"I used to think I was good at ancient runes, but apparently I've been lying to myself. What does this even mean?" Rabastan complained, pushing away the text in heartfelt disgust. "Who's even bothered about what the Ancients had to say anyway? Couldn't have been that important, because they are all dead."
"You must be the only idiot in this castle foolish enough to think Ancient Runes would be an easy O.W.L," Tom said in a bored voice, not sparing him a glance.
"Should have taken Muggle Studies with me." Avery shrugged from his highbacked lounge chair, where he conspicuously sat with not a single book, nary even a pamphlet. "Easiest class of my life. Doubt I've spent more than a total of nine minutes conscious in that classroom all year."
"It doesn't matter if you take the easiest class offered if you still fail all the others," Fenella muttered under her breath, though it lacked her old conviction. She'd grown subdued, Ophelia noticed, in the weeks following their scuffle, and Ophelia couldn't help the slight twinge of guilt she felt whenever she noticed.
When Rabastan began to bait Fenella into another argument, Tom pushed fluidly away from the table the three shared and moved to sit beside Ophelia on the couch.
"You've certainly made yourself comfortable," he noted, looking from her face to where her legs stretched along the soft, emerald upholstered cushions, leaving room for no others.
"Maybe I just like testing your patience,"she challenged, straight faced. "I want to see how irritating I have to get before you send me away and decide I'm not worth the trouble."
Tom, not at all impressed, ordered her to make room, to which she responded by turning back to studying her Ancient Runes textbook with far more success than Rabastan. At least, until she felt her lower half being lifted and looked back up to watch Tom slip onto the couch beneath the them.
"And you say I'm contrary," she sighed, turning a page.
Gradually, she felt a growing discomfort in the back of her head, until she finally gave in and turned a fraction to subtlety look behind her. Fenella, seemingly oblivious to whatever Rabastan was gesticulating across the table, stared blankly at the place where Ophelia's legs laid over Tom's. Realizing how it must look, Ophelia promptly jerked away, but luckily the abrupt movement was covered by Knott slamming the door open into the dungeon common room and swaggering in, a copy of the day's Prophet in hand.
Tom snapped his silver lined book closed with a sense of finality. "I pray, for your sake, there's a good excuse for this disturbance."
Leaping down the three steps at the entrance and falling onto the arm of Avery's armchair, he tossed the newspaper onto the low, dark coffee table between. It slid across its glossy surface, eventually landing on the ground where Ophelia had just planted her feet.
The headline made her blood run cold:
Grindelwald Strikes!
The paper was in her hands without any conscious thought to make it so. She read:
April 5, 1943
In the midst of the muggle war on the continent, Grindelwald has finally made his move. In a skirmish with Belgian aurors, he unleashed an explosive spell in conjunction with an unknown number of his followers. 17 aurors perished in the attack, as well 11 other ministry officials and 9o8 muggle civilians including 209 children known to be present in the town of Mortsel, Belgium at the time.
Obliviators from nearby countries are working round the clock to preserve the Statute of Secrecy by altering the memories of survivors. The official story: A failed Ally bombing on a munitions factory.
Ophelia couldn't bring herself to read any further. What did that make? 936 deaths total? 936 murders?
Something between guilt and undiluted horror squeezed at her stomach, no matter how she tried to digest the feeling. The more she worked to force air down her throat the harder it became, until her head began to swim, as the expression goes, though it seemed more like drowning. Her lungs felt both too full and too empty at the same time, her skin too hot, her thoughts too heavy.
Was it only a few days before where she and Dumbledore so confidently declared Grindelwald didn't harm without reason? What possible reason did he have for this most recent atrocity?
"Excuse me," she managed, climbing heavily to her feet. There was a dull thud of her textbook colliding with the ground, and then she was out the door.
The Slytherin Common Room being in the dungeons had never much bothered her before, but the dimly lit corridors and warmth smothering walls that seemed to press in at every angle stole the last remaining breath from her lungs. When she reached the end of one corridor, she merely pushed back against the wall and ran a different way without rhyme or reason.
I need out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out! OUT!
Then, out of nowhere, a large figure stepped backwards from an empty classroom and, too late to slow down or to avoid him, she crashed face first.
It was like running headlong into a brick wall. Big hands reached forward to stabalize her, not at all taken aback by the collision.
"Alrigh' there?" Rubeus asked, cocking his head to the side. "Yeh don' look so good."
Ophelia blinked away her momentary confusion. "If I look as good as I feel, I must be quite a sorry sight indeed."
His eyes lit up with mischief. "I got jus' the thing. You'll love 'im."
His massive hand engulfing most of her forearm, he pulled her back into the room he'd just exited.
"Him?" she asked distractedly, despite everything she'd only just learned. Rubeus had such a disarming quality, it was hard not to humour him.
"Come on," he cooed. "Come on out, Aragog."
First, there was one horribly hairy leg poking out of the box on the shelf. Then, if that weren't bad enough, there were eight. The creature, an altogether monstrous black spider with too many eerily intelligent eyes, scuttled up Hagrid's arm until it rested comfortably on his shoulder.
It clicked his disconcerting pincers together beside Hagrid's ear and Ophelia got the uncomforting impression that it was whispering to him.
"No!" Rubeus scolded the arachnid, confirming her theory. She'd never less liked being right in her life. "You can't eat her, either. Aragog, we've been over this. She's our friend."
Aragog gave her a look with his many eyes that left serious doubt as to whether he shared Hagrid's feelings on the matter.
"Rubeus... what is that?" she asked tentatively.
"This," he indicated the spider, "is Aragog. An acromantula. Hatched him from a little egg. Wouldn' believe the trouble I wen' through ter get him, too."
"I think I can," she said dryly, not taking her eyes from the spider. "Hello, Aragog."
It clicked its pincers. "Hello, Hagrid's friend."
Hagrid beamed.
"I don't suppose the professors know he's here?"
"They wouldn' understand." Hagrid waived a hand evasively. "He's harmless, like a puppy."
"No offense to... er... Aragog," she sent the acromantula and apologetic look, "but why couldn't you settle for one of those instead, then? I hear only nice things."
"Dogs don' like me much. Reckon they're afraid. Besides, isn't Aragog so much more interesting?"
"Interesting. Terrifying. What's the difference?" she laughed weakly.
"Don't yer like him?" he asked, suddenly sounding self conscious.
Kicking herself in the foot, she lied through her teeth. "Of course, he's wonderful. Who wants a nice, fluffy kitten when you can have a nice," she almost choked on the word, "fluffy spider. The more legs the merrier."
"He's not jus' cute. In a few years, he'll be big as a house, with enough venom ter kill an entire army."
Absolutely adorable.
III
Tom's fingers curled around the discarded Prophet, even as his eyes still stared at the door through which Ophelia had fled.
Grindelwald strikes!
Again and again and again and again. It always led back to this one point: Grindelwald.
He quickly burned through the article, before tossing it away.
"She forgot her book," he told no one in particular. None of the others seemed preoccupied by her reaction and subsequent exit, at any rate. "I should return it before she has class."
As he picked up his newfound excuse, though he didn't see it as such, he nearly didn't notice the slip of parchment sticking out the pages at an odd angle. He froze, realising it wasn't merely a sheet of paper, but an entire envelope. One of the mysterious letters.
Months prior, he wouldn't have hesitated to tear it open, even for a second. His tracks could be easily concealed after the fact through the use of a simple repairing charm, a technique even the most incompetent of first years couldn't help but accidentally learn in their early months. Ophelia would be none the wiser.
And yet.
And yet, the thought gave him pause. Not enough, apparently, because he still opened it, of course. There was really no way he was going to let that opportunity slip through his fingers. That's what he'd been working for all these months, why he'd ever bothered himself with her acquaintance in the first place. The mystique made her interesting for a time, but now he could finally be rid of her once and for all.
He ignored the unfamiliar stirring in his chest, the ill feelings that last realisation bred, and read.
At this point, I hold little hope the contents of this letter will be graced enough to ever reach your eyes, yet I will try again now, and I will try again when this fails.
Come home.
There is no safer place for you but by my side. Who knows what the ministries of the world would do to you if knew who they had within their grasp. They paint themselves as great defenders of their so-called justice, despite the evils they would inflict on you if they thought it might bring me to my knees. It would, my dear niece. Nothing else can can stop me, but you. It is only Albus' softness that prevents such a thing, but we both know that cannot last. He has proved himself incapable of protecting anything of importance, and too much a coward to fight alongside us for the Greater Good.
Just return home. The next great adventure I embark upon I will not be able to convey in another simple letter that I know you won't read.
I hope you may yet prove me wrong.
Unaddressed and unsigned, intended to be untraced should it find its way into the wrong hands. That thought came not without a small sense of irony, as Tom realized that his were the wrong hands in question.
Almost without his consent, his feet traced her steps out of his common room, the letter clutched loosely between his fingers. He sought the sound of her voice in those dark tunnels beneath the school to guide his way, the same way an old ship sought a lighthouse in the night. When the voices grew soft, he was forced to resort to other means
"Serpensortia." Three snakes- one a venomous green, one a deadly black, and the last many shades of brown with a rattle at its end- sprouted forth from his wand and immediately began to disperse every which way. "Stop," he hissed. They did, turning their pitiless faces back to him. "Find the girl and report back to me. Do no injury. Do not be spotted."
With hisses of affirmation, they set off, far more complaint than their king in the pipes beneath them all. The mamba returned first a few minutes later, blending into the dark shadows of the corridor. Tom tracked it by the torch-fire glinting off it's cold eyes.
"Show me the way."
The others reappeared soon after, which he promptly dispelled, keeping the mamba as his guide only till he was close enough to make out Ophelia's individual words.
He half expected her to be in tears, so the rational tone surprised him, as well as the one speaking back.
"...enough venom ter kill an entire army," Hagrid exclaimed proudly.
"That's really fantastic," Ophelia responded, with almost enough enthusiasm to sound convincing, but to Tom the strain was evident. "And you're positive he's not going to eat me in my sleep?"
"O' course not!"
When Tom pushed into the room, he instantly knew why Ophelia sounded as though her blood pressure had reached dangerous levels, and the cause had a disconcerting number of legs.
"What about him?" the spider asked, his pincers clacking together a note impatiently.
"We been over this. There's no eatin' anyone."
Tom couldn't help but wonder what alternate universe he'd just walked in on. "What's the meaning of this?"
Ophelia opened her mouth to speak, and then saw the letter in his hand. She shut it slowly.
"Well?" he prompted again.
"I think," she bit her lip, "we need to talk. I think we need to talk about this again soon, Rubeus. Aragog... don't do anything I wouldn't do."
With an apprehensive parting glance at the spider and a fleeting smile for Hagrid, she pulled Tom out the room after her and into an adjacent classroom. She leaned heavily against the closed door, loosing an exhausted sigh.
"I'd appreciate it if you kept that interaction between us," she said at length, rubbing her temples.
"The spider?"
"Acromantula," she corrected distractedly. "He's an acromantula. Apparently he wouldn't hurt a fly."
His lips twitched in amusement. "A spider who wouldn't hurt a fly?"
"It's just an expression, you pompous..." She spared another glance at the envelope and deflated. "Never mind. Just come out with it. You read it, right?"
"I expected you to be angrier, possibly curse me into a wall, like you did to someone else we know."
"Please," she groaned, sliding down the side of the door until she met the ground. "Please don't bring up my greatest hits right now. I have enough on my mind."
"How about this?" Tom knelt down before her, so that they were at eye level. "You tell me the truth about who you really are, and I'll keep Rubeus' spider problem to myself."
"Don't act like you don't know, Tom," she said, smiling coldly. "I'm not dumb enough to believe it, and you're not dumb enough to not have pieced it all together by now. Why else would I have avoided you for so long? I knew you were smart enough to figure it out."
"I would like you to tell me yourself," he whispered, seeking out her eyes with his.
Her nails dug into her palms as she worked to not avert her gaze. "Don't make me say it. Not when you already know."
With painful slowness, he nodded once. "Very well. You're on the run from Grindelwald."