Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or profit in any way from this work. All aspects of the Harry Potter universe belong to J.K. Rowling and affiliated groups. Kevin and other characters from America are my own. Please ask permission before copying and/or using them. Thanks for reading, Phoenixrangers.
Linking Two Worlds
Kevin's first week concluded with much less excitement than it had begun. His detentions with Professor Umbridge continued, but the use of his substitute quills negated the worst of the punishment. Working together, with the occasional help from Hermione, he and Harry were able to stay on top of their homework, or at least everything that was due that week. By Friday night, he was looking forward to a much needed break from school work and the continuation of his daily exercise routine he was forced to leave off on due to Umbridge's detentions.
Kevin rose with the sun on Saturday, long before any of his fellow classmates could be expected to wake on a weekend. Now confident with his ability to reach the Entrance Hall and return to the Gryffindor common room without becoming lost, he quickly made his way outside into the newborn morning light and began a slow job around the black lake, which quickly turned into a fast paced run once he had warmed up.
As he ran, Kevin enjoyed the beauty of the Scottish mountains in the early fall. A thin veil of mist hung over the lake and the surrounding peaks, creating a surreal landscape around the castle. A narrow dirt path wound around the lake, which looked like it received little traffic from the other students. Rays from the rising sun illuminated the condensation covering every leaf to until each plant looked to be covered in shining diamonds. Ripples on the smooth surface of the lake betrayed the presence of one of the giant squid lounging close to shore, and Kevin was careful to give the creature a wide berth, despite being well known for pushing first years back into boats if they fell out.
Near the end of his run around the lake, where the edge of the forbidden forest grew close to the shores of the lake, movement among the shadowed trees drew his attention. At first he thought it was a man riding a horse watching him from the dark confines of the forest edge. When he shifted, however, Kevin was able to see where the human torso smoothly joined the powerful dappled body of a horse. It was a centaur, watching him peacefully, but Kevin couldn't help but notice the bow slung over the centaur's shoulder. Kevin slowed slightly, and the centaur seemed to realize that he had been spotted. The centaur immediately turned around and faded back into the trees, out of Kevin's sight.
Not wanting to risk getting shot if he followed, Kevin finished his run around the lake, something he guessed to be five miles, and took a leisurely stroll down to the quidditch pitch and back to cool down. The morning was still early, and he suspected that most of the students would just be waking up as he climbed back up through the castle. Thus, he was surprised when he nearly ran into Harry as he turned into the corridor with the entrance to the Gryffindor common room.
"What are you doing up so early?" Kevin asked Harry.
"I was just sending a letter I forgot to send yesterday. There really wasn't much to do while everyone else was asleep anyway. What were you doing?" Harry asked, taking in Kevin's sweaty form.
"Just running. I haven't gotten a chance this entire week because of Umbridge's detentions, and I didn't want to risk getting lost early in the morning my first few days here." Kevin replied. "The path around the lake makes a nice track."
"You ran around the whole lake?" Harry asked in disbelief. "I think that would kill just about everyone else here."
Kevin could only shake his head at this. "You British wizards act like you've never heard of exercise before. What do most of you do to stay in shape?"
"Well, there's quidditch practice for those on the house teams, and you have to walk a long way to get to classes in the castle and on the grounds. That's about it."
"Even if you don't go running or weight lifting, there's always something to do at the Salem campus. There are games of soccer, football, quidditch, and friendly dueling competitions almost every day, and you can go sailing or swimming in the ocean. We also have two pools at the school and an indoor field to play on when it rains. Anyone over sixteen is also allowed to go to the city on the weekends as long as we don't use any magic."
"Well, Hogwarts doesn't have all of those things. There's the quidditch pitch, and the grounds, but that's it. The lake is usually too cold to swim in during the school year," Harry told him. "Besides quidditch, there really isn't much to do here. You just get used to it after a while. Anyway, want to come to breakfast with Ron, Hermione, and I?"
"Sure." By the time Kevin had taken a shower and changed into clean clothes, Ron and Hermione were up and waiting in the common room with Harry. The four joined the stream of students traveling down to the Great Hall for breakfast.
"You really shouldn't leave all of your home work to the last minute, Ron. Both you and Harry are already behind." Hermione scolded the two of them as they took their seats just in time to receive the daily prophet from a delivery owl.
"Hey, it's not my fault. I had detention every evening with Umbridge," Harry complained. "I got everything done that was due last week. Don't you think I deserve a break, Kevin?" Harry asked him.
"Probably. I'm not planning on starting on any of my homework until tomorrow. I need a break from school work just as much as the rest of you." Ron nodded in agreement, unable to speak with his mouth stuffed with food.
After swallowing, he said "See, Hermione. We also have our first quidditch practice this afternoon, and I was hoping Harry could go out early and help me a bit, to warm up for practice."
"Sure thing," Harry said, a smile appearing on his face. "We'll go as soon as breakfast is over."
"Oh, No!" Hermione gasped from behind her paper. "It's Sir… Snuffles," she quickly amended, quickly glancing up at Kevin and then back down to the paper. Completely ignoring Kevin, Harry and Ron leaned in to see the article Hermione was interested in. Kevin could not see exactly what they were looking at. Since he was across the table and one seat down, all he could tell was that they were interested in something near the bottom of an advertisement for Madam Malkin's Robes.
Kevin was only able to make out random words from their whispered conversation. He didn't mean to eavesdrop, but the three were clearly very alarmed by the article. "Lucius… on the platform… eave the house… risk…" were the only things he was able to hear.
"Is everything alright?" Kevin asked cautiously.
Harry looked up, his eyes wide, as he remembered that Kevin was sitting right across from them at the table. "Its fine, we just need to go. Ron and I left our brooms up in the tower. Are you coming, Hermione?"
"What? Oh, yes, I'm not feeling hungry anymore," she stammered, standing up with Ron and Harry. The three rushed out of the Great Hall, leaving behind two untouched plates of food and one half-full one. Kevin was left sitting by himself at the table while the general commotion continued around them.
He was so intent upon the sudden departure of the three that he didn't hear the question behind him until it was repeated twice. "Can I talk to you?" Turning, Kevin found Ginny Weasley standing behind him, looking apprehensive.
"Sure, take a seat," he told her. Ginny carefully sat down, leaving a good two feet of space between the two of them. She sat nervously wringing her hands for several moments before finally speaking.
"I just wanted to apologize for Wednesday. I just had a horrible experience during my first year with a diary similar to yours. The diary would answer me when I write in it, and yours looked just like it, with those words appearing out of the pages. I really didn't think after that. I've never reacted like that before. I try not to think about the Chamber as much as I can." She told him. "I don't know what to do to forget about it. I still have the occasional nightmare about it." She was pale and seemed to withdraw into herself, looking even smaller than she was, which only served to emphasize the height difference between the two.
"My journal doesn't write back itself. It's just a means of communication I have with my friends back home. Whatever they write appears in my journal, and anything I write appears in theirs. It's a lot faster than owls, especially when they would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean. We would always use them to hold conversations with each other from different classes." Kevin was attempting to be kind and supportive, but in truth he really had no idea what to do. Comforting traumatized younger students wasn't something he normally did. Ginny still looked unsure about his explanation, and had returned to twisting the hem of her robes between her hands. Almost out of desperation Kevin blurted out his offer. "Do you want to see the journal? That way you'll know it can't hurt you."
Ginny nodded after a moment, but still looked unsure. Casting a longing look at his still full plate, Kevin pushed himself up from the table. "The journal's up in my trunk. I have to go get it." Ginny nodded again, still not trusting her voice enough to speak, and followed Kevin out of the Great Hall. Unknown to both of them, a pair of twinkling blue eyes watched them go from their position at the staff table. Albus Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, smiling to himself. His plan seemed to be working far better than he could have hoped.
"You can wait here while I get it," Kevin told Ginny at the base of the boy's staircase in the Common Room. I'll bring it back down here. He reached the fifth step when he heard footsteps following him up the staircase. Turning back, Ginny was following him up the stairs. "I don't want to be down there in front of all those people," she told him in explanation. Kevin just shrugged and kept climbing.
"Dumbledore told me that you couldn't get into any of the girl's dorms here, so how are you able to come up here?" Kevin asked Ginny over his shoulder.
Ginny seemed to brighten a bit at this. "Apparently, the founders thought that girls could be trusted more than boys, so we're allowed in their dorms. The stairs turn into a slide if any boy tries to get into the girls dorms, and send them shooting back down. It's rather funny to watch."
The fifth year dormitory was deserted when they reached it. "Where is it?" Ginny asked Kevin a little fearfully. He gestured toward his trunk, while moving to the small table next to his bed. He moved a stack of parchment covered in spell diagrams onto his bed to reach the quill and the bottle of ink resting underneath.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Kevin warned as Ginny reached for the latch on his trunk.
"Oh, sorry. I should have realized you wouldn't want me going through your stuff."
"That's not it. I just didn't want you setting off the protective charms I have on the trunk. The effects are rather unpleasant and not very easy to reverse."
"Oh," she gasped softly, quickly backing away from the trunk. "Why do you have wards on your trunk? I don't know anyone else that does."
"I keep some valuable things in my trunk that I don't want to disappear. It's also a self-preservation tactic from Salem. There, having an unlocked trunk is an open invitation for someone to fill it with pudding, or replace all of your underwear with girls' stuff. Most of the older students help the younger kids, and at least basic privacy wards are one of the first things taught at Salem. I'm the only one with a warded trunk here. My first night, I thought about having some fun with the others, but decided that wouldn't be a good way to make friends. Plus, it probably wouldn't be hard for them to figure out who did it."
"That sounds great. You really should work with my brothers." Ginny told him. She took a deep breath and every trace of a smile faded from her face. "Can I see the journal now?"
"All right." Kevin unlocked his trunk with two taps of his wand and a whispered password. A few moments of rummaging produced the black leather book that could be bought just about anywhere. Ginny stiffened when he dropped the journal onto his side table. Slowly, she reached out to lay her hand on the cover. Taking a deep breath in preparations, she flipped to the first page of the journal, where the conversation Kevin had been having the night before was still displayed. A string of small animal pictures covered the top of the page.
Kevin handed her a quill and a pot of ink after tapping the small picture of a white leopard along the top of the page. "Go on, write in it." He urged her. "It won't hurt you. The only way you're going to get over your fears of that diary is to face them." Hesitantly, Ginny set the quill to the paper and scratched out Hello, I'm a friend of Kevin's. For a minute nothing happened, then a reply began to form as, thousands of miles away, another hand wrote in a nearly identical journal. Why would Kevin's friend be writing in this journal, especially since he has only been in Britain for a week? The moment the words started to appear on the page, Ginny had closed her eyes and was repeating "It's not Tom, It's not Tom," over and over under her breath.
Kevin pulled the quill from her fingers and quickly explained while Ginny calmed down. "Care to try again?" Kevin asked her kindly while offering the quill. Ginny took it and wrote a second message. After a few seconds, the reply formed. Hello, Ginny. My name is Rachel, and I'm a friend of Kevin's from America. I hope he hasn't been causing much trouble there. I already heard about how he managed to get a week of detention on his second day.
He also destroyed half of the house common room and still somehow gained house points from the headmaster. Ginny wrote back immediately, seemingly having quickly forgotten her fear of self-writing books. Kevin groaned. He could picture Rachel laughing in his head and knew what her response would be. Sure enough, Rachel immediately responded asking for all of the details. "I think that's enough for now," Kevin told her while reaching for the journal. He was already beginning to regret introducing Rachel and Ginny. The two of them were very similar in temperament from what he could tell. Ginny, however, did not share this view. She pulled the journal to her and leapt up from her seat on Kevin's bed. Giggling madly, she dodged Kevin's half hearted attempt to stop her and ran out of the dorm, still clutching his journal.
'What just happened?' Kevin asked himself. A minute before he had been involved in a serious discussion, and now he was standing in the middle of the empty fifth-years boys dorm after a crazy witch had just stolen his main means of communication with his friends in America. Life, and girls, never seemed make sense sometimes. Deciding to stop thinking before he went crazy, he pulled his books from his trunk and set out for the library. There were four essays he needed to complete before Monday. As he followed the twisting path to the library some part of him hoped that he would never be able to completely understand women, because that would be the first sign of the end of the world.
Kevin found a secluded table surrounded by shelves full of wizarding law. Judging from the thick layer of dust covering the shelves, wizarding law was not a common subject. Pulling out a notebook and pen, Kevin opened his Herbology book and started his foot-long essay on the care of Strangleweed seedlings, like anyone in their right mind would want to keep the plant in their garden.
Two hours later, movement amongst the shelves alerted Kevin to the presence of a pair watching him. Looking up, he saw Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass among the shelves. They turned to leave as soon as he looked up. "You can sit here if you want," Kevin told them. Zabini looked reluctant, but after a brief conversation with Daphne the pair took seats at the opposite end of the table from Kevin.
"Hardly anyone ever uses this table," Daphne told him as she sat down. "I think Granger might be the only person to ever look through the wizarding law section in the last decade, and the rest of the students tend to turn around as soon as they notice all of the dust on the shelves."
"It is hidden from pretty much everyone else in the library." Kevin acknowledged.
"That's the only reason we're sitting here. The other Slytherins would never forgive us for sitting with a Gryffindor outside of class. He," Daphne jerked her thumb at Blaise, "didn't want to risk it, but I disagree. You're not bad, especially for a Gryffindor."
"I think I've told you before, that I've only been a Gryffindor for a week," Kevin complained weakly.
"The main idea's still there. You wouldn't have been sorted into Gryffindor if the hat didn't consider you brave and foolish," Daphne told him. "You certainly proved that you are a Gryffindor in your argument with Umbridge. You and Potter. No one else would be stupid enough to call Umbridge and the ministry a liar to their faces, and to question her magical abilities."
"I can't have been the only one that doesn't think it's fair to make us use the spells for the first time in the exams," Kevin told them.
"No, but you were the only one stupid enough not to let it go before you got in trouble." Blaise spoke for the first time. "Everyone knows that the ministry is trying to gain control over Hogwarts, and Umbridge is here under the direct orders of Fudge. He doesn't want us trained to fight because they're afraid Dumbledore is trying to create his own private army to take over the ministry."
"Seriously?" Kevin asked in disbelief. "That has got to be one of the craziest ideas I've ever heard. How are these people still the leaders of the government?"
"Gold, blackmail, and more gold." Daphne told him seriously.
"And nobody does anything?" Kevin asked.
"There isn't really anyone that can do anything. The higher ministry positions and the wizengamot are all controlled by the pureblood elite, and the few who don't follow their ways can only oppose them so much without being forced out of the ministry altogether. The wizengamot elects the minister of magic, who is usually either on the wizengamot or is one of the senior department heads."
"You're government sounds like it hasn't changed in the last three hundred years," Kevin told them. "The muggle government was similar then, with the king and the house of lords controlling the country."
"Closer to four hundred," Blaise told him. The ministry of magic was formed when the International Statute of Secrecy was invoked, and the main structure has hardly changed since that time."
"Isn't there anything the averaging wizard or witch can do?" Kevin asked. "Some kind of petition or boycott?"
"Not really. You would have to organize most of wizarding Britain to be effective." Blaise said after a few moments. "Otherwise the ministry would just ignore you or discredit you to the rest of the wizarding population. Fudge currently controls the Daily Prophet, which is the only real mass news media in wizarding Britain. Both Harry and Dumbledore found that out the hard way this past summer after claiming that You-Know-Who had returned." There was silence for a minute after this statement.
"Do you think Voldemort has returned?" Kevin asked quietly. Both of the Slytherins looked up quickly at this.
"Don't call him that!" They both ordered him harshly.
"People who stood up to You-Know-Who during the last wizarding war always called him by his real name, and most ended up dead. Most still haven't forgotten his last reign of terror," Zabini explained. "His followers would intentionally target those willing to call him by his real name."
"Every wizarding child in Britain either grew up to either fear or worship his name. No one but Dumbledore calls You-Know-Who by his real name any more," Daphne added.
"I doubt Voldemort," Kevin paused as they both cringed. "I doubt that's even his real name. Can you imagine any mother actually naming a baby Voldemort?" Again, a pause while the two Slytherins reacted to the name. "Do either of you have any idea about his original name, or even what school he went to?"
Both of the Slytherins shook their heads. "Why don't we forget about a topic that might get us killed if it's reported back to some former Death Eater parents and work on homework instead? Daphne and I originally came here to work on the potions essay for Snape," Blaise ventured to change the subject. Consenting to the suggestion, Kevin pulled out his potions book and some paper and set to work.
Kevin ran into Harry and Ron coming in from quidditch practice that evening on his way to dinner. The two were windswept, and Ron was rather red-faced. Angelina followed them in through the front doors and did not look happy. She shot an angry glare at Ron before climbing the grand staircase with her broom over her shoulder. Feeling apprehensive, Kevin hesitantly asked how practice had gone.
"Lousy," was Ron's only reply before he stalked into the Great Hall, roughly pushing past a group of second year Hufflepuffs.
"He broke Katie's nose with a quaffle, and practice was ended early when Fred and George had to take her to the hospital wing before she passed out," Harry explained before Kevin could ask for clarification. "He'll get better, though. It was only the first practice." Harry said to defend his friend.
"Have you been playing quidditch since breakfast?" Kevin asked Harry as the two followed Ron into the Great Hall. Harry nodded in confirmation, then asked "What have you been doing?"
"Homework. I'm almost done, though. I only have the feeding habits of bowtruckles to finish, and I plan on doing that tomorrow. I'm free for the rest of the night."
"You're lucky. Hermione will probably kill Ron and me unless we at least start our homework tonight," Harry told him. Hermione did look rather put out, Kevin thought, but that might be because of Ron. He was sitting next to her at the Gryffindor table and was taking out his frustrations on his dinner by mutilating a poor piece of steak.
Trying to ignore Hermione's huffs of disgust over Ron's eating habits and Harry's failed attempts to engage her in conversation, Kevin ate dinner without saying a word to the others. Noticing Ginny leaving with a group of her friends, and remembering their conversation earlier that day, he rose and followed them up to the tower. Using a shortcut Harry had shown him the day before, he managed to reach the tower before her, and was waiting in front of the girl's staircase when she climbed through the portrait hole with her friends.
"I believe you have something of mine, Weasley." He stood straight and tried to sound threatening while ignoring the giggling group of fourth years behind Ginny, and suspected he failed miserably.
"If I remember correctly, you gave it to me, and never said anything about returning it," She replied without missing a beat.
"You never gave me the chance. You just picked it up and ran off. Now, I want it back."
"And if I say no? You're friend Rachel has all kinds of stories about you. I particularly liked the one involving the swimming pool, invisible ink, and half of the faculty."
Kevin visible paled, and a look of terror briefly crossed his face. "She wouldn't. There's no way."
Ginny's smile grew. "She would. In fact, I also heard about the best part, where…"
"That's enough," Kevin quickly interrupted her. "Either you return it, or I'll have to find it myself."
"You can't get into our dorms. The stairs won't let any guys up," one of Ginny's friends said.
"If I have to, I'll get Hermione to retrieve it for me, or I'll borrow Harry's broom to fly around the tower and go in one of the windows. One way or another, I will get it back," Kevin threatened.
Ginny took a few moments to study his face before replying. Deciding he actually meant to carry out his threat, her shoulders slumped in defeat. "All right. I'll go get it." She took off up the stairs followed by her friends. Kevin waited impatiently, half convinced she wasn't going to come back down, when she came back down and handed him his journal back without a word.
"Thanks." Kevin settled into a comfortable chair in front of the fire, and flipped open his communication journal. To his disappointment, any conversation between Rachel and Ginny had been wiped from the book, so he had no way to tell what other stories the redhead might know. He tapped the picture of the white leopard again and mentally prepared himself for a long argument with one of his best friends.