The Teacher Who Would Not Draw His Wand 

Chapter One: The Cupboard Beneath the Classroom

Jesus was already awake before the first bell moved through Hogwarts. He knelt in the small cupboard beneath the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, where old chalk dust lay in the cracks of the stone floor and a cracked basin caught water that tapped slowly from a rusted pipe. Above Him, the castle groaned in the dark as if it were turning over in its sleep, and somewhere beyond the wall a suit of armor shifted with a tired clatter. He wore a plain dark coat over simple modern clothes, nothing grand enough for a wizarding school and nothing strange enough to draw attention from students who had seen nearly everything. His hands were open on His knees, and His prayer was quiet, steady, and full of a grief that did not fear the morning.

On the desk above Him, in the classroom He had not yet entered, sat a stack of folded letters from parents who did not know what to do with their children. Some were written in clean Ministry ink, stiff with polite fear. Some were uneven and stained, as if the writer had held the parchment too tightly. One letter had no name at the bottom. It only said, Please teach him before the darkness does. Beside the letters lay a notice from the Headmistress announcing that the new professor would begin that morning, and one nervous prefect had already copied the phrase Jesus as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts into a study board where students traded rumors faster than owls could fly.

But the worst letter had not come by owl. It had been slid under the cupboard door during the night by someone who knew the old hiding places beneath the classroom. The parchment was torn from a textbook margin, folded twice, and pressed flat by a shaking hand. No greeting. No signature. Only one line written in a tight slant. If He can really see what is in people, tell Him not to look at me.

Jesus lifted that small torn piece of parchment from the floor and held it as though it had weight beyond ink. He did not answer it with words. He prayed over it, and in the stillness the dripping pipe sounded loud enough to mark the seconds before someone made a choice they could not undo. Above the ceiling, students were beginning to wake, dragging trunks, whispering in dormitories, and pretending not to be afraid of a classroom that had carried too much history. A third-year from Ravenclaw had already told two others that the new professor had no wand, and by breakfast the whisper had traveled through three tables, crossed the Slytherin benches, and reached a group of seventh-years who were more interested in a deeper story about faith standing in the shadow of magic than they wanted anyone to know.

In a narrow corridor outside the Great Hall, one of those seventh-years stood with his back against the cold wall and his breakfast untouched in his hand. His name was Corin Vale, though most people called him Vale because it sounded less like something his mother had chosen before everything in their family bent out of shape. He was tall enough to look older than he felt, with a black school robe that had been mended at the hem and shoes polished so carefully they seemed almost angry. His wand was tucked inside his sleeve, close to his wrist, where he could feel it when he needed courage. That morning he kept rubbing the cuff with his thumb until the fabric warmed under his skin.

Corin had not written the note, but he knew who had. He had watched her fold it near the statue of Gregory the Smarmy, her lips moving as if she were arguing with herself. Mara Flint had always carried herself like she had inherited the right to be feared. She came from one of those families who talked about blood without talking about guilt, and she had a way of making younger students step aside without knowing they had done it. Yet last night, when she thought no one was looking, she had slid that torn paper under the cupboard door with both hands trembling. Corin had seen enough fear in his life to know the difference between a person trying to hide a crime and a person trying not to become one.

The problem was the ledger.

It was not a Ministry ledger, not a bank ledger, and not a school record anyone was supposed to know about. It was an old bound book kept in the locked cabinet behind the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, rumored to have been used years ago to record names of students who showed unusual weakness against dark influence. The official story was that it had been destroyed after the war. The unofficial story was that nothing at Hogwarts ever disappeared if enough people were ashamed of it. Corin had not believed the rumor until two weeks earlier, when Professor Harrow, the short-term substitute who had left without explanation, pulled him aside after class and asked him whether he wanted to protect the school or keep pretending mercy was the same as safety.

That was how the whole thing began. Not with a curse. Not with a hooded stranger. Not with some monster moving under the floor. It began with an adult speaking in a low voice to a boy who wanted badly to be trusted. Professor Harrow had told Corin there were students carrying traces of old darkness in them, inherited from family choices, childhood exposure, cursed objects, bloodlines, trauma, or secret fascination. He said Hogwarts had grown soft because it wanted to forget too quickly. He said the castle needed watchers, and he had looked at Corin as if he were the sort of person who could stand where weaker people stepped back.

Corin had wanted to say no. He remembered that part clearly, because it was the last honest warning his soul gave him before pride dressed itself as duty. He had thought of his father, who had once been questioned by the Ministry because he had brewed protective potions for the wrong people during the worst years. He had thought of his mother sitting at their kitchen table in Bristol with her hands wrapped around a mug she never drank from, saying, “People do not care what you meant, Corin. They care what story makes them feel safe.” He had thought of the way other students looked at him whenever old family names came up in History of Magic, as if guilt could travel through portraits and settle on the nearest living child.

So when Harrow gave him the key, Corin took it.

Now Harrow was gone, and the key remained in Corin’s robe pocket like a small piece of fire.

Across the corridor, Mara Flint stood near the archway with two girls from Slytherin and a boy from Gryffindor who laughed too loudly at things that were not funny. Mara was watching the stairs that led up toward the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. She did not glance at Corin, but he saw the tightness around her mouth. She had not slept. He could tell from the pale skin beneath her eyes and the careful way she held her shoulders. People who were used to hiding fear often hid it too well. They made themselves look cruel because cruel looked stronger than afraid.

A pair of second-years hurried by, both arguing about whether the new professor would teach them wandless magic or turn all cursed objects into bread. One of them said, “My brother says He healed a portrait in the west corridor just by looking at it.”

“That is stupid,” the other said, though he sounded hopeful.

Corin watched them go. Hope irritated him when it appeared too early in the morning. It made people careless. It made them believe rescue was simple. He had spent his whole life watching people speak warmly about mercy until they had to share a table with someone whose family name made them uncomfortable. Mercy was a word adults used when danger was far away. When danger sat beside them in class, they reached for lists.

The Great Hall doors opened wider, and the smell of toast, pumpkin juice, and roasted tomatoes spilled into the corridor. Hundreds of voices rose beneath the enchanted ceiling, where a gray Scottish morning pressed against the charmed sky. Rain tapped softly above the long tables, though no one inside felt it. Candles floated with their usual calm. The teachers sat at the staff table with faces arranged into expressions of patience, suspicion, or the sort of cheerfulness people used when they did not know what else to do.

Corin stepped into the hall and looked toward the empty chair beside the Headmistress.

Professor Harrow had sat there for forty-three days. Before him, six others had held the post for short stretches. Some left because the classroom frightened them. Some left because the students did. One had lasted less than a week after a boggart took the shape of his own ambition and chased him into the corridor while shouting his private diary aloud. Defense Against the Dark Arts had always been a subject with too much memory attached to it. Every generation thought it would be the one to make the room ordinary, and every generation discovered that darkness had a way of wearing new faces while keeping old habits.

Headmistress McGonagall rose from her chair, and the hall quieted with the uneven speed of students trying to finish sentences before authority found them. She looked older than the portraits made her seem, though her eyes had lost none of their sharpness. Her hand rested on the edge of the table, and Corin noticed, with a strange unease, that she did not look toward the side door where new professors usually entered. She looked instead toward the main doors of the Great Hall.

They opened without a sound.

Jesus stepped in from the entrance hall.

No trumpet announced Him. No spell brightened the air. No dramatic hush rolled ahead of Him like weather. Yet the quiet that followed Him was deeper than surprise. It was the kind of silence that came when people felt seen before they had decided whether they wanted to be. He walked between the long tables without hurrying, His dark coat damp at the shoulders from the morning mist that clung to the castle grounds. A first-year at Hufflepuff dropped his fork, and the sound rang hard against a plate.

Corin’s first thought was that Jesus did not look like a man trying to impress a school full of witches and wizards. That bothered him more than if He had. Corin had learned how to read teachers by their hunger. Some wanted respect. Some wanted control. Some wanted to be loved by students who would forget them by summer. Some wanted to prove they were not afraid of the room. Jesus seemed to want none of those things. He walked as if the castle did not need to make room for Him because every stone already knew His name.

When He reached the staff table, McGonagall inclined her head. It was not a bow. She would not have bowed in front of the school, not even then. But there was something in the small movement that made Corin’s stomach tighten. It held respect without performance. Trust without softness. Relief without surrendering judgment.

“Students,” she said, her voice carrying cleanly through the hall, “Professor Harrow’s departure has left this school in need of a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who understands that defense is not only the use of a wand against a threat. It is also the formation of judgment, courage, restraint, and truth. Beginning today, this post will be held by Jesus of Nazareth.”

A ripple moved through the tables. Some students stared openly. Others looked down, as if the name itself had landed too close to something private. A Ravenclaw boy whispered, “Nazareth? Is that near Hogsmeade?” and received a sharp elbow from the girl beside him.

Jesus did not correct him.

McGonagall continued. “You will treat Him with the respect due any professor of this school. You will attend His classes prepared. You will not test rumors for amusement. You will not attempt to provoke miracles, request demonstrations during meals, or ask whether prophecy applies to your exam results.”

A few nervous laughs broke the tension. Jesus’ face softened slightly, though He did not smile in the way teachers sometimes smiled to win a room. His expression was steady and kind, but it did not invite foolishness. Corin looked away first.

Breakfast resumed, but it did not recover its usual noise. The hall remained watchful. Students kept glancing at the staff table. Owls swept in under the high beams, dropping letters and parcels among the plates. A tawny owl landed badly in the gravy boat and shrieked at its own mistake. Usually that would have been enough to turn the Great Hall cheerful again. This morning, even the laughter came with caution.

Mara passed Corin’s seat near the end of breakfast, close enough for him to hear her whisper without moving her lips much.

“He has it.”

Corin kept his eyes on his plate. “Who?”

“Do not do that.”

He broke a piece of toast he had no intention of eating. “You should not have written the note.”

“You followed me?”

“You made it easy.”

Mara’s fingers closed around the back of the bench. For a moment he thought she would say something sharp enough to draw attention. Instead she leaned closer, her voice lower than before. “The ledger is not in the cabinet anymore.”

Corin’s hand stilled.

“I checked before breakfast,” she said. “The lock was open. The cabinet was empty.”

“You should not have gone in there.”

Her laugh barely sounded like a laugh. “That is rich coming from you.”

He looked up then, and for the first time in months he saw the fear beneath the shape of her face without the mask placed over it. Mara Flint had spent years making herself untouchable. She had perfected the narrow smile, the raised eyebrow, the slow cruel comment that could find weakness in a crowded room. Yet now she stood beside him like someone hearing footsteps outside a door she had locked from the inside.

“What did you write?” Corin asked.

She swallowed. “Enough.”

“What does enough mean?”

“It means I asked Him not to look at me.”

Corin almost told her that was childish. The words rose quickly because cruel answers are easier than honest ones. But then he remembered the ledger’s pages and the names written in Professor Harrow’s thin hand. He remembered Mara’s name circled twice with the note beside it. Family predisposition. Aggression pattern. Possible concealment of forbidden material. Watch closely. Do not confront unless isolated.

He had believed it when he first read it. He had wanted to believe it. Mara was exactly the sort of person a secret ledger could make useful. She was proud, sharp, and wrapped in a name that made people suspicious. It was easy to think the worst of someone when the worst already fit the shape others had built around her.

“What was in the cabinet when you checked?” Corin asked.

Mara’s eyes flicked toward the staff table, where Jesus sat beside McGonagall and listened while Professor Flitwick spoke with both hands moving in the air.

“Nothing,” she said. “Except the key.”

Corin felt the pocket of his robe with his thumb. The key was still there.

Mara saw the movement and went pale.

“You have one too,” she said.

He stood too quickly, knocking his knee against the table. Pumpkin juice sloshed in a nearby cup. A fifth-year looked up, annoyed, but Corin barely noticed. Across the hall, Jesus turned His head and looked directly at him.

It was not a hard look. That made it worse.

Corin felt, in that one glance, not accusation but knowledge. He had been accused before. Accusation gave him something to resist. He could argue with it, resent it, twist it into proof that people had already chosen a story about him. But this was different. Jesus looked at him as if He knew the key in his pocket, the pride that had accepted it, the shame that had followed, the fear of being ordinary, and the boy beneath all of it who still wanted someone good to tell him it was not too late.

Corin left the Great Hall before the bell.

The corridors were colder than usual, and the rain beyond the windows had thickened into a steady gray sheet. Hogwarts had many ways of sounding alive. Pipes hissed inside the walls. Portraits muttered. Staircases shifted with the stubborn moods of old creatures. But that morning, every sound seemed to follow Corin as he climbed. He took a moving staircase two floors too high, cursed under his breath, then turned back through a passage lined with portraits of former dueling champions who watched him with bored interest.

One portrait, a pale wizard with a silver beard and a ridiculous hat, leaned forward. “Running from class already?”

Corin did not answer.

“Never ends well,” the portrait said. “Running from the room usually means the room is inside you.”

Corin stopped and turned. “Do portraits ever get tired of pretending to be wise?”

The painted wizard blinked. “Not particularly.”

Corin moved on. His hand found the key again. It was small, blackened at the teeth, and colder than metal had any right to be. Harrow had said there were old safeguards built into the cabinet, charms from a time when Hogwarts did not trust kindness to protect children from danger. He had said the key would reveal what softer minds tried to hide. He had not said there were other keys. He had not said the ledger could leave the cabinet by itself.

At the top of the Defense Against the Dark Arts stairs, students had already gathered near the classroom door, though class would not begin for another twenty minutes. Nobody wanted to look eager, so they pretended to be there for other reasons. A pair of Gryffindors leaned against the wall discussing Quidditch in voices too loud to be real. Three Ravenclaws stood in a tight circle, making guesses about curriculum. A Hufflepuff girl with a stack of books hugged them against her chest and stared at the door as if it might open onto judgment.

The door was already open.

Inside, the room had changed.

Corin stopped at the threshold. The old Defense classroom had always felt crowded even when empty. Dark detectors, cracked shields, faded diagrams, glass jars, old scorch marks, and cabinets full of things no one wanted to name had pressed against the walls for years. Some professors had added more. Some had removed things and somehow made the room feel worse. But now the center of the room was clear. The desks had been arranged in a wide half circle. The windows were open despite the rain, though no water came in. The air smelled of wet stone, old wood, and something like bread cooling beneath a clean cloth.

On the front desk sat the ledger.

Corin’s breath shortened.

It was larger than he remembered, bound in dark leather with a brass clasp that had turned green at the edges. The cover was worn smooth in the center from years of hands touching it. No title marked it. No symbol. That made it seem worse, as if the book had never needed a name because everyone who used it already knew what it was for.

Mara stood across the room near the tall windows, her face still and her eyes fixed on the ledger. She had arrived before him, though he had not seen her pass. Several other students entered behind Corin, their voices dropping when they saw the book. Not all of them recognized it, but enough did. Fear has a way of telling on hidden things. It moves through a room before explanation catches up.

Jesus stood beside the desk, not touching the ledger.

He looked at the students as they entered, one by one. He greeted some by name though no one had introduced them. That caused a new wave of whispers, but He did not seem concerned by it. When Neville Longbottom arrived near the door as a visiting Herbology instructor, carrying a clay pot with a drooping plant and a face full of worry, Jesus greeted him with the warmth of someone welcoming a friend. Neville looked startled, then quietly relieved, as if he had been carrying an old wound into the room and found that it did not need to be explained.

“Professor,” Neville said, glancing at the ledger.

Jesus nodded.

“They told me you asked for me.”

“I did.”

Neville set the clay pot on a side table. The plant gave a miserable shiver. “I am not sure what help I will be.”

“You know what fear does in this room.”

Neville’s eyes moved once across the walls, and something in his face tightened before he steadied it. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do.”

The bell rang. Its sound moved through the classroom like a line being drawn. Students took seats. Corin chose one near the back, not because he thought distance would help but because his body moved there before he could decide otherwise. Mara remained near the window until Jesus looked at an empty chair in the front row. She hesitated, then sat in it without being told.

Jesus waited until the last robe settled and the last whisper died.

“Good morning,” He said.

Nobody answered at first. Then a few students murmured it back.

He looked around the room, not scanning it like a teacher measuring trouble, but receiving each face as if no one there were an accident. “You have come to a class called Defense Against the Dark Arts. Some of you are here because you want to pass your exams. Some of you want to prove you are brave. Some of you are hoping to learn enough to make sure no one ever has power over you again. Some of you are afraid that what is dark outside you is not as dangerous as what is dark within you.”

No one moved.

Corin felt Mara’s shoulders stiffen.

Jesus placed His hand on the ledger. He still did not open it. “This book has been kept in this castle longer than many of you have been alive. It was made by people who were afraid. Some of them had reason to be afraid. They had seen harm, betrayal, cruelty, and the way evil can hide behind charm and talent. But fear, when it is left unhealed, begins to call itself wisdom.”

A seventh-year near the middle raised his hand halfway, then lowered it when no one else did. Jesus looked at him with patient permission.

The boy cleared his throat. “Sir, if a book helps identify danger, is that not useful?”

“It depends what it asks you to do with the person whose name is written in it.”

The boy frowned. “Watch them, I suppose.”

“Only watch?”

He did not answer.

Jesus opened the ledger.

The sound of the cover lifting seemed too loud. Several students leaned despite themselves. Corin forced his body to stay still. From where he sat, he could see columns, dates, notes, initials, and names written across yellowed pages. Some of the names were old enough to belong to adults now. Some were recent. A few belonged to students in the room.

Mara’s hands tightened around the edge of her chair.

Jesus turned one page, then another. “This book has been used to record suspicion. Sometimes it recorded real concern. Sometimes it recorded prejudice. Sometimes it recorded a teacher’s impatience with a difficult child. Sometimes it recorded old family names as though blood itself were confession. Sometimes it recorded grief and called it instability. Sometimes it recorded anger and never asked what wound sat beneath it.”

Corin’s pulse beat in his ears.

“Sir,” said a Ravenclaw girl, her voice careful, “are you saying danger should not be named?”

“No.”

The answer came simply, and it quieted the small relief that had begun to move through the room.

Jesus looked at her. “Danger must be named truthfully. Evil must not be excused. Harm must not be hidden beneath compassion. A lie does not become mercy because it is gentle. But truth without love becomes another weapon, and a weapon in frightened hands often strikes the wrong person first.”

Neville looked down at the floor.

Corin felt something sharp move under his ribs. He hated the way Jesus spoke. Not because it was unclear, but because it left him nowhere easy to stand. He wanted Jesus to condemn the ledger so everyone who had used it could become a villain. He wanted Jesus to defend it so Corin could keep believing he had only done what was necessary. Instead Jesus stood in the middle of the room and refused to make fear look noble or mercy look foolish.

Jesus turned the ledger toward the class. “Today you will not learn a jinx.”

A few students shifted with disappointment they were too embarrassed to show fully.

“You will not practice shield charms. You will not face a boggart.” His eyes rested briefly on Neville, then moved on. “Today we begin with the first defense.”

A Slytherin boy near Mara folded his arms. “Which is?”

“Light.”

The boy’s mouth tilted. “That sounds rather simple.”

“It is,” Jesus said. “That is why people avoid it.”

The class did not know what to do with that. Corin almost smiled, though nothing in him felt amused.

Jesus lifted the ledger. “Every person whose name is written here will hear what was written about them if they choose to hear it. No one will be forced. Every person who wrote in this book will be invited to speak truth about why they wrote what they wrote. No one will be permitted to hide cruelty behind concern. No one will be permitted to hide danger behind wounded pride. This classroom will not protect secrets that harm children.”

A hard silence followed.

Then Mara stood.

Her chair scraped against stone. The sound cut through the room so sharply that several students flinched. Corin looked at her, and for one wild second he thought she was going to run. Instead she lifted her chin with a bravery so thin it almost broke.

“My name is in it,” she said.

Jesus looked at her. “Yes.”

The room changed around that one word. Students turned. Some tried not to. Mara’s friends stared at the floor. The Gryffindor boy who had laughed in the corridor went pale.

Mara’s voice hardened, but it trembled at the edges. “Then read it.”

“No.”

Her expression cracked. “Why not?”

“Because you are asking from fear.”

“I have a right to know what they wrote.”

“You do.”

“Then read it.”

Jesus closed the ledger gently. “When you are ready to know truth without letting it become the only name you answer to, I will read it with you.”

Mara’s face flushed. “That is convenient.”

“No,” Jesus said. “It is mercy.”

She laughed once, bitterly. “Mercy would have burned it.”

“Perhaps.” His voice remained calm. “But if I burned it before the truth came into the light, some would continue to live under what was written here, and others would continue to believe they were clean because the page was gone.”

Corin’s hand closed around the key in his pocket.

Mara looked as if she might say more, but something in Jesus’ face stopped her. He did not silence her with force. He simply stayed with her pain without stepping back from it, and that seemed harder for her to fight than anger would have been. She sat down slowly, her eyes wet but not spilling over.

Jesus turned then toward the back of the room.

“Corin Vale.”

Every head turned.

Corin felt the blood leave his face. The key in his pocket seemed to grow heavier. He tried to answer, but his throat gave him nothing.

Jesus did not raise His voice. “Will you bring Me what you are holding?”

The room became so still that the rain against the windows seemed like a thousand small warnings.

Corin stood.

His chair did not scrape. He had pushed it back too carefully for that. He walked between the desks with the key hidden in his fist, aware of every face, every breath, every quiet judgment already forming around him. He saw Mara’s eyes widen. He saw Neville close his mouth as if holding back a memory. He saw McGonagall standing in the doorway now, though he did not know when she had arrived.

When Corin reached the front, he opened his hand.

The key lay on his palm, black and cold.

A murmur broke through the room.

Jesus looked at the key, then at Corin. “Who gave this to you?”

Corin’s first instinct was to say Professor Harrow and let the blame leave his body as quickly as possible. It would be true. It would also not be the whole truth.

“Harrow,” he said. His voice sounded smaller than he wanted. “But I kept it.”

“Yes.”

The word was not cruel, but it held him in place.

Corin stared at the floor. “He said the school needed watchers.”

“And you wanted to be one?”

“I wanted to protect people.”

Jesus waited.

Corin’s jaw tightened. He hated that waiting more than he would have hated an accusation. “I wanted people to know I was not like what they thought.”

“And did the key help you become different?”

Corin closed his hand around nothing. The key had already been lifted from his palm, though he had not felt Jesus take it. “No.”

“What did it help you become?”

The question entered him like a blade, not to destroy but to divide what was true from what he had told himself. He saw himself standing over the ledger at night, reading names by wandlight. He saw himself feeling important because he knew what others did not. He saw himself deciding Mara was dangerous before he had ever asked why she was cruel. He saw himself watching younger students and calling it protection when part of him enjoyed being needed by a secret.

“Afraid,” he said.

Jesus held the key between two fingers. “Fear can make a prison and call it a watchtower.”

Corin’s eyes burned. He looked up, angry now because shame needed somewhere to go. “What was I supposed to do? Everyone here acts like darkness is something out there until it comes back. Then they ask why no one saw the signs. Harrow said there were patterns. He said if we waited until someone cursed another student, it would be too late.”

A few students nodded before they could stop themselves.

Jesus heard the room as much as the boy. “There are signs that should be taken seriously. There are patterns that should not be ignored. If a person is planning harm, love does not pretend otherwise. But suspicion is not discernment. Control is not courage. Fear is not prophecy.”

Corin’s voice cracked. “Then how do you defend anyone?”

Jesus placed the key on top of the closed ledger. “You begin by refusing to become the thing you claim to oppose.”

Nobody spoke.

The words did not strike the room loudly. They settled into it. Corin felt them move across the faces behind him, touching places people had hidden under house colors, family names, exam pressure, old grudges, and private wounds. Defense Against the Dark Arts had always been treated as the class where students learned what to do when evil came at them from outside. Jesus had just made the room consider something far less comfortable. Sometimes darkness entered through the door marked safety.

Mara stood again, slower this time. “He read my name.”

Corin turned toward her. “Mara—”

“You read my name.” Her voice shook, but she did not look away. “You read what Harrow wrote about me, and then you watched me for two weeks like I was already guilty.”

“I thought—”

“You thought what everyone thinks.”

“That is not fair.”

Her eyes flashed. “No. It is not.”

He looked at Jesus, almost pleading without meaning to. “She threatened a second-year last term. She keeps hexed pins in her trunk. She told Albie Rathbone his mother should have been expelled before she had him.”

Mara flinched.

Corin pressed on because stopping meant feeling what he had done. “You want truth? That is truth. I did not invent who she is.”

Jesus looked at Mara. “Is it true?”

The whole class seemed to hold its breath.

Mara’s lips parted. For a moment the old mask tried to return. Corin could see it forming, cold and proud, ready to make everyone pay for witnessing her humiliation. Then Jesus looked at her, and the mask failed.

“Yes,” she said.

The word came out low.

A girl near the window made a small sound. Mara’s face tightened, but she kept standing.

Jesus asked, “Why?”

Mara let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Because I am horrible, apparently.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer people like.”

“It is not Mine.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly around her. Mara gripped the chair in front of her. “Because if people are afraid of me, they do not ask questions.”

“What questions?”

She swallowed. “About my father. About what he did. About what he did not do. About why my mother sends letters I never open. About why I hate going home and hate staying here and hate everybody who acts like they know which families produced darkness and which ones produced heroes.”

Her voice had risen, but not into drama. It had risen because the truth had been held too long in a place too small.

“My father was not important enough to be famous,” she said. “That is what people never understand. He was not some great villain. He was weak. He followed stronger men. He said yes because saying no would have cost him. Then after everything ended, he called it survival. My mother called it shame. I called it normal because I was six and did not know children were allowed to call their homes wrong.”

No one moved.

Mara looked down at her hands. “So yes, I say cruel things. I keep people away. I learned that if you become the rumor first, it hurts less when they say it.”

Jesus looked at her with such sorrowful kindness that Corin had to look away.

“And the hexed pins?” Jesus asked.

Mara’s mouth trembled. “Protection.”

“From whom?”

She did not answer.

Jesus waited, but He did not force the door open. After a moment, He said, “Bring them tomorrow.”

Her eyes lifted sharply. “What?”

“Bring them.”

“Am I being punished?”

“That depends what you think punishment is.”

Mara looked confused and angry, which was perhaps the only honest expression left to her. “And him?” she asked, pointing toward Corin. “Does he just hand over the key and get forgiven because he looked sad?”

Corin felt the words hit him, and he deserved them.

Jesus turned to him. “Corin will stay after class.”

The sentence carried no threat, but Corin’s stomach still tightened.

Mara sat down, though the room did not settle with her. Something had opened, and everyone could feel the air moving through it. Students glanced at one another differently now. Not softer exactly, but less certain. The ledger had been frightening when it was secret. Open on the desk, with Jesus standing beside it, it seemed smaller and more dangerous at the same time.

Jesus picked it up and walked to the center of the room. “There is a story in Scripture about men who brought a woman into public shame and used the law as a stone in their hands. They spoke of righteousness, but they had no love for her soul. They wanted a trap, not truth. I did not tell them sin was harmless. I told the one without sin to cast the first stone.”

A few students shifted. Some knew the story. Some did not. Jesus did not explain it like a lesson on a board. He spoke as though the memory were alive to Him, and Corin felt a strange chill as he realized it was not a story Jesus had studied. It was something He had lived.

Jesus looked around the classroom. “This ledger has been a stone in many hands.”

The words entered the room quietly.

“Some of you have had your names written by others,” He said. “Some of you have written names in your hearts even if you never touched this book. Some of you have been watched so long that you began to become what people feared. Some of you have used another person’s failure to avoid facing your own. Today the stone is being set down.”

A Hufflepuff girl near the front began to cry silently. Her friend reached for her hand under the desk.

Jesus did not ask her to speak. He did not turn her pain into a public example. He simply saw her, and somehow that was enough to let the room know she was not being missed.

Then the ledger moved.

At first Corin thought Jesus had shifted it in His hands, but His fingers were still. The brass clasp trembled. The pages fluttered though there was no wind. A thin sound rose from the book, like whispers traveling through dry leaves. Several students pushed back from their desks. Neville stepped forward, wand half raised.

Jesus lifted one hand slightly, and Neville stopped.

The ledger opened by itself.

Ink began to surface on the blank page near the back. Not old ink. New ink, black and wet, appearing letter by letter as if an unseen hand were writing from inside the paper. Corin watched the first name form and felt the classroom drop away beneath him.

Corin Vale.

Beneath it, words began to appear.

Easily influenced by authority. Pride disguised as responsibility. Secret access to restricted record. Uses suspicion to escape shame. Potential for betrayal under pressure.

Corin could not breathe.

Mara turned to him, and for once there was no triumph in her face.

More words formed.

Wants to be good.

The ink paused there.

Then another line appeared, slower than the rest.

Afraid goodness will not be believed unless he exposes someone worse.

Corin stared until the letters blurred.

The room had gone silent, but it was not the same silence as before. This was not the silence of people waiting for scandal. This was the silence of people realizing the book could name them too. Every student in that room had some private arrangement with fear. Every student had some way of hiding. Every student had a sentence they prayed would never be written where others could read it.

Jesus closed the ledger.

Corin had not asked Him to. He had not even been able to speak. Yet Jesus closed it before the room could take more from him than truth required.

“Why did it do that?” someone whispered.

Jesus looked at the book. “Because things made by fear often keep feeding after their makers are gone.”

Neville’s face had gone pale. “Is it cursed?”

“Yes.”

The word landed hard.

McGonagall stepped fully into the room. Her hand moved toward her wand, but she did not draw it. “Can it be destroyed?”

Jesus looked at the ledger for a long moment. “Yes.”

Relief moved too quickly through the students.

“But not by pretending it never spoke,” He said.

The relief stopped.

Corin understood then, though he wished he did not. If Jesus burned the book now, Corin could leave the room with everyone remembering only that the ledger was cursed. Mara could leave with her cruelty explained by pain but not faced. The school could call the matter finished and continue building smaller ledgers in quieter places. The fire would destroy the pages. It would not destroy the habit that had made them useful.

“What do You want from us?” Corin asked.

Jesus turned to him. “The truth.”

Corin gave a strained laugh. “Everyone keeps saying that until truth costs them something.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

That single word felt like a door.

The bell rang again, marking the end of class, though no one moved to leave. It sounded absurd, almost rude, as if the rest of the castle had not noticed what had happened in the room. Students looked at Jesus, then at the ledger, then at one another. The ordinary world had resumed its schedule. Their next class was waiting. Essays were due. Quidditch practice would continue if the rain eased. Lunch would be served. The castle would keep moving, even though something hidden had been dragged into the light.

Jesus set the ledger on the desk. “You may go.”

Nobody stood.

Jesus’ voice softened. “You may go.”

This time chairs moved slowly. Students gathered bags without speaking much. Mara did not look at Corin as she passed, but she stopped beside him for one breath.

“I meant what I said,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“I still hate you.”

“I know.”

Her eyes flicked toward the ledger. “But I hate that thing more.”

Then she left.

Corin remained near the front because Jesus had told him to stay, and because his legs did not trust themselves yet. Neville lingered by the plant, pretending to adjust its soil. McGonagall stood by the door until the last student left, then closed it with a quiet click.

For a moment, only the rain spoke.

McGonagall’s voice was low. “I should have known that book survived.”

Jesus looked at her. “You cannot repent for what you did not know.”

“I can regret it.”

“Yes.”

Her face tightened, but she accepted the distinction. “And what of what I should have suspected?”

Jesus did not answer quickly. Corin looked between them and realized he was hearing a conversation between two people who understood responsibility differently than children did. Not as a way to crush themselves. Not as a way to escape blame. As something that must be carried truthfully or it would be passed to the young in some hidden form.

“I will search the old records,” McGonagall said. “If there are other objects tied to this one, we will find them.”

“There are,” Jesus said.

Neville looked up sharply. “More ledgers?”

“Not all books.”

McGonagall closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. “Of course not.”

Corin finally found his voice. “Am I expelled?”

McGonagall looked at him, and the old terror rose. Not because she was cruel, but because she was fair in a way that gave no shelter to excuses.

“You used a restricted key,” she said. “You accessed private records. You watched fellow students under secret instruction from a professor whose conduct is now under serious question. You failed to report the existence of the ledger.”

Each sentence struck cleanly. Corin nodded because denying any of it would have made him smaller.

“Yes, Headmistress.”

“Expulsion is not my first decision,” she said. “But there will be consequences.”

Corin almost wished she had expelled him. Consequences meant staying where people knew. It meant walking into meals with whispers at his back. It meant facing Mara in corridors. It meant discovering whether shame could be survived without turning it into anger.

Jesus looked at him. “You will begin today.”

Corin’s mouth went dry. “Begin what?”

“Returning what you took.”

“I did not take anything except the key.”

Jesus’ gaze held him. “You took more than that.”

Corin looked away.

Neville spoke gently from the side. “Trust, maybe.”

The word was simple, but it hurt. Corin had not thought of trust as something he had stolen because he had not felt trusted himself. That was the trouble with wounds. They convinced a person that whatever he took was only repayment.

Jesus walked to the desk and picked up the torn note Mara had slid beneath the cupboard door. He did not show it to McGonagall or Neville. He gave it to Corin.

Corin read the line again.

If He can really see what is in people, tell Him not to look at me.

His hand shook slightly.

“She wrote that because of the ledger,” Corin said.

“She wrote that because she believed being seen and being condemned were the same thing.”

Corin folded the paper carefully, though it was not his. “What do You want me to do with it?”

“Keep it until you understand it.”

“I think I do.”

“No,” Jesus said, not unkindly. “You understand that she was afraid. You do not yet understand the part of you that wanted her to be guilty.”

Corin flinched.

McGonagall’s face remained still, but her eyes softened almost imperceptibly. Neville looked down again, perhaps because he knew that kind of sentence could only be received in silence.

Corin wanted to defend himself. He wanted to say that Mara had done enough wrong to earn suspicion. He wanted to say that fear did not come from nowhere. He wanted to say that Harrow had been the adult, that he had been manipulated, that the school itself had kept the conditions that made the ledger possible. Some of that was true. None of it removed the key from his pocket in memory. None of it changed the fact that he had liked being chosen.

“What happens now?” he asked.

Jesus looked toward the rain-streaked windows. Beyond them, the grounds rolled down toward the lake, where the water lay dark under the morning sky. “Now the thing hidden under the lesson becomes the lesson.”

Corin did not know what that meant, but he knew enough not to ask for an easier answer.

McGonagall opened the classroom door. “Mr. Vale, you will report to my office after supper. Until then, attend your classes. Professor Longbottom, would you remain a moment?”

Neville nodded.

Corin turned to leave, still holding Mara’s note. At the doorway, he paused and looked back. Jesus had returned to the ledger, His hand resting on the cover. He looked neither afraid of it nor impressed by it. That unsettled Corin. Every dark object he had ever studied seemed to demand either terror or fascination. Jesus gave it neither. He treated it as something real, dangerous, and already beneath a higher authority.

“Professor,” Corin said.

Jesus looked up.

“Did You know my name would appear?”

“Yes.”

Corin swallowed. “Did You know what it would say?”

“Yes.”

Anger stirred again, weaker this time. “Then why let it happen in front of everyone?”

Jesus’ eyes were steady. “Because you were not the only one it was speaking to.”

Corin had no answer.

He stepped into the corridor, where students scattered too quickly to pretend they had not been waiting. Their faces carried hunger, fear, pity, and the first sparks of rumor. Corin walked through them without raising his head. He expected laughter. He expected someone to call him a spy or Harrow’s pet or worse. Nobody did. That almost made it harder.

At the far end of the corridor, Mara stood alone beside a rain-blurred window.

He stopped.

She looked at the folded note in his hand, and her face changed. “He gave that to you?”

“Yes.”

“I did not say you could have it.”

“I know.” Corin held it out. “Take it.”

She stared at his hand but did not reach for the paper.

“I was told to keep it until I understood it,” he said. “But I think maybe understanding starts with knowing it was never mine.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed, suspicious of anything that sounded like decency. “That supposed to fix something?”

“No.”

“Good. Because it does not.”

“I know.”

Rain moved across the glass behind her in crooked lines. Down below, on the grounds, a group of younger students hurried toward the greenhouses with cloaks pulled over their heads. The castle felt enormous around them, full of doors, staircases, rumors, portraits, histories, and hidden rooms where old fear could survive for years because no one wanted to open the cabinet.

Mara finally took the note. Her fingers brushed his, cold and quick.

“I did keep the pins,” she said. “He already knew, I suppose.”

Corin nodded.

“I did not use them.”

“That does not make them harmless.”

“I know that.” Her tone sharpened, then softened with reluctance. “I know.”

For a moment they stood without speaking, two students who had both been named by fear in different handwriting.

Then the corridor lamps flickered.

Not all of them. Only the row closest to the Defense classroom. The flames inside the glass dimmed to a bruised blue, then stretched thin and dark like ink pulled through water. A cold line moved under the door they had just left. Students at the far end of the corridor stopped whispering.

Mara stepped back. “What is that?”

The classroom door opened.

Neville came out first, pale but steady, one hand gripping his wand. McGonagall followed, her face severe. Behind them, Jesus stood in the doorway with the ledger in His hands. The brass clasp was open again. Pages turned by themselves, faster and faster, though no wind touched them.

From inside the room came a whisper that sounded like many voices trying to speak through one mouth.

Not guilty. Necessary. Watch them. Mark them. Keep the school safe. Some children are doors. Some names are warnings. Some blood remembers.

Mara’s face drained of color.

Corin felt the key again, though it was no longer in his pocket. He felt it as memory. He felt it as temptation.

Jesus stepped into the corridor, and the blue flames steadied but did not brighten. He looked down the long stone passage at the students gathered there, at the portraits pretending not to listen, at the rain pressing against the windows, and at Corin and Mara standing too near the first opened wound.

Then He spoke, not loudly, yet every person heard Him.

“No child in this castle belongs to the darkness.”

The ledger snapped shut in His hands.

The lamps burned gold again.

No one cheered. No one laughed. No one knew what to do with relief when fear had not yet fully left. But Corin saw Mara press the folded note against her chest as if holding it there could keep her from falling apart, and for the first time that morning he understood something small and terrible. The ledger was not finished. It had only been interrupted.

Jesus looked at him once more, and Corin knew his part in the story had not ended with handing over the key.

It had begun there.

Chapter Two: The Names That Would Not Stay Closed

By the time Corin reached Charms, the whole school had already changed the story three times. In one version, Jesus had read every guilty thought in the Defense classroom and made the walls bleed ink. In another, Mara Flint had confessed to keeping cursed weapons under her bed and Corin had been dragged away by McGonagall in chains. A first-year told anyone who would listen that the ledger had spoken in the voice of Lord Voldemort, though he said the name in a whisper and looked proud of himself for surviving it. Corin heard the rumors moving ahead of him through the corridors, and each one made the truth feel both safer and worse.

Professor Flitwick did not mention the incident when Corin entered late. That somehow made it heavier. The small professor only looked up from a row of feather charms and said, “Mr. Vale, please take your place,” with a kindness that did not excuse the lateness. Corin walked to the only empty seat left, which happened to be three desks behind Mara. She did not turn around. Her shoulders were straight, and her wand lay untouched beside her parchment, as if even lifting it would require more trust in herself than she had.

The lesson was supposed to be on controlled levitation under distraction. Professor Flitwick had arranged small glass bells on each desk, and students were meant to lift them without letting them ring. It was the kind of exercise Corin usually liked because it rewarded a steady hand and a focused mind. That morning, his bell shook so badly in the air that it rang before it had risen an inch. The clear, delicate sound seemed to accuse him of having no control at all.

“Again,” Flitwick said softly from beside him.

Corin reset his wrist. “I am trying.”

“I know.”

That answer was almost worse than correction. Corin wanted someone to be sharp with him. Sharpness gave him an enemy. Patience left him with himself. He stared at the bell until the silver rim blurred, then lifted his wand and whispered the charm. The bell rose slowly this time, trembling but silent, and for three breaths he thought he had managed it. Then someone behind him whispered the word ledger, and the bell rang hard enough to crack.

Mara turned.

It was quick, only a glance, but Corin saw enough. She had heard it too. The old Mara would have punished the whisper with a look that could peel paint. This Mara looked tired, angry, and trapped in a kind of fear that had not yet decided whether it would become cruelty again. She turned back before their eyes could meet for long.

When class ended, Corin stayed seated until most students left. He told himself he was gathering his books slowly, but the truth was less dignified. He did not want to walk into the corridor where rumor waited like smoke. Mara remained too, though she shoved parchment into her bag with more force than needed. Flitwick stacked the glass bells into a shallow wooden crate, humming under his breath until only the three of them were left.

Mara stood first. “Professor, may I ask something?”

Flitwick paused. “Of course, Miss Flint.”

“Did you know about the ledger?”

The question was too direct for the small room. Corin looked down at his open book, pretending not to listen while listening with his whole body. Flitwick’s fingers rested lightly on the side of the crate. His face changed, not into guilt exactly, but into the sadness of a person who had lived through too many Hogwarts secrets to treat any new one as impossible.

“I knew such a record had existed long ago,” he said. “I believed it was destroyed.”

“Everyone seems to believe things were destroyed.”

Flitwick accepted the edge in her voice. “Yes. That is one of the castle’s great sins. It allows people to believe locked doors are the same as healed wounds.”

Mara gripped the strap of her bag. “And if my name is in it?”

“Then your name was written by a hand that was not God’s.”

Corin looked up despite himself.

Mara seemed unsettled by that. “That does not erase what I have done.”

“No,” Flitwick said. “But it may help you stop confusing what you have done with who has the right to own you.”

For a moment, Mara had no answer. Corin watched her mouth tighten as if she hated receiving mercy from someone she could not easily despise. She nodded once, not quite thanks, and left the room without looking back.

Corin stood to follow, but Flitwick spoke before he reached the door.

“Mr. Vale.”

Corin stopped.

The professor set the crate down. “I do not know what Professor Harrow asked you to do, and I will not press you for details in a corridor. That is now a matter for the Headmistress and Professor Jesus. But I will say this. Hogwarts has always produced brave students, and sometimes it has done a poor job teaching them what bravery is for.”

Corin’s throat tightened. “I thought I was helping.”

“Most dangerous mistakes are stronger when they begin near something good.”

Corin wished the professor had scolded him instead. “Is everyone going to have wise things to say today?”

Flitwick smiled faintly. “Probably. It is one of the hazards of being wrong in a school.”

Despite himself, Corin almost laughed. It came out as a breath and vanished. Flitwick did not push the moment. He only returned to the bells, placing each one in the crate with the care of a man who knew small things could break loudly.

In the corridor, Mara was gone. Corin expected that. He also expected students to stare, and they did. What he did not expect was Albie Rathbone stepping into his path outside the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls to dance. Albie was a thin fourth-year with a permanent crease between his eyebrows and a mother who worked in the Department of Magical Transportation. Mara had insulted him last term in front of half the courtyard. Corin remembered the moment because he had written it into Harrow’s supplemental notes.

Albie looked nervous but determined. “Did she really say my name in class?”

Corin shifted his books against his chest. “Not yours.”

“People said she did.”

“People said a lot.”

Albie looked disappointed, which made Corin feel unreasonably irritated. “So she did not apologize?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Corin started to move around him, then stopped. The truth felt awkward and unwanted in his mouth, but he had heard Jesus say enough that morning to understand truth did not become optional because it made the speaker uncomfortable. “She did say she said cruel things because it kept people from asking questions.”

Albie’s face twisted. “That is not an apology.”

“No.”

“Are you defending her?”

“I do not know what I am doing.”

The honesty surprised them both. Albie studied him in silence, and Corin saw the boy decide whether to strike while the older student looked weak. It would have been easy. Corin had made himself useful to Harrow by watching others, and now others had permission to watch him back. Albie could spread this conversation through three floors by lunch. Instead he nodded stiffly.

“My mum says frightened people make bad judges,” Albie said.

Corin gave a tired breath. “Your mum sounds inconvenient.”

“She is.”

They stood there a moment longer, two boys held together by someone else’s harm and unsure what justice would look like if it did not arrive as revenge. Then Albie moved aside and walked toward Transfiguration, leaving Corin alone beneath the tapestry. One of the painted trolls stumbled over its own feet and crashed into a painted piano with a sound like distant thunder. Corin looked at it for too long, grateful for anything in the castle that was allowed to be ridiculous.

By lunch, the rain had stopped, but the clouds remained low over the grounds. The Great Hall smelled of leek soup and warm rolls. Corin sat at the far end of the Ravenclaw table, where the noise was slightly thinner and the questions took longer to reach him. Students kept glancing at the staff table. Jesus was not there. His chair sat empty beside McGonagall, and the absence seemed almost as noticeable as His presence had been that morning.

Mara entered late, carrying a small cloth bundle in both hands.

The hall noticed.

She walked between the tables without looking left or right. Her chin was lifted, but Corin had learned by now that pride and panic could use the same posture. She reached the staff table and stood before McGonagall. The Headmistress looked at the bundle, then at Mara’s face, and whatever she saw made her expression grow less severe.

“Professor Jesus asked me to bring these,” Mara said.

The hall had gone quiet enough that her voice carried.

McGonagall held out her hand. Mara placed the bundle in it. The cloth shifted, and for one brief second Corin saw a cluster of silver pins, each tipped with a bead of dark green glass. They looked delicate, almost pretty. That was what made them worse. Some harmful things survived because they learned how to appear small.

McGonagall did not open the cloth further. “Thank you, Miss Flint.”

“Am I dismissed?”

“Yes.”

Mara turned too quickly and almost collided with a second-year carrying soup. The girl gasped, and Mara reached out by instinct to steady the bowl before it spilled. The hall watched that small movement with an attention it did not deserve, but perhaps everyone was hungry for proof that people were not only what they feared. Mara noticed the watching and dropped her hand as if she had touched flame. She hurried to the Slytherin table and sat with her face hard again.

Corin looked down at his soup.

A shadow fell across the bench opposite him. He looked up and found Neville Longbottom standing there with the drooping plant from the Defense classroom tucked under one arm. The plant looked even more miserable than before. Its leaves sagged like tired fingers.

“May I sit?” Neville asked.

Corin blinked. Professors did not usually ask students whether they could sit. “I suppose.”

Neville lowered himself onto the bench. He set the pot carefully on the table between them. “This is a remorse vine.”

Corin stared at the plant. “That is a terrible name.”

“It is not the official name. I named this one after what it keeps doing.” Neville touched one limp leaf gently. “It curls inward whenever someone nearby is hiding something they need to confess. Very annoying in faculty meetings.”

Corin did not smile, but the corner of his mouth moved. “Why bring it to lunch?”

“It would not stop curling in the Defense classroom.”

Corin’s eyes went to the plant. Every leaf was rolled tight now, like parchment sealed against bad news. “Because of the ledger?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Neville looked toward the staff table, where McGonagall had placed Mara’s bundle beside her plate without eating. “Professor Jesus asked me to keep it close today.”

“Why?”

Neville’s face held the uneasy patience of someone who had learned not all answers came before danger. “He said the castle was telling the truth in more than one place.”

Corin glanced around the hall. Students were laughing again in pockets now, though the laughter had a careful edge. Owls nested in the beams. A pitcher refilled itself near the Hufflepuff table. Everything looked ordinary because Hogwarts had always been gifted at making the unusual look scheduled. Still, the remorse vine remained tightly curled.

Neville leaned forward, lowering his voice. “The ledger is not simply recording suspicion. It is collecting agreement.”

Corin felt his appetite disappear. “What does that mean?”

“It means every time someone believes a person is beyond grace, the book grows stronger.”

The hall noise seemed to recede. Corin looked toward Mara across the room. She was not eating. She sat with her hands folded under the table, staring at nothing.

Neville followed his gaze. “That includes what she believes about herself.”

Corin looked back at him. “Then what are we supposed to do? Stop thinking?”

“No.” Neville’s voice was gentle but firm. “Start telling the truth better.”

Corin wanted to say that sounded impossible. He also wanted to ask why everyone kept giving him answers that were too simple to dismiss and too hard to obey. Before he could decide which complaint to make, the remorse vine shuddered. One of its leaves uncurled, pointed toward the entrance doors, then curled again so fast the stem quivered.

Neville stood.

Corin turned.

A boy had entered the Great Hall alone. He was young, maybe third year, with wet hair plastered to his forehead though the rain had ended. His robe hung wrong on one shoulder, and one sleeve was torn near the wrist. He carried his wand in his left hand, not raised but gripped too tightly. At first Corin did not recognize him. Then the boy turned slightly, and Corin saw the small scar near his chin.

Tobin Marr.

The name hit him because he had written it down.

Not in the main ledger. Harrow had kept separate notes for students he called developing cases. Tobin had been one of them. Quiet. Isolated. Strong accidental magic under stress. Possible fascination with forbidden defensive spells. Watches others from stairwells. Corin remembered adding his own observation after seeing Tobin near the owlery after curfew. Avoids eye contact when questioned. He had felt responsible when he wrote it. Mature. Useful. Chosen.

Now Tobin stood inside the Great Hall looking as if he had been dragged through a nightmare and released in front of everyone.

McGonagall rose. “Mr. Marr?”

Tobin lifted his wand.

Several students screamed. Benches scraped. Wands appeared across the hall in a wave of panic. McGonagall’s own wand was in her hand instantly, but she did not cast. Neville moved beside Corin, shielding the younger students behind him. Mara stood at the Slytherin table, her face white.

Tobin pointed his wand at the staff table, though his arm shook so hard the tip wandered.

“Give me the book,” he said.

His voice broke on the last word.

McGonagall spoke with controlled calm. “Put your wand down.”

“No.”

“Tobin.”

“I know my name is in it.”

No one answered.

Tobin laughed, but it sounded close to sobbing. “Do not pretend. Everyone knows now. Everyone always knows something before I do.”

Corin felt his body go cold. Around him, students whispered despite their fear. Tobin heard them. His wand jerked toward the sound, and half the Ravenclaw table ducked.

Neville raised one hand. “Tobin, no one here wants to hurt you.”

“That is what they say before they decide what you are.”

The sentence struck Corin with such force that he could not stay seated. He stood slowly, ignoring Neville’s sharp glance.

Tobin saw him.

Recognition moved across the boy’s face and became rage. “You.”

Corin stopped.

“You watched me,” Tobin said. “You followed me near the owlery. You wrote things.”

Several heads turned toward Corin.

“I did,” Corin said.

Neville’s eyes flicked to him, worried but not stopping him.

Tobin’s wand aimed more steadily now. “What did you write?”

Corin swallowed. The Great Hall had become painfully clear, every candle flame, every face, every breath held around him. “I wrote that you were quiet. That you avoided eye contact. That your magic got strong when you were upset. That you might be interested in forbidden defensive spells.”

Tobin’s mouth twisted. “That is not all.”

“No,” Corin said. “I wrote that you watched people from stairwells.”

“I was hiding.”

Corin closed his eyes briefly. “I know that now.”

“You do not know anything.” Tobin’s wand shook again. “My brother told them I was dangerous because I broke the kitchen window when he locked me outside. My aunt wrote the school and said they should watch me. Harrow said he could help if I told him when I felt angry. Then he started asking what I would do if people laughed at me. He wanted me to say something ugly. He wanted it.”

McGonagall’s face changed at that. Corin saw the anger there, old and cold.

Tobin took a step forward. “He said some students are doors. He said if the wrong thing opens them, something comes through. So I want the book. I want to see if I am a door.”

The words landed with a terrible sadness.

Then Jesus entered the hall.

He did not rush. He came through the same doors Tobin had used, walking quietly between the tables while every wand in the room remained drawn. He had no wand in His hand. His coat was still damp at the shoulders, and there was mud along one hem as if He had been somewhere on the grounds. His eyes were on Tobin, but not with alarm. The hall felt it at once, that strange lessening of panic without any denial of danger.

“Tobin,” Jesus said.

The boy’s wand turned toward Him.

A hundred students gasped.

Jesus stopped a few steps away. “You have been carrying fear that was given to you by people who did not know how to love you.”

Tobin’s face crumpled and hardened again in the same second. “Do not say that.”

“It is true.”

“You do not know me.”

“I do.”

“No, You know everything. That is different.” Tobin’s voice rose. “People keep saying You see people, like that helps. What if I do not want to be seen? What if there is something wrong in me and You say it out loud?”

Jesus looked at him with grief and tenderness together. “I will not use truth to make a crowd feel righteous.”

Tobin’s arm shook. “The book will.”

“Yes.”

That answer startled him.

Jesus took one step closer. “But you are not the book.”

Tobin breathed hard through his nose. “If my name is there, then someone saw it.”

“Someone saw your fear and wrote from their own.”

“My magic hurt people.”

“Did you mean to harm them?”

Tobin’s eyes filled. “I wanted them to stop.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“They said it is.”

Jesus’ voice remained low. “They were wrong.”

The hall held still around them. Corin could feel students listening differently now. This was not spectacle. It was not even class. It was one frightened boy standing with a wand in his hand while the whole school learned whether truth would come as mercy or punishment.

Tobin looked toward the staff table. “Where is it?”

McGonagall answered before Jesus could. “Secured.”

“Where?”

“In my office.”

Tobin’s wand swung toward her. “Give it to me.”

Jesus moved then, not fast, but enough that Tobin’s attention returned to Him.

“Tobin,” He said, “look at Me.”

The boy resisted. Corin could see it in his jaw, in the frantic movement of his eyes, in the way he wanted to keep anger between himself and the gaze he feared. But at last he looked. The moment stretched. No light burst from the ceiling. No spell snapped the wand from his hand. Jesus simply stood before him and looked at him as if the boy’s whole life, including the parts others had mishandled, could be known without being thrown away.

Tobin began to cry.

He tried to stop it. Everyone saw that. He bit his lower lip and clenched his wand until his knuckles whitened, but the tears came anyway. They cut through the dirt on his face and fell onto his robe.

Jesus held out His hand.

“Give Me the wand.”

Tobin shook his head.

“Not because you are beyond trust,” Jesus said. “Because right now your fear is holding it with you.”

The boy made a small broken sound. Then he placed the wand in Jesus’ hand.

Only then did the hall breathe.

McGonagall lowered her wand. Neville did too. Around the room, students slowly followed. Corin found that his hands were trembling even though he had not drawn his wand at all.

Jesus gave Tobin’s wand to McGonagall. Then He placed one hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder. Tobin did not collapse, though he looked close to it. He stood there, crying in front of the whole school, and nobody laughed. Perhaps they were too shocked. Perhaps something in the way Jesus stood beside him made mockery feel dangerous in a way no rule ever could.

Mara moved before anyone expected it.

She stepped out from the Slytherin table and crossed the hall toward Tobin. Every eye followed her. Corin felt a sudden alarm, not because he thought she would harm him, but because the room was too raw for whatever sharp thing she might say. Yet when she reached Tobin, she stopped at a careful distance.

“My father used to call me a door,” she said.

Tobin looked at her through tears.

Mara’s face was pale, but her voice held. “He said our family opened the wrong things and we had to learn how to control what came through. I believed him for a while.” She swallowed. “It made me mean.”

Tobin stared at her as if she had spoken in a language he almost understood.

Mara looked down. “That does not fix what I did to anyone. I just thought you should know it is a lie.”

The hall remained silent.

Jesus looked at her, and something in His face said He had seen the cost of those words. Mara did not wait for approval. She turned and walked back to her table, but she did not sit with the same hard posture as before. She looked shaken, almost smaller, and yet somehow less owned by what had frightened her.

McGonagall sent two prefects to escort the younger students to their common rooms after lunch. Classes for the afternoon were quietly suspended, though nobody announced it as fear. Teachers began moving through the hall in purposeful clusters. Flitwick spoke with the Ravenclaws nearest Tobin. Sprout arrived from the greenhouses smelling faintly of damp earth and asked which students needed calming draught ingredients prepared. Neville stayed close to Jesus, still holding the remorse vine, whose leaves had loosened slightly but remained curved inward.

Corin expected Jesus to leave with Tobin. Instead Jesus looked across the hall at him.

“Corin,” He said, “walk with us.”

Corin did not want to. That was the first clear thought. His second was that not wanting to did not matter. He stepped away from the bench and crossed the Great Hall under a hundred watchful faces. Tobin looked at him once, then looked down again. Corin did not blame him.

They left through the side passage near the staff table rather than the main doors. The passage was narrow and colder, lit by torches that hissed when drafts moved behind the stone. McGonagall walked ahead with Tobin’s wand. Neville followed with the plant. Jesus walked beside Tobin, and Corin came behind them feeling like a prisoner who had not been chained because everyone knew he would not run.

After several turns, they reached a small room Corin had never noticed before. It was not grand enough to be an office and not bare enough to be storage. A round wooden table sat in the center. Four chairs surrounded it. A narrow window looked out over the wet courtyard, where puddles had gathered between the stones. There was a shelf with clean cups, a kettle, folded cloths, and a basin of water. The room felt like the kind of place Hogwarts created only when someone needed it badly enough and did not know what to ask for.

McGonagall set Tobin’s wand on the table but kept her hand near it. “We will speak here.”

Tobin sat because Jesus guided him gently toward a chair. Corin remained standing until McGonagall looked at him. He sat too.

Neville placed the remorse vine in the middle of the table. It gave one faint twitch and then went still.

For a while no one spoke. McGonagall poured water into cups and set one before Tobin. He did not drink. Corin watched him stare at the cup, and shame worked through him with slow teeth. He had written about Tobin as if watching from stairwells proved danger. He had never wondered who the boy was hiding from.

Jesus sat across from Tobin. “Tell the truth you are most afraid will condemn you.”

Tobin’s hands tightened in his lap. “I thought You said You would not make truth a public shame.”

“This is not public.”

Tobin glanced at Corin.

Jesus answered the look. “He helped carry the lie. He must help hear the truth.”

Corin looked down.

Tobin’s voice came small. “I wanted to hurt my brother.”

No one interrupted.

“He locked me outside at Christmas because he said I was strange and everybody knew it. He is not magical. My aunt says that makes him safer, but he is not safe. He stood inside the kitchen and laughed while I hit the door. I got so angry that all the glass broke. It went everywhere. He had cuts on his arms. My aunt said I tried to curse him without a wand.”

“Did you?” McGonagall asked.

“No.” Tobin looked up, desperate to be believed. “I did not even know it would happen. I just wanted him to open the door.”

McGonagall’s face softened in a way she would never have allowed in the Great Hall. “Accidental magic under distress is not evidence of dark intent.”

“Harrow said distress shows what is underneath.”

Jesus looked at Tobin. “Sometimes distress shows what has been done to a child.”

Tobin’s lips pressed together. He cried again, quieter this time.

Corin felt something inside him bend. He had known the facts in scraps, or thought he had. A broken window. Family concern. Isolation. Anger. Harrow had arranged those scraps into a shape that made fear seem intelligent. Now, seated across from Tobin, Corin saw a boy locked outside a kitchen in winter while someone laughed through the glass. The same facts made a different truth when love stood close enough to hear them.

“I wrote it down,” Corin said.

Tobin looked at him.

“I wrote that your magic was dangerous under stress. I did not ask what stress. I did not ask who hurt you. I thought asking would make me soft.” His voice faltered, but he forced himself to continue. “I am sorry.”

Tobin stared at him for a long time. “I do not forgive you.”

Corin nodded. “You do not have to.”

Jesus looked at Corin then, and His expression was grave but not displeased. Corin realized, with a strange discomfort, that a true apology did not purchase release. It simply stopped adding debt.

McGonagall folded her hands on the table. “Mr. Marr, you will not be punished for what happened in the Great Hall as though you came there intending harm. But we will not pretend pointing a wand at students and staff is a small matter.”

Tobin nodded quickly, fear returning. “I know.”

“You will meet with me, Professor Jesus, and Madam Pomfrey. We will contact your guardian, but not in a way that leaves you unprotected. I will review Professor Harrow’s communications with your family. If misconduct occurred, it will be addressed.”

Tobin looked stunned. “You believe me?”

“I believe enough to investigate. And I believe you are a student under my care.”

The boy lowered his head, and his shoulders shook once. It was not relief exactly. It was what happened when someone who had braced for rejection did not yet know how to receive protection.

Jesus reached for the cup of water and moved it closer to him. “Drink.”

Tobin obeyed.

The remorse vine uncurled one leaf.

Neville let out a breath. “That is a good sign.”

Corin looked at the plant. “Does it always know?”

Neville rubbed the back of his neck. “Not exactly. Plants can be honest without being simple.”

Mara would have rolled her eyes at that, Corin thought, and then he was surprised that he knew her well enough to imagine it. The thought made him wonder where she had gone after the Great Hall and whether bringing the pins had cost her more than anyone understood.

As if answering the question, a knock came at the door.

McGonagall opened it with her wand already in her hand. Mara stood outside, holding her schoolbag against her side. Her face changed when she saw Tobin at the table. She nearly stepped back.

“I was told to come,” she said.

“By whom?” McGonagall asked.

Mara looked past her toward Jesus. “By Him. Yesterday, I think. Or today. I do not know. He said bring them tomorrow, but after lunch I could not sit there with everyone looking at the empty place where they had been.”

Jesus nodded to the chair beside Corin. “Sit.”

Mara entered slowly. Her eyes flicked to Tobin. “I did not know you would be here.”

Tobin wiped his face quickly with his sleeve. “I am not crying.”

“I did not say you were.”

“You were going to.”

“No.” Mara sat, setting her bag on the floor. “I was going to ask if you hated everyone yet.”

Tobin looked confused.

“It is what I did after people knew things,” she said. “It was not useful, but it gave me something to do.”

Neville glanced at McGonagall as if unsure whether that counted as helpful. McGonagall’s mouth tightened in what might have been the beginning of a smile if the day had been less serious.

Jesus looked at Mara. “The pins.”

Mara pulled the cloth bundle from her bag and placed it on the table. McGonagall stiffened.

“I thought you had given them to me,” the Headmistress said.

“I did,” Mara said. “Those were the false ones.”

The room changed. Corin stared at her.

Mara’s jaw tightened. “I brought decoys to the Great Hall because I wanted to obey enough to make people stop looking. Then Tobin came in, and I heard myself telling him it was a lie, and I knew I had just lied too.” Her voice dropped. “These are the real ones.”

McGonagall’s expression grew severe enough to make the air feel colder. “Miss Flint.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Mara looked at the bundle. “No. Probably not.”

Jesus reached for the cloth and unfolded it. Six silver pins lay inside. Unlike the false ones, these did not look delicate once revealed. Their green glass tips pulsed faintly, as if something within them were breathing. The remorse vine recoiled so sharply that the pot scraped against the table.

Neville whispered, “Venom-binding charms.”

Mara’s face went pale. “They are not supposed to kill.”

“No,” Neville said, still staring. “But they can carry pain into the nerves for hours.”

Tobin pushed his chair back slightly.

Corin felt sick. “You brought those to school?”

Mara looked at him with sudden fury. “You do not get to sound surprised.”

He shut his mouth.

She looked back at Jesus. “I never used them.”

Jesus did not look away from her. “But you kept the power to.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She breathed in shakily. “Because my cousin said people at school would test me once they knew my father was weak. He said fear is inherited unless you make others inherit it from you.”

McGonagall closed her eyes for one second. Neville looked angry now, not at Mara alone but at the adults who had placed such words in a child’s hands.

Jesus touched one pin with the tip of His finger.

The green light inside it went out.

Mara stared.

He touched the second, then the third. One by one, the pins dulled from within until they were only bent pieces of silver. No spell sounded. No heat rose. He simply touched what had been made to carry pain, and its purpose left it.

Mara’s eyes filled. “I thought You would be angrier.”

“I am.”

She flinched.

Jesus’ voice remained quiet. “Anger does not always need to shout.”

Her mouth trembled. “At me?”

“At what taught you to feel safe only when someone else was afraid.”

A tear slipped down her face, and she wiped it away quickly, almost violently. “I do not know how to be safe another way.”

“I know.”

The way He said it undid her more than any accusation could have. She lowered her head, and for the first time Corin saw Mara Flint cry without trying to turn it into a weapon. Tobin looked at her as if he recognized a language he did not want to speak. Corin looked at the dead pins and felt the weight of the note in his memory.

Then the remorse vine opened all at once.

Every leaf uncurled toward the table. Neville stepped back, startled. The plant’s thin stem lifted, pointing not at Mara, not at Tobin, and not at Corin, but toward the wall behind McGonagall. The stone there was bare except for a narrow crack that ran from floor to ceiling like a line drawn by age.

Jesus stood.

McGonagall turned. “What is it?”

The crack darkened.

Ink seeped from it.

At first it came slowly, a thin black thread moving down the stone. Then more appeared, spreading in branching lines across the wall. Words formed in the wet darkness, crooked and crowded, as if the castle itself had become a page.

Known risks must be named.

Blood remembers.

Mercy invites danger.

Children are doors.

Watchers preserve the school.

Mara made a small sound. Tobin gripped the edge of the table. Corin stood so quickly his chair tipped backward and hit the floor.

McGonagall drew her wand. Neville did too. The remorse vine leaned toward the wall, leaves trembling.

Jesus stepped closer to the writing. His face held no surprise. Only sorrow.

The words shifted.

Corin Vale agreed.

The room seemed to close around him.

Mara turned slowly. Tobin stared. McGonagall’s eyes moved to Corin, not with accusation yet, but with the heavy demand for truth.

Corin shook his head. “I did not write that.”

Jesus looked back at him.

Corin’s voice rose. “I did not. I read the ledger. I added notes Harrow asked for. I kept the key. I did not write those words.”

The ink thickened beneath the sentence.

Corin Vale agreed.

Jesus looked at the wall again. “Agreement is not always signed in ink.”

Corin felt the sentence reach him before he understood it. He remembered Harrow speaking in the shadowed classroom. Some children are doors. Some names are warnings. Mercy invites danger. Corin had not written the doctrine. He had believed enough of it to act.

His anger drained, leaving something worse.

“I agreed,” he said.

The ink stopped moving.

McGonagall lowered her wand slightly. “Professor?”

Jesus placed His palm against the wall beneath the writing. The ink pulled away from His hand as if the stone itself were trying to breathe. “The ledger is not alone. The words have gone into the room, the cabinet, the keys, and the agreements made around them. It has fed on fear for years.”

Neville’s voice was low. “How do we remove it?”

Jesus turned from the wall. “By bringing every agreement into the light.”

Corin looked at Mara, then at Tobin, then at the dead pins on the table. He understood with a heaviness that made him feel older than he had been that morning. The ledger did not only belong to Harrow. It did not only belong to forgotten professors or frightened parents or old wars. It belonged to every person who found a reason to decide someone else was safer condemned than known.

The ink on the wall began to fade, but one line remained longer than the rest.

Mercy invites danger.

Jesus looked at that sentence until it thinned into the stone and disappeared.

Then He spoke, softly enough that the words felt meant for the room before they were meant for the people in it.

“Mercy invited Me.”

No one answered. The room did not become bright. The problem did not vanish. The pins still lay dead on the table, Tobin’s wand remained under McGonagall’s care, Mara’s face was wet with tears she could not hide, and Corin still had consequences waiting in the Headmistress’s office after supper. Yet something had shifted. The darkness had spoken more clearly, and because of that, it had less room to pretend it was wisdom.

Jesus looked at Corin. “You will come with Me to the Defense classroom before supper.”

Corin nodded. “Yes, Professor.”

Mara wiped her face again. “What about me?”

Jesus looked at the pins. “You will come too.”

Tobin sat up straighter, fear and curiosity mixing in his face. “And me?”

Jesus’ expression softened. “You will rest.”

Tobin looked disappointed, then relieved, then ashamed of being relieved.

McGonagall picked up his wand from the table. “You may have this back after Madam Pomfrey sees you and after we speak further. Not because you are evil, Mr. Marr. Because you are shaken, and shaken hands should not be asked to carry sharp things too soon.”

Tobin nodded. This time he did not argue.

Mara looked toward the window. The courtyard beyond it had caught a weak line of afternoon light. Rainwater shone between the stones, and a few students moved across the wet ground in small groups, their robes lifted from the puddles. Life continued outside the room, but not untouched. Corin understood now that Hogwarts was not one story. It was a thousand hidden rooms, some full of laughter and some full of agreements no one remembered making.

Jesus gathered the dead pins in the cloth and folded it once. His hands moved with the care of someone handling both evidence and sorrow.

Corin watched Him and thought of the cupboard beneath the classroom, the quiet prayer before dawn, and the letter that had asked Him not to look. He had believed being seen meant being exposed. Now he was beginning to understand that exposure alone could still leave a person in the dark. What Jesus brought was harder and better. He brought sight that did not turn away, truth that did not flatter, and mercy that did not lie.

The bell for afternoon classes rang through the corridor, though no classes were meeting. Its sound moved through the little room and faded into the stone. Nobody rose at first. They sat with the quiet after confession, which was not peaceful yet but was no longer pretending.

At last Jesus opened the door.

The corridor beyond was empty except for a single line of black ink on the floor, so thin Corin almost missed it. It began outside the room and trailed away toward the stairs that led back to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. The line moved as they watched, inching along the stone like something wounded returning to its hiding place.

Mara stepped closer to Corin without seeming to notice she had done it.

Jesus looked down at the ink, then toward the shadowed stairwell.

“The book is calling its witnesses,” He said.

Corin felt fear rise again, but this time it did not come with the old hunger to be chosen. It came with the knowledge that he had already chosen once and chosen badly. Now he would have to walk back into the room where he had agreed with fear, and he would have to do it without the comfort of pretending he was only there to protect others.

Jesus started down the corridor.

After a moment, Corin followed.

Mara followed too.

Chapter Three: The Witnesses in the Walls

The ink line led them away from the small room and down the narrow passage behind the staff corridor, where the torches burned too low and the stones seemed to drink the light before it reached the floor. Corin walked behind Jesus with Mara at his side, though neither of them had agreed to walk together. The line ahead of them trembled and crawled through the joints between stones, sometimes thinning until it nearly vanished, then darkening again whenever they passed a portrait or a sealed door. It moved with purpose, not like spilled ink, but like something remembering the way back to a wound.

Mara kept one hand near her pocket even though the pins were gone. Corin noticed but said nothing. He understood the shape of that movement now. Fear kept reaching for weapons even after mercy had taken them away, because the hand had not yet learned another habit. Once, he would have marked it in his mind as proof that she could not be trusted. Now it made him think of the key he no longer carried and how empty his robe pocket felt without it.

They passed the entrance to the staff room, where voices stopped as soon as they came near. Professor Sinistra stood half inside the doorway with a cup of tea in her hand and a question in her eyes. Professor Trelawney hovered behind her in layers of shawls, looking unusually pale and not at all eager to offer predictions. Filch stood at the far end with Mrs. Norris under one arm, muttering about stains on the stone, but even he did not step forward to complain. The ink line slipped past all of them and turned toward the older staircase that rose behind the Defense wing.

Jesus did not hurry. That made the walk worse and better at the same time. Corin wanted to run ahead and be done with whatever was waiting. Mara looked as if she wanted to turn around and declare the whole thing beneath her. Yet Jesus moved with a calm that did not belong to delay or fear. He walked like someone who already knew the darkness had lost the right to command the pace.

At the first landing, the line stopped beneath a tall portrait covered in a gray cloth. Corin had passed it for years without thinking about it. Most covered portraits at Hogwarts were ignored out of habit, either because the subject inside was sleeping, mad, offended, dangerous, or all four. This one hung between two narrow windows that looked toward the training grounds, where wet grass shone under a dull afternoon sky. The cloth stirred though no wind touched it.

Mara stepped back. “I do not like covered portraits.”

Corin glanced at her. “Is there anything you do like?”

“Sharp objects, apparently.”

He looked at her, unsure whether she meant it as a joke or confession. Her face gave no help. Before he could answer, Jesus reached up and drew the cloth away.

The portrait beneath showed a woman in old-fashioned teaching robes, seated at a desk with a quill in one hand and a closed book beneath the other. She had a severe face, not cruel at first glance, but hard in the way people become when they mistake tight control for moral strength. Her painted eyes opened slowly. When she saw Jesus, she did not gasp or rage. She looked tired, and that tiredness made her seem more dangerous than anger would have.

“Nazareth,” she said.

Mara drew in a sharp breath. “You know Him?”

The woman’s painted gaze moved to Mara. “Everyone knows Him eventually.”

Corin felt the hairs rise on his arms.

Jesus looked at the portrait. “Professor Elspeth Warrin.”

The woman inclined her head. “That name has not been spoken with respect in this corridor for many years.”

“Was it earned?”

Her mouth tightened. “Sometimes respect is lost because later generations do not understand the cost of surviving earlier ones.”

Jesus did not answer at once. He looked at the painted desk, the painted quill, and the painted hand resting over the painted book. “Did you make the ledger?”

Professor Warrin’s eyes moved away for the first time. “I began it.”

Mara whispered something under her breath that Corin did not catch. He felt his own stomach tighten. The ledger had seemed old before, but not personal. Now there was a face above it, a teacher who had once stood in the room, listened to children, watched them cast spells, and decided some names needed to be collected for the safety of others.

“Why?” Jesus asked.

Warrin lifted her chin. “Because children were dying. Because parents sent sons and daughters here with smiles and trunks and letters full of hope, and some of them left twisted by things no one had taken seriously early enough. Because charming words and good marks hid rot. Because I had seen what dark teaching could do when it found a lonely child. Because I had buried students whose warning signs had been dismissed by kinder fools.”

Corin heard the force in her answer and hated that it made sense. That was the worst part of the ledger. It had not begun as a monster with fangs. It had begun near grief, near regret, near a teacher who had looked at empty chairs and sworn never to miss danger again. He could almost feel the pull of it. He had felt it already with Harrow, only in a smaller and more shameful form.

Jesus’ voice remained quiet. “You were afraid.”

Warrin’s painted eyes flashed. “I was responsible.”

“Fear often borrows that word.”

The portrait frame creaked as if the wood tightened around her. “Would You have had me do nothing?”

“No.”

“Then You admit the need.”

“I admit children must be protected.”

“Then why judge the means?”

“Because you began protecting children by deciding which ones were less worthy of protection.”

Warrin’s face hardened. The stairwell seemed colder. Corin saw Mara staring at the portrait as if looking at someone in her own bloodline, though no relation had been named. Tobin’s words returned to him from the Great Hall. Some children are doors. He wondered how many adults had repeated that sentence over the years because it gave fear a noble sound.

Warrin looked down at Jesus from the frame. “You speak as though every soul is equally safe.”

“No,” Jesus said. “I speak as though every soul is equally Mine.”

The words did not come as a declaration meant to impress the corridor. They came low, steady, and immovable. Even the portrait seemed to shrink around them, though Warrin’s painted mouth pressed into a thin line. Mara looked away toward the window, and Corin saw her blink hard.

The ink line at their feet thickened.

Words began to rise on the stone beneath the portrait, not written from above but surfacing from within the floor.

First list kept after the winter attacks. Seven names. Two corrected. One expelled. One disappeared. One died.

Corin stared at the final words until they seemed to burn. “Who died?”

Warrin’s expression moved, just slightly. “A boy named Ivo Strake.”

Mara looked up sharply. “Strake?”

The portrait’s eyes moved to her. “You know the name?”

“My grandmother used to say a Strake brought shame on the old families because he begged forgiveness before the Wizengamot and then vanished.”

Warrin’s face tightened. “He did not vanish.”

Jesus looked at her. “Tell the truth.”

The portrait looked suddenly old. “He was fourteen. His uncle had sent him cursed medallions and letters full of poison. I knew he was being courted by darkness. I placed his name in the first record. I watched him. I warned others to keep distance. When he discovered his name had been marked, he stopped asking for help. He believed I had already decided what he was.”

The corridor held still.

Corin felt the words enter him with a force he was not prepared for. Tobin could have been Ivo Strake. Mara could have been. He could have been, if shame had found the right door and whispered long enough. The ledger had claimed to prevent danger, but here was the first wound speaking from beneath the stone. A boy marked by fear had become more alone because the people watching him had stopped knowing how to reach him.

“What happened?” Mara asked.

Warrin’s jaw trembled in the painting, though she tried to control it. “He went into the Forbidden Forest during a snowstorm. We found his wand near the stream. We found the medallions buried beneath a tree. We found no body.”

Mara’s face went pale. “Then he might have lived.”

The portrait looked at her with something like anger, but it was not aimed at Mara. “For years, I told myself that. Then his mother died still waiting for him.”

Corin swallowed. “And you kept using the ledger?”

Warrin turned on him. “Do not ask that with the clean horror of a child who has never made one terrible mistake and then built a life around proving it was necessary.”

Corin had no answer because the accusation struck too close. He had held a key for two weeks and already felt the need to defend what he had done. What would he have become if the years had helped him bury shame under duty? What would he have called wisdom by the time his hair turned gray and children learned to fear his concern?

Jesus looked at the portrait with deep sorrow. “Elspeth.”

The name changed the air.

Warrin closed her eyes. When she opened them, the hardness remained, but it was cracked now. “I could not bear that my fear had helped kill him.”

“So you made fear holy.”

Her face twisted. “I made it useful.”

“No,” Jesus said. “You made it inherited.”

The portrait lowered her head. For the first time, she looked less like an old professor and more like someone trapped in the moment she had never confessed. The ink beneath the frame trembled, then pulled itself into a narrow line again, crawling toward the stairs.

“What do we do with her?” Mara asked.

Warrin looked up, offended. “I am not a classroom object.”

“No,” Jesus said. “You are a witness.”

“A witness to what?”

“To the harm fear does when it refuses repentance.”

The portrait flinched as if the word had crossed from His mouth into the painted room and struck the desk before her.

Warrin’s fingers tightened around the quill. “Can a portrait repent?”

Jesus looked at her with compassion that did not soften the truth. “You can tell the truth without defending the lie.”

The painted woman’s eyes filled with tears that could not fall outside her frame. “Then I began the ledger because I was grieving, and I continued it because I was proud. I harmed children because I was afraid of failing the dead. I taught others to suspect before they loved. I called it protection because I could not bear to call it sin.”

The ink line on the floor shuddered. Somewhere below them, behind stone and classroom walls, something gave a low, angry groan. Corin felt the vibration through his shoes. Mara stepped nearer to Jesus, then seemed irritated with herself for doing it.

The portrait sagged back in her chair. “There are others,” she said. “Other witnesses. Other agreements. Harrow did not revive the ledger by himself.”

McGonagall’s voice came from below before they saw her. “I suspected as much.”

She climbed the stairs with Neville and Professor Flitwick behind her. Tobin was not with them. Corin was relieved by that and ashamed of his relief. McGonagall stopped on the landing and looked at the uncovered portrait. Her face tightened with recognition.

“Elspeth Warrin,” she said. “Your portrait was ordered covered by Headmaster Dippet after the complaints of 1942.”

Warrin gave a dry laugh. “A gentle phrase for panic.”

Flitwick stepped closer, peering at the ink line. “It is leading upward?”

Neville’s remorse vine, still tucked in the crook of his arm, leaned toward the stairs. Its leaves were half open now, as if the truth already spoken had given it room to breathe.

Jesus nodded once. “The next witness is not a portrait.”

Mara looked up the turning stairwell. “That makes me feel worse.”

“It should,” McGonagall said. “A healthy caution is not the enemy.”

Corin looked at Jesus, wondering whether that was true after everything that had happened. Jesus answered before he could ask.

“Caution becomes fear when it stops seeing the person in front of it.”

They continued upward.

The old Defense stairway was not often used anymore because the newer route from the main corridor was wider and better lit. This older passage curled behind the classroom walls and passed storage rooms, former offices, and sealed alcoves from times when Hogwarts had taught more dangerous things more openly. Corin had once liked hidden parts of the castle. They made him feel trusted by history. Now each shadowed door seemed to ask what kind of secrets had survived because students like him enjoyed knowing what others did not.

The ink line stopped before a narrow wooden door with no handle.

McGonagall raised her wand. “This was sealed when I was a student.”

Flitwick frowned. “There should be no room behind it. That wall backs against the north side of the classroom.”

“Hogwarts has rarely respected architectural certainty,” Neville murmured.

Mara looked at him. “Do professors practice saying things like that?”

Neville glanced at her, startled. Then he smiled despite the tension. “Only during staff meetings.”

The small exchange loosened something in the air, but only for a breath. The ink climbed the wood and formed a handprint where a handle should have been. Jesus reached toward it, and the door opened inward before His hand touched the mark.

The room beyond was full of desks.

Not classroom desks. Writing desks. Small, narrow, and arranged in rows so tight that anyone seated there would have rubbed elbows with the person beside them. Each desk held a quill, an ink bottle, and a thin strip of parchment. There were no windows. A single lamp hung from the ceiling, giving off a greenish light. Along the far wall stood shelves packed with small boxes, each labeled in faded handwriting.

Corin stepped inside and felt the room pressing against him. It smelled of old ink, dust, and closed breath. The ceiling was too low. The desks were too many. This was not a place meant for teaching. It was a place meant for recording.

Flitwick lifted one parchment strip from the nearest desk. The moment he touched it, writing appeared.

Student observed laughing during discussion of unforgivable curses. Possible desensitization.

He let it go at once.

Another strip filled on the desk beside it.

Student unwilling to report family member’s political history. Possible concealment.

Mara’s face went rigid.

McGonagall moved slowly toward the shelves. She read the labels without touching the boxes. “House reports. Family reports. Wand behavior. Peer suspicions. Emotional irregularities. Restricted reading requests.” Her voice grew colder with each phrase. “This is larger than the ledger.”

Jesus stood in the center of the room, His sorrow filling the cramped place more heavily than anger could have. “The ledger was the altar. These were the offerings.”

Corin stared at the rows of desks. He imagined students sitting here in secret over decades, asked to write what they noticed, encouraged to think themselves brave for naming weakness. Maybe some had been cruel. Maybe some had been frightened. Maybe some had been like him, hungry to be trusted and too wounded to know that trust without love could become betrayal. His own notes had not been written in this room, but he felt their shape here all the same.

Neville set the remorse vine on one desk. It recoiled so sharply that the pot nearly tipped over. “It hates this place.”

Mara moved toward the shelves. “Are there names still in those boxes?”

“Do not touch them,” McGonagall said.

Mara stopped, but her eyes stayed fixed on one label.

Flint.

Corin saw it too.

Her face went empty.

Jesus looked at McGonagall. She nodded once, though it looked like the nod cost her. “Carefully,” she said.

Jesus took the box from the shelf.

It was small, no longer than a hand, tied with gray cord. He set it on the nearest desk but did not open it. Mara stood before it as if someone had placed a beating heart on the wood.

“My family?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jesus said.

“How far back?”

McGonagall read the faded side label. “Several generations.”

Mara gave a small, humorless laugh. “Of course.”

Jesus looked at her. “Do you want it opened?”

Her old answer would have come quickly. The new one fought its way through her face. She looked at the box, at Jesus, at McGonagall, and finally at Corin. He was not sure why she looked at him. Maybe because he had read what he should not have read. Maybe because if she chose to open it, she wanted one person in the room who already knew what it meant to be exposed by paper.

“I do,” she said. “No, I do not.” She swallowed. “Yes.”

Jesus untied the cord.

The lid lifted.

Inside were narrow slips of parchment, some yellowed with age and some newer. Mara’s hand went to her mouth but did not cover it. Jesus removed the first slip and read silently. He placed it aside. He removed another, then another. The room waited, but He did not read them aloud.

Mara’s voice sharpened. “Say it.”

Jesus looked at her. “This box contains suspicion, not identity.”

“I said say it.”

He held one slip gently. “Your grandfather was marked for violent retaliation after a duel.”

Mara stared. “He put a boy in St. Mungo’s.”

“Yes.”

Another slip. “Your father was marked for allegiance risk after he repeated slogans he had learned at home.”

“He did more than repeat slogans.”

“Yes.”

Another. “You were marked before your first year began.”

The room went silent.

Mara’s face changed so suddenly that Corin felt the shock of it. “What?”

Jesus looked at the slip. His voice remained steady, but grief lay under it. “Family pattern. High vigilance recommended. Do not place in peer mediation roles. Watch for manipulative social behavior.”

Mara stared at Him as if the words had stolen the floor. “Before I came here?”

“Yes.”

“I had not done anything.”

“No.”

“I was eleven.”

Jesus did not soften the truth by speaking around it. “Yes.”

For a moment, Mara looked younger than Corin had ever seen her. Not like the sharp girl from Slytherin. Not like the student who kept venom-binding pins and cut people with words before they could draw near. She looked like a child arriving at a castle with a trunk and a name already waiting for her in a box.

She sat down hard on the nearest desk. The quill rolled away and fell to the floor.

“I thought I became this here,” she said. Her voice was low, almost confused. “I thought I made them afraid and then they decided. I thought at least I had done that part myself.”

Corin understood the terrible thing she meant. There was a strange dignity in believing you had built the wall around yourself. It meant you had power, even if the power was ugly. To discover the wall had been waiting before you arrived was another kind of injury. It meant the story had begun without your consent.

McGonagall’s face was tight with anger, but when she spoke, her voice stayed controlled. “Miss Flint, I did not know this existed.”

Mara looked at her. “Would it have mattered?”

“Yes.”

“Would it?”

McGonagall did not answer quickly. That gave the answer weight when it came. “I hope so. I fear not always enough.”

Mara looked down at the open box. “That is the most honest thing a teacher has said to me.”

Jesus placed the slip back in the box. “Mara, what was written before you arrived helped shape what others expected. It did not force what you chose.”

“I know.”

“Both truths must stand.”

She nodded, but tears slipped down her cheeks. She did not wipe them this time. “I know.”

The ink on the floor began moving again, but it did not leave the room. It spread beneath the desks in thin lines, connecting one to another until the rows looked like a web. Parchment strips stirred. Quills lifted by themselves. One by one, names appeared. Not only old names. Current names. Corin saw Albie Rathbone flash across one strip. He saw Tobin Marr. He saw Mara Flint repeated on three separate desks. Then, on the desk nearest his hand, his own name surfaced.

Corin Vale.

This time he did not look away.

The words came beneath it.

Seeks moral authority after family suspicion. Vulnerable to recruitment by approval. Confuses usefulness with worth.

Corin read them once. Twice. He waited for the old heat of defensiveness, but it came weaker than before. Maybe because the room had already shown him its hunger. Maybe because Tobin’s kitchen door and Mara’s first-year file had taken some of the glamour out of being named by secret systems. The words were not all lies. That was what made them dangerous. They took something partly true and placed it under a merciless light until it became the whole person.

Jesus stood beside him. “What is true?”

Corin breathed slowly. “I do want people to think I am useful.”

“And what is false?”

“That usefulness is the same as worth.”

Jesus nodded.

Corin looked at the strip again. “I would not have known how to say that this morning.”

“No,” Jesus said.

The strip darkened, then cracked down the middle. The ink dried into gray dust and fell from the parchment.

Mara stared. “It broke when he told the truth?”

Jesus looked across the room. “Truth spoken under mercy takes food from fear.”

Flitwick’s eyes widened. “Then every entry must be answered?”

McGonagall looked at the shelves, and for the first time that day her strength seemed pressed by the size of the task. There were hundreds of boxes. Maybe more hidden behind them. Hogwarts had collected more suspicion than any one afternoon could cleanse.

Jesus touched the nearest desk. “Not today by volume. Today by root.”

The floor trembled again, deeper this time. The green lamp flickered. From somewhere below, the ledger gave a sound like a book slammed shut by an invisible hand. Mara stood, wiping her face with her sleeve.

“What is the root?” she asked.

Before Jesus could answer, every quill in the room turned toward the far wall.

A new line of ink appeared across the stones.

Someone must be watched so everyone else can feel safe.

The sentence stayed there, black and wet.

Corin felt it as more than words. It was the belief beneath the ledger, beneath the boxes, beneath Harrow’s quiet recruitment, beneath the way students used family names and house rivalries to decide who deserved distance. Someone must be watched. Someone must carry the fear. Someone must become the place where the group stores what it does not want to face in itself.

Mara read it with a hollow expression. “That is what they made me.”

Tobin had said it another way. A door. Corin had become a watcher because it seemed better than being watched. Maybe the roles were not as different as he had thought. Both were made by the same sentence on the wall.

Jesus turned to McGonagall. “Bring the ledger.”

Her eyes sharpened. “Here?”

“Yes.”

“It is secured in my office.”

“It is not secure while this room remains hidden.”

McGonagall did not argue. She looked at Flitwick. “Come with me.”

“I will,” he said.

Neville glanced at Jesus. “Should I stay?”

Jesus nodded. “Stay with them.”

McGonagall and Flitwick left quickly, their footsteps fading down the stairs. The room felt smaller after they were gone. Corin, Mara, and Neville stood among the desks while Jesus remained before the sentence on the wall. The remorse vine had settled a little, though its leaves leaned toward the writing as if listening for a confession the room had not yet made.

Mara looked at Neville. “Were you ever in one of these boxes?”

Neville’s face changed. Not with shock. With memory. “I expect so.”

“Because of your parents?”

Corin winced at the bluntness, but Neville did not seem offended. He picked up the plant pot and rubbed dirt from its rim with his thumb. “Because I was frightened, clumsy, forgetful, and easier to underestimate than understand. People thought I was harmless, which can wound a person differently than being feared.”

Mara looked down. “I did not mean to ask badly.”

“I know.”

Corin watched Neville and thought of how strange courage could look once you stopped expecting it to announce itself. Neville did not fill the room with force. He did not speak to make himself larger. Yet the room seemed steadier with him in it, perhaps because he had faced fear without letting it make him cruel. That kind of strength was harder for Corin to understand than dueling.

“What was it like?” Corin asked before he could stop himself.

Neville looked at him. “What?”

“Being underestimated.”

Neville’s expression grew thoughtful. “Lonely. Sometimes humiliating. Occasionally useful.” He gave a faint smile that faded quickly. “But if you live too long under someone else’s small idea of you, you may start trying to prove them wrong instead of becoming whole. That can be its own trap.”

Corin looked at the sentence on the wall. “Everything is a trap today.”

“Not everything,” Neville said. “Some things are doors.”

Mara gave him a sideways look. “You realize that is not comforting after what Tobin said.”

Neville seemed to consider that. “Fair point.”

Despite the room, despite the writing, despite the day pressing on all of them, Corin laughed once under his breath. Mara looked at him as if he had done something indecent. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled just barely. It was gone almost at once, but it had been real enough to change her face.

Jesus turned from the wall and looked at them. The small moment did not escape Him. He did not comment on it, which made Corin grateful. Some fragile things survived better when no one pointed at them.

A sound rose outside the room. Footsteps, quick and many. McGonagall returned with Flitwick, and between them floated the ledger, bound in a shimmering charm. The book strained against it. Its cover snapped open and shut like jaws. Ink leaked from its pages and vanished before hitting the floor.

Behind them came three more teachers and, to Corin’s surprise, Albie Rathbone. McGonagall saw Corin notice him and answered before he asked.

“Mr. Rathbone was waiting outside my office. He said his name appeared on a wall near the Transfiguration corridor.”

Albie looked terrified and angry. “It said I report people to my mother.”

Mara looked at him. “Do you?”

He flushed. “Sometimes.”

“Then why are you offended?”

“Because it made it sound nasty.”

“Was it?”

Albie opened his mouth, then closed it.

Jesus looked at him. “That is why you are here.”

Albie swallowed and stepped into the room. His eyes moved over the desks and shelves. He looked younger than he had in the corridor earlier. Perhaps everyone looked younger in that room, surrounded by the machinery of adult fear.

McGonagall lowered the ledger onto the center desk. The moment it touched wood, every parchment strip in the room filled with writing at once. Names flashed, vanished, returned. Boxes rattled on the shelves. The green lamp swung though no one touched it. The sentence on the wall darkened until it looked carved in shadow.

Someone must be watched so everyone else can feel safe.

Jesus placed His hand on the ledger.

The room went still.

He did not open the book. He did not raise His voice. “It is written, the Lord looks not as man looks. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Corin had heard verses before in chapel services his mother attended when fear had worn her thin. They had often sounded distant there, as if floating above ordinary life. Here, in a cramped hidden room at Hogwarts, with a cursed ledger under Jesus’ hand and the names of children packed into boxes, the words did not float. They landed. They made the entire room feel judged by a sight deeper than surveillance.

Jesus looked at Albie. “What is true?”

Albie’s face flushed. “I tell my mother things.”

“Why?”

“Because she works at the Ministry, and people listen to her. If I tell her early, maybe she can stop something bad.” He looked quickly at Mara, then away. “And because it makes me feel important when she asks what I know.”

Mara’s expression sharpened, but she held her tongue.

Jesus asked, “What is false?”

Albie’s voice lowered. “That knowing things about people means I understand them.”

A parchment on the nearest desk split down the center and turned to dust.

Mara stared at it, then at Albie. He did not look proud. He looked embarrassed and relieved in equal measure.

Jesus looked at Mara next.

She stiffened. “I already told the truth.”

“Some of it.”

Her eyes flashed. “How much does truth want?”

“All that fear has been using.”

She looked at the box with her family name, then at the wall. Her voice dropped. “What is true is that I wanted people to fear me. I liked it sometimes. Not only because I was scared. Sometimes because it worked.”

No one interrupted.

She continued more quietly. “What is false is that fear is the same as respect. Or safety.”

Several strips of parchment cracked at once. The Flint box shook on the shelf, then fell open. Its slips rose into the air, trembling like small pale birds. For a moment Corin thought they might attack her. Instead they folded inward on themselves and dropped as ash onto the desk.

Mara let out a breath that sounded almost like pain. Neville stepped nearer but did not touch her. Corin thought she would snap at him. She did not.

Jesus looked at Corin.

He had known his turn would come, but knowing did not make it easier. The room seemed to lean toward him. The ledger under Jesus’ hand pulsed once, and Corin saw his name crawl across the cover before disappearing.

“What is true?” Jesus asked.

Corin looked at the rows of desks, then at Albie, then at Mara. He thought of Tobin in the Great Hall. He thought of Harrow’s voice offering him the key. He thought of his mother saying people cared more about safe stories than true ones.

“I was afraid people would always suspect me,” he said. “So I became useful to the kind of suspicion that hurt me. I told myself I was protecting the school, but part of me wanted to stand on the side of the watchers because I was tired of feeling watched.”

The ledger trembled.

Jesus waited.

Corin closed his eyes briefly. “What is false is that being chosen by fear makes me clean.”

The desk beneath the ledger cracked from one end to the other.

McGonagall lifted her wand, but Jesus did not move. The ledger opened beneath His hand. Pages flew, but not freely now. They turned as if dragged by a wind they could not resist. Names flashed past, too many to read. Some ink lifted from the pages in black threads and pulled toward the sentence on the wall. The words there began to bulge outward, as if the belief itself were trying to take shape.

Someone must be watched so everyone else can feel safe.

Jesus lifted His other hand and touched the sentence.

“No,” He said.

The word was quiet.

The wall split.

Not wide enough to break the room, but enough to reveal darkness behind the stone. The ink threads screamed. It was not a human scream, not exactly. It sounded like quills scratching at once, like whispers denied secrecy, like a thousand accusations losing their audience. Mara covered her ears. Albie stumbled back. Neville grabbed the remorse vine before it fell. Corin stood frozen, watching the darkness behind the wall coil and flatten.

Inside the crack lay more parchment.

Hundreds of slips had been stuffed behind the stone, packed so tightly they had become almost part of the wall. These were not formal records. They were scraps, rumors, unsigned reports, student notes, teacher warnings, family letters, and fragments torn from essays. The room had not only stored official suspicion. It had swallowed everything people were willing to give it.

McGonagall’s voice was strained. “How long has this been happening?”

Warrin’s voice came faintly from the stairwell portrait behind them, though she was out of sight. “Longer than my portrait has been covered.”

Corin turned. “She can hear us?”

Flitwick looked unsettled. “Portraits often can when they are connected to a room. Though I admit this is an unpleasant time to remember that.”

Jesus reached into the cracked wall and removed one scrap.

He read it silently, then looked at McGonagall. “This one was written yesterday.”

Everyone went still.

McGonagall held out her hand. Jesus gave it to her. Her face hardened as she read. “Tobin Marr seen entering unused passage after curfew. Recommend isolation before incident.”

Mara whispered, “Harrow is gone.”

“Yes,” McGonagall said. Her voice had become very quiet. “Which means someone else wrote this.”

Albie looked frightened. “A student?”

“Perhaps.”

The ledger shook violently. The cracked desk groaned beneath it. Ink began spreading over the floor again, no longer forming lines but pooling around their shoes. Corin stepped back, but Jesus did not. He looked at the dark opening in the wall, and for the first time that day Corin saw something in His face that made him understand why demons begged in old stories. His mercy had been visible all morning. Now His authority stood beside it, and the room itself seemed to know it could not bargain.

Jesus spoke toward the crack. “What is hidden will be brought to light.”

The parchments inside the wall burst outward.

They did not scatter chaotically. They flew into the air and arranged themselves in a circling storm around the room. Teachers raised shields by instinct, but the scraps did not strike them. They spun faster and faster, each one showing a line of accusation before turning to ash.

Weak.

Dangerous.

Family risk.

Too angry.

Too quiet.

Too proud.

Too soft.

Too interested in curses.

Too friendly with the wrong house.

Too much like his father.

Too much like her mother.

Too strange to trust.

Too broken to lead.

Too watched to save.

The words came and burned. The air filled with gray flakes. Mara coughed, and Neville pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to cover the remorse vine. Corin watched the scraps die and felt no triumph. Each burned accusation had belonged to someone. Even when the words were false, the pain they caused had been real.

Then one scrap did not burn.

It hovered above the ledger, larger than the others, written in a hand Corin recognized.

Professor Harrow’s.

McGonagall saw it too. “Bring it here.”

The scrap floated down into Jesus’ hand. He did not read it aloud at first. His eyes moved over the words, and His expression grew sorrowful.

Corin’s mouth went dry. “What does it say?”

Jesus handed it to McGonagall.

She read, and her face turned to stone. “The Nazarene must be tested early. His refusal to use force will draw unstable students toward confession. This may open the ledger fully. If He attempts mercy before containment, the room will reveal its deeper store.”

Mara stared. “He knew Jesus was coming?”

Flitwick looked shaken. “That should not be possible.”

McGonagall read the rest silently, then lowered the scrap. “There is more.”

Jesus nodded. “Read it.”

The Headmistress’s jaw tightened. “If He speaks ownership over the marked children, the old agreements may weaken. Prevent this by forcing a public incident before the first week ends. The Marr boy remains the most likely instrument.”

Albie made a small sound.

Corin looked toward the door as if Tobin might be standing there, hearing what had been planned around his fear. Rage rose in him, not the old defensive kind, but something cleaner and more frightening. Harrow had not merely watched Tobin. He had prepared him. He had left words behind like oil near a flame and waited for the right spark.

Mara’s voice shook with anger. “He used him.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

“Where is Harrow?”

McGonagall folded the scrap with controlled fury. “That is a question I intend to answer.”

The ledger gave one last violent jerk.

The cover flew open, and a hollow formed in the pages. Not a hole torn through paper, but a dark depth where no depth should be. From within it came the whisper again, many voices folded into one.

Mercy invites danger.

Jesus looked down into the book.

“Mercy entered danger,” He said.

The whisper recoiled.

Jesus continued, “Mercy touched lepers when others withdrew. Mercy ate with sinners when the righteous complained. Mercy stood between stones and a condemned woman. Mercy wept at a tomb. Mercy carried a cross for enemies.”

The room shook, but His voice did not rise.

“Mercy is not weakness,” He said. “Mercy is the holiness of God coming near enough to save.”

The ledger split.

Its cover cracked from spine to clasp. The hollow inside collapsed with a sound like air rushing from a sealed grave. Ink burst upward, then fell as clear water over the broken desk. Where the water touched the floor, the black pools thinned and vanished. The sentence on the wall faded until only damp stone remained.

No one spoke.

The ledger lay open and ruined, its pages blank.

Mara stared at it. “Is it over?”

Jesus looked toward the cracked wall, then toward the door. “The ledger is broken. The agreement is not fully healed.”

Corin understood before anyone said Harrow’s name again. The book had been destroyed, but the person who had tried to use it remained outside the room somewhere. Perhaps outside the school. Perhaps closer. And there was still the student who had written the note about Tobin yesterday. The system had lost its altar, but its habits had not all vanished.

McGonagall stepped toward the blank ledger. “Then we proceed carefully. No panic. No public accusations without truth. No secret watching.” She glanced at Corin, not cruelly but clearly. “We will not fight this by becoming it.”

Corin nodded.

Albie raised a nervous hand, then seemed embarrassed that he had done so outside class. “What about Tobin?”

Jesus turned toward him. “He must hear that he was chosen for harm because someone saw his pain and tried to use it.”

Albie swallowed. “That will hurt him.”

“Yes.”

“Then why tell him?”

“Because lies already have.”

No one argued with that.

Mara looked at the dead ledger, then at the ash on the desks. “And what about all the names?”

Jesus touched the blank page. “They are not gone from memory. They are gone from judgment.”

Corin felt the difference more than he understood it. Memory could still tell the truth. Judgment had turned truth into a cage. Maybe the work ahead was not pretending nothing had happened. Maybe it was learning to remember without handing the past a throne.

Neville lifted the remorse vine. Its leaves were open now, trembling but alive. “I think it can breathe in here.”

Mara looked around at the cramped desks, cracked wall, ash, and broken book. “That makes one of us.”

Jesus looked at her, and there was almost the hint of a smile in His eyes. “Breathing often begins before comfort.”

She lowered her gaze, but her face had less armor on it than before.

McGonagall gave orders with quiet efficiency. The room would be sealed, but not hidden. The records would be gathered, but not destroyed without review. Students named in recent notes would be protected from rumor. Harrow’s quarters would be searched. Every teacher who had known of any related record would be required to speak plainly. This time, secrecy would not be allowed to dress itself as safety.

As they prepared to leave, Corin looked once more at the blank ledger. He thought he would feel relief. Instead he felt responsibility. The book had held names, but names still lived in the school. Tobin still had to return to a dormitory where others had seen him raise a wand. Mara still had to walk through corridors with people wondering whether she had more hidden weapons. Albie still had to decide what to do with the power of knowing things. Corin still had to face supper, McGonagall’s office, and the long labor of becoming someone who did not need suspicion to feel clean.

Jesus paused at the doorway and looked back into the room.

For a moment, Corin wondered what He saw. Not the desks alone, surely. Not the ash. Not the cracked wall or blank book. Perhaps He saw every child whose name had passed through that hidden place. Perhaps He saw Ivo Strake walking into snow. Perhaps He saw generations of students trying to survive labels that had been written before anyone loved them well enough to ask better questions.

Then Jesus turned and walked into the stairwell.

The others followed.

At the landing, Professor Warrin’s portrait was still uncovered. She stood now inside the painted room rather than sitting at the desk. Her quill lay broken on the floor of the portrait. When Jesus approached, she bowed her head.

“Will they cover me again?” she asked.

McGonagall answered. “Not yet.”

Warrin looked afraid of that. “I do not know how to remain seen.”

Jesus stopped before the frame. “Then begin with telling the truth to those who ask.”

“And if they hate me?”

“Some will.”

Her painted mouth trembled. “And if they forgive me too easily?”

Jesus’ gaze did not move. “Do not confuse relief with forgiveness. The fruit will show in time.”

The portrait nodded slowly.

Corin glanced at Mara. She was watching Warrin with an expression he could not fully read. Maybe contempt. Maybe recognition. Maybe the fear of becoming old and painted and still defending the first terrible thing she had not repented of.

They descended the stairwell as the castle shifted into late afternoon. Through the narrow windows, the clouds had begun to break over the grounds. Light touched the wet grass and the dark surface of the lake. Students moved outside in small clusters, subdued by rumors they did not yet understand. The castle had not been saved in one afternoon, but something inside its walls had been forced to stop whispering.

Near the bottom of the stairs, Albie slowed until he walked beside Corin.

“I wrote the note about Tobin,” he said.

Corin stopped.

Mara turned sharply. Neville closed his eyes as if he had expected it. McGonagall, a few steps ahead, went still.

Albie’s face crumpled. “Not because Harrow told me. I found one of his old slips near the corridor after he left. It said Tobin was dangerous. Then I saw Tobin going into the passage after curfew, and I thought if I reported it and something happened, no one could say I ignored it.” He looked at the floor. “I slid it under the Defense classroom door before breakfast.”

Corin felt anger rise, then saw himself standing in it like a familiar room. He had done the same thing in another form. He had taken fear that felt responsible and given it somewhere to grow.

Mara’s voice was sharp. “You wrote that he should be isolated.”

Albie flinched. “I know.”

“He raised a wand in the Great Hall because of that.”

“I know.”

“No, you do not know. You are just saying it because you got caught.”

Albie’s eyes filled. “Maybe.”

The honesty stopped her for a second.

Jesus looked at Albie. “Why did you tell us now?”

Albie wiped his face with his sleeve, embarrassed and shaking. “Because the ledger broke, and I still felt watched.”

Jesus nodded. “That is conscience.”

Albie looked miserable. “I hate it.”

“It is trying to bring you back.”

McGonagall turned fully. “Mr. Rathbone, you will come with me. We will speak with Mr. Marr when Professor Jesus determines the time is right. You will not approach him alone to relieve your own guilt. Is that understood?”

Albie nodded quickly. “Yes, Headmistress.”

Mara folded her arms. “Convenient how everyone gets mercy after doing damage.”

Jesus looked at her. “Mercy does not erase repair.”

She held His gaze for a moment, then looked away. “Good.”

Corin understood her anger. He also understood Albie’s fear. That was making everything harder. It had been easier when people could be sorted into clean shapes. The cruel girl. The frightened boy. The guilty watcher. The tattling child. But Jesus kept standing among them in a way that made the truth fuller than the labels and more demanding than excuses.

They reached the main corridor outside the Defense classroom just as the evening bell began to ring. Students turned at the sound, then at the sight of Jesus, McGonagall, Neville, Flitwick, Mara, Corin, and Albie emerging from the old stairway together. Rumor sparked instantly. Corin felt it move across faces like wind across candle flames.

Jesus stopped in the corridor.

The students stopped too.

For one second, Corin thought Jesus might speak to them all, but He did not. He simply looked down the crowded passage with a gaze that made whispering feel suddenly foolish. One by one, students lowered their eyes or quieted their mouths. Not from fear of punishment. From the uneasy sense that the person before them could hear not only what they said but why they wanted to say it.

Then Jesus turned to McGonagall. “Tobin should be told before supper.”

“Yes,” she said.

Mara looked toward the infirmary corridor. “Should I come?”

Corin expected Jesus to say no. Mara expected it too. Her face was already prepared to resent the answer.

Instead Jesus said, “Not to speak first. To listen.”

She swallowed. “Fine.”

Albie looked panicked. “Do I have to come?”

Jesus looked at him with kindness that did not rescue him from truth. “Yes.”

Corin waited for his own instruction.

Jesus looked at him last. “You too.”

Of course, Corin thought. The day had become a long road back through every place where fear had borrowed his hands. He wanted to be done. He wanted to hide in Ravenclaw Tower until people found a new scandal. He wanted to become invisible, but invisibility was only another kind of locked cabinet.

They walked toward the hospital wing together.

The corridors stretched ahead under torchlight, and the castle seemed to listen. Corin could hear distant voices from the Great Hall, the rumble of staircases shifting, and somewhere far above, a window opening in a tower room to let in the clean air after rain. He did not know what Tobin would say when he learned how deliberately his fear had been used. He did not know whether Mara would keep choosing truth once anger returned with its familiar armor. He did not know what consequences McGonagall had prepared for him after supper.

But he knew this much. The ledger was blank. The hidden room had been opened. The first witnesses had spoken. And Jesus was still walking ahead of them, not away from the danger, not around the shame, but straight through the castle’s oldest fear with mercy in His hands and authority in His silence.

Chapter Four: The Boy in the White-Bed Room

The hospital wing was too bright for the kind of truth they were carrying. Lamps glowed along the walls with a clean steadiness that made the rest of the castle feel older and less certain. White curtains hung between beds, and the smell of healing salves, lavender, and sharp potion steam filled the air. Outside the tall windows, the last of the rain clung to the glass in silver lines, and the dark shape of the lake lay beyond the grounds like a thought no one wanted to speak aloud. Corin walked behind Jesus, aware of Mara on one side and Albie on the other, each of them silent for a different reason.

Madam Pomfrey met them near the door with her sleeves rolled above her wrists and her expression already prepared for trouble. She had cared for too many students after too many kinds of foolishness to be easily startled, but something in her eyes changed when she saw Jesus. She did not soften into sentiment. If anything, she became more alert, as if holiness entering a room did not make work unnecessary but made it more important to do rightly. She glanced past Him at the students and then toward the screened bed near the far window.

“He is awake,” she said. “Not calm, exactly, but awake.”

McGonagall’s mouth tightened. “Has he asked for anyone?”

“He asked whether he was expelled. Then he asked whether everyone saw him cry. Then he asked whether his wand had been snapped.” Pomfrey looked toward Albie with a sharpness that made the boy shrink. “After that, he stopped asking questions and started apologizing to the bedsheets.”

Mara looked down at the floor. Corin felt the words settle in his chest. Tobin had walked into the Great Hall with a wand in his shaking hand, yet in the quiet afterward his first fear was still that he had ruined himself beyond repair. Corin knew the feeling too well. Shame was quick to announce a final sentence before truth had even been heard.

Jesus looked toward the screened bed. “May we come in?”

Pomfrey studied Him for a moment, then nodded. “He trusts You more than the rest of us at present. Do not let too many speak at once. And if anyone turns this into a scene, I will remove them myself.”

Albie whispered, “She means me.”

Mara murmured, “She means all of us.”

Pomfrey heard them both. “I do.”

Jesus stepped past the curtain first. Tobin sat propped against pillows, smaller without his school robe and wand. Someone had given him a cup of broth that sat untouched on the table beside him. His hair had dried in uneven tufts, and the tear tracks on his face had been wiped away, though his eyes remained swollen. When he saw Jesus, his shoulders loosened slightly. When he saw the others behind Him, his whole body went stiff.

“No,” Tobin said.

Jesus stopped near the end of the bed. “You do not have to speak before you are ready.”

Tobin’s gaze moved from Corin to Mara to Albie. His face hardened at the sight of Albie, though confusion passed through it too. “Why is he here?”

Albie looked as if every word he had planned had abandoned him.

McGonagall stepped into view but kept her voice gentle. “Because there is truth you deserve to hear. Professor Jesus will guide this, and I will remain.”

Tobin pulled the blanket higher over his lap, though the room was warm. “Is this about punishment?”

“Not first,” Jesus said.

“Does that mean later?”

“It means truth must come before consequences can be made clean.”

Tobin stared at Him, not comforted but listening. Corin had noticed that about Jesus already. He did not always make people feel better quickly. Sometimes He made them steady enough to face what feeling better would have avoided. That was harder to watch, and perhaps harder to receive.

Jesus looked at Albie. The boy took one step forward, then stopped.

Albie’s voice came out thin. “I wrote the note.”

Tobin blinked. “What note?”

“The one about you going into the passage after curfew.” Albie swallowed hard. “The one that said you should be isolated.”

The color changed in Tobin’s face. It did not drain all at once. It moved slowly, as if his body understood before his mind accepted it. “You wrote that?”

“Yes.”

“I thought Professor Harrow wrote it.”

“He wrote an older one. I found it. I copied what I thought mattered and added what I saw.” Albie’s hands twisted together. “I thought if I told someone and something bad happened, then I would not be blamed for staying quiet.”

Tobin’s mouth opened, then closed. For a moment he looked less angry than lost. “You thought I was something bad waiting to happen.”

Albie’s eyes filled. “Yes.”

The answer was terrible because it did not hide. Tobin looked at him as if struck by something invisible, and Corin felt Mara shift beside him. Her anger was rising. He could feel it like heat from a hearth, and for once he did not think it was only cruelty. She had given up the pins. She had found her childhood name buried in a box before she had ever made a choice. Now she was watching another student learn that someone had helped fear move toward him in ink.

Tobin looked down at his hands. “Why?”

Albie wiped his face quickly. “Because I was scared.”

“Of me?”

“Yes.” His voice cracked. “And of being the person who saw something and did nothing. My mum works at the Ministry, and she always says people ignore signs because they do not want paperwork or trouble. She says danger usually looked obvious afterward. I wanted to be the one who noticed before afterward.”

Tobin’s face tightened. “So you made me afterward before I did anything.”

Albie flinched.

Jesus did not interrupt. Corin saw why, though it hurt to stand in the silence. Tobin’s sentence had to land. Albie had to carry it without being rescued from its weight.

Mara spoke before anyone expected her to. “He did the same thing people did to me.”

Tobin looked at her.

She kept her eyes on him, not on Albie. “They decided the story early. Then everything I did became proof. If I was quiet, I was hiding something. If I spoke, I was manipulative. If I was angry, I was dangerous. If I was kind once, it was strategy.” She breathed in, and her voice lowered. “I helped them believe it sometimes. That part is mine. But they wrote it before I knew how to spell half the words.”

Tobin stared at her, and the anger in his face changed shape. It did not disappear. It became less alone.

Albie whispered, “I am sorry.”

Tobin looked at him sharply. “Do not say it like it makes it smaller.”

Albie nodded, tears spilling now. “It does not.”

“Do not cry like I am hurting you by being mad.”

Albie covered his mouth with one hand and nodded again.

Madam Pomfrey stood near the curtain with her arms folded, but her eyes were not hard now. McGonagall looked at Tobin with the grave patience of someone allowing a student to say what adults had often hurried past. Neville had remained just outside the curtain, but Corin could see the edge of the remorse vine in his arms, its leaves turned toward the bed.

Jesus sat in the chair beside Tobin’s bed. He did not tower over him. That seemed to matter. “Tobin, what did the note make you believe?”

Tobin stared at the blanket. “That it was already decided.”

“What was decided?”

“That I was dangerous. That if I waited, everyone would find out from the book, and then I would be locked away or sent home, and my aunt would say she knew it.” His hands closed in the blanket. “I thought if I saw the book first, maybe I could know how bad it was.”

“And when you raised your wand?”

Tobin’s lips trembled. “I wanted them to stop looking at me like they were waiting.”

Jesus nodded slowly. “You wanted to control the moment before it controlled you.”

Tobin’s eyes filled again. “Yes.”

“That was fear.”

“I know.”

“It could have harmed people.”

“I know.” Tobin looked up quickly, desperate now. “I did not want to curse anyone. I did not. I just wanted the book.”

Jesus’ face remained full of mercy, but He did not rush to soothe away the seriousness. “I believe you.”

Tobin’s breath caught.

“And you must still learn that fear cannot be allowed to hold your wand.”

“I know,” Tobin whispered.

Jesus held out His hand. Tobin hesitated, then placed his hand in it. Jesus’ hand closed around his with a tenderness that made the hospital wing feel even quieter. “Your fear is real. It is not your master.”

Tobin bowed his head, and this time when he cried, he did not fight it as hard. The sound was small, almost childlike, and no one mocked him. Albie sobbed once and turned away, but McGonagall placed a hand on his shoulder before he could retreat behind the curtain. It was not comfort alone. It was instruction. Stay. Hear what your fear did. Do not leave just because the truth has become painful.

After a while, Tobin wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. “What happens to me now?”

McGonagall answered. “You will remain in the hospital wing tonight. You will not be expelled. You will meet with me and Professor Jesus tomorrow. Madam Pomfrey will decide what care you need. Your guardian will be contacted, but not with a careless report that makes matters worse at home.”

Tobin looked at her as if he did not trust the last part. “My aunt will say I tricked you.”

“Then she will say it to me.”

That seemed to surprise him. Corin understood why. There was a kind of protection that sounded real only when it came with a person willing to be inconvenienced by it. McGonagall was not warm in the way people usually meant warm. But when she chose to stand between a child and harm, she did not do it lightly.

Tobin looked at Albie. “What happens to him?”

McGonagall’s hand remained on Albie’s shoulder. “There will be consequences. They will not be designed to satisfy anger. They will be designed to repair what can be repaired and teach what must be learned.”

Tobin looked disappointed, then guilty for looking disappointed. “I wanted him punished.”

“That is understandable,” Jesus said.

“Is it wrong?”

Jesus looked at him gently. “Wanting harm to be taken seriously is not wrong. Wanting another person to become only the harm they caused will bind you to the same darkness that named you.”

Tobin did not answer. His face showed he did not fully accept it yet. Corin respected that more than a quick nod. Some truths had to enter slowly, especially when they asked a wounded person not to build a home out of revenge.

Mara looked at Jesus. “What if the person really is dangerous?”

“Then mercy tells the truth and sets boundaries.”

“People say that and then do nothing.”

“Then they are not practicing mercy. They are avoiding pain.”

Mara looked down, thinking. “So mercy can say no.”

“Yes.”

“It can take the wand.”

“Yes.”

“It can remove the pins.”

“Yes.”

“It can still look at the person afterward.”

Jesus’ eyes rested on her. “Yes.”

That last yes seemed to reach her more deeply than the others. Mara stepped back and leaned against the footboard of the next empty bed, no longer trying to look untouched. Corin saw her look at Tobin’s wand, which McGonagall still carried, and then at her own hands. Maybe she was thinking of the pins. Maybe she was thinking of how easily she could have used them on a day when anger moved faster than conscience.

The remorse vine rustled outside the curtain. Neville slipped in with an apologetic expression. “Sorry. It was leaning so much I thought it might fall.”

The plant’s leaves reached toward the bed, no longer curled tight. Tobin looked at it suspiciously. “Is that thing judging me?”

“No,” Neville said. “It mostly judges avoidance.”

Tobin sniffed, half from tears and half from confusion. “That is worse.”

Neville set the pot on the table beside the untouched broth. “It also responds to confession, though I should warn you it has dramatic habits.”

One leaf extended toward Tobin’s hand and gently brushed his knuckle. Tobin stared at it with the wary wonder of a boy who had expected even plants to accuse him.

Mara watched the vine, then said, “It recoiled from my pins.”

Neville looked at her carefully. “They were made to carry pain.”

“I know that now.”

“I think you knew it before.”

She glanced up sharply, but Neville did not look afraid of her. That seemed to disarm her more than a challenge would have.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I knew enough.”

The vine turned one leaf toward her. It did not recoil. Mara stared at it and seemed almost offended by its restraint.

Jesus rose from the chair. “Tobin must rest.”

Tobin’s fingers tightened on His hand before letting go. “Will You come back?”

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

The answer was so simple that it carried more weight than any vow with grand language. Tobin leaned back against the pillows, exhausted now. The confession, the anger, the crying, and the strange mercy of not being thrown away had taken more from him than the public incident itself. Madam Pomfrey moved in at once with a potion cup, and this time Tobin took it without arguing.

Before they left, Albie stepped forward again. “Tobin.”

Tobin looked at him with heavy eyes.

“I will not ask you to forgive me,” Albie said. “Professor McGonagall said not to approach you just to make myself feel better, so I am probably doing this wrong even now. But I am sorry I made my fear sound like wisdom. I am sorry I treated you like a warning instead of a person.”

Tobin looked at him for a long time. “I still do not forgive you.”

Albie nodded, crying quietly. “I know.”

“But you can bring my assignments tomorrow,” Tobin said. “Not because I like you. Because I do not want to fall behind.”

Albie blinked. “All right.”

“And do not tell everyone what potion I had.”

“I will not.”

Tobin looked at him with sudden sharpness. “Do not tell your mother either.”

Albie swallowed. “I will not.”

McGonagall’s gaze sharpened in approval, though she said nothing. Jesus looked at Tobin with a tenderness that did not turn the moment into triumph. Corin understood now that this was not a neat reconciliation. It was one small step away from the machinery that had almost swallowed them all.

They left the hospital wing quietly. The corridor outside felt colder after the bright room, and the torches had been lit for evening. Students were beginning to move toward supper in subdued groups, but word had spread that classes had been suspended for reasons nobody understood. Rumor still lived, but it sounded different now. Less gleeful. More afraid of being wrong.

Mara walked ahead of Corin for several paces, then stopped near a window overlooking the courtyard. Albie continued with McGonagall, who had not released him from her care. Neville followed them, carrying the remorse vine and speaking softly with Madam Pomfrey about where to place it for the night. Jesus paused beside Mara, and Corin stopped a few feet behind them, unsure whether he was meant to keep walking.

Mara looked out at the courtyard stones. “I wanted Albie to suffer more.”

Jesus stood beside her. “I know.”

“I still do.”

“I know.”

She turned toward Him, anger and confusion moving together in her face. “You keep saying that like knowing makes it less ugly.”

“It does not make it less ugly. It makes it less hidden.”

Mara’s eyes shone in the torchlight. “What am I supposed to do with all of it? The things people wrote before I arrived. The things I became because of it. The things I chose anyway. The people I hurt. The people who hurt me first. Everyone acts like truth is clean, but it is a mess.”

Jesus looked through the window toward the wet courtyard. “When a wound is cleaned, what was hidden often comes to the surface.”

“That is disgusting.”

“Yes.”

Corin nearly smiled, but the moment was too serious.

Mara rubbed her arms as if cold. “I do not know who I am without making people afraid.”

Jesus turned to her. “Then you will learn.”

“What if I do not like who is left?”

“You are not finished.”

She looked at Him, and for once her face had no cleverness ready. “Do You ever get tired of saying things that sound simple and ruin everything?”

Corin froze, but Jesus’ eyes held warmth. “Some people asked Me that in different words.”

Mara looked back through the window. A group of first-years hurried across the courtyard below, stepping around puddles and whispering under their breath. One slipped, and another grabbed his sleeve before he fell. The small rescue was clumsy, ordinary, and gone almost before it registered. Mara watched it longer than Corin expected.

“I told Tobin my father called me a door,” she said. “That was true.”

Jesus waited.

“He also said doors can be locked from the inside.” Her voice lowered. “He meant it like strength. Like if I shut enough out, nothing could enter unless I allowed it. I thought that was smart.”

“What did it keep out?”

She swallowed. “Help.”

Corin felt those words more deeply than he wanted to. He had locked his own door differently. Not with cruelty, but with competence. He had tried to become useful enough that no one could accuse him of weakness. It had kept out help too.

Jesus looked back at him. “Corin.”

He stepped closer. “Yes?”

“What did your door keep out?”

The question startled him. He had not expected to be pulled into the moment, though perhaps he should have. Jesus had a way of seeing the person hiding behind another person’s confession.

Corin looked at the stone floor. “Trust.”

Mara glanced at him. Not kindly, but not cruelly either.

Jesus asked, “Why?”

“Because if I trust someone, they can decide I am not worth trusting back.”

The words embarrassed him once spoken. They sounded younger than he wanted to be. Yet neither Jesus nor Mara mocked him. That made the embarrassment cleaner somehow, like pain after a bandage was removed.

Jesus said, “A locked door can feel safer than an open one, but it also keeps the prisoner in.”

Mara gave a quiet, bitter breath. “My father would hate You.”

Jesus looked at her. “He is not the first.”

She studied Him then, and something like fear moved across her face, but not fear of being harmed. It was fear of being loved by someone she could not control. “What happens when You look at someone who hates You?”

“I tell the truth.”

“And then?”

“I love them.”

“That is impossible.”

“For man, much is.”

The words were soft, and He did not finish them like a classroom quotation. He let the meaning rest between them. Corin had heard part of that Scripture before, about what was impossible with people being possible with God. Here it did not sound like a verse stitched into conversation. It sounded like the ground beneath the conversation.

A distant shout rose from below. Not panic this time. Students near the courtyard had begun arguing about something near the fountain. McGonagall’s voice cut through from the next corridor, and the argument died quickly. Hogwarts was returning to its rhythms, but the day had changed the pitch of them. Authority felt more awake. Secrets felt less safe.

Jesus turned from the window. “We must go to Harrow’s quarters.”

Mara’s face hardened. “Now?”

“Yes.”

Corin felt dread tighten in him. “Why us?”

“Because both of you were touched by what he left behind in different ways. You will not search alone. You will not handle what is hidden. But you should see what fear sounds like when it writes lesson plans.”

Mara looked unsettled by that. “That is a horrible sentence.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

They found McGonagall outside the old faculty corridor with Albie beside her, pale and silent. Flitwick had joined them again, carrying a small stack of sealed parchments from his office. Neville stood a little behind, still holding the vine like a strange green witness. When Jesus said they were going to Harrow’s quarters, McGonagall did not argue. She looked as if she had already made the same decision and disliked being late to it.

Professor Harrow had occupied a temporary suite near the Defense wing, a place used by short-term instructors who did not yet belong to the deeper life of the school. The corridor leading there was narrower than the main staff passage, with older carpets laid over uneven stone and brass lamps that gave off a sleepy amber glow. The portraits along the walls pretended to doze as the group passed, though Corin saw several painted eyelids lift halfway.

At the door, McGonagall raised her wand. “I sealed this after his departure.”

Flitwick stepped closer. “Your seal is intact.”

“Then if something is inside, it remained there before the seal.”

Mara muttered, “Or it never respected doors.”

McGonagall touched the wand tip to the lock. Silver light moved across the frame, tracing runes Corin did not recognize. The door clicked open.

The room smelled of cold tea, old parchment, and extinguished candles. It was neat in a way that did not feel clean. A narrow bed stood untouched against one wall. A writing desk sat near the window, every object arranged at precise angles. Books lined a shelf by subject, each spine facing outward with a severity that made them look inspected rather than read. On the mantel sat a small brass clock that had stopped at four seventeen.

Corin stood just inside the doorway and felt the room press against his memory. Harrow had not invited him here often, but he had come twice. Both times he had felt honored. Both times Harrow had spoken in that quiet, serious voice that made a student feel older, sharper, and necessary. Now the room looked less like a place of responsibility and more like a trap that had learned good posture.

Jesus entered first. The others followed. Albie stayed near McGonagall, clearly wishing he had been sent anywhere else. Mara moved slowly, her eyes taking in the desk, the shelves, the folded cloak on the chair.

“He left quickly,” Flitwick said.

McGonagall looked around. “Too quickly for a man who kept everything in order.”

Jesus stopped before the desk.

A leather portfolio lay centered on it. No dust had settled on the cover. Corin stared at it, and his stomach turned. He had seen that portfolio before under Harrow’s arm after class. He had watched pages slide into it. He had wondered what important work it held and hoped, shamefully, that some of his notes had been good enough to keep.

McGonagall touched the portfolio with her wand. “No immediate curse.”

Flitwick added a second charm and frowned. “No ordinary one.”

Jesus looked at Corin. “Do you know it?”

“Yes,” Corin said. “He carried it when he met with me.”

Mara’s eyes moved to him. “How many times?”

“Four.”

“You said two.”

“I came here twice. He met me elsewhere twice.” Corin kept his eyes on the portfolio. “Once near the trophy room. Once outside the old owlery stairs.”

McGonagall’s expression sharpened. “You will write those details tonight.”

“Yes, Headmistress.”

Jesus opened the portfolio.

Inside were lesson plans.

That was what made them so terrible. They were not wild ravings or dramatic curses written in blood. They were neat pages headed with dates, class years, objectives, and expected outcomes. Harrow had written like a teacher. He had planned fear with clean margins.

McGonagall lifted the first page and read silently. Her face grew colder. She handed it to Flitwick, who read and shut his eyes briefly.

“What does it say?” Mara asked.

Flitwick looked at McGonagall. She nodded, though reluctantly.

He read aloud. “Seventh year practical discussion. Theme: Preemptive Defense. Encourage debate around whether compassion compromises group safety. Observe which students defend high-risk peers. Corin Vale likely to respond well to responsibility framing.”

Corin closed his eyes.

Mara looked at him, not with accusation this time, but with a recognition that hurt more. “He studied you too.”

“Yes.”

Jesus turned another page.

McGonagall read this one herself. “Third year emotional pressure exercise. Theme: Fear recognition. Use controlled rumor to increase defensive response in isolated students. Tobin Marr likely to demonstrate wand instability if exposed to peer observation.”

Albie made a small choking sound. “He planned it.”

Corin felt rage stir again. Harrow had not simply found fear and mishandled it. He had cultivated it. He had built lessons around children’s wounds and called the results evidence. Corin wanted to hate him cleanly, but the portfolio would not allow even that. His own name was there, not as a victim only, but as someone expected to respond well to responsibility framing. Harrow had seen the hunger in him and used it.

Mara reached toward the page, then stopped before touching it. “Is my name there?”

Jesus turned several pages, then paused. “Yes.”

Her face went still. “Read it.”

McGonagall glanced at Jesus. He gave the page to Mara instead.

Mara took it with both hands. Her eyes moved over the lines. Corin watched her jaw tighten, then loosen, then tighten again.

“What does it say?” he asked quietly.

Mara did not look up. “Sixth and seventh year cross-house tension. Mara Flint likely to escalate if publicly challenged. Use Rathbone incident if needed. Keep focus on inherited aggression and concealment of defensive objects. Possible leverage through fear of becoming father.”

The room went silent.

Albie looked horrified. “Rathbone incident means me.”

Mara folded the page carefully, too carefully. “He was going to use what I said to you.”

Albie stepped back. “I did not know.”

“I know.” Her voice was flat. “That is the problem with people like him. He did not need everyone to know. He only needed everyone to be what he guessed they were.”

Jesus looked at the page in her hand. “He mistook knowledge for sight.”

Mara stared at the writing. “What is the difference?”

“Knowledge can collect facts. Sight knows what love must do with them.”

She did not answer, but she did not look away.

Neville set the remorse vine on the mantel. The leaves quivered but did not curl. “There may be more hidden.”

McGonagall began searching the shelves with Flitwick. Books slid out, opened, closed, and returned. Some were ordinary Defense texts. Some were old Ministry reports. Some had been charmed blank, which only made McGonagall more determined. Albie stood uselessly near the door until she instructed him to sit in the chair and not touch anything. He obeyed with visible relief.

Corin moved to the window. The glass looked out over the side lawn and the path toward the owlery. He remembered standing below that window two weeks earlier while Harrow told him that the school needed students who understood difficult truths. He had felt seen. Now he understood he had been measured.

Jesus came to stand beside him.

Corin kept his eyes on the darkening grounds. “I thought he trusted me.”

“He used trust-shaped words.”

“That sounds worse.”

“It is.”

Corin’s throat tightened. “Was any of it real? Did he see anything true in me?”

“Yes.”

Corin looked at Him, startled.

Jesus’ face was full of sorrow and firmness. “That is why it worked.”

The words hurt because they did not let Corin hide inside the idea that Harrow had simply lied. Harrow had seen his fear of family suspicion, his desire to protect, his need to be considered good, and his hunger for a place on the right side of danger. Then he had arranged those true things into service of a lie.

“What do I do with that?” Corin asked.

“You let truth belong to Me before fear uses it again.”

Corin looked back out the window. Students moved below toward the Great Hall. Supper would begin soon. He was not hungry. He wondered whether he would be able to sit at the Ravenclaw table without feeling every whisper as a sentence.

Behind them, Mara spoke sharply. “Professor.”

Everyone turned.

She stood before the bookshelf with one hand hovering near a gap where a book had been removed. A strip of parchment had slid out from behind the shelf and was unfolding in the air. McGonagall lifted her wand, but Jesus raised His hand slightly. The parchment opened fully and hung between them.

At the top was a single line.

If the Nazarene breaks the ledger, proceed to the mirror.

Flitwick whispered, “What mirror?”

The brass clock on the mantel began ticking.

Everyone turned toward it. The hands, which had been frozen at four seventeen, spun forward wildly, then backward, then stopped at midnight. The remorse vine curled so tightly that Neville grabbed the pot with both hands. The room grew colder.

Mara backed away from the shelf. “I hate this room.”

The parchment continued writing.

The mirror beneath the classroom retains the first fear. Warrin fed the ledger, but Strake opened the deeper door. The boy who vanished did not die in the forest. He returned to the castle changed. His reflection remained.

Corin felt the floor tilt beneath him. “Ivo Strake?”

McGonagall looked grim. “The boy from Warrin’s confession.”

Jesus’ eyes moved toward the door, and for the first time all evening, Corin sensed the story opening into something older than Harrow. The ledger had been broken. The hidden records had been exposed. Harrow’s plans were now in their hands. Yet beneath all of it lay a mirror, a vanished boy, and a first fear that had survived long enough to teach generations how to watch one another.

Albie stood from the chair. “Are we going there?”

McGonagall looked at him. “You are going to supper under supervision.”

He sat back down immediately. “Good.”

Mara looked at Jesus. “Am I going?”

Jesus answered, “Yes.”

She nodded as if she had expected that and hated that she was right.

Corin looked toward the portfolio, the lesson plans, and the parchment still hanging in the air. He understood that the hospital wing had not been a pause from danger. It had been the first repair before walking deeper into it. Tobin had needed the truth before the castle’s older truth could be faced. Mara had needed to surrender the real pins. Albie had needed to speak before his fear became another hidden note in the wall. Corin had needed to see how Harrow’s manipulation had worked on him, because the next place would likely offer him another chance to agree with fear.

Jesus took the parchment from the air. The writing stopped under His hand.

McGonagall gathered the portfolio and sealed it. “We secure these first. Then we go to the Defense classroom.”

The clock ticked once more and stopped.

Outside, the supper bell rang through Hogwarts. Its sound moved across the grounds, into corridors, through the hospital wing where Tobin lay awake, past the Great Hall where students waited for answers, and into Harrow’s cold temporary room where the truth had begun to show its older bones. Corin stood beside Jesus and felt the old desire to be chosen rise in him one more time. This time, it was met by something stronger and quieter. He did not need to be chosen by fear to have a place in the work ahead.

Jesus opened the door.

The corridor beyond was dim, but not dark. The lamps had already been lit. They burned steadily along the way back to the Defense classroom, where the mirror beneath the floor waited with the reflection of a boy the castle had failed to love rightly.

Corin followed Him out.

Chapter Five: The Glass That Kept the First Fear

The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom waited in the evening with its door half open and its lamps already burning low. Supper was beginning somewhere below them, and the smell of roast chicken, potatoes, and warm bread drifted faintly through the corridors, making the silence outside the classroom feel stranger. A school was supposed to gather around meals after a day like this, to let noise soften fear and let ordinary hunger remind children that life still held simple needs. Yet Corin followed Jesus past the doorway with his stomach tight and empty, knowing that what waited beneath the floor had survived longer than any meal, rumor, or teacher.

Mara entered behind him, then McGonagall, Flitwick, and Neville. The room had changed again since morning, though Corin could not say how at first. The desks remained in their half circle, the windows were darkening against the Scottish evening, and the broken ledger was gone from the front desk. Still, the air felt lower. Not heavier in the way a storm makes air heavy, but lower, as if the ceiling had leaned down to listen.

McGonagall closed the door. The click was soft, but it carried through the room. “No student enters this room tonight without permission,” she said, and the lock gave a silver flash beneath her wand. She looked at Corin and Mara, not unkindly. “That includes both of you if I instruct you to leave.”

Mara lifted her chin. “Understood.”

Corin nodded. “Yes, Headmistress.”

Neville set the remorse vine on the front desk, where it leaned toward the center of the floor with all its leaves open. It no longer curled in panic, which worried Corin more than if it had. Open leaves meant truth was present, not that danger was absent. He had begun to understand the difference. The plant seemed less like a warning now and more like a witness that could not look away.

Jesus stood in the middle of the classroom. His gaze moved over the floorboards, the cabinet, the windows, the scorch marks, and the old wall stones where generations of students had practiced defending themselves from things they could name. He did not move like a man searching for a trap. He moved like someone listening to a wounded place breathe. Corin watched Him and felt the strange steadiness that had marked Him all day, a calm that did not deny evil but denied its right to rule the room.

Flitwick knelt near the first row of desks and tapped the floor with his wand. A soft blue light ran across the boards, then vanished. He frowned, moved three feet to the left, and tried again. This time the light sank between two stones and did not return. “There is a cavity under the center of the room,” he said. “Old. Sealed under several layers.”

McGonagall joined him. “I taught here for years nearby and never sensed a chamber beneath this classroom.”

“Neither did I,” Flitwick said. “Which is not comforting.”

Mara folded her arms. “Hogwarts has a terrible habit of keeping extra rooms under the worst possible places.”

Neville gave a small breath that might have been a laugh under kinder circumstances. “That is sadly accurate.”

Jesus looked toward the place where the blue light had vanished. “It was not only hidden by stone.”

McGonagall’s face tightened. “By agreement?”

“Yes.”

That word had followed them all day until it no longer sounded abstract. Corin thought of every place fear had borrowed good language. Responsibility. Safety. Protection. Wisdom. Agreement was not just saying yes aloud. It was acting as if a lie had earned authority. The floor beneath him had been sealed by years of people accepting that some children needed to be watched so others could feel safe.

Flitwick traced a small circle with his wand over the stone. “There are locking charms here, but they are layered over something older. If I force them, the room may react.”

Mara looked at Jesus. “Can You open it?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are we waiting?”

Jesus turned to her. “Because opening a hidden thing does not heal the fear that hid it.”

Her mouth tightened, but she did not argue. That was new. Corin noticed it before he could stop himself. Mara was still sharp, still frightened, still capable of making her face into armor, but she had begun to let answers reach her before she cut at them. It was not gentleness yet. It was the first pause before another kind of strength could be learned.

McGonagall stepped back from the center of the floor. “What must be spoken?”

Jesus looked around the room. “This classroom taught defense for many years while carrying an accusation under its feet. Every lesson above it was touched by what lay beneath. Not ruined entirely. Grace has worked here too. Courage has grown here. Students have protected one another here. But the hidden fear remained.”

Neville looked down at the floor. His face had gone quiet in that old way it did when memory came near. “I learned fear here before I learned courage.”

Jesus looked at him gently. “Tell the truth.”

Neville breathed in slowly. “I used to think courage meant not being frightened in rooms like this. Then I thought it meant doing the right thing even when frightened. That is true, but not all of it.” He looked at Corin and Mara, then back at the floor. “Sometimes courage means refusing the story fear tells about you before you have strength to prove otherwise.”

The stone beneath the remorse vine gave a faint sound, like a small crack forming under ice.

Mara watched Neville. “Were you watched too?”

“Not like you,” he said. “But I was measured. That can leave marks. People expected little from me, and for a while I helped them believe they were right because it hurt less than trying and failing in front of them.”

Corin understood that more than he expected. Being suspected and being dismissed were not the same wound, but both could make a person arrange his life around other people’s expectations. One fought to escape a dark label. The other fought to escape a small one. Either way, fear stayed near the center.

Jesus turned to McGonagall.

She stood very still, her hands folded around her wand. For a moment Corin saw not the Headmistress but the woman who had inherited a school full of history no policy could fully cleanse. Her face did not soften into weakness. It tightened into responsibility.

“I have believed too often that order meant healing had occurred,” she said. “I have trusted locked rooms because they caused less immediate harm than open panic. I have corrected students sharply for carrying wounds I did not take time to understand. I have protected this school, but not always seen every child protection had overlooked.”

The floor trembled.

Flitwick lowered his wand. “Minerva.”

She did not look at him. “No. It is true enough to be said.”

Jesus’ eyes rested on her with deep respect, not pity. “What is false?”

McGonagall’s breath moved slowly. “That a school is safe because its secrets are well managed.”

The center stones split in a thin circle.

Mara stepped back. Corin did too. Dust lifted from the floor, and a cold draft rose through the crack, smelling of damp stone, old smoke, and something metallic like blood on a bitten lip. The circle widened until the stones lowered silently, forming steps that had not existed moments before. They descended into darkness beneath the classroom.

Nobody moved at first.

Then Jesus stepped down.

McGonagall followed, then Flitwick. Neville picked up the remorse vine and motioned for Corin and Mara to stay close. Corin had no desire to lead. Mara looked as if she did, but she did not step ahead of Jesus. Together they descended into the space under the room.

The stairway was narrow and steep, cut from dark stone that seemed older than the castle above it. Moisture shone along the walls. The air grew colder with each step, and the classroom lamps faded behind them until only the light from McGonagall’s wand and Flitwick’s charm moved over the stone. Corin counted the steps without meaning to. At twenty-three, the stairway turned sharply. At forty-one, the walls opened into a low chamber.

The mirror stood at the far end.

It was taller than a person, but not grand. No gold frame surrounded it. No carved inscription promised visions or truth or desire. It leaned against the wall in a plain black frame, the surface dull and gray, like water under ash. At first Corin saw only the reflection of the small group entering the chamber. Jesus in His dark coat. McGonagall straight-backed and severe. Flitwick with wand raised. Neville holding the trembling plant. Mara pale but defiant. Corin himself looking younger than he wanted and more afraid than he could hide.

Then the reflection changed.

The chamber in the glass became the Defense classroom as it must have looked many years earlier. Desks stood in rows. Snow pressed against the windows beyond the reflected walls. A boy sat alone in the front row, thin and dark-haired, with one sleeve torn and a bruise near his eye. He could not have been older than fourteen. A medal hung from a chain around his neck, and he held it so tightly that the metal had reddened his palm.

Mara whispered, “Ivo Strake.”

The boy in the mirror lifted his head as if he had heard her. His eyes were not empty. That made him worse to look at. Empty eyes might have been a ghost. These were living eyes trapped in a memory that had never been allowed to finish. He looked at each of them, then stopped on Jesus.

“You came late,” Ivo said.

His voice came from the mirror and from the chamber at the same time.

Mara’s face changed, and Corin felt the words strike everyone differently. McGonagall’s mouth tightened. Neville looked down for a moment, wounded by an accusation that was not even aimed at him. Jesus stepped closer to the mirror.

“No,” Jesus said. “I came into what they hid.”

Ivo’s eyes narrowed. “Same thing.”

“It is not.”

The boy laughed bitterly. “That sounds like something adults say when they want the dead to be reasonable.”

Corin glanced at McGonagall, expecting correction, but none came. Perhaps everyone in the chamber understood that a boy trapped in a mirror beneath a cursed classroom had earned the right to speak with pain before being answered.

Jesus stood before the glass. “You are not dead.”

Ivo’s expression flickered. “No. That was the problem.”

The mirror darkened around him, and the reflected classroom shifted. Now the boy stood in the Forbidden Forest with snow falling hard through black branches. His school cloak was wrapped tight around him. The medallion at his neck pulsed with a sick red light. Somewhere behind him, voices called his name, but they sounded far away and frightened of finding him.

Ivo looked toward the trees. “I ran because the ledger had already decided. Professor Warrin watched me like I was a curse waiting for a mouth. Other students stopped sitting near me. My uncle’s letters told me they were right to fear me and wrong not to use me. I tried to ask for help, but every question I asked became another mark.”

The forest in the mirror seemed to breathe.

“I buried the medallions,” Ivo said. “All but one. I wanted to prove I could choose. I wanted to come back clean. Then I thought of the ledger waiting for me. I thought of her face when she looked at me. I thought of every child in that classroom knowing I was marked. So I kept walking.”

Mara stood very still. Corin could feel her beside him, barely breathing. Her story had nearly bent in the same direction, though she had carried pins instead of medallions and cruelty instead of uncle’s letters. Tobin too had come close to believing the record before anyone could reach him. The mirror was not showing an old tragedy as history. It was showing the path the ledger kept trying to recreate.

Ivo turned back toward them. “I found the old lower door. It opened because I had already agreed.”

Corin’s mouth went dry. “Agreed to what?”

Ivo looked at him. “That if they were going to see darkness in me, I might as well use it.”

The chamber seemed to grow colder.

Jesus’ face held grief. “You opened yourself to what hated you.”

“I opened myself to what answered.” Ivo’s voice sharpened. “There is a difference when you are fourteen and everyone righteous has stopped listening.”

Mara flinched.

The mirror showed a hidden door beneath tree roots, then darkness rushing in like smoke. The image shifted too quickly for Corin to understand everything. He saw Ivo returning to the castle unseen. He saw him standing before the mirror in this very chamber, older and not older, changed by something that had promised power while feeding on rejection. He saw Professor Warrin placing the ledger over the sealed floor, never knowing the boy she grieved had come back below it. He saw the mirror absorb the first fear fully, keeping Ivo’s reflection while whatever had used him slipped into the hidden agreements of the school.

Flitwick whispered, “This is not a ghost.”

“No,” Jesus said.

Neville held the remorse vine tighter. “Then what is he?”

Ivo smiled in the mirror, but the smile did not belong entirely to a boy. Something else moved behind it. “Careful, Professor Longbottom. Labels are how this began.”

Neville paled but did not step back. “You are right.”

That answer seemed to bother Ivo more than an insult would have.

Jesus lifted His hand slightly. “Ivo.”

The boy’s face twisted. For one moment, the other thing behind him receded, and he looked fourteen again. “Do not say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I am still there.”

“You are.”

“No.” He struck the inside of the mirror with his hand, and the glass rang through the chamber. “I am a warning now. That is what they made me. That is what I became. That is what the room needed.”

Jesus looked at him. “A warning is not a son.”

The words silenced the chamber.

Ivo stared at Him.

Corin felt the sentence move through him with unexpected force. Not a son. The ledger had made students into risks, patterns, doors, warnings, and evidence. Harrow had made them instruments in lesson plans. Fear had many names for children, but none of them were son or daughter. Jesus spoke as if the first truth about a person was not danger or usefulness, but belonging.

Ivo’s voice dropped. “Do not.”

Jesus stepped closer. “You were a child.”

“I chose.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted power.”

“Yes.”

“I let something in.”

“Yes.”

“Then do not make me innocent.”

“I am not.”

Ivo’s face trembled with anger. “Then what are You doing?”

Jesus placed His hand against the mirror.

The glass did not ripple. It did not crack. It seemed to become more solid under His touch, as if reality itself had leaned into the place where He stood.

“I am telling the truth without surrendering you to the lie.”

Ivo closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet. “No one did that.”

“I know.”

The simple answer carried more sorrow than a speech. Corin looked at Mara and saw tears on her face again, though she seemed unaware of them. McGonagall had lowered her wand slightly. Her eyes remained on the boy in the glass, and Corin wondered how many students she had known who were still alive but trapped in someone’s old description.

Then the thing behind Ivo moved.

The mirror darkened at the edges, and the boy’s reflection stretched taller. Shadows rose behind him, not forming a single creature but many shapes made from accusation. Faces appeared and vanished, some adult, some young, some with mouths open in whispers. The chamber filled with the sound of quills scratching, locks turning, students laughing under their breath, teachers saying concern in voices that meant suspicion. Ivo’s face hardened again, and when he spoke, his voice carried more than itself.

“If no one is marked, no one is safe.”

The words pressed against Corin’s mind with terrible familiarity. They were close to the sentence from the wall but older, stripped to the bone. If no one is marked, no one is safe. He felt how easily the phrase could become policy, habit, family wisdom, school culture, even private prayer if fear dressed it well enough. Mark someone. Watch someone. Blame someone. Place danger in a person you can name, and the rest of the room can breathe.

Mara stepped forward.

McGonagall reached out as if to stop her, but Jesus did not move. Mara stood beside Him before the mirror, close enough that her reflection appeared next to Ivo’s. She looked at him through the glass with a face that held fear, anger, and recognition.

“They marked me before I arrived,” she said.

Ivo looked at her. “Then you know.”

“I know part of it.”

“They made you what they feared.”

“No,” she said, though her voice shook. “They helped. I chose some of it.”

The shadows behind Ivo hissed.

Mara swallowed but kept speaking. “I liked being feared. I kept things that could hurt people. I said cruel things because I wanted to reach them first. That is mine. But the first name they gave me was not mine to carry.”

Ivo stared at her.

Mara’s hands trembled at her sides. “I do not know how to put it down yet. But I am not letting it choose everything.”

The mirror shuddered.

Corin stepped forward before he had decided to. He stood on Jesus’ other side, feeling foolish and terrified, but unable to remain behind them. His reflection appeared in the glass too, pale and thin beside Mara’s.

“I became a watcher,” he said. “Not because they marked me the way they marked you. Because I was afraid they would. I thought if I stood near the people making lists, I could prove I did not belong on one.” He looked at Ivo, then at the shadows behind him. “It did not make me safe. It made me useful to fear.”

A crack formed near the bottom of the mirror.

The sound was small, but everyone heard it.

Ivo’s expression shifted. He looked from Mara to Corin, and for the first time he seemed uncertain. The shadows behind him pressed closer, crowding his outline.

“You think confession changes what happened?” he asked.

“No,” Corin said. “I think hiding kept it happening.”

Another crack appeared.

McGonagall came forward next. She stood behind the students, not taking their place, and looked at the boy in the mirror with a sorrow that did not seek to excuse itself.

“Ivo Strake,” she said. “This school failed you.”

Ivo looked at her with open suspicion. “You were not there.”

“No. But I stand where authority stands now, and I will not protect the school’s name by denying the harm done under its roof.” Her voice remained steady, but Corin heard the feeling beneath it. “You should have been helped before you were watched. You should have been corrected without being condemned. You should have been treated as a child in danger, not a danger wearing a child’s face.”

The mirror cracked again, higher this time.

Ivo looked angry, but the anger was breaking unevenly. “Too late.”

“Yes,” McGonagall said. “For what should have been done then, yes.”

Corin saw Jesus look at her with approval. Not because the answer was comforting, but because it was true.

McGonagall continued. “But not too late for the lie to lose its authority here.”

The shadows recoiled.

Flitwick came forward then, smaller than the others but no less serious. “I have taught charms long enough to know that repetition strengthens magic. I suspect it strengthens fear too. We repeated what we should have questioned. In staff rooms, in reports, in the way we spoke of difficult students as problems to manage rather than children to know.” He looked down, then back at the mirror. “I repent of every time I chose the tidy explanation over the harder love.”

The crack widened.

Neville set the remorse vine on the floor before the mirror. Its leaves opened fully, reaching toward the glass like small green hands. He knelt beside it, not caring that the stone was damp.

“I was once a frightened boy in this school,” he said. “Other people’s courage seemed too large for me. Their expectations felt like robes that did not fit. I know what it is to be measured badly.” His voice grew firmer. “I also know that a person can become more than the room expected. Ivo, what happened to you was wrong. What came through your fear was wrong too. Both can be true, and neither truth gives the darkness the right to keep your face.”

The mirror rang sharply.

Ivo staggered within the reflection. For a moment he looked again like the boy in the snow, bruised and cold, clutching the last medallion while voices called from too far away. The shadows behind him pulled at his shoulders. His face twisted with panic.

“It will take me,” he said.

Jesus did not move His hand from the glass. “It already did. I have come to take you back.”

The chamber trembled so violently that dust fell from the ceiling. McGonagall raised a shield over them, and Flitwick strengthened it with a sharp word. Mara grabbed Corin’s sleeve without seeming to know it. He did not pull away. The mirror surface darkened until Ivo was almost lost inside it.

Then Jesus spoke again, and His voice filled the chamber without becoming loud.

“No one comes to the Father unless the Father draws him.”

The darkness recoiled like a living wound touched by fire. Corin did not understand everything in the words, but he felt their direction. Ivo’s life had been pulled by fear, by shame, by old family poison, by a school that marked him, by a power that answered when love did not. Jesus spoke of another drawing, deeper and older than all of it.

Ivo cried out. The sound was not rage now. It was terror.

“I cannot come out,” he said.

Jesus’ face held such tenderness that Corin had to look away for a breath. “Then look at Me.”

“I did terrible things.”

“Look at Me.”

“I let it use me.”

“Look at Me.”

“I hated them.”

Jesus’ voice softened. “I know.”

Ivo looked.

The chamber changed.

Not visibly at first. The stones remained damp. The mirror remained cracked. The shadows still pressed behind the boy. Yet something in the air turned, as if the deepest direction of the room had shifted from hiding to home. Corin felt it in his chest. Mara went still beside him. McGonagall lowered her wand a fraction, not from carelessness but from awe.

Jesus leaned closer to the glass. “Ivo Strake, you are not the first fear. You are a child I see.”

The mirror split from top to bottom.

A wind burst from it, cold and black, filled with whispers that tried to become words but could not hold together. The shield around them flared. Mara cried out. Corin felt the wind pass through him, searching for the old agreement, the old hunger to stand with the watchers. It found something in him, but not enough to take hold as it had before. He gripped Mara’s sleeve now too, and they stood like that without pretending either of them was steady alone.

The shadow tore loose from the mirror.

For one terrible second, it filled the chamber above them, a mass of accusation and fear with no true face. It bent toward Jesus as if to swallow His outline. He did not raise a wand. He did not step back. He lifted His hand from the broken glass and spoke one word.

“Enough.”

The shadow fell.

It did not explode. It collapsed, all at once, like ash losing the shape of flame. Darkness poured down over the floor and became clear water at Jesus’ feet. The water spread across the chamber stones, washing over Corin’s shoes, Mara’s, McGonagall’s, Flitwick’s, Neville’s, and the roots of the remorse vine. Wherever it passed, old ink stains surfaced from the floor and vanished.

The mirror frame stood empty.

Not broken glass now. Empty.

For a heartbeat Corin thought Ivo was gone with the shadow. Then he saw him kneeling on the chamber floor in front of Jesus, no longer in the mirror, no longer stretched by darkness, but not fully solid like the living either. He seemed made of memory and mercy, a boy-shaped presence in an old school robe, his hands shaking around nothing. The medallion was gone from his neck.

Ivo looked down at himself. “Am I dead now?”

Jesus knelt before him. “No.”

“Am I alive?”

“Not as you were.”

Ivo’s face crumpled. “Then what am I?”

Jesus reached out and touched the side of his face. Corin did not know how a hand could touch someone like that, but it did. Ivo closed his eyes as if the touch hurt and healed in the same breath.

“You are held,” Jesus said.

The boy began to cry. This was not like Tobin crying in the Great Hall or Mara crying before the family box. It was older and younger at once, the sound of a child whose terror had finally run out of places to go. No one moved. Even McGonagall seemed to understand that authority had no work in this moment except reverence.

After a while, Ivo looked past Jesus toward Mara. “Your name is Flint.”

“Yes.”

“My uncle knew Flints.”

“I am not surprised.”

“He would have used you.”

“He nearly did without meeting me.”

Ivo nodded, and there was no accusation in it. Only grief. “Do not keep the last medallion.”

Mara frowned. “I do not have medallions.”

“No,” he said. “You have other things.”

Her face tightened, then she understood. The pins were gone, but not every weapon was silver and green-tipped. Some were habits. Some were sentences. Some were the pleasure of watching another person step back. She nodded slowly.

“I am trying,” she said.

“Try faster,” he said, then looked startled by his own bluntness.

Mara gave a shaky breath that almost became a laugh. “You sound like half my teachers.”

“Then half your teachers may have been occasionally right.”

For the first time, something like warmth passed through the chamber, fragile but real.

Ivo turned to Corin next. “You would have written my name.”

Corin did not defend himself. “Yes.”

“Would you have regretted it?”

“Too late.”

Ivo studied him. “That is honest.”

“It is not enough.”

“No,” Ivo said. “But it is better than pretending.”

Corin nodded, and the words settled in him. Better than pretending was not absolution, but it was a road. Perhaps that was what this whole day had given him. Not a clean escape from shame. A road away from lies.

Neville wiped his face quickly and pretended he had not. Flitwick noticed and looked away kindly. McGonagall stepped forward, her voice lower than Corin had ever heard it.

“Ivo, your mother waited for you.”

The boy closed his eyes. “I know.”

“She loved you.”

“I know that now.”

McGonagall’s face tightened. “I am sorry that no one told you in time in a way you could still hear.”

Ivo looked at her, and the old bitterness flickered faintly, then faded. “Tell the ones who are still in time.”

“I will.”

Jesus stood. Ivo stood too, though he looked suddenly translucent around the edges. The water on the floor had grown still, reflecting the empty frame and the people around it. The remorse vine had rooted through a crack in its pot, thin white strands reaching into the wet stone. Neville stared at it in amazement.

“It is planting itself,” he said.

Mara looked down. “Here?”

“Apparently.”

Flitwick adjusted his spectacles. “That may make the chamber difficult to seal again.”

Jesus looked at McGonagall. “It should not be sealed as it was.”

She nodded slowly. “No. Not hidden. Guarded, perhaps. Remembered.”

Ivo looked toward the empty mirror frame. “Do not make it a shrine to fear.”

“No,” Jesus said.

“What then?”

“A place where false names are surrendered.”

Mara crossed her arms, but this time the gesture looked more like holding herself together than keeping everyone out. “Students will hate that.”

“Some will,” Jesus said.

Corin looked at the water around his shoes. “Some may need it.”

Jesus turned to him. “Yes.”

Ivo began to fade more quickly. He looked at Jesus with sudden panic. “Where am I going?”

Jesus’ expression held peace. “You are not being left in the mirror.”

The boy looked around the chamber, at the teachers, at the two students, at the plant rooting into stone, at the empty frame. “Will they remember I was not only the warning?”

McGonagall answered before anyone else. “Yes.”

Ivo looked at Mara and Corin. “Will you?”

Mara’s answer came first. “Yes.”

Corin nodded. “Yes.”

Ivo seemed to gather those answers as if they were warmth. Then he looked at Jesus one last time. “You really did come late.”

Jesus’ eyes were full of sorrow and love. “I came.”

The boy held that truth for a moment. Then his form thinned into light, not bright enough to blind, only soft enough to be received. It rose like breath in cold air and vanished before it touched the ceiling.

The chamber remained silent after him.

Nobody rushed to speak. Corin thought of the first note under the cupboard door. Do not look at me. He thought of the ledger, the hidden room, Tobin’s wand, Mara’s pins, Albie’s confession, Harrow’s lesson plans, Warrin’s portrait, and Ivo’s face behind the mirror. So much harm had grown from people fearing what might be found if someone looked too closely. Yet Jesus had looked more deeply than any of them, and His sight had not behaved like the ledger. It had named sin without reducing the sinner to it. It had exposed fear without letting fear keep the final word.

McGonagall finally lifted her wand and sent a silver thread of light up the stairway. “I am calling the senior staff. This chamber will be guarded tonight.”

Neville knelt beside the remorse vine. “I may need to stay with it. Or it may need me to stop fussing. Hard to know.”

Mara looked at the plant. “It picked a dramatic place to live.”

“It has dramatic instincts,” Neville said.

Flitwick stepped toward the empty frame and examined it without touching. “The mirror surface is gone. Not shattered. Gone entirely.” He looked at Jesus. “Will it return?”

“No.”

“Good,” Mara said. “I have had enough reflective surfaces for one day.”

Corin glanced at her, and for once the humor did not feel like a shield only. It was still sharp, but less poisonous. Maybe that was one way repair began. Not by becoming gentle all at once, but by losing the desire to make every sharp edge draw blood.

They climbed back toward the classroom while McGonagall remained below to set protective charms. Jesus walked last, and Corin noticed that He paused at the foot of the stairs before following. He looked once more at the empty frame, the rooted vine, and the water still shining over the stone. His lips moved in prayer, too quiet for Corin to hear.

Back in the classroom, the air felt different. Not light exactly. The day had carried too much for lightness. But the lowered feeling was gone. The ceiling seemed higher. The desks no longer looked like witnesses waiting to accuse. Through the windows, the first stars had begun to appear behind thinning cloud.

Mara sat on the edge of a desk without asking permission. Corin expected McGonagall to correct her from below by instinct alone, but no voice came. Mara rubbed her hands together, then looked at him.

“I grabbed your sleeve,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“If you tell anyone, I will deny it.”

“I believe you.”

She studied him for a moment. “You grabbed mine back.”

“Yes.”

“I will also deny that.”

“I believe that too.”

She looked away, but he saw the corner of her mouth move. They sat in quiet for a while, not friends exactly, not enemies in the familiar way either. Something stranger had begun between them. They had stood before the same mirror and refused, however imperfectly, the same lie.

Flitwick went to inform the staff. Neville remained near the open stairway, speaking softly to the vine as if it were a nervous first-year. The room grew still around Corin and Mara until the distant noise of supper below reached them in muffled waves. Plates, benches, voices, ordinary school life returning without knowing yet what had broken beneath its feet.

Mara looked toward the door. “Tobin should know.”

Corin nodded. “Not tonight.”

“No. Not tonight.” She rubbed her sleeve where his hand had gripped it. “But he should know there was someone before him. Not because that makes it better. Because it means he was not crazy.”

Corin looked at her. “You should tell him.”

Mara’s face tightened. “Why me?”

“Because he might hear it from you.”

She seemed ready to reject the idea, then stopped. “Maybe.”

It was not agreement, but it was not refusal. For Mara, that was a long distance traveled.

Jesus came up from the stairway then. The classroom quieted around Him in a way Corin had begun to recognize. He looked at both students, then toward the windows, where the castle reflected faintly in the dark glass. His face held weariness now, though not weakness. Corin wondered whether Jesus had carried not only the day’s events but the pain underneath each one.

“Professor,” Corin said.

Jesus looked at him.

“Is Harrow the final part?”

“No.”

Corin felt Mara go still beside him.

Jesus walked to the front desk and rested His hand on the wood. “Harrow served what he did not create. He chose it. He will answer for that. But the final part is not finding one guilty man and placing the school’s fear inside him.”

Mara’s voice was quieter than usual. “Because then he becomes the marked one.”

“Yes.”

Corin understood and hated that he understood. The school would want Harrow to become the container for everything. It would be easy. Harrow had done terrible things. He had used students, planned incidents, fed old systems, and tried to turn fear into proof. He was guilty. Yet if everyone placed the whole darkness on him, the agreement would survive under a cleaner name. Someone must be watched so everyone else can feel safe. Even punishment could become another hiding place if truth did not go deeper.

“Then what is final?” Corin asked.

Jesus looked toward the door, beyond it to the corridors, the Great Hall, the common rooms, the hospital wing, the staff offices, and all the living places where the old habit might still breathe.

“The school must decide what it will do when fear asks for another name.”

No one spoke.

The supper bell’s echo had faded, and the castle settled into night around them. Beneath the classroom, the chamber remained open. In the hospital wing, Tobin was likely asleep or pretending to be. Somewhere near the staff corridor, Albie was facing the first consequences of truth. Professor Warrin waited uncovered on the old stairway. The hidden room stood exposed, the ledger blank, the mirror empty, and the first fear released from its glass.

But Corin knew Jesus was right.

Tomorrow, students would wake. Rumors would bloom. Parents would write. The Ministry might come. Some would want safety. Some would want blame. Some would want mercy until mercy required them to stay near the uncomfortable truth. The real test had not ended in the chamber. It had only moved upward into the lives of everyone who would now have to choose what kind of defense they believed in.

Jesus looked at Corin and Mara with quiet authority.

“Go eat,” He said.

Mara blinked. “That is Your instruction?”

“Yes.”

Corin almost laughed from exhaustion. Mara looked as if she wanted to argue on principle, but her stomach betrayed her with a loud sound in the silence. She glared at it, then at Corin, as if daring him to comment.

He did not.

They walked toward the door together. Before leaving, Corin looked back once. Jesus stood alone in the Defense classroom, His hand still resting on the desk, His head slightly bowed. Not fully in prayer yet, but near it, as if every room He entered eventually became a place where the Father was addressed.

Corin stepped into the corridor with Mara beside him. The lamps burned steady gold along the stone walls. For the first time that day, the way ahead was still frightening, but it did not feel hidden.

Chapter Six: The Supper That Would Not Stay Ordinary

The Great Hall did not know how to receive them when Corin and Mara walked in together. That was the first thing Corin noticed. Conversations did not stop all at once, because Hogwarts had too many students for silence to travel cleanly through a room that large, but a strange uneven quiet moved outward from the doors. Heads turned at the Gryffindor table first, then Hufflepuff, then Ravenclaw, then Slytherin. By the time Corin reached the Ravenclaw bench and Mara stepped toward her own table, the noise had lowered into the careful murmur of people pretending not to watch while watching with all their strength.

The enchanted ceiling above them showed a night washed clean by rain. Stars had appeared between thin shreds of cloud, and the floating candles shone with a warmer light than usual, as if the hall were trying to repair the day by being beautiful. Platters of food filled the tables, and students served themselves with the distracted urgency of people who had been afraid long enough to remember they were hungry. Corin sat where he usually sat, but the space around him felt chosen by others rather than open by chance. Two students who might normally have squeezed in beside him remained a careful distance away.

Mara sat at the Slytherin table with her back straight and her face controlled. Her friends looked uncertain whether to welcome her, fear her, question her, or protect themselves from whatever story now clung to her. Corin watched one girl slide a dish of potatoes closer to Mara without speaking. Mara looked at it as if it were a challenge, then took a small spoonful. It was perhaps the least dramatic act of the day, yet Corin found himself strangely grateful for it.

At the staff table, the empty chair beside McGonagall remained empty. Jesus was not there. Neither was Neville. Flitwick had returned and sat with his hands folded near his plate, though he was not eating much. McGonagall stood behind her chair with Albie Rathbone beside her, pale and stiff, waiting under her instruction. The sight of Albie there created its own storm of whispers, because students understood punishment more quickly than repair. They could guess at guilt. They could not yet imagine why he had been kept close instead of hidden away.

Corin reached for bread, then stopped when he saw his hand trembling. He put it back on the table and folded both hands in his lap. Across from him, a Ravenclaw girl named Elowen Pike watched him through narrowed eyes. She was clever, ambitious, and known for remembering every rule someone else broke. Corin had never disliked her. He had also never wanted to be noticed by her when he was guilty.

“So,” Elowen said quietly, “is it true?”

Corin looked at her. “You will have to choose a rumor.”

“The one where you helped Harrow spy on students.”

He could have said it was more complicated. It was. He could have said Harrow manipulated him. That was true. He could have said he had not known the ledger was cursed or that the system reached deeper than one book. Also true. But all those truths, placed first, would have arranged themselves into a shield.

“Yes,” he said.

The students near them fell silent.

Elowen’s face changed. She had expected denial, perhaps anger, maybe a careful legal answer. The plain yes left her with nowhere prepared to go. “Why?”

Corin looked at the bread again, then forced himself to meet her eyes. “Because I wanted to be trusted by someone who made suspicion sound like responsibility.”

Elowen frowned. “That is not an excuse.”

“No.”

“Did you read my name?”

“I do not know.” He swallowed. “If I did, I do not remember.”

“That is supposed to make me feel better?”

“No.”

A boy farther down the table spoke before Corin could say more. “If he does not remember, that means he read many names.”

The words moved down the bench like a spark. Corin felt faces turn toward him with fresh anger. This was the part he had not thought about enough. Guilt was not only a private condition. It entered rooms ahead of you. It sat down among people you had wronged, even when you could not remember the exact shape of the wrong. He wanted the floor to open the way the Defense classroom floor had opened, but no hidden stairway came to rescue him from the table.

“I read pages,” Corin said. “Not all of them. Enough.”

Elowen’s voice tightened. “Enough for what?”

“To be wrong.”

That did not satisfy her. It should not have. She looked away, jaw set, and began cutting her food with more force than needed. Corin sat with the silence that followed, and for the first time he understood how difficult it was not to fill a room with explanations. He had spent so long wanting people to understand him that being misunderstood felt almost unbearable. But some pain could not be rushed past simply because he had finally decided to tell the truth.

At the Slytherin table, a different conversation had begun. Mara’s voice carried just enough for Corin to hear pieces of it when the hall dipped between waves of noise.

“Did you really bring cursed pins?” someone asked.

“Yes,” Mara said.

A boy near her laughed nervously. “That is very Flint of you.”

“No,” she said.

The simple refusal cut harder than an insult. The boy’s smile faded.

Mara continued, her voice low but clear. “Do not say my name like it means I had no choice.”

Another girl whispered, “People are saying you cried in front of professors.”

Mara reached for her cup and drank slowly. “People say many things when they are too frightened to ask what happened.”

“Did you?”

Mara set the cup down. “Yes.”

Her table fell quiet.

Corin looked away, not wanting to steal the privacy of a public confession. Still, something in him steadied when he heard her say yes. Not because it made her better than she had been that morning. It made her less controlled by the need to appear untouchable. Maybe that was all either of them had managed by supper. A few honest yeses where old defenses would have stood.

McGonagall lifted her hand.

The hall quieted faster this time. Even the younger students, who often needed several warnings from prefects, seemed to understand that the evening would not proceed as usual. Albie stood at McGonagall’s side with his eyes fixed on the floor. The staff table looked unusually bare without Jesus and Neville, and that absence made every student more alert.

McGonagall’s voice carried through the hall. “This afternoon, classes were suspended because a serious matter concerning the safety and integrity of this school came to light. I will not feed rumor by giving details that belong first to those directly affected. I will say this clearly. A hidden record connected to past misconduct in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom has been discovered and rendered powerless. Additional hidden materials have been secured. No student is to harass, threaten, corner, question, or mock any other student over what they think they know.”

A murmur began, then died when she looked across the tables.

She continued. “Some students have been harmed by suspicion. Some have participated in spreading it. Some will need protection. Some will need correction. Many will need patience as truth is handled properly. I expect this school to do better than rumor.”

A Gryffindor seventh-year raised his hand without fully standing. “Headmistress, was Professor Harrow involved?”

The hall sharpened around the question.

McGonagall looked at him. “Professor Harrow is no longer employed by this school, and his conduct is under investigation.”

That answer was controlled, but everyone heard what stood behind it. A wave of whispers moved through the hall.

Another student called out from Hufflepuff, “Is Tobin Marr expelled?”

McGonagall’s eyes flashed. “No.”

The word struck the room harder than a long explanation would have. Some students looked relieved. Others looked uneasy. A few looked offended, as if mercy toward a frightened boy with a wand somehow placed danger on their plates beside the gravy.

From the Slytherin table, someone muttered, “So people can point wands at everyone now.”

Mara turned toward the voice before Corin could see who had spoken. “No.”

The hall went still again.

McGonagall looked at her. “Miss Flint.”

Mara stood slowly. Corin could see the cost of it in her shoulders, though her face remained controlled. “He should not have done it. Nobody is saying he should have done it. But if you think the only important thing is that he raised the wand, you are choosing not to care who pushed him to that point.”

A student from Gryffindor snapped, “That does not make it safe.”

Mara looked toward that table. “I did not say safe. I said important.”

The Gryffindor student rose halfway. “Easy for you. You had cursed pins.”

Mara’s face tightened. For one second, the old cruelty returned to the edge of her eyes. Corin saw it and held his breath. A dozen possible answers seemed to pass through her, each sharp enough to wound and familiar enough to feel like home.

Then she said, “Yes.”

The student blinked.

Mara’s voice shook once, then steadied. “I had them. I should not have had them. They were taken. They are gone. If that makes you afraid of me, I understand. But if you use that fear to decide I was born with them in my hand, you are helping the same thing that nearly swallowed Tobin.”

No one answered.

Mara sat down before McGonagall could tell her to. The Headmistress studied her for a moment, then looked back at the hall.

“That,” McGonagall said, “is enough public discussion for tonight.”

The meal resumed, but ordinary sound did not return. It came in pieces. A fork against a plate. A nervous laugh. A whispered apology somewhere behind Corin. A chair leg scraping stone. The Great Hall was still full of students, food, candles, and house banners, but something invisible had been placed on the table with them. The school had heard just enough truth to know that rumor would not be harmless tonight.

Corin forced himself to eat a few bites of potatoes. They tasted like nothing. He wondered where Jesus was and whether the chamber beneath the classroom was still shining with that strange water. He wondered if Ivo Strake’s mother had died with a candle in her window or an unopened letter beside her bed. He wondered whether Tobin was asleep. He wondered whether Albie would spend the next weeks hated or pitied, and whether either would teach him anything true.

Elowen spoke again, quieter this time. “Was my name in it?”

Corin looked at her. “I really do not know.”

Her eyes were bright with anger she had not decided where to put. “That is what I cannot stand. Someone may have written me down, and I have to sit here not knowing.”

“I know.”

“No, you do not.”

Corin let the correction stand. She was right in the way that mattered. He knew what it was to fear being marked, but he did not know what it was to wonder whether he had been recorded by a classmate sitting two feet away from him and then forgotten like an unimportant detail.

Elowen pushed her plate away. “I always thought you were decent.”

The words hurt more than insults would have. “I wanted to be.”

“That is not the same.”

“No.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Are you going to tell us whose names you remember?”

Corin’s stomach tightened. It was the question he had feared. “Not here.”

“That sounds convenient.”

“It is not meant to be. Professor Jesus said truth cannot become another public shame. I have to tell McGonagall everything I remember. She will decide how to tell people without turning it into more harm.”

Elowen studied him, searching for evasion. “And if she protects the school?”

Corin looked toward the staff table. McGonagall stood there like a tower built from both stone and regret. “I do not think she will. Not now.”

Elowen’s face softened by almost nothing. “You trust her?”

“I am trying to trust truth more than panic.”

She looked away. “That sounds like something He said.”

“It is probably because I would not have thought of it.”

This time, she almost smiled. Not forgiveness. Not even warmth. But the conversation did not cut as deeply after that, and Corin received the small mercy without trying to make more of it than it was.

At the staff table, a barn owl flew in through the high opening above the doors. Owls came during meals often enough that no one should have noticed, but this one arrived alone and too fast. Its wings beat hard beneath the floating candles, and a streak of rain darkened its feathers though the sky above the hall was clear. It carried a red envelope in its talons.

The hall saw it.

Howlers had a particular authority over schoolchildren. Even students who had faced boggarts, curses, dangerous creatures, and exams they had not studied for knew to fear a red envelope at supper. The owl dropped it before McGonagall and veered away so quickly that it nearly struck a candle.

The envelope smoked on the table.

Albie recoiled. McGonagall did not. She looked at it with the tired annoyance of a woman who had survived more than one generation of magical shouting.

Flitwick leaned toward her. “Minerva.”

“I see it.”

The Howler burst open before she touched it.

A woman’s voice filled the Great Hall, magnified and furious. “HEADMISTRESS, I HAVE JUST BEEN INFORMED THAT MY NEPHEW TOBIN MARR CAUSED A PUBLIC INCIDENT IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE SCHOOL, AND I DEMAND HIS IMMEDIATE REMOVAL BEFORE HE DISGRACES THIS FAMILY ANY FURTHER. I WARNED YOU PEOPLE. I WARNED YOU HE WAS UNSTABLE. I WILL NOT HAVE MINISTRY OFFICIALS LOOKING AT US BECAUSE A BOY WITH NO SELF-CONTROL DECIDED TO ACT POSSESSED IN A DINING HALL.”

The room froze.

Corin felt the words strike like thrown stones. Tobin was not present to hear them, but somehow that made it worse. The Howler had brought his home into the hall without him, exposing the voice he had probably been trying to survive for years.

The envelope flared brighter.

“IF HE CLAIMS HE WAS PROVOKED, DO NOT BELIEVE HIM. HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN DRAMATIC. HIS BROTHER STILL HAS SCARS FROM THAT WINDOW INCIDENT, AND I WILL NOT ALLOW THAT BOY TO RUIN ANOTHER HOUSEHOLD. SEND HIM BACK OR KEEP HIM LOCKED WHERE HE CANNOT HARM DECENT CHILDREN.”

Mara stood.

So did Corin.

They were not the only ones. Several students rose in shock or outrage, though none seemed to know what to do. Albie looked as if he might be sick. McGonagall’s face had gone white in the way anger sometimes makes a person pale before it finds language.

The Howler continued, uglier now because it had an audience. “AND IF ANY PROFESSOR HAS BEEN FILLING HIS HEAD WITH IDEAS THAT HE IS MISUNDERSTOOD, I SUGGEST YOU SPEAK WITH THOSE WHO HAVE HAD TO LIVE WITH HIM. SOME CHILDREN ARE BORN WRONG, AND PRETENDING OTHERWISE ONLY ENDANGERS EVERYONE ELSE.”

The red paper tore itself in half with a final burst of smoke.

Silence followed.

Not the heavy silence of awe. Not the tender silence after confession. This was a stunned silence, full of children realizing they had just heard an adult say aloud the very lie the day had been fighting. Some looked frightened. Some looked ashamed because part of them had believed something close to it. Others looked toward the hospital wing doors, as if Tobin might appear there and collapse under the words.

McGonagall lifted her wand and vanished the ashes. When she spoke, her voice was low enough that everyone had to listen.

“No student in this school is born wrong.”

The sentence crossed the hall like a blade cutting a rope.

She turned to Albie. “Mr. Rathbone, you will come with me now.”

Albie nodded quickly, but before they could move, the Great Hall doors opened.

Jesus entered.

The room seemed to draw in one breath. He walked toward the staff table, but His eyes moved first across the students. Corin saw Him take in Mara standing at Slytherin, Corin standing at Ravenclaw, Albie near McGonagall, and the shaken faces of students who had been handed a hateful sentence and did not know whether to reject it fully. His expression carried sorrow, but there was no surprise in it.

He stopped beside McGonagall. “Did Tobin hear?”

Madam Pomfrey’s voice came from the side entrance before anyone else answered. “No. He is asleep, and I placed a muffling charm around the ward when the owl entered.”

Relief moved through the hall.

Jesus looked at McGonagall. “Good.”

Then He turned toward the students.

For a moment, Corin expected Him to address the whole hall the way a teacher might after a crisis. He expected instruction, warning, perhaps even comfort. Instead Jesus stepped down from the staff platform and walked between the tables until He reached the space where the four house tables nearly met. He stood there, not above them, but among them.

“A voice just entered this room,” He said. “It spoke fear. It spoke shame. It spoke the old lie that a wounded child is easier to condemn than to love with truth.”

No one moved.

Jesus looked at the place where the Howler had burned. “Some of you were angered by it. Some of you were frightened by it. Some of you recognized it because you have heard a voice like it at home. Some of you recognized it because you have carried a voice like it inside yourself.”

Corin felt the hall shift. The words did not only defend Tobin. They turned the moment toward everyone who had been touched by that kind of sentence. He saw a Hufflepuff boy lower his eyes. A Slytherin first-year began crying silently, and an older student beside him moved closer without making it obvious. At the Gryffindor table, the student who had challenged Mara stared at his plate.

Jesus continued. “A child may do wrong. A child may need correction. A child may need boundaries, care, consequence, and help. But when you call a child wrong in his being, you speak against the One who made him.”

The hall stayed silent.

He did not raise His voice. “You must learn the difference.”

A Ravenclaw boy near Corin whispered, “Between what?”

Jesus turned toward him. The boy looked startled that he had been heard. Jesus answered anyway.

“Between naming harm and naming a person as harm.”

The words settled over the room. Corin felt them land in the place where Elowen’s question still sat. He had named people as risks. Mara had named people as weak targets. Albie had named Tobin as a future incident. Tobin’s aunt had named him wrong. Harrow had named children as instruments. The mirror had held Ivo as a warning. The whole day had been one long battle over who had the right to name a person.

Mara sat down slowly.

Corin sat too.

Jesus looked at McGonagall. “Tobin should not return to that house tonight.”

McGonagall nodded once. “He will not.”

The hall heard it, and some students exchanged glances. That was not a small decision. Families had power in the wizarding world, and guardians could make trouble. But McGonagall looked as if trouble would have to take a number and wait its turn.

A girl from Hufflepuff raised her hand, trembling slightly. “Professor?”

Jesus turned to her. “Yes.”

“What are we supposed to say when people ask what happened?”

It was a good question. The hall leaned toward it because everyone had been wondering the same thing in less honest forms.

Jesus answered, “Say less than you want to say.”

A few students looked confused.

He went on. “If the story is not yours to tell, do not spend another person’s pain to purchase attention. If someone may be in danger, tell the right person plainly. If you have harmed someone, tell the truth where repair can begin. If you do not know, do not pretend that guessing is courage.”

The girl nodded slowly, as if she would need time to understand the answer in practice.

Mara looked across the hall toward Corin, and he knew she was thinking the same thing. Hogwarts would find that instruction almost impossible. The school ran on stories, secrets, and students trying to know things before others knew them. But perhaps impossible was not the same as untrue. Perhaps it was simply where the real lesson began.

Jesus returned to the staff table. He spoke quietly with McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey, and after a moment they left through the side door with Albie. The hall did not erupt after they were gone. It remained subdued, as if everyone had been entrusted with something fragile and dangerous.

Corin looked down at his plate. He was hungry now, strangely. Not because the heaviness had lifted, but because his body had finally remembered it was still alive. He ate slowly. Across from him, Elowen did the same.

After several minutes, she said, “I think my name was probably in there.”

Corin looked up.

She kept her gaze on her plate. “I report things too. Rule things. Not like Albie with his mother, but to professors. I always tell myself it is because order matters.” She breathed out. “Sometimes it is. Sometimes I like being the person who noticed.”

Corin did not know what to say. For once, he did not try to be useful too quickly.

Elowen looked at him. “Do not look relieved. This does not make you less wrong.”

“I know.”

“But maybe you are not the only wrong one at this table.”

Corin nodded. “I do not think I am.”

She picked up her fork again. “That is annoying.”

“Yes.”

The corner of her mouth moved, then fell. “I still want to know if my name was written.”

“I would too.”

“Will you tell me if you remember?”

Corin considered the question carefully. The old version of him might have promised quickly to seem honorable. The new version, only hours old and still unsteady, knew better than to make truth serve the need to be liked.

“I will tell McGonagall what I remember,” he said. “If it is right for me to tell you directly, I will. If not, I will not use your name again to make myself feel better.”

Elowen stared at him, then looked away. “That was a better answer than I wanted.”

“I am sorry.”

“No, you are not.”

For the first time that day, Corin laughed softly. It was not joy, not exactly. It was the small sound of a person discovering that honesty did not have to be grim every second to remain true. Elowen shook her head but did not tell him to stop.

At the Slytherin table, Mara stood again, but this time no speech followed. She picked up her plate and moved three seats down to sit beside a younger girl who had been crying quietly since the Howler. The girl stiffened when Mara sat near her. Mara did not touch her or demand an explanation. She only placed the dish of potatoes between them and said something too low for Corin to hear. After a moment, the younger girl took some.

That was all.

No transformation announced itself. No applause came. No one declared Mara changed. But Corin saw the act for what it was. A girl who had once made fear her shelter had noticed someone else drowning in it and had not turned away. It was small enough to be missed by anyone looking for a miracle. Jesus, Corin thought, would not have missed it.

Supper ended without the usual rush. Students left in slower clusters, watched by prefects who had been quietly instructed to keep corridors calm. Corin remained seated until the Ravenclaw table thinned. He had to report to McGonagall’s office after supper. That had not changed. The thought pressed against him with steady weight, but it no longer felt like the worst thing. The worst thing would have been to leave the day with his lies still hidden.

Mara appeared beside him as he stood.

“You are going to McGonagall,” she said.

“Yes.”

“So am I.”

He glanced at her. “Were you told to?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

She looked irritated by the question. “Because I gave false pins before I gave real ones. Because I have names to say. Because if I wait until morning, I will find a way to become clever again.”

Corin understood that too well. Night could make excuses sound intelligent. Sleep could soften urgency. By morning, a person could turn confession into a plan that protected the wrong things.

They walked from the Great Hall together, not close enough to suggest friendship and not far enough to pretend the day had not bound them in some difficult way. The corridors outside were guarded by prefects and watched by portraits who had clearly been told something but not enough to satisfy them. A painted knight whispered, “Is it true a cursed book exploded?” and Mara told him, “Go polish your helmet,” without breaking stride.

The knight looked offended. “It is painted on.”

“Then polish your personality.”

Corin looked at her.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“You almost smiled.”

“I did smile.”

“Do not make it a habit.”

“I will try not to.”

They reached the moving staircase just as it began to swing away from the landing. For a moment they had to wait side by side while it groaned into a new position. Below them, students crossed the entrance hall in small groups under the watch of teachers. Above them, the higher floors curved into shadow and lamplight. Hogwarts seemed both vast and exposed now, its old secrets disturbed but not fully cleansed.

Mara gripped the banister. “Do you think it is possible?”

“What?”

She looked embarrassed by the question before she asked it. “To stop being what people prepared room for you to become.”

Corin thought of Ivo in the mirror. He thought of Tobin asleep behind a muffling charm. He thought of the ledger’s blank pages and the Howler’s ugly voice. He thought of Jesus saying a warning was not a son.

“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

“You sound uncertain.”

“I am.”

“Then why say yes?”

He looked at her. “Because He is not.”

The staircase locked into place with a low thud.

Mara looked away first, but she did not mock him. They climbed toward McGonagall’s office in silence, each carrying a different fear into the same narrow future. Behind them, the Great Hall doors closed. Ahead of them, consequences waited. Somewhere in the castle, Jesus was likely walking toward Tobin’s bedside, or perhaps back to the open chamber beneath the classroom, or perhaps to some quiet place where He could pray over a school that had mistaken locked doors for peace.

At the stone gargoyle outside McGonagall’s office, Mara stopped.

Corin looked at her. “Are you coming in?”

“Yes.” Her voice was tight. “In a moment.”

The gargoyle watched them with carved impatience.

Mara reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a small silver object. Corin stepped back before he could stop himself. She noticed and did not blame him. In her palm lay not a pin, but a broken clasp shaped like a serpent’s head.

“It was from the case I kept them in,” she said. “Not cursed. I think.”

“You think?”

She gave him a look. “If it bites you, I was wrong.”

Despite everything, he almost laughed again.

Mara stared at the clasp. “I kept it because it looked like something I should keep. Family thing. Proud thing. Stupid thing.” Her fingers closed around it. “I was going to throw it into the lake tomorrow where nobody had to see.”

Corin waited.

She looked at the gargoyle, then at the office door above. “But that feels like hiding.”

Before he could answer, the office door opened from within.

Jesus stood at the top of the short stair, looking down at them as though He had known they were there before the gargoyle could announce them. Warm light from McGonagall’s office framed Him from behind, and His face held the tired kindness of someone who had spent the whole day entering rooms others wanted sealed.

Mara’s fingers tightened around the clasp.

Jesus looked at her hand, then at her face. “Bring it into the light.”

She swallowed.

Corin expected her to make a sharp answer because fear had touched a tender place. She did not. She climbed the first step, then the next, holding the broken serpent clasp where it could be seen. Corin followed her up toward the office, his own empty pocket feeling heavier than the key had ever felt.

Behind them, the gargoyle settled back into place.

The staircase stopped moving.

And for the first time since dawn, Corin did not feel like he was walking toward exposure.

He felt like he was walking toward the truth that might finally teach him how to live without hiding.

Chapter Seven: The Office Where Excuses Lost Their Seats

McGonagall’s office had never felt like a room built for comfort, but that night it felt less like a place of discipline and more like a chamber where every excuse had been asked to sit down and wait its turn. The round walls were lined with portraits of former headmasters and headmistresses, most of whom were pretending to sleep with the unconvincing stillness of people who desperately wanted to listen. Silver instruments clicked softly on tables. A fire burned low in the grate. The Sorting Hat rested on a high shelf, tilted in shadow, as if even it had decided this was not a night for songs.

Corin entered behind Mara and saw Albie already seated near the desk, his eyes red from crying and his hands folded so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. He looked up when they came in, then quickly looked down again. Professor Flitwick stood near the fire with a stack of sealed notes under one arm. Neville sat beside a low table where the remorse vine had been placed in a wider pot, though its roots were still wrapped in damp cloth from the chamber below the Defense classroom. Jesus stood near the window, looking out over the dark grounds toward the hospital wing, where a single warm square of light still shone.

Mara stopped just inside the office, the broken serpent clasp hidden in her fist. For a second, Corin thought she might turn around. The office carried too many watching faces, too many carved frames, too much history sitting in judgment above them. Then Jesus turned from the window and looked at her, and the room seemed to become less crowded without becoming less serious.

“Bring it here,” He said.

Mara crossed the room with measured steps and placed the clasp on McGonagall’s desk. It looked smaller there than it had in her palm. A broken silver serpent’s head, slightly tarnished, with one green stone missing from an eye. It did not hiss. It did not glow. It did not do anything dramatic enough to justify the fear Corin felt when he saw it. That was the unsettling part. Some objects became powerful not because of the magic in them, but because of the story a person had allowed them to carry.

McGonagall looked at it over the rims of her spectacles. “Explain.”

Mara’s shoulders rose with a careful breath. “It fastened the case where I kept the pins.”

“Was the case brought to school?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“In my trunk.”

McGonagall’s face hardened. “Then your trunk will be searched tonight.”

Mara nodded once. “I know.”

“Is there anything else in it that can harm another student?”

Mara opened her mouth too quickly, then stopped. The pause told more truth than the answer she had nearly given. Corin saw Jesus watching her, not with suspicion but with the steady patience of someone who knew a lie could be interrupted before it became another wall.

“I do not think so,” Mara said.

McGonagall’s eyes sharpened.

Mara swallowed. “That is not good enough. There are letters from my cousin. Some of them include defensive spells I did not try. Some include ugly ideas I liked reading when I was angry. I do not know if the paper itself is cursed. I never checked because I did not want to know.”

Flitwick’s expression grew grave. “Then we will check.”

Mara looked at the clasp. “I kept this because it felt like proof that I was not weak.”

Jesus stepped closer to the desk. “What is true?”

Mara’s jaw tightened. Corin had begun to recognize the question as a kind of blade that did not cut skin but opened the locked part beneath it. She stared at the little serpent head as if it had insulted her by becoming so small.

“What is true is that I liked having something hidden,” she said. “It made me feel prepared. It made me feel less like a child waiting for someone else to decide what my name meant.”

Jesus waited.

“What is false,” Mara continued, her voice quieter, “is that secret harm can protect me from shame.”

The serpent clasp cracked.

It was not loud. It gave a small silver snap, then split across the remaining green eye. A thin thread of dark smoke rose from it, twisted once, and vanished before it reached the ceiling. The portraits stirred. One elderly wizard in a purple hat opened one eye, saw Jesus standing near the desk, and immediately closed it again.

Neville glanced at the remorse vine. Its leaves had opened toward Mara.

McGonagall lifted the broken clasp with her wand and sealed it in a clear box. “This will be examined. Miss Flint, you will not return to your dormitory unaccompanied tonight. Professor Sinistra and Madam Pomfrey will inspect your trunk with you present. You will surrender any object or letter connected to these matters. If you conceal anything further, the consequences will become far more serious.”

“I understand,” Mara said.

McGonagall studied her. “Do you?”

Mara looked up then. Her face was tired, but no longer empty. “Not fully. But more than I did this morning.”

The answer seemed to satisfy McGonagall more than a confident yes would have. She nodded and turned to Corin.

He felt the whole office shift toward him. The portraits above seemed to lean in. Albie stared at the floor with the relief of a boy temporarily outside the center of attention. Corin stepped forward before he could be told, because waiting to be summoned felt too much like clinging to the last shred of a dignity he had already damaged.

McGonagall placed a clean sheet of parchment before him. “You will write down every meeting with Professor Harrow, every location, every student discussed, every name you remember reading, and every task he gave you.”

Corin looked at the blank page. “Now?”

“Yes.”

The answer was simple and merciless in the proper way. Not cruel. Not rushed. Only unwilling to let confession remain a feeling. Truth had to become specific, or it would dissolve into regret and leave the same habits intact.

Corin sat at the small writing table beside McGonagall’s desk. A quill moved toward his hand by itself, then stopped as if waiting for permission. He picked it up. For a moment he could not write. His mind filled with names, places, fragments, the smell of Harrow’s tea, the quiet authority in the professor’s voice, and the warm pride Corin had felt when he was first trusted with the key. Shame wanted to blur the memories into one large dark shape. The parchment demanded lines.

Jesus came to stand near him. “Begin where you first said yes.”

Corin’s hand tightened around the quill. He wrote: Trophy room, two weeks before Harrow left. He said the school needed watchers.

Once the first sentence appeared, the next came with less resistance. Corin wrote about the first meeting, how Harrow had not given him the key at once, how he had spoken instead about history, danger, and students who had been missed until it was too late. He wrote about the second meeting near the old owlery stairs, where Harrow had asked whether Mara Flint seemed cruel from vanity or training. He wrote the phrase and felt his stomach turn. He wrote about Tobin by the owlery, about Albie’s mother at the Ministry being mentioned as someone who understood early signs, about the cabinet, the key, the ledger, the supplemental notes, the names he remembered clearly and those he feared he had read without caring enough to remember.

The office stayed quiet except for the scratching of the quill. Mara sat near the fire, watching the flames rather than him. Albie remained hunched in his chair. McGonagall read each page as Corin finished it, her face growing more severe but never surprised enough to let him hide behind her shock. Flitwick occasionally asked one precise question. Neville kept the remorse vine close, and its leaves shifted every time Corin tried to soften a sentence.

At one point, Corin wrote that Harrow had encouraged him to observe Mara because she had influence over younger Slytherins.

The vine curled.

Corin stopped, breathing hard.

Jesus spoke quietly. “Tell it plainly.”

Corin crossed out the line and wrote beneath it: Harrow told me Mara could become useful if fear isolated her first. I did not report him because I wanted to know what he meant.

Mara turned from the fire.

Her face was pale. “Useful?”

Corin set the quill down. “Yes.”

She looked at Jesus, then back at Corin. “He wanted me isolated?”

“I think so.”

“No.” Her voice sharpened. “Do not say think so if you know.”

Corin forced himself to hold her gaze. “He did.”

The room took the words in. Mara looked as if she had expected betrayal from enemies but not strategy from a teacher who had barely seemed to notice her. She stood, then sat again, as if her body could not decide whether to fight or fold.

“I thought I made everyone step back,” she said.

“You helped,” Corin said, then immediately regretted the bluntness.

Mara gave him a hard look, but there was no denial in it. “Yes. I did.”

Jesus looked at both of them. “A trap can use a person’s own steps.”

Mara returned to the chair by the fire, but she did not turn away this time. She watched as Corin wrote the rest. That made it harder and better. He could no longer write as though the names belonged to records. They belonged to breathing people, some of whom were in the room and some of whom were trying to sleep elsewhere in the castle under the weight of things adults and students had said about them.

Albie was next.

McGonagall did not allow him to give a speech. She placed parchment before him and said, “Begin with the note.”

Albie looked smaller than ever as he took the quill. “I already said it.”

“You said enough to begin. Now you will say enough to repair.”

His lip trembled, but he wrote. He wrote slowly and badly, blotting the first line with too much ink. He wrote about finding the old slip with Tobin’s name. He wrote about his mother’s warnings, his fear of being the one who failed to act, and the satisfaction he had felt when he believed he had done something responsible. When he reached the sentence where he had recommended isolation, he stopped.

The remorse vine curled inward.

Albie closed his eyes. “I cannot.”

Jesus sat across from him. “You can.”

“It looks worse written down.”

“It was worse done in secret.”

Albie’s eyes filled again. “I hate this.”

“I know.”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes,” Jesus said. “But it does not excuse you from finishing.”

Albie bent over the parchment and wrote the sentence. His hand shook so badly that the words slanted downward. When he finished, the vine uncurled halfway. He pushed the parchment toward McGonagall as if it burned.

McGonagall read it, then placed it beside Corin’s pages. “You will meet with Mr. Marr tomorrow if Madam Pomfrey and Professor Jesus permit it. You will not ask for forgiveness. You will answer questions. You will bring his assignments as he requested. You will also write to your mother tonight under my supervision, making clear that no details about another student are to be discussed outside proper channels.”

Albie looked horrified. “My mother will be furious.”

“Yes.”

“She will say I am making myself look guilty.”

McGonagall’s gaze sharpened. “You are guilty of what you did. You are not guilty of what panic may invent around it. Learn the difference now.”

Albie nodded, though he clearly did not like the lesson.

The fire shifted, and one of the portraits cleared his throat. It was Phineas Nigellus Black, who had stopped pretending to sleep and now watched with thin impatience.

“If I may observe,” he said, “this amount of moral excavation among children after supper seems excessive. In my day, we punished wrongdoing swiftly, sent everyone to bed, and allowed shame to do its work.”

Mara looked up. “That explains a lot about your day.”

Phineas blinked, offended. Several portraits stirred with poorly hidden amusement. McGonagall’s mouth tightened, but not enough to hide the flicker of approval.

Jesus turned toward the portrait. “What work did shame do?”

Phineas lifted his chin. “It kept students in line.”

“For how long?”

The portrait narrowed his eyes. “Long enough.”

Jesus looked at him with such calm that the old headmaster seemed suddenly less confident in his frame. “No. Shame keeps people hidden. Hidden things do not become holy because they are quiet.”

The office went still.

Phineas looked away first. “Modern softness.”

McGonagall’s voice cut cleanly across the room. “Be silent, Phineas.”

The portrait sniffed but obeyed.

Corin stared at the parchment before him and thought about shame doing its work. Shame had worked in him. It had made him hungry for approval. It had made him stand near Harrow and call it courage. It had made him read names because reading them felt better than fearing his own might be read. If that was work, it was the work of a bad master.

Jesus looked toward the window. “Harrow will not return tonight.”

McGonagall’s eyes sharpened. “You are certain?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“He is near enough to hear that the ledger broke and far enough to believe distance is protection.”

Flitwick stepped closer. “Should we notify the Ministry now?”

McGonagall’s face showed she had already asked herself the question and disliked every answer. “Yes, but carefully. I will not allow this to become a Ministry spectacle before we understand which officials may have known about related records.” She glanced at Albie, whose mother worked there, then softened the look slightly because he flinched. “That does not mean your mother knew, Mr. Rathbone. It means we will not be careless.”

Albie nodded miserably.

Mara looked at Jesus. “Will Harrow try to come back?”

Jesus did not answer quickly. “He will try to make the school afraid enough to invite his way of thinking back in.”

Corin felt the truth of that more than he wanted to. Harrow did not need to walk through the doors if students, teachers, parents, and officials began repeating his belief without him. The Howler had already done part of the work. Tobin’s aunt had spoken the old lie in a new voice. Some children are born wrong. The ledger was broken, but the sentence still knew how to travel.

McGonagall sat behind her desk at last. She looked tired now, but not weakened. “Then tomorrow morning we address the school.”

Mara frowned. “All of it?”

“Yes.”

“That could go badly.”

“It may.”

“Parents will send letters.”

“They already are.”

“People will say you are protecting dangerous students.”

“They already have.”

Mara seemed to consider this. “You are very calm about being hated.”

McGonagall looked over her spectacles. “I have had practice.”

For the first time that night, Albie made a sound that was almost a laugh. It vanished quickly when McGonagall looked at him, though not harshly. Even Mara’s mouth moved with a faint hint of respect. Corin realized that courage did not always look like a wand raised in battle. Sometimes it looked like an old woman behind a desk, choosing to receive angry letters rather than hand a wounded student back to a voice that called him wrong.

Jesus turned to Corin. “There is one more truth you have not written.”

Corin looked down at the pages. “I wrote everything I remember.”

“No.”

The office quieted again.

Corin felt defensiveness rise, then recognized it and let it pass without obeying it. “What did I leave out?”

Jesus’ gaze held him. “Why you kept going after you began to feel the wrongness.”

The question found the one place he had written around rather than through. He had described events. Meetings. Names. Tasks. He had admitted pride, fear, and hunger for trust. But there had been a moment, perhaps more than one, when he had known the work was wrong and continued anyway. That was harder to confess than being fooled. Being fooled left room for pity. Continuing after the warning belonged to him alone.

He picked up the quill again, then stopped. “I do not want to write this.”

Jesus said, “I know.”

Corin almost asked if he had to, but the answer was already in the room. He bent over the parchment and wrote slowly: After reading Mara’s name, I knew the ledger was not only protecting anyone. It was making me enjoy knowing what she did not know. I kept going because stopping would mean admitting I had already become part of something ugly.

His hand stopped. The sentence looked unbearable on the page.

The remorse vine opened fully.

Mara did not speak. That was mercy, though Corin doubted she meant it that way. McGonagall read the line and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, her expression held both disappointment and something like hope, which was almost harder to bear.

“That,” she said, “is the first line tonight that sounds like it may help save you from doing it again.”

Corin swallowed. “It feels like the worst one.”

“It often does.”

Jesus looked at the parchment. “Truth has entered the place where shame was hiding.”

Corin leaned back in the chair, exhausted. The office no longer felt like it was pressing him flat. It felt as if the air had room in it, though nothing had become easy. He still had consequences ahead. He still had names to remember. He still had people to face. But the lie that exposure would kill him had lost some of its strength. He was still there. Guilty, ashamed, seen, and still there.

A knock came at the office door.

Everyone turned. McGonagall lifted her wand. “Enter.”

The door opened, and Madam Pomfrey stepped inside. Her face was serious, but not alarmed. “Tobin is awake again.”

Albie went pale.

Pomfrey’s eyes moved to Jesus. “He asked for You. Then he asked whether the Howler was real.”

Mara’s hands tightened on the arms of her chair. “I thought he did not hear it.”

“He did not,” Pomfrey said. “But the hospital wing has ears even when patients are asleep. A portrait near the corridor mentioned it before I could silence him.”

McGonagall looked furious. “Which portrait?”

“A shepherdess with poor judgment.”

Phineas muttered from his frame, “Portraits are always blamed.”

McGonagall did not turn. “Because portraits are often blameworthy.”

Pomfrey continued. “Tobin is frightened. Not out of control. But frightened. He wants to know if he is being sent home.”

Jesus moved toward the door. “I will go.”

Mara stood too. “Can I come?”

Pomfrey looked doubtful. “He needs quiet.”

Mara’s face flushed. “I know. I would not talk unless he wanted me to.”

Corin rose as well, though he was less certain. “I should not come unless he asks.”

Jesus looked at him. “That is right.”

Albie remained frozen in his chair. “I definitely should not go.”

“No,” Jesus said. “Not tonight.”

Albie looked relieved and ashamed.

McGonagall stood. “I will come as Headmistress.”

Pomfrey nodded. “He needs to hear from you directly.”

Mara looked at Jesus, waiting. He nodded once. She followed Him and McGonagall toward the door. Before leaving, she looked back at Corin. There was no warmth exactly, but there was something like recognition.

“Do not make your confession neater while I am gone,” she said.

Corin looked at the pages. “I do not think that is possible.”

“Good.”

She left with them.

The office became quieter after the door closed. Flitwick remained by the fire. Neville adjusted the remorse vine. Albie sat in his chair, looking as if he wished the upholstery would swallow him. Corin stayed at the writing table, the quill still in his hand, surrounded by pages that made him feel emptied out.

For several minutes, no one spoke.

Then Albie said, “Do you think Tobin will ever stop hating me?”

Corin looked at him. “I do not know.”

Albie rubbed his sleeve across his face. “That is not helpful.”

“It is true.”

“I preferred when people lied more kindly.”

Corin leaned back. “So did I.”

Neville looked up from the plant. “Being hated for harm you caused is not the same as being condemned forever.”

Albie frowned. “It feels the same.”

“Yes,” Neville said. “A lot of things feel the same when you are afraid. That is why feelings need truth nearby.”

Albie stared at the floor. “I do not want to be the kind of person who did this.”

Corin looked at his own pages. “Then I suppose we have to become the kind who tells the truth after doing it.”

“That sounds slow.”

“It probably is.”

Albie sighed, a shaky sound from a boy whose world had become much larger and less flattering in one day. Corin felt a strange tenderness toward him, though he did not mistake it for innocence. Albie had done harm. So had Corin. The tenderness came from recognizing the terror of facing oneself without a hiding place.

Flitwick climbed into the chair behind McGonagall’s desk with some difficulty, not to assume her seat but to review the sealed notes. “Mr. Vale, I will ask you one more thing before the Headmistress returns.”

Corin straightened. “Yes, Professor.”

“When Harrow spoke of mercy, what tone did he use?”

The question seemed odd at first. Then Corin remembered. Harrow had used the word often, but never as Jesus used it. Never as something strong. Never as something holy. Harrow had said mercy the way some people said weakness while pretending to be polite.

“He made it sound childish,” Corin said. “Like something people believed in because they had never had to make hard choices.”

Flitwick nodded grimly. “That is important.”

“Why?”

“Because tomorrow, others will say the same thing. Perhaps not in those words. But they will say this school has grown soft. They will say the Headmistress is risking children for sentiment. They will say Professor Jesus does not understand magical danger because He will not use fear’s methods.” Flitwick’s small face grew deeply serious. “You must recognize the sound when it comes.”

Corin felt the warning settle over him. “So I do not agree with it again.”

“Yes.”

Albie looked up. “What if it sounds reasonable?”

“It often will,” Flitwick said. “Unreasonable fear is easier to reject. Reasonable fear is where discernment is tested.”

The fire popped softly.

Corin thought of Jesus saying danger must be named truthfully. He thought of Tobin’s wand, Mara’s pins, and Ivo’s medallion. Mercy had not pretended those things were harmless. It had simply refused to let harm become the whole name of the person. That line was harder to hold than either panic or denial. Perhaps that was why so few people held it long.

The office door opened again after what felt like an hour, though it could only have been minutes. Jesus entered first, followed by McGonagall and Mara. Madam Pomfrey remained outside, likely returning to the hospital wing. Mara’s face looked shaken, but not broken. McGonagall’s expression was stern with fresh resolve.

“Tobin is not being sent home,” McGonagall said before anyone asked. “His aunt will be informed that he remains under school protection pending review. She may object through proper channels.”

Albie looked down. “Was he angry?”

Mara answered. “He was scared first.”

Albie swallowed. “And then?”

“Then angry.”

He nodded miserably. “Good.”

Mara gave him a strange look. “That is not usually what people say.”

“It is better than him being scared because of me.”

No one corrected him.

Jesus returned to the window. Outside, the grounds were dark except for scattered lights along the paths. The office fire reflected faintly in the glass, placing all of them in the window’s surface like a second room. Corin saw himself there, seated at the writing table with ink on his fingers. Mara stood near the door, arms crossed but not sealed away. Albie sat small in the chair. McGonagall stood behind her desk with a stack of hard truths before her. Neville and Flitwick waited with the patience of teachers who understood that the day had become a lesson no curriculum could contain.

McGonagall gathered Corin’s pages and Albie’s. “Tonight, you will both return to your common rooms under escort. You will speak of these matters only as instructed. Tomorrow will be difficult.”

Mara gave a dry breath. “That is a gentle prediction.”

“It was not meant to be gentle,” McGonagall said.

Corin stood slowly. He expected dismissal to feel like release, but it did not. It felt like being sent back into a school where everything ordinary had become morally dangerous. A whisper could harm. A silence could protect the wrong thing. A question could become gossip or truth depending on why it was asked and where it was carried.

Jesus looked at each of them. “Before you sleep, ask what name fear wanted to give you today.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she listened.

“Then ask what name God has not surrendered.”

Corin felt the words settle somewhere deeper than exhaustion. Fear had wanted to call him useful, guilty, exposed, untrustworthy, and beyond repair. Some of those words touched truth. None of them could be his whole name unless he bowed to them. He did not yet know what name God had not surrendered over him, but for the first time in a long while, he wanted to learn.

McGonagall opened the door. Professor Sinistra waited outside to escort Mara. A prefect waited for Albie. Flitwick offered to walk Corin to Ravenclaw Tower himself, which made Corin feel both protected and deeply embarrassed. Neville lifted the remorse vine carefully, preparing to take it back toward the Defense wing for the night.

Mara paused in the doorway and looked back at the desk where the broken serpent clasp sat sealed in a clear box. Her face tightened, then eased.

“Leave it there,” Jesus said.

“I was planning to.”

“I know.”

She looked at Him. “That is still unsettling.”

“Yes,” He said.

She almost smiled, then left with Professor Sinistra.

Corin followed Flitwick into the corridor. The castle had grown quieter now. Supper had ended, and students were being guided firmly toward their common rooms. Portraits whispered behind their frames but stopped when teachers passed. The torches burned steady along the stone walls, and the damp chill of the evening had settled into the floor.

As they walked, Flitwick did not fill the silence. Corin was grateful. He had been spoken to enough for one day. Yet near the turn toward the Ravenclaw stairs, the small professor stopped and looked up at him.

“Mr. Vale.”

“Yes, Professor?”

“There will be students who do not know what to do with your honesty tomorrow. Some may punish you with contempt. Some may try to use your guilt to feel clean. Some may offer quick forgiveness because discomfort tires them. Do not build your next self from any of their reactions.”

Corin absorbed that slowly. “Then from what?”

Flitwick’s eyes softened. “From the truth, repentance, and the mercy that keeps calling you farther than shame can carry you.”

The words were almost too large for the corridor, but somehow they fit because Flitwick said them plainly. Corin nodded, not trusting himself to answer.

When he reached the entrance to Ravenclaw Tower, the bronze eagle knocker gleamed in the torchlight. It asked its riddle in a calm voice, as if the world had not nearly cracked open beneath a classroom that afternoon.

“What can be opened only by being surrendered?”

Corin stared at it.

Earlier that morning, he might have tried cleverness. A secret. A lock. A sealed charm. Now the answer rose from the day itself, unwanted and true.

“A hiding place,” he said.

The door opened.

Inside, the common room grew quiet as he entered. Students looked up from chairs, books, and unfinished conversations. Elowen stood near the window with two others beside her. No one spoke at first. Corin stepped into the room with Flitwick behind him, and he knew this was only the beginning of another kind of consequence.

Professor Flitwick addressed the room in his high, steady voice. “Mr. Vale is under school supervision regarding a serious matter. He is not to be harassed, cornered, threatened, or questioned tonight. If you have concerns, you may bring them to me or the Headmistress in the morning. You may feel many things. You may not turn those feelings into cruelty.”

The room remained silent.

Flitwick looked once at Corin, then left.

The door closed behind him.

Corin stood alone before his housemates. Some looked angry. Some looked confused. Some looked almost afraid of him. He did not blame them. For a moment, the old desire returned. Explain. Win them back. Make the room understand before it decides. He took one breath and let the desire pass without obeying it.

Elowen crossed the room first.

She stopped several feet away. “Are you all right?”

The question surprised him so much that he almost answered badly.

“No,” he said.

She nodded. “Good. I mean, not good. But good that you know.”

A few students shifted awkwardly. Someone near the fire muttered something Corin did not catch. Elowen turned her head sharply, and the muttering stopped. She did not smile at Corin. She did not forgive him in front of everyone or make a speech. She only pointed toward an empty chair near the window.

“Sit there if you want,” she said. “No one is using it.”

Corin looked at the chair, then at the faces around the room. It was not welcome exactly. It was not rejection either. It was a place to sit while truth did its slow work. After the day he had lived, that felt like more mercy than he deserved and exactly the kind he needed.

He crossed the room and sat by the window.

Outside, Hogwarts lay under the clean night after rain. Far across the grounds, one light still burned near the hospital wing. Corin looked at it for a long time, thinking of Tobin awake under protection, Mara walking toward the search of her trunk, Albie preparing a letter to his mother, McGonagall gathering courage for the morning, and Jesus somewhere in the castle, refusing to let fear name children as harm.

For the first time, Corin wondered whether defense against the dark arts had never really begun with spells.

Maybe it began when a person stopped agreeing with darkness about himself.

Maybe it began there, and then had to be chosen again in every room afterward.

Chapter Eight: The Morning the School Had to Answer

Morning came to Hogwarts with a thin white mist pressed against the windows and a silence that did not belong to any ordinary school day. Corin woke before the bell, though he had barely slept. The Ravenclaw dormitory was dim and blue with early light, and the curtains around several beds were still drawn tight. Someone had left a book open on the floor near his trunk. Someone else had kicked off one shoe beside the hearth and never found the strength to put it away. The room looked normal in every small detail, but Corin could feel the difference beneath it, as if the castle itself had spent the night holding its breath.

He sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed both hands over his face. For a moment, before memory returned fully, he almost believed the day before had been a dream made from guilt and too many old Defense stories. Then he saw the ink stain on his right thumb from McGonagall’s office. It had dried into the skin near the nail, dark and stubborn. He tried to wipe it with his sleeve and stopped. The mark felt less like dirt than a reminder. Some things did not disappear because a person wished to look clean by breakfast.

Across the dormitory, Callum Vane was awake and pretending not to be. Corin could see the narrow line of his eye through the gap in his bed curtains. Callum had not spoken to him the night before. Most of the dormitory had not. They had moved around him carefully, as if guilt might spread by touch. Corin had lain awake listening to their breathing, their whispers, and the occasional creak of a mattress when someone turned over too sharply. He had wanted to explain himself to every shadow in the room. He had not.

The bronze eagle had asked him what could be opened only by being surrendered. A hiding place. He had answered correctly. Living the answer was harder than speaking it to a door.

He dressed slowly. When he reached for his robe, his fingers brushed the pocket where the key had been. Empty. The absence still startled him. He wondered how long his hand would keep checking for a thing he had surrendered. Perhaps habits had their own ghosts. Perhaps repentance was not only turning away once, but teaching the body that it no longer needed to reach for what had once made fear feel useful.

When he came down into the common room, several students were already gathered near the windows. Elowen Pike sat in one of the blue chairs with a book open on her lap, though she was not reading. The fire had burned low overnight, leaving red coals under gray ash. Outside the arched windows, the mountains were hidden behind mist, and the lake was a dark sheet below the castle. A few owls moved through the pale air toward the towers, carrying the first wave of morning letters.

That was what everyone was watching.

The owls.

Corin stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

Elowen looked up. “There are more than usual.”

He followed her gaze. From the window, he could see them cutting through the mist in twos and threes, then in larger groups. Brown owls, gray owls, snowy owls, barn owls, and several official Ministry birds with brass message tubes strapped to their legs. They flew toward the Great Hall, toward staff windows, toward common room towers, toward the hospital wing. The Howler from Tobin’s aunt had not remained a private ugliness. The story had moved beyond the walls during the night.

A younger Ravenclaw boy near the window whispered, “My mum will write. She writes when the pudding menu changes.”

No one laughed.

Corin looked toward Elowen. “Do we go to breakfast?”

“There is an assembly first.” She closed her book. “A prefect came through ten minutes ago. Everyone is to report to the Great Hall before eating.”

“Everyone?”

“Yes.”

His stomach tightened. “That sounds cheerful.”

Elowen stood. “It sounds necessary.”

He looked at her, surprised by the steadiness in her voice. She had not forgiven him. He knew that. Yet she had not turned away either. There was a difference between mercy and immediate closeness. He was beginning to learn that people could stand near a hard truth without pretending it had stopped hurting.

Callum came down the stairs behind him and paused. For a second, Corin thought he might speak. Instead Callum adjusted his tie with unnecessary focus and walked past him toward the door. The common room began to empty in small groups. Corin waited until most had gone, then followed with Elowen a few steps ahead of him.

The corridors outside were full of students moving quietly under the direction of prefects and teachers. Hogwarts mornings usually carried a jumble of sounds, footsteps, laughter, complaints about homework, someone late for breakfast, someone trying to finish an essay against a wall. This morning, the noise had been pressed down. Portraits watched without pretending not to. A painted monk near the third-floor landing crossed himself when Jesus passed below, though Corin only saw the movement from a distance before Jesus disappeared around a corner with McGonagall.

Mara stood near the base of the marble staircase with Professor Sinistra beside her. Her face was pale from lack of sleep, but her robe was neat, and her chin held its old angle. Corin saw the difference anyway. There was no hidden case now. No serpent clasp. No sharp little secret in her posture. She looked exposed and angry about it, but she was still there.

Their eyes met for one moment.

She did not nod. Neither did he. Somehow that seemed right.

Albie Rathbone stood with a prefect near the entrance to the Great Hall, clutching a sealed envelope. His eyes were swollen, and his hair had not been combed well. He looked like a child who had been made to write the truth and then sleep under the weight of it. When he saw Corin, his expression tightened with something like apology, though not aimed at Corin exactly. It seemed aimed at the world in general and nowhere useful.

The Great Hall had been rearranged.

The house tables remained, but the staff table had been moved forward, closer to the students. A small clear space had been opened at the center, not a stage, not exactly, but a place where a person could stand and be seen without towering. The enchanted ceiling showed the same gray mist that pressed against the real windows, but here and there a pale gold morning light began to gather behind the clouds. Owls perched high in the beams with letters still tied to their legs, as if they had been held back from delivery. Hundreds of students filed in quietly and took their seats.

Corin sat at Ravenclaw and looked toward the hospital wing doors.

Tobin was not there.

Relief came first. Then shame for feeling it. He told himself it was better that Tobin did not have to face the hall yet, and that was true. But another part of him was relieved because Tobin’s presence would have made the harm harder to set aside even for a breath. Corin did not want to become the kind of person who preferred wounds at a distance. He had already seen where that road led.

McGonagall entered from the side door with Jesus beside her. Neville followed, carrying a smaller cutting from the remorse vine in a simple clay pot. The larger plant, Corin guessed, remained rooted in the chamber below the classroom. Flitwick came after them, then Madam Pomfrey, Sprout, Sinistra, and several other professors. No one sat. McGonagall moved to the center of the open space, and Jesus stood a few feet behind her, not taking the room from her but strengthening it by His presence.

The hall quieted completely.

McGonagall looked across the four tables. “Before breakfast, this school will hear what it must hear. You will not hear every detail. Some details belong to private repair, formal investigation, and the protection of students who have already been exposed to too much public judgment. But enough will be said that rumor need not fill the empty space with poison.”

Corin felt the sentence move through the room. Several students lowered their eyes.

She continued. “Yesterday, an old system of secret suspicion connected to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom was uncovered. It involved records kept across years, some old and some recent. Those records reduced students to risks, patterns, family histories, fears, and possible future harm. Some were based on real concern. Some were based on prejudice. Some were based on incomplete truth. Some were based on the kind of fear that calls itself wisdom because it has not yet repented.”

Her voice did not shake, but Corin could hear what the words cost her. A Headmistress had to speak not only as someone who had discovered a problem, but as someone who stood inside the institution that had allowed the problem to survive. He watched students absorb that. Some leaned forward. Some looked angry. Some looked confused because adults admitting institutional sin was not a subject covered on exams.

McGonagall’s gaze passed over the tables. “The ledger connected to this system has been broken. A hidden room has been opened. Further materials have been secured. Professor Harrow’s conduct is under investigation, and he is not permitted on school grounds. If he attempts contact with any student, you will report it immediately to a professor. You will not answer. You will not hide it. You will not decide that secrecy makes you brave.”

At that, Corin felt several eyes move toward him. He kept his head lifted, though heat rose in his face.

McGonagall went on. “One more thing must be said clearly. A student who acts from fear may still cause harm. A student who causes harm may require consequence, restraint, and serious correction. This school will not pretend otherwise. But we will not call any child wrong in their being. We will not decide that family history is destiny. We will not treat wounded students as dangers to be stored away so the rest of us may feel clean.”

Mara sat very still at the Slytherin table.

Albie’s head bowed.

A hand rose from Gryffindor. It belonged to the same seventh-year who had challenged Mara at supper. McGonagall looked at him. “Mr. Ellison.”

He stood awkwardly. “What if parents say you are not keeping us safe?”

“They have already begun saying it.”

A ripple moved through the hall.

McGonagall remained steady. “Safety built on secrecy and scapegoating is not safety. It is fear with polished shoes. We will handle danger more truthfully, not less. Wands raised in threat will be addressed. Harmful objects will be removed. Students in crisis will be cared for and supervised. Reports of danger will be taken seriously through proper channels. But no student is to create private records, spread suspicion, or appoint themselves a watcher over another child.”

Corin felt the words enter him like a seal placed over yesterday’s wound. He had needed them to be public. Not to humiliate him, though humiliation came with them. He needed the truth that had corrected him to stand above the school as more than a private rebuke. No more hidden watchers. No more secret keys.

Mr. Ellison sat down slowly.

A younger Slytherin girl raised her hand. “What happens to the names already written?”

McGonagall’s expression softened slightly. “They will not be read publicly. They will be reviewed by a small group under strict care. Where a student needs to know, they will be told in a way that does not make their pain a spectacle. Where harm was done by those records, repair will be pursued. Where real concerns exist, they will be handled without turning concern into condemnation.”

The girl nodded, though she looked frightened.

Then a voice came from Hufflepuff. “How do we know which is which?”

McGonagall turned toward the question, but Jesus stepped forward before she answered. She allowed it, moving aside just enough.

Jesus stood in the center of the Great Hall without a wand, without notes, without any effort to make His presence larger than it was. It became larger anyway. The hall did not simply quiet. It seemed to listen with its stones.

“You are asking how to know the difference between concern and condemnation,” He said.

The Hufflepuff boy nodded, looking embarrassed that his question had reached Jesus directly.

Jesus looked at him with kindness. “Concern moves toward the person with truth and care. Condemnation moves away and carries the story to others. Concern seeks help from those responsible for protection. Condemnation seeks agreement from those who will share fear. Concern can say no, stop, and that is dangerous. Condemnation says you are danger, and that is all you are.”

No one spoke.

Jesus continued. “You will not always know at once. That is why humility is part of defense.”

Corin felt that line settle over the room. Humility had never been named in Defense class the way shield charms had. Yet after yesterday, he could not imagine any defense more necessary. Pride had opened him to Harrow. Shame had made him hide. Fear had made him useful. Without humility, every spell could become another way to avoid truth.

Jesus looked toward the staff table, where the held-back owls shifted in the beams. “Many letters have come this morning. Some are from frightened parents. Some are from angry parents. Some speak love. Some speak suspicion. Some ask good questions. Some repeat the old lie. This school will answer them truthfully. But you must understand this. A voice from outside can awaken a fear inside. When that happens, do not hand your conscience to the loudest voice.”

Mara’s eyes moved toward the hospital wing doors. Corin knew she was thinking of the Howler. Perhaps everyone was.

Jesus went on. “There is a Scripture that says perfect love casts out fear. It does not say love pretends danger is not real. It says fear has torment. When fear rules, it punishes before truth is known. It imagines protection without love. It makes prisons and calls them peace. The love of God does not make you careless. It makes you free enough to see clearly.”

The words did not sound like a sermon. They sounded like a key being placed into a lock the school had mistaken for part of the wall. Corin saw faces change around the room. Some softened. Some resisted. Some looked wounded because the words had touched too close to their own homes. At the Ravenclaw table, Elowen stared at Jesus with the expression of someone discovering that clarity could be more uncomfortable than confusion.

McGonagall stepped forward again. “For today, regular classes remain suspended until after lunch. Each house will meet with its Head of House. Students directly involved in yesterday’s events will meet privately with staff. Any student who receives concerning communication from home, from former staff, from Ministry contacts, or from any unknown sender must bring it to a professor immediately.”

At that exact moment, one of the official Ministry owls gave an impatient screech from the rafters.

Several students jumped.

McGonagall looked up. “Yes, yes, you have made your point.”

A faint nervous laugh moved through the hall, and for the first time that morning, the room remembered it was full of children. McGonagall lifted her wand. The waiting owls descended in controlled groups, delivering letters under the watch of teachers stationed near each table. Students opened envelopes carefully. Several red Howlers were intercepted before they could burst open and were placed into a sealed silver basin by Flitwick, who looked personally offended by each one.

Corin received no letter. That did not surprise him. His mother often waited before writing when she was afraid, because she believed words sent too quickly could become injuries. He found himself grateful and worried at the same time.

Mara received three letters.

She stared at them without opening any.

Professor Sinistra appeared beside her and spoke quietly. Mara shook her head once, then nodded, then handed over the darkest envelope. Sinistra inspected it with her wand and sealed it without reading the contents aloud. Mara kept the other two on the table, her hands resting on either side as if they might move by themselves.

At the Hufflepuff table, a boy opened a letter and began crying almost immediately. His friend put an arm around his shoulders. At Gryffindor, someone swore under his breath and was corrected by a prefect. At Ravenclaw, Elowen received a neat blue envelope, read it twice, and folded it with shaking hands.

Corin looked at her. “Bad?”

She slid the letter toward him, then pulled it back before he could read it. “Sorry. Habit.”

“You do not have to show me.”

“I know.” She stared at the folded paper. “My father says this is what happens when schools become afraid to call dangerous people dangerous.”

Corin said nothing.

“He does not know anything,” she said, then frowned. “No, that is not true. He knows some things. He fought in the war. He lost people. He is not stupid.”

“Fear is smarter when it has grief behind it,” Corin said.

Elowen looked at him. “Did you just say something wise?”

“I think I repeated it badly from yesterday.”

“That is more likely.”

A small pause passed between them, not warm enough to be friendship, but honest enough to hold.

She folded the letter again. “I hate that I understand why he wrote it.”

Corin looked across the hall at Jesus, who was speaking quietly with a young student whose envelope had begun smoking. “Maybe understanding fear is not the same as obeying it.”

Elowen did not answer right away. “That also sounds borrowed.”

“It probably is.”

Breakfast began late. Food appeared on the tables, but students ate in distracted silence or quiet conversation. Teachers moved constantly through the hall, checking letters, calming students, answering questions they could answer and refusing those they should not. The Great Hall had become less like a dining room and more like a place where a community was learning how many voices had been speaking into it all along.

Mara finally opened one of her letters.

Corin saw it from across the hall. She read the first line, and her face went blank. Not hard. Blank. She folded it immediately and placed it under her plate. Then she opened the second. That one she read all the way through. Her hands shook once near the end, and she pressed them flat on the table until they stopped.

A Slytherin boy beside her leaned closer, probably asking if she was all right. Mara looked at him as if the question came from a country she had never visited. Then she nodded once. He seemed startled by the answer and returned to his breakfast with exaggerated focus.

At the staff table, McGonagall received a thick packet tied with purple Ministry cord. She opened it, read the first page, and passed it to Jesus. He read silently, then handed it back. Whatever was in it did not change His expression, but McGonagall’s eyes sharpened in a way that made Corin’s stomach tighten.

A moment later, a silver paper bird flew in through the closed doors.

It passed through the wood as if the doors were mist.

Every teacher reacted at once. Wands rose around the hall. The bird fluttered over the center space, folded and unfolded itself, then hung in the air before Jesus. Its wings were made from a page torn out of a Defense lesson plan.

Corin stood before he knew he was standing.

Mara stood too.

The paper bird opened.

Harrow’s voice came from it, smooth and tired, as if he were disappointed rather than afraid. “Headmistress, I had hoped the school might handle yesterday’s developments with more discretion. Since discretion has apparently become unfashionable, I will speak plainly. You are placing students in danger by letting sentiment override pattern recognition. The Nazarene’s methods produce confession, yes, but confession is not containment. The unstable are now emboldened. The guilty are now performing remorse. The fearful are being taught to distrust those who would have protected them.”

McGonagall’s face became still.

Harrow’s voice continued. “I did not create the school’s fear. I studied it. I did not make children dangerous. I observed what others were too soft to name. If the ledger broke, it broke because it was mishandled by those who did not understand its purpose. Do not confuse hidden things with evil things. Some truths must be managed out of sight for the good of all.”

Corin felt the old pull of the voice. Not agreement, not fully, but recognition. Harrow still knew how to make fear sound educated. He knew how to place words like pattern, containment, and protection into the air so they stood straighter than cruelty. Around the hall, some students looked repulsed. Others looked uncertain. That uncertainty was the danger.

The bird turned slightly toward the student tables, as if Harrow had known his message would not remain private.

“To the students who can still think clearly,” the voice said, “ask yourselves who benefits when discipline is called shame, when surveillance is called suspicion, when danger is called pain, and when mercy is used to blur every line. Ask yourselves whether you feel safer this morning than you did before the ledger was broken.”

A murmur moved through the hall.

Jesus looked at the paper bird.

Harrow’s voice lowered. “And to Corin Vale, if you are listening, remember that you were chosen because you saw what others refused to see. They will make you confess until you are useful to them instead. Shame is a leash, Mr. Vale. I taught you to stand without one.”

The words struck Corin in front of everyone.

His face burned. The hall turned toward him, not all at once, but enough. He felt the trap opening. Harrow had named him publicly, not to rescue him, but to pull him back into the old hunger. Chosen. Saw what others refused to see. Stand without shame. It was almost the same voice that had handed him the key, now sharpened into a hook.

Jesus did not destroy the bird.

He looked at Corin.

The room waited.

Corin understood then that this was not only an attack from outside. It was a question placed in his hands. Fear was asking for another name. Harrow had given him one. Chosen. Clear-eyed. Strong. Misunderstood by softer minds. It was tempting not because it was true, but because it offered relief from the humiliation of repentance.

Corin stepped out from the Ravenclaw bench.

His legs felt unsteady. He walked into the open space near the center, not all the way to Jesus, but far enough that he was no longer hiding among his housemates. The paper bird tilted toward him.

Harrow’s voice spoke again, softer now. “Do not let them make you small.”

Corin looked at it, and for one breath he heard the old promise. A place on the side of authority. A way to be trusted. A way to stop feeling watched. Then he thought of Tobin in the hospital bed, Mara’s first-year file, Ivo in the mirror, Albie crying over the sentence he had written, and the line on his own parchment in McGonagall’s office. I kept going because stopping would mean admitting I had already become part of something ugly.

He spoke clearly, though his voice shook.

“I was small when I needed secret power to feel important.”

The hall became utterly still.

The bird fluttered.

Corin continued. “I did see some true things. That is why your lie worked. I saw fear. I saw anger. I saw patterns. But I did not see people rightly because I was looking from the place where you taught me to stand.”

Harrow’s voice tried to speak, but the paper only crackled.

Corin looked at Jesus once, then back at the bird. “You did not teach me to stand without shame. You taught me to hide shame behind suspicion.”

The bird’s paper wings curled inward.

Mara stepped into the open space next.

Corin turned, surprised. She did not look at him. She looked at the bird.

“You studied me,” she said. “You wrote that I could be useful if fear isolated me first.”

The bird trembled but did not answer.

Mara’s voice hardened, but it did not become cruel. “You were right that I was angry. You were right that I kept things I should not have kept. You were right that I knew how to hurt people before they came close. But you were wrong that this made me yours to use.”

The paper bird smoked at the edges.

Albie stood from near the staff table. He looked terrified, but he stepped forward too. “You left old notes where students could find them.”

The bird jerked toward him.

Albie swallowed. “I used one. That is mine. But you left it because you wanted someone like me to think fear was responsibility. I am not going to make that sound smarter than it was.”

A small sound moved through the hall. Not applause. Not approval. Something closer to the room breathing after being held too tightly.

Jesus looked at the bird. “Would you like to speak truth now, Harrow?”

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then Harrow’s voice returned, but the smoothness had cracked. “You are making children accuse adults of doing what adults must do.”

Jesus’ eyes did not move. “No. I am letting children name what you did to them.”

The paper bird convulsed. Ink bled through its folded body, forming words that had not been spoken aloud.

Containment requires instruments.

Corin read the line and felt the hall recoil from it. There was the heart of Harrow’s method. Instruments. Not students. Not children. Instruments. He had used Corin as one. Albie as one. Tobin as one. Mara as one. Maybe others still unknown. Fear always needed instruments, because fear could not love people. It could only use them.

McGonagall lifted her wand. “Harrow, if this message remains connected to you, hear me clearly. You are forbidden from contacting students. You are forbidden from entering Hogwarts grounds. You will present yourself for inquiry, or you will be compelled.”

The bird shook, then began laughing in Harrow’s voice. It was not loud, but it was ugly. “You still believe inquiry will save you. Ask the Ministry how many of them prefer my caution to your mercy.”

The purple Ministry packet on McGonagall’s table rustled.

Flitwick’s expression darkened. “Minerva.”

McGonagall did not look away from the bird. “Yes, I noticed.”

Jesus reached out and touched the paper bird with one finger.

It stopped laughing.

The hall seemed to lean toward Him.

“Harrow,” Jesus said, “you call fear protection because you do not want to confess what you have served. You call children instruments because seeing them as children would require repentance. You call mercy soft because mercy would make you release what gives you power.”

The paper bird browned at the edges as if held near flame.

Jesus continued, “You are seen.”

The bird burst into ash.

This time, no smoke remained. The ash fell into the open space between the tables and vanished before touching the floor.

No one spoke for several breaths.

Then McGonagall turned toward the hall. “Breakfast will continue. House meetings will begin immediately afterward. Any student who received direct contact from Professor Harrow, or from anyone speaking in similar terms, must report it. You will not be punished for being contacted. You will be held responsible if you hide it.”

Students sat slowly. Corin remained standing for one moment longer, his heart beating hard. Mara stood beside him, Albie a few feet away. The three of them did not look heroic. Corin knew that. They looked tired, guilty, frightened, and young. Yet the bird was gone, and the hall had heard Harrow’s voice answered not by denial, but by the truth of those he had tried to use.

Jesus looked at them with quiet approval.

Not praise exactly. Something better. He looked at them as if they had taken one step on the road away from fear and He had seen the step fully.

Corin returned to his table.

Elowen watched him sit. For a while she said nothing. Then she pushed the bread toward him.

“You should eat,” she said.

He looked at her.

She shrugged. “Do not make it profound.”

“I was not going to.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“I was.”

She shook her head, but there was less distance in it.

Across the hall, Mara returned to her place. The younger Slytherin girl beside her said something. Mara listened, then slid one of her unopened letters toward Professor Sinistra, who had come to stand near the table. Corin saw that Mara did not open it first. She surrendered it sealed.

Albie sat under McGonagall’s eye and began crying quietly into his sleeve. No one mocked him. That might have been because teachers were everywhere. It might also have been because the Great Hall had begun to understand that public shame was not the same as public truth.

After breakfast, the houses separated. Ravenclaw was led not to the common room but to an unused classroom near the library, where Flitwick stood on a chair at the front and spoke to them about discernment, reporting, gossip, secrecy, and the hard work of being clever without becoming proud. Corin listened from the back. He did not expect the meeting to become about him, but it did in the way all shared failures become about everyone.

Flitwick did not name him. He did not need to.

“Intelligence,” the professor said, “can become a hiding place for fear. Ravenclaws are especially vulnerable to making suspicion sound like analysis. We enjoy patterns. We enjoy hidden connections. We enjoy being the one who understands before others do. These gifts are good when governed by humility. Without humility, they become tools that can harm with very clean hands.”

Corin looked down at his ink-stained thumb.

Elowen, seated two rows ahead, lifted her chin slightly.

A boy near the front raised his hand. “But if we notice something, are we supposed to ignore it?”

“No,” Flitwick said. “You are supposed to bring it to the light without feeding your pride on it. That is harder than ignoring it and harder than spreading it.”

The meeting lasted nearly an hour. Students asked questions, some honest and some defensive. Flitwick answered each with more patience than Corin thought he would have had. By the end, nobody seemed fully satisfied, which made Corin suspect the meeting had told the truth. Lies often satisfied quickly. Truth asked for more time.

When they were dismissed, Corin lingered near the back.

Flitwick saw him. “Mr. Vale?”

Corin stepped closer. “Do you think Harrow expected me to answer the bird?”

“Yes.”

“He thought I would agree with him?”

“I think he hoped shame would make you angry enough to mistake his voice for rescue.”

Corin nodded slowly. “It almost did.”

Flitwick’s face softened. “But it did not.”

“No.” Corin looked toward the door, where students were filing into the corridor. “Does that mean something?”

“It means something today,” Flitwick said. “Tomorrow will ask again in another form.”

That sounded discouraging until Corin realized it was honest. Repentance did not place him beyond temptation. It placed him on the side where temptation could be named.

As he left the classroom, he found Mara waiting in the corridor.

She was leaning against the wall under a portrait of a woman holding a sleeping cat. The woman in the portrait was pretending to be absorbed in petting the cat while clearly listening. Mara glanced at Corin when he approached.

“You spoke well,” she said.

He stopped. “Was that painful to say?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for enduring it.”

She rolled her eyes, but without much force. “Do not become charming. It would confuse everyone.”

“I will avoid it.”

She looked down the corridor. “Slytherin meeting was awful.”

“I believe that.”

“Professor Sinistra said ambition becomes dangerous when it needs someone beneath it to feel tall.” Mara’s mouth twisted. “Everyone looked at me.”

“Everyone?”

“Enough.”

Corin leaned against the opposite wall. “Was she wrong?”

“No.” Mara looked irritated by the answer. “That is what made it awful.”

The portrait woman murmured, “Self-knowledge is good for the complexion.”

Mara looked up. “Your cat looks bored.”

The portrait gasped and turned away.

Corin almost laughed, then saw Mara’s face shift back into seriousness.

“One of my letters was from my mother,” she said.

He waited.

“She said she heard there was trouble and that I must not let anyone use our name against me. She also said if I had done wrong, I should tell the truth before the family taught me how to survive a lie.” Mara stared at the floor. “I did not expect that.”

“No.”

“The other was from my cousin. Professor Sinistra sealed it.” Her jaw tightened. “I think I know what it says anyway.”

Corin thought of the letters from her cousin, the defensive spells, the ugly ideas she had kept because anger made them attractive. “Are you going to read it?”

“Not alone.”

That answer was another step, though she did not present it as one.

Before Corin could respond, a commotion rose from the end of the corridor. Students turned. A group of Ministry officials had entered through the main doors below and were climbing the staircase with McGonagall descending to meet them. Their robes were formal, dark, and trimmed with narrow bands of color that marked departments Corin did not recognize. At the center walked a tall woman with silver hair pinned tightly behind her head. Her eyes moved over the students with practiced concern that did not warm her face.

Mara straightened. “That was fast.”

Corin felt unease move through him. “Do you know her?”

“No.”

The officials reached the landing. McGonagall met them halfway, her posture so straight it made the staircase seem less certain of itself.

The silver-haired woman spoke first. “Headmistress McGonagall. I am Undersecretary Vey from the Department of Magical Education and Child Safeguarding. We received several urgent communications regarding incidents of instability, unauthorized curse exposure, and a breakdown in disciplinary containment.”

The phrase struck Corin. Disciplinary containment. Harrow’s voice echoed inside it.

McGonagall’s face did not change. “Then you have received partial and inflammatory accounts.”

“We have received enough to require immediate review.”

Jesus appeared at the top of the opposite stairway.

The undersecretary’s eyes moved to Him. She did not hide her assessment. “And you are the new Defense professor.”

Jesus looked at her. “Yes.”

“I understand your appointment is irregular.”

“Many healings are.”

The woman blinked once, as if uncertain whether she had been answered or corrected. “I am not here to debate theology.”

“No,” Jesus said. “You are here to decide whether fear will be permitted to use law as its robe.”

The corridor went silent.

McGonagall’s mouth tightened in a way that might have been satisfaction if she had been less disciplined.

Undersecretary Vey’s voice cooled. “I am here to ensure children are safe.”

Jesus looked at her with unflinching calm. “Then you must first decide whether you mean all of them.”

The words landed in the corridor like a bell.

Corin saw the undersecretary’s face harden. Behind her, one of the officials shifted uncomfortably. Another glanced toward the students, then away. Mara stood beside Corin without moving, but he felt the tension in her like a drawn string.

Vey looked at McGonagall. “We will need access to the records.”

“You will have supervised access to materials relevant to the investigation,” McGonagall said. “You will not remove student names from this school without protective review.”

“That may not be your decision.”

“It will be until properly ordered otherwise.”

The two women looked at each other for a long moment. The staircase beneath them gave a small groan and wisely remained still.

Jesus stepped down one stair. “The records were used to harm children under the claim of protecting them. Anyone who reads them now must be willing to be judged by the same truth.”

Undersecretary Vey lifted her chin. “Are you threatening a Ministry official?”

“No,” Jesus said. “I am warning a soul.”

No one breathed for a second.

Then, from somewhere below, a young voice called out.

“Professor Jesus?”

Everyone turned.

Tobin stood at the foot of the stairs in hospital pajamas under a school robe, one hand gripping the banister and the other holding the small clay pot with the cutting from the remorse vine. Madam Pomfrey hurried behind him, furious and worried in equal measure.

“Tobin Marr,” she said, “you were instructed to stay in bed.”

Tobin looked pale and unsteady, but his eyes were clear. “I know.”

Undersecretary Vey looked down at him, and something in her expression sharpened with recognition. “Mr. Marr.”

Tobin flinched at his name in her mouth.

Jesus began descending toward him. “Tobin.”

The boy looked up. “They were going to talk about me without me.”

McGonagall’s face softened. “Not carelessly.”

“I know.” Tobin held the plant pot tighter. “But I want to say something before everyone decides whether I am a problem.”

The corridor filled with students watching from doorways, stairs, and hall edges. Teachers moved to control the crowd, but Jesus lifted one hand slightly, and they did not clear it completely. Tobin had been publicly shamed by rumor and nearly used as an instrument. Perhaps now, within care, he had something public to reclaim.

Undersecretary Vey spoke carefully. “Mr. Marr, no one is deciding you are a problem.”

Tobin looked at her. “You said instability.”

Her lips pressed together.

Tobin took one breath. “I raised my wand yesterday. I should not have. I scared people. I am sorry for that. I am not sorry for being alive.”

The words shook as he spoke them, but they did not break.

Mara’s eyes filled.

Corin felt the corridor change. Not dramatically. Not magically. But every student hearing him now had to decide whether the boy below them was only the incident they had heard about or a child fighting to keep his own name from being buried under it.

Tobin looked at Jesus. “Is that all right to say?”

Jesus reached him at the foot of the stairs. “Yes.”

Tobin’s knees seemed to weaken with relief. Madam Pomfrey moved beside him at once, putting one firm hand behind his shoulder. “Now you are going back to bed before I bind you there with medical authority.”

A faint ripple of laughter moved through the corridor. Tobin almost smiled. Almost.

Undersecretary Vey watched him with an expression that had lost some of its polish. “Mr. Marr, your safety and the safety of others will be considered.”

Tobin nodded. “Good. Please remember I am one of the others too.”

The undersecretary did not answer.

Jesus looked at her.

She looked away first.

Madam Pomfrey guided Tobin back toward the hospital wing, muttering sharp things about reckless boys and heroic timing. The little remorse vine cutting leaned over Tobin’s arm toward the corridor, its leaves open to the morning.

When he disappeared, the students remained quiet.

Corin glanced at Mara. Her face was wet, but she did not wipe it quickly this time. She looked down only when Jesus turned back toward the Ministry officials.

McGonagall spoke into the silence. “Undersecretary, you and your party may accompany me to my office. Professor Jesus will join us. The students will return to their houses as instructed.”

Vey gave a stiff nod. “Very well.”

As they passed, her eyes moved over Corin and Mara. Corin did not look away. Neither did Mara. He did not know what the Ministry would do. He did not know how many officials preferred Harrow’s caution to Jesus’ mercy. He did not know what other records existed beyond Hogwarts or whether the old system had roots in offices with polished floors and official seals.

But Tobin’s words remained in the corridor after he left.

I am not sorry for being alive.

Corin thought of Ivo Strake, whose mother had waited for him. He thought of Mara marked before first year. He thought of himself standing in the Great Hall while Harrow’s paper bird tried to call him back. He thought of Jesus saying that no child in the castle belonged to darkness.

Maybe the next battle would be fought with documents, inquiries, parental outrage, Ministry language, and the slow resistance of people who thought mercy made them unsafe. It would not look like a duel. It would not feel like the stories students preferred. But as Corin watched Jesus walk beside McGonagall toward the office, he understood that defense had widened far beyond the classroom.

The dark arts had not only lived in curses.

Sometimes they lived in the names people were willing to place on children.

And that morning, Hogwarts had begun learning how to answer.

Chapter Nine: The Inquiry That Could Not Hold Mercy Still

The corridor emptied slowly after Tobin was guided back toward the hospital wing. Students did not scatter with the usual relief of dismissed children. They moved as if the stones beneath them had begun asking questions and they did not yet know how to answer. Corin stood beside Mara near the landing and watched the Ministry officials follow McGonagall and Jesus toward the Headmistress’s office. Their robes moved in dark formal lines, too clean for a castle that had spent the last day opening hidden rooms, cracking cursed records, and letting old ink bleed out of walls.

Undersecretary Vey did not look back. That bothered Corin more than if she had. People who looked back were at least still aware they had left something living behind them. Vey walked as if every human thing could become a file if one held the right title and used the proper seal. Perhaps that was unfair. Perhaps he was doing again what he had done before, deciding from posture and fragments what kind of person stood before him. The thought itself irritated him because repentance had made even his instincts inconvenient.

Mara seemed to sense the same danger in the air, though she gave it her own shape. “She wanted him smaller,” she said.

Corin looked at her. “Tobin?”

“Yes. When she said his name, she wanted him to become whatever was written in her folder.”

“You think she already had one?”

Mara’s mouth tightened. “People like that always arrive with a folder. Sometimes the folder is paper. Sometimes it is just in their head.”

Corin looked down the corridor where the officials had disappeared. “That sounds like something we should be careful saying.”

“I did not say we should curse her.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.” She looked annoyed by the fact that she did. “You meant suspicion can dress itself up as discernment even when aimed at someone suspicious.”

“Yes.”

Mara folded her arms. “I hate how often the right answer has become the less satisfying one.”

Corin almost smiled. “That may be the most honest thing anyone has said today.”

She glanced at him. “Do not compliment me. I may recover badly.”

Before he could answer, Professor Sinistra appeared beside them with the silent efficiency of a woman who could read star charts and student nonsense with equal precision. Her dark eyes moved from Mara to Corin and back again. “Miss Flint, your house meeting is not finished simply because you stepped into the corridor.”

Mara looked toward the stairs. “The Ministry arrived.”

“Yes. And unless you have been appointed Undersecretary without my knowledge, you will return to Slytherin.”

Mara’s jaw tightened, but she obeyed. She looked once toward Corin before following Sinistra. It was not a friendly look, not exactly. It carried the strange agreement of two people who had stood in the same fire and were now being sent to different rooms to learn what the burns meant.

Corin turned toward Ravenclaw, but before he reached the classroom where Flitwick had gathered them, Elowen stepped into the hall. She had the blue letter from her father in one hand, folded so many times the edges had softened. Her face held irritation, fear, and curiosity in a mixture that seemed very Ravenclaw.

“Was that the Ministry?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“About Tobin?”

“And the records. And Harrow. And probably everything.”

She looked toward the stairway. “My father will like that.”

“The Ministry coming?”

“The Ministry using words like containment.” She frowned at the letter in her hand. “He thinks systems are dangerous only when the wrong people run them. I think yesterday proved systems can become wrong while decent people are still standing near them.”

Corin absorbed that. “You should say that in the meeting.”

“I did. It made several people uncomfortable.”

“That seems useful.”

“It was.” She looked at him more carefully. “Are you all right after Harrow’s message?”

The question reached him in a place still raw from the Great Hall. Harrow’s voice had tried to pull him back with precision, and answering it publicly had not made him immune to its echo. “No,” he said. “But less trapped by it.”

Elowen nodded. “That is irritatingly healthy.”

“I have had help.”

“Clearly.”

A silence passed between them. Not empty. Not easy. Then Elowen looked down at her folded letter and spoke in a quieter voice. “I am going to write my father back.”

“What will you say?”

“That I understand why he is afraid, and that I think he is wrong about what fear should be allowed to do.” She looked embarrassed by her own seriousness. “I may phrase it better.”

“I think that already says it.”

She studied him, then gave a small nod. “Come back to the meeting. Flitwick is making everyone define the difference between curiosity and intrusion. It is horrible.”

Corin followed her back.

The Ravenclaw meeting had become more restless in his absence. Students sat on desks, chairs, and windowsills while Flitwick stood at the front with a piece of chalk hovering beside him. On the board were two columns, though Flitwick had not written titles above them. Under one column were words like report, protect, ask, wait, witness, and verify. Under the other were words like speculate, collect, corner, trade, label, and enjoy. Corin understood the lesson immediately and disliked how much of his own behavior could fit under the wrong side.

A boy near the window was speaking as Corin entered. “But what if the person refuses help? At that point, are we not obligated to watch more closely?”

Flitwick tapped the chalk once against the board. “You are obligated to involve someone who has actual responsibility. You are not obligated to make yourself the secret center of another student’s life.”

The boy looked dissatisfied. “That seems inefficient.”

“Mercy often seems inefficient to people who prefer control.”

The room quieted.

Corin took a seat near the back. Elowen sat beside him, which caused two students to glance at her with visible surprise. She ignored them so thoroughly that the glances seemed to lose confidence.

Flitwick looked over the room. “Many of you are troubled because you do not know what was written. That is understandable. Some of you are troubled because you do not know whether what you wrote, repeated, or believed has caused harm. That is also understandable. The temptation will be to solve both troubles by demanding access. That temptation must be resisted. Access is not the same as healing.”

A student named Brigham raised his hand. “Then how are we supposed to trust anything?”

“Slowly,” Flitwick said.

The answer drew several frustrated breaths.

He continued. “Trust that has been damaged cannot be restored by one announcement. It also cannot be restored by creating a second system of suspicion to investigate the first. Some things will be handled by staff. Some things will be brought into carefully guided conversation. Some things will be known only by those who were harmed and those responsible for repair. Your part is to practice truth without appetite.”

Corin wrote that phrase down before he knew why. Truth without appetite. It felt like the opposite of the ledger. The ledger had been full of appetite. So had Harrow. So had students who loved being first with a rumor and adults who felt safer when danger could be named before it had been understood. Truth without appetite meant the truth was not there to feed pride, fear, revenge, or curiosity. It was there to heal, correct, protect, and bring light.

Elowen leaned slightly toward him. “That phrase hurt your feelings, did it not?”

“Yes.”

“Mine too.”

They looked at the board together.

The meeting continued until late morning. By the time Flitwick dismissed them, Corin felt more tired than he had after descending beneath the Defense classroom. Fighting a shadow in a mirror had at least been direct. This was slower, more humiliating work. It asked students to examine not only their dramatic failures but the small daily pleasures of knowing, judging, and being right.

In the corridor, Ravenclaws split into quiet groups. Some went toward the library. Some went to write letters. Some simply stood around as if waiting for the castle to tell them whether they were allowed to resume being ordinary. Corin had no instructions until lunch, so he walked toward the windowed passage that overlooked the courtyard. The mist had begun to lift. The stones below were damp, and students from other houses moved in supervised clusters.

From the far end of the passage, he heard voices.

One belonged to Mara.

He slowed, then stopped before turning the corner.

“I said I gave them up,” Mara snapped.

A boy answered. Corin recognized the voice from Slytherin but could not place the name. “And we are supposed to believe that? You stood up in the Great Hall and made yourself sound noble. Very moving. But everyone knows Flints keep something back.”

“I kept letters. They are being reviewed.”

“Convenient.”

Mara’s voice sharpened. “Use another word. That one is worn out.”

Another student, a girl this time, spoke softly. “Darian, leave it.”

Darian. Corin remembered him now. Darian Rowle, sixth year, with a family name that carried its own long shadow. He had always drifted around Mara’s circle without quite belonging to it. He liked other people’s cruelty when it cost him nothing.

Darian laughed. “No, I am curious. Are we all doing confession now? Should I tell the Headmistress I once hexed a kneazle dish because it looked at me funny?”

Mara said nothing.

Corin stepped around the corner.

Mara stood near the window with her hands at her sides. Darian stood before her with two other Slytherins slightly behind him. The girl who had told him to leave it looked uneasy. Darian glanced at Corin and smiled with immediate pleasure.

“Oh good,” Darian said. “The watcher arrives.”

Mara’s eyes flicked toward Corin with warning. Perhaps she meant stay out of it. Perhaps she meant do not make it worse. He stopped several feet away, close enough to be present and far enough not to turn the conversation into a duel.

Darian turned back to Mara. “Maybe he can tell us what is in your records. He likes records.”

Corin felt the words strike exactly where they were meant to. Heat rose up his neck. The old urge to answer with force came quickly. He could expose Darian’s cowardice, name his family history, remind him that enjoying someone else’s public pain was not intelligence. The words were ready. That readiness itself warned him.

Mara spoke first. “Do not use him to get at me.”

Darian raised his eyebrows. “Defending him now?”

“No.” Her voice stayed sharp, but controlled. “Refusing you.”

The girl behind Darian looked at Mara with something like surprise.

Darian stepped closer. “You think you can stand in the Great Hall and cry, then come back here remade? You were useful because people knew what you were. Now you sound like a Gryffindor apology letter.”

Mara’s face went pale. Corin saw the words land in the place where her cousin’s letters had lived. Useful. People knew what you were. Darian had not invented Harrow’s method, but he knew the tune.

Corin took one step forward. “Enough.”

Darian looked delighted. “There he is. Does Jesus let you say that now?”

Corin held his gaze. “I said enough.”

“Or what? You will write me down?”

That one hit harder. Corin wanted to step back. Darian saw it and smiled wider.

Before Corin could answer, Mara moved. Not toward Darian. Toward the girl behind him. “Sella, come here.”

The girl stiffened. “What?”

“Come here.”

Darian laughed. “Do you still think you command people?”

Mara did not look at him. Her eyes stayed on Sella. “You told him to leave it because you knew he was being cruel. Come stand where your own conscience put you.”

The corridor went silent.

Sella looked from Darian to Mara. Her cheeks flushed. Darian’s smile faded. “Do not be dramatic.”

Sella stepped away from him.

It was a small movement. One step, then another. She came to stand near Mara, not fully beside her but no longer behind Darian. Corin felt the shift in the corridor. Darian felt it too. His face hardened.

Mara looked back at him. “That is what I should have done more often when people laughed with me because they were afraid not to.”

Darian’s mouth curled. “You think one day of public guilt makes you righteous?”

“No.” Mara’s voice lowered. “I think one day showed me I was tired of being followed by people who liked the worst parts of me.”

Sella looked down.

Darian’s wand hand twitched.

Corin saw it. Mara saw it. The air tightened.

A year ago, or even yesterday morning, Mara might have reached for a hidden pin. Corin might have reached for secret knowledge. Darian might have enjoyed forcing them back into those old shapes. But there were teachers nearby, and more than that, there was now the memory of Tobin’s shaking wand in the Great Hall. A wand held by fear could change a life in one breath.

“Do not,” Corin said.

Darian glared at him. “I have not done anything.”

“Then keep succeeding.”

For one absurd second, Mara’s mouth twitched. Darian looked between them, furious at being denied a clean fight. Then footsteps sounded from the stairway. Professor Sinistra appeared, her face calm in the way night skies are calm when storms are far below them.

“Mr. Rowle,” she said. “Your wand hand is restless. Place both hands where I can see them.”

Darian’s face flushed. “Professor, I was only speaking.”

“Then your hands have no need to prepare commentary.”

Sella coughed once, perhaps hiding a laugh. Darian obeyed, though anger burned in his eyes.

Sinistra looked at the group. “You will come with me.”

“All of us?” Mara asked.

“Yes.”

Mara sighed. “Of course.”

As they walked behind Sinistra, Corin fell into step beside Mara. Darian walked ahead, stiff with resentment. Sella stayed quiet between them and the other Slytherin, who looked as if he deeply regretted being present.

Mara spoke low enough that only Corin could hear. “I almost enjoyed that.”

“Which part?”

“Making him feel small.”

Corin considered lying kindly, then did not. “I saw.”

She gave him a sideways look. “You are supposed to say I did well.”

“You did some of it well.”

“That is irritating.”

“I know.”

She was quiet for several steps. “I did want Sella to move because it was true. She knew better.”

“Yes.”

“I also wanted Darian to watch someone leave his side.”

“Yes.”

Mara breathed out through her nose. “Truth is crowded.”

Corin looked at her. “That is a good way to say it.”

“Do not write it down.”

“I already did in my head.”

“I regret speaking.”

They were taken to an empty classroom where Sinistra separated them and asked each person to explain what had happened. It was not dramatic. That made it more difficult for Darian, who seemed to have expected either a duel of accusations or a quick dismissal. Sinistra asked plain questions. Who spoke first? What was said? When did the wand hand move? Why did Sella step away? What did Mara mean by conscience? What did Corin mean by enough?

By the time she finished, Darian’s anger had lost some of its shape, though not its heat. Sella looked relieved and ashamed. Mara looked exhausted. Corin felt the familiar weight of being made to describe a moment until all its hidden motives stood in the open.

Sinistra dismissed Sella and the other student first. Darian was kept behind for a private correction. Corin and Mara were told to wait in the corridor.

Mara leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “I hate being supervised.”

“You also needed it.”

She opened one eye. “So did you.”

“Yes.”

That satisfied her enough not to argue.

A few moments later, Jesus came down the corridor with Neville beside Him. The remorse vine cutting Tobin had carried earlier was now in Neville’s hands, looking slightly perkier despite its eventful morning. Jesus stopped when He saw them.

Mara straightened. “We did not start it.”

Corin glanced at her. “That is not the best opening.”

“It is true.”

Jesus looked between them. “Did you finish it rightly?”

Mara paused. “Parts of it.”

Corin nodded. “Parts of it.”

Neville looked pleased in a tired way. “That may be the most realistic answer we have had all morning.”

Jesus’ eyes rested on Mara. “What did fear want?”

She looked away. “For me to enjoy making him lose someone.”

“And what did truth want?”

“For Sella to stop standing where she knew she should not stand.” Mara’s jaw tightened. “Both were there.”

Jesus nodded. “Then the next step is learning to obey truth without feeding the other hunger.”

“That sounds like it will take longer than today.”

“Yes.”

She looked annoyed, but less surprised by the answer.

Jesus turned to Corin. “And you?”

Corin leaned against the opposite wall. “Fear wanted me to defend myself by becoming what he accused me of.”

“Did you?”

“Not fully.”

“That is a true answer.”

Corin received that quietly. Not fully had become, in this strange new life, something worth noticing. Not victory in a song. Not a clean transformation. But not fully agreeing with fear was better than handing it the room.

Neville lifted the plant slightly. “Tobin asked if you both would come by later. Not now. Later. Madam Pomfrey said absolutely not unless Professor Jesus agreed, and then she said perhaps, which I believe means she is considering it while pretending not to.”

Mara’s face changed. “He asked for both of us?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Neville looked at her kindly. “I did not interrogate the recovering child.”

She frowned. “That is inconvenient.”

Corin looked at Jesus. “Should we go?”

“After lunch,” Jesus said. “And only to listen unless he asks you to speak.”

Mara nodded. The idea seemed to frighten her more than the hidden chamber had. Corin understood. Facing old magic was one kind of danger. Sitting beside a wounded boy who had reason to distrust you was another.

The lunch bell rang through the corridor before anyone could say more. Students began moving again under teacher direction. Hogwarts was trying to create order around a wound that had not yet closed. Corin wondered if that was what a good school did. Not pretend the wound was gone, but keep meals, meetings, and supervision moving around it so children had a structure in which to tell the truth.

Jesus looked toward the stairway. “The Ministry inquiry has begun.”

Mara’s eyes sharpened. “Already?”

“Yes.”

“Are they going to take the records?”

“Not today.”

“Are they going to blame Tobin?”

“They will try to understand him through the categories they brought.”

Corin heard the careful wording. “That sounds worse than yes.”

Jesus looked at him. “It can be.”

Neville’s face had grown troubled. “Undersecretary Vey has requested interviews with involved students.”

Mara’s posture changed at once. “No.”

Corin felt the same answer rise in him. The idea of sitting before Vey while she placed his guilt into Ministry language made his skin tighten. He did not fear consequence in the same way he had before, but he feared being turned into an example that served someone else’s argument.

Jesus said, “No student will be interviewed without protection.”

Mara crossed her arms. “Protection like a professor in the room?”

“Yes.”

“And You?”

“If needed.”

Corin looked at Him. “Will You be in mine?”

Jesus’ eyes softened. “Yes.”

The relief was immediate and embarrassing. Corin nodded and looked away.

Mara did not ask the same question, but Jesus answered her anyway. “Yours too.”

She stared at Him for a second. “I did not ask.”

“I know.”

“I was going to.”

“I know.”

“That is still unsettling.”

“Yes.”

The exchange was almost familiar now, and for a moment the corridor felt less impossible. Then a shout rose from below. Not fear, but anger. Several students turned toward the sound. A Ministry official’s voice followed, sharp and commanding. Teachers moved quickly down the stairs.

Jesus did not hurry, but He moved.

Corin, Mara, and Neville followed before anyone told them not to. At the lower landing near the entrance hall, they found a crowd forming despite prefects’ efforts to hold students back. Undersecretary Vey stood near the main doors with McGonagall beside her. Facing them was a woman in traveling robes, her hair pinned badly, her face flushed from cold and fury. Beside her stood a boy of about sixteen with two faint scars on one arm and a hard expression that seemed practiced but not steady.

Tobin’s aunt had come to Hogwarts.

Corin knew it before anyone said her name. The voice from the Howler had filled the Great Hall the night before, and though it now came from a human throat instead of red paper, the shape of it was the same. It had the same sharp certainty, the same fear trained into accusation. The boy beside her had to be Tobin’s brother.

Mara went very still.

The woman pointed toward McGonagall. “You have no legal right to keep my nephew from his family.”

McGonagall stood firm. “I have both the right and responsibility to protect a student under my care while serious concerns are reviewed.”

“Concerns?” The woman laughed bitterly. “He threatened your entire school, and I am the concern?”

Undersecretary Vey lifted a hand. “Mrs. Marr, we will handle this through appropriate channels.”

Mrs. Marr turned on her. “You said I could see him.”

“I said your request would be considered.”

“My request?” Her voice rose. “I raised that boy after my sister gave up pretending she could manage him. I fed him, housed him, explained him, apologized for him, and now strangers tell me I need permission to see the problem I warned everyone about.”

Jesus stepped forward.

The entrance hall quieted in widening circles.

Mrs. Marr looked at Him with immediate suspicion. “And you must be the one filling his head.”

Jesus did not answer the accusation directly. “Tobin is not a problem.”

Her mouth tightened. “That is easy to say when you have not lived with him.”

“I know what has lived with him.”

The words changed her face, though only for a second. Something like fear crossed it, then hardened into anger. “Do not speak to me in riddles.”

Jesus looked at her. “You have called his pain drama because his pain inconvenienced your control.”

The woman flinched as if slapped.

Tobin’s brother looked at her, then quickly away.

Undersecretary Vey stiffened. “Professor, this is not the setting for personal accusation.”

Jesus turned to her. “No. It is the setting where a child’s life is being spoken of as property.”

Mrs. Marr’s face flushed deeper. “He is my family.”

“Then speak of him as one.”

The hall was utterly silent now. Corin could feel students pressed along the stairs and corridors behind him, watching an adult voice face the truth it had sent by Howler. He wondered if Tobin could hear from the hospital wing. He prayed he could not.

Mrs. Marr’s son spoke suddenly. “He broke a window on me.”

Jesus looked at him. “Yes.”

The boy seemed startled. “I still have scars.”

“Yes.”

“He could have blinded me.”

“Yes.”

The boy’s anger faltered because Jesus did not deny his harm. Corin saw the importance of that. Mercy toward Tobin did not require pretending his brother had not bled. This was the line again, the narrow place between naming harm and naming a person as harm.

Jesus took one step closer. “What did you do before the window broke?”

The boy’s face hardened. “That does not matter.”

“It mattered to Tobin.”

“He is always upset about something.”

“What did you do?”

The boy looked at his aunt. She did not look back at him. That silence told on them both.

McGonagall’s voice was low. “Answer the question.”

The boy swallowed. “I locked him out.”

“In winter?” Jesus asked.

The boy’s eyes dropped. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“He was being strange.”

Mrs. Marr snapped, “He was frightening his cousins.”

Jesus looked at her. “By existing differently than they understood?”

“By making things move when he was angry. By staring at people. By refusing to answer normal questions. By acting like the whole house had to bend around whatever mood he brought into it.”

Corin heard frustration there, real and human, buried under cruelty. That made the moment harder. Mrs. Marr was not a painted villain. She was an exhausted woman who had chosen contempt as a way to survive a child she did not know how to love. But exhaustion did not make contempt holy. Fear did not make the locked door right.

Jesus’ voice softened without losing authority. “You were afraid of him.”

She looked away. “Anyone sensible would be.”

“And he was afraid of you.”

Her eyes snapped back. “He had no reason.”

The boy beside her looked at the floor.

Jesus did not let the answer pass. “He had reason.”

Mrs. Marr’s mouth opened, then closed.

Undersecretary Vey spoke carefully. “This matter will require family review, magical safety assessment, and temporary placement considerations.”

McGonagall looked at her. “Temporary placement away from Mrs. Marr’s custody.”

Vey’s face tightened. “That has not been determined.”

Jesus turned toward the hospital wing corridor. “Tobin must not be sent back to a house where fear has already named him unwanted.”

Mrs. Marr’s voice cracked. “Unwanted? You have no idea what I gave up for that boy.”

Jesus looked at her with sorrow. “Sacrifice without love becomes a debt the child can never repay.”

The sentence struck the entrance hall harder than any raised voice. Mrs. Marr took a step back. Her son stared at Jesus with an expression Corin could not read. Vey looked unsettled, not because she had been defeated in argument, but because the category family had just been opened wider than paperwork allowed.

Mrs. Marr’s eyes filled, but she turned the tears into anger before they fell. “You make everything sound cruel.”

“No,” Jesus said. “I am naming the cruelty so it can stop pretending to be care.”

For a moment, the woman looked tired enough to collapse. Then she gathered herself around the same old hardness. “I want to see him.”

McGonagall answered. “Not today.”

“I will appeal.”

“Yes.”

“I will bring officials higher than her.” She pointed toward Vey.

McGonagall’s gaze did not move. “Then I will speak with them as well.”

Mrs. Marr looked at Jesus one last time. “And when he hurts someone again?”

Jesus’ face held both truth and mercy. “Then the harm will be addressed without handing him back to despair.”

She seemed to have no answer for that, so she turned sharply and walked toward the doors. Her son followed, but at the threshold he paused and looked back.

“Is he really not expelled?” he asked.

McGonagall answered, “He is not.”

The boy nodded once, not quite relief and not quite resentment. Then he left with his aunt.

The doors closed.

The entrance hall remained silent.

Undersecretary Vey looked at Jesus, then McGonagall. “You understand this will complicate the review.”

McGonagall’s expression was iron. “Good. A simple review would be inadequate.”

Vey’s jaw tightened, but she did not answer. She turned to the other officials and gave a quiet instruction. They moved toward the staff corridor, leaving the gathered students in the care of teachers who now had to break apart a crowd that had witnessed more than anyone planned.

Mara stood near Corin, pale and rigid. “Tobin should not hear that from students.”

“No,” Corin said.

“He will.”

“Probably.”

Her hands closed into fists. “People are cruelest when they think they are just reporting.”

Corin looked at her. “We should tell Professor Jesus.”

Jesus was already looking at them.

He had heard.

“Tobin will be told with care,” He said. “And the students will be instructed again.”

Mara’s face tightened. “Instructions do not stop everyone.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But they remove the excuse that no one knew better.”

That answer settled into Corin with uncomfortable force. Much of the work ahead seemed to be removing excuses. Not removing every temptation, every failure, every cruel whisper, or every fearful reaction. Just removing the darkness where people could claim they did not know what they were doing.

The lunch bell rang then, absurd and ordinary.

Nobody moved at first. Then teachers began guiding students toward the Great Hall. Life resumed because bodies needed food and schools needed structure, even when the morning had pulled another family wound into public view. Corin walked beside Mara at the edge of the crowd, and neither of them spoke until they reached the doors.

Mara looked toward the hospital wing corridor. “I know what he meant now.”

“Who?”

“Ivo. When he told me not to keep the last medallion.” She glanced down at her hands. “Mrs. Marr keeps hers in her voice.”

Corin thought about that. “Your cousin keeps his in letters.”

“Yes.”

“Harrow keeps his in lesson plans.”

She looked at him. “And you?”

He did not answer quickly. “I kept mine in the key.”

“No,” she said. “That was the obvious one.”

The words could have been cruel, but they were not. They were direct in a way he needed. Corin looked through the Great Hall doors at the house tables, the watching students, the staff trying to hold order, and the empty space where Harrow’s paper bird had turned to ash.

“In being useful,” he said.

Mara nodded, not triumphantly. “Yes.”

He looked at her. “And you?”

She stared ahead. “In being feared.”

They stood there with the answer between them, each having named the other with more care than the ledger ever had. It did not feel comfortable. It felt clean in the way cold water is clean.

Then Jesus passed them and entered the Great Hall.

The room turned toward Him again, still hungry, still frightened, still full of students carrying letters from home, rumors from corridors, guilt from hidden acts, and questions too large for their age. He did not stop at the staff table this time. He moved among them, table by table, pausing with the ones whose faces were most troubled, speaking little, listening more.

Corin and Mara went to their separate tables.

As he sat, Elowen leaned toward him. “Was that Tobin’s aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Was it bad?”

Corin looked toward the hospital wing corridor, then back at the table. “It is not my story to tell.”

Elowen studied him. Then she nodded. “Right.”

He reached for a cup of water and drank slowly. That small answer felt like another step. Not dramatic. Not enough to repair everything. But real.

At the staff table, McGonagall stood with Undersecretary Vey in sharp conversation. Neville sat near the end with the vine cutting, which had begun leaning toward the hospital wing again. Flitwick intercepted another smoking envelope and dropped it into the silver basin with satisfaction. Sinistra watched the Slytherin table like a hawk studying weather.

Lunch began.

The work did not pause. It simply changed rooms.

And somewhere beyond the walls of the Great Hall, in a white bed under Madam Pomfrey’s care, Tobin Marr would soon have to hear that his aunt had come for him and left without him. Corin did not know what that would do to the boy. He only knew Jesus would not let him hear it as proof that he was unwanted.

That, Corin thought, might be what mercy kept doing.

It entered the room before the lie could explain everything.

Chapter Ten: The Bedside Where the Lie Was Not Allowed to Finish

Tobin was awake when Jesus entered the hospital wing after lunch. He sat propped against the pillows with a blanket pulled up to his chest and the small remorse vine cutting on the table beside him. The plant leaned toward him with its leaves open, as if it had decided that a boy recovering from fear deserved company more than decoration. Madam Pomfrey stood at the cabinet across the room, grinding something green and stubborn in a stone bowl with more force than the ingredients seemed to require. She looked up when Jesus came in and gave Him the expression of a healer who had already guessed that calm would be needed before the hour was done.

Mara and Corin remained just inside the door because Jesus had not yet invited them closer. They had come with Professor Neville, who carried a small tray of broth and bread that Madam Pomfrey had insisted Tobin needed even if the whole Ministry collapsed into foolishness downstairs. Mara’s face had gone pale again, not with the sharp fear she used around Darian but with something quieter. Corin understood it because he felt a version of it too. They were not afraid of cursed mirrors or hidden ledgers now. They were afraid of the moment when a hurting boy would hear that his aunt had come to claim him and had spoken of him as a problem in front of half the school.

Tobin saw them and looked from one face to another. “Something happened.”

Jesus came to the side of the bed and sat in the chair where He had sat the night before. “Yes.”

Tobin’s hand moved toward the vine cutting, and one leaf brushed his fingers. “Was it my aunt?”

No one answered quickly enough.

He looked away toward the windows. The day outside had brightened, but the hospital wing still carried the soft white stillness of a place where pain was managed in whispers and clean sheets. “I knew she would come.”

Madam Pomfrey set down the bowl. “You do not need to hear every unpleasant word spoken by an unpleasant adult.”

Tobin gave a thin, tired smile. “That means she said a lot.”

Pomfrey huffed. “It means I have opinions and excellent restraint.”

Jesus looked at Tobin. “She came with your brother.”

Tobin’s face changed at once. Not anger first. Hurt. It passed over him so quickly that Corin might have missed it if he had not been watching for the wrong thing. Tobin’s brother had been part of the winter window story, the one that had become evidence against Tobin without carrying the cold door and laughter that came before it. The brother’s presence meant the wound had walked into the castle with two faces.

“What did he say?” Tobin asked.

Jesus answered plainly. “He said you broke a window and that he still has scars.”

Tobin closed his eyes. His hand tightened around the edge of the blanket. “That is true.”

“Yes.”

“I did not mean to cut him.”

“I know.”

“But I did.”

“Yes.”

Tobin opened his eyes again, and tears had gathered there. “Did he tell everyone?”

“Some heard enough.”

The answer hurt him. Corin could see it. Tobin turned his face toward the window, but tears slipped sideways across his temple before he could hide them. The vine leaf bent toward his hand again, and he held it gently between two fingers as if it were the only thing in the room small enough not to accuse him.

Mara took one step forward, then stopped. Jesus did not look at her, but He seemed to know.

Tobin whispered, “What did she say?”

Jesus’ face held sorrow without hesitation. “She said you should be removed. She called you unstable. She said some children are born wrong.”

The hospital wing seemed to tighten around the words. Madam Pomfrey’s mouth became a hard line. Neville looked down at the tray in his hands. Corin felt Mara go still beside him, as if the sentence had struck her too. Some children are born wrong. The same old lie, dressed in family authority, sent by Howler, then carried in person.

Tobin did not speak.

He did not cry harder either. That was worse. He went quiet in a way that made him seem far away from the bed, the room, the plant, and everyone who had come to tell him he was protected. Corin recognized that kind of quiet from the mirror under the classroom. Ivo had carried a version of it into the snow. Mara had worn it as a mask. Corin had hidden inside his own safer form of it, the quiet of competence and secret usefulness.

Jesus leaned closer. “Tobin.”

The boy did not look at Him. “She said it in front of people?”

“Yes.”

“Students?”

“Some.”

He nodded once. “Then it is everywhere.”

“It will be handled.”

Tobin gave a small laugh with no humor in it. “That never means it is not everywhere.”

Jesus did not deny it. “No. Some people will have heard.”

“Then why tell me?” His voice rose suddenly. “Why not let me find out when someone says it wrong in a corridor? That is what usually happens.”

“Because the lie must not arrive before love.”

Tobin turned then. He looked angry and wounded and very young. “It already did.”

Jesus held his gaze. “Then love will answer before it finishes.”

The words did not make Tobin soften. Not yet. He looked toward the doorway, where Mara and Corin stood, and his face tightened with embarrassment. “Why are they here?”

Jesus answered, “Because you asked if they could come later.”

“I did not mean for this.”

“I know.”

Tobin looked at Mara first. “Did you hear her?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

“What did she sound like?”

Mara’s mouth tightened. “Like someone trying to make fear look like experience.”

Tobin stared at her.

Mara stepped closer, but not too close. “She sounded like my father when he had already decided what a person was and did not want new information getting in the way.”

Tobin looked back at the blanket. “That sounds like her.”

Corin expected Jesus to speak again, but He waited. The room gave Tobin space without abandoning him to it. That was a harder balance than Corin had understood before. Silence could be cruelty when it left a person alone under condemnation. It could also be mercy when it refused to rush pain into a lesson.

Tobin finally said, “What did my brother say before the window?”

Jesus did not answer for him. “He admitted he locked you out.”

Tobin’s lips trembled. “Did he say why?”

“He said you were being strange.”

The boy’s face twisted. “I was making spoons move. I thought it was funny. My cousins laughed first. Then one spoon hit the wall. I got scared. They got scared. He called me a freak, and I told him to stop. He dragged me outside and locked the kitchen door. It was snowing.” He swallowed hard. “I kept knocking. He laughed through the glass. I got angry. Everything broke.”

Madam Pomfrey moved as if she wanted to say something, but Jesus lifted His hand slightly, and she held her place. Tobin needed to say it in order, not have it cleaned up before it left him.

Tobin looked at Corin. “You wrote about me watching people from stairwells.”

“Yes,” Corin said.

“I watched because I did not know when people were joking until it was too late. If I stood far enough away, I could leave before they turned on me.”

Corin felt the sentence sink into him. “I did not ask.”

“No.”

“I should have.”

“Yes.”

There was no cruelty in Tobin’s answer. That made it land more heavily. Corin nodded because anything more would have tried to move the pain along before it had finished speaking.

Tobin turned to Mara. “And you knew what it felt like?”

Mara looked uncomfortable. “Not the same way.”

“I did not ask if it was the same.”

She folded her arms, then seemed to notice and forced them down. “Yes. I knew what it was like to have people decide early.”

Tobin looked at the plant. “Then why were you mean to everyone?”

Mara winced, and Corin almost stepped in. Jesus did not. Neville’s face showed sympathy, but he also stayed quiet.

Mara answered slowly. “Because being feared felt better than being pitied or watched.”

“Did it work?”

“For a while.”

“Did it help?”

She looked toward the windows. “No.”

Tobin nodded as if he had expected that and still needed to hear it.

Jesus looked at him. “Your aunt will not take you from this school today.”

The boy’s eyes snapped back to Him. “Today?”

“The matter will continue. She may appeal. Officials may argue. Adults may speak in language that tries to make their fear sound clean. But you will not be handed back today.”

Tobin’s whole body seemed to release and tighten at once. “What about later?”

“We will walk in truth then too.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is not the answer your fear wants.”

Tobin wiped his face with his sleeve, frustrated and ashamed of needing reassurance. “I want You to say never.”

“I know.”

“Why won’t You?”

Jesus’ voice softened. “Because love does not need to lie to be kind.”

Tobin looked away, angry again. Yet the anger had life in it. It was not the dead quiet from moments before. Corin found himself almost relieved by it.

Neville stepped forward with the tray. “Madam Pomfrey says you need to eat.”

Tobin looked at the broth with suspicion. “She always says that.”

Madam Pomfrey lifted her chin. “Because I am almost always right.”

“Almost?”

“Eat, Mr. Marr.”

He took the bowl with both hands, but he did not drink yet. “Did my brother ask about me?”

Everyone paused.

Jesus answered, “He asked whether you were expelled.”

Tobin’s mouth twisted. “That is not asking about me.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But he looked back when he left.”

The boy’s eyes lowered to the broth. “That means nothing.”

“It may mean little. It does not mean nothing.”

Tobin stared at the bowl for a long time. “I hate him.”

Jesus did not flinch. “I know.”

“I do not want to forgive him.”

“I know.”

“Are You going to tell me I have to?”

“I am going to tell you not to let hatred become the place where he still holds you outside in the snow.”

Tobin’s face broke then, not with loud crying, but with the kind of pain that made his breathing uneven. He set the bowl down before he dropped it. Mara looked away to give him some privacy. Corin did too, though he could still hear the boy trying to pull himself back together.

Madam Pomfrey moved in then, not with softness but with command. She adjusted the pillows, placed a cloth in Tobin’s hand, and muttered that people who made recovering children discuss family wounds before finishing broth should be forced to drink bone-mending potion for character improvement. Jesus accepted the remark with quiet patience. Tobin almost smiled again through tears, which seemed to be Madam Pomfrey’s true aim.

After a while, Tobin lifted his head. “Can they stay?”

Jesus looked at him. “Corin and Mara?”

“Yes. Not all day. Just for a little.”

Mara seemed surprised enough to forget to hide it. Corin nodded, but waited for Jesus’ permission. Jesus stood from the chair and motioned for them to come closer. Neville placed the tray on the side table and went to speak quietly with Pomfrey near the cabinet, giving the three students room without leaving them alone.

Corin took the chair at the foot of the bed. Mara remained standing until Tobin looked at the empty chair beside him. She sat stiffly, as if chairs near hospital beds had rules she had not learned.

For several breaths, none of them spoke.

Then Tobin said, “I heard there was a mirror.”

Mara glanced at Corin. “You heard quickly.”

“A portrait told me before Madam Pomfrey threatened it.”

Corin leaned forward. “It was under the Defense classroom.”

“Was it bad?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

Tobin looked at her. “Did it have names?”

“Worse,” she said. “It had a boy.”

Corin wondered if they should be telling him this, but Jesus remained close enough to hear and did not stop them. That meant the truth was allowed, though not everything at once.

Tobin’s fingers touched the vine leaf again. “A boy like me?”

Mara answered before Corin could. “A boy people failed before he made the worst choice.”

Tobin’s face tightened. “That sounds like me.”

“No.” Mara’s voice was firm. “It sounds like a warning not to let it become you.”

He stared at her, and she looked startled by her own words. Corin saw the cost of them. Mara did not yet know how to comfort without sounding like she was ordering someone to survive. But Tobin seemed to receive it better than a gentle phrase might have been received from someone else.

“What was his name?” Tobin asked.

“Ivo Strake,” Corin said.

Tobin whispered it once. “Is he still there?”

“No,” Mara said. “Jesus brought him out.”

Tobin’s eyes moved toward Jesus, who stood by the window in quiet conversation with Neville. “Was he alive?”

Corin thought about how to answer. “Not like us.”

“Was he dead?”

“Not exactly.”

Tobin frowned. “That is unhelpful.”

Mara gave a dry breath. “Yes. The whole thing was like that.”

Corin looked at her, and for one strange second they shared something almost like normal student frustration. Then Tobin looked at his hands.

“Did he hurt people?”

“Yes,” Corin said.

“Did Jesus still help him?”

Mara answered, “Yes.”

Tobin’s eyes filled again, but he did not cry this time. “Good.”

That one word held so much that the room seemed to quiet around it. Corin understood. Tobin needed to know harm did not close the door forever. Not because harm was small. Because if Ivo could be helped after opening himself to darkness, then Tobin was not beyond help for raising a wand while terrified. Mara perhaps needed the same truth for the pins. Corin needed it for the key. Every one of them had some version of the question hidden inside them. Did Jesus still help the person who had done the thing?

Mara looked toward the bedside table. “Your plant likes you.”

Tobin looked offended. “It is not my plant.”

“It followed you into the entrance hall.”

“I carried it.”

“That is usually how following works with plants.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, then looked at the vine. “Professor Longbottom said it responds to confession.”

“It also judges avoidance,” Corin said.

Tobin looked at him. “That sounds like a plant you would deserve.”

Corin accepted the hit. “Yes.”

Mara glanced away quickly, but not before Corin saw the small movement at the corner of her mouth.

Tobin looked suddenly worried. “Are people angry at you?”

Corin blinked. “Me?”

“You said what Harrow did in the Great Hall. Are they angry?”

“Some.”

“Good.”

Corin looked down. “Probably.”

“I do not mean good like I want you hurt.” Tobin’s voice was awkward now, as if kindness embarrassed him. “I mean good that they know. Not everything. Just enough.”

Corin nodded. “Yes.”

Tobin looked at Mara. “Are they angry at you?”

“They always were.”

“That is not an answer.”

She leaned back in the chair. “Some are afraid. Some are curious. Some think I am pretending. Some liked me better when I was cruel because then they knew how to stand near me.”

Tobin seemed to consider that. “Do you miss it?”

Mara went still.

Corin expected her to deflect. She did not.

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes. Not the worst parts. Or maybe the worst parts too. I miss how simple it felt to enter a room and already know I would not be the one backing away.”

Tobin nodded slowly. “I think I miss being alone before everyone knew I was alone.”

That sentence made Mara look at him fully.

Corin felt it too. Exposure had not removed loneliness for Tobin. It had changed its shape. Before, he could hide and call it privacy. Now people knew enough to watch him with pity, fear, or interest. Being known wrongly was terrible. Being known partly could feel dangerous too.

Jesus returned to the bed then. “You are not required to let everyone near you because the truth has begun.”

Tobin looked relieved. “Good.”

“But do not confuse being protected with being hidden.”

The relief became less simple. “I knew there was another part.”

Jesus’ eyes warmed. “There often is.”

Madam Pomfrey came back with a fresh cup. “The next part is drinking this.”

Tobin smelled it and recoiled. “What is that?”

“Something that will calm your nerves.”

“It smells like wet socks and pepper.”

“Then your sense of smell remains functional.”

Mara looked at the cup with sympathy. “I would rather face the mirror again.”

Pomfrey pointed at her. “Do not tempt me to prescribe it for visitors.”

Mara closed her mouth.

Tobin drank with the expression of someone accepting betrayal from medicine itself. Afterward, he leaned back against the pillows, tired settling over his face. Pomfrey’s potion worked quickly. His eyes became heavy, though he fought it with the stubbornness of a boy afraid sleep would make him miss decisions about his own life.

Jesus placed a hand on his shoulder. “Rest.”

Tobin whispered, “Will You be here when I wake?”

“I will come.”

“That is not the same.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But it is true.”

Tobin considered that through the fog of potion, then nodded. “All right.”

His eyes closed.

Mara and Corin stood quietly. The vine leaf remained resting against Tobin’s hand until sleep took him fully. Then it lifted and turned toward Jesus, as if awaiting its next instruction.

Outside the hospital wing, the corridor felt louder even though no one was speaking nearby. Mara walked a few steps ahead, then stopped near the same rain-washed window where she had spoken with Jesus the day before. This time the glass reflected late afternoon light instead of gray rain. Corin stopped beside her because it seemed expected, or maybe because he did not know where else to stand.

Mara looked down the empty corridor. “He asked if I missed it.”

“Yes.”

“I hated that.”

“You answered.”

“I know.” She looked at him. “Do you?”

“Miss it?”

“The key. Harrow. Feeling useful.”

Corin looked toward the far end of the corridor. “Not Harrow. Not really. But I miss the feeling before I knew what it was costing.”

Mara nodded. “That is the part people do not understand. Wrong things would be easier to leave if they only felt ugly.”

He thought of the clean neatness of Harrow’s portfolio, the warmth of being trusted, the sharp comfort of standing on the side of those who knew. “Yes.”

Jesus stood a short distance away, speaking with Neville, but His presence seemed to hold the corridor even when He was not part of their conversation. Mara glanced toward Him, then back at Corin.

“Do you think He ever misses anything wrong?” she asked.

Corin frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, He was tempted, was He not? That is what people say. In the wilderness. Stones to bread. Kingdoms. Proving Himself.” She looked uncomfortable, as if discussing Scripture in a corridor felt too close to vulnerability. “Do you think the wrong things sounded ugly to Him, or did they sound like something He could have wanted for good reasons?”

Corin did not know how to answer. Jesus did.

He turned from Neville and looked at Mara. “Temptation often offers a good thing without the Father.”

Mara froze, clearly startled that He had heard. “That was not exactly a question for You.”

“It was exactly a question for Me.”

She looked down. “Then answer more.”

Jesus came closer. “Bread is good. Authority rightly held is good. Trust in the Father is good. The tempter offered good words in a false order. He asked Me to take apart from love what was only holy inside love.”

Corin listened carefully. The answer did not make temptation sound small. It made it more serious. Harrow had offered protection, responsibility, and courage, but pulled them away from love. Mara’s pins had offered safety apart from trust. Tobin’s raised wand had offered control apart from care. Albie’s note had offered vigilance apart from humility. Wrong had not always entered wearing a monstrous face. Sometimes it entered carrying a good word stolen from its proper home.

Mara’s voice was low. “So missing the feeling does not mean I want the evil.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But it means you must not pretend the feeling is harmless.”

She nodded slowly.

Corin looked at Him. “What do we do when we miss it?”

“Tell the truth before fear finds a use for the longing.”

The answer was simple enough to remember and hard enough to require help. Corin felt it settle beside the other sentences of the last two days, not as a slogan but as a tool he would need again. Tell the truth before fear finds a use for the longing.

Neville joined them, carrying the tray now that Tobin had finally eaten some of the broth. “Professor McGonagall has asked for both of you.”

Mara closed her eyes briefly. “Again?”

“I believe this is about the Ministry interviews.”

Corin’s stomach tightened. “Now?”

“Soon. She wants to prepare you first.”

Mara looked at Jesus. “You said You would be there.”

“I will.”

She nodded as if trying not to show relief.

They walked toward McGonagall’s office once more, though the castle felt different in the afternoon light. Students had been kept in house groups most of the day, but a few moved through corridors under supervision. The mood had shifted from shock to strain. Shock freezes a school. Strain tests what the school will become afterward. Corin could feel questions following them from every doorway. Had Tobin heard? Had the Ministry arrived? Was Harrow coming back? Were names going to be revealed? Was Mara still dangerous? Was Corin being expelled? Every unasked question seemed to crawl along the walls.

At the gargoyle, McGonagall was already waiting. Undersecretary Vey stood beside her with two officials, one carrying a black case and the other holding a stack of forms. Vey looked at Corin and Mara the way one might look at witnesses who were also evidence. Corin disliked the look and then checked himself. Dislike could be accurate without becoming judgment. That distinction was tiring.

Vey spoke first. “Mr. Vale. Miss Flint. We will conduct preliminary interviews regarding Professor Harrow’s actions, the hidden records, and any related student misconduct.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Student misconduct.”

McGonagall stepped in. “The interviews will be supervised. They will not be fishing expeditions. They will not require students to reveal private matters unrelated to the inquiry. They will not use language that presumes guilt beyond what is being examined.”

Vey’s lips pressed together. “Headmistress, I am familiar with procedure.”

Jesus looked at her. “Procedure can still carry fear.”

The undersecretary looked at Him, and for the first time Corin saw real frustration break through her polished control. “And mercy can still obstruct necessary action.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

The answer surprised her.

He continued, “That is why mercy must remain truthful. But your necessary action must also be judged. Necessity has excused much evil.”

Vey’s face tightened. “You speak as if institutions are inherently cruel.”

“No. I speak as if souls can hide inside them.”

The corridor went quiet.

One of the officials behind Vey looked down at his forms.

McGonagall opened the office door. “We will begin with Mr. Vale.”

Mara looked at Corin. “Do not become clever.”

He gave a faint breath. “That is your encouragement?”

“Yes.”

“It may help.”

“Good.”

He entered the office with Jesus and McGonagall. Vey and one official followed. The other remained outside with Mara, which Corin suspected Mara would enjoy less than the interview itself.

McGonagall’s office had been rearranged for the inquiry. The desk was cleared except for Corin’s written statement, Albie’s note, sealed evidence boxes, and a Pensieve standing near the window. Corin had seen Pensieves before but had never used one. This one shimmered faintly, silver and deep, holding memory like moonlight made liquid.

Vey saw him looking at it. “We may request memory confirmation.”

Corin stiffened.

McGonagall spoke at once. “Request, not compel.”

The official with Vey made a note.

Jesus stood beside the chair where Corin was meant to sit. “Do not surrender memory to fear. If truth requires it, you will not be alone.”

Corin nodded, though the idea of placing his memories into an object while Ministry officials leaned over them made him feel exposed in a way different from confession. Words could still be shaped carefully. Memories had their own force. They could reveal things he had not known he was showing.

He sat.

Vey began with formal questions. Name. House. Year. Date of first contact with Professor Harrow. Whether any coercion was used. Whether any reward was promised. Whether any student was threatened. The questions were clean at first, and Corin answered as plainly as he could. McGonagall listened without interrupting. Jesus stood near the window, His presence steady.

Then Vey’s questions shifted.

“When Professor Harrow asked you to observe students, did you believe he had legitimate safety concerns?”

“Yes.”

“Were those concerns always baseless?”

Corin paused. “No.”

Vey looked up. “Explain.”

“Some students were angry. Some had harmful objects. Some were isolated. Some were being influenced by family or fear. Those things mattered.” He took a breath. “But he used those true things wrongly.”

Vey wrote something. “Wrongly in what sense?”

“He made them into whole identities. He used them to isolate people. He wanted fear to produce the behavior he claimed to be preventing.”

Vey’s pen paused. “That is a serious claim.”

“Yes.”

“Is it your claim or something Professor Jesus told you to say?”

Corin felt the trap in the question. Not because it was completely unfair. Jesus had taught him language he did not have before. But Vey’s phrasing made truth sound like contamination.

Jesus did not speak.

Corin answered, “I learned the difference because He showed it to me. But I know what Harrow did because I was there.”

Vey studied him. “You were also complicit.”

“Yes.”

“That may affect your credibility.”

“Yes.”

McGonagall looked at him with something like approval. Vey seemed less pleased by an answer that did not defend itself.

She continued. “Did Professor Harrow ever instruct you to provoke Tobin Marr?”

“No.”

“Did he instruct you to provoke Mara Flint?”

“No.”

“Did he instruct you to gather information that could be used to pressure them?”

Corin stopped.

The room seemed to wait with him.

“Yes,” he said.

Vey leaned slightly forward. “Specific words.”

Corin closed his eyes briefly and returned to Harrow’s temporary room, the portfolio, the tea he had not drunk, the rain tapping at the window. “He said some students reveal the truth only when the right pressure removes the performance. He said Mara Flint’s cruelty was a performance hiding deeper allegiance, and Tobin Marr’s quiet was a pressure chamber. He told me pressure is not harm if it prevents greater harm.”

The official wrote quickly.

Vey’s expression remained controlled, but her eyes sharpened. “Did you believe him?”

“At first.”

“And later?”

“I wanted to.”

“That is not the same as believing.”

“No.”

“Why did you want to?”

Corin glanced toward Jesus, then back at Vey. “Because if he was wrong, I was wrong.”

For the first time, Vey seemed to receive an answer without turning it at once into another question. She looked at him for a long moment. “That is often why adults continue too.”

The sentence surprised him.

McGonagall noticed too. Her face did not change much, but her eyes moved to Vey with sharper interest.

Jesus said nothing.

The interview continued, but the air had shifted slightly. Vey was not softened, exactly. She still pressed details, dates, words, and actions. Yet she no longer sounded as if she were trying to force Corin into either victim or offender. She allowed him to be both manipulated and responsible, which felt closer to the truth and more painful than either simpler category.

Near the end, she asked about Harrow’s paper bird.

“What did you feel when he addressed you in the Great Hall?”

Corin looked down at his ink-stained thumb. “Relief.”

Vey’s eyebrows lifted. “Relief?”

“Yes. For a moment. He made it sound like I did not have to be ashamed. Like confession was something being done to me by people who wanted me small.”

“And then?”

“Then I remembered that when he made me feel large, he was making other people smaller.”

The office fell quiet.

Vey closed the folder in front of her. “Thank you, Mr. Vale. We may need further questions.”

Corin stood, tired in a way that felt bone-deep. “Am I dismissed?”

McGonagall answered, “For now. Send Miss Flint in.”

Corin moved toward the door, then stopped. He looked at Vey. “Undersecretary?”

She glanced up.

“If you interview Tobin, do not make him prove he is not what people called him.”

Vey’s face stilled.

McGonagall did not interrupt.

Corin swallowed. “Ask what happened. Ask what he did. Ask what he needs. But do not make him start from wrong.”

Vey held his gaze. For a second, he thought she would rebuke him for instructing a Ministry official. Instead she said, “I will consider that.”

It was not enough.

It was something.

Corin left the office and found Mara standing outside with her arms crossed and her face set in a defensive calm. The official beside her looked relieved to be released from silence when the door opened.

Mara studied Corin. “Terrible?”

“Yes.”

“Useful?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you become clever?”

“I tried not to.”

“Good.”

She stepped toward the office, then paused. Corin saw fear move through her face before she locked it down. She had faced hidden records, a cursed mirror, Darian’s cruelty, and Tobin’s honest questions. Still, walking into a Ministry interview meant something different for her. Her family name had already been written before she arrived at Hogwarts. Now official hands were waiting with fresh parchment.

Jesus appeared in the doorway behind Corin. He looked at Mara. “You are not your file.”

She lifted her chin. “I know.”

He waited.

Her eyes lowered. “I am trying to know.”

“Then come.”

She went in.

The door closed behind her.

Corin remained in the corridor, unsure whether to leave. After a moment, Neville arrived with the vine cutting from the hospital wing, now safely returned from Tobin’s bedside. He looked at the closed office door, then at Corin.

“How did it go?”

“I told the truth.”

Neville nodded. “That often feels less satisfying than people expect.”

“It did.”

They stood together in the corridor while distant student voices moved from lower floors. Through a nearby window, afternoon light fell across the stone in long pale bars. Hogwarts had survived another hour, though survival now meant more truth rather than less danger.

Corin looked toward the hospital wing. “Tobin asked if Jesus helped Ivo even after what he did.”

Neville’s face softened. “That is an important question.”

“I think it is everyone’s question.”

“Yes,” Neville said. “In one form or another.”

Corin leaned against the wall, exhausted. “Do you think the school can really change?”

Neville was quiet for a while. “Not all at once. Not because one cursed ledger broke or one speech was given. Schools are made of habits as much as stones. But habits can be repented of. Rooms can be opened. Names can be corrected. Children can learn different answers than the adults who frightened them.”

“That sounds slow.”

“It is.”

“Everything true is slow now.”

Neville smiled faintly. “Quite a lot of it.”

Inside McGonagall’s office, Mara’s voice rose once, sharp with anger, then steadied. Corin could not hear the words. He was glad. Her story was not his to collect. He had said that at lunch and meant it. Now meaning it required him to stand outside a closed door and let the truth do work without him.

At the end of the corridor, Jesus’ words from the hospital wing returned to him.

The lie must not arrive before love.

Corin thought about how often it already had. In Tobin’s house. In Mara’s file. In Ivo’s classroom. In Harrow’s portfolio. In his own hungry heart. Maybe the work ahead was not only breaking dark objects. Maybe it was learning to arrive differently. To reach the frightened place before the lie did, or at least to answer it before it finished.

The office door opened again.

Mara stepped out.

Her face was pale, and her eyes were wet, but she was upright. Jesus stood behind her, and McGonagall remained inside speaking with Vey. Mara looked at Corin and Neville as if deciding whether to be furious that they existed.

Corin did not ask what happened.

After a moment, Mara said, “I told them about the letters.”

Neville nodded gently. “Good.”

“I hated every second.”

“That does not make it less good.”

She looked at Corin. “Are you going to say something irritating?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because your story is not mine to handle.”

Her expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. “You learned something.”

“I am as surprised as you are.”

She gave a tired breath that nearly became a laugh. Then she leaned back against the wall beside him, not close, but near enough to show she was choosing not to stand alone.

Inside the office, Undersecretary Vey’s voice continued in low conversation with McGonagall. The inquiry was not over. Harrow was not found. Tobin’s aunt had not given up. The Ministry had not decided what kind of institution it would be in this story. Hogwarts had not become whole in a day.

But Mara had told the truth about the letters. Corin had told the truth about the longing to be useful. Tobin had heard his aunt’s cruelty answered before it could finish naming him. Albie had begun writing back to the voice that taught him fear as responsibility. The mirror was empty. The ledger was blank. The vine had rooted itself beneath the classroom in a place where false names would one day be surrendered.

Corin stood in the corridor beside Mara and Neville, tired enough to feel every stone under his feet, and understood that the story had begun turning. Not ending yet. Not healed yet. But turning.

The old fear had spent years teaching the castle how to mark children.

Now Jesus was teaching them how to answer before the mark became a name.

Chapter Ten: The Bedside Where the Lie Was Not Allowed to Finish

Tobin was awake when Jesus entered the hospital wing after lunch. He sat propped against the pillows with a blanket pulled up to his chest and the small remorse vine cutting on the table beside him. The plant leaned toward him with its leaves open, as if it had decided that a boy recovering from fear deserved company more than decoration. Madam Pomfrey stood at the cabinet across the room, grinding something green and stubborn in a stone bowl with more force than the ingredients seemed to require. She looked up when Jesus came in and gave Him the expression of a healer who had already guessed that calm would be needed before the hour was done.

Mara and Corin remained just inside the door because Jesus had not yet invited them closer. They had come with Professor Neville, who carried a small tray of broth and bread that Madam Pomfrey had insisted Tobin needed even if the whole Ministry collapsed into foolishness downstairs. Mara’s face had gone pale again, not with the sharp fear she used around Darian but with something quieter. Corin understood it because he felt a version of it too. They were not afraid of cursed mirrors or hidden ledgers now. They were afraid of the moment when a hurting boy would hear that his aunt had come to claim him and had spoken of him as a problem in front of half the school.

Tobin saw them and looked from one face to another. “Something happened.”

Jesus came to the side of the bed and sat in the chair where He had sat the night before. “Yes.”

Tobin’s hand moved toward the vine cutting, and one leaf brushed his fingers. “Was it my aunt?”

No one answered quickly enough.

He looked away toward the windows. The day outside had brightened, but the hospital wing still carried the soft white stillness of a place where pain was managed in whispers and clean sheets. “I knew she would come.”

Madam Pomfrey set down the bowl. “You do not need to hear every unpleasant word spoken by an unpleasant adult.”

Tobin gave a thin, tired smile. “That means she said a lot.”

Pomfrey huffed. “It means I have opinions and excellent restraint.”

Jesus looked at Tobin. “She came with your brother.”

Tobin’s face changed at once. Not anger first. Hurt. It passed over him so quickly that Corin might have missed it if he had not been watching for the wrong thing. Tobin’s brother had been part of the winter window story, the one that had become evidence against Tobin without carrying the cold door and laughter that came before it. The brother’s presence meant the wound had walked into the castle with two faces.

“What did he say?” Tobin asked.

Jesus answered plainly. “He said you broke a window and that he still has scars.”

Tobin closed his eyes. His hand tightened around the edge of the blanket. “That is true.”

“Yes.”

“I did not mean to cut him.”

“I know.”

“But I did.”

“Yes.”

Tobin opened his eyes again, and tears had gathered there. “Did he tell everyone?”

“Some heard enough.”

The answer hurt him. Corin could see it. Tobin turned his face toward the window, but tears slipped sideways across his temple before he could hide them. The vine leaf bent toward his hand again, and he held it gently between two fingers as if it were the only thing in the room small enough not to accuse him.

Mara took one step forward, then stopped. Jesus did not look at her, but He seemed to know.

Tobin whispered, “What did she say?”

Jesus’ face held sorrow without hesitation. “She said you should be removed. She called you unstable. She said some children are born wrong.”

The hospital wing seemed to tighten around the words. Madam Pomfrey’s mouth became a hard line. Neville looked down at the tray in his hands. Corin felt Mara go still beside him, as if the sentence had struck her too. Some children are born wrong. The same old lie, dressed in family authority, sent by Howler, then carried in person.

Tobin did not speak.

He did not cry harder either. That was worse. He went quiet in a way that made him seem far away from the bed, the room, the plant, and everyone who had come to tell him he was protected. Corin recognized that kind of quiet from the mirror under the classroom. Ivo had carried a version of it into the snow. Mara had worn it as a mask. Corin had hidden inside his own safer form of it, the quiet of competence and secret usefulness.

Jesus leaned closer. “Tobin.”

The boy did not look at Him. “She said it in front of people?”

“Yes.”

“Students?”

“Some.”

He nodded once. “Then it is everywhere.”

“It will be handled.”

Tobin gave a small laugh with no humor in it. “That never means it is not everywhere.”

Jesus did not deny it. “No. Some people will have heard.”

“Then why tell me?” His voice rose suddenly. “Why not let me find out when someone says it wrong in a corridor? That is what usually happens.”

“Because the lie must not arrive before love.”

Tobin turned then. He looked angry and wounded and very young. “It already did.”

Jesus held his gaze. “Then love will answer before it finishes.”

The words did not make Tobin soften. Not yet. He looked toward the doorway, where Mara and Corin stood, and his face tightened with embarrassment. “Why are they here?”

Jesus answered, “Because you asked if they could come later.”

“I did not mean for this.”

“I know.”

Tobin looked at Mara first. “Did you hear her?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

“What did she sound like?”

Mara’s mouth tightened. “Like someone trying to make fear look like experience.”

Tobin stared at her.

Mara stepped closer, but not too close. “She sounded like my father when he had already decided what a person was and did not want new information getting in the way.”

Tobin looked back at the blanket. “That sounds like her.”

Corin expected Jesus to speak again, but He waited. The room gave Tobin space without abandoning him to it. That was a harder balance than Corin had understood before. Silence could be cruelty when it left a person alone under condemnation. It could also be mercy when it refused to rush pain into a lesson.

Tobin finally said, “What did my brother say before the window?”

Jesus did not answer for him. “He admitted he locked you out.”

Tobin’s lips trembled. “Did he say why?”

“He said you were being strange.”

The boy’s face twisted. “I was making spoons move. I thought it was funny. My cousins laughed first. Then one spoon hit the wall. I got scared. They got scared. He called me a freak, and I told him to stop. He dragged me outside and locked the kitchen door. It was snowing.” He swallowed hard. “I kept knocking. He laughed through the glass. I got angry. Everything broke.”

Madam Pomfrey moved as if she wanted to say something, but Jesus lifted His hand slightly, and she held her place. Tobin needed to say it in order, not have it cleaned up before it left him.

Tobin looked at Corin. “You wrote about me watching people from stairwells.”

“Yes,” Corin said.

“I watched because I did not know when people were joking until it was too late. If I stood far enough away, I could leave before they turned on me.”

Corin felt the sentence sink into him. “I did not ask.”

“No.”

“I should have.”

“Yes.”

There was no cruelty in Tobin’s answer. That made it land more heavily. Corin nodded because anything more would have tried to move the pain along before it had finished speaking.

Tobin turned to Mara. “And you knew what it felt like?”

Mara looked uncomfortable. “Not the same way.”

“I did not ask if it was the same.”

She folded her arms, then seemed to notice and forced them down. “Yes. I knew what it was like to have people decide early.”

Tobin looked at the plant. “Then why were you mean to everyone?”

Mara winced, and Corin almost stepped in. Jesus did not. Neville’s face showed sympathy, but he also stayed quiet.

Mara answered slowly. “Because being feared felt better than being pitied or watched.”

“Did it work?”

“For a while.”

“Did it help?”

She looked toward the windows. “No.”

Tobin nodded as if he had expected that and still needed to hear it.

Jesus looked at him. “Your aunt will not take you from this school today.”

The boy’s eyes snapped back to Him. “Today?”

“The matter will continue. She may appeal. Officials may argue. Adults may speak in language that tries to make their fear sound clean. But you will not be handed back today.”

Tobin’s whole body seemed to release and tighten at once. “What about later?”

“We will walk in truth then too.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is not the answer your fear wants.”

Tobin wiped his face with his sleeve, frustrated and ashamed of needing reassurance. “I want You to say never.”

“I know.”

“Why won’t You?”

Jesus’ voice softened. “Because love does not need to lie to be kind.”

Tobin looked away, angry again. Yet the anger had life in it. It was not the dead quiet from moments before. Corin found himself almost relieved by it.

Neville stepped forward with the tray. “Madam Pomfrey says you need to eat.”

Tobin looked at the broth with suspicion. “She always says that.”

Madam Pomfrey lifted her chin. “Because I am almost always right.”

“Almost?”

“Eat, Mr. Marr.”

He took the bowl with both hands, but he did not drink yet. “Did my brother ask about me?”

Everyone paused.

Jesus answered, “He asked whether you were expelled.”

Tobin’s mouth twisted. “That is not asking about me.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But he looked back when he left.”

The boy’s eyes lowered to the broth. “That means nothing.”

“It may mean little. It does not mean nothing.”

Tobin stared at the bowl for a long time. “I hate him.”

Jesus did not flinch. “I know.”

“I do not want to forgive him.”

“I know.”

“Are You going to tell me I have to?”

“I am going to tell you not to let hatred become the place where he still holds you outside in the snow.”

Tobin’s face broke then, not with loud crying, but with the kind of pain that made his breathing uneven. He set the bowl down before he dropped it. Mara looked away to give him some privacy. Corin did too, though he could still hear the boy trying to pull himself back together.

Madam Pomfrey moved in then, not with softness but with command. She adjusted the pillows, placed a cloth in Tobin’s hand, and muttered that people who made recovering children discuss family wounds before finishing broth should be forced to drink bone-mending potion for character improvement. Jesus accepted the remark with quiet patience. Tobin almost smiled again through tears, which seemed to be Madam Pomfrey’s true aim.

After a while, Tobin lifted his head. “Can they stay?”

Jesus looked at him. “Corin and Mara?”

“Yes. Not all day. Just for a little.”

Mara seemed surprised enough to forget to hide it. Corin nodded, but waited for Jesus’ permission. Jesus stood from the chair and motioned for them to come closer. Neville placed the tray on the side table and went to speak quietly with Pomfrey near the cabinet, giving the three students room without leaving them alone.

Corin took the chair at the foot of the bed. Mara remained standing until Tobin looked at the empty chair beside him. She sat stiffly, as if chairs near hospital beds had rules she had not learned.

For several breaths, none of them spoke.

Then Tobin said, “I heard there was a mirror.”

Mara glanced at Corin. “You heard quickly.”

“A portrait told me before Madam Pomfrey threatened it.”

Corin leaned forward. “It was under the Defense classroom.”

“Was it bad?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

Tobin looked at her. “Did it have names?”

“Worse,” she said. “It had a boy.”

Corin wondered if they should be telling him this, but Jesus remained close enough to hear and did not stop them. That meant the truth was allowed, though not everything at once.

Tobin’s fingers touched the vine leaf again. “A boy like me?”

Mara answered before Corin could. “A boy people failed before he made the worst choice.”

Tobin’s face tightened. “That sounds like me.”

“No.” Mara’s voice was firm. “It sounds like a warning not to let it become you.”

He stared at her, and she looked startled by her own words. Corin saw the cost of them. Mara did not yet know how to comfort without sounding like she was ordering someone to survive. But Tobin seemed to receive it better than a gentle phrase might have been received from someone else.

“What was his name?” Tobin asked.

“Ivo Strake,” Corin said.

Tobin whispered it once. “Is he still there?”

“No,” Mara said. “Jesus brought him out.”

Tobin’s eyes moved toward Jesus, who stood by the window in quiet conversation with Neville. “Was he alive?”

Corin thought about how to answer. “Not like us.”

“Was he dead?”

“Not exactly.”

Tobin frowned. “That is unhelpful.”

Mara gave a dry breath. “Yes. The whole thing was like that.”

Corin looked at her, and for one strange second they shared something almost like normal student frustration. Then Tobin looked at his hands.

“Did he hurt people?”

“Yes,” Corin said.

“Did Jesus still help him?”

Mara answered, “Yes.”

Tobin’s eyes filled again, but he did not cry this time. “Good.”

That one word held so much that the room seemed to quiet around it. Corin understood. Tobin needed to know harm did not close the door forever. Not because harm was small. Because if Ivo could be helped after opening himself to darkness, then Tobin was not beyond help for raising a wand while terrified. Mara perhaps needed the same truth for the pins. Corin needed it for the key. Every one of them had some version of the question hidden inside them. Did Jesus still help the person who had done the thing?

Mara looked toward the bedside table. “Your plant likes you.”

Tobin looked offended. “It is not my plant.”

“It followed you into the entrance hall.”

“I carried it.”

“That is usually how following works with plants.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, then looked at the vine. “Professor Longbottom said it responds to confession.”

“It also judges avoidance,” Corin said.

Tobin looked at him. “That sounds like a plant you would deserve.”

Corin accepted the hit. “Yes.”

Mara glanced away quickly, but not before Corin saw the small movement at the corner of her mouth.

Tobin looked suddenly worried. “Are people angry at you?”

Corin blinked. “Me?”

“You said what Harrow did in the Great Hall. Are they angry?”

“Some.”

“Good.”

Corin looked down. “Probably.”

“I do not mean good like I want you hurt.” Tobin’s voice was awkward now, as if kindness embarrassed him. “I mean good that they know. Not everything. Just enough.”

Corin nodded. “Yes.”

Tobin looked at Mara. “Are they angry at you?”

“They always were.”

“That is not an answer.”

She leaned back in the chair. “Some are afraid. Some are curious. Some think I am pretending. Some liked me better when I was cruel because then they knew how to stand near me.”

Tobin seemed to consider that. “Do you miss it?”

Mara went still.

Corin expected her to deflect. She did not.

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes. Not the worst parts. Or maybe the worst parts too. I miss how simple it felt to enter a room and already know I would not be the one backing away.”

Tobin nodded slowly. “I think I miss being alone before everyone knew I was alone.”

That sentence made Mara look at him fully.

Corin felt it too. Exposure had not removed loneliness for Tobin. It had changed its shape. Before, he could hide and call it privacy. Now people knew enough to watch him with pity, fear, or interest. Being known wrongly was terrible. Being known partly could feel dangerous too.

Jesus returned to the bed then. “You are not required to let everyone near you because the truth has begun.”

Tobin looked relieved. “Good.”

“But do not confuse being protected with being hidden.”

The relief became less simple. “I knew there was another part.”

Jesus’ eyes warmed. “There often is.”

Madam Pomfrey came back with a fresh cup. “The next part is drinking this.”

Tobin smelled it and recoiled. “What is that?”

“Something that will calm your nerves.”

“It smells like wet socks and pepper.”

“Then your sense of smell remains functional.”

Mara looked at the cup with sympathy. “I would rather face the mirror again.”

Pomfrey pointed at her. “Do not tempt me to prescribe it for visitors.”

Mara closed her mouth.

Tobin drank with the expression of someone accepting betrayal from medicine itself. Afterward, he leaned back against the pillows, tired settling over his face. Pomfrey’s potion worked quickly. His eyes became heavy, though he fought it with the stubbornness of a boy afraid sleep would make him miss decisions about his own life.

Jesus placed a hand on his shoulder. “Rest.”

Tobin whispered, “Will You be here when I wake?”

“I will come.”

“That is not the same.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But it is true.”

Tobin considered that through the fog of potion, then nodded. “All right.”

His eyes closed.

Mara and Corin stood quietly. The vine leaf remained resting against Tobin’s hand until sleep took him fully. Then it lifted and turned toward Jesus, as if awaiting its next instruction.

Outside the hospital wing, the corridor felt louder even though no one was speaking nearby. Mara walked a few steps ahead, then stopped near the same rain-washed window where she had spoken with Jesus the day before. This time the glass reflected late afternoon light instead of gray rain. Corin stopped beside her because it seemed expected, or maybe because he did not know where else to stand.

Mara looked down the empty corridor. “He asked if I missed it.”

“Yes.”

“I hated that.”

“You answered.”

“I know.” She looked at him. “Do you?”

“Miss it?”

“The key. Harrow. Feeling useful.”

Corin looked toward the far end of the corridor. “Not Harrow. Not really. But I miss the feeling before I knew what it was costing.”

Mara nodded. “That is the part people do not understand. Wrong things would be easier to leave if they only felt ugly.”

He thought of the clean neatness of Harrow’s portfolio, the warmth of being trusted, the sharp comfort of standing on the side of those who knew. “Yes.”

Jesus stood a short distance away, speaking with Neville, but His presence seemed to hold the corridor even when He was not part of their conversation. Mara glanced toward Him, then back at Corin.

“Do you think He ever misses anything wrong?” she asked.

Corin frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, He was tempted, was He not? That is what people say. In the wilderness. Stones to bread. Kingdoms. Proving Himself.” She looked uncomfortable, as if discussing Scripture in a corridor felt too close to vulnerability. “Do you think the wrong things sounded ugly to Him, or did they sound like something He could have wanted for good reasons?”

Corin did not know how to answer. Jesus did.

He turned from Neville and looked at Mara. “Temptation often offers a good thing without the Father.”

Mara froze, clearly startled that He had heard. “That was not exactly a question for You.”

“It was exactly a question for Me.”

She looked down. “Then answer more.”

Jesus came closer. “Bread is good. Authority rightly held is good. Trust in the Father is good. The tempter offered good words in a false order. He asked Me to take apart from love what was only holy inside love.”

Corin listened carefully. The answer did not make temptation sound small. It made it more serious. Harrow had offered protection, responsibility, and courage, but pulled them away from love. Mara’s pins had offered safety apart from trust. Tobin’s raised wand had offered control apart from care. Albie’s note had offered vigilance apart from humility. Wrong had not always entered wearing a monstrous face. Sometimes it entered carrying a good word stolen from its proper home.

Mara’s voice was low. “So missing the feeling does not mean I want the evil.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But it means you must not pretend the feeling is harmless.”

She nodded slowly.

Corin looked at Him. “What do we do when we miss it?”

“Tell the truth before fear finds a use for the longing.”

The answer was simple enough to remember and hard enough to require help. Corin felt it settle beside the other sentences of the last two days, not as a slogan but as a tool he would need again. Tell the truth before fear finds a use for the longing.

Neville joined them, carrying the tray now that Tobin had finally eaten some of the broth. “Professor McGonagall has asked for both of you.”

Mara closed her eyes briefly. “Again?”

“I believe this is about the Ministry interviews.”

Corin’s stomach tightened. “Now?”

“Soon. She wants to prepare you first.”

Mara looked at Jesus. “You said You would be there.”

“I will.”

She nodded as if trying not to show relief.

They walked toward McGonagall’s office once more, though the castle felt different in the afternoon light. Students had been kept in house groups most of the day, but a few moved through corridors under supervision. The mood had shifted from shock to strain. Shock freezes a school. Strain tests what the school will become afterward. Corin could feel questions following them from every doorway. Had Tobin heard? Had the Ministry arrived? Was Harrow coming back? Were names going to be revealed? Was Mara still dangerous? Was Corin being expelled? Every unasked question seemed to crawl along the walls.

At the gargoyle, McGonagall was already waiting. Undersecretary Vey stood beside her with two officials, one carrying a black case and the other holding a stack of forms. Vey looked at Corin and Mara the way one might look at witnesses who were also evidence. Corin disliked the look and then checked himself. Dislike could be accurate without becoming judgment. That distinction was tiring.

Vey spoke first. “Mr. Vale. Miss Flint. We will conduct preliminary interviews regarding Professor Harrow’s actions, the hidden records, and any related student misconduct.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Student misconduct.”

McGonagall stepped in. “The interviews will be supervised. They will not be fishing expeditions. They will not require students to reveal private matters unrelated to the inquiry. They will not use language that presumes guilt beyond what is being examined.”

Vey’s lips pressed together. “Headmistress, I am familiar with procedure.”

Jesus looked at her. “Procedure can still carry fear.”

The undersecretary looked at Him, and for the first time Corin saw real frustration break through her polished control. “And mercy can still obstruct necessary action.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

The answer surprised her.

He continued, “That is why mercy must remain truthful. But your necessary action must also be judged. Necessity has excused much evil.”

Vey’s face tightened. “You speak as if institutions are inherently cruel.”

“No. I speak as if souls can hide inside them.”

The corridor went quiet.

One of the officials behind Vey looked down at his forms.

McGonagall opened the office door. “We will begin with Mr. Vale.”

Mara looked at Corin. “Do not become clever.”

He gave a faint breath. “That is your encouragement?”

“Yes.”

“It may help.”

“Good.”

He entered the office with Jesus and McGonagall. Vey and one official followed. The other remained outside with Mara, which Corin suspected Mara would enjoy less than the interview itself.

McGonagall’s office had been rearranged for the inquiry. The desk was cleared except for Corin’s written statement, Albie’s note, sealed evidence boxes, and a Pensieve standing near the window. Corin had seen Pensieves before but had never used one. This one shimmered faintly, silver and deep, holding memory like moonlight made liquid.

Vey saw him looking at it. “We may request memory confirmation.”

Corin stiffened.

McGonagall spoke at once. “Request, not compel.”

The official with Vey made a note.

Jesus stood beside the chair where Corin was meant to sit. “Do not surrender memory to fear. If truth requires it, you will not be alone.”

Corin nodded, though the idea of placing his memories into an object while Ministry officials leaned over them made him feel exposed in a way different from confession. Words could still be shaped carefully. Memories had their own force. They could reveal things he had not known he was showing.

He sat.

Vey began with formal questions. Name. House. Year. Date of first contact with Professor Harrow. Whether any coercion was used. Whether any reward was promised. Whether any student was threatened. The questions were clean at first, and Corin answered as plainly as he could. McGonagall listened without interrupting. Jesus stood near the window, His presence steady.

Then Vey’s questions shifted.

“When Professor Harrow asked you to observe students, did you believe he had legitimate safety concerns?”

“Yes.”

“Were those concerns always baseless?”

Corin paused. “No.”

Vey looked up. “Explain.”

“Some students were angry. Some had harmful objects. Some were isolated. Some were being influenced by family or fear. Those things mattered.” He took a breath. “But he used those true things wrongly.”

Vey wrote something. “Wrongly in what sense?”

“He made them into whole identities. He used them to isolate people. He wanted fear to produce the behavior he claimed to be preventing.”

Vey’s pen paused. “That is a serious claim.”

“Yes.”

“Is it your claim or something Professor Jesus told you to say?”

Corin felt the trap in the question. Not because it was completely unfair. Jesus had taught him language he did not have before. But Vey’s phrasing made truth sound like contamination.

Jesus did not speak.

Corin answered, “I learned the difference because He showed it to me. But I know what Harrow did because I was there.”

Vey studied him. “You were also complicit.”

“Yes.”

“That may affect your credibility.”

“Yes.”

McGonagall looked at him with something like approval. Vey seemed less pleased by an answer that did not defend itself.

She continued. “Did Professor Harrow ever instruct you to provoke Tobin Marr?”

“No.”

“Did he instruct you to provoke Mara Flint?”

“No.”

“Did he instruct you to gather information that could be used to pressure them?”

Corin stopped.

The room seemed to wait with him.

“Yes,” he said.

Vey leaned slightly forward. “Specific words.”

Corin closed his eyes briefly and returned to Harrow’s temporary room, the portfolio, the tea he had not drunk, the rain tapping at the window. “He said some students reveal the truth only when the right pressure removes the performance. He said Mara Flint’s cruelty was a performance hiding deeper allegiance, and Tobin Marr’s quiet was a pressure chamber. He told me pressure is not harm if it prevents greater harm.”

The official wrote quickly.

Vey’s expression remained controlled, but her eyes sharpened. “Did you believe him?”

“At first.”

“And later?”

“I wanted to.”

“That is not the same as believing.”

“No.”

“Why did you want to?”

Corin glanced toward Jesus, then back at Vey. “Because if he was wrong, I was wrong.”

For the first time, Vey seemed to receive an answer without turning it at once into another question. She looked at him for a long moment. “That is often why adults continue too.”

The sentence surprised him.

McGonagall noticed too. Her face did not change much, but her eyes moved to Vey with sharper interest.

Jesus said nothing.

The interview continued, but the air had shifted slightly. Vey was not softened, exactly. She still pressed details, dates, words, and actions. Yet she no longer sounded as if she were trying to force Corin into either victim or offender. She allowed him to be both manipulated and responsible, which felt closer to the truth and more painful than either simpler category.

Near the end, she asked about Harrow’s paper bird.

“What did you feel when he addressed you in the Great Hall?”

Corin looked down at his ink-stained thumb. “Relief.”

Vey’s eyebrows lifted. “Relief?”

“Yes. For a moment. He made it sound like I did not have to be ashamed. Like confession was something being done to me by people who wanted me small.”

“And then?”

“Then I remembered that when he made me feel large, he was making other people smaller.”

The office fell quiet.

Vey closed the folder in front of her. “Thank you, Mr. Vale. We may need further questions.”

Corin stood, tired in a way that felt bone-deep. “Am I dismissed?”

McGonagall answered, “For now. Send Miss Flint in.”

Corin moved toward the door, then stopped. He looked at Vey. “Undersecretary?”

She glanced up.

“If you interview Tobin, do not make him prove he is not what people called him.”

Vey’s face stilled.

McGonagall did not interrupt.

Corin swallowed. “Ask what happened. Ask what he did. Ask what he needs. But do not make him start from wrong.”

Vey held his gaze. For a second, he thought she would rebuke him for instructing a Ministry official. Instead she said, “I will consider that.”

It was not enough.

It was something.

Corin left the office and found Mara standing outside with her arms crossed and her face set in a defensive calm. The official beside her looked relieved to be released from silence when the door opened.

Mara studied Corin. “Terrible?”

“Yes.”

“Useful?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you become clever?”

“I tried not to.”

“Good.”

She stepped toward the office, then paused. Corin saw fear move through her face before she locked it down. She had faced hidden records, a cursed mirror, Darian’s cruelty, and Tobin’s honest questions. Still, walking into a Ministry interview meant something different for her. Her family name had already been written before she arrived at Hogwarts. Now official hands were waiting with fresh parchment.

Jesus appeared in the doorway behind Corin. He looked at Mara. “You are not your file.”

She lifted her chin. “I know.”

He waited.

Her eyes lowered. “I am trying to know.”

“Then come.”

She went in.

The door closed behind her.

Corin remained in the corridor, unsure whether to leave. After a moment, Neville arrived with the vine cutting from the hospital wing, now safely returned from Tobin’s bedside. He looked at the closed office door, then at Corin.

“How did it go?”

“I told the truth.”

Neville nodded. “That often feels less satisfying than people expect.”

“It did.”

They stood together in the corridor while distant student voices moved from lower floors. Through a nearby window, afternoon light fell across the stone in long pale bars. Hogwarts had survived another hour, though survival now meant more truth rather than less danger.

Corin looked toward the hospital wing. “Tobin asked if Jesus helped Ivo even after what he did.”

Neville’s face softened. “That is an important question.”

“I think it is everyone’s question.”

“Yes,” Neville said. “In one form or another.”

Corin leaned against the wall, exhausted. “Do you think the school can really change?”

Neville was quiet for a while. “Not all at once. Not because one cursed ledger broke or one speech was given. Schools are made of habits as much as stones. But habits can be repented of. Rooms can be opened. Names can be corrected. Children can learn different answers than the adults who frightened them.”

“That sounds slow.”

“It is.”

“Everything true is slow now.”

Neville smiled faintly. “Quite a lot of it.”

Inside McGonagall’s office, Mara’s voice rose once, sharp with anger, then steadied. Corin could not hear the words. He was glad. Her story was not his to collect. He had said that at lunch and meant it. Now meaning it required him to stand outside a closed door and let the truth do work without him.

At the end of the corridor, Jesus’ words from the hospital wing returned to him.

The lie must not arrive before love.

Corin thought about how often it already had. In Tobin’s house. In Mara’s file. In Ivo’s classroom. In Harrow’s portfolio. In his own hungry heart. Maybe the work ahead was not only breaking dark objects. Maybe it was learning to arrive differently. To reach the frightened place before the lie did, or at least to answer it before it finished.

The office door opened again.

Mara stepped out.

Her face was pale, and her eyes were wet, but she was upright. Jesus stood behind her, and McGonagall remained inside speaking with Vey. Mara looked at Corin and Neville as if deciding whether to be furious that they existed.

Corin did not ask what happened.

After a moment, Mara said, “I told them about the letters.”

Neville nodded gently. “Good.”

“I hated every second.”

“That does not make it less good.”

She looked at Corin. “Are you going to say something irritating?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because your story is not mine to handle.”

Her expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. “You learned something.”

“I am as surprised as you are.”

She gave a tired breath that nearly became a laugh. Then she leaned back against the wall beside him, not close, but near enough to show she was choosing not to stand alone.

Inside the office, Undersecretary Vey’s voice continued in low conversation with McGonagall. The inquiry was not over. Harrow was not found. Tobin’s aunt had not given up. The Ministry had not decided what kind of institution it would be in this story. Hogwarts had not become whole in a day.

But Mara had told the truth about the letters. Corin had told the truth about the longing to be useful. Tobin had heard his aunt’s cruelty answered before it could finish naming him. Albie had begun writing back to the voice that taught him fear as responsibility. The mirror was empty. The ledger was blank. The vine had rooted itself beneath the classroom in a place where false names would one day be surrendered.

Corin stood in the corridor beside Mara and Neville, tired enough to feel every stone under his feet, and understood that the story had begun turning. Not ending yet. Not healed yet. But turning.

The old fear had spent years teaching the castle how to mark children.

Now Jesus was teaching them how to answer before the mark became a name.

Chapter Ten: The Bedside Where the Lie Was Not Allowed to Finish

Tobin was awake when Jesus entered the hospital wing after lunch. He sat propped against the pillows with a blanket pulled up to his chest and the small remorse vine cutting on the table beside him. The plant leaned toward him with its leaves open, as if it had decided that a boy recovering from fear deserved company more than decoration. Madam Pomfrey stood at the cabinet across the room, grinding something green and stubborn in a stone bowl with more force than the ingredients seemed to require. She looked up when Jesus came in and gave Him the expression of a healer who had already guessed that calm would be needed before the hour was done.

Mara and Corin remained just inside the door because Jesus had not yet invited them closer. They had come with Professor Neville, who carried a small tray of broth and bread that Madam Pomfrey had insisted Tobin needed even if the whole Ministry collapsed into foolishness downstairs. Mara’s face had gone pale again, not with the sharp fear she used around Darian but with something quieter. Corin understood it because he felt a version of it too. They were not afraid of cursed mirrors or hidden ledgers now. They were afraid of the moment when a hurting boy would hear that his aunt had come to claim him and had spoken of him as a problem in front of half the school.

Tobin saw them and looked from one face to another. “Something happened.”

Jesus came to the side of the bed and sat in the chair where He had sat the night before. “Yes.”

Tobin’s hand moved toward the vine cutting, and one leaf brushed his fingers. “Was it my aunt?”

No one answered quickly enough.

He looked away toward the windows. The day outside had brightened, but the hospital wing still carried the soft white stillness of a place where pain was managed in whispers and clean sheets. “I knew she would come.”

Madam Pomfrey set down the bowl. “You do not need to hear every unpleasant word spoken by an unpleasant adult.”

Tobin gave a thin, tired smile. “That means she said a lot.”

Pomfrey huffed. “It means I have opinions and excellent restraint.”

Jesus looked at Tobin. “She came with your brother.”

Tobin’s face changed at once. Not anger first. Hurt. It passed over him so quickly that Corin might have missed it if he had not been watching for the wrong thing. Tobin’s brother had been part of the winter window story, the one that had become evidence against Tobin without carrying the cold door and laughter that came before it. The brother’s presence meant the wound had walked into the castle with two faces.

“What did he say?” Tobin asked.

Jesus answered plainly. “He said you broke a window and that he still has scars.”

Tobin closed his eyes. His hand tightened around the edge of the blanket. “That is true.”

“Yes.”

“I did not mean to cut him.”

“I know.”

“But I did.”

“Yes.”

Tobin opened his eyes again, and tears had gathered there. “Did he tell everyone?”

“Some heard enough.”

The answer hurt him. Corin could see it. Tobin turned his face toward the window, but tears slipped sideways across his temple before he could hide them. The vine leaf bent toward his hand again, and he held it gently between two fingers as if it were the only thing in the room small enough not to accuse him.

Mara took one step forward, then stopped. Jesus did not look at her, but He seemed to know.

Tobin whispered, “What did she say?”

Jesus’ face held sorrow without hesitation. “She said you should be removed. She called you unstable. She said some children are born wrong.”

The hospital wing seemed to tighten around the words. Madam Pomfrey’s mouth became a hard line. Neville looked down at the tray in his hands. Corin felt Mara go still beside him, as if the sentence had struck her too. Some children are born wrong. The same old lie, dressed in family authority, sent by Howler, then carried in person.

Tobin did not speak.

He did not cry harder either. That was worse. He went quiet in a way that made him seem far away from the bed, the room, the plant, and everyone who had come to tell him he was protected. Corin recognized that kind of quiet from the mirror under the classroom. Ivo had carried a version of it into the snow. Mara had worn it as a mask. Corin had hidden inside his own safer form of it, the quiet of competence and secret usefulness.

Jesus leaned closer. “Tobin.”

The boy did not look at Him. “She said it in front of people?”

“Yes.”

“Students?”

“Some.”

He nodded once. “Then it is everywhere.”

“It will be handled.”

Tobin gave a small laugh with no humor in it. “That never means it is not everywhere.”

Jesus did not deny it. “No. Some people will have heard.”

“Then why tell me?” His voice rose suddenly. “Why not let me find out when someone says it wrong in a corridor? That is what usually happens.”

“Because the lie must not arrive before love.”

Tobin turned then. He looked angry and wounded and very young. “It already did.”

Jesus held his gaze. “Then love will answer before it finishes.”

The words did not make Tobin soften. Not yet. He looked toward the doorway, where Mara and Corin stood, and his face tightened with embarrassment. “Why are they here?”

Jesus answered, “Because you asked if they could come later.”

“I did not mean for this.”

“I know.”

Tobin looked at Mara first. “Did you hear her?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

“What did she sound like?”

Mara’s mouth tightened. “Like someone trying to make fear look like experience.”

Tobin stared at her.

Mara stepped closer, but not too close. “She sounded like my father when he had already decided what a person was and did not want new information getting in the way.”

Tobin looked back at the blanket. “That sounds like her.”

Corin expected Jesus to speak again, but He waited. The room gave Tobin space without abandoning him to it. That was a harder balance than Corin had understood before. Silence could be cruelty when it left a person alone under condemnation. It could also be mercy when it refused to rush pain into a lesson.

Tobin finally said, “What did my brother say before the window?”

Jesus did not answer for him. “He admitted he locked you out.”

Tobin’s lips trembled. “Did he say why?”

“He said you were being strange.”

The boy’s face twisted. “I was making spoons move. I thought it was funny. My cousins laughed first. Then one spoon hit the wall. I got scared. They got scared. He called me a freak, and I told him to stop. He dragged me outside and locked the kitchen door. It was snowing.” He swallowed hard. “I kept knocking. He laughed through the glass. I got angry. Everything broke.”

Madam Pomfrey moved as if she wanted to say something, but Jesus lifted His hand slightly, and she held her place. Tobin needed to say it in order, not have it cleaned up before it left him.

Tobin looked at Corin. “You wrote about me watching people from stairwells.”

“Yes,” Corin said.

“I watched because I did not know when people were joking until it was too late. If I stood far enough away, I could leave before they turned on me.”

Corin felt the sentence sink into him. “I did not ask.”

“No.”

“I should have.”

“Yes.”

There was no cruelty in Tobin’s answer. That made it land more heavily. Corin nodded because anything more would have tried to move the pain along before it had finished speaking.

Tobin turned to Mara. “And you knew what it felt like?”

Mara looked uncomfortable. “Not the same way.”

“I did not ask if it was the same.”

She folded her arms, then seemed to notice and forced them down. “Yes. I knew what it was like to have people decide early.”

Tobin looked at the plant. “Then why were you mean to everyone?”

Mara winced, and Corin almost stepped in. Jesus did not. Neville’s face showed sympathy, but he also stayed quiet.

Mara answered slowly. “Because being feared felt better than being pitied or watched.”

“Did it work?”

“For a while.”

“Did it help?”

She looked toward the windows. “No.”

Tobin nodded as if he had expected that and still needed to hear it.

Jesus looked at him. “Your aunt will not take you from this school today.”

The boy’s eyes snapped back to Him. “Today?”

“The matter will continue. She may appeal. Officials may argue. Adults may speak in language that tries to make their fear sound clean. But you will not be handed back today.”

Tobin’s whole body seemed to release and tighten at once. “What about later?”

“We will walk in truth then too.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is not the answer your fear wants.”

Tobin wiped his face with his sleeve, frustrated and ashamed of needing reassurance. “I want You to say never.”

“I know.”

“Why won’t You?”

Jesus’ voice softened. “Because love does not need to lie to be kind.”

Tobin looked away, angry again. Yet the anger had life in it. It was not the dead quiet from moments before. Corin found himself almost relieved by it.

Neville stepped forward with the tray. “Madam Pomfrey says you need to eat.”

Tobin looked at the broth with suspicion. “She always says that.”

Madam Pomfrey lifted her chin. “Because I am almost always right.”

“Almost?”

“Eat, Mr. Marr.”

He took the bowl with both hands, but he did not drink yet. “Did my brother ask about me?”

Everyone paused.

Jesus answered, “He asked whether you were expelled.”

Tobin’s mouth twisted. “That is not asking about me.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But he looked back when he left.”

The boy’s eyes lowered to the broth. “That means nothing.”

“It may mean little. It does not mean nothing.”

Tobin stared at the bowl for a long time. “I hate him.”

Jesus did not flinch. “I know.”

“I do not want to forgive him.”

“I know.”

“Are You going to tell me I have to?”

“I am going to tell you not to let hatred become the place where he still holds you outside in the snow.”

Tobin’s face broke then, not with loud crying, but with the kind of pain that made his breathing uneven. He set the bowl down before he dropped it. Mara looked away to give him some privacy. Corin did too, though he could still hear the boy trying to pull himself back together.

Madam Pomfrey moved in then, not with softness but with command. She adjusted the pillows, placed a cloth in Tobin’s hand, and muttered that people who made recovering children discuss family wounds before finishing broth should be forced to drink bone-mending potion for character improvement. Jesus accepted the remark with quiet patience. Tobin almost smiled again through tears, which seemed to be Madam Pomfrey’s true aim.

After a while, Tobin lifted his head. “Can they stay?”

Jesus looked at him. “Corin and Mara?”

“Yes. Not all day. Just for a little.”

Mara seemed surprised enough to forget to hide it. Corin nodded, but waited for Jesus’ permission. Jesus stood from the chair and motioned for them to come closer. Neville placed the tray on the side table and went to speak quietly with Pomfrey near the cabinet, giving the three students room without leaving them alone.

Corin took the chair at the foot of the bed. Mara remained standing until Tobin looked at the empty chair beside him. She sat stiffly, as if chairs near hospital beds had rules she had not learned.

For several breaths, none of them spoke.

Then Tobin said, “I heard there was a mirror.”

Mara glanced at Corin. “You heard quickly.”

“A portrait told me before Madam Pomfrey threatened it.”

Corin leaned forward. “It was under the Defense classroom.”

“Was it bad?”

“Yes,” Mara said.

Tobin looked at her. “Did it have names?”

“Worse,” she said. “It had a boy.”

Corin wondered if they should be telling him this, but Jesus remained close enough to hear and did not stop them. That meant the truth was allowed, though not everything at once.

Tobin’s fingers touched the vine leaf again. “A boy like me?”

Mara answered before Corin could. “A boy people failed before he made the worst choice.”

Tobin’s face tightened. “That sounds like me.”

“No.” Mara’s voice was firm. “It sounds like a warning not to let it become you.”

He stared at her, and she looked startled by her own words. Corin saw the cost of them. Mara did not yet know how to comfort without sounding like she was ordering someone to survive. But Tobin seemed to receive it better than a gentle phrase might have been received from someone else.

“What was his name?” Tobin asked.

“Ivo Strake,” Corin said.

Tobin whispered it once. “Is he still there?”

“No,” Mara said. “Jesus brought him out.”

Tobin’s eyes moved toward Jesus, who stood by the window in quiet conversation with Neville. “Was he alive?”

Corin thought about how to answer. “Not like us.”

“Was he dead?”

“Not exactly.”

Tobin frowned. “That is unhelpful.”

Mara gave a dry breath. “Yes. The whole thing was like that.”

Corin looked at her, and for one strange second they shared something almost like normal student frustration. Then Tobin looked at his hands.

“Did he hurt people?”

“Yes,” Corin said.

“Did Jesus still help him?”

Mara answered, “Yes.”

Tobin’s eyes filled again, but he did not cry this time. “Good.”

That one word held so much that the room seemed to quiet around it. Corin understood. Tobin needed to know harm did not close the door forever. Not because harm was small. Because if Ivo could be helped after opening himself to darkness, then Tobin was not beyond help for raising a wand while terrified. Mara perhaps needed the same truth for the pins. Corin needed it for the key. Every one of them had some version of the question hidden inside them. Did Jesus still help the person who had done the thing?

Mara looked toward the bedside table. “Your plant likes you.”

Tobin looked offended. “It is not my plant.”

“It followed you into the entrance hall.”

“I carried it.”

“That is usually how following works with plants.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, then looked at the vine. “Professor Longbottom said it responds to confession.”

“It also judges avoidance,” Corin said.

Tobin looked at him. “That sounds like a plant you would deserve.”

Corin accepted the hit. “Yes.”

Mara glanced away quickly, but not before Corin saw the small movement at the corner of her mouth.

Tobin looked suddenly worried. “Are people angry at you?”

Corin blinked. “Me?”

“You said what Harrow did in the Great Hall. Are they angry?”

“Some.”

“Good.”

Corin looked down. “Probably.”

“I do not mean good like I want you hurt.” Tobin’s voice was awkward now, as if kindness embarrassed him. “I mean good that they know. Not everything. Just enough.”

Corin nodded. “Yes.”

Tobin looked at Mara. “Are they angry at you?”

“They always were.”

“That is not an answer.”

She leaned back in the chair. “Some are afraid. Some are curious. Some think I am pretending. Some liked me better when I was cruel because then they knew how to stand near me.”

Tobin seemed to consider that. “Do you miss it?”

Mara went still.

Corin expected her to deflect. She did not.

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes. Not the worst parts. Or maybe the worst parts too. I miss how simple it felt to enter a room and already know I would not be the one backing away.”

Tobin nodded slowly. “I think I miss being alone before everyone knew I was alone.”

That sentence made Mara look at him fully.

Corin felt it too. Exposure had not removed loneliness for Tobin. It had changed its shape. Before, he could hide and call it privacy. Now people knew enough to watch him with pity, fear, or interest. Being known wrongly was terrible. Being known partly could feel dangerous too.

Jesus returned to the bed then. “You are not required to let everyone near you because the truth has begun.”

Tobin looked relieved. “Good.”

“But do not confuse being protected with being hidden.”

The relief became less simple. “I knew there was another part.”

Jesus’ eyes warmed. “There often is.”

Madam Pomfrey came back with a fresh cup. “The next part is drinking this.”

Tobin smelled it and recoiled. “What is that?”

“Something that will calm your nerves.”

“It smells like wet socks and pepper.”

“Then your sense of smell remains functional.”

Mara looked at the cup with sympathy. “I would rather face the mirror again.”

Pomfrey pointed at her. “Do not tempt me to prescribe it for visitors.”

Mara closed her mouth.

Tobin drank with the expression of someone accepting betrayal from medicine itself. Afterward, he leaned back against the pillows, tired settling over his face. Pomfrey’s potion worked quickly. His eyes became heavy, though he fought it with the stubbornness of a boy afraid sleep would make him miss decisions about his own life.

Jesus placed a hand on his shoulder. “Rest.”

Tobin whispered, “Will You be here when I wake?”

“I will come.”

“That is not the same.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But it is true.”

Tobin considered that through the fog of potion, then nodded. “All right.”

His eyes closed.

Mara and Corin stood quietly. The vine leaf remained resting against Tobin’s hand until sleep took him fully. Then it lifted and turned toward Jesus, as if awaiting its next instruction.

Outside the hospital wing, the corridor felt louder even though no one was speaking nearby. Mara walked a few steps ahead, then stopped near the same rain-washed window where she had spoken with Jesus the day before. This time the glass reflected late afternoon light instead of gray rain. Corin stopped beside her because it seemed expected, or maybe because he did not know where else to stand.

Mara looked down the empty corridor. “He asked if I missed it.”

“Yes.”

“I hated that.”

“You answered.”

“I know.” She looked at him. “Do you?”

“Miss it?”

“The key. Harrow. Feeling useful.”

Corin looked toward the far end of the corridor. “Not Harrow. Not really. But I miss the feeling before I knew what it was costing.”

Mara nodded. “That is the part people do not understand. Wrong things would be easier to leave if they only felt ugly.”

He thought of the clean neatness of Harrow’s portfolio, the warmth of being trusted, the sharp comfort of standing on the side of those who knew. “Yes.”

Jesus stood a short distance away, speaking with Neville, but His presence seemed to hold the corridor even when He was not part of their conversation. Mara glanced toward Him, then back at Corin.

“Do you think He ever misses anything wrong?” she asked.

Corin frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, He was tempted, was He not? That is what people say. In the wilderness. Stones to bread. Kingdoms. Proving Himself.” She looked uncomfortable, as if discussing Scripture in a corridor felt too close to vulnerability. “Do you think the wrong things sounded ugly to Him, or did they sound like something He could have wanted for good reasons?”

Corin did not know how to answer. Jesus did.

He turned from Neville and looked at Mara. “Temptation often offers a good thing without the Father.”

Mara froze, clearly startled that He had heard. “That was not exactly a question for You.”

“It was exactly a question for Me.”

She looked down. “Then answer more.”

Jesus came closer. “Bread is good. Authority rightly held is good. Trust in the Father is good. The tempter offered good words in a false order. He asked Me to take apart from love what was only holy inside love.”

Corin listened carefully. The answer did not make temptation sound small. It made it more serious. Harrow had offered protection, responsibility, and courage, but pulled them away from love. Mara’s pins had offered safety apart from trust. Tobin’s raised wand had offered control apart from care. Albie’s note had offered vigilance apart from humility. Wrong had not always entered wearing a monstrous face. Sometimes it entered carrying a good word stolen from its proper home.

Mara’s voice was low. “So missing the feeling does not mean I want the evil.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But it means you must not pretend the feeling is harmless.”

She nodded slowly.

Corin looked at Him. “What do we do when we miss it?”

“Tell the truth before fear finds a use for the longing.”

The answer was simple enough to remember and hard enough to require help. Corin felt it settle beside the other sentences of the last two days, not as a slogan but as a tool he would need again. Tell the truth before fear finds a use for the longing.

Neville joined them, carrying the tray now that Tobin had finally eaten some of the broth. “Professor McGonagall has asked for both of you.”

Mara closed her eyes briefly. “Again?”

“I believe this is about the Ministry interviews.”

Corin’s stomach tightened. “Now?”

“Soon. She wants to prepare you first.”

Mara looked at Jesus. “You said You would be there.”

“I will.”

She nodded as if trying not to show relief.

They walked toward McGonagall’s office once more, though the castle felt different in the afternoon light. Students had been kept in house groups most of the day, but a few moved through corridors under supervision. The mood had shifted from shock to strain. Shock freezes a school. Strain tests what the school will become afterward. Corin could feel questions following them from every doorway. Had Tobin heard? Had the Ministry arrived? Was Harrow coming back? Were names going to be revealed? Was Mara still dangerous? Was Corin being expelled? Every unasked question seemed to crawl along the walls.

At the gargoyle, McGonagall was already waiting. Undersecretary Vey stood beside her with two officials, one carrying a black case and the other holding a stack of forms. Vey looked at Corin and Mara the way one might look at witnesses who were also evidence. Corin disliked the look and then checked himself. Dislike could be accurate without becoming judgment. That distinction was tiring.

Vey spoke first. “Mr. Vale. Miss Flint. We will conduct preliminary interviews regarding Professor Harrow’s actions, the hidden records, and any related student misconduct.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Student misconduct.”

McGonagall stepped in. “The interviews will be supervised. They will not be fishing expeditions. They will not require students to reveal private matters unrelated to the inquiry. They will not use language that presumes guilt beyond what is being examined.”

Vey’s lips pressed together. “Headmistress, I am familiar with procedure.”

Jesus looked at her. “Procedure can still carry fear.”

The undersecretary looked at Him, and for the first time Corin saw real frustration break through her polished control. “And mercy can still obstruct necessary action.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

The answer surprised her.

He continued, “That is why mercy must remain truthful. But your necessary action must also be judged. Necessity has excused much evil.”

Vey’s face tightened. “You speak as if institutions are inherently cruel.”

“No. I speak as if souls can hide inside them.”

The corridor went quiet.

One of the officials behind Vey looked down at his forms.

McGonagall opened the office door. “We will begin with Mr. Vale.”

Mara looked at Corin. “Do not become clever.”

He gave a faint breath. “That is your encouragement?”

“Yes.”

“It may help.”

“Good.”

He entered the office with Jesus and McGonagall. Vey and one official followed. The other remained outside with Mara, which Corin suspected Mara would enjoy less than the interview itself.

McGonagall’s office had been rearranged for the inquiry. The desk was cleared except for Corin’s written statement, Albie’s note, sealed evidence boxes, and a Pensieve standing near the window. Corin had seen Pensieves before but had never used one. This one shimmered faintly, silver and deep, holding memory like moonlight made liquid.

Vey saw him looking at it. “We may request memory confirmation.”

Corin stiffened.

McGonagall spoke at once. “Request, not compel.”

The official with Vey made a note.

Jesus stood beside the chair where Corin was meant to sit. “Do not surrender memory to fear. If truth requires it, you will not be alone.”

Corin nodded, though the idea of placing his memories into an object while Ministry officials leaned over them made him feel exposed in a way different from confession. Words could still be shaped carefully. Memories had their own force. They could reveal things he had not known he was showing.

He sat.

Vey began with formal questions. Name. House. Year. Date of first contact with Professor Harrow. Whether any coercion was used. Whether any reward was promised. Whether any student was threatened. The questions were clean at first, and Corin answered as plainly as he could. McGonagall listened without interrupting. Jesus stood near the window, His presence steady.

Then Vey’s questions shifted.

“When Professor Harrow asked you to observe students, did you believe he had legitimate safety concerns?”

“Yes.”

“Were those concerns always baseless?”

Corin paused. “No.”

Vey looked up. “Explain.”

“Some students were angry. Some had harmful objects. Some were isolated. Some were being influenced by family or fear. Those things mattered.” He took a breath. “But he used those true things wrongly.”

Vey wrote something. “Wrongly in what sense?”

“He made them into whole identities. He used them to isolate people. He wanted fear to produce the behavior he claimed to be preventing.”

Vey’s pen paused. “That is a serious claim.”

“Yes.”

“Is it your claim or something Professor Jesus told you to say?”

Corin felt the trap in the question. Not because it was completely unfair. Jesus had taught him language he did not have before. But Vey’s phrasing made truth sound like contamination.

Jesus did not speak.

Corin answered, “I learned the difference because He showed it to me. But I know what Harrow did because I was there.”

Vey studied him. “You were also complicit.”

“Yes.”

“That may affect your credibility.”

“Yes.”

McGonagall looked at him with something like approval. Vey seemed less pleased by an answer that did not defend itself.

She continued. “Did Professor Harrow ever instruct you to provoke Tobin Marr?”

“No.”

“Did he instruct you to provoke Mara Flint?”

“No.”

“Did he instruct you to gather information that could be used to pressure them?”

Corin stopped.

The room seemed to wait with him.

“Yes,” he said.

Vey leaned slightly forward. “Specific words.”

Corin closed his eyes briefly and returned to Harrow’s temporary room, the portfolio, the tea he had not drunk, the rain tapping at the window. “He said some students reveal the truth only when the right pressure removes the performance. He said Mara Flint’s cruelty was a performance hiding deeper allegiance, and Tobin Marr’s quiet was a pressure chamber. He told me pressure is not harm if it prevents greater harm.”

The official wrote quickly.

Vey’s expression remained controlled, but her eyes sharpened. “Did you believe him?”

“At first.”

“And later?”

“I wanted to.”

“That is not the same as believing.”

“No.”

“Why did you want to?”

Corin glanced toward Jesus, then back at Vey. “Because if he was wrong, I was wrong.”

For the first time, Vey seemed to receive an answer without turning it at once into another question. She looked at him for a long moment. “That is often why adults continue too.”

The sentence surprised him.

McGonagall noticed too. Her face did not change much, but her eyes moved to Vey with sharper interest.

Jesus said nothing.

The interview continued, but the air had shifted slightly. Vey was not softened, exactly. She still pressed details, dates, words, and actions. Yet she no longer sounded as if she were trying to force Corin into either victim or offender. She allowed him to be both manipulated and responsible, which felt closer to the truth and more painful than either simpler category.

Near the end, she asked about Harrow’s paper bird.

“What did you feel when he addressed you in the Great Hall?”

Corin looked down at his ink-stained thumb. “Relief.”

Vey’s eyebrows lifted. “Relief?”

“Yes. For a moment. He made it sound like I did not have to be ashamed. Like confession was something being done to me by people who wanted me small.”

“And then?”

“Then I remembered that when he made me feel large, he was making other people smaller.”

The office fell quiet.

Vey closed the folder in front of her. “Thank you, Mr. Vale. We may need further questions.”

Corin stood, tired in a way that felt bone-deep. “Am I dismissed?”

McGonagall answered, “For now. Send Miss Flint in.”

Corin moved toward the door, then stopped. He looked at Vey. “Undersecretary?”

She glanced up.

“If you interview Tobin, do not make him prove he is not what people called him.”

Vey’s face stilled.

McGonagall did not interrupt.

Corin swallowed. “Ask what happened. Ask what he did. Ask what he needs. But do not make him start from wrong.”

Vey held his gaze. For a second, he thought she would rebuke him for instructing a Ministry official. Instead she said, “I will consider that.”

It was not enough.

It was something.

Corin left the office and found Mara standing outside with her arms crossed and her face set in a defensive calm. The official beside her looked relieved to be released from silence when the door opened.

Mara studied Corin. “Terrible?”

“Yes.”

“Useful?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you become clever?”

“I tried not to.”

“Good.”

She stepped toward the office, then paused. Corin saw fear move through her face before she locked it down. She had faced hidden records, a cursed mirror, Darian’s cruelty, and Tobin’s honest questions. Still, walking into a Ministry interview meant something different for her. Her family name had already been written before she arrived at Hogwarts. Now official hands were waiting with fresh parchment.

Jesus appeared in the doorway behind Corin. He looked at Mara. “You are not your file.”

She lifted her chin. “I know.”

He waited.

Her eyes lowered. “I am trying to know.”

“Then come.”

She went in.

The door closed behind her.

Corin remained in the corridor, unsure whether to leave. After a moment, Neville arrived with the vine cutting from the hospital wing, now safely returned from Tobin’s bedside. He looked at the closed office door, then at Corin.