Cohen made it back to the dorm and waited forever, but Voldemort never showed up at Gryffindor Tower.
*Damn it, Voldy, you're not even here! Where the heck did you go?!*
If Voldemort wasn't coming to find Cohen… where would he head instead?
Maybe to track down the basilisk?
Cohen mulled it over. That guess sounded plausible at first, but it didn't hold up.
If Voldemort could safely possess the basilisk right now, he wouldn't need to waste all this effort making Lockhart orchestrate attacks. He'd just slap his soul onto the snake and call it a day. But the basilisk could even harm ghosts—Voldemort's tattered soul would probably get caught in the crossfire. Plus, as one of the top-tier dark magic creatures, the basilisk had its own hefty magical mojo. Voldemort couldn't possess it the way he did those random critters in the Albanian forest or Quirrell.
And in his soul state, he couldn't exactly flash his "Slytherin Heir" ID card. The basilisk's no-questions-asked petrifying stare would likely zap him too.
So, that left Voldemort with two options: bolt like he did last term—or cozy up to some dark-magic-loving student and sweet-talk them into helping him out.
Even then, he still wouldn't come straight to Cohen for a team-up? *Come on, Riddle, don't waste your last brain cell on weird stuff !*
Cohen couldn't wrap his head around Voldemort's tsundere antics—going out of his way to frame him while refusing to just show up, admit he messed up, and work things out.
Since Voldemort was playing dirty with these sneak attacks, Cohen decided to double down on his "stick-to-Harry" strategy. As long as he stayed glued to Harry's side, he'd have zero time or motive to look guilty. Drag Harry into the mess with him, and Dumbledore wouldn't dare pin this on Cohen—Voldemort's little stunts would only end up exposing himself.
Voldemort clearly didn't get how Dumbledore ticked.
*Harry = Dumbledore's current fave student.jpg*
Full-on, 360-degree defense—Voldemort didn't stand a chance.
The worst this frame job could do was tank Cohen's rep with the other students. Big deal. He didn't care what they thought. He barely hung out with kids from other houses anyway, and last term he'd already ticked off most of them for the sake of racking up some sweet villain points.
But if Voldemort was gonna keep being this ungrateful… Cohen figured it was time to teach him a lesson. Sure, teaming up with Cohen or rejecting him both ended in failure for Voldemort, but Cohen could at least dangle the illusion of "almost winning" in front of him.
Over the next few days, though, Cohen's disappointment in Voldemort only grew. The guy vanished like a ghost—no sign of him keeping tabs on Cohen. For a minute, Cohen even wondered if he'd bailed entirely.
Saturday morning rolled around, and Harry wanted to drag Cohen and the crew to chat with Hagrid. But before the sun was even up, Wood stormed into their dorm, shaking Harry awake. Cohen and Ron got rudely woken up in the process too.
"Quidditch practice!" Wood barked. "Let's go!"
Outside, the sky was just starting to lighten—a soft pink with streaks of gold, wrapped in a thin layer of mist.
"Oliver…" Harry groaned. "It's barely dawn…"
"Exactly!" Wood said, way too hyped. "It's part of our new training plan! Come on, grab your broom—no other team's out yet. We've gotta get in gear and take the top spot!"
"What about us?" Cohen grumbled, still cranky from being woken up. "Are we part of this training too?"
"Or are we the brooms that need training…" Ron mumbled through a yawn, eyes half-shut. "Just snag Harry and go—why all the noise? I wanted to sleep more…"
Wood hauled Harry off.
Cohen and Ron tried to catch some extra Zs, but once you're jolted awake and the sunlight's streaming in stronger by the minute, falling back asleep is a lost cause.
So, they dragged themselves to breakfast instead.
When they hit the Great Hall, Hermione was already there, done eating and apparently waiting for them.
"You're all up early today," she said, raising an eyebrow. "Heading to Hagrid's later?"
"Harry got dragged off by Wood for practice," Cohen said, scanning the room and not spotting him. "Looks like he didn't even get to eat."
"That's rough," Hermione said, wincing in sympathy. "I don't get it…"
She packed up some bread, jam, and a couple of sausages for Harry.
After Cohen and Ron finished eating, the three of them headed to the Quidditch pitch—just in time to catch the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams tangled up in a standoff.
"Aren't you Lucius Malfoy's kid?" Fred was saying to a scrawny Slytherin player, his tone dripping with disgust.
"Funny you'd bring up Draco's dad," the Slytherin team snickered, looking smugger than ever. "Take a look at the generous gift he sent the Slytherin team."
All seven Slytherins proudly showed off their shiny new brooms.
"Trouble?" Ron clocked the scene from a distance and rushed over with Cohen and Hermione in tow. "Why aren't you playing—what's *he* doing here?"
He'd spotted Malfoy decked out in a Slytherin Quidditch robe.
"I'm the new Seeker for Slytherin, Weasley—" Malfoy started, ready to gloat, but then he saw Cohen and instantly dialed back the attitude.
"You bought your way onto the team, huh?" Ron hit the nail on the head, smirking.
"No one said I couldn't," Malfoy shot back coolly, avoiding Cohen's gaze like it'd burn him. It made him look… awkward as hell.
"Seven Nimbus 2001s are worth a lot more than the two Cleansweep Fives your family's got," Slytherin's captain, Marcus Flint, snarled in defense. "Money gets you places—I bet your folks had to scrape twig by twig to get those brooms for the twins."
The whole Slytherin team—minus Malfoy—burst out laughing. Malfoy tugged at Marcus's robe, trying to get him to chill.
To his relief, Cohen didn't react.
And Cohen wasn't planning to—because a second later, Fred and George charged in, tackling Flint in a fury. The scuffle snowballed into a full-on fifteen-person brawl (Ron jumped in too).
Colin Creevey, who'd been trailing the Gryffindor team at some point, snapped a few pics with his camera—until a stray fist clocked him by accident. Terrified, he bolted toward the castle to fetch a professor and stop the chaos.
"Harry!" Hermione yelled, frantic, toward the pile of flailing bodies. "Get out of there! The professors are coming—you don't want a third detention in a row, do you?!"