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Chapter Text

An Eventful Train Ride

Both Cormac and her were going through the tunnel beneath the Forbidden Forest, only that instead, it now extended beneath the Irish Sea.

“Arabella, wake up, it’s almost ten already!”

“Hmmpf”

Where was she? Yes, the tunnel. Railroads were now emerging, so the train could get to Ireland. That was stupid, though. The Knight Bus was faster. She started making the enchantment to link it with the Floo Network, although she didn’t know which one, if any, it was. And the tunnel wasn’t complete anyway.

“Wake up, we’re going to be late!”

“Mmm”

So yes, the forest, only that she was now flying above it, along Cho and Marietta. Ugh, Eddie and Marcus have joined up. What were those two up to now? And what was she dreaming before?

“Arabella, it’s a quarter to eleven, wake up!”

“WHAT?!” The fourteen years old witch intentionally rolled out of bed and stood up on her bare feet on the cold floor to stop her from falling asleep again. Cursing under her breath, she took on her surroundings. No hangover? check - not that butterbeer was that strong. Trunk ready from the previous day? check. Change of clothes ready at her wardrobe? check. Wand at her night table? check. She quickly changed her clothes, tossed her nightgown into the trunk, decided against wearing the robes, and quickly tossed on top of everything else into the trunk. Not willing to wait anymore, she took one final look at the village downhill, levitated the trunk and, yawning, raced downstairs and into the dining room, where her family was having breakfast beneath a clock that read half past ten.

She took a moment to get her bearings. At either side of the table, her parents were quietly finishing their breakfast - tea with toasts, nothing fancy - while Cedric looked at her with fake innocence, right beneath the clock. He was nearly a mirror image of herself, or so she always heard. As children, strangers would confuse them and talk about the ‘Diggory Twins’. They weren’t - Cedric was fifteen months older than her. As they grew older, Arabella’s friends would point out how Cedric was like she’d look without breasts. And then they’d go on and add ‘with broader shoulders, and with a square jaw’ and on and on, and Arabella would shut them down by asking them if they wanted her to set them up with her brother - so far shyness triumphed and they’d shut up. But yes, strangers and friends alike had a point. Cedric had been growing broader and had light gray eyes instead of her own brown ones, and of course Arabella kept her dark hair long, but their resemblance was obvious. She was even nearly as tall as him, making her the tallest witch in her year, which sometimes had strangers believe her to be older than she was. But unlike her current disheveled look, Cedric was all prim and proper and with a brand new prefect badge in his uniform - a badge she wasn’t in the running to ever get.

But musings aside, she had more pressing concerns “You told me I was about to miss the train!” she complained, pointing at the clock.

“Would you have woken up if I told you the hour for real?” laughed Cedric

She was thinking some sort of witty retort when her mother interrupted “At what time did you arrive last night?” she asked, without any hint of Cedric’ smile, as Arabella half pouted and sat for breakfast.

“Half past eleven, I think” she lied as she spread butter on a toast “I wasn’t going to miss Sarah’s first public concert”.

Cedric raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t say anything. In reality, Sarah and her band had performed before in muggle venues, but this was the first time they’ve played in a fully wizard venue - The Three Broomsticks - and since Arabella doubted Mrs. Fawcett knew about her daughter’s muggle escapades she thought that particular half-lie was unlikely to reach her parents. The time she had actually arrived home last night, that was another matter.

Sarah was the only daughter of one of the other three families that lived around Ottery St. Catchpole - the other two families being the Weasleys and the Lovegoods. The age of Cedric, Sarah was Arabella’s first childhood female friend, and as children, the kids of all four families used to hang out and learn the basics together. But what Arabella used to call ‘the Ottery St. Catchpole Gang’ started to drift apart as they started school and everyone, Arabella included, started spending more time with their classmates. Even Cedric, Sarah and the Weasley Twins, all in the same year, typically hang out with people in their respective houses. So Arabella thought Sarah’s band - she played the rainbow saxophone - show at Hogsmeade last night would be an opportunity to bring back the old Gang together. Only that as a new teenage band, the only date they were able to secure was the night before the Hogwarts Express departed. Cedric passed on the invitation to avoid sleeping late on his first day as prefect. The Weasleys were probably not allowed to go for the same reason and Luna’s father thought her to be too young to go out at night. Fortunately for Arabella her best friends from school, Cho and Marietta, went with her and they ended up hanging out around Hogsmeade until… she didn’t know for sure, but certainly well past midnight. Not that her parents needed to know, unless her father happened to talk about it with Marietta’s mother at the ministry. They weren’t in the same department and the ministry was a big place. ‘Worse come the worse, I’ll be at Hogwarts by then’ thought Arabella as she bit her toast.

“You shouldn’t have overslept” admonished her mother, Eleanor.

“The Sorting Hat didn’t say I was too lazy for Hufflepuff for no reason, mum” she answered, trying to divert the conversation away from her particular last night schedule.

“Right, that’s why you took three electives instead of just two” teased Cedric.

“Oh, because you’re working hard at Muggle Studies, right? Do you need to misspell things to get a passing grade?” she teased back, and pretended to imitate the voice of the older professors “Oh, no, he wrote ‘electricity’ instead of ‘eccleticy’. That’s wrong! And he answered that muggle ships can sail without wind! You’ve failed your OWL Prefect Diggory!”

Cedric bursted out laughing “It’s not that bad!”

“ That bad” pointed out Arabella.

Their father, however, interrupted the fun “Muggle Studies is a sensible choice for opening doors at the Ministry after graduation” he interjected.

“I’m not going to work for the ministry, dad. I’m going to be a curse breaker!” she answered while dipping in her tea. It was cold, so she pulled her wand and casted a mild warming charm on it. “Too hot”. She pulled her wand again and while everyone shouted at her to stop she casted “Glacius!” and her brother screamed in pain.

The entire table was frozen solid by her spell and Cedric, who apparently had a hand on the table when her spell hit, was grabbing that hand in pain, frozen burns over it.

Her mother scrambled to get her first aid kit - plants, but unlikely to have potions - while her father just grabbed his head “I take that you’ve never used that spell before?”

Arabella had to recognize she hadn't and mouthed a ‘sorry’ to her brother, across the now frozen table. Cedric mouthed a significant variety of foul words in return.

“Just finish your breakfast” ordered her father, who went to collect the trunks and started casting at the house’s fence. Arabella’s mother, in the meantime, was now applying some herbal paste on Cedric’s hand - murtlap and ditanny, according to what Arabella could see. Arabella would favor potions over raw ingredients, but obviously there was no time to brew any. Mrs. Diggory finished Cedric up with some sort of complex spell she didn’t bother to say aloud, and also conjured a leather glove out of thin air, filled it with more murtlap essence and covered the hand of a rather pissed Cedric with it.

Curious about what her father was doing, Arabella casted a revealing charm to the house’s boundaries while still going for one of the now icy toasts. “Hey dad” she started, as her father returned and grabbed her “why have you just dispelled the…”

Her body uncomfortably squeezed into nothingness and back to normal

“... anti-apparition ward” she finished, a frozen toast in her left hand, her wand in her right hand and her feet firmly planted in a London street just across the corner from King’s Cross. A soft pop and her mother and brother appeared behind her.

“Wands out” whispered her father.

“What?” asked Arabella, looking at the muggles all around them, commuting to whatever thing they did for work. Mr. Diggory didn’t answer - he was looking around as if expecting a threat - and pointed at his sleeve, where he kept his wand half hidden from view, but on hand for immediate use.

“Black. Sirius Black” explained her mother, pushing both siblings to walk at a brisk pace into the station.

“What about him?” asked Cedric

“He’s probably sunbathing in Tahiti!” said Arabella

“You don’t know that. For all you know, he wants a piece of action” Insisted Amos Diggory while continuing to scan the crowded station

“Then he’ll be working as a hired wand in the Incan Independence War” she whispered, torn between having complained all her life about the Statute of Secrecy and now being asked by her parents to be willing to break it at a moment’s notice for a threat that wouldn’t come. Her mother, behind her, was nearly pushing Cedric and herself into the pillar. What did their parents know? Yes, she figured they were traumatized by the war, but no escapee from Azkaban would choose to remain in the country! 

As her father walked inside the platform with a barely contained shield charm coming from the tip of his wand and then pulled his head back from inside the pillar, while in full view of all the hundreds or even thousands of muggles around to tell them it was safe to walk into the platform, Arabella simply pictured Sirius Black partying in the Polinesia or prowling the Andes.

Her ruminations ended on the now familiar sight of the Hogwarts Express scarlet engine - the train would do a U turn on exiting the station so the locomotive both greeted the students when they’ve walked into Platform 9 ¾ and then lead the train north from the front of the train rather than the back.

They were also jumped by Sarah Fawcett, who greeted both, embraced Cedric and wasted no time asking about the glove in his hand.

“Ask Ara” simply answered Cedric, prompting a quizzical glance from Sarah. Arabella was saved from answering as her parents herded the three of them into the train.

“They are worried about Sirius Black” explained Arabella.

Sarah, just like Arabella, dismissed the idea with a gesture and grabbed Cedric by the shoulder “I’ve missed you last night!” she said as they boarded the train.

Cedric’s tone was uncomfortable “I didn’t want to start the term half asleep” he justified himself

“Nonsense, your sister was there and here she is! I was thinking, maybe we have place for a chorus”

Behind them, Arabella drowned a yawn and was about to point out how asking any Diggory to sing was a really bad idea when she paid attention to the way Sarah was embracing her brother. Was she trying to flirt with him? She was willing to bet she was, but she split from the potential lovebirds at the sight of a red mane of curled hair and freckles in a nearby compartment she identified as her friend Marietta Edgecombe. Peeking inside, she saw the other two Hogsmeade girls in her year, Tabitha and Seraphina sitting next to Marietta and in front of them, her boyfriend Cormac McLaggen and his fellow Gryffindor Ritchie Cootie. She said goodbye to Sarah and her brother and walked into the compartment, sitting between Cormac and Ritchie and greeting the former with a quick peck in the lips.

“So, have you seen Cho?” Arabella asked Marietta.

“No, but she’s probably ahead with the boys” came the redhead’s answer

“Poor girl” joked Arabella.

Cormac shrugged “Pff, Cho would probably get conversation out of a gargoyle”

The rest of the compartment tensed a bit, as this was yet another instance of Cormac saying something inappropriate without even realizing it, but Arabella just laid on his shoulder “You have no idea” she said and that time, the train started its engine.

‘The boys’ were Eddie Carmichael and Marcus Belby, the other two Ravenclaw students who, along with Arabella, Marietta and Cho, completed their year’s Ravenclaw’s current crop. A muggleborn and a muggle-raised half blood respectively, they became fast friends since they met in first year. They could also be a pain in the arse when they thought they were being fun and in such occasions Arabella would rather handle them separately. Since Marcus was shy and fat while Eddie was tall - the only Ravenclaw taller than her - and outgoing, people would often mistake Eddie as the instigator of whatever mess the pair got themselves involved in, or eventually involved with someone else. But Arabella had long learned not to underestimate Marcus - they both instigated one another. To be fair to them, Eddie in particular had a bad time the last year with the heir of Slytherin petrifying muggleborns and so had Marcus who, as a muggle raised half-blood (or ‘quarter-blood’, not that Arabella cared) didn’t really know where he fit in blood supremacists views. So yes, they had stopped intentionally giving the wrong answers to the Ravenclaw Common Room door. But maybe it wasn’t because they had matured, or because Arabella had increased her jinx repertoire. Maybe it was because they were afraid.

As for Cho and gargoyles, Cormac really had no idea. Cho’s parents were recent migrants to the British Islands, having left China in the 1970s and, after several years in the Ottoman Empire - Cho was born in Constantinople and had an older brother still living there - they set up shop in London in the mid nineteen eighties. Without contacts nor personal history in post-war Britain, the only place they were able to rent for their apothecary was in Knockturn Alley. Which meant they didn’t get to make a cut selling restricted ingredients, as only well connected shops kept the ministry looking the other way, and that many of the customers were those shunned in Diagon Alley: hags, werewolves, the odd veela passing by, vampires and wizards of lesser repute. As a child Cho was not allowed into the Alley at all. But now that she knew the basics of defending herself, her parents thought it was a good idea to let her make deliveries and mix with the rest of Knockturn Alley’s denizens. The logic was that, as one of their own, she’d be at less risk from them than if she was seen as a snotty outsider to Knockturn Alley.

A few weeks ago Arabella flooed over to the Chang’s apothecary to visit Cho only to be invited to accompany her in a delivery - after covering her hands and hair, because it wouldn’t do anyone in the Alley to help themselves to their hair or nails to use with polyjuice. So Cho and Arabella casually walked into the study of one of the Chang’s better customers: a centuries old vampire who have been managing the night life clubs at Knockturn Alley since the 19th century in order to make a delivery of ingredients for blood replenishing potion (obviously), plus all the legal ingredients for polyjuice, the ingredients for the softer kind of love potions, the elixir of euphoria and variety of healing potions. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which kind of clubs used the combination of polyjuice and not-quite-amortentia but both Cho and the vampire, called Janus Molloy, reassured her that the healing potions were for a gambling ring, unrelated to the other establishment. Which of course begged the question of which kind of gambling ring required reliable supplies of healing potions.

Gargoyles? Cho Chang could easily take you to a vampire’s lair to talk business over tea.

As the train continued north, Marietta pulled the latest issue of Witch Weekly and Arabella switched places with Cormac to pick at the magazine. Cormac took the opportunity and grabbed a deck of Exploding Snap to play with Ritchie. Arabella glanced over the magazine looking for any update on professor Lockhart’s condition - not so much for the author but to figure out what had exactly happened on the Chamber of Secrets last May, because the Weasleys weren’t talking. Alas, the magazine said nothing about it and the girls got into a discussion about the current fashion. Predictably, the Hogsmeade girls preferred the thick Scottish robes to the capes that were in vogue in the Mediterranean.

Cormac and Ritchie alternated in losing at Exploding Snap and had their faces scorched with ash by noon. Arabella smiled from her spot by the window. Cormac and her have been dating since her fourteenth birthday, in January, when they were set up -  or more precisely she was - by the majority of the girls in her year as they celebrated in an abandoned classroom. Since Arabella’s class consisted of students born during the worst of the war, it was by far the smallest class in Hogwarts at just nineteen students. Unlike other years, which took their classes with just their houses, Arabella’s class took them all together. And while they naturally spent more time with classmates of the same houses, they also mixed among houses a lot more than other years. Their birthdays were then typically celebrated by them all. For Arabella’s fourteenth four of her classmates unsubtly remembering how she did say she thought Cormac was fit and that Cormac may think the same of her, and after a while and a bit of effort on their part to push them into action, the same friends ended up saying she got a boyfriend as a birthday gift.

The youngest of seven siblings, Cormac was born in a wealthy Irish pureblood family but, fortunately, didn’t act posh at all - or whatever the Irish word was for that. He was, like Marietta, half orphan, having lost his mother because of the war while Marietta had lost her father in it. Their respective surviving parents have even dated each other at some point during the eighties, so both Cormac and Marietta knew each other from childhood.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a delightful ride as the Hogwarts Express travelled through the rain covered Highlands. Marietta worked on Arabella’s hair, which was a mess due the haste in which she left in the morning. In turn, Arabella played and passed on the puzzle box she was gifted by her Head of House, professor Flitwick, the first time she sneaked out of Hogwarts with Cormac. They got caught because it turned out there were (obviously) more than just three enchantments in the Hogwarts boundaries and while Flitwich assigned them detention, he also gifted her the box to encourage her. It was a deceivingly complex toy that started with a simple jinx to be dispelled, but turned more and more complex as the player advanced: each dispelled jinx opened a new level which threaded together more and more charms of advanced difficulty. Arabella had reached level fourteen during the summer, and she stopped because she needed to check the Hogwarts library to advance further. Marietta would have easily reached at least level twenty in the same time, if she got her mind to it.

It was a bit ironic: Arabella wanted to be a curse-breaker and Marietta an unspeakable. But for someone who was supposed to be able to be an expert in hundreds of counter-curses for her desired career, Arabella took a long time to master spells and would often need to research the theory behind them as much as possible, while also getting sidetracked into other avenues of research. Marietta, who seemingly wanted to engage in magical research, typically progressed through practical classes with ease and without bothering much with researching the theory behind things, usually being first to master spells in class.

She was about to point that out when the train suddenly stopped long before reaching Hogsmeade Station, and its lights went off. The rain kept hitting the windows, but the sound seemed muffled.

“What’s going on?” someone in her compartment asked. The temperature dropped, Arabella realized the train shouldn’t naturally be that dark, even with the rain. Her puzzle box laid forgotten on the floor, and in the dark she suddenly felt as if she was nine again, flying over the countryside on a toy broom and a muggle crop duster had panicked and doused her with pesticide. 

She could almost hear a nervous eight years old Ronald Weasley whena  scream erupted at her side “NÍL, MAMAÍ, NÍL!” howled Cormac and in worrying about her boyfriend, Arabella realized she could see. Marietta was sobbing uncontrollably, Tabitha was trembling, and Cormac kept screaming for his mother until he raced for the door.

“Stop him!” someone said, probably Ritchie. Certainly not eight years old Ron.

Arabella stood up, only to feel she was back in her second year, at that stupid obstacle course with Cormac and Eddie. Unwilling to challenge the giant chess set and also unable to climb back to the cerberus’ room, twelve years old Cormac lay screaming with a broken leg because of their failed attempts to levitate him. As fourteen years old Cormac opened the compartment door, she realized she wasn’t going to save him.

Which wouldn’t stop her from trying, she also thought “Petrificus Totalis! Colloportus! Lumos!” she shouted and then grabbed the now immobilized body. In her wand light, she could see the pain, fear and anger in Cormac’s eyes. Like she couldn’t see them when the centaurs surrounded them.

She pushed him back to the seat, while her classmates sat useless, each lost in their own worlds. Those centaurs? They had it coming, with that of threatening their betters. “Love, I’m lifting the jinx now. You can’t get out. There is something out there. Finite”

Cormac curled into a ball crying, his face against the window. Ritchie had his head between his legs and Seraphina was doing her best to comfort both Marietta and Tabitha. Arabella stood in front of the compartment door, wand in hand and unsure what to do if it opened. She racked her mind thinking about the creatures that could do this, with only one horrible answer coming to her. Then the train’s lights flared up and Hogwarts Express started moving again.

“What was it?” That was Seraphina. Ritchie was returning to his senses, but Marietta kept sobbing and Cormac remained curled up, and even shaken.

“Mamaí, mamaí” he whispered. Arabella tried to hug him, but he just pulled her away without looking.

“Love, it's me. Look at me” she put her hand on his shoulder, but Cormac just curled tighter.

“I don’t think he wants you to look at him in his state” said a still shocked Ritchie.

“WHAT? I’m his girlfriend!”

“YES, which is why I think he doesn’t want YOU to look at him like this!”

Arabella felt like hitting the compartment door in frustration. Yes, her often boisterous boyfriend was turned into a crybaby. Yes, she knew there were very few things that could do that, and she should very well be able to explain it to him. She also figured out that blowing up in anger in front of two orphans who just been exposed to a dementor was… well maybe well deserved.

Seraphina gave her a way out “Why don’t you go and check on everyone else, Ara?”.

She nodded, unlocked the door and walked into the compartment - wand in hand for all the good it would do against a dementor - and delivered a silent scream into one of the wooden panels.

The corridors were starting to get filled with students moving from one compartment to another. She took a deep breath and tried to remember everyone she knew who should have suffered from dementor exposure.

Sarah had lost her father during the war. Hopefully, she was with Cedric who, like Arabella, enjoyed a rather sheltered childhood. Cho missed her brother, but the young man lived and hopefully nothing traumatic had happened to her growing up in Knockturn Alley. Marcus… Marcus! Both his parents were lost during the war. Then there was Luna, who had seen her mother die when she was nine. And Ginny, kidnapped in the Chamber of Secrets just months ago.

She cursed her boyfriend, the idiocy of the Ministry, the dementors and Voldemort since she was at it, and began pushing against the crowd to go check on everyone else. Yeah, ‘lost in the war’ could sometimes mean ‘tossed in Azkaban’, but those were family matters she was taught to ignore. The children, after all, were innocent of whatever crimes their parents may or may have not committed.

As she moved through the tide of her fellow students, she saw the lanky form of Eddie Carmichael approaching from the opposite direction.

“Ara, they say that was a dementor” he started when they met and Arabella nodded in return “Just one, passing through and it made this mess? What have those things done to the Continent during Grindelwald’s War? Are you ok?”

Arabella huffed, wondering if Eddie had learnt from Cormac to speak a lot when nervous “I’m fine. As for that war, I don’t even want to think about it. Those things, they breed on human misery and decay. So Eddie, trust me: the Russian Dragon Corps was less destructive than the British Aurors” she said, with a disgust she didn’t know she had in her.

“I’d say. Breeding on misery and decay, during Grindelwald’s War?” retorted a horrified Eddie.

“Yes. That’s what they are and that’s what Grindelwald’s tried to stop. How is Marcus doing?” she asked, changing the subject. Whether Eddie knew it or not, she had a pretty good idea what ‘misery and decay during Grindelwald’s War’ meant and not so clear ideas about who were the good and the bad guys during the wizarding side of that war.

“Like crap. Were you with Cormac or Marietta? How are they doing?”

“Like crap” she answered “Just don’t let Cormac know you notice”

Eddie stifled a laugh “Ok. Listen, I’m looking for the trolley lady. Some professor went through the train and said chocolate helps with the after effects of the dementors. Did you see her?” he asked.

Arabella shook her head and Eddie started walking in the direction opposite to her. As a group of first or second year students went between them he joked “I’ll let Cormac know how so much worried you’re for him!”

“Eddie!” shouted Arabella, raising her wand “I’ve been practicing jinxes over the summer, Eddie!” she half-joked, as the tide of younger, shorter, students pulled them apart and she started again to go towards the end of the train looking for everyone else.

She found Sarah a couple of wagons ahead, surrounded by a mix of fifth year Hufflepuffs and Slytherins. Her head rested on Cedric’s chest, who still wasn’t hugging her “How are you doing?” Asked Arabella. 

“Badly” pouted Sarah from her position on Cedric’s chest.

Arabella tried to gesture Cedric to embrace her, but he didn’t understand and all she accomplished was to make the rest of the girls hold their laughs “At least you’re being taken care of” she said with a pointed look at her brother, who didn’t look like he was taking any sort of hint.

Sarah smiled at her as she nudged herself into her brother’s chest “Yes, thank you for asking” she winked.

Through the window, Arabella saw the hills surrounding Hogsmeade in the distance. They weren’t far from Hogwarts “I’ll see you at the feast, then” she said, before making another futile gesture at Cedric, who was realizing he was missing out on something but still had no clue what it may be.

She heard Cho calling her just one wagon ahead. She was with Marcus as well as Katie, one of the Gryffindor chasers, and Thomas, a Hufflepuff muggleborn, so Arabella greeted and walked into the compartment.

“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been better” answered Marcus at her questioning “I hate those bloody dementors”

“Azkaban must be the worst prison on Earth” Added Cho while Arabella sat next to her. Marcus looked still uneasy, as much as he tried to hide it. Arabella wondered, not for the first time, why a half-blood not only ended up raised by his muggle grandparents but also refused to get in touch with his well known wizard relatives. ‘Family issues’ her parents would have answered. She sighted. At the end, it was up to him to explain such issues to his classmates, or continue to keep them for himself.

“It makes you wonder how dementors tell different people apart” was musing Cho as Katie and Thomas were discussing if the dementor was in the train looking for Sirius Black, as that was the most likely explanation. 

“Or why would the ministry think Black is even in the country. I’d be in Tahiti” added Arabella and Cho giggled next to her “Oh, you’d be in Constantinople, right?”

“Nah, they’d look for me there. And I don’t fancy being woken by rebels with mandrakes so I’m skipping Peru as well” said Cho, elbowing Arabella in the ribs.

“I’m taking New Zealand” raised his hand Marcus.

“Eddie got to you” said Thomas

“Just imagine seeing the South Pole from two hundred miles up” answered back Marcus

“For just fifteen minutes” retorted Arabella “And they charge like a thousand galleons for that”

“Ah, but what fifteen minutes!” said, undeterred, Marcus.

“Pfff. You’d just be flying high. I’d buy myself a Firebolt for that money” insisted Arabella.

“She got you there!” ended the argument Katie

Marcus laughed “True. So, what did the dementor make you see? We were just talking about that. Was it the Inca’s dragons?”

“I didn't see the dragons. It was only the mandrakes and mom and dad took us out of there fast. No, it was mostly Eddie, Cormac and me trapped beneath that cerberus” she confessed while everyone looked at her with the mischievous look of a bunch who were certainly not talking about what they’ve seen under the dementor’s influence before.

“Oh, was it that bad to be in a locked room with two boys? One of them ended up becoming your boyfriend!” mocked her, playfully, Marcus and even Cho laughed.

Arabella stood up to leave “Not that again! And for your information, Cormac broke his leg there!” It was good to see that Cho was fine and Marcus’ mood had improved, but she had no interest in that being done at her own expense. On top, she had been teased about that incident during her entire second year and didn’t want to relive the experience.

Cho stopped laughing “Ok, him breaking his leg outside the Quidditch pitch isn’t funny, but you three are the ones who sneaked into a dangerous hidden room because ‘it was there’”

“Says the witch who runs deliveries through Knockturn Alley” retorted Arabella

“Says the witch who joins me” said, deadpanned, Cho and both girls burst out laughing.

Marcus was about to say something so Arabella pulled her wand preemptively as Eddie, his arms full with chocolates, entered the compartment.

“What’s going on?” asked the newcomer.

“Ask your friend” answered Arabella, patting him in the back as she left. 

She didn’t get to hear Marcus’ explanation but she could swear she heard Eddie’s groans and his own version of “Not that again”. After all, she hadn’t been the only one teased for spending an entire Saturday locked in a hidden room with two boys during her second year - the boys had had their own share of the teasing.

She found Luna a few compartments down, as she was already debating whether to go back to her own compartment or not. She was among a group of second year Ravenclaws and seemed to be fine. Which, knowing Luna, meant she was not, but there was little Arabella could do about it, even if Luna wanted to acknowledge how hard the dementor must have hit her. Arabella also had the general idea that Luna didn’t have a good time with her classmates, and that’s to be charitable about it. But, again, she could do little about it as long as Luna kept denying it. She could intimidate the younger second years, but that would ultimately backfire on Luna.

She was resting on the doorframe and pondering about both that as well as that boyfriend of hers who didn’t want her to see him crying, when Luna noticed and asked if she had wrackspurts in her head.

“I dunno. But there are plenty in my compartment” answered Arabella, still lost in her own thoughts.

The other girls shifted uncomfortably in the compartment. “Don’t encourage her” said one of them.

“Don’t bother her” warned Arabella before saying goodbye and leaving the compartment. She knew the train should be near Hogsmeade by now, so she could continue to see if she could check on Ginny or go back to her compartment to put her school robes on. Unwilling to see her boyfriend, she carried on towards the back of the train.

She finally saw Ginny at the very end of the train, with Ron, a couple of Griffindors she thought were in Ron’s year, a grown man who had to be the professor Eddie talked about and, of course, Potter, who was hoarding the biggest chocolate tablet Honeydukes had to offer.

“Ron, Ginny, how are you doing?” She asked. 

Ron murmured something that sounded like “fine” and Ginny, clearly not fine, said the same.

Unconvinced, she gave a pointed look at Potter “Do you want some chocolate, Ginny? I’ve heard it helps” 

Potter took the hint and began sharing his chocolate around. “Want some?” He offered her while he broke a piece for himself.

Under the uncomfortable realization that she hadn’t bothered to introduce herself to the bunch, Arabella shook her head. She had long ceased to feel the after effects of the dementor, never having experienced serious suffering in her life “No, thanks, I’m mostly pissed off, actually” she explained.

The professor raised an eyebrow at that “Not the typical effect of dementor exposure. There is plenty chocolate to share, don’t be shy”

Arabella took a moment to gather her thoughts. She wasn’t about to tell a compartment of mostly strangers about her anger at her boyfriend. Nor was she going to share with Potter and his friends all the misgivings she had about the whole monster of Slytherin ordeal: a monster that had to be some sort of snake, mentions to a heir of Slytherin, the parselmouth who banished a candidate for the title of Heir of Slytherin and the girl kidnapped by the monster - or the Heir - together in the same compartment weeks later. It rang all the alarms in her head because if the monster was a snake, Potter could speak to it. And still the Weasleys circled around Potter and wouldn’t tell anyone about whatever happened to Ginny. It all smelled fishy.

But she couldn’t say that to them right then so she turned to the best next thing “No, it’s the effect of the Ministry unleashing a dementor on a train filled with war orphans, sir”

The professor nodded gravely “I can understand that. The dementors are really angry about Black escaping them, though”

“So what? The Ministry shouldn’t care about how those things feel. They don’t have an ounce of wizarding’ pride!” Vented Arabella.

“You think the ministry lacks in wizarding pride?” tried to clarify the professor.

“Obviously” she said, earning a quizzical look from the grown man, as if she had given him the wrong answer. She ignored him “Ginny, you know you can talk to me, right? You too  Ron. Just find me anytime” she said and, as the train now stopped at Hogsmeade Station, she left Ginny’s compartment and tried to hurry back to her own amid the tide of students exiting the train.

It was really a lost cause, trying to get some information about the stubborn Weasleys. And, on top, she was reminded to add Potter to the list of things to be pissed about. Seriously: a serpentine monster, four petrified students, the cure in short supply because of the unrelated Incan War, a groundskeeper unfairly detained, a professor mind wiped, another student kidnapped and no auror bothered to conduct an investigation. They just had to feed the parselmouth a few drops of veritaserum and ask away!

She snorted. For the time being, she had to get to her robe before getting to the school or she’d start the year losing points for Ravenclaw. She usually waited a week or two for that.

Chapter Text

Fourth Year Starts

Arabella’s compartment was empty when she finally managed to reach it - not even a written note was left for her by her boyfriend and friends. In a grumpy mode, she ended up joining the carriage of some hitherto unknown sixth years. The group turned to be the last into the Great Hall and she hurriedly joined Cho and Marietta at the Ravenclaw table. And Marietta waited no time in telling her they had been waiting for her until the last minute.

After the sorting (There were so many of them!) Cho ended up lightening the mood by asking her what gossip she managed to get. It wasn’t much, really, but little gossip beat no gossip at all, of that the three agreed to. The opening ceremony carried on as usual and Dumbledore made his regular announcements: the groundskeeper was now professor of Care of Magical Creatures and the professor Arabella met at the train was the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. And yes, the latter counted as a regular announcement: as far as anyone could remember, no Defense professor had lasted more than a year.

The surprise came when the headmaster announced that dementors - as in, many dementors - would be guarding the entrances in and out of Hogwarts. Arabella’s gaze turned to Cormac without a second thought, who had turned around in his chair to look at her at the same time. He shrugged, quizzically, and Arabella shook her head. As far as she was concerned, they were not sneaking out of Hogwarts as long as dementors were watching the school’s boundaries - or she found a way to go through them. And she was writing to her father at the first opportunity. Dementors may fall under the Department of Magical Law Enforcement rather than the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures but, nonetheless, they had no business around a school. Or anywhere, as far as she was concerned, but according to what little she knew of them, they were some sort of spirits and thus, could not be exterminated. She needed a trip to the library as well as one to the owlery.

Finally, as she contemplated the darkened grounds of Hogwarts from the window at the dormitories at the top of Ravenclaw Tower, the long day was over. She had just finished changing for the night and was trying to glimpse the soul sucking tools of war somewhere beneath the castle when Marietta’s broken voice took her out of her revelry.

“I shouldn’t have remembered that” she was saying, sitting in her bed and clutching at the sheets “What the dementor made me see… I was just a baby. I wasn’t even two!”

“Mari?” approached her Cho.

Marietta, however, continued as if talking to herself “Mom, she had just heard of dad’s death. He was visiting grandpa and… for some reason, the Dark Mark was at their house when mom went to check why he was talking so long. She… she didn’t think I’d understand her, but I think I did. She badmouthed You-Know-Who, yes, but also my uncles, and my grandparents… and she was crying so much, and so was I” Arabella went to hug her and Marietta continued “How does a baby who can’t talk process that? I could not speak! And how do I remember it? You shouldn’t be able to fix memories at that age!” she insisted, grabbing and hitting at the bedsheets.

Cho was contemplating everything from her bed, just across Marietta’s “Do you want some dreamless sleep potion?” she finally asked.

“Do you have some?” asked Marietta

“No, but we can go to the Hospital Wing” said Cho

“It’s too late” insisted Marietta, still sobbing.

Arabella rose from the bed and went straight to her trunk “We can brew some. Go take a hot shower and Cho and I will prepare it” she announced, her past misgivings about the train journey forgotten.

Unlike freezing charms she hadn’t practiced before, Arabella was confident in her potion skills and knew from working with Cho for three years that her roommate was just as good as she was. The two girls set up their potions kit in short order and quickly divided their workload - Arabella had long learned to respect Cho’s ability to prepare ingredients, often deviating from the textbook with good results. In turn, Arabella was one of the top potions students of her year - a bit of a waste, as potions wasn’t a skill typically demanded of a curse breaker and she hadn’t been fooling around when she insisted about that to her father earlier that day. But useful or not for a future career, none could deny she was good at it.

They had the potion half-way by the time Marietta came out of the shower. It had the right shade of turquoise and all it needed was ten more minutes of stewing over the mildly warm fire - Arabella had accounted for the cold entering the dormitories through the now open window - they needed to ventilate away the fumes. With nothing else to do, she went to take a shower herself.

“She’s sleeping like a baby” Told her Cho as Arabella exited the bathrooms a while later “We have lots of spare potion now”

“We can take it to Madam Pomfrey in the morning” said Arabella “It’s not like Snape would give us less homework if we bring it to class”

“Or we can sell it to the lower years”

“Why would they pay for it? It’s free in the hospital wing”

“Because many would be too ashamed to go asking for it” explained Cho

Arabella smiled as she tucked herself in bed “Good idea”

The next morning found Marietta in a perfectly good mood and Arabella waking up from some forgotten nightmare. Marietta agreed on them selling the remaining potion, but warned them about keeping some for friends.

“Or boyfriends” she insisted “Cormac must have had a rough night”

“What do you know?” Asked Arabella as they made their long way downstairs for breakfast.

Marietta didn’t respond right away “Mum knows about it through Cormac’s father. But it’s not my story to tell” she finally said.

Arabella rumminiated more anger as she had her breakfast. Not only her boyfriend didn’t want her around when he was suffering because of his mother’s death. One of her best friends knew how it happened, and she didn’t. Rationally, knew Marietta was taught, like her, to file such things under ‘family matters you don’t ask about’. Emotionally, she was even angrier than before. Whether she wanted to confront Cormac or not, she did not know.

They got their class schedules from professor Flitwick as they were finishing breakfast. She had all the electives that day, starting with Ancient Runes, then Arithmancy and, after lunch, double Care of Magical Creatures. That meant she didn’t need to see Cormac until the afternoon, as the lazy sod had taken Divination for an easy OWL, so Care of Magical Creatures was the only elective they did together.

Ancient Runes was an easy class. Professor Babbling started the class by impressing on them the importance of the OWLs even though they were almost two years away. But then the class was just a revision of ancient futhark. Arithmancy, on the other hand, was the opposite of easy. Professor Vector gave them the same lecture about the OWLs and put them to work right away.

Vector handed each student an enchanted chess set, with the game already started, and the ELO rating of the enchantments playing the game for both sides. Their task was to use arithmantic matrices to predict not just the winner of the game, but the moves each side would play.

Everyone’s predictions were off by the fifth move and even their probabilistic matrixs were becoming utterly useless. Frustrated, Arabella tapped her chess board with her wand, casting a couple of revealing charms.

“Bloody hell!” she exclaimed

“Language. Three points from Ravenclaw” said professor Vector, as if expecting an outburst.

“What? So soon? It’s just the first day!” complained Arabella, biting another curse word. The rest of the class laughed and she felt tempted to join in the laughs.

Professor Vector stood up from her desk and walked towards Arabella “Yes, and if you keep complaining I’ll assign you an essay on the numerologic probabilities that you’d lose points on your first day” said the professor and this time Arabella did join her classmate’s laughs. “So, what’s the problem Miss Diggory?”

“The enchantments in the pieces are affecting the charms of the imaginary players, thus changing the elo rankings and playstyles from those in the assignment. Which throws all predictions away” She explained, and with a few spells she pulled the runic chaining of the white side into an ethereal blue image in mid air. Another tap and the white imaginary player’s enchantment showed up in the air, tugged around by each of the nine white pieces in the board “See? We’d need to calculate the effects of each piece on their respective player enchantment, the effect they also have on the opposite player and, as the predictions move on, how the removal of the pieces from the board re-affects the player’s enchantments!”

“Well, of course you do. That’s the point of the exercise” explained the professor and the entire class groaned. More curse words were uttered, more points were lost from all houses “You can all feel free to enlarge your desk to have more working space”

Groaning, but minding their language, the entire class set out to do just that, as what looked like a simple ‘welcome back to school’ exercise of matching two enchantments turned into a hellishly difficult arithmancy test well beyond anything they’d done in third year.

She didn’t get to see Cormac by lunch. She was intercepted in the Great Hall by Sarah and ended up eating at the Slytherin table with her - a welcome distraction from how burnt out she was from the overly demanding arithmancy class. The two girls spent most of the dessert going through Sarah’s muggle tattoos magazine and thus drawing weird looks from the rest of the Slytherin table, who didn’t appreciate the static pictures.

The moment to finally meet Cormac came later, in the grounds, as they walked towards the Care of Magical Creatures class, which was to be held near the edge of the forest. Both Cormac and Arabella greeted each other coldly.

“We need to talk” finally said Arabella, only half distracted by the familiar smells coming from the forest. They were still during the last weeks of summer and the weather was magnificent for an outdoors class. She tried to discern what creature they’d be studying. In the distance, it looked like a foal inside a corral.

“We do” was Cormac’s curt answer.

“After…. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Exclaimed Arabella and joined all the girls into running towards the corral.

“Is that?” someone asked

“IT’S A UNICORN FOAL!!!!” screamed Marietta and soon all the girls were in the first line around the corral. Arabella’s cold, rational part of her mind knew it was just a golden foal, but it looked soooooo magically cute and gave her such a great opportunity to get away from Cormac that she soooooo stood pressed against the corral staring at the beautiful creature in daft fascination. And Cormac waited at the back because unicorns distrusted boys. Good for him.

The class went rather well, really, even if Professor Hagrid seemed distracted by something and all the girls in the class were distracted by the cute, little, pretty, amazingly beautiful baby unicorn. Arabella regretted not bringing the dicta-quills they’ve used for Binns’ class. Hagrid knew a lot more about unicorns than what the books taught, no doubt due his years as a groundskeeper.

As the class ended Arabella was left wondering if Hagrid was really part human as she had always suspected or if he was a pure wizard who had grown too tall due an accident or something. She had professor Flitwick as an example of a part human who was both amazing and just as capable as any other wizard. But Flitwick was half goblin, and goblins were nearly as smart and powerful as wizardkind. Or at least, as much as a being could be without being a magical human. If Hagrid was only part human, the other part had to be giant…

Cormac took her out of her ruminations “I waited for you at the train. You’ve never showed up” he said, right after their classmates went their ways to give them space as they all marched back into the castle.

“And did you want to see me on the train?” she answered back, distracted.

“Yes?”

“And you are angry with me” she said, pointing at each other “because I didn’t return in time, when you did not want to see me?”

“I never said that. Ritchie did. Are you angry at me for something Ritchie said?” inquired, puzzled, Cormac.

Arabella stopped walking towards the castle at once and wished she knew how to make a silencing charm so she’d be able to scream without, well, screaming. She was indeed angry about something Ritchie, not Cormac, had said. Which, unfortunately, didn’t mean she had stopped being angry. “Are you angry at me for not returning to the compartment in less than twenty minutes?” she finally said, to divert the subject.

“Damn” admitted deflated Cormac, who was also angry for something of no fault of hers.

They were near the castle doors. Arabella grabbed his hand “Yeah. Damn. What do we do now?” she asked.

Cormac seemed to think for a moment “How about we go get some drinks at Hogsmeade? We have a few hours until dinner” he smiled.

Arabella, however, raised two fingers “No” she said, grabbing one finger “One: We’ll take too long to go there and back without our brooms. Two: there are dementors around the boundaries”

“So? I reckon they don’t know about the tunnel” insisted on Cormac.

“And what if they do? One at one end, another at the other. What do we do then?” Arabella walked him into the castle “Ghosts are a pain in the arse, but at least they don’t suck your soul out. Then don’t sell butterbeer, though. But besides, we need to find new abandoned places before all the firsties claim them!” She said, doing her best to feign enthusiasm. She really wanted to get out of the castle, but she wasn’t risking coming face to face with dementors, especially after seeing the effect they had on Cormac. As she saw it, she had two choices: either figure out how to slip between all the twenty-one enchantments surrounding the school undetected while also not drawing attention from the dementors, or find out how to defeat dementors. Neither was easy and, worse, whatever good qualities Cormac may had, finding new pieces of magic wasn’t one of them, so she’d had to figure it out on her own. Which sucked.

She went towards the stairs leading to the trophy room, around which they typically hung out when inside the castle, as it was equally distant from both the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor towers “There are so many of them. Firsties, I mean” said Cormac as they went, trying to get her attention.

They ended up breaking into an abandoned potions lab on the third floor. Arabella transfigured an old bench into a wide armchair - a bit rustic and not as finely finished as McGonnagal would have liked, but it would have merited an A anyway. As expected, they hadn’t been in there for five minutes when a pair of ghosts glided through the walls and started arguing about some nonsense.

“Bloody hell” exclaimed Cormac.

“At least they aren’t dangerous” tried to console both Arabella, deflated.

“Yeah” managed to say Cormac before withdrawing to his end of the armchair, sulking.

“I have some dreamless sleep potion” offered Arabella. It appeared just remembering the dementors put Cormac in a dark quiet mood very unlike him.

“Yes… I mean, let me try a few nights. It’s just… Listen, I never really thanked you” said Cormac.

“What for?” inquired Arabella, surprised.

“For stopping me at the train” said Cormac, as if explaining the obvious “I just wanted to get away, and I would have ran straight at the dementor. So thanks, you’ve stopped me from doing something stupid.”

“Your damsel in shiny armor!” she smiled, wondering for the first time how much Cormac had been hiding from her since the dementor attack. And how much she’d hide if she had suffered something as intense as Cormac had. Because it seemed clear the dementor must have made him relieve the death of his mother, or perhaps something even worse. Looking at the ghosts around them, she wondered how she’d act if she was the one going through such a loss.

“I’ll stop you from doing something stupid when the chance comes to return the favor” said Cormac suddenly, bringing her back from her ruminations.

“Oh, you silly. You aren’t supposed to stop me when I do something stupid. You’re supposed to join me!” She laughed.

Cormac chuckled as Arabella proceeded to tickle him, but got withdrawn when she stopped “It’s… I didn’t remember what I saw. I shouldn’t have been able to remember it, so I just wanted to run away”

“Marietta said the same. Not about running, about how she was too young to remember it, and she still did” offered Arabella, putting aside her feelings about how Marietta knew what Cormac had seen and she didn’t.

“It’s not that” Explained Cormac “I was old enough to remember. I was obliviated of it”

“Wait, obliviated?”

“The mind healers of St. Mungo recommended it. I was too young, so my father authorized it. I was told about what happened years ago. But…”

Arabella just hugged him. ‘Fuck dementors’ she thought, as she also wondered what exactly had hurt Cormac so much and what kind of magic the dementors wielded that was powerful enough to defeat a memory charm placed by the best mind healers in Britain.

Chapter Text

On Ethics and Restricted Books

As the week progressed, everyone began to settle in again to the normal Hogwarts routine, or at least, as routine as it gets at Hogwarts. Arabella wrote to her father asking to talk to someone in the ministry to get the dementors removed. She tried to check books on dementors in the library, but she had waited a few days as she worked on her potions and astronomy essays so by the time she asked Pince for books on dementors, most of them had already been checked out by other students. Only Albus Dumbledore’s translation of Ekrizdis’ Journals About Dementors remained unchecked, but that book was in the restricted section - which only increased her interest in it. If there was something on how to get past them, it had to be in an advanced restricted book for NEWT students and not in a general book on monsters. And even if there wasn’t, the fact that the book was restricted made it all the more interesting.

She squashed all her intentions of making a good first impression (or second, really) on the new Defense professor by arriving to class right after Professor Lupin finished taking roll, though. She took a seat at the back of the class, next to Marcus and Eddie.

“Where have you been?” Whispered Eddie.

“At the library. Got hung up reading about newt spleens” she answered truthfully. 

“Wit-sharpening potion? It would have stopped you from arriving late”  joked Marcus and Arabella giggled.

“Do you have anything to contribute, Miss Diggory?” Called her out Professor Lupin

“Uh, no” she answered, embarrassed, and the professor continued his introduction to the class.

“Alright. Now, as I was saying before Miss Diggory showed up, Defense Against the Dark Arts is supposed to teach you first how to defend yourself against non-magical creatures, be those muggles or wild animals you can find in the field. A simple jelly legs jinx would stop a boar or a muggle, both of which would be unable to undo the jinx, which gives you time to seek help if attacked. Note that the class is about Defense. You are not supposed to harm people or even animals, if there is no need. And against muggles, there is no need.

The second and third years cover the less dangerous magical creatures, ranging from household pests to deadlier underestimated creatures like grindylows, and then you start with humanoids like hags and move on to vampires, werewolves and banshees. 

Fourth and fifth year focus on making you capable of surviving an encounter with one of the most dangerous magical beings to walk this world” he said and let a dramatic pause “Wizards. Do any of you know some spell capable of protecting you from most of the things a dark wizard can throw at you?”

Arabella raised her hand, still thinking about getting authorization to check Ekrizdis’ Journals from the library “The shield charm. The incantation is protego” she answered when called. Lockhart’s attempt to start a duelling club had been an unmitigated disaster, but it had piqued the interest of quite a few of the then third years, and they had been doing some practising on the side during the past term.

“Three points for Ravenclaw. Correct.” Admitted Professor Lupin “A proper shield charm will deflect away all jinxes and hexes. The more powerful forms of the shield charm, which are covered after you take your OWLs, can also protect you from most dark curses, except for the unforgivable curses. Now, before we move into practising the shield charm, do any of you know which are the unforgivable curses and why they are called such? We will be studying them, in theory only, in the next class”

Now he had piqued the entire classroom’s interest. Practical lessons and learning about the worst curses in the world, all in one week? Arabella, Cho and Leo quickly answered the question about which were the curses, eager to move on to practice the shield charm, and got another six points to Ravenclaw and three to Hufflepuff in the process.

It was Marcus who raised his hand when Professor Lupin asked why they were called unforgivables.

“Mister Belby, right?” asked Lupin, likely trying to commit everyone’s surnames to memory “Are you by any chance related to Damocles Belby?”

“Are you acquitted with him, sir?” retorted Marcus, instead of answering right away. Up close, Arabella could tell he was nervous.

“I’m not. It’s just that Damocles Belby is… well, he is a renowned potioneer” answered the professor.

“We are related. I think he’s working for the Peruvian army in their war, but I haven’t heard from him in a long time” he said, overstretching things. Arabella and Eddie shared a quizzical look. As far as they knew, Marcus hadn't ever been in touch with him, but apparently, he was keeping tabs on his father’s relatives. Considering how often they were on the Daily Prophet’s social pages, it wasn’t a hard thing to do, at least from afar. “They are called unforgivables because using them against a human being carries a life sentence in Azkaban.” Continued Marcus “But that’s the legal punishment. They say what really makes them unforgivable is that you have to mean them to use them. You have to really want to control, murder or torture your victim. So they claim someone who’s able to channel powerful magic in such a way isn’t fit for living in society. And that, and not the life sentence, is what makes them unforgivable, sir”

In front of the classroom, Professor Lupin nodded “Yes. The punishment is the textbook reason or is at least the official reason. But what you’ve described has been discussed. Five points to Ravenclaw. Now, desks away and wands out. Let’s see how much we can advance in your shield charms for the remainder of the class. The pronunciation is ‘pro-te-go’ with an upward swish of the wand, and you reinforce your magic during the ‘te’ syllable. Let’s go”

The following hour was a bit of a mess as Lupin corrected the students as they practiced and the students just happened to fire the odd jinx here and there when Lupin turned their back on them. Eventually, Marietta was the first to cast a really good shield charm. Therefore the last fifteen minutes of the class were supposed to be spent with everyone else taking turns throwing full body binds at Marietta’s shield - which held - while those who weren’t casting the jinx ducked for cover as jinxes rebounded everywhere. Only Lupin’s swift deduction of house points to pretty much everyone prevented the class from completing its descent into madness: Arabella laughed when a deflected jinx hit Eddie, who retaliated as soon as Lupin turned her back, causing Arabella to hit him with a jinx of her own when Lupin himself had to cover from a jinx deflected from Marietta’s shield, so Marcus fired back at Arabella, who was in turn covered by Cho. The two-on-two duel didn’t last: Katie joined Marcus and Eddie, so Cormac remembered he had a girlfriend and pushed a desk towards the Eddie-Marcus-Katie trio.

And at the shout of “House traitor!” Delphine jinxed Cormac, so now Cho and Arabella were two on four, but Seraphina and Leopold joined them to even the odds, and then the Slytherins decided to make a third party composed of all five of them and attacked everyone, and Lupin deducted points from all of them and along all that, Marietta’s shield still held.

Still panting and with an upcoming class on the unforgivables later in the same week, Arabella decided against asking for authorization to check Ekrizdis Journals. Instead, armed with patience, she later went to the library to note the title of some restricted books on the unforgivables. And she also took the opportunity to grab a few books on common curses for solving her puzzle box. Her general idea was that by asking for additional reading material for class-related homework, Lupin would be more predisposed to give her authorization for works unrelated to the curriculum.

So by the end of her second Defense class, she approached Professor Lupin to get the authorization to withdraw Ekrizdis Journals and the couple of extra books on the unforgivable curses from the restricted section of the library.

“No” Surprised her professor Lupin “Why do you want these three books together?”

“Uh, well, the books on the Imperius and killing curses are to expand on the essays. Since they are restricted, if I find I need them for the essays I should ask before starting it, or I’d need to track you down on the weekends to get them.” She smiled, a bit nervous and surprised about how taken back the professor was in his initial answer “Dumbledore’s Translation on Ekrizdis Journals it’s because it’s the only book on dementors that wasn’t checked out from the library. I thought, with dementors around, it’s better to learn what we can about them, right?” She explained. It was probably ten percent of the truth, but not technically a lie. Besides getting past them, she may figure out how it was that they were so powerful, how they could affect so many people at once, how they made people remember misery they’ve forgotten and what exactly they were. And then probably something more, once she got her hands on those Journals and figured out even more questions by reading it.

“So you don’t think they are related?” wanted to clarify Professor Lupin.

“These three books? No. Are they?”

“Only tangentially” shook his head Lupin “No, Miss Diggory. You don’t need additional material for your homework, just the stuff in your textbook. And just stay away from the dementors. I’ll add material on them in the next coming weeks. But… just remember they don’t differentiate between guilty and innocent. For them, we are all just food. And some of that food bargains with them to give them a steady supply of more food. That’s the only reason we think we control them. We do not.”

“I’ve never said I wanted to go after the dementors” she complained, but Lupin gave her a knowing look. Arabella didn’t buckle. It’s not as if the old professor knew how often she’d sneaked around in the forest, where she could be at risk of dementors. Or Cormac had, often with her. Or Fred and George, on their own. Or Fred, George, Cedric and Al, to engage in hippogryph racing.  “It’s all those things you’ve mentioned and more that I want to know!” She insisted. It wasn’t exactly a lie, just withholding some particular information.

“And we’ll cover them in class in due time. Now, aren’t you late for your next class?” Said Lupin pointing at the classroom door, where older students were already queuing up for their own Defense Against the Dark Arts class.

Friday finally came and with it the end of the first week of classes. Arabella got an answer from her father about removing the dementors. It essentially said it was impossible. Despite the many complaints, the minister had insisted he wanted dementors around to keep Hogwarts safe from Black. Sadly, the letter didn’t specify what it was that made the minister stick to the idea that Black would attack one of Britain’s best-defended magical dwellings. Probably nothing, she thought, picturing Black having some drinks on a warm beach somewhere while dementors waited for him thousands of miles away.

Arabella and Cho ended up earning a galleon and some change each for selling the remains of their dreamless sleep potion. That was both too little and too much. It was too little when compared with the fees actual potioneers charged. It was too much when considering they had given away half the batch, that most of the students who paid for it should have been able to brew it themselves and that the potion was freely available in the hospital wing anyway. 

She got a hold of a non restricted book on dementors, but it was rather basic. It described them as non-beings, related to boggarts and poltergeists (that was news to her), amortal. When it came to fighting them, it settled in advising the reader to stay away from them ‘as only the more powerful aurors can deal with them’ . A book as useful as the Ministry, as far as she was concerned.

After the final class on Friday, notices appeared in the Ravenclaw’s common room about the schedule of the Charms Club and Arabella, who had joined all the way back to first year, quickly signed herself up again. Quidditch tryouts were also posted and, with the seeker position open this year, Cho was determined to join the titular team. And, of course, Cho pestered Arabella during dinner about her seriously trying out, so both would get to play together. Worse, she got the Ravenclaw captain, Roger Davies, to assist her in convincing Arabella. That only led to a long dinner in which Davies and Cho insisted that waking up at seven in the morning on Saturdays or doing practices during thunderstorms was the best possible way to spend the time.

“Yeah, what would I do instead?” mocked Arabella “Sleep late and stick to a warm fire with hot chocolate when there is a blizzard outside?”

“Precisely! We train in the worst possible conditions just in case we have to play Gryffindor or Slytherin under a snowstorm!” explained an enthusiastic Davies, without catching the irony in her

“Or I can drink hot chocolate and play with the puzzle box while you freeze your ass off”  cleared up Arabella.

“But you like Quidditch, Ara” insisted Cho.

“Yes, I love to play in clear afternoons, after a good night's sleep. Or at night, when none gets to see me coming, as long as it’s not freezing, raining, snowing or any of those things you nutjobs enjoy. Keep me in the reserve team, that’s it.” answered Arabella

“Training in those conditions gives us a competitive advantage against the other teams! And you could be one of our best beaters now that Owen and Natalie graduated. Your priorities are all wrong, Diggory” shouted Roger Davies before getting up and going back to his friends.

“My priorities are perfectly fine, Davies!” closed the issue Arabella as Davies left. Seriously, hot chocolate or thunderstorm? Quidditch players were mental, Cho included.

Cho, however, wasn’t so easily deterred “We could be flying together Ara. If I make it to the titular team, that is. My broom sucks”

“I’d absolutely love playing in the same team as you Cho” answered Arabella, with a hand on her heart “on sunny afternoons. And maybe cloudy and easy winds days and nights as well”

She overslept on Saturday morning on principle and made it to the Great Hall when breakfast was about to end. According to Marietta, Cho had eaten early to go practice flying at the Quidditch pitch. Making a mental note to finally figure out where the kitchens were just in case she was too late in the future, Arabella decided to insist on Ekrizdis Journals with Flitwick. She’d miss flying with Cho, who was probably disappointed with her - and for all she knew, Cedric and the Weasley Twins would also be around - but she’d rather catch her head of house in the morning before he left for Hogsmeade, or whatever he did during weekends.

She knocked on the door of Flitwick’s office and quickly heard her Head of House voice as if he was standing right next to her “Miss Diggory! Kindly wait a few minutes!”

How did he know it was her, she didn’t know. But she waited alone in the corridor for a while - she lamented not having the puzzle box with her to spend the time - until finally a jovial Professor Flitwick came out of the door accompanying a shy first-year student, who quickly went his way.

“Miss Diggory! What a lovely surprise, please come on it” greeted the tiny professor. The office was unchanged from the last term: file cabinets, several libraries stacked with books, the odd teapot and appliance jumping around and Professor Flitwick’s desk, which was human-sized. It was rumored in Ravenclaw Tower that his desk was actually shorter when he was alone and he only made it grow taller when he got visitors. Whatever the case, he jumped into his chair with gusto and invited Arabella to sit in front “First-year muggle-borns always have a harder time adjusting. You purebloods and half-bloods already expect to come to Hogwarts. But for them, everything is new, and they often miss home when they first arrive” explained Flitwick.

“And besides, they miss their favorite shows on the telly”, blurted Arabella.

“Telly? What’s that?” asked Flitwick

“A muggle thing they use to make pictures move and since it also has sound, they use it to tell stories” Explained Arabella, momentarily forgetting the reason she was there.

“Really?” Wondered Flitwick “I thought muggle pictures didn’t move”

“On paper they don’t, but they make them move on projectors and in the telly. They have all sorts of weird stories” she explained.

“Such us?” asked Flitwick, always willing to learn something new.

“Well, you see, the Statute of Secrecy mostly erased the existence of magic from muggle history. But they keep myths. So, for instance, they have a story about a mermaid who falls in love with a muggle prince. But since they don’t know how mermaids are, they draw pretty mermaids instead of ugly ones. And since they are writing about beings they believe don’t exist anyway, then they also made stories about a family of talking ducks who fight a dog-wizard who’s also an animagus over a duck-djinn. Because if you write about stuff that doesn’t exist, why not continue to make things up, right?”

“Ducks fight a human wizard who turns into a dog?” Smiled Flitwick in disbelief.

“No, no! The dog stands on two legs and is already a wizard. And then he transforms into many other animals. I told you they are weird!”

The tiny professor laughed “That may be, but I take that you didn’t come to see me because you wanted to talk about the muggle telly and I don’t think you’re having trouble adjusting to school either, right? What do I owe this pleasure?”

Arabella readjusted herself in her seat and internally thanked Flitwick. If he hadn’t interrupted, she would have carried on talking about how the muggles turned Grindelwald and the Magical German government's fight for magical artefacts into the Indiana Jones movies. “Right. You know how we have dementors at the gates? Well, I went to the library to find books on them, but all except one were already checked out…” Arabella stopped as Flitwick raised his hand.

“You’ve already asked this to your Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. I can not disavow him, not on his subject” said Flitwick.

“But professor, you once told me this is a place of learning, remember?”

“Yes, and do you remember under which circumstances I told you that?”

Arabella failed to hide her guilty expression “You’ve caught me sneaking back into Hogwarts after dispelling two of the twenty-one charms watching the boundaries”

“I remember telling you they were at least fifteen” inquired the professor.

“And fifteen makes no sense” Explained Arabella “If there are going to be powerful wards to protect an ancient fortress, it has to be a magically round number. So I went and checked later and there are three times seven spells. New ones, that is. There is a lot of old stuff as well. Could it be that there are blood wards around the boundaries?”

Flitwick coughed nervously “Maybe. But whatever it is, is old and isn’t believed to be functional. Blood magic has been frowned upon in Europe since the Romans. So we don’t know who did it or when. Centuries ago, for certain”

“I knew it!” cheered Arabella “But, yes, I broke the rules. So you gave me detention and a puzzle box to learn because this is a place of learning. And that’s what I want to do” smiled Arabella.

Flitwick, however, was unfazed “I gave you detention because you and Mister McLaggen sneaked out of the school boundaries. Do you know what’s watching the school boundaries now?”

“Yes, Dementors. That’s my point!” answered Arabella and Flitwick made a gesture as if to tell her to explain more “But I won’t be trying to get past them because they are too dangerous. Professor, I’ve seen what they do!”

“Only a part of it. And I seem to recall giving you detention a year before to both you, Mr. McLaggen and Mr. Carmichael for sneaking past a creature you were  told it was dangerous”

“Cerberuses aren’t that dangerous” pouted Arabella “It was McGonnagal’s chess set…”

Flitwick raised his hands in the air “Miss Diggory, most people do believe cerberuses are dangerous to twelve year olds!”

“But if we only needed a music box to get past it! Or is there something simple like that to deal with dementors?” she asked. Maybe there was hope!

“No, there isn’t!” Flitwick was now exasperated.

“See? Then I won’t be trying to get past them. I just want to know all there is to know about them” She lied.

“And why do you want books on the Imperius and killing curses to read together with Ekrizdis Journals?” sighed Flitwick.

“Oh, those two other books were to ease Professor Lupin into giving me permission to check Ekrizdis Journals. I wouldn’t mind reading them, but I only wanted the Journals”

Flitwick sighed, weighing something in his mind “There is something else, something you told Professor Lupin in the train. You said the ministry lacks in wizarding pride. Were you upset at the moment or do you really think that?”

“Well, the ministry obviously lacks in wizarding pride” Arabella said to her half-human Head of House.

Flitwick took a minute to consider “Great many atrocities were committed in the name of wizarding pride, Miss Diggory”

“And what does Grindelwald have to do with this?” asked Arabella, wondering where Flitwick was going with this “Yes, he wanted to rule the world with wizards as an upper class and the ICW went to war to stop him. But what does that have to do with the dementors?”

“I was thinking about You-Know-Who” clarified Professor Flitwick.

Arabella looked at him intrigued and swatted away a floating parchment with her left hand “What did he have on wizarding pride? He got hundreds of witches and wizards killed, all for his own ego” she retorted

“Grindelwald got a lot more people killed, though” insisted Flitwick, to Arabella’s annoyance.

‘Because the ICW insisted on holding onto the Statute of Secrecy’ she thought, but didn’t say that. She wasn’t sure what Flitwick was getting at, or what Lupin had told about her behind her back. As far as she knew, neither Voldemort nor Grindelwald had anything to do with Ekrizdis Journals. “Right” she conceded “But Grindelwald didn’t do it just for him. He had a vision for a world in which wizards ruled all beings for their own good. And of course with him as emperor of all mankind, because it’s not like he was disinterested and magnanimous. But he would have avoided the calamities the muggles did during his war. The catch is, even if he won, and if he was a good, wise ruler, what happens when he dies if someone like You-Know-Who takes over?”

“So your problem with wizards ruling the world is who does it?”

“That’s what an old muggle warrior who fought in Grindelwald’s War told me” she defied Flitwick. She didn’t think he’d realize she was talking about Marcus’ grandfather but even if he did, Mr. Hall didn’t have to explain himself to Flitwick. “It’s nice for them to have self-rule, until they get someone like Hitler. But we can get someone like Hitler too, as You-Know-Who showed. And our problem is that we can’t coexist as equals. If we break the Statute, we’d rule over them” she concluded, remembering some conversation between Marcus’ grandparents and Eddie’s parents about replenishing charms, their electrical generation buildings and the muggle economy. She hadn’t understood that full discussion, but the gist was that wizards would dominate their businesses and, through them, their world.

“Who’s Hitler? And why would we have to rule over them? Why do you think we can’t act as equals?” Fired Flitwick.

Arabella sighed. At this rate, she wasn’t going to make it to the Quidditch pitch before lunch. “Hitler was a muggle tyrant who horrifically killed millions of muggles during Grindelwald’s War. We’d rule over them because we’d take over their economy. And we are not equals, we’re superior”

“How are we superior?” Insisted her professor.

“We have magic, they don’t” said Arabella, explaining the obvious. She looked out of the window, into the sunny day outside. She could be playing beater against Fred and George but she had to believe getting a book would be a simple talk instead of this. Worse, both Cho and Cedric had good chances of making it to their houses titular teams, and they could be with some harsh training. In the form of her flinging bludgers at them, of course.

Flitwick, however, showed no sign of relenting. “Dementors have magic too. And their soul magic is much more powerful than anything we can do, or even comprehend. Does that make them superior to wizards?”

“Well, they certainly think so, after the Minister let them harass a train full of kids because they were angry” She blurted before realizing that Flitwick had just told her soul magic was a thing.

“That doesn’t answer my question. Let’s try it from a different angle: we don’t know what dementors think about this, if they think about it at all. Centaurs believe to be superior to wizardkind and even if they don’t openly display it, so do goblins. Why is it that they are wrong and you’re right?” Asked the professor, more calmly now.

“Centaurs are dumb half breeds…” started Arabella.

Flitwick interrupted her “You’re not helping yourself, Miss Diggory”

“Well, they are. Worse, they mix the arrogance of humans with the cowardice of horses”

“Did you just say that they’ve threatened both you and Mr. McLaggen because they are cowards?” Arabella could swear she could see Flitwick veins growing in his forehead and neck.

“Exactly” she explained, tired of explaining the obvious. “Now goblins, they are the closest we have to peers. And they do believe they are superior to us”

“And why do you think it’s the other way around and it's wizards that are superior to goblins?” Insisted Flitwick, as if trying to prove something.

“Because I’m a human. If I was a goblin, I’d believe goblins to be superior. Mind you, I don’t think the goblins would let a dementor loose among their kids, so point to the goblins I guess. But what does all this have to do with Ekrizdis’ Journals?” she asked ‘And me going to the Quidditch pitch once and for all’ she also thought.

“Because Ekrizdis was one of the worst dark wizards of the late middle ages, Miss Diggory” Explained Flitwick “And just a week into the school year, I have a new professor asking me why one of my fourth years believes the Ministry, of all places, lacks in wizarding pride and also asks for assorted advanced books on dark magic including one that’s comparable as you asking for the journals of Grindelwald or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”

Arabella jumped from her seat “You’ve known me for four years now. I’m no Stormwitch or Death Eater” she started “There are two reasons why I want that book. One, because neither you nor Lupin want me to read it. Second, for the same reason I went beneath the cerberus: because it’s there” she insisted, realizing those were really two reasons she had, besides getting to Hogsmeade whenever she and Cormac wanted to.

Flitwick considered her for a moment “Just like you have two reasons to read it, we have two reasons why you shouldn’t. The first one is that you may want to go after the dementors. They are, after all, there”

“Is there an easy way to deal with them, like with the cerberus?” she asked rhetorically. She was fully aware of the answer.

“No” was the simple answer, as expected.

She sat down “Then I won’t.” She lied “What’s the second reason?”

“That you may try to replicate the experiments. Using, for instance, centaurs as your subjects, as I know you wouldn’t use your classmates” said Professor Flitwick.

She weighed every word as she answered “And how exactly would I get centaurs, of all beings, to become subjects of such experiments?” she asked, getting angry again.

“Through the Imperius curse. A curse you’ve also asked about” answered Flitwick.

It took all the respect and appreciation she had accumulated towards Flitwick in her time at Hogwarts to not jump at him. That, and that deep down, she felt somewhat elated that her Head of House believed her powerful enough to cast such a curse “I.am.not.that.person” she said, punctuating every word “when centaurs pulled a bow on me, even outnumbered, we didn’t hurt them. We immobilized them and then went looking for help. Not for us, for them, so we wouldn’t leave them helpless in the forest. And we did it knowing we’d get punished for breaking the rules and going into the forest in the first place. Are those the actions of a dark witch who seeks to imitate the Vold… well that guy, but from the Middle Ages? Or wouldn’t a dark witch simply kill them and hide the bodies?”

Flitwick looked guilty “I suppose you’re right”

“Did you let a professor who barely knows my name taint your image of me?” she insisted. At that point, she no longer cared about the blasted book, or what the experiments were. Centaurs may very well be a piece of shite, but she wasn’t feeding them to dementors to experiment on them. And though she wouldn’t admit it, it hurt her that Flitwick considered that of her.

Her professor might have been thinking along the same lines because he wandlessly summoned a piece of parchment and began writing on it. “I apologize, Arabella. You’re right, of course. Take your authorization” he concluded.

She left and, rather than going straight to the library, went to the Ravenclaw Tower. She got what she wanted, but she felt more dejected than victorious. Once in her dorm, she took her broom from her trunk and flew right out of the window towards the Quidditch pitch. Maybe she’ll still be able to catch some of the pickup Quidditch games before everyone dispersed for lunch.

It was finally Sunday night (Cho and Cormac could really do with a lot of training and the days were still nice) when she could lay quietly in her four-poster bed, curtains closed, and take her time reading “Albus Dumbledore’s Translation of Ekrizdis’ Journals as they Pertrain Dementors”. She skimmed over Professor Dumbledore’s prologue, filled with warnings and disclaimers. Ekrizdis wrote in chronological order, starting with his arrival to Azkaban, abandoned at the time. She found out the real reason why Lupin and Flitwick had been reluctant to let her get that book, and why the combination of books she requested had freaked them out, just on the second page of Ekrizdis' first chapter.

Dementors were susceptible to the Imperius curse.

Chapter Text

Shattered Momentum

The following week came with the quidditch tryouts, which found Cho and Arabella sitting in the stands, clad in quidditch uniform as they waited their turn, but with Arabella levitating Ekrizdis Journals in front of her as she copied its pages as fast as she could, as she had been doing all week. Cho, on the other hand, was fidgeting. Arabella knew she had been playing practice games against Cedric all week, as both wanted to enter their respective Houses teams. Based on what she had seen of those practices, Cedric had trounced Cho. He had a better broom, although Cho compensated by being lighter. But, ultimately, Cedric was simply the better flyer of the two. And that hasn’t done anything good for Cho’s self-confidence.

Cormac, to her left, ignored all this. He had gone to watch over the trials just for the sake of watching them and shook his head in disbelief “People are playing with a quaffle up there, Ara!” he said, as two trios of chaser candidates zoomed past each other in the air in what looked more quadpot than quidditch, but gave the Ravenclaw captain, Roger Davies, a better chance of judging the candidates than having all positions playing at once.

Arabella looked up with only mild interest. Of the past year's team, only Davies and Hawkthorne remained. Clearwater had decided to leave the team to focus on her NEWTs and everyone else had graduated, which meant they were short of everyone save for one chaser and one beater. And sadly, the chasers she’s seen so far were everything but impressive. She shook her head “Not a good enough show, love. Besides, what if I need to return the book before I finish copying it?” she said.

She had been given Ekrizdis Journals for a week, but negotiated with Pince, the librarian, to keep it until someone else requested it. And since she didn’t know if that would happen the day after her week was over or months later, she was doing her best to summarize it and copy it as fast as she could. Manually, because duplication charms weren’t taught until the seventh year, and it would probably take her a longer time to learn it anyway than to copy everything by hand.

The book itself was dark, horrible and fascinating, she thought as she tuned out Cormac’s disparaging, but sadly honest, comments on the prospective Ravenclaw chasers. If Grindelwald was evil because he thought it was necessary and Voldemort because he liked it, Ekrizdis was evil because he didn’t care. Expelled from his village for his crimes, he set sail north and discovered the abandoned island of Azkaban and the dementors locked within. He unlocked them, only to nearly have to run for his life. Only his use of the Imperius curse on the dementors in the nick of time allowed him to lock them up again - Interestingly, Ekrizdis described the imperius as one of the ‘two most-damnable curses’ rather than one of the three unforgivables.

But rather than leaving the accursed place and leaving the dementors locked up for good, Ekrizdis made himself at home at Azkaban and started kidnapping sailors and people living on the nearby coasts to test dark magic, the powers of the dementors and, by using the dementors, the soul itself.

“Did you find anything about stopping a dementor from eating our souls?” asked her Cho as Davies stopped the practice and had other Ravenclaw students line up for chaser testing.

“Well, there is a way to keep the dementors from sucking your soul, but I don’t think we should use it” teased Arabella

“How so?” asked Cormac, now interested.

Arabella pulled back a few pages “Here. Ekrizdis cursed one of his victims. He sewed up his mouth and nose and the dementor couldn’t suck his soul. Of course, the then victim suffocated to death”

“Ughh” said Cho

“You’ve asked” she said “Anyway, for the next victim, he first performed a tracheotomy before erasing his mouth and nose. So the dementor went ahead and sucked his soul through the hole in the trachea” 

“Fuck” exclaimed Cormac.

“No, I don’t think the dementors can do that, Cormac” answered Arabella and all three couldn’t help themselves from chuckling “I’ll keep reading just in case” she joked.

The trials kept on and on, pushing the trial for beater and seeker into the night, which was great as far as Arabella was concerned: the snitch would be easier to spot, which would hopefully negate Cho’s disadvantage in using a slower broom. As for beaters, it made it easier for them, which could also give Cho an edge if Davies paired her or Hawkthorn with Cho and they kept the competing seeker at bay.

Keeper trials came next and Cormac became insufferable, criticizing every single one of the candidates. Arabella asked him to light up his wand so she could continue to read her levitated book in the dark. He did but, sadly, he didn’t shut up anyway.

“Anything interesting in there?” Asked Cho after a while, nervous as her trial was about to come up “That doesn’t involve dark magic” she quickly added.

“Ekrizdis put boggarts and dementors to fight each other” answered Arabella absent-mindedly. That was the chapter she was reading about.

“Who won?” Asked Cormac, who was listening to her even if he pretended he only cared for the players above.

Arabella skipped a page “The dementors. The boggarts kept them at bay for a while transforming into ‘a ghostly image of joy’. Weird. Anyway, the dementors couldn’t suck their soul, either because boggarts don’t have a soul or because they don’t breathe, but eventually, they went through them and towards their human victims. Ugh, Cho wouldn’t like what happened next” she said and Cho gave her a friendly punch in her shoulder.

“Hawthorne, Chang, Diggory, Corner, Boot, Morgan, you’re up” commanded Davies from high up, enjoying his use of the sonorus charm. Swallowing hard, Cho stood up and went to the pitch. Arabella marked the next chapter in Ekrizdis Journals - something about a patronus, whatever that may be - and followed her. She may have not cared much about entering the titular team, but that didn’t stop her from getting nervous as well.

She got her mind right into the game the moment a bludger came straight to her head from below. She twisted to her left, took a split second to locate Terry Boot flying below her and to her right and waited for the precise moment when the bludger would turn around and try to hit the back of her head. With a smile, she swirled at the last moment and batted the bludger away and right into Boot’s path. It was on.

Boot dodged and Arabella turned to see how the rest of her team was fairing. She had been paired in a seeker’s duel with beaters with Cho and Chloe Morgan, a girl in Luna’s year, against Edmund Hawthorne, the one remaining beater from last year, and third years Terry Boot and Michael Corner. She hoped Corner was bad so they’d be evenly matched, as Chloe seemed more interested in unseating Edmund - and good luck with that! - than in protecting their seeker.

She got herself into a bit of a duel with Hawthorne after a few minutes which, surprisingly, he abandoned. Looking around, she quickly spotted the reason: Cho and Boot were racing shoulder to shoulder toward a golden spec, with Hawktorne diving on them.

She turned around in the look for bludgers, but none were around. “Cover me!” she shouted Chloe, wherever the younger girl may be as she dove after Hawkthorne. He flew a Cleansweep Seven to her Cleansweep Five and was heavier, so it was no surprise he was diving faster than her. Neither could crash into the seekers themselves or catch the snitch, but they could very well disrupt them. Hoping against hope to find a bludger at the last minute, Arabella pressed her dive, but it proved useless. Cho had to swerve to the side to avoid Hawkthrone and that gave Boot the split-second opportunity to grab the snitch.

Davies whistled with his fingers and all the power of his sonorus charm - he was enjoying it - “Well done! Once more!” he shouted.

Cho flew back to the centre of the pitch with hunched shoulders. Arabella, instead, flew up to where Chloe Morgan was “Where were you?” she asked the younger girl

“Trying to get at Corner!” she shouted “He was tossing the two bludgers at me while you were failing to outfly Hawkthorne below!”

“Our job isn’t to outseat the other beaters Morgan! We’re to escort the seekers so they catch the snitch and win!” she shouted back. Below, Davies had released the snitch again “They toss bludgers at you? Send them to me when I need them!” she screamed as she dove for one dark bludger below and quickly hit her towards Boot, only to be thwarted by Corner.

The second round was longer, harder and the sun had set by the time Boot, once again, caught the snitch despite Cho’s best efforts. Cho, however, found herself with renewed determination by the third round and thanks to a good combo play by Arabella and Morgan - the younger girl was learning fast - who kept Boot busy, got the snitch in the third round.

Davies was delighted with the way the trial was going and reminded them the seekers were playing at three out of five wins. Should Boot catch the snitch in either of the next two rounds, He’d become the titular seeker. Cho, instead, would need to catch it twice to make it, as she was losing 1-2.

Hawkthorne kept Arabella busy all the fourth round while Morgan and Corner circled around the seekers. And no matter how much Arabella kept trying to avoid him, wherever she flew, she found Hawkthrone or a bludger coming at her. Bruised and covered in sweat, she spotted the snitch in one end of the pitch, far away from the seekers. Cho must have spotted it to and realizing she wasn’t going to make it to it before Boot - he was simply much closer to it - feigned a dive in a completely different direction. Arabella was whacked by a bludger to the stomach as she distracted herself with the seeker drama. When she recovered she pumped a fist in celebration: Boot had fallen for it. Hawkthorne, however, had not and hit the same bludger back to Arabella. Taking on her own advice during the first round, Arabella diverted the bludger towards Chloe Morgan, turned around and flew away from Boot and everyone else towards the second bludger. She hit Corner straight in the head with it, leaving Morgan undisturbed to pester Boot with the remaining bludger, which she did with gusto.

Boot fell to the ground and now without an opposing seeker and having to deal with just one beater, Cho graciously flew towards the snitch, easily dodged Hawkthrone’s bludger and secured the snitch to tie in with Boot 2-2.

There wasn’t a fifth round. Boot was too exhausted, beaten and a bit dizzy after getting hit in the head and subsequently crashing into an empty stand and Davies swiftly proclaimed Cho as the winner. Seekers, after all, were supposed to suffer more during games and still be able to catch the snitch.

Still in the pitch, Davies transfigured some benches into tables and placed cornish pastry and haggis he had previously secured from the kitchens, as they were now well past dinner time. Cormac approached Arabella and began a long tirade of all the ways she could have done better.

“Not now Cormac. I’m exhausted” she said. ‘And sweaty, and beaten, and hungry, and thirsty and in need of a hot shower’ she also thought.

“But it’s so you can become better!” complained Cormac. Arabella downed a glass of pumpkin juice as an answer.

Roger Davies, in the meantime, approached her from the other end “So, Diggory…” he started, saving her from her boyfriend.

“You’ll need plenty of time to bring this team up to scratch” she interrupted him “You’ll need training at least twice per week, but ideally thrice a week, in a variety of conditions…” she interrupted herself when she noticed the wide smile Davies was giving her as he nodded.

“Yes! Are you in?” he said and Arabella could feel Cormac and possibly Cho’s eyes on her.

“No” she admitted and raised a hand to stop Roger’s objections “I’m serious, Davies. And Cormac. And Cho. I’m doing three electives. I have the Charms Club. I even need an OWL in history and astronomy, which everyone else ignores, to get into Gringotts. I just don’t have the time. And yes, I don’t like flying in awful weather or before sunrise. Which matters because you’ll have to train them in all weathers, Davies”

“You could have more time if you weren’t such a bookworm” interjected Cormac

Arabella swallowed some pastry and huffed. The training had done a number on her and Cormac wasn’t helping. “Me. Hot showers. Soon.” she said “Alone!” she quickly added to stop everyone’s mischievous looks.

“Alright, have it your way” admitted defeated Roger Davies “Morgan, you’re on the team!” he announced and Arabella raised an eyebrow “She learns fast” he explained.

Cedric entered the Hufflepuff team the next evening. He was up against a petite girl in his year and a third year boy, but his trial’s outcome was never in doubt. While the girl had an advantage in being lighter, Cedric was simply the better flier of the three. And unlike Cho, who had to contend with a basic broom, Cedric’s Cleansweep Seven was in line with everyone else’s. How he and Cho would deal with the Gryffindors and Slytherins Nimbus their respective seekers used, they’d see in due time. 

On Friday, the fourth and fifth years insisted their professors allowed them an early Hogsmeade visit. The faculty didn’t budge, unfortunately, but that didn’t stop Sarah and the rest of her band from performing near the lake on Sunday morning. Eddie and Marcus were amused, as they realized the song “It Must Be Love” they were performing was from a muggle band called “Madness”

“You’re wrong” said behind them the seventh-year prefect, Penelope Clearwater “It’s by Labi Siffre. Rocket made a cover”

“Well, they are covering the cover” insisted Eddie.

“Hush” said Arabella, singing along with the rest, and not missing the irony of how many prejudiced students were singing and enjoying muggle music.

She followed Sarah when their impromptu show was over and saw her approach Cedric and his friend Al. Whatever they were talking about, she heard Al saying “Go Ced”

“What 's up?” Asked Arabella and she could swear Sarah had blushed.

“Since we can’t go to Hogsmeade, I was asking your brother if he could show me to the kitchens and we grab some butterbeers to go spend the rest of the afternoon somewhere” Answered Sarah. She was definitely blushing.

“Go Ced” said Arabella, mimicking Al from before.

“It’s… well, discovering the kitchens is supposed to be that thing we figure out on our own…” blabbered Cedric.

“Go!” she insisted.

“Ced” said with fake solemnity Al “I’ll keep your Hufflepuff honour safe. Go”

At the dual insistence, Cedric and Sarah left for the castle. Once they were out of earshot Al sighed “At last” he said and Arabella giggled “You don’t go to classes with those two. I do. It was about time”

September faded into October and none asked for Ekrizdis Journals, which Arabella eventually finished up copying. She kept the book for a few more weeks, passing it along to Cho and Marietta, who got used to reading it in the privacy of their room - people tend to look at them oddly when they’ve heard them discuss what relation might be between a dementor sucking someone’s soul, Ekrizdis invention of the killing curse and passing into the afterlife. They also agreed it was the stuff to read if they wanted nightmares. Flitwick wasn’t lying when he compared to hypothetical Grindelwald or Voldemort’s journals. Fascinating? Yes. The stuff to read after a bad day? Absolutely not.

Arabella finally returned it a couple of weeks before Halloween. She had, in the meantime, made notes of lots of additional subjects and books based on the stuff she read in it. Fortunately, only a few of those things were in the restricted section: everything related to possession, which Ekrizdis also involved himself with, was. But a lot of tangential stuff like pacts and communal magic were a branch of soul magic that, while dangerous, wasn't dark and thus, were freely available. Stuff about other non-beings was sparse, but not restricted either. Ekrizidis’ long catalogue of dark curses was hit or miss: the curses themselves were restricted, if at all in the library, but the countercurses weren’t and since they were written in ancient futhark, they also provided for good runes practice.

In the meantime, she had a block with two things: the undetectable extension charm they were practising in the charms club and the one spell Ekrizdis had devised to keep dementors in check. The extension charm would allow her to expand her robe’s inner pockets and carry her broom with her, if she managed to cast it, that is. The spell Ekrizids had devised was not, surprisingly, dark and was listed in the seventh-year Defense textbook.

It was called a “Patronus Charm” and was still in use centuries after its invention. It boiled down to using the same technique the boggarts used against dementors: pushing joy straight from one’ soul into magic and letting the magic itself weave it into an animal form. The animalized form prevented the dementors from overpowering it, as they did to boggarts, while the joy-turned-into-magic repulsed them. But it was challenging - the textbook mentioned it was taught in Auror training and it wasn’t required for a defence NEWT. On top, Arabella had never tried to wield magic in such a way. All she was accomplishing was pushing white smoke out of her wand. But it was either that or learning the imperius curse.

Eventually, the school dressed up for the Halloween Feast and it looked like they could finally have a feast without trolls or Slytherin monsters. They ate and celebrated and finally went to bed and the only fly in the ointment seemed to be that Cho was saddened when she saw Cedric and Sarah together. It looked to Arabella as if Cho fancied her brother, even though she denied it.

And it was with those simple thoughts she was getting to an early sleep when Penelope Clearwater broke into the bedroom. “Quickly! Get your wands and robes. We’re evacuating to the Great Hall. Sirius Black broke into Hogwarts and is somewhere in the castle!”

She had barely managed to cover herself with a winter cloak before Clearwater insisted she hurry up. Arabella left, joining all the baffled Ravenclaws as they travelled downstairs. She felt inadequately dressed in just her nightgown beneath the heavy robe, but that was nothing to the idea that Sirius Black, of all people, could be lurking around the hallways. She did her best to mix along with everyone else. She had finally mastered the basic shield charm in defence and felt more or less confident in her disarming charm. But she still couldn’t cast a stunner and typically got battered every time they duelled in Lupin’s class. With a death eater on the loose, she suddenly wasn’t feeling like the defiant girl who had stood up against a trio of centaurs armed with just bows. Even Mrs. Norris’ meows gave her a fright on her way down.

To her shock, Dumbledore left them all gathered together in the Great Hall, which was openly accessible from plenty of hallways when they’d be perfectly safe in their Houses dorms, which had only one guarded entrance. Worse, he ordered the prefects to stand watch instead of calling the aurors.

After the professors left (‘Yeah, why not let Flitwick at least to protect them’ cursed Arabella), she sneaked past Percy Weasley and went to join Cedric, who was standing watch in a hallway behind the professors' tablet along with Clearwater and a seventh year Hufflepuff prefect she had only seen in passing. Either he’d send her back or she’d be allowed to stay and, well, she wasn’t sure. Protect him? She wasn’t really sure how.

She stood right behind Cedric and tapped him in the shoulder “What are you doing?” whispered Cedric, frightened.

“Scaring you, of course” she said and Cedric shook his head and chucked.

“And then what? Tell me, how is your stunner?” asked Cedric in a low voice. She had been complaining about it with him the past week, so he knew the answer. But he didn’t tell her to go away.

“Not the time, Ced. And besides, what if it’s a dementor that’s coming?” she answered.

The other Hufflepuff whistled “She says the sweetest things. I’d say we wake up everyone and run” he said.

“Really, Reginald?” Clearwater said, her voice tinged with frustration “Are you letting a dementor feast on everyone behind us?”

“And what’s the alternative?” complained Reginald “Also, why is that girl here?”.

“We stop them” said Cedric, with a courage Arabella didn’t know he had in him “And she’s here because she wants to” he concluded.

Arabella nodded and, once again, tried to conjure joyful memories. Her getting her wand wouldn’t do, Ollivander had ruined that moment. But just before entering the shop, as they were doing her first shopping trip for Hogwarts supplies, she thought that should do it. “Expecto Patronum” she recited, and only a puff of white smoke came out of her wand.

“What was that?” asked Cedric, puzzled.

Penelope Clearwater, however, smiled at her “Not a bad try for a fourth year” she said in a warm tone. She then took a deep breath and closed her eyes “Expecto Patronum” she whispered. The smoke coming out of the wand wanted to form something, but it dissipated “Dammit, I got it once. It’s the spell to counter dementors. But it’s just too advanced!”

Cedric stepped forward, pointing his wand to a nearby suit of armour “You all overcomplicate things. Dementors can’t go through solid matter, and neither can fugitives, so… piertotum locomotor” he casted and the suit of armour came to life, standing between the four of them and the hallway beyond “I’ll introduce you: he’s Jack. He’ll stop Black, the dementors and whatever comes our way. Jack, meet Reginald, Penelope and the younger one, Arabella” Cedric gave a twist of his wand and the suit of armour vowed to them.

Penelope laughed “Nice Diggory One. Now let me try again” She closed her eyes again, raised a hand as if to tell everyone not to be disturbed and with a smile on her face, she insisted “Expecto Patronum!” and this time the smoke coalesced into a small bird, bigger than a dove and smaller than a raven. Penelope pumped her fist in celebration. “It’s complicated, Diggory Two. You kind of need to connect the magic in your soul directly to your wand, skipping mind and body. It’s hard to explain. And this is the second time I manage anyway”

“Still, that’s a nice one, Clearwater Only” admitted Cedric and pointed his wand at the suit of armour. A complex spell later, the armour was twirling on the floor and making so much noise that Reginald had to cast a silencing charm on it to stop it.

“What’s that?” asked the older Hufflepuff as the suit of armour convulsed and seemed as if it was dancing on the floor

“Breakdance!” exclaimed Cedric “Have I mentioned Jack loves rap?”

Arabella laughed “Now you’re showing off!”

“Of course I am” he laughed.

Fortunately, other than a few frights when ghosts broke into the corridor and the four of them thought something was coming, nothing ended up happening. No Black (What was he even doing at Hogwarts?) nor dementors breaking into the castle. And if McGonnagal found it odd that Arabella was there with the prefects, she said nothing before sending them to sleep.

She got trashed again during Lupin’s defence practices, this time by Eddie. She was getting more and more frustrated by that. She had always been good at jinxing, and that was supposed to be her wand’ strong suit. But as opponents defended, shielded and fought back, all her instincts played against her. Playing Quidditch since childhood taught her to think three-dimensionally when in action, but she wasn’t flying. Playing as a beater had trained her reflexes, but she also got used to waiting for bludgers to use them - she had grown too reactive. Finally, her perfectionist angle had made her casting slow. The weak jinx or charm with a rushed incantation always beat the perfect jinx or charm she didn’t finish casting because she was forced on the defensive.

“You just need your rival to not cast back at you” teased Eddie by the end of the class. Unlike her typical banter with Marcus and Eddie, that stung. But the lank muggle-born had a point: Had Black surprised her on Halloween night, her best bet would have been to have a Dancing Jack covering her back.

It was carrying those frustrations around that she went flying with Cormac by the end of the week, the day before the Quidditch Season officially started with the Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff match.

By an unspoken agreement, Arabella and Cormac ended up flying into the edges of the Forbidden Forest, where they had once dug a hole into the abandoned tunnel to Hogsmeade. Cormac landed and Arabella followed, feeling how the joy of flying and letting go of her concerns abandoned her as she stepped back into the ground. It was the place where they had been confronted by the centaurs the past year. But they had beaten them once before and they wouldn’t even be concerned with the two of them unless Cormac started wondering aloud about the location of the female centaurs’ breasts again. In short, she supposed they’d be fine. Maybe.

“Nice play for a pic-nic” said Cormac in a tone that wanted to be nonchalant, but came out forced.

Arabella subtly kicked the hidden trap door - it seemed to be in order. “Anything wrong?” she asked.

Cormac fidgeted a bit and distracted himself by watching a large black dog which, in turn, observed them from behind a fallen trunk. He finally looked back at her “It’s that you’re always busy. It’s the first time in the entire week we’ve had some time for ourselves”

“I’m doing three electives…”.

Cormac interrupted her as he sat next to the dog “And the charms club and all that, I know. But you spend most of your free time buried in those journals of dark magic!” he complained and the dog fixed its eyes on her. Cormac went on to pat him around the neck.

“I’ve returned Ekrizdis Journals weeks ago! I’ve been reading about communal magic, which is not, at all, dark. Did you know the anti-apparition wards in the English channels are simply powered by the will of the magical community? Should Fudge desire to do so, he could unmake them with a twist of his wand, as the elected representative of the community!”

“Who cares?” asked Cormac and for a moment Arabella thought the dog was nodding “Besides, we know how this is going. I’m going to pester you to go to Hogsmeade, you’re going to say you’re too afraid of the dementors. Weren’t you researching how to get past them, instead of that communal magic thing?”

“Oh, I know how to get past them” answered Arabella, no longer hiding her frustration “We just need a boggart or two. Do you have one in your pockets? Hell, maybe even a suit of armour!”

“There was a boggart in the Shrieking Shack” offered Cormac, who now had the dog’s head resting on his lap. She could swear the dog’s ears stood up at the mention of the shack.

Arabella sat right on top of the hidden trap door, deject “We’ve dealt with it last spring. Cormac, the magic to deal with dementors is too advanced. And I’ve never seen you trying to look for it or even try it”

“We can outfly them” insisted Cormac.

“I can. Can you?” retorted Arabella and the moment her words came out of her mouth she realized they hit him deep. He retorted to play with the dog, keeping whatever he wanted to say for himself. Not that she wasn’t doing the same, still pissed as she was for not knowing what had he experienced that made the dementors affect him so much. Which, in turn, was made worse by the fact that Marietta did know. She wasn’t going to ask her - it was Cormac’ secret after all. But it made it worse anyway. Eventually, she reclined in the grass “You’re so upset we don’t spend time together and you’re now playing with a stray dog”

Cormac hugged the dog “What do you think doggie, should I spend more time with her?” he said and the dog barked cheerfully “Should we go to Hogsmeade?” the dog continued to bark and wagged his tail “Do we risk dementors?” the dog whimpered “This dog is weird. Come on, there is another place we can go” said Cormac and, like a monkey, started climbing a nearby tree.

“What about bowtruckles?” shouted Arabella

“None on this tree!” shouted Cormac from above. She waited until he was high enough and then graciously flew to him in her broomstick. Near the top of the tree, just high enough so they could see beyond the treeline, Cormac had enlarged and knotted together a couple of branches, making enough room for both of them to sit and either make amends or pretend their argument hadn’t happened.

They’ve spent a more comfortable afternoon up there, into a while after dusk, when the temperature began to drop rapidly.

“It’s getting too cold” warned Cormac, briskly rubbing his arms to stave off the cold.

Arabella disregarded him, although she made a mental note to carry a jar so she could place fire in it when needed “It is autumn in Scotland, Cormac” she said, while thinking that the jar didn’t need to be big, she could enlarge it at will when needed.

“No, this is not natural” He insisted “Let’s go”

“Oh, come on” she complained as Cormac rose to his feet and, seeing him standing atop a tree, had a sudden flashback to Cormac falling from beneath the venomous tentacula in the room beneath the cerberus in their second year “LET’S GOOOO!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the now icy air. In a panic, they scrambled onto their brooms and launched themselves into the void, a pair of rogue Dementors in cold pursuit.

“Where are you going?” shouted Arabella as they cleared the forest and Cormac dove to fly flat against the ground.

“The front doors!” Shouted Cormac, already shaking. Behind them, the dementors were losing ground, but just barely, and Arabella saw several more silhouettes against the horizon around the Hogwarts boundaries.

“We can’t lead them in there!”

“We need to get inside the castle!” Insisted Cormac.

“YES!” recognized Arabella and grabbed the tip of his broom “Into a professor’s study!” she said, pointing a sweaty Cormac upwards. The halls were filled with students who wouldn’t stand a chance against dementors. She hoped against hope the professors would.

They lost speed as they climbed. To their shock, the dementors didn’t and were now starting to gain on them. “Mamai, mamai” started to mutter Cormac while Arabella was distracted looking up, for a muggle cropduster aircraft that she knew wasn’t there.

The stars in the sky started to fade, and soon the lights in the castle would. She tried to focus on something happy and channel it from her soul, in whatever way that worked. Flying beneath a muggle aircraft spreading pesticide? She turned that incident into a memory of her flying into an adult’s broom for the first time “EXPECTO PATRONUM!” she shouted and white gas came out of the wand. Undeterred, she tried to point it at the dementors behind them, but Cormac was nearly fainting so she dove to set him straight, the sparse magical gas dissipating as she did.

“Mamai, nai” lamented Cormac as he flew, his eyes closed against his broomstick.

“Mama isn’t here, I am” said Arabella with a coarse voice as the castle drew near. Few lights were on, the walls were becoming fuzzy and she needed to nail someone’s office - It wouldn’t do to break into the hallways. She tried to focus on casting a patronus again but as she tried, Cormac fell off his broom.

Desperate, she twisted around to grab Cormac’s floating broom with her left hand and dove after him into the icy cold atmosphere. She crashed into him to grab him and was now upside down, flying both brooms together and trying to hold onto both Cormac and the brooms with her legs “Grab on to me” she pleaded as she rose in the air again, flying on her back towards the castle.

But now the dementors, who didn’t seem to care for the laws of physics as brooms mostly did, were onto them and Cormac’s wails turned into Peruvian mandrakes breaking her eardrums a year and a half ago. “Expecto Patronum” she whispered once more but not even gas came out of her wand. She was helpless, in a run down hotel in Peru, bleeding from her ears and deaft  “Resirarenox!” she screamed, firing Ekrizdis’ mouth and nose eraser curse at the nearest dementor, which did nothing but anger it, as dementors didn’t breathe in the first place.

She avoided crashing into castle walls she could barely see by now. Cormac’s weight slowed her down, complicated her own panting and the position made it nearly impossible to watch her way. He was about to slip again and for a split second, Arabella considered letting him fall. “EXPECTO PATRONUM!” she tried again and as she failed she felt dementors were laughing at her in their twisted way. One of them grabbed her feet with cold hands and she reacted “IMPERIO!” she cursed it. ‘Release me’ ‘Defend me’ she thought, and the creature complied. She had, for a brief second, the feeling of sinews growing from her arm into her wand and saw the absurd view of one dementor fist-fighting the other in mid-air. Elated, she took to her surroundings: Dumbledore’s office was in a protruding tower, right ahead of them.

With dementors on her heels, she didn’t bother to slow down. Doing her best to keep the twin brooms level as Cormac shook, she transfigured the incoming window into chalk, felt herself losing control of the imperiused dementor and broke straight into Dumbledore’s office at full speed, spreading chalk all around.

There was no time, momentum or power enough to brake before the opposing walls came into them. She pulled a 180-degree turn and screamed in pain as both her legs broke against the wall.

“What have you just done?” boomed Dumbledore, his voice echoing as a bird Patronus burst from the window, while the shattered office implements mended themselves, all with scarcely a flick of the Headmaster’s wand.

“It was my turn to break my legs” she managed to groan, spatting chalk on the floor as Cormac regained his senses. He stood up and tried to raise her only to have her collapse as the weight of her body fell on her broken shinbones. 

Chapter Text

5. The Mind Arts

The Headmaster swiftly conjured a stretcher out of thin air and carried her to the hospital wing, with Cormac at her side. It was a swift but painful trip, as the Headmaster preferred to leave her healing to the capable hands of Mrs. Pomfrey. 

Arabella hoped for a quick fix but after the matron set her bones right, she ordered her into a bed as she tended to Cormac. Her feet, specifically their soles, remained painful, but the healer spent some time fussing over Cormac and, despite his protests, shoved him a huge slab of chocolate and ordered him to stay overnight. Only then, and as the Headmaster left the premises to discuss matters with the ministry officials handling the dementors, the matron turned back to Arabella and waved her wand over and over across Arabella’s legs. Whatever her spells were showing was for her view only. Worse, Pomfrey was casting them silently so Arabella’s curiosity had to wait.

The matron finally ended her analysis with concern, went back to her potions cabinet and placed a cup of an obviously foul-smelling potion in the tray next to her. “You have a multitude of small fractures in your feet, where you impacted them against the wall, as well as some nerve damage” Pomfrey sighed at this “You should have used the arresto momentum charm to slow down rather than your own body, Miss Diggory”

“I didn’t have the time for that, Mrs. Pomfrey. Do I drink the potion now?” complained Arabella, omitting that her use of the charm was hit or miss and that she failed more often than not in casting it.

“No. I’ll first need to fix every single one of the broken bones in your feet. Fortunately for you, the damage isn’t so extensive as to need skele-grow. Once I’m done, you’ll need to drink that full cup. It’s Baruffio’s Nerves Sharpening Potion. And no, I can’t make it tastier” Finished the matron and Arabella nodded, recognizing the potion as Baruffio’s first development towards his famous brain elixir. But while the brain elixir was widely used to speed up language learning, she was unlikely to gain anything from the nerves sharpening potion other than fixing her feet.

The matron cut her shoes out and then took her time to carefully fix her feet. Cormac, lying in the bed next to hers, remained uncharacteristically quiet. She had finished drinking her potion when the headmaster returned to the hospital wing and Arabella braced herself for the inevitable telling-off for using the imperius curse. “The dementors are quite angry…” started the headmaster.

“And why should I care?” she interrupted, surprising herself at her own anger.

Albus Dumbledore looked at her with a quizzical look as he positioned himself between both beds “Because, in your own words, they are there” he said and raised his hand to stop further interruptions “They are hungry, they are angry and you, Miss Diggory, should be extra careful in not approaching them”

‘I’ll imperius them again if they dare’ she thought, although she didn’t dare say that aloud. Her fear of dementors had taken down a notch now that she had time to reflect that she had the power to control them, even if briefly. Had she used the imperius curse when they first showed up in the forest, had she felt the sinews of her arm connect in such a way with her wand as she controlled those abominations, they would have retreated easily to the castle, without fear, without unnecessary risks, without Cormac suffering through the entire flight and without using her legs as a brake. That was not what came to her mouth, though  “They shouldn’t even be here in the first place!” she blurted instead.

“You are correct” answered the Headmaster “But you are old enough to realize the difference between things that should happen and things that actually happen. Now, I need to ask: have you ever used that particular curse before?”

“Which curse?” spoke up Cormac, at last.

Arabella, however, didn’t need to be told which one. Not only the dementors would tattle in their own ways: She had long known that one of the Hogwarts twenty-one wards was designed to detect the use of unforgivable curses within the school bounds and report immediately to the headmaster “No. I didn’t have a choice, professor”

Dumbledore nodded gravely “A terrible situation indeed. One that no student should ever face. It is remarkable, though troubling, that you succeeded in casting such a powerful spell”

“What spell are you talking about?” Insisted Cormac from his bed.

Arabella, however, paid him no attention. Ollivander’s words, years ago, rang in her ears: ‘a wand made for jinxes’ . A weak wand, she had thought, until she overheard her parents discussing it that very night if Ollivander had told a white lie, or a half-truth when describing it. She sat in her bed “I don’t think it’s troubling that I defended myself. You aren’t afraid of your own power…” she started.

“That’s your assumption” interrupted Dumbledore.

Arabella was surprised by his response, and continued “That… Well, I shouldn’t be afraid of my own power, however big or small it may be. But I wasn’t going to ask about that. Had I not insisted on reading a restricted book, we’d be worse than dead. But won’t talk you out of it. You’ll assign me detention, or award me points for saving us and then deduct them for using the imperius curse…”

“THE WHAT NOW?!” shouted Cormac.

“The imperius curse. That’s how your damsel in shiny armor saved you, Cormac” she clarified absentmindedly. And without realizing it, she hugged her knees in bed “But… It takes me a long time to master spells, and the imperius, I did it at once, even if it didn’t last. Professor, Ollivander said my wand was good for jinxes, but I’ve overheard my parents discuss that Ollivander may have lied, and it’s good for curses. What if it’s good for curses?”

“I’m not going to deduct points or assign you detention” sighed the Headmaster before conjuring a finely adorned armchair with a flick of his wand and sitting between the beds “You went through a terrible ordeal, one no student should face, and you came out of it with only mild injuries to show for it. I will not, though, assign you points for using an unforgivable curse, even against a non-being. As for your question, Miss Diggory, it’s our choices, not our wands or even skills, what defines us” He finished, but Arabella’s doubts remained. What did it say about her that a wand fit for curses chose her?

Cormac, in the meantime, was getting more upset by the minute “When did you learn to use that curse? You said you’d use boggarts to defend against dementors!”

“Boggarts?” asked the Headmaster, intrigued. 

“Toss a boggart in front of the dementor and run” Explained Arabella. She expected the Headmaster to reprimand her, but so far he hadn’t. He also hadn’t congratulated her, though. And it made it harder to vent her anger at Dumbledore. “As long as the boggart doesn’t react to you, it will slow down the dementor and give you time to run. They are fast, though, so you’d have to fly away in a broom” she continued, saying aloud the part of her thoughts she’d rather share.

“Good thinking” approved the Headmaster “Five points to Ravenclaw”

Arabella held her outrage at being awarded just five points after running away from a pair of dementors which shouldn’t even be at a school in the first place and pressed the opportunity to ask Dumbledore for advice “Sir, I know the Patronus charm would be a nicer way to stop dementors, but I’ve tried over and over, and I couldn’t get it right. Ekrizidis said he focused on happy memories to cast it, and Prefect Clearwater told me to focus on trying to connect my soul to my wand or something. Is there any other tip, or pointer? I’ve been trying for weeks, and I just can’t cast it”

“I’m afraid that's the gist of it. But I wouldn’t think much of it, Miss Diggory. By all means, keep practising it, but it’s a spell that’s complicated even for NEWT students. You shouldn’t be hard on yourself if you can’t make it work at your age” 

“The patronus charm is soul magic, right?” she asked “Like the killing curse. It’s weird, two spells, so different. The imperius, Ekrizdis wrote it was body magic, and it felt that way. I was like my muscles and nerves were connected to my wand. Would the patronus feel like my soul was?” asked Arabella as Cormac watched her in abject horror.

“They do. But I would be careful about openly discussing the imperius curse in school, Miss Diggory. Some of your classmate’s families have suffered greatly because of it” Answered Dumbledore, and Arabella glanced at Cormac, who at last remained quiet.

The Headmaster stood up to leave and Arabella stopped him for a moment. “Professor, one last thing. There is magic that damages the body, and the cruciatus can damage the mind. Is there magic someone can use to damage my soul?” She asked. She had been wondering about that since reading Ekrizdis Journals and never found the opportunity to ask without risking being seen as someone who asked how to attack, rather than defend. 

The Headmaster gave her one last, piercing look. It felt as if he was looking through her, rather than at her “No known magic can damage your soul. Only yourself can do that Miss Diggory. Through murder” he added before leaving.

Arabella tried to take in all that was discussed after the Headmaster left. She remained furious at Lupin, but her defence teacher wasn’t there. Eventually, she turned to Cormac “When Dumbledore talked about families that suffered because of the imperius, it was your family he was talking about, right?” She asked and Cormac nodded “Mamai, nai?” She shuddered. She had read a bit about what people had been forced to do under the imperius during the war. If Cormac was reliving his mother under the imperius…

“She wasn’t under the imperius then. Just don’t ever use that thing again” clarified Cormac and changed the subject “What’s that patronus thing you were talking about?”

Arabella sighed “It’s a very advanced spell, in which you channel joy and happiness from your soul into your magic. It’s supposed to generate an animal form that drives the dementors away, but I can’t manage to do it”

“What’s the incantation?” He asked.

“Expecto Patronum, with no particular wand movement” She said.

Cormac concentrated and, with his wand pointing upwards, he cast the spell. He produced silver smoke only “I was thinking about our first kiss” he confessed.

“It’s hard, very hard” she justified him, realizing never, in all her time failing to cast that spell, she had never focused on memories with Cormac. She grabbed her wand and focused on their first kiss, behind a transfigured folding screen during her fourteenth birthday “Expecto Patronum” she whispered. She only got white smoke.

They were released from the hospital wing the next morning, and she spent her lunch with Cedric and Hufflepuffs, who were nervous about the upcoming game with Gryffindor later that afternoon, even if they only showed bravado rather than nervousness. She then joined her fellow Ravenclaws and dared the thunderstorm outside to walk to the Quidditch Pitch.

The game was a complete and horrible fiasco. The weather had turned so awful it was nearly impossible to see the game and in the middle of it the dementors, apparently still unsatisfied, broke into the pitch. At the distance, Arabella only felt the cold and the feeling of sadness and despair. Marietta and Marcus sat down on the brink of tears, though. At least the dementors didn’t last long on the pitch. Dumbledore, angrier than any student had ever seen him, expelled all of them with a phoenix patronus the moment they showed up.

Arabella had tried to get in a defensive posture and failed again to cast a patronus of her own when she felt the dementors, but fortunately, everything was over too soon - the headmaster was simply way too powerful for even dozens of dementors at once. She’d later hear that Potter had fallen off his broom and Cedric caught the snitch, but at the time, the dementors and the thunderstorm prevented anyone from seeing it. Supposedly, Cedric was complaining loudly about winning because of dementors, but at that point everyone just wanted to leave.

Drenched and in a foul mood, they were given hot chocolate at the Great Hall and later retreated to Ravenclaw Tower, where Marietta challenged Marcus into a competition of reflexes, mental fortitude and defiance of fiery odds. Which is to say, they started playing Exploding Snap.

“I still can’t get why they make me remember stuff from when I was a baby” said Marcus as he quickly tapped into a card before it blew.

“Oh, I figured that out weeks ago” answered Marietta without lifting her view from the desk and quickly shuffling away a troll card “It stands to reason the soul stores memories separately from the mind, that’s where they are pulling our memories from” she explained and tapped the Giant Squid card, signalling the start of Marcus’ turn

“Why? How did you figure that?” asked Arabella, who hadn't thought about that despite being the one who introduced Cho and Marietta to the Ezrisdiz Journals.

“Easy, if the soul didn’t store information until death, or at all, how would the fidelius charm work?” explained the redhead witch.

Or she thought she explained, as Eddie interjected “The what now?”

Marietta clicked her tongue in disapproval as Marcus’ turn passed without the deck exploding on him “A very complicated charm that allows the caster to hide a secret in someone else’s soul” She shuffled the deck of cards and tapped a matching card with time to spare “So let’s say Arabella here was cheating on Cormac…”

“I’m not cheating on Cormac!” shouted Arabella’s indignantly, suddenly drawing the attention of the nearby students

“Of course you aren't,” said Marietta with a playful tone in her voice “But if you were, and none knew, you and your side-bloke…”

“I don’t have a side-bloke”

“I didn’t say you did, but if you had one and either of you could cast a very complicated charm, you could tell someone that secret and as long as that someone doesn’t tattle, you could snog him in front of Cormac, or anyone else, and they wouldn’t even notice”

“Wait, magic can do that?” asked Eddie

“As long as you can cast a post-NEWT charm and have someone to trust, yes” finished Marietta, tapping on a cockroatice card just in time.

“And you had a girlfriend” teased him Marcus

“Look who’s talking” retorted the muggle-born

“I wouldn’t cheat on a girlfriend anyway” promised Eddie.

“Of course you wouldn’t” concluded solemnly Marietta, as if she didn’t believe him, and Marcus, distracted, waited just long enough for the deck of cards to blow in his face “Yes! Who’s next?” Celebrated the redhead at winning the game.

Eddie took Marcus’ place and began shuffling the cards. Cho, in the meantime, perched herself on top of the desk “I thought you’d be the one to investigate overcomplicated charms” she told Arabella.

Eddie dealt the cards “Nah, she got you three into the diary of the founder of Azkaban. She’s into darker stuff than that” he said.

“I’m not!” complained Arabella.

“Are you not?” asked Eddie as he tapped a graphorn card and gave Marietta a challenging look “I’m asking because I’ve checked a book on possession from the library”

“Really?” asked Arabella curiously and quickly noticed the trap “How evil of you Eddie!”

Eddie laughed as Marietta’s turn started “Ok, no, I don’t have one. What are you reading?”

“Something evil” joked Marietta quickly double-tapping her cards

“I’m just reading about communal magic” complained Arabella, wondering if she was earning a reputation.

“See? Ministry stuff. Evil!” joked Marietta and the five of them chuckled. “Now, seriously, isn’t the fidelius covered there?” she asked when they calmed down.

“Yep, but I didn’t reach that far” said Arabella as Marietta faced a sudden defeat and had the full deck blown in her face. Eddie pumped his fist Arabella sat in Marietta’s place.

“And you, Cho? Are you up to something?” asked Eddie to pass the time as Arabella shuffled the deck.

“Oh, yes. But that’s for me and the girls” she said with a smile. Eddie nodded and stroked an imaginary beard, drawing more laughs and losing him the game as he waited too long to tap on his cards.

They found out what Cho was up to after dinner, as they were preparing to sleep and Cho, uncharacteristically of her, showed them a booklet she must have obtained from the library.

“The Mind Arts and You: A Practical Guide?” asked Marietta, squinting her eyes in the low light.

Cho smiled “Lumos” she said, lighting up the tip of her wand and opened the book in the prologue “You read this not just because you have an inquisitive mind. You also want to inquire about other minds, inquisitive or not. Legilimency is the technique you’re looking for. Legilimency allows you to delve inside the mind of those around you, whether they are your peers, your bosses, your enemies or even your friends! With proper training, none will be able to hide a lie from you and, should you want it, you’ll know what the people around you are up to”

“Wow” said Arabella, pondering the implications. She had never heard about such magic.

“But how advanced is it?” asked Marietta “Are we going to spend months on this, like Ara and the patronus charm? I mean, can we actually learn it?”

Cho nodded “The basics seem to be, like, basic. It’s just a simple charm. The more advanced techniques should take years, though. For the attack, the book says a skilled legilimens can use the spell not just non-verbally but also wandlessly” Cho beamed at this. Arabella knew Cho envied her parents’ ability to do magic without a wand. Having been trained with a wand, Cho was able to perform more refined magic than the more goblin-like magic her parents were taught in their homeland, but that wand training had also stunted her ability to do wandless magic, as did to all wand-carriers. “For the defence, there are two techniques. One we already know: a shield charm. The problem is casting it when someone is perusing your mind. The other is a passive skill called occlumency, but that’s for adults only”

“Why?” asked Marietta.

Cho flipped the pages into some advanced chapter “It says here the youngest known occlumens was some twenty-one years old guy. So, occlumency is about holding an attacker at bay by not letting him peruse through your mind. And since legilimency is done by looking at patterns of memories woven together by emotions, occlumency is about hiding your emotions. But it says here the hormonal changes during adolescence prevent the mind from accomplishing it. Which makes no sense, because hormones are in the body and this is the mind” finished Cho, closing the book in frustration.

“Ah, but the mind is the bridge between the body and the soul” explained Arabella, quoting Ekrizdis “so if one of the bridge’s pillars is shaky, the entire bridge must be”

Marietta turned on her lamp “You’re no bookworm Cho. What are you up to?” she asked.

Cho smiled mischievously again and pulled a deck of cards and a sand clock from her backpack. She turned to chapter three “I say we learn it”

Arabella sat cross-legged in her bed “How?”

“One of us grabs a card from the deck. Another uses the charm to figure out which card is it. The third one counts the time with the sand clock. The book recommends thirty seconds, but I’d rather start with just fifteen. If the one with the card was unable to cast a shield charm in fifteen seconds, the third one disarms the one performing the charm”

“Why just fifteen seconds?” asked Marietta

“Because it’s dangerous” explained Cho “We could end up in Saint Mungo with mind damage. Mari, legilimens can do more than pry secrets. They can implant visions or break people’s minds.”

“Shouldn’t we ask a teacher then?” inquired the redhead.

“They’ll say we shouldn’t do it” cut her Arabella, remembering Lupin “Let’s do this!”

“How do we decide who starts casting, to whom and who watches?” Asked Cho.

“A few rounds of rock, papers and scissors?” offered Arabella.

Cho nodded and turned to the last member of the trio “Mari, are you in?”

Marietta considered it for a moment. She could, after all, be the one to arbitrate the time “Yes. You all realize we’ll never lose a rock, paper and scissors game again if we master this, right?” she said, a sly smile on her face.

Cho beamed “Yes. We need to go slow, though. We don’t learn non-verbal magic until the sixth year, and I don’t know if we’ll accomplish wandless legilimency before we graduate. So I say we just focus on mastering the charm now, and see if we can cast a shield charm while under its influence. We have years. Let’s do it slowly” she insisted.

After a few rounds of rock, paper and scissors, Cho and Marietta would do the first rounds of caster and ‘victim’ while Arabella controlled the time. Neither could shield herself so Arabella disarmed them when the fifteen seconds were up. The two of them breathed heavily, none could figure out the other one’s card. And it was soon Marietta's turn to use legilimency against Arabella. She grabbed a card from the deck, the Jack of Spades, and saw Marietta’s wand pointing straight at her.

The redhead smiled “Legilimens!”

She was now falling on a deck of cards, memories of past card games, both regular and exploding snap flashing through her mind. She was reminded of playing Euchre with Cedric against the Weasley Twins and told herself she should cast a shield. Suddenly, the memories stopped flooding and she felt herself back into the room. Cho held Marietta’s wand in her hand. “Did you see the card?” Asked Cho.

Marietta took a deep breath and extended her hand to recover her wand “No. Jack of Hearts? And were those the Weasley Twins?”

“They were. And no, it wasn’t the Jack of Hearts” Arabella felt herself smiling as her turn to use the charm was up “Legiilmens”

It was like falling down on a deck of cards and soon found herself in memories of a young Marietta playing with Tabitha. But she didn’t care about that, she had to find out which card Marietta was holding right now. Cho said something about patterns woven together with emotion, but was Marietta even having fun right now? She was now seeing Marietta losing card games with her childhood friends and was able to switch to the exploding snap game earlier that day. But that used a different deck, she tried to bring back recent memories, although she had no idea how and was suddenly back in the room and Cho held her wand.

“Wow” she exclaimed “That was.. weird”

“The card?” asked Cho, returning her wand.

Arabella threw up her hands “Something of clubs?”

“You’re guessing,” said Marietta.

“Maybe. It’s a hunch” she answered.

“Do we do it again?” Asked Cho.

“YES!” exclaimed the other two girls in unison.

The three of them woke up the next morning with splitting headaches. As Sunday morning dragged on, the pain refused to subside, so they brewed and drank pain relief potions. Going to the hospital wing wasn’t the best of ideas — Pomfrey may ask why all three had been nursing headaches for the entire morning. Cho insisted they should take it easy with legilimency in the future and the other two agreed. They were, after all, in no hurry to learn it.

They split ways in the afternoon. Cho had Quidditch practice - not despite the strong winds but because of them. Marietta wanted to go over Cho’s book on legilimency. Left alone, Arabella decided she’d rather check her notes on Ekrizdis Journals. Both Cho and Marietta had surprised her with insights they’d drawn from the book, so Arabella wondered what else she might have overlooked.

Bundled with her notes, a thick robe, and a glass jar to hold a warming fire, Arabella made her way to the lakeside. The weather was awful, but with her head still aching, the open grounds were more appealing to her than staying cooped up indoors anyway. And it also worked as summoning charm practice, as the winds flew away any piece of paper and parchment that wasn’t tied down.

After a while she spotted Cedric and Sarah, holding hands and apparently coming from the Owlery "Hey! What’s up? Accio parchment!” greeted them Arabella, summoning a parchment that, at just that moment, flew straight into the lake.

Sarah rushed toward her. “Fancy meeting you here! I’m surprised to see you in this weather. We’re just coming from the Owlery because apparently, you have to badger your brother to get him to write his parents about winning a game against Potter.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t a fair win” mumbled Cedric.

“So? You guys won and if Cho beats you in the next game and Malfoy’s tiny brains continue to compensate for his broom, we Ravenclaws have a chance at the cup!” exclaimed Arabella “Sorry Sarah, but your seeker is an idiot” she said to the Slytherin girl.

Sarah shook her head “ You have no idea. The Hufflepuff seeker, though, wants to replay the game!” she said, nudging Cedric.

“Why? Just take the win, Ced” said Arabella, throwing up her hands. Cedric muttered something so she insisted “What?”

“It’s not really honourable,” her brother finally said.

Sarah grabbed her head in frustration, and Arabella rolled her eyes. She did like the idea of having a chance at winning the Quidditch Cup, after all “Is it honourable that Potter and Malfoy play in Nimbus? Those blasted things evened the odds Ced!” she tried to convince him.

Cedric levitated the glass jar with Arabella’s magic fire so it stayed between the three of them and transfigured its base into a taller tripod as he thought about it “Yeah, they don’t play fair. But that’s on them. If I take the win, and I know it wasn’t earned, and everyone knows it wasn’t earned, what does it say about me?”

Arabella saw the image of the Quidditch Cup in Ravenclaw’s Common Room fading away from her mind. She had to admit Cedric had a point. Sarah, however, was having none of it “You can’t let people rule what you do, Ced”, she said, her fingers pointed at him.

Cedric didn’t look away at her this time “Honour isn’t just about what others think, Sarah, it’s also about looking at myself in the mirror”

‘He’s overthinking it’ thought Arabella “It’s just Quidditch Ced, it’s not like they’ve brought back the Triwizard Tournament or something,” she said, remembering reading about it in the notes her dictaquill took during Binns’ classes.

“And can you imagine that?” Beamed Cedric, turning his head at her and away from his girlfriend.

“Oh, yes, and I’m taking the Sphinx Challenge” nodded Arabella, who had to answer a riddle every time she wanted to enter her common room “Accio papers!” she then shouted as more of her notes were flown away by a sudden gust of wind.

Sarah, however, was shaking her head, her hands hovering over the fire for warmth. Her movements were more deliberate than they should be “You’re both mental. Honour is a trap” she said with a low voice..

“What?” said Cedric, his brow furrowed in surprise as he looked back at her “Isn’t honour about doing what’s right, rather than what’s easy? Your mother taught us that”

“Exactly” leaned in Arabella “It’s what separates us from the bad guys”

Sarah smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She shifted uncomfortably, staring into the smallish flame “My mom? She clings to honour like a lifeline, but because it destroyed our family. After father’s death, honour is all she has left - well, that and me. And the ‘bad guys’? Don’t you think for a second they didn’t believe in honour. All the… dude who should not be named” she said, shaking her head while containing a small, bitter laugh “All he had to do was to roll the dice. Tell the purebloods the muggleborns would have the places of werewolves and half-breeds in society and tell werewolves, hags and the rest that they’d have the place of muggleborns. Everything that came later? That was honour at work”

Cedric blinked, off guard “What?”

Sarah finally looked up from the fire “Honour killings. Didn’t mom ever tell you about those?” About the trails of corpses honour left behind? Because people on both sides felt they had to defend it? Or to prove it?” 

Arabella groaned, throwing up her hands. “We were talking about Quidditch, Sarah, not war”

“And the Triwizard Tournament” Cedric added eagerly

“Which is centuries old” added Arabella, trying to cut the tension.

Sarah leaned back, letting out a quiet breath “Yes. It’s how it starts. With games and centuries-old traditions” she muttered.

Arabella’s irritation got the best of her. How did they go from a quidditch game to Voldemort’s reign of terror? “That’s the madness of our parents’ generation. I don’t need to live my life with that on my back!”

Sarah stiffened at that, before turning her gaze at a fleeting parchment and summoning it “Lucky you. Accio” she said as another part of Arabella’s notes flew to her hands and, to her horror, she read it. “What is wrong with you?” She exclaimed, her eyes wide open as she read Arabella’s handwriting.

“Huh, that’s a book I’ve copied,” said Arabella, extending her hand to grab the parchment, but Sarah gave it to Cedric instead.

Sarah exhaled loudly “A book about setting dementors on pregnant women?” she said with her finger nearly on top of Arabella’s chest, accusingly, as Cedric stared wide-eyed.

“Uh, well, Ekrizdis was evil. But what’s done is done, we may as well learn from it” tried to explain Arabella.

Cedric looked at her as if he’s never seen her before “What can you possibly learn from that?”

“That the human soul only shows up in fetuses by the third month of pregnancy”

Sarah froze mid-motion and gestured wildly at Arabella’s notes. “You two are out of your minds! There is so much more to life than this—than honour and… and this !” She pointed at the parchment. “There’s beauty, there’s music, there’s love and light. And instead, you’re sitting here obsessing over—and misinterpreting —a book so foul it shouldn’t even exist! It doesn’t say the soul appears in the third month, Arabella. It says that’s when the dementors can smell it!”

Arabella flinched but didn’t back down. She considered her words. “Okay, fine. These notes—and the book they came from—are horrible. But you know what? This book saved me from the dementors just two days ago. It’s hard to play the saxophone if you’re soulless, Sarah.” She concluded, daring her to argue.

For a moment, a heavy silence hung over the three of them. Finally, Sarah stormed towards the castle and Cedric hesitated to follow her. “Go!” said Arabella, and Cedric handed her over the parchment with a questioning gaze “Soulless?” Pointed Arabella, and Cedric was forced to deliver her an approving look before going after Sarah.

Arabella exhaled deeply and started gathering her things. That encounter hadn’t gone as she would have wanted. She wished Cedric had gone to the Owlery earlier that day and in thinking that, patterns woven together with some emotion reminded her that either Dumbledore or Flitwick must have written to her parents about her encounter with the dementors.

She hurried to the Owlery to write her parents something and make sure they’d get her side of the story, maybe not first, but at least soon.

Chapter Text

Curses and clashes

Arabella didn’t talk to anyone else about the dementors and her use of the imperius curse during the next few weeks and her relationship with Cormac rekindled. But without his knowledge, she was perusing through the Daily Prophet obituaries in the Library to find out what had exactly happened to his mother. After a couple of weeks, she slammed the last of the old Daily Prophets shut. She was no closer to finding… well, anything. Obituaries blurred together, a depressing litany of names and dates, each one a show of the tragedy of Voldemort’s induced madness.

To make matters worse, she had considered using their self-taught legilimency sessions to pry the details of Cormac’s mother out of Marietta’s mind but chose not to do it. Marietta, however, picked on her temptation, but not on her refusal to engage in it. It took until the celebrations of Ravenclaw’s quidditch victory over Hufflepuff for them to reconcile, and they still wouldn’t try legimency on one other until well past the Christmas break, leaving Cho in a bit of an awkward position. Eventually, Marietta explained to her that Cormac’s mother had died because of the war, but after the war. But she didn’t know exactly when: she had learnt the story - which she still refused to share - when she was a child and, as far as she was concerned, it was just the tragic story of one of her mother’s boyfriends.

Amos and Eleanor’s return letter regarding her run-in with dementors had come a week after the incident and Arabella ended up tossing it into the fire. Regarding the dementors, her father wrote her that the ministry decided to rotate them in and out from Azkaban, so they wouldn’t get so hungry - which was as awful as it sounded. But about her use of an unforgivable curse, it read like her mother was supportive, but her father wasn’t. Instead, he considered dark magic both a dangerous temptation and the means of weak wizards. Arabella wasn’t looking forward to that conversation, but the Christmas holidays came anyway. Amos and Eleanor picked up Arabella and Cedric from King’s Cross as it was now customary and apparated them to just outside Sunny Dome, their home, during a snowy evening.

With her guard up, Arabella sat in the dining room along with the rest of her family. It didn’t turn out that bad. If anything, Cedric’s disappointed reaction at figuring out how Arabella had outrun the dementors hurt her the most, but her mother pointed him out that the opposite of evil was good, not weak.

Her father, as she had guessed, was the less appreciative of the two — and that was an understatement. He started by pointing out how the imperius was the easiest of the unforgivables to cast and how quickly people ended up tempted to its repeated use - without hesitating to point his finger at her as he did, even though she used it in a soul sucking non-being and not against a person. Arabella studied her father's face, searching for a flicker of something – pain, regret, anything – that might explain his vehemence. Whatever he was on about, it wasn’t about her, and that irked her for the same reasons Sarah had pissed her off months earlier: It had been their war, not hers. Finally, her father compromised in that he was indeed happy she had survived (“Wow” she thought), but she shouldn’t ever use the imperius again unless it was a life or death situation and he’d be very disappointed with her if she had to rely on dark magic by the time she became of age - whatever dangers she may face once she became an adult, he believed she should be able to deal with without resorting to the dark arts. Not even her mother came to her defense at that.

“Dark magic is a shortcut, Ara. It’s weakness disguised as power. Remember, Dumbledore didn’t resort to the dark arts and he beat Grindelwald anyway” He told her, his blackberry pie forgotten. It was left unsaid, though, that Dumbledore had not defeated Voldemort. The Potters had, and however they did it, the Ministry kept it under wraps. Out of politeness - and to avoid more fighting - she finished her dessert and then grabbed her broom to go to the house’s terrace. It was cold outside, but she didn’t feel like staying indoors after the argument.

On what started as a lighter note, Cho invited Cedric and her to watch the Tutshill Tornados game against the Pride of Portee days before Christmas along with her parents. They did have to pester their parents to let them go watch it: According to the Ministry gossip, the hooligans from the major teams were jockeying for influence in the Ministry for seats and accommodations for the upcoming World Cup, and they were doing it by making a mess - because, as far as they believed, hexing their rivals was the way to get better, rather than worse, treatment by the Department of Magical Games and Sports.

But after reassurances from the Changs, the Diggory siblings got permission anyway. It was an exciting game, much faster-paced than Hogwarts games. Even better, the Tornadoes were victorious - coach Davies team looked primed to win the championship at this rate. And filled with excitement, the two Diggories and the three Changs joined the mass of fans celebrating in the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow… until the disgruntled Portree’s hooligans started a riot, and the Tornados’ hooligans jumped in.

The crowd either ran or apparated away at once while the air filled the smell of ozone as hexes clashed into shields. Among the screams, the Changs and the Diggory siblings tried to run away, since none of them could apparate, but as they rounded a corner to reach the muggle areas of the town they were jumped by three Portee hooligans hexing them. Two of them missed, but Mrs. Chang screamed behind them as she started puking slugs. Cedric immediately cast a shield to cover them all, as Cho turned around to tend to her mother. The hooligan in the middle cast another slug-vomiting hex at them but Arabella, recognizing the spell he cast, fired the counterhex and smiled as her jet of light bent itself into her foe’s hex and cancelled it amid the show of colours of hexes bouncing of Cedric’s shield. Incised, she fired a backfiring jinx and laughed as one of their attackers’ legs started dancing tap, his own jinx hitting him instead.

Her joy didn’t last: Cedric’s shield broke under the joint spells of the remaining two hooligans and the shield she conjured to replace it shattered at once when challenged. She braced for the incoming hexes but, out of the corner of her eyes, she saw lamp posts moving in the air, towards the hooligans: Cho’s parents were back in action. Another random wizard tried to join the squabble but Cedric quickly dispatched him with a stunner.

“Oi, you’re no fun at all!” dared to complain the remaining unhexed hooligan and now that the Changs were back in the fight, Arabella risked a legilimency probe on him. He intended to fire a horn-tongue hex at her before running away and Arabella intended to deflect it, except that the time she took to cast the spoken legilimency probe left her without time to shield or deflect - she huffed as her tongue grew into a horn growing out of her mouth.  The tap-dancing hooligan had, in the meantime, dispelled his own backfiring jinx and Cedric looked out for blood as Cho healed Arabella. Mrs Chang, however, held Cedric back as Cho’s father finished intricately complex motions and wandlessly summoned a massive blue dish out of thin air - the largest shield charm all of them had ever seen. The hooligans took a moment to look at it awestruck and ran away.

Cho finished to restore Arabella’s tongue who, filled with adrenaline, tried to chase after the hooligans, but Mr. Chang held her back just like his wife was holding Cedric. “Boys, let’s go” he ordered, and after a few more attempts to get away, the Diggory siblings finally complied and were herded by the Changs to the nearest floo. The Changs ordered the Diggories to go first, to ensure their safety.

“Not a word to mum and dad” warned her Cedric before walking into the floo. interestingly, Cho said goodbye to both of them but the hug she gave Cedric was more intense than the one she gave her.

“Come on, let me show you that thing in the greenhouse!” exclaimed Cedric, right after reaching their home, greeting their mother and shaking his dust as if nothing of note had happened.

“What thing?” Asked his confused sister.

“The thing!” Gestured her back Cedric and pointed to their mother’s greenhouse. Arabella followed him intrigued and Cedric closed the door behind her “Did you see their faces when their spells rebounded on my shield?” exclaimed Cedric, smiling ear to ear.

Arabella laughed, finally realizing there wasn’t anything in the greenhouse her brother wanted to show her “And when I got that guy hit with his own jinx?”

Cedric laughed aloud and they spent a while rerunning the short fight, emerging from the greenhouse only after their adrenaline was finally exhausted. They tried to reassure their parents nothing had happened before heading to their respective bedrooms to sleep. Their parents were left fully aware that something had happened and that a floo call to the Changs the next morning was a good idea. And so, by the next morning, both siblings received a good talk about not getting into unnecessary fights, although Amos couldn’t hide his pride - for both of them - when Cedric went into yet another retelling of last night’s fight.

The New Year came soon after and a few days later the Diggory siblings were back at school. As they sat for their first class - Defense against the Dark Arts - Arabella spent no time telling her classmates about their fight at the end of the Tornados vs. Portee game, with Cho adding in her own comments. The way Cho mentioned Cedric made Arabella think Cho may be starting to fancy her brother, but she was distracted by the very important thought of two of her friends fighting for Cedric by Professor Lupin, who had every intention of giving a class.

Professor Lupin turned it into a practical lesson, which was a nice change, as his morning classes tended to be slower and theoretical. Arabella paired with Cormac and either she was becoming better or her boyfriend was going easy on her. She got the answer to that a while later, when Lupin separated them and paired her with Eddie. The muggle-born wasted no time in giving her quite the trashing, as he was now getting used to.

By the end of the class, Professor Lupin called her apart. To her surprise, he was giving some other student lessons on the Patronus charm and offered her to join in. The key was that this other student’s boggart was expected to be a dementor, which would allow them to practice on something close to the real thing - and they would learn not to get cocky should they manage a good enough charm.

“Do you really think I’d go taunt a dementor?” Retorted Arabella

“I was fourteen once” he answered. Arabella didn’t deign an answer to that, but was at the door of his study on Thursday, right after the Charms Club.

She was checking her robe's inner pockets for damage - they have been practising the undetectable extension charm at the Club and while none of the Fourth years in the Club had managed, her pockets had become temperamental - when she was joined by none other than Harry Potter. “Huh, Potter. I’m waiting for Lupin” she said as she put her outer robe back on, causing her hand mirror to come out shooting out of the damaged inner pocket.

Potter caught the mirror right at once - seeker reflexes, Arabella reflected, worrying about the upcoming Ravenclaw vs. Gryffindor game - and returned it to her “So you’re the other student” He said.

“Yeah, Arabella Diggory” she extended her hand “Your boggart is a dementor?” she whispered

“I think so” he answered and knocked Lupin’s door. They were both promptly invited in. Arabella gave up on trying to keep things in her inner pocket and began rearranging her stuff in her backpack. She guessed being afraid of dementors made sense, although she wondered if Potter wouldn’t be mostly afraid of something else. Voldemort perhaps, or whatever it was that parselmouths feared. She had to admit, though, that dementors as a boggart beat that weird mix of desktop and old lady the boggart she had faced with Cormac had turned to last year.

She half-listened during Lupin’s introduction of the patronus charm to Potter. She knew most of that already, although Lupin’s description of the patronus as a guardian was something she hadn’t considered. She could lean on that, perhaps.

She stood several paces behind Potter when Lupin was ready to let the boggart loose. Hopefully, it would turn into a dementor. But whether it did or didn’t, she wasn’t gossiping.

It did turn into a dementor and for a moment Arabella was surprised at how much it mimicked the real thing, until she was once feeling nine years old, poisoned and with her eyes shut in a muggle farm. “Expecto patronum” she shouted, although she wasn’t really trying. She did it again, and once again the familiar white smoke came out of her wandtip… but Potter had now fainted.

Professor Lupin, alarmed, moved towards the boggart-dementor but Arabella interrupted him “I’ve got this” she said. She had wanted to face a boggart for months, intrigued as she was about which half of the boggart she dealt with Cormac was hers. Preparing a charm to face either a desk or an old woman, she stepped in front of the boggart-dementor only for the thing to dissolve into Marietta, her gaze empty as a dementor had kissed her.

“WHAAAAAAAT?” She shirked and heard Lupin cursing behind her. The older man, who had just been getting Potter back to his senses pushed her away and the boggart turned into a crystal ball, which he easily turned into a popping balloon and back into the closet.

“Are you both alright?” said Lupin.

Potter muttered an affirmative as he ate a chocolate frog. Arabella wondered what food existed for boggart encounters. “I should be” she finally said, panting and trying to get the image of a soulless Marietta out of her mind.

“It’s getting worse” admitted Potter after finishing his chocolate “I could hear her louder. And him - Voldemort”.

Lupin looked pale and Arabella turned to Potter with a bit of a perverse interest. Of course, the boggart-dementor had to make him remember the night Voldemort died - Possibly because the boggart, a non-being like a dementor, tapped into the same type of magic. Could she end up discovering how Voldemort was killed?

Professor Lupin offered Potter to stop, but fortunately, the kid was having none of it “I’ve got to! What if the dementors turn up in our match against Ravenclaw and I fall again?”

“That wouldn’t be so bad” interrupted Arabella, and answered Lupin and Potter’s outraged faces by showing off the Ravenclaw blazon in her robe. The three of them let out a well-earned chuckle.

“Alright then. Are you both ready?” Asked Lupin. Arabella wanted to say ‘no’, but Potter was already in front of the cupboard and she wasn’t going to chicken out. “You both might want to select another memory, a happy memory, I mean, to concentrate on…Those ones don't seem to have been strong enough…” he concluded.

Arabella would have pointed out that she messed that up entirely, but Lupin was about to open the closet again. ‘Ok,’ she thought ‘memories woven together by emotion, like happiness’. Her birthday and anniversary with Cormac were in a few days, so she focused on her last birthday. “Expecto Patronum” she cast, her voice over Potter’s. Still, only gas and she had to admit Potter’s failed attempt had no business being nearly as good as hers considering he was younger and it was his first day practicing. But Potter fainted and her patronus remained gaseous.

“Do you want to do the honours?” asked Lupin pointing at the boggart-dementor, another chocolate frog in his hand.

Arabella nodded “How do you turn that into something funny?”

“Imagining them as clowns usually does the trick”

She stepped forward. This time it was Ginny who stood soulless in front of her. Determined, she pictured a clown Ginny and with a shout of “riddikulus” she banished the boggart into the closet. There was at least one non-being she could take on.

Potter, in the meantime, was sobbing “I heard my dad. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him — he tried to take on Voldemort himself, to give my mum time to run for it…” he confessed, telling two strangers more than Cormac and Marcus had ever confided in her.

“You’ve heard James?” said Lupin, his voice breaking.

“Yeah… why, you didn’t know my dad, did you?”

“I… I did, as a matter of fact. We were friends at Hogwarts. Listen, both of you, perhaps we should leave it here for tonight…the charm is ridiculously advanced” started Lupin and Arabella thought that was almost half the reason. The exposure to the boggart-dementor was getting to the three of them “I shouldn’t have suggested putting you through this” he admitted.

But at that Potter sprang out, wand in hand, towards the cupboard where the boggart hid. He was mental, Arabella thought. Resigned, Lupin opened the cupboard for a third time before Arabella could even think to react and this time Potter’s failed patronus was on par with hers. She ended up cheating a bit, casting her patronus as an exhausted Lupin pushed the boggart back into the cupboard. She failed - again - but at least her gas cloud was bigger than Potters. The Professor gave them slabs of chocolates and sent them on their way. Potter, however, insisted on asking him about his past, this time about Black, because the kid was both mental and relentless.

Arabella, however, ony paid half attention and was soon traversing with Potter their common part of the path towards their respective towers, lost in her own thoughts. She understood seeing Marietta, but Ginny? It had to be because of Potter - and a redhead forming a mental pattern towards another redhead. Arabella watched Potter walk away, a knot tightening in her stomach. She'd told Ginny to come to her, but she'd done nothing and had totally forgotten to check on her younger neighbour.

Potter suddenly did a turn at a random suit of armour, uncovering a hidden passage. “What in Merlin’s name?” asked Arabella.

“Shortcut” shrugged Potter, almost as if he was surprised she didn’t know of it.

A bit annoyed - envious, really - she followed him. Her feelings finally caught up with her “Potter” she stopped him. They were alone in the hidden passage “What happened with Ginny last year? With the Chamber of Secrets?”

Potter stood still for a moment and looked straight at her. Whatever he was thinking, he was guarding it “She was rescued” he answered.

“I know that. I’m asking what happened”

He took a few deep breaths “She was taken into the Chamber of Secrets and I helped in getting her out. Why don’t you ask her?”

“Potter!” she shouted and before realizing it, she shoved him by his shoulder with her left hand while her right had her wand at the ready. Potter’s own wand was into her at once “You’re a parselmouth who started school just a year before a monster that had to be related to snakes roamed this place. I’ve known Ginny all my life. What happened to her?” She insisted.

“Ask. Her. And if you have something else to say, say it, or leave me alone” He said and they stood for a minute or two eyeing each other, their wands drawn, but neither attacking the other “I thought so” he finally said, and left.

She gave him a head start and followed later. Fortunately, the way to Ravenclaw Tower was relatively straightforward from the end of the shortcut.

Her fifteenth birthday fell on Sunday. She woke up to the howling of a snowstorm outside and was quickly embraced by Cho and Marietta, who eagerly joined her in opening presents. Their gifts were simple and expected: chocolate frogs and sugar quills. Marcus and Eddie, both Muggle comic book fans, had given her an edition of a wizarding comic book - ‘The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle’. After spending a few summers familiarizing herself with the Muggle world, Arabella doubted there was anything in that book that wouldn’t be amusing for all the wrong reasons.

Cormac had left her a thick woollen cloak—similar to his father’s gift, which was a new, larger outer robe. Both were welcome, as Arabella had been growing rather quickly over the last couple of years - It seemed she had inherited Amos and Cedric’s height. Her mother, in an obvious but doomed attempt to spark her interest in Herbology, had sent her a book on useful plants for potion-making.

The three girls spent some time sharing gossip in the bedroom before having a shower and going down for breakfast, where Cedric and Sarah joined them. Cormac was nowhere to be seen. After finishing her meal, she made her way to the Gryffindor table, where her fellow fourth-year Delphine Sturridge informed her that he was practising with the Gryffindor Quidditch reserve team, where Cormac toiled waiting for Wood to graduate and take his place - Oliver Wood had gathered both the titular and reserve team and pitted them against each other in the middle of the snowstorm.

But no matter that, she quickly noted her reception among the Gryffindors was cold, and she couldn’t figure out why. If it was for the upcoming Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw match, that was still many weeks down the line and she wasn’t even in her house’s team. Wondering if it was about Potter she cheerfully greeted Ron, who was always hovering around the Parselmouth, but other than totally forgetting about her birthday, Ron was cool.

Then she remembered Ginny and promptly sat next to her.

“Ginny! It’s been so long! How have you been?” she asked as she buttered a piece of toast. There was no way she was going to bring up the Chamber of Secrets in the middle of the Great Hall, but she could at least check in on the girl.

“Arabella, it’s been ages!” Ginny greeted her, then glanced at the Ravenclaw table, where Arabella had been sitting moments ago. After a brief pause, she suddenly exclaimed, “Oh! Happy birthday!”

She then tossed a piece of pastry at Ron to get his attention. Percy was too far away, and in truth, neither Cedric nor Arabella had ever interacted much with him. Ron, now embarrassed, quickly shouted a belated “Happy birthday!” from his seat.

“So, how things have been in the lower years? She asked Ginny and the girl immediately launched into a tirade, mentioning absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

As usual, they were planning to celebrate her birthday with all the fourth-year students in one of the many abandoned classrooms that evening. The Hufflepuffs would bring food and drinks from that fabled land known as The Kitchens, and Cormac would bring his gramophone for music.

With nothing better to do and no intention of flying in the storm outside, Arabella went looking for Eddie to practice some duelling in another unused classroom. She had been in a real fight—surely, she could hold her own in practice.

She couldn’t. The moment they squared off, surrounded by dust-covered desks and forgotten books, she hissed in pain as two of Eddie’s Stinging Hexes hit her before she even managed to get her shield up.

“How do you do it?” she huffed.

The boy shrugged “I don’t know, I just shoot. You wanted to practice, didn’t you?”

She saw him casually wave his wand and sidestepped to her right, dodging -  for once. She decided to try something different. She murmured “Legilimens”

Eddie, however, had conjured a shield just in time. To her shock, they both suddenly found themselves inside her own mind, wondering what spell she’d try next. She cancelled the charm immediately.

“What was that?” asked Eddie “I didn’t catch that incantation”

“And you won’t catch it”

“Ohhhh… keep your secrets” he chuckled

“I will” she huffed, glancing at a desk on her side. Predictably, Eddie took that instant to fire a jelly leg jinx at her and rather than trying to shield, she ducked behind the desk and murmured “depulso” - the desk shot away from her and towards Eddie, who caught it right on time with his own banishing charm. The two teens stared at each other, concerned. The desk was now trapped between their opposing spells - if either of them faltered, it would be sent flying somewhere.

“Which way?” asked Arabella, glancing at the door.

“Not into the corridor. We can hurt anyone passing by” Eddie pointed out.

“Upwards then, against the ceiling” she decided and Eddie nodded.

Eddie raised three fingers in his left hand. As he lowered them one by one, signalling the countdown, Peeves barged into the classroom.

With a flick of their wands, they sent the desk crashing into the ceiling. Peeves, incensed by the chaos, immediately began flinging junk at them. Laughing, the two scrambled out of the classroom, dodging whatever debris the poltergeist could find to pelt them with - and occasionally hurling objects back at him when they had the chance.

They lost Peeves on the second floor after dashing past an irate Filch, who bellowed at them for using magic in the corridors and shouting something about them losing points - again.

Panting, they reached the abandoned corridor on the third floor where they were going to celebrate Arabella’s birthday. She burst into laughter, clutching her sides from both the stitches of their mad dash and the lingering stings of Eddie’s jinxes. Whoever had chosen this spot for the party had a sense of humour - it was the same corridor where the Cerberus had been during their second year.

Arabella, Cormac, and Eddie had been trapped just beneath that corridor about two years ago.

Cormac and the Gryffindors were already there when they arrived, so she jumped into Cormac and greeted him with a deep kiss, which caused a few whistles from their classmates - except the Gryffindors. As for Cormac, he was trying to hide it but as the party progressed, it was clear something was up. His eyes didn’t reach up to hers, his smiles were forced. He kept glancing at Eddie. On their anniversary! As they danced, ate and partied, she decided she didn’t want to find out just then. Instead, she focused on keeping Cormac in his “trying to hide it” mood. She knew she should have asked what was going on, but that was a conversation for another day as far as she was concerned.

They all went downstairs for dinner together and once they were back in the Ravenclaw’s common room, Cho excused herself as she had to wake up early in the morning to practice for the upcoming Ravenclaw vs. Slythering match. She did give Marietta a knowing look before heading into the dormitory and the redhead glanced at a desk by the window. Arabella promptly joined her there.

Marietta blurted out, "You've been fighting with Cormac again."

“I don’t even know why this time” She admitted “Today was our anniversary!”

“You two keep fighting a lot. Listen Ara, if this is about you being angry about him not telling you about his mother…”

“It’s not, I didn’t even breach the subject… lately”

Marietta casually looked through the window. The snowstorm had subsided, but this late at night and with the cloud cover, there was little to be seen “I talked to Mum over the holiday about that…”

Arabella raised her head in interest. Something good may come out of this “Do tell”

“Just don’t let anyone know, even Cormac. It wouldn’t do for people to think I’m a sneak or something” She said in a low voice, after rechecking if anyone was eavesdropping. The common room was almost empty, except for an older couple in a corner and a few fifth years studying for their OWLs “He’s probably embarrassed. His mother killed herself when he was a child. Killing curse straight at her head” she said without hiding her disgust.

“Wait” whispered Arabella confused “You told me she died because of the war”

Marietta nodded “Because of the war. Not during the war. That’s the part none wants to talk about Ara: a lot of the people who lived through it couldn’t carry on later. Some asked to be obliviated in St. Mungo. Some didn’t want to forget… and well… We just don’t talk about the, do we?”

Arabella remembered her conversation with Dumbledore and Cormac back in the hospital wing, months ago “The imperius curse, Cormac hinted she was put under it… don’t ever tell him”

“Death Eaters claim they’ve been under the imperius and walk away scott-free. Real victims get put under the imperius curse and…” Marietta shook her head in anger “Do you think whatever he’s upset about could be about your use of the imperius?”

“No” concluded Arabella after thinking for a moment “This is recent. I don’t know why. And I’m not sure I want to follow with a relationship if we’re fighting nearly all the time” she said, realizing for the first time she had been feeling that way for quite some time.

“Makes sense, mate” said Marietta

Chapter Text

7. On brooms, hearts and ice cream

The following week saw Cormac alternate between being sullen, being way too observant of Arabella and, occasionally, making a point in flirting with her. In turn, Arabella went from becoming cold and defensive when Cormac was acting paranoid, softer when he chatted her up and distant when he was sullen. The next weekend, with the much awaited Ravenclaw vs. Slytherin match couldn’t come up soon enough.

The afternoon was cold and clear - a good weather considering the season. The game, however, was an unmitigated disaster. All Slytherin players were using Nimbus 2001 brooms and, on top, their chasers and keeper had been working together as a team for years. Davies had to scrap a team almost from scratch, and the players had whatever brooms they did. Cho was pushing her Comet 260 to its limits trying to distract and even block Malfoy on her slower broom… they would have the game in their bag had the Changs bought Cho a Nimbus like Malfoy. Any moment Malfoy dodged or slowed to avoid a bludger, he had Cho on him, pestering, blocking his view, crashing into him. At any moment he wasn’t speeding away, it nearly looked as Cho was the one with the better broom. But all the blonde poncey had to do was to fly up, above the game, and Cho couldn’t follow. The Ravenclaw chasers, however…

“They aren’t that bad” was saying Marcus right before Davies got a bludger into his face as he sped in a straight line.

“Yes, they are” had to admit Marietta. Slytherin was in possession again, the score was already 100-20 in their favour, one of their beaters tossed a bludger at the Ravenclaw’s keeper with the quaffle in the area, Chloe Morgan dove to intercept it… she failed, the bludger hit the keep mid-flight and it was another goal for Slytherin.

“Just end this” someone lamented a few seats above.

By the time Slytherin was on top by a hundred points, the snitch may have heard him because Cho dove straight to the ground, with Malfoy falling on her like a blonde, uppity, disgraceful bird of prey. Cho barely looked behind to see him gain on her, dodged one bludger, and rolled to avoid the other, Malfoy was already on her, they were level, he passed her as they neared the ground, and Cho pulled up with all her might while Malfoy crashed straight onto the ground after diving seventy meters. The Ravenclaw stands erupted in a roar, Cho Chang had pulled a Wronsky Feint, on a Comet 260, against a seeker with Nimbus.

They had a chance now. If Cho got the snitch before Pomfrey got Malfoy back together, they’d win.

The snitch, however, was nowhere to be seen and after fifteen more minutes, Malfoy was back in the air with a score of forty to two hundred. And then the snitch flew right in front of Davies when he tried to intercept a pass, deviating the Quaffle. Both Cho and Malfoy went for it, Chloe redeemed herself by knocking Malfoy with a bludger and a pissed-off and exhausted Cho grabbed the snitch anyway, losing them the game.

A few younger Ravenclaws tried to pick on her, but given the dismal performance of the rest of the team, the older students set them straight. Like it or not, Cho had been their best player, but the team had nearly no chance of turning that game around. Their odds against Gryffindor, with their three excellent chasers and a seeker in a Firebolt weren’t exactly good either.

Cho redoubled her training regime upon noticing that, and this time included Arabella in it: two weeks before the Ravenclaw vs. Gryffindor match, Cho and Roger Davies cornered and told her that Ravenclaw’s only chance was if Cho became a master of dodging bludgers within a fortnight. So anytime the Ravenclaw or Gryffindor teams weren’t occupying the game, Cho was practising against four bludgers, aimed at her by the six best beaters Davies could find among the Ravenclaws. Within a week, Cho had bruises all over her body. She covered them in salves and potions and soldiered on.

In whatever spare time Arabella had, she kept on with weekly Patronus practices with Potter and Lupin as well, practising duelling with Eddie and trying to master the Undetectable Extension Charm in the Charms Club. Mostly, she was fed up with all three activities and would rather expend her free time resting in the common room playing with her puzzle cube and half a dozen books on counterjinxes, but she also wanted to avoid Cormac, and activities beat hobbies at that. 

The outcome of the Gryffindor vs Ravenclaw match, sadly, was easily predictable. Cho could very well be running ads for the Comet line with how hard she pushed her broom, managing to block Potter over and over and being nigh untouchable by the Gryffindor beaters. But Potter was a darn good flier, he was using the best broom in the world, and their chasers were so good Arabella was sure at least Katie Bell would end up flying for England within ten years. So as the game ended, it was the Ravenclaws who returned to their common room dejected. The more optimistic among them were crunching the numbers to see if they could manage the second place but, realistically, they’d be competing for the third place with the Hufflepuffs.

Cho was a frustrated mess and it took all of Marietta and Arabella’s best efforts to keep her from sending a howler to her parents about them not buying her a better broom. The Changs could afford a Cleansweep Seven or even a used Nimbus (quite a few were entering the second hand market now that teams were switching to Firebolts) and nothing could convince Cho she wouldn’t have won both games had she had a top of the line broom. But the Changs dismissed her Quidditch interest and wanted her to focus on her academics.

“And I have top marks!” cried Cho. Eventually Davies took her to a side to comfort her, give her a pep talk, or maybe chat her up, they weren’t sure.

They woke up late - it was Sunday, after all - to a castle in a state of upheaval. Sirius Black had broken into the castle again and, according to the rumor mill, into the Gryffindor common room, where he nearly killed Ron Weasley with a knife. Led by Arabella, the fourth-year Ravenclaws went straight to the Gryffindor table, where Ron was telling the story of how he single-handledly put Voldemort’s top lieutenant on the run by shouting at him - which was unlikely to be what really happened - but Arabella was mostly concerned about how he got in, and if he’d get in again.

“Where is Cormac?” she asked when Ron finished telling the tale again.

“He went to see McGonnagal” Ritchie answered.

Arabella snatched a few toasts from the table and sped upstairs. She wasn’t sure where McGonnagal's office was, but it was probably in Gryffindor Tower. They had to tell the teachers about the tunnel they had found connecting the Shrieking Shack to the Forbidden Forest, in case Black was using it to get in, but she first needed to agree with Cormac on that.

She ran into him in the sixth floor and gave him a kiss he barely returned “Are you alright?” she asked.

“Yes” came the curt answer.

Fazed, she ignored the tone for a moment, she was more concerned about Black breaking into Gryffindor Tower again “Listen, we should tell the teachers about the tunnel going to the Shrieking Shack”

“I just did. McGonnagal already knew about it, though”

“WHAT? You should have checked with me first, it was our secret Cormac! We discovered it”

“I did. I found the tunnel” he retorted, coldly

“And I traced the tunnel’s route and made the trap door. What’s your point? You can just go on telling our secrets without consulting me!”

Cormac crossed his arms, he looked like he was about to rest on a wall but thought better “So what? We don’t tell them and then Black breaks into my common room again?”

“No, of course not! I told you we had to tell the teachers”

“So what’s your point?” he returned, uncharacteristically confrontational. Arabella was trying to figure out how to answer that when Cormac continued “Are you cheating on me, Arabella?”

“WHAT? Of course I’m not! Where did that come from?”

“So why did Marietta talk about you hiding your side bloke when discussing some complex spell in your common room?” He said, fingers pointed at her “Didn’t that happen?”

Arabella racked her brain for a moment, trying to figure out what on earth he was talking about until she remembered Marietta explaining the fidelius charm long before the holidays “That was months ago, and she was using an example. A hypothetical example! That’s what people do when they think. Or don’t you try that at Gryffindor?”

Cormac swallowed his first answer and then insisted “And what are you doing hanging out with Potter and with Eddie? Remember your birthday, how you came all winded with Eddie?”

“Yes, we were practising dueling and Peeves ran after us”

“Oh, is that what they call it now?”

She took a deep breath. This explained Cormac’s behaviour since the holidays: gossip of Marietta joking about her having a side bloke reached the Gryffindors, who then act cold with her. Then she arrives at her birthday exhausted after running two floors and three hallways with Eddie, but Peeves, lover of chaos as he is, is nowhere to be seen. And in the following days, she kept her distance. The question was, what to do about it? She could try to convince him she wasn’t cheating on him. Worse came worse, there was an ongoing black market of potions at Hogwarts, in which she had participated at the start of the year by selling dreamless sleep potions. It wouldn't be hard to find some seventh-year who sold veritaserum on the side, but that would be expensive. Would she want to follow on in a relationship in which she had to be questioned under veritaserum to be believed, though? And if Cormac believed her, even without veritaserum, what next?

“Fuck you, Cormac,” she said with a level tone “We’re done”

Arabella left slowly towards Ravenclaw Tower without giving him the satisfaction of running or looking back, but the moment she reached the seventh floor, she ran for her room with tears in her eyes. Luckily, the door’s riddle was one she’d heard a multitude of times before. In less than a minute, she was in and into her room, where she got her broom off her trunk. Plan A was to look for Cho and Marietta, who were probably still at the Great Hall. Plan B was to sneak to Hogsmeade to clear her mind. Or maybe the plans were the other way around. In any case, the fastest route was down, so she opened the windows, did a quick charm to calculate when she’d need to slow down, and shouted as she dove straight onto the ground from the seventh floor, pulling her broom upwards right after she passed the second floor’s windows. She slowed her descent at once, bringing up the full acceleration of her Cleansweep Five and stopping two feet above the ground. At the distance, over the lake, a surprised Cedric was looking at her, with the stones he was throwing at the lake still in his hand.

“What was that about?” Asked her brother when she finally closed the distance to him.

Some stubborn tear was still sticking out of her eye, and she pretended she was just casually brushing her face when removing it. “I just broke up with Cormac,” she said, just dismounting her broom.

Cedric cursed under his breath and tossed another stone into the lake, which rebounded twice before sinking “That makes two of us”

Arabella wanted to joke about him breaking with Cormac as well, but wasn’t in the mood “Did you fight with Sarah?” she asked instead.

“Yesterday before the game. She got stupidly jealous”

“Her too? With whom? Can I know?”

“It’s stupid” insisted Cedric

“And now you have to tell me” She insisted

“Moaning Myrtle” he said and Arabella chortled “I said it was stupid!”

Arabella laughed and remembered her Plan B “How about we go to Hogsmeade?”

“Past the dementors?” said Cedric, deflated.

“I can deal with them” smiled Arabella pointing at her wand.

“Madam Rosmerta would snitch on us. It’s not a Hogsmeade visit day”

“So we take the Knight Bus to Diagon Alley and go to Fortescue’s”

“Same. Maybe” doubted Cedric

“Muggle London!” jumped Arabella

Cedric chuckled “And how do you hide your broom among the muggles? Also, have you forgotten I’m a prefect?”

“The muggles don’t know that. And didn’t you sneak into the Forbidden Forest with the Twins to ride on hippogriffs last year?”

“That gives me an idea. Are you sure you can get us past the dementors?” He asked and Arabella nodded “Lets get inside, I get my broom and we can pick icecream in the kitchens” he said and started walking to the castle. Arabella followed, not quite wanting to meet people along the way for now.

“I have to ask, Ced. Moaning Myrtle? How?” Asked Arabella as they went down into the basement below the Great Hall.

“Later. Now tickle the pear” Answered Cedric, pointing at a large painting covering the wall from floor to roof.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Tickle the pear. And get us some icecream” He said as he went down the corridor. Feeling dumb for doing so, Arabella tickled the pear, which giggled and turned into an open door to the kitchens

“Wasn’t finding the kitchens some Hufflepuff rite of passage?” she shouted at her brother.

“Sure, but you are not a Hufflepuff. Get me chocolate and strawberry!” he shouted back as he continued towards his dormitories.

They’ve reached the tunnel, met the same weird dog she’d met with Cormac - the dog let himself be patted by Cedric, but not by her and she casted a patronus before opening the trap door. It wasn’t yet an animal guardian, but it was at least… better shaped perhaps? More solid and less gassy? The tunnel was silent, save for the whir of their brooms. Both siblings kept her wand out, expecting a flicker of movement, a sign of the dementors, but nothing came. They should be, thought Arabella. Twice had Black entered Hogwarts and he may have very well used this tunnel - it was not like the Shrieking Shack was warded in any way. But nothing happened and they didn’t linger in Shack - Cedric challenged her to a race to mountains, and an unfair one to that since Cedric had a faster broom, but he waited for her rather than accelerate out of reach.

They spent the morning running improvised obstacle courses between the mountain, the caves and the abandoned mines around. Speed there wasn’t as important as skill, given the constrained space and they finally sat on a ledge in the mountainside by noon.

“I can’t believe we have all this space right next to the school and we never use it” said Arabella as she begun munching on the bowl of icecream.

Cedric pulled a bottle of water he had filled in a natural spring as they’ve explored and transfigured a couple of pebbles into makeshift cups “This entire place used to be filled with little hamlets, cabins for people who lived apart from each other and creatures of all kinds. Ranrok’s Rebellion happened on this countryside because it was inhabited, not because it wasn’t!”

“What happened then?” asked Arabella taking in the view. The area was beautiful.

“You-Know-Who. Ranrok and Grindelwald’s wars did a number in the population and the migration there, even if it was due wizards leaving to fight in the continent during Grindelwald’s time. And muggle encroachment as their population grew also made the ministry reduce the size of this preserve. But mostly? You-Know-Who. The people living in the countryside fled for Hogsmeade for protection, or abroad. Poachers did the animals. I want to repopulate this place” finished explaining Cedric.

“How do you even plan to do that?” asked Arabella as she passed back the bowl of icecream.

“Within the ministry. I don’t want to follow dad just because it’s the family tradition. I want to make things better, to make a difference”

“Hope you can. But in the meantime, can you explain me how can Sarah possibly be jealous of Myrtle?” she finally said.

Cedric shook his head in denial “Myrtle doesn’t just haunt the second floor bathroom. She also haunts the prefect’s bathroom… which has a massive pool that’s more a swimming pool rather than a bathtub” he started to explain her.

“Ok, I don’t think I want to know that much but still, you can’t do anything with a ghost! It’s… it’s a ghost, it just runs right through you!”

“I know. Explain it to her! What about you? Why did you break up?”

“Jealousy too, he believed I was cheating on him with Eddie and Potter”

“With both of them?” He mocked

Arabella swated him on the shoulder “I didn’t do anything. But he listened to a stupid rumour, I avoided him, and he got the idea. Good riddance, though”

“What will you do now?” He asked once he finished the last bit of strawberry.

“I don’t know. Try to finally add an extension charm to this pocket?” she said, pointing at her robe’s inner pocket. She looked at it with concern. With all the times she had tried, she wasn’t sure how it would end up reacting to more enchantments.

“Do you want the pocket or do you want to master the spell? Because having your broom on yourself can be handy with the dementors around” offered Cedric.

“You think you can pull it off? This pocket is getting very temperamental by now”

He did it. On the second try, after drenching both of them on water the pocket happened to erupt on his first time. It had grown temperamental after all.