Chapters are slow; lots of life happening.
...
The green light of the lake moved slowly across the stone floor of the Slytherin common room, thick and quiet the way it always was in the late afternoon when most of the house had already gone to dinner or the library. Lucian sat alone on one of the long couches near the high windows, legs crossed beneath him, a stack of parchment balanced across his knees. The top sheet was half-filled in his careful hand. His pen moved without hurry, the scratch of it the only sound until the door opened and Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini came in still talking about something that had happened in Transfiguration.
They slowed when they saw him. Nott drifted over first and stopped behind the couch, looking down over Lucian's shoulder at the neat lines of writing. The parchment was covered in observations rather than the usual student essay structure, small notes in the margins about tracks and the way certain stones had been turned.
"What have you got there?"
Lucian did not turn his head. He had known the footsteps before the door finished closing. "A paper for Professor Snape."
Blaise came around the other side and leaned a shoulder against the arm of the couch, arms folded across his chest. The green light from the windows caught the edge of his sleeve. "You got him to let you skip Lockhart. How."
"This." Lucian lifted the pen just enough to indicate the parchment without looking up. "He said if I wanted to miss one of Lockhart's lessons a week and to go into the forest with Hagrid, he needed something he could point to if anyone asked why a second-year was allowed out of class. So I write about the creatures we find and turn it in. No report, no forest."
Nott made a short sound that was not quite a laugh. He shifted his weight, still looking at the page. "You want to spend time with that great blubbering oaf."
Lucian's eyes moved sideways for a moment, then returned to the page. The comment did not surprise him. Most of the house still treated Hagrid the way the rest of the school did, as something large and faintly embarrassing that existed on the edge of the grounds. "You'd rather sit through Lockhart explaining his favorite color for the third time this month."
Blaise's mouth twitched at the corner. He did not quite smile, but the expression was close. "He's got a point."
Nott dropped onto the couch opposite with a sigh and stretched his legs out in front of him, boots resting on the low table between them. For a while the only sound was the scratch of the pen and the low, constant murmur of the lake against the glass.
Nott watched the top of his head, then leaned forward again, curiosity winning out over whatever else he had been thinking. "What did the two of you find the first time out, then?"
"Started small," Lucian said. His voice stayed even. "Outer edge of a troll colony. Hagrid wanted to see how close we could get without them noticing."
Blaise's eyebrows rose a fraction. Nott sat up straighter, the casual sprawl gone. The memory of last year's troll in the girls' bathroom was still recent enough that the word carried weight even in a house that liked to pretend it was unimpressed by most things.
"Trolls."
"Trolls," Lucian confirmed, still writing. He could feel both of them looking at him. Neither seemed eager to ask the next question that was clearly forming. He let the silence sit and turned the parchment to a fresh sheet.
The common-room door opened again and the sound of boots and the clack of broom handles filled the space. The Quidditch team filed in already dressed for practice, cloaks half-fastened, hair tied back or slicked down. Marcus Flint walked at the front, the rest of the team behind him in a loose line. Every one of them carried the same sleek, inky-black broom. The wood was so dark it looked almost wet under the green light. Draca Malfoy was among them, the new Seeker's robes still sitting a little stiff across her shoulders, her pale hair pulled back tighter than usual. She glanced toward the couches the moment she entered and her eyes found Lucian.
Flint stopped in front of them and showed his crooked teeth in something that was probably meant to be a smile. The rest of the team slowed behind him, a few of them glancing at the brooms as if they still could not quite believe they were holding them. "Bloodthorne. You picked the right year to show up. With these, we're taking the Cup. You'll get to watch your house win it."
Lucian looked up. He widened his eyes in a show of interest that did not reach the rest of his face and smiled without warmth. "Can't wait."
He went back to the parchment.
Draca's gaze stayed on him. She shifted the broom in her hand, the black handle resting against her shoulder. "You said you liked Quidditch; why don't you come and watch us practice? With me as their seeker now, we can't lose."
Lucian shrugged without lifting his head. The pen kept moving across the page, describing the way the smaller trolls had watched from the tree line without approaching. "Got a report to finish."
Her mouth tightened. Nott had already forgotten the conversation and was staring at the brooms instead, one hand half-raised as if he wanted to touch the nearest one and had thought better of it in front of Flint. The rest of the team shifted, impatient to be outside.
"How'd you get those?" Nott asked.
"Donation from my father," Draca said. She was still watching Lucian, waiting for some reaction that was not coming. The pride in her voice was thin, stretched over the fact that he had not even looked at the broom properly yet.
Lucian set the pen down and looked at the brooms for the first time. He studied the nearest one for a moment, the way the light slid off the black wood, then looked at Draca. "How fast."
She straightened. The irritation on her face shifted, for a moment, into something closer to pride. "A hundred and twenty. Faster than a Nimbus Two Thousand."
Lucian nodded once, the way someone acknowledges a number they have already heard somewhere else and do not find particularly interesting. Nott looked openly impressed. Blaise looked mildly curious and nothing more. Draca's expression cooled again when she realized the number had not landed the way she expected. Flint was watching Lucian now instead of the rest of the room, the earlier swagger replaced by something sharper.
"I trained on a broom back home," Lucian said after a moment. His eyes had drifted to the window and the dark water beyond it. The lake pressed against the glass in slow, heavy folds. "Hated it. You can keep those."
Draca stared at him. Flint's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. The team behind him had gone quiet. One of the Beaters shifted his grip on his broom as if the weight of it had suddenly changed.
"What kind were you on."
Lucian was quiet long enough that Flint started to repeat the question. He was still looking at the lake, the way the light moved across the stone on the far side of the glass. The memory of the training yard in the Lostlands was not something he particularly wanted to unpack in the middle of the common room, but the number itself was simple enough. "Don't remember the name. Fast, though. Difficult. Somewhere around three-fifty Miles per hour."
The room went still. Flint forgot the new brooms entirely. His gaze had sharpened, the earlier swagger gone. The rest of the team was looking at Lucian now instead of the door. Draca's hand had tightened on the handle of her own broom until the knuckles showed.
"You could get your hands on one of those for the team?"
Lucian looked at him. The mildness was gone from his face. He set the stack of parchment more firmly on his lap and met Flint's eyes. The scar across his own face caught the green light and made the expression harder than it might have been otherwise. "Take your team to practice, Flint. I have a report due. I'd rather not be late because you decided to stand here asking questions."
Flint heard the tone. He turned to the rest of the team and jerked his head toward the door without another word. They filed out, the clack of broom handles fading down the corridor. Draca lingered half a second longer, gave Lucian a hard look he did not see, and followed. The door closed behind them.
Nott and Blaise stayed where they were. Nott was still staring at the place where the brooms had been. Blaise's expression was harder to read, but his eyes had not left Lucian. The common room felt larger with the team gone, the green light from the windows settling back into its usual quiet.
"We're going to watch practice," Nott said after a moment.
Lucian waved a hand without looking up. The pen was already moving again, the next line describing the sound the larger trolls had made when Hagrid stepped on a dry branch. They left more slowly than the team had, glancing back once before the door closed. The common room was quiet again. Lucian kept writing. Outside the windows the lake pressed against the glass, green and endless, and the only sound was the scratch of the pen and the low murmur of water against stone.
—
Two weeks later the corridors still smelled faintly of the damp and old food from Nearly Headless Nick's Deathday party. Harriet Potter walked between Ron and Hermione with her hands shoved deep in her pockets and her shoulders drawn in against the cold that seemed to have followed them out of the dungeon. The three of them had been the only living people there. The ghosts had enjoyed themselves. Sir Nicholas had been pleased to see them, even if the food had been worse than usual and the temperature had dropped until Harriet could see her breath. She had decided, halfway through a particularly cold toast that had involved something which might once have been cake, that she would rather be at the Halloween feast than miss the food entirely. The party had gone on longer than any of them expected, and by the time they left the dungeon the feast was already well underway somewhere above them.
She stopped so suddenly that Ron nearly walked into her back.
"What?" the red-head asked
Harriet tilted her head. The corridor was empty. Torches burned in their brackets and the stone under their feet was the same gray it always was. She moved to the wall and pressed her ear against it as if the voice she was hearing might be coming through the stone itself. The cold from the party still clung to her robes. A second later she pushed off and started down the corridor at a run.
"Harriet!" Hermione called, already moving after her.
Ron swore under his breath and went after them both. They caught up as she slowed again, one hand raised, still listening. Her eyes were fixed on something neither of them could see. The voice was low and cold and clear in a way that made the back of her neck prickle, and it was moving.
"Someone's saying they're going to kill someone," she said, and kept going.
They rounded the corner behind her and found a student crouched in the middle of the corridor, one hand moving slowly through a dark pool on the floor. He looked up when their footsteps stopped. The scar across his face caught the torchlight and turned the smirk that had been small when he was looking at the floor into something wider when he saw her.
Lucian stood. He was a little taller than most of their year. On the wall behind him, written in the same dark red that stained the stone, were the words, "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware."There, next to the writing, Mrs. Norris hung from a torch bracket by her tail, stiff and glassy-eyed, her body already gone rigid. The corridor smelled of something metallic and cold, and the torches nearest the wall had begun to gutter.
Ron's voice came out sharp. "What are you doing here?"
Harriet was still staring at Lucian. The voice she had been following had gone quiet the moment she saw him. Her heart was loud in her ears and her hands had gone cold inside her pockets. "Who were you trying to kill?"
The smirk stayed. His eyes stayed on her, and for the first time since she had met him on the train he looked as if he had found something he had not expected.
"You hear it too," he said. "Who would have thought?"