Harry crossed his arms over his chest as he looked up at the clock tower in the center of the quad again, noting that only a minute had passed since the last time he'd checked. And while a single minute passing was much better than ten (because ten minutes passing meant that he'd more than likely be late to his first class at university—a class with Snape, no less) it also meant that Hermione was even later now than she had been before.
He tapped his foot on the ground—tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap—and leaned back against the stone wall behind him, trying to become as unobtrusive and as invisible as possible.
It didn't work.
It was possible, he supposed as he watched his fellow students walk by, that a few of them didn't notice him as they made their way into the very building that he was leaning against. Far, far more did, though.
Most were surreptitious about their noticing, just staring at him out of the corners of their eyes as they walked past, but then there were those who started whispering behind cupped hands with their companions, those that seemed to stop just short of pointing at him and saying, 'Look! There's Harry Potter!' before they moved on.
He looked towards the clock tower again and sighed, because this time, not even thirty seconds had passed since he'd last looked.
"Come on, Hermione," he murmured. "Where are you? I'm not even the one who wants to be here." Then, he pressed his lips together, as if he could still stop himself from uttering that last sentence. He'd made a promise to himself the night before that he was going to try to be cheerful about being at Riddleway, he reminded himself. At least in front of Hermione. He fully intended to keep that promise, if at all possible.
That was when he heard the slap slap of shoe soles hitting pavement and saw Hermione running towards him, her book bag bumping against her hip, her hair and robes streaming behind her. As soon as she caught his eye, though, she slowed, so that she was walking demurely by the time she reached him. She stopped only long enough to link an arm through one of his, and then she started moving again, guiding him towards the entrance to the building, and up the stairs.
"Sorry, sorry," she said, sounding somewhat breathless. "I'm late, I know."
Now that he was moving, Harry sensed even more people's eyes on him, more people noticing him. He thought that he could hear some of the whispers that were drifting out from behind those cupped hands: Harry Potter. He's the one. Killed Voldemort. Duel. Single-handedly. Potter…
"I have a good reason, though," she continued.
"Honestly, Hermione, from you I wouldn't have expected anything less." He stepped to the side quickly, as Hermione jabbed their linked elbows at his ribs.
"No," she said. "A really good reason. I was walking across campus with George this morning—we were heading to the Administration building, so that he could floo back to the shop—"
"When he pulled you into a corner and seduced you with his manly freckled charms?" Harry asked. "And he wouldn't let you go until he'd kissed you breathless and that's why your face is red and your hair is so mussed."
Hermione stopped in the middle of the hallway, forcing Harry to stop with her. She was glaring, Harry saw, so he smirked, trying to look as if he'd only been joking.
Which he had been. Really.
"No," she said forcefully. "A really good reason."
She lowered her voice so that Harry had to lean forward to be able to hear her clearly. "When we got to the Admin building, there was this crowd of students. And just as we got there, the mediwitch came out, floating a stretcher behind her, and the receptionist—you know, that really nice lady who gave us directions on how to get to our rooms yesterday?—well, she was lying on the stretcher. She was really pale, too."
Hermione shuddered and Harry guessed that there was more to the description than that. They had less than five minutes to get to class, though, so he didn't press.
"It was horrible," Hermione said. She sighed heavily, and Harry watched as she shuddered again.
"Do they know what was wrong with her?"
"All I got from the mutterings of the crowd was that she'd passed out. That she'd had a spell. Something."
Harry nodded.
"Something wasn't right, though, Harry," Hermione said, even more softly than before. "I could feel it. It just, something wasn't right.
Harry didn't know how to respond to that, so he looked away from Hermione, around the hallway. That was when he noticed that they were virtually alone.
"We need to get to class," he said. "The last thing we need is to be late to Snape's first lesson."
Hermione nodded, then linked her arm through his for a second time, and started pulling him towards Snape's classroom again.
The classroom was an open, airy, auditorium-style room, done up with white paint and medium colored wood chairs and desks. Harry saw Neville sitting in the middle of the classroom, off to the side, and there were two open seats next to him. He watched his roommate smile in relief as he saw them; Neville's whole posture seemed to become less rigid.
They walked up the center aisle, then stepped across far too many students in their attempt to get to their seats. It was when Harry was sitting down, when he was looking around the room to see if he knew anyone else in the class, that he saw Draco Malfoy.
Malfoy was sitting all by himself, in the front row, in the seat closest to the door, which meant that Harry and Hermione had walked right by him without noticing. It had been a long time, Harry thought, since he'd walked right by Malfoy without so much as a hint of acknowledgment.
Then Snape entered the room, from a nearly hidden door at the front, located between the banks of windows and the chalkboard, behind the worktable that stretched nearly the whole length of the room, and the class quieted down immediately. Harry watched as Snape surveyed the room for a moment, looking down his rather large nose at all of them, even those who were sitting near the back, at the top of the room.
Again, he felt his professor's eyes lingering on him. He didn't meet the gaze.
"My name," Snape said, "is Severus Snape. You shall call me Professor Snape. This semester, I shall be teaching you Introductory Potions. Some of you have had the privilege of having me as your professor before. The rest of you, I ask that you forget everything your imbeciles of Professors have taught you. You are in my class now. You will do things my way."
Harry shuddered softly. He'd been so sure he'd heard the last of that voice, that he'd escaped his seven years of Snape's classes in tact, yet here he was again.
It just wasn't fair.
He jerked when a bit of parchment landed on his desk. Surreptitiously, when Snape asked all of them to take out their potions texts, he opened it up and saw Hermione's writing.
We're talking to him after class.
He rolled his eyes, but nodded when he saw Hermione glance at him out of the corner of her eye, and then he opened his text to the page that Snape had indicated they should all be looking at.
It just wasn't fair.
"Well," Neville said slowly, as they made their way out of the potions classroom and into the once again bustling hallway. "As much as I loathe to admit this, or to even say it out loud, that wasn't as horrendous as I thought it would be. Snape's not quite so horrible when he's ignoring us."
Harry nodded his agreement, although it could only be called a distracted nod at best, partially because he was paying attention to Hermione and the worried frown on her lips, but mostly because he thinking that it was the oddest potions class he'd ever had.
Throughout his years at Hogwarts, there had been very few constants, but one of them had been that Snape didn't change. He just didn't. He would be mean and spiteful, would take points from Gryffindors—especially Harry, Hermione, and Ron—for no reason at all, and that would be that.
Now, though, after the previous hour, Harry couldn't say that anymore. Because Snape had ignored them. Completely and utterly, he had not looked them at all and had not focused any attention on them whatsoever.
"He's not ignoring us," Hermione said. "He's avoiding us. You saw how quickly he disappeared from the classroom after the lesson was over. It's as if he knew that I—we—were going to go talk to him. It's as if he was running away."
She stopped in the middle of the hallway and when Harry turned to look at her, he saw that her eyes were flashing, as they did whenever she was especially angry.
He opened his mouth, sharp words—well, of course he's avoiding us, he's not the sort to go out of his way to talk to those he dislikes most in this world or, Snape doesn't run, you should know that—sitting on the tip of his tongue, ready to slip out. Then he reminded himself of his promise to be friendly and happy and understanding and he swallowed them.
Instead, he said, "Maybe he just wants to talk to us as little as we truly want to talk to him."
"It's the friendly, respectful thing to do, though," Hermione said.
"And when has he ever been the picture of friendship and respect?" Harry countered. "Neville's right. Snape's ignoring us. And you're right. He's also avoiding us. Shouldn't we just be happy he's not breathing down our necks, watching our every move, just waiting to take points away if we so much as breathe in his direction?"
He watched Hermione, keeping his eyes locked with hers until he saw her nod reluctantly.
In the distance he heard the sound of a bell tolling. Hermione jumped and Neville jumped and they looked at each other and then back at Harry.
"I've got Arithmancy," Hermione said, just as Neville, already dashing away, said, "I've got to get to the greenhouses."
Hermione continued, "Are you going to be alright, Harry?"
"I think I can find my way back to the dorms, if that's what you mean," he said, even though he knew it wasn't. He could read the concern in her eyes, as if his happy act had failed. "I'll be fine, Hermione. I think I'm going to go get started on our potions reading. Somehow I don't think that his ignoring us and avoiding us is going to stretch to him giving our assignments perfect marks without even looking at them.
Hermione smirked, nodded, stared at him for a moment, and then spur of the moment-like pressed a kiss to his cheek. Then she, too, was off running, leaving Harry behind, staring after her.
"I don't know if your plan is working, Joe," Mel said, looking up from the unfolded copy of the Daily Prophet that was resting on her knees.
She lifted it up slightly, then put it back down again, rustling the pages far more than was strictly necessary, Johan thought. It was an annoying sound, newspaper paper flapping back and forth, and he knew that she knew that he thought it was. That was why she was doing it, he was sure.
That didn't surprise him, though, because way back when, when they'd been in their first year at Hogwarts, he hadn't been the one tugging at her pigtails—or turning them into snakes (of the garden variety), as the case might have been. No, it had been the other way around, with her transfiguring his ponytail.
"And why isn't my plan working?" he asked, turning fully away from the fire and walking to the couch. He sat down next to her and draped his arm along the top of the back of the cushions.
"Because there's no mention of anything amiss here," she said, poking at the Prophet with her forefinger, crinkling the paper some more.
Johan cringed.
"All there is is mention of their bloody welcome feast and a word for word reprint of Fudge's Grand Speech. As if we don't hear enough out of him already, every bleeding day, right here on the front page."
Johan watched her bare her teeth at the newspaper; she looked a little like an oversized punk Tinkerbell, he thought. That was one thing that that J.M. Barrie had gotten right in the Peter Pan story. Tinkerbell had always had a nasty expression on her face.
"This wasn't supposed to be an overnight thing." He kept his voice as soothing as possible. "This demon doesn't just gulp down all your magic the moment it's in you, you know. It likes to take its time, to savor the taste, or so I've been told."
"So it could take months?" Mel carded her fingers through her hair. "That's not going to work, Joe. Once they figure out what's going on, the Ministry will have Aurors all over the place so bleeding fast, the watchamacallit won't be able to get anywhere near Potter."
Johan shook his head. "You're forgetting two things, doll."
Mel arched an eyebrow at him.
He held up one finger. "One. This demon is really fucking rare here—standard it may be, but it hasn't been seen in England in fucking centuries—and they don't give out their amulets to just anyone. It prefers warm climates. With active volcanoes. Like Hawaii, in the Americas. Or New Zealand. They like anywhere that has the possibility of turning into fire and brimstone and ash without a moments pause."
He raised a second finger.
"And two. Harry Potter himself. Who was the student who dashed off to take on Voldemort all by himself, his very first year? Well, with those two little brat friends of his, yes, but still. And then who went on down to the Chamber of Secrets his second year? And those were just the exploits that we saw. You remember all the ones we heard about, right? There was that incident with his godfather, and then with Cedric—God rest his Hufflepuff soul—and then he dashed off and broke into the Ministry… We can't forget his running away, too, during his sixth year. Drawing Voldemort's attention away from Hogwarts, giving the rest of the students time to escape before a whole lot more people lost their lives." He couldn't stop himself from laughing at that. "I wouldn't have fallen for that trick, of course."
He paused, taking a deep breath.
"This boy is a genuine hero—or thinks that he is, anyway—fresh off of saving the world. You think he's going to let something so small and pesky as a demon get away with jack shit on his watch?"
Mel shook her head, something that Johan was grateful for; he wasn't sure what he would have done or said if she hadn't.
"He'll get that smart bird of his, Hermione Granger, to figure out what's going on," he continued. "Then he'll track, he'll corner, and when the Veruznak senses Potter's strength, he'll go in for the kill. Or, well, maim. Squibify, as the case might be."
He nodded at Mel again, then gently ran his fingers over the top inch or so of the newspaper, the edge that was bent over her knee, towards him.
"If there's nothing in here by tomorrow or the next day, then we'll start to worry. They won't be able to keep this whole incident under wraps for very long, I shouldn't think."
He stood up from the couch then, and walked back over to the fireplace, and stared down at the flames, loosing himself in his thoughts.
Neville was, in fact, early for his Herbology class. Either that, or the teacher, Professor Arbor, was late. Either way, he not only had time to find a seat in the greenhouse-classroom—second row, center—he had time to unroll his parchment, uncap his ink, and decide which of the two quills on his person was the sharpest.
He even had time to draw the attention of the girl sitting next to him: red-haired, thin and willowy, not from Hogwarts, although she did look rather familiar. But that could have just been because he'd seen her at the welcome feast the day before. He'd seen a lot of people at the welcome feast the day before.
She knew who he was, though, because the first time he looked in her direction—just generally checking out the classroom—she stuck out her hand and said, "You're Neville Longbottom, right?"
He took her hand, because his grandmother had taught him that when a lady extended a hand in his direction, the only proper thing to do was take it, but other than that, he was afraid that he was blinking rather owlishly at her. Not such a good first impression.
"Do I—Do I know you?" he asked after too many moments, when he thought that maybe, possibly, conversation might distract her enough so that he could get his hand back.
She shook her head. Her hair hung long and straight, rather like Ginny Weasley's did. In fact, she looked a lot like Ginny Weasley. Maybe that, he thought, was why she looked so familiar.
"Amber," she said. "Amber Smith. And no, we haven't met before. I recognized your picture from the newspaper, though. My dad, he subscribes to the Daily Prophet. We get it late, because the owls have to fly from England to New York, but we get it. I recognized you from the pictures they printed after—"
She paused, rolling her eyes around slightly, visibly searching for the correct way to say whatever it was that she wanted to say. Then she looked down at their still joined hands, blushed, and let go of Neville as quickly as if she was holding a young Mandrake, one who hadn't finished teething yet.
"After the war?" he said.
Amber looked relieved and nodded, smiling. Some might have said that her mouth was too wide, Neville thought, or crooked, because one side ended higher than the other. She looked so relieved, though, that Neville could only think that she looked charming.
"Yes," she said. "After the war. I've never met someone who was on the front page of the newspaper before. You'll have to excuse me. It's all very exciting."
"Not really," Neville said. He ducked his head, looking down at the empty piece of parchment in front of him. He swallowed. "There were lots of us on the front of the newspapers."
"Well, it's exciting to me," Amber said.
There was a sound from the front of the room, and it appeared that their professor had arrived. She was short, stout, and was wearing what looked to be an upside down flowerpot on her head.
"Say," Amber said, leaning close to Neville. "If we need to work in partners in this class, would you like to work with me? It's just, I don't know anyone else, and I've heard your really good at this stuff—or so the Prophet always said—and I don't want to be one of those people who gets stuck with a random someone because I—"
"Sure," Neville said. "No, I'd be glad to partner with you." He paused. "You know, I don't believe anyone's ever wanted me to be their partner before."
"Oh, I can't believe that."
"It's true," Neville said. He nodded empathetically. "Really."
And then the conversation was at an end, because Professor Arbor started talking.
The one problem with Neville having fully unpacked the night before, leaving the two of them a relatively clean dorm room, Harry decided, was that there was now enough room on the floor to pace.
Because that's what he was doing now. Pacing, from door to window, back and forth, back and forth, and then back and forth yet again.
He'd tried to start his potions reading, he really had. He'd sat down at his desk, opened the textbook up, and he'd even gone so far as to read the very first sentence of the very first chapter, but then, well, his mind had started wandering to places that he didn't want to let his mind wander. To places that his mind had been wandering the entire summer, when he'd sat in the littlest bedroom in the Dursley's house, alone, watching the Muggle world pass by underneath his window.
To places he revisited in his dreams.
To places he'd promised himself he wasn't going to think about. Not now, not when he'd entered the After, not when he'd moved on. Beyond.
It was easier to keep that promise, though, when he was surrounded by other people—Hermione, Ron, Neville—than when he was sitting alone, in his room, doing Snape's reading assignment, when he'd been sure that he'd never have to do another Snape reading assignment again.
He managed to last a full twenty minutes, before on a trip in the direction of the door, he grabbed his robe off of his bed, made sure his wand was still in his pocket, and then just continued out the door and into the hallway.
Walking outside, he decided, had to be better than pacing in his room. It probably looked less… psychotic, too, because if anyone questioned why he was walking outside, he could say that he was exploring the campus. If anyone had asked why he was walking back and forth in his room, however, he wouldn't have been able to come up with any suitable reasons.
The air outside was thick and cool, to match the gray clouds that filled the sky. There were no glimmers of sunshine today, no rays of bright, yellow light cutting through the cloud cover.
If Harry had been paying attention to where he was going, he would have seen building after building made of old, gray and brown flecked stone, aged and worn, as if they'd been their for centuries instead of being less than three years old. He would have seen great stretches of grass, looking emerald green in the gray light, with cement paths winding their way through the lawns.
He'd been hoping that a trip outside would keep the thought that he didn't want to think at bay, that he would be able to distract himself from his world by immersing himself in the world outside. While it wasn't appearing to work, though, it seemed easier to deal with the thoughts and memories when he was walking aimlessly, his eyes on the gray pavement that was passing beneath his feet. Maybe it was the fresh air, or maybe his problems—his truths—just seemed less important when he wasn't constrained by four walls, a floor, and a ceiling.
Or maybe, possibly, it was because he could see the result of his choice; he could lose himself in a world that had not fallen to Voldemort's darkness. Because of him. Because of the choice that he'd made.
He wasn't consciously aware of where his feet were taking him, of the time that was passing as he walked. He was moving as if in a dream, lost in thought as he'd been lost in thought for most of the summer, so it was with a start that he'd realized he'd stopped moving.
He was standing in front of the infirmary. He recognized it as such from the plaque to the left of the door: Hoodleblum Memorial Infirmary.
He took a brief moment to wonder whether he'd be spending as much time there as he'd spent in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, and he came to the conclusion that he really, really hoped not.
Then, like the sudden tickle of an itch that he couldn't scratch, he remembered Hermione's story from that morning, her tale of the mediwitch and the receptionist who had been floated out of the office on a stretcher. He succumbed to the sudden impulse and started up the steps, heading into the hospital building.
Before he knew it, he was in the reception area—empty. He saw a desk off to one side of the room, directly in front of the only other door, with a sign that read: Nurse on Duty. No one was sitting behind it.
Seemingly propelled forward by the sudden bubble of adventuresomeness in his gut, he walked around the desk, through the door, and found himself in an overly large hospital wing.
All of the beds were empty, their pillows perfectly fluffed, their sheets looking starched and white, with their corners perfectly straight—except for one, down at the very end of the room. That bed was surrounded by a gaggle of doctors and women in white hats. One of them, Harry suspected, was the Nurse on Duty. That bubble of impulse in his gut, the itch of curiosity that was tickling the back of his mind, pushed him forward, step by slow, quiet step, down the center aisle way.
He could hear fragments of the medics' conversations, but only fragments, because that corner of the room seemed to be filled by a jumble of noise, everyone talking at once.
"—Just gone," a man said. "It's just—"
A woman: "—cases of this nature bef—?"
"Poor darling, she's going to be—"
Then one complete sentence. "Magic doesn't just disappear, you know. It has to go somewhere."
Harry gasped, setting his foot down with a far heavier step than he'd intended. That was enough noise, apparently, to draw the attention of the doctors and nurses, because they all, as one, fell silent.
It was a nurse who turned around first.
"May I help you?" she asked after a moment. "Did you need medical attention?" Then, "Oh, Harry Potter, darling, I've heard you're an accident prone young man. Did you manage to injure yourself already?"
Even as far away as he was from her, Harry could see the fake smile on her face, the fake cheer in her voice.
"No, I heard that, that—" He realized that he didn't know the receptionist's name. "—the receptionist had an accident. I thought that I'd come check on her, see if there was any way I could help."
The nurse was already bustling towards him.
"She'll be fine, dear. But how sweet of you to come check on her. I know that she'll be tickled pink when she wakes up and so, so sorry that she missed you."
She was right up close to Harry then, one of her hands wrapped firmly around his elbow, already turning him away, towards the exit of the room.
He must have had a disbelieving look in his eye, because she said, "She just had a bit of a spell, dearie. That's all. She'll be just fine. All she needs now is a nice, uninterrupted rest."
Then he was out the door, standing in the empty reception area, and the door to the hospital room was sliding shut behind him.
For Hermione, there had always been sort of a blissful excitement associated with the very first day of a new school year.
This year, especially, because not only did she have a whole stack of shiny new textbooks to read, she also had an entirely new set of professors—except for Snape, of course—and supposedly more advance versions of courses she'd had before. She'd get to emphasize what really mattered to her, even more so than she'd been able to at Hogwarts.
It was nearly idyllic.
She was standing at the front of the classroom, just one in a line of students waiting to talk to Professor Pythagorus. Just to introduce herself, in Hermione's case, but that was when she saw Harry standing outside of the door, looking out of place and uncomfortable, worried. He was also motioning for her to join him.
Since the line she was in didn't seem to be moving at all—one of the Ravenclaw boys was trying to explain a theory about something arithmancy oriented that he'd developed at some point in his life—Hermione stepped out of line with only a heavy sigh of regret.
She stopped regretting when she got close enough to Harry to actually see him clearly. For the first time in months, his eyes were shining with excitement. His fidgeting, which Hermione had taken for discomfort, actually appeared to be impatience.
"You were right," he said as soon as she was with him. This time, he slipped his arm through hers. This time, he was the one pulling her off in some unknown direction.
Hermione resisted the urge to say, 'Of course I was right' or 'I'm always right,' instead settling for, "What was I right about?"
"Something being fishy about the receptionist. I went to the infirmary to check on her—"
Hermione raised an eyebrow. Harry looked a tad bit guilty, she thought, but he kept right on talking.
"Okay, so I was out walking around campus," he said, "and when I passed by the infirmary, I decided to go in and check on her. There was no nurse at the desk, so I went right on in, and there was a whole group of doctors and nurses gathered around her bed. They didn't know I was there, so I was able to overhear some of their conversation."
He repeated word for word what he'd overheard, or so Hermione assumed, because she could see a crease between his eyebrows, as he concentrated on what he was saying.
"Don't you think that's weird?" he asked. "You were right. Something's going on here."
Hermione nodded slowly, not quite sure where Harry was going with his line of thought. But then it all became clear.
"I think we need to investigate," he said. "If there's something around that's making plain old witches and wizards lose their magic, we need to put a stop to it."
He was standing up so straight, puffed up with so much pride, that Hermione hated herself for what she said next.
"I'm sure that there's a perfectly logical explanation, Harry."
He eyed her warily.
"What sort of perfectly logical explanation?"
"The kind where a wizard's magic occasionally just burns out. You've heard of spontaneous combustion, right? In Muggles? Where one moment they're fine and the next they're on fire, the next a pile of ash?"
Harry nodded once, sharply.
"Well, it's the same thing with Wizards, except that it's their magic reserves that burn away. Some wizards think that that's why Muggles burn up. Because they don't have the magic for the spontaneous combustion to burn through first."
"But—" Harry started.
"No, Harry," she said. "Just because something out of the ordinary happens doesn't mean that there's necessarily evil behind it." It was her turn to take Harry's arm, to lead him away from the alcove. "If you even heard them correctly, I'm sure that there's a perfectly logical explanation. And if there isn't, well… The medics will do whatever's needed. They're the best around, you know."
"But—" Harry started again.
"I know that you've been the hero of the Wizarding World your entire life," she interrupted, her voice sharper than she'd intended for it to be. "But Harry, you can't save everyone. Not everyone needs saving, either. I know Voldemort has had you jumping at shadows for years, but he's gone now, and you're here, and you don't have to jump anymore."
That seemed to deflate him.
"You were the one who said that something didn't feel right about this whole thing."
His tone was sharp, almost accusing, but she just smiled at him, sadly.
"Maybe I need to stop jumping, too," she said. Then, her tone conciliatory: "Come on, let's go see if they've put out the luncheon spread, okay?"
They walked in silence to the dining hall.
It hadn't taken Amber very long at all to decide that she liked England. She'd apparated into the transcontinental Apperation terminal (in the Wizards Wing of Heathrow airport, the wing that had seemingly been under construction for years), she'd heard the accent, and she'd fallen in love.
Okay, so her ride on the Knights Bus, going from Heathrow to Riddleway, hadn't been the most pleasant experience of her life, but it was big, and multi-level, and purple. Then she'd arrived at Riddleway and she'd fallen even harder. Old stone buildings, like she'd seen at some of the Ivy League schools back in the states. Rich green lawns. Boys with accents. Suzy, her friend from back home, was going to be so jealous.
She shivered as she stepped out of the library and into the cool night air. It wasn't cold, per se (she was from New York, she knew cold), but it was enough to make her shiver. Enough to make her teeth chatter slightly.
She held her books tightly to her chest as she started walking the cement pathways back to the dorms. It was awfully dark, she suddenly realized; the moon was hidden by the same clouds that the sun had been hidden behind all day. Also, the more that she looked around, the more shadows she seemed to see: dark passageways between buildings, dark splotches under trees and clumps of bushes.
She shivered again, but this time not from the chill of the air. She began walking a little more quickly. Her footsteps on concrete were the only sounds that reached her ears.
Up ahead, Amber saw the thin archway tunnel that she needed to go through to get to the dorms. As soon as she reached the other side, she'd be able to see her dorm. She didn't run to get there, she didn't, but she did walk faster than she'd been walking before. Her breath was coming in quick shallow gasps by the time she reached the magically lit hallway, and she made herself stop, breathe deeply, calm herself.
It wasn't as if she was in the middle of New York City, by herself, at midnight, after all.
She started walking again, more slowly, breathing in deeply, and exhaling slowly, because she was actually here, England, and life could not possibly get any better.
That was when she saw the girl in front of her, the blonde with the thin, wavy hair. She was balancing herself against the wall at the end of the tunnel, supporting herself with one hand, and she was stumbling as she walked towards Amber, nearly tripping over her own feet.
She was looking at Amber when she said, her voice pitiful and weak, a shadow of the voice Amber would have expected from such a girl, "Help me." Then she stumbled again, crumpling to the pavement.
Amber let her books drop to the ground as she ran to help the girl. As she knelt down beside her, she looked around, frantically, trying to see if there was anyone she could call to for help.
She saw no one.
And when Amber heard the rough, inhuman whisper of "Harry Potter," and then the sounds of two screams co-mingled, there was no one around to hear them.
The owl dropped that morning's edition of the Daily Prophet in front of Hermione, but as she fed it a small bite of bacon, it was Harry who took the paper, unrolled it, and started looking through it, before Hermione could utter a word of protest.
He quickly scanned the front page, glancing at the pictures and headlines, looking for any mentions of Riddleway, the receptionist, or God forbid, himself, but he saw nothing. He flipped to the next page, then the next, repeating the process, and still there was nothing. He was just about to flip to the fourth, when the paper suddenly disappeared from his hands.
He looked over at Hermione and saw that she was glaring at him.
"My dear, dear friend Hermione," she mimicked, dropping her voice to a deeper register, in a relatively good imitation of his voice, he thought. "Would you mind terribly if I borrowed your copy of the Daily Prophet this morning at breakfast? But only when you're done with it, of course."
She switched back to her normal voice. "Of course not, Harry. You're always welcome to take a look at my copy of the Prophet, the one that I pay for. Thank you so much for asking. That was quite considerate of you. Was there anything in particular that you were looking for?"
Harry ducked his head slightly. He could feel a small flush of heat rising to his cheeks.
"Sorry, Hermione," he said, trying to sound even more chagrined than he actually was. He knew that she was teasing, mostly. It would only help his case if he played into it, though, he thought.
Indeed, it seemed to, because when he looked at Hermione again, he saw that she was smiling at him, brightly, her frown completely gone. Then she turned from him so that she could look at the paper herself.
"Now what were you looking for?" she asked. "I know you, Harry Potter, and you tend to avoid the Daily Prophet at all costs, unless there's something specific that you want."
"Yeah, Potter," Seamus said. "What got your knickers in a twist this morning?"
"Nothing," Harry said, shaking his head quickly, looking as innocent as possible. He looked at Hermione out of the corner of his eye, hoping that she would understand the point he was about to make, or hint at, as the case might be. "I just wanted to see if they had any information about the receptionist, if they'd maybe come up with a diagnosis for why she collapsed yesterday."
"Ooh," Susan said, from Hermione's other side. She shuddered. "I heard about that. That was sort of spooky, wasn't it? I heard she had a sort of a fit and then nearly attacked a student who was checking in yesterday morning, rather than when we were supposed to, and then that she just collapsed. That would make the newspaper, wouldn't it?"
Hermione's smile had disappeared as soon as Harry had mentioned the receptionist, but at Susan, Neville, and Seamus' urgings, she dutifully started scanning the paper, with Harry looking over her shoulder, in case she missed something.
"There's nothing in there," a new voice said, and Harry looked to the redhead that was now standing behind Neville, looking at all of them. For an instant, Harry thought there was something of a feral smile on her face, a glint of… something in her eye, but then Neville was looking at her and the smile turned soft again.
"Amber," he said, looking quite pleased to see her. He turned to Harry, the rest of them at the table, saying by way of explanation: "Amber's in my Herbology lecture."
"That I am," she said. "I thought it would be wise to befriend the smartest person in the class on the first day, that way I can leech all of the information I'm going to need to know off of him."
"Smart plan." Seamus clapped Neville on the back. "There's no one better at Herbology than our Neville, you know."
"That's why I was coming over, actually," she said. "I wanted to see if you'd like to get together and study tonight, Neville? Go over our notes before we have class tomorrow?"
"Of course," Neville said, but his nod was a little bit less sure than the sound of his voice, Harry thought. "That sounds like a good idea. Shall we meet in the library, then?"
Amber nodded, then she nodded at the rest of them and she'd already started to turn away, when Hermione spoke out.
"What do you know about the receptionist collapsing yesterday? Do you know anything about it? You said that it wasn't in here." Harry watched as she rustled the Prophet around.
Amber paused a moment before she turned around.
"I know that it's not in there because I checked this morning, but I don't know anything much beyond that," she said. "Just what I heard around the dinner table last night." She paused. "I do know that they found another victim this morning, though, so it doesn't sound like it was a one-time thing."
Then she walked away, and Harry turned to look at Hermione, to see what her reaction would be. He thought that maybe she'd try to blow him off again, that maybe she'd tell him that there was a reasonable explanation, some way that things could be explained without things automatically being afoot.
She was biting at her bottom lip, though, looking down at the now refolded newspaper in her hands. When she spoke, nearly a minute later, she leaned close to Harry, so that only he would be able to hear her.
"I think we should take a trip to the infirmary this afternoon," she said. "Don't you?"
Harry nodded, smiling in relief. Just for the moment, the world seemed to have stabilized underneath his feet; he was back on solid ground again, because tracking down evil, putting things right… those were things that he knew.
"I'm sure that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this all," she continued, looking in the direction that Amber had gone, "but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to do a little investigating."
Again, Harry nodded in agreement.
Johan sighed as he stared at the shreds of that day's Daily Prophet that were spread out across the carpet in front of his fireplace. The thin sheets of paper had been torn into inch wide strips, methodically shredded when it was discovered that it didn't include the information Johan had promised that it would: namely, information regarding the progress of their Evil Plan.
He'd tried to tell them that the fact that there was no information didn't necessarily mean that The Plan was failing. He'd tried to tell them that it could just mean that Fudge had a strong influence over the editors of the paper still and that he'd managed to persuade them not to print anything that might be considered a black mark against his sparkly new institution.
Mel and Toddy and especially Martin hadn't listened, though. No, they'd shredded the paper—which Johan had paid for with his own knut, thank you very much—and then they'd taken a trip to the Duck's Foot. A trip on which he hadn't been invited.
Slowly, reluctantly, he waved his wand, muttered a few words, and watched as the shreds of paper gathered themselves into a pile and then floated in the direction of the fireplace, landing on top of the logs that were already there. The paper certainly wasn't good for much beyond kindling at this point.
As he did that, he told himself that he wasn't worried. Everything was going according to plan, he was sure of it. It had to be, because it had been a good plan.
Tomorrow, he'd told his cohorts. Tomorrow there would be news, there would be proof in the Daily Prophet. They'd told him that there had better be.
He tried not to think of what the consequences might be if there wasn't.
It hadn't taken Hermione long to regret suggesting to Harry that they pay a visit to the infirmary, that she'd make an attempt at talking to the now two patients. Provided that they were still there, of course. Provided that they hadn't been shipped off to St. Mungos for closer examination.
She had, in fact, started to regret the words as soon as they'd left her mouth. As soon as she'd seen Harry's eyes light up. As soon as she'd seen him sit up just a bit straighter. It was for those reasons, though, that she hadn't taken—couldn't take—the words back.
She'd regretted as she'd left the dining hall, Harry by her side. As they'd made plans to meet in front of the infirmary after their respective morning classes—Defense Against Centaur Magic for him, Advanced Topics in the History of Magic: Goblin Rebellions of the Past and How They Might Be Prevented in the Future for her. And she was regretting now, as she was slowly making her way across the campus to meet him, dragging her feet more with every step that she took.
She wanted to say that it wasn't that she didn't want to believe Harry when he said that something was most definitely wrong. That it wasn't that she didn't want to help him if something was in fact wrong. She'd be lying, though, if she said such things.
Eight years before, she'd left her world, the Muggle world, more excited than she would ever be able to put into words. Magic, she'd thought. Adventure, excitement! She'd met Harry, then, and after rough patch at the beginning of their first year, she'd embraced her role as his sidekick. It had been her destiny, she'd thought, to help him take down Voldemort. And she had.
There was a difference between that, though, she'd decided, and looking for trouble that likely wasn't there, trouble that didn't concern them anyway. This trouble, she was sure—if it was even trouble at all—was of the normal sort that occurred in Magical worlds. The sort that they had Aurors for. And Ministries of Magic. Things that shouldn't concern Harry and most definitely didn't concern her.
Harry had looked so lost ever since he'd killed Voldemort the summer before, though, ever since they'd had that wizards duel and all of Harry's practicing had apparently paid off, because he'd won. He'd looked so lost, and then when he'd been talking to her about this, he hadn't, so she'd agreed to help him.
As her feet took her even closer to the infirmary, she just prayed that nothing would come of it, that other people wold have already figured out what was going on and would have taken care of it. She'd had enough excitement and adventure to last a lifetime, after all. She didn't need any more to be going on with.
Up ahead, she saw the infirmary, and to the left of the door, of the staircase that led up to the building, she saw Harry leaning against the wall, lurking in the shadows, hiding in plain sight as much as he could.
He was looking at the ground when she first glanced at him, but as if he felt her gaze, he looked up at her and waved, even if he didn't smile.
She waved back.
"Hey," he said when she was close enough to hear him. "You ready to do this?"
Hermione nodded her assent and let Harry take the lead into the building. He trotted up the stairs, a bounce in his step that she hadn't seen there for far too long. It almost made her stop regretting. Almost.
"You know," he said as he reached for the door, "the nurses in there are going to start thinking I have some sort of romantic attachment to that secretary girl. Two visits in two days… Next thing you know, we'll be linked together in Witch Weekly."
Harry sounded almost amused, so Hermione glanced at him, sharply. He almost looked amused, too. There seemed to be a smile hovering at the corners of his lip, twitching there, trying to make itself a reality.
"That'll probably be the silver lining of this whole experience for her," Hermione said. "Not very many witches would pass up the opportunity to be linked with you in the tabloids."
"Except you."
"Except me," she agreed, smiling kindly, to take any unintentional sting out of the words. "Been there, done that, no desire to repeat the experience again. Besides, I don't think George would like that very much, do you?"
Harry shuddered. "I'd prefer not to be on the wrong side of the Weasley twins, thank you."
Then he opened the door to the infirmary building for her and Hermione stepped inside. She was immediately surrounded by cool, sterile air that had just a tint of that distinctive smell she'd come to expect in Wizard hospitals. She hadn't ever been able to decide if that smell was the remnants of healing charms, or whether it was just an odor associated with those who were hurt or ill.
Too quickly, then, they were in the waiting room. The nurse who was sitting behind the desk peered through her glasses at them, then widened her eyes when she saw exactly who they were. Only for a moment, though, because in the time it took Hermione to blink, the woman had the common, disinterested expression of professionals everywhere firmly back in place.
"Back again, Harry dear?" the nurse asked. "Back to check on our Mary?"
Harry nodded. He was tense; Hermione could feel it.
"Has she woken up yet?" Hermione asked. "Harry was telling me about her unfortunate accident yesterday and we both wanted to come check on her, to make sure that she was okay."
She watched the nurse's face carefully as she spoke, hoping that the disinterested mask would disappear for a moment again, and it did. She saw worry, confusion, and a slight amount of fear flit through the nurse's eyes.
"She's awake," the nurse acknowledged. "Aye, she's awake."
"May we go in to say hello, then?" Hermione asked, smiling as ingratiatingly as she could. "It might do her some good to see some friendly faces."
Again, the nurse's mask slipped back into place.
"No," she said. "No, our Mary isn't up to seeing any visitors just yet, I'm afraid. She needs all of the rest that she can get. I do believe that she's asleep now, actually."
There was a tightness to her lips, Hermione saw. Thin, pressed together, turning white, and Hermione knew that she was lying. She didn't press it, though. She just smiled and nodded and put a hand on Harry's elbow, intent on turning him away.
Then she heard the scream: high-pitched, feminine, and reminiscent of the screams that Hermione had heard on the battlefield—screams that Hermione had never wanted to hear again.
"What do you mean that my magic is gone! Do you know who I am? My magic is—"
The nurse was standing up now, tall and straight and pale behind her desk.
"I think that you'd best be going," she said. Her voice was hard as steel suddenly, cold. It was a tone that left no room for argument, which of course meant that Harry was going to argue. Hermione watched him open his mouth, saw him draw in a breath, before she said quietly, "Harry, no."
He looked at her, betrayal sharp on his face, but she glared at him until he turned on his heel and stormed out of the waiting room, not waiting for her to follow. She smiled apologetically at the nurse, then turned and ran after him.
She'd expected Harry to be halfway across the campus by the time she made it outside. She'd half-expected him to have called for his broomstick, for him to be flying off into the heavens as she stepped out the door, but he wasn't, hadn't. Instead, he was standing at the bottom of the staircase, staring off into space. She could see him breathing deeply, as if he was barely keeping his temper in check, so she approached him cautiously.
"I'm sorry," she said, even though there wasn't anything that she'd done that she truly felt she needed to apologize for. It was an olive branch, though. A peace offering.
Harry didn't look at her, just shook his head. She stepped closer.
"There wasn't anything more for us to learn there. Not today. Not while they were going to be focusing all of their attention on their other patient, whoever she was."
"It isn't a coincidence, Hermione," Harry said. "That's two people who've lost their magic for some unknown reason. This isn't internal combustion. Something isn't right here and you know it as well as I do."
"I'll admit that two cases does make the situation more dire," she said slowly. Then, "I suppose this means that you'll want me to go to the library and see what I can find out regarding the various ways that wizards might lose their magic?"
Harry looked obscenely grateful when he turned around to look at her, nodding his head enthusiastically.
Hermione sighed, did a mental catalog of how much reading she'd planned to do that night, and finally nodded. "You get to be the one to explain to George and Ron why we aren't visiting them at the shop tonight, though. And you get to come to the library with me and do some of this research yourself."
"Of course," Harry said. He sounded grateful, too. "Together, we'll figure this thing out. And then we'll put a stop to it."
Hermione didn't say that that was what she was afraid of.
It was almost like being back at Hogwarts, Harry thought as he looked up from the roll of parchment in front of him and glanced around the library table, studying his friends. Hermione was currently bent over a tome that was nearly as large as she was, Ron was looking at another, far thinner one, and while George hadn't been there for, well, any of their frantic library sessions at Hogwarts, he was there too, sitting at the end of a table, tossing a quill up and down in the air.
The table was located in an alcove in the middle of some of the stacks in the Defense Against the Dark Arts section of the library. The shelves of books stretched nearly to the ceiling and ladders rolled back and forth along each bookcase, waiting for some student to catch them and use them to reach the books on the top shelves.
Harry was still staring at those ladders when Ron looked up from his book and met his gaze. His best friend gave him a mock glare.
"You know, Harry, when we left Hogwarts, I swore to myself that I'd never set foot in another library again. I swore it—I think you heard me swear it, too. I would like this to be a testament to the depths of our friendship that I'm here now, back in a library, doing research when I'm not even in school anymore."
Hermione answered before Harry could. "Your sacrifice is greatly appreciated," she said, even as she didn't look up from her book. She flipped to another page and dragged the feathered end of her quill back and forth across her lips.
"Also," Ron continued, "I feel the need to point out that my life was quite complete without the knowledge of how many ways a wizard could lose his magic. I'm a firm believer that there are some things I'm better off not knowing. This is one of them. For the record."
"Oh give it up, little brother," George said. "You were the one who leapt at the opportunity to help them tonight. I'll remind you that I was the one who wanted to go to the Duck's Foot and get a Fire Whisky, but no, no. Evil things were afoot. Your spider sense went all tingly and we just had to dash off here. You wouldn't have it any other way."
Harry watched as George turned in his chair so that he could give Hermione a somewhat heated look. "Not, of course, that I would willingly pass up the opportunity to spend time with my best girl."
"Of course," Hermione said, turning another page.
Harry chuckled. It felt good to chuckle. He just felt good all over. Maybe it was because they were in the library, attempting to do something about whatever it was that was going on. Maybe it was because he was, for the first time since June, feeling useful again, or because he had another opportunity to try to live up to the hero's reputation that he'd developed. To possibly earn it this time.
Whatever it was, he was actually feeling something akin to happy. Until he looked out one of the library windows, that is.
The sky was growing darker with every passing moment—it was a deep blue now, but Harry knew that it would be black in just a matter of minutes. The gray cloud that he'd been living in for weeks settled back down around him, far more quickly than it had cleared. He looked back down at the parchment in front of him, at the books in front of Hermione and Ron.
"Do we have any idea of what's causing this yet?" he asked. "Have we managed to narrow it down at all?"
For the first time in this bout of conversation, Hermione looked up. There were lines of… something on her face. Frustration, maybe. Annoyance. Exhaustion, possibly. He wouldn't have been surprised if she'd snapped at him and said, 'Don't you think I would have told you if we'd narrowed it down? If I had any idea of what was causing this?'
Instead she gestured at his piece of parchment and the other piece of parchment sitting in the middle of the table and said, "Some of these seem to be pretty unlikely causes, but can we full-on cross them out? No."
Harry nodded, then looked back out the window. The darkness had deepened even more in those few seconds and he shivered.
"It could be a spell," Hermione continued. "Or a demon of some sort. A wizard, maybe. Or it could just be a freak accident. We really don't know."
"We should be out there," Harry said. "If it's a wizard that's doing this, we should be out there to find him. If it's a demon, we should be out there stopping it. If it's a not-so-freak anymore accident, maybe we can figure that out, too."
"And what if it is a wizard?" Hermione's voice was as loud as Harry had ever heard it while they were within library walls. "What if it is a demon that goes after people's magic? What makes it your duty to stop it? And if it is out there hunting, it's just as dangerous to us—to you—as it is to anyone else who might encounter it."
"Then that's a risk we—I've—got to take." Harry pushed his chair back, away from the table, and stood up in the same movement. "I can't just sit here, Hermione. Not while something bad is going on out there. Maybe I'll see something. Maybe we can get more information, enough so that we can figure out what's going on, so that we can put a stop to it once and for all."
He couldn't tell her the real reason that he needed to be out there, after all. He couldn't tell her that he needed to atone for what he'd done, so he watched with something resembling trepidation as Hermione pressed her lips together until they were little more than a thin, straight line bisecting her face.
"You can't save the world from everything," she said. "It's not your job to save everything and everyone anymore. You had a prophecy to fulfill, you've fulfilled it, and this is no longer part of your job description. Do you understand me?"
"And do you understand that I can't just sit back and let things happen?"
"More the fool you are," she countered. Her voice was harsh, pained, and Harry heard more emotion there than he reasonably should have heard for this argument.
"I'm going out there," he said, carding fingers through his hair. "If I can do something, anything to stop whatever's going on, I'm going to. You can't stop me."
"Fine." Hermione was pale, he saw, and he was pretty sure that she would have yelled the word, had they not been in the library.
Harry turned away from the table and started walking towards the library's exit. He could nearly hear the three-way look that passed between Ron, Hermione, and George and he wasn't at all surprised when he heard the sound of feet running after him. He paused, letting Ron catch up.
"So, what's your plan?" Ron asked as soon as they were outside of the library, walking across the dark and very nearly empty quad.
Harry wanted to shrug, but that wasn't the heroic, confident thing to do. Instead, because Ron was his best friend who had been with him through thick and thin, he said, "I'm sort of improvising right at the moment."
He glanced at Ron out of the corner of his eye as he said the words and saw that his friend was looking down at him with an aghast expression on his face.
"You're improvising? You stormed out of the library— You yelled at Hermione because you were improvising?"
Harry supposed that the nod he gave Ron might have bordered on sheepish, but it was the truth.
"All I know," he said, "is that we don't have enough information to be doing much good in there yet. When Hermione started pulling all of those books down and we discovered that there were so many ways for a wizard to… And she said it herself, we can't eliminate many of the options that we've found thus far. We need more information." He shrugged, then nodded decisively. "We might be able to get that out here. We might be able to do some actual good out here."
Ron nodded. "Unless it's just coincidence."
"Do you think its coincidence?" Harry asked. "Two people, two women losing their magic in a twenty-four hour period? Does that sound like coincidence to you?"
"No," Ron said, "But—"
Harry sighed. "But it could be."
"It could be," Ron repeated.
"Then it won't matter whether we're in the library researching with Hermione and George or whether we're out here, doing this. Following our instincts."
He spoke with more conviction than he was feeling. For the same reasons he hadn't been able to tell Hermione his real reasons for needing to be out there, searching, doing something besides sitting in a library, he couldn't tell Ron why—as horrible as it sounded—he needed this to be a real problem. Something that he could solve.
They'd made it to one of the corridors that surrounded the quad, and while it was lit, the stone tunnel-like passageways that led to different areas of the campus were not. He glanced at one and saw nothing but shadows.
"Your instincts," Ron said quietly. "But I trust your instincts. And I trust Hermione's instincts. You know she wouldn't be spending the time researching if she didn't think there was something to what you were saying."
"I know."
Harry stopped where he was, then walked to the head of the nearest passageway, letting his eyes glide over all of the dark corners in which Evil might be hiding. If it was hiding at all, that is. There was another corridor not too far ahead of them, the one that led back to the dormitories, and that was where the second victim had been found that morning, Harry had heard.
"Let's go check over there," he said to Ron, jerking his head in the direction that he wanted to go. "Maybe we can find some clues as to what happened last night."
Ron nodded and they started walking forward.
Onto Part Four...