S1E7 — East Stands
Saturday arrived with a sky that couldn't make up its mind. The lake wore pewter; the wind kept changing hats. Corvus decided the weather had read the program and wanted a dramatic credit.
Ravenclaw's knocker asked, "What has many keys but can't open a single door?"
"A piano," he said. "Ideally a tuned one." The door let him out with a little arpeggio of approval.
He dressed like a boy trying not to look like a plan: scarf, gloves, locket warm under his collar, the black coin against his sternum like a steady note. He slid Breathkeeper test pins to the Ravenclaw prefects with a "favorite shape, not an order," and jogged down to the grounds with the particular calm of someone who has agreed to be weather, not thunder.
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Stadium Setup
The stands rose in ribbed arcs, timber and iron and cheerful menace. Flags snapped; students sorted themselves into tribes and volume. Madame Hooch cut the air like a whistle given legs. Lee Jordan cleared his throat as if preparing to narrate history with a drum kit.
Flitwick intercepted Corvus at the east entrance, coat neat, eyes bright. "Our man," he said softly. "No heroics. Watch the steps. If they flirt with mischief, use what you have—manners first."
"Always," Corvus said. He tapped the rail. "Good morning. Thank you for being stairs."
The stadium stairs—cousins to the castle's more eccentric cousins—shivered, flattered, and settled.
He tuned his kit:
CV-006 Breadcrumbs: refreshed on Hooch, McGonagall, Flitwick, Madam Pomfrey, two Auror-aged professors he did not recognize, and—after a brief sulk—the Snape weather system.
CV-005 Compass (Field Variant): nudge toward exits if a crowd thought lost.
Breathkeeper: prefects briefed along each section; key phrase = favorite shape; thirty seconds of better decisions.
CV-008 Umbrella Etiquette: not deployed; clouds were dithering, and he preferred honest rain to decorative magic.
He made a note on his cuff with a pencil stub.
> 48. Quidditch protocol: watch the ways in and out, not the sky. Systems ≫ spectacle.
Daphne Greengrass ghosted up the steps at Slytherin's end, cool as a silvered quill. She didn't look over. "Raven," she murmured sideways, voice for a single ear, "today we win without trampling."
"I am firmly anti-trample," he said. "If you feel the urge, breathe a pentagon."
"Triangles are for children," she said, almost smiling, and disappeared into green velvet and expectation.
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Whistle, Release
Balls caged; brooms bristling; Madame Hooch with a voice like a brass edge. "Mount your brooms."
The whistle split the air.
The game tore free.
It was bright noise and blades of color: Slytherin green knifing lanes, Gryffindor scarlet arcing after, blurs that remembered to be boys when they needed to be. Jordan's commentary flared and folded; McGonagall's reprimands filigreed his enthusiasm like lace over a drum.
Corvus let the pitch be background music. He watched rails, risers, the shiver line where excitement tips toward crowd logic. He counted: first-years per stair; distance to exits; how quickly a prefect could reach a choke point if the wind shifted. Systems, not capes.
The coin against his chest warmed when a small boy whispered Home, and a mote on Flitwick's lapel flared for him alone. Corvus tracked the light across a hundred bobbing heads until boy-found-teacher and the current smoothed. He logged it with the precision of a man who counts breathing.
> 49. Breadcrumb activations, first ten minutes: 2 (both resolved).
49a. Prefects using Breathkeeper: observed 3; average calm return ≈ 25s.
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The Wrong Harmony Arrives
Ten minutes in, the sky decided to audition for November. Wind veered; flags snapped as if insulted. Gryffindor's Seeker—Harry Potter, a spark still learning to be a flame—tilted into a dive and came up with nothing but bravado. Slytherin Beaters swung like carpenters with grudges. The crowd swayed into one animal with many throats.
Corvus had just told a step, very politely, that it was doing an excellent job of being a step when the coin cooled so quickly he felt it in his teeth.
The wrong harmony—thin and hungry—threaded the edges of the pitch. Not loud. Focused. As if someone were playing a bad note into a single instrument and daring it to keep time.
Harry's broom shuddered.
Up in the stands, attention narrowed as hard as glass. It always narrows before it breaks.
Corvus didn't look where everyone looked. He looked across that space, into the seams. He felt along the line of the wrong note and found, not a point, but a direction: the opposite stand, a stripe of staff seats, a man in turban and fear, eyes fixed, lips moving without prayer.
A beat later, he saw the decoy the school would have offered any less stubborn observer: Snape's long mouth shaping words, gaze locked, malice like weather.
"Witnesses or walls, not thresholds," he told himself. He chose walls.
He walked the east stair with his hands behind his back like a boy inspecting architecture. "Hold for small feet," he told the timber, not the trigger—just the truth. The wood steadied the way old dogs steady when you say their name kindly.
On the pitch, Harry clung; the broom bucked like a thing offended by gravity. A swell of noise—fear braided with thrill—climbed the stands.
Corvus slipped between two clusters of first-years and grinned like a dare. "Pick a shape," he told them. "Breathe in it. Whoever chooses the more ridiculous polygon wins."
"Dodeca—dodeca—" one boy managed, laughing through terror.
"Winner," Corvus said, and the cheer tilted a degree back toward human.
He timed Hermione Granger's movement without meaning to. She had the particular velocity of a mind that has found a theory and refuses to leave it unharmed. She shouldered down their row like a librarian through lies. The wrong harmony wavered, confused by a small girl traveling with intention.
Across from him, Daphne stood without standing, eyes slivered against the wind. She tracked not the boy, not the ball—the line of the bad note. Slytherin eyes, properly used, are excellent scientists.
Corvus touched the rail. "Good stairs," he told them. "Thank you for not being theater."
They held. The coin stayed cold.
> 50. Broom anomaly: localized jinx vector (not rail- or weather-borne); wrong harmony source ≈ opposite staff row; Snape = decoy, Quirrell = knife under cloth (hypothesis).
50a. Response plan: keep exits clear; keep lungs honest; let witnesses work.
On the pitch, the Gryffindor Seeker was either about to be unseated or about to become myth. In the staff row, sparks the size of a bookmark flared at a hem and died; the wrong harmony hiccuped.
Harry's broom stuttered, then steadied.
Corvus did not cheer. He exhaled, counted to five because five is a number you can hold in one hand, and patted the rail as if it had helped—which, in its way, it had.
"Steady," he told the stands. "Stay stairs."
The game, rude and beautiful, kept going. The crowd remembered how to be many throats instead of one mouth. Corvus watched the ways up and the ways out and wrote with his pencil stub in the palm of his glove:
> 51. If panic, code = Home. If stampede, speak to wood first. If heroics itch, scratch with paperwork later.
Below, a flash of gold teased the corner of vision like an idea. Above, clouds negotiated with themselves. Across the stadium, a girl with a scorched sleeve sat down very calmly and looked, for the first time, like someone who would never again ask permission to be brave.
Corvus smiled, very small. Systems had held. Witnesses had been chosen. The door of this story would not bite—today.
He leaned his elbows on the rail and listened to the castle purr under all the noise. The coin warmed a degree, then two, a quiet yes under his ribs.
The wind argued with itself; the stands decided to ignore it. The wrong note—thin, hungry—hiccuped, then frayed. Across the pitch a sleeve smoked, a hand slapped, and the discord died like a string that finally snapped.
Harry's broom steadied.
Noise returned in a rush—the sort that pretends it never left. Corvus kept his eyes on rails and risers, not the sky. Systems, not spectacle.
Madam Hooch's whistle carved lanes in the air. Chasers scissored; Bludgers sulked with intent. Then the flash of gold did what ideas do: appeared exactly where persistence could catch it. Gryffindor's Seeker dove; the crowd became weather; Daphne Greengrass watched like a scientist measuring wind shear.
Harry came up swallowing victory.
The stadium detonated into delight. Flags became wings. Corvus tapped the rail twice—good stairs—and let the exhale pass through him instead of taking him with it.
> 52. Match end: no stampede; exits behaved; Breathkeepers used (observed 2) for celebration wobble, not panic. Acceptable.
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Egress
Leaving is when crowds get stupid. Corvus walked the east run like a man reading sheet music. A first-year tripped; a prefect caught him; the step held instead of performing. Two little Hufflepuffs went static at the sight of so many boots—Home, a mote on McGonagall's lapel flared, and they curved toward her like iron to north.
He thanked the timber under his palm. The stair hummed back, pleased to have been praised for doing its job. Manners move stone.
Daphne materialized at the top landing, composed in defeat the way marble is composed in winter. "Well flown," she said, meaning we lost without letting the world cheapen it.
"Your Beaters were carpenters with vendettas," Corvus said. "I took notes."
Her mouth tipped. "I would be offended if you hadn't."
Fred and George ricocheted past with the grace of chaos granted immunity by joy. Fred clapped Corvus's shoulder once, hard. George mouthed systems! like a battle cry. He let them be thunder. He stayed the weather report.
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Staff Weather
Flitwick found him at the foot of the stairs with the satisfaction of a conductor who'd heard the orchestra land the ending together. "Observation?"
"Lights used. Breathkeepers polite. Stairs enjoyed being architecture," Corvus said. "Also, the wind thinks it's clever."
Flitwick's eyes laughed. "You watched the right things," he said, which is as warm as praise gets when it's meant to make you steadier, not taller.
Snape passed like weather with an appointment. His gaze flicked over Corvus, then past him, toward the opposite stand—the space where a turbaned man had been very busy not praying. Two sentences of meaning walked behind his eyes. None of them came out. Fine by Corvus. Witnesses, not thresholds.
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Hut, Smoke, and Secrets (From a Distance)
The grounds smelt of wet wood and victory sugar. Corvus let his feet take him near the pumpkin patch and stopped when the hut's chimney smudged the air. Voices inside—three smaller ones tripping over excitement; a fourth with the gravel of a heart that thinks first and speaks second.
He could have knocked.
He did not.
He watched the smoke write an untidy sentence against the sky, then turned back toward the castle, where his work lives.
> 53. Hagrid—triage of secrets in progress (inference).
53a. Policy: do not add variables to conversations already full of them.
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Umbrella Etiquette (Field Note)
Rain tried a few halfhearted drops. The main steps slicked like a punchline waiting to happen. Corvus sketched CV-008 — Umbrella Etiquette into the air over one bottleneck—no show, no sparkle—just a nudge that taught water to prefer the sides. Puddles endured for the children who required splashing; the center line lost its slapstick.
Madam Pince—of all people—passed through the drier strip and did not scowl. He recorded this under miraculous, scalable.
> 54. CV-008 (trial): localized guttering; zero slips; one librarian spared; keep to rush hours only.
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Tower, Riddle, Tea
Ravenclaw's knocker asked, "What has a head, a tail, is brown, and has no legs?"
"A Knut," Corvus said, "and an attitude." The door opened, smug.
Common room light: book-gold. Susan and Hannah were mid-post-match debrief with biscuits; he contributed a policy—no heroism under fourteen—and a refill of the kettle. Teacups behaved without choir; they'd earned the night off.
He climbed to the dormitory window. The lake held the sky's unread letters. Coin and locket went on the sill, small moons in a private tide.
Mystery Log:
> 55. Quidditch Debrief
– Wrong harmony pinpoint (hypothesis): staff row; decoy vs. knife confirmed by outcomes.
– Hermione: acted like a theorem—brisk, correct, minimal apology.
– Stairs: impeccable under praise.
– CV-006 (HOME): used; route time ↓; tears ↓; dignity ↑.
– CV-008 (Umbrella Etiquette): keep.
55a. Doctrine update: Witnesses or walls, not thresholds remains the rule. Choose where the story cannot bite.
Frost took its time, then wrote on the glass in a tidy hand: You looked the right way.
"I had a good teacher," Corvus told the pane, meaning the castle and the small, stubborn part of him that refuses capes.
The frost cleared.
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Late Corridor, Brief Conversations
On the landing by the fourth gargoyle, Daphne again—because of course. "The boy swallowed the Snitch," she said, tone halfway between offended and impressed.
"Everything tastes like victory for an hour," Corvus said. "Then it tastes like metal."
"Accurate." She glanced toward the third floor without moving her head. "Your rule about thresholds—keep it sharp."
"It's a promise," he said.
She nodded once—the Slytherin benediction—and dissolved into shadow and prefects.
Farther along, Hermione came at him with the high-beam eyes of someone who had just passed an exam no one else had scheduled. "You saw?"
"I saw enough to know you'll need a new sleeve," he said mildly. "And that the world is safer when the right person makes a fuss."
She flushed, proud and embarrassed, which is the correct combination for first-rate courage. "Systems are good," she said, almost like an apology.
"Systems make courage cheaper," he said. "We'll keep building them."
She left with her chin a degree higher.
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Two Lines of Weather
Snape again, later, at a corridor's edge. He stopped. The pause meant gift or warning.
"Black," he said, almost bored. "Whatever you imagine you understand—imagine it more slowly."
"Yes, sir," Corvus said, storing the sentence under useful, unkind, correct.
He passed on. The air kept its secrets, but a fraction lighter.
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Night, Delivered
He set the coin by the locket and did not open either. Promises kept are anchors.
He wrote one last line:
> 56. Build choices so others can take them. Keep doors as promises. Praise your stairs.
The tower exhaled. Paradox muttered in her sleep, offended by nothing in particular. Down in the stone, the old intelligence that had adopted a thousand clever children purred.
"Steady," he told the room.
The coin warmed once—yes—and the castle, pleased with its boy, went on keeping watch.