While Kevin's class was sorting out the love potion question, Hermione was in Snape's lesson on the floor below.
Snape swept in, scanned the room, spotted two girls glaring at Hermione across the table, and said nothing to them directly.
"I've been hearing," he said, setting his things down with the precision of a man who had composed this sentence on the way over, "about a remarkable young witch in this school. One who has supposedly managed to dose a fully qualified Potions Master."
He let it land.
"Ha."
The contempt was architectural.
"Given what I observe in this classroom on a daily basis, you could not reliably brew anything that would trouble a first-year."
He moved on. No further mention. Topic closed.
The class exchanged looks. The message had been delivered without being stated: Kevin was a Potions Master. The suggestion that any student had successfully dosed him was too absurd to examine seriously. Snape had just called the story impossible in a way that couldn't be quoted back to him.
By evening, the damage from the article had largely closed over. Students with sense had filed it under Rita Skeeter, which was sufficient.
Hermione was alone in Kevin's workshop, waiting for him to finish the remedial session. She'd opened his ingredient cabinet — the familiar smell of lacewing flies and boomslang skin and half a dozen other compounds hit her as she began to lay things out on the worktable.
She talked herself through the steps for a Love Potion, quietly, hands moving through the motions. Not brewing. Just thinking out loud.
She was halfway through the third step when she heard it. A faint, high buzz. Insect wings.
She kept her eyes on the ingredients.
Kevin came through the door. "Hermione! What the — what are you doing?"
She spun around, injecting the right amount of alarm. "Kevin? You're back already? Wait, it's not—"
"Freeze."
A Petrificus Totalus hit everything in the room except Kevin. Hermione locked rigid. The beetle on the windowsill stopped mid-crawl.
Kevin crossed the room, pinched Hermione's cheek lightly — she couldn't react, which he was clearly enjoying — then moved to the windowsill. He picked up the frozen beetle, sealed every window, bolted the door, and cast the Isolation Charm.
He dropped the Body-Bind.
Hermione blinked back to life, rubbed her cheek with great dignity, and turned her camera toward the beetle.
"Kevin. Is that an Animagus?"
"Yes."
The beetle had woken up and was sprinting for the gap between the sill and the frame. There was no gap.
"Rita Skeeter." Kevin's voice was pleasant. "You can transform back voluntarily, or I can help."
The beetle ran in a small, frantic circle.
Kevin counted to three, then pointed his wand. The transformation reversed — not gently — and Rita Skeeter landed on his workshop floor in a dishevelled heap, emerald robes twisted, Quick-Quotes Quill nowhere in evidence.
Hermione's camera captured everything.
Rita scrambled backward until she hit the base of the ingredient cabinet. Her eyes moved from Kevin to the camera to the locked door to Kevin again.
"I'm a journalist. I have rights — you can't—"
"Two options," Kevin said. He crouched to her level, forearms on his knees, voice entirely ordinary. "Option one: I report an unregistered Animagus who has been illegally spying on students inside a protected school building. The Ministry takes that seriously. Azkaban's cold this time of year."
Rita's mouth closed.
He let her sit with that.
"Option two: you work with me. When I need a story placed, you place it. When I need something corrected, you correct it. In return, I don't file anything with the Ministry, and those photographs stay in a drawer."
"That's blackmail," she said. Thinner now.
"Option one is still available."
A pause. Then a crowbar sailed in from Kevin's bag and stopped one inch from Rita's ear.
Rita Skeeter made a sound that contained no actual words and chose option two.
Kevin produced a small vial of purple potion, unstoppered it, and held it out. She looked at it with profound suspicion.
"Drink."
She drank. It burned going down. Then it stopped burning. Then she felt — nothing in particular. Which was somehow more unsettling than pain.
"You're free to go," Kevin said. "No tracking charm. No conditions beyond the ones we've discussed. I'll reach out when I need something, and it won't be beyond your capabilities."
He opened the window.
Rita transformed, flew an unsteady line out into the cold air, and was gone.
Hermione lowered her camera and looked at Kevin.
"What was in the vial?"
"Could have been a passive compliance compound." He smiled. "Could have been sugar syrup with a purple dye. She doesn't know which."
Hermione exhaled slowly. "And the photographs?"
"Develop them. Two copies. Send one to her."
She nodded, working through it. The Animagus footage — Rita caught mid-transformation, Rita in beetle form being lifted off a windowsill — was the leverage. The potion was theatre. The crowbar had done most of the real work.
"Effective," she said.
He was visibly pleased with himself.
Hermione pinched his cheek. Firmly. "You froze me."
"You were too close to the window. If she'd seen your reaction before she came in fully, she might have bolted."
"You pinched my cheek when I was immobile."
"That was—"
"Week from now. You're my Shield Charm practice target."
"Hermione—"
"Full session." She smiled with enormous sweetness. "Or else."
She tucked the camera into her bag and went to develop the photographs.
---
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