The door to the Three Broomsticks hit the wall.
Neville appeared in the frame, out of breath, scanning the room. He found their table and crossed it in about five steps.
"Kevin. Harry. There's a fight — Seamus and Dean and some Slytherins, near the edge of town."
They were moving before he finished. Coins hit the table, five people were through the door, and Neville was catching up to them while still catching his breath.
The story came out in pieces as they walked fast. A group of Slytherins had caught up to Seamus and Dean on the main street. One of them had started on the D.A. badges — called it roleplay for children, said anyone who thought practicing Stunners would prepare them for Voldemort's Death Eaters was playing pretend. Seamus had decked him. It had gone from there.
The crowd that had gathered by the time they arrived was not helping. Crowds rarely helped, and the specific crowd that had gathered to watch a five-on-two between large Slytherin sixth-years and two smaller Gryffindors was enjoying it too thoroughly to intervene.
Harry and Ron didn't discuss it. They went straight in — a kick each, aimed at the nearest two Slytherins, and the odds shifted.
Kevin handed two vials to Neville. "Get those to Seamus and Dean." Then he was gone from the spot.
Three distinct impacts. Three Slytherins went airborne in different directions and came down hard.
Harry and Ron, who had been bracing for the immediate problem of being surrounded, found themselves with nothing in front of them.
Seamus and Dean, scraped and breathing hard, accepted Neville's vials and looked around with the expression of people whose situation had changed very suddenly.
"Could've come in sooner," Ron said to Kevin.
"I wanted to see how long you'd last."
Ron pointed at him again. Kevin assisted Harry up off one knee.
The five Slytherins were down. One wasn't. The leader had taken Kevin's kick, gotten up, and done so without the normal human response to a kick of that magnitude. His face was expressionless in a way that wasn't composure — it was the absence of expression. His eyes had the flat quality of someone not fully present in their own body.
Kevin felt the hair on his arms stand up.
He reached the kid in two steps, took his wand hand, and twisted with careful, surgical precision. The wand dropped. The arm dislocated with a sound that made people nearby wince — and the Slytherin didn't react. No gasp, no recoil. Nothing.
Kevin pressed his awareness inward — a quick Legilimency probe, the barest touch at the surface.
Imperius. Someone had this boy under Imperius Curse.
He hit him with a Freezing Charm. The Slytherin locked in place mid-movement, hand frozen half-inside his own robes.
Harry and Ron had both felt it too — the wrongness of the scene, the way Kevin had acted when no normal fight would have required that response. They stepped back and watched. Hermione came up beside Kevin.
"Hermione. Step back."
She heard his voice and stepped back without argument. That tone was specific.
Kevin flicked his hand. The Slytherin's robes shifted. Something inside moved — not struggling, just responding to the summoning. Layer by layer of yellow parchment wrapping peeled away in the air.
A necklace appeared.
It was beautiful. That was the first thing — objectively, undeniably beautiful, catching the pale Hogsmeade winter light in ways that suggested it was doing something other than reflecting. Delicate filigree, a central stone that seemed to shift color as it turned.
Kevin felt the pull immediately. The same quality as the Imperius Curse at the surface — not a command but a want, heavy and persuasive, pressing inward.
He broke it deliberately. Snapped his attention sideways, fixed his will against the tide of the desire.
The curse in the necklace was ambient. It broadcast. Everyone who could see it was feeling what he'd just shaken off — the compulsion to reach for it, to take it, to make it theirs.
Half the crowd was already moving. Some had their wands drawn and weren't fully aware of it.
Harry blinked awake beside him. Then Hermione. Ron shook his head hard, came back.
"Kevin—" Harry, scanning the crowd, voice tight.
"I know. Stay close."
Kevin lifted the necklace out of reach. The crowd tracked it. He moved it sideways; they moved with it. He could see the Imperius quality in their faces — not quite present, wanting the thing, following its movement like iron filings following a magnet.
He Vanished it.
The silence when it disappeared was sudden and absolute. Then the crowd came back — blinking, confused, hands dropping that had been halfway raised, wands lowering. A few people looked at their own hands with the slight nausea that came from being controlled and knowing it.
"What — what happened?"
"I couldn't—"
"Someone had us—"
"It's fine," Kevin said, loud enough to reach the edges. "Everyone's fine. You weren't controlled for long."
He turned to the frozen Slytherin.
The Imperius was still holding — the Freezing Charm had locked the body, but the mind underneath it was still occupied. Kevin pressed two fingers to the boy's temple and pulled.
Twenty minutes of memory. Someone had planted it. Specific instructions, embedded in the Imperius. Put the necklace near Kevin Croft. Make sure he touches it.
Kevin released the memory and stepped back. He looked at Harry.
"That necklace had a touch-activation curse on it," he said quietly, so the crowd wouldn't get the full picture. "The Slytherin was being used to deliver it. He's under Imperius — he didn't know what he was carrying." He looked at the frozen figure. "Someone sent him."
Harry's expression was steady. "Voldemort."
"Most likely. Or someone acting on his instructions." Kevin looked at the crowd, the scattered Slytherins getting unsteadily to their feet, Seamus and Dean still watching with eyes that had gone sharp. "Get Dumbledore. And let's get this student to the infirmary."
He looked at the space where the necklace had been.
He hadn't Vanished it entirely — he'd displaced it, which was different. It was sitting in a sealed case in his workshop, wrapped in every containment charm he knew. Dumbledore needed to see it.
Harry was already heading for the castle.
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