The mortifying ordeal of falling in love with your entire secret study group

7th year: Theo

Classes needed to be restructured, with the loss of two members of the faculty that was already overworked. Snape, because he was an asshole on the inside, ordered the baby Death Eaters to attend the staff meetings. For the second meeting, Daphne ordered her Prefects along, because the awkward silences when someone alluded to certain influences from a related Dark Lord or the possibility of Potter's return got taxing. Theo, Daphne, Blaise, Snape and the other baby Death Eaters were Slytherins first – so it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that no answers would be given.

Muggle Studies was cancelled, as there were no suitable teachers in the castle – not amongst the staff and not amongst the students, so the timetables were adjusted to allow students to pick another elective. NEWT courses such as Alchemy, Art and Ghoul Studies would be open for all years, which made McGonagall and Flitwick smile like cats who caught a very delicious bird. Apparently they'd been petitioning for years to make this change.

And Snape, of all people, turned up one morning with what must be the entire stock of at least one Muggle bookstore or second hand bookshop. Hogwarts' trusted rumour mill was intent on the belief that Madam Pince was now in love with the Death Eater.

Professor Vector and Madam Pomfrey took over the Dark Arts class, Professor Vector with a hasty Snape approved curriculum and Madam Pomfrey with an introduction to healing for all years. Daphne, as Head Girl, was going to do all of Professor Vector's grading in Arithmancy, and Blaise in Defence, while Theo would stick to his Head Boy duties. And as Daphne appeared to be happy about the chance to do more Arithmancy, Theo couldn't even be mad about it.

Being Head Boy was a taxing job. In the evenings, he patrolled the halls alone, and on the weekends he helped the first and second years with homework in the library – Daphne's study group for all houses worked surprisingly well, and the Prefects had, reluctantly at first, started a friendship. Following their lead, even Gryffindors and Slytherins weren't at each other's throats all the time. Though maybe that was because Draco stopped picking fights.

By Christmas, Theo was usually hiding in the secret study room during the study hours, content to let literally anyone else do the tutoring. A first year Hufflepuff had too dumb or too brave to properly be afraid of him, and now nobody was scared of him. Blaise, the idiot, just laughed at him.

"Any ideas on the antivenom?" Theo asked on one such December afternoon.

Blaise, who was glaring at the vial of Nagini's venom, just shrugged. He was sitting on a pile of the books Hermione had stolen from the Black townhouse, because Theo was lying on their old, admittedly shoddy transfiguration of a couch. "We'd need a lot of luck to figure it out. We only have one try to test it against the venom Snape gave us, and if we fail..."

And they should test it, Theo knew. It was useless to base survival on a hypothesis. Luck, though, was hard to come by. Potter had some of it, he knew, and by extension Hermione, otherwise they'd be dead. There were no charms, dark magic or light, that could influence fate, and the potion... wait, the potion. "Felix Felicis!"

"What? Oh," Blaise breathed, and stood. His eyes lit up as he smiled. "Between us and Snape, we'll get the ingredients for it, and..."

Theo was violently reminded of one night last year, in early spring, when they'd gone to the lake at midnight to enchant a rock to glow with moonlight – it had failed – but they'd decided, foolishly, to jump into the lake for a quick swim. It had been freezing, and they'd laughed so much it hurt, and when they'd climbed out of the water before the Giant Squid would throw them, the Slytherins had dried themselves and wrapped their clothing in warming charms, while Hermione had been laughing too hard to notice. She had conjured a blanket for herself, but she had still been clattering teeth and icy hair until Daphne pointed her wand at Hermione and said the spells.

The following conversation was one that Theo had brushed aside as a Hermione thing. She'd grown up with Muggle parents. Of course, the Muggle solution of finding a blanket first was the obvious train of thought for her. Theo, now, was confronted with the possibility that his life as a wizard who preferred spells and rituals made him blind to the ways of a Potion's Master.

"We're wizards, fuck," Theo cursed. "We should have thought of this earlier. What's stopping us from dosing everyone with liquid luck as a defence strategy?"

Madam Pomfrey was teaching them spells to stop a bleeding, to heal broken bones, and to cast diagnosis charms. Theo hoped they'd never have to use them.