"Congratulations on your excellent Sleeping Draught essay, Mr Williams," an impressed Professor Ellis declared as he peered into Ville's cauldron, surveying its depths, lilac according to the colour chart pasted across the walls. It was the Ravenclaw's Wednesday afternoon lesson with the Slytherins and Orville had been attempting to persuade Rose to join in on their almost-laughable plan. He'd flashed Albus and Rose a grin over their spacious work counters, his cousin calling it 'idiotic'.
"Ten points to Ravenclaw," Ellis continued, stepping across the uneven flagstones, worn through years of students shifting around nervously. He rolled his sleeves up, revealing his sturdy arms, the paling fingers of a tattoo tiptoeing beyond his robe sleeves. "Although its consistency does make me wonder… Did you put your four Valerian sprigs in? It's not quite at its final stirring point…" The Ravenclaws revelled in his level-headed method of teaching; nothing was too disastrous as long as it didn't affect the mug of tea that was a permanent fixture in his hands. He'd untangle the most unconventional questions with a smile and allow them to experiment with left-over ingredients to test their theories if they had a spare ten minutes.
Whilst the flustered Liverpudlian scrambled to dice his missing ingredient, its brittle inner roots speckling his robes, Rose leant over and whispered into Albus' ear. "Are we really doing this? Breaking and using a Professor's private possession without permission?" Her apprehension was borne of understanding Albus' frustration with their research, knowing it hadn't answered their questions but fearing their grandmother's wrath.
Albus repeated the statements he'd repeatedly told himself in his head over the last week as he measured his third quantity of Standard Ingredient. "McGonagall would think we're being paranoid. It's not yet big enough to go and warn her about. And it's not a shining example of inter-house unity, is it?" He looked down at the concoction of dried herbs his Magical Drafts and Potions manual had alleged was vital for first-year work, biting his lip. It'd been the least interesting thing on his supply list in August. "I want to make sure I'm not making a fuss over nothing. And I'm not telling Dad, either."
The red-haired witch pointedly exhaled, propping her hands on her hips and wrinkling her nose at him. "And doing this on a hunch is better because…? None of you have a plan. Not you. Not Sky. And not bloody Ville. Are you hoping for the best? Because between you three, I'd say you know about ten spells."
"Oi, Rose! Do I hear porky pies?" Orville made a wisecrack, leaning against the coarse wooden desk, stirring his Draught. "As basic our induction into the world of wizardry may be, we've got at least one brain cell between the four of us." Whilst Rose joked back cynically about it mostly being hers, Albus leant down to ensure his cauldron was on a medium heat - he had to get the right temperature to mix in his Standard Ingredient as per the instructions.
Like Ville's Valerian sprigs, an idea began crystallising in his mind. But would the theory work?
"The basic nuclei of the plan is this: we knock out any cats we see en route and pray that it's McGonagall," Sky retorted, joining in with a devious grin.
Rose groaned. "That's animal cruelty though…"
"Mind you, we need a regular weekday… Her office'll be empty then. No meetings and the portraits'll be asleep. If we bunk off lessons, she'll know it was us. Added to that, all we need is a distraction so we're lost in the chaos. As for the spells, well, Sky knows 'em. The perfect time would be a History of Magic lesson," Ville outlined. "It's genius."
Sky slid a thin green notebook across the scratched wooden surface. "In here's all the Charms I picked up from working in the shop. This one-" he pointed to it, as Rose thumbed through the pages, examining several frayed sides with an attentive stillness before snapping it shut on his fingers. "-is a Latin translation spell that'll let us see whatever the daemon said. Grandad stocked millions of bloody Latin books. You get bored of them after a while." He shrugged the memories of the Ellis Emporium away, unaware of Albus's mouth gaping open. He'd love nothing better than to trudge through never-ending books on Latin divinities and litterae theorems for whole summers on end, helping a substantial stream of first-years find a way of discovering Hogwarts through the written word.
Rose rolled her eyes, turning to Albus, her voice suddenly taut like the Muggle telephone wires they'd grown up seeing dividing the sky. "So you've figured all this out using logic?" Their friend's face reddened slightly as he nodded, providing contrast against his short, no-nonsense hair. "Fair enough. But how are you going to get in there? Albus, you don't remember where it is."
"That's why we're relying on you, dear cousin," Albus affirmed, biting his lip again, as not to awkwardly smile at her. She anxiously ran her hands through her hair, which further established, in his mind, that she was as invested in deciphering the mystery as he was but its excessive risks deterred her. She transferred her weight to one foot and back again as she weighed up her options.
"I'll be back in ten minutes," she eventually said. "Professor, may I use the loo?" When Ellis gave her a polite nod, she decisively strode to the door, her hasty and unexpected departure prompting Sky and Orville to give him perplexed looks.
Whilst Rose was gone, he considered their plan - or lack of - warily. Was a Lilliputian step forward in terms of progress worth it? Did the end justify the means? It had to be if it meant they understood more about what they were dealing with. And would his idea work? He considered his Draught with a sickly lurching sensation in his stomach as if he'd missed a step on one of the castle's stairs before glancing at Kavyansh, which all of this seemed to centre around. Studying his stocky figure, he'd watched him at breakfast that morning, his shirt and robes creased as if he'd slept in them. His hair practically reflected the knotted mayhem of his thoughts and speech.
Potions was the subject he noticeably excelled at, amassing generous numbers of house points for Ravenclaw, but he looked exhausted, the pits underneath his eyes burgeoning, the same plum colour as his own Sleeping Draught. The eleven-year almost looked emaciated. What on earth was happening to him? It was as if the fight had been knocked out of him over the past week. His brilliant blue eyes had become duller than a cloudy grey, making the Potter wonder if he'd been outside at all since the match. It was like seeing his father after each anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts.
After a few minutes, Rose returned, "Thanks, Professor," she called out, wheezing ever so slightly, her arms tucked across her chest. "What?" she mouthed at Albus and Orville as they gave each other disconcerted looks. "If you want my help, stay with me." She withdrew two glass vials from her inside robe pockets which she hastily fastened when she caught him looking and deftly collected the lavender-hued Sleeping Draft. "Act normal."
Lounging on his stool and resting his chin on one knuckled hand, Sky queried. "Normal? Us?" He concentrated his razor-sharp eyes on her, alert, scanning for prohibited items. "Not Wizard Wheezes?" In the meantime, Ville shrugged at Albus as if to say 'Haven't the foggiest mate, just go with it', as they began focusing on gathering purple liquid into their own vials.
A pillar of steam, soft indigo Ellis' posters warned, billowed from the top of Kavyansh's cauldron, whistling shrilly. Rose spun around as she labelled her first vial, carefully inserting it into the Potion Master's rack. He'd set aside a designated area solely for their lesson's potions from their first Potions class.
"Mr Dewan, what spell did you use to complete your potion?" Professor Ellis pressed Kav, the strong implication of urgency in his tone. The boy moved sluggishly as if he was half-asleep. "Mr Dewan?"
Kav groaned, his face distorted, before foundering and collapsing to the cold masonry underneath. As Ville lunged towards him, arms outstretched as to catch him under his armpits, his fist knocked the cauldron to the floor, its thick, opaque contents fizzing as it made contact with the stone.
A stunned lull in conversations was the result as their classmates turned to look, Albus' mouth ajar, startled. What had happened to Kav? Had the wandless magic hurt him in some way? Someone shrieked "Bloody hell!"
Ellis marched across from behind his desk, flicking his wand at the clumps of failed Draught with an instantaneous "Evanesco!", vanishing it as it hissed maliciously. "Students, bottle your potions and hand it in if you haven't already. Go to the Great Hall."
He bent down to take the unconscious Kav's pulse and with concern evident in his weathered face, he cast a hazy Patronus, directing it through the castle's walls to where Albus guessed the Hospital Wall would be. The professor possessed a cool unflappability, which kept him and his classmates calm. Where had he gotten that from?, he puzzled as he followed the Potion Master's instructions. Would he have developed that from facing the magical equivalents of Karens over the years?
Over the low grinding and scraping of stools, he heard him speak again. "Miss Adelisa, would you mind finding Professor McGonagall? She's normally in her Transfiguration classroom on the ground floor at this time of day."
Ville had backed away, heaving his book bag over his robes. With a discrete gesture, Albus, Rose and Sky followed him into the frigid corridors outside, the air so cold their breaths gushed out of their mouths, glittering. Confirming their Ravenclaw classmates hadn't noticed them slip into one of the clandestine passages he and Rose had grown up playing imaginary games in over myriad summer holidays, he invited his cousin to explain where she'd disappeared to.
"James needed some persuasion," she said, smirking, clambering up stone steps so worn they revealed a natural dip in their middle. Stuffing an iridescent material into her leather satchel as she retold the duplicitous story of blackmailing his older brother, he gasped. Dad's Invisibility Cloak! Before James was sent his Hogwarts acceptance letter, Uncle Ron would weave complicated stories of the Cloak in reverential and solemn tones, with him regularly ending as the hero in a daring twist of fate. Their dad would roar with laughter, wiping tears from his eyes. But he hadn't seen it personally until today.
"What do you think happened to Kav?" Ville asked, as their footsteps were dampened by the sound of the end-of-day bell tolling. "He looked seriously ill."
Sky mumbled his agreement. "I think he'll end up in St Mungo's. Grandfather wouldn't consult the Headmistress over a dead faint."
"D'you think so?" Rose asked, scrutinising Sky's face. Professor Ellis had to have worked against the Dark Arts in some form or another. His hardened grey eyes told of a sinister world that Albus had never known. Dad had never mentioned the Ellises though. They hastened their pace when the raucous and boisterous chatter of the castle's inhabitants emanated from the walls.
They gathered around the top of the dimly-lit staircase, absorbing his words, Albus took a deep breath as he pushed through the false wall, feeling his heart hammering against his ribcage. It would be just their luck to encounter McGonagall and a troubled Christine. Relief choked him. They'd made it to the third floor, the gargoyle guards flanking a barren expanse of brick wall at the bottom of the corridor. Now was their opportunity to use his idea. "Stop," he commanded. "Rose, have you got your vials?" As she noisily fumbled around inside her satchel, eventually producing her remaining vial. "D'you remember the Fire-Making Spell?"
She nodded, slightly bewildered by the question. "What's your idea?"
Sky smacked himself with his notebook, laughing as he realised. "We're boiling it to set up our first line of defence. A gaseous wall of Sleeping Draught," he explained to Ville. When his eyes remained clouded with indifference, he elaborated. "Y'know the three states of matter, liquid, gas and solids? Because it's a liquid, you have to boil it. Scouse, you told me you went to Muggle school!"
"Who listens in Muggle school?" he replied, grinning, as happy-go-lucky as ever. "You bloody sound like Professor Ellis!"
"You're the one with a crush on him!" was Sky's comeback.
Deliberately pretending he hadn't heard that to avoid looking at the crimson that stole across Ville's face, he countered. Instructing Sky to cast a Levitation Spell on the vial of Draught he'd placed on the cold flagstones reminded him of something he couldn't quite recall. "Rose, Incendio, yeah? Right, Ville, let's break into McGonagall's office."
His cousin and Sky formed a modest line, one foot in front of the other, pointing their wands at the vial filled with shimmering purple liquid. It bore a disquieting resemblance to the faded photographs Dad kept in his study, of his Auror training with Uncle Ron.
"Do we know the password?" Ville asked, his voice slightly croaky.
"After you," Sky said to Rose. They had no idea where Mullard or any of the other professors could be; they fiercely hoped that McGonagall and Ellis remained where they were.
One of the portraits on the wall scowled at him. "Harry?" it questioned him, its high-pitched voice close to a giggle.
Albus repeated its words in his mind, watching as Sky cast the Levitation Spell.
"Harry? Hang on, Valerie?" She'd flitted into one of the frames outside the Gryffindor common room the night of the match. "Ville, that's the password! It's Harry!" If it worked, why was the password his Dad's name?
It seemed bizarre... Unless it was the names of the old Order. What had that meant? Albus plunged into the depths of his memory, remembering that Auntie Hermione had fleetingly narrated an account of their year hiding from Voldemort, reminding him that Uncle George's attempts to set a wireless radio network had stemmed from Potterwatch. Uncle Ron had spent days fidgeting with it, prodding and twiddling its knobs, intently listening to the static for hope. Hadn't she said the watchwords were its deceased members? What did that mean in this context?
The vial hovered in mid-air, reminding Rose of her task, as she uneasily met Albus' eye. "In-cendio! Incendi-oh..." Her haphazard stress on different syllables had returned, leaving her unable to work the spell. Exasperated, she flung her wand at the floor, bellowing "INCENDIO!" A cylinder of seething flame materialised from its tip, vaporising the vial and its contents. A glistening fog expanded from where it'd been, looming menacingly over them. "Cover your faces!" she screamed, issuing a muffled yell of "Harry!" at the gargoyles.
They tugged their robe sleeves over their noses and mouths, sprinting into the empty doorway and up the rising spiral staircase. "Bloody hell, Rose," Orville panted, wide-eyed. "Please stop doing that."
Sky snorted. "Vaporisation. I always forget that one."
McGonagall's colossal bookcases greeted the foursome, the book spines glittering, some of their ancient lettering disintegrating and mouldering away in places. Their titles framed the pendulum that swung with mechanical monotony on the far wall, dictating Hogwarts' days. It had stayed the same as that fateful dinner on his and Rose's third day. Was it his guilty conscience or did the portraits, the few that weren't desolate canvases as their occupants had hurried off elsewhere, squint at him with deep-seated suspicion? Dumbledore and Snape's portraits were uninhabited, although Valerie had followed them into the sacrosanct heart of the castle.
They scanned the lower levels of the office for the Pensive before Albus stumbled upon it, tucked away in a corner, surrounded by a tall series of metal shelves, with hundreds of vials crowded into inches.
"Lumos," he whispered, angling his wand for a closer look at some of the decaying labels. One was marked with faint initials, an 'E' perhaps? A date - was it the year he was born? "I found it!" he called his friends. Was his need to know worth the hefty consequences? Would his father be gravely disappointed if they were caught?
His hands quivering, he pressed the tip of his wand to his head, like he'd seen Dad do on many occasions in this office and thought considerably about the faltering memory. He'd pored over it so many times it'd become a meaningless jumble of images. Nothing. Was he trying too hard?
He persevered. It had to be there, somewhere. Jammed together around the basin, uncomfortably, their clammy and agitated faces were reflected in the undulating surface of the Pensieve. As his mind swam, the silvery strand of memory finally attached itself to his wand. The room careered, sending them tumbling into the circular basin. Its cloudy depths enveloped the foursome, the overcast October day forming around them as they landed, delicately, in the midst of the Quidditch pitch.
"God, I can see myself," Orville noted, a hint of disdain in his voice. "This is weird. Bloody weird. And that's grim," he snorted, elbowing Sky. Both of their past selves dissolved into the crowds filing out of the stadiums, yelling "Whoo! Gryffindor!" with exuberance. Muffled bickering reached their ears, from underneath the professors' and James' stand, escalating to mostly barbed words, sharpened to leave festering wounds. The memory momentarily darkened with the two disgraced Ravenclaw players' movements accelerating, their voices drowned out by a loud ticking noise. As abruptly as it'd happened, it stopped.
"Did it just glitch? Al, is that normal?" Rose demanded, almost fearfully, her gaze on the past-Albus and Kavyansh rushing to the aid of the duelling Ravenclaws, their faces lit up by the harsh red of jinxes. McDonald was sobbing, her shoulders convulsing.
Albus could see his own mouth moving but he couldn't hear anything. "No- I've never seen that happen before." The professors, especially Dupont, moved sluggishly and he caught himself screaming the cleaning spell, a horizontal line of fire cascading from his wand, constructing the outline of the fire daemon. Shifting his eyes to the formidable figure of Kav behind him, he watched him. His mouth or hands hadn't moved an inch. "What? But-"
"Transducium," came Sky's voice from behind the real Albus, a golden ellipse fluttering in mid-air, like a flag caught in the wind.
Rose started fretting. "Albus-"
"It's any second now..." he insisted, watching the past-Albus mouth 'Bloody genius!' The charm quivered, before translating a singular word. Daemon.
Flabbergasted, he clapped a hand to his mouth. Had he unknowingly addressed the daemon? The near-monosyllabic reciting of Latin words reverberated in his ears. The phrases that'd made his blood run cold filtered through the Translation Charm. "He called us. I have chosen. He called us. I have chosen."
Sky exclaimed as the memory evaporated to black, desperately jotting the translation down as the charm dissipated into nothingness. His cousin turned to him, her eyes full of unease. "It wasn't Kav. It was you." Horrified.
"You said it was Kav," Ville stated. "But - we saw him do that spell- What? This is stupid."
"It could've still been him," Albus feebly protested. "There's got to be a link somewhere… I swear I'm not making it up." A few seconds elapsed, yet the memory lingered. "Should we still be here?"
Something in the distance shattered. They turned their faces to what should've been the exterior of the Pensieve, half-expecting the bony hands of McGonagall to take shape above their heads. Instead, a trickle of somebody else's memory metamorphosed the blackness into an ordinary street in the outskirts of a town, poorly lit by tawny-gold streetlights. "What the bloody hell-" Sky cried out, before his voice cut out, almost in realisation.
Albus, Rose and Orville blindly looked around, their wands out, searching for whatever it was that their friend had seen before their eyes distinguished the row of houses facing the street. "Do you recognise this street?" Ville demanded. Sky shook his head, his face a shade of alabaster. He had to be lying.
"Gentlemen… And honourable lady, let your eyes adjust to the dark. Rose, the Cloak. I'm not being caught now." She obliged, as thoroughly freaked out as Albus was, hurling the material over the foursome as they examined the street. It appeared every inch of the exquisite and unblemished semi-detached utopia his grandmother had dreamily spoken of, but there was something off here.
At last, Albus spotted it. The tiniest hint of ruby sparks, exactly where the magical extensions had run thin, accommodating a strain somewhere. "The second house from the left," he whispered.
The brick houses were silent, their lights turned off as if it was bitterly early in the morning in this memory. Their front gardens were modest, bordered by immaculate gates and smart hedges, but as soon as they stepped across the boundary of No. 23, the one he'd indicated, it was reconstructed into an unkempt and chaotic bramble, as if a later memory had been incorporated into this one. Whose memory was this? He was beginning to wonder, keeping Sky in his sights, studying the boy anxiously.
Did they have enough time in the Pensieve to work out who this memory belonged to? How long had it been in the real world? Had their scheme been unearthed yet? The questions clamoured inside his mind, imploring him to go on, engulfing his fears about himself and the daemon.
The front door, marked with yawning lacerations in one memory but undamaged in what he guessed was the original, allowed them to pass through like the Hogwarts ghosts. The curtains were drawn, as a blossoming young woman, shrouded in a Hufflepuff jumper, bounced a dark-haired baby on her leg, creating sparks with her wand. They surveyed the front room, filled floor-to-ceiling with vast numbers of books, sensing that something was about to happen. The wooden floorboards groaned upstairs, but the woman was unperturbed.
"Is this something we should see?" Sky asked, his face even paler than it was before, stepping out from the security of the Cloak. Rose made to grab him but something stopped her. Albus made a terrified face at his cousin underneath the Cloak, a hissing like the sound of a kettle boiling obscuring the memory's sounds. He regarded the woman's face with a resolute determination, searching for anything familiar. The stairs loudly creaked as if somebody frenzied had paced down them. A thickset man - he gasped - the exact likeness of a younger Professor Ellis fixed his eyes on the woman and her baby. But his eyes weren't the benevolent grey he recognised from Potions lessons. They were sharp, in a callous and harsh manner. Was this a different person?
"Cass," the woman beamed, contentedly, her pride melting the hard-faced man's anxiety. "Say hello to an illustrious Hufflepuff… Or will he be a Ravenclaw, like his dad-"
The window detonated, a merciless green flame erupting into the living room, hurling the small family across the far wall. Albus closed his eyes to avoid seeing the horror, the whooping of whoever was outside fracturing the air. It had been so...swift, like a methodical execution. The memory followed the same route as the previous one, dwindling into nothingness behind Albus' eyelids. He sighed, relieved, but almost cried out.
Mullard had appeared, his hand on Sky's shoulder, guiding him, and subsequently the hidden three, to the warmth of McGonagall's office.
"Ellis, that's enough," the Northerner's firm voice stated, unyielding.
Next to Albus, Rose bit her fist to avoid the tears. He couldn't see Ville but his gut told him the boy was suspended between horror and acute nausea. He'd never been so grateful for a memory to end before as the sombre faces of Professors McGonagall, Ellis and Longbottom came into view. What had they seen? It felt hideously intrusive, like something they weren't supposed to see.
"Was he the only one there?" McGonagall addressed her colleague, who nodded affirmatively. The questions started to bolt through his mind, reminding him of Quidditch players. Who had that family been and what had happened to them? Had they been anything to do with Sky and Professor Ellis? Albus knew of dozens of individuals who'd died in the Second Wizarding Wars but he hadn't noted any Ellises. He made a mental note to survey the names of the fallen on the steps in the Entrance Hall the next time he was there.
"Sit down, Mr Ellis," McGonagall continued. He ignored the instruction, his eyes fixated on the floor and his face bleached of colour. The Headmistress sighed. "I understand your grandfather informed you of certain events in your childhood earlier this term. I appreciate that you want to understand more, which is a natural response, but you broke into my office to do so. I won't punish you on this occasion-" Sky's shoulders shook at this, prompting Mullard to remove his gnarled hand. "I gather the memory was enough." The memory of what? An act of Dark Magic? "But be warned, I do not take kindly to this sort of thing."
The stunned group of Ravenclaws under the Cloak were only stirred into shuffling through the open doorway by McGonagall's stern command 'You may go now.'
Professor Ellis earnestly traipsed to the edge of the office, intending to escort his grandson outside. Waiting until he'd steered Sky to the bottom of the spiral staircase before approaching the subject, he took a deep breath. "I was hoping to show you when you were older."
Albus winced, feeling rude at watching what was undoubtedly something personal to his friend for the second time.
"I think you were unwise to go looking for what happened in the Headmistress' own Pensieve, Sky. You're too young to understand all of it. I'm proud of your achievements but… Not today. Do you understand? You took advantage of your classmate's illness for your own gain."
Sky looked up, meeting the professor's eyes. "Is Kav okay?" When his grandfather didn't respond. "What ward in St Mungo's?"
"Go to Ravenclaw Tower," Ellis repeated.
"The Janus Thickey Ward? God, that's brutal."
"You heard Professor McGonagall," came the hushed reply. "Go back to Ravenclaw Tower..." He straightened his jumper, unrolling the sleeves of his robes so that it covered his tattoo. "And let your friends know that I thought their efforts were commendable under the circumstances. I'd go as far as to say it'd merit a strong pass in their Defence exams."