firecracker ???

2-12

"Bathroom," she answered without pausing.

Draco didn't look up. Blaise raised an eyebrow.

"Don't get hexed," he said with a lazy sort of amusement.

She didn't dignify him with a response.

The second-floor girls' lavatory was as quiet and unpleasant as always. The cracked tiles gleamed with moisture, and the air was thick with the scent of mildew and perfume. Moaning Myrtle's occasional sniffles echoed faintly from her stall, but otherwise, the space was hushed.

Elestara entered like a shadow. She didn't make a sound. She simply waited, leaning back against the cool marble near the sinks, letting her presence fold into the silence.

A splash broke the stillness.

She turned, careful and slow.

Ginny was kneeling beside one of the toilets. Her fingers hovered over the bowl, trembling visibly. Her lips moved, but whatever she was trying to say came out as nothing more than breath. Fear curled through every line of her body.

The diary sat on the edge.

Ginny looked at it one final time, eyes wide with some raw, private horror—then she shoved it in. It sank beneath the water, vanishing without a sound.

She didn't stay to watch.

She ran.

Elestara stepped forward only after the echo of her footsteps had fully disappeared. She stood over the bowl, expression unreadable, and looked down.

The diary had settled, soaking, dark and still.

She didn't touch it.

She didn't need to.

She turned and left.

That night, she wrote two letters.

The first, to Regulus:

She tried to destroy it. That's not nothing.

The second, to Lucius:

The object has surfaced again. I am observing. I will not interfere unless instructed.

The replies came in order.

Regulus's was swift.

Watch Potter. If the item changes hands, follow it. You know what it is.

Lucius's was colder.

You will not touch it. If it ends up with the boy, let it. We planted a weapon, not a lesson. You are not to expose yourself unnecessarily. Draco is to remain uninvolved.

She folded both notes carefully and slid them into the slit behind the headboard of her bed. Safe. Contained.

Two more days passed.

Ginny deteriorated.

Her complexion was ghostly. Her hair lost its shine. She jumped whenever someone said her name.

And Potter, predictably, noticed.

He began watching her during meals. Frowning. Glancing after her when she left class too quickly. Speaking to Weasley and the Muggle-born girl in hushed tones.

And then—

He left lunch early.

Alone.

Elestara slipped from her bench a few moments later, brushing invisible lint from her sleeve. She took a different route—longer, quieter, less likely to be noticed—and arrived outside the second-floor lavatory in time to hear the faint echo of Myrtle's wails.

She didn't enter.

She leaned against the wall across from the door and counted each second in her head, listening through the stone.

Inside: the sound of feet shifting. Running water. Then stillness.

When Potter emerged, his robes were damp, his expression unreadable—but his hands weren't empty.

He was holding the diary.

His brow was furrowed, mouth set in a tight line. He looked like someone who had picked up something he didn't yet understand but wanted to. Like someone with too many questions and nowhere safe to put them.

She watched from the shadows as he passed.

He never saw her.

That night, Elestara lay awake, unmoving, her eyes fixed on the curved top of her four-poster bed. The dormitory was quiet—Pansy breathing softly behind one curtain, Daphne snoring lightly in the next.

The diary was in Potter's hands.

And the rules had changed.

She knew what it meant. What it could do. She knew why it had been sent and who it was meant to reach.

And now that it had chosen him, she would not look away.

She wrote a final letter before dawn.

The boy has it.