S1E4 — : Charms, Chaos, and Controlled Variables
Ravenclaw's door asked, "What's always on the way but never arrives?"
"Tomorrow," Corvus said, and the bronze eagle swung inward as if disappointed he hadn't needed to think.
The tower smelled of ink waking up. He slipped the locket beneath his collar, palmed the black coin until it warmed like a small opinion, and headed down. The staircases behaved—only two capricious swivels before breakfast—and he rewarded them with a pat on the newel post and a murmured, "Good taste."
In the Great Hall the ceiling wore a temperamental sky. Gryffindors buzzed with rumors: a broom, a dive, a catching—not a Quaffle, a glass ball—and McGonagall walking away with eyes like sharpened silver. Harry Potter's name hissed around the tables like steam from a kettle someone had forgotten to turn off. Corvus buttered toast, timed the goblets (two and a half seconds still), and filed rumor as interesting, not my circus.
Hufflepuff waved him over as he passed. "You owe us biscuits," Hannah said.
"I owe you data," Corvus said gravely. "Biscuits are a delivery mechanism."
Susan slid him a folded scrap: Halo worked. Pince didn't hiss once.
He tapped the note to his chest. "Blessed be the quiet," he said.
Two identical shadows fell across his plate. Fred and George: identical grins, identical posture, identical inability to look innocent. Daphne Greengrass materialized a half-step later, cool as a quill freshly dipped.
Fred lowered his voice. "Controlled Variables convene?"
"Laboratory conditions secured?" George added.
Daphne's gaze flicked to the staff table, then back. "Five minutes. Fourth gargoyle."
Corvus raised his goblet. "To non-destructive chaos and the documentation thereof," he said, and they all drank water like it was contraband.
---
Lab, Found
The hidden classroom behind the fourth gargoyle had learned their footfalls. It creaked in welcome. Dust motes practiced choreography in the slices of light. Corvus laid out parchment and a neat row of feathers; Fred and George set a battered valise on the table and opened it like stage magicians. Inside: joke-shop detritus, string, a set of bells liberated from a cat collar, and three small vials of something labeled Don't.
Daphne dropped a satchel of Slytherin respectability onto a chair and, with the air of a duchess at cards, produced a clockwork mouse. "It bites anyone who isn't me," she said. "For motivation."
Corvus grinned. "Agenda," he announced, chalk in hand. "Our remit: Proper mischief. Rules: reversible, measurable, kind in the kernel. Today's target: sound."
"Sound as in bang?" George said, hopeful.
"Sound as in behavior," Corvus said. "Acoustics as a suggestion. Charm that makes crockery hum in tune with conversation tone, encouraging people toward not being dreadful at breakfast."
Daphne arched an eyebrow. "Tea that calls you out for being a bore."
"Tea that rewards you for not being one," Corvus corrected. "Positive reinforcement."
Fred drummed his fingers. "Name it."
"Teacup Choir, CV-004," Corvus said, writing. "Hypothesis: when people hear pleasant harmony while speaking kindly, they will continue doing so. When harmony thins because they're being cutting, they will adjust to restore the sound."
George tied bells to the valise handle. "You want to make the Hall self-tuning."
"Only our corner," Corvus said. "Proportional power, localized effect. We're not redecorating Dumbledore's dining room."
Daphne's clockwork mouse clicked its teeth. "Test group?"
"Ravenclaw's right end," Corvus said. "We're the least likely to punch anyone if it goes wrong."
He sketched the charm in air—delicate filigree of quietus pared to a whisper, a whisper of sonorus throttled to suggestion, tied to a syllable-detection net that only woke for kind words and careful listening. The magic liked the shape. It rose off his wand like steam and settled into a cluster of porcelain cups they'd smuggled down from the tower.
"Proof," Daphne said.
"Data," Corvus replied, and poured tea. "Say something nice."
Fred leaned toward George. "Your face is a public service."
The cups thrummed a mellow, contented chord.
"Something sincere," Corvus said, resisting a smile.
George looked at Daphne. "You scare me in a way that improves my posture."
A higher harmony threaded through the first. Daphne's mouth tilted. "Acceptable."
Corvus flicked the charm's throat. "Now something rude, but whispered."
Fred, very softly: "Professor Binns is a nap in a tie."
The harmony thinned, not unpleasant, but noticeably. The cups held the note like a choir surprised to be off-key.
"Self-correcting," Corvus murmured. "Good." He slotted the charm into a ready-made scaffold that would hang over three feet of table and nowhere else. "We'll deploy at lunch for five minutes. Maximum. Then we watch."
Daphne tapped her watch face with a nail. "Then we don't get caught."
"Then," Fred said solemnly, "we definitely get caught, but in a charming way."
"Flitwick will sense the signature," George warned.
"I will confess to the concept and present the documentation," Corvus said. "He will award points begrudgingly and tell me to label it better."
"On brand," Daphne said, amused.
---
Alohomora & the Ethics of Doors
Charms before lunch: Flitwick radiant, classroom buzzing. "Today—doors! The etiquette of entering! Alohomora is a tool; you must promise me to use it with the elegance of good manners."
He demonstrated; latches obeyed like well-trained terriers. Then he had them practice on a row of enchanted boxes that sassed and sulked.
Corvus tried once; the lock chittered, unimpressed. He adjusted his grip, remembered the coin at his chest, and the way a key can be an answer or a question depending on tone.
He asked the lock, in so many syllables, whether it wanted to open for him. Something warmer than technique threaded the spell.
Click.
Flitwick's eyes sharpened. "Mr. Black. Again."
Corvus repeated the motion. This time the lock stayed shut. He hadn't asked; he'd told. He corrected the impulse, softened the request, and the box popped obligingly.
"Very good," Flitwick said. "Remember—doors have purposes. You are persuading, not bullying."
"Noted," Corvus said, tucking the feeling away with twenty others.
On their way out, Flitwick's hand brushed the edge of his desk. "And, Mr. Black—hypothetically—if a… sonorous experiment were to occur in a dining context, it would be wise to ensure it ends itself."
"Hypothetically," Corvus said, deadpan, "five minutes, self-sheathing."
"Splendid," Flitwick beamed, and pretended to shuffle papers.
---
Teacup Choir (CV-004) — Trial 1
They took the far right of the Ravenclaw table, nearest the windows. The ceiling had leveled out into a dignified grey. Corvus hung the charm in the air like a lace canopy and anchored it to three cups and one jug. It breathed once—barely—and went still.
At first, nothing.
Then Susan sat within the radius with a stack of notes, said, "Hannah, your handwriting is prettier than mine," and the cups answered with a low, content chord that made nearby shoulders drop an inch.
Two seats over, a third-year began muttering about someone's essay. The harmony grew thin as paper. The third-year blinked, glanced around, and, as if surprised to hear themselves, switched to, "We can compare notes later if you want."
Harmony returned like sunlight.
Five minutes. The charm faded on its own like a song ending on purpose. No sparks. No scolding. Just the quiet, the sort that makes people realize they'd been shouting without noticing.
Daphne raised her goblet a fraction. "Acceptable," she murmured.
Across the Hall, Snape looked up, hunting a disturbance with predator's patience. Flitwick coughed into his goblet to hide a smile. Corvus kept his face carefully neutral and wrote, on his napkin, CV-004: effective; more honey, less vinegar; test at breakfast with Slytherin adjacency.
As they stood to go, Fred breathed, "We are going to turn this school into a polite revolution."
"Politeness is a weapon," Corvus said. "And it leaves fewer stains."
---
A Knock with a Question
Afternoon drifted toward Library O'Clock. Corvus broke away and slipped back to the hidden classroom. The coin in his pocket warmed as he crossed the threshold; the room's small, patient magic uncreased itself like a cat.
He set his palm to the wood he'd marked and knocked—two knuckles, once. "Question," he said. "What are you for?"
The dust took its time, then swirled across the old slate in a single word, chalk pulling itself from air: Listening.
"Good," Corvus said. "Me too."
He drew a plan on the board: a map of their proper mischiefs, a network of small kindnesses disguised as pranks. In the corner he wrote his father's line: Not by blood noble, but by choice. The room's light shifted as if the sun had remembered a different window.
He took out the locket, lay it beside the coin on the desk, and didn't open it—again. Experiments required patience. Also spine. He had both today.
On his way out, the corridor gave him a chill, the kind that isn't about temperature. A wrong harmony, faint as a splinter in a song, somewhere above. He touched the coin through his shirt. It cooled, then warmed, like a heartbeat steadying.
"Tomorrow," he promised the stones. "We listen closer."
The staircases, merciful, took him where he asked. The bronze eagle let him in on the first try.
Night pressed at the windows. Corvus wrote three lines in the Mystery Log before sleep caught his sleeve:
> 26. CV-004 — Teacup Choir successful; five-minute window; measurable posture changes; no detentions.
26a. Doors respond to request, not demand. Apply to people.
26b. The castle answers when asked politely.
He doused the lamp, and the tower breathed. Somewhere below, a cat padded on silent paws. Somewhere above, a mirror waited behind a door that didn't like to be touched. The school kept humming its old song, and Corvus, grinning into the dark, began to hum back.
Afternoon slid in on quiet feet. The castle felt like a library that had decided to purr.
Corvus took his notes from Teacup Choir (CV-004) and went hunting for a new variable. The corridor outside History of Magic—site of a thousand yawns—had the right kind of laziness for an experiment that wanted to be helpful.
He traced a slim sigil into the mortar between two flagstones and breathed a charm into it that preferred truth to speed. Hallway Compass (CV-005): any first-year who stepped on the flagstones thinking I'm lost would feel a nudge—just enough breeze to make their robes tug in the correct direction and spotlight, faintly, the nearest relevant door handle.
A Hufflepuff girl shuffled past with a map upside down. The hem of her robe tugged right; the brass plaque for Charms caught the light like a wink. She made a small "oh" noise that sounded like saved time and hurried off.
Corvus logged the data on his cuff with a pencil stub.
> 27. CV-005—Hallway Compass: non-coercive; useful; nearly smug. Reset nightly.
Mrs. Norris glided by, disdain sharpened to a fine point. Corvus bowed as if greeting royalty. She stared as if he were a moth that had read a book. The truce held.
---
Alohomora, Second Thoughts
On his way to the stairwell he passed a storage door with a grumpy lock and a list of "STAFF ONLY" instructions that took up more parchment than dignity. He stopped, because the urge to practice Alohomora felt like a sneeze.
He didn't cast. Instead, he tested the idea in his head—the thing Flitwick had said about doors having purposes. The lock refused to hum back; the coin at his chest cooled, not disapproving so much as not today.
"Fair," Corvus said aloud. "We'll be friends later."
He left the door alone. It was a novel sensation. He liked it.
---
A Courier with Opinions
At the base of the tower, an unfamiliar owl dive-bombed him with the tactical subtlety of a thrown brick. It wore a small blue ribbon and the expression of a postmaster who had seen things.
Paradox hooted from a beam above, offended that another owl dared bring letters in her sky.
"Professional courtesy," Corvus told her, and took the envelope. Samantha's hand—not cluttered, not nervous, full of wind and tea.
> Starling,
I practiced not fussing and succeeded for nearly twenty minutes. Do write back and tell me if the staircases are polite to boys who say please.
I found a notebook of your father's—blank, but he had the habit of pressing flowers between pages. (I shook it; a pressed star fell out. Imagine that.) I am well, I am proud, and I am not surprised in the least that your letter already smells of ink and plans.
Eat something green.
Mum
P.S. If you charm the kettle, be gentle with it. It is older than it admits.
He read it twice. The edges of the day softened, like bread in soup. He tapped the coin through his shirt and it warmed, quick and approving, which wasn't science but felt like it.
He scribbled a reply while walking (not recommended, highly satisfying):
> Mum,
Stairs respond best to flattery; one turned for a view on request. I built a choir into teacups; it rewarded kindness and made lunch bearable. Green eaten (in treacle tart proximity). Kettle uncharmed. For now.
— C
P.S. If a pressed star falls out again, save it. Might be useful for astronomy homework or aesthetics.
The courier owl snatched the reply with the grousing professionalism of a veteran and vanished. Paradox continued to sulk.
---
Controlled Variables, Assembly 002
By arrangement (unofficial, delightful), the Controlled Variables reconvened at the hidden classroom: Fred and George lounging like friendly gargoyles, Daphne Greengrass composed as ever on the desk's edge, one leg crossed precisely, clockwork mouse asleep in her pocket.
Corvus chalked the board. "Results: CV-004 works. No detentions, measurable niceness. Moving on: navigation and emergencies."
Fred perked up. "Pranks that help you not die?"
"Concept," Corvus said. "CV-006: Beacon Breadcrumbs. Whisper-light motes that stick to prefects and professors. If a first-year panics, mutter a key phrase and the nearest mote will brighten for ten seconds, visible only to the panicker."
George whistled. "So children will home in on helpful adults instead of sprinting in circles."
"Exactly." Corvus twirled the chalk. "And the motes hitch a ride politely and dissolve at bedtime."
Daphne considered, weighing ethics with elegance. "No data collection on the panickers," she said. "You'll be tempted."
"I'll log only aggregate usage," Corvus promised. "No names, no houses."
"Acceptable," Daphne said, and passed him a tiny corked bottle of faintly glowing dust. "Stolen starlight. Figuratively."
They wove the charm together: Corvus handling the lattice, Daphne smoothing the power so it wouldn't itch, the Twins adding a failsafe that snapped the motes off anyone who sneezed (learned from tragic glitter incidents).
Corvus palmed a mote and breathed it onto Flitwick's lapel in his imagination; the class-bell six floors away gave its tinny salute. "Launch at supper," he said. "Unobtrusive. If it works, we deploy for Halloween."
Everyone understood why.
---
Snape, Unamused (and Yet)
Double Potions meant twice the quiet and three times the tension. Snape stalked like a storm front; cauldrons obeyed the way trees obey the wind.
They were brewing Wiggenweld—healing in bottle form. Corvus measured each ingredient like a clockmaker and handed Susan a cleanly labeled phial like a peace offering to fate.
At the far table, a Slytherin boy—Nott—stirred counterclockwise with such violent enthusiasm the mixture threatened to curdle. Corvus opened his mouth to warn him, remembered Snape punishes cross-table heroics like fun, and instead scraped a bit of powdered Horklump juice into his own brew. Wiggenweld responds to the room if you let it.
Both cauldrons steadied.
Snape arrived as if apparated by annoyance. His gaze took in Nott's almost-mistake, Corvus's suspiciously calm solution, and the way Susan was pretending very hard to review her notes while helping.
"Mr. Black," he said, soft as cut glass. "If you intend to rescue Gryffindors and Slytherins alike with improvisations, you might consider a career in not my classroom."
"Duly considered," Corvus said. "Rejected."
Something like a smirk tugged one corner of Snape's mouth tight, then vanished. "Ten points from Ravenclaw for audacity," he said silkily, "and—five to Hufflepuff for not fainting."
When he swept away, Susan let out a breath she might have been holding since breakfast. "He likes you," she whispered, appalled.
"He respects a properly rude hypothesis," Corvus said.
They bottled their potion. Snape's red mark—precise as a bloodline—appeared on Corvus's parchment later with the comment: Adequate, bordering on tolerable. Corvus planned a pillow collection.
---
Supper: Beacon Breadcrumbs
Supper wore its usual mask—noise making itself taller, jokes leaning on elbows. Corvus, Daphne, and the Twins ghosted the edges of the Hall and whispered motes onto select targets: McGonagall (sturdy), Flitwick (sparked happily), Sprout (tender), Hooch (brisk), even Snape (difficult; the mote sulked until bribed with a muttered apology to ingredients everywhere). A few prefects in each house received one. The motes settled, invisible and smug.
"Code phrase?" George asked.
"Home," Corvus said. "Quietly. Anyone can say it in panic."
Daphne nodded once. "Halloween, then," she said, like a toast, and sipped water as if it were wine. "You're covering the third floor with your curiosity, aren't you."
"I'm covering all floors," Corvus said. "Equally. With favoritism."
Her mouth almost smiled. "Good."
Across the Hall, Dumbledore's eyes found Corvus for a heartbeat—twinkle with ballast. The headmaster raised an eyebrow a degree: I see your weather. Corvus raised his goblet: It's temperate.
---
The Wrong Harmony (Closer)
He didn't mean to go near the third floor again. That was the plan: not today. But curiosity and caution are siblings; they walk the same corridors.
The Out-of-Bounds sign looked freshly polished, letters carved with a chisel that understood children. Corvus stood well away and listened.
Under Dumbledore's careful music, something crackled—not loud, not yet, but hungry in the way a fire is hungry. The coin cooled. His wand hand itched. The corridor's ambient magic—soothed in most places by what he'd begun to think of as the school's pulse—was tight here, like breath held too long.
"Not today," he said again, to the door, to himself, to the part of him that liked lockpicks because they were questions with metal answers.
Behind him, footsteps: gentle, quick. Flitwick.
"Ah," said the professor, as if they had met at a bakery. "Listening practice?"
"Yes," Corvus said.
"Good," Flitwick said, and didn't add be careful because he had already said it; the rest would be up to the boy who kept showing up with the right kind of audacity. "The castle appreciates being consulted."
"It wrote on my window," Corvus said before he could tidy the sentence.
Flitwick's grin flashed, sudden and young. "She does that," he said, and then, businesslike again: "Shoo. Somewhere with fewer teeth."
Corvus shooed.
---
Night Experiments (Small Ones)
Back in Ravenclaw, the riddle asked, "What belongs to you, but others use it more than you do?"
"My name," Corvus said, and the door was pleased with both the answer and the tone.
He added a single line to Hallway Compass—a sunset routine so the charm would teach itself to sleep at curfew.
Then he climbed to the dormitory window, set the coin beside the locket again, and wrote by moonlight:
> 28. CV-006—Beacon Breadcrumbs placed. Code: Home. For panic only.
28a. Motes must die at midnight—privacy.
29. Snape respects audacity if you salt it with competence. Pillow remains the plan.
30. Doors: some are for not opening. New muscle group: restraint.
He closed the Mystery Log and leaned his head back. Owl wings whispered somewhere in the rafters. The lake threw a careless band of silver across its own face and pretended it didn't like compliments.
On the pane, frost bloomed in a small, slow swirl. Letters pressed themselves from the cold: Ask better.
Corvus smiled, unguarded and very young for once. "All right," he told the window, the coin, the castle, the coming trouble, himself. "Tomorrow—I'll ask better."
The frost cleared as if a finger had drawn through it, and the night—ancient and amused—settled around the tower like a cloak.