I am Happy to Publish Another Chapter of The Apprentice of The Red Witch
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The fire in the headmaster's office had burned down to embers by the time the three of them settled into their chairs, and Albus Dumbledore did not move to stoke it.
Minerva sat in the chair closest to the fire, her back straight, her spectacles reflecting the glow of the embers. Severus stood by the window, half in shadow, his arms folded across his chest.
"Well," Minerva said, and the word had the sharp, contained quality of a lid being placed on a pot that was already boiling. "What are you going to do about this, Albus?"
Albus folded his hands on the desk. "About which part, Minerva?"
"About the part where an eleven-year-old boy cast a Confringo powerful enough to kill a mountain troll in one of my corridors." She removed her spectacles, cleaned them on her sleeve with precision, and put them back on. "That spell is not taught until sixth year at the earliest, and even then, with considerable supervision. It is classified as dangerous, bordering on dark, and it was performed tonight by a child who has been at this school for two months."
"Two months, yes," Albus said.
"He didn't learn it here." Minerva's voice dropped. "He learned it from her."
"Natasha Evans," Minerva continued, "has been teaching that boy magic that is well beyond his year. Beyond what any responsible guardian would consider appropriate for a child. A Blasting Curse, Albus. She taught an eleven-year-old a Blasting Curse."
Albus said nothing. He let the statement breathe.
"You need to talk to her," Minerva said. "You need to go to that woman and make it clear that she cannot continue to arm a child with spells that could level a corridor. There are rules. There are protocols. There is a reason we teach magic in a structured progression, and it is precisely to prevent situations like the one we cleaned up tonight."
"I agree that the situation requires a conversation," Albus said carefully.
"A conversation. A conversation with consequences, Albus.
The fire cracked. A log shifted and sent a spray of sparks up the chimney.
Minerva was quiet for a moment. Then she exhaled, and something in her posture changed.
"Having said all of that," she said, and her voice was different now, quieter, "I need to say something else, and I need you both to hear it."
She looked at Albus. Then at Severus, who had not moved from the window.
"Imagine what could have happened to those children if Harry hadn't been able to protect them."
"Miss Greengrass was in that corridor," Minerva continued. "Miss Granger was on the floor with a troll standing over her. If Harry Potter had been an ordinary first-year student with nothing but a Lumos and a Knockback Jinx, we would not be sitting here having this conversation. We would be sitting in the hospital wing. Or worse."
She paused. Her throat moved.
"Whatever I think of Natasha Evans, and I think very little of her, she taught that boy a spell that saved lives tonight. I cannot overlook what she did to the protocols. But I will not pretend that I am not grateful she did it."
From the window, Severus spoke. His voice was low and precise, each word placed with the care of a man handling something sharp.
"Grateful," he said. "To Natasha Evans." The name left his mouth the way one might handle a piece of rotten fruit. "The woman raises the boy in secret for a year, trains him in magic far beyond his capability, arms him with a spell that could kill a grown wizard, sends him into a school full of children, and we are meant to be grateful because her recklessness happened to produce a useful result."
He turned from the window. The firelight caught the angles of his face and made them harsher.
"A stopped clock is right twice a day, Minerva. That does not make it a reliable instrument."
Minerva looked at him. "I didn't say she was reliable, Severus. I said she was right. Tonight. About this one thing. Those are not the same statement."
Severus held her gaze for a moment. Then he looked away, toward the dark window, and said nothing more.
Albus watched both of them. He had spent decades reading rooms, and this room was telling him something important: two people who rarely agreed were circling the same truth from opposite directions, and neither of them liked what they found.
"I will deal with it tomorrow, Minerva," Albus said. "I will go to Natasha and talk with her."
"Good," she said. She stood. "I'll leave you alone now. But Albus, when you speak with her, be direct. Don't dance around it the way you do. That woman sees through indirection faster than anyone I've ever met, and she has no patience for it."
"I am aware of Natasha's temperament."
"Then act accordingly." Minerva straightened her hat, crossed the office in four sharp strides, and closed the door behind her with a click that sounded like a period at the end of a sentence.
The room settled.
Albus sat for a moment, listening to the silence, letting it fill the space Minerva had occupied. Then he turned to Severus, who remained at the window, his reflection ghosted in the dark glass.
"Severus."
"Headmaster."
"The troll."
Severus turned. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were not. They were sharp and alert, the eyes of a man who had been thinking about this all evening and had arrived at conclusions he did not like.
"A fully grown mountain troll does not wander into a castle by accident," Severus said. "The entrance points are warded. The gates are sealed after dark. The creature was brought in deliberately, and it was brought in by someone who knew the layout of the castle well enough to ensure it reached the upper floors before being intercepted."
"An inside man," Albus said.
"Yes."
"Do you have any indication of who?"
Severus was quiet for a moment. "I checked the third floor tonight, while the rest of the staff dealt with the troll. Everything was intact. The door was locked. The creature behind it was undisturbed. Whoever released the troll, it was not to access what lies beneath the trapdoor. Not tonight."
"A distraction, then."
"Or a test. To see how the school responds. To measure response times, identify which staff members go where, observe the security protocols in action." Severus paused. "It is what I would do, if I were planning something larger."
Albus absorbed this. The fire popped quietly. Fawkes ruffled his feathers and settled deeper into his perch.
"Should we add extra security to the third floor?" Severus asked. "Additional wards. A rotation of staff patrols. The protections are strong, but they were designed to delay, not to prevent. If someone inside the castle is working against us, the current measures may not be sufficient."
"No," Albus said.
Severus looked at him. One eyebrow rose, barely perceptible.
"We will not add extra security," Albus continued. "If we reinforce the third floor now, visibly, we announce to our inside man that we know he exists. We tell him that tonight's distraction worked, that it drew our attention to the exact place he wanted us to look, and that we are afraid."
"We should be afraid," Severus said quietly. "We have an agent inside this castle, fear is not an unreasonable response."
"Fear is always reasonable, Severus. Acting on it visibly is not." Albus leaned back in his chair. "Our advantage, at this moment, is that our opponent does not know what we know. If we change the security, if we add patrols, if we alter anything at all, we sacrifice that advantage. He will see the changes, and he will know that we know, and he will adapt. And a careful enemy who knows he has been discovered is far more dangerous than a confident one who believes he is still hidden."
"We watch," Albus said. "Quietly. Carefully. We observe who moves and when. We note which staff members are absent during incidents, which routines change, which stories don't quite add up. We let our inside man believe he is operating undetected, and we use that belief against him."
"And if he acts before we identify him?"
"Then we deal with the consequences. But we do not show our hand prematurely, Severus. Patience is a weapon too."
Severus stared at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, a single, curt movement.
"As you say, Headmaster."
He moved toward the door, his black robes barely stirring. He paused with his hand on the handle.
"The boy," Severus said, without turning around.
"Harry."
"He killed a mountain troll tonight. An eleven-year-old child cast a spell that most adult wizards would struggle to perform and used it to end a life, even a troll's life, without hesitation. You saw him in that corridor. He was exhausted. He was barely standing. But his eyes were steady."
Albus waited.
"That is not the face of a boy who has been taught magic," Severus said. "That is the face of a boy who has been trained for war."
"And the woman who trained him," Severus continued, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper, "is not someone who prepares a child for school, Headmaster. She is someone who prepares a child for something she expects to happen."
Severus opened the door and left without waiting for a response.
The door closed. The office was silent.
Albus sat alone in the firelight, his hands folded, his mind turning over the pieces of the evening the way a jeweller turns a stone, examining each facet, looking for the flaw that would tell him where it might break.
A troll in the castle. An inside man. A boy who could kill with a spell he should not know. A woman in the countryside who was preparing for a war that most of the wizarding world believed was over.
And on the third floor, behind a locked door, guarded by a creature with three heads and no patience, a small object sat in the darkness, waiting for someone to come and claim it.
It was going to be a very long year.
The common room was empty.
Everyone else had gone to bed an hour ago, driven upstairs by exhaustion that came from knowing a mountain troll had been loose in your school.
Harry sat on the leather sofa nearest the fire, his legs pulled up, his back against the armrest. His wand hand had stopped shaking sometime around nine o'clock, but something like cold in his chest was still there.
Daphne sat at the other end of the sofa, her shoes off, her feet tucked beneath her, a cup of tea balanced on her knee. She had been quiet for most of the evening, which was unusual for Daphne.
"Harry," Daphne said.
"Hm."
"The spell you used tonight."
"Confringo," Daphne continued. "I looked it up. It's a sixth-year spell at minimum. Some schools don't teach it at all. The Ministry classifies it as restricted combat magic."
"Okay," Harry said.
"You cast it without hesitation, you didn't even seem surprised that it worked. You cast it the way someone casts Lumos, like it was something you'd done a hundred times before."
Harry said nothing.
"Your aunt taught you that spell."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Harry said.
"I'm not asking because I think it was wrong," she said. "I'm asking because I was standing behind you when you used it, and I saw what it cost you. You were grey, Harry. Your legs were shaking. You could barely walk. That spell took everything you had."
"Most of it," Harry admitted.
"And your aunt taught it to you knowing it would cost that much."
"She taught me knowing that the alternative was worse."
Daphne looked at him. Her blue eyes were steady and serious, and Harry realised she wasn't going to let this go.
"Tell me about her," Daphne said. "Your aunt. Not the version you give everyone else, the sharp aunt who trained you and taught you to fly. The real version."
Harry looked at the fire. The flames were low, orange and gold, and they moved the way water moves, slow and certain.
He could say no. Daphne would accept it. She wasn't the kind of person who pushed past a boundary once it was drawn.
But Harry didn't want to say no. He was tired, and his chest was hollow, and something about the empty common room and the dying fire and the way Daphne was looking at him made him feel safe in a way that he hadn't felt since leaving Willowmere Hollow.
"I lived in a cupboard," he said.
Daphne didn't react. She didn't gasp or widen her eyes or say anything at all. She just listened.
"Under the stairs. At my aunt and uncle's house. Privet Drive. That was my room for nine years. A cupboard with a camp bed and a lightbulb and spiders I named because they were the only company I had."
He looked at his hands.
"They didn't hit me. But they didn't feed me properly, and they didn't want me, and they made sure I knew it every single day. My cousin had two bedrooms. I had a door with a lock on the outside. I did all the cooking and the cleaning and the garden, and if I was good, they let me eat what was left. If I wasn't good, they didn't."
The fire popped.
"I didn't know magic was real. They told me my parents died in a car crash. They told me my dad was a drunk. I believed them because there was nobody to tell me different."
He paused.
"And then Natasha came."
"She drove up in a blue sedan and got out and looked at me like I was a person. That was the thing, Daphne. She looked at me. Not through me. Not past me. At me. And she asked me questions, and she saw through every lie I told, and she walked into that kitchen and drew her wand and my uncle sat down and shut up, and that was the first time in my life I understood that someone could be on my side."
He told her about Willowmere Hollow. The house that appeared from thin air. The room that was his, no catch, no condition. The meals that were always there, and the rule that he never had to ask permission to eat. The first bath where nobody knocked on the door. The first morning where someone made him breakfast and told him to sit down and eat instead of stand up and cook.
"She taught me to fly," Harry said. "And to breathe. And to visualise. And to sense my core. She sat in a chair and watched me fail for two weeks straight, and the first time I held a coloured sphere for two minutes and fourteen seconds, she looked at me like I'd done something that mattered. Nobody had ever looked at me like that before."
"She built me a room," Harry said quietly. "For my birthday. A study, with books she picked because she knew what I'd want to read, and a telescope because she saw me looking at the stars, and a photograph of my parents because I told her I didn't know what they looked like. Nobody had ever given me a birthday present before."
Daphne was very still. The fire had burned down to coals, and the common room was almost dark now, just the faint green light from the lake and the last glow of the embers.
"She made me believe I was worth something," Harry said. "Before her, I thought I was nothing. A freak. A burden. She didn't tell me I was special or famous or important. She told me I was a wizard, and she told me I had work to do, and then she made me do it. And somewhere in all that work, I stopped believing I was worthless."
He looked at Daphne. Her eyes were bright in the firelight, and she was blinking more than usual, and Harry realised with a quiet shock that Daphne Greengrass, who was never shaken by anything, was close to tears.
She didn't cry. She wouldn't. Not Daphne.
But she reached across the sofa and put her hand over his, and then withdrew it.
"Thank you for telling me," she said. Her voice was steady.
"Thank you for asking," Harry said.
They sat in the quiet for a few more minutes. The coals dimmed. The lake light deepened.
"We should sleep," Daphne said.
"Yeah."
"Harry."
"Hm."
"Your aunt sounds like someone I'd like to meet."
Harry smiled. "She'd terrify you."
"I don't terrify easily."
"I know. That's why she'd like you."
They went upstairs. Harry lay in his bed in the dormitory, staring at the green-tinged ceiling, and thought about Natasha at Willowmere Hollow, probably sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee, not knowing yet that her nephew had killed a troll tonight with the spell she'd made him learn.
He'd write to her tomorrow. She would want to know everything.
Sleep came slowly, and when it came, it was deep and dreamless.
The next morning, Harry and Daphne were halfway through breakfast when Theodore Nott appeared.
He slid into the seat across from them with the controlled urgency of someone who had been holding information for hours and was about to burst. His face was pale, his eyes were bright, and he had a bread roll in one hand that he hadn't taken a single bite of.
Harry set down his fork. "What happened?"
Theo glanced left and right. The nearest students were four seats away, absorbed in their own conversations. He leaned forward.
"I found a spot behind a tapestry near the staircase," he said, keeping his voice low. "Clear view of the corridor entrance and the door. I was there for about an hour before the troll announcement. I heard the commotion downstairs, the screaming, Dumbledore's voice, all of it. But I stayed. You told me to watch, so I watched."
"And?" Harry asked.
"One person came."
"Who?"
"Quirrell."
Harry and Daphne exchanged a look.
"He came up the staircase about ten minutes after the troll announcement," Theo continued. "Fast. Not running, but fast. He went straight to the door. Didn't hesitate, didn't look around, just walked directly to it, and he tried the handle."
"He tried to open it?" Daphne said.
"He did open it. Just a crack. He looked inside for about three seconds, and then he closed it and stepped back." Theo paused. "Then he heard footsteps coming. Snape. Coming up the stairs from the other direction. Quirrell moved fast, backed away from the door, and when Snape came around the corner, Quirrell was standing in the middle of the corridor with his hands in his pockets."
"What did Snape say?" Harry asked.
"Snape asked him what he was doing on the third floor. Quirrell stuttered. Said he was checking if the troll had come up to the higher floors. Said he wanted to make sure the corridor was secure."
"And Snape believed him?"
"I don't think so. Snape looked at Quirrell for a long time, the way Snape looks at everyone, and then he told Quirrell to get back to the dungeons and help with the students. Quirrell left. Snape stayed for another minute, checked the door himself, and then left too."
"That's it?" Daphne asked.
"That's it. Nobody else came. I waited another hour after they both left.
"Quirrell let the troll in," Harry said quietly.
"We don't know that for certain," Daphne said.
"He's the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher," Harry said. "He's the one who came running in to announce it. And while every teacher went to the dungeons to deal with the troll, he went to the third floor. The troll was a distraction."
"A distraction that almost killed you," Daphne said.
"A distraction that almost killed Hermione," Harry corrected. "We were supposed to be in the dormitory. Nobody was supposed to be in that corridor."
Theo chewed his bread roll and watched Harry think. "What do we do?"
"Nothing yet. We watch. We don't confront Quirrell. We don't tell anyone. We just watch."
"I hate watching," Theo said.
"I know. But if we're wrong, we've accused a teacher of attempted theft. And if we're right, we've tipped off someone dangerous."
Daphne nodded slowly. "Harry's right. We watch."
They finished breakfast and walked to Transfiguration.
The classroom was on the first floor, bright and airy, with tall windows and rows of desks facing a large blackboard. It was a joint lesson, Slytherin and Gryffindor, and the two houses settled into their respective sides of the room with the careful separation of people who had been told to cooperate but hadn't decided to yet.
Harry noticed it immediately. The Slytherin students were looking at him differently. Not with the probing curiosity of the first weeks, the careful assessment of a famous name. This was something else. Respect. Malfoy, who had barely spoken to Harry since the flying race, gave him a single, stiff nod as he passed. Crabbe and Goyle, who never looked at anything with intelligence, looked at Harry with something close to it.
He had killed a troll. In Slytherin, that counted for something.
On the Gryffindor side, Harry caught Hermione Granger's eye. She was sitting at the front with her books already open, and when she saw Harry, she stood up, crossed the invisible divide between the two houses, and stopped beside his desk.
"Potter," she said.
"Granger."
"I wanted to thank you again. Properly. What you did last night was extraordinary, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it."
"I'ts not needed, i'll do it always when i see you in danger." Harry said.
"How did you learn it?"
"My aunt."
"Your aunt must be a remarkable witch."
"She is."
Hermione looked at him for a moment longer, her sharp brown eyes working behind her expression, filing and sorting. Then she nodded.
"Well. Thank you. For saving my life."
"You cast Incendio at a mountain troll," Harry said. "Thank you for being brave enough to do that."
Something warm crossed Hermione's face, brief and genuine. Then she turned and walked back to her seat, and the lesson began.
Professor McGonagall entered the room, and the conversation died instantly. She had the effect of making the class quiet without asking.
"Today," McGonagall said, standing at the front with her wand in hand, "we continue our practical work on the fundamentals of Transfiguration. You will be turning a matchstick into a needle. This exercise tests your ability to visualise the end result and impose your will upon the object's material composition."
She demonstrated. A matchstick on her desk became a gleaming silver needle in the time it took to blink. She made it look effortless, which Harry knew meant it was anything but.
"Begin," she said.
Harry looked at his matchstick. He thought about Natasha's teaching: intent, visualisation, the shaped sphere. He pictured the needle. Not vaguely. Specifically. The taper of the point. The smoothness of the shaft. The cool gleam of silver.
He pointed his wand. Concentrated. Spoke the incantation.
The matchstick shivered. Then it lengthened, thinned, and the wood grain faded to a dull silver. It wasn't perfect, the point was slightly blunt and there was a faint grain pattern still visible on the surface, but it was recognisably a needle.
McGonagall had been watching. She crossed the room and picked up the needle, turning it between her fingers. She examined the point, ran her thumb along the shaft, and set it back down.
"Very good, Mr. Potter. The visualisation is strong. The material conversion is incomplete, but the shape and structure are excellent for a second attempt. Five points to Slytherin."
Harry felt a small glow of satisfaction.
The lesson continued. By the end of the hour, most students had managed some degree of transformation. Hermione had produced a needle that was nearly flawless. Daphne's was sharp but retained a woody texture. Theo's had turned silver but remained stubbornly matchstick-shaped, which he found more interesting than frustrating.
McGonagall dismissed the class. Students began packing their bags and filing toward the door.
"Mr. Potter," McGonagall said. "A moment, please."
Harry stopped. Daphne gave him a questioning look, and he nodded for her to go ahead. She left with Theo, and the classroom emptied, and then it was just Harry and McGonagall, standing on opposite sides of the room.
McGonagall walked to her desk and sat on the edge of it, which was the most informal Harry had ever seen her.
"Your father," she said, "was one of the most naturally gifted Transfiguration students I have ever taught."
Harry went still.
"James Potter walked into this classroom at eleven years old and understood, instinctively, what most students spend years learning: that Transfiguration is not about forcing change. It is about understanding the nature of what you are changing and persuading it to become something else." She looked at him. "You have the same instinct. I saw it in your needle. The shape was right before the material caught up, which means your mind leads your magic. That is your father's gift."
Harry's throat was tight. "Thank you, Professor."
"You have potential in this subject, Mr. Potter. Considerable potential. And I would like to see it developed properly." She paused, choosing her next words with care. "The training you received before Hogwarts was clearly extensive. Your reflexes, your spell work, your physical conditioning, all of it speaks to serious preparation. But Hogwarts offers something that private instruction cannot: breadth. Structure. The opportunity to learn not just what is useful, but what is foundational. The building blocks upon which truly great magic is constructed."
Harry listened.
"I want you to know," McGonagall said, and her voice softened in a way that surprised him, "that you are not alone here. You have teachers who care about your development. Who knew your parents. Who want to see you reach your full potential. The whole of it."
Harry understood what she was saying. Not the words on the surface, which were about Transfiguration and potential and building blocks. The thing underneath. She was telling him that Hogwarts could give him something Natasha couldn't. That his education shouldn't be shaped by one person's priorities, no matter how capable that person was.
She was trying to loosen Natasha's hold. Gently. Respectfully. But unmistakably.
"I appreciate that, Professor," Harry said. "And I'd like to learn everything you can teach me."
McGonagall nodded. The faintest suggestion of a smile crossed her face. "Then I will teach you everything I can. Starting with that needle. I want the grain pattern gone by next week, Mr. Potter."
"Yes, Professor."
Harry picked up his bag and walked to the door. He paused with his hand on the frame.
"Professor McGonagall?"
"Yes?"
"My aunt says you're one of the most accomplished witches in Britain."
McGonagall could wait for everything but not this one.
"Did she," McGonagall said.
"She also said you're too stubborn when you think you're right."
McGonagall's mouth thinned, but her eyes were bright. "I see she hasn't changed."
"No, ma'am. She hasn't."
Harry walked into the corridor, and behind him, in the empty classroom, Minerva McGonagall sat at her desk and allowed herself, just for a moment, to smile.
Albus Dumbledore had not stood on this cobblestone path in over a decade, and the house looked exactly as he remembered it, which meant Natasha had not changed a single thing.
He adjusted his half-moon spectacles and knocked.
The door opened after some seconds. Natasha Evans did not rush for anyone.
She stood in the doorway in a dark jumper with the sleeves pushed to her elbows, her red hair loose around her shoulders, her green eyes fixed on him with the particular stillness of a woman who was already three steps ahead of wherever this conversation was going.
"Albus," she said.
"Natasha." He smiled. It was his warmest smile, the one that put most people at ease. Natasha had never been most people. "May I come in?"
"No."
"Then we'll speak here." He folded his hands in front of him. "You look well."
"You look old."
"I am old. It's one of my few remaining talents." He let the smile hold for another moment, then let it fade. "I trust you know why I'm here."
"I trust you're going to tell me regardless."
"Harry," Albus said. "And what you've been teaching him."
She leaned against the doorframe, one shoulder resting against the wood, her arms crossed.
"Did you teach him your lessons?" Albus asked, and he let the question carry the weight he intended. Something that reminded her that he had known her for a very long time, and that he remembered things she might prefer he didn't. "Your particular curriculum. The spells you developed during the war. The ones that caused such difficulty the last time."
She remembered. Of course, she remembered. The mistake she had made, the consequences it had carried, the conversations that had followed in rooms very much like this one, with voices raised and trust broken and promises extracted that were supposed to prevent exactly the kind of situation they were now standing in.
"I taught him what he needed to know," Natasha said. Her voice was level.
"You taught an eleven-year-old boy a Confringo."
"I taught my nephew how to survive."
"You taught him restricted combat magic and sent him into a school full of children."
"I taught him one spell. One. And I drilled it into him for weeks before I let him leave, because I knew, Albus, I knew that wherever you put him, whatever supposedly safe environment you constructed for him, something would go wrong. Because something always goes wrong where Harry is concerned. And when it did, I wanted him to be able to walk away from it."
"And your confidence in Hogwarts was so low."
"My confidence in you is what's low."
"Tell me what happened," Natasha said. "Tell me exactly what happened."
Albus studied her for a moment. Then he told her. Simply. A troll, released inside the castle on Halloween night. Students evacuated to dormitories. Harry and a classmate encountered the troll on the second floor while searching for a friend. A Gryffindor girl intervened and was nearly killed. Harry cast a Confringo that killed the troll instantly.
Natasha listened without moving. Her face was stone.
When he finished, Natasha stepped forward, off the threshold, onto the cobblestone path, and her voice rose.
"You couldn't protect him." The words came out sharp and hot. "A troll. Inside your castle. Inside your school, Albus. Behind your wards, under your watch, surrounded by your staff, and a twelve-foot mountain troll was loose in a corridor where children were walking. If it hadn't been for my spell, if I hadn't taught Harry what I taught him, a girl would be dead. My nephew could be dead."
"Natasha."
"Don't." She held up a hand. "Don't give me the calm voice. Don't give me the measured tone and the folded hands and the look over the spectacles. A child nearly died in your care because something got past your security, and you came here to lecture me about what I taught him?"
"I came here to understand."
"Then understand this." Natasha's green eyes burned. "Harry is my nephew. He is my blood. He is the son of my sister, and I will teach him to defend himself. I will teach him every spell I know, every trick, every piece of magic that gives him a chance of surviving whatever is coming for him. And you will not stop me."
"Natasha, there are protocols."
"Protocols." She spat the word. "You and your protocols. You taught Lily your way, Albus. You taught her to trust the system. To believe in the Order. To follow the plan. To defend herself peacefully, within the boundaries you set."
Her voice cracked. Just once. Just barely.
"Where is she now?"
The question struck Albus Dumbledore in the chest, and for a moment, he had no answer. Not because he didn't have words. He always had words. But because the words he had were not enough, and he knew it, and Natasha knew it, and the ghost of Lily Evans stood between them on the cobblestone path and would not move aside.
Natasha stared at him. Her eyes were bright and fierce and wet, and she did not blink.
Albus looked at her. At the red hair that was so like Lily's. At the green eyes that carried the same fire. At the woman who had spent a year building a home for a boy nobody else had bothered to check on, who had taught him to breathe and to fight and to believe he was worth something, and who was now standing on her doorstep asking him the one question he could not answer.
Where is she now?
He opened his mouth.
Natasha stepped back inside and closed the door.
Albus Dumbledore stood alone in the afternoon light with the taste of lemon drops on his tongue and nothing useful to say.
He turned and walked back toward the ward boundary.
The bird near the stream was still singing.
It didn't help.
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