By the first Saturday in December, Adrian had learned that arriving early for Kettleburn meant receiving whichever job the professor had intended to finish before he got there.
That morning, it was washing feeding dishes.
He stood beneath the shelter beside the hut with his sleeves rolled up, working a brush around a stubborn patch of dried food while Kettleburn sorted supplies behind him.
Cold air crept through the gap beneath the roof, making the warm water considerably more appealing than taking his hands out of it.
“Leave those upside down on the rack,” the professor said.
“Then bring your notebook.
We’ll have a look at what you’ve written before we start.”
Adrian set the last dish aside and dried his hands, relieved to find that the small room inside was warm.
His notebook lay open on a clear corner of the table, beside a tin with several holes punched through its lid.
Something scratched inside.
“Before you ask, woodlice,” Kettleburn said, pulling up a chair.
“For the Bowtruckles.”
“I was gonna ask if they were supposed to be getting out.”
A woodlouse had emerged beneath the loose edge of the lid and was making steady progress toward a stack of papers.
Kettleburn intercepted it with the tin, secured the lid properly, and settled into his chair.
“Good.
You’re looking at what’s in front of you.
Now, Professor Sprout tells me we’ve been having rather less straightforward conversations with the creatures than I realised.”
Adrian pulled his own chair closer.
He had known this was coming, but he still wished Sprout had mentioned exactly how much she had told him.
“I can understand some of them.
I know it sounds like I’m just making noises, but that’s not what I hear.”
“So she said.” Kettleburn opened the notebook to Adrian’s account of the Bowtruckles.
“What interests me is why you didn’t tell me.”
Adrian considered several answers before settling on the one that sounded least like an excuse.
“I didn’t know how to bring it up without making it sound like I already knew what I was doing.”
“Well, you don’t,” Kettleburn said comfortably.
“Neither does a man become a competent dragon keeper merely because he can ask a dragon not to bite him.
Still useful to know whether it has answered.”
That was reasonable enough that Adrian felt some of the tension leave his shoulders.
“I’m still learning theirs.
Sometimes I get part of it, and sometimes I get nothing.”
Kettleburn turned the notebook toward him.
“Then we need to make that clear in here.
What you saw, what you believe you understood, and what you’re uncertain about.
Otherwise, I may correct an observation without knowing you heard something I didn’t.”
Adrian took out his pencil.
“Okay.
That makes sense.”
“And don’t expect every creature to be obliging.
You can understand your classmates perfectly well, and I imagine some of them are still a thorough nuisance.”
Adrian smiled down at the page.
“A few.”
They spent the next twenty minutes working through his earlier notes.
Kettleburn asked practical questions about particular sounds, sometimes repeating one badly enough that Adrian had to bite the inside of his cheek.
The professor noticed on the third attempt.
“If it’s wrong, say so.”
“It’s pretty wrong.”
“Then I shan’t use it while anything is close enough to object.”
Outside, the wind rattled the shelter roof.
Kettleburn waited for it to settle before closing the notebook and reaching for the tin.
They found the Bowtruckles clustered against a sheltered part of their tree, with only one immediately visible from the path.
Adrian stopped where Kettleburn indicated and watched it turn toward them.
The professor handed him the woodlice.
“Same arrangement as before.
Offer the food, keep your fingers clear, and tell me if you think it says anything.”
Adrian made the sound he had practised, then waited while the small creature shifted along the bark.
Its reply came quickly.
He caught something about where he was standing, followed by a sound he couldn’t place.
He moved his foot away from an exposed root, but the Bowtruckle repeated itself more sharply.
Kettleburn watched without intervening until Adrian looked up.
“I thought it wanted me off the root.”
“It may do.
What else?”
Adrian listened again.
The unfamiliar part remained unfamiliar, and trying harder only made him increasingly conscious of the tin in his hand.
“I don’t know.”
“Then we’ll give it a little more room.”
They stepped back together.
After a moment, the Bowtruckle descended far enough to take the food Adrian had left within reach.
He watched it retreat with the woodlice, disappointed that the first attempt after explaining himself had gone so poorly.
Kettleburn nudged his notebook with the end of his wand.
“Write the sound down however you can remember it.
Next time you hear it, we may have more to go on.”
Adrian opened to a clean space beneath his earlier notes.
By the time they returned to the hut, he had three possible explanations, all marked with question marks.
For once, Kettleburn seemed quite pleased with the question marks.
The wooden box was waiting on the library table when Adrian arrived after lunch.
George had taken the lid off, Fred was holding a narrow strip of wood up to the light, and Cedric had placed a large reference book between the experiment and the rest of the room.
Adrian stopped beside his chair.
“You brought that in here?”
“It’s stopped making the noise,” George said quietly.
“We’re trying to work out why.”
Fred looked past Adrian toward the shelves.
“And if you see Pince, we’re revising.”
Adrian sat down, taking care not to knock the table.
The last time the box had worked, it had drawn the attention of everyone near the common-room fire, and he had no desire to discover what Madam Pince would do if it started again among her books.
Cedric pushed a page toward him.
Beneath a sketch of the lid, he had written a short account of their attempts, including the angle at which the sound began and how long the effect lasted.
“I think we’ve been charming the wrong part,” he explained.
“It works when we move the lid, but not because we’re opening the box.”
He picked up the detached lid and held it above the table without letting it touch anything.
Fred stopped examining the strip of wood.
“Go on, then.”
Cedric gave him a look and lowered it again.
“Somewhere else.”
That afternoon, they took the pieces to an empty classroom Owen had recommended, where the desks had been pushed against one wall and the blackboard still carried half an erased diagram. This chapter is updated first at novelping . com.
Adrian checked behind the door before closing it, while George laid their work across the nearest desk.
With room to experiment, Cedric demonstrated what he meant.
After repeating the charm, he raised the detached lid.
The quacking noise returned.
Fred grinned so broadly that Adrian began laughing before the sound had finished.
“There it is.”
“It’s the movement,” Cedric said.
“Look.”
He lowered the lid and lifted it again.
The noise repeated, but turning it sideways produced only a brief squeak.
For the next hour, they tried the charm on different pieces of wood, arguing over whether the size or direction mattered more.
Adrian held things steady with Float while Cedric adjusted his wand movement, and George kept a record of which attempts produced anything useful.
Fred contributed most enthusiastically whenever something needed to be louder.
By the time the light outside began fading, they had abandoned the box entirely.
On the desk lay an ordinary quill that gave a short, ridiculous squawk whenever someone lifted it to write.
The effect lasted less than a minute.
Fred picked it up, set it down, and picked it up again, shoulders shaking.
“Oh, that’s much better.”
George reached for their notes.
“We’ll need it to last longer.”
From beside the window, Cedric watched the quill give its final exhausted squeak.
“And you’ll need him to pick it up.”
Adrian looked toward him.
“You’ve been thinking about that.”
Cedric closed the reference book, though the small smile gave him away.
“I’ve had quite a lot of time to listen.”
The opportunity came the following Thursday, after McGonagall returned an exercise that gave Adrian some hope for his future in Transfiguration.
There were still corrections, but he could see considerably more of his own writing beneath them.
Cedric’s work had received a short, approving comment.
He tried to put it away before anyone noticed, but Toby asked what it said, and Adrian made him hand it over.
By lunch, Adrian had decided that if McGonagall ever wrote the same thing on his work, he would frame it.
They were leaving the Great Hall when George intercepted them and steered them toward the wall, where Fred stood examining his quill.
“Here we are,” Fred said, slipping it into his bag.
“Try not to look so interested.”
Beyond him, Avery stood in a window recess with two other Slytherins, adding something to a piece of parchment.
Adrian recognised the boy beside him as one of those who had blocked the corridor, although neither appeared to have noticed them yet.
Cedric glanced toward the window.
“You’ve got it working?”
George nodded.
“Fred’s had it up his sleeve all morning.”
“I’ve been making sacrifices.”
Adrian looked at the cuff, where a small feather protruded between two buttons.
Fred plucked it free and tucked it into his pocket before heading down the corridor.
He drew a folded parchment from his bag as he passed the window, letting the quill fall beside Avery’s shoe.
After another step, he turned and held out his hand.
“Chuck us that, will you?”
Avery glanced down.
The boy beside him reached for it first, but Avery stopped the quill with his foot.
For a moment, Adrian thought he would grind it beneath his shoe.
Instead, Avery picked it up and held it just beyond Fred’s reach.
“Dropped something, Weasley?”
The quill squawked.
It was a splendidly ugly noise, loud enough to interrupt two conversations farther down the corridor, but the small burst of feathers that followed was considerably better.
They puffed out around Avery’s hand and drifted over his sleeve.
He stared at them.
Fred took a quick step back.
Avery jerked the quill toward him, apparently intending to throw it.
Another squawk burst out, accompanied by enough feathers to scatter across his chest and cling to the front of his robes.
One landed on his lower lip.
He spat it away while the boy beside him began laughing.
“Stop waving it about,” the other Slytherin said, backing against the window.
“Then take it!”
Avery thrust it toward him.
The movement produced a third indignant squawk and a flurry that caught both boys across the face.
George clapped a hand over his mouth.
Beside Adrian, Cedric had gone red with the effort of keeping quiet, although his shoulders were shaking.
Avery finally dropped the quill.
It fell silently between his shoes.
For a second, everyone watched it.
Then Avery bent, evidently deciding that leaving Fred’s property intact would be an unacceptable conclusion.
George caught Adrian’s sleeve.
“Oh, go on,” he whispered.
Avery snatched it up.
The resulting squawk echoed off the stone, and a thick puff of down burst upward beneath his chin.
He recoiled with feathers caught in his hair, across his shoulders, and along one eyebrow.
Laughter spread through the corridor.
Fred made a brief attempt to retrieve the quill, but Avery rounded on him before he got close.
“You think this is funny?”
Fred looked at the feather slowly sliding down Avery’s nose.
That finished him.
He doubled over, and George abandoned any attempt at concealment.
Adrian laughed hard enough to have to step back against the wall, while Cedric kept one hand over his mouth and looked desperately toward the floor.
“Give it here,” Avery’s friend said, reaching past him.
“Don’t—” Cedric began.
Too late.
The boy pulled the quill from Avery’s hand, setting it off directly between them.
Feathers billowed over both their heads, and Fred had to brace a hand against the wall.
“What,” said Professor McGonagall, “is happening here?”
The laughter faltered.
She approached through the drifting down, taking in Avery’s appearance, the quill in his friend’s hand, and Fred’s unsuccessful attempt to straighten his face.
Neither Slytherin seemed eager to explain.
McGonagall stopped before them and held out her hand.
“The quill, please.
Slowly.”
The boy obeyed with exaggerated care.
“I presume this belongs to you, Mr.
Weasley.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“And the feathers?”
Fred’s eyes flicked toward Avery, who was pulling one from his collar.
McGonagall’s expression sharpened.
“Consider your answer.”
“They’re ours as well, Professor,” George supplied, coming forward.
Adrian pushed away from the wall, and Cedric followed him.
There was little point pretending they had been passing by when all four had spent the previous week discussing how much movement the charm would tolerate.
McGonagall glanced at their small, conspicuously united group.
“I see.”
Avery brushed at his robes, dislodging another shower.
“They did it on purpose.”
“Plainly, Mr.
Avery.
Stop brushing those onto the floor.”
She silenced the charm with a precise movement of her wand, then removed the remaining feathers from the three Slytherins.
Avery’s hair settled back into place, although his expression did not improve.
“You three may go.”
Avery hesitated, looking from the quill to Fred.
“Now.”
Once they had gone, McGonagall turned back to the four boys.
“You will collect every feather before proceeding to your next lesson.
Mr.
Weasley, you may retrieve your quill from my classroom afterward.”
Fred glanced along the corridor.
A passing student had carried several feathers halfway to the stairs on the hem of her robes.
“All of them, Professor?”
McGonagall followed his gaze.
“I suggest you begin.”
She remained long enough to see them crouch down, then continued toward the Great Hall.
Fred waited until she had passed through the doors before looking at George across the spreading mess.
“You said a few feathers.”
“It was a few.
He kept having another go.”
Cedric reached beneath the window ledge and retrieved a handful of down, still smiling despite himself.
“We ought to have tested what happened if someone shook it.”
“We have now,” Fred said.
Adrian caught a feather drifting toward the stairs and added it to the growing pile on George’s open parchment.
“I thought he was gonna break it.”
“So did I.” Fred inspected the place where Avery had stood, then began laughing again.
“Did you see him hand it to the other one?”
That set George off, which was enough to make Cedric lose the composure he had just recovered.
It took them considerably longer to clear the corridor than it should have.
Snow arrived during the final week of term, turning the grounds white overnight and making Hagrid easy to spot from almost any window.
Adrian watched him crossing toward the castle one morning with a tree balanced over his shoulder, then abandoned the last of his toast to get a better look from the entrance hall.
The tree proved to be one of several.
By evening, the Great Hall smelled faintly of pine, and decorations glittered above the tables.
Adrian spent more time looking upward than eating until Cedric nudged his plate away from his elbow.
At home, December meant his mother deciding everyone had failed to dress warmly enough and his father pretending not to notice when she added more food to his plate.
Here, suits of armour acquired decorations, portraits complained about drafts, and Peeves discovered that a sprig of mistletoe could cause considerably more trouble when dropped directly onto someone’s head.
The castle made leaving difficult.
Kettleburn helped by giving Adrian something to do over the holiday.
“Copy the useful observations into a separate section,” he instructed on their last Saturday, handing back the notebook.
“Keep the guesses, but I want to be able to find what happened without working through every possibility you considered.”
Adrian leafed through the increasingly crowded pages, stopping where an observation continued sideways up the margin.
“I was gonna do some of this over Christmas anyway.
Finding anything in here is getting ridiculous.”
“Leave yourself more room in the next one,” Kettleburn advised, reaching for the feeding tin.
“You’ll always notice something else after you think you’ve finished.”
Adrian looked at the cramped addition beneath his thumb.
“Yeah, I’m figuring that out.”
Before putting the notebook away, he marked the morning’s entry.
One of the Bowtruckles had repeated a phrase he had heard during their previous visit, and although he understood part of it, the rest still escaped him.
“This is the one I want to ask about when I get back,” he said, showing Kettleburn the line.
“I’ve heard it twice now, but I need to hear what comes before it.”
“Put that at the top of a fresh page, then.
We’ll take the notebook out with us in January.”
Adrian did, leaving plenty of space beneath the question before slipping the book into his bag.
Copying everything would take a while, but he was already looking forward to having another conversation with the little creatures.
On the morning they left, Cedric sat on the edge of his bed while Adrian checked his trunk for the third time.
“You’ve got your notebook.”
“I know.
I’m looking for a sock.”
Cedric lifted it from the bedpost beside him and held it out.
Adrian took it without comment, which made Cedric smile more than an argument would have.
Their trunks went ahead, leaving them free to join the other students making their way out of the castle.
Adrian slowed near the entrance, turning for one last look at the hall and the moving crowd beneath the stairs.
He knew where several of those staircases led now.
He knew which door near the trophy room to avoid, which portrait expected an audience, and which stretch of corridor could cost them ten minutes if they met Mrs Norris.
There were still whole floors he had barely explored.
Cedric stopped beside him rather than calling him along.
“January,” he said.
Adrian adjusted his scarf and followed him outside.
On the train, Fred recovered his best quill from an inside pocket and laid it on the compartment seat between them.
McGonagall had returned it with an additional assignment.
George produced the parchment, now covered with corrections in four different hands, and spread it over his knees.
“We’ve found the problem.”
Cedric looked toward the compartment door, then back at the quill.
Outside the window, the castle was disappearing behind the hills.
Adrian took out his notebook and settled comfortably into his seat.
“All right,” he said.
“Show me.”