APRIL 2, 1976

KATHLEEN FORGOT HOW WONDERFUL QUIDDITCH COULD BE. She kept on hugging her red sweater around herself, watching the players whizz about on their brooms. She'd gone on another visit to the kitchens with Black, where she downed four Gillywaters again. She arrived at the Pitch afterwards, and currently, she was walking back to Gryffindor Tower after her House's victory over Ravenclaw, 200 to 110. 

Perhaps it was all the pollen in the air, but as she walked, she kept having to rub at her eyes, which in turn made her temples sore. A slight wave of lightheadedness hit her, and she paused, one hand on a pillar, breathing out of her nose.

"Oof-" someone grabbed her from behind the stone, but their kiss told her who it was. "Oi, don't grab me like that."

"Mm, whatever," Black sighed, holding her extra tight. 

She wriggled out of his arms. "-Can we take a walk instead? I have a headache."

Black opened his mouth, then jerked his head a little. "Alright."

"M'kay. Let's just go around this floor," Kathleen yawned, and took a few steps forwards, feeling her headache slowly buzz away with the movement. She could feel the breeze through the open windows, and it was lovely indeed. She looked back, and Black fell into pace aside her. But as they turned the corner, Kathleen let out a horrified gasp.

A small patch of red fur lay on the ground, blood leaking from it to form a pool. As she stepped closer, she could see that it was white fur, stained red, and, oh my Merlin.

"Oh my god, Thumper?" Kathleen gasped, tapering into a shocked and unsure croak. She was at his side in an instant, observing the little thing. A few patches of white fur remained unstained, but the rest of his small body was slathered with unlife. One of his eyes was open, the other barely fluttered, as both stared into and through Kathleen's gaze. She raised a hand, freezing; she didn't know where to touch him.

"Thumper, Thumper," Kathleen repeated, beginning to sob. She couldn't help picturing sweet Posey holding him, fresh out of the Forest, both girl and animal covered in grime and dirt. And now both were reduced to bloody bits, as Kathleen's fingers ghosted over the wound. What a terrible wound it was, starting at Thumper's neck and reaching diagonally to his foot, as if someone took a razor-thin knife and slit him on a table. Thumper was just a rabbit, he didn't deserve that. "Call Professor McGonagall!"

Kathleen's vision blurred with tears as they fell onto the still animal's body, mixing their translucent emotions with the remnants of his lifeblood. Black had knelt down aside her as she begged. "Do something, anything."

Kathleen's hands found Thumper's thin, blood-soaked ears and started petting them in some semblance of normalcy, as Black fumbled for his wand, placing it around the wound.

"Vulnera Sanentur. Vulnera Sanentur," he murmured, and as Kathleen breathed shakily, the sword-like wound began closing, the flesh knitting itself together. She gasped. "Vulnera Sanentur."

Kathleen's knees were cold from the blood, her robes stained maroon as more blood crusted over her fingertips. But Black's spell did nothing. Thumper didn't move.

Black sat back. "I'm sorry. He must've already been dead."

Kathleen only cried harder, and when McGonagall finally came, she lay like a corpse, hanging desperately to Black's shoulders. 

Kathleen often found herself staring at the door. The same door that she'd opened to throw Thumper outside last month. She sat on Posey's colorless empty bed, thumbing over the edges of a chocolate bar. 

That morning, she'd pulled Black aside into another broom closet, but he'd wrestled out of her grip, muttering about needing to get to class. Annoyed, she'd researched the Goyles for almost three hours afterwards, and finding nothing. Like the Prewetts, much of the Goyles' magical history in spellwork consisted of soldiering, with mostly defensive spells. There was no dark magic about how to slash a rabbit. 

The door swung open, and since Kathleen was staring at it from before, she met the eyes of Flora Blishwick. Blishwick shot a look at Kathleen, doing a little double-take seeing how she was on Posey's abandoned bed.

"Morning, Prewett," she said in a flighty tone.

"Morning," Kathleen grunted.

Blishwick flounced to her corner of the room, opening a drawer and taking out a quartz-inlaid hairbrush, and beginning to run her golden hair through its bristles. "...McGonagall would like to see you in her office."

...And that was how Kathleen ended up in the stern Professor's office, weary in grief and determination. 

"When was the last time you saw the animal?"

"Yesterday," Kathleen said. Her stiff lips moved as she talked, and she felt bits of the skin stretch and split. "In the Common Room at curfew."

McGonagall jotted something down on a piece of parchment.

"There are plenty of white rabbits with red eyes. And you are sure that this is the one that was Miss Finch's familiar?"

"Familiar? No, no, Thumper was just her pet," Kathleen said.

McGonagall peered down from her spectacles.

"I- um," Kathleen paused. "Professor, I think the slashing spell used on Thumper was the same one used on Persephone."

McGonagall stilled, and her irises seemed to tremble in their strength as she reached out, pulled her spectacles off her nose, and gave them a wipe with a little cloth on her desk. "I- Miss Prewett, are you sure? We cannot be certain even if it was a spell."

"No, I'm sure," Kathleen said emphatically, offended at the thought of wasting all her hours of research. "I saw it both times. Unless someone's carrying around a Muggle knife or a sword, it was some sort of dark magic."

McGonagall seemed taken aback at her ferocity. "-Very well, I shall reach out to the Headmaster and we will re-investigate with your opinions. But dark magic leaves traces, and unless the spell's advent was less than six moons ago, we have not found any traces of it, or any dark magic in Hogwarts' walls."

Kathleen mumbled something unimportant.

"I'm sorry, Prewett. I know the rabbit was of great importance to Miss Finch, and thus to you. To target a pet, I myself simply cannot understand," McGonagall sighed then, and the fireplace light fell in dappled shadows against the crow's feet near her eyes. "You may go."

As Kathleen stepped into the dark halls, she felt unbelievably heavy, as if her boots were of iron and her limbs were steel. She had more reading to do, she decided, as she headed to the library.