You know your life ain't normal when you're saddled with an unwanted mystery.

It was Monday morning, and I was trying to concentrate as best as I could on the lecture Professor Flitwick was giving. He was a short man, who'd been old back when Lord Voldemort was at Hogwarts, but he was, amazingly, going strong. There was always a bet every year about if this would be the year he retired and/or died. Professor Binns, the old History of Magic teacher, had proven that death didn't really have to stop you from retiring.

Did you have to pay a salary to a teacher if they were a ghost? What need did they have for money? What would they even buy? They couldn't touch shit. Maybe that was why Professor Binns had been kept on for so long – Hogwarts was just trying to save a few galleons in its measly budget.

My mind kept on wandering, despite all my best efforts – and I really was trying to concentrate. I genuinely enjoyed Charms class.

I hadn't gone to the library all weekend, too scared to return to the scene of the crime. Given, I hadn't done anything wrong, per se, but I was feeling nervous as heck about the events of my little night-time adventure. How did fulltime pranksters, rule-breakers, and rebels handle all the stress? James and his cousin, Fred, were always so chill about troublemaking. They made it look cool, and fun!

As I was staring into space, pretending like I was deeply interested in the back of Flitwick's head, a paper boat floated over, and landed on my desk.

Frowning down at it, I unfolded it, and read the message written on it in large, loopy writing.

You okay? It asked. I looked to my left and back, where Chris and Potter was sitting. Potter was gazing intently at the blackboard, scribbling down something on his parchment every now and again. Chris was looking at me, and when we made eye contact, raised his eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes, but turned back in my seat, to write a reply. I hadn't really seen all that much of him over the weekend, since he'd been busy with Quidditch.

Every weekend when there wasn't an official Quidditch match, there was a friendly game between mixed teams. Anyone was free to play, no tryouts required. It was a great way to train for those people on House teams, make friends with other Houses and year levels, and since it was open to anyone, everyone got a chance to experience the joys of playing team sports. If I weren't deathly afraid of heights, I'd be totally into this model of school sports. There was unfortunately no Muggle football equivalent, despite all the effort the Seventh Year Muggle Studies class had put in a few years back.

I'm fine, I scrawled back. Folding the paper back into a boat, I sent it floating in Chris' direction, and tried to return my attention to the blackboard. I needed to take notes, myself.

The boat returned a few minutes later. You sure? Chris had written. Rose said at breakfast that she didn't really see you all weekend.

Rose was busy with Head Student stuff, I replied. I hadn't wanted to disturb her, although I desperately wanted to hear about her and Scorpius' "discussion" about dating, from her perspective. It was all very exciting, them going on a date!

Unfortunately, this reminded me of the promise I'd made to Scorpius last week, about talking with Potter about him and Rose. It would be much easier if Scorpius just asked Potter himself. This was just a ploy to get us to talk to each other like normal people, I was sure.

Tell me if something's going on! Chris sent back.

I turned back around and glared at him. Potter chose this moment to let his attention drift, and he caught me glaring. He gave me a miffed look.

I just glared harder, even though he hadn't been my initial target.

Noticing the increased intensity of my stare, Chris looked a little confused as well. Then he glanced over at Potter and noticed that we were now engaging in a three-way glare-off. He nudged Potter and whispered something to him.

The bemused, slightly indignant expression cleared from Potter's face, and he nodded in reply to whatever Chris had said. And then, he smiled at me.

It was a small smile, mind, but it was definitely a smile. I grimaced, completely bamboozled by his actions. Why the fuck would Potter smile at me? What twisted game was he playing?

I quickly turned back in my seat in case Flitwick turned around and found out I wasn't paying attention. He was pretty cool usually, but he wanted us to at least pretend like we were engaged.

I scribbled my response. Nothing's going on. Wanted a quiet weekend to myself. There. I sent the boat floating back to Chris. That should be enough to placate my brother for the moment. He knew that I sometimes needed a little time by myself. People could be so exhausting, sometimes.

Glowing statues with laser eyes could be even more exhausting.

But even an entire weekend spent mostly in Gryffindor Tower studying wasn't enough to shake how spooked out I was feeling.

When class ended, I was only distracted by my thoughts when Potter walked past my desk, heading for the door, and I was reminded again of my promise to Scorpius.

I sighed, quickly packing away my stuff, trying to catch up with him. I wanted to get to him while he was still alone, so I didn't have to interact with his douchey Quidditch friends, or whoever he hung out with when he wasn't hanging out with Chris.

"Hey, Potter!" I said, darting through the door of the Charms classroom, about three people behind him. "Ow!" I muttered, when my backpack bumped into me, thanks to the doorframe. I hadn't managed to get it onto both shoulders as I was hurrying, and now I paid the price for it.

Potter paused, and looked around, trying to figure out who was calling out to him. When he noticed me rushing towards him, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Wanted… to talk to you… about something," I panted, stopping at a little distance from him, and finally getting the other strap of my bag onto my shoulder. God, I really needed to work on my cardiovascular fitness. These sprints were really taking it out of me.

Potter stood there for a second, as if his surprise at me wanting to talk to him about something was just so shocking that he'd been frozen by it.

I rolled my eyes. "It won't take long," I said, gesturing with my head for us to step out to the side of the corridor, to let everyone past. It was morning break, so I didn't have to rush off to my next class just yet.

"What about?" Potter asked. He looked suspicious, but I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. It was kind of gratifying that he was a little wary talking to me. The famous Albus Potter, who was taller than me by half a head, and probably had a better exercise tolerance than I did, thanks to all the Quidditch practice he did, feared talking to me. Score one for Ellie Anderson!

"Wanted to talk to you about Rose and Scorpius," I said, getting straight to the point. No reason to beat around the bush – it would help me avoid the temptation of sending a Jellylegs Jinx his way, just for the fun of it.

"Oh," he said, his shoulders falling as he relaxed. "What about Rose and Scorpius?"

"Scorpius said that he and Rose wanted to date, but they were worried about that affecting the friendship group, or whatever, so I told Scorpius that I'd ask you if you were cool with them dating." I got out in a rush.

It wasn't too fast for Potter. He was nodding along with what I was saying. "Yeah, it's cool. Rose already talked to me about the same thing. Told her it was about time they started dating," he said with a grin. "It's been obvious that they're into each other for like, forever."

Well. We agreed about this, then. Somehow, that was a little disappointing. Guess I didn't have to threaten to hex him. I'd wondered if he'd be a little hesitant about having his cousin date someone – one of his friends who was a Malfoy – but he was rather cool about the entire thing. Don't know what Scorpius was so worried about, really. Unless…

"Wait. When did you and Rose talk about this?"

Potter narrowed his eyes in thought. "Hm… last Thursday, maybe?"

"That little shit," I muttered. Scorpius had convinced me to talk to Potter about this on Friday. He'd already known what Potter thought about it by then – couldn't imagine why Rose would keep something like that from him, after all. No wonder he was so smug about their upcoming date at Hogsmeade – he'd already known it was a done deal.

"Who's a little shit?" Potter asked in confusion.

"What?" I asked, coming back to the moment. I'd kind of forgotten that Potter was still standing there. "Oh, never mind." I said, waving my hand dismissively. Potter didn't need to know that I was going to kill Scorpius the next time I saw him. And to think everyone had been surprised when a Malfoy was Sorted into Ravenclaw, and not Slytherin! This was all a cunning ploy of his. He'd had me fooled, with his dorky little act, but deep down, he was as manipulative as the best of them.

And Rose was probably in on it, too! Knowing the two of them as well as I did, it was probably all Rose's idea, getting me to have a civil conversation with Potter. She knew how invested I was in her and Scorpius' romantic relationship.

Those two were so devious! A masterful match made in hell!

"Scorpius wanted you to talk to me about this, didn't he?" Potter asked.

My head snapped up to look at him. "How did you know?"

He ruffled his hair, looking a little sheepish. "Rose wanted me to do the same thing. Said it was about time we learnt to be nice to each other."

I growled. Those conniving lovebirds! I was going to give them an earful the next time I saw them – but maybe after I grilled Rose about her budding romance.

"Did you just… growl?" Potter asked, looking a little wary again.

"Oh, you're still here," I muttered. I'd sort of forgotten again that he was standing in front of me.

"Where would I go?" he asked, looking disgruntled.

"To hang out with your friends, now? Since the conversation is over?"

He looked a little annoyed, but still didn't leave. "Does my presence really annoy you that much? That you can't wait until I leave?"

I was a little confused by this. Why was he annoyed that I didn't want to hang around him longer than completely necessary? We didn't like each! "You don't like me."

Potter opened his mouth to say something, his eyebrows pulling into a confused, somewhat pissed off frown. It was an expression of his with which I was very familiar, since it was the one that I saw most often. But then he abruptly snapped his mouth shut.

I looked at him blankly. When he still didn't say anything, I said, "Well, since it's settled that we're both in agreement about Rose and Scorpius dating, I'll um," I didn't know why I was struggling for words. "I guess we're done."

Still, Potter didn't reply. He just kept on looking at me, with that frown on his face. If he was any other person, I would've asked if he was alright. But since he was my mortal enemy, and I wanted him to not be alright, I was going to let that one slide, and just leave.

Unable to go without saying something, I said, "Bye, then," and turned around to go.

"Wait!" Potter cried.

Surprised by the sudden sound of his voice, I stopped. Turning around to face him again, I asked, "What?" I adjusted the straps on my shoulders, impatient to leave and maybe grab a snack before morning break ended. I had double Alchemy next, and I'd need the brain food.

"Shouldn't we talk about this some more?"

I was taken aback. "What? About Rose and Scorpius? I thought we agreed about them already?" For once.

"No, not Rose and Scorpius," Potter replied, shaking his head. "About us."
My face scrunched up as if I were sucking a bitter lemon. "Us? What the fuck's there to talk about?" We had a mutually adversarial relationship. Didn't really need all that much dissection and discussion, honestly.

He sighed, as if he were frustrated by how dense I was being. Well, he was the one being dense. "Don't you want to at least consider what Rose and Scorpius were saying about us being nice to each other – or trying to?"

"No." That was an easy answer. "We did what they asked. We've had one calm conversation. We've ascertained that we both are very happy that they're finally going to become a romantic couple, now. Mission accomplished."

He ran his hand through his hair again. Terrible habit of his, really. "Don't you…?" he started, then stopped. "Aren't you… tired? Of us always fighting?"

"No, not really." Again, such an easy answer. I found it rather the opposite. Having an arch-nemesis really helped me focus, gave me an impetus to do my best. Without a doubt Potter and I weren't the students with the best marks – but we were sure near the top. In fact, we were rather well matched, often competing for second- or third-best scores in our shared classes.

Or at least, I was. I wasn't sure if academics mattered to Potter as much as it did to me. But I wanted to work hard and do my best in school. Chris often made fun of me for it, but unlike him, I didn't really have all that much else going on other than my academic performance. I didn't play Quidditch, nor was I into music, the way he was.

"Are you?" I asked him. Not that I really cared if he was. I couldn't see how his answer would change anything.

He shrugged. "Sometimes, yeah. I don't always want to fight."
"Really? Could've fooled me," I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest.

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, really."
"Then why are you always complaining about me to our friends?"

"I am not!" he replied indignantly. "I do have better things to do with my time than whinge about you!"

"You told Rose and Scorpius that I was hanging out in the Restricted Section last week! I wasn't breaking any school rules, but you still found something wrong with it!"

"They asked why I looked so annoyed when I got back from my patrol! I told them that you were lurking around the library for no good reason! That's not a crime, either!" I didn't know how, but we were yelling at each other again. This was clearly all Potter's fault that it had come to this. I'd been ready to leave several minutes ago. We could've avoided this confrontation completely.

"I told you I was there to get a book! For your information, that's where you find them! In the library!"

"I definitely heard you talking with someone, and it's fine if you were, but I don't understand why you just won't tell me –"

"Because no one else was there!" I was breathing hard, now.

There was an awkward moment where Potter just looked at me, also breathing a little hard. Where was his cardiovascular fitness, now?

Then, completely unexpectedly, Potter said, "I'm sorry."

My mouth fell open, I was so shocked. Snapping it closed, I replied, "What… did you just say?" Surely, I'd heard him wrong.

"I said I'm sorry."

"For… what?"

"For that whole thing in the library. I shouldn't have been so suspicious of you."

This was so out-of-the-blue, I had no idea how to react. In all our years of knowing each other, we'd never apologised. There were likely plenty of reasons to do so, but that wasn't part of the rules, wasn't how our relationship worked. How could you fuel the fire of dislike when you were nice to each other, and acknowledged when you'd wronged the other?

"I… thank you?" I didn't really know how to respond. Did I now have to apologise as well? And if so, for what? The list was – potentially – quite long.

"You must talk to yourself all the time," he went on. I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not, his expression not really giving away anything, so I decided to work on the assumption that he was being sincere. And if he wasn't, there was nothing like earnestness to shut sarcasm down. Albus Potter couldn't out-sarcasm me.

"I do," I replied in a much calmer tone. This time, leaning into the lie was much easier. If I kept it up, maybe I would start talking to myself for real. "All the time." Maybe I'd leaned in too far. Oh well. It was only Potter. I could handle Potter thinking I was batty as fuck.

I think my ploy to bamboozle him worked because he shook his head in bemusement. "Do you think we could try and be a little nicer to each other, from now on?" he asked.

Again, this wasn't something I expected him to say, although thinking about it, his conversation had been leading up to this. "No," I replied.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, but his lips pulled into a faint smile. "Not even a little?"

"I…" I started, not sure where that thought was really heading. Could I try being a little nicer to him? It wouldn't work if only one of us did. And if Potter wanted to give it a go…

It was the perfect reason to disagree. But I thought about the tension it caused in the friendship group. I could hear Rose saying "for the sake of the friendship group" in my head already, but maybe I could wait to hear that lecture from her in person.

"I'll think about it," I replied.

Potter nodded. "That's fair."

Another awkward silence fell between us.

"Well, bye, then," I said, unsure what to do now. The conversation was clearly over this time.

"See you around, Ellie," he replied with a small smile.

I scowled, about to retort that I didn't in fact, want to see him around. But that didn't seem in the spirit of the whole "I'll think about being more civil" thing. So, I just gave a short nod, and turned and left.


Later that evening, I found myself in the library once again. You just couldn't keep me away. Libraries were a home away from home. I hadn't managed to track Rose down, yet, and grill her about Scorpius – or that ridiculous plot they'd cooked up to get me and Potter to be nice to each other for five minutes. I felt a little pang that my best friends and I weren't in the same House. Of course, it didn't really matter all that much, but it would've made things easier if Rose and I shared a dorm room, logistically speaking. She'd have to come up to sleep, eventually. And now with her and Scorpius being Head Students this year, I'd seen them even less.

We'd figure out a way to hang out, I was sure. Rose was great at keeping in touch with people, unlike me. I wanted to hang out with my friends, but I lacked a distinct follow-through when it came to planning the how. It was just so much easier being by yourself.

I was in the main part of the Library, at one of the long desks that ran through the central part of the space. I loved listening to the soft murmur of voices around me, of various study groups and social gatherings quietly chatting away about their Potions homework, or the minutiae of Gobstones. Even studying alone as I was, I never really felt lonely.

That familiar prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck alerted me to an otherworldly presence. Finishing the sentence on my Charms notes – ones I'd had to spend much longer on, thanks to my inattention in class – I looked up, trying to figure out where the dead person was.

I didn't have to look far – Regulus Black was lounging in the seat directly opposite from me. I wondered how he wasn't falling through the chair. I cut that train of thought short before it could spiral out of control. It began with thinking about how ghosts could sit down and ended in slight alarm at the possibility that ghosts might fall right into the centre of the planet – and maybe out the other side, into the void. How did ghosts interact with gravity? Was the Higgs boson involved?

"We have to stop meeting like this," Regulus said, with a mischievous grin. "Or people are going to talk."

I considered just ignoring him, but what would that achieve? I doubted he'd leave me alone, as a result. He was here for a purpose, and Regulus Black didn't strike me as the type to simply give up if he were ignored. It would be interesting to see how he went about doing whatever he was supposed to do if I didn't cooperate. Maybe it would finally reveal what he was up to…

But I didn't have that kind of patience. I was a lazy-ass mastermind, when it came down to it. One of the many reasons why I couldn't play chess – I just lacked the self-control needed to play the long game.

"You're the one who keeps showing up when I'm in the library," I muttered. The closest people to me were a few seats down and very absorbed in their discussion about the underground chocolate frog cards trading ring at Hogwarts. I wasn't too worried about being overheard talking to no one. And if someone did look at me oddly, it would be another opportunity to cultivate the whole "I talk to myself" thing. I could see this persona having many advantages.

Regulus grinned in response and leaned back in his chair. Amazing how he didn't fall right through… What strange physical laws governed ghosts. "Tell me what's new in your life, Ellie."

My mind jumped immediately to the secret chamber I'd found tucked away in the corner of the Restricted Section. "Why would I do that?" I asked. "I don't even know you."

He nodded. "True, true. But we could get to know each other."

I narrowed my eyes. "Why would an ex-Death Eater who's been dead over forty years be interested in getting to know a teenaged girl? It's kind of creepy, if you ask me."

Regulus rolled his eyes. "I look the exact way I did when I was sixteen. Doesn't that make me your peer?"

"In a really bizarre, alarming, catfishing kind of way," I replied. "Because you're not, in fact, sixteen. How old were you when you died?"
"Nineteen," Regulus replied with a shrug.

I raised an eyebrow in surprise. He'd been so… young. And he'd had the guts to defy his lord and master – in a manner of speaking. Did your act of rebellion still count when only your beloved House Elf was there to see it? "Still doesn't make you my peer. You've got so much more life experience than I do. Hell, you're probably old enough to be my grandfather."

"Life experience?" Regulus repeated, cocking his head to the side, that mischievous grin back on his face. "There's a contradiction in there, somewhere."

"You know what I mean," I huffed. "But if you told me what you're doing here, what you wanted… maybe we could be… colleagues."

Regulus raised his eyebrows, faint disbelief painting his clean, aristocratic face. "Like partners in a gritty crime drama? You, the bright, young rookie, still full of hope about the world. Me, the older, jaded senior partner, haunted by a violent past."

"Why does everything come down to television shows with you?" I asked, incredulous. "For a person who comes from a fanatic Pureblood family, you sure are into a lot of Muggle shit."

Regulus shrugged, unconcerned. "What can I say? Death changes you. The longer you stay dead, the more television you get to watch."

What a weird perk of the afterlife.

"You're not going to tell me why you're really here, are you?" I asked, with a defeated sigh.

"Maybe, maybe not," Regulus said, his eyes gleaming a little wickedly. He was really enjoying himself. "Now, tell me what you found on your little night-time jaunt last week."
"Oh, my God!" I cried. How did he know that?

"Keep your voice down, Ellie. People are going to think you're crazy," Regulus said mildly.

I looked around me to see if anyone had noticed my outburst. Luckily, everyone was still engrossed in their own conversations and tasks to notice me sitting here, by myself, exclaiming to thin air. If anyone was paying attention to me, they'd hopefully just put it down to frustration for a particularly difficult Arithmancy problem.

"Have you been spying on me?" I hissed.

He had the gall to roll his eyes. "Obviously not. Otherwise, I would already know what you'd found."
"You know that I was out past curfew last week! And that I may or may not have found something! How would you know that if you weren't spying on me?"

"I was just keeping an eye on you," Regulus replied calmly. He slouched a little in his chair, letting his back slide down. He was getting more comfortable, the bastard.

"That is spying! Why would you do that?" He hadn't struck me as particularly sinister, but it just went to show – never trust a Death Eater, even dead ones. "Is this something you learnt from your Death Eater friends, or were you always a predatory weirdo?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Regulus muttered.

"I don't know what you're annoyed about," I huffed, folding my arms across my chest. "It wasn't your privacy that was invaded." What a jerk.

"It's part of my job to look out for you, okay?" Regulus snapped. "I… check in on you, from time to time. You sensed me when you were coming back to Gryffindor Tower the other night." So, it had been him that had raised the hairs on the back of my neck as I'd hopped through the portrait hole.

"But I didn't follow you," he continued. "I would never invade your privacy, okay?"

I stared at him, too shocked to answer immediately. That was a lot of information to absorb. "What do you mean by job?" I asked. Let's tackle one issue at a time.

He sighed. "I've probably already told you too much. I can't tell you anything more than that. Later, I might be able to. But for right now, that's it." He looked genuinely sorry about that, too. But was Regulus just a very good actor? It was hard to say. All that television… research for his illustrious espionage career?

"So what? I'm just supposed to accept that you're going to stalk me from now on?" I asked, my arms still folded across my chest.

He stuck his hands into his pockets. "You could think of me as your guardian angel, if you want!"

I snorted.

"Hey, now!" he said, feigning hurt. "That's just mean. Even dead ex-Death Eaters can be guardian angels. Ever heard of a redemption arc?"

"Is this penance for misdeeds committed when you were alive?" I was intrigued by the idea. I'd already figured that Regulus wasn't my average ghost. No other dead person had ever mentioned something like this before. They'd all been so focused on doing that one thing that they'd left incomplete, before moving onto whatever came next.

"You know, I'm still trying to figure that out." He seemed frustrated, as if he was trying to figure it out. "But it doesn't matter why I'm here," he said, shaking off the frustration like a dog drying itself. "All that matters is that I am. And I'm here to make sure that you get through whatever comes next in one piece. Relatively." His mouth quirked.

I had no idea what he was talking about. I was suddenly reminded of that quack lady Rose and I'd met at the shopping centre on my birthday. She'd also been going on about things that didn't make sense, just like Regulus was now. What was going to happen next? Why would I need a guardian angel? Why was I equating what Regulus had just said to that weird-as lady?

"What do you know about what I found?" I asked. "Did the light show tip you off to something?"

Regulus frowned, sitting upright once more. "What light show?"
"From the other night. That's how you knew I found something, right? Unless you're lying about the whole spying thing." I wasn't sure if I quite believed his story about just "checking up on me" every now and then, but in a totally, non-creepy, without-invading-my-privacy kind of way. I don't think you can do that without letting the other person know that you were going to keep an eye on them, especially when you had the ability to walk through walls.

"I really don't know what you're talking about, Ellie. If you'd just start from the –"

"Ugh!" I cried, throwing my hands up in the air, so annoyed that I couldn't get anything out of him. "Would you just tell me what's going on? Or even what your deal is?"
"I told you about keeping your voice down," Regulus admonished, glancing to the side. I'd gotten a couple of surprised looks in my direction at that outburst.

"Arithmancy's the worst, am I right?" I said to those people who were staring at me, with a weak smile. One of the people gave me an odd look, before turning back to her parchment, but the other guy smiled sympathetically. "Tell me about it," he said with a commiserating roll of his eyes. He, too, returned to his textbook after that.

I turned back to look at Regulus. "Please, what's this all about?" I asked quietly. I was lowkey begging, but I just didn't care at this point. If he was going to follow me around for the foreseeable future, I wanted answers from this guy.

Regulus placed his hands on the table. "I don't know what's going on, either," he replied, just as quietly. "All I was told by my superiors was that something big was going to happen at Hogwarts this year, and you were likely going to be part of it."

"You have superiors? What evil shit did you do when you were alive to get stuck with bosses when you died?" I asked.

"Keep your head in the game, Ellie!" Regulus barked. Right. Big things happening at Hogwarts. May or may not involve me.

"You don't know what big things?" I asked. "Not even like, a little bit?"

Regulus shook his head, pursing his lips. He seemed as pissed off about being kept in the dark as I was feeling. I hated when "the fates" or "destiny" or whatever conspired against you. I was very pro-free will, and I just wasn't up for messing around with prophecies and predictions of the future. They were usually vague as fuck and led to nowhere good. Just look at what happened to Macbeth – or old Voldemort. Knowing the future gets you nowhere but dead.

"So, what did you find?" Regulus asked once more.

I told him what happened the other night. Perhaps I dwelt too long on what a chore it was to take all those books out of the shelf to unlock the secret entrance to the storeroom, because it was the only time Regulus interrupted me. "Use magic next time," was his rather sage advice. I forget about the whole magic thing at the most inconvenient of times.

"So, do you know what that light show was about?" I asked him. Maybe now that I'd told him of my discovery, he'd be able to help me pull more pieces of this puzzle together. I wasn't sure how I felt about "something big" happening at Hogwarts, but I definitely wasn't down for it to involve me. Hard pass, thank you very much. With NEWT exams and thinking about what I wanted to do in terms of a career, this year was more than hectic enough. I required no further adventures.

Regulus leaned forward on his forearms, frowning at the table. "Not really, no," he replied, an expression of intense thought still on his face.

I slouched back in my chair, disappointed. "What is the point of you being around if you don't know what's going on?" I muttered in exasperation.

Regulus threw a look of slight affront at me. "Rude."

"True, though," I pointed out.

He had the indecency to shrug. "I'm just the guardian angel, not the spirit guide, okay? I'm as much in the dark about this as you are."

"I don't understand how you're meant to do your supposed job," I made air quotes around the word "job". Was there no relief from employment after you died? Or did this fate only await people who'd died before they had the chance to retire? "When you don't even know what you're supposed to be guarding!"

"Definitely supposed to be guarding you."
"I'm a little insulted someone thinks I need guarding," I sniffed. "I'm very capable of looking after myself."

Regulus gave me a look. "Even the great Harry Potter would've been much better off if the adults around him had looked out for him a little more."

This was likely true. On the outside, the Potter family seemed perfect. But I'd overheard things over the years, from either Chris or the Potter kids themselves, and it painted a picture that things weren't as rosy as they seemed to the rest of the Wizarding community. The scars of war ran deep. Mum had been training to be a Healer at the time of the Second Wizarding War, but she'd hardly ever spoken about her time at St Mungo's, then. Whatever her experiences had been, I guess she'd thought they hadn't been very appropriate for her two young children to learn about. I felt a pang at the reminder that I wouldn't ever have the chance to know my mother as a person, outside of her role as a parent.

"Fair point," I murmured, conceding that maybe having someone keep an eye on you wasn't a totally bad thing.

"Thoughts on what those four statues are supposed to be?" I asked. "Or rather, who?" I hadn't really thought about them all that much – just that they might shoot lasers in my direction if I got too close. The bowl-thing emitting that large beam of light had taken up most of my thoughts about that chamber.

Regulus gave me a look. "You're kidding, right?"

I stared at him blankly. "What do you mean?" Was I supposed to know who those four people were?

Regulus leaned back again in his chair, laughing. It was so hoarse and gravelly, and nothing like what I'd expected his laugh to sound like. Maybe it was that way because he didn't get to laugh all that much when he was alive? I can't imagine being a Death Eater is particularly cheery work.

Or maybe he'd really enjoyed being a villainous, Pureblood zealot, and that was his evil laugh, which had become his normal laugh, because he used it so much.

"You really don't know?" Regulus asked as his strange as fuck laugh died down. "Like, actually?"

"Yes," I said through gritted teeth. I hated not knowing things. I hated having that rubbed in my face even more. "Will you just spit it out? Who are they supposed to be?"

Regulus raised his eyebrows, and crossed his arms over his chest, looking highly amused. "Gee, I wonder who four people, dressed in old-timey clothing, who were hidden behind a Hogwarts crest, could be? There are just so many quartets closely associated with Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to choose from!"

I blinked at Regulus' smirking face, waiting for the sickle to drop. And then realisation hit me. I was a fucking fool. The four statues' identities were so blindingly obvious when Regulus put it that way. I groaned and dropped my head into my hands.

It was the Four Fucking Founders.

"It can't be them," I muttered into my palms. I was such a plebe for not working this out on my own.

Regulus continued to look smug, enjoying the moment far too much. "Oh? Any ideas about who else it could be? And why they'd choose to hide their idols behind a giant Hogwarts crest?"

"It can't be them!" I cried, incredulous and still flustered by not working this out earlier. But Regulus was right. Who else could it possibly be? There wasn't one other person I could think of so dedicated to this school that they'd put a statue of themselves in the bowels of the castle, let alone four.

Regulus just shook his head.

I sighed. "Well, what would statues of the four people who'd founded this school be doing hidden away so well? And what was up with that bowl-thing? And the light-thing?"

Regulus shrugged. "Who knows? But you know who's going to find out?"

"Please let it not be us," I mumbled, sliding down lower in my chair, returning my hands to my face, as if I could hide away from this bizarre new information. I really didn't need this shit in my life right now – or ever, really.

"Us!" Regulus cried, throwing his hands in the air. He was having far too much fun for a dead guy. Was there no sense of decorum in ghosts these days?

I let my head fall onto the desk in defeat, resting my forehead on my mostly forgotten Charms notes. Ugh. Could I just… not?


AN: Hello, friends! Long time, no see! I've had this chapter percolating for far too long, now. It was begging to be let out into the world, so here it is! Hope y'all enjoy!

Adios, amigos! :D