"Mmm…"
Dumbledore did not answer at once.
Charlie felt the tension climb a notch higher.
Then, across the desk, the old man simply laughed.
Charlie rolled his eyes. "All right, Professor. You just wanted to watch me squirm, didn't you?"
Dumbledore's smile said everything.
"Fine. I agree to your request. But…"
"But what?" Charlie leaned forward at once. "And please don't make it complicated."
"It's not complicated. I'm only wondering how many more secrets you're still carrying, Charlie."
Charlie met the blue eyes without flinching. "Professor, no one ever knows another person completely. Everyone keeps a side that stays hidden. That side is usually the one worth protecting."
If only Dumbledore were as easy to handle as Harry, he thought.
He had no idea whether the words would actually quiet the headmaster's curiosity.
"Very well," Dumbledore said at last.
"Still, you're certain you don't want to look more carefully into the source of your own abilities? Fiona's magic, for instance. As it happens, I know an old friend who is rather an expert on magical creatures."
"I know you're talking about Newt Scamander. I'd rather not, for now." Charlie's smile stayed light. "I have no interest in putting her in a cold little box so someone can watch what she eats and sleeps, or poke at her power just to see what happens."
Fiona shot up from his collar, landed on top of his head, and sprawled there without the slightest dignity, grinning like a fool.
Dumbledore looked at her and nodded. "I think you may have a slight misunderstanding of research methods. But all right. I respect your wishes. I won't speak of this to anyone else.
As for you yourself—Charlie—I've known a fair number of mixed-blood wizards over the years. You're clearly the most unusual of them. Whatever makes you different, I hope you'll take care to protect it."
"I will."
Dumbledore did not look convinced.
"You never seem particularly careful about hiding things. Not just this."
"Hiding things is exhausting," Charlie said, relaxed. "But you're probably right.
Which brings me to a small request of my own." He took a quiet sip of tea.
"You've been holding that in for a while. Go on. What do you want?"
"The Mirror of Erised."
Dumbledore's brows rose. "May I ask why?"
"I want to practice Occlumency over the summer."
The Mirror's greatest strength was that it saw straight through to a person's deepest desires. Occlumency was the exact opposite. Using the Mirror to train against it was the cleanest method Charlie could think of.
A Boggart would work too, but the Mirror was cleaner. Fear was better saved for later stages of practice.
"It feels a little like using a war hammer to crack a walnut," Dumbledore said, "but all right. You may have it."
Charlie finished the last of his tea, stood, and took his leave.
Only after the revolving stairs had carried him out of sight did a sour voice rise from one of the portraits on the wall.
"Arrogant little upstart. Bargaining in the headmaster's office like he owns the place. What does he think the authority of this office is worth?"
Phineas Nigellus Black, the least popular headmaster in Hogwarts history, glared from his frame. His tenure had been famous for its iron fist.
"If he were dealing with you, Black," another portrait answered, "you would never have learned a single one of his secrets. I can guarantee that."
Dilys Derwent, the gentle-faced former headmistress, had never gotten along with Black.
She continued, "Dumbledore sits and talks with him because the boy has given him a measure of trust. You, Black, never learned what it feels like to earn the genuine trust of a gifted student. That feeling is rather like the bond one has with one's own child—oh wait. I forgot. The Black family has rules against that sort of sentiment, doesn't it?"
"Students exist to obey the headmaster!" Black snapped.
"And that," said yet another former head, "is precisely why the proportion of dark wizards produced during your time remains the highest on record."
"Enough, all of you." Dumbledore's voice was mild. "He is allowed to bargain with me. After all, the boy helped kill Voldemort.
I rather think even you, in my place, would have offered him a reward."
The wall erupted in overlapping voices of pure disbelief.
"Is that so?" Black's eyes narrowed. "He looks remarkably healthy for someone who just fought a war. And what, exactly, does a first-year possess that could kill Voldemort?"
"That's the more interesting part," Dumbledore said. "He never drew a blade. He simply stood behind the events and gave them a quiet push. The one who actually sent Voldemort back to hell was Harry Potter. He's resting in the hospital wing right now."
By the time Charlie reached the dormitory it was well past midnight.
To his mild surprise, Anthony and Hector were both still awake, waiting.
"Thank Merlin you're back," Anthony said the moment the door opened. "What happened?"
They only knew Charlie had gone to cause Quirrell some trouble. They had no idea how far that trouble had gone.
Charlie had never intended to keep them completely in the dark; he simply hadn't seen any reason to drag them into the middle of it. The professors' challenges were Harry's group's business. Hector might even have solved McGonagall's chessboard more cleanly than Ron, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome. The purple fire would still have stopped them cold.
So the two of them had simply waited.
Charlie exhaled and opened his arms. "It's finished."
Neither of them hugged him. Instead they took an arm each and began checking for missing limbs or open wounds. Only when they found not a single drop of blood did they relax.
"All right," Hector said. "Now tell us what kind of trouble you actually caused."
Charlie nodded and laid out everything that had happened in the underground chamber. He spent the most time on what Harry had done. His own part he kept modest—mostly standing in the shadows and talking.
Even so, the moment they heard that Voldemort and Quirrell had been the same person, both of them went pale.
"So You-Know—" Hector began.
"Don't say the name!" Anthony cut in at once.
"Fine. The Dark Lord. He was with Quirrell the whole time? Sitting in class with us, eating in the Great Hall with us—right there the entire year?"
"Yes."
"And Anthony," Charlie added, "the name Voldemort isn't that terrifying. It just makes you flinch a little."
Anthony promptly shivered.
Hector's shoulders hunched at the same moment.
Hector rounded on Anthony. "You absolute coward. You just infected me with your fear!"
"What fear? You're the one who's scared—don't pin it on me!"
Charlie watched them bicker and said dryly, "You're not just arguing to chase the fear out of your systems, are you?"
"Of course not!"
"Absolutely not!"
They both denied it at the same volume, then both swallowed hard at the exact same time.
Charlie smiled. "I believe you.
Strictly speaking, language has power. Language shapes thought, and thought shapes magic. So the fear is completely normal."
Anthony frowned. "I don't follow."
They clearly needed a new topic, anything that would push the name away.
"To explain it properly," Charlie said, "we have to start with what language actually does.
If I say the word 'fire,' your mind instantly fills with color, shape, the feeling of heat against skin. The word 'fire' is an anchor for everything you already know about real fire. I use the word to point at the burning red thing in the world."
Both boys nodded quickly. "And that has what to do with You-Know-Who?"
"Everything. What I just described applies to every human society. For wizards it carries an extra weight.
Wizards can change the world."
Charlie raised his right hand and closed it into a fist.
"So I say 'fire.'"
His thumb flicked upward the way a lighter would. A small, perfect flame bloomed on the tip.
"The word called up everything I understand about fire. I added a thread of magic. The world changed. Real flame appeared.
Same principle when we speak the name of the Dark Lord. The entire wizarding world has spent decades agreeing that the name belongs to a monster who kills without blinking. So the name itself becomes a vessel for fear. When a wizard speaks it, that collective fear rises inside the mind and the magic answers. The fear becomes real."
Voldemort—flight from death, or theft of death. In the English of the magical world the name carried a cold, literal weight. The Chinese rendering Charlie had once known, with its image of a serpent sliding low to the ground, had never quite matched that same sharp edge.
He was beginning to understand why even Hector reacted.
A wizard's thoughts could shape reality—including the wizard's own.
Anthony and Hector were Ravenclaws. Their minds moved fast.
Hector tried the name carefully. "So Volde—mort—"
He still shivered.
"—is basically a spell? An uncontrolled one that casts fear on anyone who says it?"
"Exactly." Charlie sat down at his desk. "But if you stop being afraid of him in the first place, the name loses its grip. Say it and nothing rises. Ghosts, for example. Do either of you still flinch at the word 'ghost'? In the Muggle world, talking about them this late at night would have someone telling you to shut up. Here we know better. The word stopped carrying fear the moment we understood what ghosts actually are."
Hector nodded. He remembered nights at home when ghost stories had kept him awake. After a year of Nearly Headless Nick and the rest, the fear had simply evaporated. Next time his father put on a horror film, he suspected he would watch the whole thing without blinking.
Charlie pulled off his shirt and reached for a clean one. "Honestly, if you'd seen what was left of him tonight, the name would already feel empty. Since you didn't, here's a practical method. Repeat the name quietly in your head until the fear thins out. Then start saying it aloud. The only way past a fear is straight through it."
He opened the dormitory door and headed for the bathrooms. After a night like this, a shower was non-negotiable.
The Ravenclaw bathrooms were individual stalls with simple showers. Charlie stepped under the water and let it run through his hair while his thoughts drifted.
Prefects' bathrooms supposedly had proper baths. His hair had grown longer than he realized. He hadn't cut it once since September.
When he finished he wiped the steam from the mirror, braced both hands on the sink, and looked at himself.
Then he froze.
A single drop of water slid from a strand of hair and fell past his eye before he managed to speak.
"What?"
He patted his own chest, half-expecting the reflection to change back.
The thin, sharp-edged boy he remembered was gone. The body in the glass was longer, more evenly filled out, the shoulders broader, the height noticeably greater.
Hogwarts food alone could not have done that.
Unless…
He ran through the changes in his habits over the past months.
A quiet laugh escaped him.
Energy never simply disappears.
After he had taken in Spring Thunder, the power that vanished from the chocolate had not been lost. It had become fuel.
Spring thunder blooms, and all things grow.
Apparently "all things" included him.
And his hair. That explained the length.
He shook his head, still smiling, and reached for a towel.