Chapter 127: The Discarded Note
"You should go and check—"
Justin did not finish. Professor Snape was already striding towards them.
"That is my book!" Hermione looked both anxious and furious. She stamped her foot, eyes flashing with regret.
She never should have lent them the book.
Harry and Ron watched Snape limp away, then realised with a jolt that he was heading straight for Shawn instead. They began whispering at once.
"We are done for. Did you see, Harry? Shawn has a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages as well…" Ron hissed.
He meant the library copy Shawn had borrowed. Madam Pince had told him to keep hold of it so she would not be pestered by begging students. She had wanted to do that for ages.
"We have to warn them," Harry said, frowning, worry in his eyes.
Out in the icy courtyard, the blue flame did not seem to give off much warmth.
Shawn took Quidditch Through the Ages from his bag and handed it to Hermione. With the Quidditch season underway, even she had been affected, especially when all her friends were interested.
Lately, she had taken a real liking to Quidditch books. She had only lent out Quidditch Through the Ages because of Harry and Ron's heroic dash to find her on Hallowe'en.
And now Snape had confiscated it. No one in their right mind would dare ask him for it back.
"Quick, quick, hide it!" Hermione said, seeing Snape draw closer. Panic made her voice jump.
Shawn, however, was staring at the professor's injured leg. Beneath the trailing hem of his robes, a wet, bloody wound showed faintly. As Snape's limp brought him nearer, Hermione's face went chalk‑white. Even Justin was shivering, though it was hard to say whether from nerves or the slicing wind.
"Ha. An idiot reading an idiot book…" Snape sneered, his lip curling.
"Very fitting for you, you—"
The last word never left his tongue. He simply shot Shawn a vicious glare, then forced himself to walk on as if nothing were wrong.
"He did not take our book?" Hermione gasped.
"That is not— oh, I mean, that is incredible," Ron spluttered, almost disappointed.
"He must really hate me," Harry muttered under his breath.
Only Shawn's gaze stayed fixed on Snape's injured leg.
He remembered that although Snape had been hurt in the original timeline, he had never gone to Madam Pomfrey. He had taken a roll of bandages from Filch's office and dealt with the wound himself.
The good thing about Madam Pomfrey was that once you told her what kind of injury it was, she would simply treat it as such and never pry into how you had gotten it. The bad thing was that anyone could get information out of her.
So Snape had avoided the hospital wing. His position in the castle was already sensitive enough.
Shawn, however, had no such concerns. No one would pay attention to a first‑year.
"He is badly hurt," Justin blurted. His eyes held the same worry. Then he darted a quick look at Shawn.
Outside the caretaker's office,
A large parcel floated beside Shawn. Mrs Norris alternated between purring on his shoulder and darting under the stained‑glass window to chase the bright patches of light that flickered with the passing clouds.
After playing for a while, she hopped onto the hovering parcel, turning into a cat suspended in mid‑air.
Shawn knocked lightly. Filch's contemptuous voice answered at once.
"Another idiot – you think knocking is some clever trick? If you do not want your hand bitten off, get away from the door!"
Shawn ignored the insult. A faint smile tugged at his mouth.
The Fanged Doorknob seemed to be doing its job…
"It is me, sir," he said.
He had barely spoken when there came a loud clatter inside, followed by hurried footsteps.
The door swung open.
The dim, grubby room with no windows was much brighter than before, lit by several floating candles.
On the desk, beside a jam jar, lay a letter pinned down by a quill and a scatter of crumpled balls of paper.
Filch looked at Shawn's wrinkled scarf and, for a moment, found he could not speak.
"Mrrow," Mrs Norris said, planting a paw on the letter. Under it was a line of unfinished script:
Happy Hallowe'en…
Beside the letter lay a brand‑new scarf.
It seemed he had hesitated so long over it that the entire Hallowe'en had gone by without the gift being sent.
"Happy Hallowe'en, Mr Filch," Shawn said.
No wonder Mrs Norris had been trying to drag him here since midday.
The caretaker's office always smelled faintly of dried fish, though Filch himself loathed the stuff. More often than not, he had a pot of bone broth simmering on the stove. Whenever that happened, Mrs Norris would leave the room.
In their own way, even if they shared a single mind between them, they still made compromises for one another.
Shawn felt a familiar surge of energy. He set down the potions and bandages Madam Pomfrey had given him, then flicked his wand. The contents of the parcel flew out.
It was an enchanted window, capable of showing any kind of weather. The Weasley twins had gone to considerable trouble to get hold of it.
Similar windows had once been installed in the Ministry, since the Ministry itself lay underground.
At one point, the Magical Maintenance staff, hoping for a pay rise, had set the thing to a constant hurricane for two straight months.
Between paper‑plane memos zooming through the corridors and officials flushing themselves into the Ministry during Voldemort's regime, many of the Ministry's oddities made the body supposedly ruling the wizarding world look more like an amateur troupe than a government.
Yet in some ways, it could still surprise. When Fudge ordered the Aurors to arrest Dumbledore, they had really gone.
"So," Fudge had sneered in the original story,
"You intend to take on Dawlish, Shacklebolt, Dolores, and me single‑handed, do you, Dumbledore?"
Sometimes Shawn thought wizards did indeed possess a kind of wildly misplaced bravado. A few heartbeats later, Fudge, Umbridge, Kingsley, and Dawlish had all been sprawled unconscious on the floor.
They were braver than Voldemort.
By November, snow had begun to drift down over Hogwarts. When Filch came back to himself, he realised that a thin layer of white now covered the grounds, and the lake's surface was sheathed in ice.
None of that should have been visible from a windowless room.
On the desk, a gale roared in the enchanted frame. Scraps of discarded paper rolled into the fireplace. None carried a single finished line.
What could he write?
Endless petty details, a desperate longing, a window that had never seen the outside world?
Or the sorrow of a man who stared too long at a solitary moon, the loyalty of someone who had never had a god to believe in…