The final bell was a death knell. Throughout Charms, Iris had practiced the Levitation spell with only half her mind, the other half re-reading the list clutched in her lap. It felt flimsy, childish.
*1. Game of Exploding Snap with Hannah Abbott, approx. 8 pm. I won. Hannah’s right sleeve was singed.*
*2. The name of Neville Longbottom’s toad (Trevor). Susan Bones forgot.*
*3. Neville Longbottom himself. Susan doesn’t know who he is.*
Beneath, she had added three more items noticed during the day. Justin Finch-Fletchley had no memory of borrowing her quill in Herbology, even when she’d pointed to the small ink blot on his finger. Ernie Macmillan had insisted they’d never been taught the Unlocking Charm, despite it being the first spell they’d learned last week. Each forgotten moment was a tiny, smooth stone dropped into a pond, leaving no ripple.
Her classmates swept out of the room, their chatter and laughter echoing down the corridor. Iris remained, her legs feeling as heavy as lead. She had to go. She had been commanded.
The journey to the dungeons was a descent into winter. The cheerful torchlight of the upper floors gave way to the same eerie, sourceless green glow from the night before. The air smelled of wet stone and something vaguely unpleasant, like old potion ingredients left to rot. Her own footsteps sounded unnervingly loud. She clutched the singed card and her parchment list, the edges of the paper growing damp in her hand.
Snape’s office door was black, unadorned wood, set into a wall that seemed to weep moisture. It looked like the entrance to a tomb. Taking a shaky breath, Iris raised a knuckle and knocked. The sound was swallowed by the immense silence.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the door swung inward without a sound.
Snape stood there, a black silhouette against the dim light of his office. He said nothing, merely stepping aside. It was not an invitation, but an order. Iris scurried past him, careful not to brush against his robes.
The office was just as she had imagined, only worse. The air was frigid. Floating in jars that lined the walls were things she couldn’t, and didn’t want to, name: slimy, multi-legged creatures, pale organs suspended in murky liquid, eyeballs that seemed to follow her as she passed. A single candle flickered on a vast desk, casting long, dancing shadows that made the bottled horrors seem to writhe.
“Well?” Snape’s voice sliced through the quiet. He had closed the door, plunging the room into near darkness save for the candle and the faint green light from the corridor that bled from under the door. He glided to his desk and sat, his face half-hidden in shadow. “Do not waste my time, Whitmore. Present your… findings.”
Her hand trembled as she placed the parchment and the scorched card on the polished wood of his desk. He did not move to take them. He simply stared, his black eyes fixed on the paltry offerings.
“This is it?” he asked, his tone dripping with acidic disappointment. “A card game and the forgotten name of a dunderhead? This is the grand mystery that prompted you to accost a professor?”
“There’s more,” Iris said, her voice a squeak. She pointed to the bottom of the list. “Ernie Macmillan forgot the Unlocking Charm. And Justin—”
“I can read.” He finally picked up the parchment, his long, pale fingers holding it as if it were contaminated. He scanned the short list, his upper lip curling into his customary sneer. But his eyes were sharp, missing nothing. He paused, his gaze lingering on the first entry.
“Abbott’s sleeve,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “It was singed. Now it is not. Describe the original damage.”
“It was just… a little black bit, around the cuff. It smelled of burnt sugar.”
“And the following morning, it was pristine,” Snape stated. It was not a question. He placed her list down and picked up the singed card, examining its blackened edges. “Mere forgetfulness does not mend cloth, Miss Whitmore. That requires magic. Or, perhaps, the un-doing of magic.”
He looked up from the card, his eyes boring into hers. “You are Muggle-born, are you not?”
Iris nodded, her stomach twisting.
“Then you would have no concept of Memory Charms. They are crude instruments. A bludgeon to the mind. They leave headaches, nausea, confusion. A lingering sense that something is missing. You claim your friends exhibit none of these symptoms.”
“They’re perfectly happy,” Iris whispered. “It’s like… it’s like a slate that’s been scoured clean.” She used the phrase from her own mind, the only one that truly fit.
Snape placed the card down gently. His gaze drifted from her to a dark, empty corner of his office. “Scoured,” he repeated, almost to himself.
The temperature in the room, already cold, dropped another ten degrees. A sudden, piercing chill washed over Iris, so intense it made her teeth chatter. The candle flame on Snape’s desk guttered wildly, spitting wax. The shadows leaped and contorted.
A shimmering, pearlescent light bled through the stone wall in the corner Snape had been watching. It coalesced into the form of a man—tall and thin, clad in the old-fashioned, high-collared robes of a previous century. He was translucent, the jars of creatures visible through his form. It was the ghost she had seen in the corridor.
He drifted forward, his feet not quite touching the floor, his spectral face set in lines of deep frustration. He paid Iris no mind at all, fixing his translucent gaze on Snape.
“Severus,” the ghost said, his voice a dry, rustling whisper, like ancient paper. “Another. Gone from the record.”
Snape leaned back in his chair, his face a mask of weary impatience. He did not seem surprised. “Elaborate, Phineas. I am occupied.”
“The tale of Emeric the Evil and his wand of elderwood,” the ghost announced, gesturing with a see-through hand. “Binns recited it this very morn. Yet when questioned, not a single third-year could recall the name. They remembered a powerful wizard, yes, but the name… it was scoured. Wiped from the slate.”
Iris flinched. *Scoured. The slate.* It was the same description. Her description.
Snape’s eyes flickered towards Iris for a heartbeat. “Binns’s lectures are potent sleeping draughts. It is a miracle the students remember their own names, let alone that of a historical miscreant.”
“This is no student slumber!” the ghost insisted, his form wavering with agitation. “I have seen this before. It is the same manner of erasure. A clean cut. Two weeks past, it was the formula for the Scintillation Solution in the sixth-year textbook. Before that, the portrait of Sir Cadogan’s pony. Small things. Trivial things. Erased from memory, and from the world itself!”
Snape held up a hand. “The portrait is still there, Phineas. I saw it yesterday.”
“The *knight* is there!” the ghost hissed. “But his fat little pony is gone. Think, man! Do you not remember it? It was a dapple grey and was forever attempting to eat the frame’s gilded fruit.”
Snape was silent. A look of profound concentration crossed his features. He stared at the wall behind the ghost, his mind clearly sifting through years of memories, looking for the image of a painted pony. Iris held her breath. After a long moment, a muscle in Snape’s jaw twitched. He couldn’t remember it.
The ghost seemed to deflate, his glow dimming. “You see? It steals from us all. From the living and from those who have… lingered. It is a thief of what has been.”
It was then that the spectre, Professor Phineas Blackwood, finally noticed the small, living, breathing girl standing by the Potions Master’s desk. His misty eyes widened. He floated closer, peering at Iris with an expression of intense curiosity, like a naturalist examining a new species of beetle.
“What is this?” he whispered, turning his head to Snape. “A student? Here?” He looked back at Iris, his gaze piercing. “Child, pray tell, what is the name of Sir Cadogan’s steed?”
Iris stared, bewildered. She had seen the portrait of the excitable knight a dozen times on the moving staircases. He was always alone, waving his sword and challenging people to duels. “He… he doesn’t have one.”
Phineas Blackwood let out a ghostly gasp. He looked from Iris to Snape and back again. “She does not know. Of course. She is as blank as the rest.”
“Professor,” Iris said, finding her voice. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. “The Exploding Snap game. It wasn’t just forgotten. Hannah’s sleeve… it was burned. But this morning, the burn was gone. The sleeve was perfect.”
The ghost froze. His translucent form solidified for a split second, his shock so profound it seemed to pull him closer to the physical world. He drifted right in front of her, his cold presence making her shiver violently.
“The burn… was undone?” he breathed. He looked at Snape, his eyes wide with spectral alarm. “Severus. It is not merely stealing memory. It is un-writing history.”
Snape stood up. The movement was sudden and sharp, a predator uncoiling. His face was grim, shuttered. All traces of disdain were gone, replaced by an unnerving, high-stakes focus.
“That is enough,” he said, his voice a low command. He pointed a long finger at Iris. “Whitmore. You will return to your common room. You will continue to observe. You will write down anything, anything at all, that vanishes from the world or from the minds of your witless companions. You will not engage. You will not investigate. You will only watch and record.”
“But what is it?” Iris pleaded. “Who is he?” She glanced at the ghost professor.
“He,” Snape cut her off, “is a lingering nuisance. And what ‘it’ is, is not the concern of a first-year Hufflepuff. Your concern is to follow my instructions precisely. Report to me in three days. Not before, unless you witness another physical alteration.” His eyes flickered to where her sleeve would be. “Now, go.”
He did not need to say it twice. Iris turned and fled, yanking the heavy door open and spilling into the green-lit corridor. She didn’t stop running until she reached the warm, sunlit landings of the upper castle, her lungs burning and her mind reeling.
She had an ally in Professor Snape. And, it seemed, so did the ghost of a professor who had been dead for two hundred and fifty years. They were fighting a thief who didn’t just steal memories, but stole pieces of the world itself. And somehow, she was now one of their spies.