Harry Potter: Fire Lord Black

By breakfast, half the school had decided what Harry's Parseltongue meant.

Edward heard three versions before he finished his porridge. In one, Harry had ordered the snake to attack Justin. In another, he had summoned it himself. A fourth-year Slytherin claimed Harry had threatened the entire Dueling Club in the language of snakes. None of them had been close enough to hear anything but hissing.

Draco repeated the darkest version until Edward stopped him.

"You conjured the snake," Edward said.

"That is not the point."

"It is a fairly important point when the story becomes Potter summoned a snake."

Draco scowled into his tea.

Edward did not defend Harry out of affection. They barely spoke. He defended the sequence because sequence mattered. Draco had violated the dueling rule. Harry had spoken. The snake had turned toward Justin. Harry claimed he had ordered it away. Snape had removed it. Those were facts. Everything else belonged in a different column.

The distinction became harder to maintain as the day went on. Students moved aside when Harry entered corridors. Justin left a classroom by another door rather than pass him. Even some Gryffindors watched him when they thought he could not see.

Edward understood fear better than he liked. Fear wanted a shape. Give it a name and a face, and people could pretend they had solved the problem.

That evening, he found Draco in an empty Charms classroom serving detention under Snape's supervision. Draco was copying the Dueling Club rules by hand while Snape checked essays at the front desk.

"You are enjoying this," Draco muttered when Edward entered to return a Potions reference.

"Immensely."

Snape looked up. Edward set the book on his desk.

"Professor, may I ask about yesterday?"

"If the question is whether Mr. Malfoy's decision was foolish, the answer is already available in writing. Several hundred times."

Draco pressed his quill harder.

Edward kept his face straight. "The snake turned after Potter spoke. Does that tell us whether he controlled it?"

Snape's gaze sharpened. "It tells us the snake responded. Parseltongue does not provide a transcript to everyone else in the room."

"So Justin's interpretation could be wrong."

"As could Potter's explanation. Evidence can support several possibilities without choosing one for you."

Edward nodded.

Snape glanced at his wand. "You also appear curious about your own spell."

He was. The Incendio he had cast had come quickly, quicker than Edward expected after the weeks of private fire practice. That bothered him more than the praise some students had attached to it.

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"I reacted before thinking through interference with your spell."

"Yes."

"The flame also spread farther than I intended."

"Also yes."

Snape closed the essay he was marking. "Power you cannot place precisely is not control. You will not practice stronger fire alone at night because yesterday happened to end without a burned student."

Edward had not told him about the Astronomy Tower.

Snape's mouth thinned. "Mr. Black, there are very few secret places in a school patrolled by ghosts, portraits, prefects, professors, a caretaker, and a cat."

Draco laughed and received another line to copy.

The next week, Edward moved his fire practice into approved sessions. Professor Flitwick reduced the exercises rather than expanding them. Edward lit three candles at different distances without scorching the table. Then he extinguished only the middle flame. On the next attempt he failed and put out all three.

"Again," Flitwick said.

Edward repeated the exercise until irritation made his hand tense. The nearest candle flared too high.

"Stop."

Edward lowered his wand.

"Your spell becomes broader when you are frustrated," Flitwick said. "That is useful information. It is not an invitation to become more frustrated."

The lesson was less impressive than shaping blades of fire beneath moonlight. It was also harder.

By the third session, Edward could create a narrow tongue of flame, move it across a line of damp sand, and stop it before it reached dry parchment. He failed often enough that Flitwick kept a bucket of water beside the table.

No one applauded.

Edward preferred it that way.

Meanwhile, the whispers about Harry did not fade. They sharpened. Someone wrote HEIR? beside his name on a noticeboard. Professor McGonagall removed it before lunch and assigned prefects to watch the corridors. Snape warned Slytherin that harassing Potter would be punished regardless of whatever theory a student had invented between classes.

Draco complained afterward.

"If Potter is the Heir, we are supposed to ignore it?"

"No," Edward said. "We are supposed to notice evidence without manufacturing the rest."

"He speaks Parseltongue."

"Yes."

"Slytherin spoke Parseltongue."

"Yes."

"The Chamber belongs to Slytherin."

"According to the legend."

Draco spread his hands. "How many pieces do you need?"

"Enough to connect Potter to an attack."

Draco muttered something about excessive caution.

Edward let it go. He was more concerned by what the rumor revealed about his own group. Several students he had considered promising repeated accusations because they came from older relatives. One boy suggested following Harry after curfew. Another wanted to provoke him with a snake and see what happened.

Edward rejected both ideas.

"We are not testing classmates like ingredients," he said.

The phrase sounded obvious once spoken. A month earlier, his private notes had contained lists of students ranked by usefulness and discipline. He had not planned anything as crude as releasing a snake, but the instinct behind the lists was uncomfortably similar: observe people under pressure, sort them, decide who was worth keeping.

He tore out two pages that night.

Not because every observation was wrong. Calm under pressure still mattered. Skill still mattered. So did access to knowledge. But a person was not a bundle of assets waiting for Edward to assign a place.

The first real warning of the term was not the snake or the whispers about the Chamber.

It was how quickly fear made bad methods feel reasonable.

Near curfew, Edward crossed the entrance hall on his way back from the library. Harry stood alone near the stairs, reading a notice that ordered students to travel in pairs after dark. For a moment neither spoke.

Harry broke the silence. "You told Malfoy I did not attack Justin."

"I told him we do not know what you said."

"I told the snake to leave him alone."

Edward studied his face. Harry looked angry, tired, and younger than the rumors made him sound.

"Then say the same thing to the professors if they ask. Do not chase everyone who whispers about it. You will never catch up."

Harry gave a humorless laugh. "Easy for you to say. Everyone thinks your strange magic is impressive."

Edward remembered the candle flaring when he lost his temper. "Some of them do. That does not make them right about me either."

Footsteps sounded from the corridor. Hermione and Ron appeared, both visibly relieved to find Harry where expected.

Edward continued toward the dungeons.

Behind him, the three Gryffindors left together. Ahead, the stone passage descended into colder air.

Hogwarts had not yet suffered another attack, but the castle already felt different. Students watched one another for signs. Old stories had become explanations. Every unusual talent invited a verdict.

Edward flexed his wand hand once and let it relax.

If another warning came, he wanted his first response to be evidence, not certainty.