For the next several weeks, Kevin disappeared.
Not literally — he was still in class, still at meals occasionally, still visible in the way that someone is visible when they pass through a space without inhabiting it. But the comfortable library evenings stopped. The morning runs that had become a kind of background constant of Gryffindor tower were still happening, but earlier, before anyone else was up. He had dark circles by the end of the first week and worse ones by the end of the second.
Hermione asked once what was happening. He said: "Potions work. Don't worry."
She worried.
She also decided that whatever Snape had done was Snape's fault, and adjusted her opinion of him accordingly. In Potions now she sat with the composed attention of someone who has privately decided that full, direct eye contact with the instructor would be a power display too far, and opted instead for a level, evaluative gaze that she had been told was unsettling. Snape ignored this entirely.
Kevin, arriving to class with ink-stained hands and the faintly abstracted look of someone whose brain was running calculations in the background, was the only person who seemed to notice. He found it funny, which he kept to himself.
The debt peaked at thirteen thousand, one hundred and five Galleons, at which point Kevin sat down with all his notes and spent two days working purely on the mathematics of materials allocation rather than brewing anything. Snape said nothing. Kevin suspected he was watching.
On the other side of that two days, things shifted. Each new batch drew down the debt rather than building it. The efficiency curves he'd mapped started paying off, redundant processes fell away, and the formulas he'd developed over the preceding weeks produced outputs that — he had to admit — surprised even him with their quality.
The morning the debt hit zero, he sat alone in the lab and laughed for about four minutes straight.
Then Snape appeared from the shadows and raised the workshop rent.
Kevin lay on the floor for a while after that.
Christmas came closer. He emerged from the underground grind with money in his pocket for the first time and found Hermione waiting, which was not surprising, and found her smiling when she saw him looking like himself again, which was.
They fell back into their library pattern as though no interruption had occurred. Hermione was chattier than usual — compensation, he suspected, for several weeks of suppressed conversation — and he listened with genuine interest while she walked him through three weeks of academic progress she'd been saving up to share with someone who would find it interesting.
"You've been talking to yourself," he said, at one point.
"I have not."
"Neville said you've been explaining transfiguration theory to your dormitory while they sleep."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. "That is completely — Neville said that?"
"Neville said it was actually quite helpful. He's started leaving a notepad on his bedside table."
She looked at him. He kept his expression neutral. After a moment she made a sound that was almost, not quite, a laugh, and went back to her book with pink cheeks.
The first snow came on a Tuesday, in the late afternoon, big slow flakes that came down like they had all the time in the world.
Kevin stopped walking. Hermione, half a step ahead, stopped when she realised he wasn't beside her.
She turned. He was looking up at the courtyard sky, the flakes settling in his dark hair.
"Hogwarts in the snow," he said. "I wanted to see this."
She looked too, then. The castle stones going grey-white against the sky, the lights in the windows warm and specific, the whole thing becoming gradually quieter and more itself in the way that snow does to places.
"Christmas soon," Kevin said.
"Yes."
"Did you get my gift yet?"
She turned a look on him that communicated clearly she was not telling him, and kicked his ankle lightly by way of punctuation.
"I have one for you," he offered.
Her expression changed — she tried to keep it neutral and didn't quite manage. "You don't have to — "
"I know."
She was quiet. A flake landed on her shoulder, then her hair.
"Kevin." She bit her lip. Her cheeks were already pink from the cold, which provided useful cover. "If you don't have plans — for Christmas, I mean — my parents asked me to..." She stopped. Started again. "I told them about you. They know about the orphanage. They thought — they asked me to invite you."
She said the last part quickly and looked at him with the expression of someone who has just done something that can't be undone and is waiting to find out whether that was a mistake.
Kevin looked at her for a moment. Something moved in his expression that he didn't try to manage.
"Miss Hermione Granger invites me personally," he said. "How could I say no?" He paused, deadpan: "Even if Voldemort storms back, Snape steals the Stone, and Dumbledore goes on holiday — I'll be there."
She stared at him. Then kicked him in the shin, firmly.
"That was a yes," she said.
"That was absolutely a yes."
"Good." She turned and started walking, hands on her hips, chin up, with the precise body language of someone who has gotten what they wanted and is choosing to act as though they hadn't particularly cared.
Kevin followed her, smiling at the back of her head.
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