Lord Harry Potter and the Whispers of Lady Polixenes - Chapter 17 - lily_winterwood - Harry Potter (2024)

Chapter Text

Mum was discharged from St Mungo’s the night before they were due to return to Hogwarts. In celebration, Regulus hosted a dinner party with the rest of the prior Order members, serving up beef wellington and truffle risotto to an eclectic array of guests. Between Dumbledore and Moody plotting at one end of the table, Bill trying to teach Fleur how to pronounce the English ‘r’ in the middle, and Tonks and Fred cracking dirty jokes at the other end, it would almost be too easy to overlook Hermione’s absence.

Unfortunately, it was all Harry could focus on. Even though all the spots at the table were filled, Hermione not being there still felt like an open wound. Even though he and Ron and Regulus all seemed to have reached some unspoken agreement to pretend nothing was wrong, they still kept leaving gaps in the conversation that Hermione would have filled with her facts, her research, her unwavering conviction.

“I saw Cormac McLaggen getting discharged today,” said Mum as she finished her soup (tomato, which felt wrong to have without Hermione here to enjoy it). “He’s still a bit peaky; I wouldn’t be surprised if he delayed his return to Hogwarts by a couple of days.”

“What a shame,” said Ron dryly.

“He was replaced almost immediately by some other Hogwarts bloke,” continued Mum. “A Graham Montague, I think? Ring a bell for anyone?”

“He’s a Slytherin Chaser,” said Harry. “What’s he in for?”

“Not sure, but Sylvia took charge of him, so I’m guessing he got poisoned,” said Mum. “He’ll probably be out of commission for a bit; I hope Slytherin have got a reserve to take his place.”

“They’ve got a reserve Seeker,” said Ginny. “Pansy Parkinson. If Draco goes for Chaser—and he could, he’s half-decent at it—then Pansy could take his place. And the Slytherins will finally have a girl on their team for the first time in… about three centuries.”

“Umbridge would do her nut,” cackled Fred.

“I’m always keen on Umbridge doing her nut,” agreed Ginny.

“As the heiress said to Merlin,” cut in Tonks, grinning wickedly.

That entire section of the table erupted into groans. Ginny mimed vomiting into her risotto, while George started wailing about ‘horrid mental images’. Fred, doubled over with laughter, barely managed to lean across the table to give Tonks a high-five.

Once the dinner and the pudding had all been cleared away, Regulus rose to his feet with his half-drunk wine glass. “I really must thank all of you for coming tonight,” he said. “Especially you, Albus, no doubt taking the time out of your incredibly busy schedule to come have dinner with us.”

“Oh, it’s only the start of the next term,” said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling. “Couldn’t have timed it better myself.”

The corner of Regulus’ lips twitched upwards. “I aim to please,” he said smoothly, before raising his glass. “And, of course, I must thank the lovely Dowager Lady Potter, for making such a speedy and miraculous recovery so that she could be here with us tonight. To your health, Lily.”

“To Lily’s health,” chorused the table.

“And thanks to the continued hard work of everyone involved with this campaign, the Daily Prophet polls have pulled us into second place behind Miss Silverstream, and we are, of course, steadily gaining more support every day!” Regulus raised his glass again. “To victory!”

“To victory!” everyone cheered.

“And now, to business—”

“To business!” toasted Fred, causing a couple laughs. Regulus chuckled, tilting his head at Fred in acknowledgement.

“—I would like to request all those who are currently Hogwarts students to please leave the room,” he continued, which caused a wave of groans through Harry and all the Weasley children. But under everyone else’s expectant silence, they all slumped out of the dining room. The door promptly closed behind them the moment they were all in the hallway, but not before Harry heard Regulus sigh and begin with, “So, as you might have already noticed, we’ve got a new problem on our hands.”

“They’re talking about Hermione,” said Ron, disbelieving. “They kicked us out of the room so that they can discuss Hermione as a problem.”

“Why’s Hermione the problem, all of a sudden?” demanded George.

“It’s like they don’t care about our reputation as troublemakers anymore!” protested Fred.

“You really don’t think a swot can cause problems?” scoffed Ginny. “Hermione’s been a ticking time bomb for this campaign ever since Regulus put her on tea-tray duty.”

Harry and Ron looked at one another. Frustration with her internship wasn’t why Hermione had rowed with Regulus and then stormed out, but telling Fred, George, and Ginny about what they’d actually heard on Boxing Day would only make this already-delicate situation even worse.

Hermione wasn’t a problem. She was their friend. But she could cause problems, especially if she let slip what she knew to someone with the means to make sure everyone found out that Lord Regulus Black had once been a Knight of Camelot. Someone like—

“Rita Skeeter,” said Mum an hour later, over the last dregs of her tea. Across the dining room table, Harry and Ron looked at one another, and then at her to elaborate.

“The Daily Prophet has been aching for a return to credibility after the libel suit earlier this year,” continued Mum. “You might have noticed that Rita Skeeter has been awfully quiet this year, and that Gaunt has mostly been using the wireless to spew his lies rather than her column. The Prophet would absolutely lunge at a story like this.”

“Why? Because they want to start another Lord Slytherin Scandal?” wondered Ron.

“Nothing like a good scandal to drive up paper sales,” said Mum dryly.

Harry personally thought Rita Skeeter had been quiet because Hermione had held her hostage and threatened to tell the Ministry about her being an unregistered Animagus, but that didn’t seem particularly relevant to the situation. Hermione could just as easily go to some other reporter, and the end result would be the same.

Ron’s brows furrowed harder. “So… you want us to stop Hermione from going to the papers?”

Mum sighed. “I want you two to remind Hermione about the goals of this campaign,” she said flatly. “Regulus is promising to change New Avalon for the better, not just keeping more of the same. We understand that she’s feeling betrayed right now, but we must caution her against doing anything rash about it.”

Ron nodded. “Right. Speaking of betrayal, though—did any of you know about Regulus being a Knight before this?”

Mum briefly froze. “Most of us knew Lord Black before his brother was sent to Azkaban,” she pointed out after a moment. “He was a different person then. The Regulus you see today would never dream of going back to the Knights. Hermione should know that.”

Harry, too, started frowning. “But did you know he was a Knight, Mum?”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Mum, shaking her head.

“It’s a simple yes or no question,” insisted Harry. “Did you know?”

“Knowing and being told are different things,” replied Mum vaguely.

Harry gritted his teeth. “Okay, then why didn’t you tell me what you knew?”

“What does it matter?” Mum sighed. “Uncle Reg quit the Knights; that’s the important part.”

“Aunt Sev says no one ever fully quits the Knights, though,” Harry pointed out.

“Well, then think of this as Uncle Reg’s rebellion,” suggested Mum. “It’s his Act of Contrition for the Muggleborns that the Knights have hurt!”

“What, becoming Minister for Magic?” demanded Ron incredulously.

“Stopping Gaunt from becoming Minister for Magic,” corrected Mum. “You’ve been following Gaunt in the news; you know how dangerous his promises are. What Regulus has or hasn’t done in the past will be nothing compared to what Gaunt will do if he gets back into power. That’s what you need to remind Hermione about: what’s really at stake here.”

“Right.” Ron exhaled, rising to his feet. “I’m going to make some more tea. Harry, you want a cuppa?”

“Yeah.” The words sounded numb. “What about you, Mum?”

Ron raised an eyebrow at Mum, who merely smiled and held out her cup and saucer. Ron took it with a harsh nod, before striding out of the dining room. The moment he was gone, Mum waved for Harry to come closer. With a small sigh, Harry obeyed.

“So,” said Mum, once he’d sat down in the chair next to hers, “besides what happened with Hermione, how have your winter hols been?”

Harry winced. “Well, er—I mean—you’ve probably heard all the highlights from Uncle Sirius by now.”

Mum sighed. “Pity I missed Weasleys versus Malfoys, round two,” she lamented. “Would’ve loved to talk with Lady Malfoy again.”

Harry couldn’t tell if she was being serious, or if she was just saying that to be polite, or—also disturbingly possible—as a threat.

Mum’s eyes twinkled at that. “I also heard you almost bungled the whole thing by snubbing Draco during the first dance.” Harry made a face almost reflexively, causing Mum to chuckle and pat his hand. “Oh, love. There’ll be other dances.”

“I had a row with Gary and Rose over it,” said Harry, now intently focused on a spot over Mum’s shoulder. It was suddenly hard to look her in the eye, even though he knew she wasn’t mad at him. She should be, though; he didn’t feel like he deserved for this to be easy.

“It was brave of you to tell them at all,” said Mum.

“Oh, I didn’t.” Harry winced. “Ron brought it up. But I didn’t deny it. I guess five years at Hogwarts made me forget that sort of thing was a no-go for Muggles.”

Mum hummed. “Some things really are different between Mages and Muggles,” she agreed. “But I’m sure your friends were just more concerned for your safety, rather than hating this part of who you are.”

The understanding rankled at him. “Why aren’t you mad at me?” muttered Harry. “I mean, he’s still a Malfoy, and Gaunt’s nephew—”

“Well, Aunt Sev is a Prince, and a former Knight.” Mum’s eyes twinkled. “But that’s why it’s so important that Uncle Reg wins this election. The less power Gaunt has over the Malfoys, the less important all those other barriers become.”

Once again, they both wanted the same thing for different reasons. With a sigh, Harry nodded in agreement, squeezing his mum’s hand back. She leaned over and kissed the side of his head.

“I need you to do something else for me, love,” she said against his ear. “I need you to start learning Occlumency.”

Harry remembered their conversation about this back at St Mungo’s, and how Mum had tried to ask Ron if he could teach it to Harry.

“I don’t think Ron’s changed his mind,” he began, but Mum was already shaking her head.

“Professor Liu has agreed to give you lessons,” she said. “He’s going to be teaching someone else, too, so you’ll just be joining in on their sessions.”

“Who else is he teaching?” asked Harry.

“All he said was to report to the Customs and Etiquette classroom after dinner on Wednesdays,” replied Mum with a little sigh.“Look, I’m still recovering, so my own Occlumency shields aren’t as strong as they usually are, which means you’re going to get some very strange dreams for a couple more weeks, or until you learn to put up your own shields. I’m sorry; I really should’ve taught you this stuff when you were younger.”

There were a lot of things she could’ve taught him when he was younger, though all of it would have hinged on her telling him about magic sooner, too. In any case, it was now too late to think on all the hypotheticals.

Harry shrugged. “Better late than never, I guess.”

“Better late than never,” agreed Mum, and kissed his forehead. Harry leaned into her warmth with his eyes closed, missing her even though she was still sitting right beside him.

Later that night, he dreamt of being Mum again, of wandering out of the Gryffindor portrait hole in a nightgown and a threadbare pink dressing-gown. The sallow-faced girl stood at the end of the hallway in a black dressing-gown, her hair in a long, severe plait down one shoulder, her expression lined with misery.

“Lilith.” Severina’s voice was breathless with desperation. “I’m sorry for what I said, Lilith, please—”

“I didn’t want to see you,” Harry said, in Mum’s voice. “I only came down because Mary Macdonald said you were threatening to sleep here.”

“I would. I’d sleep here for a year and a day, if that’s what it takes.”

“Save your breath, Sev.” Harry crossed his arms. “I thought you weren’t desperate for the approval of your family’s New Blood.”

“Heir Potter,” spat Severina, “accused me of wanting you. Of wishing to compromise your virtue like he so clearly wants. He is not worth the ground you tread on, Lilith. But to insinuate in any way that my feelings for you are anything lower than honourable—”

“—So Bonding with the family New Blood is not honourable?” wondered Harry, raising an eyebrow.

For a brief moment, something burned in Severina’s eyes, before being quashed over fully by the weight of her own misery.

“You should not wish to be Bonded to someone like myself,” she ground out. “Touching me would defile you.”

Harry knew the Mum he knew today would have been gentle. She would have begged Severina not to think like that, reminded her of how wonderful she was, how much she and Harry both needed her. But this was a younger Mum, and the younger Mum only laughed.

“Don’t take it so seriously, Sevvy,” Harry teased, in her voice. “You’re basically my sister!”

“You’ve got a sister already.”

“Yeah, but who cares about Tuney?” scoffed Harry, reaching out to cup Severina’s cheeks. “We’ve let our Houses separate us from each other for too long. Spend some more time with me, your family’s New Blood, the one that you’re not so nearly desperate enough to Bond with…”

“Lilith,” Severina’s voice was strangled. “Lilith, don’t—”

Harry immediately stepped back, laughing, as Severina touched her cheeks gingerly, a look of disgust on her face. “I was joking, Sevvy,” he said lightly. “Spend some more time with your sister, and less with that Heiress Avery. I hear she’s the real todger dodger at Hogwarts… Marley says she saw her dancing naked in the Forbidden Forest…”

The hallway blurred a little, as if Mum’s mind couldn’t remember the exact details of the next bit of conversation. Harry tried to force himself out of the memory, but he didn’t even know where to begin. He seemed to be paralysed inside Mum’s head, a passenger in a body that was not his own.

“I do not deserve this after what I said today,” said Severina, when the world righted itself again.

“Don’t make yourself more miserable, just because Heir Potter is the vilest toerag I’ve ever had the misfortune to share a House with,” scoffed Harry. “He should not have attacked you.”

“I do not know what set him off this time.” Severina’s voice wavered. “I wasn’t even in his way!”

“You did nothing. He’s the one who threatened to touch your hair; he’s the one at fault.” Harry began pacing the length of the hallway. “So much for Potter honour! If he thinks the verbal lashing I gave him today was too weak, then he’ll have another think coming!”

“Lilith.”

“Why, I ought to—if he wants a Courtship Date so badly, then I’ll accept Courtship Dates from everyone else besides him, that’ll drive him batty—”

“Lilith!”

“Joking again, Sevvy—” Harry’s voice cut off at the sight of Severina holding a wand to the top of her plait. “Sevvy, no! What about your magic?”

“I’ll ask Grandfather for a ring to put it in,” said Severina dully.

“Lord Prince would never agree,” breathed Harry.

“I’ll beg Lurch to sneak one.”

Harry could feel his lips stretching into that mischievous grin Mum liked to use when she snuck chip butties out from her old job for his lunch tomorrow.

“Severina Prince, you rebel,” he said, approvingly, before pulling out his—Mum’s—wand. “Here, let me.”

The dream blurred and shifted, shuffling through even more memories. Now Severina was clutching onto her plait, shining jet-black in the torchlight. Now Severina was standing in the doorway of the cottage at Godric’s Hollow, her expression cold and forbidding.

Now Severina was pinned to a beech tree by Dad’s wand, fear and rage warring across her face—

“I’m not so desperate that I would Bond with my family’s New Blood, you creep!” she shrieked.

Dad’s hazel eyes flared at that. “Well, it does take one to know one, doesn’t it, Snivellina?” he growled, and with a flash of his wand he had her plaited updo tumbling free like a rope down her shoulder.

“Stop it, Heir Potter!” bellowed Harry, lunging forward to try and wrest the wand from Dad’s hand, but a pair of hands on his shoulders jolted him back awake, and Ron’s concerned, freckled face swam into view.

“Another dream?” asked Ron, his voice hoarse. The sound of footsteps rushing down the stairs echoed on the other side of the wall.

“Yeah,” said Harry, sinking into his pillow. “If anyone asks, I’m fine.”

Ron poked his head out the bedroom door to report that to whoever had just come downstairs. Harry, however, lay awake for a little while longer, too terrified of what might be lurking in the spaces between his mind and Mum’s to go back to sleep.

Mum saw them off on the Hogwarts Express back to school the next morning. Her presence on the platform drew a lot of stares and whispers, but she ignored all of it in favour of hugging the living daylights out of Harry.

“You’ve got to be careful,” Harry told her, once she finally let him breathe. “Don’t accept any more poisoned pears, all right?”

Mum laughed. “Got it. I’ll stick to poisoned apples from now on.”

“Mum.” Harry wrinkled his nose. Mum reached up—since when had he grown so tall that she had to reach up?—and ruffled his hair.

“Don’t worry about me, love,” she teased. “I’m well-protected.”

Harry had a feeling she was referring to him eavesdropping on Severina for her. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to act around Aunt Sev anymore,” he admitted. “She poisoned you. On orders from Gaunt.”

“Orders that she couldn’t refuse,” Mum reminded him. “Did Uncle Sirius tell you what he promised he’d tell you?”

Harry nodded. Your… Aunt Sevvy made an agreement with Dumbledore years ago that she would help him when the time came to take Lord Gaunt down for good, Uncle Sirius had said on Christmas Eve, his grey eyes focused on the burn mark on the kitchen table. Dumbledore won’t tell us why, exactly, but they—and some of Dumbledore’s other contacts—are focused on the Gaunt ancestral home in Lancashire.

Silveryholt Manor, Harry had replied, to a nod from Uncle Sirius. So, what, are they trying to steal secrets from Gaunt’s campaign?

To some extent, Uncle Sirius had replied. But they’re looking past the election right now, to try and find something that will take Gaunt down once and for all.

And what’s that? Harry had wanted to know, but that had unfortunately been the extent of Uncle Sirius’ knowledge on the subject—or at least, the extent of what he was allowed to share with Harry. He smiled at Mum now, pretending that he was fine with the piddling information that the grown-ups had finally deigned to allow him to know, before taking a step back from her and hopping onto the train.

“Focus on your O.W.Ls, both of you,” instructed Mum, as Harry and Ron both poked their heads out the window of the scarlet train to wave goodbye. “And remember to talk to Hermione about what we discussed!”

“Yeah, take care!” Harry shouted back, as the train began to move. “Love you!”

As the platform ebbed from view, Ron slumped into the seat across from Harry, looking forlornly at the spot in the compartment where Hermione usually would’ve sat. “We’ve got to find out who Lady P is,” he declared, as Harry took out his now-modified Walkman.

Harry looped his headphones around his neck instead of putting them on. “What makes you say that?”

“Hermione doesn’t trust the Daily Prophet after the Rita Skeeter stuff,” Ron pointed out. “She’s not going to go to them with news this serious.”

“Lady P only writes about stuff at Hogwarts,” said Harry.

“Not only—didn’t she write something about the Candidates’ Dinner?” Ron tossed a couple Owl Treats at Pigwidgeon, who seemed to be getting jittery in his cage. “She clearly hates Umbridge and thinks the Circle’s full of gits; she’ll probably jump at the chance to expose a Pureblood lord or something.”

“She might not,” Harry pointed out. “Regulus seems to represent a lot of her interests, too.”

The door to their compartment slid open. Harry had been hoping against hope that it would be Draco, but instead it was Qiu Zhang, with her long black plait still adorned with a linen flower. “Could I sit here?” she asked quietly, dragging in her trunk and cage behind her.

Ron and Harry helped her hoist her trunk up into the luggage rack next to Harry’s. Qiu then took a seat next to Harry, placing her cage in the seat next to her. A very tiny brown owl—only slightly larger than Pigwidgeon—was sitting inside.

“His name is Kitty,” said Qiu, having noticed them staring at her owl.

Harry had never seen a bird that looked less like a cat. Ron, however, was the one who said that aloud, causing Qiu to giggle.

“Well, my dad thought he looked like a potato, so he wanted to name him Chip, and my mum thought he looked like her favourite singer, so she wanted to name him Andy, and then my aunt started calling him Kitty and the name stuck.” Qiu shrugged. “It’s from the Chinese word for ‘owl’: cat-headed eagle.”

“Mine’s named Pigwidgeon, which means Pigwidgeon,” said Ron. “Ginny named him,” he added hastily, his cheeks flaring.

Qiu giggled again, before settling back into her seat, fiddling with the end of her plait. Harry stared at the linen flower in her hair, and remembered, with a jolt, that this was her seventh and final month of mourning.

“What… what’re you doing here?” he asked.

“Mari and I aren’t talking to each other,” replied Qiu simply.

Ron made a slightly strangled noise at that. “Lavender mentioned your row at the Black-and-Silver Ball—” he began, but then cut off at Qiu’s growing scowl.

“Someday, Heiress Brown is going to say something that’s going to get her into serious trouble,” said the Ravenclaw vehemently, before subsiding into a more resigned look. “Did she know what it was about?”

Ron’s face grew even redder. “Something about… aspersions on your honour.”

Qiu huffed. “Right, well, Heiress Brown is now convinced that Heir Malfoy has lost his Bonding contract with the Greengrasses and is being set up with Lady Longbottom, of all people, so I wouldn’t consider her a very reliable source!”

Harry was glad he hadn’t been drinking anything. “Lady Longbottom!” he exclaimed.

“Why not Neville? He’s at least Malfoy’s age,” Ron pointed out.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Qiu, making a face at him. “But get this, Heiress Brown is also convinced that Heir Malfoy is secretly being courted by the heir to the ASKE potions empire, which—I’ve never even seen the two of them in the same room, so…”

Harry and Ron had both, unfortunately, seen the two of them in the same room several times. “That one’s not so far-fetched,” said Ron, “but it’s also not going anywhere. Malfoy’s being courted by someone else.”

Harry sent him a warning look. After the fiasco with Gary and Rose, surely Ron would think twice before telling someone else about him and Draco? But apparently the lure of Qiu’s interest was too great, because when the Ravenclaw leaned in with an expectant smile, Ron actually had the temerity to open his mouth like he was going to answer her.

Harry kicked him in the shins. Ron glowered at him, but got the hint.

“I… can’t say,” he grumbled, to Qiu’s obvious disappointment. “Anyway, how were your holidays? I beat Lord Malfoy at chess—wanna play another round?”

Qiu looked at Harry, as if hoping Harry would tell her what Ron would not. Harry shook his head, so she had to content herself with agreeing to a game of wizard’s chess. “It was fine,” she said flatly, as they set up the board together. “I spent Christmas with my dad. Mum went to the Black-and-Silver Ball with Master Diggory; she had fun, I think.”

“Yeah, Master Diggory greeted me at one point,” said Harry. He’d been a bit rude about it at the time, given that he’d been in a rush to get away from prying eyes, but hopefully Master Diggory didn’t think too much of it.

“He was glad to see you again,” said Qiu, “though he thought you looked a bit unwell, possibly out of worry for your mother.” She paused. “How’s she doing, by the way?”

Some movement at the compartment door drew Harry’s attention. Hermione was peering in through the glass, her hand raised as if about to knock. But then, upon seeing Qiu in the compartment, she seemed to think better of it, her expression crumpling as she stepped away.

Ron cleared his throat, and Harry quickly turned his attention back to Qiu. “She’s better now,” he said. “She’s out of hospital, at any rate.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Qiu smiled, before looking down at her pieces. “Pawn to E4.”

As the new term began, Hermione continued to ignore them. She said nothing at meals, did her homework in the library, and didn’t return to the common room until it was so late that there was no point in waiting up to ambush her. Ron even reported her giving him the silent treatment during prefect meetings, purposefully signing up for rounds with prefects from other Houses so that she wouldn’t have to spend time with him.

“At this rate, she’ll be dooming us both on the O.W.Ls,” he grumbled to Harry a couple mornings in, as they walked past a group of students gathered around the new policy wall. Over the winter holidays, Umbridge had taken the liberty of redecorating the entrance hall, mounting and framing all of her policies to make what Harry was sure was the second-most oppressive art exhibition in Britain. “Why’s she ignoring us, though? It’s not like we told Regulus to join the—”

“Shush,” said Harry, looking around at the other students. “Lady P could be listening.”

“Fat chance,” scoffed Ron. “It’s been a week already and no new leaflets. Surely she’s got enough news from the winter social season to report on?”

They made their way down to the dungeons for Potions class. “What’ve we figured out about Lady P from all the existing issues, anyway?” wondered Harry. “Astoria suggested that she wasn’t actually a lady because she had no discretion—”

“Lavender’s a lady, and you’ve seen what she’s like,” Ron pointed out.

Harry waved a hand. “People said she was protecting me during the stuff with McLaggen,” he continued. “So she’s not out to get me, which is a nice change.”

“She uses words like ‘wrongthink thoughtcrime’,” mused Ron. “Which are words I’ve never heard of. Could be some Muggle thing.”

“I’ve never heard it myself, either,” said Harry defensively. “I thought it was a wizard thing.”

There was a soft scoff from behind them, as Hermione and her armload of books arrived at Potions class. “Hermione!” exclaimed Ron, his face suddenly bright pink. “D’you happen to know where ‘wrongthink thoughtcrime’ comes from?”

“Maybe if you opened up more books, you’d know,” was Hermione’s scathing reply.

Theodore Nott, Harry’s Potions partner, was not at their workstation today. “Heir Nott is in hospital with the black cat flu,” said Severina before Harry even opened his mouth to ask. “You have either the choice of brewing the potion entirely on your own—which, while doable, I suspect may be beyond your powers of concentration—or to join another group.”

Harry beamed hopefully at her. “Could I join Draco and Neville, then?”

Severina looked as if she was warring with herself for a moment, before she turned back to the board to put up the instructions for the Babbling Beverage. “Do what you wish,” she flung at him from over her shoulder. “But I will be greatly disappointed if the three of you together cannot brew the potion correctly.”

If someone had told Harry back in first year that Draco Malfoy would be happier to see him than Neville Longbottom, he would probably have told them to pull the other one. And yet, today, that was exactly the response he got when he brought his cauldron over to their table. “Maybe I should ask Prince if I can join Ron and Goyle instead,” muttered Neville, while the corner of Draco’s mouth curled up in the Pureblood toff equivalent of a sh*t-eating grin.

“You wouldn’t do that; you’re terrified of Prince,” scoffed Draco.

“I would, if it would put some distance between me and… whatever you two are doing,” said Neville, grimacing.

“We’re just sitting,” said Harry incredulously.

“And setting up our cauldrons,” agreed Draco.

“And taking out our equipment,” added Harry.

“I’m going to go get the ingredients,” said Neville, rising from his seat. Draco immediately hopped to his feet to force Neville back down.

“Absolutely not. You stay put; I’ll get the ingredients,” he declared, before rushing to join the queue for the student stores. Harry waited for him to get out of earshot—not too difficult, given that general mayhem had broken out at three separate tables—before leaning in closer to Neville.

“I’m sorry for being a prick about the Creeveys,” he whispered. “I know you’re just doing the best you can for them.”

Neville pursed his lips. “Thanks, I guess,” he said, still looking a bit sullen. “Have you done something, then, about…?” he nodded towards the queue.

“My mimbletonia?” asked Harry. Neville nodded. “Did your gran tell you about what happened at the Black-and-Silver Ball?”

“She said he got snubbed,” said Neville, with a pointed look. “She had to dance the minuet with him, and he was weeping the whole time.”

Harry winced. “I did dance with him eventually,” he muttered, before trying to focus on copying down the instructions on the blackboard. “We danced three times. Happy?”

“I don’t think my happiness has got anything to do with it,” said Neville, and then, almost like an olive branch, added, “Don’t turn in early tonight, by the way. I overheard Seamus and Dean making plans, and, well.”

“Plans,” echoed Harry, frowning, before realisation dawned. “Oh. Seamus went crawling back to Dean, then?”

“I don’t think it’s proper,” said Neville, “but given all the new policies, I’m not surprised that they’d rather keep it in the dormitory than get caught elsewhere.”

“Shouldn’t they be more worried about the Maiden’s Kiss?” asked Harry, as Draco finally returned to their workstation with their ingredients.

“Dean’s unanointed,” said Neville.

“Good for him,” sighed Harry, as Draco handed him the valerian sprigs.

“What’s so commendable about being unanointed?” he asked, as he lit the cauldron and set a timer spell. Neville reached for the dittany, only for Draco to smack his hand away.

“You don’t have to worry about causing a Maiden’s Kiss,” said Harry. He finished chopping the valerian sprigs, and got handed some aconite roots to grind next.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about it, either, if you didn’t kiss someone with Bonding intent,” said Draco.

“That doesn’t explain how Lord Avery keeps managing to steal away debutantes who probably want nothing to do with snogging an old creep like him,” scoffed Neville.

Harry snorted. “Maybe the debutantes were put into Bonding contracts. Like the one between Draco and Lady Longbottom that Lavender’s been telling everyone about.”

Draco accidentally squeezed out too much dittany, causing a couple bright sparks to fly out of the cauldron. “Oh, f*ck off, Potter,” he grumbled, Vanishing the cauldron’s contents and starting over again. “What is wrong with Heiress Brown? First the stuff with you and Hermione, now this—”

“Consequences of who you dance the minuet with, I guess,” said Harry, grimacing.

“I don’t see her saying the same things about Lord Black and the Mother Weasel,” sneered Draco. The cauldron came to a boil soon after that—Draco had apparently set the flame higher this time—causing him to simmer it down again before adding in the correct amount of dittany. “Right. Six stirs clockwise, and then the aconite roots. Longbottom, mash three beetle eyes into a paste for the step after the valerian.”

Their Babbling Beverage must have been a success, because even the fumes afterwards made Harry feel loose-tongued. “Neville told me Seamus and Dean got back together, so you’d better steer clear of the dormitory tonight,” he told Ron as they made their way out of the dungeon just behind the rest of the class.

“Ugh, why can’t they do what everyone else does and take it to a broom cupboard?” complained Ron.

“Maybe you’ve got to be courting to get away with snogging in a broom cupboard,” said Harry thoughtfully. “I mean, if it puts you in danger of kissing with intent to Bond, and therefore forming a Maiden’s Kiss…”

Ron rolled his eyes. “For the umpteenth time, mate: I don’t need to hear about your twisted fantasies about Malfoy.”

“They’re not—” began Harry, only to cut off at the sight of a crowd of students gathered in the entrance hall around what appeared to be a new policy from Umbridge:

“Respectful Relations Between Witches and Wizards Policy,” a Ravenclaw girl was reading, as Harry and Ron passed by the crowd. “Licentious behaviour, defined here as all amorous interactions between un-Bonded witches, wizards, and mages that take place within seven inches of one another, is hereby banned. Public displays of affection within courting couples, including hand-holding, are also included in the definition of ‘licentious behaviour’.”

“She can’t be serious,” scoffed the Hufflepuff boy standing beside the Ravenclaw girl. “Even amongst courting couples?”

“Yeah, because then we’ll be spared the sight of you and Sarah snogging all over the castle,” retorted Padma Patil, crossing her arms.

The Hufflepuff boy rolled his eyes. “Bite me, Patil.”

“Bold of you to assume I want to put my mouth anywhere near you, Mr Stebbins.”

“Ooh, I wonder what Lady P will have to say about this,” gushed Lavender Brown, as she pushed her way past the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws to read the new policy. “I bet she’s brewing something up about this right now, alongside all the juicy winter hols gossip.”

“She always makes it so clear just how awful the policies are,” agreed Parvati Patil.

Her sister scoffed. “Awful? Madam Umbridge only wants to stop people from acting so shamelessly in public, Paru.”

“How’s anyone gonna be able to court anyone else if no one’s allowed within seven inches of each other?” asked Ron loudly, earning himself a glare from Padma as they made their way into the Great Hall.

“Well, I think you’ve got a point,” consoled Harry, as he pushed Ron past a glowering Cormac McLaggen on their way to the Gryffindor table. “How can you even tell if two people are holding hands with Bonding intent?”

“I bet we’ll be told to check every broom cupboard from now on,” said Ron glumly as they took their usual seats. “And measuring the distance between people who are just minding their own business…”

“It seems impossible to enforce,” mused Harry. “Just like the appearance policy. It’ll only be pulled out when Umbridge wants to punish someone she doesn’t like.”

“Blimey, Harry.” Ron looked winded. “You might be onto something there.”

“I think it’s what Lady P would point out, too,” said Harry vehemently. Was this how Hermione felt all the time? Maybe he should inhale Babbling Beverage fumes more often. “Umbridge’s last policy before the hols cracked down on clandestine courting as ‘illicit activity’, but now ‘licentious behaviour’ can be used against regular courting, too—and anything that could be suspected as courting!”

There was another light scoff nearby, as Hermione lowered her Arithmancy book. “Is that what you think Lady Polixenes should be writing about?” she asked in a low voice. “Courtships, and Umbridge trying to dictate courtship etiquette?”

Ron immediately bristled. “Really? That’s what you’re going to lead with after ignoring us for weeks?” he demanded.

“Lady P is a gossip leaflet,” added Harry. “Why wouldn’t she write about developments from the winter social season?”

“And give away how she spent her winter holidays?” snarked Hermione, before vanishing behind her book. After a couple seconds, she lowered it again. “Also, if you inhaled any Babbling Beverage fumes during class today, you might want to visit Madam Pomfrey.”

“Are you suggesting we’re talking rubbish?” snapped Ron, but Hermione was already returning to her previous cold shoulder by raising the book back over her face.

Tonight was Harry’s first Occlumency lesson, so after dinner he reported to the Customs and Etiquette classroom. On his way there, he tried to practise clearing his mind and putting up walls, but all of it felt useless and theoretical. Was it supposed to be like meditation? Like Jedi mind tricks? Were he and the other student about to do all sorts of menial chores for Professor Liu so that they could learn mental discipline?

The door to the Customs and Etiquette classroom was open. Based on the voices, Professor Liu and the other student were already inside. “These are the books we were able to pull from the tower at Aderrith Hall before it moved the library again,” Professor Liu was saying as he set down a stack of books on a desk. “Please get them back to Lady Jenni in a timely manner, lest the tower ghost makes good on his threat to put custard in our shoes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Draco, causing Harry to startle back from the doorway, his heart racing. “I appreciate you and Lady Jenni helping me with this—it’s really just some hunch that’s been bothering me since I finished reading Le Morte d’Arthur.”

Liu raised an eyebrow. “A hunch, Heir Malfoy?”

“So, Malory was pulling from French stories about King Arthur and Geoffrey of Monmouth, right?” Draco tapped thoughtfully at the books. “And those were pulling from an older version of the Tome of Avalon. But Geoffrey of Monmouth says King Arthur ruled during the sixth century, and I’m pretty sure Hogwarts was founded long after that…”

At that, Liu made an appraising noise. “And the Tome quite clearly states that Crown Prince Myrrdin Emrys, mage advisor of King Arthur, was a Slytherin?”

Draco nodded vehemently. “So why would Geoffrey of Monmouth say King Arthur lived during the sixth century?”

Liu looked contemplative for a moment, before gesturing to the books again. “I think there might be some Penruddock family records in here that could be of interest to you. And if you want to know more about the true age of Hogwarts, I do believe Professor Babbling is currently doing research on the castle’s wardstones…”

“I’ll have to ask her, then,” mused Draco, before turning to see Harry standing like a creep just outside the door. “Potter? What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for Occlumency,” replied Harry, stepping into the classroom. The desks had all been pushed to one side, to make room for a gramophone and a dance floor marked with arrows. The first-years must be learning the Enchanted Quadrille or something.

“I wasn’t told that I’d be having this class with someone else,” said Draco, frowning. “Do you even know what Occlumency is?”

Harry bristled. Draco didn’t have to talk to him like he was a petulant first-year. “I do,” he protested. “It’s the thing where you block people out of your mind.”

“It’s the thing where you seal your mind against external magical intrusion,” explained Draco, still with that condescending tone that was really putting a damper on Harry’s fantasies of the two of them wrapped up in a passionate Vulcan mind-meld. “When you form a magical bond with someone, you connect your mind to them in such a way that, if you don’t construct strong Occlumency shields, you can end up sharing thoughts and emotions with them.”

“I know that,” said Harry, sullen. “I talk with my mum over our familial bond all the time.”

Draco frowned. “Are you having some sort of issue with your familial bond, then, if you’re here to learn more advanced forms of Occlumency shielding?”

Harry cleared his throat, not sure how to break it to Draco that he hadn’t even learnt how to construct one of these Occlumency mind shield things in the first place. He was spared from having to do so, though, when Severina barged into the classroom and demanded that she be the one to teach him and Draco Occlumency instead.

“Both Heir Malfoy and Lord Potter are here with me by request,” said Liu coldly, as he tried to walk Severina back to the classroom door. “So, unless they wish to switch instructors, I do not think it necessary for you to go to such extra trouble.”

“Do you think I wish to spend my precious free time wandering around the castle offering Occlumency classes to dunderheads, Ryan?” demanded Severina, extricating his hand from her forearm like it was an oversized insect. “I am here by necessity as well. Lord Malfoy and Lily have both requested, in light of their respective circ*mstances, that I be the one to instruct their children in Occlumency.”

“Respective circ*mstances?” echoed Draco, with a wide-eyed look at Harry.

“High Lord—Lord Gaunt is a formidable Legilimens, and it is best that you train with someone who has considerable experience with Gaunt’s Legilimency,” replied Severina.

“Heir Malfoy approached me himself about these lessons,” said Liu bluntly. “Lily, too, for Lord Potter’s sake.”

“I rather think Lord Malfoy’s request takes precedence over his heir’s,” retorted Severina. “And Lily is capable of changing her mind, believe it or not.”

“But why wouldn’t she tell me beforehand?” demanded Harry.

“Did Father make the request in writing?” added Draco, with equal scepticism.

Severina scowled at both of them. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I won’t go unless I see confirmation in writing,” retorted Draco, crossing his arms. Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to see him pouting, too.

Liu moved forward, putting a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Are you sure Lily is fine with you risking your cover like this?” he asked Severina.

“As far as anyone else needs to know, Potter will be having remedial Potions with me,” replied Severina dryly. “He would certainly need it.”

Harry glared at her, and then at Draco, who had just muffled a laugh with the sleeve of his robe. Liu, on the other hand, still looked sceptical.

“But is Lily fine with it?” he needled.

At that, Severina’s eyebrow twitched. “…She believed it important for us to… clear the air.”

“Through Occlumency classes?”

Severina’s eyebrow twitched again, as if she hadn’t expected this amount of pushback from Liu. Perhaps Umbridge banning the Order and forcing him to cut his hair had made the Customs and Etiquette professor a lot less amiable than usual.

To Harry’s chagrin, Severina promptly switched tacks. “I fear you may have your work cut out for you, Ryan. Lord Potter is sorely lacking in even the most basic Occlumency skills, no thanks to his Muggle upbringing.”

Draco raised both of his eyebrows at Harry, who glowered back in reply, his face heating. Severina had no right to say that, especially not after half a year of alternating between ignoring his existence and berating him in class.

But Liu merely glanced at Harry sympathetically, before shaking his head. “I taught Jacques, Severina; if anyone is qualified to handle inexperienced Occlumency students, it would be me.”

“You have unfettered access to Bonnefoy’s mind,” Severina pointed out. “I had unfettered access to Potter’s childhood. There will be no surprises for me.”

Liu’s gaze darted sceptically over to Harry. “Harry, if you wish to go with Professor Prince—”

Harry was on the verge of shaking his head—especially looking at the protesting expression on Draco’s face—but Severina suddenly deciding to fight tooth and nail to teach him Occlumency after months of silence was now a thread he had to unravel. So with a shrug, he nodded and fell in step behind Severina as she swept from the Customs and Etiquette classroom.

Draco caught him at the door. “Put your thoughts in boxes,” he told Harry, his voice low and urgent. “It’s easier to clear your head if all your thoughts are all sorted into different boxes and closed up.”

Harry could have hugged him. “Thanks,” he said, before following Severina out of the warmly-lit Customs and Etiquette classroom.

By contrast, Severina’s office was cold and shadowed, even once the hearth had been lit. The bluebell flames cast an eerie, icy glow across all the various pickled creatures and slowly-brewing potions lining the walls. On Severina’s desk sat a familiar stone basin, swimming with silvery memories.

“What’s that for?” asked Harry, pointing at the Pensieve.

“Safeguards,” replied Severina. Harry wanted to know what she was safeguarding, but Severina held up a hand, and he fell silent. “We are going to be defending your mind against external intrusions, which means I will be performing Legilimency on you. There is a chance that your attempts to block me may result in you reversing the attack upon me. Hence, safeguards.”

“But I’m supposed to be learning how to block my mind off from Mum,” said Harry. “What’s that got to do with any external intrusion? Isn’t she already in my head because of the familial bond?”

Severina scoffed. “Your mother is not in your head, Potter. A magical bond is a passageway between your mind and hers. She has shielded off her side, but you have not. That is why when you are in distress, she is able to know what is happening through your bond.”

“So she’s able to read my mind at any time?” demanded Harry.

“Intention matters in magic, child,” retorted Severina. “You must intend to delve into someone’s mind; that is the point of Legilimency. Your mother chooses not to delve, but now she’s realising that her own shields can be compromised, which leaves you, in turn, vulnerable to her thoughts and emotions—”

“Compromised,” repeated Harry, with an angry twist of his gut. “And exactly who did the compromising here, Aunt Sev?”

Severina flinched. “It was necessary.”

“I thought you loved her,” snapped Harry. “Last I checked, you don’t poison the people you love.”

“Last I checked, Knights who defy orders from High Lord Slytherin end up dead,” countered Severina. “I would not be of use to your mother or Albus Dumbledore if I were dead.”

“So Gaunt ordered you to try and kill my mum?” hissed Harry. “Why couldn’t you get out of it?”

“I did,” said Severina. “Didn’t I tell you not to eavesdrop on my meeting with an old friend?”

Harry had suspected that there had been something afoot, the moment Mum thanked him for spying on Aunt Sev. Your warning gave me the extra time I needed to figure out the poison that had been used, she had told him, shortly after Healer Blackridge had taken her off the Ventilation Charm. You saved my life, Harry.

How convenient it had been that he had overheard Severina giving Heiress Avery the poison, and then been able to warn Mum through Uncle Sirius! How lucky they’d been that it was a poison that Mum could recognise before she lost consciousness! It was as if they’d dropped him like a lab rat into a maze, trusting that his instincts would further their plan against Gaunt…

“You used me,” said Harry, numbly.

“I did what I had to do,” replied Severina, her voice flat.

“You could’ve just told me.”

“And just exactly what do you think would happen to me, if High Lord Slytherin found out that I had met with you and told you my plan?” growled Severina. “Were you not listening earlier when I said that he was a formidable Legilimens? And that I, as someone foolhardy enough to have bound my soul to his in eternal vassalage, was the only one in this castle who has ever had to regularly protect my mind against his intrusions?”

“So? Then you could’ve just gone on protecting your mind or whatever! I just—I thought you trusted me, Aunt Sev!”

“I trusted you to do what you always do,” said Severina shortly, “and with that in mind, we train. Wand out, Potter.”

Harry drew his wand, still bristling at the betrayal. Severina, too, took out her wand from the folds of her dark shroud-like robes.

“I am going to attempt to break into your mind,” she instructed, “and you are going to try and repel me. You are welcome to defend yourself with whatever spells you know, but the main goal is to defend your mind against attack.”

Harry spluttered. “Okay, sure, but how?”

Severina pointed her wand at him. “Legilimens!”

Put your thoughts in boxes, Draco had told him, but Harry hadn’t even begun to sort through his thoughts, let alone box them up. The spell hit him like a slap to the face, sending him reeling backwards into a table full of cauldrons—

“There’s a difference, you know,” he said, in the voice of his eleven-year-old self, as he scrubbed at a cauldron in the Potions classroom side-by-side with Draco, “between calling someone a prat and hating them.”

“So you don’t hate me,” said Draco, his voice sceptical—but his face somehow, oddly, full of hope…

The memory blurred, and then Harry was twelve, flinging cream puffs and pudding at Draco across a well-appointed ballroom. The debutantes were fleeing, screaming for their hair and their ball gowns, but Draco was laughing, bright and joyful—a sound that Harry hadn’t remembered the first time around…

“Draco’s got a pash, Draco’s got a pash,” taunted Daphne Greengrass in the Slytherin common room, as Draco blushed and flung a green-tasselled pillow at her head. Harry himself could feel his own heart racing—he’d thought it had been indignation at the time, but now…

“How do you love something that you don’t believe exists?” asked Draco quietly, as the memory blurred, and Harry’s heart continued to race. They were both thirteen now, lying together in the dark, side-by-side. Draco’s hand was wintry-cold in his, with a long, wicked scar slashed across his palm—but when Harry ran his finger over it, soft and comforting, the way Draco had gasped at the touch had made his own heart so very full of spring…

No, thought Harry wildly, trying to pull himself free of the memory. You’re not watching this, Aunt Sev, it’s private—

He tugged harder, and this time his elbow hit the table, jolting him back into the office again. Severina’s brows were furrowed as she rubbed gingerly at her wrist, but at least her wand was lowered.

“Did you mean to cast the Stinging Hex?” she wondered, her voice wary.

“No!” exclaimed Harry. “It was an accident!”

“It was resistance,” said Severina flatly. “Too little and too late, but at least you resisted in the end. Keep using the voice. Push back when you are pushed. Legilimens!”

He was dancing with Draco now, under the snowy enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall. Draco was dressed like a prince from one of Mum’s period dramas, all clean dark blues and white, his silvery-blond hair tied in a low ponytail that fell just below his shoulder. Harry remembered how good the Slytherin had looked, waiting down in the entrance hall with Pansy on his arm—remembered how Draco had watched him descend the staircase like the prince waiting for Cinderella in a fairytale…

No, he thought, even as Draco’s face ventured closer to his on a snow-covered garden bench. No, get out, stop it—

Put it in a box, Draco’s voice cut in now. Clear your head, box it all up, don’t let her see…

With an enormous effort, Harry wrenched himself off of the snow-covered bench, and then promptly fell onto the unforgiving dungeon floor. Severina’s nostrils were flared with frustration as she lowered her wand, watching Harry as he slowly staggered back to his feet.

“Your memories seem to have a common thread,” she remarked.

“How much did you see?” wondered Harry, rubbing gingerly at his forehead. It ached in ways he didn’t even know it could ache.

“Enough,” was Severina’s unsettling reply. “You are letting your emotions get the better of you. Wearing your heart out on your sleeve like this makes you vulnerable to people like High Lord Slytherin.”

“I’m not the one bonded to him,” grumbled Harry. “I’m not trying to defend my mind against Gaunt; I’m just here to protect Mum—”

“There’s a reason why Lord Malfoy also requested that his heir learn more advanced Occlumency techniques,” interrupted Severina. “Do you think High Lord Slytherin will ignore the shot you’ve fired across his bow this past Christmas? The prized pawn that you’ve promoted into a queen under his nose? If what you feel for Heir Malfoy is only a schoolboy’s infatuation, then you have put his entire family in incredible danger for nothing.”

“Why does Draco need to block his mind to Gaunt, though?” demanded Harry. “His dad’s the Knight of Camelot, not him!”

Severina froze. “You do not know that for sure,” she scoffed.

“Hermione saw something,” insisted Harry. “She saw Reg’s Mark, too. They had a big row about it.”

At that, Severina’s hand drifted to her forearm, and her brows furrowed in calculation. Harry was tempted to try Legilimens himself, just for a glimpse of whatever she was brewing up in her head.

But after a moment, Severina shook her head, taking a step back from him. “I think this is enough for tonight,” she muttered. “I expect you here again next Wednesday, is that understood?”

“Yes,” said Harry, sullen.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, Aunt Sev.”

“Yes, Professor Prince,” corrected Severina.

Harry repeated the correction half-heartedly, and fled from her office with no small amount of relief.

On his way out of the dungeons, he ran into Draco. “How was remedial Potions?” teased the Slytherin, raising his eyebrows. Harry only had to look at him before all the memories Severina had dug up in Occlumency were flashing before his mind’s eye again.

With his face feeling like it had caught fire, Harry quickly rushed past Draco for the stairs, eager for the first time in ages to put some physical distance between them.

Harry was dreaming of a hallway at Hogwarts hung bright with paper lanterns, their soft golden glow illuminating a younger Severina’s face as she stood awkwardly in an alcove, clutching a cup of dirigible plum blancmange in her trembling hands.

“There’s someone I like,” said Harry in Mum’s voice, as he kicked her dragonhide loafers against the stone floor. Down the hallway, the sound of music and laughter was filtering out of an open office door. Mum and Severina must have stolen away for a quiet conversation. “Someone I’ve liked for a long while. And even though they’ve made mistakes, even though they’re imperfect, I just wish they could see how dear they are to me.”

Harry didn’t know what Mum had felt at this time, but perhaps she’d had a stomach full of worms, because he, too, felt the same. He glanced back at the younger Severina, who was trying to hide her pallid face behind her stringy, short hair. In every fairytale Harry knew, she would’ve been the perfect wicked witch, and yet the way her face softened whenever she looked at Mum made her so much more than that.

“We haven’t always been close here at Hogwarts,” he continued in Mum’s voice, as Severina looked away from her, a spot of pink appearing high in her cheeks, “and for a while we didn’t even see eye-to-eye. But they’re not so bad when you get to know them.”

The memory blurred, and now Harry was standing in a train corridor, his hand extended to Draco… now Harry was holding his wand aloft for Draco as he carved runes onto the hinges of Scabbers’ travelling cage… now Harry was pinning Draco’s cloak for him, and pressing the other boy’s fingers to his lips…

“Do you think they know how I feel?”

Harry was lying in bed, Draco’s letter clutched to his chest… Harry was standing in the middle of the Room of Hidden Things, Draco’s plait bound around his wrist with a pale blue ribbon… Harry was sliding a twisting constellation of opals into Draco’s hair, his fingers trembling…

“Do you think they would care for me, if I told them that I cared for them?”

The dirigible plum blancmange was floating away from the younger Severina’s nerveless fingers. Her expression had grown more and more haggard the more Harry-as-Mum talked, like an autumn leaf slowly decaying on the ground.

“Don’t be absurd, Lilith,” she said after a moment. “Potter’s cared for you since first year. If you’ve grown to care for him, too, then at least do me the decency of not rubbing it in my face.”

The words felt like a blow to Harry’s gut, like they must have felt to Mum the first time she’d heard them. “I wasn’t—I didn’t mean—” he began, before the hurt made him stagger backwards, away from Severina’s withering expression. “I wasn’t rubbing anything in your face, Sev.”

“You don’t have to play coy,” sneered Severina. “I don’t understand how you can forgive Potter so quickly for what he did to me, but I guess it’s a lot easier when you’re the one he adores beyond all reason.”

The hurt soured into anger, into frustration. The memories blurred: now Severina was scolding him for burning the toast—now Severina was holding him at arm’s length as he cried, her expression suffering—now Severina was telling the Triwizard judges ‘not to underestimate Mr Potter’s determination to cross lines when it suits him’—

“Potter, you are not trying hard enough!” scolded the current Severina, and the memories all pulled back to show her dungeon office once again. Harry was on all fours, his breath coming in panicked bursts, while Severina paced in front of him with an irritation she usually only reserved for Neville, Crabbe, and Goyle. “You didn’t even give me a hint of resistance this time. At this rate, you’ll be handing out information on your loved ones to anyone with a wand and the slightest inclination to go flipping through your head!”

Harry gritted his teeth. “Clearing your mind’s not exactly easy if you’ve never done it before!” he spat.

“It’s a matter of discipline,” scoffed Severina. “You are not a child anymore; you must control yourself. You must rule your emotions, not let them rule you!”

“Do you think I want to have Draco in my head?” demanded Harry, stung. “Do you think I want to watch you rejecting Mum? I’m not like you—I can’t just turn off my emotions like a tap!”

“Then you leave yourself vulnerable!” snarled Severina, brandishing her wand at him. “Up! Back on your feet! You are not leaving this office until you push back against me with your mind. Legilimens!”

It was just before curfew when Harry was finally released from the dungeons. He staggered back up to Gryffindor Tower, exhausted and near tears. Was Occlumency always going to be this difficult? How was Ron able to do it against his entire family, while he himself can barely even push Aunt Sev out of his head?

“What’s the matter with you? Some girl break your heart?” wondered the Fat Lady as he approached her portrait.

“Alea iacta est,” replied Harry, grimacing.

“Oh, fine, don’t tell me,” sniffed the Fat Lady, swinging open with a distinct grumpiness. “I’m sure I’ll find out sooner or later.”

Hermione was writing something in her usual armchair by the fire, though when Harry approached her, she quickly slammed the book she’d been using as a writing surface shut. “Don’t stop doing your homework on my account,” said Harry waspishly as he leaned over the back of a nearby sofa. “Got kicked out of the library, then?”

“Apparently librarians need to sleep, too,” replied Hermione, stuffing the book into her bag. It made a disturbingly loud ‘clunk’ as it hit the countless other books inside.

“Oh, so you’re the reason Madam Pince looks more vulture-like than usual.” A bolt of pain jolted up into his forehead, causing Harry to wince and rub his temples. Hermione immediately set down her ink bottle again, scrambling over to the sofa.

“Harry, what’s wrong?”

Harry flinched back from her hands. “Maybe you’d have known sooner if you hadn’t been ignoring me and Ron for the past several weeks,” he growled.

“I was busy with something,” said Hermione, her brows now crinkled with worry. “Please, Harry, I’m sorry for ignoring you and Ron. Do you need a headache cure? We could go see Madam Pomfrey—”

“I’m fine.” Harry came around to sit on the sofa, putting his head in his hands. “It’s just… remedial Potions. Side effect of a potion that I had to brew.”

Hermione frowned harder. “Have you told Prince about it?”

Harry had never wanted to see Severina less. His unwillingness must have shown on his face, though, because Hermione sighed and sat down beside him.

“Well, you should at least write to your mum about it. Maybe she’ll tell Prince to stop.”

“Or she’ll send me back for seconds,” grumbled Harry.

“You don’t know that.”

“Have you gone to McGonagall about Umbridge, then?”

Hermione’s nostrils flared briefly, before she sighed and shook her head. “There’s no point,” she sighed. “If Liu couldn’t get through to the Board of Governors, then I highly doubt McGonagall will.”

“What about Dumbledore?”

“He’s a busy man,” replied Hermione flatly. “And since the Board can suspend him, too, I don’t think he’d want to put his own job on the line for a couple detentions. I’ve found that putting the numbing cream on the back of my hand before I go in helps a lot with the pain.”

“You shouldn’t have to think like that,” insisted Harry, taking her hands. They were still as dark and smooth as ever, with nothing to show for all the pain that she had endured.

The bells marking the start of curfew began to ring, just as the portrait hole slammed open again to admit Ron and Ginny. “Smith is as dirty a player as the Slytherins, I tell you,” Ron was hissing as the two of them doffed their cloaks and loosened the laces on their Quidditch boots. “I can’t keep track of him; you’re gonna have to run interference if you see him doing one of those back-goal shots.”

“I can’t block the goalposts for you, Ronnie,” scolded Ginny. “Summerby’s no Diggory, all right, but he’s still a decent Seeker. I’m gonna have my hands full.”

“I’m just grateful we’ve already played Slytherin,” grumbled Ron. “Would hate to go up against the new dream team of Parkinson and Malfoy without Harry there.”

“Harry lost to Pansy the one and only time he flew a game against her,” said Ginny snarkily. “So have a bit more faith in your baby sister, all right?”

Ron opened his mouth to argue further, but then saw Harry and Hermione over by the fire. He bade good night to Ginny, who stomped on ahead to the girls’ dormitory, before taking Hermione’s usual armchair by the fire. Hermione winced as the melting snow on his robes dripped all over the upholstery.

“What?” Ron glared at her. “Were you sitting here?”

“I was,” agreed Hermione stiffly.

“Sorry.” Ron unrepentantly leaned back further in the chair, crossing his legs. “Finally decided to talk to us again, then?”

“She was busy with something,” said Harry.

Ron scoffed harder. “Too busy to talk to her friends during meals, then? Too busy to do prefect rounds with me?”

“I’m sorry!” exclaimed Hermione. “I thought—I thought maybe the two of you—or at least Harry—had known about Reg this whole time, and never bothered telling me!”

“Well, we didn’t!” Ron threw up his hands. “And you’d have figured that out if you’d bothered asking us, instead of overthinking it with your big, dumb brain and jumping to conclusions!”

“I was going to!” Hermione looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I thought we’d have a chat on the train, but…” She glanced at Harry, before wiping absently at her eyes and shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. I just can’t believe I really thought once we elected Regulus, all of these problems would just… go away. I can’t believe I thought he would be the solution, when he’s just as dirty as the rest of them!”

“Hermione, he’s not Gaunt,” Harry tried to point out, but she sprang to her feet in clear agitation.

“He’s not Gaunt, but that vassal bond connects him to Gaunt,” she hissed. “Remember what you saw happening to Greengrass in first year?”

“Gaunt was draining her magic,” said Harry flatly. “Like Astoria’s attacks on Draco, Justin, and the others.”

“A vassal bond only gives magic from the vassal to the bond-holder,” agreed Hermione. “It also gives Gaunt some access to his followers’ minds, just like your familial bonds.”

“He only has Pureblood vassals,” Ron pointed out. “All of them would be decent at Occlumency. You kinda have it by default in most Pureblood families—”

“—Because you’re used to having magical bonds with each other, yes, I know.” Hermione rubbed at her temples. “But—as Harry’s mum just proved—Occlumency shields can fail. What if the moment Regulus becomes Minister for Magic, Gaunt attacks him? Or blackmails him into doing his bidding under threat of draining his magic? What are we going to do then?”

“It’s a magical bond; it’s got to be Sever-able,” Harry pointed out.

“But if Severances could work on it, then why hasn’t Regulus got one already?” demanded Hermione. “Why has he got to meet in secret with Lord Malfoy and Karkaroff?”

“Is that why Krum was at the ball?” demanded Ron. “Because of Karkaroff?”

“Yes, but Karkaroff showed up the next morning, after you’d all left for the football match,” said Hermione miserably. “I… I overheard him and Lord Malfoy and Regulus; Regulus said he was working on contingencies and suggested Lord Malfoy do the same…”

Do you think High Lord Slytherin will ignore the shot you’ve fired across his bow this past Christmas?

“That’s why Lord Malfoy wanted Severina to teach Draco Occlumency.”

The words came tumbling out before Harry could stop them, and though clapping his hands to his mouth did nothing to take the words back, he still tried to do it all the same. Both Ron and Hermione looked at him oddly, as if trying to ask how he had found out about this. Harry merely shook his head, rubbing at his temples.

“The Black-and-Silver Ball, remember? People kept commenting on how odd it was to see the Malfoys sharing a room with the Weasleys…”

“A couple family friends did point that out to me, yeah,” agreed Ron.

“If no one at the party was expecting Lord Malfoy to support Reg, then Gaunt definitely wouldn’t have expected it either, especially if he was counting on the votes of all of his vassals and maybe even their families—”

“And if he drains Lord Malfoy in retaliation—if the head of house loses their magic, then that’s the end of the family magic, too,” breathed Ron, suddenly paling under his freckles. “They could lose everything, Harry: centuries of family magic, the wardstone protecting the Manor, their social status with all the perks…”

“But none of that would matter if Uncle Reg got elected,” Harry insisted. “If he supports all Muggleborns, then he’d support any Most Ancient House whose head loses their family magic. That’s what he meant by offering a ladder, to try and get people out. And that’s why we can’t do anything that would jeopardise his chances of getting elected.”

He looked pointedly up at Hermione, who looked back at him with a wavering expression for all of a couple minutes, before she whirled back around to the armchair to pick up her bags and inkwell.

“Gaunt is fourth in the polls,” she pointed out. “Turns out not a lot of people in New Avalon like his particular brand of lunacy, either. But I’m not going to sit here and let Regulus compromise the work we’ve done just because he feels bad for his old friends. The Muggleborn community deserves better than that.”

“But if we can find some way to get rid of the vassal bond—” began Harry, but Hermione was already shaking her head, heading towards the stairs.

“I don’t see the point in trying to recruit the Malfoys, Harry, I really don’t. They don’t betray their own, fine. But that means they’d betray everyone else for each other.”

She fixed him with a hard, piercing stare. Harry felt a bit pinned down in his seat, wanting to look away and yet inexplicably unable to.

“Are they really the kind of allies we want in this fight? Is their money worth the fickleness and the cowardice?”

“I bet Gaunt’s thinking the exact same thing right now,” mused Ron.

Hermione glared at him. “Never compare me to that murderer again,” she ground out, before stalking off up the stairs to the girls’ dormitory.

With Hermione talking to them again, however grudgingly, life at Hogwarts fell back into its old routine. Classes, homework, meeting with Severina in her office. Except instead of check-in teas, this time it was Occlumency classes, and Harry still couldn’t get the hang of it no matter how hard he tried. He was starting to dread Wednesday evenings, and he didn’t even have Quidditch to take his mind off of how miserable he was.

Umbridge, too, was contributing to his—and the rest of the school’s—ongoing misery. Even though more and more people were getting caught for violating her policies, none of them seemed willing—or able—to talk about their punishments. The hallways were now silent, with students hurrying to classes at respectful distances from their friends and classmates. All the girls seemed to spend countless hours making sure their hairstyles were up to code. No one wanted to be caught even accidentally stepping out of line, and the fact that no one knew exactly who was in the Inquisitorial Squad only added to the atmosphere of fear.

Harry still remembered how gloomy the castle had been back in third year, when the Dementors had been stationed at the school. It really said something about Umbridge that he would rather have the Dementors back.

“Finally, some blessed normalcy,” sighed Ron on the night of a DA meeting, as they stepped into the Room of Hidden Things. Tonight, Blaise Zabini had got to the room first, and had transformed it into a close facsimile of a covered terrace in an Italian seaside villa. Harry liked it; the sound of the waves and the cries of the gulls were very soothing, and the late summer warmth was also an added bonus.

“This is normal for you, Weasley?” asked Blaise from where he was sprawled out on a wicker sofa, poring over some sort of O.W.L. revision guide.

“Well not this,” said Ron, a bit defensively. “Just generally not having to act like Umbridge is breathing down our necks for a bit.”

“She is breathing down our necks,” Millicent Bulstrode pointed out. She was sharing the wicker sofa with Blaise, trying (and failing) to stop her cat from chewing her parchment note cards. “We wouldn’t be stuck in the Room of Hidden Things like a bunch of hidden things if she wasn’t.”

Most of the students in the DA were fifth-years, and it seemed like everyone had decided to start revising for the O.W.Ls the moment the winter holidays were over. Harry soon found himself on a bench out by the terrace wall, trying to finish up an essay on wardstones for Babbling. A couple feet away, Hermione was lying on a chaise lounge with a pair of sunglasses on, quizzing Ron with her own deck of parchment cards.

“You’re still on the wardstone essay?” wondered Draco as he sat down on the bench next to Harry. Harry stiffened a bit, causing the Slytherin to laugh. “I’m not judging… much. But that thing took me five hours to write and it’s due tomorrow.”

Harry winced. “I’m kind of winging it?” he admitted.

“I can tell.” Draco leaned in to read what he was writing. “I mean, wardstones aren’t found everywhere in the world. Chinese wizarding families keep their magic in a special bronze cauldron, for example.”

“Something you uncovered during your research, is it?” wondered Harry as he scratched out the now-inaccurate phrase.

“Well, Liu and I have got plenty to talk about during Occlumency class,” said Draco, shrugging. “What about you and Severina?”

Harry pursed his lips, his face burning. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Draco sighed. “I’m sorry if I was out of order for the remedial Potions thing,” he offered. “It’s not my place to pry.”

Harry considered the apology for a moment. It really didn’t make the heat in his face go down. “Well, I’m pants at it,” he hedged.

“Everyone’s pants at it when they start,” said Draco dismissively.

“Most people aren’t fifteen when they start,” countered Harry, jabbing his quill to make an entirely too-vicious full stop at the end of his next sentence. “Bet it’s like riding a bike: easier to learn when you’re a kid.”

“Also easier if you haven’t got a lot in your cauldron to start with,” agreed Draco, with a slight crinkle in his brow as he looked at Harry. Harry had the urge to run his thumb over it and smooth it back out.

“How’d your parents teach you? Ron said it was just a habit he picked up—was it like that with you? Or did Lord Malfoy probe around in your head until you learnt to throw him out?”

Draco scoffed. “Probe?” he echoed. “You make it sound like he stuck his wand into my brain, Potter. It’s not like that. You’re supposed to learn how to calm yourself, separate yourself from your thoughts and memories—”

“Put it in a box, clear it up?” finished Harry. “Yeah, no, that’s still about as clear as mud from where I’m at right now.”

“Memories are filled with emotions, aren’t they?” Draco’s gaze flickered briefly across the room over to where the second-years were chasing each other with slap bracelets. “You use the happy ones for Patronuses. But you’ve got to feel the happiness—you’ve got to put yourself back into the centre of that memory before you use it. Occlumency is the opposite. You can’t be in the centre; you’ve got to look at it down from above so that you can box it up and put it away.”

“But they’re my memories. How do I look down from above if it’s my memory?” demanded Harry.

Draco opened his mouth as if to answer that, only to be interrupted by Malcolm Baddock nearly crashing into their bench, accidentally smacking his slap bracelet against Draco’s wrist. It made a loud rooster noise as it curled up.

“Heir Malfoy!” shrieked the second-year, white as a sheet. “I’m so sorry! Please don’t curse me!”

“Two points from Gryffindor,” said Draco, peeling the bracelet off his wrist and shoving it back into the second-year’s hands. Malcolm Baddock immediately bolted off as though his very life depended on it.

Harry’s jaw dropped. “Why Gryffindor? He’s a Slytherin!”

Draco smirked at him. “Why didn’t you stop him before he hit me, Potter? So much for chivalry.”

“Oh, sod off.” Harry lightly nudged him.

Draco nudged back, before glowering over at the younger students. “Must be nice, not having to think about O.W.Ls.”

“Your parents expecting you to get straight-Os?” asked Harry.

“It would be preferable.” Draco shrugged. “Being provably competent at magic is the bare minimum.”

Harry shook his head. “You’re definitely more than just competent. If it weren’t for Hermione and Theo Nott and, like, a third of Ravenclaw, I think you’d be top of the class.”

Draco snorted. “You certainly know how to compliment a boy, Potter.”

“I can’t help that you’re not a swot,” protested Harry.

“I’m literally assisting Professor Babbling with her research.”

“You’re like half a swot,” insisted Harry. “You only get swotty in certain situations. Like a werewolf, but instead of trying to bite people you go to the library.”

Draco laughed at that, and for a brief, burning moment, all Harry could think about was waking up to such a sound every morning. Opening his eyes to Draco’s smile, finding ways to make Draco laugh while he pulverised the butter on his toast, walking through a home filled with happy memories of the two of them—all of that, somehow, now felt like the bare minimum, like proving himself reasonably competent at magic.

The memories he’d rediscovered in Occlumency swam back to the surface again, setting Harry’s face ablaze once again. Suddenly agitated, he set his essay aside and rose to his feet, crossing to the terrace railing to look out at the imitation Italian seaside.

(It was a very good illusion. If it weren’t for the gulls flying on a loop, he’d almost think it was real.)

He heard rather than saw Draco join him. “Now you know why I kept avoiding you after the Yule Ball,” joked the Slytherin. “Every time I saw your face I thought you could see exactly how I felt. Myrtle had to talk me out of hiding in the Slytherin dormitories until June.”

Harry suddenly remembered, to his increasing chagrin, Myrtle teasing him about Draco’s increasingly harebrained plans to get Harry to notice him. “Oh my god,” he groaned, putting his head in his hands. “You did want to climb a tree after all.”

“Merlin, I wish you could hex a ghost,” muttered Draco, bumping his shoulder against Harry’s. Harry’s hopeless stomach swooped at the feeling, even though it was just the barest of touches.

After a moment, Draco spoke up again. “Well, now that Father is in talks with Lord Black, perhaps… perhaps we could also spend more time together?”

Harry nodded, his mouth a bit too dry for words at the moment. Draco smiled at him in reply, reaching out to tug Harry’s pinky with his own. Harry’s Snitch-like heart was now fluttering madly against his ribcage, as he turned towards the boy he was—in spite of everything that lay in between them—courting?

“Do you honestly think you can fool people into thinking this is a real Lady Polixenes leaflet?!” Hermione’s voice suddenly demanded from behind them. Harry turned, only to see her brandishing a parchment leaflet in Lavender Brown’s face. “It’s got none of her usual wit!”

“Well, that’s just your opinion!” protested Lavender. “I think this one is plenty witty!”

“This issue’s a lot nicer than usual,” mused Hannah as she turned the leaflet over. “None of the usual ranting about Umbridge, or airing people’s dirty laundry. Megan Jones is still devastated about Lady P ruining her courtship with Oliver Rivers, you know.”

“Maybe Madam Jones should’ve thought about her daughter’s Bonding prospects before she donated to the political campaign of a lying madman,” said Qiu, rolling her eyes.

“Bold words from someone Lady P has just exposed as having designs on Lord Potter,” remarked Lavender.

Qiu groaned. “Harry and I are friends. Mari’s just jealous and talking rubbish.”

“So that wasn’t you hugging him at the end of last meeting?” Lavender shot back. “Or going on secret walks with him around the lake?”

“Or sitting with him and Weasley on the train back?” added Astoria in equally innocent tones.

Harry cleared his throat, causing everyone to look over at both him and Draco. “Sorry,” he said, with an awkward wave. “What’s all this about?”

Lavender flicked her wand, and a copy of the leaflet flew over to them. Draco took it, scowling as he skimmed through the words. Harry tried to read it, too, but unfortunately Draco was much faster at it than him.

“This isn’t written by the same author as the others,” announced the Slytherin once he’d finished, pushing the parchment into Harry’s hands. “Lady Polixenes might be abrasive and unsubtle, but at least she reports on the truth. I don’t know what happened at the Yule Ball, but I do know the item about me in this issue is untrue.”

Harry skimmed faster. A couple items down, he found it: The silver dragon-knight flies no longer! Sources report a certain vigilant heir was spotted doing an amorous minuet with an august older lady of a valiantly reputable Pureblood House, perhaps in anticipation of an upcoming Bonding. But all may not be well… this very same heir was spotted wearing the token of a secret admirer… perhaps a courtship gift from a certain potioneering scion from the distant lands of Norwegia…

“You know, Draco, I do recall hearing something about you being spotted in Hogsmeade with the Norwegian potioneering heir,” said Astoria, tilting her head.

Draco scoffed. “Firstly, they’re Swedish. Secondly, just because I was spotted in Hogsmeade with someone doesn’t mean I’m courting them. And thirdly, just because I did the minuet with Lady Longbottom doesn’t mean I’m set to be Bonded to her!”

“Oh, it doesn’t?” Astoria raised a scornful eyebrow. “Good. It would be such a shame if you were caught in breach of our contract.”

She glanced pointedly at Harry. Harry’s hackles rose, but Draco’s hand on his forearm quickly stopped him from storming across the room.

“Asta, maybe you should save this for somewhere more private,” suggested Luna.

“Lord Draco has not humoured any of my requests for a private audience,” said Astoria flatly, as she glared daggers at the two of them. “He would rather humiliate the both of us by having this conversation in public instead of where it properly belongs.”

“At least then I will be guaranteed witnesses in case you attempt anything,” Draco shot back, his fingers now digging into Harry’s arm.

“If the thought of being alone with me—even in the company of a chaperone—is so intolerable to you, then why have you not voided the contract?” demanded Astoria. “What honour is there in dragging this shambling corpse of an arrangement any further?”

“And set you and your sister free to prey upon other young heirs of New Avalon?” sneered Draco. “I think not.”

At that, Astoria swiftly rose to her feet. “I know I have wronged you, my lord,” she began, striding over to where Draco was—though Harry suspected he’d insist he wasn’t—cowering half-hidden behind Harry. “I have apologised and offered recompense through an Act of Contrition. And yet you still insist on hanging this contract over my family—dishonouring me and my sister—”

“I haven’t dishonoured you any more than you’ve already dishonoured yourself,” retorted Draco.

“The longer this goes on, the more torturous it gets for all of us!” protested Astoria. “Can’t we just make a clean cut of it and move on?”

“That’d be doing you a favour, as if I’d forgiven you,” spat Draco. “I would sooner be run over by a train than forgive you.”

“As the heiress said to Merlin,” remarked Fred, cutting through the tension with a chorus of groans.

“Oh, f*ck off!” Draco sent him a rude gesture. “How is that a double entendre?!”

Fred raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”

“No!” shouted Ron, before Draco could say anything. “Merlin, Fred! There are kids here!”

At that, Fred quickly put up his hands. “Look, I’m just saying that I support Heir Malfoy having some fun before he gets Bonded, that’s all,” he said, as he came over and slapped Draco on the back. “Not a crime, is it?”

“Well, that was a crime,” muttered Draco, with a half-hearted glower at Fred.

“Wait, how would you have fun before Bonding if you’ve been anointed?” demanded Colin Creevey from where he was covering Ginny’s arms in bracelets. “What about the Maiden’s Kiss and stuff?”

“Yeah, don’t talk rubbish, Fred,” said Ginny. She giggled as the next bracelet turned her bright yellow. “Kissing without Bonding intent is one thing, but aren’t you going to be ineligible for Bonding if you… do it beforehand?”

“Not unless you do it Muggle-style,” called Seamus Finnigan, causing everyone to turn to where he’d been sitting with Dean Thomas half in his lap.

“…Muggle-style?!” ventured Hannah weakly, looking between the two Gryffindor boys.

“It’s just a rumour we heard,” demurred a heavily-blushing Dean.

“There’s nothing to it,” countered Seamus brightly. “All you’ve got to do is pop a condom on before you ride. They’re these wee rubber things that go over your, you know, your wand, and you can get them at a Muggle chemist or send for some via the Boudoir Secrets Owl Order—”

“Don’t tell people where to get them!” protested Ron.

“Why not? Shouldn’t more people know that you can’t Bond if you don’t actually leave a bit of yourself inside the other person?”

“Seamus!” groaned Ernie, Hannah, and Ron all together.

“Mr Finnigan!” exclaimed an especially-scandalised Astoria as she gingerly removed her hands from her ears. “Of all the boorish, licentious—I can’t believe you would put such defiling mental images in the minds of innocent young witches! You could very well have traumatised one of us for life!”

“Jesus Merlin Christ, Asta, stop being such a drama queen,” scoffed Ginny.

“But this is serious!” insisted Astoria, turning to face the rest of the room. “Purity of mind is just as important as purity of body in the creation of a Mother Magic-honouring Matrimonial Bond. Every time you engage in thoughts of intimacy with people who aren’t your future Bonded, you’ll leave bits of your magic on theirs like stray Kneazle hairs!”

Hermione coughed in a way that suggested she was trying to hide her laughter. “Is that… is that what your aunt told you?” she ventured in a rather high-pitched voice. “Shouldn’t you of all people know it takes a lot more effort to touch someone else’s magic?”

“Look out, Hermione, or else Miss Junior Anti-Sex League here’ll arrest you for wrongthink thoughtcrimes against your future lord-husband,” mocked George.

“Well, some people don’t want to hear about Bonding loopholes in graphic detail!” spluttered Ron.

“Given the stuff you write about in your dream diary, though, I’m surprised that you’re one of them,” remarked Ginny, causing Ron to throw a ball of parchment at her.

By the time the DA meeting was ending, most people were still speculating about the new Lady Polixenes leaflet. Fred and George were collecting the slap bracelets from their testers, though anyone who wanted to keep theirs had to cough up four Sickles. Harry was still trying to finish his Runes homework, but to very little success.

“Are you going back to Gryffindor Tower soon?” asked Qiu as she approached his bench.

“Not yet,” said Harry apologetically. It was odd to see her without Marietta glaring at him from over her shoulder.

“The next Hogsmeade weekend is in March,” continued Qiu, biting her lip hopefully. “If you haven’t got any plans, then maybe…?”

Harry looked over at the wicker sofa, where Draco was standing, stone-faced, as Astoria complained at him about his mother’s choice of jewellery at the Candidates’ Dinner, of all things.

“It’s a bit early to make plans, isn’t it?” he wondered.

Qiu sighed, and Harry’s heart lurched a bit to see that her expression had noticeably fallen. “Yeah,” she conceded after a moment. “Bit early. Actually, maybe I should keep my distance for a bit, with all the stuff Mari’s been saying…”

“She’s just jealous,” said Harry, with an anxious glance over to where Astoria was still complaining at Draco. Thankfully, Luna was already pulling Astoria away to join the rest of the departing Ravenclaws. “She hasn’t got the right to stop you from talking to whoever you want.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Qiu sounded a bit more heartened at that. “I’ll see you around, then, Harry?”

Harry nodded, waving goodbye at Luna as the Ravenclaws all departed. He turned back to his essay, then, only to be distracted by the sound of Draco testing out one of Fred and George’s slap bracelets.

Smack. The bracelet made an elephant noise. “This is so puerile,” said the Slytherin, folding the bracelet back out and then smacking his wrist with it again. This time, it made a pig noise.

Harry chuckled. “And yet you’re playing with it.”

“Do you think tonight’s leaflet was truly written by Lady Polixenes?” wondered Draco.

Harry scoffed. “Absolutely not. I don’t think Lady P has ever taken Lavender Brown seriously.”

(That did seem a bit odd, now that he was saying it aloud. Who would write a gossip leaflet without consulting a girl known for gossiping?)

“Lady Longbottom.” Draco shook his head, scuffing at the terrace flagstones. “If you’d danced the minuet with me, Potter, this wouldn’t have been a problem.”

“There’d just be a whole new set of problems,” Harry pointed out. “Like your mum throttling the Malfoy house-elves for getting the wrong shade of purple for our Bonding.”

At that, Draco inhaled sharply. “Is that what you want?”

“No! I don’t want house-elves to die because of bad colour coordination!”

“Not that part, the Bonding!” Draco’s eyes were wide. “Is that what you want now?”

Harry looked around the room. Thankfully, most of the DA were gone by now, save for their own friends. Ron and Hermione seemed to be engrossed in some sort of discussion, while Crabbe and Goyle were decidedly not.

“It was a figure of speech,” he admitted. “I was joking.”

He could practically hear the disappointment in Draco’s next breath. “Oh. Right.”

Harry made a face. “I don’t not want it, though; it’s just—” he broke off, rubbing blearily at his eyes. “You wanted us to talk about expectations, right? Now that Uncle Regulus and your dad are in negotiations? So why can’t we find another time to get it all squared away?”

The breath after that was somewhat resigned. “Fine,” said Draco, a little stiffly. “Name a time and place.”

Harry closed his eyes and let the illusory sea breeze wash over him. “What about the Astronomy Tower?” he suggested. “Sundown on Thursday?”

Draco considered it. “I’ve got Quidditch. I might be a bit late.”

“I’ll wait,” offered Harry. “I’ll bring some food from the kitchens, too.”

“An entire apple tart, or I’m not showing up,” warned Draco.

Harry laughed. “It’s a date, then,” he said, before taking the slap bracelet out of Draco’s hand and smacking it across his wrist. It made a fart noise this time, causing him to wince and Draco to snort in a very undignified way. Harry wondered how he could tease that back out of the Slytherin the next time they met.

“You can’t just say stuff like that,” rebuked Draco, smiling nonetheless.

“I mean it this time,” replied Harry, his heart already light with the promise of a next meeting. He could get used to courting.

A couple days later, Harry found himself walking up the interminable staircases to the top of the Astronomy Tower, with a hamper of cheese toasties and tarts dangling from his arm. In his bag, he had his homework and his dad’s Invisibility Cloak, just in case. His Walkman, clipped to his trousers and partly hidden under his robes, was blaring the new Oasis album into his ears.

Gary and Rose still hadn’t replied to Harry’s last letter, and the implications of their silence was more than Harry ever wanted to bear. Why was being a wizard less far-fetched to them than fancying a bloke? Why was him being some sort of wizard noble easier for them to wrap their heads around than him being bent?

“Lord Potter!” exclaimed Professor Sinistra as Harry hit the fifth-floor landing of the tower. He quickly paused the tape on his Walkman in order to greet her. “Here to finish some star charts?”

“Something like that,” agreed Harry, hoping she couldn’t see how flushed his face was. Or question why he was toting a picnic hamper with him.

Professor Sinistra beamed at him. “Always good to bring a snack. Here, can I trust you to get set up by yourself?”

She tossed him a key, presumably to the cupboard where the student telescopes and carpets were kept.

Harry pocketed the key with a grin. “Thanks, professor.”

“When you’re done, clean up after yourself and leave the keys in my office on your way out, all right?”

“Yeah, of course,” said Harry, and Sinistra practically skipped out of the tower. Harry had a fairly good idea of where she was headed.

Soon, he had a picnic set up on the Astronomy Tower battlements, where a Climate-Control Charm had been cast to ward away the icy January wind. The carpet had an extra Warming Charm on it, and the cushions were the same squashy ones that probably hadn’t been replaced in twenty years. Harry also made sure to set up a telescope and a lantern, mostly to make sure Draco knew where he was—and to make anyone else think he was here to struggle with star charts, not snuggle with a Slytherin.

What else could you do on a Courtship Date, anyway, if snogging was out of the question?

Harry was halfway through actually doing some of his homework when Draco finally alighted on the battlements, his pale-blond hair windswept from both Quidditch and the tower winds that Harry could faintly hear on the other side of the Climate-Control Charms. “Budge up a bit, it’s freezing out,” declared the Slytherin as he came striding over with his Nimbus Two Thousand and One slung over one shoulder and his satchel over the other. “Are you actually doing homework right now?”

“What else was I going to do?” wondered Harry, smiling nonetheless as he tucked his essay and his Walkman into his bag and rose to his feet. “I do go to this school, believe it or not.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” teased Draco, his eyes twinkling as he dropped his broomstick down by the carpet and stepped in for a hug. Harry buried his nose into Draco’s robes, breathing in the scent of Quidditch leathers and broomstick polish. Umbridge’s ban had somehow even made him miss the pong of the Quidditch changing rooms.

“Are you… sniffing me, Potter?” asked Draco.

“No,” lied Harry.

Draco chuckled disbelievingly. “Better stop it before the unicorn ring tries to have you thrown from the battlements,” he warned.

Harry did, regretfully, pull back, and they both sat down on the carpet. Draco took one look at the essay still poking out of Harry’s bag and raised an amused eyebrow.

“I thought you finished the essay for Babbling at the DA meeting. Wasn’t that due today?”

“I got stuck on the last three inches,” protested Harry, shoving the essay deeper into his bag. “I’ll just slip it in her office on the way back down. She’ll never notice.”

“Sure,” Draco scoffed. He then noticed Harry looking longingly at his broomstick, and nudged it carelessly with his boot. “Want a go on my broom?”

Harry bit back the urge to make the comment Fred would make at such an invitation, and—with much regret—shook his head. “If Umbridge catches me flying around, we’ll get in trouble.”

“We’re on an illicit Courtship Date, Potter; everything about this is already causing trouble.”

“What Courtship Date?” scoffed Harry, gesturing to the telescope. “I thought we were here to finish our Astronomy homework?”

“I’m here to finish my Astronomy homework,” corrected Draco. “You’re here to finish an overdue essay for Babbling. You’d better get cracking.”

Harry started rifling around in the picnic hamper instead. “Let’s have dinner first,” he suggested, before handing Draco a cheese toastie.

Draco examined the toastie with great scepticism. “Did you make this yourself? Only a Muggle could think of something as plebeian as a sandwich with nothing but cheese in it.”

Harry shrugged, biting into his own toastie. “Don’t knock ’em ’til you’ve tried ’em.”

Draco said nothing to that, only sprawled back against the cushions like a courtesan in an old painting, enjoying his plebeian cheese sandwich.

“I used to make these cheese toasties all the time in primary,” continued Harry, as he dug through the hamper and resurfaced with a soup flask. “But the cheese wasn’t as good—I always got the cheapest brand I could find at Woolworths so that I had an extra quid or two left over for crisps or pick n’ mix.”

“I never had to do the shopping,” said Draco, his nose wrinkling. “That’s house-elves’ work.”

“What about buying other things?” wondered Harry, incredulous, as he dug out a spoon and opened the flask, inhaling the scent of tomato soup.

“The Malfoys have got accounts at all the shops in Esplumoir,” said Draco. “All I’ve got to do is give my stuff to a clerk to be wrapped. I never even touched a knut until Hogwarts.”

Harry coughed down the urge to make another Fred-approved comment. “How’s the research going?” he asked instead.

“There’s a lot more rock sorting than expected,” was the reply. “Is that tomato soup?”

“I think so.” Harry shuffled closer to Draco. “Open wide.”

“I’m not a child,” protested Draco, but he opened his mouth for the spoon anyway.

“Rock sorting?” prompted Harry.

“Mm.” Draco licked his lips, and Harry had to busy himself with blowing on the next spoonful of soup so that he wasn’t staring too hard. “Babbling is restoring the Chamber of Secrets so that she can study the Slytherin wardstone. I’m helping her sift through the rocks down there to find the oldest parts of the castle.”

Harry hummed, and feinted the spoon into his own mouth. “And then what?”

Draco pouted at him. “And then Babbling’s going to test the rocks to see when magic was first put into them, which will give us the exact period when Hogwarts was founded.”

“I didn’t know that was something we needed to confirm,” remarked Harry, as he offered Draco another spoonful of soup. Draco obediently opened his mouth; the sight of that alone made Harry feel hot all over.

“Well, if Babbling’s method can prove the age of the wardstones at Hogwarts, then it could determine the age of any other wardstone, too,” said Draco, once he’d swallowed. “It could resolve all kinds of historical discrepancies. Isn’t that exciting?”

Harry made a face. “History of Magic classes often make me think I’m dead.” He took a sip right out of the flask itself. “What’s the most interesting thing that Binns has made you fall asleep to? For me, it’s the Second Goblin Rebellion. You’d think a revolution fought over Goblin wand rights would be more interesting than watching paint dry.”

“Sounds like Hermione’s notes are much more interesting than Binns’ lectures.” Draco opened up for another spoonful of soup, even having the audacity to point to his mouth. Harry wasn’t sure which was worse: Draco doing something like that knowing full well what it could do to a bloke, or Draco doing something like that out of pure, Mother Magic-honouring innocence.

A couple spoonfuls later, Draco finally answered Harry’s question. “The Sentinel era,” he said, as he followed Harry’s lead in dipping his cheese toastie into the flask. “I mean, it’s fascinating how the Sentinel of Avalon and the Wizengamot laid the foundations for the Ministry as we know it, but the way Binns talks about it, you’d think they all just had a tea party and then went to bed.”

“I don’t even remember learning about that,” admitted Harry through a bite of his toastie.

“See? Binns is a walking—well, floating—memory hole. If I were Luna, I’d even suggest his appointment as professor was part of some conspiracy to keep us from actually studying our own history.”

Harry leaned in. “A conspiracy?”

“Remember what Uncle Regulus said during the Soapbox Speech about Muggles and Mages living in harmony?” Draco looked from side to side, as if they weren’t the only two people up here, before leaning in closer to Harry as well. “Well, I finished reading Malory’s book, like he suggested, and I’m making my way through his sources, too—”

“The French stories and the… mouth bloke?”

“Geoffrey of Monmouth,” corrected Draco. “My father says the texts were obviously pulling from an earlier version of the Tome of Avalon, which is possible since they’re all historically proximate, but then…” He trailed off, frowning. “Why do Malory, Monmouth, and the French stories all date Arthur’s reign to the sixth century, when the Tome says Camelot existed at the same time as Hogwarts?”

Harry shrugged, thinking back to the hearing he had during the summer, and how the Wizengamot were fully willing to write off the testimonies of Gary, Rose, and Mrs Figg. “Maybe you need to find a wizarding account that isn’t tied to the Tome to compare,” he suggested.

“That’s why I got the books from Lady Jenni,” said Draco. “I haven’t had much time to go through all her family records, but they were extant in Britain during the sixth century, so depending on what they say about King Arthur’s reign…”

“Then either the Muggle sources are wrong, or the Tome of Avalon is wrong,” finished Harry.

“Who controls the past controls the future,” agreed Draco, in a voice too solemn for someone who was eating a cheese toastie. “Who controls the present controls the past.”

Harry frowned. “What’s that from?”

“A Muggle book Hermione gave me for my birthday this year.” Draco polished off his toastie and wiped his fingers clean on his handkerchief. “So if the Penruddock records confirm what’s in the Tome, then that’s good, but if they don’t, then what other fabrications have I been taking for granted?”

Harry tried to think about how he would feel if he’d found out something he’d previously taken to be true had actually been a fabrication. Mum had hidden a lot of things from him before, but she would never actively lie to him about things, or try to hide the fact that she had lied at all…

“Have you asked your parents about it?” he wondered.

Draco shrugged. “Father doesn’t think this is a productive use of my time, and Mother gets upset whenever I bring up anything that might challenge what’s written in the Tome. I think they’re both worried about what my aunt and uncle might think. We all used to see eye-to-eye on everything, but now…”

Now you’re actually starting to think for yourself, and they don’t like that, Harry didn’t say, though he wanted to, very much. Almost as much as he wanted to kiss away that smudge of cheese at the corner of Draco’s mouth.

“Now things aren’t so certain anymore?” he finished. “What with Uncle Regulus… and us?”

“Especially us,” agreed Draco, sprawling back on the carpet with a wry quirk of his mouth. “I hate to break it to you, Potter, but my uncle’s not very fond of you.”

Harry snorted, pushing the rest of the food aside in order to join Draco down on the carpet, side-by-side. “Feeling’s mutual, I’m afraid.”

“There’s also the issue with… you-know-who.” Draco flashed him the scar on his hand, a souvenir from Astoria’s almost-vassal bond. Harry pulled it closer to examine the scar, tracing the thin white line with trepidation.

“Wait, doesn’t this mark mean you’re technically her vassal?” he asked.

Draco made a face. “No. The mark of a blood bond takes on a distinct shape, like the Knights’ Mark.”

“Or Dumbledore’s weird triangle thing with Grindelwald,” mused Harry.

Draco looked at him oddly. “In any case, she didn’t Mark any of us, and even if she did, Dumbledore made her visit us in the Hospital Wing to make sure we were all Severed from her before she left school.”

Harry inhaled sharply. “So there is a Severance for the vassal bond.”

“Yeah.” Draco pursed his lips. “But only the creator of a bond can Sever it, and in a vassal bond, there’s only one creator.”

“Then why would anyone want to be a vassal?” demanded Harry, dismayed. “Why would anyone want to sign away their magic to some other bloke, with no way out?”

“Because it’s a mark of honour for a lesser house,” replied Draco. “Doubly so if the lord is of an Oligarchy House. A lot of the Knights are cadet-line members or younger siblings; it’s a legitimate form of advancement for them.”

“But then some of them became Lords,” said Harry, numbly thinking of Regulus.

“And the family magic is bound to protect the Lord first, above all others,” agreed Draco.

“But if the Lord is drained, then the rest of the family magic goes with him.”

Draco grew quiet at that, as if he’d come to some sudden, unsettling realisation. Harry, in turn, took Draco’s hand again, covering the scar with his own fingers.

“You’re sure, then, that you’re no longer blood-bonded with Astoria?” he asked quietly. “So if she finds out about us, she won’t have any chance to drain you?”

“As far as I know,” agreed Draco, and closed his hands around Harry’s fingers.

In less than five months, this infuriating, pointy, wonderful boy would be of Bonding age. As Harry watched him play with their fingers, he couldn’t help but remember Hermione’s words: old enough to be wizard-married for life, but not old enough to vote. How was it considered normal that in five months, Draco could irrevocably alter his life by tying his magic to someone else’s forever, but he would still have to wait another year to be considered a proper wizard adult?

Almost as if he had read his thoughts, Draco kissed the tips of Harry’s fingers. “I turn sixteen in June. My parents are considering counteroffers to the Greengrass contract—that’s why Mother wore the courting pearls to the Candidates’ Dinner, and why she and Father agreed to attend the Black-and-Silver Ball.”

No wonder Astoria was mad about Lady Malfoy’s choice of jewellery! Harry still felt as though his heart had lodged itself in his throat. “But even if your thing with Astoria isn’t going to happen, why’ve you still got to get yourself Bonded off before you leave Hogwarts? Don’t you want more time to figure out what you like, or what you want from a Bonded partner before you commit to them for the rest of your life?”

Draco furrowed his brows. “I thought I told you—the longer I remain un-Bonded, the more people will talk. I’m young, I’m rich, and I’m the only heir of a Most Ancient House. Why wouldn’t I get snapped up as soon as I debut?”

“You’re not a piece of meat that’ll go bad if someone doesn’t snap you up in time,” protested Harry. “You’re—you’re you!”

Draco snorted. “Of course I’m not a piece of meat, Potter. I’m the bloody Golden Snitch.”

And if you don’t catch me, someone else will, he didn’t say, but Harry could hear it as loud as his own heartbeat. Draco reached out and traced the curve of his cheek, and every last intelligent thought fell right out of Harry’s head.

Instinctively, he pressed Draco down against the carpet, brushing Draco’s silvery fringe out of his eyes before pressing their foreheads together. He was rewarded with a small gasp, followed by Draco moving his hand to cup the back of Harry’s head, tangling his fingers into Harry’s hair.

The moan slipped out of Harry’s throat before he could pull it back. His cheeks immediately flooded with warmth, which only made Draco’s smirk grow wider and his grip on Harry’s hair grow tighter.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” he murmured, his breath fogging up Harry’s glasses. “The warmth in your hair… the magic.”

“Holy sh*t,” was all Harry could say. Blindly, he tried to close the last of the distance between their lips, but all he managed to get was tense, invisible resistance—not from Draco, but from the annoying unicorn horn ring still circling his left fourth finger.

With a frustrated growl, Harry pulled back further and grabbed Draco’s hand. “Can’t you take this thing off?” he demanded, reaching out to try and tug at the ring himself.

“No, don’t touch—” began Draco, but it was too late: another flash of light, and Harry found himself being flung backwards off the carpet, nearly hitting his head against the parapet. Chastised, he straightened his glasses and scooted back towards Draco, scowling at the ring now gleaming innocently on the Slytherin’s finger.

“Where does it even draw the line between pure and impure?” he grumbled.

Draco made a face. “I think it tries to measure intent,” he said. “So it’ll let you wrestle me down for the Snitch, or a book, or a Tickling Hex, but it’ll throw you right off if you try to kiss me.”

“A Tickling Hex, you say,” mused Harry, and then immediately darted his hand into Draco’s robes and ran his fingers lightly down Draco’s side.

The effect was immediate—Draco lashed out with a kick that Harry quickly dodged. He tried to regain his position from earlier, too, but this time Draco managed to push back at him, using the unicorn horn ring to force him down onto the carpet. With a smirk like he’d just caught the Snitch, the Slytherin immediately clambered on top, grabbing Harry’s wrists and pinning them above his head.

“This is unfair,” complained Harry, though other parts of him were far from upset about the situation. “You’re just using that ring against me on purpose at this point.”

“Shut up and take it like a Gryffindor,” Draco shot back, his hands slipping down to cup Harry’s face. Harry’s breath caught in his throat at the touch of Draco’s thumbs across his cheeks; he bucked his hips up completely out of instinct, his hands wandering back to rest against Draco’s slender waist—

Another flash of light and a protesting yelp, and this time Draco was the one who had been thrown back by his own ring. His entire face was pink now; he looked as if he’d just been caught stealing from Prince’s potions stores.

“I—I didn’t mean—” he began, pulling his robes tighter around himself and then covering his crotch with his satchel as well. His eyes were much darker than before, even in the dim light of their lantern; there was no disguising just how much he had meant it.

Harry let out a shaky breath. “It’s all right,” he muttered, reaching for his own bag. “I wanted it.”

“You can’t have it yet.” Draco’s voice was sullen, pouting. For once, he seemed as frustrated about it as Harry was.

Harry nodded, reaching out to cup Draco’s cheek. “I know,” he sighed, and then the two of them reluctantly, begrudgingly turned back to their homework.

By the time the candle in their lantern was guttering out, the two of them had actually managed to finish both their work and the tarts that Harry had brought for dessert. Draco had even, after finishing his work early, nicked Harry’s Walkman for another go at Muggle music. The way he hummed along with the songs was just as sweet as the way he pulverised his toast; Harry could’ve happily spent the rest of his life sitting atop the Astronomy Tower listening to Draco discover the joys of Pulp and Oasis and the Corrs.

“Seamus was the one who showed me this song, actually,” he said, gesturing to the latest one warbling out of the headphones looped around Draco’s neck. “It’s a bit more soppy than his usual tastes, but I think he might just be thinking about someone.”

“I wonder who,” was Draco’s dry reply. As they started clearing away the picnic, he even started to sing along with the song. “And I would run away… I would run away with you…”

“Have Purebloods ever done that?” asked Harry. “Run away with someone their parents don’t approve of, or something?”

Draco shrugged as he gathered up the carpet and cushions. “It used to happen a lot more in the past. Loads of the old tragic stories were about the dangers of Bonding beneath your station. True love turning monstrous, or families hunting down the partner of lower birth…”

“What’s changed since then?” wondered Harry, thinking about Ginny’s Howler from Lady Parkinson.

“Well, New Blood initiations, and half-bloods being able to ‘cleanse’ their bloodline with a potion.” Draco sent the stack of carpets and cushions flying back into the student store cupboard. “The Knights don’t like it, but for most people, that meant almost everyone at Hogwarts was now eligible for a Mother Magic-honouring Bonding. So now there’s no need to elope, unless you had the misfortune to fall for someone who hadn’t been anointed or initiated somehow…”

Harry frowned. “So your parents would be fine with you Bonding with whoever gets your Maiden’s Kiss?”

“Only someone approved-of is even going to get close,” scoffed Draco, as he waggled the hated ring at Harry yet again. “I’m going to be the next Lord Malfoy; I can’t tie my magic to just anyone’s.”

“But you’ve got to do it just to get your leg over,” Harry pointed out, frowning even deeper. “Isn’t that frustrating? Muggles stopped making people have to get married before they did it ages ago.”

“Yeah, but they haven’t got magic; they’ll never run the risk of making a Bond during… during the physical act.” Draco’s entire face was pink now as he deliberately turned from Harry in order to collapse the telescope. Harry couldn’t help but feel endeared anyway.

“But mages could do it without Bonding, too,” he said, once they had everything stored away again and were heading back down the Astronomy Tower stairs together. “Seamus said you just had to use Muggle protection.”

At that, Draco paused on the staircase to stare at him like he’d just grown a second head. “I can’t even fathom doing something like that with someone I don’t want to Bond with,” he sniffed.

“But what if you don’t like the way your Bonded acts in the sack?” wondered Harry.

“Don’t be ridiculous; the Bond will take care of that.” Draco waved a dismissive hand. “They’ll know what I want and they’ll make sure it’s not painful. They’ll worship me and adore me and protect me from all else. It’ll be perfect.”

Harry grimaced. “Poor bloke. That’s a lot of expectations to live up to.”

“It’ll be perfect,” pressed Draco, “because I’m only going to Bond with someone that I’m absolutely mad for. I won’t settle for anyone less.”

Harry had no idea what to say to that, and so the rest of the walk down passed in relative silence, broken only by the tinny music coming out of the Walkman’s headphones. Finally, they reached the Ancient Runes classroom, and Harry went to slip his only slightly late essay under Professor Babbling’s office door. Draco waited for him outside, and then they went down the corridor to greet the birds chirping in their circular cage.

“I don’t hate it, actually,” said Draco after a moment, as he paused the song on the Walkman. “Muggle music, that is. It all sounds like the Weird Sisters to me.”

“That’s because you’re just listening to bands,” teased Harry. “There’s loads of other stuff out there. I could write to Gar—”

He caught himself before he could finish saying ‘Gary and Rose’, rubbing gingerly at the recurring ache in his chest. The memories were still too raw for reliving.

“I’ll write to Mum,” he corrected hastily, “and she’ll send some other stuff, and you can try a bit of everything and figure out what you really like, not what you think you’re supposed to like.”

Draco nodded, his expression reminiscent of the stray cat Harry had once tried to feed behind the bins at the back of his primary school. “I’d like that,” he admitted. “Figuring it out.”

Soon, they reached the dreaded sixth-floor landing, their parting point for tonight. Harry had never cursed their separate Sortings more than he had in this very moment.

“Have you got plans for Hogsmeade, then?” he asked, just as Draco took his first step onto the downwards staircase.

At that, Draco raised an eyebrow. “I thought you told Heiress Zhang that it was too early to plan for Hogsmeade.”

“You’re not Heiress Zhang,” was Harry’s immediate reply as he took Draco’s hands. He could practically hear the Slytherin’s next snarky comment, so he quickly headed him off with: “At least think about going with me? We don’t have to stay in Hogsmeade, if you’d rather we take a Portkey to Allegoric Alley…”

The corner of Draco’s mouth quirked up as he squeezed their hands. “It’s a date,” he promised, before letting go. “Good night, Harry.”

It had been a perfect evening. A perfect first foray into wizard courtship. The ecstasy of such a successful first venture—of having Draco close, even if they couldn’t do much more than hold hands—was so overwhelming for Harry that it took the Fat Lady asking him where it had gone for him to even realise that Draco had walked off with his Walkman.

And even then, all he could do was shrug and smile, and tell her Alea iacta est.

It was just another chance for him to see Draco again, anyway.

“I think Lavender might’ve had detention with the toad last night,” said Hermione grimly during their next Runes class. “She came back to the dormitory last night just before curfew and didn’t seem to have any idea where she had been.”

They were working on wards that required the power of multiple wands today. Harry’s gambit with the slightly-late essay might have paid off, since he’d managed to scrape an A and Babbling hadn’t said anything to him about the lateness. All he had to deal with, really, was Draco sending him knowing looks as they all painted their runes onto the worktable.

“Why would Umbridge go after Lavender?” he asked Hermione, while pulling a face back at Draco.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Remember that leaflet that Lavender was peddling at the last DA meeting? The one she claimed was the next Lady Polixenes leaflet despite it being poorly written and full of unsubstantiated claims?”

“Didn’t she say Lady P finally realised people were only reading her for the gossip so she decided to focus her latest issue on that?” wondered Justin Finch-Fletchley.

“Right, well, looks like Lavender just found out the consequences of taking credit for someone else’s subversions,” said Hermione vehemently, and stabbed her paintbrush back into the paint.

Draco hummed. “You seem terribly convinced that Heiress Brown isn’t the one penning these leaflets.”

“Obviously,” huffed Hermione, scowling at him from over the paint pot. “Do you really think Lavender Brown would have said all the stuff Lady Polixenes says about Umbridge? Or protect Harry after McLaggen’s disappearance? Or use words like ‘verboten’ and ‘interminable’?”

“Or ‘wrongthink thoughtcrime’,” muttered Harry.

The sound of the classroom door opening echoed through the darkness. Harry would have ignored it, had the sound not been followed by a spine-chilling “Hem, hem.” Almost immediately, the rest of the class straightened up, trying to look as if drawing their wards was a matter of life and death.

“Good morning, Madam Umbridge,” called Professor Babbling from somewhere in the darkness near Megan Jones’ table.

“A bit dark in here, isn’t it, Professor?” questioned Umbridge, her heels click-clacking against the stone floor as she tried to find the Runes professor. Harry noted, with some savage satisfaction, that no one seemed inclined to help her out.

“It helps the students visualise their work more easily.” Professor Babbling was now moving off to Georgiana Smith’s table. “Students, when you are ready to activate your wards, have everyone in your group tap their wand to one of the runes…”

Each of the tables began to glow as each group activated their wards. Harry hastily finished up his own part of the circle, tapping the rune in his segment with his wand. Immediately, the figurine of Sir Luckless began to fly around and multiply at the same time, with each clone then exploding in three seconds and dissipating within the boundaries of the ward.

“That’s not supposed to happen,” said Hermione, frowning at the explosions. “The duplicates are supposed to spin for three seconds and then disappear, right?”

“Someone might need to check their runes,” agreed Professor Babbling as she came by. “Whoever you placed in charge of the spinning portion of the ward needs to explain the runes they chose, as well as their positions and any potential conjugations. It will help you find out where the error might be.”

“I think I might have some idea,” said Draco, frowning at his section of the ward. “The timeline between the duplication and the disappearance is too swift for the type of spinning spell that had been used, so the explosions are an error…”

They cancelled out the ward so that he could tinker with it, while the sound of Umbridge’s quill scratching echoed through the darkness.

“How long have you been at Hogwarts, Professor Babbling?” wondered the Inquisitor herself a couple minutes later, her voice now way too close to Harry’s table for comfort.

Professor Babbling, on the other hand, had now wandered off to help Sue Li with something. “A while,” she called back after a moment. “Headmaster Fortescue was the one who invited me to teach at Hogwarts back in the day.”

“Headmaster Dexter Fortescue died in 1756,” said Madam Umbridge, disbelieving. “The only ghost professor we have on record is Cuthbert Binns.”

“That would suggest that I am still quite alive, yes,” agreed Professor Babbling. “I don’t think anyone has truly apprised Cuthbert of his death just yet. I’ve suggested it to Albus a few times myself, but I think he’s too fond of Cuthbert to let him know the truth.”

“Does Professor Dumbledore ignore your suggestions very often, Professor Babbling?” wondered Umbridge.

“I don’t think it’s as much ‘ignoring’ as ‘unable to find a suitable solution’, really,” said Professor Babbling. “He’s offered me the post myself, given my existing body of research, but research itself can simply be shelved if the people in power do not agree with it. Teaching what passes for History of Magic here in New Avalon is an entirely different matter.”

Harry looked over at Draco, who was still tinkering with his runes. Draco was Babbling’s research assistant now, helping her reconstruct the Chamber of Secrets’ wardstone. What had he uncovered down there, in the remnants of Harry’s own second-year misadventures? Was Babbling close to figuring out when Hogwarts had truly been founded?

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. But all Binns ever talked about were facts and figures and dates… plastering a dull, lifeless façade over deeply disturbing implications…

“Could you give me an example of your research?” asked Umbridge. Draco cleared his throat, and the four of them activated their ward again. This time, all of Sir Luckless’ copies spun around for three seconds each, before disappearing.

“Excellent fix, Heir Malfoy. Five points to Slytherin,” commended Professor Babbling. To Umbridge, she added, “I am currently trying to determine the ages of various wardstones found at Hogwarts.”

“For what reason?” wondered Umbridge.

“I think it’s important to know when magic first entered the stones of this school,” was Babbling’s calm answer.

“I think letting things be as they are is just as important.” Umbridge’s quill scratched something down. “Some things in magic are just better left as mysteries, wouldn’t you agree?”

“That’s what Mother says whenever I bring up discrepancies between the Muggle and Tome accounts of King Arthur,” muttered Draco as Babbling gave them a new set of parameters for their next ward. “She’s convinced the Muggles are lying to discredit the Tome.”

“Have you found anything in Lady Jenni’s books yet?” wondered Harry.

Draco pursed his lips. “I haven’t finished reading them, but so far I’ve seen no references to either Camelot or Hogwarts.”

“Maybe one or the other is going by a different name,” suggested Hermione. “I think I remember some stories about Arthur putting him somewhere else… Logres, or something?”

“I’ll have to go back through it,” agreed Draco. “It could also be an error with my translation spell. The records are all in Cumbrian and Latin.”

“What’re you looking for?” asked Justin.

“Whether or not King Arthur ever knew about Hogwarts,” joked Harry.

“Oh.” Justin made a face. “I’ve got a book of Arthurian legends at home, but I reckon that’s all stuff Heir Malfoy has already read?”

“It might be interesting to compare the Muggle legends to what’s in the Tome—” began Draco, only to be cut off by Umbridge’s ever-irritating ‘hem, hem’.

“And what, may I ask, are you children doing?” she queried, as she leaned over their table with her clipboard.

Justin cleared his throat. “We’re making a ward, ma’am. It’s supposed to turn Sir Luckless into a beetle and then contain him within the boundaries of the circle.”

“And his shell has got to change colour every five seconds, too,” added Draco, not looking at Umbridge. Harry and Hermione also hunched up tighter over their work, their heads bowed.

Umbridge hummed. “Good,” she said after a couple minutes of writing. “Well, it is good to see you taking your classwork seriously, children; they will prepare you for your O.W.Ls, which could potentially determine the course of the rest of your life.”

Hermione coughed uncomfortably, as if unable to fathom having finally found common ground with Umbridge on something.

Thankfully, the old toad didn’t seem to notice. “In any case, it is much better for you children to be revising hard for these exams, rather than joining radical, subversive anti-governmental organisations.”

Harry glanced around the table at the rest of his groupmates, all of whom were also in the secret alternate Order that Umbridge was nominally still trying to hunt down. “Who’s been doing that?” he ventured innocently.

He could hear Umbridge inhaling sharply, as if fixing him with her most disapproving glower. “You tell me, Lord Potter,” she said nastily. “Or don’t; it’ll only be a matter of time before I find proof of your secret Order. I’ve been making progress in my investigations, and now that the meddling Lady Polixenes has finally stopped her poisonous pen…”

“I thought she recently published a new leaflet,” said Harry.

“An issue which led me directly to her,” was Umbridge’s smug reply. “And I can safely say that from now on, there will be no more printings of her pernicious little papers…”

At that, Hermione laughed derisively. “If you’re referring to Heiress Brown, then you’ve just completely wasted your time. That latest issue is a fake, and a poorly-imitated one, at that. Really goes to show just how easily led you are, Madam Inquisitor, that you’d readily believe a daft dimbo like her could be capable of writing subversive analysis of Hogwarts’ social dynamics as Lady Polixenes!”

Umbridge’s response to that was a long, angry silence, punctuated only by a loud ‘snap’, as if she had broken yet another quill.

“I see that we’ll be seeing each other in detention once again, Miss Granger,” she sighed.

To Harry’s surprise, Hermione merely beamed from ear to ear, her dark eyes burning with grim satisfaction. “I look forward to it, Madam Inquisitor,” she declared, before tapping her wand to her portion of the ward. Sir Luckless immediately turned a bright shade of magenta and exploded into little pieces.

When did Hermione stop caring about the blemishes of these detentions on her previously-spotless record? It chilled Harry to the bone, really, just watching her eyes glint maniacally at Umbridge from behind the magenta explosions of Sir Luckless. She had clearly nothing left to lose.

Harry was not looking forward to where this was going.

“Your time is running out, Seeker,” whispered Draco in Harry’s dreams again, his silvery fringe falling into Harry’s eyes as he pressed the words against the side of Harry’s head. “There’s less than five months left… if you don’t catch me in time, who knows where I’ll fly…”

Harry reached out and tangled his fingers into the soft silver curtain of dream-Draco’s hair. The other boy’s lashes fluttered closed; he leaned into Harry’s touch with a soft sigh, while a strange coppery scent filled the air between them.

“I’m so cold, Harry,” whimpered Draco suddenly, causing Harry’s eyes to startle open. He pulled his hand back, only to find it stained with blood.

“Draco!” he screamed, as Draco was suddenly pulled out of his arms, tugged away from him into the gaping black maw of the Vanishing Cabinet. Harry lunged to try and pull him back, but all he was met with was the smug visage of Cormac McLaggen, whose limbs were hanging on his body at unnatural, bloody angles.

“Didn’t your mummy teach you to share your playthings, Lord Potter?” taunted the older Gryffindor as he pulled the now-unconscious Draco towards him. “You didn’t claim Princess Malfoy when you had the chance, so now I’ve broken into his tower…”

“You get your hands off him!” shouted Harry, reaching deeper and deeper into the Vanishing Cabinet but still finding Draco just out of reach. “You stay away from him—”

“Get up!” bellowed Severina. Harry gasped as the dream dissipated in front of his eyes, replaced by Severina’s office with its pickled animals and bubbling cauldrons. He was on the floor again, panting heavily, unable to stop the tears from the dream that were blurring at his eyes. “You are not trying hard enough, Potter! If Pureblood children can learn to push other people out of their heads, so can you!”

“Then you and Mum should’ve taught me when I was a kid!” spat Harry as he struggled to pick himself back up. This was worse than learning the Patronus. At least with a Dementor, you knew exactly what kind of memories it would be digging up…

“Believe me,” huffed Severina, “it was not my idea to stunt your mental defences. You are soft, and weak, and lazy—you’ll never be able to protect yourself from High Lord Slytherin, and everyone you’ve ever cared about will suffer for it—”

“This isn’t about Gaunt!” shrieked Harry. “I only agreed to learn Occlumency because of Mum!”

“Only coddled fools look at the game one move at a time,” growled Severina. Harry glared back as he staggered to his feet, his wand at the ready. “One—two—three—Legilimens!”

And then Harry was thrown back into the third-floor corridor, with Professor Greengrass bearing down on him—he was running out of the collapsing Chamber of Secrets, with Astoria clinging tightly to his hand—he was standing on the edge of the lake as hundreds of Dementors swooped down, their rotting hands extended out of their darkened shrouds—

You can’t be in the centre, said Draco’s voice, as silvery mist sputtered uselessly from Harry’s wand. You’ve got to look down on it from above so that you can box it up and put it away.

He wasn’t actually standing on the shore, about to get Kissed, nor was he in the bushes on the other side, about to save himself. He was looking down from above, like when he was swirling the memories in the Chamber Pensieve, or the one in Dumbledore’s office…

The Dementors descended, but this time Harry was able to look past them, ignoring their hoods and rotting hands to see Severina. Her eyes were fixed on him; her mouth was moving wordlessly.

Harry raised his wand. “Protego!” he shouted, and Severina stumbled back, her wand slipping out of her hand.

The world suddenly blurred, and then Harry was standing in a girls’ lavatory, watching an even more gaunt and haunted-looking Severina furiously scrub at her hands. After a moment, she leaned down and splashed water onto her face, before clutching onto the sink with a low, desperate gasp.

The door to the toilets slammed open with a flash of fiery red hair. “Mordred the Betrayer!” shrieked Mum’s voice, causing Severina to jump and turn to face her as she stormed up to the sinks. “How could you, Severina? You promised—you promised me you wouldn’t go back to them!”

There was a crack in the mirror behind Severina, and she quickly scrambled away from it. “How did you—” she began, but Mum clenched her fist, and another mirror began to crack.

“Did you forget that Mary Macdonald is my friend, too?” hissed Mum, as she drew her wand and jabbed it right into Severina’s face. “Or am I the only New Blood that you consider worth protecting? Answer me!” she screamed, when Severina only flinched and said nothing. “How can you even look me in the eye after what you did to her?!”

“I did nothing!” protested Severina, but Mum only laughed with derision and disgust, stepping back from Severina as if the very air around her was poisonous.

“That’s right, you did nothing,” she repeated, her voice now low and deadly. “You did nothing to help her when Valerius Mulciber cut her open and drained her magic. You—who nearly had your hair violated once—did nothing to stop these Knights of Camelot hooligans from cutting her braids right off her head.” She nodded, blinking away furious tears. “You f*cking coward.”

At that, Severina snorted, drawing her wand as well. “You want to talk about cowardice, Lilith?” she shot back. “You want to talk about broken promises, or hair violations? Of all the people in this bloody castle, you chose him?!”

“How dare you put this on me!” screamed Mum, as more and more of the lavatory’s mirrors and windows began to crack. “How dare you bring him into it, when you’re—you’re the one who—”

“Say it,” spat Severina, the knuckles of her free hand now even whiter against the porcelain sink.

Mum jutted her chin out at her. “Heir Potter personally brewed the Mandrake Restorative Draught for Mary, you know,” she said, her green eyes flashing scornfully. “He’s working on a tincture to help her regrow her hair. He checks in on her in the Hospital Wing night and day.”

Each sentence was a dagger, and each one hit its mark. Severina’s face was now losing what little colour it had left, as she stumbled back against the sink and scrabbled to steady herself again.

“He’s just doing it for attention; he thinks he’s such a hero—”

“And what were you doing, then?” Mum shot back. “You want to talk about choices, Severina? Because from where I’m standing, I think I made the right one.”

With one final, disdainful look, Mum turned on her heel and swept from the lavatory, leaving Severina still clutching blindly to the sink behind her. Only once her footsteps had faded down the hall did Severina let go, falling to her knees on the dirty stone floor and screaming until all the mirrors and windows in the room had shattered—

“Enough!” The memory suddenly went dark, and Harry found himself being shoved back into Severina’s cold, cheerless office, slamming back into a jar of some unknown creature. Severina was clutching onto her desk with the same white-knuckled intensity that she had had in her memory, her dark eyes wild and unreadable.

“Was that—” began Harry, but Severina shook her head, drawing her wand again.

“You’re making progress on resisting me,” she ground out. “With more practice, we’ll—”

“Shut up about practice!” snarled Harry, slamming his hand back against the jar. To his surprise, it cracked right under his hand, causing Severina to flick her wand and mend it. “I want answers! Was that after you became a Knight? Why were you even there at the attack? Why didn’t you do anything to stop it?”

Severina’s lip curled. “After your mother made her choice, there was no one left in the world that I cared about—”

“So you decided to join the Knights of Camelot?” demanded Harry, incredulous.

Severina narrowed her eyes. “You have no right to stand there and question my choices, as if a snot-nosed brat like you would know better—”

Harry bristled. “I do know better,” he ground out. “I know that if someone cared about me as much as Mum cared about you, I would never dream of driving them away and then using that as an excuse to turn to the Dark side!”

“I do not have to explain my motivations for joining the Knights to you,” sneered Severina.

“You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t believe that you’ve really left the Knights, then,” Harry flung back.

At that, Severina threw her head back and laughed bitterly. “You’d be right, Harry,” she said flatly. “I haven’t left. There is no way to leave. Only High Lord Slytherin can Sever the vassal bonds he’s got with his Knights, and he will never do so, as long as we’ve got magic that he can take.”

Only the creator of a bond can Sever it, and in a vassal bond, there’s only one creator.

Harry felt like his heart had been Petrified. He’d known Severina was a Knight, and he did remember her mentioning that ‘no one ever truly quits the Knights of Camelot’, but it was one thing to know about her permanent vassal bond with Gaunt as its own thing, and another to know about it in connection with other disillusioned ‘former’ Knights like Regulus and (possibly) Lord Malfoy.

It was about the family magic. It had always been about the family magic. It was why Aunt Sev was not Stepmum Sev; it was why Regulus was ‘working on contingencies’ rather than any sort of victory policy. No one ever truly quits the Knights of Camelot, because they were all sacrifices at the altar of High Lord Slytherin.

Gaunt could, in the process of ‘restoring Avalon to its full glory’, drain the magic of every Most Ancient House he had under his thrall. And because those Knights believed him to be even more blessed and chosen than they were, they would gladly give him every last drop.

“I don’t think I want someone with a back door to Gaunt in their head to go poking around in mine,” said Harry after a moment, his head still reeling and his heart still firmly lodged somewhere between his toes. “You’re compromised. All of you.”

Severina’s expression grew ashen. “Harry—” she began, but Harry was already rushing out of the office, taking in gulps of (relatively) fresh air the moment he cleared the Potions corridor.

He was halfway to the Customs and Etiquette classroom—hoping against hope that Liu would take him back as an Occlumency student—when he heard raised voices in the corridor near the Transfiguration classroom. He quickly headed towards the shouting, only to realise when he got closer that it was Hermione and Professor McGonagall.

“—I wish that it did not have to come to this, Miss Granger,” sighed McGonagall.

Hermione eyed their Head of House like a cornered animal, her thumb rubbing agitated circles around a small golden thing in her hand.

“This is retaliation,” she hissed. “You want me silenced because of what I know about Regulus Black’s campaign.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed McGonagall. “This is a simple case of you having far too many detentions for someone who is supposed to be setting an example to other Hogwarts students—”

“And exactly how many of those detentions were assigned for actual misbehaviour and not because of Madam Umbridge’s petty vendetta against me?” demanded Hermione.

McGonagall’s mouth thinned into a line. “I seem to clearly recall telling you not to cross Madam Umbridge, Miss Granger.”

“I’m crossing her simply by existing as an uninitiated Muggleborn!” Hermione clenched her hand into a fist. “Time and time again I get told ‘oh, we’ll appeal to the Board, we’ll tell Umbridge to stop’—and nothing happens! If Hogwarts can’t protect me—or any other Muggleborn—from Umbridge, then—then what’s the point of me having this thing at all?”

Harry’s heart lurched, as Hermione held up the red-and-gold prefect’s badge like an accusation. Both she and McGonagall looked at it for a long moment, before Hermione dropped the badge, and McGonagall caught it.

“I’m terribly sorry that you feel this way, Miss Granger,” said their Head of House, inclining her head.

Hermione shook her head, taking a step back. “I really thought that Hogwarts was going to be different from what I’d left behind,” she replied, and fled before either Harry or McGonagall could try to stop her.

Harry rushed to catch up, but Hermione was too fast; she tore through secret passageways and side staircases with all the confidence of a seasoned troublemaker. By the time Harry reached the seventh floor, he was feeling a little bit turned around. Hermione, on the other hand, quickly paced three rounds in front of the wall opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, and disappeared into the Room of Hidden Things the moment its door appeared. When Harry rushed to follow, the door vanished on him in an instant.

That night, Harry couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he found himself in front of the Vanishing Cabinet again, digging into the darkness for some sort of treasure he could no longer remember. Every time he pulled his arm back, he would be coated up to the elbows in blood, and every time he tried to turn away, he would hear echoes of McLaggen’s mocking chants of ‘Princess Malfoy’, or Gary’s cries of ‘airy-fairy little lordling’.

And worst of all, when he finally managed to pull himself together enough to close the doors of the Cabinet, he would then find himself storming into that girls’ lavatory again, this time screaming at Severina while wearing Mum’s face, cracking all the mirrors with his rage and betrayal…

“Mate, wake up!” Ron’s voice jolted Harry back to the light. Somehow, he felt even more tired this morning than he’d been the night before. “Are you still having those dreams? Aren’t you supposed to be learning how to block them out?”

“Prince isn’t exactly teaching me how to clear my head,” grumbled Harry as he reluctantly clambered out of bed, displacing Crookshanks from his usual spot near Harry’s feet.

“I thought you said Liu was your Occlumency teacher,” said Ron as Harry scrounged through his wardrobe for his least-wrinkled shirt, trousers, and robes.

“Prince demanded I go with her,” said Harry.

“What for?” Ron made a face. “It doesn’t seem like she’s any better at teaching Occlumency than she is at Potions.”

“That’s why I’m going back to Liu.” Harry pulled on one of Mrs Weasley’s jumpers before slinging on his robes. “It’s getting too personal, seeing what she was like with Mum before she…”

He trailed off, knowing that Ron probably didn’t want to know what he’d seen last night. The screams of Mum and Severina’s last fight were still echoing in his ears.

Hermione met them down in the common room, and Harry’s stomach immediately lurched again as he remembered her vanishing into the Room of Hidden Things last night. However, before he could open his mouth to ask when she’d got back to Gryffindor Tower, Hermione flashed him a bright, pointed grin and chirped, “Good morning, you two! Shall we go to breakfast together?”

Ron, bless him, immediately found this as suspicious as Harry did. “What’ve you done now, Hermione?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

“What’ve I done?” Hermione had the audacity not to acknowledge that they were onto her. “Can’t I just be having a good morning? Let’s go before they run out of toast. I’m starving.”

The walk downstairs was a veritable gauntlet of whispering students. Harry would have normally ignored them all, having long become inured to the spotlight that his unfortunate position in Pureblood society tended to put on him, but today the whispers seemed to be particularly pointed, and were consistently accompanied by whispers of the names ‘Black’, ‘Malfoy’, and ‘Karkaroff’. His stomach jolted when some Slytherins caught sight of him and started whispering even more ferociously. Had something happened to Draco? Had someone—like the real Lady Polixenes—discovered their secret courtship?

Finally, they came to the grand staircase down into the entrance hall, and Harry immediately saw the cause of all the whispering. The walls of the entrance hall were completely covered in typewritten parchment leaflets. They were even plastered over Umbridge’s framed school policies, which explained why Filch the caretaker was trying to peel them off the wall to very little success.

“What the bloody hell—” began Ron, as the three of them pushed their way over to a relatively un-crowded patch of wall. However, just before Harry could read beyond ‘Lady Polixenes’ Hogwarts Secrets, Issue 8’, there was a shriek of frustration from the direction of the grand staircase. Umbridge had arrived at the scene of the crime.

“Looks like she couldn’t silence the truth after all,” said Hermione with vicious satisfaction.

Almost as if in response, Umbridge raised her wand. “Incendio!” she cried, and the leaflets on the walls began to burn. All the students gathered in the entrance hall began to hurry to breakfast, some of them stowing away copies of the leaflet that they had salvaged from the smoke and flames.

“Quick, take one,” Hermione hissed, pulling a copy of the leaflet off the wall before the fire could get it. Harry grabbed it from her as they joined the crowd rushing into breakfast, keeping their heads down to avoid Umbridge’s wrath.

“I will not be bested by an anonymous rumourmonger!” bellowed the High Inquisitor, her voice carrying over into the Great Hall in her rage. Next to her, Filch was trying to fan the smoke away from his face, coughing all the while. “Argus, round up some more students. It appears we have some more interrogations to carry out.”

But the damage had already been done. No amount of leaflet-burning could stop the contents of Issue 8 from spreading like a wildfire of its own throughout the Hogwarts student body. By the time Harry finished reading the issue, he could already see the proverbial writing on the wall:

I have devoted countless words already to critiquing Madam Inquisitor’s rule over Hogwarts, in the hopes that this year—this very important election year—the students of Hogwarts will be able to recognise just how many of their liberties are at stake. But in the process of doing so, I committed the error of misrepresentation.

Lord Regulus Black, who has built a promising platform of reconciliation between mages and Muggles, and Purebloods and Muggleborns, is unfit to represent the most vulnerable members of New Avalon’s society. Recently, Lord Black has been openly attempting to recruit Purebloods like Lord Malfoy and Durmstrang headmaster Igor Karkaroff to his cause, even going so far as to resurrect the Black-and-Silver Ball as a platform to advance such an agenda. He may claim to do it out of a wish for rapprochement, but in truth, he is simply wishing to demolish a crucial skeleton in their collective cupboard: namely, that all three of them are lapsed members of the Knights of Camelot, a proscribed terror organisation linked to the poisoning of the first New Blood Minister for Magic, the kidnapping and torture of Lord Frank and Lady Alice Longbottom, and numerous additional crimes against the Muggle and Muggleborn communities of Britain.

I have always been suspicious of the maxim that ‘reformed rakes make the best husbands’, a phrase often passed around the girls’ dormitories at this school alongside giggles and snippets of choice passages from illicit publications. If there is no proof of reformation, then there can be no trust. Absolution cannot be bought with Acts of Contrition, especially if the guilty party continues to offend in smaller, more socially acceptable ways. And just like how a reformed rake may not make for a good lord-husband, a reformed Knight of Camelot may not make for a good Minister for Magic, especially not when he is soliciting donations from his fellow Knights whilst claiming to represent the best interests of the Muggleborn community.

Muggleborns deserve so much better than that.