It turned out that Adrian had been pulling Harry's leg when he said it would be tricky to get back to Hogwarts from the painting. They merely retraced their steps to the lift in the barn and Adrian touched a painting of a castle while Harry held his elbow. They were pulled through again, like a portkey, but it was clear that they weren't in the corridor. Harry stumbled as he tried to find his footing on the sloping, squishy tundra outside of the castle.

"Where are we?" he asked, relieved that Adrian was standing next to him.

"Just outside the castle…by the lake…you know, where the boats go in…first year?"

"Oh, " Harry said, realizing he had no idea how to get back to Gryffindor Tower from here… he hadn't been through this entrance since his first year. Luckily, Adrian knew how to find the entrance and get back inside without being detected. Harry tried to impress it on his memory in case he had to visit Virginia again. He was pretty certain he'd get lost if he had to do it on his own.

"Why didn't it put us back in the corridor where we went in?" Harry asked, remembering how the portrait on the HMS Eden had worked.

"Er, well, I didn't touch that part of the painting, did I? It's a picture of the castle, not the corridor… so I had to choose the best spot for us to show up unexpectedly… I figured this was as good a spot as any," Adrian said, shrugging as he guided Harry along the narrow, rock-strewn path bordered with tall grasses that brushed against his trouser legs.

"There's more than one spot to touch on the painting?" Harry asked.

"Sure, loads of them. You got to pick the place where you want to land."

"Hmmm. Do other paintings do that?" Harry wondered, mostly to himself.

"I haven't really tried. I mean, it's pretty risky if you don't know what you're getting into," Adrian posited.

"Right. So does that mean that there could be potentially thousands of entrances into Hogwarts that no one really knows about?" Harry gulped, his chest constricting a bit at the thought.

"I'm sure Dumbledore knows. I bet he has a way to make sure no one can just enter the school."

Harry kept his doubts to himself, though his stomach roiled and the hair on the back of his neck tingled.

As soon as they were back, Harry went looking for his friends to tell them about his adventure. He found Ron in the Gryffindor common room in front of the fire.

"You lot are never going to believe what I just did," he began. "Where's Hermione? I want to tell her, too."

"What are you on about, mate?" Ron asked lazily, not looking up from whatever he was doing in the squashy armchair in which he sprawled.

"I just went into a painting," Harry exclaimed, unable to keep it to himself. "Hermione needs to know about this! Apparently, it isn't the only painting that you can travel into."

"Who?" Ron asked, finally looking up. "You went where?"

Harry went very still. His heart had begun to pound. "Hermione. Our best friend. Hermione."

"You've got to be joking," Ron replied. "What kind of a name is that anyway? I don't know her. Tell me about the painting."

Harry felt the color drain from his face. Without another word, he turned and slammed out of the portrait hole, oblivious to the fat lady's protests at his rudeness. He jogged down the corridor, ignoring his cane, which was still in his hand, until he was pulled up short by ramming into a half-open door that had been carelessly left ajar. He rubbed his forehead where the edge of the door had hit him, but he felt so upset, he hardly felt any pain. He went around the door and continued on, swinging his stick in arcs to at least try and find a clear path.

He arrived at the moving staircase, and was glad he had used his cane, because it fell into nothingness. The staircase wasn't there. Harry waited impatiently, his throat tight, his eyes stinging. Once the stairway had ground its way into place, he leaped down several stairs at a go.

Soon, he was at the door of Cedric Diggory's Head Boy room. Without waiting, he pounded on it, and opened the wide wooden door when bidden to do so.

"Cedric!" he called, his hand still on the latch of the door, his cane clutched with white knuckles in the other hand.

"Potter?" asked the older boy with surprise.

"Are you… is anyone else here?" Harry asked, panting from his hurry.

"No," answered Cedric, still mystified.

"Hermione!" burst forth Harry. "Have you seen her?"

"She was here this morning," answered Cedric.

"But tonight. At dinner, or after. Did you see her?" Harry pressed.

"I don't think so," Cedric answered, his tone beginning to echo Harry's worried one.

"I think she's gone. Disappeared," Harry exploded.

Cedric's hands slammed down on his desk, and Harry imagined that if he could have, he would have leapt to his feet. Instead, Harry heard a very deliberate squeak of chair feet across the floor, the click of crutches lifted and fitted and a breath let out as Cedric pushed himself to his feet, automatically suppressing the slash of pain that the movement caused him.

Five measured strides of alternating crutches and metal shoes with foot drag sounded and Cedric stood facing Harry, towering over him, actually. His height and his anger made him intimidating, crutches and all.

"What. Makes. You. Think. That?" he asked through gritted teeth.

Harry pressed his back against the sharp corner of the door frame. He swallowed hard.

"Ron," he said, forcing his eyes to look up at Cedric's face without blinking. "Ron didn't know who she was."

Cedric said a word that Harry had only once heard Dudley use. Instead of punching Harry, as Harry had almost expected him to do, he turned heavily, his body seeming to sag between his rigid arms.

"It's really time," he said, still turned away from Harry. "Past time. Good thing it's Thursday."

"Time for what?" Harry asked nervously.

Instead of answering, Cedric turned back toward Harry.

"How many crips do you think will come to my group?" he asked.

"Crips?" Harry queried, feeling confused.

"Crippled. Disabled. Kids like us," Cedric explained impatiently.

"Err, I know a few," Harry replied. "There's Gemma…" He almost smiled, thinking of his gentle friend. "Mei uses a wheelchair, but I'm not sure if being Jiāorén is a disability."

"Bring her along," Cedric said.

"Them," Harry corrected automatically.

"Do you know anyone else?" Cedric asked urgently.

"Adrian can't read," Harry offered. "Same thing as Dumbledore, I think. Dyslexic or learning disabled or some such."

"Fine, bring him too," Cedric ordered.

"Bring? Where?" Harry asked.

"The new Hogwarts Common Room," Cedric said. "Tonight."

Harry nodded slowly. "Gemma is in your house. Can you find her?"

"Sure," Cedric agreed.

Harry obediently made his way to Ravenclaw Tower where he sent a message up to Mei and Luna, and down to the Slytherin Common Room in the dungeon beyond Snape's potion classroom. He could see a dim glow of candlelight through the half-cracked door and hear the scratching of a quill where Snape graded essays at his desk, but Harry slipped past without attracting his attention. He collected Adrian with somewhat less trouble than he expected, and told him what was afoot. Adrian reluctantly agreed to come with Harry and they went together to Gryffindor Tower, where Harry asked someone to go up to the girl's dorm to fetch Jasmine Mercer, a student he'd just remembered. She had been mute for years while separated from her family, and still sometimes struggled to speak. She agreed to come with them, although she seemed a bit scared.

Cedric had told Harry that Dumbledore had given him the far side of the trophy room for his new, inter-house common room. It had been fitted up with chairs, a fireplace, tables and even a magical snooker table that would draw lines and angles for each shot when asked to do so.

Harry hadn't been into the room yet, and he hesitated at the door unsure of the layout of the room and the interpretation of the higglety-pigglety tangle of grey, blurry bumps and shadows which were all that he could see. Almost immediately, a soft hand took his and signed, "hi, Harry" into his palm. He turned to smile at Gemma, gratefully allowing her to guide him to a seat on a velvet armchair with a comfortable amount of worn places on the arms.

Cedric was already there as the small group of students assembled and found spots where they felt more or less comfortable. He stood before the fire, his stooped silhouette black against the glow of the flames. Even without standing straight, and braced upright on his crutches, he had an imposing presence.

Before he began his speech, he asked Harry and Gemma to remind him what the spell was to make his words magically appear on slips of paper near his mouth that Gemma could read. They told him—Gemma fingerspelling and Harry making the wand motions while saying Scribulunt Loqi to demonstrate and cast the spell himself so that Gemma could follow along if he spoke, too. Harry could hear the papers fluttering after that, and he felt Gemma relax slightly beside him. He reached out to give her hand a squeeze.

"I've asked you all to gather here tonight for a very particular reason," Cedric began. He spoke with intensity, and Harry thought suddenly that Cedric ought to go into politics, since he seemed to have the ability to captivate the room with his first sentence. Then, Harry pulled his thoughts back to what Cedric was saying. "All of you have a disability of some kind or another."

From Harry's left, Mei muttered audibly, "Speak for yourself."

"I've included you deliberately and I think you'll soon see why," Cedric said in an aside. Then, to the group, he continued, "first of all, I think we need one another. I know I…" Here, he faltered for the first time. "I… I've struggled with… this." Harry guessed that he gestured to his legs or his crutches, although he couldn't see him do it. "We've all gone through something. We all know what it's like to have pain. Physical pain for some of us. Social isolation or shame or ridicule for others. We all know what it's like to meet a stranger and have them look away or try to help too much. Some of us can hide, some cannot."

As he spoke, a silent focused attention filled the room. Everyone was nodding, but they sensed there was more coming. He hadn't just called them together as a support group. Each could relate to things that the others had experienced, endured. Without ever saying anything aloud, each knew that every person in the room could name a list of microaggressions, condescensions, awkward encounters, too-sweet well-intentioned compliments and stares that they had struggled to ignore or answer or simply process within themselves. But in spite of that shared knowledge, they knew Cedric had more. And so they waited, listening, watching.

"I think there is something else going on," he said. "Something that involves us. Each of us."

A low murmur ran around the room. The air crackled with tension.

"There are students disappearing from Hogwarts," he said, and it was only due to his magnetic power over his audience that there was no reaction. They simply waited. Waited for him to explain.

"Not just disappearing, but vanishing from memory, as if from existence," he went on. "But not to us. For some reason we remember them. At least I'm pretty sure that's the commonality."

"What do you mean?" Adrian asked with a frown.

Cedric went on to name some of the students who had gone missing. Not everyone knew each of them, of course, but everyone knew a few of them and all of them remembered the ones they knew.

Luna spoke up. "There's a Hufflepuff boy in my Astronomy class named Duncan who did not come to class a few weeks ago and hasn't been seen since. No one has mentioned him."

"You see?" asked Cedric rhetorically. "My theory seems to be correct. For some reason we don't forget the ones who disappear. Now," he said in a parenthetical tone, and with an undercurrent of pain lacing his voice that Harry recognized, "I have got to sit down. My legs are killing me."

The tension swirled away as a ripple of sympathetic chuckles peppered the room. Everyone understood. Harry thought how far Cedric had come since the summer. He never would have made that admission then, no matter how congenial the audience.

"Why us?" Gemma asked, her fingers forming the words under Harry's cupped hand and Harry obligingly voicing them for her.

"I don't know," admitted Cedric. "I don't know why they're gone either, or why those particular kids. There has to be a reason. Or who is doing it. I just don't know."

Cedric's voice lowered, and the pain Harry heard now was grief for Hermione and other friends who seemed to vanish into a puff of fog. Harry gulped. He had almost forgotten about Hermione as he gathered the people together for the meeting and listened to Cedric. Gemma turned toward him slightly and gave his hand a squeeze.

"I need you, err us… we… all of us… need to try and figure this out," said Cedric at last. "Since we seem to be the only ones who know it's happening."

"Nobody will believe us," Harry put in miserably.

"We're used to that," added Adrian dryly, and he got several chuckles, and a confused, irritated gesture from Gemma, who had missed what he said. Harry repeated it for her in BSL and she laughed her silent laugh, tapping lightly on his forearm.

"I don't have anything else," concluded Cedric from his armchair. "Just keep your eyes and ears open, and we'll meet again in a week."

"Sure thing," Harry quipped, getting a general laugh. Everyone appreciated a gimp joke.

"Are we sort of… a club?" asked Mei sourly. It was evident that if the group was indeed a club, then Mei would refuse to join merely on principle.

Adrian laughed.

"Crip club," he offered.

Harry was astounded. Adrian had always been so shy about his learning disability, unwilling to talk about it or let anyone see it, and covering his failures with a veneer of clownish tricks as a disguise. Harry never expected him to so easily throw in his lot with the other, more obviously disabled kids. But, then again, maybe he was just tired of being alone and he had finally found his tribe. Harry shrugged to himself as he translated Adrian's words to Gemma.

"I'm not crippled," Mei groused. "But… I am different. Really different. I've had quite a few kids say I don't belong here, and that hurts. Just because I have a tail and I have to keep wet all the time. They say I'm not really magical. But we Jiāorén have a magic far beyond what you wand-wavers can do."

"Hey," said Adrian loudly. "I resemble that remark."

Harry didn't comment. He was too busy signing for Gemma. She gave him a grateful thank-you, and then turned to talk to Jasmine, who had sat silently through the entire proceeding. Harry always felt a bit lost with Jasmine, because she was so quiet. Since he relied on sound, her silence rendered her nearly invisible to Harry. She wasn't warm and friendly and forthcoming like Gemma either. Gemma was silent too, but certainly not invisible. Her personality shone through every posture and gesture. Jasmine, on the other hand, had withdrawn so far into herself, Harry wondered if she even had a personality at all. He felt frustrated by her, and then upset with himself because of his frustration. He much preferred spending time with her twin sister, Jamie, whom he had gotten to know the year before when they were both exchange students together at Durmstrang.

The meeting gradually broke up and people began to wander back to their respective dormitories. Luna stopped for a moment behind Harry's chair.

"Thanks for inviting me to this, Harry," she said.

"You're really autistic? That's what Gemma said," Harry wanted to know. He felt awkward asking, but had learned from his own experience that it was better to ask than merely assume or wonder.

"I prefer to think of it as Alternative Mental Processing, and I know others who prefer Neurodiverse," she replied seriously. "And yes, I am."

"That's pretty accurate," said Harry with a smile.

She bade him goodnight and wandered out into the corridor. Finally, only Harry and Cedric were left in the room. Cedric shifted in his chair, and Harry could hear an odd, metallic vibrating rattle. Cedric drew a sharp hiss of indrawn breath.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked, aware that something was happening, something he could not see.

"Cramps. Leg cramps, from standing too long," Cedric said through clenched teeth. "My legs spasm and make my braces shake."

"Oh," Harry said, relieved.

He supposed the pain Cedric felt was comparable to the searing agony that bright light bestowed on himself. Pain was something each person had to navigate themselves. Deciding what medication to utilise and when, weighing the side effects against the benefits of obliviousness… it wasn't something he could do for Cedric. Still, out of politeness, he asked, "Anything I can do?"

He was surprised when Cedric asked him if Harry would go fetch his wheelchair. Harry wondered if Cedric knew how hard the favour would be for Harry to do. Finding anything, even his own stuff that he had set down himself, was a daily frustration. Now he had to find something in a room he didn't know. But he agreed anyway, got very specific directions and set off.

It turned out to be easier than he expected to find the chair, but harder than he expected to push it in front of him without running it into everything. He finally reversed his hold and pulled it behind him, so that he could find his way in front with his cane.

"Ta, mate," Cedric said when Harry finally reappeared dragging the chair behind him. "Really appreciate it."

"No problem," Harry fibbed.

When Cedric had transferred into the chair, he let out a sigh of relief, spun in circles, and then did a wheelie, his tires softly screeching on the stone floor as he danced.

"I used to hate this thing," he said. "Until I realised how much it sets me free."

"Wish something could set me free," said Harry. "I mean my cane does some." He didn't say more, but he remembered running with Padfoot, holding the handle and feeling as though he flew. He wondered if Sirius would ever decide he was willing to wear the harness again and guide Harry. He hoped so.

Just remembering the feeling of freedom made Harry feel lighter until he remembered that Hermione was missing and he came crashing back to earth. He slumped against a nearby table, gripping the edge to steady himself. How on earth was he going to find her?

Cedric glided next to him, and patted him on the shoulder… he was so much taller than Harry that even seated it was a fairly effortless gesture. Harry understood that behind Cedric's upper-crust stoicism, he was just as frantic with worry as Harry, and he appreciated knowing he wasn't alone.

"We'll find her, mate. We will." Cedric's words held the tone of desperate hope.