Chapter Twenty One

Alex, I write, I know I've not sent you letters as frequently as I ought to have. I am sorry about that. I was distracted by other projects. I have, to my utmost regret, found myself an apprentice, and though everyone tells me she's no good, I am determined—

I cross the line out.

… an apprentice, I try again, and though she has not made much progress, I think you would like her. She's forgettable, but she's also diligent. A bit like Dawlish, Kingsley's Second, I don't know if you remember him—

I shake my head and cut that out as well. Perfectly trite. Meaningless chatter to fill that space where awkwardness festers. Marietta Edgecombe has her virtues, but none of them would appeal to Grimsditch, not even the quirk in wrist position that caught my eye. Should've been writing to Lacroix, I think mournfully. Now there's a technician with an astute eye for oddities.

Sighing, I vanish the sheet, then reach into my school bag and pull out another parchment.

"Are you done yet?"

This from one Daphne Greengrass, seated to my right.

"There's a shortage of saucy stuff to write about," I complain.

Around us the clinking of cutlery. A blanket of drowsiness drapes the Great Hall. There are few things less appealing than Monday mornings, yet the girl on my right is attentive and well groomed. Not so much the one on my left— Trace has fallen asleep, hair splayed out, head resting between her arms. I consider the rustle of her breathing and debate tickling her neck with my quill. Daph follows my gaze and intuitively divines what I am thinking about.

"Don't," she warns. "Tracey was up all night with that useless manuscript."

"The one by Emeric?"

A nod.

"And you didn't tell her to stop?"

"She did not listen."

I sneak a glance to my left. Trace seems fragile, as she did in Milan.

"Is this a one off," I ask, "or has it been like this for the entire month?"

"Some days are better than the others."

"You're useless, Daffy," I groan, running a hand across my face. "Both as a disciplinarian and an alarm clock."

She rolls her eyes.

"Your manuscript— your fault."

A heartbeat's silence.

"Meet me halfway and pin the blame on Alex?" I offer.

She gestures to the blank parchment.

"Write that to Madam Grimsditch then, if you don't know what else to write."

I do. My quill flies, the words come. I rant about the crudity of the prank she's played on us. Interspersed in between are questions about her current adventures. I am so captivated by the depth and profundity of my eloquence that not even the flutter of hundreds of wings breaks my concentration, nor the storm of murmurs, nor Trace waking up, nor her leafing through her copy of the Daily Prophet. What does eventually catch my attention, however, is Daph tugging at my sleeve with increasing vehemence.

I look up, my head still in a different universe . . . and all thoughts of Alexandra Grimsditch grind to an abrupt halt.

Trace is sniffling.

Her eyes are blotchy and her nose is red, but she's also silent in her agony, so that even as the tears trickle down her cheeks there's nothing to intimate the cause of her grief.

"What is it?"

She shakes her head and buries her face in her sleeve.

"Talk to me," I beg.

She passes me the Daily Prophet. I flip to the front page. Daph leans in and peers over my shoulder.

Breakout from Azkaban! The headline screams. Then, in smaller font: Prison Warden found dead.

"What's that got to—" I begin, only to be interrupted by a flash of memory: Kingsley Shacklebolt was transferred to Azkaban last month.

"Ah, hell." I slump back heavily and toss the paper. Daph fishes it and skims it. The sharp intake of breath tells me she's on the same wavelength as we are.

"The Dark Lord," Daph whispers. This pronouncement is half reverence, half terror.

"Kingsley." Tracey's voice is quivery and it shatters into pieces on the second syllable. "I liked him, he was a good person, he gave me duelling tips that one time in London."

I close my eyes. He was an acquaintance at best, but I respected him. I am not gutted, not the same way Trace is, but then Trace has shed tears in the past for complete strangers. For historical griefs. For wounded animals. For the helpless and the downtrodden.

Daph meanwhile has renewed her white knuckled scrutiny of the newspaper.

"Does it say Vol—"

She shushes me. Her lashes flicker in fright.

"It doesn't." It is Trace who replies. She continues scrubbing at her face with her sleeve. "Says a guard got careless and Bellatrix Lestrange nicked his wand before killing him and freeing the others."

Daph continues to skim the article.

"They're implying there was inside help," she whispers. "But there are no mentions of the Dark Lord. There's a strong statement by the Prime Minister, denying . . ."

She trails off. Her gaze skitters over the page. Her breathing hitches for a second time. Wordlessly she brings the paper to my nose and points to a paragraph in small print on page two. The microscopic headline says:

Ollivander's wand shop temporarily closed. Wandmaker missing.

Unprompted there solidifies in my mind's eye the wandmaker's image: antediluvian nose, eccentric eyes, hair hung like a laurel wreath. The short and sharp rushes of nervous movement. The passion with which he caressed each wand, and the jubilant smile when I finally found my match. And there comes to my lips, unbidden, the ghost of an utterance from yesteryear: ash and dragon heartstring, twelve and a half inches, Mister Potter. Unyielding— a fiercely loyal wand that will break before it bows.

"A dead warden," I mumble, reaching for the comfort of my wand on instinct. "A ransacked prison. A missing wandmaker. What does it all mean? What interest could Vol—" a glare from Daph "—He who must not be Named have in a wandmaker?"

Similar questions cloud the room. But by the end of breakfast there are no answers forthcoming.

No one even pretends to pay attention during the day's classes. Rumours shuttle through the hallways. Terror traverses the corridors. Trace is withdrawn the entire morning and Daph quiet and pensive. Slytherin House though has been rejuvenated. There is this new strain of defiance about them. Zabini sneers at me between classes; Montague scoffs when he catches my eye at lunch; Warrington shoulder checks me when I exit the common room, then pretends to be apologetic; and on my way back from the Owlery I see Malfoy strutting about. This time he has the temerity to smirk.

That smirk grows brittle when I momentarily adjust my stride and cut across his path. His shoulders droop, his spine incurves, his eyes drop to his shoes. I let him slink past without censure though. The instinct to lash out lies dormant. It is their tool, I say to myself, not mine. It would accomplish nothing.

The room of requirement, when I enter, is an inferno of disquiet. Once we fell into a routine last month, it was not uncommon for me to arrive here and see people running sparring drills or practising their stunner or their bombardment hex— now, however, they've broken up into separate groups and are discussing those thrice damned newspaper clippings with their acquaintances. It is evidence to the unreality of the day's happenings that I am approached by none other than Susan Bones, who encroaches upon my space and lowers her voice.

"Fred and George won't come today," she informs me. "Snape's given them detention until February."

"What for?" It feels a little weird, after all these months, to have a civil conversation with her again.

"They attacked a group of Slytherins. I saw it happen."

"What for?" I repeat, eyebrows rocketing to my hairline.

She gives me a hard stare.

"You're supposed to be clever, aren't you?" Ah, there's the acrimony.

"Ginny Weasley?" I enquire.

A decisive nod.

"And is there any reason," I ask, "that you did not join them in hexing these Slytherins? Merlin's beard, Sue, this is what I'm training you all for."

A slight softening in demeanour.

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Good. Now, where's Neville?"

"He had to go see Professor Dumbledore."

"And the others? I don't see the Gryffindor Quidditch team here."

"Angelina said they'd come. They might be late though, because it's Gryffindor against Slytherin next week."

"We'll wait, then," I say, staring at the students that are here already.

She crosses her arms and surveys the class with me. There's Goldstein and Cho, who have roped Marietta into their discussion; there's Daph, seated on the dais and dutifully producing monosyllabic replies to Granger's frenzied queries; there's Trace, slamming her fist into her palm while surrounded by a group of admirers— she's shaken off her earlier malaise, it would seem. She waves at me, then goes right back to whatever it is that she's saying.

"I can't stand her," Bones grumbles.

"Tracey wouldn't hurt a fly," I fire back.

"She's two-faced. Pretends to be sweet, but she's a slimy little—"

"Don't finish that." There's an edge to my voice. "If I said such nonsense about your friends you would get upset."

She meets my glare head on.

"Oh, but you have. You mocked me all the time, don't you remember? And they joined in, they encouraged you." She makes a careless gesture towards Trace and Daph. "You and your pathetic little clique, and I was always looking in from the outside. Where's your righteous anger over that?"

She's not right, but she's not entirely wrong either. There's a lot in that ruined relationship which I am happy to forget.

"I may have said a few things in the past that I regret now," I say, staring resolutely into the space behind her head. "It's taken a while, but we've all grown up a little bit. So how about we both admit we made mistakes and move on?"

There's no response. She goes back to watching the class. The silence stretches out, an open wound, settled over by the flies of resentment. There's no forgiveness, she seems to say, but she's happy with an implicitly agreed ceasefire. I think this is what I hated the most back then— after we tore into each other, hurt each other in the worst possible ways, always this lull, where we'd both be painfully polite.

"Read the papers?" Susan asks.

"Who hasn't?"

"Think we'll ever be ready to face him?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"You're good with a wand." Her sea stone eyes meet mine. "It's your only redeeming quality."

I sigh.

"It would take Lord Voldemort less than a minute to mow down this sorry lot." I give her a winsome smile. "But you already knew that."

"Hm. And you? Could you fight him?"

No chance. I'd get run over.

"I won't stick around long enough to find out," I say instead.

An uncomfortable hush.

"You know," Susan Bones replies, "even though I still hate you, I never took you for a coward."

"Shacklebolt was brave. See where it got him."

"He was ten times the man you are, that's true." Her accent is slipping. It now has a distinct northern tang. She's been simmering for this entire conversation; now she's reached boiling point. There's the first flash of that infamous temper.

"Ten times the corpse as well," I quip. "Death does not suit me, it's so awfully bland. As for Lord Voldemort? That's Neville's fight, not mine. He's The Boy who Lived. Whereas I'm just another poor Death Eater spawn."

For an instant—and just an instant—hate curdles her expression. Then the cold water pail of her Occlumency.

"I'll give you the tools to survive," I offer, unsettled. "And I promise not to go over to the other side. Don't ask for more— it'll only end in disappointment."

"As if you could ever do anything other than disappoint people," she replies. "You've never been anything but an entitled narcissist, Harry. I don't know what else I expected."

She jerks her head in farewell and walks away, but not before her disgust with me is clear even through the Occlumency.

I should not care a whit about her disgust, I feel. I should be gloating in self satisfaction over my own pragmatism. I should be laughing off the stupidity of that implicit plea she was too proud to put into words: help us, join us, we have no one else to turn to.

So then why . . .

Why does guilt claw away at my heart?

I have no answer.

But as a result, I am melancholy when I skulk up to Daph and Granger, tail firmly tucked between my legs. The former, I can tell, is looking for rescue, and the latter is a shark smelling blood. The relief on Daph's face, as I butt into their conversation, is palpable.

"Am I a narcissist, Daph?" I mumble.

"That depends. Who said it?"

"Bones."

"Then no."

"What if I'd said Tracey?"

"Then I would have agreed with her. But Susan Bones?" Daph harrumphs and turns her nose up imperiously. "If she tells me I'm a witch, I'd call myself a squib."

"So then you agree with her in principle." I stroke my chin. "Am I really too full of myself?"

"Sometimes." She pats my arm. "I like it, it's not a bad thing— it makes you look very traditionalist. Like a proper lord."

"And there's the kiss of death," I say sadly.

I quirk an eyebrow, point a thumb at her, and turn to Granger.

"See this? This is what I have to deal with everyday. How else could I be, when my two best friends are sycophants?" I muss up Daph's hair to emphasise my point, then laugh when she whacks me across the back of my neck in retaliation. I conjure a mirror and hand it to her, the first sunbeam of lightness splintering the drudgery of this day.

"Hullo, Granger," I say, even as Daph busies herself with cleaning up.

The poor girl's trembling under the tyranny of an enforced silence. The metaphoric clink of this key is all she needs to catapult herself into speech.

"Harry— can I call you Harry? Potter's so formal."

"You may," I say, offering her my best smile. "But only if you'll let me call you Hermione."

She beams.

"Oh, you're nice, you really are! Could you get Daphne to call me Hermione as well? I've been trying for days now, but it's always Granger."

"Daphne is . . . a social wallflower." A half shrug, an upturned palm. "Very shy, very delicate, very demure, as you must've noticed. She's half in love with you though; she's been singing your praises for the entire month."

Daphne Greengrass, in fact, has done no such thing. The frigid look she shoots me in retaliation is a promise to yerk me when I least expect it.

It is indicative of just how much of a stretch my pronouncement is that not even Granger buys the dragon dung I'm peddling.

"Uh, thanks? But, Harry, I just wanted to ask you a question about our curriculum, if you have the time."

I made twenty five copies of my dossier and distributed them a fortnight ago. Granger being Granger has of course read the entire thing cover to cover.

"We're waiting for the Gryffindor Quidditch team," I admit. "So there is time."

"When we were speaking last week, Daphne said—" and here Granger takes a running leap into a river of verbosity. She brutally beats me over the head with medical mumbo jumbo. I am treated to rhetorical uppercuts and body blows— something about the difference in healing magic when applied to bipeds as opposed to quadrupeds. With touching diligence I try following along. It is futile. My caveman mentality becomes stark to me with every sentence that leaves her lips.

"—but then I said, should not our failure to catalogue the anatomy of every magical species—"

"Hermione," I beg, "Hermione, yes, I get it, you're smart. But is there a point to all this?"

"Oh." She blushes. "I wanted to ask about the Patronus charm."

My mouth falls open. I twist around and look at Daph, completely bamboozled. What, I wish to ask my trusty comrade, my partner in crime, my solitary respite in weal and woe, is the relationship between what I just heard and the sodding Patronus charm?

But I need not ask. Daph's eyes hold the same agony. Suddenly I understand her better, and even as I do, sympathy inflames my heart.

"The Patronus," I repeat tentatively.

"Daphne said— and I've also noticed, in Professor Flitwick's class— that you're not very good at charms." Her hands fly to her mouth; she looks appalled. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it that way—"

I chuckle.

"I'm not," I say. "Not at what he teaches, at least."

"Then . . ." Her eyes flit between us. "Is Daphne going to teach us that section?"

"No, I am." Another half shrug. "I mean, I've not even decided if we're going to do it, but if we do, it'll be in April or May—"

"But that is really advanced magic!" She cries. "How could you be bad at charms if you can teach something that complex?"

"Intent." I clear my throat. "Er, I never struggle with anything that has intent as its crux, and the Patronus is just intent and positive emotion given corporeal form, as you well know. Shields are similar. They operate on the same principle."

She nods in encouragement.

"But," I continue, raising a finger, "but— erm— there's a lot of magic that . . . that, as you know, has nothing to do with intent. Runes, Arithmancy, Potions . . . Alchemy, Warding and Curse breaking, most Charms. Healing." I turn to Daph. "Healing, I don't think . . .?"

Daph grimaces.

"A little bit." She inverts her palm and shakes it horizontally. The emerald lynx bracelet I gifted her in Milan gleams on her wrist.

"Yeah, there you go." I give Daph an appreciative nod. "I'm kind of rubbish at those . . ."

"So, what is it?" Granger demands.

I stare at her blankly, my train of thought derailing.

"I'm sorry, you have me at a loss. What is what?"

"Your Patronus!" she urges, with an insistent flurry of her hands.

"Ah." I scratch my head. "Siberian Husky."

It takes her a second to process that.

Her eyes light up. Her lip trembles. Muffled snorts build at the base of her throat and break through.

Then Hermione Granger collapses into a fit of giggles.

"What?" I demand, insulted. "Tracey reacted the same way— what is it with you people?"

She shakes her head, uses Daph's shoulder as support and continues cackling. Daph looks at me and rolls her eyes. Can you believe this girl? She seems to ask.

I can't, I wish to say. I really cannot.

"I'm sorry, but that's so— fitting!" Hermione Granger gasps, holding her stomach. "Oh God."

"Wait till yours is a goldfish," I grumble. "Or a fucking amoeba."

Her tinkling laughter continues unabated. But whether her Patronus could be a potential cause for schadenfreude is a line of investigation I am unable to undertake, for even as she stops laughing we are graced by the presence of Neville Longbottom. At his heels tromp in the Gryffindor Quidditch team, all shivering and wet and mud bespattered. None of them have changed into their school robes. They've brought their brooms along; these they dutifully stack in a rack that the room gives them.

Everyone thus accounted for, I make my way to the dais. But I am waylaid by Neville.

"Harry," he says, motioning towards the lectern, "can I speak first for a minute, mate?"

"All right."

No matter how many times I see it, it is unsettling to watch Neville's metamorphosis from the easygoing gait and the innate introversion to what I've taken to calling his public persona. His shoulders square, his jaw hardens, the cleft in his chin sticks out. There's steel in his eyes; there's a presence about him as he takes my place.

"Yesterday," he says solemnly, as the room quietens, "Azkaban was broken into. Today we got the news that five Aurors were killed."

He pauses to let this sink in.

"You know who did the deed," he continues. "I know it frightens you that he's out there."

Neville surveys each face.

"I'm scared as well," he admits, touching his own heart. "But I'm willing to face my fears."

He takes a deep breath. Knots his fingers and places them on the lectern.

"I'm willing to face them because Kingsley Shacklebolt was my friend," he says softly, "and now he's gone, taken away by Lord Voldemort."

Gasps ring out. Neville ignores them and presses on.

"Voldemort," he repeats, "Voldemort, who will not stop. Not unless someone puts him in his grave. And you know what?"

His voice has risen with each word.

"I'll do it myself if I have to."

A few seconds ago this entire group was wilting— now they stand at rapt attention, soaking in every word.

"With this," Neville growls, clenching his fingers into a fist. "And this." He shows them the other fist. "Our strength is all we have, so I say we use it. We'll crush them with it, we'll make him and his Death Eaters pay for every crime. Kingsley will be avenged— till the time I breathe, what Voldemort did to him will not be forgotten. That is how I will honour his memory."

A slow exhalation. He meets every pair of eyes in the room.

"It's up to you all to do the same," Neville Longbottom murmurs, bowing his head.

And with that he hops off, pandemonium ringing in his wake.

"Hey, Harry," he whispers to me nervously, as he waddles up to me, his audience still roaring in defiance, "so, erm, what are we learning today?"

How to lead an insurrection, apparently.

Author's notes

If I had a nickel for every time I put up a hiatus notice on my FF profile, then updated a week after that hiatus notice, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it is weird that it has happened twice.

In other news, the holdup this time was physical illness (and isn't that some lovely variety?) Delhi this time of the year is a gas chamber, I fell ill, as I often do, and lay cursing my existence for several days. I still seem to have this persistent cough, which is here to stay and unlikely to go away for the entire winter. Someday this city will kill me. But not today. Today I live.

Anyway, that's it for now. See you in . . . god, I don't know. Call it a defect of not having an update schedule.

Next time, guys.