The party wasn't a big thing; it couldn't really be, not when there were so many kids at home for the holidays. They hadn't all gone, though, and so Aiden had insisted on inviting everyone he knew, and several students he didn't, to relax in the Room of Requirement on New Year's Eve. He'd managed to bargain some food out of the trasgus, and somehow Nate had been bludgeoned into acquiring some alcohol from Hogsmeade, and one way or another they'd ended up with a fairly casual get-together.
Nate was in the middle of comparing homework horror stories with a fifth-year, and casually scouting her out for any interesting gossip — he and Gerard would be meeting up soon, to trade stories of what everyone got up to during the holidays, and Nate didn't want to disappoint — when Johan Yurgenstein looked out the window and laughed.
No, wait. He was looking at the window, not out the window.
"Look at this! Somebody made rainbow drops!" Johan announced, holding up his bottle of Ogden's as if he was toasting.
Nate's eyes widened. He only distantly heard Shaila saying that someone must have been getting into the holiday spirit; he was too busy making his excuses to the fifth-year and sidling over to the window. There were prism-like splashes against the pane, and sure enough, a few drops were wriggling their way through the miniscule space between the window and the sill. Johan hadn't noticed, already distracted by his firewhiskey. Nate looked around, feeling more and more alone as he realised that nobody else had felt their heart stop when Johan spoke. Nobody else heard rainbow raindrops and thought oh, shit instead of weird or fuck, that's gay.
He gathered up a drop on his finger and told the room at large, "Hey, I'm going to step out for a bit," already hurrying for the door. If anybody tried to catch his attention, he didn't notice.
Once out in the hallway, he paused. The reason the prism drops worked so well, despite being occasionally hard to notice, was that if you poked the drop with your wand and whispered a few key words...
There. The drop rose off his finger and into the air, glinting as it formed a small arrow. Nate quickly followed it outside, watching as it pointed straight to... Gerard? But Gerard didn't look distressed, he just looked like he was circling a tree and growling. Had he trapped the mysterious stranger he'd been chasing a while back?
No, he couldn't have been, because the only person in the tree was William, and the arrow was definitely pointing up. William was the one who had sent the distress signal.
And Gerard was the one with blood on his face. Well, fuck.
Suddenly, it was like the months since the war ended had never happened at all. The past few months of school, his promise to his mom, his endless battle to keep himself relaxed instead of perpetually on guard — all of that was gone. He Concealed himself without even thinking about it.