Trigger warning: Suicide mention

The detention had accomplished what it'd been designed to do. It'd persuaded Albus that listening to news of eleven years of Weasley and Potter mischief and playfulness, with all of the enduring, resigned sighs that accompanied it, had sufficed in terms of troublemaking. So had leaving his own perennial mark on the castle, manufactured in the form of two scuffle-marks and an uneven, charred hole on the carpet in the corridor outside the Ravenclaw common room. (Until they replaced the carpets, that was, Scorps had smirked). In Rose's words, he was 'detention-phobic'. They'd spent half an hour discussing what Mullard would make him do, with the Gryffindor jovially implying there would be cursed-textbook chasing involved.

The Albus that'd set foot on the velveted passageways of the Hogwarts Express that cloudless day in September wasn't the same Albus that had spent the last two hours mopping the petulant professor's office floor whilst he watched, sat behind his desk. The dissatisfied Northerner had snickered when Sky asked if they could use their wands to speed up the process, pointing to the plastic tub of out-of-date Muggle soap concentrate on the windowsill. "Old-fashioned way's t'best way, lads."

"Just how dirty can a floor get?" Sky groaned, rolling his sleeves up to pour the dented tin of polish across the flagstones, marking the end of their tasks. They looked marginally cleaner and some of the cloudy stains, which Albus strongly suspected was coffee, had lifted but it'd been a cheerless several hours otherwise. As soon as Mullard immersed himself in reading his newspaper, they'd taken turns in practising the Levitation Charm, which Ishanvi had taught them in their last Charms lesson, on their rags and mops to speed up the process. They'd conceded, offering shy grins, jarring against the bruises and cuts on their faces.

Mullard's chair shrilly ground against the floor as he stood up, preoccupied with folding his periodical. The pair rapidly tucked their wands away, Albus angled over one of the polish tins, trying not to look at Sky's face and burying his laugh. "Looks like you've done a decent job. Spruce up my desk once yer done that an' I might think about lettin' yers go." He gave them a rare wink as he loitered by the door, glancing at Sky.

Emboldened by the cantankerous professor's absence, Sky directed his wand at Mullard's desk, muttering the phrase 'Wingardium Leviosa' as softly as he could. The dog-eared Daily Prophet fluttered. "How did Kav do it?"

Albus shrugged, still at a loss to explain the Glaswegian's collapse in the middle of Wednesday's Potions lesson. "My cousin said it was severe burnout. Potentially life-threatening... Whatever he was doing, it wasn't first-year stuff."

In a bid to stretch his leg muscles, he drifted across the room to sit in Mullard's antediluvian chair, the brown leather shredded from generations of abuse, Sky throwing the office windows open to dispel the fumes. If the embittered wind buffeted the castle in a particular direction, they could catch fragments of the commentary. Distracted by the chromatic illustration of a hoary wizard wearing vintage-framed glasses, he outlined a circle around his chin with an index finger. The second day of turmoil over the Ministry's wand-holding laws, it reported, had devastated a Muggle community approximately three miles south of the city of York, with claims of renewed goblin activity in the neighbouring areas.

Recognising that face from somewhere, he read the byline about the riots, but the man hadn't been formally identified. "Sky, d'you remember this bloke from anywhere?" Who was he?

Sky shook his head, rearranging the contents of the drawers as hurriedly as he could. He'd made it to the third and final drawer when it became evident that it was sealed shut. "Wonder what's in here." In spite of their efforts, it didn't succumb to the pair tapping it with their wands, shoving a mop handle into the gap between the metal runner and the wood or volleying an Unlocking Charm at it.

"I bet it's his Firewhiskey collection," Albus snorted, replacing the Prophet in its original place.

They heard the jubilant cheering as the majority of the student body trooped back into the castle, rapturous voices chanting players' names, indicating their detention was more or less finished. Mullard was a few minutes late, beleaguered by the apparent Hufflepuff win. Nodding approvingly, he affirmed, "Properly finished? Sod off before I think o' summat else."

Buoyed by the fact he and Sky were talking again, they ventured out to the Herbology greenhouses for their Sunday afternoon sessions, their sweltering warmth too significant a temptation to miss. Neville had briefed them on aloe vera when they'd asked what they were covering that week, requesting that they keep notes on the appearance of its roots and leaves and watering frequency over December. Rose had opted to sketch hers, as the sort of person who never took notes, citing her exceptional working memory, whilst they discussed Kav and whatever was in Mullard's drawer. Scorpius had theorised it was mundane, with the lock an accidental addition.

"Why ask us to tidy his desk with a drawer that nobody can open? It's like he wanted us to find it," Sky retorted, prodding his potted aloe vera with his wand. One of its thickset green leaves caught aflame, prompting him to note it on his chart. "Finally! Something interesting for Longbottom."

Scorpius defended his theory as they jogged into their History of Magic lesson on a blustery Monday morning. "Maybe the point of the locked drawer is that it's a mystery that's not really a mystery." Sky scowled at him as a sleepy silence descended. Binns, a hangover from their parents' days, had lounged behind his desk, listing their examination objectives and the causes of a 1919 goblin revolt in Munich in his drawl.

"Maybe you've read too much Agatha Christie," Sky muttered back, as Ville loudly yawned next to him, slouching into his chair. Their Quidditch-bedevilled friend had spent the weekend, from dawn to dusk, with the Ravenclaw players again, rehearsing their drills as part of his unofficial apprenticeship. Albus thought he was delirious, volunteering to train in the December weather. He'd rolled his eyes at the Malfoy, fastening his blue-crested tie which was wrinkled from having been trampled on that morning in the dormitory.

"Well, maybe you're too cynical!" Scorps hissed, agitated.

The relentless back-and-forth diatribes appealed to their classmates more than listening to Professor Binns describe another floundering treaty. Intrigued, Christine and a small number of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors contributed their input, amused by the enigma. Three-quarters of an hour into their lesson, Binns hadn't acknowledged their attention had manoeuvred elsewhere, even with the debate reaching boisterous volume levels.

"Oi, first-years!"

Sky forcefully jabbed Ville awake, the dishevelled boy as surprised to see Arofan as they were. Their Head of House, adorned in a charcoal blazer over a beige-coloured jumper, stood in the doorway, a bundle of paper tucked under his arm.

"Binns, I'll take over, have a tea break on me." The spectre considered Professor Arofan through his crescent glasses for a few seconds before nodding appreciatively and flitting towards the staff room, discarding his yellowed pile of rebellion notes. The classroom watched, anxious to face their Head of House's indignation. He'd never been one to outwardly show his emotions, preferring to deliver sanctions and meticulously chosen words, which terrified Albus. He never knew where he stood with Arofan.

"Sir?" Orville queried, his voice evidently higher-pitched than normal.

Arofan looked to his wrist to inspect the time before traipsing to the blackboard, the sound of his measured footsteps punctuating the apprehensive stillness of the classroom. Positioning the orderly heap of paper on the desk, he flicked his wand, sending several sheaves of parchment hurtling towards each student's workspace. "Dioloch. I lose respect for those who choose to scorn Professor Binns and his teachings," he stated, scanning their faces. Albus glanced at the exam script in front of him, a catalogue of conceivable essay questions filling the pages. "History of Magic teaches you about your origins, about the rights and wrongs some of your ancestors may have wrought and unless you understand where you've come from, how can you understand your futures? Your notes will be priceless resources for you when you come to sit your exams. I've given you possible essay questions to revise from for the summer-" A groan invaded the reticent classroom, only suppressed when Arofan raised an eyebrow. "Those who fail to achieve the 55% needed to move into the second year will find their repeated year afflicted by remedial sessions for their unsatisfactory subjects, including History of Magic. Are there any questions?"

"Who gives a toss about bloody Binns and History of Magic anyway?" Scorpius complained as they rushed to their next lesson, the Gryffindors diverted to Transfiguration on the first-floor whilst the Ravenclaws had Charms with Professor Ishanvi in the South Tower, overlooking the lake. Once Albus had demonstrated his faultless Levitation Charm, earning him five points, they'd been assigned a handful of written questions on the limitations, exceptions and wand movement of the Mending Charm and at least an hour's worth of practice for homework. Whilst Rose battled with the spell's pronunciation at lunch over the next few days, Albus wondered about Kavyansh.

His uninhabited four-poster bed, its curtains pulled shut, had become like a missing tooth in the dormitory, serving as an uncomfortable gap from Albus' life at Hogwarts. His letter to Teddy, verbally composed by Rose, imbued with questions on the recovery process from severe burnout in an 'academic context', had gone unanswered. What if that was their response? The faintest rumblings of rumours that Kav had been expelled for hexing a third-year or that his parents had removed him, under the guise of a black-out to enrol him elsewhere, had been repeated amongst the first-year Ravenclaws but otherwise, it appeared to Albus that nobody had really noticed.

What about the daemon? The others hadn't alluded to it in the week since. For all he knew, they were too afraid to. He'd whispered 'genius' and other Latin variations of the word he'd encountered in the library with Sky's keyword-finding spell but it'd been fruitless so far. If he'd unwittingly called the daemon that day, why hadn't it come since? Were there specific conditions that needed to be met for it to materialise? If Rose's illustrated passages on Platonism and daemonism were rooted in fact, how had a daemon been tied to him from birth? Why hadn't Dad noticed?

Then there was the memory of the events at No. 23. As he scrutinised his lunar chart on the waning gibbous phase of the moon in preparation for his lesson at midnight, he contemplated the tidbits of detail he'd garnered from it. Sky had heavily implied his father had been killed, in presumably an outburst of Dark Magic and they'd overheard the woman call the youthful version of Professor Ellis 'Cass'. In addition to these two facts, Albus' dad had looked alarmed when he'd mentioned the Ellis surname - had he worked on whatever had happened as Head Auror?

It gave him a headache if he mulled over it for too long, the tittering of whoever had fractured the little family tormenting him in his sleep. What would he do if he unexpectedly lost his parents?

He was distracted from his thoughts by the Muggle radio, a meagre grey box with a baton that fizzled uncontrollably if someone sat too close to it, whistling the Ministry of Magic's bulletin chime. It'd become aligned with the sunset, audibly marking the time of day as it advanced into the early evening. For the fifth and seventh-years contending with huge assortments of essays, it'd become a daily occurrence they respected, indicating their revision time was over. It also announced that when dinner started in the Great Hall. The third-year girl Albus had seen labouring over it since his first night at Hogwarts, her wand tucked behind her ear, had revealed that she was determined to make electricity work at Hogwarts. "Why can't we?" she'd asked rhetorically, her face animated. "Merge electricity and magic and we could leave the Dark Ages behind." A wire had flared then, emitting coils of white smoke.

As he meandered towards the Great Hall, Rose and Scorps wandered ahead, arguing over whether or not Gryffindor's unused penalties would be forfeited in their match in March. Albus mentally reviewed his list of questions for his father, unsure whether he'd speak to him at the High Table or knock his office door. Tucked away inside his battered copy of Advanced Second Year Charms: Behind the Incantations, was a tentative request for information on how Kav was and Sky's surname.

"The IQA guidebook says-"

"Yeah- Except Dupont's more flexible with the rules…"

"It's a gamble to throw away potential points though! Gryffindor'll regret that when they lose the Quidditch Cup for the fourth year in a row-"

"Thought you weren't supporting Gryffindor?"

"Says the Malfoy that upended centuries of Slytherin heritage on his first day…"

Oblivious to the smatterings of their conversation, he trotted up the Entrance Hall steps one at a time, intrigued by the four hourglasses mounted on the stonework. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were more or less at the same level, with Hufflepuff's number of gems crawling behind. What was the incantation that enabled each gem to traverse each bulb? He stumbled over one of the steps, cracked from the battle, glimpsing the inscription chiselled into the solid riser. "Cedric Diggory, born 15th September 1977… Died 24th June 1995?" He abruptly realised he'd forgotten about looking for the Ellises on these steps.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?" Rose demanded as he inspected each of the steps in turn, tracing his fingers along the carved letters. The names of the dead...

"Reperium Ellis," he murmured, hoping the spell worked outside of books. Nothing happened. "Looking for the Ellises… I can't find them." He stood up, scouring the stone again. "They're not here."

Scorpius grimaced at him from the top of the staircase, moaning. "What've I missed now?"

"They might've survived. They probably did, judging by the state of that memory. Come on, Albus, you look like a right muppet, anyway, it's roast beef tonight," said Rose, kneading her temples. She turned to Scorps again. "Mate, you won't believe what we did…"

Rose quickly chronicled their age in the Pensieve, how the daemon had appeared and disappeared with the invocation of the word 'genius' and the explosion at No. 23, avoiding the more delicate details, whilst she hacked at the meat on her place.

"I can't believe you missed the match over a fight, Potter. Wait 'til Mum hears about it," Scorpius grinned, the evening light filtering through his hair in such a way it reminded Albus of the brown sugar his grandmother adored baking with. He couldn't help but gawk at what looked like streaks of gold unwinding. Was Uncle Ron right? The Malfoys had enough wealth that bathing in a tub full of Galleons would be a drop in the sea to them.

"I'm the talk of the town, me," Albus punted his one-liner, the idea of Scorps sat in a midsummer garden with his mother, savouring Earl Grey from the teapot and gossiping giving rise to a muted snort. It struck him there and then - the most conspicuous difference between Sky and Scorpius. The latter freely spoke of his life at home, recounting stories of his happy-go-lucky childhood with humour whilst Sky was solely grounded in the present, his past as much of a conundrum as the haunting memory. "Hold on… The only family member Sky ever brings up is his grandad-"

"A Galleon on adoption under suspicious circumstances," Scorpius remarked, making him wince. It felt wrong to speak of their classmate that way, equating potentially traumatic life events to pointless bets. "Wasn't it all over the Daily Prophet anyway? Dad didn't like the Ellis Emporium in Diagon Alley… Said stuff about a suicide? 'Botched affair' - his words, not mine! Where are you going? I haven't finished my roasties!"

"The library's got newspaper archives!" Rose exclaimed, throwing her bag strap over her shoulder again. Unimpressed, Malfoy wielded a roast potato on his fork.

Their shared love-hate relationship with the innumerable shelves of texts, the wooden ledges bulging underneath the weight of so many tomes, was the result of hours of secondary research on top of their homework. Granted, they'd grown up together, learning to walk as toddlers and in Rose's case, how to ride a broomstick, in each other's homes, but they'd learnt more about themselves in the three months since being Sorted. She knew him well, Albus reflected. Right down to the twitch in his left eyebrow which meant he was curious about something. ("It's so prominent, how else d'you expect me to know you're about to ask a question?!")

He forged on ahead, his fingers tingling with spots of cold. Was that why, when they were so frustratingly close to unearthing what'd happened, the reference to something so macabre and personal, unnerved the pair of them? Was it something they had the right to find out for themselves? There were scarcely any pupils studying as they pressed on, scrambling down the inner staircase that fed into the archives. The collections, venerable to students past, present and future, were arranged in a similar layout to the main library, steel racks jammed with brown cardboard boxes, descriptions of their contents stamped on their sides, in claustrophobia-inducing rows. "What year should we try?"

His cousin racked her brains, her russet hair tied in a top-knot with her wand. "I'm making assumptions here… Sky was the baby so give or take a year… 2007? Still three hundred and sixty-five editions to go through…" She trailed her fingers along the second row of boxes, four inscribed with the year. "Daffodils… Flower February to May… They were definitely there… I'm making Grandma Weasley her favourite rock cakes after this!" Hauling the first paper-thin box out of its berth over to the small table in the examination area, they thumbed through the sixty-plus outstanding Daily Prophets, Rose's pile Charmed to shriek the main titles.

March 14th 2007 had been a dull Wednesday, according to the latest copy he'd read. A higher education institution, dedicated to furthering the understanding of wizarding history, Muggle relations and alchemy, had opened its doors in York.

"Binns could do with a course…!" Rose quipped. Laughing, Albus reached for March 15th, skimming over its headlines. Page six consisted of a current events crossword, the letters drowsily shuffling across the page. Underneath the questions was a warning that the answers would be released on March 14th, the day before.

Perplexed, he skipped through the remaining Prophets, each one chronologically indexed, with no sign of the real 15th. "Have you got the 15th?" he quizzed Rose who shook her head. "So...they're all present and correct apart from that one day?" What was so special about that day's copy? He compared the two front pages and groaned. Someone had gone to the effort of duplicating the 13th to camouflage the missing copy. It had to be the one they were after. But why? "D'you suppose Sky's been through here?" Was he also seeking answers? Would he have it?

But they'd overheard Professor Ellis' admonition… Sky had been especially shaken after the memory. Who else had the motive to bury that Prophet?

"Albus, that's the week before your birthday," Rose whispered, distracted by March 22nd's issue.

"That's not important!" he hissed, refusing to be defeated by the lack of answers. The recollection of Mullard's hand on Sky's shoulder in the Headmistress' office lurched into his mind… "It's in Mullard's bloody drawer! That's what it was all along!"