Dumbledore settled onto the sofa with the ease of a man who had spent years treating other people's furniture as his own.
"He is," Dumbledore began, "the grandson of an old friend of mine."
Kevin looked at him.
"A very old friend."
Kevin kept looking at him.
"I won't say more than that tonight — partly because the full context would take longer than either of us has, and partly because the shape of it will become clearer to you in time. What I can tell you is that I arranged his placement here myself, and that he represents no threat to you or to Hogwarts."
"You arranged it," Kevin said. "And Professor Snape knew. He told me it was your doing when I asked."
"Severus assists in the administration of such things, yes."
Kevin leaned back in his chair. "Grandson of an old friend," he repeated. "Would this old friend happen to be someone whose name I already know?"
Dumbledore's expression was placid and entirely uninformative.
"You'll see when the time comes," he said. "I ask only that you give the boy the same latitude you'd give any student, and that you don't go digging with Reveal Charms or interrogation spells. He'll be perfectly forthcoming when the moment is right."
Kevin thought about this.
He trusted Dumbledore. He also knew, with the detailed familiarity of someone who had spent six years watching the man operate, that Dumbledore's definition of keeping people informed was generous at best. The old man was not malicious. He simply believed, profoundly and sincerely, that information was best managed by a single source, and that he was the appropriate single source.
"Fine," Kevin said. "I'll treat him like anyone else. But I'm watching him."
"I would expect nothing less," Dumbledore said warmly, and stood. "One other thing — I hope Harry is beginning to make progress with Horace?"
"Harry can handle it. Slughorn likes him."
"Good." Dumbledore moved toward the door. "Grindelwald — I'll address the full context at school in due course. For now, I ask you to trust that the situation is being managed."
Kevin thought about the conversation on the train. About the Mirror World speech. About a man who had moved hundreds of wizards' opinions in one afternoon with a careful combination of acknowledged failure and slow-burning contempt.
"Managed," he repeated. Not agreeing. Not disagreeing.
Dumbledore left him to it.
The first week of term had the particular texture of a year that knows it's going to be harder than the last. Dumbledore's address at the feast hadn't softened anything — the Auror presence on the grounds was visible, the mood in the corridors a degree more careful than the year before. Students who had been at Hogwarts through the events of fifth year carried it differently. The first-years hadn't earned the context yet.
Kevin spent his days teaching, his evenings in the workshop or in conversation with Hermione, his stolen hours thinking through the problem of Harry's scar from as many angles as he could find.
Snape had taken up Defense Against the Dark Arts with the focused grimness of a man who had wanted this job for two decades and intended to demonstrate exactly why. His first week made Ron's existential despair entirely understandable.
Slughorn settled into the Potions classroom with the warmth and political instinct of a man returning to his natural habitat, and immediately began the quiet work of identifying his collection's newest additions.
And Gren Dore moved through Slytherin with the careful, watchful ease of someone who had been placed somewhere deliberately and was giving nothing away about why.
Kevin watched, and waited, and got back to work.
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This story don't stop here, y'all. It never did, not once. More chapters breathing and waiting right beyond this page like a river that just keeps on running. Don't you leave curiosity unanswered, folks. That ain't right.