Felix wrote the letter that night.
He sat on his bed with the dagger resting beside him on the blanket, a fresh sheet of parchment spread across his lap and a quill in his hand, and he thought for a long time before he put ink to paper.
He had written to his parents before, of course — short notes since term started, the kind of thing every first-year sends home in the first weeks — but this was different.
This was a letter he had been told to write.
This was a letter that meant something.
He kept it short.
Mother, Father —
Professor McGonagall has taken an interest in my education.
She has asked me to tell you that she will be teaching me privately, twice a week, outside of my normal lessons.
She said you would understand what that means.
I did something in Transfiguration today that I cannot fully explain.
I will tell you about it when I see you at Christmas.
For now, I will say only that I think this is what Andros was writing about.
I am well.
Kratos is well.
I will write again soon.
— Felix
He read it twice, folded it, and sealed it with a plain wax stamp.
Then he went up to the owlery and sent it off into the dark, and he stood at the window for a moment watching the owl disappear against the night sky before he turned and went back down to the common room.
He did not tell Fred or George about the letter.
He did not tell Jonah, or Lee, or anyone else.
He filed it away the way he filed everything else, and he went to bed.
The next morning, Felix woke to the smell of something burning.
It took him a moment to place it.
Then he realized it was coming from the window, and he looked over to see Fred holding a piece of parchment near the candle on the bedside table, waving the smoke away with one hand.
“What are you doing?” Felix asked.
Fred looked up, unbothered.
“Phase two.”
“It’s six in the morning.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
“Percy’s awake at five. He’s always awake at five.” Fred waved the smoking parchment again.
“This has to be sent before breakfast, or the timing’s wrong.”
Felix sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“What’s phase two?”
Fred grinned, and then George’s voice came from the other side of the room — he was sitting on his bed, already dressed, with a stack of parchment on his lap.
“We’re taking the audit seriously,” George said.
“Percy submitted his first set of copies yesterday. We’re going to write back and tell him there’s been a problem with the format.”
“What kind of problem?”
“He used the wrong ink.”
Felix looked at him.
“He used ink.”
“He used black ink. The Ministry requires blue.” George held up one of the parchments.
“At least, that’s what we’re going to tell him.”
Felix looked at the parchment, then at Fred, then back at George.
“How long are you planning to keep this up?”
Fred shrugged.
“Until it stops being funny.”
“When will that be?”
George smiled.
“We’ll let you know.”
The letter went out before breakfast.
Felix watched Percy receive it at the Gryffindor table — the older boy’s expression went from composed to confused to quietly panicked in the space of about ten seconds — and then Percy stood up and walked out of the Great Hall without eating anything, and Fred and George exchanged a look that said everything.
Felix helped himself to toast and tried not to smile.
The rest of the day was ordinary.
Charms with Flitwick, where Felix levitated his feather on the first attempt again and Flitwick nodded at him with the same thoughtful expression he had worn in the first lesson.
Herbology with Professor Sprout, where Jonah nearly got bitten by something in a potting shed and had to be rescued by Lee Jordan, who spent the rest of the lesson telling anyone who would listen about his heroism.
And History of Magic with Binns, where Fred and George passed notes back and forth and Felix took notes that he would never need.
By the time dinner came around, Felix was tired in a way that felt good — the kind of tired you feel after a day spent doing something, even if most of what you did was sit and listen and take notes.
He found a seat at the Gryffindor table between Fred and Jonah and helped himself to roast chicken.
The Hall was loud, the way it always was at dinner, and Felix let the noise wash over him while he ate and half-listened to Fred and George argue about something that had happened in Herbology.
And then he looked up at the High Table. Find the original chapter at g.com.
He did not know why he looked up.
He had looked at the High Table a hundred times since arriving at Hogwarts — every meal, every day, the professors sat there in a long line at the front of the Hall and every student looked at them at some point without really seeing them.
But this time was different.
This time, something caught his eye, and he looked, and then he kept looking.
Professor McGonagall was sitting near the center of the table, and she was leaning toward Professor Flitwick, and she was speaking.
Flitwick was listening with his head tilted at an angle, and beside him, Professor Snape was watching both of them with an expression that Felix could not read.
And then Dumbledore leaned in.
The four of them — McGonagall, Flitwick, Snape, and Dumbledore — were huddled together at the center of the High Table, speaking in low voices that Felix could not hear from across the Hall.
McGonagall was doing most of the talking.
Flitwick was nodding.
Snape was watching McGonagall with an expression that looked almost like disagreement, but he was not interrupting.
And Dumbledore was listening to all of them with his hands folded in front of him and his eyes half-lidded, the way he always looked when he was paying more attention than he appeared to be.
Felix watched them for a long moment.
Jonah noticed him looking.
“What is it?”
Felix did not answer.
He kept watching the High Table, and something cold and quiet settled in his chest — not fear, not exactly, but the same feeling he had felt in Ollivanders when the wand had chosen him.
The feeling of something happening that he did not fully understand yet, but that he knew, with the certainty of long practice, was going to matter.
“Felix?” Jonah said.
Felix looked away from the High Table and back at his plate.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Just looking.”
He went back to his dinner, and Fred and George went back to their argument, and the noise of the Great Hall rolled on around them.
But Felix kept thinking about what he had seen.
He kept thinking about it while he finished his chicken and while he ate his pudding and while he walked back up to Gryffindor Tower with Fred and George and Jonah.
He kept thinking about it while he got ready for bed.
And when he finally fell asleep, he was still thinking about it — the four of them, huddled together at the High Table, speaking in low voices about something that Felix was almost certain was him.