I know that not everyone probably reads the content warnings, but I wanted to let you know in advance that there are going to be some slurs in the dialogue in this chapter. Just so you don't freak out or anything, I know the connotations of the words I'm using, and I'm specifically using them in dialogue to show how some people can be ignorant assholes when it comes to those sorts of things, especially the more privileged people in our society.

Content warnings can be found at the end of this chapter, but they're just for what I've already warned.

After explaining to Harry the basics of unarmed combat and self-defense, the boy had agreed that it would be a useful skill to have in the battlefield, and, come next Wednesday, he was willing to have Tim share some of that knowledge with the D.A.

"But I still think it's important to know a bunch of spells and be able to use them in battle," Harry repeated as the students filed into the Room of Requirement for their next D.A. session.

Tim nodded. "And I completely agree. You're wizards, magic is your greatest weapon. I just want to make sure everyone has the training necessary to stay alive when they become the ones under attack."

Eager to begin another lesson, the students again arrived with incredible promptness, clutching their wands desperately like they were afraid Harry was going to announce the dreaded "Wands away and quills out."

Instead, Harry began with, "Er—hi everyone. I'm glad you all could make it. We're going to continue practicing Expelliarmus today—" Everyone looked positively giddy at this announcement, "—but I'm going to add a new element to things. Or, rather, Tim is." He tilted his head in Tim's direction, signaling for him to take over. As the students turned to face Tim, whispering among themselves, Tim set his shoulders back, took a deep breath, and took the lead as though he was speaking to his Young Justice team.

"Thanks, Harry." He waited for the whispers to slowly die away. "For those of you who don't know me already, I'm Tim Drake-Wayne, the transfer student from Ravenclaw."

"Hey, you're the kid who goes and sits at the Gryffindor table all the time!" an older Hufflepuff exclaimed. "And you parkoured off the stairs once, I heard some second years talking about it."

He winked at them. "That's me. I, like the rest of you, am here to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts from a teacher who actually knows what he's talking about." To his left, Harry's face turned beet red, and Tim held back a laugh. "But there's more to defense than curses and counter-curses.

"Yesterday, many of you successfully disarmed your opponent after a few tries. But that creates another problem—what are you supposed to do when you're the one getting disarmed?"

Upon hearing this, the students all shifted in their cushions uncomfortably. Clearly, no one wanted to consider the fact that this could happen to them in real life. One student, though, a tiny Gryffindor, tentatively raised his hand into the air. Though Tim had really intended this to be more of a rhetorical question, he reckoned that it wouldn't hurt to listen to what the boy had to say.

He pointed at the boy. "Yes?"

"Uh—um—we have to get our wands back?" he squeaked, lowering his hand.

"You're absolutely right, but by that time, your opponent will have already had the opportunity to kill you."

Kill. Another uncomfortable concept these students would have to acknowledge.

Tim smiled to show them that there was hope for their survival yet. "But would you believe me if I told you that you could take an opponent down without magic?"

"Bullshit," Zacharias immediately stated, crossing his arms and ignoring the younger students who gave him scandalized looks. Of course it would be Zacharias who felt the need to express his skepticism.

"Well then, allow me to demonstrate." Tim looked at Harry. "Mind being my opponent?"

Harry, caught unawares, nodded quickly. "S-sure." The two of them walked a couple paces away from each other, both in full view of the seated students on one side and Ron and Hermione on the opposite.

"All right then. Harry?" he said. "You're going to disarm me and then attack me with another spell that you think would best take me down." Harry only seemed confused for a moment, but he nodded anyways and readied his wand.

"And I—" Tim pointed at himself, "—am going to be disarmed, and then I will take Harry down." A series of gasps and incredulous laughs came from the peanut gallery.

"No way!"

"He's joking, right?"

"That's not possible."

Just to make sure Zacharias didn't have any further reason to doubt him, Tim added, "And, Harry, can you promise everyone that you'll go all-out, even though this is a demonstration?"

"…are you sure?" the boy said slowly, looking down at his wand and then back at Tim.

"Positive."

"Okay, then, if that's what you want…"

"Ron? If you would count us off?"

Hermione nudged Ron, who was still in a daze after Tim's bold declaration of war. "R-right…"

"Three…"

Tim and Harry both readied their wands, Tim instinctively shifting into a fighting stance.

"Two…"

Tim inhaled through his nose, held his breath, and then exhaled out his mouth.

"One—!"

Harry flicked his wand and shouted, "Expelliarmus!" and Tim's wand went flying out of his grip and over the heads of the students.

The moment he felt it leave his hand, he went into action. He sprinted up to Harry, grabbing the boy's wrist in one hand and his shoulder with the other.

Harry, to his credit, was quicker to react than Tim would have expected, and was already midway through a spell of his own.

"Stup—"

But the breath was knocked right out of Harry as Tim rapidly twisted his own body, hooked his right leg around Harry's left, and yanked it out from under him. Harry landed on his back with a loud thud. Pulling his leg out from under Harry's, Tim pressed his knee into Harry's stomach (and normally, Tim would have gone for the chest, but this was no Gotham criminal, this was a high-schooler).

By the time Harry was able to take in a breath, Tim was already pinching his right wrist, forcing the boy's hand to spasm and release his own wand. Tim removed his hand from Harry's shoulder and grabbed the wand before it could fall to the ground, and, forcing the boy's wrist to the ground, Tim pointed Harry's wand at his throat.

The room was silent as Harry caught his breath, the boy staring at Tim with impossibly wide eyes.

And then, predictably, they all started yelling at the same time.

"What in the—!"

"Merlin's fucking beard!"

"—my god, did you see that?"

Tim released Harry's wrist and got off of him, offering a hand to help him up. He handed Harry his wand back as the boy continued to steady his breathing.

"Bloody hell, Tim!" he coughed out, doubled over. "That was unreal!"

"In a good way?" Tim said, only half-joking. Was it too much?

"Are you kidding me? It was brilliant!" They both turned to the students, who all immediately quieted as though they too had been shoved to the floor.

"So," Tim said, clapping his hands together and grinning like a madman, "let's get started, shall we?" He made sure to look directly at Zacharias Smith when he said this because Tim was petty like that.

The little Gryffindor's hand went into the air, followed by practically every other student's hand, who all stared at Tim in shock. Tim sighed, setting his hands on his hips. If he started calling on people, they would be talking for the entire meeting.

"Okay, hands down, everyone. We don't have time for any of that." Dejected, they lowered their hands. "The first thing I'm going to teach you—"

"—is how to stand."

Tim froze in the middle of making punching motions in the air. "What?"

"You need to know how to stand correctly," Mr. Wayne repeated, pulling a tank over his ridiculously toned chest.

"Oh, I can do that," Tim told him, excited to actually have even the smallest bit of experience coming into this. "My parents taught me." He stood up straight, squaring his shoulders, pulling in his stomach, and setting his feet to almost (but not quite) align with his shoulders. Toes pointed slightly out, hands folded in front, chin slightly tucked in—

"That's not what I meant, Tim."

Tim's face flushed, and his heart began to beat faster. How absolutely idiotic of him to assume he knew better than Batman! This was it, this was a test, and Tim had failed it! And he had been so excited when Mr. Wayne had acknowledged him. He felt very ashamed indeed.

But Mr. Wayne moved on, ever merciful towards Tim and all of his mistakes. "To be an effective fighter, you have to be flexible, able to go from defending yourself to going on the attack to running away without hesitation."

"R-running away?" The thought of Batman of all people running from a fight absolutely baffled Tim, and he considered himself a pretty rational kid.

"Yes, Tim. Sometimes you need to run away." He said this with the most conviction out of everything, as if it was the one thing Tim needed to remember. After he said this, Mr. Wayne was silent for quite a long time, several minutes, if Tim's count was accurate, but breaking that sacred silence was the last thing Tim intended to do, so he waited patiently, watching as Bruce stared past him at…

Oh. He must have been looking at the display case. That display case.

And then, out of the blue, Mr. Wayne said, "Now, I'm going to show you what a flexible stance looks like. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to be able to move, and to be able to move—"

"—you need to be light on your feet." As Tim was talking, he squatted down and untied his wingtip boots. This would be much easier to learn if they could see his bare feet. At least, that was how all of his teachers had taught him.

"What this means is keeping your weight on the balls of your feet." He slipped off his shoes and socks. "Observe."

And this was how the D.A. meetings began to be run—Harry taught the spells, and Tim taught the basics of self-defense. Tim continued to stand by his assertion that magic was a wizard's greatest weapon, so, despite finding unarmed combat a highly effective technique for fighting all manners of opponents, much of what he taught these kids was how to stay alive until they could get their hands back on a wand. It wouldn't help them to know how to block a punch if their opponents would be shooting Unforgivable Curses their way. It would, however, help if they knew how to predict the path of said magical projectiles being shot at them.

Harry was proving himself to be quite the teacher, to Tim's surprise. Given the boy's performance in Transfiguration and his and Ron's overreliance on Hermione's essay-writing abilities, Tim had wrongly assumed that Harry wasn't terribly gifted in the arcane arts and that he had managed to escape death so many times purely because of his quick reflexes and incredible nerve. However, from what Tim had seen in their D.A. meetings, Harry had a natural affinity for combative spellcasting, and Tim was often taking notes from him to better his own spellcasting.

Not only that, but he was really growing into his role as a leader, which was exciting to see. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all had the potential to be great leaders in Tim's mind, but seeing Harry go from stammering and stuttering to confidently speaking to a crowd was truly inspiring.

And Hermione's fake Galleons? That was absolutely incredible. The fact that she was able to successfully enchant them with N.E.W.T.-level charmswork was unreal. To have such a clever idea and to be able to execute it was truly a testament to the girl's brilliance.

Ron, however, ended up surprising Tim the most. The boy's spellcasting was substandard, and he was often overlooked in favor of his younger sister, Ginny, who was beginning to show an aptitude for hexes in particular. Despite this, Ron pushed through and continued to practice with the determination and diligence one might expect from a Hufflepuff. In fact, Tim noticed that many a student who was having trouble with their spells would approach Ron, of all people, to ask for help. It was as though he, alongside Neville Longbottom, had become an icon for students to whom Defense Against the Dark Arts did not come naturally.

Plenty of those same students also ended up really leaning into Tim's training. The mild-mannered Susan Bones, for example, once tackled Lee Jordan midway through his trying to jinx her, and Cordelia took to physical maneuvers like a duck to water. But the most shocking diamond-in-the-rough ended up being Zacharias. Tim's first demonstration seemed to have been something of an awakening for him, and he ended up being the student who most frequently asked Tim for further instruction.

It seemed that Dumbledore's Army had become Tim's passion project without him realizing it.

Of course, Tim still had his mission to attend to, but research was slow-going. Constantine hadn't sent Tim a reply to his last report, which had worried Tim up until he remembered that he was working with John Constantine and that extended periods of silence were normal for the man. That, and Tim was quickly getting sucked into the drama surrounding Quidditch, which was ever-present and inescapable. Many members of the D.A. were on their Houses' respective teams, most notably Harry, about whom there was a general consensus that he was one of the best Seekers anyone had seen in years.

The first match of the season would be Gryffindor versus Slytherin, easily the fiercest and longest-running rivalry of two Houses. Tim assumed that part of this was due to the fact that Draco Malfoy was Slytherin's Seeker, and from the few interactions Tim had witnessed between Malfoy and Harry, it was obvious that their personal rivalry was quite intense in and of itself.

This meant that Harry and a couple other Gryffindors were practicing on an almost daily basis, such that the D.A. meetings were few and far between in the last weeks of October. However, Harry seemed very adamant on the lessons continuing, so in those days, he let Tim borrow his enchanted Galleon to schedule his own review sessions which proved to be a good refresher for everyone.

Since Quidditch was the only big competitive sport in the wizarding world, Tim had read up on it so that he would have a basic understanding of the rules and not seem like such a social pariah in casual conversation. However, this Saturday would be the first time he would actually see a formal match. He sat next to Cordelia, who had been rattling off her hot takes on school Quidditch nonstop for the past week and a half. Despite her tendency to infodump, Tim picked up a lot of information about the game simply by virtue of being around her. He went into this match knowing far too much about the Nimbus 2001 broomstick model and its distinct advantages at higher altitudes.

Tim managed to avoid getting dragged off by Cordelia to the Quidditch pitch during breakfast, being already busy trying to instill some confidence into Ron, for whom this would be his first match on the team. While Harry had served himself up a hearty breakfast, Ron was staring blankly at an empty bowl of cereal like it had personally offended him.

"Trust me, Ron, it's gonna be fine," Harry assured him, patting him on the back. "Everybody knows that you're a perfectly capable Keeper, and I know you know that, too."

"No, I'm not. I'm going to fuck up the entire game, I just know it," he whined, letting his spoon drop into his bowl with a loud clatter.

"Oh, come on," said Tim, taking a seat next to Hermione. "If you're so obviously bad at Quidditch, why would Angelina make you Keeper?"

"Exactly!" said Harry, mouthing a small 'thank you' at Tim. "You earned this spot on the team, you're the best we've got."

"No way, I bet Ginny would make a better Keeper than me."

Next to Hermione, Ginny raised an eyebrow dryly. "Oh, shut up, Ron, you and I both know I can't play Keeper to save my life."

While she and Ron began to argue back and forth, Hermione leaned over to Tim and whispered, "Say, did you see those badges the Slytherins were wearing?"

Tim nodded, frowning. He had been trying to forget about it. "'Weasley Is Our King?' How could I not, I had to pass by them on my way to breakfast."

Hermione's face visibly paled. "Is that what they said?" she whispered, looking horrified.

"Yeah, and I'm not sure I like their connotation." Tim would wager it had something to do with Ron unknowingly sabotaging his own team's chances at victory and being a secret champion for the Slytherins.

Since Cordelia had already taken Purdie and Aruna with her to the Quidditch pitch half an hour ago, Tim ended up heading down with Luna, whose face was heavily obscured by her life-size lion-head hat but who had still managed to identify him amidst the mass exodus of students heading for the pitch.

"Do you like it?" she asked him, gesturing to the beast on her head.

"Yeah, I love it," Tim told her, and he wasn't just saying that to make her feel better. That she would have the boldness to wear such an audacious hat in public to support a House of which she was not even a member spoke to a weird dedication that Tim found rather refreshing. And it made him laugh. He liked when things made him laugh.

Hogwarts's Quidditch Pitch looked a lot like any other outdoor stadium save for the uniform towers decked out in Slytherin and Gryffindor's House colors and the bubble-wand-like hoops that stood thirty feet tall, if Cordelia's stats were anything to go by. He climbed up onto the stands and invited Luna to sit with his other three Ravenclaw friends. On their way over, amidst the din of students getting seated, Tim picked out a steadily-growing chorus coming from the crowd.

"Well, that's catchy," remarked Luna, sitting down next to Aruna, who was entirely unfazed by the fact that she had just obtained a free umbrella for the rest of the game.

Tim, being the Robin that he was, had no trouble deciphering the words amidst the excited chatter.

…Weasley was born in a bin,

He always lets the Quaffle in,

Weasley will make sure we win,

Weasley is our King…

"What the hell…?" Tim muttered. "Seriously?" The Slytherins had written an entire song about Ron? Tim wasn't sure he had ever witnessed something so…so atrocious…coming from a group of teenagers, and Tim had seen a lot of things. He clenched his fists so he wouldn't do anything stupid in his anger.

Thankfully, the singing was drowned out by the cheers from the rest of the students when the two Quidditch teams hit the pitch. Tim only needed one look at Ron to understand how terrified he was. To Tim's right, Cordelia pulled out a pair of binoculars and started pointing out people and shouting things excitedly to Tim, though her words were indecipherable in such a raucous crowd. Tim made sure to nod along, though, just to be polite. He knew Cordelia had enchanted her glasses to only let certain kinds of sounds through her ears at different levels (which Tim was almost certain was N.E.W.T.-level charmswork), so she could probably hear him just fine.

The referee blew her whistle, and everyone shot upwards on their broomsticks—the Keepers zooming off to their keeps, the Beaters readying their bats, the Chasers flanking out, and Harry and Malfoy soaring high above the rest, keeping their eyes out for the elusive Snitch.

"And it's Johnson, Johnson with the Quaffle," Lee Jordan's voice reverberated throughout the stadium, which was a relief because Tim was having trouble following the game only half a minute in.

"What a player that girl is, I've been saying it for years, but she still won't go out with me—"

"JORDAN!" McGonagall barked indignantly.

"Just a fun fact, Professor, adds a bit of interest…"

From what Tim was seeing and what he parsed from Lee's questionable commentary, Gryffindor was doing well for about two minutes before Lee made the mistake of trying to hear what the Slytherins were singing.

Weasley cannot save a thing,

He cannot block a single ring,

That's why Slytherins all sing:

Weasley is our King.

Weasley was born in a bin,

He always lets the Quaffle in,

Weasley will make sure we win,

Weasley is our King.

"That's horrible!" Purdie exclaimed, looking at Tim as though seeking validation. Tim was quick to give it to him, to let him know that, yes, this was indeed horrible behavior.

Lee, to his credit, jumped right back into commentary twice as loudly before the Slytherins could continue. "—and Alicia passes back to Angelina! Come on now, Angelina—looks like she's got just the Keeper to beat!—SHE SHOOTS—SHE—aaaah…"

It was disappointing that this was Tim's first Quidditch game, and yet all he could focus on was that terrible song.

Weasley is our King,

Weasley is our King,

He always lets the Quaffle in,

Weasley is our King.

Tim leaned over to Cordelia and tapped her on the shoulder, interrupting her personal commentary, wincing at the way one of her hands immediately went over to slap his away from herself. "Hey, is this—(he gestured to the Slytherins a couple stands over)—legal?" He wasn't even sure she could hear them with the enchantment on her glasses, but he felt it necessary to ask, nonetheless.

She removed the binoculars from her face. "Oh, it's legal all right," she said loudly and bitterly. "Shitty, but legal." From then on, she stopped pointing things out and talking, the binoculars forgotten. For some reason, it struck Tim that this was the first time he had ever heard Cordelia use any kind of foul language, and he was there when that Fanged Geranium nearly bit her finger off in Herbology last week.

When Ron missed his first goal, the Slytherins' singing swelled as though they had reached the final chorus of "Amazing Grace."

WEASLEY WAS BORN IN A BIN,

HE ALWAYS LETS THE QUAFFLE IN,

WEASLEY WILL MAKE SURE WE WIN,

WEASLEY IS OUR KING.

At this point, they had to have been using some sort of sound-amplifying spell like Sonorus, because Lee, who was using an enchanted megaphone, was having trouble being heard over the Slytherin chorus.

Exasperated, Tim searched for something to counter their mockery. Purdie's hands were over his ears, Luna looked like she was trying to learn the words to the song, Cordelia's eyes were glued to the Quaffle, and Aruna was curled up under her cloak, legs drawn to her chest.

It was then that he noticed that, poking out from her robes was the tip of her wand, and she was waving it around and muttering something. More than a little intrigued, Tim opted to read her lips instead of trying to shout over the ruckus of the stadium.

"Silencio," she mouthed, paused, and then another, "Silencio." That was the Silencing Charm that they had learned in Charms a couple weeks ago.

What she was doing wasn't particularly flashy or showy, and neither did the Slytherins sound any the quieter for it, but it still struck Tim that she was trying to help in her own little way.

'Good people get involved.' Tim remembered Clark telling him that back when he was Robin. No matter how unprofessional and cruel some of these students were acting, it was comforting to know that there were still good people like Aruna around.

Nonetheless, seeing the chaos around him, Tim silently prayed that the Snitch would be caught and this game would end. At this point, he didn't even care whether it was Harry or Malfoy who did so. This was Tim's least favorite feeling—witnessing injustices without being able to do anything to stop it. It made him deeply uncomfortable, more so than the worst of his panic attacks.

He steadied his breathing and closed his eyes to force himself to calm down. This was one of those techniques that Tim had learned when he started going to upper-class social events in Gotham. Being surrounded by wealthy, privileged people who only knew how to belittle others still made him uncomfortable, still made him livid. But, at this point in his life, Tim had learned how to temporarily put his rage on hold and keep a level enough head that he could make it through an evening of hell; afterwards, he could complain all he wanted around Bruce. He wasn't trying to convince himself that he wasn't angry but was rather reminding himself that there was plenty of time in the future to feel these feelings.

Find one thing. Let everything else become white noise. Bruce's words echoed in Tim's head.

Lee's voice. He could focus on that. "—Pucey's off past Spinnet, come on now Angelina, you can take him—turns out you can't—but nice Bludger from Fred Weasley, I mean, George Weasley, oh who cares, one of them anyway, and Warrington drops the Quaffle and Katie Bell—er—drops it too—so that's Montague with the Quaffle—"

Finally, mercifully, Harry caught the Snitch, silencing the Slytherins at long last. And then, as the boy lifted his prize up to show off, that Slytherin Crabbe whacked a Bludger into his back.

Cordelia jumped up out of her seat and started yelling in protest of this obvious act of foul play alongside much of the stadium. Tim, however, was trying to see if Harry was okay. He grabbed Cordelia's pair of binoculars, which had fallen to her feet when she had stood up, and tried to find Harry.

Thankfully, Tim was able to locate him fairly quickly. Angelina was helping him up off the ground, but Harry looked otherwise unharmed, to Tim's relief. However, the boy spun around on his heel, glaring at something in his path, and Tim followed the boy's gaze over to where Malfoy was shouting something at Harry, unintelligible from Tim's spot amongst the rioting students.

Unintelligible, that is, for someone who couldn't read lips like Tim could.

"—did you like my lyrics, Potter?"

Tim had only just gotten over Malfoy's actions towards Alfred, but now his relatively moderate distaste for the boy had just plunged into the intense-hatred-category.

Harry, to his credit, turned his back to Malfoy and joined the rest of his team—sans Ron, who was nowhere to be seen. But, as Tim turned back to Malfoy, he saw that the boy hadn't shut up yet.

"—we couldn't find rhymes for fat and ugly—we wanted to sing about his mother, see—"

If Tim gripped his binoculars any tighter, they would snap at the hinges. That disrespectful asshole! Had he even met Molly Weasley before? How dare he say something like that about an amazing motherly figure like her? How dare he?

"—we couldn't fit in useless loser either—for his father, you know—"

It was a good thing Tim wasn't sitting in the front stands, or he would have already hopped down to the field to punch Malfoy's snide face.

"—but you like the Weasleys, don't you, Potter? Spend holidays there and everything, don't you? Can't see how you stand the stink, but I suppose when you've been dragged up by Muggles even the Weasleys' hovel smells okay—"

Tim's eyes were losing focus. As one half of his brain worked out what Malfoy was saying, the other half was playing back all those things Tim had heard at galas and parties just in the past year alone. "It's comforting to know that Brucie found himself a proper heir. I don't know what would have happened to Wayne Enterprises if it had fallen into the hands of that gypsy." "Well, I suppose I can't help but get nervous when that child is around. For all we know, he could have bombs strapped to his chest." "It must be hard communicating with a retarded girl like her. Is that what all the funny hand-movements are for?" "In fact, maybe the poor kid's death was like a blessing in disguise, you know? It opened the path for someone like you to come along, Mr. Drake." "Are you sure that boy is supposed to be here? He looks a little out-of-place, you know? He hasn't been near my coat, has he?"

"—or perhaps you can remember what your mother's house stank like, Potter, and Weasley's pigsty reminds you of it—"

When Harry and George finally tackled Malfoy, Tim felt a secondhand satisfaction that was hard to describe. It was like that one time the Joker had kidnapped the mayor, but before either Bruce or Tim had been able to suit up, Harley Quinn of all people had shown up and punched the clown on live television. That kind of satisfaction.

"—and that bitch, Pansy Parkinson! She was leading the singing, I saw it—!"

From the moment that they had left the Quidditch Pitch to when they had reached the common room, Cordelia had been ranting nonstop about the match to whomever happened to be in her vicinity, which was Purdie, Aruna, and Tim most of the time. She had been shouting until they had left the Quidditch pitch and Purdie motioned for her to take the spell off of her glasses that dampened all the noise around her, at which point, she spoke at a more reasonable volume, though not lacking in things to say.

"—the most unprofessional, unsportsmanlike behavior I've seen from any other match—!"

Right now, they were all seated near the windows—Aruna and Tim playing a game of chess on the ground, Purdie curled up in a chair drawing in his sketchbook, and Cordelia pacing around them in a circle, snapping her fingers in a repetitive motion.

"—you know, it's hard to give Slytherins as a House the benefit of the doubt when they act like this—"

Tim nodded vaguely, concentrated on the board in front of him. Aruna was completely destroying him at chess, something he hadn't experienced in a long time, not since he'd last played with Alfred.

"—and Umbridge, the old hag, I was watching her, too, and she looked so goddamn happy about all of it—!"

After an hour or so, Cordelia ran out of steam, and she dropped to the ground, leaning her head against Purdie's armchair and running her fingers over the velvet.

She sighed, taking off her glasses and cleaning them with the hem of her shirt. "I just…" she whispered to no one in particular, "…I just wish Hogwarts was the way it used to be…"

Dinner was an unusually quiet affair for a generally rather talkative group of friends (excluding Aruna, of course). What Cordelia had said earlier seemed to have really affected Purdie. He kept stopping in the middle of eating to stare off into space, and then he would let out a heavy sigh and return to eating.

Tim really wasn't quite sure what to do or even if he should be doing anything. It felt like they needed their silence, so he just went along with it. Sometimes that was just what someone needed.

I'd say Tim chose a bad year to come to Hogwarts, but every year seems to be a bad year when Harry's there...

CW: usage of certain racial and mental health slurs in dialogue