The Morning After Christmas

Mornings at St. Mungo's usually began a little earlier than they did at Hogwarts.

People here had less excuse than most to sleep in. Healers changed shifts at six, potions arrived, House-elves came and went silently between the wards, and footsteps began pattering down the corridors early, light and steady as a drizzle that never quite stopped.

When Cordelia woke, the sky outside was only beginning to brighten.

The ward was quiet.

The first thing she saw was the letter on her bedside table.

The envelope was thin.

The handwriting on it was becoming familiar to her: elegant, confident flourishes.

She sat up, her soft hair falling around her shoulders. Sleep still left a faint haze on her face, but her hand had already reached for the letter.

It was Gavin's reply.

An Owl still needed time to fly from the Scottish Highlands to London. Even an Eagle Owl flying at full speed would take six hours, not counting breaks along the way.

Looking at Eagle Owl resting in the room, Cordelia said softly, "Thanks for the effort, Nyx."

Nyx tilted his head adorably, as if to say, You're welcome.

She opened the letter quickly, a little more awake now that her drowsiness had lifted.

And the first thing she saw was the line:

"The dress is your birthday present for next year."

Cordelia froze.

For a moment, she forgot to breathe.

Then the tips of her ears slowly turned red.

"...You big jerk," she muttered.

Clearly, Gavin had somehow remembered her measurements and deliberately bought the dress a size too large.

Cordelia felt a little embarrassed. How could he sneak looks at a girl's figure?

The muttered insult was an instinctive attempt to save a little dignity.

But beneath her embarrassment, warmth rose unbidden in her heart.

She understood. It was his answer to the people who had said she would not live to see her next birthday.

He had given her next year's birthday present early so she could wear it when that day came. In his own way, he was telling Cordelia that she would live to see it.

He was certain of it, as though he were stating something that would naturally happen, not a miracle that needed endless reassurance and prayers.

It was a peculiar kind of comfort, and exactly the sort of thing Gavin would do.

Once the tangle of emotions in her heart had eased a little, she picked up the letter and read on.

The rest of it was about everyday life at Hogwarts: little incidents around the castle, rumors, gossip, and amusing stories.

As Cordelia read, the corners of her mouth rose without her noticing.

Gavin's stories made her feel as though she were there too, at the school she had once longed to attend but might never be able to visit again.

"How wonderful."

When she finished the letter, she turned toward the window and murmured those words as she gazed into the distance.

She had not yet had time to tuck that warmth and happiness safely away in her heart when she heard voices outside.

A great deal of noise.

It sounded as though a large group was running toward her from far down the hall. Footsteps crowded together, and a trolley rattled urgently across the floor, shattering the unhurried morning rhythm of the entire ward.

The noise came down the corridor, closer and closer, until it stopped—

At the ward next door.

Cordelia frowned slightly.

That ward was usually empty.

At least, she had not seen anyone in it lately.

Still holding the letter, she listened for a few seconds before throwing back the covers and getting out of bed. She was still in her nightdress and had only had time to pull on a thin robe before hurrying to the door.

The moment she opened it, the corridor's cold white light and chaotic noise flooded in.

Healers, House-elves, a trolley, and several adults she did not recognize were clustered around the bed next door. There were so many people that they almost hid it from view. Some spoke in low voices, others passed instruments or set potion bottles on the bedside table. Tension filled the air.

Cordelia stopped in the doorway, stunned.

Then she took two steps forward.

Through a gap in the crowd, she finally saw the person in the bed.

Black hair.

A pale face.

Clear wounds still marked the side of his face and his arms, as though something violently destructive had grazed him. Most of the blood had been cleaned away, but the marks remained, deep and shallow, like burns—or places where something black had eaten and torn at his skin.

Her breath caught.

She recognized the patient at once.

"...Gavin?"

No one answered her.

Everyone around her was busy tending to the person in the bed.

But Cordelia was certain.

It was Gavin.

And the wounds on his body—

She stared at those marks, and all at once, it was as if she had been dragged back five years.

The same blackness.

The same burns and tears.

The same terrible edges to the wounds, dreadful at a glance.

She no longer saw the hospital bed.

She no longer saw St. Mungo's.

She saw another face, another body falling to the ground, her mother's bloodstained dress streaked with black, and the accident she could never truly forget.

"No..." Cordelia's voice shook. "No, no, this can't be..."

Inside her mind, the thread holding her reason in place began to loosen.

Conflicting emotions swept her away.

She did not even realize what was happening.

Black Magic had already begun to seep from around her.

Like smoke.

Like mist.

Like the night held back for far too long, ready to pour through the smallest crack.

The air in the corridor turned a little colder.

A nearby Healer jerked his head up. When he saw Cordelia, his expression changed, and he took an involuntary step back.

At that instant, a hand settled firmly on Cordelia's shoulder.

It was large and rough.

And warm.

"He's all right, Cordelia."

The voice was slow and gentle, yet it carried a calm that reached straight into her heart.

"Compared with the room he was in at the Astronomy Tower, you could almost say he escaped without a scratch."

Cordelia spun around.

Dumbledore stood behind her, a dark coat thrown casually over his robes. His silvery-white beard was a little more disheveled than usual, and the shadows beneath his eyes showed he had not slept well. But his blue eyes were as calm as ever. One look at him made it feel as though nothing was beyond fixing.

Cordelia looked at him, her voice tight.

"What happened?"

"I don't have all the answers yet," Dumbledore said, shaking his head.

As he spoke, he did not look at the black Magic still stirring faintly beside her shoulder. He merely pressed his hand down a little, offering reassurance.

"I found some parchment at the scene," he said. "From what I can tell... Gavin was trying to turn himself into an Obscurus."

Cordelia went rigid.

"What?"

"It seems he wanted to understand Obscuruses that way, so he could eventually help you."

"But we won't know exactly what happened until he wakes," Dumbledore said.

He paused, then finally glanced at the small patch of black Magic beside her, now stirring restlessly.

"For now, don't let yourself lose control. All right?"

Cordelia said nothing.

She only stared at Gavin in the bed, lost and helpless. She could not make sense of Gavin deliberately turning himself into an Obscurus. But the hand on her shoulder and Dumbledore's calm voice steadied her for the moment.

She did not go any closer.

Nor did she turn and run.

She simply stood there, watching Healers and House-elves bustle around Gavin's bed, dazed as though she were watching an accident unfold around her that she had been unable to stop.

"He must be expelled, Dumbledore."

At the same time, in the Headmaster's Office, Snape's voice was as cold as a knife drawn from the snow.

The moment he learned Gavin was responsible for this incident too, Snape made his position clear.

No one else was in the office this time.

Only Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and Snape.

They had been the first to deal with the aftermath of the Astronomy Tower incident. The students had been reassured, the scene sealed off, and the young witches and wizards in Gryffindor Tower opposite—who had nearly all stuck their heads out of the windows when the noise woke them—had been sent back to bed.

But handling the aftermath did not make the incident itself any easier to accept. Even the professors still did not know exactly what had happened.

Professor McGonagall stood beside the desk, her expression grim.

She had visibly relaxed when Dumbledore confirmed that Gavin was out of immediate danger. But her relief had not lasted long before new questions came crowding in:

What exactly had Gavin done?

How had a first-year student managed to leave Hogwarts' Astronomy Tower in such a state on the morning after Christmas?

She had seen the scene.

And because she had seen it, she found it even harder to believe an eleven-year-old child could have caused that kind of destruction.

Compared with Gavin, even the greatest troublemakers in Hogwarts history seemed remarkably well-behaved.

Dumbledore stood behind the desk. Beside his hand lay several sheets of parchment with torn corners, still marked by ash and scorch marks.

"I found some notes at the scene," he said. "They're incomplete, but they tell us enough to see what he was attempting."

He handed one sheet to Professor McGonagall.

Another went to Snape.

The office fell quiet.

Professor McGonagall lowered her gaze to the page first.

The more she read, the deeper her frown became.

Snape read faster, and his expression darkened just as quickly.

Hypnosis.

Anchor Point.

Self-Induction.

Stopping spellcasting, suppressing Magic, manipulating his own perception—all to deliberately approach the conditions that gave rise to an Obscurus.

Experimenting on himself.

Using himself to venture down a path almost no one had ever returned from.

"...He's mad," Professor McGonagall finally said in disbelief.

She could scarcely believe her eyes.

A student who had been at the school for less than half a year had already begun researching how Obscuruses were born.

Snape slammed the pages back onto the desk. His gaze was so dark it seemed ready to freeze solid.

"I told you before, Dumbledore," he said. "He's the makings of a Dark Lord."

Most of the portraits on the walls had been pretending to be nothing more than decoration.

At those words, several faces promptly stirred.

An old headmaster from Hufflepuff was the first to object.

"That's far too harsh, Snape!" he cried. "Hufflepuffs are good people!"

"Are they?" Snape said coldly. "This good person has turned himself into an Obscurus and blown up half a tower while he was at it."

"That still doesn't make him a Dark Lord!"

"It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion."

"Then he's more like an obsessively stubborn Ravenclaw!"

"Nonsense. He's more like a Slytherin!"

The other portraits on the wall immediately protested this slander.

"I say he's a reckless Gryffindor." Snape turned to Dumbledore. "The Sorting Hat must have made a mistake."

At that, the Sorting Hat stirred on its shelf across the room.

"Oh," it said, sounding quite offended. "I'm still here, you know."

The Headmaster's Office fell silent for a moment.

Dumbledore looked up at it.

"Since it's come up," he said, "perhaps you'd care to explain?"

The Sorting Hat seemed none too pleased to be dragged into such a serious discussion so early in the morning. It gave a crumpled little grumble.

"Actually, I first thought of putting him in Slytherin." Snape raised an eyebrow and was about to speak, but the Sorting Hat went on before he could. "Then I looked more closely and realized he was a Muggle-born wizard. His ambition for magic nearly fooled me."

"He has qualities from all four houses." After a moment, it added at a leisurely pace, "He could have gone to any of them."

"Even Gryffindor?" Professor McGonagall asked instinctively.

"The Gryffindor in him is quite strong too," the Sorting Hat said. "Ambitious, rational, and bold. That combination was bound to be troublesome."

"Then why did he end up in Hufflepuff?" Dumbledore asked.

The Sorting Hat fell silent for a moment.

As though it had finally been forced to remember what it had seen during the Sorting that day.

"Of course I considered his wishes," it said. "But what ultimately decided it wasn't his courage, his intelligence, or that mountain of complicated knowledge no eleven-year-old should have understood."

"What was it?" Professor McGonagall asked.

The Sorting Hat paused for a second.

Then, with obvious reluctance but absolute certainty, it said:

"His craving for good food."

The office fell utterly silent.

Even the portraits that had been grappling with each other went still.

A muscle visibly twitched between Snape's brows.

Professor McGonagall could hardly believe her ears.

The Sorting Hat continued:

"I've only ever seen that kind of craving in Hufflepuff herself. That child's obsession with food—" It paused, as if searching for a more polite way to put it. "—makes him Hufflepuff reborn."

Even Dumbledore fell silent, at a loss for what to say next.

On the wall behind them, the portrait of the old headmaster who had spoken up earlier lowered his head and coughed, apparently finding it difficult to comment.

In the end, Snape was the first to break the silence.

"Even so," he said coldly, "he is still dangerous. The fact that he did something like this at school says enough on its own."

Dumbledore looked at him. The absurd detour into food had done little to ease his expression.

"As for that," he said, "I believe I know part of the reason."

Snape frowned.

"I've read Gavin's notes," Dumbledore said. "He prepared thoroughly. He chose the open space of the Astronomy Tower and a time when the students would all be asleep. He left an anchor point for his own hypnosis, though I don't yet fully understand the term. And he arranged for Pipi to be his final safeguard."

"Hypnosis. Hah. It sounds like casting the Imperius Curse on himself." Snape's voice was thick with scorn and distrust. "I still don't understand why a first-year student would think to send himself to his death this way."

"I don't entirely understand either," Dumbledore said. "But I think I've grasped one thing."

He raised his head, looked from one of them to the other, and said calmly:

"What if he did it to save someone?"

At those words, silence fell over the office once more.

Professor McGonagall slowly raised a hand to cover her mouth.

"The girl he visits every Saturday?" she asked quietly.

"Yes," Dumbledore said. "Cordelia Rowle."

He paused.

"She has less than a year left."

This time, soft sobs came from the portraits.

Some of the painted figures already wore that familiar look of people who couldn't bear to see a child meet a tragic fate. Farther away, in a corner, one had even taken out a handkerchief and begun quietly wiping away tears.

"It seems," Dumbledore continued, "that Gavin wants to try to save her. He was willing to use himself as the test subject."

Professor McGonagall slowly lowered her hand. Her expression was painfully complicated.

Shock, lingering fear, disbelief, and a deep sadness had all tangled together.

Snape did not speak at once.

He merely looked at the torn parchment on the desk. His face remained cold, but the anger he had barely bothered to hide earlier had eased a little.

Dumbledore looked at him and suddenly asked:

"If it were you, would you have done the same?"

Snape's head snapped up toward Dumbledore.

His black eyes turned fathomlessly deep.

The air in the office grew oppressive, like the stillness before a storm.

Snape stared at Dumbledore for a long time.

In the end, he said nothing.

He gave Dumbledore one last hard look, then turned and left. The door slammed behind him.

Bang.

The whole office shook.

The sound echoed around the room.

Several portraits complained that Snape had no manners.

Professor McGonagall stood where she was, silent for a while longer.

Then she drew a deep breath, as though forcing herself to find some inner order amid the jumble of information.

"The students will be waking soon," she said. "I need to explain why the Astronomy Tower looks as though a dragon hit it on the first morning after Christmas."

It was a sound reason.

But she also felt she could not stay here any longer.

Dumbledore nodded.

"Go ahead, Minerva."

Before leaving, Professor McGonagall glanced once more at the torn pages on the desk. Her gaze lingered, then she turned and went out.

After the door closed, the Headmaster's Office finally grew truly quiet, returning to its usual state.

This time, the portraits said nothing.

Only the fire in the fireplace crackled softly.

Dumbledore stood behind the desk, looking down at the torn parchment recovered from the Astronomy Tower.

Some of the writing had burned away.

Other parts had been soaked by wind-driven snow, the ink blurred and barely legible. Even so, he could sense the almost stubborn care of the person who had written it all.

Anchor point.

Covert Observer Theory.

Magic Accumulation Effect.

Emotional amplification.

Hypotheses on returning to a normal state.

Line after line, it read nothing like the work of an eleven-year-old. It was more like the notes of a seasoned researcher who had studied magic for years.

Dumbledore read for a long time.

At last, he set a finger on the corner of one torn page and held it gently in place.

"If only I could have gone this far back then," he said softly.

The words were so quiet they seemed meant only for the flames in the fireplace.

After that, a long, unanswered silence filled the office.

Dumbledore did not move.

He simply stood there, looking at the papers, without another word for a long time.