The oaf was back. I'd been thinking I might actually do all right in my Care of Magical Creatures O.W.L. if I had a decent teacher, but of course they sent Grubbly-Plank packing as soon as the oaf returned. The Gryffindors all had to pretend to be pleased at this – they always stick by their own – but I exchanged dark looks with Crabbe and Goyle.

"Manticores today, you reckon?"

A few people laughed bitterly. But then, to my horror, the oaf grinned and started leading us off to the Forbidden Forest.

"We're workin' in here today," he beamed idiotically. "Bit more sheltered! Anyway, they prefer the dark."

"What prefers the dark?" I said in alarm. This was bloody typical. The whole class was about to be fed to some monster and, as usual, I was the only one who seemed even remotely bothered. "What did he say prefers the dark – did you hear?"

"Ready? Right, well, I've bin savin' a trip inter the forest fer yer fifth year. Thought we'd go an' see these creatures in their natural habitat. Now what we're studyin' today is pretty rare, I reckon I'm probably the on'y person in Britain who's managed ter train 'em."

This was not what I wanted to hear. It was obviously going to be something horrible. The way he deludes himself into thinking he can control these monsters – it'd almost be funny, if our lives weren't at risk.

"And you're sure they're trained are you?" I demanded incredulously. "Only it wouldn't be the first time you'd brought dangerous stuff to class, would it?" Even the Gryffindors had to give me that. The oaf's a danger to us all, yet Dumbledore turns a blind eye to everything he does. Breeding those ghastly Blast-Ended Skrewts was illegal and he still got away with it, even when it was reported in the press, and the Hippogriff that savaged me neatly disappears and no-one thinks they need look into it any further.

"Course they're trained,"

"What happened to your face, then?" The bruising on his face is so bad that it makes his face look like a bowl of rotten fruit, yet he's expecting us to line up for the same thing.

"Mind yer own business! Now, if yeh've finished askin' stupid questions, follow me!"

I was more than half inclined just to stay there, as indeed was everyone else, but after Potter, Weasley and Granger followed the oaf into the Forest, the rest of us didn't really have a choice. Thinking that my testimony could come in handy were the Wizengamot ever to try the oaf for criminal negligence (resulting in the deaths of foolhardy Gryffindors and unfortunate Slytherins) I followed the rest of the class into the Forest.

"Gather roun', gather roun'. Now, they'll be attracted by the smell o' the meat but I'm goin' ter give 'em a call anyway, 'cause they'll like to know it's me." The oaf threw down the stinking cow carcass in a small clearing and whistled.

Nothing happened.

Trying to suppress the thought that whatever beast the oaf was planning to feed us to was silently preparing to pounce on us where we stood, I suddenly saw the carcass moving. He's bred an invisible monster, I thought in a sudden panic. He's probably crossed a Quintaped with a Demiguise. Our chests will be hacked open before we can take another breath and I am the only one who can see it coming. I watched the carcass in trepidation, waiting for it to stop shaking, signaling the beginning of the bloodbath. But it kept moving; bits of meat were just breaking off and disappearing. We were all watching the carcass now. I looked around at other people to see if they were preparing to make a dash for it if needs be, and noticed something. Potter could see the thing. He wasn't looking at the carcass; his eyes were definitely fixed on a point above and to the side of it. And then I noticed it wasn't just Potter; Theodore Nott and Longbottom could see it too. What was this beast that some could see and others couldn't?

Then, it clicked. I'd known that they lived in the grounds, as the school governors had had had several complaints about them; a lot of wizarding families find them too sinister to be around children, despite the fact that most kids can't see them. Thestrals.

Theodore could see them? I'd had no idea. I've known him a long time; longer, probably, than anyone else here. I've known him so long that I still think of him as Theodore even though we started referring to each other by our surnames when we got to Hogwarts, as one does in Slytherin. But I wouldn't say that I knew him, not really. He's one of those people who will talk to you without disclosing anything about himself, and even though you could be living in the same dormitory for years you still feel as though you don't know them any better than you did the first night at Hogwarts. I wondered who it was he's seen die. Maybe most people would probably think that it was his mother, but I didn't; he would only have been about a year old when she died. No, it must have been someone else. Who though? Best not to ask, if he doesn't volunteer the information. There's no telling what he might have seen. His father is, after all, a Death Eater like mine, and he doesn't have my mother poking her nose in and making sure her precious baby doesn't hear too much. Not that I envy the loss of a parent of course, but sometimes I honestly think my mother reckons I'm about five.

The oaf surveyed the class and said, "Now…put yer hands up, who can see 'em?"

Nott raised his hand half-heartedly along with Longbottom and Potter.

"Yeah…yeah, I knew you'd be able ter, Harry. An' you too, Neville eh? An' –"

I had to do something. I was absolutely convinced that there was a good reason Nott had never mentioned anything and that unless I interrupted people were going to start wondering how this Slytherin son of a Death Eater had seen death, which would then lead to awkward questions. We all have family secrets; Nott, Crabbe, Goyle and I, we all know we will be expected to take our fathers' places alongside the Dark Lord. I didn't need to know the specifics, because the texture of our family life has been the same. We stand by each other, unconditionally. I still don't think he knows what I did for him.

"Excuse me," I said loudly, "but what exactly are we supposed to be seeing?"

A/N: Review please? I have been working on this story for ages and have amassed about 17000+ words (scarily, it's now longer than my Master's dissertation) which I want to edit and tweak until it's the best it can be. A lot of the chapters are only half-written, if that, so feedback along the way would be much appreciated…