Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter. I'm just playing around in her sandbox.
Summary: Benji Clark, the Muggle-born son of a physicist, was about to start his third year at Hogwarts when the Ministry suddenly decided that Muggle-borns don't exist. Now, burdened by a memory charm and the vague knowledge that the Ministry won't leave him alone, Benji must help navigate the unfamiliar magical world to get himself and his family to safety.
Author's Note: This is a companion story to one of my other works, "Victory Garden," but I wrote it so that you shouldn't need to read that story to understand this one. In fact, reading this as a standalone may enhance the mystery. Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading.
Benji Clark Finds the Invisible Portkey
Tina barely bothered with her victory screech the fifth time she beat Benji at their racing videogame, and Benji barely noticed. He was staring at the window where an owl should have appeared a week ago, carrying a letter inviting him back for his third year at Hogwarts. And in all likelihood would be a second owl this year with a letter for Tina. She had turned eleven back in March. Ever since Benji had learned that there really were such things as witches and wizards he'd known that he was not the only one in the house doing unintentional magic. So where were their letters?
"Do you want to play something else?" Tina asked. When she got up to turn off the game, Benji's character was still half a lap from the finish line, valiantly attempting to drive through a wall.
Benji tried to come back to the present, but nothing about their quiet sitting room could tell him what he wanted to know.
"Has the post come yet? The Muggle one, I mean."
"I'll go check," Tina said, heading for the door. She knew what was on his mind, even though Benji hadn't explained. She'd be a Ravenclaw for sure. Most of the time, Benji felt like the dumbest person in the Ravenclaw Common Room, half the time he got stumped by the door's riddles and had to wait for someone else to come along, but she'd have no trouble.
"You got something," Tina said, tossing him an envelope on the way past.
Benji recognized the heavy parchment favored by wizards and more or less leaped for the fluttering letter, something of a feat since he'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor, but it was from his friend Liam. His family's owl must have been busy, Benji decided, but Liam's father would know all about the Muggle post, the letter even had the correct postage. Only mildly disappointed that it wasn't from Hogwarts, Benji ripped the envelope in his haste to extract the letter.
"Hey Benji,
"My Hogwarts letter turned up days ago. I don't know why yours hasn't. Maybe the owl got lost, or they're going alphabetically."
Benji smirked and continued reading. Liam's last name was Waters.
"Anyway, I wouldn't worry. This is Hogwarts, they don't just forget people. I don't think you'd like some of the books on the list this year, though. One's called 'The Inferiority of Muggles.' Not sure why Burbage would assign that, unless it's to give us a different perspective. Dad says he never had to read it when he took the class. Anyway, it's not like you have to take Muggle Studies."
Some days that summer, Benji had wondered if he should have signed up for Muggle Studies after all, just for the break. Now he was glad he hadn't. The teacher was a close friend of Liam's family and he always spoke highly of her. Even though Benji didn't know Burbage personally, it did seem out of character for her to assign a book with a title like that.
"Say, have you had any trouble this summer? Only, Dad says there was some kind of shakeup at the Ministry. Scrimgeour got replaced all of a sudden, and now the Muggle Relations Office has some kind of new instructions. He wouldn't explain that part. I only got that much by eavesdropping on him and my Mum. And my parents have started throwing away the 'Daily Prophet' right after they read it. Point is, if things get too boring for you at home, or too exciting, you could come stay with us a while. You haven't lived until you've tried my Mum's shepherd's pie."
Benji could never figure out Liam's affection for shepherd's pie, he was a real connoisseur. And of course he would not shut up about his mother's recipe whenever they got served the dish at school, which was once a month or so. It had all put Benji off the stuff.
"Well, that's all I've got. Write if you want to come and stay, or come and visit. And don't worry about your Hogwarts letter, those owls are notorious.
"- Liam"
Notorious for making their deliveries on time, Benji thought, setting the letter aside. A moment later he realized that he had not heard a sound out of Tina in several minutes, never a good sign.
His hurried search ended in the kitchen, where he found Tina pointing his wand at a box of cereal, her face screwed up in concentration.
"How many times do I have to tell you not to play with that?" Benji asked, snatching the wand back. He was running out of ways to hide the thing; she had found the latest place in less than a day.
"You were busy and I couldn't reach," Tina protested.
"Then pretend you don't already know you're a witch and climb on a chair like a normal Muggle. I'm the one who gets in trouble if you do magic. Besides, Dad will be home soon."
But he did reach her down the box.
"What did your letter say?" Tina asked, dumping cereal into the bowl. She was going to have no room left for dinner.
"It was a reply from Liam. He already got his Hogwarts letter and he doesn't know why we haven't gotten ours," Benji summarized, deciding to leave out the discussion about the Ministry and Muggles. He didn't know what to make of that anyway.
"You should ask him what was on his book list so you can start studying before it's too late," Tina replied, pouring the milk and sitting down at the table with a spoon.
"I already did my summer homework," Benji grumbled as he put away the milk, but he had to admit her point. They were supposed to be on the Hogwarts Express in a matter of weeks and getting to Diagon Alley was a tricky business. Best not to put it off. Of course, Tina had already read all of Benji's first year textbooks. Second year too.
"Dad's back," Tina reported a moment before Benji heard the clatter of keys at the front door. One day she would have to explain how she did that.
"Hey guys," their Dad, Jonathan, said, appearing at the door of the kitchen and setting down a bag of carry-out boxes. Chinese, if Benji's nose was to be trusted, and it usually was in these matters. "Tina, how much cereal have you eaten? Benji, you couldn't have told her to wait half an hour?"
"Only a little!" Tina pouted at the same time that Benji protested, "I did!" and the resulting jumble was loud enough that no one heard the doorbell until it rang again a few tens of seconds later.
"All right! Quiet down while I answer this, you two!" Jonathan exclaimed. "Benji, set the table, please."
"I was hungry," Tina maintained while Benji went to the cabinet for plates and cups.
"He heard you," Benji muttered, then froze at the sound of his name.
"Benji, come here," his Dad had called in his rarely used stern voice. As he walked over, Benji could hear Jonathan ask whoever was outside, "How did you get here so soon after I did? Have you been watching the house and waiting for me to come home?"
The man at the door was unmistakably a wizard. A wizard with a clipboard. And a handlebar moustache. He didn't bother to deny Jonathan's accusation even though there was even odds that it had actually been some kind of charm that was watching the house.
"Benjamin Michael Clark?" the visitor asked.
Benji nodded. This wasn't a letter. And this wizard seemed nothing like the kind, beaming Professor Sprout, who had brought his first year letter and explained about magic.
"Benjamin Michael Clark, I am here as a representative of the Ministry of Magic. For the crime of stealing magic, you are hereby expelled from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I am here to collect the wand you stole from a true witch or wizard and perform memory charms on yourself and your family."
"Not just hold on," Jonathan said.
"Stealing? Expelled?" Benji mouthed. It felt like there was no air in his lungs, no brains in his head. Like the only thing that kept him standing was sheer habit. Had the wizard done the memory charm already?
Without meaning to, Benji's hand went to his wand, only partially hidden in his pocket. The wizard saw and a moment later Benji was frozen, paralyzed. Unable to shift to keep his balance, he began to tip forward, but his father caught him, shouting, "What did you do!"
"He was reaching for the wand," the wizard said dismissively, the air of someone making a mark in his notes. Benji's face was pressed against his father's shirt and he couldn't turn his head to look at the stranger, but he could feel when his wand was pulled from his pocket.
"It's not stolen!" Jonathan exclaimed, shifting his grip on Benji so Benji's head was in the crook of Jonathan's elbow. "We bought it from Mr. Ollivander. I have the-" He probably would if wizards went in for receipts. Jonathan was the type to hold on to those types of things. "Professor Sprout said that Benji was born a wizard, he hasn't stolen anything."
"New information has come to light that has caused the Ministry of Magic to revise that thinking," the wizard replied. "Mr. Clark is just lucky he's not of-age, otherwise he could be facing time in Azkaban. Memory charms are much more humane in these situations, don't you agree?"
Benji did not agree. The full body bind prevented him from gasping for the breath he needed but did not stop the tears from leaking out his eyes. Two years of his life and the only identity that had ever felt right to him was about to be erased, and there was not a single thing he could do about it. He already knew the incantation for the last spell he would ever hear.
Benji mechanically lifted the last forkful of kung pao chicken into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, pushed his plate away, and leaned back in his chair.
Odd, he realized, rubbing his stomach, he could hardly remember anything about that meal, though he certainly felt full. He, Tina, and his Dad must have talked about something. Usually Jonathan liked to ask about things Benji had learned at school, but that seemed odd too, now that Benji thought about it. Jonathan was a scientist and seemed to know a little bit about just about everything, and quite a bit more than most about some things. So what could Benji have learned in the last… What year was he in? He was thirteen, he knew that much, so that should put him in year eight. Why was the last school year he could remember the fifth? And why did part of his brain keep insisting he was almost a third year?
"Dad, have I been sick?"
"Sick?"
"You're not sick, Benji, you're a wizard!" Tina insisted. Something in her tone made it sound like she had been saying the same thing for a while now, Benji must've been ignoring her.
"Maybe that's an odd question," Benji admitted. "But I can't remember going to school recently. What…what school do I go to?"
"Hogwarts!"
"Tina, stop saying nonsense and help me with the dishes," Jonathan said, getting up. "I'm getting a headache. Benji, put away the leftovers, please."
"It's not nonsense!" Tina said, getting a dishtowel. "You and Benji were talking to a wizard at the door and he said he was going to take Benji's wand and do a memory charm, and he must have because you both went funny after that. Then the wizard came inside and went up to Benji's room and took all his spell books and school things, but I hid and he didn't find me. Then he left, and you both woke up enough to eat dinner, but you're still not normal."
Luckily, there weren't many leftovers to put away. Benji felt like he was starting to get a headache too.
"Tina, I think you're old enough to know the difference between what's real and what you imagined," Jonathan said flatly.
"It's true, I can prove it!" Tina replied and raced away. Benji could hear her footsteps overhead as she went to her room and came back.
"Here, see?" she said, shoving a book into Benji's hands. "The wizard didn't find it because it was in my room."
Benji looked at the book. It was titled The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection (Grade 2). The front cover had an image of a man and a woman in long robes, pointing short sticks at each other, and they were moving, sometimes firing off what looked like bolts of light. As Benji flipped through the book, occasionally pausing to watch other moving images inside, he could almost feel something inside his brain straining to break free.
"Tina," he said when he finally reached the back cover. "I think you'd better tell us everything you remember."
"All right," Benji said, rubbing his eyes. The hour hand of the clock on the wall was creeping toward midnight, but he was finally starting to feel like he understood. "I'm a wizard, I can do magic." It had taken a very long time before he even started to entertain the possibility that Tina might be right about that. The words still felt strange to say, but he pressed on. "For the past two years, I've gone to school at Hogwarts to learn magic, and I study Herbology, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, and Transfiguration, whatever all that means."
Tina nodded. Nearby, their Dad had part of his attention on the late night news, part on what looked to be the fifth chapter of Benji's Defense textbook, and part tracking their conversation.
"My best friend's name is…Liam." Troublingly, Benji had to check the signature on the letter Tina said he'd received that afternoon to make sure. "His father is a wizard too, and he works with non-magical people…er…Mu…Muggles, somehow."
"You should write to Liam," Jonathan suggested.
"No return address." Benji had already thought of that, Liam had offered to help if things got 'too exciting' for Benji, like he'd suspected that something was going to happen. But Benji couldn't remember what his friend looked like, much less where he lived. He continued with his inventory. "The wizard who came here and did this memory charm also took most of my school things and my magic wand, so I can't do magic anymore, even if I could remember how."
"No, no…stupid," Tina said, punctuating herself with a massive yawn. "You never call it a magic wand, just a wand. And you can do magic without it, but you have to be really angry or upset or scared for it to work. I can do it sometimes, watch."
"Better not, Tina," Jonathan said, placing a hand on hers. "Maybe they can…I don't know…tell, somehow."
"But Dad!"
"I know, Tina. I know this isn't right, but…" He got to his feet and ran a hand over his balding head. "'But do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.'"
Benji smirked at the reference, but then he realized what his father meant and all the humor disappeared. He traded dismayed looks with Jonathan and knew they were thinking the same thing. They might well need help, magical help, and everything Benji had ever known about how to ask for it was locked behind this memory charm.
"There's an old scientist trick," Jonathan continued eventually, and Benji perked up, certain he was about to hear some brilliant plan for how to break the memory charm, and maybe even find out why he'd one had been placed on him in the first place. "When you're stuck on something, really stuck, and going in circles, put it aside for a little while and let the back of your head work on it. It's smarter than the rest of you at times like this."
Any port in a storm, Benji decided, though he felt slightly let down. The front of his brain sure didn't seem very smart at the moment, maybe it was about time to give the back half a chance. He stood and stretched.
"I don't wanna go to bed!" Tina complained. "My brain works fine!"
"I'll let you stay up for another hour if you can say that again without yawning," Jonathan replied.
Tina put in a valiant effort, but failed before she got another word out.
"Upstairs, both of you. Don't forget to brush your teeth."
When he reached it, Benji's room looked unnaturally hollowed out. He could clearly see the absence of something big and bulky at the foot of the bed, his desk lacked the clutter of normal use, and there was no book on the nightstand. There was always a book on his nightstand. That, more than anything else that'd happened that night, made Benji feel hollowed out too. He would never find out how that book ended, an odd thing to worry about, considering that he couldn't remember how it began. More empty spaces pockmarked his closet and bookshelf. Benji selected one of the remaining books at random. The frigate on its front cover had been rendered in careful detail, but it kept completely still. Benji lay awake a long time, not even opening the book, just watching the front cover, but it never budged.
"Morning," Jonathan said in a raspy voice when Benji staggered down the stairs and past the sitting room on the way to the kitchen. He was more or less where Benji had left him the previous night, sitting in the arm chair and bent over the Defense book. "Anything come to you?"
Benji put the kettle on the stove for tea and returned to the sitting room before replying. "No, you?"
"Nothing."
From the looks of things, Jonathan had failed to take his own advice. He was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday and seemed to have made some serious progress in Benji's Defense textbook.
"Learn anything?"
"Hard to say," Jonathan said. "I wish you could put some of this in context for me. And do you have any idea how they get the pictures to move like this?"
"Sorry."
"Pity."
The kettle started whistling and Benji went to take it off the heat. He felt sure that he'd been asked that before, but that wasn't remembering, just knowing his father. He wondered if he'd had a better answer the previous time.
"What are we gonna do, Dad?" Benji asked, returning with cups of tea for both of them.
"It seems like there's only one thing we can do," Jonathan replied, taking a sip. "You may want to sit down."
Benji sat, guts fluttering.
"What did Tina call people like me? Non-magic folk?"
"Muggles."
"We've got to carry on like the memory charmed worked better than it did, like you and Tina really think you're Muggles."
"Dad! I-"
"You'll have to go back to regular school."
"I'm two years behind."
"I'll tutor you."
"Two years in, what, a couple weeks?"
"More like a month. Didn't Tina say Ravenclaws are supposed to be smart?" Jonathan said. "Listen, something about magic society broke. I'm sure of it, but I don't know what part. All we know for sure is that wizards like their secrecy, so the only way to protect ourselves is to give it to them."
Benji's first thought was that he couldn't pretend that he wasn't a wizard. His second was that he hardly knew what it meant to be one. "But I am a wizard," Benji protested.
"It'll be even harder for Tina," Jonathan replied, "but you both have to, at least until we find a way to learn more about what we're dealing with. Can you do that?"
Benji never answered, because in his search for another option his eyes roved to the muted television where a reporter was standing in front of 10 Downing Street and a red banner across the screen below her announced, "Prime Minister and Cabinet announce immediate resignation."
"What?" Benji breathed, pointing.
Jonathan turned to look, and his reaction was identical.
"How was it?" Jonathan called from the kitchen when Benji and Tina trouped inside at the end of the first day of school.
"Horrible," Tina grumbled, still sore about missing out on Hogwarts. She'd spent the whole walk home complaining while Benji tried unsuccessfully to shush her. But Jonathan's question hadn't been for her.
"Horrible," Benji agreed. He hadn't expected his father to be there when they got home. In fact, he'd been relying on having the afternoon to collect his thoughts. The fact that he hadn't known to read Frankenstein over the summer and that his math teacher had been bound and determined to teach limits even though Benji was still struggling to find his way around trigonometry was the least of it.
At least there were biscuits, Benji decided, selecting one off the cooling rack. Having biscuits ready when they got home on their first day of school was something their Mum used to do.
"Want to talk about it?" Jonathan asked, pouring Benji and Tina glasses of milk.
Benji hardly knew where to start, although he supposed that a protracted discussion about the finer points of cotangents might give him the chance to figure out how to phrase what was really on his mind.
"Benji thinks someone followed us home," Tina replied for him.
"What!" Jonathan exclaimed, jumping to look out the nearest window, which only viewed the neighbor's driveway. After reminding himself of this, he raced to the front looking windows in the sitting room.
Benji cringed. "Really, I'm not sure," he tried to backtrack. "I might not have seen anything. It was probably nothing."
"Do you remember what they looked like? Were they in a car or on foot? Did they try to talk to you?" He said all this very quickly.
"It wasn't like that, I could only get glimpses, and only when I wasn't trying to look," Benji said, struggling to find the words to explain. "It was like they could blend into whatever was behind them."
"You think they were magical."
Benji shrugged, but thought they probably were.
"This is too far," Jonathan said. "I'm calling…" He trailed off, staring at the phone, probably wondering the same thing as Benji: even if they could find someone who would believe them, what could the Muggle police do against wizards?
Jonathan shook himself and reached for the phone, but before he could dial there was a tap at the window that caused all three of them to jump.
"A letter!" Tina exclaimed, racing over to let the owl inside.
"Not helping," Benji sighed as the bird soared around the kitchen, dropped its letter on the table in front of him, and flew back out the window.
"If that wasn't the damndest thing," Jonathan breathed, watching the owl go, which completely distracted Benji from his letter because it made him realize that the whole procedure felt familiar to him. Was the memory charm finally starting to slip? Could memory charms slip? There were no answers in Benji's head. He turned to the letter.
Except it wasn't a letter at all, but a magazine of some sort. It was definitely magical, Benji could tell by the pictures, and it was called The Quibbler. If the cover was anything to go by, the lead article was about someone named Harry Potter and someone else called You-Know-Who, except that Benji most certainly did not know who. The secondary article was on Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, which funnily enough did ring some sort of bell, but only a small one, and a long way off.
"This mean anything to you?" Benji asked, tipping the magazine toward Tina.
"Wizard junk mail?" Jonathan suggested while she thought it over.
"You've mentioned Harry Potter," Tina replied at last. "He's one of the older students, some sort of hero at Hogwarts, I think."
"Maybe it's a school newsletter," Jonathan said. "And they forgot to stop sending it to you."
"Then why would they send it to me at all?" Benji replied, flipping to the article about Harry Potter. "Ordinarily I'd be at school. I could just pick it up."
"Maybe you asked them to send a copy to Tina and me."
"Maybe."
Benji lost the thread of the conversation after that, he was too busy reading, even though he was only reading the same two words over and over again. It was the name of the article's author: Xenophilius Lovegood.
The name Xenophilius meant nothing to him, Benji wasn't even confident on what gender to attach to it. But Lovegood… Every time he looked at the word he thought of the moon, and there was no good reason he could think of why that would happen, at least none that wasn't trapped behind a memory charm. Benji set down his biscuit and tried to find the connection.
Lovegood. Moon. Night. No.
Lovegood. Moon. Light. No.
Lovegood. Moon. Eclipse. No. Tide. No. Space. No. Apollo. No, these were wizards, Benji.
Lovegood. Moon. Erm…Lunar. Lun-
"Loony! I mean, Luna! Luna Lovegood!"
"Who?"
But for a moment Benji was eleven years old, just finished with yet another immensely frustrating Defense class, and staring at the patch of wall that was supposed to lead to the Ravenclaw Common Room. But it had just asked him how to find the end of a circle and refused to move until he came up with the right answer.
"Why can't you just ask for a password like a normal door?" Benji had complained, not wanting to have to settle for doing his homework on the staircase until someone else came along, again.
"Circles are so much more interesting than passwords," the wall had replied.
"Can you at least give me a hint? Or should I just switch to Hufflepuff and get it over with?"
"I know some people from Hufflepuff," Luna had replied, coming up the stairs behind Benji. "They're very nice."
That wasn't really helping. "How do you find the end of a circle?" Benji had asked her, gesturing toward the wall.
"Hmm," Luna had tilted her head in thought. "Well, circles don't have ends, generally, so I'd say to find the end you'd have to make one, wouldn't you?"
The wall slid open.
Benji decided two things that day. First, wizards do not think in straight lines. Second, he would never call Luna 'Loony' again. Not even think it, if he could. Both of those things had helped him more than once, but perhaps never quite so much as when he was sitting in the kitchen, staring at the name 'Xenophilius Lovegood' in a magical magazine.
"Benji, are you alright?" his father asked. "You went blank for a second."
"I remembered something," Benji replied. "Not everything, but something."
Certainly nothing that would tell him why Luna would send him a copy of this magazine. Or newsletter, whatever it was.
"Something important?"
"Don't know yet."
"Well, let me know when you figure that out," Jonathan said. "In the meantime, don't think I've forgotten what you said about someone following you home after school."
Actually, Benji had forgotten himself.
"I'll walk you both to school in the mornings," Jonathan continued.
"It's only five blocks, Dad!"
"As for after school, I'll as Ms. Cunningham if she can collect you two when she gets her daughter." Jonathan continued, ignoring the interruption.
"I thought you said she was a man-eater, Dad," Tina said.
Benji snorted into his milk. In fact, what Jonathan had said was that the divorcee sure acted like she wouldn't mind landing a respected scientist for husband number three. It made Benji curious where Tina had learned the term man-eater.
"I will do my best to fend her off," Jonathan assured them. "And under no circumstances are you to mention any of that in her hearing. Or mine, actually. Or anyone's. Understood?"
Tina nodded glumly.
"But if it is wizards, what could Ms. Cunningham do anyway?" Benji asked. "Wouldn't it be better to leave her out of it?"
"She can scream really loudly, I'd wager," Jonathan replied. "It's more than nothing. I don't want any arguments on this, all right? Do you have any homework?"
"It's the first day, Dad," Tina said.
"Benji?"
"Remedial Transfiguration."
"Transfiguration?"
"Trigonometry, I mean."
"Well get to it, show those triangles who's in charge. I have to finish up some work. Dinner is at six."
Benji nodded and trouped up the stairs to his room, trying to ignore the enticing sounds from Tina's video game. He could not focus on the uses of cotangents, though, try as he might. Not with The Quibbler lying next to his elbow, not even with it hidden in a drawer.
Why had Luna sent it to him? Hell, why did she even remember him? He'd been a brainless first year when they met. For that matter, where had she gotten his address? Didn't those owls need some sort of idea about where to go? Did she hear about him from Liam?
As far as Benji could tell, there was only one possible way to get the answer to any of these questions: by reading The Quibbler, so he got to it.
"How's trigonometry?" Jonathan asked when they all sat down to dinner a few hours later.
Jonathan still had not quite gotten the hang of cooking, but Benji had to give him credit for trying. Or at least he had to try, Benji told himself as he picked a whole basil leaf off his pasta and set it aside.
Unfortunately, the trigonometry was about the same as it had been earlier that afternoon. Benji had never gotten back to it and instead spent the time reading The Quibbler cover to cover. Three times. He'd learned a fair amount about Harry Potter and You-Know-Who (though he still didn't quite know who) and about the reclusive Crumple-Horned Snorkack (though not much about what it looked like, oddly), and a number of other things besides. Those things included the situation for Muggle-born witches and wizards in the United Kingdom, which included the troubling detail that no one magical was allowed to leave the country. At least not by magical means, and even with the little he could remember about magic, Benji wasn't sure about rolling the dice on Muggle transportation either.
"You should read this," Benji said, pushing the magazine over to his father, open to the start of the article about Harry Potter.
"So that's a 'no' on the trigonometry?"
Benji shrugged and got started on his pasta.
"Hey Tina," Benji said after a few bites. "How do you find the end of a circle?"
Tina contemplated her garnish for a moment, then ventured, "Well, if it's a circle someone drew, then you'd just have to look closely enough."
"No, I mean a perfect, ideal circle."
"In two or three dimensions?"
"Two," Benji replied, but that was yet another solution that had never even occurred to him.
"Then I guess you'd have to break it and make an end."
"Yep," Benji confirmed, grudgingly. That figured. She could probably explain what cotangents were good for too. If they were at Hogwarts, she and that riddle wall would probably be chums by now, exchanging geometry-based jokes. Except there was something odd about Tina and magic that Benji couldn't quite put his finger on. It had to do with the Ministry wizard who'd taken Benji's school things, though. Damn this memory charm, he'd probably have it by now if not for that.
"Very illuminating," Jonathan said, setting down the magazine. "Did you notice this?"
He was pointing to a small advertisement at the end of the article. Benji had managed to ignore it all three times around. It said, "Is your current land too gray? Gulchy neighbors got you down? No need to wait for the twister. Professor Marvel can show you the yellow brick road. Just send your flying monkey to the Munchkins at the center of Loland, Ev, Ev, Dreams, and Scoodlers. There's someplace like home."
"What is that about?" asked Benji, who had spent the whole afternoon reading The Quibbler and felt like he had developed a high tolerance of the bizarre during that period.
"It's a reference to The Wizard of Oz," Jonathan replied.
"Isn't that a Muggle movie? Or is it?" Benji asked, passing the magazine over to Tina. He'd thought that flying monkeys sounded familiar but had assumed they were a type of magical creature.
"It's a Muggle movie, and a bunch of books," Jonathan replied, "although why it would come up in a magic magazine…"
"This could help explain it," Benji said, taking the magazine back from the protesting Tina and turning to the article about Muggle-born witches and wizards.
They lapsed into silence again while Jonathan read. When he finished, he said, "Well, I'm glad they didn't call you in for a hearing, at least I think they didn't. But why didn't they?"
"I'm under age," Benji replied. That much, at least, was obvious enough. "I'm in juvenile detention."
"Can you imagine if they just wiped the memory of some elderly Muggle-born…"
"It's better than Azkaban," Benji said immediately. He didn't think he'd seen much of Dementors, but after the description in the magazine he sure didn't want to refresh his memory. Even the little he did know was enough to freeze his guts. "That advertisement, do you think it might be a message for Muggle-borns who want to escape the Ministry?"
"That's exactly what I think," Jonathan said, "but did you understand any other part of it? What was that about flying monkeys, for example? Are we're supposed to send one to a dream?"
Benji shrugged. "Wizards use owls to send letters, you saw."
"Well, we've got some time to figure it out, at least," Jonathan said. "It sounds like we're in way less trouble than those other bug- er."
Benji smirked. He'd never heard his father swear before.
Tina, however, protested, "We can't leave! Mum's here!"
Actually, she wasn't. Their mother was in the parish cemetery, at least as much as she was anywhere, about a five minute walk from the gate on High Street. All that was at the house was a small patch of flowers, but Tina tended it with devotion all through the summer. Benji understood what she meant.
"Tina, your Mum wouldn't want us to do something dangerous just for her," Jonathan said, putting a hand on her wrist.
"How do you know! She wouldn't want us to leave her."
"Now, Tina, I knew her pretty well. And even if we do have to go, she'd still be here when we got back."
Tina jumped to her feet, tears streaming down her face, and yelled, "But what if we can't come back!"
Benji flinched, then realized why, then got to his feet too. "Tina! No! You have to calm down!"
"NO!"
Benji thought for a moment that the lights had gone out, but actually he'd just closed his eyes against the noise, uselessly. He opened them again and pulled Tina into a hug.
"Yes! You have to be calm, otherwise you're going to do magic, and then we really will have go to!"
Tina screamed and kicked and spit and cried against him, and Benji let her because if she let it out as noise and violence then she wasn't letting it out as magic. But as this went on and the cries gradually diminished to whimpers, Benji began to wonder just how Tina had managed not to do magic, as worked up as she'd been. The lights hadn't flickered once, aside from the scare Benji had given himself, nothing had levitated or exploded. No magic. How many untrained witches had that much control? Then an alternate possibility crossed Benji's mind.
"Lemme go, your shirt's gross," Tina said at last in a phlegmy voice, pushing herself away.
"Whose fault is that?" Jonathan said when Benji didn't. "Are you all right now?" he added, handing Tina a tissue.
She nodded and blew her nose.
"I'm gonna go change," Benji said. Tina wasn't wrong: there was a massive damp patch on the front of his shirt that was best left uncontemplated.
"Thank you," Jonathan whispered as Benji passed, but Benji hardly heard it, he had other things on his mind.
Once upstairs, Benji threw the dirty shirt into the laundry basket, pulled on the first fresh shirt to come to hand, and sank into his desk chair.
Could it be that Tina wasn't a witch after all? She certainly thought she was a witch. The way she'd told it, she'd been responsible for at least half the unintentional magic that happened before Benji went to Hogwarts, but what about after? Of course, she might exaggerate if Benji asked, and their Dad wouldn't remember.
Despite the danger, Benji might have tried to devise an experiment to find out for sure, but as it happened, he already had another fairly compelling piece of evidence: the wizard from the Ministry who did the memory charms on Benji and Jonathan hadn't known to look for Tina as well.
If the Ministry had known about Tina, there was no place she could have hidden where they wouldn't be able to find her. If she had been due to receive her Hogwarts letter this summer, the Ministry would have known about her. If Tina was magical, she would have been about to receive a Hogwarts letter. QED.
Tina would be devastated. Benji had no idea how to tell her.
They carried on. Jonathan walked Benji and Tina the five blocks to school and Ms. Cunningham walked them home and craned her neck at the doorway as though she thought Jonathan might be at home after all. He never was, not until later, so Benji and Tina locked themselves inside and double checked the windows before sitting down to their homework.
More than once while walking to or from school, Benji thought he glimpsed someone watching them, but they always disappeared before he could get an adult's attention and eventually he gave up trying. Those sightings seemed to get more frequent when he drew attention to them anyway, better to pretend he couldn't see, no matter how nervous it made him, or how much sleep he lost wondering if one of those living shadows would ever decide to move against them. But much as it unnerved Benji, they never seemed to do anything besides observe, at least so far.
A month, to the minute, after the appearance of the first, another owl arrived bearing the next volume of The Quibbler. Benji shooed the bird away but accepted the magazine and paged quickly through, spotting mentions of Harry Potter, Death Eaters, You-Know-Who, Snatchers, and the Order of the Phoenix before finding what he was looking for.
That night over dinner he read out, "Eye of Sauron too intense? The Undying Lands are closer than you think. Send riders to Gondor, Lothlorien, Amon hen, the Shire, the Green dragon, Osgiliath, and Withered heath for directions."
"Does that make any sense to you?" Jonathan asked when Benji finished reading.
"They're talking about Lord of the Rings, obviously, but other than that…" Benji shrugged. "How are we supposed to send anything to all these fictional places?"
"Tina, you remember Benji telling you about anything magical with those names?"
She shook her head. "Do we have to read Lord of the Rings now too?"
After spending a week flailing around on the Wizard of Oz riddle, Jonathan had borrowed the movie from the library. And when that failed to knock anything loose, he got the entire series of books. They'd analyzed them together every night since, and had only just finished the last one.
"No," Jonathan decided. "Not unless you want to, anyway. Reading The Wizard of Oz didn't get us any closer, and it looks like there's a time limit we didn't know about."
Benji wondered if they should have guessed about that last part. If the Ministry really did hate Muggle-borns as much as The Quibbler made it sound and there was a network of people trying to protect them, it only made sense that such a network would need to keep hidden or else risk exposing themselves, and moving around often was a good way to do that.
So they had a month to solve this new riddle. Benji read it again. The structure was the same as the last one: a reference to a force of darkness in a well-known Muggle book or movie, an offer of easy escape to a place of safety, instructions to send something to a list of fictional places. That list was the largest difference between them as far as Benji could tell. Five places in the first riddle, one listed twice, seven in the second, no pattern Benji could see in either, but some odd capitalization in the second. He was getting more and more nervous that the knowledge he needed to solve this was locked behind that memory charm.
"Is there any dessert?" Benji asked, pushing the magazine away.
"There might be some ice cream left," Jonathan said, going to the freezer. Benji gathered up the dinner dishes while his father distributed the ice cream and was disappointed to return to the table and find that he and Tina both only had a single small scoop. Jonathan had none. He hadn't mentioned any trouble with getting food, but Benji couldn't help but notice that the cupboards and refrigerator seemed a little emptier than usual recently. Maybe he'd just been too busy to go to the store.
"I've been wondering," Jonathan said as Benji and Tina lingered over their desserts. "This transfiguration business, how does it really work? Do you actually change the atoms of something? Or the molecules? Where does the energy to do it come from? Hell, where does the energy it makes go?"
The Defense textbook the Ministry had missed contained just enough hints about Transfiguration to tantalize a physicist.
"Magic doesn't follow those types of rules," Benji replied, staring at his empty bowl as though he could will more ice cream into being. "Now you know as much about it as I do."
"But it's possible to vanish something, right? Do you just make it invisible or is it really gone? And once it's gone, is it gone forever or does it come back eventually? And where does it go?"
"A vanished object goes into nonbeing, it becomes a part of everything," Benji recited, actually recited, because that stupid patch of wall wouldn't stop asking him about it, and he never did understand the answer, so eventually he had Luna write it down so he could memorize it by rote.
And that wasn't all Benji remembered.
He remembered his father peppering him with questions like those whenever he was home from Hogwarts. What types of things do potions do? How do they work? What do they mean by Dark Arts? What's unique about magical plants? How far back does magical history go? What are charms? Hexes? Jinxes?
And that wasn't all Benji remembered.
Whenever he'd had to fend off these questions before, he'd thought it was just his Dad being a scientist, wanting to know everything about everything, and especially about something that broke every rule he ever learned. Now Benji recognized the questions that lurked behind all those others: Do wizards get cancer? and Do they die of it? And not just those, but the real question that propelled all of them: If Benji's mother had been able to hang on for another six months, until Benji learned he was a wizard, would she be alive now?
And that wasn't all Benji remembered.
"I was gonna be a Healer."
"Healer?"
"A doctor! A doctor for magical ailments, and not just those either!"
"Oh. Ben-"
"I was gonna help people! I knew it would be hard, but I was gonna do it! I was gonna make sure that what happened to Mum would never happen to anyone ever again! And…and they don't want me!"
Tina grabbed his arm but Benji shook her off.
"You can still be a doctor," Jonathan said, but Benji didn't want to hear it.
"Not as good of one!" he exploded. "They could have cured her, Dad! And they didn't, because Muggles don't matter to magic folk. Well then fine, I say, magic folk don't matter to me! I'm glad they took my memory! I hope they come back and do it properly, because I'm done with them! Get off me Tina. You don't know anything about it because you're not a witch at all."
"Yes I do! And I can be a witch if I want to!"
"Have you ever done unintentional magic when I wasn't around? You can't be a witch because you don't have magic!"
Benji and Tina started each other down, then Tina's face crumpled and Benji realized what he'd just told her.
"Shit," he said, and as he did the lights began to flicker, then faster and faster until they all went out.
Jonathan got up and flicked the nearest switch a few times with no effect, then found a torch and went to check the breaker box.
"I think it's the whole block," he said when he returned, his voice perfectly level. Tina was quietly weeping over empty ice cream bowl. Benji was sitting perfectly still, counting breaths to try and calm down.
"They'll know that was me," Benji said. "They're going to come check on us."
"How long do we have?"
Benji couldn't see his father's face in the darkness and didn't want to imagine the expression he would find there if he could.
"Not long, they can travel here instantly."
"Okay, we're leaving. There's no time to pack, just get out the door."
"Where are we going?" Tina asked as Jonathan hustled them along.
"Benji, any ideas?"
Benji had one, but he didn't want to give it. He wanted to stay here.
"What do you think will happen if they catch you?" Jonathan demanded. He must have recognized something in Benji's reluctance to move.
"Memory charm," Benji replied dully. The three of them were outside now, on the front walk. A few people were just visible on the dark street, but none seemed very interested in the Clarks.
"You read that article," Jonathan countered. "It's memory charms for Tina and I, but what for you?"
"Azkaban," Benji realized.
"And they'll make us forget you entirely. Is that what you want?"
That snapped Benji out of it. If he went to Azkaban, the Dementors would make him relive this conversation over and over in his head, forever.
"We need to go the biggest post office in Leeds."
"Why Leeds? How do you know?" Jonathan asked.
"Loland, Ev, Ev, Dreams, and Scoodlers. It was right in front of us the whole time."
"But that's from the Wizard of Oz riddle," Jonathan said. "It's out of date."
"The other one says Glasgow. We were supposed to send a letter, but if we don't have time to send anything but ourselves then Leeds is closer."
Their first problem was transportation. After hardly using their car for more than six months, Jonathan had decided to sell it not long after Benji started at Hogwarts. Benji tried and failed to think of a single bus or train, or combination thereof, that would take them from Cardiff to Leeds, leaving at this time of night, but even if they could find one, it would take, what, an entire day? Did they really have that long?
"Do we have enough money for a cab?" Benji offered, but of course they didn't. Leeds was hundreds of kilometers, what they needed was Benji's wand.
Jonathan didn't answer. There was a mad glint in his eye as he strode across the street and knocked on the door of Ms. Cunningham's house.
Ms. Cunningham said nothing for a moment after opening the door, but whatever notions she got at the unexpected appearance of Jonathan Clark at her doorstep, during a blackout, they were apparently dashed by the appearance of his children behind him.
"Mr. Clark. Um, is your power out too?"
"We need to borrow your car," Jonathan said.
"My car?"
"It's extremely urgent," Jonathan continued. "And…when I say borrow…I don't know if I'll be able to return it."
"Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"Yes, and the only way to help is to let us use your car."
"Shouldn't you-"
"There's no time," Jonathan interrupted, digging in his pocket and pulling out his house key. "Take this, take whatever is in our house that you think is fair payment, but…maybe wait a couple days. Now please!"
After a final moment of hesitation, Ms. Cunningham pulled her own set of keys off a nearby hook, detached one, and she and Jonathan swapped.
Jonathan barely took the time to say "thank you" before hurrying Benji and Tina to the waiting car.
While he was still fumbling with the keys, Tina said, "Daddy?" in a tone that made Benji's hair stand on end. He couldn't see where she was pointing in the darkness, but figured it out for himself soon enough. There were lights moving around in their house, and not torches either, wandlight. Benji could recognize their particular glow now.
"They're looking for us!" he whispered urgently.
"Get in!" Jonathan commanded, finally springing the lock. The piled into the car and he peeled out of the drive and down the street.
Benji found a map in the glove box, calculated the distance they had to travel at almost 400 kilometers, and laid out a course. Jonathan took this information grimly and pulled into a gas station two cities away from Cardiff.
Tina refused to talk to Benji for the entire trip but he refused to give up trying to apologize for how he'd told her she wasn't a witch. She'd been so excited about going to Hogwarts, and Benji had agonized for so long about how to tell her that she was a Muggle after all. He could hardly believe how insensitive he'd been. Some doctor he'd make.
"Let it go," Jonathan said eventually. "Everyone says things sometimes that they regret later. She'll forgive you in time."
"If they catch us, I don't want her to be angry with me the last time she knows I exist."
"Then we better not let them catch us," Jonathan said, with a note in his voice that Benji hadn't heard since his Mum died. "Can they tell where you are if you don't do magic?"
"I don't know."
Jonathan nodded and drove a little faster. Benji passed the time by checking their progress against the map.
They reached Leeds a little after midnight. Jonathan found the post office after some searching, but drove past it, parked a few blocks away, and made them walk back.
"Now what?" he asked Benji as they looked up at the closed building.
Unfortunately, Benji had no idea. If whoever was supposed to be helping them was expecting letters here, then they would have to come and check the place eventually, but were they even watching Leeds anymore?
"I think we should stay here and wait," Benji said eventually.
"Right here?" Tina asked. "Can't we stay in a hotel?"
"Whoever they are, they're not expecting us, we have to watch for them," Benji said, sorry to disappoint her, but glad she was speaking to him again.
"But it's cold out," Tina complained, "and I have to go to the bathroom."
Jonathan pointed her toward a nearby patch of bushes. Tina crinkled up her nose but complied.
It only got colder as the night wore on, and they hadn't had the time to grab any blankets in their mad dash to leave the house, they'd barely thought to get their coats. Instead they had to huddle close together on a sidewalk bench for warmth.
Yesterday, Benji would have thought he was too old to doze off on his father's shoulder. Today he wasn't. Twice he stirred and found Jonathan speaking quietly with police officers who offered to give them a ride to the nearest homeless shelter. The second one got insistent and almost refused to believe Jonathan's story that they were waiting for a ride from a friend. After that, they moved to a better hidden place in a clump of trees and bushes that still overlooked the post office.
When Benji finally woke properly the sky was just starting to grow light. It looked like Jonathan had drifted off, and on his other side Tina was snoring gently. Hoping they hadn't missed whoever they were looking for, Benji kept still, listened to the birds singing, and watched the sky grow lighter, wondering what had woken him. Eventually he figured it out: it was an arrhythmic series of pops in the spaces around them, something like the banging of old pipes, except that they were outside. Guessing that sounds turning up where they shouldn't was a good indicator of magic, Benji straightened up and looked around in time to spot a red haired man approaching the post office. He unlocked the door before he even reached it, without any rattle of keys, and slipped inside.
"Dad! Tina! Wake up!" Benji whispered, poking them urgently. "Someone's here! It's a wizard. Quick, before he leaves!"
Jonathan was awake and on his feet almost immediately, but Tina wasn't so fast. Benji and Jonathan half tugged and half carried her along until she woke up enough to run for herself. Benji reached the post office first and ran inside, startling the red haired man as he emerged from the back room. He half raised a wand when he saw Benji, then lowered it again.
"We found your riddle in The Quibbler!" Benji blurted. "It said to come here if we needed help, right?"
Jonathan and Tina appeared before the wizard could respond and Jonathan said, "A lot of people are on their way over here, are they part of this?"
The wizard's eyes grew wide. He darted to a window, swore, and returned to the three of them.
"Take my hands," he said.
They did. A moment later they were somewhere else. Benji doubled over coughing. He didn't know what dimension they had just traveled through, but it sure seemed not to like visitors. The ambient air was warmer, they must have traveled south.
"Which of you is Muggle-born?" the red haired man asked when the three of them had recovered enough to speak. He looked hopefully at Jonathan, but seemed unsurprised when Benji raised his hand. Benji, on the other hand, was surprised that Tina didn't raise hers.
"Then we have even less time than I thought," the wizard continued. He turned to Benji. "How are you on a broom?"
"Terrible."
"That'll have to be good enough. I'll summon you one, then Apparate these two to where we're going. Just head south – that way – and I'll find you. Can you do that?"
"I-"
"We're not splitting up," Jonathan interrupted.
"He's underage. The Ministry knows whenever magic happens around him: what and where. And since he's Muggle-born you can bet someone's paying attention. And Muggles can't use brooms."
"We're not splitting up," Jonathan repeated. "I don't even know your name."
"Charlie. Charlie Weasley."
Benji finally saw the resemblance between this man and Fred and George Weasley, who had made such names for themselves during Benji's first year.
Charlie took three steps away, three steps back, sized up Jonathan and Tina, and said, "I have an idea. You may not like it much."
"We'll do anything," Benji said.
Charlie nodded, flicked his wand, though it didn't look like he'd done anything, held out his hand, and said, "Grab hold."
It took Benji several minutes to recognize where Charlie had taken them this time. They were standing inside a dense forest on one side of a tall fence with no visible gate. He didn't get it until Hagrid ran heavily up to the other side of the fence, huffing loudly and leading four of the practically skeletal horses that pulled the carriages between Hogsmeade station and Hogwarts.
"Got here soon's I could, Charlie," he said. "What d'yeh…Benji Clark, is that you?"
"Hi, Hagrid."
"I've missed seein' yeh this year. Was hopin' to have yeh in my class. 'Course the powers that be seem to think I'm unfit to teach my class, but-"
"Hagrid, he's got the trace, we need to hurry before they catch up."
"Righ', over yeh get, my beauties," Hagrid said, giving one of the horses a smack on the rump. The four of them spread membranous wings and sailed up and over the fence.
"Okay, these are Thestrals," Charlie explained. "They're only visible to people who've seen someone die, so…"
He trailed off here, having looked up to see that Benji, Tina, and Jonathan had already selected their mounts.
"Think I'll use a broom, actually," he continued uncomfortably. Lucky him. "Point is, they can take us where we're going, and navigate by themselves if they have to, and the Ministry won't be able to track us. To…to Lancaster, then." He flicked his wand again after deciding this, again with no visible effect, but this time Benji realized that he must have sent a message somewhere.
"Lancaster!" Benji demanded as they all mounted and took to the sky. "But we're in Scotland! Northern Scotland! And we were just in Leeds!" He'd spent a long time studying the map during that car ride.
"Sorry," Charlie replied, and he sounded it. "It doesn't usually work like this. You're the first underage Muggle-born to get in contact. Benji, was it?"
He nodded. "That's Tina, and my Dad's name is Jonathan."
"You're testing my wits today, Benji," Charlie concluded.
"They put a memory charm on me," Benji explained. "It took a long time to figure out the riddle. By the time I did it was almost too late."
Charlie nodded, looking contemplative.
The Thestrals were fast, but it still took hours to fly the length of Scotland. They spoke little, mostly because doing so required shouting to be heard, but Charlie flew among them often to make sure everyone was doing all right. It gave Benji plenty of time to think, and his mind strayed constantly toward the revelations he'd had after breaking through the memory charm, and what they meant to his place in the wizarding world, or the Muggle world. It made his head an unpleasant place to spend the day, but at least it distracted from his empty stomach, parched mouth, wind chapped skin, and aching legs.
When they at last set down in the middle of a wood, all of them collapsed to the ground in piles of bones and stiff muscles, Charlie included.
"I don't wanna do that again," Tina rasped, curling into a ball. A moment later two men and a child sized being appeared and rushed to help them to their feet and across the boundary of what looked to be a destroyed house.
"You're alright now," said the one who was helping Benji and Tina. He led them to a wooden bench that looked like it had been hastily constructed out of the remains of a table and chairs. Someone pressed a cold glass of water into Benji's hand and he drained it three times in less than a minute. That was when Benji realized he was sobbing has hard as he had ever done. His father and sister were too.
"Where are we?" Jonathan asked some minutes later, when they had all calmed down a little. Tina was lying across his legs, arms wrapped around his knees while he stroked her hair. It looked like the past eighteen hours had completely done her in. Benji didn't blame her. Another hour on a Thestral and he'd probably have been at least as much of a mess.
"This is my house," one of the men said. He had several angry scars across his face, but his eyes were kind. "At least it used to be. Despite appearances, it has all the usual wards and protections. Nowhere in the United Kingdom is completely safe for Muggle-borns, but we should be all right here for now, as long as no one does any magic. I'm Remus Lupin, that's Ted Tonks, Kreacher the House Elf, and of course you've met Charlie. Welcome to the Invisible Portkey."
"Invisible Portkey? That's what we're going with?" Charlie asked.
"This isn't the time," Mr. Lupin told him.
"Jonathan, Benjamin, and Tina Clark," Jonathan said, reaching up to shake their hands. Benji did the same. "Thank you for rescuing us."
"Think nothing of it," Mr. Tonks replied. "I'm sorry you had so much trouble-"
"Can one of you take my magic away?" Benji blurted.
The three wizards looked at each other.
"I'm afraid not," Mr. Tonks replied.
"Or do a better memory charm, at least," Benji continued. "Please, I don't want to be a wizard anymore."
"Perhaps…perhaps we could find someone with the skill to do that," Mr. Tonks said. "But I don't think we should. Would you like to take a walk with me and we can talk about why?"
Supposing that one against one was better than one against six, Benji stood and followed Mr. Tonks through the rubble. They walked outside the former boundaries of the house and around to the opposite corner, where half a wall blocked the others from view.
"Most people I've met would give their eye teeth to keep their magic, as if it was possible to give it up," Mr. Tonks began. "Why wouldn't you?"
"I never asked for this," Benji replied, "and all it's done is cause trouble, and wizard-kind doesn't want me anyways, so-" He had to cut himself off. He didn't want to start crying again.
"This is a hard time to get introduced to magic society," Mr. Tonks admitted. "But I promise wizard-kind does want you, no matter what you might have heard from the Ministry. You're supposed to be, what, a fourth year?"
"Third."
"You found us by yourself with only two years of school?" Mr. Tonks asked, then refocused. "But didn't you enjoy those two years? Weren't you excited to go to Hogwarts and find out everything you're capable of doing?"
"I suppose," Benji said. "They did a memory charm. It's all still a little jumbled."
"Two years of school and a memory charm," Mr. Tonks whispered. "Remind me not to get in your way."
"I won't have to, just find someone to do a better memory charm and I'll stay away forever."
"Even if I did, you'd still be a wizard, only one who doesn't know how to control his abilities," Mr. Tonks explained. "It would find ways to leak out. You'd be a danger to everyone around you, and yourself most of all."
"I already am."
"And worst of all, you would go through life always feeling like a piece of yourself is missing."
"I already do."
"And-" Mr. Tonks broke off and waited for Benji to explain.
"My Mum died of cancer not long before I got my Hogwarts letter," he said, studying the woods as he spoke, just for something to look at that wasn't a human being. "Magic could have saved her, couldn't it?"
"Probably," Mr. Tonks admitted. "I'm so sorry."
"Wizards don't care about Muggles," Benji continued. "My Dad and sister don't matter to them any more than my Mum did."
Benji knew what Mr. Tonks was going to say. It was what adults always said about things like this: that it was more complicated than Benji realized, that he would understand when he was older. Except he wouldn't. He would just wake up one day and realize he had accepted it as the way things were.
"You're right," Mr. Tonks replied, and Benji looked at him in surprise. "The average wizard hardly understands Muggles at all. Even Muggle-borns. And how could we? We go away to school when we're eleven and live in both worlds for a little while, but eventually we become as integrated in magical society as any pureblood. Over time you lose touch and forget what it means to be a Muggle."
"You're Muggle-born too?"
Mr. Tonks nodded.
"Why hasn't the Ministry come after you?"
"They've tried," Mr. Tonks sighed. "I've managed to hide so far, but I don't know for how much longer."
"I'm sorry."
"Me too, but we were talking about you. Do you know what you're going to do?"
Do? Benji could hardly stand up. His plans went no further than finalizing his escape from the Ministry.
"You could find ways to help your Muggle-born classmates remember where they come from, and help your classmates from magical families learn about Muggles."
"I don't have any classmates."
"You will again," Mr. Tonks assured him. "What do you want to be when you leave Hogwarts?"
Benji already wasn't allowed in Hogwarts. He'd seen that fence. Didn't that count as leaving? "I wanted to be a Healer."
"No reason you can't be, if that's still what you want."
"I'm not smart enough."
"I made a mistake when I wrote those riddles," Mr. Tonks said. "I was thinking about adult Muggle-borns, not students, and certainly not third years who've had a memory charm placed on them. But you figured it out anyway. Someone who can do that can do anything they set their minds to, including convincing wizard-kind that Muggles are worth paying attention to."
"I…guess," Benji said. It was strange to think that anyone else would ever listen to him on a subject as big as that.
"Your problem is one of ignorance and habit, not hatred or indifference, at least in general, and during normal times," Mr. Tonks explained. "Take your example. Magic-folk do get cancer, but it's so easily treated that it's thought of as little more than a nuisance. Even Muggle-born wizards are not often aware that Muggles consider it a devastating disease. But think about why that is: if you hadn't been so profoundly affected at such a young age, would you really know what cancer is, even now?"
"Maybe not," Benji admitted.
"So what do you say," Mr. Tonks continued. "Let Harry put an end to You-Know-Who, then you can go and cure cancer? Sound all right?"
"Okay."
"Okay." Mr. Tonks led the way back around to where the others were waiting. Charlie had left, but a woman with purple hair had replaced him. She was sitting with Tina while Tina sipped something out of a mug. Jonathan and Mr. Lupin were having an involved discussion about the inner workings of magic. Mr. Tonks waited until Mr. Lupin had finished making his point about Transfiguration before interrupting.
"Our friend Kreacher has the ability to break through the wards that the Ministry is using to prevent magic-folk from leaving the country," he explained. "He can take you anywhere in the world you want to go. If you don't have any friends or family abroad that you can call on, many other displaced Muggle-borns have taken up residence at Beauxbatons Academy of Magic in France. Benjamin could even continue his education there. Tina too, in one of the nearby towns."
"We'll go to Beauxbatons," Jonathan decided immediately. If he looked carefully, Benji could see that just a little weight of responsibility had been lifted from his father's back. It changed the set of his shoulders.
"Very good," Mr. Tonks replied. "Kreacher, whenever you're ready."
"Wait!" Jonathan exclaimed. "I don't know how to thank you for rescuing us, or how to repay you."
"No need," Mr. Lupin said. "Just tell the people you meet what's happening here. We're going to need all the help we can get when this comes to a real fight."
"And Benjamin, don't forget what we talked about," Mr. Tonks added. "You're going to be all right. Never give up."
Benji nodded.
"Kreacher will take you to France now," said the funny little fellow in the pillowcase. He took their hands, and a moment later the four of them were standing in an elegant courtyard.
"Hi Kreacher!" a young voice called from nearby. "Look Mum! More Muggle-borns!"
Benji spun, looking for whoever had spoken, but his head kept spinning and he nearly lost his feet.
"Careful Mr. Benjamin," Kreacher said, keeping hold of his hand. "We is in the mountains now."
Benji understood: the air was much thinner here, only a few lungs full was enough to prove it. Tina was panting next to him and Jonathan had staggered over to lean against a nearby pillar. Benji tried to clear his ears and realized his nose was bleeding.
"Not to worry," said a woman's voice. Someone pressed a wad of tissues into Benji's hands. "That happens to some people. Just breathe deeply for a little while. Try not to exert yourselves for a few days and you'll be back to normal after that."
Benji nodded and his head swam again. He had to lean over, but the nosebleed seemed to be slowing already.
"Welcome to Beauxbatons," the woman continued. Benji hadn't managed to straighten up long enough to actually look at her yet. "I'm Marissa Berkley, that's my son Phillip. There are a couple other families here too. I'll show you around when you're all ready. But for right now all you need to know is that there's no war here, and no one cares if you're Muggle-borns, or Muggles, or any of that. You're safe he-"
Benji looked over to see that his father had pulled Marissa into a tight hug. Benji, Tina, and Phillip piled in too.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," was all they could say.