Reactance | James Potter

Chapter 8

   THE HOGWARTS CORRIDORS were spooky at night. Past curfew when the only persons mucking about were mischievous students and paranormal ghosts, all of whom were up to no good. They got even eerier when you were meant to walk them alone.

   With no one to watch her back in the dead of coming morning, Olivia was on edge. She kept close to the wall as she trekked on, her wand out and in her hand. Before this evening, she had gone about her prefect patrols with her wand away in her pocket. She had felt comfortable enough to do so with a partner at her side, chatting together and peeking into dusty corners.

   Now, she hardly found it in her to check around the stone statue that stood proud at the top of the side-staircase leading from the third to second floors. Instead she only gave it a quick glance before hurrying down the steps, craning her ears to listen to more than just the pounding of her feet on stone.

   Milligan Feldspar had been appointed her patrol partner for the coming two weeks. A Gryffindor seventh year. However, he had failed to meet her outside the portrait hole for their shift. She had waited all of twenty minutes before supposing that he wasn't coming and continuing on alone.

   For all of this hour, the first hour of her shift, she had been racking her memory for details of the most recent prefects meeting. Where had Lily and her partner — Remus — been sectioned to patrol? She wondered, if she could find them, perhaps they could walk together for the rest of the evening.

   Some company would be much appreciated. If there was one thing that unnerved Olivia, it was the quiet of a night's silence. It was creeping, lurking, and overrun with shadows.

   As Olivia stepped off the bottom of the staircase, she slowed her pace. The approaching corridor was dim; the lanterns on the walls burned low, their flames flickering in and out of life. The school's lanterns were enchanted to never stop burning, she knew that, and yet still she wondered if they were about to extinguish.

She hadn't always been this neurotic. She remembered it well, all of her prior years at Hogwarts when she would sneak out of her common room to explore the castle. She knew this school as well as she knew the back of her own hand.

She used to take to the Astronomy Tower, where she would lay on her back to see the stars. She used to visit the Owlery, where she would listen to the owls' sleepy hoots as she looked out over the mountains looming on the horizon. Sometimes, when she was feeling extra brave, she would even venture out onto the grounds. With the moon over her head, she would mull near the still waters of the Black Lake and watch how the banks were licked with murky dark waves.

She was different now, or perhaps the world was. This summer holiday had brought with it news of horrible, heinous crimes — performed by a group that grew larger in number by the day. Innocents were dying, children were dying.

"Hogwarts is safe," her mother had said, in an attempt to be reassuring. But Olivia hadn't missed the wavering of her voice. "It's the safest place for you."

Her father, a Muggle, understood little about the practice of magic. However even he could understand, without any shadow of a doubt, that it is dangerous. And that the better the wizard, the more powerful their spells, the bigger their sense of being almighty.

Olivia noticed how he sat quiet that evening, not an opinion to be given as her and her mother discussed the emerging war. He was at risk most of all, a Muggle married to a witch . . . how blasphemous. . . .

No, nothing was the same for Olivia. Not anymore. No feeling of security lingered long when she really put thought into it, when she had nothing to be distracted by.