A/N: Don't get too excited! This is not a full chapter.
So, a certain reviewer mentioned how great it would be if the Halloween chapter was out by Halloween. It's a little late, but…close enough?
The Serpentine Subterfuge:
Chapter 6:
[Draco POV]:
The Halloween feast was as glorious as last year's, even without the added excitement of fireworks exploding from the Hufflepuff pumpkins. The sweets were scrumptious, the decorations were brilliant, and everyone agreed it was the most fun they'd had all year. Everyone except, of course, for Rigel, who was exceedingly late….again.
Draco glanced at the doors to the Great Hall for the tenth time in the last half hour, and this time Pansy finally said something.
"I don't know why you're acting surprised and worried, Draco," his friend said from across the table, "He's always late to things like this."
He couldn't disagree with that. If it was a class or an event that Rigel had a responsibility to attend—like Quidditch practice—he was always perfectly punctual, but for everything else…it was as though Rigel forgot about them completely, and just showed up when he happened to be in the area anyway and remembered. Of course, Rigel always gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he wasn't somewhere earlier, but if anything the patient, reasonable way he explained himself only frustrated Draco more.
It would be one thing if Rigel was a complete scatterbrain, and genuinely apologetic or upset about showing up either late or not at all to events that everyone else attended as a matter of course—feasts, House meetings, Draco's birthday party, and lately even lunch. But Rigel wasn't flustered or sorry when he showed up. He just shrugged and gave some lame but supremely understandable explanation and then changed the subject. It was annoying how little he cared about things most twelve year olds cared about, and though his apathy was no longer intimidating or strange, it was still, if Draco was completely honest with himself, a little hurtful. Shouldn't friends want to spend all their time together?
Brushing that thought aside dismissively, Draco went back to picking at his pumpkin pie, determined not to look at the Great Hall doors for at least another ten minutes.
"Just because we've gotten used to it, doesn't make it okay," Draco muttered, "Why can't he be normal for once? Who's late to the Halloween feast two years in a row?"
"If he was normal, he wouldn't be Rigel," Pansy said, smiling, "And you wouldn't like him if he was boring like the rest of us."
"You're not boring," Draco said automatically, "And I don't want him to be boring normal, I just wish he cared about something besides potions."
Pansy sent him an admonishing look, which Draco supposed he deserved for making such an oversimplified generalization. He was working on articulating the complexities of a situation, like his father had been trying to teach him, but it was easier to generalize in an argument.
"As his friend, you know better than to believe that image he projects of himself," Pansy said while delicately spreading jam onto a roll, "He pretends not to care about anything but potions because he thinks that if he acts like his life is dull and boring it will keep people from getting too involved in his business. Underneath the manic academia, Rigel cares about us very much, even if he does only show it in stressful or unexpected situations."
"He's still the strangest person I've ever met," Draco said stubbornly, "Did I ever tell you he sleeps in his clothes? Like he thinks he'll be attacked at any moment."
Pansy raised his eyebrows, "That is a little…eccentric. Still, his family is very interested in practical jokes, are they not? Perhaps he was pranked in his sleep a lot as a child, and doesn't like to feel too vulnerable while unconscious as a result."
Draco shrugged, "When we asked he said something vaguely similar, but the fact is we'll probably never know. He lies too often for me to tell the difference, and I'm not sure the truth even matters anymore, because so much of the life he leads seems to be either a lie or a half-lie. It's like the lies are an inseparable part of him now, and just as true as the truth because they might as well be the truth. Does that make sense?"
Pansy nodded her head slowly, "I often get the feeling he's not telling us something extremely important about his life, but the part of him that lives without acknowledging that part of his life is just as valid as the part of him that he keeps hidden. Is that what you mean?"
"Sort of," Draco said, "It would be like if he said his favorite food was turnips when really he hates turnips, but he wants us to think he likes turnips so much that he eats them all the time, and he'd want us to get him turnips for Christmas even if he doesn't actually like them, so what does it matter if he doesn't like them? For all intents and purposes, he's a turnip-eater." Draco grimaced, realizing how absurd that sounded, and sighed, "I don't know. Either way he's our friend, right? I just feel so…it's like there's nothing I can do. He lives in this separate little world and never asks for anything from us."
Pansy's eyes lit with perfect understanding, "Yes! I think I've felt the same, as though I were useless as a friend to him, because there's never anything I can really do for him. He just doesn't share his troubles with us, or if he does it's after the fact or it's something we can't do for him, like studying. At the same time, though, he seems to do so much for us. He went to your birthday party despite the enmity between your families, and convinced Mr. Hagrid to help with you guys' present to me, but I'm not even sure when his birthday is. Sometime over the summer, isn't it?"
"I think so," Draco scrunched up his nose, trying to remember if Rigel had ever told them, "You're right, though. He always knows what to say when something bad happens to us, but he never gets excited or even brags about anything good that happens to him. Getting to know him is like trying to piece scraps of a photograph back together with spell-o-tape, only you're missing most of the pieces!"
Pansy laughed, "And then you realize you're actually putting them together upside down and backwards anyway, so you have to start all over."
Draco chuckled, "Yes, exactly. It's really annoying, but at the same time…I guess I don't mind too much. At least, I don't want to give up."
Pansy nodded seriously, "I agree. It'll probably take a few more years before even we can say we know Rigel Black, but I think he's a good person to know, and I don't just mean because he's from a well-known family, hugely talented with magic, and a you-know-what to boot. He's also a good friend, despite his quirks."
"Yeah," Draco said, glancing down at his goblet of pumpkin juice, "No matter what, it'll be worth the effort in the end."
"And even if it isn't, at least it will be interesting," Pansy said in a lighter tone of voice.
"What will?"
They both looked up to see the subject of their conversation slipping into the seat beside Pansy. Draco raked his eyes over his friend, and suppressed a click of his tongue at the sight of Rigel's plain black school robes. Honestly, who didn't change clothes for a feast?
"Dumbledore's speech," Pansy said smoothly, "You missed it last time, but this time I think he's saving it for the end."
"Which should be any time now," Draco couldn't help but add, "Seeing as you're over an hour late."
Rigel, to no one's surprise, merely blinked, "Sorry. I was finishing up a Befuddlement Draught in my lab. I had to put it on stasis for a while, though, because the belladonna I needed wasn't where I thought."
"Snape's got you on the Befuddlement Draught? That's really advanced, isn't it?" Pansy asked, "I think Rookwood was working on an essay about it just last month."
Draco wasn't even surprised that Rigel was now working on fourth year potions, but he was surprised when Rigel said, "It wasn't for Snape. He doesn't usually have me learn potions I'll be learning as part of the regular curriculum anyway. He says it would be a waste of time unless I was planning on skipping a year or two."
"You aren't, are you?" Draco asked worriedly, though he noted in the back of his mind that Rigel hadn't said what he was brewing the Befuddlement Draught for if not Snape.
Rigel gazed at him with amusement that added a small light to his grey eyes, "No, I'm not planning on it. I'd like as much time to study under Professor Snape as possible. Once I graduate I would have to apply for a formal apprenticeship, and those have to be approved by a board of Adepts from the Potions Guild. Too much trouble when I can get the best tuition right here without it."
Draco noticed Rigel said nothing about wanting to enjoy his childhood or remain in the same age group as his friends, as most kids would have. Still, whatever the reason, Draco was glad Rigel wasn't considering moving up a grade or two, though with his smarts he probably could with very little trouble.
"When did you learn the stasis charm?" Pansy asked curiously, "We don't learn it until OWL year, I think, but it sounds very useful to be able to put a potion on hold while you get something else done."
Rigel frowned slightly and Draco immediately knew they'd offended his potion-making sensibilities, "I learned it over the summer, but I almost never use it. You're really not supposed to, because a lot of potions don't like having their kinetic energy frozen like that. Some potions will even react extremely negatively to it—not while under the stasis charm, of course, but as soon as you lift it they go haywire. It's supposed to be an emergency-only kind of spell. It's just that Befuddlement Draughts take a could of hours to brew, and I was wasting enough time tracking down my back up store of belladonna."
Pansy laughed, "All right, Rigel, I wasn't suggesting using the stasis charm every time my arm got tired of stirring. I just meant it would be useful to have, in situations like you described."
Rigel's face affected the slightly sheepish look that always came when he realized he'd rambled on about something he thought no one else would care about. Draco didn't bother to reassure him—after all this time, Rigel should know better than to think he bored them. How many times had Pansy and he reassured their friend that they were interested in whatever he wanted to tell them? It was like he'd been indoctrinated into thinking everything he enjoyed was dry and boring and no one wanted to listen when he spoke on a topic he actually cared about. What rubbish. Maybe Rigel's family was as big a bunch of dunderheads as Uncle Severus always intimated.
"You should have stopped brewing before you started the Befuddlement Draught," Draco said eventually, "Then you might have been on time. Getting forgetful about your potions ingredients is probably a sign you've been at it too long. Learn to take a break, Rye."
Rigel just blinked at him like he was speaking another language, "I didn't need a break. I needed belladonna."
Pansy frowned a bit, "It is odd that you would misplace it. You've never been careless with your ingredients."
Rigel frowned as well, "I know. I guess I must have used it in something else, though I can't remember…I have been making a lot of potions in the last month, though. I'll just be sure to order extra next month."
"Isn't belladonna poisonous?" Draco asked slowly. Even he knew it was never a good thing when potentially dangerous ingredients went missing.
Rigel shrugged dismissively, "Only in huge quantities. More than I had, that's for sure. It's only really dangerous to small animals. Sometimes squirrels and birds die from eating the raw plant in the wild, but even then they'd have to eat several stalks, and they'd probably get sick after one or two and stop first." Rigel looked thoughtful for a moment, then added, "Maybe if the animal was starving, of had lost its sense of taste somehow. Maybe if it had recently eaten some sort of pepper, and therefore had a compromised sense of smell that—"
"Okay, I think we got it," Pansy said quickly, "Not that it isn't interesting, Rigel, but finish telling us about it after the meal, okay?"
Rigel gave Pansy an apologetic look, and changed the subject, "So, did I miss anything else?"
"Besides our fabulous company?" Draco drawled just to coax a half-smile from his friend, "Not really. Someone charmed the suits of armor on either side of the doors to shout 'boo' at every tenth person or so, and judging from the way Professor Sinistra jumped and shrieked when she came in, I don't think it was the staff's idea."
Rigel nodded and quirked an eyebrow as though that were a very interesting piece of information, rather than a random fact. Somehow Rigel could make him feel like he was both rivetingly important and singularly unnoticed within the space of minutes.
They were spared further inanities by the flickering of all the candles in the Hall, which Draco supposed was supposed to signal the Headmaster's speech. All it really did was make people pause long enough in their conversations for Dumbledore to clear his throat in the ensuing moment of silence and gain most people's attention.
Draco dutifully turned slightly in his seat to pay attention to the old wizard who had out-classed and out-conned every enemy, political or otherwise, who had come up against him in the last century. Albus Dumbledore had all the potential to be truly impressive, but the elderly wizard ruined the effect by dressing like a circus performer and pretending to be senile. It made people underestimate him, Draco supposed, but the people stupid enough to forget a lifetime of unimaginable magical and political feats in the face of a facsimile of nonsense weren't people worth trying to fool, because they were probably too stupid to spell politics, much less participate in them.
At least that's how Draco saw it. Better to never let your enemies—and followers, too, for that matter—forget how awe-inspiring you truly are. It only left room for questioning and doubts, which made it all to easy for someone to uproot a person indirectly through the spreading of rumors and lies. That, Draco thought, was Dumbledore's weakness. He manipulated people as a matter of course, but didn't seem to comprehend that those same people he so easily swayed could be swayed just as easily against him. One didn't have to challenge Albus Dumbledore directly—too many had tried and failed for that to be a sane option anyway. One only had to use the man's own carefully cultivated reputation against him.
People were all too poised to believe anything semi-plausible, simply because it didn't occur to them that someone else would take the time to purposely deceive them. It wouldn't take much to get the general public thinking Dumbledore was as stricken with dotage as he seemed. Then one would just have to offer a younger, sharper version as an alternative, and people would jump at the opportunity for change, thinking it to be something refreshing and improving. Little would they know that the usurper is a farce, a clever plant by the enemy who would win their favor and votes and then use the power passed to him by Dumbledore's legacy to run the Light camp into the ground.
Draco pulled himself out of his thoughts with difficulty. He was learning how to think more like a politician, more like his father, and it was surprisingly easy for him, but it had the side effect of making him tune out some things in order to concentrate on others. He realized with an inner jolt that he'd missed most of the Headmaster's speech while occupied with his hypotheticals, but wasn't in truth overly concerned about it. Pansy would let him know if anything of import had been said, and in the best-case scenario he'd managed to retain a few extra brain cells, which he would surely have lost in the face of the Headmaster's usual driveling non sequiturs.
"And on a final note," the burnt-orange-clad (was he competing with Lockhart in a most obnoxious color contest?) wizard was saying, "Mr. Filch would like me to announce that Mrs. Norris has been missing since this morning. I know you will all help keep an eye out for our beloved caretaker's cat, and if you see her please inform one of the—"
The Headmaster was cut off by the muffled sound of an explosion, like something unwieldy being dropped onto a heap of sand. A dull thudding noise reverberated distantly, like the ricochet of a swaddled piece of metal. They felt the tremor go through the Hall, rattling the dishes and setting the pumpkin juice in their goblets to trembling. There was a moment of complete silence in which the teachers all stood immediately and the students froze in confusion. Then the distant sound of falling rocks clambering against stone floors was heard and everyone scrambled into panicked motion.
"The castle is collapsing!"
Draco had enough time to roll his eyes at the first year behind that ridiculous comment, and then he was hurrying toward the nearest Slytherin prefect with the rest of their house, just trying not to get trampled in the chaos.
"SILENCE," Dumbledore's voice boomed over the melee, and all motion ceased once more. "Now, prefects will lead their houses in an orderly fashion to their common rooms, where the names of all students will be checked against the house master lists—prefects, you are in charge of this as well, as I will be needing your heads of house for a little while. The castle is perfectly safe, I assure you. One of our lovely house elves has just informed me that a portion of the corridor in the East side of the third floor has collapsed, however, the stabilizing wards and various other embedded structural spells installed by the founders themselves kicked in immediately, and so no other parts of the castle are under any architectural stress at this time."
The students seemed to digest this for a moment, and the prefects seized upon the momentary calm to begin subdividing their houses into more manageable groups and herding them more carefully out of the Great Hall, whose doors seemed to have been widened considerably by someone with a good deal of practical forethought. Probably Snape, Draco thought.
He felt a tug on his elbow and turned his head to see Pansy clinging gently but unmistakably to his right arm.
"All right there, Pans?"
She nodded, but her lips were clamped together in a tight line. Draco saw Blaise, Millicent, and Theo walking ahead of them, and turned his head to tell Rigel to take Pansy's other hand. The girl was obviously frightened, and Rigel seemed to have a soothing quality to his presence that often came in handy.
Except…Rigel wasn't behind them. Draco craned his head, but Rigel wasn't anywhere to be seen in the immediate vicinity. Draco was tempted to sigh with resignation but he was too busy being worried about his idiotic friend. Now the question was, did he tell Pansy? It would worry her more to know, but it would be bad form as her friend to keep it from her. Besides, she would notice any moment now.
"Pans," Draco said, bending down to her ear so she could hear him, "Don't be alarmed, but I can't find Rigel. Can you see him?"
Pansy stiffened and began looking around immediately, but carefully, suppressing her panic like a true pureblooded lady ought.
"Nothing," Pansy said tightly, "He does not appear to be in the Great Hall."
"How did he get out ahead of us?" Draco asked aloud.
"More importantly, where is he going?" Pansy said, frowning, "If he was headed to the common room, he would have taken us with him. You know how protective he can be sometimes. The fact that he went without us…"
Draco nearly groaned as he caught on, "Means he's going somewhere more dangerous than where he thinks we'll be going. Idiot."
"Thinks we're going?" Pansy asked, unspoken question obvious from the way she tilted her eyes toward him.
"Well of course," Draco said with a faint smile that had absolutely no humor in it, "We're not going to let him run off alone, are we?"
Pansy smiled back just as faintly, "No, we aren't."
They had reached the doors by that point, so Draco pulled the edges of his robes over his silver and green tie, motioning for Pansy to do the same, and they slipped away from the Slytherins and into the crowd of Hufflepuffs. They would be going down to the basements, but then they'd go east if Draco was right about where their common room was, and from there they'd just have to slip into one of the alcoves until everyone had passed. From there, they could take the East stairs and wind up exactly where Rigel was most likely to be right now.
Draco swore that this time when they found their wayward friend, he would have a lot of explaining to do before they were satisfied.
[HpHpHp]
[Rigel's POV]:
Rigel had been quite enjoying the Headmaster's speech, intermingled as it was by the odd turn of phrase and delivered with Dumbledore's usual sense of airy aplomb. It was sort of graceful, the way none of his statements seemed to be apropos of anything else he talked about. He must practice very hard to be so perfectly random, or else his mind was governed by a very strict algorithm of chance, which made sure it only presented things in a random order.
Draco's eyes were glazed in a way that belied his apparent attention to the Headmaster's words, and Pansy had given up the pretense of listening after the first few minutes, seeming content to glance around at the other Slytherins, taking in their expressions and postures and probably drawing any number of political and social conclusions that would have gone right over Rigel's head.
All in all, it was a relaxing way to spend an evening, until, of course, it happened. Rigel hadn't known until that moment what it would be, but as soon as the explosion went off she knew. There was something about Halloween that had always made her uneasy. Perhaps because on her ninth Halloween, she had found her beloved copy of Snape's treatise on the treatment of undiluted venoms in antidote preparation stuffed beneath an uneven table leg in her father's study. Then there was the Halloween Archie and she had accidentally set fire to the curtains in Sirius' living room and had subsequently been sent to bed without candy by their parents. While those incidences weren't quite on the level of last year's Halloween—few things in her admittedly complicated life measured up to that disaster—every year without fail something bad happened to or around Rigel on that date, so it wasn't even really a surprise to her that one of the school's corridors chose this day to get blown up.
She stood with the rest of their house and began shuffling toward the doors, making sure to keep Draco and Pansy in sight ahead of her. She had been sitting on the side of the table closest to the Gryffindors' table, and she happened to catch sight of the Weasley twins as she passed. They were walking slower than those around them, creating a sort of obstacle that people were swerving around. Their brother Ron was walking with them, and he looked quite upset about something.
Curious, Rigel altered her course a bit so that she would come up just behind them, then slowed her pace to listen in.
"—won't thank us for butting in again," George was saying.
"I know, but what if she's really—" Ron's voice was loud and agitated, but she still couldn't catch every word over the tumult around them, "—have to know."
Fred and George exchanged a look, but nodded in the end. "Better not tell Perce," Fred suggested.
"Not that he won't realize as soon as—gone," George put in.
"But he'll be too busy—" Fred's voice cut out as a couple of particularly loud Gryffindor girls walked quickly by them, "—by the time he realizes."
Rigel moved closer, until she could hear every word.
"Right," George said, "I'd say we need a distraction, but everyone's distracted enough."
"We'll break away when we get to the stairs," Fred said, "Hide behind that tapestry with the goats till they've gone."
"What if she's not there?" Ron asked worriedly.
"Then we hightail it back to the dorms before the teachers catch us," George shrugged, "I'm still not convinced this is a good idea. Either Ginny was near the explosion, and was in danger, which we can't do anything about now that it's passed, or else she wasn't, which means she's safe somewhere else, and we're only going to get caught by the teachers who are all going to the third floor right now."
"That's a fair point," Fred said carefully, "And whatever set off the explosion could be anything. Might be dangerous, which is probably why they're sending us back to the common room in the first place."
"I don't care," Ron said, "I can't just sit around in the common room wondering if she's okay. One way or another, I want to know now."
George sighed but nodded, and Fred just shrugged, apparently not caring enough to argue about it. The three brothers kept moving forward, but slowly, hanging back until most of their housemates had passed through the doors ahead of them. Standing behind them, Rigel couldn't see Pansy or Draco anymore, but she wasn't worried. They'd get to the common room safely.
Rigel put her hand in her pocket unobtrusively and pulled out the innocent square of folded parchment that held the Marauder's Map. She whispered the password under her breath and when the Map began to bleed onto the page, she quickly muttered Ginny Weasley's name to it. It zoomed in to show a tiny dot labeled 'Ginerva Weasley' walking along the seventh floor corridor toward the Fat Lady's portrait.
Satisfied that Ginny Weasley was safe, Rigel tucked the Map away and debated for a brief moment about whether to involve herself further. Then she thought that if she had a sister, she'd want to know all she could if said sister might possibly be in danger. Rigel caught up to the Weasley brothers, tapping George on the shoulder to catch their attention.
"Rigel?" George gazed distractedly at her, "What's up?"
"Don't go to the third floor," Rigel said without preamble.
George grimaced, "Heard that, did you? Well, I can't let these two idiots go by themselves."
"Don't any of you go," Rigel said seriously, "Ginny's not there, so you'll only get into trouble at best and danger at worst."
"How do you know Ginny's not there?" Ron demanded.
"I can't tell you," Rigel said bluntly, "But I promise you she'll be in the common room when you get up there. I know that's not comforting, but it's the truth. Do you trust me?"
"With most things, yeah," Ron said, frowning, "With my little sister's safety? Not really. No offence."
"None taken," Rigel said, "But I really don't want you guys in danger for no reason. Look, how about I check it out instead? I promise if Ginny's there I'll come straight up to get you, but you guys should go back to the Gryffindor common room."
"That doesn't make a lot of sense," George objected, "Why should it be more okay for you to do it rather than us? She's our sister."
"But one person is less likely to get caught," Rigel said, "And it'll be easier for me to get there and then to the dungeons than it will be for you guys to make it all the way to Gryffindor tower before a prefect notices you're missing."
Fred opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again and instead started patting down his pockets, "Where is…? Must have left it. George, give me yours."
He reached into his brother's robe pockets and rummaged around until George rolled his eyes and fished something out of his back pants pocket, "Here, this is what you wanted, right? Good idea."
Fred snatched the small leather journal from George's hand and presented it to Rigel, "When you figure out if Ginny is there, use this to tell us. This journal has a match, which is upstairs in our dorm room. Just write something in it, and we'll get the message in the other one."
Rigel took the journal and tucked it away, "Okay. Now go, before Percy wonders why you guys are lagging behind."
The three redheads nodded and set off after the group of Gryffindors, who had just begun climbing the Main Stair. Rigel herself turned and followed the Slytherin contingent down toward the dungeons. She took out the Map again and checked it. Sure enough, Ginny Weasley was in the Gryffindor common room, her tiny dot seated on a miniscule couch in front of a little ink fireplace. Rigel would wait a few minutes, then check again to make sure she hadn't moved, before writing to assure the Weasley's that their sister wasn't near the collapsed corridor.
Curious about how the Map would reflect the damage done to the castle, Rigel zoomed back out and glanced over the third floor corridor. It looked just as it always did, which she guessed made sense if the Map was only spelled to update the locations of people in real time, not , but it was flooded with the names of teachers and staff members. At a glance, Rigel recognized Snape, Filch, Dumbledore, McGonagall, and various other professors' dots. More seemed to be coming, too, she noticed. A couple dots were even now moving toward the corridor up the East…stairs…oh, no. Rigel read the labels on the dots and nearly groaned aloud.
What in Merlin's name were Pansy and Draco doing heading for the collapsed portion of the third floor? She could think of no logical reason for them to be going there now. Neither were overly curious when it came to possible danger, and in fact both were rather big sticklers for the rules most of the time. They'd been raised to respect authority, after all, at least when it didn't directly go against their personal goals.
Whatever they were doing, Rigel wasn't about to just pretend she hadn't noticed. She was already at the end of the group of Slytherin students, so it was no trouble to slip away as they passed the basement and double back to come up behind her friends. They had stopped moving and were instead poised on the stairs just below the landing that joined with the third floor, probably peaking around the corner to try and discern what was going on.
A few minutes later, Rigel had reached the East stairs. She took a moment to sweep the Map once more and write quickly in the little leather notebook to assure the Weasley's that Ginny wasn't in the vicinity of the explosion. It was curious to watch the ink disappear as soon as it dried, leaving a blank notebook once more, but Rigel would think about the spells behind such a thing later. She folded up the Map again and started up the winding stairs. Just as she started to notice a large amount of dust in the air—probably from broken pieces of stone—she heard a whisper echoing down the quiet stairwell.
"—don't see him."
"Are you sure he's—"
"Where else would he be?"
Rigel snuck up behind her two blonde friends, who were trying to use Pansy's compact mirror to peer around the corner to the third floor.
"It's just a bunch of rubble," Draco was whispering irritably, "Wait, is that? No, it's someone else. A Gryffindor? Why would one of them have been…?"
Rigel frowned. A Gryffindor? It couldn't be Ginny, but…she pulled out the Map and checked it one last time, more carefully. Ginny's name wasn't anywhere in the corridor, but another name, one Rigel should have recognized immediately, was.
Neville Longbottom.
His dot was in the center of several other dots, notably Albus Dumbledore and Poppy Pomphrey. The other dots all wavered slightly on the parchment as their owners shifted naturally, but Neville's dot didn't move at all.
Rigel shoved the Map into her pocket and hurried forward. Draco and Pansy turned around at the sound of her soft footsteps hurrying up the stairs and the looks of surprised confusion on their faces would have been funny if Rigel wasn't so worried about Neville.
"Rigel, what—?"
"How did you get behind us?"
Rigel motioned for them to be quiet and inched around the corner of the wall separating the stairs from the rest of the corridor. The third floor was a complete mess. Normally, the third floor consisted of three parallel corridors connected by various smaller hallways and passages, and then connected on either end by the East and West staircases. The Main stair went up through the middle corridor, where the Charms classroom was located. The three of them were standing just behind where the South-most corridor met the East stairs, and from what Rigel could see, the wall that had once separated the South corridor from the middle corridor was now a lot less like a wall and a lot more like a window looking from one of the South corridor's storage rooms into the back of the middle corridor's Trophy Room.
Rocks, large and small, littered the floor. All the dust in the air made it hard to see anything, but the teachers seemed to be crowding around something. It was a person, small enough to be a student, who seemed to be passed out on the floor. Rigel could see a hand and a couple of trouser-clad legs from in between the professors' feet, so it definitely wasn't a girl, and as she caught a glimpse of red and gold around the student's neck, she couldn't deny the truth. It was Neville—it had to be. The Map was, as she'd been told so many times, never wrong.
She backed away slowly, aware that there was nothing she could do for her friend that more qualified people weren't already doing. Still, it felt wrong to just leave him there, though she knew they should get back to the common room. The school had been breached by something malevolent, and it would be just plain stupid to avoid the safety of the common room any longer.
Rigel turned and tugged on Pansy and Draco's sleeves until they started following her quietly back down the stairs. When they were safely to the dungeons, her friends turned to her.
"What did you see, Rigel?"
She ignored Pansy's question, instead staring at the two blondes very seriously, "What were you two doing? You should have been safe in the common room, not—" Rigel sighed and rubbed her eyes, "You could have been in danger. Something destructive enough to blow a hole in a castle this fortified doesn't just disappear once it's had its fun."
"Us?" Draco scowled, "What were you doing? We only went to find you."
Rigel blinked, "I only went to find you two."
Pansy frowned, "Then…we all were just worried about one another? Oh. We thought…"
"We thought you'd run off into trouble again," Draco said bluntly.
Rigel sighed, "Of course I didn't. Why would I? The explosion had nothing to do with me. I just hung back to talk to the Weasley's about something before heading back, until I realized you guys weren't heading to the common room with everyone else, that is."
"How did you know?" Pansy said, cocking her head to the side, "You got there just after we did, so you wouldn't have had time to go all the way to check the common room first. Even if you did, the prefects wouldn't have let you out again."
Rigel shrugged, "I just did."
"You can't just—" Draco started, but Rigel cut across him tiredly.
"Look, let's get back to the common room first, then argue about who knew what and how."
Pansy agreed, and Draco, outvoted, bit back his exasperation in favor of setting off toward the Slytherin common room at a brisk pace.
Soon enough, they were edging through the false wall. Their stealth was apparently unappreciated, as Theo almost immediately called out, "There they are! Thank Merlin. We were so worried!"
Selwyn, who was standing close to the common room door, scowled down at them before checking their names off of a long piece of parchment she held in her hands, "Finally. You're lucky I haven't sent the Baron after Snape yet. I only waited because I know Professor Snape is busy at the moment."
"Thank you, Alice," Pansy said, inclining her head graciously.
Selwyn rolled heavily kohl-rimmed eyes, "Sure, Pansy. Go see Rosier, would you? He's doing that pacing thing he does when he worries."
Pansy headed off to sooth her friend's concerns for her safety, and Draco and Rigel stepped over to where the other second years were huddled by one of the fireplaces.
"Where've you three been?" Millicent asked curiously.
"Long story," Draco said, "Bit of a mix up on all our parts, actually. So, what did you see, Rigel?"
Rigel shifted uncomfortably as several other sets of curious eyes turned toward her, "You were there, too. What did you see?"
"A load of dust," Draco said evenly, "And maybe…well, you apparently saw something that made you back out pretty quick."
"Yeah," Rigel said flatly, "Snape. I decided we should leave before he began testing for stray magical signatures and sensed up lurking nearby." Draco gave her an unimpressed look, so she reluctantly added, "There was a student on the ground. I know you saw him, too."
"A Gryffindor," Draco said, nodding.
"A Gryffindor blew up the corridor?" Theo blurted, "But the Weasley Twins were at the feast."
Draco shook his head grimly, "Looked more like the poor sod got caught in the blast. He wasn't moving."
The other second years exchanged solemn looks at that.
"Who do you think…?" Millicent trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
"Neville Longbottom," Rigel said quietly.
They absorbed this for a moment.
"Yeah, he definitely wouldn't have blown up part of the school," Theo said thoughtfully, "I wonder what did, though."
Speculation began, but none of the posited theories seemed very likely. Even Peeves wouldn't have gone so far as to destabilize the infrastructure, much less injure a student.
Some time later, as they were all still quietly milling about the common room, too wound up to turn in, Snape showed up. He came into the common room looking drawn and tense. Selwyn presented him with the list, which he glanced over briefly.
"All accounted for?"
"Yes, sir," Selwyn said evenly.
"Good," Snape said, his mouth pressing into a thin line, "Unfortunately not all the Houses were so lucky this night." He raised his voice so everyone could hear, although most of the Slytherins had already gone quiet with respect and anticipation when he arrived, "As you know, tonight a portion of the third floor corridor collapsed. At this point, it seems to be the work of a rather clumsy, and thoroughly overpowered, bombardment hex. The perpetrator has not yet been identified. A second-year Gryffindor was found injured in the corridor, but his wand was found clean of any destructive spells, so we believe him to be a victim of the crime."
He gazed around at them all and said, a bit more quietly, "I'm sure I do not have to tell any of you how serious a situation this is. Until the culprit for these actions is identified, all of you are to keep to the main corridors when possible. Don't wander alone. Don't turn a blind eye to anything remotely suspicious—contact a prefect, professor, ghost, or even house elf the moment you hear or see anything out of the ordinary. New wards will be erected around the common rooms at night, requiring an additional password. Your prefects will be around to appraise you of increased security measures shortly."
With that, Professor Snape left again, and after Selwyn and the other prefects had explained everything, the students slowly began trickling away to bed.
Rigel silently despaired as she lay atop her covers. Though Snape had said Neville was injured, not killed, she feared for her friend. Students being found unconscious in hallways sounded all too like the sleeping sickness. Snape had also said that he was found injured at the scene of the explosion, not that the explosion had caused his injuries. She hadn't seen any blood on the floor, as she'd expect if he'd been hit hard enough by rubble to be knocked out. What, then, had made her friend so still? Tossing and turning, it was a long couple of hours until she finally slept.
Why can't Halloween ever be normal?
[HpHpHp]
Hermione's POV:
Halloween, Hermione thought to herself as she gazed over the festively decorated Mess Hall where the Halloween feast was taking place, was a very nonsensical holiday. It was only made more so when it was witches and wizards who were celebrating it.
She could understand if they had a ceremony honoring Samhain, as the wizarding community apparently had a lot of pagan roots, but after finding out last year that all the things she'd ever dressed up as for Halloween—witches, vampires, werewolves, ghosts—were in fact very much real, celebrating Halloween seemed completely ridiculous.
Then again, she mused as she watched an upperclassman in the Charms tract walk by with a talking pumpkin tucked under his arm, chatting away at it, in her experience a bit of ridiculousness never phased the average witch or wizard.
Shaking her head, Hermione claimed her seat at the Healer's table and waited for her friend Harry to arrive. Harry was another sort of ridiculousness altogether. Hermione could still remember the first time they'd met.
She had just said goodbye to her parents and boarded the plane that would take her to the American Institute of Magic. She was feeling a little depressed, because originally she had wanted to attend the English school Hogwarts, until she found out that the school only accepted those of wizarding ancestry. Still, she was excited to be going off to a new place, and to learn about magic, of all things, in an actual school with a magical curriculum and everything.
She was also extremely nervous. At primary school, she hadn't been at all popular, and most of her classmates had only been remotely nice to her when they wanted help with their homework—as if they thought she wouldn't notice. She wanted things to be different in America, but she wasn't sure how to make them different without either dumbing herself down to fit in or else sucking up to the other students until they liked her. Since she absolutely refused to sink so low as to entertain either option for long, she was quite at a loss as to how to go about making friends.
It was at that moment, after she had primly stored her carry-on bag with A History of American Magic inside of it under her seat, that a boy about her age swept into the seat next to her like a whirlwind and turned toward her with a smile that should have come with a high-voltage label, it was so bright.
"Hi! I'm Harry Potter! I guess we're seatmates, are you a first-year too? Isn't this the biggest plane you've ever seen? Well, it's the only plane I've ever seen, but I saw a picture of one once and it wasn't nearly so big!" the boy began babbling happily to her about all the cool things he'd apparently seen in the airport that morning, including a set of moving stairs, which she identified for him as an escalator, and something he described as 'a portrait that couldn't talk back but never looped like a photo' which she worked out to mean the television screens that played the news around the airport.
At some point he took a breath, and she politely interjected, "I'm Hermione Granger. Yes, I'm a first-year, and why haven't you ever seen a plane before?"
"Oh," the boy, Harry, said, cocking his head to the side like a puppy and blinking silvery-grey eyes at her, "My parents are wizards, so I don't see much of the muggle world."
Hermione frowned, "Then why are you going to AIM? Don't you want to go to Hogwarts?"
Harry waved a dismissive hand, "I'm half-blood technically, so I can't, but I wouldn't want to anyway. Hogwarts is where the stuffy old families send their kids, and the magic they learn there is as old and dusty as their way of thinking. They don't even have a Healer's program! Not to mention Alchemy or Druidry or any of the interesting specializations in magic. If I went there I'd have to go to extra schooling after I graduated just to be qualified for anything, and of course none of the universities in Britain are very accredited, so I'd have to get an apprenticeship to learn anything really advanced, and those take ages to finish and—"
Hermione just sat there and listened as Harry Potter went on and on about how much better AIM was than Hogwarts and the other European schools. At first she just couldn't believe how hyper and talkative the boy was, but as she listened she gradually relaxed and even started to feel a bit relieved that she was going to AIM after all. Imagine seven years of butting up against all those oppressive pureblood customs and stifled ways of learning and thinking. According to Harry, all the homework and tests were based around essays—the oldest form of learning in the book, and seriously outdated in Hermione's opinion. Imagine, seven years without a single creative project or experiment for an assignment!
Eventually, Harry began to wind down, and that was when Hermione started wishing he'd kept babbling a bit longer. Having exhausted everything he wanted to talk about, Harry began asking question after question about Hermione and where she was from and what her parents did and so on. He had no idea what a dentist was, and didn't seem terribly enthused by her description, but eventually equated it with a very specialized Healer and thought they must be 'wicked cool.'
"So what tract are you going to choose?" Harry asked, "I'm going to be in Healing, in case you couldn't guess, because I want to know everything about Healing there is to know—oh, I might go into Potions eventually, though. I like them, too."
Hermione reflected that Harry Potter seemed like a very unfocused sort of person, though she would come to revise that opinion of him as she got to know him over the next year.
"I was thinking of going into Healing as well," Hermione said, "I thought about Alchemy, but I'm not sure my parents would really understand that, and Healing is both universally understandable and universally valued, so they can still be proud of me even if they don't relate completely."
"That's great!" Harry said, with more excitement than Hermione thought the response warranted, "That means we'll have all of our classes together, and be in the same dorms and everything. Want to study together? Want to be friends?"
She blinked in confusion for a second, then stared when her mind digested his strung-together way of talking. He wanted to be friends? That was…easy. Almost too easy.
"Why?" she asked, a bit suspiciously. Perhaps he had seen the book in her bag, assumed her to be a nerd, and was hoping for guaranteed help with his assignments in return for being nice to her.
Harry just blinked at her, still smiling that too-bright-to-be-natural smile, and said, "Why not?"
Having nothing to say to that, Hermione just smiled back, a bit shyly. Time to take a chance, she thought. Even if he turned out to have a hidden agenda, she wouldn't know unless she tried, "Okay, friends, then. So, you grew up in a wizarding home? What was it like?"
From there the conversation flowed quickly. They covered a huge range of topics, comparing the difference between the muggle and wizarding worlds across categories like music, entertainment, politics, family life, social engagements, education, work, and more. Hermione learned more from Harry Potter about the wizarding world in that plane ride—which was somehow only six hours, though logically she knew that a flight across the Atlantic should take much longer—than she had from all the vague, generally worded books she'd bought after getting her letter.
By the time they reached AIM and separated into groups based on whether they had a tract in mind or were undecided, Harry's cheerful and excitable personality had really grown on her. Even when they got off the plane and Harry had a chance to meet their classmates, many of whom were obviously richer or cooler than she was, Harry didn't even seem to notice. All of his attention was on Hermione, and she couldn't help but like how things had turned out.
Two days later, when he made them both late for their first general charms lesson by somehow getting his left shoe stuck to the ceiling with industrial strength bubble-gum, Hermione had second thoughts about her burgeoning friendship with the quirky would-be Healer, but then he somehow weaseled an extra fruit tart from the service elves who manned the buffet-style dinner line, and he gave it to her. And afterwards he didn't ask for help on the extra worksheet they had to do for being late, and when she tentatively offered her help he just smiled and said he understood it fine, and had in fact finished it in class while she'd been taking notes.
Shortly after that, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger became nearly synonymous. They were always together, studying or enacting one of Harry's elaborate schemes, and by the time Christmas break rolled around, Harry was easily the best friend she'd ever had.
Now it was over a year since they'd met, and Hermione was so used to Harry's antics that she didn't even blink when he collapsed, sighing bonelessly, at the table next to her, and began picking bits of bat-shaped confetti out of his mashed potatoes.
"Happy Halloween," she said mildly.
Harry wrinkled his pert nose and rolled his eyes, "Awful holiday."
Hermione turned surprised eyes to her friend, "Free candy, crazy decorations and costumes, two extra desserts apiece…I sort of thought this would be right up your alley."
Harry poked at his mashed potatoes a bit sullenly, "Something bad always happens on Halloween. It's, like, a curse."
Hermione raised her eyebrows. It wasn't that she didn't believe in curses (she'd read about quite a few and even knew the theory behind a couple now), but her friend was prone to melodramatization, "You weren't depressed last year on Halloween, and I don't remember anything bad happening then."
Harry shrugged, "I thought I was well away from it here. It doesn't always happen to me, anyway. Most of the time, it's my cousin Archie that gets the brunt of the curse. Remember last year when I got that letter from home that said my cousin had been injured somehow at Hogwarts? His injury happened on Halloween night. Turns out someone tried to him kill by putting corrosive poison in his drink."
Hermione gasped, "That's awful! How can that sort of thing happen in a school? He was okay, right?"
Harry shrugged, "Yeah, someone stopped him drinking it at the last second. The point is that nothing bad has happened to me so far today, which means something awful is probably happening to Archie right now."
"Well," Hermione said tentatively, "There's no use worrying if you can't do anything, right?"
Harry sighed, "I guess. I'm just worried, because even if something bad does happen to him, he won't say anything and it will be weeks until the school informs his dad who tells my parents who write about it to me."
Hermione kept silent. She had heard a lot about Harry's cousin Archie, who went by Rigel some of the time, and from what Harry had said, Arcturus Black seemed to be a singularly strange individual, though apparently he was quite brilliant. Then again, Harry always said Hermione was brilliant, too, and she didn't consider herself a real genius or anything. She just worked hard and applied herself diligently.
"Distract me, Mione," Harry said morosely, "Please?"
"With what?" Hermione asked wryly.
"I don't know," Harry said with a sigh, "Perhaps your stunning good looks and natural charm? You could flirt with me."
Hermione rolled her eyes, "We're too young for flirting, Harry."
"Are we?" Harry didn't seem terribly concerned, "My uncle Sirius says you're never too young for flirting."
Hermione privately thought his uncle didn't seem like the sort of adult he should be taking advice from, but she knew better than to say anything against 'Uncle Sirius.' Harry practically worshiped the ground his uncle walked on, and seemed to be even closer to the man than he was to his own parents. He certainly mentioned him more often, though he hardly wrote to him at all, curiously enough.
"Maybe boys can start flirting at twelve, but I'm pretty sure respectable girls don't start until at least fourteen," Hermione said with amusement. At first all the vaguely flirtatious words and borderline propositions Harry said to her had flustered and disconcerted her. She wasn't at all used to such flowery and exaggerated banter, and had in the beginning taken it rather badly. Soon it became clear that he wasn't teasing her, and he certainly wasn't seriously coming on to her. Harry just talked that way sometimes, as though it was completely natural. She supposed it had something to do with his exuberant and open-hearted nature combined with the influence of his uncle. It made him terrible ingénue, but in an artless sort of way.
"What's so great about being respectable?" Harry said, grinning a bit, "Walk on the wild side, Mione."
"Why don't you go ahead and let me know how it is?" Hermione said primly, "I like this side of sensibility well enough."
"Someday I'll corrupt you," Harry said teasingly, "And then—prankers of the world beware! I bet you'd out-prank me any day if you put that brilliant mind of yours to it."
"Not if I corrupt you first," Hermione said, "Have you finished your paper on Mind Healing yet?"
"It's not due for another week," Harry pointed out.
"Have you finished it?"
"Yes," Harry pouted, "I guess your evil plan is working better than mine is. Maybe it's time for another grand adventure."
"No theft this time," Hermione requested, knowing better than to try and refuse outright. He would only use his puppy-eyes on her and then she'd end up agreeing to anything.
"What about arson?" Harry asked cheerfully.
As much as she was glad he wasn't depressed anymore…"No."
"Larceny?"
"That is theft," Hermione rolled her eyes, "Nice try, though."
"So, no misappropriating of property and no blowing things up?" Harry shook his head with mock forlornness, which suited him much better than actual forlornness, "What's an adolescent boy to do?"
"You could cry," Hermione suggested blithely, "Just try to avoid getting it in my pumpkin juice."
Harry laughed at that, "This is why you're such a perfect friend for me, Mione. The only other person in the world who deals with my antics so well is my cousin, and he's had a decade of practice."
Hermione felt her ears grow warm beneath her hair. She knew exactly what high praise that was, having heard Harry spout positively poetic about how awesome his cousin was countless times in the last year. No matter how strange or outright suspicious Harry got sometimes, when he said things like that she couldn't help but want to ignore all the inconsistencies a little longer. His friendship, she was realizing, was more important than figuring out his secrets. She would wait patiently until her friendship meant more to Harry than his secrets did, too.
[AbAbAb]
[end of chapter six].
A/N: Sooo, there it is. Happy (belated) Halloween. Sorry it's not longer, and don't worry if some of the things in here seem random…they're not ^^. Much love. -Violet.