A/N: In which Antares…obfuscates.


Chapter 18: Obfuscation

After a minute of trying to force himself to keep looking through the Standard Book of Spells (Grade 5), Antares allowed his mind to drift off. He was allowed to do it, he told himself, ignoring the nagging sense that urged him to keep looking for detailed directions of how to practice the Silencing Charm he'd only been able to coax the theory of from Professor Flitwick. Really, he was almost on holiday –

"You, Black!" Antares winced. Pity he wasn't on holiday yet – Greg, who was advancing towards his table in the library like a small moving mountain, would be far away from Hogwarts then, as would Draco and Vince – "Draco wants a word with you, Black."

Antares didn't look up, though he could spot – and, to a small degree, sense Draco approaching with Vince close behind him. He grimaced and turned the page, feigning ignorance of the way Draco stood rudely close behind his chair, radiating impatience.

"Black, a word," Draco said, almost courteously. Antares maintained his indifferent posture, affecting to look at the page he'd just turned. Which, he suddenly noticed, seemed to have on it the start of a tiny section on Silencing magic, which was what he'd been looking for in the first –

A large hand shoved his shoulder from behind. "Hey! Draco's talking to you, Black!"

"Don't do that, Greg, Pince'll spot us," Draco complained, sliding noisily into the seat beside Antares and trying to sneak a look at the page Antares was now avidly perusing. Sensing the idiot's scrutiny, Antares shut the book with a hard thump, mentally marking the page for later study. There was only so long he could go ignoring Draco, anyway – "I wanted to ask you something, Black."

Antares gave Draco a silent, disdainful once-over, smirking inwardly at how Draco fidgeted and began to radiate annoyance. As creepy as it was being occasionally hit by these odd sense of the stronger feelings from people around him, Antares did enjoy being able to know more or less straight away what insults and methods were working with his irritatingly persistent bully. As he'd found over the last two months or so, the one that got to Draco the most was calm, indifferent silence.

"I want to know why you've gone off Blaise all of a sudden," Draco said, a little louder than before, as if he somehow believed Antares couldn't hear him. "And don't give me that stupid look like you don't know what I'm talking about –"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Draco," Antares said, calmly. "Blaise and I are still friends – not that you care." And, the funny thing was, Antares was telling the truth, in a sort of limited sense. Despite the awful post-Christmas argument he'd had with Blaise and Tracey (as well as the numerous private skirmishes he'd had with either one of them as they individually tried to corner him and get him to forgive them), their strained collective friendship had somehow knitted itself back together, mostly because Antares, despite his threat, didn't know the slightest means of going about Obliviating them so selectively. And, because The Arte of Shielding had said several times that he would need partners to help him progress by using Legilimency on him, it was pretty much moot that he still talk to them.

"I care," Draco said, "because I was thinking you might want to hang around with me and these two instead of Blaise and that pathetic Davis thing."

Antares raised his eyebrows, then turned deliberately, looking Greg and Vince up and down in an exaggerated manner. "You know, I think my current friends are fine, thanks." Another not-quite-truthful statement – something The Arte of Shielding had included as a mandatory exercise to prepare one's mind for Occlumency. Somehow, it was supposed to help you deceive a Legilimens when they entered your mind, because it made the links between the true and false things in your head much harder to understand. Or something – all Antares privately supposed was that it would also help him to lie better, period, and that was always a good thing.

Draco laughed, a little nastily. "Blaise is a coward, and Davis is a girl. Don't be stupid, Black – you're better than them." Smiling blandly, Antares began to gather together his things, carefully concealing the pain those words were close enough to the truth to hurt. Blaise was rather cowardly about things, and Tracey – well. The fact that she was a girl seemed to gift her with odd notions about repeating things other girls said and did when the boys weren't looking, because, supposedly, 'some of them didn't mean it, really'. A more stupid notion had never occurred to Antares – why would someone say something they didn't mean, in private, to someone else's friend, if they didn't mean it?

Girls are bloody well beyond me, sometimes. "I don't think of it that way," Antares said quietly, shoving the little bits of parchment away in his robes and quickly weighing whether the concrete knowledge of how to go about trying to do the Silencing Charm was worth the fast talking he'd have to do to convince Pince to let him borrow it, as well as the risk that she might tell Flitwick or question him about the make-believe Charms project Antares had been planning to cite if need be. "Everyone has their strengths, Draco – don't you think so?" And yet another exercise employed – it was always more profitable to an Occlumens for people to reveal their own opinions and character instead of finding out that of the Occlumens. Or so the book said –

"Don't be daft, Black – everyone knows you're the second best with a wand in our year," Draco said, rising as Antares gently pushed back his chair and rose, tucking a small, tightly corked ink bottle into his pockets alongside the folded Cloak and everything else – which, he was relieved to find, after a quick rummage, included the shrunken form of The Arte, which he'd need after this useless conversation was finally over.

"Second best, Draco?" Antares said, sneering a little. "And who's the best?"

"Me," Draco said flatly, despite the colour seeping into his cheeks. Stifling a smile, Antares pushed the chair back under his table, giving Greg and Vince covert looks as he did so. Their expressions, even to his relatively unfamiliar eye, looked a lot more fixed than usual – possibly because even they knew it wasn't true.

The smile won out, and Antares bent his head a little to hide it. "Well, I suppose you think so."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Draco snapped, his reply immediate and tense. "Are you saying that –"

Antares shrugged, erasing the amusement from his face as he began to edge away from the table. "I'm saying you think so, Draco. You do, don't you?" He added an implicit challenge to the last few words, trying not to hope too hard that Draco would take him up on it. How I'd love to hex his smarmy, bigoted, puffed-up little arse

Draco glared at him, but said nothing. Antares smiled then, openly. "I'm afraid it's a no, Draco. I'm quite comfortable with the friends I already have." He pushed past Greg and Vince easily, ignoring the scowls they and Draco were all directing towards him. With a quick look around to make certain that he was firmly in Madame Pinch's line of sight, he continued speaking in a lower, harder tone. "And anyway, you probably already know there are only two lackeys in our dorm. If you didn't know before, I'm not one of them."

"Did he – Draco, did he just call us lackeys?" Greg said slowly, anger seeping into his puzzled tone. Draco opened his mouth to reply, and Antares prudently didn't wait around to see the results, throwing a snide "Good day" over his shoulder as he hurriedly left the library. If he hurried fast enough and took – yes, that turn – they'd have no idea where to find him by the time they had the time to get properly angry at his insult. And, of course, the Occlumency practice he was hurrying off to now would keep him, Blaise and Tracey up until well after curfew, which meant his three potential attackers would be asleep by the time he and Blaise stumbled into bed.

It was a pity that he'd had no time to decide on whether to borrow the Charms book, but then again, he could easily go back to the library tomorrow, well after Draco and the rest were off to the Hogsmeade train station, and immerse himself in the (quite interesting) book until lunch if he felt like it.

It didn't take time for Antares to manoeuvre his way down to the dungeons just far enough from the Slytherin dorms that he could safely make his way to the empty dungeon he and his friends had been using for weeks and weeks to practice Occlumency and Legilimency together. He avoided the well-used corridors and hallways as well as he could, and didn't bother doing more than nodding discreetly when he spotted Miles Bletchley, who often hung about the more disused dungeons practicing Beating illegally indoors. Who, consequently, was also the only one of the fourth years on the Quidditch team that had actually agreed (grudgingly) to help Antares retrieve The Artes Wich Neede No Sighte from the Restricted section after careful lobbying, judicious bribery and the chance discovery of the rather battered dungeon in which Miles regularly let loose his personal pair of Bludgers for the sake of self-improvement.

Smiling a little at the memory of Miles' shoulders sinking slightly in defeat, Antares jabbed at the correct dungeon door with his wand, muttering an absent 'Alohomora' under his breath.

"Antares?" Tracey's tone was tinged with surprise as she turned around, wand raised as she prepared to cast another round of Legilimens on Blaise, who, Antares noted, was sighing a little in relief. Antares couldn't help smiling at that; Tracey's own version of the spell always felt like a razor. "I thought you had a lesson with…?"

"Quirrel?" Antares closed the door quickly, locking it with an impatient tap before he drew the shrunken Arte of Shielding out of his pocket. "Nah, that's tomorrow, I think."

"Right," Tracey said, nodding a little as she turned back to Blaise. Who, predictably, blanched. "Ready for another go?"

"Why don't we practice half-truths instead?" Antares suggested, enlarging the book and rifling through it with the speed that came from almost three months of searching fruitlessly for the myriad referenced pages of techniques that never seemed to turn up when he wanted them. Blaise sighed a little too loudly in relief at that, and Tracey gave him a slightly cross look as Antares sought out one of the rickety chairs they'd had to steal from elsewhere and began to read. "Erm – looks like the half-truths we'll be trying to tell today will be about…the people we hate."

Tracey sighed. "I was hoping we wouldn't get to that one." Antares looked up inquisitively. "I mean, why would I want to talk about Draco any more than I already have to?"

"I don't hate Draco, actually," Blaise announced, flopping into another chair nearby, "I just hate his character – everything else is fine, really."

"Speaking of Draco, you'll never believe what the prat asked me," Antares said, setting down the book on the floor with an awkward thump.

"That doesn't count as a half truth, Antares," Tracey said, grinning a little. "All right, Blaise, what was it – a Galleon? Two Galleons?"

Antares spluttered. "Excuse me?"

"You're actually a wicked liar when you put your mind to it," Blaise said, giving Tracey a dark look. "I just suggested – suggested, mind you – that you'd never make a mistake –"

"Oh, come on, Blaise, don't be a prat – you linked fingers and swore on your wand, and everything!"

"Well, that's all moot, because Draco actually did ask me something unbelievable," Antares said loudly, cutting off Blaise before he could deliver a retort in Tracey's general direction. "In all senses of the word, I swear –"

"But you said –"

"Anyway," Antares said, ignoring Tracey's indignant exclamation, "I was in the library, just minding my own business, and suddenly Draco and company are right there. And Draco sits down, while either Greg or Vince is being all 'answer to your betters, Black', and Draco asks if I want to be his friend."

A shocked pause ensued, only to be broken by a half-giggle, half-snort from Blaise. "If we're supposed to even believe that –"

Antares rolled his eyes, kicking Blaise idly in the leg in a half-hearted bid to make him shut up laughing. "I am completely bloody serious, Blaise! I swear, he was all earnest and condescending and all that –"

"Bloody hell, you're not really serious, are you?" Tracey said, suddenly, her eyes widening in that unnerving way that meant she was probably trying hard to sense emotions from one of them.

"Like I said, perfectly bloody serious," Antares said, stifling a grin. "He even gave me all these great reasons, then almost challenged me to a duel –"

Blaise coughed. "Oh, come on –"

"Well, depending on the way you read it, what he said could have been a challenge," Antares said, a little feebly.

"I think you'd have to actually tell us what he said for us to understand," Blaise pointed out, quite correctly. Antares fought a blush – there was no way, just no way he was repeating his private thoughts about being best at magic in their year. "Oh, come on, Antares, we won't laugh –"

Antares blushed openly, then. "There was nothing to laugh at, thanks."

"That's rot, you wouldn't be blushing if there was –"

"You know, I don't think this is going anywhere," Antares said a little loudly, cutting Blaise's amused comment off. "Let's just get back to poking each other in the head, all right?"

"Fine," Tracey said, grinning at Blaise's crestfallen look. "But we both know what we'll be looking for in his head, don't we, Blaise?"

The way Blaise perked up would have been too funny for words if it hadn't been anything to do with them trying to find out what was (still) embarrassing Antares right now. Sighing dramatically, Antares bent over to retrieve the book from where it lay, carefully ignoring the way Blaise and Tracey were exchanging militant looks. It was obviously going to be a longer session than he'd thought.


Antares' premonitions about the length of their Occlumency session were quite right, only for entirely different reasons. Blaise and Tracey had eventually gotten tired of trying to get past the stubborn, distorting sheen Antares had slipped over the pertinent parts of his conversation with Draco, and had taken to just examining the conversation in its lurid glory instead. By the time they'd all had a thorough look into each other's minds, each of them was taking turns to solemnly ask the person that was not currently Legilimising them to be their friends. Even now, as they tidied the room and reshrunk the book for Antares to carry it unobtrusively back to Slytherin, Blaise kept nudging Antares or Tracey and asking plaintively why they didn't want to be his friends.

The journey back to Slytherin was made, therefore, in higher spirits than usual, and wholly without the tentative looks and rambling questions about whether Antares would let all three of them use the Cloak to get back this time. Antares had made the mistake of relenting once or twice last month, and had learned soon enough that it wasn't worth the bother that followed it. That time, reproachful looks and near-desperate negotiations had ensued after, having overheard Daphne and Pansy giggling over nicknames for everyone in their year, Antares had flatly refused to share the Cloak again, and the whole experience made him steadfastly reinforce his original decision to just not bring the Cloak up with his friends until he'd gotten over their argument. Now, it seemed like Blaise and Tracey had either forgotten about the Cloak, which they now knew that Antares carried all the time out of paranoia, or they'd just decided to let it go. For now.

Sighing inwardly, Antares forced a smile at yet another rendition of Draco's unusual request. It made him feel guilty to do all this, but he knew very well that until he forgave Blaise and Tracey properly for their insults (which he still hadn't), he'd only feel resentful if he shared the Cloak with them. After a minute or so of the three of them watching the entrance to the common room carefully, in case anyone was sneaking out (there'd been several close calls on that front until they'd learnt to wait five minutes or so before trying to enter), they all tiptoed up to the entrance. Antares and Blaise stood guard, eyeing both ends of the corridor while Tracey whispered the password, just in case someone, like them, was returning after curfew. They were inside before long, and, quiet nods and small smiles exchanged, the three of them parted ways and were all asleep before long.


Morning crept in with the end of an odd nightmare, one that had been dogging Antares' dreams ever since he'd started studying Occlumency with his friends and with the covert help of Professor Quirrel. After starting horribly into consciousness for what had to have been the hundredth time in three months, Antares set to tugging on some clothes as rapidly as possible, his need to be far away from the dorm contrasting painfully with the usual need to reorient himself beneath warm covers after yet another horrid dream. He scowled as he shivered into and under his robes, feeling somehow dirty and disgusting, then grinned a little when he remembered what dirty and disgusting really felt like.

And then, as he stuffed his feet into his boots, the memory of the dream hit him again. For a moment, Antares stood still, willing himself to calm down. It was not rational to be scared of hands. It wasn't. Every one of the dreams started out with him feeling warm and cosy and waking up to a disturbance – a disturbance that somehow always ended up with cold, dead hands catching his wrists with a steely grip as someone whispered something low and desperate all around him.

Thinking rationally about it (mostly during Occlumency sessions in which he and his friends were directed to try to think of something that upset them without showing signs of it facially or in their movements), Antares had realised that the disturbances usually featured something or someone that had bothered him during the previous day. Antares slowly began to move again, running over the information he'd puzzled out for himself in his head to calm himself down. These dreams…well, they often included Draco, and sometimes Professor Snape, and (after the first time he'd worked Occlumency into their conversation and had seen the stunned look and strangely, yet understandably vindictive expression on the man's face as Antares continued to stumble through his hints as to why he needed it) even Professor Quirrel. Blaise and Tracey had made appearances after the Cloak fiasco last month, and so had Miles Bletchley, when Antares had been frustrated by the way the overgrown idiot kept trying to get him to steal one of the older, less used sets of the Hogwarts Quidditch balls in payment for his help.

Tonight, the dream had been – Antares smiled, grimly – purer, with less distractions. He'd known almost immediately which dream it was unlike most of the time, and could almost hear the hands coming closer, and when he'd woken up, his bedclothes had been unusually warm, probably from (as Bella called it) magical stress.

Well, Antares thought, stubbornly, whatever it's really about, I don't need it in my life. And he didn't, especially with this holiday coming round. Antares slipped his hand into his robe pocket, making sure the Cloak – the source of all this trouble – was there. It was, and Antares lost no time in whipping it out and ducking under it, so he could leave the dorm unseen, if not totally unheard. As great as it was having something so useful and so precious in his possession, the acrobatic lying he'd had to go through so far to protect it really, really sucked from time to time.

Really, this Easter holiday was a prime example. Antares sighed quietly, slipping out of his bed for good. Any other Cloakless year, he'd have been the first to opt for his mother's company – despite the long hours she'd always worked, she usually managed to do something fun for Easter. And, barring that, she always told stories at Easter instead of Christmas – long, juicy ones about the Blacks and the other pureblood families and their strange goings-on, and even scary ones about the last war and the one before that. Of course, she'd never really told him in detail about the things the Dark Lord had done or made his little gang do, or even about just how many places Grindelwald set on fire before people started to try to stop him. No, Bella had covered those gaps with things about dresses and mad customers and the usual folk tales about Morgana and Merlin and so on.

And this year, there'd be none of that. Antares scowled as he tiptoed through the common room, partly at himself, and partly at the person he rightly felt was to blame – Snape. Since Snape was going to be home for Easter (probably because he would definitely have someone on hand to actually talk to – Spinner's End was even more of a depressing place to be in if you were a greasy antisocial git with no friends), Antares had grudgingly declined to go as well, citing studying and the fact that his friends would be at Hogwarts too. Because, though he had made some progress in Occlumency, what with Quirrel and the book and everything, Antares knew very well that he'd be quite unable to stand up to someone as good at Legilimency as Snape for very long. For goodness' sake, even Professor Quirrel's less serious attempts could get his head hurting in a few minutes.

And there was yet another problem with this whole Cloak business. Antares, being paranoid, had read far ahead of Blaise and Tracey and actually practiced camouflaging his associations – a simple decision, really, as he had more to hide – and had said as little as possible to Quirrel about exactly why Snape had gone rummaging in his mind. The professor had taken it in stride, making a rather pathetic nervous joke about the whole thing as usual, but Antares couldn't help feeling that Quirrel tried to follow that particular association a lot more as time went on. And since the man didn't seem to be going anywhere for Easter like a normal person, Antares could just tell that the too-short holiday would be full of sessions like that, with Quirrel's nervous jokes and badly hidden curiosity about why Antares wanted Occlumency lessons in the first place.

Gritting his teeth, Antares shook his head. He really had to stop this habit of worrying over everything all the time – look how useless that had been when he'd been worrying about how to get the other Occlumency book out of the Restricted Section. And all that time wasted when Antares had simply begun to keep a sharp eye out for a way to blackmail Bletchley…

Well. He'd try to meditate now, anyway – clear his mind, and all that rot. Early hours, when no one was in the common room and Antares could recline on the softest sofa (usually occupied by one or two of the seventh years) and let his mind quiet down.

It took a while for the peaceful feeling to begin to seep into Antares' slightly aching head, but when it came, it spread fast, muting the itch of his irritated back and the stiffness of the arm that he'd slept badly on last night. And, for what felt like an age, Antares thought about simple things. The way the Cloak shifted around on him even now; the small creaks and sounds of Slytherin beginning to wake; the way his breath sounded ridiculously loud in the still room; all these things somehow sank into him and dulled the worry and fear that he still felt about the coming couple of weeks.

Too good to last? Possibly. Antares sighed as he finally let his concentration slide, knowing by the vague thumps and very muffled voices that people would soon be streaming out into the Common Room, and that the depression he was making in the wonderfully soft sofa wouldn't go unnoticed soon enough. He rose slowly, careful not to jerk at anything or make loud noises as he moved. Thoughts began to trickle back into Antares' head slowly – I don't care what the book says, but doing it all at once is just painful and stupid – as he moved through the Common Room, heading a little aimlessly for the exit. Rufus, still vaguely asleep, sniffed and muttered something about knowing someone was there, but didn't raise much of an alarm as Antares whispered the password and went outside, bracing himself for the cold of the corridor.


Breakfast time passed in a bit of a blur, as Antares, bored of wandering the dungeons, had been forced to wait for someone convenient that wasn't paying much attention to things around them to open the door into the common room for him. After having to quell several sort-of-desperate plans to just rush by someone or chance being 'seen' opening the door, well, invisibly, Antares finally spotted a strangely cheery Flint lingering in the doorway and talking to someone. Giving fervent thanks to whatever god was looking down on him, Antares sidled up to the entrance as silently as possible, hardly hearing the odd phenomenon that was Marcus Flint laughing. He soon passed Flint and the pretty girl he was talking to or flirting with, and was inside his dorm with all speed immediately after that.

Working as quickly as he could without tripping over himself, Antares took stock of who wasn't in bed (everyone) and whose trunks were still present (only his, Blaise's and Ted's), while tidying his bed haphazardly and stuffing his already rather heavy robe pockets with things he didn't want to forget to take with him on his way to the library this morning. Then Antares practically ran into the shower, counting the minutes he probably had left before anyone came back to the dorms and saw him under his breath as he scrubbed and soaped and wrung out his wet hair. Then it was time to whip on his clothes and leave the dorm as sleepily and casually as possible, in case someone saw him.

Luckily enough, the common room was still quite empty, and only Flint noticed him on his way out, and didn't even really do much more than give him a sort of permissive nod before focusing his attention on the slightly pinking girl he was still talking to. Antares sighed in relief and began to head upstairs with only half an eye out for where he was going.

That was, until he realised he was actually quite hungry, and mightn't be able to get anything to eat until lunch. Which was what…four, five hours away?

"Fuck," Antares said grimly, rolling his eyes at himself, at Draco, and at Crabbe and Goyle and at the whole stupid situation that had had him planning very cleverly to stay out of the way of the irritating threesome, and somehow forgetting to plan for something to eat while he was doing the clever staying out of the way.

For a long moment, Antares couldn't help hovering on the stairs that led up to the first floor and the Great Hall – would it really be so bad to go for breakfast? Yeah, Draco would be angry, and even angrier because Antares was avoiding him and his two lackeys so easily, but then Antares would worry about getting away from Draco and company on a full stomach. Which seemed, for an even longer moment, infinitely preferable to hanging around and languishing away in the library on an empty stomach. And if the library wasn't open – Pince has to eat, too, doesn't she? Niffle me, I didn't think about this at all – Antares would languish away in the drafty corridor in front of the library on an empty stomach.

Then, as Antares' stomach began to twinge insistently (familiarly), he suddenly recalled how many times he'd gone without breakfast and dinner and still been fine. The recollection made him smile wryly – all this time in Hogwarts, and he still ended up starving, sort of. But the insistent growling of his stomach now didn't even resemble the hollow, clawing feeling Antares clearly remembered from not so long ago. There was really no excuse to be so silly about this, was there? So he might end up peckish and shivering in front of the library just this once – so what? At least, Antares now knew that he'd get lunch – a certainty that had, well, certainly been lacking during his truly hungry moments.

With a sigh and a half-smile, Antares began to climb again, not even pausing on the first floor landing. He'd just head for the library, then, and go down to lunch as early as possible. He'd be fine.


The library opened just after breakfast ended – or, as Antares noted to himself with a sharp-edged inward grin, just after he'd been really starting to get hungry. Madame Pince bustled in and flung open the doors with a single-minded fervour that brought Antares' inward grin out into the open and roused him to his feet. After a stiff "Good Morning, Black!" from Pince and the obligatory suspicious once-over that usually went with any greeting from the crabby old woman, Antares began to drift steadily in the direction of the shelves that contained the most books on Charms. He got sidetracked as he scanned the shelves for the fifth year book he was looking for – pass up a collection of defensive charms? Not likely – but eventually retired to a table that was relatively out of the way to thumb through to the pages on Silencing –

Right, that's it. And, for the next hour or so, Antares could barely tear himself away from the book to do anything more than rummage hastily through his pockets for something to write on and write with. The history of the charms themselves was absolutely fascinating, as was the linkage of Silencing Charms to actual glamours and illusions. The book even vaguely referenced something that sounded a lot like Occlumency towards the end of the history bit about the charms, and as for the actual charms themselves… Antares sighed contentedly, muttering incantations experimentally under his breath, and trying to convince himself that the blatantly advanced spell might just work if he tried very, very hard –

"God, there he is!" Startled, Antares looked up, his grip tightening around his wand immediately as his eyes sought who had – oh, right.

"Where were you this morning?" Blaise said, coming up and flopping down beside him importantly. Tracey sidled around to the opposite side of the table and nicked one of the defensive charm collection books from the small pile Antares had been unable to stop himself from taking. "Your bed was empty and everything."

"Really smart statement there, Blaise," Tracey said absently, thumbing through the book she'd taken. "I mean, obviously, if you were asking the first question –"

"Shut it, all right?" Blaise retorted, a little louder than Tracey's slightly smug tone probably deserved. "Can you just stop picking apart at my questions?"

"But it's good exercise for you, Blaise," Tracey said very seriously. Antares, rolling his eyes, mouthed in sync with the solemn statement Tracey added to that. "Questioning one's questions is good for the mind."

"If I hear you say that one more time –"

Tracey grinned, the book in her hands now forgotten. " – you'll pay Antares to hex me?"

Blaise spluttered in indignation. "Tracey, I wouldn't pay anyone to do my dirty work!"

"Oh, so I'm dirty now, am I?"

"Stop it, you two," Antares interjected, rolling his eyes again. "I don't know if you find it fun having this same stupid conversation all over again, but –"

But Blaise's attention was already drifting away, to land squarely on the page the fifth year charms book was still open at. "Is that the charm you were looking for?"

Antares bit back a grin. "Yes, Blaise."

"No, Blaise, it's a turnip," Tracey said, her face straight and (Antares noted, amusedly) her eyes showing nothing but truthfulness, and the silly cross between conversation and competition only grew after that. Antares joined in wholeheartedly by declaring several times that he was fifteen, and Blaise lost his temper with Tracey's irreverent and constant interruption of his own rather grand lies. It only ended when Pince passed (probably quite deliberately) by, and by then Antares was shoving aside his notes on the Silencio spell family and bending over the rough timetable he and his friends were trying to create for the easy fulfilment of their homework, amusement and Occlumency needs. That went to pieces as soon as Blaise began to argue in favour of more Exploding Snap time than chess time, of course, but as Antares' hunger pangs had begun to cross the threshold, going from being only uncomfortable to being painful, it was quite fine that Tracey ended the argument by crossly declaring that she wanted to leave the library.

A shorter argument ensued, with Antares arguing long and hard for the kitchens (Tracey was always jabbering on about how her older brother raided the kitchen every hour or some such rot, and now just seemed a good time for her to prove her supposed knowledge of where its entrance was) and Blaise arguing for the common room. A compromise was soon declared, and, after a quick scramble for all the bits of written-on parchment that had fallen under the table, Antares, Blaise and Tracey were well on their way down to the dungeons.


"Right, now if we just take that turn –"

"Face it, Tracey, we're sooo lost we probably won't be able to –"

"Is that the painting you were talking about?" Antares said hastily, cutting Blaise's slightly sulky statement off with a glare. Tracey glared at Blaise but nodded anyway, leading them closer with a slightly confident set to her shoulders as she boldly reached up and tickled the idly rocking pear in the gigantic bowl of fruit shown in the painting. It giggled, an oddly high-pitched sound, and somehow partially solidified into a door handle that Tracey wrenched quite carelessly at.

The smells and sounds of a kitchen hit Antares immediately as the painting swung out heavily from the wall, and he wasted no time in climbing in eagerly after a triumphant Tracey as she stumbled into the Hogwarts kitchens. Which, Antares thought, with widening eyes, were huge – full of house elves, which he'd half expected after all that appearing and disappearing food at meals (classic skill of well-trained house elves, Bella had told him once), all of them turning to stare at him and his friends as they stood, a little awed by the clashing pots and pans and the sheer amount of noise and activity filling the place.

"What is you wanting?" one of the nearby ones demanded, and before Tracey could reply, Antares found himself asking a little plaintively (only a little) whether there was any breakfast left. The satisfaction that small statement spread unnerved Antares quite a bit – he'd seen the unstable Kreacher's fawning behaviour over his mum and been taken aback at the pathetic eagerness with which the rather mad old house elf had taken orders to do the simplest (and, in Antares' private opinion, most irritating) tasks. But that had been Kreacher, and had seemed like something the elf would do.

However, by the time tiny, uncomfortably direct hands had practically shoved Antares, Blaise and Tracey into seats on overturned pots and pans near the door and practically rained warm, comforting toast and bacon and eggs on them in large, partially empty serving dishes, Antares was in no mood to complain. He ate happily, letting Blaise and Tracey argue and chatter to the house elves to their content, and carried that warm, satisfied feeling right out into the corridor despite the smell of food clinging stubbornly to his badly dried hair.


Three hours, one rather feeble lunch and almost fifteen rounds of Exploding Snap later, Antares gave the clock in the common room an idle glance and sighed. Just gone two thirty – means I'll have to be with Quirrel in a minute.

"Antares, pay attention, will you? Tracey's cheating again –"

"You're a bad liar, Blaise – anyone ever tell you that?"

Gathering his slightly smoking cards together, Antares shrugged and gestured vaguely in the direction of the clock. "Sorry, guys – I have to go," he said, sighing. "Lesson with – you know…"

Tracey's eyes sparkled, as they usually did whenever she was winning a game by a landslide. "You-Know-Who? Why, Antares, I'd no idea you spoke with the dead –"

"Shut it," Antares said, shaking his head a little fondly as Blaise calmly nicked a good portion of his old cards, eliciting a groan of irritation from Tracey.

"What? What? You're cheating so much that I may as well just do it openly, Tracey."

"Why are you always so touchy about snap, eh? You won the last five games, you know –"

Shaking his head, Antares stood up and began to beat a retreat, the sounds of the common room echoing a little in his ears as he retreated to his dorm to pick up his robes, which he'd shed in favour of more comfortable trousers and a ragged t-shirt – clothes that would never do for a formal-ish lesson with Quirrel. Tugging them roughly over his head, Antares also had a good rummage through his schoolbag for some of the parchment that listed spells that Quirrel had taught him – the professor had said something about wanting to put them all on a longer roll of parchment for easier reference, so…

Right, that seemed to be…yeah, that was it. Antares, after a brief stop at the table where the increasingly heated game between his two friends was going on, set off for Quirrel's office with a tuneless whistle on the tip of his tongue and a somehow calm feeling from not having any real Apprentice duties during the holidays.


Getting to the DADA classroom seemed to take no time at all – one minute, Antares was sort of ambling along and shivering slightly in the cool dungeons, and the next minute, he was roughly shouldering his way through the unlocked door of the classroom, only to find no one there. Rolling his eyes, Antares shut the door and flopped into one of the empty seats closest to the front of the empty class, humming vaguely under his breath and wondering where in the blazes Quirrel had got to. A quick look at the eerily quiet clock showed that he was just in time for the lesson, which the professor had set for about twenty to three. A bizarre time, in Antares' opinion.

Then again, that was all in the spell family in comparison to the man's usual behaviour. Antares had quickly realised even before Christmas that Quirrel's stutter seemed compounded by the presence of Snape and the heckling of some older students that seemed to be getting back at the poor man for some old grudge he'd started with them when he'd taught here a year or so ago. Antares still frankly couldn't understand why Snape – or anyone else, for that matter, would be afraid of Quirrel, or treat him badly. Of course, the Professor had his irritating habits, and Antares, having practiced with him throughout the autumn term, had even detected a strong streak of pride that ran far beneath the stutter – something that might have been much more apparent (and irritating) if Quirrel wasn't half as nervous as he was now. Although Antares did see, if a bit grudgingly sometimes, why Quirrel would be proud. He was really a fine teacher when he wasn't stuttering or endeavouring not to turn his head as if all the weight of the world was in or upon that disgusting turban (Antares, sniffing now, didn't think the smell would ever leave this room), and his eyes were just as sharp and quick to notice things as Snape's were.

For example, during their first lesson in the winter term, Quirrel had started asking Antares questions, mostly because he'd been late for that lesson despite the two notes Quirrel had had sent to him through two different second years, and also probably because Antares, still smarting from the confrontation with his friends and with the way Snape seemed to watch him all the time now, was quite sullen. They had been small questions, but always things about Snape, and about whether Antares was really comfortable in Slytherin – that sort of thing. Antares, then quite angry with his friends and Snape and even, to some extent, with the Cloak and the note and all of it, had vented, albeit as carefully as possible. Seeing how eagerly Quirrel seemed to soak up Antares' snide, bitter comments about Professor Snape, Antares had been quite happy to oblige him with tales of oppression and – as Antares had suddenly realised that his nervous tutor might be able to help him with the whole Occlumency thing – tales of the strong feeling that Snape could read minds. Tales that Quirrel's eyes had sharpened at and seemed to grasp immediately in a way that almost disturbed Antares.

At that point, Quirrel had dropped all pretence and begun to question Antares closely enough that his few newfound skills at evasion had been put to sore test. Carefully, slowly, Antares had built up a story of Snape finding him on Knockturn Alley (quite true in itself) and helping him into Hogwarts once Snape had seen how good Antares had been at magic (also sort of true), complete with arguments and disagreements and Snape threatening Antares with the knowledge of things that he didn't remember ever saying out loud. It had been a close call, especially when Quirrel had asked about Bella and who she was and all that sort of thing. Close enough that Antares was still quite paranoid about not thinking about Bella's face or voice or anything during the extra lessons, just in case. Because, as Antares had rapidly found out, Quirrel was probably just as good a Legilimens as Snape was, and probably just as sneaky, if he wanted to be. Really, it hadn't taken more than an hour or so of noticing the sharp look in Quirrel's eyes for Antares to rapidly decide that just bringing the Cloak to the lessons would never be a good idea – he couldn't imagine what Quirrel would do with it once he found out about it and confiscated it, but find out and confiscate it he eventually would.

Anyway, the lessons had gone on, more frequently than before, and Antares had come to appreciate them a lot even when he left with an aching head and a conviction that he'd never, ever be as good at Occlumency as he needed to be. For not a day or two after their second or third lesson, Antares had been accosted out of nowhere by Granger while reading the more historical Occlumency book – The Artes Wich Neede No Sighte – in the library, and had had to do some fast talking and fast cover-disguising to convince her that he was just doing some extra research on something for Potions. He'd almost been relieved when Snape had come upon them, but that relief had quickly disappeared when Snape strode off with the book, with his book, all because Granger didn't have the sense to lie that either her or Antares had a pass for the Restricted Section. Not that that would have worked, but still, that was a better lie than the one Granger had come up with – a guilty, plaintive-sounding jumble to do with her having 'found' the book lying around (which was actually part of the original lie that Antares had told her about the book in the first place) that had led the silly girl to demand that he release her of her debt to him as soon as Snape had disappeared with the book.

It hadn't taken more than a scornful look and a pointed statement or two about Granger's inability to save the book from Snape's clutches to stop her silly argument, but by then the book was well and truly gone, and the only thing Antares had had in return for his studiousness in taking time to read about the history of Occlumency was a horribly insulting conversation with Snape.

Antares sighed. At least he'd made some headway into the scattered plans he'd made to get it back. It had been one of the driving forces pushing him into his uneasy truce with his friends (as he'd never gotten round to asking Tracey how much the books had cost), and had even been the main thing they'd talked about after the truce for all of two weeks. Wisely, neither Tracey nor Blaise had mentioned using the Cloak to get it, as such an undertaking would probably have included them in some way, which Antares had obviously not been prepared to do. Asking Pince or another teacher for help had been vetoed in the same way, for the obvious reason that they didn't want Snape to find out that they were reading books on Occlumency in the first place, and after a while, the only reasonable thing to do that remained was getting someone with a pass to the Restricted Section to find the book for them. That had come with its own problems, but it still seemed a better alternative to Antares than risking the Cloak or pretending to overcome his conviction not to let his friends use it, and it had borne fruit in the end, in the person of Miles Bletchely. Now, if the irritating sod would just agree to a time and date for the actual deed –

The door to the classroom opened, cutting short Antares' somewhat irritated train of thought. In stumbled Quirrel, his face deathly pale under the lurid purple of his turban. Antares rose immediately, feeling alarmed at the sight of his teacher as Quirrel, breathing hard, shut the door a little too violently.

"Sir? Is everything all right?" Antares asked, quietly, his wand already in his hand in case –

"Fine, j-just fine," snapped Quirrel, not even looking in his direction. Antares blinked, then sat down deliberately, not bothering to cast the only small strengthening spell he knew – one Bella had taught him and used on them both, many times. Anyone that snapped at him like that just for being nice didn't deserve that spell, in his opinion – not even Quirrel, who looked increasingly like he might have a good excuse for his horrid behaviour as he flopped into the high chair in front of his large desk.

Antares suppressed the desire to fidget in the tense silence, feeling unaccountably angrier by the second. All I asked was if he was fine, for crying out loud – if he doesn't want to teach me this holiday, he can just bloody well say so instead of

"F-Forgive me, b-boy." Quirrel's tired sounding tone cut through Antares' irritated train of though with no warning, causing him to look up from his slightly clenched hands, which he'd not even known he was staring at. "I – I'd f-forgotten our ap-p-ppointment, you see."

"And whose fault is that?" Antares found himself retorting hotly, despite the niggling feeling that he needed to stay calm. "I didn't steal the thought from your head – you certainly haven't taught me that. Not that I think it's possible anyway –"

"Isn't it?" Quirrel said, a small smile filtering onto his face. Antares paused, thinking hard – well, I suppose Obliviation – er, Eradomency might do that. But

"Not from a distance," Antares said, shrugging. "And certainly not from me. And besides, if Professor Snape could do that, he wouldn't be bothering to teach here, would he?" At Quirrel's amused expression, Antares pressed on. "He'd be off somewhere, controlling the Minister of Magic or something, and rolling in money. He may be a ba- a horrible person, but he's not stupid."

"And w-what would you do w-with s-such a g-g-gift?"

Antares paused, now filtering through all the wild dreams he'd been entertaining of how much fun he'd get up to here once he'd gotten to the stage where Snape couldn't pick his brains like a can of sardines. But then, he supposed Quirrel didn't want to know about silly things like raiding the kitchens every week and stealing Draco's post for a year or so – "Go mad, probably," he said, before he could really think about it. Quirrel looked shocked, but Antares bravely went on – he'd read about something like that in the temporarily lost Occlumency book, anyway, so it wasn't as if it mightn't be right – "I wouldn't be able to trust my own mum, for crying out loud. Not that I trust her that much now, but if I could muck around with her mind like that, I'd know what she thought of me, wouldn't I? And anyway, if I had a really bad nightmare –" Antares paused for a moment, ruthlessly suppressing all thoughts of the one he'd had last night – " – and got panicked that someone was thinking about killing me or something, and I tried to wipe their memory in the dream, it could spill over, couldn't it?"

Quirrel gave him an oddly hard look. "Y-your d-dreams affect your magic?"

"No," Antares said carefully, shrugging. "My mum's told me that really serious ones can, though." And she also told me never to talk to anyone about whether mine did or not – I definitely shouldn't have said that

"V-very knowledgeable, your m-mother," Quirrel commented, rising slowly from his seat and taking out his wand with a slow deliberation that raised a sense of irrational fear in Antares. "Now, h-how about that l-lesson?"

"No theory today, sir?" Antares asked, his fingers straying hopefully back to his wand. Quirrel nodded firmly, and Antares stood up, excitement building in him as he waited for his teacher to tell him what they would be practicing today.

"Y-you f-forgot someone," Quirrel said slowly instead, the colour starting to return to his pale face as he strode around the desk. "S-someone who might be able to e-erase m-minds as well…"

Antares, stepping out from behind his own little desk, wasn't sure he cared – he just wanted the duelling to start. His reply was a bit careless, but still hopefully polite. "Did I, sir?"

Quirrel nodded, coming to a stop just in front of the desk he'd just been sitting at. "The H-Headmaster."

Antares' eyes widened a bit. "But he hasn't ever…well, I don't think he's ever…"

Quirrel shrugged. "He has the p-power, of course."

"He wouldn't care, though," Antares said, hope colouring his tone a bit more than he wanted it to. "And anyway, he doesn't know about these lessons, does he?"

"W-who can t-tell?" Quirrel replied, shrugging slightly again. And then his wand moved, if only slightly, signalling to Antares that their conversation was over – "Tarantallegra!"

"Adimo," Antares half-shouted at the same time, getting ready to dodge the irritating hex if the deflecting spell didn't – but it did, to an extent, tugging briefly at Quirrel's wand so that the Tarantallegra went off course, and Antares had a moment to fire off a Stinging Hex as strongly as he could, aiming for his teacher's wand arm. Quirrel flinched, bringing a bit of a silly grin to Antares' face, as it was rare even now that his hexes reached Quirrel, let alone had any effect on him.

"Nicely done," Quirrel said, blocking the Leg-Locker Curse Antares sent at him next with a rather negligent wave of his wand. "Don't attack or try to block for a few minutes – practice the Adimo instead –"

Antares did, and poured as much of his concentration as he could into dodging and trying the Deflection Hex again and again, but every time he moved, Quirrel seemed to be incanting something else, and all his cries of "Adimo!" were for nothing. Just as things were beginning to blur a bit behind the sheer determination to get the spell right again, just once, Antares suddenly felt a flicker in the back of his head, as if –

As if someone was trying to get into his head, or was already in his mind, somehow.

He's cheating, the bastard, Antares thought, furiously, around the unpleasant shock of the Stinging Hex that had just hit him when he paused in surprise. Not bothering to look in Quirrel's direction, he thought hard of darting behind one of the desks to use it as a shield even as he went the other way, and the red beam of the Disarming Charm flashed at that desk, sliding it back along the stone floor a little way. Eyes narrowing slightly, Antares began to do the same thing over and over again, thinking out small strategies and points and not using them even as he carefully examined his mind for where that irritating flicker was coming from. A few minutes later, Antares was starting to have a headache, and Quirrel seemed to be starting to catch on to his strategy, and he was no nearer to finding the specific part of his mind that Quirrel was watching or looking into, and Antares abruptly decided it was time for something else.

"Mordeo," he hissed, relishing the look of surprise on Quirrel's face as the hex hit him.

"I said d-deflect, not attack," Quirrel said, sounding amused as he casually fired off a Stinging Hex that almost made Antares drop his wand. It couldn't have been a coincidence that the flicker grew into a nagging throb, or that Antares suddenly found himself thinking of Snape momentarily again. "D-Don't just s-stand there – d-do it. Mordeo!"

The second Stinging Hex made Antares catch his breath, but only for a moment. Two could play at this stupid, invasive game – "Adimo!" Antares shouted, even before Quirrel could mouth the next spell, and then, as Quirrel's wand almost whipped out of his hand with the force of the spell – "Legilimens –"

Quirrel stared at him in shock, and for a minute, the whispered spell, sliding over the confusing, incomprehensible surface thoughts in the man's mind, took firm hold of a wriggling, tiny thread of association – something obscure and somehow to do with the weight of the turban – and tugged –

"Finite!"

Antares staggered back, his head swimming from the sheer force with which the association had been wrenched from his curious mind. The expression on Quirrel's face was angry, but overlain with a strange, intense look that Antares didn't understand and, seeing the abrupt way Quirrel lowered his wand, suddenly didn't want to understand. "W-what was that?"

"You started it," Antares said, nervously, angrily. "You didn't say you were going to try to look into my head –"

"It was p-p-part of y-your practice," Quirrel said, almost spitting the words out, looking like he was struggling with something. "Y-you should b-be able to d-def-fend your mind d-during a duel…" But Antares, though he lowered his wand, didn't think for a second that that was just it. Quirrel had asked and asked and asked him about Snape, despite seeming to know more about the man than Antares did – it didn't make sense that Snape's ugly, angry face would be the first thing he went for while prowling around on the surface of Antares' thoughts. Unless he thought that it led to something else that he wanted to know – something else Antares had evaded questions and more questions about ever since the start of the winter term – "Are y-you l-listening?"

"If you want to know something, you should ask," Antares said, trying to sound more injured than he really felt. Right now, with the way his head was starting to ache, he could only think of a couple of things Quirrel could want to know about him very badly – his mother, and his blood status, which Antares had heartily avoided talking about, just in case Quirrel was the sort of person who would care. Could he afford to give up the latter so that the nosy bastard would just – wait. Wait. Antares looked down almost in reflex as the thought of silver folds ran through his mind – perhaps Quirrel had gotten tired of not knowing exactly why Antares wanted Occlumency. If it was about that

"Where d-d-did you learn th-that spell?" Quirrel said, suddenly, placing his wand on the desk in front of Antares – the one he'd shoved about with a Disarming Charm, incidentally – and staring down at him, a very serious look on his face.

Antares snorted despite the panic starting to well up in him, hardly believing his ears. "I don't think you know who you're teaching, Professor." He looked up then, deliberately, having sunk all thoughts of silver and the Cloak into a morass of vague longings for money and wealth, and saw that Quirrel's expression was only growing more hostile, more affronted. "Did you think I wouldn't even try to find out more about what Snape was doing to me?"

"You d-did not ask me," Quirrel said, eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"The same reason you didn't ask me what you wanted to know just now, I should think," Antares said with a sinking feeling, trying hard to keep his frustration out of his fairly level answer. He realised, now, that he probably should have, to make everything look more natural – then again, he'd known even before he'd thought to see if Quirrel knew about Occlumency, and had needed to know to learn with Blaise and Tracey, in any case. Next time – "Ow," Antares couldn't help from exclaiming, then. Oh, just great, my burns are bloody itching again, he thought, fidgeting and trying to look at Quirrel's ear instead of his eyes as inconspicuously as possible. For some reason, his burns seemed to flare up a lot more often now, and were horrible to live with after a hard session of Occlumency with Quirrel and –

"W-where did you f-find the spell?"

"Books in the library," Antares said negligently, starting to feel very itchy and impatient, not to mention unnerved by the overly serious way Quirrel was taking this. It wasn't like he'd even seen anything in the irritating man's mind, was it? "Anyone can find them if they look hard enough –"

Quirrel leaned forward a little, a move that might have been menacing if not for the way his turban was beginning to slip precariously over one ear. "Anyone, you s-say – in-including your f-friends?"

"Excuse me?" Antares said, blinking hard, his heart suddenly thudding faster than normal. I never said – oh. Thank Merlin, I can get out of this… "I don't remember saying that, for some reason," he continued, shifting into the tone in which he'd previously expressed his conviction that Snape was doing something odd to him.

But Quirrel didn't seem to be listening or even preparing to go after the thoughts of Antares' friends learning Occlumency with him – the thoughts Antares was now layering in longing and uncertainty and firmly attaching to the thread of association that linked almost all of his dreams together. "I-I-I believe I t-told you to k-keep this s-secret," Quirrel was saying, instead, now pacing a little in front of his desk and looking a little wild about the eyes, as if he believed that Antares had somehow been tricking him or been conducting large meetings of students wanting to learn Occlumency, or was somehow in league with Snape.

As Quirrel continued to mutter about secrets and Antares not being discreet, his expression began to layer over with panic, and his eyes drift far away, perhaps remembering one of those whispered, accusing conversations Antares had spotted him having with Snape in the courtyard at least three times. In any other situation, Antares might have pitied him – after all, goodness knew what Snape might do to Quirrel if he found out about the continued lessons. But now, his back itching fiercely, almost in time with his aching head and slightly throbbing knee (which Antares had banged on a desk while dodging under the influence of a horribly persistent Jelly-Legs), Antares could do nothing but lift his chin and seek, calmly and defiantly, to draw the line. Quirrel seemed to have forgotten very conveniently that what he was teaching Antares was illegal without an appropriate instructing license, and that the way he was teaching Antares was even more so, as Antares was underage. It was time he remembered.

"I really don't know where all these strange suggestions are coming from, sir," he said deliberately, watching the colour drain out from the pale professor's face as he spoke with great satisfaction. "I didn't say anything about my friends – I remember telling you how I found out about the incantation, but –"

"I – I suppose y-you're r-right," Quirrel faltered, obviously restraining himself from saying anything else. Antares shrugged slowly, restraining a slightly vicious grin as he realised he'd just said that much in the same way he'd told his tales of mind-raping woe to the professor months ago. "I d-don't know how I've b-become so p-paranoid."

"Neither do I," Antares said. After a moment's pause, he couldn't help adding, as innocently as possible, that "The way Professor Snape's been bothering both of us recently – maybe it's all rubbed off on you?"

Quirrel laughed shakily, fakely. "I-Indeed – Severus c-can be m-most persistent."

"Yeah," Antares said, not missing the sharp look that Quirrel sent his way as he said so, shrugging. The clock behind the professor's desk chimed softly, and Antares' eyes widened a bit as he spotted the time – it was almost four o'clock, and nearly time for tea. "Wow, look at the time – should I go?"

Quirrel stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, then nodded, turning away and heading for the large desk. Antares heading slowly for the door, remembered briefly that the professor had said something about giving Antares a complete list of all the spells Quirrel had taught him since the beginning of the year. But, risking a quick look and slightly fake smile back at Quirrel, he decided not to chance mentioning –

"W-wait, boy," Quirrel said, then, stopping him in his tracks. Antares felt the strange urge to see if the door wasn't locked before he turned his back on it to return to his teacher's desk, but he suppressed the feeling somehow, walking quickly and trying to look unconcerned as he approached the desk, which now had a neatly bound roll of parchment in it. "There – I-I took the l-liberty of a-a-adding some extra, f-for your s-study." Quirrel picked up the scroll and leaned forward, almost shoving it into Antares' hands.

Antares gritted his teeth at the sharp pain of a slight cut where the ridiculously sharp-edged parchment had dug into his hand, and carefully extracted the slightly crumpled, older pieces of parchment that Quirrel had given him earlier on so that they wouldn't squash the fresh roll. Tucking it into the now nearly empty pocket, he briefly examined the slightly bleeding cut, ignoring Quirrel's stammered apologies.

"…s-sometimes m-my trimming sp-spells are too good," he was saying now. Antares nodded, mumbling a somewhat irritated 'yes, sir' as he turned away, but not before Quirrel's anxious tone could catch his attention and stop him in his tracks again. "Y-you won't b-be needing those anymore, w-will you?" Quirrel said, standing up slowly. "Here – m-might as well let me d-dispose of them –"

"I have notes on them," Antares said almost immediately, looking down at the crumpled sheets, almost able to hear Bella's voice telling him never to give away things he wrote on to strange people. After all Quirrel had done today, Antares was strongly inclined to count him as one of those – "Can I keep the ones I put notes on, or…?"

"B-but of c-course," Quirrel said, pausing in front of him, the expression on his face a little too curious for Antares' taste. Antares, who had just started leafing through them to see if any were not written on, suddenly saw that out of the bottom two pieces, which he knew were clear of notes, one had a tiny smear on one side that was already darkening and drying – his blood, the little that had come out of the cut. "Ah, th-that one –"

"It's got notes on the back," Antares insisted, not bothering to turn either of them over in that direction as he folded all of the notes together. There was no way, no way he was letting that bit of parchment out of his sight, not with any of his blood on it –

"I don't s-see any –"

"On the back," Antares repeated, squeezing and roughly stuffing the notes into his trouser pocket, more so he could easily reach his wand than anything else. The way that that roll of parchment had cut him just enough that he bled a little on that last bit of parchment was far too much of a coincidence – "I'd better go, Professor."

"True," Quirrel said, his eyes strangely hard. Not wasting a moment, Antares headed for the door, his heart beating faster than it had a right to as Quirrel called out again. "S-sure you c-can meet next week? My schedule will be –"

"Can't," Antares said, firmly, a sickly sort of relief piercing him as the door opened under his slightly shaking hand. "I've got some essays and everything."

"Pity," Quirrel said quietly. Antares nodded quickly and fled, trying to keep himself from running outright until he was well out of sight of Quirrel's office. By the time he'd reached the dungeons, he was breathing hard and trying to think about why on earth the way Quirrel had been looking at him at the last had panicked him so much. He still had no definite answer as he walked into the Common Room, feeling dazed and still a little out of breath as he headed quietly for Blaise and Tracey, who were now arguing over a rather violent-looking game of chess.

Blaise noticed him first, being the type of person that never paid much attention to his game unless he was losing – which, as Antares saw on his approach, he certainly wasn't. "Hey, Antares – what took you so long?"

"Everyone else's already gone for tea," Tracey said crossly, looking up from her avid perusal of the board between her and Blaise with a scowl. "Wait – are you –"

"No, I'm not all right," Antares said, flopping down into a chair not far from them. "Is there anyone in our dorm, Blaise?"

"Don't think so," was the cautious answer. Without another word, Antares struggled to his feet and headed for the corridor that led to the dormitories, ignoring Blaise's irritated exclamation as he left. As he'd hoped, they both followed him into his and Blaise's dorm, and gave him surprised looks as he shut the door and locked it after a cursory check of Ted's thankfully empty bed.

"Sorry, but I couldn't chance someone hearing us out there," Antares said, sighing as he sat down wearily on his bed.

"But there isn't anyone –"

"Someone could have come in," Antares insisted, digging out the crumpled notes from his pocket as well as reaching into his robes for the roll of parchment, which was still pristine. "Feel the edges on this, go on –"

Blaise yelped as it was thrust into his hand. "Ow! Antares, is this some kind of sick joke?"

"Quirrel just did that to me," Antares said, ignoring the angry look Blaise was giving him as he nursed his hand, having eagerly given up the roll to Tracey's careful, curious hands. "Did it cut you?"

"Almost – what where you thinking?"

"Quirrel did that – shoved it into my hands at the end of the lesson, and then –" Antares dug out the bloodstained bit of parchment with some difficulty – " – he tried to get me to give him this, so he could 'dispose of it'."

"Antares, I don't see –"

"Tracey, it's got my blood on it! Look, there, on the side –"

Blaise grabbed Antares' shoulder as he practically thrust the parchment in Tracey's face, shaking him firmly. "Calm down, for crying out –"

"But is it just me, or isn't that fucking fishy?" Antares said easily wrenching loose of Blaise's grip. "And god, the lesson –"

"Maybe you should start from there," Tracey said, tartly, and Antares, sighing in equal parts frustration and relief, did so.

Silence hung in the air after he finished – a nervous, tense silence that Antares could not bear. "I'm not being stupid about this, all right? He was –"

"We know, Antares," Blaise said, almost gently. "You're right, Quirrel was acting really weird."

"Yeah," Tracey said, a little lamely. She was still staring down at the bloodstained bit of parchment and turning it over in her hands, the expression on her face one of fear and disbelief.

Antares drew in a deep breath, and finally made himself say what he'd been thinking all the way down to this dungeon, all the way into this room, all throughout this conversation. "I'm not going back. I'm not doing those lessons any more."

"Antares –"

"Snape was right," Antares said, not heeding the alarm in Blaise's voice, "He was right, Blaise – there's something off. I don't know what it is, but it's off, it's wrong, and I'm not going to be alone with that stupid bastard and his stupid turban again if I can help it."

"But what about the spells, and the Occlumency?"

"I'm not an idiot, I can study spells on my own," Antares shot back hotly. "And you two are doing just fine without him, aren't you? I get the worst headaches after Occlumency now, don't I? I get to have my back feeling like it's on fucking fire after every fucking lesson with that –"

"Antares, even if Quirrel is a bit twisted, he wouldn't make your burns itch like that on purpose," Tracey tried to say. "I mean, he doesn't even know you have them, does he?"

"If the way he just snuck into my mind back there is any indication, I don't think I can say," Antares said, his shoulders sagging even more. "I hate him – you don't know what it felt like, just being cheated against like that –"

"Wait, you think he tried to collect your blood for some reason, and you're angry because he cheated at a duel?"

"It was the way he did it," Antares said sullenly, scowling as he scooted back further onto his bed. "If he wanted to cheat, he should've just blocked me or something – I'm not that good. Not like I was hurting him, or anything, was it?"

"You said he flinched at that Stinging Hex, though," Blaise pointed out, unhelpfully.

"I can count on one hand how many times I actually hit him with something in that duel, Blaise, for goodness' sake –"

"We're starting to run in circles, you two," Tracey said firmly. "The real question is what Antares is going to do –"

"I'm not doing anything, all right? I'm not going back!"

"I didn't say you were going to!" Tracey half-shouted back, her face reddening with frustration. "I'm just asking how you think you're going to keep away from Quirrel when you're an Apprentice, and you have to –"

"Snape," Blaise suddenly said, quietly. Tracey glared at him, but he gave back as good as he got. "If Antares tells Snape –"

Antares' mouth fell open. "If Antares does what? Blaise, you're joking!"

"Snape'll know how to deal with it," Blaise said, determinedly, ignoring the hard look Tracey was giving him. "Quirrel's still afraid of him, isn't he?"

Antares opened his mouth to retort to that, but stopped, remembering the wild look in Quirrel's eyes as he'd paced and muttered about being betrayed. It was actually a quite a good idea, if he could pull it off.

No, scratch that. It was a brilliant idea, as it would make sure Snape trusted him more and might therefore even leave off the watching, narrowed eyes and the frequent piercing searches of Antares' mind. It could work. It would work.

"Look at him," Blaise was saying, lowly, in an amused sort of tone. "See the wheels turning around in his head –"

"Shut up, Blaise," Antares said automatically, but he already knew what he was going to do, as soon as the Easter hols were over – as soon as Snape came back. "I'll do it, all right?"

"I knew you'd see it my way," Blaise said, smugly, and it was all Antares could do not to smile. Despite the ache in his head and the fading itch between his shoulders, everything would be fine.

At least, he hoped so. Thankfully, he had all the rest of the holiday to prepare a good story, and to drill it into his head and into the web of associations that now clung to the thought of Quirrel's name.

Antares smiled, then, determinedly. Everything was going to be all right.


A/N: Well, well, well. That was an exciting write – hope it was a good read, y'all. In the next chapter (Chapter 19: Murky Doings), I sort of get back on the canon road, wink wink, nudge nudge.

Oh, and if I manage to finish AST year 1 before I go on a brief summer hiatus? I might just give you my in-chapter writing notes for chapters 17 to 21, as well as a nice fat excerpt from one of Antares' Occlumency books – the history-ish one. Comment with your opinion, plz, and see you next week!