8th September 1995, the Defence Against the Dark Arts office, Friday evening
Harry's final detention ended exactly as the four before it had: with a page of red lines, a hand that didn't so much as sting, and Dolores Umbridge growing more visibly, deliciously frustrated by the minute.
"That will be all, Mr Potter." Her voice had a brittle edge to it now that hadn't been there on Monday. She'd spent the week watching a curse that broke grown wizards do absolutely nothing to a fifteen-year-old boy, and it had plainly cost her some sleep.
"Thank you, Professor." Harry rose, gathered himself — and, as he turned to go, made quite sure to flex his left hand where she could see it. Turned it palm-down. Spread the fingers. The back of it smooth, unmarked, flawless, not a line on it.
Umbridge's eye twitched.
"Have a pleasant weekend, Professor," Harry said pleasantly, and let a small smile settle on his face — and he'd been practising that smile, he realised, without meaning to; it was Ethan's smile, the courteous one with nothing behind it.
"I'm sure," he added, light as anything, pausing at the door, "everything that's meant to come round, comes round. Eventually." He let it hang. "Goodnight."
And he left her sitting in her pink room among her kitten plates, twitching, with the distinct and entirely correct feeling that she'd just been threatened by a child and couldn't for the life of her say how.
Outside, in the corridor, his good humour cooled.
Theodore Nott was waiting, two goons — Crabb and Golye, the classic, at his shoulders, leaning against the opposite wall with the patience of someone who'd timed it.
"Long week, Potter?" Theodore's smile was thin and sly. "Heard the Professor's been keeping you very busy. Pity. And here's me thinking you'd have learned, by now, to keep that mouth of yours shut." A soft laugh. "Things have a way of catching up with people who don't."
Harry walked past him without a word.
But the smile Theodore wore — that smile, knowing, anticipatory, like a boy who'd already lit a fuse and was waiting for the bang — put a cold prickle on the back of Harry's neck that stayed with him the whole way back to the tower.
'He's up to something.' He filed it, the way he filed everything that didn't add up, and climbed.
The common room was nearly empty at that late hour. The fire had burned low, and Ron sat alone at a table half-vanished beneath parchment, a fan of someone else's neat notes spread beside his own scrawl — Lavender's, Harry recognised the looping hand and a second untidier stack a little apart that was unmistakably Hermione's, though Hermione herself was nowhere in sight.
Ron lifted his head at the portrait-hole's swing and scrubbed at his eyes. "Survive it?"
"Easily." Harry dropped into the chair opposite. "Where's Hermione?"
"Gone to make tea. Some... Muggle thing, matcha, she keeps going on about it, says it's better than coffee for late nights." Ron yawned hugely. "She left her notes, said I could crib the Transfiguration if I got stuck. Which I am. Permanently."
Harry nudged the parchment. "Tryouts went all right, then?"
Ron's face soured. "We got a Keeper. McLaggen — Cormac McLaggen, sixth year." He pulled a face. "I've heard about him. Loud. Arrogant. Thinks he's God's gift, never met a play he couldn't improve by ignoring the captain and doing his own thing." A pause, fairer. "Mind, he's not a coward, and he's not a bad sort underneath — brave enough, righteous enough, it's just... the team-play. You can't have a Keeper who reckons he knows better than everyone every second. It'll come apart in a real match."
He shrugged. "But Angelina's not daft. She took a reserve Keeper as well — proper one, so we're covered if McLaggen goes off the rails. I reckon she fancies fixing him. Knocking the edges off." He almost smiled. "She apologised to me, actually. For how sharp she was the other day — said it was the pressure, leading the team. Decent of her."
"She'll manage him," Harry said. "She managed Wood for years, and Wood was a maniac."
"Wood was an artist," Ron said reverently, and Harry laughed.
The portrait-hole opened and Hermione came in, looking every bit as worn as Ron, balancing two steaming cups. "I made enough for two — Harry, d'you want—"
"I'm all right, thanks."
She set one cup by Ron, kept the other, and sank into a chair with a groan — and then her eye fell on the sheer geological strata of books and notes covering the table, her own contribution included, and she made a small despairing sound.
"Twelve subjects," she said. "Twelve. I keep thinking about Percy. And Bill. They sat twelve O.W.L.s each — and revised for all of them, there are only so many hours, and they didn't have a—" She stopped. Her hand drifted, almost of its own accord, toward an inner pocket, and drew out, on its fine chain, a small glittering hourglass. The Time-Turner she'd been quietly carrying since third year. She gazed at it with an expression of pure, exhausted temptation. "—Time-Turner," she finished wistfully.
"Put it away," Harry said, laughing. "Percy managed twelve O.W.L.s the honest way. Two-thirds Outstanding, the rest Exceeds Expectations, and not a Time-Turner in sight." He grinned. "And if you want to feel really small about it — my dad sat twelve. All twelve. Twelve straight Outstandings... in his fourth year."
Ron's jaw came open. Hermione's, more impressively, came open and stayed there, the Time-Turner forgotten in her hand.
"Fourth—" Hermione managed. "But — that's a year early — you can't even sit most of them in fourth year—"
"Ah," said Harry, thoroughly enjoying himself now. "That's the story."
He settled back. "You know he was a Ravenclaw, top of everything — built Atid Stella out of nothing, so you'd think talented, obviously. But this is the bit nobody believes." He grinned. "He didn't get permission to sit them early. He just... decided he was going to. So that year, on each exam day, he found whichever student had gone ill or skived off and wasn't going to show and he disguised himself as them, walked in under their name, and sat the test. Subject by subject. Twelve of them."
Ron made a strangled noise of pure delight.
"They worked it out, of course," Harry went on. "Somewhere around the eighth or ninth one the examiners realised the same handwriting was acing papers under a dozen different names. And here's the thing... they didn't punish him. They couldn't, quite. The boy had genuinely earned twelve Outstandings; you can't very well fail someone for being too good at magic. They just... let it stand. Gave him the title that's followed him ever since."
Harry's grin softened into something fond. "The Gloomy Genius. That's where it came from. I asked him once how he did it — how anyone scores like that. You know what he said? 'A bit of talent. And a great deal of self-study.'"
"A bit of talent," Ron repeated, scandalised.
"A bit," said Hermione, with the offended awe of one craftsman regarding another, "of talent."
"That's what I said." Harry shook his head. "But — that's not even the whole of it. He told me he also used mind magic."
Both their heads came up at once.
"Mind magic?" Hermione's exhaustion fell clean away, replaced by the bright hunting look she got when something new and learnable swam into view. "What kind? Is it — could you—"
"It's not as grand as it sounds," Harry said. "It's called a Mind Palace. Dad taught me years ago... it's how I get through Umbridge's recitations without breaking a sweat."
Hermione's brow creased. "But a... mind palace, that's a Muggle thing, surely? A memory technique. The method of loci — you imagine a familiar building and place things you want to remember in different rooms, and walk through it to recall them. It's just... organising memory. It isn't magic."
"The Muggle version's just a technique, yeah," Harry agreed. "Mnemonics. But this one — Dad's one, it's a real mind-magic. Same idea on the surface, but you don't just imagine the palace. You actually go inside. It's a real place, in your own head — you can walk it, change it, store anything you like in it and pull it back out perfect, word for word, image for image." He paused, choosing his words. "And it's easier to learn than the Muggle trick, not harder, once someone shows you how to open the door. Because it's not effort of memory — it's — it's a place that's already there, in everyone, you just have to find the way in." His voice dropped a little. "Dad says it's tied up with the soul, somehow. Right down deep. He never explained that part properly."
"Teach us," Hermione and Ron said, in perfect unison — Ron surprising even himself, jolted fully awake.
Harry laughed. "All right, all right — I will. But fair warning: I've only ever used mine for memory. Storing pages, recalling them. I've never gone deeper — never poked at the soul end of it. Dad always said not to, not without him there, and I never had reason to." He looked between them. "So we learn the door and the rooms. We don't go wandering into the dark, all right? Not on our own."
Hermione, who looked as though she'd very much like to go wandering into the dark this instant, visibly reined herself in, and nodded. Ron nodded too, with the air of a man relieved to be told he wasn't required to explore his own soul before breakfast.
And then Hermione's whole manner — abruptly, alarmingly — went sweet.
"You know, Harry," she said, in a voice like syrup, leaning in, "you've done so much this week and you must be tired — let me make you a cup. Proper matcha. The good tin, not the everyday — I'll whisk it properly and everything—"
Harry pressed his lips together hard, because the sight of Hermione Granger — relentless, severe, terrifying Hermione, deploying actual sweet-talk was very nearly too much for him.
Ron clutched his chest. "She's possessed," he announced to the room, with half-baked theatrical horror. "Quick! fetch a professor, something's got into Hermione, it's wearing her face and offering to make tea—"
Hermione's fist found his shoulder with a thwack.
"Ow—" Ron rubbed it, grinning, undeterred. "I'm telling Viktor. I'm telling Viktor his girlfriend's gone all domestic and menacing about beverages—"
"You will do no such thing—" Hermione rounded on him, scarlet, and Harry had to clamp both hands over his mouth to keep his laughter from waking the tower, because it was late, and this was the best he'd felt all week.
When the scuffle settled, Hermione stood to gather her cup — and as she leaned past Harry, her eye caught on his forehead, and she paused.
"Harry... your scar." She frowned, peering. "It's... it's much fainter than it was. Last year you could see it across a room. It's nearly gone pale."
Harry put a hand to it, surprised. She was right. The old lightning-bolt was barely raised now, faded to a thin pale line. "Has been irritating a bit lately, actually," he admitted. "Itching. On and off." He shrugged it off, dropping his hand. "But... fading's good, isn't it? Less of him on me. I'll take it."
Hermione looked as though she might have said something more — then yawned enormously instead, and decided, like all of them, that whatever it was could wait for a less murderous hour, and took her tea up to bed.
9th September 1995, Gryffindor Tower, Saturday, early morning
Harry was up with the dawn, washed and dressed before the dormitory stirred, and Hedwig was waiting at the window when he opened it.
Ethan's letter was a warm one this time, no shadows in it. The company was thriving. Jasper was sulking magnificently about something and being thoroughly spoilt to compensate; Osian had eaten one of Verrona's footstools and was entirely unrepentant. And — the line that made Harry sit up — I've a surprise for you. Soon. You'll like it.
Harry's eyebrows rose. 'A surprise.' With Ethan that could mean anything from a rare book to a small controlled explosion. He turned the line over, found no further clue in it, and grinned, and reached for his own parchment.
He wrote back: Umbridge's mounting frustration, the cracked quill working exactly as Ethan had promised, his O.W.L. preparation well in hand. And — carefully wrapped, he tucked the button-camera into the fold, a full week of Dolores Umbridge's detentions recorded on it, the quill and the blood and the small pink smile.
That's the evidence, Dad. Do with it what you do.
He sealed it, apologised to Hedwig for the second night's flying in a row, and sent her out into the bright Saturday morning.
"Order me food," came Ron's voice, thick and muffled, from somewhere deep in his bedclothes as Harry made to leave. He surfaced just far enough to fix Harry with one bleary, pleading eye. "I've got prefect rounds. It's Saturday. It's inhumane. Get me — everything. All the breakfast. Order me a lot of breakfast, mate, I'm going to need it to live—"
Harry laughed and patted the lump of bedclothes that was his best friend. "All the breakfast. Promise."
And he pulled on his black hoodie and headed down to the Hall.
Breakfast on a Saturday was a slow, sleepy, half-empty affair, and Harry took his time over it — and, for want of anything better and because Hogwarts in its wisdom still subscribed to the thing, he read the Daily Prophet.
It was, as ever, a masterclass.
Page after page of warm assurance: the Minister's tireless diplomacy, the unprecedented international cooperation, the steady hand on the tiller. He skimmed it with the detached interest of a man reading propaganda for the one true fact buried in it — and found it: a small line confirming that the wanted criminal known as 'Voldemort' and his associates had been sighted in Egypt. The paper framed it as further proof of the hunt closing in. Harry, who'd read his father's letters, knew exactly how much closing-in was actually happening, and turned the page.
"Harry!"
He looked up to find Cedric Diggory grinning down at him, Cho Chang at his side, and was up and into a firm one-armed hug before he'd quite set down the paper.
"Heard about your week," Cedric said, dropping onto the bench beside him. "Standing up to Umbridge — in her own first lesson. Mad. Brilliant, but mad."
"Someone had to," Harry said.
"Someone did," Cho agreed warmly and then her face clouded. "I just don't understand how people can — they read that—" she nodded at the Prophet "—every morning, and they decide it's easier to believe it. After everything. After the maze." Her jaw set. "He's out there, getting ready, and half this castle's decided it's a fairy story because the newspaper told them to sleep well."
"You'd think the maze alone—" Cedric began, and didn't finish, because some things between the three of them didn't need finishing.
A wheezing cough interrupted them — and Argus Filch came shuffling up the table, Mrs Norris winding at his ankles, his eyes alight with malicious triumph.
"Potter." He fairly quivered with it. "I've had information. A reliable source. That you've been placing an order — Dungbombs, by owl, this very morning. Banned merchandise. I'll be having that letter, boy, and you'll be having a detention—"
"You're too late, Mr Filch," Harry said evenly. "I sent my letter half an hour ago. With my own owl. There's nothing to confiscate."
"He did," Cho put in at once. "We saw him come from the Owlery. Empty-handed."
Filch's face worked through several shades of disappointment. He glared at Harry, glared at Cho, hissed something under his breath about favouritism and standards slipping, and shuffled off, Mrs Norris casting one last yellow-eyed look over her shoulder.
Harry watched him go, and the cold prickle from the night before came creeping back. 'A reliable source. Told him I was ordering Dungbombs this morning. Today. Specifically.' He thought of Theodore Nott's sly, fuse-lit smile in the corridor. 'That's not a guess. Someone fed him that. Someone who wanted me caught with a letter in my hand.' He'd sent his real letter early, by pure habit — and so the trap, whatever it had been meant to be, had closed on empty air.
Lucky. He didn't much like relying on lucky. He filed it with the rest.
"Friendly chap," said Cedric dryly.
Harry shook it off and grinned. "Reliable, anyway."
The Diggorys took their leave, and Harry settled back to his breakfast, only to be joined, a moment later, by Hermione and Viktor, each bearing a modest stack of books.
Harry winced on their behalf. "It's Saturday."
"Teaching," said Viktor, with a rueful tilt of the head, catching the look, "does not care vhat day it is. Nor does — vhat is it... prefect duty." He set his lesson-prep down with the resigned air of a man who'd made his peace with it.
"Thank you again, by the way," Hermione said, sliding in across from Harry, her eyes bright. "For last night. The Mind Palace. I've been thinking about it all morning, the door, the way you described finding the way in... I tried, just lying in bed, and I — Harry, I think I'm close. I felt something, a sort of... give. A threshold."
She was practically vibrating. "I think I could open it."
"That's faster than I managed," Harry said, impressed. "Took me a fortnight to find the door." He slid the abandoned Prophet across to them. "Here. Light reading. For your blood pressure."
Hermione and Viktor bent over it together, and within seconds were trading low, witheringly mocking commentary on the Minister's prose — "unprecedented cooperation," is it, — ah yes, the famous tireless diplomacy — that had Harry laughing into his pumpkin juice.
"What're we mocking?" Ron arrived from nowhere, dropping onto the bench and dragging a plate of everything toward himself. "Is it the Prophet? Tell me it's the Prophet." He read a headline upside-down and snorted. "'Minister urges calm.' Course he does. Bloke could be on fire and he'd 'urge calm.' 'Nothing to see here, the flames are perfectly under control, the Ministry has the inferno well in hand—'"
The table dissolved.
"Anyway," Ron went on, around a mouthful of toast, restored to full operating capacity by food, "Hogsmeade weekend's coming. Finally. Me and Lavender've got the whole thing planned — Three Broomsticks, the sweet shop, proper day off from all this—" he gestured at the books with loathing.
"You have prefect rounds to finish this morning first," Hermione reminded him, "and you'll want McGonagall's sign-off for the trip, which she will not give if your duties aren't done—"
"They'll be done." Ron set his jaw with sudden noble resolve. "I'll do them. Every corridor. Watch me." He turned to Harry. "What about you, then? You and Luna doing Hogsmeade?"
"Yeah," Harry said, his face warming at the thought of it — a whole day, the village, just the two of them. "Yeah, I thought I'd ask Luna to—"
And the smile stopped halfway.
Because the doors of the Great Hall had opened, and Luna had come through them — and walking beside her, the two of them deep in some bright animated conversation, hands sketching the shapes of impossible creatures in the air between them, was Rolf Scamander.
The two of them crossed to the Ravenclaw table together and sat down, side by side, still talking, still laughing.
Harry's smile set, slightly, on his face. And the cold half-recognised prickle he'd been filing away for a week stirred again at the back of his neck — and this time, watching Rolf Scamander lean in to say something that made Luna's whole face light up, Harry found he genuinely could not have said how much of it was his battle-trained danger-sense.
And how much of it was something far more ordinary, and far more difficult to admit.