Author's Note: This chapter has been rewritten as of January 2020 and the early plot points changed.
Chapter 6 – An Average Day at Hogwarts
"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."
~ Henry Ford
ECOTS
The rest of the train ride was uneventful.
They arrived in Hogsmeade after dark, the platform lit with twinkling fairies that darted playfully back and forth, lighting up the night in a cascade of pinks and purples. The pleasant scent of pine and forest was everywhere, floating candles lighting a path to the carriages for older years, and the lake for first.
Hagrid had explained it all to her weeks ago.
Students, still mildly drugged from the sleeping mist, stumbled out of the train and into the dark. A girl yawned, walking with her head on another, taller girl's shoulder, as if attempting to still take a nap. Hagrid stood over the crowd shouting instructions, and Kally tried not to think about how fake it all was.
Prefects had gone around from compartment-to-compartment eventually, assuring the students that the whole incident had just been a very bad, poorly timed practical joke on behalf of a student.
Draco Malfoy had just smirked quietly to himself, as if on a secret.
It had chilled her to her core.
She hurried away from the train and found the carriage Silverthorne was attached to. With a relieved breath, this thestral at least familiar to her, she ran her hand along the alleged dangerous creature's nose for a brief second.
He nuzzled her hand, a ghost of a smile touching her face.
Inevitably she hopped into the carriage. Draco Malfoy was right behind her, the wizard having followed her in relative silence off the train, wearing a mild smirk the entire time.
It wasn't until they reached the castle that she understood why.
Potter saw them disembark. He saw Draco, and Kally knew he did from the strange, unreadable look. It was like all expression had been wiped from his face, those ridiculously light eyes of his shifting from where she'd just hopped out of the thestral-drawn carriage and onto Draco.
And Draco smirked so coldly, so cruelly it sent chills down her spine again.
Potter said nothing. He didn't engage. Something clouded his eyes, like a long-brewing storm, and he'd stared Malfoy down for longer than was strictly necessary.
Then he'd left, disappearing into the throng of students heading in.
The red head he was friends with sent an incredibly dark look their way before following.
The brunette girl just seemed to sigh.
Draco though…Draco's eyes never left Potter's back.
He didn't look at her, nor make any indication that he'd just spent the last few hours with her. He merely let his eyes flash coldly, words a barely uttered sidebr. "Good luck with your sorting, Kalliandra. It'd be a shame if you wound up in a lesser House."
And then he was gone, Kally staring after them and wondering what that meant, and what the hell had just happened between those two to cause…well that.
Dragging a hand through her hair she was halfway up the path to the castle when a voice stopped her.
"Kally, right?"
Kally stopped so fast dirt plumed up beneath her shoes, the non-witch getting jostled by excitable younger years rushing past. That brunette had materialized out of the crowd of students, right alongside her, and the only way she could have done that was if she'd expressly waited for her.
The girl's expression though, while non-threatening, wasn't overtly friendly either.
Kally stepped out of the line of students and tilted her head at her, wary, curious.
The brunette's dark eyes scrutinized her right back as if she were a puzzle piece. She at least offered a slight, tight smile. "That is your name, isn't it? I heard Professor Lupin call you that. I assumed-"
With a shake of her head Kally nodded. "Yeah, it's fine." It took her a second to unearth the other girl's name amidst the melee of things that had happened - the past eight hours had been far from uneventful - but when she did her voice came out cautious. "Potter called you Hermione?"
The witch nodded, inclining her face towards the entry doors far ahead. "Yeah, I thought I might catch you before…" she paused as if searching for a tactful way to say something, before simply settling on, "Well before."
Kally didn't have to ask what she meant. Before she ran into Potter and they tore into each other? Before one of them hexed her, again? Before she tried to hex him?
Her shoulder still hurt from that stunner the red head had hit her with, barely a second after he'd realized she'd been the one to stun his friend. Not that she'd have been able to under normal circumstances. She wouldn't have stood a sodding chance against Potter had things been even remotely fair. The wand carefully tucked into her robes was ineffective. It didn't work. It had the barest traces of magic woven into it, but none of it came from her.
Except for stunning.
Stunning she could do. Stunning was electric, and that…
That was a little more simple.
But as for everything else…she had no idea how to fake this with a pre-magicked wand. It practically burned in her pocket. It was practically a toy.
Not that Potter's red headed friend knew any of that.
She glanced towards the castle again, uneager to move. She wanted nothing to do with it. It was overwhelming, all of it. And now, on her way to being surrounded by competent witches and wizards at all hours of the day and night, well…that overwhelming feeling was beginning to coalesce into something far closer to panic.
She wasn't sure she could pull this off. She wasn't sure at all.
She didn't have a choice.
"The trip here certainly could have gone better," Hermione stated, as if determined to make conversation. The witch's rueful gaze peered over the crowd, seeming in search of her two friends.
She let out a tense breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "No kidding," she remarked dryly.
The crowd of students filing past them was thinning, all the carriages unloaded and nearly all the students already up and filing through the castle doors. Hermione looked back, her eyes sharp and alert in the dark, and then glanced up the gleaming path of floating candles towards the castle itself. "Perhaps we should…?"
Kally drug a hand through her hair, nodding. "Yeah, sure."
They resumed walking up the path, and her steps felt like lead.
Each footfall thudded quietly against the packed dirt, and the warm candlelight spilled out in front of them, bobbing as the candles floated, drifting up and down on invisible air currents. In the distance the thestrals huffed breaths and stomped at the earth, the sounds more and more distant. And still neither her nor Hermione talked.
The silence and tension between them rivaled what she'd experienced with Potter. The difference was this girl eventually broke it.
"Please know, I'm not trying to criticize you," Hermione said abruptly, "but you could have made things a little easier. Particularly since this whole misunderstanding seems to be over something extremely trivial."
Kally was left with the distinct and immediate impression that this witch had been bursting to say that the entire time.
She wet her lips, her eyes drifting up the looming stonework, rising to the castle turrets that stood beneath the stars. "Yeah," she murmured, "you might be right."
"That being said, I understand why you did it."
Kally's eyes dropped down and darted towards her, honestly surprised.
"Don't look so surprised," Hermione said, but the witch didn't smile. She didn't even look at her. She just pursed her lips. "Harry's a bit too brave at times. If there were really that many of them, like Harry said there was, then taking all of them on alone wouldn't have been the best plan."
At that Hermione finally looked her way. "I'm just saying I'm glad he's okay, even if it meant you had to stun him. But you really could have gone about it in a more reasonable way."
Kally wasn't sure what to make of that honestly, so she nodded, saying, "Alright. So…why exactly are you telling me this then?"
Now the bushy haired girl seemed abjectly confused. "I'm a Prefect," she said, as if that explained everything. "Part of my job is to keep the peace during the school year. And Harry's my best friend."
"Oh."
There really wasn't much else to say to that. They reached the stairs to the castle, and feeling a ball of tight nerves within her stomach Kally sucked in a breath and climbed them.
Silently they joined the throng of students shoving their way towards the Great Hall.
That was until Hermione began asking questions again.
"Do you know if you are being sorted with the rest of the first years?"
Nearly tripping over a kid small enough to have been one such first year, Kally nodded mechanically. "Unfortunately."
A pensive frown crossed the brunette's face. "You don't sound excited."
Throwing a wayward glance the girl's way, Kally asked, "Would you be? I'm going to stick out."
Mounting the entryway stairs simultaneously, she saw the corner of Hermione's mouth crook up in her peripheral vision, as if hiding silent amusement. "You are twice their height, so I suppose that is an accurate assessment."
Instead of responding, Kally began grumbling something indecipherable under her breath.
Hermione responded by allowing what may have been a smile to cross her features. "They really are nice if you give them the chance."
Somehow she felt severely doubtful about that, but something of her thoughts must have shown on her features, because Hermione was interjecting before she could even formulate a response.
"We didn't get along at first either," Hermione said, their feet reaching the top. "To be blunt, it took a troll trying to take my head off for us to begin getting along."
Kally stumbled, her hazel eyes darting over to the girl with something akin to horror dancing within them. "What?"
There were trolls. Living, breathing, literal trolls.
Then again, she'd spent the summer in a part-giant's cellar. This really shouldn't have surprised her.
Now there was no mistaking it. Hermione really did look amused. The girl smiled at her, chuckling slightly. "Like I said, give them a chance. Especially since you already seem to know Professor Lupin-"
"He's not a Professor anymore," she said, the correction automatic at this point. She'd heard Remus make that correction himself more than once.
Hermione frowned, continuing, "…and Hagrid." She paused. "They're all close you know."
Kally honestly had no idea how Hermione knew she knew Remus. She wasn't even certain she wanted to ask, but did anyway. "So what makes you think Remus and-"
Hermione quirked an eyebrow. "The train," she said, as if it were undeniably simple. "You looked as worried about him as Tonks did. Not to mention he handed you something before he left to check on the other compartments and you were both already familiar with one another's names. It's not what anyone would call subtle."
"Oh."
Hermione simply waited, scrutinizing her quietly.
Suddenly she understood what was going on; Hermione was fishing. She was trying to get information out of her, and she wasn't certain how she felt about that. So Kally simply came to a dead stop. "You're not the portrait of subtlety either. If you wanted to ask me something you could just come right out and do it."
The witch looked mildly startled, her mouth opening as if to say-
Whatever it was, she never got the chance to.
"Ms. Granger, I would think you had someplace to be, and if you delay any longer it will be twenty points from Gryffindor."
The voice had come from directly behind them, the forcefulness of it muted by the echoing of excited chatter from students trying to cram through the Great Hall's looming doorways.
Instantly Kalliandra recognized it. She had met the man on a few occasions, and he had seized the chance to remind her how absolutely impossible it would be for her to ever gain competency in Potions.
He seemed particularly irate that Remus had been teaching her this summer.
As such, she stopped immediately, spinning on her heel. Hermione simply snapped her mouth shut, nodding. "Yes Professor Snape." The witch gave her one last look, this one almost kind, before she disappeared amongst the throng of students.
Snape said absolutely nothing until she was out of earshot. Once she was his dark eyes lowered, his eyes dark as night. "I trust you are remembering discretion. Particularly where students like Ms. Granger are concerned," he said lowly. "Some here fancy themselves as know-it-all competents, when they are anything but."
Kally wet her lips, nodding. "I'll remember."
"See that you do."
And then a woman with an austere bun called any 'new years' into the Great Hall to be sorted.
Fun.
ECOTS
"So? What'd you find out?"
Ron was as subtle as a brick to the head, and Hermione's sharp look seemed to agree as she sat down with a sigh.
"Not much," she said pensively. "Honestly, she seemed a bit bothered that I was fishing." Her brown eyes flickered to where the first years and Kaylens stood, waiting to be sorted. She looked bothered.
Ron just frowned. "Wasn't the point for her to not know that's what you were doing?"
"I'm hardly a trained spy, Ron…"
Harry thudded both elbows onto the table, rubbed his temples, and stared at the cutlery beneath his nose. Then he contemplated picking it up and stabbing the table with it. Really, it seemed like it'd be grand stress release.
On the train Malfoy had been in one of those masks; he knew he was. He knew Crabbe and Goyle had been in the other two. The fourth was anyone's guess, and part of him would think it'd been Kaylens had she not been very obviously with him at the damn time.
Then again, after she'd stunned him, who the fuck was to say she hadn't gotten the hell up, walked back into the compartment and joined them? After all, she'd left their train compartment awfully damn quick, as soon as Lupin had left, and Malfoy had found her rather quickly in that hallway.
She'd probably been going to meet him.
Death Eaters were now students…
Harry felt sick.
He'd relayed what had happened to Ron and Hermione, and they'd wasted no time strategizing. Hermione had been logical, suggesting they try to find out what they could from her, see if she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time or if she was really up to something. Ron had been of the firm opinion that there couldn't be that many coincidences. Hermione had been quick to point out that there could be, particularly if she was actually, honestly a new student and didn't know to avoid the children of Death Eaters.
He couldn't get her eyes out of his head. That strange shade of golden-hazel, but that wasn't what had caught his attention.
No.
It'd been how scared they'd looked in that damn corridor when he'd accused her of wearing a mask.
His skull gave a hard, sharp throb and he squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth as the conversation drifted back in.
"Slytherin..."
"Ron if you say that one more time..."
"Hermione you saw how vile she was," he hissed. "She's gotta be."
"She is not vile!" Hermione whispered back, strangely sharp for being so quiet. "Nervous, yes. Vile, no. We don't really know anything about her yet, Ron. For all we know-"
"You cannot tell me that there is not something inherently sinister about her," Ron challenged. "Something's not right there. She's going to wind up an evil Slytherin, probably waiting to-"
Before Ron could embark further along his psychological road trip, Hermione cut him off tiredly. "Just because someone is in Slytherin does not make them inherently evil."
"Seriously?" the Gryffindor Keeper fixed her with a look.
Hermione's face visibly tensed, and Harry pried his eyes off that rather nice looking knife to see how she'd dig her way out of that one.
"You can't pigeon-hole an entire house. Besides, Slytherins are goal oriented and strong willed. They might be a bit abrasive, but it's because they won't let anything get in their way of getting what they want."
She sounded like she was reciting an excerpt out of Hogwarts a History.
"Uh huh," Ron said, skeptical as fuck.
Harry was inclined to agree, given even he could tell she didn't fully believe what she was saying.
"How about," Hermione said, "we just watch the sorting and go from there?"
"Slytherin."
A loud sigh.
Ginny slid onto the bench across from him, quirking an eyebrow. "They're still at it then?"
"You have no," he muttered morosely, "idea."
The sorting started not long after that, Harry blocking it all out as his head continued to give loud, dull throbs.
ECOTS
Ultimately Kaylens got sorted into Gryffindor.
Harry contemplated punching things. Lots of things. The table would be nice, but Hermione might notice if he sent food flying everywhere.
And to make matters worse Hermione – soon as she got over her shocked expression - had waved Kaylens over to them, shooting both he and Ron meaningful looks before gesturing for the witch to take the seat next to her.
The hazel-eyed witch seemed hesitant, but that hesitance grew into full on…in truth Harry didn't even know how to describe her expression. Deer in headlights didn't quite cover it, but if you mixed a dash of scathing horror with a desire to run then that got closer to detailing what she looked like the instant her eyes landed on him.
Kaylens glanced between him and Hermione, as if looking for an escape route.
An irrational bit of ire reared its ugly head. Well, if she was going to be unsubtle about why she was hesitant to sit by them he might as well make it worse.
So Harry met her gaze and held it, quirking an eyebrow in silent damn challenge.
Kaylens went rigid. Gold held green, the witch breathing in deep, clearly working up her nerve for something.
Harry pointedly waited, and while he did that Ron noticed their little exchange.
"Don't bloody well encourage her," he muttered.
"I'm not," he said. "Just, you know, winning."
"Winning what?" Ron paused, his brow creased, and then a light bulb seemed to go off in his head.
His best mate gawked openly at him. "Shit Harry, please tell me you're not-"
"I'm not," he supplied quickly, too quickly. He wished Hermione hadn't insisted they sit at the end of the table. Just because she and Ron were Prefects didn't automatically make them the welcome committee did it?
Well apparently it bloody well did. It was why he was in this situation to begin with.
Ron was studying him with a disturbing amount of shrewdness, opening his mouth to ask something else, but Harry was spared by Kaylens making up her mind.
She walked purposefully towards them.
Ron saw, leaning in. "So what the hell are you trying to win?"
Every muscle in his entire body tensed as Kaylens got closer. "That," he said, turning back to his food. Round one went to him: he'd shamed her into sitting by Hermione. Granted he was fucking up his own welcome back feast, but hell, it was still a win.
At least it was until she failed to take the wide open seat next to Hermione, or literally any other free one on the extremely long bench.
Kaylens purposefully squeezed into the small opening – emphasis on small – on the bench next to him, squirming in to sit right beside him.
Ron openly gaped.
And then dropped his spoon.
Potatoes flew everywhere.
Harry wasn't doing much better. He scowled straight ahead and felt his grip go rigid around the fork he was holding. It was a marvel the thing didn't bend in half there and then.
Ginny hissed like an angry cat. "Honestly Ron! It's cutlery. I would have thought by now you'd know how to use it!"
Whatever Ron snapped back Harry missed, but out of the corner of his eye he saw several napkins get thrown in the general direction of his best mate – presumably the impromptu food attack victims – one even whizzing past his own nose, but Harry didn't move. He must not move. Kaylens vision was based on movement. She wouldn't see him if he didn't move.
Or so he tried to tell himself.
Obviously that was wrong.
Kaylens shoved her elbow up against his and flicked her hair back, as if he'd not just invited her to sit there, but as if it were okay for her to invade his personal space.
It wasn't.
At all.
He also tried to not think about how much that impromptu staring contest was fucking backfiring as the bare skin of her arm brushed against his, Harry about damn near shuddering. He had to channel every favor that every dead relative he'd ever had owed him to suppress it. He managed to. Barely.
"Potter."
His jaw worked through several tense expressions. "Kaylens."
Hermione was already talking, launching right into her reception speech. "Welcome to Gryffindor! Myself and Ronald are your years house prefects..."
"Oh joy," Ron groaned, slumping forward onto his arms.
"…and we can help with your class schedule and…"
Harry didn't hear the rest.
He did, however, hear Kaylens; Kaylens who was clearly ignoring Hermione.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, finding that Kaylens was looking at Hermione, a weakly interested look plastered onto her face, but her words were murmured quietly out of the corner of her mouth, and they were directed at him.
"Ready to apologize yet?"
He scowled. "Are you?"
"Course not." She reached out a delicate hand, fiddling with an empty goblet. He tried not to notice how nice her fingers looked. "Just thought, you know, you might be. Now that you and your pet ginger have been fed and all…figured your blood sugar might have levelled out."
She practically whispered all of this, the witch glancing at him with a mischievous look, and Harry frowned. He frowned because he didn't entirely hate having her next to him, and he sure as hell should.
He also should be outright pissed at the words that had come out of her mouth.
Slowly, without giving her a chance to react, he leaned just a bit closer, muttering for her ears alone, "You know, you're a bit of a bitch." He was turned on the bench, his neck twisted back to speak near her earlobe – her rather nice earlobe – just like he would if he were trying to tell Hermione or Ginny something at the table and wanted to be quiet about it.
The difference was neither of them smelled like this.
Fresh rain and honeysuckle and something he couldn't identify filled his nostrils, and he knew instantly he needed to move.
He didn't. Not before Kaylens had matched his movements, tilting her head closer to his, and it took everything in him to avoid visibly stiffening.
"Feelings mutual," she said softly.
He felt her breath on his chin, Harry heaving one of his own as they sat close, close together on that bench. His chest felt strangely tight. "Grand," he muttered back, "so nothing's changed."
There was a pause, a half second of hesitation in the witch's voice, before she softly asked, "Did you expect it to?"
And the hell of it was…
She sounded curious.
Having her here, right next to him, he suddenly grasped what a 'dopamine flood' was. It was nearly enough to make him forget what she'd done. Nearly.
She'd hexed him in the back, sabotaged his attempts to help those hags, lied through her teeth in Diagon, skulked around Knockturn, and had told Hagrid he'd lied even after he'd had her back.
And then she'd spent the rest of the trip with Malfoy.
A hateful ball swelled in his stomach. No, he hadn't expected a damn thing to change.
Kaylens shifted and his body reacted without him even being conscious of it. His muscles went stiff, taut, his eyes locking onto hers. Her long hair glistened in the light of a hundred floating candles, near enough to almost tickle his face, and the two of them hovered, faces turned towards one another, eyes vaguely narrowed.
She was near and he wanted her gone.
But he didn't move.
Her eyes weren't just hazel. There were flecks of green and brown reflecting in that unnatural gold. A dark brown ring encircled each iris, her lashes impossibly long. When she blinked he was certain he'd feel them if she were any closer.
And from the way she was looking so openly at him, the slightest furrow of suspicion in her eyebrows, she was clearly assessing him right back.
He opened his mouth, prepared to hiss something dour-
Someone cleared their throat, and both he and Kaylens swiveled their attention away from one another to glare at whoever it was.
As it turned out, it was Ginny, Hermione, Ron, and a rather gleeful looking Dean Thomas. Neville was just staring at the two of them rather openly, Seamus was engrossed in his food, while Ron looked like he was about to be sick.
Dean just picked up a goblet and gestured with it between the two of them, wearing a disturbingly large smirk. "So," he said, "take it you two know each other then?"
Now Harry seriously did want to punch something.
ECOTS
Dinner couldn't go by fast enough.
Heart pounding faster than she'd like to admit, her and Potter had rather purposefully ignored one another the rest of the meal.
Too bad Hermione hadn't done the same. The brown eyed witch had looked between them both, aware of the antipathy going on, and with a pursed lip expression nodded to herself, before launching into a determined, and possibly scripted, history of the school.
At some point during this the dark skinned wizard, the one holding his goblet with all the joviality of a court gesture, had leaned back on the bench, shooting her a rather pointed smirk.
This was followed by a quick look between her and Potter, an eyebrow waggle on its immediate heels.
Kally glared. Scathingly.
The wizard shrugged, non-flummoxed, and promptly began miming Hermione. The witch talked non-stop throughout the meal, providing facts and tips about the school to all the new first years and herself. Kally barely listened, but every so often she'd hear Ron Weasley growling at the dark skinned wizard to knock it the hell off.
And that was how the rest of dinner went.
Less than an hour later Kalliandra found out his name was Dean Thomas.
She was crammed amongst the throng of students outside the common room, standing on her tiptoes to peer over the heads in front of her. She hadn't a sodding clue what could possibly be so important about a painting of what looked to be an over-inflated bad opera singer, but everyone was crowded around it.
As she'd later find out it was the entrance to the common room, and the Seventh Year Prefects had lost the password.
"Psst, new girl."
Kally twisted around, knocking into a wall-mounted oil lamp. With a hiss she grabbed it, only to hiss again as it promptly burnt her.
The thing swung dangerously, nearly swinging right off its hook when she jerked her hand back.
The dark skinned wizard's hand shot out and grabbed it, using his long cloak sleeve to stop it from burning him too. "Those are hot you know."
"Yeah," she hissed, "figuring that out."
He chuckled. "Well, not usually used to quite that reaction from the female sex, but hey, I'll take what I can get. Dean Thomas, by the way."
Still shaking her hand out, her fingers red and scalding, she shot him an annoyed look. Dean Thomas was unfortunately impervious to annoyed looks. He just tilted his head, a hint of a smirk forming. "Well?"
"Well what?" she asked warily.
"Do you want me to fix that for you or what?"
Kally stared at him, skeptical. In fact she took a single, deliberate step back, and that…
It only made him laugh.
Some cajoling and one cooling charm later and Kally found herself leaning against the corridor wall, shoulder-to-shoulder with Dean Thomas. After fixing her hand he'd graciously offered to 'protect her' from the 'dastardly relics of light'. They'd apparently been known to 'jump out and attack unsuspecting transfers, inflicting a bloodied mess of first degree burns in their wake.'
She hadn't been able to help it; it'd gotten a smile out of her.
"So," she said, glancing towards the front of the crowd, "is getting locked out of the common room on the first night normal then?"
Dean shook his head. "Nah. They usually wait at least a week before giving us the hard passwords. Though…" his dark eyes narrowed towards where the two seventh year Prefects stood, arguing over who exactly had been holding on to the password, "those two aren't exactly inspiring confidence."
"Great…"
"So," Dean said, drumming his hands on his legs while they waited for someone to find the password, "what's your name? Or shall we continue to chat till the end of our formative years referring to one another as you and hey you?"
She sent him an odd look. "Does everyone in this school ask for a person's name like that?"
"Like what?" He legitimately looked confused.
Draco Malfoy had done the same thing, so she tried to explain it. "You know," she shrugged, "offering a nickname instead of just waiting for the person to answer, like a sane person."
Both of his dark eyebrows shot straight up. "You realize you're in a school of witches and wizards that's full of ghosts?" He glanced around the corridor, as if looking for something sane to jump out. "Girl, there's nothing sane about it."
She sniffed, wryly, offering, "It's Kalliandra."
"Hrm..." Dean mused. "So where did you say you were from, Kal?"
She shot him a look at his 'shortening.' "I didn't," she stated, right as someone got fed up with the 'bleeding Fat Lady' and launched a shoe at it.
Dean's mouth turned up in a lopsided grin. "The natives are getting restless. Can't wait to see what they throw once they run out of shoes."
She blinked once, twice, then turned to gawk at him.
"What?" he said. "I'm a guy, and my ex is one of the people throwing shit. I happen to know she's got a great-"
She closed her eyes and groaned. "Stop. Please."
Dean just smirked. "What? Never heard of creative ice breakers before?"
She let out another feeble, quiet groan, and wondered if it would be overkill to throw herself over the railing. It'd look high, and she was pretty sure the stone several stories beneath would be nice and hard…
"Well, I did politely ask where you're from," Dean said, interrupting her fantasy. "You deigned to not answer."
"England," she said, very quickly, before he could start talking about what his ex looked like again. "I'm from England."
Dean tilted his head. "Care to narrow it down some more?"
"Not particularly," she said.
"Not particularly? So you're what, evasive?"
"With someone who's waiting for the student body to strip?" she said, incredulous. "Yes."
He gave a mock tut. "Got a particular reason for that?"
She looked at him as if he'd sprouted antlers. "Seriously?"
He grinned from ear to ear. "Asked didn't I?"
"Many…" she said carefully, and he shot her a feral grin.
This was obviously a game.
Strangely she didn't mind it, even if this wizard did seem downright certifiable.
Dean hovered where he was for a second, then straightened back up, drumming his hands on his legs. "So," he asked, feigning contemplation, "are there any safe questions to ask you? Or have the snarling red heads driven all sociability out of you?"
She shook her head, a small smile touching her face. "A few," she admitted.
"Care to share or shall I just guess until I get one you will answer?"
"I'll answer all of them. Whether I'll answer vaguely or not is the question."
"So you intend to be difficult then?" he observed, smile growing.
"If you wish."
Dean stopped for a moment, cracking his knuckles as if pondering his next plan of attack. "Well Kal..."
"It's Kally," she corrected. "I don't know you nearly well enough for you to start shortening it."
His mouth formed an O of victory. "Freely given information? A bit out of character for you isn't it?"
A breath of laughter escaped her lips. "How would you know?" she pointed out. "You did just meet me."
"Touché. So questions of location are obviously out of the question. Care to freely divulge anything else?"
"Yeah." She paused, scuffing the toe of her shoe against the stone while people milled about. "Why's everyone so obsessed with a portrait?"
Dean blinked at her for a second, and then a loud, boisterous laugh broke from his throat.
It was so loud that Hermione overheard. "That's the Fat Lady," she called around two people.
Kally deeply considered not engaging and just leaving. She hadn't quite finished being annoyed that the girl had tried to sneakily interrogate her. Ultimately she just shook her head, saying, "I can see she's rather…large. But why-"
"GOT IT!" shouted the seventh year Prefect. "The new password is blubber worm farshnickle!"
The entirety of the hall erupted in cheers.
There was also one more thrown shoe, but this one was launched in the general direction of the Prefect who had mucked it all up's skull.
Kalliandra caught sight of the portrait swinging open to reveal a tunnel of sorts, and staring down the dark entrance to a magical living quarters, she felt the walls closing in.
"And that," Dean said, oblivious, "is the entrance to Gryffindor tower."
Everyone swarmed forward - all the happy, chattering people, talking about their summers – and she and Dean got jostled into the moving sea of bodies.
It took everything in her to not turn around and run.
"Blubbery...No... Blubber worm farts...Oh no that's not it either..." a wizard named Neville muttered, effectively distracting her for the moment.
"Neville, why is it that you can memorize long, complex scientific names in Herbology but can't remember our passwords?" Hermione questioned, stepping through the portrait and casually waving to the Fat Lady.
Neville shrugged. "Herbology's easy. Farshnickers..."
"Farshnickles," Dean corrected, coming up from behind her, nudging her with his arm.
She managed a small nod, only listening with half an ear to Neville's continued ramblings.
"Farshnickles makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Now plant names actually have meaning behind them!"
"So does Farshnickles. In the second Goblin war…" Hermione started.
A collective groan arose from around them.
"Hermione! Most of us dropped History of Magic for a reason," Dean said, effectively silencing her as a guilty grin crept across her face.
"I do go a bit overboard sometimes, don't I?" Hermione mused aloud.
And at that precise moment several different voices chorused, "Yes!"
Hermione looked rather sheepish, but Kally's attention was already on the seventh year prefects who were explaining sleeping arrangements.
"Kally, you're in our dorm," Hermione informed as if reading her thoughts. "It's the third room on the left hand side. The girls are to the right, but I'll show you there later. All the upper years usually stay down here for awhile."
But Kally was already on her way there. She wanted to get away from them. She felt confined here, in the crowd, a slight panicky feel rising in her chest as the other Gryffindors chatted animatedly around her. So she did the only thing she could think of. She pushed past the others, mounting the stairs two at a time in her hurry to the dormitory.
The dormitory was mercifully empty.
With a breath she closed the door solidly behind her, leaned against it, and closed her eyes. She was doing fine. She was doing just fine so far. She'd keep it that way.
And then, because she was alone and she didn't know when she'd get the chance again, she slid a hand into her pocket to unearth the object Remus had given her, back on that train.
It a small, circular powder compact. It was unassuming, dark blue, and totally benign.
It was also glowing.
She snapped it open.
The glass inside, ordinarily a mirror, reflected back at her, only it wasn't her reflection she saw. Instead she saw another pair of hazel eyes shining back, a head of messy tawny-gray hair, and a rather age-weary face far too old for its actual years.
It was the first feeling of relief she'd felt all day. "Hi Remus."
ECOTS
Hours later Harry tossed and turned for the final time.
A half dozen dark things had infiltrated his skull and refused to get out even with a firm eviction notice, signed and stamped by his frontal damn lobe. Things were getting worse, not better, and he knew things were going to get a whole lot worse before it was all over.
The Order was next to useless.
They'd been there, on the train, and they'd still failed. What made it worse was that Dumbledore was still content to let everyone act like a bunch of ostriches with their heads stuck in the sand. The Professors had blatantly lied about the train gasing. Rather than telling the students what had actually happened, they'd lied. They'd called it an accidental prank gone wrong by a well-meaning and foresight-deficient student.
And now those part creatures were as good as dead.
Dumbledore had once stood before the school and told them what happened to Cedric. He'd told them even when the Ministry had forbid it. So he didn't get it. He didn't get why they'd do this.
He honestly had no clue, but the train ride and the Welcome Back feast were stuck in his head. And just for some added spice, when he managed to dispel that stomach-gnawing, ulcer-creating concern a whole new and different image filled his head.
Sirius: his godfather's face falling through the veil, again and again and again.
He hated this.
And then, right when he thought it couldn't get worse, Harry rolling over and punching his pillow, he felt the phantom feel of Kaylens squirming in besides him, pressing tight to his side, her scent, her warm breath ghosting against his ear.
She could be a Death Eater.
He had no clue how long he had been trying to fall asleep, but it was evading him. Ruthlessly.
Fuck it.
He sat up and shoved on his shoes with borderline violence. Then he got the hell out of the dorm, avoiding waking this dorm mates but only just. He didn't even know why he tried to sleep anymore anyway, other than the prospect of sweet-fucking-death if he didn't. But every time he closed his eyes and actually slipped into an unconscious state, like a normal person should, a cold green mist would eventually enter his head.
It was Voldemort, always Voldemort, clawing at his mind and demanding the prophecy or else.
That or else was always backed up with action. Always.
Harry always woke up the exact same way: scar burning, sweat-soaked sheets, and a half dozen new and traumatizing images of Death Eaters torturing Muggles. He filed them all away in that extra special part of his memory labeled 'the Riddle files.' It was right next to his 'fuck it all' file and the 'people I've gotten killed' box.
His skull gave a dull throb, the low-grade burning near ever-present now.
One of them was going to have to die before this was all over, and Harry had a very good idea of who it would be.
If his mood wasn't foul enough, seeing murder on a near nightly basis wasn't helping. At this point he'd seen over two dozen faces of Muggles and wizards dying, each unrecognizable to him, and each time he dreamed it as if it were him wielding the wand. Voldemort murdered them, hissing that it was his fault, that he was the only one who could prevent it, if he would just tell him the prophecy.
Voldemort killed them, yet Harry dreamed as if he were Riddle himself, as if the hate flooding his blood vessels and fueling that green light spilling from that bone-colored wand were all his.
And the scariest part?
The scariest part was that Harry had felt such raw, undiluted hatred so many times now, night after night, that he woke up with it still vibrating rawly in his veins. He knew with utter damn certainty that he could cast the Killing Curse without batting an eye.
And it would work.
With a tired, pained groan he drug a hand through his hair as he made his way down the stairs. He really needed to start sleeping or else he was liable to turn into a homicidal megalomaniac. Maybe he'd beg a house elf for a wizarding cuppa later. He'd heard coffee did wonders.
Then again, he was pretty sure that when he'd overheard Fred and George praising the glories of caffeine it'd been due to an all-night binder they'd gone on, snogging Angelina and 'some Ravenclaw' post Quidditch cup. Caffeine might not touch that whole 'Dark Lord in the head' thing he had going on.
He had to try something though. Even Hermione was noticing how wrecked he was, to the point that she'd started dropping casual hints that he might want to 'talk' to someone about it. The last time she'd brought it up Ron's mouth had been half-way through chewing on a bread roll, his best mate gaping.
"A shrink? You want to send one of those Muggle nutters in to play with his head?"
Hermione had hesitantly pointed out that it couldn't hurt.
Harry had nearly laughed in her face. He could only imagine where talking to a shrink would get him. A Muggle would either commit his ass or diagnose him with a phallic complex the moment he started mentioning words like 'wand', 'very large snakes,' and 'Dark Lords'. A wizarding one would just find some new and inspired way for the Wizengamut to charge him for conspiring to cause a wizarding world riot. His ass would be locked up in St. Mungo's Llewellyn ward so fast he wouldn't be able to so much as say 'Nagini.' He'd have a bed smack dab between Lockhart and Neville's parents and be forced to listen to a live rendering of Lockhart's literary adventures again and again until he invariably found a sharp object to off himself.
Then again, he'd heard thorazine came in vanilla now, so…small victories.
His skull gave a dull, hard throb, and he suppressed the temptation to bash it against the nearest railing. He knew the solution. It was fucking simply really: get better at Occlumency. Then again he'd tried that. Hell, he cleared his mind each and every night, but those pathetic attempts only seemed to work half the time now, so why fucking bother?
Besides, he was still sore from the battering he'd taken on the train today.
Fuck.
Every muscle in his body protested as he descended the rest of the stairs to the common room, ignoring the sympathetic looks the portraits threw him. He dragged a hand through his unkempt hair yet again.
At least he was starting up new Occlumency lessons tomorrow, and this time with Dumbledore. Maybe that would help, but he doubted it. He didn't exactly have a lot of confidence in the Headmaster's judgement, given the wizard had once thought Snape was the best suited to teach him after all.
Really, Snape was a thirty something year old wizard that still held a school-boy grudge against a student's long dead father, all because he'd wanted to fuck his mum and gotten friend zoned one too many times. If that didn't scream 'mentally incompetent' he didn't know what did.
Harry trudged across the common room, picking his way around random cups and papers that had been left scattered from the impromptu party. The dying fire tossed an extremely dim light out, cloaking the room in shadows and doing more harm than good when it came to actually seeing anything, and when Harry reached the couch he dropped down onto it. Its red fabric gleamed as if on fire, and he stared into the hearth, watching the dying orange embers rise into the air, the burning flecks cascading back down into the licking flames, burning tendrils that reached up for them.
It was almost peaceful.
"Couldn't sleep Potter?"
Well, fuck his life.
It was a mark of how exhausted he was that he didn't jump. His eyes drifted down to the source of her voice, finding her sprawled out on the hearth rug in front of the fire, a Muggle novel in hand.
How the fuck had he missed her?
He needed to sleep. Badly. At this rate Voldemort himself could probably break into the dorms and he wouldn't notice until he took an Avada straight to the back of the head. The thought made him more irritable, and every suspicion he had about the witch laying in front of him, the one that may or may not be in league with the bastard, stirred.
Problem was he was too tired to care.
"That transparent?" he asked dryly, cursing multiple gods in several cultures. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, muttering, "You need a fucking bell on you."
His eyes were closed, so he never saw the incredulous expression cross her face. "Why a bell, exactly?" She sounded like she already regretted asking it.
He willed the couch to open up and swallow him whole. "Because I'd hear you coming," he said tiredly, as if it were obvious. "You've got this bad habit of just showing up."
A quiet breath was hissed, and he actually chuckled darkly at how angry she sounded.
At least he wasn't the only one unhappy about this.
"Same could be said about you, Potter. Case you missed it I was here first."
He cracked one eye open to eye her, but she'd already turned away, staring determinedly down at her book. And it bothered him. Irrationally so.
"What are you doing down here, anyway?" he demanded, voice gruff with lack of sleep. He could think of a few reasons why someone, Death Eater or not, would be hanging out by a still burning fireplace in the middle of the night.
He would know; he'd spoken to Sirius more than once this way.
A shot of pain so raw and acute he'd nearly forgotten stabbed straight through his core.
Kaylens didn't notice. She just glanced over her shoulder, arching a delicate eyebrow at him. Her slender neck was exposed, her hair cascading over that pale shoulder as she looked at him in seeming amusement. "What's it look like?" She gave the book in hand a slight, sarcastic wiggle.
He shrugged, non-committal, and with a tired yawn leaned forward onto his knees.
"So what's troubling you?" Her voice broke into his thoughts, racking his already aching head.
"Besides you?"
"Besides the obvious." She had already turned back to her book, turning a light-weight page that fluttered slightly in some unseen breeze.
His elbows dug into his thighs, his head propped between his hands, and Harry narrowed his eyes, his gaze fixed directly onto her. "Nothing I would talk to you about."
She vaguely nodded, remaining propped up on her own elbows, lying on her stomach, her long legs stretched out behind her, giving no other indication that she had heard him. She looked completely and entirely serene.
This was insane. This utterly insane. He wasn't sitting in the common room, talking civilly to the witch that hat hexed him in the back barely twelve hours ago.
But he was; he really fucking was.
He then noticed a metallic glint upon her face that he had not seen before.
"You have glasses?" he asked, before he could stop himself.
Everything about Kaylens seemed to change, that calm serenity she'd had stiffening slightly.
And then she moved, removing her glasses and examining them with contrived interest. "Oh is that what these are?" she replied, feigning curiosity. "I was wondering what they were doing there."
Irritation wouldn't be a strong enough word. "It was just a question."
"Obviously," she murmured almost to herself, replacing the small frames onto the bridge of her nose. "Should I expect Hermione to be asking me why I have glasses in some round-about way later on then?"
It was like his muscles were being weighted down, Harry too tired for this. "It was just a question," he said, not bothering to deny what Hermione had been doing. "That whole feigning interest thing we're supposed to do for new people."
Her hands seemed to go very still on the book, her words equally so.
"Don't bother."
Something sounded off in her voice, and it bothered him. Like hell if he knew why. He didn't know anything about her, at least nothing good. He didn't know how Lupin knew her. He didn't know why she'd been in Knockturn that day. He didn't know whether or not she was or wasn't a Death Eater recruit. He couldn't even figure out if he wanted to hex her or not.
"Why'd you do it?" he asked, abrupt. He didn't have to clarify what he meant.
The train. The train where there'd been an attack. The train where he should have done more, but hadn't. The train where Kaylens had stunned him in the back, letting Voldemort take living, breathing beings to experiment on.
He didn't even want to think about what the snake could use them for, but from what Hermione said it didn't sound good.
Hell, the last thing any of them fucking needed was a Dark Lord who didn't age. He was bad enough as it was.
"Well?" he demanded. "Why?
The fireplace crackled, the scent of smoke in the air. It was pleasant, but not enough to ease the tension in him. Had he not been so tired he might have had it in him to be more pissed. But he wasn't. So he just sat on the couch and pointedly waited.
Kaylens lowered the paperback to the floor, setting it down, but she didn't deign to look at him. Instead she just spoke, sounding just as tired as he felt. "I told you already, Potter," she said, brushing her hair back behind her ears. "You were being an idiot. They outnumbered us and-"
"So you were saving my ass, is that it?"
"Actually I was saving mine," she snapped, shooting him a look. "You would have gotten us both killed, Potter, all because you have some sodding hero complex. It's like you didn't even think about what you were doing. You just wanted to rush in and save the sodding day. That's idiotic and suicidal and you managed it all before we'd bypassed bloody Surrey."
Harry stared at her in blatant shock. He hadn't expected her to admit that. But she had, and now for the life of him only one thing could come out of his mouth.
"How the hell are you not in Slytherin?"
She stared into the dying fire, her features screwed into something upset and fed-up, looking well and truly pissed. "Don't know oh-wise-one," she said, and she spoke in such a way that he knew she was mentally setting him on fire, "why don't you go put on that oversized dust mop and ask it?"
Then she snatched up her book, flipping through the pages so quickly it was obvious no human could read that fast.
There was a hell of a lot he could say, a hell of a lot he half wanted to.
In the end all he said was, "Are you even reading that?"
The tension in the air remained, but she took a deep breath, complacently telling, "I've read this book three times. I'm just skimming over the boring parts. If you read you'd know people do that."
"I read."
"If you're determined to proclaim your literacy to the whole House, maybe wait till morning?" she said, somewhat acidly. "Not everyone here is a night owl. Speaking of you never did say why you were up."
Harry deeply contemplated the merits of marching up to Snape and asking to be hexed for the week's duration. With a grunt he glanced at the clock. It read a quarter past three. "Couldn't sleep, obviously."
"I really don't think that's it."
A surge of annoyance daggered through him. She didn't know him. She had no place to tell him why he did or didn't do things. "Yeah, because you know me so well, Kaylens."
The witch stopped what she was doing and fixed him with a look. "You stomped your way down the stairs and flopped onto that," she tilted her head towards the couch, "before you'd even noticed someone else was here. You were distracted, not just tired, Potter. So yes, I think it's safe to say something's bothering you."
"And that couldn't have anything to do with getting hexed earlier could it?"
"You know I got hexed too. That red headed friend of yo-"
"Ron," he practically growled.
"Yeah, him. He didn't even ask why I'd hexed you."
"Of yes, because he's prone to giving people the benefit of the doubt when we were under attack. You hesitate and die, Kaylens. Or didn't you learn anything from nearly getting your head taken off by Borgin?"
She said nothing. She just held his gaze with that increasingly familiar look, upset and anger warring in her eyes, and his stomach dropped. But he wasn't done, far from it.
Every suspicion that he had about her warred in his stomach, and with icy certainty he leaned forward, making damn certain her attention was anchored onto him. "You never did tell me why you were actually there, Kaylens. On the same day that he was luring part-creatures there to abduct and take to Voldemort. Kinda how they did on the train, where you just happened to be too. Funny, that." He looked at her. He looked and looked and looked. And then he waited, giving her every chance.
But Kaylens said nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
His throat tightened. "Thought so."
He stood up, movements slow and measured and self-assured. Harry was fully ready to leave with the knowledge that he needed to stay as far away from her as possible, because of who he suspected she was, because of what he suspected she'd done, but he didn't make it a single step.
She was on her feet in seconds, red shadows flickering across her profile and revealing every centimeter of furious upset on her face. "You're right, I was there." Her book hung open, pages fluttered, one side of the binding clutched between her fingers as if she'd forgotten she even had it. "But you know who else was there? You were!"
And then she launched the book right at his head.
Harry ducked with all the speed of a professional Seeker, hearing it crash somewhere behind. "Kaylens, what the hell!?"
She stood there, simply stood there, her hands curled into tight fists and her slim figure silhouetted by the light of the hearth. Her golden hair cascaded around her shoulders, seeming ablaze in the fire's dying orange glow, and for a second she looked like an avenging goddess of war.
"Whoops," she said. "Must have slipped."
Harry seriously wondered when girls had gotten violent. This was a whole new chapter of 'dealing with females' that he hadn't been briefed on. "You're awfully sweet, you know that?" he said, sarcastic as fuck. "And you wonder why I said you were-"
"Me?" she demanded, eyes going wide in surprise. "What about you? How the hell do I know you're not one masquerading around in one of those masks in your down time, Potter?"
He stared at her, dumbfounded. "You're serious?"
Kaylens didn't bat an eye. "As you've so kindly pointed out I don't know you, so yes, I am."
"You're out of you mind."
"Yeah, well you're an idiot."
"What are we, five?"
"Well I would have gone with simpleton but given it's so many syllables, I didn't know if you could keep up."
"It's the same number!"
"Oh good," she said with saccharine sweetness, "he can count."
He gawked. "You're impossi-"
"I was scared!"
He stopped. Harry actually stopped long enough to realize they'd been shouting in the common room at quarter past three.
And she'd just admitted she'd been scared.
Every muscle in him had gone rigid, and they both stood there, staring at the other. The tension was so thick it was like a physical presence, Harry's breathing hard, rough.
And then Kaylens seemed to deflate, dragging a hand through her long hair in frustration, the gesture uncannily similar to him. "Just-just drop it, alright?"
He blinked. "I was just trying to talk to you, Kaylens."
"Then stop talking." The words seemed demanding, but it came out as more of a plea.
He wanted to. He really did, but his mouth opened without this permission and the next thing he knew he did the exact opposite. "You realize you're the one who started talking to me, right?"
"Unlike you I didn't want to accidentally risk seeing or hearing something that was none of my business," she muttered.
"You're really incapable of dropping things aren't you?"
"Better than being incapable of an apology."
"I tried..."
"Half-heartedly," she interrupted.
"Well you never gave me a chance to finish!"
"Aren't we supposed to be dropping this?"
His head pounded, scar throbbing in serious pain, and he lifted a hand to tug at his own hair roots. "Alright," he said flatly, "you want to drop this?" He ground down a swallow, teeth grinding. "Fine. It's dropped."
And then he turned to stalk the hell away, only for a frustrated breath – as if she were seriously thinking better of it – to stop him.
"Potter."
Her voice stopped him less than a pace from the couch and he sighed tiredly, turning to see what else she could possible want.
She looked deflated, rubbing her face tiredly. "Look Potter…" she murmured, trailing off.
Kaylens reached up to remove her glasses, the movement revealing several inches of exposed flesh as her night shirt slipped from her shoulder, her golden eyes surveying him with too many emotions to count.
Harry was furious. He was sick and suspicious and knew damn well she'd had something to do with all of it. He was as certain of that as he was of Malfoy being a Death Eater. But right then he couldn't have responded even had he wanted to.
Kaylens stood there in the dying fire light, shadows playing across the floor around her bare feet, a resigned tiredness tracing its way across her features.
He swallowed hard, his previous irritation replaced by nervousness as he willed his eyes to actually blink.
She took a step forward, towards him, her lips parting, mouth opening to say-
He never got to find out what.
The voice of Dean Thomas tiredly groaned from the stairwell, the wizard leaning with his back to the rail but his eyes focused firmly on them. "You know people are trying to sleep up there, right?" He hooked a thumb up the stairwell.
Harry wanted to punch things. Dean Thomas related things.
It didn't matter. Whatever it was that Kaylens had been about to say vanished, the witch brushing past them both and disappearing, the book forgotten on the floor. With a curse Harry stormed back to his, but Dean Thomas-
Dean noticed the old tome, and brow creasing low over his eyes retrieved it, frowning.
Then he tucked it under his arm and went back the way he'd come.
ECOTS
"This means war."
The next morning dawned cold and grey, and Harry had woken up with worms in place of hair.
Harry grimaced angrily as Ron continued muttering threats out the side of his mouth, the things growing from mildly creative to borderline concerning. Fortunately the new DADA Professor, Professor Tres Gai, was oblivious both to the death threats being issued right under his nose and to the looks of derision that Ron and Hermione were shooting back and forth.
If there was anymore heat there, misplaced anger or otherwise, he was going to hex their fucking lips together and get it over wise. For right now, Harry was just glad he had not made the mistake of sitting between them this time.
"I know it was her." Ron glanced at him and lowered his head. "It had to be. She put him up to it, right Harry?"
Harry tiredly grimaced even more. If he were honest he had better things to worry about than extracting revenge on Kaylens. Voldemort was back. He was killing liberally, like a child on a bloody skipping spree through Muggle London, and soon he'd have to face him. There were Death Eaters in Hogwarts, the Ministry was still an issue, and he didn't know if he could actually trust the Order.
Harry needed to get ready to fight. He had bigger, real things to worry about. He didn't have time to worry about whether or not his hair had been turned into worms on a damn prank courtesy of Dean.
Ron, however, thought otherwise.
From across the DADA classroom Dean Thomas leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head, and shot them both a smirk.
A rather large, smug smirk.
Harry scowled. Ron glared. Hermione shook her head, disgusted with them all.
Last night Dean had overheard his and Kaylens little exchange, and between that and the way 'he and Ron' had 'ignored and underestimated' Ginny for several years running, he'd determined a prank was in order.
So he'd taken it upon himself to deliver one. Hell, he'd even left a note.
All Harry cared about was the lesson he'd gotten out of it: he needed to put security wards on his bed.
"I wonder if I can deduct points for this," Ron muttered, stabbing his quill so hard that the tip broke off with a loud snap. Professor Gai glanced at them for a moment, while Ron quickly blotted the slung ink from his desk, yanking out a fresh piece of parchment for note taking.
"Brilliant idea Ron. Deducting points from your own house," Hermione said with an eye roll. "What's next? Hexing yourself intentionally?"
Ron suddenly lost interest in taking notes and began cracking his knuckles, muttering something about awarding detentions.
In response Hermione began hissing about abuse of Prefect powers, and had it not been for the fact that they were in the middle of their first DADA class of the year, Harry knew she would have spiraled out into an angry lecture.
Instead she settled on tutting so frequently that he was half tempted to throw his own ink bottle at her.
"So what do you reckon?" Ron hissed as Gai turned his back towards them, writing on the chalkboard. "You agree with me right?"
"He doesn't agree with you Ron. Harry, unlike you is much more sensible," Hermione whispered dangerously, drawing Dean's attention from nearby. "Kally said she didn't do it and Dean left you a note."
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one who woke up with fish bait wiggling on your head."
"Well maybe you both deserved it," Hermione whispered. "Did either of you ever consider-"
"Is there a way to paralyze someone's vocal cords?" Ron muttered.
"I'm...still...here..." she hissed.
"How could I forget?" Ron said, earning a sharp elbow from him in the side. Too late though. Hermione had heard and was glaring at them both as if they had just personally signed a court order condemning every house elf to a concentration camp.
He'd have to talk to them both later. Preferably separately. If this was going to work they couldn't be arguing every thirty seconds.
He still was having trouble believing that they were actually going to do this. Even harder to accept was the fact that it had been her idea. Sure, Hermione had loosened up a lot over the years, but he never would have thought, that out of the three of them, that she'd be the one to promote breaking the law in such a way.
He reached into his pocket, feeling the slip of paper to re-assure himself it was still there. He couldn't afford to lose this. Not that the chances were high of anyone understanding what it meant. But just in case, he would destroy the words that were scrawled in Hermione's meticulously neat handwriting.
But only one word really mattered.
Animagi.
ECOTS
Remus Lupin glanced at his pocket watch, seeing the large hand nearly three quarters of the way around its circular face. He had gotten so used to checking if Kally was trying to contact him, that it had become nervous habit to check the time frequently. He pondered killing his boredom by seeing what she was up to, but then realized that at half past eight she would probably be in the Great Hall stuffing her face as fast as humanly possible. Not an opportune moment to bother her for something as trifling as his boredom.
He shuffled his feet, sitting on a bench in the Muggle train station. He was scheduled to spend the next 24 hours in Dublin, meeting with a potential contact . And if all went well another Auror in Ireland's Magical Defense Department would be joining the ranks of the Order of the Phoenix. Kingsley had been the one to identify Spruner as a likely candidate. Apparently he had served on an International Prosecution Tribunal with the man during Voldemort's first reign of terror, and Dumbledore had red flagged the man after Spruner publicly denounced England's Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, for failing to take the proper precautions in preparation for Voldemort's return the previous year.
Spruner's outspokenness cost the Irishman his job, his family, and his reputation.
And boy did Bartholomew Reynolds, the Irish Minister of Magic, eat that pink slip when proof of Voldemort's return showed up right under Cornelius Fudge's nose.
Reynolds had been publicly flamed for his incompetence in supporting Fudge, and during his desperate attempt to retain his job title he had not only re-hired and promoted Spruner, but he had also attempted, in a press conference, to award Spruner a commendation for his unfailing loyalty to his nation's safety.
Spruner accepted it, spit on it, and torched it.
Remus chuckled, the pictures the Daily Prophet had borrowed from the Lucky Irish Press had been priceless. Kingsley had even saved the clippings, which were now publicly displayed in his office.
And there was not a damn thing Cornelius Fudge could do about it.
The metallic screech of breaks on steel rails sounded the arrival of his train, and he gathered his briefcase and coat together as he rose. The trip would be interesting to say the least. He had not actually ridden on a Muggle train since his early twenties, and then it had been on the run from Death Eaters with Peter and Cassilyda.
He still wondered to this day if Peter's hands bore her blood as well. But in this lifetime he supposed there were some things he would just never know.
"Your ticket sir?"
He nodded, fishing in his tattered coat pockets for the small slip of paper, placing it in the white gloved man's hands, nodding a thank you as the man checked it off, handing the stub back to him.
Unlike most purebloods Remus had no qualms with Muggle inventions. On the contrary, he found himself fascinated by them. Though, not to the extent of a certain Arthur Weasley.
The thought of Arthur cheered him up slightly. He could only imagine his reaction if he were in his place. Chances were he would probably get kicked off for breaking into the conductor's booth to try and see how it ran without magic.
Probably why Dumbledore choose to send me instead, he mused, carefully treading his way up the three aluminum stairs and into the train. Dumbledore had insisted he travel this way to stay off Voldemort's perspective radars.
Which brought him full circle from one disturbing thought to the next.
Another spy had infiltrated the Order of the Phoenix.
The only problem was figuring out who.
