Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 25: The Brother's Shadow
A month went by after his last encounter with the shadow figure.
The leaves on the trees around the Black Lake turned from green to gold, then to brown, then fell altogether, carpeting the grounds in a crunchy blanket that crumbled under the students' shoes.
The air grew crisp and cold, and the first hints of frost began to appear on the windows of the castle each morning.
Harry had not seen the ghost again.
He had walked the corridors at night, alone, hoping for another glimpse of the dark figure so he could learn more.
He had stood by the lake after dark, staring into its murky depths. He had even returned to the seventh-floor corridor where the figure had cornered him, pacing back and forth, whispering into the empty air.
Nothing.
The whispers had stopped. The shadow at the edge of his vision had vanished. The figure in the lake had not returned.
Harry should have been relieved. Instead, he was frustrated.
'He wanted something from me,' Harry thought.' I need to find out what it was.'
But the ghost had other plans, it seemed. Or perhaps it could not control when it appeared.
Harry remembered how faint it had been...semi-translucent, barely visible, its words slurred and broken. It was not like the other ghosts of Hogwarts, who drifted through walls and chatted with students as if they were still alive.
This ghost was different. Perhaps it was still new and couldn't control its new form of existence, or perhaps it had been damaged somehow.
Harry kept this secret to himself. He did not tell Draco, Pansy, or Crabbe about the ghost. Not because he didn't trust them, but because he had nothing to show. No evidence at all, just his word about what happened.
Also, he could not shake the feeling that the ghost was waiting for something. Maybe it was waiting for him to be more ready to learn what it was trying to say, or perhaps it was waiting for the opportune moment to show itself again.
So Harry waited.
Defence Against the Dark Arts became Harry's favourite class.
Professor Andromeda Tonks was a tall, slender woman with light brown hair streaked with grey, always pulled back into a loose knot at the nape of her neck.
Her face was kind but tired, with faint lines around her eyes that deepened when she smiled...which was not often. She wore robes of deep blue, and a small silver badge on her chest bore her name and title.
She was stern and serious. She did not tolerate fooling around, and she had a sharp tongue for students who did not pay attention.
But he had to admit that she was a fair professor.
Harry had noticed it from the first lesson. Unlike McGonagall, who seemed to enjoy making students squirm, or Snape, whose kindness felt like a mask, Tonks treated them like human beings. She explained things clearly, answered questions patiently, and when a student struggled, she did not mock them or dismiss them...instead, she helped them understand.
"The Dark Arts are not something to be feared," she had said on the first day. "They are something to be understood. Fear leads to panic...panic leads to mistakes, and mistakes lead to death. Do you understand?"
The class had nodded.
"Good. Then let us begin."
Professor Tonks had taught them about some dark creatures first. Like the ones that lurked in the Forbidden Forest and the darker corners of the country, like imps, gytrashes, and vampires.
She had shown them how to identify a werewolf bite and the basic first aid for one. She had explained why ghosts, while not dangerous, could sometimes carry curses or bindings from their lives.
Harry had paid particular attention to that last part.
Then she had moved on to practical spells.
The first was the Knockback Jinx: Flipendo. Harry had struggled with it at first, his wand movements being a bit too shaky, his intention too scattered. But Tonks had stayed after class to help him.
"You need to focus your intent, to truly visualize the spell inside your mind before attempting to cast it," she had said, her dark eyes fixed on his wand tip. "You're trying too hard. The Flipendo is not about pushing magic out. It is about a sharp, focused burst. Imagine you are shoving something away with your mind, not your wand. Relax your shoulders. Clear your mind. Try again."
Harry had tried again and made the training dummy stagger a little bit.
"Better," Tonks had said. "Practice, Mister Potter. It is all a matter of practice. You will improve very quickly as long as you are diligent with your training."
She had become his favourite teacher almost without him noticing.
<><><><><><><><><>
October turned into November. The first snowfall dusted the castle towers, and the students began to wear their winter cloaks.
One grey morning, the first-years filed into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom for their double period. The room was warm thanks to a fire crackling in the hearth at the far end. Professor Tonks stood at the front, her arms crossed, and her expression as unreadable as ever.
"Today," she said, "we will be practicing the Verdimillious Charm. This spell produces a jet of green sparks that can reveal hidden magical residue and, at higher levels, cause minor damage to dark creatures. It is a useful diagnostic tool. Pay attention to the wand movement...it is a simple but sharp downward flick."
She demonstrated on a dark wooden box. Green sparks erupted from her wand, crackling around the box. A faint, sickly glow appeared on its surface.
"That glow indicates dark magic residue," Professor Tonks explained. "The Verdimillious Charm is not a combat spell, but it can help you identify what you are facing. Remember that knowledge is half the battle."
She then separated them into pairs and had them practice on a plain piece of parchment to get the wand movement correct. Then, once they had the motion down, they would try the spell on the dark box.
Harry was paired with Pansy. Something that he was grateful for, considering that the Gryffindors were sharing the classroom.
They stood side by side, practicing the wand movement. It was a downward flick. Simple enough, but Harry's spark appears to be weak and barely visible.
"You are hesitating too much," Pansy pointed out. "Just do it."
"That is easy to say..." Harry muttered. Spellcasting may appear simple from the outside, but producing the perfect wand movements while focusing on moving their magic and keeping a mental image of the spell AND saying the words, all at the same time...was not that easy.
Pansy raised her wand. "Verdimilious." A strong jet of green sparks shot from her wand, hitting the dark box. A bright green glow appeared on its surface.
Tonks walked between the pairs, observing, offering quiet corrections. When she reached Harry and Pansy, she stopped.
"Very good, Miss Parkinson," she said. "Your brother had a talent for the Verdimillious as well. I remember teaching him in this very room. He could detect dark magic residue that even I missed." She paused. "I have high expectations for you. Don't waste them."
She moved on.
Pansy's face went very still. Her hands, which had been steady all lesson, trembled slightly.
'Her brother,' Harry thought. 'She never talks about him...could something have happened to him?' He recalls how awkward everyone gets around Pansy when the topic of family comes up.
He filed the observation away and said nothing.
<><><><><><><><>
After class, as the students packed their bags and moved out of the room, Harry caught up to Pansy in the corridor.
"Hey," he said. "Are you alright?"
"Fine," she said, too quickly.
"You don't look fine."
Pansy stopped walking. She turned to face him, her dark eyes looked slightly red.
"What do you want, Harry?"
"I want to know what happened," he said. "With your brother. When Professor Tonks mentioned him, it made you look… sad."
Pansy was silent for a long moment. Then she sighed.
"Not here," she said. "Walk with me."
They left the main corridor and found a quiet staircase that led to an abandoned turret. No one else was around, and the only sounds were the wind whistling through a cracked window and the distant chatter of students from the floors below.
Pansy sat on the stone steps and hugged her knees to her chest.
"My family is a mess," she said. "You probably already know that. My father is in Azkaban. My mother is dead, and I was raised by a half-blood uncle who doesn't care about me...he only took me in because the Ministry paid him to."
Harry sat beside her. "I didn't know that." He did know some of it, to be honest. But he never shared the contents of that history book he found under the bookshelf with his friends.
"Not many know about it, I suppose. The Parkinsons used to be an important wizard house. Old blood, old money. But after the war…" She laughed bitterly. "After the war, we had nothing. The Ministry took everything we had, our properties, and all the contents of our vault. My father was declared a traitor for siding with the Dark Lord. My mother was an idiot who married him..."
"Pansy…"
"The only good thing in my life was my brother." Her voice cracked. "Alistair."
"Was..." Harry muttered. Already guessing where this was going.
"He was six years older than me," Pansy continued. "He took care of me when our parents were gone. He taught me how to read, how to write, and how to hold a wand. He was the only one who believed I could be more than just 'the traitor's daughter.' And then…" She stopped.
"And then what?" Harry asked softly.
"And then...he disappeared while attending his sixth year at Hogwarts."
Harry's blood ran cold. "Disappeared?"
"The school said he went on an unauthorised excursion into the Forbidden Forest," Pansy said, her voice flat. "They said he got lost. They searched for weeks, but they never found his body."
Harry tried to recall the first conversation he had with Pansy, where she mentioned her brother. They were talking about the Weasleys, and she said. "They can make your life at school completely miserable if they want to. Like they did to my older brother."
"Pansy...do you think someone did something to your brother?" Harry asked.
Pansy turned to look at him. Her eyes were wet, but she was not crying.
"Of course!" she exclaimed. "Alistair was not stupid. He would never go into the Forest alone, at night, without telling anyone. He was a prefect. He always followed the rules because he knew the consequences of breaking them." She paused. "Something happened to him, Harry. I know it. But I can't prove it. And no one at this school will help me."
Harry's mind was racing. Pansy's brother was six years older and died in Hogwarts...that would mean this happened very recently, last year at most.
A terrible thought came to him. What if...this is why that ghost looked so familiar to him.
He looked at Pansy...at her black hair, her dark eyes, the shape of her face.
'She has the same eyes,' he realised. 'The same nose, and the same sharp jaw as that ghost.'
"Pansy," he said carefully, "what did Alistair look like?"
Pansy blinked, caught off guard by the question. "Why do you want to know?"
"I'm just… curious," Harry said. "You've told me so much about him. I want to picture him."
Pansy studied his face for a moment. Then she shrugged.
"He was tall," she said. "Taller than most boys his age. He had long black hair because he refused to cut it, even when our uncle nagged him about it. He had had a sharp face like our father and our mother's eyes...pure black, just like mine. People said they were cold, but they weren't. Not to me."
Harry felt shivers.
'It's him.' The ghost that had been haunting him is Alistair.
'But why is he haunting the castle? And why is he trying to talk to me instead of his sister?'
If he had something important to say about his death, it would make more sense for the ghost to look for his family instead of some random person he had never met.
'And why does he keep whispering my name?' Harry had the feeling he was still missing a few pieces.
"Harry?" Pansy's voice broke through his thoughts. "Why are you asking all these questions?"
Harry hesitated. He wanted to tell her, he wanted to say, "You know?, I think I've seen the ghost of your brother. He has been following me around for a while." But the words became stuck in his throat.
'If I tell her, she'll want evidence. She'll definitely want to see him, too. And I dont even know where he is.'
And then there was something else that bothered him. Every night, he would see the ghost floating inside the Black Lake.
One thing he knew about ghosts was that they tend to remain close to their bodies' final resting place.
This meant there was a good chance that Alistair Parkinson's body was currently rotting inside the lake and not in the Black Forest.
'Could the school have lied to Pansy about what truly happened to her brother?' He did not have a hard time believing this after what he had learned so far.
"Harry? Are you listening to me?" Pansy shook his shoulder after receiving no response.
"Sorry, I was just lost in thought..." Harry said. "Your brother...he sounds like he was a great person."
Pansy nodded. "He was."
They sat in silence for a while, watching the snow fall past the cracked window.
Then Pansy stood up.
"I should go," she said. "I have a Transfiguration essay to finish."
Harry nodded and let her go by herself. He could tell that Pansy wanted to be alone for a bit.
He remained seated for a few more minutes and then stood up.
'I need to find out what happened to that boy.' He felt even more determined than before to get to the bottom of this.
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