"That new Ministry bloke is following me everywhere."
A week after David Greider's arrival at Hogwarts, Harry had begun to find the man's omnipresence genuinely unnerving. Corridors. The library. Outside the bathrooms.
"He tailed me to the loo, Kevin."
"At least you can see him coming," Kevin said, without looking up from his lunch. "There are worse problems."
"But if he's here to cause trouble, why hasn't he done anything? And why me specifically? Not you, not Dumbledore, just — me. It's not fair."
Neville, sitting nearby and minding his own business, considered the question with evident sincerity. "Maybe," he offered carefully, "you're just... easier to follow than the others?"
Harry stared at him. "...Thank you, Neville. That is a genuinely terrible thing to say."
"You're welcome." Neville returned to his soup with the quiet composure of a man who believes he has contributed helpfully to a conversation.
Laughter rippled around the table. Even Harry managed a reluctant grin.
The truth was, Greider's apparent restraint was a relief. With O.W.L.s looming over the fifth-years and the rest of them carrying their own complicated loads, no one had time to spend fending off Ministry interference.
What the students didn't know was that Dumbledore had already dealt with Greider privately, at some length. The terms had been simple: Greider could gather whatever intelligence he liked. He was to keep his hands entirely off the students' academic work and their extracurricular activities. If he violated either condition, Dumbledore would write directly to the Minister, and Greider would be recalled. That morning.
Greider had resented the terms. But he was smart enough to recognise when he was outgunned.
So he'd shifted tactics. For a week he'd followed Harry everywhere, observing, recording, building a picture. His conclusion — quietly forming over six days of surveillance — was that Harry's group were genuinely, almost offputtingly, unconcerned with Ministry politics. They weren't spreading rumours as part of some larger power play. They were obsessed with getting stronger. That was it. The Voldemort rumours were a byproduct of belief, not a calculated campaign.
Which raised the uncomfortable possibility that Fudge was paranoid.
Greider decided to pivot. A student disciplinary committee — independent, voluntary, extra-credit rewards dangled as incentive — could handle the rumour problem quietly and demonstrate Ministry engagement without forcing a confrontation. Box ticked for Fudge. Dumbledore given nothing to object to.
And if something slipped later, if Dumbledore miscalculated, Greider would be positioned to take the credit. Umbridge would catch the blame.
His prospects were looking considerably brighter.
The afternoon had emptied into a comfortable quiet by the time Kevin and Hermione reached the workroom. They had barely set down their bags when Kevin noticed the envelope waiting on the centre bench.
Rita's seal. A week's work, already delivered.
He broke the wax and read it standing. His expression, which had been carrying a faint worry at the corners for days now, gradually eased.
"Here." He passed the letter across. "Rita's report."
Hermione read it in under a minute, then set it down with a small frown pulling at her brow.
"Kevin... could what's happening to Draco be coming directly from Voldemort?"
The letter wasn't long. Rita had spent a week tracking Goyle, and the picture she'd assembled was not a comfortable one. Goyle and Crabbe were always near Draco — not with the easy proximity of old friends, but with the tense, watchful attention of sentinels. Draco had been suffering mysterious chest pains with apparent regularity, each episode sudden and severe, and during one of them he had been overheard muttering about a damned curse before he caught himself. On their free time, Crabbe and Goyle slipped to the outer edges of the school grounds, probing for concealed passages — entry points, or exit routes, or both.
Short report. Damning picture.
Like the necklace, Kevin thought. Like all of Voldemort's methods. Curses were a speciality of the Dark Arts — aggressive, persistent, often engineered to resist tampering. Standard counters like Finite Incantatem might loosen them; a potion might blunt the worst of it. But something cast by Voldemort himself was likely to be far more complicated, possibly rigged to punish interference.
Good thing Kevin had an approach that didn't involve picking the lock directly.
"Yeah." He took the letter back, turned it over in his hand once, then set it alight with a small, controlled flame. The ash scattered. "Probably some kind of curse keeping Draco on a short lead."
"We cut ties on the surface, but Voldemort still doesn't trust him. So he put something in to make sure Draco stays put and keeps working."
Hermione watched the ash settle. Her expression had gone thoughtful in the way it did when she was processing something unpleasant but accepting it.
"Draco's not in immediate danger," Kevin added. "Voldemort needs him for a job. That buys us time."
He pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward himself and uncapped his quill. A second task for Rita: locate Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. Pinpoint their position inside — or beneath — Malfoy Manor, if she could manage it without getting herself killed.
The key to Draco wasn't the curse. The key was his family.
And it had to be soon, before Voldemort noticed anyone was looking.
"A curse, though." Hermione was still watching him. "You can actually break it, can't you? You know enough about curses."
Kevin looked up. He tilted his head back slightly, allowing himself exactly the small, infuriating grin that drove her up the wall.
"It's just a curse, Hermione. Honestly."
She rolled her eyes. But the tension had left her shoulders, and when she picked up her own quill to get back to work, her hand was steady.
Kevin tied the letter to his owl's leg and watched it bank out the window into the grey afternoon sky.
Hermione watched it too, thinking — not for the first time — about the strange, unlikely chain of events that had led her here. Blackmailing an illegal Animagus felt like a lifetime ago. It had seemed excessive at the time. She was beginning to understand that nothing Kevin did was quite as excessive as it initially appeared.
"You know," she said, half to herself, "Animagus registration is an excellent idea, in retrospect."
"Absolutely. You should learn it."
"I said registration, not the transformation itself. It's extraordinarily difficult, and it takes—" She stopped. Kevin was looking at her with the specific expression he wore when he knew something she didn't and was enjoying it. "What."
"Nothing."
"Kevin."
"I just said you should learn it."
"Why are you making that face?"
He said, quite casually: "I already have."
The quill froze in her hand.
"What do you mean, you already have?"
---
A huge thank you to my amazing Patreon supporters—you guys are the reason this story keeps going strong
Special Thanks (Top Supporters):
@Logan Petersen
@Lucas
@Cameron Stephens
@PhildoBaggins1
@Dlaws11
@Josiah Nathaniel Younger
@Alex Carter
@RavenNightshade
@Liam99
@Ni93 Volkov
Your support truly means a lot—it keeps me motivated and helps me continue bringing this story to life.
If you'd like to read ahead (way ahead) and support the story directly, feel free to drop by my Patreon:
Patreon.com/Wicked_Wizard
Every bit of support helps keep the chapters coming