Shadow Magic • Harry Potter X Theodore Nott •

(5) Shadows Black and Grey

He glides forwards.

The one he hasn't targeted, who hasn't spoken up until now, snaps and runs screaming up the stairs. Harry ignores her. She might have touched something belonging to Luna by accident or brushed against clothing in the bathroom. His goal is the other one.

The girl does fall to her knees, tears making their way down her cheeks. "Please, please, I'll leave her alone, I promise!"

"That was what you said last time," Harry murmurs, taking her arm. "And you didn't learn."

He flickers away through the shadows, taking the girl with him. At a point where two shadows turn and converge, joining together, he releases her. The girl tumbles away down the grey path into the darkness. For her, there is no path; with Harry's blinding shadows stretched across her face, Harry doubts she could see it even if it does exist for her.

Harry smiles and jumps away to the Slytherin common room. The way that the girl will come out of the shadows, if he's correct about it from his tests on Muggles this summer, means that she'll be found, eventually, somewhere far from Ravenclaw Tower, wandering and raving and mad, unable to tell anyone anything coherent about what he did to her.

It's all she deserves.

*

"Once again, Harry, I find myself asking you to help me. Will you please help me find out why one of the second-year Ravenclaws was found wandering and sobbing this morning? Her name is Amanda Serling. She suffered some accident that has left her—it has ruined her life. Will you tell me what you know?"

"What makes you think I know anything, Headmaster? I'm only friends with a few people who aren't in my year. Why would I know anything about a second-year in a different House than mine?"

"I thought your friend Miss Lovegood might have mentioned her to you. I understand that she and Miss Lovegood have had some less than pleasant interactions."

Harry lifts his head slowly and fixes his eyes on Dumbledore. His vision narrows the way it does when he's walking through a shadow. For a moment, he's filled with rage in the way that he's got in the past when thinking of the Dursleys.

He assumed Dumbledore was unaware of Luna's being bullied, since the man seemed so unaware of the basilisk in the school or who stole the Philosopher's Stone. But now it seems as if the man knows all about it.

That entitles him to no mercy whatsoever.

Harry smiles, and if Dumbledore sees the width of it and not the edge to it, that's his problem. "Luna never talks about names to me. It's not her way. Now, if that will be all, Headmaster? I'm rather busy this term."

*

"I found a spell that will charm the whole cage you use to contain Pettigrew, not just him," Theodore whispers, sliding in beside Harry on the couch where Harry is studying for Ancient Runes.

"You did?" Harry grins at Theodore and lets his book fall shut. Ancient Runes and Arithmancy are both interesting, but tiring; Harry needs lots of short breaks in order to keep his brain matched to them. They were the only optional classes for third year that fascinated him. Harry doesn't need Divination to spy out secrets, he has less than no interest in Muggle Studies, and the Care of Magical Creatures class looked interesting but limited. Harry thinks he knows more about creatures through spying on them in the shadows of the Forbidden Forest and the one behind the Nott house than he'll ever know in a course.

Theodore nods, his black hair falling into his eyes for a moment. Harry finds himself following the motion of the hair with a glance, then shakes his head to break the spell. "Yes. The incantation is Caveam defendo. The wand motion is the same as the one for that warding spell you found the other day."