Chapter 23: Benjamin Bethel

It was mid morning but it felt much earlier as the December sun had only begun to rise. Madam Pomfrey sat in the hospital wing and watched Zoltan Kun sleep. She knew Kun was a fully grown man, towering above her at six foot, but when he slept he looked very young, with his long dark lashes resting softly against his cheeks.

Professor Dumbledore had brought the sleeping boy to her in the very early morning. He had not told her what had happened to him, saying it was safer for her not to know, but the matron knew he had been touched by dark magic. After all these years she could smell dark magic like a dog smells fear.

"What did you get yourself mixed up in child?"

A week ago the Hospital wing had been full of snoring Ravenclaw and Slytherin Quidditch players when Professor Snape had stepped out of the fireplace with Benjamin Bethel, another Slytherin, in his arms. Every one of Mister Bethel's ribs had been broken by a ruptumfrusta curse, cast by the boy now sleeping in front of her. Madam Pomfrey would not soon forget the sound of Bethel's desperate, ragged breaths as she rushed to mend all twenty-four bones. Today her only patient was Mister Kun and the wing was silent.

Kun's eyes fluttered and he turned onto his side. Madam Pomfrey traced a spiral with her wand and pronounced clearly, "Expecto Patronum." A trail of light fell from her wand tip. The matron sighed, closed her eyes, and tried again, "Expecto Patronum!" This time a silver robin flew into form. "I think he will wake soon," she said to the bird and it fluttered away.

Fifteen minutes later, Professor Dumbledore swept into the Hospital Wing followed by Professor Snape.

"Thank you for watching over him Poppy," Dumbledore said. "If we could have some time alone with the boy." Madam Pomfrey inclined her head and retreated to her office.

Róisín woke with a grinding headache. She blinked rapidly to soothe her dry eyes.

Something was at the foot of her bed.

She sat up with a jolt. Misty the house elf was staring at her.

"Good Morning, Miss Feral," Misty said. "Master Snape has told me to inform you that your arrangement with him is over."

"Sorry?" Róisín rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It felt like the morning sun had pulled the pin on a grenade in her brain.

"Your arrangement with Master Snape is over. You are to pack your bags and will be sent to a safe house by the end of the day."

"I don't understand," Róisín grumbled, her face puffy with sleep and her eyes scrunched against the sunlight. "I have to leave Hogwarts?" Misty nodded. "I can't do my NEWTS?" The house elf shook her head. Róisín let herself fall back onto the bed. "Fuuuuuuuck!" she groaned. "Fuck, fuck fuck!"

"May I return the professor's cloak?" Misty asked.

Róisín ripped the cloak off herself, sucking through her teeth as the woolen fabric scratched against the grazes on her skin. She handed it to the house-elf. Ugly yellow and purple bruises had blossomed on Róisín's arms and legs. Her stomach lurched as memories of last night jumped to her attention; her flight from the tower, Snape's hands on her as he healed her, Snape penetrating her mind, Snape's alarm at discovering Kun's interest in her…

With a jarring crack! Misty disapparated from Róisín's bedroom.

Róisín bit her fist and rocked on her bed. "Oh my god, oh my god…" she repeated. Tears dripped from her face onto her thighs, sinking through the thin fabric of her dress.

Zoltan knew he should wake up, the new day was so close he could hear it, but he felt so deliciously warm and snuggly that he chose to sleep a bit more.

Then someone called his name. He shook his heavy head against the sound. They called again. And again. Zoltan opened his eyes.

A long, crooked nose was staring down at him. He tried to recoil but his body was numb and slow.

"There's no need to be afraid, Zoltan," Dumbledore said. "You're safe here."

He was in the Hospital Wing. Where he'd sent Ben last week. The black shape behind Dumbledore came into focus and Zoltan recognised Professor Snape. Zoltan opened his mouth to speak but his voice had no body.

"It's ok, he's gone," Dumbledore said softly. Zoltan took a deep breath. It was true, he could no longer feel him.

At the beginning, Zoltan thought Benjamin Bethel looked at him that way because he was jealous. Benjamin was quiet. Too quiet. His mother was a muggle and he didn't know the right people, not the way Zoltan did. As a first year in Slytherin, it was clear that knowing the right kind of people was important.

Benjamin was only a year behind Zoltan in Hogwarts, but on his first day, when the sorting hat was dropped over his strawberry-blond hair and freckled face with soft, round features like a puppy, he looked a lot younger than Zoltan, whose jet-black hair and emerging jawline were already turning the girls' heads. Zoltan ignored Benjamin for three years as he effortlessly became one of the coolest boys in Slytherin and then in the whole school.

Zoltan was in fifth year and Benjamin was in fourth when Zoltan noticed him again. Zoltan and his crew walked into the Slytherin common room to find Benjamin and his friend practicing disarming charms. Benjamin's attempt at expelliarmus flung his own wand from his hand and Zoltan and the other fifth years started crying with laughter. Benjamin looked so crestfallen that Zoltan offered to help him practice. He learnt quickly and the two boys ended up duelling together a couple of nights a week, Zoltan learning from Benjamin just as much as the other way around.

Then Zoltan started to notice the lads sniggering behind his back. Graham Montague began calling Benjamin Zoltan's "little halfsy" because of Benjamin's muggle mother. Zoltan would retort, "And who do you think you are, a twenty-eighter?" which would shut Graham up for a day or so. Zoltan didn't care about Benjamin's mother. He wouldn't have cared if Benjamin himself were a muggle, he was falling so "dancing with the mooncalves" in love with him.

Benjamin and Zoltan kissed for the first time in the Astronomy Tower, where they had gone to watch the shooting stars. That night, hours and hours past curfew, Zoltan found himself crying with laughter as he listened to Benjamin's crazy plan to find the centaurs of the forbidden forest and ask their advice on his divination project. The following week the two boys went back to the Tower every night until they both began to fall asleep in their classes.

Then they were caught. Zoltan and Benjamin were sparring in an unused dungeon classroom when Benjamin's wandless spell was finally strong enough to knock Zoltan to his knees. Benjamin, unable to contain the huge smile on his face, rushed over to help Zoltan to his feet and Zoltan kissed him square on the mouth, both boys still panting and covered in perspiration. Pansy Parkinson, curious about the noise in the normally quiet dungeons, opened the door on the entangled couple.

Rumours spread then, not only through Slytherin but the whole of Hogwarts like their kiss had infected the water. That summer, Zoltan's uncle made a snide comment about Zoltan's inclinations at a family dinner. In his sixth year Zoltan ignored Benjamin again.

This year, Slytherin house was swarming with couples. Straight couples. They were holding hands in Hogsmeade, snuggling in front of the common room fireplace, and sneaking into each other's rooms for "study" sessions. One weekend when the rest of final year were kissing over steaming cups in Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop, Zoltan asked Benjamin to practice dueling with him again. That was when the letters started to appear.

Now Zoltan was in the hospital wing, with Professor Dumbledore peering down his half-moon glasses at him. Zoltan didn't like the headmaster, he knew he was biased against slytherins, but if the rumours about Dumbledore's own preferences were true, then he might understand how Zoltan felt. So when the headmaster asked him to explain what had happened, Zoltan, exhausted to his very bones and feeling as though he had nothing left to lose, decided to forgo the infamous deceit of his house and simply tell the truth.

"The first letter came the day Professor Snape caught Feral looking at me in class," Zoltan began and glanced at his head of house, who was standing behind Dumbledore like his stretched shadow. "Later that day Buckley told the whole common room and Balthazar shouted out, "Sure, Zoltan'd have no interest in her." At first I thought he meant because she's a mud- a muggleborn, but then he added, "Now, if she had a brother…" And it was like the world was spinning. I stormed away without even attempting a come-back. Sofia Nott came and found me. She said there was nothing so disgustingly common and muggle as homophobia and that I should pay no attention to their stupid jokes. That night, there was a letter on my bed with my name on it."

"Who was it from?" Dumbledore asked.

"He never told me his name, but I know he was a student at Hogwarts a thousand years ago, and a Slytherin like me. He's a ghost. It's weird because even after-" How could he put it? "After... all that's happened, I still don't know his name."

"What happened to him?"

Zoltan sat up higher against the pillows behind him, wincing at how stiff his muscles felt. Then he told them the ghost's story. The one he'd promised not to tell.

"In final year, he and another boy in his class fell in love with each other. The other students found out and bullied them relentlessly. They spiked the couple's drinks with a strong lust potion, but the two boys had taken a hate potion earlier that day in an attempt to fall out of love, and the combination formed a deadly poison. While they died on the floor of the Slytherin common room not one of the other students ran to fetch a bezoar. The ghost stayed behind in the land of the living, terrified that death would separate him from the boy he loved, but the other boy chose to pass on.

"He told me all about his life at Hogwarts, about the ancient magic they used to study, about Merlin, how he used to sneak around with his… with the boy he loved. And I told him all about… about me and Benjamin." Kun glanced at his Head of House, suspecting he already knew about his "secret" relationship. His expression gave nothing away.

"I started finding more letters," Kun continued. "On the desk beside me at the library, or inside my bag, or on a random window ledge, but I never saw the ghost.

"I wrote back too. At first he was so understanding about how I felt, and it was cool to talk to someone who really understood, but then… he started to get weird."

Zoltan had been talking mainly to the bed sheets, but he stopped to look up at his professors. It was clear that they were listening intently.

He didn't know how to tell them the rest. How could he explain how the last few months had been? He tried to scooch up higher against the pillows but his body ached in protest. He was relieved to see Madam Pomfrey marching from her office towards them, carrying a tray with what looked like steaming soup.

"My apologies for interrupting," she said loudly, "Mister Kun needs to eat and rest. I suggest, professors, that you return to continue your discussion later." The "suggestion" was clearly a command. The headmaster smiled as though used to being told off by the matron. Both professors left and Zoltan managed to eat just one spoonful of his carrot soup before he fell back into a deep sleep.