Chapter 1 – The Unexpected Guest

I couldn’t believe I had slept in, today of all days. I quickly stepped out of my room, wrapped myself in my dressing gown, but paused by the large curved window of the turret to peer at the grounds below. I smiled to myself; I doubted that many people would consider eight o’clock as a lie-in, but it was to me. It had been my way as far as I could remember. How I enjoyed getting up first in the morning as a young girl and having the spacious Muggle house to myself. How I enjoyed, from my first day in Hogwarts, the stillness and silence of the castle before dawn, a familiar atmosphere I now associated with the term breaks.

This last thought called me back from the contemplation of the grounds to my duties. A new term was starting today and students would flow in the castle from Hogsmeade station in less then twelve hours.

I first needed to send an urgent owl to a tiresome family who had sent particular requests on behalf of their to-be first-year son, practically every day since his letter was sent. Hopefully, this would be the last one! I settled at my desk and wrote as short and dry a note as I dared to tell Mrs. Winpumky that no, her son could not be allowed a pet boarhound puppy within Hogwarts… Honestly!

Knowing that the boy would show up with the animal anyway, and that I would have to settle this matter in the evening on top of everything else, I went to my tawny owl to tie the note. The owl gave me a fierce look – Fitzwilliam, unlike me, was not a morning person.

I watched him through the window until he became a small dot above the Forbidden Forest, then checked myself; I could not indulge in contemplation just now. What with Dumbledore and I having had more urging agenda on our plates this year, the preparation of this term had been hectic. I still had several pre-term briefings to conduct with Hagrid, Filch and the head House-Elf.

I would first send a note with my House-Elf to Hagrid, who had been pretty busy lately as well, saying that I would see him shortly after lunch. I sat back at my desk and was reaching for my quill when I saw a note on it that was definitely not there a minute ago. I recognized with some anxiety the large loopy handwriting and, after reading the three lines, hurried to get dressed.

‘Sherbet Lemon,’ I said as I reached the bottom of the headmaster’s office. As the staircase moved up, I could not stop wondering at the reason for this early call. The particular circumstances of this year had been gone over in several of Hogwarts’ meetings. Could any particular difficulty have arisen so few hours before the Hogwarts Express’ departure?

The door was ajar. Stepping in, my eyes fell on the handsome desk, which I found deserted. Taking in the rest of the large circular room, I found that it held some surprises. Professor Dumbledore and another wizard were standing on either side of the window. The wizard I soon recognized, with puzzlement, to be Mad-Eye Moody, an Auror and member of the Order that I had not seen since the end of the war. I believed he had retired from the Auror office but could not be sure how long ago. I would not know, because Moody was not the type of man to throw a retirement party. I amused myself a split second with the image of the dangerous looking wizard circulating among guests with a tray of canapés. However, the inner smile did not reach my lips, as I took in the dense atmosphere.

Both wizards were standing in intent contemplation of the grounds in the very same attitude I stood in, moments ago, in my own quarters. They looked serious and preoccupied. Inches behind, Professor Snape was looking at them. The expression of eager curiosity on his face told that he knew not to be seen. Although working with him around the year for the past decade, I seldom had the chance to catch such an obvious expression, making him looking positively human, on the mysterious black bat’s face. This puzzled me more than anything else. Just as I noticed, he shifted towards me. A mask of expressionless indifference instantly fell upon his face as he nodded curtly.

‘Minerva!’ cried Professor Dumbledore, ‘thank you for coming so quickly.’

‘What is going on, Albus? Is there any problems with the Hogwarts Express?’ I asked with concern.

‘Not quite,’ the headmaster responded lightly. ‘I am confident our students will arrive safely and on time tonight.’

‘Whether there will still be a Hogwarts for them to head for remains to be seen,’ Mad-Eye commented, provoking a gasp from me. To my horror, the headmaster did not part his concerned expression when retorting.

‘There is not need to be so dramatic, Alastor.’

‘Not that we would like the least to spoil your obvious enjoyment in spreading paranoid fear around you,’ added Snape in cold sarcasm.

‘Anything to do with… you know what?’ I glanced an uneasy look toward Moody, unsure if I could speak freely in front of him, and then added, ‘on the third floor?’ with raised concern in my voice.

Moody raised a curious eyebrow at that, confirming me that whatever the matter was, Mad-Eye had not been let in this particular confidence. I glanced apologetically at Dumbledore, but he did not seem to care the least about my slipping the hint. Actually, he had resumed his peering through the window, his expression more intense then ever.

‘Severus?’ I started pleading, at a loss to understand what was going on.

Snape gave a glance to his headmaster and decided to take his continuous peering through the window as a request for him to brief me.

‘Someone has broken into the grounds,’ he stated.

‘How many people?’ I asked promptly, ready for some action.

‘She’s alone, actually,’ Snape answered.

‘It,’ Mad-Eye corrected him.

‘So pray, why aren’t we down on the ground to confront… her?’ I asked sternly, ignoring the obscure intervention of the Auror. My mood was not improved by the mysterious glamour of it all.

‘Our headmaster called us in for some observation, as yet,’ Snape explained testily.

‘But, if the person broke in before you called me, they should already be… here.’ I could not explain my colleagues’ behavior, let alone Moody’s presence.

‘They are on foot,’ said Snape simply, before adding, apparently slightly amused by my bewildered expression, ‘and they are taking their time.’ Satisfying himself with the mixture of impatience and puzzlement on my face, he seemed to decide against risking an outburst of temper from me and came to the facts.

‘A young girl is coming from the south. She seems to have coincidently reached the Hogwarts’ grounds on her stroll to the north and has simply walked into the grounds, as far as observed, unknowingly and unharmed.’

My jaw dropped. It didn’t make any sense. One could not trespass Hogwarts’ gates “unknowingly� while strolling; this was simply impossible. I tried to think systematically. A Muggle would be repelled. The Muggle-repelling charm had never failed. The barrier interfered at several levels; the mind of the Muggle would oppose strongly against going in the direction. They would also experience several moments of urgent desire or need to go in the opposite direction. Physically, the Muggle’s body couldn’t penetrate the barrier at any rate. This seemed to eliminate the possibility of the girl being a Muggle.

There had been occurrences, however, of sorcerers successfully trespassing the grounds, I thought, recalling the chapter dedicated to the boundaries in Hogwarts: A History. Grindewald had done it single handedly and famously, and Death Eaters during the height of Voldemort’s power; this occurrence I could recall without the book, having been myself severely injured on this occasion. But even to the powerful Grindewald or a force of skilled Death Eaters, this had not been the work of a moment. It would take hours to even the most skilled and powerful to undo enough of the ancient barrier – unless they had inside information, of course. All of Hogwarts staff was enabled to undo the barrier for emergency way in or out. But then this girl was not hiding at all. None of this made sense.

I could not comprehend the situation at hand; I wanted to ask which of them had witnessed the girl’s trespassing. I looked up to find the three wizards back in the exact same attitude I had found them in entering the office earlier. I opened my mouth to ask the pressing questions I had in my mind.

‘Ah,’ Dumbledore uttered suddenly, his features lightening in some odd sort of satisfaction, with a hint of the amused surprise of a fair-player in the front of an opponent’s impressive move. ‘She has just crossed my personal line of barriers.’

‘It,’ Mad-Eye corrected automatically. ‘What, just like that?’

‘As airily as a grown doxyform would pass through this glass window,’ Dumbledore answered, taping gently the glass. His look of concern contradicted the lightness of his tone.

As Dumbledore withdrew, followed by Moody, I came to the window, Snape at my side. He pointed south, in the direction of the Quidditch pitch.

‘She is there’ he said quietly.

Then I spotted her, long way south behind the pitch, a small figure I could only recognize as a young girl from such a distance, because I had been given the information beforehand.

‘Indeed,’ I breathed. My head was spinning at the impossibility of what I was witnessing. I wondered for a mad moment if this was not Albus’ idea of a joke.

‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ came the cool voice of my colleague. Our eyes locked and I registered that for once, he was doing quite a poor job at pretending to be bored.

‘Minerva, Severus, pray join us,’ came Dumbledore’s voice.

I turned back to see the headmaster sat down with Mad-Eye at the elegant round meeting table near the north windows.

‘We need to talk,’ he added in a mater-of-fact voice, as I did not make to move from the window.

‘Shouldn’t we keep a look at her, even if we do not enter into action immediately?’ I asked resentfully as I reached the table, followed by Snape. I found my headmaster’s lack of reaction simply nonsensical.

‘She is being watched outside,’ Dumbledore said simply. ‘Beside, we will observe her much better from here.’ He gesture at a large footed lens, placed as a fifth guest on the table.

‘Alastor, would you please tune the spy-glass on the girl for us?’ he requested pleasantly.

Alastor reached up for his wand and muttered a long and complex spell over the spy-glass, which image soon focused.

We peered silently at it. The young girl was walking along the hedge of the Forbidden Forest, on the smooth grass. The ground was rising in this place and would become flat again only by the Quidditch pitch ahead. She seemed to indeed be taking a stroll, walking slowly and looking up to the trees or down to the grass, turning on the spot every so often. It was the strangest thing.

I looked up and catch briefly Moody’s eyes, who looked concerned and suspicious. The girl had presently took a break and sat on a large smooth rock to enjoy the view of the castle. She looked like a first-year, I thought. I was surprised to find her to be a pretty and well groomed child. She had long silky dark brown hair floating freely, dark brown eyes and a fair skin, a faintly exotic mixture: she could have been half Turkish, or Central Asian maybe. Her face looked sweet and very childish. Her clothes were neat, and good-looking. She was wearing an airy sort of knee-length pale blue skirt. Then I gasped; just as I was about to voice that her skirt material looked suspiciously like Muggle ‘jean’, it turned deep green.

We all looked at each others wordlessly.

‘That is an interesting development,’ Dumbledore said calmly, ‘but back to our order of the day. I was waiting for you all to be here,’ he glanced at me, ‘to hear the one who witnessed our unexpected guest breaking the ancient barrier of the grounds of Hogwarts. Eslis!’

A particularly stout house-elf appeared in the office and bowed to Dumbledore.

‘Pray join us and kindly report the events of this morning, Eslis,’ Dumbledore said invitingly.

The house-elf came up to the table and fearfully accepted the chair pulled by Dumbledore. He bowed to the four of us and on an inviting gesture from the headmaster, broke into his story.

‘I were with my team, I works with the outside ground-keeping house-elf team, and this morning us were preparing the Quidditch stands, for the coming season. Half us team were attending the magically-held structure but I and my team were up at the top of the boxes to hang on the team colors back for the new term, Sirs. I is at the south to hang the Hufflepuff flags and banner when I saw it. Someone is strolling too close to the Hogwarts grounds, sirs. Must be a Muggle, I think. And I watch; I were curious to see when they will turn back or change direction, then it happened, sirs, the Muggle hit the magical barrier and… and nothing is happening! It did not stop them, Sirs. They just walked through, but they was a child, they cannot be Hogwarts staff, so I reported to the castle, Sirs… I jumped from the top box to punish myself for stopping my work to look at the Muggle, Sirs,’ he added, as an afterthought.

‘It’s all right Eslis, you did very useful observations,’ said Dumbledore kindly. ‘Do you have any questions?’ he asked us.

We were quite speechless. Dumbledore dismissed the house elf.

‘Is there any chance that this could result from a disturbance in the barriers, and could be a mere coincidence that a Muggle had happened to stroll at this very moment?’ I asked shakily, knowing the answer.

‘That’s forgetting the blatant piece of wandless magic we just witnessed, Minerva,’ Snape pointed out, referring to the girl’s skirt color changing. ‘That, and the fact that she appears to be able to see the castle.’

Moody snorted. ‘We don’t think this potentially dangerous creature is a Muggle or a wizard, now, do we?’ he rhetorically asked. ‘Let’s put our head into finding how to handle it.’

‘What?’ I cried indignantly. ‘You are certainly not set to harm a young girl?’

‘How very naive of you, Minerva; ready to protect this dangerous creature because it looks harmless and innocent. It’s obviously a disguise!’ he yelled suddenly, making me jump. ‘The creature has powers that we know not and we’d better put it under our control before finding out if it is a friend or a foe!’

‘Alastor is right,’ Dumbledore cut in unexpectedly and much to my indignation, before adding; ‘the girl, or creature she disguises, has powers that we know not. Her trespassing our barriers in the fashion she did proves it. But, Alastor, I also believe that if the ancient barriers of Hogwarts grounds, as well as the most powerful barriers I could master myself, had not had the slightest effect what so ever on her then there is little chance that our spells or bounds will.’

‘So, what are you saying?’ Snape asked curiously.

‘I have a sense that she is coming here to meet us. We must discuss how to receive her. Let’s hope that her intentions are harmless, if she is not… After all, as Minerva noticed, she does look innocent.’

‘We are not to try to defend ourselves?’ Mad-Eye asked in disbelief.

‘No. As you pointed out, we are quite at her mercy,’ Dumbledore announced calmly.