Chapter Text
There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts, and as far as Harry could tell, about half of them were in a mood. Some of them went left when you wanted right. Some stopped halfway, or had a trick step that swallowed your leg to the knee, and on Wednesday one decided to take the whole first-year class to the fourth floor instead of the second, for no reason anyone could work out. Doors didn't open unless you asked politely. Others weren't doors at all, just walls pretending. And there was Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, who had lamp-yellow eyes and a way of turning up just when you were somewhere you shouldn't be.
By the end of the first week, Harry had stopped asking whether he was used to the castle. He was only asking whether the castle was used to him.
Potions was on Friday, in a dungeon that smelled like damp and old cabbage, and it was a double lesson with the Slytherins. Professor Snape didn't give a speech. He called the register in a soft, silky voice, and when he got to Harry's name, he stopped.
"Ah," he said. "Our new celebrity."
He wasn't being nice about it. His dark eyes ran over Harry's face and caught on his eyes, and they stayed there longer than eyes should stay on anything. His mouth went thin, like he'd bitten into something sour. Then he looked away quickly, as if Harry had burned him, and the class began.
It began with questions, and every one of them was aimed at Harry. Snape wanted to know what you'd get if you added a certain root to an infusion of wormwood. He wanted to know where you'd look for a stone from the stomach of a goat, and what the difference was between two plants that, as Hermione explained later with great irritation, turned out to be the same plant. Harry hadn't opened a single textbook. He said so. Hermione's hand was straining so hard toward the ceiling that she'd started to lift off her seat, and Snape ignored her completely, and took a point from Gryffindor for Harry's lack of effort.
"Clearly," Snape said, "fame isn't everything."
He didn't ask anyone else a question until he did.
"Miss Malfoy."
He hadn't said what he wanted. He'd only said her name, and Draco stood up from the Slytherin side of the room and answered all three questions without a pause. The wording was straight out of the book. Snape nodded, very slightly, and gave her a look, and Harry couldn't tell what it meant, except that it went on for a second longer than it needed to, as if he was checking something. Draco sat back down and folded her hands on the desk.
Harry thought that was strange. A person who'd just gotten every answer right in front of the whole class ought to look pleased about it, and she didn't. She looked tired. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and her shoulders were so straight that they seemed to take effort. When the class paired off to brew a potion that cured boils, she finished first, and her potion was a perfect clean green. Snape stopped at her desk and stayed there longer than he had at anyone else's, and he didn't say a word about it. Draco kept her eyes on the table until he moved on, and then Harry saw her let out a small, quiet breath.
"Why do you care what she looks like?" Ron muttered, scraping out her cauldron. At the next desk, Neville's had melted into a puddle, and she was covered in boils.
"I don't," Harry said, which wasn't quite true.
Hagrid had asked them to tea that afternoon, so after lessons Harry and Ron walked down to the hut at the edge of the forest. Hermione had said she had better things to do, in the voice of someone who hoped she'd be asked again.
Hagrid's hut was one room, with hams hanging from the ceiling and a copper kettle on the fire, and an enormous black dog named Fang, who put both paws on Harry's shoulders and tried to lick his ears off. Hagrid made tea and put out a plate of rock cakes. They were exactly as hard as the name suggested. Harry ate one anyway, to be polite, and nearly lost a tooth.
Ron told Hagrid about Snape, and Hagrid said that was just Snape, and that he didn't like anybody much. Harry thought that was a bit too fast. He was about to say so when he noticed a newspaper clipping on the table, with a headline about a break-in at Gringotts.
Investigations continue after unsuccessful attempt to rob a high-security vault... It had happened on the thirty-first of July, the article said, and the vault had been emptied earlier that same day. The thieves had gotten in, and they'd found nothing.
It was the thirty-first of July. It was his birthday. And Harry remembered a tunnel and a little grubby package in brown paper, and Vault 713.
"Hagrid," he said slowly. "This happened the day we were in Gringotts."
"Dunno what yeh mean."
"The vault they tried to rob. It was the one you went to. It was the one you took the package out of."
"Coincidence," said Hagrid, so loudly that Fang jumped. He took the clipping off the table and shoved it in a drawer. Then he offered Harry another rock cake. Harry took it, because he didn't know what else to do, and he filed the whole thing away to think about later.
The first flying lesson was on Thursday, on a patch of lawn behind the castle. Their teacher was Madam Hooch, who had yellow eyes like a hawk, short grey hair, and a whistle on a string, and who told them all to stand next to a broomstick, hold out a hand, and say up.
Harry's broom leaped into his palm on the first try, which felt like something he ought to get a prize for. Ron's rolled over. Hermione's did nothing, and she looked as if she were about to cry. Draco's came up without any effort, as though she'd done it a hundred times, and she didn't smile when it did.
Neville's shot off the ground like a cork. She'd been so nervous that she'd kicked off before Madam Hooch blew the whistle, and now she was twelve feet up and rising, hanging on to the handle and screaming. She stayed up for a good four seconds. Then she fell, and there was an unpleasant crack when she landed, and Madam Hooch ran to her side and said her wrist was broken. She told everyone to stay on the ground, and she marched Neville off to the hospital wing, and every one of them stayed on the ground, except for one.
Neville's Remembrall had been lying in the grass where she fell. It was a glass ball, about the size of a large marble, that her grandmother had sent. If you'd forgotten something, the smoke inside went red. Draco picked it up, and turned it over in the sun.
"Look at that," she said. "Do you think she'll notice if it goes missing?"
"Give it here, Malfoy," said Harry.
"I don't think so. I think I'll leave it somewhere for her to find. Somewhere high. How about on top of a tree?" She swung a leg over her broom, and before Harry could say anything else, she kicked off, and she didn't wobble. She went up and up, higher than the tallest oak, with the ribbon in her hair whipping out behind her, and hovered there with the Remembrall in her hand.
"Give it back, or I'll knock you off that broom!"
"Come and get it, Potter."
He didn't stop to think. He kicked off, ignoring Hermione's shout behind him, and the wind hit him in the face, and something in his chest dropped out and didn't come back. It was the best feeling he'd ever had in his life. He steered up toward her without any idea how he was doing it, and Draco, who'd obviously expected him to fall off, stared.
"Fine," she said, and her voice went high and strange. "Catch."
She hurled the Remembrall as hard as she could, and it went arcing away toward the castle. Harry dived.
He heard Ron screaming. He heard the wind roar in his ears, and he saw the little ball shrinking in front of him, winking in the light, and the castle wall rushing up to meet it. He stretched until his shoulder hurt, and his fingers closed on the glass six inches from the ground, and he rolled off hi broom, safe in the grass, with his heart going like a drum.
"Harry Potter!"
He had expected to be expelled. It was Professor McGonagall, striding across the grass with her robes flying, her face white, and he didn't hear a word she said until she grabbed his arm and dragged him back to the castle. She didn't take him to the headmaster. She took him to a classroom, interrupted a lesson, and pulled out a large, serious older boy named Oliver Wood.
"Wood, I think I have found your Seeker."
It turned out Gryffindor had been missing one for years, and that Harry was the best flyer McGonagall had seen in a hundred years, and that he was going to be on the team, in spite of the rule that first-years couldn't have brooms. He found out afterward that he'd also be getting one. He told Ron at dinner, and she nearly choked on a bread roll. Draco didn't say anything at all. She was sitting at the Slytherin table with her back straight and a very stiff look on her face, and she hadn't touched a bite.
After the meal, she walked over to the Gryffindor table, which no Slytherin ever did, and stopped at the end of the bench. Her voice was low and cold.
"Tonight. Midnight. The trophy room. Wands only, and no touching." She looked at Harry without blinking. "Unless you're scared. Bring a second, if you can find someone who'll stand next to you."
"I accept," Harry said.
"I'll be his second," said Ron, before anyone else could.
Hermione followed them out of the common room anyway. She said they shouldn't go, and then she said they'd get caught, and then she said somebody had to keep them from doing something stupid. By then they were already out of the portrait hole, and the Fat Lady had gone off to visit a friend, so Hermione couldn't get back in, and she came along because she didn't have a choice.
The trophy room was empty. There was a lot of silver, and a pool of moonlight on the floor, and no sign of Draco or her second.
"She's not coming," Ron whispered.
"It's not midnight yet."
"It's ten past."
A voice at the end of the room rasped, "Is that you, Peeves? I know you're in here." It was Mrs. Norris, with her lamp eyes, and behind her somebody was breathing very heavily, and Harry realized with a drop in his stomach that Filch was coming. The caretaker never came to the trophy room at night. Somebody must've told him.
They ran. They ran through a long gallery, and up a flight of stairs, and through a suit of armor that rattled in protest. Harry turned the corner and collided with something soft and round and screamed, and the thing screamed back. It was Neville, in pajamas with ducks on them, and her wrist in a bandage.
"I couldn't find the tower," she gasped. "They let me out of the hospital wing, and I thought it was this way, and then the stairs moved, and I've been walking in circles for an hour."
"Come on," said Harry, and grabbed her good hand.
They didn't stop until they'd reached a locked door. Filch's footsteps were still echoing behind them. Hermione took her wand out, said a word, and the lock clicked, and the four of them fell through and slammed it behind them.
It wasn't a classroom. It was a small stone room, and most of it was filled by something with fur. It had three heads. Each of them had a set of yellow teeth the size of a man's hand, and all three of them were looking at the intruders and starting to drool.
Nobody screamed. It was probably the best proof of how scared they were. They backed out of the door in a bunch, and Harry slammed it shut, and then they ran until they couldn't, and stopped only when they ran out of corridor.
"A dog," Ron panted. "That was a dog. It had three heads."
"Did you not see what it was standing on?" Hermione said, bent over her knees. "A trapdoor. It's guarding something."
"I saw its heads, Hermione. All three of them."
Harry hadn't seen the trapdoor, but he'd seen the dog's faces, and he'd never forget them. Neville was shaking so hard that her pajamas rattled. They took her back up to the tower between them, and Hermione, who'd gone very quiet, was the one who finally thought to ask whether anybody had the password. Ron said it was pig snout, and the Fat Lady, who'd come back in a bad mood, swung open.
"I'll say this much," Hermione said, once they were inside by the dying fire, "if you'd listened to me, you'd never have gone. We could've been killed. Or worse, expelled. I'm going to bed." She marched up the stairs with her nose in the air, and stopped at the top, and said, much more quietly, "I'm glad nobody got hurt."
Ron was already half-asleep on the couch. Harry stayed where he was, looking at the dying coals.
Malfoy hadn't turned up. Filch had. It was too much of a coincidence, and Ron thought so too, and she'd said so more than once on the way back up. Harry wasn't so sure. He tried to picture Draco going to the caretaker and telling on them, with her chin up, calmly, the way she did everything, and it was easy enough to see. It was harder to see her face when she did it.
He sat there for a long time without getting anywhere, and then he went to bed. Somewhere behind a locked door on the third floor, a dog with three heads was standing on top of something it had been told to guard.
Harry wondered what.