Lumos.

Leontes Granger's Hogwarts letter is delivered by a woman who calls herself Professor McGonagall. She tells him that magic is real and that he's a wizard and that he has been accepted at a school called Hogwarts. It will prepare him for life as a wizard.

It seems to be both a cultural group and a professional degree.

His parents spend an hour or so discussing the curriculum with Professor McGonagall and agree that it's Leontes's decision, because it's his future they're discussing, but that they expect him to keep up in general studies as well.

That won't be too difficult, plenty of kids in Leontes's books have done correspondence courses and it doesn't seem to have hurt them, so off Leontes goes to Diagon Alley, to Hogwarts, and then, eventually, to the Gryffindor dormitory.

The state of play in the Gryffindor first year dorm room is as follows:

-Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan: instant best friends. They're friendly with Leontes but their bond is fast and fierce, like Achilles and Patroclus. Leontes is on good terms with them and they'll put up with him at meals, but that's all there is.

-Harry Potter: famous and impulsive and often quiet. He's a good person to share a room with. Leontes tried to break the ice with him, but they don't have anything in common and Leontes had to do all the work in the conversation. A dead end.

-Ron Weasley: the inverse of Dean and Seamus. Ron and Leontes have a mutual instant dislike and loathing. A complete dead end, especially after Ron and Harry bonded so thoroughly.

-Neville Longbottom: the odd man out. Leontes supposes they might as well become friends by default. Neville is as quiet as Harry can be, but never has any of Harry's loud outbursts. Neville is calming to be around, if a little boring, and the sort of boy that adults describe as being sensitive, and so, by the second week of school, Leontes has a study partner.

All in all, a successful start to his magical career. Leontes finds a few books on basic wards in the library and constructs them around his bed to protect him from Ron Weasley, and goes on with his life.

"I wish I were as confident as you," Neville says to Leontes late in October, after Professor Snape had reduced Neville to tears in the classroom. "Instead I'm only-- only me. Useless."

"You're not useless," Leontes says, conjuring up a wet cloth and giving it to Neville to wipe his face. "Herbology comes so much easier to you than to me."

Neville sobs, "no one cares about Herbology!" and wipes at his face angrily. "Don't pity me."

"I'm not," Leontes says. Then he stands up. "All right. Get up."

Confused, Neville stands up.

"When I was nine years old, four boys cornered me, called me some names, and tried to beat me into a stain on the sidewalk. Guess what happened."

"Accidental magic," Neville predicts, accurately.

"Yeah. Then they came back with a group a few days later. Guess what happened then?"

"Uh, more accidental magic?" Neville offers.

"No," Leontes says. "Because I saw them coming, so I made sure that three teachers were heading that way before I let that group catch up to me. I led them to their doom, because I couldn't rely on accidental magic. I had to use my brains. You think you're bad at magic. You're not, but that's what you think. Okay, then use your brain. There's nothing wrong with it." He settles his feet. "All right. So now I'm going to punch you."

"Y-- you're what?" Neville asks, alarmed. His head comes up and so do his arms.

Leontes grabs one of his arms and moves it into a better position. "After that, my parents decided I needed self-defense lessons. I'm not very good at it, so we're both going to be equally bad. And then we'll go to Madam Pomfrey and get patched up."

"Um," Neville says.

"Or you can say 'you're right, Leontes, I'm not an idiot' and we can go to lunch. Those are your options."

"You have the soul of a bully," Neville says and -- with no warning -- grabs Leontes into a hug and squeezes tight. "Thank you for being my best friend."

And after that, it's not like Leontes could find another best friend, could he?

By the end of the year, their study group has expanded to include Dean and Seamus and a few Ravenclaws, too. Leontes gets satisfactory marks on his exams -- ranked first in the class, of course -- and goes home for the summer with a promise from Neville that he'll come visit Leontes in the muggle world.

"This is a journal," Leontes says, mouth quirking up into a grin. "It doesn't do anything. It doesn't talk back. It doesn't remind you of anything. If you write things down in it, they stay there."

"Thanks, Leon, not an idiot," Neville says, still blushing a little as he says that. He takes the journal and flips through it. "Why do I need this?"

Leontes gives him a ballpoint pen. "For whatever you need it to be. Keep track of homework assignments. Write down things that come to mind. Write down great quotes. Keep a list of all the times you want to strangle specific people in our year. I color-code my notebooks."

Neville nods; he's seen Leontes study by writing things from one notebook to the next. "And will this help?"

"Help with what?" Leontes asks.

Neville opens his mouth and then grimaces. "Yeah, okay. I'll see if inspiration, uh. Inspires."

They go out for pizza afterwards and Leontes's parents ask Neville about what sort of professional opportunities there are in the magical world, because owling Leontes every week about them isn't enough to soothe their concern that they're letting Leontes ruin his life by sending him to magic school instead of a real one.

Neville's a sheltered rich boy, and most of what he knows about the magical world is the same way Leontes knows of the muggle world: through books. But he rises to the challenge, because he's too distracted to doubt himself, and Leontes even takes a few notes of things he's going to ask Neville about later.

As Neville settles into the guest bedroom that night, Leontes says to him, "Neville, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. That's a famous muggle quote and tomorrow I'm going to introduce you to movies."

Neville likes movies. He likes television and he likes magazines that don't move and radio that doesn't know you're listening to it. He likes cooking like a muggle and he likes wandering the streets with Leontes after dinner.

"This wouldn't have been so bad," he muses to Leontes one night, as darkness begins to fall on the swingset they're perched on.

"Yeah?" Leontes says because he has no idea what Neville's on about right now.

"If I'd been a squib. They were sure for forever that I was. I was terrified," Neville certainly understates. "But the muggle world -- it's not a bad place."

"No," Leontes drags out. "It's really not a bad place."

"And I like your parents," Neville says. "They're great parents."

Neville's parents are in a long-term care ward in a hospital and won't ever leave it. Neville's terrified of his grandmother. Leontes is beginning to understand why. "You're welcome here anytime, Neville. My parents are overjoyed that I've got a friend now."

"You didn't have any before?" Neville asks.

Leontes snorts. "No," he says. "Not really. No one likes an arrogant know-it-all who does strange things when he's upset."

"I do," Neville says loyally. "I like you. You're my first friend, too."

Leontes reads all of the assigned Defense textbooks in August. "Well, this is shit," he says to Neville, who's still at his house, and Leontes's parents had a whispered conversation with Leontes on if they should be concerned about Neville's home life, which Leontes couldn't honestly answer because he's not sure either, but whatever it is, Neville's welcome to stay as long as he likes, it's not like they can't afford an extra mouth to feed and clothe.

"It's Lockhart," Neville says. "Not the greatest reputation."

Leontes makes a disgusted face. "There's very little actual Defense information in these. They may be good popular entertainment, but we're not going to learn anything in Defense this year if this is any sign."

Neville makes a put-upon sigh. "Very well, Professor Granger, what are you going to do about it?"

"Get better books, for one," Leontes says, and sends away the owl order that night.

"And a better teacher," Leontes says, as the ordered books start coming in. "Hmm. What do you think about Percy Weasley?"

"I don't, usually," Neville says. "Bit rigid, isn't he?"

"Yes," Leontes says, thinking it through. "He's going to really hate that his brothers are getting a bad education in their OWL year -- are the twins in their OWL year this year?"

"No," Neville says, amused at how much Leontes doesn't care about anyone in Gryffindor who doesn't study. "Fourth year this year."

"Then right before their OWL year. I bet I can get him to do some tutoring for Gryffindors. The twins won't show up and Ron won't either, but Dean and Seamus will, and I bet Lavender, and a bunch of others. And he knows who else is good at Defense, so we could get a real parallel education track going. I'm not going to sacrifice my education just because the Hogwarts Board can't find a qualified teacher."

A few days later, Neville, watching Leontes write letter after letter, suggests, "uh, could we get a parallel Potions course as well?"

Leontes doesn't look up. "Professor Snape goes after you because he's a bully, not because you're bad at Potions," like he's been saying since their first Potions class. But then he looks up. "But you're right. As we progress in potion complexity, what he's doing will become more and more dangerous to you. If he doesn't back off this year, we'll have to explore other options, or else you won't pass your NEWT and will be blocked from half the careers you're interested in. We need to either get rid of him or work around him."

"Work around him," Neville says quickly. "Let's work around him."

Leontes supposes that makes sense. Snape has been at Hogwarts for, what, ten years now. Surely there have been plenty of complaints. That he's still in his position means no one cares if he hurts the students.

"Okay," Leontes says. "Any other classes we should circumvent?"

Neville thinks for a moment. "None come to mind right now," he says.

"All right," Leontes says. "Defense and Potions. We can work with that."

They hire a tutor.

Actually, they hire ten tutors.

The sixth and seventh years are interested but also busy. Their friends in Ravenclaw also want tutoring.

"I can fund this," Neville had offered Leontes when they were first organizing it, but Leontes had told him to shut up. This isn't one-on-one tutoring, this is a group class. They would all contribute, and anything extra that was needed would be provided by Professor McGonagall, who wanted her students to fail their OWLs and NEWTs like she wanted to lose the House Cup seven years in a row.

Ginny Weasley comes to the first Defense session and hangs toward the back. When she sees Neville writing in his journal, she shyly shows him her battered, second-hand journal. Neville calls Leontes over as the ink disappears into the pages and more words appear.

Leontes watches them do it, his lips pursed, and then he declares, "this is useless. Get a real one."

Ginny sputters. "What do you mean, a real one?"

"How can you take notes when you won't be able to read them later? This is a gimmick that someone threw away. Hey, Weasley!" Leontes calls to Percy Weasley, who jogs over to them quickly, alarmed, when he sees the look on Ginny's face.

"What's going on here?" Percy asks.

"What's going on here is substandard educational equipment for girls!" Leontes says, pushing himself into Percy's personal space. It doesn't have much effect, since Leontes's growth spurts have been sporadic and Percy's haven't, but the intent is there. "Do you want your sister to be the bottom of her class? Is that's what's going on here? First you give Ron that disaster of a wand he can barely use--" Percy flutters up like a bird but Leontes doesn't let him get a word in edgewise "-- and now you give Ginny a homework planner that can't even plan her homework? No wonder the twins are going to fail their OWLs, you Weasleys don't look out for each other!"

"That's it!" Percy says, grabbing the journal from Ginny's hand. She moans, as if something was just ripped painfully away from her, and that makes all three boys stop, startled.

"Ginny?" Percy asks.

Ginny sways and then rightens herself. "Percy," she says quietly. "I think-- there's something wrong with the journal."

Professor McGonagall's lips are a thin, tight line as she examines the journal, then she gives each of them twenty-five points for quick thinking. She gives Ginny a calming tea and asks her over and over again where she got the journal, and then Professor McGonagall tells them again they all did very well, that this is a very powerful magical artifact that meant them no good, and sends them all down to bed.

After that, Ginny hangs on to Neville -- and to Leontes by extension -- as if Voldemort himself is going to come through the walls and eat her if she puts a toe out of line. Leontes puts up with it until the fifth week, when it's clear that Ginny has no friends in her class, and aggressively starts inviting all the first year girls to their study sessions, too.

Leontes does it to get Ginny to leave them alone, but it turns out that Neville really blooms when he has someone he can teach. He has a year of Hogwarts under his belt and is happy to teach the first years all the hard-learned tips and tricks that had gotten him through it last year.

Leontes writes about it to his mother, who obviously writes her reply to him while holding back laughter as she congratulates him on independently discovering basic tools of pedagogy. She includes a couple books for Neville -- over the summer, Neville had fallen in love with the quiet bravery of Frodo Baggins and had taken possession of the Tolkien books that Leontes had only owned because his relatives assumed that all nerdy boys like reading Tolkien -- and also has a book that she wants him to give to Ginny called Anne Of Green Gables.

She also writes that Neville is welcome to join them over Christmas break, or that Leontes is welcome to go to Neville's, but to please let her know by November 1st at the latest.

"Do you want to come home with me over break?" Leontes asks Neville after a week of trying to figure out how to do it and failing, so just doing it anyway. "Fair warning, if you do come, all my relatives are going to ask you probing questions about your home life and where your parents are."

Neville hesitates. "I'll ask my gran."

And by November 1st, Leontes has told his mother that Neville is coming home with him again and to please tell everyone that Neville's family lives too far away for him to go home for the break. It won't stop all the questions but it might stop two or three.

Midway through second year, Leontes has had enough. He closes his History textbook with a slam and says to Neville, "how do you exorcise a ghost."

"Uh," Neville says. "You don't? You call in a specialist. Look, Leon--"

"No, I will not look, Leon," Leontes bites off. "It was bad enough when it was just Peeves. But this is an affront to the dignity and the very name of--"

Neville puts his hand over Leontes's mouth and Leontes abruptly stops, extremely impressed. "No, you listen. Leon, if you want to try to get a professor fired, go after Snape. Binns is harmless."

"Him being here means they don't hire anyone better."

"And they don't hire anyone worse!" Neville says. "It can always be worse! Just read your textbook and shut up."

Leontes bites his bottom lip, forcing back a grin, but there's no use, Neville's grinning at him, too. "Oh, Granger," Leontes whines in a high-pitched voice, "teach me how to be confident just like you!"

"Oh, Longbottom," Neville returns, "I'm going to punch you in the nose if you don't stand up for yourself!"

They dissolve into laughter. Binns is safe for now.

But Leontes starts asking questions in class. A lot of questions. Binns is flustered by anyone paying attention and tries to start assigning Leontes more work. Then he starts inviting Leontes to come to his office after class for more discussion.

Then Leontes finds out Binns's deepest darkest secret -- which he's sure everyone who ever actually talked to Binns already knew, so, in other words, essentially no one -- which is that Binns wasn't a general magical historian in life. He was interested in historical spells, and only ended up teaching at Hogwarts through happenstance. And now, since he couldn't hold a wand anymore, he couldn't work through his theories.

Binns eagerly seizes on an interested student and soon enough, Leontes has extra History homework and a note from Flitwick asking to please pass along any useful results.

Leontes works on them after the Defense tutoring sessions. The one today is an old one that is supposed to work on familiars, but Leontes doesn't have a familiar. They get it working on Trevor, who can suddenly speak in English, but only quotes from Shakespeare that they already know -- very weird, not at all useful, why on earth was Binns researching this, he must have been one of those kinds of academics, the ones who care more about a question than ever using the answer -- and Ron Weasley, who's been mostly sleeping in the corner, because Percy Weasley could drag his brother to the tutoring session but not make him participate, suddenly remembers that he also has a familiar and goes to get him.

Leontes can't make it work on Scabbers. Neither can Neville or Ron or Susan or Parvati or Justin or even Percy.

"All right, on three," Penelope Clearwater says, because a failure this large attracts a crowd. "One. Two. THREE!"

Everyone casts, except for Percy, who has a shield over them in case of backlash.

Scabbers doesn't talk in English. Instead, there's a loud boom and suddenly Scabbers is a naked human man with a curse mark on his arm and several lacerations across his body from where the spell had tried to take root.

Leontes is immediately sick, but at least he's not alone. By the time he's wiping his mouth and vanishing the results, McGonagall has burst into the room, fast as Apparition. She throws several spells at the man, then casts a few more that rattle in Leontes's teeth and knees.

She sends a worried glance over all the students and barks off orders to the NEWT students to corral all the students back to their dorms, and then she takes the man and leaves as quickly as she arrived.

"What was that?" Ron Weasley asks for all of them, huddled in their dorm room drinking the hot chocolate with marshmallows that had appeared for each one of them. "What was that?"

"Hell if I know, Weasley," Leontes says, and for the first time, the two of them share a look of mutual understanding and camaraderie.

It doesn't last but, hey, it's nice that it happened.

10.

There's no big announcement about Peter Pettigrew, but one day, Harry Potter disappears for a few hours and comes back like he's been crying, and the rumor around Gryffindor is that he's got a new living situation now, living with some godfather he didn't know he had, but who finding Peter Pettigrew had sprung from prison.

All that means for Leontes is that Harry Potter gives him a stiff, awkward handshake, and then one to Neville, and thanks them for their part in this, and it's even more awkward in their room now.

Leontes gets bored with it immediately because it's getting to be time to pick electives for next year and, realistically, the rest of his time in Hogwarts. There's things to be said for all of the options, although the things to be said about Muggle Studies start to be said at loud volume between him and Neville.

Because Neville plans to take it, but thinks it's insulting that Leontes wants to take it. "This class isn't for you!" he shouts in the middle of the common room after the argument has been simmering for a week now. "Get over yourself, Granger, not everything in this school is about you!"

"This one is literally about me!" Leontes returns. "It's so cool to see how wizards think about muggles."

"This class is to teach us how to get around the muggle world!" Neville says. "You don't need to learn that!"

"NEITHER DO YOU," Leontes roars. "YOU DID THAT ALL CHRISTMAS."

They don't usually fight in public, so everyone's watching them like a tennis match. Percy Weasley gets between them and hauls Leontes into a study room in the corner. He locks and charms the door and then leans against it.

"Granger, calm down," he orders.

"I'm perfectly calm," Leontes says.

"Uh-huh," Percy says. "Look, I've been meaning to talk to you about this. McGonagall thought I should, since I'm the last one to do all electives."

"Yeah, and?" Leontes asks. "You also think I shouldn't?"

"I do think it's a waste of your time," Percy says. "But if you want to waste it, that's up to you. Pick the two electives to do as a class -- Care of Magical Creatures needs to be done in person, so that's one of them already -- and then organize your independent study. I did half my independent study over the summer, but you're doing your muggle classes then, aren't you?"

"I'm doing some of it during the year," Leontes says, because he only needs to do the science requirement during the summer.

"And if you keep doing your research with Professor Binns, that's another pull on your time. So ask yourself why you want to do all of it and decide if it's worth it."

That's nearly sensible advice. "So why did you do it?" he asks Percy.

Percy huffs. "Because Bill did it, and Bill did it because he was pretty bored during the war and didn't have much else to do with his time other than study. But you have to think about what you want. For instance, do you want to be a Prefect?"

Leontes shrugs. "That's not my decision."

"It might be," Percy says. "You think I got the badge because it's just me and Wood in my year, don't you?"

"No, I think you got it because Wood would be a terrible Prefect -- yeah, I guess. Yeah, I do."

"No, I earned it, but McGonagall didn't want to give it to me. She told me if I didn't think I could handle the Prefect duties and my coursework, she'd give the second badge to one of the girls. It was my decision to get it and I had to convince her." Percy's year is lopsided, two boys and ten girls; Leontes had heard that there'd been a third boy at one point but then his family moved away or something. It makes sense to give both the badges to the girls, Leontes thinks. "And if my grades ever slip, or if she thinks I'm spread too thin, she's going to take the badge from me for my own good. But right now, there's four boys in your year who are in the running to be Prefect," Percy says, very politely not saying who the two boys not in the running are, "and you might pull ahead from them in the next couple years, and you might not, but McGonagall is going to weigh all the factors in her decision. If you want to be a Prefect, don't take more than 3 electives."

Leontes hadn't thought about becoming a Prefect. He'd give it to Neville, himself. Neville's much better with the first years than Leontes is. Neville has a lot more patience. And since he stopped letting people walk over him, he's become more and more like, huh, like a future Prefect.

"Longbottom can have it," Leontes says. "I'll take all the electives."

Percy offers, like someone who has to share a dormitory with Neville Longbottom, "how about I give you all my Muggle Studies textbooks and notes and you can just take the OWL any year you want to sit for it. Doing it as an independent study really is a total waste of your time."

"Was it a waste of your time?" Leontes asks.

"I'm not taking the NEWT class," Percy says dryly. "Wood made the same argument as Longbottom about the purpose of the class and hauled me to his house for a month every summer of the last four years. I think I'm set on the muggle world."

Percy's a sixth year, so he's not too far removed from the decision, but not far enough to look back with hindsight yet. Still... "would you do it again?"

Percy considers the question. "I'd do it differently. I chose Ancient Runes as a self-study in third year and had to rearrange my schedule in late September when it turned out I couldn't teach myself Ancient Runes. I lost a year of Care of Magical Creatures and had to cram two years of it into fourth year. Divination went fine because I already knew which sort suited me, so I could focus on my strengths and not waste time with methods that don't work for me. If you don't already have insight into your Divination affinity, it's going to be an uphill climb."

"I do not have insight into my Divination ability," Leontes says. "I didn't know people have those."

"Oh, yes, those with a lot of talent can use multiple methods, but I have a very middling talent for Divination. I'm hopeless with crystal balls and tea leaves. Sticks and birds work for me. Of course, the OWL isn't a practical, so as long as you can drill yourself on the theory enough times, it'll be fine. But again--"

"It might be a waste of my time," Leontes says.

"I use Divination to check the weather before getting dressed," Percy says. "I could also just look at the sky and barometer and come to the same conclusion. But I like knowing things and I know you like knowing things, too. You just don't have to do the OWL for them if you don't think it makes sense."

"So you regret it?" Leontes asks.

Percy shrugs. "There were a lot of things I didn't do because I was too busy studying. I knew that going in -- Bill had given me the talk and so had McGonagall. You have to decide what's best for you. Do you like doing this research for Binns?"

Leontes hates to admit it, because he still resents Professor Binns's non-existence, but, "Yes."

"Then listen to me and to McGonagall and to Longbottom and keep it to three. You'll want Arithmancy and Ancient Runes for university. The third one is up to you. Or don't do a third and instead formalize your study with Binns and start working on a paper. You could publish by seventh year if you keep up your current pace with it--"

"--but not if I'm too busy chasing a big OWL number just for the sake of my ego and to shove it in the face of everyone who hates me," Leontes says.

"Precisely," says Percy Weasley.

Leontes claps Percy's shoulder. "Thanks, Weasley. You're actually good at this Prefect thing."

"Your compliments overwhelm me," Percy says dryly, and unlocks the door.

11.

In the end, Leontes picks two: Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. McGonagall agrees to sit down with him and Binns and work out a formal research proposal, to begin next year. Binns excitedly assigns Leontes three bookshelves of summer reading; Neville takes one glance at it and says, "better you than me."

"I hate that it's so interesting," Leontes grumbles. Neville laughs at him.

Neville picked Muggle Studies and then, after a long discussion with Professor Sprout about the best focus for pursing Herbology at the university level, chose Arithmancy and a laundry list of muggle classes to take over the summer. "You won't believe how useful muggle botany and muggle chemistry can be!" she had enthused to him.

And so Neville came back home with Leontes again, this time more prepared: Professor Sprout had found a few muggle teachers who would get Neville up to speed and not ask questions about why he didn't have the background a muggle his age would have. Leontes's house doesn't have a fireplace, so couldn't be hooked up to the floo, but there's a bus that goes nearby, and Leontes decides to tag along, too. Summers can stretch out long and be too boring, and he's not going to take the exams, just attend the classes for general enjoyment.

"You remember we were planning a trip to France this summer, don't you?" his mother had written when Leontes had first told her the new summer plan, but the rest of the letter had been about arrangements and how she's been in touch with Neville's gran to get his things sent over so that the guest room feels more homey for him. And Leontes had asked Neville and been told that Neville's gran was going to meet them in Paris, so they could all explore the magical side of the city.

Magical Paris is pretty cool, and Leontes finds a book that can teach him French during slow periods at school, which is a relief since Leontes has been slowly forgetting all the French he ever learned. Neville digs up a Latin grammar and a Greek workbook, both ridiculously necessary for their third year classes and yet not on their textbook list, so they each get a copy, and, after thinking about it for half a minute, Leontes gets each one for Ginny, too, and then puts them into Neville's hands pointedly.

Neville sputters for the first time in months. "We're not-- I'm not--"

"Right, you're not, but she's still a friend of yours, and you know her family doesn't care about properly equipping her for Hogwarts," Leontes says.

"So I should get one for Ron, too?" Neville asks, and then ducks the toothless swing Leontes makes at his head.

"Boys!" Leontes's mom calls at them, exasperated. "Do I really have to tell you no fighting? How old are you?"

"Sorry!" they call back.

"You know it's not their fault--" Neville starts.

"It kind of is," Leontes says. "Not the poverty, they can't help that. But they won't take charity. Hasn't Ron said that enough? They rummage through sales looking for threadbare robes, they buy old out-of-date books, and they gave Ron a wand that still doesn't work for him. Hogwarts has need-based scholarships. Professor McGonagall told me that herself, since she can't tell when muggles are poor or not. I asked Percy about it. He puffed up and told me that Weasleys are too good for that. And maybe Percy is smart enough to rise even with terrible support from his family, and I can't stand Ron or the twins so who cares about them, but Ginny's just a kid, and she's your friend. It's not her fault her parents won't lower themselves to take a hand-out. She deserves better than a cursed notebook from a second-hand store that nearly ate her!"

Neville is staring at him. "Leon, do you want to date Ginny?"

Leontes says a rude word. "I can like a girl without liking a girl."

"Uh-huh," Neville says skeptically. "Just checking. Because it's okay if you do."

"I don't!"

12.

Third year brings Hogsmeade trips and Neville finally asking Ginny out on a date. They hold hands, blushing, for a couple of months, and then seem to forget they ever dated. Leontes gives them space -- his father had written him a firm letter, man-to-man, about the importance of not getting jealous over best friends deciding they want to go on dates instead of study, and Leontes respects the voice of experience -- but the whole thing fizzles out by Christmas.

Leontes gets Ginny a Christmas present anyway, because if Neville is going to start wanting to date girls, Ginny Weasley's a good girl for him to like, and Leontes likes her, but not like that. When his parents had given him the birds and the bees, they'd both also told him that neither of them had been interested in dating until they were in university, and even then, they hadn't dated much because they'd been too focused on their careers. "Some things do run in families," his parents had told him delicately, and Leontes figures he's not going to start feeling any mating drives until he's nineteen at the very earliest. There's just too much to do before then. He has to finish all this work for Binns, for one.

"If you were a girl, we'd be telling you not to confuse wanting to be friends with a boy with wanting to date him," his mother had told him, "but since you're a boy, and take after your father, I'm just going to remind you to be gentle with any girls who try to ask you out on a date, when you tell them no."

"No one's going to ask me on a date," Leontes had said, ten years old and friendless.

"Puberty is not going to be kind to you," Leontes's father had predicted. And then the whole magic thing had happened, so the topic had gotten swept under the rug, except for his parents asking the clerk at Flourish where to find a spell book that included contraception, and making sure to put it into Leontes's trunk when he goes back to school after Christmas of his third year, "just in case the genes don't run true."

The genes are definitely running true, but Leontes learns the spells anyways, and ends up lending out the book to a few adventurous fifth years.

He gets asked out on four dates in third year, although he's not sure why, and does his very best to let them down gently, and then even goes to Lavender Brown to get tips on how to say no. Practice helps, but Leontes doesn't get it. He doesn't get it at all.

Talking to Lavender is also helpful because she's the best in their year at Divination. She gives him a few exercises he can do to try to find his affinity for Divination, lecturing him firmly not to let his mind get in the way. "Remember, magical intuition! Write down what comes into your mind and then check if it happens. Don't try to reason anything out, that's how you end up following the wrong path. Keep records of the intuition thoughts and sharpen them. The path that gets you the most correct results is the one you'll have the best chance of perfecting."

"They're all equally useless to me," Leontes writes to her over the summer, because she had stressed the importance of taking a few months and doing a lot of introspection and record keeping.

"Then either you're over-thinking it, or you're part of the tiny percentage of wizards who can't divine their way out of a paper bag," Lavender writes back. She comes to visit that summer, though, and takes Leontes through a few more exercises. Leontes's mother and Lavender's nana spend a pleasant afternoon talking about football while Lavender forces Leontes to make her six cups of tea, squint into a crystal ball, throw sticks, look for birds to augury with, and starts talking wistfully about entrails before Leontes has to tap out.

"I think I just can't do it," Leontes says.

"Not with that attitude you can't," Lavender says and leaves him with that.

Leontes grimaces after her and then looks to his mother. "What do you think?"

"I think the only things I've seen you fail at are things you didn't care about," his mother says, too frankly.

"I think predicting the future is ridiculous," Leontes admits.

"And I thought you levitating your toys with the power of your mind when you were four was impossible, but what do I know?" His mother folds her arms. "Nothing's stopping you from trying again if you want to try again. But if you don't want to try again, why waste your time? You already have too much on your plate. I wish you would read more for pleasure. Don't you have a popular literature club at school?"

"No, but we had a dueling one," Leontes says. "It lasted two days."

His mother looks disappointed at that. "Oh, I thought Neville said the books I sent were getting passed around. I must have gotten it wrong."

Leontes tracks Neville down and jumps on him. "Is there an underground book club at Hogwarts no one told me about?"

Neville struggles out from beneath him. "It's a lending library, you idiot, and you've been to the meetings."

Leontes frowns, thinking back. "Oh."

"I can't believe you," Neville says, and goes upstairs to apologize to Leontes's mother on behalf of all wizards everywhere, that her son is so oblivious to things that don't have to do with coursework.

"I resent that," Leontes says, coming up behind them.

"If you resent it, change it," Neville says ruthlessly.

13.

And so in fourth year, Leontes tries to 'get out more'. It helps that there's the Triwizard Tournament, so there's more students around. Leontes gets to practice his French with the Beauxbatons students and fix his accent, which he thinks should count, but Neville tells him is still considered schoolwork and so thus does not count.

"I'm starting an art club," Seamus Finnegan offers, when Leontes and Neville's arguing reaches a fever pitch in their room one night.

"Fantastic, I'm joining your art club," Leontes replies immediately.

His payment for his haste is when he arrives in the art room and realizes that Seamus had collected students from all years who already know how to draw and paint and sculpt and all that. Leontes doesn't know any of that.

He thinks this should count as studying, what with all the work he has to put into it, but Neville approves of this hobby, and even forces him to send his drawings home to Neville's gran, who after much proximity, Leontes was forced to admit wasn't terrible, just didn't know what to do with someone like Neville.

And then three Hufflepuff first years he's never even met come up to him at dinner and inform him that since his name is Shakespearian, he is being conscripted to be their mentor for their drama club.

"I can't be a mentor," he objects.

"Hogwarts rules says a mentor must be a fourth year or above," says the most stubborn of the first years, although they're all pretty stubborn.

"Yeah, Leontes," Neville says, "Hogwarts rules. Don't you want to set a good example?"

"Not particularly," Leontes says but the first years droop very dramatically -- he bets they practiced -- and so Leontes agrees to help out in their club. "But I'm not going to act!"

Which just goes to show that he has no talent for Divination, or his wishful thinking was getting the best of him.

His parents do send him a letter, though, congratulating him on becoming more well-rounded, so he doesn't quit the club even after they make him direct.

14.

Leontes is relieved when Neville is chosen as their Prefect and doesn't see the punch Ron throws at Neville coming. Harry and Leontes both try to step in between them simultaneously and end up hitting each other in the head accidentally. There's a lot of cursing and going for their wands and then Lavender, her Prefect badge shining, yanks open the door to the train compartment to take Neville to the Prefects meeting.

"He's taking everything from me!" Ron whines. "My sister likes him more than me, he's doing so well in Potions that Snape is picking on me instead, and now he gets to be the Prefect? I worked so hard for it!"

Leontes can't say he's ever noticed Ron working hard at anything, especially being a Prefect. But he also doesn't care about Ron.

On the other hand, he's trying to be a more generous person, ever since Lavender told him the reason that girls wanted to date him is because he isn't a total dick to girls as a general category. It turns out that other people live completely different lives than Leontes does, even in the same school. Imagine caring what other people think of you! Leontes thinks he used to care, once. That got burned out of him in his muggle life, when he had no friends. He has friends now, so what should he care about the Draco Malfoys of the world? He doesn't have time for that, he has to study.

But Neville told him once that other people can't just turn that off, and it seems Ron really cares what other people think of him, or specifically what Professor McGonagall thinks of him.

"Longbottom runs a study group for the younger kids," Leontes points out. "Do you do that?"

"Lavender doesn't--"

"Brown is always happy to help other people and give advice," Leontes says firmly. "She's even helped me when I've needed it and we're not friends. She's good at what she likes and she looks out for other people. You don't see Potter being angry about that, and he actually coaches younger students at Quidditch."

Harry looks surprised and deeply unhappy to be brought into this. "Ron also coaches those kids along with me."

Leontes shrugs. He doesn't care. "Longbottom did more. That's all there was to it." Leontes wants to ask Ron what he thinks being a Prefect even is, other than a lot of responsibility, and needs to go to someone who has already shown that quality. But that would make him more involved in this conversation than he wants to be.

Harry pulls Ron to the side and starts talking to him quietly and Leontes ignores them and pulls out his homework planner, tapping it to start assembling his notes to be given to Binns in the morning. Ron clears his throat loudly and then coughs and then, when Leontes keeps ignoring him, Ron tries to grab it out of his hand.

"I'm warning you, Weasley," Leontes says. "We're allowed to do magic on the train."

"Warning me?" Ron scoffs. "Warning me? You should have helped me! If you didn't want to be a Prefect, why didn't you lift a finger to help me, when you knew I wanted it so much?"

"I didn't know you want it," Leontes says. "I don't pay any attention to you, Weasley."

That brings Ron up short, but it's not enough to stop him. "You've been tutoring Longbottom and dragging him up from the bottom, why didn't you ever bother to help me?"

Leontes lowers his book. "I've never tutored Longbottom. We have a study group. You could have joined it at any time, except you made it clear in our first year that it offended you that I studied and participated in class. I don't know how you've been doing your homework or passing your exams and I long ago stopped listening to you moan and complain about it. I don't know why you attend Hogwarts if it's not to learn, but fair enough, some people ignore exams in favor of focusing only on OWL and NEWT results. Others do it because they don't care. This is Hogwarts. If you wanted to learn, you'd learn. Otherwise, no one was going to hold your hand and force you to study against your will. But no one is going to congratulate you on being Ron Weasley and give you a Prefect badge for the sake of your last name."

Leontes does see this punch coming and throws up a shield.

"Giving me things for being Ron Weasley?" Ron shouts. "No one's given me anything for being Ron Weasley!"

"There's no other reason to give it to you," Leontes says. "But I agree with you, is the thing. I agree that no one's given you anything for your name. Because if anyone ever tried to give you anything at all, it's only in a way where they can trick you into thinking you're not getting it. Take Potter," Leontes says, nodding to Harry, who clearly wants to be anywhere but here. "He'd have been overjoyed to buy you a new wand in first year. He only has all this money because his parents died; it's not any more fair than your parents not having enough money to go around. Neither of you picked it. Why didn't he try to help you? Because you'd have thrown it back in his face. You'd never have accepted any help. If he ever did help you, it was only in a way where you could pretend it was you doing him the favor. I expect that's how you ended up helping him with Quidditch, isn't it? Potter told you that he needed a second set of hands?"

"I do!" Harry says quickly. "I've only ever played Seeker, I don't know how to work with the other positions."

"Potter has been on the house team since first year," Leontes says helpfully to Ron. "We're going into our fifth. Please do the most basic amount of math. I suppose Potter was aware of your desire to be a Prefect and wanted to give you some mentorship experience."

"Please shut up," Harry begs.

"Is that true?" Ron asks, rounding on Harry. "Are you--"

"He's only your best friend," Leontes puts in. "Why are you angry with him? He would do anything for you. The least you can do for him is stop making him do contortions to help you get what you want. That is why you're mad at me, isn't it? The friendless nerd didn't know he had to suck up to the popular kids like you? I'm sure that's not how you'd put it, though. You're such a good person, you Weasleys. The twins are out of control nightmares, you're a spoiled brat, I'm amazed your family turned out Percy and Ginny. I guess they beat the odds. What, did you want me to spend these last four years doing your homework and standing over you to study for your exams, while you complained at me all the while for being so mean to you as to force you to act like a student? I'm not your fairy godmother, Weasley. If you can't even accept help from Potter, then you're hopeless and should just drop out of school and spare us all the burden of enduring your angst. Grow up."

Leontes stands up.

"Oh, and Weasley. If you ever try to ruin Longbottom's joy over being a Prefect. It you tease him and torment him." Leontes smiles. "I suggest you don't."

"Why?" Ron asks, Gryffindor bravery showing its mettle. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to write a letter to your mother," Leontes says. "Since you're such a big baby who can't handle disappointment with dignity and grace." Leontes nods to Harry. "Potter."

Potter grimaces. "Granger."

Leontes spends the rest of the train ride in a compartment with a Ravenclaw he'd never met, only seen around. It's a much more pleasant time and Luna Lovegood is happy to join in the study group. He guesses some people come to Hogwarts to learn.

15.

Ron stays out of Leontes's way for a fortnight, not even looking at him in their room. Harry approaches Leontes quietly and thanks him and also curses him out for a good five minutes.

"Weasley still sulking?" Leontes asks.

Harry twists his fingers. "He's my only friend. You didn't have to be so mean."

"That wasn't mean. Mean is going low, like blaming him for harboring Peter Pettigrew, or being poor. I was just telling him what he should already know: a lot of his problems are in his power to solve, if only he'd bother to do it."

"That wasn't a great way to tell him that," Harry says.

Leontes shrugs. "I'm not someone who loves him. I'm not someone who relies on him. I'm someone who can't stand him. I wanted to, though. I came to Hogwarts as a friendless eleven-year-old and I wanted to make friends so badly. Ron Weasley didn't share that opinion. He still doesn't want to be friends with me. If he wants anything from me, it's just to use me. No, thank you."

"He's not stupid, though," Harry says. "He's great at chess--"

"It's not about being stupid or being smart," Leontes says. "It's about what you do with it. Plenty of people here are smarter than me. That doesn't matter. I came here at a disadvantage and I've been at the top of the class every year. I don't do that by being smart, just like you don't keep your place on the house team by being fast. You do it by being good at Quidditch and practicing and staying ahead of everyone who would take your position on the team. I don't play Quidditch. Instead, I study. Some people don't, they coast on their memories and they pull out grades good enough for them. If Weasley can do that, then what do I care? It's his life he's ruining by wasting these years, and if he's got enough connections through his parents, then it really doesn't matter how he does here. But it matters for me, because I'm nobody. He has advantages I'll never have, and instead of using them, he just expects people to help him and then yells at them for trying. Because if he didn't do that, you'd not be here, trying to get me to be the one to apologize to him and make it seem like it was my idea and you had nothing to do with it."

"He's going through a hard time," Harry says. "He really wanted to be a Prefect to make his parents proud of him."

"I don't care," Leontes says. "You and I both know that's not how the world works. If his parents don't love him, he's not going to earn it with achievements. If his parents do love him, then they don't need a badge to be proud of him. Frankly, coming after the twins like he does, he probably makes his parents proud every day by not being like the twins."

"He's really great once you get to know him," Harry says desperately.

"I tried that," Leontes says. "I remember, even if you don't. He called me insufferable and said the only way I could get anyone to like me is if I kept my mouth shut and let them cheat off my homework. Maybe the two of you hit it off immediately, but that's not how it happened with me. I tried. The reason I'm friends with Longbottom is because he tried, too. It takes two people to make a friendship and one person to break it."

"So you won't--" Harry starts.

"I'm not going to do anything," Leontes says. "I'm not going to raise a single finger for Weasley. Or for you, either, but I don't see you blaming me for things that aren't my fault."

Harry shrugs, accepting that, and he wanders away, leaving Leontes a little lost in thought. He'd just said that, hadn't paid any attention to the words coming out of his mouth. But they feel true. Why wouldn't he help Harry? What had Harry ever done to make Leontes recoil from the thought of even pointing him in the right direction in the library? Nothing. Harry had done nothing. Other than be friends with Ron Weasley and the twins, but that's hardly a crime. Plenty of people like the twins; Leontes doesn't understand it, but he can notice and acknowledge other people's behaviors.

Harry's not a bad person. He-- okay, Leontes doesn't know, or care, about his studying habits, and Leontes has been annoyed for years that Harry won't shut up in Potions class and just stop playing Snape's game already, it's so disruptive, and Harry has a habit of thinking rules don't apply to him, and even more annoyingly, often they don't. But he's a decent guy and of all the Quidditch players in the house, Harry is the one least obsessed with Quidditch.

There's really nothing wrong with Harry.

"Do you think I'm too hard on Potter?" Leontes asks Neville later. "Be honest with me. I can take it."

"Why are you spending one single minute thinking about Harry Potter?" Neville asks. "I thought you had fifth year scheduled down to the second."

"It's not that--" Leontes starts to object.

Neville summons Leontes's planner and starts flipping through it. "No, I think you did. And you didn't schedule time in here to figure out why you don't like Potter, so clearly, you're not going to do that."

"I'm not?" Leontes asks, amused.

"No, because I'll tell you why you don't like Potter. You'd say it's nothing personal, but it is. Here it is, in its naked glory: you tried to be friends with him and he chose someone else instead. And that person he chose didn't let him be friends with other people. And that's it. You moved on, having learned that Potter is not going to be your friend. He's done nothing to change that, so you haven't changed your mind on him."

"You're a little too insightful these days," Leontes says.

"Comes with the territory," Neville says and points at his badge. "You're just going to have to get used to it."

"Okay," Leontes says.

16.

Leontes doesn't notice when Ron starts talking to him again, because he's too busy. The project with Binns is getting into the really exciting stuff about the popularity of different light spells over the centuries. And then there's the rest of the OWL preparation. Over Christmas, Leontes goes and sits the Muggle Studies OWL, so that one is at least out of the way.

In January, something strange happens, though. A Hufflepuff, Leontes thinks she's one of Dean's friends, asks him on a date. He does what he's practiced: he covers his heart with his hand and puts every bit of drama into his voice that he's learned from the drama club that he's still, somehow, involved in, and declaims, "I wish I could, dear lady! But I'm afraid my heart is sworn to the service of the cruel Lady NEWT. I can only begin to think of others once my torment is complete. I pray you forgive me for my unchivalrous conduct, but I cannot accompany you to Hogsmeade in the manner in which you request. I must toil instead, these seven years, until my work is done."

She laughs and there's no tension or awkwardness as she leaves him and Neville alone, but Neville's looking at him askance.

"Do you mean that?" he asks. "The whole bit about not dating until after the NEWTs?" Neville had dated a lot in fourth year but hasn't gone to Hogsmeade with anyone except as a friend this year. Leontes has kept his mouth shut about it, reminding himself that it's okay for Neville to go on dates and so it's not okay to congratulate him on putting his OWLs and his Prefect duties ahead of that, because that would make Neville think that Leontes did not, actually, think it was fine to go on dates. Which it is. Even though it does distract from the important things. People can have different priorities and that's okay. It's fine. It's acceptable behavior.

That said, Leontes thinks it's fantastic that Neville isn't dating this year. This is an important year! A vital year! Dating can wait.

"I suppose," Leontes says. "University is also going to be grueling so I may wait until after that, but I'm certainly not going to do it before the NEWTs. And who knows? I might end up with more free time in university for things like that."

Neville, an unreadable expression on his face, takes out his magical planner without a word and flips forward pretty far and then writes something down and then puts it away.

Leontes eyes him, mystified.

"How's Binns doing?" Neville asks, adroitly changing the subject, and Leontes relaxes. Everything's fine. Nothing to worry about. Priorities are definitely established and correct.

17.

The summer after fifth year is spent preparing for sixth year. Leontes would say he doesn't notice when the OWL results come in, except he does, because Ginny is visiting and she does him the favor of reading the results for him and then telling his parents, who congratulate him on top marks across the board, and no one even asks Leontes which subjects he's going to do at the NEWT level and which he's going to drop, which is such a relief, Leontes is so relieved, because he doesn't have a moment to breathe.

The historical light spells project with Binns has spawned an experimental arm, and Professor Flitwick agreed to let Binns and Leontes split the incoming first years into groups and teach them different spells for their first light spell, which means that the Hogwarts Board is involved, and Leontes has to write to every single parent of every single incoming first year to explain the project and why it's important and no, it won't sabotage their precious child's chances of learning the most modern version of lumos possible, it's only that their kids are too young to have picked up any bad habits, or any habits at all, really, and so they're the best population for this, and yes, if it goes well, they'll also do it in Leontes's seventh year, and also all their kids will receive an excellent education at Hogwarts, and no, Hogwarts doesn't only teach spells that were trendy four hundred years ago, Leontes promises.

He also writes to every ancient witch and wizard Binns remembers from back in his day and gets testimonials about what they remember of their educational experience with light spells, and Leontes even has a conversation with Albus Dumbledore and his brother Aberforth Dumbledore, and he gets permission to use international portkeys and visit six different wizarding primary schools and look at their records.

So Leontes spends that entire summer with a headache, so when his parents put the form in front of him of which NEWTs he's going to do, because if he doesn't make the decision now, it's McGonagall who is going to be asking him next week when term begins, Leontes looks over it and says yes to all of them.

"I can always drop them if it's too much," he says desperately to his parents, who exchange a very married glance over his head and feed him extra dessert that night and tell him to go to bed, they love him, please get some rest before you burn out.

On the train, Neville, Ginny, and Ginny's current boyfriend who is some Hufflepuff that Leontes has met maybe three times, and also Luna Lovegood and Dean and Seamus and Lavender and both Patil twins, all sit Leontes down and tell him, as friends and acquaintances and people who care that he doesn't start exploding at everyone in the common room or the library, that he has until the end of September to get his workload down to a reasonable level, or he will let Neville do it for him.

That seems reasonable, so Leontes agrees.

He's forced to pare it down the next morning, to everyone's complete relief, when McGonagall visits the Gryffindor table at breakfast and reminds him that, since he has to teach or observe all first year Charms classes, that means he has to attend all first year Charms classes. Until the project is over, of course.

"I drop Astronomy," he tells her immediately. "Uh. I need Transfiguration. I need Potions. I need Defense." She waits patiently. "Charms, of course I need Charms. Ancient Runes--"

"Summer," Neville whispers at him.

"What summer?" Leontes hisses back, then looks up at McGonagall, who might be amused, he can't tell. "Ancient Runes half the year?" he bargains.

"What do you plan to study at university?" McGonagall prompts him.

Leontes can't remember. "Wait, can I drop History?"

"Yes," McGonagall says. "Your project will allow you to take the NEWT."

Leontes closes his eyes and tries to visualize all the OWLs he took. He took Divination -- why did he take Divination? How did he do so well at it? He can't predict any future, ever! He's never managed it and never will. Uh. "I drop Herbology. Can I please take Muggle Studies NEWT without the class?"

Ginny had grabbed a first year schedule from each of the houses and has been sketching out a schedule. She passes it to Leontes, who looks it over. Ginny's dropped Ancient Runes and Arithmancy for him. He meets her gaze.

"The times conflict no matter what you do," Ginny says. "Potions or Arithmancy. Pick."

McGonagall takes tremendous pity on him. "We can revisit this after Christmas. I'm confident you can catch up on any class time you missed."

Leontes is not confident, but he got himself into this mess all by himself. He's a big boy. He nods. "Yes, Professor. This all seems reasonable. Thanks for keeping me from St. Mungo's from a nervous breakdown."

She cracks a smile. "I'd for it for anyone, Mr. Granger."

18.

He lasts three more weeks and drops NEWT Defense. The teachers are always terrible anyway. He doesn't have time to attend a class taught by an incompetent. He'll make it up next year, or do self-study, or completely forget NEWT Defense even exists.

Anyway, Neville is doing NEWT Defense and is always happy to share his notes and practice with him, so who needs a teacher? They've been teaching themselves Potions all along, too. It's fine. It's fine.

After he snaps at someone in the library and is banned for a week, Lavender takes him to Hogsmeade and makes him have a spa day and relax, and it's so great that he starts doing it every month.

As Christmas arrives, he can't tell if Neville and Ginny are dating or not -- they say they're not, just "having fun" -- and Leontes doesn't know what to do, but Parvati Patil asks Ginny for him if she wants the regular candy quills for her Christmas present and Ginny says yes, so Leontes doesn't have to worry about that. It's great, not having something to worry about.

Neville gets a new pointy hat, one with three expandable pockets, and Leontes also shoves as much candy as possible into all the pockets. Neville gets Leontes a massage stone that he can put on his shoulders and suddenly breathe better. It's phenomenal. Leontes wants six of them.

The first years all learn how to turn their wands into flashlights and Leontes is too busy with the analyzing and writing up the results and preliminary conclusions to start taking Ancient Runes or Arithmancy again. He's going to have so few NEWTs, he's so angry about it whenever he has enough time to think about it. He should have exorcised Binns when he had a chance. It's too late now.

"Do you care about the class or the exam?" Ginny asks. "Because I think you took half as many classes as you sat OWLs, didn't you?"

Not really, but... "NEWTs are harder than OWLs. They want you to take the class for a reason."

"It is harder," Lavender says. "But the homework is there to make sure we're keeping up and not getting confused, and the exams are there to see how we're doing. If you can force yourself to do that to yourself and check yourself against the material, you really only need the classes for the practicals. You can do Arithmancy and Ancient Runes yourself."

"And Herbology," Neville says, still sore that Leontes was so quick to give it up. But the class time! Herbology takes up so much time!

"I can't teach myself half the Hogwarts curriculum," Leontes says firmly. "I'm flattered you think I can, but I can't."

"What else are you doing this summer?" Neville says.

"Uh, the muggle stuff," Leontes reminds him.

"Why? You're going to wizarding university. The muggle stuff can wait until after the NEWTs. Prioritize, Granger," Lavender tells him ruthlessly. "I did a divination, you know. It says you end up with more NEWTs than Draco Malfoy. Don't prove me wrong."

"I can just sabotage Malfoy," Leontes grumbles. Neville waves his hand in a wandless summoning he learned during all his copious free time ("it's called NEWT Charms, Leon, you're in the class") and brings over Leontes's massage stones and a firewhiskey.

"This too shall pass," Neville says wisely.

19.

"Maybe I don't need to pass all my NEWTs," Leontes says in the middle of exam week, their alcove of the common room all too studious around him. "Taking them is good enough, isn't it?"

Neville and Seamus hit him with every forcible mind-clarifying spell they can think of, while Dean grabs one of the Creeveys and urgently demands his camera.

"Maybe it's too much to think I can--"

Dean gets an amazing shot of Neville throwing himself at Leontes while Seamus tries a binding spell that he swears gets rid of most mind-altering curses.

"I don't think he's been confunded," Seamus says.

"I'm being realistic!" Leontes says. "Isn't it more well-adjusted for me to be realistic about my chances of passing all my classes this year? If I have to drop one of my NEWT classes next year, isn't it better that I know now before I get my hopes up?"

"The worst part of this," Lavender proclaims while Neville starts working his way through diagnostic spells, "is that I'm sure your marks are still going to be ahead of mine. It's insufferable."

Dean gets a few more shots with the camera and then says, much too cheerfully, "let's take him to Madam Pomfrey. It might be something we haven't covered yet in class."

"No! No! Put me down!" Leontes says and gets hit with body binds from all directions.

Madam Pomfrey purses her lips at them but agrees that, as these things go, these shenanigans are harmless fun. Leontes still spends the night in the Hospital Wing, so Madam Pomfrey can analyze his sleep patterns, because Neville and Seamus and Dean had all lied with guileless eyes that Leontes has been snoring really badly and they're just so concerned about him.

McGonagall visits and looks Leontes over before allowing him to take his Transfiguration exam. "Get some rest over the summer," she says.

"I don't know what that means," Leontes says, haunted.

"Learn," she tells him, "or your body will force you. If you burn out, how can I hire you in ten years to teach History of Magic?"

"I WANT TO WAKE UP NOW," Leontes screams. "I WANT TO WAKE UP."

McGonagall lets him take a Seriously Calming Solution before the exam. She's so nice. Leontes wants to be just like her when he grows up.

20.

Leontes gets home for the summer and sleeps for about a week. Then Neville shows up and drags him to a sauna and a spa and a beach, then Leontes sleeps for another week.

Then he wakes up one morning and realizes that if he doesn't do the work now, he's out of time. His planner ends at end of term next year.

"What am I doing after Hogwarts?" he asks his parents in increasing panic. "What am I doing?"

They look at him steadily. "You've been saying you want to attend magical university."

"Right. I want to do that," Leontes says. "So I need the NEWTs in-- I need 5 NEWTs. I think. In relevant subjects to what I want to study. What do I want to study?"

"Do wizards take gap years?" his mother asks his father.

"I think this wizard should take two gap years," his father replies. "Leo-Leo, take the summer off."

"I can't! I have to--"

"You don't have to," his father corrects. "Academic achievement is wonderful, but it's a tool to be used later, not something to gain for its own sake. That friend of yours with a hatful of NEWTs, what's he doing these days?"

"Percy? Something at the Ministry."

"Did he need all those NEWTs to get that job?"

Leontes has no idea.

"And he didn't go to university first?" his mother confirms.

"No, most wizards don't go to university. It's for specialization," Leontes says and then listens to what he just said. "Oh. It's for specialization. So I need to have something I want to specialize in."

"You've been acting like you want to specialize in the history of different charms," his mother says and points with her chin to the veritable stack of books and reports that Leontes has been collecting for the last few years.

"Absolutely not," Leontes says firmly. "It's interesting but not that interesting."

"What if you had a professor for it that you like more than you like Professor Binns?" his mother asks and Leontes pauses and considers that.

Uh.

Huh.

"Neville is going to study Potions ingredients," Leontes says carefully, working it through. "That's why he's focusing on Herbology and Potions. He needs NEWT Defense to be certified for handling certain plants and animals needed for both. He's taking Charms because-- I think because he likes Charms."

"It sounds like Neville has a plan," Leontes's mother says gently. "If we asked Neville what your plan is, what do you think he'd say it is?"

"Leontes wants to take over the world," is what Neville says when he stops by later.

"Is there a class for that?" Leontes's father asks dryly.

"I just want to know everything," Leontes objects. "That's different."

"Leontes's plan is to become the next Dark Lord. He's collecting a core group of followers -- me, Lavender, Dean, Seamus, Percy and Ginny Weasley -- and he's going to build more of a following at university, targeting researchers who want to pursue pure knowledge like he does. Eventually he's going to storm Hogwarts, exorcise Binns--"

"Oh, that would be so great."

"--topple Dumbledore, smack Snape across the face, and then install McGonagall as Headmaster while Leontes moves into the library. He's also going to free all house elves--"

"Someone needs to," Leontes has to say.

"--and get centaurs to teach Divination--"

"They're better at it! All the data says that!"

"--and then he's going to go up to the Minister of Magic and tell him he's doing it all wrong, and take over. Leontes's rule as Dark Lord will be notable for requiring all students in Hogwarts to either stop complaining about their homework or drop out of school--"

"That was once, I promise you," Leontes says to his parents urgently, "I only told someone that once!"

"--that was a lot more than once, Dr. and Dr. Granger-- and he's going to allow promising students their very own time loops so they have enough time to take all their classes. He's also going to legalize lycanthropy--"

Leontes's mother blinks. "It's illegal?"

"--and abolish Azkaban and Quidditch--"

Leontes decides the better part of valor is pretending he doesn't exist.

"--and the Hogwarts house system. Once he's done that, he's going to retire to the countryside and whittle toys out of driftwood and complain about how long the academic publishing timeline is."

"I see," Leontes's father says. "An ambitious plan. Perhaps it's best to go step by step."

"I agree completely," Neville says. "That's why I'm here to force him to go to a movie."

Leontes's parents wish them well and on the walk over, Leontes says, "tell it to me straight, I can take it. Am I acting ridiculous?"

"No," Neville says. "You're just acting like someone who's been ignoring the career planning sessions because they interfere with interviewing all the first years about their experiences. Which you did. Five times."

"Oh," Leontes says. "I shouldn't have done that, should I?"

"It's okay, McGonagall can get owl post even in the summers," Neville says. "I know you can't think beyond the NEWTs right now, so I'm not going to ask you to. But maybe think about things the NEWTs make you interested in studying more. You're probably set on university admission, what with the way Binns and McGonagall love you. I'm sure they're writing your recommendation letters as we speak. Just focus on what's right in front of you and figure out the rest next year. There's plenty of time."

"Really?" Leontes asks hopefully.

"Really," Neville confirms. "Plenty of time."

21.

Leontes snaps out of it in the beginning of July. He opens his trunk and spends a few days doing some runes for the pure fun of it. Then he owls Percy and asks him if he's free for lunch or dinner in the next week or so to talk about career planning.

Percy arrives at the restaurant armed with brochures and flyers and a very large appetite. "It's been so busy at the Ministry," he says.

"Oh, I could have waited," Leontes says.

"Half your study group managed to drop by my desk this week," Percy says dryly. "I don't want my sister to send a Howler. Sounds like you woke up to the fact that you've got a year left at Hogwarts."

"I did, in fact, wake up to the fact that I've got a year left at Hogwarts," Leontes confirms.

"So what have you been thinking about?" Percy asks, and orders the duck, while Leontes figures sounds good enough for him, too. Percy also rattles off a list of side dishes, which Leontes starts eying when they arrive.

"Are you having a growth spurt?" Leontes asks Percy seriously.

"I still eat like a teenager and you are a teenager. There won't be any leftovers," Percy predicts, and he was the one who first told Leontes that divination can be used for mundane purposes as well, so Leontes supposes he believes it.

As they eat, Leontes tells Percy that he thinks he does want to do research into spell formation, but more in the theory sense, not in the history sense. Percy urges him to elaborate, and Leontes talks, between bites -- the food really does go fast, where is it all going, did Leontes forget to eat while he was hibernating? -- about how the work with Binns has forced him to really explore the fact that all spells are artificially constructed. The magic they do every day is entirely through structures created and refined over centuries, in order to get the most consistent results. Even those who cast wordlessly and wandlessly aren't doing the same kind of magic as children when they do accidental magic.

It's all so interesting.

"You need to focus all your efforts on Charms," Percy says. "Charm Theory overlaps with Transfiguration, of course, and Defense is just specialized Charms--"

"I dropped Defense," Leontes admits.

"Understandable," Percy says, which is shocking. Leontes gapes at him and Percy dabs his mouth with his napkin. "You don't need to do what I did, Leontes. I didn't even need to do what I did. Would I do it again? Probably not, but I understand why I did it. It was important to me at the time. But if Ginny asked me if she should take as many NEWTs as I did, I'd tell her to focus on what she actually needs the NEWT certification for. You can always learn on your own time. Your NEWT year is to get your NEWTs."

"But with Charm Theory, I need Runes."

"Without a doubt," Percy says. "Did you drop it?"

Leontes doesn't want to admit it, but... "I didn't have time for it. I also dropped Arithmancy."

"You don't necessarily need Arithmancy, but you certainly need Runes. Find space in your schedule and add it back. What other NEWTs are you doing?"

The list seems so short when Leontes says it. "I'm only doing Charms, Potions, and Transfiguration, but I'm authorized to take History and Muggle Studies without the classes. I'd thought about catching up on Runes and Arithmancy over the summer, but I've only just started back up on Runes."

Percy hums. "Swing by the Ministry next week and take the Runes and Arithmancy practice tests. If your results are above Troll, then you'll be allowed to take them in seventh year without sixth year. If your results are a passing grade, you'll be allowed to sit the NEWT without the class. But the class will be helpful if you can manage it. Is your History research really taking so much time?"

"Unfortunately," Leontes says. "I keep thinking it won't, but then it does."

"Get a research assistant and add back in Runes and Arithmancy and you'll be fine in seventh year," Percy says. "Now, careers. More than you'd think."

"Really?" Leontes asks. "Charm Theory is fascinating but, uh."

"I took the liberty of a few divinations," Percy admits, ha, Leontes knew it, as Percy pulls out all the materials that he arrived with. "Take these home and look through them. I didn't know you dropped Defense, so ignore anything that requires it. Or, if you want, take all the practice tests you want. You don't need an Outstanding on all your NEWTs. And that's coming from me," he adds.

Leontes laughs. "Would you have believed it yourself if someone told you that?"

"Plenty of people did tell me that, and I believed them as much as you do," Percy says. "That doesn't stop it from being true, though. Indulge me, Leontes. Make your own mistakes, not mine."

22.

They find out that Neville isn't going to be Head Boy on a stormy day in August. They've been spending the weekend at the Longbottom cottage on the lake and when the official Hogwarts owl swoops in, Leontes tenses all over.

Neville reads the letter and then looks up and smirks at Leontes. "It's going to Justin Finch-Fletchley. You're allowed to be happy."

Leontes had exhaled but now tenses all over again. "Uh."

"It's fine if you never wanted me to be Head Boy. I'm not upset."

"It would take so much time!" Leontes starts.

Neville picks it up immediately. "Time I should be using getting ready for NEWTs!"

"You remember how busy Percy Weasley was--"

"He took more NEWTs than I am," Neville puts in helpfully.

"And of course you need more time for clubs, too," because they'd come to an agreement last year on two clubs each, so Leontes was doing drama and lego, and Neville did the book club and fencing. "There's no benefit to being Head Boy, it's just loads more work and no gain."

"Nice bit of ego boost, though," Neville says.

"You don't need an ego boost, you know you're amazing," Leontes says.

Neville's laughter softens into something more genuine. "Thanks, Leon."

Leontes brushes it off again, but Neville takes a step closer and licks his lips.

"I did want to thank you. I've been thinking about it for a while. Seventh year is going to be hectic and probably really awful, so I didn't know if I'd get a chance. Plenty of people drift apart under the stress. So I did want to make sure, so long as I got the chance."

Leontes feels really uncomfortable, but when he opens his mouth to try to find any other topic, Neville puts his hand over it and Leontes can't move.

"So because I have the chance, and I'm not going to let you interrupt, I wanted to thank you for helping me in first year. My gran and my uncles had tried to get me to stand up for myself, but whenever I tried, they cut me down again. I don't think it was on purpose, but they kept saying they wanted me to act one way, but when I tried, it seemed like what they really wanted was for me to be meek and self-conscious and for them to be angry at me for it. Mixed messages, really. But then you told me to stand up for myself or else live like this forever--" is that how Leontes had put it? If so, he really had been a shockingly arrogant eleven-year-old, someone should have punched him in the nose, "--and then when I did stand up to you, you didn't abandon me for other friends or tell me off. When I stood up to you, you met me on my feet as, uh, as an equal. As a friend. As... as someone who cared about me and didn't want some kind of loyal follower or a lackey. Just a friend who wanted me to be his friend. And I appreciate that. You changed my life, Leontes Granger, and I will always be grateful to you for that."

Leontes whimpers and Neville finally takes away the silencing spell he'd sketched out on his palm.

"You can talk now," Neville says generously.

Leontes covers his face in his hands and moans, "Neville, please never be so sincere at me again, I can't take it."

Neville just stands there, waiting, and so Leontes has to say, "obviously, you too. You know that. You made me the man I am today and I. Yeah. Thanks. But we're not going to drift apart in seventh year, that's for losers who don't have their priorities in order, and our priorities are flawless and well-planned."

Neville chuckles. "Well, if the smartest boy in our year says so, then it must be true."

"See? You should never doubt me," Leontes says. He licks his lips, but he's not even sure why.

23.

Leontes had passed all the practice tests on the strength of all the preparation he'd done for the OWLs, and Binns and McGonagall had agreed that he could bring Dennis Creevey in as a research assistant, so Leontes adds Ancient Runes and Arithmancy back to his schedule, and attends about half the Herbology classes, because he needs to be able to keep up with what Neville is talking about. He would have added Defense if he had any confidence in the teacher, but he doesn't, and he'd winnowed Percy's pamphlets down to ones that don't require Defense anyway.

"And I can always just take the NEWT and fail it," Leontes says.

McGonagall has started having him come for tea whenever he's feeling overwhelmed. She always doses his with a gentle calming draught and they talk about Leontes's tentative university plans. It's really nice.

"With any other student, I wouldn't allow it, but I think it makes you less stressed to know you can take any NEWT you want to," McGonagall says.

Leontes nods. "It really does make it easier."

If he weren't taking the test, Leontes would feel so guilty when he would pick up a book on another subject, as if he's wasting time he should be spending on studying for the NEWTs he actually needs. But now he can tell himself, it's fine to talk to Lavender about the latest Divination publication, because it could help Leontes get a passing grade on his Divination NEWT. He's not slacking off, he's just studying in a different way.

And his brain feels better, having all these little bites here and there on different subjects. Is this what being well-rounded really means? That he's not a boat that's weighed too heavily on one side and sinking because of it? He's spread out all of his knowledge on the deck of the boat and is just walking around aimlessly, adding to the piles wherever he wants. So he can go to Herbology with Neville and then to Ancient Runes with Susan Bones, and he can work on his Potions with Lavender and quiz each other on minute details.

He feels a lot steadier this year.

He feels like he's ready for whatever is coming next.

24.

NEWTs come, inevitably.

The last NEWT of them all is Potions. Leontes waits outside after he finishes for Neville to finish up, then Neville suggests lunch and they wander down to Hogsmeade. Neville leads him into Josephine's, where there's a table waiting for them in the back. They talk lightly about the NEWT -- "awful", "extremely" -- until halfway through the soup course, when Leontes snaps out of the post-examination fugue, looks around, takes in the single candle flickering in the middle of the table and the overall atmosphere of the most romantic restaurant in Hogsmeade.

"Oh," he says. He looks around again, just to make sure. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Neville lowers his spoon. "You said not until we finished the NEWTs. We've finished the NEWTs. Well?"

"Ah," Leontes says eloquently. "Oh. Well. All right, then."

Neville smiles at him. It's a beautiful smile. "Glad we're agreed."

Leontes finds that his mouth is dry. Oh, look, there's soup. Soup can fix this. He stares at his spoon, then at the soup, then takes the most self-conscious sip of soup he ever has in his life. "How, uh, long?"

"Long enough," Neville says. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't being obvious or anything."

"You were dating other people," Leontes agrees. "It would have been pointless to wait for me to be ready. And I might have said no."

"Very true," Neville agrees. "But I figured you wouldn't storm out of here so at least we'd have a nice lunch and could commiserate over Potions in collegial camaraderie."

"That was a good plan," Leontes says, and finds himself at a loss for words, at what to say to someone he's never once in his life not known what to say to. That's unacceptable. He can always say anything to Neville, that's the strength of their friendship.

Neville laughs. He's really so handsome. Leontes usually doesn't think about how other people look, because it's a waste of time, but Neville looks -- he looks really good. Tired and rumpled from studying too much, and with a mark on his cheek from ingredient prep, and he needs a haircut and certainly a nap. But. He looks. He looks really good.

"So how do you think you did?" Neville asks. "No drama. Actual assessment."

Leontes sips his soup again. It's delicious and he can't remember right now what they ordered for the rest of lunch. Oh, well. They're done with the NEWTs; life is supposed to start surprising him right about now. "EE on Arithmancy. Outstanding on the rest of them that matter. I can't predict Divination."

"No, you never could," Neville says, and he's still smiling. He's been smiling since they sat down. Leontes wants to stare at his smile forever.

25.

Dating Neville turns out to be easy.

Leontes has never been a student of relationships, but he has been a student at Hogwarts, so he'd had a front row seat to seven years of other people's problems in their relationships. He never paid attention but things slipped through nonetheless. The main complaint seems to be the other person not being thoughtful, so Leontes redoubles all his efforts into being thoughtful. It's not particularly hard. He's always been thinking about Neville, but now he also thinks about what Neville likes, what would make him happy.

Be thoughtful, be considerate of others, pay attention, care about them and show that you care about them, help them however they want and stay the fuck out of the way when they don't want you interfering in their lives... this should work out. Oh, and make sure there's times to be casual and times to dress up and go on dates (but not to Hogsmeade), and spending time together doing things you like. And make sure you're not doing anything that the other person finds very annoying and will shout at you in the common room about and disturb everyone else. And shower regularly and clean under your fingernails and keep your wand polished and remember the lubrication charms and fluid barrier spells and hygiene--

Leontes gets another notebook.

26.

The NEWT results come in. Leontes opens his with trepidation.

He'd eked out an Acceptable in Divination and Care Of Magical Creatures. Somehow he'd gotten an Outstanding in Defense -- there must be such a low standard on that because of the terrible teacher quality. Only EE in Astronomy, he knew he'd gotten confused halfway through. The rest were all Outstandings, so he doesn't have to hide himself away in shame at wasting seven years of his life.

He knows Malfoy didn't sit Muggle Studies or Care Of Magical Creatures, so Leontes obligingly sends Lavender a short note telling her that her prediction was correct. She apparates into his yard an hour later and demands to see his results.

"This is why people hate you, you know," she tells him breezily over the mini-cakes she'd brought with her as a congratulatory gift. "You never even touched a magical creature and here you are, scoring above people who slogged away at it for five years. Did you even open a book for it?"

Leontes has to defend himself so he says, "yes, of course I did," but he also has to be honest, and this is Lavender, she's a friend, so he adds the real truth, "We were all studying in the same place for years. Of course I picked things up from you. I only did so well because of that."

"Most people don't learn NEWT level material by osmosis," she informs him. "Again, this is why--"

"So how did you do?" Leontes interrupts her.

She fans herself gently with her hand. "A lady never brags. But since it's just us Gryffindors, if you must know, three Outstandings, two Exceeds Expectations, and one Acceptable. How did Neville do?"

"I haven't talked to him yet," Leontes says and Lavender sits straight up in her chair.

"You mean you told me first?" She tsks at him and tries to swat him. "No! I refuse to allow Neville's years of pining to be answered by this relationship not lasting two months. You dolt, of course you tell your boyfriend first!"

"Yes, Professor Brown," Leontes says, and sends another letter to Neville. The owl returns with a short scrawled, 'yes of course congratulations etc, see you tomorrow'. Leontes shows it to Lavender, who sniffs over it.

"Very well," she allows. "If your boyfriend accepts this behavior, then I suppose I must as well."

"So are you set for your apprenticeship?" Leontes asks her. She'd needed that Outstanding in Potions and in Charms to do her apprenticeship at a cosmetics company, but she'd told him it's very competitive, and she'd gone around to get as many recommendation letters as she could, and even still, it's not a sure thing, since they only accept two new apprentices a year.

"I hear back next week," Lavender says. "And all my divinations just come back inconclusive because I want it so much."

Leontes is Leontes, so he asks, "what's your back-up plan?"

Lavender takes a vicious bite out of the apples that Leontes had found in the kitchen and brought out for guests. "Potions Mastery, then poisoning Snape so I can get the Hogwarts position. McGonagall would support me. She needs another Gryffindor Head Of House once Dumbledore retires."

"Oh, so that's why she kept sounding like she wanted me for History!" Leontes says, relieved. "I'd been so worried she actually thought I'd make a good teacher."

"You'd make a terrible teacher," Lavender says.

"I know!" Leontes says. "It never made any sense. But if she needs a replacement Head Of House, of course she's started recruiting already. She could probably get Percy for Transfiguration, though. I think he hates his job."

"Oh! Did you hear," Lavender leans forward. "You're going to either hate this or love this. Ron Weasley's gone into business with his brothers."

She's wrong, Leontes doesn't care. "Okay?" Leontes asks. "I always knew he'd land on his feet. I don't want him to fail or anything. I just don't like him."

"No, you're -- it's amazing you missed this, he was moaning about it for the last four months of school--"

"I was studying for my NEWTs and so were you--"

"But he kept complaining that you'd said that he'd get a job because of his name, and so here he was, with an opportunity that he only had because of his name. He almost didn't agree to do it because if he did it, he'd be proving you right. So I wasn't sure if he was going to do it or not, but I met up with Ginny a couple weeks ago and she said, yep, he's decided to do the joke shop with them."

"Congratulations to Ron Weasley," Leontes says, bemused. Lavender gives him a look and Leontes holds up a hand. "No, really! I've mellowed as a person! I understand now that it takes all types to make the world, and Ron Weasley is one of the types. I'm sure he'll make lots of children happy and lots of parents miserable."

"Ginny says that Ron is sure he got zero NEWTs," Lavender continues ruthlessly and stares at Leontes's face, but his poker face is perfect and he doesn't let his grin show. Too much.

"Percy told me the twins got Charms and Transfiguration, which you'd expect, based on their antics," Leontes says. "Ron probably got Charms, too. He wasn't hopeless once he got his new wand."

"And Harry Potter is their silent, secret funder that no one is supposed to know about, so everyone does," Lavender continues. "But Potter himself got a tryout from a professional Quidditch team."

"Oh, that's a shame," Leontes says, actually genuine. "He was phenomenal at Defense, everyone said. And he can speak to snakes, too, can't he? There's so much he could have done with that combination. But I guess Quidditch careers are pretty short. He can probably do it after."

"What happened to it takes all types?" Lavender asks.

"Some types can do better!" Leontes says. But... "But I get it, it's not my business if Potter wastes his brains."

"Uh-huh," Lavender judges. "And when are you going to make your decision?"

"I already have, I'm spending this year finishing up my work with Binns," Leontes says. His parents have been referring to it as his dissertation, which Leontes has disputed for years, but now that's he's older and wiser, he has to admit he doesn't know enough about dissertations to really dispute the label. But it's still not a dissertation. It's just the result of years of research and will certainly take Leontes several months of doing nothing else to actually finish writing it. "McGonagall's been in touch with Hopewell and they'll hold a space for me for three years, so long as I got the expected NEWTs. But she also thinks I should keep my options open and that some opportunities might fall into my lap after NEWT results are published, or after the Binns stuff is done. Professor Flitwick also told me not to commit anywhere since he's still writing letters for me." Professor Flitwick had also offered to help Leontes write the damn thing -- which Binns did not -- and Leontes now has a standing engagement to meet with him once a fortnight to discuss the draft progress and get feedback. Professor Flitwick told him also to start thinking about new spell types he might want to innovate based on his research, because it will really help with deciding what placement is best for his future growth. Leontes is really grateful and also really overwhelmed.

"And Neville starts next month?" Lavender asks.

"Yes," Leontes says confidently, even though that was pending Neville's NEWT results. Neville took all of his classes for his NEWTs, so the admissions officer had his exam scores to base admission off of. Leontes is sure that Neville got all the NEWTs he sat for.

And, as Leontes finds out the next day, Neville got Outstandings in all his NEWTs.

Really, just an overall successful end to their Hogwarts careers. Leontes is relieved.

27.

Two months into Neville's time in the Potions ingredients lab, he's already complaining. But not about the work. He loves the work. No, it's the same old complaint he's always had about Potions: Severus Snape.

"It's horrible," Neville says, his hair standing on end from how he's been yanking it. Leontes had started out this walk to their picnic dinner by trying to hold Neville's hand. It hadn't worked. Neville had been too worked up. "They're so pleased with me! They tell me I'm the best Potioneer they've seen come out of Hogwarts in ages -- they always plan that any Hogwarts graduate with an Outstanding in Potions still needs four months remedial work to get up to standard. They're so complimentary to my old Potions master, I think some of them have even written him to tell him that. He keeps following me around! Severus Snape this, Severus Snape that. Severus Snape had nothing to do with it!"

Leontes nods encouragingly. He waves his hand over the picnic basket, and a blanket unfolds itself.

"Do you want to wait on the food?" Leontes asks dryly. Neville gives him a look.

"I decided not to tell you this during school," he says firmly. "I made the decision and everything. But I ran the numbers. If we hadn't had to spend all that time teaching ourselves Potions, you could have taken another class. Even two if one of them was Astronomy. That's how much time we were wasting, correcting for terrible teaching courtesy of Severus Snape."

Leontes raises his eyebrows. "I believe you but I'm not sure I believe your math."

"No, the math is fine," Neville says. "I even checked with Justin and Hannah." They'd both kept up with the muggle mathematics curriculum because both planned to go to Oxford. "We decided not to tell you because we figured you'd murder Snape."

"That's sensible," Leontes says. "I definitely might have tried."

"But you're taking it pretty calmly now," Neville says.

"Yeah, it's," Leontes tries to think about how best to explain it. "If you'd told me back at Hogwarts, I'd have taken it really badly. Really badly. But now that I'm on the other side of the NEWTs... the NEWTs are over. I did them. I know I spent two years complaining about NEWT Astronomy and celestial navigation, but if I really wanted to be able to navigate by the stars on a broomstick or carriage, I could go learn that now. I picked up enough to pass the NEWT and... it's over now. I have the NEWT and now... the NEWTs don't really matter."

"Wow," Neville says.

"I know," Leontes says. "But doesn't it already seem so long ago? It was only a few months but it was a different lifetime for us. The Hogwarts chapter of our lives has closed. The epilogue was getting our results. Now we're in the next volume. Everyone told me that two years after Hogwarts, no one cares about your NEWTs anymore and I would be included in that 'no one', but... honestly, Neville, do you still care about Hogwarts stuff? Aside from Snape and the rampant bullying and that sort of thing."

"You passed your rite of passage and are ready for the next one," Neville says. "I understand."

"You're not moving on as easily because the ghost of Snape is still following you around," Leontes says. He waves the food out onto the basket and settles in.

"You're still actively working with Hogwarts professors," Neville says, but tucks into the food.

"Yeah, but it's different," Leontes says. "And I still care a little. Ginny and Luna and Dennis are still there, after all. I'm sure after I get the next owl from them, I'm going to be brainstorming ways to end the Hogwarts bullying problem for good. But right now, it's not a priority. It's a bit out of sight, out of mind. I'd still jump at a chance to get Snape fired, but it's not as urgent. Important, of course it's important. But--"

"Not as urgent as figuring out the lumos issue," Neville says.

Leontes shrugs. "Yeah. It probably says something about me morally, that something that would have enraged me five months ago, now doesn't really engender the same response, but--"

"But five months ago you desperately needed to be lightly tranquilized twice a week so you didn't work yourself into a nervous breakdown," Neville says. "I'm not complaining, Leon. This is much healthier for you. It's just unexpected."

"But good?" Leontes asks.

"But good," Neville confirms, smiling at him, a bit of lettuce hanging out of his mouth.

28.

After a few more months of metaphorically banging his head against things, and occasionally literally banging his head against Flitwick's comments and notes -- the feedback is invaluable, but mostly Leontes is full of regrets for even starting this; he wants to obliviate himself and start all over again in Australia, his parents and Neville can come, too -- Leontes decides to go back to the basics. There's nothing that clarifies a topic quite like having to explain it to someone who doesn't know that much about it.

His parents are settled into the couch, watching him with clear love and patience and experience of raising him. Leontes paces in front of them.

"Charms -- spells that don't fall into other specific subcategories -- which aren't important right now -- can be broadly grouped into two categories. The first either work or don't work. The second have more flexibility and can fail overall but still work to a degree. There are magical terms for both of them but--

"Let's call them fail-open and fail-close," Leontes's mother suggests.

Leontes nods. "Both types have been used historically, but some types are more common to some applications than others: all medical spells are fail-close, and a lot of finicky, dangerous ones are, too. The idea is, if it's too dangerous to do it badly, then it can't be done badly. That is, if done badly, nothing happens. Fail-open spells can work to some extent even when done wrong, but some spells are broadly mis-categorized as one or the other, which can cause issues in teaching the spells. Lumos is fail-closed. Every single one of the variations we tested is fail-closed. But lumos looks to be fail-open because, in the most modern variation -- the one I did in first year but that I believe should be abandoned for first year education -- in the most modern version, students can still generate a small amount of light even when doing it badly. This leads to thinking it's fail-open, but it's really just a very flexible spell that was crafted over years and centuries to be among the first spells taught to children. The flexibility was there as an aid to education. It also means that lumos, as a spell, is a bit too flexible. I could cast it now and make a flashlight. I could also make a floodlight. It depends on how much power I put into it."

His parents are nodding. Leontes picks up the pace.

"However, not all really powerful spells are fail-close. The Patronus is famous for being fail-open, because the creators decided that a little bit of protection was better than nothing." Leontes idly casts his patronus to demonstrate, and his parents coo over Sally The Seal before she disappears. "The Patronus is considered a difficult spell to learn and many adult wizards do not manage it, but why not? It's fail-open! They should at least get some reaction. However, it was likely not invented as a spell to be taught; spells can also be categorized as public spells and private spells.

"Everything taught in the Hogwarts curriculum is a standardized spell, and was thoroughly, rigorously tested, it's just too dangerous otherwise to do them in a school. Private spells have no such limitations, and may fail simply because they were not created properly, or have other limitations -- there are some really fascinating spells that can only be done by identical twins casting at the same time -- but many private spells make the transition to being broadly taught, and the Patronus is one of them. And so the Patronus stands out as a spell that is in the wrong category from where you'd expect it to be based on its properties."

"And lumos is the opposite?" Leontes's mother asks.

"Yes," Leontes says. "And the educational aspect of starting with a spell that is crafted to be too easy might be a -- we weren't doing a longitudinal study but we did end up with two years of data, and one of the original first years has been so interested in it that she's kept detailed records, and gotten her friends to do the same. And the students who started with the oldest lumos variation are having a much easier time with harder spells, and I think it's because they were not primed to think that every spell will take as much creativity in application as lumos does. Doris Hopkirk -- that's the girl, she's really excited about this -- plans to keep up with her notes and so there's a lot of further exploration we can do on the topic. But."

"This is out of scope from your original focus on the construction and revision of light spells over time."

"Yeah," Leontes says.

Leontes's father interlaces his fingers. "A serious question, Leo-Leo. Does magic exist?"

Leontes grimaces. "The current consensus is that it cannot be measured or quantified, but it creates observable phenomena. So: probably."

"Is magic in the wand?" his father asks.

"Not quite," Leontes says. "The wand is a focus, it's not necessary. But, yes, wandless magic is a different spell-- uh, I'm trying not to dissolve into jargon, I promise -- wandless magic is categorized differently, and wordless magic is not studied as well as it should be."

"If you break your wand, can you still do magic?" his father asks.

"I can," Leontes says. "But most magical people don't treat wands like training wheels on a bicycle. But the wand itself is generally considered not to be magic. However, some wands will refuse to work for people other than their primary wielder, and some wands do prefer certain kinds of wielders. Wand preference is also not genetic -- a parent's wand may not be a good match for the child, nor a sibling for another sibling. So wands are -- they are not -- they have some magical properties but cannot perform spells on their own. I haven't studied wandmaking, my assumption is all these properties of wands that I mentioned are imbued by the wandmaker as part of the process. The wand isn't sentient, I didn't mean to imply the wand wants or does anything. These characteristics are present in some wands to a greater extent than in others and I don't know if it's correlated to the materials that make up the wand. It may be necessary for wand creation and it may simply be a traditional aspect."

"How many spells does an adult, out of school, do every day?"

"I don't know," Leontes says. "It's truly possible it isn't all that many."

"How many spells does an adult learn post-Hogwarts?"

"Also no idea," Leontes says. "There is a spell book niche for household spells; perusal of them and discussions with Professor Flitwick indicate that they are written at below-OWL level. The Charms OWL is considered among the easiest, because spells are woven into nearly every other class and aspects of daily life. The spells from these books tend to be fail-close, because that's what's needed; if you want a spell to wash your dishes, you don't want it to drop your dishes instead. Interestingly enough, Potions, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be done much at all at the personal level. There is no publishing niche for new home potions. Most adults purchase potions, for what I assume are several reasons.

"The primary one is that potions simply do not have the fail-safes that spells do, and so getting a potion wrong can cause disastrous results. The most frequent potions done at home seem to be at the second year level, because after that, the danger of potions really does make a rational person want a spotter there. But even adults with Potions NEWTs don't necessarily do their own brewing; I think most home brewing is probably done for potions that are illegal to purchase. Of course, there are also economical reasons for the make vs. buy decision. Percy Weasley remembers his mother making large batches of potions, such as headache relievers or general first aid remedies. Ginny Weasley does not, she says that by the time she was old enough to notice her mother's brewing, it was cheaper for her mother to buy potions rather than pay for the ingredients, because with the twins out of the house, she didn't need as much. When you don't need a large batch, especially for a potion with a very limited shelf-life, most people buy. This also changes how people view a Charms NEWT vs. a Potions NEWT: a Potions NEWT is assumed to be used for a career, while a Charms NEWT is more of an -- an all-around thing to do, for lack of a better term. People will do a Charms NEWT because they plan to do charms in their daily lives, and want to expand their repertoire. Of course, at Hogwarts, Potions NEWTs are also limited because the teacher quality is abysmal."

"Do you plan to brew your own potions?" Leontes's mother asks.

"I don't have anywhere to do it," Leontes says. "A Potions lab is an expensive investment. Neville has one at his house but -- it's the make vs. buy decision for me, too. I don't need customized potions for anything, so if I need to stock a first aid kit, I'll just swing by the apothecary, even though I can make them myself. It's just not worth it to do it."

"And you knew this before you did a Potions NEWT," Leontes's father says dryly.

"Well, yeah," Leontes says. "Everyone does. Uh. Don't they?"

"Neville needs it for his career, dear," Leontes's mother says to his father. Leontes doesn't see how that's relevant. He was going to do the Potions NEWT anyway. It's required for a whole host of things.

"Of course, of course," Leontes's father continues. "Keep going, Leontes."

"Right," Leontes says. He mentally reviews what he's already covered. "And lumos itself, because it's been in every school's beginning curriculum for four hundred years, is well-documented, but it hasn't been well-studied. That's why Binns was looking it into it in, uh, the 1850s I think. Everyone's done this spell and it is a spell that the average adult uses frequently, and because it is so well-worn in every adult's magic, many adults can do it wandlessly and wordlessly even when they can do no other spell that way. But it's fail-closed! It's a spell category that's meant to be just for spells that would be dangerous if they were done wrong. Someone invented lumos, and when that person did, it was invented to be harder to do -- I mean it, it really was -- than the Patronus, a spell most adults don't bother learning. It's also very specialized--"

"What exactly is it for?" Leontes's mother asks.

"Oh, repelling Dementors. Very limited scope, that's why no one learns it." Leontes shrugs it off. "It's basically a party trick unless you expect to encounter Dementors. I really think it needs to be studied more because it has to be easier than its reputation-- sorry. Lumos. -- But I did learn the Patronus in about five months, without taking NEWT Defense, so it's not that hard--"

"Leontes," his mother says.

"I know, I know, other people are different and that's okay," Leontes says.

"Is your argument that lumos is actually a difficult spell?" Leontes's father asks. "You started out by saying it's too easy and that causes problems down the line."

"I think lumos should be a second year spell, and first years should work on lighting candles instead of making their wands light up," Leontes says. "That's a lot more controllable and measurable than lumos and prioritizes focus, with a tangible result."

"Okay," Leontes's father says. "And in line with your original topic...?"

Leontes closes his eyes. "The lumos spell was created to be a moderately-difficult spell but was modified over the centuries for the sake of giving students a gentle introduction to spellwork using a general purpose spell that they would need to cast often. There are four distinct varieties, with several local variations. Lumos was prioritized because of its utility in providing light for students, however that falls apart when you consider that when a student is performing lumos, they aren't performing any other spell, so they need an external light source anyway. Unless they're working in a group. But the earliest version of lumos I can track down is both more powerful and more focused than the current version, and it provides a steady light bright enough to see by, but not any brighter. I believe it was used as what it sounds like: a spell for a quick light in the dark. But that falls down when we come to modern students, who have other light sources available for them and do not need lumos to make sure they don't stumble around in the dark instead of lighting a candle."

"Leontes."

"The second variation in lumos was to add a wand movement. It didn't have it before that! That's why it was just a focus spell, it was entirely in intonation and intent, which is much more complex spellwork than the mindless wandwaving that goes on in the first year classrooms--"

"Leontes."

"What?" he asks.

"You want to teach eleven year olds to set fires?" his mother asks.

"It's a second year spell right now," Leontes says, confused. "I could do it in first year."

"Why didn't we read your textbooks?" his father grumbles. "Why did we send you to this school?"

"I can see the argument for not teaching any practical spells until third year," Leontes says, "if nothing else, it would cut down on avenues for bullying, but remember that Hogwarts works on the assumption that all the spellcraft you'll ever learn in your life, you'll learn by the end of 5th year, and all practical spellcraft for adults is like -- it's like a cookbook that just tells you different ways of preparing ingredients you already know how to use. Yes, there may be a cookbook here or there that goes over advanced techniques, but that's not what most people pick up a cookbook for. They pick up a cookbook to figure out new things to make for dinner. An adult doesn't pick up a popular new spellbook to learn the latest in spell crafting, because the spells people use every day have already been made, and they've already been learned! So there are always people working on improving current spells, and making new ones, but most people's charms are what they knew when they were in school. And there's plenty of automation, too. Who needs to learn the latest spells on broomstick maintenance, when you can just wave your wand in the way the instructions say to do, and a broken seat will mend itself?"

"Leontes, yes or no: do you have enough data right now to make recommendations?"

Leontes is forced to admit: "No."

"So you should do what?"

"I should write all the recommendations in a separate notebook and keep that for the follow-up, which Professor Flitwick should probably be first author on, because he actually knows something about teaching, once we have more results."

"And you should focus on what?"

"The research on the development of lumos over the centuries, the data I already have, and the current results," Leontes says.

"And what else are you going to do?"

Leontes frowns. "What do you mean?"

His mother leans forward. "Not by bread alone. Take a break."

"Oh," Leontes says. "Uh." It's true. He has time now for breaks whenever he needs them. It's not like school. The deadlines here aren't firm. "I'll go research adult art clubs, shall I?"

"And community theater, if you can stand it," but that's a joke, that's got to be a joke.

"I cannot stand it," Leontes says, standing on his dignity. "...Unless they need someone to organize them. I got really good at that, by the end."

29.

Finishing the second draft takes several more months of work, and taking a week off in December when Neville's grandmother decides that Leontes is spending Christmas with them this year, and Leontes has to prepare for Longbottom Christmas, Capital Letters Earned, which Neville has been skipping more times than not these last seven years, so Leontes doesn't really see the point, but he is wise enough to the ways of relationships to not actually say that.

But he does get it, a little bit. Before, it was Neville -- who was single and/or casually dating -- spending Christmas with a friend. Now it's Neville, who is not single and is in a very serious relationship, thank you, who is taking his boyfriend home to meet The Extended Etc.

Neville drags Leontes to tailors and then brainstorms on gifts for everyone. Leontes's parents also send gifts to the assorted Longbottoms: a CD player, a lot of batteries, and what feels like three tons of music (Leontes magically shrank it, it wasn't a big deal).

"Are they going to ask us about babies?" Leontes asks and Neville gets a firm look on his face.

"They will, and you will pretend to be a muggle-born who did not get every NEWT there possibly is and is working on a paper entirely about the development of spellwork across the centuries," Neville says.

"In other words, I'll lie?" Leontes says.

"As hard as you possibly can," Neville says.

"Yes, sir," Leontes says, accepting upon himself the ordeal.

Although...

"When do you want to have the kids talk?" Leontes says. "We're too young now, but I'm, uh. Generally in favor of children."

Neville makes a face. "I can't think about you and babies right now," he says. "It will be too adorable and I need to focus on my third cousins who hate me."

"Why are they coming?" Leontes asks, but that's the wrong thing to say and he knows it, so he says instead, "are any of these distant relatives people I know from school?"

"I don't think you would remember them, their years and their interests weren't relevant to what we were doing," Neville says. "The Weasleys tend to come over to visit and then go with me to St. Mungo's to visit my parents, they knew them Before, and in the last few years, Sirius Black has come, too, so, uh."

"We don't have to go with them," Leontes says firmly.

"What?"

"It was horrible, right? That's why you stopped going with them?" Leontes doesn't need divination for this, it's pretty obvious. "You had an excuse when you were with me, but now this year you won't have an excuse. But I can still be your excuse. We can go visit your parents whenever you want, and it doesn't have to be with anyone else, if you don't want to."

"Oh," Neville says. He clears his throat. "Oh, uh, it probably won't be too bad. I'm older now and it was, well. Overwhelming, usually. And nightmarish. And really just-- not something I wanted to be there for, but knew I had to be. But it will probably-- I think it'll be fine to go along with them."

"Okay," Leontes says. "But if at any point you need me to invent a reason, you can rely on me."

Neville takes his hand and squeezes it. "Thank you."

Visiting Neville's parents isn't on the list of top 100 things Leontes likes to do, but his life has been generally free of things he has to do simply because it's required of him. His parents are great, his school experiences have been within expected parameters -- the Hogwarts bullying wasn't fantastic or anything, but again, it was generally expected, it's a boarding school after all -- and mostly things have been fine.

He's not sure Neville ever wants to visit his parents, but Neville regularly visits his parents. Leontes first went with him back in third year and it's an overall unpleasant experience.

It being an unpleasant experience is not a reason to stop going: it's a reason to keep going, whenever Neville wants him there, so Neville doesn't have to do it alone.

That's what being best friends meant and that's what being boyfriends means now.

Christmas itself is pretty interesting. The Longbottom family -- as in, people in it who are named Longbottom, nothing to do with people who had other names before or after they married -- goes back to before the Statute Of Secrecy. After it, they kept attending their local church for a while, but now they floo over to one where the congregation is entirely magical. They've picked up traditions here and there over the years, mostly, Neville explains, because someone thought it would be cool, or because one year everything collapsed and they had to make the best of it. He brushes it off, but the reason they have a giant Christmas tree is because his dad heard about them from a muggleborn friend at school, and now Neville's grandmother, with great fortitude and determination, finds and cuts down the biggest one she can find on their land and hauls it inside and makes it bigger and brighter every year.

Leontes is an adult now. He can see something that is clearly being used as a way of working out a horrible kind of grief, and say nothing, just help decorate.

But it really is this amazing mishmash of Christmas, and Leontes has a good time, even though Neville really isn't. Leontes isn't on display, he's just here as an accessory to the family, so the only awkward moment is when some distant cousin actually has heard of him, because her granddaughter (grandson? great nephew? miscellaneous younger relative? Leontes didn't quite hear the name and it's too late to ask now) was one of the experimental first years, and so she's heard all about Leontes Granger Who Watched Us Cast First Year Spells While Taking Detailed Notes And Offering Encouragement.

But that doesn't blow Leontes's cover as someone who hasn't been considering the pros and cons of all magical conception methods ever since they didn't have that talk about kids, because Leontes can just ask her about her memories of learning light spells and what she thought about them and her opinions on the Hogwarts curriculum -- he has learned that every person who attended Hogwarts has opinions on the curriculum and what changes they'd make to it if they could -- and so Leontes gets away with it.

The Weasleys do stop by, sans Ginny because she stayed in Hogwarts to study and sans Bill and Charlie because they work overseas, so really it's the parents, Percy, the twins, and Ron. Leontes and Ron give each other awkward nods across the room, and Leontes gets a chance to talk to Arthur Weasley, which is fascinating, because his job is about the interplay of magical and muggle, and how magical people try to scam and hurt muggles. He knows all about enchanting and transfiguration and how it can be used to harm people.

Arthur Weasley doesn't try very hard to recruit Leontes into his department, but even so, Leontes is tempted for about five minutes afterwards, until he remembers that reverse transfiguration doesn't come naturally to him, so this isn't a great long term career plan, unless he can suddenly become fantastic at it very quickly. But he can see how Bill Weasley The Cursebreaker got into it from what his dad does, and he can certainly see how the twins got their ideas.

Leontes does try to give the twins a second chance because it's been a couple years since he had to interact with them in any way and maybe they've grown up, but every time he gets close to them, they're making snide remarks about Percy's job. Percy is puffed up, but still obviously being needled, and ah, that's a minor mystery cleared up, why Leontes got the feeling that Percy didn't like his job: Percy might like it just fine, but his family is giving him grief over it. That can certainly poison good feelings either to the job or to the family. Then again, Leontes isn't sure how many positive feelings Percy has for the twins. Maybe he loves them and cherishes them and doesn't want to hex them into next week?

Whatever, Leontes has no siblings, and also doesn't care about the twins. They have a lot of talent and they are using it for what they have decided to use it for. Good riddance.

He manages to rescue Percy after about an hour, and they're still catching up on Leontes's draft agonies when Sirius Black floos in with Harry Potter, so they can come along on the visit to St. Mungo's.

Leontes takes Neville's hand as they go through to the hospital. He stands there, still holding Neville's hand, as the Weasley parents and Sirius Black tell over old stories that Neville must have heard a hundred times already, when he was young and they still thought there was any hope, when Christmas was about the people who weren't there more than the ones who were, when every family occasion had a gaping hole in it but they still thought maybe. Leontes squeezes Neville's hand when his mother calls him 'Frank'', remembering when Neville had first whispered to him, "she doesn't know who I am", and Leontes watches Neville's throat bob, and after they leave the room, Leontes looks at Harry Potter and something must pass through, because Harry Potter vanishes and reappears less than two minutes later with hot cocoa dotted excessively with tiny floating marshmallows.

"How has the quidditch training been going?" Leontes asks politely while Neville stares forward blankly and occasionally sips from the cheerful mug when he remembers he's holding it.

"Oh! Well, really well," Harry Potter says. His eyes keep darting between Neville and the door, where Sirius Black is talking to the Weasleys. "I'm going to be a reserve this year and they might send me to an affiliated team in Norway to get more experience. The Hogwarts quidditch season isn't very long, so there's a lot I don't know."

"Is seeker a heavily-recruited position?" Leontes asks.

"It comes and goes," Harry Potter says. "There's a glut right now. Seekers aren't as injury-prone as the other positions, so at my depth in the reserve list, I probably won't participate in many games other than exhibitions. I thought about switching to chaser and tried it out for a few weeks, but I don't have the size."

"Can you move easily around between teams or do you sign exclusive contracts?" Leontes asks. If he'd ever cared about quidditch, this is something he would have learned by osmosis by the end of first year, but he has never cared about quidditch and he still doesn't, but Neville is vibrating just slightly and since Neville doesn't care about quidditch either, he doesn't have to pay attention right now.

"It depends on the league," Harry Potter says. "I signed a contract but it allows for me to move around between a lot of different teams and leagues, so they can send me off to other teams as needed. I don't mind, I'd be happy to travel and see the world. I like that it's an international career."

Leontes nods. "And how long is the career length for a seeker? Five years? Ten years?"

"If you avoid injury and keep your eyesight, it's almost indefinite," Harry Potter says.

Oh, that's no good. Leontes makes a face. "I presume you'll get bored eventually."

"Tell him about Defense," Neville says, voice a thousand miles away.

"I-- sorry, what?" Harry Potter says.

"Defense," Neville says. He turns to look at Leontes. "Tell him."

"What about Defense?" Harry Potter asks.

Leontes sighs. He'd wanted to do this -- well, never, realistically, but more rationally, at a place that isn't a waiting area in a long-term care ward, where they've just been visiting people who will never recover from curse exposure. "I think you should take the Defense position at Hogwarts."

"I'm a teenager," Harry Potter says. "My NEWT is still wet."

"Yeah, but you know the teacher quality," Leontes says. "Everyone who took NEWT Defense with you said you were great at all. You've been tutoring people for longer than I've been aware of it--" because Leontes never paid that much attention to Harry Potter, since he thought he never studied and so wasn't worth any attention, because Leontes was kind of a prick in school, "--and it's not like Hogwarts requires teaching certifications for the teachers. And you're likely immune to the curse."

Harry Potter's eyebrows raise. "How do you reckon that?"

"Everyone says the curse was put on by--" Leontes grimaces, looks at Neville, who says for him, "Voldemort", so Leontes nods and says "what he said. And it may be true; school records show that the school has been churning through teachers ever since. Some of those short-term teachers were planned, but most weren't. The curse got 'em. We've ourselves experienced the consequences of this. There's no way I should have gotten an Outstanding on NEWT Defense without taking the class for two years, based only on Neville's notes and him practicing with me."

"No offense, Granger, but you're kind of a genius," Harry Potter says.

"There's no such thing as genius," Leontes dismisses. "The point is, a lot of long-term curses work on the idea of the caster as exempt from it. It would be a pretty useless curse if it then ensnared the person who did it. Now, this curse may or may not be tied to," another glance at Neville, "Voldemort as a person, because it hasn't diminished in potency over the years. It may have been intended to be permanent. I don't know what the teachers and Board have done over the years to remove the curse or find where it's anchored, but they haven't figured it out yet, so the only way around it is to work within magical constraints. And therefore: you're the one who defeated Voldemort. His curses shouldn't work on you."

"I don't think that's how that works," Harry Potter says skeptically.

"If I may?" Leontes asks and Harry Potter shrugs agreement as Leontes pulls out his wand. Leontes touches it to the curse scar on Harry Potter's forehead and mutters a few spells.

The curse scar pulses and Harry Potter glares at Leontes.

"What was that?" he demands.

"It's integrated into your sense of self," Leontes says. "Your trophy, I mean."

"My trophy?" Harry Potter asks.

"The scar," Neville says dully. "It's the killing curse, trapped."

Harry Potter grabs his forehead with both hands. "I beg your pardon."

"You defeated Voldemort and you wear that defeat everywhere. His curse will be terrified to touch you, because the last curse Voldemort cast at you is still trying to reach you and can't," Leontes says. "You're invulnerable."

Harry Potter looks between them. "I don't even know where to start."

"Do you know how you defeated Voldemort?" Leontes asks.

"No," Harry Potter says. "Do you?"

"Not a clue," Leontes says. "But you did and everyone knows it."

"You think the curse on the Defense position is, what, self-aware? Self-protective?" Harry Potter asks, clearly deciding to ignore the fact that he has a deadly curse trapped on his head. Sensible. It's not like they can remove it.

"It has to be doing something or they'd have broken it by now," Leontes says. "Some of the effects can be coincidence, but not all of it. Therefore, unless and until they can remove the curse, all Hogwarts students are going to suffer the same educational experience we did. I can't change that. But you can."

"You're a mean one, Mr. Granger," Harry Potter says. "Emotional blackmail?"

"It's your life," Leontes says. "Waste it away on a quidditch field, if you want. Or put away childish things and help."

"I wouldn't hire me," Harry Potter says.

"Would you have hired any of our other Defense professors?" Leontes asks.

Harry Potter's silence is damning.

"What Leontes means is you should think about it," Neville says. "And if you truly think you can't be a teacher, go learn how to be a teacher. It's a skill. People can learn it. I need to get out of here."

"Right!" Leontes says, jumping up. "The floo is right over here. Potter, you'll make our apologies, right?"

"Of course," Harry Potter says.

Harry gets Neville back home as fast as possible and then Neville turns to him and says, "you were right, we should have just gone ourselves, next Christmas we're going to somewhere far away."

"Okay," Leontes says. "How about Australia?"

"Plan it," Neville orders and then goes to lie down.

30.

They celebrate the completion of the second draft, and Neville finally getting up to speed in his program, by going out to dinner at a new restaurant O'Neill had told Neville about. It's twenty-five different courses, in small portions, where they build a meal slowly and creatively. Leontes thinks back to the metaphor he'd told his parents about no one really exploring cooking beyond the basics, and feels like he was probably wrong about that. He's not sure he can make any of this himself, but he'd definitely like to try.

Afterward, they wander around Diagon Alley and stop into the ice cream parlor to get sundaes.

And then Neville metaphorically girds his loins and says "we're in Diagon Alley."

"We are," Leontes says.

Neville nods. He grabs Leontes's hand and takes him to a flower store, where they buy a gigantic bouquet.

"St. Mungo's is this way," Leontes says.

"We deliver," the clerk says, pointing to the sparkling boxes in the corner with hospital names written on them.

"Thanks, but it's better coming from me," Neville says.

The ward is quiet this time of day. Neville talks to the healers on duty and then takes several deep breaths, in and out, in and out. He forces a smile onto his face and walks into his mother's room. Because when a woman who can't form new memories call you Frank, then you're Frank for the entire duration you're in her room.

She fawns over the flowers, asks him about his day, and then has one of her moments where she notices that details are different.

"It's been some time," Alice Longbottom says.

"Yes," Neville says.

"Did we win, Frank?" Alice Longbottom asks.

"We won," Neville says, crying. "No one cares about Voldemort anymore, our son is all grown up, and Lily's son, too."

"Oh, Lily's little boy? Do he and Neville get on?" Alice Longbottom asks.

"About as well as me and James," Neville says, and Leontes hasn't heard those stories and really doesn't want to, but he knows Neville must know everything everyone ever wanted to tell him about his parents, who don't know him. "Does it hurt, Alice? The healers say today has gone well."

"Oh, you know I never feel pain," Alice Longbottom says and it's only some quick wandwork from Leontes that keeps Neville upright and not sobbing into a corner.

"I'm so glad to hear that," Neville says.

And then the moment passes and Alice Longbottom says, confused, "Frank?"

Neville takes a horrible steadying breath. "I'm here, Alice. It's Frank."

There's only so much Neville, or any man, can take, so Leontes steps forward. "Mrs. Longbottom, I'm one of Frank's colleagues. I thought you would want to know what he's currently working on."

"Frank's colleague? Oh, that would be wonderful," Alice Longbottom says.

And so Leontes starts telling her about what Neville has been doing lately, while Neville busies himself with a handkerchief and wash cloth. Alice Longbottom never asks him for his name -- she usually thinks it's still the war, Neville had told him once, and she knows it's better if she doesn't know names. But sometimes she thinks she's back at Hogwarts, and near the end of the visit, she asks Leontes how the OWLs are coming along, and he says, "about as well as can be expected" because he didn't recognize the name she called him, but from Neville's furious headshaking, he knows that man is dead.

Afterwards, over hot cocoa and something a little stronger in the hospital cafeteria, nearly empty at this hour, Neville says, "if that ever happens to me, I want you to agree to every experimental treatment or study there possibly is. Even if it's not something that could ever fix me, if it could help someone else, I want you to agree to it. Don't worry about keeping me comfortable or making sure I'm not suffering. You better use me to help other people."

"Okay," Leontes says.

"My gran still thinks there's hope," Neville says. "She won't allow anything that could hurt them. I understand that. I couldn't do it to them either. But I know the risks, Leontes. And you better not waste my chance to help someone else even when there's no more help for me."

"I understand," Leontes says, and then he needs a handkerchief for himself.

31.

Leontes writes a really incoherent letter to Harry Potter, imploring him to do his duty to the nation and get rid of the last influence that Voldemort left on the world and also prepare the students of today and tomorrow and the future for defeating any other Voldemorts that might pop up, and for the love of god, Potter, can't you see that you're the only one who can fix this, if I could fix it, I would! But I can't, so will you just do your damn duty.

Harry Potter sends back an owl with three spa brochures and a quick note that says "Ginny told me you'd stopped having these stress episodes".

Fair enough, Leontes supposes.

And Neville only took a few days to bounce back. He's started teasing Leontes again about his budding Dark Lord tendencies -- this time, that Leontes has been trying to get the community theater to use a listserv to stay in contact with each other. Leontes may have ranted a few too many times about how easy it was back in Hogwarts when he could just enchant a few pieces of metal and then everyone knew what time practice was and that they were running late. He'd even taken a page from pagers and made them buzz angrily to make sure the student noticed they were late for practice.

Leontes is right, not that that helps. A few members have mobile phones, but Leontes doesn't; there's no one he would call with it, and he gets messages just fine from his existing phone. But at least Leontes listens to his answering machine! Why are these people taking part in community theater if they don't want to be part of the community?

This is about the time when Neville starts trying to pick out his dark lord name.

So, Leontes and Lavender find a time that works and do a spa weekend together. She's in touch with more people than Leontes is and they compare notes. Leontes is the least-accomplished of their cohort, which he's fine with. A lot of things stopped being so important once he had the sheepskin that said he was a real boy, uh, wizard.

His parents haven't said anything directly to him about it, but when he'd mentioned that Justin and Hannah were taking this year to finish up their muggle educational qualifications, they'd exchanged a very speaking look, and Leontes was suddenly very aware that he'd let his muggle education slip away while focusing on the magical side of it. And his parents wouldn't say anything, because Leontes had very firmly gotten in over his head with the NEWTs, he can admit that, and now he's finishing up The Paper With Capital Letters, and his parents would, yes, obviously love it if he took some time to at least get up to speed on biology and mathematics and literature -- there were problems when your parents had met during a performance of The Winter's Tale and named you accordingly; they thought you needed to be as well-versed as possible in Shakespeare, and as a bonus, everyone else too -- and anything else Leontes could take the time for.

But they wouldn't come out and ask him to do it, because of the very reason that Lavender is ruthlessly pressuring Leontes into committing to a monthly spa date with her.

"I've seen what you do when left to your own devices," Lavender says. "If we're going to be your loyal Dark Lord minions, we can't have you destroying yourself before you're twenty."

"That's Neville's joke," Leontes says weakly. "He's the only one who can--"

"The only one who lost family members to Voldemort and the Death Eaters?" Lavender asks, raising an eyebrow. "Wanna say that again?"

Leontes grimaces. "Okay, okay, I get it."

"Get used to it. Potter is making the joke now too, he told me you're trying to boss him around and get him to take up the mantle of Gryffindor Head Of House."

"And fix the Defense problem!"

"You cannot run the entire British magical world if you don't eat your greens and get enough sleep," Lavender lectures.

"I eat my greens!" Leontes protests, saying nothing about sleep, although the massages here are so life-changing that he always sleeps great for a week after them, even though they also leave him sore for 48 hours and having to drink a lot of water. "Just call me Dark Lord Broccoli."

And, well, it's only Leontes's fault that she proceeds to do so whenever she thinks it's funny.

32.

His paper is approved for publication and Binns takes that as an opportunity to free himself of this mortal coil.

Leontes finds this out when he's being used as a sounding board for one of Neville's current issues on the Herbology side of his program. They're studying different collection methods and potency of the resulting potions, and Leontes is not allowed to talk until Neville is done, only make encouraging noises, as Neville tries to work out the problem. Then the floo flares and McGonagall's voice comes through and says, "Mr. Granger, will you come through? It's important."

Leontes and Neville both come through, because it's Neville's fireplace. McGonagall assesses them, her jaw set, and then she says, "yesterday, Professor Binns came to Dumbledore and declared that his life's work and purpose is now complete. The one regret tying him here, that there is no one to continue his work, has been wiped clean. His purpose in his afterlife fulfilled, he then faded away. Leaving behind, I might mention, a lot of unmarked essays."

Oh. Leontes isn't sure how to feel about this.

"Congratulations, Mr. Granger. Your paper has been accepted to the British Journal Of Charm Theory."

Leontes isn't sure how to feel about that either.

"For this accomplishment, Professor Binns bequeathed to you all of his papers and anything still remaining from his earthly sojourn. That amounts to his Gringotts vault, a small manor house, a library, and whatever those contain."

"Ah," Leontes says.

"I expect this is a shock," McGonagall says.

"Yes," Leontes says.

"I will not ask you to take his place," McGonagall says, and Leontes exhales. "That will be a matter for the Hogwarts Board Of Governors to decide, and until then, Headmaster Dumbledore will teach those classes. I'm sure this is a relief to you."

"No offense, Professor, but teaching History is my worst nightmare," Leontes says honestly.

"You have very unimaginative nightmares," McGonagall says. "I would have expected more from you, Mr. Granger." But she's smiling as she says it and then she floats over some tea and all of the legal paperwork that Leontes has to sign to officially take ownership of the estate of Professor Eugene Archimedes Winthrop Binns, Deceased.

33.

"I can't believe you finally exorcised Binns," Neville says in awe, and then calls an emergency party of their cohort and Percy. It pre-empts the meeting of the Hogwarts Alumni Book Club (currently reading The Count Of Monte Cristo) and so the party also includes a lot of people Leontes doesn't know, but knows of, because Neville's mentioned them to him over the years.

They all also bring a lot of friends. Everyone toasts Leontes for getting rid of Binns. Even Dean and Seamus are there; the last Leontes had heard from them, they were in Prague.

"Can you get rid of Snape now, too?" Colin Creevey asks.

Leontes is a little drunk, he'll admit that. "But is Snape the problem?" he asks.

"He's a problem," says a Ravenclaw whose name Leontes isn't entirely sure of. Magda Smith? She's dating Luna, who is over by the CD player, flipping through the options.

"Yeah, he is," Leontes allows, "but he's been teaching there so long and surely he'd had plenty of complaints against him. So why's he still there? Snape's not the big problem." He looks around for Neville. "Isn't that why you told me not to exorcise Binns, because his replacement could be worse? What if we get Snape to quit but his replacement is as untouchable as Snape is? What's the point?"

"Is your problem with the Hogwarts Board of Governors?" someone asks and wow, is that Draco Malfoy? Who invited Draco Malfoy? Leontes supposes it has been some time since school and who knows, perhaps they're united in their joy that Binns is gone.

"If they're the ones supposed to be doing oversight, then yes," Leontes says. "What's the point of the school if no one ever learns anything because the teachers don't let them?"

"Did you not learn anything?" Draco Malfoy asks. "You got the most NEWTs of anyone here."

"Are NEWTs really the best measure of a person?" Leontes asks and a shocked hush comes over the room.

"See, I told you he's mellowed," someone whispers harshly in a corner to a friend, then shuts up abruptly.

"So how would you get rid of Snape?" Ginny asks. "Go after the Governors?"

Leontes shakes his head. Ugh, that feels a little dizzy. "Snape's easy. Snape's so easy. He's a Potions Master forced to teach newbies, of course he's like this. He brags about how many amazing potions he can brew but he's stuck teaching teenagers. He doesn't want to be teaching any more than we want him teaching. Someone is forcing him to be there. Find out who that is, get them to stop, and Snape is gone without us doing anything."

"And you think that person blackmailing him is the person interceding with the Governors?" someone asks. Leontes blinks a few times, makes out red hair. Could that be Ron? Did someone invite Ron? No, that can't be Ron. Wrong height.

"Ask Malfoy, he's the one related to one of them," Neville says, saving Leontes from figuring things out. This firewhiskey is amazing. He needs to thank whoever brought it.

"Does the Board need to be manipulated?" Leontes wonders out loud. "The teacher quality is uneven across the board, why shouldn't they ignore Snape? For every McGonagall and Flitwick, there's a Binns and a Snape."

"Sprout's good, too," a Hufflepuff says loyally.

"You can't say the teacher quality doesn't imply either incompetence or negligence," says Percy Weasley. "I've come to the conclusion that all good teachers that Hogwarts has are down to sheer dumb luck."

Thanks, Percy, you're the best.

Draco Malfoy looks very put-upon and so Leontes squirms around on the couch to face him. "We can test this," Leontes tells Malfoy seriously. "You know people. Have one of them offer Snape the position of his dreams. Whatever that is, maybe a great research opportunity, something where he never has to interact with people who aren't great at Potions. Whatever you come up with, you know Snape better than I do. Have someone offer it to him, a genuine offer of another job. A perfect job. And then if he doesn't take it, something's keeping him at Hogwarts. And if he does take it, then we all win anyway."

And then someone passes Leontes more of that fantastic firewhiskey and he zones out the rest of any conversation.

Things are wonderful. And they're fully stocked on hangover potions, so things are really wonderful.

34.

Gringotts sends an official letter with the inventory of Binns's vaults, plural. He had one with income from his rental property, which was also used to maintain the rental property -- said rental property is the manor house and also a commercial building in Diagon Alley that used to be a stable. The second vault is where his salary went, and while it was clear he did spend some of his salary, he didn't spend more than half of it, and what he spent it on is clear in the library of his Hogwarts room and of the manor house.

The long and short of it is, Leontes is rich now and has tenants.

"Do I have a house elf?" Leontes asks, horrified. He writes to Gringotts, who don't know anything about it, but Leontes has the address of the rental property. He owls the tenants to let them know of the change in ownership and asks them if they want to buy the house off of him. They reply that they are planning to move out after this lease, which ends in two years, and no, they don't want the house. A few more letters reveal that they are visiting academics who rented it for the library, and yes, there is a house elf.

"Oh no," Leontes says. He grimaces and writes to the tenants that he's going to come visit.

He takes a potion for patience before going over, which helps. Sindy, the house elf, looks at him with gigantic, emotional eyes as he explains the options that he'd like her to choose from. She can go free immediately and leave, she can go free immediately and stay and be paid ("and please help me calculate the back wages that you're owed!"), she can go free immediately and stay in the house as the owner ("because the back wages are probably worth the entire house"), she can go free immediately and stay in the house as whatever she wants, or she can go free immediately and Leontes will help her find another job.

He'd told the tenants in advance that they can hire a house elf if they really need the help, and the whole thing turns into a negotiation between the tenants and Sindy where the tenants will be her employers and she'll stay in the house and then leave with them. Sindy will not take a single knut of back pay. Leontes negotiates her into letting him at least provide a stipend for her until they leave the country. Sindy doesn't see the point of magical money, he thinks she's just stringing him along until he leaves.

When he goes home after, he feels absolutely disgusting. He takes a brain-clarifying potion and two more for calming the fuck down, writes an angry letter to the Ministry about house elves, writes an angry letter to Dumbledore about the Hogwarts house elves, writes to Malfoy, too, while he's at it, because Malfoy did come through and offer Snape another job and it turns out Snape is starting there after this term ends at Hogwarts, so Leontes guesses he was wrong about why someone as insufferable as Severus Snape was stuck in a job he didn't like, namely that no one had ever offered him a better one, but that's fine, Leontes is wrong all the time, that's why he doesn't put up with anyone calling him a genius, that just doesn't exist, and no one gets called a genius after a certain age anyway, and if it were an intrinsic part of a person's nature, they shouldn't be able to do something as pedestrian as aging out of it, and it's all nonsense anyway, and so Malfoy actually starts up a correspondence with Leontes, which he had never actually wanted but that's what comes from irresponsibly overdosing on potions, and he must bear the consequences as a man.

By the time Neville has ended his busy time in his program, Leontes has been writing back and forth to Malfoy for months. Neville surveys the detritus of Leontes's writing desk with a jaded eye.

"Any other friends you've made?" Neville asks, amused.

"I think Harry Potter," Leontes says, a little horrified, because Harry Potter writing to him to keep explaining his reasons for not taking the Defense position ended up in the current state, which is chatty letters about quidditch training. Harry has also been going over to St. Mungo's once a week when he's in the country and flying in the ward garden with Neville's parents, while pretending to be James Potter. One of the painful parts of Neville's parents's condition is that they have aged enough over the years that they no longer recognize each other as their spouse, but it also means that the children of their friends can impersonate their parents. Apparently Ron Weasley and the twins have also gone a few times, pretending to be Arthur. Harry Potter says he puts in colored contacts before he goes, but all the Weasleys seem to need is adjusting their posture to fit Arthur's, because it seems like neither Longbottom parent knew Arthur Weasley well enough to be able to tell it's his sons instead.

It's annoying, how someone as annoying as Ron Weasley turns out to have a generous spirit.

"Uh-huh," Neville says. "And any major revelations? Any new truths about the world?"

Leontes grimaces. "I did spend two hours once crying over Binns."

Neville sits down abruptly. "You what?"

"Yeah." Leontes waves his hand. "You were doing-- you know, the midnight planting schedule. And I was going through Binns's papers. He never married, had no known descendants. He taught at Hogwarts for something like two hundred years. For some people, their students would be their children. But he was such a bad teacher that no one liked him. Almost no one took History to the NEWT level because he was just so bad at his job. He spent his life and his afterlife teaching ungrateful students who just wanted him gone, and I don't think he even realized we didn't like him or his class. All those books in his library, I've been going through them. He has a larger journal collection that the Hogwarts library. He has history of charms and charms theory and giant tomes about spell progression and the evolution of sixteen different spell types. And more that I haven't even gotten to yet! And yet he spent all his time telling us dry history, never making it interesting a day in his life -- afterlife -- and for what? For what? Why? He's gone now and no one misses him."

"So you cried over him, Neville says.

"Yeah. So I cried over him," Leontes says. "But it is tragic, don't you think? All those years and nothing to show for it except the damage it did to the education of two hundred years of Hogwarts students who should have been learning History Of Magic and Magical History, and instead got Binns, who provided naptime to generations of students. On every side of the equation, it's such a waste."

"I see," Neville says. "Did you tell anyone about this at the time?"

"I told Lavender," Leontes says. "She told me I was being ridiculous and then told me it's cute that I'm so empathetic with people who chose their own hell and maybe I should think about why."

Neville bursts out laughing. "Doesn't pull any punches, does she," he says when he's gotten under control.

"No, she doesn't," Leontes says. "Then she took me out to lunch and read my tea leaves and told me that while professionally it's still up in the air, she could tell for certain that I would regret my next haircut, then the next morning she sent me a regrowth solution. She was right, too."

"Convenient," Neville says. "She should replace Trelawney." Leontes never took any classes from Trelawney but he's heard enough to know that Lavender and Parvati had to teach themselves Divination so they could get the NEWT. "So are you going to do the pure theory or the practical one?"

Leontes has been ruminating over this for months. He's narrowed his choices down to two programs. The one that's more tempting is pure theory, really delving into the fundamental nature of nature and how charms work upon the some fundamental aspect of physics and the known reality. The other one, which is also tempting, is about refining spells, by breaking them down into their component elements and rebuilding them to be more stable, more reliable, and easier. But what had caught Leontes's interest in it was that the head of the program told him frankly that sometimes part of making spells easier was making it harder, because if it was too easy, it would be done wrong and cause more problems than it solved.

Leontes really isn't sure and has a couple weeks left to make the decision.

"I think it's about -- they both make improvements in spellwork," Leontes says. "So I can't evaluate them based on their impact, because they both make an impact. One of them just makes a clearer impact than the other. But the theory one make more a more resounding impact."

"And you like both programs," Neville says.

"I do like both programs," Leontes agrees. "I may just flip a coin."

"That sounds reasonable," Neville says. He pokes at the mountain of letters and makes a face. "What exactly are you saying to Draco Malfoy, if you don't mind saying?"

"Oh, no, it's fine, it's nothing secret," Leontes says. "I'm trying to get him to free his house elves by appealing to his self-interest."

"He does have a lot of self-interest," Neville judges.

"Right," Leontes says. "So I sat down and asked myself: how does Draco Malfoy see himself? What image does he have of himself in his mind? It's like how Potter's mental image of himself includes his scar and his broomstick, but not his glasses. His glasses are an accessory, his scar and his broomstick are part of his sense of self." Actually, Leontes isn't sure he'd mentioned that part to Neville; it had come up in one of Harry's letters, where he'd talked about the guided meditations that were part of high-level quidditch training. Still, pretty insightful on the part of Harry, and also targeted to get Leontes to stop pestering him about Defense. "And then I thought about why Draco Malfoy does what he does. What is he trying to prove to the world? What does he think being a Malfoy means and what should it mean? And then I thought, he wants to be important. His family is prominent. So I've been suggesting that he can set a fashion, that he can show off that his family is rich enough that they can afford to pay their house elves, to rub it in the noses of everyone who can't maintain the standard the Malfoys do. And then I thought, Malfoy lives under the shadow of his father, who, you know..."

"Was a Death Eater and tortured and murdered a lot of people and got away with it," Neville fills in.

"Yeah, that," Leontes says. "And so I thought, what better way to show that the Malfoys aren't what people think they are than by doing something that a Death Eater would never do? You can't make freeing your house elves into some nefarious Voldemort-type plot. It just doesn't work."

"And how's it going?" Neville asks, looking again at the, okay, it's not a mountain of paperwork. It really is self-contained. Leontes doesn't actually send any of the books or pamphlets around, he just uses them for quotes and for how other people view the world.

"It's a work in progress," Leontes says. "His main argument against it is that he's abused his house elves so much that they'd never stick around for money, which isn't the solid argument he thinks it is."

"No, but it's self-aware," Neville says. "I wouldn't have thought that of him."

Leontes shrugs. "It's not precisely how he's putting it, but the sentiment is clear. I hope I can wear him down. It really would set a fashion if the Malfoys were to charge forward with it, with no clear financial or political benefit to themselves."

"I wouldn't complain if he did turn around his family's reputation," Neville says over dinner after they've figured out where they'd going or if they'd just order in. It's colder than expected but Leontes'd had wandless wordless warming charms down pat for years now.

"No?" Leontes asks.

"No," Neville confirms. "Because the amount of work that it would require... look, I hate the Malfoys, right? But Draco's in the same position I'm in. He didn't pick his parents and he didn't get to pick his House. What he gets to pick is what he does now. Lucius Malfoy can go rot, I'd spit on him in the street if I could get away with it, and his wife, too. And Draco was a bully at school. But we're not at school anymore and we've got the rest of our lives. If Draco wants to find a new leaf and turn it over, then I don't care how many people nudged him into it if he actually does do it. As much as I can't stand him, he's, you know, if you can get through to him, and you have enough patience to try, then it's not a waste."

Leontes nods. He and Neville pour over the menu and then just order every single appetizer.

"I never thought about it until I started this program," Neville says, poking at the dumplings. "Everything at Hogwarts was just Hogwarts. But Blaise Zabini is doing this program, too, and I never spoke more than five civil words to him at school. I started thinking about how things create our lives that have nothing to do with us. What would I have been like if my parents were Death Eaters? What if everything was the same but I'd been sorted into Slytherin instead? We can't pick our circumstances. I didn't luck into parents who could raise me, but neither did Potter, and at least mine are still alive. I lucked into a great best friend, but that was luck. The luck of the draw, really."

"I lucked into a great best friend, too," Leontes says. "But it wasn't just luck, the way I remember it. We picked each other."

"Yeah, because no one else would be friends with us," Neville laughs. "We were so cliquey as eleven year olds, weren't we? If Ron Weasley had given you the time of day, everything would be different."

"Not everything," Leontes objects. "We'd still be friends." He's sure of that with a surety that it probably doesn't deserve, but even though Leontes is terrible at Divination, this feels correct in a way nothing else does. It's not about destiny, it's about Leontes. Of course he would have befriended Neville. There's no other way he can imagine his life having gone.

"I'd like to think you're right," Neville says, almost wistful. He takes a sip of wine. "Anyway. Back to the looming decision that is hanging over you."

Leontes grimaces and eats more dumplings. "What do you think?"

"I think you should accept the practical spellwork program at Hopewell," Neville says. "It'd be better for you."

"How do you figure that?" Leontes asks. There are some small spicy fish and they're delicious and he needs to eat them all before Neville spots them.

"Because I know you," Neville says. He points his fork at Leontes. "What was that you were saying about self-image? Yours is pretty easy to figure out, even though it's often very frustrating to me, on a personal level." Leontes huffs a laugh. Neville continues, "You think you're not very smart -- this is because you were raised by very smart parents and so you don't think you're anything special, and you say that you can't be anything special because things are still hard for you--"

"They are!"

"Even though the things that are hard for you are well-beyond what the rest of us find hard. You think you aren't smart because you don't understand everything in the world immediately and perfectly. And so you underestimate the difficulty of things because most of the time, they aren't difficult for you, and when you find things that are difficult, you complain a lot."

"Thank you," Leontes says.

"You do," Neville says. "It's a personal affront to you when things don't come naturally--"

"Most things don't come naturally!" Leontes says. "I have to do so much work to understand things."

"You got every NEWT there is and you took nearly zero classes seriously, you were too focused on your research project," Neville says ruthlessly. "Look, Leontes, I have a special view of these things because I had to change my own perspective on myself when I was in second year. All my life, I'd thought I was like what everyone had told me I was: stupid, clumsy, never amount to anything. Everything always made them seem right. And then when Snape picked me to be his object of mockery in first year, I thought it was because I deserved it, since I was bad at Potions. It took an insufferable know-it-all to point out that a first year isn't supposed to be good at Potions. A first year is supposed to be a beginner and the problem is the teacher, not the student. And then this insufferable know-it-all demanded I stopped insulting myself with the words everyone always had for me, that I was nearly a squib, that I didn't belong here, that it should have been me instead of my parents--"

"WHO SAID THAT?" Leontes asks very calmly, in full control of his emotions.

Other diners look their way and Leontes flutters his hand into a privacy barrier.

"It doesn't matter," Neville says. "It matter that I believed that. If you had asked Neville Longbottom, age 11, why he had been sorted into Gryffindor, he wouldn't have been able to tell you, because he wasn't brave, he wasn't strong, magic was a struggle and so was friendship. He didn't have anything that would make anyone think he deserved the House he was given. And then this loud, emotional, genius roommate of his demanded that he start saying that he wasn't an idiot and that he stand up for himself and not let everyone make fun of him. And then he introduced Neville to his parents, his wonderful, loving, supportive parents, who took this person who'd never been properly taught anything and taught him about the muggle world with no sharp remarks, no needling comments. Your parents took me in and I began to understand how you can be the way you are. Because you don't think you're anything special, but you hung the moon for me, because you made the stars achievable."

Neville is tearing up and sniffling and so is Leontes. He reaches across the table and grabs Neville's hand and holds on. This is too honest, this is too emotional, this is basically a marriage proposal and Leontes isn't ready but he's here, he won't let go.

"And you proved yourself right and you proved me wrong, because I wasn't clumsy, I was just scared, and I wasn't stupid, I was just a typical student, and I could learn if I did the work and had people to help, and you helped me get people to help me, and I wasn't a coward, I'd just been surrounded by bullies my entire life, who wanted me to be my parents and were -- they wanted my father and got me instead, and I couldn't be him because I was just a little kid. But I was all they had left, because my actual father can't leave the ward -- they tried once, you know. My third birthday. They tried to bring my parents back to the house. It should be fine, right? It was a familiar space. But it wasn't. It really wasn't. They kept turning around and spotting some detail that was wrong and thinking it was a Death Eater trap. And I was three and these were my parents, but they didn't know me, because to them, Neville will always be their baby. And that baby grew up, but the Cruciatus damage is permanent. Back then, there'd still been hope. But eventually, we realized, there isn't. My parents will always be this way, and I can't be them but I'm also not their disgrace. How can I be, when they don't know who I am?"

"Neville," Leontes starts and then stops, without words.

"And so," Neville sniffs. "We get back to you. You want to help people. You want to help people so much. You're still working out how to do that without being overbearing -- please give Potter a break for at least a year for him to understand that a professional Quidditch career is actually pretty monotonous, he'll be much more susceptible once he realizes that -- but that's who you are. You think everyone is as smart as you and you think you're here to help other people. And that's the part you don't acknowledge, well, really, you don't acknowledge any of it. But you could have dropped that research project at any time. McGonagall would have wept with joy if you had. But you didn't, because it was interesting and because of the practical aspects you had to keep forcing yourself to remove. You want to fix Hogwarts. You want it so much. You want every student to have their chance at learning magic and have it come as easily to them as it does to you. And if that means revising the first year spellbook, then that's what you'll do, even at the risk to your own education, because you care so much, even though you don't acknowledge that's why you're doing it."

Leontes opens his mouth and Neville holds up his finger.

"You say you want pure theory. You always say this. You want to delve into the true nature of magic, to find out if magic even exists or is a collection of other phenomena. But when it comes down to it, you want to help people, and a choice between something that will almost certainly help people in small ways, against something with the potential to help people in big ways, you're going to take the sure thing over the possibility. Because why take the risk on what breakthroughs might happen, when you can make little fixes here and there and not need the big changes after all?"

"I like Charms Theory," Leontes sulks.

"Yes, but you like charms themselves more than that," Neville says. "I saw you when you were interviewing those first years, you were so excited to see them excited by magic. Face it, Leontes. You'd love the intellectual challenge of the Southton program. You'd delight in the most obscure elements of it. And then five months into it, you'd say to me something ridiculously insightful about how it can be used to revise the OWL standard. And you'd be right, but you'd be in the wrong place to be right. So why not start in the right place and be with people who will be on that journey with you, to improve the OWL standard and everything else?"

Leontes supposes Neville is right, but he doesn't see what this has to do with his self-image. He thinks he sees himself pretty well: a decent-enough wizard. Not particularly handsome, but looks aren't that important in a place where you can just do up a glamor if you want to feel beautiful. Probably -- he has to be honest with himself and admit -- faster at picking up spells than most other age-mates, although he thinks his understanding of their underlying characteristics is behind some people; certainly Percy Weasley has better insights into household spells than Leontes think he'll have for at least three more years of doing them daily. He has a good memory but that's not a character trait, that's just convenient. As for helping other people? Oh, he'll admit he's tried too hard to help people who aren't interested, but that's why he learned to restrain himself to the study group and stop bothering other people. And, yes, he did like the research project Binns shoved on his lap, he'd have dropped it if he didn't, but that was about the thrill of pursuing knowledge. It wasn't about the first years. It wasn't.

But as long as he was doing it, if he could help the first years, then of course he would! It would be absurd not to.

"What if I say no to everything and spend my life taking over my local community theater group?" Leontes asks.

Neville spears a pickled onion with his knife. "I'd like to see you try," he says. "It would be very entertaining."

35.

He owls the Hopewell program with his eager acceptance, and the Southton program with his apologies and hopes that they can still keep the door open to future opportunities.

And then there's nothing to do but get ready to go back to school.

He sharpens his quills and gets his papers ready. He practices the ink removal spell over and over again; he can do it wandlessly, but wordlessly eludes him. He doesn't want to bother the people around him, that would be a terrible first impression. This isn't Hogwarts! The students in the program are assumed to be fully-qualified and capable of all this basic spellcraft. He'd just embarrass himself if he draws attention to himself when doing pedestrian spells.

He also practices typing. His parents had presented him with a personal computer for his birthday and Leontes had spent a few weeks learning how to type and then discovered all the possibilities now available to him. He's always practiced a studying method of copying information between notebooks; there's the one he uses during class, there's the one he uses to summarize and consolidate information, there's the one he uses when he needs to just double check something -- it's a system he's perfected, but now he can also type. And then instead of fiddly searching spells -- which Leontes has not mastered, because he'd decided against library school when he was in third year and he isn't going to change his mind, but it still would be nice if he were better at them -- he can just use the computer program to search his notes.

It's not set up for Ancient Runes, but the benefits of what he can use it for should make it well-worth the trouble of having to invent his own way of computerizing Ancient Runes.

Leontes busies himself by typing up all his sixth and seventh year notebooks. He finds a few places where they could be tightened and then loses a weekend trying to get the printer to work. One of his cousins has to trouble-shoot it with him over the telephone, which is very humbling, but Leontes thinks is good for him. Ginny was just telling him that's good for him to be bad at things; she's working at a smalltime broomstick manufacturer as a product designer and tester and cheerfully told Leontes last week that she's never fallen off a broomstick so much. Leontes tries to keep her example in mind as he tries to figure out why the printer claims there's a printer jam when there's no paper at all inside it.

Maybe Leontes shouldn't have gone to Hogwarts. If he'd stayed in the muggle world, maybe he'd understand printers.

But he did go to Hogwarts and he did decide to stay in the magical world, so he'll just have to make the best of it.

Finally the day arrives and Leontes checks himself over in the mirror, which tells him that he missed a spot shaving and three spots ironing, both of which are easily fixed but he doesn't have time to get coffee before apparating over to the campus. At least he finds the building and the correct room on the first try, thanks to solid preparation, but then it turns out he's ten minutes early and could have gotten coffee.

Since there's no one around, he takes out his wand and pokes himself in the bicep and mutters a spell that Percy had been working on, which is supposed to provide a gentle calmness and really just mostly feels cold. But it does help jolt him out of his head before he enters Louis Stern's office.

"Ah, Granger," Stern says. "Right on time as expected."

"Hello, sir," Leontes says. "I'm very excited about this opportunity."

"Yes, yes, opportunities." Stern waves his hand and books move themselves off of a chair. Stern then waves at Leontes to sit in it. "We're very glad to have you here. Virginia Coolidge over at the Pratt Institute has been sending me Howlers every day since I told her you'd agreed to come here. I imagine more will come soon. You've made several waves already, young man. Very exciting! Very exciting!"

Leontes never knows what to say to this sort of thing. The Pratt Institute had definitely looked cool and their recent publications have been really interesting and thought-provoking, but they also think magic is transferable and are doing their best to prove it, which Leontes thinks is frankly unsupported by any evidence, and that they keep pursuing that line seems more political than scientific. "I'm really excited to be here," Leontes says. "Lina Hansson's work on the physicality of casting as it relates to measured impact of the spell, and if there is a physical connection between exertion or intent and outcome is something that seems so straight-forward but then it turns out to have untold depths and complications, which is amazing, and when you compare it to Risby's Rule, makes me wonder if she's crafting a modification to it. And Scott Watson's work on wand size--"

Stern is looking at Leontes with a very patient expression and Leontes remembers that this is just the first part of the first day.

"I hope to be able to learn from everyone while I'm here," Leontes finishes.

"You will! You will!" Stern says. "You know this is a very small group." Leontes does. There are larger programs, some much much larger, but he'd liked the direction that Hopewell has been going, and he isn't worried anymore about if this was the right decision, because if it was the wrong one, he can always go do something else. That's the whole point of so many NEWTs. He can just go do a Potions Mastery if he needs a complete change of pace, or get a monotonous day job testing transfiguration-proof exam materials to see if they really are transfiguration-proof like Colin has been doing, so he has time when he's off-shift to focus on his photography. "Half the day is coursework, but it will be different from your time at Hogwarts. Much more collaborative! No one competes here, I won't have it! Competition is the enemy of collaboration! Nothing is done alone, nothing is ever accomplished by one wizard off of your chocolate cards, do you eat those, Granger?"

"Sometimes," Leontes says. "My boyfriend collects them."

"Hmph," Stern says. "Well, don't let those chocolate cards fool you! Even Merlin didn't work alone! No, no, you see Lina, she also works with me and with Scott and with Caroline and Ricardo and Frank and even Pierre, even though he is in another department. Departments are just words, Granger! Magic unites us all! We would be nowhere if we let little things like words define magic. Your application said you cast wordlessly, I recall."

"Yes, sir." Leontes nods. "But not that many, only my general day-to-day routine. I'm working on expanding it."

"Yes, good," Stern says. "So you see, you already know that words don't define magic. Can you define transfiguration, Granger?"

"Probably not," Leontes says.

Stern chortles. "Ah, so you're ahead of the game. Good! Good! An easier one, perhaps. Define magic for me, if you will."

"Anything that is not in line with current scientific understanding of the world," Leontes says. "Ah, my parents like Shakespeare. After I got my Hogwarts letter, they put up a sign in my room. There are more things in heaven and earth--"

"I like your parents!" Stern says. "I quibble with your definition but no one has managed to define magic to my satisfaction yet and it won't be done today, or tomorrow, or next Thursday. Simply put, magic is what we decide it is, but that's so limiting. So limiting! Our imaginations are not large enough for magic, that is why we need new blood, always we need to churn things, consult our colleagues, go to conferences, take a look at how someone else does things, or else we become stagnant and our magic deserts us for those who are more willing to delve into the unknown and accept that they are wrong. Are you wrong, Granger?"

"Frequently," Leontes says.

"Does that bother you?" Stern asks, his gaze perceptive and his mouth quirked into a grin. Leontes would not have been accepted to this program if Stern was in doubt of that answer, he's sure of it.

"No, sir," Leontes says.

"Yes, every time you are wrong, it's an opportunity to learn! Being right is boring, isn't it?"

And Leontes feels like the sun has shone on his heart for the first time. "Yes! Sir," he adds and Stern waves it away. "Thank you, sir, no one's ever understood that before. If I'm right, it's because I already know something. If I'm wrong, it's -- yes, that's it exactly, being wrong is an opportunity."

"Yes, this is why I was so eager to have you," Stern said. "Filius, he owled me and said, I have a student, a sixth year, who runs at brick walls and falls down and gets back up again. And I said, ah, an adventurous Ravenclaw, send him my way! And then Filius said no, a Gryffindor and one in thrall to Binns and History. And then I had to have you even more. We have a lack here, I will not lie to you, of those with a real understanding of the way spells fluctuate across time. And I read your paper and I thought, he is the one I have been looking for. Because we are good at seeing into the future, but we are not so good at seeing into the past. But you, Granger, you have a keen eye on the past and how it becomes the future. This is priceless. We are going to work you to the bone. Do you drink coffee?"

Leontes can't remember the last time he grinned like this. Probably the first time Neville kissed him. "Yes, sir."

"Good! I will show you the machine, its name is Mister Coffee," Stern says, standing up. "It works by electricity, because magic makes terrible coffee. Terrible! And you cannot do magic with terrible coffee. At least, I cannot. And then I will show you around."

That night, exhausted, Leontes sends a text message to Neville on his brand new mobile phone: 'you were right.'

Neville replies five minutes later: 'that's a relief.'

36.

They start him on casting. Micha Stein, who is the one generally in charge of wrangling the students, apologizes before they begin, since this has been known to interfere with the ability to cast wandlessly or wordlessly.

"But you'll never understand magic if you keep doing it only the way you've always done it," he says cheerfully. "How many languages do you speak?"

"English and French, some Latin and Greek," Leontes says. "I can read it better than speak it."

"Right, let's start you on Portuguese casting," Micha says, and he's right, because that night, Leontes has to try three times to get his clothes to fold themselves and then has to resort to using words to get the dishes cleared and clean. It hurts something right behind his eyes when he has to turn his wand left instead of right, down instead of up, twisted in a corkscrew instead of straight.

But it starts coming easier, and at least he gets afternoons to be useful, rather than bumbling around like a first year.

After a month, the students are forced to swap wands and then Leontes really feels like a failure, but at least he's not alone. Dorota gets a look on her face and squeezes her fingers and her wand jumps from Leontes's hand into hers, so fast it leaves a burn on Leontes's palm. She relaxes and then has to sheepishly hand her wand back so they can continue the exercise.

"What's a spell?" Micha asks them and then enchants those words to float over their head in neon lights, shooting off fireworks at every spectacular failure at doing magic. "You have intent and you didn't know what these words meant either when you first learned the spells ten years ago. Why do words matter?"

"It's a different spell!" Tom shouts, frustrated. "Don't you get it? It does the same action but it's not the same spell!"

Micha applauds, the fireworks shoot across the room in glee, and they're bathed in a rainbow of colors and booms.

Then while they rest their brains, he starts them on some basic transfigurations. Metal to another metal, wood to another wood, the sort of thing Leontes had mastered by third year. Except he's doing it blindfolded, without his wand, and in a language he doesn't speak. But, as Micha ruthlessly reminds him, he didn't know what the words meant the first time around! Hogwarts never translated spells into English. He learned spells by syllable and by action, all to train intent. Intent is the focus. Intent is what needs to be sculpted and perfected; wand movements are arbitrary mnemonics and have no bearing on magic, if magic exists.

How can you understand spells if you don't understand spells?

It hurts his head and he thinks he may never cast the same way again, but that's good. He thinks he's beginning to understand the mere beginnings of it, what he'd never even glimpsed in all those years in Hogwarts, in all those discussions with Binns and Flitwick. But some of the things Flitwick had said to him are starting to come to mind more frequently now and he thinks those were hints, that this was a seed being planted for later, for when Leontes's brain was in the right condition to understand them.

But he does lose all wandless spells for sixteen days. It's very frustrating.

37.

Ten minutes into date night, Neville says, "you can just ask, if you want."

"Ask what?" Neville had made spaghetti, it's very good, and Leontes is eating it like he hasn't eaten in five days, even though he had lunch today, he knows he did, because he ate it standing up on the green while watching Maeve and Suellen play tennis without a racket.

He thinks forcing himself to do magic in a non-intuitive way makes him really hungry. He should write that down.

"What you want me to try doing," Neville says.

Leontes is about to deny it but what's the point. "Did you ever try to do spells without knowing what they did?"

"Yes, and it didn't work," Neville says, because there's two answers to the question on if it's possible to do spells without knowing what they're meant to do: the first, that no, it's not. The second one is that yes, it's possible, but it's also a very bad idea.

It's never worked for Leontes either. One time he did try a spell out of a book without knowing what it was supposed to do, and then realized, stupidly, that he'd never know if it worked or not, since he didn't know what it would do. But he's been reading cautionary tales of people who've made spells do things they weren't supposed to do -- with very, very, very gruesome results -- because they had an incomplete description of what it was meant to do.

"It would be unethical for me to give you a list of spells and ask you to do them," Leontes says, "especially because I'd be required to give you a full summary of what it might or might not do, for the consent, but that would also be bad because it would prejudice you to assume the spell might or might not do certain things, so we'd have to work -- of course I wouldn't give you a spell that would hurt you or others--"

"I know, I trust you," Neville says. "This isn't an experiment, this is just you being curious."

"Right," Leontes says. "Because I've been trying to link up various mnemonic words or whistles to certain -- let's call them tricks. And there's no way for me to find out if it's reproducible without asking someone to reproduce it. But these are original spells and I think that if you don't know what they are, they won't work, but even if you do know what they are--"

"Uh-huh," Neville says. "And I've never seen you do them or heard about them so I can't expect certain outcomes from the spells. So you're testing a theory of charm action and you're also testing this specific charm you've been working on."

"It's a terrible experimental design," Leontes says. "Because it's not an experiment. I'm curious. But," he flounders. "If you were interested?"

"Yeah, let's try it," Neville says and that's how they end up on the couch after dinner, with Leontes writing down a three-note whistle on one scrap of paper, then what it's meant to do on another one, and folding them and giving them to Neville.

"Wand movements?" Neville asks.

Leontes pauses. He. Oh, this is so embarrassing.

"You forgot about wands?" Neville asks.

Leontes hides his face in his hands and starts shaking with laughter.

"Right, that's what happens when your boyfriend is deep into the cutting edge," Neville says, and whistles the tune a few times, first slowly, then faster. Nothing happens, of course.

Neville unfolds the paper with what the spell is supposed to do: bathe the room in a pale blue light, enough to see by, but not enough to illuminate the corners of the room.

Neville tries again. Still nothing.

"Okay, now show me," Neville commands.

Leontes sits up straight, folds his hands in his lap, closes his eyes almost entirely, and whistles three sharp notes shrilly and loudly into the dark room. Blue light blooms from him and then fades, gently, into the floor.

"Oh," Neville whispers. "Oh, that's beautiful. Let me try it."

38.

Stern takes a two-week vacation in the spring and comes back well-rested, with a new hat, and a new family photo to go up behind his desk. "Descendants! Wonderful thing, descendants, a blessing! But so loud on my old ears," he says happily. The people in the new photograph elbow each other to take a look at the previous photograph. Leontes thinks he sees Anthony Goldstein from Hogwarts somewhere in the background.

"Ah, you know someone?" Stern asks.

"Maybe," Leontes says. "If that's Anthony Goldstein, we took classes together at Hogwarts."

"Ah, it is, it is. He's dating my great-granddaughter Bayla. One of my Baylas, that is. A beautiful name! But did we need three of them, I asked. But I was not consulted. Still! Three Baylas is a good number, four would certainly be worse. Goldstein seems a decent sort, a solid head on his shoulders. Studying international law like his father, you know."

"No, I didn't know," Leontes says. "We're not, uh. There's a lot of students at Hogwarts."

"Yes, of course!" Stern says. "So many promising young people these days, it does an old heart good! Too many years of the same people is like a rut in the road, it needs new dirt! Ah, your year at Hogwarts, so many promising students. My mother tells me she's working with young Millicent Bulstrode, she was also in your year, yes?"

"Yes," Leontes says. "But--"

"No, no, I understand," Stern says. "You have your friends, they have their friends, and in ten years, you'll all shuffle around a room together asking who everyone is, because you'll have forgotten everyone who was not memorable enough. I know how it is very well! But there are so many wonderful young flower buds blooming now! That is what my father would say, he is a horticulturist, but retired. Everyone is a flower! Unless they are a rock, be worried if you are a rock. Rocks have their uses but they do not grow. Your parents are dentists, are they not?"

"They are," Leontes says.

"Talented people, dentists! They look in your mouth and know all your secrets! I went to a dentist once, he told me to floss more, so I flossed more and never went back!" Off Leontes's look, Stern chuckles. "I joke, I joke. My granddaughter, she is a dentist, she looks in my mouth twice a year and tells me to do a whitening charm to look younger. I tell her, we have both seen Star Wars, at least I do not look like Yoda! And then she tells me about this disease gingivitis and scares me. She does this every year! So, you see, I respect dentists! A noble profession, a thankless one! How is your casting coming?"

"I'm not sure," Leontes says honestly.

"Hmm," Stern hmms. "Oh, well, no use puttering around! Let's see it."

Leontes hesitates. "Anything in particular?"

"No, whatever comes to mind," Stern says.

So Leontes closes his eyes and focuses and blue light shines from behind his eyelids.

"I see," Stern says. "And with the wand?"

Leontes pulls it from his ear and twirls it and light shines from both ends of it, a glorious shower of twinkling lights.

"And with words?" Stern asks, too perceptive.

"I can't make that work," Leontes admits.

"Hmm, yes," Stern says. "You can't link it with an idea. That whistling, that was good. But you can't form a permanent link, you're no musician. You need to link the effect with the cause! You put too much intent into it right now! Do alohomora."

The door behind them slams open.

"You see?" Stern says. "Too much focus, that's what's the problem right now is! All right. This is our fault, our fault. Take a week of no wandless, no wordless! You must use your wand before you forget how to, and then you'll never make a spell for a child again, because you'll have forgotten how to see the world as they do."

"I have been looking into accidental magic recently," Leontes admits.

"Yes, yes, your pensieve memories of parents who witnessed their children's first, I recall," Stern says. "And your thoughts on it?"

"That it's entirely intent, backed by frustration. They don't know how to do magic -- when it was me, I didn't even know I was doing magic. But they pour intent into the world and are rewarded with their objective. But they can't repeat it." Leontes says. "That's-- that's why spells have words and wands, to be repeatable."

"Yes, the problem of knowing so much! It is hard to condense it into something that can be taught. An ordeal, to be sure! But if we did not do it, then there would be no children doing spells, none at all, until the children invented their own and taught us. Becoming an expert is not always a benefit!" Stern claps Leontes on the shoulder. "No, no, take the week off entirely, no practical magic whatsoever. Go to the library! Go to the cinema! Go on a date with your young man and enjoy the sunshine! And no! Wandless! Magic!"

Leontes is about to object, but Stern physically moves him towards the door.

"Remember!"

"I know. Use my wand."

"Good!" Stern slams the door behind him. His voice echoes after him. "And get some sleep!"

39.

Neville's off looking at dirt in Oslo, so Leontes spends a day sitting around and reading, and then visits his parents. They have some boxes they need him to move around, and it's good exercise. Then they want him to go through all his old stuff and decide what to keep, which turns into him sitting around and reading, just in a different place.

Everyone is busy, but Leontes has a letter on his desk from Luna that he needs to reply to, and since she's gone into journalism with her father, she keeps a very inconsistent schedule. He owls her to see if she's in the country and wants to hang out, and she replies within the hour.

Leontes goes to the nearby bakery and buys some cupcakes before apparating over to her house.

Luna exclaims over the cupcakes -- they're enchanted to look like cats -- and they settle onto the lawn.

"It's great to see you," Leontes says. "Sorry I've been terrible about keeping in touch."

"Who's to say what's in touch?" Luna asks. "Were we required to send a certain number of letters every month or deny our friendship?"

"You make a good point," Leontes says. He is about to wave over the pitcher of lemonade before Stern's voice thunders in his ear (it's a really persistent spell, Leontes needs to learn how do it ASAP) and he grabs his wand first.

Luna watches him do it, a bemused smile on her face. "It's like going backwards, isn't it?" she asks.

"It's horrible," Leontes complains. "It's just a wooden stick with a bit of an old feather in it."

"Oh, have you disproved magic already?" Luna asks.

Leontes shrugs. "That depends on what definition of magic. Disproving it entirely isn't going to happen because I didn't do any advanced physics. I'll leave that to Dennis," since last Leontes had talked to him, Dennis wanted to figure out how to rewrite physics to fit magic into it. Leontes wishes him the best. "But disproving part of magic isn't that hard."

Luna nods. Her cupcake pounces on another cupcake and then she licks the cream off. "When do you think they invented it?"

"Hard to say." Leontes frowns, thinking it over. "The Statute of Secrecy, do you think?"

"I'd say later," Luna says. "It's a shame Binns was a tool of the establishment."

Leontes huffs a laugh. "I do feel bad about the whole-- the whole thing," he says, because sometimes he really does. "They took advantage of having a ghost who wouldn't leave them having to find another teacher. And enough people passed the OWLs and the NEWTs that who really cared, right? But the history of magic and magical history are two different things! The history of magic goes back to prehistory and magical history--"

"Doesn't," Luna says. "I'm glad to see you keeping up with the Quibbler."

Leontes isn't going to lie to her, he mostly skims it. "It only makes sense," he says. "What makes something magic? The head of my program thinks magic is anything we define as magic. But my focus is on history of magical spells, not," he waves his hand, "the history of persecution of people who do magic in public and the resulting separation of them in England and the development of magical identity over time. But having magical people versus non-magical people is clearly some kind of bullshit."

Luna laughs at him and waves a cupcake over to him, along with more lemonade. "Oh, I've missed you, Leontes. Dennis isn't nearly so blunt about it."

"Are you still seeing him?" Leontes asks, because usually his source for this gossip is Luna, so unless she gossips about herself, he'll never know.

"Every night in my dreams," Luna says primly.

Leontes nods. "Sounds like me and Neville."

"He may stop by later," Luna says. "The stars were unclear."

"It was cloudy last night," Leontes says. "Oh. I've been meaning to ask, do you have any books on magical creatures not covered by the Hogwarts Care of Magical Creatures textbooks? You always know so much about them, and I'm supposed to be taking a break this week, so I'd finally have time to read them." Luna has been talking about magical creatures that weren't in the textbook since Leontes met her, and he never took Care of Magical Creatures so he don't know what was simply conveyed orally or in additional readings, but he'd never had time to care about it before, because if it's not in the assigned readings, then it's not on the standardized test for a topic as broad as magical creatures. It's not like that exam is going to be a practical one, it's completely impractical to do that.

And since Hogwarts... Leontes has been busy, Luna's been out of the country, other things have been going on. And most of the time, he doesn't really care. But it's something that's been in the back of his mind, this thirst to know more about this world and how it works.

"Most people think I'm making them up," Luna says peacefully.

"I'll admit at first I thought some of them were metaphors," Leontes admits. "But after a few months, it was clear that you could see creatures that I couldn't. I just didn't have enough time at school to ask you to teach me to see like you do, or find out more about them. I had other things on my mind. But learning is life-long, right?"

"I don't think there are books for some of them," Luna says, thinking it over as she eats another cupcake. "They're very elusive and don't want to be seen. What would you fill a book with? They won't talk to you."

Leontes nods. "I suppose a book that simply categorizes them wouldn't be very interesting or useful."

"And seeing them -- hmm," Luna says. "Seeing and noticing are different things. I notice them because I know to see them."

"Is there anything around right now?" Leontes glances around. "Does it take a special experience to see them? You said nargles lived in plants, right?"

"They can," Luna says. "Generally poisonous ones, they tell you what not to eat. Oh. Not really, though. They were first noticed that way. The plants that would poison you were the ones the nargles liked best. But they also can live in trees and in beehives and in candy. The nargles don't tell us anything. They don't even notice us. We're not plants or bees. Why are you interested in creatures you can't see?"

"Because I don't know anything about them, and I never understood why everyone at school didn't take a moment to consider that you were right and they weren't." Leontes passes her more cupcakes. "Dr. Stern, the head of my department, he likes to say that being wrong is a beginning and being right is a dead-end. In a school seemingly dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, a lot of people chose ignorance, not to mention mockery. If I'd taken Care of Magical Creatures seriously, I'd have made time to ask you, but since I wasn't planning to ever work with a magical creature, I didn't think I needed more information on them than what's in the textbook. But you'd see creatures near me or in the school, which means I am interacting with them, or I could be. It seems stupid not to know more about them."

"They don't care if you know about them," Luna says. "They have their own existences." She peers at Leontes. "You're a magical creature."

"As a wizard or a human?" Leontes asks.

"A human," Luna says. "There's no such thing as a wizard, you know that."

Leontes nods. "And categorizing humans in books, well, that's several entire fields of study. There's no introduction to humans book."

"Oh, but there should be!" Luna exclaims. "Think about what you'd put into it!"

Leontes does. "Chapter 1," he works through, "biological classification? No. Habitat? I haven't taken a biology class in," he can't actually remember, "I can't actually remember."

"Why categorize what everyone already knows?" Dennis says, coming up the hill from behind them. "You only do that for things you don't know. And everyone knows what a human is. Hello, Leontes."

"Dennis," Leontes says. "Have a cupcake." And with Stern's voice in his ear, he uses his wand to pass one over as Dennis conjures up a blanket to sit on.

Luna kisses Dennis hello. "Leontes wants to know about heliopaths," Luna says.

"Don't stare directly at them," Dennis says immediately. "It's like looking at the sun."

"I've never seen them," Leontes says.

"No?" Dennis asks, surprised. "Never stared into a camp fire and seen horses? That's how they're born."

"I don't do much camping," Leontes says. "Never got the hang of it."

"Stargazing is very romantic," Dennis says, man-to-man, learning forward and looking Leontes in the eye. "If you and Neville ever start having problems, go camping. Either it'll fix all your problems or you'll break up and stop having them."

That's the kind of logic that would suit Dennis well in dating Luna, but Leontes isn't sure it's generally applicable, and certainly not to Neville. "Got it," he says. "How's physics?"

"Frustrating," Dennis says. "But I think I'm making progress. Hopefully it's in the right direction."

They chat through the remainder of the cupcakes and the lemonade, and Leontes leaves with no books, but three years of back issues of the Quibbler, and a new appreciation for what it takes to make a career in journalism and in physics. Leontes is so glad he picked the easy path. He just modifies existing spells; people have been doing that since they first invented spells.

Honestly, after how stressful it was to get through school, it's nice to be going at a slower pace now. He's not concerned about the road not taken. It'll still be there, if he wants something hard instead.

40.

Leontes gets an owl from the tenants that they've moved out, so the next time he has a free weekend, he apparates over to the manor house and looks it over. He's probably making some kind of unpleasant expression but there's no one there to see as he walks through the whole place, cataloging all the reasons this isn't a place he'd want to live full-time.

But he does own a house, and although he didn't want it or ask for it, he did get it. Either he can sell it or live in it, those are the only options he'd be comfortable with. He really hadn't liked having tenants. It felt like he had a responsibility on his shoulders that no one asked him about before they shoved it on him.

Could he renovate this into something he'd want to live in? He walks the entire house again and frowns harder, lines burrowing into his forehead. Yes, probably, although he's no designer, and he'd want to get Neville's input. If Neville would ever want to live here, too, it's only polite.

It takes longer for both Leontes and Neville to have a day free, but Leontes takes that time to do some little sketches here or there of what the house would need to be like for him to be willing to live there. He's no artist but he wouldn't be doing any of the work himself anyway. The library is the best part of the house; he wants it bigger. He wants that giant dome in it expanded and he wants the library to be the heart of the house, with work spaces and couches and cozy little corners. He needs the kitchen to be modified to the scale of an adult man, not a house elf. He needs the bedrooms not to feel like the walls are closing in on him. He is going to change all the wallpaper into something that doesn't look so dreary. And put in better lighting. All these candlesticks and lanterns are atmospheric, but very impractical for the way Leontes lives his life.

Neville wants a bigger garden and to change the shed into a home potions lab. His opinions on the interiors are mostly in line with Leontes's -- they disagree on if the windows should be expanded in the living areas or if that would just get in the way of the bookshelves and artwork. Neville wants stained glass. Leontes is willing to go with it. And Leontes doesn't want a floo in the main areas. But a lot of it is just details.

He'd asked Harry's friend Dobby, the first house elf Leontes had ever met, if he knew any house elves who had gone into the building industry, and Dobby had, as usual, over-delivered. This is fine with Leontes. He still feels like the manor's Gringotts vault is full of dirty money. He doesn't want to touch it. If he can use it all to pay house elves to do work on the manor, that's fine with him. Use it all up, and use up Binns's Hogwarts salary, too. It was earned while giving hundreds of years of students a terrible education. Good riddance, get rid of it.

The house elves get to work and within a few months, the manor is transformed. Aprea, one of the house elves who works in the Hogwarts library, was willing to be hired to fix up the manor library, and she tells Leontes sternly how often he needs to have someone come in and maintain it.

"No sloppiness!" she lectures him and Leontes nods.

When they're done, Leontes thanks them all, especially Dobby, who Leontes really couldn't have done it without. Dobby gladly accepts the hat that Neville's grandmother had knit and settles in for tea with them, admiring the new house.

Dobby is as excitable as ever, which Leontes sometimes finds tiring, but reminds himself that he probably does things that Dobby finds tiring and Dobby isn't rude enough to mention it. Tea lasts about a half an hour and Dobby mentions as he leaves that he, personally, is in such a great mood because, "Draco Malfoy is freeing his house elves!"

"He's doing what?" Leontes asks, shocked, since his correspondence with Draco Malfoy has dwindled over the last year because Leontes has been too busy and he assumes Malfoy has been, too.

"Freeing his house elves!" Dobby says enthusiastically. "Draco Malfoy is saying that he is too rich to have elves dressed like a disgrace to the furniture! So he is giving all his house elves clothes and salary and telling them to look smart!"

Wow. Leontes had no idea. "Did any of them leave?"

Dobby's ears twitch. "Most of them!" he confirms. "But more house elves are coming! They say they want to see if Malfoy is good for it!"

"Wow," Leontes says.

Later, Leontes writes a letter to Malfoy, who writes back a very stuffy reply that confirms all of Dobby's points and also adds on the minor detail that Draco Malfoy plans to begin a political career. He is also, Leontes reads, going to attend the next meeting of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, with reporters in tow, to demand of Dumbledore that he free the Hogwarts house elves, too.

Leontes stares at his new office wall, watching the small motifs of beautiful, unrealistic, artistically stylized dragons frolic in a completely imaginary but very scenic forest, and then writes a letter to McGonagall to warn her; he owes her too much not to.

41.

Neville laughs and laughs and laughs.

And then laughs some more.

"Leon," he says, putting a firm grip on Leontes's shoulder. "This is--" and he starts laughing again.

Leontes waits him out.

"You got Malfoy to do your dirty work for you!" Neville finally exclaims. "And Sirius Black has been fighting to get rid of Azkaban and-- and even Ron Weasley is working on improving the public perception of werewolves," which is sadly true; the Weasley joke shop had come up with several clever gags about Werewolves: The Rest Of The Time, and then also put out a line of silver dust that supposedly made you unbiteable during the moons, which Leontes thinks probably can't have been tested, but it's the Weasleys, and Sirius Black does live with a werewolf, so who knows what they tried, "and--and-- didn't Colin say something about a Hogwarts unity club?"

"Dennis," Leontes says. "He's still in touch with our first years. The work really brought them together."

"What's left for you, oh great and powerful Dark Lord Spinach?" Neville asks. "Still want to abolish the house system or is that enough for you?"

"I'd like it if they could remove all presumed immutable character traits from house assignments," Leontes says, because Neville did ask, which just sets Neville off again.

Leontes waits him out and then says, "most of the people I talked to said that the sorting hat gave them the house they asked for, or let them choose between options. I don't think there's any great magic going on. They could just roll some dice. Kids are going to group together and ostracize no matter what you do, but you don't need to give it a veneer of scientific fact."

"Uh-huh," Neville says, as if he hadn't spent ages eleven through thirteen convinced he'd been sorted wrongly and they'd kick him out of Gryffindor -- or Hogwarts -- as soon as they noticed. "How about the Statute of Secrecy?"

Leontes grimaces. "Ask me in five years. I'm not sure how the internet is going to handle it. You can't obliviate a computer."

Neville starts ticking things off his fingers and then gives Leontes a beautiful smirk. "You know, I've forgotten what else we'd decided was your Dark Lord platform."

"We?" Leontes asks fatalistically and is rewarded by Neville listing off for him how many of their friends had gotten together and decided what Leontes Granger would be like when he finally -- WHEN???? NEVILLE, WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WHEN -- had enough and went evil.

"The only thing I'd do if I went evil is quit my program and sit around the house reading all day, living off of Binns's salary," Leontes says. "Yes, there are things that bother me about the magical word--"

"Oh, Binns, can't believe I forgot Binns. That was your first evil victory," Neville says, far too happily.

Leontes has never studied psychology and so he's always figured this whole joke from Neville was some sort of -- look, Leontes knows what happened to Neville's parents. If this is the kind of gallows humor that Neville ended up with, it's understandable. But hasn't this joke gone on long enough? It's been long enough for Leontes to forget everything that was on his NEWTs! This is ridiculous!

But. On the other hand. Neville has been under a lot of stress in his program and he's mostly all the way to a Potions Mastery, which he's getting just as a side foray while doing his Herbology Mastery, and if Neville needs to blow off some steam and put together a platform for his boyfriend's completely fictional evil future... Leontes supposes that's also understandable.

Of all their cohort, Leontes definitely has the easiest post-Hogwarts career. He can't judge. Okay, he can, but he shouldn't.

Leontes squeezes his eyes shut and thinks for a moment about everything he'd complained about in school. "You also think I want to abolish quidditch, don't you?"

"Without a doubt," Neville says. "Unless Harry has convinced you otherwise."

Leontes shrugs. "It's a waste of time, but..."

"But people are allowed to waste their time in non-Granger-approved activities," Neville says. "You've become wise in your old age."

"Thank you," Leontes says, touched.

"Oh! And you also wanted to get rid of Snape," Neville says, putting down another finger. "More dirty work you shoved off onto Malfoy! Does he know he's your loyal minion now?"

"I don't do minions," Leontes says. Although that reminds him... "Stern is a big believer in collaboration. Maybe I should be the first Dark Lord to really be a Dark Council." There, that's being in the spirit of the joke.

Neville laughs again. "Oh, well," he says, wiping away a tear. "As long as I can be your foremost minion, first among equals in your Dark Council."

"I thought you were going to be my husband," slips out, and then Neville turns those eyes on Leontes and he stands his ground like a man, goddammit. "If you want," Leontes says.

"I-- yes," Neville says. "But not right now, Leontes, have you seen both our schedules?"

Leontes has, in fact, seen both their schedules. "Once you're done with your Masteries and I've figured out if I'm going to throw my wand away and do pure theory instead of letting the tide pull me into doing a spell design degree?"

"Yes," Neville says. "It's a date."

42.

Now that the house is done, Leontes finally gets to put his Runes NEWT to practical use. He enchants a portal between his parents's home and one of the spare rooms in the manor.

He'd planned to do it the normal way, using the door to his childhood bedroom, but his parents have read too many books, so they insist on him doing it to the back of an old armoire that they'd gotten from a cousin or a friend who was willing to part with it. Leontes had offered to make them a new one! But no, it had to be an old one, with chips and gouges in the wood. Leontes usually understands his parents, but he really doesn't understand this decision. Oh well.

He does put in some security features: it only works for his parents, it won't work if they're speaking certain code words. But once it's put in, his parents start coming over for dinner once a week or so, and Leontes feels a warm glow of accomplishment.

Neville is there most weeks, but Leontes notices that once, twice, three times, afterwards Neville looks like he's been crying.

"What's wrong?" Leontes asks, as the dishes sort themselves out and his parents are long-since gone back home to get ready for Monday.

Neville hesitates but Leontes supposes that Neville decides that denial is pointless. "It's ugly," he warns.

"Marriage isn't just about the good times," Leontes says. "It's about the ugliness and pain and all that, too."

"Right, right," Neville says. He puffs himself up and says, "I'm angry, I suppose."

Neville isn't really someone who cries when he's angry. Leontes waits him out.

"Your parents are wonderful -- really, they are. Your mother, before we were dating, she said she was so glad to get another son, and then after we started dating, told me that even if we broke up, I was still her extra son and she was keeping me even if you weren't. Your father has six different times made sure I know what condoms are, starting when I was fourteen and still dating Ginny. Your parents are great. They love you. They'd love you even if you were a muggle, they love you even though you're a wizard. They have no idea what it is you do in your program but they don't care, because they're just so proud of you for doing whatever it is you do. They'd be proud of you if you quit it all and went into community theater. They are, without a doubt, the best set of parents I've ever met."

Leontes waits.

"And they aren't mine," Neville says savagely. "And it's not that I'm jealous! I don't want them to be my parents. I want MY PARENTS to be THEM. I want-- I want my parents to be any kind of parents at all! I don't know what my parents think of me and I never will. I'll never have any relationship with my parents like I have with your parents. And I should have! I should have had parents all this time, and I don't! Instead I have two strangers with brain damage who don't know who I am. And I hate this, because it's not their fault, and I know that. I know they didn't choose this. They didn't abandon me on purpose. But I could stop visiting them tomorrow and they'd never, ever, ever notice. And it makes me so angry, and it shouldn't, but my parents will never come round for dinner and I'll never have anything like what you have with yours. Are-- now's the part where you tell me that this, this--"

Leontes nods. "This makes perfect sense."

"What?" Neville asks, clearly having expected something else.

"What you're saying. It makes perfect sense," Leontes says.

"You're not angry with me for crying over the horrible experience of having over for dinner two people I like and respect?" Neville asks.

Leontes doesn't understand what Neville's getting at. "Why would I?" he asks.

Neville mutters something, then says louder, "Okay." Then he mutters something else about what else should he have expected, this is Leon.

Leontes says, thinking hard, "I think it's normal," he says. "Potter once told me he punched Sirius Black in the nose for not coming for him sooner. But that doesn't mean Potter didn't want Black to come for him. It means he did. I know you like my parents and I know you love your parents, and I know that your relationship with them -- it can't be the relationship you should have had with them. And seeing my parents reminds you of what you don't have."

"I have it now, with them," Neville says. "But--"

"But it shouldn't be like this," Leontes says. "We should be able to have both our parents round for dinner and we can't. And I think it's very normal. To be angry about that. Because it isn't right that you don't get to have that, and Potter didn't, either. And," Leontes takes a deep breath. "It's okay to be sad about it, too."

Neville bats away tears and then gives into them and Leontes cries with him, too, for the parents Neville didn't have, and for the parents he did have, and for everything that Neville won't have, and their children won't, either, if they have them. Leontes has visited St. Mungo's enough now to feel some of what Neville does, the frustration, the fear, the grief. The magical world can heal so many illnesses, but they can't fix this. And in a world that promises that so many things are so easily fixable, it aches all the more so, because this one can't be.

43.

Usually, after Neville's allowed himself to complain about his parents, he overcompensates in how often he visits them. This time, though, instead of the usual strategy where each of them visits one of his parents and switches each time, for the next few months, Leontes visits one of Neville's parents and Neville instead spends that time talking to the healers. He defends himself by saying that if there were new treatment options, no one would find out about them if they weren't actively managing the case, but Leontes doesn't think Neville needs to defend himself at all, so he just nods.

There's the usual ratio of good days to bad days. The Cruciatus damage encompasses a lot of different medical problems, some of them more controllable than others, but it can be hard to evaluate because Frank and Alice Longbottom are perpetually stuck in the middle of a war. The rooms in the ward have a letter from Augusta Longbottom, spelled to be impervious to anything they can throw at it, that tells them that they are in St. Mungo's because of curse damage, and uses the code phase that both of them should remember. One of the days when Neville won't come inside the room, is one of the days when Frank Longbottom thinks it's three years before that code phrase came into being, and it's a bad day with his paranoia, too.

Leontes usually impersonates someone under Polyjuice, using his collection of code phrases he's gotten from people who knew Neville's parents way back when, but this time, he has to pretend to be Frank's old Hogwarts roommate's girlfriend Calliope Brenner, because she's the only one still around from that specific time who was ever able to give Leontes some tips; the real Calliope Brenner is a guest-lecturer on alchemy at Hopewell.

Frank throws him out after ten minutes.

Alice Longbottom is also not having a great day, but Calliope Brenner works for both of them, and so Leontes at least doesn't have to quickly consult his notecards.

The next month is better. Leontes likes to talk to Neville's parents about his research, when he can. They have good questions and insights, and he's ruthlessly winnowed down his explanations so that it's short enough to explain to them in their good moments and have useful conversations. Neither of them were ever spell specialists, but they had to do a lot of off-the-cuff innovations in their time.

And so Leontes holds up the slack until Neville feels up to visiting again, and Leontes holds his hand during the first visit back, and he squeezes, and Neville squeezes back, and Leontes can't imagine what Neville has gone through, but at least Leontes is here now.

44.

Colin's written a history of magical photography and sent out copies to everyone who showed even the slightest interest in proof-reading it. Leontes, alas, was one of them, so he has his nose in the book when Dorota comes slamming into the room in a frenzy and points at him. "You! Leontes! What are you doing all of this for?"

Caught on the spot, Leontes says, "to improve beginner magical education."

She snaps her fingers at him. "Fantastic! Come with me."

And so Leontes gets up and follows her into a room where there are, huddled around, a large group of ten year olds, some nervous, some bored.

"How are you with children?" Dorota asks him.

"I once was a child," Leontes replies.

"Fantastic!" she says again and leaves.

"Where are your parents?" Leontes asks the ten year olds.

The bravest one steps forward and says, "in the administration building, talking to the provost."

"So why are you here?" Leontes asks.

"For the tour!" another one of the ten year olds says.

"Are you..." Leontes glances them over. "Tell me your educational background."

"We're students at the Ryan Academy," says the first ten year old. Leontes has never heard of that. The ten year old continues, offended, "it's a real school. You can ask Mrs. Ryan."

"I don't feel the need to do that," Leontes says. "I can show you around, but it's going to be very boring."

"They said you make spells here!" says one of the ten year olds.

"Yes, but it's very boring," Leontes repeats, and shows them around, and answers approximately three hundred thousand questions about it. He still doesn't know why they're here. But that doesn't really matter, surely someone knows they're here, and after they get bored, he takes them out to the green, where they can run around.

He keeps an eye on them and eventually Bill Weasley, of all people, comes over and says, "Granger."

"Weasley," Leontes says. "Are some of these kids yours?"

"One of them," Bill Weasley says.

"I didn't know you went into teaching," Leontes says to make conversation.

"I didn't, I'm chaperoning the field trip," Bill Weasley says, which makes sense, even though Leontes doesn't understand why there's a field trip. "We're showing them various options for careers. Yesterday, we went to the prank store."

"That's probably more exciting than academia," Leontes says.

"No, we didn't let them touch anything, they hated it," Bill Weasley says.

"What's the point of going to a prank store if you can't do any pranks?" shouts one of the ten year olds, Leontes thinks his name is Alan.

Bill Weasley shouts back at him, "to learn about businesses!"

"But I wanted to do pranks!"

"I don't care!" Bill Weasley turns to Leontes. "Ginny will say hi once she knows I've seen you. So: hi."

Leontes nods. "How's she doing? Last I heard, she was still falling off brooms professionally."

"She is," Bill Weasley says proudly. "They're coming out with a new model next year. She's tested every one of the safety features personally. Guaranteed to keep you upright or your money back."

"Is she still seeing," Leontes thinks hard, "that Amadeus Smith?" They'd met, briefly. Ginny had introduced him as an engineer at the company.

"Yes," Bill Weasley says. "And Percy's back together with Oliver Wood, although I have no idea how long that will last this time."

Leontes is saved from having to make further conversation by the arrival of the rest of the parents and the provost, and Leontes gets to slip away back to the book.

He writes up his comments on loose sheets of paper and sends them back to Colin, who repays him by making him edit the book until the day before the final version has to go to the publisher. And then Colin repays him by sending him some books Leontes hadn't otherwise read about Divination theory. He still doesn't understand Divination at all, but the theory is really very interesting. It's good reading for when his head hurts too much from what he's supposed to be doing.

It also keeps giving him things to write to Lavender about, which is a relief. It's hard to stay in touch this long out of Hogwarts, and so having a quasi-book club is wonderful.

"Only you," Lavender does say, though, "would be mystified by beginner Divination books, but love the dry theory."

"The dry theory makes more sense!" Leontes defends himself. Really, if the whole thing had been digging into the theory, he would have taken the class. If he'd had time. Which he wouldn't have. Oh, well. He's out of Hogwarts now and can read whatever he likes.

45.

Leontes takes a few months to do some work with linguists and comes out of it, really, with a headache, and yet more months where he can't use wandless magic because his brain is too confused.

"I don't think I know what a spell is anymore," he complains to Neville.

"Did you ever?" Neville asks.

"Yes!" Leontes says. "It's...," he frowns. "I'm confident it was defined in first year Charms class."

"I'm not," Neville says, so Leontes writes to Flitwick to ask what a spell is and gets a response that, between the lines, suggests he take a break. The letter also, helpfully, defines spell as a spoken word incantation used to achieve a specific goal.

It's the part of the autumn where Stern is out more than he's in, but Leontes lucks into seeing him one day, and is given a stack of books to read on languages used in spells and, crucially, languages that their speakers do not consider appropriate for doing magic with, and which languages they use instead and why, including ethnographic studies and historical analysis, and gets told to go visit a scenic location and sit outside with a cup of tea and then let him know if this influences the direction Leontes wants to go with his research.

So Leontes has a nice relaxing two week vacation in one of the Longbottom properties, enjoying the crisp air, and staying up curled around a book and thinking about false cognates and the fifth year Defense curriculum while staring at a lot of trees.

Stern was right. It's very restful.

He comes back and Dorota is doing her defense, so Leontes helps her with that, and then he's deep in the depth of a paper with Pierre when Lavender gets her mastery and announces she's starting her own cosmetics potions line, with several people from her cohort and a couple who she has met professionally, and also someone named Sally-Anne Perks, who Lavender assumes Leontes already knows and is very huffy at him when he admits complete ignorance.

"She was in Gryffindor with us," Lavender tells him.

"She what?" Leontes asks.

"Her parents took her out of Hogwarts when they heard that Lockhart had been hired," Lavender explains. "She transferred to Beauxbatons, but we wrote Christmas letters to each other every year. How do you not remember her?"

"Dr. Stern did tell me that ten years out of Hogwarts, I wouldn't remember people anymore," Leontes defends himself. "It's definitely been ten years since I saw her."

"I'd say clearly you're not a Hufflepuff since you can't even be loyal enough to remember who was sorted with you, but I know you think the sorting hat is a random number generator," Lavender says.

"No, I don't think it's a random number generator. That was a theory on class sizes being so different. But I do think there's a strong element of randomness to it," Leontes says.

"Class sizes average out when you consider all seven years together," Lavender says.

"Oh." Leontes considers this. "Huh. I haven't thought about this in a while. I've been told anecdotally the hat also takes into account the student's preferences, although I've also heard that it doesn't, so I suppose it may not be as random as I thought it was."

"And I think it can't be random at all," Lavender says, "because in the last fifty years of school records Parvati and I found, there were always three or more per sex per house in every year. You'd think it would have to be two, not three, at the least, because you need to pick a Prefect and that gives you hope of at least having a choice. But no, there's no two in the sorting. You only get two, like me and Parvati, when someone drops out. But, you know, that did make the Prefect competition very straight-forward: Parvati and I flipped a coin for who had to do it and told McGonagall it would be me. Much easier than with your side of things."

"I figure Neville had it sewn up by third year," Leontes says. "But you think the sorting can't be random at all?"

"No. The hat must be keeping a count as it goes. Oh, I don't buy into all that about the hat reading your mind and putting you into a house that fits your personality, that's all bunk. Of course if you shove teenagers into a group and tell them that their group exhibits these behaviors, then you'll see those behaviors in that group! But Parvati's done a lot of work to reverse-engineer the algorithm that the hat must be using. She thinks the first three and the last three letters of the alphabet are being treated totally differently. Where you are in the alphabet and where you are in the house placement matter more than anything else."

"Huh," Leontes says. "So with you, Brown--"

"Right," Lavender says. "I don't remember asking for any house in particular, so after Hannah and Susan went to Hufflepuff, Hufflepuff was set on their two, and they'd get their third somewhere down the line, easy enough, from someone asking for Hufflepuff, or at the bottom of the alphabet if not. Mandy goes to Ravenclaw. Gryffindor is still empty, so off I go, sorted Gryffindor, and then Millicent right after me is the first for Slytherin. Did you ask for anywhere?"

"I don't think so," Granger, Leontes says. "By me, it had already sorted Seamus, and Slytherin would be at," he lifts his eyes upwards, "were all three other houses already at two boys when I was sorted?"

"Yes," Lavender says. "So you get Gryffindor to even it out. The hat must be fed the class list beforehand, and so it knows how many students it's going to be sorting and it knows how it sorted their family members. But it has to hedge bets, you see. There was a good chance Ron would ask for Gryffindor, but there was also a chance he'd want to get away from his brothers. It might have already penciled Neville for Gryffindor or it might have treated him as a wildcard. Harry told Parvati he asked not to be Slytherin and had to really convince the hat otherwise, which means that the hat didn't assume he'd be Gryffindor based on his parents. By the time we get to the lower part of the alphabet, the hat is trying the best it can to fill all quota requirements while not making eleven year olds sob uncontrollably from being sorted where they don't want to go and thus ruining the mood of the entire feast."

Leontes mentally tries to go through the entire class list for his year in Hogwarts and... fails. This would be a good memory exercise, he decides. Alphabetical lists of people he can only barely remember. "So the first half of the alphabet is chaotic and the second half is more predictable?"

"Generally speaking," Lavender says. "Last year, Parvati correctly predicted the final 10 sortings, based on the rest of the sorting, family history and on eavesdropping spells that began after the students left the train. The head girl predicted five more in the last twenty, based on what she'd overheard before then and from older siblings."

Huh. Really interesting. Hang on, if she was at the sorting, "is this an official Hogwarts research project?"

"At this point, yes," Lavender says. "McGonagall is really interested in it. It's just a mathematical question to Parvati, but it's a practical question to McGonagall. She doesn't know how the hat works, either, and she wants to."

"It's good to know how something so central to the school experience actually functions," Leontes agrees. He'd never interacted with Dumbledore at all, but he's always felt that Dumbledore was more interested in feeding chaos than McGonagall is. If one of them is going to encourage studying how the sorting hat works, it's going to be McGonagall.

Because how would they know, really, if the sorting hat started to break down? How long has it even been used anyway?

"I'm not sure why they don't allow students to pick their own houses in the first place," Lavender says. "Parvati thinks it has to do with how, traditionally, the four houses did each have a different academic focus, so each founder and their successors did actually look for different things in their students."

"That's not a myth, then?" Leontes asks. He's read Hogwarts: A History backwards and forwards but it's more a hagiography than a source he's comfortable trusting these days.

Lavender shakes her head. "No, no, that's well-documented. But why they enchanted a hat rather than relying on human instinct... who knows?"

"Huh," Leontes says. It's been ages since he caught up with Parvati. He's going to have to remedy that, maybe send her a letter if she's too busy. This all sounds fascinating.

46.

Leontes's parents text him to find a time he can come over, and since they normally don't do that, Leontes apparates over immediately from Hopewell.

He lands in the middle of a pile of folded laundry and falls down.

"Leo-Leo," his father says, long-suffering.

"Sorry!" Leontes waves it back the way it was and tosses in a cleaning charm to boot. "What happened? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Leontes's mother says. "It's only Stella thinks her granddaughter has ESP. We thought you could take a look."

Stella is one of his mother's friends from way back, the kind of woman who Leontes wasn't entirely sure wasn't related to him until he had to do a family tree project for school and discovered that none of his parents's friends are actually related to him, and their kids are not biologically his cousins.

Stella has a couple kids and Leontes does not keep up with it, so this is the first he's heard of grandchildren, or maybe he has heard of grandchildren and didn't pay attention.

"There's no definitive way to check for magic in someone under the age of nine," Leontes says, because if there were, Neville would have had a happier childhood. "How old is the granddaughter?"

"Five," Leontes's mother says. Leontes... hadn't known that Stella's children were old enough to have a five year old. Hang on, is Leontes old enough to have a five year old? Realistically, not just biologically?

Um. Yes. Yes, he is.

Right, then.

"I can ask Hogwarts if their admissions book has picked her up, but the way it works is, uh, a lot of poorly-understood spellwork from the 14th century and relies on accidental magic being done within certain boundaries, or the parents enrolling the children specifically after the first show of magic. It's generally considered reliable. Do you know why Stella thinks her granddaughter has ESP?"

They do, in fact, know why Stella thinks her granddaughter -- Katrina -- has ESP, and Leontes hears all about it as he puts away all the laundry by hand. To make it even worse, Leontes's mother says that Stella had said that the Grangers should know all about it, since Leontes had had ESP as a toddler, too, before growing out of it.

There are so many reasons Leontes thinks the Statute of Secrecy is stupid and pointless. But oh well. That's not in scope of the work he's doing, and he's not going to turn into the Dark Lord Rhubarb just to get rid of it.

After his parents feed him dinner, Leontes goes home and writes to McGonagall to ask if Katrina Rolland (or Katrina Sandoval, there's a story there that Leontes's mother had dismissed with 'it's too complicated to get into right now, sweetie, and can you add an ironing spell onto the tablecloths, please') is down for Hogwarts.

McGonagall writes back that this information is restricted, and so Leontes has to floo over to Hogwarts to explain the situation, because he doesn't want McGonagall to think badly of him.

He brings a bottle of wine and a fancy box of fresh chocolate strawberries and a letter from his mother to explain the situation. His mother underscores that they would have been better equipped to parent Leontes as a child if they'd known more about the hidden magical world and not thought they were reinventing the wheel.

"The fact remains, Mr. Granger," McGonagall says, "that you have not been authorized to reveal the existence of Magical Britain nor of Hogwarts to a muggle family."

"Right," Leontes says. "I haven't."

"Your parents are not bound by the Statute of Secrecy," McGonagall says, as a non-sequitur. Leontes blinks, not having considered that. "However, I appreciate that they have left this discussion to us."

"The idea was they wouldn't have to wait for a Hogwarts letter," Leontes says. "Six years is a long time to not know."

"It can be," McGonagall says. "Mr. Granger, would you say that you are close to completing your mastery?"

Leontes hesitates. Technically...

"Mr. Granger," McGonagall says, he can't tell if she's exasperated or amused, "would you say that you have already completed your mastery?"

Leontes still hesitates.

"Mr. Granger."

"There's still so much more to explore--"

McGonagall silences him by toasting him with her glass. "Mr. Granger, allow me to be the first to welcome you to the staff of Hogwarts."

"Wait, no--"

"As your first responsibility as liaison officer, you are officially tasked with speaking to the family of Katrina Rolland and explaining her educational options. You will find brochures for youth academies in your bag," they swoop at Leontes's messenger bag until he begrudgingly allows it to open, "and I expect you will conduct yourself with the manner befitting an adult wizard who is trusted with the education of children."

"I don't actually have a teaching degree--"

"After which, you are welcome to resign your post and continue on with your apprenticeship to Doctor Stern."

It's not really an apprenticeship, but... "Thank you, Professor," Leontes says. "You're too kind."

McGonagall gently grills him on his research until all the strawberries are gone, and so Leontes at least feels better when he leaves, more confident now that McGonagall is not actually going to try to entrap him into teaching at Hogwarts.

47.

Leontes meets with Stella, her life partner Tracy, and Katrina's mother Enid, in their house a few blocks from where Leontes grew up. Katrina is not present, which Leontes had requested, because he thought she would be a distraction.

"Before we start, who is the one who makes legal decisions for Katrina?" Leontes asks. "Just you?" he directs at Enid, who used to give him piggy-back rides until he got too tall for it. "No significant others involved?"

"Yes," Enid says. "Just me."

"Okay," Leontes says, because it's not any of his business. "Right. Magic. Katrina has magical powers, which my mother tells me you already know."

"We do," Enid says. "She can fling around her toys with her mind."

"It's not a surprise," Tracy says. "My family has always been able to see beyond the veil."

Leontes is still terrible at divination. "I'm glad to know this isn't a surprise. I'm told it can be difficult when parents and guardians are very rigid in their ideas of what constitutes acceptable talents for their children." He licks his lips. "Broadly speaking, as you know, people with magical powers have always existed. Talents can sometimes run in families," because he has learned about being diplomatic, he nods toward Tracy, "such as being able to see aspects of the future, and sometimes talents seem to appear out of nowhere. Due to periods of persecution of people who were thought to be doing magic, many British families separated themselves from the rest of society and hid the areas they tended to live in, such as their houses on existing streets, or entire neighborhoods. They hid their schools and their shops. They did this imperfectly; there are still small towns all over the place where there is known to be a peculiar family that lives there. However, magical society, as it came to be, is deadly terrified of non-magical people. They fear total annihilation if their magic is known. This fear led to the creation of something called the Statute Of Secrecy. I would be breaking this statute if I said any of this to you without having gotten prior authorization from an official authorized to do that; in my case, the Headmistress of the Hogwarts School, which I attended."

"How is this Statute enforced?" Stella asks.

Leontes shrugs. "Inconsistently but sometimes brutally. There is a category of magical spells known as obliviation spells, which are used to effect amnesia in the subjects. These spells are difficult to do properly and have had periods of being overused or underused; they are also not unbreakable by the object of the spell under certain circumstances. There is a Ministry within the British government devoted to keeping magic a secret, and their agents are the ones who are meant to be doing these spells. In practice, it is... spotty. The Statute is essentially enforced on the magical side through a continued fear of non-magical people, referred to as muggles. By keeping the magical people separated, it diminishes the opportunities for non-magical people to find out and react violently. There are several problems with this approach."

"Such as us," Enid says. "Women who give birth to witches."

"Yes," Leontes says. "There are political parties within the magical world who believe strongly -- because they must believe this -- that magic is only even inherited directly from magical parents. Therefore, muggleborns like myself and Katrina are anomalies. Non-magical people born to magical parents -- currently referred to commonly as squibs; there have been other terms in the past -- must also be considered anomalies. And by continuing to consider us all each an individual anomaly, they avoid directly targeting their basic understanding of the world, that there is such a thing as a magical or non-magical person, that we were different species, different types. It's all nonsense, but the most important thing to understand is that it is born out of fear. Unfortunately, in some, that fear turns into superiority and hatred."

"There are no perfect worlds," Stella translates.

"Certainly not the magical one," Leontes says. "But it's not a separate world at all. These are all -- these are stories, please understand. For instance, magical photographs move around, like magical paintings. Photography is much, much newer than the Statute of Secrecy, so one of my friends has spent his entire adult career studying this. But plenty of snobs use magical photography and don't consider the muggles who created photography in the first place. The same with magical radio. The Hogwarts train leaves from King's Cross. This idea that the magical world has remained completely separate from the muggle one is preposterous on any merits. However, it is one that upheld by official policy, which required my parents to turn into liars, and for me to either leave them behind entirely or become a liar myself. All to protect a fragile magical world, which will not protect non-magical people from itself, because magical people think they are in danger from muggles, and that it cannot ever be the other way around. Which is just ridiculous, considering that before I was born, there was a magical terrorist going around killing a lot of people, both magical and muggle, and the magical world knew about him, but the muggle world did not."

"What?" Enid asks.

"I think this has happened at least six times," Leontes says. "I haven't studied it. But with Voldemort, the last one -- he called himself a Dark Lord, it's a put-upon title that means he can do powerful magic, as if we can't all do powerful magic -- the point is, if the British army had gotten involved in the fight against Voldemort, the way the magical people who created the Statute of Secrecy in the first place were certain would happen eventually, then a lot of people wouldn't have died, and my husband's parents would not be living out the rest of their lives in a hospital ward, because of injuries they suffered fighting the terrorists."

Leontes realizes, too late, that this sort of thing is what McGonagall had been telling him not to be doing when explaining the magical world.

He's probably blushing. Right. This is stupid. "It's just a society like any other," Leontes says. "It has its good aspects and its bad aspects. I'm supposed to tell you that it's vital that Katrina attend Hogwarts, but I'm not actually a liar, so I'm not. What she's doing now is called accidental magic, which is a category of magic that is generally only ever ascribed to children, but can be done by adults. It is better called intent-based magic; she is not doing any formal magic that she has learned from someone else. One goal of formal magic is to control accidental magic, so we're only doing magic with intention and forethought -- this is called wand-focused magic. Accidental magic can also be controlled by other self-control exercises. There are also other schools. Hogwarts is a boarding school and begins at age eleven. I have information on schools for younger children where they can learn about magic, but British law does not allow them to purchase wands until they have been accepted to a school such as Hogwarts."

"Purchase wands," Stella repeats precisely.

"Making a wand is not actually hard," Leontes says. He offers his wand around to the women, who inspect it. Tracy waves it around and it shoots off tiny blue sparks. Huh. How about that. "Modern wandmaking techniques use a core from a magical source and a wood from alchemically-important sources, but at its most basic, a wand is a focus object. If Katrina had a favorite stick, she could learn to focus her magic through it and create her own spells. In which case, sending her off to boarding school is protection for you and your environment. She has the power to create chaos, but not the control to fix it. I do not have children but I imagine this is a general theme in children her age."

"It is," Enid says dryly.

"But if she could create destructive chaos, how can your secrecy law really work?" Stella asks.

"That's a useful question," Leontes says. "I don't know how the Ministry is informed of situations that require cleaning up. I imagine it's very inconsistent. Too, accidental magic in children is not generally -- hmm. Out of proportion? Magic born out of a happy child is a happy mess. Magic born out of an unhappy child is an unhappy mess. It remains within the scope of the imagination and desires of a child of that age. Tossing around toys is expected. The sort of thing that demands experts to resolve -- it doesn't seem to happen, or, if it does, it doesn't seem to happen enough that it's commonly spoken of. However. If there are records and studies of this, I've never encountered them. My specialty is in the construction of spells, that is, specific forms of controlling accidental magic to create only the desired outcomes, using a wand focus, with specific triggering words and actions. Accidental magic is definitionally opposed to what I work on, so I have only studied it in contrast."

"So this secrecy law is spottily enforced," Enid says. "What's to stop you from going around telling everyone about magic?"

"Social and legal repercussions for me personally," Leontes says. "I live and work within a magical society, so breaking that rule could cause problems for me. But for any other graduate of Hogwarts, who returns to the muggle world... it's generally not enforced. That is, the magical world considers it, in a way, self-enforcing. Again, this is because of their fear of muggles, which is foundational to their definition of what makes them different from other people. They believe so strongly that the muggle world will murder a witch or wizard who lives openly, that they think no one will ever try, or succeed."

Tracy chortles.

"Yes, they have a very limited understanding of the muggle world," Leontes says.

"Who benefits from this?" Enid asks, keen-eyed. "From their, call it their ignorance."

"Their chauvinism," Stella mutters.

"Oh, plenty of people," Leontes says. "The rich and well-connected, they enjoy being the big fish in the tiny pond. And many of them are from families that have thrown out their squibs and see muggles only as distant creatures flying over them in airplanes; they resist knowing anything about muggles because to know about muggles is to risk knowledge that could make them feel insignificant. This limits their curiosity, and to compensate, they attack anything that they think is insufficiently magical. This includes people, like myself. Some of them grow out of this, some don't. Others are curious about aspects of the rest of the world, but are limited by the fact that there are no legal avenues for them to address it. The father of two of my friends has devoted his life to protecting muggles from damaging charms being put on electronic items, and he does his best at this, but he has no way of getting a muggle education himself without leaving his world behind entirely, and wouldn't be able to function if he did, so he is always three or four steps behind where he would be if he had an intuitive understanding of muggle items. It limits him while at the same time telling him that it's better that he has remained entirely magical his entire life and never ventured into the muggle world. Muggles are harmed, no one is helped, but he cannot change a system by himself, and certainly not if even he doesn't think it needs to change. From his perspective, everything would be fine if magical people stopped trying to charm muggle items. But that's how we got magical photography, radio, and the Hogwarts train in the first place."

"I want to go back to the topic of boarding school," Stella says. "Tracy, you were out of the country that Christmas, but I remember you, Leontes. You brought home that friend of yours, Neville. Wide-eyed and terrified, I said. I knew he had to be rich but I couldn't see how. Very polite, very polite. Were we the first muggles he met?"

"It's very likely," Leontes says, because he doesn't remember anymore. It's been way too long.

"Is the purpose of boarding school so that the classes will mix between the stodgy rich sorts and the rest of the magical youth?" Stella asks.

Leontes frowns. "I-- I don't know. Hogwarts was founded by -- oh, it's all mythology at this point. I've read plenty of theories on how and why Hogwarts was founded. It was never meant to be anything like it is today; I can't imagine that any school in existence as long as Hogwarts could possibly still be fulfilling its original purpose. It's constructed as an alternative to apprenticeship programs and provides a broad, practical education. We don't cover any foundational theories of magic or of spellwork at all. The class offerings are limited. However, among the class offerings is an elective course called Muggle Studies, which offers a preliminary overview of the British non-magical world. It's adequate, I suppose, but it would hardly teach anyone how to live a non-magical life. General social mixing is-- well, I have reason to think it's changing, but when I was at school, social mixing was restricted because Hogwarts sorts students into four different houses, and it's difficult to create cross-house friendships. It is done, but it is not common. I'm told it is changing now but I don't know how much. Still, anything is better than how it was. I only made one good friend who was not in my house, and that was just by chance. It could be said that there's, uh, a leveling factor, yes. Hogwarts is a level playing field. The students from a magical background have a slight advantage, but I was the top of my year, every year. It's not insurmountable."

He's never thought it from that perspective, Hogwarts as a way of taking magical children of all types of backgrounds and providing them the same education, allowing them the same opportunities.

"So what's the downside?" Enid asks.

"Of Hogwarts or the magical environment?" Leontes asks.

"Both," Enid says.

"Hogwarts is like any boarding school," Leontes says. "There's a bullying problem. The teacher quality is inconsistent. A lot depends on the luck of the draw of how you're sorted and who else is sorted with you; my friend Luna was in Ravenclaw but didn't make any friends at all in Ravenclaw, she'd have been much happier if she had been sorted anywhere else. But you can't change your house. The class selection is not broad, but it requires specialization early on and it's difficult to change electives, and it can be hard to know which electives you'll want for a future career. It benefits the students who are certain, early, rather than those who aren't certain of what profession they want to pursue until much later."

"Because it is meant to be setting up the students for specific professions," Tracy says.

"Yes, a limited number directly out of Hogwarts, and several more based on fundamentals learned in Hogwarts," Leontes replies. "Most students go directly into professions or to apprenticeship programs. If Hogwarts is for anything, it's for that."

"And the problem with the magical environment?" Enid asks.

Leontes shrugs. "It's small and insular. Like any other culture, it has its books, its radio programs, its magazines, its musical acts, its literature, its history, its values, its shops, its restaurants, its politicians, its infighting... thinking back on it, I think it was a disservice that my introduction to Hogwarts came from Professor McGonagall. I admire and respect her, but she's never lived in the muggle world, and like every other magical person like that that I've met, she unconsciously feels that it's only natural that, once a child discovers that there is an entire hidden, secret magical world, that obviously that child is going to choose that world and forsake the world of the child's origin. As if being magical is the most important, core part of the self, and as like calls to like, magic must call to magic, and so a magical person must gravitate to the magical world, closing the door behind them. And many of them to. But some muggleborns return to the muggle world, and some people born of the magical world, not even squibs, do decide to make their way in the muggle world. Because it's not two worlds. Sometimes, it's not even two different streets."

Although, that said... "thinking through it," Leontes continues slowly. "To be fair to Professor McGonagall, she's also approaching it from the perspective that the magical child is one of her people but the parents are not, and she was raised on the stories of muggle parents rejecting or attacking their magical children. Perhaps she even saw a few cases herself. However, if that was considered to still be a problem, Hogwarts would have a summer placement program, which they do not. It may simply be a lack of introspection, or a-- a reliance on what she thinks the muggle world is like, because she sees herself as the one who opens up to children a whole new world, not one who removes children from the world they know."

Stella's eyebrows are raised. "Is Hogwarts mandatory, then?"

"Certainly not," Leontes says. "Education isn't mandatory, either. However. What I remember of my own introduction to Hogwarts was the framing of the argument being that it would be a danger to myself and others if I did not learn how to control my magic. This isn't untrue, but that control can be learned through other modalities than formal education in a new environment. But those were not presented as options. But the question is, a question that the magical world doesn't tend to ask, but the question remains, if magic is an element of your existence or the core of your existence, that you are a magical person and belong with other magical people, where you do not have to hide, where you are surrounded by people like you. The idea that only magical people are people like you. That magic is what unites all people who do magic. And that's -- oh, that's probably beautiful and poetic coming from someone other than me, I'm too pedestrian. But it denies that children are not tabula rasa. And it also doesn't make any sense, because if magic is what unites everyone who has magic, then the British magical world would not rely on slavery of magical creatures."

"I beg your pardon," Tracy says.

"Oh," Leontes says. "Yes. Right. I probably should have started with that. There are types of people in the magical world who are often thought to not exist, such as unicorns and centaurs and goblins. There is a species of elf known colloquially as house elves. They are enslaved in Britain. A posh bully from my year at school is working to have that abolished entirely because he thinks it will help his political career, and I wish him luck. Hogwarts only freed their slaves a few years ago when the old Headmaster retired. It's all very unethical and also just so egregiously pointless. But that's where we are."

"Katrina is not going there," Enid declares. "No."

"I understand," Leontes says. "It would have been a deal-breaker to me, too, if I'd known. I only found out in third year."

"Leontes, we appreciate you coming here to explain this to us," Stella says. "I know the details you're happy to provide are different from the version we would get from someone trying to convince us to send Katrina to Hogwarts, and so I'm glad you've been so honest and forthcoming."

But?

"But," Stella continues. "If you're going to do this more often, you have to decide if you think you made the right choice in going to Hogwarts."

"I did," Leontes says.

"If you could go back in time, would you still do it?" Enid asks.

"Of course," Leontes says. "I've got a great life in the magical world, I have a wonderful husband. Things aren't perfect, but they won't be perfect everywhere. I'm sure I gave up an interesting career in the muggle world, and maybe a different wonderful husband, but even if I fell into a stack of time-turners, I'd still make the same choices."

"Well, that's very-- I'm sorry, did you say time-turners?" Stella says.

"Yes, but they're restricted-"

"The magical world can time travel?" Enid shouts. She looks around and then whirls on Leontes. "They have time travel? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"No," Leontes says. "I've never used one, though, they're not for general--"

"What else do they have, flying broomsticks?" Enid asks.

"Yes," Leontes says. "And people who can turn into animals."

"How does that even work," Enid moans.

Tracy pats her on the shoulder. "Magic, my darling." She turns toward Leontes. "Now, what are our options that aren't this boarding school with slave labor?"

"They freed the slave labor," Leontes has to say, but then pulls out his brochures, along with the several others he'd collected. "I'm glad you asked. I personally recommend summer programs."

48.

Leontes visits McGonagall long enough to resign any position of liaison officer she might try to inflict on him long-term, and thankfully is not asked if Katrina would be attending Hogwarts, since McGonagall assumes all admissions questions like that are sorted out when a child is formally invited to Hogwarts.

Then he goes to Hopewell and scrounges up the people who didn't go to Hogwarts and thanks them for their brochures, and then he's on time to the restaurant in Diagon Alley that Ginny rented out to announce that she's engaged.

"I can't believe McGonagall sent you to persuade parents to send their kid to Hogwarts," Harry Potter says, "You were miserable in Hogwarts."

"I was not miserable," Leontes says. "And why would you have noticed anyway?"

"You were very vocal about it, Granger," Harry Potter says. He raises his voice. "Hey! All! Show of hands! Who thinks Granger enjoyed his time at Hogwarts!"

"Fuck off!" comes a return shout. Leontes cranes his head. Yeah. Yeah, that's Neville.

"It was fine," Leontes insists. "Really. I don't see why--"

Colin elbows his way in. "Oh, is this my time to shine?" He rummages through his bag and pulls out a photo album. "I call this one Character Studies," he says cheerfully, and thumbs the index in the back to pull up six photos of Leontes, all in classic poses of misery and collapse on the couches of the Gryffindor Common Room.

They're magical photos. Leontes gets to watch his miniature agonized self pour over books and get ink all over himself and shout at the person holding the camera.

Leontes kicks back the urge to retort that that's just what he looks like when he's studying. Because that's what it looked like at Hogwarts. It hasn't looked like that at Hopewell even once.

Still, he wasn't miserable at Hogwarts. He would have noticed!

"True portraits of Leontes Granger," Colin says happily. "Some of my best work from my early period."

"People who are having a good time do not regularly threaten to exorcise teachers," Neville says.

"It was once," Leontes says.

Lavender's coming over because of the commotion, so Leontes appeals to her. "Lavender! I wasn't miserable in Hogwarts."

"Of course not," she says. "You were too busy to have emotions."

What? Preposterous and likely physically impossible.

"But you were also the architect of your own misery," Lavender continues. "So I don't feel bad for you. Everyone told you that you could stop at any time. You didn't bother."

"It was all so interesting," Leontes defends himself.

"Even all the extra OWLs and NEWTs that you knew you didn't need?" Lavender returns.

"I didn't know I would never need them. And knowledge is never wasted! I might need it someday!"

"Uh-huh," says Harry Potter.

"I would have known if I were miserable, and I wasn't," Leontes says. "That's final."

"Would you go back and do it again?" someone asks.

"Obviously, yes," Leontes says. "I told the parents that, too! And then they were shocked about time travel and I had to explain that for a while."

"Time travel is the worst," Colin says happily. "Dennis complains about it constantly. He's having real problems getting it to work theoretically."

"None of magic works theoretically," Leontes says. "That's why we still can't define it."

Colin considers that. "Huh. You know, I'd never thought of it, but I'm not sure I could give a definition of what magic is."

"One of my colleagues, Dorota Rozycka, says that magic is what other people do," Leontes says. "That's the only definition she thinks works historically: other people do magic, normal people just do normal things. That persists today, think about all the sub-divisions of spells that don't have a clear distinction between them, like charms, hexes, jinxes, curses..."

"Magic is a judgment call?" Colin frowns. "Maybe."

There's a lot of mingling going around, people who haven't seen each other in years, and Leontes finds himself telling the story of him talking about magic to muggles three or four times.

It brings up a good icebreaker question for the people milling around near Leontes. Is magic something you do or something you are?

"That's easy," Harry Potter says immediately. "Obviously it's something you do," at the same time as Ron Weasley says, "of course it's something you are!"

Harry and Ron look at each other, Leontes leans back in his chair. "Fascinating," Leontes says.

It draws an interested crowd. It's not an obvious split. And then Amadeus Smith, Ginny's fiance, ambles over, listens to the question, and says, "neither. I'm a squib."

Leontes leans forward eagerly. "Fascinating," he says. "Do you feel like magic is a culture? Or would you put it another way?"

"I think it's a place," Amadeus Smith says. "Places, you might say. Magic is locations separated out as being magical."

Leontes eagerly discusses this with Amadeus Smith for five minutes before he realizes that there was previously a shocked hush in the room that has come back to normal noise levels. He doesn't understand why until he sees three Weasleys elbow each other and conduct what looks like a flaming argument underneath a muffling spell.

Oh. Ginny hadn't mentioned it to anyone, then.

Oh, well. Not Leontes's problem. And he has a squib who has thought about the definition of magic to talk to! Leontes hasn't been to a party this great outside Hopewell in years.

49.

On the way out of a budget meeting, Leontes checks his phone for the text message he felt come in. It's from Neville. He got the fellowship. It starts in June.

Leontes turns on his heel and goes back into the meeting room. Stern is collecting papers and looks up. "Ah, Granger, good news?"

"Yes, Neville got the fellowship in Vienna," Leontes says. "Do you know anything I could do there for a year?"

"You owe Pierre a book chapter," Jack says.

"Are you volunteering for extra work?" Suellen asks. "Because if so..."

Stern strokes his beard as the news goes around and everyone comes over to give their ideas of what Leontes should spend a year off from the program doing.

"Vienna, yes?" Stern breaks in.

"Yes, sir, or apparating distance," Leontes says.

"Vienna, maybe. Apparating distance, certainly. But tell me, Granger, as an honest man: do you want to teach?"

"No," Leontes says, certain of it.

"Ah. Well, having thought it over," Stern says, "let me get in touch first before making promises, but my colleague Margalit Galitzer, she is in Prague now, she runs a school for children who have been kicked out of other schools for not learning up to standard. This would be a good opportunity for you! You can provide your expertise on good beginner spells and you can see how curriculums are created! And I will get you a pass for every good library within a day on the train. And you will write the book chapters and peer reviews and get cards made for Dr. Leontes Granger, it is about time."

"But--"

"But nothing," Stern says. "Or, if you want, you can work on your own book, too. I want a draft, what do you think, by the time you get back?"

"I can't write a book in a year and do anything else!" Leontes objects.

"Nonsense, is it not already nearly written?" Stern asks, pointing his finger in the air. "Your paper for Binns, your work here, those letters you send back and forth -- look it over, make large piles of your notebooks, and you will see. You will take a week or two and work your way through language books and when your brain needs to rest, you will write out all the thoughts buzzing through your mind and discover you have already written them down somewhere."

"This doesn't sound relaxing," Leontes says.

"I have never met a man who hates relaxing as much as you do," Stern says, unfortunately accurately. "No, no, I know you, the only way you will rest from one project is to work on a different one. And when you need a rest from that, only then do you take one. I will not pile work on top of you! Only you will do that."

Leontes thinks he's blushing. "I do do that," he admits.

"So!" Stern claps one hand against the other. "Do what work you can, don't do the work you can't, and when you come back, we'll see what's done and what's not. But you will find, I know, that most of the work overlaps! Do a little here and more is done there. And when you owl me in January and complain about being bored and ask for more projects, I will tell you to go skiing."

"I'm not going to have all of this done by January!" Leontes says, alarmed.

Stern pats him on the shoulder. "It is already more done than you think it is. Trust an old man. I have seen many students like you. Perfectionists, all of them! So you will send me your first draft and your first draft only, and you will talk to Margalit and get practical experience with consulting, and you will spend a week lost in a library or two. It will do you good!"

50.

For a few weeks, Neville is too busy to ask too many questions about how Leontes is reorganizing his life to come with him, but then one day he looks at Leontes, tilts his head to the side, and says, "wait, this work you're doing, it's for your doctorate?"

Leontes grimaces. "Yes, I suppose."

"Did you get your Charms mastery and not tell me?" Neville asks.

"Stern said he's had the paperwork sitting in his cabinet, signed and ready for me to be ready to accept it, for three years now," Leontes says.

Neville laughs. "Oh, so you knew about this."

"I didn't, uh, not know," Leontes says.

"You were in denial," Neville nods. "I see, I see."

"There's so much more for me to do!" Leontes says.

"Right, and it's going to be your doctoral work instead of your masterwork," Neville says. "Stern would hire you in a blink of an eye, you know that, right?"

"No, I don't want to teach," Leontes says. "He's trying to get me well-rounded so he can find me the best offer."

"I think you think teaching means Hogwarts," Neville says patiently. "Or younger students. I think you'd be fine teaching people your age. You just have to learn how to follow a lesson plan."

"And learn to want to teach," Leontes says. "It's not the mechanics, it's the human. I'd be worse at it than Snape."

"I'm told Snape is very happy lording it over twentysomethings," Neville says, which Leontes supposes he'd hear about, from the people he works with. "But all right."

All told, it doesn't take all that much to upend their lives for a year. Neville's in a fencing club, but he's not running it, and he says he'll find a fencing club if there's time in Vienna. Leontes has been less and less active in the community theater group, and he can hand over whatever remains of what he was doing to Troy, who has been trying to stage a hostile takeover anyway. He's welcome to it.

Neville worries for a day about his parents, but then gets verbal commitments from all the Weasleys that one of them will visit his parents once a month, if not more often, and since Neville himself was only going once a month, he's fine with that.

And then it's portkey day, with their luggage all shrunk and lightened in their pockets, Neville nervously adjusting his hat. Leontes hugs his parents and then the portkey activates.

51.

"I don't understand, are you writing a textbook?" was the first question on a letter Dennis had sent Leontes about seventeen months ago now, but Leontes had pulled it out of the letter and stuck it on the front of his purple (reminders) notebook, so he could write NO underneath it.

This is why when Leontes first opens up his laptop on the kitchen table of their rented house, Neville somewhere in the bedrooms looking for where he'd put his sock organizer or if he'd left it at home, that Leontes finds himself typing out a list of spells and prerequisites for each of them, along with strong words about the order they should be taught.

Neville looks over his shoulder on the way out the door and says, helpfully, "you didn't follow the order of spells in our textbook."

"And look where it got me!" Leontes calls after him, and Neville's still laughing as he apparates.

Leontes gets it all out of his system and as the sun sets, he scribbles into the green (questions) notebook: magic must be defined through its boundaries.

And, down the page: magic cannot be directly perceived. The usage of magic in spells allows magic to be...

And then he writes POTIONS? beneath it and underlines it. And then scrawls: magic is action.

He underlines that, too.

Then he writes POTIONS IS OUT OF SCOPE and goes to find some dinner.

52.

It takes a couple weeks but they settle into a rhythm. Leontes has owled extensively with Dr. Galitzer and her staff before coming over, and he visits and talks to them. The building is modern, the students are all at least fourteen or fifteen years old, and they focus a lot on building off of a strong foundation and how that means they usually have to create the foundation.

Leontes goes there a couple times a week and meets with the teachers. They're interested in the development of beginner spells over time, and for once, Leontes has educators listening seriously to his idea that it's more important to start with a hard spell that only works when done correctly than an easy one that works when you don't.

"Practicing precision must be more important than an easy win," Leontes says, and then gets pulled into five discussions, after which he's not sure anymore if he's right, or if he just had too many easy wins when he was a first year and it set him up for endless frustration once spells weren't so easy anymore.

He writes a letter to Stern that night and thanks him for making the introduction and for getting him this opportunity to learn, and also mentions that he's getting nowhere on the work he's meant to be doing, since he's accidentally started writing a beginner spell book.

Stern's reply congratulates him on finding an innovative way to relax, and Leontes, out of spite, collects everything in the pink notebook into a book chapter over a frenzied 36 hours during which he resurfaces only for biological necessities and doesn't notice Neville coming or going or forcibly cleaning the house around him. Neville helpfully took photos to document the absurdity.

Leontes spends the next two weeks tweaking it, then sends it off to Pierre, whose focus is magical theory, so Stern was right, Leontes really did have everything already ready for that.

He celebrates by going to the library, where he also reads popular fiction, too, because Neville is still in a book club and Leontes never feels pressured to keep up, but sometimes he wants to anyway. The best one he finds is a lengthy series about muggle magicians accidentally re-inventing "real" magic.

He buys copies and sends them to his parents.

53.

The plan unfolds like a map in the back of his head while he's doing other things. A practical spellbook that shows the transformation of basic magical education over the last 400 years, using his research and everything he has from Binns that covers what Leontes is defining as basic. He pulls out the timeline he'd put together from all the journals that Binns had, pulling out all the articles that seem interesting. He combs through records and gets in touch with Flitwick, who is enthusiastic about the concept. Flitwick's a teacher. Flitwick can put together curriculum recommendations based on his thirty years of teaching and everything he's learned from it. Flitwick knows people in his position at other schools. This is exactly the kind of collaborator Leontes needs.

McGonagall gets involved five months in, with all her resources, and by the end of Neville's fellowship, Leontes has most of a first draft of the book for Stern, and is three drafts into a book series that he's realistically not going to be first author on, but he dreams about it more than he dreams about anything else. It haunts him, it follows him everywhere, and for the first time maybe ever, he's grateful to Binns for leaving him a treasure-trove of his archive and his legacy.

But it's been very relaxing, even satisfying, almost like stretching after sitting for too long. Whenever he's given himself a headache working through how to discuss the differences between the 1749 and 1814 versions of lumos and the slow acceptance of the change -- with three! competing versions of them being taught all at once in one school in Meryton for six entire years until a war of letters came to an end and they decided to go with the 1632 version for thirty more years until finally agreeing to go along with everyone else, and why they did that, and the specific differences between the versions, and why John Everett and John Kent and John James Wyatt developed their versions, including quotes from their letters and published articles and diary entries that were quoted elsewhere and that Leontes finally tracked down original copies of because he needed to check the context and original spelling -- look, Neville, it's just really a relief to be able to take a step back and focus on the wider, more general issue of what changed over time and why and if I think the change was helpful in the long term or counter-productive.

"Uh-huh," Neville says. "You know I'm not the one you need to convince, right? Whichever project you focus on is fine with me."

Before they'd moved for the year, Neville had apparently told Leontes's parents that he figured Leontes would get so bored and/or work himself into such a stressed out knot that he'd start inventing spells in the attic to blow off steam.

For the record, Leontes invented zero spells during their year abroad.

It occasionally sounded tempting but then Leontes's notebooks started dancing across the desk and he hit them with indexing spells and reminded himself of the result of other people thinking they can refine spells, and that he has to do something about it, namely finish his work about it, before he can tackle something else.

Anyway, if he were going to spend the time really inventing a spell from scratch and perfecting it so others could use it, it would be one that did text messaging across distances, and he already has that spell in his pocket, it's called a mobile phone. And it wouldn't be from scratch, he'd just modify the one he used at school to communicate with other members of the drama club--

Look, he didn't invent any spells.

Yes, he did possibly innovate new collation and organization spells for getting his notes assembled, but it's only a spell if it's documented and reproducible, otherwise it's just accidental magic.

...He'll just write up some notes on it right now. That way, he can talk to the library science people at Hopewell and compare it with how it's normally done.

54.

Stern welcomes him back into the fold with a clasp on the shoulder and a three-hour meeting to go over his notes.

His parents welcome him back by taking him on vacation with them to Australia for a month.

Leontes finds time to catch up with friends and attend a community theater production of Hamlet with everyone who is even slightly interested, and he hosts dinner and game nights, and tries to understand what Dennis is talking about when it comes to physics and magic, and one day Ginny puts a baby in his arms and Leontes realizes he's years and years overdue to have a discussion with Neville.

And throughout it all, he works on his books.

He isn't thinking about what he'll do after. There isn't an after. There's just a next.

And there will always be interesting things to do next.

55.

A couple years later, Leontes stands in the front of the biggest auditorium at Hopewell, looking out over the sea of faces.

"Hi, I'm Leontes Granger," he says. "If you're not here for the demonstration, you're in the wrong room."

No one leaves.

It's time to begin.

Leontes holds up his wand and flicks it in a gentle circle.

"Lumos," he says and the room is illuminated with a gentle glow.

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Lumos.

Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)

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