Chapter Twenty-Five of 'Feather and Glass'- Venom

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twenty-Five—Venom

Hermione can feel a churning in her stomach as the door of the Slytherin common room opens at Malfoy’s dismissive sneer. Ron is behind her, disguised as Crabbe. They had to hex Goyle with a Knockback Jinx and make sure he hit his head hard enough to keep him down for a while.

But they did it. They’re in the Slytherin common room, and now they can find out whether Malfoy is the Heir, or what he knows about the Heir.

And she brewed Polyjuice successfully.

No matter how much Malfoy likes to complain about “Mudbloods,” Hermione would challenge him to do that as a second-year.

“The newspaper’s up in my dorm,” Malfoy tells them, and then leaves Hermione and Ron to sit on a couch while he runs up some stairs. Hermione stares around the common room. It’s a lot larger than the Gryffindor one, but then, they’re cramped for space in the Tower. And it’s cold, physically and with all the green and silver and snakes around. Hermione will take Gryffindor, thanks.

“Remember what we planned?” Ron whispers.

“Yes. You make sure that you don’t let your dislike of Malfoy take over.”

“Got it, I know, you only said—”

Malfoy appears, sliding down the banister to get to the common room. Hermione blinks. For some reason, she didn’t think of him as someone who would do that.

“Here we are,” Malfoy says, and snaps the paper out, holding it towards Ron and Hermione. “Arthur Weasley, under investigation for ordering excessive raids on pureblood properties.”

Ron chokes. Hermione can feel herself going stiff. Neither of them gets the Prophet, and they were so busy planning the Polyjuice trick that they haven’t looked at it in several days.

“What?” Ron croaks.

Hermione takes over, as strange as it is to hear her own words emerge in Bulstrode’s husky rasp. “And there’s nothing about the Petrifications and the Heir of Slytherin in the papers?”

“Why would there be? There hasn’t been so far, and it’s only Mudbloods who’ve been affected, who cares about them?”

Hermione has to slide her hands under her knees so that she won’t spring at Malfoy and try to claw his face off. “Wasn’t that first one, what’s his name, Terry Boot? He’s a half-blood?”

“So? His father’s still a Muggle, and he doesn’t matter.” Malfoy rattles the paper at them again. “I thought you would find it funnier. Weasley! Under investigation! Don’t you remember how much he hates my father?”

“Ha-ha,” Ron says, his face straight and turning so red that Hermione is almost afraid Malfoy will figure out who he is just from that.

“Ha-ha,” Hermione says hastily, and leans forwards a little. “But you have an idea who the Heir is yourself, don’t you?” If it’s Malfoy himself, she bets he won’t be able to resist bragging, even if that’s a stupid idea. Then again, bigotry is also a stupid idea, and Malfoy is full of that.

“I told you I didn’t, Millicent,” Malfoy says, and rolls his eyes, as if Hermione is being the unreasonable one. “I want to help him, but I have no idea who it is! And Father says that I’m to just let the Heir get on with things.” He scowls at the Prophet and then tosses it onto the couch beside them, folding his arms. “I wish I knew who it was.”

“No idea at all?” Ron asks, and manages to make it sound like Crabbe’s grunt.

“I told you, no.”

Hermione stifles her disappointment. It’s starting to look like venturing into the Slytherin common room was a risk without much reward.

But then someone pauses not far from the couch, watching her, and she recognizes Theodore Nott. He’s also the son of an old pureblood family, and his father was supposedly under the Imperius in the war like Malfoy’s was. There’s a chance he’ll know something even though Malfoy doesn’t.

“Be right back,” Hermione says, patting Ron’s shoulder fast so that he has no time to object, and then she gets up and walks over to Nott.

Nott tilts his head when she gets close. He has a book in one hand, but he doesn’t continue on his way to wherever he was going. “Bulstrode.”

“Hi, Nott,” Hermione murmurs, and ducks her head. She’s never really flirted before, and she thinks the girls who do it all the time, like Parvati and Lavender, are stupid, but she’s not in her body and doesn’t have to worry about what fallout this might have for Bulstrode. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Why?”

“I mean—I just wanted to talk to you.” Hermione is a little bewildered. Just mentioning that they want to talk to a boy, and ducking their heads this way, works for Parvati and Lavender. Maybe it’s because they’re more girly than Bulstrode, though.

Nott looks over Hermione’s head at something behind her, and she hopes it’s just Malfoy and not Ron doing something that would be out of character for Crabbe. “All right. Come on.”

He whirls around and leads her over to a shadowed corner of the common room near the large fireplace. Hermione sits down primly on the chair next to Nott’s, and then, at a weird look from him, decides this probably isn’t flirtatious enough. She clears her throat. “So what have you been doing?”

“Reading.”

Nott says nothing after that, only smiling at her, and Hermione doesn’t know where to begin. She doesn’t think Bulstrode’s a big reader. “Oh. I—I asked Malfoy, but he didn’t know who the Heir of Slytherin is. Do you?”

“I think it would have to be someone of the blood of Salazar Slytherin. But no one like that is attending the school now as far as I know.”

“Would someone else know?”

“Why so interested, Bulstrode?”

“I want to know if the school can be cleared of them.” Hermione can’t bring herself to say the word, but she squares her shoulders and tries to imitate the way that she’s seen Bulstrode scowl sometimes.

Nott’s eyes glitter. “Well, we could look at it another way. Just because we don’t know if someone’s of the blood of Salazar Slytherin doesn’t mean they can’t be the Heir. There are other traits that we could look for.”

“Like what?”

“If someone was a Parselmouth, for example.”

Hermione takes a moment to search her brain for the word, but then she has it. “Oh! Th way that Ophelia Lemaze talks about in A History of Magical Languages? Chapter Six?” she adds, because Nott is staring at her as if he’s never heard of the book.

“Why, Bulstrode.” Nott’s voice is silky smooth. “I had no idea you were so well-read.”

Hermione feels her face turn ashen. And isn’t it almost an hour since she and Ron took the Polyjuice? Don’t they need to leave?

“Uh, I had no idea, either,” she says, and scrambles to her feet, not caring what Nott thinks of her or what Bulstrode will have to deal with later. “Ro—Crabbe! Come on, we have to go! I don’t feel good.”

Ron shoots up off the couch. His hair is already turning red and Malfoy is staring at him, but Hermione thinks that neither Malfoy nor Nott will really understand what happened. It’s not like they would think Ron was sneaking into the Slytherin common room disguised with Polyjuice, after all.

They run for the door, and Malfoy gapes after them.

“Impedimenta.”

The Trip Jinx hits Hermione square on, and she falls over and sprawls on the floor. Ron turns around to run back to her, and another jinx catches him and lays him out, too, before Hermione can wave at him to go on. Then a Body-Bind catches both of them.

“Granger? Weasley?”

Malfoy’s voice is squeaky with surprise, but when Hermione feels a dragonhide shoe beneath her turning her over, it’s Nott’s face she ends up looking into, not Malfoy’s. She has no doubt that he was the one who cast the jinxes, too. Nott smiles at her, a smile that makes Hermione flinch as ice water fills her veins.

“Now,” Nott says, his eyes going briefly to Ron, “one has to wonder what two Gryffindors are doing drinking Polyjuice and sneaking into our common room.”

“Weasley? Granger? Polyjuice?”

Nott shoots a sharp look at Malfoy, and he shuts up. Then Nott bends down and considers Hermione from close up, nodding and drawing back after a second. “Now I’m going to prop you up against the wall,” he says, “and maybe if you tell me what in the world you were doing, I’ll let you go.”

Hermione keeps silent, since the Body-Bind locks her jaw in place, but she trusts her murderous glare will tell Nott what she thinks of that.

Nott shakes his head and looks a little disgusted, probably because she’s daring to exist in his presence. He does prop her up against the wall, with Ron beside her, and then casts a spell that wraps their hands behind their backs in rope. Then he casts something else, a mutter Hermione can’t hear, and their wands shoot out of their pockets and into Nott’s grasp. Malfoy has come up to gape over his shoulder.

“Weasley? Poly—”

“Shut up, Draco.”

Malfoy does, with an indignant gasp. Nott keeps looking at Hermione and Ron. Hermione can feel a horrible sinking in her stomach. She’s never really noticed Nott before; he always keeps to the background and interacts only with Slytherins and doesn’t even really look at Gryffindors to sneer at them. She thinks now that not noticing him was a horrible mistake.

“Are you going to tell us why you sneaked into the common room?”

“How can they when the Body-Bind holds their jaws shut?” Malfoy asks.

Hermione stares at him. She’s surprised. Well, maybe everyone gets one smart idea in their lives, and she just happened to be there when Malfoy spoke his.

Nott sighs as if they’re all boring and flicks his wand. Hermione clenches her jaw shut at once as it sags. She doesn’t speak.

Ron does. “Let us go!” he yells, a flush as red as his hair making its way up his neck. “You have no right to keep us here!”

“And do you have the right to be brewing Polyjuice? Last I checked, it’s illegal for anyone under seventeen to make, and in many circumstances even for of-age wizards to brew.”

Hermione says nothing. If Nott turns them in to the Headmaster or someone else, she’ll face the consequences. But she still doesn’t need to tell them why she and Ron sneaked into the common room in the first place.

Maybe it’s a good thing Neville’s not here.

“They’re not going to talk, Theodore.”

Hermione can see Nott’s face tighten, but she’s not sure why. And he doesn’t pay attention to Malfoy anyway, still considering her and Ron, tapping his finger against his chin. A second later, he smiles. “Well, they were asking questions about the Heir of Slytherin? What if they came here to figure out whether one of us is the one running around Petrifying people?”

“You think they would be that stupid?”

Hermione tries to bristle, although she knows that she shouldn’t be confirming Nott’s guess. That was not stupid! It was a good guess that Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin, the way he’s always going on!

“Oh, Granger doesn’t like that,” Nott murmurs. His smile is crooked and cruel. “But I think I’m right.”

“Why?”

“Who knows why Gryffindors do anything?” Nott asks lightly, but his eyes are direct and piercing. “I think I’m going to escort them out of the common room, and then have a little chat with them about using Polyjuice.”

Malfoy starts to say something, but Nott withers him with a single glare. Then he marches Ron and Hermione to the common room door and out, their hands still tied behind their backs and their wands still in Nott’s robe pockets. Hermione heard Malfoy say the password that opened the door, but she has no doubt that Nott will go to a prefect and have that changed as soon as possible.

When they’re out in the corridor, Nott waits for the door to rumble shut, and then shakes his head at Hermione and Ron. “You could be in such trouble if I wanted to put you there,” he says. “I think you should thank me that I got you out of it instead.”

“Shut the fuck up, Nott!”

Hermione catches her breath in surprise. She’s only heard Ron swear once, last year, after Neville came back from whatever happened with Professor Quirrell in the obstacle course under the school.

Nott’s eyes narrow. “So you do want me to go to talk to Professor Snape about your brewing Polyjuice, Granger? With ingredients that you stole from him, if I’m not mistaken.”

Hermione glares, but doesn’t let herself be baited into talking. Nott is going to do whatever he’s going to do. And at least she and Ron have a viable candidate for the Heir of Slytherin who isn’t Malfoy.

Nott considers them for a moment more. Then he sighs and mutters something that Hermione can’t quite catch, waving his wand. The ropes around their hands part, and he tosses their own wands onto the floor in front of them.

“I suggest you go your way and forget about what you saw and heard today.”

“Or what?”

“Reporting you to Professor Snape for illegal brewing of Polyjuice would be the first step,” Nott says thoughtfully. “But I imagine there would also be some prefects who would be interested to hear that Gryffindors managed to sneak in, and also Professor McGonagall might want to hear that some of her more foolish lions are hunting the Heir of Slytherin, and we can’t forget that the Slytherin Quidditch team is paranoid about harm befalling their Seeker—”

“Fine, Nott, you’ve made your point,” Hermione snaps, and snatches up her wand. It’s harder than she expected not to attack Nott.

“As if we want to tell people about your dirty, nasty common room anyway,” Ron mutters.

“I wouldn’t,” Nott says, and his eyes glint. “Now, leave.”

He stands watching them as they walk away, which Hermione thinks is the outside of enough. It’s not as if she and Ron did much. They didn’t attack anyone in there, unlike Nott with his stupid spells.

“What do you think we ought to tell Neville?”

“That we didn’t get much information, and that we got found out, but also that we decided Malfoy really isn’t the Heir of Slytherin.” Hermione nods at Ron. “I think Nott is a much better candidate.”

“What, really? But he doesn’t go around proclaiming his hatred of Muggleborns all the time the way Malfoy does.”

“I know. But he managed to figure us out, and you saw how practiced he was with the Body-Bind and those other spells. I’ve never even noticed him, he’s so quiet. Don’t you think someone who doesn’t get noticed would have an easier time Petrifying students and getting into the Chamber of Secrets than someone noisy like Malfoy?”

Ron’s jaw firms, and he nods. “You have something there.”

Hermione nods back, and makes a note to start looking up more Defensive charms and spells. Nott handled them like it was nothing. If Hermione wants to fight the kind of people who will try to put her in the hospital wing, she needs to master them, too.

*

“Granger successfully brewed Polyjuice?”

“Yes. Although her attempts at flirting while she was disguised as Bulstrode were pitiful.”

Blaise leans back in his chair and runs his hand down his face with a small groan. He and Nott are in a shadowy corner of the common room, where he came to sit the moment Nott caught his eye. It’s the first evening back from the Christmas holidays, and of course Nott has this ridiculous story to tell.

“What are you going to do?”

Nott is good at many things, but not at sounding casual. Blaise drops his hand. “Tell Harry.”

“Why? I didn’t know Weasley and Granger were friends of his.”

“They’re friends by association. Longbottom’s, and Harry considers Longbottom a friend for all that I would prefer he didn’t.”

“You don’t want the cachet that comes from associating with the Boy-Who-Lived?”

Blaise is slow in answering, watching Nott. Nott watches him back, and he’s calm and collected, or at least making a good show of it, but the way his foot taps, subtly, shows how much he thinks is riding on the answer.

“I think that Longbottom is soft,” Blaise says at last. “And Harry’s not. I’m not. Sooner or later, Longbottom is going to find out exactly how far Harry is willing to go, and then he’ll probably try to take a principled stand and make Harry choose between him and me. Or between him and Dark Arts, at least. It’s not going to work out.”

“What would Potter choose?”

“Me.”

“You seem very certain of that.”

Blaise smiles, the way his mother taught him, and watches Nott twitch a little. “If you think that you can come between us—”

“I don’t think that. I think that friendships that don’t have more of a guarantee than yours and Potter’s does are fragile. And that even Ravenclaws can surprise you with how squeamish they are and how strongly they’re willing to cling to their principles.”

Blaise bursts out laughing. A few people glare at them, Draco most notably, but Blaise just shakes his head, and they turn away again.

“What is that for?” Nott smiles, but it’s a bit tight.

“You have a long way to go if you think that Harry’s principles are that different from mine,” Blaise says, and enjoys the way Nott appears to chew on that as he stands. “Oh, by the way. A gift from my mother.”

He tosses it at Nott, who fumbles and nearly drops it. Blaise winces. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to drop that, even on the carpet,” he says.

“Oh?”

“No.”

“What is it?” Nott holds up the crystalline cube, seemingly fascinated by the spark of blue light from inside it.

“Something that might help you develop your art as a Defender.”

Nott’s hand spasms, and he nearly drops the cube, again. Blaise sighs. He’s not in the habit of questioning his mother’s judgments, but he does wonder if it was the best idea to give this to Nott. “You assume I want to do that.”

“Of course I do.”

Nott looks at him, and for a moment, something dark behind his eyes stares at Blaise like a ravenous wolf. Blaise just looks back. He’s a great deal more dangerous than a hungry wolf, and it’s time Nott learned that.

Nott looks away and down, nodding. “Yes, I do. Thank you for the gift, Zabini.”

Blaise smiles and goes back to his dormitory. He’s meeting Harry later for another search of the dungeons for the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, and failing that, he and Harry and Artemis will go up to the upper floors and see if they can find any trace of a large snake.

Harry might even have something interesting to tell him about Granger and Weasley’s little expedition to the Slytherin common room.

*

Harry puts his hand over his eyes.

“You un-understand why they did it?”

Merlin, Neville is more nervous than Harry thought he was, if he’s stuttering now. He lowers his hand and does his best to smile at Neville. “Of course. I just think that it was sort of silly of them.”

“I don’t think it was silly.”

“Even though they didn’t learn anything?”

“They l-learned that Malfoy probably isn’t the Heir of Slytherin. And they learned to be afraid of Nott.”

Harry hesitates.

“He is your ally, and he knows about me,” Artemis hisses from Harry’s robe pocket. “You owe it to him to defend him, even if you are not going to tell Neville that you are friends with him.”

Harry still isn’t sure that he’s friends with Nott at all, is the thing. But it does seem silly not to at least say, “I don’t know if Nott is all that threatening. He’s never said the word Mudblood, has he? Do Ron and Hermione really think that he could be the Heir of Slytherin?”

Neville doesn’t answer for a bit. He has his back turned, watering one of the plants that stand on the row of shelves in this particular classroom. Then he turns around, his hands shaking, but his face stubborn.

“I know that you spend a lot of time with one particular Slytherin, Harry.”

Ugh. I don’t think I’m going to like what comes next.

“But you have to see that there’s someone running around here and Petrifying people. And if it’s not someone with the blood of Slytherin—someone who would probably brag about it—it’s probably someone in the House, r-right? I’m not accusing Zabini!” he adds hastily, as if he can see the argument already building up in Harry’s mind. “But Nott seemed awfully interested in what Hermione and Ron were doing in the common room.”

“It doesn’t mean that he’s the Heir of Slytherin.”

“And it doesn’t mean he isn’t.”

Harry sighs. He wishes that he’d had more of Aradia’s lessons in logic, which she started giving him over the Christmas holidays. There’s probably something in what Neville said where he wants Harry to prove a negative, and—

But seeing the stubborn look on Neville’s face, Harry lets it go. A logical argument won’t convince him. “Please tell me that Hermione isn’t going to go brew Polyjuice and try to break into the Slytherin common room again.”

Neville chuckles, and the stubbornness fades from his face. “No, once was enough. It’s kind of amazing Nott didn’t go tell Snape about her stealing the ingredients.”

“See? He keeps his word. Maybe—”

“I don’t want to argue about this right now, Harry.”

Neville can be forceful at the most bloody inconvenient times. Harry just nods reluctantly and lets this go, too, because he wants to talk about something else anyway. “Did you want to practice those charms that Flitwick showed us the other day?”

“Yeah!”

Neville draws his wand and stands across from Harry, his smile bright. Harry smiles back. He can’t force Neville into the mode of Blaise or even Nott, he thinks. Neville is Neville, and Harry just has to be grateful for his friendship and accept that there are things Neville doesn’t want to listen to or hear about.

Even if that means that he ends up keeping a lot more secrets from Neville than the others.

Artemis gives a small, sad hiss in his pocket. Harry ignores her and raises his wand. “Ready?”

“I vanquished You-Know-Who. Of course I am.”

Harry hopes that he’s hiding the sadness of his own smile as he aims his wand and casts the first Cheering Charm.

*

“Mr. Potter, I wondered if I might speak with you for a moment?”

Harry turns around with a perfect, charming smile. “Of course, sir.”

Albus hides his own sigh. He can’t blame Harry for distrusting him. The boy seems to trust no one except a few of the other Slytherins, Mrs. Zabini, and, oddly, Neville. Albus makes a note to encourage that friendship. It seems to give Neville confidence, and in the meantime, perhaps it will give Harry a stronger moral perspective than he will receive elsewhere.

“I wanted to know if you would visit with Sirius Black this summer.”

“Of course, sir. I’d be happy to.”

Albus blinks. “But you were not happy to remain at Christmas so that you could get to know him?”

“Well, that was at the last minute. And I would have missed the train if I’d delayed. A planned visit is different.”

Harry’s eyes glitter and sparkle the way that Lily’s did, when she was a child. Albus finds himself smiling, tentatively. Perhaps he’s underestimated Harry, or overestimated him. Or simply been wrong. A child who looks like this one is not one who can be corrupted by the Zabinis.

“Thank you, Harry. It means a great deal to Sirius, and to me.”

Harry smiles at him again, and then asks, “Sir, do you think that you’re going to catch the Heir of Slytherin soon?”

“Yes, of course we will. And even if we do not, the Mandrakes are growing strong in the greenhouses. We will be able to wake up the Petrified people soon.”

“All right, sir.”

As Harry turns and walks away, Albus has the unsettling feeling that he has made a mistake. But he was honest, and Harry was honest in return. Why would telling the truth about their hopes regarding the Heir of Slytherin, or inviting Harry to visit Sirius, be a mistake?

It cannot be a mistake, not when it will make them both so happy.

*

“They’re not going to do anything.”

Harry is sitting with Artemis in a corner of the dungeons where most people never go, and he’s shaking with anger. Artemis winds around his upper arm, hissing soothingly at him. Harry leans his chin on her head and closes his eyes.

“For all Dumbledore cares, everyone could get Petrified, and it would be just fine.”

“But he said they were trying to find the Heir of Slytherin.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t describe anything they were actually doing to do that! And he said that the people Petrified in the hospital wing would have to wait until the Mandrakes were ready.”

“Is that not true? I only know how good most magical plants smell. And what eats them.”

Harry pulls back with a chuckle that even he knows is watery, and touches the small ridge above Artemis’s left eye. “It’s true as far as it goes, but he could find another source of fresh Mandrakes if it’s so important! And it is important! Imagine everyone up there being Petrified for months! Some of them already have been!”

“And the Heir of Slytherin?”

“Dumbledore controls the ghosts and the portraits. He’s the master of the house-elves of Hogwarts. He could do all kinds of investigations, and they could tell him what students or professors were sneaking around. And he supposedly warded the school so that Voldemort couldn’t get back in here.”

“But someone is getting in here.”

“Yeah.” Harry pulls back with a shake of his head, eyes closed. Then he reaches down and strokes Artemis’s scales, once, before he drops her into his robe pocket. “It makes me furious, but there’s not much I can do for right now. Come on, we need to go talk to McGonagall.”

“You will not allow me to talk with her.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “You know that she would think you were dangerous and she would think I was evil.”

As always, it’s the last bit that convinces Artemis, Harry knows. She subsides into grumbles as Harry slips down the corridor and up the staircase that will get him to the Transfiguration Professor’s office fastest.

He knows she wants more friends for herself, and a better life for him, and he understands that. But he won’t have a better life if too many people know that he’s a Parselmouth who has a pet snake. He just won’t.

*

“Stir in the lacewings next, Mr. Potter.”

Minerva watches carefully as Harry stirs the lacewings into the thick purple potion, which burbles and slurps before it turns back into a dark, inert mass. Harry’s forehead is furrowed as he carefully stirs, once and then again. The potion is indeed complex, but Mineva thought it best if Harry prepared the final steps, to give his magic more time to attune itself to the potion.

“Now remove the stirring rod from the potion. Slowly, Mr. Potter, or the drips from it could affect the potion badly.”

“How badly, Professor?” Harry asks, as he lays the stirring rod aside.

“They could make it explode and mean that we would have wings if it landed on us. If we are lucky. It might be scales.”

For a moment, Harry looks oddly indignant, as if having scales wouldn’t be a huge imposition. Well, perhaps it wouldn’t be, for someone who is friends with a Slytherin, Minerva acknowledges. But there is a difference between having a friend with a snake as a symbol of their House, and being a snake yourself.

Perhaps Harry understands that, because he looks back into the potion again. “What now?”

“Now we wait exactly five minutes more,” Minerva says, spelling a crystal clock into being to hover above the cauldron. “And when that amount of time has passed, you drink it.”

Harry nods. He looks nervous. Well, Minerva can understand that. If they’ve done everything exactly right, the potion will work, and he will suddenly have stronger magic, which will take some getting used to.

If they haven’t done everything right…

Minerva shakes her head briskly. If she thought that, then Harry wouldn’t be drinking the potion.

“Will I still have to have remedial Transfiguration with you if the potion makes my magic stronger, Professor?”

Minerva half-smiles at him. She feels that she has come to know Harry, the boy behind the title of the Boy-Who-Lived, far better in the last few months than she ever did before, and as a separate person from his parents. He could also use the extra practice. “Are you so eager to leave the remedial lessons behind, Mr. Potter?”

“I don’t want to look weak, Professor.”

Minerva starts to reply that even if the potion works, Harry will have to spend some more time with her learning to regain control of his magic and mastering the skills that should raise him to the position he should hold in the second-year Transfiguration class. Then she closes her mouth and considers what Harry actually said.

He doesn’t want to look weak. He said nothing about being weak. Maybe it’s because he accepts his weak magic and knows that nothing he can do can change it, if this potion doesn’t work.

Maybe the realization comes from something else.

The clock gives a little warning buzz, which means the five minutes is almost up. Minerva uses a crystal flask sitting on her desk to scoop up some of the potion, and then offers it to Harry, who smiles at her and drinks when the clock chimes five minutes exactly.

For a moment, a glow as crystalline as the flask surrounds him, and Minerva holds her breath, hoping it will work—

And then it doesn’t, slumping back into nothingness.

Harry has a sad smile when he looks up at her. Minerva suspects that she looks far more devastated than he does. “It’s all right, Professor. I know that you were trying your best. If anything could strengthen my magic, it was this potion.”

“I should be reassuring you, Mr. Potter, not the other way around.”

Harry shrugs, his eyes steady on her. “Why? You tried to solve the problem, even though you weren’t the one who caused it.”

“Your relatives caused it!”

“Yes, Professor. And I blame them. But I can’t blame someone who was trying to help me. Or someone who hid me in the Muggle world because they thought Death Eaters would be after me. It’s possible, given the way my parents died. At least I survived to have magic, and I wouldn’t have if the Death Eaters had found me.”

Minerva’s lips pinch together as she watches Harry leave the classroom. Harry is forgiving and gentle. Whether or not he’s completely identical to his parents or whether he ever gives Sirius Black a chance to be his godfather, he’s a good person.

Minerva knows who is not. She knows who she blames for causing Harry’s lack of magic. And she will never truly trust him again.

*

“And? What happened?”

“Nothing, as far as I can tell.”

Blaise frowns. “So the potion didn’t have any harmful effects, but it didn’t have any beneficial ones, either.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Blaise spends a moment watching Harry as he lounges on the other side of the brazier, a grumpy Artemis wound around his neck. He doesn’t know exactly what’s going through his best friend’s head, but he wants to. “All right. What would you say?” he asks, after a few minutes of trying to come up with a guess and not managing.

“I think I have firmly detached Minerva McGonagall from Dumbledore.”

Harry smiles like a hunting cat. Blaise’s smile is, he knows, a perfect match.