They boarded the Hogwarts Express back to King's Cross, a heavy, creepy silence clinging to the platform and following them all the way from Hogsmeade Station. The traumatic weight of the Triwizard Tournament's catastrophic ending hung thick.
The four of them managed to secure a compartment entirely to themselves. Once again, Ron's hyperactive owl, Pigwidgeon, was safely hidden away beneath a pile of his hideous, maroon dress robes to muzzle the bird from hooting continually. Hedwig was dozing peacefully on her perch, her snow-white head tucked neatly under her wing.
Crookshanks was curled up into a ginger ball in the tight space between Hermione and Lucifer, sleeping the rainy day away. Sheltered from the rest of the school, the four friends felt a massive wave of relief, finally able to talk more freely and fully than they had all week. They spent the hours whispering about what Albus Dumbledore was potentially organizing behind scenes to combat Lord Voldemort's return, only stopping their hushed theories when the rattling Lunch Trolley arrived outside their door.
Hermione volunteered to step out and handle the food orders. When she returned, sliding back into her seat while frantically stuffing her leftover coins into her canvas school bag, her bustling movements accidentally dislodged a folded copy of the 'Daily Prophet' she had been carrying.
She caught Harry's gaze and saw him staring fixedly at the wizarding newspaper.
"There's absolutely nothing in there," Hermione said, her voice dropping into a flat, disappointed tone. "You can look for yourself, Harry, but there's nothing at all. I've been checking every single morning. There was just a tiny piece printed the day after the Third Task saying you'd won the Tournament. They didn't even mention Cedric's death.... Nothing about any of it. If you ask me, Minister Fudge is using his office to force the editors to keep completely quiet."
"Nothing better than a good old state-run media to keep the sheep asleep..." Lucifer said, scoffing loudly as he leaned back against the headrest.
"He'll never keep someone like Rita Skeeter quiet," Harry countered, shaking his head. "Not on a massive, terrifying story like this."
"Oh, Rita hasn't written a single syllable since the Third Task ended," Hermione said in an oddly constrained, tight voice. "As a matter of fact," she added, her fingers tightening around her bag as her voice trembled slightly, "Rita Skeeter isn't going to be writing anything at all for a very long while. Not unless she wants me to completely spill the beans on 'her."
"What on earth are you talking about?" Ron asked, his eyebrow raising.
"Lucifer found out exactly how she was listening in on private conversations when she was banned from coming onto school grounds," She explained in a triumphant rush.
"How was she doing it?" Harry asked Lucifer at once, leaning forward.
"How did you even find out?" Ron asked simultaneously.
"Well, Lucifer actually brought the brilliance of the idea to me," Hermione said, eagerly reclaiming their attention. "He brought up the theory that what if Rita Skeeter could be absolutely anywhere she wanted at Hogwarts because her form was incredibly small and easily dismissed by the naked eye?"
"How?" Harry and Ron demanded together.
With a dramatic flourish, she reached deep into her school bag and pulled out a small, heavy glass jar. She had to forcefully suppress the sudden, dark urge to shake it wildly like it contained a handful of muggle toffees.
"Rita Skeeter can turn... into a beetle," Hermione revealed, her eyes flashing. "She's an unregistered Animagus."
"You're kidding," Ron spluttered, staring blankly at her. "You haven't... she's not..."
"Oh, yes she is," Hermione said fiercely, brandishing the clear jar right in front of their faces. Inside, beneath a few dry twigs and green leaves, was one large, fat, iridescent beetle. "Honestly, I'm just more surprised her inner form isn't a cockroach, given how utterly revolting and disgusting her personality is."
Lucifer just let out a sharp, genuine laugh and shook his head, watching the fat beetle inside begin to skitter around the glass in sheer, unadulterated terror as his eyes tracked it. Harry stared at the insect, a look of sudden enlightenment washing over his face.
"Ron! There was a beetle sitting on the stone statue the exact night we overheard Hagrid telling Madame Maxime about his mother!" Harry shouted.
"Exactly!" Hermione said, her voice trembling with righteous indignation. "And she was probably hidden on a tree branch outside the window when you were in Divination class and passed out from your scar aching. The Slytherins were clearly talking to her, feeding her malicious gossip to get those exclusive snippets. Remember when we saw Malfoy whispering directly into his cupped hands... right before Lucifer barged over to them and held Blaise Zabini by his throat? Of course the Slytherins wouldn't care about Skeeter violating the rules, even though she was legally banned from the grounds."
She took the glass jar back from Ron's outstretched hand and offered a brilliant, chilling smile down at the trapped insect.
"I've told her I'll let her out once the train reaches London," Hermione continued serenely, placing the jar back inside her school bag. "I've placed an 'Unbreakable Charm' on the glass, you see, so she physically cannot transform and shatter it. And I've laid down the law: she is to keep her poisoned quill entirely to herself for a whole year. We'll see if a year of silence can't break her habit of writing horrible, destructive lies about innocent people."
The compartment door suddenly slid open with a sharp, rattling crash.
"Very clever, Granger," Malcolm Graham's sneering voice cut through the room.
Crabbe and Goyle were looming right behind his shoulders in the narrow corridor. All three of the Slytherins looked significantly more pleased with themselves, more arrogant and openly menacing, than Lucifer had ever seen them look before.
"So," Malcolm said slowly, taking a deliberate, advancing step into the compartment. But he quickly caught Lucifer's shifting posture and strategically backed out into the doorway, second-guessing his own bravery. "You caught some pathetic, nosy reporter, and Potter is Dumbledore's golden boy again. Big deal."
His smirk widened, his lips curling back in a nasty sneer as Crabbe and Goyle leered over his head. Lucifer wasn't actively projecting any terrifying aura or drawing his wand at that exact millisecond, so the three bullies didn't feel immediately threatened.
"Trying entirely not to think about it, are we?" Graham asked softly, his eyes shifting maliciously to look around at all four of them. "Trying to play pretend that it hasn't actually happened?"
"Get out of here, Graham. You're worse than Malfoy," Harry said, his voice shaking with a rising, protective anger.
That comment only made Malcolm's smirk grow wider. "You've picked the absolute losing side, Potter!" he barked. His memory flashed back to the dark, smug look on Draco Malfoy's face earlier on the platform when he was comforting Pansy Parkinson and whispering in dark corners with Zabini and Nott. "Malfoy warned you on day one! He explicitly told you that you ought to choose your school company much more carefully, didn't he? When we all first met on this very train? He told you not to hang around with worthless, pathetic riffraff like this!"
He jerked his head insultingly toward Ron and Hermione. Lucifer took a deep, deliberate breath, steadying his lungs as he actively tried to remain calm.
"Too late for regrets now, Potter!" Graham taunted, stepping closer again. "They'll be the absolute first to go now that the Dark Lord has returned! Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first! Well—technically second—seeing as Diggory was—"
It happened in the span of half a heartbeat.
Hermione's eyes widened as she saw Lucifer snap, standing up from his seat with a terrifying, primal groan of fury that she hadn't heard from him in a very long time.
Arcs of blinding, crackling blue lightning suddenly erupted from Lucifer's bare fingertips, tearing through the air and hitting Graham square in the chest with an unwaning, brutal power.
The Slytherin violently fell to his knees on the floor of the corridor. Lucifer cut the current for a brief, agonizing second, letting the boy gasp, before yelling out as he unleashed the lightning again, completely 'electrocuting' Graham's thrashing body.
When Lucifer finally stopped the onslaught and began to aggressively march out of the compartment to finish the job, a panicked Crabbe and Goyle frantically grabbed Graham by his collar and ran for their lives down the corridor.
Lucifer turned his frame toward the fleeing boys, 'hell-bent' on following them through the carts and killing Graham outright. But Hermione leaped from her seat and desperately grabbed his rigid arm.
"Lucifer, please... please, just come back inside the compartment," She begged, her voice cracking.
Up and down the narrow train corridor, numerous compartment doors had flown open as students sought the source of the commotion. The onlookers' faces were instantly stricken with pure fear and horror at the sight of the violent magical display. In a synchronized wave of panic, they all slammed their doors shut, terrified of drawing his unbridled wrath onto themselves.
He slowly turned his face back toward Hermione, and all three of his friends caught their breath as they saw his glowing red eyes burning more intensely than ever before. He walked back into compartment and dropped heavily into his seat, trying to master his breathing. A moment later, Fred and George appeared at the doorway.
"Good show, Lucifer! Honestly, I've never seen Crabbe or Goyle move their fat legs so fast before," Fred said, a wide grin splitting his face as the twins stood in the threshold.
"Thought we'd come down and see what those three idiots were up to," George said matter-of-factly, stepping over the threshold. He and Fred both had their wands drawn, though they clearly hadn't needed to use them. "Should've known Lucifer would take all the bloody fun for himself," he prodded lightly, trying to break the tension.
Lucifer, however, wasn't laughing. His jaw remained clenched as he stared out the window, his mind trapped in a dark, sadistic loop. 'I just used the Cruciatus Curse on him... and it felt absolutely magnificent... the agonizing scream he emitted as his nerve endings were tortured with that spell... he thought, a dangerous, sadistic thrill running through his veins.
Fred quietly shut the compartment door, sliding onto bench. "Exploding Snap, anyone?" he proposed, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket.
Lucifer flatly declined to play, knowing that if his temper flared again, he'd likely lose control and incinerate the cards in his hand. He sat in moody silence until halfway through the fifth game, when Harry finally looked up from the table and voiced the question that had been bothering him.
"Are you two going to tell us, then? Who exactly it was you were blackmailing all year?"
George's cheerful expression soured, shifting into something dark. "Oh. That."
"It doesn't really matter now," Fred said, shaking his head impatiently as he shuffled the deck. "It wasn't important. Not in the grand scheme of things, anyway."
"It was Ludo Bagman, wasn't it?" Lucifer asked suddenly, his voice quiet, keeping his eyes fixed on the passing scenery outside.
"How did you—" George started, his eyes widening, but Lucifer cut him off without a glance.
"I had a sneaking suspicion ever since I first heard you two whispering about a wager back at the Quidditch World Cup," Lucifer stated smoothly. "Every single bet Bagman made with the spectators, he probably paid back using Leprechaun Gold, didn't he?"
"Yeah, the utter bastard did," Fred spat bitterly.
"We'd been trying to get him to answer our letters all year, but we had zero luck," George explained, leaning his elbows on his knees. "We thought it was just a genuine mistake at first. We figured if we just wrote to him and told him the gold had vanished, he'd cough up the real currency. But nothing doing. He ignored every single owl."
"In the end," Fred added, "when we finally cornered him here at Hogwarts, he turned pretty nasty. He told us we were far too young to be gambling anyway, and flatly refused to give us a single Knut."
"Which is highly ironic, considering how eager the idiot was to take our life savings at the World Cup," Lucifer reasoned, his mind calculating the pieces. "He was desperate for money, and I'm guessing he owed a massive debt to the Goblins?"
"Right in one," George sighed. "He borrowed loads of gold off them and hadn't paid back a single bit. A squad of Goblins cornered him in the woods right after the World Cup and took absolutely every single thing he had on his person, and it still wasn't anywhere near enough to cover what he owed.... The man hasn't got two Knuts to rub together. And you want to know how the absolute idiot tried to pay them back?"
"How?" Harry asked.
"He put a massive bet on you, mate," Fred said, looking at Harry. "He bet a mountain of gold on you to win the Triwizard Tournament outright. He bet against the Goblins."
"So 'that's' why he kept trying to corner me and help me cheat!" Harry said loudly, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. "Well, I technically did win, didn't I? So why can't he just pay you your gold now?"
"Because the Goblins play just as dirty as he does," George sighed, rubbing his temples. "They claim the tournament ended in a draw between you and Diggory, and Bagman's specific wager was that you would win it entirely on your own. So Bagman had to run for it. He bolted from the grounds right after the Third Task ended." He began dealing out another hand of cards for the rest of them, completely bypassing Lucifer, who still had absolutely no desire to join.
Hours later, the Hogwarts Express slowly clattered to a halt, pulling into the bustling, smoke-filled expanse of King's Cross Station. Lucifer grabbed his trunks, immediately making his way toward the exit with a fierce urgency, Hermione following right on his heels, and Ron bringing up the rear.
Lucifer looked around at the swarming crowds of mundane people on the platform, the adults who would soon be forced to reckon with the terrifying truths Dumbledore had just told their children. Families were running or walking up to students, pulling them into tight, emotional hugs before disappearing from the platform.
Through the sea of cloaks, he spotted Luna Lovegood standing beside a man with wild, shoulder-length blonde hair. Luna pointed directly toward Lucifer and said something to her father. He began to take a step forward to walk over and properly say goodbye, but Luna simply offered a dreamy wave and yelled across the noise, "See you on the Express on September First!" In the next blink, her father took her hand and 'Apparated' away with a sharp crack.
He walked through the barrier of Platform 9¾ alongside his friends, immediately spotting Harry's remarkably large Uncle Vernon standing a short distance away from Molly Weasley.
She pulled Harry into a fierce, maternal hug, whispering something quietly into his ear. Lucifer's advanced senses easily picked up the words, a warm, open invitation to come stay at the Burrow the moment he was allowed.
"See you, Harry," Ron said, clapping his friend firmly on the back.
"Bye, Harry! Take care of yourself!" Hermione said softly. She stepped forward and kissed the boy gently on his cheek, wishing him well for the dark summer ahead.
"If you find that you need any assistance over the summer with 'that," Lucifer said casually, slanting his chin toward the purple-faced Vernon Dursley, "just send me an owl."
"See here, boy—" Vernon started to bark, his beefy chest puffing out aggressively.
But the words died in his throat, and he stopped talking immediately when Lucifer turned his gaze and glared at him. His eyes flashed with a lethal, chilling look that clearly communicated he could end the man's life with a single thought if he wanted to.
Vernon grumbled under his breath, his bravado instantly evaporating into a nervous sweat, and Harry walked back toward the station exit with him without another word.
Lucifer watched their retreating figures disappear into the muggle crowd. Hermione stepped up to stand directly beside him, the Weasley family having departed a moment earlier toward the floo network.
"So... shall we wait together?" she asked softly.
"Of course," he said, his expression softening completely as he looked down at her.
The two of them walked over to a quiet wooden bench, sitting down to wait for her family to arrive and pick her up.
"Hermione?" he asked after a long moment of comfortable silence, capturing her attention. "If... if you find that you need me to help you, in absolutely any way whatsoever over these next few months... whether it's to assist your family medically, or even 'financially... you only have to let me know. And if you ever find yourself wanting to visit me at Lux, or if you just need a complete getaway from the Wizarding world for a little while, you just have to say 'Lux' clearly inside any fireplace connected to the Floo network, and you'll be brought straight there. I've personally keyed the wards so that it will only allow you passage... Anyone else who attempts to use the name to break into my quarters will be instantly burned alive by the green flames."
Hermione turned to look at him, her brown eyes 'full' of deep, touching gratitude. "Lucifer... thank you. I appreciate that more than you know, and honestly, I may truly need it before we go to visit Harry and Ron later this summer when he is finally allowed away from that horrible family."
She knew the coming weeks were going to be heavy, and having his absolute protection was a comfort she couldn't measure.
It turned out to be a slightly longer wait than usual on the bench, but eventually, her mother materialized through the station doors. It seemed to Lucifer, as he observed the woman approaching, that Jane Granger looked significantly better emotionally than the previous frantic descriptions he had received from Hermione.
The woman was smiling warmly, clearly holding herself together perfectly for her daughter's sake as she welcomed her home.
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