"Very good, Miss Evans! Excellent work. Ten points for Gryffindor."

Alex grit her teeth. The potion gently bubbling in front of her was the exact shade of orange that the textbook described. She stirred it a twice counter clock-wise, watching as it turned a shade brighter.

"Mr. Potter, I am certain that this is not your best work..."

"I assure you, professor, that all this was very intentional—"

"Mr. Black, I also expected better from you. Look at your brother's!"

The brother in question was using the same table with Alex. Alex shot him a look; he didn't even glance up from his chopping board, the mandrake root precisely cut and stacked on one side. He wiped his knife on a towel.

"Yes, well, he has always been a stickler for these things..."

Alex went back to her own potion. Slughorn passed through the Slytherin section of the room without much comment, although he did stop to praise Severus, who had breezed through the instructions and was now adding bits of green grass to his red concoction, and Regulus, whose work was moving along at the same pace as Alex's.

"Lovely work, m' boy, lovely work," Slughorn said, thumping Regulus on the shoulder. Alex didn't look up as Slughorn passed by her side of the table and he didn't comment. She merely proceeded to crush the green grass in her hand, letting the juice drip from her knuckles. The gentle aroma of the grass mixed with the pungent smell of the liver and Alex squinted at the potion.

Her mother had warned her in one of her many letters that Slughorn played favorites, and although Alex did not mention this in her letter, it was clear that Slughorn had no intention of making her one of his favorites despite her performance in class. Alex's eyebrow automatically shot up at the notion. It was not quite that she wished to be favored by the old, pudgy professor—as far as she could tell, Slughorn was, although an expert in his field, not very fit for the vocation of teaching compared to other teachers such as McGongall or Flitwick, far too concerned with what the students could do for him, as opposed to what he could do for them—but she did wish to be acknowledged for her abilities. Her essays at least seemed to have been graded fairly, but Alex couldn't be sure.

The class ended and Alex left quickly, barely pausing to seal her vial of potion and slapping it onto Slughorn's desk. It was early afternoon in late October and the sun was already beginning to set on the horizon when Alex arrived at the library. She went to her desk—her desk, because it was located in the far corner away from the general studying area, facing a small window on one side and surrounded by shelves and shelves of dusty books that had not been opened for dozens of years. She sighed.

It was the only place that she could find her bearing in the wide, large castle. Very few people frequented this part of the library, and not many people were eager to study on a Friday. Alex looked around furtively to check if anyone was looking her way before she slid the book hidden from the plain view by the wooden panels of the table from its hiding place, rubbing her hand over the cover, trying to smooth it over.

She'd found the book only yesterday, during one of her many daily visits to the library. She had taken to studying in the dusty old place, at first because she had worried about falling behind other students. It soon became apparent from her lessons that other students didn't know much about magic, either, but the feeling of panic still remained. Besides, there was nothing else to do; Rebecca and Leila often spent time together and it was difficult to join their conversations. Severus and she interacted during class, exchanging notes whenever they needed it but otherwise remaining distant. To other boys in her year she spoke whenever she needed to and they spoke to her when they needed to. Remus sometimes joined her in the library, but his visits were inconsistent—she'd been told that he often got sick—and grew less and less frequent as he became preoccupied with his friends in Gryffindor—Potter, Black, Pettigrew. No one else in the castle were willing to talk to her; she didn't realize until the second week into school that this was because she was a Slytherin. The library soon became one of the few places in the castle where she was allowed to go despite her house and she became accustomed to taking refugee there. The studying, if nothing else, helped her keep up with her classes, and she had also found very interesting books on Hogwarts and wizarding history that she realized weren't very hard to comprehend as long as she wrote down the names.

It was during one of her excursions through the section of the library dedicated to Hogwarts history that she found several shelves of records about previous students at Hogwarts. Some of them dealt with famous figures that went through Hogwarts—the Founding Fathers, Merlin, and even Dumbledore—that were well-worn, but others were perfectly preserved save for several layers of dust that seemed to place the books away from the rest of the library in present time to a distant while ago where nothing ever happened that anyone could touch.

It took a while before she could locate the year she was looking for, and when she finally did the day before the library was about to close and the shrill voice of Madam Pince was ringing through the aisles like a banshee's screams. She exhaled, her heart beginning to accelerate at the sight of the letters engraved over the cover: Hogwarts: Year 1956-1957. Her mother must have been in her last year at Hogwarts. Alex opened the book and unceremoniously began to leaf through it until she found the section she was looking for. She swallowed.

Her mother was smiling at her, her face unmarred by the years that Alex had known her. Her hair was longer and combed by the fingers of the wind, obscuring the view to the wide smile. The unfamiliar sight of her mother in wizard robes made Alex feel as though she was spying on something private. She was surrounded by other students in her year. Beneath the picture was the list of the names of people in the photo and a title: Ravenclaw seventh year. So her mother had been Ravenclaw; it made sense. The Sorting Hat had implied as much about her mother's character, and from what she could gather, her mother possessed neither the ostentatious style the Gryffindors displayed nor the unqualified consideration of Hufflepuffs. The rest of the page was filled with the pictures of Ravenclaws, and Alex soon learned that not only was her mother a member of the alchemy club and rarely lost in a game of Exploding Snap. Alex leafed through the book, looking for more.

The answer came almost at the end of the book, where there were commemorative pictures taken after the graduation. Alex shook her head. Of course her mother had been a prefect. Then something caught her eye.

In the group of prefects there was a young man. He was standing with the female Slytherin prefect—Slytherins tended to stand by themselves, Alex knew by now—and he was looking straight at the camera without smiling. His dark, deep-set eyes glared intensely and the firm set of his mouth told her that that he did not like to be taken lightly. Slughorn stood between the two prefects, beaming, obviously satisfied the presence of the two prefects standing beside him. The picture unlike the other ones didn't move, set permanently in time without changing. The prefects from other houses smiled brightly at the camera. Alex noticed that Dumbledore was standing with the Gryffindor prefects—so McGongall couldn't have been working in Hogwarts yet. And her mother, standing next to the male Ravenclaw prefect, was for once not looking at the camera, instead looking over at Slughorn—no, the boy standing next to Slughorn. Alex looked at the caption beneath the photo, but she could already guess what she was going to find. She knew the look in the boy very well—knew the eyes, knew the firm set of the lips, knew the stiff stance and the square of the shoulders. Even though she had been told that she had her mother's face, her mother's features—she knew. They were her own.

Altair Wymond boarded the Hogwarts Express at Platform Nine and Three Quarters for the first time on September 1st, 1949. He did not have siblings who preceded or followed his enrollment at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry nor had his parents nor any relatives had any affiliation with the school. He was sorted into Slytherin and proved himself to be an adequately intelligent student, although his talents seemed to have lied with Quidditch; his in second year he was chosen to play the Beater—a feat not to be overlooked, as he had been merely twelve and other players had at least a few years on him, not to mention several stones. In his fifth year he was chosen to be the Slytherin prefect along with a fellow student Genevra Greengrass. In his seventh year he also served as the Slytherin Quidditch captain and held the first place trophy that the Slytherin house hadn't won in sixteen years. He graduated in the summer of 1956 and that was the last time that Hogwarts would hear of him.

All this Alex had gleaned from various books in the library, but little more. She was sitting on the table in the Great Hall, watching as students around her chattered cheerfully. It was Halloween, and, although Alex didn't realize until she entered the Great Hall to have dinner, the wizards were even fonder of Halloween than Muggles; festive jack-o'-lanterns hung from the places where the candles usually were, gleaming wickedly with their angular eyes and sending sinister smiles down at the students. There were very large pumpkins in front of the head table that the gamekeeper, Hagrid, had grown by himself and on them were carved several important scenes from history regarding Halloween, such as the defeat of Gwua-rumph, the great giant, by the elves who had then gone on to celebrate in their towns and occasion several accidental run-ins with the Muggles. Even Dumbledore's robes were orange with black bat prints, and McGonagall, who never changed out of her dark green robe, had a tiny grinning pumpkin attached to the end of her wizard's hat.

Alex was not in the mood to celebrate, however. She could feel a little piece of paper burning inside her pocket, threatening to singe the fabric and leave a permanent scar on her skin. She felt as though she had been marked in an irrecoverable way; the picture of her father taken after graduation along with several other prefects secretively ripped from the library book and stowed away in her pocket kept reappearing in her mind, enticing her to take it out and examine it again. Even the fact that her housemates ignored her failed to affect her tonight; the usual familiar banter, the inside jokes and looks, words that made little sense to her—she could tune them out, all of them, dig so deep into her isolation that nothing mattered but herself. It was tiring to constantly watch, to absorb information until like a sponge that has too much water in it expand to the point she couldn't anymore and then act as though it was all effortless, the process of learning, and that she couldn't possibly be affected by anything. Instead she thought about the several pictures that she had discovered, the dark gaze of the young man whom she didn't know and her mother's bright, carefree smile that she had never received.

The dinner ended slowly, and Alex began to drag her body, full stomach and all, wordlessly to the Slytherin common room, feeling restless despite the heavy dinner. The name Altair Wymond ran in circles in her mind, creating a large loop she seemed to be in the middle of. Altair Wymond. Altair Wymond. Altair Wymond. They Slytherin boy her mother had run off with. Her father…

"Legilimens," she muttered to the dungeon door. It slid open.

Her body seemed to have a mind of its own. A few minutes later she had found a roll of parchment from her bag and a quill and was sitting on her bed, staring at the blank page. She didn't know what she wanted to say, what she wanted to ask, and her hand began to scribble something, but she could not make a sense of the words.

Her mother would have told her if she wished to, and Alex knew this. If Sophia Wilson wanted Alex to know who her father was, she would have told her. But she didn't, and Alex assumed that this hadn't changed—her mother would not tell her even though she asked. I found a picture of a man, a man who looks very much like me, words stood in front of her eyes, demanding attention the way a blade of grass stands on its own among the countless others. I think you knew him. You must have. He was in your year… She rolled up the letter and tied it with a thin rope and put it in her pocket. She stood up.

The corridors were much colder than she was used to, but she wasn't accustomed to wondering around the castle in the night. Perhaps it wasn't past the curfew—Alex didn't know—but it certainly was past the time when the library usually closed. The corridors were lit only by a few lanterns sparsely planted—strewn perhaps was a better word—within the castle and a view from a large window in third floor revealed that the full moon was up tonight. Alex shivered and then shook herself. It was just the darkness, which could not possibly harm her.

But what hid in the darkness could, and Alex drew herself closer as a violent gust of wind from the West Tower hit her face. She began to climb up the stairs, one by one. It was a long climb, and when she finally reached the top her nose was cold and her hands were firmly glued inside her pockets.

She spotted her school owl immediately. They had bonded of sorts over the months. The owl hooted happily as she approached it, and looked at Alex expectantly.

"Listen, I need you to deliver something, but I forgot—" the owl looked back at her a little more sternly. "Yeah, I know, it's a bit spur of the moment, but—" This time what stopped her wasn't the hooting of the owls, or the cold gust of wind. It was the sound of footsteps. Alex froze in her position. She told herself to relax—it could be anyone. A Slytherin. Alex knew the ridiculousness of the idea. Slytherins didn't come to the owlery after dinner. She slowly turned toward the staircases and her eyes met another pair of eyes that she didn't recognize.

"Well, well, well," he drawled. "Look who it is. A first-year Slytherin." As the boy approached her, Alex realized that he was accompanied by two friends. They all seemed to be at least fifth years or older—she couldn't tell. They weren't Slytherins, that much was obvious. Alex squinted at the badge on the front of their robes. Ravenclaw. Alex swallowed. Ravenclaws in general tended to be much more judicious with the Slytherins as long as the Slytherin house didn't bother them.

From the looks on their faces, Alex surmised that her house had.

"Aren't you a little too young to be wondering by yourself at night?" the boy said. "After all, you could be caught." The boys behind him laughed and Alex discreetly reached for the wand in her pocket. It wasn't there. With an inward groan she remembered that she had put it aside carefully in her bedside table—despite two months that she had spent at Hogwarts, she still treated the wand like a common wristwatch that she had to take off every day before sleeping. She cursed under her breath.

"If you need to send a letter, then send a letter," she said, trying to look less wary than she was feeling. "Don't bother me with your banter." She drew herself up taller, looking squarely at each and every one of them. Their eyes shifted under her gaze and she felt a little triumph boost her confidence.

"A letter?" the boy who appeared to be the leader laughed. "To whom?" he was still drawing in closer, and Alex refused to cower and step back. Now he was standing less than a feet away from her. "You don't seem to know something, girl. I don't have anyone to send the letter to. And you know why?" He drew in even closer, his greasy nose now inches away from her face. Alex's eyes widened. The boy's eyes were unsteady not because they were intimidated by her; they were unsteady because they couldn't focus. Wouldn't focus. They were drunk.

She could smell the alcohol from the distance. Alex remembered some of the older boys talking about having some sort of a small, private party during dinner, but Slytherins tended to keep to themselves and most older students didn't pay attention to the younger students so she hadn't given it much thought. Apparently Halloween parties weren't just a Slytherin tradition—and apparently they also involved alcohol. It wasn't the common smell of beer and whiskey that she had once or twice encountered in a restaurant. It was stronger, spicier. And that meant only one thing to Alex at that point: get away.

"And you know who killed them?" He drew in still closer. Alex pulled her face back to avoid their noses meeting, and the boy grinned nastily. "You did. Every single one of you. You think you're so high and mighty, with your Pureblood status. Oh, look, another Mudblood that we get to kill." The last sentence was said in a falsetto, mimicking her voice.

"Listen—" Alex started, but the boy took a big step forward and Alex took a step back involuntarily. Alex clinched her teeth. This was not going well.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said. "But I didn't have anything to do with it. I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sincerely so—"

The boy laughed. It was a horrible laugh. Bitter. Angry. "Did you hear that, Bertie? She's apologizing." He sounded almost gleeful. "Not so tough without your gang of snakes to protect you, now, are you?"

Alex resisted the urge to say that the didn't have any friends. Clearly this was not the time and she needed to focus. Meanwhile the boy took another menacing step forward and Alex stepped backward and felt something hit her legs. The stone wall. She could feel the cold wall stubborm and immense behind her back. The boy leaned over her, his hands on both sides of her body, sneering. Her eyes widened.

If this was a typical case of bullying than she might have felt a little less troubled. Bullying had happened before in the Muggle school she went to. She had seen them happen, and although most students at her school left her alone because of her 'oddity,' she had enough experience with it to know that the physical pain didn't last forever, and that it was more of the violence itself that was truly frightening, the psychology of it, the assertion of power and dominance over one person by another that would have been disgusting in an ordinary situation. She considered. The odds were stacked against her. There she was, wandless, quite slight and small compared to the boys who were at least a foot taller and much heavier than her, and outnumbered. Her only way of escape was through that doorway, which meant that there was no escape for her unless she could find a way to get past the three boys. They were quite drunk and she supposed that that could work in her favor. But she would have to be fast.

Apparently the boy could tell that she was thinking. He smiled a horrible smile and grabbed her chin with his hand. It was bigger and thicker than she expected and she bit the inside of her cheek to swallow a wave of disgust that threatened to come up from her stomach. "You can try to get away," he said. "But let's have some fun first." Alex stopped breathing, just for a second. Stupid, stupid. Stupid to think that the pain wouldn't last forever and stupid to think that these boys will be satisfied with a few blows with a fist. Stupid of her to think that these boys were eleven, like her.

She reacted. She stomped on the foot of the boy, hard, and when lost his balance, gave him a well-placed knee kick to his groin. The boy doubled over. She pushed him aside roughly and made a run for it as the two others boys advanced toward their direction. The owlery was small, however, and there wasn't a corner that she could run to and no one would be able to reach her. She ran smack into one of the boys and he turned around and held her arms back, his grip stronger than she had anticipated from a drunken person. Alex struggled, also stepping on his feet and trying to elbow into his abdomen, but his grip only tightened and she felt a sharp pain in her shoulders. She stopped struggling. Another boy was checking on the leader, who was now glaring at Alex with glittering eyes.

"You," he growled.

Alex bit her lips. She'd only made the beast angrier than it need have been.

The boy stomped to where she was standing, his the tip of his wand placed at her throat. "Now we can make this easy for both of us," he said quietly, too quietly. "Or we can make this much harder. Either way we'll enjoy ourselves. Is that clear?"

Alex didn't respond.

"I asked, IS THAT CLEAR?" he shouted, and when Alex didn't answer, he raised his hand and struck her face.

Alex felt her face tense, trying to get the feeling back into her left cheek. It stung. Mostly. But the stinging left her mind when she saw that the boy had now reached for the buttons on her robe that held it together.

Something that had once puzzled Alex about the wizarding robes was that no one wore anything underneath them except underwear. Her mother had explained as much during their visit to Madam Malkin's and said that it was a sensation that one gets used to after a while. Initially Alex had felt quite self-conscious whenever she put on her uniform because she could not feel the familiar tug of the jeans band around her waist or the slight confinement of the shoulders by the shirt. But over the months she had grown used to the free movement that the wizard robes offered, and although the weather was becoming colder, the robes were enough to keep her warm; besides, there was also a winter cloak for wintry months.

She had never wished so fervently for her normal clothes until now.

The chill air raised goosebumps on her skin and Alex struggled again against the boy's grip, but it was too firm. Fortunately—if the word even applied to the situation—the boy in front of her clumsy, groping in the dark and attempting unsuccessfully to undo the buttons. It was dark in the owlery despite the silver light that shone from the full moon and he was also very drunk. Alex grit her teeth and felt her eyes sting, a teardrop just about to form. She forced herself to swallow. She couldn't just give up now.

"Well, isn't this a pathetic sight," she heard a cold voice from behind her. "Taking advantage of a girl. Mudbloods do stoop so low. And you wonder why we call you Mudbloods." The boy in front of her stopped and looked up. His eyes narrowed.

"Black," he spat.

"Me." The boy holding her arms back spun them around so that all of them faced the newcomer. Alex's eyes widened. Regulus Black was standing on the entryway, his wand in his hand, his face expressionless. "Let her go," he said. "Pick someone your own size."

The boy laughed. "Like you, you mean?" The others joined in, jeering at him. Alex had to admit that Regulus didn't exactly present a picture of a grand savior, invincible and fearless in face of any danger. In fact, he looked quite thin and small compared to the grip that just tightened around her forearms.

Regulus sighed and held his wand higher. "As if you could fight me," he said lowly.

The answer came swiftly in a form of a non-verbal spell that disarmed Regulus quickly. His wand fell to the floor and Regulus made a move to grab it. The leader was quicker, however, and stepped on the wand before Regulus could reach it. Meanwhile, the other boy had sneaked up behind Regulus and held him straight up, his arms around Regulus's neck and waist. Unceremoniously the leader punched Regulus hard in the stomach. Alex could hear his sharp exhale before he gasped for breath.

"Not so cocky now, are you?" the leader sneered. Another punch landed on his stomach, and then his face. A small crack rang unmistakably through the circular room and in the background Alex could dimly hear the sound of owls hooting in an odd cacophony that was a mixture of both upset and excited. "Who's laughing now, huh?"

"Coward," Regulus spat out. He looked straight at the boy, still a bit out of breath. "This is the only way you'll fight. Like a coward." He inhaled shakily. "Like a Muggle. That's all you are."

The boy's eyes flashed. Alex could sense what was about to happen before she saw it: the boy getting out his wand again, pointing it straight at Regulus. Regulus was proud enough to look straight at the attacker as it happened, but Alex could see, from the tension in his jaw, the clinch of his fist that was barely visible, that he was bracing himself. The boy raised his wand.

"NO!" she shouted.

The spell was uttered—Alex never learned what it was. The target standing less than a feet away, the spell was emitted from the wand, the energy leaving the tip of its carrier.

It never reached the target.

A strange, golden sphere appeared seemingly out of thin air, glimmering, bubbly, transparent yet solid, enveloping Regulus and the his captor. But the leader boy who was standing away from him was pushed back, as though the sphere was a physical barrier that like a ball expanded and pushed against anything that it came into contact with. It knocked him against the staircase wall, and the boy lost his balance on the last step, teetering dangerously on its edge, his arms flailing around him, his body careening helplessly in the darkness before falling, falling, falling…

Alex could hear his shout, the sound of his body rolling against the stone steps, and the final dull thud that signaled that the boy had reached the bottom of the staircase. The boy who was holding Regulus back let go of him and ran after him. Alex felt the pressure on her arm also disappear and another hunk of shadow disappeared into the staircase. Regulus let them pass, leaning against the wall and wheezing quietly. Alex felt her legs give out under her and she slumped against the stone wall.

They stayed that way in silence for a long time. Alex had crawled up into a ball, holding herself tight against the cold night air, burying her face in the comfort of her thick fabric of her sleeves. Regulus stopped wheezing after a while. Alex heard his footsteps on the floor of the owlery dimly dulled by the droppings and skeletons he stepped on as he approached her slowly but didn't look up.

"Are you well?" he asked, his voice still a little hoarse. Alex nodded into her arms.

Regulus seemed to hesitate. "I'm sorry I wasn't of more help," he said finally.

Alex didn't answer. She could hear his rough breathing close to her and even though she knew that he meant her no harm she wanted to get away, crawl away from all human presence, anything to silence the sound of breathing she heard.

"Merlin, are you crying?" Regulus said, alarmed, noticing her shaking shoulders for the first time. "I—" he stopped for a second. "I was about to say that it's nothing to cry about, but I suppose that it is." He sounded awkward, uncomfortable. Alex couldn't find the voice to tell him off. She was suddenly very tired—tired from the night's incident, tired from weeks and weeks of keeping up, trying to survive in a lonely environment where no one cared, trying to pretend like all this was nothing, nothing at all.

"I have something," he said, rummaging through his pocket. Alex merely drew herself in closer.

"Here," he said, and an unexpected smell of… was that pumpkin? Alex looked up, bewildered. It was one of the mini pumpkin pasties that she'd seen during dinner, not altogether a tart, but still mixed with raisin and cinnamon and some sort of pastry dough that held the mashed thing together.

"I saved it for Edge," Regulus explained. Was there a defensive note to his voice? Alex looked at Regulus's face properly for the first time and saw that there was a flush to his cheeks that she'd never seen before. He was embarrassed.

"He likes the taste of pumpkin," he continued. "Whenever he flies in during breakfast, he always nips at my pumpkin juice. I thought that he might like to try something new." Now Regulus was scratching the back of his neck—like an ordinary, embarrassed eleven-year-old boy. "We don't get these pastries every day, but it looks like the stupid bird has gone off flying again—" he stopped on his track when he heard a strange sound.

Alex laughed. A weak, spiritless laugh rose from her stomach and she coughed, but she kept laughing until it gained a sound. The sound became louder and louder until it rang in the owlery and escaped into the dark night. She laughed until she didn't have the breath to sustain her laughter and when she couldn't she clutched at her stomach which still hurt from the punch and she laughed until she was wheezing like Regulus had.

"No thanks," she finally managed to gasp out before falling again into a fit of giggles. After watching her in bewildered silence he joined in, a laughter so unexpected that it sounded foreign even to his own ears.

"It's quite lovely, though," he said, and they both fell into a fit of laughter again.

They sat there on the stone floor, laughing and laughing and laughing, until there wasn't any air left to laugh and their stomachs hurt from laughing, being punched, or both. Alex wiped the tears from her eyes and blew her nose into her sleeve, careless of appearances now. Regulus was now watching her with somber gravity.

"Thank you," she murmured. Regulus blinked.

"It wasn't exactly a heroic rescue anyhow."

"Still," she insisted. "Thank you."

Regulus didn't answer to this.

"I should be thanking you," he said. "The shield you cast. It saved me. Both of us."

Alex frowned. "The shield?"

Regulus smiled wryly. "It certainly wasn't any of them. It wasn't me, either. I've never seen it before in my life."

"Neither have I."

They fell into a confused but comfortable silence.

"We should get going," Alex said after a while. She stood up wordlessly and Regulus followed her suit. He then looked away. He cleared his throat.

"Your robe," he said succinctly. "I'm going to look for my wand." Alex felt a terrible blush creep up her face and felt the taste of bile rise in her throat. She swallowed again, quickly arranging her clothes. Regulus meanwhile stood up and pocketed his wand.

"Why did you come up here in the first place?" he asked as they descended.

It took a while for Alex to remember why she had felt the need to come up here in the first place. The discovery of the photograph. Her father. Her mother… "I wanted to send a letter," she said, gripping the roll of parchment in her pocket tightly. "It's not important now." Regulus nodded.

"I don't know whether we should go to the infirmary," he said. "It's late, and we'll definitely get detention for being out in the first place—"

"Mr. Black!" a stern voice sharply called their attention. "Miss Wilson, really!" They turned around and saw McGongall standing behind them close to the stairway of the West Tower. Alex bit her lips.

"Twenty points from Slytherin! Wondering around the castle in the dark! It's dangerous—" McGonagall's eyes narrowed. "Mr. Black, is that blood on your nose?" Alex looked away. She had neglected to mention the fact to Regulus—she suspected he already knew and felt it unnecessary to point it out.

"I'm afraid so, ma'am," he said politely. McGonagall looked back and forth between them.

"And Miss Wilson! What happened to your face?" Her voice grew sterner. "If you two had been fighting each other, truly, I confess myself to be very disappointed. Explain yourselves!"

Alex looked uncertainly at Regulus, who looked back at her. An understanding passed between them.

"It's a long story, Professor, and Regulus needs to see the nurse," and I need to take a shower, she thought, feeling the tiredness press a forceful finger on her eyelids, making her unfocused. "Could we go to the Hospital Wing and talk?"