They fell in with Hagrid on the walk back from the pitch, the afternoon light thinning, everyone still buzzing from the match. Hagrid had cheered himself hoarse and was currently working through his feelings about Slytherin's playing tactics by volume.
Harry brought up Snape. Naturally. It had been coming since breakfast.
"Hagrid, Snape was jinxing Harry's broom. We saw him."
"Rubbish!" Hagrid's beard bristled. The very suggestion. "Snape jinxing Harry? That's the most — what on earth would Snape want to do that for?"
"He was there on Halloween," Harry pressed. "In the corridor near the third floor. Why'd he go near Fluffy?"
Hagrid stopped walking.
"How do you know his name?"
Ron's eyebrows went up. "It's Fluffy?"
"Course he's got a name. He's my pet. Bought him from a bloke in a pub last year." Hagrid began walking again, slightly faster. "Lent him to Dumbledore to guard — " He stopped again. Mouth shut.
"Guard what?" Harry said.
"Can't say. And don't ask me again. It's top secret Hogwarts business and I've already said too much, and if I hear another word about Snape being involved then —" Hagrid pointed at each of them in turn, "— it's all three of you I'll be pointing fingers at, and I don't care whose father is who."
Hermione looked at Kevin, who had said nothing for the last four minutes and was walking slightly behind the group with the unhurried air of someone thinking about something else entirely.
"What do you — " she started.
He'd already peeled off from the group.
She turned back to Harry and Ron. They were still watching Hagrid. None of them had noticed.
She looked again. Kevin was a dozen metres away, on a parallel path, maintaining the same pace as Hagrid with a gap of about thirty feet between them. Not following. Just happening to walk in the same direction.
"Is that — " Ron started.
"Ssh," Hermione said.
Hagrid reached his hut, glanced back at the three remaining students with a look that said I've said everything I'm going to say, and opened his door.
Kevin was in before it closed.
The three of them stared at the hut.
"How did he — "
"I don't know," Hermione said. After a moment: "Quietly."
They crept to the window. The glass was grimy but they could see shapes: Hagrid's enormous outline, Kevin making himself comfortable on one of the chairs with the relaxed confidence of someone who had been welcomed rather than having simply walked in behind a person while they were distracted.
Hagrid looked at him. The body language went through several stages. Then the kettle went on.
Hermione's breath fogged the glass. "How."
"I genuinely don't know," Ron said.
Inside, Kevin accepted his mug, wrapped both hands around it, and looked at the fire with the expression of a boy having a perfectly ordinary afternoon. Hagrid's posture had already softened — the prickly defensiveness he'd had outside draining away with the familiar comfort of someone who had made tea and found decent company.
"Uncle Hagrid, you're completely right," Kevin said. "Those three are terrible for sticking their noses in. No sense of proportion."
Hagrid's face opened up. Finally. A sensible child.
"Exactly! They should be concentrating on their classes. It's not their business what goes on in the castle, and — " He was off. Kevin listened with the serene attention of a very patient fisherman.
Outside, Hermione was making a face that could only be described as betrayed. Harry's mouth had dropped open. Ron looked almost admiring.
"The nerve of him," Hermione said.
"He's looking right at us," Ron said. "Through the window. He just winked."
Kevin had.
Inside, the conversation had moved to creatures — Hagrid's favourite subject when the sensitive topics had been successfully navigated around. Kevin had asked the right question at the right moment, and Hagrid, finding himself fully engaged on comfortable ground, had forgotten to guard the edges.
"...and Nicolas Flamel — haven't heard his name in years," Hagrid was saying, with the nostalgic warmth of someone recalling an elderly acquaintance. "Great alchemist. Retired years ago. Most of the wizarding world's never even heard of him anymore. Even Dumbledore barely sees him these days."
"Remarkable man, then," Kevin said.
"Oh, the very best," Hagrid said. He looked slightly surprised at himself, blinked, and seemed to sense that he had arrived somewhere without quite tracking the route. "Right, well — "
"More tea?" Kevin held up his mug.
Hagrid poured it.
The light outside had gone gold and low when Kevin finally came out, his breath misting in the cold air, looking thoroughly warm and well-refreshed. The other three were waiting for him with a specific quality of silence.
"You told him," Harry said, "that we were being terrible busybodies."
"I said you stuck your noses in. It's not the same."
"It is exactly — "
"I found out who Nicolas Flamel is." Kevin started walking toward the castle. After a moment, footsteps behind him. "Alchemist. Retired. Barely sees anyone. Including Dumbledore."
"That's it?" Hermione said.
"For now." Kevin glanced back at her. "Some information has to be extracted gently. You three went in with crowbars."
She made a sound that was not quite agreement. "I noticed you didn't seem to have trouble being invited in."
"I wasn't rude about his cooking last time."
Hermione filed this away. Kevin had an instinct for these situations — the slow patience of it, the way he could sit in a room and wait for the conversation to come to him. She'd seen it work on Hagrid, on McGonagall, even in his own strange way on Snape.
She fell into step beside him and didn't mention that she'd seen him wink through the window.
He stayed for dinner. Hagrid twisted his arm about it, and Kevin, who had heard the warnings about Hagrid's cooking and chosen to ignore them, accepted.
He spent the following day in the hospital wing with what Madam Pomfrey described as a gastric incident.
He told no one this was his fault.