The Slytherin common room was never actually quiet.
Even late at night when the fire burned low and most people had gone to bed there was always something — a conversation in the corner, someone's enchanted notes rearranging themselves on a table, the particular compressed awareness of a room full of people who had grown up understanding that information was power and were therefore always, on some level, listening.
Mia had learned to read it the way she'd learned to read most things since arriving in 1975 — carefully, completely, and without letting anyone see her do it.
What she'd learned over the first term was this:
The Slytherin seventh year was eleven people including herself and Bellatrix. Of those eleven, four were solidly what she'd have called Voldemort-adjacent in her own timeline — Avery, Mulciber, Rosier, and a girl called Selwyn who was quiet and watchful and significantly more dangerous than she appeared. Three were genuinely neutral, waiting to see which way things went before committing. Two were Bellatrix's — not followers exactly, more people who had decided that being adjacent to the most formidable person in the year was its own kind of protection. And one, a boy called Thaddeus Nott, was difficult to read and therefore required attention.
Rodolphus was not a seventh year. But he didn't need to be — he had enough reach into their year group that his influence moved through it regardless.
The rumour had died down after the Gringotts visit, as Bellatrix had predicted. It was difficult to question the origins of someone with a vault older than most of the families in the room. Mia had worn the ring to breakfast the morning after their visit and said nothing about it and watched understanding move through the common room like weather.
But the absence of the genealogy rumour didn't mean the absence of Rodolphus.
It was Avery who told her.
He did it in the way he did most things — indirectly, efficiently, with the affect of someone making casual conversation and the reality of someone delivering a specific message.
"There's a gathering," he said, dropping into the seat across from her in the common room on a Wednesday evening. He had a book open in front of him that he wasn't reading. "This weekend. Off campus."
Mia looked at him. "What kind of gathering."
"The kind with a guest of honour." He turned a page of the book. "Someone who's been talking to a lot of people in our year. In several houses, actually."
Voldemort. Not using the name — Avery was too careful for that — but it was in the shape of what he wasn't saying.
"And you're telling me this because," she said.
"Because Rodolphus extended the invitation to three people in our year that he expected to attend." He paused. "You weren't one of them. Bellatrix was."
Mia kept her face still. "When."
"The invitation was extended this morning. Through Rosier." He looked at his book. "I thought you'd want to know the timeline."
"Does Bellatrix know yet."
"She'll know by this evening. Rosier will tell her directly."
Mia sat back and thought for a moment. The fire crackled. Across the common room two third years were arguing quietly about something involving a potion that had gone wrong.
"Why are you telling me," she said again. More directly this time.
Avery looked at her properly. "Because I've been watching you since September," he said. "And I've decided what I think." He paused. "I also watched you at the duel. You took a hit you didn't have to take and you waited until the exact right moment." He closed his book. "You play a longer game than most people in this room understand."
"And that matters to you."
"It matters to me considerably," he said. "The next few years are going to require good judgment about which way to face. I'm being careful about who I stand near." He stood up. "So is Bellatrix, which is what she's been doing since first year. She's just better at not looking like she's doing it."
He picked up his book and left, and Mia sat with the fire and the information and the specific chill of knowing that the gathering Avery wasn't naming had just complicated everything.
Bellatrix came to find her at eleven.
She came in quietly and sat down on the edge of Mia's bed and said nothing for a moment, which told her everything before she said anything.
"Rosier told you," Mia said.
"This afternoon." She had her hands folded in her lap. Her voice was controlled in a specific way — the way it was controlled when she was angry about something and had decided not to be visibly angry about it. "He was pleasant about it. Framed it as an opportunity."
"For you."
"For me." She looked at the window, dark and frosted. "He said the Dark Lord was interested in the Black family specifically. That my presence would be noted." A pause. "He also said that my current associations were a concern to some people and that the gathering would be an opportunity to — clarify my priorities."
Current associations. Mia felt a cold clarity settle over her.
"He's using Voldemort," she said. "As leverage."
"He's using the invitation as leverage, yes." Bellatrix turned to look at her. Her eyes were very dark. "He thinks if I go, I choose a side that doesn't include you. He thinks if I don't go, I've refused the Dark Lord and that has its own consequences." She paused. "He thinks he's cornered me."
"Has he."
Bellatrix looked at her for a long moment. "No," she said. Simply, flatly, with complete certainty. "No, he hasn't."
"What do you want to do."
"I want to go," she said. "Not because of Rodolphus. Not for the reasons he thinks." She was quiet for a moment. "If Voldemort is recruiting our year then I need to know who goes. Who commits. Who comes back changed." Her jaw tightened. "And I need him to see me and file me as a future asset rather than a current problem, because a Dark Lord who thinks you're coming is a safer Dark Lord than one who thinks you're a threat."
Mia studied her. "You want to go as intelligence."
"I want to go so I know exactly what we're facing and he doesn't know I'm facing him." She held Mia's eyes. "I go, I listen, I come back."
"He'll try to recruit you."
"He'll try." Said with the confidence of someone who had already had this argument in their own head and won it. "He doesn't know what I know. He doesn't know about the Horcruxes, about the research, about any of it. To him I'm a talented pureblood who he'd like to own." She paused. "I can be that. For one evening."
Mia looked at her for a long moment. The cold clarity had shifted into something else — not fear exactly, but close to it. The fear of someone who knew what this man could do to a person who walked into a room with him.
"He's persuasive," she said quietly. "More than persuasive. He has — a quality. A way of making you feel like what he's offering is the only thing worth wanting."
"I know." Bellatrix's voice was steady. "I've read everything written about him. I know what he does to rooms."
"Reading about it isn't the same."
"Mia." She reached out and took her hand. "I know what I am. I know what we're building. I know what I'm going to him to protect." She looked at her steadily. "He will not get inside my head. There's no room."
Mia looked at their joined hands. Thought about a future she'd come back to unmake. Thought about this girl who had never once, in all of it, been anything less than exactly what she said she was.
"I'm going to be here," she said. "When you come back."
"I know."
"And if you're not back by two—"
"I'll be back by one." She squeezed her hand once and let go and stood up. "Get some sleep."
"You're giving me the get some sleep line when you're going to a Dark Lord gathering this weekend."
"One of us should sleep." She moved to the door and paused with her hand on the frame. She looked back over her shoulder. "I'll tell you everything when I come back. Every detail."
"I know you will."
A pause.
"I love you," Bellatrix said. Still slightly new on her tongue — she said it like she was deciding to say it every time, deliberately, the word chosen rather than defaulted to.
Mia looked at her in the doorway. "I love you too. Come back whole."
"Always," Bellatrix said.
The door closed softly.
Mia lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and thought about the particular courage of someone who walks toward the thing they're most afraid of becoming and trusts themselves not to become it.
She thought about it for a long time before she slept.