Kevin had been tracking something quietly for weeks.
Harry was sleeping through the night.
No nightmares. No waking in a cold sweat. No mornings where he came down to breakfast with the tight, haunted expression of someone who had spent the night trapped inside Voldemort's head.
His Occlumency was working.
The technique blocked external access — Legilimency, emotional manipulation, the kind of passive soul-bleed that had been giving Harry those visions all summer after the graveyard. It didn't prevent Harry from looking the other direction when he wanted to, but he hadn't developed that active ability yet, and Kevin wasn't pushing. Passive defense first. Offensive access later, when it was needed.
The thing Kevin was quietly monitoring, though, was the snake.
In the timeline he remembered, Harry had dreamed himself into Nagini's body and attacked Arthur Weasley in the Ministry. The attack happened. Mr. Weasley had survived because Harry woke in time to warn Dumbledore. If Harry's Occlumency blocked the connection cleanly enough that the dream never came, they might miss the warning entirely.
Kevin was not willing to rely on that. He had made six alert amulets during the first week at Grimmauld Place and quietly distributed them — one for each Order member who spent meaningful time outside the house. A standard proximity ward, linked to a central signal: if magical violence registered near the Ministry after hours, every amulet would pulse. Not elegant, but reliable.
He was also going to ask Dumbledore, at the start of term, about expanding the design. If he could get twelve working simultaneously, the whole active Order would be covered. If he could push that to twenty, it started being a real early-warning network.
He added it to the list of conversations to have.
The Hogwarts letters arrived the day before they were due to leave, with the standard book list and the less-standard announcement of the new term's staffing.
Dolores Umbridge. Senior Under-Secretary to the Minister for Magic. Defense Against the Dark Arts, and additionally: High Inquisitor of Hogwarts.
Kevin read the title twice.
High Inquisitor.
So Fudge wasn't just sending an observer. He was creating an entirely new authority within Hogwarts — a position that answered to the Ministry, not to the Headmaster. Umbridge wouldn't just teach one class; she would have the power to evaluate, inspect, and potentially override Dumbledore's staff appointments.
Which made the position threat to Kevin's Potions post considerably more direct than Moody had described.
He found Moody in the kitchen and said, quietly, so the others wouldn't hear: "We might need the plan faster than we thought."
Moody looked at him over the rim of his tea. "Already?"
"She's not just a teacher. She's an oversight body." He slid the letter across. Moody read it. His jaw tightened.
"Polyjuice is ready," he said, after a pause.
"I know. Start watching for an opening — but carefully. We act only if she makes a move that compromises us or endangers a student." Kevin pulled the letter back. "Not preemptively. We're not giving Fudge the story he wants."
Moody grunted and drank his tea.
Kevin had also used the last few days to complete his first-through-fourth-year Potions texts — a supplementary guide called Preparations for Potions-Making and the Processing of Materials. He'd written it across three evenings and had it copied at a print shop in Diagon Alley. It looked like a textbook. It read like a textbook. It was, in fact, rather aggressively practical — heavy on foundations, precise about technique, written for students who needed to build competency rather than impressive vocabulary.
He'd paid for the ingredients himself. He'd been doing that since Year One. His Healing Potions, sold under his name in Diagon Alley, covered it easily.
The train journey to Hogwarts was uneventful. Order escorts — Moody and two Aurors — saw them to the platform without incident. The crowd on the Hogwarts Express was thicker than usual, noisier, and had the slightly pressurized quality of a group of people who had collectively spent a summer being told nothing was wrong.
Harry had barely sat down before Sirius appeared at the compartment window — on the platform, waving extravagantly — and pressed a small wrapped box against the glass.
Harry opened the window and took it.
"Contact me whenever," Sirius said. He was already pulling out a matching silver rectangle from his own pocket. "Remember, your dad and I used these all the time."
He held his mirror up and said hello, and his face appeared in Harry's. Sound and image both, clear and immediate.
Harry lit up in a way that Kevin hadn't seen from him in a while. He called up to Sirius, tested the signal, laughed at something Sirius said, and spent the next five minutes finding reasons to check that the connection was still working.
Kevin examined the mirror when Harry finally offered it around. The alchemy was older than anything he'd studied yet — intricate binding between the two surfaces, stable and self-reinforcing, probably the work of a skilled craftsman in an era when this kind of thing was more commonly practiced. He turned it over twice, then handed it back.
"I'd like to replicate the principle," he told Harry. "For Order communications. I'll look at your mirror for reference — but I'll make our own copies, not borrow yours."
Harry looked faintly relieved at the qualification.
"You can borrow it," he said, "for study."
Kevin borrowed it immediately.
Harry reflected, too late, that he should have seen that coming.
Hogsmeade was grey and cool under autumn cloud. Professor Grubbly-Plank met them in place of Hagrid — compact, brisk, efficiently managing the first-years without any of Hagrid's theatrical warmth but with rather more precision. Hagrid was away on Order business, and the details were not for sharing.
"There — Draco."
Ron had been scanning since they got off the train. He found Draco near the far edge of the platform crowd.
The summer had changed him. The straw-pale hair was cropped shorter. The careless arrogance — which had always been partly posture, a performance of ease he'd never had to work for — was gone. In its place: something quieter and more careful, a composure that looked earned rather than inherited. His suit was dark and precisely fitted. He held himself straight.
His eyes found them. There was a moment — brief, barely there — where something in his expression moved. Then it closed down again, and he held their gaze for two cold seconds before turning away.
Goyle and Crabbe fell in behind him. Goyle had spotted Kevin and the others first and leaned in to say something. Whatever it was, Draco had not visibly reacted.
He walked toward the carriages without looking back.
Kevin watched him go. Said nothing.
Nobody did.