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Mind the fine print.
The castle is listening.
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By the time Percy told them to put the practice boards away, the Defense lesson had been over for hours.
Ron could still see the second desk.
It had stood behind Harry when Quirrell called him forward.
Harry had moved.
The spell had not stopped where Harry used to be.
Parchment had gone across the floor.
Quirrell had apologized.
Only after the bell, when he tried to keep Harry behind and Hermione objected, had Neville bent to pick up a sheet.
Ron remembered the sound the desk made against the stones.
He could not remember whether Quirrell had looked at it afterward.
“That one goes in first,” Percy said.
Ron looked down at the wooden board in his hands.
Percy had opened an unused classroom for the first-years’ evening practice and was already regretting the favor.
Flitwick had assigned them a wand-light charm to repeat until the light stayed steady for three breaths.
Half the room had produced a weak glow.
The other half had produced opinions about why the room was too bright to tell.
Now the hour was up, and Percy wanted the chairs back where he had found them.
“I’m listening,” Ron said.
“You are holding the front board.
It goes behind the others.”
“Then I’m holding the wrong one.”
“An encouraging start.”
Neville took the board from him and turned it sideways to fit through the cupboard door.
His hands had been steady enough during practice.
Ron had watched because he remembered them shaking around the fallen parchment in Defense and wished he had not noticed.
“Leave the door,” Neville said.
“It catches on the left.”
Ron held it open.
The cupboard smelled of old chalk and damp felt.
Two more boards waited by the wall.
Percy was stacking chairs at the far end, his badge flashing every time he bent.
Outside, students moved toward the common rooms in clusters that grew louder as they got farther from a teacher.
“When Quirrell cast at Harry,” Ron said, “the spell hit the desk behind him.”
Neville stopped with one corner of the board still in the cupboard.
“I saw.”
“I mean it didn’t just go where Harry had been.
If he calls one of us up, we ought to make sure no one’s standing behind.”
“I wasn’t standing there.”
“You went up after the bell, when Quirrell tried to keep Harry.”
“After Hermione spoke.
To pick up a sheet.”
Ron let go of the cupboard door before he could say that he knew.
It swung toward Neville’s elbow.
Neville caught it with his free hand, then pushed the board into place harder than he needed to.
“I saw you do it,” Ron said.
“That’s why I thought to tell you.”
“You could have told everyone.”
“Everyone wasn’t between a professor and Harry’s bag.”
Neville turned.
He had not expected anyone to notice that part.
Ron had, because Draco had been watching the aisle and because Ron had been trying to look as if blocking it was an accident.
Neville’s fallen sheet had given Harry another moment to leave.
It might have been an accident too.
Ron did not know, and asking would make Neville choose an answer for both of them.
“If it happens again,” Ron said, “you can get clear.
You don’t have to be the next thing in the way.”
Neville’s face closed.
“Harry wasn’t a thing.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You keep talking as though I stepped in front of a spell because I couldn’t find my feet.”
Ron could hear how his own words had sounded.
He reached for the joke before he could find a better sentence.
“Well, if anyone was handing out points for shaking, you and Hermione would’ve made a splendid team.”
Neville set the last board down.
The noise was small, but Percy looked up.
“I was frightened,” Neville said.
“I wasn’t playing for points.”
“I know that.”
“Then don’t make it funny.”
He walked back to the chairs.
Ron stayed with one hand on the cupboard door.
He had meant to keep Neville from standing near another demonstration.
Instead he had made Neville defend the one choice he had managed to make while afraid.
Ron shut the door carefully, which improved nothing.
Percy glanced between them.
“Whatever happened, resolve it without damaging school property.
I have enough paperwork.”
“We haven’t damaged anything,” Ron said.
“A statement best made after you’ve finished putting things away.”
Neville carried two chairs to the wall.
Ron took the next pair.
On the blackboard, somebody had written THREE BREATHS in large letters and drawn a little star beneath it.
There was no star in the assignment.
One of the younger boys had wanted to make success look as though it might be visible from the back row.
Ron tried to think of something to say without using the words sorry for the way it came out.
That was the sort of apology Fred could make sound sincere while ensuring everyone knew the other person had misunderstood.
Ron had heard too many of them to trust one from himself.
“I know you weren’t playing for points,” he said when he reached Neville.
Neville kept his eyes on the chair legs.
“You said it.”
“I did.
I wanted you to stop looking at me like I’d called you a coward.”
“I wasn’t looking at you like that.”
“No.
You were looking at me like I was one.”
Neville put his chairs down.
“That isn’t what I meant either.”
Ron almost laughed, not because it was funny but because the two of them had managed to turn a warning into a fight neither could name.
He held the laugh in.
Neville had told him what a joke cost in this room.
Percy had gone to check the corridor before locking up.
The classroom door remained open.
There were four chairs left, a box of spent candle stubs and a narrow practice mat rolled under a cabinet.
Ron could see the mat’s strap if he leaned down.
Neville had been the one to borrow it.
“I’ll get that,” Ron said.
“I can.”
“You’ve done the boards.”
Ron knelt.
He reached under the cabinet and found dust, a broken quill and the cold buckle of the strap.
When he pulled, the buckle caught on a nail.
He could have moved the cabinet with Neville’s help.
He did not want to ask Neville for help while their last sentences were still lying on the floor between them.
The space beneath the cabinet was dark.
Ron lifted his wand.
“Don’t,” Neville said.
“It’s a light charm.
We just spent an hour on it.”
“Percy told us to put the wands away while we cleaned.”
Ron looked at the buckle, then at Neville.
“I only need to see the nail.”
“Then wait.
I can move the cabinet.”
Ron said the charm before Neville could reach him.
The tip of his wand gave a bright, ugly snap.
There was no steady light, only a spit of sparks that went under the cabinet and caught the mat’s frayed edge.
Ron jerked his hand back.
The buckle tore free at the same moment.
The rolled mat came out with a thread of orange at one end.
Neville stepped on it.
The flame went out, but not before the heat bit through his shoe.
He took his foot away with a sharp breath.
Ron dropped the mat and stamped on the smoking part himself.
Black powder rose from the felt.
“Are you burned?” Ron asked.
Neville lifted his shoe.
The leather had darkened across the toe.
His sock was intact.
“I think it’s mostly the shoe.”
“Take it off.”
“I can feel my toes.”
“That’s not the same question.”
Neville stared at him.
The words were almost the ones Ron had used about the desk, only now there was a shoe between them and Ron was the one who had made the danger.
Neville sat on a chair and pulled it off.
The skin across the top of his foot was red but not blistered.
His fingers shook while he undid the laces.
Percy returned before Ron could decide whether to fetch water or hide the mat.
He smelled the burnt felt first.
“What happened?”
“I tried the light charm under the cabinet,” Ron said.
“It sparked.
Neville put the mat out.”
Percy’s eyes went to Neville’s foot.
“Shoe back on.
We’re going to the infirmary.”
“It’s only red,” Neville said.
“And Pomfrey can tell us whether it stays only red.”
Ron picked up the mat.
Percy took it from him by the unburned end.
A dark mark ran along the floorboards under the cabinet.
It would not come off with a quick wipe, even if they had time to try.
“Neville told me.”
“I am relieved one of you heard the instruction.”
Ron waited for Percy to add a lecture about using his wand because he was impatient.
Percy looked at the mat, then at Neville balancing on one shoe.
He had another job to do first.
They went down the corridor at Neville’s pace.
Ron carried Neville’s bag and his own.
Neville did not thank him.
Ron did not ask him to.
The door to the classroom shut behind Percy with a sound that felt more final than the hour of practice deserved.
Madam Pomfrey examined Neville’s foot, applied a cool salve and told him to keep the shoe off until morning.
She asked who had cast.
Ron answered before Percy could.
“I did.
It was supposed to be light.”
“What it was supposed to be is seldom the part that hurts,” she said.
“Hold still, Mr.
Longbottom.”
Neville looked at Ron over the edge of the bed.
His expression was not grateful or angry.
It was tired.
That was worse in a way Ron could not complain about.
Percy said he would tell Flitwick about the damaged mat and the unsafe practice.
Ron would lose the open classroom for the rest of the week and help replace the mat after lessons tomorrow.
Neville would not be named as the caster.
Percy asked whether Neville wanted to report anything else.
“I told him not to cast,” Neville said.
“Then I put it out.
That’s all.”
He had not said Ron was trying to help.
Ron was glad he had not.
The help had been an excuse for ignoring him.
Percy left to speak to Flitwick before the professor retired.
Pomfrey went to another bed.
Ron stood with both bags in his hands, unable to make himself go.
“You don’t have to wait,” Neville said.
“I’ve got your bag.”
“You can leave it there.”
Ron set it beside the bed.
He considered the sentence he had been avoiding since the cupboard.
“I was wrong about you this afternoon.
You knew where you were standing.
I wanted you away from the next spell, and I made a joke because I couldn’t say that without sounding frightened.”
Neville looked down at the red skin on his foot.
“You were frightened.”
“Yes.”
“So was I.”
Ron nodded.
He could not improve the fact by explaining it.
“What did you actually see?” Neville asked.
“In Defense?
The spell hit the desk behind Harry after he moved.
You picked up a sheet near the front.
I didn’t see why Quirrell cast as hard as he did.”
“I didn’t either.”
“I know.”
Neville rubbed the edge of the blanket between his fingers.
“If someone asks, tell it like that.
Not that I was in the way.”
“I will.”
“And don’t tell them I helped because I’m brave.”
Ron looked at him.
“Why not?”
“Because next time I’ll think I have to.”
That took Ron longer to understand than it should have.
He had grown up with brothers who made dares out of breakfast and courage out of every refusal to back down.
Neville had spent the day trying to be useful without turning himself into a dare.
“All right,” Ron said.
“You picked up a page.
You put out a mat.
Neither makes you Quirrell’s next volunteer.”
Neville’s mouth moved, almost a smile.
“The mat wasn’t volunteering.”
“No.
It was drafted by an idiot with a wand.”
This time Neville let the joke stand.
Ron was relieved and disliked needing the relief.
He left the infirmary with the smell of scorched felt still in his robes.
There was no plan to carry to Harry, no name to write under Quirrell’s, no tidy answer to what had happened in class.
Tomorrow he would replace a mat and tell Flitwick exactly whose spell had failed.
If Neville asked him to repeat what he had seen, Ron could do that without adding a reason he did not know.
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