The morning after, Kevin woke in the hospital wing with the specific alertness of someone whose body has decided that ten hours of genuine sleep is a form of apology for yesterday.
Madam Pomfrey had been thorough. Everyone had been looked over, treated, and assigned beds with the firm competence of someone who does not accept arguments about feeling fine. The only person with genuinely significant injuries was Kevin, who had been thrown into two pillars and a stone floor and whose Bone-Repair Potion had been working overtime.
He felt excellent. Post-battle rest and good potions were genuinely restorative in ways that made him newly appreciative of having brewed the good stuff all year.
Dumbledore's office at mid-morning was its usual self — warm, cluttered, the new phoenix chick in the ash pile with the specific alertness of something that has recently been through a difficult experience and emerged from it with a great deal of energy.
"The four of you resolved a crisis that threatened the school, identified the mechanism behind the attacks, and protected other students at significant personal risk," Dumbledore said. "Hogwarts owes you a great deal. I owe you a great deal personally." He looked at Kevin. "As does Harry."
Kevin shook his head. "I nearly couldn't move the basilisk without the diary getting away. If you hadn't been there — "
"The important thing," Dumbledore said, "is that neither of us had to manage it alone."
He smiled. Kevin accepted this.
Lucius Malfoy arrived seven minutes later.
Kevin had not been expecting him, which made the arrival Dobby's first notable entrance — shuffling in behind his master with the posture of something that has been carrying a very heavy weight for a very long time.
Harry looked at Dobby with the expression of recognition, calculation, and empathy arriving simultaneously.
Lucius performed his pleasantries at Dumbledore — something about concerns for student safety, appropriate oversight, the school board's collective wisdom — and delivered several pointed looks at Harry and Kevin in the intervals between polished sentences.
Harry interrupted him.
He held up the ruined diary. "You gave this to Ginny Weasley," he said. Directly. Not as an accusation requiring proof, but as a statement of fact delivered to the relevant person's face.
Lucius looked at the diary and looked at Harry with the specific calm of someone who has decided not to confirm or deny anything.
"I don't believe I've ever seen that notebook," Lucius said.
Harry took the diary, tucked something into the cover, and walked to Lucius and held it out. "You should have this back."
Lucius's expression didn't change. He looked at Dobby and said "hold this" and Dobby took the diary.
Harry nodded at Dobby.
Dobby opened the cover. A sock fell out — an ordinary sock, from the pile Harry had in his bag.
The diary was an item passed from Lucius to Dobby as part of the instruction. Lucius had just given Dobby a sock. A clothing item, personally gifted from a master.
Dobby's eyes went enormous.
"Master has given Dobby a sock," Dobby breathed. "Master has given Dobby a sock. DOBBY IS FREE!"
He began jumping.
Lucius turned on Harry with the specific cold fury of someone whose elegant plan has just been dismantled by a twelve-year-old using a sock.
He raised his wand.
Dobby got there first.
The blast that came off the free house-elf was not elegant, but it was enthusiastic, and it sent Lucius down the staircase in a series of impacts that were individually undignified and collectively emphatic.
Kevin walked to the top of the stairs and looked down at Lucius rearranging himself at the bottom.
"Anytime," he said pleasantly.
Lucius got up, looked at him, and said something through clenched teeth that Kevin did not catch and felt no need to ask to be repeated. Then he walked away.
Dobby was, in the corridor below, approximately one metre off the ground with his arms spread wide, declaring himself free to the corridor at large.
Harry, behind Kevin, was grinning.
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