I studied.

Once the initial shock had worn off, I had settled into the reality of my situation.

"Carefully, Mr. Potter, there should be a flourish at the end for just the right result," Professor Flitwick said.

Voldemort disintegrated, but he was still out there, somewhere, and he was going to come back one day, who knows when?

So I studied.

"A little too much water, but the potting was done right," said Professor Sprout.

I took every one of my subject books and read them front-to-back, I needed to know it all if I was going to have any chance of catching up to him.

"The feathers lack some detail, but I see improvement." Professor McGonagall nodded.

I worked and ate and slept and studied. Again and again and again.

"Acceptable." Professor Snape sniffed.

September passed without any further surprises and we drew closer to winter.

I woke up on Halloween morning in my empty dormitory and threw the covers off of me. I rubbed the crust from my eyes and felt my broken glasses press into my nose.

"Ugh," I said. I fell asleep reading, again.

After a quick reparo, I started my day.

#

I bowed my head in a moment of silence with the rest of the student body at breakfast. It was mandatory for all to attend. No words were spoken, no speeches or remembrances, just quiet and stillness and a palpable energy that I could not name.

In the wizardring world, there was no celebration on Halloween, we called it Remembrance Day - to remember the Purged.

I snuck a look up and turned my head up and down the Hufflepuff Table. All the older students maintained a respectful silence. I noticed two pairs of blue eyes look at me and my eyes widened. Cedric gave me a cheeky wink and I smiled and returned to my respectful silence.

#

"Come on now," she said as she dragged me by the arm.

I tried to resist, but Alicia was surprisingly strong. "I really do need to study."

"All you do is stay locked up in the Library and read and read and read. Honestly, you should have been in Ravenclaw, but I guess the work ethic would say otherwise." Alicia shook her head. "Regardless, we are going to the Pitch and getting you on a broom, you need some life in you Potter. You're paler now than you were when I first met you."

The Gryffindor girl refused to relent and in a way, I was glad, if a little annoyed, that she intervened.

#

"You're not too shabby, Potter," Alicia said.

I had a big grin splitting my face. I had had a few flying lessons with Madam Hooch, but nothing beat taking to the air without the watchful gaze of the flying instructor bearing down on me.

"Thanks."

"I mean it," she said. "If you shaped up a bit, you would be a terror on the pitch. You should speak to Cedric about that. He's the new Hufflepuff Seeker, I'm sure he'd be up to training you some more."

We walked through the Entrance Hall chatting amiably and for a moment, just a moment, I forgot that today was Remembrance Day, and it felt freeing.

#

"Mr. Potter," said a voice.

I groaned and turned over in bed.

"Mr. Potter, Harry, please wake up."

I slowly sat up in bed to see a lumos light hanging over my four-poster bed and my Head of House looking right at me. I blinked once. Twice. A little bit of sense came flooding to me and my mouth and brain finally started to work.

"Is something wrong, Professor?" I asked.

"Something terrible has happened, Mr. Potter, you must come with me to the Headmaster's office immediately.

My heart sank.

#

All the way to Professor Dumbledore's office, my mind raced with possibilities. As we walked along the cold Hogwarts corridors in the dead of night, I felt the gaze of every portrait and all of a sudden, it felt like my first day all over again. The people in the portraits were running around and whispering to each other urgently. Wherever I passed, they stopped to stare.

I stared back.

"Am I in trouble, Professor?"

She didn't answer. That worried me more.

"Professor," I said.

Still no response. I stopped and stood in my position and refused to move. Professor Sprout walked a few more steps and then noticed that I hadn't moved. I was glad she stopped as the light source continued onwards with her. With every one of her steps, the space around me grew darker and I was not afriad to admit that in the dead of night, this darkness felt especially scary.

She sighed. "Don't dally, boy, the Headmaster will tell you what you need to know. There has been an attack." She flicked her wand and I went careening forward and was planted in front of her. "You need to be secured."

I started to walk in step with her as my anxiety intensified. "What kind of attack? Who was attacked?" With every question, I could feel sweat collecting on my forehead.

"A student was found just outside Gryffindor Tower, I do not know more at this time," she said.

#

"Petrified?" I asked.

The aged Headmaster nodded. "Alicia Spinnet was found outside her dormitory, petrified. She is currently in Madam Pomfrey's excellent care."

My breathing grew erratic. "But I was just with her, we flew together all afternoon and evening. I don't understand how this could have happened."

"The matter is being investigated. But it cannot be ignored that this was likely to be a direct message to you, Mr. Potter." Professor Dumbledore waved his wand and an image appeared before me.

Alicia's oridnairly relaxed face was frozen in an expression of terror. She had her wand up and her body was locked in a defiant posture. The sweat from our earlier flying still clung to her skin, frozen in animation.

"Do you have any idea of how this might have happened, Mr. Potter?" Dumbledore asked me this gently, slowly, but my mind was blank.

I sagged into the armchair I had occupied when I walked in.

Professor Sprout sat next to me, impassive. "Mr. Potter, the Headmaster asked you something," she said.

Her clipped tone snapped me awake. I shook my head no. "I...I didn't see anything. We talked all the way back from the pitch and then I went down to the Burrow and she went to her dorm. The last I saw her, she waved at me...and..."

The Headmaster pressed his chin on his hands as he looked at me over his half moon spectacles. His keen regard unnerved me a little bit, but I didn't have the energy to feel uncomfortable.

"Nevertheless, you are now confined to the Burrow after classes every day. If you are to go anywhere, you will be accompanied by a Prefect or Professor, at all times. Until this matter is resolved, we cannot take lightly any risk to your person." He made a note on the parchment in front of him.

The parchment copied itself onto mutiple parchments and they magically sealed themselved into planes and flew out of the Headmaster's office window.

"Will Alicia be okay?"

"In time." He assured me.

#

I felt like a prisoner. I was escorted from the Burrow every morning by a Prefect to the Great Hall and from the Great Hall to my first class. After every class, a Professor walked me to my next classroom.

I was isolated before, but the students around me usually stopped to say hello or offer a smile. Now, I got stared at and pointed at, nobody said a word as I walked under the watchful guard of an authority figure.

All the while, I worried about Alicia. She was targeted because of me. I couldn't let that happen to anybody else.

#

"Kill, rip, tear..."

I bolted straight as I walked alongside a surly Professor Snape, who looked like he would prefer to be eaten alive by a venomous tentacula than walk me to Herbology.

"Did you hear that, Professor?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "The constant nattering of foolish children, it would be hard to avoid that here."

"Feed, tear, hungry..."

"No, I mean, the voice, there's a voice talking..."

"I hear nothing, Mr. Potter."

I was about to say something more, but stopped short at the look he gave me. I knew that look. It was what every teacher at my old school usually gave me when they laid eyes on me. The Dursleys' lies spread far and wide and they let everyone believe I was touched in the head. I closed my fists and looked away from the incredulous stare of my least favourite teacher.

"I'm sure it was nothing, Professor."

We continued on. But I knew better. I kept my ears peeled. I had to find a way to find this voice.

#

Creeping around the castle under wandlight in the dead of night was not the brightest of moves when I was supposed to be securely tucked away in bed. I knew that. But this was the only way I had to figure out what was happening.

I moved as swiftly as I could through the corridors, keeping my lumos at the lowest intensity - just enough to see a few paces ahead, but not enough to be seen from a distance, or so I hoped.

"Hungry...so hungry...kill..."

A faint voice in the distance. It was unmistakably loud in the silent hallways. I closed my eyes and honed in on the sound. I wanted to find it, I needed to find it.

I weaved through corridors as I followed the sound of the voice. It seemed to be moving, growing louder and softer. For a moment I felt maddeningly close to it and then the next moment, it was gone again, disappearing into the night like the whisper of a secret.

A slight whisper, a quick hiss, something to the left. I pressed my hand to the wall next to me. I looked around cautiously. I knew this hallway and this patch of wall. The Defence classroom was usually in this spot the third week of every month.

A creepy, crawling, hairy sensation covered my hand. I yelped and pulled my hand back from the wall as if burnt. I moved my wand down to focus the wandlight on the floor. There was a trail of spiders, marching in unison away from the wall and towards the nearby window, all leaving the castle, solemn and disciplined, like soldiers headed to war.

"Did you hear that, dearie?" A voice. A cat meowing soon after.

Filch!

I bolted to the other side of the corridor and took a turn. A slap on a nearby suit of armour that I had discovered a week prior and a concealed alcove opened in the wall. I threw myself in and the wall closed around me.

It was a small closet, a hidden closet with nothing within except an ageing broom and well rusted bucket. I heard footsteps tip-tapping outside. Filch was outside. I held my breath, convinced that the caretaker could hear me breathe. I pressed myself to the back of the forgotten broom closet. Having grown up in a cupboard, small spaces brought me a strange comfort. As tiny as my cupboard was, it was my refuge in Privet Drive, a place where the Dursleys would leave me be. A confined space held memories of belonging and safety. I was safe here, Filch would not find me in here.

Footsteps faded, he was on his way away. I finally breathed out, it was a messily loud exhale and I panicked that Filch picked up on it.

I stayed put. I closed my eyes and focused my ears, where was the voice now? Whom did it belong to? Why was I the only one who could hear it?

#

It was a miracle that I got back to the Burrow unscathed. I muttered the password and the entrance opened. I threw myself in and felt safe for the first time all night long.

"Fancied a night time stroll, Mister?"

I jumped out of my skin and my eyes bugged out in terror. Against the backdrop of the last embers in the common room fire, Cedric Diggory sat covered in blankets. His eyes looked droopy, he had been waiting a while.

"Do I want to know what you've been up to?" He asked in that light tone with that same kind smile that he used when asking me about my day or if I wanted help with my homework.

"Cedric...I..."

And the words came tumbling out. Slowly at first, then all at once. The fear, the sadness, the isolation, the difficulty, Alicia...the voice. I said it all to him.

He sat in his chair and looked at me with increasingly widening eyes, but he didn't comment, he didn't interrupt. He just listened as I vented and frayed at the edges. When I ran out of steam, he nodded once.

"This voice only you can hear, any clues as to why?"

I shook my head no. He looked worried.

"Even in the magical world, Harry, it's not normal to hear voices. I wouldn't spread that with the other students, mate, you don't want rumours swirling that you're somehow, you know, off."

I blinked. "Do people think I'm off?"

He shrugged. "People think anything and everything about you. Everyone thinks about you a lot."

"Do you believe me?" I hated that my voice broke a little at the end of that question. "About the voice I hear? Do you believe what I've told you about it?"

He didn't immediately respond. Those few moments stretched out to an eternity. It felt like he had blanketed my very existence in those few seconds as I waited for his assessment, as though judgment was to be passed on me. Finally, mercifully, he nodded. Slowly.

"I believe you hear a voice." He paused. He said his next words very slowly. "You're obviously special, Harry, you know? It would hardly be surprising that you can hear something the rest of us can't."

I felt my knees buckle in relief, but I held my emotions back. Until that moment, I didn't know how much agony I was in, how much I needed him to understand, how much I needed him to believe.

"Have you told any teachers about this?" He asked with an arched eyebrow.

I wrung my hands. "Professor Snape didn't believe me." I mumbled the words.

"What was that now?"

I repeated myself and his face transformed into one of disbelief. "I don't need to tell you that Snape hardly qualifies as the caring sort. You're close enough to Flitwick, what did he have to say?"

I looked to the floor and said nothing.

"Why haven't you told, Flitwick or Sprout or the Headmaster even? This could be important information, Harry, if they know, they might even be able to help."

I looked up to him, a small flame of anger bubbled in my chest. "What if they don't believe me?"

Cedric looked confused. "I think you ought to give them the benefit of the doubt. Especially if this is something that might help Alicia."

Cedric's words rung true and the ensuing guilt somehow stoked the anger in me. "If they don't believe me, I'm a nutter. If they do, well, look how I've been treated since the first incident? The connection to me and Alicia is so small, but they...they...they're watching me. I can't go anywhere alone. If you add crazy murder voice to this...what if they take me out of Hogwarts? I need to be here!"

Cedric scoffed. "They wouldn't do that."

"What makes you so confident?" I challenged him directly for the first time.

He seemed a little taken aback. I wasn't surprised. He was used to me taking his words as gospel. I had grown used to taking his words as gospel.

"Well, you need to study, don't you? Harry Potter being at Hogwarts is important. You made the front page of the Prophet, for gods' sake! You not being here would be a big blow to...to...everyone!" He threw his hands wide with his last exclamation.

Of course, he doesn't sense the urgency, the hidden danger. He doesn't know that Voldemort was going to come back and I had to- Don't think about it! I closed my eyes tight and took a calming breath, then let it out slowly. I was not going to think about, I refused to think about it. I had to solve this mystery.

"I need to solve this before I go to them." The words felt true, I knew they were, I felt the weight of them in my heart as I uttered them.

In an odd sort of way, I think Cedric, despite thinking I was barmy, felt the truth of my words. He rubbed his chin and the few sprigs of his growing beard that were on it. "You seem dead sure on this." He shrugged and his demeanour relaxed, that same infectious smile back on his lips. "Well, I'm coming with you then."

"What...?" My anger drained to make way for the surprise following his statement.

Cedric smiled wider. "Two heads are better than one and all that rot. Besides, you could use a little more firepower while running around the castle at night. Also, I know far more hiding spots and shortcuts than you do."

"You want to help me? Even though it's breaking school rules? You could get expelled." I knew I wouldn't.

Cedric got up from his armchair, his blankets still around him. His skin looked bright, like shinning with a pearly sheen, in the common room firelight. The grin on his face was maddeningly wide. "What's Hogwarts without a little adventure? Besides, with the Boy Who Lived, things are bound to get legendary." He winked at me. "Now off to bed with you, it's late and you have a full day of personal tuition tomorrow and we have adventure to be getting on with in the night." He threw his fist in the air.

In that moment, I knew Cedric Diggory was barmy. In that moment, I knew Cedric Diggory was my friend.