Hermione winning a small vial of Felix Felicis in Professor Slughorn's Potions class had stirred up a certain amount of talk around the school, in its own small way.
But that particular topic was quickly overtaken by a far more interesting one.
Hogwarts had once again opened an unprecedented new course, and this time, it was one that all the young witches and wizards from third year up would attend together, as a single combined group, rather than divided by their usual separate class schedules.
So far, aside from the large joint lectures Gilderoy Lockhart and Professor Watson had once held together, back in what now felt like a considerably simpler year, nothing quite like this arrangement had ever happened at Hogwarts.
And in order to accommodate everyone's already crowded individual schedules, the school had been forced, in the end, to slot the new class in on Wednesday mornings, before breakfast—a scheduling decision that had produced groans across every House the moment the new timetables went up.
For the students who'd already been through a term of PE training under Bryan's supervision, this particular inconvenience was nothing especially new as they'd grown accustomed, by now, to running laps every morning before the sky had even properly begun to lighten, and one more early gathering barely registered as a hardship.
But for most of the rest of the students, leaving the warmth and comfort of their beds while it was still fully dark outside was nothing short of genuine agony, and it showed clearly on various face walking into the entrance hall.
The entrance hall itself, gilded a warm gold by the flickering light of the wall torches was packed with groggy, half-awake students, with more of them trickling in steadily from down the main staircases, up from the dungeons, through side corridors.
Hermione and Ginny leaned into each other near one wall, murmuring about something in low voices.
Ron, meanwhile, had been kidnapped by his girlfriend. Left largely on his own, Harry leaned back against the notice board, listening with vague, half-formed boredom to Seamus and Dean's ongoing complaints about the unreasonable hour.
"What d'you reckon this Professor Rahansen actually wants us to do, Harry?"
Neville asked, yawning enormously in the middle of the question.
"Er—"
Harry's sleep-deprived brain twitched faintly at the effort of forming a response, then went still again.
"Meditation, apparently. I don't really know much beyond that, Neville, but Parvati reckons it's meant to be sitting meditation—she said it's really popular where her family's from, some tradition or other."
"Yeah, I heard that too—"
Neville said it in an idle, half-interested, chatting sort of tone, clearly still mostly drowsy himself.
"But meditation needs a properly quiet setting, doesn't it? Seems like we ought to just be tucked away in some classroom somewhere, not standing about like a load of idiots in the entrance hall at this hour of the morning, freezing."
"Maybe the school just couldn't find a room big enough to fit everyone comfortably."
Harry said it though he knew perfectly well, even as the words left his mouth, that the explanation was rubbish. If it genuinely came down to it, either Professor Watson or Professor Dumbledore could fit every single student currently enrolled at Hogwarts into one ordinary classroom without the slightest difficulty.
Neville shrugged at the unconvincing answer and said nothing further.
Harry stared blankly across the entrance hall toward the four long, entirely empty tables visible through the open doors of the Great Hall, already anticipating the breakfast that wouldn't arrive for some time yet.
Just as he was beginning to properly long for a nice, hot cup of pumpkin juice to warm himself against the pre-dawn chill, he caught, at the very edge of his vision, three boys walking side by side down the corridor to the left of the main hall.
It was Malfoy, Nott, and Zabini.
In that dazed, half-awake instant, Harry felt an odd, entirely involuntary urge to laugh.
Before PE classes had started, Malfoy's constant "best mates" had been Crabbe and Goyle—those two thick-as-a-post idiots who'd trailed him everywhere since first year.
But ever since Malfoy had taken up the rigorous PE training himself, the frequency with which those two turned up at his side had dropped off remarkably fast. These days, you could hardly ever catch the three of them larking about together in the old configuration anymore.
The crowded state of the entrance hall made Draco's brow furrow slightly. He, Nott, and Zabini didn't attempt to push their way into the thickest part of the crush the way most students were doing. Instead, they held back, standing off near the edge closest to where the Slytherin table would normally sit for meals.
"Draco—"
From the corner of the hall where most of the Slytherins had naturally gathered together, Pansy Parkinson waved brightly at Draco, and with a delighted little shout, went jogging over toward him.
'Draco Malfoy, dating Pansy Parkinson?'
The thought crossed Harry's mind entirely without his meaning it to, followed immediately by a silent, private sneer he didn't bother suppressing.
Still, now that they were all moving up into the higher years, there were, admittedly, more couples scattered around the school than there'd been in previous terms. Ron and Lavender being one obvious, currently very visible example of the trend.
Harry's eyes drifted, without any particular thought behind the motion, toward the two girls leaning together nearby but before his gaze had even fully turned to properly look at them, something happening over on Malfoy's side of the hall made him narrow his eyes and refocus sharply instead.
The listless, just-woken-up expression that had been sitting on Malfoy's face changed colour the very moment Pansy tried to hook her arm through his left one.
He shoved her grip off with a sudden burst of temper and glared at her with an intensity that seemed considerably disproportionate to the small gesture that had provoked it.
Pansy, for her part, looked hurt by the reaction.
This wasn't the first time he'd seen that reaction from Malfoy.
Was Malfoy especially touchy about that particular arm? But it hadn't looked injured at all, as far as Harry could tell from this distance there was no bandaging visible beneath the sleeve.
The image of that door from his recurring dream—the one that never, ever seemed to actually open leapt back into Harry's mind, arriving right alongside the memory of Malfoy sneaking off behind his mother's back over the summer, slipping into Borgin and Burkes to purchase something described as capable of breaking through powerful magical protections.
There was one possibility that connected the two. The only possibility—
Harry's eyes searched out Ron across the crowded hall, but he hesitated a moment upon finding him, then decided against disturbing Ron and Lavender, thoroughly glued together as they currently were.
He squeezed his way instead between Neville and Dean, working through the press of bodies, and came up in front of Hermione and Ginny.
"What's wrong, Harry?"
The moment she properly saw his face, Hermione already had a fairly accurate idea that something specific was up.
Facing two pairs of curious, bright, expectant eyes now on him, Harry hesitated for a moment, then said, lowering his voice:
"I need someone to do me a favour—"
"Oh, come off it, Potter—"
Hermione rolled her eyes at the vague opening.
"Since when did you learn to beat around the bush like that? Just say what you actually mean."
Ginny, grinning at him from beside Hermione, made Harry's cheeks go faintly red at the attention.
He took a deep breath and, as discreetly as he could manage in the crowded hall, pointed toward the far end of where the Slytherins had gathered, at Malfoy and the others standing together, chatting in low voices.
"Errr…. I think there's something not quite right about Malfoy's left hand."
"Something not right about his left hand?"
Hermione, sharp as ever despite the early hour, eyed Harry with immediate, focused suspicion.
"You think Malfoy's got something hidden up his sleeve?"
Laying the whole theory out properly in a place this crowded, with this many ears potentially in range, wasn't remotely wise, so Harry gave only a small shake of his head in response.
"I want to find out for certain—so I need someone to help me actually test it out—"
"Test it out?"
Hermione's gaze turned keener, still fixed intently on Harry's face now.
"How, exactly, are you planning to go about that?"
'How, indeed,' Harry thought.
He certainly couldn't go about it by using a Severing Charm to slice Malfoy's entire left sleeve clean off in the middle of the crowded entrance hall, could he?
Harry thought it over carefully for a few seconds.
"You two just walk past Malfoy like it's nothing at all, and brush against his left arm in passing—that's all."
"Harry, if you're suspecting—"
Hermione was clearly gearing up to press the point further, but Ginny got there first, agreeing readily before Hermione could finish.
"Just bumping his arm—that's easy enough to manage. I'll do it."
Harry hadn't quite expected Ginny to agree so immediately, without hesitation. He looked at her with a mixture of genuine surprise, gratitude, and something warmer across his expression all at once.
"Oh—er, thanks, Ginny. Really. Just jostle that arm of his a bit as you pass, no need to go to any trouble actually trying to rip his whole sleeve off or anything like that."
Ginny laughed at that and the sight of her bright lovely smile sent a small jolt straight through Harry's chest. He pretended, immediately to be watching Malfoy across the hall instead, so that he could quickly look away from her before she noticed anything in his own expression.
Hermione, for her part, still clearly harboured reservations about the wisdom of Harry's plan to go deliberately provoking a confrontation, however small, with Malfoy though she didn't voice any objection to it either.
"He's here."
The chattering, half-awake students scattered around the entrance hall suddenly fell quiet, and as one body, turned to look toward the staircase leading up from the second floor.
It was Professor Flomide Rahansen.
He'd traded the simple beige linen robes he'd been wearing the past two days for proper wizard's robes now, matching, at least in basic form, everyone else's.
He didn't seem entirely comfortable in them either. Professor Rahansen came down the stone staircase step by careful step, in a rather stiff, visibly self-conscious walk until he reached the young witches and wizards gathered below at the bottom.
"Here I am, everyone—"
Professor Rahansen said, smiling faintly out at the sea of curious faces.
"Sorry to have kept you all waiting a few extra minutes—I was just discussing something in Professor Watson's office before coming down."
Curious as the students clearly were about that particular detail, none of them were bold enough to actually voice the question of what, exactly, he and Professor Watson had been discussing.
"Come along, everyone—let's head out toward the forest—"
Flomide said to the gathered group, his tone was warm and genuinely kind.
"Into the Forbidden Forest?!"
Hannah Abbott of Hufflepuff cried out immediately, her face went noticeably pale at the prospect.
"That's right, Miss Abbott—"
Professor Rahansen nodded, still smiling gently, amid a fresh wave of startled, uncertain looks rippling through the crowd.
"Meditation class will be held in the Forbidden Forest."
The stream of students inching toward the edge of the Forbidden Forest seemed to stall briefly over some small commotion.
From the window of his third-floor office, Bryan watched the scene unfold with calm interest as Flomide worked to settle the disturbance below before finally leading the full assembly of students toward the treeline and whatever awaited them within it.
The ashes piled in Bryan's own office fireplace had built up into a small, undisturbed heap; after a full night spent warding off the season's encroaching cold, only a few scattered embers still smouldered faintly among them now.
The pale grey light of dawn was struggling its way over the distant mountains beyond the castle, working slowly, in increments, to stain the wider sky.
Bryan watched the retreating figures of the young wizards disappear gradually into the dim, shadowed treeline, then withdrew his gaze from the window and turned away without a word.
His eyes landed on the display case of confiscated items standing beside the sofa.
The case had been magically expanded some time ago to accommodate its growing contents, and yet it was still being filled at a rate that defied reasonable expectation—proof enough on its own, of the persistent rebellious, authority-defying spirit streak alive in Hogwarts' young witches and wizards.
After a silent, considering look at the cabinet's contents, Bryan walked slowly over to it.
His fingertips brushed the small brass clasp. With a soft click, the cabinet door swung open on its hinges.
Among the dazzling array of confiscated items crowded within, one particular wand, carved from what looked like grapevine, pulsed with a vivid life of its own.
Bryan raised his hand and lifted the wand carefully into his palm. He gazed at the wand for a moment while his palm slowly stroked its faintly warm surface, feeling the powerful vitality coursing just beneath the withered-looking exterior of the wood.
At last, he extended his right index finger and tapped it gently against the wand's length.
A pale blue glow, moving like a slow ripple across still water, spread and wrapped itself entirely around the wand's length which trembled faintly, almost as if in response, beneath the shimmering light now surrounding it.
Some ten-odd seconds later, everything settled back into stillness. The glow faded and the wand lay quiet and unremarkable once more in Bryan's open palm.
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