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Chapter Seven—Lower Powers

"Harry? Are you okay?"

Blaise has resisted asking the question all week. When he first figured out that Harry was probably hiding something from him, he was hurt, but willing to wait and see if Harry eventually told him about it. After all, for him not to be talking about it and thinking about it so hard instead probably means it's important.

But now, a week has gone by, and Harry is quiet most of the time, and Blaise is tired of waiting.

Harry sighs and looks up at him. "It's about why Professor Flitwick wanted to talk to me last week. He—cast a few spells on me, and found out that my wand is normal, but my power is really low."

"What? Why?"

Harry shakes his head. "He didn't say. And I don't really understand the part about my wand. It liked me in Ollivander's shop! Sparks came out of it! So why am I taking so long to learn spells with it now?"

"You can cast them."

"Yeah, but after like fifty tries or so. I'm not kidding, that's how long it took me to cast Lumos," Harry adds when Blaise stares at him, and runs his hand through his hair. "It's just—weird. Do you think that my magic is draining away from me or something? That I won't be able to cast anything soon?"

"It takes powerful magic to be a Parselmouth," Blaise reminds Harry, gesturing at the table where Artemis sprawls, and Harry ducks his head. "So I don't think that can be it. What if it's a different reason? Were you thinking of a specific spell when you made the sparks come out of your wand?"

"What? No. I didn't know any specific spells then."

"So I think that your magic probably tends really, really strongly towards magic that doesn't involve spells," Blaise says. "Like Parseltongue, or like Potions." They've only been brewing independently for a month, and from what Harry has said, his performance in Potions will never please Snape, but Blaise can already tell that Harry is an instinctive brewer, and his magic surges around the potion and the ingredients as if inspecting them. It's just practical knowledge he lacks. "That could cause a problem with your wand."

"So the sparks were kind of wandless magic? Accidental magic? Even though it was with a wand?"

"Right. You should try to cause the effects of spells with your wand without speaking the incantation or doing the movements. Just imagine that you're making light appear without thinking about Lumos."

"Huh! That could work. Thanks, Blaise." Harry smiles at him, and Blaise smiles back, glad that at least part of what Harry was worrying about was so simple to solve.

"Does Professor Flitwick know why your power is so low?"

"Um. No. He didn't really have any theories."

And Harry is looking shifty and glancing away from him again. Blaise sighs. It's a good thing Harry didn't end up in Slytherin. He can't lie worth a Muggle.

On the other hand, Blaise might only know that because he knows Harry so well.

"Can you please tell me?" Blaise asks softly. "Just because Professor Flitwick doesn't know doesn't mean you don't."

Harry sighs and stares down at the stinging nettles in front of him, which he's shredded so thin that he's almost ready to put them in the potion. Blaise crosses over to him and puts a hand on his. Harry glances up at him, eyes bright and miserable.

"I have some ideas," Harry whispers. "But I don't want to tell you right now. Is that okay?"

"Of course." Blaise touches Harry's hand one more time and then pulls his own back. He's had so few friends in his life that he would want to share secrets with them right away, but he has to remember that Harry isn't necessarily the same way. "Now, are you ever going to add those nettles to your potion, or are they just going to disintegrate?"

Harry smiles and drops the remains of the nettles into the potion. Blaise smiles and leans over to study the bubbles rising to the surface. They look perfectly like the ones that Blaise saw the last time his mother brewed the Swelling Solution.

"Good. Now, let's pick up the crumbled chalk…"

"Are you ever going to tell Blaise?"

Harry sighs and rubs a hand over his face. He's on the way back from practice with the Stumbling Jinx, which they're learning in Defense. He prefers to practice by himself where his roommates can't see him and start getting all concerned about how long it's taking him to master each spell. Harry knows they would be partially concerned about him, but really more concerned about whether he'd lose Ravenclaw House points.

"I think you should tell him," Artemis goes on, sounding concerned. She twines around Harry's arm and shoulder. Harry would normally tell her to go back into a pocket, but she's spent an awful lot of time there lately, and they're in a distant corridor far away from everybody. Most people are at the Halloween feast. "He gets upset when he thinks that you're keeping things from him."

"He would tell me to get rid of you."

"I offered to go."

"But I don't want you to go!" Harry stops in the middle of a corridor and scowls down at Artemis, who flicks her tail at him sulkily. "Why can't you understand that, Artemis? You're my best friend! You don't really want to disappear from existence, either, do you?"

Artemis lowers her head after a second and touches his wrist with her tongue. It's warm and a little ticklish. "Of course not."

"Then why do you keep saying that I should get rid of you and draw my magic back?"

"I keep thinking of what Mrs. Zabini said about power. You'll need all your power to survive in this world, Harry, because it doesn't really care about you. What if you need your magic someday and you can't use it because I'm taking it all up?"

"I want friends more than I want power," Harry says stubbornly. And it's true. He thinks of what Mrs. Zabini told him about power, too. But he doesn't want to be powerful and lonely. He was lonely for the first six years at the Dursleys'. It hurt a lot more than having people sneer at him because he can't get spells right on the first try.

Artemis starts to reply, but a huge roar echoes from somewhere up ahead. Harry gasps and backs into the wall. Artemis immediately rears up on his shoulder and flicks her tongue in and out rapidly. Harry thinks she's also using some of her magic, which is his magic and gives her gifts most snakes don't have, to look around.

"What is that?" Harry whispers.

"I don't know! It reeks, though, and if that roar is the—"

The sound echoes down the corridor again, and Harry hastily grabs Artemis and stuffs her in his pocket, ignoring the way that she clamors at him. He knows what it is now. Professor Quirrell mentioned trolls in Defense Against the Dark Arts last week and talked about how big and stupid they are and how bad they smell. It has to be a troll.

Harry can smell the scent wafting towards him a few seconds later. Like Artemis says, it reeks, even worse than the one time that Dudley got food poisoning and Harry had to clean out the bathroom afterwards.

He turns and starts to hurry up the corridor. Whatever a troll is doing here, he wants to get far away from it.

But then the corridor shakes, and Harry spins around in time to see the troll coming around the corner. It's so huge that it's ducking so its head doesn't brush the ceiling. It's swinging a huge club.

It seems him and roars, and heads towards him with strides so fast that Harry knows he'll never get out of the way in time.

Harry clenches his hands, his body shaking with the force of his heartbeat. He hates this. He wants to run away, but he already knows that he would never get far enough in time. He can feel Artemis wriggling furiously in his pocket, but even if she was venomous, he doesn't think any bite would get through the troll's thick skin.

He can think of spells that would help him, but he won't be able to cast any of them fast enough.

I hate this! I want to live!

The troll swings its club idly and showers some fragments of stone loose from the wall. Harry jumps, because one of them is moving. Even as he watches, it totters up on what look like six spindly legs and runs straight towards the troll, becoming more confident with each movement.

Other shards of stone fly towards the living one and bind to it. They encircle what Harry think might be kind of like the thing's head. Or they're forming…teeth? Really long and jagged teeth?

The thing canters right up to the troll's ankle and bites down.

The troll turns around, not screaming, but staring at the little thing in puzzlement. Then it reaches down and picks up the thing, tilting it back and forth as close as it can get its fist to its eyes. Harry inches backwards, hardly believing his luck.

Maybe Hogwarts has little guardians that come to life to protect students when one of them is in danger? Harry wouldn't have thought of that, but then, he isn't smart like a Founder or a great wizard like—

"That's your magic, Harry!" Artemis is practically climbing out of his pocket, poking her head into the air and making Harry catch her hastily before she can fall to the floor. "Can't you feel it? You're animating that thing!"

"What are you talking about?" Harry eases further back. The troll is tossing the little thing up and down in its hand, apparently unable to get a clear look at it. "How can I be moving that thing around when I don't have that much magic left?"

"The kind of magic you use matters! I should have thought of this! You brought me to life, so you can bring other things to life! It's only ordinary spells like Lumos and the others you've been struggling to cast that are a problem!"

Harry's eyes widen in realization.

The troll seems to decide at the same moment that the little thing in its hand might be a tasty snack. It tosses the stone shard down its throat.

Then it screams.

Harry jumps, and then sees the troll's throat bulging and rippling oddly. The stone shards must be working on tearing up the skin and flesh from the inside, he thinks.

But it doesn't really matter if they are, or how much damage they can do. What matters is that the troll is distracted from him, clawing at its neck and mouth. Harry turns around and runs, making sure to keep a hand cupped over Artemis so she doesn't fall out of his pocket.

He doesn't stop running until he gets to a corridor where you can either turn to go up to Ravenclaw Tower or to a staircase that ultimately leads to the Defense classroom. Harry leans against the wall and pants and hurts, holding one hand over the ribs. It feels like someone stabbed him there. It's been months since he ran like that even from Dudley. Dudley usually gives up before he gets too close to Harry.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm all right. What about you?"

"Of course. The troll never even came close to touching me, silly." Artemis's tongue darts out and touches Harry's pulse point, then again. Harry calms down further, closing his eyes and slumping against the wall. "What I want to know is why there was a troll in the school in the first place."

Harry shakes his head weakly. "I have no idea." He checks around himself—this is a more populated part of the school, and someone might see Artemis—and then takes her out of his pocket and cradles her against the underside of his jaw. Artemis hisses softly and soothingly and coils around his neck.

"What did you mean about me bringing things to life?" Harry asks, when he's managed to stop panting.

"The stone thing that came from the wall," Artemis says at once, and she sways so hard that Harry takes her off his neck so that he can hold her in his palm and see her that way. Artemis coils back and forth, looping and doubling back on herself. "That's what your magic can do! It can create things that move!"

"That doesn't seem much like creating you and helping myself speak Parseltongue."

"But you brought me to life. You brought the stone thing sort of to life. What were you thinking right before it formed and came over to attack the troll?"

"That I wanted to live."

"When you really want something," Artemis says with certainty. "That's when your magic responds. You brought me to life because you wanted a friend, and you made yourself speak Parseltongue because that was the best way to create a way to speak to your friend without any Muggles overhearing. And then you wanted to live, and you created a little guardian for yourself that would attack the troll."

Harry exhales in wonder and sits down against the wall. "Wow," he says aloud.

"Potter! There you are!"

Harry jumps, but luckily he was sitting with his arm sort of cocked away from anyone who might come around the corner, and Artemis manages to slither up his sleeve. Patil would probably cry out if she saw her, and she doesn't, so Harry thinks he got away with it. He stands up and dusts off his robes. "Yeah, I was practicing magic," he says. "I missed dinner. Why is everyone else here?" he adds, seeing the rest of their year trotting up behind Patil, followed by some older Ravenclaws.

"Didn't you hear?" Lisa Turpin asks importantly. "There's a troll in the dungeons!"

Looked a long way from the dungeons to me, Harry thinks, but he's wise enough to just gape at her. "What?"

Turpin launches into the story, and Harry listens and nods and makes a little gasp of horror despite himself when he hears that the Slytherins had to go back to the dungeons. Of course, he knows that the troll isn't really anywhere near the dungeons and so he doesn't have to worry about Blaise, but it's still worrying to know that he might have had to.

When he's back in his bed in Ravenclaw Tower, he takes Artemis out of his pocket after whispering the spell that will lock the bed curtains. That one took a lot of practice, too, but he really wanted to master it.

He's starting to think that makes a difference.

Ordinary charms just don't hold that much allure for Harry. Why would he really care if he could cast a bright Lumos when the torches in the castle provide all the light he wants, or a strong Wingardium Leviosa when he could just go over and pick something up? But he learned the locking spell a lot more quickly, because he wanted to protect Artemis.

And now he apparently knows how to turn little shards of stone into things.

"What else do you think I can do?" he whispers to Artemis as they cuddle on his bed together and listen to the others discussing the troll. Harry's sure that he'll hear what happened in the morning, but now he has to just shiver. "Do you think I could take pieces of wood or glass or something and make them into what I want?"

"I think you could do it if you desired it enough."

Harry nods. He'll have to work on that. The short bursts of wanting something intensely, like when he was locked up in the cupboard at the Dursleys' or wanted to live, won't work all the time. He'll have to meditate and train his mind.

Or is it training his emotions? Harry has read a few books from the Ravenclaw Tower library that older students recommended which mentioned Occlumency. But that sounded like protecting your thoughts. Are thoughts and emotions the same thing? What is he going to do if they aren't?

Harry falls asleep thinking about it, Artemis a warm thread of magic around his neck.

"Are you all right?"

Blaise smiles a little when he and Harry both blurt that out at the same time as he enters their brewing classroom. Harry smiles anxiously at him and visibly looks over Blaise for injuries. Blaise is touched, even though the gossip spreads so fast at Hogwarts that Harry has to know he would have heard right away if Blaise got hurt.

"I heard the troll was in the dungeons," Harry says, tapping one finger on the rim of their cauldron.

"Yes, that's what Quirrell said, but are you really surprised that it went in a different direction?"

Harry ends up snorting. "Of course not," he says, but he still looks a little worried. "But Quirrell was the one who took it down in the end, wasn't he? That's what Edgecombe was saying."

"No," Blaise says, and rolls his eyes. "Apparently Snape and McGonagall teamed up and hunted it down outside a girls' bathroom, of all things. There was a girl hiding in there, apparently. Some Gryffindor. They thought it was following the scent of prey. But the troll died before it could touch her."

"Oh. They killed it?"

"Yeah." Blaise watches Harry closely, but although he seems a little shaken, he doesn't seem upset. That bodes well for how he's going to react when the truth of what Blaise's mother does really sinks home. Blaise still doesn't think it has yet. "But they said someone must have found it before then and used some kind of spell on it. It was weak and dazed and didn't fight back well. That's what Snape said."

"And you know this how?"

Blaise smiles smugly at him.

Harry just laughs. "Keep your secrets if you want. I'm just glad that it's gone and it didn't hurt anyone."

"Not from lack of trying. Did you know that Longbottom and Weasley were apparently running straight towards the troll? The Weasley who's friends with him, I mean."

"What?"

Harry has his hands clenched on the rim of the cauldron now. Blaise nods. He knows Harry doesn't exactly consider Longbottom a friend, or he would probably call him by his first name, but he feels sorry for him and would be upset if he died.

"Yeah. Apparently Weasley was responsible for the girl hiding in the bathroom in the first place. He said something to her, and she got upset and ran away and hid, so she didn't know about the troll." Blaise shrugs. He doesn't think much of Weasley, and this has only revealed how stupid he is. Fancy upsetting someone enough that she could have died, and then running straight into danger in the name of correcting the mistake. "McGonagall and Snape found them before they got anywhere near the bathroom and made them turn around and go back to Gryffindor Tower."

"Well, there's that, at least," Harry says, and shakes his head. Then he stares at the wall for a second before a slow smile creeps across his face.

"I wonder how the troll got in," he adds, turning to Blaise, "but I suppose the teachers aren't going to tell us. At least everyone survived and we can investigate on our own if you want to."

"You want to?" Blaise blinks. It isn't like Harry to want to run into danger like a Gryffindor.

"Aren't you the least bit curious how a troll got past the supposedly strong wards around Hogwarts?"

Ravenclaw curiosity. Right. Blaise rolls his eyes a little and smiles at Harry. "Well, yes. I'm just not eager to get into trouble or get hurt because we're poking around wards that even the professors might have trouble bending to their will."

"We'll be careful!"

Blaise has the sense that he yields to Harry's enthusiasm too easily, but at the moment, he can't bring himself to regret it. He has a certain amount of curiosity himself as to how a troll got past the wards, and he'd like to figure it out, since he knows well enough that Snape will never tell even the Slytherins the truth.

And if it makes Harry smile…well, Blaise has to admit he'd do a lot to keep his first friend happy.

I am not pleased about the troll.

Albus blinks at the letter that's appeared on his desk. It isn't in any handwriting he's familiar with, and if it was from an outraged parent, he would have expected a Howler. He picks it up and turns it over in curiosity, and casts some more detection spells.

But no, it isn't cursed. It's simply and straightforwardly a letter that says the person in question is displeased about the troll, and nothing else. No threats, no guidance for future actions that the writer wants him to take.

Albus shakes his head in mystification, and puts it away. He would have thought the letter was from Augusta, but he knows her handwriting well, and she would only yell at him about possibly endangering young Mr. Longbottom.

No, it is a mystery.

Aradia sits back in her seat and stares out the window. The shifting color of the sun in front of her says that she will need to shed blood for it soon. Luckily, she's had her eye on a wizard who, the only son and the pride of his family, is nevertheless lazy, a wastrel, a womanizer, and the despair of his mother.

Aradia is in favor of erasing the despair of mothers, when she can.

Will he listen to the letter?

Aradia sent it without her signature partially as a test. Albus Dumbledore would certainly pay attention if he received post from the Black Widow, but he also wouldn't make the kinds of changes that Aradia wants to see made in how Hogwarts is run, not without some kind of assurance from her or promises that she has no intention of making.

Will he pay attention to a simple anonymous warning? Will he wonder how anyone beyond Hogwarts's walls knew what happened, when students were certainly not writing en masse to their parents? Will he conclude that he should perhaps strengthen the wards?

Aradia does not think so. But it will be an interesting test.

The sun beyond her window flashes purple fire. Aradia stands and prepares to hunt.