7th September 1989 – Hogwarts Castle
Not looking forward to another night void of sleep spent stewing in my own thoughts, after the astronomy lesson and I slunk away from Ravenclaw tower and went to spend the evening in the room of requirement, as it was now technically my turn.
I wasn’t too worried about my head injury; I’d suffered plenty of bumps and knocks on the head in combat zones far beyond friendly medics and I also wasn’t fond of the idea of explaining how I had suffered such an injury to the nurse. I wasn’t feeling dizzy nor was I vomiting, so unless it got any worse I was keeping it to myself.
Moving around in the dark was not new to me, though it was certainly perilous traversing the stairs in pitch black. Rather than lighting my way with my wand I instead let my eyes adjust and moved slowly, keeping my ears out for Mr Filch or any wandering professors.
I wasn’t concerned about being caught; I’d snuck around in far more secure facilities with the likes of security cameras and actual trained guards. An old man and his cat were child’s play by comparison; no invisibility cloak needed.
It was a challenge to get my bearings, however, as everything looked far different in the darkness. And though I prided myself on my sense of direction, after an hour of walking I conceded that I was well and truly lost. I was somewhere on the first floor I reckoned, with things having gone wrong when a moving staircase had put me down somewhere I suspected was different from usual and gotten me turned around.
I cursed the damn things under my breath, why couldn’t they just use normal stairs for god's sake? Just because it’s a magic school didn’t mean everything had to be magic for the sake of it.
As I did so I began to hear faint scuffling around the corner of the corridor ahead of me. Quickly, I backtracked to a side corridor behind me and pressed myself between the paintings in the darkness.
Slowly but surely the scuffling came closer, far slower than if someone were simply walking. I knew when whoever it was turned the corner as light from their wand lit up the corridor I had just been in. I heard a deep thumping noise and the scuffling stopped, followed by someone cursing under their breath.
It was quiet, but in complete silence he may have well been shouting. The cursing was distinctly male and with an unmistakable American accent. Professor Revan I assumed, which was confirmed when the scuffling continued and I saw him dragging a large wooden chest along the carpet the way I had came.
He looked haggard and was breathing quite heavily from his exertions. The chest was big enough to fit the Professor in twice over, made of some kind of dark wood that was absolutely covered in various carvings and runes that I couldn’t make neither heads nor tails of.
Revan spared not so much of a glance in the dark corridor I was hiding, and he wouldn’t have seen anything had he done, but kept dragging the chest along as though it were the only thing that mattered.
I most certainly wasn’t going to offer to help him carry it, not on the off chance he was doing something he didn’t want anyone to know about and decided to obliviate or kill me, though I didn’t get the impression it was in his character. There could be a legitimate explanation for his actions, though I wasn’t going to go up and ask him for it.
It was curious he wasn’t just lifting the chest with magic, which I imagined wouldn’t have been difficult for a wizard at the level of a Professor. I assumed it was something to do with the runes inscribed in the wood, though that was just supposition.
As I let him pass me by, I was going to just continue on and forget this ever happened. I still needed to get myself un-lost and then I could spend an enjoyable evening in the privacy of the room of requirement whilst I did my best to stay awake.
However, and this may have been the concussion talking, I really had nothing better to do. Curiosity killed the cat, as they said, a phrase I understood better than most but in this instance I was willing to take a little risk. Who dares wins as our sister regiment was so fond of saying, though I didn’t imagine I’d win anything other than potentially putting to bed my fears that Revan was up to no good so I could go about the school year without waiting for something bad to happen. If the opposite was true, well, I’d burn that bridge when I got to it.
So I decided to follow him. I stayed as far behind him as possible, which really wasn’t that difficult as he wasn’t exactly being quiet. It was a pleasant surprise that he guided me back to the stairs I had lost half an hour ago.
What followed was twenty comedic minutes of Professor Revan trying desperately not to drop the obviously heavy chest down the stairs, and there were plenty of close calls. The American had some colourful language at his disposal and he didn’t stop himself from shouting in frustration every time the chest slid down the stairs he had put so much effort into pushing it up.
I was surprised no one else came to investigate the noise, but the castle was a big place and very few had any reason to be out and about in the night so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the two of us were the only ones in this part of the castle.
In some cases the moving staircases seemed to actually conspire against him, almost sending him toppling over the rails on several occasions with sharp changes in direction and often left him in precarious positions at the top of staircases as he waited for the correct ones to line up.
I observed from below him, having significantly less trouble with the stairs despite the darkness. The light from his wand ensured his eyes couldn’t see past the faint glow it produced and into the darkness around him and made me feel secure in moving about in his line of sight, if he ever bothered to actually look down.
By sheer chance he kept going up and up until he finally stepped off with his chest, thoroughly exhausted if his ragged breaths were anything to go by, on the seventh floor.
I waited for him to catch his breath and continue before heading up myself. I grew concerned as I continued tailing him that he might be heading towards the room of requirement himself, but when he walked straight past the entrance I had been using I let out a silent sigh of relief.
He seemed to know exactly where he was going so he’d obviously planned to move the chest in advance, though I couldn’t decide if that was more or less suspicious.
Soon he was heading into the more unused parts of the castle. Like I’d said Hogwarts was a big place, far larger than its purpose demanded. There were countless empty and unused rooms, even entire sections of the castle that were rarely visited by anyone other than Filch, his cat, and teenagers looking for a place away from prying eyes. The seventh floor had more than its share of such rooms and I quickly found myself following Revan into unfamiliar territory, though unlike earlier in the night I paid special attention to which way we were going so I could find my way back.
In the middle of the night the seventh floor was chilly indeed, and the further we get from the more well-trodden parts of the floor the colder it got until I could see my breath in the air before me.
Revan finally stopped before an old wooden door at the end of a long and dusty corridor void of any windows. For perhaps the first time I’d noticed he looked behind him into the darkness, though showed no signs of seeing my head peeking out into the corridor as I watched him.
Seemingly satisfied, he opened the door and dragged the chest in with him, then promptly slammed the door shut.
I certainly wasn’t going to try my luck and attempt to catch a peak at whatever it was he was doing, at least not tonight. Patience was the key to surveillance, and I liked to think it was one of my few virtues. I debated calling it a night but decided instead to wait and see what he did upon leaving.
So I slid down to the cold stone floor and returned to doing what could accurately describe half my career in the military; hurry up and wait.
I was left in the pitch darkness without light from Revan’s wand, but I didn’t mind. The darkness was an ally, not something to be feared. Prey feared the darkness, predators ruled it, as my old squad leader had been so fond of saying. Unfortunately, I was not equipped with night vision goggles nor did I possess an IR laser for my wand, though the thought of it made me chuckle, but I didn’t expect I’d need either.
Minutes turned to hours as I was left spinning my wand between my fingers to stave off the boredom and take my mind off the numbing cold. I felt strangely comfortable however, the entire scenario was familiar and I was utterly calm for the first time since my episode several days ago.
It was what many civvy’s tended to get wrong. It wasn’t the explosions, the bullets, the stress or the danger that got to you. It was the sudden lack of them when you returned home. Your mind was conditioned to handle high-stress environments and activities, which was all well and good when you were actually in a high-stress environment, but your brain was stupid. It got confused when you left, mistaking mundane and innocent things like fireworks for gunfire and explosions. It thought it was in a warzone when you were surrounded by friends and family and handled it as it deemed appropriate, which was anything but.
I may not have been getting shot at, but I was back in familiar territory and I felt like a normal human being for the first time in a long time. That being said, I wasn’t planning on making a habit of it, because it would only make it harder to adapt back to a more mundane life and I knew id be happier in the long run if I cut myself off from such things and focussed on my dream.
I realised then that perhaps it wasn’t the concussion that had set me on Revan’s trail tonight but just me indulging myself and jumping at the first chance to return to my old ways. I swore to myself I’d be more vigilant against such instincts in the future.
Staying awake had never felt easier and I had gotten pretty adept at spinning my wand between my fingers in a single, uninterrupted movement before I finally heard the door closing at the end of the corridor.
The sudden noise surprised me mid wand-twirl and I lost control of the spinning length of wood as it fell clattering to the stone tiles below before I could stop it, the sound echoing off the walls making me wince.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Shit.
With that amateurish mistake, I wasn’t going to make another and wait to see if Revan heard anything. I snatched up my wand and sprinted back the way I came, though I kept my footsteps muffled. The art of running silently was one I had been adept at in my previous occupation, and being a light eleven-year-old rather than a fully grown man only made it easier.
I just managed to hear a cautious “Is someone there?” in an American accent before I fell out of earshot entirely.
No spells chased me down the corridor and I heard no sound to suggest Revan was doing the same. Nevertheless, I didn’t stop until I was safely tucked away in the room of requirement.
With that healthy dose of adrenaline I wasn’t much in the mood for reading, so I continued practising with the disarming charm, although didn’t entertain the idea of attempting it once more without my wand for longer than a couple seconds.
More than just improving my efficacy with the spell, my practice was paying dividends in narrowing down what worked for me and what didn’t in terms of some of the standard methods for visualisations I had read about. I kept a running tally of what I found helped and what didn’t in my NOT-book, as well as what specific visualisations helped with the disarming charm and some other spells I tried in my grimoire under their respective entries.
I worked in a cycle of reviewing my notes, practising new ideas with the same spell and then writing in what I learned. I felt a bit like a giddy mad scientist uncovering the secrets of the universe in my hidden lair, although I had little doubt that what I was doing was unimpressive in the grand scheme of things.
I wasn’t discovering anything new, just uncovering what worked for me. Really, it was a night of self-discovery rather than research. I found I fell into what the wizard community called the realist school of thought when it came to visualisation; namely picturing the magic as imparting physical forces and changes on the world around me, as opposed to the fantastical and esoteric schools of thought that were less grounded in reality but equally valid when it came to magic.
I found leaning on my background in physics helped, as I imagined my magic as a stream of exotic particles that would manipulate physical mediums and interactions in different ways depending on the spell. For example, when I used the disarming charm on the dummy, I pictured the particles flying towards my target then creating a brief but intense electrostatic repulsion between the hand and the wand. The greater the number of particles, the greater the power.
This likely wasn’t what was actually happening at all, but according to what I had read no one really understood how magic interacted with physical laws, what was important was that it made sense to your mind and thus to your magic, so because it was what I thought was happening, in many ways it became so.
That didn’t explain why different spells produced different colours despite a complete lack of intent on my part, along with various other phenomena, but I was a first-year student reading second-year materials, not a veteran wizard researcher so if I did manage to discover the answers all on my own in the space of one evening what need would there be for a comprehensive school?
By the time I suspected it was getting close to dawn I was once more magically exhausted. I was still curious to learn precisely what governed how much magic I could use and what the source of said magic was, whether I could increase it or if it was static. So many questions, the answers out there somewhere, no doubt in more advanced tomes about magical theory, but I needed to remind myself to take it one step at a time. Basics first, then I could delve into the deeper mysteries.
With that thought, I snuck back to Ravenclaw Tower, taking special care not to wander from my usual path. I answered the riddle and was in my bed with everyone other than perhaps the Grey Lady none the wiser as to my nightly escapades, though the wink the ghost had given me when I’d snuck through the common room suggested she wasn’t going to tell.
Throughout breakfast and the rest of the morning, I was subjected to Rebecca’s relentless giddiness for the weekend’s quidditch match, the first of the year. It was Gryffindor vs Slytherin, the classic rivalry, and though I had little desire to see a bunch of teenagers try to kill one another over various balls I had to admit I was more than a little excited myself about seeing the fantastical sport in person at least just once.
In the meantime, I hung out with Rebecca as we walked around the castle simply chatting, me too tired to do anything strenuous and Rebecca too focused on the afternoon’s game. We did happen to run into the Weasley twins, who happened to be two of the only people Rebecca actually got along with in her house, although she didn’t exactly call them friends.
They offered us some sweets which I politely refused as I had little doubt they were a prank of some kind, firmly suggesting Rebecca do the same.
“Buzzkill.” They had said in tandem with frowns on their faces.
“You going to the quidditch game later?” George asked us.
“I heard it’s a real grudge match. Slytherin won last year.” Fred added.
Rebecca’s eyes lit up at the mention of quidditch and promptly entered into an animated discussion with the twins about the game, who seemed equally excited.
The gleam in their eyes, however, was distinctively more mischievous than Rebecca’s and I couldn’t help but suspect they were planning something. I just hoped Rebecca and I were sitting far enough away from them to avoid the worst of it.
Time flew by and before I knew it was sitting in the stands of the quidditch stadium alongside Rebecca and basically the entirety of Gryffindor house. The Slytherins were sitting on an opposing stand, but even across the pitch I could hear their chants, shouted in reply to Gryffindor’s own. Rebecca joined in with gusto but I refrained, keeping an eye on the Weasley twins sitting several steps down from us.
They kept glancing over to Will and his companions, who were similarly invested in the game as the rest of the Gryffindors, and giggling to themselves. Though I was at least glad of their target, I doubted it would end well for any but perhaps the twins.
The game started soon enough and my attention turned to the players whizzing around on their brooms at dizzying speeds. Just watching it made me anxious but I grudgingly admitted it was one of those sports that was genuinely fun to watch.
Anything but the basic rules were far from clear in my mind but Rebecca happily gave her own running commentary, apparently having done her own research on the topic since id mentioned it, even so much as being able to name all the players. I personally enjoyed watching the seekers vainly chase the nearly invisible golden snitch about like greyhounds after a rabbit.
They never did catch the snitch, but the game was far from close anyway. Slytherin absolutely trounced Gryffindor much to Rebecca’s and the rest of her housemate's dismay. When I looked down after the whistle had blown I immediately noticed the conspicuous absence of the Weasley twins.
My eyes flickered across the stands and caught no sight of them, but it wasn’t long before their presence became obvious elsewhere on the stands. A loud and startling bleating silence much of the dismayed chatter between Gryffindor as all eyes turned to the young first year that had seemingly grown the ears, nose and tail of a donkey. It was, predictably, Will. As he opened his mouth once again with a look of terror and confusion on his face, all that came out for a second time was the bleating of a donkey.
Rebecca joined with a chorus of laughs directed towards the boy, but I couldn’t find it in myself to do the same. Sure, maybe he deserved it for being a bigot and making Rebecca’s life miserable, but I didn’t find anything funny about the sheer despair that seemed to come over his face as everyone, even his friends, laughed at him. In my experience humiliating a bully would only make them worse, not better, even if it was satisfying.
“We always thought you were an ass, Will!” came the shout of Fred, who had suddenly re-appeared near the boy.
“Now everyone else can see you are as well!” followed George as the twins high-fived.
Their fun came to a swift end when Professor McGonagall stood up and dispelled the hex with a flick of her wand before giving a very disappointed look over at the Weasley twins. As she was dragging them off by their ears, Rebecca was still giggling to herself as we began to leave the stadium.
The rest of the weekend passed by uneventfully after that. Saturday afternoon was spent with Rebecca as we discovered the Wizard’s chess boards in the study area on the fourth floor, which she failed to even get close to beating me at. I spent some more time in the room of requirement that night before finally sleeping. Sunday was mostly boring as Rebecca finally spend some time with her housemates who had apparently seen the error of their ways since the twins’ prank and I got my head down and ploughed through more of Flitwick’s recommended reading. I once more found myself incredibly grateful for my enchanted notebooks as I suspected with all that I had been writing in my NOT-book I could have filled a dozen normal ones by now. I also kept up with my new exercise regime since it was once again Lucon’s turn in the room of requirement.
I resolved not to go further snooping in Professor Revan’s business without good reason after realising how stupid my escapade a couple of nights previous had been.
With Monday came a return to what was quickly becoming routine. Lessons, detention, room of requirement. The only difference on Tuesday was that I went to the gym, again with Rebecca, instead of the room of requirement. She had yet to inquire too deeply into where it was I disappeared off to every other night, my initial explanation evidently being answer enough to stop her prying but not enough to stop her being obviously curious.
I had been slightly nervous about defence against the dark arts but had little reason to be. Revan barely gave me a second glance and seemed more on top of his actual job as a Professor this week, no longer disappearing into his office every five minutes, no doubt because the source of his irritation had since been safely tucked away somewhere on the seventh floor.
With what I was beginning to understand was her usual tact, or lack of it, Rebecca not so subtly inquired as to what had happened to the boggart. Revan’s eye had twitched fiercely but he’d kept up a smile and confidently answered that he’d gotten rid of it.
It didn’t bode well that Rebecca didn’t seem convinced.
Other than that he seemed as competent and put together as the rest of the Professors, more so in some cases. That more than anything set off alarms in my head. An incompetent professor could get fired at the end of the year for that very reason, no disaster needed, but it seemed a more exciting fate would be in stall for Professor Revan, and excitement always meant trouble.
But I was careful not to voice my misgivings to Rebecca, especially considering after that lesson she had straight up said, “somethings up with that Professor.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with why the auror’s won’t let anyone leave the grounds?” she asked after my silence at her first statement.
I refused to engage with her on the topic but it seemed she took my silence as answer enough. “The higher years are pretty upset they can’t go to Hogsmeade. I overheard them saying it must be something pretty bad if so many aurors are about.”
She continued talking to herself as I remained steadfastly silent on the topic, hoping she’d drop it but not knowing how to dissuade her without doing the opposite and encouraging her.
As the rest of the week passed it quickly became her favourite topic, sprouting outlandish theories as to what the aurors were up to and how it connected to Revan’s suspicious behaviour.
“Oh, oh! Maybe a prisoner has escaped from Azkaban and they think he’ll come back to Hogwarts but it's actually Revan in disguise!” she told me Friday evening as we were walking to the after-dinner astronomy lesson.
“You think he’s using a Polyjuice potion?” I grumbled, having since been worn down from my silence into merely humouring her once I was sure she didn’t actually intend to act on anything she said. At least, reasonably sure. Maybe.
“What’s that?” she asked excitedly.
“If you have someone’s hair or something it lets you turn into them for a while. Though I imagine Snape would notice if someone had been making enough to last for a significant amount of time.” I explained, as he had when Barty Crouch Jr had impersonated Alastor Moody.
“Hmmm.” She hummed as her brow furrowed in thought. “Maybe. It would all make so much more sense if we just knew why the aurors are here.”
I snorted. “Well, in case you forgot the first time we talked to them they didn’t seem so keen on telling us anything. You could always go out to the forest again and ask them a second time.” I said sarcastically.
“Or maybe you should just go up to Professor Revan and ask him. Oh Professor, would you mind awfully telling us why you are so shifty and suspicious?” I said, doing my best girly voice in imitation of Rebecca. She slapped me on the shoulder with a scowl but I kept going. “Why don’t you tell me the truth about the boggart because I know you were lying. Oh, and why you’re at it, why don’t you tell me what were you doing on the seventh floor in the middle…”
Shit. Rebecca’s eyes widened as my words registered and she stopped in her tracks. “What?” she demanded.
Curse my damned mouth and its constant betrayals. I wasn’t so loose-lipped in my past life so why was I making a habit of it in this one?
Rebecca was looking at me with her hands on her hips like a mother who’d just caught her child doing something naughty. “What was that about the seventh floor?”
…. Shit.