Blaise sits up, gasping for air and clutching his head. There's a tingle that rushes down his spine, taking the pain of his nightmare away, along with any recollection of it. He looks around, and then he jumps when a shadow rushes out of the corner and heads for the door.
He takes a moment to compose himself before he's dashing out of Ron's arms and into the dark hallway, chasing after the shadow with his wand clutched tightly in his hand.
The Gryffindor starts when his arm is thrown against him, snores himself to a sitting position and just barely catches Blaise's lithe form running out of the room.
He's confused when he hears feet rapidly hitting the stone floor.
"Blaise?"
He rubs his eyes quickly and pushes the blankets off, and as soon as his feet hit the rug under the bed, a flash of light and a pained shout comes from the hallway.
"Blaise!"
Ron sprints out, almost falling on the edge of the carpet as he curves toward the door, pushing against it and swinging his body around. He runs down the corridor, hastily lighting the tip of his wand with a shaky Lumos as he dashes around corners and past too many doors that he didn't even know existed.
He freezes as he comes to two bodies in the hall, one with their feet planted firmly in a defense stance and their wand steadily pointed at the other body, which is on the floor, clutching their shoulder with a grimace on their face.
"What the bloody hell," Ron hisses, walking past Blaise's pointed wand and hiking the twin up by his shirt. He slams him against the wall, silently praising himself when the boy winces and squeezes his hand around his shoulder tighter. "What's going on?"
"He was in the room," Blaise's voice does not match his confident stance. He's unsure, weirded out and the adrenaline in his body isn't helping. "I woke up and he just ran out. So, I followed him."
"Which one of them is it," Ron asks, his eyes moving all over the face of his captive, who gives him a scowl but stays quiet nonetheless. Ron's eyes move down to where he's holding his shoulder and turns to Blaise. "Nice shot, by the way."
Blaise ignores his praise, walking closer and lighting the surrounding torches with the flick of his wand. His eyes narrows as they study the face of the boy in Ron's strong grip. "Xabros."
Xabros' silence is enough confirmation.
"What were you doing in my room?"
"Listen to me," the boy breathes, his eyes dark but somehow sincere. "You are all in danger. Every single member of the colony..."
"How do you know about that," Ron interrupts, his knuckles whitening as his hold tightens on the twin's sleep shirt. "Who told you?"
"No one," Xabros assures hurriedly. "No one, I promise. I was eavesdropping the night Madame Pomfrey came into the Common Room."
"Are you a spy?"
"No!"
"Who do you work for?"
"No one! I..."
"Don't lie!"
"Ron," Blaise places a hand on the Gryffindor's shoulder, easing him back from the twin's face. He sees how Xabros' face is pinched with pain and concern. "Let him go."
The way Ron's whips his head to look at Blaise is almost comical, but Blaise has too many things running through his head to laugh. "What?"
"I hit him pretty bad. And hurting him further is not going to get you any answers."
"Uh, yeah, it will? It's called torture?"
Blaise smacks him upside the head. "Let him go, you buffoon."
The redhead huffs, but his hold softens on Xabros' shirt, and he steps back but doesn't leave much room for the boy to go anywhere. Just enough room for him to sag against the wall.
"Come on," Blaise purses his lips and takes Xabros' arm, begins leading him back down the hall. "We need to talk."
"You're taking him back to the room," Ron asks incredulously. "Seriously?"
"He can't reverse the hex I threw at him by himself. He needs me. And unless you want to face the wrath of Poppy Pomfrey at this ungodly hour of the night, I suggest you run ahead and warm a bowl of water for me."
Ron's angry stomps are the only answer he receives in the empty corridor, and Xabros lets out a weak chuckle. "Do all Slytherins have a Gryffindor wrapped around their finger?"
"You know I have to tell Harry about this, right?"
"Unfortunately," Xabros grimaces.
"That can wait, though. I need to talk to you first."
The twin looks over his shoulder carefully, and for a few steps he stays like that until he moves forward again. "Whatever I tell you tonight, if I tell you anything," he whispers, but it's so soft that Blaise can barely hear it. "No one else can know about."
"Why not?"
"Let's just say the world has different views."
Ron is sitting stiffly on the armchair next to the window when the Slytherins walk in, and as soon as he sees them he stands, his big arms crossing over his chest. "Start talking."
"Hold on, tough guy," Blaise grunts as he sits Xabros down on the futon. "He needs to heal first."
"I can't feel my chest," Xabros says weakly.
"Part of the hex," Blaise chuckles nervously. He runs off to the bathroom and comes back with the bowl of water that Ron refused to warm, the git. "I created the hex in fourth year, since the ones we were taught in Defense were prohibited. But since I needed extra protection, I made it so that the effects weren't reversible by the victim if they were a wizard."
"Clever," the twin mumbles, his eyes drooping. "My whole upper body is numb."
"Working on it."
Ron watches as Blaise undoes the buttons of the twin's shirt, pulling his hand away and mumbling a spell over his shoulder. "Thought you said you couldn't use magic."
"The victim can't use magic to reverse it. But I can, as the caster. Well, at least to stop the spell from spreading anywhere else. I couldn't exactly figure out a counter-hex."
The Gryffindor gives him a look, Blaise stops what he's doing to roll his eyes.
"I'm not an expert in making spells, okay? Come, come here."
The spell looks like a bloody spider web on the boy's shoulder, like a connection of angry veins that starts at the shoulder and moves down his torso. It looks painful.
Blaise holds out his hand after mumbling Accio until a small vial comes flying into it, and he uncorks it to hand it to Ron. "Take this," he holds a dropper filled with the fluid in the vial in front of Ron's face. "And put a single drop over every mouth of each line. Quickly."
Ron nods and immediately gets working on it, watching in amazement as the angry lines reverse back into the complicated array of raised skin on Xabros' shoulder. The twin's body visibly relaxes when he gets the feeling back in it, and he rolls his head away from his hurt shoulder.
"What is this stuff?"
"My own concoction," Blaise mumbles. Then he lifts his head to give Ron a wide grin. "I call it Whatever Heal. It was the only good thing that came out of my Potioneer phase."
When all the lines zoom back up to the main area of the hit, Blaise takes his wand and points it directly at the wound.
"Watch this," he says.
He gives the tip of his wand a little twirl, and then the droplets Ron had deposited over Xabros' body rush to it like a magnet, taking the irritation and the swelling of the wound with it. It rises like a blob of red, shooting aggressively against the invisible barrier that's holding it hostage under Blaise's wand.
He drags it slowly away from the boys and moves to the bowl of warm water, and when the blob is right on top of it, he shoots it into the bowl, watching as the jinx jumps around trying to activate itself.
Ron walks over to the bowl and his jaw drops. "You created a live hex."
"That, I did," Blaise sighs. "That, I did."
"What's a live hex," Xabros mumbles half-heartedly from the futon.
"A masterpiece," Ron gushes, his voice giddy and completely forgetting he's supposed to be interrogating the boy on the couch. "It's basically a spell that's alive, like a virus. All you do is direct it and once it leaves your wand it has a mind of it's own. All it needs is a host, and once it has one, it activates itself to do what it was created to do.
"George and I tried creating one after Fred died but we could never do it," he walks around the bowl, watching as the hex strikes the edges of the bowl to no avail. "Seems someone had more motivation."
"He'll be out for a few minutes while the healing potion kicks in and his system reboots."
"His system," Ron makes a face.
"His immune system, Ronald."
The Gryffindor nods, looks at the boy sleeping on the couch. "Why do you think he was here?"
"Looking for something. I don't know," Blaise mumbles, running his knuckles across his chin to distract himself. "Whatever it is, he doesn't want anyone else to know."
"Why?"
"He said something about having different views."
"So the new kids are either bad or mediocre," Ron scoffs. "This is dangerous either way, Blaise."
"There is no other way. He can't hurt us. All we have to do is wait for him to wake up and then we can ask him what we need to know. Harry will be up later today, anyway."
Ron's angry demeanor is broken by the sudden yawn that breaks past his lips, and it lasts for a few seconds to the point Blaise is looking at him with mirth.
"You can go back to sleep," the Slytherin says quietly. "I'll keep watch."
"I'm not going to sleep. What's wrong with you?"
"You look tired. And it is the middle of the night."
"You'll wake me to get Harry?"
"No. I'm just going to leave you here with the person who was sneaking around in my room at night undetected."
"Ha, ha," Ron rolls his eyes as he makes his way back to the rumpled mess of Blaise's bed. "Very funny. You're very funny, you know."
*******
It's only dawn when Draco starts awake. The moment he does, though, something is off.
He moves dreary eyes around, disoriented and in a haze due to his freshly awoken state, and waits patiently for his magical mind to reel back in after associating itself with the surrounding currents.
Several alarms go off in his head within the next second.
Draco sits up straighter, he looks around slowly as he moves off the bed, his stance ready. He detects nothing but familiarity, yet somehow, the aura of Harry's dorm is odd. He notices the lack of a lump on Seamus bed, and then his eyes scan over the other beds, freezing upon the heap under Ron's sheets.
The blond spares a glance at Harry's abandoned sheets, frowning when he finds no one else laying there. That must have been what woke me, he thinks to himself as he approaches Ron's bed carefully. Harry must be somewhere else in the castle.
At the last minute, he realizes there aren't any snores coming through the thin material of the sheets, and his chest freezes. He reaches, yanks the duvet down and his heart jumps to his throat.
There's a smiling boy.
Except, it's not quite a smile. It's more of a smirk, and it's also very sinister, to the point that it causes Draco to step back uncomfortably, completely unsure of what to do.
The only logical thing that registers in his head is danger and in a flash, his hand is outstretched and his wand comes flying into it.
"Who are you," his voice rasps, still heavy with sleep, yet completely unwavering like his pointed wand. "What are you doing here?"
"No need to feel threatened," the boy sits up slowly, his eyes lazily dragging across Draco's hand where his wand is clutched tightly. "I am, but, a mere messenger."
"State your business," Draco spits.
"They're coming," the boy whispers, his grin spreading manically. "They're all coming."
That unsettles the Slytherin. His grip tightens over the wand and his arm begins to shake, which makes the boy snort in amusement.
"You have run out of time, outcast. Your father, lost. Your mother, taken. Your friends, scattered. And your mate," he snickers behind his hand when Draco whips his head towards the empty bed of Harry Potter. "Gone."
"No," Draco chokes out, straightening his arm in hopes his body will just obey and stop shaking. He glares at the boy. "Who are you! Where is Harry!"
"Draco," Ron suddenly appears in the doorway, catching himself on the frame as he struggles to breathe. "Gone. Blaise. He's gone."
There's one more cackle before the boy disintegrates into thin air, and Draco falls to his knees while Ron slides down the frame, head in his hands.
"What," Draco gasps. "What just happened? Where is Blaise? Where is Harry?"