Bill?
Bill:
The Hogwarts library was immersed in an almost absolute silence, broken only by the faint sound of pages turning and the occasional scrape of quills on parchment. The tall windows let in the gray light of an overcast afternoon, spilling soft rays that illuminated the seemingly endless rows of bookshelves. The air carried the distinctive scent of aged parchment and fresh ink—something Bill Weasley had always associated with tranquility and focus. Today, however, his mind was restless.
He sat at a table near the center, surrounded by a group of seventh-year classmates. Gideon Carruthers, with his messy dark hair and perpetually alert eyes, was hunched over a Transfiguration book, scribbling notes on an already crowded parchment full of underlined phrases and arrows connecting concepts. Beside him, Olivia Worthington, a Ravenclaw student, was poring over a massive volume of Advanced Potions, her brow furrowed as she murmured something inaudible to herself.
"If I have to read one more potion formula today, I swear I'll turn into a beetle just to hide from Snape's next class," Olivia muttered under her breath, dropping her quill with a dramatic sigh.
"Good luck with that, Worthington. I bet he'll find you just to rip off your wings," Gideon replied without looking up, though a teasing smile played on his lips.
Recently, since returning from the winter holidays, seventh-year Potions students had been recruited to teach younger students. However, this also meant they were the unlucky ones still enduring lessons with their esteemed professor, Snape. Bill had volunteered for two weekly classes with first-years, hoping to see his younger siblings—and Lyra—but Snape had made a special effort to ensure no relatives supervised each other's classes.
Bill chuckled quietly at his friends’ banter, pretending to focus on his own list of notes on defensive spells for the NEWTs. Yet his attention was far from the conversation around him. Almost immediately, he had noticed the solitary figure in the farthest corner of the library.
Lyra Black.
She sat at a small table, surrounded by a pile of books that seemed disproportionate for a first-year, but it was a scene he had grown used to over the past few years. Her posture was relaxed, but her eyes were fixed on a page with an intensity Bill recognized—the same look he saw in his own younger brothers' eyes when they were engrossed in something fascinating, often plans for a new prank.
She should be with her friends, not alone here, he thought, accompanied by a pang of unease. It was strange. He had never really considered how her personality might make it hard for her to befriend other kids—how she defended controversial ideas, her precocious intelligence, and the disconcerting way she looked at people, as if she could see more than they wanted to show.
"Earth to Weasley." Bill blinked, snapping back to reality when Gideon nudged him with his quill. "Are you going to help us with this Arithmancy project, or are you trying to figure out how to transfigure your quill into a hippogriff?"
"Sorry," Bill murmured, forcing a smile. He pointed at the book in front of him, feigning attention. "What was it again?"
Gideon rolled his eyes but let it slide.
"No master numbers in the individual letter values," his friend explained. "We just need to work with six for now."
As Gideon elaborated, Bill nodded distractedly, offering a vague response that his friend seemed to accept. But his gaze slipped back to Lyra. She had shifted position, tilting her head to the side as she read. The light from the window behind her seemed to create a subtle halo around her black hair.
"I'm grabbing another book," Bill said abruptly, standing before anyone could question him. Gideon and Olivia exchanged a glance but said nothing, accustomed to Bill's sudden mood shifts when he was "focused" or felt compelled to act on something. It happened sometimes.
Walking between the shelves, Bill tried to appear casual, as if he were genuinely looking for a book. But as he approached the library's corner, the muffled sound of his footsteps on the carpet seemed louder in his ears. He hesitated for a moment, watching Lyra from a distance.
She appeared completely oblivious to the world around her, her eyes glowing as she read. There was something almost magnetic about her concentration. Whether it was curiosity or concern driving him, Bill knew he needed to talk to her.
Just for a bit, he promised himself.
He took a deep breath, adjusted his tie automatically, and began to approach, carefully choosing the most discreet path to avoid drawing anyone else's attention. The titles of the books on the table, hidden from view of the rest of the library, were quite suspicious: Cursing the Unseen: Conquest Spells for Objects and Locations; Architects of Fear: The Art of Crafting Original Curses; Eternal Runes: Anchoring Spells for Maximum Durability; Enchanted Metamorphosis: Subtle and Functional Transfigurations; and Conditioned Enchantments: Custom Spells for Specific Situations—and those were just the ones whose covers Bill could see.
"Up to no good, princess?" he whispered in her ear. Close, but not touching—he wasn’t an idiot, after all.
His smug expression faltered slightly as Lyra jumped, startled and tense, her body stiffening before she looked at him with unrecognizing eyes for several seconds. Then her shoulders relaxed. Bill watched, entranced, as her pupils, contracted in alarm, dilated upon realizing it was him who had snuck up behind her.
"You shouldn’t scare people like that, or..." she began but pressed her lips together, cutting herself off and piquing Bill's curiosity.
"Or?" he pressed. Lyra narrowed her eyes at his insistence instead of letting the matter drop, and Bill just knew she would deliver a sharp retort for it.
"You’ll end up with a knife in your throat," she hissed irritably. Bill felt his lips twitch in a barely suppressed smile, which he tried to cover with his hand, only partially succeeding if Lyra's narrowed eyes were any indication.
"Careful, princess. Someone might think you’re planning to become a Dark Lady with all these cold-blooded threats and curses," he teased with a mischievous grin, glancing pointedly at the Dark Arts books. He was certain they came from the Black library and that Lyra was taking advantage of the recent rule changes to study the subject openly—or as openly as the secluded corner of the Hogwarts library allowed.
"You're putting me on the same level as a mere Lord?" Lyra raised an eyebrow, a smile tugging at her lips. "What happened to the demotion? Not too long ago, I was just a princess."
"Ah, my mistake," Bill said, sitting down as Lyra resumed her seat beside him. They were close enough now that no one could overhear their banter, which could so easily be misinterpreted. He added in a whisper, his grin growing cheekier, "Should I call you Dark Princess? Or would Dark Queen be more fitting?"
Bill watched as Lyra’s neck flushed red, along with the tips of her ears. He could almost feel the heat of her embarrassment radiating off her, and he had to bite back a laugh at the triumph of managing to provoke the usually stoic girl.
"That’s inappropriate," Lyra said, her face crimson and lips pressed tight as she fought back a bemused smile.
"Which part exactly?" he chuckled. "Suggesting Voldemort and Grindelwald should pay their respects to Your Majesty, or all this Dark Arts studying? What are you trying to do with it, anyway?"
"There are a lot of inappropriate things about this conversation," Lyra said, rolling her eyes.
"So, what are you trying to do here?" he persisted, gesturing to the books.
"Nothing, just curiosity," she lied—and wasn’t even trying to be convincing about it.
"You’re studying these books with the same fervor Fred and George have when planning a prank." She might be good, but Bill had spent too much time as the older brother of those two troublemakers not to recognize a scheme.
Lyra huffed and rolled her eyes, but relented.
"I'm trying to figure out how to apply a curse to a specific area—one that would only activate under very specific circumstances," she explained. "Spells are temporary, and I need something that lasts."
"Runes can be used to anchor one or more spells for longer," Bill reminded her. "Diagon Alley is full of them. Many buildings have runes in their foundations to help them withstand natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. A magical house can last a long time."
"I know, but I feel like my knowledge of curses is lacking, and I was hoping to fix that here," she grumbled, gesturing vaguely at the scattered books. "This project would be a harmless way to practice wide-range, condition-triggered curses. Something harmless and easy to justify if anyone came to cause trouble."
"What kind of curse are you trying to create?" he asked, frowning. It was true that the term "curse" had a negative connotation due to all the cases where people didn’t die from it but spent the rest of their lives suffering its effects. Popularly, a curse needed to have a harmful impact. However, in more technical terminology, a curse was a spell that sustained itself by feeding off the magic in its environment. It almost gained a life of its own, which was why some of them ended up causing unexpected effects or even mutations, not always yielding the same results.
"Take the example of the Greengrass family curse, which occasionally manifested and killed some members. Why did it only affect certain people? Why did the age at which they died vary? These are all questions that shouldn’t exist if the curse simply affected everyone equally, but that’s not what happens.
Curses are living magic, connected to Ley Lines, and they are always changing, even though their general nature remains. That’s why curses are so feared. You can never predict what they’ll do next."
"I wanted to change the physical properties of a surface under certain conditions but without altering the surface itself," Lyra replied hesitantly, as if searching her mind for the best words to explain her idea. "I want to make a lawn, for example, soft or elastic if someone falls from a certain height."
"The lawn… Oh, I see," Bill chuckled a little, covering his smile with his hand. "You’re taking flying lessons. Still scared of heights?"
"Shut up. At least I’m not scared of cockroaches," she retorted.
"Hey, cockroaches are disgusting!" he defended, still laughing at her. "Remember how Uncle Sirius had to enchant the ground to make it soft? Charlie even jumped off his broom to show you that you wouldn’t get hurt, and… oh, even then, you only hovered a few inches off the ground before giving up and literally running away in fear. You fled flying lessons like the devil himself was after you!"
He could barely breathe, holding back his laughter to avoid drawing the attention of Madam Pince, who would kick them out for making noise without a second thought. That woman was like a dragon guarding her treasure.
"Oh, and do you remember the time there was a cockroach in the—"
Bill clamped a hand over Lyra’s mouth, glancing around to make sure no one was watching them.
"We agreed that would stay between us," he whispered, narrowing his eyes. "Besides, no one would believe you."
Lyra licked his hand, making Bill instinctively pull back, retreating a few inches just in case she decided to retaliate. It wouldn’t be beneath her to bite him, considering her Animagus form.
"You licked me, you savage!" he accused, though there was no resentment in his tone.
"Be thankful I only did that, you heathen," she shot back, narrowing her eyes in playful warning before breaking into a predatory grin. "I didn’t know boys could hit such high notes…"
"All right, what can I do to help with your safety 'project'?" he changed the subject, grabbing some books so he wouldn’t have to look at Lyra while she undoubtedly laughed at him. "The conditions you mentioned earlier were 'falling,' right? The ground should keep its natural physical properties unless someone is falling, and their health or life is at risk."
Lyra took a second to compose herself before answering.
"Yes, the ground should act as a cushion," she said, pulling some books from beneath others. She was using many references, but the newest one she picked up was a Muggle physics textbook. "We also need to adjust the spell so that the elasticity coefficient of the surface is just enough to cushion the fall without causing injury but not so much that people bounce around like balls."
She showed him formulas that seemed far more complex than anything he’d seen in Arithmancy. The diagrams featured numerous vectors alongside calculations with many variables.
Sometimes, Bill questioned the quality of magical education because if Muggle children could understand those diagrams, what did that say about an adult—he was legally of age—who found translating hieroglyphs easier? Wizards were so focused on how magic could change the world that they didn’t bother to understand the rules they were supposedly breaking. They didn’t even fully grasp what they were altering with magic, caring only about the final result.
"You could apply this to the entire castle and the grounds," Bill suggested, realizing how much safer it would make things, especially for the Astronomy Tower. "I can imagine some idiots daring each other to jump from high places just because they know they won’t die."
"Then we should leave some pain, instead of creating a perfect cushioning effect," she corrected thoughtfully. "It wouldn’t be as fun for them to jump off a building into a deadly fall if they knew it’d hurt a lot, even if it wouldn’t kill them."
"It would also help reduce suicide rates," Bill added, though he suspected not all the deaths recorded in Hogwarts’ history were actual suicides as reported. The school would’ve been shut down long ago if parents thought students could be killed because of a 'prank' that went too far.
Most of the victims, he was sure, came from poor families or were Muggle-borns, and their deaths were attributed to the pressure of high expectations and the need for success. But Bill had spent years around Slytherins and fulfilling his duties as a Prefect too long not to see something suspicious in it. For example, poorer families or the Muggle relatives of the dead wouldn’t have the resources or knowledge to force Aurors to truly investigate, unlike wealthier families often connected to the culprits of the so-called 'prank.'
Labeling it as suicide was politically convenient. It reminded him of something.
"Are we still having the Muggle Dueling Club tonight?" he asked. The combat lessons took place at least twice a week, and Bill could already see how the exercise was transforming his body, giving him muscles and more energy.
"Of course, why wouldn’t we?" Lyra asked without looking up from her book.
"Well, with what happened to Cordia…"
"What about Cordia?" Lyra’s full attention was now on Bill, like a leopard assessing an opponent.
Cordia was a Slytherin student who attended the lessons. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was a half-blood, so her situation in her House probably wasn’t ideal. But Bill could only fight threats he could see.
"The professors called the Prefects to warn us to watch out for violence between students after she was attacked," he explained. The girl didn’t have many friends, and it was sad if no one visited her in the hospital wing. Bill had checked in on her, and she was unconscious. "Apparently, she was hit with multiple jinxes and beaten afterward. The professors were called to cancel the jinxes so Madam Pomfrey could properly treat her."
He and the other club members were still strengthening their bodies and learning how to handle a single opponent. None of them would stand a chance against so many attackers at once.
Bill grabbed Lyra’s hand when he saw her rubbing her forearm—a clear sign of nervousness.
***
"Tell me," Bill suddenly found himself more courageous, insistent. If someone was hurting her… What if it was Uncle Sirius? What would Bill do then? He doubted the man would do such a thing to the daughter he seemed to love so much, but what if? "Your dad…"
"It wasn’t Dad," Lyra immediately cut in, sounding offended on her father’s behalf at the suggestion, and Bill felt relieved it wasn’t him. She sighed, tension leaving her shoulders. "It was someone named Ryuna."
"Where is this person?" Bill felt his fists tighten, ready to punch something. Or someone.
"Don’t worry about it. Ryuna’s already dead," Lyra reassured him, showing no sign of being disturbed by someone leaving permanent marks on her skin. No anger to be seen.
***
The scars he knew were there, under her long-sleeved shirt, were small lines etched into her skin, carefully ordered and parallel, none of them touching the others. Bill dreaded knowing how they’d been made, but it was a relief to hear the person responsible was already dead.
When he felt Lyra tense under his hand, he looked up to see her face set in a closed expression and her eyes cold. She pulled her arm away and stood up silently, like a stalking leopard.
"Will you watch my books for a while?" Lyra asked, her voice unusually flat. "I have something to do."
She was already walking away without waiting for a response when Bill grabbed her wrist, immediately letting go when he remembered the one time Fred and George tried to scare her with a playful shove. Both ended up on the floor before anyone could react, and they’d learned that touching Lyra by surprise could bring unpleasant surprises. That was why Bill took care not to touch her until she saw it was him.
"Where are you going?" With her mood, he doubted she was heading to the hospital wing.
"You’d better not know, Head Boy," she said before leaving without looking back, leaving Bill stunned.
He could follow her, but then he might be forced to stop her, even punish her. Plausible deniability was probably best.
Bill exhaled deeply when he saw how many highly suspicious books he now had under his care and began packing them into his bag—he had to cast an Extension Charm on it to make everything fit. The spell would only last a day, but it should be enough.