Disclaimer: I do not own HP…..
Echoes ran through the castle daily, the same ones all the days of school. Dumbledore dead…..He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named rising…..the Chosen One missing…..
I petted Oliver Twist the whole summer long, just staring into space the whole time. I never met Dumbledore, but I knew enough about the Dark Lord to know that something bad was going to happen, something very, very bad. And it did, Harry Potter went missing as soon as school started again.
It was all over the Daily Prophet, Witch Weekly, everything and anything. People sent owls about it for weeks after it happened, and it was right after the Chosen One's birthday too. The owls' flapping wings filled the skies for days, only thinning after threats from the ministry, but even those were mostly empty, the ministry couldn't do anything now, they were powerless without the Chosen One.
It was all old news by the time school began, most people doubted there would even be a school, but the ministry wanted things to continue normally, to keep things from changing, as though it would defeat the Dark Lord by refusing to let him break their regular pattern of work.
I petted Twist during the train ride too. I think that he was starting to get a bald patch by then or a sore spot because he wouldn't stop fussing, but that could have been because he just felt uneasy. He knew when trouble was coming, but by now trouble was everywhere, even merry Diagon Alley was dreary and unfriendly by now. Everyone wanted to travel in groups and no one trusted the other not to be a Death Eater, or any other type of traitor.
I had to travel in a group too. It was mainly composed of friends from last year; almost all of us were fourth year except a few outlying members that had lost their friends to parents that no longer believed Hogwarts was safe for their children. We all were from different houses too. There were a few from Ravenclaw, the same house that I was in, a few from Hufflepuff, a lot from Gryffindor, and only one small mousy boy from Slytherin, a second year and one that had lost all his friends. No one had wanted to bother telling him to go to his own kind, but I think that was because he shared the same look we all had, worn and worried, he probably had it worse off than us too, Slytherins were all being ridiculed in England by now, picked on and treated like dirt.
Not much happened during the ride. The trolley never came by and almost everyone sat in silence except for Dorothy, who was crying, but she had reasons to cry. Her sister had died only a week earlier along with her brother in a raid near Olivanders.
When the train finally came to a halt barely anyone noticed, I think if it weren't for the Slytherin boy getting out of the compartment we would have all just sat there.
We all were in a sort of mindless trance when we got to the carriages too. It was the same for the sorting and the feast too, most of us didn't feel hungry and the ones that had been were busy trying to console Dorothy. It was the same when we were getting to our dorms, we paid no attention to Peeves hiding in the shadows with water balloons or the whispering portraits we all used to be so fond of. Even the first years were quiet, it was a big change from last year where everyone was happy and almost oblivious to the things the Dark Lord was doing out side the castle, but that had all been before Dumbledore died.
"Hey, Kait, had a good summer?" asked a slightly quivering voice from next to me. It was Dal, he was like a big brother to me, strong, deliberate, and understanding, it was a surprise to see him the way he was, pale and jumpy.
"Sure, it was fine," I had said, though I think he knew it had not been, I had been worrying about the Death Eaters all through the months after the Chosen One had disappeared.
"Mine was good too. Mum and Dad bought me a new wand, last one snapped to pieces when Steve tried using it," Dal told me, his voice a bit stronger than it had been before. I thought it ironic how Dal could be like that. He was really the youngest of six, but he was already more mature than his oldest brother Steve, unless he was telling long tales again, he liked twisting the truth to scare people in younger years like me.
"Oh, really?" I smiled at him, "and how did you do that with Olivander gone?"
"We had to go all the way to Porpington Alley. Steve had to take me too since I'm not learning how to apparate till now."
"Porpinton Alley? Never heard of it," I said, by then it seemed that everyone else was talking too, as though they hadn't had the courage to talk until we had started.
"It's near Diagon Alley, I'll show you some day," Dal said, but he wouldn't tell me exactly how he would show me. I was happy either way, it was something to look forward to through the war.
We talked about a lot of things after that, along with everyone else, but we couldn't talk for long. When we got to the mirror that served as the entrance to our common room, a hushed silence went through the crowd and we listened for the prefect to tell us the password.
"Good prevails," the prefect said and the mirror surface disappeared to let us in.
It was another way to get our hopes up again. The ministry probably had something to do with the password. They had started putting things like that everywhere, all the Daily Prophet articles were hidden with double meaning and allusions to the end of the Dark Lord.
"Bye Dal," I said and skipped away up a stair case into the fourth year girl's dorm.
Not much had changed there when I had opened the door. The same beds, the same curtains, the same carpet, but missing trunks. Lisa and Melanie's trunks were missing, but their beds were still there.
It didn't come as a shock that Lisa's trunk was missing, she was Dorothy's dead sister. Melanie's missing trunk was a worse shock. Melanie and I had been best friends for the last few years and she had promised to come back to Hogwarts no matter what her parents said. Melanie never broke promises, and I'm still afraid that she might be dead.
The next morning was better than the day before had been. Class schedules had been passed out, and new teachers met, old friends greeted. It was then that whispers went around the hall of the Chosen One and the Dark Lord. The whispers are still going on even now, three weeks after the beginning of school.
"Toast?" Dal asked from next to me, "Not exactly the breakfast of champions."
"Dal," I smiled readily, he loved muggle book allusions, and I never had had the heart to tell him that even though I was muggle born it didn't mean I liked them too.
Dal smiled back at me. He was holding his schedule in one hand and trying to stuff his mouth full of oatmeal without loosing his smile. He always did things like that, and I had reason to believe he did those things on purpose.
"So, what's on your schedule," I asked him.
"Oh, just classes," he answered after swallowing.
"I know that, I want to know what classes though," I snatched the schedule away from him.
It read something like this:
Monday
Muggle Studies 8:00AM
Potions 9:00AM
Arithmacy 10:00AM
History 11:00AM
Transfiguration 2:00PM
The rest of the schedule was the same for different days of the week. When I finally finished and looked back up Dal was busy reading my schedule.
I smiled fiendishly, "You're not memorizing that to stalk me, are you?"
Dal smiled back as he gave me my schedule, "Course not, you know all us guys are in love with Cho."
Cho had become a hero to all the Ravenclaws. She had dated Cedric the year he died and she had been with the Chosen One. It was every girl's dream to be like her and every guy's dream to be with her, and it was a long standing inside joke between Dal and I.
School was like usual after that, except the rumors and the empty seats. There were empty seats in every classroom, it hadn't just been Lisa that died over the summer.
Things were the same for weeks, empty seats, rumors, and mourning students. It wasn't until now, the third week that anything changed. Ginny Weasley came back to Hogwarts.
She was more legendary than Cho when she came back. She was coming back as a student, but she was treated as a celebrity.
"Ginny, is there anything you need?"
"Ginny, I want to be just like you."
"Ginny, will you date my friend, there? He really likes you."
Even Dal was flirting with her, and I was jealous. Dal wouldn't flirt with Cho, but he would flirt with Ginny. I had to wonder whether he was aiming too high. If he was then I would never be able to compare with Ginny.
It was common knowledge that Harry had loved Ginny before he disappeared. People had eavesdropped on a conversation they had had before summer and it had become one of the central rumors when Ginny came back. She also seemed to know more about Harry and the Dark Lord than most of the school put together. Everyone was competing to get into her heart and learn the secrets she knew.
I kissed up to her too, just to see what would happen. She didn't notice me through the crowd that was trying to do the same thing that I was and we were all shooed away by her brother, Ron Weasley, before long.
Nothing much has happened since Ginny came back. No one knows why she was late or what she was doing or how much she knew about the Chosen One. She rarely talked about the war going on outside of these castle walls and all we had to go by was the Daily Prophet and its ministry funded articles, The Quibbler had more truth in it.
It was all too serene in the castle. Half the time it was like there was no war, then a letter from parents would come to a student and they would go into mourning, sometimes the letter wasn't even sent by their parents and it would just be an unsympathetic letter from the Gringotts Goblins stating that they had inherited a vault. A few students went home to be with what was left of their families; others came back to escape from adoption agencies. Classes emptied and filled with different people, more and more of them became orphans and the ones that left were in funeral attire. I was one of the lucky ones.
My parents were muggles and didn't know anything about what was happening. They had no idea how much danger they were in. They blamed the unearthly fog that was devouring England on pollution, all the massacres were accidents and caused by nature, the lies they believed were never questioned and they thought more about what they would eat for dinner than how easily they could be dead the next day. Sometimes I thought ignorance could be bliss.
I tried talk about it with Dal earlier and all he would talk about is 1984 and Big Brother, sometimes I just feel like pulling my hair out when he did things like that.
I tried again later, "Dal," I said, "Do you think what the Daily Prophet is saying is true?"
"I told you, it's all like Big Brother and 1984," he said.
"Dal, I haven't even touched the book," though I had actually started reading the beginning of it and gotten bored after the first page.
Dal looked hurt, I think he has a stereotype that all muggleborns read any book they come across, he sure did.
"It's about a government that is at war and how they keep everything a secret from the citizens. It's just about a big conspiracy and how the government brainwashed everyone," Dal told me.
I guess I looked confused because he went on, "Big Brother was supposedly the head of the government. They had pictures of him everywhere and he watched everyone and knew everything and he was always right. He was just a symbol though, the government did all the covering up."
"Oh," was all I could say, I never had liked literature too much.
Dal shrugged, "Maybe you should read the book sometime, it's by George Orwell."
I nodded even though I knew I wouldn't do it. Dal and I split up then, I had to go into transfiguration, and he was going back to muggle studies, eh never could get enough of that class.
Transfiguration was boring, nothing happened. The teacher that replaced Professor McGonagall had a horrible accent and made all the guys in the class drool on her. She had married one of the Weasleys earlier and that added with her earlier fame in the Triwizard cup made her almost a big of a celebrity as Ginny.
Next was potions where another replacement teacher had been hired. Slughorn had fled as soon as last year had ended and the traitor Snape never would have been brave enough to come into the castle to teach again, though rumors floated around every one and a while that he had been rehired by McGonagall. I had never liked Snape or hated him, but either way I would have probably helped a crowd in lynching him, though I think everyone would help in doing that just to avoid being called a traitor. Potions had never been that good of a class and Professor Mayes went on lecturing in a way horribly similar to Professor Binns.
After potions was defense against the dark arts. It was one of the only good classes. Professor Lupin was teaching it and I had heard that his earlier career at the school had lead to Snape revealing him as a werewolf. I didn't even know Hogwarts had existed then and I had to piece together rumors to figure anything out.
The rest of the day was studying and homework and falling asleep when before even reaching the bed.
I woke up the next morning lazily. I was on the floor, somewhere in on the straight staircase that lead to the dorms. People were bustling past me, and I noticed several other girls sprawled on the stairs identical to me. I knew for a fact this didn't happen much in other houses, but in Ravenclaw we tend to loose sleep over studying or get tricked into drinking sleeping potions thinking its coffee while studying. A few of the others were waking up and I had the rising suspicion it had been sleeping potion.
The rest of the day was uneventful, yet again. Class, homework, study, sleep (this time without a potion).
The same the next day….and the next day…..and the next day…..
Then there was news.
The Chosen One had returned.