Harry, Ron, and Draco arrived at the lake for morning drills to find two people already occupying their usual spot — Kevin on a fallen tree trunk, Hermione leaning into him, their heads close together.
"Kevin and Hermione," Harry said helpfully, pointing.
"I can see that," Draco said, with the patient tone of someone who has already processed the situation. "What I can also see is what they're doing, which means if you walk over there right now, Hermione will hex us out of instinct."
Harry and Ron looked at the angle, at the way their heads were tilted, at the complete absence of any daylight between them.
"Oh," said Ron.
"Yes," said Draco.
The three of them backed behind a boulder.
They spent a few minutes in consensus that there was no polite approach. Then Draco suggested the practical solution: withdraw from sight, make noise, let them hear you coming.
They crept back a fair distance, then began talking loudly about nothing in particular and advanced at a normal pace.
Kevin's head came up. He tracked the sound with a single glance, identified the exact spot on the path where they'd been, assessed the timing, and understood with complete precision what had just happened.
The three of them waved enthusiastically.
Kevin looked at them for a long moment. The temperature of his attention dropped a few degrees.
"Fancy running into you," Harry said.
"Total coincidence," Kevin agreed, very pleasantly.
Hermione had turned away and was straightening her hair, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"We were going to practise over here," Ron offered.
"Perfect. I'll join you."
His tone was warm and completely implacable.
Ron took a step back.
Three spells later, all of them were flat on the grass — clothes soaked, hair lightly smoking, the specific kind of winded that comes from being caught completely by a spell you technically knew how to block and didn't react to in time.
Kevin dusted off his hands.
"Quit lying there. I've got news."
He waved his wand and their clothes and hair dried themselves in about four seconds.
They sat up, somewhat chastened. Kevin told them about the teaching assistant arrangement — the room on the eighth floor, the classes, the terms of the agreement with Snape.
Harry looked at him with the specific expression of someone processing a loss. "So you're not in the dormitory anymore?"
"I'm still a student. I still have classes, I still need somewhere to sleep most nights. The room's for long brews and for the assistant work." He paused. "Snape handed me the full syllabi for years one through three. He's treating the TA position as a full handover."
"Can he do that?"
"He just did."
Harry and Ron both absorbed this.
Hermione, nearby, was replaying the earlier conversation and the exact sequence in which Kevin had introduced the teaching arrangement, and the exact way she'd responded before understanding it, and going systematically through every embarrassing specific. She pressed her fingers to her cheeks.
Kevin glanced at her. He winced internally. Yes. He was going to hear about this later.
They watched Harry test the Bubble-Head Charm underwater for the first time that afternoon — he went in cold, held his breath, submerged, and came up thirty seconds later sputtering but grinning, the charm intact.
Once the others had gone, Hermione stood up from the bank and looked at Kevin with the precise expression of someone preparing to be very reasonable about something that was not going to receive a reasonable response.
"You let me say those things," she said.
"I was going to explain. The timing got disrupted."
She grabbed his ear. Not hard. Demonstratively.
"You are absolutely going to let me be embarrassed in front of you and call it timing."
"I was just—"
"I said Teacher Kevin."
"In context, that's quite—"
She kissed his hand, quick and sharp, like a punctuation mark. Then she sat back on the tree trunk with her legs crossed and looked at him, composed now, something mischievous in her eyes.
"Since we're on the subject," she said, with a very deliberate air, "I've been thinking about the power dynamics."
Kevin looked at her.
"I'm your student," she said, in an extremely innocent tone, "and you're my teacher. Which means, theoretically—"
"Hermione."
"—that the authority is entirely yours." She tilted her head. "That sounds quite pleasant, actually."
"You're making fun of me."
"I am absolutely not making fun of you." She was obviously making fun of him.
He pointed at her. She laughed.
Later she said, thoughtfully, that she did actually understand, now, why the idea of a role reversal was interesting. Something about the usual dynamics being inverted. She said it with genuine intellectual curiosity and then went bright red when she realised she'd said it out loud, which Kevin thought was probably the best possible outcome of the whole afternoon.
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