I'd managed to completely avoid Maeve for the first week and a half, save for our brief public standoff on the train. While I felt like I needed to ultimately do something about her, I didn't know what. I was really good at problems that everyone agreed it was okay to throw dangerous spells at. Death Eaters, werewolves, vampires, and basilisks, no problem. Beautiful young women for whom I was the only one to have a proper understanding that they were up to no good? Those were significantly harder to solve.

I mean, I might have a real problem even if everyone agreed it was okay to try to set her on fire. I wasn't exactly sure where I picked up my weird chivalry thing, but I knew it was wrong to hit girls. Even if they were immortal eldritch entities with machinations inimical to human life.

Of course, I hadn't even blinked trying to blow up Mavra, so maybe I only had a problem fighting pretty girls and that was a bias I needed to examine.

Regardless, my dithering avoidance of Maeve came to an end when I almost literally bumped into her in the hallway on the second weekend of the term. Turned out not even sidhe grace could make having to pace up and down the hallway three times to summon the Room of Requirement door less of a navigational hazard if someone else was coming. I'd just been going over to Ravenclaw tower to see if Penny wanted to discuss the potions essay, but now I was focused on something more important: what the elf with white dreadlocks and an illusion-thin punk aesthetic was up to this time.

"Why are you messing with that?" I asked. As conversation starters went, it was more school bully than righteous defender of the seventh-floor, but I was nonplussed seeing her there. I hadn't realized spreading it around to the professors would see Slytherins using our secret room. That was a good point, "Don't you have a cool room with a giant snake closer to your dorm?"

"Oh, is this Gryffindor's special room?" she asked smugly. Realizing I'd come unarmed to this verbal sparring match, she quickly rolled her eyes and said, "Prefect business. Didn't your friends tell you we've been assigned to try to make sure there aren't any other secrets in the castle that Sirius Black could use to gain entry?"

It was also funny, I noticed in passing, that she didn't really push the Irish accent when she was talking to me privately. Her voice took on a tone much more similar to my own American accent. She was very like a conversational mushroom, taking on the flavors around her. I think she even increased her height subtly to negate some of my ability to loom; she certainly seemed much shorter in mixed company.

My prefect friends had actually mentioned that they were tasked with exploring the castle, and I hadn't connected that it would give Maeve free run as well. "How'd you even get to be a prefect anyway?" I asked.

"Poor Nerys had such a hard time balancing her prefect duties and her OWL studies that she realized she needed all the extra time possible for her NEWTs, and relinquished the position." A door finally materialized for the Room of Requirement, elegant and painted in multiple shades of blue. "Coming?" She didn't wait for my answer before pushing her way in.

I wasn't sure if it was the innate command in her voice that I needed to learn to resist better, that I wanted a clue as to what she was up to, or just that I wanted to finish the argument, but I wound up following her into the room not knowing what she could get away with in there. "I bet you suggested that she needed to give up the duties, huh?" I asked.

"Friends, I understand, provide advice. And if she also came to understand that Malfoy patronage would see her in better stead than a silver badge when she graduated, where's the harm?"

The room Maeve had summoned was like walking into an Escher painting, or, perhaps more appropriately, like into the Labyrinth movie. Which, I guessed, was based on the same idea. The room was enormous, full of every possible variation of furniture all twisting in on itself to form different areas on the walls and ceiling, all broken by stairways leading to other doorways at impossible angles.

"Let me guess, you just tried to think of a normal sitting room and this is what your twisty brain spat out?" I asked.

"You're lucky you're still more useful to me alive than dead, Harry," she tossed back, playful tone fading as it usually did when I started actually scoring points. "Someday, you may see what's left of others who have been so insolent to me. But, no, this was mostly intentional, to see if I could stretch the capabilities of the room. It seems limited to providing furniture it actually has in its storage, because that wasn't what I imagined. And…" she tried to take one of the stairways that emerged out of the wall at the wrong angle and wasn't able to stand on it. "...it seems limited to gravity that reflects the rest of the castle."

It actually amazed me that she was thinking these things through scientifically. And it worried me, because I hadn't thought to test the room's limits like this. I wasn't even sure I could imagine a room request this involved. "It would have been a cool place to hang out, if we could have different groups on the ceiling," I admitted.

"But that's not all," she said, walking up one of the stairways that was oriented correctly to climb and throwing open the door at the top. "Observe."

I followed up so I could see through the door and my mind was blown. I recognized the back room of Honeydukes that the closed secret passage once emptied into. She'd just created a portal probably a half mile away into Hogsmeade. "How is that possible?"

She shrugged, closing the door. "Everything I just showed you is yours to share. I'll be telling the Head Girl myself. Think of how dangerous this could be with someone inside the castle controlling it, or if it could somehow be summoned from outside?"

I trooped back down the stairs, thinking of how this all could work, especially given how comparatively backwards ancient magic had been. How long had they labored to enchant this room, and then kept it a secret?

"But I have a theory," Maeve continued, walking over and leaning against an incongruous marble column that rose to "support" the room. "And that theory falls within your geas, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. From what I've observed, none would believe you anyway. That theory is that this room is an accident. A natural consequence of the intrusion of this school into the Nevernever. What they call 'wizard space.' They didn't create it so much as confine it. Thoughts?"

I nodded. I was actually kind of surprised to see Maeve thinking things through instead of just being a queen bee mean girl. The castle was full of space expansions that required pushing into the Nevernever, and that could create some kind of spatial imbalance that needed to be anchored and contained. "That would make sense."

She smiled, like a shark. "This space is the domain of the Nevernever. The wizards hid it. The wizards likely feared it. They forfeited it."

Before I realized what she was doing or could even consider stopping her, her left hand lit with blue, freezing flames and she used her index finger to sketch a fae rune on the column. It left behind a trail of ice and the black of frostbite.

"Witnessed by a wizard protector of Hogwarts, I claim this room for the Winter Court! So I say it, so mote it be!"

As my brain kicked into gear that I needed to stop her too late, I tried to dive toward her, but suddenly the Escheresque properties of the room surged, and everything twisted. Though she was only standing a few yards away, it was like she was across a great chasm, my feet leading me at oblique lines to where I wanted to go as the room suddenly fought my attempts to reach her.

"Thanks for your help, Harry. I couldn't have done it without you." The smug dismissal hurt more for knowing she couldn't lie. This hadn't been a chance encounter after all. "Don't worry, I plan to lease it back to the school at very generous rates. None of the students or teachers but you and I will even know anything has changed.

"And it will remain that way, because you can't tell anyone."

I felt the geas snap hold of my tongue. Where before the prohibition against sharing her secrets was subtle to the point that I had to test it to even notice, this prohibition was enforced. I could tell there wouldn't be any dancing around it or leading Luna or Mathilda to the truth with half-finished statements. "Just a representative, huh?" I scoffed at her, referring to her statement the year before about her intentions.

"It's hard to represent an institution with no power in it," she shrugged with languid nonchalance.

I should have just kept avoiding her.