For two days, Iris Whitmore lived in a state of heightened, fearful awareness. She felt like a spy in a land of blissful amnesiacs. The world of Hogwarts, which had seemed so solid and wondrous, now felt fragile, like a watercolor painting that could be wiped away with a damp cloth. She watched her friends with an almost painful intensity, cataloging their every conversation, waiting for the flicker of a forgotten memory, the smooth, vacant space where a shared joke used to be.
Nothing happened. Justin Finch-Fletchley complained about the ink blot on his finger, wondering aloud how it got there. Susan Bones waved happily at Neville Longbottom in the corridor, having re-learned his name in Herbology that morning. The tiny holes were patching themselves over with new experiences, and only Iris carried the phantom limb of what had been erased. Her list, tucked inside her robes, remained unchanged.
On the evening of the third day, the Great Hall buzzed with more than the usual pre-dinner chatter. Professor Flitwick, standing on a stack of books by the staff table, tapped his wand against a lectern for attention.
“Announcing,” he squeaked, his voice beaming with pride, “a short performance by our esteemed Frog Choir, who have been diligently rehearsing a new piece for your enjoyment!”
A smattering of applause broke out. Six senior students filed to the front, each holding a large, deeply croaking toad on a velvet cushion. Iris had seen them practicing earlier by the Great Lake, their voices carrying over the water. She’d recognized the melody from a Muggle play she’d been forced to read in primary school. *Double, double, toil and trouble…* It sounded magnificent with the deep, bass-note ribbits of the toads providing the rhythm.
Professor Flitwick raised his wand like a miniature baton. “And a-one, and a-two…”
The choir took a breath. The toads swelled their throats.
“*Stir the pot and watch it bubble*,” they sang, their voices clear and pleasant. “*Make the potion, make it double. Magic charm and wizard’s art, mend a soul and heal a heart.*”
The toads punctuated each line with a resonant “Brrrr-wumph.”
Iris froze, a piece of shepherd’s pie halfway to her mouth. That wasn’t right. The lyrics were… trite. They were simple, almost childish. Where was the talk of fillet of a fenny snake? Of eye of newt and toe of frog?
She glanced around. No one else seemed to notice. The professors were smiling indulgently. Her fellow first-years were captivated. A few seventh-years in Ravenclaw had faint frowns of concentration, as if trying to place a half-remembered tune, but then they shrugged and went back to their meal. The song ended to a wave of enthusiastic applause.
The cold dread, now horribly familiar, seeped back into Iris’s bones. This was it. A big one. A public one.
As the choir filed out, flushed with success, Iris slipped from the Hufflepuff table. She caught up to a tall sixth-year with blonde hair, one of the lead singers.
“Excuse me,” Iris said, her voice small. “That was a lovely song.”
“Thanks!” the singer said, beaming. “Flitwick was thrilled. Said we got the harmony just right.”
“It’s just,” Iris pressed, choosing her words carefully, “I thought I’d heard a different version. One about… witches and cauldrons?”
The singer’s brow furrowed. “Different version? No, this is the one. It’s a classic. Barnaby Fink’s *Witches’ Brew Accompaniment*. Been in the choir repertoire for centuries.” She brandished the roll of sheet music she was carrying. “See?”
Iris looked. There, on the aged parchment, under the title, were the lyrics they had just sung. *Stir the pot and watch it bubble.* The ink was old, faded to the same brownish hue as the musical notes, as if it had been there forever. There was no sign of alteration. No fresh ink. No magical shimmer.
The sixth-year shrugged. “Maybe you’re thinking of another song. Got to go, my toad needs his warts moisturized.” She hurried off, leaving Iris staring at the spot where the pristine, incorrect sheet music had been.
It wasn't just memory. The physical world had changed again. This was exactly what Snape had warned her about.
A sudden, intense chill made her gasp. A whisper, dry as dust, slithered from the empty suit of armour beside her.
“Doggerel,” it hissed. “Utter, contemptible doggerel where once there was Shakespeare. An outrage.”
The pearlescent form of Phineas Blackwood seeped through the metal chest plate of the armour, his spectral face contorted in disgust. He drifted towards Iris, his translucent eyes burning with an intellectual fire.
“Did you hear it, child? ‘Mend a soul and heal a heart.’ Sentimental tripe! The original composition was a masterwork. Barnaby Fink brilliantly set the Bard’s own verse for choir and amphibian chorus in 1728! I attended the premiere! It was ghastly, but it was art!”
“It’s gone,” Iris whispered, her own horror validated by the ghost’s fury. “The sheet music itself has changed.”
Professor Blackwood’s form flickered violently. “The parchment, too? Scoured. Another piece of history… simplified. Cheapened.” He floated closer, his chilling presence a strange comfort. He was the only other person—personage?—who saw the world as she did: a tapestry with threads being pulled loose.
“He knew,” Phineas murmured, looking not at Iris but through her. “Fink. He feared ephemera. He was obsessed with preservation. He made a master copy, a definitive score. Bound in dragon-hide, he claimed. Resistant to fire, time… and fading.”
This was it. A clue.
“Where?” Iris asked.
The ghost gave a translucent shrug. “That, I do not know. He was a notoriously secretive fellow. Probably hidden somewhere no one would think to look.” His form began to thin. “This warrants… consideration.” And with a final, frustrated shimmer, he drifted backwards through the stone wall, gone.
Iris stood alone in the corridor, her heart pounding. *A master copy.* She had to tell Snape. This was physical. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d wanted to know.
Her dash to the dungeons was a blur of familiar terror. The clammy air, the oppressive silence, the door that looked like a scar in the stone—it was all the same. She knocked, her knuckles rapping sharply.
The door opened instantly. Snape stood there, holding a long, thin silver instrument she didn’t recognize. He saw her face, clocked the frantic energy coming off her in waves, and stepped back wordlessly.
She stumbled into the freezing office. The pickled things in their jars seemed to stare more accusingly than before.
“Professor,” she began, breathless. “The Frog Choir.”
Snape placed the silver tool on his desk with deliberate care. “If you are here to offer a critique of their musicality, Whitmore, I will have you scrubbing cauldrons until Christmas.”
“The song changed,” she blurted out. “They were supposed to sing lyrics by Shakespeare. I heard them practicing. But when they performed, the words were different. Simpler. And the sheet music… it’s changed too. The old words are gone, and the new ones are written on the parchment as if they were always there.”
She watched him, trying to read his shuttered face. He did not move. He did not even seem to breathe. The black eyes held hers, and for a terrifying second, she thought he didn’t believe her.
Then, he spoke, his voice a low and venomous whisper. “First, the name of an obscure Dark Wizard. Now, a piece of foundational magical culture. It is not merely eroding history. It is replacing it with a blander, more palatable substitute.”
He paced once, a restless panther in a cage of shadows. “This is a direct parallel. It confirms a theory.” He stopped and pinned her with his gaze. The academic curiosity from their last meeting was gone, replaced by something far harder, and far more dangerous: calculated intent.
Iris swallowed. “The ghost… Professor Blackwood… he appeared. He said the composer, Barnaby Fink, made a master copy. A definitive score, bound in dragon-hide. He said it was hidden.”
Snape’s eyes narrowed to slits. It was the first time she had offered him a piece of information he did not already possess, and the shift in the room’s atmosphere was palpable.
“A primary source,” Snape hissed, almost to himself. “Untouched by this… scouring. If it exists, it would be the first tangible proof we have that reality itself is being re-written.”
He fixed his gaze back on Iris. The look was no longer merely dismissive or analytical. It was commanding. He was no longer observing a phenomenon; he was preparing for a fight, and she was the only soldier he had on the field.
“Your assignment has changed, Miss Whitmore,” he said, his voice dropping to that lethally soft tone that signified an unbreakable order. “Observation is no longer sufficient.”
He leaned forward over his desk, the candlelight casting the hollows of his face in deep shadow.
“I require the original score. Find it.”