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Chapter Twenty-Four—Fitting In

Theo took a deep breath and stared down at the parchment in his hands, before he began to walk, slowly, towards his first class.

Or private lecture, really. Professor Riddle had explained that since they were more than halfway through the first year at Fortius, now, and Theo had joined the others of his age so late, he would have lectures and lessons in private with the professors until he could catch up.

Theo had tried to say that he was sure he couldn’t be that far behind his peers and he had learned enough at Hogwarts. Professor Riddle had just stared at him with an unreadable look in his eyes and then asked Theo to answer a question about history that didn’t concern goblin rebellions.

Theo flushed, now, from the memory as he walked into Professor Johnson’s classroom. Professor Riddle could have chosen more humiliating tests, but not many. At least they had been in private.

“Mr. Nott?”

Theo warily studied the woman in front of him, looking for some sign that she was prejudiced against him for being a pureblood. There was none. Her voice was firm and calm, and she sat at a chair behind a table rather than a desk.

“Please sit.”

Theo sat down on the chair on the other side of the table, facing her. It was throwing him off. He wondered if it was meant to. His father wouldn’t have thought a Muggleborn capable of that level of subtlety, but Theo was not his father.

“Are you all right?”

Theo simply shrugged and sat up. If she was asking if he was all right to continue the lesson, he could answer. If she was asking if he was all right in general, she hadn’t earned the right to that knowledge. “Yes, professor.”

“Good.” Professor Johnson leaned back in her chair. “Tell me your general impression if wizarding history. Not just within the last few decades, or the time of the goblin rebellions, but in general.”

That wasn’t a question Theo had anticipated, either, any more than he had the much more specific example that Professor Riddle had asked him about. He was silent a second, gathering his thoughts, but Professor Johnson sat still and didn’t seem to care about that. Finally, Theo cleared his throat lightly and murmured, “I—I know that a lot of it is a mess.”

“Better than I expected for someone who grew up steeped in propaganda,” said Professor Johnson, and gave him a light little smile. “Yes, that’s accurate, Mr. Nott. Even before the pureblood regime that did things like place restrictions on Muggleborns and start the harvesting process, we had the war with Grindelwald, and the long fight to render Muggle-hunting illegal, and the prejudice against werewolves.”

Theo licked his lips. “Does that mean you’re going to teach me all of history?”

“It means we’ll go a little faster through the introductory lessons that your yearmates have already had. I was worried that I was going to be struggling against any bigotry you’d been taught.”

“I am not my father.”

Professor Johnson nodded, calmly, not as though she thought that Theo had had to drag those words uphill or anything. “I’m seeing that. Now, I’m going to begin with a lesson on what brought us to this present pass, and it goes back to the duel that Albus Dumbledore had with Gellert Grindelwald…”

*

Tom shook his head and set the letter from Narcissa, which she wouldn’t remember sending, aside. If Lucius had done something that had to do with the explosion of magic the goblins had sensed, he hadn’t told Narcissa, and she hadn’t seen anything that struck her as strange.

He stared at the pile of paperwork on his desk, which included some essays he’d set the Defense class, and sighed a little. He was reaching for the first one when someone knocked on his door. “Come in!” he called, more grateful for the distraction than he probably should be.

It opened to show Remus Lupin. Tom blinked. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Lupin rarely sought him out except to hear about progress reports on Harry.

It was twice a surprise to see Lupin step into the office dragging Hermione Granger behind him. Tom resisted the urge to rub his face. All the first-years engaged in extra study and sometimes tried to master spells they weren’t ready for yet, but none of them did it as often as Granger did. Still, most of the time she managed to keep her experiments within bounds and hadn’t reached the point before of actually being brought to the Headmaster.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you, Miss Granger?” Lupin seemed to be in the middle of a towering rage, so Tom spoke to the girl, and saw her eyes waver and drop to the floor.

“I didn’t mean to!”

Well, that’s a promising beginning. Tom turned sideways and slung one leg over the other, trying to project exasperated sternness instead of just sternness. “All right, Miss Granger. Sit down and explain to me what happened.” He shot Lupin a glance that invited him to take a seat, but Lupin pretended not to see it.

However, he did offer his own explanation. “I truly believe that Miss Granger didn’t mean to cause me harm, but she used Legilimency on me, and it would have caused permanent, scarring wounds if I wasn’t a werewolf and didn’t have some natural protections that most people don’t.”

Tom turned and looked at Granger. She blanched hard enough for him to see it and drew back into the chair, gripping the back with white-knuckled fingers for a second. “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered, but more uncertainly.

“Tell me why you did it at all, Miss Granger.”

The girl licked her lips and looked slowly up at Tom. He kept his face neutral, and she took a gasping breath and explained, “I thought that it would be good to know how to break through the strongest walls on an enemy’s mind, and I don’t know a lot of students with strong walls, and I’ve already tried several of the professors, so I know what they’re like—”

“I do not think that the enemy has many werewolves working with them, Miss Granger.”

The girl flinched a bit, but also lifted her chin. “I know, sir. I just meant people with strong walls in general, and who I hadn’t tried to read yet.”

Tom sighed and glanced at Lupin. The man watched Granger with golden eyes that weren’t murderous, but hard and unwavering, which might be one reason she preferred to look at Tom instead of him. Tom hoped at least part of the other reason was guilt. They might have a hard time if it was not. “You estimate that she would have scarred your mind, Mr. Lupin?”

“Yes.”

Granger flinched and looked down. She said nothing, maybe understanding there was no excuse for this.

She is young, and she is mistaken, Tom thought. I don’t want to do anything that will make her back off and never pursue her Legilimency gifts again. Lavinia had told him how gifted Granger was, and honestly, they had too few students with her strength to sacrifice any of them.

At the same time, there was a need for punishment so that she never did it again outside the circumstances of training or battle.

“Look at me, Miss Granger.”

She glanced up at Tom, and he dived into her mind.

He did nothing more than a simple, straightforward dive, in and down and touching on a few scattered memories before he pulled back and up and into his own mind, but he had not done it gently. When he looked again, Granger was sitting with her head in her hands, eyes tightly shut. Tom didn’t think she was crying, but her eyelids trembled as if she wanted to.

“That is perhaps a tenth of the pain that you would have inflicted on Mr. Lupin if you had succeeded,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Granger whispered. Her hands dropped into her lap and formed into fists, which shook. “I didn’t know—I didn’t think—I’m sorry.”

Tom let her suffer for a moment more in silence before he gave in. “That is not to say that you should never use your Legilimency,” he said. “I know very well that Professor Elthis has already invited you to read her several times. It means that you should use it carefully. And when you are invited, until you enter battle situations. Do you understand?”

Granger nodded. “Sir, what would have—what would have happened—”

“Pain and wounds are not enough for you?”

“What would have been the long-term consequences?”

Well, Tom could admire courage. “If Mr. Lupin had not been a werewolf, you might have trampled on some memories to the point that your attack would have mimicked a Memory Charm. He might have found himself suffering migraines every time he drew near remembering something that resembled a memory you had shredded. Resembled it, not was the memory itself. He could have gone into shock, a coma. The pain could have killed him.”

Granger huddled on her seat in response.

Tom let her do that until he grew bored, and nodded at Lupin. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mr. Lupin. I assume that Miss Granger was on her way to bed for the night, and you can escort her to Phoenix House’s sleeping quarters?”

“Of course.” Lupin let a sympathetic look appear on his face now, although Granger hadn’t turned to see it. He touched Granger’s shoulder, and she leaned a little towards him, for all that he had dragged her here in the first place. “Come, Miss Granger.”

Tom waited until they were out of the room before sighing explosively and turning to write a note for Lavinia. He did not have time to take on the training of a second student outside of the occasional private lesson. He would make sure that she gave Granger a grounding in the etiquette and morals of Legilimency before allowing her to use her gifts at will again.

*

Harry opened his eyes and turned head towards the window, frowning.

There was something moving out there, he thought. But not on the grounds of the school. It was strange. It was distant. He wasn’t sure that he could have felt it if it was any more distant than it was right now.

Still frowning, Harry stood and wrapped the protective magic of Gryphon House close around him. He felt what seemed to be the pressure of claws against his arms, and the butt of a great feathered head against his cheek, and smiled as he walked over to the window.

Staring out revealed nothing except Belasha moving where she should be moving, as far as Harry knew, and a few lights in some of the windows where the professors had their offices. Harry leaned his arms on the windowsill and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the light of moons and stars and the movement of grass as he concentrated on what his magic was telling him.

He knew he could feel it. If he just reached—

He reached in a direction that he didn’t think he had known about before he’d read Disaster’s book, but it was always so hard to remember what it had been like not to know something. That was a thing Harry had noticed since he’d been here. Not so much in the years before that. The Dursleys hadn’t let him have enough books and he hadn’t learned enough in school to really notice it.

Harry fell into a pattern of breathing that he knew would help. And the direction opened in front of him, a beckoning, shining tunnel, as if he was walking beneath waves lit by the moon.

There was no sense of water or anything else about to fall and crush him, however. He was safe.

Harry walked the path, and reached out with his magic, and felt the same sense of what he had before, pulsing and distant. He pushed himself, further on, further. It shouldn’t be that hard to locate it, not when he had found it once before, and when it wasn’t trying to hide from him—

It wasn’t trying to hide from him.

Harry had a momentary realization of how bad that probably was before pain seized him.

Harry tried to cry out, but his breath seemed paralyzed in his lungs. He clenched his fists and fought back, sending out his magic in unformed splashes of power. It didn’t do much, but it kept the strange thing that was holding him from taking complete control of his body, which he knew it very much wanted. It was like, if some of his magic was outside his skin, the thing couldn’t achieve that control.

Harry imagined what it could do with his magic, how it could probably destroy Fortius and hurt Professor Riddle and Hermione and all the rest of them, and pushed harder.

No! You can’t have my magic!

The thing recoiled. Harry had no idea why—maybe it hadn’t been expecting him to speak to it—and he didn’t care. He ripped himself free.

He opened his eyes, panting harshly. He was slumped against the wall beneath the windowsill, and when he reached up and touched his nose, a warm trickle of blood was running from it. Harry shuddered and tucked his bloodstained hands beneath his arms.

“Harry?” Aster Hendricks’s voice was sleepy. “Is something wrong?”

“I—a little. I need to go talk to Professor Riddle.” Harry forced himself slowly back to his feet, although his legs were wavering and it sort of felt like he was trying to stand on stacks of tins. He took a step, then another, and sighed in relief when nothing else grabbed him and he managed to walk normally.

“Kay.” Aster was already falling back asleep.

Harry paused to use his wand to cast a Warming Charm on himself, and then sprinted across the grass towards Professor Riddle’s office, or at least the building where he thought it was.

There was a sudden, sharp movement in front of him, and Harry stumbled to a halt as Belasha loomed up in front of him. She hissed at him, flickering out a tongue that looked the size of his whole body.

“I need to go see Professor Riddle,” Harry said, holding as still as he could and not looking away from the massive snake in front of him. “Please? It’s important. It has something to do with a power out there who could—who could possess me and make me do—terrible things.” He swallowed. “Please don’t stop me. Please come with me.” He wasn’t sure if there were any other protections on the grounds that might try to strike at him if he wasn’t walking with Belasha.

Apparently, the basilisk did understand English. Her tongue snapped back into her mouth, and she lowered her head in a way that made Harry suddenly nervous of her eyes.

But he didn’t turn to stone or die, and he supposed she had to have some way of hiding her gaze, or she wouldn’t make a very good guardian for a school full of children. With what looked to be a lot of effort, she turned her body around and led him towards Professor Riddle’s office.

Harry followed, trying to remember as much as he could of the moments when he had fought the thing for control of his body. He was going to ask Professor Riddle to read his mind. He didn’t think he could describe it well enough.

*

Tom leaned back from his expedition into Harry’s mind and let out an explosive sigh.

“Did you find out what it is, sir?”

“No.” Tom shook his head a little as he watched Harry open his eyes and stare at him. “You don’t need to worry about that. I did absorb enough of its hatred and fear that I’ll be sure to recognize it if I come across it again. And you need a Painkilling Potion,” he added, leaning over and scooping up a vial of the crystalline draught that sat ready and waiting on the edge of his desk.

Harry swallowed the potion, and Tom watched the tight lines at the edges of his eyes disappear. He had tried to be as gentle as he could—nothing like the rough Legilimency probe that he had used on Miss Granger the other day—but he had had to go deep enough that it was inevitable there would be some pain. No damage, though. At least Tom had seen to that.

“Do you think it can possess me? Reach out across the distance between us and do that?”

“No,” Tom said. In truth, he was not as sure as he pretended, but if the creature could honestly do that, then they were all lost anyway, given how strong Harry’s war wizard powers were. And if the thing could do that, Tom didn’t think it would have that much reason to be afraid of Harry. “But I must ask that you wrap your magic close around you, for now, and keep it there. No reaching out and seeking for things you don’t understand. If you feel that creature in the night again, alert me.”

Harry looked disappointed. “Does that mean that I can’t cast any more spells from Disaster’s book, sir?”

“As of yet, I have no proof that this is how that creature, or thing, found you,” Tom said, and had to conceal a smile at the way Harry perked up. “But do remember to come talk to me the moment you feel any hint of something like this creature reaching out to you again.”

“Yes, sir!” Harry said, sitting bolt upright on his stool. And yawned.

Tom walked Harry back to Gryphon House and tucked him in himself. None of the few other children in the room stirred. Tom watched them in silence for a moment, then cast a charm that would cover up the sounds of his footsteps, and quietly retreated.

Something else to worry about, he thought acidly as he walked back to his office. He wished he could be sure that the creature Harry was feeling was the same one Lucius had summoned, and therefore that he already had people working on the project, but he couldn’t assume that. He would have to do some more research, or delegate some people to do it.

Perhaps he could have Narcissa send him some of the books on the war wizards that the Ministry had started restricting and confiscating years ago.

*

Draco watched Ron’s jaw clench as the owl swept towards him. He patted his friend’s shoulder and raised his wand. “Want me to take care of it?” As the Minister’s son, there were particular protections built into the wards of Hogwarts that let him cast spells others couldn’t.

Ron nodded, some light coming back into his eyes. “Please.”

Draco took careful aim at the owl. “Aperio,” he said, and the bright red Howler the owl was carrying abruptly snapped away from its talons and flew towards the open doorway from the Great Hall. The bird looked shocked and wheeled in a circle for a second before it ended up landing on one of the older Slytherins’ chairs, looking extraordinarily foolish.

Ron still winced a little as his mother’s loud voice sounded from the entrance hall, but Draco pointed out, “Everyone is in here, so no one is really listening to it,” and Ron smiled.

Draco shook his head as he returned to his breakfast. Really, if Mrs. Weasley should be getting after anyone, it should be the twins. They had entered Slytherin territory, had told a lie that could have got Ron in trouble, and then wouldn’t go away. Ron had been perfectly in the right to curse them.

Madam Pomfrey had cured it, even. It wasn’t as if Ron had withered one of their legs, or stripped them of their magic.

Ron was watching him, Draco realized abruptly. He went on eating and drinking, though, calmly modeling the kinds of manners that Ron would need to get somewhere in life. If he wanted something, he would have to ask for it.

“Can you teach me some of those Dark Charms you were talking about?” Ron blurted.

Draco blinked. He had thought that Ron was going to ask for more help with Potions, or maybe help telling his parents off about sending Howlers. He turned to Ron with a faint smile. “What are the ones you’re thinking about?”

Ron took a deep breath, and his face turned red. “The kind that make someone ignore your existence. You know, the kind that they’ve worked out with Muggles and that they’re working on fine-tuning to Mudbloods.”

Draco made a considering noise. He didn’t want to admit that he had only mastered two of those particular charms, and both were low-level. One wouldn’t work if someone was specifically looking for you, and the other only lasted half an hour. “Why would you need them? Who do you want to hide from?”

“My family.”

Draco blinked at Ron, and then understood. Summer holidays were still a few months away, but they were coming, and Ron would be expected to go back to that horrid, crowded house with all his siblings. Where he wouldn’t be able to avoid his mother if she yelled at him, or the twins if they cursed him in retaliation.

“There’s a simpler solution,” Draco said, smiling as he thought of it. This way, he wouldn’t have to admit that he only knew those two charms, either. “You can come visit me whenever you feel as though someone is crowding you there.”

Ron’s mouth fell open a little. Draco hissed at him, and Ron flushed and closed it and finished chewing his bacon. “I can?” he whispered when he had swallowed. “But will your mum and dad approve?”

“You know my father is friends with your parents,” Draco said, and waved his hand imperiously. It was one of the few times in his life that he had watched someone’s eyes widen and focus on him, not his father as the Minister, and it was as thrilling as he’d always thought it would be. “And you’re a pureblood and a Slytherin. Why wouldn’t they approve?”

Ron smiled, but then his face fell again. “I’d want to stay, like, weeks, though. I don’t think they’d approve of that.”

“You can stay some of the time,” Draco said. “And we’ll create a room with a Floo connection that only you know about the rest of the time, all right? That way, you can go there when your family’s being unbearable, even if you can’t officially stay over at the Manor for that long.”

Ron stared at him, and then smiled again. Draco basked in the warmth of it. Ron was his first minion, he was sure of it. Although Father said he shouldn’t refer to them as minions. “Allies” was both better for the relationship with them and closer to the truth, Draco thought.

“You’re the best, Draco,” Ron said fervently.

“I do try.” Draco nudged Ron’s leg with his. “Come on, we have to finish eating or we’re going to be late to Potions, and you know what Professor Snape is going to say about that.”

*

“Professor McGonagall! Professor McGonagall!”

Minerva snapped to her feet, ignoring the shocked and intrigued looks of her students. She was currently teaching a fifth-year class preparing for their OWL, and she had been watching them work on Transfiguring water pitchers into gulls, but the almost deranged shriek from the corridor had claimed all of her attention.

“Stay here!” she snapped at the Montague girl, who was standing up to follow her, and ran towards the noise of the scream.

It turned out to be coming from around the corner, and when she rounded it, Minerva saw one of her Muggleborn sixth-year Gryffindors, Ashley Jones, standing with her hands clasped across her mouth and the scream welling out. On the floor in front of her were what appeared to be the ingredients of a spilled potion. Minerva reached out and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, wondering if she was under a curse that purebloods liked to use which made ordinary things over into horrifying hallucinations.

“Miss Jones, calm—”

Jones turned and flung herself into Minerva’s arms, sobbing. Minerva smoothed down her hair and cast the counter for the curse, frowning at some of the students who were peering out of the Charms classroom and trailing around the corner.

“Just a Potions accident,” she said briskly. “You can—”

“Not a Potions accident! Professor McGonagall!”

Miss Jones was shaking. Minerva stepped back and looked at her, and the student shuddered and shrank back as some of the spilled potion on the floor crept towards her shoe. That made Minerva look more closely at it. Perhaps it was fumes from the potion that were at fault, and not a curse after all.

And this time, when she was not so focused on her student, she made out the scraps of flesh and stains of blood around the edges of the spill, and what looked like strands of red hair near the center, and was abruptly ill.

Minerva closed her eyes. She had thought this might come to pass, and now it had.

“She was walking down the middle of the corridor,” Miss Jones warbled, and some of the other students gasped. “And then she just—she just dissolved, she fell apart, it was the little Weasley girl, the first-year, she’s gone—”

Minerva cast a Cheering Charm on the girl. She didn’t like to do that, but she had to.

Especially because a long shadow coming down the stairs had revealed the approach of Headmistress Carrow.

Miss Jones’s sobs cut off abruptly. Minerva nodded, patted her shoulder again, pushed her gently aside, and turned to face the mess on the floor just as Carrow came down the last of the stairs and narrowed her eyes at everyone present. Suddenly, those of Minerva’s fifth-year students who had left the Transfiguration classroom remembered that she had told them to stay put and turned and ran back.

“What happened?” the Headmistress hissed.

“One of our students,” Minerva said, and met her eyes. She didn’t know how much Carrow might be in on the secret of the students who had been created using Potions and Transfiguration, but it seemed that something of her own gravity had reached the woman, who paled. “There has been an—accident.”

Carrow must have known something after all, because she swung around and unleashed a wide-range Memory Charm against the students in the corridor. They staggered back, including Miss Jones, eyes unfocused, and Carrow said briskly, “You should return to your classes. An unfortunate Potions accident, releasing some dangerous fumes, which you should leave to the professors to clean up…”

They retreated, muttering under their breaths in confusion. Carrow turned back towards Minerva and took a deep breath.

“I require your expertise in Transfiguration, Minerva,” she said. “We will try to save her.”

Minerva kept her stomach down, and simply nodded. She doubted that anything could retrieve Victoria Weasley now, but they would try.

“And I trust that I can count on your discretion, as well?”

Minerva looked into Carrow’s eyes and nodded again. She hid her hatred, her disgust, her mourning, and simply moved forwards to help, the way she had stayed at Hogwarts for so long to try and help her students.

But underneath the placid surface she was projecting, a flame of rebellion leaped and gleamed.

The people that could do things as awful as this had no place in the world.

We must end them.