Three weeks into term, the rhythm of the year had established itself.
Harry ran Dumbledore's Army sessions on weekends with the efficiency of someone who had spent a summer studying Moody's drills and was now applying them with the enthusiasm of someone to whom Defense Against the Dark Arts was both vocation and survival strategy. The sessions were popular. Word had spread past Gryffindor into Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and the Room of Requirement was filling up.
Kevin's Potions classes were building reputation in the way practical competence always built reputation — slowly, then suddenly. His first-years were already brewing above what was expected of them. His second-years had stopped being afraid of the subject. The Room of Requirement had nothing to do with Potions, but four of his third-years were now meeting voluntarily on Tuesday evenings to work through problems they'd gotten wrong in class, which was the kind of result that didn't show up in any formal assessment.
Snape had not commented on any of this. Kevin chose to interpret this as approval.
"Harry," Ron said, not looking up from his Transfiguration essay. "Have you decided what you want to do after Hogwarts?"
It was a Friday evening, after dinner, in Kevin's workshop. Ron was sprawled across the spare chair. Harry was on the floor with his back against the bookshelf. Hermione sat on the sofa next to Kevin with an Arithmancy text she was going to finish whether or not anyone spoke to her, but she was listening.
"Auror," Harry said, without hesitation.
"Me too," Ron said, finally looking up. "Partners."
Kevin looked at them both. They had the expressions of people who had made a decision and found it uncomplicated. He thought about Auror training — the years of it, the attrition rate, the specific brutality of qualifying examinations designed to select for people who would not flinch under conditions that would break most people — and decided to say nothing.
They'd find out. And they'd be fine. Probably.
"Kevin, what about you?" Harry asked.
"Potions. Possibly teaching." He stirred his current experimental potion — a side project, not an assignment. "Dumbledore's been fairly direct about wanting me at Hogwarts after graduation."
"He mentioned it again?"
"Twice this week."
Ron looked at Hermione. "What about you?"
Hermione had predicted this question and had a prepared answer. "I haven't decided. Several directions interest me." She turned a page without looking up.
Ron accepted this as terminal and went back to his essay.
Kevin was about to return to his own work when the door opened without a knock.
Dumbledore stepped in, looked around the room at all four of them, and said warmly: "Good evening, all of you." His eyes settled on Kevin. "I couldn't help overhearing — about Hogwarts. I do hope you'll say yes."
"You timed that deliberately," Kevin said.
"I arrived when I arrived," Dumbledore said, with the serenity of a man who had refined deliberate timing into something that looked like coincidence. He settled into the armchair Kevin had long ago accepted was Dumbledore's armchair. "We do, in fact, have something more pressing to discuss. All of you." His tone shifted — not dramatically, but perceptibly. The warmth was still there. The calculation beneath it was now visible.
Harry sat up straight. "Voldemort?"
"No movement yet. But there's something I've been meaning to show you. Something I'm now ready to confirm." He looked at each of them in turn. "Come to my office."
The Pensieve sat on Dumbledore's desk, shimmering faintly in the low light. Beside it: a tall cabinet, its shelves lined with labeled glass vials, each holding a thin curl of silver memory.
"What I'm about to tell you," Dumbledore said, settling behind his desk, "is the central secret of Voldemort's survival. You've earned the right to know it. I believe knowing it will help you understand what we're facing and why certain things have happened the way they have."
He looked at Kevin. "You found the locket at the Order's headquarters. That was not luck, was it."
It was not quite a question.
Kevin met his gaze. "It reminded me of Tom's diary."
A pause. "Yes," Dumbledore said. "That's precisely the word I'd use. They are the same kind of thing." He folded his hands. "They are Horcruxes."
---
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