“I always get so excited when it’s time to go back to school,” remarked Emma. “Then after a few weeks I’m sick of it again and I can’t wait for holidays.”
“I know someone who’s going to have no problem waiting for the winter holidays,” Ted replied quietly, jerking his thumb toward his fellow Prefect.
No one had trouble understanding that. Spending a weekend with the Malfoys was not going to be the best way to celebrate Christmas.
Speaking of unpleasant Slytherins, Charybdis Nott (a sixth-year Slytherin Prefect of whom none of them were very fond) and one of her friends walked by at that moment, speaking loudly enough for all the station to hear.
“”to be so exciting!”
“I know, I can’t believe Ophidias is coming back! I can’t wait to see him again!”
“Wasn’t he supposed to have graduated last year?”
“Yes, but he was in prison all last year, poor thing, so he’s doing his seventh year now.”
Charybdis’s yellowish-amber eyes shone. “This is going to be great.”
Her friend giggled. “So are you going to start going out again?”
“Looks like it!” Charybdis chirped in her small, razor-sharp voice. She, too, was small but razor-sharp, tiny with pointed features and stick-straight light brown hair. “Anyway, it’s great that he’ll be back. Some of those people of inferior birth around here, if you know what I mean, are getting pretty full of themselves. He’ll put them back in their places, stupid Mudbloods. C’mon, let’s go get on the train.”
It was truly disturbing how she could speak of ‘putting Mudbloods in their place,’ with the casual perkiness of a girl discussing boy bands. Ted blinked. “Charybdis Nott has a lot of pretty bad ideas,” he said, “but she does have one thing right. Let’s get on the train.”
He picked up his suitcase and one of Haley’s (a chronic overpacker, this year she’d brought three suitcases and a purse, reaching new heights in sheer volume of luggage) and inclined his head toward the door to the Hogwarts express. “After you, ladies and gents.” And he climbed on to the train after the other four, helping up a little first year who had been knocked over by two of Haley’s enormous suitcases.
Jordan looked at his wristwatch, eyebrows furrowed. “You and Ivy should have already reported to the Prefects’ carriage,” he informed Ted. “You’d better hurry if you don’t want to be in trouble. We’ll remember to save seats for you.”
The Prefects exchanged meaningful glances, both thinking the same thing. Ophidias had been a Prefect. And although he’d been in prison, they’d never known Hogwarts to revoke the status of Prefect before. Even before Ivy had helped the Auror forces apprehend Ophidias and place him in prison, it seemed pretty clear that the two of them had never had a good relationship, from the little that Ted knew about her life with the Malfoys.
Ivy raised her chin resolutely. “There’s no sense in avoiding Ophidias,” she said. “It’s probably best if we can get it over with now. He can’t do any real harm in a carriage full of Prefects.” She smiled nervously and whipped her long blonde braid over her shoulder as she bent to pick up her suitcase.
Ted smiled back, although he, too, was less than eager for a reunion with the boy who had sliced his head open and knocked him unconscious with a very nasty curse in his third year. “Westward ho, then,” he replied, and the two of them marched off toward the Prefects carriage (which was actually to the east).
“They’re so cute,” commented Haley brightly, passing one suitcase each to Jordan and Emma. “Now, we’ve got to find a compartment before there aren’t any left except ones with Slytherins, or first years, or Nelson Blenkinsopp and his pet slugs.”
Emma mimed vomiting. “That’s a great idea,” she replied, shuddering slightly.
They traipsed through the train, peering in compartments as they went in search for somewhere to sit. They couldn’t help but notice as they looked into each compartment that there was an inordinate number of students proudly holding pet toads.
“How does Tyrone do it?” muttered Emma as they passed by another compartment packed with toad owners.
It was not long before they reached the last carriage of the train, still unable to find a seat.
“Let’s sit here,” suggested Emma, gesturing toward a compartment that only contained one person. “It’s nearly empty.”
Jordan looked at his cousin incredulously. “There’s a reason for that. There are slugs oozing all over the windows,” he pointed out rationally. “I’m quite positive you said earlier that you didn’t want to sit with Nelson Blenkinsopp. Besides, there’s a perfectly good compartment right here.”
Emma’s eyes flashed. “Look, I don’t want to sit there. Deal with it.”
“But there’s no one in this one but Tyrone Thomas and some girl,” said Jordan, plainly confused.
Haley, however, was wearing her shrewd face. “Aha!” she exclaimed, eyes sparking with realization. “I see where this is going. You””
Emma stuffed her fingers in her ears. “Blahblahblahblah…”
“How intelligent,” remarked Jordan, with the air of an astrophysicist forced to live in a settlement of pea-brained apes.
Just when it seemed that the three of them would be stuck standing in the aisle and arguing for the rest of the train ride, the door of the compartment adjacent to Jordan flew open. Tyrone was standing in the doorway.
“Emma!” he beamed. “And company.” He was quick to add this last part, knowing that Haley hated to be left out. “Come on in and sit down! We’ve saved seats for you.”
The Potter twins exchanged glances and looked over at their cousin”and they were surprised to see that she was walking toward the compartment. “He may have won this round, but there’s no way he’s beating me in the game,” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
It was not often that Haley and Jordan agreed on, well, anything, but at the moment, they were of the same mind”Emma Weasley had gone cuckoo for cockroach clusters. Nevertheless, they all made themselves comfortable in the compartment, settling into seats and taking care not to sit on Fido the toad.
A girl none of them had ever seen before was sitting beside Tyrone, reading a book. When the newcomers to the compartment arrive, she looked up and said, “Hi,” giving them a timid smile that revealed two missing canine teeth.
“This is my little sister,” Tyrone explained proudly, nodding toward the girl. “She’s a first year, and I promised her I’d introduce you.”
“I’m Tabitha,” she said in a soft whisper of a voice. Like her brother, she was quite good-looking, but her features were softer, more generically pretty than striking. Several tight black curls escaped from the thick ponytail trailing down her back, and she had big brown eyes like a doe’s. While Tyrone was tall and strapping and had a charismatic air that commanded attention, Tabitha was very small and blended into the dusty brown seats of the train like a chameleon.
Haley offered the girl some sugar quills, which she declined. “I’m Haley Potter,” she introduced herself. “And the sort of moody-looking bozo with bad hair who’s staring out the window is my twin brother, Jordan. He likes to be called Dr. Stinkface.”
“No he doesn’t!” Jordan exclaimed quickly, glaring at his sister. “Please, try not to listen to anything Haley says, particularly when she’s consumed large amounts of sugar. She’s an extremely bad influence.”
Tabitha giggled quietly.
“Speaking of bad influences,” chipped in Emma, “Your crazy brother’s started some kind of trend. I must have seen hundreds of disgusting toads on my way here.” She narrowed her eyes at Fido, although it was clear that she bore no resentment whatsoever toward the little amphibian. “I’m Emma Weasley, by the way. You’ve probably heard some horror stories about me, and most likely, they’re pretty much all true.”
Tabitha’s eyes widened. “You’re Emma?” She looked rather intimidated.
Tyrone laughed. “I promise I’ve never told her a single horror story about you, but I do talk about you a lot”she asks about you all the time. You’re kind of her hero, I guess. Plus, she likes you ‘cause you’re the only other person who doesn’t like my mustache. Can’t imagine why…”
Emma chose to ignore the ‘mustache’ comment and focused on the fact that she had an eager fan. It was rather ironic, given Tyrone’s status among younger students. “So this is what it’s like to be you,” she mumbled, for some reason unable to look into his face. Maybe the sun was in her eyes, she thought, adjusting the blinds on the window.
“Pretty much, yeah.” Tyrone slung a well-toned arm around her shoulders. “So, Em, what’s new with you?” he asked, changing the subject.
Emma’s body stiffened uncomfortably under his arm. “Nothing much,” she muttered darkly. “Only a git named Hadrian Bellowes wants to get my dad kicked out of his job, and Pansy and Ophidias Malfoy are out of Azkaban, and Ivy has to stay with them for two weekends, and you’re invading my personal space.”
“Whoa, relax,” Tyrone told her. “I’m just being friendly, asking a civil question… invading some civil space…”
Haley knew her cousin’s expression only too well. “You probably shouldn’t put your arm around her anymore,” she suggested brightly, “or there’ll be a civil war.”
Tyrone’s bizarrely expressive eyebrows tilted upward, giving him the sad look of a puppy that had just been called a bad dog. “Sorry,” he mumbled, withdrawing the offending appendage.
Emma couldn’t think of anything at all to say, and much like Tyrone and his toad, she started a bit of a trend; for the next several moments, the train ride was a quiet one. Jordan continued staring out the window, Haley busied herself with some sweets, Tabitha resumed reading her book, and Tyrone directed his attention toward Fido. Emma wished she could be Tabitha’s age again, when she’d hated Tyrone with every fibre of her existence and everything had been so much simpler.
“Look,” she said at last, “I don’t mind, really. It’s just, at least me be the instigator next time, okay?”
And like the sun popping out from behind a cloud, Tyrone’s wide, white grin reappeared in a heartbeat. “Gotcha,” he said. “Though I can’t promise I’ll always stick to that rule.” He paused. “Oh, and by the way? I’m winning this game.”
Jordan had no idea what this game was that Emma and Tyrone kept talking about. But he knew one thing for sure”he was extremely glad that he was not playing it.
Ted and Ivy were among the last people to enter the Prefects’ carriage, and they felt the uncomfortably sensation of many eyes fixated upon them. They sat down quickly, between the two Ravenclaw sixth year Prefects.
“Right,” announced the Head Girl, a Hufflepuff with whom neither of them were familiar. “I think nearly everyone’s here, so let’s get started. This year, we--”
Her speech was cut off by the sound of the carriage door creaking open, followed by a late arrival. All heads swiveled around to stare at the young man with the solemn black robes and the bowed head covered in short bristles of pale hair. Ophidias Malfoy had entered the carriage.
“Oh…” the Head Girl looked both surprised and somewhat frightened. “Er, take a seat, Malfoy… we’ve already got started.”
Charybdis Nott jumped up from her seat. “Ophidias! Hi!” she squeaked, propelling herself toward him and throwing her arms around him. “School hasn’t been the same without you! Come on, sit down here.”
But Ophidias neither spoke nor followed Charybdis’s instruction. Instead, he sat down on an entirely empty seat and folded his hands, acting as though he had taken absolutely no notice of the younger Slytherin. Charybdis gaped indignantly. This was a change from the Ophidias that Icy had known and tried to put up with for so long, and though it was a welcome change, it was a strange one. The person now sitting in the otherwise empty seat and staring down at his knees looked a lot like Ophidias, but it didn’t act anything like him.
“Well,” said the Head Boy, a stern-looking Ravenclaw, nervously casting a not-so-discreet glance at Ophidias, “Some of you are new here as Prefects, and some of you have heard this lecture before. But as Prefects, it’s your responsibility to be good examples for your respective houses. You’ll have to patrol the corridors on the train to make sure that nothing inappropriate’s going on, and you’ll have to make rounds at the school at night.”
“We won’t keep you for long,” the Head Girl assured them. “If you want to hear a long speech, you’ll have to wait for McGonagall’s after the feast. You already got Prefect information from the letters included with your badges, so there’s not much else you have to do. You’re free to go patrol the halls for a bit”then you can go sit with your friends.”
The other Prefects gratefully rose from their seats, chattering and laughing. There was, however, an exception. Ophidias remained seated, simply handing a folded piece of paper to the Head Boy.
The Ravenclaw scanned it briefly, his face serious. “Malfoy, I understand, but your Head of House specifically stated that he and Professor McGonagall have agreed that you are to continue with your Prefect duties. They’ve said that it will be the best way to teach you about responsibility and to regain respect from your peers.”
Ophidias nodded, resignedly, pulled on his school cloak, and walked flat-footed out of the Prefects’ carriage. As he passed the doorway where Ted and Ivy were still standing and watching, he turned his head and looked them in the eye.
Ivy could have sworn she’d seen him mouth the word ‘sorry,’ but it had to have been simply her imagination.
“SLYTHERIN!” proclaimed the Sorting Hat, and a spike-haired boy proceeded to the Slytherin table.
“Future Evil of England Society, more like,” Emma whispered under her breath. Haley flicked her tongue like a snake and giggled.
Professor Granger-Weasley looked up from her list of first year names. “Thomas, Tabitha.”
Tyrone stretched his neck to see his little sister over the crowd. Normally, being rather tall, he had no trouble doing this, but at the moment, he was sitting behind Ted, who cramped his style somewhat in this respect. “Hey!” he called, waving his arms and bouncing up and down enthusiastically.
Emma almost expected him to rip off his shirt to reveal the phrase ‘GO TABITHA!’ painted across his chest. Smirking at the image, she watched timid little Tabitha blush dark violet at the spectacle her brother was making.
She let the decrepit hat flop over her eyes, preventing her from seeing the spectacle of her brother holding up Fido over his head to let the toad have a bird’s eye view of the situation. The hat sat there for a moment in silence before the rip in its brim opened wider to announce, “RAVENCLAW!”
The Ravenclaw table burst into cheers, and Tyrone looked stunned. “Ravenclaw? That’s so lame! Now I can’t bug her in the Common Room! And if she makes it onto the Quidditch team next year, I’ll have to play against her!” He paused. “Well, I shouldn’t be too surprised. She was always the bright one”it’s just, my mum and dad were both in Gryffindor, and, I mean, I am, too, so I kind of expected her to do the same.” He sighed and admitted, “I’m gonna miss her.”
As Tyrone leaned out into the aisle and held a hand out to the proud new Ravenclaw for a high-five, Jordan couldn’t help but think how unusual it was that Tyrone and his sister got along so well. He and Haley had always been as different as night and day respectively, and although they could occasionally coexist peacefully, they were usually at one another’s throats. But then again, the Potter twins were apparently similar enough to land in the same Hogwarts house, while the Thomases didn’t even share that. Maybe it was the age difference that kept them from fighting, he mused.
There were only two more students to be sorted”a Phoebus Wilkinshire and an Azalea Yancy”and then McGonagall mounted her podium to give a typical welcoming speech.
After five years of these speeches, Haley could practically recite along with the Headmistress. Prefects would help the first years adjust to the new school. Quidditch try-outs would be held in a few weeks, subjecting even more unsuspecting students to Jordan’s harsh training regimen. A Valentine’s Day Ball would be held that February, on Haley and Jordan’s birthday, as always. The Forbidden Forest was, as always, forbidden, though Haley herself saw this rule as more of a guideline. The caretaker, Andreas Gauge, had banned even more Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes products.
And then, she heard an announcement that made her ears perk right up.
“Finally, this year, every student in the school will need to participate in an Inter-House Unity project. Each of you will be paired with a student from another house, and asked to create a collaborative project of your choosing on the subject of Inter-House Unity. You will receive more information tomorrow from your first-period professors, who will also be determining partner assignments. All projects will be due in April.”
“Ooh!” squealed Haley, reminded of her peer counseling days in her fourth year. “This should be really fun!”
Her twin looked considerably less thrilled. “I loathe group assignments,” he muttered. “No one in my group ever does anything properly, and then I have to do it by myself, and the professors always get upset because no one else participated.”
Emma rolled her eyes and mouthed to Tyrone, “Obsessive-Compulsive Boy strikes again,” though not loud enough for her cousin to hear. If she upset him, he had the power to make her Quidditch training sessions absolute torture.
“I think it sounds great,” chipped in Ted, who always loved working in groups. He was very good at cooperating, compromising, and complementing, but not so much at writing, so he preferred groups to any other type of work. “I like meeting new people. And I, you know, just like the whole idea.”
Emma pulled a face. “Because the Gryffindors and Slytherins will totally be holding hands and singing in perfect harmony together by the end of the project, right?” She snorted. “I think Inter-House Unity’s a lost cause.”
More than one person was prepared to challenge this statement, but they didn’t get a chance. After McGonagall wrapped up her beginning-of-term speech, food began to magically appear on the tables. One startled first year, apparently Muggle-born, actually toppled out of his chair at the sight, to be gently informed of the properties of magical feasts by Ted.
Everyone, even Jordan, agree that choosing Ted to be a Prefect was an inspired choice”his easygoing, down-to-earth manners, and patient thoroughness made him very approachable and a great favourite among younger students. And as an added bonus, he could actually stand the first years, not a common trait.
The students helped themselves to generous helpings of the feast, although Haley barely took anything so as to save room for dessert, by far the most important part of any meal. Emma and Tyrone somehow managed to start a contest for who could create the most disgusting mixture of food and then eat it without vomiting (Tyrone insisted it was good practice for Potions class when challenged by a glaring Jordan), and Ivy reviewed her charms work by enchanting her knife and fork to cut up her food for her. Because everyone was so engaged in their own culinary experiences, it was several minutes before anyone noticed what Ted was up to.
Although he had certainly never been a picky eater (after all, his favourite thing to eat was a bowl of cottage of cottage cheese topped with vegetables, ketchup, and ranch dressing, which repulsed even Tyrone) and his extremely tall frame required large quantities of food to keep it running, he was shoveling down his food unusually quickly.
“What,” demanded Emma, “is your problem?” She eyed his pumpkin juice mustache with disapproval. She was good at eying mustaches with disapproval in general.
Ted shrugged his bony shoulders apologetically and gave her a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’ve really got to work on my table manners. It’s just, I’ve been really hungry and thirsty lately. And I’m hoping it’s not another growth spurt, ‘cause I really don’t want to have to duck to get into the Great Hall.”
“You’re sixteen,” Ivy told him sensibly. “Of course you’re always hungry. When Ophidias was”” her voice trailed off. “Well, that’s not important.”
There probably would have been an awkward pause, but instead, the other end of the Gryffindor table burst into cheers as Tyrone swallowed the last bite of his beet-tripe-custard-goat cheese-chocolate-potato-and-pumpkin-juice concoction. He pumped his fist victoriously. “I win,” he grinned, sticking his tongue out at Emma, who groaned.
“Ted, don’t worry about your table manners being bad,” she told her friend, patting his arm comfortingly.
That night, Haley was cozily curled up in her favourite fuzzy pink armchair in the Common Room. The fire cast a warm, soft glow on her face, and gentle croaking of toads formed a comforting cadence. Her head was bent over a leather-bound book whose pages were blotched with shiny, hot-pink ink. It was a typical scene, a teenaged girl scribbling down the events of the day in her diary.
But this diary was unique. Over forty years before, it had belonged to a girl named Lily Elizabeth Evans, who had cast a charm on it to magically give it the properties of her own personality. The diary, affectionately known as ‘Lee,’ effectively was seventeen-year-old Lily, with her preferences, knowledge, memories, and everything. And this especially interested Haley, because Lily was the long-dead grandmother that she had never known.
“Hey, Lee!” she wrote. “Here I am in the Common Room again, all in one piece!”
“Oh, good,” replied the diary. “Here I was worrying that you’d been pureed. Anything interesting happen yet?”
Haley scratched her chin thoughtfully with her quill. “Well… Ophidias Malfoy is back. I thought I saw him on the train, but I didn’t get a good look at him until I got to the Great Hall. He looks weird.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t really know. I mean, his hair’s all buzzed off, he looks tired and kind of sick, maybe his face is a little bit thinner or something, but that’s not it…” She couldn’t think of the words to describe the change that had come over Ophidias. “He’s just… shrunken. I don’t know, when I was little, I used to get scared when I saw him coming around the corner, but he doesn’t look scary anymore. Actually, he looks kind of scared.”
The page remained smooth, empty, and blank for a moment after these words sank in. But then, Lee’s red-inked words reappeared as usual. “Wow, you really have grown up. Do your friends still get surprised when you do something smart?”
“Oh, yeah. You should’ve seen Jordan’s face when he saw my O.W.L.s. He was all smug because he got straight O’s, and I think he wanted my scores to be really bad so he could hear Dad say, ‘why can’t you be more like your brother?’ and make him feel good or something. But then I got three O’s, and I passed everything, and he looked like someone bashed him in the face with a frying pan.”
“Come on, do you really think Jordan wanted you to fail? Even he’s not that much of a git… at least, not anymore. Wow, I really shouldn’t be saying this about my future grandkids…”
“Lee, he tried to tell everyone that I really only had two O’s because ‘Divination’s not a real subject.’ I’d like to see him take it! He’d probably fail, and then we’d see who’s laughing.”
Talking about school and grades reminded her of the Inter-House Unity project that had been announced earlier that day, and she was surprised that she hadn’t even thought to mention it yet.
“Oh yeah, this year, we’re doing some weird Inter-House Unity project, where we have to work with someone from a different house. It sounds kind of fun to me, but I don’t know how well it’s going to work. Like Emma said, I don’t think Gryffindors and Slytherins will be holding hands and swaying back and forth singing in perfect harmony any time soon.”
“I see what you mean,” replied Lee. “I mean, it’s been about a thousand years since Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor were friends, and even they never forgave each other. I don’t think some project is really going to make the whole school get along again.”
Haley checked the clock. “I should get to bed,” she noted “Classes tomorrow, ick.”
“Well, nighty-night! Hope you get assigned someone cool for your project tomorrow!” wrote Lee.
“Yep. I’ll tell you all about it then!”
And with that, she closed the diary, opened the door to the girls’ dormitory, and was out like an appendix, drifting into peaceful dreams.
But across the Common Room in the boys’ dormitory, a boy tossed and turned in his sleep, his bedclothes damp with sweat and his brain whirling at a thousand miles a second.
For the second time in his life and as many weeks, Jordan Potter was having a very strange dream.