They were still laughing when Snape came round the corner.
George caught Fred by the sleeve.
Cedric straightened, while Adrian turned away from the entrance hall just as the professor glanced past them toward Rook’s armchair.
“Have you discovered another improvement to the school furniture?”
“No, Professor,” Cedric said, moving his bag out of the way.
Snape stopped.
“Then I am relieved to learn that you can still entertain yourselves without assistance from a roomful of frightened first-years.”
Fred looked down.
Adrian suspected this had more to do with hiding his expression than accepting the criticism, and carefully avoided meeting his eyes.
The collection was finished, the refunds accounted for, and the last of the Bum-Bouncers handed over.
Adrian had been looking forward to an afternoon in which nobody wanted an explanation.
Snape appeared willing to disappoint him.
“Your customer list did raise one question.
Did you imagine refusing Avery a sale would prevent him from acquiring one through somebody else?”
“He probably could’ve,” Adrian said.
“We just weren’t gonna sell him one.”
“How gratifying.
A commercial policy founded entirely upon spite.”
Adrian’s mouth twitched.
“We sold to plenty of people we didn’t like, sir.”
George became very interested in the buckle on his bag.
Snape’s gaze remained on Adrian.
“I would advise you not to mistake that admission for a defence.”
“I’m just saying he didn’t get turned down for being a Slytherin.
We told him no, and then we told his friend no.
He kept trying to change our answer.”
“And you found the opportunity to refuse him irresistible.”
“A little,” Adrian admitted.
Cedric glanced at him.
Adrian could almost hear the suggestion to stop there, but Snape’s expression was too familiar now: the faint curl of his lip, the patient expectation that Adrian would supply something else to criticise.
“He could’ve borrowed one,” Adrian continued.
“By then, I don’t think getting it was the part that mattered.”
“You appear remarkably confident in your understanding of other people’s motives.”
“Maybe I’ve got him wrong.” Adrian adjusted his bag, still faintly smiling.
“He sent somebody else to ask, though.
Seemed like a lot of trouble over a chair prank.”
“A subject on which you are eminently qualified to recognise wasted effort.”
Adrian’s grin widened before he could help it.
“Fair enough, sir.
He still wasn’t getting one from us.”
Snape looked at him for a moment, then glanced toward the others.
“If only you were half so determined to follow instructions.”
Cedric shifted his bag onto his shoulder.
Adrian took the hint and stepped out of the professor’s way.
Snape looked along the four of them before stepping aside.
“And find something more productive to do than loitering here admiring the consequences of your behaviour.”
They moved on.
Adrian waited until the professor’s footsteps had faded before glancing toward Fred, who released a long breath.
“Well, that was getting a bit expensive.”
George nudged his shoulder.
“You hadn’t said anything.”
“I was making an effort.”
Cedric shook his head, though he was smiling as he drew a folded page from his bag.
“Come on.
Owen’s meeting us in the library.”
Adrian leaned closer to see what he was carrying.
There was a small drawing of one of their cabinets at the top, followed by several lines of notes.
“You found something?”
“I think so.”
Fred looked toward the stairs leading down to the Great Hall, then reluctantly followed as Cedric began explaining.
By the following evening, Cedric’s books had taken over the part of the reading-room table previously occupied by orders and unfinished Bum-Bouncers.
Their money had been divided, George’s ledger put away, and the spare chairs returned to their places.
Adrian found he could stretch his legs beneath the table without kicking a bag of cushions, which improved his opinion of doing homework there considerably.
Cedric had brought three books.
Fred examined the pile before putting down his own.
“Are we finding another cabinet or sitting here reading about the ones we’ve already found?”
Cedric opened the smallest volume to a marked page.
“You can go and look.
I want to find out why George couldn’t take the badger.”
“We know why.
He’s in Gryffindor.”
“Yes, but how does the cabinet know?”
That brought George’s attention away from his quill.
Cedric laid his notes beside the book.
“It isn’t simply recognising the robes.
Beatrice collected a serpent token when she wasn’t wearing hers, and George tried the badger with my scarf on.”
Fred turned toward his brother.
“When was that?”
“Thursday.
You were finishing your essay.”
“You said you were fetching a book.”
George tapped the volume in front of Cedric.
“We fetched it.”
Adrian drew the notes closer before Fred could pursue the matter.
Cedric had copied a passage about enchantments that restricted access to members of a household, then written several questions beneath it.
“Could it recognise the person?” Adrian asked.
“Like the Sorting Hat does?”
“Possibly.
Or being Sorted might be enough for the enchantment to recognise which House you belong to.
This doesn’t explain that part.” Cedric turned the book so Adrian could read it.
“I’d like to know whether the restriction is on the token or the cabinet first.”
Fred pulled out a chair.
“If you’ve got a way to make it give us all four, you might have said.”
Cedric looked up from the page.
“That isn’t what I’m trying to do.”
“Wouldn’t complain, though, would you?”
George reached for the diagram, studying the recesses while Adrian read the passage again.
The language was difficult, but Cedric had marked the sentences that mattered and left the rest alone.
Adrian could see why he had stayed with it.
They had spent months finding these things, collecting what they could, and hurrying off to look for another.
Cedric wanted to understand what happened when he put his hand inside.
“What’s the test?” Adrian asked.
“We ask Beatrice to let us hold a token after she’s collected it.
If we can pass it round, we put it back and see what happens.”
George nodded slowly.
“And try it in a different cabinet.”
Cedric reached for his pencil.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
For the next half hour, the four of them covered another sheet with questions, crossed several out, then put two of them back after George objected that Cedric had dismissed them before they had actually proved anything.
The problem they kept returning to was the same one: if one of them removed a token, returned it to the cabinet, and then found it stuck again, would Beatrice still be able to retrieve it?
Fred eventually shoved his chair back and stretched his legs beneath the table.
“We could ask her tomorrow.”
Cedric was already stacking the loose parchment.
“She said she’d be outside the library before supper.”
Fred looked at the essay beside his elbow, then at Cedric.
George had begun packing the books.
“Oh, that’s nice.
I’ve finally started this.”
“Bring it,” Cedric said, without looking up.
Fred stared at the back of his head.
Adrian closed his notebook.
“You can complain while we walk.”
“I can complain here perfectly well.”
George picked up Fred’s essay and placed it on top of his book.
Fred looked at him.
George held the pile out.
A moment later, Fred took it.
…
They caught Beatrice just outside the library.
She had two books under one arm and had clearly been intending to go inside, but Cedric stepped across before the door closed and held up the notes.
“We found another test.”
Beatrice’s eyes went from him to the other three.
“Of course you did.”
Adrian opened the notebook to the marked page while Fred leaned back against the wall and George tried to read over Adrian’s shoulder.
“The simple version,” Adrian said, “is you take one out, hand it over, then we put it back and see what happens.”
Beatrice frowned at the page.
“You put it back?”
“That’s the interesting bit,” George murmured.
Fred nodded.
“Potentially.”
Cedric gave both of them a look and tapped the bottom of the page.
“If it sticks again, you try taking it out.”
Beatrice took the notebook from Adrian and read the rest herself.
Nobody interrupted for several seconds.
Then Fred opened his mouth.
George caught his sleeve.
Fred looked down at the hand.
George shook his head once.
Beatrice finished, handed the notebook back, and shifted her books against her side.
“Sunday.”
Cedric nodded.
She turned towards the library.
Fred waited until the door had closed behind her.
“That went rather well.”
George started walking.
“You’ve ruined it now.”
Fred followed.
“Ruined what?”
“Sunday.”
“You can’t ruin Sunday on a Thursday.”
“You manage things nobody else does.”
Adrian fell into step beside Cedric while the argument carried on behind them.
…
Herbology the next morning left Adrian with soil beneath his fingernails and a beetle occupying an empty flowerpot.
It had crawled from beneath his tray while he was separating seedlings, protested when he shifted the tray back, then planted itself beneath the bench as if the matter had been settled.
Adrian tilted his head and answered the rapid clicks with a quieter series of sounds.
Maisie stopped packing soil around her seedling.
She watched him for several seconds before asking, “Are you talking to something?”
“There’s a beetle under here.”
“That wasn’t really what I meant.”
Adrian reached for an unused flowerpot instead of answering.
He laid it on its side, tore off a scrap of leaf, then tapped lightly against the bench before making another sound.
The beetle emerged far enough to inspect the pot.
Across from them, Cedric loosened a knot of roots with his thumb.
“He is talking to it.”
Maisie’s attention shifted to him.
Cedric kept working.
She looked back at Adrian.
Adrian shrugged.
The beetle crawled into the pot.
Professor Sprout arrived before Maisie decided what to do with that information.
“Problem?”
“Visitor,” Adrian said.
He tipped the pot just enough for her to see inside.
Sprout bent slightly.
“Ah.
Comfortable, is he?”
“Apparently.”
“Can’t blame him.
Warm soil, no wind.” She straightened and pointed at the remaining seedlings.
“Outside after the lesson, somewhere sheltered.
And finish those before you adopt the entire greenhouse.”
Adrian looked at the four plants still waiting.
“I wasn’t adopting it.”
Maisie made a noise beside him.
He glanced over.
Maisie was smiling down at her seedling.
Adrian caught the expression and went back to work before she could say anything.
Sprout had already moved on.
Finishing took longer than Adrian expected.
The roots tangled easily, and every few minutes Maisie’s eyes drifted back towards the pot.
When the lesson ended, Cedric remained behind to ask Sprout about one of his seedlings.
Adrian took the beetle outside and crouched beside the greenhouse wall.
He tipped the pot.
The beetle crawled into the light, stopped, then clicked at him with renewed irritation.
Adrian rested the flowerpot by his shoe.
“There’s cover right there.
You don’t need to cross the path.”
Another burst of clicks.
“No, I heard you.
I’m trying to—” Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Footsteps stopped behind him.
Fred and George were standing a few feet away with books tucked beneath their arms.
Fred glanced at the pot.
Then at Adrian.
“Going well?”
“It wants cover.”
George came closer.
“What wants—”
Adrian pointed.
Both twins bent at once.
The beetle tried to retreat under the pot.
Adrian moved it aside and made another short sequence of sounds.
The beetle answered.
George’s expression changed first.
Not amusement this time.
Concentration.
“Wait.”
Adrian glanced at him.
George crouched.
“Do that again.”
Fred’s eyes had left the beetle entirely.
Adrian looked between them.
“I’m trying to move it somewhere people won’t step on it.”
“The noise,” George said.
“You did something and it answered.”
Cedric emerged from the greenhouse with his books just in time to catch the end of it.
Fred pointed at Adrian without looking away.
“He actually talks to them.”
Cedric stopped beside George.
“Yes.”
Fred turned.
Cedric frowned slightly.
“What?”
“You knew?”
“I knew he could communicate with animals.
I didn’t realise he meant quite this literally.”
Adrian sat back on his heels.
“Guys, I’ve told you this.”
Fred folded his arms.
“You’ve said animals like you.”
“That is not the same thing,” George added.
“I said I could talk to them.”
Fred looked at his brother.
George looked back.
Together, they said, “We thought you were exaggerating.”
Adrian stared.
Cedric laughed.
The beetle clicked again.
Fred dropped into a crouch immediately.
“What’s it saying now?”
Adrian looked down at it.
“That it doesn’t like four enormous things standing over it.”
Nobody moved for a second.
Then Fred spotted a curled leaf nearby, picked it up, and held it towards Adrian.
Adrian took it and set it against the wall.
The beetle hurried underneath.
Another click came from the shadow.
George waited.
Adrian got to his feet and brushed the soil from his palms.
“It still wants us gone.”
Fred glanced at the leaf.
“Sensibly put.”
…
The questions followed them most of the way back to the castle.
Fred kept finding animals before Adrian could finish explaining the previous one.
A crow perched on the wall became the next candidate.
“That?”
Adrian barely glanced over.
“Not enough.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I know some signals.
Not enough to have a useful conversation.”
George, walking on Adrian’s other side, frowned.
“So you learnt them separately.”
“Yeah.
Different species, different rules.”
Fred had already spotted something moving near the path.
“What about—”
Cedric bent down, picked up the worm before Fred could finish, and moved it into the grass.
“Lunch.”
Fred watched him straighten.
“I was asking a serious question.”
“You were about to ask him to interview a worm.”
“I hadn’t decided how to phrase it.”
George nodded.
“Important distinction.”
Adrian laughed.
Fang came bounding towards them before Fred found another subject.
The dog drove his head beneath Adrian’s hand with enough force to shift him half a step.
“Easy.”
Adrian scratched behind his ear and answered the low rumble Fang made in his throat.
Hagrid came up the path behind Fang with a bundle of stakes tucked beneath one arm.
“Fang, leave the lad be.
You’ll knock him over.”
Adrian laughed and scratched beneath the dog’s jaw.
Fang leaned harder into him anyway, then gave a low, hopeful rumble and turned his attention towards Fred.
Adrian followed his gaze to Fred’s pocket.
“He knows you’ve got something in there.”
Fred’s hand stopped halfway down.
George noticed immediately.
Hagrid did too.
“Don’t you start feeding him.
He’s had enough already.”
Fang looked back at Hagrid and complained.
Adrian smiled before he could help it.
“Apparently, he disagrees.”
“He always does when food’s concerned.” Hagrid shifted the stakes higher against his shoulder.
“Come on, Fang.”
The dog lingered long enough to give Fred’s pocket one final look before following.
They had gone several yards when George glanced back towards the castle.
“Think Mrs Norris does that?”
Adrian knew exactly where this was going.
“I’m not helping you interrogate Filch’s cat.”
Fred came up beside his brother.
“Interrogate sounds a bit strong.”
George nodded.
“We were thinking more along the lines of—”
“—a quiet conversation.”
Cedric laughed under his breath.
Adrian kept walking.
“Still no.”
…
They found the next cabinet on Sunday.
Owen found the key.
Beatrice found the cabinet after George walked past it twice.
Fred claimed he had known where it was all along but had wanted to see whether anyone else was paying attention.
Nobody bothered answering him.
The four tokens rested in their recesses exactly as before.
Beatrice removed the serpent.
Cedric held out his hand.
She passed it over.
Nothing happened.
He turned it once in his palm, then gave it to George.
George examined the underside, passed it to Fred, and Fred immediately offered it to Adrian.
Adrian took it.
Still nothing.
“So outside the cabinet, anyone can hold it,” Cedric said.
Owen leaned closer.
“Looks like.”
George took it back and placed it carefully into the recess.
Cedric reached in.
The serpent refused to move.
He tried once more, then shifted aside.
Beatrice reached past him and lifted it out as though it weighed nothing.
Cedric’s face changed.
“There.”
Adrian already had the notebook open.
Fred leaned over his shoulder.
“There what?”
“The restriction comes back when it’s returned.”
Owen was watching the serpent in Beatrice’s hand.
“Or the token recognises the recess.”
Cedric stopped.
Adrian handed him the pencil.
Cedric took it without looking away from the cabinet and added another line beneath the first.
Fred looked from the writing to the tokens.
“So we’ve answered one question and added another.”
“Several,” George said.
Fred sighed.
“Excellent.”
Adrian took the badger while George collected the lion.
Owen held the eagle, and for several minutes the little group passed them around, returned them, removed them again through Beatrice, and tested every harmless variation they could think of.
Nothing contradicted the first result.
On the walk back, Cedric was already talking through the next one.
“If the restriction only matters inside the cabinet, we ought to find out whether distance changes anything.”
George turned the token once between his fingers before handing it back.
“We’re not carrying one halfway across the castle.”
Cedric was still looking at the notes.
“I haven’t said we are.”
“You’ve got the look.”
Fred drifted back towards them.
“He’s planning something.”
Cedric ignored both of them and tapped the end of the pencil against the page.
“I’m trying to work out whether distance matters.
That doesn’t mean I’m putting one in my pocket and wandering off with it.”
George glanced at Fred.
Fred nodded gravely.
“Yet.”
Cedric looked up at last.
Adrian hid a smile and took the notebook before the argument could start all over again.
Finding the cabinet had answered where the tokens were.
That should have been enough for a while.
Instead, Cedric had become interested in everything the cabinet refused to explain.
Adrian understood the problem.
Once you knew a mystery had rules, it became very difficult to leave the rules alone.
…
Astronomy had never been Adrian’s least favourite subject, but sharing the tower with Slytherin had done its best to lower the ranking.
Avery and his friends had been at it since September.
Nothing dramatic most weeks, because they had learned fairly quickly how much they could get away with while Professor Sinistra’s attention was elsewhere.
A telescope would be shifted just enough to spoil an observation.
Notes would migrate beneath somebody else’s chart.
Someone would take Cedric’s place at a station and insist they had been there first.
The rest was mostly muttered comments designed to be heard without being loud enough to earn a detention.
Adrian had discovered that the easiest way to annoy them was simply not to give them what they wanted.
That evening, he reached for his star chart and found empty stone beneath his hand.
A quiet laugh came from his right.
Corbin Mulciber had rolled the parchment into a loose tube and was tapping it against his palm.
Avery remained bent over his telescope, apparently fascinated by the sky.
Adrian held out his hand.
Mulciber looked at it.
“Misplaced something?”
Adrian waited.
The cold had already worked through the fingertips of his gloves, and Professor Sinistra was moving between the farther stations.
He had another set of measurements to finish before the end of class and no interest in spending ten minutes pretending this was clever.
Mulciber’s smile began to thin.
“You could ask.”
Adrian kept his hand where it was.
Cedric had noticed from two stations away, but he stayed where he was.
This had happened often enough that he knew Adrian did not need rescuing from a stolen sheet of parchment.
Avery finally glanced over from his telescope.
“Go on, Mulciber.
He’ll stand there all night otherwise.”
Mulciber dropped the chart onto the table rather than handing it over.
“Thanks.”
That was worse.
He saw it immediately in Mulciber’s face.
Avery straightened.
“You really are an odd little sod, Clarke.”
Adrian smoothed the chart flat.
“Okay.”
Mulciber gave a short laugh, but there was very little amusement left in it.
“That’s all you’ve got?”
Adrian had already found the line he had been working on.
“Was I supposed to have more?”
Avery’s mouth tightened.
That was the problem.
Adrian had understood it months ago.
They wanted anger.
Embarrassment would do.
A raised voice was better.
Getting him into trouble was best of all, because then they could walk away knowing they had moved him exactly where they wanted.
Most of the time Adrian refused to move.
Avery leaned back against the stonework.
“Suppose that’s what happens when your father runs off to America.
You pick up their manners.”
Adrian marked the position of the star.
Cedric’s quill stopped for a moment.
Avery waited.
Nothing.
He tried again.
“Did your mother teach you that as well?”
Adrian’s pencil stopped.
The silence changed.
Mulciber noticed first.
So did Cedric.
Adrian lifted his eyes.
Avery’s expression had brightened slightly, because there it was at last: a reaction.
Adrian spoke quietly.
“You remember what happened the last time you dragged my mom into this?”
Mulciber looked away.
Avery did not.
There had been no wand involved then either.
Adrian set the pencil beside his chart.
“You can talk about me.
You can talk about my accent, my dad, America, whatever dumb thing keeps you entertained this week.
Say something about my mother again and I don’t care what punishment I get afterward.”
Cedric had gone very still.
Avery stared back at him.
Adrian did not raise his voice.
That probably made it worse.
He had already put one student on the floor earlier in the year when a wand had been shoved into his face at close range.
They knew what he could do with his hands, and unlike most children raised around magic, Adrian did not seem to require a wand before deciding somebody constituted a threat.
Mulciber shifted his weight.
“Bit touchy, aren’t you?”
Adrian picked up his pencil again.
“Try me.”
Professor Sinistra’s voice carried from the other side of the tower.
“Mr.
Avery, if your observations are complete enough to permit conversation, I shall be delighted to inspect them.”
Avery turned back to his telescope.
“They’re not, Professor.”
“Then I suggest you remedy that.”
Adrian bent over his chart again.
Cedric caught his eye from across the gap.
Adrian gave the smallest shake of his head.
Leave it.
Cedric did.
For perhaps five minutes, Astronomy returned to Astronomy.
Adrian found the constellation he needed, adjusted the telescope and began another measurement.
He was halfway through recording it when movement far below caught his attention.
Not in the sky.
He looked again.
Beyond the dark shapes of the greenhouses, where the maintained grounds gave way to rougher grass, something pale passed through the moonlight.
Adrian lifted his head from the telescope.
Another shape followed.
Then a third.
His pencil remained suspended over the chart as one of the creatures stepped fully into view.
The large round eyes gave it away first.
Its neck was long, its body narrow, and its legs looked almost comically thin beneath it.
Mooncalf.
Adrian moved closer to the parapet without thinking.
Cedric noticed him abandon the telescope.
“What is it?”
Adrian pointed instead of answering.
Cedric followed the gesture and came over, careful not to knock either set of charts loose in the wind.
Below them, another Mooncalf emerged into the open.
Then the dance began.
At first Adrian could not tell whether there was any order to it.
One creature stepped sideways while another turned behind it, their long legs and awkward bodies making the whole thing look almost clumsy from above.
Then the others joined, and the pattern resolved.
The herd moved together.
Circles widened across the grass and folded back into themselves.
Individuals crossed through one another’s paths without colliding, turning beneath the moon with a precision that made the ungainliness of their bodies irrelevant.
Every so often one would spring lightly to one side and another would answer the movement farther along the group.
The moonlight caught on their pale backs.
Adrian forgot about Avery.
He forgot about his unfinished measurement for several seconds too.
He had seen Mooncalves before.
There had been photographs in books and moving images on a screen, and he remembered thinking they were strange and wonderful even then.
Neither had prepared him for this.
There was something different about watching them continue when nobody had asked them to perform.
They were not there for Adrian.
They were not part of a scene waiting for a protagonist to arrive.
They had come out beneath the full moon because this was simply what Mooncalves did, and if Adrian had happened to be asleep instead, the dance would have gone on without him.
That thought made him smile.
It was why Fantastic Beasts had stayed with him when so much of the other story had faded into disconnected scenes and familiar names.
He liked Hogwarts.
He liked the moving staircases, the impossible ceiling, the ghosts and the thousand small pieces of magic that everyone raised here took for granted.
He knew there were larger things coming one day, things involving Harry Potter and people far more dangerous than a handful of first-year Slytherins trying to make themselves important.
But those things were not what had made him fall in love with this world.
This was.
A herd of strange, ridiculous-looking creatures dancing beneath the moon because magic had made room in the world for something like them to exist.
Adrian rested his forearms against the cold stone and watched.
Beside him, Cedric had stopped worrying about his own chart.
One Mooncalf broke from the pattern, bounded several yards across the grass and curved back towards the others.
The rest shifted around it so smoothly that Adrian wondered whether there was a structure to the dance that he simply could not see from this distance.
He wanted to know.
Of course he did.
The thought brought another name with it.
Newt Scamander.
Adrian’s copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was already swollen with loose pages, questions in the margins, underlined passages and notes about creatures he wanted to see for himself.
Scamander had spent decades doing exactly that.
Adrian had never understood the appeal of chasing famous people merely because everybody knew their names.
Newt was different.
If Adrian ever got the chance to meet him, he was taking it.
He already had enough questions to make the man regret agreeing.
“Mr.
Clarke.”
Professor Sinistra’s voice finally reached him.
Adrian straightened and turned.
She stood near his abandoned telescope.
One hand rested beside his chart.
“Sorry, Professor.”
Her eyes moved past him towards the grounds.
She found the herd almost immediately.
“Mooncalves.”
“Yeah.”
Sinistra looked at him.
Adrian corrected himself.
“Yes, Professor.”
The corner of her mouth moved, though not enough to become a smile.
“They will be there for some time.
Mars will not remain where you have left it simply because you have found something prettier to look at.”
Adrian glanced back at the grounds.
Cedric was already reluctantly moving towards his own telescope.
“I’ll finish the chart.”
“I rather hoped you might.”
Sinistra moved on.
From behind them came a faint scoff.
Avery.
Adrian did not bother turning around.
A few minutes earlier, that sound might have been followed by another comment about his father, America or whatever else Avery had decided mattered that evening.
Now there were Mooncalves dancing below the tower.
Avery simply could not compete.
…
By March, enough of the grounds had dried that students were beginning to spend more time outside again.
Cedric had taken to watching Quidditch practice whenever he could, and one Saturday Adrian found him near the pitch after finishing with Kettleburn.
Fred and George were already there, following one of the riders as he circled back towards the posts.
“Too early,” Fred said.
George kept his eyes on the player.
“You missed the turn.”
“I watched it.”
“You were talking through half of it.”
Fred waved that away.
“I can manage two things at once.”
Cedric let them carry on.
When the rider began another circuit, he leaned slightly towards Adrian.
“Watch his shoulder before he reaches the post.”
Adrian followed the approach more carefully this time.
The movement came before the broom visibly turned.
The rider shifted through his upper body, moving his weight just enough to begin setting the line before he reached the post.
A moment later the broom banked sharply and accelerated away.
“Oh.”
Cedric smiled without looking at him.
George traced the turn with one hand.
“There.
That’s what I meant.”
Fred folded his arms.
“Which is more or less what I said.”
George finally looked over.
“You said he turned too early.”
“He did start early.”
“No, that’s not—”
Cedric laughed, cutting the argument off before George could finish.
Adrian sat down in the grass as the rider came round again.
This time he caught the shoulder movement without Cedric pointing it out.
They stayed until practice finished.
By then Adrian wanted to try the turn himself, while Fred and George had somehow both reached the conclusion that they would already be quite good at it.
“We should ask Hooch if she’ll give us some practice time,” Adrian said as they started back towards the castle.
Fred was busy explaining why his balance would obviously be better than George’s.
“Natural ability.”
George gave him a look.
“You fell off the garden wall last summer.”
“That was sabotage.”
“You stepped backwards.”
“After being distracted.”
Cedric let them get several paces into the argument before saying, “Monday.”
Adrian looked over.
“I asked her yesterday.
She said to see her after the lesson.”
That stopped the twins.
George slowed.
“All of us?”
Cedric nodded.
Fred put a hand on his shoulder with exaggerated gravity.
“Diggory.”
Cedric’s eyes narrowed at once.
“We may have misjudged you.”
“Badly,” George added, coming up on his other side.
Cedric knocked Fred’s hand away.
“Keep that up and I’ll tell her you’ve both changed your minds.”
The twins fell suspiciously quiet.
Adrian laughed and kept walking, replaying the rider’s turn in his head as the castle came closer.