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Chapter Text

Minerva spends her summer at Hogwarts, almost completely alone, except for the ghosts. The snow has finally melted, even in the shadows of the trees, and the halls are quiet and warm in the sunlight. Good for sleeping, and in her Animagus form, the hollows from years of student’s footfalls are comfort enough on her old bones, the castle’s magic a heavy pool against hers. There was a time when she would have spent the summer trying to publish papers and attend conferences, certain that she could match or even exceed Albus as the premier Transfigurationist of Britain, but now she just writes up her conclusions in long hand and spells them to be only readable after she passes. The last war, she fought Death Eaters who used magic she’d invented against her. Not again. 

Years ago, when she had a different steady lover at every major transfiguration conference and wrote them romantic missives in the margins of the journals she sent to them, she would have balked at the thought of spending the summer almost completely alone, ensconced in magic. Coming of age with the war with Grindelwald had fractured something inside her, and she’d been determined to fill it by becoming something— she still remembers the long talks with Albus late into the night, when she was still in her thirties and the years held nothing but knowledge, and when she got back to her rooms there would be letters from her loves in different cities, and who was she, Minerva McGonagall to, limit herself? She let affections spool around her like the magic did, and even when the romance ran out, there was almost always a friendship still. Those had been good years, heavy and perfect.

Was it because she was older, that the second war took so much from her? Or did she simply have that much more to loose? Gone were the carefree publications; gone were the conferences; gone were the lovers. What a thing, to find yourself in a thicket of woods on a moonless night, fighting for a world where blood didn’t matter, and a women you had met in a Paris lounge and kissed between breathless talk of yet-unproven theorems shot the killing curse at a man you’d loved for a quarter a century, on the orders of a maniac, but there had been a time when you would have taken the green jet for the both of them. What a thing, to come into the safe houses and find sheets laid out over the small still bodies of students you had taught, students you had mentored, students you had loved. 

There had been nights in those years, and nights in the years afterwards, when she’d wondered if it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, to take a flash of green for the vague idea of a better world. Leave the part where you wring it into existence to someone else. 

But of course it hadn’t gone like that. She came back, year after year, and taught children who might one day shoot the killing curse at her. That had happened last time, too, except this time she won’t give them the benefit of the doubt. 

(She wonders, sometimes, if this time, she’ll be able to say the words back them. To shout Avada Kedavra at the Death Eater who was also once the Hufflepuff Chaser who grinned at her every lesson, the Ravenclaw girl who came to office hours because she was so worried about her OWL in Transfiguration, the Gryffindor who she didn’t realize believed the blood purity nonsense until it was too late. What will it make her, if she can?)

But. It is still summer, the Scottish sun high in the sky. She redoes the wards at the base of the castle. She speaks with the ghosts and toys with the complex magic of the Come-and-Go Room (Helena and Rowena, she’s pretty sure at this point, and she always forgets how brilliant they were until she’s in there, the net of it like a tapestry). She proves theorems and then hides the books and the notes.

She mourns the dead, while the sun is high and she has space to do so, transfiguring twigs into wreaths for the grave in Godric’s Hollow and then walking back from the Apparition Boundary, dreaming of whiskey. She thinks of the living, when she can stomach it, but when she sees Severus as he makes his appearances to brew for the hospital wing, she doesn’t ask him about Potter. She sleeps in the sunbeams in her office as her Animagus, and feels the heat seep into her cold bones, and thinks of how she would like to go, in the next war. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, personally, is what her status at this point demands; but she would like to think she is still Gryffindor enough to take a bolt of AK for any one of her charges. 

(Severus, being Severus, comes to find her in the lull of brewing Blood-Replenishers, and sits down next to her where she lays curled in the slot of sunlight in the disused eight-floor corridor she favors. Wearing only a dark shirt and pants in the summer, hair up, he looks more like he did when he was sixteen and she could not reach him before He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named burned the mark into his arm. But, while she is the cat, he tells her what she does secretly want to know, as much as it hurts: Potter playing Quidditch at the Burrow, Potter visiting the Oxford Wizarding library and studying Defense and Potions at the Grangers’s very muggle kitchen table, Potter eating ice-cream in Diagon and laughing.)

Days like that, with the sun laying bright prisms over her colleague’s face, his hands stained with the effort of brewing instead of blood and the magic of the castle building up her own reserves and stories of the son of her protégée, she dares to hope there will be no war. That the remnants of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will implode inwards and Potter will grow up into a brilliant heartbreaker of a Quidditch player like his father, and Severus will never have to go back to that monster, and she will be able to publish her innovations. They will break the curse on the DADA position and when Albus retires, she will be Headmistress and find another brilliant lover, who will revolve around her like a planet and take her face in their soft hands. 

They’ll live, the both of them, and all the children, and all they have already lost will have earned them more than a scant decade and a half reprieve from bloodshed. 

________________

Filius spends the summer in Switzerland, at his daughter’s house on a glacial tarn, constructing international portkeys with the ease of a master when he needs to go to Tokyo or Berlin or Lima for conferences or meetings with colleagues. Quick, painless, always back before dinner to walk down to the village and see his great-grandchildren playing rec league Quidditch in the dusky twilight. 

The summer wastes in a lacuna of days. Philomena and her husband Jacque remind Filius of him and Fey, all those years ago, before the sickness and the post at Hogwarts, when there was only this remote Swiss village his family had lived in for generations, where no one really minded if there was Goblin blood in there. They are always leaning into each other, moving without having to say anything to each other; you can feel the love hang like a good ward. Jacque is a muggle sheepherder, who spends his days out in the hills with the most recent of a long line of loyal dogs at his heels; Philomena learned how to make magical artifacts so he would always have her magic with him. Their three children— two magical, one not, not that it truly matters out here— moved down into the village and now have children of their own. A master stone mason, a healer, a baker. 

There is always a moment, in the middle of the summer, when he thinks of resigning from Hogwarts. There is a small school in the village, for children of all ages, muggle and magical alike, and they always seem to need another teacher. He would write papers, go to conferences. There would be no faculty meetings where Severus picked fights with the DADA teacher, no Valentine’s Day Hogsmeade visits to supervise, no Quidditch matches to attend because his Ravenclaws begged and pleaded. 

There would be no war. 

(Or, well— there would be a war, and it would not be his. He would see the names of the dead in the newspapers and feel nothing, because he did not teach them and does not know their bright faces. The Death Eaters and the Order alike would learn their charms from someone else.)

And what about when Voldemort comes to Switzerland, Philomena had said last war, her eyes cool and even. She had children in her skirts and held her wand with the same brutality her mother had, all those years ago, and he had nothing to say to her. Still doesn’t. Of course You-Know-Who would not be able to abide the concept of this village where blood meant nothing and even magic itself was just a thing you could do or not do. If he won the war in Britain, he would conclude the circle of his quest for immortality and then come for the continent, and the Death Eaters would descend on the village and want to kill his son-in-law because he could not cast a lumos.

But who am I, to do anything about that, Filius thinks, dipping his quill again and starting on the next paragraph of his paper on hyper-colloidal charm theory. He is sitting in the garden of his grandson’s house, while two of his great-grandchildren chase a light-footed dog in circles, magic in their tiny fists. There is only knowledge, and his ability to give it to those who ask for it. 

(In a bookshop in Geneva, he finds the obscure book on Hinther Wards he knows Miss Granger has been trying desperately to get her hands on, but no British Wizarding library has a copy to ILL. At a conference in Bern, he talks to a Charms Master who he thinks Severus’s Miss Finkley would get on splendidly with. In Tokyo, he befriends the new librarian at the Imperial Magic Library and knows Miss Clearwater will be in touch, once he tells her. Student favors fall through his hands like water, and before he knows it, he has stacks of articles he’s found for them, books he bought because they lined up with their specialties, contacts and job placements and Philomena is leaning on the door jam with a knowing look in her mother’s eyes: Dad, you do this every summer, don’t act shocked again.)

In the blushing twilight, they split a bottle of elderflower gin in honor of Fey, who died when Philomena was fourteen and still leaves aches in her wake like great arêtes across the landscape, but beneath them the village sprawls, and look at what else they have built: Philomena, with her mother’s eyes and her father’s magic and that great love all her own. 

I think there is going to be another war, he tells her, slowly, once the bottle is three-fourths empty. He tells her about You-Know-Who back in the school and Albus so blatant with his trap, and saying all of that under the golden Swiss twilight, with the glaciers hanging from the peaks feels almost like sacrilege, but Philomena reaches out to take his hand in hers. 

Then you really do have to go back, she says. 

Fat load of good that did last time, he says, thinking of his Ravenclaws who came to extra tutoring and then knelt at the feet of the Dark Lord.

But they need you, she says, and his heart twists at the thought. And who else is there? 

No one, Flitwick knows in his bones. To leave without spending at least five years carefully finding and teaching his replacement feels like a grievous oversight, despite how he flits with it at times. And if there is to be a war, who is he to leave them without the ability to cast  basic charms, when You-Know-Who is so much, already?

He is not Minerva, who will take up her wand and fight in the Order, when the time comes. He is not Pomona, who will die to save her children if need be. He is certainly not Severus, who’s spent the last ten years never bothering to un-shroud his loyalties and might go back. Hopefully for the Order, as a spy, but perhaps—

He is a teacher. Even if the war is knocking on the gate, he will teach them how to cast levitation charms, and protection wards, and navigation spells. He will grade them fairly and make them sit their OWLs. If they go out to fight, they will know how to heal and how to charm and how to ward. And if You-Know-Who sets foot in his school again—

Well, Filius isn’t a Master for nothing. He knows magic that would make the most powerful wizard of their time quake. It will slow him down, at least. 

But not yet. Now, there is only his family and the summer and the rest of the bottle of elderflower gin.

________________

Pomona spends the summer everywhere. Trekking through jungles after rare plant specimens, only to tumble back through to London to tell a muggleborn they were to come to Hogwarts, only to head to the Rare Plant Fair in America for a weekend, trying to outbid Jasper fucking Burns, the Ivermony Herbology professor, on an excellent example of Celebrun cerebrumn. Anywhere, really, but the quaint cottage in Hogsmeade she still hasn’t brought herself to sell, even though it’s coming on five years. 

(Anywhere, really, but Isle of Sky, where she last heard Marsha was, researching runic circles.)

Sometimes, the other life she could have feels so close she can taste it, like salt in the teeth. She and Marsha would have rented out the Hogsmeade house and travelled the world together. They would have adopted a new dog and gone to little cafes in the magical districts of all the cities they visited. Hogwarts would have been a chapter of her life, not her career, and the weight of the war would have vanished off her shoulders and Marsha would have worn that black dress that even now Pomona can’t get out of her mind and everything would have been alright. 

(Everything would have been alright, except in the moments on the edge of sleep, when she would have longed for Hogwarts, and dirt on her hands in the teaching greenhouses, and her twice-monthly teas with Severus, and Ros’s friendly chatter in Hogs Head and the way the village was all done up in lights at Christmas, and it would have hurt— maybe more, maybe less, who’s to say— but what cruel irony, that Pomona is so acutely aware nothing could have ever fit right, between the two halves of her lives.)

She and Marsha had met in Glasgow, when she was twenty-seven. She had been finishing a Mastery in Herbology and Marsha had gotten a Phd from a muggle university in history, just to compliment her research. It had been a sudden, hungry sort of love— Pomona had had her share of long-term girlfriends through her twenties, but they all had been loose, soft things, not all-consuming. There was something electric in not being coddled, like beating your way up from deep water. 

When Pomona had been offered the Hogwarts job, the first war was just a building of pressure in the temples, and they’d done long distance for a year and a half, until a blustery February day when a shadow had unhooked itself from the castle wall and Marsha had been there, with her truck and traveling cases and a ring. 

All through the war, it had been a good thing, coming back to the house in Hogsmeade and staying up late, talking. They both had their careers, and Marsha travelled often for hers, and Pomona worked late hours. But—

Even now, she is not sure what went wrong. What caused such a beautiful love to wilt and wither. Was it Marsha, who seemed to keep wanting more and more, wanting things she had always been alright with not having, in the before? Had she thought the reason Pomona could not give them was simply the war, and not the way she was made? Or was it her fault— when after three years of rows, Marsha laid the me or Hogwarts card on the table, Pomona had said Hogwarts without even hesitating and what a cardinal sin, even if no true love would have asked her to leave the job she was built for? 

Either way, the house is empty and the ring is gone. What a thing, to survive a war and then to have the woman you loved walk away from you. Or you, walk away from her because you could not give her what she’d demanded if she was to stay. No fault? Equal fault? 

(Three years, it took her, before she stopped packing up her office on the monthly, as if to tenure her resignation and run back, run back to a woman who had demanded her to burn her career because she seemed to feel it meant there was less love for her.)

The past is dead, she knows, and now there is only the coming storm of another war. Owls come to her in the glens and forests and she hears her news of the world: Minerva writes her about class schedules and budget propositions; Albus, who probably should have been writing her about those things, simply sends little off-the-cuff notes (the man is one of the most powerful wizards of the age, but Headmaster? Really?); and Severus writes her dense missives in his sharp scrawl, the kind of thing that one would expect a potioneer to send to a herbologist, but buried deep in there is what he knows she’ll want to know: Harry’s safe, spending his summer with Ron playing Quidditch in the glades and with Hermione studying at the kitchen table. Sitting against an ancient cypress tree deep in the wilderness of northern Russia, snow still underfoot in the shadows, she reads the letter and wonders how much of their next six years will be consumed by the trio’s exploits. 

The trio’s exploits, or the war. She folds the letter neatly and sets it ablaze without a word, just a flash of heat from her crevassed palm. How long do they have? 

She is at a seed bank in Kansas. She is at a muggle conference on rare orchids in Jakarta. She is back at Hogwarts for the night, getting drunk with Severus (well, she is drinking, and Severus is stepping out at intervals even she can match to the steps of brewing Sober-Up), asking that very question, and he doesn’t answer, just looks at her, cold and even. 

Pomona believes that Marsha had come to think that she couldn’t love her and love her students, and what kind of horseshit was that? Pomona’s love had never been anything close-fisted, or finite. Perhaps it will cost her more than she has to give, to stay. Perhaps it will end for her how it has ended for so many others in this war: blaze of green, unmarked grave. But there are worse ends, are there not? 

There would be something, she thinks, to dying on her feet, taking the killing curse meant for a muggleborn. To meeting the Dark Lord at the gates of Hogwarts and saying if you want to hurt them, you will have to go through me. 

These are things about her Marsha never understood, but it is just her, now. She lets the summer gallop by, and thinks of things she can have Neville do in the greenhouse, and the likely composition of her newest NEWT class, and how when the time comes and she raises her wand to fight, she will not think of Marsha. 

She will think of what she chose to stay for. 

________________

Severus spends the summer solving the myriad of problems that have somehow all become his. There’s brewing for the infirmary, brewing for commission, and brewing because he’s a spy and thus paranoid to the point where all of his safe houses have full stocks of countless healing potions. There’s the conferences he’s been invited to speak at, there’s the tea with his former associates (the best is when Lucius has an engagement and he and Narcissa can just talk in the dappled sunlight by the koi pond; the worst are the dinner parties where Avery and Rosier and the rest get deep in their cups and want to tell stories about the muggles they’d tortured like it was some heroic accomplishment. Though, as he finds out halfway through the summer, that is somehow preferable to being asked what Harry Potter is like, and having to play up the sneer in his voice and pretend all he’s been doing for the boy is just a front.) And the Dark Lord is somewhere— no better way to spend a summer evening than tramping over the hideous fens of Europe looking for a wraith, right— and Albus is bloody cryptic and unhelpful about what exactly he intends to do about that problem. 

And then Harry, of course— making sure the net of charms he’d crafted for the Private Drive house held up, and he got weekly letters from the Grangers and then the Weasleys, and he wrote Harry but received no replies, which he supposed to be expected from an eleven-year-old, almost twelve-year-old. 

And was it no wonder he was exhausted? Looking for the Dark Lord had set some of the old paranoia loose in his bones, and he apparated excessively to shake tails. He slept on the couch in Cokeworth, the miasma infecting his dreams; dressed up for the Death Eater’s dinner parties in robes with flowing sleeves and schooled his face to keep the disgust and discomfort off when Nott or Rowle insisted on seeing— on touching— the infernal mark (say what you would for Lucius, but the man knew exactly what he needed to do to keep Severus’s favor and he never appreciated it more than when he didn’t fucking touch him—)

And yet, he’d still find himself drawn back to Hogwarts. He’d never wanted the job, though several years into it, he can admit that he can’t quite see himself doing anything else, not with the war clouding the future. He won’t pretend to be good at it, but he has kept everyone alive, and produced a few top notch potioneers (probably in spite of his methods.) But—

There is something about it that soothes a part of him he won’t dream of putting a name to. There have been no James Potters and Sirius Blacks, since he began; there have been far fewer Slytherins going back to abusive homes (and Pomona and Flitwick have begun to delegate to him as well). His students stand taller in the hallways, like their house is not just the house of the Dark Lord, of genocidal maniacs, of children of Death Eaters. The wards hold, because he checks them, and the potions in the infirmary are perfect, because he brews them (did Slughorn even fucking bother?), and everyone goes back home at the end of the year. 

And— well, he won’t pretend to be a very pleasant or social person; there are kinds of love he’s never wanted, and kinds of love that he had to let go of wanting when he ruined things with Lily, when he took the Mark and decided to spy, when Reg vanished into the dark wastes of the war. But trying to coax himself to sleep even with the rattle of traffic outside Spinner’s End, he finds his mind circling back to the night in April, when he’d handed Sprout his house ring and she’d backed his play; how Flitwick had come down to his quarters and worked through alcohol with him. How Minerva had taken to plopping down next to him in the staff lounge and getting into it. Even some of the more distant colleagues—Sinistra, Vector, Babbage— had begun to listen to his points at staff meetings. 

Like they wanted him there. Like they trusted him. 

The Mark aches, when he gets deep into the fens, but not in any way he can follow. Nott Sr. has this hungry look to him sometimes, and Severus remembers how much he’d enjoyed getting to take him apart, all those years ago. How he’d always wanted to be thanked after crucio, like he was doing a fucking service. Narcissa’s eyes when he comes down the stairs from the upstairs lounge, before she schools herself, and how they look like what he will see in his own, when he finally lets his guard down back at home— it was a mistake, but we’re in too deep now, aren’t we? 

He tells them Harry is just like his father. He tells them Harry is arrogant and spoiled and too-good for school, an easy bid for when the Dark Lord returns, but not worth getting into it with now— Dumbledore is powerful, Severus will sneer, the fumes of cigars hanging around him and the Death Eater’s hungry eyes, not worth making any enemy out of needlessly. 

But the boy thinks you are trustworthy, Lucius says, and Severus—

(Severus thinks of Harry’s face when he’d bought him an ice-cream cone in Diagon. Of how he’d turned back to him, in the doorway at the Grangers’s and said thank you with such absolute faith, and of how small he’d looked, on top of the ward tower after Easter. He is too much of a spy not to think of how easily such a trust could be twisted, warped, used, but he pushes it away.)

Yes, says Snape. Which may be useful, once the Dark Lord rises again. Even saying such a thing makes his chest tighten, and maybe it’s the vow but maybe—

Already, he is dreading the time when he will have to repay Albus’s favors of protection with going back and continuing to weave his web of lies. 

But when he goes back to Hogwarts, the tension slips off his shoulders a bit, and in the dungeons he always brews so well— not innovative, but solid, like a foundation. Sprout drops by and drinks, and when did he become someone people wanted to get drunk with? When did he become the kind of person who would sit next to McGonagall-as-cat and tell her the things about Harry he figured she should know? 

When did he become the kind of person who poured over owl order catalogs, trying to find just the right thing for the child, trying not to think of what Lily would have bought, because then he would have to think about how he was the reason it wasn’t Lily doing the shopping and his day would spiral into a mess of alcohol and regret. 

He has no illusions about the war to come. But watching the Hogwarts owl wing away with his order, leaning on the wall of the owlery and the sunset like falling water all around him, he dares to think of what he would do, if he did not have to do this, and aside from getting to give the Death Eaters a piece of their own medicine (he has a vision of Tiberius Nott crumbled under the weight of his crucio, as imperfect as it is), he finds he doesn’t mind what he has as much as he once did.  

And what more could a man with as much blood on his hands as he has ask for? 

________________

(Albus spends the summer plotting. Voldemort’s rise to power is shrouded in mystery, but he criss-crosses the continent, searching for clues. There are whispers of hideous dark magics that can cup life and stretch and warp the very fragments of humanity, and he knows he should be looking into them, but the books and the shiver of power they exude bring back memories of another summer, when everything had seemed possible and then he’d lost it all in a single blow.)

(He is no fool, not at his age. He knows what he and Gellert could have done together, if it hadn’t been still-birthed. He would have let the rhetoric slide until it was too late to do anything about it; he would have tapped into great wells and glades of darkness, drawing out power. There would have been no Dark Lord because there would have been him, instead. When he walks into the ancient dark libraries, he can feel the books calling to him, their hideous magic recognizing him as one who once sought the darkest of arts.)

(And so many the books are relegated to the corners of his office, stifled in wards. Maybe he goes to the North Sea instead and lets his silver phoenix spare him from having to relieve that August afternoon while he interrogates the Lestranges for the umpteenth time, trying to glean some kernel about Voldemort he didn’t have before, walking past Black’s cell without a look in his direction— he should have seen it coming, really; what kind of fifteen-year-old turns a school rivalry into a murder attempt but also at the time he would have bet his life that Black would have died under crucio before even raising a hand to James Potter—)

(The wards are holding at Private Drive, according to the delicate instruments in his office, and the one turned to Harry’s magical signature reports him alive, so all is well. In long hand, he makes lists of what Harry will need to know, and barters it off against borrowed time.)

(At what point will Severus’s loyalties to Harry impact his ability to spy for the Order? He has half a dozen plans he could use to slowly separate them— so far, it seems Severus’s care for him is half real and half manufactured,  but if it becomes a problem, things can be arranged.)

(Things can always be arranged.)

(Albus sees the war in long lines, in grids and furrows. He thinks of the prophecy, and the past. Admits to himself, alone in his office, Hogwarts as silent as it ever gets, that he is worried what Harry in Slytherin might mean for things. Would he be the one to tug a generation of Death Eater children to his side? Or would he be swayed from his duty by a desire to survive?)

(Time. Albus will only hope they will be able to have time, before it all comes to a head and they’d have to wage a war. Time for Harry to grow into a man, time for him to discover the threads tying Voldemort to the world, time for his Heads to hopefully cultivate the next generation of warriors in the long fight against evil.)

(Hogwarts settles around him, and Fawkes comes to perch on his shoulder, and in between research trips he finally decides on Lockhart— not much substance, to the man, but certainly not being possessed by Voldemort, not with that ego— and Harry is alive and happy with the wards holding steady, and when the war comes, they will be standing there, shoulder to shoulder, and go out to meet it.)

Chapter Text

Harry has been having nightmares, Ron knows. So far, he’s been at the Burrow for a week and he’s had one every single night, waking up with hitching, shifting gasps on the transfigured cot on Ron’s floor, clawing himself upright, borrowed Cannon’s bedspread falling form his shoulders, hand going to his wand. 

Ron isn’t aware, of waking, usually, but by the time Harry is awake, Ron’s up too, and their eyes meet in the slivers of moonlight falling through the attic window. It’s a strange thing, really— Justin and Ernie would attest that he sleeps like the dead, and who wouldn’t, after five brothers, two of which are Fred and George? But if Harry can’t sleep, he can’t seem to either. 

The first night, Harry brushed it off, rubbing at his eyes with shaking hands. Bad dream, mate? Ron had asked, and he’d nodded but said nothing. Didn’t mean to wake you, Harry finally offered, and there had been something fragile and hideous at the root of his voice, and all Ron could think to do was tell the story about the time the twins had woken him up by slowly turning all his plushies into spiders, which was categorically worse than your best mate having a nightmare on your floor. Harry managed a sympathetically horrified face, and they fell back asleep and Ron dreamed of playing for the Cannons but on the condition that he train Hermione too, which went about as well as you’d think it would, and then Harry is there, but his arm was boneless and floppy. Needless to say, they were at the bottom of the League. 

The second night, Harry had been more shaken up, rocking forward to bury his head in his knees. After a long, paralyzing moment, Ron settled for channeling his mother, passing Harry the glass of water from his bed side table and asking if he wanted to talk about. He got a muffled no after a cascade of sorries. It was harder to go back to sleep that night, and when he dreamed it was of Harry, but him just a few paces ahead and always out of reach. Didn’t take a seer to figure out what that one was about. 

Night three, he stood from the bed, walked over to the window and threw open the sash, beckoning Harry out onto the roof with him. His mum would have killed them if she’d found them out here during the day, but right now it was awash with warm night air and starlight. Harry didn’t want to talk about that one either, but he did finally press his shoulder up against Ron’s. Back to sleep thirty minutes later, Ron dreamed about the chess set and that awful moment when he thought he’d cut it too close and would have to sacrifice his knight so Harry and Hermione could continue.

Night four, Harry was shaking, murmuring about please let me out, and Ron knew enough about Harry’s childhood to know what that one was about. He padded down to the kitchen and returned with two glasses of milk and some carefully smuggled treacle tart from the pantry and they ate it in the moonlight. Ron dreamed that Norbert had eaten his homework and Snape hadn’t taken him seriously, but then Snape was in their bolthole in the castle and all the wards were listening to him. 

Night five, Harry woke up restless, pacing, hands shaking. Ron threw back the covers and took his hand and they went out from the house in the light from the almost-full moon, out to the edges of the wards by the Quidditch pitch and when he asked, Harry began to talk, his voice raspy— we were in the maze by the mirror and when I touched Quirrellmort his shoulder burned into ash except it wasn’t Quirrellmort, it was Snape. Ron took his thin hand in his, and hopes the wind burns off the fear. Harry’s forehead was warm against his shoulder, and he said sorry again, and all Ron can think is maybe this shouldn’t be happening. Ron dreams of playing Quidditch in a field with wildflowers, the sun high above and Harry’s there and Hermione’s in the weeds reading.

Night six, Harry wakes up sobbing, and then his eyes jerk up to Ron and he’s across the room in an instant, and Ron has an armful of his best friend. Ron can count the times Harry’s initiated a hug on one hand, and as his arms come up around him, he understands without being able to put it into words what this nightmare must be about. Hot tears on his pajama collar, and they fall asleep curled together, like they’d sleep in their hideout in the castle, and all Ron dreams of is Hermione. 

He wakes before Harry, the next morning, and shifts just slightly away form him, to see the thinness to his face and the dark circles under his eyes. He turns, expecting to find Hermione, and finds only the wall, and the ache is so sudden that it hurts. Last year, they would cast silence charms in History of Magic and talk about Harry while their classmates slept, debating their concerns in hushed voices, if they should go to Snape or Sprout or Flitwick or owl Ron’s mum or just let it lie, but this already feels like it’s gone on long enough. 

How do you convince your best mate that they deserve someone caring about if they suffer or not? 

Ron casts studious glances at Harry all through the day, while they go about their typical summer business— morning Quidditch with the twins and Ginny, bugging Percy to play with them in exchange for not pranking him or trying to read his long, love-lorn missives to Penelope, spending the muggy afternoons reading over the countless books Hermione had packed Harry off with after their two weeks in Birmingham (this time last summer, Ron would have laughed at the assertion that he would spend his summer reading, but somewhere between hanging out with Hermione and the warming evenness of studying with Susan and Hannah and the fact that all their research over Christmas had so clearly worked, here he is). He mulls over his options, noting Harry’s easy laugh as he goes for the snitch and the circles under his eyes and how he’ll tense and then unspool at inopportune times. 

He dashes off a quick letter to Hermione, and while he debates how to conscript Errol, Hedwig lets out an indigent chirp from the perch in the kitchen window, as if to say don’t leave me out of business involving my boy! and Ron gives her the letter and ruffles her feathers before she wings out before Harry returns from the loo. But in the end, what feels right is not confronting Harry, or talking to his mom, but going to find his dad. 

His dad is in the shed, tinkering with the blue muggle contraption— a car, Harry had called it, and the twins think the end game is to make it fly— and Ron goes out to talk to him after dinner, leaving Harry and the twins and Ginny to play exploding snap directly above Percy’s room.

“What’s up, Ron?” asks his dad, picking up his wand to vanish stray grease. On the work bench lies a pipe-like piece of machinery, humming with magic. “Hand me that pair of pliers, will you?”

Ron passes the pliers and shifts the rest of the tools on the work bench around so he has have enough room to lever himself up to sit. His dad makes a few adjustments to the pipe thing, muttering spells under his breath, while he waits for Ron to collect his thoughts. That’s the nice thing about his dad, Ron figures: his mum’s great for when you have problems that need to be solved, but his dad will happily listen to him chatter about the Cannons or Hufflepuff drama without batting an eye. And it’s gnarlier than just the nightmares, somehow.

“Harry’s been having nightmares,” he says, finally. Overhead, the spelled lights buzz with energy, and Ron watches the trapped moth go bump-bump-bump against them. “Bad ones. Every single night.” His dad puts down the pliers and shifts, so that it’s clear Ron has his full attention. “I—“ He chews on his lip, trying to put what he wants to say into words. His father waits, looking very much like him in the sallow light of the shed, and Ron spares a thought to the idea that he also probably got some Hufflepuff from his father: hardworking, determined, willing to wait. “I dunno what to do about it.” He let out a sigh and tried to vocalize the most upsetting thing. “And there’s so much of it.”

“In what way?” his dad asks after a long moment of silence. 

Ron rubs at his face. “Like— all the dreams are different. Sometimes it’s stuff that happened last year at school, sometimes I think it’s before with his relatives, and sometimes—“ He trails off, unable to quite voice his suspicion that Harry’s been dreaming about him. “All my nightmares are just about spiders, not about people dying.”

A long moment, the lights buzzing and the moth bumping. “Well,” says his dad finally. “I think in terms of practical solutions, your mother would be the one to talk to. From what I remember about Dreamless Sleep, it’s a bit addictive, but there are other potions and wards that could be used to at least dull some of the edges of the dreams. Though, I will say, after the year the three of you have apparently had, I’m more surprised you’re not having nightmares, than hearing that he is.” His father fixes him with a soft smile, and Ron’s shoulders slump.

“A bit,” he admits. “But not— I don’t wake up sobbing.” A look of something Ron distantly places as concern washes over his father’s face. 

“But if I’m not mistaken,” his dad says, rubbing a hand across his chin in a contemplative gesture that only successes in smearing grease. “What you’re really asking is why all of this has happened to Harry, of all people. And what it might mean if he isn’t seeking out help on his own accord.”

“Yeah,” says Ron, feeling warm and vindicated in his choice of confidante about this problem. “Exactly.”

His dad taps his wand absent-mindedly on the knuckles of his opposite hand. “Based on what Professor Snape has told us, about Harry’s relatives and why he should stay with us, I can fashion a guess that he doesn’t seek help because he is not confident he will receive it.” Ron opens his mouth to protest— he’s got us, we’re right here!— and his dad continues. “Some patterns of behavior takes years to unlearn. He clearly feels safe enough to tell you about his nightmares, which is a start.” Ron sighs, kicking his legs slightly prattishly— time. Always, it was give it time and when you’re older and you’ll understand later, as if they weren’t facing bloody You-Know-Who and could use all the information they could get. But he doesn’t say anything. 

“For the other thing— Ron, the older you get, the more you will come to understand that there is no rhyme or reason to who suffers.” Ron lets out a breath, thinks about Harry and Susan and how You-Know-Who killed their parents, but his are just fine, and how is that fair? His instincts scream at him to make it fair, to find some way to level out the damage— if Harry has to suffer, he’ll take his share, and he knows Hermione will too— but it doesn’t work like that, does it? 

“You can’t control things like that, Ron,” says his dad, and Ron knows, but still prickles at it. That this is Harry’s first proper summer hols where the people in the house want to look after him, and he still wakes up screaming from nightmares. 

“I’m his best mate,” says Ron, plaintively. His dad’s face cracks into a small, slightly sad smile, and he crosses over to where Ron sits on the bench and wraps his arms around him. His dad’s hugs are less fierce than his mum’s, but longer and more focused, and for ordinary things, like coming down to breakfast, and Ron appreciates that. He tucks his face into his dad’s shoulder and finds his eyes growing wet. 

“Yes,” says his dad. “And you’re doing such a good job at it.”

“I can’t fix anything,” says Ron, something in his voice a little too like a sob for comfort. 

Silence, except for the low hum of magic coming from the car. “Ron,” his father says finally, drawing back a little and resting his hands on his shoulders, “People don’t pick best mates because they think they can fix everything. They pick best mates because they know you’ll always be on their team, and if there’s no fixing things, you’ll be there anyways to deal with it. That’s what you’d expect Harry do to for you, right?”

(Ron thinks of Harry, patiently working with him until he could cast the first-year jinxes, which didn’t seem to come easily to him. Ron thinks of Harry three days ago, veering away from his neck-and-neck pursuit of the snitch with Ginny, to come make sure he hadn’t hurt anything when George slammed into him and knocked him into hedgerow. Ron thinks of Harry, keeping his cool in the hallways when people insulted him, but his hand always going straight for his wand when anyone said anything remotely bad about him or Hermione.)

Ron thinks he understands. He wipes off his face with the hem of his shirt and spends the rest of the evening bustling around the shed, handing his dad tools and asking questions about how one might actually go about flying a car if said car could theoretically fly. Back inside, his mother spells his hands clean with a sigh and a slightly embarrassing kiss to the check, and in the living room, Fred and George and Ginny and Harry (and Percy, who is trying to pretend he’s not delighted every time they score a goal) are listening to the Tornados obliterate the West Chester Larks. Harry looks at ease, laughing at Fred’s mocking voice for the commentary and George’s explanation of beater tactics in such a Chaser-dominated game. His best mate, who’s always on his team and does his best to help Ron with Potions and DADA and always lets him borrow his broom and has nightmares where he dies. 

“Mum,” says Ron, deciding not to lower his voice and risk the twins mocking, so Harry will know what’s going on. “Do you think you could do that ward thing you did a bit ago, to help with nightmares?”

Fred’s head jerks up. “Is Ickle Ronnykins having nightmares, now?”

“About spiders?” George asks, his hands twitching in a parody of legs. Ginny slaps at his hands. 

“You’re the reason he has nightmares about spiders, git,” she snarls. Harry is just starting at Ron, who stares deliberately back at him. 

“Of course, Ron,” says his mum, wrapping him in a hug and shooting the twins a withering glare. “And I’ll show you where I keep the sleep aid teas— here, just over here—“

The twins continued to make snide remarks throughout the evening, but with Harry elbowing them as well as Ginny, it soon developed into a full on play-fight, which Ron thought Harry seemed less than amused by, and his Mum took great offense with— “If you’re going to brawl like hooligans, you’re not to do it by the fine china, honestly, boys—“ but she made Ron a cuppa, which he took upstairs and set by Harry’s cot. When he got out of the shower, he found Harry sitting cross-legged on the mattress, holding the mug but not drinking it. 

“It’s for you,” he says, slipping on his pajama shirt. “I’m not actually having nightmares.”

Harry studies it. “They’re not that bad,” he says, which causes Ron to disguise a scoff as a cough. “And it’s— it’s nice not to wake up alone.”

Ron sits down on his bed, reaching out his magic like Hermione’s been showing him and finding his mum’s ward drapped over the room. It feels like a blanket fresh out of the dryer. “Even if they’re not that bad, mate, we can still do something about it to make them better.”

“Yeah,” says Harry, heaving out a sigh and then taking a long sip of the tea. His shoulders relax minutely. “Still not used to it, I guess.”

Ron know he can’t fix the fact that his parents are dead, or You-Know-Who maybe being still after him, or what happened with his relatives. But he’s his best mate, and if he does nothing else, hopefully he can convince Harry that he’s always going to be here, trying to make things better. “You’d do it for me,” he says, and Harry’s eyes jerk up to him, and his face curves into the smile Ron is learning is only for him and Hermione. 

“Yeah,” says Harry. “I would.”

Ron dreams of walking through a dark wood, following a pair of golden threads, until he gets to a gate. He follows them because they’re familiar, and when has he every done anything else but follow his crew? It is not a happy dream, but it is not a nightmare, and when he wakes, the gate looming in his mind’s eye, it is to sunlight in their room and Harry asleep soundly, and he lets out a sigh. Maybe today he and Harry can play chasers together, or he’ll be keeper against Ginny and Harry and Fred, and George will be beater (they can get away with it as long as no one actually breaks anything). Maybe he’ll write Susan and ask about getting to visit with Harry. Maybe his mum will make rashers for breakfast. Maybe Hermione can come and visit (well, maybe not until they do a little bit more of the reading she sent with Harry). 

No nightmares, and another glorious summer day. What could be better?

_______________

Susan was having a pretty terrific summer, actually. Fatima and Anika, her two best friends from primary school, were just as wicked as she remembered, and rec league rugby was maybe more fun than Quidditch (for all she loved following it, the idea of scampering around at high altitudes was actually terrifying, thank you very much, and in rugby you just got to tackle people). Her aunt always had a full house— Aurors, ministers, foreign policy people— and the youngest trainee was a brand new graduate from her house who always came by with badly baked tarts and knocked over furniture and wanted to hear about Susan’s escapades. And despite her Aunt’s best efforts, Mad-Eye was always willing to tell gruesome stories about the war or about her parents. 

And every Saturday, her aunt would take her out to the farmer’s market, and then they would go on a long walk by the canal, and talk about whatever Susan wanted to talk about, and her aunt would come to her rec league games and swear up a blue streak at the refs and one evening she came home with exuberant grin, waving a pair of Nottingham Quidditch tickets. 

It was a good summer. Hannah came over to meet Fatima and Anika, and they all had a great deal of fun wading in the slough of the canal and playing a complex game of knights-and-warlocks on the muggle playground (Hannah did not like the idea of rugby), and Ernie wrote her long elaborate letters about his travels in Wizarding America (he had some cousins there, and his parents were quite keen to introduce him to other cultures), and Justin sent her letters the muggle way and her aunt took her over to him and his mum’s quaint bungalow in Reading. And Ron! Turned out, he was free the first two weeks of summer hols, and so he’d flooed over and they’d seen the neighborhood and waved at all the barges going through the lock up the road. 

And then, finally, in mid July, Ron and Harry came, tumbling through the floo onto her living room floor, and Susan almost tackled Ron in delight. Her aunt, meanwhile, gently took Harry’s glasses, which had somehow cracked in the process, and repaired them with a quick tap of her wand. “Well, should I ask what chaos you three have planned for today, Susan?” she asks. 

Susan surveys the two of them— Harry knocking ash out of his hair, looking hopeful, and Ron letting out a resigned sigh and muttering something that sounds like it better not be bloody rugby— and finds herself grinning. “Oh, we’ll find something.”

Her aunt lets out a sigh. “Well, dinner is at seven, and I’ll give you some quid for the lunch out in town. Should just be some aurors, but if you’d prefer not to meet them—“

“Mad-Eye Moody,” Susan informs Harry and Ron. “And Tonks, the seventh-year Hufflepuff from last year? Auntie, Mad-Eye worked with Harry’s parents, right?”

Harry’s face, which had been a little tense after hearing about dinner plans with strangers, relaxes after the inclusion of Tonks (everyone liked Tonks) and brightens when she mentions Harry’s parents. Her aunt, who’s luckily quick on the draw, nods. “Yes, he did. I’m sure he will have some quite gruesome stories about their many escapades.”

“Wicked,” says Ron, and then glances over at Harry as if to confirm that he too thinks this is wicked. It appears Harry does.

Susan’s aunt sighs, and hands over several muggle pound notes for lunch. “If there’s an emergency, use your bracelet to portkey to the Ministry or St. Mungo’s, but please dear, try to keep the broken bones to a minimum. Molly Weasley will have my head if anything happens to them.” 

Susan rolls her eyes. “Yes, Auntie. Though, the fact that I broke my shin the other week was totally Glenda’s fault, she made an illegal tackle and everything—“ (In retrospect, telling Ron about this incident had probably been why he didn’t want to play rugby.)

Her aunt sighs and waves them off with a hand. “Dinner at seven. No broken bones. Portkey in an emergency. I love you.”

“I love you too!” Susan says, grabbing Ron with one hand and Harry with the other, and both boys follow in her wake, out into the garden, the July sun bright and glorious. 

The thing is, Susan’s spent the summer reading Ron’s thick missives from the Burrow (she knew he wrote long letters to his mother, but it was his mum, and she could see him writing letter like that to Harry and Hermione, but pages long letters to her made something in her chest well with joy), and she’s not stupid. Wherever Harry had been staying before Hogwarts was not okay, in the slightest. There had been little things that had jumped out during the term, but the fact that he was spending the whole summer with either Ron or Hermione (though Ron had been vague about it, it was sort of obvious) was kind of a red flag. After a lot of thought, she’d finally written Ron back you know my aunt’s the head of the DMLE, if someone’s up with whoever lives with, she could probably fix it, and Ron had waited to reply until they’d been sitting on the edge of the lock two weeks ago, their legs dangling, eating the messy cucumber-and-marmalade sandwiches they’d made up in the kitchen of the flat (both of their tastes in food was abysmal). 

“Snape is handling it,” he’d said, smearing marmalade off his face with the back of his hand. “He’s Harry’s Head of House.”

Susan tried to square Snape, who seemed to hate everything about teaching and children, with the idea of him handling things relating to Harry. She looked sideways at Ron, who’d somehow gotten marmalade in his hair, and decided that if she couldn’t trust Snape, she could at least trust Ron’s word on the situation. “Why doesn’t he want to do things legally, though?”

Ron shrugged. “Slytherin morals, or something, dunno. Snape thinks circles around us. As long as Harry’s not going back to the muggles, I figure it doesn’t matter much how.” 

Susan chewed as she thought about this. Down the canal, another barge was coming, and Kenneth, the old man who worked the lock was stepping out for his smoke break, and gave the two of them a wave. “That’s not very Hufflepuff of you,” she said, finally. “Fairness, and all.”

Ron looked over at her with a slight smirk. “Pretty loyal though,” he said. Susan couldn’t argue with that. The conversation turned to the upcoming Cannons and Nottingham match, and the next barge through the lock had a black-and-white boat cat named Tom who deigned to let both of them pet him. 

It is very Hufflepuff of him, to be this loyal, Susan thinks, as they head to the playground to find Fatima and Anika, who met Ron last time and warm up to Harry very quickly during a convoluted game of freeze-tag combined with strains of kickball. They scatter as the sun gets high, Fatima and Anika home for lunch, and the three of them head into the town to get a bit to eat. They eat their sandwiches by the canal, tossing stray pieces of bread to the loons and ducks, Harry asking about Nottingham’s prospects in the League (somehow, he still doesn’t have a team, though Susan thinks if the Cannons weren’t completely and legitimately cursed, he’d surely pick them), and Ron speculating on the recent trades on the Seeker front. 

“You think you’ll ever play professionally, Harry?” Susan asks. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, looking up from his chips to her. Ron nudges his shoulder. “Youngest seeker in a century, mate.”

Harry chews on his lip for a minute. “Maybe. It’s a long way off, isn’t it? Haven’t really thought about it much.”

There’s something disconcerting about this— ever since she was little, Susan has been thinking about following her aunt into DMLE, or maybe being a professional rugby player. If she was as good at Quidditch as Harry so clearly is, she would be having daydreams about playing for Nottingham. 

She pushes away such doubts, to examine later. For now, she just says, “Well, you’re too good for the Cannons, clearly,” — “Hey!” says Ron, with no heat— “So I can’t wait to tell my children I went to school with the seeker for Nottingham.” Harry stares at her for a minute, a bit startled, and it is only later that she realizes somewhere in the year and the heat of summer and Ron’s letters about how Harry keeps taking the mickey out of him every game of pick-up Quidditch, she has forgotten Ron’s friend— her friend?— is the Boy-Who-Lived.

Kenneth shows Harry how the lock gates work, and then they hitch a ride with Mrs. Douglas down to the next lock, about a mile to the south. Harry’s face lights up as he watches the water slick down the sides of the boat, and then they walk back from the lower lock with scones in their pockets, bumping into each other on the lane, babbling about what they missed about school and their top ten ideas for pissing off Malfoy (Harry snorted loudly at Susan’s prime suggestion, which was to replace his hair products with muggle motor oil). It was a long walk, interspersed with detours— to see the flotsam of the old fridge that had washed up during the last flood; to check to see if that sparrows in the bush were nesting (they were!); to pet the Great Dane on a walk with his owner (his name was Rufus); for Ron to wade into the shallows of the canal to try to retrieve the snagged rubber duck, cussing all the while under his breath every time he slipped. 

“Your aunt,” Harry says suddenly, as he and Susan stand on the (mercifully dry) bank and watch their friend struggle. “She— she seems decent.”

Susan remembers what she’s heard, of Harry living with a not-decent aunt. Resists the urge to ask questions. In the shallows, Ron slips up to his knees with a muffled “Bloody hell!” 

“Does it—“ Harry bites his lip. “Does it make you miss them less?”

They are both orphans, aren’t they, which Susan knows on paper  but hasn’t yet thought about. Orphans because of the same war, because of the same man. Susan’s parents were killed three months apart, not personally by Voldemort, but on his orders— her mother on a Death Eater raid to an Order safe house, and then her father in an ambush in Brighton Beach. She wasn’t even a year old yet. The duck eludes Ron’s grasp, and he swears again. Susan thinks of the pictures framed in her house, and the locket at her neck, and the stories her aunt has told her, the stories the older Aurors tell. The way her family just is— she has one parent, who is her aunt, and it’s hard to miss something that she never remembers having. 

Except, sometimes, in Fatima’s kitchen, when her father will come home from work and kiss her on the head. Except, sometimes, when Anika’s father will come out to play rugby with them. How Ron’s got so many siblings, and writes his mum thick letters, and how Justin’s mother made them cookies. Can you miss an idea?

“I didn’t ever know them,” she says. Ron stumbles into slightly deeper water. “So sometimes it feels like they’re not mine to miss. My aunt tells me about them, but it’s not the same.”

Harry’s eyes are on Ron, but he’s shifted slightly closer to her, so their shoulders are almost touching. “No one told me about them. Except about how they died for the greater good and defeating Voldemort and all that stuff.”

A flush of anger rises up inside Susan. “That’s what the aurors say about mine. Which is rubbish. They didn’t die for anything. They got murdered. They didn’t want to die defying You-Know-Who, they wanted to stay alive and be my parents.”

Harry’s hand slips into hers, and she knows, suddenly, that he is her friend. Then, Ron stumbles completely, tumbling into the water, and the moment is over and they’re both rushing forward to drag him (and the infernal duck) out of the canal. 

And so maybe they stagger in for dinner twenty minutes late, covered in frogspawn and canal mud in front of Mad-Eye and Tonks, but Susan is saved her Aunt’s ire by Mad-Eye’s roar of laughter and Tonks rushing to cast some drying and cleaning charms (“When you’re as clumsy as me, you learn them fast!”) and Mad-Eye taking an immediate liking to Ron and Harry (“Can’t be afraid of a little mud and water if you’re going to be pursuing criminals, now can you! In ’74, Creighton— a Death Eater, you know— tried to evade me by jumping in the bloody Thames, as if I wasn’t fully prepared to chase him into the sewers, that blighter—“)

Ron and Harry end up staying the night, sleeping on the floor in the living room, after her aunt floos Molly to ask for a change of clothes. Mad-Eye told many stories about both Harry’s parents in the war (“One time, you mother dueled three Death Eaters single-handedly— don’t listen to anyone who says your dad’s the stronger of them, your mother was fu— fecking brutal, lay off Am—“) and Ron’s uncles (“I reckon if Dolohov hadn’t gotten lucky, they would have figured out how to turn You-Know-Who’s arms into snakes or something— both terrible tricksters.”) It was amusing and wonderful to hear, but also made Susan a bit sad, for a reason she didn’t quite understand until long into the night— what would it be like, to have stories about her parents that didn’t involve a war? What if none of this had to be theirs?

Her aunt makes waffles in the morning, before heading off to work. They eat them with the windows open, waving to the barges. She notices Harry’s eyes following her aunt as she cooks, as she cracks jokes, as she ruffles Susan’s hair. Outside, the summer air is crystalline, and there are muggles walking on the toe-path by the canal, and she feels a burst of anger rise up in her, at the thought of You-Know-Who. She knows the agendas of genocidal maniacs are beyond her, but who was he, to think none of this was worth saving? What could he have possibly conceived to build, that would be better than this? 

But at her table, Ron is eating waffles like he’s been out running before breakfast, and Harry is laughing and making fun of him for it, and she catches her aunt’s eye and can read the pride there, from one Hufflepuff to another: you did this, you brought them here, good job, and Susan won’t realize, not for years, but when she goes to incant Avada Kedavra for the first time at eighteen, it won’t be out of hate, but out of the thing formed at that kitchen table, the summer she was twelve: how fucking dare you, all of this is worth saving.

_______________

(Hermione comes over in the afternoons, sometimes, and they read in the sunlight and eat recently baked good in the kitchen. Millie owls Ron, her letter saying that since Harry hasn’t replied, she hopes Harry is with him, since they’re both invited to the Tornados v. Cannons game in a couple of days. “I never got any letter,” says Harry, looking over his shoulder. “But we should go.” The Cannons loose, obviously, but Ron can’t find it in him to care much, not when they’re in the bleachers screaming and eating magical ice-pops and Millie is babbling on about her summer and Tornados statistics and Harry’s grinning.) 

(The twins take advantage of a night when his mum is out at Muriel’s and his dad is working late to test out the Ford Angelica. Fred’s whoop when it starts is seconded only by George’s stream of curses when it almost stalls out midair, but Harry rolls down the windows and sticks his head out into the moonlight night and Ron figures they should soak up all the joy they can right now, before their mum inevitably finds out.)

(They muck the chicken coop and weed the garden for days. Ron grumbles, and the twins plot elaborate revenge pranks involving said car. Ron’s dad tries to act angry about it, but then slips off to interrogate the twins on how successful it was.)

(Hermione brings Sue Li over for an afternoon, who turns out to be a wicked good Chaser, so they can finally play 3-on-3, Hermione content to read in the sunlight; Ron brings Susan over, who is petrified by the idea of getting more than four feet off the ground and they end up just exploring the hills and dales of Otterey St. Catchpole. The twilight is like smoke and mirrors, and Ginny and Susan get on like a house on fire.)

(Bill comes back for Friday dinners, in between curse-breaker training. Charlie replies to all of Ron’s letters. Even Percy occasionally forgets to be a prat and will come play Quidditch or talk legal systems with Hermione or listen to matches over wireless with them. Harry still has nightmares, but not every night, and they’ll sit up on the roof or on the edge of the bed and most of the time Harry will actually do his best to talk about them.)

(Later, Ron will cup this summer in his hands and wonder at them being so young, so clueless, still— no one was actively trying to kill them and they got to fly every day. What more could they have wanted? Later, Ron will have nightmares of his own, and when he wakes up shaking in the tent in the Forest of Dean, Harry will be up, already, looking at him, and raise his wand to summon tea to the both of them. Later, it will be Ron who will incant the killing curse for the first time, and he will think only get the fuck away from my mate and who said it was about hate? Maybe all of this, the whole time, has been about love.)

Chapter Text

Harry sits in the kitchen of the Burrow, pretending to read Kneader and Klohr’s On Basic Defensive Warding (3rd edition), and really watching Mrs. Weasley bake his birthday cake. Hermione can’t blame him, he figures— she’ll just summarize everything she thought he needed to know, and he’s only had one birthday cake before. And that one was slightly squished and no one had spent three days trying to figure out what flavor of cake was his favorite when he’d blushed and said he didn’t know. 

Sometimes, Harry will have to leave the house and go out to the pitch and just crouch on his haunches in the grass and breathe through all the emotions being here is giving him. All good emotions, but so many of them.

He still can’t quite fathom that he won’t ever have to go back to Private Drive. No more baggy hand-me-downs and no more missed meals (if anything, Mrs. Weasley is too intent on him eating, he’s understanding where Ron gets it from). No more shouts of boy and summers spent doing chores and snarled insults from his aunt about his parentage. Snape had been very clear, on all of that, as they’d sat at the ice-cream parlor in Diagon the day term ended, Snape polyjuiced but still projecting a look of you wouldn’t catch me dead eating ice-cream. 

No one had ever bought Harry ice-cream before. It was a nice, unexpected feeling. 

If this summer doesn’t work out, Snape had said, low and quiet, that signature buzzing of his silencing wards hanging around them, We’ll find something different for next summer. But even if I have to house you myself, you will not be going back. Harry hadn’t quite been able to hide his grimace at that suggestion— he was sure Snape would be better than the Dursleys, but compared to the Weasleys, it would probably involve lots of discussions of potion theory and very little flying. Snape hadn’t mocked him for his grimace, instead nodding. Yes, my thoughts exactly. But rest assured, you would be fed. 

Snape had told him to send his owl if anything wasn’t working out. Snape had also told him that he’d write him weekly, just to check in, and Harry hasn’t received any of those letters, though it was nearly a month into holidays, and tries not to feel too disappointed. He had been confident the letters would have been nothing more than Do not let Granger talk you into any illegal brewing over the summer (it had only been two potions, done in the back yard of the row house in Birmingham, both ones Hermione had been curious about, and really, if Snape hadn’t wanted them to practice, he shouldn’t have had Harry buy their second year books on the first day of summer.) or maybe if you end up in St. Mungo’s from a fall from that infernal Nimbus, you only have yourself to blame, but they still would have been nice. Like— like maybe there was someone out there who cared about his well-being and his summer. But Snape must just be busy, and have more important things to think about than Harry, and he tries to focus on the cake instead of the thought that he might miss Snape. Just a little bit. Just the way he made him feel, when his eyes were on him at meals in the Great Hall, like he had someone on his team. 

He feels dizzy with it, sometimes. All he has now. Mrs. Weasley is throwing him his first ever birthday party in a few days, and when he stuttered when asked who he wanted to invite, Ron just started naming names and got everyone right, and it was all Harry could do to nod.  

At Hermione’s, her parents had been warm and welcoming, and Harry had learned where Hermione had gotten her nerd instincts— their house was full of books and journals about dentistry and someone was always reading. Her grey cat, named Socks, appropriately, had taken a shine to Harry and had started falling asleep in his lap, and in the evenings, he and Hermione went out into the back garden and picked enough raspberries to fill a large colander and then went out to the park, where they’d wander and talk and maybe half-heartedly kick a football around. Hermione hadn’t figured out how to get around the Trace yet, but on the weekends, Hermione’s mum would take them up to Oxford or Cambridge and they’d present their wands at the front desk of the magic library and libraries weren’t Harry’s favorite things but he could have stood there forever, watching his best friend’s face illuminated at the sight of all the books. They had Sue over for tea and slightly more legit games of football, and Millie and Daphne sent slightly frustrated letters to Hermione saying please pass this to Potter, he won’t answer mine, asking about their summer homework and League Quidditch, and how Daphne’s parents didn’t want to her come to Birmingham, but she’d see him at the birthday party.

And suddenly, two weeks were up, and Mrs. Weasley arrived in Birmingham to Side-Along apparate him to the Burrow. And this too, had been brilliant— 2-on-3 Quidditch with the Weasleys every day, treacle tart, getting to see Susan and Millie, and Ernie had written back my dearest apologizes, I am in America for the summer, etc., etc. (it had gone on for pages, and even Ron, writer of longest letters ever, had been a bit horrified) and Theo had been just as official, on stationary with the Nott crest, his message betraying no sense of actual friendship between them. Which Harry had expected— Mrs. Greenglass might have been a minor Death Eater, but Theo’s father was definitely one. But almost everyone could make it and they’d been instructed to bring brooms if possible and Ron was already working out optimal Quidditch arrangements (they’d have enough for full teams if they played their cards right, and pressured Percy enough). 

Sitting in the kitchen at the Burrow, thinking about strategies for his team, Harry almost doesn’t want to go back to Hogwarts. Hogwarts means house rivalries, and Draco being Draco, and transfiguration lessons where nothing made sense until about the sixth time Sue or Hermione or Theo explain it to him. Hogwarts means Dumbledore being sneaky and everyone with exceptions about him because he’s the Boy-Who-Lived. 

(And Snape. And the little room he and his crew have warded together. And getting to see them more— it was good now, but at the Grangers’s, he’d find himself turning around to ask Ron something, and at the Burrow he’d find himself doing the same but for Hermione. It was an ache he couldn’t seem to get out from his bones. And actual Quidditch on an actual pitch. And the classes he did like— Charms and Herbology were compelling; he liked the subtlety of Potions and the theory, though he wasn’t always quite focused enough in class to produce solid results, between Draco and the Gryffindors and he knew Snape wouldn’t hurt him but something about a man standing behind him still make him tense and shaky; and DADA might be fun if it wasn’t being taught by Voldemort. And Hagrid, always eager to have them drop by for tea. And the house elves, who cleaned Slytherin— Mimsy and Balian and Poppy and Vityok.)

He watches Mrs. Weasley crack eggs and mix batter, singing along to the wireless as some witch sings about a strong hot cauldron full of love. Is it so wrong to just want to be normal? To get to do homework at his best mate’s house and have birthday parties and go to school and learn how to do magic without anyone trying to kill him? To have somewhere that could be home, for real? 

Ron comes into the kitchen then, grubby from working in the garden (Mrs. Weasley had decided that as a guest, Harry wouldn’t be held accountable for the stupid choices her sons had made, which was both nice and weird, because when had anything ever not been his fault, but Harry was trying to make Ron feel better by spending his mornings mainly reading, not playing Quidditch) and flops down at the table next to him. “How’s the wards coming?”

“Brutal,” says Harry, shutting the book with a snap. “‘Mione will explain them anyway if we ask. Wanna play one-on-one?” 

“Duh,” says Ron, chugging a glass of water and snagging a banana. “Front garden’s all done, Mum. De-gnomed and no more weeds. Can we go out to the pitch?”

Molly sighs. “I suppose, dears. Be back by lunch, though.” Like Harry would miss lunch at the Burrow for the Quidditch World Cup. He gives Ron a fist bump and they head out to the pitch with their brooms slung over their shoulders, in each other’s space easily, and Harry thinks, not for the first time that summer, that this is what it must be like to have a brother. Except better than a brother, maybe, because brothers do things like turn their sibling’s plushies into spiders and Ron would never. Hermione wouldn’t either. 

They mount their brooms and kick off, the sky above them cerulean blue. Ron tucks the quaffle under his arm and makes for the goals. The reason he didn’t like the idea of playing chaser for real was something in the blocking and the body-checking, but it’s Ron, everything’s fine with Ron. 

First at Hermione’s, and now at Ron’s, when he woke up shaking and sobbing from a nightmare with them dead in the green light, he’d pad over to them, too terrified to overthink, and when he opened the door to Hermione’s room, she sat up and lifted the covers and opened her arms, and Ron did the same. It helped, in a way he couldn’t articulate, to hear their heart beating under his cheek, to have their arms around him. 

He swipes the quaffle, feints across the pitch, Ron streaking after him, cussing, and maybe there aren’t words for what the three of them have. But Ron blocks him with enough force to land them both in the grass, laughing and heaving for breath, quaffle and brooms scattered, and if nothing else, there’s this.

He’s got a crew. Maybe he can trust that all the rest will make sense in time. 

______________

Theo picks out his most Slytherin-looking dress robes for the party, hoping it will not offend the host’s very Gryffindor tastes. Hopefully she will be like Ron, and not all touchy because he is a Nott. Though, she did agree to have him at her house, so she must be somewhat alright with Harry’s choice of… friends. 

It feels dangerous to even think such a thing in his father’s cold house, buzzing as it is with Dark magic. Theo focuses on slicking his hair back in a way that would make Malfoy proud, and tucking his wand into his holster smoothly. He’s spent all summer slowly pitching the idea of this party to his father, and he’s not going to blow it now.

Honestly, it hasn’t been that bad of a summer— his father hired a Defense tutor to help him make up for time lost during the school year (Theo obviously hadn’t mentioned Quirrell secretly being the Dark Lord), and has been out more evenings than not, likely at his little Death Eater gatherings. Apparently, the Mark has gotten darker over the last year (wonder why that could be? Theo has no comment.) The best is when his father returns too late for dinner, and too hungover to wake for breakfast; the worst are when he spends all morning repeating Snape’s comments about Harry over breakfast and Theo has to fight to keep a straight, even face, appearing to agree. He understands why Snape is doing it, of course (or at least, he thinks he does— if Snape is really on the Dark Lord’s side, he surely wouldn’t have bothered to make sure Harry got to spend the summer away from his relatives, correct? Or is it all some high-level double play?) but it still hurts to hear. Is it better or worse than his father’s usual post-Death Eater shindig stories, about the importance of blood and the glory of the war years and his slightly creepy obsession with many of the younger Death Eaters— some of them simply needed to be disciplined, half-bloods often do, got to get that muck out of them— Theo’s not sure. Either way, he’d slowly salted the waters over the past month, and he father had agreed, at last. It had come with conditions, of course, but he was going to the birthday party!

He had sent off an owl order a month ago, while still at Hogwarts, not willing to risk it, to be delivered directly to the Burrow. He had, per his father’s instance, worn the Nott house ring, which buzzed with a magic he felt unsettled by, and he had been told several very cutting insults for the Weasley family that he had no intention of using— even Malfoy wasn’t enough of a prat to tell the host of the day that her brother had died in a lot of pain, begging for his life. Theo shivers at the thought, and thinks, not for the first time that summer, about owling Snape. Telling him the truth— no embellishments, but no holds bared either— and just seeing what he would do with it.

He wouldn’t, but it is a creature comfort in the long, empty evenings, with only the stories of violence and his father’s magic to keep him company. He wants to believe there is someone out there would be willing to get him out of this trap, even if he can’t quite trust it.

“How do I look, Father?” he asks, presenting himself in the drawing room before the fire for inspection. His father looks him up and down. 

“Too much of your mother’s blood in you,” he says finally. “Scrawny for a Nott. When you’re back, I want to see your best attempt at the blood-boiling hex, you understand? There are some rabbits your tutor has procured for the exercise.” Theo fought to keep his face impassive, though his heart was beating wildly at the thought. He had indeed seen the rabbits— three beautifully soft and curious creatures, who he assumed were for him to work on Transfiguration, not to torture. They had eaten little nibbles of hay from his hand. His father drew his wand and cast a wordless spell on Theo; he could feel it settle with the stickiness of a tracking charm. “Ten pm curfew. If you are late, there are some more memories for you to see.” Theo draws a shallow breath— the last time his father had shoved his face in the pensive to demonstrate a Death Eater raid, he had thrown up all over his office floor. 

“Of course, Father,” he says. “May I take your leave?”

His father studies him for a moment. “Do do your best to place yourself in Potter’s good graces. Severus’s descriptions of him are enlightening, to say the least. I would most appreciate the opportunity to meet him. An afternoon of him at the manor would be most clarifying, would it not?” 

Theo knows that if he lets Harry set one foot in the ancestral Nott manor with his father, he will be dead, because Ron and Granger will have killed him, and if they somehow aren’t successful (fat chance, Granger is terrifying), Millie will finish the job. Though— even on his own time, he wouldn’t let his father within a hundred yards of Harry. There was a lot that could be done in an afternoon and then removed with a well-placed memory charm, or bound with an oath to never bring it up. 

“I will do my utmost, Father,” says Theo, bowing slightly and lying through his teeth. His father gives him a wave of dismissal, and he took a handful of Floo powder and calls out The Burrow! and the password the Weasleys had set for the event, and then steps forward into a blaze of green, letting the passage ease some of the tension from his shoulders. 

He finds himself in a cramped and cluttered but quite homey kitchen, and he can’t quite help the fact that he falls to his knees in relief at not being at his father’s, even if it is just for the day. The kitchen is blessedly empty for the moment, giving him the chance to get his bearings.

“Oi!” comes a very Weasley voice, which Theo vaguely places as one of the twins. “What are you doing here, Nott? Party’s not until the afternoon.”

Theo struggles his way to his feet, brushing ash off his robes and finding himself face to face with both twins, looking vaguely suspicious, like most Gryffindors did when they looked at him. His letter had quite clearly said nine am until whenever! and he’s on the verge of digging for it in his robe pocket when a familiar voice cuts through the faint buzzing in his chest.

“Break it off,” comes Ron’s voice, which Theo had never been more relieved to hear. Ron walks between the twins, looking like he might be going in for a hug, but settling on a handshake at the last moment. “Told him to come early, you gits. Need his help with things.”

Theo hadn’t heard any of that, but lets Ron guide him from the kitchen. “Sorry they’re being berks,” he mutters, once the twins are out of earshot. “Everyone’s sort of frazzled about the party.” They climb stairs, and Theo tries to keep his hands from shaking. 

“What— what do you need my help with?” he corrals himself enough to ask, as they mount another flight. 

“Just an excuse,” says Ron. “Figured it would be rough for you to get away, and Harry hasn’t actually gotten to see you at all this summer. So we just lied about the time of the party in the letter. Everyone else is getting here at one.” 

Even if they had climbed stairs until they got to the moon, Theo doesn’t think he could have ever found a good response to that. The stairs end at a door set in the eves, and Ron opens it to reveal a room decked in orange (Ron’s team, Theo remembers blearily) and Granger bent over a book and Harry sitting in the window sill, reading a different tome. 

A different tome, which is flung aside as he suddenly has an armful of Harry. “You came!” he says, and Theo hasn’t been hugged much and doesn’t particularly like it, but there are qualities to this one he wouldn’t mind replicating in the future. 

“I said I would, didn’t I?” he says, as if he hadn’t spent hours formulating plans and shifting variables around. 

“Theo!” says Granger, bouncing up to stand slightly behind Harry. “I know you said I shouldn’t write you, but I’ve been dying to ask you about Wintenmire Warding! The way it combines transfiguration theory and classic warding theorems—“

“Give a bloke a minute, ‘Mione,” chuckles Ron, giving Theo a light shove so he’s all the way into the attic room. “Maybe we all have some questions about advanced magical theory we want to ask him.”

Harry’s backed off from the hug, but still has a hand on his shoulder, and he’s scrutinizing him for signs of damage, Theo can tell, and his heart swells. This. He wants this, so suddenly it’s hard to breathe. The trio will never be his, not like they are to each other, but bloody hell he wants them on his team. He wants them to ask him their questions about arcane magics and pull strings to arrange meetings and look at him like it matters if he’s hurt or not (he’s not, but for Harry to look at him like that—)

“Well?” says Harry, after a long minute, apparently satisfied that he’s been fed this summer. “What about these Winten-whatever wards?”

“Wintenmire,” Theo and Granger say together, and the summer’s been awful but for one day, he has this. He knows technically it’s Harry’s day, but anywhere that’s not the Nott manor feels like a day all for him. 

There is in fact Quidditch, and Granger offers him his pick of books she’s packed. Ron’s two older brothers are here, so he and Granger and Bones (who’s afraid of heights) and Longbottom (who’s absolute rubbish on a broom, but has some good recommendations for advanced Herbology texts) sit with Ron’s third-oldest brother and watch the chaos that is Millie and Li as chasers unfold. Harry gets the snitch, because of course he does, but only barely. Then the switch up the teams, and Percy is recruited defacto to have enough Weasleys to field a full team (he grumbles, but Theo gets the impression he’s delighted to be included), and a relieved Goldstein gets to come down and discuss his own summer reading with him and Granger. Harry’s team gets hammered, and in the pressure Ginevra gets the snitch, but he’s grinning the whole time.

Cake, including one for the yesterday birthday boy, Longbottom, who flushes bright red. Theo wonders if Harry and his crew are just going around collecting misfits, and can’t blame the brilliance and the Slytherin-ness of such a move. That was what the Dark Lord did, did he not? Looking for people with nothing, and offering them everything?

Theo thinks Harry will be better than the Dark Lord, if the look of complete shock at the pile of presents he receives is anything to go by. 

Bones wants to introduce them to rugby, and Ron and Abbot shout her down— “Harry deserves all his bones to be intact on his birthday, thanks!” Dinner. Laughter. Granger talking about magical theory with Percy, dragging him into the conversation. Ron’s father, who goes out of his way to say hello to Theo, as if he does not know (does not care?) who’s son he is. Harry grinning and laughing and coaxing Longbottom to relate the story of breaking his wand to get a new one. Harry with Ron and Granger at his shoulders. Harry.

Harry.

The night wastes, and one by one, the others floo home, until it is only Theo and Granger and the Weasleys and Harry. Molly has made him tea, and he looks at her and thinks of what he was supposed to tell her and hates his whole bloodline for it. He drinks slowly, as Ron tells him about the flying car debacle, as if he is not a threat. As if his father would not use such a piece of information to ruthlessly get Arthur removed from the Ministry. Granger— Hermione, please, Theo— does a transfiguration solution on a stray napkin and passes it to him to look over. Harry is leaning against his shoulder and grimaces— “Please, not on my birthday!” and they all laugh. 

(They’d spent the morning in a glut of light in the attic, talking about warding and the summer and the next year and dancing around if Theo was alright at his house and what can Theo say? He is fed, he is taught, he is not physically hurt. What does it matter if he has to school his face and lie about his friendships and still has nightmares from what he father has said, has showed him, about Death Eater raids from the last war?)

(What does it matter, if he is only wanted in that house because of the canvas of his blank forearm and what he could do in the next war?)

Theo doesn’t want to leave. He wants this day to last forever. Even if he has to play a whole match of Quidditch, he’ll do it. The Burrow is warm and full of light and no one seems to care what his family name means, only that he is Harry’s friend. 

As the clock approaches ten, Harry beckons him outside for a word. The night is deep and warm, and there are still the lingering rays of the unending British summer twilight. 

“Are you really alright?” Harry asks, with none of the subtly one would expect from a Slytherin. “Because you don’t seem alright.”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” says Theo, which is the truth. 

Harry swallows. He’s not looking at him, he’s looking out across the field around the Burrow. “You don’t have to, you know.”

Yes, yes he does. “It’s nothing like what happened to you,” says Theo, bluntly. “I am unhurt.”

Harry’s eyes rove over his face. “You know Snape would fix it, if you told him,” he says softly. Theo lets out a sigh. 

The thing is, he doesn’t know. Snape’s loyalties are shrouded in deep water. What if— what if all along, all of it was a ploy, and Snape was a Death Eater through and through and would tell his father about the stupidity of such an ask, and he’d pay for it in suffering. What if the things he was experiencing in the house, which cut to the quick but never drew blood, were not deemed enough to warrant any care? 

“It’s one more month,” says Theo. “I am visiting the Malfoys in a few days, and then the Greenglasses, and then the Parkinsons. I will be there seldom.” Harry is still looking at him, and Theo suddenly understands that by getting him out of that house, Snape has made him dangerous. All of the things Harry had been using to survive are now hanging in the air around him, ready for use. “I am fine, Harry, really.”

Silence. The hot summer night, laden with the sound of cicadas. “You’re a good liar,” says Harry, finally, something liquid and bitter on his tongue. “But you’re still my friend.” He slings his arm over Theo’s shoulders, and Theo almost staggers at the gesture. He has no idea why lying and friendship might not click together— they’re Slytherins, aren’t they, this is what they do— and he finds himself leaning into his friend. 

He will say nothing. He will go back to the house and when his father hosts a Death Eater gathering, sit in the shadows of the landing and listen to Snape deride his friend with a casual brutality that will make him wonder if he has enough power yet for crucio, and how un-Slytherin of him, to not be able to put aside emotion for a potential con. But sitting the shadows, missing his friends and longing for the light of the Burrow, it doesn’t feel like a con at all. He will use the transfiguration charm Hermione taught him, the solution she passed him at the last minute and transfigure the rabbits into thimbles, and when they are deep in the back garden, un-transfigure them and let them free. Three potatoes are easy enough to replace them with, and if the rabbits he boils the blood of are imperfect, starchy facsimiles of rabbits, no one will ever know.

What will he say, if the Dark Lord returns, and he is asked to take the Mark? He wants to choose Harry, but the fear is like a snake in his gut. Harry had enough Gryffindor to decide to trust Snape, to face the monster himself at the end of term, to befriend people outside his house, and he is just Theo, who cannot quite seem to draw together the things he would need to leave, least he run afoul of one madman or another. 

He pushes the thoughts of that away. For now, his forearm empty, and Harry’s face had lit up when he unwrapped his birthday present. He thinks of the coming year: studying with Hermione in the library, trading scraps of paper on ward theory and transfiguration solutions; the way Ron will draw him into games of chess or exploding snap; Harry practicing jinxes and hexes with him in the common room. Millie badgering him to come to Quidditch matches and explore the castle; Daphne sliding in next to him and helping revise his essays; Blaise’s easy camaraderie. Even some of Ron’s and Hermione’s friends— Li, Goldstein, Bones (though Bones is wild), Longbottom— didn’t seem to care who his father was. What his last name might mean. 

“It’s better than last summer,” he says, softly, and Harry’s arm tightens. “I have something to go back to, when it’s over.”

______________

(For his birthday, Harry received an amount of presents that he previously would have only attributed to Dudley, and it was hard to breathe, honestly. Looking at the pile, he shot a panicked glance to Hermione, who elbowed Ron, who glanced quickly around and then ducked over to whisper something to twins. A minute later, while Mrs. Weasley was still doling out pieces of cake, there was a large explosion, involving catching Percy’s robes on fire, and he ducked off with the two of them while that got sorted. Why are there so many, he breathed, sitting between them on the sofa with his head in his hands, Hermione gripping his hand and Ron’s hand tracing circles on his back. Maybe we can just take it one at a time? Hermione asked. Have them bring them in here? Harry tried to breathe, and Ron added, Or we can just wait until no one’s here?)

(They ended up going with Hermione’s suggestion, and he tried to compartmentalize and not think of the sum total. Thankfully, Ron and Hermione’s friends mainly got him little things, and Neville had gotten him a very Neville typical plant, and his Slytherin friends, Blaise aside, had been reasonable: books on defense and Quidditch gear.)

(The Weasleys had given him gifts at breakfast— fireworks, a hand-knit hat with the Slytherin crest on it, and Charlie and Bill had gone in on a ward holster and even Percy had gotten him something, even if it was a copy of the Hogwarts bylaws. Ginny had gotten him a practice snitch, which floated and darted happily around the room, until he or Ginny grabbed at it. Ron and Hermione had waited until that night, until Theo had left back to his father’s house, no matter how much Harry had tried to get him to tell him to just owl Snape or someone— Susan’s aunt was DLME, she could help— when they were all clustered together in Ron’s attic room.)

(Ron had gotten him a photo album, except this one wasn’t of his parents. It was of them, and their friends. He turned the pages, breathless, as he watched them wave at him— from their bolthole in the castle, from the Quidditch pitch, from the Great Hall. When did you take these, he asked, and Ron shrugged. Dunno, just figured we should have something to remember things.)

(Hermione had gotten him a small over-the-shoulder satchel, which was spelled with countless charms so it could fit pretty much his whole trunk, and even his broom in there. It was a soft green leather and had his initials on it, and was impervious to fire and water damage— Malfoy, explained Hermione and Ron at the same time, and Harry understood without her saying anything that this was her way of saying now you’ll always have everything with you, safe.) 

(He thinks of Theo, standing in the twilight, with the lines in his face. He thinks of Snape, and tries not to be disappointed the man didn’t send him a birthday present. He thinks of the warmth of the Quidditch matches, everyone laughing, and how he told Millie and Daphne and Blaise to just send letter to him to Ron, because apparently their owls were just confused by him not being at Private Drive and Snape’s complicated wards.) 

(They all sleep on the cot on the floor of Ron’s room, without really meaning to. But it is good, be together. To sleep easy, without dreams.)

(Later, he will spell the satchel black and his initials off, lest they give too much away. Later, he will understand why Theo wasn’t sure if he could trust Snape, and wonder if he too should have been smarter with his loyalties. Later, he will dream of this summer— the birthday cake, the Quidditch, the libraries, always someone to lean against— and understand that if he got nothing else, he was given one summer to actually be a child. To go out in the weeds and not need to save anyone. In the long nights, later, it is a creature comfort, and he lets it pool against his sternum and hold off the hunger and the fear: I haven’t always had nothing, now have I?)

Chapter Text

Hermione watches Harry read at her dining room table in her muggle neighborhood, her cat in his lap and his quill scratching as he takes notes, and feels inordinately happy. 

This time last year, she had been a wreak of nerves and excitement— McGonagall had shown up to tell her she was a witch, and that all the strange things she could do were because she was magic, and then escort her to Diagon Alley, where her parents, upon seeing Flourish and Blots, had realized they would need a lot more pounds exchanged for Galleons. Together, they had spent all of August reading about her new world— the history, the magic, the terrifying fact that they were just a decade or so removed from a war— and also about Harry Potter, of course. The orphan just her age who had saved the wizarding world by defeating You-Know-Who (it had taken four days of peering through indexes for Hermione to learn his real name was Voldemort, and at that point, she was well and truly scared). 

And then, the compartment on the train. The bubble of easy conversation swelling so suddenly, once they were all together. She hadn’t know he was Harry Potter until he’d been called to sort, and by then all she could think of was his thin face and bright eyes and the little cascade of his laugh and what it might be like to have friends. And now here he is, at her table, like it was always going to come to this: her little muggle kitchen, with her nerdy dentist parents, and Harry Potter.

Who is, and will always be, simply Harry to her.

August creeps slowly forward in a haze of heat and light. In a few days, Harry will be back to the Burrow for the last two weeks of summer hols, and Hermione will be off to visit her cousins in Bath. And then Diagon Alley, a few days before term, all together, and then Hogwarts. Hermione tries to let the excitement of going back to classes and getting to ask Flitwick all the questions she’s had over the summer overwhelm the lingering spike of fear the idea of the term brings.

There are some things about the term and the magical world she has not told her parents. She has not told them about the slurs some of them will use on her, as if the war is not over, as if her magic is not proof enough she belongs. She has not told them about the people in their study group who’s parents worked for You-Know-Who. She has not told them about Quirrell, and how he tried to kill Harry, and going after the stone. How could she? Where even are the words for it? 

She glances over at Harry, who has begun to doodle sketches for Quidditch plays on his corner of parchment, a sure sign Hermione needs to break off their study session (honestly, it’s a wonder the boys have been so tolerant of her desire to just sit around and read massive books this summer). She hopes Quirrellmort was just a one-off thing. That Hogwarts will be safe and she and the boys will retreat to their little bolthole and study and everything will be alright. 

She can’t quite bring herself to believe it, though. 

“Alright, let’s take a break,” she declares, shutting the book, and Harry looks up at her with a slight smile. “Can’t study all day.”

“That’s a new outlook,” says Harry, getting up from the table and laughing. “Want to walk to the gardens?”

The city blurs around them as they move, each taking a turn to ramble about whatever they want to— wards for Hermione, Quidditch for Harry; defense jinxes for Harry and Hermione’s tangent on the difficulties of healing, which just weren’t coming easy to her. “You’ll get it,” says Harry, reaching a thin hand into the reflecting pool to pull a quid coin out, only to try to skip it back in. “You’re the brightest wix in our year.”

She blushes, despite herself. Harry’s quid coin hits the water wrong and slips beneath it.“Theo could give me a run for my money.”

Harry snorts. “Theo’s had magical tutors his whole life. You didn’t even know about magic until last year.”

That too is a bite of warmth. Harry pulls a coin from the water and offers it to her, and she skips in three bright hops across the water. Hermione thinks of how her magic is all technical, solving equations and learning theory, and how Harry’s is instinctual, intuitive— his grasp of DADA, how he seems to know how the ingredients in a potion will balance out but struggles to explain the reactions. How Ron’s magic is calm and even-keeled, but with a blustery of heart and emotion behind it— his hexes against Malfoy, or his practice on spells Hermione had picked out were always stronger and better than just casting standard in class. 

“Here,” says Hermione, when his next coin also splashes into the fountain. “Let me show you.” Her dad had taught her, when they were at the beach the other summer, and she figures no one had ever shown Harry. He lets her take his wrist and guide him through the motions. After a few more attempts, he manages it, his coin bouncing in a tight arc across the water. 

Watching him reach down to dig out another coin, she suddenly feels self-conscious. “It’s been alright, has it? Staying with me? I know it’s not the Burrow.”

Harry turns to her sharply, a coin in his hand, droplets of water running down his forearm. “It’s been brilliant, ‘Mione. Don’t worry.”

She bites her lip. He stands, shifts, and tries again, managing two this time. “It’s fun there, and I get to play a lot of Quidditch, but it’s never quiet. And I mean— I know magic’s real and all, but it’s overwhelming sometimes. All the plates washing themselves.”

Hermione nods. She does love the Burrow, but it never feels calm. 

“Dunno how to explain it, I guess,” says Harry, shaking water off his hand, “But it’s nice to feel normal, you know? I always just wanted to be a normal muggle getting takeaway, before I knew about magic.”

Hermione remembers Harry’s face from earlier in the summer, when both her parents were working late and she just called in to the Indian place and they walked to pick it up, and Harry’s face alight with joy. How he’d said it was the first time, and how proud she’d been, being able to give that to him.

Hermione knows they’ll never be normal, in either of their worlds. He’s the bloody Boy-Who-Lived and she’s a muggleborn witch who’s trying to become something. But it still hurts. Is there another life where she would have been wanted, completely, in the magical world? Where Harry would just be Harry at Hogwarts and then they’d walk through the grimy Birmingham twilight and no one would want to kill them? 

“Come on,” she says, shaking herself from her doldrums. If nothing else, they’re here now, in the twilight. “Let’s go see the fountains.”

Back at the house for dinner, her dad makes Yorkshire pudding and asks them about their day, what branches of magic they’re working on now, listening to Hermione’s explanations of it the same way she listens to him explain dental surgeries. She thinks they like Harry, quite a lot actually— he’s polite, but also funny and sarcastic at times, and he’s so clearly on her team. She knows her parents have always been a little concerned about how she doesn’t have very many friends. When Ron comes over for the afternoons, the house is full of raucous laughter and he tries to explain to her mom (a die-hard Chelsea fan) the superiority of Quidditch, and her dad asks Harry about his summer work, and Socks makes biscuits on Hermione’s dungarees and the light is clean and decedent. She loves her house quiet, when they’re all around the table reading, but she also loves it loud. Next summer, she promises herself, she’ll figure out how to get around the Trace and show her parents her wards. 

Tonight, her mom is working late, and her dad tells them a story from his dental school days, when he slept through an exam and in order to get credit for the class had to write a twenty-page paper in twenty-four hours. He did it, because of course he did. “No wonder where you get it from, ‘Mione,” Harry says, elbowing her and laughing. 

Her parents are always very careful, she has learned, to not ask about Before things with Harry. She isn’t sure what Snape told them, that they agreed so readily to host him and are so careful with him, but it was probably enough. She overhead them talking, one night while Harry was at the Burrow, when she had gone down late at night to get a glass of water and instead lingered on the last step of the stairs, around the bend from the kitchen: “It’s awful, really,” her mother had said. “What Hermione’s professor said about there not being any other options. You’d think they had some sort of DfE or something over there. For all the magic, it doesn’t sound that sophisticated legally, you know.” 

Her dad had sighed, and then the sound of something pouring. “That Severus fellow said something about how him being famous made things complicated. Which sounds like a load of rubbish to me. You’d think they would want to take care of the kid who saved them all from that You-Know-Who bloke.”

“I think that’s the problem, Pete,” said her mother. “They don’t see him as a child. He’s some kind of figurehead for them.” That was so blindingly true that it almost threw Hermione for a loop. Yes, it was insane that Harry was famous for something he did when he was a baby, wasn’t it? Especially because after what Dumbledore had told him in the hospital wing, it sort of sounded like it was his mum who’d died so he could live, so where the bloody Lily Potter appreciation? 

“I just hope he’s happy being here with us,” her dad has said, after a long minute. “It’s not fun and magical. We’re not fun people, Cindy.” Hermione bristled at that, even while acknowledging that her and her parents’s ideas of fun was very different from say, Fred and George Weasley. 

“From what Severus said, and from what I’ve seen from Harry, his relatives weren’t even bothering to feed him. So we have them beat on that front.” Hermione knew that— hell, she had heard Harry say that— but to hear it from her parents just hit different somehow. She couldn’t even imagine a world where her mum and dad didn’t make sure she didn’t have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

“I’m just amazed he asked us, honestly,” said her dad. “You’d think there would be loads of people lining up. And we’re— well, muggles— to them.”

“I don’t think it was about that, Pete. I think it’s about him and Hermy. You saw how they were together. Them and Ron.” Hermione’s heart was beating fast in her ribcage— Ron had come over to meet her parents for the first time last week, and they’d spent a very loud afternoon playing muggle board games together (Hermione had won Monopoly, but should have known never to play Ron in Risk).

“Yeah,” says her dad. “They sort of revolve around each other. Like they’re triplets, honestly.”

“Did you see how Harry will just relax whenever Hermy comes into the room?” asked her mum. “And then him with both of them— he was almost a completely different kid.”

Her dad gave a hum of affirmation. Hermione felt a well of joy behind her sternum— was it really like that? Did everything just shift for Harry when they were all together? Because that’s what it felt like for her—

“I’ve never seen Hermy so happy either, Cindy,” said her dad. “Just— out exploring the town, talking about everything, so comfortable— she wasn’t like this last summer, even after we figured everything out. It’s them, not the school and the magic. She finally has friends.”

It’s true, she thought, tucking her head into her knees. It was so good to know that the strange well of power within her finally meant something, but if she had to choose between Hogwarts without Ron and Harry and some muggle prep with them, she’d pick the prep school every damn time. 

“As long as he’s happy here, it won’t be any trouble to just have him every summer until Severus can figure something out,” says her father, with a great deal of certainty, and Hermione’s chest swells, with warmth and hope and love.

She looks over at him now, telling her dad about their afternoon, and how Hermione taught him to skip rocks. About how tomorrow they’re going to take the train up to Liverpool to see Sue for the day. About how moody Hedwig has been— I think something’s wrong with my mail, but I’ve just told everyone to write to Ron or ‘Mione and it’ll get here eventually.

Every summer, she thinks, like an oath. You will be here and you will be fed and you will be okay. And I’ll be okay too, because I’ll have you and Ron.

They’re a trio. On some level, she’s known that since after the sorting, when they all came back together in the hall and everything was settled, who cares what house, but it is all just beginning to come into focus, now. What they’re doing is permanent. Unwavering. Forever.

Harry gets up from the table to get seconds without asking. Ron wrote back yesterday with a question about summer work, and her mum just said tell him to drop by on Friday. They’ll figure out how to kill You-Know-Who. Harry will be safe. Ron will be safe. She will be safe. 

Harry nudges her leg under the table, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Warding reading after dinner?”

“Warding reading after dinner,” she says, and maybe, just maybe, they can contrive to have everything. 

______________

Sue Li has been having a pretty terrific summer, but this is the day she’s been waiting for: Hermione and Harry are coming to Liverpool. She isn’t entirely sure if Harry is her friend yet, but if he’s not, she wants to make it happen. He’s been standing up for her at Hogwarts, something flashing in his eyes when anyone tries to deride her for her muggle dad or what might or might not have happened in the last war; he always listens to her when she talks about transfiguration. Honestly, it’s no wonder he’s struggling with it— McGonagall’s a tough teacher and for some reason she seems to freeze up a little whenever Harry’s in the room. And even Sue’s not sure she would have have time to focus on transfiguration equations if someone had spent last year trying to kill her. 

(In another life, maybe it would have been her You-Know-Who would have tried to kill. Her parents are a pure-blood who married a muggle. A whole family of blood traitors to wipe out. Her parents hadn’t been as involved in the war as Harry’s had, but what did You-Know-Who care?)

Sue shivers at the thought, and makes sure Alexis has been appraised on the fact that there would be no math today (“Look, all I’m saying is that you need to let me borrow an owl so I can send some letters to the Ministry and your bloody headmaster, math is an essential subject!”). Her parents are already off at work, but after a cup of coffee and some peanut butter on toast and some quick over-breakfast algebra questions (Alexis might have lost her mind if she’d gone to Hogwarts and there had been no maths, but before that, she would have been in Ravenclaw, too), she grabs the keys and drove them both over the train station to pick up Hermione and Harry.

“Hermione is in your house, lives in Birmingham, does wards. Which sound like math. I feel like she might benefit from math,” says Alexis, dutifully repeating the facts Sue Li has spent the last year feeding. “But you think she’s only doing wards for security reasons?”

“Yeah,” says Sue; there are some things that are hard to explain to her parents, especially since her mum is so connected in the magical world, but she tells her sister everything. “She’s really good at them but I think she thinks she’ll need them. Like— like if you were only studying math so you could go into codebreaking for MI6 or something.”

“Because you think there’s going to be another bloody war.” Alexis’s hands are tight on the steering wheel. This is the thing that’s difficult to talk about in their family— what would they do if You-Know-Who came back? Sue and her mum would be safe, functionally— but only if they severed ties from the rest of their family. Or should they all go into hiding, to be safe? All she knows is that Alexis’s pamphlets about uni were mainly from American schools. 

“Hopefully not,” says Sue, thinking about Hermione’s whispered conversation at the end of last term, about the stone and Quirrell and how he’d secretly been You-Know-Who the whole time. About unicorn blood and desperate measures and how much he wanted to kill Harry. 

Alexis lets out a long sigh and drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “And then it’s also Harry Potter.”

“Yes,” says Sue. “But you need to be cool. He’s only famous for something he did as a baby and I think he sort of hates the attention. He plays Quidditch, he’s a seeker. Ask about that.” (Alexis’s favorite thing about the wizarding world always had been Quidditch, and she’d been quite a good chaser when she’d played rec league as a kid. Now she played lacrosse at Eton.) 

“I guess that makes sense,” says Alexis, as they drive through the morning traffic in Liverpool, Alexis making several rude hand gestures en route. “It’s just so weird to think the person who stopped You-Know-Who is just some twelve-year-old who can’t even do algebra.”

Sue purses her lips. “I just want you to be chill,” she says. “He’s— well, he’s sort of skittish.”

“I’m always chill,” says Alexis, which is categorically untrue, but Sue lets it slide.

They park at the train station, eventually, and the train from Birmingham gets in and off tumble Harry and Hermione. Hermione runs straight into Sue for a hug and a long babble about her most recent warding reading, while over her shoulder, Harry surveys the train station and eyes Alexis, who takes pity on him, offering her hand. “Alexis,” she says. 

“Harry,” he says. “You’re the mathematician?” and Sue sees Alexis blink— she was definitely expecting the cool dismissive squib that she often got from wizards meeting her for the first time. “Umm— you’re not going to make me and Hermione do algebra or anything while we’re here?”

“Only if you want,” says Alexis. “But it is a really essential—“

Harry turns to Sue, a little frantic. “You said something about football? Or maybe the library?” 

“I told you no algebra,” says Sue, untangling herself from Hermione, who also reaches out to shake Alexis’s hand. 

“I thought you played Quidditch?” Alexis asks, as they head to the car, and Harry embarks slightly nervously, but warming up to it, on a talk about playing seeker for Slytherin, and Alexis tries to explain lacrosse— “Sounds better than rugby,” offers Harry; “My thoughts exactly!” says Alexis— and Hermione bumps Sue’s shoulder and gives her a delighted grin, and Sue gives a little bump back— it’ll be alright. 

Earlier in the summer, when Harry had been at the Weasley’s (it was supposed to be on the down-low, that he wasn’t at his relatives, but Sue wasn’t stupid, and Snape, if nothing else, was ruthlessly loyal to his Snakes), she and Hermione had spent the day in Oxford, at the wizarding library there. Out of the stacks briefly for lunch, eating sandwiches in the courtyard of Christchurch and tossing scraps to the koi in the fountain, Sue had broached the topic of what it was like to have Harry stay for two weeks. 

“It’s like having a sibling!” Hermione had said gleefully, and then her face had down-turned, somewhat. “I just— I’ll forget he doesn’t have parents, but then I’ll get a kiss form my mum or something and turn to him and his face will be all pinchy.” She took a bite of her sandwich and groaned in frustration. “I just wish all this magic stuff wasn’t so complicated. The war and all of that. And now we have to deal with it.”

Sue Li took a bite of her sandwich, and then, in the count yard of Christchurch, told her in low tones about how You-Know-Who wanted to kill her family too, because her mother was the daughter of one of the first Death Eaters, one of the ones who went to school with You-Know-Who, and then married a muggle. Tells her about a daughter born in hiding and years spent on the continent, running. About how neither of her parents know what they’ll do if there is another war— “I think they’re just banking on him actually being all the way dead. Even if there was no body or anything.”

Hermione flopped back on the grass and massaged her forehead with her hand. After a moment of deliberation, Sue set down her sandwich and flopped down next to her. Above them, the English summer sky was full of fluffy clouds, and she suddenly realized Hermione’s breathing was closer to sobs than not. Sue reached out and took her hand in hers, and Hermione’s thin fingers clutched back tightly. 

“Do you think,” she said, tightly, like she was holding in a sob, “We could just talk about transfiguration for the rest of today?” The and pretend we’re normal was implied. Sue said yes, because what else do you say? 

Today is another one of those pretending days, Sue thinks, as they sink into the by-ways and back gardens of suburban Liverpool. Sue shows them the tree house in the woods behind her house, and the paths that lead down to the golf course, and they spend a very enjoyable morning dodging golfers and hunting for balls in the weeds of the ponds. Alexis takes them to the local fish and chips place for lunch, and then to the small but lovely Liverpool wizarding library, where Harry becomes entranced by a codex of Worst’s Your Enemies Will Fear You: Offensive Hexes For The Grudge Holder, and Alexis flirts with the new Astronomy Masters’s student in town. And then, transfiguration at the house, obviously, and Harry’s face when Sue finally manages to explain the concept of transfigurative equivalence to him is like the sun coming out.

Alexis eventually coaxes Hermione over to “just try some algebra,” and being a nerd, Hermione goes, leaving Sue and Harry lying on the living room floor, revising their transfiguration essays. 

“I don’t actually hate it, you know,” says Harry, finally, throwing his quill down and flopping over onto his back. Sue looks over at him from her sit against the couch. “I just— it doesn’t seem to work for me. And McGonagall gets all weird when I come to tutoring. But it makes sense, when you put it like this. So thanks.”

Sue taps her fingers against her leg, thinking. “What about it doesn’t work?”

Harry does his best to shrug while lying on the floor. “All the equations. Solving them, trying to find the missing piece. And McGonagall keeps telling me not use emotion, but how am I not supposed to think about where the spiders go, you know?”

Sue wrinkles her forehead. “What do you mean, where do they go? They’re spiders. Good riddance.”

Harry laughs. “That’s what Ron said. We both didn’t do well on that one, but only because he freaked out.” He stretches out his arms a bit, shifting around with a seeker litheness. “But— where do they go? I don’t want them to just be stuck as snuff boxes forever. Is it like a long weird dream about being a snuffbox, when they wake up?”

Harry looks over at her, and Sue sees only her friend. The Slytherin seeker, the one who stands up for her in the hallways, the one who wants to make sure the spiders are okay. “Are you telling me,” says Sue, “that you’re bad at transfig because you’re worried the spiders aren’t okay when they’re snuffboxes?”

Harry gives her a shy grin. “I think my magic can tell I don’t really want them to go.” 

Sue puts aside her revisions and gets to her feet, offering Harry her hand. “I think I’ve got some theory books about where things go. We could do look it up?”

He takes her offered hand, and she pulls him to his feet. He’s got more substance to him than he did when he first met him, she thinks. More weight on his bones. 

She too hates the idea that if there is another war, Harry will be in the thick of it, with his messy hair and his glasses and his care. Surely there’s someone else who could defeat You-Know-Who? Surely she and Harry and Hermione and Ron and everyone else could just spend their afternoons in the library, and on the quidditch pitch, and in the slivers of suburban woodland in Liverpool, and not have to save anything? 

In the decaying twilight, they learn that typically, animals see transfiguration as a weird type of nap. They talk about homework, and study strategies, and how the few times Harry has been successful at transfiguration, it’s because he’s needed a needle or a pen or some item, not because he really understands the equation. Sue thinks of the Hogwarts library, and playing chaser with Millie and Susan at the birthday party, and Hermione’s glazed, focused face when she studies wards, and the power the trio radiate, all of them with such a different grasp of magic. 

It is then, sitting her bedroom of her Liverpool house, reading transfiguration books with Harry Potter, while downstairs Alexis teaches Hermione how to solve basic algebraic equations, that she understands that if there is another war, she will not be able to do as her parents did, and hide on the continent, hoping someone else will kill You-Know-Who. Not if the war will be fought by Hermione and Harry and Ron. Not when You-Know-Who wants to kill everyone she holds dear, for loving maths or muggles. 

No killing curse, she already knows in her bones. But she’ll incant imperio and tell the Death Eaters to betray the insane rhetoric they grew up with, and transfigure stones into griffins to fight along side them, and her protegos will be bolstered with geometric transformations and her knowledge of sine and cosine functions. For now, though, her house is full of maths and transfiguration and knowledge, and her mother comes home with takeaway, and McGonagall will give them all Os on their summer work, because how could she not? 

How could she not, when they’re all this?

______________

(Apparently, nothing is ever going to be destined to come easy to the three of them. When they’re all back at the Burrow after Diagon Alley, their school supplies stacked neatly and Hermione’s tower of books waiting to be browsed, Harry opens his new Defense books, the whole stack of Lockhart’s narratives about his defeats of various Dark things, and pales. Ron and Hermione move to his shoulders to look at them, and Hermione’s stomach does a funny twisting thing: each page has been disfigured, over and over again, with an almost blood-colored message: DO NOT RETURN TO HOGWARTS.)

(Harry’s breathing is shallow. Is this some kind of Malfoy prank? Ron asks, but even Hermione cannot imagine Draco being so cryptic, not when he seems to thrive off getting a rise out of Harry in front of him. Hermione digs out another book and opens it: NO ONE WANTS YOU THERE. The next says DID YOU EVEN GET ANY MAIL THIS SUMMER? and the next says YOU’RE BARELY A WIZARD and then the last one has NO ONE WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND.)

(Okay, well that’s clearly rubbish, says Ron, tossing it aside on the bed. We’re your bloody friends, mate.)

(Hermione can feel the room beginning to buzz with the scent of Harry’s magic, and sits down on the bed next to him, pressing her shoulder against his and taking his hands. It’s just some sick joke, says Ron, tucking himself into Harry’s other side. Malfoy’s dad seemed even more prickish than Malfoy.)

(How did they know, gasps out Harry, that I didn’t get any mail this summer?)

(And he hasn’t,has he, now that Hermione thinks about it. She’s taken to just sending her notes for Harry to Ron. Who would know that?)

(And when they calm down and collect the books to take down to show Ron’s parents, they’re completely blank, as if nothing has ever happened to them. A practical joke, Mrs. Weasley assures them, and the twins think it’s Lucius for sure, but Hermione can’t quite get her nerves to settle. Over the next few days, as they play some final quidditch matches and double check their summer work, the messages come back, but always at times when they’re alone. Who doesn’t want me to go back? Harry asks, and Ron says Owl Snape, he’ll take it seriously, and Hermione thinks of the foreboding castle in the highlands and the smell of magic and wonders if already it is too late, if already they are racing towards some vast darkness that they cannot extricate themselves from.)

(Later, Hermione will think of that first summer as a lacuna in a sea of complications, and how Hogwarts had still felt like it could be safe, like Quirrellmort had been a one-off fluke. Later, she will clutch a brutal letter from Albus Dumbledore in her shaking hand and think of Dobby, and the messages, and how some people don’t seem to understand that just because you love someone doesn’t mean you can’t hurt them, immensely.)

(And later, in the forest with the sword, the hideousness of a fractured piece of the Dark Lord’s soul will snarl such similar lies at the three of them, and yet again it will be the most egregious of them that will snap them from their trance: of course we have friends. We’ve always had friends, you son of a bitch. They’re right here.)

Chapter Text

“It will need to be off the books,” Severus had said, and it had been strange to see him sitting at the Burrow’s kitchen table, drinking tea in his dark robes, when Molly still remembered him in the last war as a thin teenager fighting for You-Know-Who. Albus had vouched for him, and whatever his true loyalties, that he would do this for Harry was proof of concept more than anything, but it was still strange to have here, so sallow and so full of edges. The late spring light was like glazed honey, and Molly wondered what her children were up to, on a Hogwarts Saturday, hoping it was homework (but knowing the twins, certain it wasn’t). “From the way Potter behaves with your son and Granger, I doubt anyone will be shocked to find he spending large portions of his holidays with them, but the Headmaster needs to remain convinced his home is with his relatives,” and Severus had said home with such a sneer it almost rattled the plates. 

“And you really think Albus will do nothing?” said Molly, thinking of what Ron had said in his letters, and the small black-haired boy in her house over Easter, who’d seemed shocked that any adult would ask him questions about his life and melted into Molly’s embrace like it was one-of-a-kind. “It seems like an open and shut case.”

Snape’s face had shifted through emotions faster than Molly had been able to chart them. “Albus— Albus historically has proven quite recalcitrant to removing children from abusive households,” said Snape, finally. “Anything less than broken bones has not phased him. Of late, I have been simply leaving him out of proceedings to expedite things.”

Molly thought of Albus, and his twinkling eyes and brutal magic, and how old he was. Maybe, in all the wars, and the bodies torn apart by Dark curses and people reduced to madness by Cruciatus, he’d forgotten that childhood did not have to be fought like a war as well.

She let out a sigh “But why not DMLE? They would be sure to take his side, even if the abuse was difficult to prove.”

“I had considered,” said Severus. “I did some investigating, prior, however.” He took a long sip of tea. “Everyone Lily and James named in the will to serve as guardians are either dead, insane, or in prison.” Sirius Black, Molly thought, with a swell of pure rage. She remembered the swaggering kid at Order meetings and how smugly close he’d been with James and how at the time it had reminded her of her brothers, except her brothers would have never—

“The Headmaster is serving in loco parentis for him in the magical world,” said Severus, flexing his fingers as if to go for his wand. “Which would make any official court case even more controversial, and likely give Lucius even more openings to make an official bid for guardianship.”

The teacup in Molly’s hand cracked at the mention of Lucius, resulting in the closest think she’d seen to smile from Severus. “Yes, my thoughts exactly,” he said.

“So he stays here or with Hermione’s parents for the summer,” said Molly, waving her hand to repair the tea cup. “What about long term? He really needs a proper guardian.” Her mind caught up with the implications of what Severus had said, about Dumbledore, and she turned to him with a sharpness in her eyes. “Severus. Have you not told Albus because you don’t think he would consider it reason enough to remove him, or because you think he already knows?”

The man’s dark eyes glittered, and he put his teacup down, flexing his hand again. “Apparently, by— dying— Lily imparted some sort of blood magic protection to the boy. These have manifested into blood wards around relatives’s house, as they share Lily’s blood. These would deter any enemies, but the Dark Lord in particular.”

“But if the threat is coming from inside the house—“ said Molly, her heart beating fast.

“Exactly,” said Severus, his eyes shining with a sticky sort of malice that was very Death Eater of him, but she couldn’t find qualms with it being directed towards Albus at the moment.“The Headmaster— I have reason to believe he knew— at least, he was informed things were not strictly above board, as he chose to tell the greater world.” Listening to Severus explain about Arabella Figg and the letters and Severus’s meeting with Lily’s sister, Molly could feel her magic building within her, in a way it hadn’t done in years, until the kitchen began to smell of cloves and blood. An abused child was one thing, tragically common, but for Albus to just—

“So he’ll stay with us until he’s of age,” said Molly. “And you’ll fake the wards at his relatives.” Severus nodded. “And we will deal with Albus.”

Another quirk of his lips at her likely murderous expression. “Thank you. I will continue looking into permanent solutions.”

Molly went to the cabinet for the liquor and delicately spiked her tea with fire-whiskey; she offered it to Severus, who politely declined. “I seem to remember some old Hogwarts by-law, about Heads of Houses being able to petition for guardianship in emergencies?”
Severus winced. “In theory, yes. However, in practice—“ He did not finish, but he didn’t really need to. There were more players on the table than Molly could keep tabs on. Declaring his loyalties so openly would likely tip some delicate balance she couldn’t even see.

“What are you going to do if Albus finds out about all this?” she asked, taking a long sip of her fortified tea. 

A flicker of amusement in Severus’s face. “Throw you under the bus, of course. You’re powerful enough to cast spells that can toy with the Headmaster’s trace wards, and mine could… let’s just say I designed them so that it could be interpreted as yours, in the right light. You’re motivated enough to take a child from a bad home, and you’re angry enough at Albus to be too busy berating him to attempt to implicate me. Which, even if you did, would come off as a desperate attempt to dump blame, seeing as I barely respect the child and would hardly chose to place him with families comprised of muggles or Gryffindors.” The manufactured sneer on the last word left his mouth low and dark, but his eyes were crackling with something like amusement. She had to give it to him— he was likely correct. Especially about how much she wanted to hex Albus to another dimension. 

She understood why he had been such a good spy in their last war. Why he probably would be able to continue to spy in the next one, if it did end up coming to pass. He would go back to You-Know-Who and spin thickets and webs of deceptions, and they would believe it all, because who would think Severus Snape capable of care or love?

That summer, she writes him letters on Saturday mornings, when everyone is still asleep. Harry is doing well, she begins every letter, and every time it’s true. A year ago, she would have laughed at herself, writing about Harry Potter’s well-being to Severus Snape, but she had seen that brief flash in his eyes when she’d mentioned the Head of House rule, something like regret.

She knows it’s not strictly necessary— he asked for sporadic updates about essential information, and Harry and Ron playing yet more Quidditch, or reading about warding with Hermione, or eagerly discussing their next year in Potions after getting back from Diagon Alley is hardly essential. 

But just because he has Albus and You-Know-Who both fooled doesn’t mean he can make it past Molly fucking Weasley. 

She writes: Today, Hermione was here, and she and the boys read through the first chapters of all their second-year texts, and from the sound of it, you may want to include a lecture on the dangers of unsupervised brewing in your syllabus again this year.

She thinks: even if it’s not you on paper, it’s you in spirit, isn’t it?

______________

Despite the fact that she’s known magic has existed for a full year now, going back to Diagon Alley is a shock, and it’s all Cindy can do to take her husband’s hand and follow their daughter into the colorful and very magical street. Hermione, being Hermione, is making a beeline to the bookstore, only to make a sudden halt when she catches a glimpse of a family of redheads and their black-haired addition. Pete squeezes her hand as they watch both of the boys collide with Hermy in the middle of the street, like it’s been years since they’ve seen each other, and not just a few days. 

“No clue where she got that from,” murmurs Pete. “I was not that good at making friends as a child.”

“Pretty sure Ron’s the mastermind,” says Cindy, who has come to hold Ron Weasley and Harry Potter very dearly over the summer. 

“Hello Grangers!” says a figure Cindy recognizes as Molly Weasley, taking a step out of her knot of redheads to throw her arms around her. A thin, equally redheaded man appears from the side to shake both her and Pete’s hands. “So good to see you!”

“Mum,” says Hermione, popping up in front of her. “Do you mind if I go with Ron and Harry to get my books and things?”

Cindy is all too aware that this is their last morning with Hermione for months— she and Peter are off to a week-long dental conference tomorrow, and the Weasleys are going to drop Hermione and Harry off at the train station, but she spent a good chunk of Hermione’s first eleven years desperately wishing their smart, socially awkward daughter would find people who actually wanted to hang out with her, and Ron and Harry are pretty top notch. “Of course,” she says. 

“We can have lunch together, just us, before you go,” she adds, as Pete begins to fumble with his wallet to hand over quid for her to exchange at the bank, and Cindy’s reluctance melts into a puddle of affection. She gives into her urge to drag her daughter in for a quick hug and kiss on the head, despite her brief embarrassed protest, and then she and Ron and Harry head off in the direction of the bank, despite the boys’s very vocal arguments about going to the Quidditch supply store. Molly calls after Ron to be at the bookstore by two, to get all their books sorted, and the twins take off in one direction, while the rather posh looking oldest redhead takes his youngest sister by the hand and says, “Ginny and I can manage, Mum,” the effect of which is slightly ruined by Ginny squirming out of his grasp and sticking out her tongue at him. 

“Nonsense,” says Arthur. “We’ll all go to get your wand together, Ginny, and then your mother and I and the Grangers can meet up for a cuppa at the Leaky Tap?”

Ginny schools her features but looks very delighted by this turn of events. Cindy and Pete agree, and spend a good fifteen minutes just being delighted and amused by the strangeness of magic. Cindy tries very hard not to think about how conspicuous they must look, in muggle clothing, or the shocking percentage of wizards who apparently believe that just because they’re magical they have no need for good dental hygiene.

In the Leaky Tap an hour later, Molly introduces them to the barman, who has a truly horrifying lack of teeth, and she orders a brandy and the rest of them order tea. Molly seems about to launch into something conspiratorial once they are sitting in a shadowed far booth, but Arthur pulls out his wand and incants what he explains are silencing charms around them first. 

“Well,” says Molly, taking a long sip of her brandy. “Considering we’ll likely be seeing a great deal of each other for the next several years, a more official sit-down seemed in order. Harry get on alright with you?”

Getting right into the weirdness of their little kidnapping song-and-dance, weren’t they, then. Cindy and Pete had talked for a long time, after Severus Snape had shown up at their house right after Easter Holidays, about if they should accept or not. They’d eventually decided to say yes— Hermione’s comments about Harry had seemed to suggest a less-than-ideal home life (he hadn’t seen a picture of his real parents?), but if it was kidnapping, they could ask Harry directly what he wanted to do, and return him to his muggle relations if necessary. For all their sophistication, the Grangers had gathered that wizards were very bad at basic muggle things like “using the tube” and “how roadmaps worked.” 

Cindy had in fact taken Harry aside, two days after Severus had dropped him off at their house. Admittedly, seeing him with Severus had assuaged some of her concerns— the child clearly trusted the man— but there were just some details to confirm. Harry had spent the whole conversation staring at the kitchen table and had answered her questions dully. No, he didn’t want to go back to his relatives. Yes, they had withheld food. Yes, they had locked him in his room, which wasn’t actually a room apparently, but a cupboard under the stairs. It felt like sacrilege, to ask the child all of those things in the dazzling summer light spilling into the kitchen of the row house, but when it was done she felt better about the subterfuge. And she had gotten to tell him, with no uncertainty, that he could have as much food as he wanted here, and a room of his own.

“Yes,” says Cindy. “Although I do have several questions about wizarding law and child abuse cases. And the whole concept of the war and Harry’s defeat of You-Know-Who.”

The morning devolves into lots of long-winded explanations of the war and the legal system— Cindy learns that Molly’s twin older brothers were murdered by people supporting You-Know-Who, as well as Arthur’s parents and many of his cousins— and Cindy begins to understand their relief at having a figurehead. Even if that figurehead is a twelve-year-old boy who looses Monopoly with an embarrassing regularity. 

They meet Hermione for lunch, who shows them all her books and babbles about her morning and promises to write. The bookstore is complicated— Gilderoy Lockhart, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, who has little going for him other than his perfect teeth (Cindy wonders if he sees a muggle dentist) keeps trying to drag Harry into the spotlight, and the press of the crowd is such that no one can get to him. Then, there’s Lucius Malfoy, who Cindy vaguely recognizes from Modern Wizarding History as someone who allegedly followed You-Know-Who but was cleared in the aftermath, and his cutting insults manage to draw both Weasley parents into a brawl, and all in all it’s not a great way to end a shopping trip or a summer. They all end up at the ice-cream parlor, Molly nursing split knuckles and Arthur a black eye, and Cindy buys Harry a waffle cone to make up for how clearly uncomfortable he’d looked near Lockhart. She wonders if she should send that Snape fellow a letter about him— he doesn’t seem all that qualified to be a teacher, and he seemed weirdly focused on Harry. 

Or maybe that’s the whole damn wizarding world. 

Hermione gives her, and then Pete, and then her again, fierce hugs. Cindy opens her arms to Harry too, and then to Ron, and then she’s got all three of them. She’d wondered over the summer, when both Harry and Hermione were running in the garden, or when the three of them were working on their summer work loudly at the kitchen table, if this was what it would feel like to have more than one child, and it sits warm and right. 

They will be seeing a lot of the Weasleys, she supposes, as she and Pete take the train back up to Birmingham in a haze of afternoon light: Ron and Harry aren’t going anywhere. 

Back at their house, they find Harry’s owl perched on the back of one of their lawn chairs, with a letter on her leg. She gives Pete a soft hoot and allows him to gently pet her head, before winging off into the gathering dusk. The letter is a thank you note from Harry, because of course it is. “Do you think,” says Pete, putting the letter down gently on the table and pulling out a bottle of wine. “that we could file something with our government and get him that way? His relatives are normal, aren’t they? No way those wizarding blokes monitor DfE.”

She wants to. She wants to forget the way Lucius looked at them in the bookstore, with the sneer on his face; she wants to forget that the war had ended with You-Know-Who trying to murder a baby and the things on Snape’s face, cold and harsh, when she’d asked if this was really the way it had to be, so under the table. 

“I reckon we should ask Severus,” she says, walking over to stand next to her husband, his hand warm in hers. “But God I hope it’s that easy.”

He takes a long sip of wine. “You know I was sort of jealous last time we went to Diagon with Hermy, seeing all of that?” He lets out a long sigh, takes another sip. “I don’t think I’m jealous anymore.”

Cindy feels that in her bones. She writes to Snape: What would you think of going through muggle legal processes, to file a claim for custody of Harry from his relatives?

She thinks: why is it, that your world always seems to be at war? 

______________

Lucy Li, née Creighton, had watched Harry Potter with the eye of a lawyer all evening he’d been at her house. Sue had been delighted, to have him here, and Hermione Granger, who Lucy could admit she really liked, has seemed to relax just having him sitting next to her. From what she’d gathered, from her daughter’s letters and the gossip at the dinner parties, Potter had ensconced himself between two very unlikely allies— a Ravenclaw muggleborn who was shaping up to be the brightest wix in their year, and the Hufflepuff sixth son to the Weasleys, who for all their pure-blood were still derided as blood-traitors for not caring one whit about it. 

And Potter himself was an enigma. Lucy had spent the past ten years hearing stories— from Albus, from the members of the Wizengmont, from various press outlets— about Harry Potter, raised safe from outside influences and the pressure of his fame by adoring relatives, ready to go to Hogwarts when the time came. Ready to take up his place to help defend the world; Albus had always insisted that You-Know-Who wasn’t quite dead, though Lucy hoped to Merlin he was wrong about that. She didn’t know if she could take another war. 

She had expected many things, but not the nervous black-haired child who always tracked her position in rooms, who conversed quietly with Sue about Transfiguration and asked polite questions about wizarding law like it was a novelty. Who took two steps closer to Hermione whenever he could, and took Alexis and Micheal seriously, even though they had no magic. Wizards, even wizards who defeated the Dark Lord, were chock-full of prejudices, but if she didn’t know better, she’d think Harry had been raised by muggles—

Micheal offered to take them over to the local pitch after dinner, for flying, and Harry visibly lit up, turning on Sue. “You didn’t tell me we could fly here!” he said, and the youngest seeker in a century she’s been hearing about would have demanded it off the bat, or just assumed that every wizarding household had a pitch of their own. Would have balked at the ancient Shooting Stars Micheal dug out of the broom closet, would have questioned why Alexis and Micheal were coming along. 

Would have had questions, about her past, and why the daughter of one of the first Death Eaters would have married a muggle and walked away from a house steeped in hatred and suffering. Would have doubted her loyalties. 

I wonder, she thinks, as she follows them to the warded pitch with the camera, to take pictures in the gathering twilight, if anyone knows Harry Potter at all. Hermione sits next to her with a book but hardly looks at it, shouting at Harry and Sue instead, and Harry indeed flies like a dream of a seeker. Severus must be smug, to have him in his house, flying like that. 

When she sits down a few weeks later, after turning over all the small details, to write a letter to the man himself, she tries not to think about the small, hostile child she overlapped with for one year at Hogwarts; tries not to think about the man’s shaking hands and perilously thin face in the post-war hearing, where Albus had vouched for him and the man almost looked like he felt he deserved to get thrown to the Dementors. She thinks instead of the man she’s heard stories about, from her younger colleagues and at dinner parties: a ruthless Head of House, who sees everything and doesn’t let anything slip his purview. 

(Thinks of the child she saw in slight glimpses, on rounds as Head Girl, always tucked close to Lily Evans, like Harry is tucked close to Hermione.)

In the end, it is not the letter she intended to write— talking to Sue reveals that Harry’s home life is fraught, at best; Sue doesn’t know specifics but she has enough sense to understand it’s nothing to aspire to. “Don’t worry, though,” says Sue, leafing through a Transfiguration text thick enough to kill a cat. “Hermione says Snape’s handling it. And Harry’s been happy all summer. So it’s probably fine.”

Lucy thinks of growing up in a manor that was crumbling, of Tom Riddle sitting at the dinner table during her childhood, before he was You-Know-Who, laughing like he didn’t just kill people. Of how she ran during the first war, because what else could she have done: she’d fallen in love with a muggle and didn’t want that horrific snake on her forearm. Thinks of Snape, in the chair with the chains around his arms, and Lily and James Potter, who made different choices. Who payed for their different choices in blood. 

What she writes Snape: I know things aren’t right with Harry’s muggle relatives, and I trust you are handling it, but if you need assistance from a lawyer, I am here. 

What she thinks, as she watches Sue bounce up to Harry and Ron and Hermione in Diagon Alley, flush with joy, and then Harry looks up and gives her a wave: Merlin, please don’t let there be another war. 

______________

Against all odds, Amelia Bones has acquired for herself a free evening. Moody has taken the entire Auror department for “drinks,” which, knowing the bastard, will devolve into a kidnapping / shoot-out type situation. Amelia weaseled her way out of it by claiming childcare obligations, and then Susan bounced in at five asking if she could spend the night at Fatima’s. And so here she is, with a complex cocktail and the wireless, listening to the Gyrehawks play the Unicorns, no one trying to hex her. 

Back in the kitchen for a glass of water during a timeout, her gaze falls on the pictures on the fridge— her and Susan at the beach last summer; her and the DMLE department, Moody’s eye whizzing; Susan’s parents waving merrily in one of the only pictures of them and Susan. She thinks, again, of Susan’s tight hugs and the many comments about thank you for telling me about mum and dad that summer. About how Harry Potter’s eyes had lingered on her and Susan’s interactions, like he couldn’t quite believe it. 

Susan befriending Harry Potter hadn’t been a shock, exactly— she was Susan, she would probably befriend a bear (Amelia shivers at the brief but terrible vision of Susan bringing a full  polar bear into the house as her familiar). And once she’d seen Harry with Susan and Ron, the situation had clarified itself— Susan was friends with Ron and Harry, but Ron and Harry were something thicker than blood. She herself has had the privilege of a few friendships like that, the sort her mother and sister had expected to turn into romances, and she’d never been able to explain that yes of course it was love, but not like that.

Things weren’t quite right with Harry Potter, she’d realized quickly. Something to do with the past and the reason why he was spending so much of the summer with the Weasleys. Probably something to do with the dead, and who he’d ended up with— she won’t pretend she knows it’s lucky for Susan that she made it out of the war alive, because everyone else on her sister and brother-in-law’s list of potential guardians are dead or tortured to insanity. 

Should she investigate? She pours another drink and considers. 

Harry is with the Weasleys now, she knows; Susan had been over there yesterday, and had returned with twigs in her hair and stories about the twins setting off fireworks. Everything Susan has said this summer has pointed to Harry happy and safe. And wasn’t Albus the one handling all the Boy-Who-Lived shite? Amelia permits herself a head tilt back against the couch and a long sigh at the thought of Albus fucking Dumbledore: the man has always rubbed her the wrong way, power and influence be damned. They could have done a lot if they’d had a minister of magic who’d been willing to promote things like werewolf rights and DMLE budget extensions to get through the backlog from their egregiously long suspension of habeas corpus during the war, and not bloody Fudge. 

Amelia allows herself a brief moment imagining how Fudge would fair if Moody invited him for “drinks,” and smiles. 

She flicks through her mental files of allies— what she really needs is more information. If Harry has been spending the summer not with his relatives, someone must have orchestrated such a thing, and she’d like to know who. Molly Weasley, perhaps? Though, she can’t imagine the woman having the subtly to not make a huge deal out removing him from the house—

House. Harry’s in Slytherin, isn’t he?

Is she skeptical that Severus Snape ever truly turned his back on You-Know-Who, even if he was able to convince Dumbledore? Of course she is. Does she know that almost every abuse case of a school-aged child that’s landed on the DMLE desk in the last decade originated because Severus bloody Snape noticed something everyone else had missed? Also yes. 

She thinks of the thicket of rumors in the Order of the Phoenix, about Black and James and Lily and how Severus Snape had fit into that. She thinks of Albus, who retreated to Hogwarts, and how You-Know-Who liked them young as well, all the better to twist their minds and hearts. Thinks of Harry, laughing with Susan, and why Snape would keep this case, out of all of them, off her desk, because he might have hated James Potter, but he was nothing if not a meticulous bastard. 

She writes: Do I need to file a report about Harry, Severus Snape, or am I supposed to trust that you, a known Death Eater, are somehow handling it.

She thinks, nursing yet another glass: holy shit, I wish I had someone I could trust like Susan seems to trust Ron, like Harry seems to trust him and Hermione. 

______________

(Severus, that summer, received no replies to his letters to Harry, but he does receive thick missives from Molly Weasley and Cindy Granger, about exactly what the boy is up to each week. The week after Harry’s birthday, he opened the letter and a handful of photographs tumbled out: Harry perched on a broomstick, surrounded by his friends, grinning; Harry opening a present, looking sheepishly up at the camera, like he isn’t quite sure what to do with actual gifts; Harry doing homework at the kitchen table with Granger and Weasley.)

(He buried the memory where he knew the Dark Lord wouldn’t even think to look at it, because if the Dark Lord saw him sitting in his safe house with his hands shaking over pictures of Harry bloody Potter being happy, he would kill him. He buried the photos with his other photos he cannot have, in a trapped box in his safe house in Bath, the one he would only go to for real if his cover was blown and he was reinventing himself. At the next Death Eater meeting, sitting in the claustrophobic lounge at the Nott estate, summoning derision came easier, knowing what he’s bought the boy.)

(Theo was in the birthday pictures, but there is no trace of him in the cold manor, and Severus still does not know how to play that angle, especially if the boy won’t give him anything to work with, but it cannot be truly alright, to grow up with your only parents as Tiberius Nott.)

(He considers the Granger’s idea, and slots it into his line-up— it could work, unless anyone in the wizarding media caught wind of it, and then it would blow up in everyone’s faces. And if the Dark Lord returned— he sees the row house with the Dark Mark hanging over it.)

(He considers, for a long time, the letter Lucy Li sent him, offering to be on Harry’s side, should he need a lawyer. He remembers her in flashes, supposes she was probably there at the farce of a trial he was given, sitting shaking and chained behind Dumbledore and wondering how Azkaban could be worse than knowing Lily was dead and it was his fault. He responds cordially, and promises vaguely to be in touch. Better a friend than an enemy, a woman like that.)

(Amelia Bones’s letter— which, he should have seen coming, but the Bones girl being so Hufflepuff had apparently not factored adequately into his calculations, of course she would invite Weasley and Harry over to her goddamn house— will eventually require a long, long lunch. He will disclose what he knows, omitting specifics she could use in an official statement, mark her backup— two third-year Auror trainees, he taught them and thus knows exactly where the gapes likely lie in their defense education— and she will eventually be persuaded to the same conclusion Molly Weasley was: take practical measures while we look for legal methods that do not involve Lucius Malfoy, and daydream about socking Albus in the face. He knows Amelia will never trust him, but there is something warming about the way she could not trust him and still treat his ideas as good.)

(A last letter from Molly arrives the day before the term starts, when he’s back at Hogwarts, and those he has to burn. She must have copies, and they’re just too dangerous to keep. But he imprints them in his mind, before he tucks the memories away: Harry and Ron and Susan, playing in the muck outside the doorstep of the Burrow. Harry and Ron laughing at the kitchen table. Harry, with a practice snitch flying around him, and as the photograph moves he reaches out and catches it, and though Severus cannot imagine a more James Potter-like act, the look in his face is all Harry— joy, shock, delight. James Potter would have never doubted his ability to catch it, and Harry is surprised anew every time.)

(Later, he will contrive to give the trio detentions, allegedly for minor infractions but in reality for brewing potions over the summer like idiots, like he had not spent a full school year and sworn a bloody vow to keep them alive. Later, Harry will see that memory in his pensive, and Snape will have try to explain that the man who died facing the Dark Lord with no hesitation is the same man who took him apart in school for the fun of it. Later, he will lie successfully to the two most powerful wizards of the generation, rising to his feet and wiping blood off his face and say he’s just like his fucking father and they will believe him.)

(He is a good liar. But he will not lie to himself, and alone in his quarters the day before the start of term, he looks at the pictures of Harry having the summer he’d built for him, and allows himself the luxury of a full smile.)

Chapter Text

All Harry can think, as he watches Snape approach the three of them from the castle, his robes billowing out behind him and the car shuddering away into the thickets of the forest and blood dripping from Hermione’s forehead and Ron clutching his wrist, is that they’ve had a good run. He flinches as Snape pulls out his wand, even though the only thing he casts is something he recognizes as the slightly clammy weight of a diagnostic charm, and doesn’t argue as Snape barks out orders for Ron and Hermione to help each other to the hospital wing, and for him to come with him to his office. Ron’s in too much pain and Hermione looks too nauseous to really argue, and he wonders if it was all a dream: the summer and Snape being so decent at the top of the ward tower. He can’t quite tell what emotion the man is giving off, at the moment, and it scares him. 

He flinches, again, as the man summons two silver deer and sends them off— one to Madame Pomfrey, detailing the nature of Ron and Hermione’s injuries and where to find them, and one to McGonagall, indicating he had resolved the matter of missing students, and that Ron and Hermione are en route in the Hospital wing and I have Mr. Potter with me. Harry had heard, from Ron and Hermione, about the deer at the end of last term, but he hadn’t seen them before, and doesn’t quite know what to do with the strange familiarity they stir within him. 

“Sit,” says Snape, once they get to his office. Harry sits, and tucks his hands into the sleeves of his jumper, feeling like an imposter without his robes, and stares at the flagstones.

“Look at me,” says Snape, still calm, and Harry carefully raises his head. Snape is leaning on the corner of his desk, looking down at Harry with an even expression. “I assume you are realizing the stupidity of your actions even as we speak,” he says quietly, and Harry looks for the malice tucked underneath, but cannot find it. “However, unless you have spent the summer suddenly realizing that your greatest desire is to feature more prominently in the headlines of the Daily Prophet, I am sure there is a reasonable explanation to your choice to fly a car to school.”

It takes Harry’s panicked mind a long moment to work through that statement, to realize Snape is asking him to explain before just yelling at him. Harry lets a shaky but relieved breath. “I didn’t— we couldn’t get to the platform, sir.” He chance another glance up at Snape, who seems to have taken that claim fairly well. He takes another deep breath and starts to explain about the closed platform, and how Fred and George had already taken their trunks and Hedwig, and how they’d gone back to the car to wait for the Weasleys but then Ron had remembered that they’d been invited last minute to have lunch with Neville’s grandmother, and that they’d probably apparated to Diagon. And the Grangers were in Geneva at a dental conference, and they didn’t have money for muggle transit, and even if they made it to Diagon to find a post office, owl post took a bit, didn’t it, and what if Dumbledore went to talk to the Dursleys and found out he hadn’t been there all summer—and there was a flying car, right there—

Snape holds up his hand, finally. “So you took the car and flew to Hogwarts.”

Harry nods. “We— we were going to try to land in Hogsmeade and hide it and then owl Ron’s dad to come pick it up.”

“And doubtlessly the twins have shown your Mr. Weasley how to circumvent security and use one of the passages from the village to the castle,” says Snape dryly, which was actually exactly the plan, but Harry doesn’t confirm or deny such a supposition. 

Harry takes a deep breath. “Err— if people are getting expelled, it really should just be me— Ron and Hermione wanted to wait for help, I was just worried at that point someone would have showed up at the Dursleys—“ His hands have begun to shake again. 

“No one is getting expelled,” says Snape, sounding slightly ticked off. “The Headmaster does not seem to believe in expulsion for anything less than first-degree murder, and against all odds, you three have survived your stunt more or less in one piece.” Harry looks up to find Snape pouring out tea. “I suspect you will have a Professor Sprout detention in your future, for damaging a rare and valuable tree, and perhaps an essay on the motivations behind the Statute of Secrecy.” He adds milk but not sugar to Harry’s cup— Harry’s not entirely sure how Snape figured out how he takes his tea— and passes it over. Harry feels inordinately relieved, and takes the cup with his fingers shaking slightly less. Snape summons a house elf— Caddy, it turns out, who he waves to— and retrieves a plate of sandwiches, which Harry very much appreciates. 

“We’ll have to rectify your lack of communication options in the future,” muses Snape, picking up his own cup and scooting the sandwiches closer to Harry. He moves over to the other side of the desk to take a seat, and now that he’s not terrified he’s going to be expelled and Snape is behaving like normal Snape, Harry finally feels like he can breathe. As weird as it feels to admit, he really had missed Snape over the summer, hadn’t he? “But most concerning to me is the closed platform. That takes uncommon magic, to fiddle with something like that.”

Harry takes a deep breath. Remembered how Ron had told him days ago to owl Snape about the weird messages in his books, and how somewhere in the fact that Snape hadn’t written him like he said he would, he’d just figured he wouldn’t have time to bother with it. But they’re here now, and the tea really does have just the right of milk. 

“Err—  I think someone doesn’t want me to go back to Hogwarts. Sir.” Snape’s gaze sharpens, and he waves his hand to cast the familiar buzzing. It settles down like a blanket over Harry, and he feels some of the tension leaving his shoulders. This is what he missed over the summer, he thinks— the cocoon of silence wards, and how they meant he was important enough to be listened to.

“Explain.”

Harry does. About the messages in the books, and the fight in Diagon, and the fact that he hadn’t gotten any mail—

“No mail at all?” asks Snape, leaning forward. “You didn’t get any letters from me?”

Harry’s heart leaps. “You— you wrote me? Hermione said it was probably what you’d done to the wards at the Dursleys—“

“Of course I wrote you,” says Snape. “I said I would, did I not?” Harry wants to ask him what he said, wants to have the letters in hand, for reasons he cannot articulate but feel so desperate it scares him, but Snape is already moving on. “I knew where you were, so my letters would not have been affected by wards that I cast. There’s something else involved. Mail magic is complex, and outside the average wizard’s purview— it would take a strong wizard to mess with it, but what powerful wizard would play games with you like that?”

“Malfoy’s dad?” Harry suggests. Something like a smirk forms on Snape’s face, as he stands to pace. 

“Always a good guess, when petty tricks and subterfuge is involved, Mr. Potter. But what would Lucius Malfoy gain with parlor tricks that he could not gain with disputing your enrollment on a grand scale, considering he is currently Chair of the Board of Governors at Hogwarts?” Harry swallows— he hadn’t known that about Malfoy’s dad. Snape seems to sense his unease and waves his hand. “Do not worry about Lucius, at the moment, Mr. Potter— he has plots, of course, but I doubt he will want to make a public enemy out of you. It is in his best interest that you have a respectable Hogwarts career as a Slytherin and reflect fondly on your time here. And you would not know this, of course, but in my experience, Lucius’s chops as a politician far outweighs his instinctive magical capabilities.”

How do you know that, Harry almost wants to ask, but he only knows rumors of who was on which side last war. No one seems to be quite sure about Snape. The man is still muttering to himself, his footsteps echoing on the stone and his cloak billowing, discarding Dumbledore and Voldemort alike.

“Sir?” Harry asks. “If— if they’re this powerful, why go to the trouble of trying to stop me from going back to school, instead of just—“

Snape comes to a stop behind his chair and leans on the back of it, rest his chin on his hand. “Instead of just killing you, exactly.” 

Well, he didn’t have to put it like that, but yes. He can almost see Snape flicking through lists behind his eyes, cataloging players, and it’s a comfort, in the strangest way. 

“Bring me one of your books, when you get the chance,” says Snape, finally. “I will test the mail system, see if whatever this diversion is holds once you get here. You skirted the blocked barrier in a completely unexpected way, of course— I doubt no one else in the entire wizarding world, other than the Weasley twins, would think of trying to breach the Hogwarts wards with a flying car.” Harry decided not to mention that that was where he and Ron and Hermione had gotten the idea, and that he had a good idea of what the two of them would be spending next summer doing. “If I had to hazard a guess, this is someone who used to serve the Dark Lord and, unable to find you or deal bodily harm for fear of repercussions from the Headmaster, is resorting to petty tricks to mess with you. Less subtle than Lucius, more vindictive. I will look into it.”

Do you know them, sir? is the question on his lips. He does not ask it. How can he ask it, when he won’t be expelled and Snape wrote him all summer and is going to help him figure out who is doing this. Snape drags a hand across his forehead and lets out a long sigh. “Did you even receive a gift from me?” he asks. “Or was that too affected by your mail troubles?”

Harry’s heart skips a beat. He shakes his head, and Snape lets out another sigh. “Well, let us hope whoever’s done this isn’t keeping the mail. I will rectify the situation with your gift as well.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, but Harry can’t quite think past birthday present. The coat he’d gotten from the man last Christmas was still one of the best presents he’d ever had. “Now, would you like to floo up to the hospital wing and check on your associates?”

Of course that’s what Harry wants to do. “Thank you, sir,” he says, as he stands from the chair, not exactly sure what’s he’s thanking him for. Snape is by the fireplace, taking down the box of powder, when he turns to Harry. 

“You did— you did have an enjoyable summer, however? Other than these issues?” If Harry didn’t know better, he’d think Snape looked nervous. 

“Of course I did, sir,” he says, because how else can he describe the sheer joy it brought him? He’s still a little too dazed by everything to attempt to explain the novelty of people wanting him around, and feeding him, and getting to study magic or fly every day, but he hopes Snape can tell. He’s usually good like that. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” says Snape, handing over the floo powder. Harry arrives in the infirmary with a rush of green, and finds Hermione already sitting on Ron’s bed (he’s pretty sure Pomfrey gave up separating them midway through last year, after Hermione dug up several comprehensive texts on how healing was enhanced by spending time in the magical auras of close friends, and she’d thrown up her hands and declared if they were quiet and stopped citing texts from the 1800s, they could stay). 

“Harry!” says Ron, sitting up groggily, and Harry about collapses into Hermione. His wrist still looks tender, and Hermione still looks a bit washed out from blood loss, but there’s here.

“Snape’s going to fix it,” he says, in response to both of their unspoken questions. 

“I told you, didn’t I?” says Ron, reaching out his uninjured hand to grab Harry’s. Harry tucks himself better between the two of them. 

“Apparently he sent me letters all summer,” murmurs Harry, feeling the adrenaline crash coming and not caring, now that he’s here with them. “And a birthday present. The mail was just weird.”

“I told you he wasn’t being flaky!” says Hermione. 

“Yeah, he’s honestly sort of scary persistent,” says Ron. “Good luck to the bloke who blocked your mail, honestly.”

Vague thoughts of Theo’s dad and Lucius Malfoy swirl in the eves of Harry’s mind, but what he really wants to know is what those letters said— he knows it’s stupid, he knows Snape’s just doing his job, but it feels so big it’s hard to put into words— and he slides off into sleep between Ron and Hermione. By the time Pomfrey gets back from treating the year’s first victims from hexing in the hallways, she finds all three of them asleep, curled up together, and she shakes her head, thinking of a different trio from years ago, hopes to Merlin these bonds are stronger than those ones, and shuts the curtains around them. 

_______________

Theo had been so caught up in his personal countdown until the train left for Hogwarts, thinking mainly of the library and the Slytherin common room and how nice it would be to see Millie and Harry and Daphne and Blaise (yes, and Ron and Hermione) more often, that he completely forget that Harry was Harry bloody Potter and just generated catastrophes around him. After hearing the whole flying car escapade, he could honestly say that he didn’t think he’d ever be jealous of Ron and Hermione again. He would happily back Harry’s plays and attend his Quidditch matches and help him with homework, but stealing a flying car and nearly breaking the Statute because apparently you have the kind of enemies that just don’t want you to get on the Hogwarts Express, and also Ron had broken his wrist in the effort? He was the Nott Heir, and he was good at a lot of things, but for the first time he understood why the Hat had apparently wanted to put all three of them in Gryffindor. Idiots, the lot of them.

Other than that fiasco, the first week back was as to be expected: Draco was still a prat, Daphne had grown about three inches over the summer and learned several new tripping hexes, two of which she could cast non-verbally; Blaise’s morning routine had somehow gotten even more complicated, and Millie had already found a new secret passageway behind a portrait on the sixth floor (occasionally, Theo doubted her Slytherin credentials—  she was just so friendly, talking to all the portraits— and then she’d say things like well, I can think of several situations where that might come in handy and he remembered. The last person he would want to hide from in Hogwarts was Millicent Bulstrode.) And the new defense teacher was possibly less qualified to be a defense teacher than the actual Dark Lord. 

(Though, Theo will admit that if the Dark Lord had tried to teach instead of apparently hiding on the back of their stammering, vampire-adverse professor, they might have actually acquired some decent instruction. Theo doesn’t want the Dark Lord to come back, but there is a lot he would let slide for a decent education.)

And Gilderoy Lockhart is decidedly not a decent eduction. 

Theo shuts Travels with Trolls with a sharp snap. Next to him, Daphne is revising her start chart, and on the other side of the table in the common room, Blaise has taken a break from his essay to redo his already perfect tie, and Millie is reworking what Theo thinks is going to be some sort of comprehensive Hogwarts map. Harry’s at quidditch practice. 

Abruptly, Theo needs to see Hermione. She will understand the rant building in his chest about the complete lack of citations and defense spells and curriculum focus and how the syllabus was clearly designed to inflate his sale numbers. 

En route to the library (where else would Hermione be?), he’s barely a few strides out from the common room when he almost runs straight into Ron and the witch in question. 

“Potter’s at Quidditch,” he says. “But surely you know that?”

“We were looking for you, actually,” says Hermione. “Or Millie.” She looks a bit nervous, Theo realizes, as does Ron, and the pieces click suddenly— for them to come here now, while Harry is so clearly not, must mean it is about him, in some way. 

“She’s in the common room,” says Theo. “Shall I go get her?”

Hermione looks over at Ron, who gives a quick nod. A few minutes later, Millie is leading the three of them towards one of her favorite nooks in the dungeons— a disused supply closet that opens easily with a basic unlocking charm. The four of them slip quickly inside, and Theo conjures a small floating orb of light to illuminate the compact but surprisingly warm closet. Other than a few stray chairs and boxes of outdated potions supplies, the space is very empty. Hermione raises her wand and casts a quick series of wards— silence, protection, non-detection— with such accuracy and clear power that Theo finds himself jealous.

“Harry meeting?” asks Millie, transfiguring a stray box into comfortable throw cushion and sitting down. Ron does the same as he nods. “Do you think we need a badass name? I just don’t want to leave it to Draco this time. Golden Trio is not his best work.”

Ron laughs. “Sort of hilarious how he got that from all his insults about me having no money.”

“You just have to hope his marks are better than his insults,” says Hermione, pulling back her hair and sitting cross-legged on one of Ron’s pillows. “Because if they’re not, all he’s got going for him is his hair.”

Millie’s laugh is like a cat being murdered, and Theo finds himself oddly relaxed, sitting in a supply closet with almost all of his friends. “I’ll have to use that on him,” she says. “House unity is really stifling my creativity, honestly.”

“Harry,” says Theo, as much as he enjoys the idea of sitting around thinking up insults for Draco all night (was that where Draco went with Vince and Greg sometimes? Brainstorming sessions?)

“Right,” says Hermione. “Harry.”

“It’s Lockhart,” Ron says, without preamble, after Hermione can’t seem to get any further. Theo’s hackles rise on instinct, thinking of his abandoned rant. What kind of defense textbook doesn’t have any references—

“We met him in Diagon, before term,” says Ron. “He was weird with Harry.”

“Weird how?” asks Millie. Theo has a vague memory of the Daily Prophet issue his father had tossed on the table with a scowl and the picture of Lockhart with his arm pulling Harry in for the photo. Can’t get enough of the spotlight, apparently.

“Wanted him in all the pictures,” says Hermione. “Kept trying to make a big deal of him. Very— manhandle-y.” 

“Harry was uncomfortable with the whole thing, but more so than just normal you saved the wizarding world type stuff usually makes him,” offers Ron. “And we’ve been trying to avoid the bloke this week, but you’re the ones who actually have DADA with him.”

Theo’s eyes flicked between the two of them, who’s nervousness had clarified into a kind of bloody-knuckles brutality. Theo almost wanted to say yes, he’s actually been really creepy and possessive, just to see what they would do. Maybe they could get a decent defense teacher after all, if two-thirds of the trio contrived to spike his tea or defenestrate him. 

Unfortunately (fortunately) he brought Millie. Who’s eyes narrow with malice but also focus as she thinks through their defense classes. “Well, Lockhart is clearly incompetent. He loosed a whole hoard of pixies our first class and just left us and Harry to fix it. And he did make a comment about Harry’s desire for fan-mail? But nothing— weird.”

“He said something about mentoring Harry to deal with his fame,” says Theo, which is true. Ron winces. 

“Oh, and that Creevy kid— the new Gryffindor first year, with the camera— was taking pictures and Lockhart assumed Harry was trying to give out signed headshots for some absurd reason.” Theo hadn’t been there for that one, but he had heard Draco making snide references to it through the week. Whatever faint hope he’d harbored over break that Draco would finally see the light of house unity was not panning out.

“Unideal,” says Hermione, her lips pursed. “But not—“

“We will keep an eye on the situation,” Theo promises. “So far, he appears to be a man obsessed with his own fame, with very little to offer in the way of defense instruction.”

Hermione’s face curdles. “It’s honestly disgusting, the hiring process here. Have you read Travels with Trolls yet? The audacity of him to—“

“Not a single bloody source!” crows Theo, finally, and Hermione looks equally justified. 

Ron raises an eyebrow and looks over at Millie. “Thoughts on Tornados’s trade for Perkins? Sees like lunacy to me.”

Millie’s eyes gleam. “Exactly! You can’t build a Seeker career on two lucky catches, it’s about strategy—“

All in all, it is a pleasant way to spend an evening. They get no closer on a name— Hermione’s only suggestion is “Ruthless Quartet” which, as Ron says, Draco could have come up with, and Millie’s suggestion, which she can’t even keep a straight face for, is “Snuffleclaw.”

The Snakes agree to keep an eye on DADA classes, and make sure Lockhart doesn’t get too close to Harry. 

“We’ll cover it,” says Millie, finally, as they stand up and let the transfiguration on the cushions unravel. 

“He seems egotistical, though not—“ Theo doesn’t quite know how to put what he is saying into words, only that if Lockhart hurt people, Harry would not be the obvious choice. Small Hufflepuff first years who are still homesick; isolated Ravenclaw sixth years wanting extra information, not someone under Snape’s ruthless purview. He thinks of his father pulling him aside before Death Eater gatherings at his house, and telling him which of his associates he was absolutely not to allow himself to be alone with. How those people had held themselves with a different sort of thing than Lockhart does.“He’s a narcissist, wanting more fame. Harry’s more famous than him. I— hopefully that’s all there is to it.”

Ron’s looking at Theo with a kind of scrutiny he’s not sure he appreciates; Hermione looks like she’s thinking of disfiguration hexes (Daphne surely knows a few.) Millie has taken a few steps towards the back of the closet, and has begun to press on bricks, like she’s looking for hidden doors. Theo wonders is Harry is back from Quidditch yet, and if he’ll want to revise in the common room with his year-mates or retreat to that mysterious fifth-floor location he and his crew vanish too most often. (Theo will admit, he has tried on two occasions to enter it, but the wards were impressive, uncannily so— if Hermione did all of them, he’s surely looking at the greatest warding master of their generation.)

Theo wonders, with a fluttering sort of emotion that is so foreign it scares him, if there’s a way forward in school that isn’t just making alliances and going to the library and trying to accrue enough knowledge to buy himself some time. If maybe there could also be this: Millie’s little triumphant shout when one of her taps on the bricks causes a concealment charm to fail, revealing that the closet has a window to the lake; Hermione passing him a note at breakfast two days later with some actual reading on trolls (“We went through a lot of lit last year”); Ron reaching over to take his book away so he would actually eat; and Harry coming back from Quidditch with a light in his eyes and drenched and shivering, who still has the audacity to look surprised when Theo casts an aggressive drying and warming charm on him before he sits down to try and do potions work. 

He notes, with a strange degree of fascination and pride, that the first-year Slytherins have began to venture off to the other tables for meals, sometimes. Even the upper-years, who spent most of last year bewildered and occasionally angry about Ron and Hermione joining their table for breakfast, have seemed to let it slide, now. Sometimes, the trio will even sit at Gryffindor, with the twins and the youngest Weasley and Longbottom. 

(Sometimes, when he comes to the Great Hall for lunch, and sees them sitting at Hufflepuff and laughing, he will have an urge to join them.)

Millie and Theo spend each DADA class on edge, watching Lockhart with sharp eyes. When Lockhart attempts to call Harry to the front to act out a scene, Millie elbows him before he can get up and flounces to the front as if she was the one called on.

“Now Miss Bulstrode, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I really must insist—“

“But Professor, I was just so inspired by your account of your saving the village in Travels with Trolls— I think it’s changed the trajectory of my entire career—“ Lockhart, being a preening narcissist, can’t resist something like that. When he tries the same stunt a few days later, it’s Daphne who steps up, smirking at Theo and Millie as she saunters to the front. Even Draco, who appears torn between supporting Potter and keeping Potter out of the spotlight, eventually gives it try, and receives a genuine smile from Harry in return, which clearly confuses him immensely, because he spends all of next potions class trying to undermine Harry and Theo’s Solidifying Solution. 

Sitting up late reading in the common room, Harry’s head tucked up against his shoulder as he dozes, and laughing with the trio at breakfast, and agreeing to help Millie figure out what exactly was going on with the weird room on the fifth floor that was only there some of the time, Theo tries to forget about the summers, about the cold house and the way Snape’s voice had sneered as he told lies about Harry to the Death Eaters in his father’s sitting room, and focus on what he has now, which is what he’s always secretly dreamed of: friends.

_______________

(The first two months of second year turn out to be two of the best months Harry ever spends at Hogwarts, though in retrospect, it is good he won’t put that together until much, much later. Sure, Lockhart is fame-obsessed and keeps trying to drag him to the front for reenactments, but after that first awful encounter in the hallways and the discussion of signed headshots, he succeeded in little more than calling up everyone in Slytherin but him.)

(The weather is good for flying, other than a few sporadic rainy evenings. Quinten and Gemma start up DADA tutoring for all the Slytherins again, and Harry teaches what he knows to Ron and Hermione in their bolthole, and it’s a comfort, the way the hexes and defensive spells come easily to him. Theo offers him lists of additional reading, and Sue continues to have the insight he needs to muster through transfiguration— sometimes, it’s as embarrassingly easy as just thinking to moth it’s alright, I’ll only leave you a snuffbox for a little bit, it’ll be like a little dream and then it’ll twitch and settle for him.)

(They spend Sundays in the library, with what Harry is slowly starting to think of as his friends. Ron and Hermione are more to him, obviously, but then there’s Anthony’s bad puns and Hannah’s trays of scones smuggled in from the kitchens and Neville always knowing which herbology text they should reference and Daphne handing back an essay covered in red with only a sly, mischievous smile. Millie interrogates the Ravenclaws about their common room and corrects everyone’s star charts; Sue and Ernie have an on-going quest to find the most frivolous wizarding lawsuit; Susan’s genuine warmth at having Theo walk in the door clearly unnerves him, but he’s taking it in stride. Blaise asks Hermione for pointers about charms, Justin has an interest in defense, even if he’s not very good, and Harry will catch Ron looking up from his homework, just grinning.)

(His spells are solid, and he has enough time to complete his homework. Fly like this, Potter, says Flint, and Ravenclaw are toast. What was all that nonsense about Hogwarts not being safe? Hogwarts is his. He’s never going back, and so there’s only this.)

(Later, he will remember the weird paleness in Ginny’s face, whenever they had meals at the Gryffindor tables. Later, he will comprehend that the reason Snape’s birthday present was a bracelet that amplified basic personal wards was because the man knew he was a target, from the beginning. Later, as the winter rain comes down on the canvas tent and he sits on the bed with Ron’s head in his lap and Hermione at his shoulder, he will ask himself what they could have had, if it had all looked like that. Two months where no one was trying to kill them, where their biggest concern was an egotistical liar with perfect teeth who couldn’t beat Goyle in a duel and if Ron’s mum would react badly to the car situation.)

(She didn’t, in the end. Harry’s pretty sure Snape sent her a letter or something, defending their actions as under duress and unideal but practical.)

(Two months. Padding back into their bolthole after a Quidditch practice gone late, Harry finds to two of them already asleep— Hermione with a book on her face and Ron muttering about the Whomping Willow— and curls up next to them. Sleeps easy.)

(Everything. They could have had everything.)

Chapter Text

Death Day party, because Harry’s too polite to say no, despite what the day means. For once, feeling hungry enough to sympathize with Ron’s whinging. Harry going still against the wall and then running, and then they’re all running— it’s going to kill someone! he yells, and Ron yells what mate, what’s happening? and then— 

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAVE BEEN OPENED. Mrs. Norris hung up like a gibbeted chicken. The three of them stand there staring, Harry’s hand finding Hermione’s instinctually, and all Hermione can think is it better fucking not be and Ron says, “If this is what the twins meant by getting back at Filch it’s gone too far,” and Harry’s breaths are shallow, like the creases fingernails leave in a palm. 

If Hermione hadn’t been internally panicking, she might have at the wherewithal to cast a disillusionment charm over the three of them, when the sound of the exodus from the feast came.  As it is, her thoughts are cycling rapidly between the need to go to the library and horror over the apparently dead cat and the looming disgust of really? Another threat? And so the student body and the teachers find them all there, facing the wall, and then everything’s a blur as Filch screams— he’s not a very nice man, but Hermione can relate to loving your cat— and Malfoy says something predictably nasty and then Dumbledore is ushering the three of them into a classroom as Lockhart babbles and Hermione tries to remember to breathe.

“He did it!” Filch says, rounding on Harry with venom in his voice, and Hermione and Ron mirror each other as they both step slightly in front of Harry, who has that tight, battle-hardened look to him that he gets in a crisis. 

“We were with him all night!” says Ron hotly. “You can ask the ghosts if you want.”

“And why would Harry have hurt Mrs. Norris?” Hermione asks, willing her voice to be less shaky, but failing. She knows she sounds like a scared child, but also, she is a scared child.

Filch is crying, Hermione realizes distantly. Harry’s shoulder is pressed against hers. She looks around the room, belatedly, for allies, and finds, with a sigh of reassurance, Flitwick muttering detection charms over Mrs. Norris with Dumbledore, Sprout standing with McGonagall by the door, and Snape slightly in the shadows, arms crossed, his attention on Harry.    “He knows!” crows Filch, eyes red and face livid. There is a thing to Snape’s stance, Hermione’s disjointed brain realizes, which suggests he is prepared to draw his wand at a moment’s notice. She wonders if she could cast anything right now, but the speed at which this evening has deteriorated is making the thought of a protego difficult right now. “He knows I’m a squib!”

“Why would I care if you’re a squib?” asks Harry, meeting Filch’s eyes. His chest is heaving but his voice is cool and even. “Why would that matter at all?”

Dumbledore looks up from the cat and can’t argue with that, even though their excuses about why they’re in this part of the hallway fall flat, when Harry refuses to elaborate on the mysterious voice. Dumbledore thinks Mrs. Norris was petrified by dark magic, and Snape dismissing outright Lockhart’s outrageous assumption that he make the restorative draught with a dry, “I’m sorry, which one of us is the youngest Potions Master ever?” is the unexpected highlight of the night, regardless of the circumstances— even McGonagall cracks a smile. 

“With me, you three,” says Snape, leaving Dumbledore and Sprout to debate the current market price of mandrakes and the growing crop in the greenhouses. As they follow Snape down to the dungeons, Hermione chances a sideways look at Ron and Harry— Ron looks a bit nauseous, but Harry looks contemplative.

“In the future,” says Snape, after the door to his office is shut and his silencing wards are up and there’s a tea service sitting steaming on his desk. “When you are headed somewhere suspicious, perhaps consider preparing a lie before hand. Now, why exactly where you taking that rather circuitous route back from the Death Day party?” The sound of tea pouring. 

“Are you going to tell Dumbledore?” Harry asks. 

Snape’s eyes sharpen, and there’s something like approval in his gaze. “If it becomes an issue of public safety, yes. If you lot have simply been experimenting with illicit magic, no.”

“It wasn’t us!” says Ron, but Snape quiets him with a gesture of his hand, his gaze fixed on Harry. 

Harry meets Snape’s gaze for a moment. “It— it’s going to sound like I’m lying,” he says quietly. 

“Believe me, Mr. Potter,” says Snape, soundly slightly annoyed but more intrigued than anything. “I will know if you are lying to me.” On Harry’s other side, Ron gives his shoulder a nudge, and Harry looks over at Hermione, who nods.

Harry tells Snape about the voice coming from the wall, wanting to kill something. Hermione can see the thing in Harry’s face, splayed like a deck of cards: I know this sounds insane, please believe it. Snape’s face is impassive, as it usually is when he’s talking to the three of them. 

Once Harry is done, Snape retreats behind his desk, pushes the tea service towards the three of them, and sits down heavily in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Well, Mr. Potter, I can only say that I once again understand why the Hat thought you would be good in Gryffindor.” 

“It said it was going to kill someone!” protests Harry.

“And what were three of you going to do against something capable of infiltrating the Hogwarts wards, traveling through the walls, and petrifying a cat?” 

“Petrificus,” says Harry, at the same time Hermione says, “Protego,” and Ron says, “Confundous.” 

Snape looks torn somewhere between amusement and wanting to punch a wall. “Three phases in a defensive situation, right, sir?” asks Harry. “Offense, defense, and cover. That’s what Gemma said you’d recommend.” This is of course glossing over the fact that Harry had not shared this information with her or Ron, and that their strategies just happened to mesh well together, but Snape didn’t need to know that. 

Snape pinches the bridge of his nose again and lets out a long sigh. “I suppose, if you were to come face to face with a dark wizard or whichever singularly unfortunate individual is perpetrating this incident, please do utilize Molotov’s classic three-point defense stratagem. Ideally, you will have rehearsed, or even discussed it, beforehand. If, however, you hear strange voices in the walls, or perhaps find blood or receive cryptic warnings, instead of behaving like idiotic Gryffindors, you will instead come and find a qualified wizard.” 

Snape summons a plate of sandwiches to the office, and Hermione has a memory of last Halloween, and wonders if they’re doomed to spend every Halloween feast eating in Snape’s office, being watched by his jars of floating creatures. She can’t bring herself to do more than pick at them, her mind moving too quickly to focus on food. “Sir,” she asks, putting the nibbled sandwich down. “What exactly is the Chamber of Secrets?”

Snape’s gaze is silent and heavy. “I am telling you this,” he says finally. “Only because I would like to actually receive potions essays from you three for the next several weeks, and after last year’s debacle I have no doubt in your ability to procure information for yourselves. If you attempt to do anything with this, I can foresee a swift decline in your free time outside of detention for the remainder of your Hogwarts careers.”

And so Snape tells them. About the rumors Slytherins whisper to each other in the common room, the stories they tell the younger students: a chamber, built by the founder, in case of contingencies. How contingencies has come to mean blood purity, of late. Of how most recently, when the chamber was opened— a generation or two ago, before Snape’s time, at least— there were attacks. A student died. 

“I am telling you this,” says Snape, as Hermione tears her thoughts away from back issues of the Daily Prophet, could Sue help— “Because either this is a very elaborate practical joke, or someone has actually rediscovered how to open the chamber, and either way, it will likely involve you, Mr. Potter.”

“Why?” asks Harry, looking both confused and a bit pissed. “All that blood stuff is rubbish, isn’t it, sir?” He is gripping Hermione’s hand very tightly, now, and she gives him a light squeeze back. 

“Yes,” says Snape, looking rather exhausted. “However, those who do value it highly, and see the benefit of you in Slytherin to promote their agenda, will want you involved. Or seek to promote the appearance of you being involved.”

“Guess we’ll just hang out with Hermione more,” says Ron darkly. “Oh wait.” 

“Yes, I do agree that whoever is doing this is clearly an idiot, Mr. Weasley,” says Snape, rubbing at the side of his nose. “Possibly the same brand of idiot who felt the need to prevent you from returning to school, and is now attempting to finish what they started.” 

Silence, except for Ron reaching over to take another sandwich. Hermione’s stomach is in knots and she almost blurts out how can you think of food at a time like this, Ronald? but narrowly successes in holding her tongue. “What do they think is actually in there?” he asks, between bites. “Some kind of bloody massive snake?”

Snape looks distinctly unimpressed. Hermione gives in and elbows him. “Ronald. How would a snake have survived since Slytherin was here?”

“Right,” says Ron, wiping at his mouth. “Reanimated necromantic snake.”

Hermione rolls her eyes. “Slytherin’s specialty was transfiguration, everyone knows Gryffindor was the dark arts practitioner—“

“They do not!” says Ron. “How do you know that?”

“It’s all in Hogwarts: A History—“

“Sir,” says Harry, cutting off their whispered debate. “Do students often die at Hogwarts?”

Somehow, Snape looks even more exhausted than before. “No one has died here in the decade I have taught here, Mr. Potter. During my time as student, two students died as a direct result of potions accidents, which has been a trend throughout the last century.” Hermione suddenly feels she understands Snape’s frequently aggressive behavior in class slightly better. “There have been occasional accidents due to dabbling in the Dark Arts, and a few murders during the height of the last war. Rather shockingly, no one has died during Quidditch since the 1700s.” He leaned slightly forward in his chair, propping his chin on his interlaced fingers. “Rest assured, I have no intention of allowing you to perish during your tenure here, Mr. Potter.” 

“I don’t want them to die either,” says Harry, gesturing to Ron and Hermione rather sharply; Snape blinks. “Or anyone, really.”

Snape actually goes so far as to roll his eyes this time. “If you would all refrain from following disembodied voices declaring they wish to kill, I believe it would be significantly easier to achieve this goal.” Hermione winces. In retrospect, that was probably not their brightest moment.  Snape looks at all three of them with a heavy gaze. “None of this leaves this room. There is to be no following of disembodied voices, no investigations into castle secret passages or chambers, and no investigations of any suspects, especially if they are your peers or professors. Do I make myself clear?”

The three of them nod. Snape stands in a billow of robes, and opens the door with a wave of his hand. “I do not think this would be a wise time to find yourselves out of bounds,” he says, and Hermione knows he knows about their bolthole, but mourns the loss of the escape anyway. 

“Sir,” says Hermione, standing in the doorway, with the boys behind her, Snape’s silence wards buzzing around her. “Do you think it’s a pretender, or do you think it’s really open?” Snape regards her with an even gaze, and it suddenly occurs to Hermione that she has somehow come to regard him as someone with answers, more so than even Flitwick, over the last year.

“I think, Miss Granger, that it would be better for all of us if it was a mere pretender.”

The door is shut in their faces, and there is nothing but the dark of the dungeon corridor and her friends’s beating hearts. They stand there in the corridor in a tight knot for what feels like an hour.

“Brilliant,” says Harry, finally. Ron pulls out sandwiches from his pockets and passes two to Hermione and two to Harry— “Just because we’re in a state of crisis doesn’t mean you can’t eat,” he says to their unamused looks.

“You sound like your mother,” says Hermione, but she’s already biting into one. Harry is nibbling along the edge of one of his, the yellow light from the candles cutting sallow shadows on his face. 

“You know what he didn’t say we couldn’t do?” asks Harry before Ron can respond to that, swallowing and then drawing himself up taller. His eyes are hard but shining. 

“What, mate?” asks Ron. 

“Research,” says Hermione softly. Harry gives her a sly, very Slytherin grin as he nods. “We can do as much research as we want.”

A beat of silence from Ron. “I’m regretting giving you those bloody sandwiches.” Then he turns, and starts walking in the direction of the library, impending curfew be damned.

Hermione feels the grin lick up her lips, as Harry turns to catch up with him, and then she’s running too, sandwich half-eaten in her hand, and falling into stride with the two of them loosens the last dregs of horror and panic seething in her chest. 

_________________

“Bone-removal hex,” says Hermione, keeping her voice low. “It’s technically Dark magic, but it shouldn’t land us in that much trouble.”

“If it’s technically Dark,” says Ron, pacing around their bolthole. “How exactly did a bloke like Lockhart learn to cast it?”

“Accident,” says Hermione, spinning the textbook they swiped from the restricted section around to show Ron. “Wand movement is close to Episky’s, and he clearly bungled the casting, otherwise, Harry would have been in immense pain.”

“So he’ll be in immense pain, then?” says Ron, with something glinting in his eyes that would never have flown in Gryffindor. 

“I think I might try to modify it,” says Hermione, chewing on her quill. She hopes Harry is alright in the hospital wing, regrowing an entire arm’s worth of bones. “Something tells me the man has a low pain tolerance.”

Ron laughs darkly. “Go for his nose, I reckon. Or his bloody cheekbones. Git seems rather attached to his own face.”

They’d temporarily suspended their quickly sprawling research project into suspicious Hogwarts deaths (which was quickly turning into nightmare fuel— Hermione could admit that she still thought Snape was a needlessly curt and dismissive teacher, but his quickness to vanish potions even slightly bungled was doubtlessly preventing incidents like the death of fourteen-year-old Jason McEwen, who’s cauldron had exploded and vaporized him on the spot) in the wake of the Rogue Bludger Incident. Sue Li and Susan had confirmed that it would take powerful magic to alter the spells on the ball, and Hermione’s thoughts had immediately turned to the rather similar incidents with the mail and the barrier to the platform. Snape, sweeping in the hospital wing after Madame Pomfrey had kicked out the celebrating Quidditch team, had ordered them out too, and they’d decided they might as well solve while they waited.

And maybe get back at Lockhart when they were at it. Upon learning Skel-Grow had been involved, Snape had stalked off to retrieve a better pain potion than the Hospital Wing typically stocked, and Hermione had stalked off to find out how to remove bones from people. And Ron, being Ron, had kept his focus and was reading about how to alter Bludgers.

“It’s weird,” he says, leafing through his copy of Quidditch Through the Ages, which Hermione will begrudgingly admit is turning out to be more useful than she would have thought. “There’s only been four documented cases of people successfully interfering with Bludgers mid-match— usually, it’s the maker who’s been messing with them. But Hootch said she checked them at the start of the match, and they were fine.”

“What happened in the four cases?” Hermione asks, sidling up to Ron and peering over his shoulder.

“Mainly stupidly powerful wizards who’d used their Dark Arts knowledge to try to profit from their bets on a match,” reports Ron. “Or murder their husband’s lover. Or—“

They both stare at the last entry. In 1605, reads Hermione breathlessly. Dwindle the Dithering pled guilty to ordering his house elf to interfere with the Bludgers during the Sedgwick v. Surrey match, resulting in four deaths.

“Harry got off lucky,” Ron breathes. Hermione finds herself loathing Quidditch even more, if possible. 

“You don’t think—“ Hermione says, and then they do think. Of the mail and the barrier and the books. Of the weird voice in the walls. Could someone have sent their house elf to toy with Harry? 

It is late, but not too late for disillusionment charms and a race to the library to find books on how house elf magic works. It is late, but not too late to encounter, on the way back, McGonagall’s pale face as she levers a petrified Colin Creevy towards the hospital wing. They see the steam jet from the camera, and Snape rise from a chair next to Harry’s bed, wand out, looking ready to fight. Not again, Albus, says McGonagall. Hermione can feel Ron looking at her, even if she can’t see him. Harry, at least, seems to be out for the count, which is good, because apparently regrowing bones was extremely painful. 

Colin Creevy’s muggleborn, isn’t he?

What, exactly, are they up against? 

_________________

Sue Li’s November has felt like being held under water, ever since the Quidditch game. The entire castle has been on edge, and she hasn’t had any idea of what to write her parents. So, the rumored Chamber of Secrets? It’s been opened. And then Colin Creevy, got petrified. Like, he’s a statue. And Professor Sprout and McGonagall are petitioning the Board of Governors for funds to import mandrakes, but my friends in Slytherin said that Lucius Malfoy said it’s unnecessary since there’s mandrakes in the greenhouse, but they won’t be ready until the end of term, but you know if it had been Draco and not a muggleborn—

She is angry, she realizes all of a sudden, as she stands at the shore of the lake, watching the dark water swallow the snowflakes. Her hands are shaking with it, and she wonders what she could cast if she pulled out her wand. What hexes would come easily to her. She might be in Ravenclaw, but she knows she has a keen ribbon of— of something else to her, that spikes her spells sometimes. 

She’s spent the last month in the library, mostly— doing homework and helping the trio work through reams of old Daily Prophets. There’s something they’re not telling the rest of them, but sometimes, she’s not sure she wants to know exactly what goes on in their heads. Theo keeps his head down and works, looking up only to scrutinize Harry; Susan arrives with smuggled desserts from the kitchen; Anthony will help when he can.

Someone died, Hermione had said, when she explained it. A student. Mysterious circumstances. We need to find it. 

Sue watches the flakes fall into the lake. It has been a month, and they have been back thirty years. She knows it’s got something to do with the Chamber of Secrets. She thinks of Colin, so small at the Quidditch game. What did they tell his parents? Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Creevy, going to Hogwarts is like this sometimes? He’ll be fine by June! 

What if we haven’t found anything because the Prophet didn’t bother to report the death of a muggleborn? Sue thinks. 

There are rumors, about who might be Heir. One of the pure-blood Ravenclaw fifth years started a betting pool but Sue doesn’t think it’s funny. The top names on the list are three Slytherin seventh years and Harry Potter. 

Harry Potter, who asked her last week how her sister was doing. Harry Potter, who rises from the table with his wand in his hand every time anyone even whispers the m-word near Hermione. 

Sue wonders if it might be said fifth-year Ravenclaw. Sue wonders if she’s safe, if the people who wanted to kill her pure-blood mother for marrying a muggle would want to kill her for being the child of one. In her chest, she can feel her magic burning. 

What they have found, in the papers: four students were murdered at Hogwarts, during the last war. No one was ever caught. But all four of the students were muggleborn, and Sue recognizes the names in the ledgers from those years as names of people who later be confirmed as Death Eaters. 

(Barty Crouch, Jr. Anthony Dolohov. Sirius Black. Severus Snape too, though Sue’s pretty sure he was cleared of everything after the war. Lucius Malfoy, who begged imperius curse for everything and is now on the Board of Governors like it doesn’t matter— )

I want to do something about this, Sue thinks. It is a sharp and ruthless thought, like the ice clinging to the edges of the lake.

She walks back up to the castle, snow sticking to her hair and her breath fogging. She digs up the current information on the Board of Governors, and current Hogwarts by-laws, and then starts a very different letter to her mother: 

Mum:

What can you tell me about the allegiances and personal contacts of the wix listed below? Please let me know anything relevant about their social lives and legal histories, especially related to their politics during the war. 

She has Madame Pince pull the minutes of the board meetings, and has Anthony help her dissect them. Theo, when he appears disconcertingly out of the mist one evening, is surprisingly helpful as well. She traces bloodlines back generations, learns about ancient feuds, and Ernie lectures her about the finer points of blood politics she didn’t think she’d need until now. 

Her mother writes back with everything she needs to know, pages and pages, and she sometimes forgets her mother was a Slytherin but here is all is, shining. Sue, her mother says, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I have faith in you to do it right. I knew you had some Slytherin in there. We love you very much. 

“What if it goes wrong?” asks Hermione, as Sue writes the letters and seals them with the seal she transfigured last night. Theo showed her how to melt wax. It’s the Creighton seal, and she knows her mother might blanche from it, and maybe it’s not hers to use, but she knows what her grandfather was. She’ll trade on his name to undo the kind of world he wanted to build. They’re in the owlery together, as nine school owls wing their way out into the December gloom.  Christmas Hols start tomorrow. She’s going back to Liverpool and her sister has promised to take her ice-skating like they’re just muggles. She wonders what Lucius will say to her letter, done in Ernie’s best calligraphy, which taps into what her mother identified as his two key weaknesses: loss of power and Draco. She wonders what Kiera Otherby, the newest member of the board, who according to her mother lost two daughters in the war, one fighting on either side, will say to her letter about how scary she feels Hogwarts has become, and how much she would like to be a child studying transfiguration. 

“Then we’re where we are now, aren’t we?” asks Sue. Outside, the night is fierce and cold, and Susan thinks of Colin lying still and petrified in the hospital wing, not home for Christmas. “But they’re meeting in the New Year and Sprout said she’s going to make the pitch again. So maybe— we only need five, and my mum thinks Malfoy will flip if everyone else does—“ She trails off, looking over at her friends. Hermione just takes a step closer to her, and wraps an arm around her. 

“I don’t know how you did this,” she says. “But it’s awesome.”

“I don’t know how you do half the wards you do,” she says. “You’re the best wix in our year. Maybe in the whole school.”

“Well, I’m never asking anyone else to handle my blackmail for me ever again,” she says. 

“Harry’s in Slytherin,” she offers, doubtful. Hermione snorts.

“Couldn’t strategize his way out of a paper bag, that one. Either of them, really. All his Slytherin-ness is about surviving.”

Sue leans into Hermione’s embrace. She has a sister, of course, but there is something heavy and comforting about having a ruthless female friendship at her back. “Lockhart’s… face… at the feast was certainly entertaining. I wonder who’s work that could be?”

Hermione lets out a snort, and it’s times like this that Sue understands the Gryffindor her friends is packing. “Finally figured out just the right modifications I needed to make to the hex so that it wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t really need all the bones in his face, now did he?”

And then they’re both laughing, thinking of Lockhart’s flustered summoning of a mirror (at least he knew how to cast one spell) and how Snape had just said, cooly, “I see no difference,” loud enough to carry over the entire Great Hall. 

Sue doesn’t know if her letters will work. If anyone will take a twelve-year-old seriously (though Theo had seemed to think a few of them might be impressed or otherwise positively swayed by her age). But the school coffers are overflowing, really, and five thousand galleons won’t make too much of a dent, and then Colin can have the rest of his year back. 

(She had been blunt, with Lucius, uncaring if she made an enemy. What if next time, it is your son, sir, she’d written. Monsters rarely discriminate. She can still feel her magic burning, if she pauses to listen. She is still angry, too. Maybe she will always be angry.)

Hermione, beside her, is also always angry. It’s the anger of having to do this at all, Sue thinks. It’s the anger you carry with you. 

“I’m glad you’re my friend,” Sue says softly. 

“Me too,” says Hermione, and they stand together in the owlery, saying nothing and being angry and holding each other, for a very long time.

_________________

(Maybe, in another timeline, they would have stayed at the castle for Christmas. Combed through newspapers for weeks on end or tried to corner one of their prime suspects with home-brewed veritaserum or something of that ilk. But everything felt on edge, like the hovering blade of a guillotine, and Malfoy and some of the other pureblood had been more open about using the m-word, and what if—)

(Hermione wants to be brave, and ruthless, but when the morning of departures for Christmas Hols and the announcement that it’s Justin who’s been petrified next, all Hermione can think is thank goodness I’ve leaving, none of this is in Birmingham. She wants, for just a little bit, to trust that someone else can handle this problem— Sue with her owls to the Board of Governors, Snape tearing apart his eldest Slytherins looking for answers, maybe even Dumbledore. Doubtful, considering last year’s fiascos, but maybe? He supposed to be some uncommonly powerful wizard, though frankly she has seen none of that yet.)

(Harry is going home with Ron, but is going to spend a week in Birmingham with her after Christmas. At the station, the two of them stand bracketing him, buffered by the Weasley twins and Ginny’s pale face and Sue and Susan and Millie. Hermione knows, faintly, about the immense complication of Theo’s loyalties, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want him here at times like this. Rumors swirl around them, and all Hermione can think of is how good she is now at the bone-removing hex, and how would some of the pure blood upper-year Gryffindors like to go home with no bones in their legs? He’s not the bloody Heir.)

(Hermione thinks again of the dueling demonstration— how Lockhart had tried to call on Harry, and how Snape had smoothed it over— you’re completely correct, Gilderoy, that my House produces excellent duelists, but Potter is adequate at best so far— perhaps Miss Finkley and Ravenclaw’s Mr. Quinn? And Gemma, being Gemma, had summoned a full snake for her snake-adverse academic rival to deal with— no one said Snape didn’t play favorites— and then Lockhart had attempted to vanish it and succeeded only in flinging it into the crowd—)

(None of them had known Harry could talk to snakes. Even Hermione had only heard of the concept of parseltongue in passing. Justin, who had been very close when Harry had started talking to said snake— I just didn’t want it to hurt anyone! Harry had said, when they had all predictably ended up back in Snape’s office, the man looking like he was one more Golden Trio incident away from having a conniption— had freaked out. So had half the student body.)

(And now Justin—)

(On the platform, as they wait for the train, Harry laces his fingers through hers. His palm is warm and calloused from all the flying. On her other side, Sue leans into her; on Harry’s other side is Ron, staring back at her with a grim determination. She hasn’t voiced any of the doubts that have reverberated through her chest this last month, since Halloween, but in the raw morning they feel like an open wound. Why is it not enough for you, that I can do magic? Why does it matter that my parents are dentists, when you lot certainly seem to need some good dental hygiene?)

(Later, she will learn that while she helped mastermind a resistance at Hogwarts, Sue Li wrote— anonymously, of course, but still fucking wrote— a letter to Voldemort himself. What kind of half-rate wizard gets taken out by an infant? she’d scrawled, along with Isn’s it hilarious that for someone so concerned with protecting wizarding blood, you’ve been the direct reason behind most wizarding deaths in the last fifty years? and leagues away, Harry will wake up with his scar burning. Later, swirling rumors will again descend on Harry in the Hogwarts halls— liar, cheater, murderer— and Ron and Hermione, with more power and more fury, won’t hold back on the hexes. Later, the word itself will be inscribed on her arm, and she won’t even be offended anymore, she’ll just be brutal as she heads back out to duel Death Eaters: you wish you had what I had. How stupid of you, to torture me, and not just kill me.)

(But now, there is only the train, and Harry’s hand clutching hers and Ron’s arm over her shoulder and Sue against her side as a warm weight, and maybe she will have no choice but to fight in the war to come, because it will arrive on her doorstep either way. But she’s not going to have to do it alone, now is she?)

Chapter Text

Sitting across from Harry in their compartment on the Hogwarts Express, as they head out of the Scottish highlands for London and the Burrow, Ron tries to pinpoint when their term went from solid to not ideal to well and truly fucked. Harry is curled up against the window, trying to catch his breath, his wand clenched in his hand, and Hermione’s wards buzz around them. Ron rehearses the hexes he’s most confident in— confundous, petrificus, he might actually try the slug-vomiting one the twins introduced him to last year on a few select seventh years— and outside the countryside ticks by. Ron almost wishes they could have a full compartment, but the waiting on the platform for the train had deteriorated into a pitched fight between the Slytherins claiming Harry as the Heir, the rest of the houses mocking him for it, and Harry looking increasingly nauseous, and so here they are. A little knot against the world.

The end of the term has been brutal, and Ron’s exhausted. He wants nothing more than to climb up to the attic room at the Burrow and sleep for about four days, ideally with Harry within earshot, or maybe just curled up next to him (and he won’t lie, he’s sad Hermione has to go back to Birmingham— he knows she misses her parents, and he wouldn’t want to spend all of break away form his family, but— is it such an outrageous thing to say that she’s family too now?) He eyes Harry from across the compartment— dark circles under his eyes, hair lank and dull, a degree of thinness to his face that he hasn’t had since that first term— and hopes his mum will be able to do what he hasn’t been able to, and get his best mate to actually eat.

Look, Ron is aware that You-Know-Who was (is?) a parselmouth. It’s pretty much the only fun piece of trivia about the bloke— oh, and by the way, when he’s not murdering children or torturing muggles, he can have a chat with any snakes he sees!— but there were a lot of weird wizard powers to go around. Tonks could just change her appearance at will, and there was Seer blood way back in his family, apparently, and chatting with snakes is pretty tame compared to all that, right?

Apparently not. The entire castle had gone bloody mad because Harry had had the audacity to tell Gemma’s thirteen-foot-cobra to calm down, no one here wants to hurt you, what’s your name? Even Malfoy wanted to talk to them now, like a civil person (well, he still insulted Hermione, but he had stopped insulting Harry). Now it was all I am willing to acknowledge you as the rightful heir to our house and together we can cleanse the school and my father will hear about this but in sort of a I got an O on my potions essay way and not a he’ll ruin your whole career way. 

And now not just Colin, but Justin too. Awkward, friendly Justin who loved learning wizarding variations to board games but had his mum owl him muggle puzzle books because he really liked doing the crosswords, even if he wasn’t very good yet. Dorky, dependable Justin, who always forgot to match his socks but would let you read his notes any time, who wasn’t great at any subject but found them all interesting, Justin who if you didn’t know where to find him would be conversing with the Fat Friar, hearing about the ghost drama. 

He hopes Sprout is yelling at the Board of Governors on their behalf. Sue had sent letters, but Ron’s faith is pinned on his Head of House. He’d never seen her so angry as she had been this morning, in a way that made him think, huh, Snape’s really not that scary. Ron almost thinks he might prefer Quirrellmort or maybe straight up You-Know-Who over Sprout after finding out one of her students had been petrified. 

Hermione shifts closer to Harry. The compartment is already smothered in the comforting pressure of her wards, their faint smell of petrichor and charcoal as familiar as his own magic. Harry looks up from his hands, then, and stretches out one of them to Ron, and he crosses the compartment and curls up next to him, all their legs crumbled together. There’s a particular buzz and burn that Ron’s started to notice, when they all cast together, and it feels familiar, like a photograph of them as children, like a dream replicated in real life. 

Harry tucks his head against Ron’s shoulder and just breathes.

Maybe the thing that hurts the most about it is that Ron knows now, in a way he only knew in pieces last year, what it looks like when Harry is happy. The way he stands, the way he laughs, the way he moves through the world. How easily he peels off pieces of his time and care to give away to others, without it coming back up later in nightmares or vomit. How his magic shimmers with power and finesse. 

In September, Harry bounced up from the library table with a glimmer of light in his eyes and demanded that they give up on studying for the afternoon and have a practice scrimmage instead. They went out in the transcendent fall light with brooms and kicked off into the gold. Eventually, others had come to join them— the twins and their freinds; half of Hufflepuff, it felt like; some older Slytherins and Ravenclaws begging off studying; even Malfoy. The air over the pitch had been full of laughter, and in the center of it all had been Harry, grinning, unaware that he could do things like this. Slytherin, with that Gryffindor cluelessness. Though, up in the air with the wind in Ron’s hair, buffering with Millie over the quaffle and hearing Cedric Diggory of all people mutter an oath that would have had his mother in up in arms, houses had never seemed more useless.

Harry’s hand comes up to smear at his face. Hermione mutters under her breath, and Ron feels the drape of her magic over them, and then she’s tucking her wand away for good. Somehow, they’ve all found themselves on the floor, nothing but the shadows and light playing over the compartment while the outside world flicks by. 

“Do you think it’s really open?” Harry asks, at last, something heavy and ruthless girding his breathlessness. Ron is reminded of last year, when they were in their bolthole and the pieces about the mirror came together. “Or is whoever’s sent their house elf just playing with me?”

Ron looks over Harry, to Hermione. “I don’t know,” she answers, honestly. “There’s nothing that I’ve read that makes it sound like house elves can petrify people, but their magic is so under-researched— honestly, it’s sort of horrifying, how little we know about them even though so much of our society seems to rely on them—“

“What things can petrify people?” says Harry. He’s perched his chin on his arms, which are slotted across his knees. There’s a tension to his posture, but a dullness to his voice.

“I don’t know,” says Hermione. “Nothing we’ve looked at has seemed conclusive. There are curses, obviously, but they’re very Dark.” 

“We can keep looking,” offers Ron. Harry’s eyes are stormy, like a sea in a gale. “And we could try to find out who has house elves.”

“And I’ve found this,” says Hermione, reaching for her discarded bag and pulling out a thick, ancient looking tome. “Which has some wards against keeping house elves out of places you don’t want them to be. They’re— well, I can’t do magic outside of school anyway. But I’ll write some of them down and you can get Ron’s mum to do them for you.” 

Harry turns to look at Ron, who nods. “Mate, the last thing Mum would stand for is some ruddy house elf popping in and ruining Christmas dinner. She’ll be delighted.”

“And Snape—“ Hermione begins, but at that, Harry ducks his head back into his arms. 

“Snape’s on our side, mate,” says Ron. “He listened to you about the car, and the voice, and—“

“Then why is it like this!” says Harry, sharp, like a puncture wound. “The— the pure-bloods in the house seem to think I’m going to— to finish what Voldemort started, like he didn’t kill my parents, and everyone else seems to think I’m hurting people on purpose, and Snape just— just hovers— like Dumbledore does—“ His voice cracks, sending splinters everywhere. “I thought he was on our team,” he says softly. 

Ron is still struggling to grasp the ghosts that haunt Harry’s past— he overheard his dad using the word neglect, when Harry was at the Grangers last summer, and maybe it’s that, this part of him that doesn’t seem to understand what adults can and can’t do. Harry trusts Snape, because Snape fixed the problem that had defined Harry’s childhood, Ron thinks. Perhaps untangling blood allegiances and stopping evil wizards feel like small potatoes after that. 

Hermione, intently aware of how much research they’d put into the problem, is having none of it. “Harry. It’s an ancient secret chamber that generations of competent wizards haven’t been able to find, and a powerful wizard probably associated with You-Know-Who who’s using his House Elf, which is notoriously tricky magic. And Slytherin’s already got loads of tensions with the other houses, and he has to make sure no one died in potions, which is apparently a huge problem—“

“I know,” murmurs Harry, his shoulders collapsing. “I know.”
Ron snakes his arm around his friend, tugging him into his side. Harry melts into his embrace, like he has since the beginning. Ron doesn’t think his relatives ever really bothered, and there is a hideous heaving in his gut at such a thought, like opening a bag of flour and having weevils spill out in all directions. 

It dawns on him that the emotions Harry’s having— the fear, the tension, the doubt— are the emotions he’s been writing his mum about. Long letters, sometimes as often as every other day these past few weeks. Littered with his worry about Harry, but also his concerns about Hermione’s frantic study schedule (was the girl sleeping?) and his own nausea over how most of Hufflepuff wouldn’t talk to the three of them now. 

“Mate,” whispers Ron, and Harry is just in his arms now, and then Hermione is there, meeting his eyes, understanding that he’s had a revelation but content to wait to hear it for later. He knows he cannot give Harry what he wants, what he needs, and he doesn’t think Snape can either— is it even fair to ask something like that, from the man? Even asking such a thing from Sprout, who’s so much more motherly, feels like a grievous overstep. But he can feel the tendrils of want stretching from Harry: for someone in power to be irrevocably on his side. To take his emotions seriously and inconvenience themselves to make him feel safe. 

To have something like a parent, for once in his life. 

The lacuna of what the two of them can’t possibly give Harry gnaws at Ron’s bones. In his arms, Harry cries without sound, and then dozes, and Hermione reads the entire tome on House Elf wards, and the train continues on, towards home— except for Harry, Hogwarts is more home than anywhere else, isn’t it?

There is a feeling in Ron’s chest, a feeling he has felt his entire life as the sixth son, of inadequacy. A feeling that eases when he’s in the same room as the trio, most of the time— sure, Hermione’s brilliant at research and magic, and Harry has a seeker’s reflexes and casts hexes effortless, but he can talk to people and understands things the other two don’t. He always remembers that they need to eat. 

He’s known this feeling his whole life, but it is wholly different now, when it comes— like in the summer with the nightmares, and trying to protect Harry in the halls, and now here, as he comes up against his best friend’s enormity of pain— I can’t possibly fix this.

(You don’t pick your best mate because they can fix things, he hears his dad say. You did everything right, he remembers his mum writing, in response to what happened their first Halloween. You were there, with him. That’s more than most people will do.)

A horrific image rises in Ron’s mind: Harry having this breakdown in the loo of the train. Harry having this breakdown alone at the castle over break. Harry having this breakdown back in that fucking house— 

Harry’s head is tucked under Ron’s chin, and his legs are slung over Ron’s lap, and his chest is rising and falling softly in his light sleep. Hermione’s head is pressed against his shoulder, the two leaves of the book split between their knocked knees, her hand that’s not turning the pages tight with Harry’s even as he sleeps. And it’s not enough, because it can’t be. But holy shit, is it better than nothing. 

_______________

It is sleeting in Woking, and Susan watches the chunks of ice slag into the cool grey water of the canal. The house is cold and empty, with her aunt at work, and with Christmas in just two days, all her muggle friends are away visiting their families. She had thought to stay at Hogwarts, actually— the trio stayed last year, and Ron made it sound like a fun time— but that was before everything. 

She paces from room to room, fraught with restless energy, at the smallness of the flat. It’s two bedrooms and a bathroom and a kitchen and a living room, stacks of DMLE reports on her aunt’s desk in the living room and the ancient muggle television still hooked up with an antenna. The Bones are about as half-blood as they come, but right now it all feels suffocating: the technology side-by-side with pictures of the Auror department waving, the stickiness of her Aunt’s wards and the barges in the canal, the weight of her emergency portkey bracelet on the rim of the fridge door as she stares dispassionately at the milk.

Justin. Justin. 

She still doesn’t know if she wants to break down in tears or punch a wall (she’d done both on the train ride home, so that her aunt had had to both heal her hand and take her for ice-cream), but the thing in her chest, writing like a pit of snakes, is some kind of unknown horror. 

She knows Sprout has a meeting with the board a few days into the new year, to try to get funding for mandrakes to undo the petrifications. She knows that if nothing else, the mandrakes in the Hogwarts greenhouse will be ready by the end of year. She knows Justin will be alright. She knows—

(She thinks of Justin’s house in Reading. How his mum had answered the door with her spectacles perched on her nose and a warmth to her eyes. She was an actuary, and Justin’s father had never really been in the picture, so it was just the two of them, in the little bungalow with the climbing plants. What had Sprout, Dumbledore, told her, about why Justin wasn’t home right now?)

Susan halts her restless circuit of the house in the kitchen, in front of the picture of her parents and her on the fridge. Stares deeply into the eyes of her parents— her half-blood father, her half-blood mother. Herself, as a babe-in-arms. The war around them in the eves, because of this shit. Justin was a decent wizard— not remarkable, or anything, but he worked at it harder than maybe you would have expected, even from a Hufflepuff, and his laughter was like sunlight breaking through clouds, and he made everything around him better. Susan would have wanted to be his friend, magical or not.

She wants Ron, she realizes abruptly. Wonders if she should fire-call the Burrow, or if she would be interrupting something. It’s not that he’ll say something, or do something, but just that he’ll be there. Him and Harry, maybe Hermione too. Maybe it’ll be sleeting at the Burrow too, but her restless energy will have something to crackle against, and maybe Harry will look better than the pale, shaking shell Ron and Hermione half-dragged onto the train. 

(She doesn’t think Harry is the heir, because how could Harry be the heir? That would be like her being the heir. You-Know-Who killed her parents; she’s not going to crop up backing his bloody agenda, and certainly not by hurting her friends. But Justin was freaked out by what happened at dueling club, and then Ernie sided with him over Harry and Ron, and Hannah, who’d finally gotten over her weird nerves about Harry at the end of last term, was on edge again and the trio had been doing their best to avoid the dining hall entirely, taking their meals in the kitchens.)

(Harry’s not the heir, obviously. But apparently the standards for Hogwarts acceptance are “have magic” and not “be at least a little smart.”)

Susan is beginning to understand that she is as Hufflepuff as they come. Ron could have been Gryffindor, for sure, with how he stands up to people in the halls and his selfless desire to make things better; Ernie has the poise and social slickness of a Slytherin. But when you scrapped back the kindness and the loyalty and the grit from her, there wasn’t bravery at the bottom. There wasn’t cunning, or a desire for knowledge. There was only the resolve that lets you get up from the ring again and again and again, spitting blood; there was only a raving sort of dedication that says they’re not yours to hurt, you motherfucker as you face the Dark Lord. 

Susan doesn’t know what that makes her. She doesn’t know what to do with it, except pace the Woking flat with anger and terror crackling in her fists, her magic reeking of peat and gauze all around her. All she knows is that it’s not okay, for it to look like this, but how the hell can she do anything about it, being twelve and only truly decent at cooking mac and cheese and getting up after a bad hit in a rugby match?

Everything aches. Hogwarts, and magic, was supposed to be finally getting to step into the inheritance she’d always been told was hers. And yet it looks like Justin and Colin not getting to go home for Christmas and Sprout looking murderous beyond measure at breakfast the morning after and—

And she wants Ron. Not to do anything, not to say anything, but just to be there, alive. So she’s not alone in this flat with only ghosts. So she’ll know that if she’s can do nothing else, she can make his face lilt up into a smile when she comes into a room with scones in her pockets and notes in her hands. 

Before she can overthink, she stokes the fire and tosses in a handful of power, yelling “The Burrow” as she sticks her head through. She is, predictably, greeted by a full kitchen, including Ron’s oldest brother Charlie, who seems be trying to take a middle ground between the twins making fun of Percy’s apparently very sappy missives to one Penelope Clearwater; a slightly less pale looking Ginny attempting to coax a dilapidated Errol to accept some food; Mrs. Weasley busy at the stove with what smells like meat pies, trying to curb the twins teasing, while also check in on Ginny (Susan’s not sure what’s been up with her, but at the birthday party and every time she saw her last summer, she was full of energy and verve, and of late she’s just looked washed out— maybe the combined stress of first year and the petrifications have been really rough on her?); and Mr. Weasley talking to Harry about exactly what his department at the Ministry had been working on lately. Harry, at least, looks more relaxed.

The only person she doesn’t see is the one she needs, and she’s about to raise her voice— in the chaos, no one’s noticed the floo activating— when he walks in. “Oi, Susan,” he says, grabbing a biscuit from the counter and plopping down on the hearth in front of the fire. “What’s up?”

“Er—“ says Susan, very aware of how the room has gone quiet at Ron’s voice. “Just— my aunt’s still at the ministry, and it’s sleeting here—“
“You’re more than welcome here, dear,” says Mrs. Weasley, from where she’s directing knives to chop. 

“Fancy a game of exploding snap?” calls Fred. “Certain prats don’t seem to be very keen on it this break,” elbowing Percy as he says it. 

“Some of us have very important upcoming exams, Fredrick—“

“Save it,” says George. “NEWTs aren’t even for a year and a half, even Penelope hasn’t started studying yet—“

Ron ignores them, and his mum, and glances back to Harry. Susan tries to convey— in her stance, in her eyes— that she won’t bring the term through with her. That she believes him, that she’s on his team.

Harry stands and comes over to the fireplace, sitting down next to Ron. “It’s sleeting here too,” he says. “But if you don’t want to play Exploding Snap, we can listen to the Cannons loose to the Harpies on the wireless in a bit?”

“Hey,” says Ron, giving him a light elbow. “The Harpies are third-worst in the league, the Cannons might have a chance!”

“No way,” says Susan. “Especially since Benson’s elbow is still messed up from that Bludger last week.”

“Still can’t believe Cotswold only got a three game ban for that,” says Ron. “Clearly deliberately targeting.”

“Dunno, doesn’t seem like anyone in the league seems to believe in giving out targeting fouls,” says Harry. “One of your chasers got messed up a couple of weeks ago, right Susan?” 

Susan winces, thinking of Cunningham’s brutal fall because the Reading Keeper had flown straight into him. “Yeah, you would have thought that was obvious,” she says. “But apparently not.”

“Boys,” says Mrs. Weasley, from around the corner. “Don’t just make her wait in the fire all day. You can talk about Quidditch in the living room, for Merlin’s sake.”

“Right,” says Ron. “Sorry, Susan.”

“I can come on through, then?” she says, looking between them, but mainly at Harry. His face still has some of the unhealthy thinness he picked up at the end of last semester, but the sickly pallor is gone. She imagines he came back from Hogwarts and slept for several days straight— that was what she’d done, and she hadn’t even been accused of being the heir of something brutal. But the soft sparkle is back in his eyes, subdued, but there, and she knows what he’s going to say before he says it. She loves Ron fiercely for a sharp, sudden second— all the Weasleys, really, for giving him this space— but Ron is the mastermind, even if he doesn’t quiet see it yet.

“Yeah,” says Harry. “Yeah.”

In the end, the afternoon goes the way most afternoons at the Burrow tend to: Exploding Snap until Fred and George’s “special chaos rules” go too wrong and Mrs. Weasley storms in to take the cards away, since the ceiling and/or floor are on fire; Ginny contrives to get her aside to ask her some question or another that would feel weird asking a brother— this one is about a friend Ginny liked at first but is now making her feel weird, and Susan suggests to maybe spend more time with people who don’t make her feel like that, and Ginny says, “Like Neville and Luna?” who, yeah, if it’s icky weird, and not Quibbler weird, are good choices, Susan supposes (who is this vague person Ginny’s been hanging out with? Susan racks her brains, comes up with nothing). They talk a lot of British League quidditch, and Susan even has an excellent opportunity to turn the twins’s teasing of Percy dating Penelope back on their heads with “Better Penelope than Marcus Flint, though, right?” and the twins pale like ghosts. 

“Flint’s not going out with anyone who isn’t Oliver Wood,” says Charlie, taking a large helping of meat pies and ignoring the bombshell he’d dropped on the entire table. Even Harry looked a little green at the gills. “Rivalries like that have a tendency to just end up with snogging, trust me.”

“What’s that about a rivalry turning into snogging, dear?” says Ron’s mum. The twins swiveled their gazes to their oldest brother, who had turned a bright shade of red. 

“Well— it’s nothing serious—“

“Yet,” says Fred with a slightly manic gleam. 

“Writing soppy love letters yet?” asks George. “I think it runs in the family, actually—“

The table dissolves into laughter and in-fighting, and Susan adds help Ron hide any future romantic entanglements from twins until proposal has happened into her mental list of being a good friend tasks. She flicks her gaze to Harry, who looks less haunted than he has in weeks, as Ron pipes up with the essential question of which of the Gryffindor chasers, exactly, are the twins interested in. Harry helps by pointing out how often the twins comment on a certain Hufflepuff Seeker’s skill and Ginny laughs so hard at the expression on the twin’s faces that she falls off her chair. Even the absolutely ruinous we’re going to prank you into oblivion look the twins send Ron and Harry doesn’t unseat the glow in Susan’s chest. 

“Thanks for coming,” says Ron, as they stand in the kitchen after dinner. Outside, the sleet sloughs down in long lines. He gives her a warm hug, and it suddenly occurs to her that she was just lonely. The semester had been rough, and the emptiness of the house had let all her thoughts spiral. 

“Thanks,” says Harry, but the way he says it means he is thanking her for far more than just showing up at the Burrow uninvited. He has such a doubt to him, doesn’t he— very Slytherin, really— that anyone would actually be on his team. 

But hot damn, she is. “Of course,” says Susan.

“Wait!” says Ron, and then darts out of the kitchen for a moment, yelling after himself, “I forgot your present!”

Susan finds herself alone in the shadow-drapped kitchen with Harry Potter. She takes him by the shoulders and looks him in the eyes. “You’re not the heir,” she half-whispers, half-snarls, and holy shit does it feel good to say something real and solid and powerful. “And I don’t care if you’re possessed by bloody You-Know-Who— I’m always going to be on your team.”

Ron’s love is like an expanse of rolling hills; Hermione’s love is like the folios of citations at the back of the book. Theo’s all sharp edges; Millie’s is smothering and decedent, like humidity; Sue’s is something well-honed and balanced.

Susan’s love is not like any of those things, she knows. It’s blazing in her fists and spilling from her wounds and everywhere, all the time. Harry opens his mouth— to argue, to invent some ridiculous situation where it might be a fallacy— but Susan just drags him into her arms.

She thinks of her parents, dead fighting a war and unable to give her things like this; she thinks of Mrs. Weasley’s eyes roving over the table and settling again and again on Harry; she thinks of Ron and Hermione always at his sides and Snape’s gaze snapping to him in the hallways and at mealtimes. 

Will it be okay if she doesn’t have anything else to offer? If there are no chocolate frog card or Orders of Merlin, no titles or awards? She is not Ron, reading rooms and understanding people; she is not Hermione, consuming information; she is not Harry, with power in his frame and the world hinging at his touch. She is not Theo with social cunning; she is not Sue with political acumen, her anger changing things. Her anger is this. 

All of it is this, maybe. 

“Thank you,” Harry whispers again, crumpling into her arms, and the answer, though she doesn’t really understand it yet, is yes. 

Is always yes. 

_______________

(When they got to Kings Cross, Hermione ducked off to talk to her parents while Ron’s mum wrapped her arms tightly around Harry, who all but collapsed into her, and then she was back, with permission to stay at the Burrow for a few days. This unhitched a thing in Ron’s chest he didn’t know was there.)

(This time, Mrs. Weasley had transfigured an extra mattress in Ron’s room, not even bothering to officially put Hermione in with Ginny. She understood.)

(Slowly, as the holidays unspooled and Fred and George made many increasingly absurd suggestions as to what might actually be in the Chamber of Secrets— Ron’s personal favorite was George’s “A portrait of Salazar, but he’s starkers,” though Harry had liked Fred’s “One very small garden snake who’s functionally immortal,”— Harry seemed to unspool too. The ever-present tension that had been there since Halloween melted off his face, and when Charlie spelled snowballs to act as defacto Bludgers in their 3-on-4 Quidditch match, he was as ruthless as he’d been in September, flying easing some of the fear in his face.)

(Up in the air, Ron could pretend that everything was fine. That Ginny hadn’t seemed like herself all semester, that the twins weren’t on the verge of stepping out into something larger than their family might be ready for, that Charlie wasn’t in Romania all the time. That Harry was alright and happy. That he was getting to have a normal education.)

(But on Christmas Day, when they took a picture of everyone in Weasley sweaters, and Harry tried to slip away, a cry of don’t you dare went up from everyone— even Percy— and Ron said mate, we want you here and Ron’s mum said you’re part of the family now, dear, and Harry looked almost faint with emotion, with something like hope.)

(Ron had gotten Harry Cannons merch— either you choose a team, or you will be rooting for my team by default, he told him, and Harry had given him an eye-roll but then worn the scarf constantly for the last week; Hermione had gotten him— surprise, surprise— a thick book on dueling tactics. Theo had owl-ordered him a thin volume on various kinds of invisibly and disguise potions, which was definitely in the restricted section at school; Millie had gotten him a subscription to Seeker Weekly. Sue Li had gotten him a book called Don’t Panic, It’s Just Transfiguration, which she’d already tabbed. Susan had gotten him a framed picture of the Trio that she’d taken over the summer; as Ron watched, their relaxed smiles broke into hysterical giggles and they collapsed into a knot of laughter. Neville sent Harry a package of his Gran’s world famous fudge and letter who’s length Ron approved of that Harry passed Ron after he read it, wiping his eyes. It was thanks and support and undying loyalty all in one— this year is so much better than last year, and you and Ron and Hermione and everyone are the reason why, I’ll always be on your side, no matter what nonsense everyone is talking about.)

(There is no package from Snape. Harry tries and fails not to look too disappointed. Ron continues to contemplate the enigma of Severus Snape, and never comes closer to an answer.)

(Later, Ron will understand that even then, before Voldemort came back, Snape was playing countless sides off against each other, and trying to find a monster at the same time. Even a spy could only work so many angles at once, and a present for a twelve-year-old you weren’t ready to admit might sort of be yours was one of the things that slipped in the shuffle.)

(Later, Ron will kick himself for not seeing the things in Ginny’s face that whole year. Dealing with a horcrux when she was eleven? How did she even contrive to survive such a thing? Later, he will stand shoulder to shoulder with Harry in a graveyard during a very different Christmas Hols, watching Hermione transfigure a wreath of flowers, and he will think, with the bizarre darkness that has consumed everything lately: Christmas with your family, Harry.)

(Except that’s not really true, is it, because by then, he’s spent every Christmas since he’s eleven with his family: in a warded room at Hogwarts, in the Burrow’s cozy living room, in the Birmingham row house. Spent them leaning into Ron’s shoulder, hand intertwined with Hermione’s, laughing at something the twins have said or one of Mr. Granger’s absurd dentistry school stories.)

(Not alone. Not anymore. And, if Ron has anything to do with it, never again.)

Chapter Text

By New Year’s, at which point Dumbledore feels like he has investigated every brick at Hogwarts, the only thing he wants to do is go back to his office and have a large glass (bottle?) of mead. Maybe find a portrait of Salazar to glower at. How dare the man.

Only a handful of students stayed over for Christmas, and nearly all of them are Severus’s, and none of them are anything less than pure-blood. That, at least, is one headache out of the way. And Pomona has offered to take over lobbying the Board of Governors for the funds to import mandrakes— Albus doubts Lucius will spring for it, but maybe if he put pressure on Severus to deliver some blackmail—

No. As much as he hates the idea of young Mr. Creevy and Mr. Finch-Fletchley missing most of their year, there will be mandrakes available by June. He will not play off potentially crucial war intelligence for six months of student learning. 

(He hopes there is not another petrification, but he will admit to himself that he thinks at this point, he’s perfected the parent letter home in case of one. Dippet certainly had no grasp of the management part of being a headmaster.)

Alone in his office, Albus allows his thoughts to sprawl. He remembers, as if it were yesterday, the cold thing in Tom’s eyes as he’d allowed Hagrid to be framed for his crimes. The way opening the Chamber and murdering Myrtle hadn’t prevented him from achieving the marks needed to be Head Boy. How even then, he’d been building the nexus of that first corp of Death Eaters. It had all been fun and games for him. 

Last time, Tom had been the obvious perpetrator. Slick and violent, cold and cruel, and a parselmouth to boot, which was too much of an obvious connection to Slytherin for him to not dwell on it.

But this time around, it is Harry with the parseltongue.

Dumbledore won’t deceive himself— if Harry was a sixth or seventh-year, with that same cold thing at the root of his eyes sometimes, he might have taken the rumors more seriously. But twelve-year-old Harry, who, according to Severus’s sneered report the day before term let out, had spent the past three weeks looking pale and withdrawn and utterly disgusted with his house? 

Twelve-year-old Harry, who knows the names of the house elves and who is best friends is a muggleborn? Not a chance, Dumbledore thinks. Which leaves—

There are the older Slytherins, of course. Who could have found a way in that he couldn’t, and wanted to watch the school burn. Severus had said he’d vetted his house, but forgive an old man for his doubts. Old loyalties ran deep, and just because Severus had turned spy on Voldemort for a muggleborn, Dumbledore had never forgotten that Lily had been the exception to the rule, for so many things. Snape was a tool, at best, in need of guidance, not any kind of independent operator.

(If there is a silver lining, it does appear Severus is finally, finally seeing the James Potter in Harry. He can put up with Severus maintaining a cool professional front in public, but if the man is to spy in the next war, it really will be better for everyone if he can’t stand the boy. There are only so many lies one wishes to weave.)

  But Dumbledore had spent the last month scouring the Slytherins— both lightly legilimenizing them at meals and just observing them— and had found nothing of note. And if he’s honest with himself, none of them have ever struck him as the same kind of wrong as Tom— some of them are future Death Eaters, certainly, but only out of weakness and misguided ideologies, not because they have the wherewithal to purge a school of muggleborns.

So if Slytherin wasn’t the answer, and Harry wasn’t the answer, who is it? He had briefly considered some kind of possession, but after last year’s fiasco he had refined the wards and the Voldemort he knew would never had returned to the castle simply to finish up a side project he started when he was sixteen. 

The mead is sweet on his tongue, and he scrubs a hand across his eyes. He had planned on a quiet year, to give Harry time to adjust and learn— two or three years of peace and schoolboy antics would give him a strong basis in magic and friendship to understand that the wizarding world was worth protecting, and then he could start to introduce him to advanced magic, teach him how to fight, and share with him his research so far into Tom and how exactly he might be remaining immortal. 

And yet, here they are, with the haunting reminders of one of Albus’s greatest failures as a professor and a very real threat on hand that seems to connect back to Harry in a way he can’t understand.

As he drains his glass, Albus has a terrible feeling that the next six months will be very long indeed. 

______________

Over the Christmas holidays, Severus caves and breaks one of his most basic rules: using the Lake District cottage for anything less than an emergency. But he hasn’t been able to really sleep ever since that bloody Chamber was opened, and the cottage, protected by his best wards and a bastardized fidelus that substituted blood and a Azkaban-worthy amount of dark magic for another person, is one of the only places he’s been able to consistently sleep in years. 

Technically, he has seven residences: Hogwarts, for work; Spinner’s End, where everyone thinks he lives off-term and is really only for appearances, for Dumbledore and the rest.  Then the two safe-houses he tells people about: Leeds, for his old crowd, stuffed to the gills with books on blood magic and twisted artifacts; and Exeter, for Dumbledore’s old crowd. Props, the both of them, easy to burn if the need came. And then, the flexibility of his “London” safe-house— often an abandoned muggle dwelling he’d ward and stock and then scrap. They were usually within the ring of the M25, hence “London,” and he liked to replace them at least every year. More often than not, he’d do it every six months. Bath, of course, was a final recourse: a shoebox of a flat in a derelict corner of a city he had no connections to, useful only a staging pad for if his cover was blown with enough to time to run. 

And then the Lake District, which is his, and his alone.

Inside a nexus of wards Severus doubts the Dark Lord himself could unravel, he pours himself more whiskey he would ever let himself have at Hogwarts, sheds his robes, and puts one of the muggle rock records Regulus was so absurdly fond of on his turntable. Runs his hand along the mangle of the Dark Mark and allows his shoulders to drop for the first time in months. Four days, he’s given himself, as a— a reward? for surviving this hellish term. Albus thinks he’s at Spinner’s End over Christmas; the Malfoys and the rest of the Death Eater ilk think he’s muzzled in the dungeons, at Albus’s beck and call. 

He trusts the Headmaster, with the basics. With figuring out the reason the Dark Lord couldn’t die and moving chess pieces around. But he doesn’t appreciate being shifted like a pawn, his very emotions managed like an asset. He’s not sure why, exactly, Albus is so hell-bent on attempting to stifle his care for Harry, but there have been so many he’s just like his father, isn’t he conversations since the term began that Snape feels like he’s back in a Death Eater meeting, lying through his teeth. 

Maybe it is only natural that he slipped into lying to Albus too. He puts the glass down and stands up to flip the record, which is difficult with his hands shaking still— he took the Nerve Regenerator a few hours ago, but he always forgets just how much vitriol Nott packs into those damn things. He notes, absent-mindedly, that perhaps he should consider just legilimenizing Theo— if there’s any chance Nott’s been turning that kind of suffering on his son, all bets are off, no matter what complex long-con Theo seems to want to play with him. 

He thinks Albus wants him to see him as some kind of savior— the only man willing to give a man like him a second chance. The one guiding him forward towards redemption. But somewhere between kneeling in the snow, begging for his life, and the day Harry Potter had walked into Hogwarts, something had changed within Severus that he doesn’t think Albus saw happening. There were only so many subtle hints about how necessary it was that you remain potion master, my dear boy (Snape hates it when Albus called him that, he has a bloody name) before it evoked different memories of kneeling, of bonds, of debts. 

It is hard to see man as a savior when he sends you knocking on the door of Tiberius fucking Nott, asking for scraps of information about the Chamber of Secrets. Playing it off as the work of his idiot employer had saved him face, but waltzing into the Nott manor uninvited was asking for Crucio. Sure, he had gotten some insight— Albus hadn’t elaborated before that the person who’d opened the Chamber before had been the sixteen-year-old Dark Lord— but his hands are still shaking. 

Two months of a term had never felt longer, he thinks, as the B side of Wish You Were Here crackles to life. The whiskey is a warmth in his chest, and he tilts his head back on the couch and just tries to breathe, now that no one can possibly watching. The petrifications, the vilification of his house by the school at large (Albus hadn’t been helping with his refusal to expand his pool of suspects to the blood-supremacists in the other houses), and Harry being a parselmouth, of all things— and of course the school was full of dunderheads who all thought a twelve-year-old who’d famously defeated the Dark Lord and was hardly ever seen apart from a certain muggleborn was about to act on his agenda, just because he could speak to snakes. 

The angles are too much for his exhausted, Crucio-shaky brain tonight. Over the past month, aided with Granger and Weasley’s admittedly brilliant insight that a house elf was likely somehow involved, he’s conceived of and discarded dozens and dozens of plots. The problem, of course, is that all the wizards he knows who want to hurt Harry Potter are the types to ignore and underestimate house elf magic. The problem is that he has no idea who is opening the Chamber (he knows it’s no one in his house, and he’s ruled out all the usual suspects in the other houses. Should he go to unlikely suspects? He can’t imagine anyone who hasn’t passed OWLs having the magic for this, but perhaps there are variables he isn’t seeing?) and no idea what’s causing petrifications. Most monsters he’s heard of kill or maim, rather than petrify. 

And then, as icing on the cake, there’s Harry’s emotional state, which has somehow become his problem. He pours himself another glass of whiskey before he attempts to deal with that thought. 

It’s— when did the child think he was the person to come to with these things? Surely Molly Weasley, or Pomona, or literally anyone else, is a better choice? Severus does fixes, and spy maneuvers, and preventing needless potions deaths. 

And then there is Harry curled up on the cot in the Hospital Wing after Lockhart vanished the bones from his arm like an imbecile, sleepily asking Snape to make sure he wouldn’t come back. And then there is Harry, sitting pale and shaking after Severus had dragged him and his… associates… to his office after the reveal of his parselmouth abilities, asking what he should do. 

Asking, in more words, for him to fix it.

Some days, he wished, selfishly, that the boy had been in Gryffindor. Then he could— well, hopefully he would have been able to see through his James Potter looks to still get him out of that house. But then the rest of it could be on Minerva. Harry wouldn’t come stumbling into his office, asking for answers, asking for support, looking up at him with Lily’s eyes like he was on his side.

Outside, the soft sift of snow; inside, the low lights over his private library and the crackle of the record. He thinks of the summer he took the Dark Mark, when he had spent days at a time at Grimmauld, lying on the floor of Reg’s bedroom and listening to Pink Floyd with him, the turntable his friends’s last link to his brother and his single act of rebellion against his mother. He remembers talking over the instrumental tracks, spinning great tales of glory to Reg, barely fifteen, then. Without him, would Reg have managed to unhitch himself from the whole affair? He was never evil, not like his brother was— it was the shaky, uneven dedication of someone who’s whole family bought what the Dark Lord was selling hook, line, and sinker. 

“Wish You Were Here” crackles under the needle, and Snape thinks of Reg, thinks of Lily. Several whiskeys in, he wonders if it would be easier if he could just be the shallow, bitter man Albus seems convinced his is. Hating Potter because of his name, because his eyes hurt to look at, meaning what he tells the Death Eaters. Who is he, after ruining all these lives, to have the boy place his whole being into his hands? Harry doesn’t even seem to realize the weapons he’s handing him. 

Or, thinks Snape, as he tilts his head back as the record runs out. He knows exactly what he’s offering up. He’s no Gryffindor; he grew up in that house and knows how to lie. He’s giving me everything because he trusts me. 

And has there ever been a more terrifying thought? He drains another glass, and he can’t feel the linger burn of the crucio anymore, but he can hear Reg’s off-key baritone edging along to the peaks and ridges of the melody, and hear Lily’s squirrel of a laugh, and he knows, in his bones, that it won’t be four days. It will be until mid-afternoon tomorrow, when the hangover is manageable again, and then he will go back to Hogwarts and fix this. Find out who’s sending their house elf and opening the Chamber and ruin them. 

He threw Lily’s trust back in her face, and he mutilated Reg’s trust until it bought him an early grave. But not again.

After everything, Harry Potter has decided he’s the one he wants to trust, and Severus will be damned before he fucks this up as well.

______________

After three weeks of Christmas Hols, Pomona’s anger has not diminished, but it has cooled into something rather like a sword, and she goes to the Board of Governor’s Meeting with her head high and all the dirt scrubbed from her hands. They might have refused her emergency injunction in November, but she’d be damned if they would refuse her to her face. Albus hadn’t wanted to get involved, citing “tensions with board members” (read: Lucius Malfoy) and “political upheavals” but she’s hoping she can spin it into a non-political issue. They’re children, after all. 

It’s been a long term. Her heart still aches after her talk with Justin’s mother in Reading, the way her face had trembled with fear and grief as she’d broken down weeping in Pomona’s arms. He’ll be fine, don’t worry, she’d said, all the while knowing that June was so far away. She can’t bear the thought of one of her kindest and brightest loosing two terms of his magical education because the Board was tight with the purse strings. She has with her at letter from his mother, which she would read the nine of them; Severus had skimmed it and decided it would likely sway at least three of them— with some editing we could maybe hit five? he’d said, with no malice, just the amorality with which he moved through the world, and Pomona, who was willing to stoop to blatant emotional manipulation of the Board, was not willing to stoop to editing a mother’s missive about her incapacitated son. But she thought Severus knew that. 

He was testing the waters, she realized later. He doesn’t know as much about me as I know about him. 

Sprout shoves the whole enigma of Severus Snape off to one side— he is on her side, and that will have to be enough for today. He isn’t any closer to the root cause of this Chamber of Secrets business than Albus is, she knows. Flitwick was teaching at the school as well, last time, but has nothing helpful to contribute, and Minerva was Albus’s apprentice at that time, and only knows about it in the flashes of Albus’s terror the first time around.

The man is acting afraid, in a way Pomona has rarely seen. There is something more to this business, she feels, than petrifications and a group of students with blood-purist views. Some  ghost from the past that has appeared again, at the worst possible time. 

And Pomona’s heard the rumors. The first thing she will be doing with her house when they get back from hols is sitting them down in the Common Room and having a nice, long chat about spreading gossip, and judging people based on abilities, and how they have a responsibility as a house to not make rash condemnations and protect the innocent. Even if Harry Potter, of all people, was the Heir of Slytherin opening the Chamber of Secrets, there were some things Hufflepuffs simply did not do. Like hex one of their own in the hallways for remaining friends with him. 

(Also, she really would have thought her house would have been observant enough to understand that the thing Ron had with Harry was unbreakable, and it was a waste of magic for them to try.)

The Governors look down on her as the small boardroom at the ministry as she enters, with her yellow robes and pined-back hair. She looks like a pureblood witch, she knows (she borrowed a particularly pointy hat from Minerva), and there’s no reason to let them think otherwise. One of many benefits of her unconventional eduction, outside of Britain and Hogwarts. 

The Board looks up as she walks in, and the other observers and witness raise their hands in greeting. Lucius’s ridiculous hair seems to glow under the magical lights, and he stands and gives her a polite welcome, always the politician. Severus, with dark circles under his eyes, pacing in his quarters, had said that Lucius was no doubt maneuvering to get Albus ousted as Headmaster. We cannot possibly allow that, he had said, his footfalls making nearly no sound on the pavers. But if you can persuade him that allowing funding for this might elevate that goal—

She could not follow the permutations and labyrinths Severus’s mind went down as he built political machinations, but she says what he told her to say. She stands in front of the Board of Governors— Lucius, who pleaded imperio for his actions in the war, who is too slippery for good measure; Batilida Bagshot, ancient beyond measure and yet somehow still on the damn thing; Damascus Warren, who had spent all of the last war holed up in an astronomy lab in Wales hoping the Dark Lord would forget about him, which apparently had worked, because here he was— and gives it all she has. 

She has tempered her expectations, and is willing to compromise— if she can get maybe half of the money, they might be able to supplement. She has the letter, Severus has Lucius’s number and told her what to say, and there are reasonable people on the board.

But the last thing she expects is to make her case for what she needs, and before she even unfolds the letter or says any of the vague statements about power Severus had fed her, Kiera Otherby says, “Surely we can do that, can’t we, Lucius?” and Batilida says, “Never in my years have I heard of such a thing happening at Hogwarts, unresolved, no less!” and Ogden Burnswild says, “And what if something happens to the Defense teacher, it’s essential we have a supply of remedy on hand!” (Pomona has a brief, glorious vision of Gilderoy Lockhart paralyzed in the Hospital Wing), and Lucius, seeing the tide turning, says, like Severus said he would, “Well, we must prioritize the education and livelihood of the children, even if other parties will not.”

Pomona walks out with her galleons, and it is not until Cathy Rooney comes up to her (the only one of the board she actually taught) and whispers conspiratorially about the vastly impactful letter from that Creighton girl— Sue, was it, she has a mother working in law— that Sprout realizes she and Severus could never have planned on this outcome.

“A hundred points to Ravenclaw,” she says as she walks back into the castle from the apparition boundary, and there’s the spill of sapphires and Flitwick’s gleeful if confused smile and Severus’s tilted head and Minerva’s bemusement. “They said yes,” she tells them, and Minerva about collapses back into her chair from relief and Filius’s shoulders relax and even some of the perpetual tension to how Snape holds himself evens out. “Because apparently your Sue Li is Slytherin enough to seal her letters with the Creighton seal, Filius.”

“Oh I hoped I’d convince her to lobbying eventually!” he crows. “Mind like a steel trap, that one—“

“Excuse me, she’s the best in transfiguration in the year—“ butts in Minerva.

“Three weeks, once I get them,” says Severus, low as he sweeps by her, out of the room.“Seems those Hufflepuff influences have come a long way.”

And perhaps there is truth to that, she thinks. She’d thought Sue a typical Ravenclaw— passable at her subject, hyper-focused on transfiguration (to the point where she had to give her detention once for attempting to transfigure seeds into saplings instead of just planting them, though admittedly all the detention had consisted of was a rather invigorating discussion of how transfiguration interacts with plants).

But Sue— Sue and Hermione were close, she knew. And hadn’t Ron taken to inviting pretty much everyone he, Harry, and Hermione knew to study together in the library on Sunday afternoons? And she’d seen the trio sitting with Sue and Anthony and occasional Lisa Turpin or Micheal Corner at the Ravenclaw table a lot, though that had dropped off by the end of the term (she’d been concerned when she hadn’t seen them in the Great Hall for meals, so she’d asked Ron, who had confirmed they’d been taking them in the kitchen— don’t worry, Snape’s already been on our case.) Could it be—

She had watched the trio enough to know how they worked. Hermione was the mastermind, and Harry had the soul, the gravity that bound everything together, but Ron was the one who noticed when Harry wasn’t okay or Hermione wasn’t sleeping. Who took the bound they had as a crew and turned it outwards, said you as well, we have love to give away. It was very Hufflepuff of him. Hermione’s friend had become his friend, had become Harry’s friend, had become the linchpin. 

Is this what the trio does, she wonders? 

If they can do this at twelve and thirteen, what things are yet to come?

______________

Filius was at Hogwarts last time the Chamber was opened, as well, though it has always been Albus’s ghost. Albus and the boy who would become You-Know-Who were— entangled— even then. Some still-birthed mentorship. Not that Filius did any better— there were too many book requests he should have refused, too many conversations where Riddle left with everything, things Filius hadn’t ever meant to tell him. 

He hadn’t been useful to the Headmaster then, in finding the Chamber— even now, after spending most of his life at Hogwarts, he still finds himself occasionally turned around on a moving staircase or stumped by an unexpected corridor— and the motivations of his older Ravenclaws slip from his grasp consistently. There are a few with the sheer power, and one who is deeply invested in understand Hogwarts as a place who could have stumbled upon it, but none of them had that virulent sense of blood-purity. Even his blood-purists don’t seem like suspects— if they can’t scrape together enough focus away from their obscure side projects to submit potions essays, he’s not confident they could invoke fear in the castle. 

Pomona has secured the mandrakes, helped by his very own Miss Li. Filius had known the child had a strong familial background in law, and had anticipated her focus turning that way after a couple of years (it was hard to make a living in transfiguration theory), but the letters to the board had a hovering trace of something different. Something very like Miss Granger’s hyper-fixation on wards. 

(Miss Granger is her own separate problem, which two of his Prefects have brought to his attention over the past term. Her tension, her worry, her seeming lack of sleep in the last weeks of term. Fear over the petrifications, or an all-consuming desire to protect Mr. Potter from the repercussions of being accused of being the Heir? And what a can of worms that is.)

He drags a stack of Charms journals towards him and begins to mark down which articles he wants to read, but his mind is elsewhere. On the kinds of spells that can petrify. On the fact that even ten years after the war, the hatred and the vitriol is still there, that no one can see Miss Granger for her magic, not just her blood. (He pities the fools, once she comes of age. If she can cast protego at twelve, they will have no recourse in the years to come.)

He has done what he can: casting wards over the common rooms of the castle, to keep monster out. Giving detentions to the students he hears using the m-word, though he knows he is not that perceptive. So much is surely slipping through his fingers. He will sit Miss Granger down, when she returns, and try to get to the root of why she is not sleeping as much as she should. It occurred to him, the week before last, that while the trio were away from the castle, perhaps he could reinforce the warding on their hideout in a disused fifth-floor classroom (was it luck they had chosen a room so close to the magical nexus of the castle in the Come-and-Go room? Or was Miss Granger that perceptive at eleven? He wouldn’t put it past her) but when he arrived there, the wards were a dense tangle, far beyond what he knew Miss Granger was capable of, even as a prodigy. It was long minutes of prodding before he understood, and his face curled up into a smile: Severus had gotten here before him. 

Still, he could not resit adding a few of his own: the man was rawly powerful, yes, but he was no Charms master. By the time he is finished, he doubts Albus could get in without the trio wanting him in there. There is something comforting about that— even after all these years of working together, he still has his doubts about the man. For a headmaster, he has never seemed that interested in teaching, in a way that reminds him of Horace Slughorn, his least favorite colleague of all time (Lockhart’s constant preening is giving him a run for his money, though at least Lockhart will be gone by the end of the year.)

On the long walk back to his quarters near the base of the Ravenclaw tower, tucking his wand back into his sleeves, Filius reflects that he has seldom felt as useless than in these past two years. What it is about Mr. Potter and his tendency to attract danger from the firmaments? 

(What is it about Mr. Potter, that he is of such a temperament that two of his best and brightest are shifting their educational courses to protect and aid him? He thinks of another Potter, years before, who had also attracted acolytes— except they are not acolytes, are they? Mr. Lupin and Mr. Pettigrew were always convinced they were one step away from being discarded, and acted accordingly, but Miss Granger and the youngest Mr. Weasley are part of the very glue that seems to hold this Mr. Potter together. He is not an untalented wizard— his magic is instinctive, bleeding from his very soul— but when he is standing between the two of them he becomes something very different all together.)

In the long run, what is there to do but to teach them everything he knows? He makes a mental note to have a long discussion with Irma about changing the limits on Miss Granger’s ILL requests. He has a feeling she will need it, in the years to come.

______________

(Last time, she was a twenty-seven year old Transfiguration apprentice, and Albus came back to the lab with a hideousness cracked over his face and gripped the tabletop with his hands and told her Myrtle was dead and it was clear in the tone of his voice that he blamed himself. Minerva didn’t know much about his sister, only that he blamed himself for that too, and surely this reminded him of that. It will be years before she learns that it was Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle who would become He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who’d opened the Chamber just to prove he could.)

(She was much kinder to Hagrid after learning that, she will admit.)

(This time, they are both far more powerful than they were then— Minerva’s magic alone sets the castle rattling sometimes. But still, the Chamber alludes them. Slytherin was brilliant, and ruthless, and she’ll freely admit that his particular blend of magic is likely completely beyond her, but it still irks.)

(She has no leads, on who it could be. If it were a different year, she would leap to accuse the Defense Professor, but there is no way on earth Gilderoy Lockhart would be capable of something like this. Perhaps if she leeks the idea that he is a muggleborn, the monster will turn on him?)

(She almost laughs to herself at the thought. My my Minerva, how Slytherin of you, Severus would say, if he knew. But in the end, this will be one of a thousand things Severus will never know. At the end of the day, her loyalty will never be to him.)

(Sitting in the infirmary at her youngest Lion’s side, where she has spent too many evenings of late, she buries her face in her hands and tries to breath through the hysteria. Pomona went to America to retrieve the mandrakes a week ago; two more weeks and Severus will be done brewing the restorative. She will take Colin to Hampshire, to his parents’s house, rules for inter-term visits be damned. There will be a moment, when he steps into his mother’s arms, where all of this will feel like more than a failure, where she will forget that the monster is still out there, that someone at the school is opening the Chamber again.)

(Who could it be? Severus is complex, and fiercely loyal of his house, but even he would sure not cover for one of his snakes if they were behind this.)

(She cannot even think of Potter, and the whispers that follow him in the halls, and how he is somehow also a parselmouth. She shudders at the idea that he could have been in Gryffindor— how could she have handled such a thing? She’s never been good at managing internal division within her house, and the idea of Potter turning up to her office, asking for help— she can barely stand to look at him, as he is—)

(She runs a hand through her grizzled mane of hair and lets out a long sigh. How is it, that after fifty years she feels just as powerless as before? How is it, that after all they’ve done, the same cycles seemed determined to repeat themselves?) 

(She hopes beyond hope that if this Potter has nothing else, he will have better picks in friends than the last one. If he has nothing else, perhaps the youngest Mr. Weasley and Granger will give him what Sirius and Remus never gave James, when push came to shove.)

(Minerva sits in the infirmary, as the night falls, three days before the term starts, and bats away another bought of despair. But who is she to hope for such things, after all of it ended last time?)

(No answers, only the night and the wind through the highlands and the upwelling of magic in the castle: promising nothing, demanding everything.)

Chapter Text

“So we all agree Harry can’t possibly be the heir, right?” says Hermione, leaning against the doors to the their newly warded compartment on the Hogwarts express. Several new wards that only appeared in Flitwick’s Christmas present— Obyrk’s A Through Review of Sympathetic Warding— have been added to her usual package, and she reaches out gingerly with her magic to test their strength. The compartment is almost too full— Ron and Harry are on the floor underneath the window, with Susan on Ron’s other side; Theo and Millie and Daphne are on the bench seat to the left, and Sue and Neville, with the last minute addition of Anthony (who seems to have spent Christmas break sorting out his priorities) are on the other bench seat. Fred and George are running interference, and Ginny said she would be here but isn’t, and Hermione can’t stomach pacing through the train looking for her right now. 

“Yes,” says Anthony. “And sorry for being such a prick before Christmas break, Harry. I know it’s not you.”

Harry gives a nod, and Theo unclenches his grip around his wand. 

“So we’re here to come up with a plan,” says Hermione. “To make sure this term isn’t like the end of last one.” Harry is looking at the floor, and opens his mouth, probably say something like you don’t have to, it’s fine, but Ron beats him to it, leaning over and whispering something in his ear that makes him deflate a bit, split a small smile, and nod. 

“So are we going to just hex anyone who says anything against Harry, or are we going to pin the blame on someone else?” asks Daphne, who has seldom attended their study group but followed Millie and Theo to the meeting with a cool, even light in her eyes. She’s got a kind of understated violence to her, slipping down with her thin blond hair, and it’s unlike anything Hermione possess but she finds she doesn’t mind having it in her corner. 

“I want to try the slug-vomiting hex the twins invented on Kelsey Metcalfe,” says Susan, her eyes glittering. Hermione winces— she’s not entirely sure she likes the concept of the slug-vomiting hex the twins taught them all over the Hols (including Susan may have been a misstep, she’s just now realizing)— but Ron looks torn, considering Metcalfe is a seventh-year in their house who seemed to be personally insulted by Harry’s existence as a Slytherin.

“Slug-vomiting hex?” asks Millie, her eyes lighting up. Even Theo looks intrigued, though Hermione has a suspicion it’s with the same kinds of questions she had, about spell creation. Theo being Theo, however, he has the presence of mind to snap his book shut and clear his throat. 

“We need to think more strategically than just some hexes,” he says. “The last thing we need is to make more enemies. We’re involved in a complex campaign for public opinion.”

Neville looks a bit confused, and Susan still looks like she wants to punch someone, but Harry’s grinning now and Anthony looks impressed. 

“The problem is that we have three factions of the school to interface with,” he says, in a tone that makes Hermione think he’s been plotting this out all of hols, and she loves him for it. “We have people who are supporting you as heir, either because they’re rank-and-file Slytherins caving to house loyalty, or because they’re blood purists too stupid to remember you mainly hang out with Gr— with Hermione—“ Hermione grins despite herself, he really is trying— “and that the Dark Lord killed you parents. Then, we have the majority of the school, who are convinced you are the heir and are opposing you. Again, low-intellect. And then thirdly, we have any smart blood-purists out there who realize you are not the heir, are willing to support the actual heir, and are publicly opposing you because they know you’re not.”

Silence. Harry’s biting his lip; Anthony and Sue look like they’re contemplating that logic. “Four,” pipes up Neville. “You forgot about people who know Harry’s not the heir and don’t want to hex him.”

“Right,” says Theo, taken aback a bit. “Us too.” He shifts slightly, cracking his neck. “Basically, I believe we’ll have to generate a different strategy to deal with each group. And group three will likely contain whoever is actually opening the Chamber.”

“What exactly is the end goal?” asks Sue, who’s gnawing on her quill (of course she’s taking notes, Hermione realizes, with a flush of pride). “Like, are we trying to find out who’s actually opening the Chamber, convince the school it’s not Harry, or just diffuse all the tension?”

The room turns to Harry, who lets out a long sigh and rests his chin on his knees. “If we can figure out who it is, then we can stop it,” he says. “Snape— Snape said that last time, someone died. So that’s the priority. Stopping that.” There is something in his face that both makes Hermione’s heart swell with affection and makes her want to cross the room to him. Ron’s got an arm around him, at least. 

“It hasn’t been great, all the— the everything,” he says. “That people think I’m the heir. But you guys don’t.” He looks around the room, with his head high, taking everyone in: Theo with his neat tie and thin face; Millie’s gleaming eyes and tight curls; Daphne with a languid violence. Anthony admitting his mistakes and Sue taking notes; Neville with his round, open face and Susan’s love like getting hit by a train. Her and Ron, in it until the sun burns out. “You guys are on my team.”

And the slight awe in the root of his voice, the open glee on his face— that’s as familiar as the drive home, isn’t it, because she sees it every time she looks in the mirror, back from a study session in their bolthole or a meal in the Great Hall. The novelty of being wanted, of being asked to stay, is so huge as to be almost overwhelming at times. She doesn’t even have to look at Ron to know that he too understands. Neville and Theo too, she thinks. 

The familiar cool rush of anger, at whoever is doing, whoever’s mauling their semester to pieces, and also a hot flush of pride: they’re building something. They’re making things better. A little cabal against the world. Politics, strategy, knowledge of the wizarding world; Neville’s rigorous moral code, Susan’s brutality, Daphne’s slickness; the twins, running interference, with no regard for rules if they’re in the way— things she and Ron and Harry don’t have.

There is something warm in her chest, just looking around at the room full of her friends. This is what I wanted when I learned about magic, she thinks. I wanted to belong somewhere. 

They spend the rest of the train ride plotting angles, generating suspect lists, and eventually being interrupted by Fred and George, who cajole them into a game of Exploding Snap, which Neville is surprised as the rest of them when he wins. Theo’s plans are complex, multi-faceted things, involving variables Hermione never would have thought of; Sue is invigorated that her letter writing campaign went so well; and Susan is the one who has the idea of what to do about Malfoy: “You should just insist that you’re passing off your heir duties to him, every time you see him, because he’s ‘more worthy.’ He’ll have no idea what to do, and it will be hilarious.”

They disembark onto the cold, snow-curdled Hogsmeade platform, the castle looming above them as flights and decks of windows. Hagrid is there, with a lantern, and Hermione casts a disillusionment charm over the three of them before anyone thinks to look their way. They watch their friends scatter, to do as they agreed to: Theo and Daphne and Millie to convince the Slytherins that no matter their stance on Harry being the heir, he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it, hoping house unity will come through; Sue and Anthony to emphasize the reversibility of the petrifications and, as Theo said, the power of your allies, and Harry had kicked him and said friends, you can say friends, Theo; Neville and the twins to “handle the Gryffindors” (said with a grim determination on Neville’s part and a manic light in the twins eyes) which Hermione honestly didn’t want to get in the middle of; and Susan, to go be aggressively Susan. The trio would handle investigative work. 

Under the slight sogginess of the disillusionment charm, Ron found one of her hands, and Harry found the other, their shoulders warm against hers. Above them, the castle, with a monster. Above them, the castle, with people who wanted people like her petrified or worse. 

“They’d be a fool to mess with you, ‘Mione,” Ron whispers at her shoulder, squeezing her hand. 

“And if they do, we’ll make sure they regret it,” says Harry, darkly, in a way that sounds nothing like the Boy-Who-Lived and every inch Severus Snape. “Someone got me a book on dueling for Christmas.” His shoulder is tight against hers, like a blood oath. She takes a deep breath, and then another, and thinks of the library. Thinks of how Flitwick got her special permission from Madame Prince to have up to 50 items on ILL at a time, which he thought warranted an express owl and honestly she agreed. Thinks of their bolthole, where no one can get through, and how one of Susan’s main points of order was that the trio should feel like they could eat in the Great Hall again, and everyone else agreed.

She can do this. After all, she’s not alone anymore, now is she? She hears, occasionally, someone make a comment about how she’s the brightest wix in their year, and it warms, but it never satisfies like walking up to the castle shoulder to shoulder with her team does. 

We’re building something, she thinks again, as she hears snatches of Mille’s raucous laugh and Neville’s voice steady when he talks to Luna and Ginny. We’re building something, and some idiot pure blood with a map and a monster isn’t going to be able to stop us. 

________________

It is a strange feeling, the way the whole castle seems to know it was her who wrote the letters to the Board of Governors that apparently tipped the scales in their favor. Especially because apart from the idea, Sue doesn’t feel like she really was the mastermind. Theo was the one who suggested complete amorality, using the Creighton name at will; Anthony and Ernie before the whole snake debacle helped her research bloodline and wizarding politics; her mother gave her the insights she needed. Is this the Ravenclaw method, thinking outside the boxes and then finding sources and allies to make the pieces click? 

Let them think what they want to think about your motives, Theo had told her, in the library in December, sharpening a quill with easy, exacting strokes. His dark eyes were shining in the candle light and there wasn’t a hair out of place on his head, but all around him hovered a kind of manic darkness, like a book from the restricted section. She still didn’t know how to feel about him, really— his father and her grandfather had fought together as Death Eaters, the kind of people who wanted to kill her father and sister. But he had chosen Harry, hadn’t he, and Harry trusted him, and maybe that was enough? Judging people because of who their parents were was such a You-Know-Who stance anyway. And his mind was like a thicket, always moving in different directions— he had a Ravenclaw understanding of magic, but used it in such a Slytherin way. It was strange to have a friend who was all edges, all weapons and corridors and subtle hexes from behind his book, who’s declaration of complete loyalty was helping her with these letters, who would brush off any thanks. 

Everyone brings their own assumptions, Theo had said, in the library, the candlelight warm and sputtering. It was moments like this when Sue could forget she was writing letters to the school board begging for funds to help a student finish the year out (no way was this nonsense happening at Eton), and pretend she was just in the library talking to one of her friends, and when Theo was finished with his talk on political savvy, she would pull out her transfiguration essay and they would compare solutions to the problems McGonagall assigned them. But you don’t have to confirm or deny any of them. As long as you say nothing, it leave you free to be everything. 

Like Schrödinger’s cat, she said. Not dead or alive. Theo had blinked; Sue had forgotten he was as pure-blood as they came. She spent the next twenty minutes explaining the thought experiment, until his eyes were burning with interest and understanding, and then they tore into a long winded discussion of how such a concept might be applied to transfiguration. 

And so maybe it had taken several more nights to write the letters than it should have. But talking with Theo reminded her of talking to her sister, even though the two of them might hate each other on principle (which hurt, like a knife to the gut)— the spark and the hunger and the threads of pure intelligence coming together.

Justin and Colin were restored from their petrification two weeks into Winter Term, to the general relief of the castle. Neither could remember what had attacked them, just a bone-deep terror. She offered to help Justin catch up in Transfiguration, but the boy ducked his head and practically ran away from her, and she swallowed heavily as she watched him go, fighting back bitterness. 

Some of the older Ravenclaws had taken to calling her Creighton instead of Li. She let it slide, and then she went and sat down next to Hermione and made a show of asking her to demonstrate a ward that was OWL level. Just because it’s my blood doesn’t mean I’ll be joining the Dark Lord. 

January and February pass in a muddle of snow and darkness; the castle feels like it’s hold its breath. With no new petrifications, and Slytherin’s silence on the issue of the heir (other than Harry’s hilarious second-day back confrontation of Draco at dinner, where he had attempted to confer his heir status on Malfoy so pompously it was clearly a complete joke, which had left Malfoy flushed and pretty much everyone deeply confused), interest in Harry-as-heir is beginning to die down, and the threat seems much less pressing now that both Colin and Justin are back in class. (Colin had recovered pretty well, back to his typical scampering and photographing; Justin seemed a bit skittish and withdrawn, even though she can tell Susan was trying.) She and Theo and Hermione set about trying to recover Harry’s transfiguration grades from their free-fall, and Hermione and Harry accompany Neville to office hours with Snape in an attempt to curtail his sheer terror of the man, and Millie somehow convinces her to join her and the twins and Ron and Harry in a scrimmage match that results in Sprout taking one look at them upon reentering the castle and sending them all straight to the infirmary to be treated preemptively for hypothermia— five points from Hufflepuff, Ron, what on earth were you thinking! and really, it’s the mark of a superb Hufflepuff that Ron takes the fall without comment. 

(Though, it’s the mark of a Weasley through-and-through that Millie finds herself beset with slightly too-warm warming charms for the next week.)

In February, Sue finds herself sitting down in the library next to an exhausted looking Susan, who looks minutes away from falling asleep on her transfiguration essay. “Let me,” Sue offers, and Susan passes it to her wordlessly. She figures the trio have retreated to their secret hideaway— Sue’s fairly sure it’s on the fifth floor, but doesn’t want to press. And it’s not like it really matters— there’s no way she could get through Hermione’s wards if she wasn’t invited. Harry won the Ravenclaw-Slytherin match narrowly for Slytherin, and luckily there were no rogue bludgers this time, but all the training had left him behind on his homework, so she isn’t surprised they’re not here.

“Thanks,” says Susan, and Sue jerks her head up, realizing Susan has been crying. She swipes a hand against her damp face. “Just— just couldn’t figure out how to choose the coefficients.”

Sue resists the urge to launch into a detailed lecture on the subject and instead says, “Are they still being idiots and not talking to you?”

Susan nods, running her hands through her fluffy blond hair. “Justin’s freaked out, still, obviously. I guess I can’t blame him for that. But he won’t even accept notes from me or Ron. And Ernie’s got this whole spiel about dark lords and knowing who’s going to go bad— well, honestly, it’s disgusting. Every time I think about it I want to hex him. And Hannah— maybe I should have seen it coming, but still—”

Sue hasn’t spent much time with Hannah Abbot, except to know she’s a half-blood, which a complex family history from the last war, a half-blood who roots for the Harpies and is fairly reserved for a Hufflepuff, unless you get her talking about baking. But she knows Susan is her friend, and if she trusts one thing, she trusts Susan’s choice in people. 

“I just don’t understand,” Susan says, her voice breaking. Sue, without quite realizing what she’s doing, shoves the transfiguration essay aside and brings her arms around Susan. “She spent nearly all of last year too nervous to speak to Harry because she had a massive crush on him for some stupid reason, and then Ron finally managed to get them to hang out, and now she won’t talk to me because she’s convinced I’m siding with Harry over her. I don’t want to side with anyone!” Her tears are hot on Sue’s arm, and she shifts slightly, to better hold her friend. “I just want my friends back.”

Sue isn’t really good at this part— no one in her family is. She has a vivid memory of going to her mother sobbing about being picked last for primary school kickball, and her mother delving into the details of her latest case. Alexis usually just started assigning math problems, hoping that would help. She tries to summon her father, instead, who’s hugs are warm and dense, who will hold her and murmur platitudes. 

“I’m here,” says Sue. “I’m your friend. I’ve got you.”

And if the transfiguration essay is turned in with some tear stains and some cramped comments McGonagall can surely recognize as very Sue-esque tangents, she doesn’t say anything. 

In late February, two mouths without a petrification and Sue finally feeling like she can breathe again, she and Anthony lie on the floor of their favorite study nook in the Ravenclaw common room, waiting for a Hermione who may or may not be back this evening. “Does it bother you,” Anthony asks, “that she’s with the two of them more often than not?”

Sue shrugs. “It’s— it’s different with them.” She raises her eyes from her most recent tome on transfiguration. “Does it bother you?”

“Err— I don’t know,” he says, shutting his book (Against With the Wind: Wizards and their Obsession with Suing Weather Phenomenon.) “Bother isn’t the right word, perhaps. It’s— I suppose I’m just confused by it.” Sue understands, after a long moment of him chewing on his lip and staring at the floor, his coiffed hair slightly mused, that he’s probably been thinking about this for a while. “We’re not— I would say we’re friends—“

“We are definitely friends, Anthony—“

“But I don’t— I don’t revolve around you like Hermione does with them.”

“Yeah,” says Sue, tilting her head to prop it on her knees. “I think it’s more than a normal friendship. I think—“ Is there any way to say it without it sounding weird? “I think they sort of need each other to survive.”

Anthony’s face creases. Sue thinks of Harry’s stillness at dinner, when her mother had asked him who he was living with; thinks of Malfoy calling Hermione the m-word instead of recognizing her magic was better than his; thinks of Ron lost in the chaos of his own home. Thinks of things she has— the things she knows Anthony has, because she was at his house over the summer, with his mother and father and twin younger sisters and grandmother, magic folding easily from her hands, everything warm and full of light, everyone proud of him and listening to his nerd facts, never out of place, never unwanted— and tries to put it into words. “We’ve always had people on our team, Tones,” she says softly. “I think it’s different for them.”

His face scrunches further into contemplation. “Tones?” he says finally, slightly horrified, and Sue thinks he understands. 

“What, want me to call you Ant?” 

“Anthony is perfectly fine, and you know it,” he huffs, opening his book again. 

“Ant. Tony. Nee.”

“For the love of Merlin, Li—“ he says, lowering the book with steel in his voice but laughter in his eyes, and when Hermione returns, she finds them both howling with laughter from some tickling jinxes gone badly wrong, 

“Honestly, you two are worse than the boys sometimes,” she says, as she casts a warm and ethereal finite over their mess and helps them to their feet. “At least they’ll let me use their ILL requests.”

“I believe you’re the one who’s limit was raised by Flitwick, and you immediately requested a nine-volume set on wizarding law that I already own, Hermione,” says Anthony, settling back down, a smile quirking his lips as Hermione blushes scarlet. “This is why I keep saying we need a self-updating communal booklist.”

“Self-updating isn’t really necessary when I know for a fact that every book the boys own is either one I bought them or Quidditch Through the Ages,” says Hermione darkly, pulling out a quill. “But your collection might warrant it, Anthony.”

“Tones,” says Sue in a conspiratorial whisper, causing Anthony’s face to darken. “We agreed on a new nickname.’

Dueling is a lot easier when you’ve got a warding prodigy on your side, it turns out. Up in the town that night, with Hermione’s snores coming softly from the bed next to hers and the moon a thin crescent through the window, Sue dares to hope furiously that everything’s over. That they’ve been through the wringer already this semester, and now maybe there can be nothing but porticos and open doors and Susan laughing and Anthony and Theo with reading recs and the trio in each other’s space, but only because they want to be. Not because they’re afraid. 

It is, of course, a dream, but the weight of it settles in her chest like a prayer nonetheless.

________________

(The diary Harry finds in the bathroom, waterlogged, crackles with power. Hermione goes to get a book of basic identification spells but they all fizzle uselessly against it. It takes them most of February, of Hermione chipping away at it with wards, before Ron knocks ink on it and they understand. None of them say what, in retrospect, they should have said: let’s find Snape. Hermione is too curious, Ron too caught in the moment, and Harry wants this to be over. Had they known what it was, they would have gone running, but they didn’t know, and the part of them all that was almost in Gryffindor doesn’t just go scampering to teachers when they find oddly magical books asking them who’s there?)

(The Golden Trio, Harry writes. It’s what Draco’s taken to calling them openly and maybe there’s something to owning it, okay? Interesting, Tom writes back. Care to elaborate?)

(Hermione is riveted by the concept of the diary— a complex alteration of a protean charm? Some kind of embedded reflection, the magical equivalent of a phone tree?— and Ron would have probably spilled his entire family history if asked— but Harry just writes nope, and then who are you? with the slick acumen of a Slytherin. Tom, being Tom— being fucking Voldemort, she will realize only later— pries information from them, piecewise, and then sucks them into the memory of the chamber.)

(Holy shit, says Ron, once they’re back. Harry does them a service and kicks the diary far, far away from them all. That— that was Hagrid.)

(This can’t be right, says Harry. There’s— there’s no way. Around them, their bolthole is littered with cork boards studded with their dense suspect lists that have gone nowhere, but even in Hermione’s insistence to consider everyone equally as a suspect, even people like Cedric Diggory and Dumbledore, did they think to list Hagrid.)

(Later, of course, all is clear with hindsight. They should have stood from their bolthole and taken the diary to Snape, or Flitwick, or Dumbledore. Hell, even Sprout would have understood it wasn’t to be trifled with. But who were they, at twelve and thirteen, to understand the way horcruxes get in and twist to get what they want? Rushing down to the front hall to go talk to Hagrid, they brush past a mess of people, only to find the night pouring and the lights in Hagrid’s hut out, and it is not until they get back that they realize it’s gone.)

(Plucked from Harry’s bag by a horrified Ginny, but of course, that revelation is not theirs, not yet. It took immense fortitude for an eleven-year-old to attempt to sever herself from a horcrux once, and even someone as brutally resistant as Ginny cannot contrive to do it again on short notice.)

(The third victim is Penelope Clearwater, petrified in a bathroom. Follow the spiders, Hagrid says, when the aurors come to arrest him for a thing Hermione cannot believe he would do. Can they go to Snape about a strange visage in a diary they no longer possess, especially when he is clearly so exhausted from having to brew another batch of draught he’s started snapping at his Slytherins and assigned Neville a week of detention for a mangled potion?)

(Later, it too will be obvious that the answer was yes. But everything feels sharp and brittle, that term, and there are more whispers about Harry and now Percy won’t speak to him either, along with almost all of Gryffindor, outside the twins and Neville, and all of Ravenclaw, besides Anthony and Sue. And Hermione, obviously. Even if Harry was the heir, she’d probably still be talking to him. When they go back to Birmingham for Easter Hols, Harry sleeps on the floor of her room, and she lies awake and watches him breathe, unable to articulate how fundamental he’s become to her existence. But there he is, alive.)

(Later, it will be obvious that even at twelve and thirteen, they are, as a crew, built for a pitched fight. They never should have had to be, but they are. Back from Easter break, all bets feel off. Tom M. Riddle, they tell Theo and Sue and Anthony, figure out who he is, and figure out who was killed at Hogwarts last time. Here’s our suspect list, they tell Millie and Daphne and Susan, figure it out. Fuck shit up, they tell the twins. We’re going to follow the spiders, they tell Neville. If we don’t come back, my wards will let you in. At the time, this was an easy, simple choice; later they will understand that out of all them, Neville is only one who is all their friends equally. Neville is also the one with guts, and a moral compass, and that hulking Gryffindor loyalty that says I’ll come after you if you’re gone for too long.)

(Should they have? Of course not. But later, as they lie starving in that tent, listening to the sifting of the rain and picking over their past to keep their minds off the hunger, all of them will fail to come up with anything better. Dumbledore knew it was You-Know-Who the first time, and knew his name, Ron will say. Dumbledore didn’t stop them throwing Hagrid in Azkaban, Hermione will say. Snape probably would have fed Ginny to the horcrux if he’d gotten the chance, Harry will say, bitter and bleeding from betrayal.)

(It should never have been our job, Hermione will say, eventually, and the boys will just laugh, because here they are, at seventeen, trying to save the fucking world.)

(Maybe not, but the cards always seem to fall that way, don’t they?)

Chapter Text

“Why on earth did it have to be spiders,” moans Ron, as he vomits into the bushes beside Hagrid’s hut. The early April night is nippy and he narrowly avoids spewing on Hermione’s fur-lined cloak and Harry’s coat that he got from Snape. “Hagrid could have raised a dragon as a child! A dragon, or a unicorn, or a fire-breathing goat—“ He’s shaking, and Hermione actually takes off her cloak and drapes it over him. Harry’s running a hand through his shaggy hair, murmuring I know mate, I’m sorry. Ron had figured it would be unpleasant, to follow the spiders that were leaving the castles for the forest in droves, but never in a million years had he conceived of small spiders leading them to car-sized spiders. 

He’s going to have nightmares for years after this. 

“I don’t care how many blokes You-Know-Who’s killed, fighting him is going to be a piece of cake after this rubbish,” he rasps, shifting back into his haunches and wiping at his mouth. “Did we even figure anything out, other than Riddle’s a lying piece of shite? We already knew Hagrid’s idea of ‘acceptable animals to own’ was not normal.”

“I’m fully convinced it’s an actual monster now,” offers Hermione. “If that helps.”

“I feel like your dad’s going to be elated that the car is living a happy life in the forest,” says Harry. The fact that that’s completely true, along with the bizarre and hilarious image of the Ford Angelica scuttling off into the forest like a full creature finally elicits a good proper laugh from him. Once Ron starts laughing, Harry and Hermione do too, and then they’re all in a puddle on the outskirts of the forest, Fang hovering nervously beside them.

“You know who was an actual Slytherin?” Hermione asks, finally, once they’ve gathered themselves a bit. They’re sprawled on the damp grass, the stars wheeling above them. 

“And showed us a very convenient memory that involved them framing someone for opening the Chamber?” asks Harry. 

The pieces are all there, but under the surface, slipping away from Ron like fish from a hand. “Riddle,” says Ron slowly. “But he’s got to be like seventy now. So what does he have to do with anything?”

“The diary’s missing,” offers Harry. “We can’t ask him.”

“But whoever took it has to be involved, somehow,” says Hermione. “Maybe he’s telling someone how to open it. Remember how he asked all those questions about our bloodlines?”

“And Harry told him to bugger off,” says Ron fondly, letting himself relax into the grass. No spiders here, just his friends. “Mind you, this all sounds barmy— imagine going to Flitwick and being like, yes, we found this strange diary that will talk to you, we think someone stole it back from us and is using it to open the Chamber of Secrets, no we have no evidence except that of a car-sized spider—“

“But now we know what it looks like,” says Harry. “And if we see someone with it, we’ll know they’re the Heir. And we know there’s a monster, who has a mortal enemy in spiders.” Ron personally thought that sounded like a very appealing monster to have on their side, but he doesn’t voice this opinion. He focuses instead on the steel girding the root of Harry’s voice: this is his solutions voice. Ron wonders if in a different life, he would think it sounded very Gryffindor of him, but in this one he thinks it’s very Slytherin: that bloody-knuckled survival instinct. It’s the part of Harry that’s never had anyone to keep him safe. 

(We’ll keep you safe, Ron wants to scream, when he hears that tone, though he knows at heart that if Harry didn’t think that, he wouldn’t be here, hearing these plans. Snape, he thinks; Sprout and Flitwick— maybe someone will believe us, Snape has listened every time—)

“Snape might listen,” says Ron, slowly, floating the idea. Even if Snape’s been a complete menace since the most recent petrification, even if Harry’s in a weird place with him right now— Ron thinks the lack of a Christmas present stung more than Snape could realize, but he also thinks Harry wants more than the man is willing, maybe can give— but none of that means Snape won’t listen. If he listened to Harry about the car—

Harry is already shaking his head. Ron is reminded of the dragon incident from last year, Sprout’s words: a danger to themselves or others. Is there a corollary for public safety? Surely there must be.

“Mate,” says Ron. “We’ve already done one stupid thing on our own. Even if he doesn’t take us seriously, I reckon we should try.”

Hermione’s gaze flits between the two of them. “It’s a type of monster that has spiders as a mortal enemy and can petrify people. It’s not in Fantastic Beasts, but it’s got to be somewhere in the library. Some obscure— I don’t know.”

“Snake,” says Ron. “It’s got to be a snake.”

“Ronald, how would a snake have stayed alive for a thousand years—“

“Maybe,” says Harry suddenly. “The only reason I heard that voice on Halloween and you guys couldn’t is because I can speak snake.”

Ron’s face splits into a grin and he slings an arm over Harry. “This is why you’re my best mate. Your ideas are excellent.”

Hermione looks miffed. “Honestly— 

“We figure out what snake it is,” Ron says triumphantly, already imagining a library book called Ten Thousand and One Giant Awful Snakes You Shouldn’t Mess With. “We tell Snape about snake and diary. Snape uses his weird Snape powers to find the diary. And we never go back in the forest again.”

Harry slumps back down to the grass, putting his head on Ron’s stomach. Hermione looks at them for a minute, clearly trying to decide if she should nudge them towards the castle— it’s got to be three in the morning by now, and the night is cool and damp— but Harry stretches out a hand to her, and she slumps forward, curling up with the two of them. Her magic settles down over them— petrichor and charcoal, warm and filling. “No spiders,” she says. “And no snakes.” None of them mention that no ward they could learn could keep the things that dog Harry out, but maybe it means enough that they’re here. 

“’S nice,” says Harry, his voice slurring with sleep. “All the sky. Always wanted to see the stars.” 

It’s not really sleep, just a snooze, more than anything. Ron dreams of skeletal snakes and holding a fang in his hand, and a great buffeting of wind, like something being killed. Then the dream changes and there are the spiders, of course, but when he wakes up screaming, Harry and Hermione are there, and the castle is gilded with the dawn light. And next week, when Hedwig returns to them as they sit at the Slytherin table (it feels safest, these days, between house loyalty and Theo and Millie and Daphne and Blaise— most of the time, he’s flakier this year than last), it is with a package from his mother, and he opens it to reveal his mother’s sleep tea blend. He jerks his eyes up to Harry, who shrugs and gives him a small smile. That’s what you’d expect Harry to do for you, right? he hears his dad asking, and it is there, at breakfast when he is newly thirteen, that he thinks he finally understands what Harry being in Slytherin means: Harry wants to stop the real heir and kill the monster, sure. But none of that is ever going to matter more than Ron and Hermione, even a massive snake and a hideous threat. 

Being wanted this much is novel. 

Being wanted this much is everything he’s ever dreamed of. He laces his left hand with Hermione’s, shoves his right shoulder against Harry’s, and lets the warm chatter of the great hall fall over them like a net of wards. 

Of course they can do this. How could they not?

_____________

Susan, Millie, and Daphne have taken a leaf out of the trio’s book and built their own little hideaway. Sure, this one relies more on Millie’s encyclopedic knowledge of the castle, Daphne’s genuine joy in setting up traps, and Susan giving death glares to anyone who tries to follow them away from the table at dinners, but together that’s basically the same as one of Hermione’s wards, right? 

(It’s a little alcove behind the portrait of Wuldo the Weirder in the dungeons, who will let anyone in if they tell him a strange enough piece of gossip. Luckily for them, all three of the girls are excellent at this— Millie has the Quidditch beat, Daphne knows exactly who’s snogging, and Susan knows things about people before they know it themselves. Dream Team, much?)

(Millie’s been trying to think of a nickname that doesn’t involve the word trio. It hasn’t been going well. Susan is starting to think Millie is not that good at naming things.)

The dull, fractious peace at the beginning of winter term had been broken a week into March, when Penelope Clearwater had been found petrified. The actual trio had rallied from their languid research state (there was only so much you could accomplish when you were the Slytherin seeker, a person intent on reading every book ever written about warding, and Ron Weasley, who’s skill set would simply never include writing an essay in a timely manner) and divided up tasks, and then upon returning from Easter Hols, marched straight into the bloody Forbidden Forest after only telling Neville.

(Susan is torn between how dare you not tell me, born of Hufflepuff loyalty and thank Merlin you didn’t tell me, I don’t know if I would have survived.)

(And now it is April, Penelope recovered from the attack but still shaky with fear, and no one has any more solutions. There is talk in the air, of closing Hogwarts, of the Headmaster being asked to step down if things continue. They are the thinnest of ice, the girls know. And yet they have nothing.)

“Melcalfe’s out,” says Millie, finally, throwing down her quill and scowling up at the stone ceiling. Their dungeon corridor has quickly filled with a variety of desks, boards, and parchment pieces with names scrawled on them and stuck to the walls. “No way you could get from Potions to the third floor bathroom in a reasonable timeframe, and Snape would have skinned her alive if she’d missed NEWT potions.”

“And we knocked Weasley off officially, right?” says Daphne. “Having his girlfriend petrified after there’s a cure is still suspicious in my book.”

“Prefect meeting in Gryffindor at the time,” confirms Susan. “All of the Gryffindor Prefects are out. Are we still trusting Snape’s word on the Slytherins?”

“I think we have to,” says Daphne, flipping her pale hair back over her shoulder. “Especially since I think the Headmaster would have vetted them too. They’re the most likely suspects.”

“I still like my pet theory,” offers Millie, who had written Lockhart in large letters and circled it several times. “‘Holidays with the Heir: My Defeat of the Chamber of Secrets. Which I also opened. But that’s unimportant.’”

“He’s an idiot,” Daphne says. 

“We thought Quirrell was an idiot and he turned out to be the Dark Lord! Besides, it’s not like we have any better leads.”

They do not, as Susan knows all too well. The trio started this project back in January, but  for all they are, their observational skills relating to people are quite low. Harry seems to see everyone in shades of threat; Hermione might be the brightest wix of her year but has no idea how people work; and with Ron’s attention so keenly focused on the people he cared about and if they were eating and sleeping, it was no wonder he had no time to pry into the lives of the Prefects and the seventh-years. She and Daphne and Millie have made more headway in a handful of weeks than they did all year, but it is still not good enough. She stares at their wall of paper, littered with leads that haven’t panned out and most of the school’s fifth, sixth, and seventh years (no one in their right mind would think Cedric Diggory is opening the Chamber of Secrets). 

“Snack break,” Susan declares. “We’re going to the kitchens and we going to have some fun gossip instead of politically significant gossip.”

“Why?” asks Daphne, looking up. “You usually just go to the kitchens and bring us back stuff.”

“Ooh, get some more of Biddy’s chocolate chip scones,” says Millie.

Susan takes a deep breath, and tries to shove away the incessant failure that’s accompanied her every time she’s pulled this card on her (former?) friends in Hufflepuff over the last term. “Because you’re my friends, and I want to do something fun with you.”

Millie raises her head from the board, turns to her. “Really?”

“This is fun,” says Daphne, looking suspicious. 

“We’re solving problems together right now, Daphne,” says Susan, trying to be patient. She think of how bad Ernie is at this, with a pang of longing. “It’s fun, but maybe I want to go to the kitchen with you and hear about how your sister’s doing and why you think the Serpents are going to win the League and what you thought about Flitwick’s last charms practical. Because you’re my friend.”

Daphne blinks, and then blinks again, and then puts down her sheaf of paper and stands, dusting off her robes. “Right,” she says, her face slack with obvious surprise. “Let’s go, then.”

Millie gives Susan and fist-bump once Daphne’s back is turned. In the kitchens, Biddy and Polly and Ollie make them a charcuterie board and tell them about all the ongoing house-elf drama (apparently Snape has had then on the lookout for a rouge house elf that might be trying to  sneak into the castle?), and when they head off to help with dinner preparations, the three of them curl up in the nook near the back of the kitchen, between the fireplace and the wall, and swap gossip.

(Millie has a crush on Fred Weasley, it turns out, which she swears all of them to secrecy about. Daphne and Blaise are just friends, but Daphne fancies Cedric Diggory— who doesn’t?— and her own sixth year Prefect Gemma Farley— I know it’s never going to happen, but she’s so pretty and mysterious and powerful— so there’s that to work with. Susan has to admit to them that she’s had very little time to think about crushes when her inner-house friendships are falling apart, but both of them nudge her and say Ron? multiple times, and maybe she blushes, okay? Maybe she’s just shocked that the whole castle doesn’t have a crush on Ron— he’s Ron.)

Susan learns about Millie’s parents, neutral in the last war, even going so far as to move in with her mother’s parents in France during the peak of it. “They almost sent me to Beauxbatons, but Dad insisted,” she says, munching on yet another Biddy scone. Daphne’s parents are both tax officials, but her mother, Daphne’s pretty sure, was a Death Eater. She says this in a hushed tone, her arms clasped around her legs and her eyes directed at the floor, and Susan scoots closer to her and nudges her shoulder, trying to convey that she doesn’t care. Daphne wasn’t the one who killed her parents. 

She tells them about Woking, about the canal and the boats, about her aunt coming home late from the ministry with the Auror corp. Millie, too, has no siblings, and from the sound of it spent most of her childhood shuttled between the decaying manors of pureblood lines consolidated and truncated by marriage and war, always exploring different rooms and opening various doors. Daphne’s Astoria is three years younger than her, and she’s never seen Daphne so soft and protective as when she talks about her— how her magic tends to make flowers grow and the cat float. 

There are no heirs to find, in the kitchen corner. No pure-blood politics, no side quests for the three they all so viciously love. No one they need to save. 

Is this what it was supposed to be like, Susan wonders? Just finding small corners and sitting down and building things, without fear or specters hanging over them?

Why is, it that the monsters always seem so intent on consuming the people she loves?

(Later, Susan will understand that a different witch— a Slytherin witch, maybe, or a melodramatic Gryffindor one— would have internalized that the problem was her. That maybe she was somehow cursed. Susan, Hufflepuff to her bones, had only ever thought well, guess I’ve got to stay and help them handle it and rolled up her sleeves and gone to work.) 

The evening wastes like a melting candle. They don’t get closer to a suspect, but they do finish their astronomy charts. At dinner, Susan doesn’t bother to go back to Hufflepuff, sliding into the Slytherin table next to Ron, a bemused but intrigued Theo on the other side, and she calls down the table to Draco, “Hey, how’s opening the Chamber going?” and Draco’s face twists, but in a way that means he’s angry because he has no idea what’s going on. “Seems like you’re doing sort of a rubbish job cleansing the school.” Harry chokes on his pumpkin juice next to her, and up at the Head Table, Snape looks resigned to this turn of events. 

(Snape is such a conundrum— Ron and Harry and Hermione trust him, clearly, and she can see the way his brutality crackles around his house, but she can’t bring herself to trust him. She’s heard rumors, from the Auror corp, about muddled loyalties and how no one’s sure exactly what side he’s really on. And he certainty prioritizes yelling over quality instruction.)

What happens, Susan wonders, if they don’t find who’s doing this? If they just live the next several years in a hideous tension, her muggleborn friends cowering small in the hallways, or not coming back at all. Do they have to find the Chamber, kill the monster (Ron think it’s a snake, which sounds like a complete cliche, but also, why not? Hufflepuff’s monster would be a badger, thank you every much) before the terror ends?

Susan doesn’t want to save the world, not really. If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t want to go back to their papered corridor and continue to cross off names. She wants—

Hannah’s laugh. Ernie’s eye-roll. Justin with ghost gossip. Ron’s face, all open doors and his snorting laughter when she says the right thing. 

Isn’t this kind of shit why they have Gryffindors? Can’t they handle it, and just let her hang out with her friends?

It is four days later, when she wakes in her four-poster bed in the warm den of the Hufflepuff house, that it occurs to her that if she’s being forced to be brave, by the trio’s influence and Daphne’s clear desire to find out who’s doing this and hex them into oblivion, maybe she should be brave in other ways too. Maybe she should stand up to her friends. 

Because damn, does she want them back. 

“Look, I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I want to talk to you,” she says, plopping down next to Ernie in the corner of the common room as he studiously tried to ignore her. He gives out a little huff and pointedly turns slightly away from her. Over the last months, she’s thrown every logical argument at the wall, about being a parselmouth and the absurdity of Harry opening the Chamber and wasn’t Hermione his best friend and on and on, but Ernie’s only response had been to turn away and say, in his pompous manor, “Is someone speaking? I hear a kind of buzzing?” and Susan had never wanted to hex anyone more, except that’s not true, is it, because it’s Ernie. 

He can be awful but he’s hers. He’s the one who stayed up all night last year to help her rewrite the charms essay that one of the older Gryffindors had swiped from her in a Quidditch-related bullying incident; he’s the one who invited her to his family’s estate last summer, noticed when it made her feel small and nervous, to be around so much, and took her out to the corner of the gardens instead, where they sat underneath the rim of the fountain and just talked. Posh and cultured and magnanimous and saying hello to the monsteras in the common room. Susan draws her want around her like a cloak, summons the undeniable fact of her love like a sword. Because that’s how this goes, isn’t it? She doesn’t do leaving, or ruins, or people walking away. 

“You’re my friend, Ernie,” she says, soft, but all in a rush, like falling down a flight of steps. “My friend. And I miss you. No one tells me little stupid facts about wizarding bloodlines, or helps me find good synonyms for my papers. I know you don’t like Harry right now, but— can’t we be mature about this? Agree to disagree?” 

Ernie turns to her, his slicked hair and horn-rimmed glass the picture of class and Susan has a vision, sudden and terrible, of him standing a few steps behind the Dark Lord, with the Mark on his arm. He’s always been so proper and malleable, hasn’t he? Over my dead body, Susan thinks, like a gunshot. “Surely you are more than happy with your Slytherin friends.”

Oh, so they had all noticed. She wasn’t sure what to make of the sudden silence the other night after dinner, but maybe that happen been a betrayal too far. 

“You’re not exactly making it very fun to eat with you guys right now,” she says softly. “At least Theo and Millie talk to me.”

“Well, I hope you are all very happy,” says Ernie, pointedly turning back to his book. “Now if you could excuse me—“

“I want to talk to you, Ernie!” she says, and she can hear the begging infused in her voice. “I— I thought being a Hufflepuff meant loyalty—“

“It does,” says Ernie, cold and brittle. “I’m sure Justin would love to hear about how loyal you’re being to Potter—“

“You don’t think I wouldn’t do the same for you, Ernie?” Susan asks, low and desperate. Ernie stills, slightly. “If the whole school turned against you for something you told me to my face you didn’t do, you don’t think I’d choose you?” He turns back to her, raising his head, licking his lips.

“Susan, the facts—“

“The facts don’t mean shite, Erns. I’m backing his play because I love him. I’d back your play too, if you would just let me.”

“Why would you want us when you have them?” Ernie asks, low and cold, and Susan understands, at last, and it’s like a dam breech. This is the house of the unwanted, after all, isn’t it? This is the house of misfits, the house of people who don’t think anyone will look twice at them, and underneath everything Ernie has is that thread, hot and burning, of please look at me, please want me, please stay. 

“What idiot wouldn’t want you, Ernie MacMillian?” Susan says, shifting closer, so she can look him in the eyes. “You’re dedicated and you’ve always got my back and you always make sure I’ve got all the notes in class and last winter when I forgot my gloves for astronomy you just gave me yours. When you look at me, you’re actually looking at me.”

Ernie blinks. “But— they’re—“

“They’re terrifying,” Susan says honestly. “They revolve around each other, and they take things apart. Hermione can cast pretty much any ward you can dream of, Ron just keeps on acquiring people to befriend, and Harry’s the bloody boy-who-lived. They keep talking about how they’re going to go find whatever monster’s doing this and finish it off, like they’re bloody Gryffindors.” Susan takes a deep breath, and then another, belatedly understanding that all of this has been pent up in her chest for a long time. She loves the trio, she really does, but they make her feel so small, sometimes, when they’re in a room with all cylinders firing. “But when you look at me, you just see me, Ernie. Like I’m real.”

The truth is like the great sheets of the northern lights. Ernie bites his lip. “Really?” he asks. 

“Do I look like a liar to you?” she says. 

He says nothing, just reaches out and takes her hand. His voice, when he does start to talk, is a low baritone rasp, but he talks of her gifts, of how much he’s missed her: the way she’ll make up little songs to memorize potion ingredients and the snap and crackle of her magic when she hexes and her constant running commentary on Nottingham and can it be so simple? 

She holds his hand in hers, their fingers interlaced, and just tries to breathe. Her favorite posh twat, back in her corner, hopefully. 

“I— I don’t— he talks to snakes, Suze,” Ernie says. 

“You don’t have to talk to him,” Susan says. “You just have to talk to me.”

Ernie chuckles. “I have missed doing that, you know.”

Susan pulls out her books and soon enough Ernie is taking her subpar History of Magic essay back from her with horror and setting to correct it with venom, and she leans back into the warmth of their corner of the Hufflepuff common room, the soft rugs underfoot and plants on every ledge. Across the room, she sees Hannah lean over and whisper something to Zaharias Smith, who lets out an ugly laugh, and Justin looks small and defeated, still, but she can take this piecewise, right? Get the band back together one Hufflepuff idiot at a time. 

The portrait is thrown open, with too much force for it to be a Hufflepuff, and the room goes silent as everyone pivots. With too much force for it to be Hufflepuff in peacetime, Susan amends, because standing in the hole is Ron, looking like she’s never seen him: stark white and his magic lashing out from him, the smell of stone and bread. He looks like he’s one step away from trying to cast the killing curse. She is on her feet already, across the room.

“Ron?” she asks, afraid beyond measure. 

“Hermione,” he says, in a voice that she doesn’t recognize. His hands are empty and shaking. She is at his shoulders now, and so when he stumbles, she catches him. “It’s Hermione.”

_____________

(Everything is ringing. All Ron can think about is how they should never have let her walk alone to the library, except she did that every day and it was usually fine, why wasn’t it fine this time? Their abandoned books on snakes, their scattered notes, their discarded theories, Tom what’s his name— the scrabbling of children, out of their depth. He’s on the floor of the hospital wing, where Susan had brought him back to, next to Harry, arms clutched around his knees, Hermione on the bed above them, too still to stomach looking at. I’ll owl your mother and organize, Susan had said, with that brisk and ruthless tone he loved her for, but it was all underwater.)

(All Ron can think about is how they’d told her she would be safe, once they’d gotten off the train at Christmas.)

(Dumbledore has been suspended as headmaster, someone tells him. Susan is there, with food. Sue is there with the books. Theo is there, with Snape standing behind him.)

(The hanging weight of Snape’s privacy wards. He kneels, and Harry looks up at him. Three weeks, Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley, he says, with something almost like a sort of regret in his voice. All Ron can think is that Hermione will be livd about missing midterms. But I need to know what you know.)

(Harry tells him. Ron pulls notes and books from Hermione’s satchel to hand him, but all he can think is that she would have been able to tell it better, and that Snape is just a little too far away from Harry to put a hand on his shoulder. Which is probably what Harry wants him to do.)

(Ron puts out the obligatory hand instead.)

(Ron can’t even find it within himself to gloat when Snape begrudgingly agrees that it is probably a snake, though even he has no leads on who Tom M. Riddle might be.)

(You can do it, right, Harry asks, staring down at his knees, so he misses Snape’s face twist and then smooth out. Ron has a sense that anyone else would have gotten a long lecture about how just an accomplished potioneer Snape is and how dare he be doubted, but Snape just lets out a huff and says of course I can, Mr. Potter. You have my word.)

(Later, there will be longer three week periods in his life— the gnawing hunger in the forests, of course; the aching static after the second war has begun again in earnest. But in all of them, they will be together, at least. It is hard to eat, to sleep, to go to class. Harry, survivor to the core, draws together his brutality and rage and bravery, intent on solving the case and finishing it once and for all, but all Ron can see is Hermione’s face, frozen in fear. At least in the bolthole, with her wards still humming around them, he can remember she’s still alive, she’s just— gone for a while.)

(Later, she will slump in their arms on a beach in the north with words carved onto her arm, and he will think, for one hideous, heart-stopping moment, that the curses they’ve been dodging have finally caught up to them. The fear is like a living thing, but also as familiar as his own name. After all, as he’s known since third year, the boggarts he faces never quite know if they should go for the instinctual fear of car-sized spiders, or the horrific tableau of her and Harry dead. He really is his mother’s son.)

(What does it say about him, that he’d take Aragog any day over even the idea of them dead?)

(Later, Ron will understand that this is where it ended, really, any illusions that they could have a normal education, or hell, an adolescence. But they were always in the middle of a war, weren’t they, and the people on the other side thought thirteen-year-old witches who just wanted to learn about charm theory were alright to hurt. While the part of him that is a Hufflepuff howls, the part of him that is a Gryffindor stands up inside him, pulling him to his feet, and by the time Hermione wakes, Snape’s perfect brew on her lips, he is ready, too, to fight.)

(They all are.)

Chapter Text

Her body will lie in the Chamber forever. Hermione’s newly un-petrified hand in his, Ron on his other side, looking apocalyptic— he was bad when it was Hermione and he thinks this might be worse. Harry thinks of the article Sue found last week, about Myrtle Kneader, killed at Hogwarts at fifteen. About the bathroom and the basilisk— is it a basilisk? They’re pretty sure at this point, but they’re not infallible. About Ginny, who has spent all year thin and pale. 

A Gryffindor would square up their shoulders and go save the day because it was their job. But all Harry knows is that after the year he’s had, he’s no Gryffindor. And he’s certainly not Harry Potter, the mythic heroic child who murdered the Dark Lord as an infant and grew up hungry for fame and power, the darling of the wizarding world, who now hands out signed headshots like Lockhart still seems to think he does. 

He’s a Slytherin, who’s sick and tired of the school thinking he’s the heir, making people suffer for the hell of it. He’s a twelve-year-old who grew up in cookie-cutter suburbs starving and unwanted, who now has two people he cares about more than anything else.

Harry takes a deep breath and then another. It’s been a long, long year, but it’s almost over. They’re going to make it be over.

And where the hell is Snape when you need him?

_____________

The worst part about it all is that Harry knows that if he was Slytherin enough— Slytherin in the right ways— he would have been able to embrace the heir business. Play around with it enough to draw the real culprit to the forefront. Daphne could have done it, Theo could have done it in his sleep, even Blaise would have done his best— at least there’s Millie, he thinks, when he’s up late in the common room feeling like he’s not good at this. Millie’s Slytherin-ness is all in cultivating information and understanding things, not in manipulations and lying and politics. 

He’s a survivalist, at heart, he thinks. Except ever since that first day on the train, survival hasn’t meant jack shit if it doesn’t include Ron and Hermione, and he’s not sure where that lies in the house line-up (Gryffindor? Hufflepuff?). A true Slytherin survivalist, like he was before he came to school, like he thinks Snape might be, loves nothing and no one, and could burn everything and start anew without loosing sleep. 

(He had thought, for a few fleeting, hungry moments, that Snape might care about him. That Snape might— more than just as a head of house, but as a kind of—)

(But none of it had been real, had it? Or— it had been real, but it hadn’t meant what he’d thought it did. Snape was protective of his snakes, defending them in the school and getting them out of bad households. He was doing it right now for Emma Slywen, a tiny first year who’d come to school with bruises. Temporary guardianship and everything while she was placed with a foster family. What Snape had done for him had been that. Professional.)

(And he feels like an idiot for thinking otherwise.)

(For wanting otherwise.)

Maybe, if he had been better, he could have seen through everything from the beginning, and manipulated the deck to benefit him, and Slytherin, and tear out the actual heir root, leaf, and stem. But he didn’t have the parts of him Theo did, that let him pretend Harry wasn’t his friend at a moment’s notice, as a defense mechanism. How could he have glorified the heir’s agenda, when it would have meant a betrayal of Hermione? 

But because he had the snake on his robes, and could talk to snakes (which he still thinks is a completely absurd power— of all the animals, snakes had to be one of most niche), the school had turned against him. Or, in the case of much of Slytherin, rallied to him for the wrong reasons. 

(He’d had grand visions for the year, which he’d voiced to Ron and Hermione in the days before the first term had started, but they all felt small and stupid now. Do well in transfiguration, and practice more in potions so he didn’t freak out in class, and win matches for Slytherin, and explore the castle more. Study with friends and have tea with Hagrid.)

(Hagrid.)

Everything hurts, in a way Harry hadn’t known it could hurt when he was at Private Drive.  He’d been hungry there, and his bones had ached, and he’d been lonely, but he hadn’t had futures dangled out in front of him only to be snatched away. He’d known exactly what he would be dealt. Here—

There’s the bait and switch of it. People wanting him to be things he cannot be. People offering him their friendship only to assume he’d betray it without a second thought, as if he hadn’t painstakingly pinned up every single photo he had from the birthday party on the wall inside his four-poster. 

(Even after Justin had been petrified, and he and Hannah and Ernie had stopped speaking to him, he hadn’t taken those down. Hadn’t been able to. Friendship still felt so fragile, and rare, and who was he to throw it away?)

(If Draco’s apology hadn’t been full of references to how glorious it would be to work together to cleanse the school of the unworthy and had just been Ron and Hermione are actually pretty cool, sorry I yelled at them on the train, Harry would have forgiven him in a heartbeat too. It wasn’t hard, and yet so few people seemed to be able to do it right.)

The blood drips down the wall. Ron, who spent the three weeks Hermione was petrified despondent, draws himself up. Hermione, who hasn’t been quite the same either, since, all flinches and jumping at shadows, sets her face and draws her wand. Harry thinks of the cool, electric clarity that followed Hermione’s petrification, how for the first time in his life, all the buzzing terror and expectations and the way he weighed the entry and exit points to every room had melted away and all that mattered was Hermione. He’d understood why the hat had thought he’d be good in Gryffindor— he must have been, if he had this part of himself. Perhaps he couldn’t summon it for Voldemort, but for Hermione? For Ron? 

“Come on,” says Harry, and they move as one towards the bathroom. 

They do not go get Lockhart, because why would they? Harry is grateful that after that first encounter in Diagon, the Slytherins had seemed to rally around him to get the man to ignore him for the most part, which was a relief. Even if Snape isn’t— doesn’t want to be that for Harry, he won’t deny he’s the only one who’s even pretended to be on their team this year, and if they can’t have him, there’s no one. They were fine in the forest, with the spiders. They are a team.

(They’re more than that. He knows on paper his family is his dead parents— and according the Dumbledore it’s his aunt and uncle and Dudley, which is absurd— but in reality, it’s the two of them. He has friends now— Theo and Millie, Susan and Sue, Neville and the twins and Daphne and Anthony and Blaise most of the time— and Ron and Hermione aren’t that. Not anymore.)

(Is it okay if there aren’t words, if there’s only the fact that he wants them by his side no matter what?)

Myrtle points them in the right direction; the faucet opens under Harry’s hiss. Cool darkness, and the warm weight of Hermione’s wards as they slide down into the blackness. Hermione reminds them in low tones what it might mean, to fight a basilisk, and Ron races across the room to Ginny’s limp form, once they find her in the inner chamber, casting the stabilization ward Hermione drilled into them both by route so forcefully the entire chamber ripples with the spark and sunder of his magic, smelling of bread and stone and spilling light freely, like an open wound. Hermione joins him, and Harry turns, surveying the room for the culprit, expecting honestly anyone at this point— 

And he finds only the thin, glowering form of Tom Riddle, too solid for comfort, but too immaterial for their curses to find purchase. 

His laughter is the laughter from Harry’s nightmare, and he understands, all at once. 

“Voldemort,” he says, wand out. Smokey letters rearrange themselves in midair, the diary abandoned on the floor and Ginny still and pale— her life-force stolen for a year, her only reprieve spoiled when she saw Harry and Ron and Hermione with the book she’d poured all her secrets into and she felt compelled to steal it back. 

There’s fear, caking the back of his throat, fear and rage and the realization that they probably should have told someone they were coming down here. Voldemort paces, spilling yarns of glory and extermination, and Hermione and Ron and him catch each other’s eyes, but their hexes won’t land and Hermione’s efforts to destroy the diary leave it unscathed. 

Is this how it ends? Voldemort coming back to life by killing his best mate’s little sister, who’s damn good as seeker and sly and sarcastic and wanted to be on his team too?

“Goodbye, Harry,” he says, a coldness and a brutality ruining the cut planes of his face. “Goodbye, Harry’s friends.” He opens his mouth, begins to hiss. 

That snaps through Harry’s fear like a knife. “Ron and Hermione,” Harry says, and he can hear the brutal thing at the root of his voice. “Their names are Ron and Hermione.” Tom— Voldemort— sneers, and Harry understands, all at once, why this man opened the Chamber while he was still in school. People like Ron and Hermione mean nothing to him. If it hadn’t been for the scar and the mistake of his survival, Harry would mean nothing to him too. He’s almost mad about it. What he would have given, for years of being beneath Voldemort’s purview.

The sound of something heavy coming towards them, scales across stone, and a heavy hissing: I am coming, my Lord. 

He has a distant memory, of standing in Snape’s office after the Chamber was opened the first time, and Snape asking them what would you have done, had you found who was behind this, and they’d lied— there had been no plan. Snape had told them to leave well enough alone, but he had also alluded to the idiocy of going in without one, next time. What are you, Gryffindors, Snape had sneered, and no but also yes. Harry thinks of the voice going rip tear kill, thinks of Colin who had done nothing but delight in magic, of Justin who had played on his quidditch team at his birthday party, of Penelope and her sappy love-letters to Percy, of Hermione. Of Ginny. Is it Gryffindor, to fight for something? To draw yourself up and stand between hideous things and the people you love? 

(Or is it Hufflepuff, to say you don’t get to hurt my people? Or is Ravenclaw, to know exactly what you’ll be fighting and find the wards that will protect you and teach them to your friends? Or is it Slytherin, to look the monster in the eyes, as he stands slim and hideous, corporal with Ginny’s stolen magic, and know what it might cost you to loose, and take the bid anyway?)

All the trio knows is that when Fawkes comes with the hat as their wards blaze and crackle against Voldemort and his massive fucking snake (and Ron has the audacity to look a bit relieved, because it’s not a spider), and they reach for the hat together, eyes on the ground and the fear in their ears, their hands find the hilt of a sword all at once. Together, they pull the blade from the hat, gleaming and terrible. 

Hermione takes defense, casting fogs only the trio can see through, protegos it takes the basilisk time to break through, wards that taste of petrichor and charcoal. Ron, aided by Fawkes, takes cover— Fawkes pecks out the damn thing’s eyes, and Ron casts sparks and great bolts of light and taunts it. Harry feels the heavy weight of the sword in his hand, watches Ron’s spells skate off the hide of the snake (hadn’t Hermione read that even Avada sometimes struggled against the sheer magical power of a basilisk) tucks his wand away, and goes in for the kill. 

Tom’s vapid smile slips into piqued interest, and then into rage, as the basilisk thrashes with the sword driven through it’s mouth. But as Harry stumbles to his knees, fang driven into his arm above the elbow, Hermione frantically trying to cast the healing magic that’s just never worked well for her at the wound even as Harry goes woozy, his smugness returns. 

“Stand aside, silly girl,” says Voldemort. “No magic you could possibly possess could revert a wound like that.” Hermione, with one hand on the sword hilt, looks murderous; Ron is on Harry’s other side, his eyes flickering between Harry and Ginny. The diary lies a few feet away from them. Fawkes comes to perch on Harry’s knee, weeping, and Hermione’s face shifts, slightly, and then she stands abruptly, facing Voldemort on her feet, wand out.

“No,” she says. Harry’s head is spinning— he’s been here before, hasn’t he, someone standing between him and Voldemort? But it’s worthless, it must be— even Fawkes is crying now, shedding tears on his arm. Ron locks eyes with him, and then reaches out to grasp the broken off fang stuck in his arm, murmuring a spell under his breath that must numb the pain, because when he yanks it out he feels nothing. 

“The diary,” Harry whispers, and Ron nods. 

“How dare you oppose Lord Voldemort,” begins Voldemort, who apparently believes part of his job as Dark Lord involves monologues. “Potter is as good as dead, with basilisk venom in his veins, and I can assure you, once that idiot blood traitor is dead, you two will be next— how I wished I could have killed you the first time around—“

“Oh sod off,” says Ron. He moves from Harry’s side, bringing the fang down in a wide arc to the book. Voldemort’s eyes go wide, but Hermione’s protego is as solid at thirteen as it will ever be, and the last thing the Dark Lord expects is for a muggleborn to be that rawly powerful. Fawkes lets out a low, melodic lilt, and Harry feels the poison recede from him. The fang connects with the diary, and then Tom’s screaming.

Fawkes comes to land Harry’s shoulder, as he sits with his legs splayed and the newly healed gash in his arm. Hermione is holding a protego against nothing, still, the sword dragging from her other hand. Ron is kneeling by the diary in a glut of ink, a basilisk fang clutched in his hand.

“Holy fuck,” says Hermione, dropping her protego and falling to her knees. Ron can’t seem to make it to his feet, but crawls his way over to Ginny, who awakens with a heaved gasp and then slumped forward into Ron’s arm. Ron cradles her and mumbles platitudes— “You’re alright, I’ve got you,” sounding like his mum. 

“Snape’s going to kill us,” Harry says, and he can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying. He feels both lighter and more fuzzy than he has in months, the sharpness finally dissipating from him and leaving a kind of hideous numbness behind. Not that he’s worried— Ron and Hermione will get him and Ginny out of here. The pain of the basilisk bite is fading, and Fawkes is a warm, billowing weight on his shoulder. The light of the lingering sparks of Ron’s vicious Wollond Ward catch on the sword blade, slick with basilisk blood, and Harry really does start laughing.

“What?” Hermione asks. 

“It’s the sword of bloody Gryffindor,” he says. 

Ron starts laughing too and then Hermione, and then even Ginny, weak and thready and tinged with sobs as it is. Harry’s gaze roves over the basilisk, and the bled-out diary with the fang embedded in it, and Ron clutching Ginny, and when Hermione lets the sword fall with a clang and crosses to him, he elects to just bury his face in the junction of her head and neck and let this all be someone else’s problem for the time being. 

He’s a Slytherin, after all. Survival is so much. Survival is enough. 

_____________

Theo forgets himself, in the aftermath, and runs all the way to the hospital wing, like he’s a child. Like his last name isn’t Nott and he cares about Harry more than he can stomach. 

He will admit, it’s been a long year. The shimmering, idyllic months of September and October seem like a distant dream, and since then there’s only been the knit of gossip and having to play politics. He wouldn’t have predicted, in October, that the person who would take his advice to heart would be Sue Li, and not Harry Potter, but that was how it had ended. He shudders to think of what his father would say if he knew his advice (to a half-blood, daughter of one of the most notorious blood-traitors of them all) had been a guiding factor in getting the muggleborns un-petrified, but there are many things his father will never know. 

(How exactly Draco thinks telling his father everything will end well for him is completely beyond Theo.)

Sue, and Susan, who had come down to the Slytherin common room at a full sprint the night Hermione had been petrified and Theo still isn’t sure if it was luck or just Susan’s particularly brutal brand of magic that had let her in, but there she was, in the room under the lake, fluffy blonde hair and eyes full of fight, and she’d crossed the room to him like politics meant nothing (and they didn’t, not to her) and said, we need you, and he’d gone and gotten Snape and then gone and sat with Harry in the hospital wing, while on the other side of Ron Susan sat, and his father would have ridiculed him for the sentiment but where else should he have been? What else should he have done?

He feels a bit guilty, maybe— there had been moments, these past few terms, where he had doubted Harry’s Slytherin-ness. It was just that he clearly had no idea how to spin the fecund gift being handed the title of heir was, truth to it or not. How could Harry not see that? Surely, Hermione would understand if they altered the perception of their relationship in the public eye; surely he could hang out with a few more of the blood-purists and make some pointed remarks and play his cards right to draw out the enemy. There was no need to remind everyone at the top of his lungs that the Dark Lord killed his parents and of course he wouldn’t be siding with his agenda. 

But Harry’s always been like this, hasn’t he? The brashness, the loyalty, the refusal to bend. It’s infuriatingly Gryffindor. 

He’s never had anything, Susan had told him, in March, when he’d dared to float such a thing to her, in the privacy of a warded nook of the library. And now he does. He’s not about to lie about it.

I haven’t had anything either, before now, Theo wanted to scream. And how I can lie! Maybe he’s just jealous. That Harry got to leave that house where they hurt him. That his abuse was the kind that raised flags and left no room for doubt. That Harry gets to be whatever he wants to be now, because the things his name means are so different from what Theo’s name means. 

What would it be like, to be able to just declare his loyalties, and refuse power plays because they might make his— his friends— feel bad, and be the kind of Slytherin that builds and cultivates and endures and wins? 

The kind of Slytherin that fights wars not because of morals, or archaic ideas about good and evil and destiny, but because of revenge. Because of pettiness. The kind of Slytherin that would stand up to the Dark Lord because he wants to kill people like Hermione, and people like Ron, and people like Susan and Sue and that’s not okay because they’re Harry’s people, now.

(Because— because maybe they’re Theo’s too, now.) 

(Slytherins had a bad rep, of fleeing in fights, but only when the fight doesn’t involve them. Harry will fight to the death in this one, Theo knows, fight to the death as dirty as the Dark Lord would, all because the Dark Lord cannot stomach the idea of Hermione Granger being able to cast a lumos.)

(Idiot.)

Theo thinks of the thing behind Harry’s eyes after Hermione had been petrified, like a forged sword, and he thinks of the gratefulness in his voice on the train after Christmas hols— at least all of you believe me. Theo knew that feeling like he knew his own name.

What would his father say, if he ever found out he’d spent the whole year researching inane side-trails for the trio, and befriending mudbloods and blood-traitors and trying to stop the Heir of Slytherin from cleansing the house from the unworthy? Theo shivers at the very thought. 

But— a year ago, he had let his fear control him, and he’d sent Millie to interrogate Ron and Hermione about Harry’s well-being. He hadn’t come breathless to the hospital wing himself, like a bloody Hufflepuff.

“Mr. Nott,” says Snape, as he steps into the room, chest heaving. Theo glances sharply to the left, where Snape is standing cooly in shadows, like a wraith. “What brings you here at this hour?”

You know exactly why I’m here, sir, he thinks, but he says none of that. His eyes rove the wing, looking for signs of occupation; the room is suspiciously empty. Snape’s eyes are dark and pressing, and he once again wonders exactly which side the man is on. “I— there was a rumor the Heir was found, sir,” he says.

There’s something like mirth in Snape’s face. “You are usually a better liar than that, Mr. Nott,” he says, silky and low. “Your loyalties have not gone unnoticed, despite your best efforts.”

A shiver goes through Theo— is that a threat? By who, he wants to ask, but does not. 

“They are unhurt,” Snape says, soft, so it will not carry. “Madame Pomfrey cleared them an hour ago.”

They’re in their bolthole, then, Theo thinks. He wonders if he dares disturb them. If he has enough terror to go infringing on their private space.

“I think,” says Snape, as soft as velvet, “that when you head to the fifth floor, you will find you are not the only one concerned about your friends.”

Theo is many things. Theo is not someone who can handle the way Severus Snape says friends, when he knows what the man is. When he knows about the Mark on his arm and that he talks about Harry like that at the Death Eater gatherings. He is on the fifth floor before he realizes it, and Snape is right, because of course he is— Susan and Sue are also here, sitting on the landing outside the ward boundary, waiting. 

Maybe it is just luck. Or maybe the wards— Hermione’s wards, which are inherently brilliant— are attuned to such a thing, because mere minutes after Theo arrives, the entire trio comes stumbling out of the room, Harry with black snake blood in his hair and Hermione with exhaustion writ into her face and Ron still paler than normal. 

Susan, of course, is on her feet, Ron in her arms. Sue approaches Hermione more evenly, but the end result is also a fierce hug. Theo, standing now too, is a few feet away from Harry, who offers him a slanted grin. 

“Potter—“ he begins, and it sounds good, it sounds perfect, actually, but Harry sees through it all at once. 

“I’m fine, Theo,” he says, and his thin, bony arms are around him. “We’re all fine. It’s over.”

Of course everyone knows, you’re hugging Harry bloody Potter in the open! the part of him that was raised in that house screams inside his mind. How can you be happy that it’s over, it wasn’t even really started yet, sneers the voice that is his father. 

Neither he or Harry are very good at hugging people, Theo thinks, but he relaxes into Harry’s grip anyway. The manganese smell of snake blood, Ron’s voice hoarse when Susan gives him a chance to interject, Hermione’s blooming rant on how a basilisk (a basilisk!) was still alive after a thousand years, and Theo lets himself pretend.

He’s not the Nott heir. He’s not a Slytherin with things to prove and angles to work, he’s not the son one of the first Death Eaters, waiting in the wings with a blank forearm and an appetite for torture. He’s Theo, and Theo is friends with Harry (who is not Harry Potter, obviously), and it’s very normal to hug your friends after near death experiences, right? 

If Sue Li and Susan Bones, paragons of friendship, are anything to go off of, then yes. Then very yes. 

Theo does his very best to focus on nothing but Harry, warm and alive in his arms, like he’s a damn Hufflepuff. And if it stills something wide open and fluttering in his chest, no one ever needs to know. 

Least of all his father. 

_____________

(Snape’s face, when Ron and Hermione and Harry had stumbled back into the school, supporting Ginny, had been all relief. Harry could have sworn it would be mainly rage— and he had, in fact, gotten a long lecture on behaving like a Gryffindor— but it had been much less threatening when he’d seen the man’s shoulders visibly slump at his reappearance. When he’d seen the man rise to his feet and start casting diagnostic charms at him and his friends. Harry knew it didn’t mean anything— he was another Slytherin, Snape cared about his House, of course— but he couldn’t help but hope.)

(Mrs. Weasley had hugged him and Ron and Hermione so many times he could barely stay on his feet. Ginny had folded herself into her father’s chest and stayed there, shuddering, muttering apologies, and it was only then that everything had clicked for Harry— possession, for a year, by Voldemort. He set himself a mental reminder to do his best over the summer to let her play seeker and keep an eye on her.)

(Snape had insisted on coming with him to Dumbledore’s office, to talk about everything. Dumbledore had been keenly interested in how exactly the sword had appeared— you reached in the hat and pulled out the sword, Harry?)

(Harry thought about what Snape had said, about lying about what they’d seen in the Mirror. His gaze is a heavy thing, like a lay of wards, and the lie is on his lips before he thinks about it.)

(Could he, alone, have pulled the sword? Harry isn’t sure. But what awful variation of today would have left him alone to try? Ron and Hermione are always there. Why Dumbledore doesn’t seem to get this, he isn’t sure.)

(Lucius Malfoy. The house-elf tucked behind his legs, staring at Harry with wide-eyed admiration. The pieces about who put the diary in play come together all at once, and maybe if he’d had a different day he could have summon some decorum worthy of his house, but his accusations are sharp and brutal. The house-elf is nodding along, and then Lucius kicks him, and all of Harry’s rage coalesces.)

(Can I give the diary back to Mr. Malfoy, Headmaster, Harry asks, and Snape’s brow furrows, but he voices no concerns.)

(Master has given Dobby a sock, Dobby is free! shrieks the house-elf with glee. It is then that Harry solves the other mystery of the year— Dobby, acting completely of his own free will, had learned of Lucius’s plans and stolen his mail and shut the barrier and set the bludger.)

(Harry stares down at the abused, ragged looking house-elf and is unable to decide what emotion he’s having— has no one heard of just talking to him? Except—)

(Can I have my letters from the summer?)

(He manages to save the stack through Snape’s enforced visit to the hospital wing— this is not optional, Mr. Potter, you were bit by a mythical snake legendary for its venom, I am quite literal when I say you were given the only known remedy— and his and Hermione and Ron’s reunion with their friends in the fifth-floor corridor. He saves them until he’s alone in his four-poster, the curtains drawn and the privacy and silence wards he favors hanging around them.)

(There are the letters he knew about— Millie and Daphne, Neville and Susan. Those taper off, as his friends realized he wasn’t getting mail and started sending them to Ron or Hermione instead. There are a few he didn’t know about— Blaise sent him quite a few letters, as did Ernie, which makes his stomach twist in a way he can’t understand. There is even one, in a complex cipher he’ll have to ask Hermione for help with, from Theo. He’s a bit amazed his friend dared, and glad that this is one letter he didn’t disappoint the sender by not seeing— Theo had warned him at the beginning of the summer not to write back.)

(And then—)

(They’re not what you want them to be, he reminds himself, as he reaches for the first one, written on parchment stained in one corner with what can’t be anything other than a potion. It’s your Head of House, writing to make sure he was successful in getting you out of a bad situation.)

(And on the one hand, he’s right. They are nothing special. Snape’s hand is as sharp and precise as ever, and he asks acerbic and grating questions about if Harry has put down his asinine broom long enough to study and I have enclosed a reading list that will surely delight your Miss Granger, please do take the summer to read up on potions theory. Snape never goes as far to ask about his summer, or share any details of his.)

(And yet it warms him to the core. He wrote them for me, Harry thinks. All for me.)

(Later, Harry will summon the cracked and cast-off pieces of this semester around him like a cloak and look the people who continue to regard him as the Heir in the eyes and say yeah, sure, want to go down with me and meet the basilisk, maybe it’s still hungry. Best results on pure-bloods who are assholes.)

(Later, Ernie will cross the Great Hall at dinner and apologize, profusely, in front of everyone, for doubting him. The reality of it, the risk someone as posh as Ernie would take to do so publicly, isn’t lost on him, and Harry takes his outstretched hand. I forgive you, he’ll say.)

(Later, a different hand will draw the sword from the hat, the best of the Gryffindors. By then Harry will understand that he alone could not have pulled the sword. Ron or Hermione alone could not have pulled the sword. Their bravery is like a triptych, worthless unless all together.)

(Worthless, maybe, unless for one of the others.)

(The letters remind Harry of the summer, of the walled garden behind Hermione’s row house where the raspberries grew and flying at the Burrow, and Harry’s heart swells with want. After all of this, the term was nearly over, and when he dreams, he doesn’t dream of snakes and Tom M. Riddle rising from the diary like a wraith. He dreams of the letters, floating around him, and Hermione casting wards in muggle Birmingham, and introducing Ron to The Hobbit, and the kind of world Voldemort would never understand.)

(Later, he will stand in a graveyard and Voldemort, newly resurrected, will ask him to join him for the last time. Harry will think not of his dead parents, or the tortured muggles, or the swaths of destruction and the rhetoric, but of Hermione petrified. Of Ron’s fear crystalized in the Chamber as Ginny lay still. Of what the monster took from Neville, from Susan. Of Cedric. And it’s not the Gryffindor that bites out fuck you. It’s the Slytherin, who could have made deals, who could have bargained, if Voldemort hadn’t hurt the people he cares about the most, again and again and again.)

Chapter Text

At the Leaving Feast, Millie sits between Harry and Daphne, Theo on the other side of Harry and a supremely miffed Draco across the table from them, and feels only relief. First year had seemed long at times, but it was been nothing compared to this one. 

In another life, she would have been at Beauxbatons, she knows, with her distant French cousins that make her feel small and ugly and unwanted. She would have taken courses on  Pureblood etiquette and and elemental magics and alchemy and instead of a puzzle box of a castle, there would have been a quite ordinary French manor house. 

(But maybe no one would have tried to kill her mates?)

In her knapsack, at her feet beneath the table, are a year’s worth of notes on the castle and its denizens, all written in the cramped cipher she invented when she was eight. She knows how Gemma takes her coffee and how Percy Weasley organizes his notes and far too much about Marcus Flint’s complete obsession with Oliver Wood. She knows how to get into all the Common Rooms in the castle, knows exactly where all the portrait connections are, and has found nine new secret passages, including one she doesn’t even think the Weasley twins know about.

(She’s content to wait on the Chamber of Secrets— maybe in a few years, it won’t be so traumatic for Harry to go back down there? She’s still not sure how exactly he managed to pull it off, coming face-to-face with a teenage Voldemort and killing a giant snake. Whatever parts of him that make up his Slytherin-ness are not the same ones she has, that’s for sure.)

Hopefully this summer she can see him for more than an afternoon at a Quidditch match. Her parents aren’t necessarily opposed to the concept of her befriending Harry Potter (she’s pretty sure her father is ecstatic that she has any friends at all; from the sound of it, he had spent his entire Hogwarts career in the library, trying not to catch the attention of anyone recruiting for the Dark Lord or the Order, and had fled to France and fallen in love with her mother immediately upon graduation), but neither of her parents are very good at the part of having children that involves them being loud and running. Decorum is very highly prized in her family. 

And despite their best efforts, she does not have a whole lot of that. She did know exactly how to get into every secret library at all their decaying Manor houses, and was the fastest person to solve the Malfoy Manor hedge maze in recent history, but all she had in her fists is violence, and hunger. (If Draco had been foolish enough to invite her to his birthday party as a joke and then try to trap her in the hedge maze, she was damn sure going to ruin it by bursting out of it in record time, earning an approving nod from Lucius Malfoy in front of Draco to boot.)

Next to her, Harry is eating with the even focus he’s slowly learned over these past two years, and Theo looks vacant and jumpy. Daphne is trying to win her end-of-term bet with Blaise by flirting with Crabbe, which isn’t going well, though Draco looks annoyed. Blaise notices her looking, like he always does, and flashes her a blinding grin. (Blaise’s actions have been shrouded in deep water for most of this term, but she’s finally managed to pry from him that his mother, an Italian Countess, threatened to revoke his Hogwarts admission if his marks didn’t improve, and he’s been working in a way that would put Hermione to shame, and has had little time for politics, Golden Trio-generated drama, or anything else. Which makes Millie sad, in many ways. But maybe they can get him back, for real, next year?)

If she’s honest, she’s still a little shocked she’s managed to garner friends for herself. Theo is as Heir as they come, and paranoid to the core, and the fact that he’s let her have so much shocks her and delights her in turns. And Harry— she expected to be beneath his purview, just another Slytherin who preferred to stay in the shadows and accrue information, but he latched onto her like a kindred spirit those first weeks First year. It’s not what he has with Ron and Hermione, of course, and it’s not what he has with Theo, but it’s the common ground of wanting to understand exits. She’s better at curating them (the Hat thought about Ravenclaw), and he’s better at using them (the almost Gryffindor), but they’re in it together. 

And— she thinks they have each other’s number, in a basal way. Neither of them had a real childhood, she thinks— she was alone in sprawling houses, and his family didn’t bother to look at him, or feed him— and together something unhinges and they can giggle about Quidditch or sneak off into the hallways or theorize about terrible dating options for the other (Harry looked her in the eyes the other day and said Lavender Brown and she about strangled him; her going pick for him is obviously Malfoy, which she thinks Harry could learn to deal with but would cause Malfoy no end of grief). They’re trying to draw Theo in, but he’s still surviving. It hurts, to see how much he’s still clearly fighting for just scraps, and Millie know she’s not powerful or skilled enough yet to orchestrate a murder of a certain Nott Lord that would look like a suicide, but she knows who is. Knows she could probably get blackmail on them if she tries. She flexes her hands under the table, and walks that corridor for a moment, but knows in her bones she’s not that kind of Slytherin. She’s not a killer, or a mastermind, or a charmer. She just knows things.

It’s hard to believe, after all of it, that Harry wants her to stick around. She’s nothing, really— the worthless only daughter of a pureblood house, no beauty, no true magical prowess to speak of, not slick social acumen or political skill. If anyone’s fade-into-the-background expendable, it’s her.

(Which is what Harry thinks, about himself, she’s beginning to understand. And yet he is the one always at her shoulder, pulling her forward. I’ll take Millie as Chaser, obviously. Where should we go, Millie? What do you know about them, Millie?)

(Maybe if she’s nothing else, in all these vast thickets and wastes of plots, monsters, and bloodshed, she can be on his team. At his shoulder, going Harry is seeker for us. Going what do you need from me? Going you’re good and you’re right and you’re brilliant, and I’m on your side.)

She doesn’t want what Ron and Hermione have with him, smothering and claustrophobic, always in each other’s space. She’s not used to that kind of thing. She needs, always, to be able to leave. But maybe it could be like it is— derelict passages, and scrimmage Quidditch matches, and always ready with human intelligence or a stupid pun.

(She always needs to be able to leave. But what a thing, that now if she’s gone too long, there are people who will come find her.)

________________

At the Leaving Feast, Ernie gingerly sits next to Ron, which achieves him a slight nod from Susan, who’s on his other side. He feels like he’s spent the last few weeks of term apologizing left and right to the trio (which is completely founded—  he was acting right Malfoy-ish there for a bit), but he is still nervous about a rejection. Ron, being Ron, had brushed off any slights against his person once Harry and Hermione had forgiven him, and only asks him to pass the potatoes several times, and then turns to him to interrogate him about his summer plans. He is surprised, but also secretly delighted, how readily he’s been invited to the Burrow in the coming weeks. He still does not feel very confident on a broom, but perhaps there will a chance for him to improve?

Ernie already knows most of his summer will be spent at the MacMillian Estate, under the rotating guidance of a series of subject tutors. His parents expect him to sit for as many OWLs as possible, and since Sprout explicitly forbade anyone from taking more than two electives (he chose Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, of course), he’ll be catching up on the rest of them over the summers. He knows he has nothing to complain about, but he had faint hopes of perhaps getting to spend some time with his father, hearing about legislation in the Ministry, or with his mother, maybe shadowing her work with the Education Board. Tutoring means seeing them for Sunday brunches, if he’s lucky. 

(He had high hopes for last summer, when they toured America, but that consisted mainly of shunting him off with different various distant cousins he’d never met and disappearing for long stretches to talk to American officials of various types.)

Ernie swallows, trying to soothe some of the bitterness from his bones. Harry has no parents, period, and whoever he’s living with now is so low as to not even be worthy of a mention. Susan has an over-worked aunt, and Neville has a distant and cold grandmother, and Theo— well, that’s not even worth getting into. He knows he has it far from bad: he’s never been hungry, or cold, or had to want for anything. He’s grown up in the lap of luxury, a perfect pureblood heir to the House of MacMillian. 

(Slytherin, he’d told the Hat, eyes shut, thinking of what his parents had planned for him. And the hat had said, Child, you’re none of that. There’s no need to lie to yourself. What you want, what you’ve always wanted, is in Hufflepuff.)

The hat had been right, of course: in Slytherin he would have found allies, unable to let them get past his well-crafted exterior, but it had only taken Susan two months of relentless Susan-ing to get him to finally put down all his walls. Ron, and Justin, and Hannah, and then slowly the rest of the trio’s friends, had followed suite. And then he’d gone and nearly ruined it all because he’d been so unnerved by Harry being a parselmouth.

“I really am sorry, Ron,” he says, in a low voice. Ron elbows him, and takes a half-chewed roll out of his mouth to speak.

“I swear mate, next time you apologize I’m going to hex you. I bloody well know. Save your speeches of undying loyalty or whatever.”

“I—“ Ernie has given several of those, in the last few days. He thinks of Harry with his bright eyes and darting laugh, how quickly he’d held out his hand to shake and make up; he thinks of Hermione who’d accepted the apology and then come running to him the next day for help with her History of Magic term paper. Sue went so far as to throw her arms around him— I couldn’t have done the letters with you, you know— and Anthony, ever the stoic, had offered him a hand to shake. Millie, of course, had been more suspicious, but ultimately had put a good face on it, and he’s not sure if Theo’s ever really trusted him. And Susan— well, who deserves Susan, when push comes to shove? But it’s back now, nevertheless, all of it. Everything he’d been handed so unexpectedly, everything he’d longed for his whole life. Can he— can he say that? He suddenly needs Ron to understand how much wants to be here.

“I’ve just never had anything like this before,” he says, softly. “And I— I love it— I love you all, I really do, and I never want to ruin it again.”

Ron’s face curls into a grin, and he slings an arm around him. “Mate. I know.” The weight of Ron’s arm is a creature comfort he’s still getting used to, but he leans into it all the same. “We don’t want to ruin it either.”

Ron told him and Susan about the chamber, about Ginny, about the sheer terror of seeing a teenage Dark Lord rise from the diary in the darkness, raving about killing his sister to return. Ernie—

Ernie’s parents aren’t Death Eaters, he doesn’t think. But the whole concept of what the Dark Lord stands for has never really dissuaded them very much; it was the torture and the mania, and also probably the part where he was stupid enough to die from trying to killing an infant. They are interested in his friendship with Harry Potter for purely political purposes, and he knows they wouldn’t have really cared if a few muggleborns had just never woken up from petrification. 

(He didn’t really care, when it was Colin. And what sick, monstrous response is that?)

Ernie knows, at heart, that he’s nothing special. He’s a cardboard cut-out of an heir, filled with stock responses and shaking hands. He makes passable grades, writing good essays but unable to quite make his magic preform in real time, which is how he feels about himself in real life. Give him a week and he’ll figure out what he’s supposed to say, do, be. He’s always envisioned himself as a legal clerk in the Ministry, surrounded by paper work and having to save nothing, someone always higher up to tell him what to do.

(But, he wonders, with an acrid taste of fear, as he watches Justin finally, finally laugh at one of Ron’s jokes again after months of ignoring him, what if the person who’s telling me what to do is the Dark Lord? What would I do then?)

It is an unsettling thing, to realize that he doesn’t really know. It is an unsettling thing, to know that if the whole Chamber of Secrets business had been left in his hands, he would not have had to guts to go down and save Ginny Weasley. He couldn’t have risked that much. 

Is it the coward’s choice, to decide at thirteen you would just trust the crew you’ve lucked into? Not the Minster of Magic; not Albus Dumbledore; not the Dark Lord— Ron Weasley with his acne-prone face and shaggy red hair; Susan Bones with her electric eyes and ruthless grin; Hermione Granger with her book-smarts and crime lord attitude; Harry Potter, parselmouth or not.

(Is it the choice of a coward, or the choice of a Hufflepuff?) 

________________

At the Leaving Feast, Anthony sits strategically across from Sue and Hermione, so that once they were done eating they could move the dishes aside and compare the final drafts of their summer reading lists. Hermione had come up with the brilliant idea of delegating everyone who was interested a subject for the summer, so that the specialist could do all the intensive reading on something that interested them, and then convey the most relevant parts to the group, either by owl or when they were back in the fall. Anthony had obviously volunteered to take law, Sue was doing transfiguration, and Hermione was wards, and she’d promised to try to draft Ernie (History of Magic), Harry (DADA), Ron (healing, apparently, which Anthony hadn’t expected but he’s open to learning new things about people), and Neville (Herbology, which was a surprise to no one). Theo had volunteered to take Dark Arts, which Anthony wasn’t sure how to feel about— he liked the bloke, but he could be creepy sometimes. Though, in his defense, that just seemed to be how a lot of the British pure-bloods were. 

Technically, Anthony is a pure-blood, but not like that. His mother is the disinherited child of a complex mangle of Selwyns who apparently did a lot of marrying their cousins, and his father is American— pure-blood, yes, but American— which has lead to a drastic increase in their household of things like “flavored food” and “sports other than Quidditch and football,” but hasn’t leant him much of a reputation in the wizarding world.

Not that Anthony cares much. The hat had said Slytherin? and then they’d both laughed at the idea of Anthony doing things like running for Minster of Magic or wanting anything that wasn’t knowledge and it had been Ravenclaw, like his mother had said it would be. He just wanted to learn things, and then go back to his parent’s rambling country house and teach his sisters how to read library call numbers and eat his grandmother’s bagels. He was a Goldstein; there were no empire builders here. 

He doesn’t have the things Hermione and Sue have, he knows. Hermione is teeth and claws, learning wards because her love for Harry is like the Northern Lights, like the pitch and fold of the landscape, like the North Star. So constant you could find your way home by it. Harry is not safe, and Hermione would like to make him safe, and she is a witch with power and knowledge. It is that simple. 

Sue, on the other hand, is all hyper-focus, brilliance— staying up all night to work on obscure transfiguration solutions, forgetting to write potions essays (the amount of times this term alone Snape has deposited an essay back on the desk they brew at together and gone, Miss Li, it may have escaped your notice, but brewing is not the crude art of transfiguration). Hermione is the brightest wix of their year, but that’s across the board; Sue has the making of a career transfigurationist. But maybe most impressive— for all her Ravenclaw, she was Hufflepuff enough to make the petrifications her problem, and Slytherin enough to trade on her family history, hideous as it is, to get a solution. 

But maybe that’s just the part of her the impending war has brought out. 

For all he is, Anthony’s no idiot— ten years without hide or hair of the Dark Lord, and then for Harry and the trio to encounter him twice in as many years? He’s in the eves, gaining power, biding his time. Even under the bright lights of the Great Hall such a thought makes him shiver, and as he looks across the table at Hermione and Sue— now talking about plans for math tutoring from Sue’s sister over the summer— he comprehends that there will be no escape from the war, not for them. The Dark Lord will want to murder Hermione (good luck, Anthony thinks) for not having the right sort of blood, and he will either kill Sue along with her family or have her do the deed to prove her loyalty. 

He’s not like them, with their prowess, their skill. He loves Hogwarts, and learning, and reading dense books about magic law, and talking about strange branches of magic with his friends, but the rest of it? He’d helped, when he could, with the Trio’s research projects, but that was only because he was good at reading archived material. He can’t begin to imagine going down into the Chamber to fight a snake. 

He can’t begin to imagine having to fight a war. 

And that’s the fundamental difference, isn’t it? He won’t have to. His father runs an apothecary in the magical section of Bath, and his mother is a professional wizarding photographer, and his grandmother takes care of the twins and runs the house hold. They’re pure-bloods, sure, but no one smart or powerful or interesting. The Dark Lord won’t come knocking, recruiting or otherwise, and if Anthony buries himself in law and under-preforms in his OWLs, he too will be of no note. There will be a war, because he can read the signs clearly, but it will never be his war. 

Except how dare he think that, knowing the past, knowing why his father ended up in America, knowing what his grandparents spent their magic on: what war with Grindelwald was worth time or energy when there were their neighbors and friends to evacuate from a monster far more grievous? 

And he, like them, is already in too deep: how could he walk, when the war will center around Hermione and Harry and Ron? Around Hermione, with her brilliance and unending capacity to listen to digressions on wizarding law; around Harry, who wants him around even though he’s a law nerd from a nothing family; around Ron, who drew him in, decided that Hermione’s friends should be his friends too with a hungry precision? When the Dark Lord will come knocking on Sue Li’s door, Sue Li who double-checks his transfiguration homework and will fall asleep on his shoulder in History of Magic, Sue’s door and Neville’s door and Susan’s door and how can he walk? How can he even entertain such an idea?

He is no Gryffindor; he is not very good at hexes, or even charms. But he can read. He can exploit law and politics. He can find books in corners of ancient libraries the Dark Lord would not bother with. He can lie. He can stall. He can fight. And, if it came to it, he can die. 

Is that what he should be thinking, at thirteen, sitting at Hogwarts at the Leaving Feast? Maybe not. But it’s what his grandmother has told him stories about, and it’s writ into his mother’s face when she tells him about the last war and what she chose, in the end, not to risk, and it’s how his father holds himself. His family are not, at heart, empire builders, and they’re no Gryffindors, seeking out a good fight, but when push comes to shove, they’ll stand and take the bolt of AK with the best of them. 

He hopes not. He hopes to God not— he wants a full Hogwarts career and a law clerk appointment in the ministry and maybe eventually a job like the one Sue’s mum has. He hopes he has years and years more with the trio, and Sue, and Susan and Neville and Millie and the rest. He wants his sisters, seven now, to come to Hogwarts when he’s a seventh-year and show them everything he’s told them about over the summers in real life. 

(But what good is wanting a better world, if you’re not willing to die in order to bring it to fruition?)

________________

At the Leaving Feast, Neville sits with Fred and George and Lee Jordon, missing Ginny fiercely. Madame Pomfrey had given her a medical leave for the rest of the semester, and so she was back home at the Burrow, which Neville was sure was helping— he wouldn’t want to be in the castle where he’d been possessed— but he still wanted to talk to her. See that she was alright, reassure her that he knew it wasn’t her fault. He’s said all those things in a letter, and apologized profusely for not noticing, but it wasn’t the same. 

(Luna hadn’t known, either, which was a relief, at least. She’d known the diary was weird, and that Ginny had been off, but she hadn’t figured out the possession angle. Or that the person doing the possession was You-Know-Who.)

It’s been a long, long year, to the point that his grandmother’s estate, mind-numbingly quiet, filled with demanding relatives and the ghosts of his parents, feels like a relief. At least there will be no petrifications of his friends or rumors over who’s the heir, or the majority of Gryffindor subtly hexing him in the hallway for siding with Harry. 

Neville won’t pretend to be any paragon of brilliance, or insight, or skill, even if magic has come so much easier this year with his new wand and help revising essays and Harry taking time, even with the heir stuff, to come to Snape’s office hours with him. (He’s begrudgingly convinced Harry is right— Snape’s not out to get him, specifically, and isn’t so basely evil that he’s about to start using that curse on students. But the man is bloody foreboding, alright, and spooky to boot, and jumpiness is not an endearing trait in a potions class, no matter who’s teaching it.) He’s no prodigy, that’s for sure. 

But— he thinks, maybe, just maybe— he’s starting to understand why the hat said Gryffindor. He doesn’t have that Hufflepuff openness, the uncomplicated loyalty, the unfettered love. His is all brittle, mangled, brutal: just because Harry and Hermione and Ron are okay with Ernie, now, doesn’t mean he is. He likes Theo enough, but he sure as hell doesn’t trust him. He holds grudges, he’s coming to learn. Holds grudges and has his friend’s backs and if—

There is a part of him, small but growing, that thinks that if the trio had asked him to come, to the Chamber to fight the snake and You-Know-Who, he would have said yes. This is a terrifying emotion, because he knows that it was this emotion that got his parents where they are, in the ward reeking of antiseptic, but it is his, nonetheless. 

He loves Ron, and Harry, and Hermione; that is fact. Ron was the first one who’d ever really looked at him, invited him into something, and now is always asking him questions, making sure he’s eaten. Hermione is so patient, answering all his questions, and also one of the few people in the castle (besides Sprout) who seems to actually enjoy Herbology. And Harry— Harry is powerful, and gentle, and stands to fight back when someone hexes him. Harry listens when he talks, even though he’s the Boy-Who-Lived, with everything, and always double-checks to make sure he’s okay hanging out with whoever’s not flying when he and Ron want to. 

He loves them, but not with that blind, unwavering Hufflepuff love, and he’s not sure how to feel about that either. Harry obviously wasn’t the heir, you could have seen that from his face, but if he had been—

If he had been, Neville is beginning to understand that he would have been able to raise his wand just the same. Level it without shaking hands. Does that make him bad? 

Or does that just make him a Gryffindor?

The summer stretches out before him, and he thinks of the letters he will write to Ginny. The letters he will write to the trio, to Susan and Sue and Millie. It is still a novel thing, to have friends. 

To have friends, and to know there are things more important than them. He will stand with them, but if they stop being worth standing behind, beside—

He pushes that thought away. Thinks, instead, of how they trusted him enough to back their play with the spiders. Of how they went down into the chamber to face You-Know-Who. Of how he hopes he doesn’t come back— hopes beyond measure— but the feeling in his chest, when he thinks of such a thing, is not quite fear. 

If anyone can stop him, surely it’s the three of them. At that table, as Fred and George discuss in low tones their prank to make it seem like Gryffindor has stolen the House Cup from Slytherin at the last moment, Neville curls his hand around his wand, and feels the now-familiar bloom of warmth of his magic, hungry, waiting. He sees the war, and he sees the trio, and he knows he’s not ready to fight. 

But in time. All in time. 

________________

(At the Leaving Feast, Dumbledore sits at the Head Table, and thinks of nothing but the diary.)

(He had known Voldemort was intelligent of course; that was why he was so dangerous. Purveyor of dark arts, master of ancient blood magics, always willing to interpolate, recombinate, old magics into something new and terrible. But after last year—)

(Last year, he’d seen Voldemort as he was: a desperate wraith, preying on anyone and anything to get back to full power. This diary was from before, when Voldemort had Britain in the palm of his hand and his magic was unparalleled.)

(When he’d been afraid of Dumbledore, but only because he’d been taught by him. Because he didn’t know any better. What Albus had told no one was that by the waning months of 1979, Voldemort’s magic had been beyond the pale, beyond him. Albus and Grindelwald had been equals, but Voldemort—)

(Perhaps, though, Lucius has made a grave error. Ever the politician, he’d forsaken his defense of an object of immense power for his Lord in an attempt to outmaneuver Albus, and perhaps murder some muggleborns along the way. Now the diary is Dumbledore’s, power broken, and Lucius will have things to answer to when Voldemort returns— if, Albus, but it’s not an if, is it?)

(At the Slytherin table, Harry sits ensconced between the son of one of the oldest and most loyal Death Eaters, and the daughter of an unremarkable pureblood house. His eyes track across the hall, every now and again, to the sixth Weasley and the ever-more interesting Hermione Granger. But for him to draw the sword from the hat, that test of Gryffindors everywhere— surely he is, despite his house, somewhat worthy? It should not have been so comforting to Albus, but it was. He hadn’t been able to help his look of triumph in Severus’s direction once Harry raced off to confront Lucius and free his house elf.)

(The diary. The war. Harry Potter, who has faced Voldemort twice in two years and come away better every single time. Hopefully, next year will be a fairly normal chance for him to bond with his classmates and grow magically, but Albus will not lie— the boy is shaping up beyond his wildest dreams. He clearly still sees Severus as more of a mentor figure than Albus himself, but there is ample time for that misstep to be corrected.)

(The diary. Power and magic beyond his wildest dreams. But for the first time in a long time, Albus feels like he has a way forward. Lucius Malfoy made a miscalculation, and Harry Potter rose to the occasion, and now they, together, are one step closer to unraveling the heavy skien of monstrosity that is Voldemort.)

(Winning the war.)

(And what more could Albus hope for, as the outcome of a school year?)

________________

At the Leaving Feast, Minerva sits between Albus and Filius, and decides to hold off on the mead, if only to better appreciate the scotch in her quarters after this. She cannot wait for the summer. If there is a silver lining, it is that Colin Creevy has bounced back remarkably well from the whole ordeal, and managed to pass all of his courses (she thinks Severus must have gone easy on him in potions, but to mention such a thing to the man would be foolish). And Ginevra—

She’d noticed, of course, that the young Miss Weasley was pale, and exhausted, and nervous. Had called her several times over the course of the year into her office, written several letters home, even gone so far as to interrogate her brothers. Every time, Ginny had expressed homesickness, and loneliness, which was quite understandable— she loved her Gryffindors, but they were not always the best at welcoming. Between the youngest Mr. Weasley and Neville, though, and the unexpected edition of Filius’s Miss Lovegood (who was a natural at transfiguration, likely because she seemed to have very loose ideas about the nature of reality to begin with), she had hoped that the girl would find her footing. 

But how could you find your footing when you were being possessed by a fragment of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?

She had send Ginevra home, after the trio had rescued her from the Chamber. To be with her parents and have the space to heal and recover. She’d reached out to several former students at St. Mungo’s, placed the Weasleys in contact with an expert in magical trauma and possession, as well as one of her muggleborn former students who’s sister was a therapist in the muggle world. She’s done what she can, and she hopes Ginevra will be better for it. But still, the hovering failure of it rankles— shouldn’t she have seen? 

Or was this just the shape her old age and exhaustion was taking theses days?

She thinks of the trio, staggering in to Dumbledore’s office after the Chamber, while Minerva tried to console the weeping Weasley parents and Albus proposed solutions and Severus’s crisp tracking spells failed over and over again. Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley had Ginevra supported between them, pale and shaky but alive, and Mr. Potter was behind them, with  Fawkes on his shoulder and the sword of bloody Gryffindor dark with snake blood dragging from his other hand. Never had he looked more Gryffindor, with snake viscera in his hair and his own blood trailing down his forearm from a closed wound, but for the first time, when Minerva looked at him, she hadn’t seem his father. 

Because James, come back from fighting a legendary monster at twelve? James, with snake blood in his hair and that look in his eyes, something between dissociation and exhaustion and resignation? At twelve, James was— well, no matter what he was later, Minerva can admit he was much more like Mr. Malfoy than this Mr. Potter, all my father will hear about this and little care beyond the crew he was building. And if he had done it, he would have come back with swagger and arrogance, and not eyes that went straight to Severus, asking is it okay?

(And Albus could crow on and on about how Severus couldn’t look past his hatred of James to care about this Mr. Potter, but Minerva wasn’t blinded by machinations she was building and the absurd need to pretend Severus was some embittered monster. She saw the slump of his shoulders in relief. She saw the nod he gave Mr. Potter. She saw the way he insisted on staying for his conversation with Albus, like a true Head of House, and heard from Poppy how he’d insisted on Mr. Potter visiting the hospital wing when Albus dismissed them.)

She thinks of the trio. Wonders who had pulled the sword, which one of them could have been hers in another timeline. Mr. Weasley, with his grit and loyalty and love, going down to fight a monster in order to save his sister? Miss Granger, with prowess and skill, who she knows from Filius is learning wards mainly because she thinks she’ll need them in the fight to come, and what could be more Gryffindor than that? Mr. Potter, himself, who raged against the accusations of heirdom with the obtuseness of a Lion and killed a basilisk? 

(All of them, maybe, she thinks, and shudders at the implications. She loves her Lions, but—)

(In another house, would Ginevra have felt included enough from the get-go to never need the diary in the first place? She’s spent decades trying to build the kind of unity that Severus and Pomona and even Filius seamlessly foster, and it truly is like herding cats.)

At Slytherin, Mr. Potter is grinning at something Miss Greenglass has told him; at Ravenclaw, Miss Granger is scrawling something down on a slip of parchment while Miss Li and Mr. Goldstein talk (a book list, she would put money on); at Hufflepuff, the youngest Mr. Weasley has one arm slung around Mr. MacMillian and is shoveling food into his mouth with his free hand. No indication that they’d just killed a legendary monster, or faced He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, again. 

They are not hers, and she has been more grateful for few things (she would pity anyone who’s responsibility was the whole trio). Maybe, as the years stretch and melt, she can see someone else in Mr. Potter’s face consistently, like Severus seems to be able to. Maybe she’ll finally crack the code, with enough advising meetings and house Exploding Snap tournaments and the right Prefect appointments, and build a Gryffindor house where they’ll side with each other above all.

But maybe more than anything, she hopes this crew will be stronger than the last one. That when this Potter faces the Dark Lord once and for all, it will not be because his friends have betrayed him. It will be with them, and they will raise their wands as one. 

________________

At the Leaving Feast, Filius sits between Minerva and Aurora, and debates if the next Defense teacher will be worse than Lockhart. 

(No one, except perhaps Severus, had been more delighted to learn that the fraud had managed to give himself a such an intensive concussion in his scramble to pack his countless portraits of himself and flee the school rather than face the basilisk, that he’d had be rushed to St. Mungo’s with severe amnesia. No one was sure if he would ever recover. A true pity, Severus had sneered, and Filius could say he felt the same.)

On the one hand, it would be hard to do worse, but on the other hand, Albus’s priorities regarding staffing at the school were opaque at best and downright infuriating at worst. As much as Filius admired Severus’s policies as Head of House, and had grown to like the man personally, he was far from well-suited to teaching. 

(Admittedly, anyone would be better than Horace Slughorn. Just thinking about him made Flitwick take a long drink of his mead. There is a part of Filius, surprisingly brutal, that still regrets not risking the sentence from casting imperio to make him resign after the first potions death had failed to concern Dippet. If nothing else, students should be safe at Hogwarts.)

But have they ever been safe at Hogwarts, really? He thinks, with chills, of the variation of this year Pomona’s lobbying and Miss Li’s letter-writing campaign had prevented: Mr. Finch-Fletchley and Mr. Creevy and his own Miss Clearwater and Miss Granger missing large swaths of the school year. 

(He has a vision, of Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley resorting to less than strictly legal methods to obtain mandrakes, if such a thing had come to pass. Three weeks had already been hideously long, for the two of them.)

He watches his house for a long moment, their motivations skating away from him like fish from a hand. He knows exactly what all of them would have gotten on their now-canceled end-of-term examinations, and what careers would be best for them, but he is still mystified by who turned on Mr. Potter over the Heir business (absurd, the idea that it would be him) and who sided with him. Miss Li’s pivot to politics was unforeseen, and he’s not upset that Mr. Goldstein is pursuing inter-house friendships with the likes of Miss Bones and Mr. Longbottom and Mr. Nott, but he can’t say he understands why, unless it has something to do with the trio. 

All roads seem to lead to them, one way or another, these days. Not that they don’t deserve that— Flitwick has noticed, as the term’s drawn to a close, how their magics mesh together when they’re standing side by side, like a rising thunderhead, and he knows it’s only going to become more prominent as they get older— but maybe it would be nice if they didn’t have to use it? If it hadn’t somehow fallen to them to kill the monster and save Miss Weasley? 

(He is still itching to get his hands on the diary that had apparently somehow invoked You-Know-Who and possessed Miss Weasley, but Albus is stonewalling him. He’s no expert in Dark Arts, but he is no fool, and surely he could have helped, but the Headmaster seems to have schemes folded inside of schemes.)

He thinks of Miss Granger’s magic, multifaceted and brilliant, bolstered by studying and reading dense papers. He thinks of Mr. Weasley’s magic, passable until he needs it, infused to the core with a heart and a need. And he thinks of Mr. Potter’s magic: trembling, hitching, but layered with a derelict sense of power, waiting in the wings until he needs to fight.

(And how Filius wishes none of them have to fight. But he knows, in his bones, they will.)

He watches them laugh in the lights and shadows of the Great Hall, and he promises himself that he will not be like Albus, not to them. When they come to him, he will tell them everything they need to know, everything they want to know, no matter how Dark or uncouth or currently beyond them. Albus maintains this strange balance of training for war while also trying to preserve innocence, and Flitwick is no liar, at heart. If they are old enough to face You-Know-Who, they are old enough to know how to begin to build a decent Avada. 

(Miss Granger will be able to do it as soon as she comes of age, with the power to put behind it; he thinks Mr. Weasley will be able to rattle it off if someone dares hurt his friends, drawing power from his great thickets and glades of love and loyalty; and Mr. Potter—)

(Not yet. But soon. If he chooses to do so. And in the end, for all he is, he may choose not to. There are far worse ending to be offered to monsters than a painless jet of green light.)

He is, more than anything else, a teacher. And if Albus intends them to fight the war— if they intend to fight the war, which, after seeing the thing on Mr. Potter’s face after Miss Granger was found petrified, he thinks they do— they will not go into it knowing nothing. 

Not on his watch.

________________

At the Leaving Feast, Pomona sits between Albus and Severus and tallies the year. After everything, the biggest victory is that no one is dead. The monster was a basilisk, which means they truly dodged a bullet. Just one less reflective surface and there would have been a body count. 

(Thank goodness that Ginny doesn’t have to deal with that, as well. She’d offered the Weasleys the best of the countless therapy and support resources she’d cultivated over her time as Head, and they’d been grateful.)

Another victory: her house seems to have finally gotten their act together— by the end of the term, Ernie had publicly apologized to Harry, the trio were happily sitting at her table again, and Susan had apparently managed to burst into the Slytherin Common Room on accidental magic alone to get Theo after Hermione had been petrified (Severus had not been impressed, but she thought that was more a matter of personal affront to his wards, not due to Susan— even Filch seemed to like Susan). And Ron going down to the Chamber of Secrets to save his sister was as Hufflepuff as they come. She would have given him five hundred points, if she hadn’t thought Severus would have retaliated by giving Harry six hundred for the same. 

She’s still a bit amazed by how unlike his father Harry is turning out to be. James had charisma in spades, and gathered acolytes around him. She never doubted that he loved Remus and Peter and Black, but they never seemed quite convinced of it, always needing to prove they still belonged. Harry is many things, but he’s not the ringleader of the trio— they’re all working on the same level. Taking the known world and subdividing it, a third for everyone. 

And then when they realized there was more to the world than they’d thought, they just went out and found people who could handle those parts. James Potter would have never befriended someone like Sue, or Neville, or Theo, and even now the trio is reaping the benefits of those choices. Pomona sees long halls and corridors of friendship for them. 

The Dark Lord, Albus had said, was behind the possession. The shadows of war paint themselves on the landscape, and certainly this year has brought to mind Hogwarts before the last war, where all anyone cared about was blood status and surnames, with no attention spared to if your magic was strong or not, if you were good in a fight or unerringly loyal. She can feel it building in the eves, like a rising thunderhead, and she thinks, as she did last war, of how she could protect her muggleborns. How she can do her best to tear from the eleven-year-olds their ideas of blood-purity. It will not be enough, because what can a woman who’s never fought a single battle do against the hideous might of the Dark Lord, but it will be better than nothing. 

She will give the trio what generations of students have needed from her: a sense of safety. She will pour them tea when they come sit in her office, and step in to supervise their detentions with bad actors, and let them know they will always have a power base here, at Hogwarts, no matter what may come. She is not particularly powerful, or influential, but she will, when push comes to shove, chose their side.

(And isn’t that what they want, above perhaps all else? Sixth son; muggleborn; orphan from a bad home— at the end of the day, this has always been about building a team. About finally having someone on your side. James Potter, for all he was, had taken friendship for granted, and Harry will never.)

Albus doesn’t understand, she knows. He is too Gryffindor for this, and for all he talks about the power of love, she doesn’t think he understands that sometimes, love goes far beyond blood and obligation. Sometimes, love is three children coming together and then just never coming apart, for hell or high water. If he is right, and Harry is meant to save the wizarding world, he won’t do with without them. Apart from them. 

(She thinks, again, of the Marauders. What good has bravery ever been, apart from loyalty?)

The dead. The war. Ron and Susan teasing Ernie; Harry and Millie spinning a complex yard to a skeptical but intrigued Blaise; Hermione and Anthony and Sue laughing, like children. 

If nothing else, when the war comes, Pomona will offer them the best she has. As she does for all of them, as she always will do. 

________________

At the Leaving Feast, Snape sits next to Pomona and an increasingly drunk Trelawny (he drew the short straw with Filius), and tries not to think too hard about what an utter mess the year has turned out to be. 

He hasn’t been able to get the image of Harry coming into Albus’s office, covered in blood and trailing the sword of Gryffindor, out of his mind. He’d never been more grateful to the Headmaster for keeping the bloody bird around than then— a basilisk. Had they been out of their minds to go down there?

We tried to find you, Harry had muttered, when they were sitting in the Hospital Wing. Granger and Weasley were with the rest of the Weasleys, and Poppy had stepped over to see to the victim of the whole affair, and so they’d had a moment of peace, for Harry to preempt his building lecture. Which had primarily been based on fear and panic he wouldn’t have owned up to at wandpoint, but that was beside the point. We didn’t want to go alone but— we didn’t know how much time she had. We couldn’t risk it.

And you would risk yourselves? he had very nearly said, but had resisted. He had also resisted the urge to reach out and try to comb some of the basilisk blood from his hair, settling for a charm instead. He still couldn’t understand the make-up of the boy’s Slytherin-ness— he clearly belonged in the house, but he had none of the political acumen that was often associated with it, and his proclivity towards survival and risk-aversion went out the window the moment someone important to him was in danger. 

Which, he supposed, was more Slytherin than Gryffindor, at the very least. Maybe Weasley’s Hufflepuff-ness was rubbing off on him. 

And then there was the matter of the sword. 

Albus had bought the lie, hook, line, and sinker. Had torn his gaze up to Severus sharply as soon as Harry had gone running after Lucius as if to say see? He’s not really one of your snakes! and all Severus could think was he’s more mine than yours, which—

What he did say, in the hospital wing, when Harry told him the truth, of the three of them pulling the sword together (and after what had happened with the mirror, Snape wouldn’t have expected any less, everything seemed to bend and fold to them): there is a lot that can be forgiven when you return successful.

Should he have apologized, for not being there, at the Golden Trio’s beck and call? He’d been brewing in the dungeons. He could admit that from the way they’d told the story, they’d cut it close to the quick with saving the Weasley girl. But—

Severus tries not to dwell on the puncture wound in Harry’s arm, closed by phoenix tears. Tries not to think about how close they had all come to total ruin.

Machinations inside machinations. Lucius flying too close to the sun— he knew much of his summer teas with Narcissa would involve her anger and disgust with her husband, and he almost laughed at the thought. Lucius was a politician, but Narcissa was a Black through and through. The Dark Lord wished he could have had her in his Death Eater ranks. He had a great deal of questions about the true nature of the artifact the Dark Lord had left in Lucius’s possession, but now it was in Albus’s hands and he doubted he would ever get any answers. And the solution to the stolen mail and the barrier and the rogue bludger was the Malfoy’s abused and slightly off-kilter house elf? Severus decides to give himself a pass on that one— even a bonafide seer wouldn’t have seen that coming. At least Harry has an ally for life, if Dobby’s professions of loyalty were anything to go by.

Severus takes a long sip of mead, careful to move his cup out of Sibyl’s reach (even the house elves have stopped refilling her cup), and lets his gaze fall on Harry. Sitting at his table, in his house. About to have another normal summer thanks to his interventions. Well-dressed and well-fed and laughing. 

The war like a long palisade over the horizon. The dead like wraiths in the periphery. Tomorrow, he will take Harry to Diagon on the way to the Grangers, as if it becoming a routine (what a thing) and do his best to channel Pomona. That no-nonsense care, professional but adequate. None of his ruthlessness, or brutality, just making sure Harry has all his books for next year and a stern warning on what will happen if he and Granger try to brew over the summer again. Ice-cream, or the Quidditch Supply Store. 

Nothing more than one would expect from their Head of House. Because that’s what he is, to Harry, regardless of what the boy no longer has.

He— he knows what the boy should have had. Would have had, if it hadn’t been for him. As much as he disliked the man, if James at twenty-one could die on his feet facing the Dark Lord, he would have made a good father. Lily— 

(How can it hurt so much, still, after all this time? What he would give, for just an afternoon. They wouldn’t even have to talk; they could just sit in the sun by the lake and read and it would be enough, to have her at his shoulder, like the trio are always with each other.)

Lily would have curbed the arrogance, the entitlement the Potter line seemed want to breed. Lily would have had him do chores by hand and taught him to garden; Lily would have put flowers in every room of that house in Godric’s Hollow and sent Albus a Howler about student safety the minute she found out about the basilisk. 

And then come up to the castle and taken her son in her arms. 

Snape pushes the past away, forcefully. Harry is not James, with followers instead of friends, choosing wrong when it comes down to the wire. Harry is not Severus, ruining things irrevocably by falling in with the Dark Lord.

Harry is Harry. Harry is at his table, laughing with the children of Death Eaters and the future scions of pureblood houses. Harry killed a basilisk and still can’t manage to brew consistently. Harry has forged a bond with Weasley and Granger so strong it bends the magic of powerful objects around it.

He’s not Severus’s, in anything more than House. And what more would Severus want to do with the spawn of James Potter, anyway?

(He’s a spy. He lies well, even to himself.)

________________

(In their bolthole, after the feast, slunk away into the shadows with the help of their friends, Ron transfigures their stolen cushions into mattresses and they curl up together, watching the shadows the candles form play against the stone. Hermione gently runs her fingers over Harry’s new scar.)

(Do you think, Harry says, as they settle in, curled up together, all elbows and bushy tangles of hair, it needed to be all of us, with the sword?)

(I think it always has to be all of us, says Ron.)

(It wouldn’t feel right otherwise, says Hermione.)

(Harry thinks of what they’ve built this semester, despite everything. Of how he has so much more to offer than he had before, when he was small and friendless and starving.)

(How despite everything— the heir rumors and the politics and the petrifications and the impending war— there’s nothing he wouldn’t burn, to have this.)

(You know I love you both, he says, and it’s the first time he’s said it. To them, to anyone. It sits in the room like water behind a dam, waiting.)

(They say it back. Of course they say it back. How could they have ever, in any version of the universe, said anything else?)

(They dream of the sword, all of them: Hermione of using it, coming into her own; Ron of finding it in a dark pool in a snowy wood; and Harry of letting it fall from his hand and vanish.)

(Why would he need a sword, when he has the two of them beside him?)