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Chapter Twenty-One—Remedial Lessons

"I don't know why she's taking you out of classes to put you in remedial ones."

Harry shrugs and picks up his Transfiguration book. Artemis stirs in his pocket, but he lowers his right arm so that his elbow gently bumps her, and she stops moving around. "She says that it will be better for me to have her undivided attention. And she thinks my poor attempts at Transfiguration in class distract other people."

"You're no worse than Gregory Goyle!"

"It's so stupid!"

Harry has to smile. He thinks that's the first time he's heard Anthony say that word. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Anthony."

"Really, you aren't," Anthony insists, leaning forwards. "Does she think that your Transfiguration is going to go wild somehow and hurt other students? That would be the only legitimate reason to remove you."

"Yeah, I do think so," Harry says, because it's the only thing that makes sense. "She doesn't understand why I'm weak, so these classes are a way of finding out, but also protecting you if my magic goes wild because of my temper."

"You don't have a temper."

Harry has to smile again, this time at Padma. "I really do."

"How would I know that? I've never seen you express it." Padma folds her arms and looks mulish.

Harry just shakes his head. He's never got angry at anything his Ravenclaw friends did, is the truth. He wonders what they would say if they could see how he spoke to Snape. "Well, fine, you don't have to believe me. But I do have one." He's about to say something else, but then checks the time on the watch at his wrist and swears.

"You have to go?"

"Yeah, sorry!"

Padma waves at him and Anthony laughs as Harry dashes out of the Ravenclaw common room. He mutters to himself as he runs towards the end of the corridor and dashes down the stairs. He got used to one time for his Transfiguration class, and now he'll need to get used to another time for these remedial classes.

"Mr. Potter!"

Someone is yelling at him for running in the corridors, probably. It sounds like Professor Sprout. Harry flaps a distracted hand at her and keeps running, ducking around the corner and then sliding down the banister when it sounds like she's coming after him.

He ends up outside Professor McGonagall's office door barely in time. Harry smooths down his robes, hisses a soft, "Stay in the pocket" at Artemis, and then knocks on the door.

McGonagall opens the door and blinks at him, probably because his hair looks ruffled, but then she nods and leads him into the office. "Right on time, Mr. Potter, as usual."

Harry wants to say that he can be on time and his Transfigurations aren't dangerous, so why does he have to do a class that's practically a detention? But he knows she won't listen to that, so he just smiles and says, "Yes, Professor."

"Please sit down at the chair in front of my desk, Mr. Potter."

McGonagall sounds distracted now. Harry glances at her and sees her using her wand to direct a bright, glowing golden orb into the air from behind her desk. Her arm is trembling, and that's strange, because it doesn't look like the orb weighs that much.

It must be made of something other than just light. Harry watches intently as the orb hovers over the middle of McGonagall's desk, and then settles into place. It makes a clink when it does, and McGonagall flinches a little, but she relaxes when no other sound comes from the orb.

Who's going to blow up who here? Harry thinks, settling back in his chair and making himself not reach for his wand. My Transfigurations are definitely not that dangerous.

"What's that thing, Professor McGonagall?"

"It's something that will test your levels of power, Mr. Potter. It's delicate—"

No kidding.

"—so I will ask that you not perform magic or move while holding it. Simply come up and put your hands on either side of the orb, and then wait."

Harry's a little hesitant, but Professor McGonagall is probably not trying to kill him the way Quirrell did. He steps up to the desk, glances at her, and puts his hands on either side of the globe when she nods.

It's warm, is the first thing he notices. It seems to be full of sunlight, and that's what it feels like on his hands, too, relaxing warmth that seeps all the way through him. Harry swallows and keeps his hands in place.

The air above the globe begins to twist and waver. Harry catches his breath, but remembers what Professor McGonagall said, and keeps still.

The air doesn't form an image, even though Harry expects it to. He watches the shimmering patterns dance and alternate, blue and white, the color of Artemis's scales. They form abstract crescents and circles and squares that melt into shapes almost like runes, but not.

He glances at the professor. She's frowning at the images above the orb, tapping her fingers on the desk in a way that makes Harry wince with memories of Aunt Petunia.

"Um, professor?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"Is this what it's supposed to do? Was it supposed to show you something about my magic?"

"It was indeed." Professor McGonagall turns to him, shaking her head. "It should have shown me concrete images, ones that would allow me to measure your magic on a scale of similar images. But this has—remained abstract."

"Does that mean that you can put me back in regular classes now?"

Professor McGonagall sighs. "Mr. Potter, there are many students in this school who would be thrilled to have personal lessons with me."

Then go teach them. Harry manages to resist saying it and struggles to look attentive.

"I just want to be with my friends, Professor. And not to get left behind."

"If anything, this proves that you need the lessons." Professor McGonagall sits up. "It may be less a lack of magical power, and more a lack of focus." She takes a button from a drawer in her desk and sets it before him. "Transfigure this into a beetle, if you please."

Harry sighs and focuses on the beetle, raising his wand. A weak flicker of power makes it grow a few legs.

"Focus, Mr. Potter. Focus as hard as you can and as much as you can on nothing but the Transfiguration in front of you. I think you will find that your power comes more easily." From the way Professor McGonagall glances at the images writhing above the orb, Harry thinks she's also hoping that the focus will make the images of his magic become clearer.

Harry grits his teeth and concentrates on the beetle. He can feel Artemis moving uneasily in his pocket. He knows she wants to help. He knows that she can't.

Again he casts the spell. The button wriggles back and forth, and then turns into a beetle that scuttles to the edge of the desk and nearly escapes before Professor McGonagall extends her hand to catch it.

"Well done, Mr. Potter."

Her voice is a little flat. Harry glances at her and sees that she's still staring at the images of his magic above the orb. He looks up in time to see what looks like the flat edge of a huge sunburst disappearing. Or maybe it was a huge button, for all he knows. It would make sense, because he was enchanting a button.

"You aren't seeing what you want to see, Professor?"

"I am certain that the images will come in time, Mr. Potter." Professor McGonagall doesn't bite the words off, but she does sound as if she would like to. She reaches into a box and produces a small snuffbox. "Now. This into a mouse. And I will watch the images and hope to see a clearer one this time."

Harry sighs, and raises his wand.

"It's beginning to seem as if you don't want to consider my offer of alliance at all, Zabini."

Blaise gives Nott a bored look. He has a theory that this will make the boy bristle and reveal a little more of himself, and it seems he was correct. Nott practically struts in rage, and Blaise holds back a thin smile as he raises a ward around them that he mutters the incantation for too quietly for Blaise to hear.

"You know that we're still in the middle of the common room, and everyone will see if you try to attack," Blaise points out.

Nott leans forwards. His eyes are almost black with what might be rage, what might be something more than rage. "I told you about the advantages my alliance can offer you. Why do you still hesitate?"

"Why do you think?"

"I am not my father."

"And I'm not my mother. You would be allying with me, not her."

Nott stares at him, then abruptly leans back on the couch he's flopped onto and becomes casual again. "Why do you say that? Wouldn't she need to meet your allies and approve any alliance that you make on your own?"

"I don't know how it works in the Nott family, but my mother trusts me."

"Don't talk about my parents."

"I had heard you only had your father. My mistake."

Nott's dark eyes become slits, and for a second, Blaise thinks he really will attack. He sits upright in anticipation. He didn't plan on a duel today, but he could use one. His nerves simmer with tension that he won't be able to shed until he sees Harry and is able to ask how his remedial Transfiguration classes went.

Then Nott turns away, shaking his head, his mouth locking into a rigid snarl. "Maybe I underestimated you. Maybe you don't have anything to offer me after all."

"And maybe you should prove yourself more," Blaise replies. "Assume that I could make an alliance with you, but so far, I haven't seen anything worth making it for."

He gets a wide-eyed glare, and then Nott lowers the ward and turns around to stalk up the stairs to their dormitory. Blaise glances around casually and notices the people who meet his eyes, the people who quickly lower their eyes back to their books, and the people who glare at him.

There's only one of the latter, interestingly. Malfoy.

Blaise holds Malfoy's eyes, calmly, until Malfoy jerks his head down to focus on his book, too. Then Blaise stands up, stretches casually, and makes his way towards the common room door.

It might look like he's retreating after his quarrel with Nott, and he knows Mother would counsel him against that. But he can't wait any longer to find out what happened with Harry.

"She had a Sunburst Orb?"

Harry looks up. He was sitting on the other side of the brazier playing with Artemis, who is hissing soothing cliches, when Blaise came in, and he just sat there and watched her while he talked to Blaise about what happened. He thought Blaise would be disappointed in him.

He can't even produce images of his magic like a normal person.

Now, though, he can hear the quickening excitement in his best friend's voice, and he blinks at him. "Yeah. This huge gold orb. She had to handle it really carefully, she floated it through the desk and dropped it there delicately, and then she told me to hold it and not move. That's a Sunburst Orb?"

"Yes." Blaise gets on his feet and paces back and forth in front of the brazier. Harry smiles at the hungry look on Blaise's face when he turns around again. This is his best friend in his best mood. "It's a priceless artifact that's supposed to measure magic with a precision no spell or potion can."

"Why did McGonagall have it? Is she secretly rich?"

Blaise pauses, blinks at him, and then laughs a little. Harry smiles back. It's not the kind of mocking laugh that he knows someone would use to make fun of him, the way Dudley used to.

"No. I assume she has it because it's a treasure of Hogwarts, and she has leave from the Headmaster to use it." Blaise tilts his head. "But it's usually used in things like criminal trials, to measure how much magic a criminal has and how strong the wards on their cell will need to be, or to study the magic other artifacts radiate."

"She might have used it for Neville, then. Not me."

"You would deserve to have it used for you," Blaise says, and Harry blushes a little at the strength of his smile. "But no, it seems strange that she would decide to."

"Maybe she thinks it would make me take the remedial classes more seriously?"

"But why would she think that, when she didn't explain anything about the orb to you?"

Harry nods. He supposes he won't know, at least for a while, why Professor McGonagall chose to use the orb, so he changes the subject. "Do you think images of my magic wouldn't form because of my connection with Artemis?"

"I know it is true. And I think you may need to release the connection to me."

Harry dips his head so that he can see eye-to-eye with Artemis. "That isn't going to happen, so don't ask about it again."

"But if it would give you more power—"

"I don't want more power! Not compared to you and my Parseltongue!" Harry extends his fingers and lets her twine around them, the way he often did in the cupboard. "And besides, I don't need power the way Neville might. I don't have to fight a strong enemy the way he does. And Blaise and Aradia will protect me if for some reason I do."

"If you are certain."

Harry is sure that he isn't mistaking the tone of relief in her voice. Artemis wants to go on existing. She just doesn't know if it would be the best choice in the circumstances.

"I am certain."

"What are you discussing with her?"

Harry blinks and then blushes again. His conversation with Artemis was so intense that he forgot Blaise was in the room. "Uh, she was volunteering to stop existing so that it would free up my power."

"Of course not."

"Yeah, that's what I told her." Harry nibbles his lip and lets Artemis coil around his throat. "But I do have to come up with something to tell McGonagall. If no images of my magic ever show up, then she's going to suspect something, and she might discover Artemis. Can you think of anything?"

Blaise pauses, his eyes widening. Harry leans forwards, but doesn't demand an answer. He knows that Blaise will share it when he's ready.

It's wonderful to have someone he can trust so much.

Blaise wants to laugh. He wants to hug himself. He wants to hug Harry.

But none of those would be enough to express the satisfaction welling up in him, dark and fierce and wonderful.

This is his idea. Not his mother's. Not suggested to him by Harry or Longbottom, or by something he read in a book. Well, all right, technically by something he read in a book, since he read a book about this years ago. But it's still his idea to use the knowledge right now.

"I can come up with an explanation."

"What is it?"

"Do you know there are conditions that can weaken a wizard or witch's magic? It's not the same thing as becoming a Squib, but it is a permanent effect. And that would account perfectly for why your magic doesn't show up above the Sunburst Orb."

"What would I have gone through?"

"Living with Muggles who hate magic is one of them."

Harry's eyes widen. Then he says. "Wait, I think I read something about this. Aren't those children called Obscurials? And they're destructive. They don't really have magic. They sort of are magic."

Blaise shakes his head. "Obscurials are the—final form of the condition, I suppose you could say. And they're caused by the active suppression of magic. But there are stops along the road to becoming an Obscurial. The magic gets sapped away not by active suppression, but because the magical child is trying so hard to fit in with their Muggle guardians. You didn't know about magic, so it's perfectly plausible that you would be affected by it, but only unconsciously."

"Do you think telling Professor McGonagall about that is the best idea, though? She might feel compelled to—do something."

"Spread it around publicly, you mean?"

"Yeah," Harry whispers.

Blaise comes over to sit next to Harry, and takes his hands. "She can't do anything. She knows that Mother is your guardian, now, and she's not the kind to charge into the Muggle world and try to exact revenge from them. We can just use them as a convenient excuse, and to make people like McGonagall think that you're not hiding anything."

"Is there anything that heals the condition? I don't want to be on a regimen of potions along with the remedial classes."

"No," Blaise says soothingly. "Well, practice can help gain mastery of certain kinds of magic, but we'll just say that you've been doing that anyway, and that's why you've kept up in classes as well as you have. She'll have to accept it, and so will anyone else who thinks that remedial classes for you are a good idea."

Harry swallows and nods. Then a different idea comes to him, and he sits bolt upright.

"Harry?"

"Do you think—would it look suspicious if I wrote about that idea to Sirius?"

"Not suspicious, no, but why would you want to?"

"I want him to hurt," Harry says, and there's a controlled savagery in his voice that's sidling up to the edge of Parseltongue. "I want him to suffer for leaving me here and going off just because Dumbledore said so."

Blaise smiles at Harry, and he doesn't care that his smile is a little too wide and a little too admiring. Harry won't be put off by something like that. He already knows that he fits with Blaise and Aradia, and this is just another way of confirming that.

Blaise squeezes Harry's hands. "I think it's a great idea. Hurt Black as much as you can. Make him suffer the pain that you did, the pain we're going to put into his food, and make him suffer with knowledge, too."

"Oh, I want him to."

Blaise thinks, not for the first time, that the people who suspect Blaise himself is dangerous, as the son of his mother, are right. But they'll be wary around him and stand at least a chance of guarding themselves from the danger that way.

Harry is the one they'll never see coming. No one can look at the innocent, naïve little Ravenclaw he pretends to be so well and suspect how much he wants to cause pain to people who hurt him.

There's a reason Harry is his best friend.

Neville takes a breath so deep that it hurts his chest, and then he walks forwards and leans against the wall beside the fire in the common room. It's a shadowy spot where people really have to concentrate to see anyone, even the Boy-Who-Lived their eyes always follow.

He's going to wait here tonight, until he feels the flash of Voldemort's presence. He has to know what's going on, if someone is carrying around Voldemort's spirit the way Quirrell did last year, and if—

If he can figure out if a piece of that same spirit is possessing him.

The chattering people wash around the common room and up the stairs to bed without noticing him. Neville stands still, and despite everything, he enjoys the sensation. He wishes he was skilled enough to cast the Disillusionment Charm when he's walking between classes, or when he visits Diagon Alley.

Sometimes he just wants to be himself, not everyone's hero.

The chatter dies away into silence, and Neville stands and thinks and waits and waits. At last it seems like everyone has gone up to bed, and he frowns.

Was it all for nothing? Does the person with the shard of Voldemort—

Then his scar abruptly twinges as if it's breaking open. Neville claps his hand to his forehead and stares at the slender figure creeping down the stairs from the first-year girls' dormitory. He never—why would—there's no way that a first-year girl could carry a shard of Voldemort's spirit—

It's Ginny Weasley.

Neville straightens up and speaks before he can convince himself he's better off not doing it. "Ginny!"

She spins around and stares at him, eyes widening. Then she squeaks in something that sounds like fear and clasps her hands together behind her back. She's blushing so vividly that it spills down her face and makes her look as if she's on fire. "N-Neville! I didn't see you standing there! Are you all right?"

"I have to ask the same thing of you."

"Wh-why wouldn't I be all right?"

Neville grits his teeth. His scar is practically aflame, and that's the thing that gives him the strength to walk out of his little corner near the fireplace and stand looking at Ginny. "Because I know that you're either possessed by You-Know-Who, or you have something that's possessed by him," he says. "Ginny, you've got to give it to me."

Ginny goes pale, then, and sways on her feet as if she's going to faint from all the changes in her rushing blood. Neville moves forwards with his hands out. Maybe he can catch her. Maybe he can take whatever it is from her before she Petrifies someone else.

"Neville, no—you can't, you can't—"

"Ginny, you have to—"

"He's my friend!"

"Yeah, that's what Voldemort said to a lot of people during the war," Neville snaps, and ignores the way that Ginny flinches at the sound of the name. His scar feels like someone has taken a branding iron to his forehead. "Ginny, you have to! Do you really want to be like him?"

"He's not Voldemort! He's just Tom!"

Neville hesitates. He has to admit that it seems unlikely that Voldemort would pick such a normal-sounding name, even to fool someone into thinking he was harmless.

"Look," Ginny says desperately, and whips her hands out from behind her back. She has a thin dark book in them. "You can look for yourself! It's nothing evil, nothing bad, just a magical diary left over from when Tom was a student here. It can talk to you! He's my friend, he just wants to survive—"

Neville reaches out and towards the book, and then screams and doubles over, his hands clasped to his forehead. He can feel thick blood sliding between his fingers.

Whatever that book is, it's an artifact of Voldemort's. It has to be. And he can't let Ginny keep it, no matter how sorry he feels for her.

He straightens back up and says as calmly as he can, "You have to give it to me, Ginny."

And then he sees that her wand is pointed at him, and there's a sheen of something darker than blood or fire haunting her eyes.

"A pity," Ginny's voice says, darker and huskier than Neville knows it is. "I did think that you might not notice for a while. But there's a way to make sure that you don't."

"I know what you are now. I'm going to stop you, the same way I did when I was a baby," Neville says, feeling vicious and strong, the way he wants to be but almost never has been.

"I'm sure you would try." Ginny's smile becomes gentle and terrifying. "If you could. Obliviate."