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Chapter Text

Archie slammed his bedroom door, storming to his bed. Before he dropped onto it, he paused, turned around and went back to his door, because just one loud slam was not enough to express the depth of his displeasure. He slammed it again, and a third time, before finally throwing himself on his bed to stew.

He and Dad didn't fight much. Not since Mum died – not since he could remember. He was easygoing by nature, or so he thought, and so was Dad. It was always Mum who scolded him, if necessary, and since she died, well…

He didn't like to think too much about it. But when she died, she took something of him with her, too, something light, innocent, some child-like part of him.

He was six when she first got sick – old enough to remember the spells of weakness, lightheaded-ness, that marked those first few months. He was old enough to remember the visits to St. Mungos, so many of them, to hear the uncertainty in the Healers' voices, to remember the referrals to this specialist and that specialist, again and again. He remembered the months where Mum was better, the joy in the months where he had thought it was all over. And then he remembered the months where she worsened, the longer stays in the hospital, the eventual "diagnosis" – a neural wasting disease, NYD. NYD stood for "not yet diagnosed", and was one of the worst diagnoses that could happen, because if the Healers didn't know what it was, they couldn't fix it. It wasn't communicable, obviously, because neither Dad nor he had caught it. Possibly a result of pureblood genetics, some Healers said, like the Fade which so often affected second-born children of pureblood families.

He was eight when she died. He remembered her bravery in that last year, her utter conviction to spend as much time with him and with Dad before she passed, the frenetic energy of the days that she felt well enough to get up and do things, the fervent dash to do all the things that she knew she would never be able to do again. He remembered, too, the days where she couldn't get out of bed, the pain and weakness being too much, and he remembered her asking, those days, for him to stay nearby, for him to read her books and talk to her. Mum was light, and even on the darkest of days she tried to put a good face on it all.

He knew, though. He wasn't stupid, he knew that she suffered, that she never wanted to leave him and Dad. And he was old enough, then, to remember those days in their fullness – light and energy and heavy dread underlying it all. And when he was eight, clinging to Harry's hand in the cemetery where Mum was buried, he remembered the bone-deep sorrow he felt, too overwhelming even to weep, and he remembered the lost expression on Dad's face.

When they lowered her into the ground, he felt like some part of himself went with her. And it wasn't just him, it was Dad, too.

At eight, he knew about Dad's depression. He remembered the quiet stillness of Grimmauld Place when he woke up, the first weeks after, the uncommon silence that followed him into the kitchen where he would pour himself a bowl of cereal and milk, the solemn coldness of the house while he ate. He remembered making trays of simple foods – cereal and milk, toast, cheese, sometimes leftovers from when Uncle James came by and dropped off things – to take to Dad, still in bed, sometimes still asleep. If he was awake, he would always try to smile, try to get up, and some days were better than others.

And he remembered, perhaps a month later, Uncle James and Uncle Remus coming by and sending him to Harry's for the afternoon. Things were better, afterwards, sometimes, and he knew it was because Dad was seeing a Mind Healer. He never said anything about it.

That was, in a nutshell, what made him so angry now. Something died in him when mum died, some sense of innocence, some sense of fun – even as he learned from it. He smiled more, put energy and joy into everything he did, because even if it wasn't always real, one never knew what would happen next. And something died in Dad that day, too, but instead of changing, instead of learning from it and moving on, he was stuck. He was stuck in the past, a past that was gone.

So what if Dad loved Hogwarts? It didn't matter one whit to Archie that Hogwarts was where Dad had met Uncle James and Uncle Remus, that it was where Dad met Mum and fell in love. It didn't matter, because Archie wasn't the same person he was when Mum was alive, and Hogwarts didn't have a proper Healing program.

It didn't have a proper anything, to be honest. Maybe an excellent Potions Master, but aside from that, he didn't see what was so great about Hogwarts. Harry would have given, not a hand, but perhaps a foot, for the opportunity to go to Hogwarts, but instead, because she was a halfblood, she would be in America. Where he wanted to be.

It just wasn't fair.

He rolled over, burying his face into a pillow, sniffling, feeling his tears soak into the cloth. A few minutes, and the pillow was cold, rough on his face. If Dad saw him, he would tease – but something Mum had always said was that emotions took strength. There was no shame in tears.

"Really mature, Arch," he heard a soft voice say.

He wasn't sure when she had come in, but there was only one person it could be. "Go away, Harry," he muttered, but without any heat.

She plopped herself on the bed, crawling across his massive four-poster to rest her back against the headboard, beside him. Her black curls were, as usual, a riotous mess, which she had pulled back into a thick tail. Her nails were discoloured, again – she must have come from her potions lab. "No luck?"

"None at all," Archie replied miserably, turning his head to face her. "Dad's convinced that I need to go to Hogwarts. He brought up all of the stories again – he met Uncle James there, and Uncle Remus, and Mum, and it was the greatest seven years of his life, you know."

Harry nodded, her expression serious, attentive. He knew she saw the streaks in his face, but she wouldn't mention it – not unless she thought it would make him feel better. If she thought teasing him would make him laugh, she would do it, but not over something like this. She was worrying at the hem of her brewing robes. "But Hogwarts doesn't have a Healing program," she said.

"Yes!" Archie sat up, but this time, he caught the glint in his cousin's eye.

Harry had been there with him forever, their birthdays only days apart. They spent nearly every day together, for as long as he could remember, and he knew that glint in her eye. There was no person in the world he knew quite as well as Harry, and that glint always signaled trouble. Trouble that he, incidentally, would usually be blamed for, even if she was standing there right beside him. For some reason, Dad and Uncle James always thought he was the instigator.

"Uh – Harry? What, exactly, are you thinking?" he ventured cautiously.

"Just – it's such a shame, don't you think, that I would give almost anything to go to Hogwarts, and you would do the same to go to AIM in America?"

"Yes, but…"

"And really, the rule against halfbloods going to Hogwarts is stupid. Dad says it all the time." She bit her lip.

"What's your point, Harry?" Archie sighed. She was not normally so evasive, so whatever it was, it wasn't just trouble. It was probably absolutely insane. Still, sometimes Harry's insane ideas were the most fun ones.

"I'm just thinking – maybe we should … switch."

"Switch?" Archie's voice dropped. "What do you mean, switch?"

"I'll tell my parents that I want to go to AIM. It's where mum went, so I don't think they'll be surprised, and they'll probably agree. Then, we trade places – you take my place at AIM, and I'll take yours at Hogwarts. You get your Healing training – and I'll get to study with Master Snape at Hogwarts."

Archie stared at her, and opened his mouth to tell her that she was insane. The idea was absolutely insane, and there was no way they could get away with it. More importantly, for Harry, it meant committing blood identity theft – punishable by, at minimum, a life sentence at Azkaban or, more likely, the Dementor's Kiss. And she would need to masquerade as him for seven years, through all her girly changes, and there was no way that their physical appearances would stay the same for all seven years. It just wasn't possible.

And yet, Harry wasn't stupid. In fact, Harry was the smartest person he knew, and if these thoughts were running through his mind, then she had probably already considered them and dismissed them. She would never have come to him with this idea unless she had reasoned it out beforehand. And if she was right, if they pulled this off, well…

He would get his Healing training. He would be able to work on the diseases that killed Mum, that killed people every day, he would be able to work to make sure that other people wouldn't feel the way that he felt. She would get to work under Master Snape, her dream – she would get to train under the greatest Potions Master in the country, if not the world, and make her dream of becoming the best Potions Mistress in the country a reality. And really… they weren't hurting anyone. The pureblood requirements to attend Hogwarts were stupid.

So instead, his mouth opened, and what popped out was, "I'm listening."

She leaned forward, her green eyes earnest. "We look similar enough – people already mistake us for twins when we go out. And on top of that, no one really knows us yet – because of the Split, our families aren't social, and we haven't met anyone that you would run into again at school. I bet we could make ourselves look more similar for school, though it's not very likely that someone who knows us from one school would ever be in a situation where they would meet the other one of us. So I disguise myself as a boy and go to Hogwarts, and you…"

Archie gave her a flat stare. "I'm not disguising myself as a girl, Harry."

Harry grinned, a bright flash across her delicate face – delicate enough, he realized, that passing as a pureblood would not be completely out of the question. "You won't need to. No one in America knows me – Mum didn't keep in touch with any of her school friends there. So you go to America, you tell them they made a mistake transcribing the forms over Floo when you get there, or, I don't know, that dad played a prank on you, and that it's Harry Potter, not Harriett Potter, and you're a boy. You laugh, they laugh, and poof – Harry Potter is now a boy."

"All right," Archie allowed, thinking it over. "What about you, though? Society knows, here, that the Black heir is a boy. How are you going to hide that for seven years? And what about our parents? You know that they can tell us apart."

Harry waved her hand dismissively. "I'll deal with the changes later – I'm sure there's a potion I can use to make it work. As for our parents, we eat dinner together almost every night anyway, and we most certainly will the night before we go to school. I'll swipe enough of my dad's Polyjuice from his kit for his to disguise ourselves as each other for the night and the morning before we get on the train or plane to school, then we'll let it wear off and be ourselves at school."

Archie scrunched his nose a little, thinking it over. It was stupid. It was crazy. It was absolutely insane. And yet…

He felt the call of the Healing program in America like a siren's song. AIM had the best Healing program in the Western hemisphere, certainly the best of the English-speaking schools. They provided practical training right from the first day, and he wouldn't need to take a years-long apprenticeship out of school for a basic Mediwizard license. Rather, AIM Healers went straight into advanced specialty training, such as internal medicine, spell damage, mental illnesses, infectious disease… most of the most prominent mediwizardry research, too, came from AIM graduates. If it worked, he would be able to head straight to research in infectious diseases after graduation.

And Harry… well, when Harry decided she wanted something, and she would find a way to get it. And no matter how crazy it was, she made it work.

"What about the danger? You know it's Azkaban, at best, if you're caught."

"I know." Harry's voice was serious. "But I'm willing to take that risk. Are you?"

There was a long silence. Harry stared at him, her green eyes pleading, but he knew she wouldn't hold it against him if he said no. It was dangerous. It was crazy. It was absolutely insane.

And yet…

"I'm in," he said.

After that conversation, they put their heads together and drafted the plan. Archie wrote it out, in chart form. Under both of their names: Act like your life depends on it. Lie through teeth to parents. Jump for joy. Under Harry's name, Study pureblood etiquette until it is second nature. Learn to bow, dance, speak like a pureblood. Engrave the Black family tree into memory. Become a boy. Under Archie's name, SULK. Throw a few more temper tantrums. Become a girl. Harry thought the list was overly dramatic, but each of the points did, Archie thought, have a point to them.

They both had to act, for the next few months, like their lives depended on it. Of course, they could not simply revert to their regular selves – they needed to sulk. They needed to make sure that their parents didn't notice anything odd in these first few months. They couldn't have Aunt Lily or Uncle Remus, easily the most observant of their family members, remember this summer and think, it was odd that Archie and Harry were resigned to their fates so early.

More than that, they would both need to pretend, to act, to lie over the next seven years. These first few months were just the preparation for the marathon. Harry had it worse – she always would. It would be far, far harder for her to pretend to be a boy, to pretend to be the Black Heir, for seven years, even if Archie's personality wasn't broadly known in wizarding society. Archie, in America, would be able to keep his gender and personality, because it was so unlikely that anyone from America would ever encounter anyone who should have known either the Blacks or the Potters in Britain. But he would still have to lie to his family, to Dad, about attending Hogwarts. Beyond that, he would need to act like he actually attended Hogwarts at home; there was no way he could get through even one year, let alone seven, without Dad wanting to reminisce at length about Hogwarts with him.

There was the lying, too – it didn't sit well with Archie to have to lie to his dad for seven years. He and Dad had always had a peculiarly friendly relationship; in many ways, they were more best friends than they were father and son. If Dad ever found out about what he was doing, there was simply no way that their relationship wouldn't change. But then again, they were as much best friends as they were father and son, and Dad would understand. He hoped.

And on the other side – this was the training he always wanted, ever since Mum died. This was about more than just him, it was about learning how to heal people, it was about saving lives. It was about making sure that no other person would hear the diagnosis, "NYD", knowing – fearing – that there was nothing that anyone could do. It was about preventing people from dying before their time. If he could prevent that from happening to anyone else, well, then it was worth it. It would all be worth it.

So, according to plan, Archie sulked in his room for weeks, reading Healing textbooks that he had rifled from the Potter library, clearly the better of the two libraries when it came to Healing. He was short with Dad when he ran into him – to the point where Dad was pouting at his door. He slammed a few more doors, he threw one more, loud, screaming tantrum with Dad, he didn't contribute as much to dinner conversation as he normally would have – and neither did Harry. Both of them, to the world, were sulking.

For Harry, he also snuck out books on pureblood etiquette, who would look odd doing so if Dad wandered into the library at the wrong time. Archie could have given her an overview, Dad having been careful about making sure the Black Heir got a background in pureblood etiquette, dancing, rituals, politics and the like. But Harry hadn't gotten any, so she needed to learn. He had pointed out that really, she only needed to learn what he knew, since she was trying to pass as him, but she only crinkled her nose at him and said, "Since it's my soul I'm risking, I'll decide what I need to know, thanks." It certainly couldn't hurt, so Archie shrugged, and instead forced her to memorize the last three branches of his family tree, as well as the family trees of some of the purebloods she would go to school with.

He left it in Harry's hands when she would ask her parents to enroll her at AIM. She approached them formally in mid July – it wasn't quite the deadline, but since Harry had grown up knowing that Hogwarts wasn't an option, her sulks weren't supposed to take as long. As expected, her parents agreed easily to her going to AIM, and there was that, done.

Archie took charge of their appearances, because while Harry understood that they needed to look alike, she didn't necessarily understand what that meant. Archie had always been the more fashion-conscious of the two of them, whereas Harry tended to throw on brewing robes and heavy boots every day and leave it at that. Looking alike was in the details – and there were some details that they couldn't get around. Pureblood genetics dictated that the Black Heir had black hair, grey eyes and a tendency towards madness, whereas the Potter Heir would have messy black hair, poor eyesight, and a talent for flying. And even if they didn't expect their lives at school to intersect with their lives at home, they needed to have some similarity, because their parents could hear something.

So Archie talked Harry into going to a barbershop in Diagon Alley to cut their hair together, which they would explain as 'grand gesture' of leaving their childhoods behind, but which would hide the fact that Harry's hair was actually quite different from his. Archie wasn't thrilled with the idea, overall, but the barber had done a good job and they did end up looking quite similar, so he called it a success and left it at that. He also quietly sourced the contacts they would need – after some consideration, he concluded that his eyes were steel rather than argent, and bought a few sets of them to put in his trunk for Harry. He also picked out green contacts for himself – there weren't any contacts that would capture her exact, intense, spark, but he did his best. Since he was in America, his contacts would matter less, anyway – he didn't think that anyone he would be meeting would be commenting on anything other than the fact he had green eyes, if that. Heck, if anyone was writing home to Uncle James and Aunt Lily, the game would likely be up anyway, given that he wasn't, emphatically wasn't, disguising himself as a girl.

Before he knew it, it was the night before they left, and Archie packed up everything Harry could possibly need for Hogwarts. He had made sure to get his own clothes into Harry's trunk a week earlier, so most of what she had were his non-preferred robes. Harry was hard on her clothes, and he also had no interest in wearing her clothes while in America, but as a pureblood Heir, she would need certain clothes that she just didn't have. She, too, had put her favoured brewing robes into the bottom of his trunk, and Archie took charge of ensuring that their new school robes were appropriately fitted. That night, he checked through everything one last time, and took a deep breath before walking downstairs.

It wasn't that he didn't have any misgivings about their plan – there were too many ways that this could go wrong. It was a risk. But Harry was the most brilliant witch he had ever met, and if anyone could pull this off, it was her. And if this worked – and it had to work – then he would graduate as a fully qualified Mediwizard, from the best Healing school in the Western Hemisphere. The equivalent qualifications from Hogwarts would take at least an additional five years, and he had no illusions; the best Healers today were trained in America, and most cutting-edge medical research happened in America. And Harry, too, would get her dream of studying under Master Snape.

"Ready to go, Arch?" Dad asked, waiting by the Floo when Archie came down the stairs.

He smiled, not as brightly as he might have, had Dad known he was planning on going to AIM, but he was supposed to be more-or-less resigned to Hogwarts, at this point. He grabbed a handful of Floo powder from the mantle. "Let's go."

He threw the glittering powder onto the flames, calling out "Potter Place", as he had a million times before, and walked through the flames into the Potters' kitchen. Uncle Remus was already there, setting the table, and it wasn't more than ten minutes before they were all seated at the table.

It was, not surprisingly, Uncle James who brought up the topic first. If there was anyone more in love with his time at Hogwarts that Dad, it was Uncle James.

"So, are you psyched to go to school Archie?" he asked brightly, almost as soon as dinner was served. Inwardly, Archie winced – even if he knew that Harry was going to go to Hogwarts, assuming all went to plan, it was outrageously insensitive. Aunt Lily was giving him a look, but Uncle James ignored it.

Archie spared a glance at Harry, who was eating, expressionless, as Uncle James continued. "You're going to love Hogwarts – there's no place like it anywhere. Why, the things me and your uncle and father got up to when we were there … as the representative of the second generation of Marauders, you'll have to carry on the family legacy –"

"—of pranking the daylights our of unsuspecting Defense Against the Dark Arts professors!" Sirius roared with laughter, slapping Remus on the back beside him. Remus smiled indulgently, but Archie could tell that he was picking up on the tension in the room. Aunt Lily, too, wore a resigned expression – slightly wistful, almost.

Even if they had good memories about the exclusive school, Archie didn't think they needed to go on about it, not when everyone knew that Harry would have killed for the opportunity to attend and couldn't, formally, because of her blood status. Still, he had a role to play, so instead he simply asked, "Why just the Defense professors? Is it part of the tradition?"

"Eh, not really… It's just that they're usually the best targets. See, the job's been cursed as long as anyone can remember, so you never get the same one two years in a row," Uncle James replied, reflecting on the question.

"Rookie professors are the easiest marks," Dad added, winking. "Though if you'll prank Snivellus once or twice your old man would be much obliged."

"Don't call him that, Sirius," Lily interjected dully. It was a reflex, at this point – her tone said that she expected nothing to come out of her objections. "He's a good man."

"Not to mention a genius," Harry murmured into her plate. Everyone ignored her.

To be fully honest, Archie had no particular feelings about Master Snape. He knew that Dad and his uncles had apparently not gotten along with the man when they were still in school, but he had never really heard or cared about the specifics. He knew, too, that Aunt Lily had been childhood friends with him, until some falling-out that no one would tell him about. Perhaps he had been too influenced by Harry – Harry thought he was a genius worth risking her soul for, so he had to have some redeemable qualities.

"Eleven years later, and you're still defending the man," James sighed.

"Eleven years later, and you're still holding onto a childish rivalry," Aunt Lily retorted. "Remus thinks it's ridiculous, don't you?"

Remus smiled ingratiatingly at his friends. "She has a point, there's no need to perpetuate this, is there?" He paused. "I'm sure by now he's washed his hair."

Dad and Uncle James fell apart laughing, while Aunt Lily glared at him. He lifted his hands in apologetic surrender, but Archie could tell he didn't really mean it. Uncle Remus had always been the opposite to Uncle James and Dad, the level-headed and reasonable one of their group, but Archie sometimes got a sense that Uncle Remus was never quite sure if he belonged. For example, Archie never heard him say anything one way or the other about Snape unless Dad or Uncle James were present. Still, he changed the subject. "So Harry, how are you looking forward to America?"

"I can't wait," Harry replied brusquely. Her tone was not enthusiastic, but then again, Harry didn't really do enthusiasm. "It'll be interesting to travel abroad. I'm actually thinking of trying the Healer track."

"Really? That's quite a difficult area of specialization," Uncle Remus replied, though Archie caught the confused look that Aunt Lily and Uncle James exchanged. "I thought you were planning on pursuing a Potions career, though."

"Well, all the really advanced Healing is done with potions nowadays," Harry said, reaching for more vegetables. "If I want to make potions to help people, not just brew them for money, then I should see the problem from the other side too."

Archie looked down at his plate, his lips quirked into a tiny smile. It wasn't entirely false – a lot of advanced Healing, particularly for progressive diseases, were done using potions. But he had also caught the if that his cousin had slid in – if I want to make potions to help people. It wasn't that Harry was disinterested in helping people, or that she only intended on brewing potions for money. No, Harry liked potions for the art itself; there was something about the cauldron that just called to her. She liked making potions and researching potions and living and breathing potions, and even if Archie never understood it, it was something about his cousin that he had long since accepted. It was something one had to accept, if one was ever to really know Harry.

After dinner, he and Harry had a private goodbye in her bedroom. She had, as planned, stolen the Polyjuice Potion from Uncle James' Auror kit, replacing it with a neutral compound that looked and smelled the same. Without ceremony, they each plucked a hair, dropping it into the potion. Archie's turned a bright, electric blue, whereas Harry's fizzled into a placid, deceptive grey. They swapped their vials.

"One, two, and down the hatch," Harry murmured quietly, and on the count, they threw them back.

The burning started from his insides, and Archie doubled over, gasping quietly. He felt his fingers deflate, and his eyes burned. He knew that Harry was doubled over beside him, in her own pain, but she was far too clever to make any noise about it. It was a second before he realized the pain had passed, and he straightened, opening his eyes. The world was blurry.

"Weird," he said, looking over to his cousin. It was like looking into a mirror, except his mirror was wearing Harry's glasses and robes. Ugh, he'd forgotten about the robes – Harry had no dress sense whatsoever, and the robes that Archie so carefully went out of his way to dress her in always seemed to end up in the back of her wardrobe. "You have awful eyesight, Harry. Give me your glasses. And we need to swap robes."

"That explains why the world is so blurry," Harry replied, cheerfully handing over her glasses and looking around her room curiously, apparently now enjoying having perfect vision, and pulling off her robes to hand to Archie while he did the same. Archie put on the glasses, with only a grimace of distaste. It would only be for a little while, anyway.

"I've packed my extra potions books in my trunk, so study up in case Mum asks me something in a letter that I should know about," Harry said, her serious frown looking distinctly out of place on his face. "And don't forget to learn a handwriting charm first thing so you can answer my parents' correspondence, and I'll do the same for your letters that your dad sends. Keep an extra copy of everything you write and we'll exchange them by owl post at the end of the term so we can keep our stories straight over the summer."

"All right, I remember," he said, trying to inject his voice with reassurance. It was unlike her to ramble like that, a sign of her nervousness. But they had taken all the steps, and even if he, too, was nervous, well, they had done all they could to carry it off. There was a long, pregnant, pause, and he reached out to her, letting his hand rest on her upper arm.

"That's it, then," Harry said firmly, shaking herself. Himself. Really, all of Harry's normal actions looked so odd when done with his body. "This is … goodbye. Good luck."

"Yeah," he replied, then pulled his cousin in for a tight hug. Harry wasn't normally inclined towards physical affection, but given the magnitude of what they were about to try to undertake, he thought a hug was entirely appropriate.

"Arch?" Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.

"Yeah?"

She pulled back, gripping him on his shoulders. "Even if this blows up in our faces, and they kick me out before the first class, I'm saying this right now: I don't regret anything."

Archie was surprised; she wasn't normally so forthright. Still, he met her eyes, grey, and nodded, squaring his shoulders. "Me neither. Thank you. This was your idea, and without it, I would have taken years longer to reach my goal. It's also going to be a lot more dangerous for you, and, well…"

He paused, unsure of what to say further. It was going to be a lot more dangerous for her – that was a known fact. If they were caught, Harry would get Azkaban at minimum, and possibly the Dementor's Kiss. If caught, she would also have a much harder time escaping Britain to claim sanctuary elsewhere. Meanwhile, if caught, Archie would face a fine. He would change all of his schooling into his proper name, and if anything more specific was on the horizon, he would be well positioned to claim sanctuary in America – famously friendly towards Muggleborn and halfblood witches and wizards.

If they were caught, he was all too aware of the consequences, and he privately resolved to protect Harry, too, as much as possible over the next seven years. He was a pureblood, and he was a pureblood Heir – surely there was some protection he could extend to her if anything happened.

Harry was watching him, waiting for him to finish his train of thought. He smiled at her, a light smile meant to be reassuring. Even on Harry's face, instead of his own, he knew that she caught the meaning when she smiled wryly back.

"I'm grateful for everything, no matter what happens."

"Same," Harry replied, smiling and trying to lighten the air between them. "Thanks for letting me borrow your name, Arch. I'll try not to blacken it too much in the next seven years."

Archie grinned back. "Do your worst."

And just like that, she turned her back, and with a quiet snick of the door, she was gone.

Chapter Text

Archie walked into Heathrow Aeroport and stared. The building was the largest he had ever seen, all glass and wide spaces and metal art installations, though it took him a few minutes of surreptitious watching to realize that that was all they were. There were more floors than he thought were possible to hold up without magic, and stairways that moved. And yet, there was no magic here, only the inherent magic of the Muggle world.

There was so much glass. He stared – he couldn't help but stare at it all! – though he tried to keep it as reserved as possible. Harry would be interested, yes, but she wouldn't stare so obviously. She would consider, and he belatedly put on a considering look as he glanced over the tall windows. The windows were huge, at least several floors, and staring out of them he could see miles and miles of pavement. There were cars, out there – he had seen cars before, Grimmauld Place was in Islington, almost in the beating heart of London, but he hadn't seen so many at one time. The cars were an endless stream, dropping Muggles off and picking them up, one after another after another. And even though there were dozens of cars and no magic, no one hit each other as they pulled away from the kerb, as they smoothly sailed into empty spaces left by departing vehicles. He wondered how they knew when to move, when there wasn't magic to help guide them.

Further in the distance, he saw his first aeroplanes. He had thought they would look like dragons, but they didn't, not really – they were shining, sleek, their wings narrower than he would have expected for a machine capable of lifting off the ground and carrying its passengers over the Atlantic. They were huge, with tiny windows on the front and along the sides marking the seats. Even at a distance, he could tell that the great metal beasts would carry over a hundred passengers at a time.

And there were so many of them! Bright, lit screens on his other side showed long lists of flights both in and out of London. New York, Chicago, Toronto, New Delhi, Beijing, Tokyo, on planes named variously Delta, United, Air Canada, Jet Airways, Air China … the list went longer than he could read in a short glance. He would have stopped to stare more, but Aunt Lily and Uncle James hadn't stopped moving, and neither would Harry. Close, too, to those screens were other screens, which had people moving on them like in photos, but no one stopped to talk to them. A few minutes study, and he realized that the screens didn't act like a wizarding picture would either – the scenes, the people changed continually, blinking from one place to another to another!

He heard a bright chime from somewhere to the side, and he turned to see what must have been an elevator stop. Dad had said there was one of these, a magical one, at the Ministry of Magic, but he hadn't actually seen one before! Its doors opened, and about ten Muggles poured out, each toting the odd-looking, coloured Muggle luggage, with a long, thin, pull-out handle and wheels on the bottom.

Aunt Lily had Transfigured his trunk into cool grey Muggle luggage that morning, saying it would be too odd to show up at the aeroport and not have any. Archie liked the look of the Muggle luggage (his Muggle luggage!), though. The casing wasn't wood, as his trunk was, but made of a lightweight, hard material that Aunt Lily called plastic. The wheels, too, were impressive, and all he had to do was kick it, slightly, and bam! The bag rolled! The ingenuity of Muggle design – it was so convenient, and even if his trunk weren't spelled to be light, it wouldn't have been much too trouble at all to pull it along. He liked the feeling, the sound, of the wheeled luggage trundling effortlessly along behind him.

Looking around him, following Harry's parents, Archie wished he had a dozen more eyes. There were people everywhere in Heathrow Aeroport, and shop counters lined the wide corridors, selling more items than he could even imagine. There was a little bookshop, carrying a wide selection of magazines, what looked like candy, books sorted by genre. There was a shop selling nothing but liquor, shops of what looked like potions trapped in tiny bottles that gave off a distinct, flowery scent when he passed them, shops of handbags and clothing. Those shops all carried signs saying "duty-free", and Archie resolved to find out what that meant.

There was also coffee shop after coffee shop. The coffee shops were the most crowded, with long queues of impatient Muggles intent on their morning caffeine. He could do with a coffee, himself, but Harry didn't drink it and it would seem too odd for her to request it now. He spotted Uncle James looking longingly towards one of the coffee shops, but with the length of the queues, there was simply no way he would be able to get a coffee and see Archie off in time.

See Harry off, rather. He had to say, being in his cousin's body was weird, and even if he had seen her naked too many times to count, courtesy of multiple clothes-swapping episodes when they were younger, he always felt awkward about it. Harry didn't care, but then, Harry wasn't like most people.

More importantly, to his mind, he was in Harry's clothes. Harry, for all her truly wonderful qualities, simply had no fashion sense. Based on the cut and fit of her clothing, he could tell that the next time they saw each other, he would need to outfit her again. She had outgrown her clothes, again – not to the point where anything obviously didn't fit, just to the point where he could feel that the seams were not hitting the lines they were supposed to hit. All in all, it was just slightly uncomfortable, about as uncomfortable as wearing his cousins face, and he really needed to avoid meeting his new classmates in this body, in these clothes. Suffice it to say, he was looking forward to saying goodbye to his dear aunt and uncle, slipping into a bathroom to let the Polyjuice wear off, and putting on his own clothes – not least because he thought that having Polyjuice wear off in a close environment like an aeroplane would attract just a little more attention than he was interested in, right now.

"The entrance to Terminal M is at the end of his hallway," Aunt Lily said, looking amused as Archie glanced back at her. Archie winced – Harry probably wouldn't have spent so long staring at the shops, the people, the building (but they were so cool!). Or maybe it was just that Harry would have looked considerably more depressed to be going to AIM. Ergh – pretending to be Harry was hard. "I suppose you haven't seen an aeroport before, have you, Harry?"

"No," Archie replied, his voice interested but cool, keeping his inner excitement contained. It was plausible for Harry to be interested, but not excited – Harry didn't do excitement in connection with anything not Potions. If he was too excited, he would remind his aunt and uncle too much of himself. "Have you been here before? I thought that in your day, you took the train to AIM."

Aunt Lily smiled, a bright flash in her beautiful face. "We did, yes – in those days, wizards didn't trust aeroplanes yet, and we took a train from Platform 9 and ¾, just as Archie is doing now. But the trains weren't efficient; it took eight wizards to operate them across the Atlantic and even then it was almost two days before we reached New York for our connecting Portkey to AIM. So nowadays, they fly. I think there were a lot of other improvements that were a long time coming, too – Terminal M is also England's largest Portkey Hub. Here we are."

She leaned casually against what appeared to be a blank concrete wall at the end of the long, wide corridor, and slid imperceptibly through.

Uncle James smiled too. "Just like Platform 9 and 3/4," he said encouragingly, and disappeared across the barrier. Archie smirked – hidden from his aunt and uncle for only a moment, he could take the time to appreciate the fact that, if he were Harry and going to AIM, she would be entirely unimpressed with the fact that the portal into the aeroport terminal was the same as the portal onto Platform 9 and ¾. She would put on a smile, sure, but it would have been her unreliable smile, the one she gave when she was skeptical about something but didn't want to seem rude.

He had a minute or so to look around, away from Aunt Lily's and Uncle James' sight, one opportunity to let his true fascination shine through. He took a long, intrigued look around the bustling aeroport, and saw another one of the plentiful screens marking the arrival and departure times for flights. His own flight wouldn't be on it, but it was useful enough. He studied it, letting a look of mild concern slip over his face, for all the world like he was reviewing his flight information, and stepped backwards into Terminal M.

"Here we are," Aunt Lily said, waving her hand at the wide, circular space, which looked almost the same as the broad corridor he just came from. He did, however, spot some wizards marked by their long robes. He was not the only "halfblood" to be attending school internationally, so that wasn't entirely a surprise, though Aunt Lily and Uncle James had sensibly dressed in Muggle clothes. He saw a dozen doorways towards the right of the dome, evenly spaced but narrow, which he assumed must be the Portkey Hub – the open space to his left was crowded with people around a single, broad gate, which he assumed must be for boarding his aeroplane to America. There were fewer people than he might have expected, but then again, after Hogwarts stopped accepting Muggleborns years and years ago, he supposed that nowadays most people married within magic and were, at this point, pureblood by definition. Given the tight regulations on employment, he wondered if many Muggleborns and halfbloods returned home at all.

"They probably Portkeyed in instead of Apparating," Aunt Lily added, steering him towards the left and tilting her head discreetly towards the robed wizards. "Apparition becomes more uncertain the further away it is, so some people make do with Portkeys, though Portkeys aren't particularly stable for cross-continental trips either. For trans-oceanic trips, the most secure way is still an aeroplane. We're lucky that the European wizarding aeroport is here at Heathrow, really."

"Is there only the one?" Archie asked, nonchalant.

"Only one in Europe," Aunt Lily's lips turned into a thoughtful moue. "There are four in Asia, because it's so much larger, three in Africa, two in each of North America and South America."

"Two in Europe, actually," Uncle James interrupted, draping an arm over his wife. Inwardly, Archie smiled – he rarely saw his aunt and uncle being demonstrative. He thought they probably avoided it around Dad, thinking it would only reopen old wounds. And perhaps it would – but Harry would be used to this. Outwardly, as Harry, he simply sighed, as if he were used to the public display of affection, no matter how slight it was. "You forgot Tbilisi, dear. Georgia is still Europe."

"Oh, right." She laughed lightly, patting him on the side. "Still – in terms of international transportation, much better than my day. We used to have these awful sleeper cars, and it would rattle the entire way to New York…"

"If there is only the one aeroport in Western Europe, at least, and only two in North America, will everyone going to AIM from Europe be coming through here?" Archie broke in apologetically, as Harry would have, with a slight smile to soften the interruption. "And we'll have to catch a Portkey, right?"

"Yes, you'll land in the New York transportation hub. AIM is farther south." Aunt Lily looked surprised. "Well, I suppose you didn't ask, before. And it will be more than just AIM, too - everyone from Europe going to an American school will be on this flight, but because of Hogwarts' pureblood rules, most students studying in America will be British. There should be a small group of French Muggleborns, though."

"Don't the French go to Beauxbatons?" Uncle James asked, taken aback.

Aunt Lily shook her head regretfully, shrugging slightly. "Beauxbatons doesn't formally discriminate based on blood status, but they only accept people from established wizarding families. Most of the French, Belgians and Swiss who don't go to Beauxbatons will go to the United Academy in Switzerland. A small number of Muggleborns will have scholarships to Collège d'Alliance in Canada – it's the only fully bilingual school and is known for its rigorous program in wizarding law and politics. Four if the last nine Supreme Mugwumps of the International Confederation of Wizards have come from the Collège."

"I never knew that," Uncle James commented, and his aunt grinned kindly in return, giving him a light shove.

"Typical Hogwarts," she said, a teasing note in her voice. "So convinced in the superiority of a Hogwarts education, they never actually stopped to consider the strengths of the other schools." She turned to Archie, leading him through the crush of people surrounding the gate and pausing just to the right of the gate. Most of the people, Archie saw, were clusters of parents seeing off their children, and true to her word he could hear brief snatches of another language – French, presumably. "Harry, sweetheart, this is as far as we can go with you, unfortunately."

"That's all right; I'll be fine," Archie replied, fighting to keep his eagerness from showing in his voice. Instead, he aimed for reassuring. Harry was good at being reassuring.

"You will write to us, won't you, fawn?" His Uncle James tried to look stern, but only ended up looking puppy-eyed. He would have thought only Dad could do that, but Uncle James must have picked up some tricks over the years. Archie smiled, Harry's slight, reserved, but most genuine, smile, in response.

"Of course I will. Every week," he promised. It's not quite what Harry would do, probably, but then again, across the Atlantic, it wouldn't be that far out of character. And he never knew, maybe Harry would have written to her parents that often.

"All right." Aunt Lily looked down at him, considering, then reached for a hug. Archie accepted it, a little stiffly, reluctant as he knew Harry would be – Harry didn't like being hugged. "You'll be fine, baby. AIM is an amazing place, and its Healing program is wonderful. And if you decide you don't want to do Healing, that's fine too, AIM has a Potions Mastery program, you can switch easily and we won't think any less of you…"

"I know," Archie hastened to reassure them, careful to keep the tempo of his voice at Harry's speed. Archie's speech was fast, a torrent of words and movement and feeling, while Harry's was slow, bubbling like the Potions she loved so much. What was fast for Harry's speech was decidedly slow for him. "I just, well, most of the high-level potions nowadays are Healing potions… and trying something new can't be bad either, right?"

"That's the right attitude," Uncle James nodded, pleased. "Nothing is set in stone so early."

Archie smiled awkwardly, letting his Uncle James hug him too, politely ignoring his Aunt Lily discreetly dabbing her eyes on a handkerchief.

"Have a great semester, fawn. Go out for Quidditch, and we'll see you at Christmas."

He nodded, stepping away, because it was obvious that the goodbyes would never end if he didn't walk away. "I'll be fine," he reminded them, pulling the boarding pass from his pocket. It said AIM on it, Seat 11B, September 1, Terminal M, Heathrow International Aeroport. He approached the gate – there was some sort of shield spell or barrier in effect across it, but when he held up his ticket, it let him pass through. He turned back, waved slightly at Harry's parents, and began walking confidently down the long corridor.

He breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he was out of sight, finding the toilets with little difficulty, and shutting himself into a small stall on the men's side to wait out the transformation. He timed it closely; checking his watch, which is actually his, he only had five minutes, and he sat to wait it out. To save time, he pulled out his preferred Muggle outfit for travel – a properly fitted oxford, navy blue cardigan, dark slacks.

The transformation back to himself was just as bad as the initial transformations into Harry. The pain, this time, started at his extremities, and his fingers were on fire. The fire moved through into his gut, his eyes, and he pulled off Harry's glasses, wincing. It was a good thing the toilets were empty, really – he didn't think he was as silent as he should have been, but no harm done. He reached gingerly for his proper clothes and pulled them on, stuffing Harry's worn pullover and jeans into his luggage case. Examining himself in the mirrors over the sinks, he popped in his green contacts, left the top button of his oxford unbuttoned and ruffled his hair into a windswept peak. Travel or not, he would be meeting his new classmates today, and he wanted to leave a good impression. A wide grin split across his face, the balloon of excitement sweeping through his middle, and he bounced out of the toilets.

He had made it past the first challenge – getting through the night and through to the aeroplane to America without being caught by Harry's parents. The rest, at least until Christmas, would be easy! He had taken the first step to his dream, and how could he not be excited about that?

The doors to the aeroplane had the same invisible barrier as the gate, but a wave of his boarding pass and it let him through. The aisles were wider than he would have expected from the outside of the aeroplane, and there was ample leg room. Without compartment walls separating people from each other, he could see that there were dozens of students already seated and chattering to each other. The back of the plane was loud and thick with French. He glanced at his ticket again – Seat 11B – and realized that, with assigned seating, they were probably generally seated by school and year.

Seat 11A was already taken when he reached his row. The occupant, a pretty girl around his age with big brown eyes and wild chestnut curls, was busy tucking a book inside her carry-on bag under her seat. A History of American Magic, he read. She was fidgeting, slightly – she was a nervous. Well, he could take care of that! She looked up as he pushed his Transfigured trunk into the overhead compartment, and he unleashed his brightest grin at her.

"Hi! I'm Harry Potter!" He dropped into the seat beside her. "I guess we're seatmates, are you a first-year too? You're going to AIM, too, right? Isn't this the biggest plane you've ever seen? Well, it's the only plane I've ever really seen, but I saw a picture of a plane once and I saw all the planes taking off in the distance today, but those planes weren't nearly so big. This aeroport is huge, isn't it? There must be at least seven or eight floors to the building, I had to go up two moving staircases to get to the right terminal!"

"You mean an escalator?" the girl interjected, a note of inquiry in her soft voice.

Archie shrugged, shifting to relax in his seat. "I wouldn't know, so sure! And then there were screens everywhere, you know, there were the screens that didn't really change, they just listed all the aeroplanes going different places, but there were these other screens with people on them that talked, but no one talked back to them and the backgrounds kept changing to different places! Isn't that so cool?!"

The girl stared at him, taken aback but nevertheless relaxing almost despite herself. Few people could withstand Archie's enthusiasm when he put his mind to it. Even Harry couldn't. "I'm Hermione Granger. Yes, I'm a first-year at AIM, and why haven't you seen a plane before?"

Archie waved his hand dismissively, thanking his lucky stars (Arcturus and Rigel, of course) that he was sitting here on this aeroplane instead of on a train to Hogwarts. "I'm halfblood, technically, so I can't, but I wouldn't want to anyway. Hogwarts is where the stuffy old families send their kids, and the magic they learn there is as old and dusty as their way of thinking. They don't even have a Healer's program, let alone Alchemy or Druidry or any of the interesting specializations in magic. If I went there, I'd have to go to extra schooling after I graduated just to be qualified for anything, and of course none of the universities in Britain are very accredited either, so I'd have to get an apprenticeship to learn anything really advanced, and those take ages to finish. Not least to mention that no one from Hogwarts has won a prestigious research award in years, except for Master Snape, the Potions Master, and most of the really cutting-edge researchers are coming from schools in America nowadays. AIM has the best Healing program in the world, and an excellent experimental Charms program too. At Hogwarts, they don't even let you choose any of your own classes until third year, can you imagine being stuck in pointless classes like Flying when we could learn that better in our own free time? And all the homework and tests at Hogwarts are based around essays, which has to be the most ineffective and outdated teaching method in existence. I'm so much happier to going to AIM, honestly – we have better opportunities and our credentials are way more prestigious worldwide. So, Hermione, you're a Muggleborn, right?"

"Yes, that's right…" she replied, blinking a little at his onslaught of words but smiling nonetheless.

"That must be so cool! What's that like? When did you find out you were a witch? What about accidental magic? Once when I was six, I was with my cousin Archie and we didn't want to come inside for dinner because we were out flying on our toy broomsticks, you know those ones that don't fly more than three feet off the ground, and my parents were trying to chase us down and they almost caught us but all of a sudden we were across the yard from them and it took them another half hour to get us inside…" He was careful to switch around his name with Harry's, keeping the tale the same except for the swapped names. It was easier to switch names only, then he wouldn't have to keep track of whose stories were whose, though most of their stories would necessarily be the same. The perspective, though, was something he couldn't change.

"Um, well, I suppose I found out I was a witch this summer, when Ms. Vance from the International Confederation of Wizards came to visit us…" Hermione laughed shyly, and Archie nodded eagerly to encourage her. "I suppose weird things happened around me every now and then – sometimes when the other people at school were looking for me when I was reading, they couldn't find me even if I was right in front of them, if I didn't draw attention to myself. And once I dropped a book in the bath, and I was really upset, but when I pulled it out, it was dry."

"Wow! So you went to Muggle school before, too? What do they teach at Muggle schools?" Maybe Hermione would be able to tell him more about the things he saw that morning – how aeroplanes stayed in the air, how the magic screens worked, the meaning of the words "duty-free", the purpose of the sweet-smelling potions in the pretty bottles?

"Yes, I went to primary school… we learned the usual primary school curriculum, reading, writing, maths, things like that. I mean, there is a standard curriculum across Britain for primary school, and most people start school at four years old…"

"That's so early! Why do they do that? Archie and I were home-schooled."

"I don't know." Hermione shrugged uncomfortably. Time to change the subject, then – he didn't want her feeling uncomfortable! "Some other countries start school a little later, but most countries start school somewhere between four and seven."

"Huh, that's weird, but I suppose there must be a reason for it. So if you didn't know you were a witch until the summer, how did you get your school supplies? Like your wand and things?" Archie grinned at her. She was a little awkward, but he could tell that she was friendly.

"Ms. Vance took me to Diagon Alley to go shopping for my wand and robes and wizarding things, but my parents took me shopping for the rest, for the pens and paper and things," she replied, her shoulders relaxing again once she was on firm territory. "Ms. Vance said that AIM would be fine with regular paper and pens, but I don't know why they wouldn't be."

Archie laughed, a deep laugh from his belly. "Yeah, about that - I have some of that too! It's because Hogwarts is so old-fashioned – they still require their students to get quills and parchment and ink, so it's a required item on their class lists. My family, and my cousin's family, we sometimes use Muggle paper and pens when we're at home, but it's not really the done thing in British wizarding society – so if you wanted to write a letter to someone else or something, it would be rude to use Muggle paper and pens."

Hermione gasped, her big brown eyes widening. "But quills and parchment and ink are so expensive!"

"And messy, you forgot messy," Archie added, a note of consternation decorating his voice. "The ink and drying sand gets everywhere. Where are you from, anyway?"

"Oxford."

"Wow, that's where that big Muggle university is, right? Have you been there?"

"Just a few times – I went with my parents for concerts and the like."

"That's so interesting! I'm from Godric's Hollow, which is a small wizarding village in the West Country, but my cousin Archie lives in London so we spent a lot of time there too." It's the smallest flash of curiosity, but Archie caught it anyway. Right, the distance – cars didn't move that quickly, and he was pretty sure from this morning that they were the main Muggle transportation. Cars, and trains, anyway. "We usually Floo to each others' houses."

Hermione nodded in understanding, so Archie continued.

"My dad is an Auror, and my mom works at a private development company testing products for the Ministry. And my uncles Sirius and Remus run a pranking business – what about your family?"

"Well," Hermione shrugged again, a small movement, and looked out their tiny port window. Since they were talking, the aeroplane took off, and they were quickly gaining altitude. "They're dentists."

"What are dentists?" Archie tilted his head to one side in an open display of curiosity.

Hermione turned back to him. "They look after peoples' teeth," she hesitated. "Sometimes they clean them, and if a person has caries - holes in their teeth - or if the teeth are damaged, they can fix that. And if peoples' teeth aren't straight, they have a treatment to make them straight… that sort of thing."

"Hmm," Archie replied, thinking. He wasn't terribly enthused with the idea – it just sounded so uncomfortable, and there Hermione went, uncomfortable again. A stretch of silence, and Hermione fidgeted a little, and Archie thought faster, seeking to smooth over her unease.

It was some sort of Muggle treatment for teeth, so that was sort of like Healing, wasn't it? It didn't sound that far off, though it did sound very narrow. Well, specialized they might be, they sounded like Healers, and a Healer was a Healer. "They must be a very specialized sort of Healer! That's wicked cool."

"I suppose." She looked down at her feet.

"So, what track are you going to choose? I'm going to be in Healing, in case you couldn't guess, because I want to know everything about Healing there is to know…" he stopped suddenly, silently cursing himself as he remembered the cover story. It wouldn't make sense if later Hermione heard that Harry Potter had become a Potions Master. Mistress. Argh! Either way, he needed to be a little ambiguous. "Oh, I might go into Potions eventually, though, I like them too," he finished lamely.

"I was thinking of going into Healing as well," she replied, looking up at him again, her big brown eyes soft and bright. "I thought about Alchemy, but I'm not sure my parents would really understand that, and Healing is both universally understandable and universally valued, so they can still be proud of me even if they don't relate completely."

Archie decided right then and there that Hermione was going to be his friend. She was in Healing, she was smart, and she was obviously very kind, thinking about what her parents would be able to relate to even when she was on the cusp of a whole new world. A small voice in the back of his mind pointed out that it was so different from what he and Harry had done – while, even in picking her dreams, Hermione had thought about staying connected with her family, he and Harry had made a pact to break the law and systematically lie to everyone they loved for the next seven years to make their dreams come true.

Somewhere in his heart, he wondered what that said about them, about he and Harry. But he remembered Mum, and he had no regrets.

Hermione was smart, and she was good, and she was in Healing. If that didn't meet the qualifications for friendship, he didn't know what did. "That's great!" He burst out. "That means we'll have all of our classes other, and we'll be in the same dorms and everything! Want to study together? Want to be friends?"

There was a pregnant pause, and Hermione looked at him, a hint of suspicion in her brown eyes. "Why?"

Archie blinked at her, a purposely innocent move, and smiled his brightest smile at her. The smile that Harry always flinched from and told him to turn it down, because he was blinding her. "Why not?"

Hermione thought for a moment, took a deep breath, and smiled back shyly. "Okay, friends then. So, you grew up in a wizarding home? What was it like?"

Archie grinned back at her, and launched into a mélange of childhood stories, careful to reverse his name and Harry's. It was a good thing they grew up so closely, really – most of the stories were shared, and easy to jump into without many changes. From there, the conversation ranged, and Archie pushed her to tell him as much about herself as she could, and they covered everything from Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans (Archie bought a few packs off the cart travelling down the aisle, and laughed himself sick when Hermione ate a pepper-flavoured one), the Muggle things he had seen at the aeroport (she did know what duty-free meant and explained perfumes, but couldn't really explain how aeroplanes stayed up), wizarding nobility (Archie explained the Books of Gold, Silver, and Copper, much to her consternation), and more.

Five hours later, they were descending over New York City, and Archie leaned over Hermione's seat to catch a glimpse of the famed city as they descended. There was rustling throughout the plane as the older students shifted, eager to get off the plane and stretch, but Archie and Hermione were still, staring out over the metropolis. In the south, they could just see the shadow of towers, skyscrapers, reaching for the sky. Two narrow fingers stretched high above the rest.

"New York City has a very detailed magical history, doesn't it?" Hermione said, staring down into city below. "It's still the home for MACUSA, and there's a huge community here… I wish we had some time to look around and see, instead of going to AIM right away."

"I think so," Archie agreed easily, never having really thought about it. To be frank, he was more interested in getting to AIM than exploring New York City, though he wouldn't pass up an opportunity to look around the famed city if one came along. "I'm looking forward to getting to school, though. Do you remember the Portkey room?"

"Yes, we're in room 2," Hermione replied instantly. "We're in the first group to go, so won't be able to look around very much at all – the Portkey leaves at 12:15, and the doors close at noon, New York time, of course."

Archie looked around him – as far as he could tell, there were perhaps only twenty or thirty people heading to AIM on the aeroplane. "Groups? Do we have enough people going to AIM to need groups?"

"We must not be the only ones going to AIM from the New York City Portkey Hub," Hermione reasoned. "It would make sense that AIM students from New York and other cities nearby go through this hub too."

Terminal M at John F. Kennedy Airport was easily three times the size of the magical terminal in Heathrow. As soon as they disembarked, Hermione gravitated to the informational desk, grabbing a few pamphlets, while Archie gawked. This airport was much more crowded than Heathrow and, unlike Heathrow, most of the witches and wizards didn't look to be school-age. They all carried the same Muggle travel cases that he and Hermione had, moving briskly between multiple gates.

Their fashions, too, were different. He eyed their robes carefully – those that wore robes, anyway, as at least half of the adults, like those who were obviously students, were dressed in Muggle attire. The robes, though, were much shorter than in Britain, ending above the knee rather than below, and clearly designed to blend in a Muggle environment. They were sometimes gathered at the waist by a belt, purely decorative to his eye, and the overall effect was that of a longer overcoat. He followed his future classmates, he hoped, towards the Portkey rooms, pulling Hermione along behind him while she read over the informational pamphlets.

"That's interesting," Hermione commented suddenly, looking up at him. "The New York aeroport has multiple daily flights to Los Angeles, and daily flights to Sao Paolo, Cartagena, and Cairo. But there's only a weekly flight to London, even though it's closer than some of the other cities."

"Is that odd?" Archie asked, offhand, as he stopped and leaned against his travel case to find his Portkey pass. He remembered he had put it in Harry's pocket before he had changed, along with his air ticket, but rather than pulling out her clothes, he simply fished around in his case. He didn't think Hermione would notice if he pulled out Harry's clothes from his luggage, but it was fitted for her, and he didn't particularly want her to see Harry's clothes in his case. Probably better not to take the risk, anyway – not that he thought she would learn anything from the fit, which was tailored differently from his own clothes, but Harry was always much less clothing-conscious than Archie was. The difference in their styles was noticeable.

"Well, yes, isn't it? In the Muggle world, there are multiple daily flights from New York City to London. Most airlines have a couple flights going there and back daily, at least, and while I understand Muggles have a much larger population, it is rather odd. The student flight is apparently a special flight."

Archie felt the edges of his Portkey ticket. "I don't know if the student flight being special is that odd. There's a special train for people going to Hogwarts, the Hogwarts Express. Isn't it normal to have the students travel together for school?"

Hermione considered, then nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose so, but the overall point stands, doesn't it?"

Archie shrugged, waving his Portkey ticket in the air. It was a little crumpled. "I don't know, but wizards have more ways of travelling, too – Apparition, Portkeys, Floo, and so on. Maybe part of it is just less need. Come on, we should go to the Portkey room – you said we were in the first group, right?"

"Right!" Hermione snapped to attention, and checked a small, gold watch she wore around her left wrist. "We have twenty minutes, so it should be fine, but let's find our Portkey room."

Archie hadn't been through a Portkey Hub before – he and Harry had relied on Floo to get to each other's houses and to Diagon Alley, and they each had emergency portkeys that they could use to get home in an emergency. And their parents all had their Apparition licences, so places that weren't accessible by Floo, which weren't many, in Britain, were often accessible by Apparition or Side-Along Apparition. Really, Portkey Hubs were used for farther distances – other countries, really.

Unlike smaller portkeys, which individual witches and wizards would charm, portkeys through the Portkey Hubs were large and could carry up to thirty people at any given time to the destination, usually a room in another Portkey Hub. The departures and arrivals were carefully scheduled between different Hubs, to ensure that people didn't arrive at the same time.

The door to Portkey Room 2 opened to a wave of his ticket. The room was large and square, with a heavy silver ring levitating, rotating, in the middle. There were already other students in the room, some of whom he didn't recognize. Hermione was right – this must also be the transit point for most of the students travelling to AIM from the New York area. He noticed that none of the students were dressed in their school robes, which was a good thing because he hadn't had the time to put his on yet either.

A few of the other students were chatting, but most of them were already holding onto the heavy silver ring – large enough to fill the room, and large enough that thirty grown people could hold on without feeling the least discomfort. Hermione was staring avidly around the room – there were runes carved into the walls, which Archie mostly did not recognize, but he guessed they were for protection and stability. He walked up to the ring and placed his hand on it. It hummed, gently, under his grasp.

He looked over the other students in the room, as the doors locked behind them. Some of the students simply looked bored – he assumed that they were older students who had already gone through this process a time or two before. A small girl beside him, her chestnut brown here tossed into a high ponytail that he recognized vaguely from the plane, simply looked terrified. Hermione was beside him, one hand on the ring and the other on her luggage (a bright blue one, he had been interested to see), but her eyes busily scanning the runes carved in the room's sides. He could swear already that she was memorizing them to look up later. Turning back to the other students, most of their expressions ranged from excitement to nervousness, and Archie caught the eye of a tall, broad-shouldered boy across the ring from him, who gave him a wide grin. Archie grinned back, and with Hermione on one side of him and the terrified-looking girl on his other side, the ring disappeared, and yanked them all into the ether with it.

The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the floor in a similar-looking room, knowing he had travelled even if the room was identical. The ring hummed innocently beside him, and he glared at it. He couldn't say he ever really enjoyed Portkey travel, the few times he had taken it. It always insisted on dumping him on his butt. He saw the boy across from him had staggered, but stayed upright. The boy was still smiling as he looked around at the sprawled people around him, beginning to help people to their feet. Archie shook his head at the other boy, stood up, and pulled Hermione up with him.

"Welcome to the American Institute of Magic." Archie turned and saw a short, round witch smiling broadly at them all from an open doorway. He smiled back – she was wearing the blue robes of a Healer, though her robes were, like all American robes he had seen thus far, cut off at the knee. "My name is Professor Charity Beauchamps – I am one of the many Healing professors at this school. Please, pick yourselves up and come into the hall; the group from Miami will be coming through shortly."

Archie instantly liked her. Her face was warm and welcoming, her voice soothing – he could see that her bedside manner would be excellent. And yet, by the way she carried herself, he could also tell she knew what she was about, too. Her gestures were confident, and while she was kind and helped other students clamber their feet, there was no nonsense about showing them out the door in a calm and orderly fashion.

The hall outside the Portkey Room was large, thankfully, otherwise he didn't know how thirty people would fit, and it was nothing like how he had heard Dad or his uncles describing Hogwarts' Entrance Hall. Instead of stone, the walls were a painted cream, with mahogany accents throughout, and the great stairway at the end of the hall was polished wood, not stone. Light streamed through the windows – he knew, intellectually, that it was just past noon in America, but it was another thing to see the bright afternoon sun making puddles of light on the dark hardwood floors. The walls, too, sported many portraits, many of them Healers, looking down curiously at the students and murmuring amongst themselves. Hermione was looking at them in thinly veiled wonder, and she was not the only one.

"I know many of you already from your previous years here, so please – the Welcome Feast is at six sharp, and you know where the dining hall is. Regular classes begin tomorrow, and you'll find your timetables in your rooms. I trust you remember the way. Ms. Cheung, Mr. Agarwal, would you mind staying behind and helping to show the first years to their dorms?"

Two of the students separated themselves from the mass, nodding cheerfully, as the rest left, and Healer Beauchamps turned to the group of them that remained. Archie glanced around – about ten of them remained, aside from the students that Healer Beauchamps had asked to stay, including the boy that was grinning at him in the Portkey room. He was now looking around the hallway with great interest. Archie turned back to Healer Beauchamps, who was looking them over, a kind expression on her face.

"New students? Let me see, here." She pulled out a list, and Archie steeled himself, because he bet anything that the list would say Harriett Potter on it. He kept his hands loose, easy, watching his classmates with mild interest as he waited, breathing evenly, purposely relaxed. Adams, Granger, Hopkins, Kowalski, Liu, McDougall…

"Harriett Potter?"

Archie sighed, looking down, and raised his hand, letting his face melt into an expression of complete and utter embarrassment. He narrowed his eyes just slightly, let his lips curve just a tiny bit up like he was trying to laugh it off. His face flushed, but not as much as he would have liked – he had been working on making himself blush on command for years, and while he was better at it than Harry was, he still wasn't able to make himself turn more than a light shade of pink. He hoped it would be enough. "That's me, Professor Beauchamps… and it's Harry Potter, actually."

The eagle-eyed professor looked him over. "Harry Potter?"

Archie coughed, still purposely embarrassed. "Well, this is a surprise, but my father is a bit of a prankster, see? He's one of the owners of the Marauders pranking products brand, so pranking, it's a bit of a family tradition. He probably told you my name was Harriett as a joke."

"You are … not a girl, then?" Healer Beauchamps asked delicately, her voice containing just a hint of question.

Archie gave a carefully pained grin. "As you can see. Dad thought it would be funny."

He stopped himself from going on any longer – if he went on any longer, he would sound like he was the one playing the prank, not the victim. He stood there, under her eagle eye, forcing himself to keep blushing as long as possible. As the others stared at him, it became easier to sustain the blush – now he was just blushing from the pressure of the situation. He could not be caught here. He just couldn't, not before he had even started!

Professor Beauchamps looked over at the brown-skinned boy that she had asked to stay behind. "Mr. Agarwal, do you know anything about this Marauders brand?"

The boy thought for a second, then shrugged. His accent was British; he must have been on the student flight with them. "Very little, Professor. I've heard of it, but as a newblood, it's rare for me to go into any of the pure wizarding areas in Britain. From what I know of it, it is a pranking business."

"I saw a display for the Marauders' line in Diagon Alley when I was there," Hermione interrupted, throwing Archie a worried look. "They had things like Sleeping Powder, Instant Darkness powder – I remember I wanted to go in to look, but Ms. Vance from the ICW told me that I wouldn't need anything from a joke store."

Professor Beauchamps seemed to consider the matter for a minute, while Archie continued blushing and looking embarrassed. Finally, she sighed, making a note in her list. "Very well, I suppose it makes no difference anyway, and it does explain why your specialization declaration said "Harry" rather than "Harriett". However, Mr. Potter, do tell your family members that this sort of joke is not appreciated here, would you?"

Archie bobbed his head quickly up and down, honestly relieved. Professor Beauchamps kept going down the list, checking off names, but there were no other problems.

"First-years, again, welcome to the American Institute of Magic. I understand that this will be, for many of you, your first extended time away from your homes, but I hope that you'll come to see AIM as a second home, in time. Each of your dorms will have monitors, older students who are specifically tasked with helping you through any problems that might arise, and I hope you will come to rely on them and to enjoy your time here.

"As I think most of you know, AIM is still a young school, but has already developed a sterling reputation academically, including our Healing and experimental Charms programs. Aside from coursework, our students are very active socially, and there are many clubs and programs for you to join to make friends, enjoy yourselves, or even learn something new. We are, above all, a very diverse school – students come from across the United States, from Canada, from Mexico and the Caribbean, and from Britain to study here. Any sort of discrimination, whether it be by race, nationality, or blood status, will not be tolerated. Otherwise, school rules are straightforward – do no harm unto others, but otherwise do as you will. Lights will be off in the common areas from midnight each night, but should you stay awake past then, you are the one who will need to find extra energy for your classes the next day.

"I know that most of you have already sent in your specialization declarations, if you have any, so if I could have those of you who signed up for the Healing program on this side of the room, yes, under the portrait Healer Smythe with Mr. Agarwal, and the rest of you on the other side with Ms. Cheung, that would be much appreciated," Healer Beauchamps gestured, and Archie, followed by Hermione and the broad-shouldered boy from the Portkey room, walked over to stand under a painting of a dark-skinned, blue-robed wizard, meeting with Agarwal, who flashed a quick smile at the first-years.

"Ranjan Agarwal," he said, reaching his hand out to shake theirs. "You can call me Ranjan. I'm a fifth-year in the Healer's track, and one of the class monitors. Your names are?"

"Hermione Granger," Hermione piped up instantly, shaking his hand with ease. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Harry Potter," Archie followed suit, reaching out and shaking hands with the monitor in turn. The movement felt a little awkward – his etiquette classes had only covered bowing, and he certainly didn't shake hands with his family members. Still, he had seen the movement before, and it wasn't hard to copy.

The broad-shouldered boy from the Portkey room cast him a curious look, but just as quickly turned away to the monitor. "John Kowalski," he said with a laconic grin, his eyes flicking curiously over Archie and Hermione once more. "I'm from New York."

Ranjan nodded politely, with a glimmer of interest but without any surprise. "I'll show you around the campus. AIM is, I understand, laid out a little differently than the traditional schools – we have multiple dorms, and our classrooms, libraries, and student activity rooms are spread out among several different buildings, which form our campus. There is a wall circling AIM – you need permission to leave, which you can get from me or one of the other Healing class monitors, and until you're in fourth-year, you'll need one of the upper-years with go with you. We're about a half hour drive from the closest No-Maj town, which has a drive-in movie theatre and some shops – there's no strictly wizarding community around here."

Archie nodded slowly, catching up quickly on the vocabulary. No-Maj was easy enough – that must mean Muggle. And Hermione had mentioned movies, on the plane, which she said were stories in moving picture form. She had moved on quickly when she realized Archie hadn't seen any, but it certainly sounded cool.

"This building, here, is Seaton House. It is our main student building – the dining room is here, the main library, various club and study rooms, and the auditorium, which also acts as our theatre." Ranjan led them through a maze of hallways, each decorated with paintings of Healers and other witches and wizards, some of whom followed them through the frames. Hermione was still throwing curious looks at them, but Kowalski didn't seem impressed. Archie wondered at that for a second, then nearly smacked himself – Kowalski was American, so it wasn't like he was here because he was banned from Hogwarts! He must be from an American wizarding family.

The dining hall wasn't anywhere near as grand as Dad always said Hogwarts Great Hall was, but neither was it plain. It had its own charm; there were large stained-glass windows splashing coloured light all over the dark tables, and they walked on beautiful, dark, hardwood floors. Listening to Ranjan's explanation, it seemed to Archie that the AIM staff trusted the students far more than at Hogwarts – there was no set dinner hour, rather, barring special occasions, there would be a buffet set every night between six and ten at night, and the students were expected to eat when they could. Older students were generally responsible for keeping an eye on the younger ones and resolving any disputes amongst themselves. There were no House tables – instead, there were many small tables, seating between four and eight students each, littered throughout the room. There were a few students already littered around the dining hall, catching up over snacks which had been laid out on the sideboard, but Agarwal led them away quickly, before Archie could get anything.

"We can come back later," Kowalski muttered to him, his tone friendly even if the words were quiet. "Long flight?"

"Five hours," Archie replied quietly with a grin, glancing over at the other boy. He was a bit taller, but stocky in build, with close-cropped brown hair and warm eyes. "I'm starving. Hermione?"

Hermione looked up at Kowalski, her big brown eyes evaluating. "I could eat."

Kowalski smiled. "I don't think the rest of the tour will take that much longer," he said quietly. "The arrivals are staggered so they should have something on most of today, at least until an hour or so before dinner."

Outside, Archie drew in a breath of warm air – it might be September, but coming from Britain, it felt unseasonably warm. But Aunt Lily said they would be in the south, and the warmth was, admittedly, very nice. Looking out on the campus, Archie saw a complex of manor houses – more like some of the pureblood families' ancestral seats than anything else. Not Grimmauld Place, which was, on the outside, still pretty grim, but some of the buildings reminded him of Potter Place. Or even Fawley Hall, a blindingly white place he visited only once a year for his grandparents to poke and prod over him, sniffing in disapproval about how like Sirius Black he looked.

"Classes are mainly held in Thompson Hall," Ranjan said, pointing out the large manor house to their right. Based on the improbable and somewhat inconsistent architecture, Archie thought was more like several large manor houses stacked together and glued with magic. "The Healing classes are mainly in the north wing. We won't go in there now – any of the older Healing students can point you in the right direction if you get lost later. On your left is Oliver Hall, which is the main dormitory for the undeclared and general education students, and the Mastery townhouses. Charms Row is most of the first row, but there are townhouses for the other mastery disciplines as well: Potions, Transfigurations, Defence, Herbology, Alchemy. Every dorm has its own specialized library, too, and we're allowed in all of the dorms if we need a specialist text."

Oliver Hall was another old, sprawling manor house, all light, white timber and brown detailing. Beside the old house was a network of townhouses – at least four rows of them, each with five houses in it. Archie looked them over curiously, but his eye was immediately drawn by a tall, modern construction, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, opposite them. On one hand, the building looked completely different, out of place compared to the manor houses that made up the rest of AIM campus even if they had tried to keep some similar stylistic touches; on the other, it was beautiful.

"And that, Harry, is Pettingill Hall," Ranjan caught his staring and favoured him with a small smile. "The Healer dorms. Come on, I'll show you to your rooms."

The main floor of Pettingill Hall was dedicated to an enormous common room, done in shades of pale blue and cream. To one side of the great room, there were sofas in navy blues, pouffes in bright royal shades, cushions in cream and grey. One wall was all glass, letting the early afternoon light shine in, warming the room, while the other was lined with tall bookshelves specializing in healing texts. Round, circular tables meant for group work dotted the edges of the room, especially prominent beside the bookshelves. The sofas looked comfortable and soft, the study tables clear this early in the year. Looking up, Archie could see that the ceiling was enchanted, showing the blue skies outside, and four lines of balconies above, all overlooking the common room.

There were a few groups of students already littered throughout the room, earlier arrivals, and one loud group of about five people, still in Muggle clothing, had taken one of the central tables. There was a board on the table, with small objects scattered over it, some sort of game. Four of them seemed to be actively playing, cards in their hands, while one of them, a girl with chestnut brown hair cut in a short bob was curled up on an armchair, watching them with an open book in her lap.

"It is so Mrs. White in the conservatory with the candelabra!" A tall, brown-haired youth with his hair swept in a widow's peak yelled. He threw his set of cards down on the table. "Open the envelope and see for yourself!"

"It isn't, either," the girl with the bob replied, amusement dancing in her dreamy hazel eyes. "Come on, Neal, pay attention. I'm not even playing, but it's obvious that Daine has the candelabra card."

A girl with tanned, olive-brown skin and loose, dark curls grinned cheekily and flashed one of her cards, while Neal scowled. She turned around, spotting Archie's group. "Oh, look – new first-years. Brits?"

"Daine, Neal, Cleon," Ranjan greeted them, pausing by their table casually. "Merric, Keladry. Meet three of the new first-years – Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and John Kowalski. Only two Brits – John just happened to catch the same Portkey as us from New York."

"Well, obviously," Neal drawled, studying Kowalski with no small amount of interest. "John Kowalski, as in…"

Kowalski grinned, a mixed expression of both embarrassment and pride. "Yeah. Queenscove, isn't it? My sister Tina at Collège mentioned you were at AIM. I think your brother Will knows her?"

"That's right," Neal snapped his fingers. "Call me Neal – I'm a fourth-year in the Healing track. Welcome to AIM, and for the Brits, welcome to America. We're nicer here."

"Neal!" the girl with loose brown curls shrieked. "You can't just say that! They're new to the wizarding world; they have enough to deal with without having to learn about that right away."

"It's no use trying to hide it from them, Daine," the hazel-eyed girl with the chestnut brown bob shrugged, turning to the first years. "There are enough clues, they'd be idiots if they didn't have a sense of it already. Keladry Mindelan – I'm a second-year, undeclared. You can call me Kel."

"It's fine," Archie reassured the upper-years quickly, flashing a bright grin – the one that Harry said was blinding. "I'm a halfblood, anyway, I already knew about the blood discrimination laws and everything. I'm Harry Potter, and this is Hermione Granger. We're both in the Healing track. So, uh… how do you all know each other?"

He had thought that the tracks were pretty independent, with the Healers sticking to themselves and everyone else keeping to their own streams. That's how Hogwarts was, with the Houses, to hear Dad and Uncle James and Uncle Remus talk about it, so he hadn't seen any reason why it would be any different at AIM. Other than the fact that their "Houses" were career-based, useful, and self-selected, that was. And Aunt Lily had never mentioned anything – she didn't talk a lot about her AIM days, strangely.

The group of upper-years shrugged, exchanging looks. "Most of us are in the Duelling club together," Kel replied thoughtfully. "Neal, I, Merric and Cleon are, anyway – oh, I suppose Merric and Cleon haven't introduced themselves yet."

"Merric Hollyrose," one of the redheads said, on cue, looking up from the game board and the sheet of Muggle paper he had been scowling at. He had freckles strewn over his nose. "I'm in second-year. I was in Healing last year, but I dropped it – just wasn't for me. Right now, I'm undeclared."

Archie blinked, almost in surprise – he couldn't imagine anyone choosing to drop out of the Healing program. A lot of people left the program, especially in the first three years, but he always thought they had failed out of it.

"Eleven is too early to really pick a specialization, anyway," Daine rolled her eyes. "It's not like any of us had any real idea of what we were getting into, when we started. Nothing wrong with changing your mind later. I'm not in Duelling – I just had a few seminar classes with Neal last year."

"She says, and, exceptional or not, she's in the Healing stream," the other redhead broke in with a grin, lounging back in his seat. "Cleon Kennan – I'm a fourth-year. General studies."

Daine's lips had tightened imperceptibly at the word exceptional, but she smiled, erasing the movement. Her tone was light, but there was almost something of a bite to it. "Decided not to declare for anything, Cleon? You were thinking about it, at least tell us you didn't just let the deadline slip by."

Cleon made a face at her. "What do you think I am?"

Neal, Merric and Daine looked at each other. "An idiot," Merric said, but with a smile to show he didn't really mean it.

"You asked for it," Keladry murmured, turning back to her book. Archie opened his mouth, to ask more, but Neal spoke up before he could get a word in edgewise.

"Speaking of Duelling, know what this year is?" He raised a finger, a sparkle of excitement in his emerald green eyes.

"Is this one of those times where you make a grandiose statement and expect us to agree with you?" Kel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, this is important – Alanna graduated! So the Duelling championship is up for grabs!" Neal threw his arms up, as if he could express the importance of this fact via his arm gestures. Archie liked him.

"I'm not sure what that has to do with you," Kel deadpanned, though there was a laugh in her dreamy hazel eyes. "You won't be winning it."

Neal clutched at his chest and staggered in a fit of dramatics, while Archie laughed. Neal was a man after his own heart. "You wound me, fair lady!"

"She's just stating the obvious," Cleon rolled his eyes. "You're not winning it this year. I am."

There was a round of guffaws at the statement, even as John looked interested. Their class monitor coughed. "As entertaining as you lot always are, I should show the new first-years to their rooms – it's a long flight from London and I want a nap if we have classes tomorrow. I hate jet lag. Neal, any trouble, and I'll have your hide."

"Why me?" Neal blinked innocently, while Ranjan glared at him.

"Because somehow, whenever there's trouble in the Healers' dorms, you and your friends seem to be at the centre of it," he replied dryly, turning towards the wide, sweeping stairs at the back of the room, leading to the second level balcony. "Come on, first-years – you'll all be on the second floor."

Much to Archie's surprise and delight, he discovered that they would each have their own rooms, though the bathrooms were both shared and disturbingly institutional. The second level balcony, going all the way around the building overlooking the common room, was lined with doors. Each door had an inset blackboard, and all had names written in a curly cursive on them – small containers of chalk were hung from the balcony every few doors. For messages, or maybe just to decorate, Archie thought, fascinated.

His room was marked Harriett Potter, but it was the work of a minute for him to fix that by rubbing out the last few letters of her name and replacing it with a hastily, loopily scrawled "y". The doors all locked to magical signatures, and Ranjan showed them all how to push their magic into the doorknobs to register their magical signature into it. In any case, having his own room would be great – it would be much easier for his and Harry's ruse if he had a space where he could keep his secrets, definitely a fair trade for institutional bathrooms. The room was tiny, only enough for a single bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a bookshelf, but what else would he need anyway?

His stomach rumbled.

"Meet you in a few?" Kowalski asked with a grin. "You too, Hermione. We'll go get a bite to eat – you two can't possibly wait until dinner to eat, not if you've already missed lunch and it's what, five hours ahead in Britain? I think Neal has something fun planned tonight, too – I'm going to go ask about it."

"Absolutely," Archie agreed, but all he had to do was leave his luggage in the room and check his appearance in the full-length mirror attached to the door of his wardrobe. His eyes were green – not Harry's exact shade, granted, but who would know? He fixed his hair, slightly, ruffling it up from where it had gone flat on the aeroplane, neatened his collar and his cardigan. His clothes were a little more formal than most of the others, he saw. He would probably need to consider a trip to fix that, especially since it didn't seem that AIM required uniforms outside of classes. No one in the common room had changed into their uniforms yet. He could change back into Harry's worn jeans, but they didn't fit him properly anyway, and, on reflection, he'd rather be considered a little more formal than unfashionable.

He popped down the stairs back into the common room, to find that John was already standing in the Dueling club circle, chatting animatedly with Neal, while Hermione was standing by awkwardly. She had put on a headband to push her wild brown curls out of her face, but she hadn't changed either.

"Cool, so meet you after dinner?" Kowalski said, leaning casually, confidently, on the side of the sofa that Neal was lounging in. The game lay, forgotten, on the table in front of them. "And of course, Harry and Hermione can come too, if they want, right?"

The fourth-year looked them over critically, while Archie tried very hard to look trustworthy, and Hermione looked very nervous. "You'll vouch for them, Kowalski?"

"Why do you think I suggested it, Queenscove?" John replied with another quick smile, straightening. "'Course I will. And it would be nice, don't you think, to welcome them to America?"

Neal shrugged. "I suppose so. I'll let Dom know to expect three more, then."

"Great," Kowalski replied, catching sight of Archie. "Come on, Brits. Let's go get a snack – shouldn't be too hard to get us back to dining hall."

Archie fell into step beside the other boy, thoughtfully tucking Hermione's hand into his elbow as he had always been taught. He hadn't done it earlier since his hand was occupied with his luggage, though he should have. "What was that about?"

"We're sneaking out tonight to see a movie," Kowalski replied, nonchalant, brown eyes dancing as he led the way across the sunny, warm campus back to Seaton House. "You like Bond?"

Hermione gasped, eyes becoming round as dinner plates, as she quickened her step to catch up with the taller boy. Archie matched her pace easily. "We can't do that! You heard Ranjan, we need permission from a class monitor! What if we get caught? What if—"

"What's Bond?" Archie interrupted, interested. He did want to see a movie, and rules, well, Dad always said rules were made to be broken. Sneaking out of school on the first night sounded like the perfect thing for a next-generation Marauder to do. And it wasn't like Harry would be picking up that torch anytime soon, so one of them had to.

"What's Bond?!" Kowalski stopped in his tracks, whirling around, a near manic glint in his brown eyes. They stood, outside, on the flagstones between the Healer dorms and Seaton House. "Bond, as in James Bond! He's only the coolest spy ever, you'll love it. And he's British. The drive-in mostly shows older movies, not any current stuff, and it's Diamonds are Forever tonight. And don't worry about it, Hermione, we'll be with a bunch of upper-years – Neal and his cousin Dom, a bunch of others."

"I'm in," Archie declared.

"Harry! We can't go, we – if we get caught, we'll be in terrible trouble, we could be expelled!" Hermione tugged at Archie's arm.

"But Diamonds are Forever is a classic," Kowalski said, ignoring Hermione's comments with a wicked glint in his eye. "It's a little dated, but it's Sean Connery, and it's a great Bond movie. Sean Connery really was the best James Bond."

Well, it was a classic, and Archie had no idea who Sean Connery might be, but he was clearly important. And the best James Bond. He wasn't sure what that meant, but there was really no question that Archie had to see it too. No question at all.

"If there's a big group, they couldn't possibly expel us, Hermione," Archie reasoned, putting a pout on his face. It wasn't the Look that he and Harry had spent so much time perfecting, but he wanted to save the Look for when he really needed it. The Look deceased in power the more he used it. "Safety in numbers! I've never seen a movie before, 'Mione."

"Neal and his cousin Dom know what they're doing," Kowalski chipped in.

"But what about tomorrow? We're going to be exhausted, tonight, Harry," Hermione objected, looking at Archie, wide-eyed, as if she couldn't believe he was seriously considering it. "We'll have jet-lag, the film will end at what, midnight? We have our first classes tomorrow!"

"Tomorrow will still be there," Archie replied, bouncing a little in his excitement even as he deepened the pout, letting his eyebrows come into play. "They're not going to be testing us in our first classes, 'Mione, darling, and it'll be understandable if we're a little tired. Anyway, on the plane, didn't you say you had read all of our textbooks already?"

"All of them?" Kowalski looked suitably impressed. "I don't think you have anything to worry about – first classes are mainly an overview of the rest of the year. And the best way to get over jetlag is just to stay up and go to sleep at the proper time. If you sleep right after dinner tonight, you'll be up at three in the morning. The movie will help keep you awake – there are explosions in it."

Archie did like explosions. One could not grow up with the Marauders and not like explosions.

Hermione pursed her lips, changing tactics. "How are you even going to get there? Ranjan said the nearest No-Maj town was a half-hour drive away, if you even manage to get off campus."

"Car," Kowalski replied, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. "Dom has one. It's expanded on the inside, to seat more people – he's in the Charms Mastery program."

"Does Dom even have a licence?!"

"He's a sixth-year, and he has his own car, so I guess so," Kowalski shrugged. "No one's going to be checking, Hermione. It'll be fine."

"Please, Hermione, please?" Archie begged, wetting his eyes a little.

She pursed her lips a little tighter, and he pouted a little harder, letting his chin tremble just a touch. He stared at her, widening his eyes, pleading – the Look was better on Harry's face than his, with her piercing green stare, but he had always found it useful enough. Maybe now that his eyes were green, it would work better for him too?

She sighed, blowing out a heavy breath. "Fine. Just this once, Harry."

John was a halfblood, from Queens in New York City. The best city in the world, to hear him tell it – a city of millions, of light and action and adventure, a place that the world came to meet and, for the most part, got along. His father, Mikael Kowalski, headed the Foreign Affairs Department at MACUSA, while his mother, Annabelle Crestley, was a senior Auror with the New York City detachment, but he had grown up mainly with his grandparents, Queenie Goldstein and Jacob Kowalski. Archie didn't recognize the names, but Hermione had been very interested, leaning forwards.

"Well, they're war heroes from the Grindelwald Wars, aren't they?" she had said, eyebrow raised. "I read about them in A History of American Magic."

In other words, John's family was well-known in the American wizarding community, which explained how he connected so quickly with Neal Queenscove, at least. It was fortunate that Archie and Harry's backgrounds were so similar; when asked, it was the easiest thing in the world to simply say that he came from an old wizarding family, that he was a halfblood, his father was an Auror and his mother worked at a private development company. Hermione said only what she had told Archie on the plane – she was a newblood from Oxford and her parents were dentists with their own practice. John had been to Oxford on one of his many trips to Britain, visiting his great-aunt, Tina Goldstein, the famed American Auror, and great-uncle, Newt Scamander, the famed Magizoologist, and they talked about a great many landmarks that Archie had never seen – but he would, one day. Hermione promised to show him.

Dinner, even though it was a formal Welcome Feast, didn't seem very formal to Archie. It was still a buffet and serving line, though they were allowed two desserts rather than one, and the students chose their own seats, filling up the dining hall to the brim. Archie was grateful he had met both Hermione and John earlier in that day, especially when John finagled them seats with Neal and some of his friends, helped by Archie's painfully hopeful smile.

Everyone, at least, had put on their school robes, which he understood wasn't usual for meals. Unlike Hogwarts, where the uniforms were identical save for ties and House crests, AIM students wore white shirts with dark grey trousers or skirts, girls being permitted to choose whichever they preferred, and an overrobe. The overrobe, like all American robes, was shorter than any robe Archie had ever put on in his life, falling just to his knees, and came in a variety of colours. Black, for anyone under third-year and for general studies; sky blue, for the Healers; and a deep, grassy, green, for the Mastery students. The dining hall was a mix of colour, more black and green than blue, splashes of water across heather and stone.

Archie could honestly say he didn't remember much from the speeches. Headmistress Seraphina Picquery the Second welcomed them to the school and provided a brief overview of the school rules, such as they were, but Archie had already heard them from Healer Beauchamps earlier. She said something about clubs, the date of the annual clubs fair, something about a well-rounded education, but Archie barely heard it.

He should have been tired – at home, it was past midnight – but instead all he felt was excitement. Tonight was his first escapade! Tonight was when he would begin upholding his legacy as a Marauder! All right, it wasn't something he planned by himself, but he needed some time to get his bearings, so that was fine. He was still sneaking out of school on his first night there, and that was more than even Dad could say. He had plans, too – eventually, maybe he would even make a Marauder's Map for AIM, since Harry had taken the one of Hogwarts with her. It would be great!

The sun had barely dipped below the horizon when Archie, dressed in a black knit sweater and navy blue slacks, met John and Hermione at the bottom of the stairs. He was the last, since he had spent too much time looking for something in Harry's trunk that screamed "adventure, sneaking out tonight!" without also drawing too much of the wrong sort of attention. It turned out it didn't exist, hence, he just picked dark clothing in case he needed to make a run for it at some point. In Dad's adventures, making a run for it came up more often than not.

"Don't you own anything less formal?" John asked, frowning, keeping his voice low. The common room was busy, loud, and Archie doubted anyone was listening – there was a group of other first years in one of the corners, marked by their general shyness and expressions of uncertainty, but the upper-years all seemed to be catching up with each other. Archie spotted several games of Exploding Snap, too. "We're going to a movie, not a fancy restaurant."

"Honestly?" Archie replied sheepishly, eyeing his friends' sweatshirts and jeans. John's proudly proclaimed New York City on it in giant white text with a picture of an apple, while Hermione's only had a small patch with a crest and the words, Oxford University. "No."

John shook his head mournfully, but led the way through the common room, outside. Getting out wouldn't be the hard part – it wasn't curfew yet, and Archie spotted several Mastery students, still in their uniforms, lounging with their Healer friends in the common room still. Neal and Daine were waiting on the steps outside, both dressed in dark, casual, sweatshirts and jeans. Archie definitely needed to update his wardrobe, sometime, to include better sneaking clothes.

"All right there, first-years?" Daine asked with a kind smile. She had pulled her loose brown hair into a bun. She didn't wait for an answer, instead turning and walking briskly across campus, weaving through the maze-like lanes of the Mastery townhouse complex. "Let's get going – Dom's meeting us behind Potions House."

Archie followed her, tuning out Hermione's continued muttering, while John and Neal brought up the rear. It seemed like Daine walked a few circles in the townhouse complex, and Archie wasn't sure whether they were necessary circles, or if they were just to distract from their true direction. It didn't matter, anyway – they soon joined a small group of other students: Kel and Cleon, and a tall, older boy with brown hair and clear blue eyes.

"Daine!" The older boy stepped forward, greeting the brunette with a quick hug. "Good to see you – I hope your summer went well?"

"It was fine, Dom," Daine laughed, pulling herself free and gesturing to the first-years. "Good to see you, too. These are our first-years, that Neal told you about – Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Brits both, and John Kowalski."

Dom's eyebrows rose, his voice gently curious. "Kowalski, as in…?"

"Yeah," John replied, with the same half-embarrassed, half-proud grin he had given Neal earlier in the day. "You're Domitan Masbolle, right?"

"That's right," Dom smiled, an open and friendly smile, and then he reached out and slapped Neal on the shoulder. "Also Meathead's cousin, here. Let's get going – I can get the side gate open, it's an easy enough ward to break. Movie starts in an hour, so you're all cutting it pretty close."

"Sorry about that," Archie replied, voice apologetic and attempting to tone down his stark British accent into something a little more like the American voices around him, following the brisk pace Dom set as he headed towards the side gate. "My fault. I had trouble finding something to wear."

"Is that why you're dressed so formally?" Kel asked, her eyes crinkled in merriment. She, too, was dressed in a dark, burgundy, sweatshirt, reading strangely Property of Georgetown Athletic Department in white, with a big pocket in the front into which she had tucked her hands.

"I grew up in a wizarding family," Archie replied with a self-deprecating smile. "My Muggle – No-Maj – clothing selection just isn't very large."

Neal cut in, his emerald eyes wide in unadulterated horror. "Do you mean to say you wear robes all the time in Britain?"

Archie laughed. "Not quite – there are wizarding clothes that aren't robes, like tunics and dresses and the like. My cousin Archie and I wore other clothes when we went out, but it's true that robes are the usual."

"Eugghhh," Cleon shuddered, on their other side. "What a thought. I hate robes."

"Robes tend to be more formal, for us," Kel said, smiling at her friends' horrified reactions. "Like how No-Majs treat suits and blazers – you know what those are?"

"Vaguely," Archie lied, somewhat embarrassed by his own ignorance. Some sort of Muggle formalwear, he assumed. A shopping trip was certainly in order – another time. He wondered how permission to leave campus was gotten, anyway.

"We'll take you another time," John said, clapping him on the shoulder.

They had reached the woods circling AIM, following what Archie could see was a slight, worn, path weaving through the trees. The wall around the school wasn't tall, only maybe six feet high, easy enough that Archie thought he could probably climb it with enough effort – the stones were old, but had plenty of handholds. There was a small, metal, gate in front of them, black iron shaped in the school crest. Dom pulled out his wand, weaving a pattern in front of the lock – not Alohomora, something else.

"We're good," he said suddenly, opening the gate with a small creak, and holding it the gate open while the rest of them tramped out. Outside the AIM gates, it was a short walk through the woods to the nearest roadway, whereupon Dom pulled a small model car from his pocket and put it down on the side of the road. He stepped back a few large steps and, with a twitch of his wand, he reversed the shrinking spell on it. A full-sized sedan was now parked on the side of the road. "It'll be a bit tight, with eight of us – Harry, Hermione, Daine, you mind sitting on the floor? No-Maj cars are only supposed to seat five."

Daine scrunched her nose up. "Why me? I'm a third year."

"Because you're smaller than both John and Kel," Dom replied, his voice the picture of reason, even as his eyes laughed. "I expanded the floor, it won't be that bad."

She sighed heavily, and Archie guessed she was used to being relegated to the floor. "Fine, fine," she said, crawling in and sitting with her legs drawn up to her chest. Kel politely pulled her legs out of the way.

Archie followed her, sitting on John's feet (expanded or not, the car was really not that big), while Neal had a heated argument with Cleon over who got to ride in the front. Eventually, Dom interceded and kicked Neal into the back.

Hermione was standing by the side of the car, still, a look of bullish stubbornness on her face as she faced Dom. "You do have a license, don't you?"

Dom raised an eyebrow, and Archie was glad to see that the upper-year was more surprised than anything else. Still, this called for emergency persuasion, and he threw Hermione a pleading look. "I do, as it happens. I got my learner's permit some six months ago. The wizarding community here is pretty well integrated with the No-Maj world – MACUSA makes sure that we all have proper No-Maj identification and things like that. We're expected to keep to No-Maj laws as well as wizarding ones, here, because doing anything different would draw too much attention to ourselves."

"Oh," Hermione said, apparently losing steam on whatever argument she had planned, or maybe it was the Look that Archie plied on her for the second time that day. He should really be conserving his use of it, but, needs must! Either way, she got into the car with no further complaints, curling herself into a disapproving ball on Neal's feet. "All right, then."

The car started moving with a small rumble and jerk, and Archie wished he could see. He had never been in a car before – he had seen cars, since he grew up in London, of all places, of course he had seen them, but he had never needed to travel on them. He could feel himself moving, but even through the gap between the front seats where Cleon and Dom were seated, through the window open to the sky, he couldn't see much but darkness. Neal and Dom were arguing, but in that light-hearted way that told Archie that they were arguing only for the sake of conversation, and not because they were actually arguing.

"Your taste in music still sucks, I see," Neal drawled, as Dom and Cleon turned one of the dials on the glittering array between them. The music was heavier than Archie had heard before – he wasn't entirely sure he liked it, honestly.

"R.E.M. is awesome, Neal, you just have no taste," Dom replied absently, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "You like that diva shit."

"Talent is not diva shit," Neal threw a hand up dramatically, and John dodged just in time.

"Pretty sure your music is way more managed and produced than mine," Dom said, turning the dial up. "My car, my rules, Meathead."

"I like your taste in music, Dom," John added mildly. "Have you heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers yet?"

"I'm surrounded by them," Neal sighed, letting his head fall back in defeat. "Surrounded."

"What do you like, Neal?" Archie asked, curious. What was diva shit? Was it different from the heavy music playing, with all its angry undertones? He had thought himself fairly well versed on wizarding music (or, at least, British wizarding music), yet he had never heard anything like this. Either American wizarding music was very different, or this was Muggle music. Imagine, he was listening to Muggle music!

Five minutes later, Archie wished he hadn't asked, because Neal had launched into an extended oral dissertation on the merits of Madonna, and Mariah Carey, and Cher, and Phil Collins, none of whom Archie had ever heard but all of whom were, apparently, a million times better than Dom's alt-rock trash. John and Dom vehemently disagreed, Cleon attempted to get a word in edgewise on the merits of Johnny Cash, while Kel and Daine ignored them all in favour of a conversation about their summer holidays, and Hermione simply looked stressed. Either way, Archie was so quickly lost in their argument that, as much as he wanted to try to contribute, he couldn't get a word in edgewise. All of them seemed to be convinced that he should listen to and prefer their music over the others. The only thing Archie managed to deduce, through all the babble, was that they listened to a mix of Muggle and wizarding music, but they were mostly arguing over Muggle music now. The Muggle entertainment industry was bigger, so there were more bands and artists they could choose from.

To his dismay, as much as he wanted to follow the conversation, he began feeling nauseated only a few minutes later. He put his head on his knees, taking long, deep breaths, but it didn't seem to help any. Why now? He didn't feel tired, or at least not tired enough to be feeling dizzy. He hadn't felt ill all day, and in any case he was rarely sick.

"Motion sickness?" He heard Hermione's soft voice ask. She laid a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to face her – the stress on her face, from their escapade, was replaced temporarily by concern for him. That was good to see. "It's because you can see yourself moving but your body can't tell. You'll be fine once the car stops moving."

"Thanks," Archie replied with a weak smile, then he focused on breathing. Did all Muggles feel this way in cars? He assumed not – Hermione and the others certainly seemed to be fine, but maybe some of them were arguing too much to notice any sickness. Car travel was apparently not for him.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before they reached their destination.

"Stay quiet, Harry, Hermione, Daine," Dom said over his shoulder into the backseat as he rolled up to a ticket booth. "There's a mild notice-me-not charm over where you're sitting, so the ticket collector won't see you unless you draw attention to yourselves. The rest of you, cough it up – four bucks, each of you."

There was some mumbling, but the four sitting on real seats pulled out money and handed it over without a fuss. Archie was amused to see that they all had Muggle money – he had some, too, Harry, courtesy of Aunt Lily, had included a billfold of strange green bills in his trunk. He hadn't gotten a close look at them, but he had tucked a green one with a big twenty on it in his pocket. He scrambled for it, but Daine poked him in the side.

"Stop moving around so much, and don't worry about it," she muttered. "The ticket collector can't see us, and there would be too many questions if he realized we were here anyway. It's the only good part about having to sit on the floor."

Dom exchanged light words with the ticket collector, an old, balding Muggle with a toothy grin, who waved them through. Archie gulped, his head and stomach both spinning as he felt the car turn and move again, cruising along for a few minutes while Dom searched for something. He stopped, throwing the car in a sharp turn, then reversing it and turning it off.

"We're here," he sang with a grin, as he opened the driver's side door. Neal pushed his door open, too, nearly falling out in the urge to stretch his legs (or in his intense desire to strangle Dom for his vociferous defense of Aerosmith, Archie wasn't sure). "Everyone out. We're in the back, well away from the other cars, so shouldn't be an issue if you all come out. If anyone asks, though, half of you took the bus here. Blankets are in the trunk."

Archie crawled out of the car eagerly, blinking and taking a few big gulps of air. To his relief, Hermione was right – it was only a couple breaths, and he already felt better. He looked around curiously. So this was the Muggle world! He stood on hard pavement, lit by large floodlights that made it almost bright as day. There were perhaps a dozen cars, all parked a short distance away, close to a giant screen. He turned around; they were in a back corner of the lot, backing onto a low hill. At the top of the hill, Archie could just make out the faint glimmer of a fence.

Neal had popped open the trunk of the car and was busy pulling out blankets for everyone. Archie grabbed one to share with Hermione, who, outside of school, was looking far more resigned to her fate, towing her a small way up the hill for a better view. Kel and Daine, it seemed, had secured the coveted spot on the hood of the car, while the others scattered around on the ground or on the hill below them. John climbed up next to Archie, his own blanket in tow, spreading it out and sitting on down beside him and Hermione. Even though it was late, it was still warm, especially compared to Britain at this time of year, this time of night. Still, Hermione pulled her half of the blanket up to cover her shoulders.

"Isn't this great?" Archie asked, a bright grin, ear-to-ear on his face. "I'm so excited!"

Hermione only sighed, though John grinned back and motioned his head to the giant screen dominating the other side of the pavement. The floodlights were dimming, and Archie caught his breath speeding up in excitement as a picture appeared on the giant screen – a lion, within a golden circle, which roared before the music started – a slow, pretty song that reminded him, more than anything else, of Celestina Warbeck.

He couldn't say he understood the plot very well, even if he was drawn in by it. James Bond was a spy – the best, most awesome, British spy. From the start, he leaned forward, intrigued by the bad guy (because Blofield was so obviously the bad guy), and he silently cheered as Bond threw him into bubbling golden potion. Then there was something about diamonds, about James Bond going undercover in a diamond smuggling ring (Archie wasn't sure why – magically speaking, diamonds were utterly useless) to meet Tiffany Case, a smuggler, and she wore practically no clothing at all! He held his breath when 007 was knocked out and put in the coffin and rolled into the incinerator, tightening his hands into fists while he hoped Bond got out (he had to get out! He was the hero!), bursting into laughter only when Bond was pulled out by the bad guys and told them bluntly that the diamonds were fake because they hadn't paid him in real money, before disappearing to a fancy hotel.

Wow, James Bond was so cool.

There was a scene in an all metal building that he didn't really understand, even if he did enjoy the part where Bond escaped in a strange buggy of some kind, then a motorcycle. There was a chase scene through a city lit with so many coloured lights, the sort of lights that he hadn't ever seen before, arranged into bright, colourful, words, casino, Las Vegas. He held his breath through the scene where Bond swung himself out a high window, climbing up on thin wires into the uppermost floor, then he gasped when he saw Blofield, the first bad guy, the one that Bond killed in the first five minutes of the movie, appear. Then he gasped again when he saw that there were two of them (Polyjuice?!), and he jumped when Bond kicked the (obviously evil) white cat and killed the Blofield that moved to save it. He leaned, still more forward, when Bond was trapped in the elevator while poisoned gas poured down (who thought that Muggles knew anything about potions? Harry could have done something like that with ease, but Muggles!), and he grinned through every single explosion throughout the last twenty minutes of the film. The explosions were awesome, and there were so many of them, and each one was better than the last!

It wasn't real – Hermione assured him that it wasn't real their entire way home, and she didn't even like the movie that much, while everyone else smiled, laughed, shared their thoughts, at least until they got back and had to sneak back in – but it was so … so …

Great. Powerful. Exciting. Wonderful. Awesome. Awe-inspiring. Just inspiring? Archie didn't have the words. If Muggles could come up with something like this, what else could they come up with?

He wanted to know. He wanted to find out. He wanted more, and he fell into a heavy, contented sleep that night with images of James Bond, Muggle (and British!) spy with all the coolest, almost magical toys, stepping out of a fancy car, fixing the lapels of his clean-cut Muggle dress clothes, and striding through the streets of London.

Chapter Text

Despite the late night, Archie had no problem waking up the next morning. It was early, still, even with the rays of light streaming through his windows, early enough his wand hadn't woken him yet. He stretched out an arm to his bedside table, grasping for his watch. The Black Heir's watch, coincidentally – no one in America would recognize the crest, so he and Harry decided had he could keep it. Seven? He sighed; classes weren't to start until nine, but he was wide awake already, feeling like he had slept through noon. Which, by British time, he had.

He heard a rasp of paper, and rolling over, he saw a piece of paper had been slid under his door. Curious, he swung his legs to the floor, and stepped over lightly to pick it up.

It was a class schedule, he realized, a slow smile spreading over his face. First morning in America, first full day at AIM, first classes! He turned his gaze down to examine the two-page schedule; the first page outlined his eight classes, spread over two days. Day A: Charms, Defensive Arts, No-Maj Studies, Magical Psychology 1. Day B: Transfigurations, Herbology, Potions, Basic Healing 1. The days would alternate, one after the other. Turning the page, he saw a list of dates for History of Magic lectures, which were taught through seminar lectures on Wednesday evenings every two weeks.

His eyes lingered for a moment on the words, No-Maj Studies. No Flying, no Astronomy. He had known that these were optional classes at AIM, and he even appreciated that! He already knew how to fly, after all, and the constellations were all in his family. Who wanted to sit in useless classes full of things they already knew? He even appreciated the fact that History of Magic was taught as a seminar series – he had a good grasp of current magical history, through Harry and reading the news, and it was nice that it didn't take up a slot in his schedule. Still, no one had mentioned to him that No-Maj Studies would be a required course.

Then again, if No-Maj studies included movies (and James Bond – did MI6 really exist?!), it wouldn't be so bad. And if that was the cost for coming to AIM and getting a head start on Healing, then he would pay it, gladly. He set the schedule down while he pulled on his uniform and his dreadfully, depressingly black overrobe, then tucked it in his bag along with his wand and a few notebooks. He would check to see if Hermione was awake yet, then go to breakfast. Maybe they would have coffee in the dining hall – even if he didn't need it, he still liked it.

In the corridor, John was already up, his hair wet, face freshly scrubbed, his overrobe draped over one arm as he closed his own door. "Morning, Harry," he said, looking bright and fully awake, falling into step beside him. "Heading to breakfast?"

Archie greeted him with a smile. "Just getting Hermione, first," he replied, heading to the door marked Hermione Granger and knocking sharply. He heard a rustle from the inside, and her head peeked out, her wild brown curls, untamed, framing her face. She was already dressed in her uniform, though without an overrobe.

"Good morning, beautiful," he greeted her, putting on his most charming grin. Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious, but he ignored it, leaning casually in the doorway. "Ready for breakfast?"

"I prefer being addressed by name," she said, after a short pause, her voice a little stiff. "Not by comments on my appearance."

Archie tilted his head, still smiling. "Really? But my uncle Sirius always says that a compliment never goes amiss. If not your beauty, what should I compliment, 'Mione?"

"It's not the compliment, really," Hermione sighed, turning back to her room where she had been packing her bag. "It's that... that's not the only thing about me."

"Of course it's not the only thing about you, 'Mione," Archie countered eagerly. "First, I noticed your beauty, but I only needed to talk to you for a minute to notice your intelligence, your sparkling wit and personality. But how could I not mention your beauty, this fine morning? You are a sight for sore eyes, the first rays of light at daybreak."

Hermione sighed, rolling her eyes, and continued throwing her books into her bag. "Beauty is an artificial construct, Harry. I'd rather you compliment me on things I've worked for, all right?"

"And as a compliment, that was awful, Harry, really." John snorted behind him. "The first rays of light at daybreak? Who do you think you are, Romeo?" He slapped Archie on the back of his head, poking his head over Archie's shoulder to look in Hermione's room. "Don't worry too much, Hermione, I'm sure Harry doesn't mean anything by it. It's our first day of classes, and you're not going to be stuck in No-Maj Studies with us, so it'll be good."

"Wait, 'Mione, you don't have to take No-Maj Studies?!" Archie burst out, whipping his head between John and Hermione. "Why not?"

Hermione's slightly annoyed look vanished, replaced with a helpless sort of amusement as she slung her bag over her back and, like John, draped her overrobe over one arm. "Um, because I'm a Muggleborn? Newblood? I grew up as a No-Maj, Harry. Let's go."

"Newbloods are automatically exempt from No-Maj Studies," John nodded wisely, leading the way to the dining hall. "But you and I, Harry, will be subject to it for the next three years. Then, if we pass the exam at the end of third year, we'll be allowed out on our own because they'll finally trust us not to blow the International Statute of Secrecy to smithereens. Though, in your case, you might actually need it."

Archie made a face at him. It was probably true – based just on yesterday, the American wizarding community was far more integrated with the Muggle world than the British wizarding community. Everyone else had had the proper clothes, they could talk about Muggle music and movies with ease. He had barely stepped foot in the Muggle world before yesterday, and even if Aunt Lily was a Muggleborn, he doubted that Harry had had much exposure to it either.

"I, on the other hand, grew up in Queens," John continued, drawing out his words in annoyance. "Queens is not a wizarding community, and my grandpa is a No-Maj who fought in World War I. I know how to pick out No-Maj clothes, how to take public transit, how to order pizza for delivery. The subject will be useless for me. I tried to get an exemption, but they denied it."

"I thought you grew up in New York City?" Archie asked, remembering yesterday's conversation, as they crossed the mostly-empty common room and headed outside. The air was cool on their faces, but not cold, and they joined the throng of students crossing the green. About half of them were already in uniforms, ready to go to classes, while the rest were still in casual clothes. He eyed a pair of bottoms with a print of penguins over it – he definitely wanted a pair like that.

"Queens is a borough of New York City," John shook his head, sighing. "Well, at least it'll be an easy class for me. Hermione, what are you taking instead of No-Maj Studies?"

"I signed up for Magical Theory I," Hermione replied, pausing by the doors politely to wait for a stream of students leaving, before entering the dining hall and making an instant beeline to an empty table close to the doors. "I thought it seemed the most useful, though Runes was tempting, too. I can hold a table for us, if you'd like to go ahead?"

The dining hall was busy, though compared to yesterday's feast, where they were packed very closely, there seemed to be plenty of room to move around. It seemed that at least some of the tables had disappeared, though, because empty tables had become a precious commodity. The buffet table, along one side of the hall, was full of breakfast foods – platters of toast, pancakes, potatoes, sausages, bacon, eggs made several ways, and pitchers full of water and juice. He didn't see any pots of coffee, yet, but he could hope.

"Thanks, Hermione." John promptly dropped his bag on the table, heading to the buffet line, as Hermione took a seat and pulled out her Charms textbook to peruse.

"Can I get you anything?" Archie asked, setting his own bag down. He smiled at her – not his blinding grin, a softer, more genuine, smile.

"Just toast for me, thank you," Hermione replied, opening her textbook. Archie could see she had already made notations along the margins. "With marmalade."

"For you, my dear, anything," he winked, and turned towards the buffet lines.

For himself, he picked up a few sausages, eggs, and toast – he liked a good breakfast. Part of it, maybe, was the weeks right after Mum died, when Dad was depressed, and he lived off cereal – but he didn't like to think about that. It didn't make a difference, anyway. The end result was the same: Archie liked a solid, big, breakfast.

For Hermione, he first grabbed two slices of toast and a small dish of marmalade, but two slices really seemed too little for a morning of classes, so he grabbed a third slice for her. There was no coffee, to his disappointment, but at least they had tea. Hermione seemed like a juice kind of girl, though, so he grabbed a glass of orange juice for her, setting everything on a tray for the trip back.

John was already back, with an omelette and a glass of orange juice, talking to Hermione about school clubs. Archie slid Hermione's plate of toast across to her, along with the marmalade and a knife. "Three slices enough?"

"More than, thank you," Hermione replied, taking the plate absently. "I'm not sure what clubs there are, yet, though. I thought I would go to the fair and look at them all and decide then."

John dug into his omelette enthusiastically. "There's all kinds, and you can join more than one, too. Obviously we should join the Healers Association, and there's a Newbloods Association and British Students Association too, if you're interested in that. Then there's clubs like Charms Club or Alchemy Club, if you're interested in a field but don't want to do a Mastery, so you still get to explore that. And then there are sports clubs, like Duelling and Quodpot, or I guess Quidditch—"

"You guess Quidditch?!" Archie interrupted, horrified, nearly dropping the slice of toast he was loading with his eggs. "What do you mean, you guess Quidditch?!"

John burst into laughter at his reaction. "You're a Quidditch fan? It's not as popular, here – Quodpot is the sport we follow. You'll see, Quodpot is awesome. Things explode."

"Bludgers hit people," Archie felt compelled to say, to defend the honour of Quidditch. "And there are two Bludgers."

"Explosions, though." John raised an eyebrow, daring Archie to argue. Admittedly, there wasn't much he could say, in the face of explosions.

"Excuse me," a soft voice interrupted, just loud enough to be heard over the hubbub of the dining hall. "Would you mind terribly if I joined you?"

The speaker was a slight girl with dark hair, tied up in a long ponytail out of her round face, and almond-shaped eyes. She wore a tired expression, and was shifting, shaking, slightly in nervousness. Archie guessed she was a first-year, partly on her size, partly on her actions. She was just too nervous to be an upper-year.

"Of course," Archie replied, as he rose to his feet and pulled the empty chair beside him for her. He heard a tutting sound from behind him, but the new girl's hands were full with a tray of food. He could hardly expect her to pull her own chair out!

"Thank you," she said gratefully, and her voice echoed far more relief than pulling out a chair really merited. She set her tray down and hid a yawn. "I'm very sorry for interrupting you. My name is Francesca Lam – I'm a first-year. Healing track, for the moment, anyway."

"So are we!" Archie burst out in excitement, his face lighting up. "You got lucky, asking us! And what do you mean, for the moment, anyway?"

She laughed shyly. "Hardly. I had a hard time sleeping last night – San Francisco is three hours behind – so I happened to see you coming in last night. As for Healing, my parents insisted. They said if I had to go to magic school, I should at least become a doctor."

"You're a newblood too, then, Francesca?" Hermione asked, her eyes bright with interest. "Hermione Granger, I'm a newblood from Britain. What are you taking as your elective?"

"Pleasure to meet you," the new girl replied, a small smile appearing on her face as she suppressed another yawn. She reached for her grapefruit and began methodically spooning out the pieces. Most of her breakfast was fruit – strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, melon, grapefruit, even a few slices of pineapple. "Yes, I am a newblood – I signed up for Runes."

"I'm Harry Potter!" Archie introduced himself cheerfully. "I'm from Britain, too, but I'm a halfblood, so I grew up in a wizarding family."

"John Kowalski," John said, looking over the new girl with a thoughtful eye. "Francesca is a weird name, for someone of our generation. Old-fashioned. Like Eunice, or Matilda, or Constance."

Francesca frowned slightly, even as Hermione raised an eyebrow. "That's a little rude, don't you think?" Hermione said, her voice pointed. "My name is Hermione. It's old-fashioned."

"Not in the wizarding world," Archie commented, shaking his head. "It's not common, but anything from Greek myth comes up regularly. I think John means that Francesca feels old."

"Harry's right," John nodded in agreement, scooping up the last of his omelette. "Francesca is like an old lady name. You need a nickname."

"Fran?" Archie guessed. He hadn't heard the name before, so he was just playing around with the sounds. The girl herself threw him a horrified look, even as she picked at her strawberries.

"No way," John shook his head firmly. "That's even worse, that makes her sound like an old lady, instead of a person with the misfortune to have an old-lady name."

"I quite think that you should let Francesca speak for herself," Hermione interrupted, frowning sternly, but both Archie and John ignored her.

"'Cesca?" Archie tried instead. He called Hermione, 'Mione, and that seemed to be fine. Something like that, maybe?

"Nah, that sounds weird, too," John shook his head. "Chess?"

"Chess is not a name," Hermione argued, taking an angry bite of her toast, while Francesca simply looked dumbfounded. "Chess is a game of strategy, not a name."

"What about Ess, then?" Archie broke in. "No, I don't like that, that's just a letter. Ran, or is that too close to Fran?"

"I'd really rather—" Francesca tried, but her voice was quiet, too quiet to break into the rapid back-and-forth that the other three had established.

"Nah, not Ran, not Ess either," John cut in, "that cuts off a few too many letters and sounds, I think. I like Chess – who cares if it's also a game? It's young, it's fun."

"Chess it is, then," Archie nodded judiciously, as the newly-named Chess shut her mouth and looked down at her breakfast. "It rolls off the tongue nicely, too, doesn't it?"

They had two classes in the morning, two in the afternoon. True to John's words yesterday, both Charms and Defensive Arts both started with a thorough review of the syllabus, grading, and a quick evaluation of what they all already knew. Archie already knew the Lumos charm, at least – he had, admittedly, been trying a few common spells at home after he and Harry had gotten their wands, just out of curiosity. He saw Dad casting Lumos all the time, so obviously it was one of the first spells he tried. Hermione took prodigious notes on everything and meticulously examined the grading structures.

Lunch was light – it was still warm outside, and instead of trying to find seats in the crowded dining hall, Archie went inside to get sandwiches for everyone and they ate outside, on a sunny patch of grass outside Thompson Hall. After lunch, the two girls went off to find their respective classes, while John and Archie headed for No-Maj Studies.

The No-Maj Studies classroom was in the East Wing, the desks set up in a horseshoe formation in front of a whiteboard. A small, round, orb was set in the ledge in front of the whiteboard. The classroom was decorated with pictures bearing legends such as Star Wars and The Sound of Music and Cosmos. The pictures didn't move, and on a closer look, Archie saw they were neither paintings nor photographs – the texture of the paper was all wrong. Movie posters, Archie realized with delight. They were just like the posters all over the drive-in last night!

John pulled Archie to a seat at the back of the classroom, at the centre of the "U", the farthest from the whiteboard. Even though newbloods were all exempt from No-Maj studies, it seemed that this class was every bit as crowded as his other classes.

"Wands away, please," the professor, a bespectacled woman with frizzy red curls said, her accent a faded Irish. She was tall and thin and, though she had eschewed wizarding attire for a deep green dress and was teaching No-Maj Studies, Archie had the impression that she was a powerful witch. He didn't know how he knew that – perhaps it was just her confidence, or perhaps the sharpness of her eyes as she made sure they obeyed her instructions. "Welcome to No-Maj Studies. My name is Professor Ryan."

There was a mutter through the classroom, and Archie put his wand away without hesitation. John hadn't bothered to take his out on the first place. To be honest, Archie's only real issue with taking No-Maj Studies was that it took away from his Healing classes, and it seemed to be the kind of thing he could learn on his own time. As a subject, he was curious – AIM was so much more connected to the Muggle world, and he was fascinated by the magic of things that were not magical. The wizarding world might have moving pictures, but movies? Movies were awesome.

She took a roll call, barely pausing when Archie corrected his name from Harriett, to Harry (it was the third time he had done so today, but only Professor McLeod, in Defensive Arts, had given him any trouble over it), before studying the class with eagle eyes. "If you are here, then you are from a wizarding family. I know that some of you have some knowledge of the No-Maj world already; I apologize in advance if you are, truly, already competent in the areas of No-Maj Studies that we will be covering over the next three years. However, in my experience, even those of you from the most open-minded and No-Maj-integrated families lack some of the necessary knowledge to successfully navigate the No-Maj world, to successfully pass as a No-Maj without drawing suspicion."

From his vantage point in the back of the room, Archie saw that several of the students had stopped paying attention, if they had ever paid attention in the first place. They were, instead, carrying on a quiet conversation amongst themselves. Professor Ryan glared at them pointedly – it was only a few seconds before one of their group, a boy with dark hair, looked up, flushed, and poked his friends. They fell silent, and Professor Ryan turned away to continue with her lecture.

"Some of you, in this room, are no doubt wondering why this is important. What need have we, witches and wizards, mages, of the No-Maj world? We have magic. We have our own ways of doing things, and they are better. We have our own entertainments, our own games, our own sports – and if that wasn't good enough, and you wanted to go out into the No-Maj world, there is nothing stopping you. Let's say you let something slip; there's always Obliviate, isn't there? Just wipe the poor No-Maj's memory, the way we did decades ago, and all will be well.

"Ethical issues aside, maybe that worked – fifty years ago. But times are changing, and it may not work much longer – if it even works now."

She paused for a moment, taking a breath, and smiled. The simple gesture took the stern lines of her face and turned them into something softer, gentler, and her tone shifted from a hard lecture to an almost thoughtful musing. "A prominent No-Maj science fiction writer of this century once said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I want you write this down and remember it: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Archie dutifully scribbled the words down, hearing the scratching of pens and pencils around him as well.

"While No-Majs may not have magic, they do have technology which does many of the same things for them that magic does for us. And while their technology may have been lacking for many years, this is something that has been changing, which has changed over the last half-century. Indeed, there are things now that No-Majs can do, that they have done, which are unrivalled by anything that wizards have ever produced.

"I see a few of you from wizarding families – Mr. Graves, I do see you making that face – are skeptical. That is why I will be showing you this recording."

She turned around to the whiteboard, pulling out her wand and weaving a spell over the orb resting in the cradle at the centre of the ledge. The orb spun, an image spinning out from its depths, unfolding to spread across the ledge, expanding against the backdrop of the whiteboard.

The image was in colour, but grainy, blurry. The picture was taken from very far away, Archie could tell, but he made out a long, thin, cylindrical tower in the distance, standing proud against the sky. The voices, though, were clear – there were words that Archie didn't understand, then then a countdown, then the bottom of the tower exploded into flames and the cylinder took off into the sky.

Lift-off, Apollo 11.

The tower moved slowly, it seemed, but considering it was only a few seconds before Archie saw the wisps of clouds drifting across the tower, he guessed it must be going very fast indeed. Even when he and Harry shot off on their brooms into the sky, they never flew so high – nowhere near so high. The air became thinner, higher up, and they never came close to the clouds before having to come down, lightheaded.

The next few minutes were confusing – there were mechanical devices first, cold machinery and with many knobs and buttons and dials that Archie didn't recognize, which drifted slowly off the screen to show blue and swirls of cloud. There was a man, a No-Maj, next, rotating in a small compartment, then a shot of a blue, blue orb. Was that a planet? Was that their planet?

That was Earth, Archie realized, a beautiful shot of Earth from the stars – he could see the clouds and oceans, the hints of green and brown outlining the continents. Archie recognized Africa first, the great brown expanse of the Sahara standing out from the rest, and from there he made out Europe, Asia, the Americas. Then, there was a shot of the blue, blue Earth rising against a grey expanse of land, the image of a No-Maj in a thick, white suit struggling to walk on the grey surface. One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind, a voice announced, and even through the distortion he could hear the pride, the hope flowing through that sentence. Then, he saw two No-Maj men, bouncing as they shouldn't have been able to, planting the No-Maj American flag into that gray land. Finally, a shot of the gray land, moving farther and farther away, a machine of some kind rotating above the gray land, and the blue, blue Earth, before the picture collapsed back into the orb.

Archie felt chills go down his spine.

"Now, what was that?" Professor Ryan asked, looking around the room. The reactions around the room were mixed; some, like John, were expressionless or expectant, and Archie guessed they were the ones who had come from the more open-minded, No-Maj-integrated families that Professor Ryan had mentioned earlier. Others, like the boy Professor Ryan called Graves, looked shocked, awed, confused, a few disbelieving. He would count himself in the awed category. John put up his hand, a lazy gesture. "Mr. Kowalski?"

"The Apollo moon landing," he replied, polite but with an edge of scorn. This was something everyone should know, his tone hinted, ever so slightly. Glancing over at his friend, Archie saw that John was looking pointedly over at the small group of students who had been chattering during class.

"Good, Mr. Kowalski. Do you recall what year it was?"

John looked back at the professor, a sheepish smile coming across his face. "Early 1970s. My grandfather often talked about it – said it was one of the greatest moments of his life, watching No-Majs do something no wizard had ever done."

The professor favoured him with a small smile. "Very close. It was 1969, and the date of the moonwalk itself was July 20, 1969 – and you're quite correct, it was the first time that No-Majs definitively achieved something that wizards could not – something that we, indeed, have still not recreated using magical means."

She turned back to the room at large. "So, tell me, students, because I'm afraid I am a little behind on the times. How fast is the fastest racing broom on the market today?"

Archie's hand shot up in the air, followed quickly by two or three others. He might know nothing about No-Majs, but he did know brooms!

"Mr. Potter?"

"The Nimbus 2000, just released this summer, has a maximum speed of 130 miles per hour," Archie spilled out. He had asked Dad for one, the minute he saw it, but Dad had shaken his head with a mischievous smirk and said that there were better brooms on the horizon. "But there are faster brooms in development, too."

"130 miles per hour. That's 210 kilometers per hour, which breaks down to," she turned to the white board, and picked up a marker. She wrote the numbers on the board, then divided by sixty, twice, then multiplied to put the numbers in the right units, calculating the numbers faster than Archie or Harry had ever managed to do in Aunt Lily's basic arithmetic classes. "That's about 195 feet per second, or just under 60 meters per second. That's not bad at all – it's very fast. But it is not anywhere close to the escape velocity for Earth's atmosphere, which is eleven kilometers per second."

Professor Ryan turned back around, then paced, first one way, then the other. "I don't need to tell you that wizards have not managed to reach these speeds, or anywhere close. The moon is too far away for Apparition and Portkeys, not to mention that both Apparition and Portkeys require us to have clear knowledge of where we are going, whether by past knowledge or Apparition coordinates. Wizarding improvements to airplanes mainly relate to safety, and even if they are a little faster than No-Maj airplanes, they still don't come close to escape velocity. And even if we did have the transportation spells necessary to get us to the moon, half of the spells and wards that we would need to survive, without air in near absolute zero conditions, haven't been invented yet. We have some spells for air, for warming, but nothing to the extent that we would need to survive in space."

Archie was taking notes, though his notes were more like questions than actual notes. Escape velocity – she had listed the speeds, but why was it called escape velocity? And what did she mean by absolute zero? He glanced over – John wasn't taking notes, so Archie made a note to himself to ask John later.

"American No-Majs used technology put a man on the moon, without magic, more than twenty years ago. The technology they used since then has progressed considerably – the computers they used to calculate trajectories on the Apollo missions were, at that time, state of the art. Now, every university across America and most of No-Maj Europe has a computer capable of replicating the feat, and technology is still progressing every day. There are telephones, now, that don't need a telephone line to work. The Earth is surrounded by a network of satellites, machines that work with each other and take pictures, that create a technology the No-Majs call the global positioning system. The computers that they are developing now, which are slowly moving into No-Maj houses and workplaces, are connected by something called the Internet, which lets No-Majs share information instantly. These are technologies, and even if they are not magical, they will change our lives, too."

Archie's list of questions was only growing. Computers. Telephones, telephone lines. Satellites – global positioning system? Internet!

"In 1692, the International Confederation of Wizards imposed the International Statute of Secrecy. Under the Statute, each wizarding government is responsible for its citizens, for the magical creatures that fall within its borders. You simply must be able to understand No-Maj culture, history, and science, at some basic level, to be able to uphold your obligations under the Statute – it is not good enough, anymore, to look around and make sure no one is looking before you cast a spell, because there are security cameras. It is not good enough to attempt to trick No-Majs with a Confundus charm, because computers can't be fooled by the Confundus Charm. It's simply not good enough to Obliviate No-Majs when there might be videos, when No-Maj psychologists have begun research into reconstructing and rediscovering forgotten memories.

"This first year, we will be focusing on No-Maj culture: the cultural aspects that No-Majs would find suspicious if you knew nothing about them. We'll start with the cultural impact of science and technology, particularly No-Maj thought, and will move onto several popular film and television franchises that you would be expected to know about. Before the holidays, we'll also go different No-Maj musical genres. After the holidays, we'll go through popular No-Maj sports, before spending most of the term studying the No-Maj conception of magic through novels. At the end of the year, there will be a quick overview of No-Maj religion."

That didn't sound bad at all – film was just another word for movies, and Archie liked movies! Television had to be something related. No-Maj novels sounded interesting, too! On the other hand, though, Archie could tell he was already behind. Most of the Americans, even if they had all grown up in wizarding families, had had some exposure to the Muggle world. Archie didn't even go into the Muggle world to shop! Aunt Lily had always done the Muggle clothing shopping for their families, and on the few occasions that he wanted to shop for himself, there were shops in Diagon Alley that specialized in Muggle clothing. He and Harry hadn't been allowed out into the Muggle world on their own, and, granted, he had never thought much about that before coming to America. He felt like he had so much to catch up on, and his notes for the day were simply a list of things he needed explained just to follow Professor Ryan's lecture. He would have to ask John for help, or Hermione.

Archie walked out of No-Maj Studies feeling like, somehow, the world had shifted. Yesterday, Muggles were cool. They had movies, they had music, and that was all very interesting, but he had never thought of them as anything beyond interesting. He had never thought of them as powerful, or skilled, or knowledgeable – he had never considered that, in some ways, they and their technology might surpass wizards and their magic. It had simply never occurred to him.

But today, Muggles had gone to the moon, and wizards hadn't. Muggles had invented aeroplanes, and wizards hadn't. He wondered, vaguely, how Muggles went about Healing. Did they use technology for Healing, too? What improvements might they have made there?

In his daze, he didn't notice the professor's eyes pausing on him as he left.

He was still thinking it over when they arrived in Magical Psychology, one of the only two Healing-focused classes for first years. He took a seat beside John, who again pulled him to the back of the classroom.

"Only one more class for the day, Harry," John said cheerfully. "And it's a Healing class, so wake up!"

Archie snapped to it. Right! One of his two only two Healing classes, and what else was he here for other than Healing? He brightened, as Hermione and Chess came through the door and took the two seats in front of them.

"How was No-Maj Studies?" Hermione asked, turned around in her seat.

"Great!" Archie burst out, his grin set to blinding. "Did you know that No-Majs have been to the moon?!"

He heard a small snort of laughter, even as Hermione was taken aback, slightly bemused. "Well, yes. 1969, wasn't it? The moon landing?"

"Yes!" Archie leaned forward, stretching out, almost catlike, on his desk towards her. "They used computers to do it! What's a computer? What's the Internet? Have you seen them yet? Can we see them in Oxford?"

"I'm… not sure," Hermione replied slowly, blinking awkwardly, while Chess smothered her giggles with a hand. "I don't think the university there would let us see them, so no. Those are probably only for researchers to use."

"If you come to San Francisco, I can show you one," Chess said, gasping for breath as she tried to talk through her laughter. "My mom works at XeroxPARC, and my dad is a professor at Stanford – we have a computer at home. It's even connected to the Internet, because my dad uses it to talk to other researchers around the world."

Archie turned shining eyes on her. "Really?!"

"I think so," Chess tilted her head to one side, considering. "I don't think my parents would mind. And I like computers."

"Great!" John said with a cheeky smile, tapping the dark-haired girl with his pencil, which had teeth marks along the end. She didn't seem to notice, or, at least, she didn't comment on it. "That means you can help us. I may have, ah, overestimated my knowledge of No-Maj technology this morning…"

She opened her mouth to reply, but the door to the classroom opened, and the professor – Healer Beauchamps, as it happened – strode in, and both girls turned around, hurriedly pulling out notebooks and pens. Archie straightened, similarly pulling out a fresh notebook and a pen, while John was already prepared with a few sheets of lined paper and his chewed-up pencil.

"Welcome to your first year of Magical Psychology," Healer Beauchamps started, writing the words on the whiteboard at the front. "For those of you from non-wizarding families, you may find this to be quite unlike what you expect, on hearing the word Psychology."

She began drawing a table on the whiteboard, marking the words Magical Psychology on one side, and Basic Healing on the other side. "Psychology, in No-Maj terms, relates to a field of study relating how people think and behave. It is not necessarily related to Healing, though many No-Maj psychologists are indeed Healers of a kind. Magical Psychology is something very different; for mages, Magical Psychology is the study of how magic interacts with the mind and with the body, including areas of Healing such as Curses, Spell Damage and illnesses that are transmitted via magical means, including through magical creatures. Your Basic Healing classes, on the other hand, will cover the areas of Healing in which the underlying condition or illness is not inherently magical in nature: trauma, musculoskeletal conditions, cardiology, genetics, neurology, and so on. As you very well know, mages are susceptible to the same illnesses that plague our No-Maj neighbours, though for the most part, since we integrate magic into our Healing practices, they don't normally cause us any hardship.

"I think most of you in this room have indicated an intent to try for the Healing program; if so, you will take Magical Psychology and Basic Healing throughout your seven years here, only to be supplemented in fourth year and above by courses in your chosen subspecialty.

"This year, Magical Psychology will, by and large, be a theoretical course. I know many of you will be disappointed in hearing this, but in order to understand how to Heal illnesses or conditions caused by magic, you must understand how magic works – how your mind works with your core to cast a spell, how magic travels from your core to form a spell, how magic might be corrupted or interfered with. We'll start today with your core."

Unlike any of Archie's other courses, Professor Beauchamps gave a full lecture that day, and it was utterly fascinating. It was dense material – there were no breaks, in her class, and the entire ninety-minute class was full of the scratching of pens and pencils, and Archie knew he would need to read it over again to truly understand it all. Still, this is what he had come to AIM for, what he dreamed of, so he was all too happy to spend the final hour before bed in a circle with his new friends, reviewing the material and preparing for their next class.

The next day, Archie went to his first classes for Transfiguration, Herbology, Potions, and Basic Healing. Potions was shockingly, unexpectedly, easy. At least some of Harry's potions fascination must have rubbed off on him over the years, because the Potions syllabus looked like a joke. In fact, he had thought it was a prank at first, and had laughed heartily the second he saw it.

"Mr. Potter, would you share for us what you find so amusing about my syllabus?" Professor Tallum's voice was reedy, thin, but still cutting as he tapped his foot on the floor.

"A good joke should be appreciated, sir," Archie replied shortly, fighting to catch his breath. "And I was wondering what was on the real syllabus."

There was silence, as half the class stared at him, and it dawned on him that the syllabus in front of him was the real one. The tapping of Professor Tallum's foot slowed, and Archie swallowed dryly, thinking quickly.

"Or rather, sir, I thought it was a joke because I have brewed most of these potions at home," he finished weakly. "I'm sorry."

"If that is the case, Mr. Potter, you should have no trouble coming up here and brewing a Boil Cure potion immediately," Professor Tallum said, his reedy voice icy, and Archie heard a sharp intake of breath beside him from John on one side, as Hermione began surreptitiously paging through her Potions textbook, looking for a recipe for him.

Well, what was done was done, and he was being Harry – a poor replica of Harry, maybe, but Harry wouldn't shirk from this challenge and neither would he. Harry would be able to do it without a recipe, probably, but it had been a while since she had last walked him through it, and anyway, Harry always checked the recipe if one was available. "If I may have two minutes to review the recipe, sir? I remember the step with the porcupine quills is tricky."

Professor Tallum inclined his head, and Archie grabbed at Hermione's textbook, reviewing it carefully. Boil-Cure Potion was not difficult, not even a lengthy brew, and since it was a potion peripherally related to Healing (it was a Boil-Cure Potion!), he had made it several times before under Harry's watchful eye just for the practice. He memorized the short ingredient list and steps quickly. It would only require ingredients in his potions kit, and there were only seven steps to the potion. This was doable, he told himself. He could back down, but Harry wouldn't, so neither would he.

Memorization done, he held the ingredient list in his head as he moved to the front of the room, pulled out his kit and set up the ingredients he would need in the order he would be using them. He threw together the base quickly – that was only three ingredients, and even if he wasn't as precise in his knife skills as Harry was, it was good enough, he thought. He threw in ingredients in the order they were called for, stirred the exact correct number of times clockwise and counter-clockwise, and navigated the porcupine quills step, by far the most difficult in this potion, successfully. Finally, he watched as the potion simmered to almost the exact shade that Harry's would have been, ignoring the silence and stares of his classmates. He might not be Harry, but he refused to embarrass her.

"Very good, Mr. Potter," Professor Tallum said, the words twisting out of his mouth almost reluctantly as he examined the completed potion. It wasn't flawless, not like Harry's would have been, but it was good. "But your potion remains on the acidic side – possibly a little too acidic for use on skin. However, I see that we have my assistant selected for the year."

"Yes, sir," Archie fought the scowl that was about to cross his face. "If I may sit down, sir?"

Professor Tallum tilted his head in the direction of Archie's empty seat, and Archie needed no further instruction before he was off like a shot, taking a seat between John and Hermione again.

Most of the first-year Potions curriculum was basic: aside from Boil Cure Potion, there were basic sleeping draughts, a Forgetfulness Potion, a few other basic ones. Harry had brewed every potion on the AIM first-year syllabus before she was eight years old and had walked Archie through the Healing-related ones soon afterwards, telling him that they would be helpful for his future Healing career. If this was the Potions curriculum at AIM, then he and Harry were all too right to switch places; she could learn nothing here.

For the rest of class, Archie was called on to answer questions whenever no one else in the class offered, ending up answering nearly half of them, the correct answers spilling out of his mouth even if he didn't want to answer. Maybe he didn't have the encyclopaedic knowledge of ingredients that Harry did, and maybe his answers weren't as complete as hers would have been, but what he knew was enough. Hermione and John both sent him puzzled glances throughout class.

"That was amazing," Hermione breathed, after class, her eyes shining in interest, but Archie simply shook his head. He wasn't Harry, and Potions were Harry's thing, not his, and accepting the praise felt wrong, false, uncomfortable. He didn't want to talk about it.

"My cousin likes Potions," he said, tone dismissive, by way of explanation. "We brewed most of these at home by ourselves. Let's hurry to Basic Healing, I want to get good seats."

Basic Healing took place in a bright, sunnily lit, ground floor classroom in the North Wing of Thompson Hall. The professor was already there when they arrived, wiping off the whiteboard from the previous class and writing the words Basic Healing 1 on it instead. They found seats in the middle of the room – not at the front, which was where Hermione wanted to be, but not in the back, either, where John wanted to be.

"Welcome to Basic Healing," the professor said. She was a large, rosy-faced woman with an eminently patient smile, her blonde curls hanging in a bob framing her face. "My name is Professor Willoweed. As those of you who are in our Healing program no doubt already know, Basic Healing, as opposed to Magical Psychology, is where you will study the areas of Healing where the illnesses and conditions are not inherently magical in nature. This will feel far more familiar to students from a non-wizarding background, as it will cover the same areas that No-Maj medicine covers, though wizarding methods of Healing necessarily involve magic."

She turned to the whiteboard and began making notes, scrawling points in quick, barely legible script that Archie somehow found surprising. He didn't think a Healer would have such messy writing, but it boded well for him – he had never mastered the neat penmanship that Harry had naturally. "The Healing program at AIM is systems-based. This year, we will first be covering basic diagnostic spells, particularly as it focuses on trauma, and first aid spells; this is mainly so that you will be able to heal minor scrapes and injuries by yourselves without needing to find one of us, or an upper-year Healing student. At AIM, any student who is injured may find you and ask you for your assistance. After that, we will spend most the year in an in-depth study of the musculoskeletal system, including the common illnesses and conditions that may affect that system. Towards the end of the year, we will have a brief study of dermatology; fortunately, unlike No-Maj medicine, most hair and skin conditions can be Healed using only a few common charms and potions. Your future years here will also focus on one or two systems of fields of study and this will be one of your two required Healing classes even once you have declared a subspecialty."

By the end of the class, Professor Willoweed had showed them two basic Healing spells, a sanitization spell and the most basic diagnostic charm, and set them to work. Hermione had gotten the spells almost right away, and Archie had mastered both by the end of the class. John had gotten the spells to work, but not consistently so, and Chess hadn't managed to cast either.

All in all, AIM's Healing program was everything that Archie had been hoping for, and that was a swelling bubble of satisfaction that smoothing over his lingering annoyance from the disastrous Potions class. He privately thanked both Arcturus and Rigel for his fortune having Harry Potter for a cousin, for her willingness to trade places, and for her (or maybe, their) ingenuity to pull it off, and settled in for a very good year.

The only thing missing, Archie thought, at the end of that first week, was a good prank. Or, really, several pranks. It wasn't as though the first week of classes was busy, which really made it an ideal time for a prank. He had some fireworks in this trunk, courtesy of Harry (who sadly had little interest in pranks in and of themselves, though she could give as good as she got), but as far as he was concerned, fireworks were celebratory, and while he might have a lot to celebrate, they were not very interesting as far as pranks were concerned.

The best pranks, though, weren't planned. Sure, he and Dad would set up ten, twelve pranks when they knew Uncle James was coming over, but they were never really planned – it was just creativity, quick thinking, seeing the opportunities and taking them. Archie was a little disadvantaged because he didn't know as many spells as Dad did (that would change!), but he was, he thought, a master of seeing the opportunities and taking them.

So on Friday morning, when he and Hermione and Chess were waiting outside John's room for him to get his things together and find his shoes (he was, apparently, in the habit of just kicking his shoes off somewhere in his room the minute he stepped in it), and John threw one shoe out on the balcony while he searched for the other one, how could Archie resist?

John was busy, and Hermione and Chess were watching him search with some concern. Chess had offered to help, but he had declined, saying it would only be a couple minutes, he knew he had kicked them off in this direction, they had to be under his bed, and he was flat on his stomach with his head and his wand under the bed searching with things strewn all over in a truly hurricane-grade mess. And John's other shoe was just so conveniently beside Archie. And no one was watching him.

It was only a tiny twitch of his wand, a very quiet whispered Wingardium Leviosa, and John's shoe was stuck on the ceiling. It was easy to hold there, and he waited eagerly for the moment that he knew was coming: when John found his other shoe, hopped out his room, and asked where his other shoe was.

"I found it!" John panted, wiggling out from under his bed with a shoe in hand, dropping it on the floor and as he stood up and shoved his foot in it. "I knew it would be under the bed!"

"Why is it that you only have one pair of shoes? And why don't you take them off neatly so this doesn't happen in the future?" Hermione scolded, but there was no real heat in her voice. "We have to go, now, or we'll be late for Charms!"

"Why would you need more than one pair of shoes at a time?" John shrugged, limping his way out the door to where he had just thrown his other shoe. "We're good, let's go – wait, where's my other shoe?! I know I threw it out here! Did it go through the railing?"

John didn't even look at Archie as he hopped over to peer over the balcony at the common room floor below. The room was empty, save for a few upper-years who Archie guessed didn't have any classes until the second period. There was nothing down there (of course not), but Archie pasted a carefully concerned look on his face as he turned around (carefully keeping his wand, hidden in his wide sleeves, trained upwards) and made a show of scanning the floor.

"I didn't see it go over," Chess supplied helpfully, scanning the floors. "But you did throw it out of your room. I thought I saw it land near Harry?"

Hermione let out an aggravated sigh. "I should leave you all here," she muttered, running a hand through her bushy brown curls. "We are going to be late."

"But you wouldn't do that, 'Mione," Archie smiled at her. He liked her curls, and he even liked her threats. She was the ballast to their group – the voice that brought them back to reality, when he and John perhaps sometimes got a little too carried away in excitement over one thing or another. "You're too kind to abandon us in our hour of need!"

"I wish that weren't so," she replied darkly. "I should just leave you all here."

"So if it landed near Harry, it should be near him, right?" John said, scanning the ground near Archie's feet, then up and down the hall. "But it's not—"

He turned to look at Archie, who was sure to keep his face as carefully concerned as possible, then he frowned and looked up, seeing his shoe stuck on the ceiling. "Harry!"

Archie shrugged again, adopting a look of surprise, mild confusion and a hint of offense. "Why are you asking me? I haven't a clue. That's some skill, John."

"Harry!" Hermione snapped. She didn't believe his innocent look for a second. Well, he did tell them all that his family was into pranking, so he was the logical choice. "Get it down, we're late!"

"I can't," he lied sheepishly, feigning embarrassment. The trick of being a good prankster was not to deny what you had done, once you were called out. Still, that didn't preclude continuing the trick. "It's stuck."

Hermione pulled out her wand, trying a few cancelling spells, including Finite Incantatem, but since Archie was still actively casting the levitation spell, it didn't work – she didn't put enough power behind it. When Finite came into conflict with a spell that was still being continuously cast, the spell taking precedence would be the one with more power behind it. Chess studied the shoe with some interest, while John went back into his room to fetch his chair.

Archie leaned, draping one arm around the balcony railing as he looked up at the shoe now apparently "stuck" on the ceiling, keeping a look of combined embarrassment and concern on his face. Showmanship was a key part of a prank's execution – if they believed he didn't know how to get it down, then the trick would go on. It wouldn't be fun otherwise. And honestly, given his repertoire of spells, showmanship was a large part of how he got pranks to work at home, too.

John pulled his desk chair onto the balcony, underneath his shoe, making to climb onto it even as Hermione sucked in a breath. The desk chairs weren't particularly stable – they rocked, so the students could lean back in them without tipping them over. Even on top of his chair, though, John wasn't tall enough to reach his shoe. He made to jump, but Hermione stopped him, citing danger, then focused her wand on a new spell. A different cancellation spell, Archie expected.

"John," Chess said suddenly, her eyes roving between the shoe on the ceiling and Archie. She was frowning, and tilted her head in Archie's direction when John looked down at her. "I think – his wand hand."

John looked over, and his eyes narrowed, a wolfish grin appearing on his face as he promptly launched himself at Archie. Faced with the stocky boy's full weight coming at him, Archie leapt away from the railing, dropping the levitation spell in the process.

"I have it," Hermione said, holding the shoe up as Archie sighed, rolling his shoulders and grinning. It had been fun while it lasted. "Now, can we please go?"

Their first Saturday, Archie was woken up by a pounding on his door. He groaned, rolling over to get his watch. It had been a late night, before – he had been dictating a letter to Aunt Lily and Uncle James, but it had been so much harder than he expected! Dear Mum and Dad, he had started at first, AIM is amazing! It is still warm here, like summer. Some of the language was so hard to understand at first. They call Muggles No-Majs, here, and I guess No-Maj doesn't work so well as Muggle for describing blood status so Muggleborns are called newbloods instead—

No, that wouldn't work. He sounded too much like himself.

Dear Mum and Dad, AIM is wonderful. It is still warm here, I can see why the packing list didn't call for any winter clothing. I'm told that it doesn't get very cold here at all. The school system is quite different, I wasn't expecting that Muggle Studies would be a requirement. The language, too! It took me a little while to adjust to new words – No-Maj for Muggle, newblood for Muggleborn. I made new friends, too – Hermione Granger, a British Muggleborn, John Kowalski, a halfblood from New York–

Ugh, no, that wasn't quite right, either, he sounded like Hermione. And did he really want to talk about John? Especially to Uncle James when he was pretending to be Harry?

Dad and Uncle James were best friends, and Dad had always told him that he owed much to Uncle James and to the Potters, who had shown him a different way of being a pureblood. It was because of the Potters, largely, that Dad had successfully navigated the Black family exit from Dark pureblood Society without causing (much) offense. But they did differ in some ways – the key one being the education of their Heirs.

By all rights, Harry should have received the same education as he did. Make no mistake – noble society was weird, and he and Dad didn't approve of most of the etiquette rules or cultural mores either. Arranged marriages at seventeen? Thank you, but no, thank you. But he and Dad still considered it important to know them, because knowledge was power, knowledge held within it the power to choose. Half of how Dad managed to extricate the Black family from their traditional noble obligations relied on knowing exactly which etiquette rules to break and which ones were inviolable, what would be acceptable to Society at large, in what context. It wouldn't hold forever, Dad warned him – a large part of his exit had relied on his personal debts to the Potters, which were generally seen to take precedence over their family's traditional obligations. Archie would need to step into those shoes and navigate the same political morass in time, and Dad had made sure his Heir received the education to be able to do just that.

Uncle James, on the other hand, saw no need for Harry to receive the same. Admittedly, Archie thought their position was a little different, since they were a traditionally Light and progressive family. In any case, while Archie could write home and say he had made close friends with the son of a prominent American family, he was pretty sure Uncle James would see a male name and lose his mind. Despite the fact that Harry, as a noble, Book of Gold, heiress, would likely begin having to deal with potential suitors in a few years, and prominent connections in America could both act as both sword and shield. Our Heiress will do better with a connection from abroad, he imagined Uncle James sniffing in derision, the way his grandfather did every time he saw Archie. Mr. Kowalski brings with him significant international connections and he'll treat our daughter so much better than your snivelling little prince. What are you offering, anyway?

Archie laughed out loud. That was a perfectly awful picture, and it would never happen. No, he and Dad fully expected Uncle James to lose his head at the first offer, and reality would probably involve many more offensive comments, and potentially a spell or two, if Dad couldn't intercede fast enough. Archie prayed he would be there to watch the fireworks when that time came!

Practically speaking, though, Archie had no concerns whatsoever on Harry learning to navigate the pureblood political scene for herself. He had passed on his own etiquette lessons to her (though she was an atrocious dancer), and she had read all the pureblood etiquette books in the Black library in preparation for the ruse. She also had the right mindset for it – she liked that kind of intricate political dance. Archie hated it – why not just say what you mean?! He dreamed of being able to tell his grandparents, the Lord and Lady Fawley, and his uncle, the Fawley Heir, that they were stuck-up, priggish, Light supremacists no better than their Dark counterparts, and yet, for the sake of potential future allies, he forebore. It was a tragedy, truly. Maybe that was why he hadn't bothered to tell them that, by magical affinity, he was, like Mum, Light. He was saving that bomb for the exact, perfect, moment.

He digressed. He needed to channel Harry in his letters. And, probably, keep things as simple as possible for her. He sighed, starting over, purposely slowing his speech to something more like Harry's measured rhythm. That always helped.

Dear Mum and Dad, how are you? Things are going well at AIM. The weather is still warm. The school system here is quite different – I didn't expect that Muggle Studies would be a requirement. Still, the Healing classes are excellent, and I have already made a good impression on our Potions professor, Professor Tallum. I made a new friend, Hermione Granger, a British Muggleborn from Oxford. I hope things are going well with you. Please give Uncle Sirius and Uncle Remus my best.

It was short, but Harry was not given to long letters, so he signed off and sealed the note, setting it out for one of the house-elves to take to the Owlery to send the next morning. He wished he could write to Dad, but there was no way – Harry would never have done so, and it would be too suspicious for him to do so now. Harry would write to her parents, and she would write to Uncle Remus if she had any questions about magical theory, but there was usually no reason for her to write to Dad directly.

He wished he could share everything he had seen, even in the first week! The new words – sure, No-Maj was clumsy, but it was so direct, so to the point! No-Maj, like No Magic! And newblood, a term that mirrored halfblood, pureblood – it was hopeful, almost, an empty term that spoke only of possibility, that firmly linked newbloods with their magic, which was new, instead of explicitly tying them to their heritage. And there were movies, and technology, and he wished he could tell Dad about Muggles landing on the moon, about James Bond, about board games, about the million and a half tiny things that had come up over the week. He wanted to talk about sweatshirts – John had let him borrow one of his until they could get to town to go shopping, and it was huge and oversized but so comfortable, he wanted to buy one for Dad for Christmas! He wanted to talk about AIM, and the different buildings, and he wanted to write about John and Hermione and even Chess, who patiently answered all his questions about computers as best as she could, then showed him on a piece of paper how programs were written, and then she told him about robots and robots were cool.

He missed Dad, like an ache that couldn't be salved, but he was here, in America, where things were so exciting and new and wonderful, that he couldn't say he regretted anything. Maybe he didn't get Hogwarts, with its elegant stone corridors and ancient history and grand Great Hall and traditional Houses, but in his opinion he had something miles better – he had a whole new world to explore, to see, to live, and as much as he missed Dad, as much as he wanted to share things and he couldn't, he would, as he did with the Fawleys, forebear.

The pounding came at his door again, this time with a shout.

"Harry? It's nearly nine in the morning, what are you doing still sleeping? Wake up, it's Clubs Day!"

It was John. Was it really almost nine? Archie winced – he almost never slept in so late, and he was what he considered a morning person. He was always up by eight, and there were so many times where he would Floo over to Potter Place at eight-thirty in the morning, rudely waking Harry up by jumping on her bed. She would groan, rolling over away from him, and say something about having been awake late the night before brewing, and he would scold her, and eventually she would roll off the bed with a fwump! She would reject whatever robes he pulled out from her closet for her, and she would put on the same brewing robes she had probably worn for half the week, and Archie would drag her out for Quidditch, or Diagon Alley, or whatever else he had planned for the day.

"I'm up, I'm up!" Archie yelled back, doing exactly what Harry would have and rolling off his bed with more of a thud than a fwump. "Clubs Day is on all day, we don't need to be there right when it opens, John!"

"But the Duelling demo is at ten and I want to see it!"

Archie pulled off his pyjamas, tossing them on his bedcovers, reaching into his closet for his favourite and most comfortable pair of black slacks and a red polo shirt. It would be too warm out for him to need a sweater, at least until the evening. He ripped the door open, to see John leaning impatiently against the railing across from his door, casually dressed in a loose black t-shirt bearing the legend The Who (whatever that meant) and the ubiquitous jeans. "Who's doing the exhibition, do you know?"

"Neal and Kel, first," John replied brusquely. "Then some of the upper-years. But they say that Keladry Mindelan is the second coming of Alanna Trebond, who won the North American League Duelling Championship for AIM the last four years running, so I want to see it. Come on, the girls are already at breakfast." John frowned. "Chess is doing that I'm not really hungry thing, again, so I need to go make sure she eats something solid. She only ate a bowl of soup last night and she's only picking at strawberries now."

Archie was surprised that his friend had even noticed what Chess had been eating or, rather, not eating. "You pay a lot of attention to her," he said, smirking a little.

"Don't be ridiculous, we're eleven," John said, frowning and shaking his head. "It's just something I picked up from my grandma. We like taking care of people. If you weren't eating, I'd notice and make you eat too."

Archie sighed, but made a mental note to check his friend in case she was sick, though Hermione had probably already done so. He wasn't worried. John lit up when he saw chocolate croissants on the Saturday breakfast table, grabbing five, while Archie picked out a heartier breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and bacon. By the time he joined them, John was already cajoling Chess into eating a chocolate croissant.

"I don't really like sweets," she was saying, frowning even as she took a hesitant bite. "And eating in the mornings makes me feel sick."

"We only get chocolate croissants on Saturdays, though," John said, keeping his tone reasonable even if it was completely at odds with what he said. "So you have it eat it now, or it's a whole week before you get to eat another one."

She made a face at him, but nibbled on it half-heartedly as John inhaled the other four. It wasn't anywhere near ten, so Archie began eating at a much more sedate pace.

"What booths are you thinking of visiting?" Hermione asked, two sheets of paper spread out in front of her. Archie looked over – one was a map of the auditorium, small squares marked with numbers, and the other was a list of clubs. "We should sign up for the Healers Association, at the very least, then I want to look at the British Students Association and the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization."

Archie pulled the list closer to him, raising an eyebrow at the sheer number of choices. There had to have been at least thirty or forty clubs listed. Alchemy Club, Asian Students Association at AIM, Black Students of AIM, British Students Association, Chamber Music, Charms Club, Chess Club, Choir, Creature Rights Advocacy Group, Dance Club, Duelling Club … His eyes skimmed down the list, organized alphabetically, noting Quidditch and Quodpot right beside each other, all the way down to the Theatre Troupe at the bottom. Archie flipped over the page: on the other side, there was just a schedule for the demonstrations, which would begin at ten. Those, though, didn't seem to be in any sort of order.

"Anything you want, 'Mione," Archie said with a smile, sliding the list back at her. "Everything you pick will be great, anyway."

"But you should look for something for yourself, too," Hermione frowned. "You and John always argue about your quids and quods and what have you, what about that?"

Archie gasped, letting an expression of shock and dismay cross his face while he dropped his fork in favour of placing one hand over his heart dramatically. "It's Quidditch, Hermione! Quidditch! You're British, you need to back me on this. John already has Chess in his corner!"

"Because Quodpot is so clearly superior," John interrupted with a smirk. "Explosions."

"And John doesn't have Francesca in his corner, anyway," Hermione retorted, waving her hand. "Francesca doesn't care, right?"

"Please don't pull me into this," Chess mumbled, mouth full of chocolate croissant, looking away.

"Well, anyway, I play both," John sighed, finishing with his croissants. "There's my dirty little secret. Quodpot in the fall, Quidditch in the spring. If you're into Quidditch, you should really join."

Archie wrinkled his nose, thinking it over. On one hand, it was something that Harry would do – she loved Quidditch. He loved Quidditch too, but he really enjoyed watching more than playing, and anyway he played Chaser while she played Beater almost exclusively. And, if he played Quidditch, it would be something that Uncle James would ask about, and it would probably complicate things for Harry, needing to remember his teammates and so on, and he really did want to focus on his Healing training at AIM.

"I'll think about it," he said finally. "I'm really more of a watcher than a player, though. I'll look around, see what catches my eye."

"All right, so we'll have to stop by the Quodditch and Quidpot booths," Hermione said, marking them off on her sheet, even as both Archie and John glared at her. "They're opposite each other in the third row. If we start at this corner and we wind our way up this route—"

"We don't need a plan for going to Clubs Day, Hermione," John rolled his eyes, pushing his empty plate away from him. "Be spontaneous. We can just wander around, it's not going to be so big."

"But how will we see what all of our options are without a plan?" she argued. "What if I missed a booth and it turned out that that club would have been perfect for me?"

"All the clubs are listed in a sheet in front of you!"

"You can't judge a club by its name, though," Hermione frowned, eyeing her list. "What if they were just poorly named? And the names aren't helpful for knowing what the clubs do, either – take the British Students Association, for example. Is it just a club that organizes social events, or do they also advocate for change in Britain? Or is it a support community? We won't know unless we talk to them."

"So, talk to them," John shrugged, even as Archie cast him a pleading look, and he sighed. "I don't mean to stop you, Hermione. If you want to plan an optimal route to see everything, fine, I just don't think it's necessary. I already know what I'm joining, though, so I won't follow. I'm going to watch the Duelling first, then I'll sign up for that and for both Quodpot and Quidditch, then I'll probably just wander around and watch demos and stuff."

"Might I join you?" Chess asked, setting down the last bite of the croissant on her plate.

"Only if you finish your chocolate," John grinned, even as Archie discreetly rolled his eyes. Whatever he said, John clearly had a soft spot for the shy newblood, always finding a way to draw her into the conversation. Chess made a face, but tucked the rest of the croissant into her mouth and swallowed with difficulty. "Good. We have twenty minutes – let's go get good seats! We'll see you there?"

"Yeah, of course," Archie nodded at him, watching the two of them leave. He polished off the last few remaining bits on his plate, then turned his most charming smile on Hermione. "How do you want to go about it, 'Mione, my dear? Other than the Healing, I don't have any particular interests, so we'll do whatever you want. What's the route?"

By the time Archie and Hermione arrived in the auditorium, which had evidently been expanded to accommodate the fair, it was already packed with excited students, dressed in all sorts of clothing. Some of their clothes were clearly of wizarding origin but inspired by Muggle designs. Archie spotted several T-shirts with flashing, charmed symbols flashing continually over the front, dresses with embroideries that ran like water over the hems. Archie spotted some students wearing light, summer-weight wizarding robes over Muggle attire, and many other students dressed completely in Muggle clothing. All the designs ran together in a mesmerizing clash of colours and cultures that Archie couldn't help but find utterly delightful. He wanted t-shirts with pictures that blinked and flashed, better fitting jeans, sweatshirts!

Another time. John said he would take him shopping, though Archie doubted there would be any charm-infused Muggle clothes in the next town over. He'd probably have to go to one of the American wizarding communities. John said there was a sizeable community in New York City. He'd go there, sometime, to explore, to see things, to find things he didn't know he had been missing.

He looked around, past the crowd of students. The auditorium had that characteristic stretched-out look that rooms did, sometimes, when expansion spells were used. The usual curves weren't as smooth as they should have been, the crown moldings on the ceilings were subtly disproportionate. Still, all the tables, chairs, banners, and posters which had been set up in the room had the proper proportions, making it easy for Archie to ignore the subtle wrongness signalling the expansion charms. There were so many clubs – the little map Hermione had did no justice to the messy, frenetic, wild pace of the AIM Clubs Day fair. There were signs adorning every booth, students shouting, talking, laughing, crowding around every table.

He craned his head to look at the stage. The doors to the auditorium opened opposite the stage, so he and Hermione were still farthest from it. John and Chess were probably somewhere in the mass of students around the front of the stage, he realized, but there was no way that he and Hermione would be joining them, now. He trailed after Hermione as she started at one corner of the room, working her way through the various cultural organizations.

He paused to watch the curtains raise on the stage, Kel and Neal facing off against each other, wands in hand. There was a brief introduction of some kind – whoever was doing it was sparing no effort to make it as dramatic as possible. Neal, apparently, came from a prominent wizarding family in Montreal, which had produced a strong line of Aurors. Kel was supposed to be the second coming of Alanna Trebond, the AIM duelling legend. Neal was twirling his wand in one hand, while Kel was poker-faced, standing at the ready.

The minute the signal went off, a cascade of red sparks, spells flew. As a fourth-year, Neal had already mastered non-verbal spell-casting for at least a few spells, and Archie picked out a Stupefy followed by Expelliarmus, Impedimenta, a few others. Kel countered them, seemingly without any thought whatsoever, varying her shield charms and dodging what could not be countered. He couldn't hear the spells she was throwing at him in return, but guessed the blue light was a Flipendo. It was an exhibition match, though, so Archie knew they wouldn't be pulling out all the stops. They were advertising, trying to bring in new members, so there was almost a poetic choreography to their exchange of spells.

He looked away from the stage, catching up with Hermione as she investigated her third booth. She already had papers in her arms – Muggle papers, something they called photocopies, they were light and not at all like parchment. The pictures on them were a little blurry, nothing like the brightly coloured No-Maj comics that John kept around (he seemed to like one called X-Men a lot) either, but they got the point across.

Hermione waved him closer to the booth she was at, and without thinking Archie followed, only to find himself face to face with the British Students Association. Oh, no. This was not good – not good at all. He cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. She had said she wanted to look at it, hadn't she?

"And this is Harry, Harry Potter. He's a first-year, Healer, also from Britain," Hermione was saying, even as Archie thought fast. He did not want to join the British Students Association. Almost all of them were newbloods, he knew – for some reason or another, not a lot of British halfbloods came to AIM. Maybe it was just that there weren't many of them, anymore, or maybe they had other options. But the British newbloods at AIM would return to Britain over the holidays, and they would want to meet up, and if it was just Hermione that was one thing, but a whole circle of people? Especially when, in Britain, he wouldn't be Harry Potter but Archie Black? True, they probably wouldn't fall into his social circle, but he and Harry came from prominent families, and sooner or later it would come out that Harry Potter was really Harriett Potter and then the whole castle would come crumbling down!

Archie pasted on a polite, friendly smile (one of Harry's smiles, in fact – her fake one). "Er, hello."

"My name is Cassie. Welcome to AIM!" the brunette said with a wide smile. There was a small gap between her two front teeth. "There's quite a lot of us here, with the British laws being what they are – it can be really hard for British students to settle in America, or to return to Britain. We try to hold social events, let everyone network, and remind them of home, but we also act as a support community – we try to help AIM graduates navigate the immigration process, or with connections if we decide to return home. You should really sign up – it's also just fun talking to other Brits about things back home!"

"What about advocacy?" Hermione asked, tilting her head slightly. "Networking and support are all very well and good, but what about advocating for our rights in Britain?"

Cassie frowned slightly, but she was thoughtful even as she chose her next words carefully. "We do some advocacy, and we've been successful with simplifying the immigration and naturalization process in America and Canada for American-trained graduates. However, in Britain, things are a little different – as you might know, they don't have wide enfranchisement there, so it's a challenge. But if that's something you're interested in, I still think the BSA would be the best club to join. We include almost all the British students in the school, and we have wide connections with other British newbloods and halfbloods within the North American League and in Australia, too."

Hermione nodded thoughtfully, picking up a pen and scribbling her name down on the list. "I'd hoped for something more advocacy-focused, but I'd love to hear more."

"Great!" Cassie replied brightly, pulling several coloured sheets together into a pile and handing them over to Hermione in a clear, plastic, folder of No-Maj design. "Here's a list of our upcoming meetings and events, the committees you can join, and our upper-year mentor list, sorted by track. Harry?"

She looked at him expectantly, and Archie smiled again, apologetically. He could duck the question, say he was thinking about it and just not return, but Hermione was persistent, he didn't think that avoiding it was the answer. If he ducked it now, he'd only have to answer it later. "I, uh, I think I'm going to pass. Sorry."

Cassie frowned, bewildered. "But why? You're British, and even if you're not particularly social, the connections you'll make will still be really important for your future!"

Archie had no doubt that she was right. If he weren't hiding the fact that he wasn't Harry Potter, he probably would have joined in a heartbeat. But what would he say? He could say he was a halfblood, that he didn't need the connections, but that sounded just awful, he couldn't possibly say that! And it would probably just make them more curious, and he didn't want to be pulled into meeting after meeting to talk about wizarding Britain and get to know them and what if he let something slip? Ugh, he wasn't Harry.

"Well," he said instead, awkward. "I'm here to study Healing, and I really want to focus on that."

"You can do both, Harry, you know that," Hermione pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes at him.

Archie sighed. No way but the direct way, he supposed. "I'm sorry. I'm just not interested. Nothing against you, or anything, I just want to focus on Healing and explore America and, and, and I don't want to be the kind of international student that just, you know, surrounds themselves with people from home."

He had seen them, all week – the small clusters of British accents marking them in the dining hall, the dormitories. They were perfectly nice, always willing to chat, but they were friends first with each other. He couldn't be one of those people. One person, Hermione, that was fine. But it would be best for him and Harry if his other friends, the people that he wanted to know him best over the next seven years, were Americans.

Cassie shook her head, but made him an introductory package anyway. "Well, if you change your mind, we're always here. And even later, throughout the year, you should feel free to approach any of the British upper-years if you need any advice. We'll always welcome you with open arms, okay?"

Archie gave her a small, but genuine, smile, seeing that she wasn't going to push the issue. Hermione would – she was already glaring at him, and he could just see the calculations going through her mind. "Thanks for understanding."

"We see someone like you every now and then," Cassie smiled kindly in return. "Usually they come around once they learn more about the laws at home. Don't worry about it."

He wouldn't be one of those people, obviously, but Archie nodded anyway in thanks as Hermione pulled him away to a quieter corner between the International Students Association and the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization. "What was that about, Harry?" Her voice was low, her wide brown eyes worried. "Even if you want to focus on Healing, there's no reason not to join the British Students Association. Even if they're mainly a social group, we would meet a lot of people who could really help us."

Archie looked up, towards the stage. The Duelling demo was done – now the Dance Club had the floor. And, more literally, the space over the floor. He caught sight of an upper-year spinning, dancing through the air in a series of turns, quicksteps and flips, in time with the music now blasting through the room. It wasn't the type of dance he had been taught at home – it was more acrobatic, more magical, and he watched as a second dancer joined the first, high in the air, and they danced a shower of rainbow sparks over the crowd. It was beautiful.

"Harry?"

Right, Hermione. Archie turned to her, sighing softly, acting exactly the way he needed to pull this off. Hermione was persistent. Vague references about wanting to focus on his studies, about not wanting to surround himself with people from home, about wanting to see more of America wouldn't satisfy her, not when she knew perfectly well that Archie (or Harry, rather) was a halfblood who already knew about the British laws. Not when everything was so stacked against newbloods and halfbloods at home. So – some truth, then. And a little overreliance on what Hermione didn't know about Britain. One could read, read, read all about the politics, and still not understand what it was to live them. Something with enough truth that it was believable.

"Hermione," Archie said quietly, turning to face her seriously. "I know we haven't known each other long, but can you keep a secret? It's not dangerous, or anything, just personal – I don't want it to spread around. Not even John, or Chess, okay?"

"What—" Hermione said, leaning back in surprise, her brown eyes wide. "Well, of course, Harry."

That was good, good enough. Nothing of what Archie said would be contentious in the least. The lie was in the fact that Hermione now believed that Archie thought it was sensitive, when it was really nothing of the sort. He chose his next words carefully. "What do you know about British wizarding Society?"

Hermione blinked. "Well... politically, Britain is ruled by the Wizengamot—"

"No, no, not society, Society," Archie said, dropping his voice into an urgent whisper and looking from side to side covertly. That, too, was an act. "Capital letter Society!"

"Oh," Hermione drew out that one sound in dawning comprehension. "Yes, the nobility. Classed into the Books of Gold, Silver, and Copper, you said, right? Completely outdated, of course, but they hold virtually all political power."

Archie nodded, shamefaced, even as he kept looking around. Thank god for the Dance Club – between their show and the music, he didn't think anyone was seeing his little show, which was really too bad even if it was for the best. He thought he was doing brilliantly. "Yes, I..." He took a deep breath, a steadying breath, looking up at the ceiling for just one dramatic moment, then he went for it. He leaned down slightly to whisper right in Hermione's ear. "I'm noble, Hermione. And not just any noble – I'm the Heir to the Potter House, which is in the Book of Gold, which is… high nobility. Very high nobility. But I just want to be normal here, Hermione, I don't want people to find out who I am, I don't want all the fuss! I just want to be Harry Potter, okay? Just for seven years, then I'll have to go back, but until then I don't want anyone to know, and if I get too close to too many Brits, someone will figure it out. Then it'll get around school, and you know, people will start treating me differently, and..."

He let himself trail off, let a look of desperation come across his face, desperation warring with sadness and something that he just invented at that moment that he hoped spelled out burning hope or trust or something like that. He would have to practice this in the mirror, again. Harry was good at all variations of poker-faced and smiles, whereas Archie was better at complex, dramatic, warring emotions. His eyebrows he pinched together just slightly, his breath quickened a bit, he ducked his head down just a bit. He let his words tumble out, faster and faster in a portrayal of someone who desperately did not want something to happen.

It worked.

Hermione sighed. "That does explain a lot," she admitted, voice similarly hushed. "Thank you for trusting me, Harry. I won't tell anyone."

Archie straightened, relieved. That was just enough truth, and trust, that he didn't think Hermione would pry any further. "Thank you. Thank you. Let's go back to your plan, now – you wanted to talk to the Charms Club, next?"

Hermione's face lit up. "Yes, that's right! AIM has such a good reputation for experimental charms, it would be a shame to miss out on it."

Archie followed the bushy-haired girl around for the rest of the day. It seemed like she joined half of the clubs there – aside from the British Students Association, she joined the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization, Charms Club, Alchemy Club... she stopped to talk to just about every academic or advocacy club in the school. They ran into John, Chess a shadow behind him, sometime in the early afternoon – John had already signed up for the three clubs he said he would and reminded Archie to sign up for Quidditch. When asked, Chess admitted softly that she had been interested by the dance club demonstration and had put her name down there. They were just wandering the fair, now, watching the demonstrations and seeing if anything else caught their eye.

It was when Hermione was interrogating the Society for the Advancement of Witches that Archie spotted it. A movie poster – it was red, this one, with the words West Side Story blazoned on it in large, black letters. He wandered over to examine in more detail. Small white print across the top confirmed that it was a motion picture, a movie, and Archie studied the ladders lining up one side of the title, the small figures climbing them.

"It's actually an original, from 1961," the student slouched behind the desk said. He straightened, leaning towards Archie in interest, holding his hand out to shake. "One of our members really loved the movie, and since its our fall production this year, we thought it would be good as marketing. Juan Hernandez – you're interested in movies?"

"Harry Potter. I only saw my first one a week ago, but I think so," Archie replied, taking the dark-haired boy's hand with a grin. "It was a James Bond movie, and it was great."

"Oh? Which one?" Juan, whom Archie guessed was a few years older than him, asked. He sounded genuinely curious.

"Diamonds are Forever," Archie replied, a hint of pride in his voice, and the other boy smiled.

"At least it was a Sean Connery, though that one isn't as highly rated as some of the others," Juan said, waving a hand dismissively. "I'd try Goldfinger – it's older, but it's one of the best. Some of the more recent ones are good, too, like Licence to Kill."

"Does your club watch a lot of films, then?" Archie asked, scanning the booth discreetly to try to spot the sign that would tell him which club he was talking to. Unlike most of the other clubs, they hadn't dangled a huge banner over their booth to announce themselves to the crowds. Their table didn't seem to be crowded, either, but then again, this late in the afternoon, most students had finished their exploring and left. It was only that Hermione got into long conversations at every booth that Archie was still wandering. Finally, Archie spotted a small wooden sign, half hidden by papers on one corner of the table. It had ornate, black letters carved on it: Theatre Troupe.

"We prefer acting to watching, generally," Juan said, pointing at the small sign and moving the papers off it. "But we do also watch a lot of movies. Have you ever wanted to be an actor in the movies?"

Archie blinked. Him? Acting? Playing roles on a stage, or in a movie, for other people? Maybe, even, one day acting as someone as cool as James Bond?

It wasn't that Archie thought he needed any help in the coolness division. He was perfectly comfortable in his own skin, he didn't need to pretend to be cooler, or better, or more anything by acting as someone else. No, that wasn't it – but there was something else about the idea that called to him.

He had only ever seen one movie. It was a James Bond movie, and, apparently, not the best James Bond movie, either. Maybe it was that movies were new to him, that he hadn't known anything about them before, that, unlike for John and Hermione, movies weren't a fact of life that had faded into the background for him yet. Maybe that was why he saw it.

He remembered being drawn, slowly and seductively, into the story, being transported into a new world, experiencing a new life, if only for a couple hours. He remembered feeling the things that James Bond felt: excitement, terror, glee. He remembered the joy of the people around him, laughing, smiling, comparing thoughts and opinions as they left the drive-in. Movies were powerful, and, in their own way, they were magical.

He could be the one to bring that to other people. For an instant, he saw himself decorating a movie poster of his own, himself in a role as someone else. He imagined someone saying the name of a character he had played with as much excitement and meaning as John had when he talked about James Bond. He imagined being the one to bring that escape, that joy, those feelings to other people. He felt a slow smile spread across his face.

Yeah, he could see that, and that would be awesome. And, to top it off, acting would even be useful for him, for Harry, for the ruse. He would need to act, through the next seven years: to solidify the character of Harry Potter at AIM, to confirm Harry's act as Arcturus Rigel Black in Britain, to play Archie Black before Dad, Uncle Remus, Aunt Lily, Uncle James. He would need to be able to fool both people he knew and loved and perfect strangers, to protect himself, to protect Harry. Learning acting, as a skill, might not only be fun, but crucial.

He looked at Juan, who had a knowing smile on his lips as he held out a pen. Archie took a small breath and accepted it. "Where do I sign?"

Chapter Text

As Healers-in-training, in the same dorms, and with nearly identical classes, or maybe just as a result of the simple chance that they all happened to meet each other and sit together within the first two days of school, he, Hermione, John, and Chess became a foursome. Even once they joined clubs, meeting people who shared their interests, they still turned first to each other, sitting together in the dining hall, studying together in the common room. Most of the time, at least.

Archie considered himself particularly close to Hermione, as the only other person in their group as obsessed with Healing as he was. For him, there was always the haunting spectre of Mum in the background, and he had been reading medical journals for close on three years. Now, too, with the risks that he and Harry (but mostly Harry) were taking for the sake of their futures, it would be an absolute disgrace if he threw himself into his Healing studies with anything less than devoted fervour.

Hermione, to be fair, was devoted to everything. She did the supplementary readings for all her subjects, including Magical Theory, the textbook for which Archie took one look and immediately recoiled. And yet, somehow, Hermione still found time for the five? Eight? Nine? Clubs that she had joined – the British Students Association, the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization, Charms Club, Alchemy Club, the Society for the Advancement of Witches, the Knitting Circle… Archie lost track of them all, but when she wasn't studying in the common room, she was off at one club meeting or another, and he had no idea how she did it. Hermione was utterly brilliant – a once-in-a-decade mind, at least. Maybe even a once-in-a-century mind.

Archie threw himself into his Healing studies with nothing short of fervour, but admittedly he only did the supplementary readings for his two Healing classes and No-Maj Studies (because No-Maj Studies was cool. Star Wars was awesome!). He generally kept to the assigned readings for the rest of his classes, and not even that for Potions. No, for Potions, between Harry's obsession and reading the books she left for him in her trunk, he was quite a bit further along than everyone else, so he just did the homework, showed up for classes, and otherwise ignored the subject entirely.

Conveniently, it so happened, leaving him with more than enough time for the Theatre Troupe.

Their first meeting was on a Wednesday, and he found his way to a much smaller and much emptier auditorium after his classes that day. He glanced around curiously.

Of all the AIM buildings, Seaton House showed its origins as an old wizarding manor more than the rest. While Archie couldn't say that it was cut from the same cloth as the noble wizarding manors he was used to, the set-up of the building felt distinctly familiar. They ate in the dining hall, which seemed to be an expanded, enormous, formal dining room, the main student library was all mahogany bannisters and worn carpeting and fireplaces like a private, home library, and the small rooms on the second and third floors, used as club rooms, meeting rooms and extra group study rooms, were all the right size and shape as bedrooms. The auditorium, too – between the fine hardwood flooring, the heavily etched crown moldings, and the almost dome-like curve of the room, Archie guessed it used to be the formal ballroom. Still, the stage had to be a newer addition, because it was much larger than any ballroom's stage would have been.

There was a small semi-circle of chairs set up in front of the stage. Several upper-years were already seated on the edge of the stage, including Juan, whom Archie recognized from the fair. They were laughing, and most of them seemed to have thin, wide books with them. There were also a few students seated in the chairs around them, and Archie joined them. Looking around, he picked out the few first-years easily – there were only three others, he thought. They weren't in Healing, he didn't know them. Two were sitting together, chatting, while the other one was silent, looking around nervously and waiting. He spotted Neal, the fourth-year Healer that John got on well with, sitting on the stage in the cluster of older students.

"New, are you?" Archie turned to the boy beside him, a tall, lanky boy that looked much younger than his height might have suggested. He had that peaky look of someone who had grown a lot in a short amount of time, and his muddy brown hair fell into his eyes. "Evin Larse – I'm a third year, undeclared."

"Harry Potter," Archie replied, offering his hand with a smile, then grinning as he saw a light of recognition flash in the other boy's eyes.

"So you're Harry Potter," Evin studied him, tilting his head in consideration. "Daine mentioned you. Said you set off fireworks in the Healer's common room on Sunday night – class monitors nearly had your head, didn't they?"

Well, that was true, but as far as pranks went, it was pretty tame. And it was less than a third of his stock of fireworks, anyway. Maybe he shouldn't have set them off indoors, but he thought the spark-dragon had been inspired. Or inspiring. One or the other. It was only a little celebration – just to celebrate the ending of their first week, not being pulled out of school by Aunt Lily and Uncle James, all that. He would come up with better pranks later.

"Nothing of the sort," Archie lied with a smirk. Even if the class monitors suspected he had been behind it (he hadn't been particularly careful about witnesses while launching them), enough chaos had been caused that no one could definitively pin it on him. Instead, all he got was a lecture about disturbing others' study times, even though most of the room had gotten a laugh. "I have no idea who set off the fireworks."

"I can't tell if you're a terrible liar, or if you're good enough at lying that you're purposely hinting that you're lying while lying," Evin narrowed his eyes at Archie thoughtfully, then grinned and slapped him on the back. "You'll fit right in."

"Hello, everyone," a voice called out at the front, and the conversations around them slowed down, quieted. Archie looked up to see an older girl, probably a sixth or seventh year, standing by the stage, a couple of steps inside the circle. One look, and all Archie could think was that she was stunning. It wasn't anything, per se, about her appearance, though she was quite pretty – it was her presence. There was something soft, yet commanding about her. "I think that's about everyone – as you can see, we're not a big group, usually. Mariana Jimenez – I'm the director."

"This is everyone? I told you we shouldn't have put Juan in charge of recruitment," a boy with honey-coloured hair joked. "What did he do, sit there and read comics all day?"

"Memorize his script, more like," a girl with short, close-cropped hair replied with a smile, the white flash of her teeth standing out against her caramel skin. Her hair was so short, save for a tuft of hair on top falling into her eyes, and Archie spotted a flashing tattooed fish, charmed, swimming its way over her neck and shoulders. That was cool – Dad had told him no tattoos until he was at least sixteen, but Archie wondered how flexible that was. What if he just … got one?

"I thought that was what you wanted," Juan shrugged, a lazy movement. "You're always complaining about people who join for all the wrong reasons, Sabrina: budding starlets that can't act and don't want to put in the work, flakes who drop out the minute they realize they aren't going to be the centre of attention all the time… I just did the work of weeding them out early. Hiding the sign was genius, by the way."

"We're also at a magic school," Neal drawled. He sat, legs dangling over the edge, at the far end of the line of students sitting on the stage. "Not a lot of mages interested in joining theatre when there are other, more magical, clubs. At least we get a good turnout at performances."

Mariana cleared her throat pointedly, and the other students fell immediately silent. "Why don't we introduce ourselves, say a little about why we joined, and talk about the rest of the year? Neal, you first, since you're at the end, there."

Neal shrugged, shot her a wicked grin, then smoothed his face out to something like shame. "Hello, my name is Neal Queenscove, and I'm an alcoholic," he deadpanned, and half the circle burst into laughter while Archie blinked in bemusement. Obviously, that was a lie and a reference of some kind (probably a pretty common one, too), but Archie didn't recognize it.

"Nealan…" Mariana put two fingers to her forehead. "Please."

Neal sighed, a heavy, world-weary, sigh of the dead. "Just for you, Mariana. Neal Queenscove. I'm in fourth-year, Healing track. I joined theatre because I am a drama addict. I am advised by my peers that I need an outlet for all my dramatic fits because my patients don't appreciate them."

"Nealan is also in charge of most of the choreographed fight scenes," the lean, dark boy beside him said, voice slow, giving the impression of stone, completely poker-faced. "Zahir ibn Alhaz. Second-year, undeclared. I am here because … I lost my way in a wardrobe. And then this lovely, lovely witch offered me Turkish delight."

"That's terrible, Zahir," the blonde beside him rolled her eyes. "A Narnia reference? Really? You can do better than that."

Zahir shrugged, and the pace of his voice picked up into something a little more natural. "You didn't like the compliment? You did offer me snacks, and it was the best I could come up with, going second. It was better than Neal's attempt. You're next."

"Noelle Svenson," the blonde said, turning to the group and tossing her long hair over her shoulder. She leaned back, crossing her legs and folding her hands on her lap as she imitated being in a great armchair. "Sixth year, Transfigurations. I am here to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

"You spent all summer thinking up that introduction," Zahir accused, scowling, while she broke character and grinned cheekily back.

It was a game, Archie realized with delight. They were all there because they loved acting, of course, so they were using the introductions to showcase their skills. Or, at least, having fun by finding creative reasons for why they were there. Better responses included cultural references or revealed something true about the person, Archie guessed, a truth that lay underneath the lie. Both Neal's and Zahir's introductions had revealed something true – Neal was in theatre because he loved drama and needed an outlet, and it sounded like Zahir had joined unintentionally and stayed for the people. Or the snacks. He wasn't entirely sure.

He was glad he was in the centre of the circle, now, the first of the first-years to be called on. He only had one reference he could make, but it was perfect. He half-heard the next few introductions as he focused on the little details that would pull off this act: he straightened his collar, made sure his slacks were hanging properly, his shoes neat and shining. He didn't have a tie – it wasn't part of AIM uniform, unfortunately, so he didn't have one handy nor did he know how to conjure one. Well, that was too bad, but he ran his fingers through his hair, slicking it back as best as he could. He was already British, but he couldn't use his normal accent, not the one he used at home with Dad and Harry and his uncles. No, this called for something posh.

"Evin Larse, third-year, undeclared," Evin said beside him, changing his body posture and moving stiffly. "I followed the yellow brick road here in search of a heart."

There was a chorus of groans, and Archie guessed that Evin's choice hadn't been very inspired, especially when the tall boy beside him shrugged sheepishly. Then it was his turn.

"Potter, Harry Potter," Archie announced, putting on his most pureblood accent, the stupidly upper-class one he had to use every time he visited Mum's family, leaning forward in interest. He wasn't really sure what movement or action to take, but as long as he wasn't slouching, it would probably be fine. "First-year, Healing. I'm here to learn new things and make new friends."

He winked at Noelle, across the circle from him, and she let out a peal of laughter in appreciation.

"You're a little young for me, Mr. Potter," she replied, miming a curtsey with her hands and upper body. "But I like it. Nice accent."

"I am British," Archie relaxed, dropping to his natural accent, which was considerably more middle-class.

The rest of the introductions flew by. One of the other students belted out a few lines from a song, but most of the references flew over Archie's head. Of the first-years, Archie's performance was, in his humble opinion, the best – one of the students hadn't figured out the game in time to come up with anything, another stuttered her way through her introduction (Archie wasn't sure if that was intentional but suspected not), and her friend made an honest effort but the reference was obscure enough that most of the room didn't get it. Oddly, that was one that Archie did get – it was Malecrit, a wizarding playwright from the 1700s, which one of his noble tutors had made him read forever ago. Boring.

"Now that we're through with introductions," Mariana said, when they had all finished, "I want to talk about our plan for the year. For the newbies, we do two productions a year, a fall production and a spring production – usually one of them is a classic, older work, and the other one is contemporary play or a musical. We perform both wizarding and No-Maj works—"

"Not that many wizarding playwrights, though," one of the upper-years said, shaking his head. "Let's be honest, it's mostly No-Maj works."

"It makes no difference," Neal replied idly, glancing curiously towards the first-year who had referenced Malecrit. "All theatre is about a few grand, universal, themes: love, war, betrayal. Hope, dreams. No-Maj or wizarding, we're all human."

"Thank you, Francis, Neal," Mariana cut back in. She sounded almost annoyed. "As I was saying, we do both wizarding and No-Maj works, but since No-Majs do have a wider selection, most of what we do are admittedly No-Maj works. According to our annual vote last year, this year's theme is The Bard. The fall production will be West Side Story; we'll be holding auditions for that next week. Newbies, you're more than welcome to audition, but most of us have been preparing for this over the summer so don't feel bad if you don't make it – we'll find spots for everyone on stage at some point, even if you're part of the chorus or dance group. The Charms Club agreed to manage special effects and volunteer stagehands for free tickets to all our performances, so we're fine there, and the Dance Club is helping with choreography again."

She leaned behind her, reached into a cardboard box, pulling out four copies of the thin, wide, books that all the upper-years carried, passing them out among the first-years. Archie examined the cover of the small book in interest; it was the same as the poster on the Theatre Troupe booth, solid red with the words West Side Story in block text on it. His fingers itched to open it, but he resisted, because no one else did.

"Newbies, read it, even if you aren't going to audition – you'll need to know about the musical to help workshop and put it on. We're set to perform the last week of November. Voting for the spring production will take place the first week in December, so that everyone will have the winter break to prepare for auditions again in January." She looked around, a bright smile lighting up her face for a moment. "Now that that's done, let's talk about West Side Story. It's set in Manhattan, in the Upper West Side neighbourhood; at the time, in the 1950s, it was a working-class neighbourhood…"

That night, in his room, when Archie cracked open the script for the first time, he was astonished when the first few notes of music came pouring out. It wasn't entirely foreign to him (it sounded a bit like the music that Aunt Lily liked to listen to), but neither was it really like anything he had ever heard before. It was music that told a story.

And what a story! All Archie had to do was change gang names into "Light" and "Dark", put everyone in British accents, and he could have had a story about noble, pureblood politics. And about his parents – Mum, too, had broken an arranged marriage to run away with Dad. It was a love story – and a death story, and his heart lurched when he read (and heard) the fight in which Tony killed Bernardo (it was an accident, he was sure!), and the cascade of events that led to Tony's death, and Maria's screams afterwards. It was tragic, beautifully tragic, and Archie was left with almost a feeling of sorrow, on their behalves. It was a love story that was, that could have been, that wasn't.

He leaned back on his bed, tapping on the runes on the side of the script, figuring out what they did. The scripts were remarkable – there was one that turned on and off the music, another one which made the paper glow slightly, so he could read at night, a third one that overlaid the text with something he thought was musical notation.

They were auditioning only the major roles next week – Tony, Maria, Bernardo, Anita, and Riff. They would no doubt be heavily fought over, and Archie pursed his lips, thinking. They were all roles with significant sung parts, and Archie couldn't sing. Or, more accurately, he hadn't had any musical training whatsoever, and he had no idea if he could sing. Among all the useless noble things he had been tutored in, music hadn't featured except to the extent that it was included in dance. He could identify the beat to any piece of music, classify it in terms of whether it was a waltz, Viennese waltz, foxtrot or quickstep and dance to it, he could identify maybe a hundred antiquated pureblood rituals the minute he saw them, but making music? Singing? No, singing was not a thing that proper nobles did, so he hadn't had any lessons in it.

Should he audition at all? He leaned back on his narrow bed, the tiny book in front of him, studying the script. It was getting dark – he tapped the glow-rune to make the pages brighter. Mariana had said that most of the upper-years had spent the summer preparing, and since Archie couldn't sing, there was no way he would win any of them. But there were so many other roles, like Doc (Archie could see himself as Doc! He could absolutely sob on command!), or the police officers, which didn't have any singing roles. They would probably be assigning all the roles based on performance in the auditions…

Well, what did he have to lose? Why was he even thinking about it? Of course, he would audition. The only question was, for what?

 The letter flew through Archie's window on Friday morning. Since they didn't keep consistent mealtimes, owls delivered mail straight to their dorm rooms.

It was from Harry, with black ink on the cover, and Archie ripped it open cheerfully. The security codes on her letters to him weren't very strong – she had made up an insane chart of signals for Archie's letters to her, down to the colour of his ink and the quality of the parchment he used, because she was in the more dangerous position, and mail at Hogwarts was carried to the Great Hall. But, since Archie wasn't in any real danger, it didn't matter as much for him.

Harry was frankly awful at writing like him, but it was the content of her letter that made his stomach drop, and he took a shaky breath inwards. Hell. In the drive to get everything done for their switch, he'd forgotten about Marcus Flint. Who was now, apparently, blackmailing the two of them. Oh, fucking hell.

Harry's letter was scathingly sarcastic. Her stern black works leapt off the page, just the perfect blend of plausible deniability and castigation, whipping his conscience with every cool word. Oh, wait, I never told you about him, did I? Oops, well, he's an old friend of mine, and I didn't expect to see him here at Hogwarts … he remembers almost everything I've ever told him, isn't that something? I felt bad that I couldn't do the same …

Shit. He kept reading. Harry didn't mention what House she had been Sorted into, but it didn't take much thought to work that out. Of course his cousin, his cunning and ambitious cousin, who had risked her life to study under Master Severus Snape and become the best Potions Mistress the world had ever seen, would be sorted into Slytherin. Was there any question? Her mention of her new friends, Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, traditional Dark families, were only confirmation. And she had changed her (his?) name to Rigel, at least for the time being. Well, that was fine – it was probably make it easier to keep track of the roles he and Harry would need to play over the next few years.

Harry said she had it under control. And if Harry said she had it under control, then she had it under control. Archie had long since learned not to second-guess her, even if he worried. Still, after a stressful, distracted day of classes, he posted a letter that very evening laying into Marcus Flint, for all the good that it might or might not do.

Marcus,

I hear from Rigel that you've found me out! As you've no doubt guessed, I'm where I've always dreamed of being: the American Institute of Magic, studying Healing! You know how much this means to me – you were with me, my only friend outside my family, through Mum's sickness. I know this situation a bit odd, but you know how my father is. He wouldn't have let me leave the country.

Look, Rigel is a good bloke doing me a favour. He says you've come to your own arrangement with him, which I can't say I'm either surprised or happy about, but he seems satisfied and I trust his judgement. I don't see any reason why anything needs to change, but if anything happens, you know my father will pull me out of school here, so please don't say anything, all right?

Thanks. If it all works out, I'll owe you one.

Your friend,

Arcturus Rigel Black

The letter took him a full two hours to write, short as it was – he had to consider what he had, what they had, and decide on a strategy. He and Marcus were friends, since they both had had season tickets to Wasps games for years, but they weren't as close as Archie had played it. They had never met outside of Wasp games and only rarely exchanged letters, which was another reason why Archie had forgotten about him. Marcus could do with the reminder, plus a side of guilt-tripping didn't hurt.

Then, he made it about him. It was his plan, Rigel was just a good bloke that Archie had found to take his place. Making it about him and reminding Marcus of their friendship would hopefully dissuade him from taking any drastic action. He carefully left out any detail about who Rigel might be, because Harry would have been far more concerned if Marcus had worked it out fully.

Finally, he gave Marcus reasons for keeping quiet. First, Harry made a deal with him, and that could only work if she stayed at Hogwarts. Second, he offered Marcus a favour of his own, then topped it off by reminding Marcus of who he was, his rank.

Archie was Arcturus Rigel Black, the Heir to the House of Black. The Flints were noble, but only barely, and Archie knew full well that Marcus was encouraged to be friends with him because a friendly association with the House of Black did not go amiss. What Archie could one day offer, by way of favours, as the Heir to a prominent House was not insignificant, and Marcus knew it.

Frankly, Archie was not above guilt-tripping, bribing or brute-force use of rank, not if he needed it – not over this, and not over Harry's risks. They both knew that Harry was the one taking the real risks, and Archie would do what he could to shield them both.

Harry would never have used her rank like this, Archie reflected, sealing the letter and setting aside for mailing later. Privately, Archie had always thought that Harry was probably the more fundamentally moral one of them. It was why she had never made a good prankster – even if she had a penchant for creating chaos when she wanted to, she rarely did, and only ever played pranks on Dad and Uncle James, when she thought they particularly deserved it. She never went after Uncle Remus, or Aunt Lily, and never wantonly caused chaos. She was methodical about what she did.

Even now, Archie suspected that a part of Harry felt guilty about lying to her new friends, about pretending to be Rigel Black instead of Harry Potter. By contrast, Archie simply … didn't, and he didn't expect to, either. Not about the ruse. Not about pretending to be Harry Potter for the purpose of being at AIM, and not about lying to his new friends.

Archie did feel guilty, but if anything, he felt guilty because he had taken Harry's place. Harry, who was so brilliant and so good, was the one who should have been in America. She should have been enjoying the warmth of the autumn sun, the mellow afternoon light streaming through stained glass windows in the timber mansions forming the AIM campus, she should have been the one with a million and one opportunities to see, explore, learn new things. And instead, she got Hogwarts, one of the last bastions of classical, outdated, magical education, where she was promptly sorted into Slytherin House, home of the most conservative, most pureblooded families, surrounded by the exact kind of people who would see her Kissed if they knew who she really was and what she had done.

But if he said anything like that, Harry would shake her head and deny it. She was where she wanted to be, she would say, studying under Master Snape. It didn't matter what AIM offered, because it didn't have her Potions program, and maybe that was true. But AIM had so much more, and Archie felt guilty because he had taken something away from his cousin, and she didn't even know what she had lost.

So, instead, he would do and say all those things that Harry was too moral to say or do, and he would guilt-trip, bribe, threaten and use his pureblood, Book of Gold noble status in a way Harry never would, if it meant that Harry stayed safe. Because Harry staying safe would mean he could stay at AIM, where he could study Healing and, along with it, continue enjoying all those wonderful, amazing things he, on some level, felt like he had taken from his cousin.

Well, wasn't that a pleasant thought? He threw his quill away from him (and it was a quill, because he was writing to Britain, and quills were stupid when there were pens), and took a deep, shaky breath, pushing the unnamed feeling back. Harry had wanted to switch, he reminded himself, and now, it was what it was. It was what it was, and he couldn't do anything about that, but he was Arcturus Rigel Black, heir to the House of Black, and he would do what he could do. Harry wanted this, and Harry deserved to have everything she ever wanted.

He picked up the quill again, collecting his resolve. He and Marcus might be friends, they might have once had each other's confidences, but things had changed. Marcus was now blackmailing them, and that justified the disclosure of at least some information. Unfortunately, none of what he knew about Marcus Flint was really blackmail-worthy. His mother was a Squib, but that was quietly known in pureblood circles; the cover story was that she had a chronic illness. His father was a prejudiced asshole, which was one reason why Dad had encouraged Archie's friendship with Marcus, to give him a way out. Marcus was a lot nicer than his attitude would normally suggest, and a lot smarter. He left out the part about Marcus' mother being a Squib, because he needed something to use later if Marcus escalated things but wrote the rest down and sent it to her. Even if it wasn't very helpful, Harry was a genius. She might still find some use for it.

He didn't try very hard to change his tone – overall, he thought he sounded a bit like Hermione. But it wasn't as though Harry's new friends would know who he was supposed to be or how he was supposed to sound like, so the changes in tone were more trouble than they were worth. He put in a cursory effort, just in case, but he put three times the effort into the very short update letter he wrote to Aunt Lily and Uncle James that night.

New mornings always felt good. A good night of sleep put distance between him and whatever was upsetting him, and Archie was happy to put yesterday, and yesterday's feelings, in the past. He had done what he could, and what would happen, would happen. There was nothing else he could do from America, and he locked yesterday away, because today, today, John had gotten them permission to go to town, with supervision and a ride from Neal and Dom, he had a pocketful of funny American money, and he had clothes to buy!

Hermione didn't want to go, though, and no amount of begging was helping.

"Come on, Hermione," Archie wheedled, widening his eyes and giving her his best puppy-eyed look. "We'll get to see the town!"

"You'll get to see a mall," Hermione corrected him, turning the page of her Defense textbook and not looking at him. Not a bad idea, all told, because if she looked at him Archie thought he could make her fold. "I don't need anything, and I don't need to see the mall, either. I told Francesca I would work with her on Defense and Charms today."

"But 'Mione," Archie tried again, adding an extra note of petulance, but she ignored him in favour of making notes on a sheet of paper, and he gave it up as a bad job. "Can I at least get you anything?"

"Thanks for the thought, Harry, but I'm fine," Hermione said, finally looking up and smiling. Her two front teeth were a little big, but it was a cute smile. "But if you got something for Francesca, I'm sure she would appreciate it."

"Done," John said, tugging at Archie's arm. "Come on, Harry, let's go. Dom's waiting for us – and you said you needed a costume. Something that screams "gang member", right?"

Archie allowed himself to be pulled away. "See you later, Hermione," he called over his shoulder, catching her small wave while she turned back to her book. "I should still get her something though, you think, John? Like flowers! A single flower, or a bouquet?"

John rolled his eyes. "First, you're eleven. Second, I don't think Hermione would care about flowers."

"All girls care about flowers, John," Archie replied, waving a hand airily. "That's what my Uncle Sirius says. Just one flower, then."

"Whatever, Harry. Stop being ridiculous before you embarrass me in front of our seniors."

Archie held his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender, grinning. As if anything Archie did would affect John's relationship with their seniors, or with anyone else. A few weeks into the school year, and it was patently obvious that John was the American equivalent of high nobility – all he had to say was his name, and eyes flashed with recognition, doors opened for him, and their little group always had seats at dinner. It was strangely familiar, and yet not – it was probably how Archie would have been treated at Hogwarts (admittedly with a great deal more caution from some corners), but it wasn't, either, because John didn't have a formal title.

People were interested in John because his grandparents were war heroes, his father was the Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs at MACUSA, and his mother was the Auror liaison to the homicide unit of the No-Maj New York Police Department, solving several high-profile murders. People were interested in John because his family was full of famous, accomplished people and they wanted to know what he would do. Some of them were probably interested in him because his family was well connected, but even that wasn't the same as it would have been for Archie at Hogwarts.

Archie was a Black, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. The title was utterly preposterous, but some people put some sort of faith in that. Dad had warned him; at Hogwarts, people would try to get close to him just because of his name. Scions of the other noble families, certainly, looking for more connections. Social climbers, looking to gain a foothold into the nobility. Archie would never be able to take anyone at face value.

People were interested in John because they wanted to know what he would do, but people were interested in Arcturus Rigel Black because he was a Black, because he was a Book of Gold noble. Harry seemed to be doing fine with it, though Archie could see it already – Parkinson? Malfoy? Blech. He had tried to warn her, in his letter, for all the good that might do.

But that was yesterday, and he didn't want to think about yesterday! And there was Neal and Dom waiting, outside Charms Row, dressed in No-Maj clothes, ready to go!

"Thanks for doing this," John said, punching Neal lightly on the arm in greeting. "Harry really doesn't have any No-Maj clothes, or at least not casual ones to hang out in."

Neal threw Archie a quick smile. "I had to go to town anyway. Have to get a costume for the auditions."

"Why couldn't you have gotten one over the summer?" Dom asked, only slightly exasperated as he led the way to the main gates. "You knew what you were going to audition for, you could have just brought clothes."

Neal shrugged. "I forgot, all right? I had clothes picked out and everything but when I was packing for the year, I forgot."

"Who are you auditioning as?" Archie asked, picking up his pace to match the upper-years.

"Tony and Riff," Neal shook his head regretfully. "I won't get either, because I can't sing worth beans, but I'm hoping to showcase enough talent to be given another role. Will you audition?"

"I was planning on it, for Riff," Archie grinned. "I can't sing either, so I picked the role with the least sung parts. Nothing to lose by doing it, right?"

"Except your sense of shame," Dom muttered. He slapped Neal on the back, and John smirked. "As your cousin, I feel embarrassed by association every time you prance and caterwaul on stage."

"In theatre, there is no such thing as shame," Neal replied, turning his nose up in the air. "Shame would only be a liability. Go big, or go home!"

The trip into town, this time, was far better than Archie's first trip to the drive-in. Being able to see the green, rolling fields passing by, meant that he didn't feel motion sick, this time. The fields were dotted with small stands of trees: oak, beech, cypress, magnolia, maple. Neal, sitting in the front passenger side seat, rolled down his window, and Archie could smell the warm dust coming off the road as they sped along it.

Dom and John had won the music argument again, so they were listening to rock. He had no idea why the genre was called rock, but now that he heard it a little more, he didn't dislike it so much. There was a melody underneath the heavy instruments, it was like a heavier version of The Weird Sisters. Honestly, he was more interested in listening to John, Dom, and Neal talk.

He had been thinking about the auditions, off and on, for a few days. He would need clothes – John said he would help with that part – but more importantly, he needed to think about how Riff would talk and act. Who was he? He was a gang leader, so he had to be a little charismatic. And the introductory speech from Mariana said that the musical took place in New York City, in a working-class neighbourhood during a period of change. So, Riff was American, and he was working class, but a leader. Archie had to lose the British accent and come up with a reasonable facsimile of a lower-class American accent.

Admittedly, John, Dom and Neal weren't the best models. They were all obviously upper-class, but they were what he had to work with, so he paid attention to their light-hearted banter, to the way they formed their vowels, drawled their words, voiced their r's. Voicing the r's seemed to be the key, then there was something about the way they made their a's, he thought.

It was only twenty minutes or so before Archie started seeing buildings along the road. Houses, some of them, built in wood, often worn, with wide sweeping porches and the No-Maj American flag flying high. They slowly bled in to squat buildings with large windows announcing garages, gas stations, coffee shops, diners. Some of the buildings were larger, longer, including restaurants, hair salons, other shops. So this was a No-Maj town in America!

"Downtown first, I think," Neal was saying. "Thrift store for costumes, I don't want to spend a lot of money on it. Downtown is better than the mall, anyway, the mall here is garbage."

"Parking downtown is shit," Dom grumbled, but he turned right at the next street. There were a few grand stone buildings on this road – churches, Archie though, at least one of them was a church, or maybe other historic buildings. The shops along this road looked a lot more inviting, in an old, quaint sort of way. It reminded him a little of Diagon Alley, though most of the buildings were made of wood rather than brick or stone. The signs were carved and painted in gold gilt, shining in the sun, and many of the storefronts were done in pastel colours. Trees lined the street, spaced evenly, but none of them were very big.

Despite Dom's grumbling, he found a parking space without too much difficulty on a side street, and Archie followed the others onto the main street.

"There's not a lot of selection," Neal said apologetically to the two first-years. "It's a historic town, but it's small, and they don't have a lot of the brand-name stores. This street is better than the mall, trust me. Let's go to the thrift store first – then there's a good burger place that does milkshakes."

The thrift shop was on the far end of the shopping district, a fifteen-minute walk away from where Dom had parked his car, but it was warm outside, so Archie couldn't say he minded the walk. There weren't many other people out, and he peered at the signs they passed curiously. There were clothing shops, cafés, restaurants, a burger bar. There was an apothecary, too, which seemed busier than the others, bookshops, a florist (he kept that in mind for later), and a few stores that he thought simply sold oddities: tea, mugs, blankets, stuffed toys, packaged candy. John paused, staring into a few of those windows with interest, but didn't linger long.

The thrift shop, though … the thrift shop was like nothing Archie had ever seen.

Wizarding clothing shops were almost all small ateliers, with very few items laid out, because all wizarding clothes were custom-made. Robes were hard wearing, especially with the number of mending and repairing charms available, and they didn't need to be replaced all that often. Most witches and wizards only went to get new robes once or twice a year, keeping to a simple, minimalist wardrobe. Aunt Lily had always laughed, saying that things were really very different in the Muggle world, but Archie never really understood.

Until now. The thrift store was huge and there were racks upon racks upon racks of clothes. He had never seen a clothing store this big, or so many clothes in one spot. There had to have been at least nine racks of clothing! Or was it eleven?! He lost count somewhere in the middle. And when he pulled a button-down shirt, only a little worn, from the closest rack, it was only three dollars! What was this place?!

He didn't even need to go anywhere else! He could buy a whole new wardrobe just from this one store, if he felt so inclined. Though, everything was used, a little worn and tattered on the edges, so he did want to buy some new, fashionable clothes too, but there had to be treasures in here.

For Riff, he picked out a rough cargo jacket in a sickly green that John had called "army" green, and a plain black t-shirt. He didn't like any of the jeans they had on offer, they all looked too much like Harry's old jeans, so he would just wear Harry's old ones, instead. He did find a nice selection of plain sweatshirts, so he picked up a few of those – a zip-up hoodie in black, a pullover in red. He thought about a few more t-shirts, but John shook his head, pulling him away.

"There are better t-shirt stores on the main street," he said, tugging him towards the cash register. "Better jeans, too."

They stopped at another three clothing stores, one of which was not at all to Archie's tastes (he didn't like his clothes to be torn before he even put them on, and everything there was too blocky and strange), but he did find better t-shirts, more knit cardigans (he liked cardigans! They were classic!), a few pairs of dark-wash jeans the he felt suited him so much better than the grungy ones Harry kept. Then, they stopped at a coffee shop, and Archie was far too happy to have his first American cup of joe. It was a solid cup of coffee, hot, dark, bitter with almost caramel undertones. After that, they went to a bookstore, because Neal insisted he needed more fiction (Archie was fascinated by the books with shirtless men on the covers, all of whom were heavily muscled, before John pulled him away, blushing, and shoved him into a different section where the books had spaceships on the covers), and then a music store for Dom. John picked up a new cassette there, too, while Archie poked at the strange machine that let him listen to one of nine cassettes, all out on display. All he had to do was put the strange earmuff-looking things over his ears, poke a number and music would start playing right in his ears! Then another shop, one with sweets, and Archie stared at the brightly coloured wrappers announcing Twix, Oh Henry, Aero, Mars, Snickers. He had no idea what to buy, but John bought a three Twix bars, two KitKats, an Aero bar and three Mars bars, then picked out what he called "a good selection" for Archie. Then, only then, when Archie was starting to feel dizzy by how many new things he had seen, they took him to the burger bar, the one with the milkshakes.

Archie had had burgers before, Dad and Aunt Lily made them sometimes for the family. They were a thing that she liked from America, and they were great, and she made them with a heaping load of fries too. But she didn't make milkshakes, and milkshakes were…

Milkshakes were divine. He had a mint chocolate double fudge milkshake, and it was huge, and his burger was greasy and hot and delicious and his fries were salty and crisp. But it was the milkshake that stood out – thick, minty, chocolatey, with two scoops of real, rich ice cream and a real fudge brownie, perfectly blended with whole milk and he didn't even know what. It was amazing. And they came in fifteen flavours! He desperately wanted another one, but he couldn't possibly finish another one, so instead he made a mental note that he had to come back. And try one of each. If he came back to town every two or three weeks for the rest of the year, it was doable!

"They'll keep for a bit, so we should get them for Hermione and Chess," John said with a grin, catching his eye. "What do you think Hermione would like? Lemon?"

"No, Hermione doesn't really like tart flavours," Archie shook his head firmly. "They've been studying all day, so what about chocolate? Or chocolate banana? My uncle Remus says chocolate is good for the brain."

John tilted his head to one side, bemused. "Do you really think she likes chocolate? Her parents are dentists, I was thinking something a little less sweet. Maybe strawberry, then?"

"No, you're right, I don't think Hermione likes chocolate much." Archie wrinkled his nose in thought. That was weird, come to think of it, Dad had always said that all girls liked chocolate! "I want to get her something exciting, though, strawberry seems so plain. How about Oreo Cookies and Cream? That sounds exciting, and it's not tart or chocolate."

John shrugged, a little skeptical, but he let it go. "A little sweet, but sure. I'll get a lime-flavoured one for Chess; it's her favourite."

Sweet was fine. Hermione wasn't opposed to sweet as long as it wasn't too sweet, and John said it was only a little sweet, so Archie took that to mean that Oreo Cookies and Cream would be fine. Neal and Dom were getting milkshakes for their friends, too, and had a heated argument over what to get Kel; apparently her favourite flavours were green tea and black sesame, but neither were an option (there was much muttering about "backwoods rural towns" at this point), and they had to settle for something. Eventually, they decided on plain vanilla and Neal went ahead and ordered a tray of milkshakes to go for their friends, then they loaded up the car and made their way back to AIM.

Chess' face lit up at the sight of the lime-flavoured milkshake, so at least John had picked right, though Hermione examined hers with an expression of mixed surprise and skepticism.

"It's Oreo Cookies and Cream!" Archie told her brightly. "John wanted to get you something like lemon, or strawberry, but I figured you were working hard all day and deserved something exciting. It's not tart, and John said it was only a little sweet. How is it?!"

She looked up, smiling at him somewhat helplessly, then reluctantly took a sip of her milkshake. Her lips pursed slightly as she considered the taste. "It is rather sweet, but thank you, Harry. For future reference, I like plain vanilla."

The auditions started on Monday, with the Tony and Maria roles going first. Archie didn't need to be there for it, but he was ahead in his readings and Hermione was off at another club meeting (the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization, if he remembered right), and he was curious. They wouldn't be auditioning Bernardo, Anita, or Riff until Tony and Maria were picked, since the two of them were so central to the story.

It seemed like most of the boys were auditioning for Tony, and all the girls, save Mariana herself, were auditioning for the role of Maria. The director wouldn't (couldn't) audition, Archie realized – she oversaw the production as a whole, and she was ruthless in her cuts. Not cruel, just ruthless.

"No, you're cut," she said simply, directing first Zahir, then a third-year whose name Archie didn't remember, then Neal off the stage. Neal was pretty bad, admittedly – Archie would wince, but he didn't think he would be any better when he was up there on Friday, so he resisted. He didn't seem put out by it, anyway, hopping off the stage with a wide grin on his face.

"I still got to sing Maria on a stage," he said cheerfully, waving off Archie's proffered condolences.

The top three Tony and Maria candidates went into what Mariana called the "chemistry test" on Tuesday. Archie had no idea what chemistry was, but it turned out that it was about finding which of the candidates got along well enough that they could successfully mimic being in love with each other. It was amazing to watch the different portrayals of love; Juan used the stage to great effect, using the space around him to mimic pulling away and being drawn back in, whereas Francis, a blond seventh year with a powerful voice, played it far more traditionally, kneeling at the Maria candidate's feet. Of the girls, Sabrina played a rebellious, troubled Maria, whereas a fifth-year, Laura Salazar, played a dreamy, romantic, one. When they watched Francis and Laura singing Tonight together, though, it was all over – they were each individually good, but together, sparks flew.

Wednesday was the Anita auditions, and since Anita needed to work so closely with Maria, it was both a general audition and a chemistry test. Most of the girls, again, auditioned for the role, but it was Sabrina who carried it off – her more rebellious portrayal worked far better for Anita, who was all sharp edges overlying a soft underbelly. Thursday was Bernardo, who sang with Anita the most – it was Juan who carried off that audition, because they could fight as viciously on stage as well as they could pretend to be in love.

And then it was Friday, and it was Archie on stage, trying and failing to sing the Jet Song. He wasn't failing as badly as he thought he would (no one was wincing, and they definitely winced for one of the other candidates!), and he could see Hermione clapping at the back, but all he had to do was listen to the others to know that he didn't really have a shot at it. His voice was too thin, it wasn't the leader's standout voice that he sensed they were looking for, that would mesh well with the chorus. The second half of the audition, though, the part with Tony, went far better – he was able to establish a rapport quickly with Francis, he showed off his fancy new American accent (which still didn't sound quite right, but it was definitely close!), and stole a page from Juan's book about the use of the stage and used it to move, changing his position every line or so, making Riff look far more eager to have Tony at the evening dance then he would have if he just stayed in one spot. He was cut, as he expected, but third-year Evin Larse picked up the role by perfectly striking the balance between young hothead and leader.

It was a week before the formal decisions on the rest of the roles came out. The wait was long, and Archie tapped his foot impatiently as Mariana read off her list. The two police officers were assigned, then Doc (sending Neal into whoops of excitement), then Chino (which went to Zahir, and even if he didn't jump up and down screaming Archie knew he was pleased), then Diesel and Pepe, the second-in-commands of the two gangs, then finally, finally …

"Anybodys, to be played by Harry Potter," Mariana announced, flashing him a small smile, and Archie lit up with a grin so big he felt like his face would split. A twelve-year-old wannabe gang member who was a girl?! He would play the perfect wannabe girl gang member. It would be a brilliant performance, he knew it, and rehearsals would start in earnest, three times week until showtime, that very week.

Chess was pulled out of the Healing program the first week of October.

It wasn't that Archie didn't notice that she was having trouble, it really wasn't. He had never seen her casting any spells in class, and Hermione was forever working with her on her spell-casting, especially for Charms, Defense, Basic Healing, Transfigurations. Once or twice, he saw her crying after a bad class, in which everyone else managed the spell and she hadn't, and he gave her a handkerchief and sat with her, arm around her, telling her he was sure she'd get it next time and rubbing her back while she cried it out. A few times, he saw her sobbing in frustration with Hermione when they were in the corner of the common room, working on a spell, and he found an excuse to walk by their table with the latest box of Honeydukes that Aunt Lily and Uncle James had sent him from home. They sent him a lot of care packages, and who wouldn't smile when they had a Fizzing Whizzbee, or caught a squeaking Ice Mouse, or ate a weird-tasting Bertie Botts Every Flavour Bean?

It wasn't that he didn't notice, it wasn't that he didn't care. It was just that he didn't worry too much about it. He figured it would blow over. A lot of Muggleborns had trouble controlling their magic early on, and he was sure he had heard Aunt Lily talk about problems controlling her magic before, too. Chess didn't have any problems with the theory (he knew because he took special care to quiz her every time they studied together), so it was just a matter of time. Next week, everything would click in her head and Chess would be with him and Hermione at the top of the class.

And it wasn't as if it she was unmagical, or anything. Archie saw her in Potions. Her potions always turned out well, easily as good as his and Hermione's. More importantly, he knew she was magical, because Dance Club shared the auditorium with Theatre Troupe (much to the dismay of both). Sometimes, when they were working on stage, Dance Club would be practicing at the back, and Archie had watched Chess master the complicated, danced levitation spell faster than any of the other first years. It wasn't that she couldn't do magic.

It was that she couldn't do wand magic. Yet. And wand magic was, apparently, critical to the AIM Healing Program. But Archie was sure – just next week, everything would click! He knew it!

But they wouldn't give her until next week.

"They're marking her as Exceptional," John told him quietly after No-Maj Studies, voice terse. "They're taking her out of Basic Healing 1 for an assessment of her magical ability, then..." He shrugged, brown eyes worried.

"It's too soon," Archie insisted, voice equally low. He didn't know much about the Exceptionals program, he only knew that it wasn't good. A lot of people said that Exceptionals were the failures they kept around even when they couldn't do magic; even those who didn't say that acknowledged that Exceptionals were different, that they didn't or couldn't follow the usual AIM curriculum. She would be kicked out of Healing if she was Exceptional! "It's normal for newbloods to have trouble with magic at first, it's not a big deal. I'll talk to Professor Willoweed – we can tutor her and catch her up. I'm doing really well in Basic Healing, I can tutor her in that, and you're the best in Defense. Hermione can do Charms and Transfigurations, and it'll be fine!"

John looked skeptical but didn't stop Archie when he bolted towards Professor Willoweed after Basic Healing the next day, towing a hapless Hermione behind him.

Professor Willoweed's face was open and kind, but she was implacable. "Mr. Potter, I thank you for your concern," she said, "but trust me when I say that, at this point, we need a proper assessment to figure out how best to help Miss Lam. Being marked as Exceptional is not the nightmare that students make it out to be; there are many cases where students who are Exceptional can still join a program, but if not, it is better for these students to have a specialized program where they can succeed."

"But her theory scores are great, and she's doing really well in Potions, Herbology, and Magical Psychology," Archie tried, spreading his hands. "It's just the wand magic classes, she's just having a little bit of trouble, but Hermione and I are doing really well, we can tutor her and catch her up, I promise!"

Professor Willoweed smiled slightly – it was a pitying sort of smile. "Your concern speaks well of you, Mr. Potter, but rest assured that at AIM, we are very aware of the kinds of issues that students, particularly newbloods, can have with their magic. Miss Lam will be a formidable witch in time, I'm sure, even if she isn't a Healer. Miss Granger, I believe you have been working closely with her for some time – have you any insight?"

Archie shot her a pleading look, but Hermione didn't notice. She was looking away in thought, and her reply was slow. "I don't think Harry is wrong, overall; Francesca just needs a breakthrough. I can't speculate on the root cause, but at this point, I suspect she just has a confidence problem. She's failed at casting wand magic so many times that even if she wants it to work, she doesn't believe it will."

"And every time she tries and fails, it reinforces the block." Professor Willoweed nodded, considering. "Very astute, Miss Granger. I will certainly pass that on to the professors working with her. But no, Mr. Potter, I can't reverse the decision that has already been made. If you want to be helpful, I'm sure that Miss Lam will appreciate your support."

That wasn't very helpful at all, and Archie scowled at Professor Willoweed's retreating back, even as Hermione tugged him back to the Healer dorms. At least Chess was still in the same dorms as them, they hadn't forced her to move.

Hermione's thoughts, though, had been useful. All Chess needed was a breakthrough, right? She just needed to know that she could cast magic, then it would all be fixed! And if he did it quick enough, she wouldn't have missed that many classes, a few classes of Basic Healing were nothing. And he had the perfect thing, too – it would take a bit of work, but he was sure he had packed the Marauder's patented coloured sneezing dust. Or Harry had done it for him – she was thoughtful, like that.

The sneezing dust was one of those things that he and Dad had worked on together, so he prided himself on knowing it better than most. The powder had two components – the sneeze-inducing part, which was coloured, and a light, tinted dust which turned to sticky, impossible-to-remove-goo when it came in contact with water. It would have been easier if Harry had packed some of the in-production stuff, but he had seen Dad work with this product before, so it was easy to separate the coloured, sneeze-inducing part out of the mix. He packed that away for use later – it was still good for a joke, it would just be easily washed off or Vanished. He was more interested in the tinted dust he now had.

He had the same kind of idea as the original sneeze-inducing powder, he just wanted it to be first, invisible, and second, a different spell, something nice, something cheerful. He didn't have a wide repertoire of spells, but they used colouris all the time at home. He just needed some more powder…

The Theatre Troupe kept some supplies in the backstage of the auditorium, including a few compacts of Muggle makeup-setting powder. High definition, etc, Archie didn't understand or care. It was powder, and it didn't have any magic in it, and he only need a very small amount for this prank. He wove the colour-changing spell into the powder very carefully, then mixed it into the tinted dust that would make it impossible to remove by washing. It wasn't quite invisible, but it was close enough, and tomorrow, he would find a way to spill it over Chess' hands, and everything she did would turn into gold!

Not literal gold, of course, but it would be gold-coloured, and it would be magical, and she would be delighted, and maybe it would encourage her to have a breakthrough. He couldn't make wand magic work for her, but if magic worked with her hands, then it had to help, right?

Getting the powder on her hands was easy. Chess was looking away from him at their study group later that week (it was Potions, so it wasn't anything difficult), everyone was looking away from him, everyone was looking at Hermione who was explaining something about the reactive properties of fluxweed. He quietly pulled out his carefully-prepared vial of powder and sprinkled it over the edges of her textbook, where her fingers would no doubt return to rest, and waited. The powder would take a few minutes to sink into her skin and work, and he turned back to their conversation, catching the tail end of Hermione's lecture.

"Fluxweed is also often used in transformative potions, most notably the Polyjuice Potion," Hermione finished.

John nodded, making a note of it with his chewed-up pencil on one of his many sheets of paper. Archie had no idea how he kept track of his notes – unlike he and Hermione, who used notebooks, and Chess, who took notes on paper but meticulously filed them in different-coloured folders, he didn't seem to have any organizational system whatsoever. And Archie had never seen him bring class notes to their study sessions, so he had no idea what he did with them. Threw them on his floor somewhere, most likely.

"Um," Chess interrupted, a note of panic coming into her voice. "Um, something's happening to me."

The pages of her book were turning gold, and when she trailed her fingers away to wipe them on her robes, her robes turned gold too. And the pencil, her pen, her paper. The table was next, as she, with increasing panic, frantically tried to wipe the invisible powder off or shake it off, but it didn't work (of course it didn't, Marauder products were better than that), and she stumbled upright, staring with wide, frightened eyes at her hands.

"Make it stop," she breathed softly, her voice rising as her breath picked up. She was shaking, and she looked at Archie with wide, terrified eyes, and Archie stared back, helpless in his surprise.

She was supposed to laugh. She was supposed to think it was funny, she was supposed to find it delightful, and it was supposed to show her that magic was great, that she could do magic, and it was supposed to fix everything.

"I… I can't," he said slowly. It required a Vanishing spell, and that wasn't anywhere near the first-year syllabus. At home, Dad would have taken care of it. "It's a Marauders product that I adjusted a little. A variant of the Sneezing Powder…"

Hermione shot him a dark look, shoving herself away from the desk and grabbing Chess' arm, where their friend was beginning to flail, her breaths coming in short, sharp sobs. She was having a panic attack – he recognized all the signs, but he couldn't do anything about it! "You did this, and you can't reverse it, Harry? Calm down, Francesca. Breathe."

"Make it stop," Chess wailed, the beginnings of panicked tears forming in her eyes as the gold colour spread from her hands to her face when she brought them up to wipe her eyes. They were starting to attract attention in the common room. From the corner of his eye, Archie caught Daine and Neal standing up.

"If it's a powder, it should come off with water," Hermione decided quickly, her voice brisk as she took charge, ushering Chess away to the girls' bathrooms. "Come on, Francesca, let's go. It'll be fine in a minute, all right? Don't cry."

"Oh, but—" Archie started, staring after them in shock. Oh, shit. He shoved himself away from the table and dashed after them, but he was too late; they had already disappeared. "Shit."

"What?" John asked, right behind him, and his usual light voice held a hint of iron.

The shriek, just barely audible from the girl's washrooms, told Archie all he needed to know.

"Harry!" Hermione's yell was easily identifiable.

"They tried to wash it off," Archie muttered, as Hermione burst out of the washroom, her arm around a now-completely-distraught, bawling, and shaking Chess. She was half-gold-coloured, like a strange, half-transfigured, moving sculpture. "The powder congeals into goo when you do that, which makes it next to impossible to remove. You have to Vanish it."

"Oh, and you couldn't tell us that earlier?" Hermione snapped, flicking her eyes down to Chess' hands, which were now covered in a clear case of sticky goo, like gloves. Wow, he didn't think the goo would be that bad – at home, they knew to Vanish them!

"You took off before I could," he replied weakly.

"So what do we do now?" Hermione demanded, over Chess' ragged, panicked breaths and choked, terrified sobs.

"The goo is supposed to harden and drop off in a day or so," Archie bit his lip, watching Chess, who was still shaking like a leaf while Hermione held her. Between her sobs, she wasn't getting enough air – her breaths were too short, too sharp, she was gasping for air but crying too hard to get any in. "There's also solvent that you can use to remove it earlier, my cousin Rigel always used to make it, but I don't know the recipe. I don't think there was a real recipe, it was just something she – he – threw together. Might be other things, too."

"She's not going to last a day in this state," Neal's voice came from behind them. The fourth-year was frowning. "She's hysterical, and unless anyone has a Calming Draught handy right now, we should probably put her out. Daine?"

"Yeah," the brunette said, catching hold of Chess' other arm. "I got her, Neal. Francesca, magelet, we're just going to knock you out with a sleeping charm and when you wake up, it'll be fixed. We promise, all right? We'll call in a Potions Mastery student if we need to, but when you wake up, it'll be fixed, okay?"

There was a slight pause, as Chess, her eyes and most her face and hair gold, shook and sobbed, but eventually, she nodded.

"Somnium." The curse was instant, and she slumped back into Daine and Hermione's arms, her breath evening out. Neal nodded, satisfied, then tucked his wand away to help with her weight. "The couch over there. John, go find Dom. Harry, you said this was your doing – a prank product you modified? Go get it."

Archie nodded, gulping, dashing up the stairs as John ran out the common room doors. He found the leftover powder quickly enough in his dorm room, hesitated, then grabbed some of the original sneezing powder too, bringing it back down to find Hermione recounting what she knew of the product.

"We'll have to have Dom look, I'm not familiar with it," Neal replied, shaking his head as he wove his wand in a complicated motion. An enchanted sleep, Archie realized. Daine was examining the goo casing Chess' hands. "Somnium doesn't naturally last very long, I'm keeping her out until we can fix this. Daine, anything on your end?"

"Nothing I can do," Daine sighed, shaking her head. "There's nothing physically wrong with her other than the anxiety. Her brain is wired to be more anxious than most, probably one of the reasons why she had a panic attack in the first place. I might be able to rewire her brain chemistry a little to help with that, but not without her explicit instruction and consent."

"Some of it was the nature of the prank," Hermione added quietly, glancing at Archie. Her wide brown eyes were apologetic, yet firm. "It mimicked magic, and she's been having trouble in classes – she was marked as Exceptional this week and pulled out of Basic Healing. They're thinking of pulling her out of Transfiguration and Defense, too."

Archie didn't know that, and his face fell. That was really bad, that meant she couldn't qualify for any AIM programs, and what would that say for her credentials? Everyone had to know Transfiguration and Defense, it was a basic requirement everywhere.

Neal and Daine exchanged looks. "I see," Daine said, her usual easy smile gone. "Well, I'm Exceptional, so why don't I take some time while we wait to tell you about that?"

"But you're in the Healing program!" Archie blurted out, looking up, then he flushed as Daine turned stony eyes on him. "Sorry, I just … I thought Exceptionals couldn't follow the normal programs."

"That's true," Daine replied, looking back over at Chess with a sombre, slightly sad expression. "I'm in a modified version of the Healing program. You see, not all magic is the same – your magic, Harry, is different from Hermione's, which is different from Neal's. If you ever see your magical signature, or the essence of it, you'll see one of the signs – they come in different colours. Most people, though, fall within a known spectrum – mages on the spectrum can do most of the same things, and the things they can't do are recognized. Like Light and Dark affinities – a Dark mage can't cast a lot of the spells a Light mage could, and vice versa, but enough people know about it that it's just accepted. For some reason, there's a strong correlation between mages who fall outside that spectrum and blood-status."

"Many theorists say that the correlation is the ultimate basis for blood discrimination," Neal added, looking at Archie pointedly. Because, perceived halfblood or not, Archie was from Britain, he realized guiltily, and Britain was now synonymous with blood discrimination. "Newbloods have wild magic, whereas purebloods inherit tamed magic from their parents. Halfbloods tend to fall somewhere in the middle – it's called Archibald's Theory of Increasing Organization."

"Essentially, some newbloods have magic that somehow breaks the rules – they can do odd things, or they can't do certain things, or they just fall outside the "normal" spectrum somehow. For me, I can't cast any of the diagnosis spells, or most of the formed Healing spells." Daine's voice was quiet, but hard. "I have to know anatomy a lot better than Neal does, because I have to direct my magic much more precisely to Heal, and my program involves a lot more No-Maj medicine, such as pharmacology. But on the other hand, I can Heal a lot of things that Neal can't, and I can identify whatever has gone wrong much more precisely than Neal can. I help with a lot of complex cases, where the usual spells interfere with each other or don't work."

"For example, Daine noticed that your friend has higher than normal amounts of anxiety – that's not something my magic, or yours, would notice no matter what diagnosis spells we cast. And we couldn't do anything about it." Neal's lips quirked into a small smile, patting Daine on the shoulder. "Daine could."

"There would be a risk of changing her personality, though," Daine shook her head. "I wouldn't do it unless it was really serious, or she wanted it. She's a little more highly strung than normal, not enough to justify intervention. Anyway – my point is, yes, a lot of people say that Exceptionals can't do magic. And that's really fucking shitty, because it's not something that you can really control or help, and people are saying you're stupid or they're playing tricks on you and then you feel stupid because everyone else is getting it except you, but it's not your fault and the truth really is more nuanced."

Archie's ears burned, even as Daine's voice broke into open anger and he felt her words burrow into his chest. He looked down, somewhat ashamed. He didn't know all that. Well, maybe he did, a little – they always said that Muggleborns had trouble with their magic. But he always chalked it up to lack of familiarity, not that their magic might actually be different.

"In Chess' case, there's also a bit of a "I left my No-Maj life for this?" Sort of feeling, too." That was John's voice, behind him, and when Archie looked up, John was carefully looking at Neal. There was a hint of something in his eyes; Archie didn't understand the message, but clearly Neal did. He had brought Dom back with him, who wore a look of concern. "She's… in the No-Maj world, she's a genius. She's used to being at the top of the class, winning competitions, being put in classes with people a few years ahead of her."

"So, she hasn't really failed at anything before, either," Neal nodded thoughtfully, passing Archie's leftover powder to Dom without comment, along with the pack of regular sneezing powder. Dom held the two powders to the light, pulling out his wand to poke at it. "That's hard. Failing for the first time is always hard. Dom, Harry played a prank on Francesca, here – he messed around with a British pranking product, supposedly a sneezing powder, to make anything she touched turn into gold. The powder turned into this when she tried to wash it off." He pointed at the goo casing Chess' hands.

"I took out the sneezing component and added a new spelled powder. It's just a colour-changing charm," Archie said, voice muted. "With the goo, I don't know the exact spell – normally the powder can just be Vanished, but since it turned into the goo – I know it's supposed to fall off within a day, and my cousin Rigel can make a solvent to remove it, but other than that …"

"Can you Vanish it once it's turned into this?" Dom turned a beady, blue eye on him. "In theory, just because it had a reaction to water shouldn't change whether it can be Vanished. Unless there's something else in the mix too?"

Archie thought hard about that. He had always assumed it couldn't be Vanished once it turned into the goo; Harry had always made the solvent, but the stuff they worked with at home was usually changed when it joined the Marauders product line. The prototype at home couldn't be Vanished once it turned to goo, but then, Uncle Remus always insisted on safety precautions. That was why their products always expired within a day, as a failsafe, and he could imagine Uncle Remus insisting that it be easily Vanished as well, since most people couldn't just go brew a solvent. He vaguely remembered them removing a compound before finalizing it. "Maybe? The prototype that my family worked with and used couldn't be Vanished, but they might have changed it before it went on the market? This is the mass-market stuff."

"Let's try that first, then," Dom decided, tossing the sneezing powder back to Archie and keeping the modified version. He spilled a bit of the modified powder on the coffee table, ignoring Neal's hiss of annoyance. "Quick test, first – don't worry, Neal, I'll fix the table too. Aguamenti."

Water spilled out of his wand, mixing with the powder, which promptly congealed into a small mess of goo. Dom waved his hand again. "Evanesco."

The mess disappeared, and Dom nodded, satisfied, before he turned his wand on Chess' hands. The goo casing disappeared, and Archie breathed a sigh of relief. Neal twisted his wand deftly – Archie thought it was to remove the sleeping spell, but nothing happened. If anything, Chess made a soft noise and fell into a deeper slumber. He silently cast Finite Incantatem on her face, on her hands, her clothes, and Archie watched the gold colour bleed away, leaving no traces behind.

"It'll be better for her to sleep through until morning," Neal said, rising and catching Archie's eye. "She'll feel better with some distance. Dom, can you take Francesca to her room? Hermione can show you where it is. I want a word with Harry."

"I have work to do," Daine said, rising from her seat. "Memorizing pharmaceutical compounds and all their possible interactions doesn't happen by itself, and Professor Beauchamps wants to bring me in on a complex care patient at the teaching hospital on the weekend. I'll see you later, Neal." She disappeared up the broad, sweeping staircase to the upper balconies.

"I'll take care of Chess' things, pack them up for her, all that," John said, standing up and brushing off his robes lightly. He pulled out his wand, checking the wand movement. "Finite Incantatem has this movement, right?"

"No, a little sharper," Neal said, watching as John did it again, nodding on the third try when he did it right. "That's it, there. If you get the powder on you, find Dom to Evanesco it – I haven't covered the spell, yet."

"Sure thing. Thanks, man." John patted him on the shoulder, turning back to their study table to pack things up.

"De rien," Neal replied, then he turned to watching Archie, who fidgeted nervously. For a few minutes, Neal simply sat there, a stern, considering look in his emerald eyes. His eyes were a bit like Harry's, a shade darker but with the same unnatural brightness. Archie wondered vaguely what Harry would have said, in this situation?

No, Harry would never have been in this situation. She would never have pulled the stupid prank in the first place. Harry probably wouldn't have gotten involved at all, and Archie never felt the fact that he wasn't Harry quite as keenly. Damn it.

"You know," Neal started, his voice dry. "I've spent the last three years corrupting first-years, and I never thought I would be in the position of lecturing one. This is a role reversal, and I don't like it. What were you thinking?"

"It wasn't supposed to happen that way," Archie spilled out, staring at his shoes. "She was supposed to be happy, it was supposed to be fun." And cute. Chess liked cute things. He had seen the inside of her room, glimpses here and there. The quilt on her bed was pale pink, and she still slept with stuffed toys. It was a cute prank, suiting her perfectly. He thought she would like it!

Neal held up a hand, to stop his babbling. "I understand that you didn't mean for it to happen that way, but it did. Let me ask you again. What on earth were you thinking?"

Archie sighed. "I was thinking," he paused. What was he thinking, before? He tried again. "I was worried about her. I knew she'd been marked as Exceptional, and Hermione said that she really just needed a confidence boost, and I thought if I did something that showed she could do magic, it would encourage her. And it would be cute, and funny."

Neal sighed and put his head in his hands. "All right. Let's deconstruct that, shall we? Worried, fine. Why did you think being marked as Exceptional was a bad thing?"

"Everyone says it is," Archie frowned, confused. "Even Daine, the first day – she didn't like it, when someone mentioned it."

"She doesn't," Neal acknowledged, inclining his head. "Being marked as Exceptional is hard, precisely because everyone says it's a bad thing. A lot of people say that Exceptionals are stupid, and they're mostly newbloods, so they're also new to our world. At first, they just have to deal with people staring at them, whispering about them. Then, after the professors work it out, people talk about how their programs are easier, that it's not fair, that if they can't do magic they should get out. Sometimes, later, they get different opportunities, based on their skills – Daine gets a lot of crap because she's only a third year but she gets pulled in on complex cases. The first time that got around, someone charmed a platter of eggs at breakfast to throw itself at her, and someone else shredded her Healer's robes. It's really hard, and it's entirely out of their control."

"I didn't know that," Archie replied, shamed. "I didn't know the magical theory stuff – I always just thought that Muggleborns had trouble with magic at first because they didn't grow up with it. That's what Dad always said."

"I think that much is obvious," Neal snorted, then waved a hand. "To be fair to you, I wouldn't be surprised if that were the Light party line in Britain. Admitting that newblood and halfblood magic is quantitatively different doesn't work with their political interests, especially when practically, it usually doesn't make much difference. They want to emphasize that newbloods and halfbloods are the same as purebloods. Moving on – you thought that she would be happy. Can you understand why she wasn't?"

Archie sat, and he thought. It was such a little prank, and pranks were fun. They were his family pastime! And his prank wasn't vicious or anything – it wasn't like he had attacked her, or thrown things at her, or anything like that. It was kind of a cute prank. All things told, Uncle James and Dad would have barely called it a prank. But on the other hand, it couldn't have been harmless, because if it were, Chess really would have been happy, instead of sleeping it off now.

"Because it mimicked magic?" Archie hazarded a guess. It was what Hermione had said. "But that was sort of the point – I wanted her to believe she could do magic."

Neal sighed again. "Harry, I guarantee you that right now, there are a dozen people who watched what happened tonight who thought you were making fun of her, and that this was funny because Francesca can't do magic. It doesn't matter what you meant, because those people are still going to be laughing at her tomorrow."

"But she can do magic!" Archie burst out. "They've seen her in Potions, right? And in dance club, she does magic!"

Neal looked at him with a sad sort of pity in his emerald eyes. "Do you really think the truth matters, Harry?"

Chapter Text

Chess didn't sit with them the next day – not at breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And because Chess didn't sit with them, John didn't either.

It started at breakfast. A month into school, a good proportion of the school seemed to have stopped eating breakfast altogether in favour of extra sleep, or they bolted something down less than a half-hour before they were due in classes. Since Archie always ate a full breakfast, he was usually there when tables were still relatively empty. It had become his habit to secure a table for the other three when they arrived. That morning, he waved, a little shyly, for John and Chess to join him and Hermione at their usual table. He watched as John leaned down and said something to Chess. Chess hesitated, glancing over at them, then shook her head. They turned and took a seat elsewhere, and Archie's face fell.

Hermione was watching, brow wrinkled in sympathetic concern.

"They didn't sit with us," Archie said softly. He knew he was stating the obvious (Harry would have told him so, even if he knew), but some part of him had hoped that, in the morning, everything would be the same as usual. Or, at least, that there would be a chance for him to apologize.

"Did you expect her to?" Hermione asked after a moment, biting into her toast-with-marmalade. "Remember, she only just woke up. The last thing she remembers is being terrified. Give her some time and space, Harry."

Archie looked down at his plate. His usual – two eggs, a side of sausages, toast. "How much time and space, do you think?"

"I don't know, Harry."

He scooped some of his eggs onto his toast and bit into it, looking over at his other two friends. Chess had a bowl of yogurt and fruit, as usual, into which he could see John had stuck a pastry of some kind. She always said she didn't want it, but always ended up eating it anyway.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like that, 'Mione," he looked back at the brunette. "You know that, right?"

Hermione sighed, setting her slice of toast down and looking at him directly. "I know, Harry, but I don't approve. Just because something is justifiable doesn't mean it's justified. Either John or I would have told you it was a bad idea if you had said anything."

Archie gave her a weak sort of smile. "I should have – you are, without a doubt, too good for me, 'Mione."

It was a terrible attempt at flirting, and Archie knew it, even as Hermione rolled her eyes.

He followed Hermione to Charms and Defense, during which Chess was assigned readings and exempted from the practical sections. Archie watched her walk to a back corner of both classrooms, out of the way of the spells, her posture slumped as it never was when he caught a glimpse of her at her dance practices. Turning back to the front, to the spells they were working on, Archie spotted several of his classmates throwing veiled stares at her, a few people whispering, sniggering. Damn it. Neal was right – had that been happening last week? Or was it worse now because of what he had done? He didn't know, and he didn't want to ask.

Lunch was more of the same; Archie ran into the crowded dining hall, wheedling sandwiches from the serving elves for him and Hermione to eat out on the grounds. It was still warm out, even in October, and they were sitting in their usual spot on the green. He vaguely expected John and Chess to show up, as they usually did, their own lunches in hand, and kept an eagle eye on the doors to Seaton House, but they never reappeared.

"They probably ate inside," Hermione said, her sandwich in one hand as she reviewed her Magical Theory textbook, open on her knees. She had a quiz in her next class, and Magical Theory was intense – it was recommended for anyone interested in the experimental Charms program and was as hotly competitive, if not more so, as Healing. "You know how John is, he can order seats with the power of his name alone."

Her voice betrayed only a hint of annoyance, for all that Archie knew that John's general use of his name and all the benefits he got by it (friendly connections with upper years, seats in the dining hall, rides to town…) irked her – even when she benefitted from it by association. She thought it was unfair and ridiculous. In reply, Archie made a non-committal sort of sound.

He and John had No-Maj Studies after lunch together, without Hermione and Chess, so he could talk to him then. He polished off his sandwich rather faster than usual, and he jiggled one knee anxiously while he waited for Hermione to finish. She threw him a knowing look.

"Go on, then," she sighed, waving him off. "You don't need to watch me study, and I know you want to talk to John."

"Thanks, 'Mione," Archie threw his arms around her shoulders, breathing in the comforting scent of her shampoo (clean with a hint of spark, like the air after a thunderstorm). She patted him awkwardly on the back in return. "You're a good friend – the best friend! I'll see you later."

He dashed off to the No-Maj Studies classroom, twenty minutes before the beginning of class. It was empty (not a surprise, this early), so he wandered in and examined all the posters and pictures and the like decorating the classroom walls. By now, a month and a half into school, he had already studied them in detail, but it was all still so interesting. One thing he had come to learn was that, even if No-Majs didn't have magic, they still dreamed, they pushed boundaries and did things (often insanely dangerous things!) for the sake of discovery itself. No-Majs saw a mountain, and they wanted to climb it. They saw birds, decided they wanted to fly, and they did. They looked to the skies, saw the stars, and dreamed of leaving Earth to see it – and they did. It was hard – harder! – for them without magic, and they still made it happen, and that sort of persistence and ingenuity and drive was, in and of itself, a special kind of magic.

Other classmates were slowly starting to trickle in, and Archie sat down in his usual seat at the back, his bag on John's usual seat beside him. John wasn't there yet, and Archie shifted anxiously, waiting. He hoped John wouldn't take too long, he wanted at least a solid five minutes or so to talk to him, and he kept pulling out his pocket watch and checking the time.

John had ten minutes, then eight, then six. At the four-minute mark, he came in, and Archie breathed a sigh of relief – he could talk to John, he could explain that he didn't mean anything by it, that he was sorry, and John would understand. He would help him talk to Chess, and everything would be fine. Everything had to be fine.

But John didn't sit down beside him. Instead, he lounged against the ledge of the whiteboard, arms crossed, waiting for people to notice him. They did, within a minute – it was odd, and the classroom fell silent.

"Hey everyone," John said, with a friendly smile that didn't reach his eyes. "For those of you who don't know me yet, John Kowalski, yes, that Kowalski. I know you've all been talking, so I'll just come out and say it. Yeah, Francesca Lam's been marked as Exceptional. I see you all whispering about her, I see you all laughing at her. That stops, now. If I hear any more of it, and I'll find out if it happens, you'll hear from me, and I won't be nice about it. Leave her alone, everyone. That's all."

"Thank you, Mr. Kowalski," Professor Ryan said, sweeping into the classroom. "I'm sure you were very enlightening, but please, take your seat. Do remember the Student Code of Conduct, everyone."

John sat down beside Archie, pulling out several sheets of blank paper and dropping a chewed-up pen on them. Archie tried to catch his eye, but John was paying unusual attention to the other students in the class, including what seemed to be a glaring contest with one Thomas Graves, sitting near the door. Archie looked up – Professor Ryan was lecturing about Cosmos, now, and Carl Sagan. He sat for a few minutes, jiggling a knee, then scrawled out a note.

I didn't mean for it to happen like that, John. Don't be mad at me. I just wanted to do something nice for her.

He slid the paper across the desk discreetly, thanking the stars that they were sitting at the back, and Professor Ryan was putting in another imaging orb. John looked down, seeing the paper, and Archie heard him sigh, scrawling something in return.

I know. Still not OK.

His handwriting was a slanted scrawl, a far cry from Archie's loopy, uneven cursive, or Harry's perfectly neat hand. Or Hermione's tiny, round script.

I'm sorry, he wrote back. The words were easy for him to write. I screwed up. I should have talked to you and Mione first. He slid the sheet of paper across to John.

It was a few minutes before John looked down, reading it. He sighed, again, leaning over to write something.

Not the one you should be saying this to.

Archie looked at the answer and winced. He knew that. He had known that, but he hadn't managed to catch Chess yet today. Anyway, this called for a bigger apology than just words. What can I do to make it up to her?

John glanced at the sheet and shot him a pitying sort of look. Don't know, he scrawled back.

Archie paused before he wrote his next words. Are you angry with me?

John studied the note for a second. No, he started writing, but then he crossed it out and wrote, Yes. Then he paused, then crossed that out, too, and then he apparently gave up. Fix it. He circled the words, twice.

Archie looked down at the note, sighed, then he folded it, and put it away in his bag. John wasn't very angry at him, but he was angry, and at least he was willing to see what Archie would do next? Archie would fix it, he would. He had an almost-full care package from Honeydukes that Aunt Lily sent him, plus a pile of No-Maj candy from his trip to town. He had tried a few of the No-Maj chocolate bars – he loved the cookie and caramel underlying the Twix, wasn't very impressed by the Aero, and he didn't like the Oh Henry bar at all. He still had the Mars bar, the Snickers, and Kit-Kats, and a Crunch bar. And he still had more than half a box of pranking supplies. Surely something in there would help?

Unfortunately, he had theatre that night, and she had dance, so he couldn't catch her before dinner. Not that he could focus at theatre – he completely failed at the tableau exercise they were doing, too distracted both by his own thoughts and by watching her practice the same sequence of steps, over and over again, dancing through the air at the back of the auditorium. At the end of it, he could picture the sequence perfectly in his head: the twist, turn and spin up spiral steps for the levitation spell, a quickstep glide across the air, a spin, tiny light skips across the air, another spin with her hands outstretched above her head, then a fold at her waist, just one rotation in the air as she dropped the levitation spell, and a soft landing on the floor.

Their practice ended earlier than theatre did, so by the time Archie was done, she was long gone. He went back to the common room to collect Hermione (it was Thursday – that meant Alchemy Club, or sometimes the Knitting Circle), finding her already at the study tables.

"We should wait for dinner," Hermione said, flipping through her Charms book. "You know it's always packed at this time – it'll be emptier in an hour. I don't want to have to fight for a place to sit."

Archie made a face at her. "John and Chess will be there now, though. I haven't managed to talk to her all day today – I want to apologize to her. I don't want it to sit for another day."

"But she won't want you to apologize front of other people, Harry," Hermione pointed out patiently. "Doing it in public pressures her into accepting even if she's not ready yet. Knock on her door later tonight. Let's do our analysis for Charms, and we'll go eat, and by the time we get back, you can try."

Archie scowled in annoyance but sat down anyway. His Charms analysis was brief (just a deconstruction of the incantation for Wingardium Leviosa) and definitely not as thorough as Hermione's, but it was fine. Who came up with the incantation for that spell anyway? It wasn't even bad Latin, at that point – it was garbage Latin. Or maybe just garbage. Wing wasn't even Latin, it was plain English! The other half, ardium, came from arduus, steep, and leviosa was some awful mangling of levis, light as in not heavy. A wing, steep, not heavy, and somehow, poof! It made a levitation charm.

It was a prank. It had to be. Who else would come up with Wingardium Leviosa?

The dining hall was much emptier later, but Archie barely noticed as he bolted down his plate of meatloaf and potatoes. The food at AIM was good, though a little heavy on the meat – Archie wondered briefly, in his distraction, how Harry would have fared? He hoped that, at Hogwarts, she had a good selection of vegetarian food.

Hermione shot him an exasperated look, and Archie's stilled his foot, which was tapping against the floor, a quick ra-ta-ta-ta. "You don't need to wait for me."

Archie sighed, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Sorry. I'm just impatient. I'll wait – it would be rude for me to leave someone so lovely and patient to eat alone, especially when I was a perfect scoundrel and abandoned you at lunch. Talk to me, 'Mione. Tell me about Alchemy Club."

Hermione's face lit up, completely ignoring his attempt at flirting. "Well, it's very closely related to Transfigurations," she said, before launching into a discussion of some of the activities they had in the club. Since it wasn't a formal class, students were able to study or research whatever interested them, and Archie didn't follow her explanation very well. He was jittery, anxious, and he felt a faint buzz, like bees, running through his stomach. He would need to ask her again later for more details.

Returning to the common room, Archie took a deep breath, walked Hermione to her room, then went to his room to consider what he had that might work as part of an appropriate apology. He could give Chess pranking supplies of her own, offer to let her get revenge? No, that wouldn't work – first, Archie liked pranks, and second, he couldn't see someone like Chess ever considering revenge. She was too soft, without even a hint of the wicked streak he sometimes saw in Aunt Lily. Candy had to be the better answer.

She liked Fizzing Whizzbees, and he had a few of those left, so he emptied out his last care package from home and threw them in. She didn't like Ice Mice at all – something about the way they squeaked more and more when they were eaten unnerved her. Same with Chocolate Frogs. She didn't like Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans very much, either. But she liked cauldron cakes, and chocolate that didn't move on its own, and glacial snowflakes and sugar quills, so he picked through for the best of that and put them in the box as well, then tucked the box under one arm and headed out of his room.

Chess' room was nearly on the opposite corner of his, the last one two long hallways away, squashed up against the huge window streaming light into the busy common room. She wasn't down there, not tonight – he'd already looked. John was there, though, in the centre of a raucous group of upper-years, which meant that Chess was probably somewhere in the building, at least. He had spent most of the rest of the day playing overprotective bodyguard, and Archie didn't think that would change anytime soon. John was weird like that – even Hermione said so.

The blackboard on Chess' door was already defaced. Someone had wiped her name off the blackboard, when it was once covered in stylized drawn flowers – she wasn't a particularly good artist, the flowers had been basic in the extreme, but she had put some time into it. Over it, words were scrawled: Pettingill Hall for HEALERS ONLY! Exceptionals Not Wanted! Go home, Wandless! The hands were different, so more than one culprit.

He didn't think this had been happening before. He wasn't so unobservant that he wouldn't have noticed this earlier, was he? He didn't think he was! He was good at observing people, it was Harry that tended to obliviousness. But Chess' room wasn't on the way to anything for him, so he never walked past it to notice, and neither she nor John had ever mentioned anything. But maybe, too, there was an element of blindness; he had always seen Chess as part of the group and, beside Hermione and John (and, he flattered himself, himself), she tended to fade into the background a little. Just a little. She didn't argue the way Hermione and John sometimes did, she was often happy to just sit and listen. Or was she? Maybe he just talked over her?

He was second-guessing himself, and he took in a deep, steadying breath. What was done, was done. Either he had failed to notice something that was happening with her earlier, or he had played an active role in sparking it. He wasn't sure which was worse, but both were bad. He pulled out his wand, waving it over the blackboard, muttering the erasing spell. He didn't even want to touch the words.

The chalk disappeared, leaving not a hint behind. He hesitated but decided to forego writing her name for her – no need to attract people to her door if they didn't already know where she lived. She could decide what to put on her door later. He rapped on the door sharply, a small pattern – three knocks, then two.

There was nothing, not even a peep for a minute, and then he tried again, three raps – then one. Ta-ta-ta. Ta!

He heard a rustle as the door opened a crack, and a single dark eye peered cautiously out. He held out his Honeydukes box and heard a sigh as she opened the door a little more, scanning the hallway before stepping in the doorway. She was clad in a pale pink t-shirt with tiny white hearts all over it, with matching red pyjama bottoms. Her thick, dark hair was loose about her face, her expression careful as she kept one hand on her door, one on her door frame, an easy position to slam the door shut if she thought it necessary. She glanced up at her blackboard, now blank, and there was a heavy, awkward silence.

Archie fidgeted. The words were so much easier to say to John and Hermione than they were to her.

"Thank you for erasing my board," she started instead, her voice soft. "I heard people writing and, well… I thought I would just deal with it in the morning."

"No, no, that's… that's nothing," Archie blurted out, pushing the box of Honeydukes sweets into her arms. She took hold of the box with a slight oof. "Look, Chess, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize people were doing this, or that they would react this way. I was stupid, I shouldn't have done it. I really thought you would like it, and that it would cheer you up."

"Oh," she replied, looking down into the box. She hesitated, then looked up at him and tried to push it back into his hands. "You didn't have to. I know … I know you didn't mean that way. I'm sorry for how I reacted. It was just… It's been hard."

"No, keep them," Archie insisted, refusing to take the box. "I sorted through it for all your favourites, see? Fizzing Whizzbees, Honeydukes best chocolate, glacial snow flakes, sugar quills! Oh, I suppose we don't really use quills, here, so it's not the same, but at Hogwarts, you could take them into class and when you suck on them you just look like you're thinking!"

"Oh," she said again. She bit her lip, looking into the box, before she turned and placed it on her desk. "Thank you, I suppose."

Another awkward pause – she wasn't telling him to go, but neither was she inviting him to stay. He shifted his weight awkwardly for a minute or so. He glanced into her room; like every other time he had seen it, it was an explosion of pink and white. The walls were cream, like his, but her curtains were pink, her chair cushion and a throw over the back of her chair were pink, her coverlet spread over her bed was pink. There was a bookshelf, too, crammed with more than just textbooks – textbooks lined the bottom shelves, but the top shelves were stacked with paperbacks, like he had seen in the No-Maj bookshop in town. Her desk, aside from the Honeydukes box, had a heavy stack of textbooks. He saw a row of teddy bears lined up alongside the wall of her bed, and her pillow was propped up in the corner. There was a book, flipped upside down on her bedspread – she must have been reading when he knocked. It was a Runes book.

She was silent, looking down at the box of sweets, and Archie wasn't sure what to do. She might not be talkative (or he thought she wasn't usually talkative?), but she wasn't telling him to go, and he wanted to smooth things over. It would be better if he stayed and smoothed things over with a little conversation – it would make things more comfortable for everyone, and she would tell him to go if she really wanted him to go.

"So," he started, scanning around for a conversation topic and lighting on the now-blank board. Maybe that wasn't a good question to ask, but he was curious. He would just go about it delicately. "Wandless?"

He was careful to keep any hint of judgement out of his voice, leaving it only curiosity, a bit of worry. She pressed her lips together, still looking into the Honeydukes box.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," Archie rushed to add, flushing. He shouldn't have asked. "I mean, if you don't want to tell me, that's fine too, whatever you want."

She shook her head slowly, pulling out a sugar quill and unwrapping it. "I'm just surprised they heard so quickly; I don't have a wand anymore."

She turned away from her desk and took a seat on her bed, pulling her legs up and leaning up against her pillow, popping the sugar quill into her mouth. She was in an awkward corner of the room and he couldn't see her very well, so Archie took that to mean he could come in. Harry did things like this sometimes, when Archie interrupted her in her lab or in the library, but she was never bothered by it – and she always told him to leave if she needed to be alone. Maybe Chess was the same – she hadn't asked him to come in, but she would tell him to go if she wanted him to go. He stepped forward and sat down gingerly in her desk chair, pulling it out to face her. "What do you mean, you don't have a wand?"

"The one I had was poorly matched – probably the best of what exists, they said, but not well enough matched for me to do magic with it," Chess replied, matter-of-fact, picking up her book and resting it on her knees. "They did a test with a book to see if a custom wand might work, but the book's suggestion was impossible to create so… I just won't be able to do wand magic."

Her voice was quiet, not upset, which was surprising in and of itself. How could she not be upset? Not being able to do wand magic would be like ... cutting off a limb, or removing an organ, or something! There was no way she would be able to Heal, or do Charms, or Transfigurations, or defend herself, or … he didn't even know all the things she would never be able to do! It would leave Potions, and Herbology, and not much else – pretty much all magic nowadays was wand-based!

But she wasn't upset. No, she had started reading her book. He resisted the urge to burst out with how awful that was, replacing it with a deep breath. If it was worth panicking about, she would be panicking. Right?

"I don't know much wandlore," Archie said, instead, frowning. "But they always say that the wand chooses the wizard, so how do they know that no wand will ever pick you? I think that's a little pessimistic! If you can't do wand magic, what will you do?"

Chess glanced up, quirking a small, shy, half-smile. "Wands are only the most common channelling method," she replied, her voice resigned, with only a hint of sadness. She gestured her stack of textbooks on her desk. It was a mix of both runes and wandlore, now that Archie could make out the titles. Wandlore? "The Chinese don't use them at all, apparently – most Chinese mages still use paper magic, so I'll have an extra, one-on-one class with Professor Li, the Runes Master, and I'll use the Chinese system for most of my magic. They can't do the Healing program like that – Chinese Healing is too different – but I'll still be in the core classes with everyone."

"Oh," Archie leaned back in her desk chair, rocking it back into the second position with a thud. He hadn't ever considered that; he always thought that everyone used wands. It was still sad, but it wasn't awful. Chess was still a witch. She would just do magic a little differently than everyone else. "What's with the wandlore books, then?"

Chess shrugged uncomfortably, looking back down at her Runes book. "Just a little bit of reading. I was curious about something."

"What about?" Archie asked. "Can I help?"

She looked up again, meeting his eyes, and Archie tried to make himself look as trustworthy as possible. How did one look trustworthy, anyway? He was good at pleading, innocent looks, that sort of thing, but trustworthy was harder. It required some sort of reliability, so he made his expression serious, but interested. He kept his eyes focused on her, a slight furrow in his brow marking his concern, his breath even.

She considered it, a moment. "It's a little … You might think it's silly," she muttered, looking away.

"Give me a chance, Chess," Archie gave her a small, but winning, smile. "Try me. If I can help, I will."

She was silent another minute, or so, before she sighed and set her book aside. "The wand chooses the wizard, right? That's the theory."

Archie nodded slowly, his eyes trained on hers. "That's what I've always been told."

"But if so, why were they able to pull out a book and, based on a drop of my blood, predict my ideal wand?" Chess frowned, but there was a spark of something in her dark eyes. Something like curiosity, but more intense. He didn't really have a word for it, but he thought he saw it sometimes in Harry's eyes when she worked on a difficult potion. Drive, maybe. "If the wand really did choose the wizard, and it were as simple as that, the book shouldn't work. If something can be predicted, that means it's not random, and there must be some other principle."

Archie thought for a moment. "You're saying the wand doesn't choose the wizard?"

Chess tilted her head one way, then the other. "Hmm… I'm saying that I think it might only be a figurative way of saying that not all wands will work for every mage, and I'm wondering why a particular wand chooses a particular mage. But I don't know anything, yet – just, if the wand really did choose the wizard, you're right. How would they know no wand would pick me? There must be something else behind it. John said he would help me. He's going to collect data on what wands everyone has for me, and meanwhile…" She waved a hand at the pile of books on wandlore.

Archie nodded slowly. He could help with that, too. It was the least he could do, and besides, she made a good point. "My wand is elm and dragon heartstring; Hermione's is vine wood and dragon heartstring. If you don't mind me asking, what did they say was your ideal wand?"

Chess made a soft noise, a small huff of amusement. "Don't laugh, okay? John did – he rolled around on my floor, laughing his head off for five minutes, until his head hit the desk chair."

"If John laughed, I don't know that I'll be able to stop myself, but I'll try," Archie replied with a smile, raising an eyebrow. "But I won't laugh at you, Chess."

She quirked another odd, half-smile. "Fine. Cherrywood and kraken's blood."

After that, things were the same, but they weren't the same.

Chess was back, and that meant their foursome was back. They ate together, studied together often in the Healer's common room, and laughed together. But things also weren't the same – even if Chess forgave him, she never forgot that it had happened, and there was an extra hint of hesitation, a little second-guessing where Archie was concerned. It was in the small things – she stiffened before she accepted most things from him, an extra pause when she considered what to say to him, a glint of caution in her eyes when she looked at him that hadn't been there before. And people still left notes on her door, whispered when she walked past, sniggered during practical classes when she pulled out paper to cast the same spells. It was pervasive, and even if John made efforts to stop it, getting himself into a fistfight with Thomas Graves of their year only a couple weeks later, he couldn't be everywhere. Archie took to pranking a few of the worst offenders – in Transfigurations, he dumped the remaining sneezing powder on a girl he had caught defacing Chess' board earlier that morning, then he threw a vial of Stinksap on someone who tried to cast a trip-jinx on her in the corridors.

"I had it already, Harry," Hermione said, that time, tucking her wand away with a sigh, the tiny Protego she had cast flashing at Chess' heels. "And really, Stinksap?"

"Uninspired, I know," Archie admitted. "But it was all I had in my bag."

Hermione made a small harrumphing noise, but Archie could tell that she wasn't really upset at him. If she was, she would have demanded to know why he had Stinksap in his bag in the first place (obviously, he had liberated it from Herbology for later pranking purposes), but she didn't, which meant that she was more upset about the Trip-Jinx.

Archie wholeheartedly agreed. It was cowardly to attack Chess with magic – she did carry a paper Shield Charm with her now, but it was mixed in a pack with paper charms for other spells, and she simply couldn't respond as quickly as a wand-user. Paper-casters were not cut out for duelling – even in China, Hermione said, where more than two-thirds of their wizarding population relied on paper casting, most of their Auror corps was made of heirloom casters, mages from old wizarding families that channeled magic through traditional family heirlooms. Not wands, for them – mostly weapons.

It was frustrating, which was the only reason that John had managed to talk them all into going out to the Quodpot game. Archie wasn't curious about the American wizarding pastime, not at all. It was no doubt a cheap replacement for Quidditch, and he was British, and he had no interest whatsoever in it. The only reason he had any idea how AIM was doing in the annual tournament was because John did not shut up about it.

"This game is going to be huge," John was saying with a gargantuan grin, shepherding the three of them across the campus to Stadium. Of the four of them, he was the most familiar with the building – it was where the Quodpot, Quidditch and Duelling clubs trained, so he was there most nights between the end of classes and dinner, and occasionally later. More than half of the days was for Duelling, to hear John tell of it – he had tried out for the Quodpot team, but hadn't made the cut, so that left the pickup games that he joined religiously every Saturday. He also joined the pickup Quidditch games on Sundays, which Archie made it out to every now and then. John was actually a pretty good Beater (though Harry was better), but Quidditch tryouts weren't until January.

"It's AIM against Ilvermorny – we wiped the floor with Escuela Maya already, and the Collège in Canada, so right now we're ahead in the rankings. But neither of those schools are very strong when it comes to Quodpot, and Ilvermorny's already cleaned up Cascadia, one of the stronger teams in the league, so their team isn't too shabby this year." John chewed on his lip for a moment. "Their forwards and centres are just so-so, but their defensive formation is tight. Here, these are great seats – right in the middle of the action, sit, sit!"

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Archie muttered, plunking himself down on the indicated seat. "A Quodpot game. I could be reviewing how to heal a bruise, or how magic moves throughout the bloodstream, or, even better, reading that book that Professor Ryan recommended – Ender's Game. She lent me a copy, said I would like it."

"Would you explain the game again?" Hermione asked, sitting down beside him. Chess was beside her – she had smuggled a book out with her and had already stuck her nose in it. "The only thing I know about it thus far is that the ball explodes. That's what you keep coming back to when you and Harry argue about it."

"Yeah, the Quod," John said, eyes lighting up. "Each team has eleven players, see – four forwards, three centres, and four defence. They each have a side of the pitch, and the goal is to get the Quod into the pot at the other end to score a point. But the Quod explodes unpredictably – the rule of thumb is that it probably won't explode in the first two minutes, and no Quod has never been known to go longer than twenty minutes before blowing up. If the Quod explodes while a player is carrying it, the player is out of the game – it goes on until either one team has no players left, or they've gone through twenty-one Quods. Chess, put the book away, we're watching a game!"

"I'll put it away when the game starts," she replied absently, turning a page.

"Quodpot still only has one ball," Archie sighed, putting on a morose tone. "Quidditch has four."

"Keep an open mind, Harry," John ordered, bouncing in his seat slightly. "This is going to be great! Our team captain is Bertrand Bouchard, that forward over there – he's really re-formed the AIM team to be aggressive, this year. He and that guy, there, Samuel Foster, they'll mostly try to bulldoze a path through the other team for the two girls in the middle of the formation– Mimi Singh and Akari Yamaguchi, to sprint through and throw the Quod into the pot. In the centre, we've got three medium-weight fliers – Tyler Jackson, Emily Deschamps, and Lily Cho, since they might need to sprint forwards or block. He has the four heaviest players at the back, since all they really need to do is block the other side and get the Quod to one of the sprinters."

Archie tuned out his friend, who was now waxing on about the Ilvermorny team, instead looking around the Stadium as the stands filled up. Quodpot was popular, he realized – more than half the school had turned out, most of them wearing AIM colours of light blue and gold. Ilvermorny had brought a small cheering section with them too, by Portkey (honestly, the Portkey Hub system was amazing – all five North American schools were connected by Portkey Hubs!) and they had stacked the opposite stands with darker blue and cranberry. Not robes, though – like the AIM crowd, they were dressed in the distinctly Muggle or combined Muggle-influenced wizarding wear that Archie had mentally come to mark as the American wizarding daily standard.

He examined the other school's students with interest. Ilvermorny was the oldest and most traditional of the North American wizarding schools, known for their programs in Transfigurations and Alchemy. Like Hogwarts, they had Houses, for their students: Thunderbird for adventurers, Pukwudgie for Healers, Horned Serpent for scholars, Wampus for warriors. John's parents had gone to Ilvermorny, as had his grandmother and great-aunt, he said – it had apparently been a great disappointment when both he and his sister had broken tradition to go to "newer" schools. Like Hogwarts, Ilvermorny students took their classes in a castle, but that was about where the similarities ended.

Unlike Hogwarts, Ilvermorny had been founded on the love shared between a witch and a No-Maj, and they staunchly emphasized their dedication to blood equality. Ilvermorny granted more scholarships to British newbloods and halfbloods than any other North American school; AIM granted between one and three scholarships to British newbloods each year (this year, there was only one – Sally Hopkins, who hoped to go into experimental Charms), but Ilvermorny didn't have a set number. It was said that if a newblood or halfblood was born in Britain without financial means, they went to Ilvermorny.

Even AIM didn't go so far – AIM simply treated the question of blood equality as if it didn't exist, which Archie found refreshing in and of itself. He didn't even know how many of his classmates were pureblood, or halfblood, though he knew the newbloods by the fact that they were exempt from No-Maj Studies. He knew John to be a halfblood because his grandfather was a No-Maj (as he often reminded them), and he guessed that several others, like Neal, were purebloods because they were from prominent, old wizarding families, but blood status was just not something people at AIM really talked about or mentioned.

"Harry, are you even paying attention over there?" John's voice cut through his thoughts, and Archie looked up, to see that the teams had taken to the air and the referee, Professor Estevez, the Flying instructor and Quodpot and Quidditch coach, was in the centre, a red ball in his hand. "It's starting! Wake up!"

"Reluctantly, but yes," Archie drawled, putting on a deliberately bored look as he glanced over at his friend, two seats down. John looked more excited that Archie had ever seen him before.

A sharp whistle sounded, and Archie watched as Professor Estevez tossed the ball into the air, and then Archie realized why Americans loved Quodpot.

Quodpot was vicious, in a very physical way that good Quidditch never was. Good Quidditch was about technique, about the fast passes and aiming and magic balls that chased players around and hunting for the Snitch. Quidditch was one part fighting against another team, two parts fighting against the game itself, and one part high speed chases around the pitch. Quidditch had fouls - cobbing, blatching, blocking, blurting, just to name a few of the most common ones.

Quodpot, apparently, did not, and he watched as one of the Ilvermorny players physically body-checked one of the AIM players out of the way, sending him spinning almost out of control, to grab the ball as it came down.

"Good afternoon, everyone, this is your favourite wannabe sportscaster from AIM, Terence Dehaney, commentating this match! Sorry about the delay, I had to brawl with my counterpart, here, Ms. Katie McTaggert, from Ilvermorny, who refused to let me have the microphone first – even though it's traditional." A voice boomed from the other side of the pitch, and Archie caught sight of a tall, lanky, dark-skinned boy standing beside a curvy girl with blonde curls in Ilvermorny colours, who immediately yanked the microphone out of his hands.

"I slapped him but good, Ilvermorny fans, don't you worry," she announced, her voice clear and delighted. "It's also traditional not to punch girls, but Terence here didn't get the memo. Here we are – it's Wojnarski from Ilvermorny who won the tossup, and he's got the Quod and is breaking for the two little girls in the middle of the AIM pack. Terence, who are they and why don't your players eat? Does AIM not have any food? They're tiny, they're going to get themselves killed!"

"They're Yamaguchi and Singh, and we take care of our own, Katie – they're faster than anyone you have on your joke of a team, you won't be able to catch them to kill them! Look, they're already up and away, and that's Tyler Jackson from AIM heading in to block Wojnarski!"

Blocking was a foul in Quidditch. It was decidedly not in Quodpot, and Archie held his breath as Jackson braced himself for impact. One of them had to lose nerve first, change direction, and he barely saw it when Lily Cho, another AIM centre, dove at Wojnarski from above. Wojnarski must have caught sight of her hurtling down at him at easily more than a hundred miles an hour, and he rolled out of the way at the last minute, losing grip of the Quod.

"Awww shit, son, Wojnarski's lost the Quod!" Katie yelled from the commentator's box. "Hope it explodes in your face, AIM!"

"Your redneck is showing, Katie, and we have children in the audience!" Terence yelled back, grabbing the microphone, to everyone's laughter. "And Yamaguchi has the Quod, she's making a beeline for the Ilvermorny side of the pitch, and that's Bouchard and Foster, clearing her path for her! Those boys can fly!"

"But it's Gergely and Ru for Ilvermorny flying in for the intercept, you really think your little girls can stand up to them?!" Katie had swiped the microphone back, and two of the larger Ilvermorny players were, indeed, heading in a beeline towards Yamaguchi as she clutched the Quod and, eyes narrowed, sprinted towards them with no intention of backing down. "Don't let her pretty face distract you, boys! Knock her off her broom!"

Yamaguchi waited until the very last possible moment, then, with a shark's grin, she threw the Quod back and down to her compatriot, Singh, who had been tracking her about fifteen feet below and to the rear. Singh caught it and continued speeding across the pitch, as Yamaguchi pulled her broom up and shot off to the sky.

"Ha! Ha! She's too good for you, boys!" Terence laughed, even as Katie shoved him. "And it's Singh with the Quod, now, and she's already past the Ilvermorny centres and is heading right into that defensive formation – Bouchard and Foster are with her!"

Four on three weren't great odds, but the two boys had steely looks on their faces – they were similarly sized as the four defensive players, the ones that John had said were strong. Bouchard was engaged by one of the defensive players, Miller, who locked broom handles with him, while Foster was blocked by another defensive player, and the other two went after Singh.

"Back on you, Terence! Girl ain't got nowhere to go!" Katie yelled, using her hip to body-check Terence out of the way. "Come on, Tavares, Crosby! Remember, AIM is a Healing school, you literally cannot do any damage to her that they can't fix so break her face!"

"You are all bloodthirsty demons," Archie said, awed despite himself. John was standing on his seat already, as was half of AIM, cheering Singh on, while Hermione was wearing an expression of mixed horror and shock. "You are all insane, bloodthirsty demons."

Singh looked up, spotting Yamaguchi up and behind her – it wasn't an ideal position, but she tried passing anyway, only for one of Ilvermorny's defensive players to swoop over and pluck the Quod out of the air before Yamaguchi could get to it. The Ilvermorny player sped forward, aiming to get back to her centre line before she passed it, but the Quod exploded in the air, sending her spinning off course. The player drifted slowly to the ground, obviously winded, a sour look on her face.

"And that's DiLaurentis out of the game!" Terence announced, having won the latest scrap for the microphone, as the AIM stands roared. "And Ilvermorny is one player down! We are no points but Ilvermorny is one down!"

"Ilvermorny don't need a full team to kick your ass, ain't that right, my boys and girls?!" Katie howled, having stolen the microphone again, and the Ilvermorny stands cheered. "One player ain't nothing! Bring it, AIM!"

"Oh, we're bringing it," Terence replied, a wolf's sharp grin on his face. "But can you take the heat? Here's Mr. Estevez again with the second Quod, let's go with the second toss-up!"

AIM won the second toss-up, with Foster swiping the Quod first off and a rapid backwards pass to Singh, who streaked off to the other side, with Yamaguchi a little behind her, off to the side, the two larger players again blocking the other team and forcing the advance. Even with one player down, though, Ilvermorny was still strong, and Archie couldn't help but hold his breath as Foster rammed Tavares in the air, sending him spiralling out of control. Neither were hurt (they weren't going fast enough for that, Archie was pretty sure), but in the kerfuffle, one of the Ilvermorny centres managed to get the Quod and streaked off towards the AIM end of the pitch.

"Come on, Tavares, you know the drill," Katie was screaming into the microphone. "Get it together, boy, or I ain't sleeping with you no more! And it's Ru with the Quod, now, and he's throwing a pass to Lawson, she's a cutie but don't let that face fool you – she be mean. Light them on fire, girl!"

"Katie McTaggert is a legend," John said, panting, dropping back in his seat, as the broad-shouldered Ilvermorny player winced and shook himself, rising unsteadily back into the Ilvermorny defensive formation. He waved up at Katie with a wry smile and blew her a kiss, to the roar of the crowd. "Ilvermorny loves her – she's only a sixth-year, but I heard the Quodpot league is already talking about signing her."

"She's sworn more in the last ten minutes than I have in the last two weeks," Archie replied, eyes wide, jaw dropped in shock. "Did she just…?"

"Children in the audience, Katie!" Terence was yelling. "Eleven-year-olds! Lawson catches the Quod, but it's Jackson, Cho, and Deschamps heading for the intercept! Come on, AIM – let's show Ilvermorny what we're made of!"

"It's just sex, you've got Healers at AIM, you should know all about it even if you ain't getting none," Katie scoffed, to broad applause from the Ilvermorny stands, and the three AIM centres were bearing down on Lawson – Jackson in front of her, Cho from above and Deschamps holding at the bottom. "Ohhh shit, Lawson, pass that Quod!"

Lawson reverse-passed the Quod into her teammate, Wojnarski's hands, pulling her broom up sharply in a crazy braking manoeuvre that Archie had only seen Harry execute perfectly once. It was just bad luck that the Quod chose that exact moment to explode, and Katie swore so loudly that Archie grimaced.

"She's probably not actually sleeping with him," John said, answering Archie's earlier question, as Wojnarski was declared out of the game and Ilvermorny was two players down, no points. "Or maybe she is, I don't know. At this stage, mostly the Quods will explode – it's more luck than anything else. There are just too many players on the field for anyone to get close enough to the pot to score points. Once we get down to about eight players on a team, that's when points usually start being scored."

True to his word, the next Quod that was brought out exploded after nine minutes of play, this time in Jackson's hands after a successful intercept, and there was a loud groan from the AIM stands as Terence displayed his similar propensity for swearing while Katie howled in laughter while shrieking insults at AIM. Looking around, Archie could tell that none of his schoolmates was taking the ribbing seriously – if anything, Terence was giving as good as he got, and most of the people in the stands were laughing.

The fourth Quod took out a third Ilvermorny player, Crosby, essentially breaking the Ilvermorny defensive formation and setting them at a decided disadvantage, so it was the fifth Quod that the AIM forwards finally managed to score with, the Yamaguchi and Singh team sinking it into the pot while Bouchard and Foster held off the remaining Ilvermorny defense. The cheering from AIM was deafening, John jumping up and down, while even Archie leaned forward in interest.

"Ha, take that, our girls might be little but they're fierce!" Terence boomed out into the crowd. "One-nothing to AIM, and Ilvermorny's down three players as we head to the toss-up for the sixth Quod!"

"Oh, we'll take that, and then some," Katie threatened, grabbing the microphone to a loud cheer from her stands. "Come on, Ilvermorny! Let's show these amateurs how real Quodpot is played!"

AIM had worse luck through the next two Quods, losing Singh and Foster to two exploded Quods, destroying their forward formation. It was a hard loss and Ilvermorny knew it – with half their forward formation gone, Bouchard was forced to change up his ranks, bringing one of the defencemen, Tuomas Vuorinen, and Lily Cho, a centre, forward.

"It's all right, it's all right," John reassured them, though from the wild look on his face Archie was pretty sure he was reassuring himself more than anyone else. "The captain planned for this – we're down players but we're more well-rounded, he's got the forward formation back!"

Archie could tell, though, as the eighth Quod dropped that the new forward formation was nowhere near as strong as Bouchard's original forward team – Vuorinen was heavier than Foster had been, slower to match the pacing required for Yamaguchi's sprint and handoff, and they lost the Quod early on. Even if the remaining AIM defensemen (Jilek, Mann and Jones, read their uniforms) successfully intercepted the Quod before a point was scored, the Quod exploded in Jones' hands and AIM was one point up, but four players down, to Ilvermorny's three players down. Oof.

"I have a question," Hermione said, brushing her bushy hair out of her face. It wasn't very windy, out, but her hair was wild enough to fall in her eyes anyway. "How do you win? What if there's a tie after twenty-one Quods, or if an entire team is eliminated but they're leading in points?"

"If an entire team is eliminated, they're out – that takes priority over points," John explained, his eyes still scanning the pitch as the ninth Quod was tossed. "Then points, then number of players left. Oh hell, Ilvermorny won the toss-up and they're up a player! If there's still a tie after that, they bring out a tie-breaker Quod. That doesn't happen very often, though."

Ilvermorny was on the offensive, and this time they managed to smash through the AIM defense and drop their Quod into the pot, to loud groans from the AIM crowd and cheers from Ilvermorny.

"And that's an even score, boys and girls, and who's still got more players, eh? Ilvermorny does, that's who!" Katie howled into the microphone. "Let's keep up the momentum, boys!"

"You're way too excited over an even score," Terence replied, voice scathing, shoving her out of the way as he grabbed the microphone. "Come on, AIM, don't back down! Get it back!"

Get it back, AIM did, over the next two Quods – the tenth exploded early, after only three and a half minutes of play, in the hands of one of the Ilvermorny forwards as he raced towards the AIM end, and the eleventh was sunk into the pot on the Ilvermorny side by Lily Cho, who flew a wild victory lap around the stands afterwards. And they were a point up, but it was the last time they were ahead that game. The twelfth Quod took out Cho, forcing Bouchard to pull Deschamps into the forward formation and leaving AIM with no centres at all, and only two defensemen. Ilvermorny sank the thirteenth and fourteenth Quods into the pot on the AIM side for two points, putting them ahead in score, and while AIM managed to even it on the fifteenth, Ilvermorny again pulled ahead on the sixteenth, then widened the gap to five-three on the seventeenth.

John had his head in hands, by the time the eighteenth Quod was thrown, and Chess was awkwardly patting his shoulder. "No, with only four Quods left, they need to sink at least three out of four to win," he moaned, even as Terence was still exhorting the AIM team to pull it out of the fire. It was possible but not likely, but Archie was on the edge of his seat as AIM, against the odds, scored on the eighteenth Quod.

The nineteenth was close, both teams sensing victory, and the Quod never made it far on either end of the pitch, with the forward teams scrambling for it and frequent intercepts. It exploded after seven minutes of play, inconveniently taking out another AIM player, to the loud groan of the AIM stands. Bouchard was forced to pull Jilek forward out of the defensive line, leaving only Mann on the defense. AIM's team strategy was, apparently, that a good offense was better than a defense and kept a line of players who could be expected to fly in all positions, but once the Ilvermorny players broke past the forward line, they just as well had a clear shot to the pot. To his credit, Mann heroically intercepted the twentieth Quod, only to have it explode before he could throw it to one of the AIM forwards.

"And it's the last Quod, everyone!" Terence yelled from the commentator's box. "Score is five-to-four for Ilvermorny, whose team still has seven players, while AIM is left with four! AIM, it looks dark, but we can at least tie it up in score, can't we?! Points still count for the Cup!"

"You got it in the bag, Ilvermorny!" Katie shrieked at her own stands, who were perfectly aware that they were heading into the final Quod with a won game. Either they would have more points, or they would have more players, and there wasn't much AIM could do about it other than fight anyway to maintain their position in the League rankings. Archie leaned forward, scanning the field in interest. "Come on, give 'er!"

The Quod went up – Bouchard won the tossup while Vuorinen and Jilek kept the remaining Ilvermorny forwards occupied, flipping it to Deschamps who flew a wild pattern, first one way, then the other, over the pitch. The three remaining AIM players flew forwards, trying to clear a path for her, but they were outnumbered and even if they had the Quod, they weren't advancing very quickly.

"And that's two minutes!" Terence announced, voice tense. "Quod could go at any time, now, so make a break for it, Em! Nothing to lose, now!"

Make a break for it, she did, spotting an opening below two Ilvermorny players and making a desperate dive into the gap, hurtling towards the pot at breakneck speed. She left the rest of the AIM team in the dust behind her, which Archie thought was good because they slowed her down, but unfortunately, it also meant she had no one to clear the path for her. Instead, she relied on wits and random, unpredictable swerving to advance, hoping that no one could catch her.

The AIM stands were standing, screaming, cheering her on, helped by the commentators who were actively stoking the fight. Terence was hanging, half out of the box, holding the microphone out of Katie's reach, but her shrieks for an intercept could be heard even without it. John was standing, jumping up and down again, and Hermione was standing, clapping, and Chess was standing on top of her seat for a better view. Even Archie, now that he thought about it, realized that he was standing, cheering Deschamps on, just a little more, just a little faster…

And the Quod exploded.

Silence fell across the stadium, Deschamps spiralling wildly off course towards one of the stands, but she flipped over and regained control, waving in resignation to the crowd.

"Five-to-four, to Ilvermorny!" Katie screamed, as the Ilvermorny crowd stood up, clapping and cheering. "And Ilvermorny pulls in the lead for the North American League Cup! Ha! Suck it, AIM!"

"Children in the audience!" Terence thundered one last time. "Have some decorum, Katie, you foul-mouthed harpy!"

The AIM stands broke into laughter, Archie among them, and he watched as the two commentators shook hands and then slung their arms around each other, smiling for the crowds. Rivalry, in Quodpot, was fun.

"So?" John asked, looking over, a mischievous look in his eye.

Archie wiped the broad grin off his face, breathing out a heavy, dramatic sigh. "I suppose Quodpot isn't that bad," he conceded with an airy flip of his hand. "But Quidditch is still better."

At AIM, it was so easy to forget.

It was easy to relax, to let himself become Harry Potter, Healer-in-Training, prankster, aspiring actor. It was easy to let himself fall into the pattern of studying with Hermione, bantering with John, reading beside Chess in the common room. It was easy to throw himself into Healing (where he could heal bruises, and minor cuts, and they were moving into broken bones soon!) and No-Maj Studies (they were done studying space, and were working their way through Frankenstein), into West Side Story (where Archie's six lines were already memorized and he was working on mastering the choreography). It was just so easy to forget that, thousands of kilometres away, the real Harry Potter was masquerading as the pureblood Rigel Black, that his cousin was risking her soul to be at Hogwarts. October rolled into November, and the days became cooler, and he began throwing on his dreary black robes before he left the dorms each morning. It wasn't truly cold – London, he thought, got much colder – but it was chilly enough to be uncomfortable and Chess no longer wanted to eat outside (California, Archie learned, was the land of perpetual summer).

But he didn't forget, not when he watched an upper-year come into their Basic Healing class and admit that the seventh-year Potions Mastery class was working on Polyjuice Potion. Not when he and Harry would need to switch back before the holidays, not when Aunt Lily and Uncle James would easily be able to recognize that Archie was not Harry at the airport, when Dad would definitely know that Harry was not him. He found an excuse to follow the seventh-year, obtaining some critical information along the way. It was the work of fifteen minutes to convince Hermione that this prank was a great idea, and to her credit, she didn't ask for any reasons why. It didn't hurt anyone, and that was critical to Archie's pranks, from here on out (unless they deserved to be hurt, of course, and the seventh-year Potions Mastery students, to his knowledge, didn't). Hermione would make sure of it.

Polyjuice Potion was useful, and he and Harry needed some, and he had two-and-a-half weeks to come up with a plan to get his hands on it. Only the fact that he had an absolutely brilliant prank to look forward to kept him from worrying too much when the latest letter from Uncle James came.

Dear Harry,

Glad to hear from you, as always, though your letters could provide a little more detail about your adventures, couldn't they? Your mum wants to know if you've made it out to the Muggle town, yet, or if you've caught any Quodpot games – she worries that, whatever you've been writing to us, you've been hiding in the AIM potions labs all season. The weather is supposed to be beautiful there – go out and enjoy it, for goodness' sake!

We're also wondering if you have heard much from Archie. He writes to Sirius, but not as often as we would have expected – you know your cousin, it's not like him to keep things to himself, especially with his dad. Sirius received a notice from Hogwarts saying that Archie was injured over Halloween. Archie laughed it off, saying he was caught in the crossfire of a Gryffindor-Slytherin prank war, but it's not like Hogwarts to notify a parent that a student was injured unless they were really injured. We're a little worried. I know there's not much you can do from America, but let us know if you hear anything from him, would you?

Thanks, fawn. Love you lots.

Dad.

Archie folded the note, tucking it into the pile he would forward to Harry later, frowning. Harry hadn't mentioned being hurt over Halloween, though Harry was a poor correspondent in any case – Archie hadn't heard much from her other than her first letter telling him about Marcus. Archie just assumed, since he didn't hear anything, that things were going well, but clearly something was going on that Harry wasn't telling anyone.

It was a good thing they did believe it was Archie at Hogwarts, Archie thought wryly. Between he and Harry, he was the open one. He was the one who shared things, whereas Harry kept secrets. Personally, he thought that made him a better secret-keeper (people didn't look for secrets in someone who was a known chatterbox, okay?!), but the fact remained that they believed he didn't hide things. And for the most part, he didn't – if things were really wrong, he'd say so. But Harry always tried to fix things herself.

Had they known it was Harry at Hogwarts, they would have been up in arms. Instead, he had to do it for them, and he wrote a worried note to Harry – not too worried, because if things had gone awry in a big way, Harry would write to him (they were closer to each other than their parents, and their parents knew it), and she did seem to be fine, if only for the moment. At least she wouldn't have to worry about the transition home, not if his plan went off without a hitch.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Hermione muttered, multiple times in the lead up, even as she practiced the Disillusionment Charm that she was learning specifically for this prank. "Why am I doing this, again?"

"Because it's going to be fun," Archie informed her, over and over, with the same cheery grin. Disillusionment Charms were so useful, and it meant that Archie would be the one taking the real risks – but since the payoff would be Polyjuice Potion, and since most of the seventh-year Potions Mastery students wouldn't be able to identify him anyway, the risk was worth it. "And to keep me out of trouble! The plan wouldn't be half as good without you, 'Mione!"

She would sigh, shake her head, and continue practicing. Archie thought she had it down pat, honestly, but it was her first real prank, so maybe she couldn't help but be nervous.

The day of the prank unseasonably warm, for November, and Archie quivered through his first two classes, that day. He and Hermione made excuses for missing No-Maj Studies and Magical Theory respectively, as well as Basic Healing – they weren't feeling well, they said, and Archie even had a couple Pepper-Up Potions for them to take just after the prank was done. It wasn't a perfect alibi or excuse, but it was better than nothing, and as long as it didn't look like any theft had occurred, Archie hoped no one would look too closely at it. And it looked less suspicious for them to go off sick after lunch than it did for them to try to do it after the third class, when a professor could conceivably say that they looked fine.

With the help of Hermione's Disillusionment Charm, sneaking out of the dorms was a piece of cake. There weren't many students in the common room, anyway – only a few older students who had spare periods, or who were skipping their classes for one reason or another. Not pranking – even if Archie was trying to bring the pranking culture to AIM, so far, he hadn't been very successful. It was a tragedy, really.

They set up in an empty classroom at the other end of the corridor to the seventh-year Potions classroom, where Archie fixed the green Mastery robes that he had swiped the day previous from the theatre troupe supplies. It was a little big for him, but that couldn't be helped – the hems flapped around his calves instead of his knees where they were supposed to land, but he wasn't going to re-hem them just for this. It wasn't jarring, anyway, and he fixed the blond wig onto his head, carefully arranging it into a wild, windswept look. Hermione was glancing out the door every fifteen seconds or so in nervousness but seemed to be fine otherwise. She sucked in a breath, checking the time with a quick Tempus spell (when had she learned that?!), then kicked him in the shins when it was showtime.

Archie flashed her a bright, excited grin (or at least he did in the direction where he thought she was), took a breath, then sprinted out the classroom, running down the long corridor in the wildest way he knew how. He let his robes flap around his legs, let the shoes (purposely a size too large) flop on the ground loudly, and he broke into the seventh year Potions classroom with a bang.

"TROOOOLLL IN THE DUNGEONS!" he shrieked, pitching his voice an octave higher than normal (it went with the blond hair and his size) and keeping to his most recent iteration of an American accent. It still wasn't perfect, but Hermione said it was close, and it would have to do. He didn't need to say too much anyway, so it should slide. He stared into the room of shocked and surprised seventh-years.

"Thought you oughta know," he said faintly, then he turned around and ran out, taking cover in a second unused classroom in the opposite direction than he knew Hermione would be coming from. He knew he had been successful from the storm of feet falling outside in the corridors and counted ten seconds before he smiled and pulled off his wig. He took his too-large shoes off and traded it with his own pair, which he had cunningly stashed earlier in the second classroom. The wig, he neatened and folded into the robes, then he straightened his own appearance, waited five minutes, and slipped off, taking a back route through Thompson Hall out a side door. He took a quick look around and, seeing no one, dashed across to Seaton House, returning the robes and wig to the Theatre Troupe supplies with none the wiser.

The reward? More than two days' worth of Polyjuice, plus a certain amount of infamy as the entire school talked about it for a whole two weeks. Some of the Healing students looked at him askance, clearly suspecting something, but then, both he and Hermione had spent most of the evening pouring steam out of their ears in the common room, so no one really pushed them. Ultimately, no one recognized him, everyone putting the blame on "a tiny blonde girl in one of the Mastery programs" and he was off, scot-free.

It was utterly brilliant. He wished he could tell Dad about it.

The theatre troupe played West Side Story for three nights only, the last week of November.

Archie peered out from the edge of the curtain – not the centre of it, of course, the edge, because otherwise people would see the movement and Mariana, who was looking quite stressed, would kick him off the stage entirely. For the whole night. Archie might only have six lines, but he was going to deliver those lines and do them well. In his shiny, finally-perfected American accent, too. It had taken most of the season, and he didn't like to use it (he wasn't ashamed of being British! Plus, Rigel wouldn't have an American accent), but he had one and it was so cool.

The auditorium was crowded, filled with students, teachers, even a few family members, for those whose families could travel. With a Portkey Hub, though, those were easy enough to arrange for events, and it seemed like half the troupe had various family members attending on one night or another. He couldn't make anyone out, but it was a full house!

"Harry, come on," Hermione tugged him back from the end of the stage. She was managing some of the stage props and special effects that night – compliments of the Charms Club, in exchange for free tickets for everyone involved. She gave him a quick, business-like once-over (Dad would have said something about how she had looked away far too quickly, but then, Dad sometimes forgot that he was eleven – well, Hermione was twelve), then turned around to check the other actors' costumes. "Evin, here's your Aging Potion – take it, then let me fix your costume."

"Sure thing," Evin said, bouncing a little in excitement as he downed the potion. As a third-year, they had decided that he simply couldn't carry off the role of "gang leader" without looking a little older, so Hermione had taken care of brewing an Aging Potion for him in exchange for an extra free ticket so she could cheer Archie on both nights she wasn't working backstage (Hermione really was the best best friend!). Evin didn't grow any taller, thankfully (they hadn't been sure whether he would), but his frame filled out some. Hermione tsked and waved her wand, tugging at the re-fitting charm one of her clubmates had built into his costume earlier, and nodded in satisfaction as the costume fitted itself properly around him.

Most of the main cast members were reacting somehow to the stress – Evin was nervous, excited, and couldn't stop moving around, which was good for Riff! Laura, on the other hand, was in a corner with her eyes shut, mumbling something that sounded like positive self-talk, while Francis was pacing back and forth close to her. Sabrina was sharper than usual and had bitten the heads off half the dancers around her already, while Juan (who would normally step in before she went too far) was standing, arms crossed, stiff and silent. Archie crept closer to the edge of the stage, again, taking another peek out at the crowd. Wow, it really was crowded. This was so exciting! And a just a little nerve-wracking, too.

"Harry, get away from the curtain!" Mariana snapped, from the back corner where she was organizing the other actors and dancers filling out the first two sets. "Get over here – you're in the background of the Jet Song! We're on in five!"

Archie blew out a sharp breath, then shook himself. He had all of six lines, and for the rest of it, he would just be a background dancer. He had gone through the choreography a bazillion times by now, and thank god for his past dance instructors because it had come pretty easily to him. The dance club had even tried to poach him for their team! He had his shiny new American accent, Harry's too-loose, straight-cut, worn jeans, a loose white t-shirt and his trusty army-green canvas jacket, a pair of something they called sneakers, and he was ready for his stage debut.

He joined the formation, stretching out his shoulders and arms casually, and slipped into the role of a twelve-year-old Irish-American girl who wanted to join a gang. The music started, the curtains were raised, and he was in the middle of the group of dancers on the stage, ignoring the crowd entirely as Evin led them through their first song. Archie let the music take him away, focusing on the series of jumps and footwork that the first number, the biggest number, required. Whew.

Right after the Jet Song, Archie threw himself into the middle of the group of "older" gang members, begging to be allowed to join. Evin, as Riff, blew him off with a laugh, telling his character (Anybodys, she was called) to go home and do something ladylike. He stamped his foot, unleashing a shrill noise of anger, and turned away and stormed off stage. He had a scene in between to switch costumes to a nameless background dancer, and he quickly stripped to his boxers, pulling on the collared shirt and trousers someone offered him for the Dance at the Gym routine.

He was actually in the foreground of the Dance at the Gym routine, since he was shorter than the others. Chess had been volunteered from the Dance Club to partner him since there was an uneven number of pairs in the Theatre Troupe and since, size-wise, they were the closest match. There was no smile on her face, though, as she executed the choreographed steps perfectly – he smiled at her, encouraging, but she was focused on her footwork. She was really getting quite good, Archie reflected, and her expression didn't matter here because the Spotlight Charms were focused on Francis and Laura, as Tony and Maria, while they fell in love at first sight.

After the Dance at the Gym, Tony and Maria took centre stage, continuing their star-crossed love. Archie watched from backstage – even if he had seen them practice these songs for hours upon hours, it never got old. He just had a soft spot for star-crossed lovers, all right? It reminded him too much of Mum and Dad for him to feel otherwise, and every time he watched, he felt something warm and fuzzy and soft in the region of his heart. He was so caught up that Hermione had to smack him in the arm to remind him to change back into his Anybodys costume for the next scene.

The gangs started fighting again, with Juan (as Bernardo) and Riff calling for a fight, and Maria convinced Tony to go out and stop it. Even with Tony's best efforts, though, he couldn't, and it ended in blood and tears. Archie ran out on stage as Hermione began casting a Wailing Charm, convincing Tony to flee and grabbing the supposed murder weapon (wands – they had decided to switch weapons to wands, to connect to the audience!), leaving only the bodies of Bernardo and Riff for the actors playing the police officers to pull off stage.

"He could have been gentler about that," Evin muttered brushing himself off at the back while Juan stretched, grinning. They were relieved – since their characters were dead, they could spend the rest of the night backstage, mocking anyone else who forgot their lines (Evin had only forgotten one, and Juan none at all).

One scene, a short one where Zahir (as Chino) told Maria what happened and Tony met up with her, and Archie was back on stage, reporting to the Jets under their new leader, Diesel, that Chino was after Tony. From there, he stayed on stage, perched in the background on an empty box, a silent member of the Jets, until Tony died, and Maria screamed about hate. It was powerful, it was tragic, it was theatre at its finest.

At the end of the performance, Archie stood on stage at the end of the long line of cast members, bowing as he listened to the applause, crashing over them like a thrilling summer thunderstorm. There were calls from the audience, both praise and catcalls (those, Archie suspected, were from friends of cast members), and the flash of congratulatory sparks flew over them. He had a light sheen of sweat on his face (half nerves, half exertion), and he was breathing heavily in relief, but he felt amazing – there was the aftershock of adrenaline running through his veins, a warm, loose and free feeling that he was immediately addicted crowd had loved it – Archie heard them laughing, crying, smiling the whole performance. The theatre troupe had taken them to another world for a few hours, letting them live and breathe as Tony and Maria and the Jets and the Sharks, and, for Archie, it made all the work over the two months – three times a week, running lines and choreography, learning how to tableau, improv, building his character, hours working on the perfect American accent – worth it. He wished Dad could have seen it! Dad would have loved it – it was Archie on stage, dancing, running, acting with his whole six lines in his shiny new American accent, pretending to be a girl, and Dad would have had such a laugh!

But even if it was Archie who was standing on stage, smiling at the audience in joy and relief as he swept his third bow of the night, it wasn't supposed to be. It was supposed to be Harry Potter at AIM, so Dad, his perfect, amazing, fantastic, charming, wonderfully supportive Dad, could never know.

Three nights. The performance ran for three nights, and afterwards Archie felt a general malaise set in. For three nights, he was someone else – not Archie Black, not Harry Potter, and he had been on a stage making people believe, and it was so vibrant in his memory that everything else paled in comparison.

"Post-performance blues," Neal called it, and most of the Theatre Troupe had it. Even Neal did, and his primary scene was at the end where he very dramatically burst into tears, grabbed Tony by the arms and sobbed that Chino had killed Maria. Dom had already shown up into the Healer's common room to slap Neal upside the head for "hideous overacting" and embarrassing the family but ended it with a congratulatory hug so Archie guessed he hadn't meant it. Post-performance blues were worst for Francis and Laura, who were both still unwinding from their intense on-stage interactions and occasionally still slipped into their roles when interacting with each other.

It made the first meeting after the performances surprisingly dull. They were back in the auditorium, and only Mariana still looked together. Neal was lying flat on his back on the stage, looking at the ceiling, while Archie slouched in his chair between Zahir and Evin. Mariana had already coaxed them all into giving up their scripts, and Archie didn't even fight it. It wasn't like he could show it to Dad, which is all he wanted to do with it. What need did he have for it, now?

"Congratulations, everyone, on three great performances," Mariana said, poking Neal, beside her, into sitting back upright, which he did with a groan. "I know we're all still winding down from them, but we're picking the second-term play today, so if you care, you better pull yourselves together. The theme this year is The Bard – we can't do Romeo and Juliet, since West Side Story is basically Romeo and Juliet, but otherwise, let's start. I'm vetoing all of the historical plays, by the way – they're boring."

Archie sighed miserably, rubbing his hands in his eyes as several of the other troupe members started arguing. He didn't know much Shakespeare, they'd only covered Romeo and Juliet quickly in class. He knew of others, like Hamlet and Macbeth, but he hadn't read them yet – with midterm examinations approaching, he hadn't had the time. He was well up to speed on all his classes, though, because Hermione was making all four of them study – she had even made study schedules for them all.

John had taken one look at his, looked her in the eye, and told her flat-out that he wasn't doing it, while Chess hid a smile behind her hand. She often joined them when they studied, but her program was different enough that she apparently had her own practical assessment process with Professor Li, the Runes Master, and would only sit theory with everyone else.

"We already did a tragic play," Noelle was saying when he focused back on the argument. It wasn't as ferocious as he expected it would be – more than half the room seemed like they simply didn't care that much. "If the histories are being vetoed, that just leaves the comedies. What about The Merchant of Venice?"

"No, that won't work." Neal shook his head. "It requires too much No-Maj knowledge to understand and enjoy – even with No-Maj Studies, most people aren't going to understand why Shylock is a money-lender, or the pound of flesh bit. How about The Tempest? There's a lot of magic in that one, Prospero was a sorcerer."

"There aren't enough female characters in The Tempest," Mariana interjected. "Or characters, period, come to think of it."

"And do we really want to put on a play where the ultimate act of the protagonist is to reject magic?" Francis added with a sigh. "At a magic school?"

"Ugh, good point," Neal wrinkled his nose in thought, and Archie listened as they debated the merits of A Comedy of Errors, Love's Labours Lost, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night.

"The Taming of the Shrew is too misogynistic," Noelle frowned. "I'm vetoing that, hard. I refuse to have any of us depict that sort of abuse on stage and have it treated as a positive thing."

"Agreed, no question. Francis didn't put that out as a realistic option – he was just going through all the comedies," Neal replied, voice soothing. "And if we were going to do Twelfth Night, we should have done it in the first semester. It's a Christmas play."

It was only Neal, Noelle, Mariana and Francis who had enough knowledge of Shakespearean plays to argue over them, and Archie listened with a vague sense of jealousy. One day, he would know enough to argue over this, too! He just had to find the time to read all these plays, which he would find, after exams. The holidays would be a good time – except, oh, wait, he would be in Britain, where he was supposed to have been all along, at Hogwarts, where they didn't have theatre.

That was a shame, wasn't it? England was the home of Shakespeare, home of the Globe Theatre, and he had never known about it before coming to America. He had even grown up in London, the famous West End only a stone's throw away! He could have grown up knowing all of this, the way that Neal and Francis seemed to know it, the way that even John, growing up in a wizarding family, had known of the major plays like Romeo and Juliet without any thought at all. And instead, he had to learn it all here.

He let out a small sigh. Turning one ear to his arguing clubmates, he realized they were now just debating between Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He didn't know either play, but he was sure he would know one of them very well, very soon.

He had to pull himself together. He was making Hermione worry, and he couldn't have that. First, she didn't deserve that – he didn't like making people worry, as a general rule, but he meant it every time he told her that she was the heart to his body, the wind beneath his wings, the melody to his song (that was the point where she usually smacked him on the shoulder, John rolled his eyes, and Chess hid a laugh). Second, she was perceptive – she had directly asked him if he was all right over the weekend, while he sat there, bored, the world seemingly faded into shades of black and grey after the excitement of performance. He had shrugged off her question off as simple post-performance blues, even if he knew it went beyond that. It went so far beyond that, and Hermione was probably one of the few people around him who would be able to pick up on it.

Life in America was so big, so bold, so free. There were movies, there was theatre, there was fiction to read. Wizarding Britain had books, but they were mostly non-fiction, books of dry facts and theory. The No-Maj world had books of imagination and dreams, stories that were thought-provoking even if they were fantastical – Star Wars, Frankenstein, Ender's Game. But Dad was in Wizarding Britain, and there was Harry, and Aunt Lily, and Uncle James and Uncle Remus too.

"Are we all decided then?" Mariana asked, and Archie snapped to attention as most of the circle made noises of agreement. He nodded vaguely – whatever play they decided on, he knew it would be great. "Fantastic. We'll work on improv for the rest of the term, and I'll order us twenty copies of A Midsummer's Night's Dream. They should be here before everyone goes home for the holidays, and we can all prepare for auditions the first week back."

Archie took a deep breath and grinned. All right, so he wasn't overjoyed to be going home for the holidays. But go home he would, and he would see Harry, and he would see Dad, and the minute he saw them, he knew it would be fine.

It would all be fine.

Chapter Text

It was cold, gloomy, rainy the day that they left AIM for the holidays. Archie looked up at the skies, his trunk yet again transformed into a Muggle luggage case (by Neal, who had grumbled a bit while he did it and asked why Archie didn't have real Muggle luggage, because really, trunks? What did the British think it was, the 1860s?). He and Hermione were on the first Portkey out, just after six in the morning, to catch the student flight to Heathrow leaving at six-thirty. It was five-thirty, and it was still dark, and it was cold and wet and gross, and Archie wasn't happy.

It wasn't that it hadn't rained while he had been at AIM. There had been a fair share of dark, damp days, in which he and his friends had run across the campus green, their bags or robes over their heads to shield them from the rain. A lot of the upper-years had an Umbrella Charm, which Hermione had vowed to learn when she had a spare moment.

It was more that, most days, Archie didn't really care about the rain. The weather was the weather, it didn't dampen his spirits any even if Hermione groaned about the havoc it inevitably played on her curls. He would usually just smile, tell her she looked beautiful anyway and that he liked it when her curls were all crazy, and move on.

Today, though, the rain was fitting.

"Are you sure you don't want us to Owl Post your presents to you?" John asked, a worried note in his voice as they marched up the steps to Seaton House. He was, remarkably, wide awake, though Chess, who was using a paper charm she had just mastered (Chinese paper charms were apparently better with the natural elements, since they were easier to describe runically) to shunt the rain off the four of them, was yawning and blinking blearily. Her Portkey to San Francisco left in the afternoon, so there was no need for her to be awake yet, but she had come along to say goodbye. Same with John, who had opted for an afternoon Portkey to New York City (there were enough students from New York that there were multiple Portkeys there). Even in his morose mood, Archie knew he had good friends.

"International Owl Post for packages is so expensive, and it's so far," Archie demurred, waving a hand. "And Hermione and I are only gone for two weeks, we might as well wait and do a gift exchange in the new year."

"I wouldn't have expected that of you," Hermione said, raising an eyebrow at Archie. "You love presents – giving them, getting them, and you don't normally worry about the cost of things."

That was entirely true, and inwardly Archie winced. The minute he had found out it was Hermione's birthday in mid-September, he had pulled out all the stops to decorate her door and ordered a Healing journal for her for the next year. He already had a subscription to that one, so he knew it was good. He had done something similar for John for his birthday in October, close to Halloween, covering his door in sparklers and giving him a specially curated starter kit of Marauders pranking supplies (most of which, as far as Archie could tell, John had used less for fun and more for retaliatory purposes). Chess' birthday wasn't until April, but he had plans for that already too (double-checked with Hermione). But he couldn't have presents from Chess and John arriving in Britain. Aside from the inevitable Uncle James overprotective explosion if he ever heard that his precious Harry was close friends with a boy, the chances of anyone in his family meeting John or Chess were so low that he simply hadn't mentioned them to anyone. Plus, it would be easier for Harry to be able to keep track of his friends if he only had the one. And if he only had one friend, that friend had to be Hermione, who was British and therefore the only one that anyone in his family had any chance of meeting.

He had made a conscious decision to downplay his friendships with his American friends at home. It would be easier for everyone involved, for the ruse. It made sense. But he didn't like it.

"But it's more fun to see people open your presents, isn't it?" he said instead with a light, half-faked grin. "Let's just do a little celebration when we're back, it'll be fun!"

John shot him a skeptical look. "If you're sure," he said, "but just so you know, you'd probably really like having my present over the holidays. And I don't mind the international postage."

Archie laughed, but even that sounded tired. They had crossed into Seaton House, Chess dropping her paper-charm, and Hermione was leading the way to the Portkey Hub. There was already a small crowd of students outside the Portkey Hub door – almost all British students, in this group, milling about in various states of sleepiness. Hermione nodded at most of them, having met them through the British Students Association. "I'm sure I would," Archie agreed, "But really, let's do it when we get back. As a group. It'll be more fun that way."

John shrugged. "If you're sure," he said, wrapping first Archie, then Hermione, in quick hugs, before Chess did the same. "Have a happy holiday, both of you."

"You too," Archie put on another smile. It didn't feel entirely fake, only a little fake. He did want to smile! He just didn't really feel like it. "See you in two weeks."

The trip home was completely unlike his trip to America – there was no excitement, and there should have been! He should be excited! He would get to see Dad, he would get to see Harry and Aunt Lily and Uncle James and Uncle Remus. He would be able to take back the identity of Archie Black, be himself, be called by his proper name for two weeks. Hermione was excited to go home, in her pragmatic, down-to-earth way, John was excited to go home to New York, talking at length about his plans to go see the lights at Rockefeller Centre. Even Chess had mentioned, off-hand, being excited about going home to play with the new computer her mother had brought home for her.

But that was it, wasn't it? Going back to Britain was saying goodbye, for two weeks, to things like computers, and theatre, and movies. Archie wasn't the same Archie Black that he had been three-and-a-half months ago when he had first boarded a plane for America, and he didn't want to be the same Archie Black that he was then, either. The world was a bigger place that he had ever known, and he wanted to bring that back with him, and he wanted to share it all, and he couldn't, because Rigel Black hadn't had those experiences. He was supposed to be happy, he was supposed to be excited, and instead, he just felt empty.

The Portkey to New York City put them at the airport precisely at 6:05am, and Archie had time to stop by a counter and buy himself a steaming cup of coffee, which he hoped would perk him up for the day. The witch manning the counter looked at him askance, but he simply glared at her as he pushed two one-dollar bills across the counter. She shook her head, sighed, and poured him the biggest cup available for him to take onto the plane with him. Yes, he knew that caffeine could potentially stunt his growth. But he was a Black, and a Fawley, and they both tended to be tall. He could stand to lose a couple inches.

"Are you all right, Harry?" Hermione ventured, her brow creased a little in concern, as they settled into their seats on the plane. She had pulled out another book, this one on weather charms, searching for the elusive Umbrella Charm. She could just ask someone, as John had told her repeatedly, rolling his eyes, but she insisted she would learn more by searching for it herself. Archie thought that while she might have had a point, she was really only doing it because she was stubborn and insisted on doing as much as possible by herself. "You're being unusually quiet."

"It's nothing," Archie replied, leaning back in his seat. It wasn't very comfortable, and he was going to be stuck in this seat for some five hours. Why couldn't they make the seats more comfortable? They were mages.

No, not mages. Witches and wizards, he corrected himself mentally. Rigel Black hadn't picked up on gender-neutral American terminology. They were witches and wizards, not mages. Muggles, not No-Majs. Muggleborns, not newbloods. There was no technology, no science. No science fiction. No theatre.

Hermione sighed. "Obviously, it's not nothing," she said, "because you're not yourself. Something's wrong, Harry, or do you think I'm blind?"

"Not at all, 'Mione," Archie said with a weak sort of smile. "You're the cleverest, most clear-sighted witch I know."

She merely looked at him, waiting, and Archie squirmed in his seat. She looked back at her book, her tone annoyed. "If you don't want to tell me, Harry, fine, just say so. But don't tell me you're fine when it's obvious to anyone with eyes that you're not happy to be going home. I can keep a secret, you know."

Somehow those words were cutting, and Archie looked down, sighing. She had handed him a way out, it was true, but he didn't want to disappoint her. He trusted her, he did, and there were so many things that she had gone along with, that year, based on her trust in him. She helped him steal Polyjuice, for god's sake, without pressing him too hard on it, especially when he had outright said he couldn't tell her. That was a lot of faith to put in someone, and Archie didn't want to disappoint that faith more than he absolutely had to.

And it wasn't like his feelings gave away the ruse. He could phrase things in a way that got across his feelings without going too far, couldn't he?

"You know I'm noble, 'Mione," he started slowly, quietly, with an eye on other students around them, all of them chattering in excitement about holiday plans. "I mentioned it once, didn't I?"

"You did," she said, lowering her voice to match his. "Is that what this is about?"

"A bit," Archie admitted, inventing something that was sort of like his problem but also wasn't, really. "It's just, you know, being in America lets me be myself, without having to worry about the trappings of nobility. Things are different in Britain – I might be a halfblood, but I'm still a Book of Gold noble, it's just… things are different. I'll be happy to see my family, but it's the other things."

"Other things?" Hermione pried, and Archie sighed again.

"You know, from the British Students Association," he muttered, looking away. "The British wizarding community's stance on blood purity, on Muggles. I learned a lot of things in America that I'm not really going to be able to share with anyone. No one's really going to be able to understand, and Muggle hobbies and things aren't really something that proper nobles are interested in, so," he took a breath. "I just feel like I'm going to have to hide a part of myself that's become really important and meaningful to me."

She gave him a long, studied look, lips pursed, and Archie got the sense that she was thinking very hard about what to say. "I'm sorry, Harry," she said, eventually, and leaned over to give him a warm hug. "That sounds really difficult."

"Thanks, 'Mione," he said into her shoulder. Hermione's hugs were always warm, comforting, long enough to be soothing. John's, by contrast, were quick, one-armed, masculine affairs, and Chess' were shy, hesitant, light.

"You can always owl me, if you want to write and talk about it. And it's only two weeks." She pulled away, and her warm brown eyes crinkled as she gave him a small, sad, smile. "We'll be back at AIM before you know it."

Archie gave her a pained smile. Hermione was not good at acting – it was obvious as day that she was choosing her words carefully. "What else is it, 'Mione? You were thinking of something else, too." Whatever it was, she had chosen not to say it, so it probably wasn't very nice, but Archie wanted to hear it anyway. He wanted to hear everything Hermione had to say, even if it wasn't nice.

Hermione hesitated, one long moment, then she sighed. "I didn't want to say it since you were hurting, but you're a noble, Harry. You're in a position of privilege. Your decision to hide the things that matter to you because they are Muggle reinforces the same oppressive system that made us have to go abroad for school in the first place." She turned back to her book. "But I know it's easier for me to say that, than it is for you to act on it, and I don't want to presume and step into your family relationships, either. Just – if we advocate for change, no matter how small, maybe you won't need to hide these things anymore."

Archie laughed, a quiet, bitter noise. He had asked for it, so he couldn't blame her for saying so, and he didn't even think she was wrong. But he hadn't given her the whole story, either – he had never felt the fact that he was Arcturus Rigel Black and not Harry Potter more. If he were really Harry Potter, halfblood Heir to the House of Peverell, if he were really going home to his Mum and Dad, he would spew out all the wondrous things he had learned at AIM, he would make his Mum take him out to the Muggle world to a Muggle bookshop for a complete set of Shakespearean works, he would beg them to show him the Globe Theatre and all the other things he had missed before. He wouldn't be ashamed of it at all.

But he wasn't. He was Arcturus Rigel Black, pureblood, Heir to the House of Black, and his cousin Harriett Potter was still masquerading herself as him for a Hogwarts education, and he couldn't wreck the ruse for her. Not when she had it so much harder, not when they had risked so much.

"You're right, 'Mione," he agreed instead, pulling out his copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream to study. "I'll think about it, all right?"

He told Hermione that he had to run to meet his parents, they had plans tonight, and he was sorry he couldn't stay longer to say goodbye properly. He wrapped her in a hug and ran off before she could protest, which he knew that she was about to do.

"I'll see you in two weeks, 'Mione," he called over his shoulder, making a break for it and running into a bathroom just out of sight. He pulled out a vial of the Polyjuice he prepared earlier, dropped in one of Harry's hairs, turning the muddy brown goop slate-grey and steaming, and tossed it down his throat. It burned, going down, and he staggered, reaching out for the side of the stall, gasping silently as his insides twisted. He and Harry did look quite similar already, why did Polyjuice still burn, so much? A heavy, deflating feeling went through his limbs, and he blinked and couldn't see anything. But it didn't hurt, anymore, either, so he pulled out his green contacts (he didn't need them, and they did nothing to correct his vision), and fumbled for his case, with Harry's glasses.

Man, one day, he would be able to do shots of Firewhiskey like they were nothing.

He found her glasses and put them on, then swapped his clothes with a set of Harry's clothes: her worn pair of jeans, a warm blue knit jumper (because London was freezing compared to AIM!). He had worn boots like hers earlier that day, but they were now a bit big, so he pulled on an extra pair of thick socks to pad them out. From the outside, they were fine – Harry usually wore potions boots that made her feet look bigger. He checked his appearance in the mirror of the thankfully-empty toilets – Harry's face looked back at him, and he purposely messed up her hair a little before he sauntered out into the corridor.

Aunt Lily's hair stood out brilliantly in the crowd, and he made his way over, settling himself into Harry's persona. "Mum, Dad," he said, tapping her on the shoulder, and her lovely face lit up as she reached down to wrap him in a hug. He hugged her back, stiffer than he would have as himself, because Harry was much less open to physical affection than he was.

"Fawn!" Uncle James nearly leapt at him, and Archie smiled, a small, genuine, Harry smile as he returned the hug. "Welcome home! How was America? How was AIM?"

"America was fine, AIM is fine," Archie replied, keeping his voice calm and even as he mentally sorted through all the things he had done, all the things he had learned while he was at AIM. His letters home had been rather perfunctory, the sort of things he thought that Harry would have written. He talked about classes, he had mentioned Hermione, that sort of thing. "A lot warmer than here, though."

Aunt Lily smiled, holding out a wool coat for him. "I thought it would be, so I brought your coat. Here." She helped him into it and helped him with the buttons before Archie could object.

"I can do it myself," he said, because Harry would have objected anyway, reaching for the buttons himself. Zippers would have been easier, but that was a No-Maj – Muggle – invention that hadn't translated to Wizarding Britain.

"No, honey, let me. I haven't seen you in months," Aunt Lily replied, patting the last button in place before they turned, heading out of Terminal M for the closest Apparition point. "So? Tell me about AIM! Did you make it to town? What clubs did you join? Did you see any Quodpot games?"

Inwardly, Archie winced. He should have prepped this role better, really – she had even asked about those things in her last letter! And Aunt Lily had gone to AIM, and she knew what it was like there. Why had she come back? Other than Uncle James, of course, but there were so many things she had left behind!

"I didn't see the town, no," Archie began slowly, thinking it over, taking care to slow down his speech as Harry would. "You know how it is, Mum – I'm not allowed to take the shuttle there until fourth year, and I need an upper-year escort before then. I looked into the Potions Club, but it's very small and they didn't like how far advanced I was in my studies, so I decided to study Potions on my own. I did see one of the Quodpot games, though – I didn't like it as much as Quidditch. Less technique, more violent."

Aunt Lily sighed, shaking her head. "I know how it is – it's hard making upper-year friends as a first-year. The town, especially the downtown area, is nice, so try to make it out if you can. I'm sorry Potions Club didn't work out."

"No, no, it's fine," Archie rushed to reassure her. "My studies in Potions are going quite well without them, and since I'm technically still a member of the Club, I still have access to the labs. It worked out quite well, actually."

"No surprise about the Quodpot, though," Uncle James grinned broadly, nudging Lily with his shoulder. "You can't take a Potter from Quidditch! I knew she wouldn't be swayed by the devilish charms of Quodpot!"

"Oh, I don't know if I would go that far," Archie said, keeping his tone airy. Harry would say this, she absolutely would. "Even if I don't like it as much as Quidditch, Quodpot is still quite a lot of fun. I might try out next year – in Quodpot, I can commit all the cobbing, blatching, blurting and blocking I want, whereas Quidditch has just so many fouls."

Aunt Lily laughed in delight, while Uncle James spluttered and shot him a betrayed look.

They went nearly right away to Grimmauld Place, much to Archie's relief – if he was lucky, he would only have to spend a couple hours in Harry's literal body, no more. It felt like no more than about noon, maybe early afternoon, for him, but the sun was already setting. Damn the time difference – he probably wouldn't be able to sleep until the early hours of the morning, but he would have to grit his teeth and bounce through it. And he would, because Rigel Black had been at Hogwarts, not five time zones away, and therefore he could not have jetlag.

Archie spotted the bucket of snakeskin over the door right away, hiding a smile as Uncle James pulled out his wand and disabled it before it had any chance of triggering. Good on Harry and Dad – they would never set up just one, and in the chaos, it was easy for him to sneak upstairs to his bedroom, now done in tasteful shades of emerald green, black, and silver in honour of "his" Sorting (that was fine – he had always liked green, anyway), where Harry was waiting.

"Whew, that was close!" he said, shutting the door firmly (but not hard enough for it to draw attention) and pulling a chest of drawers in front of it. He turned around and collapsed on his bed, while his double watched. "My 'juice is about to wear off – I didn't fancy another hour as you, no offence."

Harry sat down primly on the bed beside him, in just the way that Archie knew he never would. She was too controlled, too reserved in her movements. He looked her over carefully – all her limbs were there, she looked fine. That was good. He was relieved, despite himself. Yes, he had left a whole world behind in America, but his cousin was here, and she was fine. She looked happy, and that made things…

It didn't make things fine. It made things better, but not fine, as he had expected.

He grinned up at her anyway, ignoring the shrinking, sad sensation in his stomach. Instead, he scolded her for her lack of correspondence over the last several months, forced her to tell him everything that he would need to know, both the lies he would need to pass off to Dad and what had really happened, and he felt his heart sink a little.

She had made no effort to try to be him while at Hogwarts, which was fine – he liked Harry as she was! She was good, kind, hardworking, level-headed, calm, collected, fair and one of the most deserving people he knew, and she deserved to have every single one of her dreams fulfilled. But it did make things harder for him, because Harry was not him, and how was he supposed to blend these two distinctly different personalities into one cohesive whole? What would he need to change, how would he need to act? What was Harry's accent, now? Was it just a touch more upper-class than it had been? That was fine, if it was, it was close enough to his own that he could manage it. He listened carefully as she told him about her formal introductions to upper-years, including the Rosier Heir and one of the Rookwoods, about Lee Jordan, about her problems with her magic. He made a mental list of her friends to refer to, nodding to keep her talking, and learned about her extra work with Professor Snape. He would need to learn a little of that, too, probably, or at least the theory. That was fine, Harry would walk him through it. It was manageable.

"All right, that's everything," Harry said with a sigh, finishing off her account with her story of meeting the Malfoys and the Parkinsons at the train station and the lies she had told to Dad to explain why (though it was obvious – she met the Malfoys and Parkinsons while wearing her own face, whereas she had to meet Dad in Archie's body). She rolled over on her back on his bed. "Your turn, Arch. Spill."

For a second, he was stymied. What would he say to her?

She had given him everything – all the painful parts, all the best parts, all the lies as well as the darker truths behind them. She had talked about having to deal with attacks on her life (Acid in her drinks? Paralytic poisons? What the hell, Hogwarts?), of the perpetual dance of politics she played (Formal introductions? Asking permission to befriend someone? What was this, the Regency era? No, would Harry even know about the Regency era? He only knew because of that hilarious time they were in Chess' room, when John had pulled a book out of her bookcase and she had shrieked, blushing bright red, and grabbed it out of his hands, then Hermione had given her a lecture about filling her head with unrealistic romantic notions), of Marcus' blackmail (while he was impressed with Harry's ability to do schoolwork four years ahead of her, he was decidedly not impressed about the blackmail itself), of the never-ending precautions Harry took. It sounded so, so, so hard, and he didn't want to make it any harder for her.

And where would he even begin? Would he begin with the school, about the different buildings all done in warm mahogany timber with shiny glass windows? Would he tell her about Pettingill Hall, with its wall of glass, cream-and-powder-blue décor, and sunny common room, or about his favourite classes: Healing, of course, but also No-Maj Studies? Or, wait, did he backtrack to tell her about Bond, first, about his very first movie at the drive-in theatre – but how would he describe movies for her? What about their very first No-Maj Studies class, where they watched the moon landing, or the things they studied after that: Cosmos, Star Wars, Frankenstein? Or the Clubs Fair with its million bazillion clubs and its wild frenetic energy, the Dueling Club, the eternal Quodpot/Quidditch rivalry? What about the Muggle town, where they had stores filled with racks upon racks of clothing, with cool t-shirts and sweatshirts and sweatpants (which John loved, and which Archie thought were an absolute horror), bookshops stuffed with new worlds for Archie to discover? What about Ender's Game, for which he had gotten to the end and cried salty tears of shock and sadness? What about milkshakes?

And what about theatre? How could he describe Shakespeare, or Romeo and Juliet, or West Side Story? How could he describe the warm, sweet, sensation of standing on a stage under the harsh lights of Spotlight Charms, panting great breaths of exhaustion and relief, feeling the applause of hundreds of rain down on him? How did he describe how he felt then, that overwhelming pride and joy flowing through him, standing there as part of his troupe?

"Archie?"

He snapped to it, pulling out his pocket watch. He had gotten into Heathrow just before five, and it had taken them until almost seven to get out of the aeroport, stop off at Potter Place, and Floo to Grimmauld Place. Now it was nearing eight, and they hadn't eaten. He had no time, and he made a snap decision.

America was different, but it would have changed in the decade since Aunt Lily had been back. The chances of Harry, or Aunt Lily, or Uncle James ever meeting John, or Chess, or finding out about Archie's roles in theatre, or his adventures in town, were so infinitesimally slim. He would tell her only the most critical, factual things now, keep things simple, and he could tell her the rest later, when they had time.

"Just figuring out where I should begin," Archie flashed his brightest smile at her. "All right, so, AIM is in the southern United States – it's quite a bit warmer there than it is here. The school itself isn't one cohesive building, there are two main ones you need to remember: Thompson Hall, where all the classes are, and Seaton House, which has the dining hall, the main student library, an auditorium, and a bunch of study rooms, club rooms, labs, that sort of thing. There's a Healer's dorm, Pettingill Hall, and a general education dorm, Oliver Hall. Mastery students live in a townhouse complex."

He described the buildings and the grounds for her in painstaking detail, noting that there was a Muggle town about a half-hour away and that younger students needed an upper-year escort to go. He glossed over his upper-year friends, mentioning only Neal and Daine in passing. He went over his teachers, and over his Basic Healing classes, downplaying No-Maj studies on the assumption that Aunt Lily, as a newblood, would have been exempt, just mentioning it as a class where they learned how to function in the Muggle world. These were the details that Harry would need to sell that she went to the school, the ones that Aunt Lily would have known about, the ones that would be the same as she remembered.

He talked about the clubs, said that there were a lot of them, but only specifically mentioned the Healer's Association and the Potions Club. He told her the lie that he had told Aunt Lily, about the Potions Club, then moved on to Quodpot, which he did describe for her in detail. Think of it like Quidditch, he said, except about twice as violent because there aren't any real fouls and trying to knock people off their brooms is an integral part of the game. He mentioned the AIM rankings for Quodpot (they did beat Cascadia, placing them second in the League behind Ilvermorny), mentioned the different season for Quidditch (a spring sport, rather than year-round), mentioned that while there was a school team and there were tryouts, most people just played pick-up games on Sundays. For those that were interested, there was an intramural league of sorts, where scores were kept, but it was pretty loose and most of the teams weren't consistent anyway.

He mentioned Chess and John as key classmates in the Healing stream that she should know that he knew, but mentioned, too, that he hadn't told Aunt Lily and Uncle James about them at all. He didn't talk about how Chess was Exceptional, or about the Exceptionals program (it wasn't important right now), and mentioned a few of his pranks. She already knew about the Polyjuice prank, and he mentioned a few other minor ones – fireworks, the shoe.

He didn't talk about town, about movies, about Bond. He didn't tell her about the stores in town with racks upon racks of clothing, about cool t-shirts and sweatshirts and sweatpants, about Muggle bookshops or Muggle music or milkshakes. He didn't tell her about Carl Sagan, about the No-Maj drive for discovery, about the Earth as a pale blue dot in the rear view of Voyager 1 as it soared out of the solar system. He didn't tell her about theatre, about Shakespeare, about standing on a stage breathing life into a story, feeling that breathless sense of awe and wonder at the end of each night. He didn't tell her about his complicated feelings – how he was happy to be home, happy to see Dad and Harry and Uncle James and Aunt Lily and Uncle Remus, but how he also felt a gutting sense of loss, like something was missing from him.

For Harry, for the moment, he made his life at AIM simple. He was Harry Potter, Healer-in-Training. His best friend was a British Muggleborn witch, Hermione Granger. He could (he would!) tell her everything else later.

Harry nodded thoughtfully, taking it all in with that focused frown on her face that told him that she was memorizing everything he said. "All right," she said. "They're expecting us downstairs, so I think I've got it for now. Is there anything else that's absolutely critical?"

Archie hesitated for a long second, thinking it all over again, thinking it all through. Critical? No, but there was so much more.

"I don't think so," he said, with a smile. "Come on, let's go down to dinner. I'm starving, and don't worry – if anyone asks you anything about AIM, I'll help you out."

That night, over dinner, his family snowed him with questions about Hogwarts, about his Housemates, about the pranks he (hadn't) pulled. Aunt Lily only asked Harry a single question about her Healing classes, to which she gave the most perfunctory, strictly accurate answer (and he understood that, Harry hadn't gone to AIM and she wasn't an actress), but instead of asking her more about it, his family immediately derailed the conversation with arguing and never went back. No one seemed even remotely curious about the bigger questions: what it was like to go abroad for school, what American wizarding culture was like, what AIM was like. It made it easier that she didn't have to answer a lot of questions, it made things a lot simpler, but at the same time, it didn't sit well with him. Some part of him felt hurt, betrayed.

And Archie realized: it was because it didn't matter. His life at AIM, all the things that he had grown to love, all the experiences that he had gotten in America, all the people he had met and grown to care for – they didn't matter. So, he let Harry take control of the narrative, let her define who she was in the hypothetical universe where she was at AIM (it was easier for her that way, anyway), and he didn't say anything about it at all.

That night, Archie sequestered himself in his bedroom with a pad of Muggle paper. He had roles to work out, and not just for A Midsummer Night's Dream (for which he was going to be auditioning for the role of Puck, was there really any question?). He told Dad he was for bed at about ten, complaining about an early morning to go to the Hogwarts Express, but really, as far as his body was concerned, it was still early in the evening and he had hours to go before he even felt remotely tired.

Instead, he had to plan. They didn't have it good enough, and even if Harry's plan to homogenize their alternate selves was a good one, that wasn't the whole picture. Yes, they both needed to know all the things they were supposed to know, so Archie would need to learn to play Beater and brew Potions, and Harry would play pranks and learn Healing. Archie didn't worry about the other aspects, like theatre – he hadn't told his family about them, so they wouldn't come up. Even Harry didn't know that part yet – he would find a time to tell her, when he wasn't feeling so morose and unhappy about it all, when he could bring the excitement and enthusiasm that would let him share it properly.

Harry's plan wasn't enough. Skills were one thing (an important thing!), but Archie was thinking about personalities. Who was Rigel Black? How did Rigel talk, how did he behave? What did he know about how Harry had already portrayed him? He scribbled down the words, Rigel Black, as a heading on the first page of paper.

Rigel Black, in personality, was not his cousin Harry. His cousin Harry knew little of pureblood etiquette. Harry would never have worried about formal introductions or asking formal permission of Parkinson's parents to befriend her. Harry was reserved, but not secretive, and Rigel was decidedly secretive. Harry was not physically affectionate, but Rigel actively avoided physical contact, because Harry was pretending to be a boy. Harry slept in pyjamas and under the covers, while Rigel did not. Like Harry, though, Rigel was passionate about potions, and his magic was powerful. While Rigel hadn't played any pranks, he had been involved with them, and he would be a prankster. He made his notes, in his loopy, uneven handwriting, and looked back to consider them. Rigel Black was, if anything, a more reserved and secretive Harry, with a hefty dose of pureblood propriety.

He leaned back against his headboard, running his fingers through his hair. The problem wasn't that Rigel Black wasn't Harry Potter. The problem was that Rigel Black was nothing like Archie. Archie knew a lot of pureblood etiquette, but Harry had far surpassed him when she prepared to masquerade as him. He knew about the things she had done, but it wasn't in his nature to do them. They were stupid – Hermione would have had a field day learning that in noble Wizarding British society, one was supposed to ask permission from a girl's parents to befriend her!

He amused himself for a few minutes, imagining the reaction his friends would have had to that piece of information. Hermione would have scoffed and told them how outdated and sexist that was, because the same didn't hold true of boys, and John would tell them a story about his grandparents, because he had a story about his grandparents for everything. Chess would have put on that politely quizzical expression, the one that said that she didn't quite know what to think about something, then she would say something about how different cultures should be respected. Then Hermione would say something about how women could choose their own friends, thank you very much, and that the etiquette was an outrageous violation of a woman's right to choose. Chess would tilt her head, agree that in the basic principle, Hermione was quite correct, but what happened in practice? From a practical perspective, Pansy had been friends with Rigel for months before Rigel had had the opportunity to request formal permission, and it seemed unlikely that she would stop merely because her parents didn't give their permission. And what if they flipped the scenario around? What if Pansy's parents gave their permission to someone Pansy didn't like, did Pansy have to be friends with them? Surely that wouldn't work. Then she would conclude that overall, it seemed like a sweet and protective gesture that had little to no practical effect, and then Hermione would explode over the fact that Chess found it sweet at all instead of unbearably offensive. Then John would shoot him that look, the one that said they needed to step in and calm things down before the girls really went at it (because that inevitably ended in tears – Chess', to be exact), and John would run for ice cream for everyone while Archie waded in and said that they were both right, so how about they turn their attention to this Potions problem here, before he had to blow something up?

He shook his head. The image just made him feel lonely all over again, and he sighed. Back to the problem. The Potions part, Harry took care of over dinner by saying they were going to fulfill each other's dreams, leaving only the pureblood etiquette part and the secretiveness. Obviously, Rigel knew a lot more pureblood etiquette than Archie did, and he was willing to act on them, and Archie was not secretive. He had never been so, and he was not a faithful proponent of pureblood noble etiquette as Rigel was. So how did he make that make sense?

He would have to rely on his Sorting, he decided. Slytherin was known to be the most conservative of the Houses, with a strong predominance of traditional, ultra-conservative nobles, and it would be expected that he would change as a result. If all his Housemates abided by pureblood etiquette, then Rigel Black had to, too. He didn't have to like it, and Rigel wouldn't, but he would play by the rules and keep his head down. As for secretiveness, well, he would sell that as everyone needing to be somewhat secretive, to survive in the House of Snakes. Friendship and politics in Slytherin were indelibly entwined, the way Harry made it sound, and Dad would buy it. Dad didn't believe the best of Slytherins anyway.

He took a deep breath, staring at that list. All right. He could carry this off. Unlike Harry, whom no one expected to talk a lot about AIM and who was prone to disappearing for hours to her lab anyway, there was no way he would avoid a lengthy conversation with Dad about Hogwarts for the entire holiday. He had to have at least one long conversation about Hogwarts with him, likely tomorrow, or it wouldn't just be odd. It would be downright suspicious.

He would talk about his friends, whom Harry had told him enough about: kind, sweet Pansy Parkinson who had a slightly calculating edge to her personality; Draco Malfoy, who could be annoying and perpetually tried to impress others but also looked out so closely for his friends; Fred and George Weasley, twin pranksters who hero-worshipped the Marauders; Ron Weasley, a little abrasive but ultimately friendly; shy, hesitant Neville Longbottom who saw the best in everyone. He would talk about the castle, which had been described enough to him by Dad and his uncles that he had a mental image that he could use, and he would memorize the Marauder's Map, and that would have to be enough.

He stared at his list of notes, scowled, and ripped it off the pad of Muggle paper. He crumpled it in a ball and threw it in the fire, watching as it started smoking, caught fire, and burned.

He didn't want to study the stupid Marauder's Map right now. He was at home, but he missed AIM, and he missed his friends, and the things left unsaid between himself and Harry, the lies separating him from Dad, the things he wanted to share and couldn't, were biting at him.

So, he reached into his messenger bag, the one he had used as a carry-on on the plane, pulled out A Midsummer Night's Dream, and lost himself in a story of four young lovers and the tricks played on them by the fairies in the forest.

"Morning, Dad!" Archie bounced into the kitchen, easily the best decorated room in the house, early the next morning. He had had to set an alarm on his wand, which went off far too early for his liking (hell, in America, it was three in the morning, and he had had less than five hours of sleep), but Archie Black was an early riser, and he was always up by eight. Always. And therefore, Rigel Black had to be, too. He reached for the pot of coffee – at least, at home, he drank coffee and Dad didn't stop him. Come on, coffee, he willed. Do your work.

"Morning, Arch," Dad replied, his face lighting up, and Archie repressed the urge to pounce on him in a hug. Rigel had hugged him yesterday, and it would be a little weird to hug him again so soon. He would get one in on Christmas Day, and it would have to be enough. "How was your night?"

"Great!" Archie poured himself a steaming mug of coffee. "It's nice to be back in my own bed, in my own room, you know – not that sharing with Draco and Theo is bad, or anything, they're fine, just that privacy is nice."

Dad smiled affectionately at him, leaning over to ruffle his hair. "Yeah, I remember what that was like – in Gryffindor, we were four to a room, bit of a tough transition. Slytherin still has the curtains around the beds you can close, right? Those have soundproofing charms on them when closed, you know? Just a note for the future." He winked.

Archie rolled his eyes, patting his Dad on the shoulder and taking a seat at the table across from him. "Eleven, Dad."

Dad sighed, wistful. "Eleven, already. Seventeen is only a few years away, thanks for reminding me, Arch. You'll fall in love with someone beautiful, maybe that Pansy Parkinson girl, and you'll move out, or kick me out of Grimmauld Place, and forget that I exist—"

"As if, Dad," Archie laughed, forgoing cream and sugar in his coffee. Archie liked cream and sugar in his coffee, but this morning, he needed the bitter taste to keep him sharp, to remind him that right now, he was Rigel Black, not himself. And Rigel Black, he decided, took his coffee black. Like his name. "How could I forget you? We'll move in with you and completely redo the décor, Pansy would have never stood for the house-elf heads! But seriously—"

"You mean, siriusly?" Dad shot him a wicked grin, and Archie laughed again, a dry bark of a laugh. They said that one too many times for it to be truly funny, or maybe Archie was just too stressed to find it funny, now.

"Seriously," Archie softened his laugh with a quick smile, "I don't see Pansy like that at all. She's very kind, but she's also a brilliant political strategist – I wouldn't want to deal with that at home as well as outside, you know? Did I tell you how she set up the formal introduction to meet the Rosier Heir?"

"You didn't, Arch, spill, spill!"

Archie grinned, taking a sip of his coffee. Blegh. "It was the weirdest thing! She said she wanted to introduce me to some people, so I said sure, of course, and then she came into my room at about six in the morning to do my hair and pick out my clothes for me and do my nails. Then she had Draco and I sit in what she called the perfect arrangement: she was in a chair beside two empty chairs, for the upper-years, and Draco and I were on the sofa, with Draco between Pansy and me. She said it was so that they looked like they were supporting me but not shielding me."

"Ugh, no!" Dad grimaced. "Those games, already?"

"It's the lifeblood of Slytherin House, Dad," Archie replied, shrugging, letting a resigned sort of smile play about his lips. "I have to play them, at school. It's hard, but on the bright side, there's always a prescribed reaction or archaic ritual for everything – you always know where you stand, at least. I mean, I'm not saying I like it, or anything, but it's sort of necessary."

Dad sighed. "Yeah, Arch, I remember how it was. Anyway, so tell me about the Rosier Heir! You know he's sort of broadly related to us, right? Or not to us, specifically, but your great-aunt Druella was a Rosier, so I suppose he's a cousin of your cousins? He's a maternal second cousin to your friend Draco, whereas you're a paternal first cousin."

"Have you met him?" Archie asked, tilting his head curiously while he recalled what Harry had said about him. Dark hair, golden-orange eyes, slender. He was always beside a certain Edmund Rookwood, his best friend, and ran in a group that included the Selwyn heiress, Lucian Bole, Adrian Pucey. He and Rookwood had pulled a cruel trick on Harry, forcing her to climb a tree with a broken wrist (not that they had known it at the time), in order to prove that she deserved to be friends with Pansy. Conservative pureblood traditionalist, he guessed.

"No, actually – Lord and Lady Rosier are nearly twenty years older than me, so we weren't at school together, and you know, before the Split, things were a little different. They're a Book of Copper family and they run the Rosier Investment Trust – they're in business." Dad shrugged, tapping at his chin as he tried to remember other details. "I know only the most outdated rumours. Both Lord and Lady Rosier married late for purebloods, in their mid-thirties – older than I am now. You know how pureblood society is, Arch, it's almost all arranged marriages, usually at seventeen. Lord Rosier had it a bit easier, I think, he just refused to enter into any arrangements, but Lady Rosier was famous for breaking the arrangements made for her."

Archie pulled a disgusted grimace. Arranged marriages were gross. That was why Mum and Dad had eloped. He couldn't even imagine having someone else make such a personal choice for him. Oh, Hermione would lose her mind over the thought. It's the twentieth century, he could just hear her shouting. Wait, no, would Rigel grimace over it, or would he just be resigned to the reality, too used to people bringing up the subject around him? Too late now, but he smoothed his expression and hid it with another sip of black coffee.

Dad grinned, reaching across the table to flick Archie in the head. "Don't worry, Arch, I don't play by those rules, and you won't ever have to worry about it. Anyway, I always thought I'd like to meet Lady Rosier – Lord Evan Rosier was her seventh or eighth arrangement, something like that. Her family, the Averys, were going spare. She was so disagreeable half the proposed grooms broke it off for her, once she defeated the proposed groom in a duel, once she pled deathly illness and said she wouldn't live long enough to produce an Heir. That time, the rumour is that she poisoned herself for weeks and paid off Healers to lie for her. Once she faked her death and reappeared in the Middle East six months later when the groom married someone else. Once she straight up ran away on the day of the ceremony! That time, she reappeared in Russia ten months later, after the groom broke the contract. It was a surprise to everyone when she married Lord Rosier instead of finding yet another way out, and their Heir came along a couple of years later."

"Huh," Archie replied, grimacing slightly. No, it was fine. Rigel had to be polite about pureblood customs and rituals and etiquette, he needed to know them and respect them, he reminded himself, but he didn't need to like them. "I mean, it's funny and all, but isn't it really sad that she had to pull so many tricks just to say no?"

Dad shrugged. "Pureblood culture, Archie. I'm not going to defend it, and I agree with you – it's both funny and sad at the same time. But go on with your story – you met the Rosier Heir?"

"Yes, that's right," Archie perked up with a smile. "His name is Aldon Rosier, he's a fourth year. I met him with his best friend, Edmund Rookwood. Pansy said the introduction went quite well, but I have to rely on her judgement because the conversation itself was really stilted and unnatural. I barely learned anything about them at all! Formal introductions – not a great way to meet people, I have to say. Cannot recommend."

Dad burst into laughter, slapping the table, and Archie grinned, and settled in over his steaming cup of bitter coffee to answer questions about Hogwarts, about his supposed friends. He adlibbed his way through a conversation about his dormmates, Draco and Theo, he talked about the Weasley twins and the prank war that he had allegedly started (honestly, most of the pranks weren't very inspired – a lot of dumping things in food, explosions, that sort of thing), about the castle itself. He focused on the parts that Dad, Uncle James and Harry had talked most about – the Entrance Hall, the Great Hall, the Slytherin common room. Corridors were boring, why would he talk about them anyway? He talked about classes: Harry had rubbed off on him and he was doing best in Potions, Professors McGonagall and Flitwick were tough but he liked them, Professor Binns was so boring he fell asleep every single class and had no idea how he was going to pass the final exam. Maybe he would crib off Draco or Pansy, somehow they were immune to the soporific effect of Binns' voice.

Rigel Black was a role, just like Anybodys, just like Puck, and he wasn't Archie. But Archie let himself breathe life into the role, drawing on all the things that Harry had ever told him, both directly and obliquely, drawing conclusions here and there and trying not to step over the lines Harry had already drawn. Archie was an actor, and acting was fun!

He ignored the part where acting before Dad was not really like acting on a stage, and it wasn't fun at all.

Archie meant to tell her, he really did. He meant to tell Harry all about America, about all the things that he had done, all the things he had seen, all the things that were so important to him even if he couldn't share it with anyone else. He just couldn't find the right time.

He spent most of the rest of the holiday catching up on Harry's classes in the Potter Place library, where Uncle James or Aunt Lily kept checking on them, and then they were abducted for family time every evening. Uncle Remus joined them, for two days, and he and Harry talked at length about magical theory while Archie surreptitiously glanced through Harry's essays for Astronomy and History of Magic and took a copy of her Potions notes for himself to review later. The one morning they were undisturbed, he was preoccupied with walking Harry through the syllabi for Basic Healing and Magical Psychology and teaching her to do all the things that she was supposed know how to do, then they were sidetracked by her Parselmouth ability. Then he was trapped in two more conversations with Dad about Hogwarts, in which he draped himself in the mantle of the role he called Rigel Black, and helped his father reminisce about his Hogwarts days. Thank god for all the improv Mariana had made them do for the two weeks post-performance! He was getting miles out of the tricks he had learned.

The few patches of time he did find, fifteen minutes here, an hour there, just didn't seem right. It would take more than that to explain, and where would he even begin?

Hey Harry, he imagined himself saying, as Harry poured over one of his Healing textbooks and his notes with an obsessive zeal that spoke to her intense devotion to the ruse. I want to tell you about this really cool thing that happened when I was in America. We snuck out of our dorm the first night and went to see a movie! And then he would need to tell her what a movie was and describe Bond for her and she would smile and nod at all the right places, but her brows would narrow in confusion, her head would tilt as she tried to understand, and her fingers would twitch, itching to go back to copying his notes.

Hey Harry, he imagined himself saying, while she stood over a brewing cauldron, let me tell you about the club I joined, the Theatre Troupe! We put on a musical, West Side Story, and I played a twelve-year-old Irish-American girl who wanted to join a gang! And then he would need to explain what a musical was and tell her about the plot of West Side Story, maybe even sing some parts of it for her, and she would nod, or maybe wince as he tried and failed to sing, one eye still on her cauldron as she showed him something he needed to know to protect the ruse.

Hey Harry, he imagined himself saying, while staring at his bedroom ceiling late at night, I know people have been trying to maim and kill you at Hogwarts, and you've risked your soul to take my place, but can I tell you about the awesome, fun, frivolous things I've been doing while you were in danger? And then he just felt guilty, because his cousin, his kind, strong, brave cousin was already taking on so much by herself, and she was in so much danger, and wouldn't telling her more just make things harder, more complicated, for her? And it wasn't like anyone really asked her, anyway. The bare-bones story and details he gave her held up, because what she did in America didn't really matter.

And before he knew it, it was Christmas Day, and Archie was trading presents with her in the safety of his bedroom, and he hadn't told her anything. He had more important worries. He had two perfect, pristinely wrapped presents for her in his closet burning a hole in his conscience. Two pretty, poisonous presents labelled To: Rigel Black, From: Pansy Parkinson and From: Draco Malfoy.

Fine, she liked Malfoy and Parkinson – and Archie would continue to call them Malfoy and Parkinson, not Draco and Pansy, because he didn't know them in the slightest. Harry could choose her own friends, that wasn't the issue. But it was Malfoy, and it was Parkinson. The Malfoys were a Book of Gold noble family, quite wealthy (indeed, their asset wealth was greater than the Blacks), and Draco was the Heir. The Parkinsons, too, were Book of Gold, wealthy, and Pansy was their Heiress. It was obvious as day that both Malfoy and Parkinson had cottoned onto Harry because she was Rigel Black, the Heir to the House of Black.

Maybe it had morphed into something else, later, but Archie highly doubted that either Malfoy or Parkinson would have given Harry Potter, halfblood, the time of day. But that wasn't something he could say to her, was it?

He tried to hint it anyway, while they were sorting out their Christmas gifts. Harry handed him a heavy package – Archie recognized the neat, prim handwriting on it immediately. Oh, Hermione, he thought, with a mental sigh, even as he knew his face was lighting up. She shouldn't have – they were doing a present exchange with their other friends when they got back to AIM!

He ripped off the wrapping, finding a book: A Healer's Guide to Magical Plants and Fungi. He grinned softly, looking down at it – there was no way that this was the full present, not when Hermione knew him as well as she did. He paged through it a bit, spotting the slip of paper tucked between a few of the first pages, but he left it in there and continued looking. It was beautifully illustrated, and he would read her note later.

"A book! I might have known," he chuckled, instead, for Harry's benefit. She didn't need to know that he and his friends had agreed not to exchange gifts until the new year, and if he was honest with himself, he was also really happy to be able to open at least one of his friends' gifts on Christmas Day. Hermione would have known that, though – Hermione knew him too well.

"That ought to help you with Potions, too," Harry said, tilting her head thoughtfully. "And it's not like you can talk about giving people books."

"Yeah," Archie replied, looking up and slamming the book shut to look at later. He turned to his closet, bringing himself back to the moment, pulling out the two pretty, poisonous packages, wrapped in shining green and silver. Because they were Slytherins, of course. "I have your other presents, too – these came a few days ago, with a note not to open until today."

Harry's face lit up with a smile – a genuine one, full of fondness. "From Draco and Pansy?" she asked eagerly, reaching out for them. It was … disturbing.

Archie hesitated, frowning, looking down at the gifts in his hands. They were elegantly wrapped, perfectly done without any extra creases or folds, and certainly not any tears. The cards, attached, were done in a sleek handwriting, neat and with the same characteristic flourishes, even if the hands were different. It didn't look like the sort of gifts he and his family gave each other – theirs were wrapped with fondness, and every misplaced crease, crooked line, and poor fold spoke to effort. These presents, even if chosen with care, looked too professional, too impersonal.

"It's just … Parkinson and Malfoy … it's weird, you know?"

"We're friends," Harry replied evenly, a sharp look of warning in her bright green eyes. "Nothing weird about friends getting each other Christmas gifts."

"I know, but …" Archie bit his lip. Harry was stubborn as an ox, and he could tell she was wanting to pounce on him for her presents. He had no intention of keeping them from her, or anything like that, but he was worried. "Look, don't take this the wrong way, but you know that they're the reason you have to wear a disguise every day in the first place."

"They're just kids like us!" Harry defended them, to little surprise. "They weren't responsible for anything."

"No, but their parents were," Archie replied softly. The Malfoys were right in Riddle's inner circle, certainly part of Halloween coup in 1981, and Lord Malfoy himself was Riddle's second-in-command. The Parkinsons, too, were prominent members in the SOW Party, and Archie understood that Lord Parkinson was one of Riddle's main strategists. "And you talk as if you like their parents, too. I can tell you think they are charming and elegant, and I'm sure they are, but…"

There was a long pause, and Harry waited, glaring daggers at him. Finally, Archie sighed heavily, shrugging. "I just worry about you getting mixed up in blood politics."

"But I'm not," Harry replied, though her frown had disappeared. "It's just…"

"You think that, but this is how it starts. They get you young. I'm well out of it in America, but you…" He sighed again, looking away. "You know, I often think you got the raw end of the deal. I don't have to lie about anything except my name. You've got to hide your feelings, thoughts, abilities, and even your sex. And if we get caught, well…"

"It's my soul that gets snacked on by the Dementors," Harry replied, her voice cold at the reality, but somehow soothing at the same time. It was a truth they lived with – and just another sign of the inequalities of their world. Their world seemed to tilt more wrong every day, or maybe it was just that Archie was finally noticing it. "I know. And I took that risk when I came up with the idea. I knew all this when I started, and to me it's worth it, okay? I promise, I'm happier doing this than I would have been at AIM, no matter how good their Potions track is. It just can't compare to working directly under Professor Snape."

Looking at her, Archie didn't believe her. He believed that she wholeheartedly believed it, but she didn't know what it was like in America. She didn't know about the wonders of a magical society that accepted, embraced, Muggle culture. She didn't know about Bond, about Shakespeare, about theatre. She didn't know about science, about Carl Sagan. She didn't know that Muggles now knew far more about the stars with their radio telescopes and their computers and their calculations, she didn't know that Astronomy as it was taught at Hogwarts was horrifically outdated, to the point where large swathes of it were useless and wrong. She didn't know that Muggles had stood on the moon.

She didn't know how much light there was in America, she didn't know how free it was to walk without the spectre of her lineage, her blood status, haunting her wherever she went. If she had, he didn't think anyone could say that what she had was better than that freedom.

But he didn't know how to explain that to her.

"Okay, but be careful, will you?" He passed her the presents without a fight, and he could see her eyes softening, her small, genuine smile, as she looked down at them – so beautiful, so decorative, so deadly. "If you go and get yourself purified by the Cow Party, I'll never be able to find another Archie Black lookalike on such short notice."

Harry smirked back at him, a wry grin of acceptance. "Don't worry, Arch. I won't forget who the enemy is."

She ripped open her presents, pulling out a thick, up-to-date tome of pureblood wizarding genealogy from Malfoy, and an address book from Parkinson, which had room for secrets, pictures, almost a book of dossiers. She smiled, a genuine, happy smile, showing Archie how the most recent entries in the genealogy were written in her friend's careful hand, showing Archie how Pansy had already begun filling the address book with important students for her: Aldon Rosier, Edmund Rookwood, Alesana Selwyn, with pictures clearly taken without the person's knowledge. Archie smiled back, a small, trembling smile at Harry's obvious pleasure.

Harry, too, had changed over their months apart. He didn't know what Harry was thinking, becoming so close, so friendly, with the children of prominent SOW Party members. The Harry he knew, too, would have had no pleasure in these awful, horrific, shams of gifts. But he looked at her, and he listened to her, and he willed himself to believe her, to trust her.

But he worried, too, and in his worry, he didn't tell her anything.

Dear Harry,

I know you said that you wanted us to do our presents at AIM, but after you talked to me on the plane, I was thinking. Is it that you just want to be sure that no one will give you anything too Muggle, in case you open it around your family? Nothing else makes sense to me – you really do love presents, you've never cared about the cost of things before, and you know full well that John and Francesca can both easily afford the cost of international owl post. I can't imagine you would be anything except miserable on Christmas if you didn't get anything from your friends. I could almost picture your puppy-dog eyes from Oxford.

Well, your international owl post explanation doesn't work for me, so here is the first half of your Christmas present – I'll have the other half (the Muggle half!) for you at AIM for our present exchange party with John and Francesca. I hope your holidays are going well otherwise, and I'll see you in less than a week.

Happy holidays,

Hermione

Archie smiled at the note and tucked it back in his messenger bag, into the package of things he would take back to AIM with him: a book of Charms for Hermione, one which included the elusive Umbrella Charm that she had been searching for (he, unlike her, had asked!), a thick tome on British wandlore for Chess (written by Ollivander, long known as Britain's best wandmaker), a fat package of Marauders pranking supplies for John (which he would still probably use mainly to exact revenge instead of for fun, but in some cases, the two were synonymous).

It was less than a week before he would be back at AIM, and he pulled out A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was in the safety of his bedroom, the door was shut, his chest of drawers was pulled across it, and he was safe – he could be himself. And he had a role to plan, because Puck was perfect for him, and he had so many lines to memorize.

He ignored the perpetual feelings of discontent that ran through him. Some of it was sadness – he wanted to share so many things, but he couldn't. For Dad, for Uncle James and Aunt Lily and Uncle Remus, he couldn't tell them because it threatened the ruse; for Harry, he didn't know where to begin, he couldn't find the right time, and it would make everything so much more complicated for her to remember, to keep straight. Should he even tell her at all? It didn't matter anyway, no one asked her anything more than the bare minimum.

And then came the anger – because it did matter! He mattered! He mattered, and so did the things he loved and cared about: theatre, movies, books, science, all the things coming from the world sitting right outside their doorsteps. John, his friendly guide to the Muggle world, who was always so cheerful and fun, mattered. Chess, whose sweetness lay close to her bones and who couldn't eat ice mice or chocolate frogs because it seemed too cruel, mattered. Hermione, kind, loyal Hermione who didn't always approve of the things Archie did but always supported him anyway, mattered. All the things he did, all the things he cared about, all these things mattered, and he wanted to share it all and god damn the consequences.

And then came the flooding guilt, because Harry had already sacrificed so much, and she was all in on this, and even if he worried, even if she didn't know what she was missing, this was what she goddamn wanted, and how could he even think, let alone do, anything that might put her at risk, anything that might threaten her? Especially when all the things he had to say seemed so light, so frivolous, compared to everything she already had to deal with?

So, in the safety of his bedroom, he opened his play, and he escaped.

Archie boarded the plane for New York City, from Terminal M, with a lighter heart. He still hadn't told Harry about all the things he had done, he still felt the weight of the secrets he now kept from his family, but he was going back to AIM, and he couldn't help but feel relieved.

It was a queasy sort of relief, though, because he shouldn't feel this happy. He shouldn't feel so happy about leaving Dad, leaving his family. He shouldn't feel so happy about sending Harry back into the dragon's den that was Hogwarts. He shouldn't feel so happy.

"Harry!" Hermione bounded to her feet, a little awkward given that she was already in her seat, wrapping her arms around him. There was space, just enough space for her to stand up, and Archie smiled into her thick, wild, brown curls. "How are you? How were your holidays? Did you like your present?"

Archie breathed in a happy breath, filled with the clean scent of spring rain, with just a hint of thunderstorms, and returned her embrace. "Better now that we're on our way back, 'Mione. I loved it, and I'm so excited to give my presents to everyone back at AIM, too."

He shouldn't have felt so happy to leave, but he did.

Chapter Text

Archie got off the stage, thoroughly satisfied with his audition. Puck was an easy character for him to prepare: he was a consummate prankster, and Archie had a lifetime of experience as a prankster to draw on. His Robin "Puck" Goodfellow was, he thought, two parts Dad, one part Uncle James – more Dad because turning someone's head into an ass was absolutely his Dad, whereas the last soliloquy, to the audience, apologetic and yet not at all apologetic, was so clearly Uncle James. His Puck fell somewhere between the two – his Puck was fun, easygoing, willing to take risks and a little careless, but essentially good-hearted. He had a plethora of examples for gestures, movements, that no one in the troupe could possibly match.

John's present had really helped. John had gifted him a fat, three-volume, annotated collection of every Shakespearean play. He had flipped immediately to A Midsummer Night's Dream and read every note on Puck in the text! He thought he had picked up most of the nuances in Puck's lines, but the added information confirmed his characterization. He wished he had had it, or Chess' gift, a beautiful hard-cover edition of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, over the holidays to read. But what was done, was done, and he had an entire term to read them now.

Evin mock-glared at him as he came off the stage. "Damn it, Potter," he sighed forlornly. "When did you get so good at acting?"

Archie shrugged, smirking. "Just luck, you know," he waved a hand, dismissive. "Let's just say, this role is uniquely designed for me. And aren't you auditioning for both Lysander and Demetrius in this one?"

Evin made a face at him. "I am, but Puck was my focus – I can't do romance worth beans yet, I just don't have enough personal experience to draw on. It's all right, I think I'm leaning more towards musical theatre than dramatic acting."

Archie nodded, understanding – most of the older troupe members leaned one way or another. He was pretty sure that he would be leaning towards being a dramatic actor, himself, unless he learned to sing sometime in the next couple years. He had thought about it, but then, how would he go about doing that? He couldn't very well ask Dad for vocal lessons. Dad would almost definitely agree, but he would want to know why, and what explanation would Archie have then?

He could think about it later, when his voice broke. He wasn't going to be seriously considered for a musical role until then anyway.

"Are you wearing makeup?" Zahir asked, coming off the stage from his own audition, an expression of horror coming across his similarly made-up face. Archie spotted the touches of white eyeliner on the outer corners of the dark-skinned boy's eyes. "And is that a dress?"

"Technically, it's a long tunic," Archie grinned, tugging Harry's tunic down almost to his knees. Britain's non-robed wizarding fashion was decidedly strange – even if he wasn't wearing hose, his tight, black, trousers and black socks certainly mimicked it, which was the goal. He had left off his boots, keeping to socked feet, then brought the whole ensemble together with a thin belt at his waist. He was going for a medieval sort of look – not a medieval wizarding look, which was mainly fuzzy robes instead of modern robes, but a medieval Muggle look. He had topped it off with hefty use of black eyeliner and contouring powder, which he had coaxed Daine into showing him how to put on, to emphasize his delicate, almost exotic, pureblood features. And, unlike for Anybodys, he had fallen back on his natural accent – even if British accents had a bit of an upper-class connotation in America, the point was to make him look, sound, and feel different.

Different was good enough for now – really, he wanted to be otherworldly. If he got the role, though, he would work on it. He was supposed to be a fairy!

"You messed up your lines, Zahir," Evin commented, shaking his head in disappointment. "I think cough and laugh are supposed to rhyme."

"I hate Middle English," Zahir grumbled. "None of the things that are supposed to rhyme actually rhyme, and only Harry has the accent to carry off that rhyme naturally anyway."

"It's not even Middle English," Archie rolled his eyes, watching as the first-year on stage, Thea McKinnon, flubbed the lines, too. They were hard lines, admittedly, only easier for him because he was used to reading Middle English. A lot of journals or books in the Black or Potter libraries were in Middle English. "More like early modern English, Middle English is a lot harder. And yeah, it's in the 'au' sound – not "ah" but "aw", and you can't change your pronunciation just for that one word. When you pick an accent, you have to stick with it, all the way through."

Zahir and Evin both made faces at him, then they all turned back to the stage to watch the other auditions. Puck was a lead role, so it seemed like most of the club was auditioning for it – only Neal seemed to have skipped it, since he had declared that he would get a romantic role this time or die trying. Still, by the end of the night, Archie was cautiously optimistic. He had made the first cut, which was good!

Quidditch team tryouts were happening that same week, and Archie had completely skipped them in favour of theatre troupe auditions. Wasn't that weird, picking theatre over Quidditch? Five months ago, before he came to AIM, he would never have thought anything other than Healing could take precedence over Quidditch! But he could always play Quidditch on Sundays, or try out another year, or play in a recreational league in Britain. Theatre was different. Theatre was now, theatre was something he could only do at AIM, and the choice had been disturbingly easy to make. John was trying out for the team, and he would find out how team tryouts went later.

"How did it go?" Hermione asked, later that night, when she returned from her Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization meeting, Chess by her side. As far as Archie could tell, Chess had no interest in any clubs other than dance, but sometimes Hermione talked her into tagging along for meetings with either the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization or the Society for the Advancement of Witches. He had managed to snag the corner of a loveseat, arranged in a square with two big, comfy armchairs around a low-lying coffee table. Hermione dropped into the empty spot beside him while Chess curled up in one of the two armchairs across from them, tucking her legs up under her.

Archie shrugged with an easy smile, tucking a loose bit of string as a bookmark into his most recent No-Maj Studies book, The Hobbit, and setting it on the coffee table. They had moved into No-Maj conceptions of magic that week, and it was fascinating. The magical world that Tolkien described was so wrong, but also so imaginative, so interesting, that Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves sucked him in anyway. "I made the cut for tomorrow, anyway, so I have to prepare the final passage at the end – if we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that one."

"Is there any dancing in this one?" Chess asked, her nose scrunching a little at the thought. "We're working towards the annual competition, now. I don't know if I'll have time to learn a secondary routine…"

"It's not a musical, Chess," Archie reassured her. "Stage directions, not choreography, no explicit dance routines! You shouldn't need to worry."

"Oh, good," Chess replied, with a relieved sigh. "I mean, I liked the routine we did in West Side Story, it's just I really would like to focus on my competition routine this year – I want to get my technical score a little higher."

Archie shot her a fond look. Her competition was four months away, she had plenty of time, but in dance, she was always fully focused. Just like when she was reading about wandlore. Chess could bring a laser-like focus to the things she cared about, usually to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Like John, she hadn't really followed the study schedule that Hermione had set out for each of them (though, unlike John, she had made a periodic guilt-fuelled token effort), but as far as Archie knew, she was doing fine in her accommodated program. Probably because he had been following Hermione's study schedule, Archie unexpectedly found himself in the top three of all his classes.

"Hey guys!" John burst into the common room, waving quickly at the various groups of upper-years who called out greetings to him or stood to wave him over. He ignored their invitations, making a beeline for Archie's small group. He was still in his flying clothes, with a sheen of sweat on his brow, his broom in hand, and he wore a wild expression of sheer glee on his broad face. He threw himself into the empty armchair across from them. "Guess what?!"

Archie started smiling but wiped the expression and replaced it with a worried frown. "You didn't make the Quidditch team," he deadpanned.

John mock-glared at him, but he wasn't very good at it, and the expression broke in less than a full second. "No, I did make the Quidditch team! You're looking at the new AIM team Beater, guys!"

Archie let his face break into a grin, standing up and throwing himself across the low-lying table at his friend. "Congratulations, John! Does this mean we have an excuse to visit other schools on your away games now?"

"You always could have, Harry," John laughed, pushing him off as he accepted more subdued, but no less heartfelt, congratulations from the girls. "It's not like they restrict the Portkey Hub to friends of the players! But yeah, you better – all three of you better come to my away games now!"

"Yes!" Archie pumped his fist in the air. He sat back down in the corner of his sofa, leaning back with a happy sigh. "I want to see Ilvermorny."

"The away games for us are Cascadia and Collège, so no Ilvermorny," John laughed again. "Next year! You can see the Rockies and northern Quebec, anyway."

It was sunny outside, and the early evening light streamed through the wall of glass, painting the room with streaks of orange, pink, red. He was surrounded by his friends, better friends than he could have ever hoped to imagine for himself: Hermione, who was equally dedicated to Healing; John, who understood what theatre meant to him; and Chess, who tolerated his fascination and endless questions with everything No-Maj. He had rocked his audition today, and with a lot of luck he would be the first first-year to score a major role in a theatre troupe performance in eight years. John had made the Quidditch team, and Hermione was beside him, asking a thousand questions about the Cascadian School of Magecraft and the Collège d'Alliance, while Chess sat, listening, a small and excited smile on her face. In Basic Healing, they had finished with the basic first aid and trauma unit and were studying the musculoskeletal system, now, and in Magical Psychology, they were learning how magic travelled through the body. They were exploring fantasy novels in No-Maj Studies, and John had mentioned that Dom and Neal were planning another late-night drive-in movie escapade to see Die Hard.

He was at AIM, and he was home.

Archie didn't expect to hear from Harry for weeks – he certainly hadn't in their first term, when he thought he had received only two or three letters from her over four months. But the letter came, screaming with red ink on the envelope, flying through his window early the next week.

Harry, she wrote, because she was careful to keep to the ruse even in her writing, just in case Archie slipped and dropped her letter somewhere. Her language patterns had loosened, reverting to her natural voice – she had evidently decided that the risk of her friends seeing her letters sounding different than how Rigel would sound exceeded the risk of Archie's American friends seeing anything amiss. She wasn't wrong, there – no one in America knew how Archie was supposed to sound, so he had no idea why they had even bothered trying to swap writing styles for letters to each other in the first place.

How are you? I know you were probably not expecting to hear anything from me for awhile, but I wanted to let you know. Professor Snape can read minds. Flint says he doesn't do it to students, though, so please don't worry about me.

I also heard something about new legislation affecting halfbloods from Rosier and Rookwood, which I'm passing on to Dad. Nothing has been confirmed yet, so I won't bother you with the details.

Everything is fine at Hogwarts. I hope you're well.

Rigel

Archie dropped the letter on his desk, cursing, and ran a hand through his hair. As mildly as Harry was going about it, it was a warning. She didn't tell anyone anything, and she had a completely disproportionate sense of danger (which is probably how they got into the ruse in the first place, now that he thought about it), so the mere fact that she had written was alarming. He shook his head, reading the letter a second time, ignoring her almost blasé tone and focusing on the content of what she had written.

He would have to ignore the second part of her letter – new legislation affecting halfbloods couldn't be good, but he didn't have enough information to worry about it just yet. She was sending it to Dad, which was good, and there was nothing he could do about it now anyway. But mind-reading? Master Snape? Harry would be perpetually at risk, if things went the way she planned, because she would be spending a lot of time alone with him!

Yet there was nothing in her letter about a change of plans, or any other precautions, and she did say everything was fine.

Mind-reading. His eyes lingered on the first paragraph, the warning, and he bit his lip. He didn't know anything about mind-reading, and he had no idea whether he knew anyone with the skill. He needed to know more about it – Hermione would probably know. If not, Hermione would help him look it up, he was sure.

"Mind-reading?" she asked, later that night in the common room, looking up from her Basic Healing textbook, where they were reviewing the anatomy of the heart. She frowned – not annoyed, more puzzled than anything else. "Do you mean Legilimency?"

"Is that what it's called?" Archie smiled easily. "Do you know much about it?"

"Not a lot," Hermione replied, and her frown deepened, her lips pursing in bemusement. "It's a specialized branch of mental magic. But why are you asking me this?"

Archie shrugged. "My cousin mentioned that one of his professors can read minds, I was curious, and you read a lot. I thought you would know."

"No, not that," Hermione shook her head slightly, setting her pen down to look at Archie with her full attention. "I mean, why are you asking me this? Shouldn't you be asking John?"

"John?"

"Yes, John," Hermione said slowly, her voice almost disbelieving. "Our friend John, the Natural Legilimens?"

Archie blinked, once, then twice. John was a Natural Legilimens.

He realized he had stopped breathing, for a second, and sucked in a long, slow breath as a roaring sound filled his ears. Mind-reading was a specialized branch of mental magic called Legilimency. And if John was a Natural Legilimens, that meant that John could read minds.

Oh, shit.

"I'm taking from the look on your face that you didn't know," Hermione finished, reaching towards his arm in concern. Her light touch was warm, steadying, which was good because Archie felt a little faint. He was glad he was sitting, because he didn't think his legs would have held him up. "Are you all right? I'm surprised – he might not advertise it, but it's not a secret. And he uses it all the time – haven't you noticed how he reacts sometimes to the things you think, not the things you say? Or how he talks for Francesca, instead of letting her speak for herself? Or how he just knows what we want, without us saying anything?"

"I just thought he was observant. He never…" Archie's voice cracked a little, and he cleared his throat, taking in another deep breath. A deep, steadying, breath. Nothing had happened yet, he reminded himself. Nothing had happened yet, and everything was fine. Maybe John didn't know – he didn't know enough about how Legilimency worked to have any idea whether John would know. Even if John did know, maybe he didn't know everything. Maybe he didn't know enough to really threaten them. Even if John knew everything, he clearly hadn't done anything with the information yet. Maybe Archie could convince him not to say anything. Flint knew most of it, and Harry had managed to make a deal with him not to say anything. "He never said anything."

"Well, if this is your reaction, I can see why," Hermione tilted her lips in an understanding smile, glancing over at the person in question, who was sitting with a loud circle of people from the Dueling Club. They weren't studying, that group – it looked like they were playing a No-Maj card game. John wasn't playing, just watching and laughing. "I think the gift must have awakened when he was very young, it would explain why he was raised mainly by his grandparents. Queenie Goldstein is famous for being a Natural Legilimens, it's in all the history books."

"I didn't know that," Archie said, a little weakly but trying to hide it. He glanced over to the Dueling Club crowd again – John, Neal, and Daine were the only Healers in the bunch, and he knew Kel on sight, too. He really wanted to go interrupt and drag John somewhere private to talk, but at the same time, if he did that, dropping their usual study session, then that would signal to Hermione how worrying this was to him.

Then again, from the concerned expression on Hermione's face, the game was up on that front, anyway.

"Sorry to cut this short, 'Mione," Archie said, shutting his book with a snap. "We'll review it tomorrow, is that all right? I'm going to go talk to John."

"Yes, that's fine," Hermione said, her brow creased. She lowered her voice to little above a whisper, with a quick glance around her. "Is this about being a noble? Because if it is, he probably already knows, and he hasn't ever said anything to me about it."

Archie grabbed at the proffered excuse – he hadn't even thought of it, but it worked! "Yeah," he agreed, putting his books back into his bag and rising to his feet. "It's just, you have no idea, Hermione, how people treat me at home when they find out."

"I think you're overreacting, Harry," Hermione replied, sighing, but she set aside her Basic Healing notes and pulled out her Magical Theory textbook instead. "But if it makes you feel better to talk to him, go ahead."

"Thanks, 'Mione," Archie leaned down to give her a quick, affectionate hug. "You really are the best."

"You tell me so, every day," Hermione shook her head. "See you later."

He strode across the common room, towards the raucous group of upper years. It was some sort of gambling game, Archie was pretty sure – there were piles of pennies, nickels, quarters in front of each of the four players, and John was laughing. Kel had the largest pile of coins in front of her, her face perfectly expressionless, while Neal wore a determined sort of frown, staring at his hand of cards.

"I'll raise by another quarter," he said, throwing a quarter into the pile in the middle of the table.

A lean, dark-haired boy sighed, glancing between his cards and the pile in the centre, before he dropped his cards on the table, face down. "I'm out. I have nothing."

"Me, too." Daine shook her head, setting her own cards down on the table. "I fold."

"Bad calls, Faleron, Daine," John smirked lazily. "You both should have stayed in. Neal doesn't have anything."

Faleron glared at him. "I can't tell if you're just making stuff up, or not."

"He is. He absolutely is," Daine said, leaning back with a sigh. "I have to believe that."

Before, Archie wouldn't have paid much attention to comments like this – John did sometimes say things, but Archie had always chalked it up to friendly teasing, especially because at least half the time he was wrong anyway. But with the possibility that John was a mind-reader in his head, his words took on a new dimension. John might actually know whether Neal had the hand that he was trying to convince the others he had, and the only question was whether John's comments actually signalled anything.

If Archie wasn't so worried, he would have thought it showed that John had a wicked sense of humour.

He didn't want to interrupt the Dueling circle, but if John was really a mind-reader, all he really had to do was catch his attention, right? He wouldn't need to say anything, John would just know. He took a deep breath, approaching the Dueling circle, keeping the thought very clear in his mind: John, you bloody lying mind-reading bastard, I need to talk to you. Alone. Now.

He positioned himself a little behind Daine's chair, crossed his arms, and glared at his friend.

It was only a minute before John looked up and spotted him there, meeting his eyes. He smiled slightly, getting up from his seat. "Sorry, everyone – I have to go take care of something. I'll see you at practice tomorrow?"

"You better," Neal said, looking up and glancing between Archie and John. "You promised that Quidditch wouldn't cut into your Duelling practice – we have our final competition at the end of the year too, remember."

"Because a first-year has a snowflake's chance in hell of taking the championship," John shook his head, giving Neal a wry smile. "I'll be there. Harry, my room, or yours?"

"Mine," Archie replied, voice brusque, turning on his heel and marching up the wide stairs to his bedroom, still cheerfully labelled Harry Potter and now decorated with the Marauders logo, if not their name. "Yours is a disaster."

"A comfortable disaster, though," John commented lightly, following him closely into his room. He pulled out Archie's desk chair and plunked himself onto it, backwards, facing the rest of the room. Archie firmly shut the door behind him, locking it. He glared at the door – what was that spell that Dad used, when he and Uncle James didn't want to be heard? He didn't know it, so he supposed a closed door would need to be enough. He turned around, taking a seat on his bed, across from his friend. John's dark eyes, on him, were interested, a little amused.

There was a moment of silence, as Archie tried to work out where to start. If John didn't know that much, then he didn't want to tip him off, but at the same time, Archie needed to know exactly what John knew. Then he would need to make a deal of some kind for John's silence, if he knew anything, then he needed to learn more about Legilimency. Including how to fight it.

"I know most of the basics, I think," John said easily, propping his chin on one hand. He paused, considering, then sighed. "Do you want me to lay out everything I think I know, from the beginning?"

"I think that would be good, yeah," Archie took another deep breath, letting it out slowly.

John nodded, a slow nod that Archie thought was somehow supposed to be reassuring. Archie was not reassured. "Well, from our first day, you drew my attention because Hermione called you Harry, but in your head, you always referred to yourself as Archie, so I suspected you might not be who you said you were. That little song and dance with Professor Beauchamps, on our first day, too, was pretty telling. Then, any time you told us stories about home, they would go through another layer in your head where you would double-check the names, so I knew there was a real person named Harry Potter, and you weren't her. Between the number of stories and the details you had, I knew the stories were probably true, and that you were there for all of them. I kept a close eye on you because I didn't know what was going on with you, and I wasn't sure whether I needed to report it to anyone, or what I would even say? I mean," he snorted a little. "Can you imagine it?"

He shot Archie a look filled with mixed annoyance and fondness, a small smile on his face. "Hi, Professor Beauchamps. I have reason to believe that Harry Potter is lying about his identity, and that he's up to something. And there you are, obsessed with Healing and discovering the No-Maj world and otherwise being a complete and total nerd, so in the end I just thought I'd wait, figure out your game, and be ready to write to my mom if anything happened."

John sighed again, the smile disappearing as he looked away, out the window, and Archie's gaze followed. It was dark outside, even if it wasn't very late yet. There were no stars, or maybe the complex of buildings forming AIM simply threw up too much light for Archie to see them, just like in London. All the dorm rooms, the entire campus was well lit, puddles of even, white-blue light from the crystalline blocks that AIM used splashing across the grounds. They had some sort of integrated runic light spell, activated by the house-elves every night – no torches, as Archie half-suspected Hogwarts still used.

"After that, I can't say when I learned any particular thing. You would have a stray thought, here and there, and over time I think I managed to piece together most of it. From your stories and your thoughts, I figured you had swapped places with the real Harry Potter, and I guessed that you were probably Archie Black – you only think of yourself as Archie, but it matches with your stories about your cousin Archie. The day you got the letter about Flint, I worked out that the real Harry Potter was at Hogwarts, because you were distracted all day and kept running panicked scenarios through your head. From what you said about yourself, I knew that the real Harry Potter is a halfblood, and that the two of you are committing blood identity theft – or she is, I don't know if you are. You worried about her a lot, that day, and for a little while after." John frowned suddenly, looking back at Archie. "Also, really? That's a crime? And is the penalty really the Dementor's Kiss, or are you just exaggerating?"

Archie glared at him. "It is, and it can be. It's Azkaban at minimum."

"Azkaban," John drawled, stretching out the syllables in disapproval, his dark eyes critical, then he shook his head. "Not that American prisons are that much better – like our No-Maj neighbours, Wizarding America has an absurdly high incarceration rate, and we're unusually harsh on International Statute of Secrecy violations and crimes against No-Majs. But at least we don't stick people on an isolated island with only Dementors for company."

"Back to the story," Archie snapped. Not that American prisons weren't interesting, but they weren't relevant to him, unless he would be seeing the inside of one, and it didn't sound like blood identity theft was a crime here. But if John knew everything, which it sounded like he did, that was bad. Very bad. How much had he told others? Who else knew? "Is that everything? What else do you know, or what else have you guessed? Have you told anyone? Who else knows?"

John held a hand up, forestalling Archie's more panicked questions, a concerned wrinkle forming in his brow. "Calm down, Archie – do you mind if I call you that? I only asked my cousin, Rolf Scamander, a few questions about your families in Britain. He's a third-year at the Oceania Institute, in Australia, but he's British. I only mentioned that Harry Potter was in my year at AIM and asked what he knew about you and the Marauders, because you had mentioned them. He told me about your families, said that they were both noble and notable, and your full names. The main thing I don't know is why – well, your reasons are obvious, you want to be a Healer and AIM has the best Healing program in the world. I have no idea what Harry's reasons are. As for the rest..."

He paused, then tilted his head in Archie's direction. His voice softened, and he had almost an expression of pained regret on his face. "Look, Archie – the first thing you learn as a Natural Legilimens is how to keep secrets, especially secrets that aren't yours. This isn't my secret, and I didn't purposely go looking for it – after I realized you weren't plotting anything here, I tried to leave it alone. I haven't told anyone anything, and I'm not interested in telling anyone anything. I like you, Archie; I have no interest in blackmailing you, I have no interest in reporting you to the British authorities, and I don't want anything from you for my silence, all right?"

There was a long, drawn-out pause, as Archie thought it over. Unlike Flint, who clearly wanted something, John explicitly said he didn't want anything, and he hadn't said anything to anyone thus far – or so he said, anyway. And as an American, he wasn't directly connected to anyone in Wizarding Britain with the power to arrest Harry – well, rumours could always start, but—

John snorted. "No one important in Wizarding Britain would believe me. I'm American, and a halfblood, and I'm notoriously close to my No-Maj grandfather. And I'm underage. Your government doesn't even take MACUSA seriously, not even when we've got a full trade embargo on British goods, not even when we've banned all investment into your country. Natural Legilimens or not, I'm just not credible. Also, if you don't want me to hear your musing, turn around and face the wall or something. The eyes are the window to the soul, or at least the mind – I need to make eye contact with you to read you."

Archie scowled at him and turned around to face the wall. John wasn't directly connected to anyone in Wizarding Britain with the power to arrest Harry. Most of his connections were American and anti-pureblood-supremacy anyway, and John himself was openly and proudly anti-pureblood-supremacy. His only British connection, as far as Archie knew, was to the Scamanders: a middle-class, non-noble family with no voice in the Wizengamot, close international ties and a demonstrated history of supporting Dumbledore. Though they were considered purebloods, the Scamanders no longer sent their children to Hogwarts, in solidarity with halfbloods and Muggleborns. John wasn't interested in telling anyone, he hadn't told anyone yet, and he didn't have anyone to tell anyway.

He wasn't good at this. Harry was the one that was good at this. What would Harry do?

Harry would make some sort of deal for John's silence, he was sure. Archie knew of a bazillion old pureblood rites that he could use, Debts and Vows and so on, but he didn't want to do that, either. He liked John! John was one of his best friends! How could he even think about doing that?! Asking for any of those would be such a fundamental breach of trust, and it would break their friendship, and Archie didn't want to do that. He wasn't prepared to do that. And John hadn't told anyone, for months.

"I don't know how to deal with this," Archie said bluntly, turning back around to face John. "I just, I really don't know how to deal with this. I want to trust you, but I have to protect Harry, too. I have to protect the ruse, and she's going to be so disappointed with me for screwing it up already."

"You don't have to tell her," John replied, smiling slightly, if a little sadly.

Archie looked down at his bedspread – green, like Harry's eyes. He liked these covers, and they reminded him of her. "How can I not tell Harry? This is... look, this is huge, John. Harry and I broke the law, and we've got to keep the ruse intact, or ..."

"Or your cousin gets her soul sucked out through her mouth," John finished for him, with a disgusted shudder. "I don't even know her, and the concept makes me want to puke. Look, put that aside for the moment. Why don't I tell you more about Legilimency, including how to fight it? Would that help you?"

"I think so," Archie replied, a little slowly, as he took another, deep, calming breath. He would need to know anyway – he could learn what he needed to know, then decide what he had to do. Though, what could he do? All the Debts and Vows he knew of required the consent of the other party, and John would never consent to it, and this wasn't Wizarding Britain, or Slytherin House, where it was normal for deals to be struck. He didn't know any magic that could force John to keep silent, and even if he did, he wasn't sure he could bring himself to do any of them. They were Dark – not just in affinity, but in intent.

No, scratch that. Archie knew very well that even if he managed to look up the sort of rite that could compel John to keep a secret, he would never be able to cast it. It just wasn't in his nature – it was Harry who was the tough one, not Archie. It was Harry who could analyse the risks and benefits of a course of action, rationalizing it, and it was Harry who had the ruthlessness to do what needed to be done.

It didn't come naturally to Archie to do anything except trust John, nor did it seem like he could do anything else. But how could he explain that to Harry?

"Legilimency is the art of magically navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting the findings," John said, eyeing Archie carefully. "For most people, Legilimency is a learned skill – for me, as a Natural Legilimens, it comes naturally. Most Legilimens need to cast a spell to enable access into someone else's mind, the Legilimens spell, and all my gift does is remove that. For me, my Legilimency isn't intentional. I can't decide whether to read anyone – if I make eye contact with you and you aren't an Occlumens, I'll hear your surface thoughts. If I want, I can dive deeper, to uncover memories and find out things I want to know, but that's pretty intrusive and I don't do that unless I have your consent, or a very good reason. The best Legilimens can also plant false memories or mislead people, but I don't do that, ever."

"How would I know if someone is reading my mind, normally?" Archie asked, shifting a little on his bed. He didn't look away from John – a part of him wanted to, but if what John was saying was true, he had been hearing Archie's thoughts for months. Archie knowing about it didn't change anything, it didn't change their friendship. Or it shouldn't. Should it? "How do I know that you aren't reading me now? And Occlumency, how does that relate? I thought Occlumency was to help control emotions?"

John frowned a little, thinking. "Well, first, I am reading you now – if you want to keep me out while maintaining eye contact, you'll need to learn Occlumency. Occlumency is the art of defending your mind from mental attack. I'm an Occlumens, too, because it helps control Legilimency, and I can teach you if you want – the skills usually come together. Once you have basic Occlumency down, you'll be able to identify when someone is attacking you mentally or if you're being read. Why are you asking about Legilimency now, anyway?"

Archie hesitated for a minute. It sounded like John knew pretty much everything; Harry's brief correspondence wouldn't change anything. He reached over and pulled Harry's letter from the first drawer of his desk, handing it to John with no ceremony. John unfolded the parchment and skimmed it quickly.

"Okay. All right," John nodded, folding the letter back up and handing it back to him. "It sounds like this Professor Snape is a Legilimens, but he's almost definitely not a Natural Legilimens, and unless she gives him reason to search her mind, he won't try. It's considered unethical for a Leglimens to use their skills without permission or warning. And Natural Legilimens are rare, even more so in places like Britain, because it's a bit of a wild inheritance. If she learns Occlumency, it'll make it harder for anyone to take the knowledge from her head. Is Professor Snape someone she sees normally?"

"A wild inheritance?" Archie frowned. He hadn't ever heard the term before. "And yes, Master Snape is the Potions Master at Hogwarts, she has him for Potions."

"Yeah, some gifts are more common or only come up in people who have a bit more wildness to their magic, people who have recent No-Maj or newblood ancestry." John waved his hand absently, thinking it over. "Something to do with how much the gift breaks the usual laws of magic. Some gifts are structured and give new abilities in an organized way that follows the usual laws of magic, like Metamorphmagi or Animators, which are more common in purebloods; others completely break them, like Truth-Speakers, who are all halfbloods. Pray you never meet one of those, by the way – their brand of Legilimency is extremely narrow, but they bypass all Occlumency shields. Natural Legilimency falls somewhere in the middle – but I wouldn't worry too much about it. The blood purity laws in Britain have pretty much eliminated the wilder inheritances anyway. As for Snape—"

"Master Snape is a halfblood," Archie said, biting his lip. Snape was one of the few halfbloods of significant social standing left in Britain. He was highly respected in the Potions community, and Archie knew he had some sort of place in the SOW Party, too. That was, according to Dad, one of the main reasons why Uncle James still made so much fun of him. If it was just a schoolyard rivalry, Uncle James probably would have followed Aunt Lily's lead and let it go. But it was the fact that Snape had openly ingratiated himself into a Party of people who actively worked to deprive him, and people like Aunt Lily, Uncle Remus, and Harry, of their rights, that Uncle James really couldn't stand.

"Still pretty unlikely," John shook his head. "But even if he was, all he's likely to pick up in class are her thoughts about his class, maybe a bit of daydreaming here or there, nothing cogent. He would be too distracted by teaching and it would be weird to maintain eye contact with one student for long enough to get anything useful. And anyway, she said everything was fine, so you have to believe in that, Archie. Just like you have to believe in me. I can be helpful, if only as an outlet so you don't go insane – which you will, if you don't have one. You're not the sort of person who can live undercover for years – your cousin might be, but you're not. I don't think I've ever met anyone as unashamedly himself as you."

Archie looked away, back outside, where the faint glow of the lights of AIM lit up the bottom of hid windowpane, tightening his lips in disagreement. That didn't make any sense – he was fine being Harry Potter, at AIM, wasn't he? And he was in theatre! Being undercover should be second nature to him! "What are you talking about, John?" He laughed a little, a soft, slightly unreal sound. "I'm in the theatre troupe, I love acting!"

"You love acting," John agreed, his voice quiet, and Archie heard the rustle of cloth on wood as he stood up. "But you don't like living as anyone except yourself. In your head, on stage or not, you're always Archie. If you ever need to talk about it, or if you need help, just let me know, okay?"

He unlocked the door and walked out, and the door shut very quietly and very finally behind him.

Archie didn't tell her.

It wasn't that he hadn't tried. He had a half-dozen letters that he had tried to write to tell her, but none of them went anywhere.

Dear Rigel, said one. Thanks for your letter. About that, it turns out my friend John is a Natural Legilimens …

Oh, but she didn't know about John. He hadn't told her about John, or Chess, or his life at AIM over the holidays. She thought that he only had the one close friend, Hermione, and that John and Chess were just a few of his classmates in the Healing track. He needed to explain that, first.

Dear Rigel, started another. So, I may not have been entirely honest with you over the holidays. Remember how I said that John and Chess were some of my classmates in the Healing track? Well, John's actually kind of one of my best friends, and it turns out he's a Natural Legilimens, so he sort of already knows everything …

Oh, but she would want more details, details he couldn't give, and he couldn't send that. She got her letters at in the Great Hall, what if she opened it when someone was around? And he didn't want to put the red ink on the front and send it with a Screech Owl, that would make her panic unnecessarily, wouldn't it? And everything was fine, anyway – really, everything was the same. John had known for months, nothing changed by the mere fact that Archie now knew that John knew.

After that conversation, everything had gone back to normal. They ate all their meals together, they hung out together after classes, after clubs, they studied together sometimes. John never slipped up – he always called him Harry, he never referred to the ruse, never said anything that even hinted that Archie was anyone other than who he said he was. They talked about Quidditch, about theatre – they snuck out once (without Hermione, this time) with Dom and Neal and Cleon to watch Die Hard (which was thrilling and amazing). They went back to their normal lives, and if Archie wanted to, if Archie cared to, it would be so easy for him to forget that John knew at all.

But he didn't. He didn't, because it was important, and because, now that he knew that John was a Natural Legilimens, it was so obvious. Hermione was right; John wasn't particularly secretive about his talent, and it seemed like most people knew about it, even if they never said anything outright. The Dueling Club circle obviously knew, frequently making oblique references to John's gift, but Archie also noticed that a lot of their classmates actively tried to avoid eye contact with him. Hermione frowned every time John pre-emptively answered one of her questions before she asked it, or responded to her thoughts instead of her words, while Chess seemed to actively use his talent to communicate with him and, sometimes, to express things she didn't feel comfortable saying herself.

Nothing had changed, not really. If Archie wrote, he would just be worrying Harry over nothing. And she was in such a dangerous position right now, when she was at Hogwarts. Really, this was something they should talk about in the summer, in person. Yeah, that would be better, wouldn't it? They'd have more time to talk over the summer, and he could do it properly, explain things so she didn't freak out, make it so she understood. They could have out whatever they needed to have out, in private, in a safe space. That sounded like a much better idea, there was no need to worry her unnecessarily! He could do what he did over the holidays, tell her the crucial facts that she needed to know, and leave it at that.

And he was running out of parchment to write to her, anyway – he could write home to Aunt Lily and Uncle James on No-Maj paper, but whatever he wrote to Hogwarts had to be on parchment, or it would draw attention! It was probably bad enough in Slytherin House that Harry (or, Rigel) was openly corresponding with a halfblood, it would be far too much to do it on No-Maj paper.

Until summer, he would throw himself into the reason he came to AIM in the first place: Healing. It took only a little more focused (or, maybe, obsessive) studying, before he found himself at the top of both his Basic Healing and Magical Psychology classes, as well as Potions and No-Maj Studies. It was the least he could do, to assuage his guilt, not to squander this opportunity.

And since he was at AIM anyway, he might as well take advantage of all the other things that he could only do at AIM: acting, movies, Muggle books. He had won the role of Puck, channeling Uncle James for that last soliloquy, and he couldn't let the troupe down! And if the fact that he could surround himself in role of Puck for several hours a week was a pleasant distraction from his other problems, well, that couldn't be helped.

He wasn't ignoring the issue, he told himself. He would tell her, he would tell her everything, when the time was right, when they were in a safe place and they had enough time for him to do it properly. He was just… delaying it.

And every time John shot him a curious, worried, look, he ignored it, even if John's offer hung, tantalizing, above him.

Wouldn't it be nice to talk about his problems with someone that already knew, someone who had known for months and hadn't said anything? Wouldn't it be nice to brainstorm, to work on his problems with someone else? Archie was always better working as part of team than he was by himself – everything was better when he was part of a team. Just like studying – he and Hermione wouldn't have done half so well if they hadn't banded together, if they hadn't studied together. Or like theatre, or Quidditch – these were things that couldn't happen with just one person, they had to be done as part of a team, or they just couldn't happen. Some problems were like that, and it would be so nice to have someone, just one person, that he could brainstorm and work on his problems with. It would be so nice to have someone with whom he could be completely and fully honest.

But if he needed someone, that person should be Harry. And even if John was there, even if his offer hung between them, sweet and tempting, Archie didn't take it. He didn't, because he hadn't told Harry, he hadn't told Harry anything, and it felt like a betrayal.

The next two disasters came flying through his window a few weeks later. One was in Uncle James' flowing, professional, script, the other in Harry's neat handwriting.

He looked at the two envelopes for a second. Good news first, or bad news? Because Harry writing was always bad news – she never wrote letters just to tell him how things were going, just to amuse him. She only wrote if she had something important to say, probably something serious, possibly something threatening and dangerous and life-shattering. Uncle James, on the other hand, usually only wrote to tell Archie to go outside more.

He looked between the two envelopes, shrugged, and put Uncle James' down. Just like ripping off a bandage – he would read Harry's letter first, then cheer up with Uncle James' tidings. He broke the seal on the parchment holding Harry's letter closed.

Harry, she wrote.

How are you? I hope things are going well at AIM – I haven't heard from you, so all I can do is assume that you're doing well.

I'm writing about something else, though. There's a sickness going around Hogwarts, a Sleeping Sickness. I don't know very much about it, yet – it's affecting the youngest kids, it's only first-years through third-years being affected right now. The kids drop, unconscious, and then they are taken to the Hospital Wing. There's a Quarantine in effect around the Hospital Wing, too, so I don't know for sure what the symptoms are after they fall unconscious. I've heard that some of the kids have a fever, but others don't, and Sweat Inducers do nothing. Otherwise I think they just remain unconscious indefinitely. There are no symptoms before they fall unconscious.

I would be the first to admit that you know far more about Healing than I do, so have you read anything like this before? A study, maybe, or even a case study? I'll keep looking into it on my end and will send you any other information I find.

Thanks, Harry. Hope you're well.

Rigel

Archie read it over, frowning. A sickness at Hogwarts? That wasn't good. He skimmed the letter over again, as a professional, as a Healer-in-Training. A sickness that made students fall unconscious with no discernable symptoms beforehand. She called it the Sleeping Sickness, suggesting that they stayed unconscious, as in sleep, but she couldn't confirm that because she didn't see them again. Still, if they weren't reappearing in the school population, that meant they remained ill. She mentioned that some of the students had a fever but Sweat Inducers did nothing – he could make nothing of that. Fevers were the body's first response to something being wrong, to anything being wrong, to try to burn it out.

He considered the part about the Quarantine more carefully. The Quarantine was the worst part – if there was a Quarantine in effect and it was still spreading, that meant it was contagious before the kids fell unconscious. He had never heard of a natural sickness that induced sleep without any symptoms beforehand, not in all his years reading medical journals, nor one that spread so quickly. If he had to guess, he would stake on it that the sickness was magical in origin, possibly something new. He could do some research, ask around – that part of it was no problem.

But what about Harry? Archie bit his lip – Harry was so unconcerned! She was a first-year, too, what would happen if she got sick?! He sat down, with a heavy sigh, into his desk chair.

If she got sick, then she wouldn't be able to protect her secrets, and the fact that she was a girl would be a dead giveaway to the ruse. Her body didn't lie, and she would be too unconscious to do anything about it. Archie felt clammy, on edge – it was always going to be a possibility, while the Sickness was spreading, and they would find out, they would absolutely find out, if she got sick. Then, she would be arrested, they would be arrested, and that would be it. And when (because it had to be when, Harry could not die of this Sickness, she just couldn't) she recovered, it would be the Kiss and what could Archie do from an ocean away?

She couldn't get sick, that was the answer. It was a bloody awful answer, but maybe some research would help and give him some tips on how she could avoid getting sick. And if she did get sick… he would have to think about that.

He took a deep, shaky breath. One thing at a time, Archie. One thing at a time. Research first, then panic.

He set her letter down and reached for Uncle James'. Uncle James' letters always cheered him up – they usually didn't say anything much, but they were a nice reminder of home, of his family. He broke the Potter seal on the parchment and unrolled it.

Dear Harry, he read.

We're so glad to hear you're doing well at AIM, but you know you don't need to hold first place, right? In fact, it's a little disturbing that a next-generation Marauder is at the top of so many of her classes, so please, do your father a favour and fail something,  please . It doesn't have to be a big thing, just a little quiz or something. And go out and have some fun! Prank someone! Play Quidditch!

I'm also writing with some more serious news, though. Archie got a tip-off from some of his Housemates. The SOW Party is putting forward new legislation, a marriage law, which will require all halfbloods to marry purebloods.

Archie blinked, read the paragraph again. What? A law to require all halfbloods to marry purebloods? That was bad, really bad! Harry would definitely be a big target for purebloods – as a Book of Gold noble heiress, she would have to be a target. Pureblood lords, especially poorer ones, would be after her for her money, and a few of the Book of Silver or Book of Copper families would be looking to elevate their status with a strategic alliance. It was so, so…

Cold. Cruel. Meaningless. Marriage wasn't supposed to be like that! Marriage was supposed to be a beautiful celebration of love, not a cold, passionless arrangement! Maybe Harry would meet and fall in love with a pureblood anyway, but this new law would significantly restrict her options, and it could keep her from finding love in her own way, in her own time. It was despicable!

Obviously, Harry, Sirius and I and the other Light families will never let this pass. Even if we can't repeal the 1981 laws with anything less than 3/4ths majority, the SOW Party can't pass any new laws with anything less than a 3/5ths majority. As it stands, they simply don't have the numbers, and your mother and I will always work to ensure that you have every opportunity available to you. You will never stand alone, Harry, please remember that.

Love,

Dad

Archie sighed, pursing his lips in annoyance. Uncle James treated Harry like such a child – if he were actually Harry, maybe he wouldn't care, but he wasn't Harry. He was used to Dad, who always gave him a deeper political analysis about the law's implications, not just the bare facts. Of course, because it was Harry and she was brilliant, she could probably deduce all the implications off the bare facts that Uncle James saw fit to give her, but Archie couldn't.

Archie knew enough to know that it was much worse than Uncle James painted: the SOW Party held about half the votes of the Wizengamot, while Dumbledore's faction and the Light held about a third. But the Light was fractured, had always been fractured – Dumbledore never forced his faction to vote on party lines, so it was always a little questionable how each individual family voted. The margins were too small, and it wouldn't be that hard to sway that critical twenty percent or so of Neutral or moderate Light families to vote for it.

And it was a marriage law. Almost all the voting families were purebloods – heck, most of Wizarding Britain, as far as he knew, were purebloods, now. The law wouldn't affect most people, so most families simply wouldn't care. It didn't affect them.

But what did the SOW Party get out of this? Why did they suddenly want to marry halfbloods? Or, more accurately – why did they suddenly care to restrict who halfbloods could marry?

Dad would have told him, but he wasn't writing to Dad. And because it was Uncle James writing, and because Archie wasn't Harry, he didn't know. He wished he could talk to Dad. Uncle James just didn't tell him enough, too concerned with reassuring Harry that they would always support her, they would always fight for her. Like Harry cared about reassurance – unlike Archie, Harry went and solved her problems by herself. Not that there was much she could do about this one, yet.

His stomach lurched, a sick, pained, lump forming in it, and he was glad he was already sitting. He folded Uncle James' letter with quick, fretful movements, with hands that felt numb. His face scrunched up, and his eyes burned.

If the law passed, he would have to propose to Harry, there was no question about it. He didn't like it – no, scratch that, he hated it – but there was no other choice. It was better him than a crusty old pureblood Lord after Harry's fortune or status, and he already loved her. She was everything to him, his cousin, his best friend. His sister, really, in everything but blood. They could make it work. Maybe.

He was lying to himself. Harry was his best friend, his sister, but he didn't see her that way. Even if he didn't yet know anything about that passionate, fiery love Dad always talked about, or about that sweet, all-encompassing, doting love that Aunt Lily and Uncle James had, he didn't think he could ever feel that for Harry – she was his twin sister, and that was a line that even his famously insane family had never crossed! He sniffled a little, wiping his face with his sleeve.

God damn it. He knew what he had to do and yet he still balked at it because it was wrong. He hated Britain, he really did, he hated this country, this government that forced him into situations like this, and he hated that he had to hate them. He felt like Maria, in the final scene of West Side Story, waving a gun around with a tear-stained face, screaming about how she had learned to hate. Because he hadn't hated, before – he hadn't liked the government in Wizarding Britain, he had always disagreed with it, but he hadn't hated it. It was just something that was, something that he and Harry had to work with, something they had to work around. It wasn't something they fought against, because it was inexorable. He hadn't hated, but he did now.

Why now? Why now, and not before? Maybe it was because Archie was just like those other purebloods, the ones who didn't care until it affected them directly? No, that couldn't be right – if that were the case, he wouldn't have risked his neck for Harry in the ruse, he wouldn't be seriously considering marrying his sister. But maybe before it wasn't so real to him. Or maybe before he didn't realize, really, that things didn't need to be this way. Maybe, before, if he had stayed in Britain, he would have accepted it, because he didn't know any better. But he wasn't that Archie Black anymore.

He sucked in another breath, a slow, rattling breath, letting the tears fall. He let himself cry, because he was Archie Black, not Harry Potter. If he were Harry, he would be iron, he would be steel, and he would not be bowed. Harry would read this, she would consider it, and then she would quietly put it away for later reflection and, if necessary, plotting. Harry was tough, and she could deal with anything. Harry didn't cry.

Archie cried. Archie wasn't iron, he wasn't steel. Archie was soft, like satin, like velvet. Archie was a Healer, and he felt so fragile, so breakable in comparison to her. Archie wasn't tough. Archie panicked, Archie worried, Archie couldn't set those feelings aside and coldly consider and plan.

Archie couldn't deal with this, not alone.

Archie was a team player. Archie was at his best when he put his head together with other people, and they worked together, they made magic together. Archie was best when he was with Harry, or with Dad, or with Hermione and John and Chess. And, since Archie was a team player, Archie trusted, just like Mum. Mum always believed in people – Mum believed in Dad, Mum trusted, and Archie couldn't deal with this alone.

He set the second letter down, standing up from his desk chair, and he wiped the tears from his eyes with a quick swipe of his sleeve. He reached into his small wardrobe, pulling out a red pullover sweatshirt and pulling it over his head. He put the two letters in the big pocket in the front and checked himself in the mirror.

He didn't look so great. His hair was messier than he was used to, his eyes a little swollen, a little red, but he didn't think anyone would notice anything. It was the evening, now – late in the evening, so the common room would have started clearing out. John went to bed earlier than most, Archie remembered – he woke up early, even earlier than Archie, and he showered in the mornings, like Harry did. Archie thought sometimes he must study in his room late in the evenings – actually, given his gift, that made sense because studying in a group was probably more distracting for him. John would probably be in his room, by now, but he could scan the common room from the balcony anyway. He didn't want anyone to see him like this (least of all Hermione, who would ask too many questions), but she would probably be in her rooms by now anyway. And if he stayed on the balcony, most people wouldn't see him close enough to see anything wrong.

He opened his door slowly, checking the corridor. The lights of the common room were still bright, lighting up the space, but he didn't see anyone sitting on the balcony as some of the other first years were wont to do, overlooking the common room. John's room wasn't that far away from his – only a few doors to his right. He stopped, in front of it, taking another shaky breath.

John's door was so innocuous. It had his name, John Kowalski, written on it in a blocky print that had to be John himself, all capital letters, and underneath there was something written in another language – Polish, Archie thought. John had mentioned he spoke it at home with his grandfather sometimes. There were still remnants of Archie's improvised birthday decorations on his door, a couple blue ribbons and some decorative Marauder cutouts. There was nothing on the door to mark the momentous nature of this occasion.

It was the first time Archie would reach out to someone who wasn't Harry, who wasn't Dad, who wasn't family. It was the first time Archie would be truly honest with someone in his new life, as opposed to his old one. It was the first time Archie would make a choice that wasn't fully in alignment with their ruse.

In another light, it would also be first time he betrayed Harry, because he could never tell Harry what he had done. It would be the first time he decided, consciously, to hide something from her, because she could never know he had done this. But it wouldn't matter – his life at AIM didn't matter anyway, so what difference would it make if Archie made life a little easier for himself? It would make no difference at all to her, but it would make all the difference in the world to him.

He reached up and knocked at the door, three quiet, polite knocks, three knocks that weren't quite himself. There was a moment of silence, then he heard a rustle from inside the room, and the door opened.

John stood there, in an old ratty t-shirt bearing the legend "The Cure" and loose blue, plaid, pyjama bottoms. There were clothes and books all over his floor, his bedclothes were a disaster, and his Transfigurations textbook was open on his desk, where John had evidently been studying. He looked him over, his brown eyes lingering on Archie's swollen, puffy, red eyes.

"Hey," Archie muttered, looking away awkwardly. His voice was quiet, dry, a little raspy. "Do you have a minute? You said, if I ever needed to talk…"

"Yeah, of course," John said, standing aside and gesturing for him to come in. His voice was low, barely above a whisper, his dark eyes scanning the empty hallway cautiously. "Come on in, Archie."

Chapter Text

John settled, cross-legged, on his bed, waving Archie into his desk chair with one hand, a worried look on his face. Archie turned the chair around, sitting down awkwardly, looking everywhere except at John himself. It was less chaotic inside John's room than Archie had thought – it was a disaster, but it was almost an organized disaster. The piles of clothing seemed to be sorted by type, his books were organized into different piles. A pillow hit him in the chest, and his arm folded around it automatically, staring down at the navy-blue cotton in confusion.

"You look terrible – thought you would want something soft to cry into," John said, voice dry. "Don't have any stuffed toys, though. I gave them all to Chess."

Archie snorted, looking up at his friend, even as he wrapped his arms around the pillow gratefully. "You had stuffed toys?"

John smiled slightly. "Didn't we all, at some point?"

"I had a stuffed black dog," Archie said, smiling weakly in return. "Paddy. I didn't bring him with me to AIM, though."

"I had a bunch, all magical creatures – Great-Uncle Newt gave them to me to teach me about creatures, since we don't really have any in America," John replied, voice wistful. "My favourite was my stuffed Niffler, Nish."

Archie's smile broadened, and he laughed a little. "Now I know you were lying – Chess doesn't have any stuffed toys that are magical creatures. They're all bears: brown bears, black bears, polar bears, panda bears."

"Guilty," John acknowledged easily. "I lie a lot. Comes with the whole Natural Legilimens thing – if I lie a lot, people don't worry as much that I'll reveal their secrets. I thought it might make you feel more comfortable."

"Are you going to be a Mind Healer?" Archie asked, a little curious. John was in Healing, and he did well enough, as far as Archie knew, but he never really talked about it, not the way he and Hermione did. He studied with them sometimes, but he didn't show the same attention to detail or interest – he never read any of the suggested readings, and Archie wasn't sure he read all the required ones, either.

John shrugged. "I don't know. I'm mostly in Healing because Magical Psych helps me understand and control my gift better, not because I really want to be a Healer."

"Oh," Archie said. That made sense, and he wasn't even truly surprised. He had long since known that not everyone was as interested in Healing as he was – Harry wasn't, after all – and even in the Healing program, he and Hermione's level of passion stood out. They were the ones who asked questions, answered them, did the extra credit assignments, one and two in both Basic Healing and Magical Psych. John seemed more focused on his other activities: Quidditch, Quodpot, Duelling.

Silence stretched between them for a few minutes, John waiting for him to begin. He was patient, and his gaze was steady. If he decided to be a Mind Healer, Archie thought he would be very good at it. Here Archie was, anyway, and unless he missed his guess, John probably did something similar for Chess, too. He sighed, hugging the pillow a little closer. He felt the papers crunch against his stomach. "Sorry. I'm just not sure where to begin."

John hesitated, looking away. "I could look in your mind, if it's easier for you. Chess prefers that. Not that I can make heads or tails of half of what she thinks – it's a roller coaster in her head, all numbers and diagrams and weird connections that make no sense."

"I don't know what a roller coaster is. But no, thanks." Archie shook himself, blowing out a sharp breath, trying to pull himself together. He pulled the letters out of his pocket and shoved them at John. "I guess I'll start from the beginning. My cousin Harry wanted to go to Hogwarts, see, but she's a halfblood. And I wanted to come to AIM, but my dad didn't want me going to school so far away. We switched."

"And you're committing blood identity theft." John nodded, a frown starting on his face as he thought it through. "I'm guessing your parents don't know."

"She's committing blood identity theft," Archie corrected, with a twisted smile. "Blood identity theft can only be committed by a halfblood or a Muggleborn, not a pureblood. I'm a pureblood – the most they can get me on is aiding and abetting blood identity theft. And no, of course our families don't know, they'd never have allowed it."

"All right, so you become Harry Potter, and she becomes Archie Black," John replied, still frowning. "How far does that go, exactly? I mean, I know Harry is a girl, and obviously you're not taking it that far. And personality-wise, you're still Archie."

Archie shot him a confused look. "I thought you knew everything."

"I figured out the basics: I worked out that you swapped places with your cousin, that your cousin is a girl, and that she's at Hogwarts. Committing blood identity theft." John said, quirking a small smile. "I'm not omniscient, you know – I pieced together bits of your surface thoughts over time. I never searched your mind, Archie. I don't know how you did it, I don't know why she did it, and I don't know what your ruse involves. Is she going by, I don't know, Archeline?"

Archie burst into laughter – hard, almost pained laughter, but laughter nonetheless. "That's awful, John. Clearly my female name would be Archella. But no – my family is too prominent in Wizarding Britain for her to do that, so she's pretending to be a boy. She was Sorted into Slytherin House and her best friends are Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy."

"See, right now, Archie, you're talking and not making any sense to me, because I'm just missing too much background knowledge." John rubbed his forehead. "All I'm getting is that all of that is … not good?"

"No, it's bloody awful," Archie sighed, resting his cheek in John's pillow. "Any other House would have been better! Slytherin is the most conservative, the most traditionalist House, most of the people there come from old, pureblood supremacist families. Both the Parkinsons and the Malfoys are prominent in the SOW Party, which is the party responsible for all the blood purity restrictions."

"Huh," John blinked. "Your cousin likes playing with fire, does she?"

"Not really, actually," Archie smiled, almost a touch nostalgic. "She's pretty boring, most of the time. She's just ambitious and single-minded – I think she just sort of ended up there. And I mean, there's who I am, too – the Black Heir, and all."

"The Black Heir – oh, because nobility," John nodded sagely, mentally catching up. "Right. So her two friends, from the pureblood supremacist families, probably approached her and not the other way around."

"Definitely," Archie sighed, hugging the pillow. John was right, having something soft to hold was comforting. "Then, for whatever reason, Harry actually likes them. Anyway, my point is, she's pretending to be me, a boy, and her best friends are the people who would see her Kissed if they ever found out, and now there's, well." He pointed at the letters on the bed. "The one that doesn't look like noble handwriting – Harry and I didn't have handwriting tutors."

"I have no idea what that means, Archie." John held up the two letters, one in each hand. "Left, or right?"

Archie pointed at the one in his right hand, the one that had Harry's neat, round handwriting on it. John set down Uncle James' letter and unfolded Harry's letter, skimming it. "No handwriting tutors in America?"

"Why on earth would we have handwriting tutors?" John folded the letter back up, handing it back to Archie, who put it back in his pocket. "So, there's a sickness going around Hogwarts. I don't recognize it, but I'm guessing by the fact that you're here that it's worse than that?"

"Well, she's pretending to be me, a boy, she can't get sick. John, how can I make it so she doesn't get sick?! If she gets sick, then she can't protect herself – if she gets sick, they find out she's a girl, and, you know." He looked away, clinging to the pillow. "I mean, I can research the sickness, Hermione can help me research it, to try to find something to stop her getting sick, but what if we don't find anything? What if she gets sick anyway? I can't lose her, John – I call her my cousin, but she's really my best friend, my confidante, my twin sister, everything rolled into one!"

"I got that from how often you think about or worry about her," John snorted, flopping back in his bed, tucking his arms under his head, thinking. "You're worried about an escape plan, if it all goes wrong?"

"Well," Archie blinked, surprised that John was handling it so calmly. "Yes, I guess so? Why, do you have one?"

"Hmm. You want my sister for this," John shook his head. "I don't know enough to know if anything is possible, but you know that blood refugee status is a thing, right?"

"Blood … refugee status?" Archie blinked again, a little owlishly, taken aback.

John looked up at him, frowning a little. "How much of international wizarding politics do you know, Archie?"

"Not a lot, I mean… I know the ICW Equality Accords don't include blood status."

"Well, that's true." John snorted, sitting back up. "MACUSA can't get enough support to pass that amendment, though they've been trying for years. But that just means that you can't appeal to the ICW over blood discrimination issues. Each individual country still defines for itself what they think are grounds for discrimination – right now, I think America, Canada, Australia, Germany and most of the Nordics include blood status as a protected ground. You can still appeal to those individual countries for refugee status on the basis of blood discrimination. But, as I said, you really want my sister for this kind of thing. I don't know if Harry would qualify, because of the whole breaking the law thing, and we'd still need to get her out of Britain … I can ask Tina for some information for you, if you want?"

Archie blinked again. Was it really so simple? Really? It wasn't perfect – John himself said he didn't know if Harry would qualify, and it would still be complicated, but it was a ray of hope. Archie grabbed desperately onto it. "Would you? And in the meantime, I can ask Hermione to help me research the Sickness itself!" He stopped, suddenly, looking awkwardly at John. "Do you and Chess want to help research too?"

"No, I think you and Hermione have the research thing covered." John waved a hand, grimacing a bit at the thought of extra research. "Don't ask Chess – she'll feel obligated to say yes, but she's got her own projects and doesn't want to be distracted. I'll ask Tina for some general information, and ask how we treat blood identity theft as a complicating factor, sound good?" He picked up Uncle James' letter with one hand. "What's in this one?"

"Oh." Archie's face fell, and the sense of hope he had gotten from John's words seeped out of him. He waved a hand for John to read it. The marriage law – if it passed, he'd have to propose. And he didn't want to – he really, really didn't want to, and he felt bad because it was his obligation to do it if the law passed!

It took longer for John to read the second letter. Uncle James' handwriting, with the traditional flourishes, clearly posed a bit more trouble for him, then when he got to the end he went back to the beginning and started over. He lingered for a few minutes on the second paragraph, the one about the new marriage law, before he looked up into Archie's eyes.

"Oh, no," John said, evidently hearing Archie's surface thoughts, eyes widening. "You're not seriously – you said she was like your sister!"

"She is my sister, John! I grew up with her – saw her almost every day of my life until I came to school!" Archie threw up a hand. "But what else am I supposed to do? I have to!"

"The answer is not proposing, Archie," John snapped, eyes sparking. "Didn't I just tell you about blood refugee laws? There are ways around this sort of thing! Also, what is wrong with your society? Why is your first instinct to propose?"

"Refugee status is for people who are going to be killed, not married against their will," Archie argued, his face scrunching up again and blinking quickly to hold back more tears. He had cried enough, already, and John didn't need to deal with that. He took a deep breath in. "And I don't want to propose, John. I mean, my parents – my parents had a dream romance, they adored each other, and that's not usual for us, in Wizarding Britain, in the nobility. It's mostly arranged marriages. I always wanted a romance, too. But I can't possibly do that if Harry's going to be married off to some crusty old pureblood Lord, for her money, for her status! I'm a better option, and I feel so, so selfish that I don't want to do it, and it's just – I just—"

He lost the battle against his tears and buried his face into John's pillow. It just, he just. He didn't know. He just. He didn't like the word, it made it feel so helpless. Just. It was what he said when he was powerless, when he didn't know what else to do, what else to say. When he had no other options, when he was fighting against something that was impossible, when he was warring between what he wanted and what was right.

He felt a touch on his shoulder.

"Don't, Archie," John said, one hand on his shoulder, his voice worried. "Don't propose. I can't even really believe that's a thing I have to tell you. The law hasn't passed yet. Do you want to hear what I think you should do?"

"Please," Archie choked out in reply, his voice was muffled in the pillow. He tried to swallow a few breaths, calm down. John was doing him a favour, he didn't want to cry, not in front of John, anyway. He should stop.

"First, let me pass this onto my dad – he's the Head of Foreign Affairs at MACUSA. Between the full trade embargo and ban on investment, there's not much MACUSA can do directly, but they can put some pressure on other countries who haven't yet fully cut ties. Another international denunciation doesn't hurt, either. Second, tell Hermione – she can pass it onto the British Students Association."

Archie rubbed his face into John's pillow, which was now all wet and gross and rough on his cheekbones, taking a deep breath. It rattled, a little, then a second gulping breath. "The British … Students Association?"

"Think about it, Archie. British newbloods have been attending school around the world for almost forty years, now, halfbloods for about twenty years. Most of them end up being part of one of the BSAs while they're at school, they have a huge network of international contacts. Let them know – they'll find a way to put pressure on their governments, both to pressure Wizarding Britain to stop it from passing, and, if it passes, for a way out. So, stop crying, hey? Deep breaths. It'll be okay."

Archie took a deep breath. And another one, and a third, before he looked up from the pillow. "Sorry about this," he muttered, flushing a little as he offered John his pillow back. It was really wet and gross.

"Don't be," John smiled, even as he tossed the pillow into a corner. "I have other pillows. But I do have one more idea."

"What?" Hiccough.

"Learn some Occlumency." John's expression was serious. "Legilimency isn't a common skill, but when you go back to Britain in the summer, you should probably know enough to stop any casual prying. Enough that I can't read your surface thoughts – that'll probably be enough to prevent anyone from ransacking your mind on a whim. You up for that?"

Archie sniffled, took another deep breath, hiccoughing again. He shut his eyes for a moment, focusing on his breathing. Occlumency was a good idea – John had worked it out using only Archie's surface thoughts, and from what he said, it sounded like a sustained mental attack could probably take the whole ruse from him without too much effort. And the ruse was very simple, when he thought about it.

There was Harry Potter, halfblood, aspiring Potions Mistress. And there was Archie Black, pureblood, aspiring Healer. There were two schools. One, Hogwarts, was the home of Master Severus Snape. The other, the American Institute of Magic, was home to the world's best Healing Program. Was it inconceivable that they would switch? No, of course it wasn't – not if anyone had those simple, simple pieces. The only thing preventing them from being caught was the fact that no one had all those pieces, and those that did would never have thought they would dare to do it.

"Yeah," he said, opening his eyes again when he thought his breaths were even again, when he was calm again. "Occlumency. What do I need to do?"

"Floor is better for this." John pushed one of his piles of clothing, toppling it into another pile, and made enough space on the floor for two people to sit. "Then you won't fall asleep. Meditation, first – sit down, and clear your mind. Half an hour of meditation, every night, until you can clear your mind easily and maintain it in a state of emptiness."

Meditating was hard.

He thought Harry would have had the discipline to do it easily, but Archie was used to moving, all the time, non-stop. He was never truly still – even when he was sitting and studying with Hermione, he would tap his feet, play with his pen, jiggle his leg. Archie was movement – forcing himself to sit still for even half an hour was painfully, painfully difficult.

Let alone clearing his mind. He would try to clear his mind, and he would get most of the way there, then something would itch, or he would need to shift a little, to move. He would think of something he had to do, or something about Healing, or he would think about Harry, and his mind wouldn't be empty anymore. Then he would try again, emptying his mind, and he would hear a noise from the common room, and he would wonder what was happening out there. Or someone would walk by, laughing, and he'd wonder who it was, or what they were laughing about.

It was easier when John was there, sitting across from him. John sat with him through meditation, three to four nights a week, though Archie learned that his friend was in the habit of meditating every night before bed. Natural Legilimens, Archie learned, had a tendency towards madness; apparently the sheer amount of information they learned and processed daily could be overwhelming. Much of what John did, from Healing to his sports, seemed to be about keeping his gift under control, when it came down to it.

When John was meditating across from him, still as stone with his hands in his lap and deep, even breaths filling the space, it became a lot easier to fall into the emptiness himself. Archie only fell asleep twice! Or maybe three times. No more than three times, he was sure. John would simply wake him up when that happened, unconcerned, and tell him to keep at it and he'd get better over time.

He settled in next to Hermione a few days later, on Saturday morning. It was cold enough out that most of the students had chosen to stay in their warm beds for a few extra hours. There was no snow, as there would have been in parts of England, but it was still chilly. He just hadn't found a good time, earlier; between their classes, theatre, Hermione's many clubs, and the crowded common room late in the evenings, there just wasn't a time that was quiet enough for it. Honestly, he was nearly prepared to stage a raid on one of the Oliver Hall common rooms! Rumour had it that the general education dorms had eight or nine of them, decorated with different themes, but according to John, who sometimes went there to hang out with his Dueling Club friends (they seemed to hang out wherever they found space), they were all equally crowded.

But Saturday mornings? Saturday mornings, at eight-thirty in the morning, they were quiet enough to share a few delicate matters and enlist her help, without unduly causing comment or panic.

"Hermione, my dear, you are a sight for sore eyes, every morning," Archie said, plunking himself in the seat beside her at the study table. She already had her Charms book out – she worked so hard! And yet, she always found time for him. There was really no one in the world like Hermione.

"Good morning to you, too, Harry," she said, a touch absently, flipping the page of her textbook to check a note for her assignment. It was six questions long, and Archie hoped it wasn't tricky. They didn't do a lot of essays, at AIM, mainly assignments. On one hand, the assignments were often quick, especially if he understood the material – on the other, the assignments pushed critical thinking and innovation, and answers were usually not in any textbooks, and they could be absurdly difficult. Especially in Charms. He had had to write home and ask Aunt Lily for help with a few problems! Not that she ever gave him the answer, but sometimes he got a hint or two.

But now wasn't the time for that! Now was when he needed to research the Sleeping Sickness, and he needed Hermione to help him. No one researched like Hermione did. He put his hand over her textbook, pulling it away from her. "Now, why would you need to study Charms today, 'Mione? I think you're quite charming as it is."

She looked up at him, eyebrow raised. "Because this assignment is due this upcoming Friday?"

"Yes, Friday," Archie smiled. "That's five days away! And, I need your help on a few other things."

She narrowed her eyes at him, pursing her lips. "What kind of help, Harry?" she asked slowly. "Because I am not helping you put itching powder in anyone's pants, or sneaking anything in anyone's food to turn them into a canary—"

"That was fun, though," Archie grinned. The itching powder was one of John's revenge pranks, but the canary cream, that was all him. Cleon was chill about it, too – he had known he would be, before he pulled it. Even Neal thought it was a good idea (or rather, he had said that Cleon deserved it, which Archie took to mean that it was a good idea). "But no. Two things – first one isn't really help, more of a … heads up."

He looked around – the room was still mostly empty, just a couple sleepy students curled up with mugs of tea and novels in armchairs scattered around the room. He lowered his voice anyway. "My cousin Rigel, at Hogwarts, heard a rumour about some new legislation on the table in Britain – Uncle Sirius and my dad have already looked into their connections and confirmed it's true, so it's not just a rumour, anymore. The SOW Party has drafted legislation that would require all halfbloods to marry purebloods. My dad doesn't think it'll pass – the Party only has about half the votes of the Wizengamot, but they need three-quarters to pass the legislation—"

Hermione held up a hand to forestall him, her mouth forming into a small "o". "Harry, that's – that's horrific! It's a massive infringement of your rights, let alone Muggleborn rights generally!"

"It hasn't passed yet, 'Mione," Archie reached out a steadying hand to rest on her shoulder. "And my dad says it won't, not while the Light faction stays strong. Dumbledore and the Light hold about a third of the votes. And it only affects halfbloods, not Muggleborns, so—"

"Yes, but don't you see, Harry?" Hermione blew out a breath, exasperated, ripping a blank piece of paper out of her notebook to make notes. "The point of it isn't just halfbloods, Harry – it's meant to undermine lesser-blooded resistance by turning halfbloods against Muggleborns. And with the British inheritance laws—"

"The inheritance laws?"

"Harry, don't you read?" Hermione snapped, but she didn't really mean it, Archie knew. Her hand was flying across the parchment – his news was only one line, the rest of it were notes on her analysis. There were dashes every other line, arrows, question marks. "The inheritance laws. Wizarding Britain still requires legitimacy to inherit – it's one of the main legal differences defining Wizarding Britain, most countries removed it a century ago! If you can't marry, you can't have legitimate children, you can't pass down anything you earn in the Wizarding world. Since I doubt most purebloods are going to want to marry halfbloods, it will mean most halfbloods can't have legitimate children, and they won't be able to build a multi-generational power base, and for Muggleborns, well, forget that. It's bad for you – but it'll be devastating to the cause."

Archie coughed. Right. That angle hadn't occurred to him. "Sorry, 'Mione – noble inheritance laws are different. And people will still be able to write wills, won't they?"

Hermione snorted. "Sure. And they could also liquidate and hide all their assets in the Muggle world to be dealt with under the Muggle law instead, but people are stubbornly persistent about avoiding anything to do with their deaths. Ooh, and if halfbloods or Muggleborns, prevented from marrying, pass away without legitimate heirs, their estates will pass to the government – it's a money grab! I'll have to tell the BSA, I need to go find Cassie—"

"Wait, Hermione," Archie caught her arm just as she was about to storm off to Oliver Hall. "She won't be awake now, anyway, and this can wait for little, can't it? I really do your help on something else, too."

"Is it more important than this?" Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"It is," Archie replied, voice grim, pulling her back to her seat. "Or, I think it is. Equally important, to me, and I think it would be a better use of time than waking Cassie and half the other Brits at school?" He frowned a little – that wasn't very convincing, was it? But he wasn't sure whether the Sickness was actually more important than the marriage law, though it was something that he could actually do something about.

Hermione studied him for second, taking in his serious expression, then took a deep breath and sat back down. "All right. I suppose a couple of hours won't make a difference. What else is it?"

"Research." Archie handed her Harry's letter – Harry's letter was so bland, so devoid of detail, that Hermione couldn't learn anything about the ruse from them anyway. In that sense, it was a really good thing that Harry had stopped trying to impersonate Archie in her letters to him, because that would have been far more suspicious.

Hermione's eyes skimmed the letter quickly, then she studied the second paragraph carefully. "A sickness going around Hogwarts," she said slowly, then set the letter down on the table, and looked up at Archie, puzzled. "And you want me to help you research it?"

"Please?" Archie asked, widening his eyes a little, begging without saying anything. He was a little surprised she had asked for confirmation – hadn't he already asked? She was usually so quick to whip out a notebook, start making notes, and dive at the shelves for this text or that treatise or that book. Archie was used to justifying his reasons when he asked Hermione for help on a prank, but never on research.

"Yes, of course I'll help, Harry," Hermione said, still frowning. "But – why?"

Archie blinked, leaning back. "What do you mean, why?"

"Well, it's at Hogwarts, and Rigel's letter mentions that there's a Quarantine in effect around their Hospital Wing. It sounds like the situation is well under control – I'm not sure what you think we can do here, research-wise, especially when we know from his letter that our information is incomplete," Hermione replied, tilting her head slightly. "And yet you're saying that this is as important to you as the legislation? What, exactly, are you hoping to find?"

"Uh," Archie said. He hadn't thought that through – of course Hermione wouldn't understand why this was important, because she didn't know that Rigel was actually Harry Potter, and therefore, the importance of finding a way for Harry to avoid getting sick. But he couldn't tell Hermione! John was an exception, because John already knew, but Archie was not going to wantonly give up the ruse just because one of his friends happened to be a Natural Legilimens! No, he hadn't fallen that far yet.

Hermione leaned back in her seat, studying him. "Are you hiding something, Harry?"

Archie sighed, mentally sorting it out. He wasn't going to tell Hermione about the ruse. But he could tell her something else – something that was the truth, that would make sense, but that didn't reveal the ruse. "No, 'Mione, of course not," he lied. "I'm worried for my cousin – I want to find out more about this Sickness to tell him, to keep him from getting sick, too."

Hermione's face softened ever so slightly. "I understand that, Harry, but I don't think we'll be able to find that much. Not without a patient in front of us, not on this information. And if Rigel gets sick, he'll go to the Hospital Wing – and from the tone of his letter, it does sound like Hogwarts has it under control."

"No, it's not that, 'Mione," Archie looked down at the table, his words halting. "Look - Aunt Diana, Rigel's mum, died a few years ago. A wasting disease. NYD. Our families are really close, so it hit both Rigel and I really hard. We're - we're sensitive about any kind of sickness, really. 'Mione, it would really make me feel a lot better if you would please, please help me look into it, see if we can find any information, or a way for Rigel to avoid getting sick too."

There was a long pause, and Archie didn't dare look up. He knew that Hermione would be thinking it through, and he kept running his words through his head, looking at them from every angle, to see whether Hermione could glean any information from them about the ruse.

"Is that why you want to be a Healer, Harry?" Hermione's voice was soft, delicate, and he felt a light touch on his arm. He didn't need to look at her to know the look of sympathy she no doubt had on her face – he was used to it, now, too used to the looks of sorrow, sadness, sympathy, whenever he mentioned Mum. Even if it was well-meant, he had never liked that look – he never liked people feeling sorry for him.

Mum was light, in every sense of the word. She was Light, and she was fun, and she was loving, and the world became a darker place when she died. When she died, a part of Archie had died with her – and no one, not even Harry, could really understand that. Three years on, it seemed like the world had moved on, but Archie would always have that piece missing. Looks of sympathy didn't help – if anything, they only reminded him of what he had lost.

"Yes, I guess so," Archie replied, looking away. "Rigel wanted to study Healing, too, but Uncle Sirius and Aunt Diana met and fell in love at Hogwarts, so it was really important to Uncle Sirius that Rigel followed in his footsteps. Anyway." He took a deep breath, banishing the feelings, and looked up with a smile. "That's all in the past. Will you please, please help me, 'Mione? I just – I can't lose Rigel, too."

"Your past informs your present, Harry," Hermione replied, a look of understanding that he didn't like any more than sympathy written all over her face. "But yes, of course I'll help you research, though I don't think we'll find anything."

It had taken several days of research, but Hermione was right – try as they might, they simply didn't have enough information find anything concrete about the Sickness. The fact that the sickness was still spreading, even after a Quarantine was imposed, meant that it was contagious before any symptoms started showing. Fever was useless as a symptom – all they knew, really, was that the students in years one through three were falling unconscious.

"If you want me to hazard a guess, Harry," Hermione said, after four days of fruitless research, shutting yet another book with a snap. "I would say it's magical in origin. No symptoms before they suddenly fall unconscious? Limited symptoms afterwards? And they remain unconscious indefinitely? And there's something about the sharp decline in cases after third-years, too – it's normal for a sickness to affect the young or the elderly more, but statistically, this kind of sharp drop is, frankly, bizarre. You'd expect to see a smoother curve."

"It doesn't behave like any sickness I can find," Archie muttered, flipping through his umpteenth diagnostic manual halfheartedly. "It's almost like that legend – Sleeping Beauty. Nothing before, then boom! They fall unconscious."

"It is a lot like the legend, isn't it? That wasn't even a sickness – that was a curse." Hermione leaned back, thinking aloud. "I very quietly asked our teachers and checked the news out of Wizarding Britain. No one has heard anything about any epidemics there. That's very odd."

"Which probably means no cases outside Hogwarts," Archie ground his teeth in frustration. "Hogwarts might be able to keep news of the Sickness from reaching the news, but if it happened to anyone outside Hogwarts, St. Mungo's would know, our teachers would know, it might even be in the Prophet. Either it only affects people between the ages of 11 and 13, who are almost all at school, or – or – I don't know. It just isn't outside Hogwarts."

Hermione studied her notes for a few minutes, then pursed her lips as if she had sucked on a lemon. Archie recognized the look – Hermione wore it when she was carefully thinking something over, something she didn't like, something that she worried Archie wouldn't like either, and she was thinking over whether she should share it or not. He poked her hand with his pen. "What is it, 'Mione? Spit it out."

She sighed, looking up at him, her expression serious. "Harry, I don't think this is a Sickness at all. I think it's a curse that's mimicking a sickness. Otherwise, the pattern of who is getting sick, where all the cases are, doesn't make any sense. It's not natural – either by way of non-magical or magical sicknesses."

Archie paused, thinking it through, but he couldn't see any fault in her logic. She was right – from an epidemiological standpoint, the Sickness didn't make any sense. It made more sense as a curse than as a Sickness, especially given that Lord Dumbledore, as its Headmaster, was also politically the de facto leader of the Light coalition. Through the lens of a curse, it made a disturbing kind of sense.

"You're right," Archie replied, slamming his diagnostic manual shut in disgust. It made a loud clap, audible even over the noise of the common room. There was much less they could do about a curse than a Sickness – as a curse, they had even less information to go on. He'd have to rely on Plan B, and hope John's sister came up with an escape plan. "I'll write to Rigel. Thanks, 'Mione."

John slipped him a letter a few days after that, sliding it across the desk in No-Maj Studies while they talked about the Christian allegory in Narnia. Archie didn't like C. S. Lewis as much as he had liked The Hobbit, but The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was a No-Maj classic and acted as a good introduction to No-Maj mythology and religion. He surreptitiously slid the letter between the pages of his book, while taking notes about the role of Aslan.

He had one more class to get through before he could steal five or ten minutes to read it – it didn't feel like a long letter, but that could be either good or bad. He twitched nervously throughout Magical Psychology, answering questions only if directly asked. They were covering how illness travelled through magic, now, and it was fascinating because it meant they had to understand the different ways that magic was controlled and expressed: mental magic, physical magic, aura magic, etc. Very interesting and all, especially the way that magical illnesses could jump from one strain of magic to another, but he had a letter he needed to read, and the minutes would not tick by fast enough. He would look up at the clock, swearing that it had to be close to the ending time, but no – it was only ten minutes in, then fifteen, then twenty. Archie felt every second of that class, and by the time the bell finally rung, he had his excuse planned and he was ready to bolt.

"Sorry, 'Mione, darling, have to run," Archie said quickly, throwing his textbook and notebook in his bag. "I left my script in the dorm this morning – need to get it before theatre, you know how crowded the halls get after the last bell rings. I'll meet you in the dorms after rehearsals?"

Hermione blinked. "Yes, of course. You always have rehearsals on Tuesdays, you hardly need an excuse – I'll see you later."

Archie grinned over his shoulder and bolted for the door, ducking and dodging his way through the throngs of Healers-in-Training in the halls. Students hung around, talking, crowding the narrow hallways, so it was a battle to even make it out onto the campus green. Once outside, the cold, early February air was biting, and he sprinted, as fast as he could, through the doors of Pettingill Hall, up the stairs to his room. He dropped his bag on the floor, taking off his black robe and throwing it haphazardly on his bed, then he sat heavily on the floor and pulled out the letter.

He stared at it for a second. It was on Muggle paper, light and blinding white, and the blue ink on the front, John Kowalski, stood out starkly. Please, please have an answer, Archie begged it silently, before he took a breath, opened the envelope, pulled out the letter and started reading.

John,

Great to hear from you, and so soon after the holidays, too! I thought for a moment you were missing your big sis, at least until I read your letter. You suck at being cagey, by the way – I'm not buying your "hypothetical" for a second. Still, ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies and all; I won't ask. But if you tell me more, I can probably give you better advice, hey?

You asked about the treatment of blood identity theft as a crime in a hypothetical blood refugee status claim. I hate to break it to you, but the answer is, as it usually is in wizarding law, "it depends". The fact that the hypothetical claimant has committed a crime is not good, and a criminal conviction would normally disqualify someone from being able to claim refugee status. However, blood identity theft is not recognized as a valid criminal offence in any of the countries where blood refugees are accepted, and I think you could argue that it's an offence that strikes right in the heart of blood discrimination generally; it's fraud, but it's an offence where someone is basically trying to avoid blood discrimination, which we don't recognize as being legitimate. I couldn't find any cases, but I think it would be worth the argument.

I'd say that if you were going to try something like that, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are your best bets. The Germans and the Nordics take the strongest stance within Europe, but they're physically closer to Britain and their trade routes are more intertwined – it's harder for them to go against British interests than it is for countries farther away.

Since I know there's more behind your "hypothetical" than you're telling me, I'll have the American and Canadian forms for you for the AIM-Collège Quidditch game. You'll have to persuade Rolf to get you the ones for Australia and New Zealand. Since you'll be playing, I can pass them to one of your friends, while our Quidditch team murders you.

All my love,

Tina

John had left a note for him: I'll leave it to you to decide how much you want to tell Tina – she won't ask and you can just tell her that I sent you if you want (use that American accent you learned!), but she probably will be able to provide better insight into how to word the claim if you give her more details than I did. As for the Quidditch match, don't worry – Collège is strong, but AIM isn't going down without a fight!

Archie smirked at his friend's commentary, before he folded the letter and tucked it in his desk. It wasn't the best news, but it was better news than he had gotten in a long while.

The morning of the AIM-Collège Quidditch game, Archie rolled out of bed, vibrating with excitement. It was the first Quidditch game of the season, and it was an away game! The first thing, Quidditch, that was great – it had been months since he had seen a good Quidditch game, and he was looking forward to cheering AIM on. John had been saying for weeks that AIM wasn't a strong Quidditch school, that their team wasn't that good, but John was probably just being modest. They had been practicing for weeks, and John flew all the time, so they had to be good!

He opened his closet door, running his eyes over his clothes, then grinned and picked out his newest sweatshirt. It was navy blue, with the letters "AIM" emblazoned in gold across the front, and an integrated Warming Charm. All he had to do was touch a marked corner of the hem, shoot his magic at it like he did when he was Healing, and warmth would run up through the sweatshirt, good for a whole three hours. The sweatshirts were even customizable, and his had a patch with the sign for the Healers track on his shoulder! The Student Council had organized the sweatshirt order before the holidays, but they had finally come in, just a week before. He pulled it on – John had warned them all that the Collège would be cold.

There was a knock at his door, and Archie opened it to see John, looking somewhat uncomfortable in Quidditch robes. He had long complained that Quidditch robes themselves didn't really make sense – robes weren't aerodynamic in the least, and until they lost the robes, they'd never hit the speed and aggression of Quodpot. Still, it was what the World Quidditch League declared were the appropriate uniforms, therefore: robes. "You ready to go?" John asked, leaning on one side of his doorway. "Do you have a coat? I can lend you mine. I'll be flying all afternoon, anyway."

Archie wrinkled his nose. He liked John, but honestly, John was only a little better than Harry in terms of clothing choices. He had seen the coat in question, and he would look ridiculous in it. It was poofy, made of a strange plastic material, in an oiled black resembling nothing so much as bag. For the trash bin. "No, thanks, I'll be fine. I have the jacket I used for West Side Story, and with the Warming Charm, I'll be fine!"

John burst into laughter. "If you're sure. And that's what Chess thought, too, when I asked her. Well, the part about looking ridiculous, she's too nice to think that it looks like a garbage bag. It's all right, my sister is meeting us – she'll have something for her."

Archie's spirits dampened a little, but only a little. He was too excited about seeing another part of the world, another school, about Quidditch, to truly be upset by the reminder that he also had to orchestrate a document pick-up from Tina Kowalski that day. Anyway, John had said that he hadn't been specific, so Archie could sham being American if he wanted. He probably would, if he could get away with it.

"How will we meet her?" he asked, purposely keeping his voice relaxed, interested, even as his grabbed his West Side Story jacket. It was sort of ratty, and it didn't match the rest of his outfit today at all, but it would be fine. The pockets were big and solid and would fit paperwork fine once folded. Could he fold a claim form, though? He felt like forms like that ought to be kept straight and neat.

"She'll probably meet us outside the Portkey Room at the Collège," John shrugged, motioning for them to go. "Come on – Chess and Hermione are waiting, and I have to be on the first Portkey there. Anderson wants the entire team there on the first transit, so we can fly around and warm up a bit."

True to his word, Hermione and Chess were already downstairs, waiting for them. Both had chosen to wear their AIM sweatshirts too, Hermione's with a similar Healing patch on one shoulder and Chess' with a dance club insignia instead. Hermione had a coat over one arm, but Chess, even obviously bundled up, was still in a skirt – come to think of it, he had never seen her in anything except skirts. She probably didn't own anything else, or she hadn't brought them to AIM. At least she was wearing dark tights of some kind.

"Cutting it rather close, aren't you?" Hermione asked, taking the lead to the Portkey Room. "Did you have trouble finding something to wear?"

"Not today," Archie grinned. "I mean, the coat doesn't match, but it's all I have – I didn't bring anything back with me from Britain."

"Hmm," Hermione cast him a worried glance. "Quebec is cold, Harry."

"I'll be fine," Archie reassured her. "Coat, and Warming Charm!"

It was only a few minutes wait before they got into the Portkey Room. The transits to Collège would be every ten minutes, starting an hour before the match, until the match started. Then once the match was over, they would send everyone back in ten-minute spans as well, with the last departure to be about an hour after the end of the match. The way John and Neal had explained it, in North America, most people simply listed their top three schools in order of preference, and then school representatives met over the summer and argued over candidates, and everyone ended up somewhere. It was entirely normal for siblings to go to different schools, and games tended to also be a way for siblings to see each other outside of school holidays. Looking around, Archie saw that the entire Quidditch team was on the first transit, as well as Neal Queenscove and a few people he recognized from Sunday Quidditch games – friends of other team members, he thought. He rested his hand on the humming silver ring, felt the characteristic tug at the back of his neck, and he shut his eyes tight against the spin into the ether.

He landed, hard, in an identical room, and sprawled on the ground. John stayed upright, as he always did, and Archie was almost surprised to see that while Chess had staggered, she had also kept to her feet. Hermione was scowling, picking herself up, even as the door to the room opened.

"Transit 1, ten am, from the American Institute of Magic," he heard someone say from outside the room, the slightest hint of an accent rounding the edges of her consonants. He turned, pulling himself to his feet. The student, an upper-year in thick red and black coat, gave them a small smile and gestured for them to exit. "Welcome to the Collège d'Alliance. If you would kindly follow me, I can show you out to the Quidditch pitch, if you're not meeting anyone."

Mimicking his schoolmates, Archie followed them out of the Portkey Room, shivering slightly at the change in temperature. Even inside, the Collège was colder than AIM was, or at least this hallway was. He was suddenly glad for the coat, even if it didn't match the rest of his outfit. Hermione and John both looked fine, but a quick peek at Chess revealed that she had already activated the Warming Charm on her sweatshirt – he could tell from the telltale gleam of magic at her cuffs.

Looking around, it seemed like the Collège d'Alliance was only one building – not a castle, like Hogwarts, he didn't think. There was something grand about the building, especially about the décor, but the walls weren't stone, and there were no sconces for torches lining the hallways. Rather, like AIM, the Collège used blocks with integrated light spells, which were positioned evenly along one wall of the hallway. The walls were papered in striped cream and silvery grey, and there was gold detailing on the crown moldings lining the high, painted, ceilings. On the other side, there were windows – tall, crystalline windows, framed with thick burgundy curtains, tied back with thick golden cords, sweeping down to the floors. He trailed his finger along one of the windows – it was cold, almost like clear ice instead of glass.

Outside, Archie could see that he was maybe four or five floors up from the ground. Thick snow covered the ground, and there were trees, miles and miles of them, as far as he could see. He had never seen so much snow! In London, they sometimes got a faint dusting of it, but it rarely stayed on the ground – usually winter in London meant grey skies, cold rain, for months. Even Godric's Hollow, in the West Country, didn't get much snow – sometimes Potter Place had an inch or two of snow, enough for he and Harry to get excited and run outside to make snowmen, which inevitably melted a week or two later, but nothing like this. He guessed that there was at least a foot of snow, if not more – there was a path shovelled out to the Quidditch Pitch, and Archie caught sight of drifts rising past the students' knees.

"Very eighteenth century." Archie turned, seeing Hermione examining her surrounding with interest. She caught his eye. "The décor, I mean."

"It's modelled after the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City," Archie heard someone say, behind him, and he whipped around to see a tall, broad-shouldered, wide-hipped girl, with dark brown hair and John's laughing brown eyes. She was quite a bit older – John said she was in her sixth year – and dressed in dark pants and a thick, red sweatshirt with the Collège crest on one side. He hadn't seen a uniform on anyone, yet, but he guessed that, like at AIM, Collège students didn't wear uniforms on weekends. Most of the people he had seen so far were wearing red, though, to support their Quidditch team.

"Tina!" John's face lit up, and he grinned, launching himself at her. "How are you?!"

"Great," she smiled, and Archie caught the resemblance in their smiles, too. She let go of John, motioning for them all to get out of the stream of people heading to the Quidditch Pitch and leading them a short way down a separate corridor, away from the cold windows. She eyed the three of them with some curiosity, her eyes lingering on Chess' skirt and the glitter of spellwork at her cuffs. "Introduce me to your friends, John – and why haven't you told this one how to dress for the winter? Didn't Grandma teach you how to be hospitable?" She pointed at Chess.

"Of course, she did, Tina," John sighed, shaking his head. "I offered to lend Chess my coat, since I would be flying all afternoon anyway, but she said no. And she doesn't own pants, or a winter coat – tights and Warming Charm are the best she can do."

"Chess is right here," Hermione cut in, even as Chess looked down, colouring lightly. "You don't need to talk over her."

One of Tina's eyebrows rose. "A Brit," she said, tone thoughtful.

"Hermione Granger," Hermione held out her hand politely and shook hands with Tina. "I'm from Oxford. And this is Harry Potter, from London, and Francesca Lam, from San Francisco." She gestured to each of them in turn.

Damn. There went the plan to use the American accent to pick up the papers. Archie suppressed his grimace, sending John a slightly panicked glance instead. How was he going to get away to pick up papers without drawing any attention from Hermione and Chess? He hadn't come up with much of a plan, since there were too many unknowns. He had had a vague idea of telling Hermione and Chess that he needed to run an errand for John, or something, but how could that work, if they had already met her? John met his eyes and tilted his head the tiniest bit towards his sister, exuding steady calm.

"Pleasure to meet you," Archie said, picking up the thread of conversation without a second beat, grinning cheerfully and offering his hand to Tina. She took it, eyeing him with some interest – had she caught their exchange? He fought to keep any other hints off his face – it was obvious as anything that Tina was trying to work out which of John's "friends" John was asking questions for.

"Porpentina Kowalski," she replied, then shook hands with Chess, who had introduced herself in turn. "Call me Tina – I hate Porpentina. Francesca, or Chess? And do you want a few extra layers?"

Chess hesitated a moment, her face marred with indecision, then she sighed. "Either is fine. And extra layers would be lovely, if you have anything."

Tina's eyes softened. "I've got a wool peacoat I outgrew a few years ago and some earmuffs and mittens that would be just precious on you. Hermione, Harry, would you like to borrow a throw or something? It's ten below outside – that's fourteen Fahrenheit – you'll feel the cold, even with your Warming Charms and your coats."

"Kowalski!" Both John and Tina looked up, but it was Anderson – the AIM Quidditch Captain. One of the Chasers. "We have to warm up – you can catch up with your sister later, after we take out their Quidditch team!"

"Duty calls," John shook his head, smiling ruefully. "I'll see you all later! Harry, can I ask you for a favour?"

Archie blinked. "Yeah, of course."

"Tina has some papers for me – could I ask you to pick them up for me?" He turned around Anderson, who was standing, arms crossed, tapping his foot impatiently. "I really have to go – see everyone on the pitch!"

"Sure," Archie replied, waving him off, almost relieved. Fine, so John had pretty much identified him for Tina, but he had said Tina wouldn't ask, so it could still be a simple handoff. And he could always act – he was sure he could pretend to be ignorant and without confirmation, there was nothing lost, right? At least, by saying that they were his documents, Hermione and Chess wouldn't ask him anything. It was what it was, and he would have to adapt.

So much of the ruse was adaptation.

"Come on," Tina said, and Archie turned back to her. She motioned for them to follow her, heading down the side corridor. "Let me show you around, or at least what's on the way to the dormitory wing. We're the smallest of the North American schools, since we specialize in wizarding law and politics – we have the same basic magic classes as every school, of course, but otherwise it's language, international relations, and law. Class sizes are limited to thirty per year - you come here if you know what you want, and what you want is to be the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards."

"Is that what you want?" Archie asked, a bit tongue in cheek, even as he looked around in interest. This corridor was, like the one with the Portkey Room, done in cream, grey, red. It was beautiful, grand, but somehow still cozy.

Tina laughed. "No, actually – I'm going to be the Chief Justice of the International Wizarding Criminal Court in Geneva, I think. This hallway has most of our international relations classrooms."

"John mentioned that it's the only fully bilingual school in the world, English and French. How do admissions work here? Do you need to be bilingual before you start, or can you be monolingual and learn?" Hermione asked, hurrying to walk beside Tina, while Archie and Chess brought up the rear. Archie cast Chess a glance – she shrugged a little with a small smile, pulling her sweatshirt a little closer around herself and sending a fond look at Hermione's back. He grinned – he understood her perfectly.

"Hmm," Tina hummed, turning a corner and heading down a flight of stairs. The bannisters were smooth, polished, wood, and Archie ran his fingers along it in interest. "The languages, that's mostly because of the No-Maj history of this part of the world. We're the only school that takes francophone mages in North America, and that community is very significant here. Francophones are automatically accepted at the Collège – about half of them are bilingual when they start, the other half learn. As for the rest of the admissions policy, I think you get serious points if you're already bilingual, but otherwise they judge you on a personal statement."

"A personal statement, that early?" Chess blinked, her voice soft. "What if you decided you didn't want to go into politics?"

"Some people do transfer to other schools, and others transfer in later," Tina shrugged, turning down another stairwell and directing them along another hallway. "But for the most part, even if people decide they don't want to head into politics or law afterwards, they stay here. We're very close-knit and the foundational magic classes are good, so people can still apply to Mastery programs and other special training programs like Healing afterwards. Here we are, welcome to the Hudson Room – it's my favourite of our common rooms, mainly because it's close to my room. Hermione, Chess, you look freezing; warm up by the fire for a few minutes and Harry and I will go get John's papers and the clothes and things."

"Do you need any help?" Hermione offered, but Tina smiled and tilted her head towards the fire, which Chess was already apologetically edging towards.

"No, stay with your friend – we'll be back in a jiffy." She looked around the common room, picking out a tall, lanky boy reading in the corner with her eyes. "Will, would you mind looking after my brother's friends for a few minutes for me?"

The boy held up a finger, and Tina rolled her eyes impatiently as he took his time coming to a reasonable stopping point in his book. When he finally looked up, Archie blinked and suppressed a smile. The other boy had Neal's cat-like emerald eyes, and his pointed nose, though his hair was almost black. "John's friends? From AIM?"

Tina gestured at Chess and Hermione, now standing by the fire. "Just for a few minutes. And you should come to the game, too, you know – John says Neal is commentating for AIM."

"Really?" William Queenscove wrinkled his nose, standing up and walking closer to the fire, waving for Hermione and Chess to take a seat. "Neal doesn't even like Quidditch that much."

"But you know Yves will commentate most of the match in French – they probably wanted someone who understood our commentary." Tina shrugged, then switched into French for a stream of liquid consonants, nodding at Hermione and Chess. Hermione was frowning, trying to catch some of the words here and there, but Chess looked about as clueless as Archie felt. Will replied in the same language, then waved her off.

"Come on, Harry," Tina said, leading him out of the common room down a narrower corridor, only wide enough for two or three students, then opened an unmarked door to a … mess.

Well, it wasn't as bad as John's mess, Archie thought philosophically. Clothes were at least in baskets, and not in piles on the floor. There was a tall stack of books beside her bed, and her desk was piled high with other books, papers, pens, tea cups, even a few spoons. He lingered awkwardly in the doorway for a minute or two, since the guest chair in her room, beside her desk, seemed to be occupied by clothes. On the other hand, guest chairs! They didn't have those in AIM dorms!

"Oh, sorry," Tina said, noticing him in the doorway, then pushing the pile of clothes off her chair, and motioning for him to come in and sit. Archie hesitated only a moment, then he steeled himself and took the proffered seat. It would be rude, otherwise, and the plan would still work. He watched as she rummaged through the papers littering her desk, pulling out two fat packages. "All right – I'm going to assume that you're the one that John was writing about?"

Archie tilted his head, adopting a quizzical look, and picked his words carefully. No denial – if he was a total stranger to it, he wouldn't have even known that John had written. "What do you mean?"

Tina studied him for a few minutes, and Archie stayed there, waiting. The silence was awkward, and he belatedly realized that he needed to say something – if he was trying to hide something, staying unnaturally silent could tell her that she needed to know, even if she wasn't a Natural Legilimens like her brother. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about?"

"Not bad," she admitted slowly, still examining him as if he were a particularly interesting potions recipe under Harry's scrutiny. "If John wasn't my little brother, and if I hadn't caught that look you sent him, I would have been fooled. Don't admit anything if you don't want to – but let me know if you need help, okay? I can help you word the claim if you need, though remember that you'll need to get your friend out of Britain onto friendly soil before you can submit it, all right? It's wet out – Reducio!"

The papers shrank into a smaller, more manageable, size, and she tucked it into a small envelope before handing it to him.

"I really can't say I understand what this is about," Archie replied, taking the envelope with grateful hands and sliding it into the big pocket of his AIM sweater. He would need to learn an Engorgement Charm to restore it to its normal size, but that shouldn't be an issue – he was sure he could look it up in the main library. "But I'll pass that on to John."

She snorted, turning to her closet and opening it to a cascade of clothing. How did either of the Kowalski siblings find anything? "Oh, for heaven's sake," she muttered, sorting through it to find a neat, black, double-breasted peacoat, which she threw at him. He caught it with surprise, then the worn red earmuffs and mittens she threw at him after. She pulled on a thick coat of her own, a poofy thing in red and black, shoved a knit hat on, then rolled up a thin blanket on her bed with quick efficiency. "There's another throw on that chair, which I just threw on the floor – oh, wait, your hands are full," she said, then she stooped and fished out a folded blanket from the pile of things-formerly-inhabiting-the-guest-chair. "Don't worry, they look thin, but they're fleece. They're toasty warm, especially with a Warming Charm underneath. Fleece is great. You got everything?"

Archie nodded, his arms full of a thick coat and other accessories while Tina took the blankets. Back in the common room, it was patently obvious that the coat was at least three sizes too large for Chess, but the earmuffs and mittens fit well, and Tina merely grinned and said something in French to Will, who raised an eyebrow but agreed with her.

Archie threw a look at Hermione, beside him, who had taken charge of one of the blankets while the upper-years dressed Chess up. Chess bore it all with slightly shell-shocked expression. Hermione shrugged slightly. "I think they're commenting on how she's like a doll, or something like that," she muttered. "My parents like to vacation in France – I picked up a bit, but I'm not very good. The accent here is too different."

"Not that different," Will interjected, overhearing them with a disgruntled shake of his head. "The rhythm is a little different, but the accent itself isn't indecipherable, no matter what the French think. Certainly not enough that they would need to subtitle our movies there."

"And yet, they do, which I think speaks for itself," Tina cackled in delight, fixing Chess' collar to her satisfaction. "Cute as a button! Let's go, John's friends. Student Council is selling hot chocolate outside, and we'll go get a couple giant mugs of it to drink while we watch my school murder yours."

"Don't be so sure!" Archie piped up immediately. He hadn't even seen the AIM team on the pitch before, but they were his school! And AIM was awesome, and John was awesome, and therefore the team had to be awesome. John even said they would put up a fight. "AIM is really good! John is on the team!"

Tina and Will exchanged glances – Tina had a wicked grin, while Will was politely impassive, though there was an amused glint in his eyes. "Oh, no," she drawled, the last word taking on the most emphasis. "No, no. You're getting fried dead. AIM can't play Quidditch to save their lives."

"I do believe AIM has ended up bottom of the league for the last … five years?" Will speculated, picking up a black wool coat from the corner where he was sitting when they first came in.

"Four," Tina corrected, her smile both bright and razor-edged at the same time. "The two years before that, AIM at least managed to beat out Cascadia, but really, they haven't won the Quidditch League in, well, ever."

"There is always a first," Archie insisted stubbornly, following the two upper-years out of the warm, inviting common room, out into the freezing cold Quebec afternoon. The snow was deep – he had guessed right, it was well past his knees, with a heavy crust of ice on top, and the deep mug of hot chocolate he purchased for a dollar from a smiling Collège student was deliciously warming. The seats in the stands, where Will and Tina joined them in the AIM section (all the better to heckle him, Archie suspected), were chilly, but between multiple mugs of hot chocolate, the blankets, Warming Charms, and coats, it was tolerable. Not what Archie would call toasty warm, but he wasn't freezing to death.

Unfortunately, once the game started, Archie started wincing, while Tina started laughing. Archie didn't know what he would call the worst part – was it when one of the AIM Chasers fumbled an easy catch and dropped the Quaffle, letting one of the Collège Chasers snatch it out from under him and score thirty points in less than ten minutes? Was it the other Beater, who missed the Bludger he was chasing by so much that it turned around and smashed him in the face, taking him out of the rest of the game? Was it the sixteenth time that the AIM Keeper missed saving the Quaffle as it flew through one of his poorly-guarded hoops, when he slipped off his broom and almost fell off entirely without anything happening? Or was the worst part Neal's commentary, which varied between bored but mostly competent English Quidditch commentary and, apparently, wildly vicious insults against the Collège in French?

Not that Archie understood the insults. The bilingual half of the crowd found him hilarious in that mode, but even translated, none of the insults made any sense.

"Neal really does come up with the best insults," Will said, when he stopped laughing, gesturing helplessly at their confused stares. "I can't really translate them, because they don't actually mean anything in English – that part there, first he called the Yves the son of a whore, then the rest was just, hmm... 'my host of the holy sacrament of the chalice of Christ'? Something like that."

Tina could barely stop laughing long enough to breathe when Neal started swearing and was of no help whatsoever.

No, Archie realized, in despair, midway through the game when the score was 170 to nothing. The worst part was that there were good players on the AIM team. The Chasers were all good flyers, they were just terrible at acting like a team. Any time each of them got the Quaffle, they would streak off towards the other side without any thought for their teammates. One of the Beaters was bad, yes, but John pulled twice his weight. With only one Beater, though, John was relegated entirely to defensive Beater tactics, and not much of that, either – Archie could see that he was focused on protecting his Seeker and occasionally one of the Chasers, if the Chasers were close enough to his Seeker, leaving the AIM Keeper to fend for himself. Not that he had much choice; if Archie was in his position, he would have done the same! The AIM Seeker, whom Archie recognized as Yamaguchi from the Quodpot team, was utterly brilliant – the only redeeming feature of the whole game was when she dove after the Snitch, flattening herself on the broom, ending the game at a slightly less shameful 230 points to 150.

Tina patted him on the back. "Tough luck, Harry," she said, her voice saccharine sweet. "But AIM's first Quidditch Cup isn't going to be this year. More hot chocolate?"

Engorgement Charms were only third-year material, and he didn't need to understand the theory to perform it. It took him a week or so to figure out the charm and reverse the Shrinking Charm that Tina had put over the packages, and it was late in the evening when he finally perused them for the first time.

He opened the American package first. Wouldn't it be great if both he and Harry could be in America, one day? It was such a wonderful, freeing place, and as an American-trained graduate, Archie would be entitled to the expedited immigration process anyway.

He had written back to Harry, midway through February. He had hit on Legilimency, lying through his teeth and telling her that it was something Hermione had helped him look up – she didn't need to know that John was a Natural Legilimens, not yet. He could tell her in the summer, when it was safe, when he could explain it in such a way that she wouldn't panic. For now, she was at Hogwarts, and she was always in danger, and he couldn't risk it. He had written about the Sickness, begging her to be careful, that she could not get sick.

And he had written about the Marriage Law. With trepidation, he had also written a line in about how she could always marry him. He couldn't bring himself to write in a formal proposal, but it was there, stark in black ink on yellow parchment, an understated you know you can always marry me, right? Then, perhaps the most troubling part: If you want, you can even pretend to be me forever, and I'll stay here in America.

He had written it lightly, almost a joke, but it wasn't. It wasn't a joke. He didn't want to go back, and quite frankly, he thought his entire family should join him here. What was there in Britain, compared to America?

The Blacks and the Potters had their ancestral seats in Britain, but who cared about Potter Place? Who cared about Grimmauld Place? They had enough in Gringotts to rebuild their houses in America, if they wanted. They had their noble titles, but who cared about that? Maybe they had voting seats on the Wizengamot, but everyone in Wizarding America had the vote. The title itself was just history, it only mattered because the people around them decided it meant something. There was nothing in Wizarding Britain that mattered, nothing that he and his family couldn't recreate here.

And what did Wizarding America have?

Movies, books, and theatre just scraped the surface! There was ambition here, there was innovation, there were dreams. America pushed the boundaries in everything they did – even Wizarding America preoccupied itself with questions: How can we travel faster and talk instantaneously to anyone around the world? What spells do we need to invent to go to space ourselves? What about undersea exploration – wouldn't it be great to walk into Marianas Trench? Wizarding America looked forward, asking why, asking how, and openly integrated Muggle technologies, culture, clothing where it suited them. Just look at Warming-Charm-integrated sweatshirts! There was nothing preventing Wizarding Britain from coming up with them, the spell and technology were ancient, it was just a lack of imagination that had the Americans doing it first. Not that he had seen a Warming-Charm-integrated anything yet in Britain.

America had his friends. John and Chess were American, and they had no reason to leave. Their families were here, all the opportunities he, or they, could ever want were here. There was nothing that Wizarding Britain could offer them that America couldn't match, and as a halfblood and newblood, they would only lose if they ever touched down there. Even Hermione, whose family did live in Britain – Hermione was so ambitious! She gave her all in everything she did, and she was brilliant. All the professors raved about her, calling her the brightest witch of her generation, and she would have so many opportunities in America when she graduated. She loved her family dearly, Archie knew, but how would she balance her family with her life, with her ambitions? He couldn't really see Hermione giving up on so many of the opportunities just there for her in America, to accept a second-class citizen position in Wizarding Britain. He didn't even know if St. Mungo's, Wizarding Britain's only hospital, would accept her application! Even if St. Mungo's was technically not a part of the Ministry of Magic, even if it was technically a private institution with its own endowments, even if it was technically neutral ground, it was still heavily funded by SOW Party families.

Archie wasn't stupid. It was one thing for him, Arcturus Rigel Black, to do his Healing certification exams straight out of school and get a job at St. Mungo's. Dad donated heavily to the hospital and volunteered there. He would get an internship for no other reason than he was a Black, and once he proved himself to be competent, they would hire him. He used to think that was fine, because he would be a Healer, and where else would a Healer work but a hospital? They might have hired him because of his name, but he still planned on being the best Healer in the world, so it didn't matter.

What mattered, though, was that even if Hermione was demonstrably as good of a Healer as he was, Hermione wouldn't get that chance. Her chance would go to someone from Hogwarts, someone who had gotten middling marks on the Healer Certification Exams, but someone who had the name to back it up.

Would Hermione accept that treatment to return to Britain, to return to her family? Archie didn't know. But he knew it wasn't fair to ask her to do it.

There was so much life here, so much that he had to tamp down on when he was at home. His family was in Britain, but so much of him was here. Wouldn't it be grand if they could all come here?

He took a few minutes to imagine it. Dad would love living in a big city, somewhere with history and action and light, like New York City, to hear John describe it. Or maybe one of the big cities in the West Coast that Chess sometimes mentioned: San Francisco, with the huge bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, huge LGBTQ community, and burgeoning technological industries (which had to be good for the Marauders business!), or Los Angeles, with its million cultures and brilliant food? Aunt Lily had gone to school in America, she would be able to reconnect with the friends that she had to have left behind when she chose to return to Britain (why had she done that, anyway?). Uncle James would find a home, he was sure, in one of the many Auror departments through MACUSA, working closely with various Muggle police departments (and he would get to use No-Maj forensic science!). And Uncle Remus would be able to explore so much more magical theory here, so much more cutting-edge magical research, in an environment that actively encouraged research and development.

And Harry! Harry would fit right in, with her Potions Mastery. There were a dozen Potions Mastery students even at AIM, which wasn't known to be the North American Potions school (that was Cascadia, apparently). But there was such an appetite for innovation here, a hunger for improvement, to push known limits, and Harry was, at her core, a scientist. She would find a place here easily with a Mastery, and she would be happy here, and he could take her and show her all the things that she had been missing, all the movies, all the music, all the games and books and theatre. He could bring colour to her life, colour like she could never imagine, like he could never describe; she would see the world, taken out of shades of grey, for the first time.

Forget Britain. Forget the nobility, and arranged marriages, and fear. They didn't need social status in America, because they could work hard, and they could make of themselves what they wanted to be. They didn't need to be Lord Black and Lady Potter one day, they didn't need to be anyone except Arcturus Rigel Black, Healer, and Harriett Potter, Potions Mistress. They could forget about blood status, do what they wanted without worrying about how the Ministry was going to wreck their lives next, they could breathe, they could live.

With that happy thought in mind, he looked down at the package. The first few pages were easy: name, date of birth, nationality, address, contact information. Protected grounds for requesting asylum: a list of checkboxes, including blood status, and a line for her to write her blood turned the page, running his eyes down a further list of detailed questions: Has the undersigned ever been physically assaulted as a result of belonging to the impugned group? Explain. Has the undersigned ever been sexually assaulted as a result of belonging to the impugned group? Explain. Has the undersigned ever been harmed in any other way as a result of belonging to the impugned group? Explain.

On and on the questions went, looking for details on how Harry had been threatened or hurt, exactly what the consequences would be if Harry ever returned to Britain. There were questions about her own history, whether she had ever been arrested, whether she had ever broken the law (and if so, explain), and Archie thought he could see what Tina meant – even if he and Harry had technically broken the law, blood identity theft was so tied to other forms of discrimination that he could slide those parts into the abuse, with only a reference in the later sections. There were large, expanding sections for him to write in intense detail.

On the next few pages, there were questions about her suitability for integration into American Wizarding society. What resources did she have? What education did she have? Where did she go to school? Did she have any other skills to help her onto her feet in America? What about family or friends in America? What were her magical strengths? What was her medical history?

The medical history went on for two pages. Had she ever had dragon pox? Spattergroit? What about measles, mumps, rubella? Had she ever been vaccinated (Archie didn't know what that meant – he would work up an excuse to ask Hermione!)? Had she ever contracted any other serious disease, and if so, explain?

He turned the page. Please include a family tree dating back four generations. Please list all organization and association affiliations. Please list any required registrations with your home country.

He frowned. What?

Another page. Has the undersigned ever contracted any serious and interminable condition of any kind? If so, explain. Has the undersigned ever had any communications with wizarding or non-wizarding non-humans or part-humans? If so, explain. Has the undersigned ever contracted any unusual skills or abilities as a result of same? If so, explain.

Archie very deliberately closed the package, his heart dropping, his stomach fluttering. It was late, and that meant John was probably in his room, late enough that Hermione had gone to bed. John might have, too, but he would wake him up for this. He rolled the package, sliding it into the front pocket of his AIM sweatshirt, which he pretty much lived in now, and walked the twenty feet down the hall to the doorway marked John Kowalski. He knocked impatiently, then again when he didn't get a response.

Then a third time, louder.

"I was sleeping, Harry," John grumbled, blinking blearily, when he cracked open the door. His hair short hair was mussed, and he wasn't wearing a shirt. "This better be important."

Archie shoved the sheaf of papers at him, pushing his way into John's room without asking for an invitation. They were past that, now, they had to be. John knew who he really was, John knew about the ruse, John had arranged things. Even if Archie felt the closest to Hermione, even if Hermione was who he turned to for schoolwork, for Healing questions, for help in every other circumstance, it was John he turned to for this. Only an American could answer, anyway. "What is this?"

John frowned at him, and Archie could feel the brush of John's mind against his as he read the unspoken thoughts flying through his head. The meditation must be working – he had an awareness, for lack of a better word, of his mind that he didn't have before. They were in America – they had left the world where blood status was an issue, they had left the world where discrimination was something they needed to worry about, America was better than this. What were these questions? He didn't understand. John glanced down at the papers, at the questions, then he shut the door.

"I never said that America was perfect, Archie," he said, pushing the package back to him. "No place is perfect."

"I don't understand," Archie waved one hand at the papers, at the questions – the ones about family trees, about organizations and affiliations, about serious and interminable conditions, about non-humans and part-humans. "These questions … they're like the ones meant to identify blood-status."

John considered him for a moment. "Not blood-status, Archie. I said once that my Great-Uncle gave me stuffed animals of magical creatures to teach me about them, right? And that we didn't really have creatures here?"

Archie nodded. He did remember that. He hadn't thought much about it – he had simply accepted it, as a fact. America didn't have a lot of creatures.

"That's because our laws on creatures are strict," John said, his voice matter-of-fact. "That's why Great-Uncle Newt and my Scamander cousins don't go to school here – no creature ownership or private breeding, not even Puffskeins, is allowed. There are some creature reserves, here and there, but for the most part, our regulation of magical creatures is better described as extermination. The rationale is that magical creatures are uncontrollable, and they pose a risk to the International Statute of Secrecy."

Archie sat in John's desk chair, watching as his friend picked a shirt off the ground, looked at it once (it was wrinkled, but had no visible stains) and pulled it on. "That isn't good, but I don't understand. What do creatures have to do with this?"

John looked at him a moment, his brows furrowed, and Archie had a strong sense that his friend was at a loss for words. Finally, he sighed, rubbed his eyes tiredly, then held his hand out, motioning for Archie to hand him the package again. He flipped to the family tree and pointed. "This question is probably looking for Veela, goblins, dhampir and shifter family lines – they're trying to identify any part-human ancestry. The one about organizations and affiliations – that's for creature rights groups, or for any other creature-linked organizations, like support groups for werewolves, or coven affiliation. This one about required registrations is for werewolves, Animagi, and so on – Animagi aren't really included in the bans because that's just Transfigurations, but the skill must be declared. Serious and interminable conditions is targeting werewolves and vampires, again, but is supposed to be a catch-all too, I think. The last two questions in this section, about communications and unusual abilities or skills are just catch-all questions. Your cousin isn't a werewolf or anything, is she?"

He handed the papers back to Archie, and even if his tone was blunt, a little exasperated, his expression was politely neutral. Archie cleared his throat, a little awkward. "No, she's not, but… my uncle Remus is."

John hesitated a moment. "America has a kill-on-sight order for werewolves. And vampires or part-vampires, as it happens."

"But lycanthropy is an illness!" Archie protested, feeling his eyebrows knit together in mixed rage and sadness. "And it's perfectly controllable with Wolfsbane!"

"The thinking here is that if you are unfortunate enough to contract lycanthropy, you should be grateful for the quick and merciful death," John replied, relaxing slightly. "I'm not defending it, Archie – my great uncle is Newt Scamander, so how could I defend it? I think our laws could do with change, but that is an unpopular opinion, here. If I were you, I wouldn't spread around that one of your uncles is a werewolf."

"I'm not ashamed of Uncle Remus, John!"

"I'm not saying you should be," John's voice was low, careful. "Only that the association is something that could threaten Harry's claim, if you need to make it."

Archie looked down at the sheaf of papers, rolling them in his hands. "What about Canada? Australia? New Zealand?"

"I don't know," John shook his head, with a hint of sadness. "But nowhere is perfect, Archie. But if she's going to make a blood refugee claim, the only question for you, and for her, should be where she won't be killed for who she is and what she has done."

Archie's lips turned downwards, but he understood.

If Harry needed to make a claim for blood refugee status, then she would do it because the consequences were dire: life in Azkaban, death, the Kiss. She would have to leave things behind, in Britain. She would leave people behind, like Uncle Remus, her friends at Hogwarts, maybe the rest of their blended families – something that Archie knew she would never do easily. She might even need to leave behind her dreams of studying under Master Snape – the basis on which she had risked everything. Emigration from Britain was not an easy solution, it was not a panacea. It was a last resort, and nothing more.

"Thanks, John," he said tonelessly, rising from his friend's desk chair. "Sorry to wake you."

John blinked, and Archie felt a worried caress in his mind. "No problem, Archie. Anytime."

He didn't hear from Harry. He didn't hear from her for weeks and weeks and weeks, but neither did he hear anything else. His regular letters from Aunt Lily and Uncle James didn't mention anything, and they would have if she had been found out, so he had to sit tight and hope for the best. He had reviewed both the claim forms he had gotten, for Wizarding America and Canada – they were fairly similar, though the Canadian form didn't ask for a family tree and specifically asked questions about language fluency too. He had tucked them away at the bottom of his trunk, ready to be completed and sent, and there they stayed.

He could do nothing more, and instead, he threw himself into other things, into welcome distractions. He was still at the top of his Basic Healing and Magical Psychology classes, and he and Hermione were often heard comparing and complaining about their absurdly high marks. It drove John wild.

"How did you do on the quiz?" Hermione would say, setting her books on the study table they had claimed as theirs. "I got an extra point this time for naming a fourth method for Healing muscular dystrophy, a potion with a different functional pathway."

"I got two – I named the potion, but then I explained how that was really just a variation of the third method, and shouldn't really count as a fourth," Archie would reply with a careless shrug. "There was an article about it in a Potions journal my cousin loaned me last year which compared the two."

"Would the two of you shut up about your extra points?" John would say, waving his quiz with a perfectly respectable "14/20" circled in red ink at the top. "I will murder you both one day, I swear."

Sometimes it was the other way around. Sometimes Hermione was the one who got one or two more points than Archie, but they left their classmates in the dust when it came to Healing. In No-Maj Studies, Archie's high marks were entirely because he liked the subject – it wasn't homework for him to read the required readings, and because he liked them, he remembered them. In Potions, he still had top spot, but that was only because of Harry – he needed to know Potions, for the ruse, so he spent long hours reading her books that she had left for him in his trunk. They were far more advanced than anything that would come up in his first-year Potions class, which he waltzed through with seemingly no effort at all, a fact which drove Hermione crazy.

"I don't understand how you can be done that assignment already!" she would hiss, fuming, looking up tables for her Potions homework. "And you haven't prepared at all for the Forgetfulness Potion we're brewing tomorrow!"

"Forgetfulness Potions are easy, 'Mione," Archie would smile, looking up from a book about No-Maj creation myths. "My cousin Rigel likes potions, I told you. We brewed one of those when I was about seven. Don't worry, I'll help you if you get stuck. The answer there is thirteen ounces, by the way."

She would glare at him, and storm off to work with Chess, who was good at Potions, but not mysteriously or inexplicably so. Hermione was top of the class in all their other subjects, anyway, so Archie thought she could stand to let him have this one. He didn't even like Potions that much!

He went all out for Chess' birthday in April – he papered her door in sparkly pink paper, then magicked a rain of cherry blossoms for when she opened the door. She liked those, and Hermione had cleared it as being suitably pretty and non-threatening, and he gave her a big bar of Honeydukes' best chocolate. Maybe he went a little farther than he would have done if he hadn't wanted to distract himself so badly – he had also magicked her a hairpiece, which Hermione had promptly destroyed before Chess could even see it.

"First, Harry, it's atrocious," Hermione winced, looking at the elaborate illusion Archie had managed to pin onto a bobby pin. It was a tiara – a solid, gold, shiny tiara with the words I'M THE BIRTHDAY GIRL prancing around the rim in bright pink capital letters. It was, admittedly, a little gaudy and lopsided. But it was fun! "Second, if you give it to her, she'll feel obligated to wear it, then Graves and his cronies will make fun of her all day for it." She waved her wand, a few quick motions undoing his careful illusion charm-work of the past hour.

"I thought they had stopped doing that," Archie frowned, and Hermione shook her head in a disgruntled sort of way.

"No, they just stopped doing it where we, or any of her upper-years friends, can see it. And you know Francesca, she doesn't want to be a bother, so she doesn't tell anyone when it happens – I only know because Sally mentioned seeing it happen, once, in Magical Theory."

He threw pranks with abandon – mainly small pranks, fireworks and glitter bombs (that went on Graves and his friends, because they deserved to try to scrape glitter off themselves for days). He successfully booby-trapped John's room, spelling an illusion of a miniature Acromantula to appear in his room at exactly midnight one night, and discovered, when John ran outside in a panic, that John slept in the nude (he would not be doing that anymore, Archie was sure). He helped Neal stage a dramatic fight with Cleon over Daine's supposed affections one evening, pretending to play referee while the two of them drew wands and mock-dueled through the dining hall, while Daine buried her head in her hands in embarrassment. He then helped Daine get revenge on the two of them, later, by drafting possibly the world's worst love letter, supposedly from Neal to Cleon, and staging it to drop in front of them while they were in the crowded Healer's common room. Kel, the only one who would be able to remain straight-faced, read it out loud to the entire room, and for weeks people laughed anytime they heard some of his more fantastical phrasings. Take me aboard Cupid's loveboat, indeed.

He went off campus three more times on movie adventures. One, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Dom and John had flat-out refused to come see on account that it was a romantic comedy, so Neal talked Francis Nond and their theatre friends into seeing it as an official club event. It was so different from the action movies that Archie had seen earlier (no explosions!) but Archie fell in love with it anyway – it was a romance! And Audrey Hepburn was beautiful, and he had sighed, a goofy grin over his face through the final scene, when Holly and Paul, the heroine and the hero, stood in the rain, sharing a kiss.

Neal's face had an equally goofy grin, and Evin smacked them both in the back of the head. "You're both such romantics."

"You don't understand, Evin," Neal retorted. "Romance is more than just love. It's colour, and – and fire. Romance makes the world go 'round - it's magnificent, it's grandeur. You know, drama. Importance. Transcendent passion!"

"I agree," Archie said, nodding solemnly. "Who doesn't want a grand passion? A great romance?!"

The second movie was another Bond - License to Kill. This one, he snuck off campus with Dom, Neal and John to see late one Thursday evening, which meant that he was dead for his Friday classes – but it was worth it. Timothy Dalton gave a completely different portrayal of Bond, one that was darker, more violent, grittier. The stunts and explosions in that one made Diamonds are Forever look mild, and it gave him much to think about in terms of how to portray a character. He wondered if he could trace differences in different actors' portrayals of Bond if he simply watched all the movies, and he dreamt about having what John called a boxset of Bond films to watch, one after another after another.

"I'd give you a set," John told him, responding to his thoughts in the car ride home that night, "but VCR players don't really work in magic-saturated environments – it's a problem that magical theorists are still working on. For us, it's movies in theatre or bust. One day, though!"

The third film was animated, a whole different style of movie that Archie had never seen before. It was, surprisingly, Chess who had wanted to go see it. And since Chess wanted to see it, Daine convinced one of her upper-year friends, an over-powered, Exceptional seventh-year newblood named Numair Salmalin, to take all three of them to see it. The pictures on the animated movie were curiously flat, in bright colours completely unlike real life, yet the characters, the story, drew him in anyway. It was a fairy tale, with dancing clocks and teacups and candelabras, with a prince cursed to be a beast and a heroine who had to save him, his humanity, with her love. It was wonderful, and he left the drive-in, humming snatches of A Tale as Old as Time under his breath, smiling when he realized that Chess was singing along with him.

He followed the AIM Quidditch team religiously, yelling himself hoarse at every single game, Hermione by his side. He cheered on AIM with tears in his eyes as they redefined the meaning of loss in their game against Escuela Maya, when the Spanish-speaking school wiped the floor with them, 310 points to a mere 20. He was on his feet, his shouting loud enough to be heard over the admittedly-small crowd, at the game against Ilvermorny – Ilvermorny was not a Quidditch school, either, and it was a much closer match. Both teams fumbled the Quaffle, both teams made mistakes that a better team never would have, and AIM was leading in points when, unfortunately, the Ilvermorny Seeker was the first to catch the Snitch, and they lost a mere 190 to 110. At their away game at Cascadia, a school nestled in an ultra-modern stone and glass building in the mountains, Archie lost his voice cheering because for once, for once, AIM was winning, at least until they weren't. But they were always close enough that who caught the Snitch would make a difference, and when Yamaguchi swept in like an avenging angel and snatched the Snitch from under the Cascadian Seeker, he cried while Hermione patted him on the back. They were still last in the league, since Cascadia had beaten Ilvermorny, but at least they had won a game!

And he threw himself into the theatre production. He was Puck, and Puck held together the entire performance! Puck was the driving agent of the plotline, and therefore his Puck had to be awesome. He experimented extensively with stage make-up, both No-Maj and wizarding, to try to make himself look as unearthly as possible. He read over his stage directions a million times, then asked Chess to help him find ways to move in a more graceful and fairy-like way, picking up the levitation spell the dancers used (which turned out not to be a levitation spell at all, but a localized air-hardening spell which let them walk on air). He decided to use a more upper-class British accent than his natural, since it sounded more archaic, and little more removed for those that heard him talk every day. He practiced moving, speaking, acting as Puck, a prankster fairy, with every line of his body. He recited his lines a million times over, until the lines were burned into his brain and he was sure he was saying them in his sleep.

Three performances. Three earth-shattering performances, when Archie stood on the stage at the end of the night, a small smirk on his face as he told the audience not to worry, that their play was only an easily forgotten dream. Archie wasn't himself in those moments – he was Puck, and things were so much easier when he was Puck and not himself.

"So, good night unto you all," he said, on the third night, balancing on a tiny bit of hardened air, two feet off the stage, apparently floating. His voice was so carefully smooth, and he wore a sly smirk on his face. He spread his hands, taking in the entire audience, a hundred people or more, and addressed them. "Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends."

The curtain fell, that night, with his mocking bow, and Archie crashed back into himself. It was May, and he had heard nothing from Harry in months, and there were only so many distractions he could create for himself.

The package arrived late in May, when they were in the midst of their final exams. Hermione was nearly ripping her hair out in worry (she wasn't – and even if she was, Archie would just brew her a hair re-growth potion and it would be fine), and Archie was studying with her for the simple lack of anything better to do. He had run out of distractions: no one wanted to see movies in exam season, he had been threatened with a long and drawn-out death if he even considered playing any pranks, the Quidditch season was over, and all extracurriculars had ended. They had picked next year's Director for the theatre troupe (Sabrina James had taken the helm), as well as next year's theme and the Fall production, but no one wanted to talk about it. Even John was studying, spending most of his time holed up in his room and coming out only when he needed someone to walk him through a concept, and Chess had largely disappeared.

Archie opened the small box, labelled Harry Potter in a neat, pristine handwriting he recognized immediately as Harry's. There was a flask of something he recognized as Polyjuice, a small hair that he recognized as Harry's. Oh, good – at least one of them had remembered. It should have been him, he thought guiltily; Harry had had so much to worry about over the last term, and what had he done? He had thrown himself into a million and one distractions, so he didn't have to worry about her, so he didn't have to think about her. He had completely forgotten about the Polyjuice, and home, but in only a week, they'd be home.

In Britain.

He pressed his lips against the mix of feelings that thought stirred in him: some part of it was eagerness, because he wanted to see his family, he did, he wanted to see Dad and Harry and Uncle Remus and Aunt Lily and Uncle James. He wasn't even as enamoured of America as he was before, because America was not perfect, America was in its own way as problematic as Britain. But he still didn't want to go home, not really – he didn't want to leave movies, he didn't want to leave theatre, he didn't want to leave the new world he had discovered for the old. He didn't want to be Arcturus Rigel Black again.

He didn't want to think about how he would explain things to Harry. How would he explain America? How could he explain John, or Chess? How could he explain all the things he had done, with her name, all the things that she would never have done and all the things she didn't know about?

How would he explain his lies?

He shook his head, dismissing the thoughts, and pulled out Polyjuice Potion, which sloshed, uneven and gloopy, in the flask. The hair, in a tiny vial of its own, he pulled out and set beside the flask, on his desk. There was a letter and some newspaper clippings at the bottom, from the Prophet. He stared at them, a moment – then he took a deep breath, and reached with trembling fingers to open the letter, first.

Dear Harry,

Don't worry, I'm fine.

I am writing to let you know ahead of coming home, because I am sure Sirius will have questions for you when I am not around to help you answer them. I am also really sorry – I didn't tell Sirius about the Sickness when it happened, so I had to do some fast explaining when the news got out, but now he thinks you've grown apart. I am so, so sorry about that.

That was true, Archie reflected distantly. If it had been him at Hogwarts, he would have been raising the alarm with news about the Sickness, especially with Dad. But it made no difference – it was what it was, and he would adapt. And anyway, Harry was right – there was a distance between him and Dad, now, a distance created by all the things he had done, all the things that they were doing, that he could never tell Dad. What was one more thing? He would roll with it, the way he always did.

Anyway, about the Sickness. You were right, it wasn't a sickness at all, so much as a constructed curse which blocked us into our minds using something like Legilimency. I was very briefly sick, but since you had warned me about Occlumency, I had some rudimentary skill, so I was able to detect it and I fell into meditation before it actually affected me. I was never fully under, so our secrets are safe. When I was under, I managed to cure the Sickness. I don't fully understand what I did, but the basics of it are this: I created a core-to-core link with the sick person, sent my consciousness and my magic along the link and used it to get into the other person's mindscape, then helped them banish the Sickness until a Master of Mental Arts could break in and cure the Sickness for good. See the article for some details. It's overblown, but the basics are there, and I will explain the rest when I see you. I also received a life debt from the Malfoys for saving their Heir's life, just so you know.

Enclosed are the things we'll need for our switch home – there's only enough for about six hours, but it should be enough. I am looking forward to seeing you.

Rigel

A life debt? Archie wrinkled his nose. What was Harry getting up to?! He reached into the box for the Daily Prophet clipping, skimming over the article – it was as she had said. It was overblown as hell, but good god, he was never going to be able to live up to his own reputation. Curing a disease at eleven would no doubt look great on his Healer's applications, but that wasn't his accomplishment, and he didn't even like the idea of taking Harry's accomplishments as his own, even if she had done them under his name.

But everything was fine. Everything was good, and they were safe. Harry was safe, and for now, that was enough.

Archie was sitting on his trunk, forcing all his school things to fit inside. He had so much more stuff going home than he did coming – No-Maj books, No-Maj clothes, his cherished AIM sweatshirt, packages of refugee claim forms.

At least, his and Harry's trunks were pretty much identical, and he had figured out both the Shrinking and Engorgement Charms, so he'd be able to switch them himself once they made it home. It wasn't that he didn't trust Harry, it really wasn't, and he was sure that Harry wouldn't pry into the depths of his trunk. And even if she did, she probably wouldn't care. But he had things in his trunk that were his, damn it, and he wanted them for the summer.

He wanted his hardcover copy of Cosmos in his room, to remind him of the wonders of space. He wanted his annotated Shakespeare, because he hadn't yet had time to read all the plays, and he wanted to do that too. He wanted to talk as smoothly and as easily about Shakespearean plays as Francis and Neal had last year, when they argued out the spring production. He wanted his AIM sweatshirt at home, with him. And he was sure that the same held true for Harry – her trunk no doubt had extra Potions books or notes, her special brewing kit, her platinum and silver knives and her set of cauldrons. She wouldn't argue, he was sure, if he switched them soon after they got home.

"Hey," he heard John's voice at the door. "Ready to head home?"

"Getting there," Archie replied with a grunt. His trunk just closed.

"Well, don't be too quick about it. I have early birthday presents for you from Chess and I," John replied with a grin, holding up two small packages. "Since you don't want us sending you things in Britain."

Archie tried to frown at him, but it was so hard to frown when there were presents. He loved presents – giving them, getting them, seeing people open them! And they were for him, and John had clearly already run interference with Chess, and that was just so convenient! He wouldn't need to find any excuses for not wanting them, and Hermione already knew to only send him magical things when he was in Britain, on account of embarrassment and nobility (she didn't approve, but Archie knew she wouldn't betray him). "You shouldn't have – my birthday is really closer to September, so it could have been left until then. What did you tell Chess?"

John shrugged, coming into the room and shutting the door behind him. "I thought you would want my present, at least, this summer. I know you have misgivings about going home – your Occlumency is getting better, but I still get occasional thoughts from you. Don't worry about Chess, I just said you had complicated family dynamics and that sending you presents at home would be hard for you. She is very," he paused, thinking, looking for the right word. "Accepting of things, I guess? She doesn't ask questions if she thinks you don't want her to. Anyway, here."

Archie blinked, accepting the two packages. Both were wrapped in blue paper, one with a pink ribbon (which had to be Chess), the other with a sparkly black ribbon. He didn't think he liked the complicated family dynamics explanation (it sounded like a bad thing), but on the other hand – it wasn't wrong, either. He looked them over. "Should I open them?"

"The one with the black ribbon, yeah," John grinned. "That was the point of getting your presents early, you know. As for Chess', you can leave that to your actual birthday if you want, if you have the self-control for that."

Archie scowled good-naturedly at him, and just for that, he put Chess' present at the bottom of his trunk and swore he wouldn't open it until his birthday. He didn't know if he would actually be able to hold out until his birthday in August (that was two whole months away!) but he knew he definitely couldn't if it was right in front of him.

He sat down on his bed with John's present, untying the black ribbon (it was very sparkly – he would keep it and use it for something) and ripping open the blue wrapping paper. A book sat in his lap – Lonely Planet London, 1st Edition, it read, with a picture of a tower on it. Frowning, he cracked it open, seeing shiny pictures of old buildings, maps, lists – lists of different sights, museums, monuments. It was a traveller's guide, he realized – a No-Maj traveller's guide to his own hometown!

"You can still see and be part of the No-Maj world even in Britain," John said, with a softer, gentler, smile. "In case you need to get away from home, for a few hours. You can play tourist – use that American accent you learned, and people will assume that you don't know how to do certain things because you're foreign, not because you're a mage. The book tells you a lot of stuff on customs, so you'll be able to figure out the Underground, get around, and so on. And if you don't know and can't figure it out by watching people, just ask someone and say you came from a really small town in America. The book also gives you a guide to where to find the best theatre and stuff, too."

Archie looked up, slightly open-mouthed as he tried to find the right words to thank him. This was perfect – it was an absolutely perfect present. Even if he couldn't share his new world with anyone, at least going home, now, wouldn't mean leaving behind all the things he had come to love, cutting off all the things that had become as much a part of himself as Healing, as his magic. "Thank you," he said finally, putting the book down to throw himself at John with a hug. "This is really… I'm going to get a lot of use out of this, I know. Thank you."

"Just trying to keep you from going insane over the summer," John replied, patting him awkwardly on the back. "And remember to meditate over the summer, yeah? Your Occlumency still isn't great – I still get thoughts from you sometimes, so keep working at it."

"Yeah, I will," Archie said, letting go, looking John in the eyes and trying to let his sincerity, his genuine gratitude, shine through. "I promise. Have a good summer, John. We'll catch up in September."

"Definitely," John stood up, the soft smile on his face showing that he had received the message, loud and clear. "I have to pack, too – Chess and I are on an early Portkey to San Francisco. Have a good summer, Archie."

When he boarded the plane to Britain that day, he wasn't happy, but he wasn't unhappy, either. He was resigned. He was going back, and he would get to see Harry, his Dad, the rest of his family. He was going back, to a place where the weight of the secrets he kept were, if anything, heavier than when he was away. He was going home, to the place where he had grown up, but where he wasn't sure he fit anymore. But he was going home, to the people he loved, and he had a book in his trunk that would let him escape, and even if he couldn't share his experiences, his hobbies, his life, with anyone, it was better than nothing.

It was what it was, and what it was had to be enough.

Chapter Text

The first few days in Britain were … hard.

Their flight was a little later, touching down just after seven at night. He said his goodbyes to Hermione quickly, promising to meet up with her later that summer, downed some Polyjuice and checked himself over in the washroom, counting his fingers, toes, and so on. Seeing Harry's body, even on him, looking (feeling) safe and sound was always a relief – she always said she was fine, but with Harry, one never knew.

He found Aunt Lily and Uncle James, close to the exits, settling himself into Harry's more reserved persona. "Mum, Dad."

"Harry!" Aunt Lily beamed, her face lighting up. She leaned down to hug him, and Archie turned next to Uncle James for the same. "How are you? How was AIM? Did you have a good second term?"

"It was fine," Archie replied, shrugging a little, careful to slow the pace of his speech as he turned and led the way, his pace steady, out of the airport. His late flight messed up the timing – they would be eating dinner with Dad and Harry tonight, he was sure, but past seven? They would be eating soon, and he and Harry would have nearly no time at all to catch up. He needed to either hurry things to see her within the hour, or they would need to delay things for an extra hour after that. Of the two, the first was less suspicious. "It was very nice to spend the winter outside of the cold."

"What did you do, this term?" Uncle James prodded, catching up easily. "Did you go out for Quidditch? And what's your hurry? I know it's late, but Sirius and Archie will wait for us before they eat, especially tonight."

Archie stopped, smiling a tiny smile of apology. Argh. "Sorry. Just eager to see Archie, that's all – I didn't like what I heard from Hogwarts this term. As for what I did, Healing is challenging, so a lot of my time was spent studying, along with my independent Potions studies. I didn't go out for Quidditch, no."

"How did AIM do in Quidditch?" Aunt Lily asked, her eyes bright with mischief. "Have they won the League yet?"

Archie laughed, softly, the way Harry would laugh. "No. Bottom of the league, again. We did win against Cascadia, so that's something."

Aunt Lily sighed, a mixed expression of amusement and regret on her face. "Well, I can't say I expected different."

Uncle James looked between them, a tad suspicious. "What am I missing, here?"

Archie exchanged a look with Aunt Lily, who laughed. "Nothing, really," he shrugged, letting only a hint of amusement cross his face. "Only that AIM has never won the Quidditch League – this is the fifth year in a row that they ended at the bottom. But we win the Quodpot League regularly."

Archie hid his smile at the look of horror passed over Uncle James' face. "You can't betray me for Quodpot, Harry! You should try out next year, improve the AIM ranking – you'd make AIM history!"

"Hmm," Archie hummed, a thoughtful noise as they crossed the barrier into Muggle London, and he looked out over a busy concourse, his eyes catching on the brightly coloured, versatile Muggle luggage towed around by so many people. It was a beautiful sight, a Muggle aeroport. But he had to leave, and he had to do it fast. "Maybe. Between Healing and my independent Potions studies, though, I'm very busy."

They went straight to Grimmauld Place, thankfully, and Archie slid into his bedroom, where Harry was waiting, reading a Healing textbook, just a minute before his Polyjuice wore off. He shut the door behind him and collapsed against the chest of drawers beside it, shoving it into place in front of the door as the first of the burning, ripping, tearing changes started.

"Archie!" Harry looked up, wearing his face and body, an expression of mild relief on her face. Being Harry, that meant that she was very relieved that he had arrived.

"Hi," he gasped, bending over as he waited out the change. "I cut it close – we have no time. They want us down for dinner, as soon as possible."

"Yes, I know," she replied, relaxing on his bed and sighing a little in relief. "I'm glad you're here, Arch. I didn't factor in enough Polyjuice for myself and was on my last dose – I won't make that mistake again. I have five minutes left."

"Great," Archie said, through gritted teeth, as the last painful traces of Polyjuice wore off. He sighed, shook his limbs out and plopped himself down on his bed. They didn't have time for a thorough debrief – he would have to wing it. They would have to wing it."We probably only have five minutes before they start calling for us. Give me as much as you can – I told Uncle James that most of what I did was in my letters, implied I was busy with Healing and independent Potions studies, and talked about how AIM was last in the Quidditch league again. What do I need to know from your end?"

Harry nodded, launching into a very short description of the Sickness – not what she had actually done, just the information that he would need to sell to their families. Because it would be him, selling the story; Harry wasn't talkative, so they would be looking to him, to Archie, the known chatterbox, for conversation.

When they were called down for dinner, mere seconds after Harry had finished transforming back and they switched clothes, Archie still didn't know enough. He only knew the barest facts, and what Harry had written to him, and that would have to be enough. Luckily for them both, no one cared to discuss the darker subjects on their first night home, and Archie covered it with spirited, enthusiastic comments about how much he liked the food, how much he missed being home, how much he had missed everyone. But he didn't feel either spirited or enthusiastic, and there was only so much energy he could pull out of memories, out of thin air, before he started feeling the pressure, the drain of a self-imposed emotion.

He didn't feel spirited. He didn't feel enthusiastic, he didn't feel energetic. He looked around, and the world was faded, pulled into dim shades of black and grey, the delicious food tasting bland in his mouth. He was here, he was home, and as good as it was to see his family, to see Harry, he was in Britain, and that weighed. Even if America wasn't perfect, it weighed. Shake it off, he ordered himself. This is a performance, as much as any other, and the show must go on.

Harry noticed, catching the edge of it in one brief glance, and seamlessly stepped in to deflect the conversation from him by asking about the British Quidditch League rankings.

He begged a sleepover, that night – he hadn't seen Harry in months! She had been so far away, in America, and her plane had come in so late, they needed to catch up. Harry helped, wryly noting that, really, it was Archie who had been in danger, but she, too, would appreciate the chance to make sure he was okay. Their parents agreed, as Archie knew they would.

"All right," he said, curling up on his bed in his pyjamas. It was past eleven (if only just), and he was exhausted from dinner and the several, he thought, phenomenal feats of improv he had done. His voice was a little tired, and Harry threw him a worried look. He smiled, a weak smile that he hoped spoke mostly to his tiredness. "Spill, Harry. I want everything, everything I'm supposed to know, and probably more than that, too. I am glad to see you're okay – I worried about you, you Potions-obsessed nerd."

Harry smiled, a touch impish. "Everything, Archie? Are you really sure you want to know everything?"

Archie mock-glared at her. "Everything, cuz."

She laughed, softly, but started from her return to school, while Archie listened, memorizing useful details here and there, little bits of true information that he could draw on at need while he improvised scenes with his Dad. She told him how she had been warned about the Marriage Law by, of all people, Aldon Rosier and Edmund Rookwood (perhaps they were not so conservative after all?), about the nefarious deal that she had struck with Flint (he did not like the sound of a Vow of Undisclosed Debt, but she had deemed it necessary and agreed – he wished they could have talked about it first!), about her extra Potions studies (which seemed to be getting almost frightening in complexity).

She talked about her friends, about Pansy and Draco, about Blaise, Theo, Millicent, and Archie listened, drawing out stories, anecdotes, memorizing the details he would need to invent more, believable, anecdotes if he needed them later. Pansy was a mixture of calculating and sweet, and she wanted to learn to bake like her grandmother; she could be trusted to come up with the most cutting insults, but she wouldn't hurt a fly. Draco could be pompous and self-important, but he had an eagerness to him, a desire to impress, a generosity that made him human and relatable. Millicent Bulstrode was intelligent, a little awkward, not as cutting as the other Slytherin girls, with a steady loyalty that had her throwing Hair Removal potion at Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass when they made fun of her friend who had fallen ill. Theodore Nott was laid back, the joker of the crowd, the one who smoothed the waters when they needed smoothing, the one who broke tension in the group when it grew to be too much, the one who stopped arguments before they started. Blaise Zabini was more reserved, clever, academic, and he often knew more than he let on. That last one was a little concerning, but since Harry, paranoid Harry who double and triple checked everything, wasn't worried about him, Archie didn't worry, either. With her descriptions, her anecdotes, Archie built up characters in his mind, fitting them into the context of his Rigel, at school. Pansy would say this, Draco would say that, and it was believable, because it was consistent with their characters – even if his stories never happened.

She talked about the Sickness – she talked about being in Snape's office when one of the early cases were brought in, she talked about offering to brew first the Sweat Inducers for the Hospital Wing. Then, she talked about being exempted from her classes so she could brew, first, Aurora's Breath, then Snowhit Potion, when Master Snape had to leave to search for ingredients. She talked about Draco falling ill, the slight catch in her voice telling Archie all he needed to know in terms of their friendship, then she talked about how, since they had run out of ginseng, she couldn't make him the potions he needed to survive. Then she talked about falling ill herself, about connecting her core to Draco's, about throwing herself along the connection to enter his mindscape (what?) and throwing enough magic around to clear it of the Sickness enough to save his life.

It sounded nothing like any sort of illness Archie had ever heard about, and he listened as she lowered her voice (which was getting dry and raspy with how long she had been talking) and told him about her suspicions, that Lord Riddle had thrown the Sickness at Hogwarts, to weaken Dumbledore's position. She told him about how, when Draco had fallen ill, the Malfoys had an interview, a planned article in the Daily Prophet, exposing the whole mess, which was uncharacteristic for a Dark family, since it showed their weaknesses. Finally, she told him, in hushed tones, about the very odd conversations she had had with Edmund Rookwood, Aldon Rosier, Alesana Selwyn and Flint after the article came out, in which they had confirmed that the Marriage Law plans were shelved until further notice as a result. Archie frowned, nodding and humming in all the right places, making mental notes along the way.

Wizarding Britain was insane. There was no other word for it. Using children as a bargaining chip in a play for politics that he hated anyway? Using sickness as a weapon? That was disgusting – he had no words for that. It was reprehensible, indefensible. It was evil.

"Anyway, Arch," Harry said, sighing heavily, at the end of her recital, rubbing her eyes as she rolled over to look at him. It was late – nearly gone two in the morning, and they had long since tucked themselves into his giant, king-sized, bed, under his still-new, emerald green covers. "That's about the sum of it. And I owe you an apology – I know I said it in my letter, but I'm so, so sorry, about screwing up your relationship with your dad. I know how sensitive you and Uncle Sirius are about any kind of sickness, I should have known how uncharacteristic it would have been for you not to write home about it. I screwed up, Arch. In my defense, I was worried he would come to Hogwarts to pull you out, if I did."

Archie rolled over in bed, turning to face her. She was tired, too. He tugged at an extra pillow, wrapping his arms around it. "He probably would have," he agreed, his voice quiet, even if he wasn't the one who had been talking for most of the last few hours. "I understand, Harry. But you have to understand, you can't do that. You have to write to my Dad more, a lot more. It's just not believable if I don't write to him for months at a time, because I wouldn't do that, you know?"

"I know, Arch," he heard her say, as she curled up, a little pill bug, a little closer to him. He was one of the few people in the world that Harry trusted without reserve, with none of her usual reticence. He didn't even think her own parents received that level of trust. "I screwed up. I realized it as soon as I got the letter from Uncle Sirius – I'm so, so sorry. I can't just pretend to be you in front of Uncle Sirius, I have to pretend to be you to him the entire time I'm at Hogwarts and I … I got carried away, being myself, being Rigel. I forgot, Arch. I'm so sorry, you have no idea."

"You can't forget again, Harry," Archie shook his head, and even if he knew she couldn't see him doing it in the darkness, he knew she felt it. "You have to write to him, partly because he expects it of me, but mostly because the more you tell him of unimportant things, the less he'll look for the things you're hiding."

He heard her laugh, slightly, shifting. "The advantages of being a chatterbox?"

"The very same," Archie smiled at the shape of her head. "Write about your classes, about the stuff you and your friends do, about pranks you're pulling or that the Weasleys are playing, complain about Quidditch, but you have to write to him next year. At least once every two weeks. Something exciting and safe needs to happen at Hogwarts every two weeks, right? And send me a copy of whatever you write, too, so at least I know you're alive and I can pretend like we aren't in mountains of trouble."

Another soft laugh. "I promise, Arch. Every two weeks, like clockwork. It won't happen again, I swear. I'll even write with your handwriting, since I finally got the hang of the handwriting charm."

"Then it's fine." Archie squirmed over on his bed to her, wrapping her in a hug. She smelled of old books, her cauldron, a musty scent that was indelibly printed in his mind as Harry. She was his sister, his twin in every way that mattered, and she let him hug her like she permitted no one else. She wasn't stiff when he hugged her, she was soft, and she hugged him back, a solid, warm embrace exactly the way that she knew Archie liked his hugs, exactly the way she had held him after Mum died, when things were too much. "I'll smooth things over with Dad. Don't worry about it."

"Thanks, Archie." He felt her smile into his shoulder. "It won't happen again. So – how was AIM? What have you been doing for the last five months?"

Archie's smile wavered. What had he done, while Harry was busy saving lives with her cauldron?

He had lost the ruse, to John. He hadn't sworn his friend to secrecy, and instead he had given him the pieces he didn't already know without a fight, because he needed the support, he needed a friend who knew, he needed help. He had learned a bit of Occlumency, enough to know when someone attacked him mentally, but nothing farther. He had done useless research, he had gotten a set of last-resort-only refugee claim forms from John's sister, forms which might not even work. Those were hiding at the bottom of his trunk, at the foot of his bed, but he didn't want to mention anything about them to her – there was no guarantee they would work, and the cost of using them was so high. It wasn't important right now.

What had Archie done, that last term? He had escaped. He had thrown himself into his studies, into his friends, into pranking his schoolmates. He had distracted himself with movies, with Quidditch, with theatre. He had, honestly, had a blast. And meanwhile, Harry was at Hogwarts, taking his place, standing against a curse thrown at them by Lord Riddle and the SOW Party, living under what sounded like interminable fear when no one knew what was happening, doing what she could to save lives and cure the Sickness.

It was late – very late. And no one would ask her anything anytime soon, if ever, and whatever Harry would have been doing at AIM was so different than what Archie had done.

"Nothing important," Archie found himself saying. "It's late, and I'm really tired from travelling. I'll tell you later?"

Harry shifted beside him, and Archie didn't need to see her face to know that she was sending him a worried glance. "Are you sure, Archie? I can stay awake."

"Yeah," Archie replied, faking a wide yawn. "It's not important. Another time."

He rolled over, away from her, shut his eyes and he worried.

The next morning, he saw Harry off to Potter Place, with her trunk. She had been delighted when he showed off both the Shrinking and Engorgement Charms he had learned, breathing a sigh of relief that she wouldn't need to wait to have her favourite Potions knife set, tools and cauldrons buried in her trunk, moving them over to her house surreptitiously over a few days. He bet she planned on diving back into her Potions lab later that day – from the sounds of it, Harry had spent most of the last term in a Potions lab, but with Harry, there was no such thing as too much Potions.

He smiled and waved off Uncle James and Aunt Lily's invitations to stay for breakfast, lying through his teeth about wanting to eat with Dad. No, yesterday afternoon hadn't been enough time – he had been so tired from the train ride home that he had gone to his room and napped until Harry showed up.

He took a second, in front of the Floo, to settle himself into his idea of how Rigel Black would act, how Rigel Black would approach things, how Rigel Black would reason things. He wasn't going to be Archie Black when he returned: he would be Rigel Black, who had just come home from Hogwarts, home from months of living under a dark cloud of fear as an unknown malady had struck his friends down. And he needed to go home and justify why he hadn't told Dad about it until everything was over.

He steeled himself and threw Floo on the fire.

"I'm back!" he yelled, stepping from the fireplace into the warm and friendly kitchen at Grimmauld Place. He took a second to check himself over, brush off the extra soot. He was in Muggle clothes, his Muggle clothes that he had bought in America. No sweatshirt, but jeans more to his style than anything he would find in Diagon Alley, a soft, plain t-shirt. Small rebellions, right? No one would notice.

"No need to yell, Arch," Dad said, looking up from the Daily Prophet with an amused look. He was sitting at the kitchen table, already, a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. Coffee, yes, coffee would be a good idea, Archie agreed silently. Black, though, because that was how Rigel took his coffee. "I'm right here."

"I didn't see you there," Archie lied blithely with a smirk, heading for coffeepot. He nodded at the newspaper, which Dad had folded on the table. "Anything interesting, or straight to the fire?"

"Straight to the fire," Dad snorted, and promptly threw the paper into the fireplace to burn later. "Nothing important. Sit down, Arch – we need to talk."

Archie sighed, a long, heavy sigh. That wasn't even fake – he really didn't want to have this conversation. Even if he wasn't going to have to improv the entire thing, he wouldn't have wanted to have this conversation. He settled himself in, across from Dad, his steaming mug in his hands.

"Look, Arch," Dad said, his start awkward. "I know you didn't want to go to Hogwarts."

"I didn't," Archie agreed, tilting his head up in thought. "AIM has a very good Healing curriculum, Dad – it's the best school in the world for Healing. You can finish there in seven years with your Healer's Certification. But Harry's in the Healing track, and I'm learning from her – I have copies of all her notes and everything. It's fine, Dad."

"You said you loved Hogwarts yesterday, that it was better than anything you could have imagined."

Had Harry said that? Archie winced internally. Yes, and, he reminded himself. The cardinal rule of improv.

"Yes, I did, and I wasn't lying, either." He flashed a smile – not a blinding one, that would be too suspicious. Not a small one, that would be too secretive. A joking one, an impish one, of medium wattage. "Hogwarts is great! I was just … you know, yesterday's excitement made us all forget about it, but we did just come out of some pretty grim circumstances."

"Why don't we talk about those circumstances, Archie?" Dad asked, his face uncommonly serious. "It's… well, I don't want to play the overprotective dad here, but after your mother passed away, I thought we had an understanding. We talk, Archie, we communicate! You've never hidden things from me before, especially nothing like this. But since you went to Hogwarts, you haven't been writing home – you know Harry writes home every week, right? Yet I only get four letters from you all term, and I find out at the end, with everyone else, that there's a bloody epidemic at the school. It's not like you, Archie. I hate to think that we've grown apart."

"We haven't, Dad," Archie rushed to say, looking away. "It's just…"

He sighed. What could he say? The reality was that this wasn't characteristic of him, he never would have hidden something like this from Dad, that was all Harry. If it were him, he would have written – he would have written home at least as often as he wrote to Harry's parents, at AIM. Probably more. There were no good answers to this, so he would have to throw it all at the wall and see what stuck. He liked AIM, and Harry loved Hogwarts, and this was something he had to get through, one way or another.

"Just what, Archie?"

Archie sighed, again, bought a bit of time by taking a sip of his coffee. Black, bitter. This was good stuff – he could taste hints of toffee, dark chocolate. He wished he could enjoy it without having this conversation. "Can I start from the beginning? Of the Sickness, I mean."

Dad leaned back in his chair. "By all means. I'm just trying to understand, Arch."

Archie smiled, a little weakly as he took another gulp of coffee. Full steam ahead. "To be honest, so am I, a little."

He threw himself into what Harry had explained, last night, about the Sickness. He hadn't lived it, but for this conversation, he pulled that story, her experiences, around himself like a cloak. He was Rigel Black, and he had lived it, so he would know how it happened, how it felt.

"So," he started, thinking through his words carefully. He spoke slower than usual, almost Harry's speed, thoughtful. "At first, no one really knew what was happening, least of all in Slytherin House. It was the Hufflepuffs that started getting sick, first, and half of them and a third of the Ravenclaws and a few Gryffindors were gone before anyone really started getting worried. That was when they put in the Quarantine, but honestly, in the early days, it seemed like everything was under control. Everyone went to the Hospital Wing, and they kept a lot from the students. We had no idea that it was as serious as it was, none of my friends were worried at all, and at the time, I just didn't want to worry you. How would that look, you know? I'd write to you, and it would turn out to be a bunch of bad colds or something, and all my friends would laugh at me!"

He tried for a grin, but it came out more like a grimace. Dad was watching him, a thoughtful look on his face. "Go on."

Archie took a deep breath. "Anyway. After a few weeks – and I'm ashamed it took me a few weeks to notice, but none of my friends had gotten sick, and Slytherin House was the last to be affected. I didn't realize until how many people were falling sick at first. But after a few weeks, I realized that people weren't coming back, that people were going to the Hospital Wing and they weren't coming back, and I started to get worried. I would have written then – I should have written then – but still none of my friends were worried. I thought that was a little weird, and I started, you know, asking some questions."

He took a few seconds to collect his thoughts, taking a long sip of his coffee. Here was the risky part – why didn't he write when his friends started getting sick? Millicent and Theo went first, then Draco. Archie would have absolutely written then, if he hadn't before. There was only so far that my friends weren't worried, so I didn't worry either would take him, especially when they started getting sick. No, if he didn't write to Dad then, it was because something had happened. Someone said something, someone did something, but something happened that stopped Archie (or, Rigel Black, anyway – Archie's version of Rigel Black) from writing.

This was where the characters came in. This was where Pansy and Draco and Rigel's friends came in, this was where he had to create something that people would believe, even if it never actually happened. Who was good for this? Which of Harry's friends would do something like this? Who was she closest to, who would pull Rigel aside and tell him to stop looking, who would Rigel have believed enough not to raise the alarm? And why?

He stared into his cup of coffee. "Dad, can you keep a secret?"

He heard the rustle of moment across from him. "Of course, Archie. Always."

"Draco told me not to worry. He said that it wasn't of any concern, that everyone would be fine, not to look into it anymore." He raised his mug again and drank deeply from it. "You can't tell anyone that I told you that, Dad. No one. Draco wasn't supposed to tell me."

He looked up, and Dad had a very serious look on his face. "Are you saying that you knew the SOW Party was behind it? This is… well, this is a very serious accusation, Archie. I should be telling Dumbledore."

"I'm saying only what Draco told me, Dad," Archie looked up, treading very carefully, feeling his heart thud a heavy beat as he toed the line. "It's nothing that Professor Dumbledore doesn't know anyway – nothing that no one who followed the Prophet doesn't already know. Didn't you find it odd, that the night after the Malfoy Heir got sick, Lord Malfoy is in the Prophet breaking the news? Sounding, honestly, much less concerned than he should have been?"

"I did find it odd," Dad confirmed after a short pause, leaning forward at their table. "I suppose it's nothing but confirmation but … confirmation means something, Archie."

"You can't tell anyone, Dad," Archie said, his voice sharp. "Draco trusted me, and if it got out, they would know who leaked it. I'm only telling you, so you understand why I didn't write and tell you anything. See it from my perspective, Dad – Draco trusted me and told me that in confidence, and I didn't want to betray that. I didn't want to get him in any trouble, because it would be so obvious who had leaked it, and I wanted to look into it myself, see if I could get anything a little more concrete before I wrote to you. I'm sorry for that – I really believed that they had it under control, that everyone was going to be fine. I didn't realize how dangerous it was. I just wanted a way to get evidence of what was happening that didn't involve Draco or my friends."

He sighed, looking away. Dad was leaning back, again, looking up, a good sign. That meant that he wasn't going to run off to report to Dumbledore or anything, that meant he was thinking. Just a few more steps. A few more gut-wrenching steps. "Dad, I don't want to get Draco in trouble. And Draco … I want to stay friends with Draco. He's …"

He laughed, his laugh ringing a little off, trying to sum up in a few words why Harry liked Draco, when he had never met him, when, if he ever met the boy, he wasn't sure that he would like him at all. "He's pompous and self-important, but he can also be really generous. He always says that you'll repay the favour later, he always grumbles about it, but he never asks for it, he always just gives of himself, you know? Even this – he wasn't supposed to tell me, but he knew I was worried, and so he told me just enough not to worry. I don't want to lose that friendship, Dad, and you can't deny that it might be useful, later, to know what the Party is thinking about, right?"

Dad barked a laugh, half-amused and half-sad. "I suppose that's true, but a little harsh, from you, isn't it, Arch?"

"Slytherin House," Archie quirked a small smile. Equally sad, but he didn't have the privilege of being able to show it. "I wouldn't be surprised if everyone was reporting on me, too."

"No, you're right, Arch," Dad blew out a breath, looking away. "I remember. Your uncle Regulus was a Slytherin, too, as was almost everyone in our family. It's just hard hearing you go through the same thing. I won't say anything, and it does explain a lot."

Archie nodded, privately relieved – Dad had bought it. He ignored the muted sense of sorrow, of disappointment, that came with it. There was no other option. "After that, well, you can guess. Draco got sick, but he was allergic to one of the ingredients in the maintenance potions that he needed, so he nearly died. I got involved, looking for another substitution for that ingredient, and then, well, you know what happened then." He shrugged.

"Then you almost got sick, and in the process, you found a cure for it," Dad finished for him.

"Yes." Archie nodded again, a very final sort of nod. That was the sum of it – he could see from Dad's body language, the thoughtful expression on his face, that he understood the explanation. And that hurt – it was strange, because it shouldn't have hurt, not physically, but it did.

It was ironic, wasn't it, that in explaining to Dad how he and Dad hadn't grown apart at all, Archie understood exactly how much they had actually grown apart? Archie would never have held something like this from Dad, and Dad should have been able to see through him. And yet, he hadn't, he didn't. It was so simple, so easy, to mislead him.

His chest hurt. Lying to Dad was shit, but he had no choice. Not if he wanted to stay at AIM, and Harry loved Hogwarts. "Anyway. It won't happen again, Dad. I promise."

Dad studied him for a few minutes, in silence, while Archie drank his coffee, which was getting cold. Cold coffee was gross – he couldn't taste the notes of toffee, caramel, chocolate anymore. He had forgotten how bad hot drinks tasted once they got cold – they never worried about it at AIM. First, because Hermione had something called a thermos which kept her tea hot for hours at a time, and second, because Chess had a useful little runic charm to reheat her tea every time it got a little colder than she wanted. His drinks were always exactly as hot as he wanted them to be.

"It better not, Arch," Dad said, finally, his grey eyes serious. "I understand, but these things are important – you cannot hide something like this again. I don't care if you take out names, I don't care if you don't tell me how you know things, but you have to talk to me about things like this. Especially if they involve the SOW Party."

"I know, Dad." Archie laughed, adding a bitter note as he finished off his mug, his heart aching. "I definitely know not to trust the SOW Party when they tell me that things are under control, at any rate. It won't happen again."

Another moment of silence, then Dad sighed and nodded. "All right, Archie. Now, I'd like to say that all the Sirius stuff is out of the way and we can just catch up, but unfortunately, there is something else I'd like to discuss with you."

Archie stared at his Dad for a moment, then he shoved himself away from the table and reached for the coffeepot. "I'm going to need more coffee for this, aren't I?"

"Pour me another mug, too," Dad grimaced, holding out his mug, and Archie topped him off as well. "I don't want to have this conversation with you, either. You remember what I wrote you about the Marriage Law, right?"

"Of course," Archie said, his voice grim, sitting back down with a full cup of thankfully hot coffee. "I thought that it was tabled?"

"Only tabled, Arch." Dad shook his head, his brows furrowing. "Formally, for revisions. We have our eye on it, James and I, and the revisions they're proposing are … well, if anything, the ideas they're throwing around are even more extreme. They'll wait for a moment when the political winds are behind them, again, and they'll try to pass it again. The changes they're talking about include clauses preventing halfbloods from turning down offers of marriage from a pureblood, and further restrictions on jobs, housing, insurance, things like that. They're trying to make the changes more palatable by including benefits for halfbloods who are engaged to or married to purebloods – halfbloods who are engaged to or married to purebloods will have all the rights and benefits of being a pureblood."

Archie felt a sick, angry sense ignite in his belly. What did that even mean, all the rights and benefits of being a pureblood? Coming from America, where there was simply no distinction, it wasn't something that rested as a simple fact of life for him anymore. There were other ways! There shouldn't be any rights and benefits exclusive to pureblood status – none more than for any other person. It was insulting to everyone, including purebloods, because it implied that purebloods could not compete for these same things if everything was equal. Archie would deserve a job as a Healer because he worked for it, because he studied for it, not because he was a pureblood who happened to have some skill in Healing.

All people should be equal, regardless of blood status. All people should have the same opportunities, to work for something and to earn their way. And bringing marriage into it, just like bringing children into it, that was… he had no words.

"We're never going to vote for that," Archie said, setting his mug down with a hard thud. "The Black seat will vote for that over my dead body."

Dad grinned, suddenly, a flash of white. "Of course not, Archie. Neither will the Potters, or the Dumbledores. The Shacklebolts are generally Neutral, but they don't hold with blood-discrimination and they have a few non-pureblood branches they'll be inclined to protect. Shafiq, too, I think we can count on, and most of the Scottish seats, but… there are seats that can be pressured. The Longbottoms, for example – it's distasteful to them personally, but this doesn't actively harm them or their interests, and they've been known to change their position for their own protection before – we'll have to count on Lily's advocacy with Alice swaying them to take the risks. For now, it's fine, but you know how the tides can change. That's why… James approached me."

Archie's mouth firmed into a hard line. He could see where this was going, and he didn't like it. Not at all. "You want to marry me to Harry. Dad, you promised me never – you promised me that you would never set an arranged marriage for me!"

"Don't misunderstand me, Archie," Dad cut in, while Archie stayed, with a bit of effort, calm. It wasn't like he hadn't been thinking about it already in America, it wasn't like he hadn't already offered, even if it was in a completely understated way, despite John's objections. But there was a difference between him choosing to do it, even if he had been corralled to it, and having the matter arranged for him. But Rigel wouldn't panic about this. Rigel was friends with all the people for whom arranged marriages were just a reality. Rigel would be used to this as a possibility. "James and I are not thinking about marrying the two of you to each other – not unless you want to, of course, though I don't think you do?"

"She's my sister, Dad, in every way that matters," Archie said bluntly, sitting back in his chair. "What do you think? The Blacks have never been incestuous."

"Well, about that…" Dad smirked, a glimmer of amusement. "The Blacks are mad, Archie. Of course, we've engaged in incest – multiple times, as it happens. Usually with first cousins. Technically, Harry is your … third cousin."

"Sister," Archie emphasized again, deadpan. It wasn't funny, not at all. "Twin sister. If you're not planning on marrying me to her, what are you and Uncle James thinking?"

Dad steadied himself with a gulp of his coffee. "An engagement only, Archie – with no intention of proceeding. There will be a clause for unsuitability so the two of you can break it at seventeen, of course, but no earlier. All this will do is protect Harry, until she turns seventeen, and after that, we'll go from there. With luck, we'll have found a more permanent way to kill the legislation; if not, no one is going to ask you to follow through, Archie. We'll kill the legislation, or Harry will find someone she wants to marry for real, or if you want to marry someone else before either of those two happens, we'll figure it out."

Archie crossed his arms over his chest, taking his time to think it over. John would kill him if he said yes, and Hermione would pitch a fit. He should not have been asked to do this, they would say, in their varying ways. He was not a tool, he was not a shield, he should not be used in this way. Relationships were personal, engagements were personal. It was wrong. John would say it was stupid, and he would write his many connections, looking for ways out for him. Hermione would rage about how there had to be something that could be done, how with enough advocacy, they would be able to fix things, fix Britain, fix the world. He should say no, they would tell him. Absolutely not, no, this was stupid.

Chess, on the other hand, would tilt her head a little and say nothing. She didn't second-guess people or their decisions, she didn't challenge people, though she would defend her opinion if challenged. Chess simply accepted. Sometimes, usually, in fact, that bothered him – she rarely volunteered what she was thinking, and for all he knew, she privately thought he was a fool. But in this case, thinking about her unquestioning acceptance was almost comforting – it was far easier than imagining John, or Hermione, and their reactions to what he was thinking.

This was Wizarding Britain, and there were things he had to do, to protect his family, including Harry. No, especially Harry – his best friend, his confidante, his sister in every way that mattered, the one who had risked her soul to go to Hogwarts. A halfblood, and she already did so much, and it was only fair that Archie make a few sacrifices, too. It was only an engagement, and it would only hold until he was seventeen. He couldn't marry anyone until he was seventeen, anyway. It was nothing. The ask was so small, and he had a responsibility, even if he didn't like it.

And he didn't like it.

"Swear to me, Dad," he said, finally, leaning forward. He hated being forced. "Swear to me that you'll let me break it when I'm seventeen, whether or not Harry has found someone she wants to marry, if I choose to do that. No questions asked."

"I swear it, Archie." Dad's response was immediate. "Do you want me to swear formally?"

Archie shook his head, just as quickly. He had Dad's word, and that meant as much to him as a formal vow. He didn't need it to be enforced through a magical vow – the simple fact that Dad was willing to swear it to that standard told him all he needed to know. "No, that's enough. I'll do it."

Dad smiled, a wide smile that was just a little sad at the same time. "Thank you, Archie," he said, reaching over to grip him on the shoulder. "I know it's a lot to ask."

"What else is family for, right?" Archie smiled, a little fake. He wanted to go out, he wanted to escape, but he didn't know where to go, yet. He had skimmed the travel guide John had given him, some of the more important information about taking buses and the Underground, to get around. But the book itself, planning an adventure, could be its own escape – at least for the afternoon. "I'm going to go read for a bit in my room, if that's all right?"

"You don't want breakfast?" Dad stood, heading to the stove. "I'll make your favourites – eggs, bacon, toast, everything."

"Maybe in a bit," Archie shook his head. "I'm … not really hungry right now."

A week later, on Dad's birthday, they approached Harry with the fake engagement idea. She wasn't thrilled with it – who could be? It was a hammer of a solution, a temporary solution, and it wasn't pretty. But she smiled, and she thanked him, and Archie smiled and cracked a joke and pretended like his heart wasn't crushed when Harry turned to look at him, to look at Dad, to look at Aunt Lily and Uncle James and Uncle Remus.

"Thank you," she said, the crinkle around her eyes showing her genuine thanks, her genuine happiness. "This engagement will be enough to make sure I can get a job."

She didn't know. She didn't know anything about the outside world, she didn't know how good things could be, should be, with the blood purity laws out of the way. Harry, someone as brilliant as Harry, should never have had to have a fake engagement to make sure she could work. It was stupid, stupid, stupid, and it was garbage, and he smiled anyway because as Rigel, he wouldn't have known any better either.

Archie's first step into Muggle London was a breath of fresh air, after having been underwater for hours and hours. His face broke the surface, and he felt the sun, he felt the wind, he smelled wet rain in the air, the aftereffects of a morning shower. Dad had gone to St. Mungo's that day to volunteer, and Archie had mentioned, offhand, that he was going to go to Diagon Alley for a bit and not to worry if he wasn't home when he came back. That wasn't unusual, so Dad shrugged, told him to take his emergency portkey, and that was that.

It was warm out, but it was only June, and the recent rain had blasted the heat away, at least temporarily. He had gone first to Diagon Alley, to convert some of his allowance into pounds sterling, then headed out of the Leaky Cauldron – a study of the maps showed that it was far more convenient to head out that way, for where he planned on exploring.

The West End – home to most of London's theatre companies. Home to numerous Muggle bookshops, many of them right outside the Leaky Cauldron's doors, on Charing Cross Road. Home to the British Museum, to Covent Garden, to Trafalgar Square, the Muggle Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey.

He took his first step out of the Leaky Cauldron's doors, finding himself on narrow street, only wide enough for two cars side by side. The sidewalk was crowded, and he was buffeted by crowds of tourists, of shoppers – he had to take a step back, in front of the grimy window of the Leaky Cauldron, watching as eyes gravitated, automatically, from the department store on one side to the records store on the other.

He looked down the street – this was Charing Cross Road, and his guidebook said that it was known for its bookshops. There were used bookshops, antique bookshops, specialty bookshops, lining both sides of the street: Foyles, Murder One, Any Amount of Books. A slow smile spread itself across his face, a swelling sense of discovery stretching through him. It was here – everything was here! He might not be able to share it with anyone (or, not yet, at least – Harry had seemingly disappeared into the maw of her lab), but here it was, the Muggle world, where he could explore Muggle books to his heart's content.

He wandered down the street, joining the steady river of people moving down the sidewalk, fitting in perfectly fine in his t-shirt, his jeans, a messenger bag thrown over his shoulder. He didn't have any specific plans for the day, this was just for him to get a feeling for the Muggle world. He wanted to find the Prince Charles Cinema, apparently Central London's cheapest movie theatre, which also put on mini-festivals, classics, movie marathons, singalong screenings of the most famous movies or musicals. Maybe they would have a schedule for him to take with him, so he would know what to come back and see later? And he would stop at every theatre he saw, picking up what shows they were putting on, maybe he would wander through and look into the shops along Covent Garden, and on the way back he would poke through a few bookshops. He had a pocketful of Muggle money, enough for lunch, a movie, a few books.

The colours, the smells of the Muggle world! He ventured down Charing Cross Road, passing bookshops, music shops, pubs, coffee shops, restaurants. He passed a fine tailor, it looked like, which made very sharp looking Muggle suits, better than anything he could find in Diagon Alley. If he ever needed a Muggle suit, and he was sure he would one day, then he would be going there, for sure. A car whipped past him, black (a black cab, a taxi!), and threw a sheet of water on the passersby – half of the people around him gasped, shrieked, a couple swore, but Archie laughed in delight even as he tried, fruitlessly, to wipe the excess water off himself. He was in the Muggle world, and everything was new, shiny, bright, and nothing could depress him today!

He strode down the street, looking at everything, looking around everywhere, until he spotted a sign, on a big, blocky, off-white building. There was a red circle, and blue line, reading a single word: Underground. Smaller letters below told him that this was Leicester Square Station, which meant that, to his right, he should be able to find a small road heading to Leicester Square, around which there would be the cinema. He followed the crowds, finding a crossing – there were lights, he saw, just beside the roads, and they blinked green, yellow, red. When they were red, the cars stopped, letting pedestrians cross the road; when they were green, the cars moved, and the pedestrians waited.

That was genius! All these cars, all these people, obeyed a set of unspoken, unsaid rules, which directed how they would move, when they would move. This was how they could move so quickly, like fish, in and out of traffic, seamlessly and without hitting each other. There were signals, and everyone around him knew them, well enough that they could obey them without any thought whatsoever! He could see people around him, in groups, chatting happily to each other as they automatically stopped and waited for the lights to change. And when they did, a flashing white man appeared on a lightbox on the other side, and everyone started walking, without any comment or thought. Archie followed them, his eyes searching for a smaller road, which would take him in the direction of Leicester Square itself.

More restaurants, more pubs, a small theatre: City of Angels, he read, and the picture showed a woman with blond curls, in a revealing red dress and black gloves. He stopped only for a second – during the day, it was closed, and ahead he could see open space. A few more steps, following the stream of people, and he was in Leicester Square, a central green lined with trees, with benches. He walked into it, stopping for a moment on the green, just looking around.

There were so many people, so much action! There were more theatres, more cinemas, more shows, surrounding the small square. The architecture was weird, eclectic – some buildings were grand, obviously old, much like Potter Place or Fawley Hall, others were new, blocky in design with bright, flashing colours to try to stand out. There were a few casinos on the square, which, from the guidebook, he worked out were gambling houses, which made him much less interested. He didn't have enough money to be gambling it away – anyway, that was how the Blacks had lost their ancestral manor in the seventeenth century and ended up moving into their London townhouse.

He stretched, basking in the early afternoon sun, and wandered around the square just watching the people move around him. There were couples, sitting out on the terrace of one of the restaurants across from him, enjoying a late lunch with wine. There were old men, sitting together and catching up on the benches lining the centre of the square, some of them with newspapers in hand. There was a flock of pigeons, cooing over scraps of bread. It was peaceful, away from home. He paged through his guidebook for a few minutes, checking his map – the cinema he wanted was around here, just up there, up a narrow alleyway.

The first alleyway he went down was the wrong one – it wasn't exactly bleak, but neither was it as lively as the square had been. He only found a single restaurant, a Chinese one, as he approached the end of the alley, so he shook his head, turned around, and went back.

The next alleyway was no cheerier than the other, but Archie grinned when he approached the end, seeing the blocky letters identifying it as the Prince Charles Cinema. He slowed – the windows were papered in movie posters, each one bright and colourful. Newsies, said one window. Lethal Weapon 3, read another, with Alien 3 in the window next to that. The Waterdance, The Addams Family, Far and Away. A small stand outside the doors read The Silence of the Lambs, and had a woman's face with red eyes, and a moth or butterfly instead of a mouth.

He studied it, the posters for a few minutes, then took a deep breath and settled himself into the cover story he had specifically developed for wandering the Muggle world. His name was Archie Black, and he was born in Britain, but raised in America. Since he had picked up his American accent from John, Neal and Dom, all of whom spoke with accents typical of the Northeastern States, his Muggle persona would be from a small town in upstate New York. His parents had sent him to Britain to spend the summer with his relatives. He was thirteen – that was an age that was good for explaining why he was out by himself, and close enough to his real age that he could pass. And he liked movies, of course, else he wouldn't be checking out this theatre. Half of age was how he carried himself, anyway, so he walked in, confident. He was just going to grab a listing of any events, showing times, upcoming films.

The inside of the cinema was dark, the air was still, and smelled of buttery popcorn. It was completely different from the drive-in close to AIM – the floors had a faded red carpet, the walls were dark, except for the lit boxes showing movie posters. This was a smaller cinema, he understood, with only a couple screens, though it was said to be one of the best independent cinemas in the West End.

"Kid," a voice called out, from the shadow behind a long counter, the ticketing counter, Archie assumed. "What are you doing here? And where are your parents?"

Archie squinted in the dark, finally making out the speaker. She was older than him, but not that much older – no older than sixteen, he would guess. Her hair was cropped short, in a style that Archie had never seen before, left longer on one side than the other, her head a comma. She was perched in a chair behind the ticketing counter, leaning forward, her head propped on her right hand as she looked him over. There was an open comic book in front of her – not one that Archie recognized.

He sighed, a little annoyed, for all the world like he was used to hearing comments like that. He pitched his voice as low as he could – his voice hadn't cracked yet, so it wouldn't be entirely plausible, but if he didn't seem like he was in trouble or like he would cause trouble, he was pretty sure that this girl wouldn't look beyond what he told her. "Looking for the movie and event listings," he replied with a shrug, in his American accent. "And my parents are in America."

The girl snorted, looking him over. "Not your parents, then – whoever else has charge of you."

"They're at home," Archie scowled in reply, putting on an air of mild offense. "I'm older than I look – late-bloomer, they said. You don't need to rub my face in it."

She smirked. "Whatever, kid. The listings are over there – membership here is five pounds per year, or fifty pounds for lifetime membership. You get weekday matinee showings for two pounds, half-price. And there are regular one-pound showings of classics, too. You want a membership?"

Archie thought it over – at two pounds off, a yearly membership would pay for itself if he saw three movies. He would definitely see more than three movies over the summer. "Yeah, sure," he said, fishing around in his pocket and pulling out a crisp five-pound note.

The girl fished behind the counter for a bit, pulling out a sheet of paper and a pen and handing it to him. Archie leaned over the counter, filling out his name (Archie Black), his date of birth (August 3, 1979 – he almost made a mistake, putting in his real birth year, but caught it at the last minute), his address, and signed it roughly (it was almost a little weird signing his real name, after most of a year signing off as Harry Potter), before he handed it into the girl.

She skimmed it, wrinkling her nose. "Archie?"

Archie grinned. "Hey, it's better than Arcturus."

"Arcturus is almost as good as Phryne," the girl smirked, holding out her hand for him to shake. "Unfortunately, I don't have a halfway-normal nickname to fall back on, so it's just Phryne. Let me get your membership card."

She fished around behind the counter again, pulling out a small, green, card labelled Prince Charles Cinema, and she quickly scribbled his name on the back. Then, she pulled out a roll of sticky plastic, tearing a sheet off with a loud, scraping noise, then stuck the card in it and folded the sticky plastic over to cover it. She tore the plastic off, searched around behind her desk for a pair of scissors, and cut out the card, now covered on both sides and edged in plastic. Clever.

"It's a shit lamination job, but works well enough for us," she shrugged. "You want to see a movie? We're showing Newsies and The Waterdance this afternoon, but both of those won't start for more than an hour – Lethal Weapon 3 and The Addams Family just went in not too long ago."

Archie sighed, glancing outside at the afternoon sunlight. A part of him wanted to, but he shouldn't, not today – he still wanted to look around the area more, stop in some bookshops. Dad would be home soon, too. "I'll have to pass, today," he shook his head. "I'll just get the listings."

"Sure," Phryne nodded, turning back to her comic book. "I'm sure I'll see you later – I work here most weekdays during the day."

He waved, grabbing the glossy-looking program for the cinema on the way out. She was nice, he reflected – a little barbed, but friendly. And he had a card, and a program, so he could look at the movies and decide what he wanted to see! Until now, at AIM, he had mainly been following others' tastes: Dom and John preferred action movies, Neal liked classics and romantic comedies, Chess liked Disney movies, like the Beauty and the Beast movie they had seen together, with drawn pictures, singing and talking animals. He liked all of them, but maybe that was because he had seen so few – he needed to watch more movies, especially to get more ideas for his acting!

They were doing South Pacific as their fall production, and frankly, Archie was stuck. He had no idea who to audition for – there were fewer roles in South Pacific as in either of last year's productions, and no character he was really drawn to. He supposed he had a faint connection to Lt. Cable, the young officer in love with Liat, an Asian woman, but he was too young – his voice hadn't broken yet, and he bet Evin had his eyes on that role. He might get one of the kids' roles, though, so he needed to study up – different ways of acting, different ideas, new experiences!

The introduction to his script said that the musical was based on a book, so he would try to pick up a copy of that, Tales of the South Pacific. He headed back to Charing Cross Road, wandering through Chinatown on his way back, looking curiously into all the shops – there were restaurants aplenty, leaking so many smells into the streets: thick, beefy broth and lemongrass came out of one shop, a rich, meaty, scent came off another with roast ducks lined in the windows, notes of ginger and sesame and garlic hinted the air at in front of others. There was a bakery, which smelled sweet, and had rows and rows of pastries, labelled everything he could imagine: egg tarts, coconut cream buns, ham and cheese buns, curry beef buns, barbequed pork buns! Archie couldn't help but pick up a big, white bun with a curlicue twist at the top, for only twenty pence. The shopkeeper, an elderly Chinese woman with a plastic net over her hair and yellowed teeth, smiled as she took it from him and put it into a mysterious black box.

The box made a loud, curious, humming noise, grating on his ears, and Archie watched, fascinated, as a light came on inside the box. His bun sat, on what looked like a glass plate, spinning round and round in a circle. A lit timer on one side counted down the seconds, thirty seconds of time, before the box made a loud beeping noise, and the elderly woman pulled out his bun. Archie took it from her, unthinking, then nearly dropped it – it was hot, as piping hot and steaming as if it had just come out of the oven! Wow, what was that contraption?! He tossed the bun lightly from one hand to the other, trying not to burn his fingers as he went back outside. In a few minutes, the bun was cool enough for him to hold, and he was pleasantly surprised by the taste of savoury pork and onion packed into the middle.

He wandered down the street, staring into apothecaries filled with herbs (which looked almost like wizarding apothecaries), clinics offering acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicines (he would need to ask Hermione about that), brightly coloured tea shops with names like Tea Shop 168 (where were tea shops 1 through 167?). Chinatown wasn't very big, but it was different, and he liked it!

On Charing Cross Road, Archie wandered up the street, poking into every bookshop he passed. He didn't like the first one at all, which carried mainly expensive, antiquarian works; even if those books matched the style of the wizarding texts that he was used to, the shopkeeper kept a close eye on him the entire time he was in the store, which kept him from browsing too much.

The second one, Any Amount of Books, carried a wide selection of used and remainder books. He had to ask an assistant about the latter, smiling a little apologetically as he did so, but was informed in a cheery tone that those were books that the major chain bookstores couldn't sell and had to move off their shelves. So, they were new books, and Archie promptly started poking through the selection.

The front half of the first floor was covered in tables, rather than shelves, some with hand-lettered chalkboard signs. Classics, read one; Recommended Reads read another. The Recommended Reads selection seemed to be eclectic, books about business, science, history, sitting side by side what Archie recognized as fantasy, science fiction, or other fiction. Some of them, he didn't know enough to know whether they were fiction or not! It was easier with fantasy and science fiction, he thought, largely because he studied it at school. He wondered vaguely what other books he should read; surely, they hadn't covered all the classics in No-Maj studies? Sometimes, Hermione and Chess still made references that he didn't understand, and when he asked, they exchanged looks, shrugged, and told him it wasn't important, or their explanations didn't really make sense.

He wandered over to the Classics table. He recognized Frankenstein, occupying one corner – beside it, thick tomes titled things like Paradise Lost, Le Morte D'Arthur, The Odyssey, The Illiad. In the middle, books like Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In another corner, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, all by an apparently important author named Jane Austen, rested beside Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. He walked around the table, taking in more titles: Dracula, War and Peace, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Moby Dick, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Leaves of Grass, The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman. There were so many books that they called classics, he wished he had Hermione with him. Or even John. Either of them could have pointed him at what he should read first, he was sure! For now, he paged through the books, without any real idea of what he was reading: some of them were poetry, others looked like adventure novels, the corner with Austen all seemed to be romances. He picked up Le Morte d'Arthur, skimming through it, and made a face when he found it was written in late Middle English. That always gave him a headache, but at least it was in English.

The back of the first floor was packed with bookshelves, stretching to the ceiling, labelled with large signs. Fiction read the largest section, and Archie ran his hands down the books as he wandered the aisles. Wizarding Britain didn't have anything like this! They had books, of course, they had large bookshops like Flourish and Blotts, but the wizarding world didn't have fiction, not on this scale. Most books were textbooks, spellbooks, or they were memoirs, journals, that sort of thing. In terms of fiction, there were the Tales of Beedle the Bard, there were Malecrit's 17th century forays into playwriting. But fiction just wasn't considered important in the wizarding world, not the way it was in the No-Maj world. In No-Maj Studies, Professor Ryan said that fiction was a window into a culture, into the way people thought about themselves and about their lives, that it could be an exploration of humanity and the human condition – that was an attitude totally absent in the wizarding world. Books, in the wizarding world, were for studying, for learning, for imparting knowledge, not for stories.

He found James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific without too much trouble, squished between books by Michaels and Mills, and tugged it out with a bit of effort. It was a thin book, but it was only two pounds – he needed this book for research, so that was as good a reason as any to get it. But he wanted to get something else, too, something fun, and he had no idea what to get. Was there such a thing as too much choice? If so, he had it!

The rest of the first floor carried thrillers, horror, romance, cooking, art books, none of which he was drawn to quite yet, so he wandered onto the second story, finding there a wide selection of history, language, sports, business, science books. He spent a particularly long time in the science section, lingering over other books by Carl Sagan, by someone named Stephen Hawking, books about Muggle medicine. He wished one of them was a primer of some sort, but they all seemed so interesting! He dithered for what had to be an hour in that section alone, before deciding on three: Kill as Few Patients as Possible, and fifty-six other essays on how to be the world's best doctor (which Archie would be, so he had to buy this one), How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapters (though, really, Archie was more inclined to look for how to prevent it), and My Own Country: A Doctor's Story (the author specialized in infectious disease, so he had to pick it up), heaping them into his arms with Tales of the South Pacific.

He meandered to the front of the second floor, which seemed to be the children's section. He scanned the titles, laid out on tables, for a few minutes, but saw nothing of any real interest, at least not compared to the books he had in his arms already and the rest of the store. There was a tiny, winding staircase at the front, though, and he was curious, so he shifted his pile of books into his left arm, grabbed the metal railing, and went upstairs.

A white paper sign, at the head of the stairs, asked him politely to leave his bag and his books behind the desk, where a young man was chatting animatedly with someone about comic books. With a small shrug, Archie took off his messenger bag and set his books on top of it, leaving it behind the desk where he could see that others had left their things.

The centre of the third floor was devoted to comics. Archie paused over a few of the tables in the front, seeing the X-Men comics that John loved so much, alongside more superhero comics: Batman, Spiderman, Superman! He picked up a copy of Batman, opening the page and wincing a little at the dark, cramped art style, the heavy use of ink, the tight text. He only skimmed a few pages, enough to know that he had no idea what he was reading, before he set it down. Most comics were serialized, he remembered John telling him, hard to pick up in the middle, so he gave up. He wandered to the walls, which were lined with floor to ceiling bookcases.

These were all science fiction and fantasy books, he realized, a wide grin splitting his face. He started at one end, in the As, with Piers Anthony, running through names like Philip K. Dick (Do androids dream of electric sheep?), Mercedes Lackey, Terry Pratchett, all the way through to Jane Yolen at the very end. In the end, he lingered for another half-hour, pondering the need to buy another book, but nothing here really called to him, not the way the Healing books did. But he did want another fiction book, because Tales of the South Pacific was really work and not fun, and even if the Healing books were fun, they were also not fiction, and Archie should really read more fiction. He toyed around with the book about electric sheep for awhile, picking it up, then putting it back, picking it up, then putting it back.

Oh, hell. It was only three pounds for a copy. He picked it up, fishing in his pocket for his watch.

Four o'clock. Archie blinked in surprise, blowing out a quick breath and tucking his watch back in his pocket. Dad would have been home from volunteering a couple hours ago, and it would be a bit unusual for him to be out in Diagon Alley for more than five hours, so he had to get back. He sighed, heading back and picking up his bag and his other books, running the numbers quickly in his head to make sure he could afford all the books. He could, with even a few pounds left over, so on the way to the ticketing queue, he picked up a copy of Dracula off the Classics table, too. After The Hobbit and Narnia, he was curious to see what Muggles thought about vampires. The whole lot cost him only a little over twenty quid, leaving him with enough to spare for him to see a movie, the next time he went into the Muggle world.

All in all, Archie decided, strolling back to the Leaky Cauldron, he had had a very good day. A great weight had been lifted (though his bag was heavy – oh, he should probably spell it weightless in the Leaky Cauldron, or Dad would ask questions and want to see his new books!), and he had a program of movies to come see, and a pile of books to read.

Life was good.

He hadn't forgotten – not about John, not about all the secrets he was hiding from Harry. It had just taken him some time to work out how to approach her about it, how to tell her about it.

The problem was, there were really so many sides to it. He had to tell her about John – he had to say that someone already knew the ruse, but John didn't care, he wouldn't say anything. No, Archie hadn't sworn him to secrecy, Archie hadn't made him swear an Unbreakable Vow or cast a Sealing Curse on him or anything like that. Why? Because John was in America, and he was American, and he didn't care. Archie trusted John, he would tell her. And Harry would get that unimpressed look on her face and dryly comment that she wasn't sure how much she wanted to trust the word of someone she didn't know, not in these circumstances. Then Archie would have to argue it out with her, reassure her, tell her it was all going to be fine, and that would be hard enough.

Then, if – no, not if, once – he succeeded, he would move on, he would tell her about all the great things about America: about his friends, not just Hermione, about the Muggle town they went to sometimes, about movies and theatre and milkshakes and all the other wonderful things he hadn't told anyone at home. Hopefully, she wouldn't be too upset about how he had hidden it all – he would tell her how, since she had had such a hard time at Hogwarts, especially with the Sickness last term, he felt bad, a little guilty, that he had had such a great time at AIM.

She would tell him that he had been silly, that of course she was happy to hear whatever he wanted to tell her. She would say that nothing had changed, she was still happier at Hogwarts than she would have been at AIM, and she would listen to his adventures and she would smile and laugh at all the right places, and he would feel better for having gotten it off his chest. And after that, he could take her to the Muggle world – they could go to the West End together, he could show her Covent Garden with all its little shops, walk her through Chinatown with it's thousand restaurants and apothecaries, take her to the cinema to watch a movie, or to his new favourite bookstore. He would loan her his books, and they could talk about movies, about books, and they could laugh together over things like James Bond, or Die Hard, or Breakfast at Tiffany's!

Or, she could resent him.

She wouldn't say anything, not outright, but how hard would it be not to resent him? She had spent months working, hiding, living under an atmosphere of heavy, interminable fear, while Archie had been having the time of his life in America. She had brewed ten, twelve hours a day for the Hospital Wing, while Archie went and saw movies, played pranks on people, rehearsed his lines for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Harry was one of the most wonderful people in the world, but how could even she hear about all he had done, when he had taken her place, and not resent him a little? He would resent himself, in her shoes!

But he couldn't wait any longer, and Harry was here, at Grimmauld Place, reading in the Black Library while Archie lingered in the doorway, and Dad had just gone out volunteering and he wouldn't be back for at least a few hours. If there was any time for him to say something, it was now. It had to be now.

He took a deep breath, consciously decided to stop wringing his hands and let them fall to his sides, before he walked in and tapped her on the shoulder. "Harry? Can we talk?"

Harry looked up at him, frowning slightly, but tucked a bookmark into her book and set it aside. "Of course, Archie. What's wrong?"

"Can we go outside?" Archie asked. It would be easier outside, where he could feel the sun on his face, the breeze blowing lightly through his hair. It was a sunny day, and hopefully that meant that Harry would be in a good mood when he told her, and she would be happy for him, and maybe he could even take her out to the West End today! "It's nice, outside."

"Sure," Harry replied, pushing herself away from the table. He led the way, not that Harry needed it in the slightest – she knew Grimmauld Place as well as her own house and knew perfectly well how to get to the courtyard. They sat out, on the step, and Archie looked up. The sky was blue, there were the barest wisps of clouds passing over. The snakes were coming out, and Harry was patting one of them, absently, and Archie could hear a soft, repetitive hissing from the snake, almost a song.

It was nice out, and he was going to wreck it. Then, hopefully, he would fix it, and Harry would understand. Harry had to understand. And she wouldn't resent him.

"Harry," he started, slightly awkward. "I've been thinking, about everything, and I'm a little worried."

He would start like this, he had decided. He would start with the weaknesses in the ruse, so that when he finally revealed that John already knew, even if it wasn't for those reasons, Harry would understand. That someone had found out, but that it would be fine. Then, he would segue into talking about America, because of course he hadn't mentioned John before, and there was so much that he was hiding.

"Okay," she replied, her voice patient. "I can't blame you for being concerned about what we're doing, but what exactly are you worried about?"

Archie told her. He went through his carefully curated list of all the risks, all the ways their ruse was weak. They were too recognizable, now – especially since Harry had cured the Sickness, especially now that Master Snape had taken an interest in her. What about when their friends became involved, what happened when their parents wanted to meet their friends? What about their families – surely their parents would notice something? Especially Aunt Lily, there had to come a point where Aunt Lily would realize that the little Harry said about AIM didn't match up with her experience. And what about when Harry started puberty?

But before he could bridge into the next part of his speech, the part where he told her about John, she answered. And she had plans! She had planned for every eventuality, she just needed to work out the details. She would work out a way to blend their appearances, so that they could swap on a whim, so it was plausible that they were the other person if there were pictures of them in the wrong context. And she had a backup plan, just in case things went wrong – she would sign up for an owl correspondence school, creating a record that she had been homeschooled. She would answer an ad for a potions-brewer for an apothecary in Diagon Alley, and then she would get an apartment. If they were found out, Rigel Black would just disappear, and there Harry Potter would be: dutifully homeschooling herself in an apartment in Diagon Alley, while her cousin Archie fulfilled his dreams of becoming a Healer.

It was brilliant. There were things Archie didn't like about it – he didn't like to think he was the kind of person who would ask his sister for such a sacrifice. It made him look like a terrible brother! But, on the other hand … it worked. It worked, and if that was the cover story, it didn't matter that Harry didn't know anything about America. It wouldn't matter that she didn't really know his friends, because she would never have met them. In fact, it would make more sense that she didn't – if this was the cover story, she would never have been to America. She would never have met his American friends, and they wouldn't be her friends, just as Malfoy and Parkinson weren't his friends. It matched all the inconsistencies perfectly.

And it was safer for her, too. What if she got caught? If she was caught, he would probably be in America, it would be much easier for him to drop his half, for this cover to kick in. There was plausible deniability, and the story would hold up for long enough – even if people were skeptical, he would be able to get back to England, help her out of the country if she needed it. It was a better plan than anything that he had come up with, because it was close enough to the truth that it was plausible, it matched the major discrepancies.

It just meant that Harry didn't need to know about America. No, more than that, knowing too much about America was contrary to the cover story. It didn't mean that he couldn't tell her – but it meant he didn't have to tell her. It was probably safer for her not to know. But he still wanted to tell her, because Harry was his sister, his confidante, his everything.

Or did he?

For this, Harry would work so hard. She would work a job, save enough money for an apartment, complete work for two schools, deal with Marcus' blackmail, work with Master Snape, while possibly dealing with whatever else the SOW Party decided to throw at her. And Archie would go on as he had done. He would offer his help, but he couldn't help, not really. He would go back to America next year, and he would work hard there, sure, and he would be the best Healer he could be – but he would also have fun. He would watch movies, he would read fiction novels, he would play pranks on his friends and he would watch Quodpot and Quidditch and he would act, and it would be so much fun, while Harry toiled. Just like he had done last year, when she hadn't been researching these things, when she wasn't working a job. How could she not hate him for this?

He was a coward. He wanted to tell her, he wanted to share, but he couldn't. He just couldn't. The words wouldn't come out of his mouth.

"So we're agreed on this cover story?" Harry asked, an excited gleam of satisfaction in her green eyes. It was her plan, and it was a good plan – she had put a lot of work into it, she was proud of it. "When we get the plan in place, as soon as one of us is found out, the other has to be ready to implement the backup plan. As long as both Harry Potter and Archie Black are accounted for when the game is up and Rigel Black disappears, it'll be next to impossible for anyone to prove anything for sure."

"Yeah," Archie replied, after only the slightest pause. "Yeah, that works."

He walked Harry to the fireplace, where she went home to enroll herself in owl school, then retreated to his room. He pulled out the Tales of the South Pacific, and fell into the people, the description of the South Seas, the interactions of the Americans, stationed there for war, and the colonial, immigrant, and indigenous people they lived among.

He was home. He was home, he was surrounded by his family, he had Harry near, and yet he had never felt so lonely.

He did everything he could, for Harry, but Harry did everything, the way she had always done. She took care of everything for the ruse: she found the job, she earned enough money, she found an apartment. She researched.

Archie … well, the only thing Archie was able to do for her was make sure she could go to Malfoy's birthday party. On a personal level, his feelings about Malfoy were still very much ambivalent – the Malfoys were extremely prominent in the SOW Party, and it was obvious that Lord Malfoy had had a role in the Sickness of the previous year. But Harry liked Draco Malfoy, and from what she said, he was not a bad person, so he tried to keep an open mind. And when Harry shot him a pleading look, when their parents were arguing over the Summer Party invitation, he didn't hesitate to stick his oar in and make it happen for her. She wanted to go to Draco's birthday party, so she would go. It was simple.

Other than that, Archie whiled away his summer.

He read the books that he had bought in the West End, and he thought about them. How We Die was fascinating. He learned about the Muggle approach to illnesses that he hadn't yet covered in Basic Healing: heart attacks, strokes, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease. The book covered some darker subjects, too, like suicide, euthanasia, and he sorrowed at how some people, willingly or less than willingly, chose to take their lives. In some cases, he understood why – if there was no way of Healing something and life had become unbearable, it became a matter of dignity. Still, Archie questioned whether there was such a thing as death with dignity – what was there that was dignified about death?

The book of essays, Kill As Few Patients As Possible, was surprisingly light. Archie laughed in delight at many of the stories. The Healer, the author, showed a genuine sort of curiosity and fascination with his patients, one that Archie resolved to show, as much as possible. Healing wasn't just about the illnesses, he had to remember; Healing was about people.

My Own Country had been thought-provoking, and in it, Archie confronted how infectious disease and Healing could interact with people's prejudices. It was about AIDS, which he had learned about in How We Die, but which had adversely affected, primarily, the gay community, marginalized in No-Maj America. Because of who it affected, people hadn't researched it – people hadn't cared. That was despicable, because as far as Archie was concerned, illness was illness. It shouldn't matter who it affected! And yet, it did, and Archie resolved to examine himself as a Healer regularly to make sure his own prejudices never played into whether or how he Healed someone.

His fictional books, too, left an impact on him. Less so Dracula; even if Archie didn't know much about vampires in the wizarding world, it was mainly a fascinating exploration of how Muggles saw vampires. Muggles saw vampires as being vicious, cunning animals, with a thin veneer of class, which he found to be considerably more one-dimensional than he understood actual vampires to be. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, though, was interesting. At first, he had been on Deckard's side, hunting down the androids, and then he met the fugitive androids, and they … they weren't different at all. They weren't what he thought of when he thought about robots, about androids. They thought, and they planned, and they felt, in such a human way that by the end he had completely changed his mind. It felt eerily like blood status discrimination.

He went out to the movies. He had had some misgivings about seeing either Lethal Weapon 3 or Alien 3 without having seen the earlier ones, but he did see The Silence of the Lambs (which led to a week of nightmares, which he could never tell Dad about). He had snuck out mid-July and seen Batman Returns, which was awesome, and he gone back to Any Amount of Books and tried to find a good comic book starting point (no luck, there – why did comics have to be so confusing?). He had gone out a week later to see Pinocchio, a Disney film, which he hadn't liked much at all, but maybe that was because it made him feel guilty about all the lies that he told. There had been a few retrospectives, too, and once he went out to see The Sound of Music, by the same writers who had written South Pacific. That was research, though it was very fun research.

While Harry went to the Malfoy Summer Party in Archie's best robes (which didn't hang quite right on her, but weren't out of place), Archie went off to Oxford to meet Hermione. It was so nice to see her, to see someone who knew Archie as he was in America, even if she called him Harry Potter. It was a much-needed break, especially because Hermione had apparently developed a whole day-trip through the major sights in Oxford for him!

She had arranged a tour of the Bodleian Library for them, and Archie stared in awe at what she told him was one of Europe's oldest Muggle libraries, holding more than eleven million books! He didn't even know there were that many books in the world! It was quiet, solemn on the inside, everyone done in dark wood and leather with glints of gold. The light shone through blurry, old windows, fracturing on dust motes in the air – it was beautiful.

Afterwards, they went for lunch at a small place in a market, which was simple and inexpensive, though Archie could have both sprung for better and paid for it. They had argued, lightly, over who would pay for the bill – Archie said he would take it, but Hermione had staunchly insisted that they split it evenly. In fact, just as Archie told the waiter, no, no, just one bill, to him please, she had turned to the poor man and argued over it. The waiter smiled, gently told Archie that the woman was always right, and came back with two bills.

For the afternoon, they had simply wandered all over Oxford – the buildings were ancient monoliths, built in a medieval style that he was quite comfortable with, warm and honey-coloured in the summer light. There were students, young adults, really, wandering around the campus green, and they stopped by a river, sitting on a bench. They watched people going by, punting about on the boats under the willows, talking about anything and everything under the sun. Archie told her about the books he had read, the movies he had watched. He shared with her the lessons he learned from Muggle medicine books, about parallels he saw in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and blood status discrimination, about The Silence of the Lambs and his week of terror that he couldn't tell anyone about. Hermione had laughed at that, telling him that he should have written her about it. He nodded sheepishly – he really should have, but it just hadn't occurred to him while he had been tucked in his bed with his sheets over his head.

The day ended too soon, and Archie was none too happy to hear that while he had been touring Oxford, Harry had managed to pick up another life debt at the Malfoy Summer Party. The circumstances of this one, at least, were at least somewhat less conspicuous than curing an unknown and terrifying illness; she had only stopped Elder Ogden from drinking poison, of which Archie wholeheartedly approved. Still, he didn't like taking credit for things that Harry had done in his name.

He saw Harry for dinner nearly every day, though aside from that she seemed to have been swallowed by her lab. Normally, the year before, he would have tried to rustle her out, he would get her outside more than once a week, but these days, he hesitated. She was so busy, and she had so much to do. She was brewing two, three crates' worth of potions per day, and she was finishing a year's worth of owl school in the span of less than three months. Sometimes, he helped her carry her crates into Diagon Alley, to the apothecary where she worked, and waved goodbye as she went to pick up more ingredients. She always took hours doing that, and she would simply smile and wave back as she went to examine the quality of the salamander eyes or toadskin or whatever. Sometimes, she went off somewhere else, and Archie didn't ask. They always covered for each other, without question, their fallback story being that they were in Diagon Alley, together.

For his part, he went to the movies a few more times. He saw The Addams Family, a whimsical dark comedy that he actually found quite funny, and Robin Hood, which lead to a week of fantastical daydreams of himself, Archie Black, in the role of a vigilante hero, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. They were silly dreams – Archie probably couldn't really live in the forest (he liked his creature comforts a little too much), but he could definitely play Robin Hood on a stage. He bought a few more books, sticking to the classics table and taking a stab with some of the adventure novels, and two more Philip K. Dick books, neither of which he enjoyed to the same extent. He didn't have enough context, he thought, for The Man in the High Castle – it was an interesting story, if a rather dark one, but he had the niggling sense that there was something more to it, something he was missing. A Scanner Darkly, too, was a little too dark for his tastes. He would need to pick up recommendations from someone.

About a month before the summer was over, Harry found the spell to blend their features, and worked out the necessary modifications to make the Polyjuice Potion last a little over a year. They worked out their plans for the switch – she had to make two batches of Polyjuice, one normal batch to get them to the airport and train station, and another for them to take when they got on, the one which made them almost identical. After a total of four switches before, there and back, the switch for King's Cross and Heathrow was all too easy.

Then he was on an aeroplane, looking forward to another year at AIM, to another year of being Harry Potter – now almost as much himself, if not more so, than Archie Black.

Chapter Text

With the time difference, Archie and Hermione were among the first students to arrive at AIM, getting there shortly after noon. Unlike last year, they had no need for a tour, and since they weren't called upon to show the new first-years around, they were dismissed quickly to find their new rooms and do whatever they wanted until dinner. Archie had looked for John at the Portkey Hub and at AIM, but he must have been on a later transit. Chess, from San Francisco and three hours behind, would no doubt be on a much later transit.

He and Hermione swiped one of the better tables in the common room, directly under a patch of sunlight. Archie was relaxing over his annotated Shakespeare while Hermione got ahead on the readings for Magical Theory 2. From what she said, the Charms mastery program was intensely competitive – Archie was just glad she could dump all her competitive energy into Magical Theory, since Healing was really more of a collaborative program. It was hard, but mostly they worked together and dragged each other across the finish line. In experimental Charms, apparently, they mostly threw each other to the wolves.

"Harry! Hermione!"

John burst into the common room, dragging his luggage. He was moving so quickly, his suitcase was bouncing up and down on its wheels behind him, not helped by the number of times it got behind his feet and he kicked it. He was going to break it, Archie was sure, but since it was an ugly shade of mustard-yellow, Archie wasn't inclined to stop him.

"John!" Archie threw his book down on the coffee table, standing up to return John's quick, one-armed embrace, as his friend let go of his luggage, which promptly unbalanced and fell over. "How are you?! How was your summer?"

"Ugh," John made a face, pulling his case upright with one hand, then slumping down in the armchair across from him. "Tiring."

"What did you do?" Hermione asked, setting her new Magical Theory text to one side. "You spent some time with Francesca in San Francisco, right?"

"Yeah, I did – it was supposed to be a week, then it turned into a month. Do you know how many times I cast Lumos in the span of a month? I can do it wordlessly, now – I swear to god, I love her, but when she's onto something she's obsessed." He shook his head wryly, a bit affectionate despite his words. "She's already here, by the way. She came to New York City to stay with us a few weeks before school started and came on my Portkey. She's setting up her new room at Oliver Hall."

"Oliver Hall?" Archie frowned, disappointed. "She's not in our dorm?"

"Well, she's not in Healing anymore," Hermione shrugged, though the similar frown on her face showed her own mixed feelings on that point. Pettingill Hall was for Healers only, but Archie had hoped that Chess would be an exception since there wasn't really any one place for Exceptionals and AIM tried to integrate them as much as possible. Daine was in Pettingill Hall, still, and Numair, who graduated last year, had been on Charms Row even though he hadn't been in the Charms Mastery program.

"She'll come by later," John replied, waving a hand. "But anyway. I had to pull a dozen strings to get her parents' house warded to contain the Trace, so that she could conduct her precious experiments. That's a debt I'm going to be paying off for awhile."

"What's with you and Chess, anyway?" Archie asked, quirking a small smile. "Spending most of the summer together?"

John frowned at him. "Not what you're thinking, Harry. Honestly, I've probably just spent too much time in her mind, she's like a sister to me. And we hadn't really planned on it – I was going to go to San Francisco for a week for her to show me the main sights, then she would do the same at the end of summer in New York."

"So, what happened?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Something must have happened for you both to change your plans so drastically, and for you to arrange for someone to ward her house to contain the Trace."

"If I hadn't, she would have been arrested for breaking the Statute of Secrecy," John snorted. "I made her promise me: experimentation only at her house! And all because some of the lights of her computer blipped when I walked past."

Archie blinked. "I don't understand."

"You and I both. It meant something to her, though, so I got cornered for weeks this summer doing magic near electronic devices," John shrugged. "Therefore, endless Lumos and Nox spells, then after a few days of that, I got bored and started practicing my shields and so on, too. Once I got annoyed and tried to hex her, but she ducked and pulled out a shield spell. Don't ask me to explain anything - I have access to her thoughts, and I still don't understand what she's thinking. How were your summers?"

"Great!" Archie beamed. "I saw a lot of movies, read a lot, and I spent a lot of time with my family. And I visited Hermione, who showed me around Oxford. Nothing much, really, now that I think about it, but it was good."

"Very much the same, for me," Hermione said with a smile. "Without the movies. We spent a couple weeks in the south of France, in a vacation house near Montpellier, which was a little warm, but very nice. I wanted to look into a bit of French wizarding history, but I wasn't sure where to begin."

"Yeah, it can be hard to know where to find the main wizarding communities in a new place," John replied, stretching out in his armchair. "I'll ask my dad, if you want."

Hermione grimaced, and Archie grinned. It was good to see that aspect hadn't changed between the two of them. "Come on, 'Mione. Let him ask – you're in France often enough, and it's silly to have to research the main wizarding settlements."

"They're not secret or anything, just hard to find unless you know what you're looking for," John commented, a little dismissive. "Like wizarding New York – parts of it are integrated right in No-Maj Manhattan, but for the main shopping area, you have to take a certain path through The Ramble in Central Park to cross into it. Hard to know how to do it unless someone shows you. Hey, so how many of us survived first-year Healing? How big are our bedrooms?"

Archie perked up. They were on the third floor this year, and the rooms were a bit larger than last year. Apparently, there were always a lot of first years, who always took the whole of the second floor. AIM then relied on the class size shrinking as people dropped out and spread the upper years through the third through fifth floors. Most of the second and third years were on the third floor, then a couple third years, all the fourth years, and some of the fifth years were on the fourth floor, and everyone else on the fifth. Room sizes also increased depending on how many people were left in the program. "About ten of us, I think. And we have enough room for a second bookshelf!"

"Third floor is more stairs, though," Hermione added with a small sigh. "I know it's not something I should really complain about, but I'm not looking forward to being on the higher levels."

"The exercise is good for you," John grinned, then he quirked his head to look at the main doors. "Oh, look, Chess is coming."

True to his word, their other friend was hopping up the steps into Pettingill Hall. She nodded to a few people she knew, though most people seemed to ignore her, then sat down in the seat beside John, smoothing her skirt primly. "Hello, Harry, Hermione. How were your summers?"

"Not as interesting as yours, apparently," Hermione replied, a little curious as she leaned forward. "John was telling us about your experiments. What were you experimenting on? Or with?"

"Hmm." Chess tilted her head to one side, thinking. "Magic as it interacts with electronics, is probably the best way to describe it. I don't really know anything yet – I was mainly focusing on data collection this summer, since electronics generally don't work at AIM. Something about the magical energies floating around. But it has to be more than that – when we're at home, we have TVs, we can use the microwave, there's no issue there."

"But that's just the number of people, and the amount of magic." Hermione said, frowning a little. "It's explained in half our textbooks."

"Yes," Chess agreed, but her voice was just a note cooler. Archie winced inwardly. It wasn't that Chess and Hermione didn't get along (most of the time, anyway); it was more that sometimes Hermione could be combative in her questioning. Hermione learned well by debating people, and she liked the challenge of an oral defense. Chess, on the other hand, preferred to puzzle things out privately and set out her ideas in writing. She didn't like arguing. An awkward silence prevailed for a few seconds.

"So, how is Oliver Hall?" Archie asked hastily. "You know, I've never been there?"

John and Hermione looked at him in astonishment, while Chess hid a smile. "Never?" John gaped. "You've been at AIM a whole year, Harry! It's the main dorm, half the school lives there. How have you not been there yet? Some of your theatre friends must live there."

Archie rubbed the back of his head, a little sheepish. "Yeah, Evin and Zahir are both there, and Thea, but I just never had any reason to go, I guess. I saw my theatre friends at theatre, you know? And all four of us lived here."

"You can come visit now, if you like," Chess said, standing up again. "We might as well, while it's still mostly empty – you know Oliver Hall has nine common rooms? They're all smaller than this one, but they're cozy, I think I'm going to like them. Mine has a fireplace, I love fireplaces."

"Sounds like a plan!" Archie jumped to his feet, picking up his book. "Let me put this back in my room – I want to see Oliver Hall."

On the third floor, most of the second years' rooms were to the right of the main stairwell. Their doors were still labelled with their names, though Archie was pleased to see that AIM had remembered to write his name down as Harry Potter rather than Harriett Potter. John and Hermione were next door to each other, but Archie's room was a bit further down the hall. It was the work of a second for both he and Hermione to drop their books off in their rooms, though John took a little longer carrying his suitcase up the stairs.

The walk across AIM campus was warm, a little muggy. It must have rained recently, Archie reflected, even as he enjoyed the sun. There were a few students around, calling out hellos to each other, hugging each other in greeting, sitting in circles and catching up on the campus green. Archie caught up with her, since she was leading the way across to the old, sprawling mansion that was Oliver Hall.

"What are you taking this year?" He asked curiously. She wouldn't be in Healing with them, so he didn't know whether any of their classes would overlap at all – there were enough students that there were multiple sections of even the standard classes. Still, since most of the non-Healers had much broader elective choices, they were often placed in the same sections with the Healing students, if their schedules fit.

"I signed up for Magical Theory 1, Research Methods, and I'm required to take Runes as part of my program," Chess replied, her voice thoughtful as she strode onto a wide porch. There were old benches lining the porch, with wooden rocking chairs scatted throughout and a wide swing at the far end. There were a group of girls laughing at the other end of the porch. It was nice, the view across to Thompson Hall, Seaton House, and his own dorm. "I also have a private class in paper-casting again. Aside from that, the standard classes. Come on in."

Archie followed her into the cool entranceway. The foyer was small; there were doors to the left and right of him, and a narrow hallway stretching past a set of stairs to another doorway.

"There's nine 'wings', they call them, in Oliver Hall, and everyone is assigned into one," Chess explained, gesturing to each of the doors, then leading the way up the stairs. "Each wing has a common room and so on, and I think they try to keep friends together as much as they can. We're generally allowed in the other wings, just like the other dorms. I'm in the Holmes wing, on the second floor."

She stopped on the second story, opening a door to the right. There was a tiny gold plaque on the door, labelled "Holmes", and Chess opened the door to an antique, masculine room, with large leather armchairs and a few long, broad sofas, also in dark leather. One wall of the room was dominated by a large fireplace, though the fire was small at this time of the year. There were four large windows, framed with dark red curtains, streaming light into pools on the floor, but overall it was much darker, more sombre, than the Healer's dormitory. The ceiling was much lower than in Pettingill Hall, which Archie would have found close, claustrophobic if not for his summer at Grimmauld Place (he was always a little claustrophobic, the first few days at home). Rather than small tables for groupwork, there was only one, long, harvest table along one side of the room, where Archie could see that most people would share space to study. A few students were there already, playing a game of wizarding chess – Archie recognized one of John's many duelling friends.

"How very Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," Hermione commented dryly, even as she looked around with obvious interest. Archie missed the reference, though both John and Chess seemed to have gotten it. He'd need to ask Hermione, later. "Cozy."

"It is, isn't it? I like it." Chess replied with a small smile. She pointed towards two doors set at the back of the room. "The girls' rooms are down that hallway – the boys' down that one. A lot of John's friends are in this wing – Cleon, Merric, Kel, Esmond, Miri, Seaver, Faleron. Kel is next door to me, which is nice."

True to her word, John didn't look surprised in the least by the surroundings, even as Chess opened the door to the Holmes wing girls' dorms. The hallway was narrow, lined in a dark red carpet, the walls panelled in wood. Chess' room was labelled with another tiny, golden plaque, engraved with her name, all the way at the end of the hall. She was next door to Keladry Mindelan and across the hall from Miri Fraser.

John wandered over to tap thoughtfully at Kel's nameplate next door. "Kel's declared now, right? She said she was thinking about it, last year."

"Defense Mastery, but they don't move to the townhouses until fourth year," Chess replied with a tiny shrug. "She's here already, but she's hanging out in the Healing common room with Daine, waiting for Neal. Do you want to see the other wings, Harry? I can show you around, though John would know them better than I do."

Archie grinned. "Sure, why not?"

He had nothing better to do, and it was high time he explored the AIM main student dorms. Aunt Lily had been in these dorms! He wondered vaguely which wing he had been in, before she moved into Charms Row.

Maybe the Fisher Wing, on the third floor, done in shades of blue to evoke the beach and the sea? Or the Williams Wing, done in whites and creams with hints of sunset pinks, oranges and yellows, where Hermione said a lot of her friends in the British Students Association lived? Or Harrison Wing, decorated to evoke nature, heavy on green and rustic details, or Harper Wing, done in a style Chess called "art deco", which he was still deciding whether he liked? The Addison Wing, he had visibly recoiled at, since it was done in bright jewel shades of magenta and lime green in something Chess identified mildly as a "mid-century" look – there was such a thing as too much! The Birk Wing on the first floor, too, he found to be boringly minimalistic – who decided that the best way to decorate a room was to strip it of colour and put in block furniture? He did, though, like the practical bookshelves integrated into the walls of that space. The McAllister Wing was designed to look like a hunting lodge, which John said was popular with both Quodpot and Quidditch players, though Archie was more inclined to roll his eyes at the flagrant use of plaid. Plaid should not exist – it was a horror to the world. The last wing, Coulson, reminded him of the Potter Library, with its wide sweeping arches, worktables, bookshelves dominating two walls of the space. That was the sort of place he could see Harry ending up, had she gone to AIM.

As usual, John managed to swing them all seats together at dinner, at one of the more raucous tables stuffed with Duelling club members. Archie listened with one ear as Headmistress Picquery read them the school rules (her eyes flashing in Archie's direction for one brief instance at the mention of pranks), leaning back in his seat after a very satisfying Welcome Feast including barbequed ribs, fried chicken, waffles, and rice pudding for dessert.

It was good to be back.

The first week of school practically flew by. He and John had all their classes together, as expected, and Hermione was with them for everything except No-Maj Studies, during which she had her magical theory class. Chess still shared Charms, Defense, and Potions with them, which was convenient for preventing John from blowing up too many cauldrons (Archie couldn't be everywhere). In Healing, they would be tackling the cardio-respiratory-hematology system before the holidays, then immunology afterwards – the Basic Healing half would deal with all the purely physical illnesses that could arise, whereas the Magical Psychology half would consider how magic could play a role in blood-borne disease and how magic flowed through blood.

Archie was alternately fascinated and horrified with the latter. Normally, he would just be fascinated, so he mimed fascination with his friends (easy because it was kind of interesting), because he couldn't possibly tell anyone about the reasons for the gut-wrenching sense of horror blood-magic also instilled in him. Those reasons didn't really belong to Harry Potter, after all, but to Arcturus Rigel Black. A lot of old rituals, preserved in pureblood families, used blood magic: there were blood-oaths, blood-ties, blood-binds, blood-rites, all which Archie had heard about but never in any detail. There was magic in the blood, there had to be, but something about blood magic reminded Archie disturbingly of Frankenstein.

Still, he had to know about it to Heal, so he set aside the horror when he talked about how interesting Magical Psych was with John and Hermione. And his Occlumency was coming along – he had faithfully meditated every night all summer (even if he was, frankly, terrible at it), and John announced that he barely heard anything from Archie anymore. That was good! That meant, according to John, that his mists were strengthening, and soon he would be able to build further defenses in his mind.

Hermione's birthday was in the second week of September, and Archie went all out, again. He decorated her door in with pale blue tissue-paper, presented her with a whole bouquet of hydrangeas (they were so pretty!) that morning in the common room, and a copy of a fantastic book he had found at the Muggle bookshop in the West End late that summer, Grey's Anatomy. They had only had the one copy, much to his disappointment, but he hoped she would take pity on him and let him look at it every now and then. He could wait for another copy to appear in the used bookstore. And, anyway, it was worth it; she was overjoyed, hydrangeas left to one side, forgotten, as she poured over the detailed diagrams, gushing over how useful it would be over the remaining six years of their program.

He, John, Dom and Neal snuck out to the drive-in the first Thursday of the term, for a showing of Alien which, first, made Archie quite happy that he hadn't seen Alien 3 that summer, and second, made him vow never to watch another Alien movie. He should have liked it, he reasoned – he was quickly realizing that he was a bit of a science fiction geek ("Well, no kidding," John had said, rolling his eyes), so he really thought he would like it, but he was not a fan of horror. The moment that the alien started bursting out of people's chests, he was done with the movie and spent the rest of it watching with a sort of sick fascination, clutching John's arm (to his credit, John didn't mention it). He wouldn't sleep for days.

"I don't think I want to see any more of those," he said, on the way back, his arms locked in a vise-like grip around one of Dom's blankets that belonged in the trunk. "Yeah, no more Alien movies for me, thanks. And if you'd warn me that you were seeing a horror flick in the future, that would be appreciated."

"Wuss," Dom said, but it was with an understanding grin as he ushered Archie into the back of his car for the ride back to AIM.

"But what about Evil Dead?" Neal added, his voice purposely innocent. "They're doing a Halloween showing of Evil Dead – it's a classic!"

Archie scowled, clinging to the rolled-up blanket even tighter. Classic had worked on him last year, but no longer. He was not falling for that. "Nope, no way. I don't care that it's a classic – am I going to sleep after?"

"Probably," John said, leaning back with a stretch. "Evil Dead isn't actually a horror movie, it's a parody of a horror movie, which is completely different. It's not even a little bit scary."

Archie glared at his friend. "I don't believe you."

The Clubs Fair was busy, as always, and Archie had drawn the short straw and got a couple hours manning the theatre troupe desk, which was at least better than Hermione who was volunteering at several tables all day. Hermione, of course, had put herself forward for the executive teams for her three favourite clubs at the end of last year: the British Students Association, the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization, and the Society for the Advancement of Witches. Archie had tried to dissuade her, but she had scowled and said that there was no guarantee she would be elected, she was only going to be a second-year, so of course she had to put herself forward for all three!

But it was Hermione Granger, so to Archie's complete lack of surprise, she had won every election. Now, she was the Advocacy and Policy Chair for the British Newbloods Association, the Treasurer for the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization, and the Secretary for the Society for the Advancement of Witches. All three of those clubs were sizeable (even Chess was part of the latter two, though Archie was not completely convinced that she hadn't just signed up to make Hermione stop bothering her about them), and even if Hermione was delighted to be trusted with so much responsibility, she also had looked rather frazzled as the week went on.

"No, it's just the preparations for the Clubs Fair," she said, but even her voice was a little hassled, as she paged through pages and pages of financial records for the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization, when Archie dared to ask if she had maybe she should take a break. "And I'm getting caught up on the financials, preparing for our first meetings. Things will quiet down after this week."

"All right," Archie said, a little worried anyway. There was no arguing with Hermione when it came to how much work she could do – she was exactly like Harry that way.

Fortunately, his shift at the theatre troupe table was mercifully quiet. He had the first shift, when everyone was distracted by the flashier clubs: Duelling Club had the first demonstration, again, this time John opening the demonstrations with a wild show duel against Kel, while Neal duelled another upper-year later. He smirked at the extensive, flowery introduction that John received, though he supposed John's family and history was too much for the Duelling Club to ignore. He couldn't make out the details of John's face from his spot behind the theatre troupe table, which was halfway across the expanded auditorium, but he could imagine John's expression as he carefully kept himself from rolling his eyes too obviously.

The Dance Club routine, right after, went all the way across the auditorium floor, and Archie watched and listened, this year, with undivided interest. They always started by showing off pairs, dancing beautiful illusions across the ceiling, streaks of gold and blue colouring the air behind them. This pair's dance was themed something like Starry Night and they had apparently done well at last year's inter-school competition.

Magical dance, Archie nodded sagely to himself. Another thing that Wizarding Britain didn't have, though he was a little surprised at that. They had dance – Archie had spent untold hours with a dance instructor as a child, learning to waltz, learning to schottische, learning the foxtrot and all that rot. But apparently there had been a flashpoint in the early part of the century when new dance forms like swing were popular in No-Maj America, and a group of mages who also happened to like dancing decided to combine the dances they loved with a measure of illusion magic to boot.

Forty years on, the magical dance that Chess did was a niche sporting event of its own, nowhere in the league of Quodpot or Quidditch, but with a devoted following. He wished he had known that before Chess' competition last year, because he would have gone to see it! But Chess hadn't mentioned anything other than in passing, and John had assumed Archie knew about it ("Swing dates back to the 1920s, Harry; what do you mean you didn't know?"), and in the end, Archie missed the competition.

Starry Night was a beautiful performance, painting in song and movement and magic the story of a young couple falling in love over the course of a single night. There were heavy elements of a waltz about this one, which he recognized easily (so that was why they had tried to recruit him so hard last year), but there were also things he didn't recognize – lifts, throws, wild spins. Chess took the floor after, a prominent up-and-coming soloist, dancing the spirit of spring and drawing flowers in magical light as she leapt through the air, fifteen feet above the floor.

He had a few people stop by his booth, and he chatted with them with considerable enthusiasm about the wonder of acting, about bringing new worlds to people, about the immense pleasure of developing a role and living as another person for a few hours. Most people, though, gravitated to the usual magical clubs, or the associations that Hermione liked – a few times, Archie pointed a hapless first-year in the direction of the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization, and once towards the British Students Association. His theatre friends swung by, one by one: Sabrina came by almost first off, hissing directions for Archie to screen out any self-absorbed divas right away, not that he had any idea what that meant, and Juan and Neal and Noelle and Evin and Zahir and even Thea, the only other person remaining in theatre for in his year, all stopped by. Laura, now an elegant sixth-year, took over the theatre club table at eleven sharp.

All their efforts garnered a slightly bigger group than usual at their first meeting, and Archie had the honour of opening the introductions this year, picking a Pinocchio and lies reference which really wasn't very good, but he couldn't possibly redo last year's introduction. He picked out more references, this year – someone made a reference to the Sound of Music, someone else made a Star Wars reference. A good group, this year, Archie thought. Francis and Mariana were gone, but there were some five fresh faces, rounding out their group to almost twenty members. It would shrink soon after, but that was fine; most musicals and plays didn't have big casts anyway.

"So," Sabrina, their new Director, announced, from her seat at the centre of the edge of the stage. "Last year, we had fun. We played with the Bard, we put on West Side Story for the romantics, we put on A Midsummer Night's Dream and made people laugh. But we all know that this isn't just what drama is for – drama is for pushing boundaries, for challenging people. This is what we, as actors, should always strive to do: challenge people. This year, let's talk about racism."

The tattooed fish swam over Sabrina's shoulders, a mesmerizing show that Archie loved to watch. Sabrina avoided covering her shoulders as much as possible, showing off the beautiful thing, and Archie had long since realized that how quickly it moved reflected Sabrina's own emotional state. Before performances, the fish was frantic, zipping around in circles, but right now, it was slow, languid, gliding around her shoulders and upper back. She was calm, focused.

"The Fall performance is South Pacific, which is a little lighter than something I would have picked but does have an interesting history. It's an old musical, from the days of Rodger and Hammerstein, who are perhaps better known for The Sound of Music or The King and I," Sabrina drawled, her voice taking on a lecturing tone as Archie helped pass out the remaining booklets to the new members. "It is loosely based on a novel, Tales of the South Pacific, by James Michener, a returning soldier from the No-Maj Second World War."

Archie didn't know anything about the Second World War, though he assumed that since this was the second one, there had to have been a first. Still, they were supposed to be covering major points of recent No-Maj history this year (the reasoning being that while a No-Maj might think one was a bit stupid for not knowing older history, it was downright suspicious not to have a grasp of recent history), so he assumed it would come up in class. For the moment, he let the point go, as he so often did with references he didn't understand. They were becoming less common (he was not the wide-eyed first-year he had been, after all!), but they still happened every now and then.

"Rodger and Hammerstein were drawn to Tales of the South Pacific as source material for their new musical because of its frank treatment of racial prejudice, which was a very real thing for both of them," Sabrina continued, as Archie pulled out a notebook, one which he had started writing in this summer when he was planning his audition, to take notes. "Specifically, Hammerstein's niece was half-Japanese, and lived with him for a time; he was well aware of the very real prejudices that his niece faced after the war. On Rodgers' part, he was Jewish, and despite his professional success, he knew that he and his family would never break into the elite social clubs or resorts of the time."

Archie made a few more notes, beside the dash that said Second World War with three question marks. At least he knew what Jewish meant, since they had covered it last year in No-Maj Studies. They were a religious and cultural group which had been frequently discriminated against until recent years.

"The plot centres between two romances, one between Nellie Forbush, an American nurse stationed in the south Pacific, and a middle-aged French plantation owner, and one between Lt. Cable, a soldier, and his love for an Asian woman, Liat – yes, yes, romances, you fool romantics." Sabrina waved a hand at both Neal and Laura, whose faces had lit up into shining beacons of happiness. To be fair, Archie wasn't sure his didn't look the exact same. He loved forbidden love stories!

"Love makes the world go 'round, Sabrina," Neal retorted, even as Laura blushed.

Sabrina rolled her eyes at them. "For Nellie, the story centres around how she is in love with Emile de Becque, but she feels that she cannot love his mixed-race children. For Cable, the story explores his fears about how his family and his friends will react if he brings home his Asian sweetheart. If you wouldn't mind turning to page two of the introduction, there's an interesting scene which was cut from the actual performance – Neal, Laura, since you're our resident romantics, why don't you read it?"

"Gladly," Neal drawled, flipping to the relevant scene, as the rest of them did the same. Archie had read this scene over and over in the summer – it was a great scene, and even if it was cut, at least the song that came after, You've Got to be Carefully Taught, stayed in. Neal cleared his throat, hopping off his spot on the stage to take the centre of the floor. "Damnit all to hell! Why? Why do you look so damned shocked? What's the difference if her hair is blonde and curly or black and straight? If I want her to be my wife, why can't I have her?"

Even with the script in one hand, Neal found a way to channel his anger into his body movements, gesturing with his free hand.

"You can!" Laura squeaked in reply, taking a step back at his anger, her breath picking up, her face a perfect portrayal of shock, surprise, a hint of fear. "It's just that, I mean – they say it never works! Don't they?"

"They do," Neal replied, letting the script fall in disgust. "And then everyone does their damndest to prove it. A hell of a chance Liat and I would have in one of those little grey stone and timber houses on the main line. 'Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cable entertained, last Tuesday, with a house-warming. Nobody came!'"

They froze in tableau, Neal holding onto his expression of combined anger and disgust, Laura with her arms crossed, her mouth just slight ajar, her brows pinched together in nervous surprise and, maybe, a suggestion of understanding. It was a short snippet, but Archie considered it a powerful one.

"Thank you, the two of you," Sabrina nodded, sending the two of them back to their seats. "So, this scene was cut from the show because for the time, it was too harsh. Even the song that came after was thought to be too harsh; one prominent criticism of the time was that it was too preachy, too activist. Well, times have changed since 1949, but not enough - I'm adding that scene back in, and I want our production to be a little more raw, a little edgier than the original. We're angry, people – it's a love story, but it's also a ground-breaking story, it's a story that's meant to make us think about our prejudices. So, at auditions next week, I want your portrayals to make us feel, to make us hurt. Is that clear?"

For his Lt. Cable, at his audition a week later, Archie drew on Uncle James and Aunt Lily. It was different, in so many ways – even if Uncle James was a pureblood and Aunt Lily a Muggleborn, even if people whispered about Lord Potter, Book of Gold James Potter, the Lord Peverell, marrying a Muggleborn, the Potters had never held with pureblood supremacy and that made all the difference. Uncle James didn't care, and he was backed by Dad and Uncle Remus (no one wanted to piss off a werewolf), and no one dared say anything to their faces.

But what if they hadn't? What if Uncle James, and the amount of love he so obviously had for Aunt Lily, was stymied at every turn by his friends? What if, the first time Uncle James proposed to Aunt Lily and meant it, what if Dad had said "Wait, James, don't you think …?" instead of being supportive? What if their love required sacrifice, what if their love meant that their friends and family would turn their backs on them?

He didn't have a background for that, but he had an imagination, and he poured that created pain, that emotion into the Lt. Cable's lines the next week. If it was a drama, Archie thought he would have had it secured; but it wasn't, and the song itself came out high-pitched, weak, and he knew he had lost it. You've Got to be Carefully Taught was the key lynchpin song of the whole performance. It needed to be big, powerful, and he wasn't surprised when he was cut. Neal ended up with the role of the French plantation owner Emile de Becque, using a French accent to great effect, while Evin picked up the role of Lt. Cable. Noelle Svenson walked out with the role of Nellie Forbush, while Laura (no one did innocent love quite as well as Laura) took Liat.

Archie ended up as a background dancer, which was disappointing but not wholly unexpected. There was always next semester.

"What?" Archie muttered, reading over a line in his No-Maj Studies textbook, not quite believing what he had read. No-Maj Studies, being recent history this year, wasn't quite as much fun as it had been last year. So far, they had covered the turn of the century and spent a month on the Great War, or the First World War, including the ways in which the Great War had, for the first time, bled over into the wizarding world with the destruction of two wizarding villages near Messines and Ypres. Archie learned about chemical warfare, about aeroplane dogfights, bombs, and even while his heart went out to those two wizarding villages, it showed the importance of keeping up to date with No-Maj society, No-Maj technology.

It was just past Halloween, and things had been good.

Harry was writing to Dad. Even if she hadn't written much to Archie, she had sent along copies of her promised letters to Dad, sometimes with a covering note for his reading pleasure. Through them, Archie learned about the Thestral-towed carriages which took them to Hogwarts from Hogsmeade station, rather than the rickety boats they traditionally travelled across the Black Lake in as first-years (he had never known that – no one had thought to mention that to him!). She had added a note on that one explaining that she had happened to see a death in Diagon Alley that summer, don't worry, I'm fine, as if Archie could not worry at that information. She wrote about how room arrangements had changed, and that Blaise Zabini now shared a room with her, Theo and Draco, but that at least there were now two bathrooms for them all. She wrote about a prank she had played, something with windchimes. She wrote at length about Gilderoy Lockhart, their new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, commenting that he was "funny" and "completely useless", which Archie knew meant that she actually found him to be incredibly irritating. She wrote about Quidditch, about the Slytherin team tryouts and announced she made the House team as a Beater. As revenge, Archie seriously considered trying out for Quodpot (he didn't, because he wasn't crazy enough).

John's birthday had come and gone. The night before, after John had gone to bed, Archie and Chess papered his door in shiny silver tissue paper and navy-blue ribbons, while Hermione took care of a tricky bit of charm-work to set the fireworks over his door off when he opened it the next morning. That was how the entire dorm learned that John woke up at six every morning for a run, and most of their group received harsh glares the next day. John only laughed with his presents (a book of legendary Marauder pranks from Archie, a copy of The Ethics of Legilimency from Hermione, a box of candy from Chess) in his hands and told everyone that they shouldn't be lying in bed past sunrise anyway.

Aunt Lily was pregnant, which was exciting! He ran the numbers, since Uncle James and Aunt Lily had mentioned how far along she was, and guessed the baby was due in mid-March. Too bad he would still be at school, but at least he would be able to pat her belly at Christmas and meet his new cousin over the summer holidays. A new cousin! He couldn't wait to teach her all the tricks of pranking, once she was old enough to toddle along after him.

They had gone into town a few more times. Archie had his first milkshake of the year (salted caramel, delicious), and under Chess' guidance, he picked out a selection of classic science fiction: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, William Gibson. Of the three, Archie was most drawn to I, Robot, finding himself questioning what it meant to be human in some of his spare moments. He was, actually, convinced to see Evil Dead on Halloween, and found that John had, in fact, not lied to him and the movie was more comedic than it was terrifying. In some ways, that was unfortunate – bizarrely, he was hoping that, if it turned out to be a legitimate horror movie scaring the pants off him, the Halloween jinx would be fulfilled, and nothing would happen to Harry. At least, it was a distraction.

Things were good. AIM was good, as it always was, the No-Maj world was honest and true and good – except, apparently, when it wasn't.

Six million deaths, Archie read again, feeling a dry sort of horror rise in his gorge. The Final Solution. A final solution that involved targeted strikes, pushing people into gas chambers, and attempt at the systematic destruction of a whole subset of people, for the beliefs they held.

No, not just the beliefs they had, he reminded himself sharply as his eyes ran over the words again. It was the chemical warfare of the First World War, turned into an efficient killing machine and turned on a group of people defined partly by their religion, but also by their culture, and to a certain extent, by their blood. And it was the last one that really got him.

He stood up, in the common room, looking for Hermione, but it was Tuesday, the first Tuesday in November, and that meant she had an executive meeting for the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization. Those always ended late, and Hermione always came back grumbling about the other executive members' unrealistic expectations, honestly, the club coffers weren't limitless. John was his second choice, but John wasn't around, either. Duelling Club, he remembered.

The second-year No-Maj Studies textbook was a single history text this year, and Archie clapped it shut. He needed someone to talk to. He wandered out to Oliver Hall – for the most part, Chess still came over to Pettingill Hall to spend time with them as a group, but he knew she liked her new dorm much better than she had ever liked the Healers' dorms. Her wing had fewer people, most of whom were John's friends, and no one wrote nasty things on her door here. People still whispered in the halls, sometimes, but his year had largely gotten used to her peculiar paper charms. Those that hadn't, well, Archie always needed new prank targets. And he knew there hadn't been dance, today, because theatre had the stage - he just wasn't needed for today's rehearsal.

He poked his head into the Holmes Wing on the second floor, and, happily, Chess was there, alone in their common room, seated at the long harvest table, frowning at two notebooks strewn in front of her, stuffed full of her slanted scrawl. She had a half-full one in front of her and a pencil in her hand, and empty mug sat to one side, which Archie would bet had once had tea.

"Hey, Chess," Archie said, a little hesitant. Chess rounded out their little circle, but if Archie was honest with himself, he went to Hermione first, and John second. He was never as close to her as he was to the other two.

"Harry," the girl replied, scratching something out in her notebook.

"Do you have a moment?"

She held up her pencil, a gesture to wait a minute, then she finished whatever it was she was writing. She shut her notebooks with a sigh, piling all three of them neatly in front of her. "I do. What is it? It's rare for you to come to see me in my dorm."

Archie winced, glancing down at her notebooks. "I just wanted to talk about something."

"And Hermione is at a meeting and John is at Duelling." Chess tilted her head to one side for a moment, mulling it over. "And it's something worrying you enough that you need to talk it over with someone right now, and I'm your third choice."

Archie looked away. Was it really so obvious? "Sorry," he muttered, after a short pause.

Chess smiled, a quicksilver half-smile that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. "I'm not bothered by it."

But Archie was, a little, so he glanced back down at her notebooks. Two full notebooks, and a half-full one. "What are you working on?"

Chess studied him a moment, before she replied. "Analysing the data from my summer experiments," she sighed. "I wish I could get access to a computer here, I would be through it that much quicker if I had one. But since I can't, I have to do the mathematical analysis by hand."

"Did you find anything interesting?" Archie asked, though he wasn't entirely sure he would understand her explanation even if she decided to give one.

She hummed a little, tilting her head back and forth. "I think there's a connection between magic and electromagnetic frequencies," she admitted finally. "I'm not sure what I want to do with that yet, but the possibilities are intriguing. Would you like some tea? There's a lovely wall of loose-leaf over there, I'll go make some."

"Uh, yeah," Archie said, mentally catching up, while Chess stood up and picked out a container of loose-leaf black tea, a teapot, and a second large, chipped mug. She set the whole thing on an antique silver platter and brought it over. She filled the teapot with water from a pitcher left on the table, then traced a rune on the top of it to set it to boiling. "Are you thinking about publishing in any journals, or anything? Once you work it out, I mean."

Chess laughed a little. "Depends what I work out. And if anyone would accept it – I'm worried that my ideas might rely too much on No-Maj science to be easily understood or accepted." She sat back down across from him, and they waited for the water to boil. It did, and she neatly tapped in what she considered to be an appropriate amount of tea to steep. "So, Harry?"

Archie sighed. He opened his textbook to the page he was reading earlier, on the Holocaust, and passed it to her. She skimmed it quickly and handed it back, nodded once, then poured tea for them both. She sat back, sipping at it for a minute, before Archie realized she was waiting for him to continue.

"I don't understand," he burst out, a tad awkward. "Did this really happen? Is this something that actually happened?"

Chess took another sip of her tea, then set it down. "I'm," she hesitated. "I'm really not the best person for this. Yes, it happened?"

"Why didn't anyone stop it from happening?" Archie demanded, even as Chess pushed his mug of tea closer to him.

"Umm, well, you could say that people did," Chess said, stumbling a little over her words as she thought it over. "Hitler didn't succeed, and the Allied armies liberated the camps at the end of the war."

"Why didn't anyone stop it before it was happening?" he corrected himself, taking a big gulp of his tea. It was hot, scaldingly hot because that was the way that Chess liked her tea. It was satisfying, the burn in his throat.

Chess was silent, thinking the question over for a few minutes. "There are a lot of reasons," she said finally. "This – this isn't something I know well, Harry, I think you would do better to talk to Hermione about this, or the No-Maj Studies professor, or research it in the library. I think, though, that one thing you should remember is that the Jewish people had been discriminated against for centuries in Europe: they were kept in ghettoes, they were kicked out of cities or countries, there were special laws that applied only to them. They were an easy group to target and dehumanise."

"Dehumanise." Archie repeated, his voice dry in horror, setting his mug down with a small thud. "Dehumanise. How can you talk about this so calmly?"

Chess studied him for a minute, then she took another sip of tea. "Harry… I don't know how to tell you this. I'm not good at this, I'm not good at talking, or telling people things. But, um, this is something that every No-Maj knows. It's not, well, it's not a shock to me. You said you had read The Man in the High Castle – I don't, well, I mean, how could you understand it? If you didn't know about World War 2?"

"I didn't think it was real!" Archie sucked in a deep, upset breath. "It's fiction, and all I got was that there had been a war, and between the story and the book in the story, two different worlds that resulted. I didn't realize it was based on an actual war."

Chess sat, without a hint of either pity or judgement on her face, silent, sipping at her tea. Archie looked back into his own mug of tea.

"No-Majs even have a word for it – dehumanise," Archie said, his voice soft, feeling something break on the inside. He heard Chess huff a small sigh.

"I don't – I'm not sure what you want me to tell you, Harry," she replied. "You wanted to know how it happened, why people let it happen. One of the reasons, from the little that I know, was that the Jews were sufficiently dehumanised that no one cared to stop the genocide before it happened. People didn't speak up until it was too late."

There was a long pause, and Chess topped up his tea mug before refilling her own. She let him sit there, in silence, while she sipped at her tea, gazing off to the lit fireplace. Archie was glad that her common room was empty, though it was the prime hour for club activities, and most of her Wing was part of the Duelling Club anyway.

"I just … I didn't think people could be so horrible," Archie muttered, finally, staring at the dregs in his mug. There was Lord Riddle, of course – Lord Riddle was what, until now, Archie would have called the apex of evil. Lord Riddle passed laws limiting Muggleborns and halfbloods from working in the Ministry, his actions had kept Harry from openly following her dreams and going to Hogwarts, and now he was passing horrific laws on marriage. He did things like waiting until midnight at Halloween, when he knew most of the Light would be celebrating, to call a Wizengamot meeting and slam through legislation. He sent the Sleeping Sickness to Hogwarts to infect the youngest students as a political gambit. That was disgusting, and that was evil. But Lord Riddle had not tried to exterminate Muggleborns and halfbloods.

"I'm," Chess hesitated, then poured him the last of the tea from the teapot, tracing another rune on his mug to reheat it. "Sorry?"

Archie nodded, still looking away.

"Um, I don't really know what to tell you," Chess added, after a few minutes. "I'm not good at this. But there are people, No-Majs, who have dedicated their lives to studying what happened, how it happened, to trying to make it so it doesn't happen again. I mean, I – I don't know any of them, personally, but my dad is a professor at a university, and we – No-Majs – we study everything. Maybe if you do some research, or talk to Hermione, or to the No-Maj Studies professor, maybe that will help."

"Yeah," Archie said, half-heartedly sipping at his third mug of tea. "Maybe."

He didn't think that would help him at all, not really. Because what he was worried about, what he was really thinking about, wasn't the fact that it had happened to the Jewish people. After a few minutes, Chess stood up, cleaned out the teapot by hand, and started brewing a fresh pot for them both. She asked quietly if he would mind if she continued with her analysis, and he shook his head. He sat there, and he thought, with the scratch of Chess' pen scribbling numbers echoing in his ears.

He was thinking of Aunt Lily. He was thinking of Harry, of Hermione, of the other British newbloods at school, of anyone who wasn't a pureblood. He was thinking of the many inequalities they already suffered: not being able to go to school with purebloods at Hogwarts, that ancient and noble institution; not being able to hold jobs in government, where they would be able to influence anything. He was thinking about a certain piece of legislation on the table which, beneath a shoddy, bald, falsely hopeful statement that it would expand halfblood rights, would, in reality, restrict halfblood rights even further and which would isolate newbloods in Britain, limiting any power they might have gained.

Where was that, on the dehumanisation scale?

Archie did some research. No, that was a lie – he did a lot of research. It was a good thing that he was only a dancer on South Pacific, because he only had required rehearsals twice a week, instead of four times, like when he was a lead role on A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sometimes, he wondered wryly whether, had he gone to Hogwarts, he would have been Sorted into Ravenclaw, instead of Gryffindor where Dad had always dreamed him to be. He doubted he would have been a Slytherin, like Harry. He couldn't be sure. He did spend far more time studying at AIM than he would ever have at Hogwarts, he thought. Hogwarts, after all, didn't have a Healing program anywhere near the calibre of the AIM program.

For once, he didn't ask Hermione, or John, for help, and Chess never mentioned their conversation. He didn't want them to know how worried he was, at least not until he could put it in words. Maybe he was completely crazy. Maybe it happened then, but maybe it couldn't happen now. Maybe all his fears were groundless, maybe he could do some research and reason with himself and one day when he told either Hermione or John, they would laugh with him about how foolish he had been, trucking off to the library on empty worries. Chess wouldn't laugh, but she would smile, a little, and she wouldn't mention his panic during their conversation, or the fact that he had drunk four mugs of tea while she sat and her pen scribbled numbers across blank pages. Of course, if Chess knew, John might, but John was a closed box where secrets were concerned.

And, anyway. He remembered Chess' reaction – even if she hadn't shown any sense of her surprise at his questions, her bare words were enough. She didn't know much about it, yet she knew about it. She had said it herself; it was something that every No-Maj knew had happened, it was something that, now that Archie realized it, permeated No-Maj culture. It had been referenced in The Sound of Music, and he hadn't noticed. It had been there, staring at him in the face, in The Man In The High Castle, and he didn't see it. He knew he was missing something about that book, but not something like this, not something on this scale. Hermione wouldn't have bothered to hide her surprise, even if she would probably have been able to tell him more about it, and he didn't want her to look at him with that sense of shock or surprise because he didn't know. Then she would tell him everything she knew and then some, with a lecture on civic responsibility or with musing on how things could have been different. Even if she never even hinted at anything about who he was in Britain (and she didn't know the half of it!), he would hear it anyway, in the silences between her words. And John – John's beloved grandpa fought in the No-Maj Great War, lived through the Second World War. John wouldn't look at him with surprise, but with almost pity, and in some ways that was so much worse. Wizarding Britain, his frown would say, with a heavy dose of scorn, and to be honest that was all it needed to say, sometimes.

This was something Archie needed to find out, to work out for himself. He popped off to the Seaton House library every few days after classes, when Hermione was at a meeting and John was at Duelling or Quodpot or Quidditch and checked out every book on that time period in there, in twos and threes. He devoured them in his room, in those same hours, or later at night when Hermione and John had gone to bed. Even Harry's letter, mentioning an attack at Hogwarts over Halloween, a delayed, overpowered Bombardment Charm and the petrifaction of Neville Longbottom, don't worry, I'm fine, couldn't disturb him from his relentless search for longer than it took to scrawl a worried, keep yourself safe, Rigel, for goodness' sake, reply to Harry.

He read about the lasting resentment from the Great War and the rise of nationalism, in both the No-Maj and Wizarding worlds. He already knew about Grindelwald, of course – he just didn't know about Grindelwald's No-Maj equivalent. He read about the stirring speeches, about Grindelwald exhorting European witches and wizards to wage war against their No-Maj neighbours with looming threats of No-Maj war technology, so effective in the Great War. He read about Hitler's stirring speeches about how the German people had been betrayed from within, about his racialized vision for a new world order, in which he and his kind stood on top and everyone else below, including the systematic annihilation of certain groups. He was struck by how similar the two were, one wizarding, one No-Maj – both working off the same post-Great-War script, both espousing terror, death, enslavement.

He was struck by how similar some of these speeches were to what Lord Riddle said. Lord Riddle, too, emphasized safety and security. Lord Riddle, too, talked about the threat being posed to the elite, to purebloods, to pureblood culture, by the outside world. Lord Riddle, too, passed laws restricting halfbloods, newbloods, in the name of protecting traditional wizarding culture. They were disturbingly similar.

He read about antisemitism – that was the word they used. He read about the long history of antisemitism, about centuries of persecution. There were massacres, dating back before the founding of Hogwarts, there were expulsions, forced conversions, enslavement, and worse throughout the Middle Ages. This was a time when the wizarding world had not yet split itself off, the books would remind him periodically; this was not only a No-Maj phenomenon. A certain Lord Black, probably one of Archie's own ancestors, had been involved in the 1290 English Edict of Expulsion; he recognized the Malfoy, Selwyn, Peverell names on the lists of those who had gone Crusading, and it was the Crusaders who had committed some of the earliest, if not the worst, atrocities. The books he read were focused on emphasizing that witches and wizards had been complicit, that discrimination, persecution, genocide were not only the province of No-Majs.

The Holocaust was the culmination of centuries of persecution. In some ways, that made Archie feel better – there hadn't been centuries of blood status discrimination! In fact, since the International Statute of Secrecy was only passed in 1689, it couldn't be that bad. And there had always been Muggleborns and halfbloods, there were Muggleborns every generation. Even after 1689, Muggleborns and halfbloods had often done well for themselves, gaining prominent positions in Ministry, the Wizengamot, the Guilds. There had even been halfblood Ministers for Magic in Britain, though not a Muggleborn one. Wizarding Britain was bad, but not that bad, he told himself.

But there were other things that made Archie worry. The early laws passed in the 1930s by Nazi Germany were hauntingly familiar: restrictions on education, on employment, and a complete prohibition from holding any position in the civil service. Those were, in fact, nearly the exact laws that Lord Riddle had passed in 1981 – only people schooled in Britain were allowed to work for the Ministry, and only purebloods were allowed to go to school in Britain. There were homeschooling programs, but they were, by and large, low quality garbage, and the whole thing was a thinly veiled effort to keep halfbloods and Muggleborns out of the Ministry.

In 1935, more laws were passed, stripping German Jews, half-Jews, and quarter-Jews from citizenship, restricting who they could marry. Archie had a harder time analogizing these, though the reference to marriage made his stomach flop uneasily. Wizarding Britain had not stripped halfbloods and Muggleborns of citizenship, though maybe that was simply because wizarding Britain didn't formally identify citizenship the way that MACUSA and other nations did. Wizengamot seats were passed down through the nobility and there were no universal social security or benefit programs that would necessitate a robust citizenship system. And the marriage law on the table was different – it didn't tell halfbloods they could only marry other halfbloods and Muggleborns. To the contrary, it decreed that they could only marry purebloods.

Which was only the other side of the same coin, even if it could be couched a little differently. Look at how progressive we are, letting halfbloods marry in with the elites! It was still a restriction on marriage, it was still intended to tie halfbloods to pureblood interests and completely isolate Muggleborns.

He read about the propaganda, the purposeful agitation the government pushed, calling undesirables subhuman, comparing them to rats, emphasizing their propensity for treachery. Wizarding Britain, on that front at least, was different. They never called Muggleborns or halfbloods subhuman, they didn't compare them to animals, they didn't call for violence.

Instead, Muggleborns and halfbloods were dangerous. They didn't have generations of breeding to help them control their magic, and they didn't know how. They would inevitably lose control sometimes and hurt others. That was why they couldn't go to Hogwarts – how could the Wizarding world countenance training such dangerous lesser-bloods beside the pureblood scions of the oldest, purest Houses? It was simply a matter of safety, of common sense. Countries that did otherwise were foolish. Muggleborns and halfbloods were unstable, dangerous, threatening, and not only magically.

Muggleborns and halfbloods didn't know or understand the noble history of the wizarding people, they didn't know or respect pureblood wizarding culture. They hadn't grown up to it, and they brought in too many new ideas, crazy ideas. They would destroy the wonders of wizarding culture, just as their Muggle ancestors destroyed the wizarding settlements near Ypres, near Messines, in the Great War – they could not be trusted to do otherwise. The restrictions were necessary, to preserve and protect the Wizarding World from the menace of the Muggle, No-Maj world.

Just look at Wizarding America.

Look at Wizarding America. Look at the decimation of their magical creatures. They have no unicorns, there, no hippogriffs, no dragons. Only a few Thunderbird reservations, those great and majestic birds that had once saved Wizarding America from a complete and utter destruction of the Statute of Secrecy. Look at the way that Muggleborns and halfbloods have destroyed the greatness of a once-powerful, once-noble wizarding culture.

Archie slammed the books shut. It wasn't like that! It was more complicated than that. Yes, Wizarding America didn't really have creatures, but that was a separate problem, it had nothing to do with newbloods or halfbloods or anything! And, anyway, Wizarding American culture was still great – there was a special kind of magic to how No-Majs lived, and there was a special beauty to American wizardry. It wasn't perfect, but there was something wondrous in the wild collision of No-Maj and wizarding culture that metamorphosed into the thing he thought of when he considered American wizarding culture.

Even if Lord Riddle was right, even if newbloods and halfbloods would inevitably change wizarding culture, was that really such a bad thing? Was the culture they preserved, in Britain, worth the subjugation of a whole class of people? And what if anything happened – would newbloods and halfbloods be held to blame?

He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all, and he hated that the books had no answers.

Hermione sat down beside him, the first Saturday of the mid-term exam period. It was early, still – before nine in the morning, which meant most people were still in bed. The common room had a couple people curled up with books, but Saturday mornings were still far emptier than any other time.

"Harry," she started, a worried frown on her face as she set her bag down in the empty chair beside her. "Tell me honestly – what's wrong? You haven't been yourself, these last few weeks, and don't put me off with talk about theatre, or your cousin Rigel at Hogwarts, or how you haven't managed to pull a perfect prank all semester. I know you well enough to know that it isn't any of those things."

Archie smiled at her. "'Mione, you've been checking in with me every day. I'm fine! And why can't it be theatre, or Rigel? You know South Pacific wasn't as popular as last year's productions, hearing the feedback was tough. And there are attacks at my cousin's school – one of his friends was Petrified at Halloween, I'm allowed to be worried about that!

Technically, he wasn't strictly accurate, on either of those comments. South Pacific did have mixed feedback, but it had also caused quite a bit more talk than any of last year's performances. A lot of students had loved it, loved how visceral parts of the play were, while others found the subject matter too heavy. As for the attacks at Hogwarts, he wasn't sure that Neville actually counted as one of Harry's friends – she really only talked about Malfoy and Parkinson, with a dash of Zabini, Nott, Bulstrode, and the Weasley twins. Still, with Aunt Lily being close with Alice Longbottom, he didn't think it was an outright lie that they were friends. In a loose sense, anyway.

Hermione just looked at him, eyebrow raised. "And that smile, Harry, with that flippant tone, is exactly how I know that those aren't what you're worried about. If it were the South Pacific reception bothering you, you would have mounted a vociferous defense of the play like you did two weeks ago, you and Neal both. And if it were your cousin, you wouldn't smile – when you're worried about Rigel, you get this really pensive look on your face. Though, I am surprised you are not more worried about him – two attacks at school, after last year?"

Archie made a face at her. That was true – he was worried about Harry, but her letters had only mentioned the barest details about the attacks. Aside from the Halloween attack (why did something bad always happen to Harry at Halloween, anyway?) which had Petrified Neville, there had been another one at the end of November, leaving Padma Patil, whom Harry had never previously mentioned, Petrified. He was worried about the attacks, yes, but it was a formless sort of worry, paling in comparison to the flashing red lights in his head screaming about genocide. He didn't know enough about these attacks, other than they apparently Petrified students, to really worry, whereas he knew far too much about the Holocaust, now.

He knew the history of persecution, in some ways hauntingly similar, in other ways not. He knew about the laws that had been passed, incrementally, many or most of which were too close to comfort. He knew the propaganda, both similar and not.

Hermione's expression had softened. "Harry," she said, her voice soft. "You can trust me, you know that."

"I know, 'Mione," Archie sighed. There wasn't anything to hide anyway. He had done all his research, and he didn't think his worries were groundless. "Just – don't laugh at me, all right?"

"Harry, when have I ever laughed at you? When you're being serious, I mean."

"And don't frown at me, either," Archie added, after a brief second of hesitation. "You know I grew up in the wizarding world, not the No-Maj world, so I don't know a lot of things that everyone is supposed to know."

"I do have a year and a half of experience with that, yes," Hermione replied, smoothing her expression even if her voice was dry. "Is that what this is about? You learned about something that bothers you, but you were too embarrassed to tell me? Because, just so you know, last summer you spent ten minutes in the Bodleian Library in Oxford staring at the lightbulbs. Thank goodness our tour guide just thought we were interested in how the lights didn't damage the books and started talking about book preservation techniques."

"Lightbulbs are interesting," Archie defended himself half-heartedly. "I wanted to know how they worked, all right? This is," he drew a deep breath. "This is a little different."

Hermione studied him for a few brief seconds. "It doesn't matter, Harry. I won't laugh, and I'll try not to frown, either. What did you learn?"

Archie stared down at his textbook, for second year Basic Healing, tracing his fingers lightly over the embossed letters. He kept his voice quiet. "The Second World War. The genocide. I couldn't help but draw parallels with, you know. Home."

"Ah."

When he dared to look up, Hermione was leaning back in her chair, her expression carefully schooled to blankness. From the fact that her arms were crossed over her chest, one hand propping up her chin, though, Archie knew she had understood what he hadn't said and was thinking over possible responses.

He loved that, about Hermione. He didn't need to be explicit, she was smart enough to follow his train of thought without him needing to spell it out. He didn't need to explain exactly what he was worried about, with a few clues she would catch on. She was a lot like Harry, that way.

"Are you afraid of going back to Britain, for the holidays?" She asked, finally.

"What?!" Archie blinked, leaning forward. Of all the responses she could have had, this wasn't one that he had expected. "No, of course not! I'm not – I mean, I'm a noble, Hermione."

He had almost let slip that he wasn't a halfblood! But, of course, he had to be, because Harry Potter was certainly a halfblood. He had never been worried for himself, but for Harry, Hermione, Aunt Lily, and his soon-to-be baby cousin. Archie, even if he was Light, was a pureblood and the Heir to the House of Black. He took a deep, steadying breath. "I'm mostly worried for other people – like my Mum, or you. Just… everyone always says that history repeats itself, and with the laws they're working on passing, on top of the other laws, you know…"

"I know," Hermione nodded, her brown eyes serious. "A lot of the laws already in effect are a lot like the 1933 German laws on Jewish participation in society, and there are other similarities. I'm not going to sit here, Harry, and tell you that you have nothing to worry about. Personally, I think there is a lot to worry about, quite apart for the inherent wrongness of the laws. The laws preventing us from going to Hogwarts, from working in the Ministry, prevent us from integrating into mainstream wizarding society. Ignorance breeds hate, so if anything were to happen, I think things could spiral very quickly."

"But you're not afraid, are you, 'Mione?" Archie asked, leaning forward as he processed her words. Her voice was too even for there to be any real fear – no, from her careful words, especially the qualifier that she added, that meant there was more. She wasn't going to tell him not to worry, but she was going to tell him not to panic.

Hermione sighed and pursed her lips. "No, I'm not. I think, Harry, there are also a lot of key things that are different between Wizarding Britain and 1930s Germany. Wizarding Britain is both economically and politically stable. Most people are doing fine for themselves, most people are comfortable, and that means there isn't enough resentment, fear, or desperation to explode into any violent flashpoints. The SOW Party doesn't have absolute power, and no one is agitating for outright violence. And, well…"

She paused for a moment, picking her words carefully, then leaned over to rest her hand on his arm. "This is dark, but another thing that brings me comfort is that the Holocaust happened. It happened, and because it happened, we know what to look for, what things should cause us concern. There are people watching, Harry, so while I can't say don't worry, I would say that things are different now because of what happened before. People know that this is a possibility, people know the signs, and people will fight that much harder to stop it happening again. Does that help?"

Archie winced. "But people in Wizarding Britain don't know about this, Hermione. I only learned about it here, because No-Maj Studies is a requirement – No-Maj Studies isn't required at Hogwarts."

"But the international community knows." Hermione smiled slightly. "The ICW knows, everyone else knows. There are international observers. No one else would let it go so far – not again, not after last time, you see?"

Archie wasn't so sure – the ICW hadn't done anything to stop the laws from going through, they couldn't even get blood status accepted into the Equality Accords. Still, Hermione had a point – no one had called for violence, and there hadn't been any violence yet. Even in Germany, the genocide had started with earlier episodes of violence, most importantly Kristallnacht. Things were stable, as she said. They were horrible, but they were stable. That meant nothing was going to happen immediately, nothing was imminent.

He was right to worry, but nothing was happening now. Nothing would happen anytime soon. Nothing was more dangerous than it had been six months ago.

"What do you think we should be looking for?" Archie asked, relaxing ever so slightly. Hermione had said, if anything were to happen. She had to have ideas about what things could, in her opinion, cause things to spiral.

"I don't think anyone can say for sure." Hermione shook her head, her brown curls bouncing a little. "I would look for acts of violence, and I'd look to see how the Ministry responded. If there were a clearly blood-status-related incident, for example, I'd want to see whether the Ministry condemned it or if they were silent about it. I'd also look to see what other halfbloods and Muggleborns still in Britain were doing – if a lot of them were emigrating, I would be worried."

Archie sat back in his chair, thinking it over. Those sounded like reasonable warning signs, well ahead of any serious dangers. Even Kristallnacht had taken place in 1938, with a good breath of time before the extermination efforts began in earnest. Maybe Archie could simply become one of those people watching things, ready to raise the alarm. Maybe all Archie needed to do was watch, ready to pull his family and the people he loved from Britain. He had time to work out a safe haven for them all – maybe Australia would be better for werewolves, or Germany, or the Nordics.

That didn't sound so terrible. He could do that.

"Thanks, 'Mione," he said, smiling and opening his Basic Healing textbook. "That does make me feel better – how do you always know the right thing to say?"

She smiled back at him. "I just know you very well, Harry," she replied, pulling out her own textbook. "Basic Healing, today?"

"Definitely. We have reputations to uphold, my dear."

Before he knew it, it was the winter holidays, and he was returning to Britain. This time, he wasn't overly upset about it – maybe he was becoming accustomed to the change, between the freedom and excitement he experienced in America, and the cloak of secrecy and acting he had to wear at home? Or maybe, this time, after having worried about genocide for weeks, the usual bittersweet feelings of coming home didn't feel so bad?

He said his goodbyes to John and Chess at AIM, where both slipped him packages for him to put away in his suitcase, and he did the same for them. Hermione pursed her lips slightly, but didn't say anything, thankfully – she still believed they were No-Maj-related presents that Archie couldn't share at home, and as bad as he felt about it, he couldn't enlighten her about the true reasons. Harry and his family still knew nothing about John or Chess, nothing about the things that Archie did in America.

She must think he was such a coward, Archie realized sadly. Here he was, a Book of Gold noble, just having learned about the Holocaust, and here he was, still hiding his love of anything and everything No-Maj. Here he was, a pureblood shamming as his halfblood cousin for a Healer's education, while that same cousin risked her life and limb shamming as him in a den of vipers.

He pushed away the thought, as he had grown used to doing over the past year.

Coming home was easier than it had been in previous years – without the need for a Polyjuice switch, he was able to give Hermione a proper goodbye, hug and all, before he went off to find Aunt Lily and Uncle James, before he settled himself, temporarily, into Harry's persona for an hour or so. He fielded all the questions he could about his independent potions studies, though he honestly had a very limited idea of what Harry had been up to with Master Snape for the past four months. He kept his answers short, succinct, as he hoped Harry would have, because he didn't know half the damn answers. He had never been so relieved to Floo home, to Grimmauld Place.

"Change clothes with me, now," he said, the minute he burst into his bedroom, where Harry was waiting for him. She raised an eyebrow at him but turned around and started shucking off her clothes without complaint. "I just don't see how you do it all day!"

"Do what?"

"Be you." Archie blew out a breath, mixed relief and annoyance, as he pulled off her sweater. It was ugly and brown and he wanted to be back in his own clothes. At least Harry had dressed well, today, though somewhere along the line, Archie had become too used to his No-Maj clothes. He wanted to be in his AIM Healing sweater, he wanted to be in his own, neatly fitted, dark-wash jeans. "It's so exhausting."

"It comes naturally to me," Harry replied, a slight note of offense in her voice.

"Well, it doesn't come naturally to me." Archie chucked her sweater at the back of her head. "If Uncle James asks me one more time about how my independent potions studies are going, I swear, it's like he's trying to make up eleven years of disinterest in your potion-making all at once, but he's making it up to me."

There was a cold silence as Harry turned around and glared at him. Oh, right, Archie winced. Harry had so few sensitive topics, and Archie was so usually the exception to them, that he had forgotten. Harry had never been what Uncle James had expected, and the potions were the least of it. She looked so much like him, with her mother's eyes, but she was never as outgoing, never as gregarious. She preferred being a Beater to being a Seeker (actually, now that Archie thought of it, Harry would love Quodpot), she wasn't an open prankster the same way he and Dad and Archie were. She loved Potions, whereas Uncle James had hated the subject, and Harry had a festering litany of complaints about how Uncle James had belittled her passion over the years. Yeah, not your brightest shining moment there, Archie, he told himself.

"I mean," he sighed, his voice apologetic. Harry would get his unspoken apology. "I've picked up a lot about Potions from the materials you've been sending, but I'll never be you at it. I just don't have your experience, for one, and I can't afford to devote all my time to it."

Another short pause.

"Don't worry about it," Harry said, her voice a little stiff, but it smoothed out quickly enough and she favoured him with a tiny smile. They didn't have the time to talk about everything that had happened that semester, but at least, with Harry's somewhat better correspondence this year, Archie had a better idea of what had happened at Hogwarts. She went over in some detail about Dad's meeting with the Malfoys and the Parkinsons, and while Archie wasn't entirely happy with their new apparent friendliness, Draco and Pansy were Harry's closest friends, so he would just have to put up with it.

It was the knowledge of what had happened before, haunting him still. Would Lord Malfoy lift a finger to stop something like a genocide? Would Lord Parkinson? What about Lady Malfoy, Lady Parkinson? He didn't know these elegant nobles that Harry was describing, other than by reputation. Lord Malfoy – second in command to Lord Riddle himself. Lord Parkinson – one of the main SOW Party political strategists. He wanted nothing to do with these Dark, pureblood, SOW Party nobles, but Draco and Pansy were Harry's closest friends, and they were Harry's closest friends' parents, so it had to happen.

It had to happen, and Archie had to smile and agree and let it happen. And because he loved Harry, he teased his family, he distracted everyone when they started pointing out how bizarrely similar he and Harry were starting to look. Because he loved Harry, he filled the air over dinner with chatter, and he put up with it when his family called him a chatterbox (like he had little substance of his own, like his head wasn't ringing with knowledge censored in Britain, like he was the same person he was when he first got on a plane and flew to America).

Because he loved Harry, he wasn't offended when she insulted him, bluntly calling his chatter annoying. Because he loved Harry, he ignored it when she pointedly congratulated Uncle James on his promotion, which Archie had forgotten to tell her about, a snide insult. Because he loved her, he let it go when she blatantly misrepresented what Archie told her about AIM and Quidditch (intramural teams, that was not what he told her, they were pick-up games if they didn't make the school team, there was a whole goddamn League, did she not listen, or did she simply not care?), only casting a cursory glance at Aunt Lily, who frowned slightly at Harry, but didn't say anything.

Because he loved Harry, he didn't laugh along with Uncle James when they made fun of the Malfoys. Because he loved her, he spoke up in their defense when she kicked him under the table, even if he had no idea why he should defend them (and really, the joke was quite funny), and because he loved her, he put up with her annoyed silence afterwards.

Because he loved her, he agreed to go to the Gala, so she could see her Dark, pureblood, SOW Party friends over the holidays. Even if he didn't think they were good for her, even if he wasn't sure they weren't the exact sort of people who would turn her over to an extermination camp in the right circumstances.

Even if it didn't feel like Harry appreciated it, all the little things he did, all the things he let go, all the things he didn't say to keep their ruse intact.

He did them because he loved her.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Archie bluffed his way through a morning's conversation with his Dad over a full breakfast and coffee (black, of course, to remind him that he was Rigel and not simply Archie), relying heavily on Harry's letters and complaining at length about Gilderoy Lockhart. He invented three quarters of the complaints, but they made Dad laugh uproariously, and it wasn't like Harry was there to contradict him. He helped Dad clear up the plates and dishes and let him know he was heading to Harry's.

He was a little surprised she hadn't shown up, honestly. They hadn't had time yesterday for a debrief, so he was expecting her much earlier.

"Going over to see Harry, Dad," he said, grabbing a fistful of Floo powder from the mantle.

"Yeah, of course." His dad waved him off. "Dinner's at Potter Place tonight, remember."

"I remember."

Archie stepped out of the fireplace into the Potter Place kitchen, which was empty. That wasn't surprising. It was the holidays, but it was technically still a week day, so Uncle James and Aunt Lily were probably at work. He looked around curiously – Aunt Lily had gotten tired of the décor and had redone the colours again, lining everything in blue and gold and cream. Almost AIM colours, now that he thought about it, and the whole kitchen gave off a light, breezy sort of air. Something about the airy space reminded him of the beach, of sea-salt tang in the air, of worn, wind-beaten driftwood.

It reminded him a little of the Fisher Wing common room, he realized suddenly, looking around the kitchen with new eyes. Maybe Aunt Lily had been a Fisher girl before moving to Charms Row. Aunt Lily rarely spoke of her days at AIM, only mentioning off-hand the experimental Charms program occasionally. Surely, she had left behind friends, hadn't she?

Archie was astonished that Aunt Lily hadn't picked up on at least some of their fibs. No one cared about Archie's life at AIM (no one cared about AIM, not when they could talk about the shining example of Hogwarts instead), but Harry's comments about Quidditch last night had been blatantly wrong. Harry wasn't talkative, as a rule, and Archie knew that some part of her half of the ruse depended on the fact that she wasn't expected to say much about AIM at all. The little that Archie said, in his letters and when he was masquerading as her, were enough to convince their families that Harry actually went there, as long as Harry didn't contradict him later. Which she had, for Quidditch: there was no mention of the League, which Archie had told her about multiple times and talked about with Uncle James and Aunt Lily, then she made something up about intramural games where you needed a full team to play, not pick-up games where all you had to do was show up and be put in a team. Somehow, Aunt Lily had only frowned and let it go, and Uncle James didn't seem to notice the inconsistency.

No use begging trouble. Archie sighed, and meandered out into the main living room.

Potter Place was easily four times the size of Grimmauld Place, though it was smaller than most of the other manor houses he had seen. Not that he had seen very many – really, aside from Fawley Hall, he hadn't seen any. He had been told about Malfoy Manor, though, about the labyrinthine corridors and house-elves and portrait galleries and the maze in the garden. Potter Place was certainly not that monstrosity, especially because Aunt Lily and Uncle James kept two thirds of the manor shut off, unused – the North Tower, the entire East Wing, the upper floors of the West Wing where they did live.

"No one needs this much space," Aunt Lily laughed, whenever he or Harry asked about it. It wasn't an issue – for the most part, he and Harry went and played wherever they wanted, and Uncle James always found them, later.

He and Harry used to love playing in the North Tower, the only remaining one on the ancient Peverell estate, before Uncle James had warded the doors shut for safety reasons. There were too many stairs, there, where he was afraid they could fall. He used to be able to convince Harry to break the ward for them, but she started refusing, after a while. And since they had all the rest of the mansion to play in, including the whole of the near-abandoned East Wing, he hadn't pushed her on it. The East Wing, he remembered, included guest wings, a gallery, the never-in-his-life-used ballroom, the sealed armoury that even he and Harry had never managed to break into. He remembered being four, maybe, just having learned how to read, climbing on Harry's shoulders to trace his fingers through graven letters.

Sometimes they would run upstairs, to the upper floors of the West Wing. It was mostly more old bedrooms up there, parlours, a ladies' solar, that sort of thing. Some of the rooms hadn't been redecorated in ages, it seemed, but no one used them, so it didn't matter. Between the main living area, the basement, and the second floor, they had more than enough space for anything they could ever want. Potter Place even had wide sweeping grounds, perfect for Quidditch, so long as he and Harry didn't fly too high.

It was interesting, wasn't it? Archie mused to himself as he walked through the main living room, done in Uncle James' favourite colours of red and gold. The Potters were the last remaining direct descendants of the Peverells, noble before Book of Gold even meant anything, one of the last remaining pre-Conquest noble houses. Only the Ollivanders, historically non-political wandmakers, could trace their lines back farther. The Blacks had only come over with the Conquest. Yet today, because of their respective blood-statuses, Archie would rank higher than Harry in virtually every British wizarding social situation. She would be expected to defer to him, even if she basically lived in a renovated castle, even if, by the bloodlines that noble wizarding culture so prized, she could trace her family and nobility back much farther than he could.

Man, British pureblood wizarding culture sucked. That was garbage, that was. The whole concept of people needing to defer to each other for anything except an earned status was stupid. He didn't want people listening to him, kowtowing to him because he was a Black! He wanted to know that people liked him for who he was, that they respected him for the things he had worked for, that he could do. Like at AIM – Hermione never let him get away with stupidity. As she said, she would always support him, but when he did something she didn't approve of, he knew it.

Harry wasn't there, and Archie looked in the formal sitting room, the formal dining room, the room that Uncle James used as an experimentation lab, which was, as usual, a complete disaster, without any real hope of finding her there. Truth be told, he was just reacquainting himself with the house, and now that he had seen Oliver Hall, he couldn't help but pick out hints of AIM here and there in Aunt Lily's decorating scheme. The formal dining room was hard, imposing, somehow darkly reminiscent of the Holmes Wing. The formal sitting room was light, airy, with the sweeping lines and whites and greys of the Coulson Wing.

He went upstairs, to the second floor, where Aunt Lily kept her office (only slightly less of a disaster than Uncle James' workshop), where the bedrooms were. One of the guest bedrooms was done in pleasing peacock blue and emerald greens, bright jewel splashes of colour, a second in pale grey, white and lavender, softly feminine without being over the top. A third guest bedroom was dusty, and Archie sneezed, but it was decorated in elegant dark wood, masculine black and silver. He didn't bother poking his head into the master suite, a space that belonged so clearly in his head to Aunt Lily and Uncle James that it seemed an intrusion even to open the door. He poked his head into Harry's room, still decorated in the placid blues of her childhood.

He felt a flash of guilt. He had been annoyed, last night, as much as he had tried to hide it. It was fine that Harry made things up. It was fine that Archie had to cover for them both, it was fine that he had to continually act out a role in front of Dad, in front of his family. It was fine that he had to play the fool for everyone, that was what he liked doing anyway, right? And Harry's friends, well, they were her friends and not his, and how could he begrudge Harry her friends when he hadn't even told her about half of his, when one of his best friends was a Natural Legilimens who had already independently figured them out? How could he be annoyed, angry, or anything except endlessly grateful for her sacrifices that let him go to AIM, that let him explore a new culture and make friends that he wouldn't trade for the world?

Archie wasn't stupid. Archie got the best of both worlds, and he knew it. He was a pureblood, a noble Book of Gold pureblood, in Britain. It wasn't fair, but he knew well how he benefitted from the system. He could have gone to Hogwarts, if he wanted, and nothing stopped him from going anywhere else, under his own name. He could apply for whatever job or internships he wanted, and he knew people would look at his application seriously. He could probably waltz into a job at St. Mungo's or anywhere he liked on the strength of the Black name alone, not on any intrinsic ability he had. He didn't have to worry, like Harry did, about laws being passed preventing him from working anywhere he might want to work, restricting who he could marry. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair at all, and he hated it even as he benefitted from it.

And in America, he was no one, but he got more than he could ever hoped or dreamed about. He got his Healing program, he got the training he had wanted since Mum first got sick. He got his theatre troupe, he got the chance to explore new characters, new worlds on a stage, to bring stories to life in front of an audience. He got his No-Maj books, his movies and his science and his comfortable No-Maj clothes and his milkshakes. He got all the things that Harry didn't even know enough to know what they were, to want, and he didn't tell her about them.

Archie had everything he ever wanted and more, so what right did he have to complain? He didn't. He didn't have the right to complain, not when Harry had to lie just as much as he did and more, not when Harry was the one running all the risks, not when he had the best of everything.

Harry wasn't in her room, but her bedsheets were mussed, so she must already be up. That wasn't surprising, it was well after ten in the morning, and even if Archie was the early bird, Harry had never been one to sleep in. Had she already gone to the library to study? Or gotten caught in brewing?

He shook his head and went back downstairs. It would be just like her, too, heading straight back to work on their first day of vacation. The Potter Place library was two stories high, and Archie walked through it, reacquainting himself with rows of tall bookcases, the magical ladders that would take him to whatever book he needed. The library showed its origins in medieval times a little better than most of the rest of Potter Place, and not only through its books, though Archie was sure that this library held many copies of ancient books, pre-Conquest even. The windows on the second story were tall, narrow slits, only belatedly filled with glass, and there were notches below them which currently held favoured books, but which Archie guessed once held arrows, incendiaries, or other weaponry. The walls were all stone, though the bookcases were wooden, and one end of the grand room had a large fireplace, circled with poofy armchairs. There was only one, round worktable, dominating the centre of the room, which Archie and Harry had spent many days pouring over.

Harry wasn't there either – he paced his way through not only the main areas, but the many nooks and crannies where he remembered she loved to sit and read. Potions lab, then.

He closed the grand doors to the library behind him, finding the tiny, well-lit, stone stairwell heading underground, to Harry's potions lab. He really should have guessed – Harry loved Potions, nothing kept her away from her cauldron for long.

The basement was small – at one point, Potter Place must have had dungeons or something similar, but those had long since been filled in. No, the basement held the cellar, the wine cellar, and Harry's Potions lab. He skipped the cellars – the Potters kept a few bottles of wine for hosting, but neither Uncle James nor Aunt Lily were drinkers, and no one actively used the space.

The Potter Potions lab were well-lit and modern, and Archie was tickled to note that the lights lining the ceiling were the AIM-style crystal blocks, carved and imbued with a lasting runic-style Lumos charm. Aunt Lily must come through here every few weeks to check on them and top up the power reserves. The blocks provided solid, even, light, better than the other light spells used throughout the house, but they must have cost a pretty penny to import with the economic sanctions and tariffs. More so, Archie realized, looking up, because Aunt Lily had probably had to have them custom-made for the Potions lab dimensions, then she would have had to tie them to the usual light-spell triggers that Harry was used to using throughout the house. That was really nice, though Archie wondered vaguely if Harry had ever noticed.

There were four long benches in the Potions lab, providing more than enough space for Harry to have several potions on the go at once. The benches were made of granite, though the stools were plain wood, and there were a few clean cauldrons stacked in the corner. But Harry wasn't there.

Archie frowned. The house was empty. Harry had left, without a word, without worrying about their usual debrief.

He was alone.

He had half expected her to be at Grimmauld Place when he returned, but she wasn't. He shrugged when Dad asked him how his visit went, just replying breezily that Harry wasn't home, he wasn't sure where she went, and that he was going to go read in the main sitting room. He had managed to swing through the used bookstore in town close to AIM before coming home, so he had a new stack of books to read, too.

It wasn't that he expected Harry to be waiting on him. It wasn't like they had plans, it wasn't like she was in any way beholden to him. But they were in this together, and some part of him thought she would have wanted to debrief with him as soon as possible, the way they had last year.

He shouldn't be bothered by this. He really shouldn't – Harry didn't need to debrief with him right away, maybe she had more important things to do. It was a sign that she trusted him not to muck it up with Dad, with their families, that she trusted that he could ad lib his way through anything that came before they could debrief. And he did, didn't he? He carried off a whole conversation with Dad this morning without knowing the truths behind her letters from last term, on limited information! Dad didn't suspect a thing. It was fine, and if Harry didn't see the need to debrief right away, she was probably right.

He didn't need to feel so, he didn't know, abandoned. Left behind.

He cracked open his copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, carefully disguised in a dusty book cover that he had swiped from an old Healer's journal, and threw himself into the story of the enigmatic, often heroic, often cruel, Captain Nemo, the submarine Nautilus, and a journey of exploration, discovery, and madness.

Harry reappeared at dinner, saying that she had met a friend in Diagon Alley. Archie had panicked a little, but only until she said that her friend was homeschooled. After that, it was so much fun to watch her while she deftly handled Uncle James, whose knuckles had gone alarmingly white at the mention of a boy (see, this was why Archie never said anything about John!). And she had met the Aldermaster of the Potions Guild, who had offered her an internship! The entire story about how her friend had showed him a few Blood-Replenishers was obviously, to Archie's ears, invented, and he resolved to have the full story out from her later.

Not to mention the way her eyes lit up, just a bit, when she talked about Leo, the secretive tint to her smile. Yes, he had to find out more about Leo Hurst post-haste, and maybe he and Dad would put their heads together for a suitably terrifying and hilarious prank to pull on this Leo. After all, Archie was Harry's brother, threats by a brother were an absolute necessity for any potential one-day-more-than-friends Harry might have. Only once such a friend passed the Black test would they intervene in the no-doubt-likely-to-be-worse threat posed by Uncle James.

She persuaded her parents to let them have a sleepover, which was a perfect opportunity for Archie to find out more. He bounced inside her room, throwing himself on her bed, rolling over to face her as she closed the door behind them.

"So," he said, tucking his hands behind his head, his tone teasing. "Tell me about Leo."

She rolled her eyes at him, sitting down and resting her back against her headboard, her knees drawn up. "There's not much to tell, Archie."

"Not by your smile when you talk about him," he sang, then he winced a little at how out of tune he was. "Or how about that little glint in your eyes?"

She laughed. "No, Arch, really. It's not like that. But I met him in the summer, last year – you remember I got the job in the Alleys, right?"

"Hold on," Archie said, sitting up briefly to pull out his wand and cast Muffliato at the walls. She had lowered her voice, but it was better to be sure. He flopped back down on her bed, rolling over to look at her. "Yeah, I remember. So, you met him at your job?"

"Something like that," Harry grinned, or came as close to grinning as she ever did, smiling enough that her dimples almost popped out. "He's the son of the Aldermaster, like I said at dinner. I met him at the shop, and we got along well. He knows a lot of people in the Alleys and he was nice enough to introduce me around – sometimes he helps me carry my crates in, too."

"I always wondered how you were getting up to four crates in and out of Diagon Alley without me." Archie wrinkled his nose. "I would complain about being replaced, but I'm not really cut out for manual labour anyway, so I can't say I mind. What's he like?"

Harry blinked, tilting her head to one side and looking up. "Hmm… He's a bit older than us, he said he was about the equivalent of a seventh-year when I met him over the summer. He's fun, he's always ready with a smile and a joke, but he's also tough and responsible – a lot of people in the Alleys rely on him."

"Is he handsome?" Archie drawled.

She made a face at him. "How would I know?"

Archie laughed. That was such a quintessentially Harry reaction that he couldn't help it. Harry had never cared for physical appearances, hers or anyone else's – if it wasn't for Aunt Lily and Archie, she would probably be in the same dirty brewing robe for four or five days in a row. "Fine, fine. Did you meet anyone else, down there?"

"I did, actually." Harry thought for a second. "I suppose I ought to tell you about them, just in case you run into them in Diagon Alley, sometime."

She did, and Archie memorized the names, the descriptions, not because he would ever need this information (he almost definitely wouldn't!), but because Harry was so animated talking about them, there was a lightness when she talked about her job and about the people she had met in the Alleys that he was used to seeing only when she talked about potions. Normally, Harry was so closed off, so reserved, and he had only seen more of that since she started school. She was so busy, and these moments, where she was just herself, smiling and telling him, with that hint of dry humour, about her day, about something she had seen or someone she had met, they were preciously rare. Archie was one of the few privileged people who ever saw this side of Harry, and for these moments, he would put up with a thousand minor inconveniences, a thousand annoyances.

All too soon, though, the moment bled away, and Archie knew what was coming. He pulled himself upright, squeezing himself beside her on the headboard, and slung one arm around her shoulders. Harry tolerated easy physical affection from very few. They let the silence hang there for several long minutes – she was no more eager to let the moment lapse than he was, to break it with talk about her semester.

But she had to, so she did. The light dimmed, and Archie looked away from her, at a blank blue wall, feeling the easy and happy atmosphere disappear as her words wrapped around him and sank into his skin. It hadn't just been Neville Longbottom and Padma Patil. Harry had also been attacked, directly attacked in her private Potions lab. At least she had gone and reported it directly to Master Snape. If Harry was being targeted, Master Snape, who seemed to have some positive feelings for her, would be looking out for her.

He was more worried about the last attack, which had killed Mrs. Norris and her litter of kittens, then nailed them on the wall with a message. He asked Harry to repeat the message to him, in a cool monotone that sounded alien to his own ears, twice: For every month Albus Dumbledore remains Headmaster of Hogwarts, one more bloodtraitor will be petrified. If the muggle-lover isn't deposed by the end of the year, the next child who strays across my path goes the same way as the squib's precious pet …

It was an attack, an explicit attack on those that supported blood quality. The use of the words bloodtraitor (as Archie quite proudly considered himself to be), muggle-lover… It was a hate crime. But did it reflect anything else? Did it fit into a pattern, was it a signal for anything else? He didn't know, because Harry had erased the message, so the entire school didn't see the bloody scene traipsing past on the way to the carriages. While that was a good thought, it did mean that he didn't have any way of meaningfully looking for the other warning signs Hermione had told him about: whether and how the Prophet would report it, how the Ministry would react. Was this another SOW Party attack? Was this a cue, a sign, of any larger, impending genocide?

Harry didn't seem worried, but she never seemed worried. Though, this time, at least they had some idea of what could be happening. Harry was a Parselmouth, and she had heard the snake language bleeding from the walls of Hogwarts, so whatever it was involved a snake, a snake that could Petrify people, and that was more than pretty much anyone else knew. The next day, Archie helped her research possible creatures, in both the Potter and Black libraries.

It was over their books, in the smaller Black library (done in sombre black, with black bookcases and dark, austere furniture), that Archie broached something that had been bothering him a little since their first night, something that had only knocked at his conscience harder as he researched, as the words of the threat ran circles in his mind.

"So," he said, looking at her carefully. "Riddle's Gala, really?"

"It was Sirius who really wanted to go." Harry shrugged, a touch defensive.

That was true. Dad did want to go – it was an opportunity for him to see family members, acquaintances, that he hadn't seen for many years. But Dad would never have gone, not without who he believed Archie's friends to be.

If he was perfectly honest with himself, Archie was not comfortable with who Harry had picked to be Rigel's friends. He didn't know Draco, he didn't know Pansy. He only knew what she had told him, and their families' reputations. Harry thought they were wonderful, and maybe they were – for the pureblood version of herself. He didn't mind that Harry had picked them as her friends, but he didn't want his dad to believe that he wanted this. He didn't want Dad to believe that he wanted to go to a stiff holiday party raising money for the cause of blood purity. He didn't want Dad believing that he enjoyed being respected as the Black Heir, as anyone other than himself, Archie Black.

"And who was able to talk himself into going because your friends would be there," Archie said, instead, his voice pointed. "I'm not sure this is a good idea, Harry."

"It's a public event," Harry replied, shutting the bestiary in front of her. "The SOW Party isn't going to try anything. They're more the type to plot in secret, not in the open like that. The Minister is invited, for goodness' sake, and my dad will be there—"

"Exactly," Archie interrupted, leaning forward. "It's not the cow party I'm worried about, it's you. Can you hold up all night with Dad, Uncle James and your pureblood friends in the same room?"

It was the smallest flash in her green eyes, the way her fingers twitched. Harry was his sister, in every way that counted; until school, they had spent nearly every single day together. Harry was an open book to him, a book that only he could read – not even her parents, and certainly not her pureblood friends, knew her half as well as he did. With Harry, it was the small things that told him what she was thinking – anything too big, too overt, that was what she wanted people to see. It was the smallest flash in her eyes, the tiny twitches of her hands, the quickest furrowing and smoothing of her brow, that told Archie how she was feeling.

She was annoyed by his questioning, insulted, even. A little defensive. What was it? Was it simply the fact that Archie was challenging her? Was it simply the fact that she wanted to see her friends, and she thought she could manage it, having Uncle James and Dad and her friends all in the same room, and she didn't want to answer his, to his mind, perfectly reasonable objections? She was allowed to have friends, he would never deny her that, but going to the Gala to see them was risky, dangerous.

Or was it something else? Was the tiny furrowing of her brow at his words the cow party, was that because Archie had used the old, insulting, name, instead of the Party's proper name? Was it the fact that he had reminded her, inadvertently, that it wasn't always the Save Our World party but the Cure Our World party?

Was Harry being swayed, ever so slightly, by the glittering vision of the world being presented by the SOW Party, by their proponents, by her new friends?

No, that couldn't be it. Harry was a halfblood, for god's sake, she spent every goddamn day at Hogwarts lying about her name, about her sex. She took ridiculous precautions like sleeping fully clothed on top of her sheets every night, so she wouldn't ever be asked to change in front of others. She probably had to bite her lip around her new friends any time the issue of blood equality came up. She was confronted with her inequality every day. She couldn't have forgotten.

"I'll be fine," Harry said, fully relaxed, a small smile meant to be reassuring gracing her lips. "I won't be with all of those people at once except for a few times all night. Mostly I can just switch between personas easily depending on who I'm talking to."

"You sound pretty confident," Archie remarked.

She flashed him a bigger smile, an almost cocky one, and he let it go.

He had to trust her. Harry was the smartest person he ever knew, other than maybe Hermione, and he had to trust that she knew what she was doing.

Trust. Everything was about trust. Mum had trusted Dad, and trust had been her guiding light. Archie was his mother's son, and he, too, would trust.

Christmas Day dawned sunny and cold, and Archie was up at six, diving into the presents he had gotten from his friends.

This was his time, when no one would be asking him questions, when no one would be watching him. This was time when he was Archie Black, himself as he thought he was today, not Rigel Black as he had to play around Dad and Uncle James and Aunt Lily, not the halfblood Harry Potter as he was at school, not even the subdued version of himself he was around Harry these days. This was time when all masks were off, and he was just Archie – Archie the thespian, Archie the science fiction nerd, Archie the Healer-in-Training, Archie the Light pureblood, Archie the Heir to the House of Black. He treasured these moments.

Hermione had sent her present to him by Owl Post, conditionally rerouted while they were at home, and he had happily received it a few days ago. Her letter had included a stern warning not to open before Christmas on pain of hexing, and honestly, Hermione was probably accomplished enough to set some sort of time-delayed hex to prevent him from opening it before Christmas Day. So, he hadn't, and he hummed happily as he picked out her package first, wrapped neatly in shiny blue, and ripped it open.

His eyes lit up – A huge, hardcover edition of Grey's Anatomy was lying in his lap, a new edition. Oh, Hermione, he thought, even as a smile crept over his face. This must have been so expensive! He opened it, catching sight of her handwritten note, caught in the front cover.

Dear Harry,

Happy Christmas, and congratulations for making it to Christmas before trying to open it! I cursed the paper to burn you a little, so hopefully you didn't, or you got some practice Healing yourself. I got tired of you perpetually begging a look at mine, so here is a copy of Grey's Anatomy for your very own. Don't worry about the cost – consider it part of your birthday present, too.

I hope you're having a good holiday, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in a week!

Love,

Hermione

He paged through the first few pages, running his fingers over the detailed diagrams of human anatomy. There was no better resource than Grey's Anatomy for Basic Healing – unlike mages, for whom the human body had been considered sacred for centuries, No-Majs had dissected bodies, had examined them in intense detail, and it was on their anatomical studies that so much of modern Healing relied. It was in full colour, the pages were heavy, and it was beautiful. He couldn't wait to read it, cover to cover, all sixteen hundred pages!

He turned next to a smaller package, from John, this time, wrapped in bright, shining gold, ripping it open to reveal a thin book. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Archie read. He paged through it curiously – it was a comic book, the ink dark and heavy on the pages. He picked out the letter that fell out from the first few pages.

Archie, John wrote, and Archie couldn't help the grin that lit his face. John was so careful at school that Archie often simply forgot that John already knew about the ruse. There was nothing in his manner that ever hinted at it – no meaningful glances, no hints, not even the suggestion of a slip. Which, strangely, only made the rare times (when they were alone, behind closed doors) that John called him by his proper name more meaningful. He savoured his friend's use of his proper name – it was a guilty pleasure, a confirmation that he was Archie Black, that Archie Black, the strange combination of both Harry Potter and Arcturus Rigel Black existed, that someone in his new life knew him.

You mentioned once that you found a used bookstore in the West End that had a lot of comics, and that you were interested but didn't know where to start. I mainly like X-Men because of Professor X and the Natural Legilimens thing, but I think you might enjoy Batman more. This series is one of the best and you shouldn't need too much background to read it. Let me know how you like it and I'll think of other recommendations for you.

He wasn't sure when he would be able to read this one – certainly he couldn't pull the trick he often did with other books, disguising them behind the jackets of a Healing journal or a wizarding book. Wizarding Britain didn't have anything like comics, and it would be too easy for someone to look over his shoulder and read. Still, in the safety of his bedroom, late at night, early in the morning, he would find time.

He reached for the third package, wrapped in red with a golden ribbon on top. Chess' present was smaller than the other two, lighter, but judging from the size and shape, he had no doubt that it was a book. Some part of him was almost disappointed – all his friends seemed to give him were books! But, most of them tended to be No-Maj books, No-Maj comics, and they were all great, so he had no real complaints.

He ripped it open to reveal To Kill A Mockingbird, the novel, with a short letter on top. He already had the script for this one, since it was to be the spring production. More research materials were always appreciated!

Harry, the note read. I'm so sorry I couldn't think of a better gift for you. I wanted to find a way to give you the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I ran of time – the No-Maj technology won't work in a magical environment, and I haven't worked out proper shielding yet. Still, John said you would appreciate this novel, and said for me to tell you to work on your Southern accent for your audition. The story takes place in a small town in Alabama in the 1930s, so you'll need a strong Southern accent. Unfortunately, no one at school has a very strong Southern accent, since most of the students from the American South are from the big cities like Atlanta, Charleston, Memphis, and so on, but you can hear it in town sometimes. Sincerely, Francesca.

Archie pursed his lips at the letter. On one hand, thank you, John-through-Chess, for alerting him to the problem. On the other hand, no thanks, because what on earth did they think he would be able to do about this from Britain?! He learned accents through the time-honoured method of stalking people with the right accents and eavesdropping until he could mimic them properly! He had no source material in Britain, and apparently poor source material at AIM.

He tried to remember the slow and careful drawl of the townspeople, but he barely remembered it. Well, he had two weeks before the auditions, including a week at school. He would read the book, prepare the roles he wanted to audition for, try to remember the proper accent and, worst come to worst, bad source material was better than no source. He would stalk someone from the American South once he got back to AIM.

It was a good thing he had these presents, tucked away in his trunk, because his presents from his family were, well… they were fine. They were fine. Remus got him a renewal of his Healing journal subscription, Dad got him a huge box of the newest Marauder products to do better pranks at Hogwarts next year, Aunt Lily got him a copy of Quidditch through the Ages. Uncle James bought him a pair of Beater's gloves, which Archie knew immediately he would be trading for the leather Healer's kit Dad had bought Harry.

Harry, though. Harry had bought him a Remembrall.

He had gotten Harry an old timepiece, old enough to fit in with the fiction that she was the pureblood Black Heir, chunky enough to be masculine. It looked like something he or Dad would wear, but when she opened it, one day, she would find the Peverell coat of arms inside. Archie had had it custom-made, at not inconsiderable expense, explicitly for her – to remind her that even if she was masquerading as him, she was still herself.

And she had bought him a Remembrall.

Archie smiled weakly when he opened it, showing everyone the elegant glass orb, nestled in dark green tissue paper. He knew perfectly well what it was, and he plucked it out of the setting. It turned red, of course, because all Remembralls turned red when touched by a mage.

Remembralls are a scam, Archie remembered John snorting when the topic had come up. It's not like the stupid thing can do Legilimency, and even if it worked, how is that helpful? Okay, you've forgotten something – it's not telling you what you've forgotten. And let's face it, we're all always forgetting something. All the damn thing does it turn red, and make people feel guilty.

Was this a comment on him? Was Harry making a comment to him about something, or did she just not know that it was a scam? Was this Harry trying to be helpful? He had no idea, and he didn't want to ask.

"Well, that's not good," Archie said instead, laughing a little sheepishly, even as he felt a little hurt, even as they laughed, they all laughed at him. Because Archie was the forgetful one, Archie was the one they laughed at, Archie never got offended, and Archie was the willing joker, the fool.

Once, he wouldn't have minded. Once, he genuinely wouldn't have minded, and he would have laughed with them, and he would have found it funny. He waited for Harry to burst into laughter, to tell him that it had been a joke, to pull out a new box from behind the sofa or under her chair and to hand it to him with a smile. The minutes passed, a few minutes, ten minutes, more, and there was nothing.

That night, he opened his window to the cold night air, and he threw the Remembrall as hard and as far away as he could. Either it would smash on hitting the asphalt, or it would be lost to Muggle London. That was fine – it needed a magical core to change colours, a No-Maj would just pick it up and it would only be a pretty, clear marble. He didn't need it. He didn't need a reminder that his family thought he was entirely a fool, that they considered him the forgetful one. He didn't need a reminder that, as much as Harry might be changing, he was changing too. Once, he would have been happy to fall back into being the forgetful one, but now – now, he didn't know.

He pulled out Batman, and he threw himself into the corrupt, crime-ridden Gotham City, and the story of a vigilante fighter for justice.

Archie leaned forward, arms crossed, as he watched the rest of the auditions for Scout. Everyone third year and below, it seemed, was auditioning for Scout, and everyone fourth-year and up for Atticus Finch. As far as auditions went, this one was especially stressful – he sat in a group of his theatre friends, but they were all silently examining and criticizing aspects of each other's performances. That was the thing about theatre friends – they were your friends, unless it was audition time, when they suddenly also became your rivals.

He wanted to be Scout. Yes, Scout was a girl, but that didn't matter. The whole story, a difficult story of racial prejudice and injustice, was told through her eyes. Scout was the one who would lead the audience through the story of a trial gone wrong, it was Scout who would frame everything. He had spent the rest of his holiday, in the moments he could steal alone when he wasn't setting up pranks with Dad or studying with Harry or spending time with his family, reading To Kill a Mockingbird (twice), then reading the play again with new eyes. Then he had worked on how he would portray an eight-year-old Scout Finch, then he had tried to work on the accent, practicing quietly for hours in front of his mirror, drawling out lines.

It hadn't worked (he just sounded condescendingly British), so he complained at length to Hermione on the plane ride back. She hadn't been very helpful (despite efforts), telling him all about the BBC, which only made Archie insanely jealous. He knew about television, of course, but imagine being able to watch movies, or something like movies, from the comfort of your own home! Better yet, she had said that the BBC focused on having quality programming, and if he were lucky, he could have probably caught a legitimate Southern accent on one of their programs to imitate!

But he didn't have the BBC, so he hung out in the Holmes common room for half a week, eavesdropping on all of Faleron King's conversations, since John had said Faleron's accent was the closest to a rural Southern accent he was likely to find at school. He had also managed to get into town on the weekend, claiming he needed to make a book run, when really all he wanted to do was sit in the burger and milkshake shop for a few hours listening to the peoples' accents. Fortunately, it seemed that Neal had the same idea, and they had glared at each other over their milkshakes, moderately embarrassed, for a bit.

"Atticus?" Neal had asked, narrowing his eyes slightly.

"No," Archie replied, taking a long draw of his milkshake: Peppermint Bark, a special holiday treat. "Scout, obviously."

"Actors," Dom muttered, as he swiped the rest of Neal's strawberry milkshake.

Even for his audition, his accent wasn't perfect. It was all right, but he could still hear the echoes of his native British accent haunting his every word. Fortunately, the audition was the mob scene, which was very close to something Archie knew well how to do: distraction via childish diversion.

"Hey, Mr. Cunningham," he said, on stage, pitching his voice a little higher than he would normally and taking a step towards Juan Hernandez, the stand-in for the mob, letting his expression light up a little with childish innocence. "Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How's your entailment gettin' along?"

He had to wait, here, the book was very clear, because the person playing Mr. Cunningham had no lines. Archie knew perfectly well what an entailment was, but he was pretty sure that Scout Finch didn't. He mentally counted down ten seconds.

"Don't you remember me, Mr. Cunningham?" He took one more, mincing, step closer to Juan, tilting his head a little to one side, his light innocence now tempered with a hint of worry, a hint of awkwardness. "I'm Jean Louise Finch. You brought us hickory nuts one time, remember?"

Another silence, and this time Archie drew it out until it was uncomfortable, and Juan shifted slightly on his feet. "I go to school with Walter. He's your boy, ain't he? Ain't he, sir?"

A third uncomfortable silence, and Archie bit his lip and looked away, off put by the silence. He caught Juan's faint nod out of the corner of his eye, his cue to continue. "He's in my grade, and he does all right. He's a good boy, a real nice boy, we brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won't you?"

Silence. This was the longest silence, because the audience needed to feel the awkwardness, the audience needed to feel the tension. In the play, this was the point where half the stage would be full of people ready to mob Atticus, who stood between them and the cell holding Tom Robinson. And there Scout had to be, in the middle, between the mob and her father. He counted a full minute, before he looked up again, his gaze panning that end of the stage, imagining that there was a crowd of men behind Juan, too.

"Entailments are bad," he said, nodding awkwardly, then he turned to face the audience, and his eyes flashed, panicked, towards the end of the stage where Atticus would be standing. "Well, Atticus, I was just sayin' to Mr. Cunningham that entailments are bad an' all that, but you said not to worry, it take a long time sometimes, and that you'd all ride it out together…"

He shifted on his feet, his fingers twisting in his shirt, brows narrowed in nervousness, and blushing a little as he imagined himself, a mob, and Atticus Finch on the stage, all of them staring at whatever nonsense he had just spouted. It was an awkward scene, and he stood, blushing, until Sabrina called the scene.

Thea McKinnon did it better.

Archie knew it, scowling a little as he watched her choices, her characterization. She was right, damn it, when she had kept watching the mob after asking about Walter – Archie had looked away, to express the awkward tension, but how could he catch the right cue if he wasn't looking at the mob? That was a beginner's mistake, and he should have known better than that! That way, when Juan nodded, the audience could see the light in her eyes as she thought she had made a connection. Then, she barrelled ahead with her next lines with just a hint of relief, of excitement, her pace quickening, which only made the last silence even more awkward. She carried herself differently than Archie had, adding a touch of propriety, because of course it was the South, and Scout was a girl. And her accent was perfect – she was from Nashville, so the rural accent she needed wasn't too far from her natural speech.

Zahir made a sterling attempt too, but his voice was breaking and he was having ridiculous time maintaining the fiction that he was an eight-year-old girl when his voice kept cracking. Archie winced for him – he knew Zahir was also auditioning for some of the adult roles, but he was in this awkward phase where he was really too old to pass himself off as a child, but probably not old enough to be considered seriously for a role like Atticus, either. His physical acting was good, which only made the voice-cracking thing more depressing. Archie hoped, when his voice cracked, it would be over and done quickly.

"Well, that's that," he muttered when he came off the stage and sat down beside Archie, obviously disgruntled. "At least there's still the Tom Robinson audition later this week."

"I'm only auditioning for Scout, so I'm just hoping I make it to tomorrow," Archie muttered in reply, chewing his lip a little as he watched one of the other first-years fumble his lines. He had done well before that mistake, though Archie thought he had done better. "Thea was really good, wasn't she?"

"She was," Zahir acknowledged, tilting his head slightly. "So was that first year, the one who went before you – Heather Taylor. She has an advantage, though, she's from Georgia, her accent is perfect, and she has that wide-eyed innocence thing down. It'll be close."

Argh. Archie hadn't seen her audition, being too distracted by preparing for his own. "Damn."

Zahir smirked a little, but Archie knew he didn't really mean it. "At least they're picking more for the second round, since they're picking Dill and Jem out of this audition too. Anyway, I can tell I won't be making it, so I'm going to go prepare for my next audition. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Hopefully." Archie grimaced.

"You should come even if you don't make the cut – it's Atticus auditions tomorrow, those are bound to be fun." Zahir stood, stretching a little and shaking off his own disappointment, and headed for the door.

Archie turned his attention back to the stage, watching the last few Scout auditions. The theatre club would find a space for everyone on stage at some point, but everyone wanted one of the lead roles, and they were all willing to scrap for it. He was willing to scrap for it. He waited, shifting anxiously, for the long minutes while Sabrina conferred with Juan and Noelle, her two most trusted advisors.

They came over to the group of first through third years, and Archie forced himself to relax, to take deep, uncaring breaths. He just needed to get through today, if he made the cut today he could go back to his dorm and rework his characterization for tomorrow, he would still have a chance.

"Good job, everyone," Sabrina started, a little stiff. Unlike Mariana, who had always been gentle even if firm, Sabrina had never been good at letting people down easy. There had been tears, for the South Pacific production. "Tomorrow, we'd like to see Thea, Heather, Harry, Alberto and Yeganeh for the second round. You'll all be helping with the Atticus auditions, as well, so please memorize the scene on page 112, between Atticus and Scout. It's a short scene, but it's an important one. We're looking forward to it."

Archie nodded grimly – Sabrina had listed him third, and even if she had never explicitly said so, they had all noticed through the South Pacific round of auditions that she listed people by how much she had liked their auditions. Three out of the four main roles had gone to the people she had leaned towards after the first audition. Being third, well, that wasn't great, especially because he couldn't help the accent! Both the girls ahead of him had an advantage – they both naturally had milder variants of the same accent, and even if they didn't, they both probably had tons of source material at home. The people on the streets around them, the TV, the radio.

It wasn't fair, he thought sourly as he sprinted across campus back to Pettingill Hall. It was dark – auditions had gone on long – and the night was cool. Not as cold as Britain, but far too cold for the t-shirt and jeans he had picked for his Scout audition. He had thrown a sweater on over top, but it wasn't enough.

And that was another thing, too! He hadn't seen Heather's audition, but Thea, at least, had found the weirdest pair of pants. They were like jeans, but they had two flaps that came up, on her front and on her back, and looped over her shoulders, with a pink t-shirt underneath. He didn't even know what the garment was called! What was that thing? Obviously, Sabrina had liked that costume, but how could he have thought of that if he didn't even know what it was?

He had missed out on roles before, he reminded himself sternly as he took the steps up to Pettingill Hall by twos. He hadn't gotten a role on South Pacific. He had just been a background dancer – though, as one of the better dancers on the stage, he flattered himself, he had often been placed in the front of any complex choreography.

But maybe that made it worse. He hadn't gotten a speaking role last term, so he really, really wanted one this term. He had had speaking roles both productions last year, and he had had months to prepare himself for not getting a role on South Pacific. Nothing in that production fit with him, so he didn't really expect to get a role.

Scout was different. He related to Scout, girl or not, and Scout was such a tomboy anyway. Scout had a sort of natural inquisitiveness, an idealism, an implacable iron resolve that Archie found he both connected with and admired. Scout was him, maybe, a younger version of him, a more naïve version of him, and he would do a lot to win this role.

"How did it go?" Hermione asked, looking up from her book, Rappaport's Law: History, Passage, and Repeal.

"Ugh." Archie flopped, boneless, into the armchair across from her. "Not great. I made the cut for tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure I'm third pick. Two of the girls placed higher."

"Making it to tomorrow's audition is good, though," Hermione offered, waving her wand to put a magical mark, a bit of pale blue light, into her book and shutting it. "You were so excited last year when you made the second round."

"Yeah," Archie breathed a heavy sigh of annoyance, ignoring her comment about last year. That was true, but last year he was new. This year he had expectations for himself. He was a good actor! "It's the accent. My accent isn't right, 'Mione – both the girls with better accents actually come from the South. It's a little unfair, and all."

"I'd hardly call it unfair, Harry." Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Everyone has advantages in some ways. I'd say that last year you had a huge advantage with your accent, for Puck."

Archie scowled at her. "Are you saying I didn't earn that role fairly?"

"Not at all." Hermione leaned back, eyebrow still raised. "Only that you shouldn't complain about others doing exactly as you do and leveraging their personal backgrounds, skills, and talents in their auditions. You work hard, Harry, and of course some of your success is because you work hard, but your personal background plays a role too."

There was a silence, and Archie looked away, disgruntled. He had just wanted to complain about it, but Hermione wasn't wrong, and that just made him even more annoyed. He had absolutely leveraged his background last year for Puck: he had swiped Harry's out-of-date tunic for the audition, he had used his most upper-class British accent to make himself sound different, he had drawn on a decade of being a prankster to form Puck. "Can't I just, I don't know, rant for a bit? Aren't you supposed to be my best friend?"

"Being best friends with you doesn't mean unqualified agreement with everything you say." Hermione picked her book up, again. "You know that. You can't win every audition, Harry, and you know the theatre troupe will put everyone on stage at some point during the performance."

"It's not the same, 'Mione," Archie snapped, but he immediately regretted it when her eyebrows rose still higher, and she rose from her armchair, picking up her bag. "No – look, 'Mione, darling, dewdrop, rose petal – I'm sorry."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Harry," she replied, though she softened her words a little with a tired smile. "I've had a rough day, too, and I'm not in the mood to deal with your unjustified ranting. And you could use the time to prepare, instead of complaining. Good luck."

Archie stared at her retreating back, then he sighed and put his hand head in his hands. She was right, because Hermione was usually right. And he knew she had had a Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization meeting today. She always came back from those upset and angry, she didn't need to deal with him on top of that.

Harry would have rolled her eyes at him and told him to go handle his emotional needs himself. Even if Harry was probably one of the worst people to talk to about the appropriate management of emotions (she smothered them far too much, he thought, and she never bloody asked for help!), she was probably right. If you want the role, Archie, go prep, he told himself sternly. It's not all about you, all the time, and you don't have time for this. He gave himself five more deep breaths to be annoyed, upset, whatever he felt, then he stood up, script in hand, and headed back for his room to prepare tomorrow's audition scene.

The next day, Sabrina started with just the Atticus auditions, which were the closing arguments from the trial. Archie watched interpretations that ranged from gentle and thoughtful to thundering righteousness. The best ones, Archie thought, were the ones who balanced the two extremes – soft and thoughtful in some moments, flatly angry in others. There were a few more auditions for Atticus than for Scout, and no one had made any visible mistakes, so all the candidates hovered, behind him, waiting for the judgements to come down. Neal made it as the top contender – Evin didn't make the cut, and his face fell as he packed his script and left, without a word to anyone.

He was taking it hard, Archie realized. For all Evin had said earlier that he wasn't likely to get Atticus, for all that Archie knew he was planning on auditioning for other roles tomorrow, he had wanted this role, and it still hurt to be cut.

The second scene was a short one – only an exchange between Scout and Atticus, one of the last of in the play. It was one that showed the close relationship between the two of them, the one in which Scout said the titular line: It'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it? Scout had to look to her father, to reassure him that all was fine, and Atticus had to be worried, exhausted, and thankful at the end. It was an emotionally charged scene, no doubt the reason it was picked.

After his performance, paired with Juan, he was confident he had been reassuring. He had channeled, he thought, Scout's sense of innocent hope, her sense of justice, in his actions, in his two lines. He didn't manage the bone-deep sweetness that the girls pulled out (he didn't think he could, to be honest), which he hoped wouldn't count too much against him. Thea was still in the ugly-looking outfit that she had the day before, the t-shirt and the odd, cover-all-looking denim and sneakers, this time one of the clasps of an over-the-shoulder strap left loose.

He took a deep breath, waiting in the crowd of students. It would not be the end of the world if he wasn't picked. It was just a role. He had been through worse, hadn't he? This wasn't like lying to his family every day. This wasn't like living with the knowledge that a single misstep could lead to Harry's arrest. This wasn't like when Mum died.

This was just a role, and somehow it still cut deeply when he didn't get it.

Archie moped for three days.

It was hard to mope. If he had simply lost out on the roles entirely, he would have been able to mope better. His friends would have sympathized with him, his theatre friends would have understood his moping too. But he hadn't. He had gotten a role, Jem Finch, and therefore it would simply be cruel to mope too publicly, when most the troupe hadn't won significant roles. Even Hermione, who had patted him on the back and said she was sorry he didn't get the role he wanted, inevitably pointed out that he did get a role, and it was a good role and fit him well. John shrugged, gave him a sympathetic look and told him he would get it next time, and Chess, well, Chess had her nose buried in various books about magical theory, or wandlore, or runes.

He would have moped for longer, but he got the first letter from Harry, near the middle of February.

Harry, she wrote. Don't worry, I'm fine.

That was reassuring, Archie thought, rolling his eyes. He didn't even know at this point whether this was an actual attempt at reassuring him, or if it was a joke. Knowing Harry, it was both.

He kept reading. The attacks were continuing, a boy named Benjamin Wates had been Petrified, with a message (she didn't write it down), but she had come onto the scene before anyone else and had managed to erase the message before anyone could see it. She had discovered that the creature running around Hogwarts was a basilisk (hooray – honestly, really, Hogwarts?) and that the castle had been swept with roosters, but they were under tight controls still. Her lab had been locked up, much to her distress, and they were escorted to and from classes with only a couple hours per day to work in the library.

Oh, and the entire school had found out that she was a Parselmouth, sorry about that. Archie stared at the words, which, admittedly, were not quite phrased that way; she had only said that the whole school had found out during a brief mandatory Duelling class, a hilarious, highly edited account of which had been sent to Dad, and that it was quite aggravating, but he heard the tone of apology behind her words.

How on earth was he supposed to deal with that? He glared at the words. He couldn't fake an understanding of snakes! He didn't mind the snakes Dad kept at home anymore (much), but he didn't have any great love of the creatures, even if Harry said they were very nice and mostly wanted to play. He was good as an actor (lost audition or not), but without the ability to understand snakes, he couldn't possibly improv that scene. And it didn't even make sense for him to have that gift – his magic was Light, incompatible with such a Dark gift!

Well, he had months to figure out how to deal with that, and he was sure Harry was on it too. Worst come to worst, he would tell Dad that he didn't want to use the gift. Dad would understand – even if he was Dark, he associated Dark magic with what the Black family was, not what he was trying to make it be. That would probably work, if Archie was sheepish, apologetic, and ashamed enough about it.

It put things in perspective, though. He could have been at Hogwarts. He could be dealing with blood-status hate crimes and a bloody basilisk slithering around the school. And instead, here he was, moping over getting a supporting role in a play.

There was little he could do. So, he scrawled off a letter begging her to stay safe and not to go looking for trouble and hoped that she would be all right.

And he stopped moping over his role as Jem Finch.

"I just don't see why we need to learn this material," Archie overheard one of his classmates sighing, her mild tone of co-mingled fear and disgust ringing through the air. It wasn't loud – it was more that the speaker, Jelena Kovic and her friends, simply weren't sitting very far away. "We aren't ever going to be called on to heal any werewolves, so I don't understand why we need to learn about lycanthropy? All we have to do if we diagnose it is call MACUSA, and they'll send one of their extermination units."

Archie's head snapped up, and his lips tightened as he stood up. He felt John grab the back of his sweatshirt (a new one – last year's sweater celebrated Healing, this year it was theatre), whispering at him to sit down, don't fight this, but how could he not? He shook his friend's hand off, whirling around to face the other group.

Jelena and her friends Miriam and Huda looked up at him. It wasn't that he didn't get along with this group: normally, they got along quite well. They didn't chat a lot, but Archie remembered a couple occasions where they had collaborated on a project. She and her friends were smart, they worked hard, they were thoughtful. They weren't like Graves' group, with whom John managed to get into some sort of argument or scrap with every month over their views on No-Majs and No-Maj culture.

"We're learning it because it's an illness, Jelena," he snapped. "And we're Healers. We're called to a profession where we do no harm – would you really call an extermination unit if you diagnosed a case of lycanthropy?"

She looked taken aback, but she turned to face him. "Yes, Harry, I would," she replied, her voice mostly surprised. "It's the law. Anyone who suspects a case of lycanthropy, Healer or not, is required to report it to MACUSA, who investigates and sends out an extermination team. It's not an illness – it's an affliction, a threat to public safety."

"It is an illness," Archie insisted, ignoring the part about the law. He didn't know enough to know whether it was true or not. "An affliction is just another way of saying illness. And it's very demonstrably an illness."

"It is not," Jelena frowned at him, standing up and facing off against him. Her friends, behind her, were exchanging glances. "It's a danger, Harry – werewolves, and the people who become werewolves, are dangerous. They're a threat!"

"Werewolves are not a threat, not if the condition is properly managed!" Archie's voice was rising, and he knew he was getting attention from the rest of the room. He didn't care. "And what do you mean, the people who become werewolves? You could become a werewolf!"

"I would never become a werewolf, Harry, and you know it!" Her eyes blazed, and she took one step forward, stabbing one finger towards him. "You take that back!"

"You can't say that," Archie scoffed in reply, though he heard John swearing softly behind him. "Anyone can become a werewolf. All that needs to happen is that you have to be bitten by a werewolf!"

"You really think I'm the kind of person who would do anything with a werewolf, let alone biting?" Jelena shrieked, her voice quickly becoming hysterical. "Are you calling me a whore? What are you, moon-loony?"

"Cool it, both of you!" John said, pushing himself between the two of them, one hand spread to each of them. "Jelena, Harry didn't mean to make any insinuation on your character, all right? In Britain, the laws are different, and they don't have the same ideas about werewolves. Harry, apologize – by saying that she could become a werewolf, you basically called her the lowest kind of prostitute."

It was Archie's turn for his jaw to drop. "But that's ridiculous! Anyone can become a werewolf if they're bitten!"

"The only people who become werewolves are the people who do things with werewolves," Jelena retorted, eyeing Archie warily like he was a rabid animal. "Like prostitutes."

"I'm not apologizing." Archie crossed his arms across his chest. "I refuse. I didn't say anything offensive. And what are you talking about, things? It's a fact, anyone can become a werewolf if they're bitten by one on a full moon—"

"Or if they kiss one, or have sex with one, or mutual mate-biting," Jelena muttered darkly. "And if you touch their blood, or interact with their magic, you could be infected, too."

"Jelena—" John tried to intercede, one placating hand raised to stop her talking.

"That's a lie!" Archie snapped. "You can only become a werewolf if you are bitten by one on the full moon. It could happen to anyone, and it's a disease that needs to be treated like one!"

"On the magical level, Harry is quite right," Hermione spoke up from behind him, and John sighed, apparently giving up. Archie was relieved, though, that Hermione had decided to step in on his side. How could he argue with someone who seemed to lack the basic facts about werewolves? "The werewolf curse behaves much like all the other bloodborne diseases we've studied this year. The only differences are the depth to which the disease is rooted in the person's magical core and the extent to which it affects the person's mental magic."

"Fine, say you're right. Even if it were a disease, why should we be expected to support the lifestyle choices that lead to lycanthropy?" Jelena spread her hands in a mocking challenge. "Only prostitutes, drug addicts, criminals become werewolves. Why should we be breaking the law to support their life choices? Especially when the safety of normal, everyday people is at stake?"

"I think that's a false premise," Hermione said, arms crossed, stepping forward to stand beside Archie. Even if her voice was entirely collected, Archie didn't need to look at her to know the stubborn look that would be flashing across her face. Hermione loved debating, and as far as Archie was concerned, no one was better at it than her. "It sounds to me like MACUSA's extermination units have driven werewolves underground to the point where the only people around to help support them and who are, consequently, at risk, are other people who are underground. It doesn't sound like any choice is involved whatsoever."

"You're moon-loony too, Hermione?" Jelena's hazel eyes narrowed. "I would have thought you, of all people, would understand the dangers posed by the werewolf threat, not just to us, but to No-Majs—"

"Enough!" Neal roared, wand out – he was formally a class monitor, even if he didn't usually act like one, and Archie felt the Silencio spell sealing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Looking around, he could see that Neal was supported by Ranjan, behind him, and the other class monitors in the room were fanning out, redirecting everyone's attention. Nothing to see here. "This argument is over. Jelena – to your room, and you can complain all you want about the Healing curriculum, but you'll still need to do the work to pass. Maybe you should use the time to learn more about lycanthropy instead of spilling out every stereotype you've ever heard. Harry, Hermione – same thing, and I don't want to see you before tomorrow. Jelena is quite right about our legal obligations, and whatever your feelings about creature rights, you can argue about them outside of the common room, without disturbing all your classmates. Go on, rooms!"

He lifted the spell, and stood there sternly while Archie, Hermione, and Jelena packed their bags, all of them scowling, and headed upstairs. Archie dropped his bag on the ground beside his bed and curled up, stewing, on his bed.

John had told him, last year, that America had a kill-on-sight order for werewolves, that they had very strict laws on creatures, but he hadn't really thought much about what it meant in terms of Healing. He didn't realize that it meant that, if someone became a werewolf, they couldn't go see a Healer about it, they couldn't see a potioneer for a vial of Wolfsbane Potion to help with the transformations. It meant that, in America, if he ever identified a case of lycanthropy, he would be breaking the law by not reporting it. But, by reporting it, he would be condemning someone with death, as guilty as whoever cast the Killing Curse.

He didn't think he could do that. He didn't think he would ever turn in a werewolf. Not when he knew, full well, that lycanthropy was a manageable condition. With Wolfsbane, a werewolf was perfectly safe, able to curl up safely at home and sleep through it. They'd never be able to fully stop lycanthropy (wild werewolves still existed in the forests of Eastern Europe and Central Asia), but in theory, if every werewolf were given free and ready access to Wolfsbane, the rate of spread would be sharply curbed, without the need for mindless killing.

It didn't miss him that, for all his fears about a genocide in Britain, one was already happening in America. Against werewolves. He sighed, rolling over, burying his face in his pillow. Hell.

There was a knock on his door. Archie wished he could just yell at them to come in, but with their magical signature locks, the doors only opened to them, and no one else. That was nice, for privacy, but annoying since he actually needed to get up to open the door when someone came by to see him.

It was Hermione, who pushed her way into his room.

"You shouldn't be here, 'Mione," Archie reminded her, leaving his door ajar. The formal rule in the dorms was that you weren't allowed to have someone of the opposite sex in your room without the door open. However, Archie was pretty sure they couldn't actually enforce the rule, which was why they forced them all through mandatory sex education in first year during one of the days normally reserved for History of Magic. And Archie knew that there were a few upper year Healing students specializing in prenatal and neonatal care who could, and would, perform the delicate bit of Healing spellwork to create a contraceptive charm without too many questions.

Hermione shrugged, uncaring. "He said he didn't want to see us before tomorrow, not that we couldn't leave our rooms. I was worried about you – are you all right, Harry?"

Archie shrugged, dropping back on his bed, gesturing for Hermione to have his desk chair. "Been better."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Archie thought about it. Could he talk about it? There were things he couldn't talk about, sure, but he didn't think there was anything explicitly ruse-related. He could phrase things around it well enough, he thought. He sighed, propping some of his pillows up so he could lean against the wall easily and face her. "Yeah … I just, well, I always thought I would try to bring my family here. I'm getting a baby sister soon, you know, and she'll be a halfblood like me. I don't want her living the life I have."

"Even though you're noble?" Hermione asked, gently, her voice low and her eyes glancing towards the door.

"Especially because we're noble," Archie shrugged, a hint of scorn in his frown. "If anything, with the marriage law, being noble makes her more of a target. Anyway, my point is, I think I'm realizing that I can't, really, bring my family here. See, my uncle Remus, he's, well, he's a werewolf."

"I see," Hermione said, her eyes lighting with understanding.

"I'd never leave Uncle Remus behind, and neither would my family." Archie pulled his knees up onto his bed, where he could rest his arms on his knees. "He was bitten when he was very young, in retaliation for something his dad said about werewolves, and he's probably one of the kindest people I know. Dad, Uncle Sirius, they're both Aurors, you know. By contrast, Uncle Remus did some graduate study in magical theory, and he works full-time on Marauders products. He's not dangerous, Hermione – every full moon, he's either with my family, or he's with my cousin's family, and he takes Wolfsbane and he just curls up and hangs out with us all night in wolf form. Rigel and I… I remember nights when we would nap against him in wolf form because we didn't want to go to bed, and our parents let us, because it was better for Uncle Remus too, to have people with him. It's not like Jelena said, everything she said was wrong, really wrong."

"Except the part about the laws here." Hermione nodded, thoughtful. "I didn't know anything about it, but the words extermination unit make me uncomfortable. I'll look into it – I'd say we should try talking to the Creature Rights Advocacy Group, but when I talked to them before, they were focused on expanding the laws on creature ownership, so I didn't sign up… I'm not sure they'll be helpful."

"Are you thinking of staying in America, 'Mione?" Archie asked, tilting his head a little to one side. "Just… in Britain, werewolves are supposed to register with the Ministry, there are a lot of jobs they can't have, and there's a lot of requirements like they must have a cage of a certain size in their homes, but no one is threatening their lives. It's only a little stricter than the laws on newbloods and halfbloods."

"Because those laws are all fine." Hermione replied, sarcastic, shaking her head in annoyance. "Honestly, I don't know, Harry. I don't want to leave my parents to move here permanently, I'd want to see them more than once a year or however often I could fly over. And, as dentists, it's not clear whether they would be able to move to America either – they both love their jobs, and I'm not sure their credentials would transfer to let them practice here.

"But at the same time," she hesitated, then sighed. "After you mentioned getting the Potions Guild internship, I started asking around about internship opportunities too, especially in Healing. Did you know, even though Hogwarts barely has any Healing classes, even though there are always unfilled positions for Healing interns, even though AIM is the best Healing school in the western hemisphere, St. Mungo's has never accepted an AIM intern? More than half of the BSA have applied for them – Ranjan has put in an application every year since he was in third year, and he's the top student in Spell Damage. They've rejected him every year."

"That's garbage," Archie growled, frowning. Good Healers were good Healers, and internships should be handed out on merit, and nothing else. Leaving spots open even when there was a solid candidate? That made no sense."That's just… I have no words. St. Mungo's isn't even included in the employment restrictions, it's not government work."

"Yes, well." Hermione looked away, her voice derisive. "It's called the chilling effect. Even if St. Mungo's isn't formally forbidden from hiring international graduates, they're worried about the impact on donations if they do. In practice, the only British students who go back are from the experimental Mastery programs, since a few private companies specializing in magical technology still hire international graduates, or people who are going into unskilled labour. It's a problem since, for the most part, it makes the SOW Party propaganda a self-fulfilling prophecy – they say we are weaker, with less control, and use it as justification to pass laws keeping us from education, restricting our employment. But because of those laws, the best and strongest newblood and halfblood mages stay abroad, where they can work in the fields they want, so Wizarding Britain, for the most part, only sees the weaker, less controlled mages among us.

"But anyway," she looked back at him, taking a deep breath, her hands fidgeting in her lap. "I don't see how I have much choice but to emigrate. I'm not… Harry, I'm not going to beg for a position that I know I deserve, and I'm not prepared to live like a second-class citizen. My parents wouldn't want that for me, either."

Archie looked away from her, feeling his heart drop. That wasn't a surprise, not really. And she was right – Hermione was never going to be the sort of person who swallowed the everyday injustices that he and Harry had long since grown accustomed to. She was a fighter, she was an advocate, and she would never stop fighting for what she considered to be right. She wasn't naïve, either, she knew most of the realities of Britain from her advocacy work with the British Students Association and the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization. She had ideals, still, but those were tempered with cool pragmatism.

"What about your advocacy work?" He asked, his voice a little sad. If he were Harry Potter, then an emigration to America would be par for the course, expected, even, but he wasn't. He was Arcturus Rigel Black, and things were a little more complicated for him. He couldn't just up and abandon Dad, or his family, to move to America. It was all of them, or it was none of them.

"I can advocate for the status of newbloods and halfbloods from abroad," Hermione replied, looking back at him, her brown eyes lighting up a little, even if her smile was sad. "For most of us, we have more political power abroad than we do within Britain. We can lobby our governments to continue their sanctions, or to put on heavier sanctions, to advocate for us before the ICW. But I know things are probably different for you."

"Yeah," Archie replied, staring down at his knees. "I understand."

And he did. Hermione was his best friend, and she was probably the person he cared for most in the world aside from Harry, aside from Dad, aside from his family. As much as it would hurt, he wanted nothing but the very best for her, and she could never have that in Britain. He would never be able to ask her to make a different choice.

The rest of the year passed quickly. Some of the other Healers began avoiding him and Hermione, especially when Archie started another argument in Magical Psychology when they were discussing lycanthropy, telling everyone about Wolfsbane Potion. He argued, at length, that the threat of lycanthropy would be best addressed by a complete repeal of the extermination laws, followed by making the Wolfsbane Potion freely available and accessible for all werewolves, on a confidential basis, facing off not only against Jelena again, but also against Thomas Graves, Miriam Rosenthal, Matthias White. He was backed up in his arguments with Hermione, who had a stack of books about lycanthropy and regularly made comparisons with the AIDS scare of the 1980s, forcing everyone out of their depths. Archie was kicked out of Magical Psychology twice for being too disruptive, Hermione following him once, but that was fine – John hadn't gotten involved in either of those, and slipped them a copy of his notes, afterwards.

John only sighed and put his head in his hands during these fights, occasionally getting a class monitor if they got out of hand. He quietly warned Archie not to make publicly known that he had a werewolf in his family, and that was one piece of advice that Archie followed, just in case Harry needed to make a blood refugee claim in the future. Archie tried to press him on his own views, but John flatly refused to become involved.

The No-Maj Studies classes for this semester, and his background research for To Kill a Mockingbird, didn't help, either. They were covering the racial segregation in the American South, and the civil rights movement, especially through the 1950s and 1960s. Archie's mind was filled with Brown v Board of Education, the court case ending segregation of the schools, with Rosa Park, who sparked a movement by simply refusing to move to the back of the bus (in a certain light… was that not what he and Harry had done?), with the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., who had a led so many people through so many protests. He went out of his way to obtain up a copy of his essential writings and speeches, eating up the words, the ideas, like Harry went through potions ingredients when she was on a brewing tear.

He thought sometimes, idly, about being able to do this kind of non-violent resistance, for the things he cared about. He saw himself, sometimes, acting out Martin Luther King Jr. on the stage, or better yet, acting as someone like him for his own causes: werewolf rights in America, newblood and halfblood rights in Britain. But the environments were too different; Martin Luther King Jr. had had manpower. He had had people who were willing to stand by him, he had influence through the church, he had a population ready to follow him to boycotts, to sit-ins, to marches. Archie didn't have any of that – in America, it was him and Hermione, and rarely, John (but only if other creatures became involved). In Britain, there were people on the Light in the Wizengamot, but Archie didn't know anyone who would follow him to a sit-in or a boycott.

Imagine that, though. Imagine a boycott of Diagon Alley, or a sit-in at the Ministry of Magic. They would all be arrested, but the picture would be incredible. He dreamed of that, sometimes – crowds of people, newbloods, halfbloods, supportive purebloods, sitting in unity on the floor of the Ministry of Magic, surrounding the Fountain of Magical Brethren.

In the middle of March, there was a touch-and-go moment when one of Harry's Alley friends, one Marek Swiftknife, made a surprise visit to AIM. Archie thanked his lucky stars that he had teased information about Harry's Alley friends out of her over the winter holidays, that he had paid attention to her descriptions and pulled more details out of her. He couldn't have carried it off half so well if he hadn't, making nearly a blind guess when he thought it was Marek, then bluffing in terror through the rest of the conversation. Harry hadn't told him anywhere near enough information for him to do this realistically for any length of time, but thankfully Marek seemed to be quite gullible, and Archie was able to send him on his way post-haste, sending Harry a panicked warning letter including the letter from Leo (which he had not, despite much temptation, opened) and the package from Krait. Why were Harry's friends checking up on her, in America? What was Harry doing, making such heavy-handed friends?!

Harry's reply, at the end of March, came on the heels of Aunt Lily and Uncle James' letter with all the details of his new baby cousin, one Adriana Lily Potter. She was nicknamed Addy, which was entirely Harry's idea, and Archie could tell from Harry's somewhat lengthier account of that conversation that she was genuinely amused by her own sense of humour. She was a strange one, Archie granted, finding it funny that it really was her idea, but that she had used the excuse to get out of trouble while acting as Rigel. Aunt Lily and Uncle James had sent along a photo, which Archie promptly pinned above his desk. His new cousin was adorable, with red curls and big blue eyes – he couldn't wait to meet her in person.

She added that she had taken care of the situation with her Alley friends. She didn't think it would happen again, and he shouldn't worry. The rest of her letter, though, carried darker tidings: Gilderoy Lockhart and a Ravenclaw fourth-year had been Petrified, and Malfoy had figured something out from a Defense class in which Harry had overreacted and shielded herself from an attacking ball when she was supposed to trust Malfoy to do it for her. Archie didn't really understand the situation, but frankly, he thought Harry showed a healthy amount of paranoia, given their circumstances. Apparently, however, Malfoy hadn't taken it half so well and she had had to tell him another lie. Rigel now had some sort of embarrassing physical condition that no one knew about (that was great, Harry, just perfect), but it made him sensitive to physical contact.

That part was true, at least, Archie thought with a hint of humour. She did have a physical condition, being female, that, given the circumstances, should make her sensitive to physical contact. It was probably a healthy instinct that she had developed to keep her Housemates from identifying her, and as such, Archie couldn't really be upset about it. Fine, Rigel had some sort of highly embarrassing physical condition. As long as Dad didn't find out about this particular lie, they were still fine, and he wrote Harry a quick reply saying so. He finished off his note with, as usual, keep yourself safe, Rigel, for goodness' sake, don't go looking for any giant snakes!

Otherwise, he threw himself back into the whirlwind of school activities: Quidditch, theatre, Healing. AIM finished at the bottom of the League in Quidditch, again, much to Archie's disappointment. The team was, if anything, even more of a disaster than the year before, though John had played well. He still didn't make it out to Chess' dance competition, since his off-campus privileges had been revoked after his third public argument over werewolf rights, but John said she had done well even while she shook her head.

"Her partner fell when he wasn't supposed to," John stage-whispered to Archie afterwards, while Chess walked off back to Oliver Hall with an attitude of mild disgust.

To Kill a Mockingbird went off well – three nights, three performances, and Archie's portrayal of Jem Finch was, if he could say so himself, fantastic. His Jem was as idealistic as Scout, but not quite as innocent, not quite as naïve, quite a bit angrier. His Jem understood the undercurrents of the things that happened around him, his Jem understood the danger that Atticus and Scout were in in the mob scene. His Jem was idealistic enough to believe that Atticus had nailed Bob Ewell in the trial, which made Tom Robinson's conviction and death that much more of a betrayal. Archie was almost annoyed to find that Jem was far more like him than Scout ever was, especially Thea's Scout, who carried a sense of innocence that Archie wasn't sure he could manage, anymore.

Finals were easy, especially because Hermione still made him a study schedule. She had finally stopped doing it for John, who openly refused to follow it, or Chess, whose curriculum was too different for Hermione to work out what a reasonable study schedule might look like, but Archie followed her study plans faithfully. He stayed at the top of his Basic Healing, No-Maj Studies, and Potions classes, though Hermione had swiped the first-place position in Magical Psychology this time around, and he was in the top four of the rest of his classes, too. It was the study schedule, he would swear it – it wasn't that he was smart, it was Hermione's magic study schedule that made it happen. He told her so, heaping praise on her, until she blushed and smacked him on the shoulder.

All too soon, it was the end of the year, and he was back on a plane, on his way home.

To Britain. To his family, to Grimmauld Place and Potter Place and Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and the West End, to all the people and places he loved. But also to the mask, the thorny one he called Rigel Black, that he would need to wear all summer – a mask so much heavier than the new name he carried at AIM.

Chapter Text

Addy was adorable, all floppy red curls and gigantic blue eyes and a gurgling smile. Archie fought hard not to coo over her while pretending to be Harry, because while Harry would admire her, she would not coo. Harry would not want to pick up her new baby sister for a cuddle and several sloppy kisses, or rather, it just wouldn't occur to her. All Archie wanted to do was stare at his new cousin and make faces at her for hours, listening to her delightful little bubbling laugh, but until he was himself again, he had to control himself!

Thankfully, he didn't need to pretend to be Harry long, only a bare hour or so before they switched places. They, luckily, actually had an hour or so to talk before dinner, a good thing because Archie needed that hour to process exactly what Harry had done.

"Harry, you were what?!" He gaped.

"Kidnapped and taken into the Chamber of Secrets," Harry replied, her voice matter-of-fact.

"And you couldn't have written me about that?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "No time. It was too close to the end of the year – the letter wouldn't have gotten to you in time. Anyway, the basics: I was kidnapped and taken into the Chamber of Secrets by Ginny Weasley, who was possessed by a magical construct that called himself Lord Voldemort. The construct, through Ginny, was controlling the basilisk – he wanted to draw me down to the Chamber, kill Ginny, and possess me."

Archie examined her carefully. She looked all right.

She rolled her eyes. "He didn't succeed, Arch, don't worry about that."

"I'm more worried about the fact that you're being so blasé about this," he replied dryly. "Was it Ginny who attacked you last term, too?"

"Not Ginny, but Lord Voldemort who had possessed her," Harry corrected, shrugging uncomfortably. "Its plan was to frame Ginny, and Dumbledore, for the petrifactions, then set me up as the saviour of the school. Dumbledore was supposed to have forced Ginny to do a Dark rite to give her the power to speak Parseltongue, then she was supposed to have unleashed the basilisk on everyone."

"That doesn't even make any sense." Archie made a face, crossing his arms across his chest. "Who would believe that? And for what purpose?"

Though, on second thought, Archie thought he knew exactly who would believe it. People believed anything, if it were repeated often enough and with the flimsiest of grounds. Harry shrugged again and continued, "Anyway, Lord Voldemort commanded the basilisk to kill itself and… and it was horrible, Archie. It was just an old, senile snake, and he just … killed it."

She paused, her expression sad, somewhere else for a moment, and Archie reached out to touch her hand. She wasn't fine, not really, but she had to put a good face on it, so she would. Archie, to his horror, was almost sympathetic about the basilisk – the way she described it made it sound so pitiable. But at least Harry hadn't had to fight it!

She looked back at him, with a tiny, tired smile. "After that, Voldemort attacked my mind. I have a bit of rudimentary Occlumency, so I was able to trick him with my mindscape for long enough for me to get to Ginny, to release her from the mental prison that Voldemort had put her in. Once she was back in control of her magic, Voldemort didn't have any magic to fall back on, so it was pretty easy to kick him out of my mindscape, too."

Archie repressed the look of distaste from crossing his face. He knew what a mindscape was, John had gotten him far enough in his Occlumency, though he had only seen his own a handful of times: open skies, open fields with bubbles flying around. Mindscapes, John had said, were incredibly private and personal. A person's mindscape would tell an invader a million things about them, whether they were Light or Dark, their elemental affinity, their personality characteristics, and more. Having someone hostile within his mindscape was wrong, somehow perverse. His own Occlumency, John explained, was in the American school. Archie, like John, focused on the use of his mists, on solidifying his mists and creating illusions and defenses within his mists so that no one could gain access to his mindscape. As far as John was concerned, having someone get into your mindscape at all was failure.

"And then?" he asked, instead. She was unusually quiet, reliving the moment in her head, and Archie touched her hand again.

Harry sighed. "Then, there were three minds in the Chamber of Secrets, and three bodies."

It took Archie a split second to figure out what she was saying, and he winced.

"He took over the basilisk's body and attacked me," Harry continued, a little slower. "The basilisk's magic had died with it, so the eyes couldn't Petrify or kill anyone, anymore. I sent Ginny to get help, while I distracted the basilisk. It was hard, Arch, really hard."

"I imagine so." He scooted closer to her on his bed, slinging an arm around her.

"I killed it by gouging one of its eyes out and damaging its brain enough that it couldn't sustain the possession, anymore," Harry said, wincing slightly at the memory, and Archie shuddered a little in horror. Wait, technically, everyone thought he had done this – oh, hell. He was just glad Harry had survived, he would deal with whatever reputation she had created for him later. "But then, it had choked me, broken some of my ribs, and I couldn't stay conscious for long. Archie, you have to understand, I have to tell you this because I told Dumbledore and Professor Snape, so you have to know, but if I could I would hide it from you forever."

"Spit it out, Harry."

"If I had gone unconscious, the construct could have taken me, taken control of my magic. It thought nothing of killing the basilisk, which was just an old creature that loved him; what would he have done to you, or to Mum and Dad, or to Addy? So I reached into the basilisk's mouth and I scraped myself with one of its fangs." Harry's voice was barely above a whisper.

"Harry!" Archie shoved her, then he grabbed her again and hugged her tightly. "Harry, never, ever do that again! Never, do you understand me? Never!"

"I had to, Archie, you have to understand," Harry insisted, but she let him maul her. "If Lord Voldemort had possessed me, it would have been… It would have been bad, Archie, really bad. You have no idea, he would have inserted himself into your lives, you wouldn't have known, he would have gotten close to you, to Addy, to our families…"

"There is always another way, Harry," Archie said into her shoulder, before pulling away and looking at her in the face. Her green eyes were pleading with him to understand. He didn't – he couldn't imagine anything so bad that he would attempt to kill himself. "Always, always. We would have figured it out, I would have figured it out, I would have done something to help you and fix it, Harry. We would have done something."

"Like what?" Harry's smile was small, disbelieving.

Archie paused. Well, with something invading her mind, he would have called John. He would have had John break into her mind to investigate, then they would have figured out a treatment and called in all the Healers and Cursebreakers they needed to call in and it would get done. But explaining that would mean explaining about John, about the whole Natural Legilimens thing, and then he'd have to explain that John knew about the ruse. And then, they would argue, and he'd have to convince her that everything was fine because she would hit the roof…

"Exactly," she replied grimly, mistaking his silence, and Archie let it go. Now wasn't the time for that. "But as you can see, it's fine – Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, came and saved me."

"Phoenix tears." Archie nodded slowly. It was one of the most powerful, most precious ingredients for Healing. Not perfect – it could do little about infectious disease, spell damage, or complex care, but for things like blunt trauma or poisonings, it was perfect.

"Yes," Harry nodded. There was a short pause, before she leaned over and hugged Archie – a big hug, a warm one, the kind of hugs that she knew Archie loved. He wrapped his arms back around her, feeling her squeeze him tight, around his shoulders, reassuring. "I'm fine, Archie, I promise. I missed you."

"Yeah," Archie replied, breathing in the scent of old books and potions that he always remembered as being Harry. "I missed you, too."

Two nights later, Archie sat on his bed, staring at his script. It was one of their musical scripts, the ones that had the runes on the side to toggle music, musical notation that he couldn't read, a light spell for the pages. They had voted in Juan Hernandez as their next Director, and he had promptly decided that next year's fall production would be a musical called Les Misérables. Archie hadn't heard of it (even two years on, he hadn't heard of most plays or musicals, which was simultaneously frustrating and awe-inspiring), but half the club had immediately exploded in excitement.

"Jean Valjean is mine," Neal had announced immediately, baring his teeth in a snarl at Evin, no doubt his biggest competition for the role.

Evin laughed in his face. "We'll see how your singing improves over the summer, then," he retorted, crossing his arms. "I'll see you at the audition."

"Fantine, for me," Laura had been close after, before belting out first few lines of I Dreamed a Dream – even then, Archie had been impressed by the amount of feeling that she had been able to imbue into those few lines, her rich voice perfectly striking a balance between nostalgia and sorrow. I dreamed a dream of time gone by, when hope was high and life worth living…

Laura's voice, even without practice, was good, easily as good as the version the books came with, which only gave Archie a sense of how the songs should sound. They were never as good as hearing someone singing it in real life, and one song in isolation didn't tell Archie what the story was about. But having listened to it, from beginning to end, Archie was floored.

This was theatre. Archie thought he had loved West Side Story, he had thought his heart bled for Tony and Maria in that musical. He thought he had loved To Kill a Mockingbird, which was so recent he still felt the gutting sense of betrayal when the jury had come in and, in the face of all the evidence before them, convicted Tom Robinson of a rape that did not happen. He had liked South Pacific, not as much as the others, but the story was nice, and A Midsummer Night's Dream had been so much fun. But Les Misérables, Les Mis had everything.

It had a dramatic lead actor, Jean Valjean, on a quest for redemption for his crimes of the past. It had his nemesis, Javert, the fanatic police inspector hell-bent on recapturing him. It had the tragic mother, Fantine, who sacrificed everything for her daughter, Cosette. And there was beautiful Cosette, made to work like a drudge for so many years of her childhood, who fell in love with the revolutionary Marius. And there was their love story, told against the backdrop of revolution, a revolution doomed to failure.

He shut the book, for a minute, just to breathe and let the sounds of the powerful, dramatic, beautiful music run through his head, through his heart, through his soul. It was awesome, incredible, inspiring, and he needed the minute to savour it.

Then he cracked the book open and let the sounds of the opening trumpets take him away again. Another two hours, and it was way past anything resembling a normal bedtime, but he couldn't resist – how could he resist? There was something in this piece that spoke to him, that dug its claws deep within him and refused to come out. He wanted to listen to the whole thing a third time, but he couldn't possibly, not if he was to be up at his usual time the next day. Instead, for the next hour, he merely flipped through, listening to the key songs, the key soliloquys for each character.

His voice had started breaking at the end of last year, which made him all the more convincing as Jem, since Jem was of the right age for that. He would finally be able to audition for some of the bigger roles in musicals, though this one did have a role he could have tried out for even with his boy's voice. He wasn't sorry not to be able to audition for Gavroche though, not when he could try for Jean Valjean (the audition for that one would definitely be Who Am I), or Inspector Javert (Stars was a wonderful song, and if he was honest with himself, he loved Javert's music better), or Marius (was it time for him to try for a major romantic lead?).

It was late, but he tried a few notes on for size. His voice wasn't quite finished, yet, but he thought his range fit Marius well. He should probably do the same as the other actors in the troupe, though, and prepare multiple auditions. Think of that, for the first time, he could audition for more than one role in a performance!

All he had to do was learn to sing.

The opportunity for that, surprisingly, shockingly, came the very next day, when he went into the West End to renew his membership at the Prince Charles Cinema.

"You're working here for another summer?" he asked Phryne, still sitting bored at the desk. He hadn't become friends with her last summer, nothing like that, but he made a point of talking to her every time he came by. She was finishing up sixth form last year and had been talking about making an application for art school. Her hair was longer now, falling just past her shoulders and streaked with violet. Cool.

"It's better than any other job," Phryne replied, with a small smile, setting down her comic book. A Batman comic, he saw. "Good to see you again, Archie. Back in Britain for the summer?"

Archie shrugged easily, falling back into his role as Archie Black, mostly-American No-Maj. "Yeah," he lied, scratching the back of his neck lazily. "I usually do, you know – kind of sucks, really, since all my friends are back home. I'll have another year's membership, please."

"So polite," Phryne smirked, but she took his five-pound note and pulled out one of the little membership cards and the roll of tape to make him a new membership card. "You should find something to do other than seeing films here, then."

"Like what?" Archie leaned forward onto the desk. With this round of Polyjuice, he had grown an inch or so, and it was easier to rest his elbows on the high countertop. "Any suggestions? What's playing today?"

"Bunch of comedies – Groundhog Day, Army of Darkness, Mad Dog and Glory, and a Japanese thing, My Neighbour Totoro," Phryne said, ripping off a few inches of tape and slapping the paper card within it to be wrapped. "I'd say you should check out My Neighbour Totoro, it's cute even if you don't understand anything. I've seen in three times."

Archie laughed. Phryne was like that – since she worked at the theatre, she could see as many movies as she liked for free. If she really liked one, she would watch it several times. "Did you understand it?"

"Not a clue, but it had a cat-bus in it," Phryne replied, handing him his membership card.

"What's a cat-bus?"

"A cat that is also a bus." Phryne grinned, a wide feline grin, as Archie raised an eyebrow pointedly. "Yeah, I know, right? But let's go back to you. You should find something to do in Britain other than wandering in here a couple times a week and watching films alone like a sad sack."

"I am not a sad sack." Archie straightened indignantly, crossing his arms. "I hang out with my cousin sometimes."

"Your cousin who doesn't like movies and has her own friends?" Phryne raised an eyebrow right back at him. "You're here for three months of the year, Archie, and obviously your relatives are fine with you wandering around and doing things on your own. Go find something for yourself – there's lots of summer camps and the like."

"Summer camps?" John had mentioned those before, they were common for No-Majs in America. Some mages sent their children to them, too, something about learning to appreciate nature. John said they went on hikes, there was swimming, they learned how to kayak and canoe and camped outdoors in the wilderness. He hadn't been to one, because his gift made him stand out too much, but his sister Tina had gone and told him all about it in excruciating detail. Archie hadn't known there were any in Britain, though.

"For dance, or football, or theatre," Phryne said, settling back in her chair, smirking a little when she saw Archie's eyes light up at the mention of theatre. "You like theatre?"

"Well, I do hang out in an independent cinema." Archie gave up, letting her teasing go. Phryne was always a little mocking, and to be honest, he liked that about her. Most of the other staff weren't so cool with a thirteen-year-old wandering about by himself. "Any suggestions?"

"There's a whole wall of suggestions over there," she nodded in the direction of the cinema's community bulletin board. "But I hear good things about the Nightwood Theatre Company – it's audition-only, but I'm guessing you probably do some acting at school, and if you get in it's cheaper than a lot of the other camps. Blue sheet, over there."

"Thanks, Phryne," Archie grinned. "I'll check it out. And I guess I'll see My Neighbour Totoro, since I'm here anyway."

The movie turned out to be a very cute, if rather strange movie, and Archie remembered to grab one of the blue sheets on the way out. The audition for the Nightwood Theatre Company summer camp was a week from then, and there was no indication of what, if anything, Archie was to prepare. Well, he would just have to go and find out.

A week later, Archie double-checked the address on the blue sheet of paper, then looked up at the glass door, marked with frosted words, Nightwood Theatre Company. It was smaller than he had expected, a little out of the way – he had had to take the Underground, which had been so exciting! Heading underground, down two flights of tile stairs, it was a rush just to join the crowds of No-Majs about their business. It was so straightforward, so easy, to buy tickets at the little ticket window, pass through the turnstile, then head down more stairs into the low, narrow, tunnels. The air, the wind, below, smelled of oil, metal, machinery, and sweat of everyday life, and the train, when it pulled in, was loud and clattering.

And the train! It was sleeker than how the Hogwarts Express had always been described to him, with no plume of steam, and the compartments were packed. But once it got started, it was so fast, so efficient! He was only riding it about four stops, and it was fascinating watching the different stations zip by. Stations done in tile, in brick, in different colours, with people getting on and off, people chattering with their friends or listening to music with headphones and a small device, a CD player, that he knew Chess was still trying to reverse-engineer to work at AIM.

He shook himself, bringing himself back to the present, and opened the door. He followed the stairs downwards into a much wider space, where there were dozens of people around his age, all seated in plastic chairs set in rows facing a low stage. From what Phryne said, this camp wasn't well known, at least not among the public. This camp was for people who were serious about their acting, not meddlers. On the stage, some older people – company members, he would bet, the camp instructors – were standing around, waiting. Archie was still a few minutes early, and he walked to the front of the room, sitting down in a front-row seat.

"Archie Black," he introduced himself cheerfully to the girl beside him, who was lounging indolently in her seat. "Any idea what we'll be doing for the audition?"

She gave him a dismissive once-over, tucking dark hair behind her ears. "Tory Griffiths," she said finally, the words twisting reluctantly from her mouth. "Don't talk to me, amateur."

Archie recoiled as if he had been struck, turning slowly to face the stage. That was … unexpected. A little harsh. He hadn't done anything yet!

"Don't worry about her," a ghost-whisper came from the other side of him. Another girl, with wispy, white blonde hair, sharp blue eyes and a pointed chin sat down and gave him a tiny smile. "Hester Hoglund. First audition?"

Archie turned grateful eyes on her. "Yes. You?"

"Not me," she replied. "But we all start somewhere. I was at this camp last year – it's a good one, even if there's no performance at the end like most of the other camps. This one is focused on skills development, and the company doesn't think you can put on a good show with only two weeks of work. You're from America?"

Archie snorted, settling down. Hester seemed nice, and he was never one to dwell on people who didn't want to befriend him. Why bother? Who had time for people like that? "Yeah, I mean, I'm British by birth, but live in America. My folks send me back here for the summer to visit relatives. I have to agree on the show, though – two weeks is really short. So, what's the audition like? What's the camp like, if we're working on skills development?"

"Oh, they'll give us a scene – probably something new, that none of us have seen before, then they'll ask us to play it." Hester turned to the stage, since one of the company directors had stepped forward. "As for the camp, hopefully you'll find out."

Archie did, in fact, find out. The scene they had them play was a simple one – a break-up scene. Archie had never been in a relationship, but he knew what love looked like, and he knew what heart-rending pain felt like. He played both sides, in successful auditions, both the firm lover ending the relationship, hurting and struggling to hide it, and the heartbroken person who had been dumped. He cried on stage, not the big dramatic tears that he might have played at once, but smaller, more dignified weeping. For the second round, when they asked for a different portrayal of the breakup story using the same lines, he and, shockingly, Tory burned up the stage with a ferocious, deeply felt fight, only for them both to turn around with silent tears and anger. In the end, only a dozen of them remained, Archie one of them.

Harry had used almost none of the generous allowance that Dad had given her (in place of Archie) while she was at Hogwarts, and Archie, with a significant heaping of guilt, used it to pay for theatre camp. It was untraceable and, he tried to reason with himself, if it really was Archie at Hogwarts, he would have spent it on something throughout the year. More pranking supplies. Healing books that no doubt he would have had to special order rather than simply borrowing them off the walls of Pettingill Hall.

It didn't work, especially because he had used most of Harry's allowance while he was at AIM on books, milkshakes, and movies. He felt badly enough that he asked her about it, in a roundabout sort of way, but she had merely shrugged, said that she got potions ingredients from his school account, she had plenty of money from her job anyway. It was fine.

It didn't feel fine, though, so to assuage that bit of guilt, he resolved to get Harry a new wardrobe, on top of a truly awesome birthday present. She needed new clothes, anyway.

But it was a good thing that he got into the theatre camp, especially once Harry's Potions internship started. She was so busy, running off to the Guild every morning and researching all afternoon, and she somehow still found time to finish her work for owl school and brew for her job. He barely saw her at all, except for dinner, and after dinner it was always back into her lab for more brewing, more work. He offered to help, sometimes, but she shook her head – these were things she had to do herself, she said, before she disappeared. Sometimes, he went with her to drop crates off at her job, running into Leo Hurst a few times, just to be able to spend a few extra minutes with her.

He didn't begrudge Harry her internship. She was a brilliant potioneer and no one deserved that internship more than she did. But Harry had always been his constant companion, for years and years, and with Harry so busy, well, that just left Dad.

And he loved Dad. There was no question about how much he loved his Dad. He missed Dad so, so much when he was away in America, and catching up directly, instead of just reading his letters to Harry, that was … that was wonderful. But, if he was truthful with himself, being with Dad, wearing that heavy mask, living that lie where he was the one at Hogwarts, where he had gone through all the things that Harry had gone through, where he had done all the things she had done, that was wearying. It was exhausting, monitoring every word that came out of his mouth, every laugh, every reaction to make sure it was still consistent with Rigel Black, and it wasn't real, and even if he wanted to spend time with Dad, he also … didn't.

He was lonely, but he didn't want to spend time with anyone, at least not with his family members, and there was only so much time he could spend with Addy. Most of his family were busy with their own lives anyway. Having something to fill his days, ten until four, well, that made a difference.

They spent their mornings on technical aspects of acting: how method acting worked, character development, textual interpretation, scene studies. The afternoons were about actual practice and executing scenes, sometimes improvised and sometimes not: body awareness, positioning and movement, vocal projection, learning to shout or scream without hurting their voices. There was an extra hour at the end for people interested in musical theatre, focusing solely on vocal training, which Archie sorely needed. It wasn't great – he doubted he sounded anywhere near as strong as Evin, but he could work on it for the rest of summer.

He was friendly with some of the people at camp, but the group he was with was far too competitive, their two weeks together too short, for anything like the bonds of true friendship to form. He, Hester and Tory (who had gained a bit of respect for him through their audition) often grabbed lunch together and spent their breaks chatting. But at the end of the camp, none of them suggested meeting up. They parted their separate ways, with a light-hearted, "I guess I'll see you around," and left it at that. He was a little sad about that, but what could he do with No-Maj friends? One day, they would ask too many questions, and then there was the Statute of Secrecy. It was better not.

With a foothold in the No-Maj world, though, it was an easy matter for him to ask for a few recommendations and find an inexpensive No-Maj vocal teacher. That was only once a week, for an hour, and it was easy to slip the expense of that into his usual allowance, easy for him to practice when the house was empty. Or more commonly, when Potter Place was empty – Grimmauld Place didn't have a grand ballroom, ancient wood and stone, carefully carved and designed for the best sound. He snuck into the old East Wing, into the dusty, never-in-his-life-used ballroom, conjured his own Lumos lights, and practiced for hours each day, running through Who Am I (which he thought he sounded terrible singing), Stars (he thought his rendition was good, though he was a tenor rather than a baritone), Empty Chairs and Empty Tables (definitely his best piece). He pictured, when he was there, crowds watching him as he performed the roles, and his voice filled the space, fuller than he had ever managed before, drawing air from his diaphragm as he mastered the difficult lines, as he traced shapes in the dust coating the floor with his improvised stage work. He didn't know if he dared to hope to win the role of Marius, not when he would be just thirteen.

Aside from camp, from practicing singing, he spent his days in the city, at the movies, or reading books that he borrowed from the public library system (he had finally gotten a membership, which led to access to a world of books), re-listening to Les Misérables. He spent time with his family: lazy days with Dad (a part of his mind split off and monitoring what he said), playing with Addy (who smiled whenever she saw him), dinners and evenings with all his family, together, laughing in the Potter family room or the Black kitchen. They had a prank war one weekend, when he and Dad assaulted the bottom floors of Potter Place, spells flying, while Uncle James and Uncle Remus held the fort (the kitchen was considered neutral territory, since it was where Aunt Lily and Addy were hiding out, while Harry was in her lab).

And there was Harry. He didn't see her often, but every time he did see her, it was the same, it was just as it always was. He helped Harry prepare for the summer garden party at the Malfoys, dressing her in his best robes, which didn't quite hit the right lines on her body, but which were better than anything she had. He joined her in her Potions lab, several times, to watch her genius in action, to watch what she was creating and to help her test her new potion. He forced her to come out with him to shop for their birthdays, letting her pick out her favourite prank items from Zonko's and paying for it without question. He went to her internship presentation, watched her send a room full of Masters into a tizzy with her brief, brilliant and effective presentation, and he cheered her on silently from the back, where no one could see him. He took the time, this summer, to remember why he loved Harry – she was so smart, and she was tough, and she was witty when she wanted to be, devilishly clever and she had such a wicked sense of humour. And even if the ruse made things more difficult, made things more complicated, deep down, she was still the same.

Deep down, she was still the same. It didn't matter who her friends were, or what she had done in his name. It didn't matter that he didn't (he couldn't) tell her most of the things he did at AIM, about so many of his friends or about the things he had learned. It didn't matter that he had changed, because he hadn't changed in any way that mattered.Just like her – maybe Harry was changing, maybe Harry went to these Dark pureblood society events, maybe her best friends were the scions of the Malfoy and Parkinson Houses, long declared Dark, but this was Harry. This was Harry, and she hadn't changed in any way that mattered.

It was him, and it was Harry, and they were the same. They loved each other, like siblings, and he knew that she would always support him, just as he would always support her. Deep down, they were both still the same, and it was Archie and Harry, Harry and Archie, like it had always been.

He wished he didn't have darker thoughts, sometimes. He wished he didn't sometimes have that niggling worry, that fear, of how her friendship with Malfoy and Parkinson might change her in the future. He wished he didn't sometimes feel sad for all the things that Harry didn't know she had lost, by trading places with him. He wished he didn't sometimes feel the intense guilt that came with knowing that he had taken something from her, he had taken America from her, and that in his stead Harry was putting up with so, so much – with the Sickness in her first year, and the basilisk last year. He wished he didn't sometimes feel the anger, the burning bitterness and resentment that came when he realized how little his life at AIM mattered, knowing how little he could share of his life with his family, under the pressures of lying to Dad day by day by day.

He wished it could be this simple, him and Harry against the world, always. Always and forever.

Harry had run into some trouble with her magic after her thirteenth birthday, and so she hadn't managed to brew him a Potentialis Potion until almost the end of summer. He understood – he had felt off-kilter, off balance, for nearly a week afterwards with the expansion of his core, and his magic had been out of wack for probably two weeks. He had blinded himself with his first Lumos spell, but reined it in quickly enough, and to be honest he did enjoy the fact that his Lumos spell could now light up more of the grand Potter ballroom that he practiced in.

Harry hadn't told him much about her experience, only scowling and shaking her head when he asked her about it, but she seemed to have it fixed a week or so before they had to return to school. She slipped him a Potentialis Potion the night before they were due to return.

"Sorry," she muttered, as she slipped the vial into his pocket. "I meant to give it to you for your birthday, but you know what happened – it's under control now. Don't take it in front of Sirius, just in case – Hermione can probably help you."

Archie shot her a glance that he hoped expressed gratitude, because he couldn't openly beam at her without anyone noticing. "No, thank you," he had murmured in reply, before they walked into the kitchen, at Grimmauld Place tonight, before he turned to their families and filled the air with excited chatter about going back to school. The excitement had been real; the details, not so much.

The flight to New York City, the Portkey transit to AIM was old hat, at this point. He and Hermione and John were still on the third floor of Pettingill Hall, with most Healers-in-Trainers staying in the program. Much to his disappointment, there was little chance of sharing any classes with Chess this year – even their standard classes had been specialized into Potions for Healers, Charms for Healers, Transfigurations for Healers, Herbology for Healers. Only for Defense did they remain in the general classes, and for No-Maj Studies. Chess didn't seem overly bothered by it – her program, too, was becoming more specialised, with Magical Theory, Runes, Arithmancy, and her private paper-casting class. He asked her if she was tracking towards experimental and research work (that's what it looked like), to which she simply shrugged and said she wasn't sure, yet.

He didn't manage to take the Potentialis Potion until late that night, as much as the tiny golden vial had itched at him throughout the day. He didn't know what to expect, but Harry had specifically told him to have someone there when he took it, so he followed her directions. His first choice would have been Hermione (who had been so excited about the Potentialis Potion last year), but after a bit of thought, he went to John instead. Just in case it revealed anything odd.

With that in mind, he headed over to John's room, right after Hermione had announced that she was for bed, the vial tucked in the front pocket of his favourite AIM sweatshirt (he was so happy to be able to put it on again!). There was a moment before John opened it.

"What's up?" he asked, eyebrow raised at Archie's excited grin. He had been unpacking, evidently, not that there seemed to be much point – all of John's clothes inevitably ended up on the floor anyway, so what was the point of even pretending like he used the wardrobe?

"Check this out," Archie said, waltzing into John's room without an invitation, holding up the vial of Potentialis Potion. "Want to watch me take it?"

John frowned at the vial. "Just in case you forgot, genius, I suck at Potions. What is that?"

"Potentialis," Archie replied, motioning for John to shut the door. "It shows you your magical strengths and stuff! My cousin made it for me."

"Is that the potion that we had to dissuade Hermione from making in a bathroom stall last year?" John eyed the potion with some interest. "Why do you need to take it? You know what you're good at – theatre, Healing, Potions. What else do you need to know? And anyway, you can find that sort of information out in your mindscape, if you know what you're looking for."

"Come on," Archie cajoled with a winning smile, not letting John's questions get to him. "I want to know now. I'm not good enough at Occlumency to sort through the Manifestations on my mindscape!"

John shook his head, returning the smile, motioning for Archie to sit on his bed. "All right, I'm not stopping you. Do you need me to do anything?"

"I don't think so," Archie admitted. "My cousin just said to have someone watching, in case anything weird happens?"

John gave him a doubtful look. "And you think that I would be good at that? If you're poisoned, I've got to tell you, I'm running for Neal and I'm telling him I told you not to take the weird potion and you did it anyway."

"Harry is good at potions." Archie wrinkled his nose. "I'm sure she was just being overly cautious."

"If you say so," John replied, still skeptical.

"I do," Archie insisted, and he promptly uncorked the little vial and threw their contents down his throat.

Potentialis Potion was a little sweet, with a hint of honey. Then there was the taste of something bitter, and he made a face, then something heavier, something that stuck to the back of his throat uncomfortably, like oil. He swallowed several times, feeling a weird sensation balloon out of his core. His nose twitched – he scratched it, then sneezed, three times. There was a burning sensation in his eyes, and he reached up to rub them, his green contacts coming out in the process. Was that supposed to happen?

"Huh," John said, an eyebrow raised and his expression very interested as he looked Archie over. "Probably a good thing you did it in front of me."

"What?" Archie whirled around. He didn't feel any different, but by the expression on John's face, something was wrong, something other than his eye colour. His magic was splayed out behind him, lines of blue light flashing against the cream-coloured walls. Somehow, he understood the display without really knowing what each of the symbols meant. He was Light in affinity, strongly so – as strongly Light as Dad was Dark. His elemental affinity, and his core, was water. Both of those led to a strength in Healing, as he had long suspected, but he had a secondary strength in Charms. He hadn't known that, but he didn't think that was what John was eyeing him so oddly about, either. "What is it?"

John reached for his wardrobe door and flicked it open, pointing to the mirror. Archie looked at it and did a double-take.

That wasn't him, was it? It had to be him. He looked like Dad. He had a few traits from the Fawley line – his eyebrows were entirely Mum's, but the rest of his face was so clearly Black that he didn't think he would be able to pass as anything else. He ran a hand through his hair – that was Black hair, the texture was all wrong for the combination of Black and Potter hair that Rigel Black had, and it certainly wasn't anything like the Potter mop. He examined himself closer, trying for haughty look, a smirk.

He looked just like the Black portraits lining the walls of Grimmauld Place.

"Shit!" Archie cursed, scowling at his image. It only made him look more like his forefathers, and he felt a swell of panic rising. He couldn't look like this! He had to be Harry, Harry Potter, and he couldn't pass himself off as Harry with this face, not when he had had the right face only a few hours ago!

"I think your Potentialis undid whatever glamour spell you were using before," John said helpfully.

"Thanks for stating the obvious, John!" Archie snapped, grey eyes flashing, realizing what must have happened with the contacts. The change in his eye shape had destabilized the magic holding them seamlessly to his eyes. He caught another look of himself in the mirror – yes, that was a Black face, that was exactly like what his Dad looked like when he was snapping. Oh, hell, what was he going to do now?! He couldn't brew Polyjuice, and even if he could, he didn't have enough time to, nor did he have any idea what blending spell Harry had used, nor did he know what she had done to make the Polyjuice work longer. But he couldn't go out like this – he didn't look like Harry at all, and it would be a disaster.

"Well, if it helps any, I think you're much better-looking in this form than the other," John said, flashing a hesitant grin. "Look, you're taller!"

"Thanks, but not helpful." Archie took a deep breath, trying to soothe his panic. What was he going to do? There were other glamours, Chess had gotten him a copy of Magical Theatre for his birthday which had at least ten other glamour spells. But that book for that was in his room, in his trunk. He could learn one of those, but that would take time, time that he didn't have, because he looked too different now. He had to be back to Rigel Black as soon as possible, before he forgot what he was supposed to look like!

What was he supposed to look like? He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking hard, thinking about how Harry looked, and felt another pop on his face, a light breeze running through his hair.

"Huh," he heard John say again, with a slight note of disappointment. "Would you look at that? You're a Metamorphmagus."

"What?!" Archie opened his eyes and glanced at the mirror again. Rigel Black looked back at him, or Harry Potter, green eyes and all. Archie breathed a sigh of relief, only for the breeze and pop to happen again, and the Black face to show up again. "Oh, hell."

"Hell? Great," John corrected him, grinning. "I don't know if you heard me the first time, but you're a Metamorphmagus. That's pretty awesome!"

"It is cool," Archie conceded, scowling. "But my Polyjuice is still gone – what the hell am I supposed to do now? I don't even know what Harry did to blend our appearances, or to make the Polyjuice last longer, or… I don't even know."

"Use your Metamorphmagus abilities." John shrugged, nonchalant. "Maybe use a secondary glamour until you can work out how to hold the Metamorphmagus shape full time. You can find a glamour that works for a day at a time pretty easily, you use them all the time in theatre, don't you?"

Archie took a deep breath, steadying his nerves. It was what it was, he told himself sternly, and John was right. He had lost the Polyjuice, so he'd have to deal. And on the bright side, he was a Metamorphmagus! "Yeah," Archie replied, calming himself down with a few more breaths. "Yeah, I'll do that. But if it slips, can you, I don't know, distract everyone?"

John laughed. "Sure, you dork. No idea what you're thinking for distraction, but I'll see what I can do."

Thankfully, John only had to distract people a few times, typically by starting a raucous conversation about Quodpot with whoever was nearby, or if it was just Hermione and Chess, by railing loudly about the latest Quodpot standings, because neither of them really cared. It worked well enough, and Archie quickly learned three new glamour spells, while trying to get a hang of his new abilities. His appearance was intact, for now, but he really had to get a hang of this Metamorphmagus thing post-haste!

Unfortunately, he didn't have time. Harry (or rather, Rigel) was taking more classes, this year: Arithmancy (he had taken one look at her notes and winced), Ancient Runes (did he really need to memorize so much?), and Magical Theory (which, of the three, actually looked the easiest). He ignored the fact that these class choices were exactly the sort of thing he would have avoided if he were actually at Hogwarts. All three were so theoretical, and Archie was really more of a hands-on sort of person. He would have to find an explanation for Dad when he got home; maybe he could laugh it off, say he hadn't really cared, and that he had picked by stabbing his wand at the paper and picking wherever it landed. That would work.

His own classes, too, were harder. No-Maj Studies, which he had always loved, had suddenly become a bit of a nightmare – third year was about basic math and science, the sort of thing that No-Maj kids were required to learn in school. Archie loved science and science fiction, that was true, but the math went a little beyond the basic arithmetic that Aunt Lily had taught him and Harry. Chess had had to walk him and John through half the concepts, which she thankfully did without rolling her eyes or showing her frustration, even though John had quietly muttered that she had no idea why they were struggling because for her this was as easy as breathing.

"She's a monster with numbers," John said, after an evening cudgelling their brains through a problem set for which Chess had simply looked at each question and reeled off the answer without a hint of pause. "An absolute monster. A Chess-monster."

There was Charms, too. A small part of him had always wondered why the upper-years in the theatre club could all carry a tune, when Archie knew he couldn't be the only one of them without any formal vocal training. The answer was Charms.

Third year Charms, for all streams, covered the basic principles of song-casting as an introduction to group spell-casting. He had never heard of that – he knew about group spell-casting, but that was supposed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs (not that witches and wizards in Britain knew anything about dinosaurs, which was really a shame, because dinosaurs were awesome). It was the sort of thing that people had done, pre-medieval ages, before wands were common, before a more focused and direct way of channeling magical power had become widely available. There were other channeling methods, such as Runes, but more than half of the world now used wands.

Even if it was something ancient and probably outdated, Archie loved song-casting – it was an opportunity to sing, and there was something beautiful about weaving his magic, directed through song, with a group of others to do something magical. Unfortunately, it also sucked time out from his already crowded schedule, since it wasn't something covered in the Charms classes at Hogwarts (which he still had to learn), and it was hard.

The only one of his classes that stayed easy was Potions, which he glided through without any effort whatsoever. He did the homework for the classes, but even the homework was astonishingly easy. He polished off the weekly class assignments in a half-hour, driving Hermione insane. John just asked him for the answers (which Archie would give, but only if Hermione wasn't there) while Archie read up on other things, or tackled a problem set for No-Maj Studies.

All of which made his eventual encounter with Professor Tallum, his first-year Potions instructor and the head of the Potions department, all the more believable. Because of course old Tallum had to corner him about Harry's research when Hermione was nearby. Hermione had asked him about the internship, of course, going so far as to order the English Potions journal to read about "his" project, but Archie had been rather dismissive of the whole thing and hoped that she would forget about it soon. Or at least that she would stop asking him about it.

No such luck. Sending Professor Tallum off was one thing; as much as the man was attempting to hide it with awkward praise, he had never really gotten over Archie laughing in his very first Potions class, or the way that he had attempted to put Archie in his place and had failed utterly. The rest of first year had not gone any better – Professor Tallum was an excellent administrator but a subpar potioneer, and Archie knew it. More importantly, Professor Tallum knew that Archie knew it, and his redoubled efforts to make sure that no one else in his classes knew it had not encouraged Archie to be a particularly cooperative assistant. In truth, Professor Tallum was probably as relieved as Archie was to be put off with the promise of more written notes only, and their whole "conversation" had largely been for Hermione's benefit.

Hermione, though, was not so easily put off, especially not today, not when Professor Tallum had approached him (he had told Hermione that Tallum was a terrible potioneer, but she didn't believe him). If he could have explained it, he would have! But, to be blunt, he had no idea what Harry's project had been about. He was decent at potions, but whatever Harry had done was so far out of even his advanced Potions understanding that he simply didn't know what she had done, so he couldn't explain it. Instead, he had explained it to Hermione using the same words as Harry had used explaining it to him and hoped it would be enough.

It wasn't.

Sometimes, if John was there, he would distract her. He would start fights with her, ask for help with one of their other classes, or interrupt with something else. When John wasn't there (and he often wasn't, off at his clubs or hanging out in Oliver Hall with Chess), Archie brushed it off. Archie played the fool, Archie teased her, Archie found something else to distract her with.

Today would have to be more of the same, damn the consequences. He had no choice, no matter how much it added to his inconsistencies. He wondered, sometimes, how much she might have worked out. She was the one who helped him steal the Polyjuice. She knew that he was noble – he had told her that she was noble. She was the one he told about Mum. She was the one he went to for the Sweating Sickness, for the marriage law. She was the one who he told about Uncle Remus, who stood by his side every time he stood up for a werewolf's right to live. She was the one that had told him that, unless things changed, she couldn't see a way to go home; she was the one who knew that he couldn't do the same. For whatever reason.

"I just – I don't like all the attention!" He kept his words light, throwing his hands up in the air. Harry would have hated characterizing it this way, but it needed to be done, even if it didn't make any sense at all. "It was just a bit of fun, 'Mione! I thought I could do some off-beat experimenting over the summer, just to keep me busy; I had no idea everyone would take it so seriously!"

Hermione studied him for a moment, lips pursed, and Archie dreaded her next words. Would she point out how Archie loved attention? Would she point out that even if Archie played the fool, he was not a fool, and he had never been shy of showing his intelligence? Or would she point out that, even as a Healer, he had never been into experimentation, not on something so theoretical?

"It seemed like important work, though," Hermione replied, her tone incredulous. "How can you not be proud of something you spent so much energy on? I'd be glad if somebody were paying attention to something I had done. How many thirteen-year-olds can say they've made a breakthrough in any field?"

Hermione was nothing if not surprising. "I don't like people having such high expectations for me," he joked, saying the first thing that had come to mind. It was patently untrue, and Hermione knew it – Archie had very high expectations for himself. He expected himself to do well in Healing. He expected to put himself firmly in the running for every lead role in every theatre production the theatre troupe put on from now until he finished out his 7th year at AIM. He even expected himself to maintain his first-place ranking in Potions, because it wouldn't be believable at home if Harry Potter did poorly at Potions.

He just didn't want to bear the weight of the expectations that Harry set for him. He was not Harry – Harry's accomplishments were not his accomplishments. He gave Hermione a soft smile, and another excuse. "Especially since, if I decide to get a Potions Mastery, I'll use it for Healing, not this kind of methodology research."

Hermione studied at him for a minute, a suspicious and considering look on her face. "I understand that you want to have control of your career, Harry, but at some point you might have to weigh your right to follow your dreams against the responsibility you have to natural talent," she said slowly, carefully. "If a musical genius decided he'd rather become a mediocre anthropologist instead of a peerless composer, it's his right, but is it really for the best?"

Archie didn't know what to say to that. There were so many things wrong with it, he didn't know where to begin. Archie wasn't a natural talent at Potions – these were all Harry's discoveries, not his! Moreover, he wasn't even sure Harry was a natural talent at Potions – she was good at Potions, but she had also been obsessive about Potions since she was four years old. She was still obsessive about Potions, this was how the two of them ended up in the ruse! And Harry, of course, intended on pursuing a career in Potions.

So, instead, he grabbed at the opportunity to distract her. "Are you calling me a mediocre Healer?!" He rested one hand on his chest in feigned offense, frowning in hurt at Hermione, whose jaw dropped. For good reason, too – even if, admittedly, Archie's standing had fallen slightly in Basic Healing and Magical Psychology (this year was gynecology and obstetrics, prenatal and neonatal care, paediatrics, and genetics), his position in second place was secure.

She ferociously denied it, her cheeks reddening a little in her frustration. He liked that – maybe it wasn't a nice thing to say, but he liked it when she was fiery, when she was debating, when she was scolding and demanding and challenging him. He liked the way her wild chestnut curls blew around her face, bouncing even without a wind, when she left it loose. When they were in their practical classes, such as Healing or Potions, he liked the neat, yet pretty French braid she wove her hair into, and he liked the few curls that inevitably escaped. He loved her wide brown eyes, through which she expressed everything: interest, reluctance, acceptance, hesitation, consideration, suspicion, sadness, rage, fury, joy, a thousand emotions including some that Archie hadn't found words for yet.

He especially loved her expression when he did something to unbalance her, when she was gaping at him in shock, when she turned bright red in a blush. And what better opportunity than this? He grabbed her small, delicate hand and raised it to his lips, planting a perfectly chaste kiss on it. He was a noble, after all.

"Thanks for the advice, 'Mione, my dear." He winked, as she spluttered, her face turning the precise shade of red that he adored. "I'll take it into consideration – you know I always do."

Hopefully, that would be enough to keep her from prying too much farther.

He received letters from the British Ministry of Magic, from the Department of Mysteries, inquiring about Harry's new Potions technique, and he sent them on to her by the fastest owl he could get. There was little he could do about these letters – he would help if he could, but they wanted another explanation of the methodology and more samples, neither of which he could provide. He would trust that Harry would deal with these, and when he received a package from Harry not long after (similarly sent by the fastest owl possible), he passed it back to the Ministry of Magic.

Aside from Harry's new classes, her summer research, and his Metamorphmagus skills, Archie had new, seminar classes in Healing which were utterly fascinating. He had picked Epidemiology 1, No-Maj Medicine 1, and Infectious Disease 1, but was sorry to see that Hermione hadn't joined him for any of them. She had picked out Wizarding Genetics, Magical Development 1, and Core Damage, a tiny course of only a few Healers-in-Training, since it required a minimum of two years of Magical Theory. John, at least, joined him in No-Maj Medicine 1, but otherwise had opted for Spell Damage 1 and Curses and Countercurses 1.

"Mostly I'm thinking about emergency Healing and medic work," John had said, shrugging when Archie asked. It didn't seem to be the sort of thing John would be interested in – John didn't mind No-Maj Studies as a subject, but he wasn't fascinated with the No-Maj world the way that Archie was. "No-Majs have just as many accidents as we do, and I think we can learn a lot from No-Maj techniques."

Archie nodded in wholehearted agreement and threw himself into learning about No-Maj trauma care, and he and John could often be seen frowning over needles and threads and cushions in the Pettingill common room in the evenings, practicing their stitches. Half the Healers looked askance at it (there were a dozen spells to knit skin together), but the way Archie saw it, one never knew. Part of the wonder of Healing were how complex things could get – a cut, for example, could be cursed or poisoned not to close to the usual spells, but mages often forgot about brute No-Maj Healing techniques. He loved the problem-solving aspect of complex Healing, and the more tools he had to use, the better!

Between Harry's new classes, his new classes and specialized coursework, his new Metamorphmagus abilities, and dealing with Harry's summer research, he still had the auditions. They had gotten a good crop of first-years, though they would still have to fill out the ensemble with the choir and the dance club. At least, with the bigger cast and auditions, he had an extra week to prepare his audition – an extra week to speed-read the sections of the Charms textbook about song-casting, an extra week to lock himself in his room and practice under sound-proofing spells, an extra week to corner Evin Larse and Neal Queenscove for audition tips.

Of the two, Neal was easier for Archie to find, since they were in the same dorm and Neal was a class monitor for Healing. Unlike Evin, who was apparently lying low, Neal didn't have the privilege of being able to disappear.

"Hi, Neal," Archie greeted his upperclassman with a grin, surprising him in the common room as he was talking to Daine. "Mind if I have a word?"

Neal eyed him suspiciously. "Does it have to do with Healing?"

"Does it need to have to do with Healing?" Archie dropped into an empty seat across from Neal. "Because if it does, then absolutely - Neal, I'm struggling with my classes, and I don't know if Healing is for me."

His voice was perfectly serious, with a note of plaintiveness, and Daine burst into laughter. "Please, spare me," she said, standing up. "Neal, I'll catch up with you later."

Neal made a face at her in response, before sighing and turning back to Archie. "Fine. No need for the ruse, Harry – what's up?"

Archie suppressed his desire to twitch every time he heard the word ruse, which was critical now that each distracted twitch could lead to a disruption of his Metamorphized form. Thank god for all the meditation practice that John had made him do over the past two years. He wasn't sure he would be able to manage it half so well if he hadn't developed his mental discipline through meditation. "The auditions. Do you have any tips? For the singing, I mean – I'm not asking what you're auditioning for, or your characterization or anything, just in general."

"If you're asking me how to sing, Harry, that's not really something I can answer." Neal snorted. "I'm not that great, anyway. I just have what's in our Charms classes, and after Les Mis was introduced last spring, I took some vocal lessons over the summer. As a dramatic actor, though, I'd say audition for the roles where there is a lot of room for dramatic expression rather than one where the voice is key."

Archie made a face. "I knew that, already. The problem is that Les Mis is a sung-through musical – everything is sung. Not a lot of room for dramatic actors like us."

Neal shot him a sympathetic glance. "I know. If it helps, with Juan out as Director, only Evin is really a strong singer, and he can only snag one of the major roles, right? That's what I'm relying on – well, that and a summer of lessons, which still isn't going to bring me on his level."

"Yeah." Archie grimaced. He, too, had a summer of lessons and practice, but Evin came from a family of Players, professional stage actors. He had been singing, dancing, acting long before the rest, and it was hard to compete. "I'll corner him, too."

Evin was not usually so hard to find – he was in the Charms Mastery program, and as a fifth-year, would be in Charms Row. It was the work of minutes for Archie to find out where he lived; he was at the blue house, the fifth house down Charms Row, the one where the doors and windows were done in blue. His room was on the third floor, in the front, and was marked. And yet, every time Archie dropped by, he wasn't there – or if he was, he was pretending not to be.

It was a good thing that Archie had a good supply of teacher-trackers, and even better that he knew Chess. A lot of people simply didn't see Chess, not unless she was with John, or him, or Hermione. It was much easier for Chess to find Evin in the Charms Library, in the red house, and to stick the tracker inside his bag. It would make her a great prankster, if she were ever inclined, but when he suggested it, she simply wrinkled her nose and walked away.

No matter. With the teacher-tracker in the depths of Evin's bag, it was easy for Archie to catch up to him after classes one day, on the campus green.

"Hey, Evin." Archie grinned, matching the lanky boy stride for stride. "How was your summer? Do anything much?"

Evin sighed, a heavy, over-acted dramatic sigh, which Archie took as resignation. He hadn't exactly made his attempts to speak to Evin subtle over the last week. "Summer was fine, Harry. Ask whatever you want to ask, then begone! I have auditions to prepare for."

"Jean Valjean or Inspector Javert?" Archie asked innocently.

"Both, of course." Evin stopped, in a patch of shade, out of the way of foot traffic, close to the Mastery townhouses. "You?"

"Both of those and Marius," Archie replied, relaxing easily against the building. "I don't really have high hopes, though. I was going to ask you if you had any tips for the audition, the singing parts? You know I don't have a lot of experience singing."

"Asking your competition for advice?" Evin smirked, crossing his arms.

"Why not?" Archie returned with a smile. "I didn't see myself as competition for you, and if I am, well." He swept an elegant bow, one his etiquette instructors would have been proud of.

Evin laughed. "I feel sorry for you, so I'll say this much. Don't try to force yourself out of your range. I mean, traditionally, Jean Valjean is a dramatic tenor, and Inspector Javert is a baritone, but I'm going to sing both as if they're tenor roles. If you're a tenor, you're a tenor; don't try to pretend otherwise, it'll just sound terrible. That's all you're getting from me, all right?"

"That's helpful, thanks, Evin." Archie grinned, straightening. "I'll see you at the auditions!"

The auditions started with Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert, with easily half the club aiming for those roles. Archie was eliminated from both right off, but he didn't mind – it was obvious from the selections that had gone through that Juan was looking for a harsher portrayal of Valjean than Archie was capable of acting, and as a tenor, Archie never had high hopes for Inspector Javert. No one winced during his auditions, and Hermione had clapped and looked properly, genuinely impressed, which meant more to Archie than the mere question of whether he made the next round. If Hermione thought his renditions of Who Am I and Stars were good, then he hoped he would be able to floor her with Empty Chairs and Empty Tables.

Unsurprisingly, Evin moved on in both auditions, as did Neal, whose summer lessons had refined his voice and given him a solid, deep baritone. Archie recognized the other candidates, all upper-years, though he didn't know them very well – Cliff Burton, Tyler Cote, Gerry Curtis. Archie skipped the second day of those auditions, since it would be a chemistry test, and was sorry he did; apparently Evin and Neal had amped up their quasi-rivalry to explosive proportions for The Confrontation and he wasn't surprised in the least when Evin picked up the role of Jean Valjean and Neal the role of Inspector Javert. That took them both out of the running for Marius, which was good!

Dare he hope he actually had a chance at the role? He shouldn't – he really shouldn't, not when there were a lot of upper-years still looking at roles, not when top flyers like Zahir hadn't yet auditioned. He spent the warm-up for his audition, Hermione beside him with the financial statements from the Newbloods Advocacy and Support Organization to review, alternating between positive self-talk and lowering his expectations. You can do it, Archie, went one train of thought, you worked so hard this summer, you are not the singer that you were, you love this song, and you are going to go up there and absolutely kill it. Not thirty seconds later, he would talk himself down. Calm down, Archie, he would tell himself. It's okay if you don't get the role, you just started singing this summer, you're a third-year and Marius is a major romantic lead and everyone else is really good. And let's not repeat last year's mope-fest, because that kind of sucked.

"Stop jiggling your leg," Hermione whispered to him, snapping her hand firmly on his thigh and giving him a warm smile. It had taken her a day or so to get over Archie's extremely chaste kiss, which Archie had simply shrugged off. He was a noble, he had told her, and suffered a rant afterwards about how she didn't care that he was a noble, he was still forbidden from doing anything like that ever again without her explicit consent. "Your voice has really developed over the summer, and you're going to be great, I know it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, 'Mione, my love," he muttered in reply, then he heard his name being called. Or Harry's name, rather, but at AIM, that was him. He took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing."

His performance was slow, meaningful. He was Marius, still recovering from his injury – Marius, who had planned to die in the flames of a failed revolution, who had inexplicably survived. He was Marius, who was grieving, a bone-deep sorrow deeper than any tears, for all his friends who had died, whose bodies had been taken away before he had a chance to see them, to say goodbye. He drew on Mum, for this performance, he drew deep on himself and Dad from those weeks after her passing, on those days of cold emptiness. He knew the grief that could not be spoken, the pain that went on and on, he remembered it, and he poured that sentiment into his song.

A Songmaster could have made the room grieve with them, could have sparked weeping. Archie wasn't that, but he was good enough – or maybe it was the way he moved around the stage, touching objects here and there, moving the chair out from the table, ending the song seated at the table, staring out at the audience with a terrifyingly blank expression, as the last notes of the song bled away. There was no weeping, but there was a stunned silence, and he spotted Hermione blinking furiously in her seat at the back of the auditorium.

Zahir glared at him as he came off stage, a glare that Archie knew quite well because he had thrown them at Zahir more than once. It was a glare of respect, but also competitiveness, because Zahir had planned on getting this role. Archie tried to smirk at him, but he was too drained from the short performance, and it didn't feel right. Instead, he patted Zahir on the shoulder, a silent good luck, as he knew Zahir would have done for him.

"That was brilliant, Harry!" Hermione congratulated him in a whisper. "No one else so far has gotten that reaction, I think you're doing great!"

Archie smiled weakly at her, shaking his head, as Zahir's audition started. "We'll see."

Zahir's voice was stronger than Archie's was, filling the auditorium in a way that Archie knew his hadn't – he hadn't quite mastered the projection for that, but Archie thought his rendition had more sheer feeling behind it. It was in everything Archie had done on stage, in the slowness with which he had hobbled around, as if every movement hurt, the unblinking way he had examined the stage surroundings, the fact that he hadn't sung the song with sadness, as most of his competition had tried, but with something else, something deep and guttural and harsh.

If it was just Empty Chairs and Empty Tables, Archie thought he would have won the role. No one had done the song as well as he did, no one else had shocked the room into silence. Where he fell flat was the chemistry test; he simply didn't have much by way of chemistry with any of the Cosette or Eponine candidates, and his voice didn't mesh as well as Zahir's did. In the end, they decided to wait on those results, forcing them all to continue with the rest of their auditions.

Archie spent the rest of the week waiting on tenterhooks. He expected the roles to come out on Friday, just after the Thenardier auditions, but when Juan announced they would let them all know on Monday, he waited with increasing anxiety the whole weekend. Even a trip into town, with visits to the used bookstore, the burger bar, and the movies, couldn't distract him much! He barely paid any attention in his Monday classes, even his Healing notes were a disaster, before he dashed off to the auditorium for the results.

It looked like half the club was already there, some of them chatting quietly with their close friends, and only Evin and Neal looked truly relaxed. Archie took a seat beside Zahir, who greeted him with a tight smile; Archie suspected the main reason for the delay in announcements was that Juan and his advisors couldn't decide between them for Marius.

The rest of the club came in, in one and twos and threes, and Juan waited patiently until the whole troupe was there before making the announcements. Evin would be Jean Valjean, Neal would be Inspector Javert. Cosette would be played by Yeganeh, who cut off her squeal of joy with a hand clapped across her hand; Zahir would play Marius.

Archie breathed out a sigh of disappointment, even as he felt his friend relax and smile. He hadn't meshed well with Yeganeh at all, and Zahir had done better on the chemistry portions, he reminded himself. Even if Archie could do Marius the revolutionary, Marius' story was mainly a love story, and he couldn't pull off A Heart Full of Love as well as Zahir. The melodies of that song, the way that his voice would need to mesh with Cosette's and Eponine's, were difficult, and he didn't have the musical skill to manage it yet. It was fine. He would be fine.

He wouldn't mope – not over this.

"Harry Potter," Archie heard, and he felt Zahir poke him sharply in the ribs. He looked up at the stage, puzzled, where Juan was still reading off the role names. These would just be the smaller parts, the roles that didn't have major solos. "To play the role of Enjolras."

Archie blinked once, then twice. Enjolras didn't have a major vocal solo, that was true, but Enjolras was important. Enjolras was Marius' friend, Enjolras was the student leader who led the failed revolution. Enjolras inspired people to follow him, he was the one who led the ensemble through the revolution, who brought his people to the point of certain death. After the death of Gavroche, it was Enjolras who faced off against Inspector Javert in the final battle, embracing death. Let others rise to take our place, until the earth is free!

It was one of the most intense moments of the whole musical. It wasn't Marius, but Archie grinned – Archie could bring intense to the revolution, and he would.

It was in a sidebar of his No-Maj Medicine 1 textbook. The sidebars for textbooks were almost never required reading, which was too bad because they were usually the most interesting part of the textbook.

It wasn't even in a section of the textbook he had been assigned. He had really just been sitting at his desk, in his room, flipping through his textbook and distracting himself from his assignment on No-Maj techniques for dealing with rapid blood loss. The box, marked in a light orange colour, stood out to him. He stopped, because sidebars were interesting.

Illnesses Which No-Majs have Better Treatments than Mages: Multiple Sclerosis, A Case Study

There are many illnesses for which No-Majs have developed treatments, where such care is lacking in the magical world, or may be at best palliative. One main area in which this has occurred is in the area of auto-immune diseases, where a part of the patient's body has identified another part as foreign and has begun to attack it.

In general, mages do not suffer from auto-immune diseases, which helps to explain why little magical research has been done into these conditions. The hypothesis is that, in general, the patient's innate magic prevents their body from turning on itself. While there are curses that cause similar symptoms, these have historically been addressed through curse-breaking, and not traditional Healing. Typically, when such a curse is removed, there are no remaining effects.

However, there are cases where mages have developed auto-immune diseases, though the specific reasons for these cases remain unknown. One of the most common auto-immune diseases that seem to affect mages, specifically witches, is multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. While the underlying cause is not entirely clear, the most common hypothesis is that the myelin has been destroyed by the patient's own immune system. Over time, the white matter of the brain and spinal cord develop scars, resulting in the 'sclerae' for which the disease is named.

The damage disrupts the ability of parts of the nervous system to communicate, which results in a range of symptoms. Common symptoms include double or blurred vision, blindness in one eye, muscle weakness, trouble with sensation (including tingling, pins and needles), trouble with coordination, muscle spasms, difficulty moving, problems with speech or swallowing, or difficulty thinking. One characteristic symptom is called Uhthoff's phenomenon, where the patient's symptoms worsen due to exposure to higher than usual temperatures.

Archie felt a chill run down his back. He had been young at the time, only six, but he remembered Mum's symptoms well. He had even made a list of them when he was seven, in his childish block print, when he made Harry help him ransack the Black and Potter libraries for an answer, a solution. He was pretty sure he still had the list, somewhere in his trunk.

The list of the symptoms in the book matched, almost exactly. Sometimes, Mum's vision would blur, or she would see double, then it would go away. She would collapse, complaining of weakness, every now and then, or her legs would spasm and go out from under her – it got to the point where Dad had set up safety spells around the stairs in Grimmauld Place, just in case she collapsed too close to them and fell. She had loved to cook (she had shared that with Dad), but there were days when she said her hands wouldn't listen to her, and when she tried to use them, the bowl would slip out of her hands, or her knife would go a little too far, and Dad had to Heal her after. At the end, on bad days, she couldn't talk, she couldn't swallow, she only stared at Archie with so much love in her eyes while he read her a book. A book of romances, inevitably – stories about Merlin, about King Arthur and the sword in the stone, about Lancelot and Guinevere and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

And Uhthoff's phenomenon. That was characteristic, and Mum had had it. He remembered the summers, when things were always the worst – Mum was confined to bed on most days in the summer, unlike the winter when she was fine, three days out of four. When they realized it as the heat making her symptoms worse, Dad had spelled Grimmauld Place with Cooling charms, to the point where Mum had complained about how cold it was, that she couldn't enjoy summer anymore. Either it was too cold, and she was confined to the house, or it was too warm, and she was bedridden.

It matched. Everything matched, and Archie bit his lip as he leaned over his textbook.

Multiple sclerosis has two main forms, a recurring and relapsing form, or a progressive form. For the recurring and relapsing form, the patient may suffer as few as two attacks per year and symptoms may disappear completely between attacks. In the progressive form, attacks are more frequent and worsen over time. Although the disease may appear to disappear, permanent neurological problems often remain, especially as the disease advances.

There is no known cure for multiple sclerosis, either for mages or No-Majs. Magical Healing is often frustrated by the complex interactions between the patient's and the Healer's magic as it affects the immune system, which can lead to further degradation of the patient's overall energy levels, and therefore health. For this reason, No-Maj treatment is often recommended. No-Maj treatments for multiple sclerosis focus on restoring function after an attack, on preventing new attacks, and on preventing disability. The primary treatments include interferon beta-1a, interferon beta-1b, glatiramer acetate, mitoxantrone, natalizumab, fingolimod, teriflunomide, rituximab, dimethyl fumarate, alemtuzumab, and ocrelizumab.

The usual prognosis for multiple sclerosis, if identified quickly enough and treated, is a life expectancy of thirty years from the onset of the disease. With mages, few have survived the first ten years, as the delay in diagnosis, as well as the suspicion of No-Maj medicine, often prevents ready treatment.

Thirty years. Thirty years. Mum had lasted two.

No, Archie corrected himself sharply, taking a deep breath and resetting his image. His Metamorphized form had slipped, so put he himself to rights, put away Archie Black and put on Harry Potter. Archie didn't know, and he should not jump to conclusions. There were lots of conditions that had symptoms like these, blurred vision, weakness, muscle spasms, all of these were common neurological symptoms indicative of many diseases. Both Basic Healing and Magical Psych had drilled that rule into him: don't jump to conclusions. Haste makes waste. Consider the question of a diagnosis carefully, because a diagnosis determines treatment, and time lost on a wrong diagnosis can harm a patient much worse than no diagnosis at all.

His mother had died of a neural wasting disease, not yet diagnosed. She had had the symptoms of a person with multiple sclerosis. She was dead, and Archie couldn't bring her back.

But he still wanted to know. No, he needed to know.

With only a brief warning to his friends that he had a big project he was working on, Archie dived headlong into neurology. He already had covered immunology last year, but neurology was the fifth-year subject for both Basic Healing and Magical Psych. He borrowed the fifth-year textbooks from Daine, who raised an eyebrow at him when he begged her, and said, "Well, as long as it's back to me by next week, I suppose you can."

He swiped every book on the extensive Healing Library shelves about neurology, about No-Maj illnesses, about auto-immune diseases. He read it all, between his usual studying, letting Harry's subjects slip (they were boring anyway), focusing only on his studies, on his seminar classes, on Les Mis, and on his research into neurology. It was at the point where both John and Hermione had asked what was wrong.

"You've been… doing a lot of research into neurology lately," John said, frowning as he stopped at the table in the common room where Archie had camped out. "It's a little concerning."

"I'm working something out," Archie muttered, barely looking up from his most recent book. "I don't know anything yet. I don't know anything yet, so I can't talk to anyone about it, because I don't know anything yet."

John tilted his head to one side, thinking. "Is it something you can know?" he ventured. "Because, seriously, you're pulling a Chess and I'm about to drag your ass to the dining hall and stuff food in you."

Hermione was blunter. "What is wrong with you?" she asked, arms on her hips with that expression that Archie called "I have had enough of this". But even that wasn't enough to make Archie unseal his lips, not yet, at least.

"I don't know yet," Archie replied, looking up at her, because he always tried to look at her. Her eyes were narrowed, and he sighed. It was her "I will not take no for an answer" face. "I'll tell you as soon as I know anything, okay, 'Mione? I swear. I can't tell you now, because I don't know anything yet, but I will. I will tell you when I have enough, all right?"

"Hmm." Hermione's eyes were reluctant. She was a problem-solver, and she liked solving problems now.

Archie looked at her, studied her for a minute, then picked his words carefully. "'Mione, I told you once that there were things that I couldn't tell you," he said slowly. "This is one of them, right now, all right? I will tell you when I'm ready, but that time is not now. Please, please, 'Mione, my dear – just let it go."

'Mione studied him as carefully as he looked at her. "Fine," she said, her voice curt, her expression morphing into "I will let you get away with this for now but consider yourself fortunate". "But the oddities are adding up, Harry. One day, I'm going to figure you out, and I'd much rather hear it from you."

"I'm sure," Archie replied, looking away, feeling the dread pool in his stomach. Hermione would work it out, one day, probably sooner than he would like. Definitely sooner than he would like. "I'm sure, Hermione. Just… leave this alone, for now."

Only Chess seemed to be fine with this new obsessive research, probably because she had her own obsessive research tasks, this time ransacking her way through the Potions library. Archie would have offered to help (he was good at potions!), but he was too busy with his own work. She didn't ask any questions, just shrugging and going back to her research, letting him read (and make notes in a spare notebook) in silence.

"I'll go on a hunger strike with you, if you want," she offered with a mild smile, once when John came to rustle them out for dinner. "I'm on a good train of thought right now."

"Absolutely not," John said, arms crossed. "I know you don't feel hunger, Chess, but you are hungry. We're going to dinner, both of you, and Hermione too, and then you can come back and do whatever it is you're doing. But you're not skipping meals."

Chess sighed, an almost-rebellious look on her face, though Archie thought that this argument happened at least once a week. "Yes, mom," she muttered, and packed her books away. Archie followed her lead, scowling all the way. Even if he liked food, he wasn't hungry right now, and John was being ridiculous. He could eat later, when he was hungry!

It was three weeks of research, before Archie realized that he needed more. He could never know for sure, but he could guess. He could even guess with relative certainty, because Mum had had so many tests done. Dad had taken Mum to every reputable Healer in Wizarding Britain when she was sick, refusing to accept the diagnosis of neural wasting disease, not yet diagnosed. Dad was so sure he could find the answer, and he had the clout to see it done. There were records – there were so many records. With those records, Archie could make a guess, a strong guess. It would never be certainty, but it was better than nothing.

Those records, though, were in St. Mungo's. In the archives.

It took him more than a week to work up a plan, to approach Hermione about it. It had to be Hermione, because only Hermione would be in Britain over the holidays to help him. In some ways, he would have preferred John, who already knew everything, but aside from being in New York for the holidays, he suspected that John was generally less willing to break the law than Hermione. John was fine breaking rules,but his family was known for producing Aurors, and he was proud of their legacy. John drew the line at crossing the law, and Archie was pretty sure the main reason John kept his secrets had more to do with his ethics as a Legilimens – it wasn't something he was supposed to know, and John considered it Archie's secret.

His planning and research had consumed him to the point where, even though he had received a letter from Harry about a bizarre creature attack at Hogwarts over Halloween, he had merely skimmed it, written her a letter telling her to take care of herself, then threw her letter into his drawer and shut it. Her second letter, only a few days later, about the goblin search and the Daily Prophet article, was a little more worrying, but Harry said she taken care of it with Sirius (by saying it was the Marauder's Map), so he didn't even bother responding before tossing it into his drawer.

He had more important things to do, namely, convincing Hermione to help him break into St. Mungo's.

"'Mione, my dear," he said, stopping beside her in the Healers common room after his theatre rehearsal. He put on his most charming smile. She looked up from her Magical Theory 3 notes, and her eyes narrowed a little in suspicion. When did she get to know him so well?

"Harry," she said slowly, drawing his name out.

"Do you mind if we talk privately?" Archie gestured upstairs, to their rooms. "Your room, or mine, it doesn't matter to me."

She studied him with interest, for a moment, then packed her notes and her textbook. "Of course. My room?"

Hermione's room was neat, tidy. Unlike Archie, who sometimes let papers pile up on his desk, who left his bed unmade most days, Hermione's desk was clear, her books lining her bookshelf, sorted by subject. Her bed was always made, her clothes always folded in her wardrobe. Archie walked in, taking a seat on Hermione's bed where she gestured. He left the door open behind him but pulled out his wand and cast a Muffliato spell on the doorway. He hoped it would be enough. Could one even cast Muffliato on spaces, and not specifically on people? They'd have to keep their voices down, just in case.

"What is it, Harry?"

Archie took a deep breath, then let it out. The best way to go about this was to just be honest – Hermione wouldn't handle trickery well, not when it came to breaking the law. It wasn't that she wouldn't break the law (he had talked her into stealing Polyjuice with him in first year, after all!) but she certainly wouldn't appreciate doing it without knowing she was doing it.

"I need your help, 'Mione."

"Go on," she replied, her face softening.

"I need you to help me break into St. Mungo's over the Christmas holiday. Or, not break in, exactly," he corrected himself quickly, "but I need to get in to their archives to either steal or copy my aunt's records."

"Either steal or copy?" Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"More likely, steal," Archie admitted. He would copy if he could, but realistically, they would have to be in and out. Get in, find the archives, find the records, get out.

"Why?"

That wasn't no. Archie would have found his way in with or without Hermione's help, but having Hermione there, looking out for him, would be a huge help. He reached into his bag, pulling out his No-Maj Medicine 1 textbook, turning to the case study in question and passing the book over to her, tapping at the orange box.

Hermione took his textbook and skimmed over it. "Harry," she said, her voice sad, her expression reading pity. Archie hated pity. "I'm sorry to have to say this, but your aunt is, well, she's dead. There's nothing that these records will do, there's nothing we can do to fix that. And you know that we wouldn't be able to come to a firm diagnosis based on her records alone."

"I know, 'Mione." Archie looked down. "I know that, even with the records, I'll never know for certain. I'll only ever have a guess, but I need that guess, Hermione. It's my – it's Aunt Diana. We were very close. And if – if she died of a treatable condition—"

"You'll never know if she died of a treatable condition," Hermione said, her voice sharp. "I don't know if this is a good idea, Harry – not only for the breaking in part, but for you, emotionally. How will you feel if we get the records and they don't have enough information? How will you feel if we get their records and it shows she probably didn't have MS? How will you feel if we get the records and it shows she probably did have MS? You can't change the past."

"I know, I know – but I need to know, 'Mione. I need this." Archie took a deep breath, looking back up at her. She was learning forward in her chair, and her expression was serious, her "are you sure you want to do this" look. That was a good sign. That meant that she would probably help him. "If we get the records and they don't show anything, or that they show my guess is wrong, then nothing will have changed. But if they do match, if they do show she probably had MS, then – then that's more than my family has known so far."

"Hmm." Hermione pursed her lips. "What about your cousin, Rigel? What will you tell him?"

"Nothing, yet," Archie lied. It had to be a lie, because he wasn't Harry for this. This request was entirely Archie's, entirely Arcturus Rigel Black, not Harry Potter. "If it's hard for me, it'll be worse for him. I won't tell him anything unless we have a good guess. If we do get a good guess, I'll – I'll have to tell him."

Hermione was silent for a minute, thinking it over, and Archie waited. He had to let her think, because this was important, too important to rush her. "Why can't you get the records any other way? Can't you just request them, like a sensible person?"

"They wouldn't provide them to me, 'Mione – the freedom of information laws in Britain are stricter." Archie shook his head – he had looked into that already, considering whether he could get a request in through official channels. Not without alerting Dad to what he was doing, he couldn't. "I'd have to be a blood relative to even get a shot at getting anything, and they would alert Uncle Sirius, and I don't… I don't want either Uncle Sirius or Rigel knowing anything until we have an idea. I need to do this, but I don't want to hurt them, or get their hopes up, or – or, I don't know. Not before I have a good idea."

Hermione studied him, with an intent, considering gaze for another few minutes. Finally, she sighed. "You're going to do it no matter what I say, aren't you?"

Archie laughed a little, without any humour. "You know me too well, 'Mione."

"Then I better come to watch your back." She shook her head, taking in a deep breath. "Tell me the plan. What have you found out so far?"

Chapter Text

Archie stood backstage, listening for his cue. He was in the ensemble for the first song, but after that he retired off-stage where he Metamorphized himself into how he thought Enjolras should look. He made himself a little older, grew his hair a little longer to fall into his eyes, and added a touch of facial hair, but he kept himself recognizably Harry Potter. Being a Metamorphmagus was damn useful, now that he had gotten the trick of it – he never needed Polyjuice, or any other glamour spell! One thought, and poof! There he was, a brand-new Archie Black. Not that anyone other than John knew he was a Metamorphmagus, yet.

Absently, he took his red jacket, marking his character, from Hermione and pulled it on. He could hear Neal's voice boom out from on stage, swearing his oath with the stars as witness. It was almost showtime – it was their third performance, tonight, but he felt just the same, just as nervous, as he smoothed away the butterflies and settled himself firmly into his role. Enjolras was angry, he was furious, but he was determined. Enjolras was charismatic, idealistic, a leader. Enjolras would convince his people to rise up against the monarchy, would lead them to war.

He wasn't Harry Potter anymore, or even Archie Black. A small part of his mind split off, himself, but he lived, he felt, as Enjolras, student revolutionary.

He heard Alberto, who had won the role of Gavroche, sing the opening lines of Paris, bringing the audience forward almost a decade, to a new time. He exchanged a glance with Zahir, similarly expressionless with the same air of determination, who slapped him on the shoulder as he hiked up the stairs to the balcony, the second story, around the edges of the stage. He looked down at the ensemble (his people), with Alberto, a street urchin, dancing within the ensemble, his choreography purposely mismatched from theirs to make him stand out.

"Where are the leaders of the land?" he demanded, wearing a stern frown as he looked down. "Where is the king who runs this show?"

"Only one man, General Lamarque, speaks for the people here below," Zahir replied, his voice sweeter than Archie's was. Archie had worked to make his voice harsher, stronger, more powerful in the past two months for this performance – while he could still bring sweetness, it wasn't right this role.

"Lamarque is ill and fading fast," another revolutionary, played by fifth-year Tyler Cote added. "Won't last a week, or so they say?"

"With all the anger in the land, how long before our judgement day?" Seventh-year Gerry Curtis continued the line, stepping forward beside Archie. He was playing another of Archie's friends and revolutionaries.

"How long before we cut the fat ones down to size?" Archie spat out, pushing Gerry gently out of the way to stand in the forefront, and the ensemble took it away. Enjolras was a leader, and he felt the injustice of the world down to his core.

The ensemble would finish that song, and Archie took himself off-stage. He had a single song as a break, before he was back on, singing to Marius about love in a time of revolution. His friends teased Zahir about the pretty girl he had seen, while Archie reminded him that they had a higher call, larger goals to meet. And when they heard the news that the general was dead, Archie climbed on top of a table, stoking the discontent in the room. A barricade would be built on the streets of Paris, he sang, and the people of Paris would rise.

He had a brief interlude after that, while Marius, Cosette, and Eponine sang their love story. Enjolras thought these were frivolous, especially in a time of revolution, but the part of his mind that was still Archie loved these songs. They were so beautiful, and the harmonies Zahir, Yeganeh and Thea were able to strike were perfect. He took a deep breath before heading back on stage – he wouldn't have another break for the rest of the performance.

"One more day before the storm," he sang out, walking on the stage, gesturing for his followers (more of them, now) to follow him. He exchanged lines with Marius, berating him for worrying about Cosette when the fate of the nation was at stake, then he led his people through building the barricades, through the first attacks.

The first attacks did not go well – they would have been wiped out if not for Marius, who clambered on top to the barricade and threatened to blow them all up with a bucket of oil in one hand and a torch in the other. It didn't save Eponine, or so many others, and a serious, intense Enjolras set a watch for the night, sent Marius to bed, and sang his people through the night of anguish. He knew, then, that they would not survive the dawn. Gavroche died the next morning, and Archie stood before his people, cajoling them to their last stand.

"Let us die facing our foes, make them bleed while we can," he sang, his eyes focused and intense on his remaining people.

"Make them pay through the nose," sang one of his friends, stepping forward.

"Make them pay for every man," another revolutionary replied, nodding slowly, sombre.

"Let others rise to take our place, until the earth is free!" Archie raised one fist, a symbol of resistance, and the he dropped his hand, pointing towards the barricade. They were pushed back, of course – Chess had done the choreography for the final battle, he spotted her managing the difficult illusion magic at one side of the stage with a series of paper charms, and it was chaotic, messy, and somehow still beautiful. At the end of it, Enjolras stood at the edge of the stage, one of his compatriots beside him (the only one left), and he held a red flag up as he faced death with bitter defiance in his eyes. There was a loud blast, courtesy of one of the Charms Club members, and Archie let himself fall off stage, into darkness.

He lay there a few seconds, coming back to himself, finding his way back to Archie Black with a thin veneer of Harry Potter, as the rest of the show went on. Enjolras wasn't like his other roles. He wasn't like Puck, he wasn't like Jem Finch. Puck was someone that Archie, to some degree, had been – Puck was a prankster, and Archie's portrayal had been a combination of Dad, Uncle James and himself, with a sprinkle of fairy on top. Jem Finch was someone that Archie, to some degree, had become over the past two years. Jem Finch was about the loss of innocence, about growing up. Puck and Jem, Archie had taken those roles and he had enjoyed them while they lasted. When the roles ended, he moved on.

Enjolras wasn't like that, and Archie wasn't sure why. Was it that Enjolras was what he wanted to be? No, that wasn't it – Enjolras was a firebrand who had taken advantage of an opportunity to stage a poorly planned uprising on the streets of Paris, one doomed to failure almost before it started. He had relied on far more people rising with him than did, and he had died for it, he and all his friends. Enjolras was stupid in many ways, less complex than some of Archie's other roles, but there was still something Archie liked about him, something that Archie wanted to keep with him. Enjolras was angry, he let himself be angry, but he was idealistic and charismatic and brave, even if he was foolish. He had conviction, and he had dreams, and he wasn't afraid to chase them. Enjolras stood for what he believed was right, even when it got him killed.

It was that certainty, he thought, sitting up in the darkness as Hermione came to check on him. He smiled at her a little, waving her off. They were only just past Empty Chairs and Empty Tables, and Archie knew his cue to go back on stage, part of the ensemble for the final song. It was that certainty, that conviction. It was the fact that Enjolras knew what he believed, and he stood up for those beliefs, come what may, without hiding, without fear. Foolish firebrand or not, Enjolras stood up for what he believed in, and people took him seriously, let him lead them to their deaths, because of it.

It would be home to Britain, soon. And in Britain, he would have to be back to Archie Black, prankster, light-hearted fool.

He missed Enjolras already.

He and Hermione had taken two months to plan their St. Mungo's heist. It wasn't actually that difficult, when it came down to it – the more normal they were, the better. Healer robes were more or less standard throughout the world, in the same pale blue shade, but British Healer robes were older in style. The sleeves were still wide, falling back from the hands, and they were floor-length, in the Wizarding British style. Frankly, it was terrible for hygienic purposes, because the long sleeves and floor-length hem dragged through everything. British Healers must sanitize their robes between patients – what a waste of magic!

Hermione offered to look up the floor plans for St. Mungo's. Archie knew the rough layout – between Mum and Dad's volunteering, he had spent a fair amount of time there – but Hermione had deemed his knowledge insufficient since he didn't know where the old records were normally held. Assuming she got all the information they needed in the first week of break, their infiltration was planned for Boxing Day when families were likely to be squabbling, St. Mungo's understaffed, and everything was expected to be a zoo. Archie didn't know how he would sneak out for the day, yet, but he would figure it out. A trip to Diagon Alley would always work, especially if he brought back a book or something. He had successfully convinced Dad that he had a predilection for spending hours browsing in Flourish and Blotts, or wandering the alleyways.

Meeting up with Harry was always a mix of joy, relief, anxiety, and fear. On one hand, he was always happy to see her, but she never had good news for him from Hogwarts. Never. Why couldn't Harry have normal stories to tell him? Why couldn't her biggest worries be Professor Snape didn't like my breath mint potion, or I didn't make the Quidditch team or even Draco is mad at me and I don't know what to do. Why did her all her problems seem to come down to someone is trying to kill me?

This year, at least, it didn't seem like someone was trying to kill her. Aside from the creature attack at Halloween, Harry had nothing to report. Instead, her biggest concern was that both she and Archie would need to be at the Gala this year – Master Snape, apparently, wanted to meet the girl whom Rigel had been teaching potions to, all of her friends wanted to meet her betrothed, and she was worried it wouldn't be enough if she went by herself. Ergh.

Archie didn't want to go to the Gala – it was a SOW Party fundraiser, and he couldn't see anything about the Party that might make up for its advocacy of virulent blood supremacy. Hermione would say (and, for once, John would probably agree) that the best response was a boycott. He didn't want to go to the Gala and make nice with Harry's friends, with this mysterious Draco Malfoy that she liked so much, or Pansy Parkinson. He didn't think he could meet with them without thinking about how their beliefs, their policies, made a world where Hermione probably wouldn't (for good reason) come home, where Chess' discoveries (once she made them – she was clearly on the trail of something, and she had delivered Archie's Christmas present with an uncharacteristically wide grin that had lit her face like a beacon) would never be taken seriously, where even John, heavily connected and popular John, would be subject to the worst kind of laws.

He didn't think he could meet with them without thinking about Mum, without thinking about the ever-present possibility that maybe, just maybe, their anti-Muggle beliefs and policies, over many years, had created a world where Mum's illness had been overlooked, misdiagnosed, and untreated. And Mum had died for it.

But Harry had a point, even as she rambled on – she was nervous, she wasn't usually a rambler. At some point, to allay suspicion, people would need to see them both, otherwise it would be too suspicious. He would have to deal with it sooner or later, and he was Archie Black, damn it. He was an actor par excellence, and he could manage the role of Rigel Black, as he had done for so many years at home. Why not sooner?

"I'm just thinking – and bear with me here, here, because this is going to sound crazy, but why don't we both just go as ourselves?" Archie threw out with a small smile. He was Arcturus Rigel Black, and she was Harriett Potter, and that was the blunt and simple truth. They could feed him Veritaserum, and while a whole bunch of other things would come out, he would still be Arcturus Rigel Black.

Harry blinked. "You think? I was going to research mind magics and see if there is a way to mentally connect our surface thoughts temporarily so we could feed each other information about credible responses to awkward situations in real time."

"That sounds … awesome," Archie replied, suppressing a shudder. He would not be doing that, not if there was any other way. Once, maybe, he would have legitimately found the idea really cool (who didn't want to spend more time with Harry?), but with John's warnings about the dangers of mind magic ringing in his head, he would rather not. Not if it could be avoided. "But in this case, I think the simple answer is better. You be you, and dazzle your Snape with a galore of potions expertise, and I'll be me and dazzle everyone with my stunning good looks and charm."

"Except for the part where you look like me." Harry's voice was flat.

"Our good looks, then," Archie waved a hand dismissively. They'd have to find some reason for that eventually, but let people wonder what they would. "The point is, all Rigel really needs to do at the Gala is introduce Harriett – you – to people and not blurt out any secrets in front of the entire Wizarding ton. Piece of cake."

The entire Wizarding ton? Where had that come from? Clearly, Archie had been reading too many of Chess' Regency romances. They were sort of silly, but they were hilarious, and even if Archie thought a lot of the romance itself was kind of contrived, they were still cute. It wasn't a word used in common Wizarding British parlance, though, and he mentally made a note to watch his language.

"I'm not sure you can pretend to be me for so many hours, though," Harry said, entirely ignoring Archie's language slip. "My friends are pretty observant. One of them can feel your very emotions, now, so you'll have to be convincing on more than just the surface level."

Archie frowned a little, offended – what did Harry think he had been doing at home for years, when she was hiding in her lab, or running around Diagon Alley, or the Potions Guild? He had been playing the role of Rigel Black for his Dad, for his family, pretending like her experiences were his, living up to her legacy. She came home over the holidays, and she got to be herself, because no one really cared what she (or rather, he) apparently did at AIM. Archie came home and had to act for weeks, around the people who knew him best. Harry got to take a break from Rigel Black while she was away from school, but Archie only got his freedom in America.

There was a short pause, as Archie picked his words. He didn't want to get into this, and anyway, on a month-by-month basis, Harry carried the ruse nine months of the year, so Archie shouldn't complain that his contributions were ignored. Rather, shouldn't he be grateful? Wasn't it the sign of good undercover work that no one noticed him?

"Because you're so unique," he said finally, sarcastic even though he was really trying not to be. "Besides, I'm pretending to be me, remember? It would be literally impossible for anyone to call me out on not being Arcturus Rigel Black."

"True," Harry allowed, though from her expression, she was still skeptical. Archie fought his annoyance – so Harry hadn't noticed the behind-the-scenes work he had done over the summers for the past few years. So what? For the most part, Harry didn't notice anything that wasn't Potions. He knew that. "What about your aura? Snape, Malfoy, and Riddle can all read them, and they all know I don't have one. I can fake one as Harriett, but you don't know how to suppress yours."

"I'll learn." Archie shrugged, wrinkling his nose a little in distaste at the very thought. Ugh, he would manage, somehow. "We've nearly two and a half weeks until New Year's, if I put all my time into studying aura suppression, I'm bound to get somewhere."

Not all his time, he corrected himself mentally. Some time. There was the heist, though that was mostly planned, now. They had worked out the robes, they had worked out the plan, Hermione was just finalizing a couple details. He was nervous, running his mind over the plans, over and over again, but it would work. It had to work.

Harry frowned, still worried, but they were distracted by the call downstairs for dinner. It was showtime, again, and Archie smiled encouragingly at Harry as he took a deep breath and put on his role as Rigel Black. It would be fine – it was always fine. There always seemed to be something irritating Archie when he was at home, so with the ease of practice, he buried his discontent under a layer of excitement.

The next day, they worked on aura suppression, and Archie, with more than a hint of guilt, let Harry into his mind. John would have words with him over it, if he ever found out – John had a thing about mindscapes. They were intensely personal, incredibly private, and access to someone else's mindscape could give the person access to their most private thoughts, to their secrets, to their abilities. A very good Legilimens could possess another person by controlling their mindscape, more surely than an Imperius curse, a fact which Archie was very much aware, given what Harry had told him before.

But this was Harry. Aside from being best friend, confidante, and sister, she was also his co-conspirator. He could hardly say no, not when this was the shortest way to get the job done, not when this was something that needed to be fixed by the Gala. And, anyway, from what she said, she had been in dozens of mindscapes, both through the Sleeping Sickness and last year with the basilisk. Nothing bad had happened yet!

So, he let her enter her mindscape, amused that she didn't use his mists (where all his Occlumency was focused), let her show him how to manipulate his Manifestations and grow some additional defenses in his mindscape. He just … he wouldn't tell John about this, and his own Occlumency was good enough that John hadn't heard anything inadvertently from him in months. His mists were patrolled by ghostly, spectral, mist-forms of baying dogs, wolves and stags, which hunted down potential intruders and booted them out. John thought they were quite good, particularly the mental sting that they gave if they caught him, which they rarely did – John was too good as a Legilimens, though he hadn't ever brought his full efforts to bear on Archie in their training sessions. That wouldn't be educational, after all.

That evening, to his surprise, Dad pulled him aside into the Black Library, uncommonly awkward. Archie went, settling down on one of the old, upholstered armchairs in the library, crossing his legs. He purposely took a relaxed position – Rigel Black had nothing to hide from his father.

"What's up, Dad?" he asked, tilting his head easily, even if he felt nothing like that.

"Son," Dad started, and inwardly, Archie held his breath. That was a tic of Dad's – if all was well, Dad called him Archie, or Arch, just like everyone else. If it was something serious, or if it was bad news, it was Son. Son… I have bad news. Your mum, she…

He blocked the memory. With the heist coming up, she was on his mind more often than usual. He was a good actor, though, and he knew it, just as he knew that his Metamorphized form hadn't flickered.

"Lately, I've been thinking."

"About?" Archie prompted, still portraying a relaxed look, even if he felt nothing like that.

"You look a lot like Harry," Dad continued slowly, his grey eyes (more like Archie's that he knew) roaming over Archie's Metamorphized face with concern. "I mean, before, there was a bit of a difference, but now – you look almost exactly the same."

Was that all? There was no point denying that. "I've noticed," Archie replied, leaning forward with a frown of consternation as he started rambling. Yes, and, and all that. The golden rule of improv. "I accused Harry of playing a prank on me last night, actually, but I checked, and she definitely goes longer than an hour between drinking something, so I know it isn't Polyjuice—"

"I don't think it's Harry," Dad interrupted him, with a grimace. "I think you may have inherited some latent Metamorphmagus abilities."

"Me?" Archie laughed outright. It was a good laugh, it sounded genuine, which was all the better for hiding how close to the truth Dad really was. Archie was a Metamorphmagus, now! And of course, because he was using those abilities to look like the conglomerate Archie-Harry that Rigel Black represented, all the time, no one could know that he was a Metamorphmagus. Not unless everything went south.

John had encouraged him to drop the disguise, when he was alone in his room, or when he was with John, because the way he put it, wearing his disguise permanently, without breaks, would be detrimental to his long-term mental health. Archie had to learn how he looked, he had to be able to recognize his true face in a mirror, he had to remember what part of him was Archie Black and what was Harry Potter. Frankly, while Archie thought he looked good as both himself and as Harry Potter, he was coming to like his true appearance. He looked like Dad. No doubt that would come in handy, one day.

He listened to his Dad explain his hypothesis, that Archie had somehow gotten latent, passive metamorphic abilities which had fixated on Harry's development as a model for his own development. From a wizarding genetics perspective, it was a bit of a stretch – not the possibility of it, because the passive talents were actually fairly well documented. It was the idea that they could occur in Arcturus Rigel Black, scion of the notoriously pureblooded Black House and descendant of the equally pureblooded Fawley line. Passive talents required a certain amount of wildness to manifest, at least according to John. Dad was reaching.

But it was an explanation that worked, so Archie went with it. After all, it stopped Dad from asking, and that worked until Dad proposed that Archie find something for himself, next summer.

Something away from Harry.

Well, Dad hadn't said that part, not explicitly. But inter alia, it was there, unspoken but still clear, and Archie… some knee-jerk part of Archie recoiled, because that meant a summer out of Britain. Not only would the ruse mean he was perpetually lying to Dad, but he wouldn't even be able to come home next summer. But, almost immediately, he realized: that meant a summer out of Britain! That meant a summer of being himself, not Rigel Black and not Harry Potter, somewhere far away. And he could find an internship right in line with his interests, he could learn about himself as Arcturus Rigel Black while learning about Healing. It would be good – no, it would be great! And it would provide time for the ruse, too, for their appearances to change, especially since Uncle Remus was at Hogwarts. It was perfect.

"If you think it best, Dad, I'll start looking into opportunities." Archie grinned widely, thinking over the possibilities. Nowhere in Europe, he didn't think, though Eastern Europe had some interesting problems. Not the Far East, either, from what Chess said, their Healing techniques were too different (but it would probably be a very interesting and educational experience!). But somewhere in Africa, or South America, he could see if there was something available. He wasn't sure what he could get on Harry's credentials, but he would work something out. Harry could get him a letter of recommendation from Madam Pomfrey, that would help, and it was time for him to start building a reputation as himself.

At the end of the week, after they had worked on their auras to her satisfaction, Harry dragged him into the Lower Alleys, to a shop where she knew the shopkeeper would able to check them. Archie followed her, looking around in mild worry. The streets were old cobblestone, with dirt and mud in the cracks. Animals were left running free – there were stray dogs and crups, some of which had their tails snipped but most of which didn't, a couple angry jarveys, and he even saw a few chickens running about behind the shops. The shops, too, seemed a little unsavoury, almost suspect – the windows to the bars and pubs were grimy, some cracked with age, and he spotted an establishment that he was pretty sure had to be a brothel. The buildings were older, weathered and ramshackle, and there was a smell which he uncomfortably associated with old potions and sewage. Harry had been running around back here?

Harry didn't seem to mind, though he could see that she was wearing her sturdy old potions boots. It wasn't that Archie much cared for the boots he was wearing (at AIM, he liked his sneakers), but these ones were new, and the suede would never be the same. All the cleaning charms in the world wouldn't get the muck off these boots, and they would no doubt be heading straight for the trash bin as soon as he got home. The mud smelled, and as a Healer-in-Training, used to the odd smells of the human body, that said something. He wished she had warned him, at least then he could have put on older boots for this, something he didn't care about throwing away.

It's only poverty, Archie told himself sharply. He and Harry were wealthy, noble, privileged, and they were lucky to be so – not everyone was so lucky. Hermione would tell him that his attitude was stigmatizing the poor, that people couldn't help the socioeconomic class they were born into, just like they couldn't help their blood status. Then she would have scolded him and told him his boots didn't matter one whit, and to get over himself.

Easier said than done. He sighed, focusing on Harry instead. She was far too comfortable down here – clearly, she had been holding out on him. Once, that might have made him upset, but he had been hiding so much from her, too, so if anything, he felt glad. Grateful, even. It wasn't just him – it wasn't just him hiding things, it wasn't just him not sharing things. Harry had hidden all of this from him, all her friends and connections in the Alleys, so he didn't need to feel guilty about hiding so many things from her: AIM, No-Maj London, his theatre, his singing. Maybe this was just a part of growing up, growing apart.

In that light, everything here was interesting, especially since Harry had turned off to cleaner, better lit streets. She said her apartment was back here, somewhere, and she said it was nice. He wouldn't necessarily have believed her, but he had been in her Potions lab a million times, and she kept the space spotless. If she said that it was nice, then it probably was nice.

She stopped at a tiny, almost unremarkable shop, with a sign hanging over the doorway reading Custom Metalwork and Repair. The words were carefully formed, elegant, and ducking into the minuscule shop, Archie was impressed. It was well-lit, though cluttered, the walls were lined with brightly coloured boxes. He leaned forward, examining the items shown within the pristine glass display case under the counter.

"Are those fairy rings?" The metalwork on those were intricate, beautifully worked designs, shaped into graceful curves and delicate knots. About half of them were plain metal, in iron, silver, gold, where the designs were the clearest and most complex, whereas the other half were held stones. Power stones, unless Archie missed his guess. There was a magnificent ring on one side of the case, worked silver with a blue stone on top, a sapphire, which would be perfect for Hermione.

She would never accept it from him, she would say it was too much. But one day, he promised himself, eyeing the pretty thing. One day he'd get something like that for her, and he'd find a way to get her to accept it. The sapphire, too, looked like it was big enough to boost or anchor at least one spell, though maybe not a powerful spell.

"He works with all kinds of materials," Harry replied, offhand, smiling slightly at a very short, redheaded man who had appeared from the back room. His face was bright, lined with laugh lines, and Archie liked him immediately.

Harry did have another reason, other than their auras, to see Mr. Frein – she was wearing a magical suppressor, and needed it adjusted to give her more access to her power. He waited, looking around curiously, while Harry explained the problem, which Mr. Frein would fix by later that afternoon. He also had a quick look at their auras, which passed muster, to Harry's obvious joy. She thanked him profusely, and they headed out.

She invited him for lunch with her friends, and with some hesitation, Archie accepted. Not that he would have any issue with these friends, he was sure – he didn't know them, and these weren't like her school friends, who were deep in the SOW Party. It was more that he had already run into Marek, and meeting him both as Harry Potter and as himself, would that not screw things up? Except for his name, at AIM, he was himself, and it wouldn't take much to realize that the person that Marek had met in America was very clearly Archie Black and not Harry Potter.

Fortunately, it didn't seem like Marek was at the pub that Harry took him to, the Dancing Phoenix. Harry deposited Archie at a long table, close to the fire, and left him with a quick introduction to Rispah, Lady of the Rogue, saying that she was off to put their orders for shepherd's pie in with the kitchens.

Lady of the Rogue? He had no idea what that meant, but he studied the woman curiously as she rose gracefully from her table and sauntered over to him. Despite the cool winter weather, her dress was low-cut and thin, form-fitting, barely-there lace and sequins covering her top half, leaving nothing to imagination. It was an effort to keep his eyes politely on her face, where they belonged, and he knew that she knew it.

"Archie, hm?" She said, eyeing him like a cat with a bird caught in its paws, and Archie gulped. He was all too aware of what he was wearing. His robes were made of a fine wool, with silver embroidery along the edges, and he had his Black watch with him, on a pure silver chain. He wasn't wearing any jewellery, thankfully, but his boots, even after traipsing through the Alleys, were still fine suede. His robes were in the newest style, less than a year old, which didn't seem to fit in back here – most people didn't seem to wear robes at all, but tunics and breeches or dresses, and those that did, had robes that were worn, fraying, a decade out of fashion. Had he worn his No-Maj clothes, he might have fit in a little better, especially if he stuck to jeans and the canvas jacket he had gotten years ago to play Anybodys.

"Lady Rispah," Archie acknowledged slowly, unsure of exactly what she wanted from him.

"What brings you down here, little lordling?" Her voice was saccharine sweet, and she put her hands on the table between them, leaning over towards him, her breasts in full view.

Archie cleared his throat, averting his eyes from her chest politely and fixing his gaze firmly on her face. He shifted down the bench, away from her. It would be easier to keep his eyes on her face, where they belonged, if he was a little off-centre. "Just keeping Harry company while he ran some errands."

"He never brought you around before," she mused, her very red lips forming a thoughtful, tempting moue, as she slid down the table to mirror him. Archie inched away politely, again. "He's barely mentioned you."

Was that true? He had no reason to doubt her, and he had no idea how he was supposed to feel about that. On one hand, he was surprised, almost a little sad – Harry was in some ways foundational to him. She was so important to him that anyone who knew anything about him knew about his cousin, whether it be under the name Rigel or Harry. It was Archie and Harry, Harry and Archie. They were central to each other.

But on the other, it was better that way. It was better than she didn't talk much about him, because there was less he could contradict her on, because now he could establish himself without having to worry about what she might have said about him previously. And it helped, again, with his guilt – Harry had said very little about her adventures in the Alleys to him, only talking about her friends because he had harassed her about Leo, so it made him feel better that he wasn't fully honest, anymore, with her either.

"Harry doesn't say much unless he needs to, does he?" he replied affably, with something like a grin. "Lady of the Rogue, is it?"

She laughed, a sharp laugh, and slid a little further along the table, to face him directly. Archie shifted down, again, in turn. "That it is, little lordling."

A moment of silence, before Archie just went ahead and asked. There was no shame in not knowing something, and the first step to correcting his ignorance was to ask questions. "What's the Rogue, then?"

She tilted her head to one side, considering him with a thoughtful look in her blue eyes. "Call it the government in these parts."

Fortunately, Harry returned, providing a much-needed buffer between him and Lady Rispah, who was clearly somewhat defensive. It was probably some combination of Archie's clothes and Harry's own position in these Alleys – had he known he was coming all this way, he would have picked out his clothes better, avoided flaunting his wealth. And whatever Harry was doing in the Alleys, it was obvious that Rispah cared about her, and Archie had no problem with that. He put himself in her shoes: Archie obviously didn't fit in back here, and he was someone who had known Harry for, well, forever, suddenly coming on her turf. Of course she was defensive.

It only took a couple jokes before she was more at ease – a bit of poking fun at himself and his family, a crack about his notoriously unstable grandmother, and her attitude eased with a much friendlier smile. He listened, intently, to Harry's conversation with Rispah about Rogue affairs; if the Rogue was the government, and she was the Lady of the Rogue, then these were essentially political affairs. They talked about Ministry raids, mentioned Leo's crown – oh, so Leo had to be the leader of the government in these parts. The King, in fact – he wasn't entirely sure what he was King of, but yes, a government leader of some kind. Interesting.

Leo did, in fact, show up midway through their conversation, and Archie looked at him with a new respect. He hadn't seen Leo around that much, merely catching sight of him and exchanging brief hellos when he was helping Harry with her crates. Normally, he would get into the Alleys, almost towards the turnoff to Knockturn Alley, and Leo would appear from out of nowhere.

"Need a hand?" he would say, nodding politely at Archie but his full attention on Harry.

"We've got it, Leo, but thank you," Harry would reply, huffing a little under the weight of two crates of potions. Archie's arms would be straining a bit at this point too, not that he would say anything.

"I'm going in the same direction, anyway," Leo would add, going ahead and taking a crate from Harry's arms, then one from Archie's, and Archie would give him a grateful sort of smile. "It's no trouble."

Harry would sigh, say "If you're sure," and they would walk the rest of the way to where she worked, The Serpent's Storeroom. Once inside, Archie would deposit his crate, with a dramatic sigh of relief, on the front counter. He would check in with Harry, asking if she needed anything else, and she would typically already be lost in conversation with her older probable-future-paramour (Harry, of course, didn't see it that way, but Archie recognized the look Leo wore on his face when he looked at her). She would think about it for a second, before shaking her head and saying she would be fine, she would see him at home, and he would wave and take off to the West End for the day, to explore the bookshops or see a movie or something.

Now that he knew, though, he noticed the way that Leo carried himself: with a casual, deadly sort of grace. This man was dangerous, even if not to Harry, and probably not to him. Not so long as he didn't pose a threat to Harry, anyway, Archie was sure. That was fine – if Harry was wandering around in these parts, Archie would encourage a dangerous sort of friend.

And he probably needed it, honestly, to deal with the trials set by the Blacks and then Uncle James. Maybe Archie would set up a crazy obstacle course for him, or something like that. An assault on the castle where he held Harry, so to speak – that was an appropriate challenge for a King, was it not? That would be fun, playing the bad guy!

A brief conversation later, Archie was pretty sure he had just agreed to spy on the wizarding nobility for the King of the Rogue, in an equivocal sort of fashion which he deemed entirely appropriate. He wouldn't be able to provide much information most of the year (being as he would be in America, not that Leo would know that), but the few times a year when he was back and playing Rigel Black, well, that could be very fun.

He also learned that Harry knew how to fight with a knife, which was amazing – he couldn't wait until Uncle James found that out! He would absolutely lose it, Archie hoped he had a front row seat for that revelation. He wouldn't tell on Harry, of course, but knife-fighting totally blew acting and singing and theatre out of the water, so it was fine! Everything was good, everything was wonderful, and Archie came back from the Lower Alleys feeling like a great weight had been lifted off him.

Before Christmas, Archie was only called on to play Rigel Black once more in front of others, in front of people who weren't family, people who knew Harry as Rigel Black. It was for a visit to the Weasleys, a family that he and Dad had never known well. The Weasleys were known and proud blood traitors, exactly the sort of people Dad had always wanted to cultivate a relationship with, but it had just never happened. Generationally, Dad hadn't overlapped with either the elder Weasleys, nor the elder Weasley children, at school, falling right in the ten years in the middle. And Harry, of course, was a Slytherin and much closer with Malfoy and Parkinson.

That was really too bad, Archie reflected, after a very good day of pranks, skating, and dinner. He liked the Weasleys. They were interesting and fun, his kind of people. They reminded him a little of his friends at school – Percy reminded him quite a lot of Hermione, the twins reminded him a little of John, both the combination of fun with the sudden sharp insightfulness. These were the sort of people he would have been happy to pretend to befriend!

If only Harry had been Sorted into Gryffindor, he sighed regretfully. He understood why she hadn't been – he wasn't sure what spelled cunning and ambition more than a years-long ruse with the aim of studying under Master Snape – but it would have been that much easier.

He also received a letter from Flint, demanding that he contact Rigel and calling in a favour, almost certainly the Vow of Undisclosed Debt. He passed it on to Harry with a fair amount of worry, but she took care of it. When he asked about it, she only shook her head and told him that it was a private matter. It was nothing for him to concern himself with, so he tried not to worry about it. He had more important things to worry about for the rest of the holidays anyway. The Heist, in only a few days. The Gala, only a little over a week away. If Harry said it was fine, then he would have to trust her on it.

On Christmas Day, Archie was up at six in the morning, diving into his trunk for the box that Chess had given him, which she said had come from both her and John. She had looked so absolutely delighted when she delivered it, with a smile bigger than anything Archie had ever seen on her before, so it had to be good. Hermione had given him a book, as usual (he always opened her present first, because it was Hermione), and this time it was a beautifully embossed version of No-Maj fairy tales. He had mentioned, offhand, that he didn't know many of them, and while Hermione had complained at length about their supposedly suspect moral teachings, she had gotten it for him anyway. Hermione truly was a great friend.

He found the box from John and Chess. It wasn't a book, he knew that much from rattling it – there was more than one thing in it, he was pretty sure. It wasn't the right size for a book, anyway, being far too big and deep. He tore the paper, midnight blue, off with abandon, tossing it to feed the fire, and wiggled the lid of the box off carefully.

There was an oddly shaped, white plastic block, a pair of white headphones, a set of CDs, and a letter. Music? The thought was nice, but how could he be expected to play with these here, or at AIM? The CD players that they needed to play them always went on the fritz in magical environments.

He picked up the letter, unfolding it curiously.

Dear Harry,

Merry Christmas!

John and I worked out shielding for electronic devices! This is a portable CD player. You need to keep it in the special protective case I made any time it is on, or the interaction with the ambient electromagnetic frequencies in a magical environment will destroy it. The case works to block any ambient signals and protect it, which makes it work in magical environments! I would explain how, but John says you wouldn't be interested, and that I should patent it and get rich instead.

It runs off batteries, so you'll need to go into the No-Maj world to buy new batteries every now and then. There is a small hole to plug in the headphones, which are also specially shielded. A few other warnings – the inner side of the earpieces are not shielded, so you need to make sure they're firmly on your head before you turn the CD player on (your own magical frequency alone won't interfere with it), and always make sure the CD player is off before you take the headphones off.

John picked out a bunch of CDs for you. I remember you liked Beauty and the Beast, so I added a Disney mix in there too. I hope you like it.

Yours truly,

Francesca

There was a little scribbled heart next to her name, and Archie couldn't help but smile. Underneath, John had added a note, clearly scrawled right before it went into the box.

Archie – Chess says "John and I" but all I did was feed her and watch her be amazing! Isn't she amazing?! Anyway, I have no idea what kind of music you like, other than Broadway showtunes, so I got you a variety. Let me know what you like and I'll fix on it better next time. John.

Archie looked into the box with new eyes, pulling out the plastic block (surprisingly lightweight), finding the small hinge to crack it open. He recognized the device sitting on the inside from the record store in town, a portable CD player, just as they had said! He kept it as much in the plastic case as he could as he found the button to pop open the top and insert a CD. He ran his fingers over the buttons carefully, identifying the points above Chess had built in hard pinpoint buttons in the case to let him turn it on and off, play and stop, without opening the case. There was a small opening to feed through the headphone jack, and the headphones themselves were big, like the ones in the records store in town, though the wire was chunkier, coated in flexible, plastic shielding. He saw the plastic coating covering the headphones, too, which made them heavier, but not so much that they were uncomfortable.

Wow, Archie thought, closing the plastic case carefully around his new CD player and setting down his new headphones. That was amazing!

He sorted through the collection of CDs with delight. Chess had, as she said in her letter, provided a mix of Disney songs with her favourites from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, the tracks listed by name and movie in her slanted cursive. John had arranged for the rest, adding in Les Miserables, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera (musicals, he guessed), CDs from bands like Nirvana, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Cranberries, Pink Floyd, singers like Johnny Cash, Madonna, David Bowie. It was a whole library of music!

Wow, Archie thought again, blown away this time not just by his friends' ingenuity, but by their generosity. He had the best friends in the world, he really did, and one day he hoped he'd be able to repay them better than he had done so far.

He pulled open his delightfully illustrated book of No-Maj fairy tales, picked out Chess' mix of Disney songs (nothing better for reading fairy tales), put it in his new CD player, popped on his new headphones, and let No-Maj fantasy carry him away.

It was December 26, the day after Christmas. He and Hermione had picked the day after Christmas because that was when they expected St. Mungo's to be at its most chaotic.

Fact 1: Christmas was a time for family. That meant, for most, a time to see people they didn't often see, to exchange presents and share their love and laughter with each other. For some, though, Christmas was a show. Christmas was a time of year when they were obligated to see the family members that they didn't like, but that they had to see in order to keep up appearances. Christmas was a time of exploding, dangerous gifts, of heated arguments, slammed doors and drawn wands. And the inevitable results of those always ended up at St. Mungo's.

Fact 2: Everyone wanted Christmas off. Christmas was a time for family, and it was always a scrap between the Healers and other hospital staff to determine who would need to work the dreaded Christmas break. It would go by seniority, more likely than not, and it would be a small, overwhelmed, skeleton staff of junior Healers and clerks managing the hospital for the days between Christmas and the New Year.

All of this was fantastic. This meant that St. Mungo's would not only be a disorganized, chaotic, zoo, but also that the Healers in charge wouldn't notice anything amiss if a couple Healers showed up that they didn't recognize. They were all juniors (the most junior of juniors, in fact!), cobbled together from different shifts, and they wouldn't have met everyone yet. As long as they were dressed in the right uniforms and sounded about right, Archie hoped that they could glide under the radar.

Archie took charge of the Healer uniforms. He used a couple of Dad's old robes, from the back of his closet, as the base. It wasn't too difficult to remove the trim and turn them into the right shade of light blue marking Healers everywhere, but the illusion magic to craft the St. Mungo's logo, a crossed wand and bone, was a little more difficult and took a few days to fix. At least, working off Dad's robes meant that he didn't need to worry about the long hems or broad sleeves, since they were already styled in the traditional Wizarding British fashion. Hermione, for her part, took care of confirming the St. Mungo's layout, since she was better able to access the public records anonymously with the Ministry, and preparing useful spells to deal with situations where they were caught. Memory Charms, Confundus Charms, a few spells to disable alarms, and the like.

He met Hermione in Diagon Alley, where they would take the Underground to the closest stop a few blocks away from the public entrance to St. Mungo's. St. Mungo's had a Floo entrance, but Floo records could be traced, and neither of them wanted to take the risk, not when it was only a forty-minute ride on the Underground and a short walk outside. Harry was covering for Archie at home – he had told her he was going out to meet Hermione, and she had just shrugged over her bubbling cauldron and said she would say he was reading in the lab with her. As long as he was back by dinner, it would be fine.

"Do you remember the plan, Harry?" Hermione whispered to him, as the train they were on rattled along, breaking into the gloomy daylight for brief stretch. The grey morning light lit on her tense face, wearing her "I can't believe I'm doing this" expression, and her chestnut hair was braided back into her usual French braid. They were both in somewhat formal No-Maj clothes, the sort of thing that would not be amiss either in the No-Maj world or underneath Healer robes.

"Of course, I do," Archie replied, discreetly patting the thin cloth bag on his lap, where he was carrying their robes. They had put on their disguises in Diagon Alley, where their use of magic would be covered by the adult mages around them. Archie had done a good job, he hoped – he had aged her a little, to maybe just past seventeen, and her hair was longer, her cheekbones a little sharper. He had worked a little heavier on himself, carefully shifting his eye-colour to blue and softening his pureblooded features as he made himself older, taller, lankier. His hair was now a mousy brown, rather jet-black, cropped short. He didn't want anything associating him to Dad, or to Uncle James, or Harry. "Calm down, 'Mione. We know what we're doing. We walk in, say hello to the tired witch or wizard on shift, and head for the back. Confidence – walk like you belong there, which we do. Did you find the building layouts?"

"I did," Hermione replied, letting out a slow, nervous breath. "Archives is in the basement, as you suspected – they wanted to keep as much of the above-ground floors available as possible for patients. What's the plan if someone stops us?"

She already knew the plan – she was just quizzing him, because she was anxious.

"I excuse myself and book it to the Archives," Archie recited patiently. "While you carry on a conversation with the person about whatever they want to talk about."

"I can't believe that's the actual plan." Hermione rested her head in her hands, rubbing at her eyes. "I cannot believe that's the actual plan."

"Simple is better, 'Mione." Archie looked out the window as the train plunged back underground. They were almost at their stop. "That's what you said. We can't predict everything – I have confidence that you'll be able to believably talk about whatever you need to talk about if we're stopped, all right? We go to the best Healing school in the world – we are a hundred percent equal to a junior Healer right out of Hogwarts, right now."

She sighed, looking up at him with worried brown eyes, her expression resigned. "This better be worth it, Harry."

"It will be, I know it. I promise. To me, it'll be worth it."

They got off, walking in nervous silence the rest of the way to St. Mungo's. St. Mungo's was in an older, industrialised part of town, full of old warehouses, low-lying brick plazas with auto shops, computer repair shops, struggling restaurants. All the signs looked the same, low and flat and dull, and all the shops looked the same.

Archie had only rarely gone through the public entrance. St Mungo's Hospital presented itself to the No-Maj world as an old, derelict department store, Purge and Dowse Ltd. Archie ran his eye over the mannequins in the old, cracked windows, critical; now that he knew more about the No-Maj world, he could tell that the fashions in the window were some half-century out of date. The building stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Healers, reporting for shift," Archie yawned at the mannequin in the window. It was still early in the morning, and it would be normal for them to be tired. One glance at Hermione, and he was relieved to see that she was blinking blearily, too. He didn't give their names, as would be usual, but the idea was that they were tired after a long shift yesterday, and hopefully, the mannequin wouldn't notice or care. Most Healers would Floo in, though some would Apparate nearby and come in through the public entrance.

He held his breath for a moment, until the mannequin motioned for them to enter. He hadn't been sure, but since this was the public entrance, he had guessed that it would only need a reasonable-sounding reason from one of them to let them in. Otherwise, how would people get in who were too injured to talk, who couldn't Floo? The hospital probably relied on the reception mage to catch anything odd.

He hadn't had a backup plan, so he was glad he was right. Or rather, his backup plan had involved running the risks of Flooing in from somewhere like Diagon Alley, but that would have thrown off all their other carefully planned timing.

In the space of a breath, Archie settled himself into character and strode through the glass window with an air of tired annoyance. He was a junior Healer, fresh out of Hogwarts and halfway through his apprenticeship. He hadn't gotten any Christmas time off, his girlfriend was mad at him because of it, and they had argued over it, last night. He felt like shit, and he pulled out his pale blue Healer's robes, passing a set to Hermione, and threw them over his shoulders with an annoyed gesture of discontent. The cloth bag, he shoved carelessly into a pocket.

"Morning, Healer Ross," he said with a yawn, checking her name tag discreetly. They had to greet the reception mage – otherwise they would stand out too much. A reception mage would remember the Healers who walked in looking nervous who didn't say hello, but they wouldn't remember two tired, annoyed Healers who meshed in with the crowd of other Healers coming through the public entrance for their shifts. In theory, anyway. "Rough night?"

"Don't ask me about it," the redheaded witch replied sourly, rubbing her eyes. She was at the end of her shift, a twelve-hour, all-night shift that had no doubt been full of hectic action and drama. She had been on duty for the last twelve hours, and she probably couldn't see straight at this point. In America, at the teaching hospital, they staggered shifts for this reason; even if shifts were still twelve hours long, half the crew was offset by six hours, so half of them would always be fresh. St. Mungo's hadn't adopted the practice yet. "Yours, Healer Adams? Healer Brown?"

Archie shrugged, grimacing in disgust. They had to have name tags, so Archie had chosen the most bland, common, British names he could, not names of big Wizarding families, but names that wouldn't seem out of place, either. Nameless, faceless, pureblood names. "The missus is mad at me, still, you know how it is."

"It's that time of year," Hermione chimed in dryly. Archie could hear the tension in her voice, but he didn't think anyone else would. They didn't know her well enough.

"Seniority," the reception Healer grunted. "Maybe next year. I don't suppose either of you are relieving me, today?"

"Sorry." Archie shook his head, apparently a little regretful. "Rounds, for us."

"It's all right. If you're here, then my cover will be here soon too." Healer Ross yawned, looking over the waiting room, which was still full of patients in varying states of distress. Archie spotted a few Curses that would be easily undone, once someone was able to look at them (not him – he didn't have much training in Curses), one or two injuries that he was sure he could help with, but it wasn't the time. A lot of Spell Damage cases. One of the patients started hacking uncontrollably, leaning over as he apparently sought to cough out his lungs. "I need to get back to this. Good luck, today."

"Hope your replacement gets here soon," Archie replied, before he headed through the wide, white doors into the hospital itself. "Good luck."

The ground floor of St. Mungo's was dedicated to the Welcome area, where they had come in, which also doubled as the A&E, accidents and emergencies, and the Artefact Accidents division. That wasn't what Archie was interested in, but there was only one stairwell that went downstairs, and it was on the other side of the building. Archie and Hermione strode through the corridors, Hermione leading the way – if anyone asked, they were due for the third floor, Magical Illnesses and Maladies, but no one did. Junior Healers bustled around, too busy to pay any attention to two unknown Healers who clearly weren't from their department.

They almost made it to the other side, when another junior Healer, with a distinctly woebegone look on his face, stopped them. "Healer … Brown, is it? May I have a moment? Only a quick consultation, I assure you, I would just like a second opinion on this matter…"

Hermione looked like a deer in headlights for a moment but gathered herself quickly. "What is it, Healer Austin? I'm not scheduled for this floor, today…"

"I'll see you later, Tina," Archie said, inventing the name on the spot and making a split-second decision. No need to give their real names, and if they came in together, clearly they knew each other well enough to be on first-name terms. It wouldn't be proper Healer behaviour to ignore a consultation request, either, it would draw too much attention, so Hermione would have to manage. "I'll make your excuses upstairs."

Hermione nodded curtly, stepping neatly to one side with the other Healer and listening to his problem. That junior Healer probably shouldn't have been given the responsibility for A&E so early, but anything and everything happened at Christmas. That was why they had picked Christmas for the Heist.

Archie slipped down the stairs, to the basement level. There were two basement levels, but the first one was dedicated to the morgue and to the pathology labs. He skipped that one, heading straight for Archives at the very bottom floor.

The door was sealed. That wasn't a surprise – they had guessed that it would be.

Archie pulled out his wand, looking around carefully. He was alone, but the stairway was too bright, too alarmingly white. He needed to get under cover, as quickly as possible. "Alohomora," he muttered at the lock, which only glowed blue. That meant it wasn't the right spell, damn it – he would need a stronger one. "Resero!"

The lock glowed red, that time. That was closer. He thought for a second, then put more power behind his command, picking a more powerful spell. "Resigno!"

He held his breath, looking above him in the stairwell. Still empty, thank god. He could hear the gears shifting in the lock, and he waited, breath bated. Why was it taking so long? Resigno was the most powerful of the unlocking spells he knew, but the lock glowed again, this time white. What?

Resigno was different from the other unlocking charms because it was considered a low-level ward, Archie remembered suddenly. It was more complex than the other locking charms, it could do things like ask for a password. Unless he missed his guess, the lock was looking for a password now, probably a rune. He threw another nervous look upstairs – he didn't have time to stand around guessing at runes! He didn't even know any runes!

Fine, brute force methods it would have to be. He pulled out the pocket-knife Dad had given him for Christmas, which would unlock anything, and slid it in the crack of the door. There was a sparking, spitting noise, echoing too loudly in the silence, and Archie winced. Still, when he slipped the knife along the crack of the door, the door popped open, and he was inside like a shot, shutting it behind him. He waited, back against the door, waiting anxiously for a few minutes, listening for the sound of someone coming downstairs, approaching the door.

A minute passed. Then two.

At three minutes, Archie cautiously breathed a sigh of relief. Halfway there, and they weren't blown yet. Good, that was very good. After a second of thought, he threw the bolt behind him, but avoided any of the other locks, which looked magical – Hermione would be able to break in with an Alohomora charm, and he would have warning of anyone else.

He turned around, staring out in the huge, cavernous, room. Archives was huge, and Archie winced. There were boxes stacked high in towers, laid out in dusty shelves and dark aisles through the room. He couldn't see very far ahead of him – he took a tentative step forward, triggering a few light spells. Old-fashioned light spells, the light was a strange yellow-ish colour, but it was light nonetheless.

Fine, Archie thought, taking a deep breath. He could do this. Please, please let this be sorted in a sensible fashion.

Chess said that in the No-Maj world, medical records were starting to be stored electronically, on computers and in databases. In one of those systems, all he would have had to do was find a terminal, type in Mum's name, maybe her date of birth, and poof! All her records would be there, at his fingertips, on the screen. He would be able to print whatever documents he wanted, whatever he thought he would need, and it would probably tell him where he could find the samples or Pensieve memories or hard copy records if there were any. But this was the wizarding world, so they didn't have that. They didn't even have the Dewey decimal system, so why would they have a sensible organizational scheme?

He stared out at the dust-ridden towers of boxes, sighed, and started from the closest row. It was too dark, too dusty, too silent in the great, cavernous hall, and he had the uncomfortable itch in his skin of someone listening, watching. Probably nothing, he told himself. Just nerves, just the knowledge that he was somewhere he shouldn't be.

The boxes weren't labelled (because why would they be labelled?!) but a peek through the first few boxes, and it looked like Archie was standing in old Spell Damage cases. They seemed to be classed by date of incident or accident, which did not bode well – Mum had been in and out of St. Mungo's for two years, would he have to go through two years' worth of records to find everything that was relevant?!

He was struck, suddenly, with an idea and pulled out his wand. Summoning Charms – he hadn't ever cast one before (they were fourth year Charms material, for the Healers), but magic was about intent, and it was worth a shot! "Accio Diana Black records!" he hissed, but nothing happened. Maybe he hadn't cast it properly – he tried again, with no results.

Maybe it was under her maiden name? Wizarding Britain was quite conservative, especially compared to America – Archie had been surprised when Chess mentioned that in Chinese culture, women traditionally kept their last names on marriage, so while she was a Lam, her mother was a Cheung. Hermione had nodded, agreeing, saying that even in No-Maj Britain and America, it was becoming more common for couples to hyphenate their names, or for women to keep their last names, and that she certainly planned on keeping her name if she ever married. It wasn't like they stopped being who they were once they married, after all – this wasn't the sixteenth century, when women became the property of their husbands!

It was worth a try. "Accio Diana Fawley records!"

Still nothing. He sighed, the noise uncommonly loud in the silence, shaking his head, and moved down to another row. He'd have to do this the hard way. This row was Spell Damage, the next row was still Spell Damage, as was the row after that. Then there were rows of boxes of records for creature injuries, artefact accidents, plant and potions poisonings, then he got into the piles and piles of records from the Magical Maladies and Illnesses section.

The air in the Archives was old, stale, and everything was too quiet. Every time he opened a box, or pulled out a file, the rasp of parchment on parchment seemed as loud as a Blasting Curse. Lights switched on and off as he headed through the room and, while he always had a Nox spell ready, if anyone came in, the spotlight would make it obvious that someone was here. The silence was dreadful, and he was always listening, checking names and dates at random as he moved, as quickly and quietly as he could, through the room.

If anything, Magical Maladies and Illnesses was even worse. It took him too long to realize that these records hadn't been further subdivided, as would have been natural; cardiology cases were mixed in beside neurology and oncology and developmental conditions. And, technically, some part of his mind protested, half of these cases weren't even magical maladies or illnesses. A heart attack was not, in any manner of speaking, a magical malady or illness. On the other hand, at least he knew his mum's records would be somewhere in this section. Somewhere in this huge section, which was definitely taking him too long to search.

He pulled out his pocket watch, checking the time, running a hand through his hair in annoyance. Damn it, he had been in the Archives for more than forty minutes. That was longer than he had wanted, and he desperately hoped that Hermione was still doing fine upstairs. She hadn't come down, yet, which was worrying – she was just supposed to deal with the consultation and slip down to help him search! The fact that she hadn't, well … that spelled trouble. He hoped desperately that she was all right. She had to be all right.

Mum first got sick in the summer of 1986. He remembered, because he had seats with Marcus in the top box for the Quidditch World Cup that summer, and he had to miss it. She had passed away on February 21, 1989. That was almost two and a half years of records for him to go through, and he didn't know whether they would have filed her records by the date when she first got sick, or the date they closed their file, when she passed away.

He took a stab – it would be logical for Mum's records to be filed at the end of her illness, if they kept them all together. He paged through the records, starting from the end of February 1989, checking names only. Box, after box, after box. Nothing. He searched straight back through 1986, down most of the aisle, over several layers of shelves. It wasn't there, but that couldn't be right. She had to be here, somewhere – Mum's records had to be here! And it was probably a big box, Dad had taken her to so many specialists, this wasn't going to be a thin parchment file or scroll.

A sharp, clanging, noise cut through the silent air and he froze, whispering the Nox spell as he waited. Shit, shit, shit. He held his breath, waiting, sweating.

It came from upstairs, it was a little distant, but had to be loud to be heard through to the bottom floors. The sound went on, and on, and on, but after a minute, he breathed again, shallowly, small, light breaths. He didn't hear anyone coming in, no one was unlocking the door to Archives, and he heard nothing except that incessant clanging. It probably wasn't an alarm, or so he hoped. If it were an alarm, he should have heard an announcement of some kind. This is security, he imagined the voice would say, an intruder has been identified in the lower levels. The Ministry of Magic has been called, repeat, the Ministry of Magic has been called…

The noise stopped, and Archie waited, counting a minute, two minutes, before he cancelled his spell and went back to work. He'd have to assume it was unrelated, but he kept his ears open, jumping twice as high at every creak, every whisper of boxes shifting, every groan of settling shelves.

Back to February 1989. He ran a finger over the records again, checking it a little slower, this time. Still, nothing. Mum was not in that time period. But Mum's records had to be here, because this was the only Wizarding hospital in all of Britain. There was nowhere else for the records to be, and the records he had looked through before, just poking through, dated back through the 1950s. Even if they did move the records offsite at some point, it hadn't been recent.

He bit his lip, thinking it over, then he went back to February 1989 a third time, this time searching forwards in time. The date he lost Mum was important to him, but it wouldn't have meant the same thing to the Healers who had treated her. They might have kept the file open for a little while, for final reports or test results and so on.

Pay dirt. He found the box, labelled Diana Black, filed in the June 1989 reports. He pulled out the box, freezing a second at the loud thud it made on the floor, fighting against his sneeze at the dust he had kicked up. The box was stuffed with scrolls upon scrolls of records, all tightly furled. Dozens upon dozens of feet of parchment, it looked like, and hopefully some test results. Best of all, a few vials of Pensieve memories were there, likely from key case conferences or meetings. It was too much for him to copy, as he had suspected that it would be, so he closed the box, shrank it, and put it carefully in his pocket. From the layer of dust on the top of the box, no one had disturbed these records for years, and it would probably be years before anyone realized these records were missing. If they ever noticed.

He checked the time again. Shit.He had taken well over an hour, and Hermione never appeared. He took a deep breath – time to go rescue her from wherever she was, and to make their grand escape. She couldn't have been caught, she just couldn't be, but if she had been, he would deal with it. He would find her. He would not be leaving her behind.

Find Hermione, and get out. Not through the public entrance, because two Healers leaving mid-shift would cause comment, but there were other exits. Hermione had marked three of them.

Leaving the Archives was much easier than going in. He looked carefully out into the stairwell before he walked out, locking the door behind him. He brushed off the excess dust on his robes, casting a round of sanitization charms just to be sure – a Healer would not be dusty, that was a definite sign that he had been somewhere he shouldn't have been. That done, he strode upstairs, affecting an air of annoyed confidence.

Hermione was, surprisingly, almost exactly where Archie had left her. She was still on the first floor, flitting around A&E with her wand out, consulting with two junior Healers. Oh, hell, Archie thought, as he entered the fray around her.

"You see this result in the diagnostic charm, right here, do you not?" She demanded, her face incredulous, pointing at a characteristic knot in the results, which glowed a light blue. "That means this client has had a stroke. Not a strong one, probably just a minor one while he slept, which is why he feels weak now. Without resorting to magic, the crease in his earlobe, here," she gestured, "is also quite distinctive. So why would you give him Pepper-Up Potion?"

There was nervous shuffling from the pair of junior Healers in front of her. "We thought it was a cold," one muttered.

Hermione sighed, her expression melting into something Archie immediately named her "I can't believe I have to say this" face. "Send him to the third floor to schedule a full neurological examination," she snapped, then looked up as Archie appeared.

"Tina, the boss is looking for you," Archie said, settling into the role of a very annoyed co-worker. "Is this where you've been for the past couple hours?! I've been running the third-floor rounds by myself, you know!"

Hermione flushed. "Has it been that long? Oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry! I'll be right up!"

She was a terrible actress, and mentally, Archie winced. Her characterization was completely inconsistent, her word choice was wrong considering that not even a minute ago she had been confidently lecturing other junior Healers on strokes. No, this wouldn't work, and Archie had to get her out of here, stat.

"Yes, you will, because I'm not leaving without you," Archie snapped, grabbing her wrist but keeping his grip gentle. "If I leave, you're just going to be dragged into more consultations for the rest of our shift, and I'm not doing our entire shift by myself. Come on!"

"Healer Brown has been very helpful," one of the junior Healers around her offered timidly. "We're sorry for holding her up, it was our fault – please don't yell at her."

Archie glared at the other Healer, someone with the last name Abbott. His character was too annoyed and angry about having been essentially abandoned for the last two hours on rounds to even really consider what she was saying. "Excuse us," he said curtly, pulling Hermione away with him.

"All good?" Hermione's voice was soft, almost under her breath, as they went out of view of A&E and she pulled her arm out of his slackened grip.

"All good," Archie confirmed lowly, checking his surroundings. They were in a quieter hallway, now, out of the main A&E and heading into the Artefact Accidents. "Let's get out of here."

"Left, here." Hermione gave him directions, under her breath, as they strode confidently in the direction of the emergency exit. Thankfully, Artefact Accidents was quiet, almost empty, and they didn't run into any other Healers. Most Artefact Accidents were quickly Healed, and Archie guessed that, with the Christmas season, most cases that would normally come to the department were still stranded in triage at A&E. Hermione was also leading him in an indirect route, avoiding the wards that she had deemed likeliest to be busy or crowded, such as the long-term care wards.

The door was innocuous, but Hermione pulled out her wand and checked it over carefully. "Only two alarm spells," she murmured to him, eyes narrowed in focus, as she quietly disabled them with targeted shots of power. Hermione was the best – he had no idea where she had learned all this, but she really was the brightest witch of her generation. "Won't last forever – the alarm will reset after we leave. After you."

Archie took a deep breath, and pushed open the door, jumping down a small step into the dark alleyway outside. He reached up to help Hermione out, but she didn't need it, stepping down beside him and closing the door carefully behind her, without any loud slam. Archie didn't hear an alarm, but better to be careful.

He turned around, fishing out the cloth bag, pulling off his fake Healer robes and folding them carefully around the shrunken box of Mum's records to slide into the bag. He would burn his and Hermione's name tags later; now that they were outside the hospital, he wasn't sure how far the protection of other mages would shield his and Hermione's use of magic. He considered changing his face now, but better not – he didn't want to be recognizable, later. Hermione handed him her robes, folded, which he packed in on top of his in the bag.

"So?" Archie asked, with a small grin.

Hermione glared at him, but it was feigned, at least a little. Her "I'm supposed to be angry but I'm really not" face. "Better than expected, and I'm frankly shocked at the quality of the Healers St. Mungo's employs over the holidays. But you still owe me, Harry Potter."

"I'll always owe you, 'Mione," Archie replied, hefting the precious package under one arm as he headed out of the alleyway. The sun was starting to peak out from under the clouds, it was chilly but not too cold, it wasn't even noon yet. "Lunch? West End should be nice, this time of year. And you can tell me what that loud clanging noise was – nearly made me jump out of my skin when I was below."

Archie spent as much time as he could between the Heist and the Gala reading his Mum's file. There were so many records, but between hanging out with Dad and spending as much time as he could with Harry and his other family members, there really wasn't much time he could devote to it. A few hours every morning, from about six until eight-thirty or so, then breakfast with Dad. Sometimes, if Dad was volunteering or something, he would get a few hours in the afternoon to hole up in his room and read more, and then there were always a few hours after dinner, after he called an early night. He would pull out his new CD player, put on his headphones, and listen to his new collection of music while sorting through the box of records, marking the most important documents with a magical bookmark as he went.

John said he had gotten a variety of music for him, but Archie was pretty sure he lied. Aside from the musicals and Madonna, most of the other CDs sounded rather similar. They all had a rough sort of feel to them, very much like the rock music that John himself liked. Archie would accuse him of trying to influence his tastes, but he didn't mind half of them, so he couldn't really be upset. And there were three musicals in there.

He wasn't making much sense of any of Mum's records, yet. The earliest records only listed her symptoms, which fit MS to a tee, but the notes weren't giving him the information he needed. He hadn't seen any imaging results for the brain or the spinal cord yet, but they might not have known what to look for, plus Wizarding Britain was so much more cautious about new techniques, especially if they were innovated by No-Majs. It would take many more hours of reading, plus probably a second opinion from one of his upper year friends. Someone in complex care, neurology, or immunology.

The day of the Gala was there before he knew it. Archie stared in the mirror, making sure his appearance matched Harry's, though with the grey eyes marking him as a Black. He pulled on his dress robes, a new set, black wool with silver trim, matching well with his black waistcoat and slacks underneath. He looked good. He looked like Harry, and he looked like the Black Heir.

He wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that. John never had to worry about things like this. Even if John almost definitely matched him in standing and prestige, America didn't have nobility, so it wasn't the same. Damn John. Damn Hermione and Chess, too, for being warm and safe at home all night instead of politicking with Dark purebloods. Though, Chess probably wouldn't mind something like this – a grand gala event probably appealed to the more romantic part of her. If it wasn't a Dark pureblood supremacist event, anyway.

He sighed. He couldn't put this off forever. He Flooed over to Potter Place, where they would all Floo over together to Parkinson Palace, and stood and waited fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, for his family to get ready. Dad had Flooed over half an hour earlier, already ready in his robes, telling Archie he needed to go support Uncle James – or rather, convince him that they still needed to go.

Harry was the first to appear, looking distinctly unlike herself. Her hair was grown out to be long, curled in neat ribbons on her shoulders, left down, and she (or, Archie mentally corrected himself, Aunt Lily) had used a lengthening and thickening charm on her eyelashes, making her eyes bigger, more intense. Her dress robes had a feminine cut, rare enough for Harry, and were in light lavender silk, shining just slightly under the light. Clearly, she hadn't chosen these robes – they were an Aunt Lily selection if he had ever seen one.

She made to sit down, which would wrinkle the back of her robes, but Archie shook his head. "Don't do it. Aunt Lily will throw a fit."

"She probably won't," Harry argued, though she bit her lip.

"She probably spent ages picking those out." Archie crossed his arms over his chest, as Harry looked down and sighed, giving in. She took a couple steps closer to him, flashing her neat, cream-coloured boots (also definitely new), leaning against the fireplace.

"Where are your gloves?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. Archie sighed again, grimacing, and pulled them out.

Not only did he dislike the idea of having to go to the SOW Party Gala, pretending to be Rigel Black (it had to happen, sure, but he didn't have to like it), Harry had a few weird tics. She habitually wore gloves to cover her fingers, to hide her magical suppressor, and she didn't eat at parties.

Archie didn't blame her for the former (he, after all, had no need for a suppressor), but not eating at parties? What even were the point of parties if not to eat? He bet the food would be fantastic, too, there was no way that a family like the Parkinsons wouldn't go all out for the SOW Party Gala. There would be fine food and better wine, if not stronger spirits.

And he could write a report, after, for a certain Leo Hurst! All of this became that much easier if Archie thought of it that way. He was undercover, twice over! First, he was undercover as Rigel Black, the character that Harry played at school, and second, he was a spy for the Rogue. Not that he expected to find any information of any importance, but it was a fun idea. And if the idea helped him get through the night, well, all the better for it. He didn't actually have to report. Unless he wanted to. The offer was there, in the open, but Archie had been so equivocal about accepting it that it could really go either way.

Parkinson Palace was every bit as ostentatious as the name suggested. Archie and Dad were greeted in the Floo room, decked out with plush red sofas and chairs trimmed in gold, by a well-mannered, bowing house-elf, neat in a tea-towel stamped with the Parkinson crest. The house-elf pointed them in the direction of the receiving line, while Archie looked around him, blanking his face to hide his distaste.

Parkinson Palace was better decorated than the Addison Wing of Oliver Hall, but that didn't say much. It was bedecked in red, with a long, Oriental-style rug running the hallway from the Floo room to the ballroom. The walls were lined with portraits of the Parkinson forebears, whispering to each other and gliding from one intricate, gilt gold frame to another, and heavy red drapery. Glancing up, Archie saw that the golden gilt theme continued in the elaborate crown moldings edging the ceilings, and that the chandeliers, also gold, were dripping with diamonds. There were chairs and low-lying plush benches, in the same style as the ones in the Floo room, evenly spaced along one wall.

There was such a thing as too much. Even if it wasn't done in lime green and magenta with silver mirrors, Parkinson Palace was still too much. Where was their sense of understatement? They basically screamed about how fine and rich and wealthy they were, as if they had something to prove to the world.

He was rich, and he and Dad lived in a townhouse in London. Harry was rich, and if it wasn't for Archie and Aunt Lily buying her clothes, she would look like the worst kind of potioneer from the sketchiest shop on Knockturn Alley – or a street urchin of some kind. John was quite wealthy, and as far as Archie knew, he lived either with his parents in a townhouse in Brooklyn, or with his grandparents in an apartment above a bakery in Queens. Chess and Hermione were both in the upper middle class, from what he understood, but neither of them flashed money like this. This show of wealth, of power, of money, was nauseating.

The ballroom was only a little better. It was huge, with two rows of balconies overlooking the dance floor in the centre of the room. At least it wasn't done in the same outrageous red and gold, because that hallway was really quite enough. Instead, the Parkinsons had chosen to emphasize how large their space was by leaving the walls in cream, though there were still sweeping gold designs decorating the edges of the room, the stairways on either side of the ballroom, the balconies. Above the dance floor, there was an obscenely large chandelier, dripping with pearls and diamonds, which was Charmed to play music. There were fairy lights sparkling throughout the room, too.

The Potters went through the receiving line first, while Archie stood, poker-faced, examining the people around him. There were already people on the dance floor, though this wasn't formally the first set – that would happen probably an hour after the formal start of the Gala, and it was important for assessing which families were on the verge of forming formal alliances with each other. He doubted he and Harry would be called on to dance that set, though they probably should if they wanted the betrothal to have any weight at all. But neither Dad nor Uncle James had raised it with them, and Harry wouldn't want to dance anyway, so as long as he didn't dance with anyone else during the first set, it would be fine.

"Lord Sirius Black, and son, Arcturus Rigel Black," the herald announced, his voice clear and carrying. He motioned for them to step forwards to where the Parkinsons waited for them. Archie waited for Dad to step forward first, as Head of the House, but kept himself a half-step behind.

He looked at the Parkinsons carefully, looking for whatever it was that Harry saw in them. Lord Parkinson was tall and held himself stiffly, his face stern without the usual pureblood features. He had married into the Parkinson family, Archie remembered – he was a pureblood and a noted academic, but he had not been noble. The title had come with the Lady of the House, who had honey-coloured curls, bright hazel eyes, and a warm smile. Their robes were perfectly fitted, as Archie would have expected, but they did not match as many noble partners did. Lord Parkinson had chosen robes of sombre black, while his wife stood out in sapphire blue. Pansy, Harry's friend, was dressed in robes of forest green, with a gold filigree belt around her waist. Her eyes were a gentle blue, and her blonde hair had been left down, falling just past her shoulders. She gave him a small smile, which Archie returned without hesitation.

She was Rigel's best friend, after all.

"Sirius, it is good to see you," Lord Parkinson greeted Dad with a small, tight, smile. Archie got the impression that he smiled very little, so it was a sign of favour. "We do not see enough of you – I don't believe we've seen you since the Malfoy Summer Garden Party."

"You cannot make your appearances only at the Malfoy Summer Garden Party and the Gala, you know," Lady Parkinson added with a soft smile. "You have been out of Society for far too long – we would love to rekindle our relations with you."

And your House, Archie added silently, immediately off-put, even if he kept his face blank, as blank as Harry's would have been.

Dad shot them a rogue-ish sort of smile. "Brave, aren't you? With the madness of our family and all. Sometimes, I wonder if James can handle us."

Archie laughed softly, deeming it appropriate as the Parkinsons smiled. It was a good response, he thought – a light joke, he was open to the idea but not committed, and a referral to the close Black alliance with the Potters.

"In your case and that of your Heir, and certainly your brother, I'm the sure the madness is not a concern," Lord Parkinson noted dryly, tilting his head slightly. "And my wife and I would, of course, not be opposed to a closer connection to the Potters, as well."

Dad raised an eyebrow – it was an interesting statement, though Archie couldn't suss out everything it implied. It could just be because Harry, as Rigel, had such a close relationship with Pansy and Harry had told him that Pansy knew about the betrothal, but it could also be more. Very Dark Pureblood Society. Archie hated this kind of talk. Why couldn't people just say what they meant? It wasn't that Archie was necessarily bad at playing this game, but it didn't come naturally to him, though he knew it came very naturally to Harry.

"We'll certainly take that into consideration, then," Dad allowed finally.

"Come find us, later." Lady Parkinson smiled, her eyes lighting in kindness. "Regretfully, we must return to greeting our other guests. Please, enjoy your night."

"Rigel, Draco and the others are on the far side of the dance floor," Pansy added, motioning discreetly with one delicate hand. "I'll join you as soon as I can. Will you have Harriett with you?"

"I certainly hope so." Archie bowed politely, as he was sure Harry would have done, giving the girl a quick, Harry-genuine smile. "Anything you can do to welcome her would be appreciated, Pan. She doesn't know many people, here."

He dropped Harry's special nickname for her, just to solidify that he was Rigel Black, and Pansy smiled. Evidently, he had passed. "Of course, Rigel. You didn't even have to ask. See you later."

Archie bowed again, a perfect thirty-degree bow of one pureblood noble to another, and they moved along to meet back up with Harry. The rest of the Potters had apparently been kidnapped by the Minister for Magic, and they only had a few seconds before they were interrupted by one Regulus Black, Archie's uncle.

He had only met his uncle once, at Mum's funeral. He had made an appearance at that, at least, but it was no secret that he had not approved of the marriage any more than he approved of Dad's swing to the Light. For all that Dad tried to smooth things over with his younger brother, he had not been successful in the least. Hell, even in a few short lines, he had managed to insult Dad, insult Harry, insult Archie… Archie didn't like him to begin with, and now he liked him even less. Hell, he hoped Dad was still funnelling money into the Light.

He imagined the look on his uncle's face if it ever came out that the Black Heir that he so liked, that seemed likely to swing Dark, was the halfblood Harriett Potter, and that the true Heir to the House of Black was Light through and through. He imagined him finding out that Archie had been schooled abroad, that his closest friends included no purebloods at all. His expression would be priceless.

Harry was politely expressionless in the face of his snide comments, and Archie was all too happy to see his uncle leave. Harry guided him in a search for her friends, and Archie could tell from the slight spring in her step how much she looked forward to seeing them. He hissed at her once to stop searching so obviously, and she hung back, whispering directions at him until Archie spotted the group of young purebloods standing near the far wall, in the exact direction that Pansy had pointed them to earlier. If he wasn't sure who they were, he certainly was the minute he glanced back at Harry's face – there was a warmth in her green eyes, on seeing them, that Archie had previously thought reserved for family.

Draco Malfoy was tall for his age, a few inches taller than Archie in his Rigel form, but probably about the same height if Archie was in his true body. He had a lean Seeker's build, sharp grey eyes with a silvery sheen to them, white-blonde hair neatly combed back from his thin face, the ends just brushing the nape of his neck. He lit up to see Archie, and Archie tilted his head with a smile of acknowledgement.

He was Rigel, he was Rigel, he was Rigel. He breathed evenly, sighing as if in relief, settling himself into character. A small part of himself, Archie, split off to monitor his acting. His accent sharpened, just a touch, adding a hint of the upper-class that he normally did away with. He was Rigel Black, Neutral pureblood, Heir to the House of Black.

It was Theodore Nott who had greeted him first, a slim, sandy-haired boy with hazel eyes. He was about the same height as Rigel was, so a few inches shorter than Archie. The Notts were Book of Silver nobility, of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but since Lord Cantankerous Nott had authored that list, some circles still considered that credential to be somewhat suspect. Not that it mattered – the list had been authored in the 1930s, so anyone on it who cared had to be pureblood by now, if they cared about that sort of thing. Pureblood, and proud of it. "Hey Theo, good to see you. Draco, Millicent, Blaise. How's the party?"

Did Harry call Millicent, Millicent, or was it Millie? Archie didn't remember, but the stocky girl didn't seem to notice anything amiss. She was broad-shouldered, wide-hipped, without the delicacy prized by most purebloods. The Bulstrodes had made the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but they were non-noble, Archie recalled. They were prominent in international politics – Sir Philip Bulstrode, Millicent's uncle, was the British ambassador to the ICW.

"Excellent," the girl replied, making a sigh of content. "The food is being made continuously, so it tastes like you plucked it from the chef's hands yourself."

"And the music is instrumental, thank Merlin." That was Blaise Zabini, dark-skinned, with close-cropped black hair, elegant in navy blue dress robes. Harry had mentioned he was part-shifter, and that he was more perceptive than he let on. "Not that vocal extravagance last year."

"I liked the merfolk band!" Theo's eyebrows pinched together a little in protest.

"You would," Blaise retorted, a note of affection lining his disgust. "But sirens sing sweeter, and they can do it above water."

"And half the guests would suspect they were being hypnotized," Theo replied, pointing one finger at Blaise, as if it were patently obvious.

"Only the paranoid ones like you." Archie threw himself in the ring. That was one of Theo's defining characteristics, and it also quietly shored up that he was Rigel Black, and not an imposter in his cousin's skin. With his own name. The ruse made things weird.

Theo turned to him, then his hazel eyes looked behind him to Harry, and his expression softened a little with a smile. "At least I haven't left my cousin just standing there without an introduction, Rigel! Do you remember me, Miss Potter? We met in Quality Quidditch, once."

Archie let Harry handle this interaction. Her attitude was quieter, shyer than Archie was accustomed to – it sounded very little like Harry. Her voice had become soft, feminine, hesitant, when he was used to Harry charging in like a bull for whatever she wanted. She wanted her friends to like her, Archie realized suddenly. Not as Rigel Black, but as herself.

Her friends hesitated, looking around at each other awkwardly, and Archie fought the surge of anger on Harry's behalf. Draco was an Empath, he reminded himself sharply. Even if John had said his Occlumency would mute most of his emotions (it was an advantage of the American School, since Empaths did read through the mists, where his defenses were laid), Draco would still get some residue. If they were in America, and Archie was introducing Harry to his real friends, this wouldn't have happened. Hermione would have started grilling her, asking questions nonstop about Hogwarts, about Potions, about anything and everything she thought Harry would know, until John broke in and told Hermione to shut up, let the girl breathe! And Chess would smile at her, and quietly whisper that if she needed a quick escape from the raucous yelling about break out, she had a few ideas.

Harry's friends didn't. Harry's friends shuffled, clearly uncomfortable with the known halfblood in their midst. They were defensive as they eyed her, even a little possessive. Rigel was one of theirs, that gaze said, and Harry was just the halfblood girl that Rigel had grown up with. They were measuring her, and unless Archie judged amiss, at least one of them found her wanting. Wow, Harry, the part of himself that was still Archie thought. Some friends you have.

"Did you all hear about that dragon escape?" Archie asked, pulling everyone away from assessing Harry. It was too painful to watch Harry's smile tremble a little – not from nervousness, which was what everyone would think, but from unexpected hurt. "It was all over the news before Yule, but they haven't printed much since then. Have they caught them all yet?"

"Only three." Blaise's voice was filled with disdain. "The press is keeping a lid on it, so it looks less like incompetence at this point."

"Even though that's what it is." Draco sneered, his lip curling, ugly. "Those dragon-lovers on the reserves can hardly control the beasts in their fear to hurt them."

Archie didn't even like dragons that much. They were cool, in that "clearly a modern descendant of dinosaurs" sort of way, but his lips tightened imperceptibly. It was a year's worth of arguments over creature rights at AIM bleeding through, when he, with no small amount of effort, coolly replied, "Dragons are kind of hard to control in the wild. It's difficult to make them go anywhere, when they can run in so many directions; all they can do is keep them away from human settlements until they run out of energy and fall asleep."

"They aren't doing a very good job, though, are they?" Millicent shook her head, her lips pursed. "My father told me one of them went hunting in a menagerie in Spain a few days ago. It caused an international incident, since apparently it ate a few members of an endangered species they were trying to repopulate there."

"They shouldn't be breeding magical creatures at a menagerie anyway," Blaise broke in, the rumble of something other in his voice. Shifter, Archie remembered. "Wizards never get it right – the creatures end up with mutations that then end up in the genetic pool and weaken the species substantially."

"Like the unicorns they tried to breed in America," Draco said. His already sneering face was now twisted in disgust, and Archie fought to keep his own anger, from rising to the surface. He knew about the incident, it had been all over the American Standard, and he was still burning with the injustice of the result. "The whole herd was slaughtered by a pack of rogue werewolves, because they couldn't run as fast as true unicorns ought to be able to."

"And the muggles running the American Ministry of Magic acted like it wasn't their fault!" Theo's face was open in its anger, his hazel eyes snapping. "Like they weren't messing with sacred magic their half-formed cores couldn't possibly underst—oh." Theo looked at Harry, shocked, and then down at the floor. "Uh, no offence. It's true, though…"

Archie didn't even hear Harry's reply. His rage was roaring in his ears, and he stamped down on it, hard, trying to bring it under control. That was not what happened – not even close! Who were these awful, ignorant people, taking a truly horrific incident and twisting it to suit their ideas about pureblood supremacy?

MACUSA had one of the strictest creature laws in existence across wizarding governments internationally, preventing pretty much all creature ownership and breeding. They didn't even allow breeding or ownership of Puffskeins in America, let alone something like unicorns. The group that had bred the unicorns had done so illegally, and the werewolves in question were desperate, on the run from an extermination unit. The American Standard had reported, just before the holidays, that the whole group was caught and executed, breeders as well as werewolves. Archie had gotten into a fight in the dining hall over it, and his Portkey Room privileges for travel to other schools had been suspended, again, for the rest of the year.

It was a terrible, abominable incident, but blood-status had nothing to do with it.

Who were these awful people, and why on earth would Harry call them her friends? They were horrible! He looked around at them, at Draco's sneering and disgusted face, Theo's awkward, surprised and defensive face, the words "it's true, though..." ringing in his ears. His own friends flashed through his mind: Hermione, clever and headstrong newblood Hermione who was at the top of all her classes except for Potions, whom all their professors had high hopes for, Hermione and her once-in-a-decade mind. John, halfblood John who was, as only a third-year, making serious inroads on the North American League duelling circuit. He was fast with his wand, athletic, and his Natural Legilimens talent only gave him more of an edge. And Chess, sweet newblood Chess, who, as mildly as her letter had treated it, had just figured out how to make No-Maj electronics work in a magical environment, solving one of the greatest problems of modern magical theory.

These purebloods would never give his friends any consideration. They would never take them seriously, they would stand there, believing themselves superior for nothing, for nothing! They could barely countenance Harry, their own friend – noble, Book of Gold, Heir to the House of Potter, Harriett Potter – standing in front of them as a halfblood.

Archie hated them. He hated them so much, and he had barely even met them! And he had to spend the rest of the night with these people?

He caught Draco looking at him in surprise, and he pushed down, harder, on his anger. He was Rigel Black, damn it. He was Archie Black, and he was a damn good actor, and right now he was acting Rigel Black. And if he was Rigel Black, he would be used to hearing these sorts of prejudiced remarks, he wouldn't know any better. He wouldn't agree, but he wouldn't feel so insulted, so enraged, so offended. This would just be his everyday normal.

And that, more than anything, calmed him down. This was Harry's normal, he realized. Hearing these kinds of remarks, living beside these bigots, just taking it and taking it and never showing her anger or being offended about any of it. All for the chance to study under Master Snape, the greatest Potioneer of their generation. That was… that was so incredibly sad. And that was on top of the people trying to kill her, on top of everything else she went through. Outside of Potions, Harry didn't have anything at Hogwarts that was real, because it was all founded on her being a pureblood.

Archie had so much more. Archie had a whole new world to play in, he had friends that he knew, with bone-deep certainty, would love him just as much as Arcturus Rigel Black, pureblood, Heir to the House of Black as they did when he was just Harry Potter, aspiring Healer.

He didn't know what they talked about next. While Harry stood in her circle, evidently having forgiven the slight, her friends were stiff, their conversation stilted. It wasn't wholly a surprise when she excused herself, though Archie tried to plead with her with his eyes not to go. She sent him a reassuring sort of smile and disappeared.

"Well," Archie said, his voice acerbic. He was Rigel Black, sure, but even Harry as Rigel would not, he didn't think, have let this behaviour pass without some remark. He was frowning, lip curled, at the lot of them, at Harry's friends, a look that he hoped brought him closer to the Black Lords on the walls of Grimmauld Place. "That went well."

Draco flushed slightly, running worried silver eyes over Archie's face. "Are you all right, Rye? It was just… you hardly mentioned your engagement before, and we have so little in common with her."

"I don't see what was so hard about being welcoming." Archie's voice was scathing. He looked at each of Harry's friends in the eye, pausing carefully to examine each one, glaring especially at Theo. "The only thing you had to do was be nice and not offend her. I am disappointed that you were unable to do that."

"To be fair, it was Theo and Draco who brought in blood politics." Blaise inclined his head, slightly apologetic, if a little amused. "Please, Rigel; spare Millicent and I your wrath. We tried."

"I'll make it up to her, later," Theo blurted out. "I'll, I don't know. Invite her to dance?"

Archie forced a laugh and stopped pushing it. Not that he wanted to – in a world of wants, he would have happily held them over the fire longer, then probably walked away after having taken a few strips off them all verbally. But Rigel was someone who was used to denying his feelings, and he had definitely said more than Harry would have. Harry would have made some small comment, but she would have forgiven it quickly and moved on. Between the two of them, it was Archie who held grudges. And, even if he had no idea why, Harry loved her friends. She wouldn't forgive him if Archie cut all her friendships in one night. "Harry doesn't dance, but I'll count on you to find some other way to make it up to her."

The conversation flowed a little more easily afterwards. For the most part, Harry's friends were sharing stories of their holidays thus far – the people they had seen, the presents they had gotten, the things they had done. Archie told them what Harry had done, alluding to brewing in his lab and visiting with Harry, but even if he kept his expression engaged, even if he paid attention and worked at being Rigel, he was bored.

He wanted to be at home, with his headphones on, reading through Mum's records. He wanted to be listening to Johnny Cash, one of the better albums that John had gotten him, or Cats, or Phantom of the Opera. He wanted to be humming along to his music while making notes on the most important documents in the box of Mum's records, but instead he was here, entertaining Harry's friends, whom he didn't like. He wanted to be with his own friends, at a party like this – he and John would be eating, he was sure, and he would be keeping an eye on Hermione and following her around as she debated all and sundry, and Chess would be in the air, dancing stars over the crowd.

And instead, here he was, listening to Harry's friends dissect the alliances formed and broken through the first set. He paid closer attention to this part – it was gossip, exactly the sort of information he thought the Rogue would be interested in, if he actually wanted to send anything. Edmund Rookwood was, with much acclaim, dancing with Alesana Selwyn of the Book of Silver Selwyns, and the consensus was that they were now betrothed. There were other unions being announced, but none else so significant – mainly, lesser branches of noble houses, Guild members, and so on.

For the third dance, Archie, fed up with hearing the news of pureblood Society with an underlying hiss of pureblood supremacy, invited Millicent to dance a set with him. Of the lot of them, she and Blaise were probably the most tolerable – Theo was the most open about his prejudice (unsurprising, since it was him who had referred to halfbloods' half-formed cores), but Draco was a smarmy and pompous git, and his whole attitude rubbed Archie the wrong way. Millicent was friendly, commenting on the people around them with a gentle amusement, never mentioning blood-status, and Blaise's remarks were intelligent and insightful, expressing more alignment with shifters than anything else. Millicent had gone skiing in the Alps for part of her holiday, so Archie asked her more about it while they danced.

He was genuinely relieved when Harry came to fetch him for the introduction to Master Snape. Unlike with Harry's friends, he only needed a few pointers before he found the man for himself – he looked exactly like the pictures in Harry's old Potions journals, and Archie wondered wryly if Master Snape had simply never changed anything about his appearance.

Master Snape cut an imposing figure in a circle that included Lord and Lady Malfoy and his uncle. Ugh, he didn't really want to meet any of them. Fortunately, all he had to do was make an introduction, and make himself scarce.

Approaching the circle, he discreetly eyed Master Snape, the ultimate reason for the ruse: the man was broad-shouldered and obviously still fit, but he had an unhealthy pale pallor to his skin. His nose was large, hooked, and his eyes were dark, a true black rather than a dark brown, nothing like the delicate pureblooded features that he and Harry shared. Archie understood why Dad, Uncle James, and Uncle Remus had always made fun of his hair, too – Master Snape's hair had an oily sheen to it, though Archie guessed that it just became greasy quickly and time spent over a cauldron didn't help. His teeth were yellowed, a little crooked, and Archie wondered vaguely why he had never gotten that Healed. Straight teeth made for easier cleaning, which led to better long-term dental health.

It was the work of a second to pull Master Snape aside and make the requested introduction. He should have made himself scarce, as Harry had asked, but he hesitated.

It wasn't that he, Arcturus Rigel Black, wanted to be known as the youngest Potions apprentice in history. It was that Harry wanted it so, so badly. It was that Harry had run all the risks under the sun to have this chance, and it was that Harry had sacrificed so much – her name, her gender, her very identity – to have this opportunity. It was that Harry had given up the chance to have friends who would accept her, blood status notwithstanding, that Harry took all the dangers that apparently just came with being at Hogwarts. If Harry didn't get this apprenticeship, then it would all have been for nothing.

"About that other thing, Professor Snape," he cut in abruptly, while Master Snape and Harry sized each other up. "The apprenticeship, I mean."

Master Snape turned dark eyes on him, thoughtful. "What about it? Have you reconsidered?"

"Not at all." Archie shook his head, his voice firm. "I only had some advice for when you approached by father, if you don't mind."

"I welcome it," Master Snape said, but his voice was sarcastic, long-suffering. Archie ignored it – he knew well that the feelings between Dad and Master Snape were anything but cordial. It was probably enough of an affront for the man to be approaching Dad to ask for Archie to be his apprentice.

"Try to time it so that you make the offer in front of my uncle Regulus. If you make it seem as though this is a matter concerning me as the Black Heir, not just as my father's son, he will feel obligated to consider it seriously. With my uncle there watching, I believe my father will be more likely to evaluate the offer from the perspective of the Black Family, rather than just in terms of what he thinks would be best for me." Archie was careful to keep his voice slow, speaking even slower than Harry's speed, respectful. He didn't know whether Master Snape would accept his advice, but he had to try. For Harry's sake.

"An astute suggestion, Mr. Black." Master Snape's voice was thoughtful. "I will take it under advisement."

Archie nodded, taking one last look towards Harry, whose green eyes were silently thankful. He shot her a quick, small, smile, to wish her luck, and took off.

He didn't want to find any of his supposed friends to hang out with. He didn't want to pretend that he cared about these people. Checking his pocketwatch, he sighed – he had hours to go, yet, and he couldn't even distract himself with eating. He trailed up to one of the second-floor balconies – he would give himself a fifteen-minute break, he decided. Only fifteen minutes, and he would go back down, and he would do his duty to Harry. He didn't want to be bothered during his break, though, so when he reached an empty balcony, he turned carefully into a dark, shadowed corner and rearranged his face. He gave himself the face he had as a Junior Healer at St. Mungo's – a nameless, unrecognizable pureblood should stop any questions. He leaned against a pillar, looking down at the floor in thought.

People still spun around the dance floor. After having watched the AIM Dance Club practice for two and a half years, he couldn't help but be disappointed. It was ironic, wasn't it, that the dances in Wizarding Britain, so pureblood supremacist, were so mundane? A waltz here, an English waltz, followed by a Viennese, then a quickstep, then a schottische. Then back to more waltzes, of different continental varieties, and a few non-touchy medieval-style dances. The formal robes, too, were dull, matte where Archie expected flashing, sparkling Charms hidden throughout.

Archie wasn't old enough, yet, to go to the AIM Winter Formal or the Spring Fling. John and Chess had both gone to the Winter Formal this year, both having been asked by older students, but neither Archie nor Hermione had been invited. Chess had come back a ball of light and laughter, and John had told them how the Dance Club had put on an impromptu competition to the music provided by the school band, and that she and her partner had been voted the best performance of the night. Her dress, midnight blue, had sparkled with hints of starlight. John's suit was more somber (suits were far better for dancing than robes!), but his tie was warm with a little something. If Archie turned his head, he thought it suggested cozy nights by a fireplace, with the subtle flicker of shadows on the wall.

"Are you going to see him again?" Archie had asked Chess, his voice a little teasing. "Emile Shirazi was his name, right? Fourth-year, Transfigurations?"

"Yes," Chess said, waving her hand with a silly grin. "But it's not like that, we're just friends. That's what he said when he invited me."

John rolled his eyes behind her head, while Hermione and Archie stifled laughter. Chess was pretty, Archie allowed, though she didn't hold a candle to Hermione. She was slight in build, with long, dark hair that she had curled in loose waves and left down for the dance. She had made up her face with No-Maj makeup to emphasize her eyes, but that was all smudged now, so she looked mostly like a raccoon. Archie had heard John mutter, every now and then, about the number of guys that liked her, but he thought John was making a big deal out of nothing.

"What about you, John? You went with Annette Yorke, didn't you?" Hermione asked, turning the focus onto their other friend.

"Yeah," John said, though he frowned in thought. "I won't be seeing her again, though, not like that. I mean, I had suspected for a while, but I'm pretty sure I'm gay."

There was a moment of silence at his words, then all three of them shrugged. Chess muttered something about how she knew there was a reason all his visits to San Francisco coincided with Pride, Hermione told him reassuringly it was fine, she and her family were very progressive, and Archie asked why this was supposed to be a big deal, his Uncle Sirius was bisexual, and in Wizarding Britain it was considered rude to prefer one gender over the other. Then Hermione had spent an hour explaining the sexual mores of No-Majs, while John and Chess quickly found reasons to flee.

He checked his watch again and sighed. Back to the present. He looked down again – the floor really did look dull, with only No-Maj dances, not a hint of magic in sight. The clothing was fine, well-tailored, and they were wizarding fashions, but there were no integrated spells, no starlight or flickering shadows or gentle firelight shining off anyone's robes tonight. He turned back to his dark corner, fixing his face once more into Rigel Black.

He found Harry's friends after only a few minutes of walking around. They hadn't moved far from where he had left them. There were a few more people there, this time – he recognized them by description, and by following the conversation a few short minutes before joining them, that they were Lucian Bole and Adrian Pucey, upper-years that Harry was friends with. There was also a third boy there, tall and thin, with sharp features, jet-black hair, and icy blue eyes.

Archie recognized a Black face when he saw it. His closest biological relations were to his second-cousins: Draco Malfoy, Caelum Lestrange, and Nymphadora Tonks. He had already met Malfoy, and Nymphadora Tonks, as a halfblood of little standing, wouldn't be here tonight, lucky for her. This had to be Lestrange.

"Black." Lestrange turned cold, blue eyes on him, his lip curling in disgust. Charming – Dad hated cousin Bellatrix, and as far as he knew, the feeling was mutual.

"Lestrange," Archie replied, cool yet polite, inclining his head in recognition. What was the official Black stance towards the Lestranges, anyway? From what he remembered, Dad didn't talk to any of the Lestranges, and he went out of his way to avoid his cousin Bellatrix. But he also hadn't said anything publicly disparaging of them, so likely it was a silent disapproval. Something like that – he would have to take that and run with it. They had no relationship and were strangers, not family.

"What are you doing here?" Lestrange demanded, pretty face grimacing, as if Archie was a particularly disgusting bit of stinking mud on his boots.

He was a treasure. And, Archie realized in mild delight, the entire circle of Harry's friends was looking at Lestrange with vague disapproval. Lestrange wasn't considered one of them, either. That meant that, for once tonight, Archie didn't need to play nice! Probably. Hopefully.

"I was invited," Archie-as-Rigel drawled, smirking. "Personally, I might add."

"That doesn't answer my question, Black," Lestrange snarled. "I asked why you were here."

Archie really had no idea what he was talking about and spread his hands in a helpless sort of gesture. His confusion was real, but he knew it made him look deliberately obtuse, which was honestly all the better. It would annoy Lestrange more. "As I said, Lestrange, I was invited."

Lestrange snorted in disgust, raising his glass of wine. "This is exactly what I mean," he complained, turning to the group at large, none of whom seemed particularly sympathetic. Apparently, blood traitor or not, Rigel still stood higher in her friends' esteem than Caelum Lestrange did. "Which is why I cannot fathom the level of sheer nerve you managed to summon in trespassing for a second year running where no one wants a-"

"Oh, do shut up, Lestrange, no one is listening." Harry pushed her way into the circle. Her green eyes were dancing with amusement, her voice gently exasperated.

"You." Lestrange glared at her, his deep grimace of disgust only carving itself deeper on his face, but Harry smiled at him, saccharine-sweet.

And then, Archie got to witness a thing of beauty: Harriett Potter, halfblood, putting down Caelum Lestrange, pureblood, without even a hint of effort. She mocked him endlessly, flustered him, and Archie played his part, and the tall boy stormed off within a few minutes. After Harry had convinced their entire circle that she and Lestrange were close friends, much to their confusion. And he had reminded them, not even very subtly, that even if Rigel was their friend, they were not in the SOW Party.

Pansy Parkinson, too, turned out to be interesting. When she appeared, finally free of the receiving line, she immediately complimented Harry, then invited her to dance. Archie watched briefly, curiously, as she let Harry lead, even though as the pureblood she had the right to demand otherwise, and he found himself revising his opinion of her, ever so slightly. Maybe her friends were bigots, but maybe there was an off-chance that she wasn't. Maybe Harry's friends weren't totally unsalvageable.

Soon afterwards, Archie found himself being led by Draco Malfoy (now there was a person that Archie did, even after an hour or so of conversation, find unsalvageable), into a group of people that included the Malfoys, the Parkinsons, Lord Riddle, the Minister for Magic, and, thankfully, the Potters, with a few Elders that Archie didn't recognize. He spotted Harry across the circle from him and flashed her a tired smile. He wanted to go home. Hell, he never really wanted to come.

He loved acting, but he had to admit, he did not like playing Rigel Black. John was right. Archie loved acting, but he loved being himself more. One of the best parts of acting was bringing a role to life on stage for other people, to bring them somewhere else for a few hours – but it wasn't meant to replace real life.

He realized, suddenly, that Aunt Lily was having an argument, of sorts, with the Lestranges, with one of the Elders, with Lord Riddle nearby, about progress, change, and the role of tradition.

"I do not think tradition is like a painting," she mused, and Archie realized that this was a side of his Aunt Lily that he hadn't seen before. She was neat, elegant in silk robes of sky blue, her red hair falling in loose curls, her makeup pristine and her expression thoughtful, considering. The argument wasn't entirely new – Hermione had mentioned it, complaining about Wizarding Britain's slavish devotion to a certain ideal of tradition, but he had never heard it expressed the gentle way that Aunt Lily was approaching it. "It is not a stale, stagnant creation, to be hung on the wall for centuries. Rather, it is a living thing, contributed to by all who inherit it, even as it is preserved."

Archie silently applauded her, realizing that Aunt Lily had probably been a part of the British Students Association at AIM, many years ago. Where else would she, an 11-year-old newblood mage, have gravitated to? Charms Club, he thought was likely, but she so rarely talked about her school days that Archie didn't really know. He wondered at that – Aunt Lily had to have caught on some inconsistencies with Harry's stories at this point, but she either attributed it to change since she'd left school, or he didn't know.

The version of the argument she was using was mild, soft, completely unlike the Aunt Lily that Archie often saw at home. Her appearance was engineered to be non-threatening, and the way she had put the argument was so elegant, so carefully designed to appeal to these proud purebloods. They already thought they were superior, so Hermione's version, the usual version he heard, of this argument would have gone nowhere.

"A tradition that doesn't change is a tradition that is dead," she would say, shaking her head in annoyance. "I don't see why they can't understand that. You cannot preserve something like tradition, or culture, in a world that is changing around you! Look at our modern technology! What will mages in Britain do, when too much video evidence of them shows up on CCTV? You can wipe memories, but you can't wipe all the security footage across Britain!"

"But will No-Majs believe what they're seeing?" John would inevitably point out, shrugging. "I mean, at some point, you might be right, but people don't watch security footage unless something else has happened, and it mostly gets recorded over every few weeks anyway. And from what I understand, most British mages Apparate or Floo directly from one magical environment to another, without crossing the No-Maj world in between. We'd need to see how No-Maj technology progresses in the future, of course, but I think you're blowing up the risk."

"Forget the Statute of Secrecy, that's just sad, not knowing about the No-Maj world," Archie would add, sighing, thinking about movies, books, theatre, about science fiction and milkshakes and sweatshirts. "I like No-Maj things. And think of all the things that came out of the mingling of our worlds! We don't have sweatshirts with integrated Heating Charms in Britain, we don't have much by way of spellwork on any of our clothes, for some reason. And Chess' dance! That's half-No-Maj, half magic, and it's beautiful."

"You haven't even seen her dance, Harry," John would snort, rolling his eyes. "Try not to get your Portkey room privileges revoked, next year. It really is amazing."

Archie would laugh sheepishly, while Chess denied being amazing at anything. Really, she was just middling, her seniors were much better than her, not to mention the other schools.

Yet, when Lord Riddle spoke, it seemed that Aunt Lily's efforts had been for nothing. While it might have seemed like they had come to some sort of agreeable impasse, from the expressions on the others' faces around them, Archie guessed that the truth was closer to a graceful exit on Aunt Lily's part. These proud purebloods had listened to her argument, but they had rejected it.

Archie tamped down on another surge of anger. Maybe it was something that needed to be seen to be believed – maybe they couldn't accept this argument without seeing the No-Maj world for themselves, without seeing the wonders that it held. Maybe they needed to see something like a movie, to hear the passion in a musical, to taste the sweet fizz of Coke or Pepsi to understand that the No-Maj world had so much that they could learn from. Maybe they needed to see the sparkle of starlight on dresses, or the beautiful fairytale illusion magic of magical dance. Maybe he needed to bring all these things home – maybe then, they would understand.

But they were so ignorant, so provincial, so smarmy. He wanted to wipe those condescending smirks off everyone's faces.

Draco shot him another puzzled glance, and Archie crushed down hard on his anger. Empath, remember! "Are you all right, Rye? You've been… off, tonight."

"I'm fine," Archie replied, with a sigh and a quick, fake, smile. "I'm just a little tired, and worried about my cousin."

"Are you sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be sure?"

His retort was interrupted by an ugly cry, and Archie whipped his head around. Draco had pulled him aside, and he could barely see through the mass of people, but it looked like one of the Elders had collapsed. Uncle James was there, and Harry, and someone was yelling for a Healer. He saw blood pooling around the prone form – too much blood, to his Healer's eyes. This person needed to be stabilized, fast, or he would bleed out.

"Excuse me," he said abruptly, leaving Draco as he pushed his way forward in the crowd.

"My daughter is," he heard Uncle James say, when he managed to get into the circle surrounding the fallen Elder. "Harry, would you…?"

Heal him? Archie heard the words echoing in the silence. Harry's face was paler than normal as she stepped forward, and Archie fought his desire to step forward with her – he was Rigel Black, damn it, and Rigel had much less Healing experience than Harry Potter did. Harry glanced at him, face set, and Archie inclined his head just a touch in reassurance. He was there, and circulatory systems were second-year material at AIM. Most blunt trauma and stabilization were first-year material. Harry should be able to handle this, but he was here, and she could call on him to help her if she needed it. She knelt down beside his body, pulling out her wand to cast the usual diagnostic charms.

"Lord Parkinson, do you keep a supply of Blood Replenisher Potions in the house?" she asked, her voice quiet and slightly monotone.

"Accio Blood Replenisher."

"Archie, can you give it to him?"

Archie snatched the Blood Replenisher from the air as it flew towards him, walking (not running, not rushing) to kneel beside her, pulling out his own wand to spell it into the Elder's stomach while casting his own round of subtle diagnostic charms.

It was blunt trauma, of some kind – multiple stabbings, with a small blade. The spine was fine, but one cut had torn through the right renal artery, hitting the inferior vena cava as it went. That accounted for the blood, and the man had a fractured rib. His breathing was shallow, laboured, but there was nothing to account for it. His breathing was wrong.

"Poison," Harry muttered, just loud enough to be heard. "Some kind of paralytic. No wonder the muscles around the entrance wounds have all seized up."

Archie nodded, assessing it for himself. "I can keep his lungs working for a while, but if it's already in the bloodstream, we have to stop it before it can damage the heart too severely. Otherwise, we're looking at long-term recovery in St. Mungo's."

"Do you recognize it? It looked like saxitoxin to me, but that doesn't make any sense." Harry's voice was quiet, calm, but Archie could tell that she was stressed. This wasn't her area of expertise. It was Archie's.

He considered it, for a few minutes, throwing another diagnostic charm specifically for poisons at the Elder. It did look like saxitoxin, Harry was right. He thought it over for a second or so. "It would have to be extremely concentrated to have so fast an effect. Though… if it got into the inferior vena cava when it was nicked, I guess it wouldn't have to be that powerful."

Harry bit her lip for a moment, making a decision. "Let's assume we're right, and flush it out."

Archie nodded in agreement, and they went to work. Harry took care of the major arteries and blood vessels, the liver and the kidneys, while Archie focused on the heart, the lungs, the brain. He ran his magic through the Elder's body carefully at the end, sweeping through with his more precise magic for any traces of poison that they might have missed. At the end, Harry took care of the fractured rib, though that was a quick Heal, while Archie focused on re-knitting the muscle near the entry wounds, pulling a layer of fat to cover it and resealing the skin.

He listened carefully to the discussion that followed, the questioning and the answers, though he didn't follow most of it. Still, if he wanted to send an update to the Rogue, he would say this: Elder Ogden was planning on marrying Elder Marchbanks, but his nephew's family had tried to kill him for their inheritance. He would leave out, he thought, the additional life debt that Harry had accrued.

He needed to eat, though, so as soon as things wrapped up, he let Harry know, and took off for the refreshments table, where he hovered for the last half hour or so, thankfully left at peace as his core started regenerating.

It was, he considered, somewhat morbidly, the best hour of the whole night. Someone had nearly died, but at least he hadn't had to entertain Harry's friends. If he met some of them in a different context, he wondered if they might not get along, as friendly acquaintances, but never as bosom friends. He couldn't get a fix on Pansy Parkinson, whose family had indicated a vague non-opposition to a closer relationship with the Potters, who had welcomed Harry with open arms and yet who was close friends with someone like Draco Malfoy. He didn't think he would mind Millicent Bulstrode or Blaise Zabini, either, both of whom seemed interesting, and not obvious or outright bigots. The other two, though…

He would never like Draco Malfoy. For all he had spent several hours with Draco, he largely found him to be pretentious and condescending, and he never forgot that Draco was a Malfoy, and the Malfoys were the right hand to Lord Riddle himself. He looked at Draco, and he couldn't help but think about Hermione, about John, about Chess, about the world that the SOW Party had created and that Draco would, it seemed, be proud to uphold in the future. He couldn't help but think of Mum, who might have lived longer if it wasn't for the world the SOW Party had made.

And Draco wasn't even as bad as Theodore Nott, who had openly denigrated Americans, halfbloods, and newbloods in the space of a single breath! Even if it had only been the one comment, it had been a thoughtless comment, and thoughtless comments were the ones that truly showed what someone believed. Archie could never like someone who genuinely believed that halfbloods and newbloods were lesser. It reeked of dehumanisation, and Archie looked at Theo, and he thought about bystanders. He thought about the people who had stood by, in World War II, in the Grindelwald Wars, as those who were different were hunted down and slaughtered. Archie looked at Theo, and he saw someone who would, if the circumstances led to it (god forbid), stand by and nod in agreement, checking names off a scroll of parchment as halfbloods and newbloods were rounded up and killed for the blood they bore.

These were not his kind of people. These were not the kind of people that he would ever associate with willingly.

The rest of the night, though, he would count as a cautious success. There had been a few touch-and-go moments: every time Draco commented on his emotions, or Harry having to remind him of the Lee Jordan attack in first year, and the swapped wands, which he would switch later that night before they Flooed home via the time-honoured method of pickpocketing. But they hadn't been blown, and he wasn't now sending a frantic owl to John about an exit strategy, so all was fine. Maybe it wasn't great, but it was fine.

And he would be back at AIM in only a few days, and he could leave this all behind him.

He ignored the creeping sensation that maybe, it wasn't as easy as that anymore.

Chapter Text

Hermione looked at him strangely when Archie dropped into his customary seat beside her on the aeroplane to New York.

"Whew," Archie said, relaxing into his seat. Technically, checking his ticket, this wasn't his seat, but rather Hermione's, but she liked the window seat so much that Archie always gave it to her. She liked to nap, sometimes, when things got quiet over their five-hour journey, her face nestled against the hard plastic of the plane window. Archie always tried to make sure that she had something soft to burrow into, like his coat or a scarf or something, but more often than not, anything soft just fell to the floor. "I'm glad to see you."

"It's only been a week, Harry," Hermione replied, her voice a little unsure, running her eyes over him carefully. That was odd, and Archie didn't know what to make of it. He ignored it for now.

"It felt like longer, though." Archie smiled at her, one of, he hoped, her favourite smiles. Not blinding, just a little cheeky. "How can I help that every second away from you feels like an eternity?"

She rolled her eyes at him, huffing slightly, but the uncertainty in her voice disappeared. "What did you do for the rest of your holiday?"

Archie shrugged. "About what you would expect. I spent time with my mum and dad and Addy, with Rigel, with my uncles. Listened to music in my room while going through Aunt Diana's records – oh, did they tell you? Chess came up with the coolest case to protect electronics, to keep them from dying in magical environments! And she and John gave me a bunch of CDs for Christmas!"

Hermione laughed – she couldn't help it, not in the face of Archie's obvious glee. Few could. "She had mentioned it. She's been experimenting with a lot of new materials – the shielding is two layers of polycarbonate or Teflon, I think, with a bonded aerogel soaked in an insulating potion in the middle. I keep telling her to publish her work."

"I didn't understand that explanation." Archie smiled. His CD player and headphones were safely tucked in his messenger bag, with Les Miserables on the inside. It was still his favourite musical, though The Phantom of the Opera was quite good, too. "She told me once, though, that she didn't think the journals would take her work – too No-Maj."

Hermione snorted, her eyes deeply skeptical. "I think she just doesn't want to be bothered with writing the papers. And she's afraid of the criticism and attention she would get – she just wants to invent more things, she doesn't want to stand up and defend her ideas. Professor Ryan has been pushing her to publish too, but she's been avoiding it."

"Do you think she's wrong, though?" Archie thought about it. He didn't know what polycarbonate and Teflon and aerogel were, though he could work out from Hermione's phrasing that they were kinds of materials. Plastic, based on the feel of the case and headphones, but special kinds of plastic? "I didn't understand a lot of your explanation, even with almost three years of No-Maj Studies. The materials, I mean, and she would need to explain a lot more in a paper."

Hermione turned away from him, looking out the window as the plane started taxiing down the runway. "I do," she said slowly. "I think she's using that as an excuse not to try. Magically, it's straightforward, she just used a magical blocking potion that people were experimenting with in the 1950s. The No-Maj parts, I understand the general concepts, though not the details. Something about how aerogels have the right geometric structure to hold and trap a potion, and that polycarbonates and Teflon have the durability and electrical insulation that make it ideal to use as a magical shield – she uses polycarbonate for the rigid parts, like cases, and Teflon for anything flexible."

"I understood pretty much none of that," Archie admitted. "And with all mages being educated at magical schools, I doubt many would have the background to understand what she did, even if they were newbloods like you, or at least not well enough to publish it. Professor Ryan has a No-Maj degree in something—"

"Electrical engineering."

Archie did know what that was, but only because they had covered what the major fields of No-Maj science, technology, engineering and maths were last term. There were a lot of maths in magic, especially in upper-level Arithmancy, Transfigurations and Alchemy, but their naming conventions were different. "Yes, but I think that's pretty rare, isn't it, for mages to go to No-Maj school after graduation? Even with No-Maj Studies, I think it would be really hard to get the background to go to a No-Maj school."

Hermione tilted her head to one side, lips pursed. It was her "I'm considering your argument" face. "Even so, ultimately, the point of research is doing things that no one has ever done before and sharing it so that everyone can benefit. Even Professor Ryan is the only one that understands it here and now, people might be inspired to learn more once they see the practical applications. And, in any case, it's no excuse not to try. You should know that, Harry – you published a paper last year, and even Professor Tallum didn't understand it, remember?"

"Professor Tallum isn't really a good potioneer, though, Hermione." Archie kept his face relaxed, even if inside he was cursing himself a little for forgetting. He wasn't the one who had published that paper, after all, but based on the letters from the Ministry of Magic, no one understood Harry's research either. He waved his hand dismissively, hoping that Hermione would be distracted by their years-long argument. "That's a terrible example."

"He couldn't have become the Head of Potions Department without being a good potioneer, Harry." Hermione frowned. "We've gone over this before."

"He became Head of Potions by being a great administrator," Archie scoffed, then he yawned quickly to pop his eardrums. They were rising steadily in the air, turning westwards. "Didn't you see him, in first-year? My cousin Rigel could brew circles around him. I'm so glad we haven't had him since, he was terrible."

"My point is, Harry, that you of all people should know that publishing isn't about whether someone will understand your work," Hermione said, stopping Archie from derailing the conversation. "It's about pushing the field forwards, for the good of everyone, and not keeping your discoveries to yourself."

Archie sighed, deciding to deal with it head-on. Or as head-on as he could deal with it, anyway. Harry hadn't had an easy time of it, not with the Ministry of Magic calling every couple of months. He had no idea how she was dealing with it – all he did was pass on their demand letters by fastest owl available, receive her packages of Potions, then send it back to the Ministry. "Call it my personal experience, Hermione, but it's not that easy."

Hermione snorted again, wearing her "I don't believe you" face. "She's just afraid, and you and John need to stop enabling her. Especially John – Francesca needs to learn how to stand up for herself sometime, and every time he intercedes for her, or tells everyone what she wants so she doesn't have to do it herself, it keeps her from developing those skills for herself."

"But Chess is, you know," Archie argued. She was Exceptional, and even now she wasn't fast with her magic. Drawing a rune took longer than drawing a wand, and even if she carried a small stack of paper charms with her, it took time for her to page through them for the right one. If anyone tried to hex her, she was still defenseless.

"Francesca is nowhere near as helpless as she lets you believe she is." Hermione shook her head, her face melting into her "I'll never win this one, so I may as well give up" expression. She sighed. "The two of you baby her too much, you treat her like she's some kind of, of delicate flower, a princess, or something."

Archie quirked a small smile, taking her hand in both of his. "Are you jealous, 'Mione? Because, forget princess, if you wanted, I would treat you like a queen."

The look of open-mouthed horror on her face said it all, and Archie laughed. Hermione wasn't that sort of girl – she wasn't a princess, or a queen.

Hermione was a force of nature. She was the sun itself, her judgement harsh enough to burn out the darkness, but her kindness warm and sweet, a guiding light. She had firm ideas of right and wrong, of justice, and if she believed what she was doing was right, she had no fear at all. When she decided something was worth doing, she did it with no effort spared, and she chased after her goals with a singular devotion that Archie found utterly compelling. Hermione was the sun to his stars, and Archie quite thought he would like to kiss her.

Not today, though. Not while he wore name and face of Harry Potter, even if his personality was his own. One day, he hoped he would be able to kiss her as himself, as Arcturus Rigel Black, with his own face, his own name. With no secrets left between them.

Once they were back at school, Hermione helped him sort through Mum's box of records. Rather than splitting the box up, as would have been natural, Archie had started with a first read-through of all of Mum's records, because on some sentimental level, he had to. This was Mum!

"It's going to take a lot longer to do it that way, Harry," Hermione said, her brows furrowed. Her expression was a combination of understanding and incredulity. "It's not very efficient."

"I know, 'Mione," Archie replied, with a small, tired, smile, pulling out yet another scroll from the box. He was about a third of the way through, and he had watched and taken notes of from all the Pensieve records a spare afternoon when Dad wasn't around.

That had been hard, especially the times that he saw Mum in the memories. She had been weak, she had been worn almost to nothingness in one of them, but still … it was Mum. He hadn't been able to touch her, or anything, he was just a spectral consciousness from the future, but it had made it hard to concentrate. The Pensieve memories were by far the most helpful, though. "Just… It's Aunt Diana. I need to read everything over myself, at least once, all right? This is my – my aunt. I can do it myself – I just need to mark the most important documents, so when I ask an upper-year, they don't need to read a thousand of feet of parchment, just the most important parts."

Hermione sighed. "I thought you would say that. Give the first scroll here – I'll check to make sure you haven't missed anything."

"Hermione, you don't need to," Archie protested. "There are other things you can do!"

"Like what?" Hermione raised her eyebrow at him.

"Finding an upper-year to help us from complex care, immunology, or neurology," Archie suggested. "Or a Pensieve?"

"The complex care Healers all have access to a Pensieve anyway, as part of their regular training," Hermione replied, waving her hand as she unfurled the first scroll and started reading. "And I thought you were just going to ask Daine, anyway."

That was true, Archie conceded mentally. Daine was the only one the upper-years he knew well enough in any of those fields. Ranjan Agarwal, the monitor that Hermione got on best with, was in Spell Damage, and Neal was in Emergency Healing.

Nothing in their reading suggested that Mum had had anything other than MS. The symptoms fit, very closely, and Mum had had far more than two attacks. From a symptomatic perspective, Archie was comfortable assigning the diagnosis (as much anyone could be, in the circumstances) of laboratory supported probable MS.

The problem really was with imaging. No-Majs diagnosed MS nowadays with something called magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs, which had only just come into use in some wizarding research hospitals in wizarding America. Even when Mum first got sick, in 1986, diffuse MRIs had only first been pioneered in the No-Maj world – there was no way it would have been on anyone's mind. Before then, No-Majs had diagnosed the condition with a pathological examination of cerebrospinal fluid, but then he ran up against the traditional belief that a mage's body was sacrosanct. Many, if not most, mages considered the No-Maj practices of needles, taking biopsies, removing samples of blood or spinal fluid, and surgery as barbaric, completely unnecessary in a world where there was magic. No one would have taken a sample of Mum's cerebrospinal fluid for closer examination.

It wasn't that there weren't magical methods of imaging, it was more that neither he nor Hermione had taken Magical Medical Imaging yet. He could have – he should have! – taken it this year, but he also had to take the introductory classes for infectious diseases and epidemiology, and he had wanted to take No-Maj Medicine, so he had decided to leave it off to another year. He wished he hadn't, now, because he couldn't make heads or tails of the magical imaging reports.

He was looking for lesions, he knew that, and he even had an idea of what those would have looked like, on No-Maj tests. He just had no idea what they were supposed to look like on the equivalent magical tests. Instead, he simply marked all the imaging reports he found, which were actually quite few, considering how many records there were. Many records were useless, merely notes from the Healer on rounds indicating that all was the same, condition stable. Hermione, on her pass through, removed the markers from about half of the imaging reports, remarking only that they weren't relevant, since they weren't looking at the central nervous system.

Fortunately, Hermione was much faster reading through the reports than Archie. Sometimes, Archie would sit and linger over the dry words, stewing, thinking about Mum. He would think about how, if only had this been found earlier, she might still have been with him today. She would have lectured him and Dad to eat their vegetables, much like Aunt Lily did, but she actually enjoyed her vegetables, and her zucchini bread was the best. Dad hadn't made it since, even if Archie knew he had the recipe. She and Dad would put on music, late at night in the study, after Archie was supposed to have gone to bed, and Archie would know from the laughter and the music that they were dancing, that they were happy. She would have crawled in bed with him, pulled out an ancient, crumbling copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard or something about Merlin, and read him stories until he fell asleep.

Mum would have been there for his first day of school. Maybe, then, Dad would have let him fly to America with Harry, instead of them having to resort to the ruse (which Harry would have hated, but America was wonderful,and he would have helped her adjust, he was sure, and then they could have been together). Mum would have been there for all his firsts, maybe, even the ones that hadn't happened yet. Ten years – she could have been there for his first crush, his first heartbreak, his first successes and his first failures. Maybe, if he was lucky, she would have even lived to see his school graduation. Maybe even his wedding, if he married young, like Dad.

Inevitably, at that point, he would start tearing up, and he'd have to take a deep breath and focus. Mum was dead. Dreaming about an alternate reality in which Mum was alive was hopeful and strange all at the same time. He wanted it, he wanted it so badly, but at the same time a world in which Mum was alive was a world so utterly changed that he couldn't imagine it. Mum's death was one of his most foundational experiences of his existence – he was not Archie without it. But he didn't want to be Archie with it, either.

Instead, he turned it all to anger – a deep, fueling anger that kept him going, late at night, scroll after scroll after scroll, puzzling report after puzzling report. If he was right, if what he believed was right, then Mum didn't have to die so young. Mum could have been there for him. And she wasn't, because Wizarding Britain wasn't integrated enough with the No-Maj Britain for their Healers to consider something like MS, for their Healers to do the right tests or make the right diagnosis. Without the right diagnosis, there was no treatment, and if he was right, Mum had died for it. Mum had died because, in Wizarding Britain, pureblood supremacy, and the concomitant rejection of anything No-Maj, ruled the day, and no one considered MS, a widespread, well-known and treatable condition in the No-Maj world, at all.

When it got to be too much, Archie took off to theatre club. They were doing Arthur Miller, one of America's best-known No-Maj playwrights, this term, and there had been a heated debate over whether to do Death of a Salesman or The Crucible. Both were classics, but The Crucible was considered somewhat audacious among mages. Not that the Salem Witch Trials had identified any true mages, but the hysteria around them had inspired measures such as Rappaport's Laws, which hadn't been lifted for over two centuries afterwards.

With Juan in charge, wanting to live up to Sabrina's legacy of using theatre as a tool for rebellion, he had gone with The Crucible. Archie hadn't spent anywhere near enough time preparing for the auditions, but he threw together an almost-last-minute audition for Reverend John Hale. He channelled Theodore Nott for the first half of the audition, bringing forward that awful, misguided certainty ("It's true, though…" Theo whispered in his memories) that what he was doing was right, when he ordered the arrests of characters charged with witchcraft. It was enough to get him to the second day.

Thankfully, the second half of the Hale audition skipped Act 2, where he was supposed to be questioning the justice of the arrests that he, himself, had ordered, which he hadn't prepared in the least. Instead, it was Act 3, where he had to deliver a rage-fuelled denunciation of the court, and in his current state rage-fuelled denunciation was all too easy for him to perform, his green eyes (that should have been grey) sparking all the while. He won the role, of course he did, the legitimacy of his anger coming through in his lines, much to his relief.

Archie was often angry, these days. Being angry was better than being sad, especially the sort of nostalgic sad that he couldn't do anything about. He couldn't bring Mum back, he could only search for the truth, however good or bad it was, and let it guide him for the future. He had known that going into it, but that didn't make him less angry about it. But having somewhere to spill out his anger helped, turning himself into Reverend John Hale helped, even though he wasn't sure that Hale was someone he should like.

Archie, strangely, liked the moments at the beginning of the play, when his character was so convinced of his beliefs, where he looked at things and didn't question, even if Archie fundamentally disagreed with all of it. He enjoyed the part in the middle, which required the most technical acting, where he had to portray his character starting to question, starting to turn. He loved Act 3, when he got to unleash himself, challenging the court, showing his disillusionment, and for Act 4, he got to pull from something deep, a well of guilt he had always known he had and always tried to run from, to show Hale's desperate actions to save the lives of those he had helped to convict.

He always came back from theatre drained, but ready to face his Mum's box of records once again. Between their classes and their clubs, it took nearly three weeks for him and Hermione to get through the whole of the box. At the end, their magical markers, red and blue, pinned each scroll at key passages, lighting up the box like a chest of glowing Flobberworms.

Archie found Daine in the Healer's common room, in the customary corner that she usually hung out in, one Thursday at the end of January after classes. Unusually, Daine was alone, her head buried in a pharmacology textbook, headphones over her head. Archie smiled a little at that – evidently, Daine ranked highly enough in Chess' esteem to be able to buy one of the cases and specially shielded headphones from her. They were starting to pop up across AIM campus, though only thus far on people that Chess had a good relationship with – other Exceptionals, Archie and Hermione, a few people from the Duelling Club and the Dance Club. People who had one were often subject to jealous looks from those who didn't, and while John had suggested she sell them, she had refused, saying simply that the cases were just a means to an end.

He tapped Daine on the shoulder politely and waited for her to turn off her music before she slid off her headphones to hang around her neck. "Harry." She smiled at him and put her textbook aside. Archie took one glance at the chemistry and winced. It looked awful. "What can I do for you?"

"I was hoping I could ask you for a favour," Archie started slowly. It was a big favour to ask, so he would have to tell her some of the context, else she would have no reason to agree. "May I sit?"

"So polite." Daine raised an eyebrow but gestured to the seat across from her. "Must be serious."

"Serious enough." Archie smiled a little as he sat down and pulled out the box, then pulling out his wand to unshrink it. He took a deep breath, watching as Daine's eyes widened at the box in front of her. "You see, my aunt Diana passed away, in 1989 – a couple years before I came to school."

Daine looked up at him, her expression thoughtful, a little considering. "I'm sorry to hear that. You were close to her?"

"Very," Archie replied softly. Close didn't even come close to it, but it was the best word for the circumstances. "It's the main reason I chose to become a Healer."

"I see," Daine replied, her gaze searching. "And this is?"

Archie sighed. "I'm in No-Maj Medicine I this year, and I was paging through the textbook, and I found a note about multiple sclerosis. And I thought the symptoms sounded similar, so I did some more research."

"That's why you borrowed my textbooks." Daine's eyes widened in remembrance, and she snapped her fingers. "Neurology is fifth-year."

"Yeah, that's why I borrowed your textbooks," Archie admitted freely. "I did a lot of reading, and then over the holidays, I got my aunt's records to read through them, too."

Daine looked at the box, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. She flipped open the box, wincing at the tightly furled scrolls lining the inside, the few precious tubes of Pensieve memories. Or maybe she was wincing at the light that came out of the box, their magical markers for the most important reports. "Ew, scrolls," she muttered, before she shut the box and looked at Archie again. "Am I right in thinking that you may have bent a few laws to get these?"

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," Archie replied easily, and she sighed.

"So, yes. All right, what do you want me to do?"

Archie fidgeted a little. "I was hoping you'd be kind enough to look at it and give me a second opinion," he said finally. "Hermione and I both looked through it, through all of it, and both of us think that under the Poser criteria, this definitely meets the definition of laboratory supported probable MS. There aren't a lot of imaging studies in there, and neither of us have taken Magical Imaging yet anyways, so we aren't sure if there's any confirmatory clinical data. You're in complex care, and you work at the interface of magical and No-Maj Healing all the time, so I was hoping you might be able to understand more. You don't have to read all of it, of course, Hermione and I took care of marking the most important reports for you, and the imaging studies."

There was a pause, and Daine flipped open the cover of the box again. "This is a big ask, Harry."

"I know." Archie leaned forward, hoping that his desperation showed in his eyes, his expression. "It's just… this is really important to me personally."

"Even if I look through this, you'll never really know, you know that, right?" Daine's expression was sad, sorrowful. "Your aunt is dead – that won't change. All I can do is give you my clinical opinion at the end, which really isn't worth beans considering that none of us are qualified Healers yet."

"I know," Archie repeated. "I know. But for me, this is important. If there could have been anything else done, if it was possible the Healers in Britain missed the proper diagnosis, I need to know, okay? I just – I need to know."

Daine studied him for a minute or so, then she looked at the box, sighing. "Fine. Something like this, I won't be able to do quickly, so give me until April before you come asking again, all right? I'm scheduled for the research hospital for a few hours most weekends, but I'll try to look at it when I can."

"Thank you," Archie said, rising and reaching forward hesitantly for a hug. He was a hugger, but he and Daine were never that close, just friendly acquaintances, but she accepted it anyway. "I'll owe you."

"You're damn right you will," she said with a smile, waving him off. "I'll enjoy extracting the price from you when I'm done. I'll find you when I've looked through it and come up with an opinion."

Archie tried to forget about it. He really did – there was nothing he could do until Daine got back to him, so he might as well forget about it for now. There was a whole world of things for him to do, aside from school: there was his role to prepare for, lines to memorize, movies to see, fiction to read. The burger bar in town had two new flavours for milkshakes, wildflower honey with peanut and butter with sea salt – Hermione liked the peanut one, but Archie didn't like either of them. There was Quidditch, because John had made the team three years running, and Archie always made a point of going to the home games to cheer him on, even if it was mostly to watch AIM be flattened into the dust.

There were so many things to distract him, and yet, Archie couldn't forget. He didn't dwell on it, or he tried not to – when Mum came across his thoughts during the day, he quickly found something to do. There was always homework, more readings, more books he could borrow to read, if nothing else. But it was harder, at night – even if John's still mandatory meditation practice put him in the proper frame of mind to fall asleep, his dreams were something else.

He dreamed about Mum all the time now. Sometimes, for some of them, he wondered if they weren't simply snatches of long forgotten memories: the sound of her humming, her soothing voice reading to him, her laughter coming up the stairs after Archie went to bed. These were the easiest ones for Archie to deal with – they felt real, and it was nice to remember, to have something of Mum with him. For these ones, he would roll over and fall back asleep, a small smile on his face.

Sometimes, they were silly dreams, nothing dreams, dreams of things that could have happened or might have happened, but he didn't know if they did happen. There was one where Archie saw her at the breakfast table in the morning, a full breakfast of all his favourites laid out on the table for him, and she was in Dad's lap, two steaming mugs of coffee in front of them both.

"Good morning, Archie," she would say, her gold eyes lighting with warmth. Gold and silver, that was what his parents said they were, meant to be together forever. "Did you have a good night?"

"I did," Archie would say, his child-voice sounding strange to him, as he clambered into his chair and looked at his plate. His favourites changed, after Mum died, so instead of the protein-heavy breakfasts he had nowadays, his plate was piled high with pancakes. "Pancakes!"

"Blueberry pancakes," Mum would say with a smile. "Do you want butter, or syrup?"

There was one where Mum was there, with Aunt Lily, watching as he and Harry flew at Potter Place, chasing each other round and round on their toy broomsticks that couldn't fly more than three feet off the ground.

"Be careful," Mum would yell at him. "For goodness' sake, Archie, don't knock your cousin off her broom!"

Harry would be cackling in delight, as Archie chased after her. She was already the better flier of the two of them, so there was no real chance of that happening, but he would try to catch her anyway. He would hear Aunt Lily laughing in the background, the soft burr of his Mum and his aunt talking.

There was one that took place on Christmas, where he and Harry snuck downstairs at about six in the morning to open presents, just a few hours early, and Mum was already there, curled up in an armchair with a mug of coffee beside her.

"I see you," she would sing out, and they would bolt. In these dreams, though, Mum was healthy, as healthy as she could be, and she would catch them and send them back to bed. She would smile at them, though, as she leaned down to talk to them. "Just a few more hours, for everyone else to wake up, and then you can open your presents."

Those ones weren't so bad. Archie could pretend they were things that had happened, even if he had no memory of them. He was a child in these ones, he and Harry both, so these ones were nostalgic, almost-memories, even as they hurt. He would wake up, wipe his face, turn his pillow over so it wasn't wet, breathe deeply for a few minutes, and go back to sleep.

The worst ones were the ones that he knew couldn't have happened, the ones that took place now, with Archie as he was now. There was one where Mum and Dad saw him off to school, at the aeroport, standing beside Harry's parents, where she leaned over and gave him a big hug and a kiss.

"Have a good term, and look after your cousin, all right?" She whispered to him, while Harry stood, poker-faced in disappointed resignation, beside him. "And write home – we'll miss you!"

"Harry always takes care of me," he would reply quietly, hugging Mum tightly. "But I will."

There was one where he and Harry had come home from school, probably for the Christmas holidays. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, outside, and they were in Potter Place, and he was telling Mum all about their adventures in town, how they had seen James Bond together, and about No-Maj Studies.

"And Muggles have been to the moon, can you believe it?!" He would blurt out, while Harry smiled at his enthusiasm beside him. "The moon! In 1969, American Muggles put two men on the moon, they planted the American flag and bounced around on the surface, because the gravity on the moon is a sixth of what it is here!"

"That sounds amazing," Mum would reply, her kind gold eyes lighting up as she leaned forward for more details. "Were there pictures?"

"Better - there's video." Archie smiled brightly. "But we need to go to the Muggle world to watch it, because the electronics won't work here. I'll find a place! Maybe they'll show Cosmos, too!"

There was another one, which must have just been after their first year, where Harry was telling Mum all about Archie prancing around on a stage, playing the prankster for the world. It wasn't really something Harry would do, normally, so Archie guessed that, in the context of the dream, their parents had probably been grilling her for spending too much time in her Potions lab, or her lack of social involvement at AIM, or something.

"Forget about me, Archie won the lead role for the school play," she would say quickly, gesturing towards Archie with a fork. "Puck, from A Midsummer Night's Dream. He looked ridiculous."

"My costume was not ridiculous," Archie would protest, looking up from his chicken breast. "I was a fairy."

"You were wearing tights, Archie," Harry would deadpan, face straight, and the entire table would burst into warm, liquid laughter.

These ones, Archie would wake up, his face wet, his breath hitching with how much he wanted it to be true, and the thought that it maybe could have been true was never far away. If only the world were a different place, if only Healers looked to No-Maj medicine, if only, if only. These ones, he would sit up, he would calm himself down, wipe the tears still streaming from his face and focus on taking deep breaths until he could do it without sobbing. He tried not to let himself linger on these dreams – they weren't real, they were just ghost-visions made to torment him – but it was easier said than done. He lingered, sometimes, on that happy alternate reality, where he was still him, but Mum was there, and Harry was there, and things were so much happier.

Most of the time, after these dreams, he would have to meditate for fifteen minutes, a half-hour, emptying his mind and returning to bed, drained of all emotion, for another few exhausted hours of sleep. These nights, he let himself sleep in an extra hour in the morning, waking up with barely enough time to get himself some toast and bacon, before he had to bolt to his first class of the day. Hermione noticed, of course – she was studying him a little too closely these days, watching him, but she never came out and said what was on her mind. Every time she tried, Archie found something else to talk about, and she gracefully let him change the subject. John knew, too, but other than a few probing questions and an assault on Archie's Occlumency shields every couple of days, he let it go.

He knew what he was getting into, when he started looking into Mum's files. He knew it would be hard, no matter what, but he couldn't just leave it. He had to know.

So when Hermione turned to him, with a resigned look on her face, one evening after Archie walked her to her room, and said "I know," Archie was completely taken by surprise.

"You," Archie paused, frowning in her doorway. "Come again?"

"I said I know, Harry," she replied, setting her books down on her desk, not looking at him. "I know you're a girl."

Archie blinked once, then twice, trying to cudgel his sleep-deprived, addled brain into some semblance of functioning. Shit.

He had dealt with this before, he reminded himself, stomping down on his instinct to panic. John had figured everything out, John knew everything. Hermione didn't know everything, that's why she had put it like that, because Archie wasn't a girl. But she had somehow found out that Harry Potter was a girl, and that … was actually true.

"You might as well come in, you know," Hermione said, sitting in her desk chair and turning to face him. Her face read "I am disappointed in you". "The open-door rule doesn't apply to you, if you're a girl."

Archie inclined his head, a little jerky, taking two steps into her room. He didn't close the door – he just pulled it mostly shut, leaving a six-inch gap, the way he had always done. He threw a Muffliato spell at it, though he still didn't know if that would even work. He took a seat on Hermione's bed, sitting cross-legged as he struggled to think through his options.

"So? What have you got to say for yourself?"

It was, unbelievably, harder that Hermione hadn't figured everything out in one fell swoop. Had she done that, it would have been so much easier. It would have just been damage control. But now – now Archie had to decide.

Did he even care about the ruse anymore? Not with John – he had never cared with John, not since John told him, almost-casually in their first year, that he had worked it all out. Not even really with anyone else at AIM, because other than his name and appearance, he was more himself at AIM than he was anywhere else. Names and appearances were nothing compared to personality. If it was just him, if it was just his name, his face, then he thought the choice would have been easy. He would have told her – yes, Harry Potter is a girl, but I'm not her. My name is Arcturus Rigel Black, and have I told you today how stunning you are? And then he would win her over, not as Harry Potter, but as himself.

But the ruse was not just about him. The ruse was also about Harry, the ruse was more about Harry than anyone else. If there was one thing that going to the Gala had shown him, it was how much they had each sacrificed – Archie might have sacrificed his relationship with Dad, with their families, but he had his friends. He had AIM, he had the wonders of the No-Maj world to console him. He had three months of the year where he had to be Rigel Black, where he had to feel the sacrifices he made, but Harry...

Harry lived it. Harry lived it, every day for nine months of the year, sleeping in a dorm with and befriending the exact sort of people who would see her put on trial and subjected to the Dementor's Kiss for what they had done. And Harry did it for her dream, to work under Master Snape, and she was apprenticing under him, now! What they did was so dangerous, especially for her, and he couldn't break that trust. He just couldn't.

"I'm… really not," he said, scrambling to think of an explanation, any explanation that might fit. Something that worked with both the truth, and the ruse. Something that soothed Hermione, that answered Hermione's questions, but still protected Harry.

Hermione studied him for a minute or two, then she sighed. Her face now read, "I am extremely disappointed in you". "I've known for months, Harry. I wanted you to tell me, but I realized you weren't going to, so … so I'm telling you now."

"Months?" Archie croaked, trying to buy himself time. Come on, brain, he ordered himself, work! He needed an explanation, something that would fit, and he didn't have one. "And how, uh, exactly did you come to this conclusion?"

"My parents got me a subscription to the Daily Prophet for Christmas," Hermione explained, the slightest hint of pity seeping into her eyes. "I saw the article they did on the SOW Party Gala. It said that someone had almost died there, and then mentioned that your dad was head of the Minister's security detail. I was perplexed, because it went on to say that Auror Potter's daughter was one of the two people who saved the life of the man who was attacked, so I went to the Ministry and looked up some information on your family, which was … all too easy, since you're in the Book of Gold."

"Those records aren't always correctly updated, 'Mione," Archie tried weakly. "You know, human error..."

"Don't bother, Harry." Hermione shook her head sharply, frowning at him with her "Don't lie to me" face. "Once I confirmed that your legal name was Harriett Potter, I went to the Bureau of Magical Land Management and looked at the estate records – again, since you're noble, it's practically public knowledge. The Potter, or Peverell, Estate is currently entailed to you, Harriett Potter, Heiress Potter, eldest daughter of the current Lord Peverell, James Fleamont Potter."

Archie took a deep breath, the shards of a plan finally coalescing, ever so slowly, in his mind. It wasn't a great plan. Honestly, it was probably a terrible plan. But he didn't have time, and it met the two basic criteria he needed: it worked with the truth, and it worked with the ruse. It would answer all of Hermione's questions, it would probably even stop more questions, and it protected Harry.

Now, he just had to set it up and sell it.

"That's… very impressive deducing," he said, very slowly, hesitantly. He offered her a weak sort of smile, gearing himself up for a painful performance. Painful, because he didn't want to lie to Hermione, no more than he ever wanted to lie to Dad. Painful, too, because he was pretty sure what he was about to do was, on some moral or ethical level, very, very wrong.

"Don't you dare patronize me, Harry," Hermione snapped, brown eyes sparking. "You lied to me, you lied to everyone here – or did John know?"

"John…." Archie muttered, with a very deep sigh. "John knew. John found out on his own."

She scowled at him, but her eyes betrayed her hurt. She was supposed to be his best friend – she knew him better than anyone, maybe even including John, definitely including Harry, and it didn't take a genius to see that the knowledge that John knew, but not her, was not comforting. Even if John was a Natural Legilimens. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

"I... I didn't have plans to, no," Archie said awkwardly, stumbling over his words a little, looking at Hermione with a very apprehensive, worried, almost frightened look on his face. Fear, yes, fear was good. "I didn't want you to think of me that way. If I told you I was a girl, I was afraid you'd treat me as some sort of impostor, instead of… well."

There was a long, drawn-out pause, as Hermione followed what he was very carefully suggesting, without saying. It was important that he didn't say it outright – if he was really trans, the word she had used several months ago to describe those that didn't identify with their assigned gender, and if he hadn't come out yet, then he would be very cautious about the words he picked.

"Are you saying you're trans, Harry?" Hermione asked, her eyes widening a little, her anger dissipating with the light of understanding. Archie felt like a complete and utter cad – he was no such thing, but it was a convenient excuse that fit the facts, and based on Hermione's lecture, the discrimination experienced by the LGBTQ community would make him hesitant to be out. It even worked with Wizarding Britain, and the discussion they had had before, just after John came out – witches and wizards in Britain were more open-minded about sexual orientation, but gender identity had been completely foreign to him, and he had been fascinated. He had asked a million questions, just out of curiosity, but now she would look back at that conversation and read something completely different out of it.

It was perfect. It explained everything – why he had apparently "lied" about his gender, and why he didn't tell her. And it protected the ruse, it protected Harry.

"I'm – I'm not." A denial here was important – it showed more reluctance, more hesitation, more caution. "Just… maybe I'm questioning, all right? I've never felt comfortable in my own skin, and I thought… I just thought that coming to school, so far away, would be a good place to try something new. No one would know, I thought, and if it worked, I could... I could decide what to do then. And if not, then... I'd work it out."

There was another silence, as Hermione thought it through. The explanation really was perfect, except for the overwhelming shame and guilt now curdling in his chest. But the ruse needed something, and he hadn't been able to come up with anything else half so convincing so quickly.

Harry does more, he reminded himself coldly. Harry always does more, even if she doesn't tell you about it. And you know she doesn't tell you the worst of it.

"I didn't consider that you might have been questioning your gender identity," Hermione admitted, her voice unusually subdued, her face openly apologetic. Damn it, Hermione, Archie thought, hating himself for doing this to her. She was an angel, and she shouldn't be sorry! "I'm sorry for going off on you. I thought that, well, maybe you were playing a joke, or that you were trying to avoid some sort of sexist discrimination in the future, so I was prepared to lecture you sternly on how wrong it is to avoid the issue yourself while everyone else in your situation is still subjected to unfairness, because you have to fight for change, but… well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not considering it."

"It's nothing," Archie muttered, looking away again. He was far too good of an actor for his guilt, his shame to show on his face, but he still couldn't bear looking at her, not when her point hit a little too close to home. That was exactly what he and Harry were doing, avoiding blood discrimination with the ruse, and if Hermione ever found that out, well… Archie would be doing a lot of grovelling, he suspected. For that, and for this conversation, too.

"It's not nothing, Harry," Hermione said, and he felt her sit down on the bed beside him and wrap her arms around his shoulders. "I forced you out of the closet before you were ready, and that's not nothing. How can I make it up to you?"

Archie was stiff in her arms, frozen, and that wasn't an act. Hermione was so good, and he didn't deserve this reaction, not for a lie, not for this lie. But he had to do it, just like he had to take this offer, because Harry would expect him to, because it was how he would protect the ruse, protect her. "No, Hermione, just..." Archie took a deep, steadying breath. "Just don't tell anyone. That's enough."

"Of course." Hermione's embrace was warm, tight, exactly the sort of hug that Archie always loved. Her hair smelled like summer rain, with a slight spark of electricity. Archie couldn't help but return her easy, accepting affection, his arms moving almost of their own volition to wrap tightly around her, too. A gesture of forgiveness, of thanks, she would think. For his part, he just couldn't help himself, and her curves felt so warm, so soft, against his cold body.

They sat like that, in silence, and after a few minutes Archie sighed and leaned a little closer into her, resting his head on her shoulder and listening to her slow, even breaths. He shouldn't, he knew, he should pull away from her, but he didn't. She was comforting, and her breaths were soothing, and if he burrowed his head against her shoulder a little closer to her neck, he could almost feel her pulse, strong and steady, against his cheek.

"If you don't mind me asking," Hermione said, her voice hesitant, and Archie, with a great will of effort, pulled himself away to look her in his face. "How do you look like a boy? I can't see any feminine characteristics in you, even now that I'm looking for it. Is that natural? If so, how will you keep this up when you start filling out, and looking more feminine?"

Archie smiled, very slightly. At least this was easier to deal with – Archie would simply tell her the truth. If he didn't, then the fact that he never would start looking more feminine would be too suspicious. And his voice had cracked last year – if that wasn't a sure-fire sign that puberty had already started hitting, he wasn't sure what else there was. "Can you keep one more secret for me, Hermione?"

"Of course." She didn't even frown at his slight insinuation that she couldn't, as she normally would have. Hermione already promised to keep his "gender" a secret, she had kept his noble status a secret for years, and normally she would have been a little offended, at his suggestion that she couldn't. She still felt a little guilty about having apparently forced him out of the closet, then.

"I'm a Metamorphmagus," Archie said, focusing to change the colour of his hair to blue, for a moment, just to show her. "It means—"

"I know what it means," Hermione gasped, her eyes widening in surprise, wonder, delight. "That's so rare, Harry! I've read that it's only common to a couple of Wizarding families."

"It runs in the Black line." Archie shrugged, uncomfortable as he inched, ever so carefully, a little closer to the truth. "And one of my great-grandmothers was a Black. I haven't told anyone though – well, John found out, as he does—"

"Haven't you been working on your Occlumency, Harry?" There was that frown. Archie had never been so relieved to see it, though another part of him was still curled in shame of the lies he was continuing to tell her, even while he told her the truth.

"I have," he argued, a little petulant, "but I slipped, okay? Anyway, no one else knows – not my family, not anyone else. But it's how I live as a boy."

Hermione was still frowning at him, though this time her gaze was a little worried. "So, this isn't what you really look like?"

"Not really, no." Archie looked away again, letting a hint of his guilt flash across his face. "But… I'm more comfortable like this, Hermione. I've been – well, John suggested I try to acclimate myself to my real body, but – it just doesn't feel right, right now, at least. I like this body, Hermione, can you understand?"

"Hmm." Hermione seemed to be thinking about it, her expression vaguely disapproving, but Archie had the strong sense it wasn't at him. "John shouldn't have said that – it's up to you whether you want to try to acclimate yourself to the body nature gave you, or if you want to change it. If you want to live in this body, as a boy, Harry, that's fine. That's all fine with me."

Another stab of guilt, but Archie didn't let that show. Instead, he put on a grateful expression, a pathetically happy and grateful expression, because that was how Harry Potter, trans or questioning boy who had just come out to his best friend, would feel, right now. "Thank you, Hermione," he said, his voice soft, heartfelt.

"No," Hermione replied, her brown eyes warm. "Thank you, Harry, for trusting me."

Leaving her room, Archie felt like the worst sort of person. He had lied to Hermione, purposely playing on her emotions, and he had stolen the name, the label, the history of a group of people to which he did not belong, for his own gain. But the ruse was safe, and Harry was safe, and that had to be enough.

It was mid-April when Archie heard from Daine again. He had had only a few letters from Harry this term, though she was still faithfully writing to Dad exactly once every two weeks, telling him all about a brilliant joke she had played on the Weasley Twins around their birthday, about Malfoy's Duelling Club, about Quidditch. She also slipped a note to Archie (Don't worry, I'm fine!) with her last letter, talking about a meeting she had had with Lord Riddle, which could not be a good sign, but there was nothing Archie could do about it from America.

That was frustrating, having things he could do nothing about. Harry always did everything, and the nature of the ruse was that she had to do so much by herself – all Archie could do was sit there, in America, and fret.

At least, he had managed to arrange an internship for himself. Harry had come through with a letter of recommendation from Madam Pomfrey, and while he hadn't been accepted at his first-choice internship in Argentina, he had been picked for his second-choice at the Darien Gap community in Colombia, which was often plagued with haemorrhagic fever.

"Harry?" Daine's voice cut into his reverie, and she dropped his Mum's box of records on the study table in front of him. "This a good time to chat?"

Archie looked up from his textbook, one on epidemiology, and gave her a quick smile. She was wearing an uncommonly serious expression. "As good as any. You had a chance to look everything over?"

She nodded, taking the seat beside him, turning the chair slightly to face him. "I did. The records aren't great – it's obvious that they had no idea what they were looking at, and they didn't know how to interpret their test results either, it's horrific."

"And?" Archie closed his textbook, turning to face her fully, and steeled himself.

Daine sat and studied him for a second. "We're not supposed to make diagnoses of people who are deceased, but it's about as classic of a case of progressive MS as it gets. The Pensieve memories, in particular, were really useful – I mean, it's only a memory, but being able to see the results that way let me identify things that the Healers remembered but didn't understand the importance of, or didn't think to write down. I confirmed lesions on the brain stem at least twice, so… there you have it."

"Clinically definite multiple sclerosis," Archie finished for her, his voice quiet, and she nodded, a note of pity in her gaze.

"In the Healers' defense, MS isn't really something that happens in magical communities," Daine offered, a little hesitant. "This condition was only something that was starting to be identified, understood and treated in the magical world within the last few decades, and even at the teaching hospital, today, it would have taken months to work it out and begin treatment. And even that – it wouldn't have saved her life, just extended it."

"How long, do you think?" Archie asked, looking away from her, staring at the box. Mum's box.

"I don't know, Harry." Daine's voice was gentle. "That would have depended on how she reacted to treatment, and I can't tell that from the records alone."

Archie was silent for a minute or two, blinking furiously. He took a deep breath. Breathing was good. "Thanks, Daine," he said, finally, looking at her with a small, sad, smile. "I expected it, but… it's still hard to hear. I owe you."

"Sure," Daine replied, cocking her head to one side. "Will you be all right?"

"Yeah." Archie stood up, putting his textbook on top of the box of records and picking up his bag. He had to get out of here, fast. Not that he was ashamed of crying, but it still wasn't something he wanted to do publicly. "I'll – I'll go put these away. I really appreciate it, Daine, you have no idea. If you ever need anything from me, don't hesitate to ask."

"Yeah, of course," Daine said, her expression a little worried. "I'll see you later?"

"Yeah," Archie agreed, then he bailed, hurrying up two flights of stairs, his (because it was his, now) box in his arms. In his room, he put it on the floor, beside his trunk, and there it sat. There it sat, and he stared at it, Schrödinger's box, now opened, and the cat was dead.

The cat was always dead. He turned to his bed, crawling onto it like he was so much younger than he was, curling up against the headboard with his legs tucked up, his head resting in his arms, on his knees, feeling hot tears spill out as he mourned for Mum all over again. His breaths came out in short, painful gasps.

There was never going to be an answer that brought Mum back to life, and he knew that. He had always known that. Hermione had even talked to him about it, before she even agreed to help him with the heist, and it was something that had always, always been on his mind. But he had needed to know, and even now, he knew that there was no other answer. He couldn't have sat there, always wondering, forever and ever, wondering if there was a diagnosis that had been missed. He couldn't have left it alone – it just wasn't in his psychology.

This wasn't even a surprise. He had already, deep down, known the answer months ago. He had suspected, when he first found the note, and nothing he had ever learned since swayed him, even a little, from the eventual answer. But thinking through the possible results, even envisioning this one, for months – that didn't help with the reality.

Mum was dead, and she didn't have to be. MS was a known condition in 1986 – it had first been described, in the No-Maj world, in the 1800s. The first wizarding case of it was identified in the 1950s, in America, and it was rare in the wizarding world, but it wasn't unknown. This was not a case of "neural wasting disease – NYD". This was a known disease that had a name, a name and a treatment, and if it had been caught, there were things that could have been done. There were medicines, there was therapy, and maybe if she had had those, maybe she would have lived. Longer, at least – longer, to spend more time with him, with Dad.

Archie would do much to have another morning with Mum. Just one more morning, one more breakfast of blueberry pancakes (he didn't even like pancakes!) with butter and syrup. Just one more morning where he could talk to her, where she would smile at him, one more morning where he could hold her and be held in turn, one more morning where he and Dad would be whole.

Because they weren't whole, now. They were broken, both of them, and even if the hole in their lives had scabbed over with time, it would always be there. This was something that no one understood until they lost someone; the first year was the easiest. The first year was when their families and friends curled around them, cocooning around them protectively, with meals brought over and extra care around holidays. Because that first year, it was the first year without Mum, or Archie's first birthday without Mum, or Dad's first Valentine's Day without Mum. People knew, people understood that it hurt, that first year.

But then the second year came, and Mum still wasn't there, but everyone expected them to have moved on. Like it was that easy – a year of mourning, and off they were expected to go, even though she was still missing, and Archie would never have his Mum again. No one understood that it was hard every year.

Every year on his birthday, the first thing that Archie did was pull out a picture of Mum and stare at her. Hello Mum, he would say to her picture. I'm thirteen now, can you believe it? Harry and I are in so much trouble with the ruse, but I'm loving America so much, even if they are horrible about creatures. I wish you could meet my friends though, they're brilliant – Hermione was beside me every single fight I had last year over creature rights, and sat with me in about as many detentions for it, too.

I still miss you. Dad and I still miss you.

Every Christmas, in the middle of opening presents, in the middle of Christmas dinner, there would be moments when he and Dad would fall silent, casting quick glances at each other that they knew no one else would really understand. Aunt Lily would open a present, something small, a scarf that Harry or Uncle James had bought her, and they would see it and look at each other. Mum would have loved that, they would say to each other, or Mum would have hated that. Every time Uncle James' face lit up with another present that Aunt Lily had gotten him, Dad would get a curious sort of look on his face – happy, amused, but also forlorn, and Archie would see it, but he wouldn't mention it. He knew that feeling too well, because he got it sometimes when Aunt Lily looked at Harry, or at Addy, a look filled with so much maternal love, the kind of love Archie hadn't felt for years.

Every anniversary, they both remembered – when Archie was still at home, he and Dad would start the day off at her grave, then they would go home, and they would try. They would try to keep it light, they would try to remember all the good things about Mum, all the things they still had. Remember this teapot? Mum hated it. Or, remember that time Mum got in a fight with the portraits and waged war on your behalf against them? She always hated Phineas most, she said your mum was just crazy while Phineas was evil. But eventually, they would both fall silent, remembering. Sometimes they would stay together, in the sitting room, and Dad would break out the Firewhiskey while Archie tried to distract himself with a book, but even then – even then, it was hard, because most of Archie's books were about Healing. Now, Archie bet that Dad started drinking as soon as he came home, and he probably didn't stop until Uncle James or Uncle Remus came to check on him.

For the rest of their lives, they would always be missing her. Not for every minute of every day, but it would hit them, quickly and unexpectedly, at the smallest things. It would be the glint of light off a picture that Mum had always hated, or the snatch of a song she liked, or the scent of zucchini bread baking, and they would remember. Archie would always be missing Mum, just like Dad would always be missing the love of his life, and even if they filled their lives with other things, with other people, no one would ever be able to fill those gaps.

There was a knock at his door, but he ignored it. He wasn't home. He didn't want to deal with anyone for the rest of today.

There was a pause, then two more knocks. "Harry?"

It was Hermione, of course, but not even for Hermione would Archie open the door today. He was Arcturus Rigel Black right now, missing his Mum, and how could she possibly understand this unless she knew that "Aunt Diana" was never his aunt, but his mum? He didn't want to be Harry damn Potter right now, so he wouldn't open the door. The rest of today was for him.

"Harry, I know you're in there," Hermione continued. "Daine said she talked to you, so I just wanted to let you know that I'm here if you want to talk about it. Or I can get John, if you want. Or even Francesca, if you just want company to sit in silence while she tinkers with something."

Archie sniffled and hiccoughed, a little, wiping his face. He knew that she couldn't hear him – the rooms were designed to trap noise within. Hell, he had belted out songs in the safety of his bedroom without worrying about it, no one would hear anything. He could cry as loudly as he liked, and it would be fine. His face felt raw, puffy, and he knew without any doubt that he had lost control of his Metamorphised Harry form, and that he was curled up in his bed as Archie.

He could probably talk to John about it, if he really wanted to. John already knew everything, and it would be easy to explain. But, for now, he didn't really want to – even if John was a sympathetic ear, he didn't want a sympathetic ear. Mum was dead, had been dead for years. What comfort was there to give?

Finally, there was a sigh. "I'll save some dinner for you," Hermione said, and he heard her walk away.

Archie shifted on his bed, painfully moving until he was lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling. His body hurt, his chest hurt, his head felt heavy and fuzzy. There were glow-in-the-dark stars plastered over his ceiling, birthday presents last year from John. He had used them to make all his favourite constellations: there was Canis Major and Canis Minor, of course, and Orion with Rigel in it, and Boötes, with Arcturus, in it. There was Lupus, for Uncle Remus, and Aries for Uncle James, the Corona Borealis for Aunt Lily and Gemini for Harry.

Mum's favourite constellation, Libra, the Balance, hung in the centre, close to Canis Major and Canis Minor, him and Dad. It was where she should have been and wasn't.

It didn't need to be this way. Archie rolled over, away from the stars, facing the cream-coloured wall, feeling his grief shift slowly into a fizzing, sparking ball of rage in his belly. If only the SOW Party hadn't so thoroughly taken over, poisoning Wizarding Britain against the No-Maj world. If only the Wizengamot hadn't passed laws limiting employment for non-British trained mages, putting pressure even on employers who didn't, strictly speaking, fall within those laws. If only mages in Wizarding Britain saw the world outside the narrow pureblood supremacist bubble provided to them.

Then, maybe then, Dad would have found a Healer that would have known enough No-Maj medicine to diagnose Mum. Maybe Mum would have gotten the treatment she needed, and maybe the treatment would have worked. And then, maybe then, they would still have her.

But they didn't. They didn't have her anymore, and even if Archie knew that it hadn't been that simple, it hadn't been a direct path that had gotten them from there to here, those facts still formed the hedges of the path they had walked. Even as a pureblood, the pureblood supremacist system set up to benefit him had still cost him, it had cost him dearly, and the Britain that it gave him in return was nothing in exchange to what he had lost. Nothing even close.

Reverend John Hale was an exercise in self-flagellation, Archie decided.

He hated Hale. He hated Act 1, when he had to channel Theodore bloody Nott into his lines, into his character, as he ordered the arrests of three accused witches on suspiciously flimsy evidence. He hated Act 2, when his character started flipping, all because someone pointed out to his idiot character that even if people were confessing, that didn't mean they were witches. He hated Act 3, where his character finally denounced the court for failing to let the witches defend themselves, for being incorrigibly corrupt, as if he hadn't been entirely complicit in starting the hysteria to begin with. He really hated Act 4, where his character's act of atonement was to try to get as many people to confess as possible, to save them from the hangman's noose, at the cost of their good names.

He also loved Hale. He loved that his character was so flawed, but that he changed over the play – he started as someone terrible, and at the end he was still someone that Archie found rather terrible, but he had changed, and he struggled to atone for the things he had done. He loved that his character was technically challenging to play, stretching his acting talents to their limits. He even, grudgingly, sort of loved that Hale challenged him to rethink his beliefs.

Hale made him think about tolerance, about the nature of beliefs, about letting others define the world for him. Archie would never like Theodore Nott or Draco Malfoy, but maybe, now, having acted them in Act 1, he could understand them. If they had grown up entirely with pureblood supremacy as their one, defined worldview, handed to them on a silver platter, without ever having anything or anyone to challenge them – maybe they were like Hale. Maybe they could have an Act 2, where they could change. Archie didn't know.

Hale made him think about complicity. Hale was complicit in the witches' trials, but Archie and Harry were complicit, too. By breaking the rules for themselves and for no one else, Archie knew well that their ruse tacitly supported the pureblood supremacist regime they both hated. When Hale denounced the court in Act 3, he was, in some ways, denouncing his own past self. Did Archie, one day, need to do the same?

And Hale made him think about atonement. Not that Hale thought of what he did as atonement – Hale was pragmatic, and he tried to minimize the harm that he had unwittingly wrought, by persuading as many people to confess as he could. What did it matter that a confession would lead to the person losing everything, what did it matter that it would destroy their reputations, their families' reputations in the community? A life was something that could not be taken back, and Hale wanted to save as many lives as possible. It was horrible, convincing people to confess to things they didn't do, but lives could not be taken back, and what choice had he? But if Archie was complicit in pureblood supremacy in Britain, how would he atone for it, in his Act 4?

He didn't talk about Mum to Hermione, to anyone. Hermione had asked, of course, but he had simply said that it was as they had thought, Daine confirmed it, and he was still thinking over how to break the news to Rigel and his Uncle Sirius. He didn't know how he would tell Dad yet, because he needed to come up with some way that he could plausibly find out. Maybe something involving his summer internship in Wizarding Colombia – it wasn't directly related, but he could make something up, he thought. Then he'd have to give himself some time, theoretically, to look into it, and from Hogwarts that would no doubt take much longer than it had at AIM. Realistically, the earliest possible time he thought he could break it to Dad was probably not until next year, maybe even next summer. That would give him time to think about what he wanted to say about it, what he wanted do about it. He had learned something, something important, and the answer could not be nothing.

Harry wrote him a letter mid-May, the contents of which nearly made him throw up in worry. It started with her traditional words, don't worry, I'm fine, but this time, she added – "as fine as could be expected, anyway."

She never added addendums to that line. Three years later, it was traditional – Harry began her letters to him with an assurance that she was fine, and Archie would at least know that, by her own twisted reasoning, she was fine. If she said, "as fine as could be expected, anyway", then that meant something dire had happened.

He pursed his lips and kept reading. It was a long letter, since there was a lot that she had apparently not told him before, not considering it important. It started with an artifact, which had been stolen over the summer, something called the Dominion Jewel. It had fallen in the hands of Peter Pettigrew, former Marauder and friend of Dad's. Pettigrew had been using it to control creatures at Hogwarts, driving them mad at Halloween, and there was an incident with a dragon that she had never mentioned, too.

Harry was such an idiot! How could she not mention the thing with the dragon, at least?! She had been injured, forget the ruse, she had come up against a dragon and someone had to look out for her. Harry was so pigheaded about her own safety! Not that he had any idea what she could have done instead – maybe, if her friends were like his friends, she would have had some backup, but he really had no idea what to make of her friends.

It only got worse from there. She had been kidnapped, held for two weeks (two weeks!) in a cell underground, eating her own potions supplies for survival, and no one had noticed because she had had a bloody Time Turner. No one except Draco Malfoy, who had fortunately noticed soon after she rejoined the present, and who had found her. She had had to spend a week in the Hospital Wing, taking about a dozen potions a day to sort her digestive tract out, and had been excused from exams.

Archie did not like Draco Malfoy, but he felt grateful to him all the same. He wondered vaguely if Malfoy had demanded a life debt of Harry (Harry wouldn't have offered one, he was sure), but after a bit of thought, decided that it didn't matter if he did. She had one over him, so at worst, they were even.

Of course, Harry was only telling him this now for context, she explained, because Dad, Uncle James, and Uncle Remus had all been there, at Hogwarts. She couldn't take her modified Polyjuice to change her appearance, because they had seen her too recently, and she had no idea what to do.

Because she was still processing her trauma, no doubt. Archie shook his head, folding up the letter with trembling fingers. He hated that this had happened to her, and he knew that if he had Peter Pettigrew in front of him now, he would kill him. He would use one of those clever, precise Healer spells they learned, for Healing, and he would pervert it to cause a very unpleasant death. A blood-clotting charm would do the trick – he could cause a massive heart attack with one of those, and it wouldn't even be difficult.

At least, the problem of their return was one he could solve for her. She was making things too complicated, he thought, throwing her letter in the drawer where he kept them all. He went over to his trunk, pulling out his last few remaining vials of plain, ordinary Polyjuice (the potion kept well in sealed vials, so he had never gotten rid of the extra that he and Harry had exchanged, those first few years), and setting them on his desk. He pulled Magical Theatre, last year's birthday gift from Chess, which had a dozen or so camouflage and disguise charms and which he had already practically memorized, off his shelf, and dashed off a quick letter.

All she had to do was figure out what she would look like, with the change, and take a picture of it for both of them. He, as a Metamorphmagus, would take that form when he met with Harry's parents, before they switched, then he would revert to the body that his family had seen in the Hospital Wing after they did switch. It would look like Harry had grown while she was in America, and that Archie didn't, because he was still mimicking her form. Then, he would be away for most of the summer, and he could miraculously appear to have caught up after he returned from Wizarding Colombia. It was easy, and it matched exactly what everyone thought of him, anyway.

To his surprise, she accepted it without any questions, and if that wasn't a sign that something was wrong, he wasn't sure what was.

He was only at home for a night, long enough for Harry to catch him up on all the most important details, long enough for him to hold her as she cried, long enough for him to rub her back and cuddle her and tell her that it would be all right. He would have liked to stay – he would have liked to be there for her, when she was so obviously traumatized, but even as she put it, he couldn't. Archie needed to go away, he needed to go on his planned internship – it was what would give their ruse and its problems some breathing room, some plausibility, and when he returned, it would give credibility for his mental stability.

Who would look after Harry, though? Who would look after her mental stability, when she had gone through something so overwhelmingly traumatic? His sister had been locked underground for two weeks, and no one except him bloody knew about it!

But she was right. She was right, and truth be told, Archie didn't want a summer of worried looks from Dad, from Uncle James, Uncle Remus. He didn't want sympathy for something that had never happened to him, just like he didn't want the praise for the Sleeping Sickness, or the awe for having killed a basilisk. He didn't want to be coddled, and given his own emotional state, the truth of Mum's death so close to the surface of his thoughts, it was better that he go.

"I'll have Leo, and my Lower Alleys friends," Harry whispered to him, giving him a rare hug outside the Portkey Rooms at Heathrow. "Don't worry about me – I'll be fine. Have fun."

"Yeah," Archie whispered back, squeezing her slightly. "I'll – I'll smuggle you back some new potions ingredients or something."

That got a tiny laugh out of her, and Archie smiled, his mood lifting just a touch, and he headed into the Portkey Room for the first leg of his journey, to Madrid.

Madrid, an hour's wait, then a Portkey to Marrakech, the closest Wizarding aeroport which serviced South America. A six-hour wait, there, before he got to hop on a plane to Salvador. As he got further away from Wizarding Britain, his worries fell away, dropping like stones into the Atlantic below him. Harry would be fine. She wasn't Rigel at home, she was Harry, and that alone had to give her some distance from the things that had happened to her. She could avoid her friends from Hogwarts, avoid the things that reminded her of what happened to her, and she could Heal as Harry Potter, at home, surrounded by the people who loved her as herself.

Salvador to Bogota, then, finally, to the Darien Gap.

The Portkey slammed him into the damp ground, and with his heavy rucksack, Archie toppled over. It smelled of earth, wet leaves and he sucked in a thick, cloying breath of muggy, humid air. He was sweating already, in the shade – oh, good God, it was hot.

"Welcome to the Darien Gap community," he heard a warm voice say, and he staggered to his feet, his No-Maj clothes thankfully fitting well because he had picked out a whole new wardrobe for his true body, specifically for his internship. He was always planning on dropping the Rigel disguise for the internship (this was something he was doing as himself, after all), and he knew well that his true body was quite a bit taller than his Rigel form – about four inches taller, to be exact, and he was leaner than Rigel, too, who tended to be stocky.

The speaker was a tall, dark-skinned woman, solidly built, and she wore a kind smile. Her accent was distinctly American, Southern. "You must be Arcturus Rigel Black."

"Yes!" Archie said, picking his way towards her in his new boots. These were heavier boots, magical ones, charmed with anti-sweating and cooling spells, distinctly unfashionable but certainly better for the environment. "Call me Archie."

"Melody Huggins," the woman introduced herself, holding out a hand for him to shake. She was wearing Healer's robes, in the short American style with sleeves tapered to her arms, obviously made of a very light linen in deference to the heat. "We're happy to have you join us for the summer."

"And I'm happy to be here," Archie replied, taking her hand firmly and shaking it. "Thank you so much for taking me on – I'm looking forward to learning from you!"

"It's no trouble," Healer Huggins replied, gesturing with one hand for Archie to follow her. His Portkey had landed him in a remote spot in the rainforest, and he could hear the calls of wildlife high in the trees. Birds, maybe even a monkey or two! "We don't get a lot of internship applications, since we're so remote. How was your trip? How many transfers did you need?"

"Four." Archie winced. It had been a very long day for him, more than twenty-four hours of travel. "Portkey from London to Madrid, then to Marrakech, since there are no direct flights to South America from London, then I flew Marrakech to Salvador, another flight to Bogota, then Portkey here. With a few hours of transfer time in between."

"That is hard," Healer Huggins agreed, leading him along a thin, barely-there path. Through the trees, Archie could make out the shape of many canvas tents. "From America, it's easier, both New York and Los Angeles have direct flights to Bogota. In any case – as I think you know, there is a sizeable research community here in the Darien Gap. We have several Herbologists and Potioneers, all looking for and studying new plants and ingredients, a Magizoologist working with the creatures, a few Druids working with the interplay between nature and magic. There's also a magical languages expert studying the indigenous magical symbology, and a magical theorist studying the casting style here. You and I, though, are the only Healers on staff."

"What will my duties be?" Archie asked, honoured that she had included him as a Healer even though he was only a Healer-in-Training – and that was as Harry Potter, not even under his own name! He suppressed a yawn, feeling himself drift slightly – the heat was not conducive to staying awake when he was so tired. "The internship posting said you were looking someone who would be fine with general practice as well as an interest in infectious disease?"

"Yes, that's right." Healer Huggins walked into the mass of canvas tents, which Archie instinctively identified as the research camp. There was something about the camp that screamed outsiders – from what he knew, one of the reasons why the Darien Gap was attractive for many researchers was its relative isolation from the rest of the world. "My own research here is on haemorrhagic fever – specifically, I'm looking for reasons why these communities have so many outbreaks of haemorrhagic fever, and why they are exceptionally severe. However, as the only Healers among the group, we'll also be providing general Healing for the researchers, and for any indigenous mages who specifically request help. You'll do a little of everything, once I see what you know – you'll take notes for me, help with case analyses, handle general healing for the researchers, which is usually straightforward, and support me when I do rounds in the indigenous communities."

"That sounds fantastic," Archie said, meaning it, even as he stifled another yawn. "When do I begin?"

"Not today." Healer Huggins smiled slightly as she reached a small tent, on the outskirts of the camp, gesturing him in. "You're beat, and jetlagged too, I bet. This will be your tent, here, beside mine. Sleep it off, and I'll get you started tomorrow morning."

Archie returned her smile with thanks, not daring to argue when he knew perfectly well that he was dead on his feet. He ducked his head to enter his home for the next six weeks, finding only a small camp-bed, a dresser, a table, and two wooden chairs inside. It was simple, but sturdy and clean, and Archie fell into the camp-bed in exhausted relief.

The summer passed remarkably quickly.

He started working the next day, and it was fascinating. The Darien Gap communities were plagued with persistent outbreaks of haemorrhagic fever, which happened almost every year, with truly absurd fatality rates for an annual outbreak – nearly one in ten died, though thankfully it didn't seem to spread too quickly or too far. In a typical summer, Healer Huggins said, she would see about fifty cases throughout the Darien Gap.

The fever started slowly, with the onset of fever, malaise, headache and myalgia. Early on, one of the main problems was misdiagnosis, because early symptoms were so close to those of malaria, an illness for which the mages of the Darien Gap community had effective treatments. Concern would only begin seven days after onset, when the patient began bleeding from their nose and gums, at which point Healer Huggins and Archie would finally be called in to assist. The worse cases led to delirium and convulsions, which, since the patients were mages, often meant that raw magic was being tossed around with wild abandon. One always had to be careful with that, and Archie learned quickly how to set up a good ward against wayward magic flying about.

Healer Huggins had worked out that the fevers were viral in nature, though she hadn't figured out the disease vector. She had ruled out mosquitoes and most other insects already, and it wasn't bats, either, like the Ebola virus of Africa. She was still looking, but she was stymied by so many things – lack of funding and distrust of the indigenous mages being the biggest part of her problems.

Archie learned so much, so quickly. This wasn't like at AIM, where he hadn't even had any shifts at the teaching hospital yet. Since his declared specialty was Infectious Disease, he wouldn't have any shifts there until his fifth year. The most he did was first-aid work at school, looking after cuts, bruises, the occasional broken bone, though since John was on both the Duelling and Quidditch teams, Archie was sometimes called in on those injuries, too. That, at least, was useful for treating the research camp – as soon as Healer Huggins had realized the extent of his abilities, she effectively assigned Archie the entire responsibility of seeing to the needs of the camp. There Archie stayed, two days a week, for Healing consultations with the other researchers. He would have thought that this would be the easiest of his work, but he hadn't accounted for the sheer recklessness of the kind of researcher that came to the isolated Darien Gap.

The worst of his patients was no doubt their resident Magizoologist, Johann Linnaeus, who had a disturbing penchant for being bitten, stung, scratched, poisoned, stabbed, slashed or otherwise abused by whatever creature came his way. By the end of the first month, Archie had purged him of poison six times, reattached three fingers, and healed some twenty-two other minor injuries for him. The second time Johann came to him with a finger held in a bag of never-melting ice, Archie gave him a blistering lecture about sticking his hands into strange creatures' mouths. Johann had only grinned, waved with his now-fixed hand, and thrown himself back into the rainforest on another multi-day trek searching for more creatures. He would be back within the week, with another handful of injuries, Archie was sure.

The potioneers were no better. They loved experimenting with whatever new plant or ingredient they had found that day, and every time he heard the explosions from their side of the camp, he knew to get up and get to the medic tent post-haste. None of the injuries would be serious, of course, they'd all burst in, laughing like maniacs while Archie yelled at them, trying to triage them and restore order so he could tend their wounds from whatever thing had gone horribly wrong. He was always triple careful to check for any hint of infection before he sealed their wounds and sent them on their way.

The Druids, too, sometimes had weird spell damage issues from whatever rituals they had done that day. Under Healer Huggins' guidance, he learned to pick through different strands of magic, sorting through magical contamination, which was their main problem. He didn't have a good handle on this, and while he got good enough at it to handle minor cases on his own, he still called Healer Huggins in on anything complex. That was fine, though, she said – magical contamination wasn't something that was common in anyone other than Druids, since they messed around with magic that wasn't their own. It wasn't even something covered until specialized training, and the fact that Archie could manage even minor cases of magical contamination was promising.

For Healer Huggins' main project, Archie followed her on her rounds, taking notes for her and taking his own look at her samples, when she was able to get them. The mages here, like most places, were wary of anyone taking parts of them, blood, saliva, or anything else, so Healer Huggins often had to do without. Since they had worked out that the illness was viral, however, it wasn't something they could really Heal – all their efforts, when they started getting cases of them, were based on bolstering the person's own immune system to beat the illness on their own. It was Cooling Charms (reminding Archie so much of Mum) on the fevers to prevent brain damage, Sweat Inducers, Immunity Boosting potions – in the worst cases, mouth tight, Healer Huggins would tell Archie to monitor the patient's condition while she did the tricky work of putting the person in a magically induced coma, hoping the worst would pass without brain damage. Sometimes, rarely, she was successful – but if it was that bad, she usually wasn't.

Archie saw death, especially when the heat of summer came. This was different than past years, Healer Huggins realized – first, five or six cases in one community, then a breakout in another community, then in a third community. Lots of cases in each community, often spaced close in time to each other, rather than the isolated scatter that she had seen before, indicating a change in the disease vector. A human-to-human mutation, she guessed, and they both triple, quadrupled checked themselves before returning to camp every night. Archie was put on tracking movements between the different communities, and he filled notebook after notebook with notes of who travelled where, and when, and who got sick. There was a map, that he was put in charge of sticking pins in each community where there were cases – red pins for sickness, black pins for death, with tiny flags indicating dates.

The number of cases hit the usual fifty-odd, then they kept climbing. On past a hundred cases the numbers climbed, spread over many different communities, and this year's cases were more virulent. So many people died – a total fatality rate of over thirty percent, this year, despite everything that he and Healer Huggins tried (and often failed) to do.

Archie vividly remembered the night that he and Healer Huggins had been in one of the communities, their efforts to save a child, not even six, coming to nothing as she passed away under yet another of Archie's strongest Cooling Charms, while her mother sobbed, clinging to her limp body. He remembered the community elder, strong in the face of the inevitable – he had fought, hard, a tight expression on his face as he gave his last orders through a pounding headache and repeated vomiting to a group of younger mages, the risk of disease transmission nothing compared to the information he had to pass on before he died. The young mother, too, stood out in his memory – she had fought the fever desperately in an effort to return home to her children, but the most that Archie could do for her was carry out her last wishes, keeping her children away from her while she convulsed and Healer Huggins did what she could to ease her passing. She hadn't wanted her children to see her like that, so Archie took them on a walk, sat them down, and told them about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, doing his best to act out all the voices the way Mum used to do for him.

Archie learned from them, from every one of his patients. He learned about pride, about self-sufficiency. Sometimes, that was frustrating – sometimes, Archie wondered if, if the people brought him and Healer Huggins in earlier, there would be more they could do. Healer Huggins, though, put an end to that early on.

"The people here have their own methods of Healing, which are very effective for their needs," she had told him. "They don't like to bother us for anything other than the fevers, nor should we insert ourselves where we're not wanted. That reeks of colonialism. We are not better than them, Archie – we are here to help them, not to impose ourselves on them."

Archie learned about life. He learned that life was short, and every person he met in the Darien Gap lived their lives to the fullest, without regrets, and Archie vowed to do the same. Life, in the Darien Gap, was more brutal than Archie was used to – even aside from the persistent attacks of haemorrhagic fever, there were many creatures (magical and not) who liked to make a snack out of mages, and many other dangers in the rainforest. The possibility of death was always there, ever-present – one mistake with his defensive scans, and he could fall ill. One moment of inattention in the rainforest, and he could be attacked and eaten, one accident and he could be gone. Like his patients, Archie didn't want to leave anything behind, when he went.

And Archie learned about responsibility. He learned from the young mage, only his age, who, having lost both of her parents to the fevers, immediately took responsibility for her younger siblings, grief still lingering in her eyes while she was worked out how to put their next meal on the table. He learned from the circle of mages who had smoothly stepped up into running the village when the community elder passed on, many of whom had never been involved in village governance before. He learned about doing what he could, what was in his power to do, and he learned about duty. Between easing fevers, administering potions, and casting monitoring charms ad nauseum, Archie learned – if there was something in his power to do, that could help things, he had the obligation to do it.

With all that, Archie barely had any time for the letters from home. There was one from Harry, asking him whether she should meet with Hermione – he hadn't really thought much about it before he dashed off a reply, telling her yes, yes, meet with Hermione, Hermione was his very best friend in the world, and he had confidence that she could carry it off. And even if she couldn't, Archie would work it out. He had gone down this path before, and he could fix it if it went wrong. It seemed to have gone fine, at any rate – from the letter afterwards, Harry had gotten along well with her, and Hermione was now interning at a clinic in the Lower Alleys.

Closer to his birthday, Archie opened another package, holding one of those incredibly rare Two-Way Mirrors. It had been a delight to see Harry, to see his family again, even if he only just remembered to Metamorphize his face to match Harry's at the last instant. The Two-Way Mirror proved useful, anyway – once the Wizarding Colombian government put the formal Quarantine in place in the Darien Gap, worried that the climbing cases of haemorrhagic fever would spread further, there was no other way for him to get word home.

Harry told him, through the Two-Way Mirror, about the attack on the Quidditch World Cup. His mouth had tightened, his mind flashing back to his second year, to the things that Hermione had told him to watch for. From what Harry said, though, it wasn't the SOW Party. The tone of the pamphlets they had thrown out were wrong, she said, they were too extremist, and too many SOW Party supporters had been caught unawares in the attack. The attacks were broadly reported in the Daily Prophet, and with both the Minister for Magic and Lord Riddle condemning them, Archie cautiously relaxed. It was probably an isolated incident, he told himself. It was probably fine.

With his hands full of his work in the Darien Gap, Archie didn't have time to think about Mum, about the ruse. He didn't have the energy to worry about it, and as the Quarantine wore on, he knew he must have looked like hell from the quick furrow of Harry's brow when they talked, the slight hint of worry in her voice. But even if he had never worked harder, even if he was often sad, even if life was often sombre and difficult, even if he was often terrifyingly angry at the injustice of the fevers and who it picked to take away, he had never felt more right, either. This was where Archie was most himself, Arcturus Rigel Black in the middle of a Healer's tent, yelling at fool researchers to be careful, comforting sick and often dying people with smiles and stories and spells, doing what he could to help. This was where he belonged, and a part of him had never been happier.

Returning to Britain was complicated. Not the travel arrangements – he had gotten a Portkey out to Bogota, then flown to Salvador, then to Marrakech, then the two Portkey transfers back to London. If he had waited, he could have cut two transfers with a Bogota to New York City flight, then straight to London, but New York only flew to London once a week, and the timing just didn't work out, not if he wanted a week at home before returning to AIM.

Wizarding Britain was complicated, because he felt very different, stepping out of the Portkey Hub as Rigel Black. He hugged Dad with a happy smile and a bit of delighted chatter about how glad he was to be home, how he couldn't wait to taste the cake Dad had made for him to celebrate his return, but it all felt wrong, and Rigel Black itched against his skin, thorny and uncomfortable.

It was all wrong, Archie realized, because he was pretending to be someone he wasn't. He wasn't Rigel Black, just like he wasn't Harry Potter. The body that he was living in, that he would have to live in for the next four years, was not his own, and he hated that. He hated this body, especially when he had grown to like how he looked as himself. He liked the fact that he looked like Dad, he liked his steely grey eyes, he liked his winged brows that couldn't have come from anyone except Mum. He even liked that when he looked down his nose at someone, his lip curled up, he looked like the old Black Lords – though, he would be turning that look at entirely different people than the old Black Lords did.

He hated having to pretend that he had ever seen Hogwarts. He hated the fact that he basically had the Marauder's Map memorized for no reason other than, since he hadn't actually seen the castle, he needed the knowledge to carry off conversations about school with Dad. He hated pretending that he was a Slytherin – if the Hat had ever given him that choice, Archie was pretty sure he would have bailed, taken the train straight home that day. He hated having to pretend that Harry's friends were his friends, when he barely knew them, he had only met them once and he had, at best, ambivalent feelings about the lot of them.

He hated lying to Dad. He hated the divide that the ruse had drawn between the two of them. He hated not being able to share his real life with Dad, he hated having to pretend that he was Rigel Black, who had done so many amazing things at Hogwarts but who had also suffered so much. He hated the looks of concern that passed Dad's face every so often, when he thought Archie wasn't paying attention. Come to think of it, he hated lying to Hermione, and Chess, too, and there all he lied about was his name – his name, and maybe, for Hermione, a few other things.

Archie liked being an actor, but no one believed that the actor was his role – no one ever believed that Archie was Anybodys, or Puck, or Jem Finch, or Enjolras, or Hale. Being Rigel Black, being Harry Potter was different, because that was who people actually believed him to be.

After the Darien Gap, the differences only hit him harder. This was Archie, wasting time, living with regrets. This was Archie, building walls between himself and the people he loved. This was Archie, failing to live life to the fullest, even if he was far closer to his dreams than he would have been otherwise.

This was Archie who, while he would never tell Harry this, simply didn't care that much if the ruse fell apart. It was almost never there for John, and Archie would figure it out. They could figure it out, together, come what may, if it happened. But this was also Archie, who certainly didn't want to leave AIM, and this was Archie, who loved Harry Potter, and this was a world which would destroy Harry if they ever found out what they had done. This was Archie, who was in so deep that he didn't see any other path available to him, now. He would never fit in Rigel's boots, just as Harry would never fit in his sneakers.

This was Archie, getting on a plane with something like relief, even if he was three inches shorter than he should be, with the wrong face, the wrong eyes. This was Archie saying goodbye to his aunt and uncle, not to Dad, for another four months in America. This was Archie, running away from his complicated feelings, taking a seat beside the girl that he was pretty sure he loved.

She had only grown more beautiful over the summer, he thought. Her pretty brown hair, tucked in her usual French braid, was streaked with golden highlights from the sun, and her skin was lightly tanned, probably from her family's annual vacation in France.

"'Mione, my dear," he greeted her with his most charming smile. "How was the rest of your summer? I barely heard from you since you started the internship!"

She turned to look at him, and there was a pause as she eyed him carefully, cautiously, no hint of a smile on her lovely face. A suspicious look, an angry look – a look that told Archie that she was chewing something over about him, that something had made her very upset. About him.

Archie tilted his head, his smile fading a little. He hesitated, before trying again, his voice soft. "'Mione?"

She sniffed a little, and turned away from him, looking out the window at the planes, the tarmac outside. Archie bit his lip. Something was wrong, something was bothering her, and she wouldn't look at him. He reached over, taking one warm, slight hand in his, only for her to pull away roughly. "Hermione, my darling, what's wrong?"

She didn't even look at him. "Later," she said, her voice stiff and cold, and Archie knew from the tone of her voice that he would get nothing else from her. Not until she was ready.

Whatever this was, it was bad. Archie sucked in a deep breath, hurt, but turned to face forward. He couldn't know what was bothering her unless she talked to him about it. Instead, he pulled out a book, a copy of T.H. White's The Once and Future King, and settled in, trying to read while watching her surreptitiously from the corner of his eye.

She wouldn't look at him. She watched the world pass outside their tiny port window, watching as they took off, as they soared through the clouds and turned westwards to America. After they reached cruising altitude, she pulled out a CD player and a pair of headphones, promptly clapping them over her ears as she looked back out the window.

A few stray strands of hair, chestnut brown and gold, were escaping her tight braid, haloing around her face. Archie itched to smooth them back, tucking them back into her braid. Her eyes were big, brown, and they were probably what Archie had first fallen in love with. Right now, though, they were creased with cold, unyielding rage, and Archie had no idea what to do about that, how he would fix that. Her lips, too, were full and pink, though her mouth was pursed. He ached to make that look disappear.

Archie didn't read much. He was too worried, too distracted by her. She fell asleep, somewhere over the Atlantic, her face pressed against the hard side of the plane. Archie transfigured her a pillow from his spare handkerchief, trying to slide it between her face and the wall, only for her to wake up. She glared at him, shoved the pillow back at him wordlessly, and Archie didn't dare try again.

When they reached AIM, she followed him, a silent, disapproving ghost. She followed him across the bright, green campus grounds to Pettingill Hall, their home for the past three years and for the next four. She followed him as he went indoors, went up to the fourth floor, which they shared with the fifth-years, until he found the door marked Harry Potter, registered his magical signature to it once more, and opened the door to a familiar room. His room, with the same stars plastered over the ceiling.

She followed him inside and closed the door behind her.

"Hermione," Archie protested, his eyes going to the shut door. She wasn't allowed in his room, not with the door shut – after their conversation next year, she had always treated him as a boy, no questions asked, and that meant doors stayed open.

"Quiet," she snapped, and Archie swore that he could see her anger, rippling off her in heat waves. Her expression was beyond being upset – it was beyond anger, nothing that Archie had ever seen her wear before. "You don't want the whole dorm to hear what I'm about to ask you, and you had best be honest with me. That is not an option, do you understand? I will have the truth from you, this time."

Archie swallowed thickly, having a very bad feeling about what was about to happen. "Ask," he choked out, his throat suddenly full of sawdust, sawdust and sandpaper.

She stared at him, face pale, bright brown eyes lingering on his face. "Are you Harriett Potter, or are you Arcturus Rigel Black?"

Chapter Text

Archie took a step back, sinking slowly onto his bed. Well, this was bad. This was very bad, though he also had a strange sense of relief. If Hermione was this angry, and she had asked that question, then she had probably worked it out already. She was looking for confirmation of her ideas, not questioning him. He could drop everything, right now, and just take what came, start fixing it. Archie had done this before, with John – he could fix this!

But Harry's green eyes, a little concerned, popped in his memory. What if she didn't already have it? What if she was on a completely different track, and Archie ruined it by confirming the entirely wrong thing?

"Why—" Archie coughed, then cleared his throat. He tried for a smile, though he was sweating, and he knew that Hermione could tell that he was flustered. "Why would you ask me something like that?"

"Don't play games with me, Arcturus, or is it Rigel?" Hermione fired back, her brown eyes sparking. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. "Your cousin is nowhere near the actor that you are, did you know? I met up with her in Diagon Alley, as I'm sure you very well know. She was good, but she wasn't you. Her flirting wasn't natural, she was far too awkward when I first ran into her, and she persisted in telling me all about the SOW Party, as if she had no idea that I've been the Advocacy and Policy Chair of the British Students Association for two years running. And then, do you know what?"

"What?" Archie grimaced. That letter. That stupid letter! He should have thought it through, before he sent it, but he had been so busy and he just didn't think of it. And it was Harry, he was so used to her just taking things and running with them! But she didn't know enough, Archie realized. If Harry had been telling Hermione about the SOW Party, then she definitely didn't know enough.

"Then, she took me to a lovely clinic in the Lower Alleys," Hermione's voice was soft, deadly. "And I know you, Arcturus or Rigel or whatever you call yourself. I know you didn't know about this clinic, because if you did, you would have talked my ear off about it. You wouldn't just forget to mention something like that, not to me. And then I started thinking, because a lot of things about you never made sense. You're not especially enthusiastic about Potions, yet you went out of your way to do an internship at the Potions Guild. You never managed to explain that paper you wrote to me – everything you said sounded like it came straight from the article. You were far more excited about your cousin's internship in Wizarding Colombia than you were about your Potions internship. And that leaves out your relationship with your family."

She had a point with the internships. Archie had never been able to satisfactorily explain Harry's research, because he didn't bloody understand it, and he should have known that Hermione would remember. And he did go on a little too long, at the end of last year, about Rigel's internship in Wizarding Colombia, but he thought he had covered it up by talking about how jealous he was. Damn it. But he had no idea what she meant about his relationship with his family, and his eyebrows furrowed a little in surprise, annoyance.

"What about my family?" Archie snapped defensively, though his tone was almost hurt, too.

She gave him a pitying sort of look, thought her lip was still curled in scorn. "You almost never talk about your Mum and Dad, or your younger sister, did you know? With you, it's Uncle Sirius this, Uncle Sirius that. And your Aunt Diana – you said you were close, but for what happened last year? Your obsession, our heist, your reaction to everything you learned? That all makes quite a lot more sense if you're Arcturus Rigel Black, doesn't it?"

There was a moment of silence, as Archie bit his lip and took his time to think. He took as much time to think as he thought he needed, because this was serious, this was... well, this was worse than John, who had known forever. John had never known Archie without knowing about the ruse, and John had a weird relationship with lying anyway.

Hermione valued honesty. She valued honesty and loyalty and trust, and Archie had betrayed her.

"Well?" Hermione demanded, impatient.

Archie held up a hand, still thinking it over. Confirming everything for Hermione would be a betrayal of Harry, but he had already done that once, hadn't he? And it had been fine – over three years, and John hadn't been anything but helpful. John was a good listening ear, he had given Archie good advice, and he was a bottomless well in which secrets didn't come out. Hermione was his best friend, and she could be the same.

And was there any point to denying it? Hermione would not have confronted him, not like this, without being almost certain about her conclusions. Hermione was furious with him: furious, not merely angry, not like last year when she apparently found out he was a girl. He had smoothed it over then – and that smoothing over was probably a big part what made her so furious now. Shit.

He didn't see any way out, not from this. There was no way to address those conclusions – not when she had met Harry, when she was perfectly aware that the person that she had met over the summer was not Archie. There were too many things that didn't match up, and he couldn't come up with a lie that addressed everything. Not when she knew enough to guess.

He let go of Harry Potter, letting his shape reform as himself, as Arcturus Rigel Black - tall, grey-eyed, with winged brows and a leaner form. Hermione gasped, half betrayal and half outrage, as Archie quietly fixed his clothes to cover his wrists and ankles, fitting him perfectly instead of a little loosely as they did before. At least he was wearing clothes he had bought for this body – this conversation would be much more awkward if he were also wearing clothes that were too small.

"I go by Archie," he said, a little uncertain, as Hermione's eyes filled with tears. He was up, instantly, reaching for her. "Oh, don't cry, please don't cry."

She shoved him away, roughly. "Don't touch me, Archie," she hissed, wiping her eyes with one sleeve, stumbling backwards. "You lied to me – and when I started questioning you, you lied to me again. You lied to me, you misled me about fundamental things about you. You made up a story about being trans to avoid telling me the truth!"

"I did—" Archie started, then he stopped, sucking in a deep breath. He had lied, yes, but not about the fundamental parts of himself. "I didn't lie to you about most things, Hermione, not about the most important things! I still – I'm me, 'Mione. I never lied about so many things about myself – Healing, movies, theatre, the books I like to read, the things I like to do. What does a name change matter, compared to all we've gone through together, all we've done together?"

"Movies!" Hermione snarled, her lip curling, her face an open display of tears and heartbreak. Archie wanted to hug her, hold her, but she had shoved him away once already. Her voice was scaling up in pitch, and suddenly Archie was very glad that the door was shut. "I broke the law for you, for you and your bloody fucking lies, and you want to talk to me about how you didn't lie to me about liking movies? You're a pureblood – a British, Book of Gold noble pureblood!"

"So what?" Archie burst out, face crumpling a little. "So what if I am, Hermione? I still – I'm still-"

He had no idea what he was trying to say. He was a pureblood, and he was a Book of Gold noble pureblood, but what did that matter? He was still himself, wasn't he? He took another breath.

"Still what?!"

"I'm not a pureblood supremacist, 'Mione," he finished, struggling to keep how upset he was from his voice. He fished around in his pocket for his handkerchief, holding it out to her, even if it felt like he needed it himself. "Not every pureblood believes in pureblood supremacy, not even in Britain. The Dumbledores, the Shacklebolts, the Shafiqs—"

"Don't you think I know that?" Hermione turned away from him, ignoring his proffered handkerchief, wiping her face with the sleeve of her cardigan. "You wouldn't be here if you were one, but you still benefit from it, you still wear your privilege like a bloody fucking cloak everywhere you go! What are you doing here? Are you just – just slumming it?"

"Slumming it?" Archie repeated, letting the hand holding his handkerchief drop. He folded it back up, with quick movements, but didn't put it away. He didn't know what those words meant, but by the way Hermione had said them, they weren't a good thing. "I don't know—"

"Just seeing what it's like, on the other side?" Hermione laughed, her normally musical peals of laughter turned harsh. "Learning about what it's like to be us, to be lesser-blooded, knowing that you'll never have to actually be one of us? You'll go back to Britain, and you'll never have to deal with the discrimination again – this is just a game to you!"

"It isn't!" Archie cried, now tearing up himself. "That's not it at all! I'm here because I wanted to be a Healer, 'Mione, and I took my cousin's place here because she's taking mine, at Hogwarts, all right?! She wanted to go to Hogwarts – I wanted to come here, for Healing – the switch was her idea! Please, Hermione, you have to understand—"

"No, you have to understand, Archie," Hermione said, whirling around to face him again. The way she said his name was low, vicious, slightly mocking, and Archie couldn't help but hurt. Her face was tear-stained, but her teeth were bared in fury, and everything Archie seemed to say was just making it worse. How could he fix this? How would he fix this? "You could have come to AIM as yourself. You have that opportunity available to you."

"But Harry—"

"Your cousin couldn't, but by doing what you did, by avoiding discrimination, you and your cousin chose to perpetuate the system that keeps hurting people like me." Hermione jabbed at herself with a finger. "And then, more importantly, you used me! You lied to me, and then you used me to help you break into St. Mungo's to find out things about your mother! Do you have any idea what could have happened to me if we were caught?"

"That would have been bad," Archie admitted, stepping forward and trying, cautiously, to reach for her again. "But we had it planned, 'Mione, it was planned to a T, and it went perfectly!"

"No, you absolute and complete idiot!" Hermione screeched at him, taking another step out of his reach. "If we were caught, since you're a pureblood, I would have taken all the blame, because that's how the system works! And you would have gotten off scot-free! I thought—I thought—"

She fell silent, crying, and Archie let his hand fall, chewing on his lip. He had never thought of it that way, but she was probably right, especially because he was a Black. The air between them was sharp, jagged, filled with the sound of their ragged, pained, breathing. Archie didn't know what to say.

Hermione took a deep, steadying breath, bringing herself back under control as she wiped her streaming eyes again. Her voice, when she spoke again, was pure ice. "What on earth was important enough to you, to you and your cousin, that you broke the law to get her into Hogwarts?"

There was a pointed pause, before Archie answered, looking away from her. "Master Snape. The Potions Master. My cousin loves Potions, see – she's apprenticing under him, now, the youngest apprentice in centuries…"

"And she couldn't have done the same here?" Hermione's voice was deadly quiet. "Or at Ilvermorny, or, even better, at Cascadia, which is known for its Potions program?"

"I—I don't—" Archie wiped his eyes with his own handkerchief. "Master Snape is the best."

Hermione turned, putting one hand on Archie's doorknob. "You're a selfish bastard, Arcturus Rigel Black," she whispered, and Archie, face crumpling at the unexpected sting to her words, threw himself at her, pushed himself between her and the door. "You and your cousin both."

"No, 'Mione, please, wait," he begged, dropping onto his knees for good measure. "Just – just hear me out, all right?"

"What could you possibly say that would make this better, Archie?" Her voice was icy, but she stopped, looking down at him, a peculiar expression on her face as she watched him. Archie had never been on his knees in front of anyone before, but she had stopped, and that was a chance, right? A chance, and Archie had always been good at taking his chances.

"Just—Just think of all the good that came out of the ruse, too," he tried, trying to make his voice light, pleading, instead of merely desperate. "Without the ruse, I wouldn't have met you, I wouldn't have met John or Chess or so many people and Hermione— Hermione, I– You're the most beautiful person in the world, and I love you!"

She slapped him.

"Get out of the way, Archie," she hissed, drawing her wand, and he was so stunned he did, scrambling out of her way while cradling his face with one hand. She opened the door and disappeared, and only a few seconds later Archie heard a door slam down the hall from him.

Archie sat, on the floor beside his bed, in stunned silence for a minute or two, then he pointed his wand at the door to shut it. He curled up, put his head in his arms, and started crying.

"Harry," John's voice called from the hallway, as he pounded on the door. "Hey, open up."

It had been a couple hours, but Archie was still sitting on the floor, his arms around his knees. His tears had passed, turning into a deep, numb feeling, all over his body, even as his body ached. His brain wasn't working, it wasn't coming up with a magical solution for him – he couldn't take back words that he had already said, and what was the point anyway?

Everything he had said to Hermione was true.

"Hey, Harry, I'm serious." John knocked again, and his voice was worried. "Look, I know something happened with Hermione – Chess is knocking at her door, too. Come on, man, let's talk."

If anything, it was the mention of Chess checking on Hermione that kick-started Archie's brain. Hermione knew. Hermione knew, and Archie hadn't done anything to swear her to secrecy! Archie hadn't even checked to see if she would tell anyone!

Moving hurt, and Archie winced as he stretched out his legs and pushed himself to his feet. He paused at the door, considering whether to put his Rigel Black body back on, but he couldn't be bothered. It was just John, after all – John knew what he looked like.

He had to talk to Hermione. To beg for forgiveness, to work it out, but also to make sure she didn't tell anyone. Oh, hell.

"Come on in," Archie said, his voice raspy as he opened the door and tilted his head, letting his friend in. There was no one else in the corridor, no one watching, though John's bulk filled the doorway. Archie was distantly amused to note that in his true body, he was taller than his friend by an inch or so, though John had built up muscle that Archie would never have. Archie could tell from the way that John's eyes lingered on his own, the brush of his mind, that he knew he was upset and had been crying.

John shut the door behind him, before he went and sat down in Archie's desk chair with a heavy sigh. "All right, what happened, Arch?"

Archie sighed, his shoulders slumping forward. "Hermione found out."

"Ah." John leaned back in Archie's chair, thinking a little. "That couldn't have been good."

"It wasn't," Archie admitted, sitting heavily on his bed. "It… really wasn't. And I have to talk to her – I can't – it's Hermione, you know? I didn't – I have to make sure she doesn't tell anyone."

"I'd suggest you don't approach her like that," John commented dryly. "She wouldn't take well to it and wouldn't see whatever else you said as genuine. But I don't think you have to worry – Hermione cares about you, and even if she might be upset right now, she wouldn't betray you like that. And who would she tell, anyway? She's newblood, she has no connections in Wizarding Britain. It would be your word against hers – and her word is only worth, what, half of yours in a British wizarding court of law?"

"Three-quarters," Archie corrected quietly, the realization hitting him like a sledgehammer. It literally did not matter if Hermione told anyone, because all Archie had to do was deny it, and that would be the end of it. Archie was a pureblood, and a noble of the highest order, and Hermione – Hermione was no one. It didn't matter. It didn't matter at all that she knew.

That was not a comforting thought, even if some part of him thought it should be. She couldn't threaten Harry, though, and wasn't that a good thing? It rubbed against him, all wrong, and he made a face.

"Not helpful?" John's voice was a little apologetic, though Archie didn't think he should be. Archie needed to hear it, to understand. The power difference between purebloods and lesser-bloods was so huge, and Archie hadn't realized it before, not in such stark terms. As a newblood, Hermione literally could do nothing to him – and by extension, to Harry. She was powerless, compared to the authority he had by virtue of his blood, by his nobility.

"It's fine," Archie found himself saying, shaking his head roughly. "I'll – I'll find a way to fix it."

"Don't think that'll be as easy as you're hoping." John's smile was tinged with pity. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Archie thought about it a little, but after a minute, shook his head again. "No, but thanks for asking. I appreciate it."

"Let me know if you need to talk about it though," John said, pulling out his wand with a small smile. "Now, let me get rid of that red mark on your face – I'm guessing she slapped you – and I'll reduce the swelling around your eyes, too. It's almost time for the Welcome Feast, and you have to come to that."

Archie smiled, a little gingerly, but let him do it. "I could have hidden it with my usual body, but do I really have to do the Welcome Feast? I'm not really hungry, and I don't really want to deal with everyone."

"No, you have to come, it's Triwizard year." John's eyes had lit up, his smile widening. "They're going to be explaining the Trials and everything, and you have to hear that. Come sit with Chess and I and the Duelling crew, it's going to be great."

"What's a Triwizard year?" Archie asked, his smile feeling a little weak even to himself, though John's evident enthusiasm was bubbling over. He felt John's Healing charm taking care of the swelling of his eyes, and the sting of the slap on his face was disappearing.

"A Triwizard Tournament year," John corrected, admiring his handiwork. "It's only the biggest interschool competition in the wizarding world – played every four years. We're a little unlucky because, since we're fourth-years, we'll only get the chance at the one, but you'll love it, I swear. Chess and I have been training all summer for this, and rumour has it that they're letting Hogwarts back in, for the first time in forty years, so it's going to be good. Come on, Harry Potter disguise on, Feast time!"

"An interschool competition?" Archie pushed, Metamorphizing into his Harry Potter body, and following him out the door, but John just grinned and didn't tell him anything more.

Chess joined them at a table full of John's duelling friends, many of whom were also her dormmates or former dormmates – Kel, now a fifth-year, was there, exchanging meaningful glances with Neal, a newly minted seventh-year, sitting across from her. Sixth-year Daine Sarrasri was grinning beside her. Faleron King was there, Merric Hollyrose, and Seaver Tasride, none of whom Archie knew well but all of whom John greeted with good cheer. Archie caught sight of Hermione as she came into the dining hall, but she merely looked at him, snorted, and stalked off to another table.

His face fell.

"No Hermione, this year?" Kel asked kindly, one light brown eyebrow raised.

"Nah, she and Harry had a fight of some kind." John shrugged breezily, a look of total unconcern on his face. "Harry wouldn't tell me what about, so I don't know, because he finally figured out Occlumency and he's shielding. Chess, any idea?"

Chess tilted her head to one side, then shrugged. "No, Hermione didn't tell me. The most I got was that, in the middle of their fight, Harry apparently confessed his undying love for her."

"Wow, really?!" Merric's head snapped to stare at Archie. "I mean, I knew you had a thing for her, the whole world knew you had a thing for her, but your timing is terrible."

"I thought it was kind of romantic," Chess said lightly, then she frowned. "That is romantic, is it not? In the middle of a fight, confess your love, happily ever after ending, right?"

"You think everything is romantic, sweetheart," Faleron drawled, with a kind smile, the hint of something soft in his eyes as he looked at her. "That only happens in the movies, not in real life. Though, if that's what you're looking for…"

Chess wrinkled her nose at him. "No, thank you."

Faleron sighed heavily, though there was a hint of amusement on his face, too. "A new year, and she's already shooting me down."

"A tradition, at this point," Merric chipped in, slapping his cousin on the shoulder. "Try again for Midwinter Ball."

"Who has time for that? It's a Triwizard year." Faleron's face lit up, and he leaned a little across the table to grab Chess' hand. "What say you, Francesca, darling? If I win a spot on the team, will you go out with me?"

"Don't be an ass, Fal," John broke in, reaching over to smack Faleron's hand, even as Chess pulled her hand away. "You're not making it through the Trials, so get your head out of the clouds."

"So harsh, John," Seaver commented, but his dark eyes slid across to Faleron and he smirked. "But true."

Faleron grimaced. "I'll show you. All of you."

"What's the Triwizard Tournament?" Archie asked, a little lost even as he listened to their conversation. He had never sat without Hermione at the Welcome Feast before, and he didn't know most of John's friends all that well. He supposed they must be Chess' other friends, too, by now.

The rest of the table exchanged looks, but John just grinned. "Don't tell him, guys – let him find out during the speeches. Those are starting soon, anyway – look, the buffet is coming out, let's get our food, and we'll talk it out later."

Archie scowled, but he didn't have the energy to argue over it. Instead, he looked around, scanning the dining room for Hermione's bushy hair. He spotted her, across the room, sitting with a group of people from the British Students Association. They all had their heads together, talking, and he saw that her expression was serious, considering, no smile on her face, though her tablemates all seemed to be excited.

The whole room was buzzing. As he stood up, crossing the room with John on one side, heart aching that it wasn't Hermione beside him, he noticed that people were excited, more so than usual. The first day of school was always exciting, especially for the new first-years, but it was exciting because they got to catch up with their friends, they got to see people they hadn't seen for months and it was a new school year. This was a different kind of excitement – this was anticipation, a nervous energy, and Archie couldn't help but notice that he had found himself in a group of people who were getting a lot of covert looks from the rest of the student populace.

"Um, John," he murmured, poking his friend in the side. "Any reason people keep looking at us?'

John glanced around him. "Triwizard year," he said again, as if it explained everything. Archie must have looked annoyed, because he grinned. "They're sizing up the top contenders. Duellers always do well in the Trials."

"What are the Trials?" Archie hissed back, but John didn't answer as he picked up a plate and started piling it with food.

"Be patient," Chess cut in, with a small smile, though the light of excitement shone in her eyes, too. "I think you'll like it. John and I have a few surprises in store – I really hope we do well."

"We?"

But Chess merely turned away with a secretive, quicksilver half-smile, heaping her plate with leafy salad, vegetables, with some chicken skewers on top. Archie made a noise of frustration, but followed her, heaping his plate with his favourites: macaroni salad, coleslaw, pulled pork.

Out of what Archie could only assume was a desire to torment him with the suspense, the rest of the table didn't discuss the Tournament or the Trials over dinner, but Archie knew they were all thinking about it. John and Chess were no exception – both of them were examining Kel and Neal closely all through dinner, and Archie caught Kel and Neal doing the same to them. Miri Fraser, another sixth-year and one of Daine's friends, had taken the empty seat that should have been Hermione's. Archie chanced another look across the room at her – she was mostly through her dinner now, her expression thoughtful as she listened to something one of her BSA friends said to her. She was nodding, agreeing with something.

Plates were finished quicker than usual for the Welcome Feast, and Archie thought he could feel the nervous anticipation ramping as people started talking louder, as speculation started to build. He could overhear snatches from other tables, here and there, though he couldn't make much of it.

"Queenscove is a lock – he's a seventh-year, now, and his brothers—"

"But Mindelan – she won the North American Duelling League circuit last year…"

"Duelling circuit results are nothing when it comes to Triwizard, though – what do you think of Kowalski? Young, but I hear he's wily."

John smirked when he overheard the last one, and Chess was looking around the room, a thoughtful expression on her face. Kel was poker-faced, using a bit of cornbread to soak up the last of her barbeque sauce, while Neal cheerfully ignored all the comments around him, spooning up his rice pudding with relish, his vegetables lying forgotten on his plate beside him.

"Eat your vegetables," he heard Kel scold him. "You're of age, why do I still have to tell you this?"

"What else are best friends for?" Neal smiled, a little impish, as Kel rolled her eyes. Archie looked away, back at Hermione, but she was still absorbed in conversation with her other friends. He sighed heavily.

"You'll figure it out," Chess said softly beside him, eyeing Hermione's table with some interest as well. "Hermione cares about you. She just has to remember that. Whatever you were fighting about, you'll work it out."

"Thanks, Chess," Archie replied, with a weak smile. Obviously, she had no idea what they had been fighting about, because if she did, she would know it wasn't as easy as that. But her faith in him was nice.

Fortunately, Archie didn't need to wait much longer. Headmistress Picquery stood up, waving her wand in a small circle to conjure a podium for herself. She stepped forward, resting her hands on it, looking around.

A hush fell around the room, and Archie glanced over at Hermione, again. Like most of the students, Hermione was looking at the Headmistress, but her face held none of the confusion that Archie had. Her club friends must have filled her in about the Tournament, because she was poker-faced, serious.

"Welcome back to another year at the American Institute of Magic," the Headmistress announced, a mischievous glint in her eye. "For those of you who are returning, welcome back – for those of you here for the first time, welcome, and I hope you will find more to school than—"

A loud groan cut through her speech, from a green-clad student at a table close to the podium, and the Headmistress grinned. Half the students in the dining hall burst into laughter. "Well, now, I suppose that you can all get the usual speech and the school rules from your class monitors, can't you?"

"Yes!" The same green-clad student in the front yelled, and the Headmistress laughed lightly. "I will personally see to it that every Transfigurations Mastery student at school has the rulebook if it means you'll open the Tournament, Headmistress Picquery!"

"Patience is a virtue, Mr. Foster," Headmistress Picquery replied, her eyes laughing, but she turned to the rest of the room. "But very well. As nearly all of you are aware, this is a Tournament year. For those of you who already know about the Tournament, please do be patient while I provide a brief explanation of it for everyone else. Then, Mr. Foster, I'll go through the AIM selection process and open the competition.

"First, the Triwizard Tournament itself is an interschool competition between all magical schools worldwide. The game itself is, at its core, a war game, with each school submitting a team of three. The goal of the game is to locate the other school's keystone and destroy it – or to eliminate all the other school's players before they eliminate us or destroy our keystone. Player elimination means putting the other player in a position where they cannot continue play, which usually means knocking them unconscious. In the last forty years, further development of the game has allowed each team to expand to include a support team of Healers, strategists, rule compliance officers, equipment managers, and an alternate, usually the Captain."

Archie heard whispers breaking out again across the room, which he guessed must be from those who knew less about the Tournament – more excitement, more speculation, a few people who were whispering about trying out.

"However, I want to impress upon you, especially those of you that are less familiar with the Tournament," Headmistress Picquery continued, her eyes lingering on the table of British students, "that the Tournament can be dangerous. The basic rule can be summarized as follows: you are not permitted to permanently disfigure, maim or kill another player. As you can imagine, as mages, there is a great deal more we can do to each other without engaging those rules – AIM has, over the years, developed a reputation for taking big risks and bigger injuries. There will be duelling, but it will be unlike what many of you are used to on the Duelling circuit. I urge you, those of you considering trying out, to think it over carefully. Only those of you who are fourth-year and above will be permitted to try out – the rest of you will need to wait another four years for the next Tournament.

"That said, there is great honour in playing in these games as well. The last time AIM took home the Triwizard Cup was twenty years ago, when our all-women's team of Patricia Ryan, Nancy Herrington, Valerie Foster, and Lily Evans won the Tournament." Archie started in his seat, but his surprise was drowned out by a roar of cheering and clapping. Professor Ryan, Archie's No-Maj Studies teacher, gave a small wave and wry smile from the head table to the room. Lily Evans, the Headmistress had said – Archie knew his Aunt Lily, or he thought he did, and he had no idea that she had played in something like this! Aunt Lily was powerful, of course, but when he thought about war games, naturally he thought about Dad, about Uncle James and Uncle Remus, never Aunt Lily. And Professor Ryan knew Aunt Lily?!

Aunt Lily had never mentioned this, and Professor Ryan had never said anything, either. He supposed it had been a long time ago, and Aunt Lily also didn't write to anyone in America. She had apparently left it all behind her, though Archie now wondered why. She had had a life here – a successful one. Why had she left?

It was too much for him to process at that moment, and he shoved it aside to focus on Headmistress Picquery's speech. "Those of you who are considering putting yourself forward, I strongly suggest you speak to Professor Ryan, who will be overseeing the Trials and will be accompanying our team to the host nation. This year, the host will be the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, who will also be participating for the first time in more than forty years."

"I knew it," John muttered, sending Chess a look. She tilted her head to one side, considering, then nodded, even as the room filled with more whispers – these ones unlike those that came before. They were a little anxious, concerned, and a peek over at the British Students Association table showed that many of them were wearing frowns at this information.

Headmistress Picquery held up one hand, and the whispering in the room quieted down a little. "As a result, AIM, like the rest of the North American League and, as far as we know, the rest of the schools, will not be staying at Hogwarts as would be traditional. Alternate accommodations will be made. For now, however, the AIM selection process, the Trials."

Archie leaned forward, almost against his will, as most of the room seemed to do the same. "The AIM Trials are very similar to the games themselves, except they will be one-on-one duels. Just like in the games, anything goes – as long as you do not permanently disfigure, maim, or kill your opponent. Those of you interested in entering the Trials, put your name on this list before September 15th."

She flicked her wand, and a sign-up list appeared on one wall of the dining hall, and Archie could tell that several students were restraining themselves, with difficulty, from lunging at it to put their name on the list. "The Trials will be, first, a round-robin tournament where you will be placed in a pool and will play every other player in your pool. The top sixteen finalists of the pool division will advance onto the elimination bracket, with the top four being assigned as the AIM Team. The team will, as traditional, select their own support staff."

She paused again, and her eyes flickered over to Hermione's table, before she addressed the room. "Now, I urge you to think carefully in deciding whether to enter the Trials – this is not a game in which good grades, even good Defense grades, will be linked to victory. This is an opportunity for many of you to showcase skills and abilities that you have not otherwise shown. Injuries, even serious ones, are expected. As a result, I am also asking that our Healing students, fourth-years and up, who do not choose to either try out or join a bid team, to join the Healing Corps that will be established for the Trials."

Another flick of her wand, and another sheet of paper, this one blue, affixed itself to the wall, several feet away from the Trials signup list. Archie eyed it thoughtfully – he had no interest in trying out himself for the Tournament, he wasn't a fighter, but the Healer Corps sounded interesting. He glanced over at Hermione, but her head was back in discussion with her clubmates from the British Students Association.

"With the Tournament, the annual Quodpot, Quidditch, and Duelling tournaments have been cancelled as the North American League will be focusing its efforts on the Tournament itself. Regular clubs will go on as scheduled and, with that…" Headmistress Picquery smiled down at them all. "I do, indeed, declare the American Institute of Magic Triwizard Trials open!"

Kel and Neal exchanged a look, and stood up, heading over to the lists to add their names. John was there too, almost before Archie realized he had disappeared, and the green-clad student who had interrupted the Headmistress, Foster, was already writing his name across the top of the sign-up sheet. Daine, too, had stood up, walking over to the Healing Corps team to add her name to the list, though she was the only one.

Archie hesitated only for a second before he joined her, searching his pockets for a pen. Healing Corps did sound interesting, and he could always use the practice! And maybe Hermione would sign up, too, and they could work together. It was the sort of thing she would do.

"Not joining a bid team?" Daine asked, scrawling her name across the blue sheet of paper. "I thought you'd be trying to join John's team."

"Bid team?" Archie blinked.

"Yeah, it's not a formal thing, but usually candidates form bid teams," Daine replied, capping her pen and sticking it back in her blue robes as she turned to face him. "The promise is that if they get on, they'll put you on the support team in exchange for your help through the Trials. The bid teams are kept small, though, usually a candidate only has one or two supports – there's a lot of trust involved, and no one wants to make a promise they can't keep."

"You're not joining a bid team?" Archie paused. He could always ask John and Chess about it and decide later. He had a couple weeks.

"No, there's more than one way to skin a cat." Daine shrugged, looking at the crowd now forming in front of the formal sign-up lists. "I want a Healer spot, and the Healing Corps is a good way for me to distinguish myself. And none of the bid teams will take me, anyway – Neal and Kel would have been my best shot, but they turned me down. Ah, well."

"You're not hurt by that?" Archie frowned a little, worried for his older friend. She didn't seem too bothered, but if her friends had turned her down, how could she not be hurt by that?

"Not at all," Daine confirmed with a light smile. "As I said – candidates keep their bid teams small, and for help during the Trials, most people are looking for strategists, not Healers. Neal and Kel are strong, and they know what I can do. If either of them make it through, they'll probably offer me a spot even without a bid promise. Good luck, Harry."

She gave him a wave, and disappeared off into the crowd, joining her friend Miri as they headed out of the dining room together.

Hmm. Archie chanced a glance back over at the table Hermione was sitting at, but it was empty. The whole group of them had disappeared. With a sigh and a lingering glance at the table Hermione was sitting at, he walked back to his own table, where John and Chess were waiting for him.

Over the next two weeks, Archie learned two things.

First, Hermione was mad at him. She was really mad at him – she barely looked at him in any of their classes, instead taking a seat at the exact opposite side of the classroom. John still sat with him, but not having Hermione beside him was… well, it hurt.

He had tried to apologize, nearly every day, but she was having none of it. She was never in her room, or if she was, she refused to open the door. She didn't study in the Pettingill Hall dorms anymore, and was often, he figured out, locked in one of the Seaton Hall study rooms with her friends from the British Students Association. He had tried flowers – he had convinced an upper-year Charms Mastery student to teach him the Orchideous spell, but any time he managed to find her to give them to her, she threw them back in his face.

Her birthday had come and gone, the second week in. He had papered her door, with John and Chess' help as per usual, and he had a present for her. But he didn't manage to speak to her all day; she was in his classes, but she came in right as the classes started, sat in the front, and disappeared immediately after. He hadn't had a choice but to leave her present at her door, and hope she found it.

The next morning, though, he opened the door to find his unopened present, and his face fell. How could he fix it if she wouldn't talk to him?

Chess and John both told him to wait it out. Hermione would come around, they both said – she cared about him, and whatever had happened, that wouldn't change. Without Hermione, he spent a lot of time with them, but hanging out with John and Chess wasn't anything like hanging out with Hermione. With Hermione, they had bonded over a shared love of Healing, over their studies, over Archie's flirting and Hermione's pointed ignoring of the same. John and Chess had their own dynamic, one that Archie was still coming to learn and didn't quite fit with. Being at AIM, without Hermione by his side, that was entirely new to him, and he didn't like it. In fact, he hated it – it felt wrong, miserable, awful.

The second thing that Archie learned was that the Triwizard Tournament was a big deal, to the point where even if most clubs were still technically running, so many people were involved in the Trials that, practically speaking, they weren't truly active. Even theatre – Neal had officially taken a break for at least the first term, as had a third of the club, and in desperation, their new Director, Cliff Burton, had thrown up his hands and said that the Fall production would simply be a talent showcase of whatever the club members still around wanted to perform.

It wasn't like Quodpot, or Quidditch, either. Both Quodpot and Quidditch had school rivalries, but the Triwizard rivalries were bigger, practically political. The North American League schools generally supported each other through at least the first phase of competition, which would, like the Trials, be in pools. This was an opportunity for whole nations to show off their youth, their ideals, and in that, the five North American schools were roughly in line.

With Hogwarts, the shining peak of pureblood supremacy entering for the first time in over forty years, the usual rivalries were only amplified. This was an opportunity for the countries who banned blood discrimination to show that they were still strong, still magically powerful, that their students were still the best. This was a moment for newbloods and halfbloods to profile their strength, to show that they were in no way lesser. This was a chance for British newbloods and halfbloods especially, long since rejected from education in their home country, to show Hogwarts just who, exactly, they had thrown away.

And John and Chess were right in the middle of it.

"It's the last day," John said, shifting back and forth in his seat anxiously. They were in his dorm room, in Pettingill Hall, and in contravention of the rules, John had shut the door. For privacy, he said, lounging on his bed. Chess was sitting at the end of his bed, her legs stretched out before her and her ankles crossed, leaning against the wall, skirt neatly smooth and a notebook in her lap. Archie had taken John's desk chair. "They have until midnight to sign up. Who is on there, so far? Who do we think the hardest contenders are?"

Chess flipped open her notebook, bright pink and decorated with dancing teddy bears, and her pencil had a plastic teddy bear at the end of it. Chess was the weirdest person, Archie had decided. He knew she was a little odd, before, and while she was sweet and romantic, she was positively cutthroat in competition. "Kel and Neal, easily, but hopefully you won't need to deal with them before eliminations. They're generally considered locks for the team. Most of the duellers have put themselves in, but I haven't found out anything unusual about any of the rest. Outside of Duelling, I think Sidney Foster is worth watching. He's supposed to be a Transfigurations prodigy, and his aunt was on the last winning team. Jessica Calderon-Boot and Marshall Wagner have teamed to make a bid, and they're the top students for experimental charms right now – I think they have something up their sleeves. A few fliers from the Quidditch and Quodpot teams, and the entire British Students Association has divvied themselves up into bid teams, too."

"What about Hermione?" Archie asked, ears perking at the mention of the British Students Association. "Is she playing?"

Chess' dark eyes flickered to him and she hesitated a little before replying. "She is – with her marks in Defense, she is probably one of the strongest in that contingent. She's paired with seventh-year Isran Ali as her strategist."

"I'm not worried about Hermione," John waved his hand dismissively. "Or most of the BSA, to be honest. I know her – she's good in Defense, but she has no special skills to speak of—"

"Hermione has a lot of special skills!" Archie interrupted automatically, defensive. "She's a genius, a once-in-a-generation mind, she can learn any spell—"

"Down, Harry." John held his hands up, with a slight smile, while Chess' eyes were a little amused. "That's not what I meant. Hermione is great, but she has no duelling experience, and unless she came into a gift we didn't know about, she's already at a disadvantage. The ones we're worried about are people like Kel, and Neal, who are bringing something different to the table. And me, I guess."

"Definitely you." Chess' smile was confident.

"What do you mean by something different, then?"

John exchanged a glance with Chess, who shrugged and made a flip-flopping gesture with one hand. "Well, what do you know about either of them? About their backgrounds?"

Archie blinked, thinking it through. He knew Neal better than Kel, so he started there. "Neal is a seventh-year, Healing, specializing in emergency Healing, and he's a class monitor. He's an anglophone from Montreal, in Canada, and is fluent in French. He doesn't like eating his vegetables. His family is known for their Aurors. Um, Kel – she's a fifth-year in the Defense Mastery program, she won the North American League Duelling Championship last year. I think she's from Washington, DC."

John and Chess exchanged another look, and Archie got the distinct impression that John was communicating with her mind-to-mind. He nodded, after a second.

"Not bad," John said with a quick grin. "This is all public information, so we'll go ahead and tell you. First, Neal – he's a Queenscove, but his mother is Mei Ling Song. She's Chinese, and an heirloom-caster. He doesn't look Asian, but you know wizarding genetics are weird like that. His brother William takes after their mother more."

"Chinese mages are split into two groups, heirloom-casters and paper-casters," Chess added quietly, fishing out and holding up one of her own paper charms from her skirt pocket. "Heirloom-casters are all descended from the old magic families, and their heirlooms, which is what they call their casting implements, are a closely guarded secret. Boys usually cast with a sword, girls with a fan, though some families choose different implements. Since Neal is descended from the Songs, he has the birthright. He'll be coming into the Trials with a sword."

"As well as a wand, do you think?" John asked, rolling over on his bed onto his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows to look at Chess' notebook, which she lowered for his view.

"My best guess is that he'll have it on him, but he won't be able to use both at once – most swords need two hands to wield, but if his brothers are any indication, he will have some fencing experience too." She tapped at her notebook with the end of her pen, thinking about it. "He'll use magic at a distance, heavy on elemental magic, but he'll want to get in close to use physical attacks as well."

Archie choked, thinking about Hermione. "This isn't free-dueling?"

"Of course, it is," John replied, with an excited tilt to his eyebrow. "The Triwizard Tournament is the only time most of us get to do it, since the formal Duelling circuit outlawed it a century ago."

"But Hermione—"

"Hermione will be fine. That's what the Healing Corps is for – you've signed up for that, haven't you?"

Archie fidgeted in his spot in John's desk chair. "Not yet. I was going to ask about your bid team…"

John and Chess exchanged another look, staring at each other for another minute or so. John was definitely reading her mind, Archie realized, and Chess was looking down at her notebook when John turned back to Archie.

"Harry, I'm really sorry, but I think you should sign up for the Healer Corps," John said, sitting up and looking look him seriously in the eye. Even if his voice was kind, it was also firm. "I don't want to make promises I can't keep, and at this stage of the competition, I don't really need a Healer. Chess and I have been working for this all summer—"

"For years," Chess interrupted, looking up, her tone unusually vehement. "Years of my life went into preparing for this, even if I didn't know it. We are making it onto that team."

"Chess!" John snapped, even as she shrugged.

"Harry isn't going to join another bid team, not this late," Chess replied, leaning back in her spot and relaxing against the wall. "It's the last day – all the top contender teams are formed."

John glared at her for a few minutes, until Chess huffed a little and looked away. Either way, they didn't want to share their strategies with him, and Archie felt a little awkward as he realized the depth to which he didn't fit in with his other two friends. Had he really isolated himself with Hermione so much over the last couple years? Even if Archie was their friend, too he wasn't a part of this, and they weren't Hermione, either.

No one replaced Hermione.

"You can go sign up for the Healing Corps tonight," John said, his tone decisive as he manfully tried to smooth the waters. "Seaton House will be open late for last minute sign-ups, and Daine's on it, so you'll be in good company. It'll be good Healing experience, and you'll have a frontline view of all the best parts!"

There was an awkward pause, and Archie struggled for a moment to hide a flash of hurt. It was fine, he told himself sternly – Daine hadn't been upset, and he knew that she was close with both Kel and Neal. He would be the same. He smiled instead, reassuring his friends that he was fine. "No problem. I'll go sign up tonight. Anyway, where were we?"

"Neal," Chess supplied helpfully, her usual mild smile returning to her face. "And how he is very likely to stab John if he gets too close."

"Right, Neal," John continued, snapping his fingers. "Neal and his birthright. We know it's a sword because that's what Graeme and Will, his brothers, used in the last Tournament – the Collège put on their best performance in decades, though they just missed making the eliminations, and Graeme was on the Ilvermorny team that lost in the finals. My sister was Will's strategist."

"What are their elemental affinities?" Chess' eyes were thoughtful, considering as she opened her notebook, pencil at the ready.

"Graeme is fire, but Will is air." John waved a hand in the air. "I never got a sense from Duelling of Neal's elemental affinity."

"Hmm." Chess' lips pursed slightly in annoyance. "More than half of all Healers have a water affinity, but there's also a correlation between genetics and elemental affinity. He could be any of the three."

"We'll deal with that when we come to it." John sighed, leaning over to look at Chess' notebook. "We can't predict everything. Harry, you can go ahead and tell Hermione this, if you think she would listen, but this is her strategist's job – to tell her things like this and help her prepare."

"In the two weeks you have left?" Archie raised an eyebrow, worried. "I don't know that if sort of information is the sort of thing that the BSA students know…"

"Isran was a third-year when the last Tournament was played, he'll know." Chess said, with a tiny shrug. "Let's go on to Kel."

"Keladry Mindelan." John picked up the change of subject without missing a beat. "The Mindelans are the MACUSA ambassadors to Wizarding Japan, where she lived until she started school. She still spends most of her summers there, probably because when she was five, she picked up a naginata and never let go."

"A naginata?" The syllables sounded strange on Archie's tongue.

"Wizarding Japan teaches wand-casting, nowadays, but traditional casting is, like in Wizarding China, done with heirlooms – but there, it's not a birthright secret. Their heirloom-casting devices are still swords for the men, but naginata for the women – a longer weapon, a pole-arm. Think of it as a long-handled blade, it can be wielded like a spear, but also like a sword." Chess was paging through her notebook – she had obviously been the one to look it up. "In Wizarding Japan, formal schooling is wands-only, but you can learn traditional casting from any master, if you find one. From what I could learn, though, in Japan traditional casting is considered dull, outdated and too difficult, which is why you don't see it much."

"But it's part of what makes Kel a great dueller." John's shook his head. "She's been practicing magic since she was five, she's been under pressure in matches before, and like Neal, she can wield her naginata like a blade as well as casting magic with it. Kel is bloody terrifying. They both are."

"Just hope you don't meet either of them before the end, in eliminations," Chess set her notebook down between the two of them, so John could see. On the page, upside-down, Archie could see that she had drawn out a tournament bracket, with numbering on the sides. "I think there is a very high probability that they will be ranked first and second coming out of the pools, so to avoid that, we want you to place either eighth or ninth – that would give you the best chance of avoiding them until late in competition."

John and Chess wrapped up shortly after that, speculating on a few other names that Archie didn't know, and Chess walked with him back to Seaton Hall. She checked the names of the signup sheet, adding a few more names to her notebook, then waited while Archie put his name on the Healing Corps list – Harry Potter, of course, and not Arcturus Rigel Black.

The air was warm on their walk back across the campus grounds, though Chess still pulled her sweater tight around her shoulders. There was a cool breeze ruffling Archie's hair, and Chess didn't say anything as she walked back to her dorm. Archie walked with her – it wasn't polite to let a girl walk back home by herself, even if she didn't ask, even if it was barely thirty feet away from his own dorm. She didn't comment as he followed a step behind her.

She stopped on the wide veranda, turning to face him with a deep breath. "It's nothing against you, you know," she offered abruptly, her voice a little shy. "It's just – this is a big opportunity for John and I, and we've worked really hard on it, and you've just – I don't know what I'm saying, how to say this. You're a great Healer, Harry – it's nothing personal, bid teams are just always small—"

"I know," Archie replied, smiling a little to reassure her. In truth, he wasn't even offended, not really. Daine wasn't offended at being passed over, and after listening to the two of them talk, he knew that, other than Healing, he didn't have much to offer. And whatever the two of them were doing, they had worked hard on it, and she didn't want someone swooping in last minute to share their spotlight. He even understood that – in Britain, he didn't want the credit for having Healed the Sleeping Sickness, or for killing a basilisk, but he got it anyway, and that was as uncomfortable as he imagined the other side was infuriating. "No hard feelings, Chess. There's more than one way to skin a cat."

Her face crumpled a little, as she hugged her notebook closer to her chest. "I hate that phrase. Who would ever want to skin a cat?"

It was a week before the pool divisions were released – there were almost forty candidates for the Trials, but only a handful of people had signed up for the Healer Corps, so Daine and Archie were scheduled for every single Trial day. The Trials would last ten days, spread over five weekends, throughout the month of October, with one match per pool on every tournament day.

"Was there even a point to making up a schedule?" he muttered to Daine, standing beside him. "Look, we're all scheduled for every day, we don't get any days off."

"That's good by me," Daine replied, her blue-grey eyes lighting up with the barest hint of calculation. "All the better for us to distinguish ourselves. Have you been prepping?"

"Some," Archie admitted, skimming the notice that said that the Healer Corps would be meeting up after classes in the stadium for additional training. Now, he was glad he had signed up for Healer Corps – he never passed up the chance for extra Healing training!

Hermione would be so jealous. Or, he mentally corrected himself, his heart thudding suddenly, she would be jealous once she started talking to him again. If she started talking to him again.

It had been three weeks, now. Archie had never had three weeks of the silent treatment before, and it was absolutely maddening. Harry didn't hold grudges or anger this long, or at least not with Archie. With her, it was a day, and she was back the next day having forgotten everything. Archie was normally the one who did things like that, and the longest stretch he had gone was about ten days, and that was partly an act because it was when he was mad at Dad for not letting him go to AIM.

He looked over to the other side of the room, where the pool divisions had been laid out. It was mobbed by candidates and their teams trying to find their pools. He spotted Hermione, her bushy hair neatly plaited back, pushing forward through the crowd, a look of grim determination on her face. Chess was skipping over the crowd entirely with her air-hardening charm, her teddy-bear decorated notebook in hand, while John remained blissfully seated, eating his breakfast with Kel.

Kel and Neal had, unusually, made a bid team. Or two bid teams, to be technical – bid teams were made of a strategist and a player, sometimes one other person on equipment management, not two players who might have to fight against each other. However, there wasn't anything stopping them from pairing, either, and so they had, and most people had blinked and gone with it. If they both made it on, there would be more strategist spots available later.

Chess was still crouching in mid-air, scribbling furiously in her notebook, when Archie rejoined John at the Duelling table, which was where John and Chess usually sat now, since Hermione was now exclusively sitting with the British Students Association crowd. Archie just tagged along with them, because without Hermione, it seemed like he didn't have a place of his own. His place had always been beside her.

"Neal was sitting there," Kel said mildly, directing her comment to Daine, who had dropped into the seat across from her.

"Neal can fight me," Daine replied, her tone dismissive. "And breakfast is almost done, anyway. Not going up to check your pool?'

"No," Kel confirmed, looking perfectly nonchalant. "It makes you look weak if you do. I told Neal not to check, but he didn't listen. The list isn't going to change at lunch, or at dinner – he's too impatient."

"Makes you look weak? How?" Archie couldn't help but interrupt. He was itching to check the lists – not for him, but for Hermione. He hoped she had ended up in a pool without too many dangerous players. John and Chess had been a little more forthcoming since he formally put himself in the Healing Corps, but that didn't mean much when most bid teams were keeping their strategies secret. Instead, he had mainly gotten an insider's analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the entire Duelling team, based on their history on the duelling circuit.

Seaver had good instincts, but he tended to laziness and relied heavily on a handful of very successful tricks. Merric was slow, but his timing was nearly perfect – he wouldn't attack much, but when he did, it would be devastating. Esmond was a Light mage, weakest against Dark attacks, and he struggled with his confidence – he either did very well, or very poorly, depending on how his first match of the day went. Faleron was a strong defensive player who had difficulty attacking. Annette Yorke, with whom John had gone to the Midwinter Ball last year, was if anything too aggressive and overwhelmed her opponents with sheer firepower. Cleon Kennan fell for feints half the time but compensated with sheer magical strength. And so on and so forth.

And that was just what John and Chess let him hear. Sometimes, they disappeared, probably into one of their rooms, or a study or practice room somewhere, to practice whatever their strategy involved. Something with John's gift, Archie thought, but with Chess as part of his team, Archie honestly didn't know. She sometimes got an obsessive, determined glint to her dark eyes, and Archie didn't know what to make of it.

"It's the strategist's job to care about the pool divisions," John replied casually from over his plate of hash browns. "Running up to look means you're nervous – it means you think that there are people stronger than you, and that you are desperate to avoid them."

"Staying still portrays confidence." Kel finished her piece of buttered toast, standing to take her plate to the opening where they set their dirty plates to be washed later without any hint of any eagerness or desire to see the lists. "It doesn't matter to me what pool I'm in – I expect to win and take a spot in eliminations. It doesn't matter who I have to fight to get there."

"Even Neal?" Archie raised an eyebrow at the girl. She was calm, collected, and over the past few years, she had put on both height and muscle. He guessed she was probably about as tall as he was, in his true body.

"Even Neal," she confirmed flatly, before she glided away.

"Like I said," John muttered, scraping up the last of his breakfast. "Terrifying."

Chess bounced back only a few minutes later, doing some sort of complicated twirl in the air to get herself down to the ground, the one that reminded Archie of a quick spin down a spiral staircase. She held her notebook out to John, who ignored it and put away his dishes before coming back and taking it with an only incidentally curious expression. He opened it and skimmed the lists.

"Cleon isn't going to be happy with that," he said, raising an eyebrow. "He's in Kel's pool."

"Aren't they dating?" Archie had seen the two of them hanging out, rather more often than he normally did, Cleon's arm slung over Kel's shoulders. Cleon he barely knew – he was an undeclared general studies student, though he took a lot of classes that let him be outdoors. Duelling and Herbology, mainly.

"Yeah," John replied lightly, still looking down the list. "He won't want to fight her, not seriously, but he needs to if he wants a chance against her."

"Your pool is good." Chess' voice was low, and both he and John had to lean down slightly to hear her words. She pointed to a block in her notebook, labelled Pool F. "Unless someone brings out something new, your top contender is Esmond Nicoline. The other three – you know Lily Cho, from the Quodpot team. She's in Healing, specializing in artefact accidents with a secondary concentration in spell damage. She could be a threat, depending on conditions—"

John snorted. "If I get close enough, I can rip her from the skies."

Chess didn't say anything, instead throwing John a look of consternation, and he laughed. Clearly her thoughts, at least, were funny. She didn't share it with Archie, instead going down the list of names that John would have to duel. "Mario Lopez is a sixth year in experimental Charms, so expect a firm grounding in magical theory, maybe a new spell. And the last one in your group is Martin Haworth – seventh-year, British newblood, general studies. He takes a lot of advanced Charms and Transfigurations classes."

"That sounds workable." John nodded, straightening with a relaxed expression on his face. Archie leaned a little closer over the notebook; he had a hard time making out Chess' slanted scrawl, especially since she had apparently missed letters in the attempt to get the names down quickly, skimming over the other groups for another name.

"Where's Hermione?" He couldn't help but ask, not finding it in the mass of thirty or forty-odd names.

Chess eyed him with a look of mild interest, taking her time to pick her words as she tapped on a scrawled note. "Hermione is in Pool B," she said finally. "Neal Queenscove is in that pool."

Archie went out of his way to get Hermione's attention, that day. Not that he hadn't been trying for three weeks, deciding that any semblance of shame was unhelpful. He had thrown himself at her feet, begging forgiveness, in the dining hall ten days ago, which unfortunately only made the rest of the BSA crowd angry at him for some reason.

"I don't know him," John had said that day, sitting with his friends from the duelling club, head in hands.

"I always thought that would be romantic." Chess added, thoughtfully, wide-eyed. "But, seeing it happen, I find my sense of romance has been overwhelmed by my sense of secondary embarrassment."

Anyway, because of that incident, he couldn't approach her when she was with any of her BSA friends. Even if he asked to speak to her, they would look at Hermione, who would shake her head, and then they would find a way to send him away, or spirit Hermione away, or something. Even in Pettingill Hall, it seemed that word had gotten around to keep Archie away from Hermione, so he couldn't approach her there, either.

"I don't understand," he had said in John's room, one day. He was on the brink of tears, since half the Healing dorm seemed to have turned against him, staring and whispering when he went past. "I just want to talk to her. Why is everyone keeping that from happening?"

Chess had tilted her head to one side, hesitating, before she replied. "There are several rumours. A popular one is that you dumped two pounds of itching powder on her clothes – another is that you Charmed her textbooks to recite love poetry at her every time she opened them to study. Oh, and there's one where you turned her favourite pen into a chicken, and another one where you're supposedly a werewolf—"

"Chess!" John barked, while Archie tried to sink lower in his seat. "You weren't actually supposed to answer that! Look, Harry, ignore the rumours, all right? They're all really stupid."

"Hermione has been denying it, anyway." Chess tapped her teddy-bear pencil against her lip. "She just says its personal."

"Just stick with us, and it'll blow over." John's grin was bracing. "And maybe, have me with you the next time you try to talk to her? My good reputation can make up for yours, at least for now."

Chess glared at John, one eyebrow raised, and he laughed at whatever message she was sending to him.

As such, Archie's attempts to talk to her had largely been deterred, and he was relegated to sending her charmed notes and letters. He didn't want to put too many personal details in them, so they didn't have much by way of explanation – instead, they were a litany of apologies, flatteries, and pleading for her to talk to him so that he could explain it all properly to her. He didn't even know if she read them, but at least she didn't return them.

Still, knowing the pool divisions, Archie needed to talk to her, if only to ensure that she knew what she needed to know to face Neal. He convinced John to come with him to try to talk to her over lunch, where she was sitting with a small group of British Students Association friends outside, sandwiches in hand.

"What is the point?" John asked, beside him, while Chess trailed along two steps behind him. "It's her strategist's job to tell her this sort of thing – not yours."

"But what if he doesn't know?" Archie protested, for the umpteenth time.

"He'll know." John rubbed his forehead, annoyed. "He watched Neal's brothers in the last Tournament!"

"I'd rather just check," Archie insisted. "Because if she doesn't know, she will, and if she already did, then there's no loss to us, right?"

"This is going to be a disaster," John predicted, resigned, as he let Archie lead the way.

The group was mixed in age – Archie recognized Hermione, sitting on one side of the circle, with her seventh-year bid team partner beside her. On her other side was Sally Hopkins, the other British newblood in their year, and he didn't know the boy sitting beside her. They spotted him as he approached, as he knew they would. The seventh-year exchanged a look with Hermione, whose face had taken on a grim cast (as it usually did when she saw Archie now), and stood up, stepping forward to intercept him, arms crossed over his chest.

"I'd just like a word with Hermione, if you don't mind," Archie began, straightening his blue Healer's robes nervously. Isran's robes were green – he was a Mastery student, that meant, though Archie couldn't recall which stream.

"What about?" Isran replied, his tone decidedly hostile. "As you can see, she doesn't want to talk to you."

"Come on, man," John said, stepping forward with a resigned sigh, holding his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. "I'm going to be here the entire time, and we'll stay in eyesight of you, do you mind? No pranks. Harry here is just worried about Hermione, with the Tournament and all."

At that, Isran's eyebrow raised. "It's my job to worry about my player, not Healing Corps."

"Yeah, you think I didn't tell him that?" John snorted, dropping his hands to tuck them in his pockets. "I know. But he insisted."

"I'll talk to them, Isran," Hermione said with a sigh, evidently having overheard, standing up and brushing the crumbs from her sandwich off her pants.

Her strategist tilted his head in acknowledgement and went to sit back down with their group, while Hermione led the way to a spot under a tree, a short distance, just out of eavesdropping distance from her friends.

"What's this about, then?" She asked, her brown eyes suspicious.

"You saw the lists this morning, 'Mione," Archie started, a little awkward. "Pool B. I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"Neal has some unusual talents. He'll be free-duelling, 'Mione. With a sword." Archie fidgeted, looking down. "I just wanted to make sure that you were prepared. No matter – no matter how things are between us, right now."

Archie desperately hoped that the minute change in her expression, that slight softening of her eyes, her mouth, was not something he imagined. He glanced over at John and Chess – both of them were looking pointedly away. John was scanning the campus grounds, a vaguely interested look on his face, while Chess was looking down at her notebook, thinking.

The silence lingered for a few seconds, before Hermione broke it with a quiet whisper. "Does Francesca know?"

Archie shook his head, a tiny movement.

"I see." Hermione's voice was inscrutable.

"Please, Hermione." Archie looked up, loosening his Metamorphized form to let his grey eyes flash at her, pleading. He was careful to keep his voice to a whisper. "Please, let's just talk. I miss you, and… and we don't have to mention what I said at the end, and I am sorry, and this… the ruse… It hasn't been easy, in so many ways, and I know – I know I have a lot to make up for. Just – just let me explain the best I know how. I miss you so, so much, 'Mione."

"I know," Hermione said. Her eyes were definitely softer as she looked at him, but her lips were pressed tightly together. "I read your letters. I'll—I'll think about it, Archie." She turned back to her own friends, striding back towards them, raising her voice to speak normally, over her shoulder. "And thank you for your concern, but I'm fine."

That was the best he could do, so he sighed and followed John and Chess as they went back to Seaton House to grab some lunch of their own.

After classes, Archie hurried over to the stadium, where the handful of Healer Corps students would be receiving their additional training. He was curious as to what they would be learning – advanced trauma care? Reviewing spell damage, artefact accidents? He was running late, simply because his No-Maj Medicine 2 class had run a few minutes overtime, and he had gotten caught in the mass of students leaving from class. Why couldn't people who wanted to talk to their friends talk to them outside, or in the dorms, or even at the side of the hallways? Why did they need to linger, talking, in the middle of the crowded halls when people like Archie needed to go somewhere?

He was the last one to the stadium, but luckily, he found the Daine and the rest of their group easily. They were standing in the middle of the empty pitch, shared by both Quodpot and Quidditch. The Duelling club had their own indoor practice space, a large hall with hardwood floors, but they sometimes also shared the pitch with Quodpot and Quidditch.

Professor Ryan was standing in the centre of the small group of Healers. Her arms were crossed, and Archie approached her with something like trepidation – and curiosity. He hadn't seen her since last year, because fourth-years and up weren't required to take No-Maj Studies.

She couldn't have any idea of what he and Harry had done, she simply couldn't have. He had taken classes with her for three years without her mentioning anything, and he hadn't worried because he simply hadn't known. Aunt Lily had never once mentioned her, either. Whatever was once there, it wasn't there any longer.

But he also wondered, because Professor Ryan clearly knew a different Aunt Lily than Archie did. Professor Ryan knew an Aunt Lily who had not only competed and done well in the AIM Trials, twenty years ago, but who had also gone on to battle her way to take the Triwizard Championship. By now, Archie had heard enough stories of past games to know that both the Trials and the Triwizard Tournament itself could get violent. In Aunt Lily's year, one of the Durmstrang students had stabbed an Ilvermorny student in the gut, causing massive bleeding, a near-fatal wound. Ilvermorny's Healers had managed to stabilize him, then called in AIM Healers for support – but since they saved him, without even any scarring, Durmstrang had gotten away with it. Then Aunt Lily, Aunt Lily had apparently brought the entire Durmstrang team to their knees in the span of fifteen minutes.

He shook the thought away as he joined the group. He would have liked to ask about it, but if he asked, would he be tipping off that he wasn't Harry Potter? For all he knew, Harry knew this tidbit of information, and had simply never told him because she didn't consider it important. Harry had never, to his knowledge, kept secrets from Archie – she just often didn't consider certain things important, and didn't mention them unless asked. Like the Lower Alleys, or a specific Healing clinic inside the Lower Alleys. It was better to be safe, and not ask about it.

"Sorry for being late," he panted slightly. It wasn't that he was out of shape, but he had run from Thompson Hall to the stadium as quickly as he could. He scanned around the small circle; he recognized Daine, of course, and there were three other upper-years that he recognized by sight but not by name "My class ran over."

"No need to apologize," Professor Ryan replied, scanning the circle of Healing students. "I do believe I know all of you, and I assume you know each other?"

Daine and the others nodded, so Archie nodded with them, even if he didn't actually know the other three. He could always get to know them later, and it was obvious that Professor Ryan was eager to move on with their orientation and additional training.

"Good. So, as you know, fewer Healers than we had hoped signed up for the Healing Corps, so all of you are, unfortunately, scheduled for every day of the trials." Professor Ryan strode to one of the walls of the stands, close to one of the doors, where a blue cross had been marked. "Eric, you'll be stationed here, in this gap here close to the east doors – there will be wards set up so that whatever the players are doing shouldn't affect you. Celia, you're stationed by the west doors, same marking. Harry, Anja, the two of you are on the north wall, and Daine, you're on the south wall, in the centre."

"That is a lot of ground to cover," Eric said, stepping into the marked spot and scanning out across the pitch. "There aren't enough of us."

"It seems that more Healers have either entered as players or have joined bid teams, this year." Professor Ryan shook her head. "We could put out another call, but I don't think we would get many more sign-ups."

"It's fine," Daine declared firmly. "It's only eight matches in a day – it's not going to be too much. The difficulty will be making it across the pitch to the patient, not the amount of magic or anything. Too many people and we won't be able to work seamlessly as we should."

"I agree." Anja nodded slowly. "Eight matches per day is manageable for a team of five Healers, and we should remember that a good number of the players are Healers too. Neal will certainly be Healing his own injuries, as will Lily, Hermione, and the other Healers. If not, their strategists have a vested interest in Healing their players – we can triage that way."

"I didn't raise it for magical reasons." Eric crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. "I said that it was a lot of ground to cover – I'm concerned about whether we'll see injuries, and once we see them, whether we can get to the patient in time. Harry seems to have gotten out of breath just getting here from Thompson Hall, five minutes late; how is he going to get to a patient who might be bleeding out?"

"Hey, I resent that." Archie frowned at Eric. He didn't even know the Healer, though he thought he was a sixth year or something. "As I said, my class ran over. I booked it from Thompson Hall to here, which is much farther than making it across the pitch."

Eric shrugged, ignoring him.

"Well, you won't be needing to run across the pitch," Professor Ryan said, with a secretive sort of smile. "Now, we're only teaching you this because of the circumstances, and this is no way provides you with a license. You will only permitted to Apparate within the Trials, within this stadium itself, where we have reconfigured the wards to allow you to do so. Do not try to Apparate outside the stadium, and do not try this outside the stadium either – you will only get a headache."

They were learning Apparition? Archie's eyes lit up, and he knew that a big grin had spread across his face. Who cared that he wouldn't be able to use it outside of the stadium? He would be able to Apparate! He would even be allowed to Apparate, during the Trials, to get to his patients! That was awesome.

"So, Apparition." Professor Ryan flicked her wand, and five circles of magical light appeared in the grass ten feet away from them. Pink, red, green, blue, purple. "The traditional way of teaching it is called the three Ds: deliberation, determination, and destination. That's garbage. Just imagine where you want to be, visualize it in your head, and make it happen. You know you can do it with your magic, and you know it's possible. Just will it, turn on the spot, and you'll be there. Daine, you're pink. Harry, red, Eric, green, Celia, blue and Anja, purple. Get to it."

"What, just like that?" Archie asked, a little surprised. In Britain, Apparition training courses were eight weeks long.

Professor turned on the spot, reappearing in the grass close to the coloured circles of light. "Just like that."

Well, just like that, then. Archie stared at his red circle, thinking, visualizing. He would turn, and he would be there. He knew that this was something that could happen with magic, Dad made it happen all the time. Aunt Lily and Uncle James Apparated everywhere. He had magic too, and he could do this. He gripped his magic very closely in his mind, turned on the spot and… nothing.

Fine, it was difficult. He went back to the beginning: imagination, visualization. When he got there, he would see the ring of red floating around him, a magical shimmering ribbon which would be around his knees. What would the world look like around him after he turned? What would he see? Since he was turning, he would logically be seeing what was behind him now, so he painted the picture in his mind of what it would be like to twist and the air and… be there. He could do this – he knew he could do this, because it was possible, and it was something that ninety percent of mages learned to do. Far fewer mages than that ever learned to Heal, so this was doable. He turned on the spot again, and… nothing.

He kept trying, all afternoon, while Professor Ryan watched patiently on the sidelines. Occasionally she would call out tips to people: Imagine what the world looks like from where you want to be. Visualize it – visualize all the details. How will the wind change, when you're there? Focus harder. Focus more. Grip your magic in your chest and twist, don't just turn. Like science fiction? Imagine you're squeezing yourself between the atoms, into hyperspace or nothingness or whatever you want, and be there. The last, Archie was pretty sure, was directed to him.

"Same time, here, tomorrow," Professor Ryan said at the end of the night, seemingly unconcerned about the fact that none of them had managed it. "Then again, every night, until you can do it consistently, reliably, and quickly."

Archie sighed, but he couldn't really be upset. He was learning to Apparate! He couldn't wait to show Hermione, when she talked to him again.

It took Archie the whole of the two weeks to learn how to Apparate. He had his first success five days in, on the same day as Anja (a sixth-year pathology student, Archie had learned), and a day before either Eric or Celia (a seventh-year and a fifth-year, both in general Healing). Daine had succeeded on their third day and had mastered it before a week was through, but the way she put it, since her magic was a little wild, she knew how to control it better than most people learned for some years yet.

He had Apparated only once on his fifth day, and he did it again on the sixth day, then three times on the seventh, but it took almost until the day of the first Trials for Archie to be able to do it consistently, reliably, and on demand. It was exhausting, and he found himself dropping his Harry Potter disguise immediately on his return to his room every night, the strain on his core being tough to sustain. Still, he doubted he would need to Apparate more than, say, eight or nine times over a Trial day, so he would be fine!

The morning of the first Trials, Archie was on the field at nine-thirty in the morning, antsy as he waited. The field was bare, but he was told that it would not always be so – the school policy was not to repair or restore the field between matches, so each successive match would have to deal with whatever disaster of the field the previous players had made. He could spot the rest of the Healing Corps taking up their positions, all of them standing in front of blue crosses, with the exits marked in red lights.

He had gotten a look at the lists. Hermione wasn't playing today – miraculously (as far as Archie was concerned), she wouldn't be playing until next weekend, though she would have a weekend where she would duel both days. Still, Kel and Cleon would be opening the matches, with Neal playing in the second match, and John had his match against the Martin Haworth, the seventh-year British general studies student, in the afternoon. Tomorrow would have most of the other Duelling students that Archie knew somewhat better now – Faleron would play tomorrow, as would Esmond.

He took a deep breath, waiting as the stands above him filled, more crowded than anything he had ever seen before. Even Quodpot games didn't get so crowded! Students packed the bleachers, sitting shoulder to shoulder, with a number standing either at the top of the stands or at the railings. They had found a new commentator, a third-year in the Duelling club named Owen Jesslaw, who had been inordinately disappointed in his inability to enter the Trials this year.

"Good mooorning, everyone!" Owen's shrill voice boomed over the magicked headset, projecting his voice across the grounds. Archie winced – Owen's voice was normally loud and excited, but this was another level. Still, it would be good! Owen had the energy to be a great commentator. "And welcome to the first day of the American Institute of Magic Trials! We have a great line-up today, so stay in your seats. First up: Duelling champion Keladry Mindelan and her beauuuu, Cleon Kennan, who certainly does not look happy facing off against his lady-love in the first round!"

Well, except for the fact that Owen literally could not keep his mouth shut, which meant that he would probably spill half of the Duelling club's secrets before the day was through. Archie looked at either end of the stadium – on one end, Kel stood, holding an unfamiliar weapon in one hand, poker-faced as the laughter rang around her, and on the other, there was seventh-year Cleon Kennan, whose arms were crossed and who did not, in fact, look particularly happy, though mostly he was glaring up at the commentator's box.

"All right, everyone knows the rules – once the bell goes, they don't leave until one of them concedes or is carried out by our lovely Healing Corps! Let's give a quick round of applause to our Healing Corps, stationed in blue, there: Eric Walker, Anja Bauer, Celia Smith, Harry Potter, and Daine Sarrasri!"

There was a roar of applause from the crowd, and Archie looked up with a smile, giving a little wave.

"And with that, let's get going!" Archie watched as both Cleon and Kel took their start positions, Kel setting her unfamiliar weapon in some sort of rest position, tucked under one arm with the shining silver blade tip touching the ground. Cleon had taken a more traditional dueller's crouch, wand forward. Archie waited, breath bated, for the signal the begin.

There was a loud crack, the sound of a blast from a wand, and Archie had barely blinked before the ground was wrecked. He staggered, reaching for the wall and steadily glowing blue cross to support him, because shit, this was terrifying!

A chasm was ripping across the pitch, beginning from the point of Kel's blade, heading straight for Cleon as he twisted in the air and Apparated safely away. Or, in the case, closing the distance to Kel to fire off a round of non-verbal attack spells that Archie did recognize: Stupefy, Flipendo, Bombarda.

"Kel opens the match with some sort of earth-tearing spell, which at least confirms once and for all that she has an earth affinity!" Owen's voice boomed out over the crowd. "That's going to leave a mark on the grounds – I hope our following players are ready for that! Cleon Apparates out of the way, obviously having heard that they've lifted the Apparition Wards within the stadium for the Trials, and retaliates with a round of spell-fire, all of which Kel blocks with a handy spin of her naginata. Yes, folks, that's what that weapon is – a naginata. You're looking at a bona fide traditional caster!"

Kel had indeed managed to block all of Cleon's attack spells, and she had launched herself towards him, closing the distance. There was another spell, which Cleon dodged, face grim, that Archie couldn't identify – her casting style was too different with a naginata, which was a huge advantage for her. Cleon had no idea what was coming – he had to dodge everything, or he risked picking the wrong blocking spell. Ouch.

"Ohhhh, and look, Kel is now giving herself the high ground!" Owen shouted, as Kel tapped the ground again, this time with the butt of her naginata. The ground beneath her shook, before rising in a gentle hill, forcing Cleon to work twice as hard to get to her on foot. "Not sure that will do much, though – Cleon can Apparate, who cares about hills?"

There was another round of blinking fast spell-fire, faster than Archie had ever seen before, and both Kel and Cleon were on the move. Cleon relied heavily on Apparition to avoid Kel's spells, whereas Kel, no doubt identifying everything that Cleon was throwing at her, simply deflected or dodged his spells.

For such a large weapon, it didn't slow her down at all! For the most part, it was Cleon running, and Kel chasing, though Kel tried to keep to the high grounds, where possible. He wasn't sure why she was trying to close distance, though; distance meant that she could throw bigger, more dangerous spells at him. Archie clutched the blissfully firm wall behind him through both earthquakes that she started, with the latter perfectly timed to coincide with one of Cleon's Apparitions. He landed, and the ground wasn't steady, and he stumbled.

"Ohhhh." Owen groaned out loud. "But he Apparated far enough away, this time, that Kel can't follow up on that stumble! Bad luck, Kel – come on Cleon, get up and get back to it!"

Get up, he did, a grim expression on his face as he launched his next series of attacks. Kel was fast, though, dodging and blocking them all, before trying to close distance again. There was a single, breath-stopping moment, when Cleon slipped and just misjudged his distance, his timing, failing to Apparate away, and a moment was all Kel needed to pin him in the shoulder with her naginata. He twisted, Apparating away, but Archie hissed because from the spray of blood on the pitch, Cleon had no doubt taken a serious injury, one that likely had only been worsened by the Apparition he had pulled off.

"Oh, ow," Owen yelled over the crowd. "That's the first injury of these games, and it looks deep! Will he concede the match?"

Cleon was grimacing, halfway across the pitch clutching his shoulder as a bloodstain bloomed on his shoulder, spreading down his sleeve. Kel followed up her strike with more spell-fire, from a distance, which Cleon just barely managed to dodge. He launched a new barrage of spells against Kel, a grim look on his face, but with his injury, his spellwork was messy, slipshod, and poorly aimed. Even Archie could tell that the game was over. There was no trickery, anymore, and his Apparitions became fewer and farther between. The first match came to a grinding halt five minutes later, with Kel pointing her bloody blade at Cleon's nose.

"Yield," she said, her voice quiet but still carrying across the field to Archie's ears, though he doubted very many in the stands would hear it. "Please."

Cleon sighed, raising his good arm in a gesture of surrender. "I yield."

"And that's it, everyone!" Owen announced to the stands, as Archie twisted on the spot to Cleon's side. The cut was very deep, with a partial tendon tear in his shoulder, and Archie hissed in sympathy. Cleon must have been in intense pain through the last final section – no wonder he was distracted! "Kel carries the first match, and the Mindelan duelling legend continues. We'll give the Healers a few minutes to clear Cleon off the field and move onto the next match!"

The cut itself was clean, and Anja was there only a second after him. "I'll take care of the tendon thing," she muttered. "Can you do the muscle and bleeding?"

"Yeah," Archie replied, focusing his magic on the muscle. "I'll handle it."

It was only a few minutes' work, and Kel helped Cleon stagger off the field as Archie and Anja exchanged glances and returned to their designated positions.

"And here we go for the second match of the day!" Owen yelled, his face still shining in delight. "On the left, he needs no introduction. Everyone welcome Nealan Queenscove, third son of the Queenscoves of Montréal, noted Aurors, brother to Graeme Queenscove and William Queenscove, both of whom played in the last Tournament. For his own part, Neal took third place at the last North American League Duelling Championships, and he hasn't finished out of the top ten on that circuit since his third year."

Neal sighed dramatically, his movements visible even from the crowd, before he looked up and gave an elegant, actor's bow, to the roaring crowd. He was wearing heavier clothes than usual, a leather vest falling halfway to his knees, and trousers tight to his legs. On his left wrist, he had his wand tucked in a duelling holster, and his sword was sheathed at his waist.

"On the right, we have Thomas Graves, of the noted Graves of Massachusetts!" Owen yelled, waving his hand to the other side of the ring. "Another prominent line of both Aurors and politicians, though to be honest I really don't know much about him personally, other than the fact that he keeps getting in fistfights with John Kowalski and they both end up in detention. With me, as it happens, how cool is that?!"

There was a groan from the crowd and a few calls for Owen to get on with the match, which he cheerfully ignored. Archie recognized his classmate, Graves, though he hadn't realized that he would be trying out for the Tournament. John hadn't mentioned him, nor had he known that tidbit about John getting in fistfights with him, but at the same time he couldn't say he was surprised. The Graves were politically conservative, part of a faction that supported full assimilation of newblood and halfblood families into wizarding culture, but it wasn't like John to get into fistfights over politics. There had to be more to it than that.

The start signal cracked through the stadium. The temperature in the stadium dropped twenty degrees, and Archie felt as if he had been clapped in the face with an overpowered Cooling Charm. But this wasn't just any Cooling Charm – Cooling Charms cooled, but they didn't freeze. This was something else, this was something far colder, colder than ice. There was no water on the pitch, but if there was, he was confident it would have frozen over. He heard the winds start, a high-pitched howling, shaking the foundations of the Stadium as it tore across the pitch, from Neal's end to Graves, though he couldn't feel it behind the protective wards sheltering the Healers.

Neal had a tiny smile on his face, and his sword was drawn, held easily in his right hand. There were runes flashing along the length of the blade and a brisk, cold wind tore through the stadium. A quick peek over at Thomas Graves showed that he had gritted his teeth, but the intense cold had stopped him, very briefly, from casting whatever spell he had started.

"Those of you who were wondering, it turns out that magically, Neal takes after Will," Owen said, his teeth audibly chattering. "As he breaks out the Collège's signature move from the last Tournament – the winter wind! Thom will have to move fast, either to break it or to defeat Neal, because in the centre of that, even those Warming Charms won't keep hypothermia from setting in."

Graves obviously knew that too, struggling to move forward in the brisk wind, his face sheltered against the cold. He squinted, eyes watering, towards the other end of the pitch. Neal stood, looking entirely bored – hell, Neal planned on just waiting it out!

Five minutes passed, then ten. Graves hadn't managed to do much – he had managed to stumble a third of the way across the pitch, against howling winds, he had tried a few spells, only one of which Neal actually had to block, which he did by neatly turning it aside with a twist of his blade. A few times, shields flickered into existence around Graves, but never for very long. It seemed that the shields he was picking either weren't effective, or he couldn't maintain them while trying to attack. Fifteen minutes, it took, until Graves staggered, and he was down.

Archie glanced over at Anja, positioned just down the wall from him. She was staring at the pitch, puzzled – just like him, she was wondering whether this was the time that she should intercede. Would Graves manage to get up? Hypothermia was nothing like a blunt force injury, where it was obvious if they had to go in, but Graves was just laying there, motionless.

It was Daine who Apparated in first, dropping to her knees by Graves' prone form. She checked him over professionally, before staggering to her feet and crossed her forearms together in the X formation, to signal that Graves was out.

"Daine has called the match – and not even fifteen minutes later, Neal has his first win, and the rest of us are frozen to our seats. Thanks for that, Neal!" Owen said from the commentator's box, and Neal sheathed his blade, cancelling whatever spell he had called. Archie could feel the air warming up, much to his relief, and he cancelled his warming charm while Eric Apparated in to help Daine. She wouldn't need more than that, and too many Healers would be as much of a problem as otherwise, so Archie stayed out of it. "That's two matches down, out of the eight planned today, and we all need to warm up, so let's break for twenty minutes before the third round!"

Archie heard the rustle and creak of the stands moving above him, sighed, and leaned against the wall. It would be a long day, but John was right – he was watching some of the coolest duels on the planet. He hoped Hermione, with an extra week of preparation time, would be able to find a way around Neal. It did look like shields were sometimes effective, at least, so there was that.

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur – most of the rest of the matches today only had traditional Duelling, where matches were often quite short, less than twenty minutes each. Only a few stood out to him – Sidney Foster, in the third round, had simply disappeared in his match, reappearing not five minutes later behind his opponent and stunning him with a well-placed Stupefy! It didn't help that his opponent was good and had cast a dozen Revealing charms to try to find him, to no avail. And Akari Yamaguchi, AIM's star Quodpot forward and Quidditch Seeker, had also appeared to wild applause, flying crazy stunt circles and wowing the crowd as she neatly took out her opponent from the air.

John's match was in the mid-afternoon, and it was breathtakingly short. Archie was already tired, at that point – he had Apparated in twice more, once for a simple Stupefy, and another for a nasty, overpowered and well-timed Bombardment Hex that resulted in two broken bones and a concussion. Daine had Apparated in to help with the latter, because anything with the brain was tricky business.

"Facing off against Martin, we have John Kowalski, fourth-year, from the notable Kowalskis of New York City! John himself placed a very respectable seventh at last year's North American League Duelling Championship, while holding together the defensive arm of the AIM Quidditch Team," Owen said, his voice a little hoarse from commentating. He lowered his voice a little, mimicking a whisper. "Now, I'm not sure who doesn't know this, at this point, but John does come into the Trials with a little something extra. I hope all of his competition has learned Occlumency!"

John was looking almost excited, at his end of the pitch, bouncing up and down slightly on his toes while stretching his arms. Archie knew, without having to look, that Chess was in the audience behind him, expression pinched as she eyed the field. On the other end, Archie vaguely recognized the tall, brown-haired youth from Hermione's new circle of friends. He was shifting his weight from side to side, grim-faced.

The shot went off, and Martin immediately pulled out his wand, Transfiguring several stones on the ground to form a wild pack of dogs. That was pretty cool, Archie had to admit, even as he winced for John – Martin had started on Kel's hill, the high ground which hadn't yet been destroyed by the rest, and as far as Archie knew, John couldn't Apparate. John was already running, though, taking a diagonal route and seemingly uncaring about the growling dogs making a beeline straight for him.

Archie flinched as one of the dogs made a flying leap at his friend, snarling all the while, opening his eyes only when he heard a loud gasp from the crowds.

"Well, it looks like John has got something new up his sleeve, folks!" Owen yelled out, and Archie looked up, scanning the field for his friend. John was still making a serious dash for his opponent, whose eyes had widened as he approached – and every time one of the dogs leapt for him, they were neatly deflected by a shield, which throwing them back. "Anyone have any ideas what that is?!"

John didn't even have his wand out yet, but he had a shield, appearing and disappearing as he needed. Archie had no idea how he was doing it! There was no wand, but there was also nothing else – no paper charm, which he had half-expected John to pull out, with Chess as a strategist. John couldn't be doing wandless magic, either. Uncle Remus could do some basic wandless magic, and it was all elemental in nature, but what John was casting was very clearly a Fortis shield, so it wasn't that, either.

And the speed and number that he cast, as he barrelled forward! Fortis was stronger than a Protego, harder and slower to cast, harder to maintain. Whatever John was doing, it was new, it was crazy.

On a hunch, he glanced up to Chess, hovering along the railing on the bleachers. She had a tiny smile on her lips as she watched, and somehow Archie knew that she had something to do with this. She had made something, invented something – this was what she had meant, something she had been working on for years. She had made something new, something she was finally ready to show the world, something beyond cases to make CD players work in magical environments, and this was her chance to show it off.

And showing it off, he was – John was in conventional Duelling distance now, his wand was out, and Archie saw a Flipendo spell flying as Martin shielded, just in time. That was one attack, but John was fast – three years of Duelling Club and the North American League Duelling circuit weren't easy, and his experience showed. The fact that he was only casting attack spells from his wand, relying on whatever else it was that he had to manage his defenses, he didn't need anything else to put their classmate into the ground.

Which he did, with a combination Expelliarmus-Stupefy.

It was Eric who made it in first, this time, and Archie left him to it – it didn't look serious enough for a second Healer to be necessary. The older Healer held his arms up in the X-formation signalling a player out, and John turned around, grinning and waving at the audience. The crowd applauded, a few shrill whistles coming from his friends, but it was nowhere near as loud as for the other students. There was a great deal more whispering, and Archie could tell that a few people were trying to talk to Chess, whose face was a shining beacon as she ignored the crowd, smiling down into the stadium.

The next two matches didn't pass fast enough for Archie. Both were interesting, though they were traditional, circuit-style duels without any additional weapons or channelling styles, but Archie was eager to get back to his friends and find out what, exactly, they had been inventing.

He didn't have a chance to that night, not before he had to turn in to do it all again the next day. The next day's matches had only a few major surprises – as Chess had thought, Jessica Calderon-Boot pulled out a device that he couldn't recognize but which had half the audience (smaller, today), gasping and ducking, and which had her knocking out her opponent within the first two minutes of her match. It was a modified sniper rifle, Archie learned through Owen's shocked commentary, and likely had far-sight spells as well as a serious Amplification Charm.

Sunday also had the first matches for most of the other people he knew from John's circle of friends. Faleron successfully took out his opponent after a short duel, twisting his back cruelly in the process as he just dodged a close-range attack to knock out his opponent with a well-timed Somnium hex. Merric and Seaver both came out on top of their first matches, but Esmond, in John's pool, suffered a defeat at the hands of Lily Cho, who took him from the air.

It wasn't until halfway through the next week that Archie managed to ask John and Chess about whatever they had done in their match. Speculation was rife across campus, as was a betting pool for the top sixteen candidates, in which John was normally named. Between his Natural Legilimency, which meant most players didn't want to make eye-contact with him, his strong Duelling, and whatever else he now had managing his defenses, he was generally considered the frontrunner for Pool F.

He caught them in John's room, with the door shut, unsurprisingly.

"With a loss in his first round, Esmond is probably out of the running," John was saying, as he opened the door, saw who it was, and let him in. His face was serious, a little stern. "He's never been good at recovering from a loss."

"This is not like a duelling circuit tournament, though," Chess warned him, shaking her head. "He had a week to recover – he faces off against Mario Lopez on Saturday. You're up against Lily, so let's talk strategy. Hello, Harry."

"Hi," Archie replied, a little uncertain. "Uh, if you're talking strategy, should I leave?"

John looked at Chess for a minute, then he shook his head. "No, it's fine. You're Healing Corps, you can't interfere, and anyway, the school has seen what the ACD does at this point. The other teams are no doubt already prepping for it."

"Is that what it is?" Archie asked, as he took John's desk chair while John flopped on his bed. "The… ACD?"

"Assistive Casting Device." Chess pulled John's arm into her lap, tugging up his sleeve to reveal a bulky band wrapped around his wrist, made from the same sort of plastic as Archie's CD player case. On the top, there was a dark panel. "It's mine."

"I don't think that helps him much, monster," John grunted, though he complied without any complaints. "Do you want to explain more?"

Chess looked up from the plastic band, considering. "I don't mind," she said finally. "It's new, and I'm still developing it. I'm not really sure where to start, though…"

"Try from the beginning," Archie suggested, leaning forward in interest.

Chess thought for another minute or so, then started. "Well, I think I first got the idea in first year, from the wandlore research I did, but I didn't really make any progress until the summer, when John made my computer blip. Hmm, did you cover much electromagnetism in your No-Maj Studies classes?"

"It might have been mentioned a few times." Archie frowned, thinking back. Third-year No-Maj Studies had been focused on maths and sciences, but they didn't go through any topic with much emphasis. He thought he had heard the word in the physics unit, though – he had hated that unit. "Um, it's a signal, right? No-Majs use it to make electricity work, and computers, and things like that, right?"

Chess looked at him, a sort of baffled look on her face, and then, evidently, she decided to ignore it. "Things like that," she agreed, nodding. "Essentially, I realized that, if John's magic was interfering with my computer, in a non-magic saturated environment, magic and electromagnetic frequencies might be related. I didn't have much by way of studies in the magical world – as a twelve-year-old newblood, it was sort of hard to get to the magical libraries and so on – so I used what I did know, and tried to pin down where John's magic would hypothetically be on the electromagnetic spectrum."

"That was the summer where she made me do all the magic near all the electronic measuring things," John grumbled.

"Yes." Chess smiled down at him, a hint of humour in her dark eyes. "But now you can cast a bunch of spells nonverbally, which is very useful, you have to admit. In any case – it gave me the idea of making, not a wand, exactly, but a magical casting device that would help people like me, who didn't have or who—who couldn't have wands."

Her voice shook, just slightly, and Archie's heart sank a little. She had never mentioned being troubled by the fact that she didn't have a wand, but he had always suspected that it was hard for her. How could it not be hard, when everyone else had a wand, when she was so different? He had meant to look for kraken's blood for her, in Britain, he had meant to ask Harry about it, but it had simply… slipped his mind.

"Ideally," Chess continued, her tone clean and professional, "I wanted to make something that was easier than paper spells, that it would avoid the issues with wands. So that was where the wandlore came in. Now, all of this is conjecture – I don't have the research to back it up, because I can't, alone, do the sort of systematic study that this hypothesis requires to prove – but I think that wand-woods and wand-cores are tuned to respond best to particular magical frequencies. For example, maybe it's something like, phoenix feathers respond best to someone with a magical frequency between three hundred terahertz and three pentahertz, and the wand-wood, such as hazelnut, narrows that range further to something like one pentahertz to one-and-half pentahertz—"

"Chess, you monster, you lost him," John interrupted, snickering at the expression on Archie's face. Archie scowled at him – he wasn't totally lost! Just mostly lost.

"I was following along until the example," he muttered defensively, but Chess only smiled, pulling out her notebook and flipping it to an empty page.

She drew a straight line across the page, then marked the line with tiny cross points. "So, imagine that this is the electromagnetic spectrum, or the magical version of it. Low-frequency to high-frequency, and between these two tick-marks, if your magic is in this frequency, it'll respond to phoenix feathers. Wand-woods provide even more precision." She marked off a smaller series of lines, within the section she labelled phoenix. "So here, between these two ticks, we'll call this hazelnut. If your magical frequency falls in this stretch, you would respond to a hazelnut wand with a phoenix feather. Most wand-cores probably overlap with each other, at least to some degree."

"Where would you be on this spectrum, Chess?" Archie took the proffered diagram, studying it. He understood the general concept of what she was saying – it was interesting, even if it was so much less magical than the usual wizarding line, the wand chooses the wizard.

She pointed with her pencil, to a point on the far end of the line. "Here. Outside the range of other wand-cores."

"Okay." Archie nodded. "I'm following again. Go on?"

Chess smiled, taking her notebook back. "The idea is that, with No-Maj technology, I'd be able to make something like a wand, that wasn't a wand, that I could tune to any mage's magical frequency. I experimented with a bunch of different materials – my dad's a materials engineering professor at Stanford – but it wasn't easy. I had to design how the device would work and how it would cast magic, and since anyone using the device would be using it in a magic-saturated environment, I also needed to find a way to shield it from any extraneous magical frequencies."

"That's why you made the protective cases, for our CD players!" Archie lit up. "That's an amazing breakthrough."

"I said the same, but she wouldn't sell them or anything." John rolled over on his bed, sitting up. "Even though the profits could have funded more materials and things."

"It would have taken too much time away from my main project." Chess shook her head firmly. "The money would have been nice, but without a means of mass production, it's just not worth it. I do better coding for Dad over the summer for samples of the materials he works with."

"So how does it work?" Archie learn forward, eyeing the device on John's arm eagerly. It was bulky, though it didn't seem to hinder his movement at all.

Chess was beaming with pride and delight. "This is really a prototype device," she demurred, "but essentially, on the inside is a circuit. There was a paper, some years back – someone wrote on a theory of proto-runes, which were a sort of alphabet for runes, so instead of memorizing hundreds of runes, you could memorize a set of smaller ones and use them to construct bigger spells. Some runic systems are already fairly broken down, of course, so the idea didn't really go anywhere, especially because he broke down the runes so much that spells became really complicated, and they were so delicate that when you ran magic through them, they warped the runes and destroyed them. For runic casters, that's bad – the proto-runic sequence required for one spell was too complex to visualize quickly, and they needed to rewrite the runes to cast it again."

She ran one finger along the dark panel at the top of the device, a proud and loving movement. "I copied his runic sequence for Fortis inside the device, in LED lights – the LEDs shine out from the device, and they're individualized so the wavelength will resonate with the person's unique magical frequency. Inside, the device is all No-Maj, which is why I needed to develop shielding to make sure no other magical frequency would interfere or overload it. All John has to do is send raw magic at the device when it's on – his magic will resonate with the wavelength of the LEDs, and the spell works for him, but no one else. And since his magic doesn't flow through the proto-runes, they aren't warped."

"Her initial studies show that it decreases casting time five-fold," John added, slinging a friendly arm around Chess with a proud smile of his own. "And because it's a runic spell, it decreases the amount of magic used too, by a factor of fifteen!"

"Those are the basic advantages right now, yes," Chess agreed, looking down at her device, a plain-looking, bulky plastic box, this time with more thought. "But like I said, this is just a prototype, and there are still a lot of problems with it. I need to refine the proto-runic system more, figure out more spells, then wire in a microprocessor so each device can cast the different spells, and then, of course, I'll need to design a user interface of some sort… At the end, I want to have a fully-functioning magical channelling system on its own – something faster, more efficient, something that takes away having to memorize spells but instead just learning a system. It can be done – I feel it can be done. Just like going to the moon, Harry – computers have revolutionized the No-Maj world, and if I can just integrate that into magical spell-casting, it'll be amazing. It'll change everything!"

Her face was shining, hopeful, but John evidently caught something else in the tail end of her thoughts. "No one thinks you're a waste of space, Chess," he said, his voice uncommonly sharp.

"I didn't say anything," Chess protested, her expression shifting to surprise and annoyance, and she pulled away from him. "I didn't say it!"

"You still thought it!"

"Well, it's not like I don't hear it, John!" Chess cried, her lips twisting. "The people hissing wandless at me when I pass by, the people muttering about how all my magic classes with everyone are just pass-fail and that I should just be kicked out of school. It happens, okay? The sooner you get used to it, the better."

"Who's saying it?" John snapped, sitting bolt upright, eyes sparking. "I'll take care of it."

"Why, so that they can target me more when you're not around?" Chess snorted derisively. "It's fine, John. They're just whispers, no one would dare touch me. Let them talk. It'll make no difference in the end."

"It's not fine, Chess," John said, glaring at her, and Archie knew that he wasn't just asking – he was inside her mind, searching for the exact information he wanted. "I want names."

"Don't know them, don't want to know them." Chess snapped her notebook shut. "I should go. I have a lot of magical theory to read for tomorrow, then I have the No-Maj home-schooling I promised I'd do for my parents so I could go to college. We'll talk about your strategy against Lily tomorrow."

"I'll walk you home?" Archie offered tentatively, standing up and shooting John an inquiring look. He felt awkward, like this was a scene he shouldn't be witnessing – John never invaded his mind, not the way he went into Chess', and the whole thing was a little uncomfortable. John tilted his head, a sour look on his face. "I should probably catch up on epidemiology, anyway."

John scowled, shooting a look at Chess that promised that this wasn't the end of the discussion, but she ignored him, walking out the door. Archie gave his friend an awkward shrug, and followed after her.

To his surprise, Chess was waiting for him just outside of John's room. They went down three flights of stairs, through the loud common room, and out to the quiet grounds. They were more than halfway to Oliver Hall before Archie asked.

"Does he always do that? Read your mind, I mean."

"Close enough," Chess said, quirking a tiny half-smile. "But it's a little different, for us. Don't worry about it."

Archie chewed on his lip. "Haven't you learned Occlumency?"

"Some." Chess shrugged slightly, taking the steps up the veranda to the sprawling plantation house that was her down. "I'll see you later, Harry."

"Yeah, tomorrow," Archie replied, making sure she got in before he turned around and headed back to his own dorm. There was something odd about the last exchange – it wasn't like John to invade someone's mind, not without their consent, and Chess clearly hadn't wanted him to know about it. But Chess also expected the invasion, avoiding learning who was talking about her in advance. And Chess said herself that it was a little different for them.

Well, it wasn't like Archie could say anything about keeping secrets. He would leave it alone – if it ever became important, he trusted they would tell him.

A few days later, Archie wished he wasn't on duty, but he was also happy he was on duty. It was better for Hermione that he was on duty, he told himself, even as he was leaning against the wall in subdued terror. Hermione would be going up against Neal Queenscove this round, and even if Archie suspected that she and the entire British Students Association had put their not inconsiderable talents together to deal with his winter wind, Neal had any number of other tricks up his sleeve.

And a sharp sword, at that. And, rumour had it, the ability to use it.

It was quieter, today. Owen was still there, commentating the matches, but it was nowhere near as crowded as it had been on the opening weekend. The upper-years of John's friends had warned him that this would happen – the Trials were exciting, and everyone came out on the first day, but the next few weeks would be the grind. No one wanted to watch boring matches, and the best players would make it through to the elimination rounds anyway, so it was mainly those who were involved or who had friends who were playing who would attend throughout. Even then, most of them would only attend to see their friends. For the Healers, though, it would be a long slog – Archie never had a day off, so he could only hope, sometimes, that matches would end quickly, and he could head back early.

Owen's introductions had become shorter, thankfully, since by now most people knew who the major players were. He only bothered for those who hadn't played yet, all of whom would be playing this weekend. "Facing off against Neal this week, we have fourth-year Hermione Granger. Although only a fourth-year, Hermione is the top student for that year and is generally considered one of the most promising mages at AIM. Hopefully, she'll be a bit more of a challenge for him than Thomas posed last week!"

Hermione appeared on one end of the stadium, and Archie almost laughed. She was bundled up in a coat – a plain, No-Maj winter coat, puffy and thick, which probably wouldn't hold up indefinitely but which would provide some protection, especially if she layered it with Warming Charms. There was a wave of giggles through the audience, which she ignored.

"Well, it looks like Hermione comes prepared with some very common-sense remedies," Owen yelled out, and Archie heard the shot go off. Neal drew his sword, calling on his winds, and while Hermione, a look of intense concentration on her face, started Transfiguring herself a series of low walls to act as wind-breaks. "You know what they say, everyone – common sense is sometimes the rarest! And look at that power, everyone – Hermione now has several low walls behind which she can hide to launch spells!"

And that, she did – she didn't waste any energy trying to get too much closer, instead carefully huddling behind a low wall that she had created for herself, and lobbing something over, which burst in an explosion not far from where Neal was standing. He dodged, a casting what must have been a deflection or blocking spell with his sword, but his timing was a little off, and he took a cut across one cheek from the explosion spell.

"Look at that – Hermione Granger is the first to draw blood!" Owen yelled, even as the audience cheered her on. Everyone liked an underdog. "And she takes the opportunity with the wind down to dash forward, into the trench that Kel made last week! Clever use of the terrain – we haven't seen much use of that, yet – oh, no, has she miscalculated? Neal dives into the trench on the other end, and I don't like that mad grin he has on his face, folks, I really don't like that grin!"

Archie couldn't see anything inside the trench, not from his vantage point, and the next ten minutes were agony. Based on Owen's commentary, it seemed like Neal was using the trench to channel his winds directly at Hermione and that he was advancing on her. She had pulled the same trick with the low walls, a solid wind-break, but she couldn't climb out – since he was right there, she would be a target while climbing out, and it would take her out of the shelter of her wall, too. Instead, she would have to fight her way out, and Neal was, well…

Neal hadn't placed third at last year's intercollegiate duelling championship for nothing. He was good at duelling, and Hermione just didn't have that experience. Archie knew from Owen's comments that Hermione was fighting well, shockingly well for someone who hadn't been part of the Duelling club for years, but not well enough – she was slowly being pushed back, Transfiguring herself new shelter as he broke through each one she left behind, but there was only so far back she could go.

He couldn't see. He knew where she was, at the end of the chasm closest to him, but he couldn't see, and he knew that none of the other Healers could, either. Damn it. She was putting up a fight, Owen said, slowing Neal down with furious spell-fire and carefully planted delayed-trigger Bombardment charms along her retreat path, no doubt hoping it would slow him down enough for her to get out of the chasm. It almost worked, once, but she had no choice but to fall back again when he cleared the rubble, faster than she had thought he could, with something like a Reducto.

"She's got nowhere left to run," Owen cried, leaning forward in the commentator's box. "Is she going to concede the match?"

Oh god, no, Archie moaned internally, even as he readied himself to Apparate. Hermione did not concede. Hermione was a bulldog, the best of bulldogs, and she would stand and fight to the bitter end. He loved that about her, but right now, he knew that Hermione didn't need to win this match to advance. There were eight pools, and the top two from each pool would advance. She could lose this one, just not any of the others.

Please, concede, he begged her mentally, even though he knew she wouldn't do it.

"She doesn't concede, instead throwing out what looks like three Flipendos in a row – guess she was hoping that he wouldn't block the third one – but Neal deflects them and lunges. Ohhhhh, that looks like a nasty cut. Hermione isn't backing down, though, so – ouch, that must have hurt. Neal knocks her down!" Archie winced through that entire explanation, and he didn't wait any longer before throwing himself into an Apparition. Neal wouldn't have inflicted anything deadly, but this was AIM – this was a school where both Neal and Hermione and a quarter of the school were training to be Healers, and what was considered deadly here was decidedly different than in other places.

He looked down into the chasm before he jumped, seeing Neal standing, sword out, waiting patiently with a slightly worried look on his face as Hermione lay, unconscious, in the dirt. He jumped down, immediately, pulling out his wand to cast a general diagnostic charm.

She was unconscious, with a concussion and a massive knot on her head. He would need to check to make sure there was no intracerebral haemorrhaging or subdural hematoma, but otherwise it looked to be fine. She had a few other cuts and injuries, too, including a deep cut across one arm, but none of those looked to be serious. She was out like a light.

Archie sighed, standing and crossing his arms in the signal for player out. At least Neal had cut the wind – he had dropped that spell, apparently, in the heat of close-range combat.

"Need any help there?" Neal offered, sheathing his sword and flicking his wrist so his wand came to his hand. "I know the Healers are short-staffed, and you've got another six matches to monitor today. I cracked her pretty hard over the head – gave her about four chances to concede, but she refused."

A part of Archie didn't want help, if only because this was Hermione, and he wanted to take care of her himself. But he also saw the sense of what Neal was saying – he did need to clear Hermione off the field, and he didn't have the time to sit and sift through her brain looking for any sign of bleeding on the field. And he didn't want to wake her until he was done checking her over, either.

"Of course, she didn't concede," Archie replied with a sigh. He pulled one of Hermione's arms around his shoulders. "Help me get her off the field? I can take care of the rest – Daine and the others can do the next match. I'll be able to handle it from there."

"Sure," Neal pulled Hermione's other arm over his shoulders, and the two of them hefted their friend and carried her out of the stadium. Archie heard Owen announce the next match as they left.

"We don't need to go far," Archie huffed, pulling Hermione to a likely looking patch of verdant grass. "I just didn't want to wake her up without having already combed through her brain matter for any bleeding – and that takes too long to do in there. Here is fine. You can handle your own injuries, right?"

Neal threw him an amused look. "Yeah, I'll do that. Need any other help?"

"No, I should be good from here." Archie pulled out his wand, starting the slow process of checking Hermione's head for any sign of bleeding. "Thanks."

Neal nodded and backed off with a wave, but Archie was already gone, deep in his magic as he combed it through her brain. He found a couple small, problematic points that could have developed into clots, and ran through the veins in her brain to check for any tears. There were a few weak points in the lower-pressure veins, so he strengthened those, and he fixed a minor vessel tear as he went, which would have turned into a serious problem in about eight hours if he hadn't caught it. Then, he checked it all over again, just to make sure. She would have an awful headache, but otherwise she would be fine. The rest of her injuries were minor – he Healed those without a second thought, before waking her up.

Hermione's eyes opened, and she winced, sitting up and putting a hand on her head.

"Sorry about that," Archie said, his voice apologetic, a little awkward. "I couldn't do much about the headache – not when you had the beginning of a subdural hematoma."

"Ugh," she muttered, putting one hand on her head. "Ow."

"Yeah," Archie agreed, hesitantly rubbing her on the back. Looking around, he spotted Isran Ali, Hermione's strategist, leaning against the wall of the stadium. Archie guessed that he had probably followed them out, but he didn't want to interfere while Archie was Healing her. "I should – I should get back in there."

Hermione nodded, her lips pressed together – her expression said, though, that she was chewing on something. There was something she wanted to say, and she was arguing with herself about whether to say it.

"Hermione?"

She sighed, putting her head in her hands, and her voice was quiet, pained. "You asked me for a chance to explain. You were my best friend, Archie, and that's the only reason I'm giving you one. I'll come by tonight."

It was the chance he had been waiting for, for weeks on weeks. And yet, when the moment came, when she finally gave him what he had been looking for, his heart pounded in dread and hurt, because he knew, finally, it could never be the same. Not between them.

You were my best friend, she had said. In the past tense.

Chapter Text

Archie couldn't concentrate.

He had tried to take his mind off it with the rest of the afternoon's matches by keeping an eagle eye on the stadium grounds. He couldn't afford to be distracted while people were getting injured, so with a great force of effort, he tried to keep his mind on the matches before him. Hermione's walls made for more interesting matches, at least, as duellers used them to shield and ambush. Two of them were destroyed before the end of the day, which only made for more debris to Transfigure, Charm, throw, explode, or otherwise use.

Try was the key word. He failed, leaving most of the Healing to the other Healers for the day. He belatedly Apparated in only once more, to help Daine with a complicated spell damage issue where someone had attempted a Druidic ritual and only managed to entangle his magical signature with his opponent's. It was a case of minor magical contamination, and he only did it because he remembered, last-minute, that none of the others had any background in magical contamination.

He paced in nervous circles around his room, trying to arrange his thoughts. He had already tried to write everything down, but it sounded too… too pleading. He had already spent weeks pleading with her, and none of that had worked. Hermione didn't want to hear more pleading, more begging, and she didn't want to hear his excuses. She wanted an explanation, and Archie…

Archie wasn't sure he really had one. All he could do was cut the hyperbole, cut his excuses, and tell her.

Harry would be so mad at him. Normally, this would upset him, because it was Harry, and he hated having Harry upset at him. But, this time, he strangely wasn't. It was his fault for not telling Harry enough information to carry off his role, and it was his fault for telling her to meet with Hermione. But Harry was still the spark that had led him here, to this exact moment, and now Archie's nerves jangled with anger, exhaustion, fear, dread, anticipation and anxiety. When it all shook out, he was too emotionally exhausted from his own feelings, right now, to worry about how upset Harry would be.

There was a quiet knock at the door, and Archie steeled himself as he went to open it.

It was Hermione, of course it was, looking much better than she had this afternoon. She had let her hair loose, her bushy brown curls forming a halo around her head. He had always loved her curls, vague thoughts of wanting to twirl one loose curl coming to mind, but he shoved those thoughts aside.

He didn't even know if they were friends, right now, so he could forget anything more than that.

He stepped aside, motioning for her to come in, then he shut the door and let go of his Harry Potter body. Without turning around, he fixed his shirt, his pants, so that they covered his ankles and his wrists. Looking good always made him feel more confident, and he ran his fingers through his hair quickly, fixing it to hang the way he liked it to. It was a little longer now than it had been over the summer, falling in short waves that he liked.

When he turned to face her, Hermione was standing in the centre of his room, looking between the chair and the bed with an air of uncertainty. She looked up at Archie as he took a step towards her, and even if she wasn't frowning at him, there was no smile, no light of happiness, on her face either.

"Sit anywhere you like," Archie said, his voice soft. He didn't smile, either – this was too important for smiling. "Are you feeling better?"

"I'm fine," Hermione said, her voice equally quiet. She looked between the chair and the bed, one more time, finally picking Archie's desk chair and pulling it out, turning it around, and sitting down. She folded her hands on her lap, crossing one knee over the other.

"Your headache?"

"I took a Headache Relief Potion hours ago." Hermione looked down, fidgeting a little. "You wanted a chance to explain, Archie. Explain."

Archie turned and sat on his bed with a quiet sigh. He had been waiting for this moment for weeks on weeks, he had dreaded it all afternoon, and now that the moment was on him, he just wanted more time. More time to find the perfect words, more time to find the flawless explanation that would render him and Harry blameless, that would make everything okay, that would make Hermione fall in love with him.

Forget love. He would settle for like, he would settle for what they had and that he had lost.

"I think I have to start with my family," Archie started, his voice low, reflective. "All of my family. As you worked out, my name is Arcturus Rigel Black. I am a pureblood, and I'm the Heir to the House of Black. My family is in the Book of Gold."

He didn't put any pride into those words. They were intimidating words, but he had never liked or cared for his status. He would happily leave it behind, if only Hermione would be his best friend again. When he said those words, they were flat, monotone, empty. They were just facts – they were who he had been born.

"My father is Sirius Orion Black, the current Lord of the House of Black, and my mother was Lady Diana Black, née Fawley. The Blacks are a historically Dark house, traditionally aligned with pureblood supremacists; my mother is from a historically Light house, but also pureblood supremacists. Whatever their families were, we aren't. At school, at Hogwarts, my dad made friends with two of my uncles: my Uncle Remus, who is a halfblood and a werewolf, and my Uncle James, who I've introduced to you as my father. Lord James Fleamont Potter is from the House of Peverell, a traditionally Light and open-minded House that has never supported pureblood supremacy. The Potters didn't make the Sacred Twenty-Eight – that's the most exclusive list of pureblood families in Britain."

Hermione was nodding slowly, clearly making note of his family members, her expression still stiffly formal. "Go on."

"Uncle James married a Muggleborn, Lily Evans, who now goes by Lady Lillian Potter in England," Archie admitted, seeing Hermione's eyebrow go up. His lips quirked a little – he wouldn't call it a smile, because there was nothing happy about it, but it was a small hint of amusement. "Yeah, I know. I didn't know anything about the Triwizard Tournament, or anything, until this year – Aunt Lily doesn't talk about AIM at all." He paused, biting his lip a little bit. Aunt Lily really was odd – she had never said anything but based on the little Harry had said about AIM, Aunt Lily had to have guessed that not all was as it seemed. He didn't know. "As far as I know, she's not in contact with anyone outside Britain. I know that she went to AIM and that she was in experimental Charms, but that's it. She doesn't talk much about her past."

"Hmm." Hermione's voice was carefully non-committal.

"I know, it's… odd. But I never asked, and I don't dare ask in case it's something that Harry would know." Archie looked away from Hermione with a small sigh. "And that brings me to Harry. My cousin, Harriett Euphemia Potter. She's a halfblood, and the Heiress Potter. She is in the Book of Gold. She is also… well, until I came to school, she was … she was my first playmate, my first friend, my first partner, my first… I don't know. In a lot of ways, I was closer to her than I was with my own parents."

"I mean, I had my parents, but you have to understand, Hermione – our families are close, incredibly close." Archie made a gesture with his hands, bringing them together in something like a circle as he leaned forward, trying to find the words to explain what he meant. "We rarely have dinner apart – we have dinner one night at Harry's, then we have dinner at my place the next night, and so on and so forth. I saw Harry every day growing up – Harry and I did everything together. We played together, we teamed up together, we did our basic maths and reading and writing lessons with Aunt Lily together. We had sleepovers multiple times a week, we bathed together. We're cousins, but we were closer than siblings. She used to steal my clothes, leave me wearing her dresses, because… that was just who we were. I had my parents, but Harry was different. Harry was my age, and she was pretty much the only person of my age around me, growing up."

Hermione's eyebrow went up. "You had no other friends?"

"No." Archie shook his head. "In 1981, there was an event in Society called the Great Split. As a result of some political manoeuvring by the SOW Party on Halloween 1981, all the Families that follow the Light faction, or Lord Dumbledore, cut out Dark Society and since then, we don't go to each other's social events. A little more than half of all Families are part of that, and I guess my parents didn't know anyone or didn't arrange other playdates for us, so Harry and I practically never met anyone else. But that doesn't matter, Hermione – Harry and I, we were so close, I didn't even want more friends. I never once felt like I didn't have enough."

"It sounds like you had an insanely co-dependent relationship with her," Hermione commented, leaning forward. "It doesn't sound healthy."

Archie pressed his lips together, shrugging reluctantly. "I wouldn't – I don't know if I would say that. But Harry – Harry is brilliant, Hermione, I don't know else to say it. She's utterly brilliant, especially in Potions. She was about four when she read an article written by Master Severus Snape, the Potioneer best known for his work on the modern Wolfsbane Potion, and since then it's been potions, potions, potions. She started brewing on her own in Aunt Lily's lab when she was five, out of those Brew Your First Potion kits, and then those turned into beginner's textbooks, and those turned into advanced Potions books and ingredient dictionaries and recipe compilations and Potions journals. We were seven when we finished brewing everything you and I did in first-year Potions, Hermione – I didn't see anything new in Potions until the end of last year, and even then... Well, I'll get to that when I get to the ruse."

Hermione's lips tightened a little at his mention of the ruse, but she nodded, signalling for him to continue. Archie smiled a little, still humourless. "You read her paper, 'Mione - I don't even understand what she did, that's why I can't explain it to you. But Harry is a Potions prodigy, and when we were younger, before school started, there was nothing she wanted more than to go to Hogwarts and study under the famous Master Severus Snape."

"And you?" Hermione asked, though Archie could tell from the expression on her face that she already knew.

"And me." Archie looked down, collecting himself. Talking about Mum was always hard, and he took a deep, steadying breath. When he started again, his voice was a whisper, and Hermione had to lean closer to hear him. "My Mum got sick first when I was six years old. We didn't know what it was, then. She got sick, and then she got better, and then she got sick again. And again, and again, and again, and each time she was weaker, and there was nothing Dad or I could do. I started reading Healing books – first to understand what the Healers were saying, then to try to find things to help her, but... but I guess I didn't read enough. I didn't read the right things, because she had multiple sclerosis all along, and … if I had found out then what I know how, we could have done more, we could have... I could have—"

He sucked in a deep breath, hearing his voice start to crack, and he fished around in his pocket for his handkerchief. His eyes were wet. He wasn't crying, his eyes were just wet. Mum died years ago, years and years ago. All he had to do was tell Hermione about her, and he had done that before, hadn't he? Was it all that different to talk about Mum, rather than Aunt Diana?

"You could have done nothing," Hermione said, her voice soft. She reached out, almost reluctantly, and put a hand on his knee. "Even if you had found it, you were, what, seven years old? What Healer would have listened to you? Especially in Britain, since you would have had to get the information from a Muggle source – who would have taken you seriously?"

Archie shook his head, wiped his eyes, and took a shaky breath, moving on. Hermione made a good point, but it didn't ease his bitterness any. "Mum died when I was eight. And my mum, Hermione... Mum was wonderful. She read to me, she made all the funny voices for me. She baked the best zucchini bread in the world. She played tricks on the portraits that my Dad and I hated. I don't – I don't know how to explain it, 'Mione, because I try to explain and all you get are stupid facts about her, they don't really describe was her. She was more than reading, more than zucchini bread, more than pranks – she was my mum."

"I understand." Hermione's voice was soothing, and she patted him on his knee. "How do you describe love?"

"Passion and fireworks." Archie tried for a smile. "Like Chess does."

Hermione snorted, a glimmer of amusement in her brown eyes. "Knights in shining armour, dashing dukes and Prince Charming?"

"Who wouldn't love a knight in shining armour?" Archie shrugged artlessly, then he sighed heavily. "Anyway. The same way that Harry wanted to study Potions under Master Snape, I wanted to be a Healer. And the best Healing program in the western hemisphere is here, at AIM."

He paused for a minute, gathering his thoughts. Now was the time for him to talk about the ruse, to talk about it and explain it and he didn't even know what. He felt the warm touch of her hand disappear, as Hermione sat back up. A little touch of comfort, gone. "When I was ten, when it was time for me to choose where to go for school, I told my Dad that I wanted to go to AIM to study Healing. He refused."

"Why?"

"Why did he say no?" Archie leaned back, thinking, sombre. "At the time, I thought it was just because of his own sentiment. You have to understand; Dad loved his time at Hogwarts, as much as I love AIM. Dad, my Uncle James, my Uncle Remus, they were a pack at school, they called themselves the Marauders and they had the time of their lives. Dad met Mum at Hogwarts, it was where they fell in love, and he wanted that for me, too. I think he also didn't want me to go far away since—since Mum died. Now, seeing what Harry does in my name, I wonder if there might not be something political about it. I am the Black Heir – one day, I'll be expected to take the Lordship, and Hogwarts is where almost all the noble families, and the most prominent ones, send their kids."

Hermione snorted, her brown eyes flashing. "Because they've excluded anyone not a pureblood, then cut anyone educated outside Britain from all public sector jobs and any sort of political power."

Archie inclined his head slowly. "I'm not arguing that, 'Mione. I was just – I'm not good at politics, not really. You want Harry for political manoeuvring, for the most part I'm more of a... full-speed-ahead, act-without-thinking, make-your-excuses-later kind of guy. But I see Harry befriending the Heirs to other prominent Houses and other families, and I can see the potential future usefulness of that as well as anyone. It was just a thought."

Hermione had barked a short laugh, a tiny one, at Archie's self-characterization, but it was cut off quickly, as if she thought she shouldn't laugh. It was true, though, and Archie smiled slightly. "To get back to my explanation though, I wanted to go to AIM and Dad refused, and Harry wanted to go to Hogwarts to study under Master Snape, and, well..."

"She couldn't, because she's a halfblood," Hermione filled in flatly. "So, you traded places. Whose idea was that?"

Archie was silent for a second, picking his words carefully. "It was her idea. I would have thought about it, but not seriously, not without her. But, Hermione, you have to know that I wanted it just as much as she did. She didn't have to do much to convince me to go through with it. It made sense – she wanted to go to Hogwarts. I didn't. I wanted to go to AIM. She didn't."

Hermione snorted again, obviously skeptical. "And how on earth did you manage to do it?"

"Polyjuice, naturally." Archie shrugged. "We didn't even have to brew our own that time, Harry stole some of Uncle James' and replaced it with something innocuous. And, because we were so isolated growing up, very few people knew what we were supposed to look like, or what we were supposed to be like. And back then, Harry and I looked alike – we looked more like twins than we did cousins. Now we don't, so Harry found a spell that blends our features, and she developed a modification of the Polyjuice Potion to make it last for about a year at a time. And then in third year, I became a Metamorphmagus, so I didn't need the Polyjuice at all."

"I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed by her ingenuity," Hermione commented dryly. "She sounds brilliant – though I had guessed she must be to brew Seifer's Solution."

"She is brilliant." Archie looked up, matching her almost thoughtful expression with a wry smile. "She's already revolutionizing Potions with her shaped imbuing research, and under my name, she is the youngest Potions apprentice in history. And that's just Potions! She also cured the Sleeping Sickness at Hogwarts in her first year, and she defeated a basilisk in her second year. She's crazy brilliant, and brave, and she has this deadpan sense of humour that's so funny, and she plays the best pranks."

"And she's selfish," Hermione said, her eyes narrowing. "As are you. Let's not forget how she took an opportunity, through you, to circumvent blood discrimination. Tell me about that – why did you do it? You wanted it, and she gave you a chance to have what you wanted without having to stand up to your dad. Fine. But what about her? You know yourself that there are Potions Mastery programs at schools in America, in Australia, all over the world. Harry would have been just as brilliant anywhere else as she would have been at Hogwarts, without breaking the law. Why the ruse?"

Archie looked away, out the window.

The world was so big. The world was so much bigger than he had ever thought it could be, as an eleven-year-old. There were so many schools, even just in North America! There was AIM, of course, a group of plantation houses set on beautiful, rolling green grounds, with its brilliant Healing and experimental Charms programs. But there was also the Collège, an elegant hotel-like building nestled in the forests of northern Québec, where future politicians, lawyers, and judges bickered fluently in English and in French. There was Ilvermorny, a stone castle much like Hogwarts, set in the wild hills of the Appalachians, home of the best Transfigurations, Runes, and Alchemy programs in the world. He thought about Cascadia, that tall, glass spire in the Rockies, strongest at Druidry and Potions, and he thought about Escuela Maya, in the Mexican desert, a network of low-lying adobe buildings, ironically best at Herbology and whose Quidditch players never failed demolish AIM with a point lead of anything less than a hundred and fifty.

He thought about the world lying just outside his doorsteps, the world of science, of subways and satellites and spaceships. He thought about science fiction, about movies and music and musicals, about The Man in the High Castle and To Kill a Mockingbird and The Crucible. He thought about drive-ins, and independent cinemas, about a sarcastic Muggle girl named Phryne who wanted to study art, about summer theatre camp. He thought about milkshakes.

He thought about medicine. He thought about vaccines, about surgery, about biopsies and samples. He thought about multiple sclerosis, about the pharmaceuticals that could have helped Mum, if only they had known. He thought about all the things he only knew because he had left.

Archie had left home and discovered a whole new world.

"We didn't know, Hermione." The words were stone, dropping into waiting silence, and Archie knew they were true. "We just – Harry and I, we were so sheltered and isolated. I knew that AIM had a top Healing program because Aunt Lily had come here and mentioned it, but I didn't know anything about, well, anything else. I didn't even know the names of any other schools, or anything about them. I didn't know anything about the No-Maj world. I never went into the No-Maj world until John took me. I think – well, I can't be sure, but I don't know if Harry even knew about the Potions programs at any other schools, and AIM's Potions program isn't very good. And Master Snape is the best, so even if she did know, she might not have really believed it or understood. It's hard – it's hard to explain, Hermione. This world is so big, and there's so much that I didn't know when I came here, and I don't even know if I would have believed you about them if you told me about them before. Some things you have to see, you have to live, to understand."

"So maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was selfish, and maybe we took the coward's way out, instead of standing up and fighting for change. We were eleven, 'Mione. We didn't know about the world, and maybe we didn't think." He felt himself tearing up again, slightly, and he stopped to take a breath. His voice shook. "Maybe - maybe we screwed up."

Hermione was silent, letting Archie wipe his eyes again with his handkerchief. When he looked at her, her face was considering, though there was still a little crease between her eyebrows. He swallowed thickly – he was doing his best, but what if his best wasn't enough? What if everything wasn't enough?

"Go on," she said, her words impassive.

"Maybe we screwed up," Archie repeated, sniffling and wiping his nose. "But we can't – we can't change back, now, it would be too obvious. We couldn't have even done it after first year. I'm good at passing as Harry, or as Rigel Black, the version of me that she plays at school, but I hate it. I hate it so much, 'Mione. I'm not her, I hate her friends, I don't belong in Slytherin House where she is. I hate lying to my family, and I hate having to hide all the things I've learned here, all the things I love here."

He wiped his face again, because his eyes wouldn't stop leaking, even if his handkerchief was sodden and gross. He took a deep breath, getting himself under control. That was off-topic. Hermione didn't want to hear his personal diatribe about how he hated acting as Rigel Black; she would just lecture him about how he had brought it on himself. "And Harry – Harry isn't me, either. She can't even fool you for a few hours, how could she believably pass off that she's been at school here for three, four years? Even what we've learned – we do follow each other's curricula, as much as we can, but there comes a point where that's impossible. I am better at Potions than most people ever will be, because she tutors me, and I tutor her in Healing, and we can fool our families, we can fool most people, but I couldn't pick up her apprenticeship. She couldn't head straight into No-Maj Medicine 2. We could never believably do the switch back now. And the consequences – the consequences of what we've done are … extreme. We've committed blood identity theft, Hermione. The minimum sentence for that, for Harry, is Azkaban; it scales up to the Dementor's Kiss."

"But not for you." It wasn't a question – Hermione already knew the answer.

"No," Archie confirmed, his voice quiet. Harry had taken all the risks, and they had known that. She had known that, but he knew that Hermione would only see it as Archie doing to Harry what Archie had done to her, with the heist at St. Mungo's. It was Archie, letting someone lesser-blooded take the risks for something he wanted, that he benefitted from. "As a pureblood, I can't be convicted of blood identity theft, only of aiding and abetting blood identity theft. The worst I can get is a fine."

"Which you can pay easily, because you're rich." Hermione's eyes were narrowed, her tone growing cold.

"Which I can pay easily, because I'm rich." Archie grimaced, hearing all the things she left unsaid. "She knew, Hermione. She always knew the risks."

"Do you think that makes it better?"

Archie looked at her. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line, and he would have expected her to be railing at him, but her voice was simply cold, simply a question. She wasn't yelling at him, but by god, he wished that she was. If she was, that would mean things were normal, things would go back to normal. And things weren't normal.

"No," Archie said, looking down, his voice very quiet. There was only one answer to that, and he didn't even know if it was a true answer. "I don't."

They sat there in silence. Archie looked up, once or twice, but Hermione's lips were pursed in her thinking face, and her eyebrows were still creased. It wasn't a good sign, but it wasn't a bad sign, either. The shadows in his room lengthened a little, but he was frozen in his seat on his bed, he didn't want to move and disturb her. Minutes passed. He didn't know how many minutes, but enough that it was getting dark in his room, now.

"Is that everything?" Hermione said, finally.

"If – if you don't have any questions." Archie moved, finally, to trigger the light-spell in his room. Hermione's face was solemn.

"All right, then," she said, standing up. She put the chair back to face Archie's desk. "I should get going. It's late."

Archie's face crumpled a little, though he tried to smooth it out, as best as he knew how. He had given her everything, handed her himself, his feelings, everything about the ruse on a silver platter. And it wasn't enough.

Maybe it could never be enough. But Archie couldn't leave it like this. He couldn't let her walk away, not without trying.

"Wait, Hermione." Archie stood up, too, but he didn't dare block her way, not again. "Where – where do we stand? Please, I – I'm sorry."

He didn't know what he was apologizing for. It wasn't the ruse, because the ruse had happened, and without it, he wouldn't be him, he wouldn't be Archie, and without it he wouldn't have met her either. It wasn't even for lying to her, because that had been necessary. He hadn't enjoyed it. Maybe it was just for hurting her.

"Where do we stand?" Hermione stopped. She didn't look at him, her eyes firmly fixed towards the door. Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper herself. "I don't know, Archie. I feel like I barely know you. I feel like everything I thought I knew about you was a lie – your name, your very identity. You want to know where we stand? I don't know. I don't think I ever even knew you."

She walked out the door, and her cool, quiet, honest words stung harder than any amount of screaming and yelling could have done. She walked out the door, and she was gone. And when she was gone, Archie found himself another handkerchief, and he let himself cry for the things he had lost.

Unbelievably, things were better between them, in a way.

Hermione wasn't angry at him anymore. She didn't exclusively sit with the British Students Association anymore, sometimes she joined him and John and Chess for lunch, laughing at things he said, at things their friends said. She didn't go out of her way to avoid him – if he caught her with her British Students Association friends, she would politely excuse herself and come and talk with him if he asked. She started studying in the Pettingill Hall common room again, and when Archie came and asked if he could join her, she would nod, and he would sit, and they would study together, in silence. Sometimes, she even sat beside him in classes, politely sharing her textbook the way they had always done, letting him see her notes if he fell behind. She rolled her eyes and told the people who still looked askance at Archie that whatever rumour they heard was wrong, just how gullible were they? It was fine. Everything was fine.

It was fine, but it wasn't the same. Nothing was the same, and even if it looked fine, Archie could feel how not-fine it was. He felt it in the moments of silence when he talked to her, the brief pauses as she considered what to say. He felt it in the way she never broached things with him, the way she never approached him unless she needed something specific, the way she didn't start conversations with him without reason. He felt it in the way she never got angry, she never lost her temper, she never railed at him about the injustice of blood discrimination, about the patriarchy and feminism and witches' rights, or even just about how the Newbloods' Advocacy and Support Organization executive had no common sense and kept wanting to host events far beyond their means.

They were something more than acquaintances, but less than friends; she treated him cautiously, she didn't treat him with the unreserved trust she had before. There was something broken, between them, and every time Archie sat beside her, or talked to her, or laughed with her, he felt the shards of whatever it was digging into his heart.

It hurt.

He threw himself into the Trials, which went on, week after week, a grind that quickly became the recipe for exhaustion. Archie would argue that it was worse on the Healing Corps than it was on anyone else because he never got a break – not through a Trial day, and not through the whole competition. It was five weekends, ten days, of monitoring and Healing, and unlike the players, he had to be sharp through all eight matches each day. He wasn't the one trying to do everything except kill his opponent, but he was the one Apparating in to pick up the pieces at the end of each match. It left him with only his evenings to get his schoolwork done, and he reluctantly told the Cliff, the director of the theatre troupe, that he wouldn't be able to put anything together for their showcase.

John was on a tear through his pool. On the second weekend, he had made good on his comment to Chess and ripped Lily Cho from the skies, using an Amplification Charm on his own Natural Legilimens ability and assaulting her mind while she was in the air. Lily had taken two broken bones for that, and Archie would have been shocked by the sheer bloody-mindedness of his friend, if it wasn't for that fact that Kel, earlier that day, had lopped someone's foot off. That was actually an accident, Kel hovering anxiously in the background as he and Daine set her opponent to rights, but in terms of injuries, it was the worst he had seen thus far.

Hermione, too, was doing well – after suffering a loss to Neal, she had taken on Thomas Graves in a close match on the third weekend, winning after seventeen pitched minutes of spell-fire, a lot of running, and sheer stubbornness. She had lost one other duel through her next two matches, giving her two wins and two losses, tying her for second place in her pool; apparently, in the event of pool ties, Professor Ryan would make a executive decision on who had done better based on creativity, problem-solving, and ability to work under pressure.

"I think you did well, though," Chess said reflectively over lunch one day, nodding at Isran, Hermione's strategist, who was joining them. "You haven't got any one strategy, so you've shown a really wide variety of skills – that will play very well with Professor Ryan."

"That was the plan," Isran admitted, inclining his head in respect to Chess. It had taken nearly two weeks for the other strategists to figure out even the basics about what John was doing, far too long for most bid teams to adjust their strategies. Whatever it was, it was new, and the common consensus that it was Chess' invention. She wasn't talking about it, but she walked around campus with a proud tilt to her head, basking in well-earned respect. "Since Hermione didn't have the Duelling background or special skills, we relied on her general aptitude in most areas to ensure that we didn't do the same thing twice, especially because we couldn't rely on getting a clean sweep."

"Smart," John agreed with a smile. He was safe – he had swept his pool, wiping the floor with Mario Lopez, then, as he put it with some measure of disgust, simply intimidating Esmond Nicoline into surrendering. He had a perfect record of four wins to nothing, and he was walking into the elimination ladder ranked highly. Higher than Chess would like, probably.

He and Harry spoke, on and off. She told him about the Triwizard preparations on her end, about a magical artefact called the Goblet of Fire, which had drawn her name and a dozen others for the tasks which would determine the team itself.

"I didn't put my name in, Arch," she said, an annoyed look on her face. "I don't know how they got me – you – in, you needed to have a magical signature. They must have gotten a hair from me or something, I don't know. I wasn't careful enough."

"A magical signature?" Archie asked, eyebrows furrowed in concern. "I don't like the sound of that. It sounds like the beginnings of a binding magical contract."

"That's what Professor Dumbledore said it was," Harry replied, her mouth a grim line. "But it can't be complete, it just can't be – the Triwizard team itself is only supposed to be three people, and they called a dozen names. There has to be a way out of it."

"Four," Archie corrected automatically. "Triwizard teams are four people: three players and an alternate, the Captain. Then support staff."

Harry blinked curiously at him. "Four, then." She sighed. "I'm going to try to throw the competition – they can't pick me if I'm clearly inadequate, right?"

Archie smiled at her, a wan smile that was his best attempt at a laugh. He didn't feel like laughing, then, not because it wasn't funny, but because that was when Hermione was refusing to talk to him, and nothing had really made him laugh, then.

She checked in again in the middle of October, somewhat annoyed after the first Hogwarts Task.

"It was teams," she said, shaking her head with a sigh. "I didn't throw it, because I was on a team, and even if I don't want to do it, I didn't want to let my teammates down. I didn't offer anything, I just did what Diggory told me to do, and we ended up getting second."

Archie was lying in bed, exhausted after a day of Healing that included reattaching a limb, more magical decontamination, and various other blunt force trauma injuries. He had Apparated into the ring six times. It was only mid-afternoon, but he was already drifting off – he needed a nap. "There's a second task, though, right?"

"Dragons," Harry grumbled. She bustled around in the mirror frame a bit – Archie guessed that she must be in her lab, it was all dark on her side of the mirror and she was rather smaller than she would have been if she was holding the mirror up. She looked like she was chopping something. "They're going to make us face dragons."

"Dragons might be fun." Archie yawned. "Easy to throw."

"What are you talking about? I couldn't lift a dragon if I tried, they weigh about 5 tons each." Harry smirked, and Archie rolled his eyes at her. She knew what he meant, and she laughed, before getting back to the point. "The problem is making it look convincing. I have to throw it without looking like I'm throwing it. Arch, are you all right? It can't be more than three in the afternoon there, why do you look like you're about to fall asleep? Are you sick?"

Archie smiled weakly at her. "No, I'm just… tired." He thought about telling her about the Trials, but it all seemed too complicated for him to put into words at the moment, especially when he jerked and the mirror almost crashed into his nose. "Ouch."

"Hmm." Harry gave him a searching look. "Get some rest, then – you look terrible."

"Thanks. And good luck." Archie smiled at her, put the mirror under his pillow, rolled over and went to sleep.

The last time Harry mirror-called him, it was early in November, and she was angry – angrier than Archie had ever seen her.

"I tried to throw it, Arch, I really did." She scowled into the mirror. She was in bed this time, Archie thought – he could see green velvet curtains in the background. "I Summoned my broom and taunted some dragons and I made it look like I was struggling, like the dragons just wouldn't leave me alone."

"I'm guessing you got picked anyway," Archie replied, propping the mirror up by his desk and pulling out his Infectious Disease 2 textbook. Most of the school had been abuzz since Halloween as the other school picks started coming in. Cascadia's traditional ceremonies to choose their players had taken place over the holiday, and the Collège and Escuela Maya had chosen their teams within the last week. Ilvermorny was still in the middle of their Challenges, but John had gotten a letter in the owl post just this morning and whooped, because his cousin Rolf Scamander had made the team for the Oceania Institute in Australia. Even Neal was excited, revealing that a cousin of his had been selected for the prestigious National Magic School of China. "What happened?"

"Cormac McLaggen happened." Harry shook her head, her mouth a hard line. "The idiot was going to be toasted, so I went back and rescued him."

Archie laughed. "Always gotta make me the hero, don't you?"

"I wish I hadn't." Harry shifted on her bed. "Because they used it as sign of moral fibre and picked me. Riddle would have probably drummed up an excuse anyway, but I was hoping the judges would revolt if I was patently unsuitable or something."

"Well." Archie didn't really know what to say to that – most of AIM was all in on the Tournament, most of the world was, and Harry didn't know or care about that. He hadn't told her anything about AIM's Trials – not because there was anything secret about them, but because he had spent so long not telling her about AIM that the thought of telling her about it seemed weird, strange, uncomfortable.

Archie had two worlds, and they did not intersect. He had the world of AIM, of whirlwind Healing and Quodpot and Quidditch and theatre, of nights at the drive-in movies and burger bars with milkshakes, with Hermione and John and Chess, a world where he was mostly called Harry Potter and only a precious few knew him as Archie. And he had the uncomfortable world of Wizarding Britain, where he was the noble Heir to the House of Black, where he was supposed to be a Slytherin and where his best friends were supposed to be Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, a world where he lied, he lied and he lied to his Dad, to his family, to the people he loved most.

Harry belonged firmly in the world of Wizarding Britain, and it felt strange, oddly wrong, to break through that thin, fragile barrier separating his two worlds.

"Don't worry about it, Archie." Harry sighed again. "I've been doing some research. Since the Goblet took my magical signature, I'm the one bound to play, not you, even if it's under your name. I'm still not convinced it's a legitimate binding magical contract, but at this point, it may be best to play through until I can figure out more on that point."

"Can't let your team down, either," Archie commented with a small smile. He was glad that he wouldn't have to play, especially for Hogwarts, plus he definitely couldn't stand against the people who had made it through to the AIM eliminations ladder. Kel, Neal, John and Faleron of the Duelling club had done clean sweeps of their pools, as had the Transfigurations Mastery student, Sidney Foster (six weeks on, still no one had figured out how he was disappearing and reappearing) and the experimental Charms Mastery student, Jessica Calderon-Boot (who kept shooting people down with her modified sniper rifle before they came anywhere near her). Aside from those, advancing with good but not perfect records were two fliers, Akari Yamaguchi (who had now developed a firm fan following and couldn't be seen without a crowd of well-wishers), Lily Cho (who also had a fan club, though she was much less impressed about it), most of the Duelling Club (Merric, Seaver, Cleon had all squeaked through), and three students from the British Students Association, including Hermione. Archie would not have wanted to face any of them on his best day. "Who else is on your team?"

"Cedric Diggory and Angelina Johnson," Harry replied with a shrug. "Seventh-years, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. And our alternate is Alexander Willoughby, a seventh-year from Ravenclaw."

"Stacking your team much with seventh-years?" Archie smiled. He didn't think AIM would be the same – of the frontrunners, only Neal and Sidney were seventh-years. "Good show of House unity, though."

Harry paused, eyeing Archie curiously through the mirror. "You sound like you're enjoying this Triwizard Tournament thing."

Archie shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking away as he flipped through a few pages of his textbook. "It's a really big deal, Harry. It's just like the Quidditch World Cup would be, if Quodpot didn't exist. Everyone's into it, the world over, all the schools are really invested."

"And you?"

"I'm interested, of course." Archie shrugged a little. Having Harry ask about AIM was weird. She never asked about AIM, not out of interest. With Harry, it was what do I need to know and can you tutor me on this Healing thing that I need to know for the ruse and also Archie this happened so you need to remember when you talk to Sirius. It was never Archie, how are you doing or Archie, what is it like, going to school in America or Archie, how was your term, have you tried playing Quodpot yet. Having her ask now made him uncomfortable, like there had to be something more to it."We haven't picked our team yet, the Trials aren't done."

Harry leaned back in her bed, against a dark headboard, thinking. "Be careful about the Tournament, Archie," she said slowly. "With Riddle involved, I don't think this is going to be like past years. I know Hogwarts was kicked out after the Muggleborn bans were put in, but why are we back in now? And Riddle's got his hands in the Ministry, so whatever happens... I have a bad feeling about it."

"The ICW plans the Tournament, though." Archie frowned into his mirror. He was annoyed, a little, by her unspoken suggestion that he keep out of it, but he didn't really know why. She was just looking out for him. "Like I said, Harry, the Tournament is a huge event internationally, there will be tons of people there – it's not just Riddle. Britain is just the host nation. You said yourself, in second year when you wanted to go to the Gala; the SOW Party is the type to plot in secret, not in the open, and you'd be fine because it was a public event. This is the same."

"I don't think it's the same at all," she said, her grey eyes serious. "It's a much bigger event, for one, and judging by our tasks, more dangerous. It would be better if you stayed out of it. You are out of it, right? Focusing on your Healing?"

Archie looked away, at his textbook, feeling his annoyance and discomfort rising. Why was it that when Harry wanted something, like to go to the Gala in second year, the fact that it was a public event with non-SOW Party groups made it okay, but the excuse didn't work for him? Even if they were going to be hosted in Britain, all the schools had made independent housing arrangements for their teams, and everything was overseen primarily by the ICW. Most member nations of the ICW at least disapproved of the blood purity stance taken by the SOW Party, and even those that didn't tended not to get involved.

He didn't want to feel this way, and it didn't even sound like Harry knew what the Triwizard games would be like. She was just cautioning him, he reminded himself sternly. It wasn't anything at all, but he didn't like it, and he really didn't like the mothering tone she had used, either. "Sorry, Harry," he said instead, reaching for the mirror. "I'm studying with Hermione in a few minutes, so I have to go."

"Talk to you later, then," Harry smiled, one of her soft, genuine smiles. "I'm for bed soon, anyway."

"Night."

Archie set the mirror facedown, triggering it off, before he focused again on Infectious Disease 2. He felt a little sad, a little annoyed, but he couldn't quite put his finger on the reasons why. Harry was worried about him, she was warning him, it was what she had always done. She was just looking out for him, more than he had ever looked out for her. So why was he annoyed?

He didn't know, and he pushed his feelings away to deal with another day.

The day of the first eliminations matches opened bright and early, and the stands were as crowded as Archie had seen them on the very first day. He took his customary spot, close to the glowing blue cross, feeling the energy running through the crowd like a live thing, a palpable frisson of anticipation and dread. These were the matches everyone had been waiting for, when the weakest fighters had been weeded out and, more importantly, when it counted.

Sixteen candidates remaining. Sixteen candidates who were skilled, passionate, and savage enough to make it through the pools. Sixteen candidates who wanted one of four highly coveted spots on the AIM team, who all knew that a loss here meant elimination.

Everyone would be playing today, every one of the sixteen, and at the end of the day, there would be only eight. By the end of day tomorrow, there would be only four, and the team would be chosen and announced. Everything else had been cancelled, and the whole school, teachers included, had come out.

"Helloooo, everyone!" Owen Jesslaw bounced into the commentator's box, wide-eyed and at least twice as excited as he was before. Archie had no idea how he did it – after five weekends of pools, he still looked fresh and buoyant, while all Healing Corps had just looked more bedraggled as the weeks passed by. "And welcome to the playoffs! You all know them already, but just in case you've forgotten, our school paper has put together a profile list of our top sixteen! We have a ton of matches today, so let's get started – first up, and hold onto your seats, is Keladry Mindelan, unequivocal winner of Pool A, facing off against Derrick Holden, who just squeaked into the elimination ladder with a two-win, one-loss record in Pool G!"

There was a loud chorus of booing from the audience, even as Derrick, the boy in question, simply continued his stretching and ignored it. He was one of the British Students Association candidates, Archie knew – strong in Defense and Transfigurations, with good magical power reserves. Kel, at the other end, looked similarly cool, holding her naginata casually as Neal whispered something in her ear.

Owen grinned at the crowd. "But this is the elimination rounds, people! Forget what came before, the rule in eliminations is simple – the winner moves on. Can Derrick knock Kel off her pedestal?"

A loud round of cheers, from everyone this time, then the shot went off. And they were in the elimination rounds.

Kel, clearly amused by Owen's comment, won her match by putting herself on a literal pedestal, shooting off into the sky on a rocky spire from which she simply pulled out her wand and spent the next fifteen minutes firing Stunning spells at her opponent. She had good aim and better timing, and Derrick spent most of the match desperately dodging and trying to fire back. He was smart enough, at least, not to summon a broom, which would have just made him a bigger target, but without a way to scale her spire and being in the open, it was a simple matter for Kel to use her better Duelling skills to best him. Faleron, in the next round, used her spire and the rest of the terrain as shields to ambush his opponent – he had good timing, and he was lucky, finishing off his match in less than ten minutes.

Then, it was Hermione's turn, and she was facing off against Sidney Foster.

"Hermione's record here is good – she's got two wins, two losses under her belt, but displayed a wide range of skill and cool thinking under fire in the pools," Owen was telling the crowd. "But Sidney, well, no one is really sure what he's doing, other than kicking ass. He came out of nowhere, folks, and despite much effort, no one has worked out what, exactly, he's doing. Let's see if Hermione, who is generally known as the top student among the fourth-years, can work it out!"

The crack sounded, and Hermione immediately leveled her wand at where Sidney had disappeared. "Inflamari!" she shrieked, and Archie gasped as the fireball launched itself, in a straight path, in the direction of where Sidney had been. That was an advanced spell, a more battle-ready version of Incendio, one meant to cause serious harm to an opponent. But she had cast it at nothing.

Or – maybe not nothing, as Sidney tumbled back into appearance, blocking the spell, and Hermione's lips curved into a grin as she fired an Incarcerous at him.

"Oh, and would you look at that," Owen yelled out, as half the crowd gasped. "Hermione's the first player to make Sidney reappear! Have she and her partner worked out his secret?!"

Sidney winced, spotting the Incarcerous spell heading for him. He twisted and disappeared again, and Hermione's ropes grabbed at nothing. Her smile disappeared, and Archie could tell that she was gritting her teeth in frustration as she worked out a new strategy to find Sidney. She twisted her wand, muttering something, and a circle of flames appeared around her. Archie had no idea what she was doing, except penning herself in – it would be hard for her to move around the stadium, so she must have decided that that was unnecessary. Shields flickered in and out of existence around her, but very few people could maintain a Fortis, or even a Protego, for long periods of time.

It didn't work – Sidney appeared behind her, timing it just perfectly for the split second between two of her shields, taking her out with a quick Stunning spell. Hermione toppled over into her own flames, and Archie was already throwing himself into the Apparition as he went to her.

Her body had smothered the flames directly under her, so Archie focused on putting out any flames nearby and left it to Daine, Apparating in a second after him, to take care of the rest. Hermione's burns weren't bad, all told, and he started taking care of them while Daine signalled her out.

Burns were gross to Heal. Archie had to drop the temperature of the tissue around the burn, excise any burnt tissue that hadn't already fallen off, disinfect the area, then coax the body to regenerate the tissue it had lost in the proper fashion – muscle, fat, then skin. The whole process took about five minutes, not long enough to think about clearing her off the field, before waking her up.

Her eyes opened, staring upwards as she realized what must have happened and scowled. "Damn," she muttered, ignoring Archie's proffered hand as she got to her feet. She smiled up at the crowd, giving everyone a wave as they roared in return.

She might have lost, but she was the first one to make Sidney reveal himself, and that was, more than halfway through the Trials, impressive in and of itself.

The next matches went quickly – Merric went on, defeating his opponent in a closely fought, close-range duel that really could have gone either way, then Neal took out the crowd favourite, Akari, by taking flight out of the question with howling winds. She had tried anyway, but he had spun his sword in a complicated gesture, catching her in a particularly powerful gust that slammed her against the stands, breaking three bones and knocking her out. John was up against Cleon, and the result of his match was obvious almost as soon as they started – Cleon had never mastered any semblance of Occlumency, and John was in his mind almost as soon as he was in range, distracting him enough that John landed a Stunning spell without ever having to resort to his ACD. Jessica Calderon-Boot moved on, scaling Kel's plinth with her gun on her back and using a combination Pertus/Stupefy to take out her opponent, then Lily Cho in the air took out Seaver Tasride with speed and, mainly, sheer guts.

"So…" Neal perched his chin on his hand, later that night, at the Duelling table in the dining hall, an iron glint in his emerald eyes. Hermione had joined them (Neal and John had insisted), and Archie was tiredly shovelling shepherd's pie into his mouth beside her. Daine, too, looked ready to drift off, her face nearly falling into her bowl of soup. "Sidney Foster. Tell us about him. You must have worked out what he was doing, to make him show himself."

"I'm not sure I should," Hermione sniffed, her pert nose wrinkling as she speared some of her salad with her fork. "Work it out for yourselves."

"Aww, but don't you want to impress us with your brilliance?" John wheedled with an innocent grin, over his own half-empty plate of shepherd's pie. "No one else has worked it out! You're dying to tell us, I don't need to read your mind to know that much."

Hermione laughed at his blatantly terrible attempt at flattery. "It's not so much that people haven't worked it out, so much as they haven't got any confirmation and it's objectively hard to deal with even if they do know. Like Jess – we all know what she's doing, we all know she has a modified sniper rifle with Far-Sight and Amplification Charms, we just haven't managed to strategise around it."

There was a silence as they all chewed on her words.

"It's something obvious, that means," Faleron said thoughtfully. "Something that people have already thought of – other than Hermione."

"What do we know about him?" Kel asked, leaning forward. She had already finished her dinner and Neal had swiped her dessert. Her plate and cutlery were neatly stacked to one side.

"Transfigurations Mastery student," Neal chipped in, digging into Kel's slice of cake. "He's a bit of a Transfigurations prodigy, and he's a monitor for that stream. His aunt was on the last winning AIM team, and her strategy involved illusion magic and Conjurations. His doesn't."

"All the revealing spells didn't work to unmask him, but he never leaves the stadium." John set his cutlery on his plate, pushing it to one side, but his rice pudding sat, untouched. Archie eyed it longingly – he had gotten a slice of cake as his dessert, but he would really like both. John caught his longing glance and, with a sigh, pushed it towards him. "What else? The timing with which he reappears is linked to distance – it always took him longer to reappear if he had a moving target."

"That suggests that whatever he's doing, it lowers his speed," Chess agreed, nodding. "Hermione's strategy today was a bit of a wild guess, then – she predicted he would slow down enough that if he wanted to end it fast, he would travel in the shortest line possible to where he wanted to go."

"And the use of Inflamari, a wide range, fairly unrefined spell…" Faleron sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I'm not good at this kind of puzzle logic, give me a legal text over this any day."

The words ran through Archie's mind like water, trickling over, a comforting susurrus of talk that Archie didn't have to think too hard about. He finished off his shepherd's pie, then got a start into John's rice pudding, which was sweet and had a dusting of chocolate on top. He heard Hermione's sigh of aggravation, because she didn't just want to give up another player's secrets, but it really was so obvious to her…

Oh. Transfigurations prodigy.

"He's an Animagus, isn't he?" Archie looked up from his bowl. It really should have occurred to him earlier – his own family members were Animagi. "He's something small – smaller than a rodent, probably a bug or something that would go unnoticed. It's not that the revealing spells aren't working, it's just that he's so small that they don't notice it working. And if he's that small, that accounts for timing discrepancies, too – it takes him longer to cover ground and track his opponent."

Hermione nodded, with a tiny smile. "That's my theory – I don't have confirmation, but it fits the known facts well. Sidney doesn't have a strategist, and he's traditionalist in his casting; AIM has such a reputation for innovation that we tend to gravitate towards new and shiny explanations, but it's just not necessary in this case. There's no reason to think he came up with anything new."

"But it means that he's particularly vulnerable to wide-range, wide-angled attacks." Kel's eyes had lit up. "He has to transform back if he's going to be hit with something like Inflamari, because it would kill him in his animal form but not in his human form. My affinity is useless for this, but Neal could…"

"He's not on my bracket," Neal shook his head, then shot John a wolfish grin. "Tomorrow, my boy, you're going down."

John laughed in his face. "We'll see about that."

Despite John's comments, the next day came and he and Chess essentially sequestered themselves to talk strategy over breakfast, as did most of the candidates still in the running. There were only eight of them, but Archie could make them out in the dining room, tucked in corners with their closest friends and bid teams, having quiet and furious planning discussions. Kel and Neal had their heads together, while Faleron was sitting with his cousin Merric, and both of them seemed to just be trying to keep it together. Lily Cho was surrounded by a group of Quidditch and Quodpot players, all of whom were trying to give her different advice, while Jess and her strategist were off at another table, checking over her rifle.

He took a seat beside Hermione, who acknowledged him with a brief nod but was deep in conversation with her former strategist, Isran, about the support team positions that might be expected to come up. All the British Students Association candidates had been eliminated by now, but they were still dead set on having as many British students on the team as possible, filling out as many support positions as they could.

"With your background as the Advocacy and Policy Chair for BSA, you'd be good for a compliance officer role – it involves arguing in front of Tournament officials for anything suspicious that might happen," Isran was saying, over his slice of toast.

"And it's Britain, so whatever the ICW is saying about fairness, well," Hermione replied, shaking her head. "I don't think the SOW Party can manipulate the Tournament as they're no doubt hoping they can, but it's better to be prepared. Honestly, I wonder at this point if Riddle might be might be so convinced of his own and pureblood superiority that he has no idea what the rest of the world is capable of anymore. There's always the question of why now, but…"

"It's been forty years." Isran fell silent, pensive. As far as Archie had learned over the past few weeks, Isran was planning on staying in America – he had a job lined up as an international political analyst at one of the American papers in the Northeast. "The economic sanctions are working – there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and a shrinking middle class. The luxuries that the noble families are used to having are becoming more difficult to get, especially wines and liquor. Riddle has to bend at some point or he's going to have a revolt on his hands. This could be a way for him to try to get the ICW to loosen their sanctions a little, buying time, and if he's bought into his own propaganda, he'll assume that Hogwarts will win and that it'll prove something about pureblood supremacy."

"It doesn't really matter why, I suppose," Hermione said with a sigh, polishing off her own toast with marmalade. "We have to go, whatever the SOW Party thinks they have planned – one of the biggest problems in Wizarding Britain is the propaganda, the lack of information the general populace has about us, about halfbloods and newbloods and about the international community. This is our chance to be seen, to reach people directly and to show that we're not lesser."

Isran nodded slowly, his expression serious. "You're right, of course."

Since there were only four matches today, the start time had been set back by a couple hours, which Archie had used to sleep in, to recover his core to the maximum extent possible. It was the last day, he told himself grimly, dragging himself over to the stadium. And he liked Healing! He just wished he wasn't so bloody tired.

If he didn't have to hold onto his Harry Potter disguise, it would have been a little easier. He would have more of his magical core available to sustain him, and he knew he was pushing it – his core was bulking up in response, but yesterday he had probably pushed himself a little too far into magical exhaustion. He'd have to rein it in a little today, if he could, but the problem was that the other Healers all looked just as bad. The injuries were worse, now – everyone left meant business when they played.

Faleron was taken out within minutes – in a complete reversal of his usual style, he had chosen to play Kel from much closer than his usual range, taking out her larger spells. Kel couldn't throw earthquakes, chasms, or conjure boulders to throw themselves at him if he was within arms-length, but that put him in striking distance of her blade, which she was more than happy to use. On her part, it essentially stopped being a magical duel at all, while Faleron cast non-verbal spells with no reservations. Ultimately, it only ended when Kel removed his hand and presented her blade at his throat, and he yielded. Archie and Daine were in there before he could bleed out, as Kel very well knew they would be, at this point.

"Think I impressed her, though?" Faleron winked, pale with pain, as Archie reattached his hand, making sure to line up the bones, veins, and nerves before he commanded them to mend together as should. He didn't need to ask to know who Faleron was talking about. "She's watching, right?"

"She's watching. What was she supposed to be impressed with, your sheer stupidity?" Daine retorted, starting to patch up his other fifteen or so cuts that Kel had landed. Some of them were nasty. "Sure, definitely impressive."

"It was worth a try."

"She's not interested, numbskull." Daine stabbed her wand at another of his cuts. "Move on, you're pathetic."

Faleron sighed, and if Archie would have felt sorry for him, if he had the energy and not three other matches to get through that day. He understood unrequited love – he found himself staring at Hermione, sometimes, just memorizing the details of her face, the way her brown hair shone in the light, some strands so light they were almost blonde, others a darker brown. He counted the freckles on her nose, if he thought she wasn't looking, an ache throbbing in his chest. Faleron had the same sort of expression when he looked at Chess – a little wistful, a little forlorn, even if he always smiled and teased when she looked at him.

The second quarter-final was Sidney against Merric. Archie guessed that Faleron had let Merric in on their discussion from last night, because Merric took off immediately when the crack sounded. This match was long, longer than Archie had become used to, nearly half an hour as Merric kept moving, casting wide-angled, wide-ranged spells to try to get Sidney to reappear. He was successful, twice, but Sidney was too fast with his transformations – he would blink into existence, and as soon as the immediate danger was past, he was gone. The problem was that Merric was exhausting himself with wide-range spells, and the end was almost pathetic – Merric had slowed down, panting, his wand sputtering as he tried to dredge up another Inflamari, and Sidney had reappeared and Stunned him. Half the battleground was on fire, at that point, and even Professor Ryan had to come down and help the Healers put it out.

The third match had John facing off against Neal, the ground beneath them still smoldering in places. That ended up working to John's advantage – the wind that Neal summoned sparked a few of the fires back to life, providing heat and more interesting obstacles for the two of them to battle around.

John was doing well. He was a New Yorker, he had lived his fair share of winter storms, and he had actually pulled on a double layer of sweaters for this match. His sister had run William Queenscove's strategy in the last Tournament, so he had a good sense of Neal's weaknesses. Wind was ephemeral – it affected the environment, but if one was prepared, one could deal with it, especially with magic, brains, and a certain willingness to set things on fire.

In this match, John abandoned any pretense of holding back. It wasn't just Stupefy and Expelliarmus and Flipendo anymore, but he was pulling out Incendio (more conservative on power than Inflamari), Cutting curses, Everte Statum, more explosive spells. He used all both of his casting methods, and his Natural Legilimency with wild abandon, giving him a distinct advantage – the ACD really did take care of all of his defensive needs, and while Neal tried, at one point, to break the shield, all John did was dodge and summon a new one. With his faster casting time and the drastic decrease in power needed for the Fortis spell, the match wore on as they pushed each other around the ring. Archie guessed that, on top of physical attacks, John was probably sustaining a number of mental attacks on him as well, assaulting his mind.

Neal was warily keeping back, preferring to use magic rather than getting close for physical combat. With John's shielding system, he no doubt guessed that physical attacks would be less than effective, so Archie got to see more of his sword-based magical duelling style. It was non-verbal, so he had no idea what anything was, but the few successful spells that he did land showed Archie that a lot of it was very physical, with nothing as complex or benign as a Stunning spell. There was a Cutting curse of some kind, marking John with a nasty slice across one arm.

The end, when it came, was … unexpected. Archie knew the second that John had finally won access to Neal's mind – Neal's blade shook, shoving off erratically as Neal fell back, grimacing, while John's wand came into play. It wasn't one attack that took him out, but three – a Piercing curse, meant to break a shield if there was one, then Expelliarmus, and only then the Stunning spell.

Neal still blocked the first two, a little slower than normal, but he was too slow on the third. Archie guessed that he was busy on two fronts, trying to fight John out of his mind, and it was just the difficulty balancing the two that brought him down. Eric was the closest to them at the time, and he Apparated in, checking Neal over before he stood and formally signalled him out

There was the briefest moment of silence, which felt long because it was so unexpected, as the crowd processed what had happened. Then, in a great wave that went from the bottom of the stands to the top, cheering.

"And John Kowalski, fourth-year, eliminates another top contender, Neal Queenscove!" Owen yelled out, just as Eric revived Neal, whose injuries were otherwise minor. "Let's give both of them a solid round of applause, because I think that was one of our best matches yet!"

Neal smiled wryly, holding a hand out for John to shake, then gave the crowd a bow while John grinned and waved.

The last match of the quarter-finals was, by comparison, a poor show – Jessica Calderon-Boot shot Lily Cho out of the sky after about ten minutes with three Stunning spells in combination. Lily had lasted longer than almost all her competition, her wild flight pattern giving Jessica problems targeting, but it also put her on the defensive – her own unpredictable flight pattern meant she couldn't aim, and it was just a matter of time. She fell closest to Celia's end, so Celia Apparated in, with Daine following closely behind. There was a moment of silence, then Celia stood and signalled Lily out, while Daine took care of her injuries. Lily stood, only a couple seconds later, shaking her head apologetically at her fans in the crowd but with a smile on her face.

"All right, so, with that, we're at the end of the Trials!" Owen shouted, with a big, somewhat uncertain grin, as the crowd started cheering. "Wow, what a ride over the last six weeks! Let's get our winners up here, folks!"

There was a bustle of activity from the commentator's box, and Daine Apparated beside Archie, a wide grin on her face as she looked up at the box. All four winners stepped into the tiny box, which was barely big enough to fit them all, and there was an even louder storm of cheers from the audience. The wall behind him shook, slightly, as the people in the stands got to their feet, stamping and yelling.

"I give you, the AIM Triwizard Tournament team!" Owen yelled. "Keladry Mindelan, Sidney Foster, John Kowalski and Jessica Calderon-Boot!"

It was, Archie thought as he fell in bed later that night, probably one of the best days he had ever had at AIM. Even with the exhaustion, even with Hermione's cool tolerance and distrust. This was a moment when the whole school came together, when they were all one people, one community. Archie had smiled and cheered and waved up at John, Daine jumping up and down beside him. Then it turned into a whole day of celebration, and Hermione still cared enough to check him over magical exhaustion, then had him take a Pepper-Up Potion, just to be safe. The party started in the dining hall, the four team members and their bid teams standing in the centre of the room, the buffet tables covered in small plates and sweets, then moved to the various dorms that each teammate called home. The whole day, after the tournament, had been a flurry of laughter, music, and excitement, and Archie had been at the centre of it all. It was perfect. He had Hermione at his side, he was surrounded by his friends. What more could he ask for?

The rest of the term passed quickly. Archie was a little behind in his classes, mainly in his non-Healing classes – if anything, Healing had taken top priority, because he couldn't be sure what he might run up against on the battleground. He had taken to begging Hermione for tutoring in Charms, Transfigurations, and Defense, to which she had reluctantly agreed. He probably didn't actually need it, but it was more time he could spend with her, and that was something he would beg for any day of the week.

Still, even then, it wasn't the same.

"I'm sorry," she said, though her voice didn't sound apologetic in the least. "I do have other things to do, so why don't you complete the problem set at page 63 of the textbook, and I'll check it over for you in a few days when we meet to review your Charms?"

She never called him by name, anymore. Though, Harry wasn't his name, and Archie knew her well enough to know that even if Hermione hadn't told his secrets to anyone, she didn't approve. She wasn't a second John, ready to help him smooth things over when he needed it, calling him Harry when they were in public and simply accepting it. It was enough for her to say nothing, and Archie didn't dare ask her to do more.

"A couple days, Hermione?" Archie bit his lip. "Are you sure we can't meet tomorrow? I'm really uncertain about the theory behind the Summoning and Banishing Charms, how they're linked, and there's that assignment due on Friday…"

"No, the British Students Association has a meeting," Hermione replied, packing her bag and swinging it over her back. "The earliest I can meet again for tutoring is Thursday. If you do the assignment by then, I'll review it with you."

"All right," Archie said, holding back his sigh. He'd have to work through it on his own, even if sometimes Charms was just a giant mess of problems. Even Charms for Healing, which was said to be easier than regular stream Charms, was heavy on theory. It gave him headaches. "I'll try."

John found him, in his room, the next night, struggling through the Charms assignment.

"Hey, Harry," John flashed a wide grin. "Can I come in?"

"Please," Archie replied, waving him in. He needed the break anyway. "Charms has turned into Ancient Greek and I'm dying. Distract me."

John shut the door behind him, and Archie let himself drop his disguise with a sigh of relief. He always felt a little better, in his own skin. John shook his head at him with a wry smile, dropping onto Archie's bed and leaning against the wall, pulling one leg up. "It's always a shock when you do that – I forget how good-looking you really are. Too bad you can't ask anyone to the Midwinter Ball in that body."

Archie laughed, a little saddened. "The only one I want to ask is Hermione, and she's still… well. I'll probably just go by myself."

"She's disappointed in you," John finished, with a sympathetic look. "But at least she's not angry anymore, right?"

"I'd almost rather have her be angry at me, instead of – this." Archie blew out a breath. "Have you got a date for the Ball?"

"Nah." John shrugged, uncaring. "I don't have anyone I'm interested in, and half the Duelling club is going solo, so it'll be fun one way or another. Chess is going solo too, so it'll just be a chance to dress up and dance. Anyway – I did want to come and talk to you about something. The Triwizard team met tonight to talk strategy."

"Yeah?" Archie raised an eyebrow. He knew that there was going to be a discussion; one of the four selected players would take on the role of alternate and Captain and wouldn't get to play, at least not through the first few games. Twenty years ago, the AIM team had swapped in the alternate, Lily Evans, for the elimination rounds only, a successful strategy that took them to the top, but Archie knew that all four winners wanted to play as much as they could.

"Yeah." John drew out the word a little, his tone serious. "Kel's taking the captaincy – that wasn't as much of a fight as I thought, actually. The problem is that her usual strategy involves destroying the battleground, and that's less likely to go over well in Triwizard Tournament as it does in the Trials. We'll swap her in for eliminations, when we get there. Sidney and I are going to be the team mainstays – my job is to attract attention and take out as many of the other team as possible, while Sid's main job is to find their keystone and destroy it. In the early matches, he'll be waiting until I take out two of their teammates so we can maximize points."

"Points?"

"Round-robin in the Tournament itself will have points – taking out one player is worth one point, the keystone is worth three. But taking out all three players on the other team, or their keystone, ends the round, so maximizing points means taking out two of the other team players before destroying the keystone," John explained, while Archie nodded. It was a good way to reduce the likelihood of any ties before going into eliminations. "Jess is defensive – she'll stick behind and defend the keystone and will take out anyone who gets close to it. We'll swap her out for the elimination rounds, when we get there – her sniper rifle is the one the other teams are most likely to figure out and develop a workaround for. But that's not why I'm here, Archie."

Archie raised an eyebrow, feeling a little stir of excitement low in his stomach as he leaned forward. The team members picked their own support team, after bringing in their bid teams. In this case, everyone knew that Kel brought Neal in with her, and both John and Jess had brought their strategists, Chess and a seventh-year named Marshall Wagner, with them. That left seven spots, including at least a few Healer slots. "Oh?"

John grinned, ear-to-ear, excited. "We're offering you a spot on the team, Archie. As a Healer. Everyone was really impressed by your range of skill – the magical decontamination you did really made you stand out."

"Yes, yes, a million times, yes!" Archie grinned, jumping out his seat to throw himself at John in a hug. The Trials had been exhausting, true, but John was on the team, and Chess was on the team, and this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. What other answer was there? "Who else is on the team?"

"Neal's taking a Healing spot, since it suits him better than strategist, and Daine has the third Healing spot," John listed off, counting them on his fingers. "Jess and I had our strategists already, and Sidney is picking a friend of his from Transfigurations to act as his strategist. Compliance officers, we've come down on Hermione Granger and Isran Ali, both of whom are brilliant and have a good sense of Wizarding British and international politics. No one had any real preferences for equipment managers, so Jess and Marsh said they would pick them out of the top experimental Charms Mastery students."

"That sounds brilliant, John!" Archie lit up. He and all three of his closest friends would be going to Britain as part of the team! It would be awesome; from all the things everyone said, they would have homework to keep up with school, but they would all be staying together in Edinburgh in a hotel booked out with the rest of the North American League. There would be plenty of time to explore the city with his friends, to meet new people and allies, and it would be so much fun. "I'm so excited, I can't wait!"

"I'm excited, too." John stood up, stretching. "I've got to go ask Hermione, then she'll have to help me track down Isran, so wish me luck with those two. They haven't accepted yet."

"They'll say yes, John," Archie replied, waving a hand casually. "It's too important for them not to say yes."

"We know." John's smile had disappeared, and his expression darkened. "We're cognizant of the politics – Kel's asked us to go out of our way to think of British students who might fit any open slots, and you and Hermione were easy picks. You were always there, ready to patch up whatever we'd done to each other and then some, and then you'd pull out Healing something we never expected you to know, and Hermione, of course, has been Advocacy and Policy Chair of the BSA for years. Don't let us down, Arch."

"You know I won't, John," Archie replied, his own smile dimming, serious in his own right. "You can count on me."

Archie dithered for a week on whether to ask Hermione to the AIM Winter Formal. On one hand, she would almost definitely say no. He knew she would almost definitely say no, so why put himself through the trauma of asking and being rejected?

On the other hand, he was Arcturus Rigel Black, and Blacks never backed down from a romantic challenge. Or at least, Dad hadn't, and neither would Archie.

He begged a ride into town with Neal, one Saturday before exams when he, Kel and John were going holiday shopping. The downtown area was a treat, this time of year – even if there was no snow, in this part of America, the window displays were done in tinsel, fake snow, and weird multi-coloured lights, with snowmen and jolly old Father Christmases and reindeer in the windows. Music played out of every shop, and Archie wished he could shop for Harry, Dad, his aunt and uncles here. But it was too risky – how would he have gotten these presents, if he was supposed to be at Hogwarts? He could always say that he asked Harry to pick them up, but if Harry was at AIM, she wouldn't have come to town, Archie wouldn't have known what was in town to tell her to get, Harry wouldn't have picked out the same things Archie would have, and really, it wouldn't make much sense if anyone thought about it. It was better not to take the risk.

All he really needed was the florist, though he never said no to the used bookstore, and he didn't mind looking for presents for his friends in town, either. He spent a few hours or so browsing through the bookstore and tiny gift shops, finding by chance an adorable bracelet with crowns all over it for Chess. It wasn't expensive and adding it to the present he'd already gotten for her at the end of summer wouldn't be too much, especially since he had just gotten her another magical theory text anyway. Of course, he picked up a hefty pile of books from the used bookstore to tide him over for the holidays, too.

"Find anything?" John said, meeting him by Neal's increasingly beat up car, at the end of the day. Neal had inherited Dom's car, and Archie was pretty sure that Dom had inherited it from some other sibling or cousin, because the car was scarred, beat up, and it had to be running on Charms and not whatever it was that No-Maj cars ran on. Gasoline – he had never seen either Dom or Neal stop to get any gasoline.

"Something for Chess, and the rose I need for Hermione." Archie gestured with the single red rose that he was holding delicately in one hand. His other hand was taken up with a bag of books, and the box with the bracelet for Chess.

John eyed the rose with a bit of skepticism. "You're cruising for a bruising," he commented, then he shook his head. "She's going to say no, you know."

"You miss all the shots you don't take, John," Archie retorted, though he knew John was right. He just hoped it wouldn't hurt too much.

Later that night, Hermione at least waited for him to get the question out, will you go to the dance with me, an odd, mixed expression of sympathy and surprised respect on her face.

"I'm sorry," she said simply, trying to hand the rose back to him. "I'm going with a group of friends from the British Students Association, we decided to make a night of it weeks ago, it's not… I'm sorry."

Archie waved his hand, refusing the flower. "A rose for a rose," he replied, with a resigned smile. "It's yours. And it's fine, 'Mione. I—I know I'm late in asking, and I know—given the term we've had, it was just a hope. I'll see you there, though?"

"Yes…" Hermione nodded, something left unsaid, and her brown eyes were genuinely sorry. "I'll see you there."

The night of the Winter Formal, Archie pulled out the nicest set of robes he had brought with him to AIM. In Wizarding Britain, these wouldn't be considered formal, only nice, something that he could meet one of Harry's friends in if he had to, but also something he could just go to Diagon Alley in without standing out. They were a soft black, which he liked because it reminded him of the night sky, especially with the shining silver trim. It was simple, elegant without any integrated charms.

John and Chess showed up at his bedroom door, both in No-Maj formal clothes – Chess' dress was a dark red, setting off well against her golden skin, with a flowing skirt, and again she had gone with No-Maj makeup to emphasize her eyes. John was in a suit, with a navy-blue tie knotted around his neck.

"What is that?" John gaped at him, eyeing the near floor-length robes. "You look like you stepped out of the eighteenth century."

"I never got formal robes in America, and I don't own a No-Maj suit." Archie rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I like it. It's fashionable in Britain. Your tie is wonky."

"But how will you dance?" Chess asked, a puzzled expression on her face, as John made a face and pulled his tie off, then pulled it around to try and tie it again. "Won't you trip over the hem?"

"I'll be fine," Archie reassured her, going over to help John with his tie. How did one turn fourteen and not know how to tie a tie? "I dance just fine in these at home."

"American dancing is different than stuffy British dancing, though." John shook his head, giving up as he let Archie tie his tie for him. "You should have mentioned something on the weekend, when we were in town – No-Maj suits are better for this sort of thing."

Archie frowned. "I won't be out of place, though, will I?"

"No…" John drew out the word, thinking it over. "Well, you'll be the only one in robes this long, but Canadian fashion is longer than American fashion, and Neal usually chooses robes over a suit. It'll be a mix, but a lot of people do wear robes."

"Then it'll be fine!" Archie grinned. So, his robes would be longer than most. So what? He looked good, his friends looked good, exams were over, and Student Council had apparently been busting their asses on preparations for the last month. The auditorium was supposed to have been transformed, and it was Archie's first school dance.

When they got to the auditorium, it had been done with the polar night skies, with shimmering curtains of blue and green light to represent the northern lights. There was a cool chill throughout the auditorium, making Chess' nose wrinkle as she reached down and activated the Warming Charm wrapped through her dress. Live music was playing – there were a few bands floating around the school, and they each took a turn providing music for events. Archie scanned the room, but he saw no sign of Hermione yet.

Instead, he followed John and Chess over to the Duelling club circle which was, as John had promised, a mix of robes and No-Maj clothing. Kel was wearing something completely different, a floor-length, heavily embroidered robe in spring green and gold, held together with a thick piece of golden cloth tied into an elegant bow at her back. Her sleeves were long, coming past her waist, but unlike British robes, they were closed, flat rectangles. Her light brown hair, which she kept short, was pinned back with lacquered flowers. Cleon, neat in a No-Maj suit with a matching green tie, had one arm around her. Neal was already there, in robes as John had predicted, and Faleron had chosen robes as well, though his cousin Merric was in a No-Maj suit. Daine was there, laughing with her friend Miri, both in No-Maj dresses.

Most of the girls had chosen No-Maj dresses, Archie realized, scanning the room. A few, here and there, had chosen to wear a robe over top, but for the most part, it was dresses. No-Maj dresses were so diverse in styling, though – there were floor-length gowns, made of shiny, shimmering material of all colours, there were knee-length gowns which flared as they moved, there were shorter dresses that nearly made Archie blush to look at them. Some dresses were tight, fitting like a glove, while others were looser, sweeping, elegant. Some of the dresses had full sleeves, as Chess' did, others had cap sleeves, or no sleeves at all!

Archie let himself be pulled into conversation with his friends, let himself take a turn on the dance floor with Daine, who was still celebrating her acceptance onto the Triwizard team, and with Chess, who drew him into the air above the dance floor even if he couldn't keep up with most of her flashier moves. After a while, she gave up, resorting to a traditional waltz with him, for which he was entirely grateful.

"I sometimes forget that you actually do know how to dance," she said mildly, at the end of their turn. "It's just that it's all ballroom, and super traditional."

"Three years of lessons," Archie commented with a smile, though he was immediately distracted as the doors to the auditorium opened, again.

Hermione walked into the room, laughing in a group of her friends from the British Students Association. She was breathtaking – she was always breathtaking, but especially so tonight. Her hair had been slicked back, tamed from its usual bushy state, and was tied into a knot at the base of her neck. She had picked a dress of periwinkle blue, in a light, floaty material, which flowed loosely and flared around her knees. Her face was open, bright, and the small touches of makeup she had put on only added to her beauty.

"Go on," Chess murmured, following his eyesight. "You look great – maybe she'll even dance with you."

Archie grinned at her and took off across the room.

"Hermione?" He asked, approaching her group cautiously. Some of her friends had dispersed, meeting up with a few other friends, or taking off for the dance floor.

She turned, and there was something almost like a smile, which disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Closer, Archie could see that she was wearing silver heels, not as high as the ones that Chess liked, just enough to make her a couple inches taller than she normally was.

"Excuse me," she said to her friends, before taking a few steps towards him. She had not mastered the art of walking in heels, teetering a little, and Archie couldn't help but reach out to steady her.

"You look absolutely stunning," he murmured. He wished he could find something better to say, something flirtier, more eloquent, more… something. He wished he could compare her to a flower, or a jewel, or something else suitably beautiful and romantic, but he couldn't. Comparing her to something meant that there was something comparable, and Hermione was incomparable.

It wasn't how she looked – indeed, Archie knew full well that Hermione was not traditionally beautiful. Traditional beauty was in the purview of someone like his theatre troupe-mate, Thea McKinnon, blonde and blue-eyed and curvy in all the right places, or the Quodpot player, Akari Yamaguchi, who, despite her daring antics in the air, was slight and delicate, or even Chess, who for the most part had a lean, dancer's body, though with somewhat wider hips. Hermione was stocky and broad-shouldered, built strong.

It was her strength that Archie admired most, he thought. At eleven, she had been thrust into a new world, and her discovery of her magic had come with discovery of her blood-status, her resultant perceived inferiority. It must have been hard, and yet, she had risen to the challenge – she had flown abroad, to AIM, where she had immediately tossed herself into the most political, advocacy-oriented clubs she could, trying to make a difference, trying change the world. Hermione believed in things like right, and wrong, and justice, and she had the strength to look at something, see that it was wrong, and do something about it. Not just for herself, not just for her own gain – for everyone.

"Thank you," Hermione replied, with a quick second of hesitation. "You look very good as well."

Archie laughed slightly. "But not as good as you, dearest," he tried, letting his grey eyes flash at her for a second. These robes would look better on him if he was in his true body, since they would match his colouring a little better, but they'd need to be let out if he was in his true body. Else, they would be too short. "May I have this dance?"

Hermione hesitated for a minute or so, then she sighed. "It's almost Christmas," she said, accepting his hand and letting him pull her onto the dance floor. "I suppose a dance doesn't hurt."

She was lying.

The dance did hurt. It was painful, having someone that he liked so much, that he used to have such a close relationship with, in his arms and yet so far away. They stayed on the ground – Hermione didn't know how to dance, and she had never mastered the air-hardening spell, which took out the option of taking to the air. She didn't start any conversation with him, simply following his lead as he circled slowly on the spot. The ground was too crowded for anything else – anything flashy, anything requiring space, and people were usually good enough to take to the air.

"Are you looking forward to the Tournament?" he asked, a minute or so in. The music soared around them, but their silence was weird. Over the three years of their relationship, there had never been silence, not until this year. This year had been full of silences – angry silence, first, then this awful sort of disappointed, distant silence that felt just felt empty and soulless. Worse – because they had had something there, between them, it was worse than nothing because he felt the lack. Every time he stood beside her, every time he spoke to her, every time he approached her, he felt the haunting presence of the thing that they should have had and didn't.

Maybe it would have been easier to give up. But he was Arcturus Rigel Black, and he had grown up with Harriett Potter, and giving up was not in his vocabulary. Maybe they had made mistakes – maybe they had made decisions that, in retrospect, weren't the best. Maybe Archie would, at some point, need to make amends for the mistakes he had made, for the choices that he had made, but he wouldn't give up. Not when he knew the flip side, not when he knew how much better things could be.

"It will be interesting," Hermione replied, after a pause, her voice thoughtful. "It's difficult to see how it will play out, but Isran and I have been studying the political situation. We've managed to connect with the compliance officers at Ilvermorny and the Collège so far, so at least we won't be alone."

"Do you think anything's going to happen?" Archie kept his voice low – Harry thought something was going to happen, but this was supposed to be a public event, put on by the ICW. Nothing was supposed to happen, nothing except the Tournament, which was dangerous enough. The fact that Hermione was nervous, that was concerning.

"I don't know." Hermione shook her head slowly. "Isran and I are probably being overly cautious, but we would rather be overly cautious than otherwise. I am looking forward to the games. And to spending time in No-Maj Edinburgh with everyone – not just the AIM team, we'll be staying in a hotel with the rest of the teams for the North American League. They're putting extra security on our building, because of the politics, just in case. Collège says that a few of the European schools will be staying close to us, too."

Archie smiled down at her – in her heels, though, she wasn't much shorter than him. "That'll be fun, won't it?"

Hermione snorted. "I've heard that the parties are legendary, yes, though I hope they aren't too loud… we do still need to keep up on our schoolwork while we're away."

"We'll manage it, 'Mione," Archie replied, reassuring. It wouldn't just be them, and as fourth years, they would have upper-years on the team to help. Plus, AIM had reviewed the proposed team – everyone who was on was doing well enough that they trusted them to be away for a term and be able to catch up later. "You're brilliant, I'm not a complete idiot—"

She let out a small laugh, a little harsh, but there was an undercurrent of genuine, light, amusement behind it too. "Not a complete one, no," she agreed. "You have your moments of brilliance, too."

It was probably the nicest thing she had said to him in months, and Archie lit up as if she had said he was the handsomest, most intelligent person she had ever met. His heart was lifting, and he breathed in a happy breath, inhaling scents of summer, of fresh rain and the electric hint of thunderstorms. His face was splitting, his grin was so wide that his face hurt.

Hermione raised an eyebrow at his expression and rolled her eyes at him. "Don't let it go to your head."

"I'm a man in love, 'Mione," Archie teased, still floating on cloud nine. She was warm against him, she fitted perfectly in his arms. He wanted to take this moment and freeze it, make it last forever. "I'll take whatever I can get."

She laughed again, a tiny, forgiving one, and fell silent for a minute or so, looking at the pairs around him. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper, and she leaned in close to his ear. "Say, Archie."

Archie's heart thudded, and he felt a little short of breath. Was this good? Was this bad? "What is it, 'Mione?"

"You'll be going to the SOW Party Gala this year, won't you?"

Archie hesitated. He would really prefer not to, but if last year was any sign, he probably wouldn't be able to get out of it. Dad said that Society was loosening, and with the Potters in attendance last year, whoever was hosting this year would want something as big, as extravagant as last year. And it was a fundraising event, technically, which mean that the Split didn't apply, and with precedent set… he'd probably be there. "If I can't find a way to get out of it, probably."

"Would you be able to keep your ear to the ground for us, there?" Hermione's expression was serious. "It's Hogwarts' first year back in the Tournament, so we expect there'll be talk. If you could pass on whatever you hear, that could help us prepare – not for the Tournament itself, but the wider picture. We don't think they'll talk about anything explicitly, but… it would be good to hear the rumours, at least."

Archie blinked down at her – her brown eyes were wide, genuine. In another person, Archie might have wondered whether she was trying to manipulate him, whether she had danced with him specifically to wring this favour out of him. But this was Hermione, and Hermione was not, by nature, manipulative. If she wanted something, she usually just asked. The fact that she did it while dancing with him, that was just incidental, he thought.

Even if it wasn't, though, it didn't matter. She didn't need to dance with him to wring this favour out of him. Archie owed nothing to Wizarding Britain, to the SOW Party, who had created the world that had taken Mum from him. He owed nothing to the people that Harry called friends, the people who followed the lead of Lord Riddle, ignorant, unthinking, uncaring. And if his information could protect his friends, his halfblood and newblood friends, then he owed it to them to do it.

If Hermione wanted a play by play of the SOW Party Gala, including whatever ridiculous things Harry's friends said or dropped to him, then she would have it.

The song was winding down, and Archie savoured the last few notes. He would dance with Hermione in the future (he hoped), but no number of moments dancing with her would ever be enough. He sighed, as the song ended, then he took a step back and swept her an elegant, perfect bow. His etiquette instructor would have been proud. "My lady, your wish is my command."

Archie's first few nights at home were interesting, more interesting than usual. He took a perverse sort of pleasure in talking about the Tournament – he knew a lot about the games (more than Harry did, he guessed), and it was so easy to drum up the enthusiasm that he would have had if he had actually been a player for Hogwarts. He talked about how excited he was, to meet new people, to see how other schools cast magic, to test himself in the games. He teased Harry endlessly, talking about how he couldn't wait for Hogwarts and AIM to go head to head. He grinned, he smiled, he positively vibrated with anticipation over the Tournament.

He even found it amusing, the way that Dad and Uncle James just leapt all over the topic, bothering Harry about whether she was involved, what AIM was doing for the Tournament, who their players would be. Harry had no idea, and she said so – she was far too busy with Healing and her independent potions study to pay much attention to the Trials, and all the tracks were so separate, she didn't know any of the students in it anyway. It was Harry, and it was AIM, so they let it go – Dad, Uncle James, and Uncle Remus wouldn't know any better, and no one really expected Harry to be involved. Harry had tunnel vision, for the things she cared about, and she didn't see much beyond that – she never had.

Archie was shocked that Aunt Lily never said anything. She listened to the talk, a small smile on her face, with not even a hint that she had once brought down the most vicious Durmstrang team put forward in the last fifty years. The word at AIM was that Lily Evans was a Siren, capital emphasis required, one of the most powerful Songmistresses AIM had graduated in the last generation. She was famous, a legend, and since she had disappeared after her graduation, leaving behind her friends, her fans, people talked about her with almost a sense of reverence. Even the British Students Association, who kept such good track of their alumni, the world over, didn't seem to know what had happened to her.

Harry and Uncle James seemed to have no idea that Aunt Lily had played in the Tournament, or that she had been a Tournament Champion. He wondered about that – had she simply never mentioned it? Had she left her whole past behind to come home, to marry Uncle James? At all their speculation, Aunt Lily only smiled, laughing at appropriate moments at the things that Uncle James or Dad said about the Tournament. The only hint that there was more was when she pulled him aside in the kitchen, a couple nights later.

"Archie," she said quietly, her green eyes thoughtful. "About the Tournament. How much do you know about the other schools, about the other match-ups?"

Archie shrugged breezily, giving his aunt a bright, trillion-watt grin. "Not much," he lied cheerfully. "Willoughby is the captain, so he's the one getting all the information for us. We're meeting on the 28th to talk strategies."

"Well, I remember a little from when AIM played – I watched two cycles of the Tournament, first when I was a first-year, then when I was a fifth-year. A lot of the schools have developed reputations." She paused for a minute, tilting her head. "Would you like to hear them?"

Archie probably shouldn't be hearing this, but he was Rigel Black right now, and there was no reason that Rigel Black would know any of this information. He relaxed against the kitchen counter. "Sure!"

"Hmm," Aunt Lily said, tucking her wand into the pocket of her apron and turning to face him, her green eyes tilted upwards as she tried to remember the most pertinent bits of information. "I don't know every school, and some schools change strategies. However, the big names from America will be AIM and Ilvermorny. AIM is known for its innovation, and they usually take the Tournament as an opportunity to demonstrate something new. Since they are such a strong Healing school, their team is also known for their risk-taking."

Archie suppressed a snort with some effort. That was also no doubt engendered by the Trials. Based on his experience in the Healing Corps, all their candidates learned through the Trials that Archie or Daine would come and fix up whatever they did to each other, so why not let loose and take risks? Case in point: Faleron King.

"Ilvermorny is traditionalist in their casting, but they're strong on Transfigurations, Runes, and Alchemy, and they like to play to those strengths," Aunt Lily continued, thinking, crossing her arms and touching her lip with one hand. "Let's see … out of Europe, the strongest contender is Durmstrang – it's the only school that teaches free-dueling, so they like to play close ranges and they will be armed, so be very careful of that. The same goes for the National Magic School of China, though for them, free-dueling is just part of their casting methods. Mahoutokoro is strongest in the air, they train the world's best stunt fliers, but don't tell your dad or Uncle James that – no one has seen real flying until they see Japanese stunt fliers."

Archie laughed at that, even if he really shouldn't have. As Archie Black, who had been at AIM for years, he knew that she was right – Akari was absolutely insane on a broomstick, and he had seen her pull tricks like no one else.

But as Rigel Black, he would have no context for that. "That can't be true, Aunt Lily," he said instead, turning his laugh into a hurried scoff, trying to cover his gaffe. "All of our team plays Quidditch for our House teams, we're all fantastic on brooms! I'm sure we'll be just fine."

Aunt Lily shook her head at him, giving up the argument as lost. Archie empathized – he knew that feeling all too well, when people talked about AIM at home. AIM was more than that, there was so much that Dad, that Uncle James and Uncle Remus and Harry simply didn't know, didn't understand about that world. How did they explain it? No one would believe them, so they didn't. "What about the other schools? You haven't mentioned any of the schools from South America, or Africa, or Australia?"

"Yes, that's right," Aunt Lily replied, nodding sharply as he brought her back to topic. "From South America, Castelbruxo is the powerhouse. They are strong on Herbology and Druidry, so they'll pull more power out of the grounds than you will expect. From Africa, Ougadou – they always send three Animagi, so they're easy once you work out what the animal transformations are. As for Oceania, they're strongest on creatures, so make sure the compliance officers review what they're bringing in carefully. You do not want a Swooping Evil coming down on your head."

Archie nodded, letting his expression relax into one of seriousness. He took a deep breath. "Thanks, Aunt Lily," he said, reaching out to rest his hand on her arm in true gratitude. He would pass it onto Harry later – it was her, as Rigel Black, that Aunt Lily had wanted to tell, not Archie. Archie was just a Healer, and he was one of the best Healers in the competition, because that was what being an AIM Triwizard Team Healer meant. Being an AIM Healer meant that John would take the craziest risks, because he knew that Archie would be there, in moments, to save his life. They were in this competition to win it, to show Wizarding Britain some of the things they didn't know previously.

Harry sequestered herself in her lab, or she went to the Lower Alleys, for most of the holidays. He knew because, those first few days, he would go to look for her and she would be gone. Two years ago, he had been surprised by this, even a little hurt, but not any longer. Nowadays, he just shrugged and went home, and he didn't worry about it. Maybe this was just part of growing older, he thought wryly – she had gotten comfortable with the ruse, and this year they had kept on top of it better with the mirrors than with letters. They were less reliant on each other, and he didn't need to look to her for everything. He would just catch her later.

He did pass on what Aunt Lily had told him, while she hovered over a cauldron that was filled with a clear, odorless potion. It was her base potion for Shaped Imbuing, he thought, and she was experimenting with it. She had nodded absently as he talked, but she was responsive enough and listed off all the information properly when he quizzed her, so he shrugged and let it go. Harry wasn't interested in the Tournament, even if she would be the one playing, and to be honest, he hadn't really expected her to be. The Tournament was something she had been forced into, not something that she actually wanted to do, and Harry had never been one to feign interest in things that didn't interest her.

The Tournament provided him with a great excuse for sequestering himself in his room, in the Black Library, in the Potter Library to study. For once, he wasn't even lying to Dad – he did have to prepare for the Tournament! There was no such thing as too much prep, because he had no idea what people would be doing to each other. He expected serious trauma injuries, from knives and swords or just from players bashing each other over the head, he expected magical contamination issues from Druidry gone awry, he expected curses and hexes and all the things in combination. He tried to get in a few hours of study every day, because John was relying on him, his whole team was relying on him, and he wouldn't let them down.

On the 28th, while Harry was off at her meeting, Archie took her place in her bedroom, where she was supposedly reading up on a new direction that she wanted to try to take her Shaped Imbuing potion in. He was reading a book on advanced stabilization techniques – for very serious injuries, they wouldn't be able to Heal the person on the spot, and they couldn't Portkey someone out without stabilizing them first. He hoped he wouldn't need to put anyone in a magical coma, but he would rather know how than need to do it and not know how.

He studied the steps carefully, examining the diagrams. Magical coma stabilization was difficult, tricky because it involved the brain, and the brain was delicate. He would need to soothe, reduce the signalling activity in the brain, but he would need to do it slowly, watching for the concomitant decease in metabolic and oxygen demand until the signalling was almost nothing. He bit his lip, reading it over the spell again, memorizing it. There was an inbuilt monitoring spell to the soothing spell, but the book recommended having a second Healer on standby with a second monitoring spell. He, Daine and Neal would have to coordinate closely, work out each others' strengths and weaknesses, and develop Healing plans on the fly based on what they saw in the field.

Harry's door cracked opened, and Archie looked up. It was just Harry, so he let his eyes fade back to their natural grey and sat up, muttering a muscle relaxant spell under his breath as he stretched out his lower back. Lying on his stomach, upper body propped up on his arms, that was not a recipe for good posture later. Glancing over, he saw that Harry was frowning at him, and she had shut the door behind her. She threw a Muffliato spell at it.

"What's up, Harry?" Archie asked, eyebrow raised. Something was wrong, and he closed his book. He could go back over induced magical comas later.

"We need to talk, Arch," Harry said, looking at him seriously. Her eyes were grey, which always felt so weird to him– in her Polyjuiced form, she needed contacts to change her eye colour to their natural green, but for Archie, Harry was always supposed to have green eyes.

"Haven't we been?" Archie smiled at her, a light, teasing smile. "I met up with you this morning, in your Potions lab, and we talked."

"Have we been?" Harry retorted, leaning against her door, arms crossed. "You didn't mention that you'd been selected for the AIM Triwizard Team."

Oh, that. Archie shrugged. "I'm on the team as a Healer, Harry – I didn't think it was that important, and anyway, what does it matter? We look the same, and I'm mostly going to be in the background."

"Not important?" Harry repeated, leaning forward slightly. "How can you say it's not important? I've told Mum, Dad, Sirius and Remus that I'm not involved in the Tournament, how can we reconcile that with the fact that you're on the AIM Team? Especially when, apparently, Mum was on the AIM Triwizard Team?"

"I'm on the team as a Healer," Archie repeated, frowning at her. He didn't like her tone, accusatory and slightly sarcastic, and he felt annoyance riling up in him in turn. He pushed it down. "As for Aunt Lily, if it helps any, she hasn't said anything to me about her past involvement in the Tournament, other than what I told you. It's weird, but she doesn't talk at all about her AIM days. She doesn't even contradict you when you get details wrong. Just tell them you didn't think to mention it, or, even better, that you hadn't been asked yet."

"Archie!" Harry snapped, running her hands through her hair, then she took a deep breath. "You said you wouldn't get involved with the Tournament, when I called you."

"No, I didn't." Archie stood up, dropping his Metamorphed form. It was wearing at him anyway, and he fixed his sleeves and trousers to cover his wrists and ankles properly. "You said you thought that I should stay out of it, but I never agreed. When I was offered the spot, it was an honour. I accepted."

"You need to withdraw, Arch," Harry said, her voice firm, stalking into her room and sitting down on her bed. "It's too big of a risk – you'd be appearing in Wizarding Britain as me—"

"Because that's so different than you presenting yourself to all of Wizarding Britain as me." Archie snapped, stalking off to look out her window. His voice was more acerbic than he meant for it to be, and he saw the flash of anger across Harry's face.

"Well, you've never done it before, appearing as me in Wizarding Britain. But, ignoring that, this is dangerous, Archie." Harry replied, distinctly on edge, and she was obviously trying to keep her voice even. "The Tournament is dangerous, and that's even without whatever Riddle is no doubt planning."

Archie sucked in a breath, trying to calm himself down. Losing his temper would be … less than productive. It wasn't as if he didn't pretend to be Rigel Black, a role set by Harry and that he hated, every time he was in Britain. It wasn't as if, after the Trials, Archie probably knew better than Harry how dangerous the Tournament could – should – be. He shoved those feelings aside – Riddle's plans were more important. "Do you know anything specific, Harry?"

"Well, no, but there has to be something." Harry bit her lip, looking away, and her expression smoothed to iron resolve. "He wouldn't put us in this Tournament after forty years without a plan, Arch. You have to withdraw, you and Hermione – it's just too dangerous."

Archie shook his head, slowly. He knew what Hermione would say, he knew what Isran would say. As dangerous as the Tournament might be, it was also an opportunity, one they had to take. "If that's all you've got, then no, I can't. My team is counting on me, and this is an opportunity that we can't let pass by."

Harry twisted her fingers together a little. She was aggravated, annoyed, but her voice was still even, placating – and now, just a little bit patronizing. "I don't think you understand, Arch—"

"No, I don't think you understand, Harry." Archie's temper flared up – why was she always the one who had to be right? Why was it always Archie bending over for her? Why was it always Archie at her beck and call anyway – when had their relationship turned into one where Harry said jump, and Archie asked how high?

Maybe it had always been this way. Maybe Archie had always been too happy to jump at whatever ideas Harry had, because she was brilliant and she was fun and she was Harry. Maybe Archie had always been unusually dependent on his cousin, maybe he had been all too happy with his role as Harry's most loved end table – always there when she needed it, taken for granted, and set aside and ignored otherwise.

For years, Archie had covered for her, taking the blame for most of their pranks and tricks even when they were kids, suffering lectures, groundings, and corner time while Harry got off, scot-free – even when it was her idea. For years, after the ruse had started, he had set the groundwork where she didn't see it, passing himself off as Rigel Black in front of Dad, lying in front of their families when she wasn't there. For years, he had pretended like her friends were people he cared about, he had watched with increasing unease as Harry and Dad ingratiated themselves in at Dark Society and SOW Party events. She made sacrifices, so many sacrifices, and Archie knew that better than anyone – but he had lost things too, and his sacrifices were not nothing.

The things that he cared about mattered too.

Harry's grey eyes widened, surprised, then they narrowed, but Archie cut her off before she could argue with him.

"This is a huge opportunity for newbloods – Muggleborns – and halfbloods, one like you can't believe." Archie tried to keep his voice even, and by the miracle of three and a half years of acting practice, he did. "This is the first time in decades that people in Britain are going to actually see newbloods, halfbloods, American mages and see what they can do – it's an opportunity for them, for us to break through the misinformation that Wizarding Britain has been fed and be seen. Even if it's dangerous, Harry, it's too important for any of us to withdraw."

"No, Archie," Harry said, her green eyes hard. Her voice was even, too, but it was stone, and Archie knew without having to look at her that her mind was set, and she was not done. "You don't understand. I've lived this for three years – I know what Riddle's plans end up being like. Things are never as in control as he thinks they are, and people end up dying. Especially in a Tournament like this, where people are going to be hurting each other in the best of circumstances. Whatever big opportunity you think this represents, whatever you think this might achieve; it isn't worth it. It's not worth your life."

Archie's jaw tightened. It was the tiniest flicker in her eyes as she said big, or think – she wasn't listening. He fought his flash of anger for a minute, reminding himself that she didn't know. He hadn't told her, so she didn't know how great things could be, and maybe she didn't even understand how terrible things were, for newbloods. Oh, she knew about it, but she had never experienced it – she had always been shielded from the worst of it by her nobility, by Uncle James and Dad and Archie himself. She couldn't go to Hogwarts, so Archie switched for her. She was subject to a potential marriage law, so Archie got engaged to her.

She didn't really understand what a huge opportunity this represented, for Hermione, for Isran, for every other halfblood and newblood that had been driven abroad or, worse, deprived of an education, by their blood-status. The ones who didn't have nobility, or Uncle James, or Dad, or Uncle Remus, or even Archie to shield them.

"With all due respect," Archie choked out, his voice very stiff. He sounded like Hermione at her angriest, and his words, he was pretty sure, were hers. "That is not your decision to make."

"But whatever you do affects me, Archie," Harry stood up sharply, her face open, frustrated, angry. "Every time you threaten the ruse, it affects me – I'm the one who will go to Azkaban for this, or have you forgotten?"

"How could I possibly forget?" Archie snapped, three years of unspoken anger, bitterness, and rage finally coming to the fore. This wasn't supposed to be about them – this argument wasn't supposed to be about them. This Tournament was bigger than them, bigger than the ruse, bigger than what they had between then. "How could I possibly forget the effect the laws have on us all? I have a fake engagement to you, my best friend is planning on leaving the country completely after graduation, not that she's been speaking to me for months because she thinks I'm supporting an unjust system, and because of our ruse, my own Dad doesn't know anything about me anymore."

"What are you talking about, Archie?" Harry was angry, but there was a hint of surprise in the twitch of her eyebrows.

It was too late to back down, now, and Archie felt like an exploding dam as three years of complaints spilled from his lips. "Everything I do for you, Harry. Everything. Do you know how hard it is, to lie to Dad every time I'm home? For you, it disappears when you walk out the door. For me, it goes on for weeks, and every conversation I have with him – which is every day because unlike you, I do talk to Dad every day when I'm home – every time I have to invent another reasonably plausible thing that happened at Hogwarts, it gets harder. After last year, when I know that you're the one who was trapped underground for weeks and not me, it's even harder – everyone looks at me like I'm going to shatter, or break, or I don't even know."

He took a deep breath. He should stop. He should stop, but he couldn't, because he was a boulder, crashing down the side of a very steep mountain. His face was starting to scrunch up, in the way it always did when he was upset, when he was ready to cry. "And then the Gala. Fuck, Harry, I hate the Gala. I hate your friends. I hate having to pretend they're my friends. I barely know them, and the little I do know, I don't like. And all of that would be fine, you know, if for once, for once, you looked at me and you saw how much I do, how much I've had to sacrifice, too. Lying to Dad, acting as Rigel Black for you all the time when I'm home – maybe it's not what you do, but it's not nothing."

Another deep breath, and Archie looked away, fighting tears. He should stop, some part of his mind was telling him. He couldn't. "Then there's all the things I have to hide, because no one would understand, all the things I care about. There's theatre, there's movies, there's so much of the world that you don't know about, Harry—"

She opened her mouth, but Archie barrelled on, talking over her. Too late to stop now. "And I know I didn't tell you about it, and that's my fault, but honestly, you couldn't understand it if you tried. You couldn't understand it without living it, without seeing it. But every time I'm here, I have to hide those things, and no one cares what you do at AIM, or about AIM at all. And that hurts, because I love AIM so much, Harry – like you wouldn't believe. Even you don't care enough to get the details right."

"You could have told me all this, Archie." Harry's voice was soft, soothing, and she took a step towards him, reaching out for him hesitantly. "Look, I'm sorry – I know I'm… focused, on things, and that I don't say anything to you, but I know it's hard for you too, and I am grateful. But can we get back to the Tournament? I'm telling you, it's dangerous. You really – you can't do it, Arch. Riddle has no problem getting people killed to meet his goals."

"No." Archie shook his head, his tears and sadness and pent-up emotions turning instantly into glittering, shimmering, ice-cold rage thrumming through him. She wasn't listening. She wasn't even trying to understand him, or his position, or the reasons why withdrawing from the Tournament was not an option. He wasn't going to waste his time fighting about it. "Fuck Riddle. I don't care what kind of danger Riddle is arranging, because this is right – this is about showing Wizarding Britain and the SOW Party just who they've thrown away. I'm leaving."

"Archie." Harry's voice stopped him, sounding a little bit lost, as he just barely remembered to Metamorphize himself into Rigel Black. "Do you – how do you think this will end? When will it end?"

Archie laughed. It wasn't a fun laugh, or a happy laugh, or a laugh of anything except deep, harsh, skepticism and pain. "Damned if I know. But if you think we could switch back now, Harry, you're lying to yourself. I wouldn't last a month at Hogwarts – for one, I'm pretty sure the temptation to murder your dormmates would prove too much for me, and I'd go mad. I am a Black."

He walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Chapter Text

The decorations at the Gala this year, Archie thought morosely, suited him. There was none of the gold, gilt and velvet of last year's Gala here – the Bulstrodes were, if anything, too stark, too depressing in their décor choices. Everything here was in shades of grey; the tall wooden pillars and beams stretching across the white ceiling were painted black, the walls were white, and the floor was stone, slate grey. The few soft furnishings there were in the same grey, stiff and cold and grim. It was perfect for him.

He shouldn't have blown up at Harry. He had made the choice, years ago, not to tell her, and he couldn't possibly complain now that she didn't know. He should have swallowed his annoyance and stayed calm, explained things to her firmly and properly, the way Hermione would have. But something about the conversation had set him off. It was the first time he had ever really said no to her, he realized. Or rather, he had probably said no to something or other previously, but nothing so important. She probably hadn't really expected him to fight her on the Tournament, and then Archie had gone and blown up at her, wrecking his own case, and… well, he hadn't really talked to her since.

He should apologize. He knew that. He just didn't want to, because he didn't feel sorry in the least. And if he went and apologized, Harry might think he had conceded on the real issue, the Tournament, and he had no intention of doing that. He didn't want to give her the chance to bring it up again, either, because they wouldn't agree. They wouldn't agree, and she would try to argue with him again, and he just didn't want to deal with it.

He really hated the Gala, he thought, taking a sip from his glass of wine. Was he supposed to have wine? He was fourteen and he was pretty sure he wasn't, but it had taken him all of fifteen minutes to decide that he would really like a glass, because dealing with Harry's friends all night was his personal version of hell. He couldn't have too much – he couldn't get drunk – but alcohol was supposed to help.

It didn't. It didn't seem to be doing anything other than leaving a bitter, awful aftertaste in his mouth. Wine was disgusting.

At least Harry was having fun. A certain Leo Hurst had appeared not long after they had arrived, much to her surprise and delight, and had swept her off her feet. They had gone off to talk, Uncle James scowling all the while but completely unable to do anything about it because the Minister was beckoning to him. Uncle James had pled Dad with his eyes to go and do something about it, which Dad had pretended not to see, hiding a grin. It wasn't like Harry would get into any trouble for this – they were in public, there wasn't anything improper about it.

Well, given the fake engagement, there was a bit of impropriety about it, but not enough for Archie to care. No one really expected the Potters and the Blacks to follow the usual conventions anyway.

"Shouldn't you invite Miss Potter to talk with us?" Parkinson, resplendent in light blue silk dress robes, said, a mild look of concern on her face. "I'm not familiar with the man she's speaking to…"

"Lionel Hurst," Archie said automatically, taking a careless sip of his wine. He was Rigel, right now, so he put a kind smile on his face for her, trying to drown his sense of unhappiness, annoyance, and boredom. Rigel shouldn't feel that way – Rigel was supposed to be happy to see his friends over the holidays. Unusually, Archie was struggling to get the emotional part of his role right. He was out of practice. "He's a close friend of Harry's – the son of the Aldermaster of the Potions Guild. He's a good enough bloke."

"More than friends, from the expression on his face," Malfoy added, shooting him a puzzled look. Archie didn't change his expression, but he reinforced his Occlumency shields – he had gone into meditation last night, sharpening his mental defenses, though they weren't totally effective on Empaths. The American School of Occlumency was better than the European School against Empaths, or so John said, so he hoped it was enough. "You're her betrothed, Rigel – it's up to you to step in and do something about it, unless you want her reputation to be ruined."

Archie made a face, then he sighed. This was actually a pretty good opportunity to fix any issue that Malfoy's Empathy might have caused. Malfoy's Empathy and his own failure to get into Rigel's head. "I had a fight with her, that's all," he admitted, looking away awkwardly. "My apologies. I'm not myself, tonight."

More true than the two of them realized, and Parkinson's blue eyes creased sympathetically, even as Malfoy lay a hand on his arm. Archie didn't flinch, even if some distant part of him recoiled at his touch.

"Rigel, what did you do?" Parkinson asked, her voice patiently long-suffering. "I know it must have been you, because I know you. Have you apologized to her?"

Archie shrugged uncomfortably. Wait, did nobles shrug? Or was that too lower-class? He couldn't roll his eyes, but that was about the only thing he knew for a fact he could not do as Rigel Black. They didn't seem to see anything amiss, so he just took it and went on. "No," he muttered. "I'm… not ready to, I don't think. I might have… sworn at her."

"Rigel!" Parkinson's voice was aghast, and Draco was looking towards Harry, a harsh glare on his face. "What happened? You never swear, so it must have been serious. What did she do?"

Wrong thing to say, apparently. Ugh, Archie hadn't wanted to get them angry at her. "Later," Archie replied, knocking Draco on the arm to stop him from glaring at his cousin and drawing deeply from his glass of wine for something to do. Blech. Wine. "Let's talk about something else, do you mind? I don't want to trouble you with my problems, tonight."

"As if you ever do," Malfoy drawled, sounding a little bit put out. Oh, right – Harry, Archie winced mentally. Harry talked about her problems with Archie, but probably no one else."It would be nice, Rigel, if you troubled us a little more."

Archie laughed lightly. "Yes," he conceded easily. The first rule of improv – yes, but. "But not today."

Eventually, Zabini and Nott joined them (the latter much to Archie's distaste), and Archie listened half-heartedly to the talk around him. He hadn't forgotten what Hermione had asked him to do, but nothing cropped up that seemed very pertinent. They pressed him at some length about the Triwizard team meeting a few days ago, but Archie simply laughed and obfuscated, covering up the fact that he actually had no idea how the meeting had gone or what had happened. He and Harry had fought before she could tell him anything, and he had been avoiding her since. Not the smartest move, in retrospect, but he thought he had done well, in saying he wanted it to be a surprise for everyone.

Fortunately for him, it seemed that Malfoy and Parkinson decided that he was too upset about his argument with Harry to want to talk much, and discreetly changed the topic to simple talk about their holidays. Zabini had finally managed to gain an audience with Hannah Abbott's father, which he was all too delighted about and which led to much ribbing from Malfoy and Nott. Nott had been caught up in an endless round of family events since the end of term, and Archie recalled that the Nott clan was bigger than most of the other pureblood noble families – almost as big as the Averys, if he remembered right. All Archie had to do was look like he was listening and laugh at appropriate moments, for which he was begrudgingly thankful.

"Rigel," an unfamiliar voice cut in, and Archie felt someone touch his shoulder. He looked around, seeing a young man cutting into Harry's circle of friends. "Oh, hello, Pansy. Malfoy, Zabini, Nott."

The newcomer was in neat, fashionable, black robes with a high collar, tailored to emphasize his slim, willowy form. His hair was dark and wavy, tousled in the sort of artless, casual waves that Archie knew had to have taken hours to perfect. He called Harry by name, which meant that he was close enough to Harry to call her by name, though he evidently wasn't very close to Malfoy, Zabini, or Nott. Archie wouldn't have recognized him, except his eyes were a burning orange-gold. A Rosier – this would be the Rosier Heir. What was his name, again?

"Rosier," Archie greeted him, before anyone could catch his odd pause, stepping neatly aside to make room in the circle. He studied the older boy critically, running through what he knew about him – he was a seventh-year, Neal's age. In first year, he and his friend, Rookwood, had given Harry the warnings about the marriage law, and they had also told her when the legislation was shelved. From the Triwizard Tournament book that John had passed on to him by fastest owl possible, Archie also knew that he was one of the Hogwarts team strategists. Harry didn't talk about him much, barely mentioning him over the past two years, so she didn't consider him to be a close friend. But then, Harry also might not have mentioned it because she just didn't consider it important or likely that Archie would ever meet him. Or, maybe, she just hadn't had a chance to warn him, since he had avoided being in the same room alone with her for the past few days. Archie couldn't be sure.

Yes, but, Archie reminded himself sharply. He had no information, so he had no choice but to play it by ear.

"I'm sorry to leave so quickly, especially since you've just arrived, Rosier." Zabini nodded in reply, a touch apologetic, then cast a meaningful glance at the dance floor. "But the dancing is about to start. I wouldn't like to leave Hannah searching for me."

Nott agreed, throwing an entirely garish wink at Zabini. Archie didn't understand, and he didn't care to understand. "You're right, we had better find our partners. I've been pulled by one of my cousins, again – guess I'm old enough to use as a shield! I'll see you later?"

Archie struggled to keep the look of distaste from crossing his face. The first dance was special – it was the dance that people paid attention to, and it often signalled new alliances or political changes. To be entirely proper, Archie should find Harry and convince her to dance the first set with him, but since when had the Blacks and the Potters been proper? No one expected them to be proper, so to hell with that.

What he would actually do was find a convenient spot to watch it all and try to memorize the pairings for Hermione to review later. A quick glance towards the dance floor showed that Leo was cajoling Harry onto the dance floor with him, and she was laughing, so Archie wished her well and took another sip from his glass of wine. He dearly hoped Malfoy and Parkinson would leave soon, too, then at least he could go about his memorization a little more discreetly. Rosier, too – they probably would disappear any minute now, Heirs almost always had to be seen dancing the first dance.

"How was your holiday, Aldon?" Archie heard Pansy ask. "You were at the Tournament meeting, weren't you? Rigel has been so close-mouthed about it; surely you'll be more forthcoming?"

Ugh. Archie resisted the impulse to rub at his temples. She was probably genuinely curious – he would have been genuinely curious, in her shoes, but Archie simply had no idea. Rosier, did though, so hopefully he could push it off on him as much as possible. While being discreet about it.

"There's little news of interest, Pansy." Aldon smiled easily, relaxing and taking a sip of his own wine – white, rather than the red that Archie had. "And it will be more interesting for you to simply watch the matches. Honestly, our meeting a few days ago was dull; we only learned the rules of the game, read over the books that the ICW sent us, and so on."

Archie suppressed a snort. Everyone at AIM knew the rules, though he supposed that they hadn't been kicked out of the games for forty years. Hogwarts was walking in blind.

"That's what Rigel said, too," Pansy replied with a regretful sigh, but her voice was kind. "I suppose we'll just have to wait. Still, can't you at least tell us who we're playing first?"

Rosier laughed, and his orange-gold eyes flickered over to Archie. For all his light, almost bell-like laughter, his eyes were measuring, considering. Maybe he and Harry didn't know each other so well as that – that was not an expression one had when looking at a close friend. The rest of Harry's friends took him for granted at this point, they never looked at Archie like that. "I suppose, Rigel, that we can tell them that much, at least?"

Archie was trying to re-evaluate this relationship quickly. Rosier knew Harry well enough for first name terms and he certainly played as if they were close, but something about this whole interaction had Archie's senses on high alert. "I suppose it does no harm," he replied slowly, shrugging carelessly. He actually did know the answer for this, because it was in the Tournament booklet that John had sent along. "Hogwarts' first match is the first weekend of February, against AIM."

Malfoy snorted. "We'll wipe the floor with them."

Archie fought, hard, against the current of anger that ran through him. How dare Malfoy? There was no consideration of the strengths of a school like AIM, no benefit of the doubt. Malfoy just assumed, for no reason whatsoever, that of course Hogwarts would defeat a school like AIM, a school where blood-status didn't matter.

AIM had to crush Hogwarts. It had to, even if Harry was on the team, because Archie could not deal with this smarmy, pretentious attitude without having a gut-clenching need to make it happen. AIM would have to put Hogwarts into the ground, a defeat so complete that no one could say anything else had happened.

Malfoy flinched, and Archie reined himself in, hard. Shit, Empathy – most of Archie's milder reactions and so on would be covered by his Occlumency, so all Malfoy should have gotten was his general malaise, but this reaction was a little too strong to be shielded.

"Sorry, Rye," Malfoy said, casting him a concerned look. "You said Harry was on their team, right? As a Healer."

That would have to work. Archie could tie it to his concern for Harry – it might even have worked if they hadn't fought earlier. Shit. It was still the best explanation he had though, so he threw himself forward into it. Yes, but!

"Yes, that's right," Archie said, keeping his voice even. Thank god for three and a half years of acting. Thank god for improv practice. Thank god he had the sense to sign up for theatre at AIM, because he would not have made it through these Galas without those skills. He considered, and deemed it not too inappropriate to add, "but we shouldn't underestimate our opponents, either. AIM could be a challenge."

Malfoy smiled, but it was so clearly skeptical and patronizing, a fond look at a friend who was perhaps a little too enamoured of his halfblood cousin at AIM. "I'm sure. Sorry to leave you here, but Pansy and I have to get on the dance floor – the dancing is about to open."

Yes, please, Archie thought with almost a sense of relief. If he had stayed around, Archie didn't know what he would have done. The sensible course would have been to find a convenient excuse to leave. The less sensible, and infinitely more satisfying course would have been to hex him. He was glad to have the choice taken out of his hands.

John would have laughed at him for the thought. Archie was shit at hexing. Archie had his basic line of shields down, and he could cast the standard Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Impedimenta, but he had never picked up anything more. He had never needed to, and he had no real desire to learn anything to attack people, not when there was Healing to do.

"Don't mind me," Archie said, happily waving Parkinson and Malfoy off. "I'll catch up with you later." If I can't find a convenient excuse to disappear, anyway.

That only left Rosier, and there was an awkward pause as Archie took the time to try to remember what he knew about the family. The Rosiers were extremely wealthy – wealthier than the Blacks. They were purebloods and proud of it, belonging to the Sacred Twenty-Eight. They were in the Book of Copper, meaning they had only been elevated to the nobility within the last three hundred years. They ran the Rosier Investment Trust, the largest investment and venture capitalism firm in Wizarding Britain. Even Dad kept a quarter of the Black assets in the Trust. But what was their Heir's name?

Aldon, Archie remembered suddenly. That was right, Archie had regaled Dad with the story of his formal introduction to Aldon Rosier some three years ago. Dad had laughed and told him a few other details: both Lord and Lady Rosier had been famous (or, in the latter case, infamous) for dodging arranged marriages. They were both nearly twenty years older than Dad and had married in their mid-thirties. It was shocking that Lady Rosier had settled down. Dad thought it was interesting, especially since the Lady Rosier had taken extreme measures to avoid marriage before – poisoning herself, faking her death, running away for months at a time…

None of that helped him now, though. Damn.

"You were looking for me," Archie said, raising an eyebrow. "What is it, Rosier?"

It was a split-second decision to use his last name, rather than his first. Two reasons: first, no one had seemed to find it amiss when Archie greeted him by last name, and second, if they were on first name terms, he was fairly confident Harry would have talked about him more.

Rosier leaned back, an odd little half-smile dancing on his face as he drank from his glass of wine. If Archie was Dad in Animagi form, his hackles would have been up. Something was off about this whole conversation.

"I'm sure I've told you to call me Aldon a dozen times if I've told you once," Rosier said, his voice chiding and a little offended. "Or have you forgotten?"

Shit, Archie thought, a bit off-balance. He really hadn't thought Harry and the Rosier Heir were on first name terms. Harry should have told him! Wait, no, that couldn't be entirely right either – based on Rosier's words, I'm sure I've told you a dozen times, Harry must often slip and call him by last name.

Ah, so Rosier was closer to her than she felt to him, or it was a recent change. Fine, Archie could work with that. Now, to make him go away.

"Aldon." Archie shrugged, affecting nonchalance. "Force of habit, I suppose. You're not dancing? I'm surprised."

"I rarely dance at these things, Rigel, you know that." Rosier looked over at the dance floor, orange-gold eyes considering, a little critical. "I was curious about who Miss Potter was dancing with, tonight. I don't recognize him."

Archie didn't need to look at the dance floor to know that Harry and Leo were dancing, but he did anyway. Harry was laughing, spinning under a green-clad arm, and Leo wore the look of a smitten man. He suppressed a heartfelt, genuine smile – Harry was a much better dancer with Leo than she ever was with him.

Well, he had already told Parkinson, and Leo's identity was not a secret. Except for the King of Thieves part.

"That would be Lionel Hurst – he's the son of the Aldermaster of the Potions Guild," Archie replied casually, taking another sip of his wine. It was gross. Who drank this garbage willingly? He wanted something fizzy, like a coke. Or a root beer float. They didn't have those in Wizarding Britain. "Harry met him at an apothecary, or something like that. They are good friends."

"More than friends?" Rosier looked at him, his red-gold eyes beady.

"Not at all," Archie lied. Well, it wasn't a complete lie. It was likely true on Harry's end, but definitely not on Leo's. It was written all over Leo's face, why was Rosier even asking?

It didn't matter, Harry was having fun.

Rosier didn't say anything for awhile, studying Harry and Leo on the dance floor, so Archie took the time to skim through the other couples. Malfoy and Parkinson were dancing together – that would be a pairing of note, if they got together, consolidating the prominent Malfoy and Parkinson Houses, but Archie found it unlikely. Both Houses were tiny, with no other Heirs, so a pairing there would permanently merge their Houses and their assets. Not ideal for preserving the family name. Zabini was dancing with a blonde girl that Archie didn't recognize, presumably Hannah. The Selwyn Heiress was dancing with someone, and the ring on her finger and the expression on their faces told Archie that that pairing had been finalized.

Archie was terrible at this. He didn't recognize most people, nor did he know enough about most of their families or their Houses. He was shit at politics.

Rosier broke the silence between them, his voice gently curious, inquiring. "I would have thought you would be dancing the first dance with her, since you are betrothed."

Blunt. Archie could respect that. "Our contract doesn't require exclusivity."

Rosier turned away from the dance floor, both orange-gold eyes bright as he considered Archie. "You're unconcerned," he said, his hands fiddling with the stem of his wine glass. That glass was more than three-quarters empty, while Archie's was more than two-thirds full – it seemed that Rosier actually liked wine. "I wonder if you would be so unconcerned to learn that your betrothal contract is largely considered to be a shield for Miss Potter's protection."

Oh, he was very blunt. Archie liked that. He looked away, at the dance floor, thinking over his options.

He could deny it – indeed, that was probably what Harry would have done. That was probably the sensible course of action, but Archie wasn't feeling very sensible, right now. Anyway, Rosier was quite right – if it was a serious engagement, Archie should have been on the floor with Harry right now, and he wasn't.

And, in truth, it wasn't a serious engagement. Even if the marriage law passed, Archie would emigrate from Britain before marrying Harry. It wasn't that he didn't love her – he did love her, quite a lot, but it wasn't that sort of love. It wasn't fireworks, or passion, or anything like Mum and Dad had, and the things he was willing to sacrifice for Harry did not include his chance at love. Archie had someone he was pretty damn sure he loved and he wasn't going to sacrifice it. Since Archie had no intention of actually marrying her, it was better for her to look for other matches while she was at these things.

"So what it if it were?" Archie asked, looking at him sharply. This wasn't Rigel Black talking, anymore – this was Archie as Arcturus Rigel Black, the Black Heir. This was, he realized suddenly with a shock of surprise – himself. "If Harry needs to use my name as a shield, then I'm happy for her to do it. She has it hard enough; anything I can do to smooth her path, I'll do it, no questions asked."

Rosier blinked, a little surprised, then he smiled, like a cat with a mouse caught in a hole. Not a good sign, but what was done, was done. Who was this person? He couldn't get a fix on him, or his relationship with Harry. Something was off about it all, and he had no idea what.

"So, the engagement isn't serious," Rosier purred thoughtfully. "And that means Miss Potter is still considering suitors, is that right?"

Archie turned away, looking back at the dance floor. He had no response to that, and a turned back was as good as anything. Rosier took a step forward – close enough to him that Archie was a little uncomfortable. He couldn't help but reach, subtly, for his wand.

"Surely you might put in a good word for me with Miss Potter?" Rosier murmured, his voice quiet, just enough for Archie to hear over the music. "We are such good friends, after all."

If there were words that would have shocked Archie more, he wasn't sure what they were. He spun around, taking a step back, looking at Rosier with new eyes. Rosier was smiling, but Archie didn't see anything nice about that smile – this was a challenge to him, Archie realized quickly. Harry might or might not have anything to do with it, but somehow this other Heir was challenging him, and he had no idea what it was about.

Buy time, his mind whispered to him frantically. Buy some time to think."What do you mean by that, Rosier?"

His voice was sharp, on the border of offensive, but Rosier didn't say anything about it. Instead, he had a queer little half-smile on his face as he turned to study Harry, still spinning on the dance floor with Leo. His voice, when he continued, was thoughtful. "I met her, at the last Gala. She left a strong impression. Stunning eyes. I was – I am – quite intrigued. And it would be good to give her some options – especially since your betrothal is, as you say, not serious."

Archie stared at him, flabbergasted, utterly convinced that there was more to it. Nothing about this felt right in the least, and he had no idea what kind of game Rosier was playing. He supposed proposals were not that uncommon, not for people of their class, and Harry was even getting to the age where many pureblood noble girls were looking at arrangements. But Harry had barely mentioned Rosier over the last three years, other than an offhand comment here or there, and there was nothing to suggest that the Rosiers and the Potters had anything in common. Something about this was all wrong, and Archie had no idea how to respond.

Fortunately, it seemed that Aldon was looking back at the dance floor, watching as Harry and Leo started their second set. Archie thought through his answers – it was too late to backtrack on his last statement, and he couldn't outright shut Rosier down because he didn't know what kind of relationship Harry had with him. The risk of mucking things up and being discovered with the wrong reaction were too high.

Unbidden, Harry's advice for last year came to mind. If you don't know what to do, just laugh – it might be an inside joke.

Yeah, no, Archie decided quickly. There had been nothing about Rosier's attitude to suggest that this was an inside joke and laughing now felt like it would be a bad idea. What about John? What would John do, or Chess?

That wasn't any better. John would probably make some comment about Harry was all of fourteen years old, what was wrong with Wizarding Britain? Not helpful in this context. Chess would probably just nod as if she agreed, then note that there was a very wide space in the air where no one was dancing, and excuse herself. And Hermione?

Hermione would have a rant about arranged marriages of all kinds because women had minds of their own and they could make their own decisions, thank you very much. Archie blinked – actually, that worked fine.

"Harry knows her own mind," Archie said simply, his voice a little stiff.

"I'm counting on it." Rosier smirked, then he polished off his glass of wine and caught sight of something across the ballroom. Archie glanced over, spotting someone very like an older version of the Heir in front of him cutting across the floor – straight in a line towards Uncle James. Oh, boy. "If you'll excuse me – I have remembered something I must do."

Rosier disappeared without a proper farewell, and Archie shook his head. At least that was over; he would have to deal with the consequences later. He should alert Dad, because having Dad there would drastically decrease the chances of Uncle James hexing Lord Rosier, but it looked too late for that – Lord Rosier would be most of the way through his speech before Archie even found Dad.

Archie took another sip of his wine, made a face, and set it down on a table to abandon. It was simply too gross for him to keep trying, and anyway, he was supposed to be getting intel for Hermione. It would be easier if he wasn't himself, though, so he walked briskly alongside the bare walls, looking for an alcove, a chair, some drapery, something that would shield him while he discreetly Metamorphized himself into someone else.

In the end, he just found a few low-backed chairs, being used by a circle of laughing women, and it would have to do. He walked behind them, turning his face down and towards the wall as he corrected his facial features – he gave himself an upturned nose, close-set blue eyes, a rounder face. He wished he could change his hair colour, but it would probably draw too much attention if he did, so this would have to do. It was only a few seconds, and off he went, wandering the hall in search of rumours. Especially about the Tournament.

He didn't hear much – it didn't seem like many people knew much, and he didn't dare approach Lord Riddle or his circle. There was a lot of speculation about it, and some of the oldest witches and wizards, such as Elder Ogden and Elder Marchbanks, were reminiscing about the days when they were students, before Hogwarts had been thrown out. The games were different then, it sounded like – there were no strategists, no support teams. The Tournament today was a completely different beast.

Most people seemed to be amused, considering it to be a pleasant diversion, and of the view that Hogwarts would inevitably be the winner. Even if they weren't, Archie supposed, this was the SOW Party annual fundraiser and Gala, and it wasn't politic to say otherwise. Most people had only the vaguest idea how the game was even played.

Of the Hogwarts team members being discussed, Rigel's name came up far more often than the rest. He wasn't sure he could read much into that – Rigel was the only noble of the Hogwarts team members, and in these circles, that mattered. He didn't know the Diggorys, the Johnsons, or the Willoughbys at all.

There was plenty of chatter about things other than the Tournament, though. Archie pieced together, from several conversations, that the Selwyn Heiress was engaged to Edmund Rookwood, which would elevate the Rookwoods into nobility. The Selwyns had been bleeding funds for years, and the match promised a renewal of the family coffers.

Archie heard talk about the economy everywhere, hidden between wary conversations and smiles. It was obvious, especially after having heard Isran mention it, however briefly. There were few wealthy families left – only a few big business families remained, most notably the Rosiers, though the Zabinis and a few other families were said to be doing well. Aside from that, there were the historic Houses that hadn't yet managed to deplete their assets, though it was harder to tell with old noble Houses, since they tried to keep up appearances.

There were complaints about the wine, talk about the increasing cost of goods. Wine was expensive, especially the best ones, and the French had, under pressure from the ICW, severely restricted the wine trade with Britain. That meant no fairy wines, and many were feeling the lack – it should have been fairy wine at this Gala, because they were wizarding nobility, and not this plain swill. But it wasn't just the wine, either – the basic cost of food, potions ingredients, cloth, and other raw materials were going up, too. Wands were atrociously expensive now, especially Ollivander's – his stock had been depleted, and unless one was fortunate enough to match with a wand made entirely of British materials, the cost could be well more than a hundred galleons. These were noble families, so they would dig deep to pay for a wand, that most basic of casting implements, but he heard the fear underneath their comments. What would one do, if they could not afford to buy the wand that their child matched with?

It meant that the few families that were still known to be wealthy were in high demand – including Harry. Blood-status notwithstanding, the Heiress Potter came with money, and that alone made her a good prospect for many families. Like the Lestranges. No wonder the Lestrange Heir was dancing with her – the Lestranges would be bankrupt within a half-decade, if most families' projections were right.

Wait, what?

Archie looked back at the dance floor, only to see that Harry was dancing with Caelum Lestrange and, judging by the way her mouth was set, not happy about it. Lestrange was also moving a little too quickly for her, and it looked a little like she was subtly trying to stomp on his feet but having little success about it. They were talking, but Archie had the sense that it was not a fun conversation.

Archie sighed, pursing his lips. He would have to do something about that. He didn't want to, and if Harry was having fun, he wouldn't bother. The Potter and Black reputations were such that even if Harry wanted to dance with Leo Hurst all night, Archie was sure they could come up with something to say about it to dispel any rumours. Personally, he would go with something about how unwelcoming his own friends were, and how he couldn't possibly have pulled her away when she was enjoying herself in an environment where most people weren't friendly to her. Harry would hate it, even if it was true.

But Lestrange was there, and Harry wasn't having fun, and Archie should probably warn her about Rosier. He didn't really want to, but he didn't see that he had any other choice.

There was a convenient stretch of wall, blocked off again by chairs and a chattering circle of elderly nobles unlikely to notice him, where he could pull the same trick he did earlier. He didn't stop, but kept walking, his face turned down to the ground while he quickly rearranged them to be Rigel Black. When he reappeared, it was an easy matter to figure out where this particular waltz ended, and to sweep in and grab Harry.

Lestrange whirled on him, ready to snap – he was obviously planning on dancing another set with her, but too bad. "Sorry to intrude," Archie said, grinning like a maniac and not at all sorry. "But I need a dance with my betrothed, now, thank you."

The next set was a schottische, and Archie started the steps slowly, trying to give Harry the space to figure out her own footing. The schottische was a different style of dance from a waltz, a little easier for Archie; most of the dance was done in a side hold, so he didn't need to face Harry for most of it. Better yet, the hold put him close to her ear, so he could whisper to her without being too obvious about it.

Harry was grimly silent, focusing on her feet for a few minutes, while Archie tried to figure out what he wanted to say. He couldn't see her face, except for a bit of a side profile, so he couldn't read her very well. The way she moved, though, was a little stiff.

Archie didn't want to argue with her. He also didn't want to apologize to her, because even if he had behaved badly, he didn't feel sorry about it. He just wanted to pass on what he needed to pass on, before he went back to lingering in the background with a different face and listening to gossip that he didn't really understand.

"I didn't think you were talking to me," Harry said finally, her voice coolly neutral. She was looking down at her feet. The steps of the schottische were of the kind where one actually did need to know their footwork, not one where a good lead could guide a follower through the steps. Not a good dance, for Harry.

"This isn't talking," Archie couldn't help correcting her, his voice a little curt. "This is dancing."

"Why are we dancing, Arch?"

"Rosier talked to me," Archie said simply, keeping an eye on the crowd around them and his voice low. He spotted both Lestrange and Leo Hurst glaring at him – he guessed that the whole arranged marriage thing was a surprise to both. "He… expressed interest in you."

"What?"

"I couldn't get a good read on him." Archie shook his head slightly, still a little disturbed. "How close are you to him? He acted like we were close, but you don't mention him much. He pressed me a bit on how I wasn't dancing with you, then got me to admit the engagement wasn't serious—"

"Archie!" Harry's voice was a low hiss. If Archie could see her face, he imagined that her eyes would have narrowed, and she would be glaring at him.

Archie paused. He had only been planning on reviewing his conversation with Rosier with her, then warning her that he had seen Lord Rosier going to talk to Uncle James, but something about Harry's voice reminded him. As weird as Rosier had been, he wasn't wrong – since their engagement wasn't serious, Harry did need some options. They were fighting anyway, one more comment didn't matter.

"It isn't a serious engagement, Harry," he reminded her gently, leaning forward to speak directly into her ear. He kept his voice soft, because what he had to say wasn't nice. It was just true. "I'm not sure what you expected but… You can't rely on me to be around forever. I might move abroad; I might want to marry someone I love. My plane might go down over the Atlantic and I might die. You're supposed to be in America for most of the year. You should be using these Galas to scout out someone to marry for real if the law goes through, just in case. I suggest not Lestrange, because he's an asshole and his mother is crazier than a bag of cats, but Rosier – he's a pureblood, his family is prominent, he warned you about the marriage law. I don't know. I don't know him at all. I don't know what your relationship with him is, but I saw Lord Rosier approaching Uncle James, so… I think you got an offer."

Harry was silent, and Archie pulled her through a spin-pass. He caught sight of her face – as well as Archie knew her, her expression was hard to read, not least because she seemed to be concentrating on her steps. Her green eyes, subtly off, were a little troubled, he thought, but she didn't look surprised, or shocked, which was something. "It wouldn't be fair to make you keep your life on hold for me," she acknowledged finally. "I … didn't think about it like that."

Archie didn't reply. He wasn't sure what else to say, instead taking her back into the side hold and leading her through the next series of steps. There didn't seem to be much else that needed to be said, so maybe that was fine.

It was Harry that broke the silence instead. "You're still angry with me."

"I am." He paused. He was glad he couldn't see her face. "But I'm also a bit ashamed of how I acted, and I still don't agree with you, and I'm not sorry, just so you know."

Harry laughed – just a small laugh, enough to vibrate through her shoulders. Archie put her through another spin-pass – her expression was, remarkably, relieved. "Well, I am a bit sorry, but not about anything I said. I'm sorry that I haven't acknowledged the things you do for me. I am thankful." Another short pause. "I was worried you wouldn't come tonight."

"Just because I'm mad at you doesn't mean I don't love you," Archie replied, eyebrow raised and almost a little offended. He supposed she was justified in thinking so – their argument had marked a few firsts for them both. It was the first time he had said no, to something that Harry really wanted; it was the first time he had sworn in front of her; it was the first time they had a disagreement that Archie didn't think they could resolve. "You like to see your friends at the Gala."

"I do," she replied, and this time her voice was a little sad. "I like to see them, even if… it's not the same. They don't see me."

There were no words for that, so Archie squeezed her hands in sympathy. She was his cousin, his first friend, his sister – she would understand.

Rosier was waiting for them when the round ended. "If I may?" he asked, directing his question at Archie, much to his amusement.

"I do believe that would be up to Harry," Archie replied, hiding a smile as he thought about Hermione. Hermione would have no doubt interrupted and said something like I make my own decisions or something equally tart. John would have looked confused, uncertain if Rosier was asking him to dance or what, while Chess would have simply grabbed his hand and pulled him after her.

Rosier looked over at Harry, and Archie waited. If Harry said no, he would be there to back her decision with whatever she needed – his name, his blood-status, his face. Rosier seemed to study her for a moment, his orange-gold eyes a little softer, a small smile lingering about his face. Archie didn't know him well, but it looked genuine.

"Miss Potter." Rosier bowed, and it was a thirty-degree bow of social equals. As a pureblood to a halfblood, he was paying her extraordinary respect, and Archie couldn't help but approve. "I am glad that you were able to come to the Gala. I do hope you remember me fondly, and I regret that, this time, I am one of those people pretending not to be drunk."

Harry stared at him for a moment, then she burst into laughter – light, genuine laughter. "You hide it well, Aldon," she said, her eyes crinkling a little.

"Thank you." Rosier reached out to take her hand, and Harry accepted. It was probably fine, Archie realized – he would just wait for Harry to confirm that he could go and leave her to it. He should probably swing back for another dance later, but for now, she would be fine. "Might I have this dance? You refused me one last year and left me quite bereft."

Archie hid a laugh at Rosier's archaic language behind his most impassive face, though any of his friends would have seen it. Harry certainly saw it, when she glanced at him, and there was a twitch of her lips as she hid a smile of her own. Archie took that as his cue to leave and find somewhere quiet to rearrange his face and listen to more gossip and rumours that he didn't really understand.

Much to his amusement, the Rosier proposal came up later that very night, before they had even managed to get out of their dress robes. Uncle James corralled them all into the kitchen at Potter Place, supposedly for a very late mug of tea, and Archie was honestly a bit confused until he saw that his uncle was fixing Harry with a very deliberate stare.

"Lord Rosier approached me tonight," Uncle James said quietly, his voice somewhat strangled. "He proposed a match between you and his son."

"I suppose that explains why Aldon danced with me tonight," Harry said, her voice purposely nonchalant as she sipped at her tea. Archie exchanged a look with Dad, who looked like he was ready to burst into laughter. "What did you say, Dad?"

"I said that you were engaged to Archie, that it was a longstanding arrangement, and that there was absolutely no way in hell my daughter was going to marry his very Dark son."

"Huh. It's too bad, then, that Aldon managed to trick me into admitting it wasn't that serious," Archie threw in, just to see what happened. Dad would find it funny, and seeing Uncle James' betrayed look was worth it, he decided. He shrugged, a little helpless, three years of acting lending themselves to a combined look of surprise and helpless guilt. "He's wily, okay?"

"At least you know that the Rosiers aren't out for the Potter gold," Dad added, hiding a laugh of his own. "In terms of income, they're the richest family in Britain."

"That only makes me worry more." Uncle James scowled, staring at Harry as if she would magically provide him with answers. She wouldn't; she was intent on her mug of tea. "There has to be some other motive, and I don't like it when I can't see it. How did you meet him, anyway?"

"Last Gala," Harry replied, taking another sip of her tea. "We stood on a balcony and picked out drunk people in the crowd."

"And that's enough for a formal proposal?"

Harry shrugged. "I think Aldon might be a closet alcoholic – it's possible he was just drunk."

Uncle James took a deep breath, no doubt to start bellowing, and Archie glanced at Dad, who nodded. Time for a quick exit.

"Well, it's late – Archie and I better head home." Dad's voice was too loud, and he polished off his mug of tea in one swallow. "Arch?"

"Right," Archie said quickly, standing up and heading to the Floo. "Good night!"

His parting view of the room was Harry similarly excusing herself to bed, while Aunt Lily leaned down to soothe her husband.

Archie was back to AIM the next day, delivering a thorough report on the Gala to Hermione, who was a little disappointed at how little Archie was able to obtain. Archie had shrugged, a little apologetic – he wasn't Harry, and he had gone out of his way to avoid Lord Riddle or any of his closest associates. Archie didn't know most people on sight, so the best he could do was run through the rumours and gossip he had heard and hope it made sense to her.

"Overall, I'm not surprised," she said eventually, thinking it over with a sigh. "It's hard to know what's useful. Thank you for letting me know."

He and Harry talked more now; more than the few conversations that he had had with her last term, more than the few letters they would exchange before. But there was something awkward about their conversations, something that was flowed easily before and that came in fits and starts now. There were things they didn't talk about – they didn't talk about the Tournament at all, they didn't talk about their friends, they didn't talk about what they did day by day. Instead, they talked about their classes, their assignments, they talked about Dad and Uncle James, they talked about what they needed to talk about. Then again, Archie thought, that wasn't actually any different than before. It was just that now, they noticed it.

The time he had at AIM seemed to slip away, day after day. He was only there a month, and most of that was wrapped up in Tournament preparations. He sat in endless meetings assessing the expected strengths and weaknesses of the other teams, and he and Daine and Neal met separately to talk about the sort of Healing they could expect to do, about their strengths and weaknesses. As a fourth-year, Archie was the generalist, whereas Daine was best in complex cases with interacting conditions and injuries, while Neal was strongest with curses and countercurses. He took the time to get ahead on most of his classes, collecting his assignments for the time that he would be away, since they were all expected to keep up on their studies, too.

It felt like no time at all before they were heading back to Britain, this time in a loud mix of other teams. Everyone from North America was travelling together, meeting at JFK airport in New York City. Everyone was in No-Maj clothing, though Kel had decreed that everyone on the Triwizard Team would wear team jackets. Archie liked his new jacket very much – it was made of some sort of soft No-Maj material, not quite plastic but not any cloth he recognized, spelled with both a Warming Charm and a Water-Repelling Charm. It was sky blue, with the AIM crest and the discreet words TRIWIZARD TEAM 1995 embroidered in gold on his left breast. It was cozy, if a little bit big – he had sized up, wanting to get something that would fit him both as Archie and as Harry.

Every other team had team jackets too. Ilvermorny's were dark blue, trimmed in cranberry, with a prominent Gordian knot on the back. Archie was slightly jealous of their jackets, which were a bit longer and had a thumbhole on the sleeves, which let their students pull them over their hands. The Collège's coats were classic in design – they wore black wool peacoats, all with either red or white scarves peeking out over top. Cascadia's jackets were puffy plastic and deep green, with their school insignia, a simple mountaintop, inked in silver on the back, while Escuela Maya's students looked to be the most miserable, shivering in heavy brown canvas. Considering they had just Portkeyed in from the desert in Mexico, Archie couldn't blame them – it was pretty cold.

Some students were already mingling – Neal was deep in conversation, in rapid-fire French, with a few of the students from the Collège that he recognized, and Sidney was chatting with a few students from Ilvermorny. Hermione and Isran were standing in a circle of students from a mix of schools, about half British, Archie thought – he heard the lilting tones of an Irish accent from one boy, and a Scottish burr from another. Jessica Calderon-Boot was there, too, to translate for a few dark-haired students from Escuela Maya, since she spoke fluent Spanish.

Archie stuck close to John and Chess. John was excited, his eyes bright, chattering about the Tournament with Kel, while Chess had stuck her nose in a tourist's guide of Edinburgh, her top sights marked with sticky pink slips of paper. The ones she really wanted to see had little hearts scribbled on them too – not the look one expected of the inventor of the device they hoped would bring home the Triwizard Cup.

"What are you hoping to see?" Archie asked, relaxing in the waiting area. They had a bit of time before they had to board.

"The castle," she replied, without looking up from her book. "I really want to see Edinburgh Castle, it's dates from the 12th century and all the pictures look gorgeous. Everything on the Royal Mile – the Scottish Parliament buildings, St. Giles Cathedral, all the little shops. And I want to walk to Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park, and hike Carlton Hill, and I want to see the docks, and I want to sit in a café in downtown Edinburgh and just soak in the atmosphere, and—"

"We are here to compete, Chess!" Archie interrupted her with a gentle smile, holding his hands up in protest. "Will we have time for all that?"

She looked up, flushing a little. "Sorry. It's my first time in Europe. Do you think it would be too weird if I got a kilt? What tartan should I get, do you think?"

Archie shrugged helplessly. "I'm a halfblood – culturally, I don't know much about No-Maj Scotland. But maybe you can get Hermione to introduce you to that Scottish boy she's talking to later – he'll probably know if it's too weird or not."

"You would be cute in a kilt, Chess," John said, draping one arm around her shoulders as he turned back to the two of them. "Who cares if it's weird? Oh, did you end up finding someone's robe to borrow?"

"No." Chess shook her head with a bit of a sigh. "Nothing fit, so I ended up putting a paper-charm on the inside of one of mine. Once I activate it, the robe will be the right shade of green. I still don't understand why they're making all of us gen-ed students wear green, though."

"That's an order that came from the administration." Kel snorted, turning to them and inserting herself into the conversation. "AIM wants to make it seem like they have more Mastery and Healing students than they actually have, it's just showboating. You only have to wear it for games, in case they show the strategy room, but they've only done that once in the last twelve years; even the North American League banquet tonight is No-Maj dress."

John's face lit up. "The banquet has an after party, yeah?"

Kel smiled. "Yes, it does – why?"

"Because some of the other schools are going to crash," Neal said, coming back into their group. Looking towards the gate, Archie saw that the Escuela Maya students were boarding the plane, shepherded by their supervising professor. All the schools had supervising professors, though Professor Ryan had made clear that unless something came up, she would remain hands off. "My friends at the Collège are passing the word on to the United Academy of the International Confederation of Wizards, who are going to pass it on to the less snooty European schools."

Archie laughed a little. "The less snooty European schools?"

"Yeah, that means everyone except Beauxbatons and Durmstrang." Neal shrugged. "Not sure why Hogwarts was the only one that got the boot, except that Hogwarts changed their admission policies right around the end of the Second World War, after everyone became really sensitive about blood discrimination. Durmstrang's admission policies are even stricter and require four generations of magic-users, and even if Beauxbatons is supposed to be open, they haven't actually accepted a newblood in something like six years. They only accept a handful of halfbloods, too."

Archie frowned. "I never knew that."

"It's less of an issue for Europe, that's all," Kel replied, shaking her head with an expression of disapproval. "There are more schools there, so it's like American No-Maj colleges – Durmstrang and Beauxbatons are elite schools, but students from the ICW School or Schwarzenstein or any of the other schools do just as well."

"And there aren't any laws restricting employment, and the political situation is completely different," Hermione said, rejoining them as more of the other students were called to board. AIM was at the front of the plane, and therefore would board last. "That's the real issue. In Europe, being a newblood or halfblood, and thereby going to Schwarzenstein or the ICW School or one of the other general schools, doesn't restrict any political rights or freedoms, and leads to just as much opportunity as going to Beauxbatons or Durmstrang would – more, if you're interested in international politics."

"Hopefully some of them will show up tonight." Neal grinned. "Collège says that both the ICW School and Schwarzenstein are staying in Edinburgh too, so we can hope for a few students from their teams, at least. And I asked my cousin from the National Magic School of China, but they're staying in Glasgow, and her school is really strict so she doesn't know if she can sneak out. She said she would try, and knowing Fei, she'll manage it."

"I'm inviting my cousin Rolf." John stretched in his seat, brown eyes glimmering with excitement. "I just have to tell him when – the whole Oceania team is crashing at my great-uncle Newt's, which is going to be crowded, and they have to figure out how to get to us, but I'm sure they'll work it out. Maybe they'll come riding in on a Kelpie or something!"

"They better not." Kel put her head in her hands. "I don't want to deal with the panic that creatures would cause. How many people is that going to be? I invited a few friends from Mahoutokoro, and you have to expect that other people will have invited their friends too, Escuela Maya has a close relationship with the South American schools…"

"Don't worry about it, Kel," Neal slapped her on the shoulder. "They invented expansion charms for a reason. If too many people show up, we'll talk Marsh and Jess into expanding the hall. It's going to be awesome!"

The hotel they were at was almost clinical in feeling – all the walls were white, all the bedrooms were done in white, with white covers and sheets and furniture. Archie was sharing with John, an easy choice when room selections came about, not least because it meant that Archie could drop his disguise every night when the door was locked. It wasn't a bad hotel, though Hermione had called it a chain (Archie wasn't sure what she meant, and he hadn't managed to ask her). There were plenty of boardrooms on the second floor for the games themselves, and a gym, which each school team had for very specific hours for training every day. Kel had delivered the training schedule to them already, which John had stuck, with a Sticking Charm, on the wall.

Archie was mostly fascinated by the television in the room. He had heard about them before, of course, he had even seen them in the aeroport, but he had never gotten the chance to study one up close. He had the remote in one hand, and he was staring at the television in amazement as he changed channels. He found the BBC, which Hermione talked about, and he paused to watch snatches of a TV show on something called STV, a local Scottish channel. It was some sort of detective show, he thought, and he settled down on his bed to stare at it, trying to work out the plot. This was amazing.

"We don't have time for that right now, Arch," John interrupted, grabbing the remote and turning the TV off. "Come on, suit on, whatever cleaning spell you need on your team jacket – the banquet starts in half an hour."

"A half-hour?" Archie grimaced, then got up with a sigh, unshrinking his trunk and going into it to search for the No-Maj suit that he had been forced to get in the last month. They were in a Muggle hotel, and while the hotel had been discreetly warded to contain the Trace and the ICW had come to some sort of arrangement on staffing, and they could use magic, they were all told to be careful about appearing too overtly magical unless in a warded space. The dress code tonight was No-Maj formal, black suits and sky-blue ties for the boys, so Archie had had to spring for a No-Maj suit.

At least he and John had a bathroom right in their room, which he ducked into for a quick shower – he didn't want to be meeting people still in his travel grime. He could do a ten-minute shower, fix his hair, and get his clothes on in half an hour, easy.

John was tapping his foot impatiently when Archie got out, his hair still a little damp. Archie ignored him, studying himself in the mirror while he pulled on his tie, pinning the tiny gold school crest they had each been given onto his lapel. He looked good in a No-Maj suit, he decided. Well, not as good as he would have in his real body, his Harry Potter body didn't quite have the height yet to carry off the suit, but he would look great in this in his real body. He liked it.

"It's not like they're going to serve the food any faster if we get there faster," Archie said, rolling his eyes as he pulled a pair of black boots that went well with everything, and grabbed his team jacket. "Your tie is wonky."

"Fix it for me when we get downstairs, I want to meet up with everyone and get seats together," John replied, cracking open the door. "I don't think they planned seating for the banquet, so I want to get us a table!"

Archie grinned and followed him out. John stopped a few doors down, the room that Hermione and Chess were assigned, and banged on the door. He waited a minute or so and banged again, and after another minute, Hermione, wearing a robe and with her hair still wrapped in a towel, opened the door to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that they'd be down in about fifteen minutes, and no, they would not rush just because he wanted to be down there.

"We'll save seats for you," Archie told them with a smile, pushing John down the hall.

"Thanks," Hermione sighed, making to shut the door. "See you soon."

They weren't the first ones downstairs, there was a milling crowd of other students outside the ballroom doors already. John found the other AIM students quickly. The girls were all in light blue dresses, of different styles, though they all wore the same AIM school pin and team jackets. Half the schools had left their team jackets behind – Archie guessed that the Cascadia and Collège jackets were just too warm for the indoors. He picked out Cascadia by their green ties and dresses, and the Collège students by their language and red ties and dresses.

Hermione and Chess had both arrived downstairs by the time the doors to the ballroom opened, timing it nearly perfect. The tables were round, seating eight each, and Archie managed to snag a table for the four of them to sit together.

"John, the knot of your tie is wrong." Chess frowned at him, and John sighed and went about attempting to fix his tie.

"You do know that being able to tie your own ties is a fundamental life skill, don't you?" Archie grinned, watching his friend struggle. He would help him eventually, but it was something that John should learn, at some point.

"Fundamental life skill, my ass," John muttered, somehow twisting the tie over the knot and making an even bigger mess of it than he had before. "I'll just get clip-on ties, I swear."

"I have to concur with Harry," Isran said, taking a seat beside Hermione. "In British No-Maj schools, we all have uniforms and learn how to tie our ties ourselves when we're four."

"Are these seats taken?" An unfamiliar voice said, and Archie looked up to see two students in Ilvermorny colours standing by Hermione's chair. The boy, blonde with sleepy-looking doe eyes, was obviously Scottish, though his accent was a little worn around the edges – Archie guessed that, if he hadn't made an effort to keep his accent close to Harry's, his would likely be much the same. His companion, a slender girl with dark blonde hair and sharp blue eyes, smiled brightly at them all. The boy watched John struggling with his tie for a second. "You need a hand with that, mate?"

"I hate ties," John moaned, letting the other boy take the two ends and tie a very neat half-Windsor for him. "They're just designed to strangle me."

"That they are, but men look great in them," the girl chipped in, and Archie realized immediately that she was Irish. Her accent was not yet faded, and there was something else behind it too.

"Sit, sit!" Hermione said, a welcoming smile coming across her face as she stood to greet them. "Everyone, this is Tobias MacLean and Saoirse Riordan, from Ilvermorny. Toby is one of their compliance officers, and Saoirse is a player."

"Harry Potter," Archie introduced himself, standing up to shake hands with the two new students, ignoring the twitch in Hermione's expression. "I'm one of the AIM Healers. The one who can't tie his tie is John Kowalski – yeah, that Kowalski – and beside me is Francesca Lam."

"The pleasure's all ours," the girl, Saoirse, said, eyeing Archie speculatively. "British newblood?"

"Halfblood, actually." Archie waved a hand dismissively, making eye contact with John and dropping his Occlumency shields quickly to beg him to do something distracting to change the topic because he knew, without having to look, that Hermione's lips had pursed as he lied through his teeth. "My mum is a newblood, so I don't meet the two-generations test for Hogwarts."

Tobias groaned. "Stupid, that test."

"It's all right – AIM is up against Hogwarts as our first game in a few days," John cut in with a shark-like grin. "We'll crush them for it, how does that sound?"

"Immensely satisfying," another voice said, pulling out the last seat at their table. The speaker was a whip-thin boy with sandy brown hair and a lilting Irish accent, wearing the green tie of Cascadian Institute of Magic. "Wish we could do it ourselves, but pool match-ups being what they are, we'll have to settle for AIM beating them into the dust. Sean Docherty – strategist. I'm a halfblood, too, my mum's newblood and my dad's a Muggle."

"I didn't think the Ministry recognized magical and Muggle pairings?" Archie asked, a little hesitant. He was sure he had heard that before – it was another law pushed through in 1981, mages would only be recognized as citizens of Wizarding Britain if they were integrated in the wizarding community. That typically meant marrying another magic-user and working within the wizarding world. Technically the law applied to everyone, but realistically it only affected newbloods and halfbloods, who often couldn't find work in the wizarding world.

"They don't. My mum works as an insurance adjuster." Sean's voice was blunt. "I don't have an identity in the Wizarding British Isles. But Galway is a long way from London, and the Ministry's hold isn't as tight as they think it is, especially in Ireland. We just have to be a bit careful when we're in wizarding areas."

Archie nodded in understanding, face grim. There were probably a lot of people who were undocumented, he realized. Hermione was probably undocumented or, at best, quasi-documented, in Wizarding Britain.

"You're from Galway?" Saoirse asked, interested. "Saoirse Riordan – I'm from Ireland too."

"Gaeltacht?" Sean asked, eyebrow raised. "Newblood, or half? You're one of Ilvermorny's players, right?"

Saoirse's smile was slow. "I am," she said, and the hint of another accent behind her words was even more prominent. "And I'm a halfblood."

Sean's eyebrow twitched upwards, as John got a very amused look on his face as he looked between the two of them. "Keep talking," he said cheerfully, making eye contact with one, then the other. "I'm loving the insider access I'm getting to your team strategies right now."

Both of them flushed, a little embarrassed, and hastily changed the topic to the latest Quidditch standings. Archie, delighted to have someone new to argue Quidditch with, enthusiastically participated, then joined the other halfbloods in arguing for the merits of Quidditch over Quodpot. Toby, a newblood, and Isran ended up talking about football, while Chess mainly listened, and Hermione threw in biting commentary on each sport in turn.

It was nice, Archie reflected, having someone in his corner on the Quidditch side for once. Sean and Saoirse were both Quidditch fans, still riding the pride of Ireland winning the World Cup last summer, regaling Archie with a detailed play by play of the match. He wished he had seen it, even though he knew the match had been immediately followed by an extremist attack.

"I was lucky – my mum and I were pretty close to the gates, so we got out right quick when they started throwing pamphlets." Sean shook his head. "We Apparated out before the attack was even over – couldn't afford to stick around in case Aurors showed up."

"Lucky," Saoirse said grimly. "My parents, my sister and I were in the middle of the stands – another witch managed to protect our stretch by rallying people into shielding our section from falling debris. My dad was held for questioning, it was two days before he came home. As if a halfblood had anything to do with a pureblood supremacist attack, but that's the Ministry for you. It was just standard questions, but you know how it is – purebloods always go first. Purebloods and nobles."

"Yeah," Sean grimaced. "Or no, I don't know personally on account of being undocumented, but I can imagine." Archie nodded, a little disturbed; he could imagine only too easily what would have happened to Harry, or to her friends. They wouldn't even have noticed – they would have been called to give their statements early and gone home, without a thought for the people left behind. Archie wouldn't have noticed or thought about it, if no one had said anything.

"That's depressing," Toby sighed, pulling a flask out from inside his jacket, much to Hermione's consternation. She frowned, even as he offered it around. "Whisky, anyone?"

"Please," Sean said, swiping it and taking a swig. "The speeches are about to start – all our professors have to give speeches. Just a warning, Professor Barron is boring as fuck. Blah blah blah community; let's not kid ourselves, we're here to try to beat the shit out of each other."

"Still better than Professor Fleming," Saoirse replied, rolling her eyes as she took the flask and took a much more measured swallow. "He'll talk about tradition. This whisky is pretty good."

John was the only one from their group to accept the flask, and once the speeches started, Archie honestly wasn't sure what he was supposed to be bored about. The speech from Cascadia was very community-oriented, emphasizing connections and friendships with other schools, while Ilvermorny's focused on tradition and strengthening traditional bonds. Professor Ryan's speech, Archie thought, was awesome – she talked about progress, about building a better future, and her mild suggestion that they model a different kind of society to their hosts received wide applause. After that, though, the Collège's speech was half in French, and Escuela Maya's entirely in Spanish, and despite his best efforts, Archie couldn't help but fall in a bit of a stupor.

The sound of breaking glass cut through the end of the speeches. Archie looked up, as John, beside him, leapt to his feet, wand drawn. Chess was up too, diving behind John's bulk, a few pieces of paper appearing in her hands. Saoirse's wand was out, and her mouth was open in some sort of whispered chant, and Toby and Sean, on either side of her, had moved to shield their table.

The girl – a young woman, really – crashed through the broken window on a broom with a wild whoop. She wasn't good at flying, tumbling through the air in a few rolling passes, a chill wind whipping through the room as she landed in a heap. She stood up and looked around, and Archie saw Neal, two tables over, covering his face with one hand as he lowered his drawn wand.

"Well," the newcomer said, and her voice was clear and carrying, with a British accent. "I was told there was going to be a party? But if my cousin has tricked me into that kind of party, I'll play. Seventy-five to one, let's go."

"Put your wands away, everyone." Neal strode forward, pushing his way to the front of the crowd. "It's just my cousin – Fei Long Lin, from the National Magic School of China. Fei, you're early."

"I bet I could take on seventy-five to one odds," his cousin said eagerly, her smile wide as she pulled a fan from her belt and snapped it open. Her hair was cropped to her shoulders, tied half up, and Archie saw just a hint of resemblance in her height, in the shape of her face and nose. She was dressed in a long black coat with black leggings. "Also, you didn't make your team, Neal. Shame on you – shame on you, shame on your family, and shame on your cow!"

The laughter started as snickers, then rose to a muffled roar as people put away their wands, relaxed, sat back down and let themselves laugh. Archie found himself smiling as he tugged John back into his seat and Chess put away her paper charms.

"I do think that this ends the official portion of the evening," Archie heard Professor Ryan say, stepping forward and casting a quick Sonorus. "Miss Lin, since you broke the window, if you wouldn't mind flying back up there and repairing it, and if everyone could see the tables moved to the sides of the room, we should be able to put the music on. Seventh years, from all schools – don't make the five of us come back down here, all right? Everyone in bed by midnight, and not a minute later."

There were widespread cheers, and Archie pulled out his wand, joining everyone in pushing the tables back, smiling all the while.

He did get to meet Neal's cousin, later that night when Neal took her around to meet his friends.

"Neal wasn't sure you'd be able to make it," Hermione said, her voice gently inquiring. "He said that your school is really strict?"

"Oh, it is," Fei Long said, waving one hand flippantly. "School is a prison, and our hotel in Glasgow isn't much better. I broke out – they had warded our rooms closed, but I broke through it with zero help from my roommates. No one expected me to jump out a window on the twelfth floor, either, but they also didn't know about the broom I smuggled with me. Then I had to break the perimeter ward, which was much harder than the room wards, but after that it was smooth sailing, if a little chilly. I called a tailwind to help with speed, that part was fun."

"You can barely fly, Fei," Neal groaned. "You broke your arm in three places the last time you tried. Where did you even get a broom? You're going to be in so much trouble when you get back."

"Worth it to see you," Fei Long replied, with a bit of a smirk, but her expression was kind as she wrapped an arm around his waist. "I'm always in trouble anyway, what's one more thing? They'll be tougher on me in training tomorrow, but I'm the strongest on our team, so they can't hurt me too much. Probably they'll just break my broom."

"Break your broom?" Archie asked, his face crumpling a little. Confiscating, he understood – breaking, he didn't. It seemed so needless. "Isn't that a little extreme?"

Fei Long shrugged. "It's a malfunctioning Comet One-Sixty, I got it for cheap over winter holidays for this. I wouldn't bring a good broom on this kind of escapade."

"I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't have invited you," Neal said, shaking his head even as he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. "You have to come visit us more, Fei."

"After you brought dishonour on us all?" Fei Long smiled, a bit of laughter in her eyes. "I'll try, Neal – I miss Graeme and Will too. Montréal is just a long way from Singapore."

John's cousin, Rolf Scamander, had also shown up, although without a Kelpie. Instead, he had simply Apparated with a few of the Oceania students, bringing a couple bottles of Firewhiskey which immediately made him very popular generally. Archie didn't manage to talk to him much, having been dragged into the air as Chess' new favourite dance victim.

"Why not dance a song or two with John?" Archie asked, panting, after about six songs as he led her to the refreshments table. She had taught him more spontaneous dancing than he had ever known over the last half hour, but her penchant for what she called follower hijacks were tiring. Archie hated follower hijacks, he decided – they disrupted his flow too much, and keeping up with her styling was too much.

"Because John is drunk, even if he doesn't think he is, and he'll probably fall if he gets in the air," Chess replied bluntly, pouring herself a drink of the punch, which had not been spiked, much to Archie's relief. "Also, he's falling in love over there with that tall boy from Schwarzenstein, and I don't want to bother him."

"Is he?" Archie whipped his head around so quick he thought he heard his neck crack. Indeed, John was standing very close to another one of the newcomers, a young blond man, a few inches taller than John himself, with a patrician nose and chiseled jaw. He was laughing, and there was an expression on John's face that Archie had never seen before – a sort of stunned admiration. "Oh, god, he is."

"Told you," Chess said. "Well, if you don't want to dance, I guess I'll go solo for awhile…"

"You could go meet some new people," Archie suggested, looking around. There were so many people there, now, and nearly a third of the room weren't wearing formal No-Maj clothes, so they weren't part of the North American League. He spotted Kel chatting with two dark-haired girls in one corner, one in a pink dress and the other in a white blouse and peach-coloured skirt. Neal was with her, smiling and joking with the two new girls, while his cousin, Fei Long, was surrounded by a new crowd of admirers in another corner. Hermione was in another big group, including Rolf, Saoirse, and Sean, and a few other people, though their conversation seemed to more serious. The music was loud, with a huge variety; Archie barely recognized any of the songs.

"I don't really like meeting new people," Chess admitted softly, looking over the crowd. She shifted a little on her feet. "It makes me anxious. I'd just – I'd rather not. I'll just go dance in the sky."

Archie didn't really know what to say to that – most people were perfectly nice! He thought about going after her, but she was already in the air, so he went to talk to John about it instead.

John simply cocked his head to one side and told Archie that Chess would be fine, then introduced him to his new friend, Gerhardt Riemann, and a few other students from Schwarzenstein. They were talking about music, bands that Archie had never heard of, so he excused himself after a few minutes. He ran into Daine and was introduced to the group of Oceania students that she was hanging out with, then he met Kel's Mahoutokoro friends, Yukimi Daiomaru and Shinko Minamoto. He didn't manage to talk much to Yuki, since Neal invited her to dance shortly after Archie introduced himself.

"I've never known Neal to dance," Kel commented, a little surprised, then she paused, eyebrow raised. "I never knew he could dance."

"He's danced as part of theatre before." Archie rolled his eyes, one hand holding a cup of punch.

"I had assumed that he memorized the choreography, not that he could actually dance."

"I do not think he can dance," Shinko butted in, her English softly accented, examining the dance floor with some interest. "He has stepped on Yuki's foot and is now very red."

Archie was out on the dance floor himself many more times through the night. He danced another set with Chess, who, despite her words, did seem to be dancing a little with some students from other schools, then a song or two with Daine, Kel, and Kel's friend Shinko. He pulled Hermione out on the floor with him a couple times, then whirled Saoirse and Fei Long, and then a girl from the Collège, Héloise Nguyen, around in a some quicker-paced songs. At the end of the night, he found himself dancing in a circle with most of his friends, both old and new, a mix of his friends from AIM and from other schools, from Cascadia and Ilvermorny and the Collège, from Mahoutokoro and Oceania and Schwarzenstein. Even if he didn't know any of the songs, some of the lyrics and the movements were easy enough for him to pick up just from watching everyone else, and it was so much fun, dancing in a big circle with everyone else, one part of a single, happy, whole. The evening was a whirlwind of movement, motion, of smiles and singing and giggles and even love, as he took Hermione's hands for the last song and she just sighed and rolled her eyes and let him pull her on the dance floor.

Archie wondered, vaguely, how the Tournament was shaping up for Harry. He hoped that, whatever she was doing, however Hogwarts was celebrating, it was as much fun as this, because he would remember this night forever.

They had a few days before the first game, and Archie took that time, mostly, to rest up, complete some of his assignments to send back to AIM, and to prepare. Mostly was the operative word – they weren't restricted to staying in the hotel, so Chess managed to talk both him and John to coming with her to see the famed Edinburgh Castle, then for a walk through the downtown. She stopped at a dizzying array of cute Scottish shops selling tourist paraphernalia and cafes, looking at several kilts and even more tourist garbage. Ultimately, though, she decided that a kilt was too weird and didn't buy herself one, only a bear wearing a kilt. Archie bought one too, half-heartedly thinking that Hermione might want a bear in a kilt, trapped as she was in the strategy room with a group of students from all five North American schools talking about the ICW's security provisions for the Tournament.

"Has Hermione ever shown interest in anything like that?" John asked, eyebrow raised, one eye on Chess as she examined yet another display of cute keychains. "Somehow, I just can't see it."

Archie shrugged, a little helpless. "It's the thought that counts, right? And I didn't get her a pink bear. He's a classy bear!"

"Sure." John replied, then he was distracted by Chess holding up about eight different keychains for consideration. "Monster, you don't need all of those! Do you even have enough things to hang them on?"

A night later, it was John's turn to pull Archie away from his planned study and preparation – he had gotten an invitation to a Schwarzenstein party, at the tiny backpacker's hostel they had fully booked out.

"We're not allowed out past nine," Archie tried weakly. "And you're playing tomorrow – shouldn't you be resting? Sleeping?"

"Gerry came to our party," John argued, brown eyes wide and pleading. "That was after nine! Everyone does it, Arch – as long as we're not back too late, it'll be fine!"

Ah, so Gerhardt Riemann was the reason. Archie sighed, rubbing his forehead – John had a crush. That meant John was going, come hell or high water, so Archie should probably go too, to keep an eye on him. And to detox him if he drank anything. And to drag him home before it got too late.

"Fine," he agreed, then he listened to John's frankly awful plan for sneaking out, which involved turning their bedsheets into ropes and climbing out windows. He had a better plan, called disabling the fire alarm, then sneaking out one of the many emergency exits.

The party was a good one, at least, even if John abandoned him early on to flirt with his new beau. Instead, Archie ended up talking about their Tournament prospects with two of Schwarzenstein's other teammates, Andre Muller and Christine Hoffmann, an equipment manager and a strategist, over beer – not even Butterbeer, just plain No-Maj beer. Archie didn't really like it – if possible, beer was worse than wine.

"Our pool isn't bad – biggest threat for us is Ilvermorny, definitely," Christine said, taking a swallow from her bottle. "They're quite traditional when it comes to spell-casting, but a lot of their players dual-cast."

"Dual-cast?" Archie asked, tilting his head in question.

"They use a wand with one hand and cast runic spells with their other hand at the same time," Andre filled in with a sigh. "Dual, even triple casting is becoming more common now – using different magical channelling methods at once to do magic. It used to be that you only had to worry about people with specific gifts, but nowadays you can't know until the matches begin. I don't envy Hogwarts – forty years out, they have no idea what they're walking into. Multi-casting only became important about eight years ago, when Ilvermorny used three dual-casters to take the Cup."

"It's going to be interesting, for sure." Christine nodded thoughtfully. "Think about it – forty years ago, no comm orbs, no strategists. No video monitoring, so the terrains were way more limited. Nowadays you can't strike it lucky on your field so much – doing well in pools means being adaptable to environment, too."

"Remember last cycle?" Andre grinned. "One of the Collège's fields was tundra. Three-quarters of the players on that field got frostbite!"

Archie managed to pull John back home around midnight, running a quick diagnostic on his friend. John would be fine – he hadn't had too much, and he would sober up in a few hours, without a hangover. Archie boosted his liver and kidneys anyway, just to make them work a little faster, but he would be fine.

"I'm not an idiot, Arch." John smiled at him patiently, but there was the light of satisfaction in his eyes. Considering that he had disappeared halfway through the night, that Archie had had to go on a hunt for him, and the state of his hair, Archie suspected that kissing in dark corners had been involved. "I am playing tomorrow."

"Just checking." Archie slapped him on the shoulder, then pushed him towards his bed. "Bed. Now."

Despite the late night, the entire AIM team was in the boardroom at eight-thirty in the morning, ready to go. Archie and everyone who would be staying behind in the room were dressed in their school uniforms, just in case, either blue or green, while the three players, John, Sidney, and Jessica, were dressed in long-sleeved shirts, fitting close to the skin with an integrated Warming Charm, and heavy black trousers and boots. Jessica had her sniper rifle over one shoulder – she had had to declare that as an item, since it wasn't considered a channelling method in and of itself, but fortunately there were no issues with it.

"They didn't seem to appreciate the importance of the rifle," Isran reported, then he smirked. "I told Bulstrode that it was an assistive aiming device."

"A little obvious, don't you think?" Jess asked, shaking her head. "You couldn't think of anything else?"

"Well, I might have overemphasized my accent, too," Isran conceded. "She knew I was newblood – I saw the look on her face."

"On their part, they had some weird things, but I don't think any of it is helpful. They brought a portable swamp." Hermione snorted. "Some flashbangs, they looked to be a little more powerful than you'd normally see. I'd be careful of them, they might be strong enough to cause a concussive wave, but I wouldn't worry too much about the rest."

"I think we're fine on the plan, then," Kel said, at the head of the room. The three strategists were to be clustered on her left, across from the screen that had been set on the other side of the room for the projector orb, while Archie, Daine and Neal were on her right. All three of them had marked stones, with a string threaded through them into a bracelet or a necklace, which were their Portkeys to get the field quickly. The players had them too, but theirs had a different mark on them, as well as camera orbs that they had to release when they landed. "We're on Forest, so this is a really good field for Sidney and John, less so for Jess. Jess, you can climb, so get in the trees as soon as you can, close enough to guard the keystone. Sidney, get across the field in Animagus form – periodically, you should take human shape, just to throw them off and to get instructions from Derrick, but your job is to find their keystone and take it out once we confirm two Hogwarts players down. John, you've got the hard job this time – find their players, take them out of play."