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Chapter Twenty-Two—Flashes, Glimpses

"Are you all right, Neville?"

"I'm fine, Harry. I just have a headache, that's all."

Harry raises his eyebrows. He highly doubts that's all. Neville has been rubbing his forehead all throughout their study session, to the point that Padma and Anthony, who don't know Neville nearly as well, have noticed. Now, they exchange grim glances, and Padma leans forwards.

"Does it have something to do with—You-Know-Who?" she whispers.

"You could call him Voldemort, you know."

Padma jumps and squeaks. Harry blinks. He's more sure that something is wrong, now. Most of the time, Neville understands that other people will be reluctant to use Voldemort's name, and he doesn't say it in mixed company.

Harry opens his mouth again, but Blaise catches his eye and shakes his head. Harry sits back and lets Blaise take the lead. He kind of wonders why Blaise wants to, since he still isn't friends with Neville in the way Harry is, but Harry will wait and see what happens.

"Have you been to Madam Pomfrey for a headache potion?"

"She says they don't work on curse scars."

Blaise narrows his eyes, and Harry nods. He sees what Blaise was up to, now. Neville admitted that his scar was the source of his pain without thinking about it.

The next second, Neville turns the color of a smashed apple, and looks around at all of them as though he has something to threaten them with. "D-don't tell anyone," he whispers. "Don't tell anyone it's my scar. Please."

"Why not?" Anthony asks.

"I've been to talk to Headmaster Dumbledore, and I've talked with…other people, and—" Neville rubs his forehead again. "Everyone s-says that I'm just feeling something from last year, or something. There's no sign that You-Know-Who got into the school."

"Do you have fuzziness in your head?" Blaise asks abruptly. "As though you're looking at your memories underwater?"

Padma gasps, but Harry doesn't know why. Neville looks at Blaise in what seems like alarm. "Yeah," he whispers. "How did you…"

"A Memory Charm." Blaise's voice is soft, and Harry thinks he's the only one who knows that Blaise sounds like that when he's discussing Sirius Black and the Dursleys. "Someone dared to Obliviate you?"

Harry blinks, wondering why Blaise is taking it so hard. Then he catches Blaise's eye, and he knows. Blaise is outraged because a friend of Harry's was treated like this, and that means a friend of the Zabini family by extension.

Harry feels a fuzziness of his own, but a very nice one. Artemis gives a contented little hiss in his pocket.

"Who would do that?" Anthony asks.

"And how could they even do it without someone noticing?" Padma adds. "Wouldn't Headmaster Dumbledore read your mind and see it?"

Harry turns to stare at Padma, echoed by Blaise. She lifts her head and crosses her arms. "What? It's not a secret, exactly, that he can use Legilimency. Just not something a lot of people know."

"That's the definition of a secret," Anthony begins.

Harry interrupts. He loves the way Ravenclaws debate things, most of the time, but right now isn't the best time to get involved in that debate. "How did you find out, Padma?"

"He stopped me last year to ask me something about Professor Quirrell. The way his eyes flashed." Padma shakes her head. "And there was a pressure on my mind, not a huge one, I wouldn't have noticed it if I wasn't thinking about how bad a teacher Professor Quirrell was, but I felt it."

Blaise closes his eyes. Harry nods at him and faces Padma again. "That's at least an idea, Neville. Maybe you can have Dumbledore check on you and see if he can help you recover the blocked memories?"

"An Obliviate doesn't work like that, though," Anthony interrupts this time, before Neville can really get started talking. "It doesn't block the memories. It erases them. You can't recover them."

"That's the case if the Legilimens who did this replaces them with new memories," Blaise murmurs. His attention is focused on Neville, who's pretty ashen and withdrawn. "Then they resemble a parchment with new words written on top of the old. But when they're simply erased and you feel that kind of fuzziness that signals a Memory Charm? Then there's a chance the old words are—hiding under a layer of clean parchment, as it were."

"I don't want to ask him!"

Harry jumps despite himself. Blaise blinks and leans back in his chair, a cool mask that Harry knows well draping over his face. "All right," he says. "We were discussing the properties of seaweed in a Shrinking Solution. Should we continue?"

"This is concerning, though," Harry says. "Neville, why wouldn't you want him to look? I don't always like him myself, but if I'd been Memory Charmed, I would be more afraid of the person who—"

Blaise lowers his hand and presses it hard into Harry's leg. Harry shuts up. He's wiser than to think that Blaise is acting out of concern for Neville, so he must know something Harry doesn't.

"I don't want to talk about it," Neville mutters, his eyes on the parchment in front of him.

A few seconds pass. Then Padma clears her throat awkwardly and asks, "Do you think it matters if you use fresh or dried seaweed?"

Harry leans back in his chair and lets the conversation swirl around him, while he catches Blaise's eye. Blaise nods grimly, and then focuses on his own work.

Harry sighs and does the same. At least he knows they'll be talking later.

"Why didn't you want me to ask Neville about asking Dumbledore?"

"Did you see the way he reacted?"

"Yes, but he could have been embarrassed about having to ask. I didn't think anything was wrong."

Blaise can feel a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Harry is standing beside the brazier in their private space, cradling Artemis and watching him. Around other people, he might seem calm and concerned and deferential. Right now, he looks ready to fight Blaise if he doesn't get an answer.

"Whoever Memory Charmed Longbottom also put in an aversion to having the memories uncovered," Blaise says. "Not a complicated or intense one, since we could discuss the topic with him, but enough that he'll be averse to Dumbledore or Snape looking into his mind."

Harry blinks for a moment. Then his face snaps into a harsh mask.

Blaise blinks. "Yes?"

"It has to be someone who's pretty good, then. And who knows that both Dumbledore and Snape can use Legilimency. That means it probably is Voldemort, and he's possessing someone, like last year, and—"

Harry looks like he's about ready to march out the door of their classroom and murder Dumbledore. Blaise reaches out a hand to catch his shoulder. "I agree that it's probably the Dark Lord and he probably is possessing someone."

"But?"

"If we act against Neville's stated wishes, it's going to drive that aversion deeper into his mind, and make him avoid the Headmaster and Professor Snape. By the time they take a look, Neville's own mind might work to keep the Memory Charm in place."

"Whoever they are, they preyed on Neville's fear of being weak. And probably his fear of having his connection to Voldemort discovered, too."

Blaise nods. "Yes."

"Why are you so calm about this?"

"Because, at the moment, the Dark Lord isn't stalking either one of us," Blaise says, and waits until Harry makes a face and nods reluctantly. He might not like the distance Blaise maintains from Longbottom, but he understands it. "And because they've unwittingly narrowed our search down for us."

"How do you reckon that?" Artemis hisses something at the end of Harry's words that sounds like a demand, and Harry smiles a little as he touches her back.

"Longbottom wasn't acting like this when we parted from him yesterday afternoon, and the only place he went after that was dinner. And then Gryffindor Tower. I doubt the Dark Lord would risk Obliviating someone in the middle of dinner, and there's little chance that he would learn Longbottom suspected him, either—"

"So the person he's possessing has to be a Gryffindor."

Harry's face is hard and cruel in a delightful way. Blaise smiles. "Precisely."

"Do you know any spells that can detect possession?"

"No, but my mother might."

"We're going to make him sorry that he even thought of coming here."

Blaise smiles back, soaring joy in his heart that he found someone who understands him so well, who doesn't flinch at the roads Blaise is willing to walk down, or the magic Mother teaches him. "Yes."

Harry smiles at him again, and Blaise reaches across the brazier to clasp his hand in solemn promise.

Severus stares at the door through the wards and clenches his hands so hard that his arms hurt. He forces himself to unclench them a second later and takes a breath, shaking his head.

There is a place in the wards where the Dark Lord could easily have passed through. Albus could only have corrected that door if he was aware of it when he was weaving the new wards, and obviously, he had not been.

Severus closes his eyes for a long moment. Then he opens them and considers the area in front of him again, etching the image into his memory. He will share this with Albus—in a Pensieve by preference, through Legilimency if necessary. He must convince Albus that there is a problem here.

He turns and strides towards the Headmaster's office, intent on getting all the way there without being stopped. But of course Harry is waiting for him, and pops up around the edge of a banister the moment Severus reaches the staircase a floor below Albus's office.

"Professor?"

Severus sighs and stops to regard the boy. He still calls him Potter in class, of course, but he's stopped pretending to himself that he won't use the name "Harry" to his mind. "Yes, Mr. Potter? What is it?"

"Are they going to catch the Heir of Slytherin?"

"I am going to try and make sure they do, Mr. Potter."

Harry nods, his eyes downcast. Severus thinks he knows why. A boy was Petrified today, Terry Boot, who shares Harry's dormitory. Severus doesn't think they're particularly close, but it would shake anyone to see a person eating breakfast or casting spells that morning and then lying motionless in the hospital wing that afternoon.

There was another message from the Heir of Slytherin on the wall as well. Severus stared at it for a time, and committed it to memory.

For all the worth that that has. If the Heir is after Muggleborns, the Petrification of the cat and a half-blood student makes no sense.

"Professor?"

Severus blinks himself back to the present, and then scowls. It is one thing to wander mentally in front of someone he accepts, the way he does Harry, but another to do it for so long. "Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"How are you going to make sure that the Petrifications stop?"

"I believe I know how they are getting into the castle and bypassing the wards. I have hope that knowledge may be of some help."

"Oh."

Harry hesitates. Severus waits, his former urgency to get to Albus burning in his chest, but not driving him away. This is important, too, or at least important to Harry, and Severus has no wish to alienate him. Not anymore.

"What's going to happen to the Heir of Slytherin when you catch them?" Harry blurts out.

"They will be removed from the school," Severus says. He doesn't think he can say more than that. If they are a student, they will likely be restrained and the possessing spirit forced out—but he also thinks that if they are an of-age student, that student might go to Azkaban.

"Oh."

"Please tell me if you know something, Harry."

Harry spends a long moment looking steadily at him. Severus resists the temptation to dip into his mind. That kind of thing will hardly increase Harry's trust in him.

Harry's hands clench at his sides. Then he says, "What happens if—if the person who's being possessed resists? Would you still remove them from the school?"

"Yes."

"Even if they're a young student?"

"They would need to be removed from the school to have the possessing spirit removed," Severus says slowly, wondering what Harry is concerned about in particular. He wasn't aware that Harry has any friends among the first-years.

Then again, Harry is still Filius's charge, not Severus's. Severus barely knows him.

After another careful look at Harry, Severus thinks he knows where this is coming from. Whether or not Harry has friends among the younger years, he probably does not want them hurt. And he must worry that being expelled from the school, or even simply removed to St. Mungo's for a time, would prejudice the school against the possessed child.

"We will find a way to make sure that they do not suffer greatly," he says.

Harry jerks a little and looks at him. Then his eyes clear, and he nods. "Thanks, sir. I appreciate that."

He turns and trots down the stairs. Despite his urgency to get to Albus, Severus stands and watches him go for a few minutes.

I hope the compassionate part of him never fades.

It's too bad that the Heir won't be punished more severely, Harry thinks, and heads to his remedial Transfiguration lesson.

"Come in, Severus."

Severus lets himself into the office, grimacing at the puffs of colored smoke that are rising from the fire. He doesn't know what Albus puts in there—surely not ordinary Floo powder—but it always seems to appear just in time for his visits.

Albus turns around at the desk and smiles at him. Severus Occludes automatically, for all that he doesn't think Albus would try to read his mind for the same reasons as the Dark Lord.

Not the same reasons, but it would happen.

"How are you, Severus? Have you yet discovered the secret of modifying the Headache Draught so that it could taste more appetizing to our student sufferers?"

Severus ignores that as he seats himself in front of the desk. He is not interested in such an experiment. If Healers want to do it, they should do it instead. "Albus, why is there a door through the wards near the Astronomy Tower?"

"What?"

In a second, Albus transforms from a smiling old man into the war general whom the Death Eaters so feared in battle. Severus inclines his head without taking his eyes from Albus, and subdues his own fear. They are on the same side in this.

In this.

"Yes," Severus says. "There is a door that extends outwards to the grounds. It is a permanent construction. I must say that it is subtle work, cleverly done. I would not have noticed it had I not been scanning the school closely in an attempt to find out how the Heir of Slytherin entered."

He watches Albus, and sees the way his eyes dim. All right. Now Severus knows that Albus did not leave the door open for his own purposes.

He probably would not have. But Severus does not always think he can fathom the man's mind.

"Do you know who else may know of this?"

"No one else I know has mentioned it," Severus says. "Aloud or silently." He knows that Albus disapproves of Severus looking into the minds of his colleagues, but that only applies when something does not threaten the safety of the school.

"Very well." Albus clenches his hands on the desk in front of him for a moment. "Then I will begin to search for the Heir of Slytherin near the door."

Severus nods. At least he has succeeded in conveying the urgency of his visit, which means Albus should start taking it seriously, and he can leave now and go back to his own hunt for the Heir in peace.

And yet…

"Why did you not sense the door before you wove the wards, Albus?"

"If it was cut last year, when Quirrell was leaving the school to go into the Forbidden Forest and hunt for unicorn blood, then the wards I cast would have accepted it as part of the same construction as the prior wards, and seen no reason to distinguish it."

Severus nods, letting no trace of his emotion show on his face, and listens for a few more instructions from Albus before he leaves the room. He lets nothing of his inner turmoil show on his face when he walks through the corridors, either, and he speaks nothing of it aloud. But when he is back in his own quarters, he closes his eyes.

If it was cut last year.

Albus did not say it was cut last year.

But on the other hand, Severus at least does not doubt Albus's commitment to seeing the Dark Lord dead and Mr. Longbottom protected until that can come to pass. What would be the purposing in leaving such a vulnerability unguarded?

"I am so sorry, Mr. Potter."

Harry ducks his head. Professor McGonagall sounds so stunned and shaken that he feels a little bad about claiming that his magic has been weakened due to living with the Dursleys, when he knows very well it was Artemis.

But not sorry enough to reveal her.

"You couldn't have known, Professor," he mumbles. "I don't see how anyone could have known."

"Still."

Harry peeks at Professor McGonagall. She's leaning back, staring at the ceiling, and then she gives herself a brisk shake and focuses back on him.

"I should never have let Albus leave you there," she says. "I heard stories from Lily often enough about how awful her sister was." She sighs. "I am sorry, Mr. Potter, and I will endeavor to make it up to you."

Harry wonders if she will insist on more remedial classes instead of less, and his heart sinks a little. But McGonagall stands up and turns around, going to a shelf behind her desk. She pulls off a thick red book and hesitates a moment, flipping through it, before she brings the book and sets it in front of him.

Harry looks down. The page is handwritten, and it's hard to read all the letters, but he can make out enough to know it's a Potions textbook. He blinks at her, intrigued. "What is this, Professor?"

"It's a potion that can strengthen magic affected by—adverse circumstances. It's complicated and tricky to make. But I will tutor you in making it."

Harry wonders what will happen if he drinks it, given that his magic isn't affected the way that most people's would be by those circumstances. But if worst comes to worst, he can just pretend to drink it and work more on Transfiguration than Charms. "Thanks, professor," he says softly. "Professor Snape wouldn't brew it for me?"

"He would consider it an imposition on his time, given that—well, I know that he hasn't treated you well in the past, Mr. Potter. That's another thing I'm sorry for not intervening on."

"He's—been better. Since the end of last year."

"Has he?" McGonagall stares at Harry in astonishment, then visibly shakes her feelings away. "Well! I am glad to hear that. I will still work with you at first, but it might be that he would be amenable to helping you in the future." She closes the book, but hangs onto it, eyeing Harry sternly. "In the meantime, I am only going to give this to you if you promise me that you won't try to brew it on your own, Mr. Potter. It could be very dangerous."

Harry nods readily. He wants to learn more about Potions, but given that his magic isn't affected the way Professor McGonagall thinks, he doesn't mind waiting.

"Then," McGonagall says, and watches Harry tuck the book away in his bag before she lifts her wand. "If you could show me how you would Transfigure this quill into a feather…"

"It got Terry. We have to do something."

Neville looks down at his hands, shaking. Anthony sounds passionate, and Neville knows that he's right. It should also be up to him to do something, he thinks, since he's the Boy-Who-Lived and this is probably something to do with Voldemort.

But he's so afraid.

"The professors are looking for the Heir. Professor Snape promised me that."

"I do not understand your relationship with that man, Harry."

Padma sounds disbelieving. Neville glances up in time to see Harry giving a small smile. Neville shakes his head. He knows that Snape treated Harry almost as badly as he did Neville himself last year, but Harry's learning Potions directly from Snape anyway.

"They haven't found the Heir so far!"

"How much looking did they do after Mrs. Norris was Petrified? She's just a cat…"

Neville listens to his friends—yes, they're his friends—talk to each other and urge each other on to do something. He wants to say that he was trying to investigate the Heir himself, but then he would have to talk about the Memory Charm again, and why he hasn't gone to talk to Dumbledore.

It's just—

He's so weak and stupid that he got himself Obliviated. He doesn't have a clue who the Heir is, and he can't confront them the way he's supposed to.

Neville knows that his friends don't just see him as the Boy-Who-Lived, but part of him will always see himself that way. After all, Voldemort killed his parents when he came looking for Neville. The least Neville can do is repay their sacrifice by standing up against Voldemort.

But his mind is so weak that he can't remember a thing about who he thought the Heir was.

Frustrated, Neville stands up and picks up his books. Padma and Anthony and Harry all ask him what's going on. Neville shakes his head and makes up a lame excuse about how he said he would help Professor Sprout in the greenhouse.

Harry looks skeptical, but he lets Neville go. Zabini is the one who tilts his head and pins Neville with a flash of a sharp eye. He obviously doesn't buy the excuse at all.

But Neville doesn't really care if he does. He flees up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower and collapses beside Ron in the common room with a sigh of relief.

"Where were you, Nev?"

"Studying."

"Oh, right, with Potter and Zabini?" Ron wrinkles his nose. He doesn't have anything against Padma and Anthony, as far as Neville knows, but he thinks Harry's creepy, and he's cautious around Zabini, because he's a Slytherin. "Do you think either one of them could be the Heir?"

Neville is startled into a laugh. "What, just because Zabini is a Slytherin? You know Harry isn't even in that House!"

"But I bet they know something. They're always looking at people with superior expressions. Maybe they know something about the Heir even if they're not the Heir, and they're just keeping it to themselves."

"Ron! Neville!"

Neville looks up, grateful for the interruption so that he won't have to try and answer Ron. He wants to say that Harry wouldn't keep secrets like that, but…

Hermione flops on the couch beside them and breathlessly holds out a book. Neville stares at it. There's a snake on the cover, and it has the name Salazar Slytherin beneath it, although Neville doesn't think he's the author.

"Where did you get that, Hermione?" Ron asks, looking interested in a book that's not about Quidditch for the first time that Neville can remember.

"I owl-ordered it," Hermione says, and knocks her hair out of her eyes, beaming. "Percy mentioned something about it, and I thought we could at least try to learn about the history of the Chamber of Secrets."

"Do you think it would help us find the Heir?" Neville asks, ignoring the burst of anxiety that tightens his chest. Yes, he thinks that he should still try and find the Heir, and it's probably something to do with the Memory Charm that he doesn't dare try.

But if Ron and Hermione are with him, then surely whoever Obliviated Neville won't be able to do it to all three of them.

"Why not?" Hermione beams at Neville and looks down at the book again. "We can at least try, right?"

Neville nods, and ignores the anxiety, and leans over to read the book with his head next to Hermione's.

Blaise pauses. He left a private meeting with Harry, where they discussed various ideas for finding the Chamber of Secrets, and he's on his way back to the Slytherin common room. But there's a noise ahead of him that definitely shouldn't be there.

Blaise draws his wand.

The sound isn't repeated, but after a moment, Blaise hears a low moan. He moves forwards, alert to the possibility that it's a Gryffindor or someone else trying to fool him. Of course, he can handle them, but it's better to be prepared.

When he steps around the corner, he pauses. Malfoy is leaning against the wall, his arms wrapped around his stomach.

"Zabini?"

Malfoy sounds surprised. Defensive. His eyes flicker over Blaise's shoulder, and Blaise doesn't think he's a good enough actor to feign his relief when he sees that Blaise is alone.

"What happened?" Blaise asks, keeping his wand out.

"That crazy idiot Nott." Malfoy coughs once and then straightens, arms still wrapped around his stomach. Maybe he remembers the time that Blaise cursed him, there. "I told him I had something important to talk to him about, and he agreed to mee me. But then he cursed me because he didn't like my tone. Pain curse." Malfoy bends over with a gasp and wraps his arms even tighter around his belly, shutting his eyes.

Made worse when he talks about it, Blaise thinks. And of course Malfoy will talk about it, because he can't help himself.

"What did you want to talk to him about?"

"The truth."

Blaise rolls his eyes. "That could mean anything, and you know it, Malfoy."

"It was the truth! The truth about what lies ahead of us when the Dark Lord returns." Malfoy straightens up. "Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but Nott and I will follow him."

Blaise blinks, seeing one motivation for Nott's offer of alliance that he didn't before now. "And he doesn't want to follow Voldemort?"

Malfoy recoils with a hiss. "Do not speak his name!"

"If it makes you more afraid, then I think I should do it more."

"You don't understand the reverence in which we hold the Dark Lord. You're only a foreigner…"

Blaise rolls his eyes, steps past Malfoy, and hits him with a silent spell Mother taught him last summer. It'll make Nott's pain curse last twice as long, instead of fading away as it would most of the time. Malfoy deserves it.

When he steps into the common room, Blaise spends a moment studying the people there. Most of them ignore him, having learned that opposing a Zabini leads to pain. But Nott, who's sitting in a corner far away from the fire, reading under a conjured ball of floating light, looks up at him.

Blaise smiles and walks over to him. Nott watches him come with a furrowed forehead.

"What do you want, Zabini?"

"Did you curse Malfoy for talking about you taking the Dark Mark?"

"Going to report me?"

"Hardly. I think we might have some interests in common."

When Nott smiles, it's chilling, but not as bad as Mother or even Harry. Blaise nods and leans forwards to begin negotiating the terms.