Taking my hand off Daphne's shoulder, I focused on myself. And... nothing!
I couldn't feel death energy in myself at all, as if it simply wasn't there. Then again, this wasn't energy tied to killing, violence, agonising death, pain, and so on. It was more the reverse side of Phoenix fire, which represents the flame of life. Even a phoenix's life cycle resembles a coin. There it lives, the coin turned one face toward observers. The coin slowly flips, the phoenix fades and crumbles to ash, dying — the coin has turned, revealing death to us, but nobody sees that side, as if it were transparent. Everyone only sees the end of life. But then the coin flips again, and the phoenix returns from the ashes.
"Daphne," I opened my eyes, having spent barely a moment on self-diagnosis and examination. "Focus on wanting to see the unseen."
"Er... All right," she agreed easily, her expression suggesting she wouldn't even bother asking about something so trivial.
Nothing happened for a couple of moments, but the next instant I felt a slight chill pass through me, like the beam of some scanning device, and Daphne's left eye turned faintly grey, seemingly wrapped in a haze.
"Oh!" Daphne, openly and vividly astonished yet again today.
She leaned in, a little closer, peering into my face.
"I can see it. Curious..." — there was that word again, sticking to her — but despite her irritation at it, she didn't let herself falter the way others might have. "I have a feeling I'm seeing magic itself, since it can't be anything else. Conjure something wandlessly."
"All right," I simply raised my hand and conjured a small flame at my fingertip. "That do?"
"Yes," Daphne nodded, barely perceptibly. "It seems I see different kinds of magic very poorly, as if it slips away from my sight. But within a spell or phenomenon, I see it a touch more clearly. Inside you, in your head, something grey is swirling and flowing, but it's being squeezed out of the rest of your body by something else — I can't quite make it out."
Hm.
"Sounds like it really is magic," I nodded, as Daphne stopped emitting death energy from her left eye. "But your perception's limited to death magic alone, and everything else only barely. We'll need to experiment with this in the Room of Requirement today, work out just what death was kind enough to gift us."
"And work out," Daphne came up beside me, took my arm, and steered me toward the Main Tower, and thus toward breakfast in the Great Hall, "just what exactly we're meant to do about it. I've got a nagging suspicion that turning down a task from Death is an extremely unwise idea."
The Great Hall — a gathering place for students, with reason or without. This particular morning the reason was simple and mundane — breakfast time. Only a rare few skipped it. More than half of Hogwarts's students were there now, clattering cutlery against crockery without much enthusiasm, though given the sheer numbers it might have looked otherwise. The only house present in almost full force was Slytherin.
As I headed toward my own house table, meaning at the same time to wish Daphne a good day — it being far too ordinary for her to eat with her own housemates — I noticed the girl was walking right alongside me. At my questioning, raised eyebrow, she simply matched the expression and asked:
"Not pleased?"
"Quite the opposite, more than pleased."
We walked together to my usual spot at the house table. Many of our housemates noticed me, smiling, clearly glad to see me back from the Hospital Wing, and nobody seemed to have any objection to Daphne either. Our classmates shifted along the bench, freeing up spots for two — which we duly took.
"Morning, everyone," I greeted them all, nodding and smiling.
"Morning," Daphne echoed, sitting down beside me.
Before the others could even answer, cutlery and plates appeared before us — a ready breakfast, plus empty ones for helping ourselves from the shared dishes.
The others greeted us quickly, delighted at my return.
"Hector..." Ernie, sitting across from me with Hannah and Zacharias, couldn't take his eyes off my head, and even managed to miss his own mouth with a forkful of bacon, jabbing himself in the cheek instead. "Blimey..."
"Yes?"
"You've gone white-haired. And... erm..." he nodded "subtly" toward Daphne, throwing in a meaningful glance for good measure.
"However could such a subtle hint go unnoticed," Daphne offered a polite half-smile. "Pointing at us directly would've been even more discreet."
"My apologies, Greengrass," Ernie shook his head, matching her half-smile, showing for a couple of seconds that he too had been raised in a Sacred Twenty-Eight household. "For the faint whiff of Gryffindor in my behaviour."
"Oh, here we go," Hannah drooped her head in mock despair. "Save that for formal receptions. This is a friendly meal, with talk of current events and situations and whatnot."
"You're right, Hannah," Daphne smiled more openly. "Just old habits — the moment you sit down at a table in the Great Hall, you're primed to skewer and slice with a sharp word."
"Right then, breakfast and conversation," I concluded. "And yes, apparently I've now got this particular sort of grey streak."
"As do I," Daphne added. "And the funny thing is, it actually suits me. Silver always flatters a Slytherin."
Making fairly quick work of breakfast, we moved on to a leisurely spot of tea — students aren't often indulged with tea, so the opportunity oughtn't be wasted, and there was still plenty of time before lessons began. And where there's tea, there's conversation.
"Right then," Hannah began, "let me voice the question I imagine is on everyone's mind. What happened, Hector? Daphne?"
"Shortly put," I took a sip of tea from a plain cup — no one keeps anything fancier for tea, certainly not porcelain. "We were running one of our experiments, and the result was exactly the phenomenon we'd meant to produce... just of an entirely different nature. It rather shook my understanding of how the world works, honestly."
"And the grey hair?" Zacharias asked the moment I'd finished speaking.
I wasn't especially keen to answer, having just brought a small custard tart to my mouth. Daphne noticed and decided to field it herself.
"Madam Pomfrey said we'd been under catastrophically powerful magical pressure for an extended period. The onset caused us to lose consciousness, so I can't say anything about what came after. Our bodies took three days to recover, and this," Daphne ran her fingertips along her white streak, "is the aftermath."
"Yes," I rejoined the conversation, having finished off the little tart. "Madam Pomfrey explained that exposure to an enormous flow of raw magic doesn't pass without consequences. We were lucky, in a manner of speaking, to get away with only three days unconscious and a small change in style."
"Hm..." Zacharias looked at me, holding up a lock of his own blond mop, which hid its true length thanks to how chaotically it curled in every direction. "D'you think white would suit me? Nearly platinum."
Without a word, with a short flick of my wrist, like some proper psion out of some distant-future world, I turned Zacharias's hair the exact same colour as my own near-white grey at the temples.
"Oh!" he said, startled. "Hm... blimey, that's naff!"
The others broke into smiles or quiet laughter, and I cancelled the magical effect, restoring Zacharias's hair to its usual colour.
"Suits you two, though," he said, looking back at Daphne and me.
"Beauty can't be spoiled," I nodded, but noticing the mock-reproachful looks from the others, finished the thought. "That was about Daphne, in case anyone was wondering."
"Sly," Daphne smirked.
"Well, what can you all tell me?" I glanced around at everyone nearby, including a few from other years — someone was bound to be listening in on our conversation regardless. "I've got this feeling like something's happened over these past three days."
Everyone immediately looked toward a slightly flustered Susan, prompting her to start fiddling with her thick plait of red hair. Why her? She's the best-informed person after me when it comes to rumours, facts, or events, whether inside Hogwarts or beyond it.
"Well... There's a bit," she began modestly, but quickly found her footing once she'd got the first words out. "Not much has changed within Hogwarts itself. What's known is that just last night, Nott and his little gang of fanatics tried to 'teach a lesson' to one of our second-years."
"Hm... You put particular emphasis on the word 'tried,'" I noted, with an expression of exceeding politeness that, for some reason, made everyone visibly uneasy.
"Just — don't do anything rash," Zacharias, sitting to my left, gave my shoulder a light pat to get my attention.
"Of course not."
A small triangle detached itself from my scaled bracelet and, unnoticed by anyone, flew beneath the tables, rose up toward the dark corner of the ceiling, and hovered directly above Nott. A small effort of will, a transfer of storm energy, and...
A flash of Bombilius Maxima lit up the Hall, followed by a loud, deafeningly sharp crack, like the snap of a whip. A bolt of lightning struck Nott dead-on. In an instant he toppled from his seat, unconscious, hair standing on end, clothes and skin scorched, thin wisps of smoke curling upward.
Magical lightning, not the real thing — killing with that spell would be exceedingly difficult, barely enough to see off small rodents, and even that wasn't guaranteed. But knocking someone out and covering them in burns? That's easy enough.
The Hall erupted into noise, the Slytherins especially. In the general panic, no one noticed the already-discreet little triangle as it swiftly returned to my bracelet.
The panic lasted all of two seconds before being cut short by Snape's booming voice, clearly amplified with a Sonorus.
"Silence!" He wasn't shouting — his tone was calm, almost insinuating — but students well-trained by his Potions lessons fell silent almost instantly, dropping back into their seats.
Madam Pomfrey, too, had been having breakfast at the staff table, like all the school's staff bar Filch, though that was the caretaker's own choice, so no discrimination there. The Healer-Witch hurried at once to Nott, waved her wand, sighed with relief, and, conjuring a stretcher and levitating the boy onto it, set off for the Hospital Wing, floating the unconscious Slytherin along in front of her.
Everything somehow settled back into place on its own; the others found new topics to discuss, and the remaining sweet desserts vanished at an even faster clip. There wasn't much time left of breakfast, so the professors would soon be chasing everyone off to lessons. Some students, in fact, had already left the Hall, or were leaving right now.
"Mm," Hannah shook her head, looking at me with something of a smile. "No wonder nobody's rushing to try anything while you're in the castle and conscious."
"Turned our sweet Hector into a scarecrow," Susan shook her head, blushing again.
"Sweet, my foot," Ernie muttered indignantly, though clearly in jest. "Lightning from the ceiling is the pinnacle of mercy."
"Well," Susan continued her thought, "at least he's unconscious. They could've woken him right up with an Ennervate. With the burns and the aftereffects of an attack like that, agony's practically guaranteed."
"Looking at it that way," Daphne mused, turning to me, "you really are a Hufflepuff. A kind-hearted wizard, wants to become a Healer, wants to help people."
"There are all sorts of ways to help people," I shrugged. "So, what's this about 'tried'?"
"Malfoy interfered, if the information's right. Scattered them like a litter of pups."
"Growing into himself," I nodded. "Commendable. Scattered them badly?"
"They spent half the night in the hospital wing under Skele-Gro," Susan continued. "Released at dawn. Basically, a little before you two."
"Poor bloke's luck," Ernie's sympathy was so exaggerated it came across more as gloating. "Just got out — straight back in."
"I'm afraid," Daphne laid her hand over mine, "if Nott and his slowly-growing little gang don't settle down, he might end up unable to leave the hospital wing for longer than an hour at a stretch."
Something brushed against the reflexive invisible dome I'd raised against eavesdropping, the one shielding our entire house table — someone's persistent attention.
"Let's close this topic and talk about something neutral," I said. "The particularly curious are about to circle the dome. One of the staff, I'd wager."
"Dome?" nearly everyone asked in unison, save Daphne and Hannah.
"And when did you manage that?" Zacharias drawled thoughtfully, listening and glancing around, but failing to spot any "dome." "Ah, well, if he says it's there, it's there."
"Anything else interesting?" I turned back to the rest of them.
"Some sort of anomaly on the shore of the lake," Susan continued. "My aunt said there's an extremely dense veil of Dark magic there, a dome stretching upward. Can't really break through it, can't learn much of anything. The Unspeakables from the Department of Mysteries are working on it now. They say something's happening with the Veil of Death. You know, the one. And apparently the two are connected somehow."
At that exact moment my shield was breached — or rather, more accurately, bypassed. I dropped the dome at once — adding in a stunning effect and a bit of sensory overload for the nosy party in question! A bit of mischief done, and my conscience felt lighter at once.
"And another thing," Hannah decided to add something important. "They've set up a hundred-metre exclusion zone around the anomaly, powerful warding and alarm charms up, someone from the DMLE and two Aurors on rotating watch. All Hogwarts students are strictly forbidden from even thinking about going near it. Though, I'm afraid the ban won't do much good — not even 'Certain Death' in the forbidden corridor scared anyone off in first year. And this is just a plain old 'don't.'"
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