Chapter Text
Severina spreads the map across the library table, the parchment crackling softly as it flattens beneath her palms. People are far too bloody interested in the riddle — several of the nosy sods actually dare to approach her for a closer look. But Severina, having endured a forced withdrawal from Euphoria thanks to Slughorn blocking her at every turn by assigning her random, meaningless busywork, is fresh out of patience. She snaps at anyone who so much as breathes in her direction.
She reads the map again. Then a third time, tracing the same stubborn lines with her finger.
The library is half-filled — though most of the occupants aren't there for studying. They have gathered to gawp at the Beauxbatons champion, who has set up camp at a table near the History section, surrounded by a small flock of admirers like a particularly handsome garden gnome. The riddle refuses to make sense. And Madam Pince refuses to let her drink coffee in here, the old bat.
Severina bites her lip. Bites again. Blood floods her mouth, metallic and warm; she licks it away and reads the damn thing once more.
"Any luck?" says Rosier, sliding onto the bench beside her. By doing so, he neatly blocks the path of the gawpers, who find themselves suddenly faced with his shoulder and his distinctly uninviting expression.
"Well," she says, not looking up from the map, "Charity's gone to fetch any books on magical trees and geography. Since the map has all those dots pointing at the folklore — and by extension, the possible location of this token — we can limit the possibilities and see where that takes us."
"Hmm," says Rosier. He pulls out his own books, laying them in a tidy row as he begins his Charms homework.
Severina, meanwhile, has had a manic episode after Malfoy's letter two days ago. Due to the leftover jolt of excitement — and the desperate need to do something with her hands before she claws her own bloody fingers off — she has finished all of her homework. Then some of Charity's, as a thank you. Then Avery's, who has been languishing in the hospital wing thanks to his blood curse, his homework piling up like rubbish. The sneaky git has managed to slip his own parchments into the pile when she wasn't looking. She has realised too late. By then, only two essays have remained unfinished, which Avery hasn't minded doing alone for once. Probably because he has already got most of his work done for free. The thieving, absolute bastard.
She picks at her nail-beds. Picks and picks and picks, the sharp bite of pain digging into her flesh like an old friend — and then Rosier catches her hands quite suddenly, parting them to stop her, looking flabbergasted at the state of her bloody fingers.
She tries to free her hands, but his grip is iron-hard. "What is the matter with you?" he demands.
She tries again. "Let me go." When he doesn't, she slumps, the anger draining out. In its place creeps worry. Her anxiety these days, when she isn't off her head on Euphoria, has got so bad she almost misses those quiet months after her mum passed — that dead, silent routine she and her dad had fallen into: up, sit about, sleep, start over. The anxiety only buggers off when she has Euphoria, but she is terrified of finishing her stash.
He tightens his grip and pulls them farther apart. Why the fuck would he even care? He isn't her mother. He isn't her bloody keeper. She glares at him, his expression is blank, grim.
"I'm worried," she finds herself admitting sullenly, eyes squeezed shut, swallowing hard. "It's my chance. He —" She glances at him pointedly, and Rosier straightens up immediately, recognising exactly whom she means. The Dark Lord. "— will be watching. Lucius promised as much. Or warned me, at least. If I mess up — if I fuck up — how can I ever rise again in front of him? It means I'll have to work harder."
And who knows? Maybe He will be just like the Hogwarts professors, who never see her hard work for what it is because they have already marked her down as a problem student from the start. A greasy-haired half-blood nuisance. Not worth the time of day.
"And even that doesn't mean I'll do well, because he already expects me to fail anyway." She keeps her eyes down. "And do you know — Skeeter didn't write about it — but Petrova's wand is fully mastered. It's a wand of warriors."
She swallows hard. "And my wand —" Ill-matched with cautious or nervous natures, Ollivander has said. What a polite way to call her spineless. But how much bolder does she need to bloody be? Isn't it enough already? Standing up for herself against bullies, answering curse with curse, toe for toe. Yes, they win because it is four against one, but when she lands her hexes, they are properly fucked. When it is one for one, they end up in the hospital wing. Some people still side-eye her because she has hit Black with a curse that left the privileged tosser bedridden for two days. As if the bastard hadn't deserved every screaming second of it.
Ashamed, she glances at her wand, still unadorned. "My wand's not fully mastered yet."
Rosier's grip loosens, just a fraction. His thumb brushes once across her knuckles — not tenderly, exactly, but not roughly either. "Can't picture you with a mastered wand, honestly," he says. He brushes his thumb over her knuckles again, like he is turning something over in his mind. His voice sounds genuinely awed, so she looks up at him and finds him staring at her intensely. "You're already a terror. An absolute terror — full of nasty little surprises and bits of spellcraft I've never even laid eyes on. I've asked my duelling master, you know. He says he's never had a student invent their own hexes and curses." He shakes his head slowly. "I shouldn't fuss over your wand lacking character. For all you know — Avery's got this notion that it is mastered, and it only looks plain because you're plain."
"Avery needs to throw himself off the Astronomy Tower," she says flatly. Preferably head-first.
She pulls her hands away, and this time Rosier lets her, laughing like the great berk he is. Severina has a strange urge to lean over — to do what, she isn't sure. His laugh is making her chest feel... something. Something she cannot name and doesn't want to. She blinks and looks away, confused and upset, but also — annoyingly, pathetically — pleased that he has talked to his duelling master about her. That his words have brought her even a shred of comfort.
Charity comes staggering around the corner with a tower of books stacked so high that only the very top of her head is visible. The pile wobbles perilously with every step, threatening to avalanche onto the nearest unsuspecting Ravenclaw.
"Little — help —" comes Charity's muffled voice from somewhere behind Encyclopaedia of Magical Trees, Volume III.
Rosier doesn't move. Severina, with a long-suffering sigh, reaches out and plucks the top three books from the swaying tower, and Charity deposits the remainder onto the table with a great thump that makes Madam Pince look up from her desk and glare daggers in their direction.
"Sorry," Charity whispers, not sounding sorry at all. She shakes out her arms and flexes her fingers, which have gone white from the strain.
"Found everything?" Severina peers dryly at the stack.
Charity shakes out her arms and flexes her fingers, which have gone white from the strain. "Magical trees, magical geography, and I found a rather lovely one on enchanted forests that seemed relevant. Also grabbed a history of Hogsmeade folklore because I thought—" she glances at Severina, then away, "—well, I thought it couldn't hurt."
"Pass the folklore one, then. It can't be more useless than the last three."
Charity slides onto the bench across from Severina, pushing a strand of blond hair behind her ear. "Find anything yet?"
Severina hates that she doesn't have an answer to that.
"Well," she says, tapping a finger against a cluster of little inked dots on the map, "once we limit the possible locations, my main problem becomes transportation. Finding a way to shift quickly from one spot to another." She drags her finger across the parchment, tracing the distance. "It's ten square miles. And knowing my luck, the token's probably sitting at the furthest bloody end of it, laughing at me."
Ten square miles. On foot. Through Merlin-knew-what sort of boggy, monster-infested wilderness. With a time limit breathing down her neck — and Severina being, by no stretch of anyone's imagination, athletic. She gets winded running up the dungeon stairs, for fuck's sake.
It'd be easy if she could just invent and master the unsupported flight charm she has been trying to conjure since her second year at Hogwarts, when she had made a spectacular fool of herself on a school broom during Flying Lessons. (Madam Hooch had used the word "unprecedented." Not as a compliment.)
The experimental results have been… promising, in a strictly technical sense. She can float. Approximately ten centimetres off the ground. For roughly three seconds. With absolutely no directional control and the manoeuvrability of a drunken flobberworm.
The first proper attempts — outside of scribbling theories in a notebook — have been two years ago. They have ended in bruises. That, Severina supposes, is preferable to death. Barely.
The principle itself is obvious in theory and idiotic in practice. Levitation Charms are insultingly primitive things — designed for feathers and teacups and whatever else incompetent idiots drop on their own feet. The flaw isn't in the charm itself, but in scale. Wizards insist on casting upon objects rather than channelling through themselves. The body, after all, is merely another object. Flesh obeys magic no differently than wood or stone.
The difficulty comes with directional movement.
Suspension alone produces a revolting sensation — like hanging from invisible fishhooks lodged beneath the ribs. The first successful self-levitation lasts perhaps four seconds before she drifts sideways into her wardrobe and splits her lip on the brass handle.
Robert had screamed at her from the bathroom to stop "breaking things."
Promising progress.
By July of that year, she’d managed vertical ascent.
Forward momentum results in immediate collapse, because the levitation field destabilises the moment opposing force is introduced. A separate propulsion system is necessary. Severina considers broom enchantments for three weeks before discarding the idea entirely. Embedding runic matrices into wood is simple. Embedding them into living tissue is impossible.
Unless the body itself becomes a temporary conduit rather than fixed matter.
That thought had kept her awake for two nights, chain-smoking, sleep-deprived and nicotine-soaked. The breakthrough came accidentally while experimenting with Banishing Charms — she’d been trying to shove a chair across the room and thinks, what if I shove myself instead?
Rather than directing Depulso outward through the wand tip, she’d redirected the force behind herself while maintaining self-levitation simultaneously. The first attempt sent her crashing into the opposite wall. The second attempt cracked her head on the doorframe. The third attempt — well, she stopped counting after she put a dent in the ceiling.
She insists on experimenting with reducing the body's effective weight while redirecting momentum continuously through controlled Banishing pulses. The real issue is resistance. Human bodies aren't shaped for flight — they drag against air like anchors through murky water. Sustained movement requires either impossible magical output or the alteration of bodily cohesion itself.
Merely controlled levitation threaded with continuous expulsive force while maintaining partial transfigurative instability along the outer layers of the body. Twenty-three seconds before concentration fails and she nearly breaks her ankle landing. Still. Twenty-three seconds unsupported. If refined further, it might surpass broom travel entirely. If it fails, it will likely tear the caster apart molecule by molecule.
Encouraging odds.
So she divides the problem into separate magical functions.
First: reduce the body's pull toward the ground through modified levitation anchored along the spine rather than externally cast. Second: create momentum independently using controlled Banishing pulses directed opposite the intended movement. Not one violent burst like Depulso, but repeated micro-casts layered so tightly they resemble continuous force. Third: stabilisation.
That proves the difficult part.
Humans are asymmetrical creatures — arms shift balance, robes catch air, panic ruins concentration. Brooms solve instability through enchantments that correct movement faster than the rider can perceive. Severina attempts to imitate this by weaving minor directional charms around herself in rotating sequence, tiny corrective forces constantly adjusting posture mid-air.
In theory, the structure resembles this:
F₍levitation₎ + F₍propulsion₎ + F₍stabilisation₎ > mg
She jots it down, thoughtfully. The last step will be to weave all of this into a single, wandless incantation — then into non-verbal magic, which in itself is simple enough. It is creating the bloody spell and making every aspect of it work seamlessly that is the problem. She feels ambitious, certainly, but the worry gnaws at her like a rat on a rope: her priority is impressing the Dark Lord when he watches her, hopefully, or at the very least not making a complete and utter tit of herself on a national stage for everyone to laugh at.
She picks up the book. Aurora comes over with a dictionary of all things, and Newton Scamander's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
"See," the Ravenclaw says, leaning over Rosier to reach her, much to Evan's annoyance. "The word 'wych' comes from the Old English wice, meaning pliant or bendable, referring to the tree's flexible branches. In this context, apparently, it's yew. And the 'elf' part — we can safely assume that means the fae. So the riddle means the fae in the wood. Cornish pixies, or doxy... or everything in between, honestly, because thinking about it, all of these creatures are tree 'elf' — they help nourish the trees, you see."
Severina's eyes light up. "Oh? So we're looking for a yew tree that has a fae colony. The watcher is possibly —" she peers at Scamander's, "— their queen of the colony."
She squints back at the map. "So it's on the Forbidden Forest's eastern edge..." She stands up, sending a roll of parchment fluttering to the floor. "Well, I'll have to locate it."
"You're being too dismissive of the other locations," Rosier points out, tapping a fingernail against a different entry. "There could be half a dozen yew trees out there with fae colonies. You can't just waltz into the Forest and expect the first one you find to be the right one."
"It's the transportation from one location to another that's my main concern. So I have to map every bloody location anyway. I'll keep that in mind."
"It's on foot," Charity reminds her.
"No one said anything about using magic…" She is being too cocky for someone who hasn't actually managed to perfect the spell she is apparently pinning all her hopes on. In hindsight, it is the sort of arrogance that usually comes back to bite her on the arse. "Anyway. If I fail to create it I'd need to visit every possible location anyway."
The fog hangs low and thick over the grounds, clinging to the hillside like a drenched cloak as she trudges upward. A brass telescope dangles from her hand, borrowed from Aurora and rather crudely repurposed for fairy-spotting, and a cigarette dangles from her lips, though she has long since stopped smoking it in favour of gnawing the filter to a sad, sodden pulp.
She has decided to walk under this miserable excuse for weather — because anywhere is preferable to that wretched pit that Hogwarts is — to examine every last inch of the locations, with the folklore book wedged in her bag.
She fishes out the bloody riddle and reads it again.
The trees are thickening slightly as she walks deeper into the Forbidden Forest. She stumbles across a cluster of fungi, pulls out her knife, and harvests them without a second thought — old habits die hard, and a potion's ingredient is a potion's ingredient, no matter what sort of mess the rest of her life has become. Then she pushes deeper, circling between every dotted mark on the map, the folklore book open with the map tucked inside it, reading up on the lores as she goes. She finds a statue of a man and stops, surrounded by trees, suddenly squinting. The Watcher in the riddle could be a statue. She pauses, really considering that.
Severina shuts the book with the map tucked inside, shoves the lot into her bag, and gives it proper thought. She climbs the statue, searching for a place where light might shine. But his eyes are stony — no matter how much she digs her fingers into the cracks and tries with her wand, nothing gives. It just feels unlikely. She glances about and realises there are no wych-elves, no yew trees, and no light to speak of either. There is also the very real possibility that the whole bloody thing is metaphorical.
Then she jumps down, shoots the statue a filthy look, turns on her heel, and walks off. The quarry she can safely scratch off her list, so she insists they go to the watchtower instead.
Watcher. Certainly has something to do with the watchtower. Or so she bloody hopes.
She finds herself in front of the half-ruined tower — mould creeping up its stone walls like a slow green disease, damp seeping through every crack, the whole miserable heap looking as though it might collapse if she sneezes too hard. A massive bell hangs at the top, blackened with age and weather, its clapper long since rusted into silence. Severina climbs. And climbs. The watchtower, some centuries ago, has been built to keep watch over the lands that will one day become Hogsmeade. Now it stands surrounded by thick, tangled trees, and the fog lies so heavy she cannot even make out Hogwarts' towers. Might as well be a thousand miles away.
She pulls her wand. "Come on, for fuck's sake," she mutters, and nudges every inch of the tower with her magic — prodding here, poking there, pressing against stones and lintels and crumbling mortar. She finds precisely nothing. Not a whisper of enchantment. Not a flicker of anything useful.
She stands at the edge and looks down. Being in the watchtower makes her the watcher, she thinks — really considers it — and the notion fills her with a strange, giddy anticipation. Because the Dark Lord must see with his own eyes that she is worthy. Even with her half-blood. Even with that Muggle surname dragging behind her like a tin can tied to a stray dog's tail.
Severina bites her lip, hard enough to taste copper. "Lumos." She makes the light brighter, fiercer, thrusting it out from every window she can reach, searching the fog below for something — anything — that might count as a sign.
But again — riddles, as a rule, don't require every word to be taken literally. Things can be metaphorical. And if not, well, not everything can be interpreted in a literal sense, and a line doesn't necessarily have to mean what it says. She fishes a little bottle of Euphoria from her pocket and holds it up to eye level, studying the liquid as though it might offer her answers. About eight drops left. And considering the amount she has stashed under Robert's bed — less than four bottles, and she isn't yet sure whether she will sell them to Mulciber, use them to gain favour in certain quarters, or keep them for herself to ward off the creeping anxiety that never seems far behind these days — she ought to be careful.
She shrugs, drops one drop onto her tongue, and closes her eyes, allowing the sweetness to wash over her like warm honey.
Light-headed and lighter-hearted, she twirls a strand of her greasy hair between her fingers, fishes out another cigarette, and whimsically — because she is still using her wand to point at the ground — tries to light it wandlessly. It doesn't quite happen as intended. The cigarette bursts into flames instead.
Severina tries again, out of sheer bloody frustration, sprawled on the mossy floor of the watchtower like a cast-off rag doll, her legs propped up on the window ledge, her wand abandoned beside her. Pointless thing.
She stares up at the open grey sky, at the fog that hangs there like a dirty shroud. She fishes out another cigarette, stares at its filter for a long moment, then picks up a twig lying beside her and tries to light it with her mind. The twig begins to smoulder, a thin thread of smoke, a faint glow, but no proper flame. She really ought to practise her wandless magic more, but Merlin knows her wand cannot be arsed to be mastered by her.
Far away, she hears voices. Someone speaking. The conversation grows louder, nearer, and she realises with a jolt — someone is climbing up the tower. Bugger.
Severina scrambles to sit up just as Petrova, of all the cursed people in the world, hauls herself over the edge. The other witch stops short at the sight of her.
She has eyes so blue and pale they are almost uncomfortably grey — like the Black family. Like Sirius Black, that tosser wannabe killer. Which makes Severina dislike her on principle at first glance. Probably has Black blood somewhere back in her twisted family tree. Wouldn't surprise her in the slightest. Those pure-blood lots are so inbred they probably all share the same three ancestors in a pathetic little circle.
"Oh," says the Durmstrang witch, her eyes intense and utterly uninterested. "It's you. Hogwarts... champion."
Behind her stand two equally tall and imposing Durmstrang students. Charity hasn't been wrong — they all look like they are pushing thirty and have been hitting the aggressive potions since birth. Severina picks up her ushanka, slaps it against her thigh to knock the moss off, and says with the exact same flat tone, "Durmstrang."
She recognises one of the blokes standing beside Petrova. Her roommate's bedmate. Poor bastard hasn't got a clue what he has landed himself in — nor that Robert is already engaged to someone else. Or maybe he does know and just doesn't give a toss, which makes him another wanker in a long, unimpressive line of wankers. Severina cannot be bothered to keep her eyes on him as she yanks the ushanka back onto her head.
The Durmstrang champion's pale, watery grey eyes sweep across the tower, taking in every crumbling stone and rotting beam — clearly trying to work out if her own riddle has anything to do with this miserable heap of rubble. Then she looks back at Severina, her expression about as warm and welcoming as the bloody fog outside. "What is your riddle?"
"Why would I tell you?" Severina asks — genuinely curious, half Euphoria-fuelled reckless bravado and half pure suspicion that this cow is trying to sabotage her. Also, if she is being honest with herself — which she bloody well isn't, usually — deep down she is utterly, painfully insecure and threatened by her. Before her stands the only one of the three champions who has actually fully mastered her wand. Severina's eyes flick to it, notice the deep red twirls winding round the wood, matching that ridiculous duelling suit she has worn the other day. Now that she thinks about it, she isn't sure if that is meant to be some sort of statement or just desperately tacky.
Severina takes a long drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke out slowly through her nose toward the window.
Petrova's face doesn't so much as twitch as she recites, her Slavic accent grating on Severina's nerves like nails down a chalkboard — sounds too much like her father, similar to her own really, though she bloody well hopes she manages to hide hers better when simulating with the general public: "I pierced the breast of a traitor lord. Then missed the heart by half a cord. To hold me, ring the silent bell — twice for heaven, once for hell. What am I, and what sound frees me? That is what mine read. I have marked three locations that hold the very same description, folklore-wise. But I cannot be certain — the day of the task is the only way to know."
Severina feels a prick of unease jab her square in the guts. Because if Petrova has already solved that much, she is properly fucked. Her chances of impressing the Dark Lord seem to be sinking lower with every second she is forced to glare up at the Durmstrang cow's formidable glory. And the face-carved-from-ice bitch is right about one bloody thing — there is only one way to figure it out for certain. The riddle will only properly match the place when the day of the task begins, when they can test their theories against all the traps where tokens are hidden around the grounds, along with whatever enhancements and obstacles have been layered over them like a nest of bloody hidden tripwires.
I pierced the breast of a traitor lord.
It sounds painfully familiar. She fishes the history book from her bag and flips it open, while also realising that the other witch's riddle — no matter how much she turns it around in her head — is nothing like hers. She can safely assume their tokens aren't in the same place, and thank Merlin for small mercies, because that means they don't have to compete for the same token. Honestly, as she regards the other witch, she isn't sure she could win in a fair fight. Or an unfair one, for that matter.
She snaps the book shut. She has glimpsed the page. Some archer whose Rockwood lord had kidnapped his sister, forced himself on her, then killed her. The archer had lured the bastard into the watchtower, hidden himself in his bird Animagus form, waited, and when the lord swanned in, nicked his wand and chucked it down the tower before transforming back and putting three arrows straight through the filthy sod's heart.
Fuck. Does the other witch know she is in the right place?
How can she distract her? Severina pauses, then says, "Where the wych-elf sings beneath the yew, the keyless grave yields what is due. The Watcher's gaze, when light has flown, points to the token once unknown. That's my riddle." She tosses it out like a piece of raw meat, watching Petrova's face for any flicker of interest.
"We are dissimilar. Good." A pause, flat and dull. "In all the Tournament histories, sometimes for this sort of task, they make two champions seek the same token. Last time it was token-hunting, the Durmstrang champion broke the little Hogwarts champion."
Severina gawks at her. Is that a threat? Has this great lumbering bovine just threatened her?
Petrova waves a hand like she is shooing a fly. "Not that I would break you. I could safely put you down without harming you."
So she thinks she isn't a threat at all. Severina realises, thoroughly insulted. The usual habit of everyone who decides she is the most fragile thing going — either deserving to be snapped in half or not worth a second glance.
The witch drones on, "In any case, maybe you should see the scarecrow or the cemetery, or the Hogsmeade yard. I suppose you already know that, and you are here to explore your options?" She looks at her exceptionally — which is to say, like one might examine a dog that has just shat on the carpet.
"I know where my riddle points out," Severina snaps. Then, grudgingly: "Why do you want to help me, if I'm being generous enough to say that you're trying to help me?"
"To throw Duclair off the scent. And to keep the curve from bending too far in his favour." Petrova's voice is brisk, businesslike, utterly indifferent. "This assessment is graded comparatively — solving, timing, and the technique with which we handle the obstacles are all measured against the performance of the other competitors. Duclair has already solved his riddle and has the timing in his pocket. He knows exactly where to go once the race begins. Not to mention he's a duelling champion." A thin smile. "He'll be leagues ahead, unless at least we have the same advantage."
Severina stares at her. So it isn't kindness. It isn't even basic decency. It is just bloody mathematics. Severina feels rather good about herself for not telling the great cow about the bowman and the bastard lord, then. She straightens up and says, with heavy irony: "Well, I thank you then. I'll be on my way and make sure that... Duclair doesn't have the advantage." You bitch. Then she stomps off, nearly tumbles down the stairs like a clumsy first-year, but manages to catch herself just in time. Barely.
Duclair is a duelling champion? She hasn't known that. Not that she has really looked into anyone besides the article that has torn all three of them to shreds, and even then she has only hyper-fixated on her own miserable section and barely glanced at the rest. But that, in a way, explains why Petrova feels the need to be competitive with him and dismissive of her — seeing as he apparently has something under his belt to boast about, while Severina has sweet fuck-all. Petrova also seems to have some sort of intensity when she talks about him. In Severina's experience, that kind of intensity is either respect, or envy, or all three at once, tangled up together. She bites into her lip so hard she tastes copper.
Scarecrow or the cemetery or the Hogsmeade yard. Severina almost feels ashamed — she has wasted so much time being off her head on Euphoria, or just letting her anxiety swallow her whole. The cold digs its teeth into her. It will be even colder on the day of the task, or so Aurora has said. Bloody wonderful. Something else to look forward to.
Walking to Hogsmeade is something Severina admittedly hates. It only bloody helps her remember that she is piss-poor and fucking orphaned, especially as she eyes the shopfronts full of ingredients she cannot afford, clothes she will never wear, and fancy shampoo that probably costs more than her entire wardrobe. In the middle of Hogsmeade there is a statue — she comes face to face with the damned thing — while Hogwarts students traipse around her from one shop to another, giggling and laughing and having the time of their moneyed little lives.
She stops dead in front of the fountain where birds are loitering about, splashing in the water like they haven't a care in the world. In the middle stands a statue pouring water down into the basin — some old wizard or other, probably someone who has never had to worry about where his next meal is coming from. Severina stares at it, then squints at the shops in front to see if any of them are made of yew. A fairy flies overhead, twittering sweetly, and she has half a mind to swat the thing out of the air.
Then she hears a laugh. A voice she knows far too well.
Severina keeps her head pointed straight ahead, her jaw clenched so tight her teeth ache. Lily stops laughing abruptly — as if something has caught in her throat, as if she has seen something that kills the mood dead. Whether that something is Severina herself or something else entirely, Severina doesn't care to find out. She keeps her head buried in her father's jacket pocket, digging her chewed nails into the dry, cracked skin of her palms until she feels something close to relief. Automatically, she fishes out a cigarette — one of her last three, bloody wonderful — slides it between her lips, bites down on it, and wandlessly, to her miserable amusement, it lights up. Apparently her misery is the only thing that ever makes her develop. What a sad, pathetic state of affairs.
She turns around and walks past. From the corner of her eye, Lily is deliberately walking on the other side of the street, not looking at her, face set with grim determination. For the best, Severina thinks. She's dating my bully. She chose to turn a blind eye every time he humiliated me and — she swallows hard. None of this matters anyway. They are bound to fall out eventually, what with her being a Gryffindor and Severina being a Slytherin, with the war creeping closer, and Severina knows damn well she is going to end up a Death Eater. She has to put herself first. Part of her knows, deep down in that pathetic, traitorous part of her chest, that if Lily turned around and called her name, she would come running back with her tail between her legs, sod Potter and his whole stupid gang. But Lily doesn't call. And Severina doesn't look back.
Finding the cemetery is almost easier after that, though the local residents keep pointing her this way and that with great excitement she doesn't share, wittering on unnecessarily before their faces fall at her blank expression. One old man is stupid enough to think she is nervous and pats her back so hard she almost stumbles and kisses the mud. "Worry not, you got this. Make Britain proud."
"I'm Russian," she mutters under her breath, long gone down the road, where the cemetery gates finally loom in front of her. She looks through the bars. The place looks like something out of a Muggle horror film — thick with low-lying fog, and in the distance, the shapes of gravestones with what she assumes are statues scattered here and there like silent watchers. Severina breathes out a cloud of smoke, shoves the rusty gate open, and it screeches so loudly she almost changes her mind. Sounds determined to wake the bloody dead.
She walks inside. When she is younger, back in her first years, she has never set foot in this place. But when the weather is clear, she has a general idea of how everything looks from afar. There are a bunch of trees — she is sure of it — she can see their shapes as she walks deeper, though it is hard to tell how many or where exactly they are with the fog lying so low and thick you can barely see your hand in front of your face.
In hindsight, she should have guessed her target is in a graveyard. Yew trees grow there, obviously. But in her defence, they also grow all over the Forbidden Forest, and she used to take the fungi that grew underneath them. The first tree she comes across is pale and white and naked, not a single fae colony on it.
She takes out her wand and slashes at it with a Sectumsempra, just to mark the bastard. Then she turns left, up a hill, then down again, feeling cold and creeped out and downright defensive, her wand gripped so tight her knuckles have gone white.
Far off, down the hill where the road crosses into three more, stands a tree. In the middle of it all, a statue of a man with its back to her. She makes her way to the yew tree — this one has its leaves spread wide, and sure enough, she can spot a colony of something perched atop it. Had she mastered her flying, she would have flown up to see. But she hasn't. So she doesn't.
She turns to the statue. A wizard with a forked beard, his robe pooling down to the ground. A knotted cord is tied around his waist, and the man is hunched, old and miserable-looking. One hand rests on a tall, weathered staff planted beside him. The other hand holds — she circles around to check — a lantern made of iron, which stands out weirdly against the stone of the rest of him. The statue sits on a pedestal that is really a wide, shallow stone bowl roughly waist-high. The rim is thick enough to sit on. Water fills it almost to the brim, dark and still, reflecting the statue above like a dirty mirror.
She huffs, kneels to roll her trousers up to her knees — because of course she will end up bloody wading — then climbs up, nearly falling straight into the water on her first step. It takes her three sloshing, stumbling strides to reach the moss-eaten thing itself. Gripping its slimy staff for balance, she pulls herself close to its stony face, which wears such a thick green beard of moss it might be an ancient, drowned wizard. Fucking disgusting.
"HEY."
She jolts so hard she loses her footing and goes arse-over-tit straight into the freezing water. When she looks up, spluttering and absolutely fucking furious, a man with a lantern looms over her, his face all shadow and suspicion like something out of a bad fairy tale.
"What are you doing here," he says. It isn't a question. It is an accusation, the kind you would throw at someone caught nicking silverware.
She scrambles to her feet, shivering to the bone, stinking of moss and whatever else is floating in that shallow, foul little pond. "What the bloody hell do you think I'm doing?" she yells back, rage hot in her chest. That only seems to piss off the old fuck even more. He snaps back, "Coming here to disturb the dead. Spoil their graves. Spoil this place. No, madam, I will not allow it. I am the sexton of this cemetery. I tend the sleeping folk. I keep the peace. And I will not have some mud-soaked ruffian — some hooligan —"
"No, you fool, I'm not here to ruin anything, damn you," she spits, flinging the wet cigarette in his general direction. She spits again to get the filthy water out of her mouth. "I'm Hogwarts champion, you stale crumpet, and I'm here to solve my task — what else would I be doing in this ungodly place, in this ungodly weather?"
"Oh," says the old man, lowering the lantern closer to get a proper look at her. "My apologies, miss. My apologies." He ducks his head, and the cap nearly slides clean off his scalp. "Didn't realise. You get all sorts in here at night. Vandals, ghoul-hunters, grave-robbers — the lot what comes to nick headstones for garden ornaments, if you can believe it. Couples thinking it's romantic to snog on a grave. Terrible business."
He clears his throat, looking suddenly awkward. "The task, you say. Right, then. Right. I'll just… I'll just leave you to it, shall I?"
He hesitates, then makes a clumsy, hesitant move to help her — offering a gnarled hand or perhaps just the lantern's light. She swats his hand away before he can even make contact.
"Please do leave me to it," she bites out.
She draws her wand and dries herself with a sharp, angry flick. Then again. Then again. Unfortunately, the stench remains stuck to her like a vengeful spirit, so foul and clinging that she gags, hand over her mouth.
Awkwardly, the old man stands there watching her.
"Apologies, miss champion. Apologies," he mutters again, backing away. Then he turns and flees, his lantern swinging wildly, his boots squelching against the wet grass until the fog swallows him whole.
Severina slouches around until she finds a place to perch on the statue and finish drying herself properly. Above her, fairies flit through the bare branches, laughing with their thin, reedy little giggles, their voices musical as wind chimes. Their tiny, glowing bodies zip past her face, and she can feel them mocking her.
She casts a hex. One of the fairies drops like a stone, hitting the ground with a faint, pitiful squeak. The rest flee immediately, shooting back up into the trees, their laughter extinguished.
Severina turns back to the statue's face. Since she is already disgusting and miserable and soaked through, she uses her bare hand to wipe the moss from its features. The eyes, she finds, are stony and hollowed deep into his weathered face — empty sockets that stare at nothing. She digs her wand into the hollow and mutters, "Lumos."
Nothing happens.
Tears fill her eyes. Hot, stupid, useless tears. She climbs down from the base onto the soggy ground, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She takes a breath. Then another. She looks back up at the statue's hollow face.
Where the wych-elf sings beneath the yew. The place has its wych-elves — the fairies, with their giggles like little bells, like music. The keyless grave yields what is due. The Watcher's gaze, when light has flown, points to the token once unknown.
It is certainly this place. Severina is sure of it now, as she wipes her tears away with the back of a soggy sleeve. She finds it grimly fitting. The obstacles will be placed here on the day of the task — that much is obvious. They wouldn't leave a token lying about for any passing tramp to nick.
She breathes in and out, slow and ragged, then trudges miserably away, frozen tears still clinging to her eyelashes. She nearly stumbles right over the fairy she has dropped earlier — the wretched little thing lies twitching on the ground, its wings crumpled. Severina steps over it without a second glance and keeps walking.
People are staring at her again. Giggling. Making those wet little sounds that mean they are whispering about her, the bony half-blood freak who has somehow wound up a champion. When she looks up, some of them yelp and whip their heads away like she has cursed them on the spot — which she bloody well would, if she had the energy. Cowards, the lot of them.
It is a long, miserable walk to the dormitory. In the bathroom, she has no shampoo, no soap, none of that essential shit. She lies in the empty tub for hours, naked and staring at the ceiling tiles, before finally deciding she will simply have to steal from Robert.
Her roommate keeps her outrageously expensive, exotically scented shampoo on the little ledge by the window. The bottle is still unopened — the seal intact, the golden lid unsmirched. Which means if Severina so much as touches it, Robert will know. No question. The damn girl has the keen nose of a bloodhound when it comes to her possessions.
Severina checks the bin.
There — half-buried under a wad of damp tissue — is the same bottle. Empty. Or nearly so. She fishes it out, holds it up to the candlelight, and sees the faint, greasy smear of shampoo clinging to the inside of the translucent plastic. Enough, perhaps. Just barely. She points her wand at the bottle and whispers, "Sectumsempra."
The bottle splits cleanly down the middle. Inside, just as she has hoped, a thick smear of expensive gold-flecked shampoo clings to the plastic like melted butter. She wipes it out with her finger, then scrapes the rest into a small empty vial she has pilfered from Slughorn's stores last term.
The double she has — two washes' worth, maybe three — she uses fully. Every last drop. She scrubs her hair until her scalp stings, then scrubs again. For her body, she makes do with Hogwarts' own hand soap — that cheap, lavender-scented block that sits beside every basin in the castle, the sort that leaves your skin feeling tight and slightly squeaky.
She doesn't care. She only cares that she no longer stinks of that shallow, foul water.
Severina wraps herself in her threadbare towel and stands before the fogged mirror. She watches her own blurred shape slowly sharpen back into focus. Her hair lies silky and clean over her shoulders, falling nearly to her small back, though its edges are still brittle from years of neglect and cheap potions. Her face is pale as unbaked dough, and her eyes are red-rimmed from crying like a baby out of pure, seething frustration.
A knock comes at the door. Then Lenora Robert's voice, whining through the wood like a stuck pig, complaining that she has taken too long.
Severina points her wand. With a soft Vanesco, she vanishes the bottle she has cracked open. Then, for good measure, she vanishes everything inside the bin as well — every last scrap of evidence — before yanking the door open and stepping past her without a word.
Taking a sniff, Robert pauses, squinting at her suspiciously. Then her face twists into that familiar, scandalised sneer. "Is that my shampoo?" She draws herself up, indignant as a wet hen. "How about instead of wasting the money you get from peddling your little potions to half-wits, you buy yourself some essentials, you disgusting Mudblood? Or do they not teach basic hygiene in whatever gutter you crawled out of?"
"How about you worry about not kick-starting a chlamydia epidemic across all three schools," she calls back over her shoulder, "you slag. I didn't touch your shit. See for yourself."
She hears her sputter behind her, before she shuts the bed curtain, sealing herself away in the gloom of her four-poster. Severina sometimes thinks about slipping the same poison she has put in that mangy cat's food into Robert's pumpkin juice.
When she climbs down from her dormitory and into the common room, she finds Mulciber and Avery — of all the people she knows, unfortunately — hunkered in front of the crackling fire. A chessboard sits between them on a low table, and as always, Avery is winning. Mulciber's jaw is tight as a hangman's noose, his king teetering on the brink of utter humiliation.
Severina drops onto the sofa opposite them. "You finished with that?" She nods at the newspaper draped over the arm of Avery's chair.
Avery, who hasn't been using the newspaper at all, plucks it up and folds it across his lap. His eyes stay fixed on the chessboard, one hand hovering over his queen.
"Not yet," he says.
Severina breathes in. Breathes out. In. Out.
This absolute prick.
"Who's Beauxbatons' champion?" she asks, changing tactics.
Both of them look up at her now, mildly surprised she has asked.
"Oliver Duclair. Surprised you haven't heard of him," says Mulciber. "He's only the most talked-about champion in the whole tournament."
"Should I care?"
"Well," Mulciber says, exchanging a smirking glance with his chess partner, "other than the fact that he's going to steamroll both you and the Durmstrang girl into the ground? No reason at all."
Severina decides not to take the bait. Much as she wants to hex the smirk off his face. "And why's that?"
"He's a two-time international duelling champion," says Avery, still studying the board. His tone is almost bored, but the corner of his mouth betrays him. "Both of your opponents are, actually. Though Petrova's reputation is more local — she's never quite broken through on the world stage. Last year, she finally got her shot. Went up against Duclair in the third quarter." He glances up at Severina then, a thin, lazy smile curling across his face like an oil slick. "He wiped the floor with her. Didn't she mention that part?"
"Both of them duellists?" Well, fuck. She ignores their amusement. "What an odd thing, then. When they inspected Duclair's wand, they said it wasn't mastered. Like mine. Petrova's is the only fully mastered one."
"The thing with a mastered wand," Avery says, leaning back, "is that you think it affects effectiveness more than it does. Yes, it enhances it. But it doesn't necessarily mean one duellist is better than the other. It means she has an understanding of herself — that she's adjusted to reach that enhancement booster. It's usually meant to force the best out of the wizard." He holds up his own wand — richly brown, and annoyingly marked with ridges along the shaft. To show off his mastery. Because he is petty like that. "Here's what people don't tell you," Avery continues, turning the wand lazily between his fingers. "Wands have a sort of... opinion about you. The magic inside them, the core, the wood — it all feels your personality. And you feel it back. Some wizards spend years fighting that pull, trying to stay who they are. But the hunger for mastery always wins in the end. You start changing yourself. Little things at first. The way you hold yourself. How you react to fear. What makes you angry. And then one day you realise you're not trying to match the wand anymore — you are the person the wand was waiting for." He twirls the wand once, then tucks it away. "It's like mental training, really. You beat down the flaws your wand hates. You polish the bits it likes. And eventually, if you don't go mad first, it stops fighting you."
Surprisingly, he gives the answer she has been waiting for all along. She hates that it comes from Avery, so she will just pretend she has come up with it herself.
"What did that old wandmaker say you lack to master your wand?" Mulciber asks her.
"Like hell I'll tell you."
Mulciber's grin widens into something thoroughly unpleasant. "Shame. Write down the Euphoria recipe before Duclair smears you across the tournament ground, yeah?"
Charity, Aurora, and Severina return to the graveyard — much to Severina's chagrin, for it is still terrifyingly foggy. Wilkes trails after them like a mangy dog, still desperate to place his bets. According to him, he needs to see the horses before he wagers his Galleons.
"Are you saying both of them solved it?" he asks for the ninth time.
Severina has half a mind to hex his tongue to the roof of his mouth and leave it there to rot, but she is too tired, too bored, too fucking cold to bother. Tomorrow is the first task. People have been staring at her everywhere she goes — following her, whispering like a swarm of irritable gnats, constantly asking for the map. The map itself they have finally concluded shows three likely locations marked in red for the token. One of them is this very graveyard.
"I'm not sure about Petrova. I didn't tell her," Severina says, dragging the ushanka further down over her frozen ears, stumbling over the half-frozen ground. The frost crunches beneath her boots like breaking bones — a satisfying sound, at least. "But I had the feeling she already knows." Petrova has seemed sure enough, anyway.
"I think you're right, Severina," Aurora says, stopping before the statue of the man. She studies its weathered face intently, her breath puffing white in the cold air. "The graveyard keeper statue is the Watcher in the riddle. He's overlooked by yew trees — and these trees have fairy colonies."
"But it's the gaze part that doesn't make any bloody sense," says Severina, kicking a frozen clump of dirt. It goes exactly nowhere.
Charity climbs into the basin — the same foul pond Severina has fallen into — standing on her tiptoes to reach the statue's face. She points at the hollows where eyes should be. "The eyes are empty. That's unusual for statues. Most stone faces have carved pupils, even if they're weathered. These look... dug out on purpose. Filled with moss, which means it's not been tampered with recently."
"I tried to dig my wand in and light one of the hollows. Nothing happened." Severina scowls at the memory. "Also, the sexton made me fall into the pond, and I was too angry to stay."
Aurora circles the statue slowly, then stops where its gaze might fall. She takes several steps, looking out over the graves, then turns back. "Maybe you should try real fire," Aurora says thoughtfully. "Not just light. Sextons use real fire when they walk their rounds — lanterns with proper flames, not Lumos. In old magic, fire protects against the dead. Chases away ghostly cold. Fire is light, yes, but it's more than that. It's protection."
That is enough for Severina. She climbs into the basin beside Charity — she has no intention of stepping into that freezing water again — raises her wand at one hollow eye socket, and sends a jet of flames shooting inside. Incendio crackles from her wand tip, bright and hungry, casting wild orange shadows across the moss-eaten stone.
For a moment, the statue's two eyes blaze with fire — twin beacons burning in the dark, as if some ancient spirit has briefly woken and glared out at them.
Then it goes dark again.
The four of them stare at one another in the sudden gloom, unsure. The only sounds are Wilkes shuffling his feet on the wet grass and, somewhere in the distance, the low, mocking hoot of an owl.
"Well," says Charity after a long pause, "at least we know the fire comes from within."
"Not that it does us much bloody good," Wilkes mutters. "The real test is tomorrow. They haven't placed the enchantments or the obstacles yet. What we saw just now — that could be nothing. Or it could be a trap." He pauses. "Or it could be nothing and a trap, because why would anything ever be simple?"
"Or it could be exactly what it looked like," Aurora cuts in.
Severina picks at the dry, peeling skin around her fingernails. She hisses at the sting — bloody hurts — and looks up at them. At the weird degrees of worry plastered across their faces. It makes her feel slightly small, which she despises.
"Well, that settles it," she says, pulling her hand away before she can draw blood. "I only need to charm something small to throw inside the eye socket."
At three in the blackest hour of the morning, Severina stands before the Common Room fireplace, buried in a chaos of possessions — tomes lie splayed across the flagstones where she has sent their towers toppling, armchairs overturned, and the great oaken chest table shoved clean to the back of the room, face-down from where she has crashed bodily into it. She is rather certain her back has bloomed into a spectacular bruise.
Only within the last hour has she truly mastered the elusive art of stabilising charms. The rest of the house slumbers. Evan lies sprawled across the settee, shirt rucked up to his ribs, a bottle of firewhisky balanced on the bare, pale skin of his stomach, rising and falling with each drowsy breath. Every so often he slits open his pale eyes, watches her through the haze, and sinks back under. The one silver lining of Wilkes being Head Boy — and there aren't many — is that so long as you remain in his good graces, or at least out of his immediate line of fire, he allows you to raise merry havoc in the Common Room after hours, at whatever unholy hour you please.
"Haven't the foggiest what you're on about," mumbles Mulciber from the floor, his eyes misty with Euphoria, a pleased, half-sentient smile stretched across his face like he has forgotten how to form a proper thought — assuming he has ever known how in the first place.
"Don't trouble yourself over it," she says, drifting into the table where a candle gutters. She pours three drops into the melting wax, near the flame's tongue — and a golden haze unfurls like lazy mist off the Black Lake. She breathes deep. The headache vanishes, replaced by pure, weightless, glorious joy. Satisfied, blissed-out, and enviably high-functioning — unlike the drooling mess on the floor — she lets herself float. She stabilises. Evan blinks groggily at her as she drifts without direction, then turns her body toward him, legs trailing like seaweed, and settles into a mid-air recline. He blinks at her in bewilderment as she grins. Then, wordlessly, she uses her bare foot to cast a Banishing Spell, and she launches directly into him across the room.
He yelps just before she crashes into his chest. They both groan in pain, though his body, warm and solid, takes the worst of the shock. Pain throbs, and the firewhisky slops all over them both like a spilled cauldron of something far less pleasant. She raises her head to look at him apologetically, hands flat on his chest to regain her footing, as he opens his eyes with a proper glare.
"Merlin's beard, Severina," he hisses, whisky-drenched and thoroughly wretched. "If I wake up with a cracked rib —"
"I didn't know it would work this well," she whispers. "It's a breakthrough."
"You're an absolute menace," he groans, but his arm comes up around her anyway. He cages her there, as though she is a wayward snitch he has finally caught, and lets her head settle into the hollow of his shoulder. Her nose brushes his neck. He closes his eyes.
She tries to free herself — really, she does — but the Euphoria still pours from the candle in lazy, golden ribbons, curling through the Common Room like the ghost of a happier memory. The magic leaves nowhere to go but two directions: wild, crackling excitement, or a boneless, heavy-limbed laziness that pulls at her eyelids like weighted blankets. And Evan, curse him, seems determined to push her toward the latter. His arm tightens. His breathing slows. His body radiates warmth like a well-stoked fire.
She tells herself she ought to move. Ought to wave her wand, tidy the toppled books, right the armchairs. Instead, she lets out a small, defeated breath.
And closes her eyes.
It is nice, she thinks, somewhere in the fog between wakefulness and sleep. The firewhisky dries sticky on both their clothes. Mulciber mumbles something unintelligible from the floor and rolls over.
Severina sleeps.
When they wake the following morning — and they wake only because Mulciber stumbles straight into an overturned table and goes down face-first with a spectacular curse that wakes half the bloody dungeon — Wilkes rushes them away, already plotting aloud to pin the whole mess on Macnair for whatever the fifth-year has done to him last Tuesday. Which suits Severina just fine. She has larger concerns than a trashed Common Room and a potential week of detentions.
Like not dying in the first task, for starters.
Panic nips at her heels as she scrambles up to her dormitory, fumbling through her trunk for her Energy Potion. She drinks enough to chase away the lingering fog of too-little sleep, the bitter tang sliding down her throat like a necessary evil, and tucks the little vial of Euphoria into her robe pocket like a secret weapon.
The atmosphere in the castle that morning is thick as Treacle Fudge: great tension and crackling excitement woven through every corridor like an invisible web. Lessons are to stop at midday, giving all students time to troop down to the Quidditch pitch, where enormous screens have been installed over the past weeks. The stands now hold extra chairs for the Hogsmeade residents streaming in like bloody tourists at a freak show. Some students, from what she overhears, have even asked the house-elves to prepare picnic baskets.
Severina feels oddly separate from everyone around her, like a ghost haunting her own body. Whether they are wishing her good luck or hissing, "Try not to wet yourself, Snape," or snickering, "Ten sickles says she's dead in the first five minutes," or calling, "Hope you've said goodbye to your dignity," as she passes — their voices reach her as if through water. Muffled. Pointless. Time moves strangely: slow in the classrooms, then lurching fast, then slow again before lunch. She eats without tasting, aware of her tablemates staring, stealing glances, or outright discussing the whole affair in voices that carry like howlers.
She feels numb. So she drops the whole Euphoria into her pumpkin juice and knocks it back in one go, the way one might drink firewhisky when nothing else will do.
Severina picks up today’s newspaper, which she’d nicked from a very hungover Malcbeir. By Skeeter, it read. Petrova vs. Diclur: The Rematch. She skims the article. Her name appears only at the very end—misspelled again. She tosses the newspaper aside, watching it spin through the air like a disappointed owl.
A moment later, Slughorn comes bustling over to her in the Great Hall. Lots of people are watching. His walrus moustache twitches with barely contained anxiety.
"Miss Snape! The champions have to come down onto the grounds now. You have to get ready for your first task."
She drains the last of her juice. The Euphoria spreads through her veins like warm golden light, soft as a Patronus and twice as welcome. Everything feels suddenly, blissfully, like it might not be a complete disaster.
"Good luck," says Wilkes.
She stops. Turns. Glances at him as Slughorn rushes past her, flustered and mopping his brow with a handkerchief that looks like it has already given up on life. Wilkes runs the wide-ranging unofficial gambling ring — notebook spread open beside his plate, quill tucked behind his ear like a cigarette, his appointed assistant (a wiry Ravenclaw with a coin satchel that clinks with every breath) collecting wagers from a dozen eager hands. Just out of earshot of the Prefects, who pretend not to see, and the professors, who are far too busy managing the castle and the guests and their own unruly houses to give a single shit about what goes on under their noses.
"I should like to place a wager."
Wilkes blinks at her, eyes suddenly clear and sharp as a freshly cast Revealing Charm. The whole table has gone quiet — knives paused mid-cut, goblets frozen halfway to lips. Everyone is watching. He lowers his fork. "You're serious?"
It is the Euphoria talking, she knows. The sensible part of her is somewhere far away, probably still asleep in a puddle of Euphoria. She looks at Rosier instead, who is still nursing what looks like a sore shoulder from where she has crashed her head into his chest the night before. "Can I borrow ten galleons from you?"
"Go ahead," he says, half-amused, rubbing the spot absently. "Not like you haven't done worse damage."
She looks back at Wilkes, dead in the eyes. The Great Hall seems to hold its collective breath like a fat man at the top of a staircase. Students lean forward from both sides — some with mocking smirks carving their faces like cheap pumpkins, others with stunned, fish-bitten expressions, and a few with no expression at all, merely watching the way one watches a Bludger spiral toward an unsuspecting head. She lets the moment stretch, tasting it like expensive wine.
"I'm going to win."
Evan stares at her, intensely. Then, slowly, a grin breaks across his face.
"You hear her?" he says, loud enough for the Ravenclaw table to turn and stare. He reaches into his own pocket and slaps a small velvet pouch onto the wood with a satisfying thump. "I too wager on Snape to win."