The Ambiguous Artifice

by murkybluematter

Harriet Potter's third year masquerading as a pureblood boy promises to be even more complicated than the last two. All she wants is to get through her studies unimpeded, but with pureblood politics, ancient artifacts, and adolescent hormones getting in the way... well, at least she's up to the challenge. Alanna the Lioness take on HP, book three.

12. Chapter 12

A/N: This one's long, so set aside a good amount of time before you read. I may have gone a bit heavy on the foreshadowing, but, as always, I have no sense of what's obvious to the readers and what's obvious only because I know what's happening. This is the beginning of the end of book three. I think two or three more chapters, max. Events will be moving quickly and somewhat erratically until the climax, and if some of this looks like filler—well, I hope you know better by now, clever readers.

The Ambiguous Artifice:

Chapter 12:

Hermione was staring at him again. She'd been distractedly examining him at odd moments all week, which was very unusual for the studious witch. Normally nothing could pull her attention from the blackboard in class. Archie glanced over at his friend with a raised eyebrow, his quill taking over where his hand left off without pause. Hermione spared the dicto-quill a disapproving look before turning back to gaze at him again, her own eyebrow raised right back.

Resigning himself to being confused until the curly-haired girl got around to explaining herself, Archie sent Hermione an exaggerated eye-smile that had her turning back to her notes with a silent huff. He had to let a real smile out at that. Hermione was too cute when she got annoyed—which was often, and rather refreshing, he thought. Harry almost never got annoyed at him—even when he was being purposely annoying! Drawing his thoughts away from his cousin's unnaturally thick skin, he tried to concentrate on what their Medical Procedures professor was saying. Something about consent. And how was a person in dire need of medical care supposed to consent, anyway? He peeked at Hermione's notes to see if she'd written down anything about that, and saw 'emergency—implied?' scrawled in the margin. That's what he loved about Hermione—they were always on the same page.

"You're on the wrong page," Hermione hissed, jabbing his arm with her pointed quill. Archie checked the pair of students to his left and realized that they had, in fact, moved on to a new chapter when he wasn't paying attention. He offered a winning grin as he quickly flipped to the page everyone else was reading from. "Honestly," his partner said, sounding quite exasperated, "You said you would be in charge of the book this semester. If you can't keep up—"

"Can I help it if you're so distracting?" Archie muttered playfully. "How can I pay the lesson any attention when I've given it all to you, 'Mione?"

"Don't blame me for your lack of focus," Hermione whispered sharply. She pulled the book they were sharing closer to her side of the desk with a narrow-eyed glare that just dared him to object. Archie merely smiled and leaned closer to read over her shoulder. Objection was the furthest thing from his mind.

Fifteen minutes before the lesson was scheduled to end, Professor Bernhart told them to pack up their materials. Hermione looked as confused as he felt, so Archie felt confident that this hadn't been in the lesson plan.

"As you all should know, this is the last year of general Healing classes before you will be expected to begin considering a specialty," Bernhart said, brushing a lock of curly hair back from her rectangular frames. "Beginning in fourth year, your schedules will be considerably more flexible. You'll be responsible for choosing classes that best reflect the area of Healing you'd like to someday practice. There is room for overlap, of course, and many students prefer to keep their options open until sixth or seventh year, but it is important to begin as you mean to go on. With this in mind, today we'll be testing your individual levels of magical output to give you some idea of where your talents might be put to best use."

"What does that mean?" Sally Parks looked very worried behind her long, straight bangs.

Professor Bernhart looked slightly uncomfortable, and said delicately, "Some fields of Healing make higher demands on a witch or wizard's core than others. At this point most of your cores should be fully matured. The level of magic you have access to will likely not fluctuate much in the coming years. If the more magic-intensive Healing procedures are beyond your capabilities, it would be better to know now, so that you can choose your specialties sensibly."

Several of their classmates seemed apprehensive at this information. Archie could understand why—they'd all worked very hard to get to this point, and to be told that your future career depended on something you couldn't control was disheartening.

"Don't look so alarmed," Bernhart said, smiling kindly, "Very few fields have such a restriction on them—just Critical Care, Infectious Diseases, and Neonatal-Perinatal, really."

Sally, who Archie suspected was leaning toward Toxicology, looked relieved, but Hermione and Archie shared a silent look. Hermione was fascinated with Wizarding childbirth and he had never considered any specialty besides advanced-stage disease treatment and prevention. To have this potential obstacle come out of nowhere was a little off-putting.

Hermione raised her hand with a determined expression and Professor Bernhart, to her credit, only looked slightly apprehensive as she called on her. "Why were we not told of such a requirement at the outset of our choosing this tract?"

"There was little point in bringing it up before you could be tested, Miss Granger," Bernhart explained gently. "A witch or wizard's core can't be properly measured until their thirteenth year. Making you worry over something you could not influence would only be detrimental to your studies. It isn't quite the crisis I'm sure you're imagining. There are many interesting and important fields of study that do not require above average levels of magic for success. Don't worry, and think of this as a learning exercise. Your levels of magic are not a reflection of your talent or ability. They are something you should understand about yourself, however, so that you may grow to your full potential."

Hermione did not look at all satisfied with that answer, and Archie knew she would spend the next week researching the various factors that influenced a wizard's power levels. There wasn't time for any more questions, however, as Bernhart was already pulling out a device that Archie recognized by its cylindrical shape as a magometer.

"When it is your turn, you will step out into the hall with me," Bernhart was explaining. "Simply channel your magic as you would when performing a basic bone mending, except instead of stopping when the bone is knit, you will continue to feed magic into the device at a constant rate until you run out. You are excused from your practical work this afternoon, as your cores may take a night to replenish what the device siphons off." Seeing the unnerved expressions on some of the faces around the room, Professor Bernhart added, "It won't hurt. Who would like to go first?"

Unsurprisingly, Hermione's hand shot up with eager anticipation. Bernhart smiled encouragingly, and led Hermione out to the hallway for a little privacy. Archie leaned back in his chair, mulling over this new development. He supposed he didn't have much to worry about—the Blacks were known for generally high levels of magic, on average. Hermione though—well, muggleborns were hard to predict. A lot of them had below-average level cores, but sometimes they had nearly double that of a regular core. Aunt Lily, for instance, apparently had much more magic than he had previously imagined, if what Harry said was true.

Hermione came back into the room a few minutes later with a pleased glow across her cheeks, and Archie realized he needn't have worried.

"It turned light blue," Hermione whispered softly, aware that their curious (and rather competitive) classmates were not-so-subtly trying to listen in. "She said that's plenty of magic for Neonatal Care, especially as I'm so efficient with my spells."

"That's great, Hermione," Archie said, proud and gratified on her behalf. His brilliant and hardworking friend deserved to study whatever she wanted.

When it was his turn, he ambled out into the hallway, mildly curious at what his own diagnosis would be. Since hearing Harry describe the device, he'd wondered what it would feel like. He grasped the end of the long tube firmly, taking a moment to stir his magic to activity.

"If you need any help in channeling your magic, just let me know, Mr. Potter," Bernhart said. She had a clipboard in one hand that Archie could see, with his perfect peripheral vision that everyone assumed he didn't have because of the fake glasses he wore, bore a list of names with several blanks after each.

He gave his professor a relaxed smile, then began funneling his magic into the device as though it was a person he was trying to Heal. He could feel the runes in the device helping him direct his raw magic, which would probably have gone all over the place otherwise, and noted with interest that the crystal sphere on the end was blooming with color already. He watched it absently as it turned from red to orange and began to bleed yellow, then got distracted by a sudden lurch in the pit of his stomach.

Something was tugging at his magic, and it wasn't the device. He felt a familiar tingling in his face and realized with mild horror that the magic holding his metamorphing in place was beginning to unravel. He firmed the transformation immediately, as the last thing he needed was for his teacher to witness a sudden inexplicable shift in his features. As he pulled magic back into maintaining his guise, however, he felt the magic that was being channeled to the device slow significantly, shortly coming to a stuttering halt.

Archie let out small pants of breath as Bernhart took the device from his numb fingers. He was monstrously exhausted all of a sudden. At the forced smile on his professor's face, his gut clenched further and his eyes darted to the end of the magometer. It was a sickly yellow-green.

"Perfectly respectable, Mr. Potter," the older woman said evenly, marking down the shade on her clipboard. "And what specialties are you considering?"

"I want to do Infectious Diseases, Professor," he said, voice subdued.

"You…may want to reconsider," she said gently. "There are a lot of other—"

"I don't want to do anything else," he said firmly.

Bernhart's lips pressed together in a suppressed sigh. "The Infectious Disease path is one of the most difficult, Mr. Potter. I'm sure you have the drive, and you aren't lacking in intelligence, but at some point the practical work will be too much for your reserves. Many of the more advanced treatment procedures simply require a great deal of magic to pull off. I'm sorry, but it won't be possible to employ you in such a field."

Archie made a show of shrugging nonchalantly. "I don't need to be involved in treating them myself, Professor. I'm more interested in the research side of things, to be honest. I want to made headway in curing difficult or poorly understood diseases, but I don't care if I'm the one doing the physical curing. It's enough for me to focus my studies on them, and work in the theoretical aspects of the field."

"Even so," Bernhart protested, "The coursework required to achieve such a specialty is itself magically demanding. It would be difficult to pass with distinction—"

"But not impossible," Archie said, giving the professor his best believe-in-me smile. "I can do it, Professor. If it becomes too much I promise to reconsider switching specialties, but you can give me a chance, can't you?"

Bernhart looked torn, but allowed, "It is your decision. I can only attempt to guide you toward a responsible choice."

"Put me down for Infectious Diseases, please," Archie insisted. "I'll make it work."

She sighed, but did as he asked. He strolled back into the classroom with an air of supreme unconcern, but Hermione's frown told him she wasn't fooled at all.

"That took a long time," she said softly, "Is everything all right?"

"Perfect," Archie told her, "I'm Infectious Diseases, like I wanted."

"That's wonderful," Hermione said, excitement leaking into her voice, "What color did you get, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Green," he said, telling himself it wasn't technically a lie. No need to worry his friend. Especially since it wasn't a true concern, in any case. He hadn't realized staying constantly morphed tied up such a large portion of his magical core. It took enormous concentration, of course, especially to keep it up in his sleep, a feat he still felt great pride in having achieved, but he'd never considered the magic involved. Still, he wouldn't need access to all his magic until the upper years of study. By then, maybe Harry could come up with a way to make their Polyjuiced forms even more similar, so that his metamorphic abilities didn't have as much work to do.

Since their practicals had been canceled for the day, he and Hermione took a stroll out to their favorite tree to get some reading done before dinner. After the unexpected excitement of magic testing earlier, Archie had almost forgotten Hermione's unexplained staring problem, but when he caught her giving him measuring looks from over her textbook he tilted his head in friendly invitation to speak.

"How was your winter break?" she asked, very casually.

Archie was pretty sure she'd asked him that several times since they'd been back, but he played along. "Really great. How was yours?"

"Fine," she hummed. After a moment she added, "It's strange going back to the muggle world after so much time here, though. What's it like, living with other wizards? Do you do anything exciting for Christmas—I mean, Yule?"

"Nothing spectacular," Archie said, "Just gift exchange and lots of food, really. Some folk go to services for the old gods at Midwinter, but my family isn't particularly spiritual."

"What about New Year?" Hermione asked, blinking curiously. "I've heard wizards mark the modern calendar year as well with parties and the like. There's a really popular one in England, now that I think about it, isn't there?"

"Ah, yes," Archie said, trying not to frown. "There's a big gala on New Year's Eve that the SOW Party throws. It's sort of a fundraiser, but also sort of a social event for, um, high society types."

"You mean purebloods," Hermione said bluntly, "Yes I've heard. Have you ever been?"

"I…did go this year," Archie said, wondering why on earth Hermione was so interested in the event. Had she heard something? There wasn't anyone at AIM who would have been at a pureblood society event besides him, he didn't think. American and British Wizarding communities didn't really mix, and all the Englanders at AIM were muggleborns or halfbloods. He supposed someone might have family who'd been there, but why would they talk to Hermione about it?

"That's unusual, isn't it?" Hermione commented, "It's my understanding that the guest list is very exclusive, at least when it comes to those of mixed heritage like us."

"My cousin wanted to introduce me to some people," Archie said vaguely, "And my dad was working security for the Minister that night, so my family went along. It was unusual, yes. I probably won't attend again."

"Why not?" Hermione asked, "Don't you get along with those Sow Party types?"

"I just won't have cause to," Archie said, a bit uncomfortable. Looking to change the subject, he added, "It's pronounced like 'sew' by the way, not 'sow.'"

"What?" Hermione looked taken aback, and Archie congratulated himself for successfully distracting her. "No, I'm sure I heard someone call them the Cow Party, and it rhymes, doesn't it?"

"Actually, no," Archie explained, "That's a reference to what the Party used to be called. It started out as the C.O.W. party, then it got changed later to the S.O.W. party."

"What does C.O.W. stand for?" Hermione wrinkled her nose, "And why would anyone think up such an awful acronym?"

Archie laughed. "I don't think anyone called it the C.O.W. Party back then. It was the Cure Our World campaign. It—well, it was actually extremely bigoted. 'Cure' was meant mostly as 'Cleanse,' I think, and the entire platform was the thinning out of mixed or muggle blood from Wizarding Society."

Hermione's mouth fell open in outrage. "But that's barbaric! It's the same sort of rhetoric that excuses ethnic genocide! How could there possibly be a political platform in this day and age that supports such obvious—" she broke off into a short growl of disbelief. "Cure our world indeed—just who do they think they are?"

"They're mostly prejudiced gits who are too blinded by their own enmity to notice that the world has moved on without their bigotry," Archie said, shrugging a bit, "It's made up of families from a political oligarchy that goes back centuries, really, but their party was losing influence steadily after the fall of Grindelwald, until about forty years ago when Riddle took over and revitalized it completely. He's the one who changed the name to Save Our World, and it was his people who started calling it the SOW Party. Their motto is something to do with sowing the seeds of the future or whatever—that's why it's pronounced like 'sew' not 'sow.' It's mainly Light-sided wizards who remember what the true root of the Party is that call it the Cow Party—it's an insult, and a reminder, see?"

Hermione's eyes widened, "That's why their seal has a bag on it—it's a bag of seed!"

Archie grinned slightly, "Thought it was a bag of money, didn't you? That's what a lot of people think, cause it's made up primarily of old moneyed families."

"I knew the Sow Party had strong stances against muggle influences on society, but I didn't know it was the basis of their entire platform," Hermione said, looking incredibly upset.

"They have a lot of other agendas, too," Archie said, "At least, they do now. Riddle champions all sorts of causes through the Party, like the releasing of restrictions on Dark Magic and Artifacts, the reintroduction of certain standards of schooling, the establishment of various societies and charities devoted to the preservation of traditional Wizarding culture…all sorts of stuff, really. Blood supremacy is just one of the most volatile and controversial issues they push for. And the oldest."

"They have so much influence, though," Hermione groaned. "How can roughly half of an entire population be so—so—wrong?"

"It's not half," Archie reassured her, now regretting bringing up the subject. "I mean, purebloods do make up a quite a chunk of the population, but a lot of purebloods are in Dumbledore's Party, too. There're loads of people who don't care either way, too. It's just that those few who have a lot of influence in society tend to be in one party or the other. There aren't a lot of really powerful Neutrals anymore."

"They aren't all purebloods, though," Hermione said suddenly, "Other people associate with them, don't they? You went to one of their events, even. Why would anyone who wasn't pureblood support their agenda?"

"The SOW Party has power," Archie said, "Influence. They've rigged the employment system with laws and incentives so that the only way for a halfblood or muggleborn of talent to get a position in the Ministry or in the numerous private companies secretly funded by the Party is to play by their rules. Also, like I said, they support other things. Most Dark inclined witches and wizards support the Party, even if they aren't pureblooded, because it's the only organization fighting the stigma against Dark Magic."

"Why would anyone want to support Dark Magic?" Hermione snapped, clearly indignant.

"It's not all Unforgivable Curses," Archie said slowly, "It used to have a better reputation, actually. The Light aligned wizards have spent a lot of time in the last fifty years working to undermine the SOW Party by attacking the kinds of witches and wizards who support it. Traditionally Dark families also tend to be more politically conservative and more blood-obsessed. So by working for restrictions against Dark Magic and setting a tone of intolerance about it, Dumbledore's Party can indirectly discredit other things Dark wizards stand for, and resist efforts by the SOW Party to pass blood supremacist legislation as well."

"So instead of debating the real issues, both sides just attack the parts of the opposition's platform that are easiest," Hermione summed up, disgust on her face, "But that's ludicrous. Then you've got people who don't even care about blood supporting prejudiced policies for the sake of some other end and causes of real merit being overlooked on both sides because of which side endorses them—it's so terribly inefficient and irresponsible!"

"It's politics," Archie said, not sure what there was to be so worked up about. Then again, he grew up knowing how things were in the Wizarding world. "It's always been complicated. Everything is about alliances and money and power and the exchanges they facilitate. There are ways to get around the system, though, if you're clever."

"It's idiotic," Hermione insisted. "Someone has to do something." She began muttering to herself wildly as she abandoned her textbook completely in favor of scribbling out long lines of neatly printed letters in one of her notebooks.

Archie settled back to watch her fume and plot. He wasn't sure if there was anything a thirteen-year-old could do, exactly, but if there was, Hermione would be the one to figure it out. She was alarmingly brilliant when she set her mind to a problem. All the more reason to keep her mind on things other than him, in fact. If nothing else, solving the Wizarding world's woes would keep Hermione too busy to consider his many idiosyncrasies.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Transitioning back to her role as Rigel after the break came almost too easily to Harry. Even after being on the other side and meeting all her friends as herself for a brief moment, Rigel's semi-persona was comfortable and almost relaxing. Here at Hogwarts she didn't have to worry about what Archie was doing or saying or what her parents or Sirius would think or what others would think they were thinking or…anything. She could just let go of all that drama for a while and get back into the familiar rhythm of classes, studying, and, of course, potions making.

Her friends hadn't brought up anything about the gala since she'd been back, which she took as a good sign that their ruse had been pulled off rather deftly—that is, until she walked in on them talking about it without her.

It was the first Saturday after break, and she was the last to wake. She'd been absolutely exhausted by the time she collapsed into bed the night before, having turned back a full day and a half cumulatively since the last time she'd slept. On weekends, when Defense Club meetings meant there was no need to wake up early to exercise, she could take as much sleep as she wanted, getting the most out of her sleep-cycle adjusting potion, even if it did make her look like a bit of a layabout to her roommates.

She washed her teeth and face and grabbed her bag, thinking to beg a meal from Binny before turning back once again to see Snape about an assignment she was meant to be handing in that week.

Spotting her friends across the common room, she wove her way over with the intent to see what was on the agenda later in the day. As she approached, however, she heard Millicent saying, "You noticed too? I thought maybe he was nervous."

"Rigel doesn't get nervous," Theo, whose chair was facing away from Rigel as she walked up, scoffed lightly, "More likely he was acting for the sake of his fam—"

A swift elbow from Blaise, who had noted Rigel's presence, shut Theo's mouth rather quickly, but it was too late at that point to pretend politely she hadn't heard. She loitered at the edge of the couch as serenely as she was able, smiling good naturedly to make sure Theo knew she wasn't offended—she knew he didn't think long about most of the things he said. It was part of his charm.

"You guys are talking about the gala, right?" she said.

"We just thought you seemed a bit uncomfortable that night," Pansy, ever the diplomat, said. "Was everything all right?"

"Of course." Rigel shrugged. "I suppose I must have been distracted. I worried about Harry most of the night—she's not very social, and I know how many people were looking forward to meeting her."

"Miss Potter was just lovely," Pansy said, "There was no reason to be concerned. How could we not like anyone you held in such esteem?"

"That's kind of you to say, Pansy," Rigel said, amused. "Harry did mention to me how solicitous you were that evening. It meant a lot that you all included her."

She hid a smile at the slightly guilty looks on several of her friends' faces. Serves them right, she thought slyly. As Harry she didn't care much how people who were essentially strangers looked at her, but as Rigel she wanted better of her friends.

"We were, ah, going to work on that Transfiguration essay this morning," Theo said after a long moment. "Did you want to join us?"

Rigel shook her head. She couldn't tell them that she'd finished the essay on Tuesday when it hadn't been assigned until Wednesday, but she had other business in any case. "I have to go see Snape."

"It's Saturday." Draco frowned. "And you just saw him last night."

She mentally winced, realizing that was an idiotic thing to let slip out. She was in fact about to turn back to the previous night, but it was entirely surreal to hear Draco tell her she'd already done something she hadn't, in fact, done yet. "I forgot to ask him something," she said, resigning herself to making up an excuse to stop by that morning when she was next present in it, just in case one of her friends checked.

As she left the common room, she wondered if she was overdoing it on the time-turner, now that she had it back. This would make her third—no, fourth—Friday evening. She had also spent Friday evening brewing in her lab, researching obscure cauldron treating techniques in a secluded corner of the Library, and working on one of Flint's essays in the Come and Go Room. At this rate, she would be through most of the things she was interested in learning by the end of the year. Then again, those things would likely lead to new things to learn, and she didn't know how long she would be allowed access to such a valuable resource. It would be criminal to waste it.

She slipped into an alcove and turned back sixteen hours to the previous evening. With a quick check to make sure she did, in fact, have the assignment for Snape finished and in her bag, she made her way through the dungeons toward Snape's office. With a quick nod and greeting to Draco, who was going in the opposite direction, she knocked on the door and waited to be admitted.

There was no immediate answer, which she found odd, as they nearly always met at the same time on Friday evenings to discuss the week's assignments. Perhaps he was tied up elsewhere. She debated leaving the assignment under his door, but decided she could wait at least a little while for him to show up. It wasn't as though she didn't have the time, she thought with a secret grin. The grin left her face when she realized she had forgotten to get breakfast before turning back to meet Snape. Her stomach rumbled and she patted it sympathetically. She had the suspicion that time-turning took a toll on the user's energy reserves, as she was much hungrier than usual of late.

It was ten minutes later that her Head of House came striding down the corridor with wide sweeps of his robes. She put her Herbology textbook back in her bag and stood aside patiently while he unlocked his office door. She settled into the chair he conjured for her and took out her assignment from her bag. He'd given her a recipe for an unknown potion and asked that she fill in the blank ingredients and directions based on what she imagined the recipe was intended to do. She'd come up with two possible versions that she thought were, if not equally viable, at least interesting interpretations, and was eager to see what he made of them.

Snape dropped a bag from his pocket onto his desk and scowled at it for a moment before sitting down as well. As his robes met the chair, they sent up a fine cloud of black dust that glinted oddly in the torchlight.

Rigel's eyes fixated on the metallic particles floating between them for a long moment, a memory stirring. "What is that from, Professor?" She didn't think she'd seen it anywhere at Hogwarts. It definitely looked familiar, though.

"This?" the Potions Master spelled it away with an annoyed sneer. "From the Metallurgists' Guild, of course. Their foyer is coated in it."

"The one on Craftsman Alley?" she asked, frowning. She'd never been there, but it wasn't too far from the Potions Guild.

"Mm," Snape hummed, sounding displeased. "I acquired a number of suspiciously cheap moonstones from a dubious associate and required use of the Guild's expertise to ensure the stones were genuine."

"Does the Metallurgist Guild often work with the Potions Guild?" she asked distractedly as she tried to recall where she'd seen the dust. Somewhere in the alleys…it hit her. She'd knocked into a man on her way to the Guild one morning, a man whose robes were covered in the black dust, and whose little brown sack she'd helped to recover… she had to stop herself from groaning out loud. It had been Pettigrew. She hadn't recognized him as her parents' old friend at the time, but looking back it could have been no one else. He'd probably had the jewel on him that very day—in the sack she'd so blithely handed back to him, even!

"The metallurgists will check the properties of any materials you bring them, for a relatively low fee," Snape was saying. "Though I might have saved myself the trip—the odds of Fletcher having anything but synthetic moonstone were miniscule in any case…"

He seemed to be speaking mostly to himself, now, which was good, because Rigel wasn't hearing most of it. If Pettigrew had been to the Metallurgist Guild with the artifact, they may have tested its properties—they may know something about the jewel, or remember Pettigrew and be able to recognize its description if someone were to ask. But how would anyone know to ask unless she did something about it?

"In any case, your assignment, Mr. Black?"

Rigel snapped back into the present, relegating the jewel to the back of her mind for the moment. "Here," she said, handing it across the desk. She sat silently as he perused her work, and felt a little glow of pleasure as his lips twitched just the slightest bit in pleased approval.

"Very creative," he said, drawling his voice a bit, "Though your adding the jasmine blossoms in the second variation is a bit of a stretch—its only purpose would be to eliminate the effects of the garlic, which would make putting garlic in the potion to begin with rather fatuous."

"But not beyond the capacity for idiocy that some recipe designers possess," Rigel said innocently, fighting to keep a smirk off her face.

"Hmm, quite," Snape said, his eyes flicking up from the parchment to assess her politely interested expression. "Still, it was a bit impudent to turn Heinrich's Vampire Repellant into a breath-freshening potion, don't you think?"

"Is that what the original recipe was?" Rigel's eyes widened dramatically. "I had no idea."

Snape looked very close to rolling his eyes. "Clearly you require more difficult coursework in the future."

"I wouldn't want to strain your question-fabricating abilities," Rigel said, affecting a concerned look. "I'm sure it's been a while since you had to come up with new assignments. Er, how long have you been teaching again, Sir?"

"Impudent brat," Snape snorted. "For that, you can write a four foot essay on the effects of modern muggle agricultural technology on the potency and availability of magical ingredients worldwide."

Rigel couldn't stop the smile that escaped her. That sounded interesting. "Thank you, Sir."

Snape sneered, but nonetheless wrote out the assigned topic for her with a generally satisfied air. "Now," he said, leaning back once more, "Your extracurricular classes are going well, I presume? No difficulty completing the winter assignments without your time-turner?"

"Yes, Sir, everything is going smoothly," Rigel said, tamping down on any guilt she might feel at overusing the device until nothing but responsibleness and gratitude shone on her face.

"Good," he said, "Your next Ministry-required evaluation will be mid-February."

"All right," she said, not particularly worried. The last few had been straightforward—well, as straightforward as the Department of Mysteries got, apparently.

"As to your apprenticeship—"

"He said yes?" Rigel beamed, having been waiting for this moment since she stepped off the train.

Snape gave her an odd look, and Rigel realized he would have expected Sirius to have told her already. He probably did tell Archie, but Archie likely assumed she would assume correctly.

"He did," Snape said, valiantly suppressing a sneer at the barest mention of Sirius in passing. He really was getting better at ignoring his sustained hostility in her presence, she thought, quietly grateful. "As such, you ought to have some idea of what your commitment will entail. These past three years we have covered a wide assortment of potions, moving much quicker through those of common or important use than I had originally anticipated when first I agreed to tutor you."

She allowed herself a small sigh of pride that she was certain did not escape his amused notice.

"We will continue filling in what few gaps remain as the year progresses, moving on to exceptionally difficult and dangerous potions in your weekly lessons," Snape went on, "However, I anticipate that your grounding in the material aspects of the field will be as thorough as I can reasonably make it within the next few months." At her surprised expression, Snape allowed a wry smirk to cross his mouth. "You underestimate how far you have come, Rigel. I have never taught a student so dedicated to mastering the field."

She felt her cheeks grow warm against her will. She thought there ought to be a word for the feeling that welled up when everything you'd ever wanted was handed over without ceremony.

Snape cleared his throat uncomfortably. "There is more to mastery than an in-depth knowledge of ingredients and recipes, however. That is why, beginning next year, I will be teaching you free brewing." Rigel felt her breath actually catch in her lungs. Was he serious? "It is a dangerous technique, and many Potions Masters go their entire careers without so much as dabbling in it, but you are not most brewers, Mr. Black. I believe you could become quite adept at the art, given enough practice."

Her smile probably looked ridiculous, but she couldn't help it. Free brewing was the ultimate mode of experimentation in the potions community. Successful free brewing had resulted in some of the most revolutionary discoveries of the last few centuries.

"I would like that very much, Sir," she managed to get out after a moment of internal celebration.

"There is a condition," Snape said quietly, in a tone that caused the smile to slide right off her face. "Free brewing is not a technique that everyone is capable of performing safely. It requires a good deal of magic, and exceptional control over that magic, to hold an unstable potion together until it can be neutralized manually. Without that magic and control, the first misstep might cost a brewer his hands—or his eyes."

Rigel grimaced, but it was not at the gruesome image—rather, it was at the direction she could now see this conversation progressing. "You want me to stop using the suppressor." All enthusiasm was gone from her voice, now.

"Not immediately or all at once," Snape said, attempting to be diplomatic. "Eventually, however, yes. You must learn to harness all of your magic, Mr. Black."

She refrained from saying that such a statement was merely his own opinion, and instead said evenly, "Is this a condition of the apprenticeship itself, or only of learning free brewing?"

Snape scowled. "I have accepted you as my apprentice, Mr. Black, regardless of your own stubbornness, but remember that I have just explained the increasingly shallow body of knowledge I have to impart. I could spend the next four years coming up with exponentially more obscure and unlikely recipes and ingredient combinations, but that would not service your potions education in any useful way. Alternatively, we could attempt to fill the remainder of your school years researching various projects, but would it truly be enough to satisfy you? You sought this apprenticeship because you wanted to benefit from my instruction, did you not? Free brewing is something only a small handful of people on this half of the world can teach you. I am offering this knowledge to you, and, if you are very adept and can convince me of the prudence of such a thing, to your cousin Harriett Potter, as well. All you have to do is gain control of your own magic—something which will benefit you in all areas of your studies. Do you truly believe that is an unreasonable condition?"

She felt as though she'd swallowed something that had been advertised as sweet and had instead turned out extremely sour. A rather childish part of her was saying, he can't do that, in the back of her mind, but he could, and he was, she was forced to acknowledge. She couldn't argue with his reasoning, either, really. She had heard many times how dangerous free brewing was, and magic was the ultimate stabilizer, everyone knew that. It made perfect sense that wizards of greater magic would be better able to brew unstable potions without getting blown up. Even so, she couldn't help but think this was just Snape's excuse for making her give up the suppressor he disapproved of without a fight. She had to give him points for Slytherin cleverness, at least.

At her long, silent hesitation, Snape frowned, and asked, uncharacteristically earnest, "Why are you so against this? An honest attempt at controlling your magic does not seem so much to ask, in exchange for what you want more than anything—do not deny it." She wasn't going to. It was everything she'd ever wanted. "You are a Slytherin, Rigel. Why do you even consider jeopardizing your primary ambition simply so that you may remain mediocre?"

She chaffed at the last comment, but recognized that Snape was making an honest, if somewhat snarky, effort to comprehend her reticence. "I'm not sure you can understand," she said slowly. "Most of the Slytherin students have ambitions of power or wealth; they want to be important, to be known and have influence in some way or another. I—my ambition is somewhat antithetic to that. I don't want to be important. I want to do important work, but I don't want to be noticed myself."

Snape looked unconvinced. "You cannot tell me you don't crave recognition—I have seen it. There is no shame in such a desire, Rigel. You should be proud of your talents."

Rigel felt her forehead crease with frustration, not sure there was anyway to explain what she wanted in a way he would understand. "I just want to learn potions. When I came here, yes, I wanted your recognition, because it validated my reasons for pursuing this field. When you told me I was good at potions—I don't think you can understand what it meant to me. No one ever told me I should study potions. It was a hobby my family humored, and financially supported, which I'm very grateful for, but it wasn't—I needed someone who knew potions to tell me I had a real chance at making it in the field. You made me believe that even though I'm a—" she broke off before her mouth could run completely away with her. She had almost said halfblood girl. "Even though I'm young, that I have the potential to do something great with my abilities. I do think that now. And it's enough. I don't care if other people know how talented I am. If I make Mastery, I won't care if anyone ever hears the name Rigel Black again. I just want the knowledge, and to further the field, and invent potions that change people's lives, and—" She swallowed hard. "I just want to be left alone to brew, Sir."

Snape had the oddest, most unfathomable expression she'd ever seen as he looked at her. After a lengthy pause, however, he merely said, "What does this have to do with your magic? Learning control will only help your potion brewing. You can still be an anonymous academic if you wish."

"I can't though, don't you see?" Rigel frowned deeply, wondering if he was being deliberately obtuse. "I'd be happy living my life mostly unnoticed, apart from my work, but having powerful magic is not something people in our society just ignore. Those with unusual gifts are picked out of the crowd, elevated to a position of high expectations. People start calling them 'Lord' and push them into throwing their magic around, if not literally, then socially and politically. Everyone wants to be acquainted with them, except no one actually wants to be their friend. I don't want that life. I just want to be left alone."

"You do not know that such a fate is inevitable," Snape argued, "There are plenty of powerful wizards who live in relative peace."

"No, there aren't," Rigel said flatly. "Don't say Dumbledore and Riddle, either, because neither of them are left in peace. People watch them constantly. They have to make friends with other powerful people because if they don't make friends they'll make enemies simply by being perceived as too aloof or secretive. People are too curious to leave power alone. They already look at me differently because I speak Parseltongue and because of the weird thing my magic can do with other people's cores. If it got out that I had magic so powerful I could barely control it, everyone would want to know what I was going to do with it. No one with power manages to stay unnoticed for very long, unless they hide it, which is what I am trying to do."

"You are ignoring it, not hiding it," Snape scowled.

"But it's for the better, can't you see that?" Rigel leaned forward to brace her hands on the desk in front of her. "Most of the people with high levels of magic in history end up becoming Dark Lords or getting killed by someone jealous of their power or creating dangerous magical artifacts that ravage the earth or—or—something else incredibly egomaniacal and stupid. No one should have that kind of power. It's dangerous to the whole world. If I develop my magic, that's one step closer to using it—if I even can use it without hurting people. More than likely I'll lose control and something terrible will happen."

"Who do you insist that you are a danger?" Snape said, visibly frustrated. "Have you ever actually hurt anyone with your magic?"

Rigel shook her head slowly. "No…but I have this gut feeling I can't shake. It's telling me my magic is dangerous."

"A feeling is not sufficient reason for ignoring your potential," Snape snapped. "What's dangerous is not learning to control your magic. If pent up long enough it will hurt someone."

"Not if it's suppressed all the time," Rigel said stubbornly, "It's only if I take off the suppressor that it will have the chance to lash out. My aunt keeps hers suppressed all the time, and—"

"Do not bring Lily into this," Snape snarled, bringing a hand down on the top of his desk angrily. With a deep breath, he reined his temper, and added, "This is about you. No one else."

"I don't want to take a chance with other people's safety."

Snape rubbed his temple in irritation, "And I need you to acknowledge that I have more knowledge on the subject of magical abilities than what panicked conjectures you've come up with on your own. You are not the first student with unruly magic I have taught, nor will you be the last. There are ways to control it, ways that do not involve putting a lid on it. Just because you cannot feel your magic at the moment doesn't mean the fire isn't there. If you leave things as they are too long, it will boil over. You must learn to tame your magic, not simply cage it."

"Some animals can't be tamed," Rigel muttered. "My magic is not a lion. It's a lethifold."

"You are being dramatic," Snape told her, sneering. "And what's more, you know that I am correct in insisting on this. It is not for negotiation. Promise me that you will work on it."

Rigel mulled the demand over silently, trying to come up with another argument she could give him. What rankled was that she had other arguments, but they all pertained to keeping she and Archie's ruse running as smoothly as possible. If she began developing her magic, surely people would notice, and people noticing Rigel meant higher expectations for Archie. He didn't have as much magic as she did—it would be impossible for him to pretend he did, unless he kept his aura shielded his entire life and ducked all attempts at making him use his power somehow. It was just too dangerous for them if Rigel Black had uncommonly powerful magic. She couldn't tell Snape that to flaunt her magic was to risk a stint in Azkaban, however, and without that argument he would see no reason why attempting to harness her full power could cause problems.

The most she could do, she realized, was stall for time. "I will work on it," she said, begrudgingly and with no small amount of bitterness. That was vague enough to put him off for a while, surely. Perhaps in the meantime she could find out exactly how much magic a free brewer needed, anyway. There's no way it was as much as she had. Then she'd just have to adjust the suppressor until she had enough to be successful without letting all of it out to overwhelm her and cause trouble.

"If I think that you are not making sufficient progress, I will take things into my own hands, Mr. Black," Snape said, sinister warning in every syllable. "If you break your word I will have no compunction doing whatever is necessary to facilitate this."

Rigel pressed her lips together in slight resentment, but nodded once, capitulating, if a bit gracelessly. It felt like she'd been backed into a corner, and told that it was for her own good, to boot.

As she left the office, she willed herself to relax. She was Snape's apprentice. She should be happy, not angry. She was going to learn things many potions brewers would give their golden cauldrons to be privy to. And really, what could Snape do if she didn't put all her energy into controlling her magic? He could forcibly remove her suppressor, perhaps, but he couldn't make her use her magic. She would just outwait him, and show him that she was talented enough to learn free brewing without lord-level magic.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

That evening she slipped up to the Owlrey, a note printed by dicto-quill on nondescript parchment clutched between gloved fingers. She reassured herself that there was no way to trace who the letter had come from, even if the best people at the Ministry tried tracking it. They would only see that it came from Hogwarts, and they already suspected the jewel had something to do with someone at the castle, so there was no reason for anyone to think of her, specifically, when they read it. Even so, she could not help feeling very vulnerable as she read through the words one last time.

To: Aurors in pursuit of goblin artifact,

Man with large jewel of suspicious origin was seen in the Metallurgist Guild on Craftsman Alley, July. Questioning the material specialists there may yield the answers you seek.

-A concerned citizen

She picked the most common-looking owl she could find and whispered the destination "Ministry of Magic, Department of Magical Law Enforcement" in its ear. It winged away silently into the night, and she sighed with more than a little relief. She had done something to help the Aurors without implicating herself in the slightest. Feeling pleased with herself, she stole back down the tower steps and made her way toward the Come and Go Room. By now, her earlier self should be done using it, and she wanted to get a short workout in before crashing there for the night.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

It was a few weeks into the new semester that Rigel finally made the acquaintance of the other Alchemy student Dumbledore had told her about.

She was somewhat surreptitiously slinking through the Library late that evening, skirting slightly close to curfew but not quite breaking the rules yet. She technically shouldn't be out without her invisibility cloak on, as she was currently also in Gryffindor Tower finishing up a study session with Percy, but she wanted to check out a couple of books, and that meant being visible to Madam Pince going both in and out of the Library.

There was no one there to see her anyway, so near to closing time. Madam Pince locked up a half hour before curfew set in every night, and it was too early in the term for there to be frantic OWL and NEWT students begging for five more minutes.

She was quite surprised, then, to round the corner of the dusty, seldom-used isle on Alchemy texts and see someone else standing there, nose deep in a thick, faded tome. He looked up at her approach and frowned in a way that reminded her of Percy Weasley.

"This section is restricted," he said, eyeing her tie in an obvious way. "You have to have a pass."

"I have one," she said, judging the boy to be around sixteen or seventeen, despite his rather petite size.

"From who?" he asked, looking incredulous.

"Professor Dumbledore," she said, frowning back at him. Did he not believe her? She didn't know why he cared, but maybe he was a prefect she didn't recognize.

The boy snapped his book closed emphatically and scoffed. "The Headmaster gave you a pass to the Alchemy section? You don't look old enough to even be an OWL student."

"I'm in third year," she said, trying to be polite. "I'm very interested in learning Alchemy, though, and Dumbledore was kind enough to give me a pass and a few recommendations when I asked."

"You can't learn Alchemy from a book," he said, a patronizing expression on his face.

"What are you doing here, then?" she asked, a bit annoyed at his condescension.

"I am looking up conversion tables for the magic coefficients of rare materials," he sniffed, "Not that you know what that means."

Realizing at last that he must be the sixth year student Dumbledore had told her about, she took a deep breath and reminded herself not to be antagonistic toward someone who could help her out, if she convinced him of her good intentions.

"You must be Mr. Albright, then," she said, smiling in a friendly way that seemed to catch him off guard. "Dumbledore said you were in his Alchemy class."

"Really." Albright's eyes narrowed, but he dutifully held a hand out nonetheless. "Yes, I am the Heir of the House of Albright. And you are?"

"Rigel Black," she said, shaking his hand for only a moment before he snatched it back with a slight sneer. Ignoring that, she offered, "He said you were working on a project this semester. Can you tell me about it?"

"I think not," he said, wiping his hand on the side of his Ravenclaw robes.

"I understand," Rigel said, forcing a smile, "I suppose you want to keep it a secret until it's finished."

"No, I just don't want to discuss it with a burgeoning Dark wizard. Rowena knows what you'd do with the information," Albright said, looking perfectly serious despite the outlandish nature of his remark.

"I'm not a Dark wizard," she said, eyebrows rising.

"Not yet, maybe," Albright said, unconvinced.

Deciding to try a different tract, she said, "I won't ask about your project, then. How did you become interested in Alchemy? Have you been studying it since third year, or did you start earlier?"

The affronted look on his face was almost humorous. "Don't you know who I am?"

"You're Mr. Albright," Rigel said, containing a sigh, "You haven't told me your first name yet."

"I am Eric Alright, son of Ulrich Albright, Aldermaster of the Alchemist Guild, Premier Executive of Illuminux Inc.," Albright said, no small amount of exasperation in his voice. "You want to study Alchemy and you don't know that my family is Alchemy? Nicolas Flamel is my many-times-great uncle, for Merlin's sake."

"Oh," Rigel said, trying to look impressed, "I didn't know."

"How could you know anything about Alchemy?" Albright said, shaking his head in disgust, "It's a Light art. Ordered. Precise. Balanced. Requiring measured sacrifice. Not something Dark wizards can understand."

"What makes you so sure I'm Dark?" Rigel asked, a bit exasperated. While true that Alchemy was a highly exact field of magic, you certainly didn't have to have Light magic to use it. No more than you had to have Dark magic to use Divination, though that field of magic was highly unpredictable and very forceful in nature.

"You're a Black," Albright shrugged, as though the answer were obvious, "Your Darkness is bred into you by centuries of selective magical copulation, just as my Light magic was carefully cultivated by my own ancestors over a multitude of generations."

"It…hasn't been proven that magical natures are determined by genetics, actually," Rigel told him. "A lot of people have different natures than their parents or grandparents."

"That's what Dark wizards say to deflect suspicion from their dark deeds," Albright said, sneering. When she opened her mouth to protest, he cut her off, "I don't have all night to spend arguing with you, Black. Just try not to leave fingerprints all over the books—or better yet, give up this passing fancy with Alchemy now. You'll never get anywhere in the field with your family history, anyway."

He stepped around her pointedly, giving as wide a berth as he could in the narrow isle. "Thanks for the advice," she said, the sarcasm helping to soothe her annoyance somewhat. She got the books as quickly as she was able, and just barely managed to get them to the front desk before Pince could order her out.

She hurried to get back to the common room before curfew set in. She had down in her notebook that she had turned back a few minutes after her earlier self had left the Gryffindor common room, so she should be all right to reenter the common room as she was.

Draco came across her in the dungeons, and joined her on the way to the common room entrance. His hair was wet from showering after Quidditch practice, which had been running later and later as Flint's 'win or else' philosophy began to gather momentum as the Quidditch Cup approached.

"You looked exhausted," Rigel said, eyeing the way he winced every other step. Too much time on a broom could severely cramp the leg muscles.

"It'll be worth it, if we win," Draco said, smiling tiredly. "Where've you been?"

"Gryffindor common room," she said, anticipating his annoyed huff with a grin.

"What do you see in those blood traitors, Rigel?"

"Oh, the usual," she said lightly, "Friendship, companionable silences, long walks by the Forbidden Forest—"

"Stop, before I hurl what little dinner is still left in my stomach all over your ugly boots," Draco groaned.

"They aren't ugly," Rigel sighed, "They're—"

"Practical," Draco mimicked. "So you've said."

They walked the cold corridors in silence for a little while, Draco pretending not to shiver and Rigel pretending not to notice. Rigel's mind kept going back to Albright, and how peculiar his opinions had been, and she wondered if his family was indeed as notable as he seemed to believe, or if he was simply full of himself.

"Draco," she said, "Have you heard of a family called Albright? I think they're—"

"Albright?" Draco's head snapped around so quickly that several drops of water flew off his hair and onto her face. She wiped them away with amusement as her friend demanded, "What about them?"

"You know of them, then?" Rigel said, a bit surprised, "I've never heard them mentioned in society before."

"Not Dark Society," Draco rolled his eyes at her, "They're Light supremacists, Rigel. The whole family is a bunch of high-strung narcissists who spend all their political capital opposing everything my family does regardless of principle or reason."

"I thought they were mainly Alchemists," Rigel said, taken aback by Draco's passionate dislike.

"That's their income source," Draco said, waving a hand dismissively, "They've had a stranglehold on the Alchemist Guild for centuries, and use it to channel money back and forth between the research labs there and the Albrights' private corporation, which is basically an elaborate front for them funneling Guild money into their various political campaigns."

"That…sounds involved," Rigel said, "How do you know so much about it?"

"Ulrich Albright hates my father, and I assure you the feeling is entirely mutual," Draco said, his face pinched and angry. "Albright is always getting in the way of the SOW Party's agendas. Father thinks Illuminux is being used to manipulate the market on magical materials, too. They're always buying up huge stockpiles of ores or crops, claiming they need it for their 'Alchemical research,' but really they're just monopolizing the commodities so they can allocate them strategically and force the prices up. You remember that shortage of fairy eggs two years ago?"

Rigel blinked. "Of course. The price tripled for almost six months. I had to start substituting doxy eggs instead for some of my potions."

"Everyone did," Draco said, crossing his arms indignantly, "And guess who just happened to buy up an enormous pile of doxy eggs right before the fairy egg shortage? Illuminux. They planned the whole thing. Or at least took advantage of insider knowledge somehow. Just like they did with the ginseng crop during the Sleeping Sickness."

Rigel's lips parted in surprise. "That was them? How did they know? And why weren't they selling any of it, if they wanted to make money?"

"To spite my father, of course. I almost died, Rigel," Draco reminded her.

"There's no way they could have known you were allergic to the substitution," Rigel said, frowning. "You father didn't even tell the school nurse what your allergies were."

"They probably got access to my records at St. Mungo's," Draco said.

"Those are heavily warded, I'm pretty sure," Rigel pointed out.

"Well I don't know how they do it, exactly, but it's a pretty sinister coincidence, don't you think?" Draco scowled.

"I suppose, but surely they wouldn't take a political rivalry so far as to try and indirectly kill you," Rigel reasoned.

"They certainly would." Draco looked at her in an incredulous manner. "The Albrights are the sworn enemies of the Malfoys."

He said it with such deadly seriousness, even as his hair dripped a puddle onto the flagstones, that Rigel couldn't help but poke fun. "I thought that was the Weasleys."

Draco scoffed. "The Weasleys are an embarrassment. And blood traitors anyway. The Albrights are evil."

"They probably think the Malfoys are evil, too. Maybe you're both just misunderstood," Rigel suggested, starting to walk back toward the common room again.

Draco spluttered as he scrambled to catch up. "We are not misunderstood. The Malfoys are evil."

She shot him a sideways look that said clearly, are you sure you want to go with that?

"I mean, we have tended in the past to be a bit unscrupulous. And drawn to Dark Lords." He paused for a moment in thought. "I mean, in the past some members of my family have done what might be considered regrettable things in the pursuit of power. But it's family tradition."

Rigel snorted, "That is a rotten tradition."

Draco's face was positively indignant. "It is not. Tradition is what holds our way of life together. It's what—"

"I've heard the Party speeches," Rigel cut in, summoning a grin to show she wasn't actually annoyed. "You have to admit that not all traditions are good, though."

"Like what?" Draco said, lifting his chin defiantly.

"Like…" she cast her mind around for something that wouldn't offend her friend. "The Blacks have a tradition of beheading our house elves and mounting their heads on the hallway walls."

"What?" Draco spluttered, "My mother never told me that."

"Well, it's true," Rigel said, smirking, "At least for the main household. It's stupid though, because they smell even under the preservation charms and they clash with every décor style that isn't utterly macabre. That is an example of the power of tradition, though. Some Black ancestor decided to behead his house elf and keep it around, so every Lord and Lady Black after that did the same thing without thinking how distasteful and pointless and gruesome it actually was."

Draco was silent for a moment, looking slightly grossed out. "I'm sure it had…great significance at one point," he settled for saying, not even managing to keep the dubious look off his face.

And Rigel was sure it was just another example of blind adherence to inherited patterns of behavior and thought, but she was much too fond of her friendship with Draco to ever say something to bluntly dismissive out loud. There were some opinions he was simply ill equipped to hear.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

The first Quidditch match of the new term was on the last Saturday in January, between Slytherin and Ravenclaw. Spirits were particularly high on the Ravenclaw side, as the ravens were currently leading in points for the House Cup, and a victory on the Quidditch pitch would put them almost irrevocably ahead. Usually when Slytherin played a match, the two houses not participating would choose to root for whoever the other team was, but in this case the lions and badgers didn't want Ravenclaw to pull so far ahead in the House Cup either, so the support for the two teams was rather mixed.

Rigel was in the staff box, having been invited along with Pansy to once again spend the match with the Malfoys. She was beginning to think they simply enjoyed having people to talk down to wherever they went. Or else they were hoping for a progress report on their son.

"How is the new term coming along?" Narcissa asked after greeting them with her patented poised smile.

"Very well," Pansy said. "Draco is doing particularly well in Transfigurations and his Dueling Club is a complete success. We've had nearly a dozen new members since he opened it to the school."

Rigel hid a smile at her friend's prompt report. Apparently she was not the only one who suspected the true reason for the Malfoys' ongoing invitation.

"How wonderful," Narcissa said, smiling proudly. "It is so nice to see Draco taking up the mantle of leadership at such a young age."

"He has a natural charisma," Rigel chimed in. "Even the older students from other Houses listen respectfully when he runs drills." She didn't add that some of them probably only listened to him because his father was a school governor. There were plenty of people in the club who did genuinely respect Draco's way of doing things.

"He is only a third year," Mr. Malfoy pointed out with an air of polite disbelief. "Your interpretations are perhaps influenced by your friendship with our son."

"Results speak for themselves," Pansy said serenely. "He's already had several requests for individual training sessions. Not that he'd agree to allow his time to be monopolized like that, of course."

"The individual training sessions are for us, after all," Rigel added.

The adults laughed politely, looking satisfied that their son was at least doing well enough that his friends had nothing unhappy to say.

"And how are your studies progressing, Miss Parkinson?" Mr. Malfoy asked after glancing down at the pitch for a moment to check the progress of the warm-ups. "Which classes are you taking this year?"

"My extracurriculars are Divination, Arithmancy, and Care of Magical Creatures," Pansy recited, looking as though she'd told him so before at some point and wondered why he was asking again.

"Ah yes, I recall now," Mr. Malfoy said, smiling in a way that Rigel didn't believe for a second was casual. "And you, Mr. Black? What electives did you select again?"

Rigel fought to keep her eyes from narrowing, sure that she had heard more than casual interest in his tone. "Arithmancy, Runes, and Magical Theory," she said.

"Not Healing?" Malfoy frowned in a politely curious way that didn't fit his face at all. "But you are so skilled in the art, Mr. Black."

Rigel affected a look of earnest gratitude. "Madam Pomfrey is kind enough to tutor me unofficially whenever we both have free time. My cousin Harriett lends me her Healing textbooks over the holidays, too, and has been a great help in furthering my understanding of the subject."

"Why not simply take the class, if you have such an interest in it?" Narcissa asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

Rigel shrugged a tiny bit. "I had to choose the three subjects I thought would be most difficult to learn on my own. I can learn Healing through my cousin and Madam Pomfrey's generosity, so there was no reason to take up a slot on my schedule that could be filled by a subject I have no other way to study."

"Is it wise to attempt to focus on so many different subjects at once, instead of choosing to master a few that interest you greatly?" Mr. Malfoy asked, one eyebrow raised.

"They all interest me greatly," she said, as guilelessly as possible.

"It is so rare to meet such a devoted academic these days," Narcissa cut in, smiling in a way Rigel knew was meant to soften her husband's rather pointed inquiries. "Perhaps some of it will rub off on our Heir."

"Draco doesn't take direction from his peers," Pansy said, drawing the attention away from Rigel once more. "It's quite the other way around."

The game began soon after, and Rigel's attention was distracted from wondering why Mr. Malfoy was suddenly so interested in her schoolwork. Perhaps he was simply curious as to how a Hogwarts student learned so much about a subject that was not emphasized in the curriculum. It had seemed like more than that, but Rigel admitted to herself that she was probably being paranoid. She had been feeling increasingly as though she were missing something important, lately, and it was apparently starting to give her suspicious tendencies.

Snape had appeared sometime just before the tip off, and now stood at the elder Malfoy's elbow as the game commenced.

"The team looks in fine form," Malfoy remarked a few minutes into the match. "The Chasers are remarkably efficient."

"As I understand it, Captain Flint has been particularly driven this last month," Snape drawled.

"I think the words you're looking for are 'increasingly manic,' Professor," Pansy offered, shaking her hair back until it hung against her upper back instead of her face.

"Well, he may actually graduate at this rate," Snape smirked. "Presumably he sees this year as his last campaign, so to speak."

It certainly did look like the chaos of war as players on both sides attempted to claim an early lead by any means necessary. Rigel had to wince as both Slytherin beaters attempted to shoot bludgers at the Ravenclaw keeper simultaneously. It was obvious that the keeper was used to intercepting balls rather than dodging them, as his first instinct to fly toward the incoming bludger was only checked at the last moment in a desperate and panicky roll to the side.

She could see Draco circling high, his sharp features flushed with adrenaline and the cold slap of the wind. After a few minutes she realized she was missing all the action, just keeping her eyes on her friend, and attempted to catch back up with the rest of the game. Before she could so much as determine who had the quaffle, however, a stabbing pain eclipsed her lower abdomen and sent her gasping to her knees.

"Rigel?"

She heard Pansy's concerned cry vaguely over the noise of the stadium, but it was hard to concentrate over the nauseating sensations of snakes crawling through her belly. She felt like she'd just swallowed a galleon of Polyjuice Potion, only several times worse.

"Mr. Black," it was Snape's voice now, and his hand on her head. She blinked up at him, but he was going in and out of focus like a poorly timed picture. Her brain put two and two together just as Snape's eyes began to narrow, and she ripped herself away, turning toward the stairs with an exaggerated groan.

"I'm going to be sick," she gasped out, and that was enough to make the few adults between her and the steps step back automatically.

She dashed between them and ran with all of the speed she could muster down stair after stair until she reached a landing with no one on it. Pulling the cloak she had been grasping for in her bag over her head she fumbled with her time turner and gave it a random spin, too panicked to care how many revolutions it took as it whisked her away from the present moment and back to the only safety afforded to her just then.

She saw Snape rounding the landing just above her as she faded, invisible, from the scene, and made a note to reappear somewhere believable when she sorted things out.

When she opened her eyes from where she'd closed them against the dizzying sensation of time travel, it was to a silent stairwell, probably hours or possibly a full day before the match was set to occur. Rigel kept the cloak firmly over herself as she hurried down the rest of the stairs and away from the pitch. She still felt violently ill, but she could also now feel the beginnings of a transformation that, if she had been thinking at all, she should have been able to predict.

She headed for her lab, despite having no idea what time it was and therefore no clue whether there was another version of herself in there at present. She didn't remember the door randomly bursting open at any point in the last week while she was working in there, so logically, if the time stream was consistent, she hadn't interrupted herself—or wouldn't. Whichever.

After cloistering herself in her lab and locking the door with as powerful a spell as she could think up, she pulled her cloak off and breathed deep in both relief and in an effort to calm herself down enough to think clearly. When her body came back into view, it was obvious what had happened. The Modified Polyjuice she had taken that summer had worn off completely. Scowling at the inconvenience, she nevertheless had to admit that it was entirely her own fault. She knew the modified potion would only have an effective life of about a year. What did she think was going to happen when she crammed so much extra time into her days and weeks?

Still, she paused, had she really lived a year in roughly four and a half months? That was a little much. She briefly considered cutting back on the time turner for a while, then realized that if she was going to get out of this mess, the time turner was her only chance.

She needed to brew a new Modified Polyjuice using hairs from the same samples that she'd used the last time she took it. Otherwise, her appearance would change. Luckily, or rather due to her incredibly obsessive tendencies when it came to potions ingredients, that much would be no problem. She took out her potions kit from her bag, and opened the expanded drawer that contained all the human samples she collected. She had plenty of her own hair, having been collecting it at regular intervals for years. Finding one from the end of summer was a cinch. She needed Archie's too, though.

Skipping over those vials labels with names of other people she knew, and grimly hoping her friends never found out about her strange but oddly comforting habit of keeping bits of their hair in her potions bag, she found the row of vials with Archie's name on them and skimmed the labels. She had more recent samples from the winter break (mostly because she was curious what would happened if you Polyjuiced with hair of a metamorph who was transformed when the sample was taken), but she needed the one dated August… there!

She only had three hairs left from that sample, but one was all she needed. This is why Theo is right and paranoia pays, she thought idly as she set the vial aside.

Now the real problem: completing a new Modified Polyjuice Potion, which took an entire month to brew properly, in the next… she cast a quick tempus charm and grimaced. Six hours. Before she could despair, she sat down on a stool and pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill, muttering determinedly.

"Okay. I can do this. What do I have? Most of the ingredients…" she made a quick inventory, grimacing as she realized she'd have to somehow get ahold of an amber stone. One preferably a bit bigger than the pea-sized ones she'd been using. She didn't want to be doing this all over again if she happened to somehow squeeze another year into her remaining four months.

Amber wasn't stocked in their student storeroom, she knew, and while it was possible that Snape may have some in his private store, it was not possible that Snape would not ask her what exactly she needed it for. She could owl order it, but she didn't know how long that would take, and it was the very first ingredient she needed to put in the cauldron.

There was also the problem of logistics, she realized. Her time turner could only go back a week at a time, and Polyjuice needed to brew continuously for a full moon cycle. She would have to fold four weeks into one while somehow not running into herself or anyone else along the way.

"Oh, no," she groaned out loud, realizing that reliving the same week four times would be impossible. "I've already done Tuesday three times." That would put her at seven selves in one time, which was very, very dangerous according to everything the Ministry and Snape had told her. "Okay." she talked herself through it. "All right. I'll redo this week three times, then go back to Wednesday on the fourth go-round and live through Monday, then go back again to Saturday morning once the potion is finished. Yes. But where….?"

At various points in the last week she had already been present in the Room of Requirement and her lab, ruling both of them out as places she could leave the Polyjuice because she didn't remember there being unexplained Polyjuice in either place when she was last there. She would need somewhere to sleep, too, or rather four different places to sleep throughout the week that somehow didn't include her dorm or the Come and Go Room, since she had already slept in both places almost every night over the last week.

"What a mess," she sighed. She could try camping out in the forest, but the odds of her not being eaten eventually by Acromantula while she slept were probably fairly low. With a reluctant grimace, she realized her safest option was going to be leaving Hogwarts altogether. Once out of the school, she could purchase the amber stone at any apothecary and simply hole up in a series of cheap hotels.

It felt wrong to contemplate leaving the school in the middle of the semester, but, she reasoned with herself, it wasn't as though she wouldn't also be at school that week. It would only seem to her as though she'd taken a month off of classes. No one else would even know.

It was probably going to involve breaking a dozen rules, but hadn't she already? "Better than being sent to Azkaban for using a Ministry controlled potion to impersonate a pureblood," she muttered halfheartedly. That was the likely consequence if she couldn't get her appearance back under control before Snape tracked her down after the Quidditch match. She had seen in his eyes the beginnings of suspicion—and why not, when he likely knew exactly what the symptoms of Polyjuice wearing off were? There was no way she could buy the standard potion on the black market and use that until she had enough legitimate time to brew her own, long lasting version—Snape would likely be watching her more carefully than ever as soon as she rejoined the time stream. She wouldn't put it past him to arrange for her to be in his presence over an hour continuously that very day just to be sure she wasn't taking the potion.

How much easier things would be if she and Archie had been twins instead of cousins. She loved her mother dearly, but it was difficult sometimes not to imagine how simple life might have been if she could have just gone to Hogwarts a normal girl.

Curious, almost against her will, she took out her wand and conjured a basic mirror. The person who looked out of it at her was like a vision from another life. Dressed in Slytherin robes, she smiled tentatively, almost unable to believe her eyes. She certainly didn't look like Archie anymore.

With a tilt of her head, she took in her reflection raptly, realizing that this was the first time in over a year and a half that she had seen her true face. Longer than that, she amended, if you counted the months of folded time, too. Her hair was the same, short and black, but nearly everything else was…off. She squinted and realized belatedly that her eyesight was even worse than she remembered it being. Perhaps she'd just gotten used to perfect sight. With a sigh, she realized she didn't have a pair of glasses here at Hogwarts—why would she? She resigned herself to a long month of nearsightedness.

Stepping closer to bring her features into sharper focus, she noted to her surprise that she looked a bit like Lily, in her face shape, at least. It was rounder than the pointed purebred look she'd been sporting for so long. Her cheeks were softer and her lower lip slightly fuller. Her eyes were uncanny, after seeing them in grey and dull green contacts for so long. They almost glowed, but that might be the intensity with which she was inspecting herself. She didn't know if the girl in the mirror could be called pretty—she just looked odd to her.

She'd never considered vanity one of her defining traits, but she couldn't deny a certain amount of fascination as she experimentally turned from side to side. She was definitely maturing, she noticed with mixed feelings. Her waist was sloping in and her chest slightly out. She'd also lost at least an inch in height, she thought with annoyance. It figured that Archie would be taller than her. At least she still had her musculature. Relative health was one of the things about the body that even Polyjuice would still reflect.

After one last look, she banished the mirror, satisfied that at least no one would recognize her as Rigel Black while she was away from school. She would have to lose the school robes, though. "This is going to be more elaborate than I thought," she complained to herself, mentally drawing up a list of things she would have to do. First was collecting a couple changes of clothes and her savings from her dorm room. As it was very early Saturday morning, she would have to wait until her previous self woke up and left for the Quidditch match. That gave her a few hours to prepare the rest of it.

She began gathering cauldron, scales, stirring rods, knives, and anything else she might need to complete the Polyjuice. She used the cauldron as a carrying container, as her book bag was not quite extendable enough to shove an entire pewter size two inside comfortably. She made a list of what books she wanted to grab from her dorm to read while she was waiting for the potion to brew, then tried to decide if there was a way she could get food from the kitchens without any of the elves asking who she was and why she looked sort of like Rigel. Binny, at least, would probably notice something off. Food would wait, then.

Where should she go first? "Not Hogsmeade," she said aloud. She was obviously school age, even if she didn't look like Rigel Black. It would be too easy for someone to alert the school. They'd probably even think they were doing what was best for a young girl wandering about on her own. A moment later she realized that her youth, at least, she could fix.

An Aging Potion only took a couple of hours to whip up, after all. She would have to renew the dose every few hours, but with no one watching her every move, that was easy enough. She rolled up her sleeves and got started, determined that her plan was going to work. It had to work.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Slipping out of the castle with her supplies had been almost unnervingly simple. The Marauder's Map led her straight into Hogsmeade through the one-eyed witch's hump, and from there it was an easy matter to Floo to Diagon Alley. Fifteen minutes later she had a key to room number six at the Leaky Cauldron and rent secured through the week.

The first thing she did was purchase a hideously garish scarf to wrap around her head. The material was so eye-catching that she doubted anyone who glanced her way on Diagon would be able to remember anything else about her. Thus garbed, she strolled in her newly lengthened dress robes right into Tate's shop and purchased the largest amber stone he had. Tate didn't blink an eye at her, to her amused relief. She was back in her room at the Leaky with her prize and enough food for a few days long before the Aging Potion wore off.

It was a quiet week. The barkeep, Tom, seemed incredibly disinclined to pester his guests, and if anyone noticed the admittedly noxious smell coming from her room, they didn't care enough to say anything.

When Saturday came back around, she found herself a bit at a loss. Where would she stay next? She snagged a copy of the Daily Prophet and flipped through it to see if anyone was running advertisements for a room for let. The only mention was for an apartment complex off of Craftsman Alley, which seemed geared toward attracting the international clientele that came to visit the English Guilds for business reasons.

"I can work with that." She smirked slightly, crossing to the large satchel she had been using as a makeshift suitcase for the last week and pulling out the blonde wig that she had never gotten around to getting rid of, even after Snape ensured she had full use of the Library. "I knew this would come in handy."

A few minutes later, or a week earlier, depending on how one thought about it, Eloise Barnes from Paris, France stepped out of the Leaky with her things in tow. Her Polyjuice Potion was tucked away beneath her invisibility coat, kept simmering with an overpowered Warming Charm that she hoped would do until she could get it over a fire once more.

The address given in the paper led her further down Craftsman Alley than she'd been before. She passed several different Guild Houses on her way, one of which she took special note of, as it had "Alchemists of England" in big letters across the gate, which appeared to be made of gold. She wondered if that was a reference to the fabled Philosopher's Stone, which supposedly turned lesser metals it touched into gold, or just an incredibly obvious show of the Guild's wealth. Either way, she wondered how she hadn't noticed it before.

Turning down a side street, she found the complex of small apartments without trouble. The woman at the front desk looked up with a friendly smile as she walked in, though her nose twitched unmistakably as she drew closer, no doubt able to smell the Polyjuice from across the room, even if she didn't know what she was smelling.

"I'd like to rent a room for ze week," she said, putting on her best heavy French accent. "I'll need it until Saturday."

"Would you like one with a window?" the woman asked, very subtly turning her nose into her own collar in the guise of looking down at some papers.

"Oui, ah, yes," she said, smiling tiredly. "Merci."

"No trouble," the woman said, "Just the one bed all right?"

She nodded, trying not to look like she was in a hurry. She could feel the cauldron at her side cooling off slightly, and attempted not to glance down at it in worry, knowing she must already look pretty odd with her arm propped out from her side for seemingly no reason.

"Would you like to pay now, or when you leave?" the lady asked, her expression turning serious for a moment. "I must tell you that if you wish to postpone payment we'll need to fill out a few forms, and I'll have to register your wand, as well. Just in case." She smiled brightly, as though by sheer friendliness she could erase the insinuation that she might try and shirk payment.

"I'll pay now," she told her, pulling out a small sack of galleons with her free hand and handing it over.

"Oh, you've already exchanged for galleons, good," the woman said brightly.

Right. Obviously a French traveler would have French Wizarding money. Ah, well. It probably wasn't unusual enough to merit comment.

"You'll be in room twelve, my dear, just up the stairs and to the left, all the way at the end," the lady said. "All right?"

"C'est bien," she murmured, taking the key with a grateful smile and hurrying away up the stairs.

After putting down a flame retardant mat and setting up her cauldron over a fire once more, she sighed and began unpacking the meager necessities she'd accumulated over the past week. The room was very comfortable looking, if a little outdated. Overly floral wallpaper was the least of her problems, she supposed. She checked on the potion once more before taking out her Ancient Runes book and flipping through to where she'd left off. At least one good thing would come from this spectacular misadventure—she'd be way ahead on her schoolwork.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Near the end of the second week, she began looking once more for a place to stay. There were some high-end hotels off an alley near the Gringotts end of Diagon, but in addition to being hideously expensive, they had somewhat stringent standards for their guests. She would not be able to avoid registering at least her wand, if not her name and Gringotts vault number, if she attempted to stay in one of those rooms for a week.

In her guise as Eloise, she stepped into a second-hand robes shop and begged the owner for a quick moment of her time.

"What is it, dearie?" the old woman asked, peering at her distraught face with wizened eyes.

"I 'ave come to England to look for my brother, madam," she said, her French accent actually pretty good after a week of practice. "I 'ave checked all ze 'otels I could find, but none of zem 'ave seen him. I thought, perhaps someone who lives 'ere would know of somewhere else I could look."

"Oh, dear," the old woman said, a frown scrunching up her wrinkly forehead. "Well, are you sure he's come here? He could be in any number of Wizarding settlements in England, you know."

She nodded tearfully, her long hair falling into her face. "Oui. I know 'e is in ze alleys. 'is note was very clear." She wrung her hands in distress. "I do not know what 'e was thinking. Zer is no way for him to afford living on 'is own."

"Well, if he hasn't much coin you won't find him at the big hotels," the old woman said, taking her hands between her own kindly. "Have you checked the Leaky Cauldron?"

She sniffed. "Oui. And ze apartments for rent by ze Guilds."

The woman thought for a moment. "Well," she said slowly, "I suppose if your brother was truly in desperate straits he may have tried the Lamia Lodge…"

"Where is zat?" she asked, not having head of it before.

The old woman hesitated visibly. "It isn't in a very nice part of the alleys, dearie. And it's…well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt for you to ask there, at least." Her face took on an anxious expression. "You will go now, won't you? While it's still light out? It's no place for a lass like you to be wandering after dark."

"Of course," she promised, grinning internally. It sounded like the perfect place to lie low. "Is et near?"

The shop keep wrote down detailed directions, and with a last, slightly concerned look, bowed her from the shop with wishes of luck in finding her brother.

She perused the directions on her way back to her temporary apartment. The Lamia Lodge seemed to be situated off of Knockturn Alley, somewhere on one of the side alleys between Krait's place and Kyprioth Court. The old woman was right to be wary of sending her there. It was certainly not a place a young woman wanted to walk alone at night.

On Saturday morning, she packed up her things once more and said a friendly farewell to the proprietress as she left the building. She stepped into a public loo to lose her blonde wig and, cauldron awkwardly held under one arm, turn back a full week for the third time. After making sure no one else was present (and why would they be, when she'd turned back to the early dawn hours of Monday morning?), she tucked her invisibility cloak away and traded it for a long, nondescript black cloak with a deep hood. Once on, it concealed most of her features and disguised the awkward way she held the cauldron close to her side in its heavy folds.

As the sun rose slowly over the sleepy streets, she made her way down Knockturn Alley. The nocturnal denizens had largely deserted the alleys by now, and it was not yet day enough to tempt even the most accommodating shops to open their doors, so it was to the sound of her own quiet footsteps that she navigated her way through narrow streets. She found herself before an imposing building with narrow windows that had all been boarded or blackened and a door of deepest grey that seemed to have been gouged in several places near the doorknob.

"Charming," she muttered, steeling herself. "At least no one will recognize me here."

The numbers hanging crookedly above the antiquated knocker, a match to the ones the old woman had written down, were the only assurance that this was the correct place. Steeling herself, she grasped the knob and opened the door with a confidence she did not feel.

It swung inwards with an awful squeak that she felt had to be contrived for some sort of effect. There was simply no way those gleaming hinges actually contained that much rust. A narrow, carpeted hallway led to a slightly larger room with a desk pushed somewhat lazily into one corner. Slumped at the desk, facing away from the entrance, was a thin, wane man with long, lank hair and robes that looked like they'd lost a fight with a nest of moths sometime in the distant past.

"Excuse me," she said, raising her voice slightly in case he was as asleep as he looked.

"No need to shout." His voice sounded like a spider had spun cobwebs in his throat. She half expected dust to come spewing from his lips, but barely a particle of air stirred as he rose fluidly from his slumped position and turned to face her. He was quite a bit taller than she was, but she told herself that height was a ridiculous thing to be intimidated by.

"Do you have any vacancies?" she asked, a bit quieter this time.

"Vacancies?" he repeated, sounding distantly amused at something. "Whatever for?"

"I'd like to rent a room," she said, tucking her chin to keep her face in shadow as he bent down as though he might peer at her from across the room. "This is a hotel, is it not?"

His laugh was raspy and took an unnaturally long time to fade out. "This is the Lamia Lodge, child."

"I know," she said, "And I'm not a child, Sir."

He was looming over her before she'd noticed him move. His hand moved faster than her eyes could track, whisking the hood from her head even as she drew breath to protest. His eyes, which she noted belatedly were too black to be normal, took in her face briefly. "You smell younger than you look, under the stench of whatever you are holding," he said, interest trickling into his tone.

"Well you smell older than you look," she snapped, annoyed. "Do you have a room or—what is so funny?"

He was laughing again, slightly louder this time, and as his lips pulled back she caught a flash of fang that made the blood drain from her face. He was a vampire.

"You should see the look on your face," he said, his eyes flashing red in what was probably an attempt to scare her. She told herself firmly that it wasn't going to work, though there was a voice in the back of her head that asked just what she had gotten herself into. "Did you honestly come to a vampire hotel without expecting to see any vampires, child?"

"I didn't know it was a coven-run hotel," she admitted. "I just need a place to stay for a week and heard this place was cheap."

"Oh, it is." he smirked, showing fang again. She wasn't sure if it was meant to be threatening or not. "I'm curious, though; did you imagine it was called the Lamia Lodge because of the food?" He laughed again, apparently highly amused at his own joke.

"I thought it was named after the beetle," she muttered, realizing in retrospect that Lamia was also the name of an ancient Libyan vampire who had a habit of eating her own young.

Vampires were apparently very easily amused, as hollow sounding chuckles filled the space between them once more. She was about to suggest she look for lodging elsewhere when another voice spoke up from across the room where a narrow stairwell descended into the floor.

"What is all this racket, Gavril?" the newcomer asked. She was a vampiress with long red hair braided back from her face, and her voice was low and sleepy. "Some of us are trying to rest."

She hadn't thought they'd done anything loud, but she supposed a vampire's hearing must be as good as she'd read.

"This one wants a room," the first vampire, Gavril, said slyly.

"So give her one." The vampiress shrugged gracefully. "If she isn't a Carpathian, what matter?"

"She's human," Gavril said, looking almost proud of this fact.

"Truly?" the other vampire wrinkled her nose, "She smells like the dead."

"I can just go," she offered, feeling very uncomfortable.

"Nonsense, you must stay," Gavril said quickly. "Why, we happen to have a lovely room overlooking the inner courtyard. Won't you consider it?"

"How much?" she asked, more than a little wary.

"We can discuss that later." Gavril smiled widely.

"I'd rather discuss it now." She frowned, stepping back unconsciously.

"Stop being such a beast," the vampiress swatted her companion with an annoyed glance. "The room is yours for a galleon a week," she added. "I assure you no one here will bother you. This idiot just hasn't fed in a while."

That did not make her feel any better, but on the other hand…one galleon for the whole week was an incredible deal. Even if there were bloodstains on the walls, she'd be a fool to pass it up.

"I'll take it," she said quickly. She would just have to make sure to only leave her room during the daytime. If there were other guests, they'd probably be too busy sleeping to be curious about her comings and goings.

"This way," the female said, brushing past Gavril with a pointed look. "Go downstairs and find something to eat. I'll watch the door while you're away."

She beckoned with one hand and led Harry through a door that was the same color as the walls, making it nearly invisible until they'd drawn near. On the other side was a staircase going up, which took them to a curved hallway lit with antique candelabra. The vampiress stopped before a door that looked much like all the other doors and unlocked it with a large brass key.

"I hope you enjoy your stay," the vampiress said softly, sending involuntary chills up her spine as she crossed the threshold. With a mumbled word of thanks, she closed the door behind her and slumped to the ground. That was the last time she took directions from strangers, even if they did look like someone's sweet old grandmother.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

To her surprise and relief, her week at the vampire hotel passed quickly and uneventfully. Even so, she wasn't keen on finding yet another shady place to sleep when Saturday, once again, rolled around. She was picking up food at a market off Kyprioth Court, her hood drawn up around her face as a precaution, when she overheard a witch mentioning the Court of Rogues to her friend.

It made her wonder what Leo was up to, and if he'd kept away from her flat on Dogwood Lane like she'd asked. Hopefully Mrs. Flint had been able to get settled without too much trouble. A moment later she froze, nearly dropping the apple in her hand as a sudden thought struck her. She had a flat. She hadn't considered using it, as Mrs. Flint lived there now, but…maybe she should.

Wasn't the premise of their backup plan that Harry was living on Dogwood Lane while Archie was at AIM in her place? If she popped in while Mrs. Flint was staying there, well, that was a pretty solid alibi, should the worst happen. She had warned Mrs. Flint that it was her cousin Harry's house, and that she might stop by now and again, hadn't she? Surely the woman wouldn't begrudge her kipping on the couch for a week. All she had to do was avoid going outside much, as it would be hard to explain to any of her alley friends why she suddenly looked so very girlish.

Immensely pleased with her plan, she hurried back to the Lamia Lodge and gathered her things once more. The potion was looking exactly as it should, and in seven more days, she would finally be done with the whole ridiculous charade. By the time the last dose of Aging Potion had worn off, it was almost dusk, and she was impatient to get going. She cast one last look around the darkly furnished room to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything and locked the door behind her, cauldron under one arm, wrapped safely in her cloak.

Downstairs, Gavril sat on one corner of the desk, his mate, the vampiress who'd first welcomed her to the hotel, pressed close to his side. She had over the past week met the two of them several times, as they seemed to be the only ones about during daylight hours. At night, however, the sounds of dozens of other voices filled the courtyard outside her balcony.

"Madam, Sir." She bowed her head politely. "Here is your key."

"Leaving so soon, human?" Irina, the female, smiled wryly.

"Thank you for your hospitality," Harry said, smiling tightly. She handed over the agreed upon galleon, and bid them a polite farewell.

"Do recommend us to your friends," Gavril called after her, his voice, while not loud, carrying eerily down the hallway after her.

"You're hilarious," she muttered, knowing he could hear her. "Really, you should consider a career on the wireless." His distinctive laughter chased her out the door.

"Never again," she promised herself, once she was far enough down Kyprioth Court that she felt safe relaxing. She pulled her cloak tighter around herself and picked up her pace a bit. She wanted to get to Dogwood Lane before the sun set completely.

She was halfway there before she stopped, groaned aloud at her own stupidity, and made a beeline for the nearest public toilet. She pulled the invisibility cloak over her head and awkwardly got out her time turner one-handed. With a long-suffering sigh, she turned the hourglass over and over, keeping a mental count until she reaching the number that would take her to Wednesday morning. That done, she strolled back out into burgeoning sunlight and twittering birds. Sometimes she wondered how her circadian rhythm was ever going to recover from owning a time turner.

The street was just as she remembered it, quaint and quiet, and she let herself into the foyer shared by numbers seven and eight with her own spare key. The stairs leading up to her apartment were clean, and a cute little rug that she didn't remember being there before sat by the door. She knocked quietly, and, after a moment, realized she should remove her hood if she didn't want to scare the woman witless.

She heard soft footfalls, and then the door was opened just the tiniest crack, an eye peeking out at her suspiciously. "Who's there?"

"Hello," she said, smiling softly, "My name is Harriett. My cousin Rigel told you about me, I think. Is it all right if I come in, Ma'am?"

There was a long pause, but the door did slowly retreat inwards as Mrs. Flint shuffled back away from it. Harry slipped inside and set her cauldron down out of the way before turning to hold out her hand. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I'm sorry to drop by so unexpectedly, but I was wondering if I could impose on your hospitality for a few days?"

Mrs. Flint took her hand slowly, her eyes flicking from her face to her satchel to the cauldron she'd set on the floor, and back. Harry stared back, and noted with approval that the woman seemed much healthier than she'd last seen her. Her form was a little more fleshed out, and her hair and attire spoke of a woman taking good care of herself.

"It's…your apartment," the woman said after a moment. Her voice, while soft, was nowhere near the disused, halting sound it had been.

"It's yours now," Harry told her. "If you aren't comfortable with it, I'll leave at once and find somewhere else, I promise. I just thought I'd see if you wouldn't mind company for a week."

Mrs. Flint looked around the room, as though there would be something to tell her what to do, and Harry waited patiently while she made up her mind. "I don't mind," she said after a long pause. "I'll…" she glanced back toward the bedroom, but Harry cut in.

"I'll sleep on the couch, if that's all right. I won't be in your hair at all, ma'am," she said.

The older woman nodded slowly, then looked questioningly toward the cauldron she'd brought.

"It's nothing dangerous," Harry said, moving to set it up by the window. "If we open the shutters a bit, it probably won't smell up the house much." When it was settled, she turned back to Mrs. Flint. "Thank you so much for letting me stay. I'll get my own food, so you don't have to worry about cooking for me or anything."

"I like to cook," she said suddenly. "I cook for the ladies at the clinic, sometimes. They like my food a lot."

"That's really kind of you," Harry said, "Do you like working there, then?"

"Very much," Mrs. Flint said, nodding earnestly. "It was your doing, wasn't it? Healer Hurst told me you arranged it all. Thank you. I've never—they're so good to me, there."

"I'm glad," Harry said, smiling widely. "Mrs. Hurst is a lovely woman." After a moment she added, sheepishly, "Could you, er, maybe not tell her I'm here, though? I'm supposed to be in school."

"In America," Mrs. Flint said, nodding slowly, "I remember. Why are you… sorry, sorry, never mind. It doesn't matter."

"It's okay," Harry said. She didn't want the woman to think she begrudged her questions. "My friend is covering for me, so they won't miss me at school. I just had a couple of errands to run here. And I had this potion to finish." She gestured to the cauldron, hoping that vague explanation would do.

"Healer Hurst says you brew for Mr. Krait," Mrs. Flint said, almost tentatively. "Is it for him?"

"It's for my other distributor, actually," she said, in case Mrs. Flint ever thought to ask Krait about it. She was surprised the woman had met or heard of Krait already, as his storeroom was fairly far from the inner alleys, but she supposed it was a relatively close-knit community, and those prominently positioned in the Rogue were fairly well-known. "I have to keep an eye on it all week, so I can't really attend class again until it's finished. I should be out of your hair by Tuesday morning, though."

"Stay as long as you need," the woman murmured politely. With a glance at the clock near the fireplace, she said, "I ought to get going."

"Of course," Harry said, retrieving a book from her satchel and attempting to look unassuming. "I'll stay here and study. Can't be too far behind when I show back up at school."

Mrs. Flint's smile was relatively weak, but it still brought an answering smile to Harry's face. Once the older woman left, she relaxed onto the couch and settled in to while yet another day away waiting. She had never missed Transfigurations lectures so much as she had the last few weeks. She loved to read, but apparently she needed to rethink the assumption that she could spend the rest of her life alone with her studies. It was supremely boring, after the first couple of weeks.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

By the time Monday evening rolled around, she and Mrs. Flint were, if not friends, at least very comfortable around one another. The Polyjuice Potion had finished maturing without mishap, and the only awkward moment had been when Mrs. Flint flooed home to see Harry in the middle of drawing runes on the living room floor. When Harry explained that the ritual was harmless (without explaining exactly what she was blending two random hair samples for), Mrs. Flint had seemed inclined to leave her to it, though Harry did see the older woman peeking curiously out from the kitchen several times after it had begun.

Mrs. Flint had even fed her dinner afterwards, when her core, or at least what part of it she had access to, was nearly completely depleted. After a quick nap to restore her energy to basic human levels of functioning, Harry packed her supplies away for the final time, bottling the dose of Modified Polyjuice she would take and carefully disposing of the rest. It would be useless if not taken in the first week, so saving it for later was impossible.

She bid Mrs. Flint a fond farewell and Flooed to the Leaky Cauldron before Flooing on to Hogsmeade, just in case. The village was quiet, and Harry decided she'd have to turn back to a busier time of day if she wanted to sneak into Honeydukes' cellar without being noticed.

She chose Friday evening, so that she would have plenty of time to prepare for re-entering the time stream, and turned to approximately six o'clock, when plenty of people would be running pre-weekend errands after work.

By the time she made her way back into Hogwarts under her invisibility cloak, dinner was over, and she was pretty sure the two other versions of herself were in the Library and in the Room of Requirement, respectively. As she reentered her lab, she had the strangest feeling of surrealism. She felt like she'd been gone a year, but technically she hadn't even gone anywhere yet.

She went to put all her brewing utensils in the places she remembered them being before she left, then laughed when she realized they already were in the places they'd been, and stowed her duplicate materials in an out of the way cupboard to be collected when their originals disappeared into the time stream with her previous self the next day. She sat wearily on her familiar stool, thinking over what she had just accomplished. Archie, if she ever told him, would have a hard time believing it. She took out the little vial of Modified Polyjuice and had to laugh at how much work had gone into making such a tiny thing. She uncorked it and brought it to her lips, then hesitated.

She stood, grasped her wand in her other hand, and conjured a mirror before she could second-guess herself. She stared at her reflection a long time, taking in her green, green eyes and vulnerable mouth and stubborn chin. It didn't look like her at all, really. She looked down at the vial in her hand and tossed it back impatiently, grimacing at the awful taste that swam down her throat and pooled like grease in her belly. Her appearance began to waver, then stretch and bubble in a sickening dance. She closed her eyes against the feeling, then opened them when her body had settled into a shape.

The person in the mirror blinked back at her, familiar, yet not, after a month in a different skin. "This is who you are," she reminded herself, watching the lips move along with the words. "I am Rigel Black. I am Rigel Black. I am Rigel Black."

By the fourth or fifth time she repeated the phrase, it started to sound true, and after pacing the length of her lab for another ten minutes, she felt as though she'd never left. It was just another night brewing in her lab. The next morning she would return all the books she had taken to her dorm room, though it would be a close race to return the books after her first self had left for the game but before her other self came to collect them… She fished in her bag for a Headache Relief Potion and reminded herself firmly that it would all be over soon.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Snape found her kneeling in the stall of a stadium bathroom the next morning, face green from the combination of mustard and salt water that she'd choked down just a minute earlier. As he burst in the door, she heaved spectacularly into the toilet once again, unable to even smirk at her excellent timing as the biscuits she'd begged from the kitchen just a few hours earlier came roiling back up.

"Mr. Black." Her Head of House knelt beside her and hesitated only a moment before pulling her head back away from the bowl and peering intently into her clammy, pale features. She knew he was looking for any sign that she had been taking Polyjuice, but all she could do to convince him was play dumb.

"I think," she panted harshly, "I may have…messed up…my sleep cycle potion." After fighting a gag rather convincingly, she muttered, "I knew those skullcap flowers looked off. Should've—" She heaved again. "Just ordered more."

"Do you require assistance in reaching the Hospital Wing?" Snape asked, standing back up and looking down at her with veiled suspicion.

"I'll just take a Stomach Calming Potion," Rigel said, shaking her head tiredly. "As soon as I can get it down." She made a show of standing, bracing her hands on her knees for a long moment and then crossing to the sink to wash her face and mouth. She dry heaved a couple of times into the sink, then fumbled in her book bag for the potion that would settle her gut. After a long swig and a sharp shudder, she brushed her hands through her hair calmly and nodded to Snape gratefully. "Thank you for your concern, Professor. We should return to the game now."

Snape's eyes were still dissecting her, but he nevertheless led the way. Waiting outside for them was Pansy, who looked equally relieved that Rigel was alive and that she didn't have to enter a male restroom just to be sure.

"What on earth happened, Rigel?" she asked, folding him into a gentle hug. "You looked like you'd been stabbed—your face positively contorted with pain and I was half afraid you'd pass out and fall to your death down those stairs, you were moving so fast, and—"

"I'm fine," Rigel said, smiling reassuringly at her rambling friend. "Just got sick to my stomach all of a sudden; I think I ate some bad fish this morning."

"You had porridge this morning," Pansy said, clearly dubious.

"Must've had fish in it," Rigel said, snorting slightly.

Pansy gave her an exasperated look, but after examining her closely and seeing that she was, at least, in one apologetic piece, she sighed. "Well try not to panic half the stands next time you get a stomach ache, Rigel."

"I didn't mean to be so dramatic," Rigel said, ruffling her hair sheepishly. "You have to admit it would have been worse if I puked on Mr. Malfoy's shoes, though."

Pansy gave a disgusted noise, and flounced toward the stairs. "I'll thank you not to ever suggest such a thing again in my presence. Honestly. Boys."

"Girls," Rigel sighed, looking over at Snape ruefully. If she was expecting a commiseration of some kind, she was to be disappointed. Snape swept past her with a sneer, no doubt supremely annoyed at having gotten worked up for no reason.

As she followed them back up to the staff box, she had to take a moment to bask in the sheer relief and pride she felt at having somehow pulled off such a farce. She vowed then and there that she was going to back off the time-turner as much as possible, only using it when she truly needed to. She had come to the conclusion over the past week—month—whichever—that it might be more trouble than it was worth.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Unfortunately for her integrity, her solemn decision to respect the sanctity of the laws of time did not last longer than the first week in February, when she realized that there was a very important thing that she should be doing with her time turner, but wasn't.

It had taken that long for her to come to the conclusion that either the Auror department was very inefficient in investigating anonymous tips or the metallurgists at the Guild hadn't remembered Pettigrew's visit after all. No one from the DMLE even came to question the Creatures professor, and eventually she realized more proof was needed.

It was a simple thing to watch the Map and get a feel for his schedule. Pettigrew spent most of his time in his room when he wasn't teaching, but he also took frequent late-night trips to the Library, it turned out, and while she hadn't yet seen him do anything besides paging furiously through book after book, it comforted her to know that if he did do something majorly suspicious, she would be the first to know.

That was why, when she caught sight of his dot sliding out of the castle one evening just before dinner, she felt no compunction stealing away from her friends for a moment to turn back an hour, giving herself plenty of time to sneak outside under her cloak and wait.

He hurried across the lawn with a heavy cloak swamping his short frame, muttering to himself all the way. She tried to creep closer, to hear what he was saying, but when she rustled a leaf too near he swung around with a wild, hunted look on his face, brandishing his wand unsurely.

"Who's there?" he called, his breath coming sharply as his eyes darted here and there. He looked like a man under siege. Or perhaps one going mad. Seeing nothing, he backed away a few halting steps before taking off at a faster pace toward the Forbidden Forest.

She hung back, not wanting to give herself away, but regretted that decision when she lost sight of him around a large tree. She hurried forward as quietly as she could, but couldn't see him anywhere when she rounded the tree herself. She frowned and listened, but couldn't hear anything but the smallest of rustling in any direction. Where had he gone? She took out the Map to see which direction his dot had taken, but only just caught sight of it falling off the edge of the Map before it disappeared entirely.

Annoyed at herself, but mostly at him for traipsing suspiciously through the forest like he was hoping to be caught out at being up to something, Rigel retraced her steps and hurried back toward the castle. There was no telling how long he would be in there, and she could watch for his dot coming back toward the grounds just as easily from the warmth of Hogwarts as she could from the freezing forest.

She would figure out what he was doing with the Jewel, no matter how long it took. Time was in her favor, after all.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

It took a couple of weeks to get back into the rhythm of classes after her unconventional hiatus, but all the extra studying she'd done while mindlessly waiting for the Polyjuice to finish had an unexpected consequence.

"How did you finish so quickly?" Pansy asked lowly, looking exasperated as Rigel looked up from the book on exotic poisons she'd been perusing as the rest of the class finished their Arithmancy quizzes. "It took me ages to figure out which formula to use when calculating exponential loss of magic in semi-permanent artifacts of a non-sentient nature."

"It's a combination of two formulas. They were explained in the appendix of our Arithmancy text," Rigel told her. She knew, because she'd read the whole thing twice while trying not to listen to what she thought had been some kind of vampire revel going on in the courtyard beneath her balcony one night.

"Two?" Pansy sighed, "Well, I've botched that one, then."

"It was extra credit," Rigel said, smiling a bit at Pansy's perfectionism. "I think your marks will recover from this blow."

"Not my dignity, though," Pansy said, "I always fancied myself good at numbers, you know. My maths tutor said he'd never seen a child so fast at mental computations. These word problems are so convoluted, though. It's not at all what I expected when Father told me it was like Divination done with numbers."

Rigel had to agree with that assessment. While in the higher levels, perhaps, Arithmancy could be used to actually divine the outcome of complex events, at the level they were on it was simply a tool for calculating magic empirically in various situations. Some of it was the basis if Alchemy, figuring out how much of A was needed to get effect B, except A was always magic and never other materials. Arithmancy could also be used to calculate how many runes were needed in a ritual, how long the wards on your house would last after you cast them, and even, she'd learned, to solve for the amount of raw magic one needed to keep a potion from destabilizing.

It had surprised her to learn that when Potions Masters were designing new potions from scratch, they almost always had to rely on Arithmancy to tell them mathematically how much magic would be required at various stages to make it viable. It was also a sure way to double check a recipe prior to brewing it to make sure it wouldn't explode midway through. She wished she'd known that, as she would have looked into learning Arithmancy much earlier, even if she did personally find it much easier to feel how the potion was doing through an imbuing link. As it was, she was making good headway in the subject, but would probably never be as efficient at the actual calculations as someone like Pansy, who had a true appreciation for numbers.

Pansy might do very well as a real Arithmancer, in fact, someone who could assign numbers to real-life circumstances with a degree of accuracy. It took years of practice and a good head for relativities, according to their professor, but it was an extremely sought after skill, if only because so many wizards had difficulty with logic to begin with.

Professor Vector finished collecting the last of the quizzes and waved her wand to fill the chalkboard with notes. "Today we'll be starting on Personal Arithmancy." There were scattered murmurs of interest. "As the name implies, this is the study of self-arithmancy, which means you'll need to first collect a series of data points about yourself. Can anyone give me an example of the sort of information you need before you can begin assigning numbers to your own magic?"

"How much magic you have to work with," someone said reasonably, "The size of your core, I mean."

"Yes, your reserves must be taken into account for high-level projects and rituals, but what else?" Vector asked.

"Your magical affinity?" Another student guessed. "Some runes have to be aligned with a Light/Dark balance, so a person's magic might interact with them if it had a strong inclination, right?"

"That's correct," Vector nodded, "It's important to know where you lie on the affinity scale. Anyone else?"

"The rate at which you can cast," Pansy said, a thoughtful look on her face. "Speed of magic is important in determining short-term outcomes."

"Yes, excellent," Vector said. "What about non-magic-related data?"

"Age," someone suggested, unsure.

"Generally, yes, although you only need to know the broad category you fall into; in the case of you all, it is the 13-25 range," Vector said. "Anything else?"

"Sex," one of the boys laughed. "Girls' magic is different from boys' magic."

"Yes and no," Vector said, raising an eyebrow. "Certain spells or rituals can react to a person's biology, so it is important to keep it in mind. A pregnant witch or wizard's magic is also very different from one of their sex not carrying a child. Relative things like health and infirmary can have effects, too. What else?"

There was silence as people tried to think what else could affect magic.

Rigel frowned, thinking there was an obvious one no one had mentioned. Vector caught sight of her perplexed expression and nodded her direction. "Yes, Mr. Black? Did you think of one?"

"Blood status," she said, attempting to speak without inflection. Several people laughed, but were stifled with a swift look from their professor.

"Interesting," Vector said, her eyes boring into Rigel's face. "Some people would say there is no difference in the magic of purebloods or halfbloods or muggleborns, other than an accident of birth. Many of your classmates were thinking something similar, but did not have to courage to say so, as the rhetoric behind one's blood status is increasingly political in our time. Ten points to Slytherin for speaking your mind, Mr. Black, but I wonder if you can tell me what you think the difference is. Blood? Power?"

"No," Rigel said clearly. "Those things are immaterial." She ignored the low gasps and murmurs that broke out around her, telling herself firmly that if Archie were sitting here in the same chair as she was he would say the same thing, and not be afraid. "There are plenty of powerful muggleborns and pureblooded squibs." The murmuring was louder now, and some of it was disgruntled, so she spoke louder. "There's no clear evidence one way or another that your ancestry makes you a better or worse wizard."

"But you just said it should be taken into account," Vector pressed, smiling slightly.

"The same way Light and Dark affinities should be taken into account," Rigel said, nodding. "There is a difference, but it isn't a matter of power or worth. It's just different. Purebloods have had magic in their genetic make up for so many centuries that it's been refined, made to follow genetic patterns that run through bloodlines, and sometimes manifest into Gifts or Magical Abilities that are common to a particular Family. Muggleborns never have refined abilities, because their magic is closer to the natural source of magic—it's new, you could say. It's raw in a way that magic that's been running through generations of magical families just isn't. It's mercurial and more unpredictable, but also more Neutral and more versatile. Since the magic behaves slightly differently in its raw form, there's no way it couldn't make a difference in upper-level casting and rituals, right?"

Vector clapped slowly, a smile wider than they'd ever seen her wear on her face. "You are the first third year in many years to be so versed in the theory of Wizarding Genealogy, Mr. Black. Too often I see students whose personal beliefs cloud their understanding of the facts." She held up a hand against any protest. "I do not intend to discuss politics in this class. What you do with facts has no bearing on my lessons. I will, however, give you the facts and allow you to interpret them as you will. Mr. Black is correct. There is a quantitative difference in magic between purebloods and muggleborns, though halfbloods are much more difficult to accurately numerate." She looked briefly annoyed at that. "Qualitative, we shall not speak of, nor am I interested in reading your family's stance on the issue of blood status in your next essay." She pinned them with a very stern expression. "Facts. Only."

After a long silence in which Vector made sure every student understood how strict her policy on the subject of opinion-driven research was, she moved back to the front of the room and gestured to the blackboard. "Now, we will begin collecting your data. Due to the kind of problems you'll be expected to solve on this year's end of term exam, we will be focusing on your rate of casting, rate of recovery, and relative depth of reserves…"

The class went on, and Rigel settled down to take notes, ignoring the many, varied looks that were sent her way throughout the period. Perhaps, she reflected after catching even Pansy looking at her oddly from the corner of her eye, she ought not to have expressed her ideas on magical genetics quite so bluntly. Or forcefully.

As they copied down their homework assignment—given the relative rate of casting and recovery of you and your evil wizard opponent, predict your probability of successfully escaping—and packed up their things, Anthony Goldstein, a Ravenclaw boy, walked over to their desk.

"I've never heard of that theory you were talking about," he said abruptly. Rigel was going to shrug and apologize if her words had offended him, but he added, "Can you tell me what book you found it in? I'd like to read about it for myself."

She blinked, but rattled off the books that contained the best information on the subject automatically. Goldstein scribbled the titles and authors down on a spare bit of parchment and smiled at her tightly. "Thanks. See you around, Black."

"I heard muggleborns were descendent from squibs, and that's where their magic comes from," Pansy said quietly as they walked back toward the common room. "I…Father says that muggles are there as a repairing mechanism for magic that's gotten too convoluted in Wizarding bloodlines. He says it gets rejected in the form of squibs and then after a while it repairs itself and becomes muggleborns, thus recycling magic back into the system."

Rigel thought that sounded like the sort of thing that gave purebloods a reason to call muggles and muggleborns trash or defective or lesser, but instead of saying so, she shrugged. "It's not clear yet how magic works or doesn't work in the instances of muggleborns and squibs. There are a lot of theories. All I know it that they've measured the differences in magic between muggleborns and purebloods empirically and shown that while there aren't significant, consistent differences in average power levels, muggleborn magic is closer to the unbound, formless magic found in nature and magical creatures than the magic of wizards who've had tons of wizard ancestors is."

"I'd like to read those books too, I think," Pansy said, face blank.

"They're in my trunk," she offered stoically. "You can have them whenever you want."

It wasn't really her intention to push her friends into considering new ideas. She'd always been content to let them think what they want, seeing as it wasn't their fault what they were brought up to believe, and it certainly wasn't her place to rock the system—she'd lost that privilege when she decided to use it to her advantage. And yet, somehow, she was having an increasingly difficult time keeping her opinions to herself. Maybe because she'd seen the effect her friends' mindsets had on other people as Harriett. Maybe because they were growing up, and it was natural to begin asserting personal beliefs more strongly. Whatever the reason, she would have to step lightly. The last thing she wanted to do was alienate her friends. She cared about the truth, but she cared about her friendships more. At least…she thought she did.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

The first weekend of February, she received a note with her breakfast from Remus, asking if she would be amenable to tea in his office that afternoon to catch up. She sent her uncle a cheerful thumbs-up from across the Great Hall, which made him chuckle visibly into his goblet at the Head Table.

"What was that about?" Draco asked from the seat next to her.

"Remus wants to have tea with me this afternoon," she said honestly.

"That's a first, isn't it?" Millicent said, eyeing her curiously from across the table. "I thought you said at the beginning of the year that you and Professor Lupin were close."

"He's been maintaining a professional distance," Rigel explained. "He knows he'll see me all summer at home. It's important for his integrity that it doesn't look like he favors me."

"Seems a bit concerned with appearances," Draco said, eyebrow rising, "After all, everyone knows you're a talented student. No one would think you hadn't earned your Defense marks."

"He has to be concerned with appearances," Rigel said, feeling a little defensive on his behalf. "People are always watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake or show any sign of unsuitability."

"You know, sometimes I forget he's a werewolf," Theo said conversationally, "I mean, he's a bit boring actually—not his classes, of course, but just as a person. I'm honestly more scared of Professor Trelawney."

"She is rather terrifying," Pansy said, smiling in amusement. "Do you know she's predicted three deaths this week alone?"

"Not yours, I hope," Draco teased.

"She wouldn't dare," Pansy sniffed. "Though she did tell me I was going to fall ill around the end of term."

"Not much of a prediction," Millicent snorted, "Everyone falls ill at the end of term—finals put stress on the immune system."

"Pomfrey is already having Snape brew Calming Draughts for the OWL and NEWT students," Rigel said conspiratorially. "It's driving him spare."

"Is that why he took twenty points from that Hufflepuff student for, and I quote, 'breathing so loudly you give credence to an alternate explanation of your House's dubious nomenclature'?" Blaise asked.

They burst into undignified laughter at the way Blaise perfectly captured their Head of House's ungodly derision.

"Someone should be writing these down," Millicent said, wiping her eyes, "We can give it to him as a book when we graduate."

"I'm not sure that will make him remember us fondly," Theo grinned.

"Not to mention if he started using the same material it wouldn't be as effective," Pansy pointed out. "Half the fear he induces is of the mindboggling, how-on-earth-did-he-come-up-with-that-so-quickly variety."

"He was probably teased a lot as a child," Blaise said suddenly, causing them all to fall into an uncomfortable silence. The dark-skinned boy cleared his throat. "I mean, generally speaking that would have necessitated quick comebacks."

Thinking about Snape as a kid brought a grimace to Rigel's face. He'd attended Hogwarts in a time when halfbloods were still admitted, but everyone could see the direction the policy was beginning to take. How must it have felt, to be one of the last halfbloods around Hogwarts? Did he feel lucky, to have barely squeaked ahead of the political wave? Or resentful, that his was a dying circumstance and everyone knew it. It was probably why he worked so hard as both an educator and a researcher, she mused. To prove his place in society wasn't unwarranted.

The mood mostly ruined, they finished their breakfast in a subdued manner, and split up shortly after to pursue their own activities. Rigel went to her lab, thinking she could brew up a few batches of Calming Draughts before her meeting with Remus and give Professor Snape a break from the monotony. She honestly didn't know how he found time to be a professor and the Hogwarts potions supplier while conducting his own research as well. It wasn't as though he had a time-turner.

Wondering vaguely why they didn't give all researchers time-turners, to speed up production of groundbreaking discoveries and cures if nothing else, she got out the supplies she needed automatically, lost in a world of thought.

By the time she'd finished her last batch, she was slightly overdue for her tea with Remus, but that was fixed with a quick half-turn back of the hourglass, which hardly even counted, as the overlap was really negligible…she told herself.

Before leaving the lab, she pulled out what she was calling 'eau de Archie' in her head and sprayed it liberally under her arms and around her collar. That done, it was an easy thing to make her way to Remus' office and muss her hair up just before entering, throwing the door open with a dramatic flourish and close it swiftly behind her for good measure.

"Hey," she panted lightly, "Remus. How…are you?"

"I'm well, Ar—Rigel," Remus said, smiling a bit, "May I ask what your haste is about? You aren't late yet, you know."

"Archie's fine when it's just us, Uncle Remus," Rigel said easily. "And I may have, ah, turned the hangings in our dorm room Hufflepuff yellow. My roommates are on the warpath." That should explain the overwhelmingly sweaty scent she was sporting, at least.

"Your father would tell you to use the Map to avoid them, instead of running every which way," Remus said, chucking. "As I recall that's how Sirius avoided the people he broke up with until their ire cooled down."

"And what would you say, Moony?" she grinned lopsidedly, affecting Archie's boyish charm.

"Well, as your educator I would have to advise against such childish diversions," Remus said gravely. A smile snuck into his voice as he added, "But as your Uncle I'd tell you to try pranking people you don't share a dorm with. Unless you enjoy being hexed in your sleep."

"So you don't think I should dip Draco's essay in peanut butter tomorrow?" she asked, voice innocent.

"That depends," he pretended to think, "Is it his Defense essay?"

They laughed, and Rigel began bouncing her foot a little as the silence settled. The key to playing Archie successfully around people who knew him was to never be still. Archie was movement, restless impatience and energy and excitement over anything remotely not-boring. To be still would remind Remus of Harry.

"How are your other classes going?" Remus asked, sipping on his tea with a relaxed expression. "You're in Magical Theory, aren't you? I took that myself at your age. How are you finding it?"

"Fascinating," she said, smiling happily, "I'm taking it with Hannah Abbott, who want to be an experimental charms researcher in a private company like what Aunt Lily does, and Anthony Goldstein, who doesn't actually like the class I don't think, only he wants to be a cursebreaker, and Magical Theory is a prerequisite for the NEWT cursebreaking class. Did you know Ron Weasley has an older brother who's a cursebreaker? He works for Gringotts."

That was another thing about Archie—he noticed people, more than objects or ideas, and could ramble at length about anyone he'd had the slightest contact with. It was what made him so good at relating to complete strangers socially, as evidenced by his spectacular performance at the gala.

"I've heard that's a very exciting career," Remus agreed. After a moment, he paused, "Archie, you are good friends with the Weasley children, aren't you? Sirius mentioned you'd gone to their house a couple of times over break."

"Yes," she nodded easily, "They're really nice, except Ginny who pretends she's not nice because it makes her seem tough, and I think her brothers picked on her a lot when she was young. Ron is in the Dueling Club with me, and Percy helps me with my Transfiguration homework sometimes, and the twins…well, lets just say I sleep with one eye open at night."

Remus chuckled obligingly, but asked, "How do your other friends feel about your friendship with the Weasleys?"

"Um, they get sort of annoyed, actually," Rigel said, not seeing the harm in being honest. "Draco especially doesn't approve of them, though he's been a little better now that Ron is listening to him in Dueling practice."

"That's good," Remus said, looking relieved. "I wouldn't want you caught in the middle of anything. You're a good young man, Archie. You should build friendships wherever you see fit."

"Remus," she said suddenly, frowning a bit, "Why do people like Draco dislike the Weasleys so much? It almost seems like they look down on them as much as they look down on muggleborns, which doesn't make sense. I mean, they're both purebloods, no matter what their stance on politics." Remus looked troubled, and Rigel hurried to add. "It's not that I don't understand the political issues at stake. It just seems to me that you could disagree with someone without actually hating them, you know?"

Remus took a long drink of tea, seeming lost in thought, then said, somewhat delicately, "There are many families across the Light/Dark political divide who do respectfully disagree. The Weasleys, however, are considered—by the most extreme supporters of blood purity mind you, not the general populace—to be blood traitors."

"That just means they support muggleborn and halfblood rights equal to pureblood rights, doesn't it?" Rigel said, a bit confused. She hated not understanding a problem completely. "Everyone who supports Dumbledore's faction is anti-blood-supremacy."

"But they aren't all looked upon as the Weasleys are, are they?" Remus said knowingly, watching the wheels turn in her head.

"What…what's the difference I'm missing?" she asked, troubled that she hadn't picked up on that nuance before.

"What do you know about the term 'blood traitor,' exactly?" Remus asked, slipping into professor mode.

"Well, it's an insult," she said slowly, "A sort of synonym for 'muggle-lover,' I guess."

"Precisely," Remus said, "In fact, the root of the term is a reference to the literal meaning of the insult 'muggle-lover.' Both terms are used loosely as insults for people who support or even sympathize with muggles and muggleborns, but originally it was very explicit. A muggle-lover—a blood traitor in its truest sense—refers to a witch or wizard who has relations with muggles or muggleborn witches and wizards."

Rigel wrinkled her nose. "That doesn't make sense, though. The Weasleys are pureblood."

"There are some," Remus said carefully, "Who believe it is a mere technicality." He looked incredibly awkward, but soldiered on in his explanation. "Some purebloods believe that the Weasley family…bred with muggles or muggleborns on purpose, in an effort to revitalize their bloodline. The accusation, indelicate though it may be, is that blood traitors like the Weasleys are thought to make an effort to circumvent the fertility issues that true pureblooded families contend with by periodically—no more than once every few generations, mind you—marrying and producing children with those of less than pure blood. They are then accused of intermarrying aggressively with other purebloods once more until their own line is considered technically pure—that is, the current head of family has four magic-wielding grandparents. Their pureblooded pedigree is thus considered somewhat of a sham, if you will—a veneer that protects the family socially while not bearing up under idealistic scrutiny. Thus the term 'blood traitor' refers to someone who betrays his own blood while not relinquishing the claim to that blood status completely."

Rigel was trying not to look shocked, but she had honestly never heard anything of the sort. "If people think—if they believe that families like the Weasleys can actually achieve increased odds of fertility simply by infusing a little genetic variation into the bloodline, then—then why don't they try it? So many purebloods lose children to unknown causes. If the Weasleys have found a way around that, I don't see why everyone isn't using it."

Remus grimaced. "Archie, you were raised in a moderate, open minded household. I'm not sure you can ever understand how deeply preconceived notions about the world can run. Imagine if someone told you tomorrow that your thoughts on, oh, academic integrity were all wrong, and that if you wanted to get good marks on your final exams the only way to do so would be to cheat. You would think them ridiculous, and insist that you could get good marks by studying hard and doing what you've always done, and you'd think that anyone who cheated to pass the test was an immoral fool who didn't deserve a good mark—isn't that right?"

"Well, yes," she said slowly. "I suppose so."

"To people who believe very strongly in the superiority of blood status, telling them that mingling with muggles might save them is not only blasphemy—it's incompatible with every truly-held faculty within them." Remus sighed. "What seems obvious to us is little more than ridiculous posturing by unworthy specimens of magic to them. They would sooner change almost anything else they think or endorse than change their stance on blood purity."

"But the children," Rigel murmured, unable to really understand. "If someone told me I had to cheat on a test to keep Addy alive, I'd do it without question. I wouldn't care about my integrity at that point."

Remus reached across the small tea table to pat her arm gently. "It isn't so simple, I'm afraid," he said softly. "No one walks up to pureblooded mothers and says 'here are your choices: mate with a muggle or watch your child die.' Of course it isn't so simple. Instead they have people on every side telling them not to worry, or that it's worth the chance that everything turns out all right. And the Healers don't fully understand it. And the media doesn't make any sense at all. And everyone they know and love and trust is telling them this is the only way, the way it's always been, the way it has to be… do you see how difficult it would be to think anything else?"

"I suppose," Rigel said slowly, "That the real miracle is that families like the Weasleys ever thought to try something new in the first place."

"That's a good way to look at it," Remus said, smiling wanly. "I'm afraid any change that upsets what people view as the natural order of things is going to come slowly, and with much confusion."

"Yeah," she said shakily, wondering how she ever thought a few well-chosen words in her friends' ears would change anything.

"You don't need to worry about all that," Remus said abruptly, "Come, I didn't bring you here to despair about the world. Let's talk about something else."

"All right," she said, trying to get back into Archie's character somehow. "How is the New Wolfsbane working? Are you doing well?"

"Very well," Remus smiled, "Thanks to you and Professor Snape, I hardly feel the call of the moon most months. It does make me a little disoriented after I wake, but that is a small price to pay. I heal faster from the transformations, and my appetite in greatly increased in the days leading up to the full moon. And you can tell all that to Harry, who I know put you up to that question."

His smile was fond, and Rigel couldn't help but smile back sheepishly. "She worries about you, is all."

"I am very lucky to know so many generous, caring young—"

He broke off as the door to his office was flung open suddenly.

"Remus, my old friend, I have to tell you something—" Peter Pettigrew stopped, looked at Rigel and mouthed a soundless 'oh.' He looked back and forth between them, something in his face seeming shaken and torn.

"What is it, Peter?" Remus said, beginning to rise.

Pettigrew shook his head quickly. "I don't know. Never mind." He bolted out of the office as though he had hounds on his heels.

"What on Earth?" Remus slowly sank back down into his chair, perplexed.

"Maybe he found something interesting in the Library," Rigel said suddenly, seeing her chance.

"The Library?" Remus frowned in confusion. "Why would you think that?"

"I see him in there a lot," she said, trying to hint innocently. "He's always in there, it seems, paging through old books. I wonder if he's studying for something, or just looking for information on something in particular."

Remus cleared his throat and averted his eyes. "How odd. He never was the studious type."

She hoped dearly that he was pretending ignorance for her sake and that he did, in fact, suspect something about his old friend. All she could do, she realized, was plant seeds. She would have to trust the adults to take matters into their own hands, once presented with enough information.

Rigel thought ruefully that when she was an adult, she would be much more proactive about things than the generation before her seemed to be.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Before she knew it, Valentine's Day had come to pass. In Rigel's defense, it was struggle enough to remember which day of the week she was present in and how many other times she'd done it already, so keeping track of the actual calendar days had sort of fallen by the wayside. She supposed it was her own fault, then, that she was taken almost completely by surprise.

She had attributed her friends' unnaturally good spirits to the upcoming weekend until they walked into the Great Hall and saw a huge crowd over by the message boards, all gabbing excitedly about something or other.

"It's a Hogsmeade weekend coming up, right?" she guessed, trying to seem engaged in the present.

Draco snorted. "It's the fourteenth, Rigel."

"The…" She grimaced. "Oh." Of course it was.

"Perhaps there's an activity of some sort planned," Pansy said, eyeing the mass of milling students with interest.

"Let's go see," Draco said, glancing at Pansy with fond patience. "It would be a shame to have to get the story secondhand."

Thus decided, they crossed the Great Hall to see what the fuss was about. When the first young girl turned and spotted Rigel, immediately dissolving into a fit of giggles, she thought maybe she'd surprised the girl by standing too close behind her. After the third person to turn around, catch sight of her face, and nudge the person next to them, however, she was starting to feel dread pooling in her stomach.

Draco, perhaps feeling her sudden change in emotional state or else noticing the odd behavior of the students around them as well, said, "What?" very loudly.

Laughter spread through the mob and several students obligingly parted before their trio to let them have a look at the message board. There was a lurid pink flyer taking up most of the five-by-five foot space, and smack in the middle of it was a Wizarding photo of her. The Rigel in the photo wasn't looking anywhere near the camera, wherever it had been, but was rather gazing off at something out of frame, frowning as though gently intrigued. It was, frankly, ridiculous.

"Rigel Black's Labor of Love," Draco read, grimacing even as the words left his mouth. "Got a letter you're scared to loose? Is your amour better off anonymous? Rigel Black has got your back! One day only, put your passion to parchment and let Romantic Rigel do the rest." He turned to Rigel with a pained expression. "What is this, Rigel?"

"I don't know," she said, her voice rising a bit as she took in the rest of the poster. "It obviously wasn't me!"

"Hmm, it says 'sign your smoldering secret Valentines with the name Rigel Black, and I'll deliver them free of charge,'" Pansy noted, amusement in every syllable. "'On my honor, every tender triviality, adoring affection, and devious detail will be delivered—with your identity incognito.' It even has a copy of your schedule today so people can give you their love notes at any time—how sweet is that?"

"How quickly can I eviscerate the Weasley twins?" Rigel muttered darkly. They had taken the Rigel-signed note thing too far this time.

She turned and made for the Gryffindor table, ready to nip this prank in the bud with extreme prejudice. Before she'd gone two steps, however, a tentative hand grasped her sleeve and waylaid her.

"Are you…Rigel Black?"

Rigel looked down into the beet-red face of a Gryffindor first year. "I am," she said, fighting a grimace. "Who are you?"

Instead of responding, the eleven-year-old girl pressed a small paper heart into her hand with an embarrassed grin. "The name is on the inside. Thanks, Black."

Before Rigel could protest that she was certainly not a Valentine's Day owl, the first-year was gone, and Rigel was staring down at a piece of red-colored parchment with a bewildered expression. "How is this my life?"

By the time she made it to the Weasley twins, she had four cards in her hand and she was fairly certain another stuffed in her pocket when she wasn't looking. They took one look at her irked expression and burst out laughing. "Why the long face, Rigel? Didn't you get any valentines?" Fred asked, sending George and several of the other Gryffindors who'd overheard into appreciative chuckles.

"Why?" It was all she had to say. "Why do you do this to me?"

"One day you'll thank us," George insisted. "You're going to be a symbol, Rigel. A symbol of love, truth, beauty, and—"

"Grouchiness," Fred said, poking her cheek, where she could feel a tick developing.

"I will get you for this," she promised. "Both of you. Maybe not even at the same time."

"I don't think anyone's ever threatened to prank us separately, George," Fred said, looking interested.

"Could be fun," George agreed, grinning.

Rigel sighed, and turned back to the Slytherin table, not sure why she even bothered. When she went to take her seat, however, she found a pile of cards stacked on top of her plate. A round of snickers met her disheartened sigh.

"Didn't know you were such a romantic at heart, Rigel," Pucey spoke up from a few seats down the table.

Rigel took a deep breath, picked up the armful of Valentines on her plate and dumped them unceremoniously into Pucey's lap. "For that, you can deliver these, Adrian."

Pucey spluttered. "No way. Do you know what it will do to my reputation if I go handing out little pink hearts?"

"All I know is that you owe me several favors, Adrian," she said, raising an eyebrow challengingly. "I think the least you can do is help me out today, don't you?"

"He's got a point, Adrian," Derrick said, smirking. He pulled out an elaborately embossed red card from his breast pocket. "Deliver this to Lucian for me, won't you? Don't tell him who it's from."

Pucey scowled and snatched the card roughly before tossing it across the table into Bole's lap. The fact that Bole was sitting right next to Derrick didn't appear to amuse Pucey. "Rigel, come on, have a heart…" he trailed off with a resigned groan.

"Oh Rigel has hearts," Theo piped up, arriving at the table with a large grin. "There's a whole stack of them by the common room entrance, in fact, all addressed to him."

"Already?" Pansy hid a smile behind her hand. "My, word certainly spreads quickly."

If Rigel thought her friends were going to have their fun and then let the joke go gracefully, she was quite mistaken. All day, in addition to having to smile politely while students from all grade levels handed her cards, letters, and even, in one case, an elaborate origami flower, she also had to endure her so-called friends' poorly-stifled guffaws and smirks.

Most of the people whose names were on the valentines she found piled on her desks or passed along by her friends were students Rigel didn't even know. She had to rely on good-natured classmates from other Houses to get many of them delivered, but she was almost proud to say that by the end of the day she'd sent every last wretchedly tacky heart on its way.

She made it back to the common room just before curfew, having successfully delivered the last batch to a very helpful Cho Chang at the base of Ravenclaw tower. Adrian Pucey intercepted her on the way to her dorm room, saying, "I hope you know that we are assuredly even after this, Rigel. I have never been the butt of so many jokes."

"That you know of," Rigel said, summoning up a grin. "Thanks, though. I wouldn't have managed them all on my own."

"Yes, well." Pucey cleared his throat. "Here." He produced two modest-looking valentines that had her groaning in protest.

"No more," she pleaded. "I can't look at another one. Can't you deliver them?"

Pucey smirked lopsidedly, "I am."

"What?" She blinked dumbly at the proffered cards.

"These are addressed to you," Pucey said. "They're signed from you, too, but I'm assuming you aren't that much of a masochist."

She took them with an incredulous laugh. "Thanks…I guess."

"Yeah, whatever, Black," Pucey sniffed. "Next time do your own dirty work."

Rolling her eyes, she made a beeline for the third-year hallway. All she wanted to do was sleep. Theo and Blaise were already in their sleeping attire when she walked in, with only Draco still sitting up in his school clothes, penning something on his personalized letterhead.

"Writing thank you notes for all the valentines you got today, Draco?" she asked, chuckling a bit. She'd delivered one herself that had been handed off by Daphne Greengrass of all people. It had actually fountained confetti upon Draco opening it.

"I only received the one, as you very well know, and there's no way I'm writing a thank you note to a second year," Draco scowled.

"You know who it's from?" Rigel lifted an eyebrow. "I thought the ones coming through me were supposed to be anonymous."

"It's that Greengrass chit," Draco rolled his eyes, "The younger one. She was only stalking me all day to see my reaction to getting it. I could feel her depressing brand of fearful yearning from across the castle."

"Astoria, right?" Theo put in from where he was sprawled across his bed. "At least she's nicer than her sister."

"It would be difficult to be more harridan-like than Daphne," Blaise said mildly, not even looking up from the book he was perusing.

"I suppose a thank you note would only embarrass her," Rigel shrugged. "Still, you could at least nod politely the next time you saw her. I think she looks up to you after you calmed her down in the carriage that time."

"And encourage her?" Draco wrinkled his nose. "I think not. I've enough problems without adding lovesick shadow to the list. If I ignore her, maybe she'll get the hint and go away."

Rigel sighed, but knew that it wasn't really any of her business. It might even work, at that. She sat down on her own bed and kicked off her shoes before opening her own valentines curiously. Maybe the twins had sent her one each. It seemed like the sort of cherry-on-top thing they'd do.

After close examination, however, they didn't seem to be gag valentines at all; rather, each contained a message that appeared to have been intended genuinely. The first, a white card with red ribbon tying it closed, read simply: Be Mine? The second, smaller in size but filled with red ink, said: I've always admired your honest compassion, and thought I may as well say it now. You make me think better of Slytherins, and better of young men in general. Thanks for being inspiring, in your own quiet way. Happy Valentine's Day. It was signed Your secret admirer/ Rigel Black.

Her lips quirked at the thought that she had a secret admirer. How unlikely.

"What're those?" Draco asked suddenly, coming off his bed to have a look. "You've got valentines, Rigel?"

She shrugged in an unconcerned way. "Guess so."

"Oh, stop, I can feel your gooey insides just melting," Draco drawled. "Let's see them, then."

She held them on her other side, out of his reach. "Read your own."

Blaise, the traitor, snatched them from her hand from his side of the bed before she realized he'd left his covers. "I haven't got any to read," he said, smirking. Opening the first, he cleared his throat before saying, in a dulcet tones, "Be. Mine. How incredibly deep."

He went to open the other one, but Theo had made a grab for it before he got the chance. "Ah-ah-ah, I know you've had a valentine from Hannah, because it had adorable animated crups running along the border. I get to read this one." He recited the note grandly, interspersed with laughs from the other two, and when he was finished, he handed the card back to Rigel with great aplomb. "Looks like we have a little mystery, boys. Who could our Rigel's secret admirer be?"

"Admirers," Blaise corrected, handing the card he'd taken back as well.

"I bet I can figure it out within the week," Draco said, smirking.

"You have an unfair advantage." Blaise rolled his eyes.

"Which you still have no proof of," Draco sniffed, not having officially told anyone other than Rigel and Pansy about his gift.

"But which is nevertheless entirely obvious," Blaise said dryly.

"I'd really rather not know," Rigel said hastily. "It's more fun as a mystery…right?"

"No," Draco said flatly.

"Nope," Theo grinned.

"It is always better to know something than not," Blaise said, nodding firmly.

"Well, good luck then," Rigel sighed. "Just leave me out of it."

"Careful with your ice cold attitude, Rigel," Theo laughed. "You're going to break hearts at this rate."

"Like you're one to talk," Draco said, getting back to his letter. "I saw that tear-stained love letter from the Patil girl."

"We parted amiably," Theo said, sounding exasperated. "And we only dated once. It's not like there was some grand romance that fell to ruins. She's being dramatic."

"It's probably the first time she's dated anyone," Blaise said reasonable. "She'll gain perspective once she matures a bit."

"That doesn't help me now," Theo grumbled. "She wants me to take her to Hogsmeade on Saturday, but I've already asked Geoffrey Hooper."

"What are you doing for Hogsmeade, Rigel?" Draco asked, cutting across Theo's whining.

Rigel looked over. "I haven't any plans. I don't really need anything, except maybe some more lacewing flies, I guess. Actually, I should probably get a few other things as well." She frowned, wondering why she hadn't thought to replenish the ingredients she'd gone through with the Polyjuice while she was staying in the alleys.

"I meant for fun, not errands," Draco said. "Who are you going with? Pansy has a date, you know."

"Oh." Rigel wondered why she hadn't known that. Maybe she'd been asked that day, while Rigel was running about delivering cards. "Well, I guess I'll go with whoever doesn't have a date, then."

"I'm not going," Blaise said, grimacing apologetically. "I have to spend the summer at my family's Italian estate, and Millie offered to start catching me up on European politics."

"Just us then," Draco said, his tone a little too casual. "What should we do?"

"Whatever you like," she said, not too concerned. It wasn't as though they hadn't been to Hogsmeade before.

She turned over to get more comfortable and missed the look of calculation on her blonde friend's face. Had she seen it, she might have been a little more on her guard. As it was, Hogsmeade was the furthest thing from her mind. Though it wasn't far off in the liner sense, she had several more days of time-turned classes and studying to get through before looking to the weekend.

-0

[DmDmDm]

-0

Draco was of the firm opinion that no proper wizard should ever rouse himself from bed before the sun had bothered to grace the sky with at least a grasping finger's breadth of pink luminescence. At least, he had been of that opinion, before morning exercise with a certain dark haired roommate of his had somehow become a normal part of his cultured existence. The recent frequency of early rises hadn't made them any less utterly and uninspiringly odious, but sometimes it was necessary to make sacrifices for larger ends.

That was why, even though it was so obnoxiously early that dawn hardly described the situation, Draco roused himself with difficulty from the cocooning warmth of his blankets. His roommates, lucky sods, slept soundly as Draco crept to the foot of his bed and slipped one hand into his trunk. Feeling around for the little pouch that he'd specifically left on the top of all the other items the night before, he grinned in the darkness in a way that he told himself was not at all deranged. He'd always heard stories from his father about hatching plans and seeing them come to fruition, but he hadn't really had the chance to make his own plans. There had never been any reason to. Until now.

Rigel Black was up to something, and as his friend, it was Draco's responsibility to figure out what. That, and the curiosity was eating away at his soul. After getting a handle on his rather unexpected Empathic Gift, he'd become accustomed to knowing things. It was immediately obvious to Draco when Rigel began sneaking around at the beginning of the year, but every effort he'd made to keep an eye on his friend had been frustrated by the fact that Rigel was always doing something perfectly reasonable. Draco was practically drowning in feelings of guilt and excitement every time Rigel made an awkward excuse and ducked into a bathroom or around the corner or…wherever he would disappear to for inexplicably short amounts of time. He was never unaccounted for longer than a few minutes, which was the really strange part. Draco just knew he was up to something, but what could possibly be both interesting enough to hide and accomplished in five minutes?

His running (if admittedly unlikely) theory was that Rigel had a relationship he was keeping secret, which had him sneaking off for kisses in broom cupboards all over the castle…or something. Nothing else that he'd come up with made any sort of sense, unless Rigel had had an embarrassing case of irritable bowel syndrome all year.

Today, he would find out one way or another. His plan was foolproof. In his hand was a tiny little tracking device purchased for a modest seven sickles from a certain joke shop he'd visited over the break. While advertised for use on professors—and how ridiculous a notion was that, putting a tracker on Snape's robe hem?—Draco thought it would be perfect for keeping tabs on his most suspicious friend. He stepped quietly over to where Rigel's shoes were sitting on the floor beside his bed and carefully attached the tiny tracking bug onto the underside of Rigel's right sole. With anyone else, this would be a bit of a gamble, but Rigel wore the same pair of shoes every day. It would be his undoing, Draco thought with a somewhat maniacal smirk.

As he slipped back into bed to 'go back to sleep' until the others woke up, he had to admit it was pretty exciting, sneaking around like one of Grindelwald's spies. He could see why Rigel would find it appealing, but that didn't mean he would just let the other boy get away with it.

He was creeping through a dark forest, his wand at the ready—wait, that wasn't his wand, it was a sugar quill. Taking a bite thoughtfully, Draco spotted a majestic unicorn coming into the clearing. "Hail, Unicorn!" he said, saluting with his sugar quill smartly. "Hail, Draco!" the unicorn whinnied, bowing its horn low to the ground. "Where did you learn to bow, Unicorn?" he asked, confused. "The same place I learned to curtsey," the unicorn said, now wearing a skirt. That made sense, he thought, setting off to a different part of the forest. He was looking for something…something important…there! A flashing light up ahead made him break into an excited jog. The light led him to a clearing full of sunlight. There were birds singing and the most delicious smell in the air. It was…it was…he opened his eyes and fell forward into a meadow of strawberries. Only they weren't strawberries, they were strawberry tarts and they were calling out his name. Draco…Draco…

"Draco, get up." Someone was shaking him. He opened his eyes into Rigel's exasperated grey orbs. "Weren't you the one so eager to get to Hogsmeade today?"

Draco yawned, rubbing his eyes and hair simultaneously. "I hate mornings."

"It's almost nine, Draco," Rigel said, openly amused at his expense.

"I didn't sleep well," he said, trying to regain a semblance of his usual poise. Rigel's secret had better be worth his beauty sleep.

"That's a first," Rigel snorted. "Usually you're out cold the moment your head hits the pillow. Bad dreams?"

"Malfoys don't have bad dreams," Draco informed him. "Even the figments of our imagination know their place."

"Yes, yes, all hail Draco, King of Dreams," Rigel said, heading for the door. "When you rejoin reality, I'll be at breakfast."

"Hail Draco, yes," he murmured sleepily, reclining back into his pillow once more. A few minutes later he sprung up with a gasp and cursed quietly. "Focus, Draco," he told himself firmly, pushing the covers back and hurrying to make himself presentable. He could not afford to be off his game today—not if he was going to catch Rigel by surprise.

He arrived at the Slytherin table in time to hear Rigel inquiring politely about Pansy's date.

"It's obligatory," their friend sighed. Draco wasn't fooled by her nonchalance, however. He could read a subtle excitement underlying the slightly disengaged calculation that he'd come to understand was Pansy's norm.

"Don't dissemble," Draco teased her. "We know you love sussing out new people."

"Especially when they don't see it coming," Rigel said, moving over a bit to make room for Draco to sit.

"Only fools take the world at face value," Pansy sniffed, fluttering her lashes. "Can I help it that so many young men these days are fools?"

"Not us, though, right?" Theo grinned lasciviously from across the table.

"No comment," Pansy said sweetly.

They finished their meal and broke off in different directions for the day. Rigel and he took a carriage to Hogsmeade alone, and Draco tried to remember the last time he'd done something with just Rigel and none of their other friends.

"How've you been?" he asked, somewhat lamely, just to get the ball rolling. If he could persuade Rigel to tell him what he'd been up to now, it would save him a lot of trouble. Then again, Draco thought with a slight frown, he'd already gone to the trouble of coming up with such a brilliant plan. It would almost be disappointing if Rigel revealed his secret right off.

"Just fine," Rigel said, smiling a bit and radiating amusement to Draco's senses. "Snape is letting me brew Felix Felicis next week."

"That's very advanced," Draco said, suitably impressed.

Rigel smiled wider, visibly pleased. "It would take six months to complete, and of course the Ministry doesn't encourage casual brewing of the substance in any case, but we'll at least be able to get a good start on the base before the end of the school year."

"Sounds…involved," Draco offered.

"It's going to be fascinating," Rigel agreed. "So where do you want to go today?"

"Wherever you like," Draco said. His plan was actually to let Rigel get comfortable, while simultaneously monopolizing his time all morning. Then, if his usual pattern was anything to go by, Rigel would inexplicably feel the need to sneak away at some point. Draco would graciously pretend to believe whatever excuse Rigel made, then he would follow Rigel using the teacher tracker and see what he was really up to. It was perfect.

Rigel was quiet for a few minutes, staring out of the window, radiating pensiveness. "Would it be all right…if we went to see the Shrieking Shack?" Rigel asked, glancing hesitantly at him, as though fairly certain Draco wouldn't want to.

Normally, he wouldn't go anywhere near the supposedly haunted place, but his plan called for Rigel to be completely oblivious to any attempts at manipulating him, which meant Draco would appease his curiosity, in this instance. "Sounds good, I haven't seen it yet, either," Draco said, smiling magnanimously.

"Thanks." Rigel smiled, but the subtle expression was nothing compared to the quiet gratitude that floated Draco's way, filling up his senses as though the air in the carriage had been perfumed with the emotion.

Draco breathed it in deeply, despite knowing it wasn't an actual smell.

They departed the carriages and made their way slowly through the village, content to stretch their legs and take in the bustle and energy of the student-flooded town. They passed the main shopping streets and before long had reached the outskirts of the village. The noise of rowdy students had long since faded away, and by the time they reached the fence that set the shack back from the road, Draco might have thought them in another place entirely, so eerily silent was the atmosphere.

Rigel rested both arms on the fence and leaned forward until his chin was propped atop them, gazing at the dilapidated, boarded-up house with what Draco recognized after a moment was sadness, mingled with pity. Not knowing why Rigel would feel pity for a house, even a beat up old neglected one, Draco said, "I've heard that a family of banshees live there until some villagers found out about them, then set the shack on fire to try and run them out. The banshees died in the flames, though, and every now and then you can hear the awful shrieking as their ghosts relive the anguish."

Rigel, instead of appearing appropriately impressed with Draco's gruesome tale, merely snorted. "That's not true."

"You sound sure," Draco said, smiling as he felt Rigel's amusement and knew he'd been the cause of it.

"I am," Rigel said. "This shack was built in the same year as the Whomping Willow." A flicker of unease crossed the air between them, and as Rigel rushed on Draco wondered if he'd said something he hadn't meant to. He didn't see what that violent tree had to do with the shack in Hogsmeade, but he tucked the information away in any case. That was what Malfoys did after all—they remembered things that seemed important even if they didn't understand why they were important. Someone else might understand, one day. "Anyway, the shack was actually built a couple of decades ago at Dumbledore's behest. It looks much older, but that's part of the intended façade."

Draco lifted a brow. "How would you know that?"

Rigel hesitated visibly, but seemed to decide there was no harm in telling Draco whatever was making him look so morose. "My uncle, Remus, didn't become a werewolf later in life—he was bitten as a child, and never imagined he would get the chance to attend Hogwarts like a regular kid. Dumbledore took a chance on him, though, and arranged for this place to be built so that Remus would have somewhere to go during the full moon. You can't tell from here, but the entire structure is heavily warded, and with a few rumors spread among the locals to keep people away, it was the perfect place to keep a werewolf hidden, but safe."

Draco could not quite stop the shocked look that crossed his face. "Dumbledore brought a werewolf to Hogwarts…on purpose? Before the Wolfsbane potion was even invented?"

"It was a calculated risk," Rigel shrugged. "Dumbledore believes the best of people, and in this case, he was right. Remus never took his education for granted. He worked incredibly hard, studied everything he could, and graduated near the very top of his class."

"It's impressive, considering how ill he must have been several days out of every month," Draco allowed.

"It didn't do any good in the end, though," Rigel said, frowning. "For all his brilliance and kindness and work ethic, Remus has never been able to keep a steady job. He refused to hide his condition, refused to lie about what he was, once he graduated. He wanted to be appreciated on his own terms. And the world let him down. Every time, he was told no, you aren't good enough, no, we can't take the risk."

"You can't blame people for—"

"Can't I?" Rigel sighed. "He's more risk to his family and friends, the people who stand by him when the moon waxes, than he is to an employer who would likely never see him after five o'clock anyway. We saw the good in him. Dumbledore saw it when he was only eleven. I've never understood…why couldn't other people? Why is it so hard to look past someone else's circumstances?"

Draco didn't have an answer to that. At least, not one he thought Rigel would understand. Rigel wasn't afraid of anything. Of course he didn't comprehend how fear could motivate people to prioritize themselves over others, even unnecessarily so. It was basic instinct, not something rational that you could change about the world. People would always shun the monsters and embrace the ordinary.

"I'd heard about this place, but I've never been here," Rigel said, looking at the shack once more. "Seeing it…I wonder how it would have felt. Remus was our age—younger, the first time he was brought here. A dark, lonely house that creaked in the wind. Waiting for the sun to go down and a monster to claw its way out from his own soul. Then waking up, alone and in pain, and wondering what he'd done the night before and waiting for someone to come collect him. Wondering if they would this time, or if they'd finally decide to just leave the monster be. Sometimes, when I encounter difficulties, I think of Remus, and I wonder if I would have had the strength that he did. Most werewolves bitten young don't live to adulthood, you know."

"I didn't," Draco said, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. If he'd ever thought long about werewolves in the past, it had been in terms of whether he was ever likely to meet one on a full moon. He certainly hadn't thought about what life was like from a werewolf's point of view; he hadn't ever thought about how a werewolf became that way, except in the academic sense. It made him realize that he could become a werewolf, easily, if he were unlucky enough to be caught and bitten. That thought bred an automatic fear that he had difficulty channeling into objective caution; his instinct was to avoid thinking about werewolves at all.

"The curse is hardest on the mind, and children are weak-willed and weak-minded, generally speaking," Rigel said flatly. "In most cases the child either gives into the wolf and goes completely feral or dies in the violence of the struggle to remain human. Whenever I find life difficult or aggravating I remind myself that I have suffered nothing, compared to some."

Draco made a noncommittal noise, really out of his depth in the conversation now. He didn't spend inordinate amounts of time thanking Fate for the lot he'd been handed. Somehow, he was deserving of it—or, that's what had been implied. He was a Malfoy, after all. It wasn't accident, but providence that he should be so favored. Rigel's depressing self-deprecation couldn't go unremarked, however.

"You're a good person, Rigel," Draco told him, utterly serious. "You work hard, get all you can out of every moment, and do your best at everything you take on. I don't think you can ask more of yourself than that. It's not a bad thing that you haven't suffered—it's a good thing, and you should be glad of the life you live. If you don't appreciate it, then…then it is wasted, right?"

Rigel mused for a long moment, then turned to Draco with a soft smile. "Yeah. You're right—I should appreciate what I have more, instead of worrying if I'm somehow less because I've avoided hardships that others may experience."

Draco thought it odd that Rigel had said 'avoided' instead of something like 'not been subjected to,' but he ignored that in favor of putting a solicitous hand on Rigel's shoulder. "The past was shitty, Rigel. For a lot of people. The future will be better." It ought to be, anyway, with everyone alive having already inherited the world of those who came before them. Draco had always thought that the present was naturally better than the past. It was inevitable, in many ways. They wouldn't even have to try that hard—it was like strolling along a garden path; each step came organically, easily, a continuation of the step that came before. Nothing strenuous or difficult about it, in the grand scheme of things. He didn't get why people got so worked up about changing the world, come to that. Change was always happening, with or without people's help. It was halting change that was the real challenge. His father was always lamenting the pervasive, inconsiderate march of 'progress.'

"I suppose you're right," Rigel said at length. "I'm being overly somber, aren't I? My apologies, Draco. This wasn't what I intended by coming here. It's just I've heard so many stories…being here sort of brought them to life, you know?"

"Sure," Draco said easily. "There's a portrait in my father's private office of my great great great grandmother, and when I was seven she told me that she strangled a Ministry official with her bare hands in the blue salon. I've never been able to walk past that room without shuddering."

Rigel let out a mildly horrified laugh, and the tension was broken at last. "Why did she strangle him?"

"Her," Draco said, grimacing a bit. "Apparently my ancestor suspected the witch of conspiring to bear a Malfoy bastard. The claim was never substantiated of course—mostly because the witch never got a word out."

Rigel was suddenly very disturbed, so Draco hurriedly changed the subject. "Let's get back to the village. We can get a butterbeer and you can tell me how you've managed to show so much improvement in Dueling this semester—did you spend the whole winter break practicing, or what?"

They spent the rest of the morning walking and talking and generally just wasting time. Draco hadn't been so amused in a long while—his friend's dry wit and semi-caustic opinions almost made him forget that the day had a plan. Almost.

They had lunch in the Three Broomsticks, and afterwards Draco began to subtly press Rigel into admitting that he had somewhere to be. "I wouldn't mind splitting up for a while, I mean, if you needed to get some errands run."

"I don't really have anything besides going to the apothecary on my list," Rigel said, looking entirely nonchalant. Draco didn't believe it for a moment—he hadn't gone this long without sneaking off for a moment all week. Whatever his secret was, he knew it needed some kind of…maintenance or something. Any moment now, Rigel would make his excuses.

"Right, the apothecary," Draco said, working to keep a knowing smile of his face. "I suppose you wouldn't mind if I tagged along."

"Of course not," Rigel said, eyebrows rising. "I suppose it might be sort of boring for you, though. If you have something else you want to do, I'd understand."

A-ha! Rigel's face was calm but Draco had felt a subtle thrill go through his friend as he spoke. He was hoping Draco wouldn't want to accompany him, for whatever reason. Well, he wouldn't make it hard on his friend, he thought with a smirk.

"I'll just run to the sweet shop then, shall I?" Draco said casually.

"All right," Rigel said. "Will you pick me up a licorice wand?"

Draco mentally cursed. His friend was crafty, making sure Draco really would have to go to Honeydukes if he wanted to make his story believable. No matter. Rigel would be in the same position, having to really go to the apothecary to throw Draco off his scent, which meant Draco had time to run and get a couple of sweets before getting down to the serious business of ferreting out Rigel's secret.

They parted ways, and Draco hurried through the packed streets until he spotted a group of students coming out of Honeydukes with bags full to bursting. "Hey, do you guys have any licorice wands?" he asked quickly.

One of them, a sandy-haired boy with lots of freckles, clutched his bag possessively. Bingo.

"What did you pay for it?" Draco asked. "I'll give you double."

His eyes went wide, and he glanced between Draco and his friends, torn. "I waited in line forever, though…."

"Triple," Draco snapped. "For the licorice wand and one other sweet."

The boy sighed forlornly. "Okay. It's a deal."

They exchanged goods quickly, and Draco ducked into a relatively deserted side street to pull out the 'map' that had come in the package with the teacher tracker. It was a mostly blank piece of paper with a black dot in the center and a series of rings set up like ripples around it. Each successive ring had a different value of distance noted next to it, and at the top right there was a crude compass designating North. When he said the activation phrase, the tracker in Rigel's shoe would show up as a red dot on the map, which would move around in relation to the center dot—a bit like a radar system that only showed one thing.

More excited than he would care to admit, Draco whispered the activation phrase and waited with baited breath for the dot to appear. It winked into existence slowly, a little unsurely, not far from where Draco was standing—which made sense, since he wouldn't have had time to go very far yet. What didn't make sense was the way another dot blinked into existence a heartbeat later, much further away from the center dot and the other red dot. Then, a moment after that, yet another dot appeared, closer to the second but separate enough to be distinct. He frowned down at the map, confused.

He began walking experimentally, and all three dots moved relative to his position, just as they should. Why was it defective? Did the map pick up all teacher trackers in the vicinity? That was annoying. And actually, there should be many more dots if that were the case. There were about twenty on the shelves of Zonko's alone. Maybe it only showed trackers that had been activated. That was still a rather obnoxious design flaw.

At least he could be reasonably sure that the dot closest to him was Rigel. He began tracking that one, not noticing until he was nearly on top of it that the map had led him straight back to the apothecary. Maybe he was going to run his 'errand' first, and then sneak off? Draco settled into the alley across from the apothecary to wait.

Fifteen minutes later, he was bored, and twenty-five minutes later he was annoyed out of his mind. What was Rigel doing that was taking so long? Wasn't he in a hurry to get to wherever he had been sneaking off to? Draco was sure he would see Rigel meeting up with a mysteriously cloaked stranger who was extorting him for money or else an older, more experienced paramour who was too embarrassed by Rigel's age to be seen in public with him…

He looked down at the map again, but the dot he thought was Rigel was stubbornly in the same exact spot. He began to get uneasy. What if the map didn't work at all? What if Rigel had left his shoes behind? No, that was ridiculous. Rigel loved those shoes. And yet…what was he doing? No one could possibly spend so long picking out potions ingredients. Not even Rigel. And what about that thrill of eager anticipation Draco had felt? He just had to be up to something.

Draco's toes were starting to get cold, and he was sick of standing in the same alley without anything exciting happening. How did professional spies do it? They had to have more sophisticated methods of keeping track of people. He bet no real spy ever had to wait outside in the bitter elements for over an hour while their mark tried out all the cauldrons in the store or whatever Rigel was doing.

Finally getting fed up, he crumpled the map in his pocket and stormed into the store. He found Rigel standing in front of a shelf of newt parts, a stupid smile on his face as he looked back and forth between a jar in his left hand and a packet in his right.

"Rigel," Draco said, exasperated, "Have you been here the whole time?"

Rigel blinked at him in mild confusion. "It's only been…" He glanced at the clock behind the register. "Twenty minutes, Draco. Did you have somewhere to be?"

It was all Draco could do not to strangle his infuriatingly oblivious friend. Twenty minutes? As if. He felt like he'd been standing out there for hours. "It's fine," he grit out, suppressing an eye twitch with difficulty.

"I'm almost done," Rigel said, voice apologetic now. "Here, what do you think—should I get the single-wrapped newts or the bulk-packaged one? The bulk ones are better quantity per Knut, of course, but they sometimes slip some shoddy quality newts in with the good ones…"

"What difference does quality make in newts?" Draco asked.

"The eyes, mostly," Rigel said, "Sometimes if the newt died under stress the eyes are strained or damaged."

"If you get bad eyes on a few can you still use the rest of the newt?" Draco said.

"Yes…" Rigel said slowly, "I suppose I could just buy a small container of eyes, in addition to the bulk-packaged newts. That's probably still cheaper than buying a bunch of individually packaged newts. Thanks Draco." Rigel smiled like he'd just solved Merlin's Paradox. Draco did not immediately forgive the boy for wasting his time.

As Rigel paid for his ingredients and the two of them started back toward the castle, Draco heaved a mental sigh of disappointment. It looked like his friend was more wily than he'd thought. He was a Slytherin, for all that sometimes he seemed more like a Ravenclaw. He supposed it was only right that it be hard to catch him out. Still, Draco had all semester. He would leave the tracker in Rigel's shoe, even if it did seem to be a bit glitchy. Eventually, he would figure out what had his friend so secretive.

That is, more secretive than usual.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Rigel had no idea what was making Draco act so oddly while they were in Hogsmeade, but she was ready for an hour or so of quiet when she got back to the castle. She left the common room, which was pretty rowdy that Saturday, in favor of heading to the Library, where quiet was guaranteed thanks to Madam Pince's stringently consistent enforcement habits.

She had been planning to read some more of Dumbledore's handwritten 'textbook' that afternoon, but when she caught sight of Ginny scribbling away at a corner table she was reminded of a question she'd been meaning to ask the girl. Rigel made her way over and waited patiently while Ginny finished the paragraph she was working on.

"To what do I owe this honor?" the redhead said, propping her chin on one hand in a parody of interest.

"Do you have a minute?" Rigel asked. "I wanted to get your thoughts on something I'm working on."

"I suppose," Ginny said, clearing her parchment and quill off to the side. "It's not like this Charms essay was going to win any awards."

"I'm sure it's very good," Rigel said politely.

"I'm sure you're full of crap, like usual." Ginny smiled sweetly.

Ignoring her confrontational conversational style, Rigel sat across from the girl. "How is your Occlumency coming along, if I may ask?"

Immediately, she was on guard. "Why?"

"I've been working on mine, and I'm having creative difficulties," Rigel admitted. "I wondered if I could pick your brain for new ideas."

Ginny shrugged, relaxing a little. "As long as you aren't doing so literally, sure. What's up?"

"Well," Rigel said slowly, aware that this was a delicate topic for the second-year. "When that construct had you imprisoned in your mind—"

"Careful, Rigel," Ginny said sharply.

"Pretend it was the other way around," Rigel said quickly. "Imagine you were trying to imprison something—him, or anything similar, really—in your mind."

"Why?" Ginny frowned, looking uncomfortable.

"Just for the sake of the exercise," Rigel said, shrugging off the question for the moment. "How would you do it? I mean, you have experience being on the other end of it, so I thought you would have good ideas on what you would do. What kinds of safeguards you would put into place, that kind of thing."

"Rigel. What. Are. You. Doing?" Ginny leaned forward and lowered her voice. "If you're trying to build your own construct I will personally poke your idiot eyes out."

"I'm not," Rigel promised. "It's—remember I talked to you last year about building a guardian for my mind? Something semi-autonomous that would take the place of active Occlumency in a pinch?"

"I remember telling you it was a terrible idea," Ginny hissed. "Have you learned nothing?"

"I have," Rigel said, mildly offended. "I've put lots of restrictions on it, based on what I've learned. And that's why I'm asking you—to see what you learned, and if it's different than what I thought of."

Ginny looked sour, but said, "What have you done so far?"

"Well," Rigel said, a bit excited to be talking about her personal project with someone else, "I've already got a form for it—kind of a hollow shell that I'm planning on making autonomous—"

"How?" Ginny broke in, frowning fiercely.

"I'll get to that," Rigel said, "It's theoretical. Anyway, I gave the construct a form like a human, so that it could move around the mindscape, and fool an intruder into thinking it was me if necessary. I knew there were areas that I didn't want it to have access to, though, in case it could be influenced by an intruder and, I don't know, turned against me or something. So I altered the defenses around other areas of my mind, specifically those containing my magic, my consciousness, and my memories. I figured there wasn't much damage it could do to me, that way, but it would still be able to fight off anything that came into my mind from the outside."

Ginny nodded slowly. "That's good. But you can't only think of yourself. The mists aren't only an entrance—they can be an exit, too. That's how real Legilimens get in and out of other people's heads. If you're going to create something even potentially dangerous, you better make sure it can't leave your head and get into someone else's."

Rigel blinked, taken aback by that idea. "I didn't think of that at all. I don't know Legilimency…do you really think something I created would have any way of figuring it out if I don't have the knowledge myself?"

"You said you were making it semi-autonomous," Ginny said, eyebrows lifted challengingly. "Doesn't that mean a basic level of sentience?"

"You're right," Rigel frowned. "I'll have to build a perimeter of some kind to keep it in. That will take some time, but maybe I can work it into a first line of defense to keep others out, too. That would be fairly efficient."

"What about the parts of your mind that control physical movement?" Ginny asked. "It might be able to control your body even if your consciousness was out of its reach."

Rigel considered that. "The physical ties to the body are all over the mindscape. I couldn't block off its access to all of them without severely limiting its usefulness. I don't think it would be able to take over my body if my consciousness was free, though—I have the stronger tie to my physical self than an outside presence, after all."

"It isn't an outside presence," Ginny said pointedly. "It'll be an extension of you, right?"

"Exactly," Rigel said, "A part of me. I think it's unlikely to try and do anything that might destroy itself."

"Don't make the mistake of thinking you can trust all the parts of yourself," Ginny said darkly. "You're a teenager. Inevitably there will be parts of you that are dumb, self-absorbed, and contemplate world domination."

Rigel winced. She wanted to say 'not every teenaged Slytherin boy is like Tom Riddle,' but she wasn't sure Ginny would believe her. That, and her concerns weren't exactly unfounded. Just because she personally didn't have any interest in power or subjugation didn't mean a semi-sentient creation might not develop its own interests.

"I'll just have to make sure it's not an independent entity," she said, thinking hard. "Tie it to my will, so that even if it can think for itself, it can't do anything contrary to what I want. How to design something like that, though…"

"Tie it to your commands, not just your will," Ginny suggested, also deep in thought. "Sometimes your desires can be conflicting, and that might give it leeway somehow. Make it so that it can only act within the perimeter of specific jobs or orders you give it. It can still respond creatively, but only along a prescribed track of goal-oriented behavior. And make it logically consistent, so that it can't respond to the command 'protect my mind' in any way except ones that will ultimately protect your mind. Make sense?"

"Yes," Rigel said, tapping her fingers on the table idly. "I'll have to design a whole chain of commands, to keep it appropriately bound. It will take time, but I can probably borrow from other sources. Typical formats for magical oaths, maybe. And records of command sequences others have used. Semi-sentient objects aren't that uncommon, after all."

"Except most people don't make them in their own heads." Ginny rolled her eyes. "I still think this is a bad idea, but I'm not your moth—" She froze for half an instant after saying that, half-poised to apologize for the slip, but apparently decided to just keep going instead. "Well. You should ask Percy for help, if you're determined to be stupid. He's been studying all kinds of Wizarding law this year, looking into future career options. Barristers have to come up with airtight contracts all the time, right? He should be able to help with the wording, once you get what you want figured out."

"Good idea," Rigel said, making a mental note to do just that. She really wanted this project to work. She had so many theories about how mental magic operated, and so many things she wanted to try, if she could get this up and running. For instance, could she treat the construct like a second consciousness, of sorts? Give it selective information and then ask it to solve a particular problem? That would be fascinating. She'd be able to simulate an objective opinion inside her own head. And what if she could store data in the construct, like a back-up brain in case one of her memories was Obliviated? The possibilities were endless, really.

"How are you going to give it sentience, anyway?" Ginny asked, reluctantly curious. "It takes years sometimes to design sentience spells complex enough to seem life-like."

Rigel smiled, "I have an interesting theory, actually. You know how when magical folk give birth a tiny part of the mother's core breaks off and grows into the child's core? I think maybe I could take a piece of my raw magic and put it into the construct. Magic has a certain amount of its own willpower, so that, combined with complex command chains, might be enough to give it its own sort of impetus."

"Wild magic may have its own will sometimes, but the magic in you has only your will," Ginny said, frowning slightly. "I think that would only give you a vessel that you could command with your will…which now that I think of it would actually be pretty useful. You might get good enough at controlling it that you wouldn't have to be meditating to direct it, which means it could be doing some activity that normally you would have to be present in your mind to accomplish. There aren't many tasks like that, but you could direct it to build something, maybe…" Ginny shrugged, looking bored again. "Let me know if you get anywhere with it. I've got to get back to my essay."

Rigel thanked her for all her help and left her to it. She had a lot to think about, but she was feeling optimistic. The experimenter in her couldn't wait to see if her theories panned out. She reminded herself that she couldn't let her enthusiasm outpace her caution, but couldn't bring herself to be too worried. Talking to Ginny had only cemented the idea that, with the proper precautions, getting her construct up and running was a project worth her energy.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

After Madam Pomfrey had heard what happened at the New Year's Eve gala, her Healing classes had taken on an intensity that had previously been absent. The older woman had muttered something uncomplimentary about young people who thought they were fully qualified at something just because they'd read a few books on the subject and determined that if Rigel was going to be Healing real people so much sooner than the nurse had anticipated, then at least no one would be able to say she hadn't taught him well.

As such, her lessons had been running longer than usual, with Pomfrey packing as much information into each session as the madam possibly could. The nurse had also taken to insisting that Rigel practice on human subjects when it was possible, as in the case of diagnostic spells and charms.

Unfortunately, that was also where they ran into a bit of a snag.

"You cannot understand what the reading should look like if you haven't seen it on a healthy person," Madam Pomfrey said, exasperated. "This Charm in much more in-depth than the ones we've been working with, and that means the information it gives is both more complicated and harder to interpret correctly."

"I've already cast it on you," Rigel said, a stubborn tilt to her chin.

"And now you must cast it on yourself," Pomfrey said, hands on her hips. "A male reading differs on a number of levels from a female's. There will be differences due to our different ages and medical histories, too, and it's important that you be able to pinpoint where in the output they occur."

"I don't want to," Rigel said, trying to be as firm as possible.

"Why on earth not?" Pomfrey finally demanded. She frowned at Rigel's silence, adding, in a softer tone, "What on earth is wrong, child?"

"I just don't want to," Rigel said, shrugging uncomfortably. "Don't I have a right to refuse? Doesn't any patient?" she added, attempting to look at least a little less suspicious.

"Yes, of course," Pomfrey sighed, "But why?"

"It's personal," Rigel said, unblinking. "What would I do, then, if a patient refused to be diagnosed?"

"That is an interesting question," Pomfrey said, allowing herself to be distracted with a modicum of grace. "It depends on what, exactly, the patient has refused—the diagnostic spell itself, or treatment in general."

"People can refuse treatment?" Rigel said, surprised. "I mean, for optional operations, sure, but for life-saving procedures?"

"They can." She did not look at all approving of such a thing. "Any patient has the right to refuse any or all aspects of Healing, even if it would save their life. The only exception is when the patient is with child. In some cases, the parent would not have the option to refuse Healing that would benefit the child, as long as it created no risk to the carrier."

"What about children themselves?" Rigel asked.

"Children cannot refuse care until they are eleven—old enough to have a wand, old enough to self-determine matters of their own health, or so says the law," Madam Pomfrey explained. The disgruntlement was clear in her tone as she said, "As a Mediwizard you must bow to the wishes of your patients, even if it is not the course of action you would endorse."

Rigel laughed quietly. "You don't bow much to the whims of your patients, if I may say so, Madam."

Pomfrey sniffed. "My patients sometimes don't speak loudly enough for me to hear. And many of them don't know that they have the right to refuse, poor dears."

"Were you a Slytherin?" Rigel asked, amused.

"I'll never tell," she said primly. "Now come. You can do the charm again on me, if you insist, and I will attempt to explain where the differences would be. Some areas of information you must ignore, as they are not applicable to male anatomy…"

The lesson went on as though nothing unusual had occurred, but Rigel could feel the older woman's eyes on her through the rest of her instruction. Madam Pomfrey might have let the matter go, but she would not, Rigel suspected, forget it. She would have to be especially careful around the matron, from now on.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

It was early March before her insistent stalking of Peter Pettigrew bore fruit. She was finishing up an essay for Flint in the Room of Requirement, with the intention to spend the night there, as a pervious version of herself was already sleeping in her dorm room. She'd taken the habit of checking the Marauder's Map every so often just to check up on the professor, and this time caught sight of him heading for the Library.

It was a couple of hours past closing, but that was not unusual for Pettigrew. He spent inordinate amounts of time reading in the Restricted Section—if you could call paging feverishly through tables of contents reading, at least. Rigel ought to know, as it wouldn't be the first time she'd followed him there to try and get a look at what books he was looking through. So far, she didn't know anything except that Pettigrew didn't appear to have any idea what he was looking for. That, or he was completely pants at research of any kind.

She put aside the essay and fished out her invisibility cloak, pulling it on with a tired yawn and promising herself she'd sleep a full ten hours that night. The halls were silent as she made her way toward the Library, avoiding ghosts and patrolling prefects deftly. The door to the Library was unlocked, as Pettigrew was there before her, so all she had to do was sneak in quietly and close it soundlessly behind her. The trick would be getting out before Pettigrew re-locked it. The other night she was almost certain he'd felt the displacement of air as she slipped out just behind him.

Pettigrew carried a fairly bright lamp to read by, so it wasn't particularly difficult to see where he was. By the books on magical compulsions again, she thought. She was coming to know the layout of the Restricted Section rather well, from all the hopping around Pettigrew did while she observed him. He was sweating slightly in the light of the lamp as he shakily turned page after page, muttering anxiously to himself as he was wont to.

After a short time, he sighed despairingly with a murmured, "No, no, no. This isn't it at all." He re-shelved the book and selected another from the same section, seemingly at random. Did he honestly expect that to work? That he'd somehow just come across the answer by luck or through sheer probability if he searched through enough books?

The short man looked so hopelessly lost that she almost felt sorry for him. A sound from the hallway outside the Library echoed through the dark stacks just then, and Pettigrew froze completely like a frightened animal, clearly spooked. He hastily grabbed an armful of books at random and began scurrying toward the door. Rigel followed silently, wondering how this man had gotten up the gumption to put himself in opposition to such powerful people when he was afraid of his own shadow. He seemed pathetically inept to her.

She shook her head in silent self-admonishment. She should know better than to judge by a person's appearance. For all she knew, his bumbling fool routine was an act. Pettigrew's foot caught in the hem of his robe and he sprawled noisily, books tumbling to the floor. In his scramble to pick them up, his knee became tangled in his shoulder bag, and the moment he attempted to stand, the seam split and papers fluttered into the air around his dismayed expression of stupor.

It could be a very good act, she supposed dubiously as the man fumbled and muttered as he attempted to collect all the books and papers that had spilled. Halfway through, he realized he ought to repair his bag first, and had to put everything down and start again. Rigel shifted her focus impatiently, feeling slightly rude while watching him crawl around so piteously.

Her gaze caught onto a piece of parchment covered in scribbled notes, which had floated, unnoticed by Pettigrew, a fair distance further than the other papers. Holding her breath, she crept forward slowly until she was right next to it, then lifted the cloak just enough to drop it quickly over the stray parchment before Pettigrew noticed it. There was a slight rustling noise, but when the Creatures professor looked over fearfully, he didn't seem to see anything amiss.

He stuffed all the papers away into his newly-repaired bag and left at something close to a run, books encumbering him so much that he appeared not to bother locking the Library behind him. Sloppy, Rigel thought as she bent to pick up her prize and slip it into her pocket. She locked the door herself on her way out, and made her way quickly back to the Come and Go Room.

Once situated comfortably, she took out the scrap of notes that she'd claimed and swiftly perused it. There was a passage of some kind written out shakily at the top of the parchment. It looked like prose of some kind, or perhaps a poem. Underneath, and filling up the edges of every margin, was a collection of scribbled notes and half-formed ideas that were apparently Pettigrew's attempts to decipher the paragraph at the top. Wondering what had been so important for him to figure out, Rigel began to read the passage carefully.

If Dominion is desired, domination is required

~ere the moment be expired

To reach for selfsame power is to see Creation cower

~or to find oneself devoured.

The birds and beasts and flowers will conspire through the hours

~to contend these rising powers

So if supremacy you seek, look to reign beyond the weak

~else your Destiny be bleak

Master yourself; master the other,

Take control or be took by another

Keep Power alive, yet under control;

Dominion will answer, transforming the soul

Ascend and rule, but bear the cost

Beware what comes of power lost

She rubbed her eyes tiredly after reading it through twice. Well that wasn't cryptic at all, she thought sourly. She'd always found riddles incredibly annoying. She preferred less oblique means of communication, herself. She could start with the structure, though—there was something about the rhyme scheme that she thought was important. She looked tiredly over the passage, noting the two juxtaposed meter systems and counting the lines in each. Four lines of tripled rhymes followed by three rhyming couplets. Seven rhyming units total—a number of power, the Arithmancy student in her noted. Where had she heard about magical prose? Sometime talking to Pansy, she thought, wracking her mind for the memory. Her blonde friend had mentioned the importance of rhyming schemes in relation to one of her homework assignments. It hadn't been an assignment she shared with Rigel, which meant it was for one of her other extracurricular classes. But which one? Divination or Care of Magical Creatures?

After a sleepy attempt to recall the details of the brief conversation, she remembered where she was and asked the Room politely for a book on the technical aspects of magical poems and prose. An incredibly dense tome landed in her lap with a cloud of dust that sent her into a brief sneezing fit.

Rigel paged through the book to the chapter that dealt with identifying pieces of magical literature by their structure. She skipped over the sections on identifying spells, chants, vows, summonings, and various other rituals, eventually finding a section on divination that looked promising.

It was a prophecy, she groaned in belated realization, or something very close to one. It followed exactly the pattern said by the book to be favored by centaurean foretellers. According to the short paragraph the author offered on the seven-part rhyme scheme, it wasn't a true prediction of the future—more a prophetic collection of knowledge pertaining to an unknown subject. Centaurs weren't as reliable as human Seers when it came to predicting specific moments or events, but they could read general information on a broad range of topics from the stars. Still…where had Pettigrew found such a passage? As far as Rigel knew, centaurs rarely gave prophetic advice to wizards, and, unlike human Seers, almost never consented to their predictions being recorded. Even the book she had open on her knees referenced the rhyming structure as an oral pattern of conveyance.

The bed in the corner of the room was calling to her, but she knew she should at least make an attempt to figure the passage out before going to bed. It would only keep her awake if she didn't. It was definitely about the Dominion Jewel; aside from the fact that she'd taken it from Pettigrew, who couldn't be researching anything else, the word Dominion was capitalized on the paper.

Wait…if it was a centaur foretelling, then how would there be capitalized words? Were they arbitrary, or a true reflection of the inflection given by the original speaker? Rigel supposed ruefully she had no way of knowing, so she would take the capitals as important on faith, for now.

Scanning the verses for any other obvious conclusions, she grimaced slightly. There was a lot of mention of controlling things and dominating and mastering and reigning…that didn't bode well. Neither did the ominous warnings about being devoured and the explicit mention of cost. In her experience any magic that referenced sacrifice so blatantly was either powerful, dangerous, or a potent combination of both.

All right, let's take it line by line, she thought with resignation. Why couldn't Pettigrew have accidentally dropped a passage with very explicit directions on how to neutralize the jewel's power, or maybe a map to where he was hiding it?

The part about desiring Dominion seemed clear enough—it was introducing the requirements for using the jewel. Domination being necessary wasn't entirely surprising, though she had to wonder if Pettigrew met that qualification at all. The 'moment be expired' part was promising, too—if there was some kind of time limit, then maybe Pettigrew wouldn't be able to gain the power he sought before it was reached. He had looked pretty panicked for time while going through Library books.

Creation in capitalized form probably just meant 'everything,' she supposed, and she didn't like the dichotomy the second line seemed to be setting up. Make everything cower before you or end up devoured yourself? What an awful set of alternatives. The 'birds, beasts, and flowers' part was obvious—even Pettigrew hade made a note in the margins about how the creatures around Hogwarts had reacted to its use. So they, at least, recognized the power the jewel offered as a negative thing. That in itself should dissuade anyone from trying to use it, Rigel thought. Magical creatures rarely agreed upon anything, and that was when they involved themselves outside of their own communities in the first place.

The 'so' in the line directly after that worried her, though. It seemed to indicate a continuation of the line before it, which would put the birds, beasts, and flowers in direct juxtaposition to the 'weak.' What did that mean? That one should only reign over strong magical creatures? Or that it would not be enough to reign over weak things? She supposed it would bely the whole 'dominion' idea if the wielder settled for using it on petty things, but why would that be important enough to include in the verse?

'Master yourself; master the other,' she read again. But was that sequential or conditional? Which were you supposed to do first? Take control or have it taken by another—that seemed like a warning that if you didn't use the jewel someone else might. What a power-hungry, paranoid thing to worry about.

She had no idea what keeping power alive meant, nor why that mention of power in particular was capitalized. As far as she knew you couldn't 'kill' power. The next line about the jewel actually transforming the soul of the one who used it was equally ominous. That made it sound like the jewel had a deep effect on the one who used it. The last couplet wasn't any better—bearing the cost was in line with what she knew about truly powerful magic, but she would have thought the warning would be about the dangers and responsibilities that come with power, not about what might happen if you lost the power.

There was so much vagueness about power and control in different forms. It almost seemed like a general warning against being weak—without any concrete information on how to actually use the jewel. Judging by the disjointed, frustrated notes all over the page, that fact had been infuriating Pettigrew to no end.

Her brain was protesting violently in the form of a headache that throbbed in time with her heartbeat, so Rigel set the parchment carefully aside and decided to call it a night. She could pour over it more tomorrow, for all the good it would do her. She wasn't any closer to getting the proof she needed. How nice it would have been if Pettigrew put his name in the upper-right corner of all his notes like Theo did. Chuckling a bit at the image of the beady-eyed man carefully signing all his incriminating research notes, Rigel drifted off into a deep, bone-weary sleep.

-0

[AbAbAb]

-0

With Hermione's recent and rather persistent habit of considering looks, leading questions, and expectant expressions, Archie had seen this confrontation coming for a while. He'd been dreading it, fully aware that she'd somehow become suspicious of something, but unable to redirect her conclusions without being able to figure out what she thought she knew.

Nothing he'd imagined in all his panicked scenarios had prepared him for this, however.

They were outside at their usual spot, and Archie was sure that if he hadn't already been sitting on the grass beneath their shady tree, he would have fallen over in shock. "You…come again?"

"I said I know, Harry," Hermione said, somehow looking both apologetic and impatient at once. "I know you're a girl."

"I'm…not," Archie tried, weakly. Her accusation, while false and somewhat humorous, still betrayed a dangerous amount of knowledge—how could she have come to that conclusion without knowing something?

Hermione sighed, and managed to summon a very disappointed look that Archie was pretty sure they only taught people with small children. "I've known for months. I've been waiting for you to tell me, but I realized you weren't ever going to, so…so I'm telling you now."

"Months?" Archie croaked. "How, uh, exactly did you come to this conclusion?"

"My parents got me a subscription to the Daily Prophet for Christmas," Hermione said, gazing pityingly at him, as though he ought to have guessed how she knew. "I saw the article they did on the gala the Sow Party hosted. It said that someone had almost died there, and then mentioned that your dad was head of the Minister's security detail. I was perplexed, because it went on to say that Auror Potter's own daughter was one of the two people who saved the life of the man who was attacked. I was so confused, Harry, because I knew you had a little sister but you'd never mentioned any other siblings." Hermione was rambling now, the words spilling out quickly and almost pleadingly. "I went to the British Ministry and tried to look up some information about your dad, thinking maybe he had a child from a previous marriage you hadn't told me about, only they don't let citizens access Ministry personnel records, apparently, so I had to go to through the individual genealogy records kept by the Ministry's Department of Magical Heritage –did you know your family is in the Book of Gold?" The last was said with a demanding glare, which Archie was too distracted to cower appropriately before.

"Yes," he said, swallowing roughly. "Those records aren't always updated correctly, though—"

"Don't bother," Hermione huffed. "Even after I saw your entry written as Harriett Potter in the Book of Gold, I wasn't entirely certain. So I went to the Bureau of Magical Land Management and talked my way into looking at the estate records by saying I was doing very important research about the conservation of folded space for Wizarding Wildlife."

"You shouldn't lie to Ministry officials," Archie croaked.

"Don't you dare talk to me about lying right now, Harry," Hermione hissed. "Guess who the Potter Estate is currently entailed to? The Heiress Harriett Potter, eldest daughter to the current Lord." She folded her arms triumphantly and waited with raised eyebrows for him to collect his thoughts.

It wasn't a disaster. She hadn't accused him of anything awful, yet, like being someone else entirely. So she knew Harry was a girl. Harry was a girl, and it wasn't like that was really a secret—back home, anyway. Looking at her pouting lips, Archie suspected Hermione was more concerned with the idea that he'd been lying to her for two and a half years than with wondering why.

"That's very impressive deducing," Archie offered, smiling in a transparent attempt to lighten the air between them.

Hermione's face only darkened. "You lied to me, Harry. To everyone here. Do you know how stupid I felt once I'd figured it out?"

"You're not stupid," Archie exclaimed, feeling suddenly awful.

"I know that," Hermione snapped, "And yet I somehow missed all the signs leading up to this. How your letters were always addressed to Harriett, how you had to explain to even the teachers at the beginning of first year that your dad was just playing a joke on them—but he wasn't, this whole time. You were the one playing the joke."

"It wasn't a joke," he said quietly.

"And how you never invited me over to meet your family or let me stay to meet them at the airport, even though you've met mine half a dozen times," Hermione went on, working herself up into a real rant. He supposed she'd been bottling it in for a while. "And how you flirt outrageously with everyone you meet because you're overcompensating for the fact that you're not really a boy."

Archie didn't suppose she was in the mood to hear that that was a genuine part of his personality.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Hermione asked, her eyes slightly wet with suppressed hurt. Archie had never felt more a cad, but he didn't know how he could fix things without jeopardizing everything he and Harry had been working for. If it was just his dream…maybe he could give it up for Hermione's friendship and understanding. Harry's dreams were everything to her, though. He could never betray their ruse like that. Not even for his best friend. Somehow, he would have to improvise and hope that Hermione was as wonderful as he thought she was.

"I didn't want you to think of me like that," Archie said after some quick thinking. The only way out of this was to invoke Hermione's sense of compassion. "If I told you I was a girl, pretending to be a boy, you'd always treat me as some kind of imposter, instead of understanding who I really am."

"You…" Hermione's concentration was beautiful as she tried to follow the trail he was laying down. "You don't identify as a girl?"

"It's always been a struggle for me to feel like I belonged in my own skin," Archie said, trying to squash the feeling of incredibly guilt he felt at misleading her like this. "I thought, coming here, it would be like a fresh start. I could be the person I want to be, instead of who I was born." That much, at least, was true. And Harry was a bit of a tomboy, so he wasn't stretching reality too much.

"Don't you think it would be better to come to terms with yourself, rather than try and suppress parts of it?" Hermione asked, frowning concernedly now. That was good, he told himself. If she was worried about him she would be less likely to think up more sinister reasons he might have for hiding his gender.

"I've been working on it," he lied. Time to set some groundwork—and wouldn't Harry be proud? She was always telling him to think ahead. "Maybe one day I can go back to being a girl. For now, though…I'm more comfortable like this. Does it really bother you so much?"

"It bothers me that you lied about it," Hermione said, eyes narrowed. He could tell most of her anger had bled away once she felt she had an adequate explanation, though. "Have you even talked with your parents about it?"

"Not…exactly," Archie grimaced. That would certainly be awkward.

"Well you should," Hermione said firmly. "It's not healthy to bottle things up like this. I'm sure your parents would understand and work through it with you—this is actually very common, you know. I've read about it in several reputable psychology books."

"Of course you have," Archie said, smiling fondly.

"I must say, I didn't consider that you might actually feel more comfortable this way," Hermione said, frowning. "I should have thought of it. I was thinking maybe you'd done it as a big joke, or maybe as some sort of attempt to avoid sexist discrimination in the future—I know you've mentioned there's some unfairness in certain Wizarding industries still—and I was prepared to lecture you sternly on how wrong it is to avoid the issue yourself while everyone else in your situation is still subjected to unfairness, because you have to fight for change, of course, but…well, I'm glad that wasn't it," Hermione finished, smiling sheepishly.

Archie kept a bland expression on his face through force of will, but he could feel his insides curling up in shame. Hermione's assessment had been, once again, too close for comfort. He could only imagine how angry and disappointed she would be if she knew that he was doing exactly what she'd feared—and worse, because the issue he and Harry were skirting was blood prejudice, which Hermione already felt very strongly about fighting against.

It amazed him, how mature she was. The idea that their duplicity tacitly endorsed the unfair system they were circumventing in the first place would have never occurred to Archie without someone pointing it out, but of course it was far too late to do anything about it now. He would just have to look for other ways to atone, if he could. Perhaps once he was himself again, he could use what influence the Blacks had left to bolster Hermione's campaign.

"If I may ask," Hermione said after a moment, "How…how do you look like a boy? I can't see the girl in you even now that I know to look for it. Is that natural? Is this why you made me steal all the Polyjuice in first year? I still never saw you taking any. If it is natural, what are you going to do in a few years when you fill out and it'll be obvious to anyone—"

"Take a breath, 'Mione," Archie said, lips quirking a bit. If she was already starting to think of how he'd hide his gender in the future, then it looked like she was planning to stay friends after all. He wasn't sure he should tell her much more, at first, but then realized that if they were going to be friends till they graduated, it would be very suspicious to Hermione if he never started looking like a girl. "I…have to swear you to secrecy, Hermione," he said, lips tightening.

"Yeah, okay." Hermione rolled her eyes.

"I'm serious," Archie said. He held her gaze for a long second, to make sure she understood how earnest he was. "I won't make you swear a binding oath—"

"As if I would agree to something so reckless—"

"But you must promise me solemnly to never tell anyone what I'm about to tell you," he concluded.

Hermione bit her lip. "I suppose…you're not really hurting anyone…" Her expression revealed the furious debate taking place inside her head, but in the end she sighed gustily. "Fine, but after this you are not getting rid of me, Harriett Potter. We are in this together."

"Nothing would please me more," Archie said, smiling widely.

"Then… I promise not to tell anyone what you tell me about pretending to be a boy. I won't even tell anyone that you are pretending, if you don't want—though I maintain that you should talk to your parents about this," Hermione said.

"Noted," Archie said dryly. He gathered his courage, then said, "I'm a metamorph. It means I can—"

"I know what it is," Hermione breathed, eyes widening. "That's so rare, Harry! I read it was only common to a couple of Wizarding families."

"It runs in the Black line," Archie told her, "And my grandmother was a Black. I haven't told anyone, though—not my family, not anyone. But it's how I live as a boy."

"So…this isn't what you really look like?" Hermione asked, looking perturbed.

"Not really," Archie said wryly. She really had no idea.

"Hmm," she said, taking it in slowly. "It's almost a fateful coincidence that you would harbor such confusion about your inner self and then be given the means to manipulate your outer self, don't you think? Have there been studies of other metamorphmagi? Maybe the feeling uncomfortable in your skin thing is a side-effect of the ability, a natural adaptation of the brain, perhaps, or…well, I suppose I could look into it."

Archie was amazed, as always, at the way Hermione's brain worked.

"Just so you know, you could have told me sooner," Hermione said, tilting her head at him admonishingly. "My family happens to be very progressive."

"I'll keep that in mind," Archie laughed, fully relaxing at last. Everything was going to be okay. His relief lasted until he realized that Harry would have to be informed of this development. He could feel the blood draining from his face immediately. She was not going to like this. And somehow, he was certain, it would end up being his fault.

-0—0—0

-0—0

-0

[end of chapter twelve].

A/N: So… this one got a little long-winded, huh? Nearly 40,000 words, which I had said I wouldn't do again. Sorry ^^. I hope everyone enjoyed it, though. I had many people guess at who would get closest to the truth first. Surprisingly, not many guessed Hermione, as most people were focused on Rigel's end. Riddle and Snape are not the only clever characters, however, and Archie, bless his earnest heart, is not as good at confusing people as Harry is. Plus Hermione is just brilliant. And endlessly curious. I hope you enjoyed that little surprise, in any case. I know you didn't think someone was actually going to figure it out, though. The ruse lives on… Mua. ha. ha.

Thanks for all the excellent feedback on the last chapter! I got so many ideas from your speculations and opinions. As always, thanks so much for reading. Happy Valentine's Day.

-Violet