“Please sit down, Miss Stein.”
Tzipporah lowered herself into the spindly chair opposite Dumbledore and tried to be calm, tried to stop imagining all the terrible magical punishments she might be about to face. Or worse, the nonmagical ones. I’ll be sent away for sure, and the Nazis will get me, and…
Dumbledore interrupted these thoughts with a question.
“Would you care for a lemon drop?”
“A lemon drop.” Tzipporah stared, dumbfounded. “A lemon drop. Professor, I’ve just been attacked, by Nazis, at Hogwarts. I thought things would be different here, safer than Vienna…but not even my friends were safe.” She choked off, picturing Edward, sprawled on the ground, motionless. “I want to know what’s going to happen next “ I can’t stand not knowing!”
Dumbledore did not look angry at this outburst. If anything, he was more solemn than before.
“If the truth is what you desire,” he began with a sigh, “then you shall have it. War is what will happen.” Dumbledore pressed his fingers together at the tips and gazed over them at a silent Tzipporah. “War in both worlds, muggle and wizarding. And I do not believe that the conflicts are unconnected. For a great number of years I have feared this; now that the time has come we must do what we can to face the evil, and eventually defeat it. I have plans, measures set against the enemies of peace. There is much for us to do “”
“How can I help?” Tzipporah interjected. “I want to fight evil! I want to destroy it! Please, sir, I have to!”
Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “My dear Miss Stein, I think it would be best if you see to your studies first. When you have completed your education we can return to the subject of fighting evil.”
Tzipporah frowned. “But I can’t just stay here knowing that a war is going on, and doing nothing to stop it.”
“Then pray.”
Tzipporah knitted her eyebrows. “But I won’t be praying to your god. Doesn’t that matter?”
“I believe that no prayer goes unanswered, and that all gods are one god,” Dumbledore replied. “Your prayers will do good as long as they are sincere. That is all that matters.”
Dumbledore smiled and proffered the lemon drops once more. Tzipporah took one this time.
“Now, Miss Stein, on to other matters. I am aware of your father’s circumstances and have made arrangements for you this summer. You see, a number of wizarding families are willing to host students that cannot return home, and I have taken the liberty of adding your name to the list. I think you will find your assigned family very amiable. Do you have any objections?”
“No, sir, except…who is the family, exactly?”
Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “The Potters.”
Tzipporah was unable to suppress a smile.
“I think they’ll do very well, sir. But I need to know “ what is going to happen to those…those Nazi students?”
Immediately Dumbledore’s eyes turned icy cold. “They will be punished, severely. I think suspension until the end of the year will do them good, and afterwards they will be given a choice: Either they can put aside the teachings of Hitler, or they can find another school of magic. But I am sure Headmaster Dippet will agree that Hogwarts will not tolerate such hatred and violence.”
“Sir? What do I tell the others? The ones that just found out that I’m Jewish? I don’t know how to explain anything.”
“That is for you to decide,” Dumbledore said. “But when the time comes to face them, I think you will be surprised how little explaining you will need to do.”
Tzipporah got to her feet, feeling somewhat better. “Thank you, professor. May I go see Edward now?”
“But of course.”
As she shut the door behind her, Dumbledore called out once more.
“Oh, Miss Stein, I nearly forgot. From this point onward the meats sent to the Gryffindor table will be kosher, so there is no need to abstain. We've had to begin ordering them specially from a wizarding deli in Prague. I do hope this will make mealtimes easier for you.”
Unable to find the right words, Tzipporah simply beamed. Judging by the way Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled at her, he understood perfectly.
Tzipporah spent the rest of the day in the hospital wing with her friends and rescuers, waiting for Edward to regain consciousness. Madam Pomfrey had been unable to awaken him by magical means, but promised that he was in no danger.
“His body is resting, that’s all,” she had told them. “Why don’t you lot get some lunch? He may not wake until evening, anyway.” It could not have been clearer that the nurse wanted the hospital wing to herself, but Dumbledore had sent a note allowing them all to stay, and she couldn’t argue with that. It also did not help that, being only three years out of Hogwarts, she hardly looked older than some of the students she was trying to command.
“Fine, then, but be quiet, for Merlin’s sake,” Madam Pomfrey sighed as Tzipporah shook her head. Grumpily the nurse picked up several bottles of potion and headed towards the occupied beds at the other end of the room. Tzipporah’s eyes followed her until they fell upon the two unconscious Gryffindor boys whose skulls she had cracked against the ceiling less than an hour ago. The sight of them made her shiver.
“Tip “ Sip “ Zippie,” stammered a second-year Hufflepuff girl named Daisy Deakin, who had come to help Tzipporah as a part of Edward’s gang. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, yes, fine,” Tzipporah said, staring at the plain white sheets on Edward’s bed, the edge of which she was sitting on. He looks so peaceful lying there, like he’s sleeping. Mameleh looked the same way when she was “
No! He’s not dead! Tzipporah twirled a curl on her finger nervously, feeling horrible for having thought such a thing. He didn’t die, Madam Pomfrey says he’s fine.
“Zippie, everything’s safe now,” crooned Clarice, as Millie slipped an arm around Tzipporah’s shoulders. “Stop worrying.”
“I have to worry.” Tzipporah could not meet anyone’s eyes, even though the entire group was watching her. “If something’s wrong with Edward, it’s my fault.”
Immediately a chorus of protesting voices erupted around her.
“Don’t be stupid,” scoffed a Ravenclaw named Barcelo Navone good-naturedly.
“It’s not like you attacked them,” agreed Letty Johnson, Tzipporah’s dorm-mate, with a toss of her hair.
Prescott Longbottom punched Tzipporah gently on the arm. “I wish you wouldn’t take responsibility for all this, Zippie. You were just defending yourself. Edward’s the one that burst into the great hall and started stirring people up for a battle. He made it sound so dangerous that we were the only ones who would volunteer.”
Tzipporah examined her rescuers intently for the first time. She knew three or four of them to be Edward’s Gryffindor friends, but others were older than second-year, and from different houses. She recognized a shy Ravenclaw girl named Mischa Platt from her Charms class, along with her old friend Phyllis Morely from Hufflepuff. There were a few older students as well, from Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw, and standing to the back were a pair of Slytherin third-years, looking almost as surprised as Tzipporah to find themselves there.
“I don’t really know what to say to you,” Tzipporah began. “You didn’t have to help me, but you did, and I’m so, so thankful.”
“Zippie, we all know magic isn’t about what a person believes, or where they come from. It’s about what those beliefs and experiences help us to do with our magic.” Clarice gave Tzipporah a smile, then elbowed Millie in the ribs.
“Ouch! Oh, er…yeah, Clarice is right. They,” Millie tipped her chin at the battered students at the end of the row of beds, “were too thick to understand that.”
“Thank you,” Tzipporah repeated, overcome. “Thank you, for all of it.”
“You’re quite welcome, I’m sure,” said someone behind her.
Tzipporah spun around. There, sitting up in bed and putting on his spectacles, was a grinning “ and most definitely alive “ Edward Potter.
“Edward!” Tzipporah didn’t know what happened to her for a few moments; her legs felt soft as applesauce, and time suddenly stopped. Then, somehow, she was hugging Edward so tightly that he had to fight to breathe, and she did not care that Clarice was smiling in amusement, or that Millie seemed to be torn between acceptance and animosity, or even that Prescott Longbottom was hooting with laughter. Edward was right there, looking at her, and beaming, and she was not scared anymore.
“Tzipporah, it wasn’t me.” Edward’s eyes pleaded with her, begging her to understand. “I wasn’t the one who told. Those Gryffindor boys “ they said their friend heard us talking last night, and that’s how…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tzipporah said simply.
Edward leaned back on his pillow, clearly relieved. “How’re you doing?” he asked, so quietly that the others couldn’t hear.
Tzipporah narrowed her eyes playfully. “I’m not the one who’s been lying in the hospital wing for nigh on three hours. How are you doing?”
Edward winked. “I’m absolutely spiffing, actually. Want a game of Quidditch?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Potter!” screeched Madam Pomfrey, striding up the aisle with a flask of nasty-looking puce potion in her hand. “You need rest! I’m keeping you till after supper. And now that he’s awake the rest of you can skat. Go on, Dumbledore said you could stay until Potter got up, and now he has, so out!”
The group dispersed reluctantly, still discussing the battle as seriously as seasoned veterans.
“Meet me by the beech tree after dark,” Edward just had time to whisper as Tzipporah followed her friends out the door. “And bring a broom.”
At eight o’clock Tzipporah bid Millie and Clarice goodnight and left the common room, clutching Prescott Longbottom’s broomstick. As she crossed to the portrait hole several students waved or called out greetings, mainly the ones who had followed Edward to the battle. Others raised books to cover their eyes, or sidled up the stairs to their dormitories. Tzipporah watched Fonzie Jurgen’s cheeks redden as she passed, but he did not say anything to her, nor she to him.
Outside on the grounds Tzipporah mounted her broom and zoomed off over the verdant grass, heading for the glimmering lake and the beech tree beside it. She squinted into the pink light of sunset, trying to see whether Edward had arrived yet, but could discern nothing in the glare coming off the water. Suddenly a dark figure darted out from around a turret, his glasses flashing and his grin wide.
“Did you bring a quaffle?” Tzipporah called as Edward caught up with her.
“No playing tonight. Just flying,” he called back.
Tzipporah didn’t argue; that was what she’d been hoping for. Together they wheeled and twisted, testing the limits of the sky, diving down between the towers and castle walls, and screaming with glee all the while.
The moon was above the horizon by the time the two children dismounted at the foot of the beech tree, windswept and exhilarated. Simultaneously they collapsed against the convoluted roots, talking boastfully of the Quidditch matches Gryffindor would win the next year, with Tzipporah as a Chaser and Edward as Seeker. Veruca Williams, the captain, had already promised Tzipporah a spot on the team.
“I hate that it’s going to end,” Tzipporah said a time later, looking wistfully at the castle. “I know we’ll come back in September, but the summer seems so long from this end of it.”
“We’ve still got nearly three months to go!” laughed Edward.
“That’s no time at all,” sighed Tzipporah. “I dread the summer.”
“Hey, don’t forget where you’re going this summer,” Edward reminded her. “My place is plenty exciting. We’ll have a roaring good time.”
Tzipporah smiled. I’m sure I will. Still, England isn’t the same as Vienna, or Hogwarts. There was so much that was happening now, and so many things that had changed that could never go back to the way they once were. Tateh is in hiding, Rosa’s mother is a prisoner, Vienna is captured, and the wars haven’t even truly begun…
“Edward, what do you think’s going to happen now?”
Edward stared out across the starlit water. “You told me Dumbledore said that war is coming. So that’s what’ll happen. War.”
“But do you think…my father, and Rosa’s mother…do you think they’ll be alright?” Tzipporah held her breath, afraid of the answer.
“I dunno. I don’t think anyone can know that. My Dad’s told me about wars, and they’re pretty awful.”
Tzipporah nodded, glad he hadn’t tried to lie. The truth might sting, but at least Edward wasn’t treating her like she couldn’t handle it. His confidence in her courage made her feel stronger.
“Your father “ is he really…I mean, did he actually “”
“Yes, he’s an admiral.” Edward did not look offended. “And yes, he fought against the Irish, like Millie told you. But I think he’s always regretted it. He’s a wizard, you know. He only joined the navy because he loves to sail. He hates to see people killed, and when he came home from that war he was real depressed. He’s been on leave for a year, but he’s written to tell me he’s going to fight again, in this war against the Axis Powers. He still hates killing as much as ever, but after I tell him about you and those Nazis,” Edward shot a look at Tzipporah, “I think it’ll be a bit easier to fire at ‘em.”
They fell into thoughtful silence for a while longer, Edward fiddling with the loose twigs in his broom tail, Tzipporah playing with the pendant around her neck.
“Tzipporah,” Edward said suddenly, “I wish you wouldn’t worry. There’s not much we can do. We’re just kids. Wars aren’t for us.”
“Not yet.” Tzipporah watched the play of moonlight on the lake, then turned and shot Edward a daredevil smile. “But we can do little things now, like the battle we had. And someday we’ll be able to fight for real, and we will, won’t we? Against Hitler and Grindelwald?”
“’Course we will,” Edward agreed. “But let’s not talk about that now. I’ve got five more years, and you’ve got six. Why not be kids while we can?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Race you to the other side!”
Laughter echoed across the grounds that night, and the children thought no more of wars. They soared and smiled and schemed, and that was enough for them both.