Chapter One – Aunt Marge’s New Look.

          It was the hottest summer in recent memory, and the small house at Number Four Privet Drive was all but unbearable from the heat and the humidity. Harry Potter hardly noticed. He’d spent most of the summer away, touring the continent with some new friends he’d made during his previous year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Not that he let on that he’d met them there. As far as Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were concerned, Harry had gone vacationing with some nice, bland, mundane Americans.
          Muggles, in other words. That being the wizarding-world term for non-magical folk. Harry had spent the first several years of his life as a Muggle, with no idea that there was any other way to be. He’d never known about his parents, or the Dark wizard who’d killed them. All of that had been revealed to him on his eleventh birthday.
          Everything that had seemed so new and novel to him then was now familiar, and muchly missed. His life at Hogwarts was far preferable to that of Privet Drive. True, he had to share his bedroom at Hogwarts with four other students, while the small second bedroom he occupied here was entirely his own, but he would have gladly given up all that privacy for the freedom and understanding of his wizarding peers. 
          By now, Harry was used to magic and fantastic things. He’d encountered dragons, basilisks, hippogriffs, phoenixes, trolls, unicorns, half-giants – one of his closest friends, Hagrid the gamekeeper, was in fact half-giant – elves, centaurs … the list went on and on. He’d foiled more than a few evil plots and been in mortal danger more times than most boys his age. He’d witnessed the death of a friend (rival though that friend had been), helped a convicted-but-innocent criminal escape from unjust justice, and generally led a life the likes of which the lonely child who’d slept in the cupboard beneath the stairs for so long could never have imagined.
          Which wasn’t to say that Harry’s life was easy now. He still had to endure the summers with his aunt, uncle, and cousin Dudley. None of them liked him, a sentiment that Harry wholeheartedly returned. Aunt Petunia despised Harry because he was her sister’s son, her sister the witch, the freak. Dudley, his cousin, hated Harry with a selfish spitefulness that stemmed from Dudley’s spoiled, piggy nature. And Uncle Vernon …
          Well, Harry had never been sure exactly why Uncle Vernon loathed him so. It couldn’t be the added expense of having been forced to take in his wife’s orphaned nephew; Harry had survived on hand-me-downs and leftovers. If anything, the Dursleys got a free servant in Harry, for when he was living with them he’d worked like a house-elf. It was something else that offended Uncle Vernon. Something about Harry and the very fact of his being a wizard. Just why that should bother Uncle Vernon even more than it did Aunt Petunia was a mystery to Harry. Unless it was because Vernon Dursley, being a plodding and unimaginative sort, just couldn’t cope with anything out of the ordinary.
          And things had been plenty out of the ordinary with Harry around. His earliest, unconscious uses of magic had led to various inexplicable events in his younger years. Then, once Harry had been accepted at Hogwarts, the events had gotten slightly more extreme. The time Hagrid had given Dudley a pig’s tail, for instance. Or the time that Dobby, a house-elf of Harry’s acquaintance, had ruined an important dinner party.
          Or, most of all, the time that Harry had blown up Aunt Marge. Marge Dursley was Uncle Vernon’s sister, a large and solidly-built woman with a hard face and harder manner. Her disdain for Harry and her remarks about his shiftless, good-for-nothing parents had finally made him boil over. He hadn’t meant to cast a spell. But in all honesty, he had to admit it hadn’t entirely been an accident either.
          That incident, the blowing-up of Aunt Marge, was one that lived more clearly in Harry’s memory than in anyone else’s. The Ministry of Magic had come on the run, reducing Aunt Marge from her parade-balloon size to her normal (though still substantial) girth, and had smoothed everything over in her mind and the minds of the Dursleys with a few minor, judicious Memory Charms. 
          So it was that only Harry really remembered what had happened that day. The rest of the family remained vaguely uneasy about Aunt Marge’s last visit, aware that something had gone amiss but nobody was all that sure what. Harry was certainly unwilling to remind them. He lived in dread of Marge’s next visit.
          She hadn’t been to see her brother in quite some time. Not since the blowing-up business, as it happened. The following year, she’d written to say she was taking her holiday somewhere else, at a spa in Sweden. This had occupied her ever since. But all good things did not last.
          The letter informing the Dursleys of her plan to come calling arrived on a day so hot that the streets seemed sticky from melting tar. Dudley was most miserable of all, carrying as he did all those extra pounds. His every effort at losing weight – well, Aunt Petunia’s every effort at forcing him, since Dudley would slack on his exercises and cheat on his diets and generally make life so hellish for all of them that she lost the heart to press further – had proved fruitless. Dudley, the same age as Harry, was four times as heavy and had to have special chairs now because he’d broken half the furniture in the house.
          Maybe that was another reason he had to hate Harry, a reason that had become more pronounced recently. As a child, Harry had been small and skinny, and Dudley had been able to beat up on him. Now sixteen, Harry had shot up a few inches and put on some weight, not a lot but good lean muscle that was well-toned by his hours of diligent Quidditch practice. 
          Harry was taller than Dudley now, with long legs that could have easily outrun his cousin. Not that he had to. Dudley never gave chase anymore, and even if he had, Harry was confident enough that he would have stood his ground, faced Dudley down, and given back as good a thrashing as he got. Or better. 
          Although he had grown up some and filled out, Harry was otherwise markedly the same. He had the same unkempt black hair, the same vivid green eyes behind the same glasses, and as always, the same lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. The only real difference about his face was that he’d lately been noticing a fine black fuzz on his cheeks and chin, enough to necessitate shaving once a week. 
          He studied himself in the mirror sometimes and had finally concluded that while he was never going to be ruggedly handsome, he wasn’t exactly homely, either. Dudley, whose flat face was surrounded by jowls and chins and topped with a ludicrous crop of yellow curls, had taken to glaring at Harry all the more resentfully lately.
          Aunt Petunia was all in a dither when Marge’s letter arrived. She always went all-out trying to impress Marge, always fretted that it would never be good enough. She seemed to live in fear that Marge would sniff and scoff and make remarks about how Vernon could have done better. 
          “Says here she’s bringing a friend for dinner,” Uncle Vernon said as he perused the letter, frowning in his ponderous way. “A gentleman friend.”
          A dish smashed on the floor as Aunt Petunia whirled away from the sink. “A what?”
          “A gentleman friend,” Vernon repeated in a tone that said he couldn’t quite believe it himself.
          Dudley snorted, sounding uncannily like the pig that Hagrid had intended to turn him into. Harry kept, with great effort, an even expression and went on coring apples for a pie that Aunt Petunia wished to bake. But inwardly, he was as boggled as the rest of them. Aunt Marge had never come across as anything but a solidly spinster aunt, and the very idea of her with a gentleman friend was as absurd as …
          Harry cut off that line of thought, for most of the absurd things he could think of had already happened to him. In a world where even Professor Severus Snape could have a girlfriend …
          Thinking about that made him grow a little warm. He cringed at the same time, as if he could actually hear Hermione’s cutting remark. She didn’t trust Ophidia Winterwind, who had taken over halfway through their last term as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. It was Hermione who got them all thinking Professor Winterwind was a vampire, an opinion supported by the way she looked and the fact that she only conduced her classes at night while hardly being seen during the day.
          And there was the curiously coincidental matter of the jar of blood-flavored lollipops she kept on the corner of her desk …
          Forcing his mind back to the present, Harry listened as Uncle Vernon read aloud choice bits from his sister’s letter. It had gotten delayed at the post office – one of the drawbacks of using conventional post services and not the speedy, reliable delivery of owls, but Harry knew better than to say such a thing in front of everyone – and the crux of it was that Marge was due to arrive the very next day. 
          Aunt Petunia clutched at her heart when Uncle Vernon announced the specific day and time. She flung a worried, warning look at Harry. 
          “Is she certain she wants to?” Aunt Petunia asked anxiously. “After what went on last time?”
          Except that none of them could exactly recall just what had gone on last time. Harry busied himself with the apples and tried to look innocent, hoping that the Memory Charms held. 
          “It’s going to be fine,” Uncle Vernon announced. He glowered at Harry. “Won’t it, boy?”
          “I don’t see why it wouldn’t, uncle,” Harry said.
          “He’d just love for something to go wrong,” said Dudley. “He’d love to pull one of his pranks on us right in front of her.”
          By the way he covered his mouth as he said this, Harry knew Dudley was thinking of the time he’d eaten a jinxed toffee and his tongue had puffed up like a party favor. Seeing that no one else was watching him just then, Harry stuck out his own tongue at Dudley. His cousin’s eyes narrowed until they almost disappeared in the folds and bulges of his cheeks. 
          The rest of the day passed in an endless torrent of chores. The house had to be cleaned top to bottom, the guest room aired out. Aunt Petunia was in an agony of propriety, wondering whether Marge was going to expect her gentleman friend to stay the night, and if so, where he was going to sleep. She expressed her concerns in a loud hissing whisper to Uncle Vernon, something about not wanting to provide a bad example for the boys. Uncle Vernon told her that she was being silly, that of all people on earth, his sister Marge was the last one to engage in any sort of inappropriate behavior. 
          Dudley didn’t have to lift a finger. He spent the day parked in front of his computer, pretending to be playing a space adventure game but really, whenever his mother was out of the room, surfing for dirty pictures. 
          Uncle Vernon had gone off to work, after giving Harry a stern shake of the finger and a glare, which wordlessly reminded Harry of the rules that must be followed around Aunt Marge. For starters, she had been told that he was a student at a reformatory, a lie that Marge was all too willing to believe. 
          That left Aunt Petunia and Harry to do the cleaning and the cooking. More than once, Harry was sharply nostalgic for Hogwarts, where all the meals were made and the tidying was done by a veritable army of happy house-elves (happy despite his friend Hermione’s efforts to convince them they were being shabbily treated). 
          He also thought about all the times he’d seen Mrs. Weasley, mother of his other best friend Ron, go about her housework with a few flips and waves of her wand. He contemplated sneaking his own wand out and making short work of the chores. He was old enough now that the Restrictions for Underage Wizardry no longer strictly applied, so the Ministry wouldn’t come knocking … but he could just imagine Aunt Petunia’s shrieks if she walked into the kitchen and found him casting cleaning spells on the pile of breakfast dishes.
          Somehow, he got through that long, tiresome day. He was so exhausted that he didn’t even object when Uncle Vernon came home and told him that it would be best for all if Harry spent the evening in his room. They didn’t, Uncle Vernon claimed, have adequate seating space or place settings. Not with Marge bringing a friend and all. Harry didn’t want them to set a table with mismatched plates, did he? Or make someone sit on the rickety kitchen stool?
          Harry, knowing full well who’d be forced to perch on the stool, was almost glad to oblige. He agreed to remain upstairs, where he planned to study quietly. He wasn’t even expecting any owls from his regular pen-pals – Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, or Harry’s godfather Sirius Black. 
          Aunt Petunia nagged Dudley into leaving his computer long enough to change into his best clothes, or at least the best ones that still fit with only a minimum of button-straining gaps all down the shirtfront. Harry was allowed to make himself a plate of food, not the elaborate meal he’d spent all day helping Aunt Petunia prepare, but leftover macaroni cheese and some bread. He was in the process of pouring a glass of milk to go with it when he glanced out the window and saw a taxi pulling up outside of Number Four Privet Drive.
          Harry watched as the back door opened and a woman stepped out. His first thought was that the taxi had the wrong house. Then he heard Aunt Petunia’s disbelieving squeal from the front room, and blinked, looked again, and concluded that the woman really was Aunt Marge.
          Uncle Vernon’s sister had always rather unfortunately taken after him, the family resemblance strong. She was big, thickset. Marge the Barge, Dudley sometimes called her, and when he’d been overheard saying it, he’d claimed he was only repeating what Harry had said first. This turn of affairs resulted in Harry spending an entire weekend closed in his cupboard with no lights on. 
          Marge the Barge … not anymore. The woman emerging from the taxi was still tall, but her girth had changed dramatically. It was still a figure that would be called ‘full,’ but her waist was indented for the first time Harry had ever known, and her hips and bosom actually looked like hips and bosom rather than geologic formations. Her tailored suit was far more flattering than the awful tweeds she had previously been fond of. Her hair was styled. She was wearing makeup. 
          Amazed, Harry stayed at the window even though he was supposed to be on his way up with his re-heated macaroni cheese. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the spectacle of this new and improved Aunt Marge. He wouldn’t have thought anything could shock him more.
          But then a man got out of the other side of the taxi, and came around to direct the driver as the luggage was removed from the trunk. The man was dressed in a snappy blue suit with a shiny silver tie, his blond hair blow-dried and combed, everything about him as normal and respectable and classy. It was his smile … the one that had won the Witch Weekly Most Charming Smile contest five times running … that riveted Harry to the spot. 
          Aunt Marge’s gentleman friend was none other than Gilderoy Lockhart.

**

Chapter Two – Memory Unbound. 

          Harry couldn’t possibly remain in his room after this surprise. But he couldn’t very well just march into the dining room either. He contented himself with sitting on the stairs, silent, his plate balanced on his knees as he listened keenly to the conversation.
          Aunt Petunia kept coming back, like a circling fly, to the same thing. She couldn’t believe it, how had Marge done it, what was her secret? Marge explained at length, while snubbing the bacon-wrapped roast and the potatoes in cream sauce and most of the other courses that Harry had slaved over for the best part of the afternoon.
          “It wasn’t long after my last visit,” Marge said. Her voice was much the same, Marge-the-Barge’s blaring claxon. “Pass me that salad, Dudley, if you’re not going to eat it. No, heavens, no, that dressing is loaded with calories. I’m strictly on a health-food diet now, you see. Vegetables. Lean meat. Whole grains. You should consider it, Vernon. Does wonders for the bowels.”
          A tittering laugh, nearly as devoid of rationality as the last time Harry had heard it, came from the throat of Gilderoy Lockhart. The one-time wizard celebrity, author of many books, and ex-DADA teacher at Hogwarts, was acting as if he’d never been anything but a Muggle, and a daffy one at that. Harry hadn’t heard anything of him since he’d been carted off from Hogwarts, victim of his own backfired Memory Charm – a living example of why you should never use another wizard’s wand, especially a second-hand old one that had already been broken and ill-mended with Spell-O-Tape. As far as Harry knew, Lockhart had ended up in St. Mungo’s Hospital. His presence here was as bewildering as it was amazing. 
          “You know I’d never had any complaints about my figure before,” Marge was saying. “It was simply never a concern of mine, never an issue. But after that last visit, I suddenly realized how much I’d let myself go. I was grotesque. I felt like a dirigible, as if I might just bloat up and float away at any moment. It disgusted me. More, I couldn’t even remember what made me let myself get so big. I’ve been having such problems with my memories these past couple of years, don’t you know. That’s how I met Gil, here, but that’s another story.”
          Gil? Harry’s eyebrows went up. 
          “At any rate, there I was, feeling big as a house and ashamed of it. So I enrolled myself in the spa, and lived for eight months on sprouts and bean curd and kelp. I took up walking, swimming, and eventually bought myself one of those standing bicycles. Lost ninety pounds so far.”
          “My word!” marveled Aunt Petunia.
          “That’s quite incredible, Marge,” Uncle Vernon said.
          “I still have forty to go,” she said.
          “Now, now,” came the voice of Gilderoy Lockhart, and it was him, unmistakable, Harry would have known him anywhere. Hadn’t he sat through a whole term of listening to that man go on about himself and his fabulous exploits? None of which, as they’d found out, had really been his doing at all. “Don’t go letting yourself waste away to a stick, my dear.”
          “Oh, Gil.” And Aunt Marge giggled like a schoolgirl.
          Harry put aside his macaroni cheese, having lost his appetite. He wished he could go down there and ask what Gilderoy Lockhart thought he was doing here, but didn’t dare.
          “It’s really most impressive,” said Aunt Petunia. “I hardly recognized you. This spa … doesn’t it sound wonderful, Dudley?”
          “Sounds horrid,” came Dudley’s bored voice. “You’d never catch me in a place like that.”
          “But, Duddy-wuddy,” wheedled Petunia, “look how well it’s worked for Aunt Marge. Your teachers say --”
          “I don’t care what my teachers say,” snapped Dudley. They had, as Harry well knew, been sending home notes of concern about his size and his health for a long time, and Aunt Petunia’s every attempt to curb his eating or encourage exercise had ultimately met with failure.
          For a brief, merry moment, Harry imagined how much better life on Privet Drive would be if Dudley were indeed shipped off to Aunt Marge’s miracle-spa for eight months.
          “So,” said Uncle Vernon gruffly. “What do you do, Mr. Lockhart?”
          “I’m in advertising,” came Gilderoy Lockhart’s reply. 
          Harry bit back a snicker. That was true, at least, though self-promotion might have been a better choice of words. 
          “How’d you two meet?”
          “That’s what I was about to tell you,” said Aunt Marge. “I mentioned I’d been having some troubles with my memory. Little lapses, you know. Spots of forgetfulness. So I joined a support group for people with similar troubles. Gil’s a recovering amnesiac.”
          This time, the snicker escaped and Harry had to muffle it by pressing his forearm over his mouth. That was putting it lightly. When they’d brought Lockhart up from the Chamber of Secrets, he hadn’t even known his own name. 
          “Oh, I say!” gasped Aunt Petunia. “Amnesia?”
          “Total and utter amnesia,” Lockhart said in a carefree manner. “I hadn’t a clue who I was or what I did for a living. Luckily, some kindly ladies took me in and cared for me while I pieced my life back together. I may never fully reclaim my past, but I think building a future is more important.”
          Harry’s mirth faded as a strange thought came to him. He’d been going on the assumption that Lockhart was here on some pretense, pretending to be friends with Aunt Marge in order to get close to Harry. Throughout their entire acquaintance, Lockhart had connived to get their photos taken together, and it wouldn’t have surprised Harry if Lockhart wanted them to go on tour together or something. But now it occurred to him that if Lockhart’s amnesia were that total, he might have forgotten everything about being a wizard.
          From the dining room, he could hear the sounds of Aunt Petunia clearing the table. That was one nice thing about his exile – she couldn’t very well make him clean up. 
          “I’m not done yet,” Dudley protested. 
          “You have to save room for pie, Duddkins,” Petunia said.
          “I’ll have room.”
          “Gracious, Dudley,” said Aunt Marge scornfully. “You really should take better care of yourself. Look at the boy, Vernon. Your wife is going to indulge him right into an early grave, which he’s digging with a fork and a spoon.”
          This pronouncement stunned the table. In previous visits, Aunt Marge had always expansively complimented Dudley, saying how much she liked to see a solid and substantial young man with a hearty appetite. She’d often use those occasions, too, to toss an insult Harry’s direction and call him skinny, reedy, or scrawny. Dudley made a bleat of shock through a mouthful of food, and Aunt Petunia stammered incoherently.
          “Come now, Marge,” said Uncle Vernon. “Dudley’s a growing boy, that’s all.”
          “He’s an overstuffed Christmas goose,” Marge proclaimed. Her chair scraped back as she rose from the table. “Let’s go in the parlor, Gil, and give Petunia a chance to clear. Then we’ll all have tea.”
          Harry stood as quietly as he could, the stairs giving the faintest of creaks. He crept backward up them with the innate grace he’d honed by lots of practice sneaking about Hogwarts when and where he wasn’t supposed to. He’d gotten so that he could pass pretty well unnoticed even without having to resort to his Invisibility Cloak.
          Shadows on the wall. Harry reached the landing at the top of the stairs and paused, peering down for a look. He only got a brief one, showing him Aunt Marge’s profile – hard and uncompromising as the carved figurehead of a ship – and the impeccable grooming and twinkling eyes of Gilderoy Lockhart. Neither of them so much as glanced up the stairs. They were followed a moment later by Uncle Vernon, who was rather red in the face. 
          Aunt Marge picked up without missing a beat. “Really, Vernon, you should do something. Take a stand. That boy needs discipline. You’re not doing him any favors letting that woman coddle him to death.”
          “Oh, now, really,” began Uncle Vernon.
          “After all, you handle that other one well enough. That spindly nephew of hers. He’s not about, I hope?”
          Spindly. Harry rolled his eyes.
          “No, no, not at all,” Uncle Vernon said. “He’s away.”
          “It’s the saddest thing, Gil,” Marge said, with the air of one imparting a great confidence. “My poor brother here, burdened as he is with the responsibilities of his own job, home, and family, got stuck with a shiftless orphan to boot. And not one of your charming orphans out of Dickens, either. This one’s an ungrateful, peculiar little brat.”
          Uncle Vernon cleared his throat. “Marge …”
          “I’m only slapping down the cards, Vernon. It’s hardly your fault. I know you’ve provided a good, stable home for the boy. By rights, he should have grown up normal. But you can’t overcome genetics. Blood always tells, that’s what I say. Petunia knows her sister was a bad egg, and as for that Potter, hmf!”
          “Potter?” queried Gilderoy Lockhart. 
          “It’s no wonder that son of theirs ended up in reform school,” Marge went on. “There’s something not right about him, Vernon, I’ve always said so.”
          “We’ve been over this before.” Uncle Vernon sounded nervous and no wonder; Marge might have forgotten the circumstances leading up to her blowing-up, but he hadn’t. 
          “Potter,” mused Lockhart.
          “That awful scar, too,” Marge said. “It makes him look like the very devil. Should be a pitchfork, or three sixes in a cloverleaf like in that movie. Honestly, Vernon, if ever there was a boy to turn to black magic or witchcraft, that’s the one.”
          Harry, had he been down there and allowed to take part in their conversation, would have objected fiercely at that point. From the very day he’d come to Hogwarts, he’d been determined not to be tempted into the Dark Arts. He could have done, it would have been easy enough to get into Slytherin and befriend Draco Malfoy … surely even Snape would have softened toward him if he thought that the son of his old rival was ripe for corruption. But he was of Gryffindor! His pride stung at the accusation.
          “Scar?” Lockhart’s voice was tremulous. “Magic? Witchcraft?”
          Uncle Vernon laughed an anxiety-laden laugh. “Figure of speech, Mr. Lockhart. I’ll admit, the boy is an evil-looking creature, but hardly … we’d never permit magic in our household … even if it were real … the very idea!”
          “It would be just like him, though,” said Aunt Marge, very darkly. “I should hope, Vernon, that if there was even the slightest indication --”
          “Marge!” he barked. “We do not speak of such things in this house.”
          Harry blinked. He shook his head. Funny … that had almost made it sound like Aunt Marge did know something about magic after all. He’d always been under the impression that Aunt Petunia was most eager to keep that unsavory aspect of her family’s history a secret from her husband’s relations. Hence the story about Harry’s parents having died in a car crash, the same one that allegedly gave him his scar. It would hardly do to tell how they’d in fact been murdered by the worst Dark wizard since the Black Court of Count Douglas Tyrrell. 
          “Do you know, the most extraordinary thing is coming to me?” said Lockhart. “I think I’m beginning to remember …”
          “Oh, no,” whispered Harry, a sudden churning in his stomach that had nothing to do with his half-eaten dinner. 
          “What’s that, Gil?” asked Aunt Marge.
          “Harry Potter, wasn’t it?”
          “My wife’s nephew,” Uncle Vernon said. “But think nothing of it. He’s --”
          “Why, yes!” Lockhart cried. “It’s all coming back! My goodness, and look at me … dressed like a Muggle! I say. How unflattering. Whatever did I do with my wand?”
          “Wand?” choked Vernon and Marge in unison.
          At that moment, Aunt Petunia ushered Dudley in from the dining room with orders to “make conversation with your aunt while I dish up the pie.” Dudley waddled past the bottom of the stairs, not noticing Harry on the landing. His round shadow stopped in the doorway to the living room as Aunt Marge spoke.
          “Gil, whatever are you saying?”
          “Didn’t I tell you? No, I couldn’t have when I’ve only just remembered it myself. Marge, dear, isn’t it splendid? I’m a wizard!”
          In the hush that followed, molecules could be heard to decay. It was broken by the thick sound of Uncle Vernon swallowing, and Dudley’s craven whimper. 
          “You’re a what?” Marge asked icily.
          “And not just any wizard!” Lockhart announced with all the old familiar vanity and pride. “I am Gilderoy Lockhart, author of Magical Me and numerous other works! Have you got a quill? I’d be happy to autograph a copy for you.”
          “What?” shrieked Marge, drawing Aunt Petunia in a rush from the kitchen with suds on her hands. 
          Harry covered his eyes. He was sure that this was somehow against the Ministry’s rules. Should he do something? What could he possibly do that wouldn’t make things worse? 
          “So you’re the famous Harry Potter’s family!” Lockhart crowed. “Capital to meet you! Simply capital. He’s quite a marvelous young man, you know. We’re very close. I was one of his instructors for a time, and, dare I say, a close confidante and personal friend. Marge, dear, you should have told me!”
          “You’re a … you’re a …” she couldn’t finish.
          Dudley could. He bleated, “Wizard!” at the top of his lungs and swung about, lumbering for the stairs with a tread that made the foundations shake. He was instinctively covering his backside with one hand – well, trying to; it was like trying to cover a sofa with a handkerchief – and his mouth with the other. He clomped up the stairs without watching where he was going, craning his neck back over his shoulder. Consequently, he nearly ran right into Harry.
          “Boo,” Harry said softly.
          “Augh!” Dudley backpedaled, lost his footing, and bounced down the stairs like a big ball of nutty-putty. He hit the floor, jolting the house again, and lay flat on his back. 
          Distracted by this, Harry had lost track of what was going on in the living room. Even as Dudley landed, Gilderoy Lockhart was driven backwards into the entryway, shielding himself with both arms as Aunt Marge beat at him with a spray of daisies that Aunt Petunia had picked just that morning. Their stems were broken and nodding crazily every which way. Petals and leaves showered down on Lockhart’s hapless head. 
          “Not the face, not the face!” he cried. 
          “Out!” thundered Uncle Vernon. “Out of my house!”
          “This is hardly any way to treat a guest!” Lockhart protested.
          Marge snatched up a furled umbrella from the umbrella-stand by the door and beset him with it. “You filthy, lying, treacherous …” She went on in that vein, emphasizing each word with another whack from the umbrella, and as her anger intensified, she resorted to using words that Harry had never before heard spoken in the Dursley house.
          Neither had Aunt Petunia. She had rushed to Dudley to try and help him up, a losing battle if ever there was one, but as Marge unleashed the vilest epithet yet, she uttered a wailing scream and fainted. Lockhart promptly tripped over her and landed on Dudley’s considerable padding. But actual physical contact with a wizard did what no amount of tugging by his mother could ever have done – Dudley bounded to his feet so fast he might have been on springs. This propelled Lockhart straight at Aunt Marge. She screeched and thrust the umbrella at him. It popped open and one of the spokes nearly put out Lockhart’s eye.
          Uncle Vernon was roaring and snorting, like a maddened bull. Only the fact that the entryway was so crowded prevented him from getting to Lockhart and pummeling him. Even with a wand, Lockhart would have been next to defenseless; without one, he didn’t stand a chance. 
          Yelping, he swatted aside the umbrella and fled for the door, leaping nimbly over the unconscious Aunt Petunia as he did so. Marge chased after him and Uncle Vernon went after her. Maybe he was hoping to stop this before it turned into a complete spectacle before the eyes of all the neighbors, or maybe he was hoping to land a few punches of his own. Harry suspected the latter. A wizard without a wand? A wizard who couldn’t fight back with his foul magic? That had to be hard to resist. Since he couldn’t take it out on Harry without fear of either retaliation or the wrath of Harry’s godfather, Lockhart would make an acceptable substitute. 
          Dudley ran the other way. He reached the door of the cupboard under the stairs, which had been turned into a closet since Harry’s relocation to the upstairs spare bedroom. Dudley wedged himself through the door and stuck like a cork in a bottle. Harry could only see, from his angle, the back half of Dudley sticking out. 
          Harry did not move. He wanted to run after and see what became of Lockhart, but knew that would only be begging for trouble. He stayed where he was, amused by the grunts and struggles as Dudley tried to either force himself the rest of the way into the cupboard or pull himself back out. 
          It wasn’t long before he heard Marge and Vernon returning. Lockhart might have only been as clever as the average flobberworm, but he was fleet of foot when his life or his precious looks were in danger, and even confused, he would have easily outdistanced the Dursley siblings.
          Marge was sobbing in between heaving gasps for breath. As they came in and Uncle Vernon closed the door (and threw all the bolts and wedged a chair in front of it for good measure, as if Lockhart were coming back with an army), she kicked at the discarded umbrella furiously. 
          “How do you like that? I finally meet a decent man and he turns out to be one of them!” With another curse, she stormed into the kitchen and, by the sound, started sloppily devouring the pie that Aunt Petunia had been about to serve. 

**
 
Chapter Three – The Snake and the Bat.

          Somehow, although he hadn’t done a thing and hadn’t even been seen, it was all Harry’s fault. Uncle Vernon made that plain to him in the wake of the business with Gilderoy Lockhart and Aunt Marge. It was all Harry’s fault.
          His protests of innocence fell, as usual, on deaf ears. He hadn’t even let on that he’d listened, because that would have been taken as an admission of guilt. Instead, counting the days until summer’s end, Harry had resignedly accepted the blame. 
          He was dying to know what had happened to Lockhart afterward. And before, for that matter. Where had the erstwhile celebrity been these past few years? Why hadn’t the Ministry done something before now?
          These, like many other questions simmering in Harry’s mind, seemed destined to go unanswered. The one that interested him the most, though, had to do with the notion that Aunt Marge had apparently known about wizards all along, even if she hadn’t tipped to the fact that Harry was one until that disastrous dinner party. He’d hoped to hear more that night, especially once she finished the entire pie and went to work on Uncle Vernon's cognac. But he had been confined to his room until the following morning, when a hungover and very wretched-looking Aunt Marge left alone in another taxi.
          The days dragged. Harry passed some of the time by writing letters to his friends, especially making a point of asking Hermione if she knew what was up with Lockhart. He tried to phrase this in a way that didn’t make it seem like he was taunting her; at one point, she’d had a crush on him. But carefully as he phrased it, her first few replies contained many acerbic comments about the way the male students were now reacting to Professor Ophidia Winterwind. 
          Eventually, though, Harry persuaded her he was in earnest. She wrote back and included a few clippings from the Daily Prophet, the wizarding world’s newspaper. Apparently, Lockhart had signed himself out of St. Mungo’s a few months previously, against medical advice. Ministry operatives were supposedly on the lookout for him, but as he was considered harmless, he was a low priority. 
          That all changed shortly after Lockhart left the Dursley house. He was detained by Muggle authorities when he went running through the streets of London, waving a stick and shouting that he was a famous wizard. Luckily, the Muggles thought he was merely a madman, and he was finally returned to St. Mungo’s, under more careful observation this time. 
          As for the other burning question, Harry didn’t even know how to go about asking it. He couldn’t see himself approaching Uncle Vernon to inquire just what, when, and how long Aunt Marge had known about wizards. He suspected that it had something to do with Uncle Vernon’s disproportionate dislike of all things magical, which was a tantalizing idea. Overhearing a loud argument between Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia one night, which included her demanding of him, “why didn’t you ever tell me, Vernon, me of all people, you know I would have understood!” only made Harry more intrigued.
          He was, though, apparently doomed to disappointment. No further disclosures were made by the time summer wound to a close. Often, Harry spent the last week or so visiting the Weasley family at their charmingly ramshackle house, the Burrow, but given that he’d already had a holiday and that Mr. Weasley was so bogged down with work, that custom was skipped over this year. 
          Harry planned to meet his friends at Diagon Alley, the hidden street in London where they bought their school supplies, and go from there to catch the train that would take them all to Hogwarts. He had secretly unblocked the fireplace and covered it with a spell of illusion, so that he could make use of Floo powder with the Dursleys none the wiser.
          Floo powder was never going to be as convenient as flying by broom, but as far as Harry was concerned, it beat using a Portkey. He’d had limited experience with Portkeys, but the last time, when he’d been yanked by surprise into the clutches of his mortal enemy, Lord Voldemort, had soured him on that method of travel. 
          To make sure he didn’t disturb the Dursleys, he left late at night. He used his wand to start a small, magical fire that required no wood. With his trunk packed, Hedwig caged, and everything in order, he flung the packet of powder and stepped in after it, saying, “Diagon Alley,” as he did.
          A whirling, flickering, sooty blur became his world. Moments later, he was spat out into the smoky warmth of the Leaky Cauldron, an inn and tavern on the border between Diagon Alley and conventional, Muggle London. As it was late, only a few patrons were about. Harry’s arrival didn’t go unnoticed, and as usual he was recognized, but most people had finally gotten used to seeing the legendary Harry Potter in person. He went up to the innkeeper and asked for a room, and stowed his belongings. 
          Though it was late and he was tired, the excitement of being back among wizards and witches had revitalized Harry. He decided to go for a walk before trying to get to sleep. The night was mild and pleasant, lit by a nearly-full moon that sparkled in the leaded-glass windows of the many curious little shops. The narrow, winding street was all but deserted. Hard to believe it would be crowded with students the very next day.
          Harry was just about to turn back, thinking that a nice hot butterbeer would be the perfect thing before bed, when a fast-moving shadow caught his eye. It sailed across a patch of moonlight on the marble wall of Gringotts, the goblin bank. Something about that image, the perfect black shape of a bat on silver-white, for some reason sent a shiver through him. 
          He quickened his steps, came to the corner. The shadow of the bat descended, wings beating, and abruptly swelled. Harry stopped short. The shadow grew and changed until a very feminine silhouette stood where it had been. He couldn’t see the source, the body that cast the shadow, but he had a pretty good guess who it was.
          “You said midnight,” hissed an unfamiliar male voice.
          “I’m here, aren’t I?” countered a woman. 
          As Harry suspected, it was Ophidia Winterwind, her voice like silk and dark chocolate. Hermione had told them that Ophidia was registered as an Animagus, with the power to turn into a bat. However, Hermione speculated that instead, Professor Winterwind was a vampire and her Animagus registration was a false cover. She couldn’t be swayed from this, even when Harry had relayed what Professor Dumbledore had said. Not a vampire … in the accepted sense of the word. What that meant, Harry had yet to figure out. 
          What he did know was that she had at one time been interested in his father, but James Potter had been too in love with his future wife Lily to care … and that Ophidia’s name had also been romantically linked with, of all people, Professor Severus Snape’s.
          “Do you have it?”
          “Of course.”
          Harry edged closer. His instincts were good when it came to knowing something dodgey was afoot. Most people might have taken that as a clear sign to get away before getting caught, but he believed in knowing what was up. 
          He peeked around the corner. There, at the mouth of Knockturn Alley – and it did look like a mouth, with crooked shingles like snaggle teeth framing a hungry opening – stood Professor Winterwind. Her pale skin nearly glowed in the moonlight, which lent a frosty blue sheen to her long black hair. Her robe, which looked more like a gown made of snakeskin, shimmered. Harry couldn’t see her ruby-pool eyes, as she was turned away from him, facing a man who stood in the deep shadows of Knockturn Alley.
          The man was only barely visible, as a shape in the darkness. Harry could only make out his height and the imposing breadth of his shoulders. And his hand, reaching out to accept something that Ophidia Winterwind was holding out. His arm was sheathed in faint scales, and his stubby fingers ended in blunt, curved claws. His hand shook with barely-restrained eagerness.
          “Before I give it to you,” crooned Ophidia, lifting whatever she was holding a ways away from him, “I want to hear your oath.”
          “Give it to me, you promised.” He lurched closer to her, and as he did, Harry saw something terrible – beneath the hem of his robes, the man had no legs. He had, instead, a muscular coil of tail like that of a giant serpent. 
          “I did, in exchange for what you promise me.”
          “I do, I swear, now let me have it. It’s mine!”
          “Your oath, or I’ll dash it to the stones.” She stepped back, raised her arm as if to do that very thing. Harry caught a quick glimpse of the object in her hand. It was the size of a Snitch, triggering an immediate surge of interest in him, but rather than shiny and gold with wings, it was mottled, like an egg, and greenish. 
          A wild urge seized Harry – to whip out his wand, cry, “Accio!” and summon the egg-like thing to him. To see what it was. To find out what was going on. Instead, he stood quietly and watched.
          “In errands three,” muttered the man grudgingly, “I’m bound to thee.”
          A flicker of tiny colored sparks greeted this, spinning briefly between the two of them. A spell. 
          “And you know what those errands are?” she asked sweetly, tossing her head so that her hair rippled and danced. 
          “Yes, yes, now please! Give it to me!”
          “You are bound by your oath. Fail to fulfill, and what is done tonight shall be undone.”
          “I know. I understand.”
          “Very well.” She dropped the egg into his outstretched, clutching hand.
          He grasped it and uttered a low groan of triumph. His arm withdrew into the shadows and Harry had the impression of him cradling it in both hands, hunched over. A terrible, sick laughter rang from him. It turned without warning into a howl of pain.
          Ophidia Winterwind watched avidly. Harry could see part of her face now, full scarlet lips curved in a slight smile, a cheekbone sharp as a blade, the long fringe of her lashes. The brief twinkle of teeth, quite pronounced teeth. 
          From the alley came sudden, horrible sounds. Wet, fleshy, ripping sounds. The howling of the unseen man turned into a series of hoarse, choking coughs. 
          Harry ran. He didn’t mean to, but his feet were moving before his brain could come up with a better idea. And he didn’t run away from the hideous noises that might have been the sound of someone being violently dismembered and disemboweled; he ran toward them. 
          She turned all the way toward him. His running steps faltered as those blood-red eyes fixed on his green ones. “Harry,” she purred. “How good to see you.”
          He came to an unsteady halt. “Good to see you, too, Professor Winterwind,” his mouth said, quite independently of his mind. 
          “Whatever are you doing out so late?” She glided toward him in that way she had, that way that made it seem her feet did not touch the ground. That way that made her hips roll so alluringly. Her smile widened, and yes, he could see her teeth. Especially the long, sickle-shaped, pointed canines. 
          Yet he wasn’t afraid. A delicious calm settled over him. He lowered his arm, wand hanging at his side. The gristly popping and grinding noises from Knockturn Alley seemed very far away and of no great importance. 
          “Just … walking,” Harry said.
          “Looking forward to classes beginning?”
          He nodded.
          “Yes …” she breathed. “I’m looking forward to having you this year, too.”
          It was like being under the Imperius Curse. His mind was in a fog, and his body acted like it was totally under the control of someone else. He found himself extending a hand toward hers, without meaning to, and he twitched when she clasped it. Her flesh was cool and white as alabaster.
          Harry tried to speak but all at once he couldn’t formulate English anymore. 
          “Such a handsome young man,” Ophidia Winterwind said.
          He closed his eyes. As soon as he did, he imagined her leaning toward him, baring her fangs, angling toward the side of his neck. Any moment, he’d feel the velvety press of her lips and then the icy piercing pain … no. He concentrated, and spoke without looking at her.
          “What are you doing to him? The man in the shadows?”
          With that, his feeling of entrancement vanished. He was able to open his eyes and look squarely at her. And rather than the flash of guilt he expected, he saw only an honest surprise and concern.
          “Helping him, Harry. He was under a curse, which I’ve now broken. Isn’t that right?” She directed this last question at the alley.
          The man emerged. The scales Harry had seen on his arm were gone, as were the claws. He walked upright on two legs. Normal. Human. 
          “It worked,” he said. The hissing quality was gone from his voice.
          “You see, Harry? No harm done.”
          “I … I’m sorry, Professor.” He felt abashed, ashamed. Had made a fool of himself. 
          She smiled, this time with no sign of fangs. “It’s late, Harry, and I’m sure you’ll have a busy day of it on the morrow. Go, and get some rest. I’m sure you’re very, very sleepy.”
          The next thing Harry knew, he was at the door of the Leaky Cauldron without being entirely sure how he’d gotten there. His walk had a dreamlike quality of unreality about it, the odd angles of the buildings seeming to stretch and contract, the sheen of the moon in the windowpanes giving them the aspect of eyes. He was incredibly drowsy. 
          The downstairs common room was empty now, and lit only by the banked bed of coals. Harry shuffled to the stairs and climbed them, yawning as he went. 

**
 
Chapter Four – Another Orphan.

          He woke to a banging on the door, and Ron Weasley’s voice saying, “No answer; he must have gone out.”
          “Someone would have seen him,” Hermione’s voice replied. “You know he can’t go anywhere unnoticed.”
          “Some people have all the luck,” Ron muttered. 
          Harry roused himself, groggy and wincing at the clear light streaming through slats in the shutters. His head gave a sickly thump as he sat up. 
          “Ron,” he called, his throat dry. “Hermione. I’m here.” He swung his legs out of bed and found his glasses. 
          “He’s still in bed, the sluggard,” Ron said.
          “Harry, it’s nearly ten,” called Hermione. “You were supposed to meet us at Flourish and Blotts first thing this morning to buy our books.”
          Harry squinted at the clock. True enough, it was almost ten, His head felt stuffed with wool and his eyes were grainy. A peculiar taste coated the inside of his mouth and made him suddenly desperate for his toothbrush. 
          “Give me five minutes,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”
          The mirror tsked at him as he leaned close, squinting at his reflection. “No wonder, staying out half the night,” it chided him. 
          He ignored it, washed, and brushed his teeth. Didn’t need to shave because he’d done so just yesterday, as the smooth skin and healing nicks attested. He wet his unruly hair, combed it into submission – knowing that it would be unruly again before an hour was up – and got dressed.
          Five minutes later, he was downstairs in the bustling common room of the Leaky Cauldron, where he just had time to wolf down a few pieces of toast before Hermione dragged them out to do their shopping. 
          The summer had wrought changes in his friends, too. Like Harry, Ron had shot up a few inches, except in Ron’s case it was a matter of too many too soon. He was gangly as a scarecrow, his bony wrists jutting well beyond the length of his sleeves. His bright red Weasley hair was the same, but the straggling moustache Ron was endeavoring to cultivate was new. It crouched on his upper lip like a thin caterpillar. 
          Hermione, Harry was mildly disturbed to notice, had grown in different directions. Their first few years at Hogwarts, only the fact that she slept in a different dormitory was any reminder that she was a girl. Not until the time she’d come dressed up to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum had he and Ron really been aware of the difference. Now, it was impossible to miss. Her flyaway brown hair framed a quite pretty face, and when she turned scoldingly to brace her hands on her hips at what was taking them so long, she bounced in ways Harry hadn’t associated with Hermione Granger before. 
          “We’ve got a new instructor this year,” she said as they joined the throngs of excited Hogwarts students filling the streets. 
          “No!” Ron cried, aghast. “I thought she was staying on! Oh, it’s not fair, it’s bloody unfair.”
          “Not her,” said Hermione impatiently. “She’s still on.”
          “Is she ever,” Ron said in relief.
          “I saw her last night,” Harry blurted. He rubbed his temples. “Just for a minute.”
          “What did she look like?” Ron leaned eagerly toward him. “Was she still … you know … vavoom?”
          Hermione clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes. “In case either of you are interested, it’s a new Muggle Studies teacher we’ve got this year.”
          “Yeah, yeah,” Ron said. His attention was all on Harry.
          “There’s not much to tell,” Harry said. He related what had gone on the night before, having witnessed Ophidia Winterwind’s Animagus transformation, and the conversation she’d had with the scaled man in the alley. “I don’t know what she gave him, but it was like he’d been under a hex and whatever she gave him dispelled it. She said she was looking forward to the start of term.”
          “Aren’t we all!”
          “Some of us for better reasons than others.” Hermione swept through the door into Flourish and Blotts, her class list held tight in one hand. 
          Harry and Ron shrugged at each other and followed. The interior of the bookstore was cluttered and crowded, and they had to wait quite a while to purchase their new textbooks. Hermione grumbled something about how there wouldn’t have been such a line if they’d come early as planned, but Harry didn’t catch most of it and refused to feel guilty. He’d gotten to sleep late, and he’d been very tired. What of it?
          As they left, their cauldrons loaded down with copies of The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 6 and the others on their list, they ran into Ron’s sister Ginny. Literally; she collided with Harry and pulled away with a blush and a giggle. 
          Ron glowered. “Hullo, Ginny.”
          “Hi, Ron, Harry, Hermione.”
          An awkward silence fell. At the end of last year, Ginny Weasley had made it onto the Gryffindor House Quidditch team, as a Chaser. Ron, having also tried out but not been chosen, took it badly. His twin older brothers Fred and George, now graduated and working hard to make a go of their joke shop, had been steadfast Beaters. Ron’s secret dream, known only to Harry and the Mirror of Erised, had been to become captain of the team, winner of the cup, Head Boy, and so forth. His progress toward that dream had been sadly unsuccessful, and to have his little sister breeze through the tryouts was a bitter pill to swallow.
          Harry felt awkward around Ginny for other reasons, mostly because she was always so awkward around him. She’d had a terrible crush on him for years, but when it came to noticing that his friends were girls, he was worse off with Ginny than even with Hermione. 
          “Get out of the way, Potter, you’re blocking the door.”
          The familiar sneering tones of Draco Malfoy brought instant fists to Harry’s hands. He turned. On the train from Hogwarts at the end of term, Malfoy and his cronies had been on the receiving end of some messy Transfiguration spells. All the damage had been repaired, but clearly Draco hadn’t learned to keep his distance. Or else his pride wouldn’t let him.
          Except there was a new person in Draco’s usual crowd. In addition to Crabbe and Goyle – a pair of thick-bodied and thicker-witted thugs whose fathers, like Draco’s, were high among Voldemort’s supporters – and Pansy Parkinson, who was wearing too much make-up and hanging on Draco’s arm like a gangster’s moll from an old movie, there was a tall boy Harry didn’t recognize … although something about him seemed familiar. 
          This newcomer had to be seventeen or eighteen at least. He was much more powerfully built than Crabbe or Goyle, and his eyes were watchful and cold. If he was of Slytherin House, like the rest of his companions, Harry couldn’t remember having noticed him before. 
          Maybe it was the addition of this big, formidable friend that gave Draco the bravado to confront Harry like this. He must have figured that the new guy would give the others pause. 
          Tension prickled in the air between their two groups for a moment, but then a colossal explosion blew out the window of Ollivander’s wand shop. Sparks and rockets of fire shot into the street. People ducked for cover, some casting quick warding or defensive spells. When all was quiet again, a bare patch had been cleared on the cobblestones around a small boy. He looked to have been flung backward out of the shop. Lazy curls of smoke rose from his body and the wand in his hand was fading slowly from white-hot to a dull amber glow.
          “Another Mudblood trying to make like a proper wizard,” said Pansy, cutting her gaze at Hermione. “There really should be stricter laws.”
          Harry pushed past them, letting the Slytherin bunch enter the bookstore. He moved through the crowd – most of them were chuckling and shaking their heads now – and reached the boy just as Mr. Ollivander himself came out of his smoking front door.
          “No, no, that one won’t do,” he said to the semiconscious boy. With a deft, hurried motion, like someone flicking away a stinging insect before it could do harm, he pinched the wand from the boy’s hand.
          “You all right?” Harry asked.
          The boy coughed and opened his eyes. They were an unusual shade of blue-violet, and dazed. He had dark blond hair and his clothes were shabby and ill-fitting. “What happened?”
          “A simple mishap,” Ollivander said kindly. He smiled at Harry. “Sometimes finding the right wand takes a bit of trial and error.”
          Harry helped him up. “You’re a first-year?” He asked because the boy could have passed for eight or nine, not eleven, the usual age for new students at Hogwarts. 
          “I got this letter and this list,” said the boy, showing Harry a familiar style of envelope written on with familiar green ink. It was addressed to “Mr. Jeremy Upwood, Eighth Bed From the Window, Second Floor, Northrup Home for Orphaned Boys, Farnsworth.”
          “A Muggle orphanage,” Hermione said quietly, and Harry knew she was thinking the same thing he was. Jeremy Upwood wouldn’t be the first to come from that sort of background. But there was nothing at all reminiscent of Tom Riddle in Jeremy’s perplexed, pink-cheeked face. 
          “Are you getting on all right?” Harry asked. 
          Jeremy stared goggle-eyed at a trio of passing witches, cackling hags identical except for the color of their hair. From there, his eyes moved to the display of owls hooting on their perches outside of the exotic creature shop, and then to a waddling goblin scurrying by on bank business. He looked even more lost and bewildered than Harry had when he’d suddenly been thrust into this world, and at least then Harry had had Hagrid to guide him and explain on the way.
          “It’s all for real, isn’t it?” Jeremy held up his list. “And I’m really going to need all of these things. A cauldron and all.”
          Hermione thumped on the side of hers. “We’ve all got them. Don’t worry. It isn’t as strange as it seems. I was raised Muggle too, and didn’t know about any of this until I got my letter.”
          “Me either,” Harry said. “You’ll catch on.” 
          A delicate thought came to him, a subject he was always hesitant to bring up around the Weasleys, but Ron had drifted over to gawk at the Skyblazer, a new broom in the window of the sporting goods shop, and Ginny was headed inside to pick up a pamphlet on Chaser techniques.
          “Do you have enough money?” he asked Jeremy.
          “I think so. There was a fund left from my mum and dad, which the orphanage couldn’t touch. Was to pay for my schooling. So when the letter came, they turned it over to me and showed me the door. I guess they were afraid. Didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to.”
          “How long ago did your parents die?” Hermione asked gently.
          “When I was a baby,” Jeremy said. “In a car crash.”
          Harry jerked as if jabbed with a pin. He’d been told something similar about his parents, and look how that had turned out. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Jeremy if he’d been left with a scar from the so-called crash, but just then he sensed someone watching him. He took a casual look around. 
          The tall, older boy who’d been with Draco Malfoy was leaning against the wall in front of Flourish and Blotts. He had his arms crossed on his broad chest, and his eyes glittered beneath low, dark brows. When he saw Harry seeing him, he didn’t even look away or pretend his gaze had happened upon them in passing. He tipped his hand at Harry in an insolent way, and a hard smile raised one corner of his mouth.
          “Who’s that, do you know?” Harry murmured to Hermione. She had been going over Jeremy’s list, pointing out to him the various shops he’d want to visit.
          “I’ve never seen him before,” she said. “Certainly not with Malfoy.”
          “He must be a Slytherin, though. He’s got the look.”
          She nodded. Ron came back, puffing and flushed with excitement. “They’re having a raffle,” he announced. “For the Skyblazer. I put my name in. But Harry?”
          “Yeah, Ron?”
          “Don’t buy any tickets, what do you say? Let my luck have a chance for once.”
          “Sure,” said Harry. “I’ve got my Firebolt, anyway. It’s a few years old, but I’d be willing to bet it’s still the fastest broom on the market.”
          “Oh, they’re going to start talking Quidditch in a minute,” Hermione said. In the past, she’d been able to ignore them by talking about other things with Ginny, but now that Ginny was a Chaser, as far as Hermione was concerned all three of them were helpless.
          “Thanks for your advice,” said Jeremy. He dusted himself off and marched toward Ollivander’s, where Mr. Ollivander stood waiting for him with a pleasant, though moderately apprehensive, smile.
          “See you at school,” Harry called after. Had he looked so small and alone the first time he’d gone into that shop? The wand that had chosen him, with its core of phoenix feather, rested in his pocket. He wondered what Jeremy would wind up with. 
          Ginny, to Ron’s disgust, entered her name in the raffle for the Skyblazer too. She insisted, when he complained, that she had to have a decent broom, that Fred’s old Cleansweep Seven might have been fine for him but she was a Chaser, not a Beater.
          “Rub it in, why don’t you?” Ron said bitterly.
          Lugging cauldrons filled with books, quills, various noisome and icky ingredients for Potions class, they finished their shopping and got a table in the shade outside a delicatessen. Harry always missed wizardly fare when he was with the Dursleys. Once, on one of the rare occasions that Uncle Vernon had taken the family to dinner and permitted Harry to come along, he’d made the mistake of asking the waitress for pumpkin juice, and almost had to spend the rest of the evening sitting alone in the car. 
          They ate sandwiches and sipped juice and waved to their various classmates when someone familiar went by. Harry nearly choked on a bite when he saw Cho Chang, the girl he was secretly – or not-so-secretly – interested in. Cho was a seventh-year now, and Harry knew that if he didn’t ask her out this time, he’d never have another chance. 
          But how could he? Two years ago, Cho had been seeing Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain and one of the champions chosen to participate in the Triwizard Tournament. He’d died in the course of that, murdered by Voldemort in a fate surely meant for Harry instead. Nobody had ever come right out and said that it was all because of Harry that poor Cedric had been there in the first place, but Harry’s own guilt was worse than any amount of blame from others. 
          Last year, Harry had stayed far away from Cho, respecting that she was in mourning for Cedric and wouldn’t want anything to do with the one responsible for his death. He was glumly realizing now that a year probably wasn’t enough, that ten years might not be, that he may as well write Cho off entirely. It wasn’t as if she’d ever seemed to return his interest, or shown anything other than politeness toward him.
          He sighed into his glass, stirring ripples on the surface of the pumpkin juice. Funny … at the time of the tournament and the Yule Ball, the idea of having to ask a girl to go with him had seemed like the most daunting and awful task he’d faced. Now, though, he kind of liked the idea. Girls were, well, nice to look at.
          Of course, his and Ron’s brilliant treatment of Parvati and Padma Patil had probably done them in. They’d virtually ignored their dates, and word of it was all over Hogwarts. All over Beauxbatons, too. Harry’s chances of getting either of them, or any other girl in his year, to go out with him were roughly equivalent to his chances of making friends with Professor Snape. 
          Thinking this made him look at Ginny. She would go to a dance with him, of that he hadn’t a doubt. But she was Ginny. Ron’s little sister. It would be like going with his own sister, if he had one. And as for Hermione …
          Harry gave up. Girls might be nice to look at, and plenty of them might be good friends and clever and funny and all, but the business of asking them out was just too much trouble. 

**

Chapter Five – Murder on the Hogwarts Express.

          King’s Cross Station was a buzzing hive of activity. Muggles rushed to and fro, nearly all of them in a hurry. Even so, some were startled from their own business to notice the admittedly unusual sight of four teenagers pushing carts piled with distinctly un-Mugglish luggage. None of their carts had cauldrons, or caged owls, or cloth-wrapped shapes that were still recognizably broomsticks. 
          Ginny’s broomstick wasn’t even wrapped. She wanted all the world to see the gleaming handle and sleek twigs, and the sharply-angled lettering like script made from lightning that read ‘Skyblazer.’ 
          Harry and Hermione had accompanied the Weasleys back to the Burrow for a final dinner the night before they were due to leave for school. Fred and George came over too, and as they were in the midst of regaling everyone with funny anecdotes from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes – their mother, Mrs. Weasley, listened to these with a firm scowl of disapproval pasted on her features – a large brown owl came swooping in through the kitchen window and dropped the Skyblazer squarely into Ginny’s hands. A congratulatory note from the proprietor of the shop had been tied to the handle. 
          Nothing would do after that but for Harry to break out his Firebolt, and for the two of them to practice out back. They took turns dive-bombing the gnomes that infested the garden, scaring them into sight for Hermione’s cat Crookshanks to chase. Ron’s owl, Pigwidgeon, flapped and fluttered madly all about, wanting to play and trying to keep up with the zipping, darting broomsticks. Hedwig, Harry’s snowy owl, ruffled up her feathers and hunched her head down into them, and her expression was as patiently exasperated as Hermione’s own.
          Ron was purple with indignation. When Harry had first gotten his Firebolt, a present from his godfather, Ron had been all over Harry to let him have a ride. But when Ginny offered him a turn on the Skyblazer, he sniffed and stalked inside, and slammed the back door so hard that it sent the gnomes bounding in new directions.
          He kept Harry up until nearly midnight with his tossing and turning. Every so often, he’d rise up, punch his pillow, and snarl something under his breath. Harry didn’t know what to say. He felt bad for Ron, shown up by his own sister, but it was nice to see Ginny so happy for a change. She’d had a bad first year at Hogwarts what with the Chamber of Secrets and all. He figured Ron would get over it. 
          They got up at the crack of dawn to leave for the train station. The Burrow seemed oddly empty now that Fred and George had a flat in town, upstairs of their joke shop. Mrs. Weasley still made more food than was needed at meals, and bundled up a big bag of leftovers for them to have for lunch. Nobody wanted to hurt her feelings by mentioning Harry’s usual habit of treating them all to goodies from the snack trolley.
          While they were waiting for their turn to surreptitiously approach the entrance to Platform 9 and ¾, Harry caught himself stealing glances at Hermione. She was dressed up for the trip in a skirt-and-sweater combination not all that different from ones he’d seen in years past, but it was really remarkable how shapely her legs were, and how fascinating the contours the sweater followed.
          He had to consciously quit looking at Hermione, though, when out of the corner of his eye he caught Ginny looking at him with a suspicious furrow to her brow. Last thing he needed was for her to get all jealous … or worse, say something to Hermione. There had been that nasty mess with Rita Skeeter two years ago, and he’d sooner be eaten alive by scorpion-ants than go through that again.
          Making a big show of deliberately looking elsewhere, Harry saw a cart with a trunk on it, and just barely sticking up over the top, the dark-blond head and frightened violet-blue eyes of Jeremy Upwood. He was rolling his cart aimlessly back and forth, staring first at the sign that read “Platform 9” and then the one that read “Platform 10,” and was on the verge of tears. 
          “Jeremy!” he called. “Over here.”
          “I can’t find where I’m supposed to be,” Jeremy wailed. “The ticket says --”
          “It’s all right,” Hermione assured him. “Just watch how we do it. Here, Ron, show him.”
          “It’s easy-peasy,” Ron said. “Watch.”
          He checked to be sure no Muggles were paying particular attention, then purposefully pushed his cart straight at the brick wall dividing Platforms 9 and 10. As he reached it, the wall wavered and he vanished through.
          Jeremy’s mouth was hanging open. Harry grinned. Things that were old-hat to him now were new again when he saw them through the eyes of someone else. 
          “See?” he said, as Ginny and then Hermione went. “Nothing to it. Here I go.”
          His vision blurred briefly as he passed through the illusory wall. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if a Muggle accidentally blundered against it. Would the wall know, and reject them? Or would the Muggle suddenly be standing where Harry was now, in front of the shining scarlet train?
          The leading edge of a cart slammed into Harry’s ankles and almost knocked him over. He jumped out of the way. Jeremy Upwood was there, gaping in amazement. Harry grinned at him and winked, then went to where Hermione was waving to him. 
          He lost track of Jeremy in the crush of people all loading their luggage and boarding the train. He spotted Ginny chatting with Dennis Creevey, younger brother of Harry’s admirer, Colin. Since Dennis had also made the Quidditch team – Beater – at the end of last year’s tryouts, Harry hoped Dennis would be more likely to get to know him as a person now, and less of an idol. 
          The Hogwarts Express pulled away from the platform with a bellowing hiss of steam, and picked up speed as it chugged out of the station. Harry settled into a compartment with Ron and Hermione. Ron was slumped by the window, wearing a sulky look, and Hermione already had her nose buried in The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 6. Harry couldn’t help being intrigued by the way her skirt had hiked a little bit, exposing a pretty knee.
          Someone rapped at the doorframe of their compartment. Neville Longbottom, whom Harry had had a hand in turning into a frog last Christmastime, stuck his head in. He’d recovered completely from that ordeal, and while Harry would never be on Neville’s grandmother’s list of favorite people, she had quit trying to have Neville removed from Gryffindor House. 
          Neville, of all of Harry’s friends and classmates, had changed the least. He was still pudgy and round-faced, still with a perpetual worried look that said he knew things were going on around him and was trying his best to comprehend. 
          “Do you know who’s come back to Hogwarts?” he asked breathlessly, plopping onto the seat beside Hermione. Harry had sat next to Ron, the better to keep stealing peeks at her knee. 
          “Professor Lupin?” Harry knew it was too much to hope for, but still …
          Ron roused from his sulk. “The girls from Beauxbatons?”
          Neville shook his head at both of them. “Fyren Grimme!”
          Harry was blank, but Hermione looked up from her book and Ron rocked back in his seat. 
          “No!” said Ron. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
          “Who’s Fyren Grimme?” Harry asked, mentally kicking himself for once more being behind the times and not knowing all he should about the wizarding world.
          “Didn’t Professor McGonagall mention him?” pondered Hermione. “I seem to remember something in one of her Transfigurations classes … oh! When we were first-years, and she was telling us why we wouldn’t be allowed to practice any human Transfigurations until fifth or sixth.”
          “I heard about it from Fred,” said Ron. “Fyren Grimme was a year behind them, but everyone knew he was going to be trouble. Slytherin, of course. Had Dark wizard written all over him.”
          “You say that about everyone from Slytherin,” said Harry.
          “Am I wrong?”
          “Well …”
          “Anyway,” Neville went on breathlessly, “they finally got the spells undone on him and now he’s back.”
          “Hang on,” said Harry. “That was how many years ago? And it took this long? When you were a frog, Madame Pomfrey had you back to normal in just a few weeks.”
          “Don’t remind me.” Neville made a face, perhaps recalling what it had been like to live on a diet of pureed flies.
          “I thought he was expelled,” Hermione said. “That after he partway Transfigured himself, he went mad and bit some students.”
          “It only had half to do with Transfiguration,” Neville said. “Gran told me that he was trying to turn himself into an Animagus, and something went wrong.” He went somber. “And she told me that if I ever tried …”
          “He did,” said Ron. “Bite some people, I mean. That’s what Fred said. I wouldn’t think Dumbledore would be in a hurry to let him back. Are you sure, Neville?”
          “I’m sure,” said Neville. “I passed by a bunch of Slytherins on my way to the bathroom and Malfoy was introducing him around. He’s enormous. Well, not like Hagrid, but big. Like Marcus Flint, Harry, do you remember him?”
          “How could I forget?” said Harry dryly. Flint, the captain of the Slytherin team, had been a huge, mean bruiser who’d been held back and had to repeat a year, and taken out his anger about it on the Quidditch field as well as the bodies of the opposing team. Something struck him. “Say … is he about so tall, dark haired, shoulders like this?”
          “That’s him,” confirmed Neville.
          “That’s the one we saw outside Flourish and Blotts,” said Ron. “Blimey, he was a big one. Tough-looking, too. Fyren Grimme and Malfoy, talk about a match made in Hell. I bet Malfoy’s already poisoned him against you, Harry. Better be on your toes.”
          “Always.”
          Just then, as if on some horrible cue, the lights snapped off, plunging them into darkness. Total darkness, for at that moment the train was in a long tunnel. 
          A spate of screams and startled outcries erupted. Harry bit back an alarmed exclamation of his own. The last time something like this had happened, dementors had been aboard. 
          He pulled out his wand, the words Expecto Patronus poised at his lips. First would be the chill, the awful bone-deep chill, like tendrils of icy mist wrapping stealthy fingers around his insides and slipping into his marrow. Then the voices, his mother’s desperate pleas, his father’s last stand, their dying shrieks. 
          “Lumos,” said Hermione. A glow lit the end of her wand. 
          The frightened commotion elsewhere on the train died out as others did the same. Soon the eerie flicker of wandlights was visible all up and down the corridor. No dementors appeared. The train rushed from the tunnel and afternoon sunlight poured in through the windows.
          “What was that all about?” asked Ron as the overhead lights came back on too.
          He was answered by a fresh scream, this one full of horror and very close. Harry and Hermione were quickest to the door, Neville stumbling over Crookshanks and treading hard on Ron’s foot so that the two of them didn’t sort it out for several seconds.
          The snacks trolley was angled crossways in the corridor. The witch who managed it was standing in the doorway of another compartment, staring down and now screaming through her fingers as she covered her face. A gaggle of students surrounded her, elbowing each other and going on tiptoe and trying to see in. 
          Harry shoved through them. A surprising number gave way the moment they saw him, his reputation acting like an invisible wedge clearing him a path. Hermione came along in his wake, and they reached the witch.
          “What’s the matter?” Harry touched her on the shoulder.
          She turned to him, her face the color of curdled milk, and pointed.
          The compartment at first glance looked empty, unoccupied. But there was something on the floor … a small and crumpled something … 
          “It’s Jeremy!” gasped Hermione.
          Harry squeezed past the witch in the doorway and dropped to his knees. Jeremy was face-down, one arm bent behind him so that the tiny hand was palm-up and curled as if begging for help. 
          “Jeremy? Jeremy, answer me.”
          The boy didn’t move. He was still, so still, and it didn’t look as though he were breathing. Harry looked up at Hermione. She was chewing her lip in anxiety and agitation. Behind her, the news was being passed from one onlooker to the next. 
          Carefully, gingerly, Harry took hold of Jeremy and rolled him onto his back. Jeremy was limp and cold. His eyes were wide, glassy, like jewels the color of twilight. Unseeing. 
          “I think …” He didn’t want to say it because saying it might make it true.
          Hermione said it for him. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
          A whispering gasp, like wind through tall grass, stirred through the crowd and ended all other talk. The witch moaned and covered her eyes. 
          “Someone’s got to do something,” Harry said.
          But they were all looking at him, as if expecting him to do something. Even Hermione made a sort of ‘well, hurry it up’ gesture at him. 
          He still had his wand out, prepared as he’d been to deal with dementors. Now he pointed it at Jeremy and said, “Ennervate!”
          Light streamed from the end, but pooled uselessly around the body. If he’d been sleeping, even if he’d been unconscious … Harry grimly shook his head at Hermione. 
          “He’s not wounded. What …? Was it …?” she trailed off. 
          “I don’t know.” Harry sat back on his heels and ran a hand through his hair. He rubbed the faint roughness of his scar under his palm and wondered if he would have felt anything had someone gone and used the Avada Kadavra Curse on poor Jeremy. The only other times he’d been around when that spell had been cast, it was by Voldemort. But this wasn’t the Dark Lord’s handiwork. Harry surely would have felt that. 
          Bedlam was taking over the train, a near-panic spreading like wildfire among the students. Harry didn’t know what to do. When the dementors had come, Professor Lupin had saved them and cured the worst of the residual chill with chocolate. The trolley was right there within arm’s reach, but what good would chocolate do for Jeremy Upwood now?
          Hermione had come to similar conclusions because she was holding a thick bar, turning it over and over in her hands. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
          “You’re the book-smart one,” he said dismally. “Don’t you have any ideas?” When she shook her head, he looked up at the witch. “What did you see?”
          “All the lights went out,” she said. “Someone came out of this compartment, pushed by me, nearly knocked me over.”
          “Who was it?” demanded Hermione.
          “Couldn’t see. Might’ve been a man.”
          Harry’s initial impulse was to look around for Draco Malfoy, as he recalled the Slytherins’ snide remarks about Mudbloods, Muggles, and stricter laws. But any suspicion aimed at Draco quickly vanished when Harry saw him, rumpled and trying to straighten out his clothes, emerging from the tiny, one-person lavatory with Pansy Parkinson behind him. Pansy, too, was rumpled, her make-up smudged. 
          Malfoy’s face was flushed and indignant, as if all of this had interrupted something he really hadn’t wanted interrupted, and he wasn’t a good enough actor to be counterfeiting those emotions. Further, when word reached him that there’d apparently been a murder on board, his look of surprise was entirely genuine.
          The conductor, a wizard in dark red robes with shoulderboards trimmed in gold braid, and buttons all down the front with raised images of the Hogwarts crest, pushed into the compartment. He blanched as he saw Jeremy, but gathered his wits and motioned people back, sliding the door shut. Harry saw Ron, craning to peer over the heads of the crowd, and then Ron was gone as the door thunked home. 
          The snack-trolley witch, inside with Harry and Hermione, collapsed onto the nearest seat and began sobbing with her head in her apron. The conductor knelt opposite Harry and, not without a grimace and a hesitation, grasped Jeremy’s outflung wrist and felt for a pulse.
          “Nothing,” he said. “The lad’s gone. What did this to him?”
          “We don’t know,” Harry said, and explained how they’d been in their compartment when the lights went out, and then heard the witch’s screams. 
          “Shouldn’t we cover him?” Hermione took a folded blanket from one of the upper shelves and shook it out. Harry caught the other end and together they lowered it over Jeremy. He made such a small, pitiful lump.
          Then, from beneath the blanket, Jeremy hitched in a shuddering breath. His hand, which hadn’t been covered, spasmed as if grabbing at thin air. 
          Hermione voiced a thin shriek and sprang back. Her bottom hit Harry, and the backs of his knees hit the edge of the seat. He landed sitting, with Hermione in his lap and her skirt flipped most of the way up her thighs, but thoughts of her legs were as far as could be from his mind. He scrambled out from under her and whipped the blanket off of Jeremy.
          Those violet-blue eyes shifted to look at him. Their color was clouded, twilight sky viewed through a thin veil of cloud, but alert. He sat up.
          The snack-trolley witch pealed a scream like a siren and bolted for the door. She fought wildly with the conductor, tore free, yanked the door open, and burst out into the still-crowded hallway. Her sudden arrival set off new outbursts of panic.
          “What’s going on?” asked Jeremy Upwood in a faint, strained voice. 
          The conductor’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. 
          “Jeremy?” asked Harry cautiously. “How do you feel?”
          “I’m fine.” But he didn’t look fine; he looked pale and drawn, and there was a greyish underhue to his complexion that reminded Harry of something that he couldn’t immediately place. 
          The boy got up, unsteadily. The doorway was a wall of faces and wide, astonished eyes. He uncomfortably averted his face from them. 
          The conductor reached out for Jeremy’s wrist, perhaps meaning to assure himself that he’d simply felt in the wrong place for a pulse. Jeremy edged away, tucking his arms around himself. 
          “I’m fine, really I am,” he insisted. 
          “I guess he must be,” Hermione said, with doubt coloring her tone. “What do you think, Harry?”
          “I think … we ought to just let it be,” he said, telling her with a look that they’d talk more about it later. 

**

Chapter Six – The Green-Eyed Monster.

          The rest of the journey passed with a hectic, dreamlike strangeness. A story somehow got around that Harry Potter had brought back a boy from the dead, and reactions ranged from whisperings-behind-the-hand as he passed to Colin Creevey’s enthusiastic, puppy-like cavorting.
          “How’d you do it, Harry? Gosh! I thought no magic could raise the dead. Gosh! I wish I hadn’t packed my camera in my trunk. If you’d wait right there, I’ll go get it, won’t be a minute, and if I could get a picture of you and the boy …” Colin had finally gotten permission to put together a school paper, though some thought the only reason Professor McGonagall had finally agreed was so he’d hush up and give her a moment’s peace. 
          Harry winced. He could just see himself plastered on the first page of the first-ever issue of the Hogwarts Happenings. And as bad as it would be for him, it would probably be a million times worse for Jeremy Upwood. Nobody needed to start off their school life with that kind of attention, as Harry personally knew all too well.
          He managed to duck Colin by saying he really had to talk to Hermione about something, and escaped back to the compartment he’d been sharing with her and Ron. When people kept dropping by on all sorts of pretenses, Harry’s only recourse was to dig out his Invisibility Cloak, put it on, and sit quietly by the window. From then on, whenever the door would slide open and someone’s head would poke in, whoever it was would see right away that Harry wasn’t in there, and leave after mumbled apologies to Ron and Hermione.
          Jeremy was, luckily for him, spirited away to the conductor’s office to ‘recover from the ordeal.’ Ron had done a little asking around, but nobody seemed to know who’d been riding in with him, or who the person that had bumped into the snack-trolley witch might have been.
          “Malfoy,” Ron said. “It had to have been Malfoy.”
          “I don’t think so,” Harry said, and told them why.
          Ron goggled. “You don’t mean they were …”
          “It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Hermione loftily. “All the girls talk about Pansy Parkinson.”
          “Do they?” asked Ron. “What do they say?”
          He and Harry had shared an unspoken fascination with what girls talked about ever since their third year, when all of the girls had been called away to a ‘special assembly’ and all the boys sent out to play wizard golf one fine spring day. Hermione had returned from that assembly with a smug glint in her eyes. As if anybody needed more of a knowing look. 
          Hermione didn’t answer. She smoothed her skirt demurely, a motion which drew Harry’s eyes to her legs again. They were really quite spectacular, he was beginning to understand. Not that he would ever say such a thing to her. Besides, he’d had the odd feeling for some time now that there was something between her and Ron, something that all their bickering tried to mask. Thinking that made him feel unaccountably envious and sad. Cho Chang’s image danced briefly into his head and quickly out.
          The train arrived at Hogsmeade Station beneath a sky in which the first brilliant pinpricks of stars were beginning to appear. The students, all dressed in their robes now so that they resembled an earthbound flock of crows fluttering busily about, disembarked and struggled to organize their luggage. 
          “’Ullo, Harry!” boomed Hagrid’s deep, gruff voice. 
          The huge figure waded through the crowd. Some gave him a wide berth – the news that Hagrid was half-giant, and Dumbledore’s liaison in forging an alliance with that fierce race had made many people think that his jovial, bearish exterior really hid a bloodthirsty menace. Not that Hagrid couldn’t be fierce if angered … but he was slow to anger and really just a great marshmallow at heart, especially when it came to his fondness for horrific monsters that no one else in their right minds would have gone near without a full suit of armor, every defensive spell known to wizardry, and a wand the size of a battering ram. 
          Hugging Hagrid wasn’t so much a matter of sharing an embrace as it was of being nearly hoisted off one’s feet and shaken like a rag in a dog’s jaws. Harry endured this with good humor, as did Ron. When it came to be Hermione’s turn, though, Hagrid hesitated awkwardly and ended up sort of patting her on the shoulder. He harumphed into his beard and mumbled something about how grown-up they all were getting.
          “What was that all about?” Ron asked as Hagrid turned to bellow his summons for the first-years, who would join him on the traditional boat-ride across the lake. 
          “I don’t know,” said Hermione, but she looked like she had a fair idea. Harry, glancing once more at her figure – mostly concealed now by the loose flow of her robes – and thought he might have a fair idea too. 
          “Heard yeh had a bit of trouble on the way,” said Hagrid in a rumbling undertone. “Yeh all fine, then?”
          “We are,” said Harry. “But there’s a boy who might need to see Madame Pomfrey straight away, even before the Sorting.” 
          He indicated Jeremy, who was standing a ways removed from the rest of the first-years, all the rest of whom were clustered close together as if for shared courage in the face of this massive, wild-haired man. In the pale lights of the station, Jeremy looked wan and very pale.
          “I’ll see to it,” Hagrid said. He clapped Harry on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him, then collected his young charges and led them away in the direction of the lake. 
          The remaining students rode up to Hogwarts in magical horseless carriages. As always, the sight of the castle’s many turrets and gleaming windows woke a feeling of freedom and joy in Harry. Those halls, passages, towers, and rooms were his home. Not that he knew them all. His father had, as had James Potter’s friends, at least well enough to devise their enchanted Marauder’s Map. But a few instances of corridors that no longer led where the map claimed they did, plus the way the staircases of Hogwarts liked to move of their own accord, led Harry to believe that the map might have become slightly outdated in the years since his father had been a student. 
          They climbed down from the carriages, trusting that their luggage would find its way to their rooms. This was one of the many tasks of the house-elves, who persisted in their cheerful servitude despite all of Hermione’s best efforts as a union agitator, despite the proud example displayed by Dobby. Hermione hadn’t quite given up her aim of seeing house-elves with fair wages and benefits, but even her indomitable will was hard-pressed to deal with an entire race of elves who could barely conceive of, let alone want, that kind of help.
          “This is always my favorite part of the year,” said Ron as they waited outside of the Great Hall for its mighty doors to open. “The feast.”
          “Honestly, Ron, you’d think your mother starves you,” Hermione said. “It’s Harry who has to live on scraps all summer.”
          “I’ve nothing against my mum’s cooking,” Ron protested. “But she never makes as much as we want. It’s magic, isn’t it? Free. But whenever we say anything about wanting a bit more, she’ll trot out that old clunker about starving wizards in Africa and how we should be grateful for what we have. None of that here. We can eat until we split.”
          “What a lovely thought,” she said.
          Harry hid a smile. Hadn’t he just been thinking that Mrs. Weasley cooked enough food for an army, acting as if all of her children were still living and eating at home even though nearly all of them now were off with places and jobs of their own?
          The doors opened, and they filed into the Great Hall. Ranks of candles hung suspended between the floor and the star-strewn darkness of the enchanted ceiling. The golden dishes on the four long tables sparkled with the promise of the feast that Ron was so eagerly looking forward to. At the head of the room, the staff table was already surrounded by the teachers. Harry spotted Dumbledore’s shining silver hair and beard the moment he crossed the threshold. 
          Murmurs eddied among the students as they saw Professor Ophidia Winterwind seated between Professors Snape and Flitwick. This was the first time in most of their recollection that they’d actually begun a year with the same Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher they’d had at the end of the last year. Many of the murmurs were colored with appreciation (from the male students) and sniffs of jealousy or spite (from the females). Harry, having just seen her a few nights ago, was struck once more by her ominous, alabaster-and-obsidian beauty.
          Ophidia was chatting gaily with Professor Flitwick, flicking her long lashes and pursing her lips and generally flirting so outrageously that the diminutive Charms teacher was bright pink and barely able to sit still. Snape, on Ophidia’s other side, was regarding this with a flat, humorless demeanor that did nothing to soften the sour, miserly lines of his face. 
          “Is it just me,” Ron whispered as they took their places, “or do they look different? The witches, I mean. Look at Sprout.”
          Professor Sprout, who taught Herbology, was a plump little witch whose hands and clothes were usually dirty from gardening. Now, she was as well-scrubbed as a newborn infant, and in place of her comfortable jumper, she was wearing a yellow robe sewn with green leaves and vines. 
          “And Madame Hooch,” Hermione added with some wonder.
          The Quidditch coach, a stocky and tough woman with hair nearly as defiant as Hermione’s, was similarly attired in new, fashionable robes. She even, though it was hard to tell from here, looked to be wearing a touch of eyeshadow. 
          Harry looked from one teacher to the next. He saw other small changes, nothing big, but overall it added up to a sweeping sense of peculiarity. Everyone, wizards and witches alike, were done up much smarter than usual. They were all talking more vibrantly, their gestures more animated. As if each of them wanted to be sure he or she was noticed. Even Dumbledore was resplendent in robes of deepest purple, and his pointed hat was especially tall and straight. 
          Madame Pomfrey was not in attendance, and Harry took that to mean she’d been called away to see to Jeremy. Hopefully, the boy would be all right … and hopefully, Harry would have a chance to talk to Dumbledore or somebody about what had happened on the train. 
          The only unfamiliar face at the staff table was a man who looked to be in his sixties, though Harry knew that sort of thing counted for little among wizards. He was portly, with grey hair that was balding on top but made up for it with the most massive muttonchop sideburns Harry had ever seen. Which was to say, they were the only muttonchop sideburns he’d ever seen on a real person, outside of the moving portraits that filled the castle halls. 
          Except … the man was unfamiliar, but there was something about him that made Harry wonder if maybe he had met him before. He leaned toward Hermione to ask if she knew, because she always did.
          At that same moment, though, Hermione had been leaning toward him to ask him something, and their faces ended up so close to one another that their heads nearly bumped. She gasped, and blinked, and Harry was fascinated by her eyes. Velvety brown with a sheen like honey, and the pupils so large and dark that he imagined he could see through to the inner, secret Hermione. He’d never been this close to her, not like this, and for a moment forgot entirely about what he’d been going to say.
          She, too, didn’t speak. All around them the Great Hall was full of the noise of their classmates settling into their seats, and no one else seemed aware of the two of them. Or so Harry thought until Ron, across the table, flicked his golden goblet with a fingernail and it chimed like a bell.
          Startled, Harry drew back and Hermione did likewise. She busied herself with her napkin, folding and re-folding it. 
          A silvery peal of laughter rose from the staff table. Ophidia Winterwind, in response to something that Snape must have said, put her hand on his upper arm and briefly tipped her head against his shoulder, then shook a finger at him as if he’d been a naughty boy. 
          Professor Flitwick immediately launched into a witty story of his own, puffing up and speaking perhaps more forcefully than necessary. Professor Sprout tugged at Dumbledore’s sleeve, making him look away from Ophidia and at her instead, and as she began to talk quietly to him, she made a point of fluffing her curled hair in a disconcerting manner.
          “They’re jealous,” Ron concluded after observing some minutes of this interplay. “She’s got the whole staff worked up. Look at that. Did you ever see the like?”
          “Nonsense,” said Hermione. “Don’t be silly.”
          “I swear, it’s true, look at them,” said Ron. “All the witches dolled up, trying to compete with her, all the wizards spruced up, trying to compete for her. It’s plain as day.”
          “I’ll admit, she’s pretty,” Hermione said. “But to think that the teachers … to think that even Dumbledore …” 
          Her voice lost strength, because just then Dumbledore arose, and as he stood proud and commanding, they didn’t miss the way his eyes darted to his right and then, seeing that Ophidia was watching him with rapt adoration, he stood even straighter and held his head high so as to present his most striking profile.
          “See?” hissed Ron as an expectant hush fell over the room.
          “Yes, I take it back, you’re right,” Hermione whispered.
          The side door opened on silent, stealthy hinges and Hagrid crept in. It should have been impossible for a man his size to make his way unnoticed to his seat at the end of the table, but most everyone else was distracted by the doors at the end of the Great Hall opening once more to admit the first-years. 
          Professor McGonagall led the procession. Her robes were midnight-blue and sewn with tiny silver stars, obviously new and flatteringly tailored. She wore a matching silver necklace made of small interlocked stars. And either she was a whiz with cosmetics or she’d been sneaking sips of a Youthening Potion on the sly, but she looked at least ten years younger than Harry remembered. 
          This change was not lost on the other students. For the first time, more eyes were fixed on McGonagall than on the nervous line of first-years behind her. At the end of the line was Jeremy Upwood, still very pale but evidently all right because Madame Pomfrey – in a new, crisply white nurse’s robe – was bringing up the rear. 
          McGonagall marched to the front of the room and spun with a grand flair. This was her moment, everything about her proclaimed it, and she meant to make the most of it. She made a grandiloquent beckoning gesture. 
          Hooves clattered on the floor. A beautiful golden horse, so graceful that Harry’s first impression was that it was an adolescent unicorn, pranced forth. It was bearing a shapeless, tattered hat on its back in place of a saddle. As it reached Professor McGonagall, the horse reared up, hooves flashing prettily, and let out a loud, musical nicker. 
          She snapped her fingers. As the horse came back down, it changed seamlessly into a stool. The hat, the Sorting Hat, was resting upon it, unchanged.
          Scattered applause broke out but was stifled quickly as a rip in the side of the hat opened, and began to move like a thread-edged mouth. A cracked, amused, and actually not-quite-sane voice rang out:

                              Appearances can be deceiving
                              A cover doesn’t make the book
                              They say that seeing is believing
                              But they don’t know how deep to look

                              For truth is hidden deep inside
                              Like a story in the pages
                              What is within, you cannot hide
                              My fine and new young mages

                              I am old and torn and plain
                              I may not look like much
                              Yet put me on and I’ll obtain
                              The truth with just one touch
                              
                              Oh, I am called the Sorting Hat
                              And what that name espouses 
                              Is how I can in no time flat
                              Determine all your Houses

                              So step right up and try me on
                              To see where you belong
                              In Slytherin if ambition
                              And cunning craft are strong

                              Be Gryffindor if courage
                              Is where your heart excels
                              Or Ravenclaw if knowledge
                              Will help you learn your spells

                              Or is your heart of Hufflepuff
                              Faithful, pure and true?
                              I think we’ve waited lon