I'm thinking about writing a spin-off book about Quentin, Xavier, and Carolina...it would only be 8-9 chapters. Would anyone read it?

* ° * ° *

Drew shot Cyndee a concerned look, "Are you sure you don't want to go back? I mean, it's Tristan's birthday."

They were in the common room, discussing what they were planning to do for the winter holidays. Aurora and Blaise had gone home, but Drew had decided to stay at Hogwarts. Wilby did the same, and to their surprise, so did Cyndee. It was the first Christmas where the three of them would be together.

"I know," Cyndee threw her hands up, like she'd already explained herself so many times that she didn't care how she acted anymore, "but I'm not feeling it. He wouldn't want me to be gloomy forever. Christmas was our favourite holiday, and what happened to him shouldn't change it. I'm celebrating it with him here, at Hogwarts. Okay?" She stared at her defiantly, daring her to challenge the way she mourned.

Drew dropped it, "Okay. Is Morfinus staying too?"

"No, he went back."

Drew picked it up again, "Why didn't you go with him, then?"

Cyndee rolled her eyes, "Drew, he's my distant cousin, not my brother. We hardly talk. We don't even live near each other like Tristan and I did."

Hearing this, Drew clapped her hands, "In that case, never mind. How about we do something fun?"

Wilby eyed the fireplace nervously, "What kind of fun?"

Drew paced up and down the common room, waving her finger in the air. "I heard that Filch has a drawer full of confiscated items." She spun and faced him, "I want them."

"We're going to try breaking and entering again?" Cyndee sighed. 

"Look," Drew folded her fingers together, "the Shrieking Shack had nothing of interest, I'm sure. There were none of the rumoured creepy noises and screams. And this time, the prefects will not stop us. In fact, of all the Houses, Jason is the only prefect still here. Furthermore, if we conduct the heist during Christmas dinner, we wouldn't meet anyone."

Cyndee looked afraid, "Did you just say 'furthermore'?"

Drew nudged Wilby, "Back me up."

"Yes," he said automatically. "I am in agreement."

Cyndee shrugged, "Of course I'm in, but who's Jason?"

* ° * ° *

On Christmas Day, the entire castle's occupants sans the three of them were having dinner in the Great Hall.

They'd gone to the kitchens first and filled themselves up with all the sausages and pudding they could eat, then strolled on down to the caretaker's office.

"Who's the lookout?" Drew asked, after magicking the door open. She arbitrarily pointed at Wilby and tapped him on the nose, "You are."

"Sure." He stood inside the doorway while the rest of them entered Room 234-00.

Drew's eyes swept the area. It was a small and simple room lit by a single oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. Filing cabinets lined one wall, and a cluster of polished chains and manacles lay on a shelf. She heard scuttling in the corner — probably some animal. Drew guessed that the House-elves didn't come every day.

She slid open one of the cabinets to find a near-bursting row of folders. "Believe it or not, I've never been in Filch's office." She grinned at Wilby, "We only ever got caught at night by Xavier in second year, and he'd just scowled and angrily pointed in the direction of the dungeons."

Wilby nodded. He had wandered from his post to scan the contents of a broom closet. "I remember that."

Drew picked a folder at random, "That was before the whole Basilisk thing happened. After that, he started putting a jinx on the common room door that alerted him when it opened."

The folder she had was labelled Neville Longbottom, the short kid in Gryffindor who never seemed to know what was going on. There were a few notes inside about how he'd sometimes be out in the halls after dark after forgetting his common room's password.

She put it back and interested herself in the bottom drawer, which was promisingly labelled 'Confiscated and Highly Dangerous'.

Her hand was in the process of pulling it open when Cyndee made a small noise of surprise. Drew looked over and saw that she was reading a file marked Louisa Skull. "Did you know that Xavier had Eliza's sister expelled?"

Drew very nearly tripped in her haste to get to her, "Seriously? She told me she'd graduated."

Cyndee grinned, proud that she'd found something worthy of Drew's interest. "She didn't." She handed Drew the brown manila folder and pointed at some messily inked words, "Louisa got kicked out for assaulting multiple students and threatening the life of Quentin Stuart. Xavier dragged her to the Headmaster's Office himself, after slapping her and calling her a peasant."

"That's the best news I've heard since Granger hit Malfoy in the face. When was this?" Drew read the year and did some quick basic math. "He was in third year." She felt her eyes get bright with inspiration, "I should do this with Eliza soon. Then everything will come full circle."

"You don't have enough to do that," Wilby said regretfully. "Unless you want to lie and make something up. She didn't physically hurt you, but you definitely attacked her. Being a supremacist in nearly every way doesn't get you expelled, unfortunately."

"Oh fine," Drew snapped, annoyed at this. She'd already had a grand scheme cooked up where she'd present Eliza to Dumbledore with a ready-made speech. Eliza would fall to her knees in horror and guilt, and everyone would be happy.

Except for Eliza, she supposed, but she doesn't count as a person.

She returned the papers to Cyndee and searched the cabinet with the impounded goods. 

Drew held up a cracked glass top that was spinning and whistling softly. She chucked it back in and dug further. Love Potions, countless Sugar and Auto-Answer Quills, somebody's gold necklace, a jumbo pack of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum —

"Oh, heck yes," Drew spotted a piece of cloth wrapped around an ice cube. She hadn't known what happened to it after Eliza hit her head. Fred and George hadn't been too upset that it was gone, so they shouldn't be too upset that she had it again.

She turned to her friends. "Look what I — why are you sweeping the floor?"

Wilby threw the broom back, "I don't know."

Cyndee giggled as Drew made a face of exasperation. "Honestly, why? I'm intrigued."

"I'm afraid Mrs. Norris will choke on the dust," he answered timidly.

"Oh Salazar," Drew grumbled, walking out the door. "Sweep away our footprints while you're at it."

She tested the magical item on a nearby window, and white frost spread over the glass in the rough shape of a snowflake. "Behold," she said, dramatically holding her hands up to the masterpiece.

Wilby magically locked Filch's door, and Cyndee curiously poked at the frozen surface of the windowpane. "Is that what you used to destroy the school in our first year?"

Drew wrapped it up and tucked it in her pocket. "What? I didn't destroy the school."

Sadly, she hadn't even come close. When Isabell had blasted Eliza off the sled, the ice cube had dislodged and frozen the entire lobby. Students couldn't get anywhere, but the teachers and Filch had managed to restore it by the end of the weekend.

Wilby regarded the ice cube with concern. "What are you going to do with it?"

"I'll just keep it for now," she assured him. "Maybe if Eliza gets too annoying I'll plug up her mouth."

* ° * ° *

In months it was June, and the three friends plus Blaise were at the back of the library, revising for their exams after weeks of procrastination.

Anti-Cheating Quills were a pain, and she hadn't figured out a way to get out of using them yet, which meant that she had to actually study.

What with the drama of Gryffindor finally winning the Quidditch Cup, Snape dropping the bomb that Lupin was a werewolf and getting him sacked, Dementors flying everywhere, and Sirius Black getting away, Drew had been so sure that the finals would be cancelled like the year before.

But no. No such luck.

She was on the fast track to failing History of Magic, no doubt, so she desperately needed to change course and jam an entire textbook's worth of information into her brain.

"I've figured it out," Blaise announced suddenly.

"Fantastic," Drew said, still scanning a page from her book. "So what's their third reason for rebelling?"

"I'm not talking about homework," he snapped. "Everyone listen up."

Wilby and Cyndee put their quills down, and Drew frowned. "Okay, what is it?"

"Unlike you three, I finished revising ages ago, so I was doing some further reading for Muggle Studies." He pointed at his book like his behaviour was normal. "And I got to mental illness, and how Muggles deal with them."

Surreptitiously, Drew glanced at Cyndee's impassive face, almost certain that this was about her. "And?"

Spinning the book around so they could read it, Blaise announced, "Dissociative identity disorder. It's where you have multiple personalities. As if many people are in your head, and only one or two can be in control at once. It's also called split personality disorder."

Drew recognized the second term. "I thought that was only real in movies."

"Oh, the movies don't usually get it right, but it's a real thing."

"So it doesn't have anything to do with Dark magic?" Wilby asked.

Blaise shrugged, "It could, but the symptoms are too similar for a coincidence to be likely. The text says that people who have it often suffered a traumatic incident when they were young. They can have headaches, memory loss, and trouble sleeping." He leaned back in his chair, "I think it's a serious flaw in wizards to believe we're not susceptible to things that hurt and affect Muggles."

Cyndee played with her quill thoughtfully, unnaturally calm. "It makes sense. I think you're right."

Interest peaking, Drew asked, "Do you know how many personalities you have?"

Cyndee shrugged. "Right now? I'm not sure. At least three. Six at most. One of them might just be me talking to myself though..."

"It explains why you had multiple boggarts," Drew realized. "The fear from seeing the first one caused you to rapidly change personalities, maybe to avoid it."

Blaise agreed. "So here's my theory. Three — or at least there — of the personalities you have are versions of the original you, not entirely different people. That happens. I think that the traumatic moment of your cousin getting murdered split you into three or so pieces. One got the mischief, one got the sensitivity, and one got the vindictiveness."

Wilby lit up. "And the last one knows exactly what happened to your cousin, but she rarely shows up."

Cyndee nodded slowly. "That would make sense. I don't hear her at all and I didn't know she existed until just now. My, er, 'second side' — she was the one who actually saw Tristan die. I'm sure of it."

Drew nodded rapidly. "Which explains why you could see the Thestrals that day, despite you saying before that you hadn't seen him die."

"I thought I was crazy," Cyndee voice shook, but no tears came to her eyes this time. "Everyone said I was. I would talk to myself and forget important events. I ruined every friendship I ever had. My parents told me to stop blaming Tristan's death for everything I do wrong and to get over it."

Wilby patted her shoulder, and Blaise shook his head, miffed. "They shouldn't say that to you."

Cyndee lay her cheek on her palm, "I know. They're just...really busy all the time. And they don't understand. I would hear voices, you know? Actual voices in my head that aren't me. There's one called Louis, who is actually a lot like Tristan, and a lot like you." She pointed at Wilby. "Sunshiney. He helped me through my darker periods but stays as a voice in my head. My mum said he was imaginary, and he would insist to me that he wasn't, like he was afraid I'd believe her."

Drew stared at the textbook, taking it all in. "Does all this explain why you don't remember what happened to your cousin?"

Cyndee clutched her head in frustration. "I remember nothing about what happened to Tristan. Nothing. There was a Death Eater, and there were spells. My parents say that the Death Eater must have used a Memory Charm. St. Mungo's said the same thing. It makes sense because I know that I know. I just can't recall..."

"I think one of your personalities knows what happened," Blaise said. "And they're the one that rarely comes out, and keeps hidden. It could be your way of dealing with it. Or protecting the information."

"Hey, we'll figure it out," Drew smiled kindly. "You're getting better at handling this, I know you are. Someday we'll piece together what happened to your cousin. We'll help you every step of the way."

The chair scraped against the floor Drew stood up, but Wilby yanked her down. "We're not going to interrogate Morfinus," he said sternly, "and I'm not going to get the shackles."

Drew sighed. "I can't believe you knew your orders before I gave them."

Sighing, Cyndee waved her down, "Don't. You'd make it worse for me because he'd get worried that I'm still crazy and tell my parents. I hate St. Mungo's."

Blaise closed the textbook. "We wouldn't take you to St. Mungo's if you don't think it'll work."

"We'll support you, okay?" Drew ruffled her hair. "That's what friends are for."

"Thank you," Cyndee smiled. "Thank you so much. For everything."