Harry Potter: Fire Lord Black

Christmas emptied Hogwarts by degrees. Trunks disappeared from dormitories, tables in the Great Hall shortened, and corridors that usually carried hundreds of voices became quiet enough for footsteps to travel around corners.

Edward stayed.

So did Draco, Crabbe, Goyle, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, though Hermione spent several days in the hospital wing for what Madam Pomfrey described only as a potion accident. Edward did not ask for medical details he had no right to receive.

The interesting part happened before he knew she was there.

On Christmas evening, "Crabbe" and "Goyle" entered the Slytherin common room after being absent long enough for Draco to complain about them. Edward looked up from a book and immediately felt that something was wrong.

It was not their faces. Their faces were exact.

It was the way they occupied them.

Crabbe usually dropped into the nearest chair as if furniture had personally offended him. Tonight he sat carefully and scanned the room before touching anything. Goyle accepted a plate of sweets, then forgot to eat them while Draco spoke. Both asked too many questions.

"My father would know if Potter were the Heir," Draco said, delighted to have an audience. "He knows everything important about Hogwarts."

"Has he told you where the Chamber is?" Goyle asked.

Draco blinked. "No."

"Has he told you who opened it before?" Crabbe added.

"No. Why are you suddenly interested?"

The two boys exchanged a glance.

Edward watched from the next sofa.

Draco lowered his voice. "Father did say the last time the Chamber opened, someone died. He never said who the Heir was. And before you ask, no, the entrance is not in this common room. If every Slytherin could find it, it would not be much of a secret."

Goyle nodded too quickly.

Edward closed his book. "What did you eat?"

Both impostors looked at him.

"What?" Crabbe asked.

"At dinner. You have both ignored food for nearly five minutes. I am concerned."

Draco laughed. Goyle grabbed three sweets at once and shoved them into his mouth.

That looked more convincing and somehow made Edward more suspicious.

He did not expose them. A wrong accusation could humiliate two classmates for acting strangely. A correct accusation raised a worse question: who could copy a student's appearance closely enough to enter Slytherin?

Edward shifted the conversation to Quidditch and watched. Crabbe knew too much about Harry's schedule. Goyle nearly called Draco by his surname in the tone Gryffindors used. Neither remembered a joke from breakfast.

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After ten minutes, they left abruptly.

Draco frowned after them. "What is wrong with those two?"

"I do not think those were Crabbe and Goyle."

Draco stared.

"That is not funny."

"I am not joking."

Edward listed the inconsistencies. Draco rejected each one separately, then became pale when he considered them together.

"Polyjuice?"

"Possible. Not proven."

"Who would dare?"

Edward looked toward the closed entrance. "Someone who wanted information about the Chamber."

Draco jumped up. "They asked about Potter. Gryffindor. It was Potter and Weasley."

"That is a hypothesis."

"Who else?"

"We can ask the real Crabbe and Goyle where they were."

They found them an hour later after a prefect discovered both asleep in a storage alcove with abandoned sweet wrappers nearby. The boys remembered eating chocolates left where they could find them, then nothing.

Snape took over immediately.

He examined the wrappers, questioned Crabbe and Goyle separately, and told Edward and Draco not to hunt disguised students through the castle. The sweets went into evidence. Snape neither confirmed nor denied Polyjuice Potion.

"You noticed a behavioral inconsistency," he told Edward. "That was useful. You did not cast at them. That was more useful."

Draco folded his arms. "They invaded our common room."

"And if Mr. Black had been wrong?"

Draco had no answer.

The next morning, Harry and Ron appeared at breakfast looking exhausted. Edward noticed. He also noticed that noticing was not proof.

Hermione did not appear at all.

Several days later, Edward visited the hospital wing to return a book Madam Pince said belonged to her. He asked Madam Pomfrey first.

"Five minutes," the healer said. "No questions about the patient's appearance unless she raises the subject."

That instruction made Edward more curious and less willing to show it.

Hermione sat behind a partly drawn curtain. Her transformation had mostly receded, but traces of black fur remained along one cheek and her eyes were still an unusual amber. She looked ready to hex anyone who laughed.

Edward did not.

"Your book," he said, placing it on the table.

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "That is all?"

"Madam Pomfrey gave me rules. I am trying an unfamiliar experiment called following them."

Her shoulders eased by a fraction.

Edward noticed a familiar stack of transformative potion references beside the bed. The conclusion became difficult to avoid.

"The hair was not human," he said.

Hermione groaned and covered her face. "I do not want to discuss it."

"Then we will not."

He sat only after she gestured toward the chair.

For a minute they spoke about the petrification notes. Hermione had been unable to visit the library while recovering, so Edward summarized the staff-approved findings. No new victim had appeared. The pipe theory remained possible. The Flame Mask remained unproven and was not being distributed further.

"I still have the strip you gave me," she said.

"Keep it only if you remember the warning."

"Not a shield. Use only to move away."

"Good."

Hermione glanced toward the ward door. "You know, do you not? About Christmas."

Edward chose his words. "I know two people who looked like Crabbe and Goyle entered our common room. I know the real Crabbe and Goyle were found unconscious. I suspect Polyjuice. I do not know who drank it unless they tell me."

"That is irritatingly precise."

"I have been practicing."

She hesitated. "Would you tell Snape if you knew?"

"He already knows enough to investigate. If someone endangered Crabbe and Goyle, he should know that. If you are asking whether I intend to extract a confession from you, no."

Hermione looked at her hands.

"We were trying to find out whether Malfoy knew who the Heir was," she said quietly.

Edward did not pretend surprise.

"Did he?"

"No."

"Then you risked poisoning yourselves, drugged two students, and entered another house for no answer."

Her face tightened. "When you say it like that..."

"It sounds like one of my plans."

That stopped the argument.

Hermione looked at him, then laughed once despite herself. "That is not a defense."

"No. It is why I recognize the structure."

Edward stood to leave before Madam Pomfrey expelled him.

At the curtain, he paused. "There is one useful result. Draco insists the Chamber is not in the Slytherin common room. He could be wrong, but I think he genuinely believes it."

Hermione nodded. "We heard the same."

"Then the route question remains."

Pipes. Hidden passages. The third-floor bathroom. The locations of the attacks.

Edward left the hospital without teasing Hermione, touching her altered features, or turning her mistake into leverage. The mystery had enough violations already.

Before leaving, he reminded himself that suspicion was useful only while it remained willing to change.

He did not need to add another.