Leo spent the entire week staring at Quirrell during every Defence Against the Dark Arts class and every time they attended meals in the Great Hall. She might have been worried that he would notice her obsessiveness, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Not when so much of her energy outside of staring at him was spent on trying to ignore the way Draco had decided to start treating her like she was three or glaring at Regulus when he insisted for the thirtieth time in a single day that the only thing in her life that she should be focusing on was the third floor corridor.

When she was seven, she'd spent an entire week trying to transfigure a crumpled ball of parchment into a flower. Draco had spent that week indulging in one of his favorite pastimes: hiding her things. He never hid anything too important—he'd hidden her broom, once, and she'd responded by using a biting jinx on his duvet—but he liked to start hiding things whenever he thought she wasn't giving him enough attention. During that particular week, he'd taken to hiding the transfiguration spellbook she was using to force her to seek it, and therefore him, out.

Regulus spent that week complaining that she'd be much better off practicing Serpensortia. He wanted her conjuration to improve, which wouldn't be too terribly difficult, she imagined. She couldn't manage straight conjuration at all yet; the only way to go from there was up. But Regulus decided the best way to get his opinion across was through snipes and temptations.

Leo tried to transfigure the parchment. The edges curled and blackened as if charred. Draco hid her spellbook under his mattress. "You like creatures," Regulus wheedled. "It's different, isn't it? It's duller for them if you touch them. You'd be able to touch the snake. You just have to summon it first."

Leo tried to transfigure the parchment. It shriveled up on itself and turned an ashen white. Draco hid her spellbook atop a bookcase in the third study. Regulus said, "You wouldn't be able to do any of this without me."

Leo tried to transfigure the parchment. It paled and softened. Draco hid her spellbook in a plant pot in the entryway. "Maybe next you can go ahead and kill yourself," Regulus snarled. "Put me out of my misery."

Leo tried to transfigure the parchment. It folded up like poor origami and fell apart when she touched the twisted stem. Draco hid her spellbook up the chimney in the parlor. "Duller doesn't mean it doesn't harm," Regulus mused. "Do you remember the rabbits? You could summon the snake; you could see where the line is."

Leo tried to transfigure the parchment. It split into six pieces, pure white with a thin line down the middle of each. Draco hid her spellbook in the branches of the weeping willow behind the manor. Regulus was laughing as he said, "You won't survive. Not even for a moment. You're going to fail me."

Leo tried to transfigure the parchment. It softened and curled and finally turned into a flower in her palm. Draco hid her spellbook under the hinged seat of the window bench on the landing between the second and third floor. "I didn't think you could," Regulus said honestly.

The book had said that some flowers would be easier for some people than others, so Leo had done her best to fix the ideas of petals and stem in her mind but not something specific like a marigold or a balsamine. She stared at the long stem and the multiple sets of white flowers decorating it. Closed buds were gathered around the top. She didn't know what it was, so she consulted one of the books on flowers her mother kept in the library.

Asphodel is also known as Royal Staff, the book informed her. It is a member of the lily family and according to myth, this flower is native to the underworld. It was as she was reading asphodel has both magical and mundane uses that Regulus said, "The snake is waiting."

It took her three weeks to conjure the serpent. It took another five to learn how to vanish it. In the intervening time, Draco stopped hiding her spellbooks in favor of scowling at her snakebites. The snake's fangs became brittle from touching her, and they shattered just before she finally counter-spelled its summoning.

Here, now, Leo couldn't stop staring at Quirrell as if he was a puzzle. He was. Draco wouldn't stop treating her like glass that was close to shattering. Regulus kept snarling about the third floor. She'd had plenty of practice ignoring them both, but she knew which one she always gave in to.

She managed to lose Draco after Potions and decided against reuniting with him in the Great Hall. Instead, she escaped down to the kitchens. Mopsy greeted her excitedly and plied her with roast chicken and cabbage salads and cauldron cakes until she had told a half dozen anecdotes about growing her own potion ingredients. Mopsy happily informed her which of those ingredients were equally useful in cooking. When she finally left, long after lunch had finished for the rest of the school, Mopsy made sure to force an apple tart on her.

She considered returning to her dormitory to keep the tart in her trunk with a stasis charm, but that was a likely place for Draco to be waiting. And he knew she liked the library. So she found a window nook on the second floor and considered practicing Levicorpus on the tart before deciding that the spell would likely only work on a living creature, given what she could tell from the description. Or perhaps only a target with ankles.

It was sometime after she'd switched to practicing Incendio on torn pieces of parchment that a voice interrupted her.

"Ah! Dear Leonis!"

She looked up at Regulus and then realized he wasn't the ghost that was talking to her, and he'd never called her dear in his death. Instead, she looked to the ghost that was greeting her with a beaming smile. "Sir Nicholas," she greeted in return.

She'd spoken to the ghosts at Hogwarts more than she had the students. She did, of course, know more about ghosts than she knew about students. She'd learned plenty about them as soon as she'd had any sort of understanding of what Regulus was. And most ghosts were much easier to ingratiate oneself to if a conversation was opened with How did you die?

The Fat Friar had been happy to gratify the inquiry, and had also been happy to use it as an opportunity to segue into a discussion about the healing charms of yore. Richard Jackdaw's ghost hadn't been able to answer the question, but he'd indulged her in several hours of discussion on wandlore from his time as an assistant at Ollivanders. Myrtle had giggled and squealed and told the story several times in quick succession as well as every time she'd seen Leo since. The Slytherin House's own ghost, the Baron, had simply stared before telling her to be on her way. And Professor Binns didn't seem to be quite aware that he was a ghost.

Nicholas himself had enjoyed the question. More specifically, he'd enjoyed complaining about poor beheading technique and the injustice of the Headless Hunt's membership requirements. In the time since their first meeting, he'd occasionally come across her and stopped to chat.

"I had heard you were in the hospital wing after a particularly disastrous quidditch match," he said with some concern. "But you do seem quite alright to me."

"Yes, I healed up easily." She set another piece of parchment alight.

"Oh, is that an apple tart?" he asked with morose excitement.

"Yes."

He sighed dolorously. "I do so miss eating. Describe it for me, please?"

Leo figured that Mopsy would be happy to learn that, in the end, the treat had been eaten.

"Confundo."

Pink light shot from Leo's wand and hit the chessboard. She held her breath until Regulus reminded her that she actually did need air.

"Now we test it," Percy said, but he already looked pleased. "Pawn to c4."

The pawn looked up. Looked down. Them stumbled to the side, directly into another pawn and causing a chain reaction of falling chess pieces.

"Finally," Regulus muttered.

"Oh, shut up," Leo said, smiling. "I did it!"

"It's a very difficult spell." Percy looked even prouder now, and his shoulders were thrown back.

She tilted her head at him. Regulus huffed out a sharp laugh and waved to her to go ahead. She nodded. "I had a very good teacher," she told Percy. "Professor Flitwick would be very proud, I think."

Percy's ears went red, and he smiled broadly. "Yes, he would, wouldn't he? You know, my brother Bill did some tutoring during his time at Hogwarts. As well as a bit right after he graduated. Professor Flitwick was rather fond of him for that. Yes. Yes, he was." He started gathering up the confounded chess set. "I think I'll bring this to him. Will you come with?"

She grinned, all teeth. "I'd be happy to."

Professor Flitwick had, in fact, been proud. Delighted, even. Thrilled. He'd pulled out several things of his own—a chocolate frog card of Barberus Bragge, a chair he enchanted on the spot to scuttle around, and no fewer than five living books—for her to use the charm on. For a brief second, it seemed he was even considering having her demonstrate on Percy before he shook his head with a laugh and said a counterspell would be easy enough, but he didn't want to put the prefect through that just before curfew.

At the reminder of curfew, Percy hurried away with multiple goodbyes to report in for his patrol. Despite that, Flitwick kept her for another half hour as he excitedly asked her about every step in the process of her learning the spell. At several points, he sternly told her that it could be dangerous to learn such spells alone, but she simply reminded him that Percy had been a very attentive tutor the entire time.

Eventually, Flitwick sent her from his office with a note excusing her post-curfew return to her dormitory. The prefect that was waiting in the Common Room glowered at the delay.

"Bonsoir, Fawley," Leo greeted. She got a glare in return as the girl looked over the note. Then she shoved the parchment back at her before leaving the Common Room, grumbling about being late for her patrol. Leo briefly wondered if she and Percy worked together and whether or not Fawley could keep insults out of her mouth for more than eight minutes at a time.

But none of that really mattered much, because now she was alone in the Common Room. Regulus was standing in front of her with a stern, unwavering look that reminded her of weeks with a snake. "The third floor corridor," he said.

She was alone in the Common Room. Nobody but Regulus saw her sneak out.