"You're fine," Harry said. It wasn't a question. It barely qualified as a sentence.
Iris lowered her teacup and looked at him with the particular expression she reserved for when he was stating something she found obvious. "Well, yes. Why wouldn't I be?"
Harry looked at her. Then at Crabbe. Then at Goyle. Then back at his sister, who was sitting between two occupied hospital beds with the calm energy of someone waiting for a delayed train.
"Someone told me you were in the Hospital Wing."
"I am in the Hospital Wing."
"Iris."
"Harry." She matched his tone perfectly, unbothered.
He dragged a hand through his hair, the last of the adrenaline leaving his body in a way that felt distinctly unpleasant. His hands were still shaking slightly. He shoved them into his pockets. "They said you were hurt."
"I got a little caught in the crossfire," Iris said, waving a hand dismissively. "It was mostly glitter. It washes out."
Harry stared at her. "What?"
"I didn't mean for them to get quite so much of it."
"What?"
"The pepper spray was admittedly more of a—"
"Iris." His voice came out flat. The voice he used when he needed her to stop and start from the beginning. "What did you do?"
She had the grace to look mildly sheepish, which on Iris meant a very slight downward adjustment of her chin. "I already got detention," she said, as though this was the relevant detail. "So technically it's been handled."
Iris set her teacup down on the small table beside her with a decisive click. "So. Do you want to know what actually happened or are you going to keep standing there looking like you've seen a ghost?"
Harry pulled a chair over and sat down. "Talk."
She talked.
It had started, as many of Iris's unplanned adventures did, with her noticing something that wasn't her business and deciding it was. She had been cutting through the fourth floor corridor after Herbology when she heard it — the specific quality of laughter that didn't mean anything was funny. She knew that sound. Harry knew she knew that sound. They had both grown up learning to recognize it.
She had peered around the corner and found three older Hufflepuffs — fifth years, she thought, though she hadn't stopped to ask for their student records — with Crabbe and Goyle backed against the wall. The two boys had looked, Iris said, like a pair of very large, very unhappy potatoes.
"They were just standing there taking it," Iris said, with the tone of someone describing a personal affront. "Not even trying to reach for their wands. Just — standing there."
"Iris," Harry said carefully. "What did you do."
"I assessed the situation."
"And then what did you do."
She smoothed her robes. "I may have had my bag with me."
Harry closed his eyes briefly. Iris's bag was, at any given moment, a mobile hazard. Aunt Petunia had once described it as a skip bin with a shoulder strap. Ignatius had banned it from three rooms of the Peverell castle after an incident that none of them were allowed to discuss. "The bag," Harry said.
"The glitter bomb was already in there. It was left over from the project I was doing for—it doesn't matter. The point is it was available." She paused. "I didn't account for the air current in that particular corridor."
Harry opened his eyes. Across the room, Crabbe shifted in his hospital bed, still visibly encrusted with something that caught the light.
"And the pepper spray," Harry said.
"That was more targeted," Iris said, with the careful dignity of someone choosing their words. "Mostly."
"Mostly."
"The older years ran. Which was the intended outcome." A very small pause. "Crabbe and Goyle were unfortunately in the vicinity of the residual spray." She glanced at the two boys. "They've been very gracious about it."
From his bed, Crabbe made a sound that was not especially gracious.
"Madam Pomfrey sorted them out," Iris added. "The eyes clear up quickly apparently."
Harry looked at his sister for a long moment. The relief was still there, settled in his chest like something warm and slightly embarrassing. She was fine. She was completely, characteristically fine, and two Hufflepuff boys he barely knew were in hospital beds because his sister had deployed a glitter bomb in an enclosed corridor while trying to help them.
"You got detention," Harry said.
"Filch found us," Iris confirmed. "Madam Pomfrey was less concerned about me and more concerned about the glitter getting into her supplies, which I thought was a little unfair given the circumstances but—"
"How long?"
"Two weeks." A beat. "It would have been one, but I may have suggested to Filch that if he kept better care of the corridors there wouldn't be space for bullies to operate in them, and he took that personally."
Harry pressed his fingers to his mouth. Not to hide a smile — he wasn't smiling. He was not smiling.
"Don't," Iris said, pointing at him.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're doing the thing with your face."
"I don't have a thing."
"You have a very specific thing," she said. "You've had it since you were seven." She picked her teacup back up. "Anyway. That's what happened. And before you say anything about being careful or staying out of it — they were just standing there, Harry. I wasn't going to walk past."
The smile, such as it was, faded.
Because that was the thing about Iris. She had never once in her life walked past. Not in primary school, not in Portland, not here. It was the quality Harry relied on most and worried about most in equal measure, and it sat in his chest now next to the relief like two things that couldn't quite decide whether to be at peace with each other.
"I know," he said.
"Good." She set her cup down again. "Now. Are you going to tell me what's actually been going on with you, or are we doing the thing where you insist you're fine until something explodes?"
Harry looked at her. Then at Crabbe and Goyle, who were both very pointedly not looking at them, with the practiced nonchalance of people who were absolutely listening.
"Not here," he said.
Iris followed his gaze. Considered. "Fair enough." She stood, smoothing her robes again. "Walk with me. And Harry?" She paused at the foot of Crabbe's bed and addressed the room generally. "Thank you both for not mentioning the glitter to Madam Pomfrey. Very gracious of you."
Crabbe said nothing. Goyle pulled his blanket up slightly.
Iris nodded, satisfied, and swept out of the Hospital Wing like someone who had not, forty minutes ago, accidentally pepper-sprayed two Hufflepuff first-years in a fourth floor corridor.
Harry followed her, as he always had.
*****
They walked in silence for a while, which with Iris meant something. She was not, by nature, a silent person. When Iris was quiet it was because she was giving you space to fill it yourself, which Harry had always found a more effective interrogation technique than most people realized.
He filled it.
Not everything. He gave her the shape of it — Vaisey and the others, the common room, Flint's advice, the slow suffocating logic of making himself a ghost. He didn't mention the bed. He didn't mention the word spare. Some things he was not ready to say out loud yet, and Iris, to her credit, didn't push at the edges of what he left out.
When he finished, she was quiet for another moment.
Then she stopped walking, turned to face him, and said, "What happened to you, Harry?"
The question was quiet, but it cut through the sterile smell of the Hospital Wing like a blade. Harry didn't look up from his hands.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Iris."
"Don't lie to me. Not to me," she snapped, stepping into his line of sight. "Where is the Harry who orchestrated a six-month sting operation in primary school? The one who didn't just get an abusive teacher fired, but built a paper trail so airtight the No-Maj police had him in handcuffs by lunch?"
Harry flinched. "That was different. That was—"
"And the Halloween incident?" Iris pressed, her voice rising with a mix of fury and disappointment. "You stalked those bullies for weeks. You mapped their routes, you learned their fears, and you spent your entire allowance hiring actors just to break their spirit. You didn't just win, Harry. You ended them."
"I..." Harry started, but the words died in his throat.
"Exactly. You're playing it safe. You've looked at these older students, felt the weight of their magic, and you've decided that because they're 'dangerous,' you have to be a victim." She leaned down, forcing him to meet her eyes—the eyes of his General. "You wanted to blend in. You wanted to 'observe' the Slytherin common room until you had a footing. But look at you! You aren't a spy, Harry. You're a scapegoat. You became the idea of disrespect. You are disrespecting yourself."
She grabbed his chin, her grip firm. "Where is the cunning? The ruthlessness? The ambition they supposedly saw in you? You were sorted into the House of Snakes, Harry, but right now? You're acting like a garden worm. Start acting like the predator I know you are."
Silence stretched between them. Harry wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her about the political weight of the Burke family, about the raw power of a third-year hex, and about how he was just trying to keep them both under the radar.
But as he looked at the fierce, unyielding fire in his sister's eyes, he realized the most dangerous thing in the room wasn't a Slytherin upperclassman. It was the truth she had just laid bare.
Silence stretched between them. Harry wanted to argue—to tell her about the third-year hexes, about Marcus Flint's warnings, and the pressure of being the 'Discarded Potter.'
But as he looked into Iris's eyes, the warmth finally drained out of his own. The fear didn't vanish, but it crystallized into something cold and sharp. Something useful.
"You're right," Harry said, his voice dropping an octave as he stood up straighter. The 'victim' persona he'd been wearing for months fell away like an ill-fitting cloak. "I was trying to build a foundation of safety. I forgot that in a den of snakes, the one who doesn't hiss is the one who gets eaten."
He looked at Iris, and for the first time since Godric was named Seeker, he actually smiled—a cold, predatory thing that didn't reach his eyes.
"I've been wondering how they always know when I'm most vulnerable," Harry mused, his mind already beginning to map out the common room like a chess board. "They aren't just lucky. Someone in my dorm is talking. Someone is feeding them my schedule, my movements... my fears."
Iris smirked back, the familiar fire returning to their bond. "Now that is the Harry I know. You have a leak. So, what's the first thing you want to do?"
"Identifying the rat is a waste of energy," Harry said, his voice as cold as the stone floors of the dungeons. "I don't need to pluck one weed, Iris. I need to salt the entire field so nothing ever grows against me again."
He looked at his sister, a slow, predatory smirk spreading across his face. "Tell me... do you still have that stash of ghost peppers? The industrial-grade glitter? And the Walkman with all those heavy metal tapes?"
Iris stared at him, her confusion melting away as she realized he wasn't planning a prank, he was planning a siege. A slow, wicked grin mirrored his own.
"Oh, I feel so sorry to Slytherin house right now," she whispered. "What else do you need for the massacre?"
In a small curve of the corridor, Blaise Zabini held his breath, his back pressed hard against the cold stone wall. He didn't need to hear every detail of their whispering to know that the atmosphere in the room had shifted from recovery to reconnaissance. He still carried the metaphorical scars of the last time he'd crossed Iris Potter. That had taught him never to mistake her Hufflepuff kindness for weakness. As he watched the siblings' predatory grins mirror one another, a paralyzing chill raced down his spine. Blaise didn't know what a 'ghost pepper' was, but he knew the Potters. Their house is doomed.