Ginny Weasley flew across the Hogwarts grounds like a bird on fire, her broom twisting and pirouetting in the air, skimming the tops of the trees in a succession of reckless manoeuvrers that put her way too close to becoming a splatted bug than anything I'd ever risked myself. And still, she didn't seem fearful in the slightest, not even as she shouted and yelled for help.

Riding on her coattails, a veritable swarm of parchment paper planes chased after her like hungry birds of prey, desperately trying to close the distance to the young girl. Now and then one of them managed to get closer, throwing itself at her face and eyes, forcing her to crouch atop her broom or do a barrel roll to dodge the attack.

And chasing after those was one of her older twin brothers —either Fred or George, I wasn't sure— alongside Lee Jordan. Jordan was trying to use a Quidditch beater's bat to hit the paper planes, ineffectively enough; but the Weasley twin was smarter: he instead produced his wand and now was casting a fire charm. One that would have consumed the entire swarm, if not because a quick twirl of my own wand sent the planes scattering to avoid the thick of the flames, regrouping a few seconds later and some distance away to resume their chase of Ginny —only one or two of them having fallen prey to the fire.

I then scuttled back behind the cover of the tree trunk, where I could still keep an eye on the spectacle and intervene again if my fleet of paper planes needed any new corrections. But they were mostly autonomous, I had made sure of that. The enchantments I'd written on the parchments —that I'd copied from an advanced charms textbook found in the Library and that I didn't fully understand that well myself, truth be told— were effective enough at mimicking the movements of birds, and at staying on target.

The target, of course, being one Ginny Weasley.

A girl that was currently very preoccupied with her flying, and so not paying any attention to her belongings, placed against the castle's short rampart. As was also the case with the rest of her friends and family that were busy trying to help her. And so none of them noticed as a slight, thin disillusioned silhouette walked up to the bags and coats with furtive steps, crouching to quickly dig through them.

I would need to give my thanks to Gilderoy Lockhart if this worked out as expected, as it had been his shenanigans with the pixies that had inspired this little ploy. Although the more than two hours I'd spent in the Library enchanting all those pieces of parchment one by one meant it hadn't been entirely effortless on my part, though.

But the distraction was necessary. The camouflage on the figure far ahead wasn't as perfect as I'd have liked it to be —because a disillusionment charm, at least one cast by me, still fell very short of true invisibility— and so it would have been too much of a risk otherwise, if say any of the Weasleys happened to look in the wrong direction at precisely the wrong time. This way I could be sure they would all be looking right where I wanted them to. At Ginny.

To be extra sure, I split a few of the planes away from the main group and redirected those to target the boys head-on. It was a futile attack, of course, and the kamikaze planes quickly felt prey to the fourth-years defensive prowess, but their sacrifice wasn't in vain: it was enough distraction to cover for the silhouette's actions.

"Merlin's balls!" shouted the red-headed twin. "Ginny, stop flying away! Come back to us!"

"HELP!"

The silhouette walked away now, seemingly having completed their task, and so I moved back as well. I rushed from tree to tree like I was a fugitive from Azkaban, crouched and keeping an eye on the flying Gryffindors until I reached the shoreline of the lake, some fifty meters away; then I followed it in a wide loop as I made my slow way back to the castle, pretending I was simply coming back from taking a stroll. In the distance, I saw how my little air force was finally bested —without my direct guidance, the planes were simply too stupid to dodge the older boys' attacks, and so they quickly succumbed to them; only a few stragglers persistently chasing after the first year girl.

And oddly enough the hardest thing of this whole little plan was to remind myself not to rush ahead, to keep my pace looking even and relaxed as I calmly returned towards Hogwarts. As if I had no hurry in the world; as if there was not a bloody horcrux in play right now. As if my heart wasn't beating like a drum, my mouth drier than a lecture from Professor Binns. But no, it simply wouldn't do to attract the Gryffindors' attention now that they were free from aerial attacks, and probably looking for the one behind it. Slow and steady wins the race.

Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later I finally reached the castle, and patiently made my way to the Transfiguration Courtyard, walking up to a very particular corner where a first year Slytherin student waited for me —now fully visible and free of any disillusionment charms.

"So?" I asked, ambling up to him. "Did you do the deed? Do you have anything for me? Speak, Higgs the Younger."

"I told you not to call me that," the boy grumbled, handing me a black leather bound notebook. I had a moment of elation upon seeing it, just to came crashing back to the ground.

"This is the same one I gave you!" I protested, almost offended.

"Yes," he shrugged. "I couldn't make the switch; her diary wasn't in the bag."

"Wasn't it? Did you really look–?"

"I did look! She only had a couple of notebooks in it, but they weren't anything like that; they had yellow covers and some homework on them."

I cursed under my breath, once more wanting nothing but to throw the bloody fake diary away.

"So, that's the favour paid?" hazarded the boy. "I did what you wanted. It's not my fault if she left her diary back at her dormitory."

"No, it's not," I admitted. "You did good, Higgs the Younger; we are even."

He rolled his eyes, then nodded. "It was fun, but... next time I'd rather pay you some Galleons, you see. No essay is worth setting the Weasley twins after me."

I said some commiserating words before finally walking away. The fact that he was probably right —in that the diary was at the Gryffindor Tower, as I had kept an eye on Ginny and I had never seen the book on her hands here at Hogwarts— only made me angrier. But Higgs the Younger was right too in that it wasn't his fault. And sure, I could try and keep squeezing him on it, argue the technicalities to extract yet another favour as payment; but if I did that it wouldn't take long for the word to spread, and then nobody would ask for my help with their schoolwork. I would ruin my spy network even before it had time to grow.

Patience, then. All plants needed nurturing before they could bear fruit, didn't they?

And yeah, I'd had my first remedial Herbology lesson just the day before.

I had arrived to the greenhouses with very little expectations —or more like, all the expectations in the world that this would be a fruitless, infuriating exercise. A complete waste of a perfectly good Saturday morning —and how many of those do you get in a life, anyway? Not enough, if my fore-knowledge was anything to go by.

And the fact that the greenhouse was nearly empty when I arrived only made me feel like I shouldn't be there. It might have been the very same work room where we had our usual classes, but the stools tidied up and placed under the workbenches, the gardening tools properly stored inside their cupboards... it all combined to make it feel like an oddly different place. Like I was intruding, somehow.

At least I wasn't the only one there. Three other students also waited awkwardly for Sprout to deign join us: Ernest Macmillan from Hufflepuff, that boy Boot from Ravenclaw —I didn't know his name—... and Neville Longbottom.

Which made me pause in surprise at seeing him there, as from what I could remember of the Harry Potter books and films the Gryffindor was supposed to be some sort of genius at Herbology. I didn't know if he indeed was, though, since we didn't share that one class with the lions; and perhaps that trait only appeared later, once he got more confident in his own skin; plus there was room for misremembering things on my part there too.

Still, it was surprising enough that I ambled straight towards him, curious as to what the true reason behind his presence there would be. The boy saw me coming out of the corner of his eye, and pretended to be very busy reading over some parchment notes on his hands, his head receding into his shoulders in a pretty good impersonation of a tortoise.

"Longbottom!" I said, loud enough that he couldn't ignore me without it being obvious to the point of rudeness. "We keep meeting in the unlikeliest places, no?"

"Y– er– hi."

"So... what's your crime?"

He paused for a beat, looking puzzled. "My— my...?"

"I mean, why are you here on a Saturday morning, rather than enjoying life with... uhm– with your mates?" Even as I asked, I realised Neville wasn't exactly the most popular of boys; and even though the Golden Trio probably liked him, they didn't exactly hang together in the books, right? So it was entirely within possibility that he didn't have any mates to enjoy a free morning with. I quickly added: "Did Sprout fail you in Herbology last year too, like me?"

"N– no," he stammered. "I... I didn't fail. I just... asked Professor Sprout if she– if I... could help her with... with the plants?"

I blinked.

"Wait. Longbottom... are you telling me you asked for this?"

"Er–"

I shook my head, biting my tongue not to say what I was thinking —something along the lines of 'what the hell is wrong with your head?'— less he became even more avoidant of me. Thankfully, I was saved from the awkward conversation by Madam Sprout, who finally joined us and quickly set us to follow her lead.

The class itself didn't start that bad, to be entirely honest: a refresher on the basics so to speak. Back to first year concepts that we should already be very familiar with at this point: things like how to identify dead leaves and prune them without damaging the plants, and how to water them properly. Except that this time the woman was much more hands-on than her usual at class, at points going so far as to grasp our own hands with hers, guiding our movements so that we wouldn't mess everything up, as was the usual in my case.

Neville quickly proved himself to be the odd one out, because while we were going through these very basic motions Sprout set him loose on a couple of pots of valerian, telling him only that they needed grafting. It seemed to be enough, because he quickly went to retrieve a set of gardening tools from the cupboard and sat at the workbench, starting to work on them and pretty much ignoring the rest of us.

So, this was his pastime, uh? Curious, how different people could be. Although my opinion on the usefulness of Herbology seemed to be shared by at least the other two students next to me. Macmillan in particular looked like he wanted nothing but to cast a vanishing charm onto the stifling greenhouse at large.

After half an hour of this without any plants dying, however, Sprout considered it was time to give us a wider range and have us repeat the steps on our own.

That was, unsurprisingly, a mistake.

"Shit," I muttered after accidentally cutting a perfectly good, green leaf out of the stalk of the moly in front of me. I turned to search for Sprout, but the witch was busy talking to Boots and hadn't noticed my mistake yet; so I quickly grabbed the evidence and hid the cut leaf by burying it under the pot's own dirt.

Neville however, he seemed like he had seen it all, because I caught him averting his gaze off me. I paused for a moment, considering whether we were both far enough for Sprout to hear us, then muttered:

"It wasn't my fault, you saw it!"

"Uh?"

"It moved, the bloody plant!"

"M– moved?"

"Yeah," I shrugged, pointing to a different, yellowing leaf still attached to main stalk. "I was trying to cut this one off, but the plant twisted at the last moment. It's always the same story, it's like the stupid herbs hate me or something!"

He scrunched his face, but then his eyebrows shot up as if he had reached some deep realisation.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well, if the–"

"Shh," tutted Sprout from over her side of the workbench, causing Neville to immediately lower his gaze and shut up. I sighed, shook my head and went back to my pruning.

But the same thing happened again a few minutes later, as I grabbed yet another yellow leaf and carefully approached my shears to it. The whole plant immediately started to shudder as if under the influence of some sort of phantom breeze.

"Stay still, you piece of–!"

Neville said: "That's– uhm..."

"What?" I muttered back to him.

"Nothing... just..."

"Come on, Longbottom; just spit it out already!"

His eyes went to Sprout for a moment, but when he saw she was busy replacing some trays he nodded and said: "It's just... you shouldn't talk to the plants like that. It's– it's no wonder they are s– scared."

"Scared?"

He nodded. "See how it trembles?"

I turned to look at the moly once more, and moved the shears slowly back. The shuddering slowed, then stopped. But it started again once I tried to grab the dead leaf with my hands.

"Uh..."

"See?" he said. "It's simply reacting to your... to you."

"But that's just not... It's them who started this!" I protested, keeping my tone low. "I wouldn't be angry at the stupid herbs if they just let me do my work in peace, without sabotaging me at every step! They just hate me."

"They don't. They are scared, and might try to defend themselves. If you are miffed at them, they are just reacting to your mood. Although... I've never seen this strong a reaction before. You must be really... really upset."

I wasn't that upset, truth be told, but still I pretty much considered I had good reason to be. "Well, they started it," I grumbled.

He shot me a dubious look, before going back to his own work.

I said: "They are just plants, though... I mean, how can they–?"

"They are magical plants," he muttered back, interrupting me. Somehow, his timidity seemed to have vanished. "They can react to your mood and intentions, just like any magical thing can. If you don't want to be here and are angry at them, then the plants can tell and will get nervous at you."

I burrowed my frown at Sprout. "That would have been good to know last year. Why didn't she tell us that?"

"What? But she did! During that lesson about–"

"And what should I do, then? Sing at them?"

He shrugged. "Well, some people do... but just... just try treating them with more respect?"

I closed my eyes and sighed, then took a deep breath, opened them and stared at the stupid moly.

"Right," I muttered to it. "Okay... well... Moly: I don't want to be here, and it's obvious you don't want me to be here either. So let's make a deal, shall we? I won't hurt you if you stay still and let me prune you, and then I'll be done and out of your hair... or, uhm... leaves forever. How does that sound?"

The plant, obviously, didn't reply —it being a plant. And I only felt like a complete moron, talking to the vegetation. But at least nobody seemed to have heard me, other than Neville perhaps.

I nodded to myself, then grabbed the tool again... only for the stalk of moly to resume its shuddering once more.

I snorted and shook my head in defeat. Then I spoke under my breath, low enough that not even the boy would hear: "You know what?... You win. Yeah, you fucking do. I just realised... it's because of it, no? It has always been because of it. Because you can smell it on me, somehow." My blood, I didn't say; there are things you simply don't say aloud, not even to a plant. "I reckon that's what's making all of you so nervous, or angry, or whatever, even from the very first class we ever had... But that's the thing, I can't... that's something I can't change about me. I will always be a fr– well, what I am. So yeah... yeah, you win."

It wasn't ideal, of course, as I couldn't exactly tell Sprout that the reason I was so bad at Herbology, and I would always be, was that I was some sort of odd and exotic half-breed —something that I learned about by performing a ritual using forbidden materials— and that the plants were somehow reacting to that. But maybe I could come up with some bollocks excuse about having some sort of vegetable-related trauma or something. Weird, yes, but I was an orphan and so I knew people were predisposed to accepting that sort of thing coming from us.

Or maybe I'd just keep pretending, and keep failing, until Sprout's patience finally ran out and she gave up on me as a lost cause. I would need to keep coming to these remedial classes, of course, with the knowledge that despite all this effort and wasted time I would always get 'Poor' or even 'Troll' grades in Herbology –that I'd need to counteract with better results in the other subjects I wasn't magically incapable at.

It would be a nightmare, sure, but knowing that there was no use in trying would make it somehow easier, paradoxically. I wouldn't need to be so frustrated, for once; and...

And the moly wasn't shuddering anymore.

I paused for a beat, tilting my head as if I wasn't sure it wouldn't be a trap. But no; ever so slowly I approached my shears to the plant, and it remained still. It didn't shudder even as I cut off the yellowing leaf, with an unbelieving swift snap.

Uh.

I quickly took advantage of this odd truce, rushing to prune the rest of the moly's leaves before it could change its mind. And when Sprout finally examined my work, she didn't say anything, which was a new one.

"Thanks," I muttered later as we were packing our things, still somewhat bewildered. I wasn't sure if I was saying it to Neville or to the plant.

So... that was something.

The disruption to my Saturday morning's schedule had another, unexpected benefit: right after our remedial Herbology class ended, I was left to my own devices and without any of the girls around to inquire into what I was doing. And yeah, I loved being accepted by them and belonging to their circle and all that, but I also liked —needed— my moments of privacy every now and then. And after what happened with Tracey the year before, this time around I was determined not to drag any of them into any sort of dangerous adventure that might left them hurt or traumatised. Those last nights telling a reeling Tracey Muggle stories in front of the common room's fireplace had been a waking call.

Not that what I wanted to do this time was that dangerous. I was only shopping, after all.

I had tried not to rely too much on the Room of Requirement and what it could provide, but so far I hadn't run into any truly dangerous or cursed items —to my knowledge, at least. And so I felt reasonably confident as I examined the racks of forgotten and abandoned brooms it welcomed me with, pacing next to them as if I was perusing the stock of some Diagon Alley shop.

Most of them were, truth be told, completely unfit. Broomsticks —or good broomsticks, at that— were expensive enough that most students wouldn't simply forget theirs, didn't leave them behind at Hogwarts when they left to go home. Not unless there were some good reasons for that. And so most of the brooms in front of me sported such things as cracked sticks, splayed or missing bristles —that could be a hazard to in-flight stability— and in one very particular case, a completely burnt off handle.

But there were some exceptions, too: a few of them that looked to be in perfectly working condition, if only second-hand. And armed with the Revelio spell and a book of curse-detecting charms that Professor Flitwick had recommended me when I'd asked —after he'd inquired with a knowing wink why I hadn't gone to Lockhart instead, as he was supposed to be my Defence teacher; something to which I'd only shrugged and smirked— I set out to double-check if they were safe or not.

Sure, the diagnostics spells I had access to wouldn't be able to detect the truly, devious and subtle curses that a talented dark wizard with enough time and sufficient motivation could cast on a broomstick —you'd need to take it apart and examine each piece in separate, with dozens of different charms to be completely sure— but they were certainly good enough for the kind of stupid shit Hogwarts students were likely to use, either to prank each other or to protect their own belongings —such as I'd done with my own trunk.

Which was my real concern, since dark wizards planting items on the school grounds so subtly cursed that they were virtually undetectable wasn't just that common of an occurrence, in the grand scheme of things. I'd be incredibly unlucky to run into anything like that by accident.

Crossing my fingers, here.

So yeah, one of the brooms turned out to be cursed, but it was easy enough to detect: it shone in a very bright red under my charm, and I was able to tell it was some sort of buckling spell. Dangerous, yes, and stupid if it was someone's idea of a prank; but also obvious and easy to avoid as I simply skipped it and moved to the next one.

After a few minutes of that I settled for a dusty, old-fashioned broomstick, just because it looked sturdy enough and like it was in a better condition than most of the others. The stick itself was mostly straight —nothing like the smooth curves of the modern brooms I'd seen in the hands of my housemates— with a crooked bend at the rear, right at the point where the rider sits. It had silver bands and handles, and a full mane of bristles. Which was what convinced me to go with it: because it looked like its previous owner had taken a good care of it; and while it was covered in a fine, grimy coat of dust it didn't sport any splinters.

A quick spin around the room —just hovering at a low height, because I didn't fully trust it yet not to fail under my weight— proved my choice right: the broomstick worked well enough, and was somehow both more agile and stable than the school brooms I had rode so far. I suspected it could go much faster than those too, but I simply didn't have the space —or recklessness— to put that to the test within the confines of the Room of Requirement. If I was to crack my head open, I'd rather do it someplace where other people could witness it and come to my rescue.

I was further vindicated a while later, when I finally descended to the Slytherin common room broom in hand, to the curiosity of my friends:

"It's an old Comet model," said Adrian Pucey, twisting the broom in his own hands as he examined it. Tracey had pretty much dragged me to talk to the older boy, on account of his well-known expertise on the topic, being in the Slytherin Quidditch team and all. "I'd say a 160 maybe, or even a 140... but I'm not sure, I'm not that familiar with antique brooms."

"A– antique?" I asked.

"Yes, from the 20s or 30s. They don't sell these anymore, unless you go to a specialty shop of course. Where did you say you got it from?"

"Bought it from an older Ravenclaw girl," I answered, sticking to the lie I had came up with on my way down to the dungeons.

"Hmm... it probably belonged to her grandparents, then..."

Tracey interrupted: "But is it any good?"

"Well, yes; although the Comets are certainly no racing brooms: they have a good speed but lack in acceleration, you see. They are jacks of all trades: good enough for Quidditch at an amateur level, or just as an everyday broom to travel back and forth."

"Doesn't it matter that it's so old?" I asked.

"Yes, of course it does!" he replied, sounding almost offended at the idea. "They hadn't perfected inverted flying back then, had they? So I bet it will wobble a lot if you fly it upside down–"

Right. As if I needed any more reasons not to do that.

"–and you will need to give it a new coat of resin if you don't want it to splinter when you fly it under the rain. Modern brooms have water-repelling enchantments, of course; but these old ones needed more hands-on maintenance." He handed the broom back to me and added: "But it's not as worn down as it should be, given its age; it almost looks like it hasn't seen that much sky."

I shrugged. "The girl told me they kept it locked in some old cupboard or something."

"Not a bad find, then. Most broomsticks this old are barely holding together as it is."

"So... will it do better than the school's own brooms?" I asked him then, fearing the answer. After all, age was also the main problem with those ones too, wasn't it? But he simply looked at me as if I was asking some stupid question and gave an energetic nod: "Yes, definitely!"

Which was all that Tracey needed to hear before rushing to our dorm to retrieve her own broom, and then pretty much dragging me all the way back upstairs and onto the Training Grounds outside, to 'test it properly'. I was reluctant, but she was cunning enough to bribe me by offering me the use of her own broomstick service kit.

So yeah, I spent that Saturday afternoon flying around, familiarising myself with my brand new antique Comet broomstick. Thankfully, I had no crazy paper planes chasing after me. And over the next days my flying slowly improved —as I dared manoeuvres I wouldn't have felt comfortable to attempt on the school brooms— and the Comet proved itself not to be cursed. Or if it was, at least it must have been a curse with a very, very subtle long term effect.

I did get some disparaging comments from Draco Malfoy, comparing it unfavourably to his own Nimbus 2001 when I took it to our next Flying lesson. Which fair, my second-hand broom hadn't been anything crazy expensive like that even back on its day, but still I felt way more comfortable and agile when protecting those bloody hoops, and dodging the occasional bludger.

Improving my flying was a work in progress, but it would always need to play second fiddle to my other concerns: that of snatching the diary, primarily. I had been eyeing Ginny some more, but didn't see the notebook with her, which reinforced my suspicion that she wasn't taking it out of the Gryffindor tower that often —although a growing, worrying alternative explanation was starting to insinuate itself in my brain— and also... getting better at magic.

And that was why I stood behind right after one of our Defence classes with Gilderoy Lockhart ended, everybody rushing to collect their books and walk out.

"Go ahead; I'm just going to ask him for some more advanced work," I commented to the girls with a shrug. And because I was always practising spells from years further down the line, they accepted the excuse easily enough.

After the whole situation with the pixies —which had caused us to have to move into an entirely different classroom, at least for a while— Lockhart hadn't attempted any other practical lessons, opting instead to limit his teaching to the purely theoretical. Lots of book reading and essays. Which was rubbish, as you could write entire books with what the man lacked in knowledge about dark creatures or defensive spells. At least, it meant for peaceful, relaxed lessons; if useless ones.

But there might be a way for this year's class of Defence Against the Dark Arts not to be a complete loss of time for me. And so I walked up to our professor, waiting demurely as the last students filed out and he cleared his own table. He gave me a winning smile as he noticed me around.

"Ah, Miss..."

"Sarramond."

"Miss Sarramond, yes! Please, tell me, what do you need of me?"

"Uhm— well, sir... you see: last year I got the highest grades in this class, and I was wondering–"

"Well, of course! You must be looking to learn more from an accomplished wizard such as myself! Sadly, the school was very strict in that there shouldn't be any more practical demonstration. Disappointing, if you ask me; but I can certainly understand. Not everybody is as ready and sure-footed as me, when facing the true dangers of dark magical creatures."

"Right," I said, nodding and playing into his game. "That's very unfair! And I don't want to waste the chance of having you teaching us. So because last year Professor Duskhaven allowed me to study a few other topics than the rest of the class, I was wondering if you too could give me some... more advanced tutoring?"

"Certainly, girl! I could teach you everything about creatures of the night such as vampires and werewolves, or perhaps you want to hear about trolls and hags?"

"Well..." I said, "I was wondering instead if you knew anything about memory charms?"