Chapter 2
Stepping into the Slytherin common room was like diving face-first into his adolescence. Erik stopped in the doorway, as if the watery green light and damp, cold, stoney smell were a wall he could not walk through. Only for a moment -- then the press of students behind him forced him inside.
Was this what it felt like to come home, this surreal recognition of things long-forgotten, this aching gasping full-body flashback to the best and worst days of his life? Mostly worst, frankly, in here -- the good times had largely happened aboveground, in the classrooms, in the corridors, on the Quidditch pitch... in the lake... outside the shops of Hogsmeade...
--biting cold air full of candlelight and snatches of song, snow in his hair but warmth on his hands and lips--
He shook it off -- introspection could take place later, if it had to take place at all -- and turned his attention to the students, who were swirling around the room in various states of hyperactivity and noise. Two girls were shouting insults at each other in one corner, three boys were pounding a fourth in another, several more were chasing each other across the furniture and shooting sparks from their wands, while a first-year girl wept on the floor with a bloody knee.
For about five seconds, Erik wanted nothing more than to run from this room and all the way back to the safe, boring administrative position in London that Shaw had convinced him to give up. What was he doing here? Had he lost his entire mind?
Then he caught sight of the knot of students on his left, sixth- and seventh-years at a guess, watching him with calm, cold calculation. Waiting for him to fold, crumple, throw himself -- knowingly or not -- into their power. Waiting for blood in the water.
He met their eyes unflinchingly, and felt his face open in a smile of what had been called frightening width and toothiness. More than one of the students visibly recoiled.
You want blood in the water, lads? You're playing with the big sharks now.
A twitch of his wand at his side activated a long-memorized voice-amplification spell, and the stone walls rang with Erik's barked, "SILENCE!"
Two hundred and fifty-odd faces turned toward him, mouths and eyes open wide.
"Prefects," Erik snapped. "Front and center."
A young man and woman -- neither of them, thankfully, from the knot of troublemakers -- detached themselves from the herd and stood before him, admirably straight and calm despite the nervous flickers in their eyes.
"Names."
"Barry Bulstrode, sir," said the appropriately bull-like boy. Considering that Shaw had chosen him as prefect, Erik felt he could reasonably assume the boy was more intelligent than he looked.
"Clara Parc-Zabini, sir," said girl, a tall, bespectacled, brittle-looking creature with a long, tight braid of brown hair. Her robes were possibly the neatest, cleanest, sharpest-creased articles of clothing he had ever seen.
Erik held their eyes another cool, silent moment, then nodded briskly. "Parc-Zabini, is there still a first aid kit under the Greengrass shield?"
"Yes, sir."
"Fetch it and see to the injuries of that girl and boy." He pointed to the tear-streaked first-year and the pounded boy. The prefect moved immediately to the shield, to his approval. "Bulstrode, round up the first years and see them to their rooms." He raised his voice again. "All other students, proceed immediately to your beds, without unnecessary noise or motion of any kind. And Bulstrode," he caught the boy's arm, lowering his voice, "in the morning, I want the names of the three boys who felt it necessary to gang up on another student in the middle of the common room on the first night of the term."
"Yes sir, Professor Lehnsherr."
Erik stood with his hands clasped behind his back as the common room cleared. The knot of troublemakers -- and how bloody familiar they all looked, not just because he'd likely gotten bruises at the hands of their close relations -- moved off slowly, sullen disappointment in their eyes, but move they did.
Soon the only children in the room were Parc-Zabini and the two injured. He stood close by while Parc-Zabini bandaged the bloody knee, disinfected the boy's split lip, put an ice pack to his eye, her movements as efficient and meticulous as he'd suspected they'd be.
"Thank you, Parc-Zabini," he said when she was done and putting away the kit. "Give the rooms a sweep for any trouble, then go to bed. Escort the girl. You, boy, see the infirmary at some point tomorrow, just in case."
"Yes sir, Professor Lehnsherr," they chorused, and he smiled tightly to himself. Shaw had, after all, been their Head of House last year -- they couldn't be too badly trained.
Then he was alone in the room, and able to sink down onto an armchair before his trembling knees gave out.
The Slytherin prefects, during Erik's own years here, had been driven by a love of power concealed as a love of order, and he imagined there was a great deal of their behavior that Professor Shaw never learned of. Erik would not allow that to happen, not under his nose. While he was here, the Slytherin common room would be a place where its students could feel safe. All of them, not just the smart ones or the popular ones or the ones that spoke good English.
Great Merlin but it all felt so close right now, those first miserable days at Hogwarts -- first miserable year and a half, really, when he was angry and scared and socially inept, scooped up from that wretched German orphanage by Professor Shaw and dropped here to sink or swim--
--freezing December lake water in his nose and eyes and mouth, "Let go, Erik, you've got to let it go!"--
--five years later at the train station, "Let me go, Erik" and he'd known even then that he was eight kinds of a fool to actually do it but there was his hand opening--
A wet, gasping sound from across the room brought Erik out of his reverie. "Who's there?" he snapped.
The sound -- a sniffle, he realized with impatience and dread -- sounded again, and he realized it was coming from the stairway just beyond the half-open door to the common room.
Erik crossed the room in three angry strides and snatched the door open. A fair-haired boy sat shivering on the steps, pale face blotchy with tears. At the sight of Erik he gulped and straightened, blinking frantically and wiping his face.
"Are you hurt, boy?" Erik demanded.
"No, sir."
"Then what are you snivelling about? And why are you not in your bed?"
The boy gulped again, seemed to be attempting speech, but only got more tears.
Back to London. First thing in the morning, Erik vowed, knowing it was a lie. He sat down on the step next to the boy and waited for him to calm himself.
"You done?" he asked dryly when the sobs tapered off again.
The boy wiped his eyes, blushing scarlet, and nodded.
"Tell me your name and what in the world is the matter with you."
"Scorpius Malfoy, sir," ah, of course, he looked every bit a Malfoy, and how very odd to see a Malfoy in tears, "and I'm very sorry, sir, there's nothing at all the matter with me. I'll just go on to bed, sir, I'm sorry to have bothered you." He was sitting straight and proud now, face rigid, and Erik couldn't help being impressed -- even a little charmed -- by his valiant attempt at manners and dignity.
He realized abruptly what was missing from the boy's uniform, the reason he was shivering so badly. "Where's your scarf, Malfoy?"
Malfoy's lip began to tremble again. "I've looked all up and down the hallways for it, sir -- tried to find my way back to the Great Hall, thinking maybe I left it during the Feast, but I c-couldn't find my way and now I think on it I think I may have left it on the t-train. Sir." He swallowed, face crumpling. "It was a gift from my father."
"Calm down, boy, I'm sure it'll turn up," Erik said before the bloody waterworks could start up again. "We'll ask after it in the morning. I'm sure you're not the first idiot to leave something important on the train. There'll be a lost-and-found or some such."
"You think so?" The boy looked so stupidly hopeful it made Erik tired.
"Well, even if so, it may take several days to get it sent over, and you'll need your scarf in this icebox of a dungeon, especially when you're not used to it," Erik muttered. He unwound the length of green-and-silver from around his own neck and dropped it across Malfoy's shoulders. "I do expect that back."
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir," Malfoy said, wide-eyed, immediately wrapping it tight around him.
"Now get to your bed. I imagine you'll need this, lights-out was several minutes back." He pulled a glow-ball from his pocket, pinched to wake it to a soft green glow. "Keep it, I have more. Knew I'd need them in this bloody maze of a building."
"Thank you," Malfoy repeated.
"Go on, then. And Malfoy?"
"Sir?"
"You won't get far around here if you sit in corners and snivel. I expect better composure from you in the future." He meant his voice to sound stern, but it came out even harder than he intended.
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir." The boy shot him a bright, surprising smile, and disappeared up the stairs in the faint light of the glow-ball.
Erik got to his feet and set off for his own rooms, groaning at the thought that he still had a lesson plan to prepare for tomorrow.
He tried not to think about how much better Charles would have handled that, or wonder, for the five hundredth time today, what in the world he was doing here.
---
"Divination," Charles said, pitching his voice to carry to every corner of the classroom, "is the art of predicting the future. You see before you the traditional tools of the trade." He spread his hands over the objects arrayed on his desk. "Tea leaves. Crystal balls. Tarot cards. Astrology charts. You will learn how to use all of these. Unfortunately, unless you are one of those blessed -- or cursed -- to have their magic manifest as the Sight, they will probably be entirely useless to you."
He gave the room a broad smile, enjoying the ripple of resentment and even outrage making its way through the room. This was his fourth year teaching Divination, and word was beginning to spread that his classes were different; some students were therefore watching him calmly, waiting for the punchline -- but there were also still plenty anticipating a long term of no-win situations.
"Fortunately," he continued, drawing the students' attention back to him, "in my class you will not at any point be tested on your ability to see the future in the bottom of a tea-cup. Were that the case, only one student would have passed this class in the last three years. You will learn traditional Divination methods because their efficacy is sometimes the first sign of burgeoning Sight, and because they may be worthwhile to you as tools for focusing your efforts -- we'll go over all that. But they are not what this class will be about." With a sweep of his wand, the motley items vanished from the desktop. "Unless you have the Sight, my dear witches and wizards, predicting the future is not about tuning into the whispering voices of the universe. It is about learning to listen to your own mind and to the world around you. It is about honing your intuition, a form of magic that even Muggles have been known to develop quite keenly. Your magic will make yours more reliable, if and only if you train it properly. If you pay attention, gather the proper information and let it take shape in your mind -- you can see the pattern of events transpiring all around you. You can understand and predict the next step in the dance."
He flicked his wand, and parchments marked Syllabus appeared in the air above each desk, floating down into students' hands.
"Observational skills." He made his voice whip-like, jabbing each section of the syllabus with his wand as he read it out. "Meditation. Pattern recognition and probability. Symbology and the interpretation of dreams. Body language and microexpressions. Critical thinking. You will learn to see yourself and the world and people around you accurately, and use the truths of today to stack the odds for tomorrow."
He paused, letting some of the more boggled-looking students catch their breath.
"Next class," he said, "we will cover the basics of tea leaves and tarot. I will expect you to have read chapters three and four of Parvati Patil's Divination Tools & Rituals: A Practical Guide. I also expect each of you to immediately begin keeping a dream journal. You will find very useful advice on how to go about that in the Dream Interpretation chapter of that same textbook. If you find you cannot remem... ber..." Charles's tongue suddenly turned to lead in his mouth.
Erik was standing at the back of his classroom, arms folded, with an expression of intense interest. It faded into annoyed chagrin at the realization that Charles was staring at him. That, in fact, most of the class was now staring at him.
"If you can't remember your dreams, just bloody make something up," Charles said. "Class dismissed."
The students streamed out of the room eagerly, and Charles was left to fold away his syllabus, flick his wand to unvanish his teapot, crystal ball and tarot cards, and otherwise look useless and fidgety while Erik approached the desk. "Professor Lehnsherr," he said with a tight nod.
"I didn't mean to interrupt your class," he said. "I had a planning period and thought you might, as well. I thought it might be a good time to talk."
"I really don't imagine we have much to talk about, Erik."
Erik set his jaw, a muscle twitching near the joint, and Charles strangled an urge to reach out and touch it. "Nothing to talk about, Charles? How about the insane way you left me standing on a train platform after five and a half years of being each other's world and not a single word since--"
"We were schoolboys, Erik, it was another life and now we have to be adults about it. If you'll excuse me." He tried to brush past, only for Erik to grab his arm and snatch him back -- so close, too close -- if he leaned forward another inch he'd--
They held that inch a long, long moment, unbreathing.
"Careful, Erik," Charles murmured, cold mockery in his voice. "Someone might see. We all know how you'd hate that."
Erik staggered back, mouth falling open. Charles snatched his arm free and fled the classroom.
---
Erik made his way back to his classroom, hardly seeing anything he passed, feeling sick and shaky with the kind of chilled flush that came from high fever. The heat was frustration and anger, no surprise there; the chill might, possibly, have been a lurking whisper of guilt, but he did not acknowledge that to himself.
The Potions room was, thankfully, still empty -- no, wait, there was someone shuffling through the cabinet at the furthest end. Erik let every bit of his simmering rage whip through his voice as he shouted, "What do you think you're doing?"
Professor Shaw jerked in surprise, raised an eyebrow at Erik. "Just came to see how your first day was going, my boy."
"Headmaster." Erik huffed a calming breath, rubbing his forehead. "I apologize, sir, I thought you were a student rifling the stores for a love potion or some nonsense."
"Ah, of course. My apologies for startling you. I couldn't help admiring my handiwork, I suppose." He flicked a hand at the cabinet of stoppered vials and jars and casks, all neatly labeled in his own handwriting. "So you've, what, three classes under your belt now? How did it go?"
"Two classes. And it went... well, it's only the first day. Hard to say." He fought a shudder at the memory of all those eyes -- some intimidated, some interested, most flatly unimpressed, all waiting eagerly for him to stumble. And he still had three more sets of them to work through today.
"Hard to say? Not at all, Erik. It is simple enough. Did you control the classroom, or did they control you? That is all that matters, in the end."
"I can control my students, Professor," Erik said stiffly, and Shaw laughed. The sound went right up Erik's spine. Shaw was a great man, a great wizard, and Erik owed him everything -- but he'd forgotten how unsettling the man could be.
"See that you do. I'm willing to bet you have already formed a decent idea of which students will be troublesome, which will be worthwhile, which will be quietly useless -- ah, yes, I see it in your face! Do share with me."
"Young Malfoy seems intelligent," Erik admitted. He'd been in the second class of the day, and was one of the few who hadn't spilled anything. "He listens, at least."
"Yes, an excellent family, the Malfoys," Shaw said, nodding. "As pure a bloodline as you'll find, and it shows. Any of the Muggle-borns giving you trouble?"
"Not... trouble, sir. They do seem to mostly fall into that 'quietly useless' category you mentioned," Erik sighed, voice edged with frustration. "Can't tell a cask from a cauldron, most of them -- I suppose they'll learn, but I can already see what a plague it will be, holding the others back long enough for them to catch up."
"Oh don't you dare, Professor Lehnsherr," Shaw said cheerfully. "Catching up is their responsibility, your duty is to those of the students who can make something of themselves. Don't bother trying to make the swine appreciate your pearls."
Erik wasn't sure how to respond to that. Muggle-borns could learn, he'd seen it -- Charles was Muggle-born -- and if it was a pain and a hassle, well, that was part and parcel of teaching, was it not? But arguing with Shaw was seldom fruitful and never wise. He contented himself with a cool "Yes, sir."
"I thought you might like to join me for a drink, when the day is over. Unwind a bit."
"Certainly, sir."
"Excellent. I'll see you at dinner, then." He clapped Erik on the shoulder and walked out.
Students began trickling in only moments later, taking up all Erik's attention, and it wasn't until midway through his lecture on brews, elixirs, philtres, drafts, and tinctures that he suddenly realized there were three vials missing from the cabinet where Shaw had been.
---
"Wake up, Charlie, it's dinner time," Raven sang in the doorway of his office.
Charles jerked upright, papers scattering. "What? What, no, I wasn't asleep, I only--" He peered at his Muggle-style wristwatch. "Oh. I suppose I was asleep, or else I'm having memory blackouts, never a good sign... Sorry, Raven, what?"
Raven shook her head. "Brain like a steel trap, that's my brother. Come on, it's time for dinner."
Charles swallowed. "Oh, I'll get one of the house-elves to bring me something later, I really have too much to do here--"
"You need to come up for air, Charles, we both know how you get. Come on." A more serious look settled briefly over her face. "Don't worry, I won't let him sit next to you again."
"Promise?" Charles said weakly, feeling ridiculous.
"Promise. Now let's go before we miss the first course."
Charles stretched, gathered the scattered papers, swung his Ravenclaw scarf around his neck -- the Great Hall would be cool -- and finally let Raven tug him down the corridor, linking her arm with his.
"He tried to talk to me today," Charles said softly.
"And?"
"I brushed him off." Charles swallowed, reliving a flash of that too close one more inch. "But I'm going to have to... I mean, we can't go on like this, we've got an entire year ahead of us of eating together and working together, we have to be able to talk to each other."
"Unfortunately, yes," Raven sighed.
"And it's been ten years, after all. He may be an entirely different man now. Goodness knows I've changed."
Raven snorted. "Oh, yeah? How?"
"Well, I... I'm stronger, more confident. I don't have panic attacks during exams anymore."
"Only because you're giving them instead of taking them."
She was right, he reflected glumly, and in fact there had been that bad moment last year... Irrelevant, irrelevant. "What I'm getting at is that a lot can change in a decade. It's possible that he's no longer..."
"A bigot and a user?"
"He was never a user, Raven."
"You told me what he said, Charles, I don't think there's any other--"
"No, Raven." He stopped in the corridor to face her, hands moving as he tried to articulate. "He never -- yes, he said those things, but it doesn't mean... He wasn't using me, Raven. Whatever else he was, he wasn't... It wasn't like that, Raven, that's the only... bearable..."
"Of course," Raven said, and the solemn pity in her eyes made his face burn. "You knew him best, Charles -- if you say that's not how it was, then that's not how it was."
Any reply Charles might have managed was swallowed by sudden hysterical screaming echoing through the halls.
Wands out, they ran toward the sound, Charles's mind already spinning with frantic plans to protect both Raven and the screaming student from whatever threat had made its way past the school's defenses. In the crazed warren that was Hogwarts, it took several minutes to track down the sound, which by then had faded from screams to whimpers. Charles hoped desperately that that was a good sign.
Finally they rounded a corner and found a plump blonde girl -- a Hufflepuff first-year, Charles thought -- curled up sobbing against the wall, with another, dark-haired girl crouched over her, simultaneously murmuring comforting things to her friend and glaring daggers at the other adult on the scene -- Erik Lehnsherr.
"--any sense at all, which may be par for the course with first-years but congratulations, you have set a new standard," Erik was ranting, his own wand in a white-knuckle grip. "I suppose I shouldn't expect better from a Muggle-born -- I am assuming you're Muggle-born, because no wizarding child with two brain cells to rub together would lose her mind at the sight of a painting. Oh, pull yourself together, girl, it's not going to hurt you!"
"What is going on here?" With effort, Charles kept his voice just a shade below a shout.
"Absolutely nothing," Erik said with disgust, putting his wand away. "The simpleton is afraid of snakes." He waved a hand at the painting on the wall opposite -- a portrait of Salazar Slytherin, with a great green-black anaconda wound about his shoulders. Both man and snake looked at Charles with baffled alarm, seeming a bit traumatized by the child's reaction to their presence.
"I'm s-sorry," the girl against the wall wailed, "I just turned the corner and there it was and it was moving and looking right at me--"
"She's Muggle-born, we both are," the dark-haired girl said furiously. "We've never seen moving paintings before. It's a bit unsettling, you know."
"Can you fellows shuffle on, then, for a bit? Go visit someone else's frame? Good lads," Charles said to the portrait, while Raven pulled the blonde girl to her feet.
"Here, now. Dolly, isn't it? Weren't you in Transfiguration with me this afternoon?"
The girl hiccupped and nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Dolly Dursley, ma'am."
"And your name?"
"Imogen Cox," said the dark-haired girl, who was still glaring at Erik. "And who's he?"
"Professor Lehnsherr, Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House," Erik said between gritted teeth, "as you might know had you bothered to listen when the headmaster spoke last night, and you will treat me with the respect due to your superiors."
Raven's eyes flashed yellow, as they sometimes did when she was angry, but she kept her voice calm. "Come along, girls, let's get you cleaned up and calmed down. Never seen a magical portrait before, of course you were startled! I promise, they can't hurt you at all, they're still just paint for all that they move around and talk…" Raven led Dolly and Imogen down the hall toward the nearest girls' restroom.
"Silly child," Erik muttered. "Shouldn't have lost my temper, I suppose, but people like that don't belong here--"
"You." Charles thought he had put his wand away, but found it in his hand now, the point of it mere inches from Erik's throat. "If you ever speak to a student like that again -- stand there sneering insults at a frightened child -- I will do my very best to get you sacked. Shaw's protégé or not, there are ways around that and I will use them. Do we understand each other?"
Erik looked stunned. "Charles, I didn't mean -- I suppose I should have been more patient, but honestly--"
"You haven't changed at all, have you?" Charles said bleakly. "Not one bit. Do you even remember what it's like to be a child?" He bit back further unwise words, took a calming breath, put the wand away. "You may tell Raven not to wait on me. I won't be joining you for dinner."
He turned and strode back down the hallway, trying to remember how to breathe.