Even though she had only been to this part of the fifth floor twice, it was one of her least favorite places in Hogwarts. The first time she had been here, Ivy had gotten help, and the host had been pleasant enough, and she had gotten what she wanted with something little extra for a great price. It was just that the parting had been a mixture of shock and surprise.
The second time, she had come to do something not so ethical, and the results were not the ones she was expecting. She would still groan and sigh for several minutes after remembering the events that had transpired.
And she sincerely considered that it wasn't wholly her fault. Quinn West had shown so many signs of suspicious activity. Yeah, he had brought that on himself.
Now, here she was for the third time, standing at the door of the same classroom-turned-office, her hand on the doorknob of the entrance. She genuinely didn't want to enter the room.
Ivy could feel the stare of her best friend from her side and muttered, "Alright, alright, just give me a second."
"You already had two minutes' worth of seconds," replied Hermione in a slightly exasperated tone. "If you don't want to, I can take the lead. He did ask us both to get the map."
Shaking her head, Ivy replied, "No, I asked for the information, and the map belongs to my dad. I need to deal with this."
"You are overthinking it, you know? Think back to the time when we came here for the notes. The exchange at that time was simple." Hermione sighed at her friend's actions. "We gave him money and got the notes and the information on the Philosopher's stone. There was no stunning and being bound to chairs."
"But, what if tells us to do something," Ivy looked worried. Quinn had said that he might make her do something that she was uncomfortable with. "And, we can't really refuse him after all that happened."
"Again, we can do nothing about it. If West wanted us to do something, he would have found us to collect his favors." Hermione shrugged and even though she didn't like someone having her under their control. She had given this situation some thought. "It is inevitable; he will ask for something one day, might as well worry about it when the problem comes. No reason to waste time by worrying about it right now."
Hermione gave Ivy a push and asked Ivy to open the door and enter the door.
The redhead pursed her lips before opening the door with determination.
Inside the office, the two girls saw Quinn West sitting behind his table. His eyes were closed, and there was no expression on his face. He was sitting so still that they thought he was a statue.
But, the door chime on the top of the door alerted Quinn of their presence as he opened his eyes and saw the visitors.
He showed no change in expression and just stared at them. No, he was observing them.
"Yes?" he asked with a flat tone.
Ivy, who was walking towards the table, frowned when she saw Quinn. She could see the telltale signs that he was using that.
"What are you doing?" she asked. The question was vague, and Hermione, who was just behind her, frowned.
'Is she again going to start something?' Hermione's experience while Ivy and Quinn West interacted was full of situations like this. Ivy would act recklessly and ask questions that stumped Hermione.
She wanted nothing out of the ordinary to happen this time around and just wanted to quickly complete the transaction and get out of here.
"You know what I am doing, exactly." Quinn's reply came in the same flat tone and no expression.
Ivy's eyes narrowed, and she asked back, "I know what you are doing. What I meant was, why now? Drop it - it is unsettling."
"I am practicing," said Quinn. "Not my fault you find it unsettling. Deal with it."
Hermione was part confused, part confused, and part irritated. It was always like this. Whenever these two meet, she was sidelined.
"What are you two talking about?"
"He is using occlumency," came the reply.
Hermione didn't know what occlumency was, so it still didn't clear Hermione's confusion. "What is occlumency?"
"I will tell you later." She quickly replied before turning back to Quinn and asked, "You are more expressionless than Daph - I mean Greengrass."
"You know that Daphne's expression is not because she is using occlumency," Quinn replied back. "That is just her resting face."
"Let's move on. Why are you two here?" Quinn wasn't having a good time, and right now, he didn't want to deal with anything. Especially with these two. "The card isn't showing that I am in for consults, so why did you two come here?"
Ivy frowned before talking out the folded parchment and said, "We bought you the Marauder's Map."
She was expecting a crack in Quinn's face, but he stayed expressionless.
"Ah... I see. So you bought it. Good job, I guess." replied Quinn. He stood up from his barstool and raised his hand for the map.
Ivy didn't immediately hand the map over and asked. "What are you going to do with the map? I hope you are not going to keep it. It is my dad's, and I am not going to let you keep it."
"I have no wish or desire to keep the map," Quinn replied. He didn't need it. "I just want it for a couple of minutes, and you will get it back after that."
"But, what are you going to do with it?" Ivy pressed on. She didn't care that this could get her in trouble. She wanted to know.
"You are smart. You will figure it out after I am done." He once again raised his hand to ask for the map. "Rest assured, I won't damage it."
Ivy's eyes wandered between Quinn's hand and face before she handed the map over. "Take care of it." she softly said.
"Sure," came Quinn's reply as he stared at the parchment.
Ivy sighed because Quinn's flat voice made it impossible to detect any vocal tone clues. It was like she was talking to a robot.
"Feel free to sit while I return in a while," Quinn offered without looking at them and entered his workshop leaving the two girls behind.
"So, what is occlumency?" Hermione immediately asked.
"Sit down," Ivy sighed as she took a seat. "This will take some time to explain."
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- (Scene Break) -
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On the other side of the glass wall, Quinn stood with both his hands on the table, his head hanging down and eyes closed.
The reason he had asked for ten minutes and not a minute to work on the map because he was busy groaning in his head. Trying to maintain his occlumency because of the stupidity he had done while he was under the influence was threatening to break his already thin spread emotional occlumency bounds.
'Why did I have to ask her to get the map?!' While Quinn's face was calm as a cucumber, inside it was a raging turmoil of emotions and regrets. 'Why me?!'
His entire interaction with Ivy Potter after he had come out of the second vault had been a series of blunders that had now become a huge mistake.
The first and biggest mistake was to confront Ivy Potter while she was Polyjuiced into Daphne. This whole mess started at that point. If he was not under the influence at that time, Quinn would have ignored the thing and just turned a blind eye to the entire situation.
Getting a Potter under his debt was outstanding in almost every situation. But this situation wasn't one of those.
'Hell, no! It is the worst situation!' cried Quinn. 'Blackmail! Really, Blackmail! What was I thinking?!'
After that came the break-in, which Quinn was fine with. He would have done the same thing even without the influence from the second vault.
He would have stunned them and then probably got them to owe him just like he did, but he would have done it much more calmly and did damage control by the time they were done.
And, then was the bigger deal.
'Why did I have to tell them about the Basilisk?!' screamed Quinn internally. It was the mistake that could have and might still backfire. 'How am I going to answer if somebody asks me why didn't I tell professors? How am I going to answer this?!'
Similarly, he was slumped because he had given them the Chamber's location. Just these two things could ruin his peaceful life at Hogwarts.
Quinn was snapped out of his self-loathing when he felt something. He looked down and saw that his hands were sinking into the wooden table because the entire tabletop had turned into sand.
He clamped down on his occlumency to cut down his leaking emotions.
Quinn raised his hands as the surrounding sand trickled down, and almost in a robotic and inorganic manner, bits and pieces of sand turned back into the wooden table as Quinn used his incomplete magic.
After taking in a lot of deep breaths, Quinn calmed down his emotions and decided to end this, and after that, never to talk to anyone in the golden squad.
He touched the parchment and softly spoke,
"I solemnly swear I am up to no good."
The map came to life, and Quinn immediately found his position on the map by browsing through the spread parchment. He put his finger on his position, and within the next few seconds, the footsteps and name tag representing Quinn West on the map lightened until it was no longer visible.
"Done," said Quinn. "Now, I am free from any tracking."
This was the only good thing that came from this. If Quinn was under the radar of Ivy Potter, Hermione Granger, and with them the golden squad, then erasing himself from Marauder's Map allowed him to roam unseen.
He had Recon, and they had nothing to track him. He could outrun them all day long, and they could never find him.
"Mischief Managed."
After he was done, Quinn moved back to his office.
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- (Scene Break) -
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"Here you go. I am done." were Quinn's first words while he returned the map to Ivy Potter. "Your payment has been recorded and completed. The deal is finished. Thank you for doing business with me."
Quinn skipped the part where he says to the clients to return if they had problems. He didn't want them to ever return.
Ivy took the map from Quinn and gave it a close observation. Trying to figure out what Quinn did.
"You can look at it after you get out of here," said Quinn. "Please, leave."
Ivy and Hermione raised their heads and stared at Quinn, who stared back. The two parties stared at each other before Ivy nodded and stood up from her seat to leave. Hermione looked at Ivy and then Quinn before fidgeting a little and decided to go for it.
"Are you selling the notes for this year?"
Quinn, who wanted them to leave, clenched his hand under the table and nodded. He stood up, went to his workshop, and brought out two sets of notes.
Quinn placed one set in front of Hermione and then eyed Ivy, "Do you want one?"
Ivy nodded but didn't say a single word. Neither Quinn nor Ivy wanted to speak to each other at this point in time.
"Same as last year," Quinn quoted the price. He didn't say anything about a discount because right now, it wouldn't even be funny.
Hermione put down money for both sets and replied to Ivy, who looked at her with a quirked brow.
"... I was always planning to buy these and well thought it won't harm in carrying money for yours as well." Hermione blushed under the gaze of the other two people in the room as she picked up the notes.
"Let's leave," muttered Ivy as she turned to the door and exited without saying a word.
Hermione followed after her friend but not before throwing a quick glance at Quinn.
After the door was closed, Quinn suddenly felt very tired. He wanted the school year to end.
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- (Scene Break) -
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"I found it," Ivy yelled. She had the Marauder's Map opened on her bed as she touched a spot on the map.
"What did you find?" asked Hermione. Looking up from the notes she had gotten today.
"I found what he did to the map," Ivy was frowning.
Hermione stood up from her table and walked to Ivy's bed, and asked, "What did he do?"
"He erased himself from the map," spoke Ivy. "I can't find him anywhere on the map. Yeah, that must be it."
Hermione sat down on Ivy's bed and looked at the Marauder's Map. She studied the map, which was one of the more fascinating works of magic she had seen.
But right now, she had something else on her mind.
"So, you didn't ask him if he was down in the Chamber of Secrets," asked Hermione.
Ivy stilled at the sudden question before answering the question, but she didn't look at Hermione.
"It doesn't matter, and I don't care."
But Ivy knew why she didn't ask that particular question.
The reason was simple...
She didn't want it to be true. She didn't want to hear from Quinn's mouth that he was down in the Chamber of Secrets.
Ivy Potter didn't want to hear that Quinn West saved her and her twin's life.
He had threatened and blackmailed her twice. In both cases, he had implied that he would make her family's life hard. Her image of Quinn was anything but positive.
She didn't know how she would feel if she was told from that same person's mouth that he was indeed the one to save her and Harry's life.
Things were simple this way.
As long as Quinn West was the bad guy in her mind, things would remain simple.
And, Ivy Potter preferred simple after the events of this year.
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- (Scene Break) -
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The last few weeks had been tough. Quinn had found that if someone went from happy to the point of extreme giddiness to showing no expression, people would notice something was wrong.
To combat that problem, Quinn had to force himself to show fake expressions. Which proved to be mighty difficult when he was so detached from his emotions. He even had to put fake emotions in his voice, which was difficult in its way.
Quinn's magic was just too glitchy to keep illusions on his face the entire day. Which made it necessary to fake his expression.
To lesson this hardship, Quinn had chosen to spend the entirety of his in hiding. He would spend all his time in the Room of Requirement.
Room of Requirements was the reason he had chosen to stay in Hogwarts rather than going home. He didn't know what was happening to him, and while his grandfather contacted Mr. Alan, it could be dangerous for Quinn to stay at home and risk losing control of his magic.
His family could get injured by him. And Quinn didn't trust anyone other than Alan with his mind.
Every day inside the Room of Requirements, Quinn would undo the bindings on his emotions, letting them and his rampant magic flow out.
While letting his magic was painful, it was also stress-relieving. Quinn binding his emotions all day wasn't good for his health.
For the few minutes that Quinn let go of his emotions, he felt whole again. While it was painful, and Quinn struggled to force his magic to stay inside the entire time he let loose, it was the only time he felt whole.
His exams weren't a problem because even with his current condition. Quinn could still perform magic above the asked level. He made sure that his results would be the same as last year because he didn't want anyone to know that he was suffering from an ailment.
All his free time went in researching what had happened to him. But in the few weeks before the term end, he made little progress about his condition.
So, when he deboarded the Hogwarts Express and saw his grandfather standing there. It was like a beacon of hope in the darkest of nights.
"Is he at home?" Quinn skipped the greetings and directly asked.
"Yes, he is waiting," answered George.
George had sent a MagiFax to Quinn, telling him he had agreed to see Quinn and meet him the day Quinn returned home.
"Good, let's go home," Quinn said in the flat tone he had for weeks.
George had prepared a winged-horse-pulled carriage because Quinn didn't trust himself with magical transportations like Floo, Apparation, or Portkey.
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- (Scene Break) -
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"Where is he?" Quinn asked Elliot just as he entered the manor. His patience had run thin the second he saw the West manor from the carriage.
And usually, this would be considered rude Elliot knew what was happening to Quinn and answered,
"He is sitting in the reinforced training hall."
Quinn nodded and bee-lined his way to the hall, which was reinforced just in case Quinn went ballistics. It was reinforced to withstand strong magic.
He opened the door to the hall and saw the old man from which he had learned the magic that kept his magic at bay.
The old man turned his face towards the door and then shifted his body when he saw Quinn.
"Oh, Quinn. It has been a while, hasn't it?"
Alan D. Baddeley had arrived.
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-*-*-*-*-*-
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Alan D. Baddeley - My favorite character - Guess, who is back?
Quinn West - MC - Hey, why am I in the second place?! I am always in the first place!
Ivy Potter - Complicated emotions - Possessor of modified Marauder's Map.
Hermione Granger - Bookworm - Worried about exams.
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-*-*-*-*-*-
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