Kevin sat outside with Percy in the early evening quiet, two chairs angled toward the garden, the sky going soft purple above the paddock.
Percy was the kind of person who, when asked the right questions, became genuinely interesting — precise, thorough, with the particular perspective of someone who had been paying close attention to Hogwarts for six years and had strong opinions about almost everything.
"Next year's Defence Against the Dark Arts," Percy said, with the weight of someone delivering regrettable news. "Gilderoy Lockhart."
Kevin processed this.
"He's being given a teaching position," he said. Not a question.
"Already announced." Percy had the expression of a man who disapproves of something too much to mock it. "And his entire collected works are on the year's reading list."
Kevin reached into his bag, produced paper and a pen, and wrote to Snape. Concise: he had heard who was teaching Defence next year and wanted Snape's actual recommendations for relevant reading for himself and his friends.
He sent it with the Weasley owl and watched it bank away into the darkening sky.
"You're getting alternative books for everyone," Percy said.
"I'm getting alternative books for everyone."
"I'd like one too," Percy said, with the composed dignity of someone making a reasonable request, "and I'll consider it a gift. You don't need to be embarrassed about it."
"I wasn't going to be embarrassed about it."
"Good." Percy looked out at the garden. "He's very popular. My mother loves his books."
"I know," Kevin said. "I'm not going to say anything about his books."
"He's a fraud," Percy said quietly. "Anyone who's looked at his records knows. But he's charming and the stories are fun and he's harmless in a classroom because the practical requirements are limited. So." He shrugged.
Kevin looked at him. Percy was twenty times the person Lockhart was going to turn out to be, and he knew it, and the knowing was quiet and without bitterness.
"You're going to be good at whatever you do," Kevin said.
Percy blinked.
"Ministry, teaching, doesn't matter. You're very good at seeing clearly." Kevin stood up. "Hermione's waving at the window. Dinner."
The school list arrived with the morning post, two days before term. Kevin scanned it.
Seven Lockhart books, yes. He set the list aside and waited for Snape's reply, which arrived the same afternoon — a short list of four titles, no explanation, which meant Snape had trusted Kevin to understand why they were appropriate, which was its own kind of compliment.
Kevin bought six additional copies in Diagon Alley while the Weasleys were at Flourish and Blotts for the signing.
The signing was everything Kevin had predicted — Lockhart at his most expansive, cameras, the particular theatre of a man who has built a personality as a structural component rather than a feature. He zeroed in on Harry with the unerring instinct of someone for whom famous people are resources.
Kevin found the Lockhart books under his arm without quite registering how they'd got there and handed them to Mrs. Weasley, who was delighted, and then went to look at something more worthwhile in the back of the shop.
He spotted Draco upstairs before Draco spotted him.
"Draco," he said, looking up.
"Kevin." Draco came down a few steps, taking in the group below — Weasleys, Harry, Hermione. His face did the calculation. Then, pointedly but without the old venom, he nodded at the Weasleys.
Ron stared. Fred and George stared. A Malfoy had nodded at them.
Kevin produced Snape's letter and held it up. "Better reading list than Lockhart."
Draco came down the rest of the stairs. He read it. His expression shifted — the recognition of quality, the slightly grudging appreciation of someone who knows good taste when he sees it. "You asked Snape."
"He picks well."
"You're getting them for — " Draco gestured at the group.
"Yes. You're getting your own."
"I could afford — "
"I know you could. Get your own." Kevin said it without edge. "But look at the list first."
Draco looked at the list again. Then he nodded, once, which settled it.
Lucius arrived at the worst possible moment, which Kevin suspected was not accidental.
He came up behind the group when Harry was already laden with Ginny's things and Hermione was sorting through a stack of books, and he moved with the specific quality of a man who has spent years moving through spaces as though they belong to him — which, in most spaces he entered, they effectively did.
He reached Harry. Reached for the lightning scar with his cane.
Kevin was between them before the cane had travelled six inches.
He shoved Lucius back. Not hard enough to be assault, hard enough to be unambiguous. Then he gripped the cane — the silver serpent head — and applied pressure until the wood splintered and the shaft came apart.
A wand tumbled free from the hollow core and clattered to the floor.
"Mr. Malfoy," Kevin said. "That's a concealed weapon."
Lucius recovered his composure with the speed of someone who has practised recovering composure. He tilted his head and studied Kevin with the cold, assessing look of a predator taking an inventory.
"And who are you?" he said.
"Someone who was standing there," Kevin said. "Which you apparently didn't account for."
Hermione had already started — Shut your — — at Lucius's first words to her, which Kevin noted as character development. Harry had stepped forward. The Weasleys had gathered.
Lucius moved through the group as though they were inconveniences, stopped in front of Kevin, and smiled. The smile was the kind that people use when they want to communicate that the current situation is temporary and the subsequent one will be much less pleasant for you.
"Harry Potter," he said, stepping around Kevin toward Harry. "That scar. Legendary."
Kevin hit him.
It was not a complicated decision. Lucius's Shield Charm was real and it was fast and it was completely inadequate, because Kevin had not been throwing the punch of a trained wizard. He had been throwing the punch of a person with a constitution score of twenty-five who had been doing physical training since he was five years old and had seventeen points of magic backing the impact.
The shield cracked. The punch connected. Lucius went backwards through the air, spinning once, and sat down hard on the bookshop floor.
The room went very quiet.
"Father." Draco's voice, from the stairs. Tight.
Lucius looked up from the floor. His expression had passed through surprise and arrived somewhere that was not anger exactly but was the specific, cold, calculating quality of someone who has had a piece of information delivered unexpectedly and is already working out what to do with it.
He spat. Two teeth.
"Kevin," he said, quietly, not loudly. "Your name is Kevin."
Kevin stood over him, hands loose at his sides. "Come and find me whenever you're ready for a rematch."
He patted the front of Lucius's robes once, pleasantly, and stepped back.
Draco got his father upright. He looked at Kevin once — the specific look of someone who is in an impossible position and knows that the other person is aware of it and has given them a way through.
Kevin nodded slightly. Go. Handle it. We'll talk at school.
They left.
The cheering started approximately two seconds after the doors closed. Ron grabbed Kevin's shoulders with both hands and shook him. Harry was grinning so hard he appeared to have temporarily forgotten about everything that had happened in the last month. Even Percy made a sound.
Mrs. Weasley's expression was complicated — proud, worried, and suppressing a smile.
Kevin looked at Ginny's cauldron while the noise was happening.
A black notebook, tucked behind her brown one. The spine unmarked.
He looked at it. He looked at the spot where Lucius had stood.
He thought about plot trajectories and the cost of interference and the unpredictability of substitutions. He thought about Harry, who had faced the Chamber before and survived it, and about Ginny, who had survived it too, and about the things they'd both learned from it.
He thought about Hermione, who would not be in the Chamber. Who was not a Parselmouth. Whose role in this particular arc was to be Petrified in a corridor while solving the mystery with a page she'd torn from a library book.
He left the notebook where it was.
They gathered their things and headed out into the street, and Kevin accepted the six warm, slightly overwhelming minutes of everyone talking at once with the equanimity of someone who has decided it is a good day.
He handed out the Snape books at dinner that evening and let Mrs. Weasley credit Hermione for the thoughtfulness, and watched Mr. Weasley pull apart the compass over the pudding, and felt, quietly, that the second year was going to be whatever it was going to be.
He was ready for it.