A/N: I was thinking about all the evacuating students in DH. This came to me.

Reflections

The Slytherin common room is under the lake. We get in via a gargoyle that opens a big stone archway. There is a big window into the lake. Merpeople, grindylows, all sorts of underwater creatures go past. At night, the lights from our wall torches catch their eyes and make the green depths glow. Shoals of silvery fish come and mob like moths against the glass. Green and silver: the colours of our house, and our common room.

I am a Slytherin. I am meant to belong there.

The Slytherin common room is full of shadows. They whisper and plot, gather in dark corners with wands always at the ready. Death Eaters, prefects, the power hungry and ambitious. At night, they use curses you can only find in the Restricted section. The other shadows mob around them, and laugh.

First years are pawns in the games that they play.

~:~

Hogwarts is a huge castle. You could fit our house in the Entrance Hall, and still have space to walk round it. The ceiling of the Great Hall looks exactly like the sky outside. There are a hundred classrooms to learn in, a thousand corridors to get lost in, and a million books in the library. Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff: the great walls gather us together.

I am a first year. I am meant to belong here.

Hogwarts is divided, like a chasm through the vast stone blocks. People are hurt in the classrooms. Dark figures patrol the corridors. You have to be careful what books you borrow from the library. You can't choose what you learn. The teachers try to protect us, but they can't do very much against those two.

Students are pawns in the games that they play.

~:~

The wizarding world is made new now, purified for true magic. All those who stole our magic have been purged out, and punished. The Ministry tells us of the peaceful pure-blood society that is coming. Wizards are no longer poor and down-trodden and persecuted into hiding.

I am a pure-blood. I am meant to belong in this new world.

The wizarding world is dangerous, now. All those who do what THEY don't like are dragged off, and never seen again. People who hurt and kill and brag about it make up the Ministry. Nobody says the name of the One who's in charge. The Taboo stops you.

Pure-bloods are pawns in the games that He plays.

~:~

There is a scrawny Slytherin first-year looking back from the glass of the window I stare out from. When I close my right eye, he closes his left. I look one way, he looks the other.

Are we the only one who sees these things?

~:~:~:~