The dementors were not at the gates. This was so unexpected that Harry spent a solid minute staring into the thick darkness past the bars, as if he might have conceivably missed their depressive aura on account of his myopia.
He was two hours late, he supposed. Perhaps the dementors had other engagements. Suffused by the euphoric glow of his aberrant patronus, he laughed hysterically. The sound echoed against stone and sent birds erupting out of the nearest clump of trees.
He couldn't stop laughing. He was going to be caught, laughing his head off at Hogwarts' gates after curfew, and they'd have him committed to the loony bin. At this thought, he only laughed harder, positively convulsing.
Harry continued to stand there, gasping and choking on his own joyous tears, until at last an unseasonably icy wind sank its talons into his chest and wrenched the last of the breath from his raw throat. The dementors had finally arrived to investigate the spectacle.
By the time he completed the night's transaction, it was midnight, and he was stiff and soaked through with cold sweat. He'd somehow lost over two hours. He still had a potions essay to write.
More wretched than he could remember ever feeling in his life, Harry slunk into the common room and trudged up to his dormitory to change out of his clammy, dusty robes. Reluctantly, he returned downstairs with his potions textbook and a roll of parchment. His eyelids felt like they'd been hung with lead weights and his hand jittered uncontrollably, but the essay was due tomorrow morning.
Harry blinked as he found himself sitting across from Snape, only the professor seemed somehow diminished, his eyes downcast and his usual sneer absent. There was an almost unreasonable expanse of table between them, punctuated only by a modish leaf-patterned linen.
"You are sure that he is dead, then," Harry murmured, resting his chin on his linked fingers.
"I assumed that he had been killed on your orders, my lord," said Snape stiffly.
"You are not alone in this misguided belief," Harry murmured, leaning back. He folded his hands flat against the table. "I should like to know why."
There was a beat of silence, and then Snape glanced up. "My lord?"
Harry tilted his head very deliberately. "Have I ever demonstrated a propensity for equivocation on matters of favour and standing?"
Realisation flickered through Snape's gaze. "No, my lord. If I may, I believe the misunderstanding came about because of an incident shortly before his death, where he refused to cast the killing curse and claimed that he never would. When he subsequently vanished, most assumed that he had proven himself disloyal."
"I see," said Harry at length. "I confess, though I was aware of the incident you mention, I had hardly afforded it any consideration at the time. Perhaps that was an oversight. If he is not dead, after all this time, then he is very much a traitor."
Snape's face tightened. "My lord, his family held the funeral only days after he was last seen. They must have known for certain that he was dead."
Harry gave him a considering look. "You make a convincing case, Severus, but I should like to ascertain the truth for myself. Your arm." He reached out. Snape mirrored him, pushing up his sleeve and exposing a raised, inky scar. Harry pressed a fingertip to it, and the image of the skull sharpened into stark relief as the flesh tensed.
Harry woke up to the acrid smell of wet ink, his eyes glued shut by something scratchy. He put his hands up to his face, found a sheet of parchment in the way, and groaned. He'd fallen asleep on his incomplete potions essay. He peeled it off, grimacing at the smudged text.
These visions were getting out of hand. It was like a dam had broken the night of Karkaroff's execution, and now Harry couldn't close his eyes without seeing what Lord Voldemort was up to. What had it been this time? Snape? Perhaps his anxiety over the essay had triggered his vision. It was confirmation, he supposed, that Snape was a Death Eater, but the conversation hadn't been particularly intelligible. Harry felt the details swimming together. He yawned and checked the time. Nearly two in the morning. He couldn't afford to sleep, but he couldn't afford to not sleep, either.
Dragging himself out of his seat, Harry gave his ruined essay a last forlorn look before rolling it up and stumbling upstairs. He'd rewrite it during his free period before the potions lesson. It was doomed to get no better than a P anyway.
It felt like he'd only lain down for a moment when he woke to blinding pain, like someone had taken an axe to his head. Flashes of brilliant emerald light and a cloying, briny scent overwhelmed his senses, intertwining with incandescent rage that ravaged his whole body.
The inexplicable attack was over almost as soon as it started, leaving Harry clutching at his sheets and drenched in sweat, shuddering uncontrollably.
"All right there, Harry?"
It was Terry's voice. Mortified heat shot straight to Harry's face. Had he woken the others?
He cracked open an eye, which twitched painfully in protest as a beam of sunlight shone in his face. It had to be morning already.
Indeed, a moment later, Terry said, "We're about to head down to breakfast."
Harry's body felt like jelly; it was as if he hadn't slept a wink. Rolling over, he groaned miserably into his pillow.
"Go ahead, I'll catch up," he called through the curtain.
"All right, see you," said Terry. His footfalls receded into the distance, and the door clicked open and closed.
Harry fell asleep almost immediately. He woke again in panic, scrambling for his wand to check the time. Quarter to nine. His heart leapt into his throat. He'd missed breakfast, and if he didn't hurry, he was going to be late to Transfiguration. Throwing on his robes and blasting his teeth with the scouring charm, he flew down the stairs and through the nearly empty corridors.
Dozens of eyes fixated on him as he burst into the Transfiguration classroom and slid into the nearest available seat, right next to Ron Weasley, who shot him a nasty glare. Harry opened his mouth in shock, wondering what he could have done to offend the boy.
Professor McGonagall cleared her throat and began the lesson before he could say anything. Ron's poisonous look lingered, though he tore his eyes away eventually to pay attention to the lecture. Harry felt his chest tighten in anxious bewilderment. His eyes ached. The formula on the blackboard swam in and out of focus.
Ron shoulder checked him as the lesson let out, sending him stumbling into the side of his desk as a wave of students streamed past.
"What's your problem?" Harry hissed, righting himself.
Ron sneered. "You know, I thought you were an all right sort. Just a regular bloke like the rest of us. Suppose it was just a matter of time before fame got to your head, huh?"
"What? I have no idea what you—"
"Liar. You're disgusting. The hat should've put you in slimy Slytherin," Ron muttered. He glanced over his shoulder and, seeing that the crowd shielding them from Professor McGonagall's sight had thinned, shouldered his frayed rucksack and turned to leave with a parting, "Stay away from my sister, Potter."
Harry stared after him, absently rubbing his side, until a large shadow fell into his line of sight. He glanced up and found Neville smiling uncertainly at him.
"Potions essay? I wanted to double check a couple things."
"Right. Sure. I need to finish mine anyway." Harry let out the breath he was holding, allowing his shoulders to sag as they exited the classroom. He pressed his lips together for a long moment, finally giving in and asking, "Hey, do you know what's up with Ron?"
Neville tilted his head. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," Harry muttered. "He was really angry at me for some reason, but I don't remember doing anything that could've set him off. It's been months since we even talked."
Neville hunched inward. "Oh. That's no good. I could try to talk to him?"
"No, don't worry about it," Harry said quickly. The last thing he wanted was to rope Neville into unnecessary conflict. He paused as they approached the grand stair. It had been a while since he'd studied with Neville. "Usual place?"
"Yeah," said Neville, adjusting the strap on his bag as he began to ascend.
When they brushed past the burgundy curtain of their usual classroom, they found Hannah, Susan, and Ernie already sitting in a huddle around a makeshift table that had been cobbled together from three chairs.
"Oh, sorry," Neville mumbled immediately, but Hannah perked up at the sight of them and gestured wildly.
"Come in, join the party," she called. Then she jabbed a finger deliberately in Harry's direction. "Hey, you. What in Merlin's name is this?"
A rolled up wad of paper came flying at Harry, and he caught it just before it smacked into his face. It unrolled into a colourful magazine. He frowned as he saw a roguishly winking Lockhart on the front cover, and just behind him, a blurry flash of movement that Harry had a feeling was his own face, retreating into the distance. The background was mostly covered by luridly flashing quotes and adverts, but Harry could tell that the picture was from Hagrid's cabin. How had it even been taken?
'Troubling times at Hogwarts—conversation with Gilderoy Lockhart and the Boy-Who-Lived pg 9,' read the blurb in the corner. Harry flipped to the indicated page, growing increasingly rigid as he scanned the article. He winced openly when he reached the part about Percy:
Harry describes the late Mr Weasley as a foolhardy young man who bit off more than he could chew when he tried to get ahead of his peers using a dangerous magical artefact. Of course, we can hardly expect children to show the maturity and wisdom of adults, which is why it is the job of the professors at Hogwarts to protect students from their mistakes…
"I never said any of that," Harry protested, his heart sinking. Suddenly it was clear just why Ron had looked at him with such contempt earlier. Hot fury and shame roared in his ears, even as cold dread pooled in his stomach. He had to talk to Ginny.
"Oi, where are you going?" Hannah yelled as he whirled around to leave. Feeling foolish, Harry turned back around and passed the magazine back to her.
"Sit down," said Hannah, getting up and pulling down two chairs for him and Neville.
"I've got to apologise to Ginny—"
Hannah winced sympathetically. "She's probably in lessons right now. And I wouldn't worry too much. Everybody knows Rita Skeeter's a lying hag."
"She's definitely not a hag," Harry protested, wondering if this was some strange conspiracy theory. "I saw her teeth. They're normal."
At this, Hannah burst into startled giggles. Behind her, Ernie frowned.
"Rita Skeeter's a fine reporter," he said. "She tells it like it is, doesn't cater to Newblood nonsense."
"Don't call them Newbloods, Ernie, it makes you sound like a blood purist," Susan admonished.
"Fine, Legitimists. I'm not a blood purist," Ernie muttered.
"A fine reporter? Are you joking? Have you read this?" Hannah shoved the magazine into Ernie's face, which immediately went red.
"That's Witch Weekly," he said, leaning backwards. "That's hardly the same level of—I was talking about the Daily Prophet."
"Same reporter," Hannah pointed out, but she pulled back.
"What is it?" Neville asked.
"No, don't read it, it's horrible," Harry muttered, batting at the magazine as Hannah tried to pass it to Neville.
"It really is pretty horrible," Hannah agreed, standing up to reach over him. She was unfairly tall. "Why in the world did you decide to give an interview to Rita Skeeter, of all people? You should've known it would turn out like this."
"I didn't know," Harry insisted. "And Lockhart basically forced me."
"Don't you read the Daily Prophet?" Hannah asked.
Harry shrugged. "Not really." He sometimes borrowed Terry's copy if there was something especially newsworthy going around the breakfast table, but that was all.
"Fair. I don't read it either. But I still know about Skeeter—she's infamous. I suppose it could've been worse. She made you sound sort of like a spoilt brat, but in a sympathetic, tragic way," Hannah said.
Harry buried his face in his hands.
"How come she doesn't smear Lockhart?" he asked after a beat. There hadn't been a single unflattering word about the man.
"She probably would, if he got in some scandal," Hannah said, shrugging. "But he's good-looking, so it wouldn't even matter. Honestly, most people probably didn't even read the article. They're just there for the eye candy."
Unfortunately, Hannah had been wrong. By the end of the week, most people had in fact read the article, including a sizeable number who usually wouldn't be caught dead with a copy of Witch Weekly. Though new issues normally came out on Wednesdays, Harry saw owls carrying the accursed publication to new subscribers every morning at breakfast. Worst of all, he hadn't been able to get near Ginny in order to apologise. Patches of wet ground, falling suits of armour, and stinking dungbombs followed him everywhere he went, courtesy of the Weasley twins. Only Neville's rue, which Harry now religiously kept under his tongue, had saved him from several close calls with booby-trapped drinks.
Penelope, at least, had believed him when he insisted that Rita Skeeter had completely twisted his words around. She'd still gently told him off and asked for her library book back. After a lengthy internal debate, Harry had returned it to her without the marked up prediction inside. He kept the note, though he wasn't entirely sure why. It made more sense to forget all about it. He didn't even have Bridging the Veil anymore, after all. Professor Dumbledore had made no mention of it, and he hadn't received any condescending letters from Petri, so Harry had no idea what its fate had been.
It was Luna who gave him the first indication that something might be amiss.
"Have you seen Ginny lately?" she asked him one evening as he laboured listlessly on his transfiguration formulas in the corner of the common room. Harry startled into alertness at the sound of her breathy voice and noticed that he'd completely misspelled 'hedgehog'.
"Er, no," he muttered, despairing internally at having to redraw the whole spell. "We're not exactly on speaking terms right now."
He saw Luna draw back out of the corner of his eye, as if in surprise. "Oh, you're not? Did something happen?"
At this, Harry dropped his quill and turned his chair to fully face her. "There was this article," he began, before thinking better of explaining. "Never mind. Why do you ask?"
"I was just wondering if you'd noticed more wrackspurts around her than usual," said Luna.
'Wrackspurts' sounded familiar. "Those are the… invisible mites that mess up your thoughts?" Harry asked, his heart sinking.
Luna nodded energetically.
Harry tried not to leap to the worst possible conclusion. Perhaps Luna was just playing pretend. "How would I notice them if they're invisible?"
"There are obvious signs," said Luna. "Being easily distracted, not listening to what other people say, and also avoiding people, if the infestation gets bad enough."
"Luna, have you noticed Ginny acting like that?" Harry asked, leaning forward.
Luna shrugged. "I haven't talked to her in a while. She hasn't been sitting next to me in lessons like usual. And normally we study together on Fridays, but I didn't see her at all yesterday."
Harry leapt to his feet, pacing around his chair in a tight circle. He hesitated, his thoughts sounding ridiculous even in his own head, but he figured that Luna liked conspiracy theories. "I think someone's targeting her family. Ginny might be in danger."
"Using wrackspurts as a weapon?" Luna muttered, poking her chin with a thin finger. "That's quite dastardly. You must be right."
"But why them?" he said to himself, stumped. He tapped his foot erratically. Could it really be Lucius Malfoy, like they'd suspected? It seemed frankly extreme to assassinate someone's whole family as revenge for having had one's house searched. Or maybe it wasn't attempted murder, but something else. The book hadn't technically been a weapon of any kind.
He stilled.
"You don't think she still has the book?" he asked Luna.
"What book?" said Luna, whereupon Harry discovered with some chagrin that she'd been left out of the loop.
"The one that Percy and Penelope had, the… nargle book. I got it from my uncle and gave it to Ginny, but she said that Professor Dumbledore confiscated it. She didn't tell you any of this?"
Luna frowned. "If she forgot, that means that the wrackspurt infestation must have started even earlier than we thought."
"But why would she lie about that?" Harry mumbled to himself, bewildered. Surely she would have realised that he would see through her when Dumbledore failed to bring up the book?
Then again, Harry hadn't even suspected it until now. It wasn't as if he was going to ask Professor Dumbledore if he could please give him detention. He clenched his fist. So maybe it had been a good lie to bet on, if it even was a lie. Maybe he was completely off the mark.
"Harry… Harry?"
Harry blinked. Luna was waving her hand in front his face.
"Sorry," he said, rubbing at his temples.
"Are you sure you haven't been infested too?" Luna asked, making what Harry now recognised were swatting motions around his head. He reached up to parry her as gently as he could, as they were attracting some odd looks from across the common room.
"I'm fine. Just haven't really been sleeping well. Bad dreams." This was perhaps inaccurate. The visions from the Dark Lord rarely actually interrupted his sleep, but he felt constantly drained, like he was on his last legs, even though he'd tried going to bed earlier. He figured the exhaustion had to be because of the dementors, which was why he hadn't gone to Madam Pomfrey about it. For the past week he had visited them with only occlumency for protection, not having dared use his patronus again. The altered, manic state it could drive him to scared him more than the dementors themselves.
"Perhaps you've been visited by a blibbering humdinger," Luna suggested.
Harry bit back a sigh and obligingly asked, "What's that?"
"It's a psychic parasite. It'll reveal itself to you, pretending to be an ideal being, but you shouldn't listen to it. It starts off eating your psychic energy through extremely realistic dreams. Then, when you're tired enough, it will begin appearing during the day," she explained, gesturing wildly in his direction. "That's when you need to be careful. It'll eat your good qualities one by one until you've got nothing left."
Well then, Harry thought sardonically, perhaps Lord Voldemort was secretly a blibbering humdinger.
"So what are you supposed to do about it?"
"You've got to find out where it is in real life and expose its true form," said Luna. "It lives inside ordinary objects, so it can be hard to spot. You can definitely tell me if you've seen one in your dreams, and I can help look for it."
"Right," Harry said, suddenly tense. If only his troubles were so simply dealt with. Discussing his visions with anyone outside of vaguest terms was out of the question, and treating them like dreams was completely missing the point—the problem was that they really were real.
"So do you think you're being visited by one?" Luna asked.
Harry stared at his feet and shook his head, feeling ridiculously like a liar. He swallowed and said, "No, I'm fine. What are we going to do about Ginny?"
He really did not want to have to approach Dumbledore and admit a whole heap of wrongdoing. Losing the headmaster's trust was not something Harry could afford, not when it might be the only thing blinding Dumbledore to his deeper crimes. He was certain that the headmaster would not approve of his resurrection stone project.
"I'll talk to her," Luna said. "Now that we know it's wrackspurts, I know what to do."
Harry was sceptical, but he let it go and nodded. It was quite possible that he was overthinking things. Better for Luna to talk to her as a friend than for him to go and accuse her of something that might be completely off the mark.
He returned to his transfiguration formulas, shapes swimming in his vision as he tried to focus. Just three more weeks of this, and he'd be one major step closer to bringing back the dead. It had to be worth it. Sighing, he shoved the parchment away. His marks on homework didn't matter. He would make up for everything he wasn't learning by studying harder over the Easter holiday.
His professors did not agree with this plan. Friday afternoon, Professor Flitwick handed Harry back his essay with a circled red P and 'SEE ME' double-underlined at the top.
"Mr Potter, what's the matter? Are you well?" said Professor Flitwick when Harry meandered up to his desk after the lesson, cringing with every step as he stared down at the chicken scratch on his parchment.
'The engorgement charm makes things bigger by stretching them out,' he saw. Had he written that? That was completely wrong. It was like he'd switched the effect with that of the swelling solution, which wasn't even a charm.
"Nothing, sir," Harry muttered, and when he glanced up and saw that Professor Flitwick was unlikely to accept that as an answer, added, "I just haven't been sleeping well."
"You're observing curfew?" Professor Flitwick asked sternly. Harry nodded. "Insomnia, then?"
"Bad dreams," said Harry.
Professor Flitwick nodded. "Madam Pomfrey will sort you out."
"But—" Harry floundered, rummaging fruitlessly through the fog of his mind for some excuse. Thoughts slipped through his fingers like quicksand. Occlumency had never come so easily as when he desperately needed to think.
"No buts, young man. This can hardly continue. I know you're capable of much higher quality work," said Professor Flitwick, gesturing to the essay still clutched in Harry's shaking hands. Hot, sticky shame welled up in his throat, and Harry nodded.
"All right, sir. I'll go."
"I'll walk you there," Professor Flitwick said, his eyes crinkling kindly, though Harry suspected he was wise to the ways of students and wanted to make sure that Harry actually went. There was no believable way to refuse; charms had been the last lesson of the day.
Harry spent the whole way to the hospital wing stewing in a mild panic over what possible excuse he could give if Madam Pomfrey diagnosed him with dementor exposure, so that when they finally got there, he was entirely blindsided when she took one look at him and said, "There you are, Mr Potter! You're long overdue. Thank you for bringing him, Filius."
She shooed Professor Flitwick away politely, steering Harry towards one of the beds. He sat perched on the edge and watched in bewilderment as Madam Pomfrey turned to her potions cabinet to extract a vial, which she pressed into his hand.
"What did I tell you, Mr Potter? You're to see me immediately when you notice excessive fatigue and inability to concentrate," she said, tutting. "Drink up."
Harry looked down at what she'd given him and finally remembered about blood and the vampire curse. Nodding in distraction, he uncorked the vial and brought it hastily to his lips. He hardly tasted its contents, but he did notice when the ache behind his eyes receded and he could finally think again.
Everything felt inexplicably more real than it had a second ago. It was as if he'd come crashing back into his body after a sojourn in the clouds. Harry glanced up to see Madam Pomfrey scrutinising him with a pinched expression.
"Thanks, Madam Pomfrey," he said, trying to smile. "That helped. Er, could I have some more? So I don't have to come back as often?"
She waved her wand and summoned four more vials.
"One a week should do it," she said. "While you're here, anything else ailing you?"
"No, I'm fine," Harry said, perhaps too hastily. He fidgeted as she pinned him with her critical gaze for a few more moments. Then she nodded and waved him off the bed.
Harry made his escape quickly, hand in his pocket still clutching the clinking vials of prescribed blood. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten about the vampire curse.
The blood made him feel awake and alert, but it was only a temporary substitute for proper sleep. By Sunday he was nodding off over his homework again, and had to skip broom racing because his hands were still shaking. He was afraid he might well lose control of his broom if he tried to ride one.
The next morning, he reluctantly uncorked one of the blood vials that was supposed to be for the end of the week and swallowed it down. He needed to keep up appearances in lessons, and he had an idea of where he could get more blood without going back to Madam Pomfrey.
Visiting the kitchens reminded Harry shamefully that he was still on the outs with Ginny. He hoped he wouldn't run into her or anybody else there while he misused his knowledge of its location. The strategically placed suits of armour along the corridor seemed suddenly threatening, and the low ceiling evoked claustrophobia rather than cosiness. Harry had hurried down as soon as lessons had let out, but now he stood motionless in front of the painting of fruit for a long while, trying to swallow down the irrational nervous static that had erupted in his ears. The worst that could happen was that the elves would say no.
Or they could be completely appalled and report him to the headmaster, and then there would be an inquiry where Harry would be exposed as a dark wizard of the worst sort, have his wand snapped, and be sent to Azkaban. He wasn't sure if underage wizards could go to Azkaban, but they would probably make an exception for him.
At least he was friendly with the dementors now.
He tickled the pear.
Elves swarmed him as he stepped inside, ushering him to a table and laying a plate of biscuits before him before he could get his bearings.
"Actually, I've got a request of sorts," Harry began, addressing the nearest elf, but a hundred pairs of eyes swivelled towards him. He swallowed thickly. "You can say no, if it's out of line—"
Scandalised gasps rose up. Harry coughed.
"I need, I mean, I would like some blood. To drink. Like regularly. Sorry."
There was a brief scuffle amongst the elves nearest him, but it was over before he could even open his mouth to shout, and a familiar elf jostled her way up to his elbow.
"Nelly is making the arrangements for young sir," she said. "It is being with the pumpkin juice at every meal."
"Just breakfast is fine," Harry told her quickly, but Nelly shook her head violently.
"Young sir is not to be neglecting his nutrition. Nelly has been a bad elf for failing to provide for wizards!"
With fearsome alacrity, she slammed her large head on the edge of the table. Harry drew back with a yelp, then reached out, perhaps to stop her, but she stared up at him with such wild determination in her eyes that he froze on instinct and just looked on as she hit herself twice more.
Then the need to flee immediately and forget that this had ever happened struck him like lightning. Stammering a last apology, only to be met with a hair-raising glower of disapproval, he shuffled out of the kitchen at speed, staring at his feet the whole way to the common room.
He found a whole knot of first years blocking up the narrow landing at the foot of Ravenclaw tower. Harry groaned, not looking forward to trying his hand at the knocker with a waiting crowd. Getting it wrong would be humiliating.
"Hello Harry," said Luna, edging around a circle of chatting girls.
"What's the riddle?" Harry asked.
"Never mind that," she said. "I need to talk to you. Are you busy?"
"I suppose not."
"Great. Come on." Luna brushed past him and down the stairs.
"Wait, Potter, can you try the door first?"
But Harry had already turned to follow her, and threw a halfhearted apology over his shoulder. Luna brought him to a random, rather dusty corridor and ducked into an alcove behind a suit of armour. It wasn't exactly private.
"What is it?" he asked. "Should we find a classroom?"
"Oh no, we won't be here long. I just thought you should know that the situation with Ginny's got rather serious," she said. Harry tensed. Luna continued, "It wasn't wrackspurts at all. There's actually a blibbering humdinger living in that book. I'm sure of it."
"The book. She's still got it then?" Harry asked, not completely following.
Luna nodded. Then she asked, "Are you still having dreams?"
"Dreams," Harry repeated, though he had an inkling of what she was getting at. "Doesn't everyone have dreams?"
Luna looked unimpressed. "Vivid dreams, where you aren't part of the dream. And when you wake up, it's like you haven't slept."
"How did you—never mind. I suppose I have. But I don't think that's related."
"Ginny's been having them too," Luna told him, and this Harry had not expected at all. It made no sense. Wouldn't Petri have noticed if the book did something as obvious as cause strange dreams? Why would it do such a thing in the first place? And anyway, Harry knew that his visions were from the Dark Lord, not some artefact.
Then again, it could explain why he had suddenly started having so many visions, when before he saw into the Dark Lord's head perhaps once every few months at best.
"She's affected worse than you, though," Luna continued. "When I brought up the book, she tried to deny that she had it, and then when she realised she couldn't, started acting very oddly. I think she was afraid I might try to take it from her."
"So it really is cursed?" Harry demanded.
Luna shook her head. "Weren't you listening? There's a blibbering humdinger living in it. That's why everybody's sure it's not a dark artefact, but it's still invading dreams and making people paranoid. We've just got to get our hands on it and force it into its true form."
"Right," Harry said, since getting the book back sounded like a great idea. It had occurred to him just now that if he told Petri that he'd somehow lost it, he would probably get cursed to next Sunday at the next opportunity, and, more importantly, never be trusted with anything valuable again. "So we steal it back?"
"It's tricky," Luna murmured. "We don't want to be bamboozled by the blibbering humdinger, which might happen if we just take it. We have to lure it into a false sense of security."
"How exactly does it bamboozle?" Harry asked. "We know it has a compulsion to make people write in it, but does it also compel you not to give it up? That doesn't make sense, because my uncle and I both gave it to other people with no problem."
"It shows you things you want to see," Luna explained. "That's why you don't want to let go of it. Ginny said she was seeing things about Percy in her dreams. She wouldn't believe me when I explained that they weren't real."
"I haven't been dreaming anything that I want to see," Harry said honestly, as Karkaroff's anguished, bloody face flashed in his mind's eye. The most horrifying thing was that he still couldn't think of it without feeling an echo of satisfaction, as if he were remembering how he'd accomplished a major task on his to-do list. "Also, I only started dreaming after I gave the book to Ginny."
Luna nodded. "It doesn't leave you just because you don't have it physically anymore. It just lives in the book. Even if we destroy the book, the blibbering humdinger will just find a new thing to live in. We have to make it appear to us and observe it into oblivion. I'll ask Daddy to send us some equipment before we go for it."
"All right," Harry agreed, wondering what kind of equipment she could possibly be referring to. "I'll ask my uncle if he's had any weird dreams as well."
Petri's reply arrived at the end of the week, advising that vivid dreams were likely prophetic in nature and a common side effect of performing intensive divination. Dementor exposure could also trigger similar dreams, often nightmares. This explanation was so mundane that Harry was at a loss as to what he could tell Luna. It seemed rude to poke holes in her fantastical world.
"Daddy really came through," she said when they next reconvened in the corner of the common room. She upended a bag and an assortment of strange items tumbled out—two pairs of lurid magenta spectacles with glittery wings and opaque, neon green lenses; a collection of sticks, some with leaves growing out of them; a jar of radishes; and a stack of flimsy paper hats in assorted colours.
"Right. What are these for?" Harry asked, bracing himself for the answer. He hoped they weren't going to have to attempt to steal the book while wearing all that eye-cataching paraphernalia.
"These are spectrespecs, for us," Luna said, pointing to the spectacles. "They'll let us see the blibbering humdinger properly. The rest is for Ginny."
They weren't going to steal the book back after all. Luna instead invited Ginny to tea in the kitchens, where Harry and Ginny immediately had an awkward standoff in front of the painting of fruit.
"What's he doing here?" Ginny demanded.
"Friends shouldn't fight," said Luna blithely.
Ginny huffed. "Some friend. He blabbered about my family's private business to bloody Skeeter."
"I'm really sorry," Harry said. "Really. I didn't think she would—I didn't think."
"Too right you didn't," Ginny muttered. There was a beat, and then she said, "I did lie to your face, though, so I reckon we're even. But you're still a prat."
"All right," Harry agreed, relieved, as they entered the kitchens and sat down. A troupe of elves immediately furnished them with tea and slices of fluffy cake. "How come you lied, anyway?"
Ginny shrugged, an uneasy look passing over her face. "Didn't want you to ask for the book back. It's mine."
Harry frowned. The book hadn't come back to him on its own. "You wrote in it," he realised. "You didn't read what you wrote, did you?"
"It's not like you're thinking. I wrote in it, but it was way back when, before I even gave it to Percy. I didn't even notice. Thought I'd just fallen asleep reading it," Ginny said, snorting and staring at her feet. "And no, I didn't read what I wrote back then. Fat lot of good that did. It came true anyway. You can see for yourself."
She tipped her rucksack onto the table and the book came sliding out. Luna reached forward at once, slapping a cage of sticks and twine over it.
Ginny glanced up at her questioningly, but Luna just handed her two radishes and an acid green paper hat.
"Eat these, and put that on," she said. Luna was already wearing her spectrespecs, and now she gave the other pair to Harry, who hesitated at how ludicrous they looked. They made her look like an overgrown, glittery owl.
Ginny hummed and put on the hat, taking a bite of a radish and making a face. "These from your garden?"
"Daddy's best," Luna confirmed.
"Horrifying," said Ginny, but Luna didn't seem offended. She took one for herself and crunched through it.
Feeling left out, Harry said, "Can I try one?"
Luna offered the open jar to him, and he selected the smallest one and bit into it. It was overwhelmingly sweet and spicy at the same time, and most certainly not a radish. He winced as his whole face tingled almost painfully.
"What are these?"
"Dirigible plums," said Luna. "Put on your spectrespecs."
Harry shoved the large spectacles on over his glasses, where they sat somewhat askew. Surprisingly, he could see through them despite the painted-over lenses, but everything looked strangely two-dimensional. Lines were sharpened, shadows darkened, and colours thrown into blinding relief.
Ginny had reached into the stick cage and opened the book up to a dog-eared page. It was largely blank, except for one line at the bottom in generously rounded letters made so sharp by the spectrespecs that they nearly burned Harry's eyes:
'On the eve after the dead have departed, the twin lions of the lion's pride will be sundered forever.'
"Er, okay," said Harry, glancing up again after a cursory look at the cryptic statement. Ginny's washed out, flat face loomed bug-eyed over him.
"No, you don't get it," Ginny said. "That actually happened. It's talking about what happened to Percy."
Harry believed her, if only because he knew for himself how real divination could be, especially in retrospect, when it was too late. But when he made more of an effort to decipher the words, he hit an immediate roadblock.
"Twin lions. If it's about you, wouldn't that be talking about your other brothers? They're twins, aren't they?"
Ginny made an impatient noise at the back of her throat. "That's just it, it's not 'the twins,' it's 'twin lions.' Percy and I are both Leos. Dad used to joke about how we were double-destined for Gryffindor. The eve after the dead have departed—that's November second. This is my handwriting. I predicted his death. It was there the whole time, and I didn't even notice doing it." Her voice went very high pitched at the end, and she looked away, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her sleeve.
"Wait, I actually found one of Percy's predictions," Harry said, realising suddenly that Ginny might have real insight into its meaning. "Not the original—he probably got rid of that, but a copy of it, so it should be safe to look at. Does this make sense to you?"
He pulled the somewhat wrinkled parchment out of his pocket and slid it across the table.
Ginny turned back to read it. "What are all these numbers?"
"Ignore that, that's arithmancy that Penelope did, I think," said Harry.
Ginny stared at the prediction for a few moments before she cursed violently, hands curling into fists. Fresh tears trickled down her face.
"It says the same thing. Look!" she muttered, picking it up and slapping it down beside the open page as she pressed her other sleeve to her face. "Only, Percy figured it out beforehand, I suppose. One of us had to die. Guess he made sure it wasn't going to be me."
"What?" Harry asked, still lost as he glanced back and forth between the two predictions. "How do you figure that?"
He stared unseeingly at the ominous numbers decorating Percy's note as Ginny collected herself. She sniffed and pulled the book towards her, drawing her finger across the text. "Sundered forever. Separated by a pall. Seems pretty clear to me. One of us would have to be dead. Exactly one of us, or we wouldn't be separated."
Harry frowned. "That sort of makes sense. But everybody dies eventually. How could it be forever?"
Ginny shrugged. "Dunno. But I think I get it now," she said slowly. "I've been having these dreams about Percy. We're on the quidditch pitch, it's all dark, and he's yelling at me from across the pitch, trying to tell me something, but I can't hear what he's saying. I wasn't sure what it meant before, but now I think that's the future he saw. I suppose I was going to die in some sort of quidditch accident. But it can't happen anymore, right? He saved me."
Her voice was hollow, and she stared pensively at the book through the stick cage.
Harry and Luna exchanged looks. Viewing another pair of spectrespecs through the spectrespecs turned out to be a mistake, and Harry was left reeling as bright spots exploded in his vision.
"That's the most terrible and wonderful thing I've ever heard," Luna sighed. "I wish my mum had died to save me. But she just died."
Ginny emitted a choked laugh.
"My parents died to save me," Harry volunteered awkwardly. "I don't know that it changes anything."
"Yeah," Ginny agreed, tearing up again. "They're still gone. It still hurts."
Luna hummed. "It's all right to hurt," she said. "But you can't let it fester. Would you mind if we took a look at your blibbering humdinger?"
"I haven't got a blibbering humdinger, thank you very much," Ginny said, wiping at her eyes. She was smiling through her tears now, a lurid red curve in the vivid spectrespec tableau. "But go ahead."
Luna ate another dirigible plum and rattled the sticks around the book. Its pages fluttered, and the bit of parchment with Percy's prediction flew off the table.
"There!" she shouted. "The blibbering humdinger. Harry, don't take your eyes off it."
Harry had no idea what he was looking at. The view through his spectrespecs had melted into a river of colours and angles and it felt as though someone were driving nails into his eyes. He didn't think he could have closed them even if he had wanted to.
Then his vision cleared up, and his face, wet with tears of pain, flashed hot and cold by turns.
"We did it. Good work," Luna declared with dead seriousness. "Do you feel better, Ginny?"
"Yeah," said Ginny, who was clearly just humouring her.
"Can I take these off now?" Harry asked, wincing as his temples throbbed in time with his words.
Luna held her hand out, and Harry eagerly pawed the spectrespecs off his face. Ginny handed in her paper hat and extracted the book from the ring of sticks.
Harry wondered if there was any chance of him getting the book back. As if detecting the direction of his thoughts, Ginny quickly stowed it in her bag. Harry glanced back over to Luna, who looked dull and washed out in his normal vision. Did she really think they'd solved anything?
"The dreams you're having," Harry began a little stiltedly, turning to Ginny again, "they aren't because of that book. I mean, they are, but you don't need to keep it to keep having them."
"Leave off, Potter," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's not going to work. I know you just want it for yourself."
"That's not it at all," Harry protested, but swallowed back any further persuasion attempts. She did have a point. He'd just have to steal it back later, somehow.
"Harry's right, you know," Luna said. "The blibbering humdinger is gone, so it's just like any old book now."
"Great," said Ginny. "Then there's no problem with me keeping it, since it's mine and all."
She stood up rather abruptly and shouldered her rucksack, clearly ready to leave, though she remained standing in place for a few moments.
"Thanks for worrying about me, I suppose," she told them. Then to Harry, she said, "I'll call off my brothers. I know they've been pranking you non-stop."
"Oh. Thanks," Harry said. He'd managed to avoid the worst of it thanks to Neville's rue, but not having to look over his shoulder all the time would be nice. "I'm really sorry about that article."
Ginny shrugged. "It's… whatever. No guarantees they'll listen to me, but I'll try."
Harry did notice a distinct lack of unlikely puddles of water on staircases, nose-biting teacups at breakfast, and stink pellets under his chairs in the next week, so he figured that Ginny had come through. He finally felt safe enough to stop using rue while he visited the dementors. The extra sense of screaming doom that it afforded him was something he could do without.
The nightly visits to the dementors weren't nearly as bad now as they had been at the start. Though the dementors were interested in any happiness he had to share from his day, they otherwise knew him quite well and got thoroughly bored of him after just minutes. He was perversely beginning to look forward to seeing them, if only because his stones were making noticeable progress. Most of them had started going cloudy, like there was soot or tar coating their insides, though a few remained transparent. Harry figured they were duds.
It wasn't long until he received his first completed stone. The dementor keeping it had coughed it up, handed it over, and then refused to take it back, spitting a deluge of graveyard imagery at Harry, which he took to signify that it was finished.
"Thanks," he said, stupidly, but gratitude was apparently a happy emotion, because the dementor sucked in a rattling breath and drained it right out of him, until he was left feeling foolish and little else. Then it grasped with greedy, frozen tendrils at his nerveless heart, searching for something that wasn't there.
Its gaping mouth contracted into a twisted shape that Harry understood as inquisitive. When could it taste again the excitement of hundreds of innocents?
"In two weeks," Harry said, but days and the movements of the sun had no meaning to his interlocutor, which was eternal and blind and hungry.
"It's been three weeks since I gave you this," Harry said, holding up the stone.
The relationship between quantities, it understood. It conveyed its acceptance by drifting away into the gloomy mist hanging over the damp cobblestone road that led down to Hogsmeade. Harry wondered how the villagers were doing. The dementors were supposed to stay up by the castle, but they were opportunistic to the core and he didn't doubt that they were misting up the streets whenever they had the chance.
The new resurrection stone in his hand was thoroughly opaque, though it still shone like glass underneath the moonlight. It was slightly cool to the touch, but there was no other indication that it was anything more than a black marble. Harry had the irrational urge to immediately test it out, which was ridiculous. He didn't even know how to properly conjure from nothing.
Remembering the instructions from Deepeste Risinges, Harry made a detour towards the lake to retrieve some brackish water to store the stone in while it wasn't being used. Since the giant squid lived in the lake, Harry was pretty sure it had to be salty enough, because who had ever heard of a freshwater squid?
Taking off his invisibility cloak so it wouldn't get wet, he dipped his hand into the water and licked his finger to check, promptly retching at the slimy seaweed taste. Close enough. A quick search of his pockets produced an empty vial. It was too narrow for the marble, but a quick engorgement charm solved that. He scooped up some lake water, dropped the stone inside, and sealed the vial with a nearby leaf and a sticking charm. Harry loved magic.
"Hey, Harry!"
Harry fumbled with the vial and nearly dropped it. His heart thundered in his chest as he clutched his prize close and whirled around.
"Er, hi Neville. What are you doing out here?"
"Trying to find some moondew," said Neville, stepping into the moonlight. "What are you up to?"
"Just… getting some fresh air," Harry mumbled, trying surreptitiously to slip the vial into his pocket. "Isn't moondew the one that turns into water if you touch it?"
Neville nodded. "The flowers melt in sunlight, too, and if it rains, so it's a bit tricky to get a hold of them. They'll have all wilted by now, anyway. I'm hoping to get some bulbs."
"What for?" Harry asked, hoping there hadn't been herbology homework he'd missed out on.
"Just for my garden back home," said Neville, staring at his feet. "I mean, if they're just growing out here on the grounds, not the greenhouses, then they're technically wild, right?"
Realising after a beat that Neville was worried about getting in trouble, Harry said, "I'm sure it's fine. Do you want help? Or company, I suppose. I don't know that I can actually help."
"Oh, sure, if you don't mind." Neville beamed at him. "Could you cast a lighting charm, actually? Mine keeps going out when I get distracted."
"Lumos," said Harry, wincing as a narrow beam of too-bright light shot out of his wand like an offensive spell. He focused his intent, widening the scope until their surroundings were lit with a diffuse glow.
"Perfect, thanks." Neville led them towards the edge of the forest, eyes trained intently on the lush grass carpeting the loamy ground. They skirted around the hillock overlooking the lake, probably because it was a popular study spot and unlikely to host any rare flora, and approached the outskirts of the forest.
"So we're looking for some wilted leaves that are bluish and transparent. They'll be about as long as your little finger, and pretty thin," Neville explained as they walked.
"Is there a specific place where they grow?" Harry asked hopefully. Finding a spot of transparent foliage against a backdrop of spring vegetation sounded pretty much impossible.
"They're often found near water, so I've been looking by the lake, but they won't be in places with lots of foot traffic," said Neville.
"I've got an idea," said Harry, eyeing the sticks littering the edge of the forest. "Let's use divination to figure out which way to go."
Neville turned and blinked at him. "What? How?"
"There's a sort of divination you can do with sticks," Harry said, which was honestly about the extent of his xylomancy knowledge. However, he did know that all sorts of divination operated on the same principle of using symbols to interpret knowledge gathered by the inner eye, so he figured he could improvise. "If it doesn't work, well, it can't be worse than just wandering around randomly, right?"
"I suppose," said Neville, looking sceptical as Harry bent down to gather materials.
He found several promising twigs about the length of his wand and snapped off any unsightly protrusions. Seven seemed like a good number. Then he found a clear spot and threw them on the ground all at once.
"So which way are they pointing?" Neville asked, frowning at the haphazard array. "Looks random to me."
Trying to remember what Petri had done the one time he'd demonstrated xylomancy, Harry said, "It's got to do with the number of times they cross. So these two sticks are crossing, and those are open."
He paused, realising that he had no idea what he was doing, and took a moment to cool the burning in his face. He just had to relax and pay attention to what his inner eye was saying, like Professor Trelawney always said. Even and odd crossings for bad and good came to mind, and suddenly the message was clear. He counted them up.
"Four crossings, and four groups… that's even so I think this way is no good," he muttered. Gathering up the sticks again, he tossed them in the opposite direction. "Five crossings and one uncrossed, so that's good. Let's go this way. I think it means we'll find something, maybe even something that we didn't expect."
Neville shrugged, peering into the direction Harry had indicated.
"Seems as good a spot as any," he said.
Not five minutes later, he gasped in delight as he looked behind a rotting stump. Harry's wandlight focused in on the spot as he craned his neck, but he didn't see anything resembling transparent leaves. Neville produced a trowel from his shoulder bag and unearthed what appeared to be a large, somewhat lumpy onion.
A putrid smell suddenly hit Harry, like someone had lit a mouldering corpse on fire.
"A gurdyroot!" Neville said, holding the onion up to the moonlight in triumph. He was smiling, even though Harry thought he could see his eyes watering from the smell. Harry's lighting charm had gone out when he'd slapped both hands over his nose and mouth.
"That's foul," Harry mumbled through his fingers.
"It protects you from all sorts of dangerous creatures," said Neville.
"Probably since nothing with a nose could stand to get near it," Harry pointed out. Neville shrugged, patting crumbs of dirt off the flaky outer skin before stowing it in his bag.
"It's not a moondew, but this is a pretty nice find. Seems like that thing you did with the sticks might have worked."
A moment later, Neville gasped, running off towards the forest. He crouched down beside a tangle of gnarled roots. "No, look, it really did work. There's a moondew. You're amazing, Harry."
Harry, for his part, decided to write off xylomancy and stick to tarot in the future. Something else good, indeed. The horrible smell of the gurdyroot seemed to have clung to his robes, or perhaps even his hair, because he kept catching whiffs of it even upwind from Neville.
Unfortunately, Neville recounted their adventure to a sceptical Hannah the next day, who thought that it had just been luck, which led an offended Harry to propose a xylomancy experiment to prove that it was real magic.
"You'll hide something in the castle, Hannah, and I'll find it," Harry said.
"Anything?" Hannah asked.
"Not anything," said Harry hastily, immediately imagining horrible scenarios where Hannah hid a book in the library or a pebble in the lake. She probably wasn't that mean, but still. "We can decide on something beforehand. And it has to be in the castle, not outside, and it has to be possible to get to it without doing magic."
Neville frowned. "You really think you can find something in the whole castle? I can't even find stuff in my room sometimes. How about just this floor?"
"That sounds fine," Hannah agreed. She had her hand under her chin and a mischievous smile on her face. "I've got a spot. If you can find it, I swear I'll never doubt divination again."
"It's a school subject," Harry complained. "How can you doubt that?"
Ignoring him, Hannah said, "I'm going to make a paper crane for you to find." She pulled out a copy of Witch Weekly and tore out one of the pages. Vicious satisfaction curled in Harry's gut as Lockhart was decapitated in the process of squaring the paper.
Just then, Harry realised a problem with their plan. "I need sticks for xylomancy."
"I can make some," Hannah said, tearing out more pages and rolling them up into tight tubes.
Uncertain if they really counted as sticks, Harry worked on a transfiguration formula to turn them to wood. A stick turned out to be too general of a concept to properly transfigure, however, and he failed a few times before specifying chopsticks and managing a passable result. By the time he finished with all this, Hannah had left to hide her paper crane and come back again.
"Go for it," she said, smirking.
Harry threw his sticks on the ground and examined them, trying not to get nervous. He just needed to know which wing of the floor he should search on first. Hannah might have crossed over to the west wing to hide the crane as far away as possible, or she might have used reverse psychology and stayed close.
There was an even number of crossings on going to the west wing, so Harry figured the crane was hidden on the east side after all. He collected the sticks and tossed them again to see whether it was in the corridor with the statue of Boris the Bewildered or the one with Gregory the Smarmy.
"It's by Gregory the Smarmy," he concluded, glancing up.
Hannah made a poor attempt to hide her reaction, then gave up and crossed her arms. "How?"
It was Harry's turn to smirk.
"You still have to find it," Hannah told him.
The sticks were telling him once more that he was going to find what he was looking for as well as something else. Remembering the gurdyroot, Harry did not get his hopes up.
The corridor with Gregory the Smarmy was so known because the marble statue of the corpulent, smug wizard was the only item of decoration. The statue was located in an alcove facing away from the staircase, across from a large plaque that every Gryffindor and Ravenclaw knew well, because it was nearly impossible to avoid reading it while coming up the stairs. The plaque informed the passerby that Gregory the Smarmy was a renowned potioneer responsible for creating the unctuous unction, which had helped him swindle loads of money from King Richard and start the Hogwarts fund for the needy.
The idea of the unctuous unction, which deluded the drinker into considering the brewer a good friend, never failed to send a shudder down Harry's spine. He had actually taken the time to look it up last year and discovered that, fortunately, it was only practically usable on bewitched muggles, as it was a distinctive bright blue and the effective dose was an entire cupful.
Harry passed the statue and peered into each classroom along the corridor. Most of them were occupied by older students. After the third annoyed glare, Harry turned back to where Hannah and Neville were waiting at the stairs.
"You didn't go and hide it in a room that other people are using, did you?" he asked Hannah.
She shrugged. Harry huffed and asked his sticks the same question. They came up negative on every score.
"It's not in a classroom?" he muttered to himself incredulously. Hannah started at this declaration, which basically told him that he was right. He whipped around and went up and down the corridor again, even scrutinising the ceiling despite knowing that she couldn't have stuck it up there without magic. Nothing.
Finally, he returned to the statue, looking at it with narrowed eyes. It was bulky and took up most of the alcove, but there was probably a hand's span of space behind it, at least. Enough to slip a paper figurine into.
"Lumos," he muttered, sticking his wand into the dark crevice behind Gregory's outstretched arm. "No way."
His wandlight did not shine on the wall like he expected, but kept going until it dissipated into the distance.
"What?" said Neville, while Hannah made a muffled squeak that might have been laughter.
"Is this a secret room? That's not fair. If it's down there, how am I supposed to get it out?" Harry turned back to Hannah, who looked far too pleased with herself. "I say it's definitely down there. You've got to believe in divination now, right? I don't actually have to get it out?"
"Oh fine, I believe you," Hannah admitted. "That was pretty brilliant."
Harry shrugged, bending down to pick up his sticks. "I didn't really know what I was doing. I bet it would be even better if I studied it properly."
"You're such a nerd," said Hannah, laughing. "Check this out, though. You actually can go inside."
She took Gregory's hand and moved her arm up and down, as if shaking it. The statue's head turned incrementally and its hand shifted over, widening the gap between it and the wall. From where Harry was standing, he couldn't see the hole, but when he moved nearer, the stone darkened until the illusion fell away.
"Neat," he said, shining wandlight inside again. It seemed to be a sheer drop. "What's down there?"
"Dunno," said Hannah. "I wasn't just going to go into a dark hole by myself."
"When did you find this?" Harry asked.
"Oh, ages ago. Must have been my first or second week here," said Hannah. "I got really lost because Boris pointed me the wrong way, and I was desperate so I started shaking hands with every statue I saw."
Harry nodded. If you shook hands with the statue of Boris the Bewildered's right-gloved left hand and asked for directions, there was a decent chance that it would point you the right way, though the chance varied with the day of the week. Common consensus was that Tuesdays were the best day.
"I sort of forgot about it until just now, when I was thinking of good hiding spots," Hannah said, peering speculatively into the gloom. "Want to find out what's inside?"
"Not really," said Neville, but Harry had already crouched down and broadened his lighting charm to get a good look. There seemed to be a fairly cavernous space beneath the hole in the wall. If he shined the light straight down, Harry thought he could see the floor.
"I think it would be all right to jump," he said.
"No way," Neville protested, going pale. "How would you get back up?"
"Magic," Harry said after a beat. Then, thinking of a better solution, added, "Sticking charms to climb up the wall."
"I swear, something about being in Ravenclaw destroys people's common sense," Hannah said, snorting. "We can just levitate each other."
"I was thinking if we were alone," Harry mumbled, turning red. He was so used assuming that there was no external help allowed when answering the Ravenclaw knocker's hypothetical scenarios that he'd automatically discounted his friends' presence.
"Like I said, no going in dark holes by yourself," Hannah concluded.
"I'm not sure I can levitate a whole person," Neville mumbled.
"It's not that high. You could probably use locomotor or mobilicorpus," said Harry. He pocketed his wand, hiked up his robes, and slid down into the hole, landing lightly on the dusty floor and promptly having a sneezing fit.
"Harry!" came Hannah's exasperated cry from above, her voice echoing eerily down the tunnel. And it was a tunnel—Harry had lit his wand again and confirmed that the space behind him kept going.
"It's fine!" he yelled back. "Just a bit dusty. Scourgify!"
A few moments later, Hannah and Neville landed behind him with heavy thuds. Neville swore.
"All right?" said Harry.
"Forgot to bend my knees," said Neville breathlessly. "I'm all right."
Hannah pushed past him to peer ahead. "It's a secret passage. That's exciting. Come on."
"Are you sure we're allowed to be here?" Neville asked.
"It's part of the castle," Hannah reasoned, though she sounded a little uncertain.
Harry shrugged. "We're already down here. Might as well explore." He wrinkled his nose in concentration, modulating his lighting charm so it was wider and dimmer.
"How do you do that?" Hannah asked, but Harry couldn't explain it without losing concentration and causing his light to fluctuate wildly. Hannah cast the charm as well, and they spent the next few minutes walking in silence, experimenting with their wandlights.
The passageway began to slope noticeably downwards, until it finally steepened into a set of stairs, which curved sharply to the right. Hannah, who was in the lead, paused.
"Should we keep going?" she asked. "I haven't seen any way out so far. I think we might be in one of the towers."
"Let's keep going," said Harry, who was eager to see where the passage led. They began to descend the spiral staircase, which went down, and down, and continued going, getting narrower and narrower as they went on, until they were forced to move in single file.
Finally, the steps levelled off into a flat corridor with a low ceiling. Hannah shined her wandlight into the distance, but there was no exit in sight, just more tunnel. "That was a lot of stairs. Are we under the castle?"
"I think, I think we should go back," Neville stammered.
"Are you all right?" Harry turned back to see that Neville was deathly pale and breathing rapidly.
"I'm fine," Neville mumbled. "Just… I don't like how cramped it is in here."
"Right, let's go back," Hannah agreed. Harry was disappointed, but Neville clearly wasn't enjoying himself, so he nodded and gestured for Neville to lead the way. Walking up all those stairs was not nearly as fun as walking down them, and it was slow going towards the top. Harry's legs hadn't cramped so hard since his first week at Hogwarts.
The statue of Gregory the Smarmy had reset by the time they returned, leading to a moment of panic, but Harry managed to levitate Hannah up so that she could reach through the narrow gap and shake the statue's hand again. They spilled out into the bright corridor with some relief.
Neville's chest was heaving, and sweat streamed down his incongruously pale face as he braced against the wall, shivering.
"Merlin, Neville, are you okay?" Hannah touched his shoulder cautiously.
"I'm fine," said Neville, sniffing. "I really don't like small spaces, that's all. Sorry. Thanks for coming back with me. I don't mean to be a spoilsport."
"Of course you're not a spoilsport," said Hannah firmly. "I thought it was scary too."
"I wasn't scared," Neville insisted, going red. Hannah nodded and patted his shoulder.
"Sorry we made you come with us in the first place," she said, glancing over to Harry, who echoed her belatedly. She turned back to Neville. "Want to relax with some exploding snap?"
"Exploding snap is the opposite of relaxing," Harry complained as they walked back towards their classroom. He pushed open the burgundy curtain and paused, making awkward eye contact with the older student now occupying a chair by the window. It was Cassius Warrington, whom they sort of knew from charms club, even though he hadn't attended in months, so Harry continued into the room and sat down in the circle of chairs they had been using before.
Cassius scowled. "Shove off, you lot. I'm using this room."
"We were here first," Harry pointed out, jerking his chin towards the scraps of Witch Weekly littered around the floor alongside Neville and Hannah's abandoned bags.
"And then you left, so it's my spot now," said Cassius.
"There's plenty of space for all of us," Harry argued, trying to figure out what Cassius was even doing. Certainly not spellwork.
He spotted fist-sized crystal ball resting atop what appeared to be an egg cup by the older boy's elbow.
"Are you doing divination?" Harry asked.
Cassius turned to glare at his crystal ball for a moment, then levelled the same expression towards Harry. "Yeah, so I'd like some peace and quiet."
Hannah had by now picked up the magazine and shoved it into her rucksack, which she slung over her shoulder before grabbing Neville's in her other hand.
"We're going," she said, nodding to Cassius. Harry relented and followed her lead.
"What now?" he muttered as they left the room.
"It's nearly lunch, anyway," Hannah said, so they agreed to go their separate ways. Neville started up the stairs, presumably to return to his common room, while Harry walked the other way with Hannah, turning off at the landing to go to the library. He was finished with homework, and thought he might read up more on xylomancy.
As he made the tense journey past Madam Pince's suspicious glower, Harry remembered that he had another bit of divination to worry about—scrying for Voldemort's past again. He made a circuit around the library, trying to find an unoccupied table, but in the end had to return to the highly unpopular study area that was in Madam Pince's direct line of sight.
That meant he had plenty of space to himself, however, so he took out his tarot cards and pulled one at random for the centre of the table. It was the Fountain of Fair Fortune, reversed: a resistance to change, or an attempt to avert natural consequences. Fitting to represent the Dark Lord's battle against karma. Harry dealt four cards face down around it.
He considered which path to take, remembering what Professor Trelawney had said. Feeling confident after his success with xylomancy, Harry decided he might as well go all in. It seemed like the northern path was the only one likely to give real answers, anyway.
He flipped the eastern card. Four of wands. Actions and their consequences—a direct confirmation of his understanding of the centre card. That made sense so far. He continued to the south. Two of swords. A discovery of some secret. He flipped the west card. Eleven of stars, reversed, which alluded to creativity or innovation. The thought immediately came to mind that Voldemort had taken some technique and improved upon it somehow.
Though he was curious, he pushed on to the north. Two of cups, which represented the idea that there were always two sides to a coin, good and bad, gain and loss. He frowned as that thought fixed in his mind. Something gained, something lost.
Committed now, he dealt three more cards and flipped the middle and right cards. Ten of stars and twelve of cups. Now Harry was properly perplexed. The ten of stars represented mental distancing, often related to trying to dissociate oneself from undesirable past actions or avoid one's own thoughts. The twelve of cups, on the other hand, quite literally referred to a treasured item, something of immense worth.
But why would Voldemort have distanced himself from something he treasured? Perhaps that was what he had lost in China?
Harry had the dreadful feeling that he'd chosen wrong, that in uncovering the side regarding Voldemort's loss, he would not be able to find out what the Dark Lord had gained. He stared a burning hole into the back of the left card. He had never wanted to peek at anything so badly.
Swallowing and looking back to the twelve of cups, he dealt three more cards. This time he started off flipping only the middle card. The tower, reversed. The Dark Lord had undergone some kind of pivotal personal transformation. Hesitantly, Harry chose the card closest to him to reveal. The eight of swords. That meant excellence, surpassing others in skill.
There was something he wasn't seeing. Harry felt a nervous quaver in his thoughts, like he was staring over the edge of a jutting precipice with no line of sight to what was directly below. He glanced back and tried to retell the story, starting from what he'd learned the first time he'd tried to scry about Voldemort.
The Dark Lord had gone to China in order to perfect himself, likely to attain more complete immortality than that which Nicolas Flamel could offer. He had studied Chinese magic and alchemy for three years in a monastery focused on manipulating karma. Harry's gaze flickered to the Fountain of Fair Fortune, and he was hit with a sudden insight.
Resistance to consequences, escaping karma—all that pointed to the idea that the Dark Lord had made a mistake of some kind, one which he had then worked tirelessly to undo. And he had succeeded. The accounts from the monks at the monastery had made it out like Voldemort was the most talented person they had ever met. In just three years, he'd gone further than those who had spent their whole lives studying there.
But what was the transformation that the Dark Lord had undergone? What was the treasure that he had lost?
It seemed stupid, but Harry wondered if it had something to do with his appearance. He remembered suddenly that the monks had described Voldemort as terrifying and monstrously pale, which was how Harry knew him as well. And in their very first meeting, Dumbledore had been very focused on how Voldemort looked, taking it as a sign that he had done something terrible to his soul.
Mutilating the soul. Something treasured. Not for the first time, Harry's thoughts jumped to horcruxes. Dumbledore had dismissed the horcrux as a flawed method of immortality, like all others, and he was probably right, but what was to say that Voldemort had not taken the concept and improved upon it?
The tremble of doubt in Harry's mind stilled as he eyed the upside-down eleven of stars in the west. Innovation, beyond what any others had accomplished. The implication was clear: the mechanism of the Dark Lord's immortality was known to nobody but himself.