Chapter 29.
The Fat Lady
The second night in the dorms of St-James (not including the night of the welcoming party) was very different from the first. In one day, so much had changed. And it had passed so quickly too. The raven started the morning in optimistic anticipation, turning to shock and stress with Snape's invasion at lunch, then to downright depression when he'd thought he was kicked out of her class again, then to confusion with the secretaries, only to end in more shock and stress, knowing about the test he had to brave the next day.
His black feathers sprawled all over his pillow, Harry stared at the top bunk above him, where he knew Jeff was sleeping, if the delicate snores were any indication. Apart from that sound, the room was very quiet. Outside the room however, shuffling sounds regularly passed the door. Harry wasn't sure whether it was his imagination, or the night surveillant and nurse making rounds to check everyone was still in their dorm rooms. But the door was only opened once around midnight, and not since.
The raven didn't even attempt sleep. He was quite hungry, and would've regretted declining to go to dinner if he wasn't still unsure about the test later in the day. He went over the points in his head that he had never studied before, or had forgotten. But it was surprisingly little. It looked like English Literature was very minimal in the first two years. Little facts were given, only a few authors analyzed. Shakespeare was of course one of them. But it seemed that the main occupation for students in the first two forms was learning the possibilities and basics of literature, its role in society, and how one should approach a certain text, what to look for and such.
Those were things Harry had learned too long ago to remember. It was a natural process for him. And that made him feel just a little bit more at ease. He was almost sure he would pass the test, but only if Mr. Wright kept to the textbooks. (Harry had loaned a textbook from someone of the second form for the night.) If Professor Wright was anything like Professor Snape, Harry was not so sure about his chances of success.
A sudden, sharp rap made Harry stop in the middle of his finger-fumbling. Freezing in place, he listened for the sound that seemed to familiar.
It came again, and Harry instantly knew what it was. He put on his glasses and threw his covers off him, hastily reaching for the window before Hedwig could wake his roommates with her impatient taps on the glass.
"Hedwig!" The raven whispered in elation as the black-speckled white bird flapped her wings once in greeting. Her eyes still seemed to show resentfulness, but also reluctant relief. As if relenting to come to Harry had tainted her pride. In her mind, he should never have left her, so that her flying all this way would have been unnecessary.
Soon however, the boy realized that he couldn't let his owl in here. She would wake the others, and he just didn't have anything to take care of her. And what if someone woke up, or the nurse or surveillant peaked in? They would have a heart attack seeing the great bird of prey in the room.
There was no other option than to send the bird away. "I'm so sorry, Hedwig. This is no place for you…" Harry began to apologize. Hedwig's eyes grew colder and sharper. She turned her back to him, opened her wings and pushed herself off the third floor windowledge, hovering down slowly to the courtyard between the two dormitories, and settling herself on a black-iron bench to groom her long feathers.
Harry understood, and immediately went to his closet to retrieve his shoes and his coat. He took his shoes in hand to creep through the hallway, halting every now and then to listen for footsteps. It was eerie at night. The artificial light cast deep shadows around the water-dispenser, which hummed like a dormant beast.
Harry felt adventurous, his imagination kicking in to render every detail and every abnormality into something of wonder and danger. His heart beat faster as he thought back to the days when he crept down to the cellar at the Dursleys to steal food. In fact, he'd done it only last week, when he hadn't felt like eating breakfast with them, and had stolen it to eat it in the park the next morning.
When he reached the common room, things got more complicated. His suspicion that all doors were locked was confirmed when he tried them. And the windows here didn't open. They were all glass from the ceiling to the floor. If it got too hot in the summer, the sliding glass doors were opened to let the breeze cool them down.
After a minute of thought, the boy found the solution. He hurried back out of the room, and down the hall to the next door, which were the showers and toilets. He ducked inside, and after having checked that there was no one in one of the booths, nor in the showers (who knew if someone liked midnight showers?) he went to the windows. There were three, and two of them could be opened, giving out on the courtyard, close to the corner. There were bushes underneath with prickly branches, so Harry put on his shoes first, then glided through, landing on the damp earth with a thud.
It wasn't long now before he'd joined Hedwig on the bench, enjoying the only friend that had kept him company at the Dursleys, the beauty who knew all his secrets and sorrows. It felt better than good to stroke her soft, strong feathers again.
High above both their heads, behind a second-floor window (third floor, I think, for Americans) of the boys' section, a pair of grey eyes hadn't missed a single movement.
The young Draco, on the verge of starting his troubled years of adolescence, liked to sit on the windowsill at night. Two of his roommates were already down the hall in another room, doing Merlin knows what. Just one was left, and he was sleeping restlessly, making the bed creak with every movement. It disturbed the quiet.
Draco would've been irritated by it in other circumstances, but now, his attention was elsewhere. He'd instantly recognized the graceful bird he knew to be Harry's pet of sorts as it had swooped down to a window above him, further to the left. Calculating in his head, he was able to confirm it was his short friend's window.
Astonished at Hedwig's ability to find her 'master', even find the right room from the first try, he had kept watching intently. It hadn't surprised him when he'd noticed the movement down in the bushes by the window of the lavatory, and Harry's slight silhouette creeping out of the building, towards the garden where the bird had settled down on one of the benches. Of course Harry wouldn't let a simple lock stop him from doing exactly what he wanted. He wasn't like that.
It was amazing, Draco thought with an adoring smile. Being absolutely certain that no one could see him, he allowed himself to admire without restraint.
Spending the last two years apart from his best friend had been difficult at first, but the promise of constant contact through e-mails had helped to lessen the feelings of 'missing'. And once they had settled in their routine of weekly updates to each other, Draco hadn't felt like he missed his friend at all. Harry had been so open and honest, and always so eager in his correspondence that it had been easy to forget so many miles divided them.
But now… now all was different. Seeing Ron and Hermione again had been a lot of fun, and had brought up some good memories. Seeing Harry however, had made grey-eyes realise just what he had missed without knowing it.
He'd thought he was happy with the friends he had here. He had a lot of fun with Benjamin Malfrey, a boy he'd often been stuck with in the same dorm room and class because their surnames were almost identical. Ben came right after him in every alphabetical listing. From everyone in the school, he was the closest to the blonde, even surpassing Pansy, who had known Draco longer, but was forced to give up her constant shadowing of him by being in the girls' school.
But now! Merlin how had he missed it! Harry was so much better than anyone here, soaring high above them, untouchable. Harry had proven once again, from the very first day, how much cleverer he was, how stubborn and adventurous. He had a much more vivid imagination. No one since Harry had been able to understand Draco's world so well, and build upon it in such a way that it blended in so harmoniously.
Sometimes they fought, but Draco's fights with Harry were so very different than any he had with the other two, or anyone else for that matter. Harry was challenging, he could battle Draco on the same level, the same ground. And whenever he still used that hissing language of his, his eyes and lips came out with such fire in his countenance that it never missed to blast the blonde off his feet.
The night was cool. Draco felt it as his forehead rested against the glass of the window. He wondered whether the raven-haired boy down in the garden was cold. He only had on his pyjamas and a coat after all. He would be cold when he came back...
An idea sparked into the blonde's head.
A grin spreading across his features, grey-eyes watched and waited for the little first year to start falling asleep and shivering on the bench. At that point, Harry was forced to go back inside if he didn't want to fall sick and miss his test and the first days of term. His little form crept back towards the building, his black feathers blending in with the deep shadows there and only momentarily touched by rays of pale moonlight.
Draco pushed his cheek up against the window as far as he could to be able to keep watching Harry until he reached the corner window of the building and climbed into the boys' bathrooms. When there was no movement left to be seen, he leaned back against the side of the wooden window frame and sighed. Closing his eyes, he counted a hundred deep breaths, trying his best to ignore the squeaks of the bunk bed in the corner caused by his roommate's movements.
He should be asleep by now. He thought, but not so confidently. Having regularly slept with Harry in the guest room, in the large bed, he knew how green-eyes sometimes lay awake for hours at a time when something bothered him. But on the other hand, he also knew how he could never stay awake all night. At some point or other, the raven-haired boy always fell into an exhausted sleep.
Draco slipped out of his room, tip-toeing to the end of the hall to take the stairs to the floor above his. The artificial light was blinding after watching the gentle moonlight outside for so long. It almost caused him to smash right into a fourth-year who was going in the opposite direction.
"Eh, Draco, could watch out a little!" The other hissed discontentedly.
The third-year merely grunted and went on his way, reaching his target: 310. Now it was the sudden darkness again that blinded him, and he had to stay still and wait a minute for his eyes to adjust once more.
Little by little, the room came into focus, looking exactly the same as his and every other one in the building, except for the students' personal things lying around. And on the bottom bunk on the right, where Draco knew him to be, lay the sleeping form of the black-haired Harry, his side rising in a slow rhythm as he hugged his pillow.
Grey-eyes was happy his prediction that Harry should be asleep was accurate. It was coming close to four o'clock, and the ten-year old would be too exhausted to let even nervousness keep him awake. Besides, that little escapade outside had to have helped to make him sleepy.
There wasn't much room for him, but neither Harry nor Draco were very large, and the latter managed to slip under the covers with his friend without waking him, the way he'd sometimes done before in his own home.
Harry wasn't shivering like he'd done outside, but the blonde felt that the bed was still cold, as were Harry's rough pyjamas. They hadn't been warmed up again by the boy's body heat yet, and knowing him, Draco was aware it would take a while. That was why he'd decided to come down and help things along a little. This way Harry would sleep much better and deeper, and he would be well-rested and ready for the test he was stressing over so much.
Draco rolled his eyes in the dark as he remembered the fretting Harry, pouring over his books all evening and well into the night. It wasn't necessary, the blonde knew. The pupils in the first and second form were really just starting on literature, and knew next to nothing. It would've been too easy and extremely boring for the black-head if he'd stayed in their class. Professor Wright would be able to see it in a blink of an eye and would let him pass without trouble. Draco could only hope that his friend would be put into his third-year class.
Most importantly though, Draco was grinning at the surprise Harry would have in the morning.
Harry knew it was morning when he opened his eyes. He knew it was that morning, the morning of a test. It couldn't be anything else whenever he woke up with that characteristic tightening in his bowels. So before he opened his eyes, he tried to collect his wits about him and probe his memory for all the knowledge he was supposed to have gathered.
Everything looked like it was there; except a few details that he could look over quickly during breakfast. For really, going to breakfast while he still had a test impending was futile. He could never swallow much in such circumstances. The hunger in his belly from the previous night had vanished with his ominous feeling.
And then it suddenly dawned upon him, that something wasn't quite right. There was something touching his legs and his feet! Harry was startled into opening his eyes and tried to scurry away from the alien thing in his bed, only to hit his back and head against the wall with a soft thud.
The raven hissed in pain, his feathers flying into his eyes in the moment of confusion while he rubbed the place on his head where a bump would surely form. He had retracted his legs away from the 'thing' and was crawled up into the corner of the wall upon the mattress.
A soft chuckle came from close by, and then a hand clumsily pushed away his simply explosive morning hair.
"Merlin! You need to get your hair cut. You look like a shaggy street dog." Draco said smugly, as if his hair was always perfectly clean and neat.
Harry knew better, but he was still a little winded from the shock and impact, and had to wait a minute before being able to form a few coherent words.
"What in the world, Draco, are you doing in my bed!" He cast around his eyes to look around the room. The others had already thought his clothes and behaviour to be weird. He really didn't need another reason to alienate them. They would be his schoolmates for a full seven years if things went well.
"Relax, Harry." Draco said nonchalantly as he folded his hands behind his head. "Everyone moves around all the time. That's why I said not to worry about room arrangements. Filch, the surveillant, comes around bedtime to check that everyone goes to sleep in their own room, but he doesn't bother to come back afterwards. And if he does, he just pops in his head to see if we're asleep, but not to check who is there."
That was what Harry had seen around midnight, when the door had opened. After that he'd regularly heard footsteps and whispers. He'd assumed it was Filch or the night nurse, or both. But now he thought about it, Mr. Filch's steps didn't sound so light and hasty. He had a bad leg, and his walking sounded stocky and clumsy, one foot coming down more heavily than the other. It was quite a scary figure actually, for a small ten-year-old boy.
"Still, did you want to scare me into a blast-ended skrewt? Why didn't you wake me?"
Draco smiled. He understood from Harry's tone that the black-head wasn't angry anymore, who had just been startled. Because when Harry was angry, you bloody well knew he was angry.
"So, we still have about an hour I think before Filch comes to drag us out of our beds. Not literally of course," Draco hastily added, knowing that since Harry was new and Filch veritably looked capable of the act, he might take him literally, "he just yells in the halls and kicks doors open here and there."
Harry refrained from any comment. Anyone would probably think that this was a horrible way to wake up. But he himself hadn't gotten the warmest and most loving treatment at the Dursleys, so really, this looked like heaven on earth for him.
"What do you start with today?" He asked the blonde.
"Could you guys stop talking!" Jeff groaned as his hand appeared over the side of the top bunk and slapped against the wood. "I'm trying to sleep here!"
Draco's eyes turned to grey ice as he popped his head to the side to take a look at Jeff.
"Do what everyone does: pull your pillow over your head and shut it."
The raven thought his friend sounded almost exactly like Snape when he talked like that. It was also when he disliked him the most, and he nudged him n the ribs to let him know. Really, he didn't want to create trouble with his roommates, even if what Draco had said was true and he could move around more freely than he'd thought. The first day had already attracted enough of the school's attention to him.
Jeff leaned over the edge of his bed to look down at who was talking, and when he saw the head of one of the more popular third-years, who had lots of friends among even fifth to seventh years, he swallowed rather loudly, flushed and retracted his head. Not another sound was heard from him. Nonetheless, Harry lowered his voice when he repeated his question to Draco, his tone a little harsh because he was put off with the blonde's intervention.
"What's your first period this morning?"
"European Literature." Draco groaned, pulling his hands from behind his head and burying his face into Harry's pillow, making it clear he would prefer to stay right there than go to that class.
Harry beamed. "Me too!"
"Really?" The blonde looked up, looking just a little more cheerful at the thought now. He had hoped Harry to be in his literature classes. "Do we have English Literature together too?"
"I'm not sure…" the raven hesitated. "Mr. Wright still has to admit me to his class officially first, with the test, but I think the administration put English Literature tomorrow afternoon on my timetable.
Draco quickly went through what he had already memorized of his own timetable, but couldn't recall having a literature class at that time. He sighed. This meant they only had European together. But it was something to look forward to for this morning at least.
"So?" Hermione interrogated Harry when the four of them were seated in the courtyard shared between the two dormitory sections.
The raven had been called apart for his test with Mr Wright right after he'd eaten (or barely eaten in his case), and had only been able to talk about it with Ron during their afternoon lessons, until they all came together after the school day had ended.
Ron was already grinning, giving away the positive result, and Hermione started smiling broadly as well. "You passed?" She squeaked, her voice rising a few notes.
"I did." Harry admitted proudly, his chest feeling like buoy, or a hot-air balloon.
Hermione threw her arms around his neck, bumping his head where he'd hit it that morning in the process, but Harry didn't complain. Draco's observant eyes had noticed along the years that the boy seemed to shy away from physical contact at first, but when you persevered, he came to love the ones who did. How could one not love warmth and affection from true friends?
"I told you not to worry like that." The blonde interjected, a slightly bit condescendingly. Ron seemed a little annoyed whenever he did that, but in this case he agreed, so he let it go.
"It's true, mate. If Siberia thinks you're capable, the woman who would rather commit suicide than admit that anyone has done a good job, then you know you're safe."
After the long period of stress and starvation, Harry was ravenous for a good meal. And treacle tart. Oh, how he was craving treacle tart after his victory! But dessert was never served at dinner, only at lunch, and even then it usually was just a pudding of some kind. St-James might've been an elite school, but when it came to making meals for hundreds of people at once, no one could offer home-cooked quality.
Over the first few weeks, Harry was told a lot of things about daily life at St-James, and experienced a lot of it too. For example, if he wanted treacle tart for dessert, he would have to wait for the first holiday, which would be Halloween. Every year they would get lots of candy and desserts for dinner.
Other things that he got to know was of course the way everyone simply switched beds all the time. But only the beds. Since it was too bothersome to drag your things with you every time you changed room on a whim, and it would of course be too obvious if everyone was constantly moving around their suitcases, the students used their original rooms for storage of their personal belongings, and only crept through the halls to another room when Filch had done his first round in the evening.
That was when a burst of silent activity came up. After the official bed-time (which was only compulsory for the first to fifth year students) had passed and the old surveillant had checked everyone was in their beds, almost every door creaked open and pupils sneaked back and forth all the time. Sometimes just to bring messages or things, sometimes to switch places with another, or sometimes to have a little party or other.
This lasted until about midnight. By then, lots of students actually got tired, especially during the week or exams, and after that time someone was only occasionally to be found in the halls, and chances of collisions seriously reduced.
It was such an unexpected aspect of the night life in the dorms, and such an exciting one too, that Harry and Ron could not let the opportunity pass to take part in it. Sometimes Harry switched places with one of Ron's roommates, and sometimes Ron switched with Jeff to sleep above Harry. Other times Draco came over, or Harry went over to him. There was no need for switching then. They were more used to sharing a bed.
By then, Harry and Ron had shared a lot of their nocturnal adventures with Hermione, and from her reaction, it looked like it wasn't the same in the girls' dormitory. Girls just like to have their own things, their own bed, for their comfort, Harry assumed. They just seemed a little more protective, or possessive that way.
The bushy-haired girl had been absolutely against it at first of course. It was an infraction of the rules! And rules were meant to be followed, because if they weren't, it was just chaos! And she was right, Harry admitted, once Filch disappeared back into his own quarters every evening, the entropy level of the boys' dormitory went through the roof! But it wasn't bad, it was amazing! And after some lengthy discussions, Hermione came to see the appeal, and began to lean towards envy.
That was what pushed Harry and Ron one night to do a little exploring. The raven had told his red-haired friend about his escapade outside the building, and they thought that if Hermione took the risk, she could come down to the bathrooms on her side, slide out and come into theirs. Or they might go to her side if she opened the window for them.
The problem with that case, however, was that having a girl among all the boys in the middle of the night would be too obvious, and would cause a stir. And since every bed was already filled, where could she sleep? There was no one to switch with. And she could never use their bathrooms in the morning. So she would have to crawl back to her side in the early morning…
It was just too unpractical. So the next thing they tried was to find some place where they could gather easily, and then separate just as easily afterwards.
Halfway into October, Ron and Harry found just the place while exploring the ground floor. There were little rooms here because Filch's quarters were there, as well as the bathroom and restroom, the common room, and some cupboards for the cleaning crew's equipment. When opening one of those cupboards, they found that it was rather large, and in one corner, there was a trap door.
After moving some things around, they were able to access it and climbed down a metal folding ladder. It looked all of the things that had been present in the school buildings in older times, around the beginning of the 20th century, had been stored here. Or all that had survived anyway. Old chairs, sofa's, tables, chalkboards and ornaments like statues, vases and paintings. Much of it didn't look remotely usable anymore, but the statues and paintings were quite interesting, thought Harry. Ron on the other hand wasn't so impressed.
"This place stinks more of dust than my living room!" He complained when he'd seated himself in one of the mouldy chairs, a rusted spring digging into his backside.
The raven had to admit it didn't smell like these things had seen any daylight in the past fifty years or so, but the works of art claimed his attention. There were marble statues depicting classical Greek themes, busts of important people he didn't know, but also bronze and other metals, and what looked like abstract, contemporary art.
Harry didn't know enough about all those avant-garde movements like Futurism and Impressionism and Dadaism to see anything more in those things than…twisted…bits of metal.
The paintings on the other hand were all recognizable. An art critic could probably say lots of things about their contents, but Harry was just absorbed by the colours, and especially the brush strokes, because it made him think about the artist's hand who had painted it. You could actually see how he'd done it sometimes when it was really thickly layered and roughly made.
Such things were harder to see with books and statues. Books were printed. They were copies of a work of art made by someone. It was harder to feel the presence of the creator. It was more of a presence in thought, in the mind, than in the physical object itself.
"But it could do to just hang out from time to time." Ron went on somewhere behind Harry's back, still going on about the chairs probably. "It's comfortable enough, and I bet no one even knows this place exists.
Harry hummed in a non-committal manner as he walked from painting to painting. There was one little corner with a pair of less old and more comfortable-looking sofa's, which might once have adorned the common room, facing each other. Propped against the wall between the sofa's were a few paintings, from which the first was a depiction of a rather well-fed woman, wearing a pink dress with lots of lace and other ornaments. It looked a little medieval in fashion.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" Ron sighed as he joined Harry. "A picture of a fat lady?" He wondered aloud as he saw the painting. "She looks like some kind of opera singer. These sofa's look a little better though." And he went to try them out. "Definitely better."
"Let's look a little further." Harry said. The room looked quite elongated, but one of the light bulbs at the other end must've broken because the far wall was invisible, cloaked in darkness. How far did it reach?
The two boys probed the shadows, stumbling over rolled up carpets and low coffee tables. And antiques collector would have a field day in this room. At the end, they could see only a little in the glow from the closest lamp, but enough to notice that another trap door was lodged into the ceiling.
Puzzled, they looked for something to open it, soon finding a wooden stick with a hook on it that could only have been designed for the job. Once it was opened carefully, they moved one of the tables under it. Harry being the slightest of the two, climbed on Ron's shoulders and pulled himself up through the hole in the ceiling. Excitement at this new discovery making his heart beat furiously.
He wished for a moment that he was doing this with Draco. But it was a mere, random thought and he dismissed it quickly to look for a switch in the dark room he was now in. Once the light on, his suspicions that it was another cupboard were confirmed. And when he opened the door to look into the hall, another theory was confirmed.
"Ron," he whispered down to his friend who was waiting in the basement room. "We found a passage into the girls' dormitory."
"Well, I bet that knowledge could prove lucrative in a dorm full of boys…" Lucrative being one of the only words that he remembered from the many Hermione had attempted to teach him.
"We're not going to tell anyone!" Harry argued. "This is too perfect. We can meet Hermione whenever we want and gather down here."
"I guess we can." Ron approved as he helped his friend lower himself back through the trap door. "If we find another ladder…"
Ron stopped short. There were footsteps coming from the hall Harry had just checked, coming their way. Someone from the girls' side had heard them…
Thank you, first of all, for all the fantastic reviews! I just love them and there's nothing left I can say :)
Second of all, I haven't forgotten my promise to include the winner of the prize into my story, and Camille Noir will make her first appearance in the next chapter ;)
Last of all, I wanted to talk to you about the length of this story. Since it's getting to be so much longer than I'd anticipated when I started it, and I still didn't get to the main part (for which I've written a few chapters already :D), I'm thinking of splitting it into two parts.
I will finish this one with their time at school, and I will start the second part (the sequel if you will) when they're older, at the time of the flash-forwards. I don't like it when a story has too many chapters, it gets confusing to find certain passages and such. So it would be simpler for me to do it this way, and for you too maybe...
But I wonder what to call the sequel. I've thought to just go for 'Raven' and solving the anagram, maybe symbolizing Harry's growing into adulthood and learning the harsh realities of life, effectively 'becoming' the raven... I don't know.
Or I also thought of 'Snow', which is a translation for 'nevar' (which I didn't know but many of you found out). So it would have a direct link with this story's title. And it would give a nice contrast with the content of the story. Snow being white and pure, and the sequel being dark and messy.
What do you think? Are there other suggestions? I'd like to keep it to one word, simple and beautiful.
Love to hear from every one of you ^^
Aoiika
