CHAPTER 2: ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER GOLD
Harry woke up at 5:30. He always woke up at 5:30. Like every basic training routine from the Ministry's auror boot camp, it was written in blood somewhere deep down in the twistiest twists of his cerebellum, and so, each day since he'd signed his name on that dotted line and handed over his wand to be weighed and recorded, he lived by the clock.
Needless to say, Hermione and Ron were still asleep: Hermione somewhere upstairs, Ron twenty-or-so feet from Harry's own makeshift bed, spread-eagle on an old quilt. He was covered in a heap of unwashed jackets and snoring loud enough to crack the walls of Buckingham Palace. Some half-forgotten, schoolboy urge rose in Harry at the sight (or maybe at the sound), and he was sorely tempted to walk over and give Ron a good kick… but he restrained himself. Waking Ron would solidly ruin Harry's morning plans, and he really didn't have the time to waste. Who knew when he'd get another perfect hour of uninterrupted darkness?
So — momentarily postponing his desire to knock Ron silly — Harry swallowed back the worst of the staleness on his tongue, shook his cloak off the chair where he'd left it the night before, and tip-toed out of the dark room into the equally dark (though much colder) corridor beyond. His destination? The Forbidden Forest.
He had a rendezvous to make.
…
Two hours later and three floors away, Sam was contemplating his deep resentment of H.U.M.M.'s core requirements. The fact that Charms was a mandatory course was killing him… Transfiguration, too… and Defense Against the Dark Arts for that matter. Couldn't there be more stuff like Potions and Divination… stuff that didn't require words and wands? Sam had never been big on wands. He felt better about magic that came directly from himself — his "inner power" or some other hippy crap. You know, stuff that didn't require a dumb little stick as a go-between. 'Cause, for whatever reason, those dumb little sticks had never really warmed up to Sam, always seemed to give him a crap-load of grief that they never gave anybody else. (He still remembered the eighth-grade quesadilla incident, and he wished he didn't). On top of that, everybody knew that the American educational system lagged behind the general crowd, and he'd never been all that good back in the U.S. (at least when it came to wand-work), which meant he wasn't going to be any good here in England. All in all, it was situation normal… which he meant in the World War II way.
That aside, Sam was a dedicated student, and — despite his loud and frequent mental groans — he pushed through the heavy wooden door to the Charm's lecture hall three minutes ahead of schedule. There were already a decent number of students there, mostly half-asleep ('cause, whatever the clock said, it was way too early to be up), but there nonetheless. Sam joined the throng with a yawn, forcing himself not to select a seat at the very, very back. Two rows from the door, though; that was okay. And if he slouched way down… Well… that was okay, too, right? He wasn't really hiding. He was there after all, wasn't he?
And actually, "there" wasn't such a bad place to be (or wouldn't have been if he didn't suck so much). The hall's walls, at least, were beautiful, each stone a slightly different hue of earthy gray, so that together they created this formidable, but still somehow homey, patchwork of rock. As a great appreciator of architecture, Sam took the time to admire how smoothly the blocks fit together, so flush, in fact, that he fantasized they must've come from the same quarry… one big family of stone, relocated and reunited many miles away from their homeland, so that now they were so grateful to be back together they were grasping at each other with all the strength their rocky arms could muster and would never ever let go. It was a nice thought. Probably not true, he relented, but nice.
Then the professor coughed, a sound amplified by the projection spell he had going, and Sam was dragged back down into his desk and the reality of his situation… which was not-so-nice. Charms. Fan-fucking-tastic.
The issues began almost immediately. Silent summoning spells. Sam listened with a nearly painful degree of attention as the professor explained the theory behind all magic that involved the relocation of physical material, which Sam understood just fine. A small part of him hoped that maybe, for whatever reason — new school, new teacher, new year, or simply the right combination of pants, shoes, and shirt — this would be the day. This would be the day where suddenly his long history of failure fell away and revealed the real, kick-ass Sam Campbell underneath!
Except not.
Theory he could do, but five minutes into the relegated practice time, it became apparent that he was just as terrible in England as he had been back in New Mexico. The pin cushion he was supposed to be summoning glared at him across the intervening yards like some extremely ornery sea urchin and refused to do more than skid in small circles around the tabletop. The plump, Indian girl next to him (who had succeeded on her third try) had begun giving him sympathetic looks half-a-minute back, and Sam could tell she was working up to the big question.
"Excuse me…" Yep. Here it was. "…Would you like some help?"
Much as he griped about it (about being treated like an overgrown man-child, that was), yes, Sam would like some help, so he shot her his best I-peed-the-rug puppy smile, and said, "Yeah. Yeah, help would be great. Thanks. I have a lifelong rap-sheet of seriously screwing up at this type of thing."
The girl perked up with an answering curve of her lips, which caused her dark golden chipmunk cheeks to puff out, and said, "Well, I can't promise I'll be able to fix a lifetime of screwing up, but I can try to give some pointers."
"Go ahead," Sam nodded, attention fixed on her as if she was about to deliver the eleventh commandment, "I mean, nothing can make it worse, right?"
"Alright," she smiled, a bit shy now that she had the podium, "Well, from what I saw you're a bit tight in the wrist."
"And you're thinking too hard," a new voice broke in. Also female. When Sam and the Indian girl looked up, she smiled to soften the blow, pushing hair that was spider-web thin and sun-on-snow pale back behind her ears.
Sam made a mock suspicious face. "How can you tell what I'm thinking?"
The girl shrugged and graced them with another broad smile. "It looked like you were going into labor," she said.
The Indian girl laughed, and added, "I suppose it kind of did."
Sam winced. "Fair enough," he said, thoroughly kicked, "So, how do I think… less hard?"
"Question of the century," the blond girl sighed.
"Maybe focus more on the general goal rather than the specifics of what you're doing?" the Indian girl suggested.
"And don't scare the pin cushion off with angry thoughts," the blonde hopped back in.
Sam raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "Alright. Keeping all that in mind, here goes nothing."
The Indian girl (whose name he later learned was Prisha) said that she thought the pin cushion made a more directed shuffle this time, but Sam thought that was probably the optimistic-to-the-point-of-flat-out-lying view of the situation. Fact was, he still sucked ass, and he didn't improve in the next forty minutes, though he did attract a lot of sympathetic looks and eagerly-dropped tips from the surrounding girls, and slightly more exasperated looks and reluctantly-given advice from the surrounding males. The professor didn't appreciate the feeding ball that had formed, and he came over to break it up and give Sam a look that said, "I've seen your kind before and have little hope for your revival, but for now I shall put up with your presence in my class." It was a look Sam was used to.
But thank the fucking lord he had Divination next, and Divination was another matter entirely. Sam rocked at divination. Forget the tea leaves and the crystal balls; as soon as he scaled the ladder into the smoke-warmed loft, air ripe with incense and sweat, his inner psychic awoke from its light slumber. It was an odd sensation, but one Sam had become accustomed to over the years, his own self diffusing out into the thick air and other things beginning to diffuse in to fill the vacated hotel rooms in his mind.
For instance, the kid to his right was worrying about how stupid he was going to look in a couple of minutes. He didn't want the señoritas to see him like that. The two girls behind him were only in this class for the credits and firmly believed that divining the future was one big hoax. And the professor would make a dramatic entrance in exactly… 12.3 seconds.
And counting… three seconds now… two… one…
"Welcome, class!"
The spider-armed woman burst from behind a curtain with an accompanying cloud of lavender smoke, which pooled around her feet like an obedient dog as she strode forward into the cleared semicircle at the front of the room. Sam thought she looked a bit unstable (in more ways than one); she probably shouldn't've been wearing heeled boots, but, then again, that was just an opinion. Behind thick, round glasses, her eyes swelled huge and orb-like. Other than that, however, she was as bony as bony could be, and every time she took a tottering step on her heels, he had to prevent himself from wincing. She was gonna fall over and crack in half any second now. Except, no… he knew she wouldn't actually because he was a psychic, and if something disastrous like that was about to happen, he would've sensed it by now.
"Good morning, good morning," the woman continued. "I am Professor Trelawney, great-great-granddaughter of Cassandra Trelawney, to whom I hope your History of Magic Teacher has had the presence of mind to introduce you." The woman smiled over their heads as if in fond remembrance, though Sam was sure she hadn't been born at the time of the famous Seer's death. She stayed that way for a moment, the students eyeing her awkwardly. Then, as if coming back to herself, Trelawney continued airily, "Not to discredit the value of other subjects, of course, but they are all rather ephemeral and nit-picky in comparison to the vast and eternal oceans of time and the mind."
As she spoke, Sam settled into one of the too-small chairs that surrounded the professor's semicircle. The thin wire backing looked more like lace than metal, and, even though his psychic abilities assured him it wouldn't, common sense told him the chair was not gonna be able to hold up the full two-hundred and twenty pounds that made up his body. He ended up perching gingerly on the edge, leaning some of his weight onto the equally fairy-thin table next to him.
Someone else sat down across from him, but Sam was caught up on the professor's tottering steps and dramatically gesturing arms, and he didn't turn to see who. The guy had other plans.
"Hey," he said, leaning forward to grab Sam's attention. "Is this the first time this class is meeting?"
He sounded skeptical, and Sam twisted his head to find that it was the same guy he'd met yesterday in the hallway, the fellow American whose sense of fashion came straight from the backwater parts of the country where people were stuck twenty years behind the times.
"Hey," Sam smiled, surprised. Not the type of guy he'd thought to find in Divination. "Yeah, it is actually. Budget cuts happened last year, and they weren't sure they were gonna have funding to keep the department as large as it used to be, so the professors were all off fighting some administrative battle, but they're back now, and, yeah, long story short, this is the first time we're meeting."
"Cool," the guy said. "Though I don't know why the fuck I'm here. I need to go talk to the asshole who put me in this class."
"Not a believer?" Sam smirked. He'd met a lot.
The guy shrugged. "What, are you? Although that's not really what I meant. I meant I'm here to learn about magical creatures mostly, and de-hexing things without having to use goddamn wands or whatever. I'm not a wizard, so what fucking good could this possibly do me, bat-ass crazy or not?"
"Ahh…" Sam smiled with a nod, "one of the ever elusive muggles. It never hurts to learn theory though, man."
"What theory?" the guy snorted. "D'you see that whacked-out old broad?" He inclined his head not-so-subtly towards Professor Trelawney. "Lady wouldn't be able to sense if the goddamn Enterprise was about to crash through the tower wall, so sorry, pal, but I don't think she's gonna be much good in teaching me the theory of jack-squat."
Sam felt his smile broaden. For sure the dude wasn't what anybody'd call polite, but Sam was beginning to share his doubts about the professor. (She'd begun to spin futures for a few of the students in the front row, and from the things she was saying, Sam was pretty sure it was all coming out of her own loopy brain, not theirs.)
"I'll grant you she's a little bit… odd," he acknowledged with a tip of his head, "but that doesn't mean Divination as a whole is a load of trash. You gotta have a bit o' faith."
"What, you seriously believe in that hippy-dippy crap?"
"Oh yeah, man," he grinned, "I'm all hippy, and I can prove it, too."
"Shut up. You cannot."
"Can too."
The other guy's challenging chin jut was all the invitation Sam needed. He closed his eyes and let his self drift away again. The senses came faster this time, almost as if they were seeking him out. Skeptical, cocky, but also nervous about something, and very, very alert. The dude's thoughts were too confusing right now for Sam to get a clear read on, though, so he commanded, "Think about something specific."
Sam got a brief flash of heat and fear, but that was only for a split second before the thought waves settled into the contemplation of a burger... perhaps worship was a better word. Sam rolled his eyes. "Food, really? Could you be any less original?"
"No way," the guy sneered, hazel eyes narrowing. "That was a guess. What type of food?"
"A hamburger," Sam told him with a challenging smirk of his own, "heavy on the onions."
"No fucking way," the guy said, but this time his eyes had gone wide and he was shaking his head. "That's just wrong."
"I'm psychic," Sam explained, feeling more smug than he probably should've, but he liked a bit of flash sometimes; was that a crime? "It has its perks."
"Dude, that is beyond creepy."
"What, you don't think it's cool at all?"
He scowled. "Can you, like, tell what I'm thinking all the time?"
"Oh, come on, no. I have to actively try, and I do have some respect for people's privacy; I don't listen in on all their personal shit." He shrugged. "Even if I did, I'm not really that good. Thoughts are complicated."
"What were you sensing before I started thinking about the burger?" the guy pressed, clearly not satisfied.
"Basically that you're a dick," Sam grinned. "But," he added, holding up a playful finger, "you were also feeling… I don't know… cautious… about something. You seemed kinda, like, tense. Like, nervous and excited at the same time." Sam folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. "But that's all I got. Most of the time it's like that: raises more questions than it answers."
"Huh," was all the other guy managed to say before they were interrupted by the professor.
"Excuse me," she said, rather pointedly, although she wasn't looking at them, "But I appreciate silence in my classroom. Speech interferes with the still waters of the mind."
Sam's table partner snorted. "In that case you think she might consider shutting her cakehole once in a while," he muttered.
Professor Trelawney coughed in a rather undignified manner, and Sam was sure she'd heard. He pressed his lips together to prevent himself from grimacing… or smiling… He couldn't be sure which.
"I'm Sam," he murmured in a low voice, keeping his body turned towards the professor, but speaking across the table to the American guy. "What's your name?"
"Dean," the guy provided, "Your psychic powers couldn't pull that one out of my brain?"
Sam shrugged. "Don't know," he said, "Didn't try. Though if you're open to brain invasion, let me know, and I won't bother asking in the future until I've exhausted my own interrogative abilities."
"Ew. No. Trust me, you don't wanna be in my head."
Sam snorted. "I'll take your word for it."
"'Cause it's, like, naked chicks twenty-four-seven," Dean went on, "and pie. And when those two things come together it can get pretty wild."
"You're weird."
"Don't I know it."
…
Hermione woke up to a muffled scratching at the door. Praying that Ron would have the sense not to answer it, she stuffed her hair back from her face and hurried down the stairs, feet getting chills from the icy hide of the naked flagstones.
As it turned out, she needn't have worried about Ron. He was still snoring up a storm, and she nearly tripped over him in her scuffle towards the door because, for some mysterious reason of his own, the moron had disguised himself in a pile of smelly clothing.
Therefore, it was with a slight scowl that Hermione cracked back the oak panel to peer out into the now brightly lit hallway.
An owl hopped in. Politely, it raised its leg and stared up at its recipient with very large and very orange eyes. In no un-plain terms, the owl's expression said, "Please don't waste my time."
Hermione didn't. She bent down and untied the bit of rolled paper with sleep-clumsy fingers, and then straightened again to read it.
It was quite to-the-point. "Prof. Granger, Please come to my office the moment you receive this message. Sincerely, Prof. Crouch."
Hermione scowled and shook off any thoughts she'd had about cooking eggs and giving Ron some much-needed talking down. It looked like she'd be going to see the insufferable Mr. Crouch instead, which was really the last thing she wanted to be doing with her morning. But she didn't have much of a choice. Sighing, she tossed aside the letter, thanked the owl, and then humphed back up the frigid staircase to get changed for her upcoming tête-à-tête.
Mr. Crouch, conniving monster that he was, had long ago secured a fine set of rooms for himself in the divination tower… And then proceeded to make them distinctly un-fine. He'd removed most of the furniture, and the ice from his heart had mixed with the darkness of his personality to thoroughly demoralize the usually warm-looking and comfortable stone walls that were ubiquitous in the castle. Now the rooms were just… so Crouch-like. Hermione had to hold back a shudder as she entered.
There was no preamble. As soon as the door had whimpered closed, Crouch was saying, "I need you to cover for McConelly, who is on maternity leave, and Jameson, who met with the wrong end of a Blast-Ended Skrewt." Was there a right end? "It will be at least a month." He barely glanced up at her during his monologue, and his voice seeped out goopy, gray indifference. It pooled in the air between them like a solid wall.
Hermione's brain, for its part, throbbed with indignation. Two sets of classes on top of her own? It was virtually impossible, and Crouch knew that, had devised it specifically to drive her out because she was young and female and brilliant, and he hated that. She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd had the Skrewt imported just for this purpose. Ha! She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd knocked up Professor McConelly!
But Hermione had always been able to surmount the impossible before, and she wasn't going to let some gray-mustached old codger — however odious — stop her now.
So she said, "I'll need their schedules and lecture notes. Please have them sent to my rooms," and, when Mr. Crouch nodded without looking up from his papers, spun and stormed out in a silent typhoon.
…
Ron had been anticipating Hermione's return with distinct apprehension.
He knew she was stressed (because Hermione was always stressed), and he was eager to help. Perhaps his reasons were more selfish than altruistic, as he'd had bad experiences with getting snapped at and stepped on by a stressed Hermione, but the overall intention was still good. Anyway, he figured that his vaguely formed, big-picture goals would go over a pound or two more smoothly if he could get a nice, book-happy Hermione instead.
But he didn't really know Merlin's left foot about stress reduction, and it seemed more likely than not that he was just going to end up fucking himself over worse than he already had by turning up wet and broke on her doorstep. He'd considered cooking something, but quickly figured that that would most likely result in the added cost of a hazardous waste removal team (which could hardly count as a step forward in Operation Hermione). He'd also thought about cleaning up a bit, but, then again, Hermione was so picky about how everything was arranged that, with Ron's luck, that would only heighten her stress.
In fact, Ron had a feeling that anything he did outside of sitting in place with his mouth shut and his hands safely in his lap would probably heighten Hermione's stress. His mere presence was undoubtedly enough by its sweet little lonesome.
When she finally did creak back through the heavy oak door, Ron's internal demons had driven his already pale skin three shades whiter, and he felt the tiniest bit faint.
Hermione, who, yes, was visibly a good deal more stressed, frowned at him and said, "Ron, are you sick? You look like a ghost just walked through you."
"What?" said Ron, shocking himself out of his own aggravating mental track (which had bitten its tail and become a loop a good ten minutes back). Noticing Hermione and the stressed face, he swallowed and put on a very un-comforting-looking wafer of a smile. "I'm great. How are you?" —bloody stupid thing to say.
Hermione gave him a funny, slightly scowlish look, and dropped into the armchair across from him.
"Stressed," she said, which Ron knew. It was so blatant in the tight purse of her lips and the persistent crease of her forehead that even Crabbe and Goyle probably could've seen it.
Ron decided to carry on, though. "Why's 'at?"
Hermione scrunched her eyes shut, which was a shame because Ron loved her eyes, always soft brown, but not stupid soft. Intelligent and alert. He'd never understood how her eyes were possible. Maybe they weren't. Maybe it was magic.
Hermione was immune to Ron's silent adoration. "It's work," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand as her eyelids drooped back open. "I have to stand in for two other professors and I'm already swamped by my own classes. But I can't say 'no' because…" Rather than elaborating, she just shook her head and held up her hands as if it were obvious. It wasn't, not to Ron at least, but he nodded anyway.
Hermione shook her head again and then puttered back to her feet. "I should finish up my stack of essays to grade," she sighed, "No time to waste now."
"Alright," Ron said, though it wasn't really. He felt like a piece of furniture that did not mesh with the room; like all the other furniture was looking at him and making snide comments to their furniture mates: "Ugh… who's that guy?" But all Ron said was, "I'll be here," in a voice that Hermione, who was already halfway up the stairs, would've needed an extendable ear to hear.
He was surprised, therefore, when not ten minutes later her voice echoed down the staircase with the clear intent of finding none other than himself. "Ron!" she called, "Harry's at the door. Can you let him in?"
Harry? What was Harry doing there? And how had Hermione known that? Nobody had knocked. But then again, both of his friends were far better at magic and commonplace silent communication than Ron had ever been, so he didn't doubt they had their ways. He didn't voice any of his questions, though; he simply shook his head and hollered back, "Yeah, I got it!" as he groaned upright and tottered over the rugs to the entrance.
However, when he undid the lock and pulled back the panel, it wasn't Harry on the other side; it was a shorter, fatter man with a fluffy brown beard and watery, blue-gray eyes. The man was dressed in drab and unremarkable robes, which were covered here and there with bits of moss, drying dirt, and crystalline strands that looked suspiciously like spider webs to Ron's well-trained eye. He shuddered inwardly.
"Er… Hello," he said, "Can I help you?"
The man's face scrunched up on one side like Ron had just slapped him with some sort of tasteless joke, and then the muscles relaxed again in apparent comprehension. "Ah," said the fat man as his lips tugged into a half-mouthed smile. "Hey, Ron; it's Harry." He patted his chub-heavy chest with an apologetic, "Glamour," in explanation, before pushing Ron's shoulder aside so he could get into the room. Only once the door was shut did he tap himself over the forehead with the phoenix-core wand and let the glamour wash away. Layers of fat bubbled into the air. The beard shed itself in a windfall of sparks, and blue irises mossed into weary green as Harry's torso lengthened. Within half a minute, he was full Harry again. The only thing that remained of the fat man were the robes, which were still shabby and covered in the contents of Mother Nature's rubbish bin.
"You've gotten a fair bit better with a wand, mate," Ron nodded at him, trying to keep the tiny stab of resentment in his stomach from escaping with his voice.
"Thanks," Harry sighed. He dropped his cloak onto the same chair as the night before and then dropped himself beside it. "Hasn't helped my natural appearance, though."
Ron snorted. "Yeah," he agreed with a small jog of his eyebrows as he returned to his armchair, "It looks like you had a close call with a vampire."
"Something like," Harry smiled, reaching up to rub some of the blood back into his cheeks, "Work's not easy."
"That's why I choose to remain unemployed."
Harry laughed. "Never knew it was a choice," he said.
"Eh, you know," Ron shrugged, though not even he knew what that was supposed to mean. It was a small nothing, a change of topic. "So what's up with you? Why're you here on a day as bloody awful as this one?"
"Er…" Harry chuckled nervously, "Work. It's always work; our only holiday is over Christmas. Why're you here? I saw you last night when I came in, but Hermione didn't tell me much."
"You stayed over last night?" Ron asked, stunned. He scowled then and raised his voice as he stuck on, "Hermione really is keeping tight-lipped about all this," hoping it'd make it up the stairway. He dropped his voice again and admitted, "I'm here 'cause I can't keep up with the rent anymore, so I'm leeching for the moment, just until I can find a new job."
Harry grinned at him in a tired way. "Well, I hate to smile over your misfortune, but you have to admit it's kind of funny that we're all here again. You know... living together, at Hogwarts, like we're still twenty."
Ron snorted. "No, go ahead. Laugh it up. It'll all be real bloody funny until Hermione starts breathing fire. She wasn't expecting guests."
"She'll warm up to it," Harry assured him. "Give her a chance."
Ron hoped Harry meant more by that than he was saying. Warming up to it would be nice, but Ron would really rather that she warm up to him, and then heat up, and then boil over… because he wanted back in, and if he only had three weeks to get there, he was going to need to turn the flames on high.