Author note: This story builds on my previous Penelope Clearwater stories, "Details," "Muggle-Born," and "Long-Suffering Penelope," which I recommend reading first. For Pigspots, see "Muggle-Born"; for Penelope's relationship with Arthur, see "Long-Suffering Penelope." J.K. Rowling has given us conflicting indications about Penelope Clearwater's blood status in Chamber of Secrets and Deathly Hallows. In this story, as in my earlier stories, Penelope is Muggle-born, and her experiences as a Muggle-born student at Hogwarts, and as a witch in an affluent, highly educated, and extremely successful London family, have played a pivotal role in shaping her character.
Balliol
"Samantha, where are those Hogwarts/ Pigspots stories you wrote, that first year you were at Roedean?"
Sprawled across the bed, immersed in an essay on polymerization, she doesn't bother to answer.
"Samantha?"
She looks up. "You're home early!" It is 2:15 on a Friday afternoon. Penelope's shift at the Ministry lasts until 4:30.
"I told them I had a migraine. Where are they?"
"You want to read them?" asks Samantha.
"No," says Penelope coolly. "I want to burn them."
"Burn them?" Samantha would think it was a joke, except that Penelope has never gone in for such cold, wry humor. "B-But they're my stories!" she protests.
"Where are they?"
Samantha clambers down from the bed and removes a thick sheaf of manuscript from a desk drawer. She lays the manuscripts on the bed, sits on them, and looks inquiringly at her sister.
"Rufus Scrimgeour was murdered last night," says Penelope. "He's been replaced by Pius Thicknesse. Some people think Thicknesse is a Death Eater. Some people think he's been Imperiused. All I know is, he's hand in glove with Dolores Umbridge, and has been for years."
"That prissy old woman?"
"She's got a vendetta against Muggle-borns. And, I dare say, against Muggles. If she finds those stories on you, she'll accuse you of stealing magic."
"Stealing magic?"
"Samantha, I don't want to see you in Azkaban." Penelope puts out her hand.
"I've never been able to do magic," protests Samantha, scrambling off the bed. "Anyway, it's just a fact, isn't it? Like gravity, or conservation of energy. It's not something you own."
"Don't ask for logic from Dolores Umbridge," says Penelope bitterly. "Samantha, I don't want to pull rank, but this is wizarding politics, and I understand it better than you do. It's for your own safety."
She gives up the stories. She follows Penelope across the hall to her cool white childhood bedroom under the eaves. A suitcase lies open on the floor. It's nearly full. In Penelope's fireplace, a fireplace that has not been used—except as an orifice of the Floo Network—in all of Samantha's eighteen years, a fire now burns merrily. Samantha's manuscripts are not the only things going up in smoke.
"You're burning books!" exclaims Samantha, turning to her sister in horror.
"I'm burning evidence," says Penelope tersely. "You'll be better off if it looks like a witch never lived here. The Ministry knows my home address. If they want to find you, they will. But if there's no magical equipment, no notes, no books, then you can just play dumb, and they'll be hard put to accuse you of stealing magic—they'll focus on bigger game—"
"Play dumb?" breathes Samantha. "What about you?"
"Go get Hogwarts, A History," says Penelope. "From your bookcase. And Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland." Samantha does not move. "Now!"
She fetches the books and hands them over. Penelope tosses them into the fire, and Samantha sniffs involuntarily. "I'll buy you new copies after the war," says Penelope.
"You're going to win the war?" asks Samantha.
"The Order of the Phoenix is going to win the war," says Penelope grimly, "but I can't say how long it will take. What else magical have you got in your bedroom?"
"That really old photograph of Percy," says Samantha unwillingly, "and the one of you in Hogsmeade. The map you drew of the village—"
"Get them. Just bring me everything. Did you keep any of my letters?"
There's no point saying no. Samantha goes to her bedroom and returns five minutes later carrying two photographs, a hand-drawn map, several letters, a Ravenclaw prefect badge, a small pot of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes ten-second pimple vanisher, and the end of a carton of Fizzing Whizbees. Penelope's dismantling her entire bedroom now. Notebooks, press cuttings, ragged quills. School robes, work robes, dress robes. Quidditch souvenirs, Spellotape, flash-boiling kettle. NEWT certificate, Apparition license, currency converter. Into the suitcase or into the fire.
Penelope tosses the letters and map into the fire without a second glance. She tears the label off the ten-second pimple vanisher and says, "You can empty this down the sink. Throw the jar away in a Tube station, or Kenwood Pond." The prefect badge won't burn; she chucks it into the suitcase. When she gets to the Fizzing Whizbees, she finally cracks a smile. "You can finish them if you like," she says, "and I'll burn the packaging."
Samantha stuffs two Fizzing Whizbees in her mouth. Penelope looks briefly at the photos, eyes watering. She hesitates. She casts them into the fire.
"Where are you going?" demands Samantha.
"Away. Abroad."
"Where?"
"It's safer if you just don't know."
"Why?"
"They'll try to interrogate—"
"No, why are you going?"
"If I stay they'll arrest me. Thicknesse and Umbridge."
"Arrest you?"
"I'm a Muggle-born witch," says Penelope bitterly, "with a prize in Muggle Studies, working in a scantly supervised, Muggle-related job, and living in a Muggle household with a highly unorthodox Floo Connection—"
"That was authorized by the Ministry—"
"That was authorized by Cornelius Fudge, who was sacked a year ago. You do the math." Penelope sighs and leans against the corner of the bed frame. "I'm not leaving yet, Samantha. Nothing has officially happened yet. It could be a few days, a few weeks, a month even. But I want this house to be clean, absolutely clean, before I leave. As if a witch never lived here."
What a horrible thought, thinks Samantha. What a gaping hole to tear in her past.
"You're the one I'm most worried about," says Penelope. "Helena barely speaks to me anymore—no one would make the mistake of thinking she's trying to steal magic. Alan's been away, and Dad still thinks that faulty cabling caused the Brockdale Bridge collapse. But you and Mummy have both been to Diagon Alley—and to the Ministry. Which is not technically permitted. I bent the rules. Whatever possessed me—"
Samantha says coldly, "I wanted to go."
"If someone comes to interrogate you—" Samantha looks up. "My advice is to tell the absolute truth but as little of the truth as possible. Be noncommittal. Don't give details. Don't think about magic, don't think about Diagon Alley, and especially don't think about anything you saw inside the Ministry. There's such a thing as Legilimency, you know." Samantha nods. "I don't know when it will be, or who it will be. Whoever it is will present himself as a friend—" Samantha nods again. Penelope stabs the fire with a poker. "You're in the most danger because you're the one who knows the most. If I thought you would come with me—"
"I'm going to Oxford," says Samantha hollowly. "To take up my Exhibition, remember?"
"It's just as well," mutters Penelope. "I don't know how to hide someone who isn't magic. I barely know how to hide myself. You'll be all right," she says in a firmer tone, every inch the big sister. "We're all going to be all right."
Samantha nods. She sits beside the suitcase and silently watches Penelope burn the remnants of her girlhood.