Umbridge wrapped up her speech to a smattering of polite applause led by Dumbledore, the kind of clapping that hoped if it was brief enough it might discourage further remarks.
It did not discourage further remarks. But eventually she ran out of them on her own, and dinner was served, and the Great Hall remembered what it was actually for.
At the Gryffindor table, Harry leaned toward the others and said, voice low under the chatter: "Moody hasn't moved yet. I thought he'd have swapped her before the feast even started."
"She came directly from the Ministry with an escort," Hermione said. "That's not a straightforward interception."
"So he couldn't manage it?" Ron said, mouth half-full of chicken.
He was making a comparison — Barty Crouch Jr. had taken Moody out before he'd even reached the school last year. If that had been possible, why not this?
The back of his head was answered with a sharp thwack.
"Ow!" Ron grabbed his skull and spun around. A row of first-year Hufflepuffs sat behind him, all of them carefully looking elsewhere. "Harry, was that you?"
"Both hands visible," Harry said, raising his fork and his plate simultaneously.
"Then who—"
Harry had already worked it out. If Moody was operating as Umbridge tonight and needed to maintain cover, he might well be moving through the feast invisibly, keeping tabs on things. Moody had used a Disillusionment Charm flawlessly before. A crowded feast hall in dim candlelight was exactly where that cover would hold.
The thwack had almost certainly been intentional.
"Must be some first-year messing about," Harry said casually. "Happens every year."
Ron started to argue. Harry widened his eyes very slightly in a way that said stop talking about this. Ron caught it and dropped it.
Hermione, watching the staff table, touched Ginny's elbow. "Look."
Up at the high table, Umbridge had left her seat and was making her way toward Kevin.
Kevin was mid-conversation with McGonagall, who had been quietly delighted to have her most notable student installed at the staff table beside her and was making the most of it. She'd taught for decades; she had stories, and Kevin was listening to them with the particular attentiveness of someone who was genuinely interested and also storing everything away for future use.
Snape, on Kevin's other side, was not participating. He had the expression of a man who had accepted that the evening was going to be what it was going to be and had decided to get through it on dignity alone.
"Oh! You must be the young professor I've heard so much about. Kevin, is it?"
Umbridge appeared behind him with the inexorable cheerfulness of something that had learned to mimic warmth by studying it from a distance. Her voice hit the register of a woman performing delightfully surprised for an audience.
Kevin stood, turned, and shook her hand with a wide, open smile. "Professor Umbridge. The pleasure's mine. I'm looking forward to a great year together."
"Oh, how lovely! Such a promising young man." She beamed up at him. A beat of calculation behind the sweetness — this was going better than expected. "The Ministry is always eager to support talent like yours. I do hope you'll consider joining us there after Hogwarts."
"I'm a huge admirer of the Ministry," Kevin said warmly.
McGonagall, to his left, did not visibly react. Snape did not visibly react. Both of them were very good at not visibly reacting.
"Any trouble at all, dear, you come straight to me," Umbridge said, patting his shoulder with proprietorial ease. "My door is always open."
"As is mine. Eighth floor, end of the corridor. Come by whenever you like — I'll have good tea and something decent to eat."
Umbridge paused for a fraction of a second. Things were going very smoothly. Very smoothly usually meant something was being managed. But the boy was fifteen and she had thirty years of experience reading people, and all she could find in his face was straightforward eagerness.
She decided it was simply that: eagerness. She'd dealt with ambitious young people before. Easy to handle, once they understood who held the keys.
She smiled warmly, made pleasant noises, and returned to her seat.
Kevin sat back down. He glanced at the chair beside him — empty. Had been empty, in fact, since just before dinner.
He had two more bites of food, excused himself to the staff table, and headed upstairs.
The corridor outside his workshop on the eighth floor was deserted. Kevin let himself in, cast fresh isolation charms on the walls and door, and waited.
The door opened on its own.
Then closed.
Kevin didn't turn around. "Nice timing."
The something in the room — invisible, positioned by the window — said nothing.
"You can drop the charm, Professor. Nobody else is coming up here."
The Disillusionment Charm dissolved. Moody stood by the window, magical eye already mapping the room in its perpetual rotation, and said: "She took the bait then."
"She'll be here inside the hour," Kevin said. "She thinks I'm worth cultivating."
"Right." Moody cracked his knuckles. "Let's not make her wait."
They'd gone over the mechanics three times at Grimmauld Place. The Polyjuice supply was ready. The trunk in the corner — the one Dumbledore had warded heavily and which Kevin had told anyone who asked was a storage cabinet — was prepared.
Forty minutes later, a knock at the door.
Kevin opened it. Umbridge stood in the corridor, smiling.
"Professor! So glad you could drop by." He stepped back to let her in. "I've just put the kettle—"
The door shut. The corridor was empty.
An hour passed.
Kevin and Umbridge emerged together into the corridor. She was moving slightly wrong — the particular wrongness of a person inhabiting a body that wasn't theirs and still learning its specific weight distribution. It corrected itself within a few steps.
"Safe journey," Kevin said pleasantly at the top of the stairs. "I look forward to seeing what you do with the curriculum."
Umbridge produced a smile that Umbridge herself might have been proud of and walked down.
Kevin watched her go. Polyjuice Potion really was remarkable. Whatever it took from the body it remade, it gave back grace.
He headed back inside to pass on the news.
Gryffindor common room.
He found the group in the far corner — Hermione and Harry and the others clustered together, and around them the wide, unsettled space of a house trying to figure out which way to land.
Hermione was at Kevin's side before he'd fully crossed the room.
"How did it go?"
"Clean."
A quick look passed between them. Harry cracked the first real smile he'd managed all evening. Then Kevin looked past them both at the room.
Something had kicked off while he was gone. Seamus Finnigan was sitting with his arms crossed and the expression of a boy who had said something he wasn't fully prepared to unsay. Harry's jaw was tight.
"What did I miss?"
Hermione kept her voice low. "Seamus doesn't believe the resurrection story. He said — some things. Harry didn't take it well."
Kevin looked at Harry. Harry looked at the floor.
Kevin looked at Seamus.
Seamus looked back with the particular aggressive uncertainty of someone whose convictions were load-bearing and had just been shaken.
"Seamus." Kevin pulled a chair over and sat. Not standing over the room — just sitting, like this was an ordinary conversation. "You and Harry have been friends for four years."
Seamus opened his mouth. Kevin kept talking, not unkindly.
"That's the question. Not Voldemort. Not the Ministry. Not who's right. Four years." He let that sit. "Do you trust him?"
"I—" Seamus stopped.
"Because if you do, that's the only conversation worth having. Don't demand proof before you'll stand next to him. Ask him what happened. Give him the chance to explain. That's what trust looks like under pressure."
He glanced at Harry. "And if you don't trust him — then there's even less to fight over. You're just two people who don't know each other that well."
"But you do know him. That's the point."
The common room was very quiet. Kevin turned to Harry.
"And Harry. Seamus didn't see what you saw. He wasn't in that graveyard. Dismissing it isn't a personal attack — it's just not knowing. The answer to that isn't anger."
He let a beat pass.
"This is the part of the year where things get harder. And the people beside you are going to matter. You don't want your last conversation with someone to be a fight about whether you were telling the truth."
Neville stood up before anyone else could.
"Kevin's right," he said simply. "I don't know what happened in that graveyard. But I know Harry. And my gran trusts Dumbledore completely, and Dumbledore believes it too." He looked around the room. "That's enough for me. And even if I'm wrong — what have I lost? Nothing. If I'm right—" he didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to.
The room shifted. Not dramatically — people didn't suddenly stand and cheer. But the tight, defensive posture that had been in place since Kevin walked in began to ease. One by one, people added their names to Harry's side of it.
Seamus sat with it. His pride was fighting his better instincts in visible real-time, which was something Kevin understood from the inside.
Kevin nudged Harry once, quietly.
Harry took a breath. Walked over to Seamus. Extended his hand.
"Believe me or don't. Let's end this."
Seamus stared at Harry's hand for a long moment. Then he grabbed it and pulled Harry into a hug.
"Sorry, mate."
"Ask me anything," Harry said, hugging back. "I'll tell you everything."
Neville started clapping, and the room followed. The sound of it was genuine — relieved and warm.
Kevin leaned back in his chair and felt the particular quiet satisfaction of a thing done right.
Hermione appeared beside him and pressed a kiss to his cheek before he could say anything smug.
He smiled and said nothing smug.
---
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