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Chapter Twenty-Seven—Stalking Prey

Blaise paces across their classroom where he was supposed to meet Harry. Harry is more than half an hour late. Blaise would have gone searching, but he doesn't have any idea where Harry could be if he's not here, and if it's the Heir of Slytherin, if the beast has got him—

Blaise will need some time to brace himself for what that discovery will do to him.

"Blaise."

Blaise spins around, eyes wide, anger already on the tip of the tongue, and then he stops. Harry is smiling, obviously trying to look normal, but there's a shadow in his eyes and his face is pale and has—a flicker of illusion around it?

"Finite Incantatem."

Harry's smile drops along with the charm. "Blaise! You know that it takes me forever to cast spells like that. What are you doing—"

And he stops again, because Blaise has stridden forwards and cupped Harry's chin in his hands, so he can stare at the tear-tracks on Harry's cheeks. It's evident that Harry did try to scrub them away with something, maybe the back of his hand, but they didn't go. Blaise opens his mouth and then closes it again.

His fury makes it hard to keep his hand on Harry's chin gentle.

"Blaise?"

Blaise closes his eyes. It's hard to imagine something that could make Harry cry. Yes, if Blaise or Mother turned on him, or if something happened to one of his friends. But Blaise is sure that Harry would have run straight to him if Goldstein or Patil was Petrified, and Blaise would probably have heard about it even here if it had been Longbottom.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?"

"Nothing happened."

"Do you want to tell me without lying?"

Harry swallows and looks at him a little helplessly. Blaise just watches him, calmly, and finally Harry closes his eyes and says, "I had an argument."

"With whom?"

"You realize that most people would say who instead of whom—"

"Harry."

There's enough silence for long enough that Blaise thinks Harry really isn't going to tell him. Then he whispers, "Neville. He spied somehow and found out that I'm a Parselmouth, and he's upset that I didn't tell him, and—he thinks I could be the Heir of Slytherin."

Blaise stands in silence for a long moment, his hands wrapped around Harry's shoulders. He wants to say that he'll hurt Longbottom for this, but that would only make Harry more upset, and resistant to the notion that Longbottom deserves pain.

Besides, Blaise sees no need to announce it. Harry has to know, which is why he tried to hide the evidence of his tears at first.

"I'll take care of this," Blaise says gently, when Harry has shuddered in silence for a few minutes and made no attempt to move away from him. "In the meantime, we don't have to talk about it."

"We don't?"

"No. We can talk about whether you could make Ignis bigger for me."

Harry smiles immediately. Blaise did want to know the answer to that question, but he also thinks that knowing someone appreciates him instead of hating him for his unique magic is also helping Harry. "Well, I suppose I could try. But there's the problem of fastening more materials to his body. And there's the problem of where you would hide him if he were bigger and not able to fit into your pocket."

"You don't think I should just introduce him to everyone and tell him that he's a dragonet who followed me home from the Forbidden Forest?"

Harry laughs, his eyes bright, and Blaise feels a stab of relief in his gut. This incident with Longbottom hasn't permanently damaged him. Blaise can still do something to make up for it.

And if he plans his revenge on Longbottom at the same time, well, Mother would be proud to know that he's able to apply himself to multiple tasks at a time. And so assiduously. He'll have to tell her in the next letter he writes to her.

She might also have some ideas for increasing the rather pedestrian revenge that seems to be coming to mind for him right now.

Neville can't help glancing anxiously at Zabini from across the Potions classroom as he sets up his cauldron. But Zabini has his head turned, discussing something with Nott. Neville sighs. Harry must not have told him about the argument they had, then.

Neville feels a little guilty when he thinks about that, about the expression on Harry's face. But he feels more sad. If Harry thought Neville was a real friend, why wouldn't he have shared his Parseltongue with Neville?

It just proves that it's hard to be real friends with someone outside your own House. Neville has always doubted his own friendship with Zabini, and even Harry's. And Harry is a Ravenclaw, and he has—

I don't know. Does he have more flexible morals, or is it that the Slytherins have influenced him into having them?

Neville shakes his head. It's not something he needs to worry about any time soon. Maybe after Harry has been caught and exposed, if he's not expelled from Hogwarts, then they can be friends again someday.

And there's always the chance that Nott will turn out to be the Heir instead. In that case, Neville will apologize to Harry. But he'll also insist that Harry not extend a hand of friendship to Nott (if Nott isn't expelled).

"Sparking Solutions! Pay attention to the instructions on the board…"

Neville does, and nods as he sees the warning about not adding too much powdered onyx. Professor Snape is a little more tolerable than he was last term, or even a few weeks ago. Neville doesn't know why that is, but he'll take it.

He sneaks a glance at Zabini. No, there are still no secret glares and the like in his direction. Neville hopes that if Harry's chosen to keep their argument a secret this long, he'll just keep doing the same thing in the weeks to come, and Neville won't have to watch his back.

He faces his potion again and swirls his stirring rod carefully through the red-purple potion. It smells like blackberries, which is at least more pleasant than some of them, and it's supposed to help increase the efficacy of Floo powder. Or, as Snape told them with a sneer in his voice, be a very first step in that.

Neville wonders idly, again, why Snape is teaching children, and reaches for the flask of powdered onyx that he brought from home.

He empties the flakes into his potion.

It explodes.

There's a flash so bright that Neville is blinded and doesn't see what happens, but he sure feels it. The liquid soaks his arms and face, and it begins to blister and burn at once. Neville screams and screams. He's been subjected to the pain of fire spells gone wrong before during some of his dueling practice with Harry and Zabini, but never a burn like this that eats down into his skin and seems to be headed straight for bone.

"Neville!"

That's Hermione. Neville thinks he feels her hand on his shoulder for a second before she starts screaming, too.

"You stupid girl!"

That's definitely Snape's voice. Neville can hear him chanting intense, low spells under his breath, and then the pain begins to subside somewhat. It's still there, dragging at Neville's skin and making him breathe in racking sobs, but at least it's lessened a little.

A jet of water hits him in the face, and Neville gasps and opens his eyes. Snape is looming over him, staring intensely at him for a second, although Neville doesn't feel the brush of Legilimency. Then Snape nods and spins away, flicking his wand. The potion has spilled fire-colored liquid all over the benches and the tables, and at Snape's gestures, it flies into the air and rotates around him like a small tornado for a second.

"Clear the classroom."

The voice is the kind that Neville doesn't think anyone could disobey. He scrambles towards the door, barely pausing to nod when Snape commands him, "Longbottom, go get checked out by Madam Pomfrey."

Hermione is sobbing softly, and Ron is standing next to her and comforting her. Neville is sure—fairly sure—that he's therefore the only one who sees the expression on Zabini's face.

A smile. And he meets Neville's glance and continues to smile, before he saunters away at Nott's side.

Shaking, Neville wraps his arms around himself. He read the instructions for the potion carefully, for once. He knows that he could have been blinded or permanently scarred by the potion going wrong, if it hit too directly.

"Neville, come on! We need to get to the infirmary before the potion has a chance to dry!"

Neville starts and scrambles after Ron and Hermione. Yeah, they do. And even if he doesn't worry as much about himself, he owes it to Hermione to make sure that she doesn't scar because of Zabini's stupid grudge against him.

He does wonder if Harry knows about this. Then he puts it out of his mind. Harry is either the Heir of Slytherin or friends with someone who doesn't mind doing this sort of thing. Neville can't really afford to care about his opinion.

"You didn't have to do that, Blaise."

"But I wanted to."

Harry can't stop smiling. Blaise and Theo told him about what happened in Potions this morning, and—well, Harry knows he should be upset, because Neville might be his friend again someday, and that trick with the onyx dust could have injured a lot more people than just Neville and Hermione. Merlin, it could have blinded Neville.

But Harry is still flattered that someone, two people even, would do that for him. Even if Blaise is the one who came up with the idea first, and Theo is the one who used a wandless spell to blow an extra amount of onyx dust into Neville's cauldron.

He used to never have friends. Now he does.

"I told you that the cold boy is also your friend," Artemis says, and wriggles out of Harry's pocket to wrap around his arm. She enjoys doing that when Harry and Blaise are with Theo. She likes the way he admires her.

Theo is staring at her with longing, again.

Harry looks down at Artemis. He doesn't think she'll mind, but he'll ask anyway. "Would you be all right with Theo holding you?"

"You should have asked earlier."

Harry grins a little and holds out his arm towards Theo. "Would you like to hold her? Let her wind around your arm?"

"Really? You'd let me?"

"After what you did to Neville, I don't think you're going to hurt her, and that would be the only reason I'd have for not letting you do it."

"Yes."

Theo's hands shake a little as he reaches across the corridor they're in, deep in the dungeons, searching for the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, and scoops up Artemis from Harry's hands. She gives a sleepy little hiss and curls up in a blue-and-white ball in the crook of Theo's arm.

"What was she saying just then?"

"Nothing, really. Just mumbling the way someone does when they wake up sleepy in the morning."

Theo's face is a study in wonder. He really does seem to love snakes. Harry studies him and wonders if he could make a snake for Theo. He would have to make it carefully, so that it would seem like a real one. Then he could say he found it somewhere, and he wouldn't have to expose his gift for making living things to Theo.

"I'm surprised that Mother hasn't told you about what kinds of vengeance she'd like to enact on Longbottom yet."

"Um."

Blaise narrows his eyes. "What?"

"I—didn't tell her yet."

Blaise just stares with his mouth a little open. Then he finally says, "You didn't tell my mother, who cares about you and would want to know about this as soon as it happens, about your fight with Longbottom."

"No."

"Why, Harry?" Blaise asks, forcefully enough that Theo looks over from where he's cuddling Artemis. "Do you think that she doesn't care about you? Do you think that she wouldn't risk everything in the protection of you?"

"That's why!"

"You're not making any sense."

"I knew you would take vengeance on Neville, but I knew it would be things like the Potions accident." Harry lowers his voice so that Theo can't hear. "She would do something a lot worse and a lot more permanent, and I wouldn't want her to."

"You could ask her not to do something like that, you know."

"I could?"

Blaise looks astonished, and then pitying. Harry bites his lip, glancing away. He truly didn't know that. He thought Aradia would insist on her own sense of justice no matter what, and he's not convinced that even she, with all her skill, would get away with killing the Boy-Who-Lived.

It was to protect Neville that he didn't tell her, but also to protect her.

"You do know that now?"

"Yeah," Harry whispers. "Now." He clears his throat. "So she'd like to know, and in the meantime, you're going to keep up vengeance on Neville that hurts him but doesn't kill him, right? Because they would investigate that, and I'm pretty sure that they would catch you."

Blaise smiles at him. "No, I won't kill him. Although that Potions accident could have blinded him. I would have liked to see that." He seems wistful for a moment, but shakes it off before Harry can get worried. "In the meantime, don't keep it from Mother any longer. And now, we should go on searching for the Chamber."

Harry turns to Theo and holds out his arm, silently asking for Artemis back. Theo heaves a wistful sigh as he holds her out.

"How were his hands?" Harry asks, as he goes back to tapping on stone walls and casting the elementary charms they've learned that should show a hollow place or a stone that was recently moved.

"Solid and warm."

Harry smiles. Sometimes he wishes his own standards for friendship were so simple and wise.

Aradia sits with her eyes closed for a long moment after Harry has told her what happened as the result of his friendship with the Longbottom boy. Then she stirs and writes back in her book.

I hope that you will understand you may trust me in the future.

Yes, Harry's voice says a moment later in her head, sounding guilty and young. I promise, I'll tell you. I should have known that you would be able to control your reaction.

She would also have been able to control whether anyone at all suspected her after Longbottom's death, but that seems to be something that will only upset Harry. For some reason, he doesn't want Longbottom dead.

Then again, the boy was only his second human friend, after Blaise.

Tell me if you need something from me, she writes in the book.

Yes, Aradia.

Aradia shakes her head as she shuts the book and sets it aside, in a warded box that will only open to others if she dies. Even if it seems unlikely, she will not expose the depth of Harry's magic to anyone outside the family.

Then she stands up and goes into the dressing room adjoining her sitting room, peering critically at herself in the mirror. She nods and lifts her wand, beginning the Transfiguration of her facial features. She is so skilled in this that she can modify her bone structure without speaking the incantations aloud.

Unfortunately, her own face is known to the man she intends to pursue now. And he prefers women with a different hair color and a decidedly different set of facial features. Aradia will become that to get close to him.

Like a cheetah sneaking close to the prey, before it breaks into the sprint.

Aradia is smiling as she takes a step back from the mirror and shakes out her hair. It is a glittering blue-black now, shinier and fuller. And her nose looks as if it has been broken once, her cheekbones are lower, her lips are slightly darker, her chin is more arched.

She looks, in other words, like a more beautiful and darker-skinned version of the last woman her prey dated.

Smiling, Aradia glides out of the dressing room, and goes to choose one of the gowns she bought for this occasion. Simple robes will not do, not for this particular victim of the Suns. She must look appealing to him, but accidentally appealing. After all, he mustn't know that she knows him.

That she is hunting, and looking forwards to ripping his throat open and spilling his blood.

At least someone will die soon, and if Aradia imagines Longbottom's features when she's destroying this particular man…who will know?

Neville isn't paying much attention as he goes down the staircase, because he's laughing at Ron's jokes, and this isn't one of the staircases that has a trick step or that moves often.

His foot comes down on nothing but air.

Neville tumbles forwards with a cry, his arms flailing. There's a hole in the staircase right in front of him, one that he could swear wasn't there a moment ago, and he's tumbling, he'll hit the stone floor, he doesn't think—

"Neville! I've got you, mate!"

He bangs to an abrupt stop, swinging back and forth over the threatening floor. Ron has lunged and caught him. Neville can't see from his new angle what else Ron is holding onto besides him. He hopes there's a banister or something, but he can't be sure.

Neville gives a dry sob and stares at the fall. It might not have splattered his brains out of his skull, but he would definitely have broken some bones. He shudders as Ron shouts for help, and someone else grabs hold of both of them and pulls Neville up.

He sits on the stair he grabbed onto first and smiles weakly at Seamus and Dean. "Thanks for your help."

"Someone is trying to kill you, Neville!" That's Hermione, all big eyes and worried face. "Someone who doesn't want you to continue to exist and fight You-Know-Who, or maybe someone who's afraid that your investigation will uncover the Heir of Slytherin—"

She cuts off, flushing. Neville knows why. He and Ron and Hermione are the only ones who know that they probably already did uncover the Heir of Slytherin.

Now that I think about it, telling Harry I knew it was either him or Nott was pretty stupid of me.

Neville gives Hermione a tight smile and stands up. "Well, I'm all right," he says. "And the person who might be hunting me is pretty incompetent if they didn't manage to kill me in two out of two tries."

That gets a laugh, the way he intends. Neville is learning how to be a leader, and he knows now that one of the most important parts of that is making people trust you and believe in you and follow you.

For the moment, it means walking down the stairs and eating dinner in a lighthearted way, never looking at the Slytherin or Ravenclaw tables. And it means breaking down and burying his face in trembling hands only later at night, when he's in bed behind warded curtains.

It means saving the confrontation he wants to have for the morning.

"Harry. I need to talk to you."

Harry looks up, a little concerned. He's just leaving Herbology, and Neville is waiting for him outside with his arms folded.

Even as Harry starts to ask what they could have to talk about, Ron and Hermione materialize on either side of him. It reminds Harry so much of some of the times that Dudley's goons would catch Harry and "escort" him to go talk to Dudley and that he flinches and steps back.

His magic starts whirls of dust moving next to his feet. He could make them into simple little creatures that would blind Ron and Hermione long enough for him to get away—

And show everyone who's staring at them with curious eyes that he has powerful magic of a kind that doesn't match his weakness in Charms and other classes.

Harry takes a deep breath and lets the dust fall still. "What do you want, Neville?"

"I want to know why you're trying to kill me. I thought I meant more to you than that. I thought I was your friend."

"Yeah, and I thought you were my friend, but you accused me of being the Heir of Slytherin," Harry snaps. "So I suppose we were both wrong."

"You are the Heir of Slytherin!"

Harry just stares at Ron, until he flushes, and then says, "Apparently me and Theo Nott. Who's next? Snape? Malfoy?"

"It could be Malfoy," Hermione begins. Harry thinks she sounds eager. She probably thinks this would be a clever solution to the problem of who is actually the Heir and the conflicts between Harry and Neville.

Harry shakes his head. "You're ridiculous, and I think that you're mainly angry because you got caught when you sneaked into the Slytherin common room."

"Probably because you told them we were going to!"

"I wasn't even at the school at the time," Harry says. "Remember? Or is that another fact that you're conveniently forgetting? You seem to forget a lot of things when it's convenient." He stares at Neville. "I haven't tried to kill you. I don't want you dead. I keep hoping that someday you'll wake up and remember that we were friends. Someday."

Neville flushes so deeply that Harry thinks this is it, the end of the confrontation, and Neville is going to let him go. But instead, he ends up shaking his head and murmuring, "I wish I could be sure of that, Harry. And anyway, there's another possibility."

"Which is what?" Harry feels so tired, even though they didn't do a lot of hard work in Herbology today.

"You told Zabini about this, and he's the one who's doing his best to kill me."

"And why would he keep messing up in that case? You would be dead if the Black Widow's son wanted to kill you."

Neville hesitates. Harry watches him closely, and he can see the moment when belief shifts into place behind Neville's eyes. Harry can't feel any triumph, because the belief is based on the prejudice that people have always had against Blaise and Aradia.

But maybe he doesn't need to feel it. Maybe he just needs it to work, and it does. Neville nods. "Let him go."

Ron and Hermione step back on either side of him, and Harry walks past. Artemis is hissing in agitation in his pocket, but it seems that no one hears her, so at least he knows they're not going to hurt her even though they know he's a Parselmouth now.

He pauses when he gets up to Neville, and looks into his face. Neville flinches. Suddenly he looks anxious and guilty, and Harry feels the satisfaction down to his bones, the way he used to the rare times he got to eat a full meal at the Dursleys' house.

"I hope that you remember, someday, how we used to be friends," Harry says, and he turns around and walks away.

Neville says something soft to Ron and Hermione behind him. Harry doesn't try to listen. Those words are for the people Neville considers friends.

"I think he is a very stupid boy," Artemis announces as Harry catches up to Anthony and Padma, who are waiting for him with anxious looks.

Harry manages a quick hiss back of, "Stupider than I thought he was," before he has to stop so he can reassure two more of his real friends that he's all right.

And successfully conquer the temptation to turn around and tell Neville that he's only alive because Harry asked Blaise and Aradia for that favor.

Blaise sighs and plasters a hand across his face. Of course he managed to get all the way back to Slytherin from the library with the books he needs less than the one about rare charms for this essay.

"Blaise?"

"Go on in, Theo. I'm going back to check out that book I said I was going to check out, and talked about several times, and managed to leave behind."

Theo flashes him a quick, dark smile, and ducks through the common room door with a murmur of "Pureblood." Blaise shakes his head as he turns around. It's a stupid password, but the Slytherin Head Boy this year is a rigid blood purist.

He finds himself drawing his wand when he hasn't quite made his way back to the library. It's too quiet. The air around him seems hushed, as if someone has taken in a great breath that drew away all the air. Blaise remembers this feeling from an ambush two years ago that badly wounded Mother and nearly killed him.

The sound of grinding stone. A huge shadow on the wall in front of him.

Blaise leaps back.

A serpentine head surges around the corner, maw open, yellow eyes glistening—

The air fills with smoke and feathers. Blaise sees a silver bird form in front of him, wings spread and beak gaping, and then it bursts into flame. A dead raven falls to the floor.

The essence of the raven will linger around you. It'll take a death for you.

The words echo in Blaise's ears as he whips around and runs and runs and runs, away from the beast's enraged hiss. He ducks into a secret passage behind a tapestry of two dancing satyrs and bolts up towards the Astronomy Tower, his legs heavy as lead from fear.

I'm alive. I'm alive. But Harry's gift is gone. I would have died.

That was a basilisk.

Blaise closes his eyes, leans against a wall, and takes Ignis out of his pocket, letting the little dragon warm the side of his neck until he feels capable of walking again. And then he takes a path that leads to the owlery.

Time for Mother to descend on the school again in her righteous fury.