- CHAPTER EIGHTEEN -
The Floating Eye Charm

Harry lay awake long into the night. He could tell from the stillness that Ron was awake too, but there were simply no words to try and approach him with. Harry clenched his fists helplessly in the bedclothes, and waited for sleep to come.

When it did, it brought stomach-churning nightmares. They barely even made sequences, just fractured flashes of events as the people in his life berated him for his failures.

"You're too late!" Sirius railed at him. He looked as he had when he'd first escaped from Azkaban, wild-eyed and terrible. "Your father would have saved me! He would have saved Cedric!"

Professor Snape glared down at him, as enormously tall and imposing as he had once seemed when Harry was just a first-year. "Potter, what did we tell you about paying attention to your Occlumency lessons? Have you learned nothing in all this time? Did you not consider it important to tell anyone your scar was hurting? Mr. Weasley's life not sufficient reason to disturb your beauty sleep?"

"Harry, why didn't you tell somebody?" Hermione asked plaintively.

Harry woke with a start in a pool of cold sweat. Could it be true?

His head had been hurting on the night of the attack on the Ministry. He'd thought it was just a headache from the potion fumes - what if it had started that way, but it had blended in to the more familiar pain from his curse scar without him noticing? Hermione had said it was strange that entering Gryffindor's study had made the headache vanish. What if it hadn't been an anti-tension spell at all, but some kind of protection against mental attacks...?

He might well have had advance warning of a Death Eater attack, and instead of going straight to Snape or Dumbledore, he'd blithely curled up in his bolt-hole and gone to sleep.

Harry sat up in bed, and was both disturbed and relieved to find Ron gone. The knowledge of his possible complicity in Percy's death sat heavily on his stomach, and he wasn't sure he could have faced his best friend just then.

The Gryffindor table was very subdued over breakfast. Harry found himself unexpectedly dismayed that it was a weekend, with no classes to go to. He wouldn't have taken in a thing, but at least it would have been a distraction. Even Snape shouting at him might be better than just sitting wallowing in guilt.

He only glimpsed Ron once, briefly, that day; he was walking along the shore on the other side of the lake with Dumbledore. Harry felt a surprising amount of bitterness well up at the sight. Once, he might have believed that Dumbledore had the answer to anything, and knew how to cure all ills. Now he knew better.

Dumbledore wasn't anybody's perfect saviour. And neither was he, the great Harry Potter. He was just a helpless, tired little boy who never stopped to think before he acted.

He wanted to be alone, but he no longer felt comfortable about retreating to Gryffindor's study. If it truly had some powerful protection that closed off his connection to Voldemort while he was inside, then its refuge came at too high a price. He couldn't sell other people's lives for the sake of a good night's sleep.

Instead, Harry retreated to the furthest corner of the library, burying himself in books that he wasn't really reading. When somebody came over and sat by him an hour or so later, he raised his head to send them away with a sharp word, and found himself faced with Ginny Weasley.

"Hi, Harry," she said softly.

"Ginny." Harry suddenly felt incapable of keeping his guilt inside, and had to blurt it out. "Ginny, this is all my fault! My scar hurt, but I wasn't thinking, I thought it was just an ordinary headache-"

He didn't see the slap coming until it hit his cheek with a very loud crack. He shut up, and stared at her, stunned. She massaged her hand, and smiled at him in a rather sympathetic way.

"You're a sweet boy, Harry Potter. You really are," she said. "And I'm sure you honestly do have some warped reason for thinking this is your fault. But I really don't think I can deal with you being guilty at me right now."

Harry blinked a few times. "Oh."

Ginny leaned her head against his shoulder. "It's not your fault, Harry. It's not Percy's, Fudge's, ours or anybody's. The only ones to blame are the Death Eaters."

"Yeah," he said quietly.

"And that's why we have to keep fighting," she said with surprising determination. "Voldemort has to be defeated. This can't go on."

"Do you really think killing him will fix anything?" Harry had to ask.

"We can't fix it, but we can stop it. And if that's all we can do, that's what we'll do."

Harry nodded, and they sat together for a while in silence.

Harry was keen for the arrival of next clue, desperate to have something constructive to focus on instead of his dismal thoughts. However, Hermione's estimated arrival date came and went, and their Ravenclaw allies regretfully reported that it hadn't appeared.

"We searched the whole common room this morning," Terry said, shrugging awkwardly. They'd asked him to meet them in the Room of Requirement the day after the clue was supposed to appear. "There's nothing. I'm sorry." He left hastily, with a quick, pitying glance at Ron. Nobody wanted to be too close to the Weasleys all of a sudden, as if the death of family members might be catching.

Hermione was dismayed. "I was so sure it was going to be in Ravenclaw this time!" Her lip trembled. Ever since the news about Percy, Hermione had been throwing herself into things with even more than her usual obsessiveness, and grew perilously close to falling apart if anything went wrong.

"It's not your fault, Hermione," Ron said quietly. There was a brief silence.

"Slytherin, then?" said Harry, eventually.

"It's the most logical place to look," Hermione agreed shakily.

"I'm not taking Polyjuice Potion again," Harry said firmly.

"We don't have time, anyway. It would take at least a month to brew, and the chances of being able to steal the same ingredients from Professor Snape's stores-"

"Couldn't we get one of the Slytherin Prefects to set a new password?" Ron suggested.

Harry frowned in surprised. "You're allowed to do that?"

"Only in emergency," Hermione explained. "If the password's been leaked or accidentally set wrong so no one can get in."

Ron smiled suddenly. "Fred and George were always trying to figure out a way to reset the passwords to what they wanted. I remember on time they stole Percy's glasses and enchanted them to-" He cut himself off abruptly, and stared at the floor.

"Ron..." Harry hesitantly reached for his arm, but he immediately jumped to his feet.

"I have to go and- I need the toilet." He hurried out, and Harry sighed.

"Oh, Ron," Hermione said softly. Then she suddenly sat up straight in her seat. "Wait, Harry, that's it! Your glasses!"

"What about my glasses?" He clutched at them nervously.

"We can cast a Floating Eye Charm on them! If we link the view through your glasses to an object that somebody takes inside the room, then you'll be able to look around the without needing to get inside! Wait here, I'm going to the library."

She returned a few minutes later with a large, wobbling pile of books. Ron had not come back from his supposed trip to the toilets, but by unspoken consent neither of them made any motion to go and search for him.

A few moments later, Hermione made a sound of triumph. "Here we are - the Floating Eye Charm." She looked around the room. "We won't cast it on your glasses yet, Harry - there's no need to do that while we're just practising. We can just cast it on that wall, and attach the focus to a cushion. Then one of us can carry it out into the corridor, and see if the spell works."

The Floating Eye Charm required the two spells to be cast in quick succession, with one wand touching the cushion, and one touching the wall.

"Ready, Harry?" Hermione checked. "One, two, three... Spectare Locus!"

"Conspectus Missere!"

A brief red glow surrounded the end of his wand, but nothing seemed to happen to the cushion. Until he glanced towards Hermione, and saw his own face, viewed from below, pictured on the wall.

"Wow, that's weird." He wiggled the cushion experimentally. It was rather like watching himself on the monitor of a shop security camera, except that the picture had none of the delay or distortion present in a cheap electronic system.

"It's working," Hermione said triumphantly. "Quick, take the cushion out into the corridor."

He tossed it over to her. "No, you take it out."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to be seen wandering around Hogwarts hugging a cushion!" It was pink, and had tassels. He could only hope it was Hermione's subconscious that had decided it was required when they entered the room, and not his own.

She rolled her eyes at him, but took the cushion and went outside with it. The image on the wall lasted until she got to the end of the corridor, and then blinked out; Harry assumed it was outside the spell's range.

"We're going to have to be standing right outside the Slytherin common room to use this," he observed, as she came back.

"I know - that's why I thought we should use your glasses to view what's going on; even if we're spotted, it won't look like we're doing anything odd."

"Apart from hanging around outside the entrance to the Slytherin dorms," he noted wryly. "What are we going to use for the other end of the spell?"

Hermione frowned. "I don't know... I thought at first we could enchant something of Malfoy's for him to carry in, but I don't think it would work. I mean, all he would have to do is hold it the wrong way around, and we wouldn't see anything at all. I suppose we'd have to have something that could enter the room under its own power - then we'd only have to wait for someone to open the door. But it would have to be able to fly all round the room... and move pretty fast, because it would be sure to be spotted pretty quickly."

"Something sort of like the Golden Snitch?" Harry said.

Hermione grabbed his shoulders delightedly. "Harry! That's brilliant!"

He reconsidered. "Not really. I know there's no official Quidditch this year, but Madam Hooch still keeps the balls under lock and key, and they have all kinds of spells on to prevent magical tampering."

"That doesn't matter. We don't need a real Snitch, we can just get any old ball and enchant it to behave like one. That part of the enchantment's quite easy - it's all the other things they have to lay on to make sure it's a completely fair match that are difficult to do. And the best thing is that if anyone spots it, they'll think it's just a toy!"

"Oliver Wood used to keep golf balls for practises," Harry remembered. "I'll see if I can dig up a few of those, and you can have a go at enchanting them."

Hermione's fake Snitches were a great hit in the Gryffindor common room, helping to shake the general malaise that had settled over the house since the shattering news about Percy Weasley. Even Ginny raised a smile watching her housemates leap about in pursuit of them, though she refused to be drawn into joining in. Ron remained quiet and withdrawn. Harry's heart ached for him. His own grief for Sirius was still fresh in his mind, and he couldn't imagine how much worse it must be to learn of a death from out of the blue like that.

He and Hermione offered Ron a chance to come along on their spying mission, but he turned them down.

"I know it's important to do, but you don't need me there," he said. "You can do it just as easily with two of you, and it'd only make you look more suspicious. Besides... everybody notices me, at the moment."

Hermione looked worried at his response, but she didn't try to persuade him.

"He'll be okay," Harry said, as they hurried through the corridors. "He just needs time." He'd resented the platitudes when they were spoken about him over the summer, and they didn't taste much better on this side of it.

"I know. Ron's strong. It's just..." Hermione's eyes glittered with the suggestion of unshed tears. "This has changed him, Harry, and I'm worried that he'll never change back."

And Harry said nothing. Because the truth was that Ron probably never would be completely the same, and both of them knew it, too. Ron had been a refuge, of a sort, for both of them. Hermione always worried about everything and Harry seemed to have the world piled onto his shoulders, but Ron had always been more grounded, ready to pull them back into a different, simpler, happier world that revolved around Quidditch and midnight feasts and detentions. Harry supposed he was the only one of them who really acted their age, most of the time.

He wasn't sure he could deal with Ron growing up. Somehow, in whatever terrible futures he'd imagined for himself, he'd always imagined his two closest friends remaining exactly as they were, pulling him in two different directions so he somehow ended up walking along the right sort of straight line.

It felt wrong to be doing this actively without Ron, in a way that it wouldn't have if Ron had simply been unable to come along. It was like the difference between knowing he couldn't talk to Sirius because he was in hiding, and not being able to talk to him because he was gone.

"Ready?" said Hermione nervously. Harry nodded, feeling self-conscious and conspicuous lurking in this part of the castle. They hadn't wanted to risk bringing the Invisibility Cloak for this; they'd had to come early in the evening to make sure there would be plenty of people going in and out, and the chance of someone tripping over them was just too high.

The enchanted golf ball was rather sluggishly bumping around the inside of his fist; Hermione had temporarily charmed it to move slowly, so they stood a chance of actually getting it in the door.

"Pansy Parkinson's coming. You pretend to clean your glasses and we'll cast the spell now, and I'll drop the ball into her bag. Quickly!"

He handed the ball over, and took his glasses off, trying to disguise the fact that he was pointing his wand at them while he pretended to rub them on his robes. "Spectare Locus!" he incanted, as softly as he could. He heard Hermione murmur her own part of the spell, facing the wall to hide the momentary glow.

Pansy gave them what he assumed was a highly suspiciously look - he couldn't read it very well without his glasses on - that morphed into a scowl when Hermione approached her. "Pansy! Have you seen Professor Snape? I really need to ask him a question about the Potions homework, the textbooks aren't very clear about what colour of powdered amber you should use-"

"Get lost, Granger," the Slytherin girl snarled, pulling away from Hermione's grip.

"Done," she said with soft triumph, as she came over to rejoin Harry. The two of them pretended to wander away as Pansy headed for the entrance to the Slytherin quarters.

"How long before it wakes up?" Harry asked.

"The Impediment Jinx should only keep it for another minute or so at most. Hopefully she'll head into the common room and not straight for the dorms. Put your glasses on and see what you can see."

"If I see Millicent Bulstrode naked or anything, I'm holding you responsible for the emotional trauma," he warned. He put the glasses back on, and immediately staggered and grabbed on to the wall. Only one of the lenses had been enchanted by the Floating Eye Charm - the left was still showing him an ordinary view of the corridor. The split-screen effect was incredibly disconcerting, and it was very hard to focus.

"What can you see?" Hermione demanded, clutching his arm.

Something cylindrical and an alarming shade of pink, over-magnified and right in front of his eye. "Urgh. Pansy Parkinson's lipstick, I think."

"It's not that horrible pink she was wearing last Saturday, is it?" Hermione said, with a slight note of smug disapproval.

"Hermione, I'm a boy," he reminded her. "We don't even notice when someone's wearing lipstick unless it's green. Oh, wait- the image is jiggling about - I think the Snitch is trying to get out of the bag." He grimaced. "Wow, this is making me dizzy. Oh, whoa!"

The Snitch had worked its way loose, and Harry was suddenly treated to a high speed, darting ride through the Slytherin chambers. He closed his left eye and used his hands to block out as much of the view around his glasses as he could, which helped a little. He glimpsed a flash of wall - ceiling - somebody's robes - more wall - a distorted view of a somebody's face-

"What can you see, what can you see?" Hermione was practically jumping up and down.

"Too much!" The images blurred by faster than he could follow. "Well, I've seen most of- yeargh - most of two of the walls I think, and... whoa... okay, it's just swooped along the back wall. Nothing there. Now it's hovering around the ceiling... Ha!"

"Is the poem there?" she asked urgently.

"No, it just divebombed Crabbe." Harry smirked. "They're all trying to catch it. Erm... okay, it just kind of spun around in the middle of the room. I can't see anything written anywhere, Hermione, and the walls are pretty bare - unless one of them had the brains to cover it with an illusion, there's nothing here."

Hermione jiggled nervously. "Are you absolutely sure, Harry?"

"I'm sure. The Snitch is going all over the place, I should at least have glimpsed it by now if it's written anywhere on the walls." A familiar, if rather stretched and blurry, face loomed in the Snitch's view point. "Oh, no. Malfoy." Harry automatically flinched back as a giant hand appeared to grope towards his head-

"Finite Incantatem!"

His glasses cleared, and he breathed out. "Thanks, Hermione."

She looked troubled. "So it's not in Ravenclaw or Slytherin. What are we going to do now?"

"I don't know. Is there-" Harry broke off abruptly as the wall across from him started to move. "Uh-oh. Somebody's coming out. Let's get out of here."

They fled the scene.