indoors, which belong outside, sun, shade, greenhouses. Fertilizer. You don’t have to worry about Muggle plants eating you, you know. Or strangling you in your sleep."

"But you won’t," Amber said. "Will you? Waste all of this, to go out there and do that?"

"Doubtful," Neville said. "I would like to own my own shop, though, wherever it might be, in Hogsmeade or on Diagon Alley, or yes, even in Muggle London. Just somewhere. That’s what I want to do."

Amber nodded, then for the first time since they’d sat down, she looked around at the stacks that surrounded the little alcove they were sitting in.

"You know what’s really wonderful about this library? There’s magical soundproofing around each table, and in each row of the stacks as well, so that nothing will disturb those who are studying."

Neville couldn’t help but blink at the sudden change of topic.

"Didn’t Professor Arbor suggest some books that we might want to look at?" she continued. "That would give us some more information on the things that she covered in class yesterday? Maybe we should head into the stacks and find those."

"We could do that," Neville said. He stood up from his chair and followed her into the stacks. And since he wasn’t in front of her, since he wasn’t looking at her face at all, he didn’t see her eyes flash green as they passed into the first row.

---

They were in their fourth such passageway—who knew that Riddleway needed so many corridors to get from one part of the campus to another—when Harry heard the sounds of footsteps behind him. He turned around first, his wand at the ready, but Ron was only half of a beat behind him. They were both standing still, in position, when he saw who it was that was following them.

"Put those wands down," Hermione said. "Honestly. George and I aren’t going to attack you."

"Speak for yourself, dear," George said. "When have I ever needed a reason to attack my little brother?"

"We aren’t here to attack you," Hermione said again. More forcefully this time. She cast a furtive look at George, Harry saw, then continued.

"We decided that you were right. That maybe it would be more beneficial to be out here with you. Besides, if it is a thing that’s doing this, then it would be better to have four fully trained wizards out here fighting it. Four sets of eyes on the lookout."

Harry nodded. He looked back and forth between Hermione and George, saw the quick looks that the twin kept giving his girlfriend, and guessed that there was more going on underneath the surface than she had said. This wasn’t the place to question, though. Plus, he didn’t really want to. He was happy enough to have her out there with him again.

"Really, we were just wandering around," he said. "Looking for suspicious goings on."

"We’re improvising," Ron said. "We’re being impulsive."

There was an edge to his voice that would have clued Harry into the fact that his friend was humoring him, had he not already been clued into the fact that all of his friends were humoring him. Did it really matter if they were humoring him, though, if he was right? If he needed to be right?

"Well sometimes that’s the best way to go," George said. "How d’you think Fred and I have come up with some of our best gags? It’s more of a ‘gee, I wonder what would happen if we mixed pigs teeth with bats wings’ sort of thing. And no, honey, it hasn’t killed us yet."

Harry smirked. He’d been able to see Hermione open her mouth, intent on saying words to protest such actions, but George had been facing Harry and Ron, with Hermione behind his back. He apparently knew Hermione too well.

Or maybe they really were suited for one another.

Harry felt more than heard Ron chuckling beside him, but he could see Hermione opening and closing her mouth, apparently trying to decide how best to respond.

"Well, we won’t get anything done standing around here, talking all night," she said finally, or started finally. She probably would have said more if Harry hadn’t suddenly waved his hand sharply, motioning for her to be quiet. At first, she looked at him with sudden indignation, but then she apparently heard what he’d thought he’d heard: the quiet sound of careful, measured footsteps approaching.

Harry and Ron were already facing in the right direction to meet the interloper, but he watched George and Hermione slowly turn around, wands at the fore.

The identity of the person who entered the passageway next surprised Harry, but then again, he thought that maybe he shouldn’t have been. Wherever trouble went, Draco Malfoy seemed to follow.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

"My, my," Malfoy said before any of them could utter a word. "Is this any way to greet your old school chum?"

"Piss off, Malfoy," Ron spat.

Harry watched as Malfoy arched one of his pale eyebrows. No longer was this the Malfoy that had been avoiding Harry and Hermione since the welcome feast. Nor was it the reluctant ally whom Harry had found his side saddled with during the Final Battle. No, smirk firmly in place, this was the Malfoy whom Harry had been sure he’d left behind at Hogwarts.

"Last time I checked, Weasley, I was the one who was the student here, not you. I have more right to be walking these hallways than you do. Either of you." The blond looked back and forth between Ron and George.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Harry asked, hoping to forestall a Hogwarts-era fight. He walked forward until he stood a step in front of all of his friends.

"What does it look like I’m doing, Potter?"

"I’m serious, Malfoy. What are you doing out here? Are you following us?"

Malfoy choked out a laugh. "Following you?" Then he sighed. "Fine, I was in the library when I saw Granger and Weasley Twin Number One leaving so quickly, one would have thought Voldemort himself was on their heels. I decided to give chase."

"What for?" Ron asked. "This doesn’t concern you."

"Figure it out," Malfoy spat. "It only made sense that Granger would be running off to find Potter, and where Potter is, trouble is only steps away. I thought I’d let you lot provide my evening’s entertainment rather than the library’s copy of Most Potente Potions."

"You’d think, Mr. Malfoy, that your father would have bought you your own copy of that text before you even entered Hogwarts."

Harry jumped at the sound of the new voice in the confines of the covered walkway. He spun around on the ball of his foot, his lips already parted to utter a curse or an oath, whichever managed to leave his mouth first, when the voice finally registered in his brain.

Snape looked at him, but his gaze didn’t rest on Harry long enough for the look to even be called a glare, before he turned his attention back to Malfoy.

"Or, if not then," he continued, "I would have thought, at the very least, that he would have done so at some point before he died."

Whatever words Harry had wanted to say died on his tongue and he whipped his head around so that he could look at Malfoy over his shoulder. It was the first time Harry had heard anyone address the subject of the elder Malfoy’s death to the face of the younger. At least without immediately suffering the effects of whatever curse he’d chosen to use that day.

Malfoy appeared to be paler than he had been just moments before, before Snape had appeared, and Harry thought that he could see him trembling with unreleased tension. His voice was steady when he spoke, though.

"You mean before Voldemort had my father put to death? No, I’m afraid that buying me my own copy of Most Potente Potions was not high on his list of things to do. For some reason, it just didn’t rank up there with taking over the world."

Harry looked back at Snape, and despite the fact the nighttime shadows had settled heavily on his Professor’s face, he thought that he looked somewhat amused.

He sounded almost amused, too.

"Well, now that we’ve got that very important matter settled, we come to the true crux of this encounter. Mr. Potter, Ms. Granger, both Mr. Weasleys. May I ask what you all are doing out here, lurking in dark hallways? If you weren’t the twice savior of the Wizarding World, Potter, some might think that you were up to no good."

Harry opened his mouth to make a retort—what, exactly, he wasn’t sure, because appropriate words hadn’t come into his head yet—and he heard Hermione drawing in a breath to do the same, but Snape held up a hand to stop them.

"No, no. Let me see if I’ve learned anything in the seven years we spent at the same institution. The reason you’re out here, skulking around in the dark corners of this campus, wouldn’t have anything to do with two witches who are currently inhabiting the infirmary, now would it?"

"What if it does?" Harry asked. "Who are you to say that we can’t be out here, trying to stop other witches suffering the same fate?"

"And what fate would that be, Potter? That some members of the Wizarding World might not owe you their lives and well-being?"

Harry clenched his fists more tightly, but he forced his tone to remain calm. "No one should have their magic taken from them, Professor. Besides, it’s not as if anyone else is doing anything to stop it."

Snape coughed, or maybe it was a chuckle disguised as a cough. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a kind sound.

"And what are you going to do, Mr. Potter? How are you going to stop this great evil? Do you even know what you’re up against?"

"We’ve narrowed it down to one of several possibilities," Hermione broke in, her voice cold.

"We’re fully trained wizards," Harry said. He clenched his jaw and tightened his fist around his wand. "We can handle this ourselves." He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but Snape was already speaking.

"When these other witches, who were also fully trained, mind, couldn’t. My, Potter, how humble of you. I’m glad to see that heroism hasn’t gone to your head at all."

"There are four of us," Ron said. "Four wizards instead of one."

"And what makes you think that that will make a difference, Mr. Weasley? What if I was to tell you that this demon you were dealing with—yes, Ms. Granger, it is a demon—can only be banished back to whence it came with fire, and a certain incantation? At a certain point in the possession cycle?"

Harry watched as Snape’s eyes narrowed, glinting in the darkness. "What if I was to tell you, Mr. Potter, that the only reasonable explanation for this demon being here is that it was summoned, because this is nowhere near its native climate."

He took a step towards them all, his stance bordering on menacing.

"What if I was to tell you, Harry Potter, that the only thing that the two victims remember from their time possessed is a single name. Yours."

Harry drew in a deep breath. Froze. Felt as if he’d turned to ice. He saw Hermione, George, and Ron move in front of him and heard Malfoy start laughing behind him.

"You’re lying," he said, but his voice faltered, the words broken.

"Get back to your dormitories, all of you," Snape said, suddenly dismissing them. He turned on his heel and started walking back in the direction that he’d come from. "Leave this mess to those of us who know what we’re dealing with."

"Professor," Hermione said. "What is it that we’re dealing with?"

Snape turned back to them. "You don’t need to know everything, Ms. Granger." Then he turned around again and swept away.

Malfoy was still chuckling quietly behind Harry, and Harry saw that he almost smiled when Ron glared in his direction and said, "Shove off, Malfoy."

"Gladly," Malfoy said. Then, as he was walking away: "Ah, that was a glorious sight. The Great Harry Potter rendered speechless by Professor Snape. Much more entertaining than any text I could find in the library."

Before any of Harry’s friends managed to form a coherent reply, though, he had indeed shoved off and was gone.

"Harry, Harry," Hermione said, stepping close to him. "Snape probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He probably only suspects. If he knew, don’t you think that the Aurors would be swarming all over the campus, stopping whatever it is?"

But what if he was right, Harry wanted to ask. What if Harry was the reason it was there? What if the two girls in the infirmary were innocent victims, harmed only in an attempt to get to him?

"Hermione’s right," Ron said. "He was probably just trying to make himself sound important. Come on, mate. Don’t be like this."

Harry shook his head and then shook off the hands that were meant to be comforting.

"I’ll see you all later," he said, and then he walked away, leaving his friends standing where they were, staring after him.

---

Severus Snape waited until he heard the two Weasley boys and that Granger girl leave the corridor, the sounds of their footsteps fading as they moved in the direction opposite from the one that he had gone, before he leaned his head back against the nearest stone wall. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Merlin help me," he murmured.

---

Neville was not in their room when Harry returned and for that he was grateful, because it gave him an opportunity to lie down on his bed and stare at the ceiling, contemplating what, exactly, Snape had said.

He wasn’t left alone with his contemplations for long, though, because not even a quarter of an hour later, there was a knock on his door. He sat up on the bed, swung his legs down over the side, and pulled his wand out from underneath his pillow as he called, "Come in."

The door opened slowly and then Ron peered in.

"Oi," he said, smiling hesitantly, but Harry didn’t smile back. He tucked his wand back underneath his pillow, though.

Ron stepped into the room and closed the door, then leaned back against it. He kept his hand wrapped around the doorknob, Harry saw.

"George told me to bugger off," he said. "Told me he needed some alone time with Hermione."

"Ah. So it’s not that they sent you to try to break me out of my inevitable funk?"

Ron shook his head, so quickly and empathetically that Harry knew he was lying. He had the grace to look sheepish, though, when Harry quirked an eyebrow.

"I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. Hermione did look as if she needed some alone time with her boyf— with my brother. You know, nearly a year later and I still can’t call him her boyfriend. It’s just too weird." He shuddered. "Seriously, though. Snape’s a git. You know that."

Harry nodded. "I do, but if what he says is true… If it is a demon and it is after me and those girls all— And there will be another one tonight, too, because we bloody well didn’t find anything while we were out there."

Ron nodded, even as he said, "But maybe Snape was just being a bastard. It’s quite possible, you know, that if you’d gone into this thinking that this demon thing is—was—after you, he would have laughed at you in that scornful way of his and paid you even more compliments on your humility."

Harry chuckled at that. He shifted on the bed, pulling his pillow onto his lap.

"We’ll find this thing," Ron said. "We’ll find it, or the Aurors will be called in and they’ll find it, or—" He shuddered again. "—Snape will find it. Then this will all be over and life can return to normal."

"Normal?" Harry asked. "What is this ‘normal’ of which you speak?"

Ron might have walked across the room to punch him if the door hadn’t started to rattle as someone attempted to open it from the outside. Ron, who was still leaning against it, stepped away quickly. Harry’s hand crept back across the bed, fingers searching for his wand.

Neville stepped into the room. He looked back and forth between Harry and Ron and then he nodded at both of them.

"Hallo, Ron," he said. "Back again?"

Ron looked at Harry, as if asking permission to speak, asking what he was allowed to say. Harry shrugged one shoulder and then shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Neville, of course. It was just that the fewer people who knew what was going on, the safer he felt. Logically, it should have been the other way around.

"You know me and school," Ron said. "I just can’t stay away."

Neville laughed appropriately, then turned back to Harry. If Harry hadn’t known Neville for seven years, he might have thought the gaze appraising. Hungry, almost.

"How was your study session?" Harry asked. "With what’s her name? Amber?"

"Short," Neville said. "There wasn’t very much to go over." He shifted nervously, although it might have been from embarrassment, given what he said next. "I actually ended up going into Muggle Oxford, to meet up with Lisa for coffee and a walk around her campus." He blushed. "I’m rather tired, though, so if you don’t mind, I think that I’m going to turn in."

Harry looked at Ron, who nodded and said, "I’m supposed to be meeting up with George anyway. I’ll catch up with you blokes tomorrow."

Neville nodded and Harry smiled—a genuine smile, because Ron had apparently done his duty and had very nearly snapped him out of his funk—and then he walked Ron down to the building’s common room, where George was waiting.

When he made it back up to his room, the lights were out and Neville was apparently already asleep.

---

The first thing that Harry did when he walked into the dining hall for breakfast the next morning was to look towards the front table, to see if Snape had decided to grace the room with his presence. He wasn’t sure if he was happy or not when he saw that the potion master’s chair was empty, a noticeable hole in the line of professors that decorated the front of the room.

The next thing he did was look for Malfoy.

He, unfortunately, was there. Sitting by himself, as he was prone to do now, at the end of the table that the Durmstrang students had claimed the very first afternoon. He was looking at the plate in front of him when Harry first glanced in his direction, but as if sensing the gaze, he looked up. His eyes locked with Harry’s, cold and gray. In conjunction with his pale hair and paler skin, Harry suddenly thought that Malfoy looked rather like a ghost.

He looked like the shell of the boy that Harry had spent years hating. That spark of life that Harry had seen the night before was gone.

Unable to take it, for some reason, Harry was the first to look away.

"Come on," Hermione said and she gently laid her fingers against his shoulder blade, giving him just the most miniscule push towards their table. "Let’s go sit down. You need to eat. I need to eat."

Harry nodded and kept his gaze focused on the empty spot beside Seamus.

Seamus looked up at them as they approached and waved a hand in their direction, beckoning them closer. Harry was surprised, almost, that the other teen didn’t call out their names again, that he didn’t alert the whole room to their presence.

Then he noticed that Seamus was looking remarkably serious. Too serious. He was relatively sure that he knew what the other boy was going to say before the Irishman opened his mouth, and he was right.

Hermione had guessed it too, apparently, because before Seamus managed to get a word out, she said, "They’ve found another one, haven’t they. There’s been a third victim."

Seamus looked startled for all of a moment, but then he almost-grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "You know, it’s people like you who take all of the fun out of a good gossip session. Here I was just getting ready to spread this dire piece of news that I have and you already know it. Of course, I suppose that it’s appropriate for the saviors of the world to know everything." He sighed dramatically. "So tragic. She seemed so nice, too."

"Wait," Harry said. "You know who it was? You know who the third victim was?"

Seamus nodded, looking nearly gleeful—in an overly melancholy way, of course.

"It was that redhead who was over here talking to Neville yesterday. The one who wanted to study Herbology with him. That American bird, what was her name? Speaking of which, where is Longbottom? Do you think he knows already?"

Harry opened his mouth to say that Neville had been gone when he’d woken up, but Susan was already speaking. He felt a knot form in his stomach and he looked around the dining hall, to see if Neville was anywhere to be seen. He wasn’t.

"Amber," Susan said. "Amber Smith. Oh, poor Neville. They seemed to be getting on so well, too."

"But don’t forget that he has a girlfriend now," Dean said.

"How could we forget?" Seamus asked. "It’s all he’s bloody well talked about since we arrived, you know. Lisa this and Lisa that and Lisa, Lisa, Lisa!"

"Shush," Hermione reprimanded. Her voice was sharp, so Harry turned to look at her, tried to see what she might be thinking. She was frowning, biting at her bottom lip, and there was a deep crease between her eyebrows.

"We need to see if we can talk to her," Harry said quietly. He had to get Hermione to try again, despite his behavior the night before. To get her to help him again. He just had to. "Or see if we can talk to either of the other two girls. Maybe we can get some more details, too. See if we can figure out what Snape was alluding to last night."

She was still chewing on her lip, still staring towards the floor with a look of consternation on her face, when she finally nodded. Harry felt a tension that he hadn’t previously been aware of leave his body. Suddenly, it felt as if he was drawing his first clear, free breath in months. To have her on his side—finally. To have her truly want to help him, instead of humoring him, because he was suddenly sure that this was her firm commitment to help him stop whatever it was, to stop protesting that they should leave it up to the proper authorities. He wasn’t sure if it was that this latest victim was someone that they’d met, albeit only briefly, or that Hermione had finally rediscovered her sense of adventure, but whatever it was, Harry was glad for it.

"Let’s go," she said. She turned on her heel and started walking away from the table. Harry followed close behind.

"Aren’t you going to eat some breakfast?" Susan called after them.

Hermione shook her head, then she stopped and turned to look over her shoulder. "The sooner we find out what this thing is, the sooner we can develop a plan for stopping it."

Harry nodded his agreement. She started walking again, and just as Harry started to follow her a second time, he stopped again, noticing two things: first, sometime during the time that they’d spent talking to Seamus, Snape had entered the dining hall. He was glaring at Harry. And secondly, Draco Malfoy was staring at him, his expression not nearly as dead looking anymore.

"Harry," Hermione called, and Harry ran after her.

---

Hermione was nearly running, she realized, as she pushed her way out of the dining hall and she made herself slow down to a more demure pace. There was no point in running, no point in rushing. Rushing meant that she would be more likely to make mistakes, and mistakes might mean that another person would fall victim to whatever this demon was. Mistakes meant that the demon would be able to get another step closer to Harry, if it didn’t get its claws into Harry that very night.

She was drawing in a deep, hopefully calming breath, when Harry caught up to her and matched his pace to hers.

"We’re going to find this thing," she said. "We’re going to find it and we’re going to stop it."

Harry nodded.

"We’re going to make the nurses let us talk to Mary. We’re going to figure out what it is, we’re going to have a flame ready, and we’re going to find whatever the spell that Snape was talking about. We’re going to do everything in our power to stop this thing tonight."

Again, Harry nodded.

"It feels good, doesn’t it," he said softly. "It feels good to have something to do again, someone to help. Evil to fight."

Hermione stopped walking.

"No," she said. "Not really."

Harry looked surprised. Shocked, like he couldn’t believe what she was saying.

"This isn’t what I want my life to be. I’m not like you, Harry. I’m not meant to be a hero. I’m not meant to save the world every year. I want to be able to focus on my studies, without having to worry about which direction the next evil is coming from. That’s not living, not the way I want to live."

She looked away from him then, just for a moment, and when she looked back at him again she knew that her face was set in determined lines.

"But that’s not to say that I’m going to let evil go on underneath my nose and do nothing about it. We’ll stop this. I’ll help you stop this, but then… I don’t want this to be what the rest of my life is like, okay?"

He nodded. There was a hesitancy to the motion, she saw. An abrupt jerk of his head, a tremble of his lips. He nodded, though, and she thought that he understood.

"Let’s go to the infirmary," he said. "As you said, the sooner we get this information, the sooner we can put it to good use."

They started walking again. At first it was a slow walk, but as they moved across the campus, they sped up, until they were trotting up the steps to the school’s hospital, panting slightly as they opened the doors.

Hermione walked into the waiting room first. She made sure that her face was set as she looked at the nurse on duty, the same nurse who had been on duty the day before. This time, she didn’t smile at them.

"We are here to talk to Mary," Hermione said.

"I’m afraid—"

"We aren’t asking. We are here to talk to Mary."

"I can’t let anyone just waltz in here and—"

Harry broke into the conversation then. "Madame, it’s a question of, well, maybe not life or death, but of whether or not you have more people ending up in your hospital ward drained of their magic. Is that something that you want?"

"Of course not—"

"Then please let us in." Harry almost batted his eyes, Hermione saw, and she almost rolled her own in response. He could be so charming when he wanted to be. He could just turn on that earnest ‘I am the savior of the world and here I am, trying to help a common person, do you really want to stop me?’ expression and the people in charge just melted at his feet. Because the nurse was melting. Hermione could see it happening right before her eyes.

"Just for a few minutes," Harry prodded. "Just so we can get some answers to some questions, so that we can try to figure out how to stop this thing."

And the nurse crumbled. She nodded sharply, then sat back down at her desk and didn’t look at them again.

Hermione smiled at Harry, then walked through the door to the hospital ward. She saw two rows of crisply made beds—five of them filled, two near the door and three down at the very end of the room. Those were the beds she wanted to get to, of that she was sure.

The echoes of her shoes on the stone floors were loud as she walked down the center aisle and she cringed with each step that she took.

Amber was in the bed closest to the door. Her skin was pale, almost the same color as the starched sheets she was lying on. Her red hair was spread out across the pillow beneath her.

The girl in the next bed was blonde. She was awake, sitting up in her bed, and she glared at Harry and Hermione as they walked by. Mary was the in the bed at the very end of the room. She was lying down, facing the window, her back turned to them.

Hermione walked slowly around the foot of that bed, so that she could see Mary’s face. Her eyes were open and Hermione could see tear tracks on her cheeks.

"Mary," she said.

The receptionist looked at her, her eyes wary.

"My name is Hermione Granger," she said. "This is Harry Potter." She didn’t bother gesturing at him; she’d felt Harry come right up behind her.

Mary’s eyes widened slightly at the mention of Harry’s name, but then she looked away from them, back out the windows.

"We’re here to ask you some questions, about whatever this thing is that attacked you. Do you think that you could answer some questions for us?"

She watched as Mary closed her eyes and thought, for a moment, that the other girl was just going to ignore their presence. She looked at Harry, unsure of what to do. He shrugged, too.

"Green," Mary whispered finally.

"Green," Hermione said. "What was green? It’s skin? It’s teeth?"

Mary shook her head. She still hadn’t opened her eyes and Hermione wondered if she was reliving whatever trauma the demon had put her through. Assuming that Snape was correct and that it was a demon, of course.

"Green eyes. In the floo. The flames went out and I went over there to light them again and when I did, there were these eyes. Green eyes. It hissed at me. It said… Harry Potter."

Hermione cast a quick look at Harry, saw him swallow heavily, as if he was just barely keeping down what food he’d eaten the night before. His face was white, all color drained away.

"It did," the blonde girl said. "I remember her—" she glared at Mary "—advancing on me and then this voice, this horrible scaly voice, said, ‘Harry Potter.’ I thought she was out of her blinking mind. But then there was pain and then I remember waking up here."

"That’s it," Mary said. "I remember waking up here and they told me that—"

Harry had started to back away from them all, even as Hermione watched. One of his hands was held out in front of him, as if to staunch the flood of words coming from the two patients. As if he could stop what they were saying, as if he could erase his name from their narrative.

It was one thing, she realized, to have Snape suspect that the demon had been sent after Harry. It was quite another to realize that more than likely Snape’s assumptions had been correct.

"Harry," she said softly.

"This is all your fault," the blonde girl said. "All your fault, Harry Potter. Whatever it was that took my magic, it was after you. I’ve become a squib because of YOU, you bastard."

Hermione hadn’t thought it was possible, but Harry went even whiter. He looked at the bed that was holding Amber and swallowed again, looking pensive.

"Harry," she said again, more loudly this time. Harry jerked at the sound of his name, as if he’d been burned, and she took a step towards him.

He bolted. She saw him nearly running out of the room. She looked back at the patients, at Mary who was staring out the window again, at the blonde who was staring in the direction that Harry had gone, a look of undisguised hatred on her face, and then she mumbled her thanks and followed after her friend.

He was standing outside, just outside the building, and he was wringing his hands, twisting the skin and bone and flesh farther than she thought skin and bone and flesh were ever meant to twist.

"I knew he was right," Harry said. "I knew that Snape was right. This thing is after me. It’s after me and it’s harming innocent people, Hermione. We have to find this thing. We have to stop it." The lines on his face were thin and drawn. "Do you have enough information to figure out what it is?"

"Green eyes," she said. "Heat—but we knew that already. Yes, yes. I think I remember seeing this in my research yesterday. I discounted it because it wasn’t native to this area, but. Snape said it wasn’t, and he’s been right about everything so far."

"So far, yes."

"I think I know where I saw mention of this demon, too," she said. "If I’m right, it was right under our noses. Standard Book of Demons, if I’m remembering correctly."

She was already walking towards the library before she realized that she’d started moving.

---

"I’m not sure that this is working," Ron said. They’d stopped in the middle of the quad outside of the library, nearly invisible in the black of the night. Still, despite the darkness, Harry could see Ron darting his eyes back and forth and turning his head this way and that to glance over his shoulders, trying to look everywhere at once.

"Well, what do you suggest?" Harry asked. "Do you have a better idea?" He’d spent an hour thus far that night, walking ahead of his friends, hoping to lure the demon to him. So far, it hadn’t worked.

Ron glared at him. "No, but that doesn’t mean that this idea is working either, because it’s not."

"And if the two of you can’t keep your voices down, you’re either going to clue it into the plan or scare it away," Hermione said softly, but fiercely. "Or at least warn it off, since I don’t know how well it scares. We want it to think that it’s the one hunting Harry, not the other way around, remember?"

Under her reproachful glare, Harry found himself starting to shuffle his feet, but as soon as he realized what he was doing, he stopped. He pushed his chin out and glared right back.

"This demon, it will find us. It wants me. It will find me. For all I know, it could be going after my friends, too, in an effort to get to me. I want you all safe, where I can see you. Where you can protect each other."

They all had candles, they’d all learned the incantation. Before he’d left for the evening, he’d told Neville that he should stay in their room. That he shouldn’t let anyone in. Neville had looked at him oddly, but apparently Harry had sounded serious enough that he’d agreed without protest. Or maybe it was because of Amber.

He would be happy when this night was over, though. When the demon was found, or it wasn’t, and Neville was still there, whole. He needed Neville to be whole. Needed his alibi of having been visiting his girlfriend to be true.

Hermione, Ron, and George were all opening their mouths to say something, when from somewhere in the darkness there came a shout. It wasn’t a happy, playful shout, nor was it a shout of recognition, but one of anger, surprise. Warning, maybe.

Harry looked at Ron, then at Hermione and George, and then as one they started running in the direction the shout had come from. It was over towards one of the magically lit corridors he’d just passed by, on his way to the center of the quad, but there was nothing to be seen, nothing, nothing, so they slowed to a walk again, then stopped to listen.

Then, just ahead of them, coming from an alleyway off to the right, Harry heard a rough voice croak, "Harry Potter…" He paused, just for an instant, and then he looked over his shoulder to where his three companions were standing. Their eyes were wide and Harry knew that they’d heard the voice, too.

"That’s it," Hermione mouthed, but it might have been a question, so Harry nodded. He nodded and then he stepped into the open space at the head of the alleyway. "Lumos," he said, and then the knot in his stomach tightened.

---

"’Wait,’ you said." Mel paced back and forth in front of the fire, her hands clasped behind her back. It wasn’t the somewhat serene handclasp that Johan had perfected. No, she was tense and he could see the whites of her knuckles.

She turned to him, to the hard wooden chair that he’d been relegated to, no matter that it was his flat. Martin and Toddy had taken the couch. They were glaring at him, too.

"’This is a brilliant plan!’ you said," she continued. "’It bloody fucking can’t fail!’"

"It hasn’t," Johan said, but his voice sounded too weak, too tired, he knew. Especially since Dark Lords—or Dark Lords In Training, as the case might be—weren’t supposed to get berated by their minions.

"I’ll know if it fails," he continued. The demon’s medallion was heavy in his pocket. He’d know if the demon failed—if it had been banished—because it would turn black and dead, would become useless to him. It was still gold, though. Still alive and binding.

"Well, it hasn’t exactly succeeded, now has it?" Martin asked. "We’d all know if it had succeeded."

"Dark Plans aren’t known for being instantly gratifying," Johan said. He kept his eyes on Mel, watching as she paced back and forth in front of his fireplace. She had no right! "They take time, planning, and waiting for results. You all know that saying, don’t you? That the best things come to those who wait."

"You see why we’re skeptical, don’t you, Joe?" Mel asked, turning towards him, her voice suddenly as sweet as the blue drink mix she’d used to highlight her hair the day before. "There hasn’t been any word. Not one single itsy-bitsy word. For all we know, the Veruznacallit could have fucked off for fucking Timbuktu."

"It hasn’t," Johan said. It couldn’t. "It’s doing its job. I bet that it’s hunting Potter right this moment, as we sit here talking."

"Then let’s go check on it," Toddy said. "Let’s go see what sparkling progress it’s made."

"And how do you propose to do that?" Johan asked.

"You’re the genius," Martin said. "You’re the evil mastermind. You figure it out. Surely there’s a ‘how to’ in one of your books that you’ve got. Maybe it’s in the Standard Book of Demons on page 78."

"Yeah," Toddy said. "When you figure it out, you can come find us at the Duck’s Foot."

Johan watched as Toddy and Martin stood up from the couch and headed for the door. Mel followed just a moment later, after giving him an appraising look, which he didn’t like one bit.

---

"Neville!" Hermione gasped as Ron growled, "Malfoy. We should have known."

It took Harry less than a moment to take in the sight in front of him. Malfoy and Neville were both on the ground in front of him, and from the dust that he could see on Malfoy’s robes and the streak of blood on Neville’s cheek, it was obvious that they’d been fighting.

Malfoy was sitting on top of Neville, one of his hands wrapped around Neville’s throat while his other held one of Neville’s wrists out, away from their bodies. Neville was struggling, that much Harry could see, and there was a blue tinge to his normally ruddy face.

It was when Neville looked in his direction, uttering a pitiful, "Help!" and Malfoy uttered a growl, a rough sound, that Harry made his decision. Unable to let himself believe that he was making the wrong one, he pointed his wand at Malfoy and said, "Petrifictus Totalus."

Malfoy froze, Hermione squeaked, and Neville didn’t stop struggling until Ron and George rushed forward to lift Malfoy off of him. Then, as Harry watched, Neville pushed himself up and scooted backwards until he was leaning against one of the corridor’s stone walls. He was panting and the whites of his eyes were showing as he looked at Malfoy warily.

"He—" Neville started. "I know you said that I should stay in our room, Harry, but I just couldn’t. I figured there couldn’t be any harm in walking to the library, so that I could do some revisions for Snape’s class and— I don’t know where he came from. One moment I was alone and the next I wasn’t and he was pulling me into this alleyway."

Harry looked over to where Malfoy was still lying on the ground. His hands were frozen into claws and a sneer—or was it a baring of teeth?—was stretched across his face.

Oh Merlin, he thought, please let him have made the right decision.

"—should have known it was Malfoy," Ron was saying from behind him. "The way he was skulking around last night, hiding in dark corners, following us. He was in the library, too, where that Amber bird was found. He told us so himself. He—"

Harry looked back and forth between Malfoy’s prone figure, who was looking more and more possessed by the moment, and Neville’s trembling one.

He felt his heart sink, felt his stomach lurch. He hadn’t been joking when he said that the demon would try to get to him through his friends. He hadn’t been overestimating its intelligence. He didn’t want to believe, but there was only one way to know for sure.

"Do the spell, Hermione," he said.

"What spell?" Neville asked. "What are you talking about, Harry? He attacked me, like he’d gone a bit off in the head. I— I think maybe I should head to the infirmary, to see if the nurse can—" His head started moving back and forth, as if he was convulsing almost.

"George and I could help him to the infirmary," Ron said. "You and Hermione should be able to handle Malfoy, especially when he’s spelled like that."

Neville was trembling even more than before.

There was only one way to know for sure.

"Do the spell, Hermione," Harry said again. "Now."

He wrenched his gaze away from Neville and turned to look at her. With the way her hands were shaking as she pulled the candle out of her pocket, as she used her wand to light it, he figured that she’d come to the same conclusion that he had. He wondered if she’d started thinking about the possibilities at the same time he had. There were tears in her eyes, he thought. Or maybe there were tears in his eyes, because the world had suddenly gone blurry.

"I’m sorry, Neville," Hermione said. Then she started chanting.

Harry had just turned to look at Neville when he found himself on the ground, a growling Neville on top of him. He was stunned for a moment, the result of his head hitting the stone floor with more force than he could prevent. His roommate’s normally round face suddenly seemed angular, ragged, and the normally kind eyes flashed green.

"Harry Potter," Neville said, but not with Neville’s voice. It was the same raspy voice that Harry had heard before. Neville’s hands were around Harry’s throat, and his mouth opened, a green mist forming around his tongue. "Harry Potter."

In the background, almost sounding as if she was a long ways away, Harry could hear Hermione chanting still. She was rushing words, but still pronouncing them precisely. She sounded almost frantic.

Then there was a sudden void of silence, just for a moment, the calm before the storm, and then there was a whoosh of noise, a roar, which might have come from Neville, but seemed to come more from the green mist, and it stopped hovering in front of Harry’s face and streamed to the candle flame Hermione was holding.

Neville collapsed, boneless, and Harry pushed him away. He scrambled to his feet, his eyes on the figure of his friend, who was now passed out, pale, almost dead-looking. He glanced at Hermione after a moment, his eyes on the candle flame in front of her, where two pin-point green eyes stared out at him.

Ron was just staring on in shock. Looking from Malfoy, to Harry, to Neville, his mouth working although there were no words coming out. It was George who finally thought to end the spell on Malfoy, muttering "Finite Incantatum."

"Here," Hermione said, holding the candle out to Harry, for him to blow on it, but he shook his head.

"You do the honors," he said. "You do it."

So Hermione did.

---

It was a defeated looking group that passed by the hallway that Severus Snape had secreted himself in. Defeated looking, but victorious. He knew that they had been, because he’d watched the drama unfold, close enough so that he could intervene if necessary, far enough away so that if he didn’t need to, no one would have known he was there.

Potter was the one he kept his eyes on, though. The slump of the shoulders, the dragging feet, the stubborn, set mouth.

After they’d passed by, Severus looked down at the unlit candle that he was carrying in his hand, unused, unneeded. Then he melted back into the darkness, in case any of the group chanced to look his way.

---

The medallion was on the bed in front of Johan, gleaming dully in the firelight, and he kept one eye on it as he paged through yet another book. The stack of books that he’d already looked through was high on the floor beside him, but none of them had yielded any answers as to how they could track the demon once they managed to get inside the school, which was a whole other problem, of course, but a slightly more manageable one.

Another page, another.

Then a gust of wind seemed to travel through his flat, deadening the light from the fire for just a moment. He only had time to look to the fireplace before the flames came back to life again.

When he looked back at the book in front of him, his eye immediately sought out the medallion on the bed. He caught his breath, and then his head fell into his hands, because it was black, dead, and now useless to him.

---

It was late afternoon the next day, when Harry walked into his dorm room and found that Neville had returned and was packing. By hand.

Harry stopped in the threshold and stared, unsure of what to say. Time seemed to slow as Neville turned to look at him, and Harry almost expected to see a look of hatred on his face. He almost expected Neville to jump him, and he suddenly realized that his hand was in his pocket, fingering his wand. He made himself let go, made himself pull his hands out into the open so that he could see them.

He deserved whatever Neville chose to do to him, he reminded himself. He deserved more punishment than Neville could ever enact on him. Neville wasn’t glaring at him, though. He wasn’t smiling, either, but his look was not unfriendly.

"Neville," he started.

"It wasn’t your fault," the other teen said. "I was the one who couldn’t protect myself."

"It was after me, though. You? Those three girls? All because of me. My fault."

Neville stood up and stepped closer to Harry. "And you know what I have to say to that? You didn’t summon the demon, thus it wasn’t your fault. And if it had to get anyone? Better me than you. Better all of us than you. You’re important, Harry. The world needs you."

"But not so much that you—anyone—should have—" He paused, swallowing deeply. "I’m not that important."

He wanted to say that he wasn’t important at all. Not anymore. He’d fulfilled his destiny and now he was just another wizard. He was nobody special.

That wasn’t true, though. He was a liar. A cheater.

He wanted to tell Neville that, to tell him exactly why he was a hero.

"You don’t have to worry about me," Neville said, looking far too kind. "I have a life out there among the Muggles. I made one for myself this past summer." He cracked a smiled, which was more than Harry would have been able to do in his situation. It was almost more than Harry could take. "You know, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to come here anyway. Maybe this is the sign I needed. The one that I’d been waiting for, that I wasn’t meant to be a wizard."

He nodded once, as if convincing himself of the truth in his words, and then he turned back to his trunk, knelt down, and stuffed some more of his clothes in.

"Besides," he said as he packed. "Lisa’s getting her degree in Botany and Minister Fudge offered to provide me with entrance papers to the same program, so it’s not like I’ll have to change my chosen field, now is it?"

"Why are you being so good about this?" Harry asked.

Neville stilled. "What other way should I be, Harry? Would you rather I screamed and yelled? That I blamed you for this? Say, ‘Why do these things always happen to me?’"

Harry nodded, even though Neville wasn’t looking at him.

"I’m sorry, Harry. I just can’t do that, because I know that I’ll be okay, that everything happens for a reason, and I don’t want to hate you. Besides, why don’t you hate me for trying to trap you?"

"That was the demon, not you. I know that."

"And I know that you can’t save everybody. Not even me."

Before Harry could say anything else, Neville stood up again and shut the lid of his trunk. "My Gran’s houselves will be along to pick that up tonight. Lisa should be out front about now, waiting to pick me up." Then he stepped forward and hugged Harry, patting him on the back.

"This won’t be the last you see of me," he said as he let go. "I’d be willing to bet Trevor on it."

Then he walked past Harry, out into the hallway, and Harry followed behind. He stood in the doorway, watching Neville’s retreating figure, until the other teen was gone from sight. Until he felt a prickling of someone’s gaze on him.

He turned and saw Malfoy standing just down the hall, his hand on the knob of his door. He was glaring at Harry, of course, his gaze ice cold. Then he opened the door, stepped inside, and let the door slam shut, disappearing without saying a word.

Harry stared after him for a moment, before he turned to look in the direction that Neville had gone once more. Then he stepped back into his room and shut the door behind him.

End Episode One