firecracker ???

The castle had begun shifting again—not with sudden violence, but with the slow, inevitable crawl of something ancient waking beneath the floorboards. It wasn't that anyone said anything; no new attacks had struck, but the silence had been longer and heavier than the one before, Elestara could feel it. The way a storm announces itself in the stillness before the wind, in the pressure that builds behind the eyes, in the pause that makes even the portraits seem to listen.

The diary was gone. Retrieved. Stolen back.

She had not seen the moment it happened, but she didn't need to. She had been watching Harry Potter too closely to miss the signs. The subtle way his posture shifted—tense, uncertain. The quick frustration in his voice when he asked his little friends questions that only circled answers. He had stopped glancing toward the second-floor girls' lavatory and instead routinely asked the Weasley prefect about a sick Ginny. 

He no longer had it. That much was clear.

She wrote to Regulus first, her message as precise and understated as ever: The Weasley girl has reclaimed the item. Potter no longer possesses it.

Lucius received the same report, though her wording was colder, more formal—an echo of his own way of speaking.

Regulus's response was hidden in the spine of her Charms text. Then it's time. Approach him. Measure what he knows. Engage, if necessary.

Lucius's message came through Snape's hand soon after,  the ink crisp: He will reveal more than he means to. Use your name. Use your charm. Use silence. Make him speak.

She let the instructions settle before acting. Waited until the air felt right. Allowed herself to observe a little longer. Because there was something about Potter—something reckless and raw and stubborn—that made her tread more carefully than she was used to. She didn't underestimate him. Not anymore.

It was late afternoon when she approached him by the frozen lake, where he stood alone skipping stones across the surface of the water. His scarf was crooked, his hair even more disheveled than usual, and he looked tired in that particular way people looked when sleep had stopped helping. As though he'd been carrying a question he couldn't put down.

She said nothing at first. Just walked up beside him, hands neatly tucked behind her back, eyes on the horizon. When she finally spoke, it was as if the moment had been rehearsed.

"You've been sulking," she said, voice cool but not unkind.

He didn't flinch. Didn't turn. Just tossed another pebble and gave her a look from the side of his eye that managed to be both tired and amused.

"Waiting for you to say something," he replied.

"I always say something."

"Not to me."

She studied him for a moment. "Perhaps you haven't been worth the breath."

He laughed—low and surprised. It was the sort of laugh James Potter might've made when he thought he was cleverer than he was, when he thought he'd won.

"You know," he said, casting another stone, "you're not as cold as you pretend to be."

"And you're not as clever as you think you are."

This time he turned to face her fully, and for a moment she saw it again—that flicker of something honest, something open. The boy who had stood over a troll for someone else. The boy who looked at her like she was made of starlight and riddles he might actually want to solve. He didn't know what it was that made him tell her, he hadn't even told Ron and Hermione for Merlin's sake.

"I saw something," he said quietly.

She didn't speak, didn't blink.

"In the diary. Before it was taken."

Her heart gave a single, hard beat. She didn't let it show.

"What did you see?" she asked.

"A memory. From fifty years ago. A boy named Tom Riddle."

The name struck like a bell inside her chest, low and resounding.

"He said Hagrid opened the Chamber. But something about it didn't feel right."

"Tom Riddle," she repeated, carefully. Like naming it gave her power over it.

Harry nodded slowly. "He was... different. Calm. Everyone liked him. Too much. He had this way of speaking like he knew everything already. It felt like... he wanted to be admired."

She didn't respond. Just tucked it all away, quiet and methodical.

That evening, the castle cracked.

News of Hermione Granger's petrification spread like wildfire. She had been found outside the library, frozen mid-step with a mirror clutched in one hand and a parchment crumpled in the other, her expression blank with the absence of fear.

Students crowded the corridors. Professors barked orders. Whispers swelled into murmurs.

Elestara stood behind the crowd, her arms folded neatly across her chest, her face unreadable.

She didn't gasp. Didn't pale. Didn't blink.

She simply watched.

Later, in the common room, Theo dropped into the seat beside her, casual and quiet as always.

"You're not upset," he said.

"She's not one of ours," Elestara replied, her tone distant.

Theo studied her face for a moment. "Yet you're still watching Potter."

She looked at him then, sharp and unflinching.

"Because he is."

The next morning, Potter came to her. No pleasantries. No clever smiles.

"She found something," he said, and handed her a page.

The parchment was crumpled and faded from pressure, but the words were still visible.

Pipes. Granger had scrawled the word quickly over the page about a basilisk.

It was a giant snake. Of course it was.

She folded the page once, slowly.

"Why tell me?"

He opened his mouth, closed it, then said quietly, "Because you already know more than anyone else."

She didn't thank him. Didn't nod. She turned and left. She tuned to Professor Snape's office and shared what she knew. Snape watched her enter without comment and gave a nod telling her he has informed her father.

Snape's office was dimly lit, the space thick with the scent of scorched herbs and old parchment. Glass jars lined every surface. The quiet bubble of something brewing filled the corners. She stood in the center of the room, waiting.

Lucius arrived a few minutes later. He took the paper from her hand, read it in silence.

"Potter is too close," he said. "We have allowed this to stretch long enough."

He circled her like a chessmaster assessing his next move.

"You will guide this to the end. If the girl is taken, if the Chamber opens again, you will follow. And when Potter follows—as he always does—you will be there."

She straightened her spine and didn't speak.

"Do not engage unless the outcome demands it," Lucius said. "And no matter what—do not let him see you hesitate."

She looked up at him, proud and still.

"I never do," she answered.

And she didn't.