Chapter 21: Prior Incantato

Unlike so many of the other things that had sent the three of them to the library – the Resurrection Stone, the alleged Book of the Mark – it was incredibly easy to find information on performing the Reverse Spell. Thank goodness, thought Rose, who was anxious for answers sooner rather than later. It helped that she'd already seen it done once.

They found a guide to the incantation and the wand movement in a deeply boring book called Critical Spells for Magical Law Enforcement and Record Keeping (by Justus Pilliwickle). Within a few hours, Rose was successfully able to make both Al's and Scorpius's wands regurgitate magic over at least the past several days; before that, and the shapes that whooshed out of the wand tips tended to be ill-defined and more translucent. Nevertheless, that would be enough for their purposes. The last of the Obliviations had occurred right before everyone came back to Hogwarts, less than a week ago.

The only thing left to do was to actually steal Melisenda's wand and see what came out. Rose was all in favor of just performing the spell in the dormitory, which seemed the safest, until Al asked what would happen if Wilkes woke up while Rose was mid-incantation, or worse, while the spell was still in action. They ultimately decided that using the common room late at night was the better option; students that might have been out of bed to use the loo were still unlikely to come down to the common room. Plus, that way they could just claim to be practicing the spell if they were caught – at least, if they were caught by someone other than Wilkes.

"So when should we do it?" Al asked.

"No time like the present," Scorpius said. Rose bit her lip. She was reasonably certain she had the spell down, but she would've liked a few more days to get a sense of Wilkes's sleeping patterns, which she wasn't in the habit of paying any mind. Scorpius seemed to sense her hesitation. "Whatever comes out is just going to get less and less clear the longer we wait," he said. "You've got the spell down. We just have to go for it."

"No, you're right," Rose sighed.

"It kills you to say that, doesn't it though?" Scorpius asked, smirking slightly.

"Hmm," Rose said noncommittally, "No, I just don't know when Wilkes typically goes to sleep. I don't want to go in and try to take her wand and have her still be awake and hex me to Hades."

"Don't you ever see her going to bed?" Al asked with some confusion.

"No," said Rose, "She's practically always with Azalea, Roma, or Valissa – I'd imagine they're hanging out in the Slytherin common room most nights. I don't usually see her come back."

"Well she can't very well be there when we're all required to be in our own common rooms after dinner," Al pointed out logically. "So where's she been this week?"

". . . I've no idea."

"She's not with Azalea," Scorpius said, with a forced air of off-handedness. Rose and Al exchanged looks; Scorpius's continuing friendship with Azalea was mystifying to both of them, given how unpleasant she insisted on being every time they happened to cross paths. "I asked," Scorpius added inconsequentially.

"Er, thanks, Scorpius," Al said.

Rose sighed "I guess the only thing to do is just to go for it." She paused. "So, I'll see you tonight? Back here in the common room – let's say two? That seems late enough to be safe."

"Tonight," Al echoed, nodding.

"Tonight," said Scorpius. He hesitated before adding, "You'll be fine, Weasley. And if she catches you, you hex her first." Al nodded fervently.

At a quarter of two o'clock, Rose was startled awake by her wand buzzing lightly on the pillow next to her – a handy little spell Scorpius had taught them so that they didn't have to rely on being able to keep themselves awake in the dark. She hastily tapped her wand to stop the spell and allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness in the room for several moments. Drawing her curtains back quietly, she found her slippers and paced as silently as she could over to Melisenda's bed.

This was the moment of danger.

Rose paused outside of the curtains, listening intently to hear if there was any hint of a noise from the bed . . . any rustle of sheets . . . any hitch in Wilkes's breathing. Melisenda seemed to be muttering in her sleep, and then, to Rose's consternation, she started making some sort of strange hissing noise . . . Rose waited, completely still, to see if the curtains would open, but the hissing subsided into silence. And then . . .

Nothing.

She crept around to Melisenda's nightstand and lightly felt over the surface. Yes . . . there was Melisenda's wand. Hardly daring to breathe, Rose grasped it, expecting Wilkes to rip the curtains apart and tear her throat out at any moment.

If anything, the silence in the room felt deeper in contrast to Rose's pounding heart.

Rose turned, and with hurried steps made her way out of the second-year girls' dormitory and down the stairs to the common room. The whole time, she fought the claustrophobic feeling of not quite being able to draw a deep breath, sure that at any moment the door at the top of the stairs would creak open and Wilkes would come screaming down the stairs at her.

Al and Scorpius were waiting in the hushed common room for her. The embers in the fire were low, throwing the shadows of the furniture into sharp relief on the walls. The wall hangings seemed to come alive in the dancing light, while the paintings were unusually still, their occupants mostly asleep. Good thought Rose, inanely, they won't be watching us.

"Well?" said Al expectantly.

"Got it," Rose breathed.

"Nice one," said Scorpius.

Rose nodded at him. "So . . . shall we?"

"As they say, Weasley, it's your show."

Rose took a deep breath – still, the feeling that her lungs were just a little too shallow persisted – and touched her wand to the tip of Melisenda's. "Prior Incantato," she whispered.

With a quiet whoosh, ghostly shapes began emerging out of the wand. There were several spells Rose recognized from the last couple days of classes – a pair of rabbits that Melisenda had been trying to Transfigure into slippers, a cube of what looked like a marshmallow that must have come from the work they'd done on Softening Charms in Defense right after hols – and then a few spells that had nothing to do with classes. A bunch of locks that could have been from Melisenda locking her trunk, or a door, or even trying to unlock a door (it was hard to tell with the Priori effect). Several small lights that could have been Wilkes casting Lumos spells to help her see in the dark, or might have been her producing fairy lights for all Rose knew.

She, Al, and Scorpius held their collective breath. They should be approaching any spellwork Wilkes might have done over the holidays now –

And then, unexpectedly, several runes Rose didn't recognize . . . slight variations on the same shapes, over and over again. Strange, twisted runes whose ghostly shapes gave Rose the shivers to look at. More normal runes that Rose thought she almost recognized. Runes upon runes spiraled out of the wand . . . it must have been days and days of Melisenda casting little else. What was she doing? They were so far back now that the shapes the wand was churning out were growing dimmer and more faded . . . well past the point where they should have seen some evidence of an Oblivation spell, if Melisenda had been casting them. But it was just the runes now . . . and now, not even those. Wilkes's wand was emitting what looked like light puffs of steam when Rose raised her own wand, ending the spell.

For reasons she couldn't understand, some of the runes had been . . . disquieting somehow. Al wore a perplexed look that Rose knew she must have mirrored. "What were those?" he asked in a hushed tone.

"Ancient Runes is a third year and above class," Rose whispered.

"I . . . I think I recognized some of those," Scorpius faltered, "I think they look like some of the wards my father uses to open or seal the rooms where he keeps . . . you know, his collections."

"Those were Opening Runes?" Rose asked.

Scorpius nodded. "I think so."

"Like what James was using to open Greenhouse Five?" Al asked shrewdly, and both Scorpius and Rose drew breath sharply.

"Exactly like that, yes," Scorpius said quietly. "I can't believe I didn't catch that's what he was doing earlier."

"I've read about those," Rose whispered. "That's . . . that's powerful magic, those runes." She paused. Something was tugging at her memory from earlier in the year. "Do you think Wilkes is still trying to get into Greenhouse Five?"

"Merlin, still?" Al asked.

"That must be it," Rose hissed excitedly, her mind working overtime. "She stayed at Hogwarts over hols because . . . she needs to get something in Greenhouse Five, and she wanted a chance with Professor Longbottom not around to check if someone had been trying the wards."

"But what does she want with Greenhouse Five? What would her family want with Greenhouse Five?" Scorpius asked, quite sensibly.

Rose deflated. She wracked her brain, and found nothing helpful. She didn't like the feeling of coming up empty. "No, I really don't know," she said.

"And what does that have to do with the students who have been Obliviated?" Al added. "I mean, if she's not the one doing the spells, but Wendy said . . ."

"I know," said Rose miserably. Scorpius and Al both looked at her. "I mean, I don't know. She's clearly not doing the Obliviation, but Wendy said she'd had something to do with it . . ."

"We're so close," Scorpius whispered fiercely. Rose shot him a look. "We are, and you know it, Weasley. There's something huge going on here, you can both feel it. And it's as though – "

"It's as though we have a puzzle and we're missing the edges," Rose said.

There was a long pause as the embers of the fire hissed and crackled.

"It's down to Wilkes," Rose averred. "It's got to be. Everything that's going on this year – the Obliviations, whatever door she's trying to get at . . . even your grandfather asked to see her at the Welcome Feast," Rose said to Scorpius, remembering suddenly. "So it's all got to do with her, somehow, even if he is looking for the Book of the Mark. We have to figure out exactly what she's doing. That'll be the key."

"Seems we need to know more about Opening Runes," Al said. "Isn't Dom – "

"Dom's definitely in Ancient Runes," Rose finished for him. "We can ask her for sure."

"Maybe I'll . . . er . . . sit that one out," Scorpius muttered.

"Are you – are you afraid of Dom?" Al asked incredulously.

"You must have noticed by now that she is by far the most intimidating of you lot."

"What?"

"The other day, I watched her practically eviscerate someone in the Great Hall because they had spilled jam that she sat in . . . two months ago. I think I'll avoid any extended time with Dom Weasley, thank you."

Rose and Al couldn't say anything to this; it was true that Dom tended to . . . well, carry a grudge. And what Scorpius said had also been true. At breakfast the other day, Dom had rigged up some sort of clever spell that sprung when poor Caspian Diggle had sat down, covering him head to toe in blackcurrant jam. Dom had stood up, thrown a scone triumphantly at Caspian (where it stuck to his shoulder, sliding down morosely), and yelled something along the lines of, "See how you like it, then!" This trap, apparently, had taken her two months to streamline and set up so that it could only be sprung by Caspian, and would do the maximal amount of staining damage to his clothing. Dom wasn't just vengeful, she was patient and hard-working – she was a Hufflepuff, after all.

"Right," Al said, "You don't have to come talk to Dom, Scorpius."

A creak on the staircase to the dormitories made them all jump. Rose looked at the clock and realized with shock that it was well past three in the morning.

"You'd better get that wand back up to the dormitory," Scorpius said. Rose nodded and turned for the stairs.

Taking Wilkes's wand back to the dormitory was, somehow, far less unnerving than stealing it, even though she knew Wilkes would be just as furious if she caught Rose this time around. Perhaps it was because she already had the wand in hand, so there really wasn't much Melisenda would have been able to do to her, even if she had been awake – which she wasn't. Rose slipped the wand back onto her bedside table and climbed quietly back into her own bed, her mind working furiously.

Try as she might, she didn't come up with any brilliant flashes of inspiration, though she did lie in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to fall back asleep, for the better part of an hour. When she did sleep, she had unsettling dreams – Wendy Wilkes, riding Al's broomstick, swooped down on her as she crossed the grounds to Hagrid's hut, yelling, "This is what happens!" . . . Unsettling silver runes clustered around her wand as she tried to Transfigure the rabbits on her desk into slippers, and Callister stood at the front of the room, snapping, "Why can't you just remember?" . . . Lucius Malfoy sat in Headmistress Sprout's seat at the High Table and sneered at Scorpius while he held her hand . . .

Rose was so tired the next day she nearly lit herself on fire in Potions trying to kindle the flames under her cauldron.

"Weasley!" Scorpius hissed in warning, and Rose, who had been nodding off, jerked her sleeve back from the flame.

"I'm . . . I'm sorry," she said with a shuddering yawn, "I really didn't sleep last night."

Al looked at her in mild alarm – Rose usually never had this much trouble in classes, and today was a rare day when they were actually brewing something in Potions.

"You don't have to apologize to me, Weasley," Scorpius said, scooping his powdered Griffon claw meticulously "Just watch your robes."

They were completing a potion they'd started the first class back from hols – Wiggenwald Potion, which took several days to mature in between the first and second days of brewing. The room felt at least five degrees warmer than it usually did when Wistorren was doing his lecturing. All of the students had been a bit surprised when they'd moved so quickly from the Swelling Solution at the end of last term onto a new potion right at the beginning of the year, but Wistorren had explained (breathlessly, as though in a rush) that one of the ingredients needed to be harvested under particular conditions and used quickly so as not to spoil. Apparently, he'd been able to get hold of it over the break in classes.

At the front of the classroom, Wistorren cleared his throat. "Now before we all get involved in our own cauldrons – a quick announcement. Can someone read me step seven on the board?"

Bradley Jones, who was sitting with Connor McLaggen closest to the board, raised his hand first, and Wistorren tipped his head towards him. "'Add three drops of Solanum Venenatus venom while stirring counterclockwise four times.'"

"Thank you, Mr. Jones. You will notice," said Wistorren in his spindly voice, "That none of you have any of this venom on your benches, and that it cannot be found in the storeroom. Solanum Venenatus venom is highly poisonous in large quantities, difficult to extract, and very rare. It is also unstable. This vial," he said, holding up a tiny, stoppered vial full of a viscous black liquid, "Will be useless in approximately four-weeks' time, although the potions or elixirs it produces can last far longer than that. Fortunately, Professor Longbottom has been kind enough to cultivate some of it on the grounds for the past several years, which has made this substantially easier to come by for classes.

"Professor," Melisenda Wilkes called loudly. Every Gryffindor head in the room swiveled towards her with varying degrees of surprise – Wilkes was rarely known to speak up in classes, unless it was to mutter something snide at one of her fellow Gryffindors – "If it's so poisonous, why is it used in a healing potion like the Wiggenwald?"

That was unexpectedly insightful.

"Excellent question, Miss Wilkes," Wistorren said, and Rose sighed. She should have known it was too good to be true that they'd actually get straight to brewing today; Wistorren's tone suggested he was ready to settle in for a lecture.

"Solanum Venenatus venom is, indeed, toxic when consumed in larger quantities. In very small quantities – such as the three drops used for this potion – it can have a mild sedative effect, helping to suppress any muscle spasms, respiratory issues, rapid heart rate, or immediate stomach issues that might result after poisoning. In quantities or concentrations much higher, it results in pupil dilation, blurred vision, headache, flushing, hallucination, delirium, convulsions . . . and ultimately, with a high enough dose, death. You will find as you continue in your Potions education that many ingredients have a similarly dichotomous effect – "Dichotomous? Al mouthed at Rose, who shrugged as Wistorren droned on, "— likewise, its specific effect on the pupils – that is, the opening of the pupils – is thought to be linked to the fact that Solanum Venenatus venom has also been traditionally used in the drawing of powerful Opening Runes . . ."

At this, Rose whipped round to see if Al and Scorpius had been paying attention. Their wide eyes told her that they had. And while nearly everyone in the rest of the class had started preparing the rest of their ingredients, Melisenda was also staring up at Wistorren, paying particularly rapt attention, her dark eyes huge. Rose noticed for the first time how pale Melisenda looked. The circles under her eyes had grown dark and deep. She looked hungry – leaning forward in her seat to hear exactly what Wistorren was saying – but also utterly exhausted. What in Merlin's name had she gotten herself into?

Wistorren's voice had continued. "Each of you will need to come up to the front for this venom when you have reached step seven. Add your three drops and stir as instructed, and then bring the vial back to me. If any of you uses more than the requisite amount," he snapped, suddenly sounding much more like Professor Callister than he normally did, "I will be able to tell. And there will be consequences."

Rose found that she herself was suddenly not at all sleepy anymore, though she still worked through the instructions on the board with only half a mind. Fortunately, Scorpius was paying enough attention that he managed to stop her dumping her Griffon claw in all at once rather than sprinkling it over the full surface of the concoction, as the directions called for. He stopped Al from doing the same thing not a minute later.

No, Rose's mind was half-focused on Melisenda. She watched Wilkes watch their Professor – or more accurately, the dark little vial in his hand – beadily. When Wilkes reached her step seven well before Rose did, Rose followed her up to the front of the room anyways.

"Where did you get the Solanum Venenatus, Professor?" Wilkes was asking in a way that imitated innocence – Rose could see that clearly, even if their professor couldn't. Then again, most of the professors seemed to dislike Wilkes quite as much as she did. Callister was the exception here.

Wistorren, completely unsuspecting, was more than happy to answer any questions about his academic endeavors. "Professor Longbottom is cultivating it in one of the Greenhouses," he said, "He is kind enough to collect it for me."

"I don't think I've ever seen it during Herbology lessons," Wilkes pressed eagerly.

"I believe it's in one of the restricted Greenhouses, Miss Wilkes," Professor Wistorren said with a smile. "Even one berry of the plant is sufficient to do ample damage. In fact, I believe there was an issue with some of the plants going missing last year . . ." he trailed off, looking thoughtful, " . . . But as no one turned up in the Hospital Wing with poisoning, nothing really came of it."

"It must have been awfully hard to come by before Professor Longbottom started growing it, sir," Wilkes said.

"Indeed," said Wistorren, grimacing. "I used to have to collect it myself from the Forbidden Forest . . . quite the endeavor, you understand . . . the raw berries themselves cannot be touched without some form of protection, and if the skin is broken in the air, before they are immersed in alcohol, the extracted venom will be useless."

"Do you have to store it specially, sir? Because it's so dangerous?"

"What a perceptive question, Miss Wilkes!" Wistorren said, beaming. "But, surprisingly, no. Cold storage – freezing the solution, or the like – renders it impotent. So I can simply store it in my personal stockroom, but only for about four or five weeks at a time. After that, as I said, it loses its potency and becomes useless."

Wistorren looked as though he could have said a lot more on the topic, but Wilkes cut him off. "Thank you, Professor," she said in an unexpectedly genuine tone, though her voice was a little hoarse, taking the small bottle from his outstretched hand. She turned to find Rose listening intently to their conversation, and shoved roughly past her, muttering, "Out of my way, Weasley."

Rose made her way in a daze back to her cauldron.

Solanum Venenatus.

Well, she thought, at least now she knew what was in Greenhouse Five.

Author's Note: Listen, if you have not already had a Professor Wistorren in your life, I envy you. The character is based on several professors I had during my time at university and in graduate school, all of whom were excited in the extreme about their research, and all of whom were terrible teachers.

We don't get a ton of insight into the hiring process at Hogwarts, but given the caliber of most of the staff, I have to imagine being a teacher in the wizarding world (and perhaps at Hogwarts in particular) is a well-paid and well-respected position, especially under Dumbledore - who seems to have been allowed to run the school almost like an independent country with its own governing body and a general disregard for "the rules" as they apply to others. I would imagine that, given their experiences throughout their time at school, and the roles of power they stepped into after the war, Harry, Ron, and Hermione would do what they could to ensure that Hogwarts as an educational institution retains this degree of independence. Given that Hogwarts failed to fall to Voldemort while the Ministry underwent a successful silent coup, I imagine that they would be successful in this endeavor.

So Professor McGonagall, who was Headmistress at the time, would have been fully responsible for hiring Wistorren. There was no Ministry involvement and no pressure from anyone outside of the school to hire him for any nepotism-influenced reasons. The only excuse is that he seemed really smart on paper and in his interview, and his fussiness and general academic air made McGonagall think that he was probably much less likely to be a secret-not-really-Dark-wizard-double-agent than his recent predecessor, positively less likely to (apparently) murder the current Headmistress, and overall just less likely to cause drama (an important hiring consideration post-war). Unfortunately, not every hiring decision can be a winner.

Thanks for reading!

-bbh