Sticking the Hogwarts verse all together all in one place

[grenegome]

Once upon a time, I did a mini fill for the Dresden Files Kink Meme for a prompt that requested the whole cast as wizards at Hogwarts. And then I did a follow up, and another follow up, and maybe it got a tiiiiiiny bit out of hand. In all honesty, this needs a good edit, and at some point in the well intentioned future, I may do that and AO3 it. For the time being, in case anyone wants slightly easier access than trawling back through various posts on the meme, I’ve stuck it together on my journal.

The Hogwarts verse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 26000
Pairing/Character(s): Harry and John mainly, alongside quite a lot of the main cast.
Warnings: Potential liberties taken with HP verse elements, themes of bigotry regarding blood ‘purity’ as in HP verse. Rather a bit of swearing. Many words of fic in which not all that much actually happens.
Summary: Harry gets his Hogwarts letter. Featuring Harry Dresden as the world’s friendliest Hufflepuff, and Marcone the angry Slytherin.




Harry Dresden and the Sorting Hat

My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden and I’m eleven years old. I got my Hogwarts letter today.

“Godmother!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “GODMOTHER! IT CAME!”

Lea peered around the door of her study and pinned me with an amber eyed stare. She’s worse than Mister, my cat, when it comes to disapproving glances. “Of course it came, child. How could it not?”

“We’re kind of hard to find, Godmother? I’ve seen your hounds eat owls.”

“Not an owl from Hogwarts. Let me see, boy.” Lea held out her hand, waiting for me to step forward and hand it over. But I’d never gotten my own letter before, addressed especially to me. I tightened my grip.

“In a minute, Godmother.”

I looked down at the envelope, almost too excited for the words to make sense. Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, The Second Largest Bedroom, Barrow House, Winterford.

My letter.

I shredded it open, and stared. My stomach felt all birthdaychristmas, and if I could get away with jumping up and down and yelling then I would, except Lea was watching me, closely, and I wasn’t at Hogwarts yet.

But I was close.

I took a breath and offered the parchment up to Lea. She ignored the note of welcome and perused the second page, frowning. It was all about robes and books and pets and stuff. Mister could come with me, which was what mattered, but Lea didn’t care about stuff like that. “Trimble, she sighed. “Well. I’m sure Durmstrang would assign set texts that are a little more challenging. More suitable for a wizard of your potential.”

I didn’t step back, but I kind of wanted to. “I’m not going to Durmstrang, Godmother,” I said, making sure my voice sounded firm. “So it doesn’t really matter.”

“Durmstrang was good enough for your mother. She flourished there.”

“She burned down their East wing and got chucked out, Godmother.”

“A misunderstanding. They’d take a wizard of your lineage in a heartbeat.”

My mum’s dad was Ebeneezer McCoy. People say his bloodline can be traced back to Merlin.

He’s the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

I’ve never met him.

*

You’ve got to do a lot of boring rubbish shopping before they let you go to Hogwarts. There’s only one shop which matters, which is Ollivanders, which is a really big deal. Even bigger than Christmases and birthdays because your wand-day is only once, unless you do something horrible to the wand you’re given. But everyone has their wand story, and I’m not going to bore you with mine, apart from the basics: Oak, twelve inches. Phoenix Feather.

I clutched it all the way to Madam Malkins. Which is the most boring kind of shopping: Robes.

I wasn’t the only new first year in there. Another boy already stood on a fitting stool. He was short, and kind of staring at everything. His eyes were Slytherin green, and his dark hair was a bit messy around his ears. “Arms out dear,” Madam Malkin said to him.

The boy complied slowly, and a measuring tape shot up from the floor to gauge the length of his arm. “SHIT!” he yelled and recoiled, ducking away from the tape like it was a particularly aggressive bludger.

I burst out laughing just as Madam Malkin started remonstrating with him. “Now, young man, I’ll not have that kind of language in my shop.”

He’d leapt from the stool and had his back to the wall, glaring at me and Lea in the doorway like we were conspiring to imprison him in a robe shop. His glare hit me. “You think that’s fucking funny?”

He said the F word. In front of my godmother. It was kind of amazing.

“I think it’s a tape measure,” I said. “It won’t bite you.”

“Oh yeah?” he snapped, which occurred to me as a really stupid comeback.

“Yeah.”

Madam Malkin didn’t look very impressed with our exchange. “Mister Marcone, could you hop back on the stool? I have other customers.”

“No. I don’t want any robes. I’ll just- ” he pulled the parchment out of his pocket. “Go get my... wand? Wand. Jesus. And books and shit.” I bit my lip, resisting the urge to look up at Lea’s face. She liked young people to be polite.

“Excuse me, but where are your parents?” my godmother asked from behind me.

“Dead.”

“How unfortunate. Who brought you here today?”

Marcone froze, and then all of a sudden stood up straight and looked terribly honest and polite. “My brother, miss. He’s just outside; let me point him out to you.”

Lea nodded and stepped aside, and Marcone slipped through the door to point at a young wizard loitering by the window of the shop directly opposite. He looked maybe 13, and vaguely familiar, so we’d probably been introduced at some gathering or other.

“How curious.” My godmother said. “I happen to know Richard Rudolph has no siblings.”

Marcone ran.

I ran after him.




“WAIT,” I yelled, barging through the crush of people outside Fortescue’s. I bounced off a tall red haired kid and then ducked around him with a yelped apology. “WAIT!”

Marcone didn’t wait. He looked over his shoulder, saw me catching up, and then swung left.

Down Knockturn Alley.

My godmother was going to kill me.

I did my best not to bump into any of the, uh, people in the street, because I didn’t fancy a surprise curse round the ear, but I kept on Marcone’s heels until he ducked into a passageway between two dingy shop fronts, and came up against a wall.

He spun and stood panting, fists clenched. I held my hands up, slowly. “Look, it’s dangerous down here. Don’t you know anything?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Marcone waved his school letter at me. “They send me a letter by fucking owl, they tell my uncle he has to take me fucking magic shopping which yeah, right, and then they fucking leave me to it?”

I wanted to ask him if he knew any other words. I didn’t. I’d kind of caught up with why he was so jumpy. “Are you... muggle born?” I asked.

“You’re fucking muggle born!” he snapped.

“Uh, no.” I said. “Wait, it’s not an insult. I don’t care who your parents were, and the only people who do are gits. ...It’s... it’s what wizards call non-magic people. You don’t talk like you’ve been raised by wizards.” But Marcone didn’t look like he was getting any unmadder, so maybe I needed to change the topic. “Uh. Hey. Do you want an ice cream?” The crowd around Fortescue’s promised something potentially new and tasty.

But a cold voice distracted me from ice cream. “Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, you impetuous boy. Back this way, now. And you, Jonathan Marcone.”

My godmother. Oh dear.



Lea didn’t let us get ice cream. She swept actually-it’s-Johnny Marcone up in her storm of godmotherly organisation, and took us round every shop. She refused to call Marcone ‘Johnny’, but conceded ‘John’, and marched him into Ollivander’s last of all.

Willow, ten inches, dragon’s heartstring.

Lea watched him wave the wand. When I’d done that a whole explosion of sparks had shot through the shop, but Marcone blasted out three bright green points of light, which shot straight up to the roof and spiralled gently down.

“That is everything you need, young man. My name is Lea Aignenshee, and if you need council then you shall call on me. Do you understand?”

“Why? You don’t know me.” Marcone was burdened down with bags, but if he wasn’t buried in school supplies then I think he might have crossed his arms.

“I make it a rule to know everyone, and you may be worth knowing some day. So. Call on me, if you have need.”

Lea rounded up me and all my school stuff, and we floo’d back to her house. We left John Marcone to make his own way back through muggle London.


*

I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so I’d never seen the Hogwarts Express before. I’d heard about it of course, so I wasn’t like some of the muggle born kids standing on the platform and staring. I was one of the kids being prevented from just racing onto the train with my trunk by the dutiful ritual of kissing my godmother on the cheek and nodding through her words of advice. But as soon as she let go of my shoulder, I bolted.

I found a spare seat in a carriage, and struck up conversation with a third year in Ravenclaw by the time we’d started moving. She was called Karrin Murphy, and she was a Beater for her house quidditch team. I’d maybe frowned a little bit when she said that- it’s not like she looked like your typical Beater- and for a minute she looked like she was going to beat me.

Fortunately, we were interrupted. Our carriage door shot open, and a familiar head poked round the doorway.

“Hey, Dresden! What the fuck does Mudblood mean?” Marcone said. Everyone flinched.

“Did somebody actually call you that?” I snapped, standing up. I didn’t really know him, and we weren’t exactly friends, but the kind of people who used that word were the kind of people who sneered blood traitor when they heard my mother’s name, and they made me mad.

“Right,” Marcone said, and closed the door again.

I heard a thump, and then a howl of pain. And then a lot of banging, like someone being slammed against the walls of the train.

“Aw, shit,” Murphy said. “I should probably stop him doing that.” But she didn’t seem particularly motivated to go and quell Marcone. The door opened again, and a second year by the name of Nathan Hendricks hauled Marcone inside our carriage by his collar.

Somebody started banging on the door. Marcone lurched forward, ready to return to the fray, but Hendricks planted a hand on his chest and shook his head. “Give it a seco- ”

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS? RICHARD RUDOLPH, TERM HASN’T EVEN STARTED AND YOU’RE BARGING UP AND DOWN THE TRAIN LIKE A HERD OF GIANTS!”

-nd. See? Prefects. No point making a bad first impression.”

“Like I care what some prefect thinks of me.” Marcone sneered, but seemed less enthusiastic about barging past his new acquaintance.

“You should,” Hendricks shrugged. “Detention, house points, no point ticking them off. Makes life difficult for everyone. But they’d have listened, if you told them what Rudolph said.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. For all I know, you all talk like that.”

“I don’t,” he said, and then raised an eyebrow at me and Murphy.

She shook her head emphatically.

“I don’t, either.” I volunteered. “But I liked Marcone’s plan A.”

“Harry Dresden, right? Punching people in the face does not count as a plan. You know my uncle Michael, don’t you?”

Michael was kind of related to everyone. I called him uncle too.

“Yeah. He’s cool.”

“Right. Well, I was going to buy some chocolate frogs, so can you keep Marcone out of trouble till I get back?”

“I’m not your responsibility,” Marcone growled.

“Sure you’re not,” Hendricks said, thumping him on the shoulder as he left. “I’ll buy you some Pepper Imps.”

*

I knew what was coming, for the Sorting. So when Murphy tried to tell Marcone he’d have to battle the squid in the lake for his place in the school, I put him right. It was a hat, and the hat looked inside your head. Marcone looked less keen on that than the squid.

I wasn’t too bothered about the hat. But I was worried about the Sorting, sort of. I knew who’d be there.

My grandfather called my name. He said it like all of the others, smiled like he did for all the other students. Dropped the hat on my head the same as for the others. My heart was racing and he’d looked at me, but he hadn’t said anything, done anything, nothing was different and I-

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, what have we here?

Hi hat. I said. How are you? My godmother sends her good wishes.

Quite well! My, but you’re a lively bunch this year. Hmm... I see that’s not all your godmother asked you to ask me.

No. She asked me to ask you to put me in Slytherin. We had an agreement.

So you did. And you have done as you agreed, Harry Dresden. You have asked.

I have.

You have not wanted.

I have not.

Very well, very well. Bravery, loyalty, power, loyalty, curiosity, loyalty... hmmm, a clever tongue. And loyalty. Well. We could make something of you anywhere.

I’m at Hogwarts. I made it. I’m staying. I’m going to have a home. Put me wherever you like, hat.

“HUFFLEPUFF!” the Sorting Hat cried.

When the hat came off my eyes, for just a split second, my grandfather was staring at me. I stared straight back, before walking towards my cheering house.

Harry Dresden and Hufflepuff’s Housepoints

Hufflepuff rules.

Seriously. People don’t know we rule, but we’re like the stealth ninjas of awesome. And Hogwarts rules. The castle was awesome. The grounds were awesome. The squid in the lake was awesome. Charms was awesome. Transfiguration was awesome.

My friends were awesome. Some of the people in my year- Waldo Butters (Hufflepuff), Terry Tooting (Gryffindor), and Susan Roderiguez (Ravenclaw)- were really cool, and the older kids who didn’t mind having a first year underfoot were even cooler. Hendricks kept an eye out for me, and Murphy had given into cheerful persistence and tolerated my company from time to time. It helped that her he’s-not-my-boyfriend Jared in fourth year found me amusing. I hung out with people from a few different houses, and I’d be letting the side down a bit to say their houses were awesome, but they had some awesome people in them anyway.

I made most of my friends the usual way. Some of them I knew already, because Lea had always been keen on ‘maintaining a wide acquaintance’, some of them liked the same kind of things I did- muggle devices, detective fiction, chocolate frog cards- and some of them I just happened to sit next to in lessons.

None of that applied to John Marcone. I didn’t even think he might be interested in making friends; considering his main hobbies seemed to be swearing and getting into fights. But one day I did him a good turn, and he wasn’t expecting it, and then he couldn’t let it drop.

Apparently, if there’s one thing John Marcone couldn’t forgive, it was loyalty. One moment of Hufflepuffian solidarity and bam! a minor war to lay claim to my friendship. I’m not one of those wizards who thinks your house makes you who you are, because if blood doesn’t then why should one quick chat with a hat and the colour of your uniform make any difference? But it is a part of a whole load of other things that do, and, well... Slytherin.

I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t think it would matter so much to him.

But I’m sort of getting ahead of myself.

It started in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and Defence Against the Dark Arts isn’t awesome. Neither is Professor Morgan, contender for the title of World Champion Grudge Holder.

It was a very, very small part of his classroom I set on fire. Granted, that also happened to be the Professor Morgan part of it, but it wasn’t like there was any malice involved.

And it totally wasn’t my fault. Before I tell you, I want to make it clear that he started it. Morgan’s always trying to catch me when I’m not paying attention, always demanding I repeat the last thing he said if he finds me looking out a window, or picking at my quill. Unfortunately for him, I usually am paying attention. Because he knows a lot of interesting stuff.

“Well, Dresden?” he’d asked, leaning over me.

“Uhm,” I said, running the last few minutes of his opening speech back through my head. “A kappa looks like a fish-monkey?”

“Fish. Monkey,” Morgan repeated flatly, pinning me with the kind of stare that would terrify a boy who’d never had to face down my Godmother after accidentally letting her hounds loose in the library.

“Sorry. Like, uh, a simian, but with scales. Sir.” I smiled at him hopefully.

“And why is it a good idea to bow to one of these Fish-Monkeys, Dresden?”

I hadn’t been taught that. Morgan hadn’t even covered it yet. But I knew anyway, because Lea hadn’t told me the kind of bedtime stories most wizarding children fall asleep to. Instead, I had The Chronicles of Margaret and Lea by heart, and the number of curses and creatures the two of them had cast aside was kind of scary. “To try and get it to bow back, Sir. So all the water in the hollow of its head runs out, and it goes all weak, Sir.”

Morgan didn’t respond. He just kind of glowered at me, as if he could make my answer wrong through sheer force of will, before stepping away.

A paper plane nose dived over my shoulder, propelled by a clumsy gust of magic. I knew who it came from, because only one kid was brave enough or stupid enough to send airborne notes across Professor Morgan’s classroom. I unfolded it carefully, and squinted at the inky scrawl.

His wand’s so far up his own arse he couldn’t bow to a Kappa if it was licking at his crack.

I gaped at the note, horrified thoughts of euuuuuurgh bubbling up into a treacherous giggle. John’s language hadn’t gotten any better. I wasn’t any better at not laughing when I shouldn’t.

“Well, Mr Dresden,” Morgan said, appearing by my side again as if he’d just apparated there. “Why don’t you let me see that?”

Oh... rats.

I sighed. Marcone’s (appalling) handwriting was pretty easy to identify. If Morgan could decode the dreadful scribble, then the results would be... Well. Volcanic.

I reminded myself I didn’t owe Marcone anything. That he shouldn’t have written it in the first place. That he shouldn’t have sent it to me when Morgan was already breathing down my neck.

But I kind of agreed with the sentiment. And Marcone nearly got expelled last week, after knocking Rudolph down a flight of stairs. He couldn’t afford to be in this much trouble so soon after.

Rudolph had really deserved it.

“...Incendio,” I muttered mournfully.

*


When you set stuff on fire in your Defence Against the Dark Arts class, it’s a good idea to check your professor isn’t standing too close. If he is, and his robe starts to smoulder at the same time your intended target wooshes into ash, then you get into what John Marcone would describe as a ‘metric shit ton of trouble’.

A metric shit ton roughly translates to: dragged out of the classroom by the scruff of your robes, supposedly to your head of house, except oops, Michael’s off taking the youngest Carpenter to St Mungo’s for his magical malady inoculations, lets just see what the Headmaster makes of this, Dresden.

So I got hauled up in front of Ebenezer McCoy instead.

The stairs up to the headmaster’s office are twisty. A big long spiral, and they’d probably make you dizzy even without a full grown wizard hauling you up them with your robes getting a bit too tight around your neck. I didn’t struggle, I didn’t get mad at Morgan. I’d stopped thinking about him as soon as we’d found Michael’s office empty.

McCoy was at his desk, and Morgan deposited me in front of it before I had time to work out what I was going to say. The headmaster looked up, and one side of his mouth twitched into a smile. “Ah, Professor Morgan,” he said, “and Harry Dresden. I wondered when I’d be seeing you.”

“Hello Grandfather,” I said.

Morgan looked more shocked than when his robe caught fire. Margaret LeFay had been pruned from the McCoy family tree; under wizarding law I had no right to claim kin. No bloodright. I carried my muggle father’s name, and I was under the protection of my godmother’s house.

But one of the skittish thoughts galloping around the whole mum-family-blood-grandfather thing in my head had abruptly reared into the forefront of my mind. It went like this, and it sounded a little bit like John Marcone: Fuck him. I don’t give a fucking fuck.

It felt like a new, brave thought. A revelation. I was kind of fond of it. But none of that would be readily apparent to the headmaster: “Well, Harry. I hoped our first discussion might be under better circumstances. I’m sure you have questions.”

I had years of questions, all lined up in a row. None of them fell out of my mouth. “Not really,” I said, and shrugged. It was a gesture Marcone pulled out all the time to annoy Hendricks and Murph.

McCoy just smiled. “Well. You might not look like your mother. But you certainly sound like her.”

“Thanks.”

Apparently, that was all the family feeling Morgan could stand. “Your mother used the Dark Arts!” he snapped, and I jumped, because I’d somehow managed to forget he was standing right next to me. “And by all indications you are no better. Attempting to immolate a teacher!”

“...Immolate?” McCoy asked, after a moment’s contemplation of Morgan’s singed robe. “When did fire magic sneak onto the first year curriculum?”

“It. Uh. Didn’t,” I said, and then looked up at Morgan. He was a bit of a git, but I didn’t just run round setting fire to people that annoyed me. “Kind of why I overshot. Sorry. Wasn’t aiming for you.”

Morgan inflated like he was about to impersonate a howler, but McCoy snuck his question in first. “So, what were you immolating, boy?”

“He had a note,” Morgan snarled. “Something he wrote and was too cowardly to admit to writing.”

“Cowardly...” McCoy repeated, tapping his quill against his abandoned paperwork. “Hmm. It’d take a coward and a fool to burn a note in plain sight of his Professor rather than just admit to it. I’m not so sure the boy is either.” I held McCoy’s gaze, and my breath. And I carefully didn’t fidget, but in the end it didn’t help. “So, Harry. Who wrote that note?”

I shrugged.

McCoy stared me down for a moment, and then fought off a little spasm of a grin. “Fine. Professor, Mr Dresden here can scrub your classroom until it shines, and then he can lose whatever points you want to take off him.” I winced. We were running third for the House Cup, Ravenclaw close behind us, and I was going to have a hell of a time scrambling to make up the points Morgan would strip from me. “And anything Professor Carpenter wants to add. Probably a letter of apology.”

I winced again. Uncle Michael was going to look so disappointed.

“Headmaster, if there’s another pupil involved- ” Morgan began.

“Then we’ll be here all day. Unfortunately, getting a baby Hufflepuff to dob in his friends is harder than pulling dragon’s teeth. I’m inclined to think that if Harry is so desperate to serve detention, we should indulge him.”

Morgan grunted. Possibly in agreement, but I wasn’t getting any more fluent in grunt, no matter how much time I spent around Karrin Murphy.

“That will be all, Professor Morgan. Harry, wait there a moment.”

Oh. So. We were going to talk. I stood up straight, resisted the urge to pat my wand and check it was still in my pocket. Morgan left in a disgruntled flurry of cloak, and I felt strangely abandoned.

I stared at McCoy’s desk. He had picture frames, and I wondered who waved up at him from behind the glass.

Not me.

McCoy let me stare for a moment before he spoke, and then his voice was gentle. “You know, I thought Lea would pack you off to Durmstrang. It was a surprise when you owled back to say you’d take the place.”

“She tried. We had an agreement,” I said, and surprised myself. My voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded very calm, steady.

“Well, be careful boy. Your godmother usually benefits from her bargains, in the end.”

I knew that was true. I’d played under the table in Lea’s study whilst witches and wizard stood on the rug before her desk, begging and bartering. But she was my godmother. The only person to look for me, after my father died. McCoy never did, and he had no right to warn me, to act like he cared. I shrugged. “I’m safe until I’m eighteen.”

“And eighteen is a long way from eleven,” McCoy sighed. He rubbed at his face, like he was tired.

It had to be a late night, or something. It couldn’t be care creasing up his features, digging deeper into his wrinkles. There were questions I’d grown up with. They were in my head now, and I shouldn’t care about the answers, because when I was five years old and my father died Ebenezer McCoy hadn’t come for me. When I was eight years old, my godmother had. Plucked me out of the muggle world and raised me in the wizarding tradition.

The words were there. The questions. I’d rehearsed this whole discussion in my head, at night, for most of my life. But I didn’t want any of his answers. Because she was Dark. Because she married a muggle. Because you killed her.

I didn’t kill her. Lea told me that, and Lea doesn’t lie to me.

None of his answers were good answers, and I didn’t want to hear them. So I didn’t ask the questions I’d kept safe my entire life.

I had my House, and my friends, and my magic.

I didn’t need McCoy.

I wasn’t going to ask.

*

Michael was disappointed. Which is why I was sat in the library, on a sunny Sunday, feeling sorry for myself. John Marcone was sat opposite me, a stubborn set to his chin.

“Give it here,” he demanded.

I glared at him, and then down at my blank apology letter. “You can’t write it for me. Morgan knows what my handwriting looks like.”

“I wasn’t going to write it. Hell no. Tulane owes me a favor. He can write sincere shit. And I bet Nate can charm the writing to look like yours.”

“And then Morgan would find out, because he’s a paranoid bastard, and he’d tell Michael, and I’d never ever be able to look him in the eyes again.”

“You’re too soft, Dresden. Fucking Hufflepuff.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Whatever. Look, the letter’s not a big deal. I’m more worried about the points.”

“What, your house giving you a hard time? They don’t just want to hug it out?”

I laughed at him, and I don’t think he was expecting it. Marcone tends to get stuck bouncing between delight and suspicious anger when he knows I’m amused by something he said. “They’re not, like, pleased or anything, but no-one’s been hiding dung bombs in my bed. It’s just... ” I sighed, picked at the parchment. “We’re coming last, and it’s on me. I can’t make up fifty points.”

“Huh.” Marcone said, and got his thoughtful face. That isn’t a good face. That’s the face that launched a thousand detentions. Well, not quite a thousand, but he’s working on it.

“Technically, you don’t have to. If Slytherin, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw all lose fifty points, then your loss won’t have changed anything.”

“Uh huh, except that’s not actually going to happen. No-one else is going to be stupid enough to set Morgan’s robe on fire.”

“Doesn’t have to be one big thing. Could be a few little things... ”

“Marcone,” I said, “No. Whatever you’re thinking, no. It’s cheating.”

“Aw, Hufflepuff. Home of the badgering just.” Marcone lent across the table and patted me on the cheek. “Don’t worry about it.”

I threw my quill at him. “Get out of here. And whatever you’re doing, do not get expelled. Nathan will kill me.”

Nathan Hendricks was kind of buried under a three foot transfiguration essay this weekend, and he’d delegated stop-Marcone-being-a-diabolical-little-shit duties to me. I wasn’t very good at them.

I’d told him that. So I take absolutely no responsibility for what happened next.

*

It started when Luccio sprouted a beard.

If you’d asked me, I’d have said not a single student in my year had the nerve to land a curse on Professor Luccio. She was head of Gryffindor and currently taught Charms, but she hadn’t always been a teacher. Before terrifying a couple of generations of wizarding kids through impeccable OWL scores, Luccio had been an auror. It wasn’t a standard career change, but according to my godmother Luccio was so good at her job that other schools were always trying to coax her away from Hogwarts. But that wasn’t the kind of gossip kids my age care about. We worried more about whether she really ate first years for breakfast, and if that story about her slaying a dragon in the air over Bulgaria had any basis in reality, and if she still went moonlighting to run down dark wizards if the Ministry asked her really really nicely. I was willing to bet they did ask her, because I knew she was good at it. That was one of Lea’s favourite stories; the time my mum tried to sneak the Franks Casket out of the British Museum, and nearly made it- until Luccio tackled her off the roof.

Anyway, I certainly wasn’t going to try anything; I’d always been on my best behaviour in Luccio’s lessons, even though she’d never shown any signs of holding a grudge. I usually sat next to Waldo Butters, and we passed the time fairly peacefully. Butters was good at Charms, and he’s the kind of kid who likes to help you out, so I was getting along alright as well, with Waldo coaxing me through some of the swishier wand movements I tend to make a hash of.

So I wasn’t expecting John to deposit himself next to me in a tumble of parchment and ill-treated books. It was our first lesson on the Monday, and way too soon after breakfast for me to react to him with anything more than a “Muh?”

Butters, edging up next to the seat John had requisitioned, was a bit more eloquent. “That’s, uh, that’s- well. Mine.”

“So?” Marcone said, with a stare that was supposed to call to mind all the times he’d been hauled off a bigger, meaner, faster, stronger kid and landed in detention. I elbowed him in the ribs. “Ask nicely.”

“What?” Marcone looked confused.

“Ask nicely, or you aren’t sitting next to me.”

Marcone considered that for a moment. “Oh yeah? Gonna make me move, Dresden?”

“Nope. I’m gonna move myself. Now ask nicely.”

John frowned his way into a realisation of checkmate before turning back to Waldo. “Butters. Can I sit here then, or what?”

“May you,” Waldo corrected, and then skipped backwards when John turned a glare on him. But he gripped his set text a bit tighter and then glared straight back, unwilling to be run off.

“May I pretty fucking please sit here, Waldo? With a fucking cherry on top?”

Butters didn’t get a chance to answer, and I didn’t get the chance to make good on my threat to move. Luccio had caught sight of us talking instead of settling down for her lesson. “Gentlemen! Are you staging some kind of drama about your seating arrangements?”

“No!” we yelped in chorus, and Waldo dived for the desk in front of us, where John usually sat, unpacking in a hurry.

We started a new spell that day, Luccio trying to teach us Spongify, which is intended to make objects a bit softer. She had us practicing on rocks, and me and John weren’t having much luck.

“Spongify!” John snapped, and whacked the rock with his wand. The rock deflated.

“Uh. I think that’s a bit too spongy? Maybe you need less... of a slamming motion. More of a tap?” I was trying to be helpful, the way Waldo was with me, but Marcone didn’t take the criticism well.

“Oh? Let’s see you get it right then, genius.”

“Spongify?” I tried, poking at the rock with my wand. The stone glowed a deep, dark red, and the desk beneath it began to smoke.

“Fuuuuck,” Marcone said, pulling away from the desk and yanking me with him. Waldo turned around at the noise, went a little bit wide eyed, and then belted out an impeccable “Finite!” that had my rock back to its usual, rock like self.

“Struggling, Dresden?” Luccio asked, from where she was examining Claire Moreau’s work.

“A bit, Professor. Yes. Sorry.” I ducked my head and poked at the scorch marks on the desk, wondering if I’d end up scrubbing this classroom too.

“You’re here to learn boy, don’t apologise for it. I’ll be along in a moment. Tulane, let me see.”

John made a noise of satisfaction just as Luccio reached for Tulane’s rock, and I barely had time to wonder what had him so smug before a sudden forest of hair bristled out of Luccio’s chin.

I gaped.

Luccio blinked, just once, and then stroked her new beard. “Well, Mr Tulane. Would you care to explain yourself?”

“I wasn’t ready, Professor. The charm was a bit wrong.”

“Hmm. A hirsute jinx doesn’t come about accidentally, Mr Tulane. It requires intent. In fact, for a wizard of your age, it requires some rather intent practice. So. I am left with the conclusion that this is a practical joke.”

“He’s doomed,” Butters breathed in front of us. I nodded in sympathy, trying to restrain the urge to crawl underneath my desk.

“Honest, Professor- ”

“Honest is as honest does, Tulane, and this is not an honest spell. It’s inspired, and sneaky, but certainly not honest. Thirty points from Slytherin, and detention on Saturday.”

“It the quidditch on- ”

“I know exactly what it is, Mr Tulane. That will be all.”

Luccio taught the rest of the class with the beard. I couldn’t stop looking at it, jerking my eyes away every time Luccio turned in our direction. It was grey, like the hair on her head, but just bristles mostly, not long in the Merlin style.

“Quit staring,” Marcone muttered, “she’ll get suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what? We haven’t done... anything. Have we? Marcone. What have we done?”

John slid a piece of parchment out of his copy of Magical Theory. He’d drawn three columns on it, and at the head of the columns were stick drawings of a lion, a serpent, and what I’m charitably going to assume was an eagle. Under the serpent, Marcone scrawled the number 30.

“Not a bad start,” he said with a smile.

“Are you- is this- did you put him up to that?”

“No comment.”

“Marcone! You can’t just- wait. Why would he agree?”

“He needs an alibi for Saturday. And a little assistance”

“What assista- ” And that’s when the bell rang for the end of Charms. Marcone swept all his stuff up into a messy pile and cradled it against his chest.

“Can’t be late for Herbology. See you around, Dresden.”


I had Potions next, which we took with the Ravenclaws, and was mostly event free. The only excitement was provided by Susan Rodriguez, who kept turning around in her seat and quizzical-eyebrow-miming some kind of question at me from the other side of the room. Neither of us were very good at lipreading.

I could make out the shape of Is it true? and then something... something... something...

I mimed WHAT? at her. In return I got something... something... (exaggerated chin stroke) beard?

Oh Merlin. Why was she asking me? Waldo was sitting right next to her. Did that mean she thought I knew something? Susan liked knowing things, and she might not be a gossip, but she could wring you dry of secrets faster than Swift Swifton could catch a snitch. I made a not-sure-what-you-just-asked-me face and coupled it with a helpless shrug, and she rolled her eyes at me, huffed, and turned back to her text book.



But Susan wasn’t easily put off by professions of ignorance, and she caught up with me on the way to lunch. “Beard, Luccio, really?” she asked, longer legs making it impossible for me to outpace her. “Your Charms class is way more exciting than mine. Didn’t you guys blow out a window last week?”

“Not intentionally! John just kind of... throws everything at a new spell until it decides to cooperate with him. Sort of.”

“That was Johnny? Hah, I knew it. What about the beard, Tulane, right? I don’t know him.”

“Wait. There’s someone at Hogwarts Susan Rodriguez doesn’t know?” I covered my O-shaped mouth in amazement, and Susan caught me with one of her bony elbows.

“Oh, you can talk. Not sure I want to get to know him anyway; isn’t he from one of those purer than pure old families?”

I shifted my books in my arms. “Well. His mum did say something really mean to me over tea once. But I don’t really know him, he doesn’t have to be horrible too.”

“Guess not. But I wish the Hat would stop putting possibly Purist kids into Slytherin. It’s like encouragement or something.”

“Only if you really believe Slytherin wanted to deny entry to Muggle-borns on the basis of their blood. There was more concern about secrecy than pur- ”

“It was stupid!”

“I know`it was stupid! I’m just saying Salazar Slytherin shouldn’t be waved around as some kind of justification for- ”

“Not the point, because he is, and- ” We rounded the doorway of the Great Hall and Susan trailed off. She was gazing up at the high table where the teachers sat, with the kind of adoring expression I’d only ever seen her direct at a really tricky unsolved crossword in the Prophet.

“What?”

“Oh! She looks so dashing! I mean, she always does anyway but- ” I followed Susan’s gaze to see Luccio, tucking into a sandwich, still happily wearing her beard.

“That’s a first year’s jinx,” I blurted. “She could dispel it in a second!”

“Ooooh, she should trim it! A goatee would really suit her jawline.”

“Augh,” I said, because my brain was hurting.

“Oh, you’re useless,” Susan said. “Come on, I’m starving.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me straight over to Ravenclaw table like she’d forgotten which house I belonged to, and we took seats opposite Murphy.

“Got a taste for breaking rules now, Dresden?” she asked. Her voice was dry, and she always managed to ask questions like she didn’t care if I answered them, but I always did anyway.

“But are there any rules? No-one ever sits at another table, but no-one ever told me it wasn’t allowed.”

Murphy shrugged. She didn't look impressed by my logic. “Can’t say I care either way.”

“We mixing tables now?” Jared Kincaid dropped into the seat next to me, and he was another thing Murphy was very deliberate about Not Caring about.

“No. It’s just Dresden being the world’s most laid back crusader for wizarding unity. Again.”

“Sounds good,” Kincaid said, ripping open a bread roll. He had big strong hands, and the knuckles were grazed. Rumor had it he subscribed to the John Marcone school of conflict resolution, but he was subtle about it; you never actually saw him in a fight. “Find us a Gryffindor, we’ve got the whole set.” Kincaid flashed a grin at Murphy. “Oh. Unless we already do.”

She tightened her grip on her soup spoon. “Fu- Shut up, Kincaid. You shouldn’t be here either, snake.”

“Murphy the brave! Murphy the bold! Only in Ravenclaw because she was told!”

“I will gag you with this spoon, I swear by my wand.”

Susan jumped in as well. “She knows how to think, Kincaid. That’s more than you can expect from some heroic Gryffindor rush ahead foo- ”

“Hey! Terry’s in Gryffindor,” I protested.

“Sorry Harry, you know I’m not being serious.”

“And you know Kincaid is winding you up, right?”

He stole a piece of cheese of my plate as soon as I said it. “You never let me have any fun, kid. But, house politics aside, Luccio has a beard now?”

“Isn't it cool?” Susan asked. “It brings out the colour in her eyes.”

“It looks better than the Blackstaff’s.”

“McCoy doesn’t have a beard.”

“Exactly. He grew it in my second year. Looked like someone glued a dead Kneazle to his face.”

“Why do they call him the Blackstaff?” I asked. “My godmother never tells me, and it doesn’t seem to be written down anywhere.”

“It really isn’t!” Susan said, “I must have searched the whole library, nothing. And Bodiless Bob wouldn’t even breathe a word.”

“Not the whole library,” Kincaid said. “They save this kind of thing for the Restricted section. It’s not the kind of thing civilized wizards talk about.”

“Like you know,” Murphy snorted at him.

“Course I do. My dad isn’t exactly civilized, is he? Bit of a psycho, prone to discussing Dark shit over dinner.”

“Is that why we’ve never had you round to tea?” I asked. Lea had everyone round to tea at some point or another, but never Kincaid or his dad. She couldn’t stand a poor grasp of etiquette.

“Who cares who is allowed over to Barrow House for tea,” Susan said, waving the question out of the air. “We were talking about the Blackstaff!”

That’s when Morgan started giggling. Full on, high pitched, shoulder shaking giggles, with his gaze fixed firmly on Luccio’s chin. She turned to stare at him. The whole hall turned to stare at him. And then Michael Carpenter started laughing too. Big booming barks of laughter, and he clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes widening in alarm.

“...Huh,” Kincaid said, when the laughter didn’t subside, and a hush fell across the hall. Michael didn’t laugh at people. With them, sure, all the time, but never at them. And Morgan just didn’t laugh at all. I half expected the stones of the hall to shake as the castle foundations began to crumble. This wasn’t right!

Luccio didn’t seem to think so either. She drew her wand, and then started tapping at the plates and cutlery in front of the helpless Michael and Morgan. When she tapped the pitcher between the two of them, her wand glowed blue. She slid it down the table towards Professor McAnalley, who tapped it with his wand twice, sniffed it, and then announced, “Alihotsy.”

Most of the other students had started giggling by this point, but that was a natural reaction to the expression of constipated rage on Morgan’s laughing face rather than further cases of poisoned pumpkin juice induced hysteria. We weren’t laughing for long. McCoy stood up. “Any intrepid poisoner like to step forward? No? Then let’s see if you’re as clever as you think you are. Accio Alihotsy.”

There was a yelp from the Gryffindor table, and we all looked over to see a pouch fighting its way free of Tony Torelli’s pockets. It sailed across the room and into McCoy’s hands.

“Well, Mr Torelli. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Torelli, apparently, couldn’t quite manage it. “I- I- I- That’s not!” He was the kind of bull headed fearless kid that made you wonder if sometimes, when the Hat couldn’t get a year group to divide neatly into four, it just shoved some kids in the direction a house and hoped the values stuck. Torelli didn’t look particularly daring then, or full of nerve. He just looked really really surprised, like it wasn’t blatantly obvious a summoning charm would have whipped the incriminating evidence straight out of his pockets.

“Nothing coherent, I see,” the headmaster said. “Professors, if you’d like to make your way to the Hospital Wing? I’m sure some treacle of Glumbumble will set you right.” McCoy’s gaze fell on Luccio, and her beard, but as soon as she raised an eyebrow at him, he seemed to think twice about saying anything. “Children, eat up. Any further practical applications of Herbology should be relegated to the greenhouses. Oh, and fifty points from Gryffindor, Torelli, you lummox.” With that, he sat down.

“Lummox,” Kincaid snorted.

“Herbology...” I repeated, because it had prodded something in the back of my mind. “Herbology!” I spun around to stare at Slytherin table. John Marcone sat staring back, smug written all over his stupid face. He had a quill, and he noted something on the piece of parchment he’d just unfolded. “That’s it. I’m kicking his stupid arse.”

“Whose? Murphy asked. “You don’t fight, Dresden.”

“I bet I can learn,” I muttered, and set to savaging a chicken leg.

After I’d finished my chicken, and some soup, and a couple of sandwiches, I realised I didn’t really want to kick John’s arse. Lea always says I’m irritable when I haven’t eaten. Instead, I wanted to sit him down and explain, in small words, that it wasn’t ok to run around poisoning teachers and rigging the House Cup competition. I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about doing that, because in my head it sounded kind of... obvious, and John wasn’t stupid. Surely someone had explained this kind of thing to him before? But apparently, it hadn’t stuck.

The first step required actually getting hold of him, which was easier said than done. I made my first attempt as soon as I’d cleared my plate, by rising and heading over to Slytherin’s side of the hall. Before I could circle the head of their table and head back down to where John was sitting, a fourth year lent back in his seat and caught my eye.

“Too good for Hufflepuff now, Dresden?” Marco Vargassi asked me, with the kind of polite and friendly tone that meant he wasn’t interested in being polite or friendly at all. “Wasn’t your mother one of ours?”

I shrugged, because my mum had been a Slytherin at Hogwarts for a couple of years after Durmstrang announced they wouldn’t take her back, but I couldn’t tell what Vargassi was getting at. “Briefly.”

“And her father too,” Marco continued, flicking a glance up to the teachers’ table. “But not you. Curious... I’d say you were letting the side down, but maybe that’s just what happens when you water down the bloodline.”

Ah, right. That’s what we were getting at. I checked on John, because I didn’t want to lose him just because Marco felt like sneering at my pedigree, and caught him half risen to make a break for the door. But John seemed to have stalled, braced against the table, an angry set to his jaw and a cold look in his eyes. He wasn’t going anywhere, except, if I was unlucky, straight for Marco’s throat.

Like Murph said, I don’t really fight. So instead of walloping Vargassi around the ear with a convenient gravy boat, I slipped into the seat beside him and made myself comfortable at Slytherin table. And then I just carried on talking. “Maybe. Yeah. I bet my dad would have been in Hufflepuff, you know, if he’d been a wizard instead of a magician.” I scooped up one of Slytherin’s silver saltshakers and peered at my distorted reflection. I’d only been little, when I was with my dad. Old enough to remember him, and his shows, and how much he’d loved me, but not really old enough to remember how he’d done all the things he’d done. But when I was older, there were muggle libraries, and muggle books, and my indulgent godmother who never prised me away from anything I showed an interest in learning. Legerdemain, prestidigitation, sleight of hand. You could call it a few different things, and my dad had called it magic, and he’d been really good at it.

By now, I wasn’t bad either.

So I waved my hand over the salt shaker, once, twice, three times, and it was gone. Vargassi jerked in his seat, because wandless banishing magic was well beyond the scope of any first year.

“How did you- ”

“By letting the side down,” I smiled, and hey presto, reappeared Slytherin’s silverware right under Vargassi’s uncomprehending nose.

And then I ignored him. “Hey, John, can we have a word?”

I’d surprised him, and John jerked away from the table like he hadn’t realised he’d been standing there staring. “Transfiguration,” he said, turning away to give me the slip, but I still caught the wide easy smile that had slipped onto his face during my impromptu magic show. “Got to run.”

I dived under the table and scrambled upright on the other side, trying to stride after John without making it look like we were racing for the door. Which we were. “John!” I hissed at the back of his head. “John, you stop right there!”

John lengthened his stride, I lengthened mine. And then I reached forward, and grabbed at his wrist, and we jerked to a halt in the doorway.

“Johnny,” I said. “Stop. Everything. I mean it.”

“It’s in hand, Dresden. I told you not to worry.”

“This isn’t worry! This is being peed off!”

A laugh burst out of him, and he looked surprised. “Aw, come on. Peed? Seriously?”

“I’ve never been seriouser,” I snapped, and then poked him in the chest. John looked down, and then frowned at my finger, which was still poking.

“Better move it if you want to keep it, Dresden.”

I poked him again, because he wasn’t as scary as he thought he was. Marcone tensed up, and caught my wrist. “Dresden. I mean it.”

Very very gently, I kicked him in the shins. “Uh huh. So do I.”

“Dresden, I’m trying to fucking help you here!” He tightened his grip. Ow.

“Michael is family,” I said. “Sort of, anyway. He’s definitely a friend. I don’t want you putting stuff in his drink, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt. Torelli didn’t do- ”

“Torelli pushed you in the Charms corridor. Last Thursday. When you didn’t get out of his way.”

I blinked, because I’d completely forgotten about that. “Not the point- ” ...And that’s when it got a little bit more out of hand.

“Harry! Johnny! I want a word.” Startled, we looked away from one another and towards Nathan Hendricks, who was bearing down on us with a frown stamped on his face.

“Oh. Shit,” Marcone said. “Micheal really is his uncle, right? Not his sort of uncle?”

“His very actual uncle,” I said, shifting away from the oncoming red wrath, “do you think he- ”

“Did you tell- ”

“I think he might already- ”

“RUN!” Marcone took off, dragging me with him, and then behind us Hendricks broke into a run too. So much for being subtle.

“This is all your fault!” I yelled, as Marcone took us straight through a huddle of third year girls instead of around them. “Sorrysorrysorry, beg your pardon Priya!”

“Shut up and run,” John hissed. “He’s too big to be a runner, right? We can lose him.”

“He’s got longer legs!”

“Fuck,” Marcone towed me around a corner, nearly slamming me into a wall in the process. “We can hide?”

“It’s Nathan, he knows all the good hiding places!”

“Alright, you think of something.”

I did. I thought, and I thought, and I thought, ideas bouncing around my head as my feet pounded against the stones of the castle, and as we ran past a portrait of a fusty old wizard gazing up at a grandfather clock, I had a thought. “It’s the first Monday of the month, right?”

“Yeah, and?” John was starting to sound a little short of breath.

“And we need to go left after the statue of Frederick the Flatfooted! Then up the staircase, and skip the second step!”

“Why- ”

I looked over my shoulder. Nathan was gaining, and he was now as red in the face as he was in his hair. “Just trust me and do it!”

John did, and we did, and as I was hoping, Nathan followed us but didn’t skip the step. His foot dropped straight through it, and I drew to a halt as he yelped in surprise.

“Nathan? You ok?” I called back down the stairs. Nathan grunted and planted his hands flat on the stone, skipping the confusion that hit most people when Hogwarts decided to snack on an unwary student, and instead just started trying to prise himself out. “Well, I’ll take that as a yes.”

“See you around, Nathan!” John called, because he’s an irritating jerk, and dragged me off at a trot. “See? Turned out fine.”

“That was not fine! Nathan likes us, what are the people that don’t like us going to do?”

“Stay out of our way, if they’ve got any sense. He’ll get over it, and Michael's going to be fine; you can’t hurt anyone with Alihotsy. I checked.”

“Oh yeah? What if he was allergic?”

“He isn’t. None of the staff are, like I said, I checked.”

I blinked at him, because really, that was some thorough checking. “Right... you just didn’t account for the fact Hendricks might wring your neck?”

“Our necks. No. Miscalculation.” John looked thoughtful for a second, and then broke out another grin. “Did you see his face when that step gave out? It doesn’t always do that, right?”

“Not unless it’s the first Monday of a month, between noon and midnight.”

“How’d you know that? Who tells you all this stuff, Dresden?”

“I ask Bodiless Bob about the castle, and stuff. He’s really interesting.” I said it awkwardly, because I knew it was a dorky thing to be doing with my spare time, and I’d already been teased for it more than once. But Marcone didn’t seek to think it made me any less cool than I already was. Instead, he was still grinning.

“Right. Sure. A ghost skull told you about a vanishing step. In our magic school.” Marcone laughed suddenly, bright and unexpected. It looked a lot better on him than his usual scowls. “Hogwarts is kinda magic, isn’t it?”

“Oh, now you realise. Yeah, it is. Old and full of secrets.”

“And ours,” he said with a grin, reaching out to pet a tapestry, the same way he’d patted my cheek in the library. This was exactly what he’d looked like when I’d kept him out of trouble with Morgan, and I had a sudden horrified realisation: He thought Hogwarts had just done him a favour.

“You aren’t forcibly befriending the castle! Stop that. Stop grinning.”

John just turned that grin on me, and it was hard to remember why letting him do whatever he wanted might be a bad idea, if it could make him that happy. “Transfiguration, Dresden. Got to go.”

I remembered that I was the only person standing in the way of John Marcone, Devious and Unasked for Champion of Hufflepuff, and clamped down on his arm. “Except we aren’t done talking yet.”

“Find me after dinner,” John said, reaching up to pat my cheek again, which confused me into letting go of him so I could bat his hand away.

“Stop doing that!” But he was gone, laughing, and I had History of Magic to attend.

*

Trying to find Marcone after dinner whilst not in turn being found by Hendricks involved a lot of skulking behind suits of armour and dashing between statues. I felt like a muggle spy, like James Bond, or like an Unspeakable, or maybe like my mum when she’d gone through that spate of robbing magical artifacts.

But I was concentrating so hard on not being found by Hendricks that I didn’t even think about not being found by anyone else, until I galloped down the stairway from the astronomy tower (where Marcone hadn’t been lurking), and barrelled straight into Torelli.

“Oof!” I said, and then because that was a little bit rude, “Sorry.”

Torelli blinked down at me for a moment, apparently confused, and then his brain clicked into gear. “Dresden. We need to talk.”

“Sure, cool, why not?” I grinned, feeling myself starting to flush with guilt. “Hey, is your sister better? I heard she got magical mumps last week.”

That confused him even more. I had no idea why Lea kept padding out her letters to me with interminable detail about the state of every wizarding family under the sun, but apparently it was useful when you didn’t want to accidentally confess your part in getting another kid framed as a poisoner. Which I was starting to feel worse about the longer it stewed in my conscience. “Uh. Cecily? Yeah. Mum says she’s fine. Thanks.”

“Good!” I said, and smiled at him. Belatedly, he tried to loom a little bit.

“I want to talk about housepoints,” he said.

“Oh?” I tried to portray myself as the picture of innocence whilst inwardly thinking of all the nasty things I was going to yell at John Marcone as soon as I found him.

“Yeah. You lost Hufflepuff fifty, on Friday, right? Set Morgan on fire?”

“He was singed!” I protested, wondering if this was how my mother had become known as the witch that levelled the East wing at Durmstrang: Exaggeration. Maybe she’d only ever torched a curtain or something.

“Now it’s Monday, and Gryffindor and Slytherin are down fifty too. That ain’t right.” Slytherin had reached fifty? John had been up to something then, between lunch and now, but I hadn’t heard what. Just Ravenclaw to go.

“Well. They say bad luck comes in threes, right?”

Torelli poked me in the chest. “Sure. ‘Cept certain people think it ain’t bad luck, Dresden. Certain people think it’s you, being tricky. And I might just believe them, ‘cos that Alihotsy wasn’t mine.”

He was big, and the jab to my chest rocked me backwards a bit, and my hand twitched for my wand. Not that it would do me much good, seeing as I didn’t know the kind of spells that would help in a duel, and the spells I did know were prone be accidentally fiery from time to time.

“And which people would they be, then?” I asked. “Didn’t they want to back you up, if I’m so tricky?”

“Sure they do,” he said. “Right, Vargassi?”

I heard a very put upon, very Slytherin sigh, and Vargassi stepped out from behind a statue. “I believe we agreed that I’d stay in reserve, Anthony?” He rolled his eyes at me, and smiled, in that you just can’t get the help way that always pissed me off.

“...oh yeah,” Torelli said, and I felt a sudden inexplicable surge of pity for him.

“Hi Marco,” I said. “Think we’ve got some kind of misunderstanding here?” Marco had his wand out. Marco was older than me, and he probably knew the kind of spells you needed in a duel. I didn’t like where we were headed.

“Oh, I don’t think we do. I’ve just come from a quick chat with Tulane, and he really couldn’t give me a convincing reason for cursing Professor Luccio.”

No, of course he couldn’t. But he hadn’t given John away either, from the sound of it, and I made a note of that. Maybe Marcone could direct his stupid face patting elsewhere for a little while.

“Curse?” Rumbled Torelli. “That really was a first year? I thought she was coming out as a Metamorphmagus or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vargassi tutted, and then his wand was spinning around in his hand, as he flicked it from finger to finger, like a muggle gunslinger in the kind of muggle movie the Vargassis wouldn’t be caught dead watching. “Of course it was a curse. But not a very inventive one. He really could have picked something more interesting, for the sake of thirty points. I certainly would have.”

I could hear the Slytherin subtlety of it, the threat that was supposed to sneak into my ears and curl around my brain, making me frightened, willing to please him. It kind of did exactly the opposite. I spread my arms. “Go on then.”

Marco blinked, hesitated, and I rolled my eyes.

“I thought so. You aren’t going to walk up to a first year and curse him at point blank range. Not if you want to make prefect next year, like your dad keeps saying you will.” He said it over and over and over, to the point where I think Lea had seriously been considering slipping a sleeping draught into his Earl Gray.

Vargassi’s eyes narrowed. “I might just do it in self defence, against a little Dark brat like you.”

I smiled at him, a couple of years of Lea’s mandatory tea party composure freezing the part of me that wanted to jam my wand up his nose and pull his hair until he stopped looking at me like I was a lesser wizard. “And I’m sure priori incantatem will back up your story.”

Vargassi frowned, and I realised this wasn’t going to script. I was supposed to be cowering away from a physical confrontation with Torelli, not debating outcomes with Marco. He started to twirl his wand again, trying to stall for thinking space, and then a familiar hand plucked it from the air.

“Hey!” Vargassi yelled, and turned to face the unsmiling face of Jared Kincaid. It freaked me out a bit, because Kincaid always smiled. His serious face was creepy. “Jared. Give that back.”

“I could,” Jared nodded. “Or I could snap it in half and shove it up your arse.” Vargassi twitched. “Maybe you want to try cursing someone your own size? Someone who doesn’t give a flying fuck about becoming a prefect?”

“The kid’s none of your business!” Marco snapped. “He’s just another waste of space Hufflepuff, and he’s fucking over our house, Kincaid. No-one gives a damn what happens to him.”

Kincaid rolled his eyes. “Have you been asleep for the entirety of this term? The kid’s a sweetheart, half the castle’s tripping over themselves to pinch his little cheeks, and Hogwarts aside, he’s got the kind of godmother who doesn’t take kindly to- ”

“Enough!” I snapped.

Kincaid shrugged. “I just thought it was worth pointing out, seeing as Marco’s dad works for- ”

“I don’t care,” I said, pulling the wand out of Kincaid’s hands and shoving it back at Marco. “Look, any problems we have stay between the two of us, Lea doesn’t have to- ”

“You better not tell her!” Marco snapped, pointing his wand in a slightly wobbly way. Kincaid sighed, and I had a sudden vision of Vargassi getting a broken nose about twenty seconds from now. “Don’t,” I said, and instead Kincaid clamped a hand on my shoulder and turned us away from Vargassi, steering me back in the direction of the entrance hall like the angry wand pointing wizard at our back wasn’t an issue. “Wasn’t planning to. I’m not getting paid enough to champion your honour, Dresden.”

“Paid- wait, where are we going?”

“Nathan Hendricks promised to help out with my muggle studies essay if I delivered you or Marcone to him.”

“He’s two years below you!” I yelped, “how can he help?”

“He’s got muggle relatives, right? I know fuck all about them, only want to pass to piss off my dad. Hey, did you know muggles have walked on the moon?”

“What? Of course I do.” And distracted by that, I didn’t manage to wiggle away before Kincaid marched me into the hands of Nathan Hendricks. And my doom.

*

Hendricks frowned at me, and then said, “Well I guess you’ll do as bait, anyway. Kincaid, plan B?”

“Sure.”

With that cryptic exchange, I was passed into the custody of Nathan Hendricks, and Kincaid strolled off whistling.

“You know, you really shouldn’t do his homework; that’s cheating. How’s he ever going to learn about Muggles?”

Nathan swept me with a Michealesque gaze of woe and disappointment. “Hypocrisy, thy name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Come on. Let’s take this someplace private.”

“I haven’t cheated!” I protested, as Hendricks herded me further into the castle. “I don’t want to cheat! It was- ” But dropping John in it didn’t feel right, and the words caught in my mouth. All this time, it had felt at least a little bit like a game, and I’d growled some at John, but not taken any steps that could really have stopped him. I’d never thought he might end up upsetting an honorary tenuous cousin of mine. “MmmsorryNathe,” I mumbled. “Is Uncle Michael ok?”

“Fine.”

“I’d never hurt him. I swear. I wouldn’t.”

“Hush. We aren’t talking about this in the corridor.”

“Oh. Ok. Nathan? Where are we going?” I only asked because we were headed in the direction of the dungeons, and I’m of the opinion that you don’t need a dark creepy home to the rumour of a band of flesh eating trolls for privacy when the Owlry will do just as well.

“Quit squirming. We’re going someplace Bodiless Bob told me about.”

“Some- ” I didn’t have time to finish my next question before we rounded a corner and drew to a halt in front of the statue of Septicetta the Smelly, inventor of the first deodorising charm. The middle of a corridor didn’t look very private, even if it was deserted. But then Hendricks reached for the statue and tickled beneath its stony nose. “What- ” The statue curtsied and stepped to one side, leaving a dark archway in the place it had been, a passageway leading away from us, lit by hovering candles. “Oh... Merlin.”

Nathan nudged me forward, but I didn’t budge, staring at the statue and committing everything to memory. Septicetta the Smelly, her nose- and what if this was a time sensitive thing, like the step? Or-

“Dresden,” Nathan nudged me again. “Just a few words, you can go whenever you want, I swear.”

Swear? Why was he swearing? Oh! “Hendricks, I’m not scared. It’s just- ! Secret Passage.” I twisted round in his grip to grin at him, and pointed at the passageway, in case it had escaped his notice. I’d known such things existed, academically speaking, because I’d read Hogwarts: A History about five thousands times before my letter came- out of sight of Lea, who’d pointedly included nine volumes of the Durmstrang Chronicles with the presents I’d gotten for my eleventh birthday. But Hogwarts: A History wasn’t very heavy on maps, and it was really coy about stating where any of the school’s real secrets lay.

Nathan shook his head at me. “Right. In you go.” I scrambled inside, Nathan close behind me and Septicetta slid back into place, privacy secured. Looking around, I decided it was the concept of a secret passage that was exciting, rather than its actual ae- aes- I’d read the word last week, damn it... aesthetic! Because it looked like any part of Hogwarts, familiar old stones but with bare walls.

Except it twisted off and away into the unknown.

“Nathan, where does it go? Do you know? Have you been?”

“Seventh floor.”

“Cool!” I bolted forward, wanting to see how quickly I could make it from the dungeons to the top of the school, if I’d be faster when walking between the walls, but I was stopped in my tracks by Nathan’s hand on my shoulder again.

“Not so fast. We got stuff to talk about.” We had, and I’d somehow forgotten, and it all came stomping back at the sight of Nathan’s solemn disappointed face, his brows beetled together and his mouth in a flat line.

“Nathan. I would never, ever hurt Michael. Cross my heart, hope to die, I wouldn’t. And I’m really sorry about lunchtime. Are you mad? Will you tell?”

His grip tightened a little bit on my robes. “I’m mad you don’t have the sense to ask for help when you know John Marcone has a Salazarian plan you can’t get him to drop.”

“I can! He didn’t listen to me, but I was just looking for him when you had Kincaid abduct me. I just need to explain- ”

“I don’t think he wants to listen. He’s too busy wanting you to like him.”

“I’d like him a lot more if he stopped ignoring what I say! That’s just stupid.”

“Most eleven year olds are.”

“Hey!” I protested, but realised Nathan was just winding me up by the grin on his face. “I like him just fine. Most of the time. That hasn’t stopped him being an idiot.”

“I’ve got a suggestion.”

“Yeah?”

“Quit persuading him, and start distracting him. Ask him to play Exploding Snap. ...Or maybe something less violent. Preferably before he tears the castle down for your approval.”

“I’d kill him.” I scrubbed my hands through my hair, which is something I do when I’m tired or I’m thinking, and it drives Lea mad, because I end up looking like I’ve never seen a comb. “So. Operation Hug the Idiot Jerk out of John Marcone. Really? You think that would work?”

“I don’t think it could hurt. And it might mean Uncle Michael can stop fretting.”

“Fretting... oh Merlin. Does he know it was John?”

“Nah. Gave Johnny a detention last week, and then I reckon he saw his file.” John was semi-permanently in detention, and that was exactly the kind of thing that would have Michael asking questions about how are you settling in, and have you made any friends, picked up any new hobbies, even for kids that weren’t in his house. But as far as I could tell, John had a pretty low tolerance threshold when it came to Concerned Adults.

“Ah. Ok, I’m on it. Tell him not to worry.” It’d be weird that maybe trying to make John happy would make up for John poisoning Michael, but it made my conscience feel a little better about things. “Want to let us out? I’ll go find John.”

“No need, I’m pretty sure he’ll be finding us.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked Kincaid to spread the word I’d dragged you back here to rough you up.”

I frowned. “You? You’d never- ” I looked up to meet his eyes and realised, yeah, Nathan was kind of growing into someone who... well... looked like they’d get picked first as any team’s Beater. Maybe someone who didn’t know Nathan particularly well, didn’t know Mr and Mrs Hendricks, didn’t know the Carpenters, might think he’d be the drag-them-off-and-beat-them-up type.

And that’s when I heard an angry voice, muffled through stone. “Hey! I know you’re in there! HEY! OPEN FUCKING SESAME. ABRAFUCKINGKADABRA!”

Marcone. I pictured him standing there, jabbing the statue with his wand, yelling made up spells. We weren’t supposed to improvise incantations.

“I thought you didn’t want him to tear the castle apart!”

“Nope.” Nathan walked back to the wall that had closed behind us, and pressed his palm flat against it. The stone shifted, and revealed John Marcone, hair messy, eyes bright and angry, wand out in a tight grip. John looked up at Hendricks, sneered, and then leaped forward swinging.

Protego!” Marcone’s fist skated off sideways across Nathan’s shielding charm, and that was the first time I’d seen someone not get shocked into forgetting their wandwork when John took the muggle approach to expressing his displeasure. But Nathan didn’t bother with his wand after that, instead grabbing John by the front of his robes, and pinning him gently up against the wall after a bit of a shake to get his attention. “Harry’s fine. Relax.”

“Leave him the fuck alone or I’ll kick your head in, you get me?” Marcone didn’t relax, he was hissing and kicking like an angry Mister.

“Uh huh. Shut up and listen, because someone’s got to say this to you at least once: Johnny Marcone, you’re a fucking wizard. Start acting like one.” I didn’t think I’d heard Nathan swear before. It seemed to surprise John too.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you’re here to stay, so stop trying to get yourself expelled. The world isn’t ready for an angry, untrained... you.”

“Like I care,” John sneered. “People here think they’re too good for me? I wouldn’t piss on half of them if they were on fire, so you go right ahead and tell your precious uncle whatever you want, and keep your fucking wizardly manners to yourself, I don’t want to act like any of you!”

Nathan didn’t bash John’s head against the wall at that point, which I think probably took a great deal of restraint. Instead, he just frowned “Ever stop to think that if you got expelled, you’d never see Harry again?”

That thought apparently ambushed Marcone, because he hesitated mid attempt to kick Nathan in the leg, and blinked. “And in case you’re wondering, I’m not telling on you.”

“I ain’t done nothing.”

“And I wasn’t born yesterday. Look, I’m not your enemy. I like Harry, and I like you well enough when you aren’t poisoning my family.”

“I didn’t- ”

Hendricks sighed. “Whatever. I tried. Talk to Harry.” He bundled Marcone into my grip, shoved us both into the passageway, and then stepped back into the corridor to tickle beneath Septicetta’s nose once more. The wall slipped closed in front of us and Marcone howled, kicking and slamming against the unresponsive stone. “You think that’s fucking funny? You just wait until I get the fuck out of here!”

“Stop fucking swearing!” I yelled, and then clapped my hands over my mouth. Marcone froze, and turned round to grin at me. “Aw. Say that again.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut u- wait. Are we... In a secret passage?” John ducked around me and started pacing down the corridor. “Fuuuuck. We are. A secret passage. Dresden, where does it go?”

“Seventh floor, apparently,” I said, and then remembered Hendricks’ line about being distracting. “Want to go find out?”

Marcone tried to tone down his grin, and shrugged. “I guess. Might as well, while we’re here.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Whatever. Race you.” And then I bounced him off the wall with my shoulder and took off at a sprint, laughing.

“THAT’S NOT VERY HUFFLEPUFF,” he yelled, pounding after me. “I’m so fucking proud!”

*

So, I didn’t hit on the obvious Distract John Tactic straight away, because Hendricks had suggested wholesome, rule-abiding wizarding games, and John let slip he’d never played chess before, not even the non-wizarding kind, and really, that was a crime. Lea had started teaching me the first night she’d brought me home, when I sat at her long dining room table, staring at the moving pieces. I hardly ever won a game against her, but she always smiled when I did.

John didn’t take to it as eagerly as I had.

“Castle is not a fucking verb, Dresden.”

“It is in chess! Look, there’s long castling and short castling, but we can play without until you understand the basics- ”

“The basics are stupid. I can’t even move any- ”

“No, look, your knight.”

“It can’t- oh. L shapes. Yeah. That’s still stupid.” John moved his knight, and then beamed vindictively when it decapitated my pawn. “Right then, L-shapes. And the pointy one goes diagonally.”

Slytherin’s common room door clicked shut as somebody else joined us. “The bishop, Marcone. Don’t let Dresden think you were born in a gutter.” It was Tulane, who greeted me with exemplary Slytherin courtesy: “Who let the world’s friendliest Hufflepuff in here?”

“Kincaid did,” I said. Tulane might get short with John for sneaking in members of other houses, but sensible people didn’t argue with Kincaid. Helpfully, I pointed to where he sat reading, lounging sideways across an armchair. At the mention of his name, Kincaid looked up from his book. “What? The pair of you scrambling in behind me before I could close the door doesn’t count.”

“Well, you didn’t throw me out.”

“You keep Johnny quiet. Now shut up and keep doing it.”

Before John could object to being dubbed the source of Kincaid’s irritation, Tulane stepped up and plucked the title from him. He drifted over to Kincaid’s chair, and, ever so slowly, poked at the spine of his book until Kincaid was forced to hold it upright. Revealed on the front cover was an inexplicably shirtless muggle, clasping a lady to his chest on what looked like a windswept moor. The lady seemed to be having a bit of trouble keeping her clothes on too.

Me and John and Tulane shared confused glances until Kincaid swatted Tulane’s hand away. “Bloody firsties. Can’t mind your own business.”

“Is that a muggle book?” Tulane sounded a little scandalised, and I remembered Mrs Tulane’s nasty turn of phrase that time she’d taken tea with Lea. But he didn’t look disgusted, more... sort of shocked into unexpected amusement. He lent forward, trying to read the page upside down.

“What is this, Tulane, story time? There’s a whole library upstairs if you want one.”

But Tulane seemed taken by Kincaid’s book in particular. “Well. Did that come out of the Restricted section... ?”

Kincaid dropped his face onto the open pages, like he was trying to smother himself, and then lifted his head for a quiet breath. “No. Muggle romance. For an essay. Now go help Marcone beat the Hufflepuff, and leave me alone if you know what’s good for you.”

Tulane skipped back sharply, and I didn’t blame him, seeing how Kincaid was baring his teeth in something that definitely wasn’t a smile.

“You can join us, if you like,” I said, gesturing at me and John and the chess set, sprawled out on the hearth rug. “I was just teaching John.”

John scowled up at him as he came over, and grabbed at his bishop like Tulane might try and take it away or something.

“Wait- ” Tulane said. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Didn’t ask you, did I? Anyway, I can take his pawn, idiot.”

Tulane rolled his eyes. “Uh huh. Right before he captures your knight. Not worth it.” John’s hand hesitated over the board. “You want to take his king, right? You want to win. I can help.”

John frowned. “Why?”

“Because it’s a Sunday afternoon, it’s bloody freezing out, and I don’t want to do my transfiguration homework. Good enough for you?”

“I guess,” Marcone shrugged. “Not like I care who’s playing this stupid game.” Only in Slytherin would kids negotiate about who got to mess around with a chess board.

Tulane sat beside John, cross legged, and eyed me carefully. “Alright then. Let’s give Dresden a run for his money. Hendricks says he’s good.” Delicately, he suggested John move his bishop exactly into the space I’d left open for that purpose, trying to illustrate the best possible use of a diagonal. Team Slytherin had the advantage, as my pieces were higgledy piggledy all over the board, arrayed to instruct, rather than win. I smiled, because I like a challenge, and everyone else was a lot easier to beat than Lea. “You’re on.”

Tulane and Marcone did a lot of whispering, and a bit of jabbing one another in the ribs with their elbows, but they actually played well together; Tulane happy to let Marcone be the one to actually move the pieces, John gaining in confidence as we continued playing.

I had fun scrambling around the board trying to make up for my horrible starting position, and really, the look on Tulane’s face when I laid waste to his pawns was kind of hilarious, but we ploughed straight into an obvious stalemate after about fifteen minutes, stripped of all but three pieces that were perpetually chasing one another around the board with no hope of conclusion.

“Draw?” I offered, after shuffling my king sideways one last time.

“What?” John said. “We sit here fiddling around for ages and no-one even wins? That’s fucking stupid.”

“That was well played, Dresden,” Tulane inclined his head, and held out his hand. I blinked, because, well, shaking hands was a kind of stupid ritual among kids from the older (and generally ‘purer’) houses, but it was a ritual nonetheless, something tied up with old stories of wizarding nobility and unbreakable vows, back when wizards had ruled the land they lived on. In a family like Tulane’s, you wouldn’t offer your hand to anyone you didn’t really consider an equal, not ever. So. Maybe he didn’t share his mother’s opinions. Or maybe he thought chess trumped bloodlines. I didn’t know, but I took his hand anyway, and wondered if I could get him to shake with John. As soon as we shook, John hissed in disgust and knocked over the remaining chess pieces with a swipe of his hand. “Rubbish. Load of old shit.”

Tulane was glancing at him sideways, evidently unimpressed and I hopped to my feet before John could notice. “Right! Ok! Who’s for a walk? Still an hour till dinner, right?”

“Best get to my essay,” Tulane said. “You two have fun.”

*

Standing by the lake in the crisp evening air, I was beginning to think I’d have to force-feed John fun; he didn’t seem keen on the idea. “Why’d they put a wizard school in fucking Scotland?” he growled, hunching deeper inside his duffle coat. “It’s freezing. Autumn sucks.”

“Maybe Salazar Slytherin thought you’d be smart enough to pack your own gloves,” I grinned at him, and then ducked a swipe of his bemittened hand.

“Shut up,” John said, but it was slightly muffled by the borrowed scarf I’d wrapped round him. “Maybe he knew some softhearted Hufflepuff would keep spares.”

“My godmother packed them. That’s why everything’s in Slytherin green.” Matching hat, scarf, and mittens, all of which looked better on John that it had on me, his eyes catching mine with an echoing green. “But she knitted me some more when I got Sorted.” I was wearing them, fully kitted out in yellow and black, which hopefully meant Lea wasn’t too put out about me being sorted into the most awesome house in Hogwarts, though knowing my godmother it might even be a sign of pride, that I’d managed to keep to my agreement and do exactly what I wanted, all at the same time.

“They’re warm, anyway,” John said. “Thanks.” And then he kicked a stone out of the lakeshore with the toe of his boot, probably hopelessly scuffing his shoes in the process, and began chipping it in front of us as we walked. The grey plane of the lake, softened by drifting mists, didn’t seem to hold his attention the same way it did mine. I liked the cold bite of the air, the festive colours creeping into the leaves of the trees, the rise of Halloween excitement that snuck up at this time of year, twice as exciting for me seeing how my birthday came with it.

None of it seemed to touch John, and maybe I hadn’t pencilled long walks? onto my possible distractions list very hopefully, but I still sighed when I drew a mental line through it. Walking was a no. Chess was a no. I didn’t dare try Exploding Snap after that time I got a bit too literal and prompted an evacuation of Hufflepuff’s common room.

But John seemed kind of absorbed in kicking that stone, and it put me in mind of the wall of my dorm room, where Waldo had hung unmoving muggle posters of Man United. “You like football, then?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Better than quidditch. Rules actually make sense, don’t they? Game of skill, not a fucking spot the snitch competition.” I carefully didn’t point out that spotting the snitch took a great deal of skill; I could save that argument for later, and I was possibly on to something here. “Do you play?” I asked.

“Not really. Kick a ball round the street the same as everyone else. Everyone that isn’t here.”

My next move was obvious, so I scooped the stone away from John’s foot with a kick of my own, dashing it away from the shore and into the damp grass, startling a yell of objection out of John. He bolted after it and I kept on his heels, charging after him trying to do it again, but I wasn’t actually quick enough, and even though he was grinning, John eventually just spun and booted it into the lake. It landed with a solemn plop, and I panted, watching my breath hang in the air.

“Is there really a giant squid in there?” John asked.

“Yeah.”

“Think he knows the Loch Ness Monster?”

“I think that’s a myth.”

“Some things still are then.” John turned to look at me, studying my face. “Alright. Hungry?”

“Always.”

*

Ok, I don’t know what the house-elves do to the roast beef at Hogwarts, but I was ready to storm the kitchen and beg them for the recipe. “Mmpf,” I said, and grabbed a bread roll to mop up the gravy. Oh Merlin, the gravy.

Waldo was sitting opposite me, grinning. “Planning a growth spurt, Harry?”

“Nopf,” I said, and Lea might have disowned me if she could see me talking with my mouth full. I wondered what Lea would make of my Distract John problem, seeing as she’d spent four years successfully keeping me occupied, and mostly out of the kind of trouble that resulted in property damage. Maybe it was a skill, seeing as Lea had also managed to keep my mum out of Azkaban, back when she chose the name of LaFey.

“Doing anything after tea?” Waldo asked. “I said I’d write home to my mum, but I wouldn’t mind playing Gobstones after.”

“Sure,” I said. “Actually, I owe a letter too.”

*

We had an agreement, that I’d write to Lea every fortnight, and a lot of the time I’d forget until the last Sunday and then end up scrambling to compose something suitable. I wracked my brain for Godmother appropriate news. Anything I chose to omit had to be balanced against information that might reach Lea through other channels, and she’d definitely find out about what I’d done to Morgan. Half my class had probably written home about it.

Dear Godmother, it read

Have not got any better on a broomstick, I’m afraid. Crashed into Thomas Thompson five times during flying practice and in the end apologised by giving him my spare Donar Vadderung Chocolate Frog card. Glad nobody thought I was doing it on purpose, but it was kind of embarrassing. My essay marks are still high, but I’m not all that great in my practicals. Also, I lost 50 points for singeing Professor Morgan (it was only a little bit, I swear). And I met my grandfather. He gave me detention and let Morgan take the points. He said I sound like mum.

I swallowed then, and blinked a bit, and sometimes I knew it was stupid because I’d never met my mum and I didn’t care what my grandfather thought but it all jumped on me, the same kind of sadness that still hit when I got reminded of my dad at weird moments. But I had a letter to write.

I’ve made lots more friends, and do you remember Johnny Marcone from Madam Malkins? You asked me to tell you what house he got Sorted into, and I kept forgetting to mention it, but he’s Slytherin and I’m worried he’s going to get in trouble. He’s mad all the time. And he seems to hate everything that isn’t me. And Hogwarts, the castle anyway, not sure he’s so keen on the school concept. I showed him a vanishing step and we got pushed into a secret passageway, and I think he thought that they were cool. Maybe we should look for some more because I don’t know what else to do with him and he doesn’t even like chess. I drew a game with Tulane today and he shook hands with me.

I like writing things down, almost as much as I like reading things, because when you lay things out on paper, sometimes something occurs to you, all of a sudden. Inspiration.

Godmother, did my mum ever talk about Hogwarts with you? About passageways or tunnels or anything? My birthday is soon, and I usually ask for books, but if she did, I’d like that instead.

I hope you’re well. Say hi to Smopsy from me, and tell her I’m getting enough to eat and wrapping up warm.

Lots of love,

HBCD

After I signed and folded my letter, I checked the time and realised I had about twelve minutes to make it to the Owlery and back before curfew. I weighed my chances of being caught out late against breaking a promise to Lea, and decided to risk it. Parchment held tight in one hand, I dashed out into the castle, hoping my godmother had answers to my questions.

*

My godmother’s answer came the next day, in the form of a present. But it was about three weeks too early to be a present for me. It divebombed my eggs and bacon first thing in the morning, dropping out of the grip of my godmother’s largest and most belligerent owl.

“Chauncy!” I yelped, trying to retrieve the parcel before it got entirely smothered in perfectly runny yolk. The eagle owl decided it was presumptuous of me to scoop up my post before offering him tribute, and snapped at my fingers. I hid my hands under the table smartly. “Chaunzaggoroth. We talked about this. Godmother said you aren’t allowed to eat me.” Chauncy tried to pin me with his baleful orange glare instead, but I stared straight back; I’d had enough of his nonsense after the time he tried to swoop off with Mister. It hadn’t ended well for Chauncy. “If I give you the sausage you just squashed, can we call a truce?”

I decided to take the owl’s steady blink as a yes, and dropped a sausage by his talons. Chauncy snapped it up, flapped his wings a couple of times- knocking a milk jug over in the process- and soared back out of the hall.

“You never mentioned your godmother kept Pterodactyls,” Waldo said as he started drying the table with a quick flick of his wand. I watched the spell with interest.

“Oh, hey, have we learned that one?”

“Eh. I took a left turn at a warming charm? Seems to be working.” Butters was always doing things like that- quietly picking things up and adapting them and practicing and then just being awesome- and no-one seemed to notice. It was weird. “What did you get? Another care package?”

“I don’t think my godmother likes knitting that much.” The package was a surprise, which made it exciting, but I couldn’t open it first of all because there was an envelope stuck to it and you always open a letter first. Lea said so. And Lea didn’t usually write back so quickly, so it must be something interesting. I ripped the envelope open and then unfolded the paper over the wreckage of my breakfast.

Dear Child,

I am glad to hear you’ve kept at your flying practice, but as long as you can stay seated on a broom, you needn't concern yourself too keenly with skillful flying; no wizard of real merit has made his name on a quidditch pitch.

With regard to your lessons, I expect nothing less than well turned out essays, as you are a bright boy with a thirst for knowledge. Practical skill comes with time, and you come from a powerful line. Your ancestor barely mastered his magic until the day he drove the sword into the stone, and then he went on to be the country’s kingmaker.

If you have to set any of the teaching staff on fire, I suppose Morgan is a suitable target. And yet I hope discretion comes with age also.

I am loathe to find myself in agreement with Ebenezer McCoy, but you do, as it happens, sound like Margaret. More so with every day that passes, and I think she would have been very proud. I hope the political fallout from losing your house 50 points was not too great? But I have heard of odd fluctuations in the house cup competition of late, so perhaps your little mishap is subsequently unremarked?

With regard to Jonathan Marcone, I thought he would make a fine Slytherin. That house is too often deprived of potential, and fresh blood should be invigorating. I look forward to observing his career.

On the subject of young Jonathan, and your request, I must first disappoint you. Your mother knew Hogwarts from dungeon to spire, and we talked of the castle on more than one occasion, and her stories are yours by right of birth and blood. But I will not gift you anything that might unduly harm you whilst you are still untried. So, for your birthday, expect the usual presents. But in substitution, that you and John might keep out of trouble, or at least find trouble which is educational and worth your while, please find with this letter a present for his birthday, which falls today. Make your own memories of Hogwarts until you are wise enough for Margaret’s, and do so boldly.

Smopsy is fretting dreadfully in your absence, and still keeps serving meals for two. The house is very quiet without you and Mister, and it is strange not to be eternally tripping over the books you leave in your wake.

I’ve been drawing up lists of our usual Winter visits, in preparation for your return at Christmas, as such things are best settled early. If you’ve made acquaintance with the eldest Tulane child, perhaps we should overlook his mother’s slight of you and call on them this year. I will send a draft for your review.

Your affectionate godmother,

Lea

I barely skimmed the last paragraphs, struck by a fact of great import. Grabbing at the parcel, I actually looked properly at the name written across it in graceful golden ink. Jonathan Francis Marcone. I shook the package, but It didn’t make a sound.

“JOHN!” I yelled across to Slytherin’s table, trying to catch his eye by leaning sideways in my seat. “HEY! JONATHAN FRANCIS!” At ‘Francis’, John’s head jerked up from the toast he’d been buttering with enough vigour to poke holes clean through the bread, and scowled at me. I held up the parcel and waved it to and fro. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”

Then a hand tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked up at the beardless chin of Professor Luccio.

“Uhm.”

“Mr Dresden, are you capable of receiving post like a civilised young wizard, or should I look after that parcel until you recollect your manners?”

I lowered my arms. “ ‘Msorryprofessor. Got excited?”

“You vigour is inspiring, but a little obnoxious first thing in the morning. Mind yourself in future.”

“Yes Professor. Sorry Professor.”

Luccio nodded down at me and swept out of the hall, leaving John to scurry over with his half mauled toast. Mine looked better, even with Chauncy’s claw marks in it.

“Tell you what? And don’t go calling me Francis, for fuck’s sake.”

“That it’s your birthday, Marcone! I haven’t got you anything!”

John tried to cross his arms, and then remembered he was still holding his breakfast. He scowled instead. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does! Has anyone even sung to you yet?” John turned up the scowl, and I knew that meant no. “HAAAAP- ”

John looked physically pained, and then made little hand grabby motions like he was throttling the air. “Shutupshutupshutup. Dresden! Don’t you even dare.” He looked around the hall, to where people had started to turn towards us, most notably a sizable chunk of Slytherin. “Seriously. Not here, Christ.”

I deflated slightly. Singing happy birthday was fun, but not if it made the birthday boy unhappy. “Lea got you a present?” I tried, and held it out instead.

John blinked. “She... why? How? I didn’t tell you. How’d she know?”

“She sort of knows everything. Or lots of things. But it’s probably character building or something? Sorry. I bet it’s a book.” I loved books. John was apparently less keen on them.

I pressed the parcel into his hands and he looked down at it, frowning. I was starting to debate the merits of explaining present opening, until he opened his mouth. “I- look. Do I have to open it here?”

“...No? I mean, you can open it wherever you like. Or not at all. I’d kind of like to watch though. If you don’t mind?” I smiled up at him hopefully, because birthdays. They were made to be shared.

John shifted from foot to foot, looking down at the parcel awkwardly. “Tonight, then? After tea?”

I grinned at him. “Yeah, sure, great. What’ve you got this morning?”

“Divination. Who the fuck put that on the curriculum? I was born a bullshitter, I don’t need a freaking O.W.L in it.”

“You’d be surprised at how much prophecy shaped the history of the wizarding world.”

“Right. Did any of these prophecies get pulled out of teacups? Crystal balls?”

“Uh. I... don’t think so?”

“Right then. Later, Dresden. Don’t start any fires.” John shoved the parcel under his arm and left, stuffing cold toast in his mouth as he walked.

“Don’t get detention!” I yelled after him, because the problem with arranging to meet John was that he tended to get himself double booked with angry professors.

*

John must have been on his best behaviour, because he didn’t get detention, I didn’t set anything on fire, and we made it into Slytherin common room just after seven o’clock, sprinting straight through it and down the hall to the first years boys’ dorm. Kincaid’s shout chasing us, “Johnny, I don’t care if he keeps following you home, you can’t keep him!”

John’s dorm was furnished in the usual grand Slytherin style, all giant four posters with green drapes, and dark wooden furniture. I couldn’t help comparing it to Hufflepuff’s simpler, cosy, set up and deciding I’d lucked out in my Sorting. John threw his book bag onto a bed I presumed must be his from the way the covers were all rucked up and unmade, and then kicked off his shoes, and sat crossed legged in the middle of the mattress. I joined him as he pulled the present out of his bag.

“Wait!” I said. “Can I sing now? I should have brought cake.”

“We just ate Dresden. Even you can’t be hungry again.”

“You don’t need to be hungry for birthday cake. That’s like a separate stomach or something.”

“Shut up. Sing if you want to, sap.”

He sounded less than enthusiastic, but I didn’t need telling twice. “HAAAAAAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR JONATHANFRANCISMARCOOOOOOONE. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOOOOOO YOOOOOOOOU!” I sang, and then thumped him in the shoulder for clamping his hands over his ears. John walloped me around the head with a surprisingly sturdy pillow, and then had to drop it to stop me falling off the bed.

“Ow. Jerk.”

“Marshmallow.”

“Open your present, birthday boy. Come on!”

“You made me wait,” he said, and shredded it open at a speed which meant he had possibly been a bit more excited than he was letting on.

I was right, it was a book. Bound in red leather, with gilt pages, and an embossed... tool type thing of some description in gold on the cover. John stared at it, mouth moving as he mimed the title to himself. “...What’s a Cartographer?” he asked, eventually. I tilted my head so I could see the title too. A Cartographer’s Craft.

“No idea.” But there seemed an obvious way to find out. “Open it.”

John did. “Chapter six: Plotting the Unplottable.” He flipped the pages. “Chapter twelve: Depicting Ambulatory Rooms. I don’t get- ”

“Oh!”

“Oh?”

“It’s about mapmaking!”

“...Mapmaking? No offence Dresden, but this is a weird present.”

“No, John. Hogwarts! Secrets!” I grabbed the sleeve of his robe and tugged on it a little for emphasis.

“...?” he said, looking at hand where it clutched at his uniform.

“It’s never been mapped! We can find the passageways, and all the other things, and John, we can write them down.”

“Can’t we just remember where everything is? Why do we want a map?”

“Because no-one else has ever drawn one! We’ll be like explorers, finding secrets and putting them on paper.”

John was leaning towards me, still peering down at his book with a frown. “No-one else? Just us?”

“Just us.” I reached over and flicked the pages, straight to the back, which I never ever do, but maybe it was forgivable with a reference text. “I mean, a lot of this magic is advanced. We won’t be able to do it yet, like... oh, wow. You can track people.”

John looked from me, to the book, and back to me again. “We’ve got till 18. Think that might be old enough?”

“Maybe.”

“Cool,” John said, and nodded, and that was that. Decisions made. “So what’s she gonna send for your birthday?”

The door swung open before I could answer, and John shoved A Cartographer’s Craft under his pillows, and we both stared at Tulane, faces plastered with innocence.

“What’re you two up to?”

“Nothing!”

“Whatever. Wanted to let you know Vargassi’s in the common room. He’ll probably run to a teacher if he sees you here, Dresden.”

“Oh. Crap. Thanks Tulane, that’s really nice of you.”

“Call it Marcone’s birthday present. Game of chess, Johnny? We should be able to sneak Dresden out, if we’re quick.”

John looked between the two of us, somehow uncertain, and I smiled reassuringly. “That’d be alright, I guess,” he shrugged. I bumped him with my shoulder before scrambling off the bed, trying to knock a bit of enthusiasm into him.

“Can you distract Vargassi for me?” I asked, tying my shoelaces.

“Oh, you just bet I can,” Marcone grinned.

“Peacefully! Distract him peacefully.”

“...I think I’d better take this one,” Tulane said, and slipped out of the room.

John looked thoughtfully at the doorway he’d just vacated. “Tulane’s ok. I guess.”

“Uh huh,” I said, with a nod of encouragement at John expressing positive sentiments over someone that wasn’t me or the castle. “So. Mapmaking. Tomorrow?”

“Where?”

“Wherever we can find some privacy. That’s our first challenge.” And then, impulsively, I reached over and patted him on the cheek. John barely managed to stop himself jerking away, and then shot me a look of confusion that made me laugh. “Night, Johnny. Happy Birthday.”

I was grinning all the way home, sneaking through Slytherin’s common room, winding my way through the castle towards Hufflepuff, wondering if there were quicker ways, secret ways, to make the same trip, and how long it would take me to find them. Take us to find them. We had years to manage it, and I couldn’t wait to start.

Harry Dresden and the Halloween Hogwarts Birthday

I woke to the clatter of Waldo’s alarm clock, a racket that sounded pretty much like a brass band falling down a flight of stairs, and the sole guarantee that not a single Hufflepuff first year boy had missed breakfast since term began.

“Augh!” wailed Fix, sitting up in bed and nailing the clock marching around Waldo’s bedside table with an overarm pillow throw.

“Hey!” Waldo yawned, rolling over to rescue his clock from the floor, “And a happy Halloween to you too!”

“...Halloween?” I repeated, kicking my way out of the blankets. “HALLOWEEN!”

Another series of groans sprung up from Fix and the determinedly unconscious Vince, but Waldo just turned to grin at me. I leapfrogged from my bed to his, tipping him laughing back onto his pillow. “Waldo! Halloween! It’s my-- ”

“Birthday!” he finished for me, all smiles. “We know, Harry; you mentioned it.”

“A few thousand times,” said Vince, now under his pillow.

“Come on, Graver, I’m twelve! It only happens once.”

I jumped off Waldo’s bed to peer out of the window, bare feet cold on the floor. It was still dark, and I couldn’t see much. “My godmother said she’d send a cake, d’you think it’d come with the morning owls?”

“I’m not sure birthday cake counts as a breakfast food,” Waldo yawned. “Aren’t we having a whole feast later?”

“Breakfast!” I dragged my robes from where I’d kicked them under the bed last night. “Come on guys, rise and shine!” Instead of rising or shining, Fix lobbed his second pillow, nailing me in the back of the head when I was half tangled in my robe. “Yah! Fix!”

“There’s more where that came from!” Vince finally emerged from his bundle of blankets, and caught me in the shoulder with a rapid fire pillow. I threw it back, covering my dash for the bathroom, and slammed the door shut behind me. I leaned against it, and grinned birthdayhalloween at the mirror.

“You look cheerful, dear,” it said. “Start the day with a smile, that’s the way! But you really should run a comb through that hair.”

The mirror was usually right about this stuff, the same way Lea was, so I borrowed Fix’s comb and dragged it through my hair until the mirror was satisfied. Then I finished dressing, and led an even-earlier-than-usual troupe of Hufflepuff boys down to the Great Hall. I’d wanted to wake the girls too, in case there was cake and they wanted some, but the others had all looked horrified at the idea of banging on their dorm room door. So it was just us walking into the hall, grinning at the decorations.

I’d heard some of the older kids talking about the Halloween feast, and the hall was already made up for it. Pumpkins levitated through the air, grinning down at us with a variety of fearsome expressions, and the walls were laced with black and orange cobwebs. It was still early, so the place was mostly empty apart from a few quidditch players refuelling after a horribly early practice session. It wasn’t even light yet. I checked the high table, hoping to catch uncle Michael for just a minute, even though he ate breakfast at home half the time. But Professor Luccio was the only member of staff there, and she was frowning at us.

“Gentlemen, please tell me you’ve all spontaneously become morning people. If there’s some reason you’ve had to evacuate your dormitory, I don’t want to hear about it until I’ve finished my coffee.”

Oops. Maybe Luccio had heard about that time with the overly explosive Exploding Snap cards. I gave her a little morning wave. “It’s my Birthday!” I tried. “Happy Halloween, Professor.”

Luccio stopped frowning. “Ah, good. Happy Halloween, Mr Dresden. And many happy returns.”

Having reassured Professor Luccio that we hadn’t set Hufflepuff on fire, I got stuck in, piling up sausage and bacon and eggs and beans and toast on my plate and demolishing at least half of it before the rest of the school started drifting in, calling morning greetings and scrambling for seats with friends.

I was torn between watching the door for John, keeping an eye out for the morning post, and listening to Fix and Vince debate the likelihood of the ghosts putting on a show for the evening feast.

The owls arrived before John did, Chauncy bearing down on me with a basket in his talons. He dropped it in my breakfast, and then shrieked at me.

“Ow. Thanks, Chaunzaggoroth. Happy Halloween.” Chauncy shrieked again, snapped his beak at Vince, who’d been edging close to the basket, and flapped off. Waldo caught a cup of tea before it could tip over in the backdraft.

“That owl is mean,” Fix said.

“Open the basket,” Vince said, leaning closer again. “Come on, Harry.”

I did, and pulled out four parcels, wrapped in yellow paper and black ribbon. The knots slowed me down a bit, until Fix leaned over and snapped the ribbon with his knife, getting jam all over the place in the process.

“You got parchment?” Vince said. He sounded disappointed, and I guess parchment might look like a boring present to someone who hadn’t sat staring at Cartographer's Craft, Chapter Two: Tools and Techniques, but I had. I could recognise plotting parchment when it was staring me the face.

“I like parchment,” I grinned, and tore into the next two gifts. Lea had sent me a box of finely crafted quills, and a selection of inks in black and red and gold. They were perfect, and I couldn’t wait to show John, but there was one present left.

“What’s that going to be? Enchanted paperclips?”

“No idea.” I tugged at the black ribbon, and the bow unravelled, paper folding away before I could touch it, and I was looking at a miniature model of Hogwarts.

“Oh!” I said, and leaned in closer to look, because it’s not like you can usually see the astronomy tower from above, but I sat back quickly when the tower got closer than I expected.

“Is it growing?” Fix yanked his porridge out of the way as Hogwarts got bigger, pushing a tide of cutlery and food along the table.

“Uhm-- ” I said. “Yes. Definitely growing. Lisa! Watch your plate!”

People were turning to look as things crashed off the floor, and the spires of Hogwarts rose into view from Hufflepuff’s table. I hoped it wasn’t supposed to be life size, or I was going to be in trouble for opening this particular present in doors.

As I debated calling a teacher for help, Butters drew his wand and poked the model. It sank straight through. “...Huh,” Butters said, pulling the wand back out. It was all goopy. “Wait. Is this icing?”

“Oh, Merlin. It’s a cake!” Vince wooped, and then punched the air. “Giant cake! Dresden! Best breakfast ever!”

I burst out laughing and took a quick peak at the teachers’ table. The cake had drawn to a halt, with the tallest tower maybe about level with my head. Professor McAnally was smiling at us, and Professor Luccio had a hand on Professor Morgan’s shoulder, who was half way to standing. It looked like I wasn’t about to get told off, despite the mess.

“Right. You better get people to pass their plates down,” I said, waving encouragingly to the group of third year girls who were sitting next to us. “From the other tables too; I don’t think I can eat this much by myself.”

The sudden influx of cake kickstarted a chorus of ‘happy birthday!’s, and some enthusiastic and off key singing. Vince and Butters were trying their best to sing the loudest, right down my ears. But there’s only so long anyone wants to sing for with a giant chunk of cake waiting for them, and the last notes were dying away by the time John Marcone slunk into the hall.

I don’t think John made a habit of listening to his mirror; his hair looked like he’d tried to comb it with a pillow.

I waved him down. “John! I saved you the astronomy tower! Happy Halloween!”

John made his way over, staring at the wreckage of cake crumbs and icing. “Harry. Five minutes. Meet you in the treehouse.”

“But you haven’t eaten,” I said.

John picked up the astronomy tower and bit its roof off. “Fife m’nts, H’wy.” Then he stalked back out of the hall, school bag slung over his shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re friends?” Waldo asked, watching him leave.

I shrugged. “I don’t think he’s had much practice, but yeah. Best friends, Waldo.” I got my stuff together. “See you in Charms?”

“Lessons start soon, Harry. Don’t be late, we need the points.”

“I won’t! Cross my heart!” With that, I dashed out the hall after John.

*

The Treehouse was mine and John’s favourite meeting place, but it wasn’t really a treehouse. We went there when we wanted a bit of privacy, usually to work on the Secret Castle Map, and we only called it a treehouse because it was up high and out of the way.

We hadn’t found it by ourselves. Our usual methods for discovering new places were a bit hit and miss; we prowled the school, poked and prodded around, and muttered random incantations. Sometimes we followed Mister down his cat paths, or quizzed one of the older kids who didn’t mind talking to us. None of that got us the Treehouse. The Treehouse we got from Bob.

Bodiless Bob haunts the library. A specific shelf in the library, just where the normal shelves start to give way to the restricted section. He’s in charge of raising the alarm if anyone tries to sneak past him without permission, to look up something they shouldn’t, and he’s really good at making a racket.

I’m pretty sure the restricted section is full of interesting things that everyone thinks I’m not old enough to read. But that’s ok, because Bob is full of interesting things too, and there aren’t any rules about talking to him. Unless you count Bob’s; he doesn’t share stories for free.

I tell him things all the time, like when I set Morgan a little bit on fire, or crashed my practice broom into the lake, and Bob tells me about how the first house-elf came to Hogwarts, or the name of the giant squid. But the first time we asked Bob about the secret places in Hogwarts, he wanted John’s stories instead.

They hadn’t met before, and John doesn’t really like sharing with strangers, but I vouched for the ghost head sitting on the shelf in front of us. John came round to the idea.

In case you ever wondered about how John Marcone first came into his magic, it was by accidentally shoplifting an X-box. I laughed when he told us, even though I thought maybe I shouldn’t, which made it a very John story.

The place Bob told us about in return felt kind of similar. It made me want to jump up and laugh, and clap my hands, and also run away from what might be the worst idea ever.

Because this is how you find the Treehouse: You run up one hundred and seventy five steps of the Astronomy Tower, and then you stop in front of a narrow window, and spin around three times, carefully so you don’t tip back down the stairs. Then you say “I shall gang widdershins”, and the window widens, and you step through.

You don’t hit the ground and die. Something happens, between standing on the ledge, and taking a step, and you end up inside a wide, circular room instead. There aren’t any windows, just a dark outline in the stonework showing where you stepped through, and the walls are covered with tapestries. There’s a big fireplace too, but other than that the place is empty, because me and John hadn’t got around to carting anything up there.

But on my birthday, when I stepped into the Treehouse, it wasn’t empty. It had John in it, of course, standing in the middle of the room, but he was scowling down at a little package by his feet.

“Uh, John? Is that for me?”

“That’s what the label says.” John drew his wand and started glaring at the walls. “I didn’t put it there. We need a better secret den.”

I crouched down to look at the the parcel. The label read, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARRY’ in sturdy block capitals, which wasn’t much of a clue at all. “Well, I don’t mind people breaking in if they’re going to give us presents,” I said, and picked it up.

John grabbed my wrist. “Wait! You don’t know what’s in that. It could be cursed, or a bomb or anything.”

“ John, it’s a birthday present. Relax.”

“Oh, Christ. You’d take sweets from strangers too, wouldn’t you?” John yanked the present away from me.

I shot to my feet. “Marcone! Quit being a jerk!”

“You quit being an idiot,” he said, and shoved my present in his bag.

I took a breath, ready to yell at him, and then wondered if we needed to have another conversation about Things that Should be Obvious. “John. You don’t steal birthday presents. That isn’t ok.” Rule number two, right after Poisoning is Bad.

John crossed his arms over his bag, holding it tight to his chest, and turned the scowl up a couple of degrees. I scowled back. Compromise, Lea’s voice whispered in my ear.

“Right. Fine. How about I get it checked? By a grown up?”

John shifted, clearly caught between a sensible suggestion and his knee-jerk distrust of anyone over the age of eighteen. “Which grown up?”

“Uncle Michael.”

More scowling. John still hadn’t forgiven Michael for taking an interest, but he knew that I trusted him. “That’d be ok. I guess.”

Encouraged, I held out my hand, but John shook his head. “No way, Dresden. You wouldn’t last five minutes with an unopened present.”

Waldo was right. This didn’t look very much like friends at all. “You just hate birthdays, John. You hate fun.”

John rolled his eyes, and then yanked a different parcel out of his bag. “I do not. Here. Sorry it’s not new.” John shoved it into my hands.

It was another present, wrapped in yesterday’s Prophet and lots and lots of spellotape. More spellotape than paper, almost, and it took me a minute to scrabble my way into it to find a book. It was battered; corners folded and spine cracked, exactly how I expected a beloved muggle book to look. “The Fellowship of the Ring? Oh, hey, cool!”

“I liked the movie,”John said. “Would have got you the DVD but, you know, Hogwarts. Nothing to watch it on. And I don’t think Amazon deliver here.”

“Books are better,” I grinned. “This is perfect, John. Thank you.”

“Yeah, right. Good,” he said, and crossed his arms again. He was so bad at this, wasn’t even trying for one of his stupid cheek pats, and impulsively I lent forwards and squashed him into a hug. “Gah! Dresden!”

I squeezed him a bit tighter, still grinning. “Come on. We’ll be late for Charms.”


The staircases were with us, and we made it to Charms in record time, skidding through the door as Luccio called the class to order, diving into a couple on unclaimed seats at the back of the room instead of our usual places.

“Today, we’re going to take a look at a tickling charm,” she said, and behind her the word Rictusempra wrote itself across the blackboard.

“...tickling?” Marcone muttered. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“When am I ever going to need to magically tickle someone?”

John was good at awkward questions, and I frowned, trying to think of an answer, but Luccio’s voice distracted me. “An excellent question, Mr Marcone. Can you hazard a guess?”

“Fucking hell, she has bat ears,” Marcone hissed, and I elbowed him in the ribs in case Luccio could hear that too, because if he got detention and missed the halloween feast, that’d be terrible.

“Mr Marcone? Can you speak up?”

John frowned at Luccio. “I dunno.”

“I don’t expect knowledge, but I’d like a theory. This isn’t a trick question, think it through. Why might you want to cast a spell on another that makes them thrash around and laugh?”

Marcone looked at me. I shrugged. “For a prank?” he guessed.

Luccio gave him a small smile. “It’s certainly a well established one, but I wouldn’t recommend it in my lessons. But thematically related to the idea of a prank, perhaps, is the idea of a distraction. Rictusempra is a useful feint in a duel, for example. It requires very little power and concentration to cast, and leaves your opponent open to your following spell.”

“Huh,” Marcone said, sitting up straighter and looking at Luccio with interest.

“It’s also very difficult to accidentally cause physical harm, even if the spell is badly cast. So it’s an excellent starting point when it comes to casting spells on another human being. Now, open your textbooks to page thirty two, and watch me for the wandwork.”


We staggered out of Luccio’s classroom an hour later, massaging strained cheeks and panting for breath. I nearly walked straight into Nathan when he detached himself from the shadow of a statue.

“Yah! Why are you lurking?”

“Tis the season,” Nathan said. Marcone came up beside me, trying to be casual about clutching his ribs.“Let me guess. Rictusempra?”

“Yeah!” I said, “I think I got it too.”

“Classic Luccio.”

“What is?” Marcone said, propping himself against the statue Nathan had been lurking by.

“She has to deal with a load of hyped up first years first thing on Halloween, and she made you all get daft and giggly productively. Tactical genius.”

“...huh,” said John again, and maybe it didn’t sound like much, but from him and about a teacher that was practically Susanesque levels of enthusiasm. “What you stalking us for, Hendricks? Whatever it is, we didn’t do it.”

“Uncle Michael wants to have you over for lunch, Harry. Aunt Charity made you a cake. I think Molly helped ice it though, so you’ve been warned.”

Marcone rolled his eyes at me. “Harry doesn’t need any more cake. He’ll explode.”

“You’re invited too, pest. And it’s chocolate cake.”

“We’d love to,” I grinned.

“Hey!” John said.

“Come on, John. You’ll like the rest of the Carpenters, they’re really nice.”

“If anyone asks me about my feelings, I’m out of there. I’m not kidding.”

Nathan clearly took that as a yes, because he gave us both a nod. “See you later. Don’t be late, Charity’s got a consultation after lunch.”

*


Lunch time came, finally. I met Nathan in the entrance hall and we headed out to the greenhouses to pick John up from Herbology. He was chipping a stone around by the time we got there, scuffing it up into the air and darting to kick again before it could fall.

Nathan winced. “Windows, Johnny.”

John scowled, standing on one foot, stone balanced on top of his shoe. “I’m miles away from them, shut up.”

He was maybe six feet away, and as I looked between John and the greenhouse, wondering if its glass was charmed against stray stones, I caught sight of Professor McAnalley still inside, plucking fruit from a little shrub thingy. “Uhm. Professor Mac’s watching,” I said, nodding at him. McAnalley smiled and nodded back. John looked over his shoulder, wobbled, and cut short the argument by dropping his stone into the grass.

“Right. So where’s this cake then?” John said, like he’d meant to drop the stone all along.

“The old gamekeeper’s cottage,” I said. “Come on.”

It was about a five minute walk with John dragging his heels, but he got curious as we got closer and he could consider the cottage, picking up the pace a little. “That old thing? They’ve got kids, right? Where do they all fit?”

Uncle Michael and Aunt Charity had three children so far. Molly was four, Daniel was three, and Matthew was at the one-and-a-bit stage where adults still talked about his age in months, but I forgot how many. To muggle eyes, the small, squat cottage would be horribly cramped for a family of five.

“Uncle Michael worked as a builder, before Hogwarts,” Nathan explained. “He’s pretty handy with an expansion spell.”

John huffed in irritation, and I’d never known him be bothered by architecture before. He liked the castle, with all it’s places there shouldn’t be spaces. “What?”

“I sleep in the box room at my aunts. This is going to be bigger on the inside, isn’t it? Like your school trunk.”

“Buildings might be harder than trunks, I think. But same principle. Hey, Uncle!”

Michael Carpenter walked round the corner of the cottage, little Matthew in his arms. “Hello boys!” he smiled, like we were a pleasant surprise even though he’d invited us. “Say hello, Matthew.” Matthew waved vigorously, having just discovered how waving worked a few weeks ago. “Ha! Ha!” he said, with a big grin.

“Ha Reeee,” I encouraged, waving back before I made introductions. “Hi, Matthew, this is John.” Matthew waved some more, and John nodded in response.

“Hiya Matthew,” Nathan said, over John’s shoulder.

“NAAAAAAFE!” Matthew yelled, and then stuck both arms out and wiggled, like he could fly over to Nathan if his dad would just let go. Michael handed him over, and Nathan spun his youngest cousin in a quick circle, making ‘woosh!’ noises and pretending to throw him in the air. Matthew shrieked happily, kicking his little feet like he could swim higher towards the sky.

John backed away a little, like he thought Matthew might come rocketing in his direction if he stayed too close.

“Hi!” I heard, and spotted Daniel in the doorway to the cottage. He had one of Molly’s dolls by the ankle, and he dragged it over to us carefully before stopping front of John.

“I’m Daniel,” said Daniel. He lifted the doll, which had red pigtails and a blue dress. “This is Godric.”

“Right. John,” said John.

Daniel offered him Godric.

John looked at me, with his what-is-this-Dresden face. “Nice to meet you, Godric,” I prompted.

“Yeah. It’s a pleasure,” John said, not quite scowling at me as he shook Godric’s hand.

“Molly got a broom,” Daniel told him, and from his tone of voice, this was An Important Event, and it needed to be shared. “I got Godric.”

“That’s... Nice?” John tried, and I wondered if he was going to make a break for the castle. But before he could try, Molly appeared to round us all up.

“Faster, faster, faster!” she drifted around the corner of the cottage, on a toy broom done up in purple and black streaks with silver sparkles. It hovered about knee height, and she flew it around us in circles. “Daaaad! Faster!”

Michael scooped Daniel up, because he looked fascinated by the broom and in danger of wandering into Molly’s flightpath. “As soon as the stabilising charms come off, Molly. You need to hover before you can race.”

“Stabilisers are rubbish,” Molly said, with all the conviction of four. “I can fly better than Harry. Harry doesn’t have to go slow.”

“That’s not hard, though.” John said. “Bricks fly better than Harry.”

“Hey!” I said, and thumped him in the shoulder, ignoring Nathan’s choked off laughter. “I’m the birthday boy, you have to be nice to me.”

“I’m nice, Harry. I made you a cake!” Molly said, dismounting with admittedly more grace than me. “Happy Birthday!”

“Cake!” Daniel cheered, and Matthew yelled “Naana!”, which generally meant ‘food’, or ‘banana’, depending on the context.

“I think that means it’s lunchtime,” Michael said, and led us into the house.



It was a lot bigger on the inside, with a staircase leading to a second floor that didn’t make sense from the outside. The ground floor was still all one big room for cooking and eating and living in, and a lot of the time in Charity’s case, working. I’d seen her work spread out every now and again, and right then the big kitchen table was covered in parchments, Charity busy making notes on the upmost.

“Mum!” said Matthew, making his flying arms again. Nathan held onto him carefully, and Michael set Daniel down to wander.

Charity looked up and smiled. She had a dark streak of ink through the part of her hair which had escaped being tied back; it reminded me of John’s failed attempts to master a quill without looking like he’d murdered an ink pot. “Just a second, Matthew. Did you have a good walk?” Matthew beamed, and Charity turned to the rest of us. “Hello boys, what do you think?”

We gathered around to look at Charity’s latest diagram. It was intricate, features and charms painstakingly detailed in a tangle of ink. I tried to make some of it out, but I didn’t know enough about brooms to decode it.

“It’s a broom,” John said.

“A prototype racing broom,” Charity confirmed. “Fast enough to sweep Nimbus out of the sky.”

John looked some more, and then picked up a bundle of test twigs sitting next to the plan. “You make brooms. At Hogwarts.”

“Hmm?” Charity drew a broad line through a note about cushioning spells, like maybe she’d changed her mind about it. “No, I have a workshop in Hogsmeade— and I should have introduced myself. I’m Charity Carpenter. You must be John Marcone, Harry’s friend.”

“…yeah,” John said, like this might be a trick question, even though it wasn’t a question at all.

“Pleased to meet you, John. You’ve said hello to Molly and the boys— don’t tug at him like that, Daniel, it’s rude.”

Daniel broke off from pulling on John’s robe, and stared up at him sadly. “Want to see,” he said.

John looked down and froze, like Daniel might monkey his way up John’s robes if he sensed movement. I grabbed Daniel round the middle to hoist him up, surprised at how heavy he was getting. Daniel looked down at the diagram, and then at his mum, clearly not finding it very exciting after all. “Ok.”

“Say happy birthday to Harry,” Charity said, but John interrupted with a yelp and a wobble.

“Out of the way!” Molly said. She was frowning at the back of John’s knees, where she’d just rammed them with the end of her broom.

“No flying indoors, Molly,” Michael said, just as Charity sighed. “Anti collision charms. I knew I forgot something; I don’t think I’m destined for the toy market, Michael.”

“Possibly not,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll just have to content yourself with being exceptional at real brooms.”

“Flatterer,” she smiled at him. “Are you after a bigger slice of cake, dear?”

“I get all the cake I can handle,” Michael said, and for some reason Nathan made a distressed noise and pretended to cover Matthew’s ears.

“Cake! Can I have cake?” Daniel asked, and Matthew started wiggling again.

“Oh come here,” Charity said, and scooped him into her arms. “We can both be full of ink, little man.”

“Clean hands all round please,” Michael said, and started rolling away parchment under Charity’s direction.

We trooped over to the sink, and Nathan held Molly up so she could reach the tap, and I only dunked Daniel in the water a little bit by accident, and he didn’t mind. But he did take the opportunity to splash Molly’s robes, and then there was yelling, and Aunt Charity descending to set us to rights.

When we were clean and mostly dry, and all the parchments and broom bits were tidied away, we sat down to sandwiches cut into the shape of pumpkin faces, and pumpkin juice all round. We chatted, mostly about our classes, and how many words Matthew could say, and the last book Nathan had read, and I couldn’t stop grinning; I was at Hogwarts, and with family, on Halloween, on my birthday, and I’d had cake for breakfast and more to come.

“Anyone for tea?” Charity asked. John and I shook our heads, but Nathan and Uncle Michael agreed. “Alright then. Playtime for five minutes, and then cake.”

Nathan freed Matthew from his high chair, and I helped Daniel off his seat. Daniel ran as soon as his feet hit the floor, making a grab for Molly’s broom and trying to sit on it. He didn’t manage, tipping straight over the handle and onto the floor instead. Molly dove in to defend her property, Nathan hot on her heels to maintain the peace, and John started backing away again.

He retreated to the window, and I followed. Something had caught John’s attention, and he was poking at the windowsill. It was littered with grey plastic, and a flat green card full of bits, probably something of Michael’s.

John held up a grey disk with the word “SONY” branded on it. “Is this a PS1? Aren’t they in like, museums by now?”

The battle of the broom had died down, and Michael came over to join us. “Ah, you’ve found my latest project?” he took a sip of his tea. “I’m doing a series of lessons on muggle popular entertainment. We’ve covered thrillers and romances and so on in terms of novels, and football and rugby and cricket, but we’re so limited when it comes to exploring television or movies or gaming or the internet.” Michael took another sip, and John stared. “This is my latest attempt at enchanting something to fill the gap.”

“...You want to do lessons. On computer games.” Marcone kept staring. “They let you do that?”

Michael snorted. “Well, one of the more challenging aspects of teaching Muggle studies is that there’s very little in the way of a curriculum. Very little investment in the subject as a whole, except as a sop to-- ” Michael stopped himself, “but if I start on that, we’ll be here all day. In short, yes. They let me do that. ‘They’ have very little idea what I teach.”

“You do boring stuff too, right?” John said, seeking reassurance. “I’m pretty sure I saw Kincaid dragging round some Shakespeare.”

Michael smiled at him. “Some of my students have never heard of Shakespeare. Or the moon landing. Or nuclear power, or the history of British imperialism... actually, John, I’m pushing for the opportunity to run some workshops for first and second years. I’d appreciate your input.”

“I’m muggleborn,” John frowned. “I know half that stuff already.”

“Exactly,” Michael said. “We miss an important step in terms of orientation and integration for first years. We just expect you all to muddle through.”

“Could I help?” I asked. “I lived with muggles until Lea.”

“Of course you can,” Michael squeezed my shoulder. “Actually, you could drum up some enthusiasm for me. Being allowed to host a workshop is one thing, getting people to attend is another.”

I opened my mouth to agree, but John interrupted. “How about you help us first?”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “What help do you need?”

John fetched his school bag, dragged out my present, and offered it to Michael. “Is this safe to open?”

“This... is a birthday present. Can I ask why you’re concerned, John?”

“No. I’m just making sure.”

Michael considered him, but didn’t shrug the request off or unwrap the package. Instead he drew his wand, and worked through a series of complicated spells, which made nothing happen. Michael made a hmmming noise. “Well, it’s enchanted, whatever it is, but it feels perfectly benign to me.”

“Benign means not harmful,” I told John, and grabbed the present out of uncle Michael’s hands without even minding my manners. I tore it open, and found a little wooden box, and then I opened that, and in there was a silver chain, and I held it up, and a silver star dangled in front of me, bound in a circle.

“Oh,” Michael said.

*

I swung the pendant like a muggle hypnotist, watched it arc from side to side in the light from the window. It felt like mine; it felt kind of like picking up my wand after losing it in my dorm, the happy recognition-relief of The Last Place I Looked, after shaking out all my bedding and abandoned robes.

“Jewelry?” John said. “Someone secretly bought you a necklace? What the fu-- dge?”

“I’ve seen this before,” I said, swinging it some more, like maybe I could hypnotise the thought straight out the back of my mind where it was lurking. “Uncle, where’ve I seen this?”

I glanced up at Michael who looked a little bit worried, like the time he’d sat by my bedside in the hospital wing, watching me spit up lakewater, even though I was fine. “Well-- ” he said, and hesitated, and that kind of uncertain silence from adults who liked me usually meant one thing.

“Mum,” I said, and it felt right as soon as I said it. The necklace slotted into place in my head, filling a gap made by the motionless muggle photograph I kept by my bed. I’d stared at it countless times; my mum and dad, smiling but still, my dad’s hand frozen mid-wave to the photographer. My mum had a necklace in that photo, and I could always tell it was silver, with a pendant, but I’d never been able to make out the detail. “It’s my mum’s, isn’t it?”

Michael puffed out a breath, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Yes. Yes, I think it is, and perhaps we should write to your godmother-- ”

“This isn’t from Lea,” I said, and heard my voice wobble as I realised who it probably was from. I did a pretend yawn and stared up at the highest part of the window, because maybe that would trick my eyes into thinking they weren’t itchy and maybe it would stop my throat being tight and maybe I was being stupid because it was my birthday and I wasn’t going to-- “It looks nice and bright out there,” I heard myself say, and then bolted for the door.

“Hey!” John came straight after me, but it was a really stupid race, because I didn’t know where I was going. I made it outside and around the corner of the house before I stopped, and John grabbed my arm, like I might take it into my head to sprint for the Forbidden Forest if he didn’t hang on to me.

“Look, Dresden. It’s pretty. Or whatever. If you like that sort of thing. I mean... it’s ok.”

I think that was an apology of some kind, but it wasn’t anything John had done that had me full of, of, weirdness, and it wasn’t his fault, but he’d started talking to me about it and apparently I had some things to say. “It’s not his!” I said, knocking John’s hand away, and he jerked back like I’d cursed him, and then more words just came straight out of my mouth. “It’s not-- who does he think he is? I didn’t even want a present from him and he isn’t getting a thank you note and I wouldn’t give him any birthday cake if he was starving.”

“You send out-- wait. Who are we talking about?”

“Ebenezer McCoy! Either he wants to be my granddad or he doesn’t and I don’t even want him to be anyway and he doesn’t get to run around pretending to be my granddad in secret.” I took a deep breath, pretty sure that I might need it, but John cut in.

“Aw, shit. You sure it’s from him?”

I nodded, staring down at the star I still had tight hold of. “Lea’s got nothing to give me. She never even knew what happened to her wand.”

“He’s a dick, Harry, don’t worry about him. You don’t want it, just give it back.”

“He shouldn’t have any of her stuff to just give away, like he’s got any right to-- ” I took another breath, and closed my eyes, and I could hear my heart beating in my ears.

“...are you actually gonna cry, Dresden?” I could hear John shuffling his feet, but I wasn’t brave enough to answer him in case my voice wobbled all over the place again, so I just rubbed the chain between my fingers, feeling the links. “Shit. Look, you want Nathan? Or your uncle? Or- or- some of your cake?”

I shook my head, because I wasn’t crying on my birthday. I wasn’t.

“Right... I could go and kick McCoy in the nuts?”

I wasn’t expecting that. It surprised a laugh out of me, and even that sounded kind of wobbly, but I opened my eyes anyway; John could get himself in all kinds of trouble, trying to make me feel better. “Thanks. Don’t you dare.”

“Harry?” Nathan poked his head around the corner of the building. “You want to talk?”

I stared at him pathetically, because there were lots of things I wanted to say but what I thought I’d actually end up doing was bursting into tears like Daniel when he grazed his knee.

“He’s fine,” Marcone said, stepping in front of me. “Except he wants the necklace and doesn’t want it because it’s from McCoy. Probably. The dickhead.” Marcone considered that a moment. “Headdick? Dickmaster?”

Nathan was trying so hard to reign in his wincing disapproval that he almost looked like he was folding in on himself. “Maybe don’t say that too loud round the castle, Johnny.”

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it? It’s a dick move.”

Nathan shifted from foot to foot, and then nodded. John punched the air, because he doesn’t usually win any points in discussions with Nathan.

“You going to try it on, Harry?” Nathan changed the subject. “It’s yours, right? Doesn’t matter who wrapped it up and put it in a box.”

“...yeah,” I said, because part of the weirdness inside of me was that this was mine, and I was happy to have it, I just didn’t want to be thankful for it. I slipped the chain over my head, and then settled the star on the front of my robes. “Uh. Do we have any uniform rules about necklaces?”

“Who cares?” John said. “It... looks good. Suits you.” After a second’s hesitation, he punched me in the arm. But gently.

“Tuck it away for practicals, you’ll be fine,” Nathan said. “Look, I came out because Charity says she can save your cake for later, if you don’t want it right now. We can go back to the castle if you like.”

“No! I want the cake,” I said, “I’m sorry, I just--”

“Shut up,” John said. “You’ve got nothing to apologise for. Professor Headdick might, but no-one else.”

“...I’m going to need a silencing charm for this, aren’t I?” Nathan asked.

“Or we could just have cake,” I said, because I bet Charity wouldn’t let John talk with his mouth full.

*

The cake was shaped like a badger, with the white strip done in yellow Hufflepuff buttercream instead, and Molly insisted I eat the nose because it was the best bit, and I think maybe she’d helped stick it on because it was a bit wonky.

“Why are the eyes red?” Marcone asked, staring down at his piece of badger head. It looked a bit rabid from that angle.

“Red eyes are what happen when you leave children unattended with food colouring,” Charity told him.

Molly had a different opinion. “It looks prettier that way, stupid.”

“Oh, we should have taken a picture!” I cut in before she could get told off. John narrowed his eyes at Molly, and I really hoped he was big enough not to get in a grudge match with a four year old, because I had the horrible feeling he might not actually win. “Sorry, Molly.”

“S’ok,” she said, and stuffed an ear in her mouth in one bite.

Michael had demolished his badger foot, and was helping Matthew smear crumbs over his face. “Mmmm, yum yum yum,” he said, and Charity checked the clock. “Clean up time already, boys. Can’t be late for lessons.”

“But I shouldn’t have to sit through Divination on my birthday,” I said.

“Hypocrite!” John yelped, which made Nathan smile. He’d thrown that word at John a couple of days ago, and clearly he’d caught it.

“What? I told you prophecy was important, and it is! The theory’s really interesting, but I don’t see the point in the practicals.”

Nathan started stacking plates. “Maybe there’s evidence that inducing caffeine addiction in the young can trigger latent precognitive powers. Only excuse I can think of for the first year curriculum.”

I sighed, standing up and dusting crumbs off my robe. “I don’t even like tea that much. No one likes tea that much.”

“Sneak in some pumpkin juice and put that in the teapot,” John said. “That’s what I do.”

“I’m pretending I can’t hear any of this,” Michael said, freeing Matthew from his high chair, “and keep your hands off that pitcher, Harry Dresden.”

“You could write me a note, Uncle? Let Professor Ferrovax know I’ve strained my third eye.”

“Hah, hah.” Michael waved us towards the door. “Out, malcontents. Go forth and learn, you aren’t the only ones with a lesson to get to.”

I ducked under Michael’s herding arm and caught him a hug around the middle. “Thanks, Uncle. This was really nice.”

He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “Any time, Harry. And if you change your mind about talking to someone--”

“I’ll come see you. Promise.” I did the rounds, hugging the rest of the Carpenters, and had to have Molly peeled off me at the door before we headed back to the castle.

The other two started outpacing me pretty quickly, even though John’s legs weren’t any longer than mine. “Come on, lazy arse,” John said, and shouldered me forwards.

“I’m not lazy!” I said. “I just think I might explode.” I was awfully full of cake. And sandwiches. And juice.

Nathan looked over at us. “Need a piggy back, Dresden?”

“Nah, we’re nearly there. But you two might want to walk ahead, I don’t want to make you late.”

Nathan considered that for a moment, and then swooped in.

“Yahhhh!” he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. “I’ll be sick! You aren’t funny!”

“He kind of is,” John said, peering at my upside down face.

“One,” Nathan said, taking a giant step. “twoooo-threeeee-foooour-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve-onnnne for good luck, and one for next yeaaaaaaar.” Nathan made the last one a really long, wobbly step, finally reaching the castle, before he dumped me in the doorway.

“Sick everywhere,” I moaned, making no attempt to get off the floor. John had to prop himself against the door, having decided that Nathan carting me around like a sack of bludgers was worth laughing himself red in the face. I glared at him as he came sliding down the door to join me. “I hate you both. That was mean.”

“Gentlemen, are you trying to stage some kind of sedentary protest?”

John yelped, and then stared up at Professor Luccio who was looking down at us disapprovingly. “Do you have superpowers?”

Luccio couldn’t have apparated into the entrance hall because Hogwarts doesn’t let you do that, but she did have the alarming ability to be right beside us every time we were doing something silly.

“I get by quite well without them, Mr Marcone. Now, unless anyone requires a swift escort to the hospital wing, stand up straight and stop making the place untidy.”

I scrambled upright. “Sorry professor, we’re fine. Maybe a bit too much cake.”

“Good, In that ca--” Luccio stopped talking. She was looking at my necklace.

“Professor?” I asked, resisting the urge to fidget.

“In that case, I believe you have a lesson to get to, Mr Dresden?” She was very firmly looking me in the eyes, which was kind of terrifying, and not anywhere near the necklace at all. But I did have a lesson to go to, so I ducked her gaze, waved a quick goodbye to the others, and escaped to Divination.

I tucked the pendant in my robe as I did. It was mine, and I wanted it, but maybe I didn’t want people staring at it all the time.

*

Divination went on for ages. Apparently having your birthday fall on Halloween is magically significant or something, because Professor Ferrovax kept going on about it, and coming back to me to find out what I could see in my tea leaves. He didn’t find anything exciting, and neither did I. They just kept looking like tea leaves.

After Divination, I had Defense Against the Dark Arts, and I was heroically well behaved, mostly by refusing to make eye contact with John and not volunteering the answers to any questions in case Professor Morgan decided to view that as provocation for detention and then we were free, killing time until the feast.


*

“Will you stop bouncing?” Meryl asked, staring at me. We were sitting by the fire in the common room, mostly just waiting around and chatting a bit.

“I think it’s sweet,” Lily smiled at me. “He’s excited, aren’t you Harry?”

“Of course I’m excited! Aren’t you excited?” I asked.

“Did you overdose on an Invigoration draft? It’s just a feast, Dresden. But with pumpkins and stuff.” Meryl said.

“It’s a Halloween feast!” I said. “It’s special.”

“It’s not,” Meryl sighed. “I was talking with Karrin Murphy, she said the ghosts just do a bit of a dance and then everyone goes to bed.”

“You’ll see,” I told her. “Just you wait.”

*

There were a lot of pumpkins, which is what you’d expect really. Pumpkin decorations, pumpkin table settings, pumpkins in food and food shaped like pumpkins. The houselves had really taken the theme to heart. Pumpkin bread was really tasty, and I made a note to ask Mopsy about it in my next letter to Lea.

“Bleurgh,” said Vince. “Pumpkin soup. No. Don’t eat that.”

I tried a spoonful out of his bowl, and pulled a face. “No, maybe not.”

Vince looked shocked. “Hey! I found a food Harry doesn’t like!”

“Are you ill?” Waldo asked, frowning.

“Oh hah hah,” I said, and tossed the other half of my roll at Vince. “Chew on that, Graver.”

“Pumpkin. Cheesecake,” Fix said, staring down at his plate in awe, and then leaned around me to shout down the table. “Hey! Lily! Meryl! You gotta try the cheesecake.”

“Did you just skip straight to dessert, you savage?” Waldo asked. “You know there are courses, right?”

“Well, they shouldn’t put it all on the table at once, should they? Anyway, it’s been like, an hour, and it’s Halloween, I can start with cake if I w-- ”

The candles went out. There were a few shrieks as the hall plunged into darkness.

“Girls and boys!” boomed the voice of Ebenezer McCoy. “It has been brought to my attention that tonight is Halloween.” A cheer went up in the darkness, and I joined in, banging my cutlery on the table. “I’ve been told that you want a show, you ungrateful rabble.” We cheered louder. “I’ve been told that you want a bit more that the traditional, graceful, synchronised floating of your house ghosts!” More cheering, with some whistling thrown in too. “Very well. Be careful what you wish for, girls and boys, because I’m about to disregard our school motto.”

“Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus,” I murmured, and could hear Waldo doing the same. As we finished, a sheet of flame shot across the ceiling. It was followed by a roar.

“Merlin!” Waldo slid off his chair, and under the table, which was probably the sensible thing to do. Meryl had her arm around Lily, both ducking their heads, and I was staring around the hall, half way to standing.

So I had a good view when the dragon skeleton flew through the wall.

“Oh,” I said, as it flew up above the re-lit candles, and then did a somersault in mid air. “Oh, that’s so cool!” I leapt up on my chair, like that would give me a closer look, and Waldo tugged at my ankle.

“Harry, it’ll eat you!”

“It doesn’t have a stomach,” I pointed out.

“It doesn’t have any proper wings, it’s still flying! And it’s got really big teeth!”

The dragon turned and dive bombed Gryffindor, who seemed slightly more inclined to point and yell then hide under the table, but there were still lots of people ducking for cover.

“Over here, over here!” I called to it, waving my arms.

“You idiot!” Vince said, and threw my bread roll back at me. The dragon swung our way, roared, and I felt the heat of the fire pass over my head.

“...wow.” I said. “Do that again!”

It ignored me, flew back up above the candles, and started somersaulting fast, mouth wide open, right after its own tail. “What?” said Waldo. “What’s it doing now? Oh, I don’t want to look.”

The dragon caught its tail, and started vanishing inside itself, getting further and further down until it couldn’t get any further without making my brain hurt and then...

It exploded.

There were a chorus of ohhs and ahhs, like at a really good firework display, and then bits and pieces started raining down on us from overhead.

“It’s candy!” Meryl laughed.

Someone started clapping, and applause spread around the hall. At the high table, McCoy took a bow, and Luccio shook her head, one hand over her eyes.

“That was amazing,” I said.

*

Meryl was right about the second half of the evening anyway. After the finale, we went up to bed, even though I was the most excited and full of sugar I think I’ve ever been in my life. There was still curfew, and lessons tomorrow, and-- and we were probably just going to stay up talking.

“No, I can do it, I can,” Vince said, bouncing on his bed.

“You can break your stupid neck,” Waldo said, hiding his eyes with a pillow.

“Look, look, look,” Vince said. “RAAAAAAAARGH,” he bellowed like a dragon, and tumbled head over heels before crashing back onto the bed on his back. “Ow.”

“Oh, Merlin, is he dead?” Waldo asked. “Tell me he’s not dead.”

“He’s not dead,” we chorused, together with Vince.

Our dormitory door flew open, and one of the sixth year prefects, Joshua, walked in. “All right. It’s now one minute past midnight, which means it’s no longer Halloween, and you all have to stop yelling and sleep,” he looked at us kind of desperately. “Please. I have a three footer due in tomorrow, and I haven’t finished the references, and all I can hear is you lot trying to bring the castle down.”

“Sorry!” I said, scrambling under my covers. “We’ll be quiet, promise.”

“Thank you,” he said, a bit pathetically, and spelled out the lights.

I rolled onto my side, looked for the picture on my bedside table that I couldn’t see, and held onto the star on my necklace. “Thanks for the present, Mum,” I whispered. “I had a great day. Good night.”

Comments

[isweedan]

Ahhhhhhh I am delighted! That was such a fun read.