Ross had pitied Demelza Carne when he'd thought about her, which wasn't often. She wasn't a Gryffindor and she didn't play Quidditch and she was a full two years behind him which might well have been one of the epochs the Muggles assigned to history with a long name to hold the dinosaurs or a sea full of trilobites. It had been evident someone had tampered with the Sorting Hat, perhaps some time-release spell from the era of the Weasley twins of sainted memory, for there was hardly a Slytherin so scrawny, so unconnected to a great family, so unprepossessing and Mugglish and he wondered, even time she was within his sight, her robes dragging, trod upon by her mangy familiar Garrick, nine-tenths an ordinary wolfhound, why she had not been sent to the badgers' den, to be cosseted by the Hufflepuffs into the witch she could become. There was no one to ask, the Headmaster too remote and busy with the liaison with the Ibizan satellite academy, the Gryffindor Head of House absorbed only in House rivalries and securing the Cup. Not one of his friends could be bothered about the runt of Slytherin and Elizabeth raised an eyebrow as prettily as if she'd Glamoured it when he mentioned it over buttered crumpets and the strong China tea Ross preferred and that the House-elves had noted from the first week after he'd arrived at Hogwarts.
He'd felt sorry for Demelza and obscurely for doing nothing about it, annoyed that no one else minded, until the day he'd found her singing at the edge of the Great Lake by the white sepulcher that was Dumbledore's tomb, her hair crackling with some weird electricity and her hands outstretched, beckoning or welcoming or warning, he couldn't tell. He'd felt sorry for her that she wasn't cozy among the loyal, comforting Hufflepuffs who'd overlook her every aspect of poverty until he saw how she'd brought the whole court of the Merpeople to the surface, breaking the slick black water for a meeting of unknown significance, except that the chieftain offered a little circlet of weed and pearl, caught with a shimmering veil and Demelza let it be place in her hand and did not stop singing, singing as if her heart would break, as if she would cast a spell they'd all forgotten, as if she did a magick there was no name for. Ross had felt sorry for her until he realized just what a Slytherin she was and how that meant how little he'd known. He'd thought to slip away, as she always had before, to escape her notice, but she'd seen him and she did something then, split her voice like water split the light into a rainbow and while she sang on and on, he heard a different refrain:
"Stay, stay, a year and a day, stay."