He is eleven years old and trying to talk the Hat into Gryffindor. I'm brave, he's arguing. And I'm not smart enough for Ravenclaw, not nice enough for Hufflepuff. And I couldn't hack it as a Slytherin.
The Hat is skeptical; I'm not sure that's bravery, it's saying. That looks a little more like curiosity killing the cat, and the cat not minding.
Michael doesn't know what this means and demands an explanation.
It means, says the Hat, that you're a "Ravenclaw!" The last word is shouted to the hall; as Michael takes the hat off he hears one last whisper in his head— good effort, though.
And the Hat didn't seem all that incorrect, either— Michael excels in his classes and he likes Ravenclaw, and by the end of the year he is turning his nose up at the Gryffindors.
On the train ride home with Terry and Anthony they speculate about how Harry Potter must have felt defeating You-Know-Who and saving the world, and about whether Neville Longbottom deserved those ten extra points, which seemed to have only been added to rub it in Slytherin's face.
"Not that I minded," said Michael. "I don't like Slytherins."
"Pfft," says Terry, who doesn't like Slytherins either but does like to take the piss. "Gryffindor much?"
"Take that back," says Michael.
He is fourteen now and he has been abandoned at the Yule Ball. He had impressed his date initially with his very poor French, and once they'd gotten to the dance she'd realised how terrible it really was and gone off to dance with someone from her own school.
Terry went home for the holiday, and Anthony is dancing with Lisa Turpin, and Michael is sulking by himself when Neville Longbottom and a third year Gryffindor stop. She sits down and rubs her ankle and Neville goes for punch.
"Ginny Weasley," is what she introduces herself as. (He could have guessed. Ginger, freckles.)
"Michael Corner," he says.
"Flying solo?" she guesses.
"No, I just got dumped," he says. "I don't speak much French."
She laughs at him; he grins. He is feeling brave enough to go on: "You uh, like dancing?"
"Yeah, I guess," she says. "You?"
"Yeah, actually," he says, and gets up and does an awful shimmy around her chair, finishing with self-deprecating jazz hands and then sitting back in his seat with a whump. She laughs again, and this time so does he.
"What house are you?" she says.
"Ravenclaw," he says. "And you're Gryffindor?"
"Yeah," she says.
"Weasley," he says, to make it clear that he is not stalking her. She snorts with understanding.
And when he keeps talking to her, and she keeps talking back, and he gets up again to do a stupid dance and tells her, on impulse, to get up too, there is a part of him that says, see? This is sort of brave, right?
But the thrill of feeling like he's in the right supersedes the thrill of talking to a girl, and so he forgets it and moves on.
And Ginny Weasley dumps him, in the end, for being Ravenclaw.
(Well, for liking Ravenclaw's team more. And for thinking it hadn't been fair that the half of the Gryffindor team that was still playing had beaten Ravenclaw by relying on Cho Chang's broken heart to lose the game. Just didn't seem fair, did it?)
"Cheer up," says Terry bracingly. He never liked Ginny much.
But Michael is feeling pensive; he scowls out the window of their dorm and comes to terms with the fact that, even if joining the DA had been a sort of brave thing, it had been a Ravenclaw move.
Because yeah, he hadn't been sold on joining Harry Potter's illegal army club until he'd realised how godawful Professor Umbridge's class was going to be.
He's seventeen, and he's fallen asleep in the Common Room, his head resting on his bookbag, snoring softly. It's nearing exams and even though Snape is infinitely better than Umbridge, Michael can't keep up in class without a lot of time and effort. Earlier, Terry and Anthony were playing chess in loud voices over his head when his DA Galleon, which he'd stuck in the front pocket of his bag and then forgotten about, burned his cheek and woke him up.
He was too bleary to fish it out and read it. And what possible problem could Harry Potter be having that he'd need or want Michael Corner's help with?
He went back to his studies; Terry and Anthony go up to bed late and Michael, alone and candlelit, drifts off again until Professor Flitwick comes into the tower.
"Corner?" he says, his voice high.
"Uhhum," says Michael.
He realises at that moment that the professor was shaking and injured; he scrambles upright and stared. Flitwick looks so sad.
"Professor Dumbledore is dead," he says. "Death Eaters infiltrated the castle. Did you know?"
Michael keeps staring, with awful comprehension dawning on his still sleep-groggy mind, and says "No. It was quiet all night."
He doesn't go to the funeral; his dad shows up the next day, with a score of other parents, and says they're going home. As they're talking quietly in the Entrance Hall— Michael is trying to argue for more time to pack, since he's been missing his favourite jacket since February— an argument between one of his classmates and his mother gains steam, until the entire hall is quiet but for their raised voices.
"Gryffindor?" his dad asks, when Seamus Finnigan and his mum have quieted down and the assembled students and parents have started speaking again, uneasy in the aftermath.
"Yeah," says Michael.
His dad rolls his eyes. "I thank God every day for you."
Michael scratches the side of his nose.
When he is eighteen he spends the first eight months of the school year with his proverbial tail so far between his legs that it's crushing his proverbial balls.
Sure he joins the DA, but it is a lot less in the spirit of fighting the Carrows' regime and withstanding You-Know-Who's propaganda, and a lot more in the spirit of his best friends having joined it first. And sure he does a few stupid things for them, but nothing really stupid. The Carrows make examples of the older students; he's keen not to be made an example of.
Anthony, in half of their Muggle Studies classes, can't refrain from blurting out and correcting Alecto (Gryffindor of him, maybe, but very very Ravenclaw.) Terry, on DA missions, is happy to take a risk, go a little bit further than necessary. He says he just wants to see what'll happen; that's Ravenclaw, maybe. And Michael is the most Ravenclaw of all— he doesn't do a thing, just thinks, obsesses. There's nothing he's better at than driving himself mad.
Today they have locked a first year in the dungeon alone; Michael doesn't know what he's done, and doesn't really care. He is not keen to be made an example of, but he is also not keen to watch an eleven year old child made an example of. There is a moral line he's drawing. No, it hadn't morally been right to make examples of Ginny Weasley, or Neville Longbottom, or Finnigan or the other Patil or Hannah Abbott. But he could stomach it when he knew that for the most part, his classmates called it on themselves to make a point.
This first year, as far as he knows, didn't. And even if he had, it's in poor form to torture a child. He doesn't know for sure that the little boy will be treated the way they'd done Longbottom or Finnigan or Brown and Patil but he doesn't like the odds.
So he thinks about it long and hard and obsessively, all morning while his friends bother him about what's on his mind and why he's so quiet, and he tries first to get Neville to send a few of the DA to get the kid, but is shouted down by the very true point that it's too dangerous, and what will we do with the first year anyway? Most of the DA has a reputation now that means that being caught will result in another public, horrific example made.
So Michael, who has no reputation to speak of, disobeys Neville's direct request (Let it go, Mike. All we can do is be there for him after) and goes in during lunch. It was a good point, what they could do with the kid, but Michael has another good point: they're only looking for someone to martyr, and they'll still get that.
That's a Gryffindor moment, there, probably, but Michael doesn't even want to call it such. In his mind the way he deals with the aftermath disqualifies him from bravery. Obviously he hadn't taken the torture well— before he'd gotten caught disrupting school procedures on apparently the worst day possible, he'd been Cruciated exactly once. It landed him in the Hospital Wing with head trauma, and left him so battered and bloody that even his best friends couldn't help but stare a little. The aftermath— two days after, Death Eaters showed up to arrest Neville, who fled to the Room of Requirement— did not make him feel better, since his own actions had not been Neville's fault. And after about a day, Michael, though he had nothing even close to the same rap sheet with the Carrows that Seamus Finnigan or even Anthony had, decided to succumb to cowardice and retreat likewise into the Room of Requirement to wait out the year.
In his defense, the Carrows had been watching him closely and treating him poorly ever since you-know-what; once he started contemplating skipping class, he knew it was over. (Ravenclaw, or coward? Anybody's guess.)
The real question, amid all this, is what their long-term plan is. God knows Aberforth can't feed them forever. At the very best case scenario he'll eventually die, he's around a hundred years old.
Neville is convinced that eventually Harry will show up and be glad to know they're all ready and willing to fight for him— but Michael doesn't really think he will. He isn't in the Room out of loyalty. He's here because the Carrows beat him into pulp and he doesn't want a reprise of it.
So his plan, long-term, is to eventually Apparate out of the Hog's Head and go back home, then convince his parents to move to France. It's a work in progress; he doesn't know if, following his disappearance, the Carrows got the Ministry to put his family in Azkaban. And he hadn't passed his Apparation test, which makes him nervous for the first bit of the plan.
But it's a concrete plan— better than what Neville's got. And it's a cowardly plan— and Michael is revelling in cowardice right now. Bravery had gotten him tortured; Ravenclaw would get him home.
In theory, at least.
Of course, when the war finally comes to Hogwarts in full force a month later, he skips the Ravenclaw moment and stays again. He and his friends part ways right before the battle, by unspoken agreement that they cannot watch each other die, and they shake hands and exchange affectionate insults.
"Don't be too Gryffindor," says Terry, as he claps Michael on the back; Michael sniffs haughtily and says, with characteristic eloquence, "Shut up."
It isn't a battle they win on intellectual strength, however much Michael hopes it will be. In the end it is a battle they win because Harry Potter is Gryffindor enough to walk to his death.
Afterwards he and his friends sit together among the wounded. Michael had been set on fire briefly, and is waiting for transport to St. Mungo's to see what could be done for the burns, which are hideous enough that he'd asked for a blanket, and painful enough that he could do little more than lie on his back with his fists clenched in the blanket 'til Terry had found him a strong pain potion.
"What d'you reckon happens now?" says Anthony, who is sitting hunched with his chin on his knee, solemn and droopy-eyed.
"I dunno," says Michael. "We go home. Our parents coddle us." He knows Anthony's parents well enough to know Anthony's certainly will, and Terry's well enough to reasonably assume. o
"No," says Anthony. "I mean, like, the Ministry."
"How can you think about that right now?" says Michael.
"Well the Minister's dead," Terry chimes gloomily.
"He was Imperiused," says Michael, and shakes his head. "God— imagine."
He can only assume they all reflect immediately on how depressing that is, to die for a cause you'd been magicked into following. It is a horrifying prospect. "They've got a new one," says Anthony. "Some Auror. He was in the, er, Order."
"He's gonna have a hell of a time undoing all that shite," says Terry. "How many Death Eaters do you think are still in the Ministry? There must be a load. How do you think they'll sort out Imperiuses from real Death Eaters? Don't reckon there's a countercurse."
Michael scowls. "Can we have like thirty minutes' rest from thinking?" he says, and covers his eyes with one arm. "Please?"
Terry laughs, but Anthony sighs; they are quiet for a moment before Michael adds "You're such fucking Ravenclaws."
Then they all laugh, and Anthony says "You're one to talk."