The Hogwarts Express moved at its usual measured pace southward, the rhythm of it a steady backdrop to the hum of conversation and the smell of Trevor Longbottom's escaped toad somewhere in the corridor.
Kevin, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had claimed a compartment to themselves. Ron had his feet on the seat. Harry was watching the snow-grey countryside unspool past the window.
"Have you heard from Dumbledore?" Harry asked.
Kevin glanced up from the journal he'd been reviewing. "Not since last night."
Dumbledore had vanished the morning after Slughorn's party — McGonagall had explained it briefly, the way she explained things she didn't entirely approve of: the Ministry had flagged a sighting of one of Voldemort's escaped prisoners in the vicinity of Little Hangleton. Dumbledore had gone to check. He hadn't come back.
Kevin shrugged. "He does this. He'll be fine."
Harry didn't look fully satisfied, but he nodded.
"Give me your hand," Kevin said.
Harry looked at him. Then at the hand. Then back at Kevin, who was holding his wand with the expression of someone who'd already decided this was a good idea and was not going to be argued out of it.
"Why," Harry said, which wasn't really a question.
Ron had gone very still and very attentive. Hermione, beside Kevin, had the air of a woman who already knew exactly what was about to happen and had made peace with it.
"For research." Kevin waited.
Harry held out his hand.
Kevin pressed the tip of his wand to Harry's palm. He exhaled slowly, focusing the spell down to its finest possible thread — the very edge of it, barely a whisper of power. Nothing that would cause lasting harm. Just enough to demonstrate.
"Avada Kedavra's Edge."
A pale flash. Blue-white, not green — the colour had shifted when he'd restructured the spell, the killing component stripped away and only the deeper mechanism left.
Harry yelped and jerked his hand back. He shook it hard, grimacing, the pain radiating upward in pulses — not savage, but strange, reaching somewhere that ordinary pain didn't usually go.
"Kevin! What was that?!"
"Hold on. How do you feel? Anywhere lighter than before? Like something's been removed?"
"I feel like you just hexed me at the Slug Club Christmas party —"
"That's not what I asked."
Harry stopped moving and actually considered it. He probed at himself the way you checked a tooth with your tongue, feeling for gaps. Then he shook his head. "Nothing. Just hurts."
"Hmm." Kevin sat back and tapped the wand against his knee, thinking.
He explained the mechanism — carefully, and without mentioning the real target. He described it as a counter to Voldemort's Physical Immunity Spell, which was true as far as it went. A soul-cutting edge, weaponized. Bypassed physical defenses entirely because it didn't operate physically at all. Most Dark Magic did enough damage to the body that the soul came secondary; this one inverted the priority.
What he didn't say: he'd been trying to map the soul-shard Voldemort had lodged in Harry. If he could feel its edges, isolate it, he might be able to remove it without the traditional solution, which involved Harry dying.
The test had been too gentle. He'd have to calibrate further.
Ron had been listening with his mouth slightly open. "That's — Kevin, that's nastier than the actual Killing Curse."
"In some ways."
"Good thing you're on our side," Harry said, and meant it quite completely.
He was still rubbing his hand when a tongue of flame bloomed in the air above the luggage rack and a folded letter dropped into Kevin's lap.
He opened it. Dumbledore's writing, tight and precise.
The others leaned in.
The Ministry intelligence had been accurate — there had been activity near Little Hangleton. Dumbledore had started at the Riddle house and found nothing. Just an empty hillside, faint residual magic, the kind you couldn't quite get a handle on. He'd swept the surrounding area instead, methodical, unhurried.
Just before dawn, he'd found it.
A manor. New construction, concealed under a layered Glamour Charm of considerable sophistication. Aurors had walked past it for months without registering it. The shadows had moved at the wrong angle; Dumbledore had noticed, watched, and confirmed people moving through. When he'd pierced the Glamour, the building revealed itself completely — large, fortified, warded in ways that even he hadn't forced immediately.
He believed it to be Voldemort's new main base. He had not attempted to enter. He had not disturbed the Glamour.
They would speak when he returned.
Kevin read it twice, then folded it along its original creases.
He was already planning.
Hermione's elbow found his ribs.
"Don't," she said, without looking up from her book.
He turned to look at her. She turned a page.
"The letter says heavy wards," she said. "And Grindelwald has been off the map for weeks. Which means Grindelwald is probably in that building."
Kevin said nothing.
"So no."
He sighed and leaned back. The snow-grey countryside rolled past.
Well I'll be…there exists a mighty precious space, y'all. Exclusive, hallowed, chapters ahead of the rest of the world. It's called [P] wickedwizard, folks. I do declare it's been waiting on you something fierce. Don't keep it waiting now