The Great Hall had been lavishly decorated for the last day of October, the exquisite scent of pumpkin pies and melted chocolate soldiers wafting through the corridors that Thursday. As now typical of the Gryffindors, their common room hosted a colossal party until dawn, record-breaking in the number of detentions ruthlessly issued. For Albus, the novelty of going had worn off, especially when he had Professor Mullard to contend with the next day.
He, alongside his classmates, tried to avoid the manic Kav as much as they could in the weeks that followed, each of them darting to the greenhouses or isolated corners of the library, where they were supervised by unassuming professors. The Glaswegian appeared to be everywhere in their lessons or spare times but by Halloween, he'd connected the dots and sat alone, his head firmly in a book with a self-writing quill drifting through the air next to him.
A delicate and fine frost had settled over the grounds by the first weekend of November, spurring Orville into beckoning them to the empty Quidditch stadiums to watch his try-out for the team. Perched on the cold wooden benches, Albus and his cousin discussed their readings on the fire creature, sporadically listing their most outlandish and illogical theories. Disheartened by the huge number of advanced books on the topic, they'd taken to borrowing a few books at a time and flicking through them at random intervals at odd places. "Who knew fire things covered phoenixes, dragons, gods and every-bloody-thing in the world?" he muttered discontentedly. They'd made a start, but it was tiny compared to the lists he and Rose had drawn up. How were they going to find an explanation for what had happened? What had Professor Ellis meant when the castle's protective boundaries were failing? Albus' gut feeling was that the two were inevitably linked.
As Professors Arofan and Dupont directed a group of miniature Ravenclaws, the majority of whom were too astonished or demoralised by the act of getting on a broomstick, they fell off and limped away, brandishing bruises that told of their bravery. Rose bit her tongue, as not to laugh. She offered Albus a mug of scalding hot tea, a faded tome propped open in her lap. "I asked Mullard. Yesterday."
"What'd he say?" Albus' gaze was focused on Orville who was demonstrating his practical skills, kicking off a tad shakily. To his untrained eyes, Ville's confidence had been undoubtedly bolstered by Dupont's flying lessons and almost predictably, innumerable hours studying the Ravenclaw team in the air. There were roughly nine or ten trial players alongside him and after a few laps of the pitch, half flew back to terra firma, too unconfident or inexperienced to be considered. Could he actually do it? Hope surged in his chest.
Rose's hair blazed red in the faint sunshine, drawing his eyes away from the try-outs. "Daemons," she whispered, handing him the unwieldy volume, marking a passage underlined and annotated in her handwriting. "We were looking in the wrong place the whole time."
"'Daemons have remained benevolent and benign spirits through the ages, representing a non-personified mode of guidance, as suggested in Greek mythology, driving mortals forward to act… Platonism declared that daemons were tied to magical individuals from birth, as the essence of thinking and performing acts of magic… On a Hellenistic level, these daemons were divided into 'agathodaímōn' (good) and 'kakodaímōn' (evil)...'" Albus looked up. "Mullard saw it, didn't he?"
She shook her head. "Interestingly, it's a footnote in the first-year Wiz Lit curriculum… Kav would've seen it. Think about what it means, Albus, daemons can act as an extension of yourself, as a magical being in itself. Can you remember what you said that it reacted to?" she replied. "Hey, Orville's doing really well."
Sipping from his tin mug, he teased Rose. "What's hard about staying on a broom?" elicited a smack around the head from her with the book whilst several blue-clad figures streaked across the pitch. "Kav accused me of calling myself a genius... Which is light, considering, y'know..." As she flipped to the appendix to figure out if it meant anything, Albus tried to guess which player was their classmate.
Scorps had explained why the try-outs were a brilliant opportunity to learn early on to mitigate bad habits or common mistakes; it appeared that he was circling the other pair of Beaters with his teammate, like two birds of prey, scrutinising the flaws in their play. If he struggled to plan his academic work off the pitch, the opposite was true here. He was cataloguing each move carefully, mapping out his strategy in response.
"Maybe it was a trigger word," Rose pointed out. "Kav lost control and the daemon emerged because of that. McGonagall said pushing yourself before you're ready can cause instability in your magic-" She tensed as Ville, constricted in movement by his partner and the opposing pair, swung upside-down on his broom to hit the Bludger. He rapidly batted the flying menace back, forcing his opponents to pull their broomsticks sharply upwards to avoid being struck down. They weren't aiming for clean play.
Albus spotted the grinning figure of their classmate, Sky, making his way to where he and Rose were seated in the stands. "Brought a spare mug!" he panted, settling down on the bench below them. "Surprised Scorps didn't come. How's Ville doing? Any bets?"
Rose scowled, pouring another cup of tea. "We're not betting on our mate!" She leant forward though, breathless, as both Orville and his trial team-mate batted the Bludger in sync at their competition. "That was a Dobblebeater Defence! Fine, Ellis, a Galleon on reserves!" She winked at him.
"He's bloody brilliant," Sky stated, his face animated. One of the unknown players looked solidly confident in her face-offs against the ruthless Charmed object but Albus was sure Orville had secured it. "I mean, for a first-year." He spotted the book Rose was clutching. "Are you reading ahead? Upper Wizarding Mythology?"
Albus and Rose's eyes met. Sky knew enough of their uneasiness around their classmate to eschew him, but he didn't know why. As well as that, he'd been the only one in their group to notice that Kav left his wand in the dormitory. Albus had later kicked himself for that; he quietly prided himself on noticing these insignificant details. "Kav does wandless magic," he began. "Were you there at the match? Did you see the fire daemon?"
"Not really, I only saw it from a distance. Y'know, caught up in all of the typical teen revelries. It just looked like McDonald and Deryn were duelling." Sky shrugged before his sharp grey eyes focused on the pair. "Daemonism? That's classical mythology... I've only ever heard of them as reflecting your inner thoughts, but fire ones can be good signs. Could you pass me that?" Rose obliged.
Sky set his tea aside and withdrew his wand, murmuring "Reperium fire daemonism." Hovering above his lap, the book flipped open, like an invisible hand was rifling through its page with unrivalled intensity. "I use it in the shop when I can't be arsed to read through the books… It's like Control plus F. Grandad taught me that one." Rose glowered at him disapprovingly, whilst Albus' mind whirled with confusion. What on earth was that? As if he'd read Albus' mind, Sky elaborated. "The Muggles use it to find exactly what they're looking for on the internet, a massive library in a small device. This is the magical equivalent of that."
"Imagine doing that in the library with one of McGonagall's essays," Rose smirked. "You'd get knocked over by the volume of bloody books. Anyway, we think that Kav lost his control over his magic and that allowed the daemon to take over. It did start chanting Latin-"
"Wait, hang on- Albus, can you remember any of what it said? Ah, here we are," Sky's spell had worked; he jabbed at the passage it had deemed important. Had his grandfather allowed him to use his wand to practise in the shop before Hogwarts? "It's not dead on but this is the closest match. 'As one of the four elements, Greek philosophy associated fire with power, strength, willpower and resoluteness as well as being an abstract principle of reality... It represents the heart, as the heart of all magic… It purifies, symbolising new beginnings…' There's nothing there to argue it's a bad thing."
Albus traced a circle around his chin with his fingers as he considered Sky's reading of the passage. What if his immediate reaction to distrust what he didn't know had been wrong? He'd made his friends push away an innocent classmate for no good reason. Something tugged at the back of his mind. There had to be something off about the whole thing.
"Everything's pointed to it being a good form of guidance or an augmentation of a person's magic… Should we trust him, Albus?" Rose asked. "Do you know what the daemon said? If it was pure, it'd have gotten past Hogwarts defences regardless…"
"It was all Latin… I wouldn't be able to remember it word-for-word," he answered dejectedly. As he pondered the events succeeding the match, a thought struck him. "I offered McGonagall my memories though, maybe we could ask to use her Pensieve?"
"McGonagall's got a Pensieve?" Sky repeated, questioningly. "How comfortable are you with telling the professors if it's looking like Kav is harmless?" Several whistles blew, signalling the end of the trials for both the regular team and the trial teams. Albus could hazily see the only remaining Beater, Bella Burns, resolutely discussing the try-outs with the professors and her team. Emergency appointments were usually made in a manner of minutes, Scorps had warned him. The more time on the pitch, the merrier, so the saying went. A team's cohesion could make up for a major lack of skill in desperate circumstances.
Within a few minutes, Ville had joined them, a dented mug clasped in his hands before long. "What did you think?"
"Not bad," Rose replied, grinning broadly, Albus and Sky nodding in agreement. "When d'you think you'll know?" One of the Ravenclaw team gestured towards the stand, his wand sending miniature blue models flying through the air, like an almost kind of playback of how each trial player had competed. "Albus, you've got to tell your dad."
"Why can't we break in and use it?" Sky asserted in a hushed voice.
The smile on Orville's face vanished. "What the sodding hell have I come back to? Ellis- What?"
"We can't just break into McGonagall's office- There's bound to be enchantments that'll wake up the whole castle, plus what if she's there whilst we wheel the bloody thing out? And have you thought about the paintings? They can travel anywhere so we'd have Mullard there within a few minutes- Do you want to spend the rest of the year stuck in a room with McGonagall breathing down your neck? Albus, your dad would kick-off-"
Sky cut across Rose. "There's something that's not adding up, mate. What do we know? Grandfather said the castle was attacked and something's been draining power from the North Tower charms. What if this is our one opportunity to find out what it is?"
"Are you talking about breaking into McGonagall's office?" Ville laughed.
The three of them turned to look at him, his face an odd mixture of confusion and amusement. "Shit, we are," Albus said. "It's the Pensieve we're after, d'you know what that is?" When Orville half-nodded, he expanded on what they'd managed to connect so far. Eventually, their classmate agreed, shaking his head.
"Albus, you're being stupid," Rose hissed. "Really stupid. Just tell your dad."
"Dad wants to take me out of Hogwarts." The fact that had haunted him since that disastrous collision with a Bludger on barely his second day blundered out of his mouth. It'd coiled in his stomach like a slumbering snake and from time to time, it threatened to tear a hole in his heart. Despite his initial misgivings about coming to the castle, he'd grown to recognise and appreciate it as a home away from home. His cousin, typically goofy, gaped.
Sky was the first to break the awkward. "Bloody hell, you could've said," he remarked. "Are you sure you're okay to do this? It's not to get back at your dad?"
"Nothing like that. Rose, are you in?" She didn't reply but stared straight ahead, gritting her teeth.
On the pitch, the huddle of professors and players fractured, allowing Burns, whose face was grimly resolute, to address the small number of try-outs. "Mackenzie, Aitken, sod off."
"Bit rude, innit?" Sky snorted into his mug.
"Tanzer, Seeker," she began again, leaning on her broomstick for support. "Salisbury, Beater. Williams, where are you?" Orville waved his hands, shouting to Burns. "Right, I want you attending training, get a feel for how we play. First one tonight, so dress warmly. Now bugger off, it's nearly lunchtime."
As soon as the words left her mouth, the four of them erupted into cheering and whooping. "Does... Does that mean reserves?" shouted Rose. "Ha, Ellis! You owe me a Galleon!"