Come Seek Us Where Our Voices Sound

Chapter 45: Come Seek Us Where Our Voices Sound

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

“Herbert and Denise.”

Hermione paused. Given that she did so with one hand on the sugar bowl, poised to turn a perfectly good cup of tea into a bioweapon, he judged his intervention a mercy.

“Gesundheit,” she said.

“Those are your parents’ names.”

“Quite,” she said, after another pause. Her eyes darted between him and the sugar spoon.

“What? Aren’t they?”

“Yes,” she said. “I am aware of that.”

“Shield your eyes, lest her brilliance astound you—”

“Oh, sod off.”

“—and lest mine, for I am, in fact, aware that you know your own parents.”

He returned to his own tea. It was cool before she ventured anything further.

“Were you asking, or…?”

“No,” he said crisply, and reached for the kettle, point proved. She made a quiet, contemplative sound, watching him.

It had been five days since the fight.

Ron did not return to them, and it was felt. It was very unlike Draco’s own brief estrangement from Hermione earlier that year, when wide new cavities of time in his schedule had testified to the unpleasant changes at hand: at least those had been obvious. No single activity disappeared from his life, but all took on a slightly uncanny feeling. Ron’s absence was like coming up the stairs in the dark, misjudging their number, and planting one’s foot with erroneous confidence on a shelf of empty air.

When they went to dinner it became more apparent. All of them now read while they ate. Draco brought Potions homework or a novel stolen from Hermione — recently, The Count of Monte Cristo, chosen because its volume could get him through a good number of meals — while Harry flipped through Draco’s old copies of Quidditch for Seekers. This unnerved Hermione, who would have been reading anyway, but every so often would look up with a queer bereft expression, trying to tune into a conversation that didn’t exist. More than one meal elapsed without talking.

Harry began coming to the library. This was good for his education and terrible for everyone else’s.

His idea of studying, of course, involved nothing so pedestrian as reading textbooks or writing things down. He took out the assignment sheet, paced several circles around Draco and Hermione’s study table, and then paged through the book like it was a magazine, screening for pictures. The ‘studying’ aspect, if indeed there was one, seemed to come later. When asked whether many of his papers wrote themselves via immaculate conception, he was baffled.

It was also bothersome. Draco didn’t consider himself a tyrant, but he was accustomed to a modicum of quiet, which Harry’s shuffling footsteps and muttered pleas for understanding both denied him. It took him twice as long as it should have to write an essay on the use of peppermint oil in Calming Draughts, because every two sentences, Harry cleared his throat or blew his nose or went to get some water. A lesser man would have fused his anklebones to the chair, but Draco had discipline, and moreover, he had pity: Ron hadn’t spoken to Harry since the fight. Even sitting next to each other in the Potions classroom, while Snape sneered and mocked their pitiful cauldron of curdled Doxycide, they exchanged only terse monosyllables, and afterward Ron swept out to walk with Dean and Seamus.

“Have you spoken to him?” ventured Hermione. This was bold of her; she herself hadn’t talked to Ron since the fight, either.

“No. And that’s fine,” said Harry, lying pathetically. “If he doesn’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. He can talk to whoever he wants. Hell, he can — he can go spend all his time with someone else. I can’t stop him. He can do that. If he wants.”

“If… he wants.”

“Yeah. If he’s that angry at us, or you, or maybe all of us, I can’t do anything about it if he doesn’t talk to me. Which is fine, I guess. And it seems like he’s having a great time off by himself with Seamus and Dean, they were really laughing it up together in Charms, so I guess if that works out he doesn’t have a reason to talk to you or me or Draco ever again, and that’s fine! Really! Awesome! I guess.”

Hermione came in unexpectedly gentle. “Of course he misses you,” she said. “He loves you.”

“He’s got a funny way of showing it,” he said tightly. “Running away. But that’s fine! He can do that. If he wants.”

Hilarity. It was patently obvious to all with eyes that if anyone in the world needed Ron Weasley, it was Harry. The proof was in the way he slouched along unhappily behind Draco and Hermione wherever they went, falling silent during conversations about, for example, the antiinflammatory properties of various poison antidotes and their corresponding concentrations of antihistamines. He was adamant that he wasn’t bored, and that they could talk about whatever they pleased, but it was difficult to make a point about vascular permeability with Harry sprouting new abandonment issues in the background.

On a day in late January, they came back from a depressingly literate luncheon and found a flood in the third-floor corridor that usually conveyed them to their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. A film of greenish water lay ankle-high over the dark stone. Draco, who rounded the corner first, drew up short, and Hermione bounced harmlessly off his back. Harry quickly sidestepped her — preened, slightly, at his dexterity — and then, not looking where he was going, slipped on a wet stone and tripped headfirst into the soup.

A gnarled hand thrust out of the darkness and caught him by the collar. Mad-Eye Moody materialized from an alcove and hoisted Harry up, lifting eight stone and change like a sack of sickles. He grunted and tossed him on the dry stone.

“Watch yourself, Potter.”

“Er — thank you, sir.”

“I see you don’t check your corners. Malfoy does, that’s why he’s not wringing bilgewater out of his robes. Also why he’s not like to be jumped. You want to be jumped, is that it, boy?”

“No, sir.”

“No? How about petrified? Stunned? Shot?”

“Not really, sir.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“…Check my corners?”

“That’s right, you’re going to check your corners,” muttered Mad-Eye. His glass eye swiveled at Hermione. “And you, too, Granger, I didn’t see you taking too much time with them, either.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Not as sorry as you will be, if you don’t,” he muttered. “Not as sorry as I’ll be, come to think of it. When you don’t. And you won’t. That’s my misfortune. Cruel man, Albus Dumbledore, come-and-serve he says, do I deny him, I do not… and here I am, all the same people, only different faces… should’ve torn it down when we had the chance… Schoolchildren for soldiers… infants for infantry… Never grow old, kiddies, you’ll have to watch your own life happen twice.”

Draco wondered what medication Mad-Eye had missed, and where to procure as much of it as possible, immediately.

“Soldiers, sir?” said Hermione faintly.

But Mad-Eye had apparently met his quota of cryptic disclosures for the day. He tucked his thumbs into his coat pockets. “No class today,” he barked. “Not till Filch gets this cleaned up. If any of you need a soak, in the meantime, use the prefects’ loo, it’s nearest. Password’s ‘pine fresh.’ Not,” he added, with a rare double-eyed stare at Harry, “that you should go spreading that around.”

“…No, sir.”

“Those passwords are for Hogwarts personnel only. Peeves happened to catch a certain Frenchwoman coming out of there the other night, some daft nitwit must’ve given her a password into the tunnels… Though she’ll not be hurrying back, after I found her,” Mad-Eye added, with some satisfaction. “If Maxime hadn’t pitched a fit, I would’ve confiscated that egg, too. No special treatment! That goes for you, too, Potter. I’ll not make any exceptions for you, if I catch you lurking about after hours, you understand?”

“No, sir,” said Harry fervently.

Mad-Eye grunted in satisfaction. On that note, he hobbled away, his wooden leg rasping against the slick floors.

Hermione had put a strand of hair to her mouth and was nibbling it, which showed she was entirely lost to thought, and her body was more or less an autopiloted vessel for the brain. Draco, sighing, took the elbow of said vessel and steered it along while the brain did its work.

“Every day,” he announced, “I wake up and am made to imagine situations. Terrible situations. Distasteful ones. Why is it that no one ever asks me to imagine pleasant, flattering situations? Why does no one ever say: ‘Picture yourself quidditch captain,’ or: ‘Say you have just been awarded the Order of Merlin.’ No one does this for me, and frankly, it rankles.”

“Can you picture yourself quiet?” said Hermione distractedly, and he glared at her.

“What situations?” said Harry. “Are you talking about Moody?”

“Those ears of yours can do more than hold up your glasses, Potter, and if you use them right you might just learn something.”

“My fault, I usually turn them off when you’re talking,” said Harry. “C’mon, prat, what did he say?”

Draco snorted. “He all but told us Delacour’s been shacking up with Roger Davies.”

“Wh— I mean, I guess, but — how do you know it’s with him, though?”

“Only prefects and quidditch captains have access to that bathroom,” murmured Hermione, “and Davies is both. Sorry, but could you two possibly— not to be rude—”

“Shut up?”

“Pipe down?” suggested Harry.

“Keep mum.”

“Put a sock in it.”

“If convenient.”

“Or if it isn’t,” suggested Draco.

“Yes, thanks,” she said, too distracted to be polite. He directed his smile at the ceiling, so it wouldn’t end up in her or Harry’s crosshairs by mistake.

He climbed the stairs in silence, exchanging an amused glance with Harry behind her head. It didn’t take more than one flight. When she reached the top stair she stopped, one foot in the air, and then spun around and seized each of them by a shoulder.

“The egg.”

“What?” said Harry, but Draco held up a finger.

“Professor Moody caught Fleur coming out of the prefects’ bathroom, and he wanted to confiscate the egg. If she was meeting Roger for a — a late-night rendezvous,” she said, turning a lovely shade of pink, “then why did she bring the egg with her? Unless he was helping her with it — which isn’t very likely, if you believe what Cho has to say about him — and Moody didn’t mention anything about Roger being there, anyway. So she must have been doing something in the bathroom with the egg.”

“But,” began Harry, and Draco held up a second finger.

“But what was she doing with it? Yes, Harry, that’s the question! Moody said we should use the prefects’ ‘if you want a soak,’ which doesn’t make sense, because the third floor bathrooms don’t have bathtubs. But the prefects’ bathroom must! And we know the egg opens when it’s covered in water, but Fleur’s more than capable of an Aguamenti, so there must be something different about the bath.”

“Oh,” said Harry, “you don’t think, maybe—”

Draco raised his third finger.

“The egg has to be submerged,” she said triumphantly. “And I think we have to be submerged with it.”

---

It was a testament to how time had changed him that Draco felt almost no apprehension stepping down from the portrait-hole after curfew.

The castle corridors, painted with the squirming shadows of low-burning torches, held no terror for him now. He had mastered far worse than what lay waiting for him in the darkness. It was with a calm, weathered sort of confidence that he didn’t even reach for his wand once he stood outside the portrait-door — untroubled by the creaking floorboards, at ease with the odd deep croons of the building’s magic resettling itself into the foundations. It was just a school, which when you got down to it was only another kind of home. Nothing inside the walls of Hogwarts Castle could frighten him.

And, in fairness, he wasn’t much worried about being caught, anyway. He held in one hand the Marauder’s Map, which showed the dots labeled ‘Filch’ and ‘Mrs. Norris’ both puttering safely around the dungeons. In the other, he carried the Invisibility Cloak, which he shook out while Harry and Hermione stepped down after him and eased the door shut. Hermione held the egg carefully under her arm like she had laid it herself.

“This isn’t going to fit the three of us,” he murmured. “It barely managed me and Granger during the First Task.”

Hermione cleared her throat. “Well, it was tangled,” she said. He glanced at her, and she promptly turned away from him to adjust the egg. “But anyway, you’re right. Harry, you two are about the same height, so why don’t you and Draco—?”

“I’m wider than Draco is,” said Harry apologetically, like his wingspan had been an inconsiderate personal decision. “It’s easier with the two of you.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well — it doesn’t have to — I mean, it would also work with you and me. Since Draco’s taller.”

“Well spotted,” said Draco curtly. It was a more than cozy arrangement, and she seemed rather eager to get in there with Harry. “And I’ll just fetch my own Invisibility Cloak, shall I?”

“It doesn’t matter who gets it! I don’t even need it, my Notice-Me-Not’s better than yours.”

“I don’t know whether to be impressed that your attempts at manipulation are improving or dismayed that this can be considered ‘improvement.’”

“What? It is.”

“If you two aren’t under the Cloak in the next ten seconds, I’m getting Filch myself,” said Harry doggedly.

There was a lull in negotiations.

“Pushy,” muttered Draco.

“Bossy,” whispered Hermione, which was the pot calling the cauldron tenebrous, really, but he wasn’t going to mention it.

She folded herself under the Cloak beside him, forced against his side by the shortage of fabric going to cover his head. It became apparent that no amount of personal space could be preserved if this was going to be effective, so with a short pained sigh he opened his arm and jerked her unceremoniously against his side, where she went with a small squeak.

“Draco!”

“What? I haven’t got fleas.”

“You might have warned me,” she muttered, fussing at the Cloak. Harry, who could not see them and could not have looked more grateful for it if he tried, had still turned his back for some reason.

Perhaps vengefully, she burrowed into his side, suffusing the whole side of him in tingling — it wasn’t discomfort, but a keen awareness of contact, of a human being in all her fidgety warmth. Locks of hair tickled his neck and the underside of his jaw — if he found one in his mouth later she was a dead witch — and perfumed the world in florals.

“Are you comfortable?”

“We lack enough time left in the millennium, Granger.”

“Fine, then, I won’t bother adjusting my elbow.”

“By all means. My kidneys have become quite fond of it.”

“I’m going to start walking,” announced Harry, “and you two can stay here and sort out your situation, or — mad idea — one of you can actually come help me. Just spitballing.”

“Well, look who has a timetable—”

“Honestly, Harry, it’s only eleven—”

“—would think he’d got another appointment—”

“—no need to be pushy about it, like you’d even know how to open it—”

“—little bit of patience, for crying out loud, the Task’s not happening at dawn.”

“Can’t hear you,” Harry said, “too busy walking,” and then they had to follow, or he wouldn’t hear them complaining.

The Marauder’s Map located the prefects’ bathroom behind a statue of Boris the Bewildered, a famous Seer who had discovered several new forms of divination by accident. A high stone door, thatched by a somber deadbolt, held a jewel at its capstone, and this glowed faintly green through the castle gloom.

“It’s ‘pine fresh,’” Hermione whispered.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes, Hermione, I remember,” he said. He turned to his side, as if to mutter something to Ron, but then remembered the other thing, and shoved his hands in his pockets.

A voice from down the hallway stopped them all cold. It was a low male baritone, interpolated irregularly with a much fainter tenor, like the two speakers were at odds.

“…for a fact it was drugged, if you so much as glanced at the toxicology report, which I know you didn’t—”

“But you would,” said the second voice pleasantly. “And I am afraid I fear inefficiency too greatly, these days, to ever risk redundancy. Tell me what it said, if you please.”

“It would tell you, Albus, that four hours later, that creature was still approximately one-third diazepam.”

“A state one envies more and more, throughout this conversation.”

“Are you listening to me? The beast was tampered with! Even you can’t ignore—”

“Ignorance is not a synonym for patience, Severus.”

“—signs everywhere! Someone has conspired to back Potter in the Tournament! An adult! Someone capable of manipulating the ancient charmwork of the Goblet, and very capable potioneer, if I had to guess.”

“Now, this is interesting. I recall your initial hypothesis was that he had cheated his way in himself, for vainglory. Have you developed an appreciation for his better nature?”

“I’ve developed an appreciation for hard evidence. He’s a feckless child, but he’s no great potioneer. When will you pull him out?”

“Assuming, arguendo, that the Ministry will not fire me for doing so?”

“Don’t run and hide behind the Ministry. It might work with Minerva, but it doesn’t with me.”

“You think me far stronger than I am. That always was your mistake.”

“I know who you are. Besides, Runcorn prays for Potter’s downfall. It isn’t him.”

“Albert Runcorn is not the sole voice of the Ministry of Magic. Nor is he the most salient one, in the case of Hogwarts… you must trust me above perhaps all men, Severus, to know how very weak those at the heart of power are to wield it. We must act through the hands of lesser wizards, and lend them our judgment and trust, while they offer in return their freedom and strength…”

“Then where is your judgment and trust for me?” Snape’s voice was harsh and low. “If you will not heed me, direct me. How am I to answer Karkaroff?”

“Cautiously.” Dumbledore’s voice swelled around the corner. Hermione gasped and tried to duck behind the statue of Boris — forgetting, as was the perennial danger, that they were invisible — nearly tearing the Cloak from their shoulders. Draco hissed, wrapped an arm around her, and hauled her against him to keep her still. She wriggled and then fell slack, her chest rising and falling riotously under his arm.

Harry, however, had no such protection. He dove behind the statue, but the noise sent echoes skittering around the corridor. Dumbledore and Snape paused and turned to look. Snape’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted his wand.

“Lumos.”

Light blazed through the hall like a tiny sun, stinging the eye. The trouble with the Cloak was how hard it was to believe, on the inside, that you were hidden; it seemed impossible that Snape’s dark little eyes didn’t see right into him and Hermione, tangled together in plain sight, with only a thin layer of silk to shield them.

Hermione’s heart was doing a scherzo against his arm. She had ceased breathing. Her hand found his wrist, somewhere around her hipbone, and squeezed. He exhaled hard into the thatch of curls against her neck, and her whole spine shuddered.

“Who’s there?”

“It is an old castle,” Dumbledore said mildly. “It would be more suspicious if there were no strange noises, from time to time; in my experience a silent building is far more dangerous than a loud one.”

“Be that as it may,” said Snape, and his lips crooked in unpleasant anticipation. “Locomotor Boris.”

The statue trembled and then rose from its pedestal. Harry gave a slight groan and screwed his eyes shut as light washed the back of his head.

“Potter!”

Harry sighed, and with a graceful motion of his knees, he rose to face the music.

“Evening, professors.”

“Harry,” said Dumbledore warmly. “It is an unexpected pleasure.”

“You know, professor, I really wish it was.”

“Explain yourself,” snarled Snape. The statue of Boris dropped back down with a shuddering thunk.

Draco caught Harry’s sidelong glance. He almost mouthed ‘say something’ before he remembered Harry couldn’t see him.

“…Reckon I fancied a walk.”

“What?”

“You know,” he said. “Stargazing. Good for insomnia.”

Dumbledore was clearly repressing a much broader smile. “I’m afraid the rules do not recognize an exception for celestial contemplation,” he said, “no matter how much you and I might wish it. You should be in Gryffindor Tower.”

“Funny thing, professor, I was just on my way back. So if you’ll actually excuse me—”

“Wait.” Snape’s order froze Harry in his tracks. “Who else is with you?”

“No one,” he said immediately.

“You expect us to believe you came here by yourself?” Snape swept his wand around the chamber. “Where is your stalwart entourage? Where is Weasley?”

Harry shrugged.

“Answer me.”

“Ask him,” said Harry, mimicking the tone. Draco suppressed a snarl of frustration. “If you can find him, that is.”

“I see from your tone that you have already reconciled yourself to a well-earned detention.”

“I’ve reconciled myself to a detention,” he said. “I think I’m still working on earning it.”

Dumbledore lightly placed his fingers over his mouth, but the bundles of his cheeks were too high for him not to be smiling.

“Harry, why don’t you go back to bed?” he suggested gently. “We will see to your detention on Monday. In the meantime, I trust you can find your way back to Gryffindor Tower in the dark. Professor Snape and I have an appointment.”

“The meeting will wait,” Snape gritted out.

“Not happily,” said Dumbledore. “Surely you trust Harry to find his way.”

“It is not his sense of direction which I fear will lead him astray.”

Harry, ever the fair one, dipped his head to acknowledge a valid point.

Dumbledore sighed. “Then see him back to Gryffindor. But punctuality, and I mean this, is of the essence—”

“Fear not. I will be quite scrupulous.”

His tone shaved the adjective of all positive connotations.

Snape clamped a hand on Harry’s shoulder and steered him out with a grip that Draco knew, from personal experience, would remember itself with a bruise. Dumbledore watched them go, gave a quiet sigh to himself, and sent another glance at the chamber. A prickle of cold ghosted over Draco’s neck as the shock-blue eyes passed across his face — the Cloak held fast, so he must have imagined their lingering — and then wandered away, as did their owner, into the darkness.

In the silence that ensued, he heard only his heartbeat and Hermione’s, which beat into his arm like a tattoo.

Belatedly, he noticed she was pushing against his arm. She was trying to get out. He still had her pinned to him. He’d — he’d not forgotten, but acclimated to it, so that he hadn’t remembered she couldn’t — well — leave.

He tore his hand away and stepped hastily free of her, throwing the Cloak from his shoulders.

“Finally,” she gasped. “My lungs were about to explode. I thought we were cooked.”

“—want to say straight away that it was an emergency procedure, Granger, I obviously didn’t — we were what?”

“Cooked? Oh. Muggle thing, I suppose. Poor Harry, I feel so bad for him. And if he’d only been under the Cloak. But I don’t know what else we were to do. One of these days, you and I should really figure out Disillusionment Charms — anyway, do you still want to go in?”

“So that his sacrifice might not be in vain?”

“Dulce et decorum est,” she suggested, and he snickered, before realizing what he’d done, and sent a Muffling Charm racing after the echoes of his stupidity that went scampering into the dark.

A murmur of “pine fresh” sent the deadbolt rattling back, and the door creaked ajar.

His immediate reaction was of overwhelming adequacy. It was a nice bathroom. Big, pretty roomy, nice taps. The master suite at the Manor was better, but at least this one had a bath, which was more than could be said of the Gryffindor showers. He’d make a point to revisit in the future.

“I love Hogwarts,” said Hermione softly.

That surprised him. He’d expected something more practical, a remark about ventilation, perhaps, or the high risk of slippage on the tile. But she gazed at the room with such starry unadulterated wonder that he thought he’d perhaps missed something in it, and turned back to look. At first he was amused, because it was just a bathroom, but by and by he came around to a certain reluctant aesthetic appreciation: it was a nice room, really, when you thought about it. The ceiling and walls were dappled with the buttery light of a candle-laden chandelier, and under this soft glow the marble floors were toasted yellow, with shadows burnt into the crown moldings. A wide sunken bath at the center was terraced in a hundred bejeweled taps, each inscribed with a different rune for scent, and a row of sculpted marble nereids along the wall offered stone armfuls of soaps, perfumes, and lotions of every possible variety. Across a triptych of stained glass windows, velvet curtains the color and consistency of whipped cream swirled their skirts shyly under a tickle of cool air.

“It’s alright,” he remarked. “Bit drafty.”

She flicked her eyes at the ceiling, once, with a totally unfair and unexplained implication of ridicule, and then set down the egg. “I suppose ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ would be too pedestrian,” she said, squinting at the runes. “I’m not up to date on herbs and flowers. Is that a melon? And that’s cinnamon, I think… I’ll just do them all, it’s faster.”

“By all means, if you want this room to smell like a bomb went off in a Chanel warehouse.”

“I’m surprised you know what Chanel is. Aren’t brands ‘dismally middle-class’?”

“Well, I’m something of a prole, myself.”

She laughed and went down the row, switching on a few at random. One spurted thick ropes of foam, while another poured a braid of purple rapids into the basin, and fluffy lavender cumulus clouds drifted off the water’s back. The combination of colors and scents swirled together in a nacreous film at the bottom of the marble bowl, welling under snowdrifts of opalescent bubbles and cotton-candy colored foam, which rose in childish towers and buffets around the edges. When the pool at last brimmed with hot, iridescent water, and the room was cloaked in hot, overpoweringly fragrant steam, they shut off all the taps and stood together at the water’s edge.

Hermione looked at the egg. She looked at the bath. She said, “Hm.”

“What?”

“I didn’t think about this,” she said. “I didn’t even think to think about this. I suppose… you wouldn’t want to go stand outside, would you?”

“Oh, yes, and let me just go get my livery while I’m at it.”

“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed,” she said balefully. Then she squared her shoulders, stuck the egg on the ground, stuck her courage to its sticking place, and said: “Well. Turn around.”

In an egregious tactical error, he failed to do what she said. Instead, he glanced over and found that she had bent down to peel off her socks. These she layered neatly on top of her shoes, because of course she did, and stepped barefoot onto the cold tile, toes curling. Even then, he was such a contemptible idiot that it wasn’t until she tugged out her tie — Merlin — and undid the top button of her shirt — Merlin’s fucking blood — that something in his wretched thick head woke up and slammed a lever, making him spin around on his heel, face burning.

“What are you doing?”

“Well-for-heaven’s-sake-what-does-it-look-like-I’m-doing!” Her voice was shrill. “It’s a bath! What did you think we were going to do!”

“You might warn a fellow!”

“I told you to turn around!”

“You didn’t say ‘turn around, Draco, I’m about to put on a one-woman burlesque’—”

“Burlesque! Honestly!”

His brain was replaying the part where she’d reached for her button. He closed his eyes in the hope it might help. It didn’t. With his eyes closed he could focus on nothing but the small rustles of fabric coming from behind him as she undressed. Did people undressing always cause so much noise?

“This was ill-conceived,” he said thickly. “Potter and I should have gone it alone.”

“Oh, very nice,” she snapped, “and leave me out, just because I’m a girl? It’s not my fault you’ve got ridiculous hangups about a woman’s body.”

He desperately needed her to stop saying words like ‘woman’s body.’ “I haven’t got hangups!”

Too high. Far too high. Needed to talk in a lower voice, project calm. Didn’t have any. Needed to find some. In these environs it was a non-native species.

“You sure sound like it,” she said skeptically, and his irritation was an excellent distraction from the embarrassment. Hard to feel any kind of way about someone being naked when you wanted to get a handful of their hair and tug. No. “Sometimes I forget how traditional you are. I’ve still got my pants on, you know. It’s hardly any more skin than a muggle bathing suit.”

“That doesn’t — it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Of what? Seeing a woman’s shoulders? Will they throw you out of parties?”

“I’ve seen your shoulders,” he said informatively, which was not a riposte that sizzled. “It’s not about that. It’s about propriety. It’s — not done.”

“Well,” she said, a trifle sly, “obviously it’s done some- times, or you wouldn’t exist.”

“Granger!”

She laughed, either at her own joke or his tone or both, and there was a small splash.

He found the door where the thoughts were coming from. He slammed it. He deadbolted it. He piled it high with chairs and thoughts of an amorous Severus Snape. It held for a hearty nine seconds.

“You can turn around,” she said. She sounded not quite so confident as she had been before. “The bubbles cover mostly everything.”

“I beseech you to remove all ambiguity surrounding the word ‘mostly.’”

“Oh, please. I’m not going to flash you.” That went straight into the mental lockbox with woman’s body and hair-pulling. He was going to need a bigger box. And a bigger lock. “All you can see is my head.”

He forced a neutral face and turned around. She hadn’t been lying, although she’d neglected to mention he could see her shoulders, rising from the water in burnished crescents, her skin shiny and stark against the white straps. She had tied up her hair to keep it dry, but pieces of it had tumbled loose and floated in a dark shawl around her shoulders, buoyant on the white bed of foam, wet to the shiny brownish-black of wood stain at the tips. The steam had turned her skin rosy and damp.

“See?” she said meaningfully. She swam forward, parting the drifts of foam with an efficient sweep of her arms. “It’s deep. You can’t see anything.”

“Mmhm.”

“In fact there’s a part that’s deeper, if you’re anxious for space. Or propriety.”

“Mmhm.”

“Draco, for goodness’ sake, if you actually want to go outside—”

“No. I — fine.”

He sighed and stripped off both shirt and jumper with a wrench at the back of his neck. They went in a pile beside her shoes, and she made a noise like a bit of tinsel had an interaction with a paper shredder.

“What now?”

“You might warn me first!” But she hadn’t turned around. She was staring at his chest as if he’d spilled something on it; he checked, but it was clean. “Instead of just stripping!”

“There’s nothing to show,” he said, mystified, which wasn’t quite true — he had the beginnings of a rather nice chest, if he did say so — but as far as modesty was concerned, he showed more skin at quidditch practices. A shortage of shower stalls and an excess of impatient teammates tended to desensitize one to the male form. Katie Bell had seen his nude arse more often than his mother, at this point, and treated it with no more interest than a decorative sconce. Harry’s arse had become something of a team mascot. “You can close your eyes, if you’d prefer.”

“There’s — a double-standard at work here,” she said, in a strange airy voice, as he divested himself of shoes, socks, and trousers. He kept his pants on, and after a moment of thought, he slipped the signet ring off his finger and tossed it on top of his jumper. The stone landed on a cushion of cashmere and rolled upright, the engraved stone face-up and glinting in the soft candlelight.

“Feel free to close your eyes at any time,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her, and she turned such a radiant shade of pink that she could have blinded a sunrise.

Snickering, he slipped into the water.

It was deep, and hot, and his muscles sang from a relief long denied them. The bath was so wide that he could swim freely under the towers of phosphorescent bubbles and foam. He did a neat dive to the bottom of the pool, swam the length of it, and popped up at the other side. Hermione, treading water, twisted around to find him.

“You’re fast!”

“I ought to be. My mother didn’t go to the trouble of hiring a nereid just so I could dog-paddle.”

“Nereids are real?” She was caught between her natural skepticism and her fervent desire for him not to be lying, which was the best spot to have her.

“Never so much as when they’re harrying you around a swimming pool with a trident,” he agreed.

“And why was she doing that?”

“Pedagogy. Swimming is one of the cardinal talents, you know, dating back to the pre-Merlin Era. There was a time no wizard could call himself a man unless he’d mastered the arts of swimming, dancing, and French.”

“You’re joking.”

“Yes. The Manor has a lake.”

He dropped to the bottom, pushed off, and ribboned through the water. When he surfaced, he slicked some of his hair out of his eyes and deposited himself on a stone bench that ridged the wall of the bath. The egg sat in a small cradle formed by their clothes, and he had to hoist himself up on the elbows to get it, a taut assertion of his core muscles that drew him half-out of the water.

“Alright. Want to try this on, Granger?”

She said nothing. He twisted back into the water and found her transfixed by the middle distance between them as if it held a trove of profound and unsettling secrets. He snapped his fingers.

“Hello? We’re not here for a soak, remember?”

“What? Yes. Let’s hurry.” She was passionate, which showed she hadn’t lost her wits entirely. She tucked her hair around both ears and paddled forward bravely, her expression determined. Gryffindor to the last, was Hermione. Give her a biopsy, they’d probably find a lion carved on the inside of her ribcage.

He submerged the egg and twisted the clasp. It sprang open, and they both cringed away in anticipation of a sound that did not come: instead, a gurgling melody floated up, insulated by foam, muffled by the burble of water and the laving of waves against the tile.

Hermione gave a triumphant shriek. “Ha!”

“Ah, no,” he said, nearly giddy with success, “there’ll be no living with her, now.”

“I told you! I got it, didn’t I? I was right!”

“Don’t give away too much credit.”

“I’m good! I’m clever, admit it! Admit I’m clever, and I figured it out.” She bounced closer to him in the water, sending lips of foam lapping at his chest. Her face was a gloriously insufferable beacon of pride. She could be a terribly haughty little thing, Hermione, and he liked it rather a lot.

“Yes, you’re clever,” he said. “You figured it out. Have a shout about it, go on.”

“Seventh year runes! And as a fourth year! Without help!”

“Right, none. Alone in the world, that’s you. A solitary savant.”

“Except for you,” she said, after an offensive pause. “Obviously. I mean, I did figure out the clasp. And the submersion—”

“Yes, and how many legs of yours did a dragon flambeé? If we’re doing a comprehensive accounting.”

“I didn’t mean you didn’t help!”

“Oh, I helped, did I. Thank you, Professor Granger, for the credit, I feel ever so appreciated.”

She rolled her eyes and swam closer, peering at the green glimmer under the foam. “I can’t make it out, though,” she said curiously. “Can you?”

“No. I expect we’ve got to put our heads below.”

“Right. Together, then?”

“On three?”

“One—”

“Two—”

They gasped and sank together below the waves.

Water rushed into his ears and blanketed the world. Under the foam the bath was eerie and quiet, like a marble chamber roofed in white clouds, webbed with shivering green light. The egg shone verdantly from the nub at its center. From its depths echoed a high, discordant choir of voices, and they were singing a song.

---

Come seek us where our voices sound

We cannot sing above the ground

And while you’re searching, ponder this

We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss

An hour long you’ll have to look

To recover what we took.

It took two listens to make out where the verse ended and began. By then his lungs had started to itch for air, and diamond chains of bubbles rose from his nose. Hermione had already once resurfaced and come back down. Her face shone from the egg’s refracted glow.

In the water, everything was blurry. Her hair wreathed her head like a drop of diluted ink. Her bare arms and legs floated unmoored from the ground, less freckled than they had been in summer, save for a dusty scattering around her shoulders; and there was a long, bleach-pale plain of skin between the hem of her brassiere and the top of her waistband, soft and fair where the sun never touched. She had a birthmark on the swell of her left hip, just a tiny brown smudge like the print of a thumb, and he watched helplessly as that information went searing into the depths of his long-term memory, never to be removed.

She shook some hair out of her face, a slow, artless movement that sent billows of it rippling behind her head. Then she swam closer, until she was floating over the egg, and tendrils of her hair coiled in feathery loops around his shoulders, like soft strands of kelp. She was very close. One of her ankles accidentally bumped and collided with his knee. He whisked it away, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was staring at the egg with her hands knotted over her mouth in concentration, face furrowed in intense and oblivious problem-solving that meant he could have stripped off his trunks and Transfigured them into a flying carpet without disturbing her. His skin was covered in prickling heat from the bath and his head was full of warm thick silence.

Abruptly she drew her hands away from her mouth and slid them over his. He had a heart attack.

Subsequently he realized he had not had an actual heart attack, merely something that felt like one, and disgorged an unwise volume of his remaining air. Oxygen deprivation had left his cognitive acuity rather under par. That was probably why he instinctively twitched his hands outward, into hers — assuming, reasonably, based on available data and a total lack of communication — that she wanted them.

His knuckles dragged against her soft pruney fingers, almost frictionless. Tingles followed across the back of his hands, distantly pleasant, almost unnoticeable. The egg slipped through his open hands and drifted to the bottom. He turned his cheek into the soft stroke of her hair, feeling his heartbeat kick down slow and hard in the base of his ribs.

She twitched her head up at him, squinting, and cracked a smile. Then pearly balloons of air bubbled out of her smile: she was laughing. And, still laughing, she dropped his hands and dove to the bottom of the pool, where she scooped up the egg — i.e., the thing she had wanted the entire time, as was obvious to anyone who wasn’t an absolute goddamn dribbling moron, and he instantly began working on plans to kill himself.

He slammed his heel against the floor and rocketed to the surface.

Hermione surfaced a good few seconds after him, filled her lungs, and went immediately back down for another listen. She repeated this procedure several times. He was glad of it, because it gave him a few minutes to plant himself firmly on the other side of the pool, fill his chest with cold air, and figure out what the hell was wrong with his brain.

It was time to admit there was a problem. He could no longer depend on his own senses of perception. His first instinct was head injury, but the more likely option was enchantment. He ought to ask Daphne to see her Healer. At the very least, she could tell him if lobotomies required parental consent.

With a splash, Hermione breached for a final time and took three quick gasps of air. “It’s mermaids,” she panted. She hauled a curtain of hair out of her face and shoved it distractedly over her shoulder. “The Task is mermaids.”

“Obviously,” he said unevenly, though it wasn’t. He hadn’t thought about the bloody riddle at all. He still felt shaky and unsettled, and acting snide made him feel better. “You needed six verses to get that much?”

“No. I memorized it.” She snapped the egg closed and hocked it carelessly over the side of the pool. “It’s all laid out. Some riddle! ‘We cannot sing above the ground’ — that’s Mermish, of course, famously untranslatable, it wasn’t until the invention of the Bubble-Head Charm that anyone knew mermaids were even Beings because their voices are enchanted and need water as a medium—”

“Slow down. Binns isn’t lurking in the shadows with a gradebook.”

She didn’t, and blazed on with full steam. “But that doesn’t matter, of course, you’re right. ‘Where our voices sound’ has to be the lake. ‘An hour’ is self-explanatory, so is ‘recover,’ he’ll have an hour to retrieve something hidden. But ‘what you’ll sorely miss’? That could be anything. It could be a trinket, or a personal item, or even their wands… dreadfully vague, but I suppose it isn’t important, because the real thing is to get Harry prepared for whatever’s under the lake. Mermaids aren’t aggressive but they’re notoriously territorial, especially against wizards, and I don’t suppose they’ll take kindly to a bunch of students barging in and trying to take something… and I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard really nasty rumors, Lupin had a whole unit on grindylows—”

“Potter can handle the grindylows fine. That was the one class he ever paid attention in. I’m still hung up on how to keep him aspirating. He can’t do a Bubble-Head Charm, remember?”

“But we’ve solved that, he’s just got to practice.”

“That would be a waste of his time, to say nothing of ours,” he said grimly. “The time has come to accept what we’re working with. Even if he does manage to cast it, he would have to sustain concentration the whole time he’s underwater, on the understanding that if it breaks, he’ll drown—”

“Harry’s not totally useless, you know. I do think sometimes we haven’t been fair to him.”

“—and as someone who might, hypothetically, harbor some fondness for the sorry git, I am exercising a hard veto on any plan that requires Potter to concentrate on anything.” He paused. “Anyway, there are other ways to breathe underwater.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

“…I don’t know, but there’s got to be some.”

“Oh, very helpful—”

“Listen, wizards have been faffing about for thousands of years. It is probabilistically impossible that we haven’t come up with more than one method for subaquatic immersion. We’ve just got to find one that doesn’t require concentration.”

“And one that we can do,” she reminded him stubbornly. “Or teach Harry to do. In a month.”

“Yes.”

“Easy.”

“We’ve done more with less.”

Her lips quirked. “Bootleg Polyjuice?”

“Three-headed dogs. Sodium lamps. Et cetera.”

The quirk doubled and spread. “I’d forgotten that,” she said. “That was years ago now. In the Vault, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, though I’m aghast that you apparently thought so little of my brilliance. I’ll have you know that was a fine moment for me.”

“No, it was very good. I admit it. I wouldn’t have thought to check the flames themselves, I would’ve spent all my time fussing with the clues.” She smiled at him through a sappy fug of memoria, bringing heat to his cheeks. “It was the first time I realized you were clever,” she said. “Properly clever, I mean. Like — well.”

“No, go on and say it.”

“Fine! Like me.”

“Humility, thy name is Granger.”

“I was impressed! That’s all! I was little and stupid and I’d somehow concluded that I was the only eleven-year-old on the planet who liked to read, and here you come, and you impressed me.” She laughed a little. “And then I wrote you about a hundred letters that summer, I think, trying to impress you back—”

“That’s what those were?”

“Yes. Why are you looking at me like that? Honestly, did you think I cared that much about the properties of hinkypunk vapor?”

“I read a book on that for you!” He was indignant. “I thought it would be on next year’s exams! I thought I’d fallen behind!”

“I was showing off,” she said, amused and a bit startled, like she thought it obvious. Had it been? He couldn’t remember. He’d been a bit caught up, himself, in the prospect of having someone to write letters to. “You were the smartest person my own age I’d ever met. I wanted you to like me.”

“I did like you.” It was a bit strange to say it out loud, like it was a remark on the weather, but it was true, and anyway, it was pointless to play his cards close to the chest, at this point. The kneazle was out of the bag. The kneazle had been out of the bag for so long that it had forgotten the bag altogether, roamed to new pastures, and started a dynasty that was now several generations bag-free. He couldn’t very well admit to liking anybody, if not her.

That made her beam. Sometimes it was bafflingly easy to satisfy her. She really ought to have higher standards than — what, a smile? The admission that he, having risked death a multiplicity of times at her side, did not disdain her company? Merlin, maybe she did need better friends.

“I liked you, too,” she said. She paused and blinked hurriedly. “I mean, you were my friend. Are. My friend. As in, you are my friend. Still. Like then — but now.”

“Are you having a stroke?”

“Quite possibly. Permission to change the subject?”

“Enthusiastically granted.”

“The water is getting cold.”

It was. The surface area of the pool was so great that it actually held heat quite poorly, besides which it was surely near midnight and Harry would be waiting for them in Gryffindor Tower, to hear what they had found out. They ought to be heading back.

He suggested as much, and she agreed. A hop brought him out of the pool, and he padded over to the muddle of his clothes, where he withdrew his wand and Summoned a towel from the annals of the room. He coursed it roughly over his hair and shoulders, used a Drying Charm for his trunks, and dressed quickly, shivering in the damp air of the vaulted chamber. A heat prickled at his back, but when he glanced over his shoulder, Hermione had turned away from him and stared pointedly at the far wall.

“Are you finished?”

“Nearly. I didn’t ask you to turn around, you know.” He abandoned the tie and jumper, from laziness, and left his collar unbuttoned. The cufflinks he ignored, and merely rolled the sleeves up to his elbows to avoid the appearance of complete slobbery.

“I know you didn’t ask,” she said, “but I realized you shouldn’t have to ask for a bit of privacy when you’re dressing, it’s common decency, and it’s no more than you did for me, and anyway, maybe I’m modest, did you think of that?”

She hadn’t been when he was getting in, but that particular can had ‘WORMS’ written in big red print all over it.

“Now you turn around, for me,” she said nervously.

He did.

“You know, it’s nothing I haven’t seen,” he said, for apparently no sodding reason at all, except possibly a sublimated death wish.

“What?”

“I meant earlier, underwater, and anyway you’re the one who said you’re in a muggle’s idea of wading gear—”

“That’s different,” she said, scandalized. “It’ll be all see-through when I get out.”

“Oh,” he said.

The ceiling was an exceptional work of architecture. The Founders really outdid themselves. Not one missing bit of ornamentation, not one tile out of place. If anyone wanted proof, they could consult Draco, who had personally checked them all.

“…Draco? Draco.”

“Good evening.”

“I’m decent,” she said, though he gave her a few extra seconds, just to be sure. When he turned, she had every scrap of clothing firmly and properly affixed to her body, and was winding her hair into a high bun over her head. “You’ve got the Cloak, haven’t you?”

Merlin’s tits. He’d forgotten that they had to get back to Gryffindor Tower. Under the Cloak. The same way they’d come.

“It’s fairly late. I doubt anyone’s holding a soirée in the hallways.”

“Filch is still on patrol, prefect rounds are still going, and we just watched Harry get caught by a teacher.”

“We’ve got the Map, remember.”

“The Map doesn’t show ghosts or Peeves. And knowing someone’s coming won’t help if we can’t find somewhere to hide.” She paused. “But I suppose, if you’re not comfortable—”

“That’s not it. I mean, it’s not, to be honest with you, but I don’t have any reservations about that.”

“Good, then,” she said after a moment. She gave a short, businesslike nod, and smoothed her skirts. “We’ll be quick. And, er— I promise not to tell Daphne.” She gave him a queasy smile.

“Why the devil would she care?”

But Hermione had already hurried away to drain the pool, and the sound of gurgling water drowned him out.

She insisted on getting the Cloak situated before they left the bathroom, which meant a lot of fidgeting and muttering and swearing and stepping on toes, mostly Draco’s, but no amount of engineering could produce a permutation of limbs that didn’t leave her veritably squished up against his side. That was fine. He was resigned to it, or would have been, if it didn’t mean her hair was wedged up against his neck like an ice-cold wreath of wire, making him yelp and squirm away wherever she brushed her head against him.

“Ow!”

“For goodness’ sake— sorry, but you keep wriggling around!”

“That’s because you’ve got a pile of sodding icicles on your head—”

“It’s hair, I’m sorry it doesn’t magically dry out when it touches a towel, but not all of us cut it short! Believe me, it’s on my head, it’s no more fun for me than you!”

“Why don’t you use a Drying Charm?”

A suspicious silence. Something was muttered so low that even in very close quarters he couldn’t hear it, which meant he was about to dine out.

“No, tell us, go on,” he said gleefully.

“It makes it frizzy,” she said sulkily. “Okay? Are you happy? I used to use them every day, until Lavender mentioned that Drying Charms make your hair frizz up, and I didn’t — know that, before. And my hair is frizzy, most days, as I’m sure you and everyone have noticed.”

“…And you… attributed that quality… to the Drying Charms.”

“Do you know, Flitwick said my Freezing Spell was exceptional? The best in years, he said.”

“Truce,” he said, but he was so close to laughing she could hear it in his voice, and she fumbled for her wand. “I — no, stop — Granger, don’t—”

He ducked away from her, laughing, as she sent a whistling bolt of cold over his shoulder. “I just meant to suggest that an eleven-year-old’s Drying Charm is probably not quite so — stop — sophisticated as it could be, and given the likelihood of confounding variables—”

“Singularly frigid, he said!”

“—I am making a number of purely hypothetical statements about the scientific method, and therefore cannot be blamed for them. And Brown is wrong, anyway, I use Drying Charms every day, and my hair’s fantastic.”

“It is,” she muttered vengefully, as if she thought this deserved capital punishment.

“So — and don’t jinx me, you little creature, or you’re going straight back in the bath — I’ll show you how to do one. If you’re nice.”

She eyed him doubtfully, but lowered her wand and her head in begrudging assent. Still snickering to himself, he drew his wand and stepped close.

The trick to a good Drying Charm was not to go quickly. Flash-drying your follicles in a bath of heat would leave them fussy and shriveled, which created the aforementioned woebegone frizz. He activated the charm with a murmur, and drew it in a slow halo around her head. At the touch of magic, the strands lifted and lightened to the same lustrous chestnut color it always turned in winter.

Which was sort of an odd thing to notice, wasn’t it. He couldn’t have described how Ron’s hair changed in winter, for instance. Let alone identify a unique adjective for it. His mental account began and ended at ‘red.’

He needed to have his head checked.

“That’ll do,” he remarked, once the charm had erased all but some lingering dampness at the ends and roots. He flicked his wand to put it out and put it back in its sheath, where lingering warmth on the tip pressed into his thigh. “Leave some to dry on its own, you don’t want to overdo it.”

She said nothing.

He looked down at her. “Did you hear me?”

She was standing so close the tips of their feet could touch, staring evenly at his throat, to let him reach the crown of her head. It put her eyes on level with the loose buttons of his collar, and belatedly he felt a bit self-conscious about them; he hadn’t thought they’d be getting any particular scrutiny. He probably looked like some sort of scurrilous ragamuffin.

When she turned her face up it startled him, a little, because she didn’t move away. There was a sort of fogginess in her eyes that made him fret he’d bungled the charm and Confounded her, only she was frowning. Or not frowning, exactly — anxious, perhaps, was a better word. Despairing? Not pleased, at any rate.

“Granger?”

“Yes. I heard you. Sorry. Thank you. Have you got the Cloak?”

She was rather more clipped than he thought he deserved, considering he’d done her a favor. This taciturnity did not dissipate with time, and, if anything, got worse. As they fumbled back under the Cloak, she remained stiff and uncooperative to adjustment, moving only when asked, and when they at last made it out of that damnable bathroom, she said very little on the way back to Gryffindor Tower except to remark about something on the Map, or remind him of a secret passageway that could shorten the journey.

He had no idea whatsoever what she was about.

The Pink Lady yawned and lilted lazily ajar upon receipt of the password, barely lucid enough to recognize it. It was midnight now, and the hour-bell was tolling twelve, sending its chilly moans all through the dark stone vaults of the castle. The torches guttered low, and from the common room beyond, there was only the faintest glimmer of firelight around the bend in the portrait-hole. Impossible to tell if Harry was there, or if he’d gone to sleep.

From courtesy, he offered his hand to her to climb up. It was a bit of a high step, especially for shorter legs. He’d done the same for half of Gryffindor House, including Ginny Weasley, Angelina Johnson, and Katie Bell, each of whom would gladly pop his nose flat, the muggle way, if he tried it on with them.

But Hermione glanced at him with wide-eyed unease, as if his hand were covered in neurotoxin, and hurriedly clambered up by herself. His hand floated there for a moment in stunned repose as she muttered something about having perfectly functional legs.

As he watched her vanish into the portrait-hole, reeling from what felt, against reason, like a subtle blow to pride, he nevertheless assured himself that it would be alright. He put himself to bed repeating this assurance: that a night’s rest would dispel whatever delusions of sentiment a long day’s turmoil had brought, and that daylight, that old harbinger of normalcy, would restore equilibrium.

He woke the next morning from a dream about soft wet skin and dark wet hair. And he admitted, with his burning face in his hands, that the problem had officially worsened beyond his capacity to ignore.

---

-It’s angst, it’s drama, it’s… BY GOD IT’S ANOTHER UPDATE WITH A STEEL CHAIR!

-So, my justification for the double-hitter is that, one, I was literally considering a second update this week as soon as I hit Publish on the last chapter. I thought, “Hm, that ended on a downer, a chaser might be nice.” And then not one but two people in the comments suggested it. And then I had a really good writing week, and finished TWO chapters of Book 5. And it wasn’t any single element, but the rare confluence of all three factors made me think: hey. Drop 30,000 words in 8 days. Do it.

-draco, upon having a single physically awkward interaction with his crush: interesting. i’m going to kill myself. (been there!)

-One of the joys of writing from Draco’s POV is that I get a live feed into his brain for every moment; one of the great sadnesses is that I don’t get one into Hermione’s. The sort of nostalgic conversations that they have in this chapter, about the Vault and second year summer, are real indulgences for me because I can sort of wink behind the curtain as to what was happening in Hermione’s head during that time.

-Next chapter will go up on Friday, as usual. It will include a feature appearance by Daphne Greengrass, a terrifying conference with Draco’s godfather, Speculations Concerning The Whereabouts Of Narcissa Black, and a special field trip to the Slytherin common room.

-Naturally, there’s a ton of threads still hanging from Ch.44, and I will continue to tangle those up in my mean little hands for a while more at least. But the important thing is [avengers endgame title card] RON WEASLEY WILL RETURN…

-Thank you, thank you, thank you, for commenting. My God. I hope your Monday is wonderful, and contains a rare and beautiful bird.

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