'Ello, everyone! Sorry this chapter took a while—when I finished, I realized I had made it way too long, so I had to divide it up into two chapters. The next one should be up soon (:
Disclaimer: Anyone seen Hunger Games? I finally did, and I loved it! I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own the Hunger Games.
Harry, Levina, and Ron left the hospital wing first thing on Monday morning, restored to full health by the ministrations of Madam Pomfrey and now able to enjoy the benefits of having been knocked out and poisoned, the best of which was that Hermione was friends with Ron again. Hermione even escorted them down to breakfast, bringing with her the news that Ginny had argued with Dean.
"What did they row about? Harry asked, trying to sound casual but failing as they turned onto a seventh-floor corridor that was deserted but for a very small girl who had been examining a tapestry of trolls in tutus. Another girl stood beside her, arguing with her about something. However, the first girl looked terrified at the sight of the approaching sixth years and dropped the heavy brass scales she was carrying. The second girl yelped and jumped back in alarm.
Levina raised her eyebrows at the girl, puzzled; first years were usually pretty afraid of teachers like Snape and the bullying older students, but it wasn't like they had jumped out at her and tried to scare her.
"It's all right!" said Hermione kindly, hurrying forward to help her. "Here…"
She tapped the broken scales with her wand and said, "Reparo." The girl did not say thank you, but remained rooted to the spot as they passed and watched them out of sight; the girl next to her continued her argument with her, but Levina noticed she looked kind of familiar…
"Rude much?" Levina said as they walked away.
"I swear they're getting smaller," said Ron.
"Never mind her," said Harry, a little impatiently. "What did Ginny and Dean row about, Hermione?"
"Oh, Dean was laughing about McLaggen hitting that Bludger at you," said Hermione.
"It must've looked funny," said Ron reasonably.
"It didn't look funny at all!" said Hermione hotly. "It looked terrible and if Coote and Peakes hadn't caught Harry he could have been very badly hurt!"
Levina smiled proudly. "That's my boys," she said, and when the others shot her a look she said, "What? They're improving. Not Fred and George good, but improving…"
"Yeah, well, there was no need for Ginny and Dean to split up over it," said Harry, still trying to sound casual. "Or are they still together?"
"Yes, they are—but why are you so interested?" asked Hermione, giving Harry a sharp look.
"I know why," said Levina under her breath, grinning.
"I just don't want my Quidditch team messed up again!" he said hastily, but Hermione continued to look suspicious, and he seemed very relieved when she changed the subject direction.
"So, Levina," said Hermione, turning eye Levina with a very distrustful look.
"What did I do this time?" sighed Levina.
"Well, not so much something you did," said Hermione, moving to catch up to Levina's side, "but someone else."
"What?" said Levina, not altogether very interested.
"When I would come to visit Ro—I mean, all of you," she hastily added with a small blush, "in the hospital wing, I saw someone else come and visit your bed."
Levina's heart stopped momentarily, and although her lips moved to form the question, she knew it was already answered in her head. "Who?"
"Malfoy," said Hermione, and Levina tried her best to maneuver her expression into a poker face. Beside her, Harry's eyes shot up from the ground in interest. "He was there almost every day, you should know, always at your bed. I mean, every time I came in and found him, he would get up and leave in a hurry, but he was always there, just…watching you."
Levina swallowed hard. "Creep," she managed to croak out, but she hadn't altogether meant the word. Draco Malfoy visited her in the hospital wing every day? "Did he ever say anything?"
"Nope. I'd walk in and he'd be sitting on a stool beside your bed, hunched over, looking at your face."
Levina ignored the skeptical look Hermione was shooting her and attempted to clear the thoughts out of her mind. "Probably nothing," she mumbled dumbly, unable to think of anything else to say. Harry opened his mouth to say something, surely to criticize both her and Draco and say that it was part of his 'big plan', but at that moment someone hollered at them down the hallway.
"Harry!" said Luna, approaching their group.
"Oh, hi, Luna."
"I went to the hospital wing to find you," said Luna, rummaging in her bag. "But they said you'd left..."
She thrust what appeared to be a green onion, a large spotted toadstool, and a considerable amount of what looked like cat litter into Ron's hands, finally pulling out a rather grubby scroll of parchment that she handed to Harry.
"...I've been told to give you this."
It was a small roll of parchment, which Levina recognized at once as another invitation to a lesson with Dumbledore.
"Tonight," he told Ron, Levina, and Hermione, once he had unrolled it.
"Nice commentary last match!" said Ron to Luna as she took back the green onion, the toadstool, and the cat litter. Luna smiled vaguely.
"You're making fun of me, aren't you?" she said. "Everyone says I was dreadful."
"No, I'm serious!" said Ron earnestly. "I can't remember enjoying commentary more!"
"I wish I had heard it; sorry I missed the match, Luna," said Levina.
"That's all right. Oh, and this is for you," she added, pulling out a few copies of The Daily Prophet and handing them to Levina. "Eternity said you wanted them," she added.
"Eternity?" said Levina, taking the newspapers from Luna. "You know her?"
"Oh yes," said Luna happily, while Harry peered over his shoulder at them suspiciously. "She's fairly nice, but she usually only talks to me in the library or in deserted areas…I suppose she doesn't want to be seen with someone like me," she added vaguely. "Most people don't."
"I don't think it's that," said Levina hastily. "She just doesn't…er…want to be seen with anyone from another House."
"Yes…I believe she's mentioned that before. She said the Slytherins don't care for her much."
"What is this, by the way?" said Ron, interrupting them, holding the onionlike object up to eye level.
"Oh, it's a Gurdyroot," she said, stuffing the cat litter and the toadstool back into her bag. "You can keep it if you like, I've got a few of them. They're really excellent for warding off Gulping Plimpies."
And she walked away, leaving Ron chortling, still clutching the Gurdyroot.
"You know, she's grown on me, Luna," he said, as they set off again for the Great Hall. "I know she's insane, but it's in a good—"
He stopped talking very suddenly. Levina followed his eyes to see Lavender Brown was standing at the foot of the marble staircase looking thunderous.
"Hi," said Ron nervously.
"C'mon," Harry muttered to Hermione, and they sped past, though not before they had heard Lavender say, "Why didn't you tell me you were getting out today? And why was she with you?"
Ron looked both sulky and annoyed when he appeared at breakfast half an hour later, and though he sat with Lavender, Levina did not see them exchange a word all the time they were together. Hermione was acting as though she was quite oblivious to all of this, but once or twice Harry saw an inexplicable smirk cross her face. All that day she seemed to be in a particularly good mood, and that evening in the common room she even consented to look over (in other words, finish writing) Harry's and Levina's Herbology essays, something she had been resolutely refusing to do up to this point, because she had known that Harry would then let Ron copy his work.
"Finally done!" said Levina, sighing in relief and allowing Lilypad to curl up into her lap.
"Thanks a lot, Hermione," said Harry, giving her a hasty pat on the back as he checked his watch and saw that it was nearly eight o'clock. "Listen, I've got to hurry or I'll be late for Dumbledore..."
"Have fun," said Levina, waving to him as he climbed out through the portrait hole. She reached into her back and pulled out the newspaper articles from Eternity, which she unrolled to examine. The headline on the front read: LEVESQUE GIRL MURDERED BY NOTORIOUS LYDIA RUSSELL.
Levina scanned the article, reading through the story. From eye-witnesses and questions, the story said that apparently Lydia had cornered the family when Eric was barely three or four. She confronted them at their own house and targeted the two siblings. Nicola was slain on the spot, but according to Eric, she told him to run right before her life was taken. Their mother, out of supposed grief, soon left Eric and his father and returned to live with the Sirens once again. She hated being nosy, but a part of her desperately wanted to ask Eric about that.
A moving picture of Eric was attached; he was very handsome, even as a little kid, with his gorgeous golden eyes and dark black hair. In the picture, he was standing next to who Levina assumed was his father, for he had the same dark black hair as Eric and the same nose. Neither looked particularly happy; Eric kept wiping his watering eyes on his little sleeve, and his father looked on coldly into the distance.
On the ground beside her, Lilypad turned over in her sleep and mewed softly. Levina yawned, folded up the newspaper, and scooped Lilypad up into her lap, thinking hard. Her family was so messed up, it was a wonder any of them were still alive: Eric and Destiny were half-siren, she was a werewolf with strange abilities…
Levina wondered what it would be like to be normal for once…
But then…where would all of the excitement be?
…
Harry wracked his brains over the next week as to how he was to persuade Slughorn to hand over the true memory, but it seemed to Levina that nothing in the nature of a brain wave occurred and he was reduced to doing what he did increasingly these days when at a loss: poring over his Potions book, hoping that the Prince would have scribbled something useful in a margin, as he had done so many times before.
"You won't find anything in there," said Hermione firmly, late on Sunday evening.
"Don't start, Hermione," said Harry. "If it hadn't been for the Prince, Ron and Levina wouldn't be sitting here now."
"He would if you'd just listened to Snape in our first year," said Hermione dismissively.
"Lay off him, Hermione," said Levina sharply. "I for one am glad I'm alive."
Harry ignored Hermione, and Levina sank low into her seat, yawning. They were sitting beside the fire in the common room; the only other people awake were fellow sixth-years. There had been a certain amount of excitement earlier when they had come back from dinner to find a new sign on the notice board that announced the date for their Apparition Test. Those who would be seventeen on or before the first test date, the twenty-first of April, had the option of signing up for additional practice sessions, which would take place (heavily supervised) in Hogsmeade.
Ron had panicked on reading this notice; he had still not managed to Apparate and feared he would not be ready for the test. Hermione, who had now achieved Apparition twice, was a little more confident, but Levina was horribly frightened by the idea of losing a body part.
"At least you can Apparate, though!" said Ron tensely to Harry, who wasn't old enough to take the test. "You'll have no trouble come July!"
"I've only done it once," Harry reminded him; he had finally managed to disappear and rematerialize inside his hoop during their previous lesson.
Having wasted a lot of time worrying aloud about Apparition, Levina was now struggling to finish a viciously difficult essay for Snape, scrawling as fast as she could onto her parchment. Every so often, she would hold her quill up to her face, tapping it against her cheek as she thought hard.
"I'm telling you, the stupid Prince isn't going to be able to help you with this, Harry!" said Hermione, more loudly. "There's only one way to force someone to do what you want, and that's the Imperius Curse, which is illegal—"
"Yeah, I know that, thanks," said Harry, not looking up from the book. "That's why I'm looking for something different. Dumbledore says Veritaserum won't do it, but there might be something else, a potion or a spell..."
"You're going about it the wrong way," said Hermione. "Only you can get the memory, Dumbledore says. That must mean you can persuade Slughorn where other people can't. It's not a question of slipping him a potion, anyone could do that—"
"How do you spell 'belligerent'?" said Ron, shaking his quill very hard while staring at his parchment. "It can't be B—U—M—"
"No, it isn't," said Hermione, pulling Ron's essay toward her. "And 'augury' doesn't begin O—R—G either. What kind of quill are you using? You have ink on your face, by the way," she added to Levina, who hastily rubbed at her cheek but smeared the ink worse.
"It's one of Fred and George's Spell-Checking ones, but I think the charm must be wearing off."
"Yes, it must," said Hermione, pointing at the title of his essay, "because we were asked how we'd deal with Dementors, not 'Dugbogs', and I don't remember you changing your name to 'Roonil Wazlib' either."
"Ah no!" said Ron, staring horror-struck at the parchment. "Don't say I'll have to write the whole thing out again!"
"It's okay, we can fix it," said Hermione, pulling the essay toward her and taking out her wand.
"I love you, Hermione," said Ron, sinking back in his chair, rubbing his eyes wearily.
Levina jerked her head upright and looked between the two with a very wide smirk, but Hermione merely turned faintly pink and said, "Don't let Lavender hear you saying that."
"I won't," said Ron into his hands. "Or maybe I will, then she'll ditch me."
"Why don't you ditch her if you want to finish it?" asked Harry.
"You haven't ever chucked anyone, have you?" said Ron. "You and Cho just—"
"Sort of fell apart, yeah," said Harry.
"Wish that would happen with me and Lavender," said Ron gloomily, watching Hermione silently tapping each of his misspelled words with the end of her wand, so that they corrected themselves on the page. "But the more I hint I want to finish it, the tighter she holds on. It's like going out with the giant squid."
"Going out with the giant squid might be easier," said Levina, still attempting to wipe off the ink on her face.
"There," said Hermione, some twenty minutes later, handing back Ron's essay.
"Thanks a million," said Ron. "Can I borrow your quill for the conclusion?"
Finally, Levina managed to wipe the ink on her face away. She returned to her paper, scribbled something, and looked up from her paper; they were the only four people left in the room. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and Ron scratching out one last paragraph on dementors using Hermione's quill. Harry had just closed the Half-Blood Prince's book, yawning, when—
Crack.
Hermione let out a little shriek; Ron spilled ink all over his freshly completed essay, Levina toppled sideways from her chair, and Harry said, "Kreacher!"
The house-elf bowed low and addressed his own gnarled toes. "Master said he wanted regular reports on what the Malfoy boy is doing, so Kreacher has come to give—"
Crack.
Dobby appeared alongside Kreacher, his tea-cozy hat askew.
"Dobby has been helping too, Harry Potter!" he squeaked, casting Kreacher a resentful look. "And Kreacher ought to tell Dobby when he is coming to see Harry Potter so they can make their reports together!"
"What is this?" asked Hermione, still looking shocked by these sudden appearances. "What's going on, Harry?"
Harry hesitated before answering, Levina suspected because she would take it the same way Levina and Ron had, and call him obsessive.
"Well...they've been following Malfoy for me," said Harry.
"Night and day," croaked Kreacher.
"Dobby has not slept for a week, Harry Potter!" said Dobby proudly, swaying where he stood.
Hermione looked indignant.
"You haven't slept, Dobby? But surely, Harry, you didn't tell him not to—"
"No, of course I didn't," said Harry quickly. "Dobby, you can sleep, all right? But has either of you found out anything?" he hastened to ask, before Hermione could intervene again.
"Master Malfoy moves with a nobility that befits his pure blood," croaked Kreacher at once. "His features recall the fine bones of my mistress and his manners are those of—"
"No one needs to know how he walks, Kreacher," said Levina.
"Draco Malfoy is a bad boy!" squeaked Dobby angrily. "A bad boy who—who—"
He shuddered from the tassel of his tea cozy to the toes of his socks and then ran at the fire, as though about to dive into it. Harry caught him around the middle and held him fast. For a few seconds Dobby struggled, then went limp.
"Thank you, Harry Potter," he panted. "Dobby still finds it difficult to speak ill of his old masters."
Harry released him; Dobby straightened his tea cozy and said defiantly to Kreacher, "But Kreacher should know that Draco Malfoy is not a good master to a house-elf!"
"Yeah, we don't need to hear about you being in love with Malfoy," Harry told Kreacher. "Let's fast forward to where he's actually been going."
Kreacher bowed again, looking furious, and then said, "Master Malfoy eats in the Great Hall, he sleeps in a dormitory in the dungeons, he attends his classes in a variety of—"
"Dobby, you tell me," said Harry, cutting across Kreacher. "Has he been going anywhere he shouldn't have?"
"Harry Potter, sir," squeaked Dobby, his great orblike eyes shining in the firelight, "the Malfoy boy is breaking no rules that Dobby can discover, but he is still keen to avoid detection. He has been making regular visits to the seventh floor with a variety of other students, who keep watch for him while he enters—"
"The Room of Requirement!" said Harry, smacking himself hard on the forehead with Advanced Potion-Making. Hermione, Levina, and Ron stared at him. "That's where he's been sneaking off to! That's where he's doing... whatever he's doing! And I bet that's why he's been disappearing off the map—come to think of it, I've never seen the Room of Requirement on there!"
"Maybe the Marauders never knew the room was there," said Ron.
"We could always ask Sirius," said Levina.
"I think it'll be part of the magic of the room," said Hermione. "If you need it to be unplottable, it will be."
"Dobby, have you managed to get in to have a look at what Malfoy's doing?" said Harry eagerly.
"No, Harry Potter, that is impossible," said Dobby.
"No, it's not," said Harry at once. "Malfoy got into our headquarters there last year, so I'll be able to get in and spy on him, no problem."
"I don't think it's that simple," said Levina.
"But I don't think you will, Harry," said Hermione slowly. "Malfoy already knew exactly how we were using the room, didn't he, because that stupid Marietta had blabbed. He needed the room to become the headquarters of the D.A., so it did. But you don't know what the room becomes when Malfoy goes in there, so you don't know what to ask it to transform into."
"There'll be a way around that," said Harry dismissively.
"There has also been a girl hanging around him often, Harry Potter," said Dobby, and Levina lifted her head curiously from her paper.
"What? Who?" said Levina.
"Another Slytherin, Miss, one with red hair and very blue eyes—"
"Eternity?" said Levina, standing up so abruptly that her essay fell from her lap.
"I do not know her name, Miss," Dobby squeaked, "but she and the Malfoy boy argue and bicker, indeed, they do not get along very well."
"Hmm," said Levina, thinking hard. "It's almost as though Eternity wears a mask or something, like you can never tell what her real intentions are."
"You shouldn't trust her," said Harry at once. "If she's been hanging around Malfoy—"
"She and Draco are cousins," said Levina.
Harry turned back to Dobby. "You've done brilliantly, Dobby."
"Kreacher's done well too," said Hermione kindly; but far from looking grateful, Kreacher averted his huge, bloodshot eyes and croaked at the ceiling, "The Mudblood is speaking to Kreacher, Kreacher will pretend he cannot hear—"
"Get out of it," Harry snapped at him, and Kreacher made one last deep bow and Disapparated.
"You'd better go and get some sleep too, Dobby."
"Thank you, Harry Potter, sir!" squeaked Dobby happily, and he too vanished.
"How good is this?" said Harry enthusiastically, turning to Ron and Hermione the moment the room was elf-free again. "We know where Malfoy's going! We've got him cornered now!"
"Yeah, it's great," said Ron glumly, who was attempting to mop up the sodden mass of ink that had recently been an almost completed essay. Hermione pulled it toward her and began siphoning the ink off with her wand. Levina looked between the two with a smile, relieved that at least they were finally doing well. Their complex relationship was kind of…cute.
"But what's all this about him going up there with a 'variety of students'?" said Hermione. "How many people are in on it? You wouldn't think he'd trust lots of them to know what he's doing..."
"Yeah, that is weird," said Harry, frowning. "I heard him telling Crabbe it wasn't Crabbe's business what he was doing...so what's he telling all these...all these..."
"Girls?" said Levina in a slightly more acidic voice than she had intended.
Harry's voice tailed away; he was staring at the fire. "God, I've been stupid," Harry said quietly. "It's obvious, isn't it? There was a great vat of it down in the dungeon...he could've nicked some any time during that lesson..."
"Nicked what?" said Ron.
"Polyjuice Potion. He stole some of the Polyjuice Potion Slughorn showed us in our first Potions lesson...There aren't a whole variety of students standing guard for Malfoy...it's just Crabbe and Goyle as usual...yeah, it all fits!" said Harry, jumping up and starting to pace in front of the fire. "They're stupid enough to do what they're told even if he won't tell them what he's up to…but he doesn't want them to be seen lurking around outside the Room of Requirement, so he's got them taking Polyjuice to make them look like other people...those two girls I saw him with when he missed Quidditch—ha! Crabbe and Goyle!"
Levina's sour mood changed instantly. "Crabbe and Goyle?" she repeated with a smirk. Then she burst into laughter so loud that it hurt and she clutched her sides, her eyes watering. "That's hilarious, that is!"
"Do you mean to say," said Hermione in a hushed voice, "that that little girl whose scales I repaired—?"
"Yeah, of course!" said Harry loudly, staring at her. "Her and the girl arguing with her. Of course! Malfoy must've been inside the room at the time, so she-what am I talking about?—he dropped the scales to tell Malfoy not to come out, because there was someone there! And there was that girl who dropped the toadspawn too! We've been walking past him all the time and not realizing it!"
"He's got Crabbe and Goyle transforming into girls?" guffawed Ron. "Blimey...no wonder they don't look too happy these days. I'm surprised they don't tell him to stuff it..."
"Well, they wouldn't, would they, if he's shown them his Dark Mark?" said Harry.
"Hmmm...the Dark Mark we don't know exists," said Hermione skeptically, rolling up Ron's dried essay before it could come to any more harm and handing it to him.
"We'll see," said Harry confidently, and Levina realized that she had begun to subconsciously finger the scars from Umbridge on her arm.
"Yes, we will," Hermione said, getting to her feet and stretching. "But, Harry, before you get all excited, I still don't think you'll be able to get into the Room of Requirement without knowing what's there first. And I don't think you should forget," she heaved her bag onto her shoulder and gave him a very serious look, "that what you're supposed to be concentrating on is getting that memory from Slughorn. Goodnight."
Harry watched her go, looking slightly disgruntled. Once the door to the girls' dormitories had closed behind her he rounded on Ron and Levina.
"What d'you think?"
"Wish I could Disapparate like a house-elf," said Ron, staring at the spot where Dobby had vanished. "I'd have that Apparition Test in the bag."
"Although I think this is a great discovery and all," said Levina, getting up from her seat and heading up the stairs behind Hermione, "I still don't think that Draco's the worst person to ever walk this earth."
"Well, yeah, that would be Voldemort," said Harry. "But I still wish you'd stop acting all buddy-buddy with him, Levina. I still believe he's just toying with you."
Levina did not sleep well that night. She lay awake for what felt like hours, thinking of Draco. His voice from before still haunted her…How he said he 'had' her…Was she part of his plan? Was Harry right? Could she really just be allowing herself to succumb to his sudden good nature and desire to be friends…or more? The thought made her sick.
Harry was in a state of great anticipation over breakfast the following morning; he had a free period before Defense Against the Dark Arts and was apparently determined to spend it trying to get into the Room of Requirement. Hermione was rather ostentatiously showing no interest in his whispered plans for forcing entry into the room, which clearly irritated Harry, because he apparently thought she might be a lot of help if she wanted to.
"Look," he said quietly, leaning forward and putting a hand on the Daily Prophet, which she had just removed from a post owl, to stop her from opening it and vanishing behind it. "I haven't forgotten about Slughorn, but I haven't got a clue how to get that memory off him, and until I get a brain wave why shouldn't I find out what Malfoy's doing?"
"I've already told you, you need to persuade Slughorn," said Hermione. "It's not a question of tricking him or bewitching him, or Dumbledore could have done it in a second. Instead of messing around outside the Room of Requirement," she jerked the Prophet out from under Harry's hand and unfolded it to look at the front page," you should go and find Slughorn and start appealing to his better nature."
"Anyone we know—?" asked Ron, as Hermione scanned the headlines.
"Yes!" said Hermione, causing Levina, Harry, and Ron to gag on their breakfast. "But it's all right, he's not dead—it's Mundungus, he's been arrested and sent to Azkaban! Something to do with impersonating an Inferius during an attempted burglary…and someone called Octavius Pepper has vanished…oh, and how horrible, a nine-year-old boy has been arrested for trying to kill his grandparents, they think he was under the Imperius Curse...And what?" Hermione paused and stared at her paper, horrified.
"What? A death?" said Levina immediately.
"No, not anything like that…" Hermione trailed off. "Lydia Russell escaped from Azkaban."
A horrible, sinking feeling overwhelmed Levina. The very woman that had murdered Eric's sister, her own husband, and countless others, had escaped? This certainly wouldn't be good, not at all. "I need to talk to Eternity," she said promptly.
"No," said Hermione sternly. "You can't, Levina! She's not to be trusted, I wish you would just listen to me already! You need to cut your ties with her—"
"But—" Levina protested.
"Hermione's right," said Harry. "It's bad enough that you're fraternizing with Draco, but two Slytherins? You're just asking for it."
They finished their breakfast in silence. Hermione set off immediately for Ancient Runes; Ron for the common room, where he still had to finish his conclusion on Snape's Dementor essay, and Harry and Levina for the corridor on the seventh floor and the stretch of wall opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls to do ballet. Harry had convinced Levina to come along with him, to try and prove to her that Draco really was just reeling her in.
Harry slipped on his Invisibility Cloak once he had found an empty passage, but he need not have bothered. When they reached their destination they found it deserted. Regardless, Levina used a transparency charm on herself.
He closed his eyes as he approached the place where the Room of Requirement's door was concealed. Levina watched him pace past it, his eyes shut tight in concentration.
Three times he walked past the door. He moved forward and gave it an experimental push. The stone remained solid and unyielding.
"Okay," said Harry, and Levina smirked as he kicked the wall. "Okay...I thought the wrong thing..."
"Or maybe it just doesn't like you anymore," said Levina.
"I need to see the place where Malfoy keeps coming secretly...I need to see the place where Malfoy keeps coming secretly..."
After three walks past, he opened his eyes expectantly.
There was no door.
"Oh, come off it," he told the wall irritably. "That was a clear instruction...fine..."
"Harry, did it ever occur to you that maybe he told the Room of Requirement to not let anyone but him into it?" said Levina.
"I need you to become the place you become for Draco Malfoy..." Harry murmured, ignoring her.
There was still no door.
Harry swore. Someone screamed. Levina looked around to see a gaggle of first years running back around the corner, apparently under the impression that they had just encountered a particularly foul-mouthed ghost.
Levina watched Harry with little interest for an entire hour before, frustrated and annoyed, he set off for Defense Against the Dark Arts, pulling off his Invisibility Cloak and stuffing it into his bag as he went. Levina undid her own color charm and followed behind him, shaking her head.
"Just give it up, Harry," she said as she pulled out her books and Dementor essay.
"Not until I find out what he's doing," said Harry.
"Late again, Potter," said Snape coldly, as Harry hurried into the candlelit classroom. "And this time you brought Miss Snowpetal late, too. Ten points from Gryffindor." Harry scowled at Snape as he flung himself into the seat beside Ron, and Levina stuck her tongue out at him behind his back. Half the class were still on their feet, taking out books and organizing their things; they could not be much later than any of them.
"Before we start, I want your Dementor essays," said Snape, waving his wand carelessly, so that twenty-five scrolls of parchment soared into the air and landed in a neat pile on his desk. "And I hope for your sakes they are better than the tripe I had to endure on resisting the Imperius Curse. Now, if you will all open your books to page—what is it, Mr. Finnigan?"
"Sir," said Seamus, "I've been wondering, how do you tell the difference between an Inferius and a ghost? Because there was something in the Prophet about an Inferius—"
"No, there wasn't," said Snape in a bored voice.
"But sir, I heard people talking—"
"If you had actually read the article in question, Mr. Finnigan, you would have known that the so-called Inferius was nothing but a smelly sneak thief by the name of Mundungus Fletcher."
"I thought Snape and Mundungus were on the same side," muttered Harry to Ron, Levina, and Hermione. "Shouldn't he be upset Mundungus has been arrest—"
"But Potter seems to have a lot to say on the subject," said Snape, pointing suddenly at the back of the room, his black eyes fixed on Harry. "Let us ask Potter how we would tell the difference between an Inferius and a ghost."
The whole class looked around at Harry, and Levina glared at Snape, annoyed. She had wanted to hear Hermione and Ron's responses.
"Er—well—ghosts are transparent—" he said.
"Oh, very good," interrupted Snape, his lip curling. "Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. Ghosts are transparent."
Pansy Parkinson let out a high-pitched giggle that made Levina's ears hurt. Several other people were smirking. Harry took a deep breath and continued calmly, though his insides were boiling, "Yeah, ghosts are transparent, but Inferi are dead bodies, aren't they? So they'd be solid—"
"A five-year-old could have told us as much," sneered Snape. "The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard's spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like a puppet to do the wizard's bidding. A ghost, as I trust that you are all aware by now, is the imprint of a departed soul left upon the earth…and of course, as Potter so wisely tells us, transparent. "
"Well, what Harry said is the most useful if we're trying to tell them apart!" said Ron. "When we come face-to-face with one down a dark alley, we're going to be having a look to see if it's solid, aren't we, we're not going to be asking, 'Excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?'"
There was a ripple of laughter, instantly quelled by the look Snape gave the class.
"Another ten points from Gryffindor," said Snape. "I would expect nothing more sophisticated from you, Ronald Weasley, the boy so solid he cannot Apparate half an inch across a room."
"No!" whispered Hermione, grabbing Harry's arm as he opened his mouth furiously. "There's no point, you'll just end up in detention again, leave it!"
"Now open your books to page two hundred and thirteen," said Snape, smirking a little, "and read the first two paragraphs on the Cruciatus Curse."
Ron was very subdued all through the class. When the bell sounded at the end of the lesson, Lavender caught up with Ron, Levina, and Harry (Hermione mysteriously melted out of sight as she approached) and abused Snape hotly for his jibe about Ron's Apparition, but this seemed to merely irritate Ron, and he shook her off by making a detour into the boys' bathroom with Harry.
…
The following weekend, Ron joined Hermione, Levina, and the rest of the sixth years who would turn seventeen in time to take the test in a fortnight. Harry appeared fairly jealous of it, but Levina reminded him that she was no better at Apparition than anyone else. This didn't seem to help much, but Harry came to the decision that he would go and look for the room of Requirement again.
It wasn't until after the test that he found Ron, Levin, and Hermione in the Great Hall, already halfway through an early lunch. Levina was in a rather foul mood and she continually stirred her soup around and around with her spoon.
"I did it—well, kind of!" Ron told Harry enthusiastically when he caught sight of him. "I was supposed to be Apparating to outside Madam Puddifoots' Tea Shop and I overshot it a bit, ended up near Scrivenshafts, but at least I moved!"
"Good one," said Harry. "How'd you do, Hermione?"
"Oh, she was perfect, obviously," said Ron, before Hermione could answer. "Perfect deliberation, divination, and desperation or whatever the hell it is—we all went for a quick drink in the Three Broomsticks after and you should've heard Twycross going on about her—I'll be surprised if he doesn't pop the question soon—"
"And you?" said Harry, turning to Levina, who sank in her seat.
"Awful," said Levina, still stirring around her soup sadly. "I was told to Apparate to the street in front of Honeydukes and ended up getting stuck in a tree."
Harry was clearly trying not to laugh as he covered his mouth, and Levina couldn't really blame him. Everyone else had laughed at her…It had actually been pretty embarrassing; she landed in the topmost tree branch and her shirt cuff had snagged on the sharp end of a stick, leaving her hanging like a piñata.
"That was hilarious!" said Ron, grinning at Levina.
"For you, maybe! That was so humiliating," said Levina. "Two of the instructors had to get me down…"
"And what about you?" asked Hermione, ignoring Ron and Levina. "Have you been up at the Room of Requirement all this time?"
"Yep," said Harry. "And guess who I ran into up there? Tonks!"
"Tonks?" repeated Ron, Levina, and Hermione together, looking surprised.
"Yeah, she said she'd come to visit Dumbledore."
"If you ask me," said Ron once Harry had finished describing his conversation with Tonks, "she's cracking up a bit. Losing her nerve after what happened at the Ministry."
"It's a bit odd," said Hermione, who for some reason looked very concerned. "She's supposed to be guarding the school, why is she suddenly abandoning her post to come and see Dumbledore when he's not even here?"
"I had a thought," said Harry tentatively. "You don't think she can have been...you know...in love with Sirius?"
Hermione and Levina stared at him.
"What on earth makes you say that?"
"I dunno," said Harry, shrugging, "but she was nearly crying when I mentioned his name…and her Patronus is a big four-legged thing now...I wondered whether it hadn't become...you know...him."
"Good point," said Levina. She hadn't thought of that before…It was a traumatic experience…
"It's a thought," said Hermione slowly. "But I still don't know why she'd be bursting into the castle to see Dumbledore, if that's really why she was here."
"Goes back to what I said, doesn't it?" said Ron, who was now shoveling mashed potato into his mouth. "She's gone a bit funny. Lost her nerve. Women," he said wisely to Harry, "they're easily upset."
"And yet," said Hermione, coming out of her reverie, "I doubt you'd find a woman who sulked for half an hour because Madam Rosmerta didn't laugh at their joke about the hag, the Healer, and the Mimbulus mimbletonia."
Ron scowled and Levina let out a bark of laughter.
Hey, guys! Sorry this was such a short chapter, but as I said before, I had to divide it up into two segments. The next chapter will be up shortly.
Review Responses:
Flower gettin' Lady: Yup, they kissed! Well…sort of. It was more of a short, surprise peck on the lips from Draco, ruined by Snape. And it's totally fine! I can be really bad about both updating and reviewing, so it's perfectly fine. I just missed your reviews; reviews always make my day, and make my stories worthwhile(: And Eternity's mom Lydia killed Eric's half-sister. His parents are still alive, they just disowned him. And yeah, dogs have good hearing; not sure about werewolves. But Levina tends to have a keen sense of hearing. Also, I'm glad you liked the love potion scene! And now you now, he did come and visit her ;) Anyways, thanks!
Things to come: Sectumsempra, Apparition, and revealed secrets. Be sure to stick around for the next chapter!