Autumn for the Two. The First Moment of Eternity

Something cold was pressed to his lips, and Harry coughed as an oily, foul-tasting liquid slid down his throat. He reluctantly opened his eyes, trying at the same time to pull away from the source of the revolting flavour, and found himself staring into the black eyes of his Head of House. ‘Sir?’ he croaked in surprise, not understanding what Snape was doing here — and, for that matter, where ‘here’ even was. He adjusted the glasses that had slipped crookedly down his nose and weakly glanced around the small room. Apart from the bed he was lying on, there was a bookcase, a desk, and several shelves cluttered with various objects. ‘Not a day without a fit, eh, Potter?’ the man enquired calmly for once, stepping away from the bed. Harry immediately noticed Professor Lupin approaching him. ‘How are you feeling?’ Remus asked anxiously. ‘Erm,’ Harry listened to himself, immediately becoming aware of a dull throbbing pain in his temples and a sluggish weakness throughout his body, ‘all right, thanks,’ he attempted to sit up, and the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor promptly tucked a couple of pillows behind his back so that he might be comfortable. Snape, observing this display, gave a quiet sniff. ‘What happened?’ ‘An excellent question, Mr Potter,’ the professor responded at once, fixing an irritated stare upon Lupin. ‘A very excellent one, considering I have yet to receive a coherent answer to it — apart from some pitiful, incomprehensible bleating.’ Remus cast his colleague a weary look and turned back to Harry. ‘What do you remember last?’ ‘There was an alarm?’ Harry frowned and immediately panicked. ‘What happened? Who got into the school? Is everything all right? Was anyone hurt? And why —’ ‘Harry,’ Remus interrupted gently, ‘calm down. Everything’s fine. No one was hurt … except you.’ ‘What happened to me?’ Potter asked. ‘I was hoping you would tell me,’ Lupin admitted quietly. ‘You suddenly felt unwell, clutched your head, and collapsed. To be honest, you rather scared the life out of me.’ ‘Clutched my head?’ Harry pondered this, then shuddered as the memory of that nightmarish, searing pain surged back into his mind. ‘My scar,’ he said hoarsely, clearing his throat. ‘My scar hurt.’ ‘Scar?’ Snape stepped closer and frowned. ‘The scar on your forehead?’ ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t have any others, sir,’ Harry remarked dryly, momentarily forgetting to whom he was speaking — a lapse which the Potions Master promptly corrected with a pair of cutting remarks. Harry dropped his gaze in embarrassment, missing the amused look Remus directed at Snape. ‘But why would Harry’s scar suddenly start hurting?’ Lupin rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘You’re asking me?’ the Slytherin Head sneered softly and examined the boy closely. ‘Given that you appear, for the moment, to be perfectly healthy, Mr Potter, I would insist that you return to your common room. Professor Lupin’s office is hardly suitable lodging for the night.’ ‘We’re in your office?’ Harry glanced apologetically at Remus. ‘Given the circumstances, it was the nearest place,’ he shrugged. ‘It didn’t occur to you to take him to the Hospital Wing,’ Snape muttered under his breath, then raised his voice. ‘Well, what are you lounging about for, Potter?’ he barked, and Harry was off the bed as if propelled by a gust of wind. ‘Sorry, Professor,’ he said — not specifying to whom exactly he was apologising — while simultaneously attempting to flatten his hair and straighten his crumpled robes. Together with his Head of House, Potter made his way down to the dungeons, dreaming only of getting to bed as soon as possible. Having received as a bedtime blessing another helping of Snape’s biting commentary regarding certain children’s tendency towards fits and one particular child’s fondness for staging dramatic scenes in order to attract attention, Harry at last slipped into the common room, which, after the freezing corridors, felt to him very warm. The moment the entrance closed behind him with a soft rustle, Harry allowed himself to wince painfully, rubbing his aching temples. Truth be told, he did not feel nearly as well as he had pretended. The common room, which had at first appeared empty, turned out not to be empty at all. ‘Harry,’ Tom hurried towards him, pale as a sheet, ‘where have you been?!’ ‘Well … I … er …’ Harry hesitated, wondering whether he ought to tell his friend what had happened. Making up his mind, he sighed. ‘I felt a bit off and I — well — sort of blacked out for a minute.’ ‘Off?’ Archer asked a moment later. ‘What happened?’ ‘My scar hurt,’ Potter yawned. ‘Why?’ Archer pressed after a short silence, gradually calming down. ‘How should I know?’ Harry shrugged, edging step by step towards the bedroom. ‘It’s never happened before.’ ‘Hm …’ Archer paused. ‘Did it happen when the protective wards were triggered?’ ‘Yeah …’ ‘Right,’ Tom gave his friend a long, searching look, wondering why he seemed so calm about it. ‘Still, it’s odd that your scar hurt.’ ‘It doesn’t hurt now, so there’s no point worrying yet. Shall we get some kip?’ His friend remained where he was, a familiar spark of fervour burning in his dark eyes, and Harry knew perfectly well that until he had his answers, there would be no slipping away that easily. ‘Still, it’s interesting — who was it …’ Archer drawled thoughtfully. ‘Eh?’ Potter yawned again. ‘Who broke into Hogwarts.’ ‘Snape says no one did,’ Harry shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’m just glad nothing happened.’ ‘Hm …’ Tom looked his friend up and down pensively. ‘And you, as I see, are terribly “concerned” about it all,’ he remarked with open sarcasm. ‘Absolutely beside myself,’ Harry muttered, trudging towards the dormitory, Archer close on his heels. ‘And how are you feeling now?’ ‘Rubbish. Thanks for asking.’ ‘Don’t mention it …’ Tom smirked, yet he still could not shake the feeling that whatever had happened to Harry and the intrusion into Hogwarts were somehow connected. But how? And why would a scar — which by all logic ought not to hurt — suddenly … ‘Tom …’ ‘What?’ Archer snapped out of his thoughts and looked at Harry, who had stopped a few steps ahead. ‘Don’t pull that scary face. Nothing happened, everyone’s alive — just forget it,’ Potter said, turning on his heel and disappearing into the dormitory, leaving his friend alone with his thoughts. ‘You’re wrong,’ Tom said quietly, a dark smile playing about his lips. ‘There’s something off about that cursed scar …’ he suddenly gave a slight shudder, and his smile widened. ‘Cursed? Hm … interesting …’ Still muttering under his breath, Tom entered the dormitory and quietly shut the door behind him. “I bet my wand this isn’t as simple as it looks,” Archer thought as he drifted off to sleep. In the neighbouring bed, Harry collapsed face-first into his pillow, breathing in the faint scent of pine rising from the bed linen, and felt at last the long-awaited calm settle over him. Nevertheless, the following morning he woke exactly as expected — utterly shattered — and barely survived two Potions lessons, during which Snape quite surpassed himself in the art of caustic remarks. Tom, surprisingly, did not bring up the previous evening again, for which Harry was immensely grateful. He would not have survived another round of questioning — he had spent the entire day half-asleep as it was. Worst of all was the homework, of which there seemed to be an unreasonable amount and which stubbornly refused to complete itself. ‘Bloody hell,’ Harry rubbed his reddened eyes and stared stubbornly at his Charms textbook. ‘I don’t get any of this.’ ‘Then go to bed,’ Tom replied from the sofa. Unlike his friend, he had finished everything already and was now reading some hefty tome about ancient wizarding families. Harry peered at the title and gave a distinctly cat-like smile. ‘Looks like someone’s starting to believe his own fairy tale,’ he murmured. ‘Did I ever actually lie?’ Archer asked innocently, lowering his eyes. ‘I really did live in a Muggle orphanage and I genuinely don’t know who my parents are. And as for the Archers — that wasn’t me, that was Ollivander,’ he added with a sly smile. ‘For all I know, I might be the heir to some frightfully wealthy family and simply unaware of it.’ ‘Yes, that would be quite the oversight on your part,’ Potter smirked, turning back to his homework. ‘No, there’s something seriously wrong with this paragraph,’ he complained a minute later, snapping the book shut. ‘It’s complete nonsense.’ ‘You mean Levitation?’ Blaise Zabini appeared beside him unexpectedly and, not waiting for an answer, continued cheerfully, ‘Exactly! They write that the weight of the objects you can lift is limited — but that’s daft. Magic can do anything. If I want to lift a house into the air, it ought to bloody well fly.’ ‘You’re an idiot,’ Draco said, perching on the arm of the sofa. ‘Wingardium can only lift what you could lift yourself.’ ‘Then what’s the point of the spell if I can manage perfectly well without it?’ Blaise scoffed. ‘To make our lives more complicated, I suppose,’ Potter muttered gloomily, feeling a headache coming on. ‘Why are you in such a “good mood”?’ Zabini asked, studying him closely. ‘He’s been like this since yesterday,’ Tom cut in. ‘He’s playing the brooding type.’ The three Slytherins exchanged amused looks. Harry ground his teeth in irritation. ‘Hilarious,’ he muttered, rising to his feet and heading for the dormitory, ignoring the three surprised stares that followed him all the way to the staircase. ‘What’s got into him?’ Zabini murmured. ‘You just irritate him too much,’ Archer replied indifferently from behind his book. Draco smirked. ‘How do you even get on with him?’ Malfoy drawled. ‘Marvellously.’ ‘Really? He’s so terribly “sociable”, after all,’ Draco observed with biting irony. ‘And?’ Tom glanced sideways at him, wondering what he was getting at. ‘You seem rather different,’ Malfoy pronounced thoughtfully. ‘And?’ Archer repeated. ‘That’s all,’ the blond shrugged. ‘Who do you reckon broke into Hogwarts?’ ‘I don’t know. Didn’t see anyone,’ Tom yawned. ‘And you’re not curious?’ Blaise cut in at once. ‘Nothing happened, did it?’ ‘What if it was a Death Eater?’ Malfoy narrowed his eyes at him. ‘A what?’ Archer blinked in confusion. ‘A Death Eater,’ Blaise answered for him. ‘That’s what the Dark Lord’s followers used to call themselves.’ Tom shook his head. ‘We live in a world full of idiotic nicknames,’ he concluded. Blaise laughed. ‘Too right, mate.’ ‘I wouldn’t joke about that,’ Draco advised calmly, looking at Tom with cool superiority. ‘I understand no one explained it to you in the Muggle world but Death Eaters are very dangerous.’ ‘Doesn’t make the name any less ridiculous,’ Archer snorted, closing his book. “Still,” he thought, “if a Death Eater really did enter the school, could that have affected Harry somehow?” ‘So long as they don’t cancel the match,’ Zabini sighed. ‘I’ve heard Potter’s an absolute devil on a broom. I’d love to see whether that’s true.’ ‘I was at practice,’ Draco admitted reluctantly. ‘I must say, he flies rather well,’ he gave an arrogant sniff. ‘Of course, I’m no worse.’ Tom and Blaise exchanged eloquent looks. Malfoy scowled in offence.

***

Surprisingly, even the fact that Harry had gone to bed early did nothing to improve his condition. He still felt utterly shattered and was sluggish from the moment he woke. At breakfast he poked listlessly at his plate with a fork, fighting to keep his eyes open. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ Blaise said under his breath, noticing his housemate’s complete lack of appetite. ‘I get that it’s your first match and all that but you probably ought to eat something.’ ‘Eh?’ Harry tore his gaze away from the tragic remains of his omelette and looked at Zabini in confusion. ‘The match,’ Blaise blinked. ‘I mean Quidditch.’ ‘Quidditch?’ Harry mumbled weakly. ‘Eleven o’clock today,’ Blaise added pointedly, staring at Potter in disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me you forgot!’ Harry felt a wave of nausea join his general misery. The Quidditch match! Today! He clutched his head in both hands. He had only just remembered. Tom, seated on his right, gave a quiet snort. ‘I see you’re over the moon about it,’ he remarked dryly. ‘You’ve no idea,’ Potter groaned, dropping his fork. The first match of the season was between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and by ten o’clock half the stands were already packed with students and teachers. Watching the terraces fill with witches and wizards, Harry noted with detached displeasure that most of the students — regardless of House — were waving homemade flags bearing the Gryffindor crest and loudly supporting the lions. The only patch of green in the red-and-gold sea was the Slytherin stand. Madam Hooch stepped onto the pitch with her opening speech, and the roar of the crowd subsided to a low, restless hum. Harry drew a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and closed his eyes, gripping his broom more tightly. The strain of nerves made his head spin horribly, and the only thing he wanted was to crawl into the darkest corner he could find and stay there until everything was over. Marcus Flint clapped the first-year encouragingly on the shoulder. ‘Calm down, Potter,’ he advised. ‘It’ll be brilliant.’ Harry gave a weak nod, eyeing the captain’s unnervingly broad grin and reflecting that if Flint discovered Harry had remembered the match only a couple of hours ago, he would probably bite his head off. The thought did little for his morale. ‘Mount up!’ Flint barked, swinging onto his broom. Harry clenched his teeth. The game began. ‘And the star of this season — the young hero Harry Potter, who for some reason chose to play for the Slytherins!’ announced the Gryffindor commentator, Lee Jordan, seated in the stands beside Professor McGonagall. ‘Let’s see what the Slytherin celebrities can do!’ Jordan’s words might have stung on another day but Harry was so focused on not throwing up that he barely registered a syllable. The last idiotic thing he needed today was to vomit over one of the players. He rose higher into the air, ordering himself to calm down and think about the Snitch — and then suddenly realised that at nearly a hundred feet above the ground, he felt calmer than he had all morning. The weakness and dizziness were not caused by fear. It was something else. But what? ‘Potter, don’t fall asleep up there!’ Marcus roared from somewhere below. Harry started and turned his head — almost directly opposite him hovered the tiny golden ball, with the Gryffindor Seeker racing towards it. Whirling his broom sharply, he shot after the Snitch, forgetting everything else. The wind whistled in his ears, drowning out the crowd and cutting him off from the world below. He did not see Flint waving his arms and shouting orders to the Beaters to shield their Seeker from the Bludgers. He did not hear Lee Jordan’s commentary. He did not feel his earlier sickness. His entire reality narrowed to the small golden ball darting ahead. He forgot everything. There was no anxiety, no fear, no danger — only absolute freedom and white-hot adrenaline urging him faster. Never in his life had Harry felt so magnificent, so certain. It seemed he could predict every twitch of the Snitch, every feint, every curve of its flight. The ball plunged downward. Harry dived after it, and had he been capable of noticing anything beyond the chase, he would have heard the spectators howl in awe at the chase. The Gryffindor Seeker, unwilling to risk losing control of his broom, fell behind when there were barely ten feet left to the ground. At that same instant the Snitch changed direction and slowed ever so slightly. The moment was perfect. Levelling his broom, Harry thrust out his right hand. ‘Got you,’ he breathed as his fingers closed around the cool surface of the ball. In that instant he felt like a predator, its long-sought prey trembling in its grasp. The sensation was so intoxicating that he lost focus for a split second. Sound and colour crashed back in. He blinked rapidly, disoriented by the deafening roar of the crowd and the dizzying blur around him. With it returned the weakness and the spinning in his head. Realising he was hurtling straight towards the stands, Harry wrenched his broom aside. The hand gripping the handle slipped under the force of the sudden movement. At that point Potter and his broom parted ways. The boy tumbled across the ground to the right, while the riderless Nimbus, spinning like a boomerang, shot off to the left and vanished from his sight. “It’s probably smashed into the stands,” Harry managed to think gloomily. The collision with the ground was quite painful. Harry lay on his back, trying to draw a breath while clutching the golden ball tightly in his fist. Above him the sky spun like a carousel, and beneath him the earth trembled from approaching footsteps. ‘Potter! Are you all right?!’ with those words he was yanked to his feet and found himself face to face with a pale captain. ‘Bloody hell, what was that stunt?!’ Flint bellowed as soon as he was certain his Seeker was alive. ‘I thought you’d snapped your damn neck!’ Harry shook his head, thinking that if Marcus kept shaking him like that, he would soon throw up. A second later he realised Flint was not the worst of his troubles, because when the entire Slytherin team descended upon him — trying to shake him, clap him on the shoulder, or simply grab at him — Harry began to fear he would be trampled on the spot. Someone seized his wrist and raised the hand in which he still held the Snitch. ‘We won!’ their Keeper, Julian Bletchley, yelled into his ear. ‘Potter caught the Snitch!’ After that Harry was dragged all over the place by his collar, never given a moment to recover or even to work out whether he had broken every bone in his body during the fall. By the time they reached the Slytherin common room, there was little left of him but the name. He collapsed limply onto a sofa, mechanically smiling and nodding at everyone, until Marcus suddenly remembered that his Seeker ought to be examined by Madam Pomfrey for injuries, and Harry was hauled off once more. He thought the nightmare would never end but at last he was seated on a bed and everyone was sternly ordered out. Finally, everything became silent. ‘That Quidditch,’ Madam Pomfrey — a short, slender witch with dark chestnut hair streaked with grey — muttered irritably, shaking her head. ‘Whenever it comes to that dreadful game, everyone loses their minds,’ she smoothed the folds of her impeccably white robes and fixed Harry with a sharp look. ‘Now then, Mr Potter, how are you feeling?’ ‘Er …’ Harry supposed the nausea and dizziness would pass once he properly recovered, and otherwise … ‘My shoulder hurts a bit,’ he admitted. ‘I’m amazed it’s only your shoulder,’ the nurse murmured dryly. Drawing her wand, she passed it several times along the first-year’s chest. ‘No fractures. Just a couple of bruises,’ she declared, then frowned. ‘Tell me, Mr Potter, are you experiencing any weakness or dizziness?’ ‘What?’ Harry stared at her in surprise. ‘Yes … a little … Why?’ ‘You have a fever,’ she fixed him with a reproachful stare and added, almost affronted, ‘That is something you ought to mention, Mr Potter.’ The mediwitch gathered several small bottles of potion from the bedside table. ‘Pain relief … healing draught … restorative … fever-reducer,’ she recited, handing them to Harry one by one. At last — when, in Harry’s opinion, he was thoroughly filled with potions, and in Madam Pomfrey’s, he had received adequate first aid — he was released, instructed to take the fever-reducing potion before bed. The first-year nodded obediently and escaped. The Slytherin common room was still celebrating their first victory, and the moment the hero of the day came into view he was surrounded yet again and congratulated afresh. It was … exhausting. Forcing his way through his housemates, Flint reached him and regarded him sternly. ‘Well? What did Pomfrey say? You fit?’ he demanded. ‘Er … yes,’ Harry shrugged. ‘A few bruises,’ after a pause he added, ‘but I’ve got a temperature, and Madam Pomfrey told me to go straight to bed.’ Marcus reacted exactly as expected, turning his back to Potter and shielding him from everyone else. ‘Right, that’s enough!’ he announced loudly. ‘You’d think we’d won the Cup already! It was only one match — we’ll celebrate properly when we take the trophy! Clear off and stop pestering Potter!’ the Slytherins quieted reluctantly and drifted away about the room, grumbling about the Head Boy’s severity, while Flint turned back to Harry. ‘Off to bed. Now,’ he ordered. ‘Thanks,’ Harry smiled, heading for the dormitory, but halfway there Marcus stopped him. ‘Listen, Potter,’ he began in a threatening whisper, ‘if you manage to fall ill and miss even a single practice, I’ll personally tear your head off,’ he snorted. ‘And don’t think I’m going to coddle you just because of one win.’ The captain clapped him on the shoulder and strode off to the other side of the common room. Harry merely smirked, deciding not to tell Marcus that he already had no idea how to escape his constant care. The dormitory was quiet and cool. Harry yawned, blissfully closing his eyes as he began pulling off his Quidditch kit, when he noticed he was not alone. Reclining lazily on the bed, one leg crossed over the other and a thick book resting on his chest, lay Tom. ‘And here comes our champion,’ Archer drawled, stretching and glancing sideways at Harry. ‘How are the bones?’ ‘Intact,’ Potter grinned, continuing to remove his robes. ‘Were you at the match?’ ‘Ha. As if I could’ve gotten away with not coming,’ Archer rolled his eyes. ‘That lunatic Flint would’ve murdered me. I’m convinced he’s entirely bonkers.’ Harry sat down on his bed and began unlacing his boots. ‘So if not for Marcus, you wouldn’t have come?’ he asked teasingly. ‘Well, I might have lost track of time reading,’ Tom drawled, then shot his friend a sly grin. ‘What, expecting a standing ovation?’ ‘No thanks,’ Potter grimaced. ‘I’ve had quite enough bone-crushing embraces for one day.’ ‘As you like,’ Archer shrugged. ‘But you do fly brilliantly.’ ‘Really?!’ Harry beamed. ‘You think so?’ ‘Yeah,’ Tom glanced sideways at him. ‘Oh, don’t light up like that as if you had no idea. You can’t pretend no one’s ever told you before,’ he groaned. ‘But it always matters what you say,’ Potter replied simply, climbing under the covers. Tom puffed up slightly with pride, but noticing his friend’s actions, he immediately sat upright. ‘Oi, you’re not going to sleep, are you?! It’s the middle of the day!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m tired,’ Harry muttered into the pillow, breathing in the faint scent of pine from the pillowcase. ‘And then tonight he’ll wake me up and announce he’s had plenty of rest and is bored,’ Tom grumbled, shaking his head. ‘You could’ve waited till evening. I wanted to show you —’ he broke off and listened. Judging by the steady breathing from the neighbouring bed, Harry was already fast asleep. Archer smirked and returned to his book, though his thoughts kept straying back to the match. Watching his friend play, Tom could not help but admit that Harry had been born to fly.

***

The following day Harry discovered two things. First, despite having slept for nearly eighteen hours, he felt no better. Second, he had suddenly become remarkably popular within his House. Throughout the day the Slytherins seized every opportunity to congratulate him. The attention was even rather pleasant — at last there was something that was truly his own achievement — but he felt so dreadful that half the praise passed him by unnoticed. He spent the whole of Sunday in a haze. Tom watched his friend with faint concern. ‘Since when do you take this long over homework?’ he demanded at last. ‘You’re usually finished by Sunday.’ ‘I didn’t manage to write my Potions essay because of the match,’ Harry replied from behind a mountain of textbooks. ‘I’m bored,’ Archer sulked. ‘And I want to go outside!’ An irritated sigh was his only answer. Tom fell silent for precisely five minutes while he considered his next strategy. ‘Why don’t you do it outside? I’ll even help you …’ Harry peered at him over the tops of his books, fixing him with a thoughtful look. ‘You’re not going to drop it, are you?’ he sighed at last. ‘Nope,’ Archer grinned. All of this struck Tom as odd. Harry was excellent at Potions; he practically knew the entire textbook by heart, and writing some silly essay was usually the easiest task imaginable for him. But today … Potter struggled with his homework the entire day. He could not string two sentences together and kept forgetting what he had been writing. Archer, realising that something was not right, helped him — explaining unclear points and correcting mistakes — yet what troubled Tom most was the cause of such a strange state. Harry seemed hardly to see what he was putting on parchment; his neat handwriting had deteriorated into illegible scrawls, and three times he rewrote the whole thing before finally being satisfied. After spending a good half of the day outdoors, they finished the essay at long last and returned to the common room. ‘Harry,’ Tom touched his shoulder as they settled by the fire together, ‘are you all right?’ After the fresh air Harry did appear somewhat better; at the very least the unhealthy pallor and listlessness that had followed him for days seemed to have faded. At Archer’s question he merely shrugged. ‘Yeah. Why?’ ‘Nothing,’ Tom gave him a suspicious look. ‘Just asking.’ “If he doesn’t want to talk about it,” Archer thought stubbornly, studying him, “I’ll have to find out myself.” For some reason he suspected that Harry’s condition had something to do with his scar.

***

Monday began atrociously, as the general weakness was joined by a migraine. Harry could barely force his eyes open, glaring irritably from beneath the covers at Tom, who was attempting to shake him awake. ‘Rise and shine,’ Archer prodded him in the side with his fist. ‘Morning’s here.’ ‘Leave me to die in peace,’ Harry groaned, though he did sit up, pressing a cool palm to his forehead and feeling beads of sweat slide down his spine. He cast a sidelong glance at his dorm-mates pulling on their robes. “I’m fine,” he assured himself. “It’s just a headache.” With difficulty he dragged himself from the bed and trudged to the bathroom, loathing early mornings with every fibre of his being. One look in the mirror made him groan softly. A drawn, pale face with reddened, inflamed eyes stared back at him. He looked ghastly. ‘What on earth is wrong with me?’ he whispered despairingly, running his fingers through his unruly hair. He spent half his lessons practically asleep with his eyes open. Professor McGonagall glanced at him several times in concern but said nothing. Flitwick, watching his futile attempts to produce even the simplest spell, asked in surprise whether Harry was unwell, to which he merely shook his head. But matters grew worse by midday, when the Slytherins were preparing for Potions. It began when Blaise asked to see Harry’s essay. Harry nodded and went up to the dormitory, where his completed work — the essay he and Tom had spent all Sunday writing — lay in his bedside cabinet. Opening it, he froze in shock, feeling the colour drain from his face. Instead of a neatly rolled scroll, a heap of torn parchment scraps lay scattered on the shelf. ‘What the —’ Harry breathed, then fell silent. “Of course,” he thought bitterly. “I forgot that Slytherins usually strike from behind.” Clenching his teeth, he drew his wand. ‘Reparo!’ the scraps of parchment fluttered weakly but remained where they were. “I don’t have the strength,” Harry realised with a sigh, yet he stubbornly repeated the spell. There was still no result. The door creaked and Malfoy poked his head into the dormitory. Harry hastily shut the cabinet door. ‘Are you coming to the lesson?’ Draco asked lazily. ‘Yeah … Have you seen Tom?’ Potter asked, rising from his knees. ‘He’s already gone,’ Malfoy’s pale brows arched questioningly. ‘Something wrong?’ ‘No,’ Harry replied quickly. ‘Nothing.’ Snatching his bag from the floor, he stormed out of the room, helplessly furious with the entire world.

***

‘Potter,’ Snape drawled, looming over him like a malevolent shadow, ‘what, pray tell, is bubbling in your cauldron?’ ‘A Calming Draught?’ Harry suggested weakly, without looking up at the professor. ‘Are you quite certain?’ Snape inquired coldly. ‘To my eye it appears to be pure poison.’ The students in the dungeon, carefully pretending to brew their own potions, listened in tense silence. Never before had they seen Snape reprimand Potter for a failed brew. Tom, seated beside Harry, shifted an anxious glance from his friend to their teacher. He understood perfectly well that at this moment Potter was simply incapable of producing a proper potion. He had been watching him all day and had reached an unsettling conclusion: Harry was ill — perhaps seriously ill — and for some inexplicable reason he was pretending everything was fine. Meanwhile, Harry stared mutely into his cauldron, unable even to concentrate on what Snape was saying. ‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll redo it …’ ‘Do not trouble yourself, Mr Potter,’ the Slytherin Head of House snapped, flicking his wand sharply. The contents of the cauldron vanished, and he shot Harry a look of open contempt. ‘If you cannot brew a potion you have written an essay about on the first attempt, you will hardly manage it on the second.’ Harry’s shoulders tensed at the mention of his homework. Noticing this, Snape’s lips curved in a cold smile. ‘Though perhaps you would care to show me this essay of yours,’ he continued silkily, ‘and we might discover precisely where the great Harry Potter committed such an idiotic mistake as to ruin his potion.’ Harry cleared his throat. ‘Sir … may I bring the essay after class?’ he asked quietly. ‘Oh, so you imagine I have absolutely nothing better to do than occupy myself with your incompetent scribblings?’ the professor mocked openly. The students had entirely abandoned their work and listened, scarcely daring to breathe, as the Head of Slytherin chastised the local celebrity. Harry lowered his head further and further; Tom, meanwhile, was slowly approaching murderous fury. ‘Well,’ Snape concluded at last. ‘That is a zero, Potter. Now leave the classroom.’ Without a word, Harry gathered his things and left swiftly for the corridor. Tom, watching him go, sifted through a catalogue of curses he might use on Snape; yet had anyone looked at him then, they would never have guessed he stood on the brink of committing mass murder. “Damned parasite,” Archer thought, chopping ingredients with sharp, jerky movements. “He can see that Harry’s unwell — so why is he doing this?” Out of the corner of his eye he observed their Head of House pacing the classroom as though nothing whatsoever had happened. “I hate it,” Archer raged inwardly. “Absolute dependence and not a shred of voice. I hate it — I hate it!”

***

Harry flung his bag beneath the table and sat down, piling a mountain of textbooks before him. “I’ll rewrite it,” he thought stubbornly. “I’ve already written that essay — I just need to reconstruct it from memory,” he laid out parchment and ink and took up his quill. “I’ll do it,” he repeated, a note of desperation creeping into the words. When the clock struck midnight, Harry finally tore himself away from the essay, removed his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. He had spent almost the entire day rewriting Snape’s assignment, and there was still so much homework left that sleep seemed nothing more than a distant dream. “I’ll manage,” Potter told himself. “I’m not ill at all.” But no matter how insistently he tried to convince himself that it was mere exhaustion and that by the weekend everything would pass, his condition deteriorated steadily with each day. He stopped doing his homework altogether, began avoiding his classmates — especially Tom, who had more than once tried to drag him to the Hospital Wing — and in lessons he no longer even attempted to follow what was being said. In the space of a single week he lost more points than Slytherin usually did in a month. Snape continued to gloat, burying him under mountains of additional assignments. Hermione ceaselessly urged him to stop tormenting himself and admit that he was ill. Lupin tried several times to reach him and find out what was going on. Even Ron, on one occasion, cautiously asked whether he was all right. Harry stubbornly insisted he was merely tired. He could no longer understand why he was so unwilling to ask for help, why he refused to acknowledge the obvious. Each time he realised that matters were only worsening, he told himself it was simply weakness. He despised self-pity. It seemed to him that the moment he said aloud that he truly felt awful — that it was hard to breathe, that his eyesight had deteriorated so badly he could barely see, that his head throbbed constantly and the fever would not subside — he would simply break and be unable to go on. He was afraid of being weak. He was genuinely frightened for the first time only on Saturday evening, when he began coughing up blood. For several seconds he stared in horror at his palm, dotted with tiny beads of crimson, but then, terrified someone might notice, he hastily clenched his hand into a fist and glanced around. ‘It’s rather entertaining, watching you indulge in self-destruction,’ Zabini observed calmly; as it turned out, he was standing barely a metre away, ‘but to me it’s an unnecessarily elaborate pastime.’ ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Harry said hoarsely, gathering his books from the table. ‘Oh? So you often cough up blood?’ Blaise snorted. ‘Don’t be absurd, Potter. You need a doctor.’ ‘I don’t need anyone!’ Harry snapped, hurrying out of the common room before his housemate could add anything further. In truth, Blaise had no intention of continuing the conversation. Instead, he went in search of the one person to whom the Boy Who Had Turned Into A Stubborn Ass once listened. ‘Hey, Archer,’ Zabini found Tom in the library. He was seated at a far table, surrounded by books, and did not even look up when his name was called. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Theory of Curses?’ Zabini picked up one of the volumes and turned it in his hands. ‘Planning to curse someone?’ ‘Yes — you, if you don’t tell me why you’re here and clear off,’ Tom lifted his head and fixed his classmate with an irritated stare. Blaise smirked. The worse Harry’s condition became, the more vicious Archer grew. ‘I just happened to recall a small family tale,’ Zabini shrugged. ‘My mother once told it to me — I forget in what context — but here’s the interesting part. When my great-grandmother poisoned her husband, he suffered for nearly a month before he died, and when he finally did, no trace of poison could be found in his blood. The trick was that once inside the body, the toxin destroyed the blood vessels. My dear great-grandfather bled internally — slowly, painfully, and irreversibly,’ Blaise fell silent, casting an amused glance at the books spread before Archer. ‘You’re looking in the wrong section, Tom,’ Zabini remarked calmly, and left him alone. For several moments Archer stared blankly at a single point before the full meaning of Blaise’s words seized his mind. ‘Devil!’ Tom hissed through clenched teeth.