Chapter 8: Sturm und Drang

September brought his exile to an end. Two months of summer holiday cooped up in Cokeworth felt like two years after Severus had gotten a taste of Hogwarts. He’d filled his days hunting for potions ingredients with Lily, poring over his school assignments, and losing himself in Genesis Magicae, the text on spell creation Lucius had lent him last term. He’d tried to share it with Lily, but she remained relentlessly against anything to do with Lucius after their spat. The only reason they had reached a temporary truce on the matter was because Severus pointed out Professor Slughorn considered himself good pals with Abraxas Malfoy, and she dropped the issue until she could bring it up with old Sluggy herself. Their shared Prophet subscription smoothed any bumps along. They were stuck looking out of the same small window onto a Wizarding World that easily moved on without them. Lily seemed to have a harder time accepting it; Severus had years of practice of looking through window displays of goods that weren’t meant for him and Hogwarts quickly dispelled any notions that the Wizarding World wanted to welcome him with open arms.

Lily had disappeared from their compartment almost as soon as the Hogwarts Express pulled out of London to meet up with her other friends, which was understandable. They’d spent the entire summer together and if he could’ve only communicated with her via owl, he would’ve wanted to catch up with her on the train ride too. He happily waved her off, eager to delve into Genesis Magicae once more, but when the train pulled into Hogsmeade Station without Lucius stopping by, Severus was forced to admit he spent every minute of the trip expecting Lucius to slip into Lily’s deserted seat. Reluctantly, he shut the text in his trunk along with a heap of papers. All of his notes were scribbled on scraps of parchment to keep Lucius’ margins pristine, forming a lengthy, lonely conversation with himself. There was enough material to fill several letters. He wished he could have owled Lucius over holiday.

He joined the sea of students headed for the carriages, looking for a flash of white-blonde hair, whose nebulous friendship felt like capturing lightning in a bottle. He couldn’t spot Lucius anywhere. He got into an empty carriage that soon filled with a group of older Hufflepuffs so consumed in their gossip, they didn’t notice him squeezed into a corner.

“You tell me how it sounds, Paul. I’ve been owling Ted every day for weeks and haven’t gotten a single response back. I swear, she wasn’t able to stop at one Unforgivable. She’s killed him!”  

Severus ducked his head to dodge a flailing, bulky arm that could’ve knocked him out the carriage door. 

The only thing anyone in this school could talk about was the Black family. Last year, the entire student body gossiped about Sirius Black’s sorting; this year they were obsessed with Andromeda, who graduated last June and shook the wizarding world with a scandal. Severus sort of remembered her in Lucius’ circle. Her dislike of him hadn’t been as dramatic as Narcissa’s, so his memory of her was woolly.He’d caught her staring at him a couple of times when she presumed he wasn’t paying attention. He chalked up her dissecting gaze to her own variation of a sneer and didn’t spare her a second thought.

Supposedly, several weeks ago she eloped with some Muggle-born by the name of Ted Tonks. Severus had no idea who the bloke was and couldn’t make out whether Tonks also graduated last term or earlier. He didn’t care about either of these people, but he figured he should if Andromeda had been one of Lucius’ friends. It would’ve explained why Lucius hadn’t been making rounds on the train.By the sound of it, the teenagers he shared a carriage with considered themselves friends of Ted, though they obviously weren’t close enough to get wedding invites. It was also no surprise they didn’t get owls back. If those two really did elope, the groom would throw a strop if he heard what his mates were calling the bride. Severusjust wanted to get out this carriage. The castle wasn’t far; he could see Hogwarts glowing by torchlight against the dark sky. They’d already passed the Whomping Willow, which gave them a proper Hogwarts hello by trying to flatten them into a pancake. There wasn’t a chance of it hitting the carriages though, and all its walloping inspired was a single break in the conversation to whinge about how much better Hogwarts was before the Willow was planted last year. That was a way more interesting conversation topic, but duller minds settled on the elopement. 

They were almost at the roundabout.

“She better stay outta Diagon Alley ‘cause when I get my hands on her, I’m gonna beat that bitch to a pulp.”

Severus snapped his head towards the speaker, but no one was prepared for what happened next. A wheel on their carriage burst from its axle and flew into the air as the carriage tipped forward and crashed at an angle against the ground, jostling its occupants to one corner. His jaw collided painfully with someone’s elbow and his left knee hit against someone else’s ribs in the pile up. The accident spooked the thestrals. It was hard to say how many were harnessed to the coach, but they pulled with enough strength to haul the dipped carriage forward. Feeling the drag behind them but unable to perceive what was going on, they beat their powerful wings and took to the sky. The coach rose a few inches off the ground, throwing its occupants backwards, and then toppled over on its side as the invisible thestrals broke free from their harnesses. Everyone groaned in pain. Luckily for Severus, he managed to avoid getting crushed under the older boys the final round. Before his luck ran out, he yanked himself up to the skyward-facing door, jumped out of the carriage, and retrieved his trunk, which was several yards away, looking less battered than he was. The other trunks were similarly scattered, having fallen from the coach’s roof and back when they lost a wheel. Only one owl cage was knocked over; its feathered occupant looked shaken but unharmed when Severus set it upright. The owl screeched loudly and scratched at his hands through the cage bars.

“Bloody hell! Some fucking kid blew up the carriage! Paul, did you see ‘im?”

Other students started screaming as their carriages approached the crash site. Some of them started to light wands from their windows to get a better view. Ignoring the pain in his knees, Severus dragged his trunk towards the mass of students dismounting near the Castle entrance as quickly as he could, dumping it near a luggage pile. He didn’t think anyone saw him. Filch shouted at him, but Filch was shouting at everyone. Pandemonium reigned near the doors as people got heated over the Black-Tonks rumors spreading like wildfire. Whispers that he drugged her with love potion, and many more whispers that she drugged him…to have her way with his boyish looks and then devour him whole like a ravenous hag. That was another Hufflepuff version of the story, which caused two upperclass Hufflepuffs and one upperclass Slytherin to be sent to the Hospital Wing after a nasty exchange of hexes. By the time news about the tipped carriage reached the rest of the school, he’d made it through the doors of the Great Hall.

He finally caught sight of Lucius sitting at one end of the Slytherin table with an arm around Narcissa, but there was no time to talk to him. Severus found himself wedged between his housemates like a lone man lost at sea between two islands, the crowd of boys to his left and the cluster of girls to his right. Not a single person had welcomed him back. He kept his head down and pointedly kept his back to the Hufflepuff table where “the Slytherin carriage bomber” wormed its way into the great mythos of Andromeda. The last thing he needed was a second taunting nickname.

Despite the professors’ best efforts, the raucous whispers continued through the Sorting Hat’s song and into the Ceremony, extinguishing themselves for one solemn moment of silence when McGonagall called the name “Black, Regulus.” The whole school waited 2 minutes for one 11-year-old’s single-man procession up to the stool; McGonagall hadn’t let the Sorting Hat out of her fingers before it called, “Slytherin!” to cheers and clapping. A camera flash went off from the center aisle. 

Severus watched as Regulus joined the other end of the Slytherin table where he took a seat next to Lucius Malfoy, who welcomed him with a pat on the back. He looked away quickly, staring resolutely at the empty, human-sized space across from him between Mulciber and Pallsworth.

To his left, Avery’s clap was so minimal you would think he was using one hand to brush dirt off his palm. 

“I thought you said he wouldn’t be here,” Mulciber muttered over the empty plates and goblets between himself and Avery. Evan gave Avery a quizzical look from where he sat to Mulciber’s left, across from Wilkes.

“I said, we’d see. After the, ah, events of the summer, my parents thought the Blacks might consider sending Regulus abroad, but I’m not surprised it didn’t take. The Blacks believe they own the castle. Sending one of Phineas Nigellus’ great-great grandchildren to Durmstrang while Muggle-borns matriculated here would be like admitting they lost.” 

“Durmstrang?” Wilkes balked. “They have a reputation for the…Dark Arts.” He lowered his voice for the final two words even though there was no way he’d be overheard; all four House tables had resumed their conversations. 

“Regulus loves the Dark Arts. Orion paid the Durmstrang Dark Arts professor loads of gold to come tutor Regulus over the summer.” Evan regarded Avery with a tilt of his head. “I take it you heard from Lucius.” His words weren’t a question, and he didn’t wait for Avery’s answer before he turned back to Wilkes. “Do you know Igor Karkaroff?”

Severus rolled his eyes. So what if Black’s brother got private Dark Arts tutoring over the summer. Loads of numpties needed to be spoon-fed and the Blacks had enough silver spoons to do it. None of that pointed to talent, intelligence, or capability. He glanced past the second year girls towards the opposite end of the table where Lucius was laughing at something Regulus said and Narcissa was looking at him fondly instead of treating him with contempt and disgust—why would she? They were cousins. He turned back to the Sorting with a scowl. He must’ve been the only kid in the whole school paying attention because McGonagall needed to call “Boot, Benjamin” several times for the gossiping first year to realize it was his turn.

By the time she reached “Yarbrough, Alana,” none of the Houses were bothering to clap. The three second-year girls to his right were still talking about the elopement. He was trying to ignore them, but Mary Pike couldn’t whisper and her booming, clear voice rose above the rest.

“I bet she got knocked up and wanted to keep it.”

Several seats down, Evan stopped speaking mid-sentence, completely forgetting his train of thought and turning towards Pike guppy-faced like she slapped him. It triggered a domino effect of swiveling heads—Rosier, then Wilkes, Mulciber, then Avery, then Severus, then Pallsworth—all staring at Pike, whose lips slackened like she bit off more than she bargained for. Arushi, who was between Mary and Severus, used the moment to steal the spotlight. 

“Don’t worry, Rosier. My holiday was worse than yours. I had the worst summer in the world!” She threw a hand across her forehead dramatically. Severus couldn’t imagine how insufferable Bhatar would be if she spent her summer on Spinner’s End. She came back from holiday looking shorter than she had last year and her arms jingled with more gold bangles, which she waved at her two friends with a conciliatory afterthought. “The only reason it wasn’t completely terrible was you two.” 

Food appeared on the table and they all began helping themselves, leaving Arushi free to prattle on. Evan seemed happiest by the turn of events, giving Arushi his full attention. 

“I was supposed to spend my summer back in Jumbudvipa with my whole family, but your Ministry told me and my parents if we leave, we shouldn’t expect to come back. Pitaji predicted it. They’re always trying sneaky tricks to deport him, but this time was the worst. My father thought my mum and I could go home without him like before, but your Ministry sinks to new levels of despicable behavior each year. We found out they were conspiring to ban my mum and me from returning to England to try to use seeing family to pressure Pitajii into returning home.” She sniffed loudly. “Not what the average British wizard would expect their Ministry to focus on during wartime, but that’s what my father means when he calls them purveyors of evil.”

Severus had to admit, he’d been curious about Rishi Bhatar since overhearing the Minister mention him by name to Dumbledore, quaking like she’d met the Grim. He’d tried to puzzle out why the wizard was so infamous, but for being an extremely notorious figure, the Hogwarts Library didn’t contain a single English article about him aside from minor entries listing him as an ambassador. Maybe he’d ask Slughorn. 

Evan was stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Some officials have been exploiting the war for personal gain…the usual career advancement, power struggles…” he said slowly, shifting the contents of his goblet. “A full-out Ministry conspiracy though—”

“Rosier means you’d sooner get a troop of Cornish pixies to clean house before getting our entire Ministry to work together,” Mulciber said, sawing his knife into a bloody piece of organ meat. “Common enemy or not.”

“My father shouldn’t be their enemy,” Arushi grumbled.“He’s come to save you all, but you’re too stupid to figure out you’re lobsters in a boiling pot.” Avery coughed into his fist. In a split second, Arushi traded her doleful cloak of martyrdom for its sword, which she wasted no time impaling Avery on. “Anyway, the Head of the Department of International Cooperation was useless.”

Avery, normally unflappable, dropped his utensils on his plate at that last comment. He leaned forward to address Arushi around Severus, she leaned back to avoid him and they seesawed a couple of times as Avery spoke. “My dad told your parents that’s not his fault and not his decision—blame Transportation and Law—and you can thank him personally for the fact that you’re still here—I’m glad your parents weren’t this ungrateful.” 

She ignored Avery and addressed the rest of them at a volume designed for him to hear. 

“If you were the British Ministry of Magic, who would you choose to supply with a set of international portkeys during wartime: a mother who wants to return to Jumbudvipa with her 12-year-old daughter to see her oldest children and her extended family or a Dark Arts professor who teaches at Grindelwald’s old school?”

Bhatar cycled through a series of goofy pantomimed thinking expressions. 

“Oh! Oh! I would choose the mother and her daughter!” Agrippina said eagerly. She clasped her hands together like she was expecting a pat on the head, which Arushi delivered. 

“Congratulations, you’re smarter than your entire Ministry put together.” Pallsworth gave a proud, gormless grin. Four of her incisors were pointed. Severus hadn’t noticed last year.

Further down the table, he saw Lucius rising to lead the first-year Slytherins out of the Great Hall to meet Slughorn. He swiveled in his seat hoping to make eye contact but he missed his chance. Lucius’ focus was entirely on Regulus. Pike had also turned to watch them go.

“It’s too bad the Blacks didn’t send Andromeda to Durmstrang. Then the worst scandal she could’ve made was marrying a wizard with one Muggle for a parent.” Pike gestured Severus’ way with a bread roll. He wouldn’t even have noticed if Pallsworth hadn’t made such a show of staring at him while Mary was talking.

“But, if Durmstrang doesn’t admit Mud—Muggle-borns, what happens to them?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Mulciber said with mocking, exaggerated patience. “They never get a letter, they never buy a wand, they never learn about magic, and they go on existing their happy little Muggle lives.” He spooned a lump of mashed potatoes onto his plate with each point and then grabbed his fork to dig in.

The creases crossing Pallsworth’s forehead got deeper. “But—” 

“That’s how it is in Jumbudvipa,” Arushi interrupted, nodding. “We don’t have Muggle-borns or half-bloods. The only ones you meet are foreigners, and that’s why we don’t let many stay for more than 6 weeks at a time. Two of our cities won’t admit them at all. We don’t even have a word for Muggle-born, only Muggle, and, in English, it means ‘hollow’ or…’empty.’”

Mulciber was bobbing his head up and down. “Yup. Yup. On half of the continent, any witch or wizard caught knowingly teaching magic to someone without wizarding blood goes to prison. It’s worse if you knowingly supply one with a wand. They could charge you with high treason since, over there, it counts as a breach of Secrecy. You still get half-bloods, just nowhere near as many.”

Arushi frowned abruptly. “No, not in Jumbudvipa. Wizards and witches aren’t supposed to meet Muggles. It just doesn’t happen. When magical communities truly commit to Secrecy, they’re completely segregated, which is why some of us are thriving while the rest of you die out.” Her gaze drifted to Severus, shaking her head as if she could erase him out of existence. “Half-bloods shouldn’t exist.” 

Severus rolled his eyes all the way up to the enchanted ceiling. He’d said it countless times in the privacy of his own head that Mum shouldn’t have married a Muggle, but he was a better wizard than any of the purebloods in the grade. Lily had way more magical talent than Bhatar, Pike, and Pallsworth combined. They didn’t deserve his or Lily’s spots. Arushi could repeat half-bloods shouldn’t exist til she was blue in the face. It wouldn’t make her words any truer than Petunia Evans saying wizards and witches don’t exist while staring at a pair of them. By chance, his gaze lighted upon the Andromeda galaxy, visible near the Great Square of Pegasus. Severus studied the enchanted stars nearby to see if he could make out the constellation of a woman chained as a snack for a sea-monster. He couldn’t.He thought of Mum and whether or not anyone bothered to talk rubbish when she married a Muggle—if anyone even knew. He didn’t think she ever had Andromeda’s glamour, but most of the gossipmill was plain foul anyway. They got enough of that back in Cokeworth.When he turned his head, he caught Rosier staring at him and quickly looking away. It brought out his resemblance to his cousin—something in the twitch of curls or the shifting of brown eyes—but her dissecting gaze had been cold and analytical; his was squeamish.

The conversation at this end of the table had split apart and moved on, but Agrippina was still facing Mulciber, struggling to string her words together from before. “But what if a Muggle-blood does magic?”

Mulciber paused midway between grabbing a third helping of cured ham. “If they do any magic that threatens Secrecy, they get obliviated just like a Muggle would. Eventually, they just stop. Hasn’t broken Secrecy yet.” His fork pierced the wood of the table and his easy grin fell off his face. 

“Oh!” she brightened as the platters of meats and sides were replaced by puddings. “That’s a great idea! Why don’t we do that here?”

“Genius, Pallsworth. You’ve got my vote for Minister.”

Pallsworth had enough sense to tell when she was being made fun of. She slid as far from Mulciber as the bench would allow.Mary Pike, who had her mouth too full to fling an insult, flung the pineapple slice topping her sponge cake at Mulciber’s head, who caught it in his mouth. He made a big show of chewing with his mouth open. Pike ignored him and answered Agrippina’s question.

“It’s ‘cause Britain’s one of the territories that chooses to inform Mudbloods about magic.” 

“It’s one of the countries practicing magie oblige,” Arushi said primly, offended by both sides of pineapple war.

“No, it’s how Hogwarts was set up, but it’s not written into our laws,” Pike said. She almost knocked over a goblet in her enthusiasm. “That’s why the idea gets challenged here so often.”

“Speaking of magie oblige,” Avery spoke up. “You won’t believe where France has taken the concept. They now think wizards and witches are obligated to use magic to help Muggles—not just Muggle-borns—Muggles—” 

“I heard about that!” Evan gasped. Avery flung his hands in the air. 

“—they have seats in the government. They’re an actual political party. It’s mental. They want to end Secrecy.” 

“They won’t get anywhere,” Arushi interjected. “France has a huge creature and being population who vote. Magical creature rights and Muggle rights are mutually exclusive. Right now France is discussing giving voting rights to gnomes—you English wizards know what it’s like to have gnomes in your government.”

As the conversation drifted to France and politics, Wilkes looked like he stepped into heaven. He began rambling off dates and names of old treaties. Mulciber told him he sounded like Binns, which Wilkes mistook for a compliment. Severus was content to leave him behind in the 11th century.He couldn’t believe it was so hard to start a conversation about magic at magic school. The kids around him wanted to talk about people and places and he wanted to talk about the way Genesis Magicae rewired his brain—the definition it gave magical intent, the interrelation it revealed between language, movement, and thought in a magical body, the explanations it provided for why certain goals would be best achieved through spellwork versus other branches of magic. Hogwarts hadn’t begun to cover this stuff. He didn’t know if it would. He’d have to ask Lucius, who just returned to the Hall and took his seat beside Narcissa. Severus couldn’t get his attention then either, but he noticed Rabastan shoot the pair dirty looks from the other side of the table. That was new. 

When the Feast was over, Lucius led the way to the Dungeons, but there was no chance to approach him. Being a second-year meant being on the bottom of the totem pole. No one cared to extend the same allowances they would give a first year to a second year, and although fourth and sixth years were supposed to be last in everything, they muscled their way ahead of anyone younger. He finally had the time to chat with Lily after a Feast, but she went up the Grand Staircase without looking for him, engaged in a deep conversation with the second year Gryffindor girls. Nearby, Wilkes shuffled along Evan’s side, his arms spread out like he was Rosier’s bodyguard. Wilkes even glowered at his own sister, who rejoined her group of whispering Hufflepuffs. Severus caught her words as they left.

“My brother isn’t the carriage bomber!”

He tugged at the sleeves of his robes, but they were too short to cover the owl scratches marking his hands. He ducked his head lower.

The aptly chosen password, Princeps Fidelis, opened onto the Common Room. Several armchairs and sofas were already taken by lounging students, some of whom, given their attire, already had the time to go to their rooms and change clothes.

Slughorn was near the fireplace, still talking to Regulus Black. It was the professor holding up the student, literally. Slughorn had a hand on each of Regulus’ shoulders like he was about to lift him up and mount him on a wall. 

“That is, officially, everyone except Sirius,” Slughorn cried, his emotions torn between the jubilation of a gold medallist and the pain of a collector outbid at auction. His next words so low they were inaudible, but you could read them on his lips like a prayer. “Two generations.”

“We’re not a set,” Regulus interrupted curtly. “You should prepare yourself now, sir, and spread the word in the staff room. Sirius and I are nothing alike.” It was Severus’ first good look at Regulus Black. He was slighter than Sirius, like Sirius’ shadow came loose and took flesh, all of its dissimilarities made three-dimensional, the limbs ganglier, the face correct in profile but distinct in its portrait. There in the Common Room, Regulus stood the chance to accomplish what his brother could not. He could ruin Slytherin.

Slughorn pressed a handkerchief to his eyes. “Forgive me, Regulus. It’s a very significant moment in my career as a teacher.”

Regulus reached a hand up and patted the professor’s cheek with some measure of affection. He seemed to be sifting through his head for words worthy of the occasion. “Let me say, when Polaris Black married Bacchus Slughorn in 1829, you could tell, sir.”

Slughorn blew his nose into his handkerchief and swiped at his mustache. “Thank you, my boy.” His eyes began to water once more.

To Regulus’ visible relief, they were interrupted by one of the seventh year girls. “Here’s your photograph.” She held out a small square she traded for a Galleon, and both parties studied their prizes with zeal.

“Mother and Father will be so pleased!” Severus didn’t need to see the photo to picture the snapshot of Regulus’ smarmy face the moment the Hat announced Slytherin. Regulus made the same face again, holding up the photo for Slughorn to admire.

“Why, Miss Tuppet, this is excellent! I had no idea you had such an eye for photography.” 

“Tippet. Lucy Tippet,” the seventh year said breathlessly. “I have more right here.” She fished an album out of her bag, which Slughorn perused with great delight. He tried to show the photos to Regulus, but the latter busied himself by examining his fingernails. 

Slughorn didn’t seem to mind. He kept flipping through the pages, stopping every so often to examine a particular image more carefully or hum with approval. “I wouldn’t mind any one of these on my wall.” He beamed at the album and let some of that light fall on Tippet as he turned to her. “On more than one occasion, I’ve wished I had a photographer at one of my parties,” he said, rubbing his palms together. Tippet was ready to eat out of them.

“I would love that! I know you said the field is difficult…in our career advisory meetings,” she added helpfully, but it didn’t ring any of Slughorn’s bells.

“My dear, it’s a simple matter of knowing the right people. I have a little soirée planned next Saturday. You should drop by. Ludo Bagman would love to see your work.” The girl nearly fainted. After finalizing a few more details, the seventh year seemed to float back to her dormitory. Slughorn turned to Regulus in a newly boisterous mood.

“All Houses have talented members, but one thing I treasure about Slytherin is you find the highest concentration of them here.” He twirled the tip of one of his impressive whiskers. “Miss Tippet could be as famous as Benjy Fenwick in a few years. And very wealthy if she plays her cards right.”

Regulus rolled his shoulders back conceitedly. “I don’t amuse myself with card games, sir. As Father says, gold changes hands but blood is forever.”

Severus shook his head incredulously. Unbelievable! How could Lucius stand this pint-sized prick?

“You can always tell who the half-bloods are,” droned a sardonic adult male voice. “Bitter, resentful, envious.” 

He jumped in surprise and looked around wildly before placing the speaker as aportrait hanging on the wall behind him. He sneered at the painting of an ugly little man.

“Well, am I right?” the painting asked smugly. “Tell me your last name. It won’t be Greengrass, Gamp, or Parkinson.”

Severus flipped him the bird. 

“Rude!”

For good measure, Severus flipped the frame to face the wall. A little home decorating until the House Elves cleaned up.

“Petty!”

It was the last thing he heard because the voices of magical portraits grew muffled when they faced a wall. Who knew? Out of spite, he wouldn’t even check the name of that wizard. He’d ignore it the next six years he was here. Revenge served cold. 

He took off to the boys’ stairwell. Pike’s voice echoed up the steps.

“Rosier, don’t go!” Pike called at her normal, noisy volume. “You haven’t told us what happened with Andromeda!” Severus caught sight of Avery shooing her from their doorway. “I didn’t know you have a cat.”

“Mary, you have a long night. Learn some tact and start putting it into practice,” Avery said.  

Severus moved aside to let Pike pass, but Avery misread his motives.

“Snape, if you’re waiting for Lucius, you’ll be waiting for a long time.” He hadn’t meant to stop in front of that doorway it was just…force of habit. Severus hastened down the rest of the stairs and Avery shut the door behind them. The moment it was closed, he clapped his hands together. “Well, Rosier, what happened with Andromeda?"

Wilkes looked aghast. “What was all that back there with Pike about learning tact? A song and dance?” Avery brushed past him.

“Save it, Wilkes. We already know you know.”

Somehow, it seemed as though every living being wanted to know the latest Black family gossip. There, floating beyond the glass of the window to the left of Wilkes’ bed, was a stua ceatha, a very rare magical fish with seven separate tails that, together, resembled a rainbow caudal fin flowing through the pitch-black water. Severus had no idea any lived in the lake. Avery’s cat stared at its shimmering, multicolored scales, transfixed.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Mulciber was shaking a metal tin of insta-pop kettle corn. They didn’t sell those on the Express. He opened the lid and offered some Severus’ way, shrugging when he didn’t accept any and grabbing a mouthful for himself. 

“What do you want to hear?” Evan asked flatly. He was kneeling by his trunk taking out his Arrows posters.

“How do you know there was no foul play?” Mulciber asked midst chewing. Evan sighed deeply, casting the rolled up posters to the floor. 

“Because she told us.”

“You mean the message she left with the house elf,” Avery questioned. 

“You heard about that?” Evan said sadly. He went to sit on his bed, the chatty ruse from the Feast fading entirely. “There were two messages. She ordered her house elf to make a confession to her parents, but…she came to my parents in person.”

Avery and Mulciber exchanged glances. Further away, Wilkes watched Evan with a look of concerned trepidation etched on his face.

“It was horrible. My mum started crying. She said Andromeda could change her mind, that no matter how permanent she thought her decisions were, she could always go abroad and get a fresh start.” He seemed faraway.“We have a great uncle like that on the continent. He came back after 50 years, and—” He shook his head abruptly, like none of it mattered. “She said there was no baby, so don’t even ask,” he snapped.

Avery smoothed a wrinkle from his emerald green bedspread. He wasn’t going to touch that nerve, regardless what he thought. “Did the Blacks blame your side? She did say you’re her favorite cousin.”

“Well, she told my parents she hated the entire family,” Evan said furiously. His blond curls turned to waves of frizz from violently running his fingers through them. “Everyone got blamed. My parents because we’re the relatives she spent the most time with, Narcissa for not watching Dromeda’s movements carefully enough at school, Lucius for the Malfoys’ progressive attitudes towards half-bloods, Melania for not shunning her MacMillan family blood-traitors, Lucretia and Ignatius for attending their niece’s wedding to a Weasley, Cedrella because they think Andromeda’s been in contact with her…everybody was pointing fingers at somebody else.”

Lucius for the Malfoys’ progressive attitudes towards half-bloods. Severus’ stomach dropped. 

“And, in the end, they blamed the house elf,” Avery surmised. 

“Did the elf die?” Mulciber blurted out, surprisingly invested in the storyline.He was bouncing his legs so vigorously that the kettle corn tin balanced on his knee continued to pop kernels.

Evan continued to stare into space, but Wilkes nodded over his shoulder. 

“They killed it?”

“No, they wouldn’t kill a house elf outright. They’re too valuable…until they can’t work…but one of the grandparents…made her punish herself. And…she died in the process.”

“That’s stone cold,” Mulciber said. “The grandparents are bastards for the House Elf, but she shouldn’t’ve left her elf to play messenger in a family like that.” Mulciber seemed heartfelt, but his words would’ve had greater effect if he wasn’t snacking as he said them. 

Avery took a handful of popcorn from the tin and popped the pieces into his mouth one at a time. “Well, Sirius must’ve been happy. He hates his family’s house elves.”

Evan frowned.

“I saw Sirius kick his one time.” Avery directed the comment to Mulciber, but the latter wasn’t listening.

“I’m surprised no one’s done him in yet. I take it Tonks doesn’t work for the Ministry.”

“He sources Potions ingredients. Privately,” Wilkes said. They blinked at him, surprised he knew that information, and he blinked back, processing what Mulciber just said. “Wait. What do you mean ‘done him in’?”

“I mean, I’m surprised none of the Blacks have cursed him,” Mulciber said, sliding a finger across his own throat. “Mark my words. This bloke is going to turn up missing in the Prophet before the end of the year. They’re gonna blame it on You-Know-Who.” He jolted, sending popcorn flying out of the tin in his hands. Wilkes shrank back. “I bet they’ve paid someone to spill his FLOO connection.”

“I’ve wondered about that. Private ingredient suppliers don’t make much gold.” Avery snapped his fingers. “I bet he has a Muggle house.”

Mulciber turned his horrorstruck face to Evan. “Can you imagine your cousin meeting his Muggle parents?”

“Stop. Just—stop.”

The room fell silent. Wilkes apprehensively eyed Severus, who sat cross-legged on his own bed in his secondhand robes. What was he supposed to say? Don’t worry, Rosier, not all Muggles are poor? It was kinder of him to say nothing. Even if the Tonks family was minted, Andromeda was going to be in for a huge adjustment. Mum lived in the Muggle world for years and the closest she came to fitting in was alienating herself from the Wizarding World. Being rejected wasn’t anyone’s path to belonging. Mum’s reality was grim and sad; her best hope was Severus forging a way back for them. The best thing Andromeda had going in her favor was her husband was an actual wizard and should belong to the wizarding world, but that wasn’t enough for families like the Rosiers, the Blacks, and the Averys, who never let anyone forget their Muggle ancestry. If there had been a chance they could’ve accepted a Muggle-born in-law, Andromeda probably wouldn’t have left.

Avery switched topics a little less gracefully than usual. 

“Oh, Mulciber—now that we’re back in the dorm, are you planning on starting your summer assignments?”

He groaned. “What do we have tomorrow?”

“Defense, History of Magic, Potions, and Charms.” Severus supplied. “You could probably do Potions over lunch. Defense was 3 feet, but the new Professor might not care.”

Mulciber seemed to consider his options. 

“I’d focus on Transfiguration. You don’t want detention with McGonagall,” Evan said half-heartedly. 

“Wait. You’re serious?” Wilkes whipped his head round in alarm, like this was the most distressing news of the hour. “What did you do all summer?” he demanded. Mulciber’s green eyes turned malicious.

“I worked from the night term ended til 10:30 this morning. My holiday starts today.” His anger swiftly dissipated, and he lounged on his own bed with a relaxed, holiday laziness. “Come to think of it, I don’t want to do assignments on my first night of holiday. I’m going to sleep.”

Avery hummed. “Your dad was that busy despite all the—” 

“Oh yeah. Bunch of crap for Nott. And that’s just—” Mulciber never finished his sentence. A pompous voice bulldozed over his.

“Janus Nott, now there’s a free thinker who ought to be Headmaster!”

The door burst open. Under the cover of his pillow, Severus’ hand reflexively gripped his wand handle. He didn’t expect much from a first year, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Sirius Black had come to Hogwarts knowing a repertoire of jinxes and hexes he happily put to use; his brother spent the summer privately tutored in the Dark Arts—for all the good it did him. Unless Severus’ eyes were deceived, Regulus came with no wand.He strolled into the room wearing a set of robes without pockets and with sleeves wide enough to slip down his elbows when he raised his arms, as he was doing now. Severus loosened his grip.

“Evan, there you are. How unlucky to be at the bottom of all these steps. I’m the first door off the stairwell. Father insisted. He’s still pushing the Board of Governors to allow me a broom. It’s a travesty I can’t try out for the team as a first year, but not letting me keep a broom—criminal. This school’s gone to the dogs.”

The first dog was Sirius to Potter’s aye-aye.

Regulus toed open one of the rolled up posters Evan left on the floor.

“Cornelius Reed.” Regulus pulled a face as Wilkes angrily snatched the poster from under his foot, shaking the roll at him like a club. It didn’t seem to occur to Regulus that he could be smacked with it. “To think he still has fans after last season’s bungle against the Bats. I wouldn’t have him on my team.” 

“Funny, I don’t remember you on the roster,” Mulciber quipped. 

“Spoken like someone whose taste in entertainment is a Cannons match.” 

Regulus plopped himself on Evan’s bed, which put him in direct line of sight with—

“Avery.”

“…Regulus,” Avery said after a beat. From her perch on Avery’s dresser, Tivali gave a prickly hiss.

“If this is still about Yule from four years ago, my family has forgiven yours ages ago.”

To this, Avery wisely said nothing.

“I don’t know why your family continues to be so petty. My father says purebloods need to stick together in these trying times. There are so few of us left…” Black’s gaze drifted to the room’s left windowin time to watch the beautiful, luminous stua ceatha snapped between the jaws of an invasive common sea serpent, which darted away. His voice grew steely. “Individually, we might not care about those of us who choose to debase themselves by betraying wizardkind, but collectively the night sky grows darker with the loss of every star’s light.If we don’t act fast, there will come a day when this school is crawling with nothing but mudbloods and blood traitors. And on that day, the Blacks will close the gates to Black Castle forever.”

Mulciber stifled a laugh with the sleeve of his robe. Avery gave everyone pointed glances behind Regulus’ back. Wilkes alone looked personally affronted.

“You might not know, but this castle is called Hogwarts.”

Regulus shot him a patronizing look. “It was renamed to Black Castle in 1920 by its headmaster.” He swept an arm across Wilkes’ stretch of wall. “Your windows look upon The Black Lake.”

Wilkes looked scandalized. “That’s The Great Lake!” he protested. 

“The Black Lake. The names are synonymous. Phineas Nigellus Black christened it so upon the birth of his final grandchild. He had asked Lycoris and Regulus Phineas which part of the school was most dear to them and the lake was their answer. Haven’t you read Black Castle: A History?” 

“You mean Hogwarts: A History!” 

“No, not that deceitful propaganda written by a Dumbledore family friend,” Regulus scoffed. “You must check who’s authoring your reading material, Linus. My grandfather Pollux privately commissioned this edition of Black Castle: A History as an alternative to the cherry-picked drivel Bagshot published. He wrote the forward himself!” Everyone except Wilkes snickered, but Regulus was too full of himself to notice. “My great-great grandfather wanted to restore the castle to Salazar Slytherin’s great vision. Half-bloods like Dumbledore have run this school to the ground.” 

Regulus’ bloviating was beginning, not ending, but at that moment, his head flew in Severus’ direction for the first time and he stopped his train of thought as if he only just noticed the fifth bed in the room and the occupant sitting upon it. He took in Severus’ faded school robes, missing the concealed wand, and froze.   

Severus tightened his grip on his wand handle. 

“Regulus, that’s Snape.” Avery said with relish. 

A look of recognition dawned in Regulus’ eyes. It was impossible to trace its spark to Lucius or Narcissa, Avery or Evan, Slughorn…or Sirius, who had the entire summer to relive his and Potter’s pathetic taunts from last year.The clearer things became in Regulus’ vision, the murkier Severus found them.

“The half-blood…” he murmured, tilting his head “…who?”

Severus quickly considered his options as he stared at a face both similar and dissimilar to one of the people who had devoted the previous year to his making his life miserable. He had a wand, Black didn’t. But Regulus hadn’t done anything yet—not really—hadn’t even insulted him. They were in Slytherin, where hexing your own housemates was frowned upon in the best of times, and half the House prefects were steps away.

“…Prince.”

He didn’t think the name would mean anything to Regulus—Mum was first generation English—but Regulus was satisfied. If Black was going to comment further, he didn’t get the opportunity because Evan, who had remained silent since Regulus’ arrival, lodged himself in Regulus’ direct line of sight, blocking Severus from his view. 

“It’s been great seeing you, Reg, but you probably want to go to bed before your first day of classes.” Regulus agreed promptly, as though the idea had been his own. Evan put a hand on his back, guiding him to the doorway. “See you at breakfast. If you ever need help finding your way around—”

“—the portraits will guide me as Master of the Castle,” Regulus finished brazenly. “Ta!” The door had just closed when Mulciber burst out laughing. 

The Black brothers were more of a set than Regulus realized. Severus thought he had gotten it wrong before. Regulus wasn’t Sirius’ shadow after all. It might’ve actually been the other way around—Regulus was the flame under his brother’s feet, spurring him to set the metaphorical curtains on fire. It would’ve explained why Black had spent last year seeming to strive to break a most detentions record.

“Two Blacks,” Mulciber grinned, leaning back against his bed with his hands interlaced behind his head. “We’ll never be able to tell them apart now. Black the arrogant git, Black the pompous moron, we’ll keep getting them confused.”

“I hope he’s not planning to hang out here,” Wilkes sniffed, gathering up Evan’s share of their Arrows posters from the floor.

Avery’s eyes darkened. “If he comes back, we’re cursing the door.”

Evan shot them both disapproving looks. “He’ll make his own friends.” Their expressions said it all, and Rosier rolled his eyes. “He wasn’t kidding about being good at Quidditch. He really is that good. I think he just wants to get to know people.”

“I think he wants wizard-shaped house elves,” Avery deadpanned. “Wear your Black Castle-issued pillowcases if you want. Individually, I don’t care about those who choose to debase themselves, but collectively the night sky grows darker with the loss of every star’s light.” In one swift motion, he shut his curtains. They opened a crack at the wall, where two hands enveloped Tivali from the dresser top and pulled her into the fold, then closed again.

Mulciber threw his pillow at Evan’s bed. Evan grabbed it and stacked it atop his own to lean against his headboard more comfortably. 

“Well, he doesn’t kick house elves, he doesn’t set curtains on fire, and he doesn’t hex people.” Rosier eyed Severus’ hidden wand pointedly, but didn’t comment further. He began to help Wilkes arrange their Arrows shrine, but paused when Mulciber crossed over to the door. “You’re not going to his room, are you?” he said with disapproval. “I thought you said you’re going to bed.”

Mulciber put his hands up. “Paying a visit to the Black bog. I hear those pipes lead out to The Black Lake. Hope the Blacks put good filtration charms on ‘em.”

He closed the door behind him and Rosier tossed his pillow back. Wilkes used the time to shoot Severus a wary look.

“You didn’t really write 3 feet for Defense, did you?” he asked suspiciously. “My answers were very thorough and I didn’t reach 2. It’s fine to lie to Mulciber, but if you actually wrote 3 feet, we ought to compare our work. You must be going wrong somewhere!”

Severus shut his curtains in Wilkes’ face. His first day back and it already turned pear-shaped. He’d still take this over Cokeworth a million times over, but what a day, from the bloody cursed carriage ride to the constant reminders of exactly where his blood status left him. His mind drifted over the conversation from the Feast. No difference between a Muggle and a Muggle-born witch or wizard. His housemates had no clue. They should try living on Spinner’s End for a week and get back to him. It was a rather dark day when Grindelwald was making more sense than his roommates—and Grindelwald was the reason he and Mum didn’t have other wizarding family. There was nobody left out there to be devastated because Mum left, or angry because Toby muddied the Prince line, or determined to write Severus off. It was him and Mum—and Toby for worse. If his grandparents hadn’t fled to Britain, he would’ve been in Beauxbatons right now. A version of him, maybe. Mum would’ve never met Toby, and there was no denying she would’ve been better off without either of them. 

He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the idea that under his eyelids, it was Mum—not Regulus Black or Arushi Bhatar—telling him he shouldn’t exist.

❀

So far, Defense Against the Dark Arts had turned out to be a complete dud. Last year’s professor bored Binns—Lily witnessed the History of Magic Professor excuse himself from his conversation with Professor Thaddeus Dullard during the Leaving Feast last term. According to Professor Slughorn, who knew Binns before he died, the wizard never moved so fast in life as he floated that day. Lupin joked that Dullard put werewolves to sleep. Lily’s own theory was he was trying to turn his students into zombies. She had tried to pay attention last January, after the war announcement, but Professor Dullard made it harder because, by that point, he had stopped holding lessons where students took turns reading passages from the textbook out loud. They had to rely on his heavy, plodding voice, which expounded upon the many folds of a lethifold with such boring detail it all but became a blanket and enumerated the many teeth of a lethifold with such scrupulous precision it became counting sheep. 1…2…3…101…102…103…It had been impossible to stay awake.The most useful thing she had learned about Defense came from History of Magic—actually, it came from Severus, who first showed her the archived article she read in History of Magic—Dumbledore favored Transfiguration in his duels. 

Neither she nor Severus could find out how Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald in their legendary 1945 confrontation. The writings about it said it was a sight to behold, but no sources provided a description of the types of spells that were fired that day, let alone a list. Lily had tried to ask Professor McGonagall about combat Transfiguration in class, but the stern professor told her to mind transforming her mouse into a snuff box. Lily wouldn’t hold her breath for the day she’d need that spell to save her life.

She held higher hopes for the new Defense Professor. The bar was set so low, no one could trip over it. The whole school was happy Dullard was gone.

“He didn’t disappear, though?” Mary asked nervously, like she felt guilty for cheering along with the rest of Gryffindor when they saw their class schedules earlier that morning.

“Nah,” Polly shrugged, adjusting the strap of her Celestina Warbeck bedazzled book bag, which magically changed lyrics to read My love is too strong to vanish, I will sing from my heart in Spanish. “He took the post because Dumbledore was the only person to reply to his job applications. You know he was a security troll trainer before he got fired? He kept putting the trolls to sleep!”

They all laughed except for Nichola, who remained as businesslike as ever as the girls put away their History of Magic books.

“I hope Dumbledore has chosen the new DADA professor with current events in mind,” she said darkly. Lily could relate to the sentiment, but Dullard wasn’t Dumbledore’s fault; the professor’s hiring predated the war announcement.

“He must have trouble finding people. DADA is jinxed—everyone knows. Gus said there’s a new teacher every year.” 

“So what happened to Dullard?” Adeline asked.

“He finally heard back from the Nundu Reserve of Mozambique. They thought his sedation skills could come in handy.”

“Nundu whisperer!” Lily grinned. “That’ll sound so good on his next Defense Teacher application, no one will check his poor Hogwarts recommendations.” 

The five girls emptied out of the History of Magic classroom, following the three boys ahead of them. Classes were convenient this term because Defense was down the corridor from History of Magic, which all second years shared back to back. It looked like Gryffindor split the morning shift with Slytherin, but the new Defense professor didn’t seem to be around, which made Lily’s eyes light up. She could spend the extra time between classes catching up with Sev!

Lily ran into the Defense classroom to drop her belongings on a desk, yelling for Sev to wait up for her as she passed him. When she exited, she caught sight of Sev stumbling through the air like a newborn giraffe, seeming to have tripped over nothing until Potter removed his Invisibility Cloak. So that’s where he’d been, the tosser. Some of her House mates laughed, and Sev whirled around, drawing his wand.

“Hey, now. No hexing in the corridors. Where are your manners, Snivellus?”

From the corner of her eye, it looked like Black drew his wand behind Potter, but it was hard to tell because movement near the History of Magic doorway caught her attention too.

“Knock it off, blockhead,” Lily sniped, glaring at Potter and coming up to Sev’s side. The rest of Gryffindor filed into the classroom, Potter laughing with his mates and Hippolyta shooting her a critical look. She knew what Polly thought of Severus. At the other end of the corridor, Lily saw Rosier and Avery looking over their shoulders, whispering darkly as they disappeared into the History classroom behind the other five Slytherins of the grade. 

They were a nasty bunch. 

There was Evan Rosier, who had more skeletons in his family than people. He belonged to the other half of the family who disowned Andromeda Black for marrying a Muggle-born.

Braxton Avery, named for Abraxas Malfoy, who considered Avery’s dad such a good pal he made him Lucius’ godfather. Sirius said Avery would never slip up in public, but you only had to listen to his views on Muggles to know what was going on in his head.

Mary Pike, the darling of Sirius’ great aunt Cassiopeia, who kept alive the Black family tradition of beheading house elves for a new generation, was like a little yapping dog. Pike was related to both the Travers and the Selwyn families, the fruit of a specialty breeding project expected to pay off in one more decade.

Arushi Bhatar came from a pureblood-only country and hid her anti-Muggle bigotry behind her “culture.” Lily didn’t need Sirius’ help to figure her out. It sounded like Jumbudvipa was in the dark ages; magical Britain was light-years ahead of them for teaching magic to Muggle-borns.

She didn’t know much about the remaining three, but those seven were such good friends, it was hard to imagine how they could be any different in the ways that mattered. That whole House snaked together like one single unit,a seven-headed hydra ready to devour the rest of the school whole.

She was glad Sev wasn’t friends with any of them. She asked him about it last term and felt bad when he vaguely implied his roommates hadn’t been happy to discover his cricket eggs hatching, but it was better being alone than keeping bad company. Maybe this year he could stop hanging around Lucius Malfoy too. She’d try to introduce to more people after the disaster with Polly blew over. She’d forced Sev to come along and listen to a Celestina Warbeck album last year. He’d made a valid point when he suggested Warbeck might have a better love life if she stopped drugging her love interests with love potion, but Polly didn’t want to hear it. Lily was on Sev’s side. The song had been called “Powdered Moonstone.” How much more obvious could she get? I know your sweet whispers are powdered moonstone lies. Once the pearl dust fades, you’ll say your goodbyes. That wasn’t even subtle.

Severus had finished gathering the items that had flown out of his bag when Potter tripped him, except one stray piece of parchment, which Lily retrieved for him. It was littered with Severus’ cramped, spiky handwriting. She hadn’t meant to read it. She’d been drawn to it because she thought Sev had doodled a picture, but the image Lily saw proved to be a mirage formed by several words that were crossed out and one word circled many times. Conjunctivitis. She searched the rest of the page.

“The homework is to write an essay on how you’d defeat a dragon?” Lily asked, wide-eyed in her excitement. That was way better than anything Dullard asked them to do.

“Not exactly—well, you’ll see,” Sev said mysteriously. “The new professor’s loads better than Dullard.” Lily glanced back at the empty corridor, hoping to catch sight of him. She imagined some glittering war hero, a fusion of Dumbledore and the image of the statue of Godric Gryffindor taking shape in her mind’s eye. “He had to run to the staff room because he forgot his class roll call. He should’ve sent one of us to go get it, but I think he’s new to teaching. Wicked lesson though. We got to pair up to practice spells ‘cause O’Donnell let us ask any questions we wanted and Pike asked him if she could hex Mulciber.” Lily smiled wide. Spell practice would be brilliant! Sev jutted his thumb over his shoulder, his dark eyes glittering. “I don’t want to keep you from Defense. Good luck.” He smiled as he darted into the History of Magic classroom. 

Lily’s smile vanished the second she walked into the Defense class doorway. She entered right on time to see Potter squirting a canister of black ink at the moving targets his friends held up. The canister glitched in its last squeeze, splattering ink across her summer work. There was a collective wince round the room.

“Sorry, Evans,” Potter said unapologetically. She ran to her desk and began dabbing at the ink in a corner. When it did nothing, she switched to trying a spell she knew for removing stains.

“It isn’t coming off!”

“Yeah, it won’t,” Potter said, ruffling his hair into a look he thought was fanciable. It made him look like a cockatiel. “I told everyone, it’s permanent.” 

Lily groaned. Her homework was soaked in permanent squid ink that there was no way to remove. She hoped her new professor had a spell to fix it…or at least wouldn’t give her failing marks.

Sirius shrugged his shoulders. "Bad luck.”

“Bad luck? That was you two dunderheads having bad aim!”

“James has the best aim!” Pettigrew protested, lifting his marked target for proof. “He’s going to make the Quidditch team for sure!”

“It’s true, Evans. I can launch a quaffle from quarter field.” He faked an exaggerated yawn that he stretched into a shameless flex of his biceps. Pettigrew swooned. “Tell you what, as a compromise, I’ll invite you to watch me try out, front row seat. You can cheer me on from the stands. I’ll even sign your parchment for you. You can tell people you knew James Potter before he was famous.”

Peter gasped unironically before handing Potter his quill and turning to Lily. “Blimey! It’s your lucky day!”

“I’ll cheer on the broom that can lift your fat head and massive ego,” she said fiercely, snatching her ruined parchment out of Potter’s fingertips. There was no time to say more or switch her seat. The door opened for a wiry wizard bedecked in shamrock green.

Professor O'Donnell came as close to seeing a leprechaun as Lily could imagine, but taller. She, Pettigrew, Black, and Potter all dropped into the seats nearest to them, but the professor had his nose buried in the class roster and barely noticed them anyway.

“I’ll read your name. Please say ‘here’ and hand me your summer work.” That meant Lily would be second. He started with Black.

“Evans, Lily?” He smiled and held out his hand. 

“Professor, my summer work was soaked by Potter’s permanent squid ink right before you came through the door.”

The professor glanced over her solid black parchment and then at the canister of Squibbly’s Permanent Squid Ink Solution sitting on Potter’s desk. “I love Squibbly’s,” he laughed softly. Then he turned back to Lily, shrugging as casually as Sirius had. “Bad luck.” He retreated back up the aisle and finished taking attendance, flicking his wand at the eight pieces of parchment he’d collected, which rolled up and zoomed into his desk. Then he turned his back—a rookie teacher mistake—and wrote his name on the chalkboard by hand. Lily addressed the back of his head as he scribbled a very loopy “O,” ignoring Lupin passing something to Pettigrew.

“Erhm, Professor? I still remember my answers. Could I redo the assignment and hand it in to you tomorrow?”

“Ye can’t,” Professor O'Donnell said cheerfully, walking from the board and sitting atop his desk. “I’ll have to make a lesson out of ye.”

“Me?” Lily cried indignantly. “Why me?” It was Potter's fault she didn’t have an assignment to turn in.

“Because, Miss Evans, today you’ve shown us something integral to remember when it comes to our subject. If ye ever find yourself in a position to defend yourself against the Dark Arts, you’ve got yourself in a spot of bad luck, and bad luck happens to the best of people.” Something in the message resonated with the rest of the Gryffindors because they collectively nodded their heads. No one was in her corner when Professor O'Donnell pronounced, “Detention.”

Lily slumped in her seat. So unfair! Between the dud they had last year and barmy O'Donnell, Defense was quickly shaping into Lily’s least favorite subject. At least she could read books in History of Magic. A spot of bad luck…it wasn’t a potioneer’s problem, was it? Lily’s thoughts stewed on Felix Felicis and the fact that if she said those words to Slughorn, he would’ve given her an extension. And probably a chocolate truffle.

“The first order of business is to assign ye homework of me own.” The class groaned, but that only made his grin bigger. “Ye can’t be lucky every day.”

He reached into a desk drawer and took out a huge deck of Chocolate Frog Cards bundled with twine. O’Donell needed to take his wand out to unwrap it, and the moment he did, dozens of cards slid onto his lap and across the desk top. It was too massive a deck to handle one-handed.

“Nice collection, Professor,” Lupin quipped with just enough irony he couldn’t be accused of brown-nosing.

“Thank ye. I have all the beast cards in here too, no doubles.”

He picked up the loose cards looking like another kid in the Common Room. The collection was what Lily would call well-loved. All cards held signs of frequent handling and use, like her Dumbledore card, which was in her pocket right now, as usual. When he’d stacked them all same-side up, he prodded the pile with his wand, which obscured the pictures as though they were all covered by black curtains.

He stowed his wand away and began to shuffle them, but Lily thought some wandless, nonverbal magic might have been at work. Those cards went flying between his hands like he was playing an accordion or stretching taffy. He even made them jump from one hand into the other behind his back and over his shoulder. 

Now that he had everyone’s undivided attention, he began to explain the assignment, splitting the deck in half and riffling the two piles.

“Everyone is going to pick a card and your homework is to write me a fourteen inch essay how ye’d thwart your opponent. Now, I don’t expect ye to defeat Albus Dumbledore—” he gave a wheezing laugh—“but I want an explanation of how ye’d subdue or escape from your match.”

Lily’s own Chocolate Frog collection was now large enough that she could see the pitfalls of this plan right away. If O’Donnell hadn’t removed swaths of cards from his deck, they’d be going up against Quidditch players, gobstone champions, portrait painters, wizard chess champions, complete randoms. There was no guarantee they’d be facing anyone powerful. They could theoretically fight a champion dueler or a champion kneazle breeder. How was anyone supposed to write an essay about battling Gunhilda of Gorsemoor, the one-eyed, hump-backed witch famous for developing a cure for Dragon pox? Nichola must’ve had the same thought because she scowled from her front row seat.

The professor split the cards into two piles again and fanned both out in each hand, so the blackened, obscured pictures were facing up.

“Miss MacDonald, if ye would be so kind as to start us off.” Professor O’Donnell held out the fanned cards to Mary and she picked one from the middle in the hand closest to her. At her touch, the dark shape over its picture became visible again.

“Healer Hugo Huckney, inventor of the…nostril-enlarging charm?” Mary looked bewildered.

“Explains what happened to Snivellus’ face,” Potter jeered. “I bet he stuck something up there he wasn’t supposed to as a wee lad.” Pettigrew and Black laughed.

“I had no idea his childhood was so sad!” Black bit back in mock falsetto.

They were so immature! O’Donnell had been explaining several of the charm’s clinical uses to Mary, but he raised his voice when he noticed the boys losing focus.

“This assignment will involve research!” O’Donnell said loudly over his shoulder, reshuffling the deck in front of a grumpy-looking Nichola with a slick, zipper-like technique. This time he kept the top fanned out with one hand and the rest of the cards stacked in the other. “Study your enemy. If he or she graduated Hogwarts, they should be able to manage the full seven year curriculum o’ spells. Don’t overlook anyone’s skillset.”

“Emeric the Evil.” Nichola had worn a look as skeptical as Lily’s when O’Donnell had gotten his deck out, but that changed the moment she held her card. Her expression morphed into something battle-ready. “The dark wizard who menaced Southern England in the Middle Ages.”

“Only two cards in and someone’s been unlucky enough to face off against our first dark wizard.” O’Donnell gave a low whistle. He had the eyes of every student in the room. “We know ‘im in Ireland too. Skilled enough in the Dark Arts to ride on a dragon’s back with a wand they call The Wand o’ Destiny. Some say it’s the same wand Godelot dubbed the Deathstick, either because it could slay any opponent who dared challenge it or because its very core came from the bony finger of Death’s right hand.”

“How’s a second year supposed to pretend to duel someone like that?” Pettigrew asked in outrage. Potter made one of his usual boasts, but was stunned when all three of his friends ignored his comment. Blinking owlishly, even he turned to give O’Donnell his full attention. The professor was tugging on his long, wispy goatee, which resembled an orange flame burning from his thumb.

“Matter o’ fact, Emeric the Evil had a short reign. He was slaughtered by an even more powerful dark wizard by the name of Egbert the Egregious.” The name should have been funny, but no one laughed. “Even dark wizards have bad luck.” 

The whole class was silent. The atmosphere had changed. This used to be a classroom easy to fall asleep in. Now it seemed happy to toss them to and fro, chew them up, and spit them out. If Binns covered this in class, Lily must not have paid attention. Two dark wizards threatened England simultaneously til one destroyed the other? Where did You-Know-Who stack up againsteither of them? 

O’Donnell cut through her thoughts. “Miss Santos, I expect ye to write an escape plan.” Under any other circumstances, Gryffindor would’ve skewered a professor who suggested they flee, but he still had their tongues tied. “Almost every legendary hero has a story or two ‘bout how they lived to fight another day because they knew how and when ta leg it. That’s a skill that can save your life.” 

He held out his deck to Adeline, who was so subdued by his words, she poked her choice and withdrew her finger. O’Donnell read the card to himself. “Ah! Our first beast card. Miss Fray, write your essay assuming it’s a full moon night.”  

Confused, Adeline leaned forward to get a view of her card, then stumbled back so fast she fell out of her chair, shaking with such terror no one laughed at her. “A werewolf?” Adeline cried from the floor, turning white. O’Donnell had to help her up. Polly retrieved Adeline’s card from under a desk, and Lily glanced at its picture while Polly stood in the aisle. Powerful, clamping jaws filled the frame and then shifted for a twitching, yellow, human-shaped eye consumed with such a powerful sense of evil, it scarcely seemed human at all. The creature depicted on the card reappeared as a wolfish shadow against the light of a full moon. Lupin was as pale as Adeline, and Peter as tremulous. 

“The Woking Werewolf,” O’Donnell announced, showing off the picture. “Terrorized Surrey and southwestern London thirty years ago until the Ministry put ‘er down. Here’s why no wizards live in Surrey to this day.” He handed the card to Adeline, who immediately flipped the picture upside down and crushed the card under her textbook, looking morose. “Take heart! There are ways to defeat them. You’ll see when ye look up the story of the Woking Werewolf in the library—you’ll learn a lot.”

Polly took her card from the pile next, not waiting for O’Donnell to pick them up and reshuffle them. “Babbitty Rabbity,” she smiled forcefully, showing the card around. It got a few chuckles as the old, rose-cheeked witch beamed at them from atop her stump, but the air in the classroom was still tense. Polly cracked a joke. “Sir, I like Babbitty. I wouldn’t want to fight her.”

“Never underestimate your adversary! Babbitty Rabbitty could hold her own against the Woking Werewolf very easily,” O’Donnell said, likely for Adeline’s benefit, who was still white-faced and shaking. “Can anyone tell me why?” 

Sirius raised his hand.

“Mr. Black?”

Strangely, Sirius didn’t answer. O’Donnell had to call his name a second time and then he flashed a dazzling smile. “Animagi can’t be harmed by werewolves so long as they’re transformed.”

“Excellent. 5 points to Gryffindor!” O’Donnell held out the deck to him and he picked the top card, immediately flipping it up for O’Donnell to read aloud. “Edgar Stroulager, inventor of the Sneakoscope. Good luck sneaking up on him!” The professor laughed heartily at his own joke, rearranging the deck and holding it out again. “Mr. Lupin.”

“Circe.” Lupin waved his card around miserably.

“Ah, the Ancient Greek witch of Aeaea,” O’Donnell commented, growing serious. “She’ll stick ta her signature o’ course. It’s important to know how ta escape an enemy’s human to animal transfiguration.” Potter made pig sounds, which earned him a few laughs. O’Donell wore a somber look on his face, but unlike other professors, he didn’t reprimand Potter for his outburst. Instead, he shuffled his deck and held it out to James next.

Potter thought he was being slick by eschewing any of the cards fanned out in O’Donnell’s hand  and choosing the card at the very bottom of the deck. “I bet I got Andros the Invincible or slimy Salazar Slytherin,” he boasted, only to clamp up and cover his card the second he flipped it over. Professor O’Donnell pried it out of his fingers.

“Spotty the Puffskein!” O’Donnell cooed. Mary, Adeline, and Polly all awwed in chorus. Potter’s mates all snickered at him, Sirius laughing the loudest. Even Lily couldn’t help cock a half-grin. “I had a puffskein just like him! Spotty is famous for originating the bunny-eared variant. Those aren’t really ears. They’re long tufts of fur, and yer puff skein will purr extra long if ye stroke ‘em.” He handed the card back, a fond smile dimpling his cheeks.

“I want a new card,” Potter said gruffly. “I should have a tougher opponent.”

“Don’t worry,” Professor O’Donnell waggled his eyebrows. “There’ll be more homework on Friday.” When no one in the class moaned or groaned, he looked extra chuffed with himself. 

Pettigrew used the opportunity to try to peek at the cards.

“Uh-uh! No cheating,” O’Donnell chided, pulling his pile away until Pettigrew was left with the one he’d tried to lift. Peter meekly lifted up Merwyn the Malicious, an odious looking wizard who lived up to his name. Lily knew his entry well because she owned a copy of the card. He invented many unpleasant jinxes and hexes, including Locomotor Wibbly, which many knew as the harmless Jelly-Legs jinx. Nowadays, loads of people favored it as a non-violent option, but it was actually a curse with a dark, sadistic origin story. Merwyn invented it to make one of his enemies collapse before he murdered the man’s son with a knife; he wanted the father to watch the boy die, powerless to intervene in time but mobile enough to try. Sev showed her the story from a book on the history of common jinxes. She hoped no one told Peter, who was wringing his hands. 

“Maybe I caught him on a day I was having really, really good luck…and he was having really bad luck. Maybe I get to duel him on his death day, the minute before he dies?” 

The professor looked chagrined. “Crafty. I did say the best of wizards can have bad luck too. It’s not the spirit of the assignment, but it fits the instructions.” He was rubbing the back of his head. “Give it a lash! The point of these essays isn’t to convince me you’d defeat any enemy ye faced; it’s ta really consider what it takes to face an opponent outside of a formal duel. Ye need ta think about what an adversary’s capable of and how ye can resist ‘em.” Potter sulked over his puffskein. He opened his mouth to have another go at changing cards, and O’Donnell quickly thrust his deck to Lily. She was still unimpressed with the first teacher to assign her a detention and grabbed a card at random. 

That was…that was bad luck. 

Of all the Chocolate Frog Cards she could have found herself holding, she had once again come across Charlie Bucket, the wizard who died in the Chocolate Frog Company’s chocolate vat. She couldn’t believe it. This card was supposed to be rare.

“Mine’s already a goner.” she said wryly, lifting the moving image so all could see his flailing, chocolate-encased limbs. “Spotty the Puffskein’s more dangerous.”

“Easy! A simple stunner should do the trick,” Sirius grinned, miming the spell with his wand arm like he’d done it before even though it hadn’t shown up in the curriculum yet.

“Ah,” Professor O’Donnell chimed, “ye missed the real danger, the silent killer in the background.” He tapped her card with a stubby finger. “The true enemy is the chocolate vat. Poor Charlie found himself overpowered.”

Lily felt doubly insulted. She was not writing an essay of how she’d escape a chocolate vat. She wouldn’t have been dumb enough to fall in. She was overcome with a sense of soaring through the air as she leapt off a swing. She could feel it bodily, as though magic possessed its own muscle memory. Wasn’t that the whole point of magic? Feeling invincible? Ordinary things couldn’t harm wizards or witches. Mum had thought she’d crack her skull on the asphalt playground, but she hadn’t been in any danger. That’s how Lily remembered magic, when it felt like the whole world shaped itself around her.

School wasn’t like that. She sat through the rest of the lesson, bored and disgruntled. O’Donnell had told her to come back that evening for detention, and she caught up with the rest of her classmates as they headed to lunch. She’d have to eat extra because she’d be missing supper. 

“It’s something though. Two dark wizards between our whole class. Seven out of nine of us got really good opponents,” Nichola said. “Only Lily and James got lucky.” 

Potter looked as lucky as she felt. At least his puffskein moved around. Everyone began voicing their own opinions as to whether Babbitty Rabbitty or Healer Huckney counted as decent—except Lupin, who ran to the loo. Pettigrew consulted Nichola about their dark wizards. Lily stared at her black, ink-splattered parchment. She could still make out her first name at the top, but that was it. Even Evans had been swallowed up. She crumpled the page. Not even back to back Charms and Potions could save this day.

When Lily reappeared in the Defense classroom that evening, there was another boy in her year already sitting at one of the desks. Mulciber. Lily recognized the Slytherin from Herbology, but she’d never spoken to him before. She didn’t even know what his first name was, just that he was good friends with Avery, which spoke for itself. Mulciber was the tallest kid in the grade, beating out Sirius by an inch. Today she had coincidentally worn her hair like his, but her ponytail was much longer. His couldn’t even scrape his shoulders. He seemed to be in a mood as foul as hers, so she took the desk closest to the door and zoned out until O’Donnell appeared in the doorway. 

“Oh good, ye both showed up.”

“Didn’t realize detention was optional,” Mulciber muttered. 

Professor O’Donnell entered, magically pushing a sizable cage, which housed a short, gremlin-like creature with red eyes and long fingers. Lily eyed it warily, hoping it had nothing to do with their detention. It beat its fists in the air viciously, like it desperately wanted to bludgeon someone, but it didn’t dare touch the cage, which might have been magically fortified. The professor moved it behind his desk and turned to face them. Lily noticed the three people in this school with green eyes were all in the same room. She hadn’t stared into every students’s eyeballs to say for certain, but that creature’s freaky red eyes made it very noticeable.

“Sorry I was late. This yoke was roaming the Castle, and Headmaster Dumbledore asked me to handle him. I’m saving him for me third years—maybe all the classes. He’s unexpected, but he’ll be educational. Couldn’t even get me tea,” the professor rambled. 

Lily and Mulciber stared at him impassively. Their professor seemed green. No teacher owed students an explanation of what they did with their time. Professor McGonagall would never have apologized for attending Castle business. Behind the desk, the mysterious creature screamed without making a sound. It appeared to be silenced by a charm from earlier. She shuddered, but she couldn’t look away from those diabolical red eyes gleaming over the desktop. She wished she could’ve. They set her on edge. The creature was now staring directly at her as it pounded its fist against its own hand and snarled. 

O’Donnell drew himself up, looking every bit like a big brother trying to play at an adult. “Ye two are not to go near this Red Cap for any reason. Am I making myself clear?”

He almost sounded like he didn’t plan to stay in the room.

“Yes, sir,” Mulciber dutifully droned. “I don’t want to get attacked.”

O’Donnell sighed, looking relieved. Any enforced sternness left his face and his tone fell back into its natural playful cadence. “Have ye done inventory?” 

Mulciber groaned like a dying bullfrog. Lily didn’t know why he was whinging; inventory sounded like a lucky break. Pettigrew once said McGonagall made him and his mates wash Hospital Wing bedpans by hand. 

“Sounds like a yes,” O’Donnell smiled, shifting his head between them. “And a no.” 

“Let me guess. No one’s done it for years,” Mulciber whinged, his chin slumping against his propped up elbow. O’Donnell crossed the classroom to the wall of cubbies in the back, randomly brushing his hand inside a hole. He pulled out crushed quills covered in dried ink, which stained his fingers blue. 

“No one’s made a good job of it. I’m told it’s been many years since my post has been permanent.” He summoned a roll of parchment from his desk and doubled it. “I need ta order new supplies soon, and I need ta know what’s already in stock.” He tapped both rolls with his wand and they glowed blue for an instant. Then he conjured two pairs of thick gloves. “I want ye working with these at all times in case anything left here still has its teeth.”

Great. 

“I’m not taking yer wands, because I’ll teach ye a spell ye can use, but no other charms. This isn’t about making ye miserable or making ye work hard for no reason. It’s about putting in enough work to get a task done, one that’s beneficial in the long run…like me lessons.” He lifted his eyebrows pointedly. “I’ll be back to check on ye. And no talking! Unless ye need to say something important related to the task.” He rubbed his goatee uncertainly. “No chatting,” he amended. “This is detention.”

“Your first, huh?”

O’Donnell nodded, looking between the pair of students. “This is how they go, yeah?”

Mulciber shrugged. 

“It’s my first too,” Lily chimed in, picking up the gloves and dropping them back on the desk dejectedly. “It’s alright, a little long and dull, but you’ve still got time to fix that.”

“Cheeky!” O’Donnell laughed. It still didn’t make Lily like him.

He taught them derigo, a spell with a linear wand movement that ordered items. Mulciber picked it up instantly, admitting he knew the spell from home, and Lily mastered it after a couple of tries, which satisfied O’Donnell, who left to pop into the Great Hall. She was glad the movement was so simple. It was hard to maneuver a wand with a glove so thick.

As the two students set to work, it became apparent Mulciber knew a whole host of inventory spells. She never considered him particularly good with magic, but maybe he just bunked off assignments. She could track his progress on her own inventory list, which was synced to his. He was fast, with a wand and without one, but he was muttering too low for Lily to copy his words or movements. They all flowed into one another. It helped that he’d removed the protective glove from his wand arm too. All his actions seemed automatic, like a machine or a well-practiced factory worker on the assembly line, which was not how Lily usually thought of magic. He could make a quill note for him, a cubby hole empty itself, and like-objects clump together. He also had a knack for how to sensibly group things by year and type whereas she had to think about it.

“Hey,” she called. Mulciber purposefully ignored her, so she closed the gap between them and batted his arm. “Hey, show me—”

The spell he was saying backfired, punting the objects to the opposite side of the room. He swore at them and then at her. From behind O’Donnell’s desk, the Red Cap shook with violent glee.

“Quit messing me up!” he shouted. Lily let her annoyance simmer. They weren’t ever going to be friends, but she still wanted to get this detention over with. It was dumb to waste time doing this work by hand when there were a plethora of faster magical solutions.

“Look, if you teach me those spells, you’ll be done faster too,” she said through gritted teeth. Mulciber had retrieved whatever items scattered earlier and gestured with the hand holding some kind of giant hair balls.

“You stay on your side. I’ll stay on mine. No talking.” Behind them, the Red Cap cheered for blood. Its silencing charm had worn off.

Lily glared at his back. “Fine. Be a prat. But if Herbology is anything to go by, you’re slower than snails.” 

When he turned to her over his shoulder, his words slipped like ice. “I’m not listening to opinions from a Mudblood.” 

He resumed his chain of spells and the room filled with the steady beat of the inventory sorting. She forced herself not to go to the cubbies on the other end of the wall. She wasn’t going to meet Mulciber in the middle. She pulled out a dozen or so garlic bushels from a cubby by hand, all soft and browning. They went in the rubbish. Mudblood. It was a stupid word, pathetic as far as insults went. It didn’t even hit its mark, not really. She would’ve laughed it off if she hadn’t learned what it meant last night, after hearing it whispered repeatedly alongside the Andromeda elopement gossip. Mary had asked their squirming roommates to explain it. The term was a slur against witches and wizards with Muggle parents, born out of a sentiment which likened everything about Muggles to filth. There was a really scary undercurrent in the wizarding world of people who thought of all Muggles like animals. Even good wizards and witches fell dangerously close to the pattern. Last year, when that airplane flew over Hogwarts, The Daily Prophet released an article about how Muggles were too unobservant and sheeplike to suspect the existence of the magical world. It hadn’t seemed that bad at that time, not too different from the silliness of wizards believing Muggles used brollies as boats, but in retrospect, knowing what Grindelwald did to Muggles and how he rationalized his actions, it was sickening. 

It filled her with a strange numbness. Did she belong in this world or not? Did she want to? She put down her wand to work faster, but then picked it up again.

She would’ve rather been called a freak.

Before long, Professor O’Donnell entered the room, carrying a plate of half-finished treacle tart and rambling apologies. “Had ta discuss dispatching the Red Cap with Headmaster Dumbledore. We don’ want ta set ‘im loose on account of what they do ta poor Muggles. If this yoke bludgeoned a Muggle to death ‘cause we released him, I’d feel responsible, buck what yer Ministry says.” O’Donnell silenced the Red Cap, which had been getting rowdy again. When he realized they still weren’t paying attention, he glanced their way and whistled appreciatively. “Fair play t’ya,” he called out. 

They were almost done and there was still time before curfew. Mulciber completed most of the work, skipping over Lily to finish the columns at the end. Finally, he threw off his one protective glove, made final notes to his parchment, and handed the roll to O’Donnell, who had been marking papers while they finished. 

“Your family runs a tight ship.” Professor O'Donnell shot him a smile he didn’t reciprocate. “Where are they located again?”

“Lewis and Harris Island,” Mulciber said impassively. O'Donnell nodded.

“A bit out of the way—not by FLOO, of course,” he amended upon seeing Mulciber’s expression. “I’ll have to stop in sometime to send a few goods back home.”

“First time abroad?” Mulciber guessed dispassionately.

“It is!” O'Donnell enthused. He seemed open to chatting longer, but Mulciber asked to be excused. Lily had gathered her things and lingered to give Mulciber enough time to clear the corridor.

O'Donnell must have noticed her expression and misread why she was upset. “Miss Evans, I’m sure your homework was excellent, and it’ll count for Friday’s pop quiz. Mr. Black had a perfect paper…” He shuffled through some more parchments from the Gryffindor pile. “Or you could study from Miss Santos’ homework.” 

“They told you this job is jinxed, right Professor?” she interrupted cooly. 

O’Donnell shot her a look of confusion, a blank, deer-stuck-in-headlights look, and she turned into the corridor. She ambled up the staircases, not wanting to go back to her dorm, but not knowing where to go instead. When she neared the second flight of stairs, Greta and George waved to her from the first floor and she doubled her pace, pretending not to see them. There was nowhere to be alone in this school. 

She settled on the library because there were rules against speaking. 

Mara Benson waved to her from a table filled with Ravenclaws, and Lily mutely waved back, glad for the excuse not to talk. She searched for a different place to sit down. She spotted Sev sitting at a lone table squarely in front of Madam Pince. That was actually the perfect spot not to be disturbed. She dropped into the chair beside him. He whirled his head around, and then realizing it was her, moved several of the books he had strewn across the table.

She tried to busy herself with the nearest one, but gave a judder when she opened a page to a moving picture of a Red Cap above the explanation for what made their eponymous caps turn red. She slammed the book shut. It was a text on Dark Creatures.

“You alright?” Sev asked blankly. Pince glared at them for talking, but she soon went to investigate a noise behind one of the bookcases. 

“What does Mudblood mean?” Lily questioned. 

“Who called you that?” Severus asked appallingly. It immediately set Lily on edge because why did expect someone to call her that instead of her learning it from a book. 

“What does it mean?” she said stonily.

“Forget it, Lily. It’s someone being a berk.” 

The words from two summers ago replayed in her mind as clearly as if she had heard them yesterday. Muggle-bornis exactly what it sounds like, a witch or wizard born to two Muggles. You’re still a witch. “You said being Muggle-born didn’t matter,” she accused, aiming all her fury at Mulciber at Severus instead.

“It doesn’t. Not to anyone worth anything!” 

Lily stomped away angrily. She heard Pince admonishing Severus for the noise as she left the library. A moment later he came running out into the corridor. 

“Lily! Lily!”

She heard him rush towards the staircase that led to the fourth floor, having assumed she went back to her dorm. Now she really didn’t know where to go to clear her head. Aimlessly, she wandered back down to the first floor, but her plans to walk around til curfew were foiled. Up ahead, a few professors were standing outside the staffroom.

“Professor O’Donnell, how are you finding Hogwarts?” McGonagall asked. 

“Cillian—please,” O'Donnell responded amiably. “Grand! The school’s grand! The students here are very creative. Today one of my second years asked me if I had experience defending myself against a puca. I was surprised—not Irish, never been to Ireland, just does a lot of supplemental reading. I was very impressed. One of yours, Horace."

“No surprises there,” Slughorn chuckled. “Speaking of—Cillian, as our new Defense Professor, can we count on you to supervise our first Hogsmeade trip in October? We’d like to get your name down for the role. We don’t want the wrong kind of surprises. There might be more Red Caps lurking about.”

“I‘d be happy as Larry. But don’t worry about Red Caps, Horace. They’re usually rather solitary aboveground.”

Slughorn shuddered in spite of the warm air. “I spoke with Albus earlier, and he believes that Red Cap was planted.”

“By someone in the Castle?” O’Donnell asked with alarm.

“No, no. He believes it was meant for the local Muggle town—what’s it name—but it went astray. Come, I’ll explain by the fire. Minerva brought a delicious Scotch.”

Slughorn tried to scoop O’Donnell up by the shoulders, but the Defense professor blocked his hand. “Maybe we ought ta call the Aurors. That Red Cap could’ve been a scout or a test. There have been dark wizards in the past who used Red Caps for warfare.”

Slughorn folded his hands. Lily couldn’t see his face from her spot down the darkened corridor, but he sounded somber. “Albus suspects it was one or two individuals orchestrating a cruel prank.”

O’Donnell reeled back. “Setting a dark creature loose on unsuspecting victims? It’s not Irish humor,” he said grimly. 

“Nor Scottish,” McGonagall replied. “Please, let’s move this discussion to the staffroom.”

❀ ❀

In the week since his return to Hogwarts, Slytherin had changed. When the RAB embroidered pillows appeared on all the Common Room sofas and armchairs, Severus had assumed Rabastan was being pissy and territorial. When the RAB-branded enchanted shower mat found its home in front of one of the boys’ shower stalls, Severus had assumed Rabastan had a tacky sense of decor. Then he stumbled across a pair of RAB slippers too small for Rabastan’s feet and realized the “A” must stand for Regulus Black’s middle name. He spotted the culprit lounging across a sofa by the fireplace in a monogrammed dressing gown, like the reclining figure of some naffing Renaissance painting. Severus tossed a slipper at his torso. He was set to miss, sailing way above Regulus’ legs, when Regulus shot up and snatched it like a swooping falcon, slipping it onto his foot, which he flexed in the air as he lay back down. A couple of portraits clapped.

“Cheers! Do me a favor and fetch me the second. I don’t feel like getting up.”

Severus stooped down to get the second slipper, waved it in his hand so Regulus could get a good look at it, and hurled it in the opposite direction of the sofas, as far away as he could manage. Regulus made an affronted noise and sat up, watching as it slid under one of the lake-facing armchairs.

“Whoops,” he said softly.

Severus’ smile grew bigger watching Regulus gurn. 

“Your aim is atrocious! If you’re on the Quidditch team, we’ll lose!” Regulus still hadn’t pieced together that someone could have thrown his stuff on purpose. Severus headed out of the Common Room in a better mood, swiping a copy of the Sunday morning paper out of the rubbish.

Paper in hand, he made his way towards the library. He could hear the boisterous noise from the Great Hall echoing down the Dungeon staircase. Everyone was eating lunch, which meant he could finally have some peace and quiet walking through the corridors. As he climbed the Grand staircase to the second floor, he allowed himself to let his guard down and scan the news.

The Daily Prophet had a new column sponsored by the Ministry. On pages two and three, you could read “Sightings of You-Know-Who,” which could more accurately be renamed “Non-Sightings of You-Know-Who” because, without exception, the Ministry exclusively reported confirmed non-encounters with He-Who-Must-Be-Named. 

How could anyone take this war seriously? Severus didn’t know which party was most pathetic—the fool who believed He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would visit Madam Pudifoot’s Tea Shop, the Ministry for sending workers to check, the Prophet for publishing this as news, or a hypothetical dark wizard who stopped in a cutesy couples’ haunt for tea time. This was turning into a wild-goose chase. If Lily hadn’t told him He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had appeared in the Ministry last December, Severus wouldn’t even believe there was a single wizard linked to any disappearances, the last of which had happened December of last year.

It was the inverse of the “Martin Miggs, The Mad Muggle” comics Mulciber loved so much. Instead of what wild place will The Mad Muggle go next, it was what wild place wouldn’t You-Know-Who go next? It became a running joke in Slytherin. You-Know-Who is not in the jam jar. You-Know-Who is not under your bed. You-Know-Who is not in the second floor girls’ loo.

Potter, on the other hand, had a poxy Invisibility Cloak. Severus snapped his head between the two ends of the second floor corridor and forced himself to stow his wand away. No one was here. The whole school was at lunch and if someone wasn’t, what were the chances he’d run into them on the back staircase or on the second floor? He’d become paranoid since returning to Hogwarts. It was his imagination; no one was breathing on him and no one was laughing behind his back. Not this minute anyway. He had the corridor to himself. He surveyed the space once more. The skin of his arms turned to gooseflesh; he could feel hairs raised on the nape of his neck. The air was so prescient in its silence, someone could easily get the impression something was about to happen. There were no footsteps sounding behind him but multiple doors up ahead that anyone could be hiding behind. 

He sped towards the back staircase when a door slammed open and a loud thud sounded behind him. He spun round to see Lucius Malfoy with his foot stamped on a trailing piece of fabric and Potter splayed out on the floor between them. That was Potter’s brand of Gryffindor bravery, sneaking up on people when he had the upper hand with his Cloak and catching them off guard. The whole thing reeked of cowardice. 

“You should say ‘Excuse me,’ you know,” Potter ground out in Lucius’ direction. 

“I found you on the floor,” Lucius replied coldly. “You should say ‘thank you’ on the account I didn’t trod on your face.” He lifted his foot off Potter’s cloak. “Get up. Get back to your dorm, and that goes for your friends. Homenum Revelio.” Lucius glanced to the toilets, where Lupin, Black and Pettigrew filed out of the entrance. 

“We were just using the loo,” Lupin lied in a pleasant, well-meaning voice. Pettigrew trailed after him.

“Can’t even use the toilets in this school in peace. Outrageous!” Pettigrew whinged. 

“All together?” Lucius said dryly. “Do you need to hold hands?” He lifted his hand as Black opened his mouth. “I don’t care to hear more from you. Leave before I take points.” They trooped towards the main staircase, muttering mutinously, and Lucius waited until they were down the corridor. “15 points from Gryffindor.”

“For what?” Black yelled, whirling around. 

“Not flushing.”

Luck took the shape of Lucius Malfoy. 

The second those four dingleberries were gone, the unmistakable sound of the tap running sounded through the corridor. Lucius stepped into the loo doorway and flicked his wand in the direction of the sinks, which stopped the noise, but he took a few steps further in anyway.

“Blast it,” he swore, reappearing. “They’ve clogged everything. I have to go get Filch.”

“If no one takes Potter’s Invisibility Cloak, they’re just going to do it again later,” Severus muttered grudgingly. His words let on more than he wanted them to, but it wasn’t just him made a target. It was whoever Potter wanted. He and his three friends did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, whether it was sneaking up on someone or clogging the toilets. Everyone in the school, teachers and students alike, knew Potter had an Invisibility Cloak. He wasn’t shy about showing it off. Severus once asked Lily how a tick like Potter could be marginally popular, and she said most of Gryffindor liked him because he used his cloak to sneak snacks from the kitchen for late night parties. Open secret indeed.

“Anyone is free to own an Invisibility Cloak,” Lucius ruled impassively. 

Severus could only stare. If he could afford to buy an Invisibility Cloak, he’d be back in the Common Room right now lounging on a sofa in his monogrammed dressing gown and matching slippers. A bundle of Demiguise hair could pay a month’s rent for him in Mum on Diagon; he had no idea how much it’d cost by the yard. This gave a whole new meaning to blindfolded Themis holding out the scales of judgment.

Lucius massaged his temples. “Possessing and wearing an Invisibility Cloak isn’t against the rules; however, confiscating one is. Removing Potter’s cloak would count as forcibly removing articles of clothing from a person, which goes against the student handbook. No teacher or prefect can demand he remove it either because it would qualify as compelling a student to disrobe.”

Severus’ mouth dropped open in horror. There were rules against hexing in the corridors and against breaking curfew, both of which Potter used his Invisibility Cloak to do, but Potter was protected in both on technicality. How thick could people be? It was like that tasteless joke Toby liked to tell about the mill manager who let his warehouse stock burn down cause the doors have to be locked by 6 and the fire was 6:30. 

“I’m a fan of making the rules work for you. Consider it a Slytherin House virtue.”

Severus said nothing. Potter’s Invisibility Cloak wasn’t really the problem. Although he couldn’t cast the human-revealing spell Lucius had used, there were other spells to face off against an Invisibility Cloak. He could use light in the evenings, checking for odd shadows no visible objects could cast. Any weather charm could reveal Potter’s location. A light dusting of snow would show where an invisible person was standing; strong wind might knock back the cloak’s hood. The problem was Potter had an Invisibility Cloak and three friends. The second Severus saw two or three of them, he’d fire spells at empty air, looking mental, and Potter and his mates would get a laugh out of their fan club as they lampooned him. Then, if he did nothing, that would be the time one or two of them would sneak behind him under the cloak. 

Four on one. How were those odds fair?

Lucius nudged him with his elbow. “No solutions from Genesis Magicae? I’ve been waiting to hear your thoughts.”

He’d been working on a simple toenail-growing hex, but he wasn’t in the mood to share that. It would stick out from under an Invisibility Cloak and stop someone in their tracks, but what he really needed was something nonverbal he could cast without drawing any attention to himself.

Severus shrugged. “I’ve barely seen you since term started.”

Lucius sighed. “Undoubtedly, you’ve heard about Andromeda. I’ve been dealing with the ripple effects for weeks.”

Lucius had a way of turning the tables. Now Severus felt guilty. Every time he’d seen Lucius, he’d been at Narcissa’s side. Hadn’t Andromeda been his friend too? Severus knew about some of the fallout the elopement caused—blame from the Blacks, some bad blood with Rabastan—and he bet that was the tip of the iceberg.

“Erhm. Sorry.” Lucius looked at him queerly. “If she was your friend.” 

Lucius rocked back on his heels and brought a hand up to his chin like it was some complicated puzzle to decipher. Wasn’t it simple? People either were friends or they weren’t. “I knew Andromeda for over half my life, but I couldn’t tell you where the truth ended and the lies began. Mr. Tonks might have found himself with more than he bargained for. I don’t think she was that good an actress.”

Severus didn’t know how to respond to that. He should’ve turned this into a conversation about   spell creation back when he had the chance.

“There is something you could do for me.” Severus squinted up at him, wondering what potion Lucius had in mind. “Take care of Narcissa.” Severus balked. He made a garbled sound that was meant to be, She’s a grown witch, but the words were stuck in his throat. Something must have shown in his expression because Lucius continued, “As a prefect, I need to get Filch. Just keep Narcissa company while I’m gone.” Lucius began steering him in the direction they had come from, towards the door he had exited to catch Potter.

“Why me?” he griped. Narcissa had two cousins in Slytherin. 

“Because you owe me a favor,” Lucius said in a mercenary voice. The liar! Severus should have known he was favor-counting this whole time! 

“She doesn’t like me.” He tried to pry Lucius’ grip off his arm.

Lucius ignored his protests. Severus struggled against the seventh year, but his attempts to resist were so feeble he would be embarrassed to admit he tried. 

“You’re acting like she’s a manticore.” Lucius must’ve been desperate because he resorted to bargaining. “I’ll make it worth your while. I will get you books from the restricted section.”

That was funny—Lucius made it seem like he had a choice, when he clearly didn’t.

“What am I supposed to do?” Severus asked, clinging the doorframe as a last resort.

“Just distract her.” He shoved a conjured textbook into Severus’ chest, knocking the wind out of him and forcing his fingers off the doorway. “Quiz her for her exams.” Before Severus could get ahold of his bearings, the door shut in his face. Narcissa had just taken her OWL exams in June. There was no way she’d care about the exams for the end of term in September.

Severus tried the handle. It turned, but the door wouldn’t open no matter how hard he pushed, like it was blocked by a heavy object. That bastard effectively locked him in! Severus muttered a string of obscenities, but Lucius wouldn’t have heard them even if he had stayed behind the door; the sound of Narcissa’s heavy sobbing drowned everything out.

Severus risked a glance at the older girl, who sat at one corner of the long table dominating the space with her face buried in her hands. He could see her tears trickling through the crevices of her fingers and he quickly looked away, jiggling the door handle with new ferocity. His efforts were in vain. The damn door wouldn’t budge. 

He slowly turned to face his crying companion again and trudged over to where she sat, lost in grief. Narcissa gave no acknowledgment she knew he was in the room. 

Mum had cried like that once, when Severus was small. He hadn’t been able to cheer up Mum that time either, and he doubted Narcissa would want him to try hugging her. 

He forced himself into a chair as far away from her as humanly possible and opened the textbook Lucius had thrown at him, disappearing behind it. He would’ve rather taken his chances against Potter and his pals. It was obscene here. Despite the wall of words in front of him and the cover of Narcissa’s hands and long hair, he found himself behind Narcissa’s private curtain of grief, an unwilling voyeur to her loud sobbing. For a long time, he didn’t say anything, waiting. You can only cry loud for so long before your throat gives. 

Gradually, Narcissa’s sobs pattered out to shuddering hiccups and Severus jumped at the first opportunity to talk over her misery. 

“You don’t want to cry during exams, so we’ll review Transfiguration. The Vanishing Spell—Evanesco—has a complicated wand movement of 5 continuous pieces. Its initial downward swoop falls right, left, right, left, with a particular emphasis on the first three lateral movements where the zigzag directional changes refer to an object’s temporal state and not a spatial state as one might presume,” he read, tracing the spiky movement with his finger. “It looks the number 3,” he added helpfully because Narcissa wasn’t paying attention to the diagram. 

She was rubbing at her eyes with both hands and hunched over herself, starting a fresh round of sobs. Weakly, he shut the textbook.

He hadn't been able to cheer up Lily either when she cried on the Express last year. She had told him she didn’t want to talk to him, and the only reason she changed her mind was because they happened to be sharing a compartment with two obnoxious louts. She wound up redirecting her building anger at him at them instead. And it all started because of Tuney, which Severus still didn’t get. Talk about someone worth no tears. Lily had cried a few droplets; Narcissa could have salted a whole ocean with tears for Andromeda.

“You must really love your sister,” he mumbled. At once, Narcissa stopped weeping and looked at him with dry, red-rimmed eyes, the last of her tears trailing down her face like precious water droplets upon the rock of a scorched desert. When she spoke, her voice was cold and tinny.

“No, I don’t. I have no love for the selfish monster who abandoned our family.” Severus didn’t know how to react. It felt too good to be true that Narcissa had left behind whatever hurt she felt with the ease of flipping a switch, but her cutting words sounded sincere. It’s not like her feelings were impossible. He’d cried over Toby as a little kid, but he wouldn’t say he felt any love for the man.

Narcissa composed herself and snatched the textbook out of his hand. “I don’t need to review Transfiguration. Quiz me on Arithmancy.” She pulled out a stack of notes from her bag and handed them over, sliding her chair across from his own.

Naricissa proved a wicked smart conversation partner. He’d asked her a single Arithmancy question to clarify a theorem referenced in Genesis Magicae and that led them on a tangent on the Dark Arts as the most powerful and varied branch of magic.

“—which goes back to what Ptolemy meant by his eternal principle. You can have an advanced everlasting charm like Gubraithian Fire or a powerful fluctuant spell like the Mhéiniúil Charm but the only intersection of permanence and mutability is within the Dark Arts; mutable immutable, impermanence in permanence, e pluribus unum, ex uno plures. That’s why Phineas Nigellus Black was so keen to teach it here in Hogwarts.”

Severus leaned back on his elbows, his dark eyes dilated like unfathomable tunnels. Narcissa could make piffling Phineas Nigellus sound bostin and her description of the Dark Arts was pure poetry. He stared at the tip of Narcissa’s withdrawn wand where her golden ouroboros twisted itself into a lemniscate, infinity twice over. The dazzling symbol seemed to hold the secret to magic itself. 

“Whoa. No wonder you have so many friends,” Severus mumbled.

Narcissa threw her head back laughing and he immediately flushed, sitting up so fast his long hair covered his face. The ouroboros she drew in the air had vanished. 

“You think I have friends because I sit and talk about Dark magic?”

Severus felt his face heat. He knew blokes followed around Narcissa because she was stunningly beautiful, but the girls couldn’t trail after her for her looks. Not all of them!

Narcissa whipped her hair over her shoulder so it cascaded over her robe like a wave of liquid gold. “Tell me I’m pretty,” she commanded. “Go on.” Severus met her blue eyes, half-shielded by heavy lids, the haughty bow of her lips. So much for Narcissa taking after the Rosier side of her family. Those Blacks were all the same. Nutters, Mulciber called them, but Severus could think of a different set of words. Arrogant. Obnoxious. Imperious. Self-absorbed.

“Pretty annoying,” he scowled.

“I’ve heard that one before, Severus. Pretty unoriginal. You’re supposed to be very clever.”

Severus’ chest swelled. That was what Lucius said about him to someone who couldn't stand him. He’d talked him up to Slughorn too—he didn’t have to, but he’d done it all the same. The feeling deflated as he remembered Lucius trapped him in here.

The door clicked. It was Lucius, sticking his head in the classroom. “What’s so funny?”

Severus glared at him with a look that had severed tree branches in the past. “He locked us in here,” he informed Narcissa bitterly. 

“Severus, the door was unlocked. Narcissa could have left at any time.” Lucius’ two half-truths glued together so seamlessly they didn’t need a ribbon. He cocked his head at Narcissa, who cut Severus half a break.

“Severus thinks the wand movement for Evanesco looks like the number 3.”

They pestered him to draw it for them.

He tried to ditch them and go to the library, as he’d originally planned, but Lucius played the prefect card.

“I simply cannot permit you to walk through these corridors unaccompanied. Haven’t you heard? The unidentified Slytherin carriage bomber is still on the loose. There are rumors he blew up an entire coach of Hufflepuffs with Dark Magic.” Lucius’ eyes were shining with mirth. 

Severus scowled. He’d cleared up his hands with dittany and stayed away from those teens since the Feast. None of them could’ve seen him that night. It was too dark. “It’s Regulus Black.”

“All the way from the lake?” Lucius teased.

“He spent the summer getting tutored in the Dark Arts. Everyone knows.” 

They put on a show of being concerned and swooped him along with them, reverting to their original request after they climbed down the first flight of stairs. 

“Draw it for us and we’ll stop talking.”

Severus was starting to wonder how he’d ever been daft enough to miss Malfoy. Lucius wasn’t this irritating last year. He’d had enough of their badgering by the time they reached the dungeons and quickly wrote the number 3 on the parchment they conjured for him, laughing like a pair of hyenas.

“Good heavens, it does!”

“It looks like a rune.”

“It’s like a pine tree. We could put this on our Yule cards.” 

He knew Lucius was a liar. He stomped away from them, and heard himself called the one word no 12 year old boy wanted to hear. Adorable. He was almost 13.

Severus gagged. He hated them both. He hoped Lucius choked on spotted dick and that Narcissa went bald…for a day. Just long enough that she’d lose her voice from screaming about her hair. He didn’t want her crying again. Because she was annoying.

“You two deserve each other,” he said spitefully. The insult flew over their heads. They made lovesick eyes at one another and he turned away from them. They were blocking the door to the Common Room. He heard Lucius croon, “Princeps Fidelis,” like the corniest line out of the most maudlin pulp romance imaginable. What were they trying to do? Act out the love story between Filch and Mrs. Norris?

“Get a broom cupboard and cast a silencing charm for the rest of us!” He glanced over his shoulder—Narcissa was already gone. He glared at Lucius. “…adorable?” His point would have hit better if his voice hadn’t chosen the worst time to crack. Mercifully, Lucius didn’t laugh. 

“Being adorable is not a bad start with the witches,” he said airily. But in a show of good faith, he vanished the parchment with a nonverbal Evanesco and leaned against the part of the wall opposite the Common Room entrance. “It will be well worth your while. I deliver.” He spread his arms magnanimously. “Reading preferences?”

“Curses,” Severus said darkly—to no effect. Lucius remained nonchalant.  

“Very well. If you come across anything on unmoored curses, let me know.” 

Lucius had to be taking the mickey out of him or testing if he’d actually read his book. Severus rolled his eyes. “There’s no such thing. All curses need an anchor to work.” Genesis Magicae explained the theory behind it. Either the anchor was eye contact, spell contact, or object contact, which was one or both of the first two by proxy. Severus couldn’t go back into his dorm room and cast a curse on James Potter in Gryffindor Tower, which is what an unmoored curse would imply. Lucius smiled, and Severus realized it too late. That’s exactly what he’d implied Regulus Black had done to the carriage from a boat on the lake. 

“All kinds of new advances in curse casting,” drawled a deep voice.

Who? Severus turned his head in time to see Rabastan with his wand drawn and slashing a green light right at them. He raised his arms up too slow and closed his eyes.

Confetti exploded over their heads. What a fucking wankstain!

“Cheers, mate! I just got the news! Wedding’s gonna be on Halloween.” He clapped Lucius on the shoulder and disappeared into the Common Room grinning.

“I thought you had a row,” Severus said, flinging confetti out of his hair. It stuck to his robes and littered the floor with green paper snakes. He’d thought Rabastan was going to curse them for real. And because he was still peeved, he added, “Halloween, huh? Congrats. Poor Narcissa. She doesn’t know you two made up.” 

With a flick of his wand, Lucius sent the confetti still covering him flying at Severus, who probably deserved it. “He was upset with the Blacks, but Bellatrix fixed everything. That’s Narcissa’s other older sister. She is becoming a Lestrange on Halloween. She’s marrying Rabastan’s brother, Rodolphus”

“So this had nothing to do with Andromeda,” he blinked.

“Of course it did. Andromeda was supposed to marry Rodolphus. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Andromeda didn’t have to marry him. The whole affair had been her idea. That’s why everyone’s so flummoxed. Bellatrix had introduced the pair, thinking they might hit it off, but Andromeda had always been the more interested party. You see, Rodolphus proposed to Bella years before. They were always good friends, and he went abroad when she declined—”

“I don’t know any of these people,” he reminded Lucius flatly. He really didn’t care. 

Lucius looked offended. “Well. You’ll be happy to hear Mr. and Mrs. Lestrange also prefer to discuss curses over social matters.” 

“Great—”

“It’s why they’re so well suited—”

“Do they also think there’s a way to cast a curse without an anchor?” he asked pointedly.

Lucius scowled at being spoken over. “As a matter of fact, they do. A great deal of interesting magical discoveries are being made at present. Some believe we’re entering a new gilded age of magic.”

Severus listened intently. There might be someplace left for him to fit into this world after all. “But what about this You-Know-Who business?” he asked, taking out the rolled up copy of the morning Prophet, which he had shoved into his pocket. A few pieces of snake confetti came loose and fell to the floor. “Sightings of You-Know-Who” faced the outside and Severus gestured to the column’s headline, frowning. “Why do they even publish this stuff? All it does is show the Ministry has no clue where he is.”

“I suspect he’s listened to the Ministry’s demands to leave the country,” Lucius intoned. “If I were you, Severus, I wouldn’t be too concerned.” He waved a hand so frivolously it was hard for Severus to put any stock into his words. People like Lucius probably had enough money to ride anything out—war, disaster, calamity, scandal. “I’m glad you and Narcissa have finally spoken. You have no idea how tiresome it is for two people you care about to not get along.” He vanished the confetti breezily.

Severus did know the feeling. He knew what favor he wanted from Lucius. It wasn’t a book from the Restricted Section. He wanted Lucius to befriend Lily. He could make anyone like him, and if Lily could only talk to him, he was sure they’d be fast friends. 

Lucius put a hand on his shoulder.

“More seriously, thank you for cheering up Narcissa. I haven’t seen her smile once since the news came that Andromeda eloped with that mudblood.”

Severus' blood ran cold.

❀ ❀ ❀

For the first time since entering Hogwarts, Lily wished Professor Slughorn was her Head of House. Not that she wished she were in Slytherin or that she didn’t like Professor McGonagall, but the Potions Professor was so approachable. He threw parties every week and was always inviting students to his office. Lily spoke with him every day, even if it was just a quick hello in the corridors or during mealtimes. By contrast, Lily admired Professor McGonagall, but she couldn’t imagine saying a word to the witch outside the classroom. You admired the tiger; you didn’t go into the enclosure with the tiger, and McGonagall was the tiger in tartan, although Lily wasn’t sure her professor would like that comparison.

Lily knocked twice on the door. McGonagall should’ve been in, but there was no response. Lily hoped she’d gotten the right place. To the right of the twisty staircase that leads to the third floor. She asked Pettigrew for directions because she didn’t know where McGonagall’s office was, and he had stammered them to her so shakily, she started to wonder if she ought to be knocking the next door over.

“Enter.”

McGonagall didn’t look up from her desk where she was reading and signing documents. Lily stood there awkwardly, unsure whether or not to say anything because she was seldom in a position to be kept waiting. This was the part where Professor Slughorn would usher her into one of his cushioned chairs and offer her crystalized pineapple or some other tasty treat he saved just for her with a wink. The whole school knew he kept favorites, but McGonagall was at the other end of the spectrum. If she held special fondness for any particular student, she never showed it, and though she was partial to Gryffindor’s Quidditch team on the pitch, she usually didn’t grant them special favors. 

Lily used the time to notice what a stark difference there was between the office of her own Head of House and that of Slytherin’s. There were no photos with students, no gifts or cherished letters, few mementos and no rare, intriguing items to be captivated by. The small office was plain and full of paperwork. Its dominating feature was a large fireplace, which made the office feel grim rather than cozy despite the fact that colder weather was fast approaching. The small windows which might have overlooked the Quidditch pitch were currently shuttered and the candles compensating for the loss of light were too few to counterbalance the loss of cheer. The single chair placed across from the desk looked appropriately uncomfortable, as though it existed solely because McGonagall’s job required her to take errant students to task. This was the type of office for students who misbehave and woe to those who sought to socialize here. No wonder Peter had assumed the worst.

With a final flourish of her quill, the Transfiguration Professor looked up to acknowledge Lily through her square spectacles. There was no welcome greeting. 

“Yes?” Right to business. Lily fidgeted. She should make this quick; she realized she didn’t actually want McGonagall to ask her to sit down.

“Professor? Is there a club for Muggle-born kids and kids with a Muggle parent?” If she expected her question to throw off the Deputy Headmistress, she was wrong. McGonagall answered immediately.

“No, Miss Evans, no such club exists and I must discourage you from starting one. It would conflict with the unity Hogwarts attempts to foster within its student body, unity that transcends parentage or blood status.” Professor McGonagall fixed her with a trademark keen-eyed stare. “What brought this on?”

Lily was suddenly flustered. She didn’t want to sound like a dumb insult from two weeks ago was still on her mind.

“It’s just not everyone can be like you,” Lily spluttered. Professor McGonagall raised one unamused eyebrow. “You know, obviously a witch.”

“I am ‘obviously a witch,’ am I?” she repeated. Her lined face was unreadable. Lily couldn’t tell whether her professor was secretly amused, or feeling philosophical, or seriously questioning Lily’s brainpower right now.

“I know I’m a witch too, but you’re the kind that has two magical parents and I’m the kind who has none.” She was worried she would get emotional if she elaborated, but she felt it made a difference if you grew up riding bikes instead of broomsticks or writing with a pen instead of a quill. Lily had tried believing it made no difference at all, like Sev had told her, which almost worked last year, but she could no longer pretend these were superficial differences when they felt bigger. 

McGonagall put down her quill and folded her hands.

“Tell me, Miss Evans, what would you say if someone told you that your Head of House arrived to Hogwarts without knowing what Quidditch was or the difference between a hippogriff and a hinkleypuff?”

Lily’s jaw dropped. No way!

When Minerva McGonagall sat back, her expression didn’t change but the lines on her face seemed different somehow, less imposing.

“My mother was a witch, but my father was a Muggle clergyman who wasn’t informed about magic until his eldest child”—here McGonagall gestured to herself—“began displaying unmistakeable signs of supernatural ability. Because of his occupation as a pastor, he was never comfortable with learning about the wizarding world and, for the most part, my mother happily pretended it didn’t exist along with him. Today I am ‘obviously a witch,’” she finished with a wry twitch of her lips.

Professor McGonagall grew up almost like Sev! Maybe her professor’s parents liked each other better—she didn’t want to pry—but she had a Muggle dad and a witch mum. This conversation put Lily’s mind at ease. If Professor McGonagall had entered Hogwarts with minimal understanding of the wizarding world, then Lily had nothing to worry about. McGonagall must have felt the same way.

“You are performing well in your studies and, from my understanding, appear to have no shortage of friends. I believe you are fitting in at Hogwarts just fine. Now, if that is all—”    

“Yes, thank you!” This wasn’t the place to chat, and Lily was eager to tell Sev what she learned about McGonagall. But as she twisted the door knob, she wondered if she might share something in common with the Transfiguration professor herself. McGonagall had called herself an eldest child. 

“Professor? One last question. Was your sibling magic too?”

For a second McGonagall looked surprised and Lily thought she might not answer such a personal inquiry—although Lily wouldn’t consider it personal had she asked anyone else about their siblings. It was just weird to picture McGonagall that way, with a family and with a life outside of her work.

“I have two younger brothers, both moderately-talented wizards. One Gryffindor like myself, one Ravenclaw. Robert Jr. writes opinion pieces for the Prophet. Malcolm travels the world researching kappas.”

Lily smiled. She could guess who was who.

“The Gryffindor writes for the paper,” McGonagall added, turning back to her documents. “People usually get them confused—stereotypes.”

Professor McGonagall went back to signing parchments and Lily shut the office door behind her feeling reinvigorated. That could be her one day—so at home in her robes that someone would think it strange to imagine her wearing anything else.

That conversation had taken no time at all and most of it was spent waiting. Lily didn’t expect to have so much free time left before curfew so she spontaneously decided to visit Sev in the dungeons. She didn’t know if she’d find him. Sometimes her friend hung around one of the empty dungeon classrooms to test Potions theories. It was worth checking because Lily couldn’t wait to tell him what she discovered about McGonagall being similar to him.

“Cra-Cra-Cra!” 

She looked around in surprise at the noise, feeling like she might find herself the victim of a prank. Someone would be really gutsy to try that outside the office door of the Deputy Head Mistress.

“Kree-Kree!” 

The noise appeared to be coming from behind a statue of a bucktoothed dwarf a few yards down, where the corridor forked. When Lily took a couple steps closer to it, Peter Pettigrew shuffled out from behind the statue’s base. He made a series of outlandish hand signals at her, which she couldn’t begin to make heads or tails of, but she could recognize the concern on his face. She was touched he would worry about her. She gave him two thumbs up. He looked relieved, shot her a thumbs up back…and proceeded to crab walk back behind the statue from which he had been hiding. 

Lily muffled her laughter so as to not give him away. Peter was the only one of those four who was naturally funny, though often without meaning to be. Potter and Black sought their humor out at the expense of others, Lupin made self-deprecating jokes at the expense of himself, Peter was the funniest person she ever met. She had told him so once, thinking it would boost his self-esteem, but Potter was too insecure to stand someone else getting a compliment and made Peter the butt of his next attempt at humor. It was too bad Pettigrew worshipped the ground Potter walked on. Lily would’ve been his friend—in exchange for leaving Severus alone. She had told him so when Potter, Black, and Lupin weren’t around to influence him, but Peter liked James and Sirius. He wasn’t like Remus who sometimes disapproved of their actions but went along with them anyway; whatever Pettigrew followed them in doing, he wanted to do, he often just needed their support. Pettigrew had the greater nerve, but Lupin had the better conscience, and in the end, their shortfalls produced the same effect. 

She spent her walk to the Dungeons wondering what those four could be up to today. She had scarcely gotten the chance to look around before Professor Slughorn’s office door burst open.

“Miss Evans! Just the person I was hoping to see. My dear, I have a fine set of imported toffees from the ambassador to Germany—a former student of mine—and I saved the last one just for you.” He gave her an irresistible wink, like a balding, beardless Father Christmas, and she took a welcome detour to his den of treasures. 

Slughorn ushered her into a plush armchair nothing like the hard, straight-backed wooden seats in McGonagall’s office. She saw a new curio on his desk, a mysterious contraption of a finely polished cobalt blue attached to a transparent membrane. Part of it was rock, part of it was shell, and part of it had thin, swaying tentacles with no suction cups. It was one of the most intriguing, unusual things she had ever seen.

“Professor, what is this thing and what does it do?”

Slughorn beamed, placing down the toffee tray in his hand. “Ohoho! You’re the first to ask me about it. I suspect some of my older students are afraid to reveal they don’t know what this is.” She grinned as he gingerly placed the object in her hands, but it was surprisingly heavy, so she returned it to the desk. “This is a very rare instrument invented by merpeople. You tell it a wish, or sometimes a secret, and this spout forms a bubble that rises to the surface of the ocean.”

“And that’s it?” she asked, rising from her seat to examine it from another angle.

“No? You don’t see anything spectacular in that at all, my dear?” He leaned closer to the device to better appreciate it and she mimicked him. It was certainly beautiful. “It unburdens the heavy heart or the weighed-down mind. If only wizarding solutions could be so elegant, so poetic, so soulful.” 

Lily wondered if her Potions Professor had ever heard of the placebo effect. From her side of the contraption, the membrane refracted Slughorn in fisheye perspective. With amusement, she imagined he saw her with the same distortion. There was something charming in its impracticality. It represented the more whimsical side of magic she was seeing less and less of. She sat back down.

“Do any Merpeople in The Great Lake make these?” she asked.

“No, not to my knowledge. This was a gift from a friend, who came across one and was reminded of me. I’ve told this story countless times—I was kissed by a merperson once on a spectacular holiday along the Polynesian Islands. None of my friends believe me.” 

Lily stifled her giggle. “I believe you, Professor.” He offered her the sweet.

“Thank you, Miss Evans. Ah, I suppose it sounds too much like a Muggle tale to be real.”

“Do you know much about Muggles then?” Lily asked, her mouth sticking around the delicious toffee.

“I’ve stayed in many Muggle homes. Beautiful places. Muggles have really mastered luxury these days, let me tell you.”

“You have Muggle friends!” Lily exclaimed exuberantly. This was exactly what she had been hoping to hear. She hadn’t heard of many wizards with Muggle friends unless they also had Muggle parents, let alone any pureblood Slytherins at that. 

Slughorn shrewdly puckered his lips. “I would qualify those relationships as well-timed meetings of the mind. In my experience, simultaneously planning holidays counts for a great deal. A personal philosophy of rest is an important value to have in common.” He poured himself a glass of aged mead, which he had summoned with his wand. “I found that Muggles, a conscientious group on the whole, are generous with their homes provided you put everything back exactly the way you found it.”

Lily nodded. That was Tuney and her parents in a nutshell. 

“Well, if you decide you want Muggle friends, my parents like you very much.”

Slughorn looked delighted. “If they’re half as charming as you, Lily, I’m sure I would like them very much, too. And what brings you to my office today?”

Lily was going to remind the Potions Professor he had invited her inside, but suddenly recalled she had been waiting to ask him an important question for weeks. “Sir, do you know Abraxas Malfoy?”

“Abraxas! Why, how did you hear—ah, never mind. Yes, Abraxas is a former student and dear friend of mine.”

She frowned, but Slughorn didn’t notice. He glided to a cabinet where he kept photos of former eminent students, plucking a photograph from one of the shelves without even bothering to double-check he’d picked the right one. Lily’s heart sank. It came from the same section as his all-time favorites.

“He looks just like a dark-haired Lucius,” Slughorn cooed. “Handsome chap, no?” No! Worse, the photo was recent because dark-haired Abraxas was sporting more salt than pepper, having not been dark-haired for some time. In the frame, Slughorn and Lucius’ father each had an arm around the other’s shoulders. The photo was taken at some sort of celebration. They both clinked champagne flutes ad infinitum. “I prefer a pristine past for myself, but life is too short to snub the scandalous.” He winked.

Lily sank deeper into her seat, a pleasant experience with the plush cushions, though she hadn’t wanted it to be. If Professor Slughorn had a fault, he was too friendly. Lily much preferred a less friendly Slytherin she knew, but now she could hardly criticize Sev for being so close to Lucius on account of his father when Slughorn spoke so highly of Abraxas himself. She placed the frame backwards on Slughorn’s desk and picked up the cobalt contraption once more, letting its weight sink into her lap like an anchor.

“I was just in Professor McGonagall’s office,” she admitted. “I tried to start a club for people with Muggle parents.”

Slughorn hummed politely. “Perhaps Professor Frothmore, the Muggle Studies teacher, would have been the better choice for a supervisor?” 

She shook her head. “Professor McGonagall said a club based on parentage would harm the unity Hogwarts clubs attempt to foster.” 

Slughorn misconstrued McGonagall’s message for praise of his own organization. “Yes, I designed the Slug Club to foster unity among the student body,” Slughorn boasted. For a moment, the professor seemed to forget himself, like he was standing at a podium in the Ministry’s atrium and not in his Hogwarts office. He grabbed the curio out of Lily’s hands as though she had handed him an award. “I sought to create a refuge for the top tier of Hogwarts elite, a watering hole where the future greats of the wizarding world can mingle with one another, a phantasmagoria of Mount Olympus.” 

Lily applauded, only half in jest, and Slughorn became aware of his surroundings, not modest by any stretch, but no home of the gods. He rebounded gracefully, putting down the instrument.

“It always included students of all types of parentage, even before I opened it up beyond Slytherin,” he continued. “Why, one of my most gifted students, both in my House and in Hogwarts, was Muggle-born.”

“Where are they now?” Lily asked excitedly, hoping she’d get another story. Her eyes drifted to the gigantic cabinet housing a collection of photos of famous alumni, trying to spot which illustrious moving picture could belong to the Muggle-born of Slytherin, but Professor Slughorn paled as though someone died.

“He—he went missing.”

That was terrible! She thought back to the Prophet articles on missing people. She didn’t realize her teacher knew someone who was never found. And a Muggle-born too. Slughorn reached a hand out as if to steady himself and grabbed a small hourglass off his desk. Lily hadn’t noticed it before, but its sands were speeding down the funnel from the upper bulb into the lower bulb.

“I’m sorry, Professor. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Slughorn saw that her eyes had begun to mist and gave her a strained smile. 

“Yes, look how late it is,” he said in a facsimile of his usual zest. He lifted up the hourglass as proof, all its sand pooled in the lower half. 

Lily waved goodbye to Professor Slughorn and made her way up the Dungeon steps, where she heard Slughorn’s voice echoing up the stairwell.

“Miss Black! What a pleasant surprise! I have a special toffee I saved just for you.”