In the quiet of the Hufflepuff common room, Icharus watched Neville stare into the fire, his face a map of simmering resentment. The boy was changing, but still rudderless.
"They all have an opinion now, don't they?" Icharus murmured, not looking at Neville. "Cedric pities you. The Slytherins fear you. Dumbledore… he probably sees only another piece to move on his board."
Neville's hands clenched. "What do I do?"
Icharus turned at last, his gaze intense and unblinking. "You heard Malfoy. The only language they understand is power. Dumbledore has it, so he shapes the world. We do not—so we are shaped. The only right a weak person has is the right to be crushed."
The words landed like blows. The last remnants of Neville's old self seemed to smolder in the firelight. By morning a different Neville Longbottom had emerged: sharpened, deliberate, driven by a cold, single purpose.
He became a fixture of the library, no longer skulking in corners but demanding books on advanced Charms, defensive wards, and potion catalysts. In Professor Flitwick's class, while others fumbled with simple Lumos, Neville attempted nonverbal casting, brow furrowed in concentration. By the week's end he was one of the few who could perform the Switching Spell cleanly, earning a surprised squeak of praise from the Charms Master.
In Transfiguration his matchstick did not merely become a needle; it became a sharp, polished silver pin that kept its form under McGonagall's stern eye. "Remarkable improvement, Mr. Longbottom. Ten points to Gryffindor." The praise, once the thing he hung his heart on, now felt like a small coin tossed to a beggar.
His path inevitably crossed with Hermione Granger's. United by a ferocious appetite for knowledge, they became study partners. Hermione, delighted to have someone who treated learning as a weapon, poured her insights into Neville's newly methodical mind. Their alliance was efficient, intense, and immediately useful.
Ron watched the change with something like disbelief that curdled into jealousy. Where his resentment had once been aimed chiefly at Harry's fame, it now found a new target: Neville, suddenly capable; Hermione, suddenly occupied. He traded in old barbs for sharper ones.
"Why are you even bothering with him?" Ron snapped at Hermione in the common room.
"Because he's actually trying, Ronald," she retorted. "Unlike some who coast on luck and infuriatingly convenient reputations."
"Oh, so it's Longbottom now, is it? Bet you think he's the real Boy-Who-Lived!"
The bickering escalated, culminating on Halloween morning when Ron, stung by Hermione correcting his potion in front of others, snarled, "No wonder you haven't got any friends, Hermione. It's a wonder anyone can stand you!"
Hermione fled in tears. Icharus, watching from a shadowed archway, felt a chill of satisfaction. The fracture was useful; the chaos, elegant.
And yet there was another watcher whose heart split in two: Harry. He found himself pulled between the easy, lifelong loyalty he owed Ron and the fierce intellectual companionship Hermione offered. Ron had been at his side through everything—friend, protector, the brother he had never had. But Hermione's insistence on the right answer, her tireless reading and correction, woke in Harry a gratitude and admiration he hadn't expected. He loved Ron for his warmth and simple courage; he admired Hermione for her mind and resolve.
The guilt of that split gnawed at him. Each time he laughed with Ron about Quidditch or the Weasleys' chaotic warmth, a small, uncomfortable echo reminded him of the tutting glances Hermione shot his way when he let things slide. Each late-night study session with Hermione warmed him with the satisfaction of progress—and left him ashamed at the thought of Ron, pacing the dormitory, feeling sidelined. He worried that his silence, his inability to reconcile both, looked like betrayal.
That guilt made him quieter, less decisive—an absence Icharus noticed and catalogued like a useful weakness.
A new directive burned in Icharus's mind.
[New Task: The Forbidden Heist]
Objective: Steal and master one piece of forbidden knowledge.
Reward: 100 System Points. One-Time Trace Removal Charm (5-day duration).
This was it, Icharus thought, a predatory grin unfurling. The path to the Restricted Section was now clear; he needed a diversion, and he knew the architects.
He found the Weasley twins in a deserted corridor, experimenting on a first-year's trunk until it squealed like a pig.
"Fifty Galleons," Icharus said, cutting off their sales pitch. "Halloween. I want something massive, chaotic, and mobile. Start near the Great Hall, sweep past the girls' lavatory on the second floor, and stink all the way down to the dungeons by Snape's classroom. Draw every prefect, every professor, even Peeves."
Fred and George glanced at one another; their faces lit with avaricious delight. "Fifty Galleons?" George breathed.
"For that price, we'll make Peeves look like a choirboy," Fred promised.
"A deal," Icharus said. "Gold in your trunk tomorrow."
He walked away, the Restricted Section already occupying his thoughts. The Polyjuice recipe might be in Magick Moste Evile or The Potioneer's Forbidden Vade Mecum. He wanted more: the Patronus formula to mask himself in noble light, and the Unforgivable lessons that bent will and soul. Halloween night would not be a feast; it would be his coming-out: a silent declaration of war on every limit anyone had ever placed upon him. With the Trace removed for five days, he would be a ghost—free to learn, to practice, and to become what he had always thought himself destined to be: powerful.