The Observer Effect

      The newly elected Chairman of the Board of Governors was preparing for Hogwarts as if for battle. At any rate, he piled on amulets in no smaller number than in former times, when setting out on a Death Eater raid. Over the finest most supple mail he laced a leather jerkin, and even tied his hair back, as though he truly meant to start fighting the moment he crossed the threshold. Some would have called it cowardice, others, self-soothing; both would have been right, as Lucius perfectly well knew. A dragon was no laughing matter in itself, nor a troll, but there was someone at the school worse than either.       Albus Percival Wulfric Brian ‘Old Snargaluff’ Dumbledore did not believe in the repentance of ‘exes’, or their pleas of Imperius—not for a Knut; moreover, Malfoy had not the slightest doubt that the former—indeed, now once again acting—Head of the Order of the Phoenix was to blame for those endless, barbarous raids by the Auror Office which Lucius himself, and many of his friends, had endured.       The pretexts invented were the most nonsensical—vague complaints by anonymous victims, certain operational data ‘exempt from disclosure’, and ‘newly discovered circumstances’ in old cases, diligently investigated year after year, yet never brought to trial. The result was always the same: humiliating searches after which, if one so much as blinked, one might find oneself missing rather valuable books and artefacts.       Objects bearing traces of ‘Dark magic’ were confiscated, and only rare luck ever saw them returned—whether the seized baubles found their way into Unspeakables’ talons, or were simply destroyed, Malfoy did not know. Certain losses could be nothing but the settling of personal scores, or acts of pure sabotage—for instance, a rare, but entirely non-magical, edition of The Canterbury Tales, which once vanished mysteriously, and was never seen again.       Beyond such mischief done by other hands, the Chief Warlock found further ways to poison Lucius’s life. In the Wizengamot smouldered a quiet war of positions, exhausting in its relentlessness. Where Malfoy voted ‘for’, the head of the legislators was ‘against’, and vice versa. His speeches on equality, and progress, no longer merely set one’s teeth on edge; they stirred bile—for the progress beloved of that Muggle-lover, invested with no small authority, meant ‘anything new is vastly better than anything old’, and equality meant ‘all are equal, but Mudbloods are more equal than the rest’.       Regrettably, the vanquisher of Grindelwald was monstrously strong, magically speaking. For that one reason alone had the Most Noble Lord Malfoy—and many, many of his kind in spirit, for Death Eater masks and cloaks might have been tucked away in locked chests, but none had quite the heart to destroy them—only because he judged, objectively, that he could not prevail, not yet challenged the scoundrel to a duel to the death. It was not, at all, because crossing wands with a commoner was unforgivable bad form.       Besides, the wizard who so carefully cultivated the image of a harmless, eccentric old man, was a master of Legilimency, and, for that alone, he was doubly to be feared. In other words, any sensible person would have preferred a dragon, and a troll. Alas, there was no choosing to be had.       From the Greengrasses’ feast the Malfoys had returned late—or, rather, early—so much so that when the house-elf arrived to prod his master awake with a note, Lucius, half-asleep, greeted him with a non-verbal Flipendo, and only then opened his eyes. Dobby, who had tumbled off the bed with a squeak, scrambled back up, and managed to deliver the missive, muttering a jumble of self-abasement and assurances of urgency. It was from Snape, and the contents of his epistle banished sleep better than any invigorating draught.       First, a troll had been found in Hogwarts with the Headmaster’s indulgence—indeed, not so much found as kept there for some time, though Snape’s circumspect turns of phrase suggested that not all was quite so simple. Second, that troll, who had wandered at large through the school corridors on a feast night, had been neatly dispatched by some unknown benefactor—there was, quite literally, nothing left but a wet patch.       The identity of the troll-slayer was not entirely clear; Snape suspected the younger Potter’s hand. Considering that the hero of Magical Britain had, in a mere two months, managed to feature in several quiet scandals at once—sorted into Slytherin, declared himself the Heir of its Founder, and displayed knowledge of Parseltongue—one need not be surprised. Especially given that, earlier still, Potter had, in effect, confessed to involvement with the reborn Dark Lord, whose artefact was presently in his keeping—or, at least, the boy knew where it was.       In principle, the image of Potter taking shape from rumour—gathered by Narcissa, and retailed by Draco—fit so little with the poster-boy, the propagandised portrait of a sainted infant, that suspicions arose: was this even the same boy? But the boy was very much that boy—the looks, so like his father’s, attested as much. Still, Polyjuice ought not be struck off the list entirely, though no one had observed in Potter the habit of constantly lifting some inconspicuous flask to his lips, and people were watching him hawk-eyed—foes, and would-be allies alike. The child was James’s son—but as for his upbringing, and his outlook, questions abounded; neither was, manifestly, a product of company kept with the Dark Lord’s opponents—rather the opposite. Into this same pot went Occlumency—a gift rare to the point of impossibility at his age—or was it, in fact, a skill?       In short, Severus had believed the boy; Lucius, not entirely. A personal meeting would clarify matters, one way or the other. He and Narcissa had been waiting for the holidays—Draco had promised, by hook or by crook, to bring his friend to visit—but this convenient opportunity was not one Lucius intended to miss.       Even setting aside the troll, and his presumed tamer, an immediate visit to Hogwarts was required in any case. In the night, the hut of the school gamekeeper, the notoriously half-giant one, had burnt down. Hagrid himself had suffered as well—with extensive burns he was in St Mungo’s, had yet to regain consciousness, and had given no account of what had happened.       The staff meeting had concluded that the ardent fancier of fauna classified no lower than XXXXX had returned to his old ways—where there is an Acromantula, there are other such creatures besides; this time—supposedly—Hagrid had brought himself a dragon. The nature of the fire, by description, did indeed sound unnatural, and the relevant books, which the giant, not formerly much given to reading, had lately taken to hauling out of the library, served as circumstantial evidence; even so, no one had actually seen the fire-breathing lizard. Severus thought the Heir of Slytherin had had a hand in that business, too; the timing matched his nocturnal absence far too well. And there was another point—dragons understood Parseltongue…       Whilst Malfoy was reading and re-reading these excellent tidings, a second note arrived—this time from the beloved offspring.       In the best traditions of his mother’s family, he poured half a page of high-flown secrecy. Through the ‘I cannot disclose all’, the ‘true might of ancient blood’, and the ‘incredible power’, there shone, ‘What a wonder I am’. Something had happened to the child overnight to send him into fresh raptures over his adored Potter—and over himself, for good measure. If one took even half the hints for truth, Magical Britain truly had no inkling whom, precisely, it had contrived to make its hero. To rid oneself, with the aid of such a Potter, of the reborn Dark Lord would be no easier than get rid of a salamander by means of fire, or a giant squid with Aguamenti. And that was whilst he was still small…       Having thoroughly savoured his correspondence, Lucius called for parchment, and a writing set, and wrote several letters of his own right there in bed. Only then did he begin his morning preparations, rousing Narcissa, who was sleeping face-down in the pillow in perfect abandon.       Lucius frowned over the last artefact, an earring that served as a shield against mental assaults—feeble, but it would shoulder something, and no one knew how to make strong ones nowadays, not for any money—inspected his rings with a critical eye—enchanted as well, of course, one to detect poisons, the other, Veritaserum—he grimaced; he disliked them, they got in the way—but left the lot on with a sigh. Throwing his cloak over the rest of his gear, he pulled a fierce face at himself in the glass. It was just the thing—fit for a ‘WANTED’ poster on the instant. The mirror burbled, flustered, in French, some fawning nonsense, but Malfoy, long used to ignoring the prattle of bewitched glass, let it wash over him. That he cut a dash in whatever he wore, Lucius knew perfectly well without its say-so; not even two months of mounting strain, and the cares of his new post, had altered that. His cheekbones were a shade sharper, that was all.       To be perfectly honest with himself, it was not concern for Hogwarts that was wearing out the Most Noble Lord. Another riddle tormented him. The Dark Mark blackening on his arm left no room for doubt: the rumours were true, the Dark Lord had found a way to return to life. Yet a month had passed, then another—and now the fifth was halfway through—and no summons to his master had come. Why?       Did he no longer trust them? Lucius could understand that. The Death Eaters had split into two camps: some resolved to fight to the end, come what might; others made a strategic retreat. One could put it otherwise: some, glorying in their own unbending nature, rotted in Azkaban; others remained at liberty, having, for the most part, kept influence, capital, and other resources.       Or put it this way: some betrayed, others stayed loyal. The wording was key—there were few things in the world the Dark Lord hated more than treachery.       A hundred times Malfoy had asked himself whether he had chosen rightly. Perhaps Bella, Antonin, and Barty had done better? All they had had to do was believe, wait, and not break in the company of Dementors that bled all joy dry—and how was that different from his own quiet, daily battle? His pride, trampled again and again under an Auror’s boot for ten years, would have remained intact, and he could now have looked his returned master in the eye. But…       Always that cursed ‘but.’ The loyal, the proud, the best—at this moment, they were useless. What could they do, locked in their single cells on that far, frozen lump of rock? Nothing. They would have carried out any order, thrice suicidal—but there was no sense in ordering them at all. The second thing, after betrayal, that the Dark Lord would tolerate under no circumstances—and the usual reward for which was death—was ineffectualness.       Now the time had come which Lucius had so feared, and so yearned for, believing in it, and doubting it—and he, so prudent, was one of those who kept a lamp lit in the night, ready, armed to the teeth—but the summons never came. So, he had chosen wrong? Misjudged it? Was all for nothing?       These were the thoughts that circled his head all day long, and kept him from sleep at night—not bursaries for the needy, nor Quidditch fixtures, nor the infirmary’s expenditures. Lucius entertained no illusions: at heart, he was a cautious coward, and knew it perfectly well. He was afraid now.       Narcissa came up without a sound, and, with a tender, sly smile, smoothed the cloth of his sleeve, arranging the folds according to a private notion of harmony. Then she rested a hand on her husband’s forearm, rose quickly on tiptoe, took careful aim, and kissed him at the corner of the mouth.       ‘Peacock,’ she said, stepping back after this fleeting caress. ‘A white one. How charming.’       Lucius rolled his eyes.       ‘Do not fret so, darling,’ Narcissa advised, sensibly, as she crossed to the dressing-table, and settled on the low stool. ‘Fomalhaut is a very sweet boy, and Severus, as usual, is simply working himself up. I am sure you will get on perfectly.’       Still in negligee, in chemise and robe, the skirts of which lay about her on the carpet like a mermaid’s tail, blue-green and iridescent, bare-headed, sleeves pushed up to the elbow, she herself resembled, if not a peacock, then some other exotic bird, busily preening with the coming of morning.       ‘Vous êtes la femme la plus séduisante du monde,’ cooed the mirror, obsequiously. Narcissa, in a lofty tone, snapped:       ‘Tais-toi, crasse!’       She groped in the drawer for a pearl-inlaid brush, and set about taming sleep-tangled fair locks. Malfoy could not help admiring—the mirror, for all its vulgar banalities, was right in essence.       ‘You are too partial to him because he is a quarter Black,’ Lucius lamented, taking up his cane, and checking, by habit, the seating of the concealed wand. ‘You think that since he gladly eats your chocolate, he will eat out of your hand in all else as well?’       Catching his gaze in the glass, Narcissa smiled, self-satisfied.       ‘We shall see. In any case, our son has already made brilliant use of his chance. Do not forget to see him, by the way. He has complained to me of you—that Papa writes little, and does not praise him at all. Buy the poor child… what does he want? A broom?’       She twisted her hair into a bun, and with a careless pass sent a swarm of pins into flight; they circled her head, and settled. The tiny pearls that topped them glinted in the light of the enchanted candles set in twin silver candelabra. Ancient, heavy, and a touch coarse, they did not suit the refined decor of the bedroom, and, besides, Lucius disliked, on principle, the combination of skeletons and tentacles. But Narcissa had once brought the candlesticks from home as part of her dowry, and cherished the horrid things.       ‘A Seeker’s place on next year’s House team,’ Lucius snorted, straightening his cuffs. The beloved boy did not aim low. ‘That is seven brooms.’       Having dropped the surplus pins into a trinket-box, Narcissa lifted her brows, queenly.       ‘And? Do you see a problem?’       Lucius smiled, studying his wife’s face in the mirror. Oh, these Blacks.       ‘None. A problem of motivation, perhaps,’ he said, and, leaning over a shoulder wrapped in frothy lace, kissed her cheek swiftly, his fingers closing around her delicate hand; then touched his lips, for a heartbeat, to the knuckles that stood out so vulnerably under pale skin. ‘I am off.’       Fully kitted out, Lucius did not, however, head straight for Hogwarts.       First, he looked in at the Ministry of Magic, and from there, with Macnair, whom he had warned by a morning note, Flooed to the private rooms of the Slytherin Head of House. In the first place, because he meant to exchange a few words with Severus—to secure, as it were, the freshest intelligence before a decisive thrust—and, in the second, because barging straight into the Headmaster’s office was not the most inspired idea. The man might not admit him at all.       With Severus they found Tiberius Ogden, who had hurried in as well—his own daughters, it transpired, had managed to scribble him a line or two; both in Hufflepuff, in second and third year, they were no great shakes academically, but a fabulous dowry guaranteed them excellent matches in time. The wine magnate, now in his later years, rich as Croesus, doted on the late blossoms of his third marriage. Malfoy understood—he himself had only one son, there would be no others, and if anything were to happen… but he drove the thought away. No, nothing would happen to Draco. He, Lucius, would see to it. Besides, the Malfoy heir was a clever lad, for all his impulsive, adventurous nature—wholly a Black in that regard.       Old Walden, once a Death Eater, and now a Disposal Officer for Dangerous Magical Creatures on the relevant Ministry committee, another of the cohort who had chosen the substance of loyalty, not its form, exchanged a handshake with Ogden, and a greeting nod with Severus.       The three Marked men had had the pleasure of seeing one another relatively recently. Of late, mutual visits among the ‘exes’ had taken on the character of a fretful swarming—Lucius could all but see the stirred-up hornets spilling from the nest, buzzing, circling, bumping into one another, and feeling at everything with their antennae. Each wished to be sure that it was not he alone whom the summons had passed by. Each remained, time after time, not wholly convinced of anyone’s sincerity. No one was in a hurry to confess to having taken part in the Potter affair, before or during his summer disappearance from under the eye of the brightest of wizards. No one dared boast of the murder of the old Squib—such a model effort, with the Dark Mark in the sky for show. And everyone was going quietly mad—separately and en masse.       As it turned out, they had put real stock in the dragon at the school—or decided to cover themselves. The older students, and most of the staff—Snape excepted, who, disgracefully sober, had been waiting for them; Trelawney, disgracefully drunk, who was still not over the feast; and the Headmaster, for whom there was no excuse—were at that very moment scouring the Forbidden Forest. Mostly from the air, but in especially suspicious spots with windfall—of which there were, of course, many—they set down search parties on foot.       In a few hours of the operation—it had begun at half past seven in the morning, right with the thin, grey November dawn—they had managed to find and destroy a giant, very dangerous colony of Acromantulas, to startle a herd of unicorns, which galloped deeper into the forest, to discover a whole glade of Venomous Tentacula, to encounter, and quarrel with, centaurs—fortunately, with no casualties on either side—and to smash one of the brooms to splinters (the flyer, who had lost control, got off with only bruises and a sprain). Of the dragon there was no sign.       Ogden brightened at once—there was no immediate danger to his girls—and Macnair, contrariwise, grew glum; his sensational axe (Walden persisted in calling the inseparable lump of iron his ‘halberd’) was plainly at risk of being left idle, at least for today. Curtly cutting off further discussion, which had slid from an exchange of information into an exchange of gossip, Lucius led his little dragon-hunting party to the Headmaster’s office, and, thanks to the many summonses he had received in his school days, he could hardly have forgotten the way there without the help of a skilled Obliviator.       His memory had not lost the quirks of the guest chair, either. When the Headmaster admitted them, and invited them to sit—though, to be sure, he was not overflowing with graciousness, and the guests had to conjure their own seats—Lucius, first thing, tapped the leg of his with his cane, transfiguring the nasty contrivance of some deranged cabinet-maker into a proper chair.       ‘Tea, gentlemen?’ the Headmaster curved his beard into a false smile. ‘An excellent Darjeeling, I can recommend it. To what do I owe the pleasure?’       He did not seem in the least nervous—and yet Lucius had hoped he would be. He had not put his delegation together at random, however hastily.       Tiberius Ogden, alongside Malfoy himself, and Marcus Millamant, the de facto monopolist of the magical tents and marquees market, was one of only three major benefactors who sponsored the school’s operations. Should the three of them tie their purse-strings, the budget would require serious revision, particularly the line for bursaries for all the little beggars like the Weasleys.       Macnair, for his part, who went by the unlovely nickname of ‘the headsman’ behind his back, embodied a threat more indirect, yet more straightforward. He had understood his role in the play perfectly—he set his axe where it could be seen, between his splayed knees, folded his hands on the butt, and pulled a grim face. His face, which, even in good humour, suggested a thoroughly vile temper, looked positively loathsome now.       ‘As Chairman of the Board of Governors,’ Lucius pronounced, primly, setting aside the hand that held his cane, and assuming the haughtiest possible stance, ‘I have come to investigate the incident that took place here last night. I am speaking of the troll, Headmaster. And of the fire. Kindly explain yourself.’       ‘The safest place in Magical Britain!’ Ogden pursed his lips in indignation, so that his pendulous bulldog jowls quivered. ‘That is what I was told. Do you recall your own words? I should have listened to my dear Clarissa, and sent Edith and Beata to Beauxbatons! Though it is not too late to transfer…’       ‘Where is the monster?’ Macnair chimed in, twisting his mouth into a grimace that on anyone else might have passed for friendly. The seasoned ruffian’s teeth were poor, but the inexplicable charm of his smile lay not in that—or, rather, not only in that. ‘There’s a proper request in on you. You produce the beast, and we, me and my little darling, whizz—and that’s that!’       ‘I fear there has been a misunderstanding,’ the Headmaster said, piously lowering his eyes. ‘No troll. You see, in honour of Hallowe’en, one of our students played a prank—enchanted a large puddle so that it looked like blood. And our Defence teacher… I believe it is no secret that the post is cursed by You-Know-Who… In short, he is a rather nervous young man. And he cannot abide the sight of blood. He took fright, and fainted. I repeat—a misunderstanding, and nothing more.’       Such blatant, brazen, undisguised lying took one’s breath away. Lucius had to work to keep his face. Of all things, this he had not expected.       ‘And the evacuation, was that to make the joke funnier?’ Ogden grimaced.       The old ham smiled again, crinkling the corners of his eyes—the very image of a kindly grandfather about to regale beloved grandchildren with a fairy-tale.       ‘The safety of the children is our priority,’ he informed them, unctuously.       Putting aside emotions ill-suited to the moment—foremost among them the urge to seize that respectable silver beard, rip open the Headmaster’s maw, and cut out his tongue—Malfoy came at it from another angle.       ‘Delightful. Let us, for the sake of argument, accept that. What, then, are your explanations as to the fire?’       His spectacles glinted in the firelight, the little bells tinkled softly; the Headmaster bowed his head.       ‘Unfortunately, a small outbreak, I would not call it a fire, did occur,’ he said. ‘But not in the school building. The gamekeeper’s hut suffered. Most likely Rubeus nodded off, and a coal dropped from the grate into a crack between the floorboards… The poor fellow is deprived of a wand by order of the court. You are, of course, aware,’ he added, with a note of reproach, as though it had been Lucius who had snapped the wand of that lover of deadly beasts, and then stamped on the pieces. ‘He was at a loss, and failed to put out the flames in time—and so suffered burns, and smoke inhalation. A most unpleasant, and sad, incident, I agree, but the children were in no danger whatsoever. We are already addressing the consequences.’       Malfoy drew a slow, deep breath through his nose. Severus, the liar, maintained that this helped one ‘manage anger’. It did not help in the least, and Lucius resorted to another method, his favourite, tried and true: he began calculating, in his head, how many Cruciatus Curses in succession the Headmaster’s lungs could power before his voice gave out.       ‘Did the dragon not threaten the children as well?’ he enquired.       The Headmaster sighed, displeased.       ‘Mr Malfoy…’       ‘Lord Malfoy, Mr Dumbledore,’ Lucius snapped, mechanically. ‘Do try to show a modicum of respect.’       ‘…what dragon?’ the other continued, ignoring the remark. ‘How would there be a dragon here? Upon my word, I do not follow.’       ‘So it is not a dragon that is at this very moment being hunted across the Forbidden Forest by the children whose safety is your priority?’ Malfoy asked, inwardly boiling.       ‘Oh, you noticed?’ the Headmaster beamed, as if nothing were amiss. ‘It is a mass Defence Against the Dark Arts drill. Do not worry—they have teachers with them, everything is under control. By the way, since you are here, could we discuss a couple of financial questions? I am sure the Board of Governors will be interested to hear that…’       Lucius realised he had lost the bout. The Headmaster had gone into what Aurors called stony denial. Aurors had methods of breaking such subjects—and, more importantly, the authority to use them—but none of the three possessed that, not even Macnair. Short of declaring the insolent, bearded charlatan a dangerous magical creature, and, on that basis, taking his head off—and something told Lucius that this plan lacked viability.       ‘I shall not let this rest,’ he said, coldly. ‘You may be certain I shall go as far as the International Commission for Education, if need be.’       ‘A capital idea!’ the Headmaster rubbed his hands, pleased with himself. ‘We shall be only too happy to receive them. Exchange of best practice—what could be better! Now then, returning to the cost of repairs…’

* * *

      Ghosts had never inspired much reverence in Harry. Still, if not a bow from the waist, the Bloody Baron had certainly earned verbal thanks, in his view. Whatever he had told the prefects, the atmosphere Harry found in the common room was far less strained than he had feared.       The prefects were having tea. One of the big square tables was covered end to end with cups, napkin-holders, plates of pastries, a teapot, a milk jug, and other crockery—in the end, the scene looked more like a family get-together than a courtroom. He had no time to contemplate the unfamiliar sight—first, they spotted him, and second, Draco, coming behind, gave him a firm nudge between the shoulder-blades, and he tumbled, not very gracefully, into the Slytherin common room proper.       ‘Here is the Heir at last,’ Blishwick smirked, enthroned with Rowle at the head of the table. ‘Get over here, we have been waiting long enough.’       ‘Should have gone to bed, then,’ Harry thought, without enthusiasm, while arranging a polite smile, and going where told—to the empty chair on the right of the House prefect. The place of honour spoke more plainly than words—they would scold him, if they did, not too harshly.       ‘And you—bed,’ Bletchley frowned at Draco, but Harry objected:       ‘Do not send Malfoy away, he is with me.’       He tilted his nose importantly, though he was clearly overawed by the prefects. Blishwick waved, indulgently—and Malfoy, having dragged a chair from a neighbouring table, settled at the edge, instantly snatching up a Chelsea bun, from the nearest plate.       ‘So, a dragon,’ Euphemia smiled, toying with her teaspoon. ‘At least tell us what breed? Hebridean Black? Or something exotic? We must know what we shall be hunting in the morning. Though I will wager they will not find it in the Forbidden Forest, will they? But of course,’ she propped her cheek, dreamily.       Harry eased himself onto the chair, accepted the cup of tea that slid to him across the table, and asked, cautiously:       ‘A dragon?’ For, Merlin bear witness, he still had no idea what she was on about. Rowle snorted, and Blishwick wagged a lazy finger.       ‘Save that face for the Headmaster, lad. We are all our own here. One family, got it? So, what about the dragon? Is it big? And, for Salazar’s sake, tell me you have it under control! I quite see about Parseltongue, but those beasts have a vile temper…’       ‘Frankly astonishing no one twigged earlier,’ Selwyn cut in, with enthusiasm, winking as he bit into toast with jam. ‘The school motto did not come out of thin air, eh? Salazar’s weapon is a dragon—it was obvious. And how many wild fancies they built instead…’       Harry hid his startled grimace by bending over his cup. A dragon. What dragon, in Mordred’s name? Then he remembered Tom’s talk the other day. No one but the four of them knew that the basilisk was, precisely, a basilisk.       ‘Do let him answer, you oafs,’ Rowle winced. Harry took another sip—the tea tasted quite bland to him, like water—and braced for the Slytherins’ favourite pastime: teasing from one’s interlocutor information which, to that interlocutor’s mind, you already knew.       ‘My apologies,’ he said, modestly lowering his eyes. ‘I had no thought of affronting any of you by mistrust. But, as you will understand, I have no right either to confirm, or to refute, your words. I am bound by a vow to keep the secret strictly.’       Here he raised his head, and let his gaze run round those at the table—Draco caught his eye, and smirked, twitching his brows; they were watching with interest, with expectation, and not a single face, not even Bletchley’s sour one, showed scepticism, not a trace. They did not doubt—not any longer—in him.       The Heir’s first victim—technically not the very Heir they had in mind, but no matter—had been ‘someone entirely useless.’ Yet there had been a use: it was the sacrifice that paid for the change.       And had remorse and doubts stirred in Harry, they would now have vanished without a trace. They listened to him. They fell silent the moment he opened his mouth. As though he himself were a prefect, or the captain of a Quidditch side—as though he were Tom. The realisation set his head pleasantly spinning.       ‘But I can ask you a question,’ he went on, adjusting his glasses. ‘Why has everyone decided that Salazar bequeathed the Heir a single weapon?’       This sparked an explosion of exclamations, which scattered into whispering and exchanged glances. Blishwick thumped the table, a quick grin flashing with unmistakable approval. Rowle smiled with almost maternal fondness. Farley chuckled, Edgecombe scratched his nose, and Selwyn prodded Harry in the ribs.       ‘Stop blathering,’ Bletchley snorted. ‘Can they catch the dragon?’       ‘No,’ Harry replied, devoutly hoping he had told the truth. Where Tom had managed to get a dragon—that would be interesting to know. No, nonsense—even with all his brother’s genius, it could not be a real dragon. Simply impossible. Some trick, more likely.       ‘Why Hagrid in particular?’ Edgecombe asked meanwhile, smoothing what he mistakenly took for a moustache. Bletchley rolled her eyes.       ‘You mean you do not—’ she began, but her neighbour cut her off:       ‘Honoria, I wish to hear what the Heir says. I already know your opinion.’       The sixth-year prefects did not get on terribly well with one another. Harry might have suspected a perverse form of romantic attachment (in fiction that sort of thing cropped up all the time), but both were engaged—though that might not have meant much. He cleared his throat. Hagrid. Yes—Tom had taken the well-trodden path. If, earlier, Harry had seriously doubted that it was Tom who had fed Hagrid to the investigation the first time, he now realised—yes, that was exactly how it had been. Whence it followed that…       ‘I had thought it obvious,’ he said, burying his thoughts deep, and schooling his features to cool composure. ‘To us, of course. To the rest, it will look as if a recidivist has returned to form.’       ‘First an Acromantula, and now a dragon!’ Selwyn chimed in, delighted, prodding Harry in the ribs again. He was wolfing down pastries with gusto, listening with equal avidity, and, on the whole, behaving as though at a long-awaited fête. ‘Logical!’       Harry nodded, sedately.       ‘We all understand here that the usurpation of his title is a touch insulting to the Heir,’ he went on, feeling his way, cautiously, through a conversation riddled with hidden snags.       ‘But the overgrown oaf was not charged with that,’ Farley frowned. ‘He was tried as a murderer.’       ‘Formally,’ Harry shrugged.       ‘In law, the Slytherin legacy, in itself, does not constitute an offence,’ Blishwick agreed.       ‘Though many would much prefer it did,’ Bletchley pulled a face.       ‘Their problem,’ Rowle inclined her head.       ‘None of the initiated, of course, was taken in,’ Harry smiled, conspiratorially. ‘But among the rest there were surely those who believed it was the half-giant who opened the Chamber. Or, at the very least, those who failed to realise that it certainly was not he.’       ‘Well, now it is more than obvious,’ Edgecombe nodded. ‘So, for the truly thick—the giant-blooded mongrel played with fire and got burnt; for the slightly less thick—he crossed the Heir’s path at the wrong moment; and for those in the know…’       ‘…the true Heir set him in his place,’ Selwyn finished, smiling to his dimples. Harry saluted him with his cup.       ‘Precisely.’       The talk went on, but drifted to minor matters. When the tea was over—the remnants of the fare, and the crockery, were vanished in a few careless Evanescos, leaving Harry to wonder whether the latter had been conjured, or whether school property was not much cherished—he took Malfoy by the arm, and bolted for the dormitory with a vast sense of relief. At the same time, he was seized by a fierce desire to see Tom at once. To confer, as it were, Heir to Heir. He was not, in truth, aiming to give his best friend a scene, but there were one or two points he wished to clarify, and without delay. Alas, delay it must—for a few hours at least.       Leaving the dormitory on Saturday morning not without a qualm, Harry found the common room crammed. It seemed the House, to a man, had decided to skip breakfast. The older students, warmly dressed—or in the process of dressing so—were thronging the room, in groups and singly. The air hummed with lively chatter.       ‘We are off to look for your dragon,’ Farley remarked in passing, adjusting a thick grey-green scarf. ‘They have mobilised everyone from fifth year and above. We shall likely tramp the Forest till dusk—the one comfort is knowing we shall find nary a thing. Some Tentacula, perhaps.’       ‘What about centaurs? And Acromantulas?’ came an answer from a knot of fifth-years. Gemma made a playful swipe with her gloves.       ‘For you, Deacon, a Bowtruckle would do! About that big!’       With a deal of swearing they divided the brooms—not all the elder students had their own, and thus the younger students’ property rights were unlawfully trampled—and, trading lazy quips, the oldest students headed out. Those left in the castle drifted off, little by little resuming the usual Saturday routine. Some set off for the library, book-bags at the ready; some started on Gobstones. Harry remembered, with a stab of shame, that he had quite forgotten Naga in the abandoned lavatory. Draco agreed to go and fetch him—not least because he wished for another pilgrimage to the scene of glory, and to show it to Vince and Greg into the bargain; the true secret of Myrtle’s lavatory was not about them, but they really ought to appreciate that sea of gore. Unless it had been cleaned up by now, of course.       Harry himself had a more important errand. He was heading for the secret Headquarters—to Tom. But he had barely stepped over the common-room threshold when the Head of House intercepted him. The man was in his usual vile temper—though, to Harry’s eye, he seemed to have acquired, overnight, some new reason to hate the world entire.       ‘I have arranged for you to meet the former keeper of the object,’ he informed him, as though conferring a great favour. ‘At noon, in my office. Do not be late.’       Harry thanked him—nothing else was called for, though his gratitude was far from heartfelt—and set off for his original goal at a near-run. The next person to try and stop him, he promised himself, would meet with a very cruel punishment.       The Room of Hidden Things greeted him with a sleepy, soothing hush. There was no need to summon Tom, nor to wait—he was already there, seated in his favourite chair, sunk in profound thought, fingertips steepled before his face, and eyes fixed on a very nondescript, dull, battered ballroom tiara lying on the table before him, atop yet another stack of books on the Dark Arts. In other circumstances Harry would have taken a lively interest in the find—the tiara was unlikely to have material value; it was more likely some sort of artefact—but now he cared neither for Tom’s mood nor for the object of his musings. He closed the door pointedly quietly, without a bang.       ‘Someone entirely useless, you said,’ Harry quoted, wasting no time on greetings, not even the usual ‘Tom!’ He was too angry for effusions. ‘I thought you meant Filch. I could have sworn we were talking about Filch!’       Tom, roughly snatched from his thoughts, gave him a look of unpleasant surprise—like an undertaker, sizing up a future commission by eye, already displeased at the extra expense of material.       ‘In future, learn not to make assumptions,’ he intoned, didactically, lowering his hands to the armrests, and crossing one leg over the other. Harry came nearer, but the fizzing nervous energy would not let him sit. He began pacing up and down along the sofa, twirling his wand in his fingers by habit. He longed to conjure something… unkind.       ‘He is on the list, starred, everyone hates him from the youngest to the eldest, and he is a Squib. What, in Salazar’s name, did not suit you?’ he burst out again. As for the assumptions, there was no answer—his own fault for not asking directly; the reproof was just. But—Hagrid? What grudge could Tom have against him that he could not simply leave the hapless hybrid to his own fate?       ‘What do I care for a list?’ Tom asked, coolly. Harry clutched at his head—both figuratively, and literally.       ‘I care! I asked the prefects whom they would like removed—and they were expecting precisely that of me, they had even prepared in advance!’ he shot back, furiously rubbing his scar. These were obvious things, the basics of politics. What was it called… lobbying, that was it. ‘Was it not you who told me I must secure their patronage, eh?’       ‘Patronage was needed before; now your aim is their respect,’ Tom enlightened him, showing his teeth in his incomparable version of a smile—a predator pretending he was not about to bite. ‘By acting to their cue, you will not gain it, but the reputation of a tractable puppet.’       Harry ground his jaw. Another helping of insulting truth—but this was Tom.       ‘I still need patronage! I am small! I am a first-year!’ He stopped for a second, sketching, with a gesture of disappointment and irritation, his entire short person from scuffed shoes to unruly hair. ‘I feel, in their company, constantly like… a child-king among mighty dukes—do you see? As though I were Richard II, or something of the sort.’       The comparison to a monarch who had ascended the throne at the age of ten struck Harry as apt, but Tom reacted unexpectedly—tipping back his head, he suddenly laughed; not in some lofty villain’s key, but with simple, genuine mirth, as at a very good joke.       ‘And who am I in this picture, then?’ he asked, while Harry considered whether to take offence in earnest. ‘John of Gaunt?’       Harry flopped onto the sofa at last, arms folded, and shrugged.       ‘Looks like it, does it not?’       ‘Perhaps I am not quite so noble as John of Gaunt,’ Tom supposed, with a soft, playful smile.       ‘Perhaps, unlike Richard, I can keep my word,’ Harry shot back, rolling his eyes. ‘He was a dreadful king anyway.’ The sudden skirmish did its work; Harry no longer felt like being cross. He sighed, heavily.       ‘We have wandered off the point. Why Hagrid, again? I had, you know, to invent your motives—allegedly my motives—and I want to be sure that this time I did not build on unfounded assumptions. Well?’       Tom’s face darkened.       ‘I should remind you how it began. Hagrid was tried as the murderer of a girl—and he truly stood every chance of becoming a murderer, and a mass murderer at that, had I not intervened,’ he said, moving his wand.       In the air there wove itself an illusion—astonishingly lifelike, especially considering that barely a couple of months ago Tom had not possessed the art of making them. A huge… spider? Scorpion? Harry could not, at a glance, classify the creature, which combined the most revolting features of both.       ‘This,’ Tom remarked drily, ‘is an adult Acromantula. XXXXX classification, and venomous to boot. Semi-sentient, but only just—they understand speech directed at them, and can speak, but it does little good; they are no cleverer than gnomes, and far more aggressive. Our dear Rubeus fancied himself capable of taming the creature. It is worth noting that, in the whole history of mankind, there have been only two successful domestications of arthropods: the bee, and the silkworm. Arachnids do not feature on that list. Do you think we were in for a revolution in animal husbandry?’       Before Harry could answer, the wand swept again.       ‘And this is what I found in his trunk. Locked with a simple Colloportus, I might add. A baby Acromantula. In steady above-freezing temperatures—such as one finds in living quarters—their kind do not go into winter torpor, and reach maturity faster. So this one is seven or eight months old, I should think. Fit to breed a year and a half after hatching under normal conditions; with accelerated development—who can say. Now, tell me that such a creature is absolutely safe, and that the student who kept it in a school full of wizard children was sound, and did not merit expulsion with ignominy.’       Harry held his tongue. The Acromantula illusions were briskly webbing opposite corners of the ceiling. One could see quite clearly, particularly with the big one, the way that infernal thing that served them for a mouth writhed.       ‘I will not deny that Hagrid found himself in the dock because of me,’ Tom finished him off, since no objection was forthcoming, ‘but that was only a pretext, a convenient opportunity. Had the regrettable misunderstanding with Myrtle not occurred, I would have contrived his expulsion all the same. He ought never to have been at Hogwarts to begin with; the strain on his mental capacities was absurd, and the constant threat to everyone else palpable. A crude, physical threat included—do you imagine he always controls his strength? And that is without mentioning his… naturalist’s proclivities.’       Harry shook his head. ‘You have practically called him an idiot, and a freak, you know?’       ‘No. If I wished to call him names, I would say he is the issue of diseased, uncontrolled lust, and that no one knows how far he was damaged, at conception itself, by the biological incompatibilities involved. And all of that would be plain truth. And before you play the devil’s advocate again, do recall who left you, with your head wound, on a charmingly warm, welcoming October night, on the doorstep of some good, caring Muggles. Even my simple-minded trollop at least bore me indoors. And handed me from one pair of arms to another, rather than dumping me on the steps.’       Harry took off his glasses, and rubbed his face with his hands.       ‘All right,’ he managed at last. ‘I take your point about his previous sins. What, now, is your quarrel with him? He was expelled, he served his time—that is enough, is it not? I cannot remember the Latin—though you certainly can—“one may not be punished twice for the same thing”.’       Tom raised his brows, and tilted his head. ‘Non bis in idem’—of course he knew it, of course. ‘Do not worry, that principle is not being breached. The present sanction is for the dragon.’       Harry’s jaw dropped. ‘What?!’