Two classes' worth of sleep later, Tom had recovered enough to function like a human being again. When he heard about Lupin's plan for the duelling sessions, his reaction was essentially nothing. He certainly wasn't going to step up and challenge Lupin himself. That would require him to consciously hold back, and the mental arithmetic of not accidentally putting a professor through a wall was more trouble than it was worth.
...
The weekend arrived, and for the student body of Hogwarts, it was shaping up to be an excellent one. Saturday brought the Ravenclaw versus Slytherin Quidditch match, and Sunday brought an open day in Hogsmeade. On match day the sky was brilliant and clear, and before either team had even taken the field, a considerable number of students were already craning their necks toward the Slytherin stands.
Tom was seated in the best viewing position available.
He didn't usually bother coming to Quidditch matches. But today was Cho's first time playing for Ravenclaw, and Tom had decided he ought to be there to cheer her on.
The result was a scene that left most of the crowd momentarily confused.
Floating above the Slytherin stands was an enormous banner, larger and more brilliantly enchanted than anything else in the stadium, blazing with the words: RAVENCLAW, GO! CHO WILL DEFINITELY CATCH THE GOLDEN SNITCH!
The Ravenclaw students stared at it, deeply unsettled.
Their opponents were cheering for them?
"Tom, you're so unfair!" Daphne puffed out her cheeks at him. "Even if Cho is playing today, you can't be this blatant about supporting the other side. We're Slytherin. They're our rivals today!"
Quite a few of the younger Slytherins quietly agreed with her and were grateful she'd said it, since none of them would have dared to themselves.
"Is there a problem?" Tom looked at her with genuine puzzlement. "Ravenclaw can't win regardless. No matter how enthusiastically I cheer, the outcome won't change. Might as well let Cho feel good about it."
Daphne opened her mouth. Then closed it. The Slytherins nearby also fell into a thoughtful silence.
That was... remarkably hard to argue with.
Ravenclaw's reputation as the weakest Quidditch team in the school was well established. They were a scattered house with the worst collective competitive spirit of the four, and the team itself was heavily imbalanced, with only team captain Roger Davies and their Keeper Castor Bent as male players. Everyone else was female.
They hadn't won a match in years, aside from that one remarkable season when they'd caught a short-handed Gryffindor on a bad day.
The match did nothing to challenge this reputation. Ravenclaw didn't look like a functioning team for a single moment. Even Cho, making her debut, was visibly rattled by nerves. She fell for Malfoy's feints twice, and the match concluded in an utterly predictable Slytherin victory by a comfortable margin.
Wood and Harry and the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team watched from the stands with the hollow expressions of people attending a funeral.
The House Cup ran on aggregate score. Their own loss last time had cost them eighty points. Now their biggest rivals had just won by over two hundred. The combined swing meant Gryffindor was down by nearly two hundred and eighty points, and climbing back from that was going to require something close to a miracle.
Harry watched Malfoy performing triumphant loops in the air, showboating for everyone below, and found a very specific thought taking shape in his mind.
What if he broke Malfoy's leg before their match? Made it look like a duelling accident?
Oddly enough, he'd been feeling noticeably stronger lately, ever since he'd come out of the detention Snape had given him. His mind felt sharper too. He'd managed to learn three offensive spells in rapid succession.
He wondered, briefly and absurdly, whether scrubbing Snape's cauldrons had somehow been good for his physical conditioning.
...
On the other side of the stadium, Tom went to find Cho once the match was over. He'd expected to do some consoling. Instead, he found her disappointed but composed. She had anticipated something like this result, if he was being honest, and had come prepared for it. But the fact that Tom had shown up, banner and all, cheering for her from the opposing stands, had moved her more than she quite knew how to say.
Gratitude, it turned out, expressed itself in certain ways.
A look at the legs. A small reward of the kissing variety. These things were now, apparently, on the table.
...
Sunday, most of the students streamed off toward Hogsmeade. Tom didn't go. The recklessness of his fire-and-ice experiment had left both of his magical circuits with damage that needed repairing, and he wanted to use the time productively.
Next time he wanted to test a new ability, he would do it inside the learning space and nowhere else, no matter what. The space was more than spacious enough. There was absolutely no excuse for nearly destroying himself in the real world.
The recovery did yield one unexpected discovery, though. The repaired circuits, once mended, channelled magical amplification more smoothly than they had before. Something that had previously taken two or three seconds now took roughly twenty percent less time.
Growth through damage? Or perhaps the repair had simply carved away redundancies that had been there all along?
He didn't yet have the theoretical foundation to fully understand what had happened, but it was absolutely worth investigating further.
...
Evening arrived.
Students returned from Hogsmeade loaded with purchases, and the Great Hall filled with the warm noise of dinner and shared excitement. Tom listened to Daphne recount everything she'd bought, including two scarves and two pairs of gloves she'd picked out for him specifically, insisting he try them on when they got back to the common room and that she'd return for different ones if the styles weren't right.
Hermione delivered the parchment he'd requested. It arrived in an Undetectable Extension Charm bag, the combined weight somewhere north of a hundred pounds, more than ten thousand sheets in total. She had effectively cleared out the stationery shop.
"What do you even need that much parchment for?" she asked, genuinely baffled.
"For actual use. Deriving alchemical formulae gets complicated. I need to write everything out properly and organise it into reference volumes."
Besides, compared to Nicolas Flamel, whose personal library contained entire shelves filled exclusively with journals he'd written himself over centuries, ten thousand sheets was barely an introduction.
Hermione nodded, satisfied with the answer, and made her way back to the Gryffindor table.
She had just sat down when it happened.
"DUMBLEDORE!"
The roar hit the Great Hall like a physical force, so tremendous that the enchanted ceiling trembled and a fine shower of dust drifted down from the ancient stonework. Students across every table winced and squeezed their eyes shut.
Tom looked up from his soup, startled.
That voice. Why did that voice sound so familiar?
At the staff table, Dumbledore, mid-conversation with Professor McGonagall, went equally still.
That voice. Why did that voice sound so familiar?
One second later, both of their pupils dilated at exactly the same moment.
Grindelwald.
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