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Chapter Ten: To want the Stars
12 October 2013 – Very Late
Harry frowned at the door barring passage through the pointed stone arch guarding Lockhart's office, rubbed a finger across its curved bronze handle, and stuck the digit in his mouth.
"Mate, do you normally go around tasting non-food things?" whispered Fred from a crouch on his left.
"'Cause that's not normal," George concluded on Harry's right.
The wizard in question rolled his eyes as he sorted out the flavour in his mouth.
"He's wised up on us," he finally explained. "Tastes of a very strong blood ward. Just takes a prick of the finger and a runic circle: simple, crude, and effective. We could break it, but there'd be no way to reset it."
The twins exchanged devious looks, and Harry got the impression they were conducting a conversation in micro-expressions.
"Leave it to us," they chorused with matching smirks. "We'll set up the next round of fun for you later. Trade secrets, you know?"
Harry looked between them and sighed.
"Follow the Doctors rules," he reminded them seriously. "He knows everything. More than Dumbledore, even."
"Yeah," George muttered ruefully. "We're intimately acquainted with his evil powers."
The Slytherin laughed and pressed a matchbox into the boy's palm.
"Everything you need's in there. Three or four engorgios should put them at the right size."
Fred saluted while George tucked the box into his breast pocket, and Harry waved at them both before quietly creeping around the corner. Once out of their line of sight, he donned his cloak again and started back toward his common room.
As always, he felt a special sort of freedom walking the castle by night with his birthfather's cloak of invisibility hiding him even from the moonbeams. The portraits mostly slept, but the few containing nocturnal creatures buzzed with movement and sound. Oil-on-canvas owls swooped through frames. Big cats prowls their grasslands and jungles, or stared forlornly out from behind the bars of their cages. Surrounded by such enchantment and the music played by flapping wings and gentle swaying foliage, he almost missed the presence of another midnight wanderer.
He caught a reflection of silver light bouncing unnaturally over the floor. The flash made him pause on his way past the great hall, but his momentary jolt of nerves at possible discovery quickly faded into curiosity when he heard no footsteps or words. He reinforced the muffling charm on his shoes and clothes before stealing into the empty hall. Devoid as it was of students, staff, owls and food, and with the glory of space's vast endlessness sprawled across the ceiling overhead – more brilliant and enticing than any glancing view from a window – the hall seemed larger than ever. The odd reflection flashed again against the flagstones, drawing his gaze from the billions of stars twinkling silently through the enchantment, and he followed it with his eye as it danced across the floor.
"Hello."
The boy jumped a foot into the air and spun with his wand raised beneath the cloak. A girl with wide, silvery blue eyes and long, wispy blonde hair sat atop the mantel above an empty fireplace set into the east-side wall. She stared through his exact spot, and the intensity of her gaze made him believe, for a moment, she could actually see him through the cloak. Several seconds passed in which she kept on staring, unblinking, while she turned a highly polished silver pendant in her fingers. Harry barely breathed as he soundlessly cast his most powerful notice-me-not, and though her gaze blurred for a moment, she only tilted her head and smiled dreamily. Her bare feet swung back and forth, back and forth, keeping time as effectively as a metronome.
"It's all right if you'd rather not talk," she mildly offered when it became apparent her invisible company would not speak first. "No one ever talks to me, anyway."
Her expression never changed, and her fingers never stalled their rhythmic tumbling of the ovular pendant.
"Why doesn't anyone ever talk to you?" he whispered after he'd watched it weave over and under her ring finger five times.
He reached out and winced as the taste of her magic registered to his senses. Her aura smelled of salt and lilies mingled with the bitter bite of liquorish. Her magic hummed of dejection and loneliness. Still, her face remained placid, showing only pleasant surprise at his address.
"I make people uncomfortable," she said just as blandly as before. "I'm not afraid to be myself, even if others don't like what they perceive me to be. I don't mind if they think I'm odd, either."
Harry chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, glanced at the door, and swept off his cloak. The girl's smile stretched impossibly wide to create dimples in her cheeks.
"I thought you were a wizard," she told him. "I wasn't sure, though. That's a magnificent cloak you have."
"One of a kind," he agreed before taking a seat on the long Slytherin table facing her mantle. Sitting with his feet on the bench, they were almost at eye level.
"What's your name?"
"Luna," she hummed. "Luna Lovegood."
The second-year made a sound of recognition after a moment's recollection.
"Are you the one who fell in the lake?"
Luna shrugged.
"I was trying to listen for merpeople. I heard Hogwarts has a large settlement, but I leaned too far in," she elaborated. "Mr Cuddlepus caught me, though."
She made a wiggly motion with her arm that he took as an imitation of her rescuer.
"Mr Cuddle-pus?" Harry echoed. "You named the giant squid?"
"He's very sweet," she assured him. "And actually, I think he's a Kraken. He looks more like a cuttlefish through the mantle."
Harry breathed a laugh.
"What's your name?"
She watched him with bland expectation.
He blinked and hesitated, examining her face to tell whether she was joking, but found no evidence of humour. Sincere curiosity shone clearly in her luminescent blue eyes.
"I-" he frowned contemplatively. "Don't you know, already?"
He phrased it poorly and thought anyone overhearing his conversation might mistake his befuddlement for ego.
"I know what everyone calls you," she clarified, her pale brows climbing her forehead. "But what is your name?"
Harry felt a flood of warmth in his chest for the unusual Ravenclaw, and he realised with an odd pang that she was the first person in over a year to ask him that. Hermione had been the last.
"Harry Tyler," he answered with a soft sort of pride. "Glad to make your acquaintance, Luna."
Her answering smile returned the dimples to her cheeks.
"You've been very kind to me, Harry Tyler," she said. "Thank you."
"So," Harry grinned. "What're you doing in here?"
She stared up at the enchanted ceiling. With no other sources of light around them, the stars caught and reflected brightly in the girl's silvery-blue eyes. Harry felt her magic swell and ebb again.
"It's too cold to stargaze on the Astronomy tower," she finally sighed. "This is a close second, though. I wanted to look at the universe and feel small."
"I know what you mean," the Slytherin whispered, his eyes cast upward. "I'm going, someday – To space, I mean. I want to discover stars and planets. There's so much out there we haven't found, yet."
"I'd heard the non-magicals went to the moon," Luna mused. "So perhaps you will."
He thought it lovely he didn't have to explain himself despite her apparent heritage. After over a month working on the dirigible and constantly arguing non-magical ingenuity, he'd become used to justifying every little thing he said in relation to science. Harry smiled wistfully. Movement made him glance down, again, to where Luna had resumed swinging her feet back and forth. He frowned at the flash of ankle, and his brow furrowed while his brain caught up with his eyes. Her robe hung awkwardly off her slim frame, and her hands protruded from voluminous sleeves that bunched bulkily at the crook of her arm.
"But why did you choose tonight, of all nights?" he gently pressed.
The pink toes twitched and her legs stopped swinging.
"I went to meet with Ginny Weasley," Luna said a little sadly. "She's been my friend since we were little. I even stayed with her for a while after my mother died a couple years ago."
She turned the pendant in her hands, and her placid face pinched with concern.
"Ginny's been really withdrawn, and she stopped coming to study with me, so I was worried about her. Her brother Percy says she's just homesick, but he tends to assume things without actually asking people," she continued. "I went to see Lady Aglaia, that's the name of the portrait who guards Gryffindor's entrance, and I told everyone I saw go in to ask Ginny to come out, but she never did. I waited for hours and hours, but then Mrs Norris came around and I had to run."
Harry frowned at the matter-of-fact explanation.
"But if you running from Filch, why didn't you leave the stars to another night?" he asked.
"Oh," she sighed. "The knocker wouldn't let me in. He said the door had been locked by a prefect, and he couldn't open it again without permission even though I answered the riddle correctly. I figured I'd just wait for a while and try again, so I went for a soak in the roman baths on the fourth floor. My things were gone when I came out, and it'd been such a horrible day, already, I needed to see something beautiful."
The boy tasted salt again as the girl's shoulders slumped. She sat unnaturally still.
"I suspect nargles are responsible," she mumbled. "They can be very mischievous, and they're not really smart enough to understand the concept of personal property and inconvenience."
"You must be freezing," Harry said sympathetically.
He sent a warming charm at her, and the girl sighed in appreciation. He didn't know what 'nargles' were, but he had a fair idea she didn't really believe they were to blame for her troubles that evening.
"Thank you, Harry," she smiled. "Borrowed overrobes never really cut the chill."
"Come on." He uncrossed his legs, stood to stretch his arms overhead, and yawned. "Let's get you back to your dorm."
He held out his hand, and the girl stared at it for a long moment before letting the Slytherin half-lift, half-levitate her down from the mantle.
Harry escorted Luna up twelve flights of stairs and one long, spiralling tower beneath his invisibility cloak. They saw no prefects still patrolling, nor did they note any professors. The ghosts floated through the halls, instead, but no one detected their presence on the way. Harry, who considered himself fairly fit (what with resumed Quidditch practice, continued conditioning, and duelling his housemates), found himself feeling a bit out of breath as they crested the last landing leading away from the spiralling staircase. Luna stopped before an arched door adorned with nothing but a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle. Its wings spread as if it would take flight at their approach, and the ring held in its talons rattled. The head, which had previously tucked beneath one of its wings, swivelled to stare at them as Harry folded up the cloak and stowed it in his pocket.
"We can poison without drink nor food, and we can harm without a weapon. We trade in truth, but also lies, and cannot be judged just by our size. What are we?"
"Words," Luna immediately answered.
"You are correct, but you may not enter," the eagle grumbled. "I cannot open without unlocking."
Harry gave his new friend's hand a small squeeze and stepped forward.
"Would you mind if I try?"
The eagle tilted its head like Hedwig sometimes did, but nodded after a moment's examination. The boy dropped Luna's fingers to press his ear to the door. He sniffed it after listening for a moment, and spread his palms on either side of the eagle, who cackled a laugh.
"That tickles!" it complained.
"Sorry," Harry smiled.
Hogwarts' magic hummed around them as it always did, but the door, just like the Slytherin common room's, seemed interwoven with something extra. In his mind, he saw the structure of the thrumming power as cogs turning behind the wood to line up the tumblers of a complex lock. He found the piece he wanted, twisted, and grinned as the door swung open under his hands. The first-year clapped her hands. Feeling immensely satisfied with his progress, Harry went with it and bowed like a proper showman, still holding open the door for her.
She skipped into her common room with the robe's hem trailing behind her like a train. The boy had almost closed the door when he felt to slim arms wrap around his middle and squeeze him with all their might.
"Thank you. Would you mind if I wanted to be your friend?" she asked in her light, airy way.
He twisted in her vicelike grip and smiled.
"'Course I wouldn't. We're friends, already," the Slytherin assured her. "You're nice and fun to be around."
"Goodnight!" she let him go and crossed the round common room to disappear inside an archway nestled behind a white marble statue.
Harry hesitated in the threshold, half in and half out of the dormitory, thinking about the whimsical first-year and her stolen clothes and shoes. He hadn't asked if the nargles had taken her wand, too, and wondered if she'd be all right in class in a few hours. He let the door close behind him with a soft snap.
The Ravenclaw common area lay beneath a high, domed ceiling of deep blue strewn with gold-leaf stars. An intricate model of the solar system wrought from shining bronze hung from the dome's apex. A glass sphere of what appeared to be swirling, bright yellow flames burned at its centre to light the room. The statue across from the entrance, an austere woman draped with flowing robes and crowned with a tiara, slowly turned her head in a way that made him shiver.
It reminded him too much of the Doctor's stories.
He slipped on the invisibility cloak and strode to the archway behind her. The corridor in front of him forked to the boys' and girls' sides, if he were to guess. But rather than exploring, like some might, he drew his wand, breathed deep, and flicked up with a whispered Accio!
He heard a few doors open down either corridor, but soon enough the items he'd called flew toward him. He directed Luna Lovegood's lost and stolen things into a pile at the centre of the circular table below the chandelier. His gut twisted. Clothes, jewellery, photographs, books, shoes, drawings, bits and bobs neatly stacked themselves in a pile a foot high and two feet across to form a pyramidal monument to the unknown perpetrators' callousness. Harry wasn't a particularly angry person, but he would be the first to admit he had a breaking point. The last time he'd felt this overwhelmingly furious had been in the presence of a dark lord.
It burned in his belly and tasted bitter on the back of his tongue.
Never one to stew when he could take action instead, Harry racked his brain for the nastiest spells he and Hermione had found. After several minutes of silent referencing of his internal catalogue – he didn't want to create lasting harm, after all – His face split into a grin and his wand snapped to attention. He traced the archway with the glowing tip, carefully burning a constant stream of minute runes into the stone which the castle's magic easily powered as soon as the he closed and charged the inscription. The difficult work complete, Harry returned to the common room and its pile of loot. He transfigured four thumbtacks, which he positioned at each corner of the pyramid, and aimed his scanner at them. It hummed and whirred until a brief ripple indicated the barrier's activation. Finally, he pulled a sticky note from the pad he kept in his pocket, enlarged one sheet, and used the same scorching spell he'd employed with the dormitory entrance to burn a message onto the paper.
Be better humans, or reap your just desserts. We're watching.
He smirked and cast a look over his shoulder at Ravenclaw's statue, whose face watched him, devoid of emotion. A moment later, the boy disappeared beneath his cloak and made his exit.
The next morning, a good portion of Ravenclaw's number did not come to breakfast until it had nearly concluded, but when it did, the boisterous hall fell silent. Flitwick's usually jovial face had twisted in a glare of fury to match his ferocious ancestry. Harry, who sat between Draco and Daphne as usual, stilled with his toast halfway to his mouth. The professor and head-of-house marched with several students, mostly second through fifth-years of both genders, whose foreheads sported the ugliest, most inflamed spots most had ever seen. Hermione's head twitched as if to eye her Slytherin friend, but she managed to control the impulse and avoid implicating him. Whispers swept the hall as people made out the words stamped in acne on every one of their foreheads.
BULLY
THIEF
COWARD
LIAR
The person who caused the labelling quickly dismissed the brief feeling of regret niggling in his gut at the sight of red, tear-swollen eyes as he counted the guilty. Of Ravenclaw's 193 students, forty-one followed Flitwick into the room with their heads hung. The diminutive professor marched up to the short steps to the podium, conjured a stool, and stared around at the unnaturally quiet students before him.
"It has come to my attention that a number of students have caused unprovoked harm on others by wand, word, deed, or by their inaction. I am ashamed to find so many such persons in the house supposedly intended for the wise," he snarled. "I am appalled to learn over half of my former prefects belong to that statistic. Therefore-"
He glared at his cowering students.
"I take five points for every instance of deliberate cruelty committed by members of my house since September 1st."
The sapphire-filled hourglass behind the head table abruptly emptied. It had, apparently, gone into the negatives, because the upper-chamber lay vacant, too.
"I also revoke all privileges for every person involved in the victimisation of their classmates and dismiss all team and club members in their number. I have never, in all my years, felt so ashamed," he continued. "I do not add weekend detentions for the remainder of the year only because of the brands you see. That said, the person who caused this sorry revelation has also broken school rules in their efforts to right egregious wrongs. Therefore, he or she will report to my office by noon today, or his or her punishment will equal that of the truly guilty. That person will receive a week's detention for being out-of-bounds and for purposefully cursing other students."
The short remainder of breakfast continued in whispers, which stretched well into their first, second, and third hours. Harry's close friends, who all knew well his repertoire of spells from their conjoined research and practice, threw him curious looks throughout it all, but he didn't offer any elaboration. When their charms lesson – directed by a decidedly snappish charms professor – concluded at 11:45, they weren't surprised to see him remain in his seat although his bag lay on his desk, packed neatly and ready to go.
"Mr Potter," the professor sighed as Hermione and Susan finally left. "May I help you with something?"
"Yes, sir," Harry said solemnly. "It was me. Luna didn't have anything to do with it, if you wondered."
The part-goblin chuckled, and a little of his normal levity crept back onto his face in the twinkle of his eye. He hopped nimbly down from his stack of books to stand by his student's desk. The young Slytherin met his eye with neither shame nor pride, only conviction.
"I never considered it," Flitwick assured him. "May I ask what inspired you to take such drastic measures?"
"I was doing some exploring-"
The charms master smirked, and Harry had the distinct impression Flitwick knew exactly what he meant by that.
"-And I noticed her in here by herself. She was really sad so I stayed and talked to her. Finally got around to asking why she was barefoot, and well- After I escorted her back to the dorms, I might have investigated, and erm-"
"I think most would describe your actions as excessive; however," the professor drawled. "In consideration of how many were involved, I personally believe your brand of retribution rather deserved."
"I've got a soft spot for eccentrics," Harry smiled ruefully. "I thought a little itching, soreness and embarrassment was worth the trouble if I got caught. What gave me away, anyhow?"
Flitwick chuckled and began preparing for his next lesson, clearing slates and rearranging desks for a practical lesson. His pupil assisted him without being asked, casting with and without incantations with more efficiency than most twelve-year-olds could ever hope to aspire toward.
"The runes, dear boy," the professor chuckled. "Just because I haven't been assisting Gilderoy doesn't mean I wasn't curious about some of the more remarkable work done for the castle's entertainment."
"It's mostly Hermione's genius, really," the Slytherin demurred. "She inspires me to new levels of inventiveness."
"I see. Ten points to Hufflepuff and Slytherin, each then. And another ten to the Weasley twins, for their part in things, as well."
Harry appraised the clever half-goblin, whose shrewd, whiskered face crinkled with barely withheld laughter.
"You're good," he admired.
The professor shrugged.
"I've got a soft spot for merry marauders."
A/N: One of you lovely folk commented on Rose's handling of her hate mail. She had the owls drop the envelopes over the Atlantic somewhere, into the ocean where they can't hurt anything. The sonic sorted the biodegradable ones and howlers into that group. The environmentally harmful (and coincidentally, more heinous) ones returned to sender. The healers of Saint Mungos were not pleased at the amount of "accidental" spell and potion damage they had to reverse following Rita's article.