AN: For those of you who will be wondering who Imamu Ibori is in this chapter, don't worry, there is a reason for this as his name will pop up quite a few times in this book, so keep your eyes peeled.

Chapter 3

In Memorium

KIARA

Yes, it's me again, back in my grandmothers' cottage, bleeding.

Yes, I was bleeding. Clutching my right hand in my left and swearing under my breath, I shouldered open my bedroom door and, keeping my bleeding hand elevated, I tramped across to the bathroom to run my finger under the tap.

It was stupid, pointless, irritating beyond belief, that I still had four days left of being unable to perform magic ... but I had to admit to myself that this jagged cut in my finger would have defeated me. I had never learned how to repair wounds and now I came to think of it - particularly in light of my immediate plans - this seemed a serious flaw in my magical education. Making a mental note to ask Sian how it was done, I bandaged up my finger as best I could, before I returned to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

I had spent the morning completely emptying my school trunk for the first time since I had packed it six years ago. At the start of the intervening school years, I had merely skimmed off the topmost three quarters of the contents and replaced or updated them, leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom - old quills, desiccated beetle eyes, socks that no longer fitted. Minutes previously I had plunged my hand into this mulch, experienced a stabbing pain in the fourth finger of my right hand and withdrawn it to see a lot of blood.

I now proceeded a little more cautiously. Kneeling down beside the trunk again, I groped around in the bottom and, after retrieving an old badge that flickered feebly between Support GEORGIA DIGGS and PRIDE-LANDER STINKS, a cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope and a silver locket inside which a note signed "O.B.W." had been hidden, I finally discovered the sharp edge that had done the damage. I recognised it at once. It was a two-inch-long fragment of the enchanted mirror that my mum's best friend, Pumbaa Warts, had given me. I laid it aside and felt cautiously around the trunk for the rest, but nothing remained of Pumbaa's last gift except powdered glass, which clung to the deepest layer of debris like glittering grit.

I sat up and examined the jagged piece on which I had cut myself, seeing nothing but my own dark amber eye reflected back at me. Then I placed the fragment on top of that morning's Daily Squabbler, which lay unread on the bed, and attempted to stem the sudden upsurge of bitter memories, the stabs of regret and of longing the discovery of the broken mirror had occasioned, by attacking the rest of the rubbish in the trunk.

It took another hour to empty it completely, throw away the useless items and sort the remainder in piles according to whether or not I would need them from now on. My school and Quidditch robes, cauldron, parchment, quills and most of my textbooks were piled in a corner, to be left behind. I did not bother thinking about what my grandmothers would do with them, for neither they nor I would be - but no, I wouldn't let myself go there just yet. My Muggle clothing, Invisibility Cloak, potion-making kit, certain books, my wash and makeup bags, hairbrushes, the photograph album Mina had given me, the framed picture of my parents on their wedding day, a stack of letters that were in a box that Grandmother Sarabi had given me a few days previously and my wand had been repacked into a large old rucksack. In a front pocket were the Scallywag's Map and the locket signed "O.B.W." inside it. The locket was accorded this place of honour not because it was valuable - in all usual senses it was worthless - but because of what it had cost to attain it.

This left a sizeable stack of newspapers sitting on my desk beside my snowy owl, Harold: one for each of the days I had spent at my grandmothers' cottage that summer.

I got up off the floor, stretched and moved across to my desk. Harold made no movement as I began to flick through the newspapers, throwing them on to the rubbish pile one by one; the owl was asleep, or else faking; he was angry with me about the limited amount of time he was allowed out of his cage at the moment.

As I neared the bottom of the pile of newspapers, I slowed down, searching for one particular edition which I knew had arrived shortly after I had returned to my grandmothers' cottage for the summer; I remembered that there had been a small mention on the front about the resignation of Christian Boggles, the Muggle Studies teacher at Dragon Mort. At last I found it. Turning to page ten, I sank into my desk chair and reread the article I had been looking for.

SUSAN CRIGHTON REMEMBERED by Ellie Dodge

I met Susan Crighton at the age of eleven, on our first day at Dragon Mort. Our mutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ourselves to be outsiders. I had contracted dragon pox shortly before arriving at school, and while I was no longer contagious, my pockmarked visage and greenish hue did not encourage many to approach me. For her part, Susan had arrived at Dragon Mort under the burden of unwanted notoriety. Scarcely a year previously, her mother, Lillian, had been convicted of a savage and well-publicised attack upon three young Muggles.

Susan never attempted to deny that her mother (who was to die in Azkaban) had committed this crime; on the contrary, when I plucked up the courage to ask her, she assured me that she knew her mother to be guilty. Beyond that, Crighton refused to speak of the sad business, though many attempted to make her do so. Some, indeed, were disposed to praise her mother's action and assumed that Susan, too, was a Muggle-hater. They could not have been more mistaken: as anybody who knew Susan would attest, she never revealed the remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Indeed, her determined support for Muggle rights gained her many enemies in subsequent years.

In a matter of months, however, Susan's own fame had begun to eclipse that of her mother. By the end of her first year, she would never again be known as the daughter of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing more or less than the most brilliant student ever seen at the school. Those of us who were privileged to be her friends benefitted from her example, not to mention her help and encouragement, with which she was always generous. She confessed to me later in life that she knew even then that her greatest pleasure lay in teaching.

She not only won every prize of note that the school offered, she was soon in regular correspondence with the most notable magical names of the day, including Nicola Fleming, the celebrated alchemist, Imami Ibori, the noted South African historian, and Adalbert Waffling, the magical theoretician. Several of her papers found their way into learned publications such as Transfiguration Today, Challenges in Charming and The Practical Potioneer. Crighton's future career seemed likely to be meteoric, and the only question that remained was when she would become Minister for Magic. Though it was often predicted that she was on the point of taking the job, however, she never had Ministerial ambitions.

Three years after we had started at Dragon Mort Susan's sister, Sara, arrived at school. They were not alike; Sara was never bookish and, unlike Susan, preferred to settle arguments by duelling rather than through reasoned discussion. However, it is quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that the sisters were not friends. They rubbed along as two such different girls could do. In fairness to Sara, it must be admitted that living in Susan's shadow could not have been an altogether comfortable experience. Being continually outshone was an occupational hazard of being her friend and cannot have been any more pleasurable as a sister.

When Susan and I left Dragon Mort, we intended to take the then traditional tour of the world together, visiting and observing foreign wizards, before pursuing our separate careers. However, tragedy intervened. On the very eve of our trip, Susan's father, Johnathon, died, leaving Susan the head, and sole breadwinner, of the family. I postponed my departure long enough to pay my respects at Johnathon's funeral, then left for what was now to be a solitary journey. With a younger sister and brother to care for, and a little gold left to them, there could no longer be any question of Susan accompanying me.

That was the period of our lives when we had least contact. I wrote to Susan, describing, perhaps insensitively, the wonders of my journey from narrow escapes from Chimareas in Greece to the experiments of the Egyptian alchemists. Her letters told me little of her day-to-day life, which I guessed to be frustratingly dull for such a brilliant witch, although she would say every so often that a rich aunt of hers would go and see her once a week, to provide funds when necessary, but more often than not to watch over her younger brother and sister, so that Susan could have some leisure time, for which Susan was extremely grateful for. Immersed in my own experiences, it was with horror that I heard, towards the end of my year's travels, that yet another tragedy had struck the Crightons: the death of her brother, Sean.

Though Sean had been in poor health for a long time, the blow, coming so soon after the loss of their father, had a profound effect on both of his sisters. All those closest to Susan - and I count myself one of that lucky number - agree that Sean's death and Susan's feeling of personal responsibility for it (though, of course, she was guiltless) left their mark upon her forever more.

I returned to the Crighton residence to find a young woman who had experienced a much older person's suffering. Susan was more reserved than before, and much less light-hearted. To add to her misery, the loss of Sean had led, not to a renewed closeness between Susan and Sara, but to an estrangement. (In time this would lift - in later years they re-established, if not a close relationship, then certainly a cordial one.) However, she rarely spoke of her parents or of Sean from then on, and her friends learned not to mention them.

Other quills will describe the triumph of the following years. Crighton's immeasurable contributions in the store of wizarding knowledge, including her informative papers on the twelve uses of dragon's blood, will benefit generations to come, as will the wisdom she displayed in her judgements when she had a place in the Wizengamot. They say, still, that no wizarding duel - apart from Grindelwald and Dumbledore's - ever matched that between Crighton and Femwazz in 1955. Those who witnessed it have written on the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary witches do battle. Crighton's triumph, and its consequence for the wizarding world, are considered a turning point in magical history to match the introduction of the International Statue of Secrecy or the downfall of He Who Must Not Be Named, and the downfall of She Who Must Not Be Named.

Of course, some good did come into Susan's life in later years. Many men wanted to court her, but she refused them all, until she saw Matthew Dawson, a man who was a few decades younger than Susan, this is true, but Susan saw something in Matthew that no one else did, and the age difference did not affect either of them, for Matthew saw something in Susan, too, for they were courting, and within a matter of months they were wed. People talked about how Susan could have chosen someone like Matthew Dawson, a man with no fortune, for a husband, but Susan didn't care. She was too happy. Her aunt saw how happy she was, and so gave Susan the inheritance that she ought to have received at seventeen, but wanted to wait until Susan had got married first. Together, Susan and Matthew used some of the money to build a house that they would later come to raise their children in. The rest of the money was put away, and he amount grew because of Matthew's job as an Auror.

Susan and Matthew had eleven children: eight born of their mother, one adopted son and a further two sons they fostered. Susan was proud of all her children and loved them all dearly, but there was one child she loved more than any other: her firstborn, Sian. Anyone who ever saw them together could see just how much mother and daughter doted upon one another. Whenever I would see her, Susan would always say just how much she loved Sian, and I could see it in her eyes just how proud she was of Sian.

Susan Crighton was never proud or vain; she could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that her early losses endowed her with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss her friendship more than I can say, but my loss is nothing compared to that of the wizarding world's and, indeed, her family's. That she was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Dragon Mort's headmistresses cannot be in question. A loving, gentle, kind and affectionate wife and mother, she was, who will be sorely missed by all. She died as she lived: working always for the greater good and, to her last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small girl with dragon pox as she was on the day that I met her.

I finished reading but continued to gaze at the picture of accompanying the obituary. Crighton was wearing her familiar, kindly smile, but as she peered at me from out of the newsprint she gave the impression, even in newsprint, of X-raying me, and I felt my sadness mingling with a sense of humiliation.

I had thought I knew Crighton quite well, but ever since reading this obituary I had been forced to recognise that I had barely known her at all. Never once had I imagined Crighton's childhood or youth; it was as though she had sprung into being as I had known her, vulnerable and loving and growing older. The idea of a teenage Crighton was simply odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Sian or a friendly Shudder-Ended Crab. And speaking of Sian ...

I couldn't remember ever feeling more sorry for Sian. I knew of the pain she was in, saw it in her eyes every day before we left Dragon Mort. Whenever I read her letters, she would always skip over the pain she was in, and no matter how many times I would ask her how she was feeling, Sian would always reply with, "I am doing fine". Sian's letters were short and brief, but she always spoke well of her family, and about how Tanya and Geri were driving everyone crazy by keeping up their usual pranking antics. In her latest letter, Sian spoke of her youngest brother, Max, and how he was home, which surprised me, but what surprised me more was that she spoke with pride and joy about him instead of skipping over the subject like she always did, which meant that something must have happened between them. Making a mental note to ask Sian what had happened between her and Max, I then turned my attention back to Crighton.

I had never thought to ask Crighton about her past. No doubt it would have felt strange, impertinent even, but after all, it had been common knowledge that Crighton had taken part in that legendary duel with Femwazz, and I had not thought to ask Crighton what that had been like, nor about any of her other famous achievements. No, we had always discussed me, my past, my future, my plans ... and it seemed to me now, despite the fact that my future was so dangerous and so uncertain, that I had missed irreplaceable opportunities when I had failed to ask Crighton more about herself, even though the only personal question I had ever asked my Headmistress was also the only one I suspected that Crighton had not answered honestly:

"What do you see when you look in the Mirror?"

"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick woollen socks."

After several minutes' thought, I tore the obituary out of the Squabbler, folded it carefully and tucked it inside the first volume of Practical Defensive Magic and its use Against the Dark Arts. Then I threw the rest of the newspaper on to the rubbish pile and turned to face the room. It was much tidier. The only things left out of place were today's Daily Squabbler, still lying on the bed and, on top of it, the piece of broken mirror.

I moved across the room, slid the mirror fragment off today's Squabbler and unfolded the newspaper. I had merely glanced at the headline when I had taken the rolled-up paper from the delivery owl early that morning and thrown it aside, after noting that it said nothing about Zira. I was sure that the Ministry was leaning on the Squabbler to suppress news about Zira. It was only now, therefore, that I saw what I had missed.

Across the bottom half of the front page, a smaller headline was set over a picture of Crighton striding along looking harried: CRIGHTON - THE TRUTH AT LAST?

Coming next week, the shocking story of the floored genius considered by many to be the greatest witch of her generation. Stripping away the popular image of serene, greying-haired wisdom, Peter Meter reveals the disturbed childhood, the lawless youth, the lifelong feuds and the guilty secrets that Crighton carried to her grave. WHY was the woman tipped to be Minister for Magic content to remain a mere headmistress? WHAT was the real purpose of the secret organisation known as the Order of the Centaur? HOW did Crighton really meet her end?

The answers to these, and many more questions are explored in the explosive new biography The Life and Lies of Susan Crighton, by Peter Meter, exclusively interviewed by Bernard Brownlaw, page 13, inside.

I ripped open the paper and found page thirteen. The article was topped with a picture showing another familiar face: a man wearing jewelled glasses with elaborately curled, blond hair, his teeth bared in what was clearly supposed to be a winning smile, winking up at me. Doing my best to ignore this nauseating image, I read on.

In person, Peter Meter is much warmer and softer than his famously ferocious quill-portraits might suggest. Greeting me in the hallway of his cosy home, he leads me straight into the kitchen for a cup of tea, a slice of pound cake and, it goes without saying, a steaming vat of freshest gossip.

"Well, of course, Crighton is a biographer's dream," says Meter. "Such a long, full life. I'm sure my book will be the first of very, very many."

Meter was certainly quick off the mark. His nine-hundred-page book was completed a mere four weeks after Crighton's mysterious death in June. I asked him how he managed this super-fast feat.

"Oh, when you've been a journalist as long as I have, working to a deadline is second nature. I knew that the wizarding world was clamouring for the full story and I wanted to be the fist to meet that need."

I mention the recent, widely publicised remarks of Ellie Dodge, Special Advisor to the Wizengamot and long-standing friend of Susan Crighton's, that "Meter's book contains less fact than a Multi-Flavour Fruit-Frog Card."

Meter throws back his head and laughs.

"Darling Dodgy! I remember interviewing her a few years back about merpeople rights, bless her. Completely gaga, seemed to think we were sitting at the bottom of Lake Windermere, kept telling me to watch out for trout."

And yet Ellie Dodge's accusations of inaccuracy have been echoed in many places. Does Meter really feel that four short weeks have been enough to gain a full picture of Crighton's long and extraordinary life?

"Oh, my dear man," beams Meter, clapping me on the back, "you know as well as I do how much information can be generated by a fat bag of Galleons, a refusal to hear the word 'no' and a nice sharp Quick-Quotes Quill! People were quelling to dish the dirt on Crighton, anyway. Not everyone thought she was so wonderful, you know - she trod on an awful lot of important toes. But old Dodgy Dodge can get off her high Hippogriff, because I've had access to a source most journalists would swap their wands for, one who has never spoken in public before and one who was close to Crighton during the most turbulent and disturbing phase of her youth."

The advance publicity for Meter's biography has certainly suggested that there will be shocks in store for those who believe Crighton to have led a blameless life. What were the biggest surprises he uncovered, I ask.

"Now, come off it, Bernie, I'm not giving away all the highlights before anybody's bought the book!" laughs Meter. "But I can promise that anybody who still thinks Crighton was as white as the lilies that covered her tomb is in for a rude awakening! Let's just say that nobody hearing her rage against She-You-Know would have dreamed that she had dabbled in the Dark Arts herself in her youth! And for a witch who spent her later years pleading for tolerance, she wasn't exactly broad-minded when she was younger! Yes, Susan Crighton had an extremely murky past, not to mention that very fishy family, which she worked so hard to keep hushed up."

I ask whether Meter is referring to Crighton's sister, Sara, whose conviction by the Wizengamot for misuse of magic caused a minor scandal fifteen years ago.

"Oh, Sara is just the tip of the dungheap," laughs Meter. "No, no, I'm talking about much worse than a sister with a fondness for fiddling about with sheep, worse even than the Muggle-maiming mother - Crighton couldn't keep either of them quiet, anyway, they were both charged by the Wizengamot. No, it's the father and the brother that intrigued me, and a little digging uncovered a positive nest of nastiness - but, as I say, you'll have to wait for chapters nine to twelve for full details. All I can say now is, it's not wonder Crighton never talked about how her nose got broken."

Family skeletons notwithstanding, does Meter deny the brilliance that led to Crighton's many magical discoveries?

"She had brains," he concedes, "although many now question whether she could really take full credit for all of her supposed achievements. As I reveal in chapter sixteen, Ivor Dillonsby claims he had written out most of the useful notes on the twelve uses of dragon's blood when Crighton 'borrowed' his papers."

But the importance of some of Crighton's achievements, I venture, be denied. What of her famous defeat of Femwazz?

"Oh, now, I'm glad you mentioned Femwazz," says Meter, with a tantalising smile. "I'm afraid those who go dewy-eyed over Crighton's spectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell - or perhaps a Dungbomb. Very dirt business indeed. All I'll say is, don't be sure that there really was the spectacular duel of legend. After they've read my book, people may be forced to conclude that Femwazz simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of her wand and come quietly!"

Meter refuses to give any more away on this intriguing subject, so we turn instead to the relationship that will undoubtedly fascinate his readers more than any other.

"Oh yes," says Meter, nodding briskly, "I devote an entire chapter to the whole Pride-Lander - Crighton relationship, and another chapter is focused on the relationship Crighton had with her firstborn. But the Pride-Lander - Crighton relationship has been called unhealthy, even sinister. Again, your readers will have to buy my book for the whole story, but there is no question that Crighton took an unnatural interest in Pride-Lander from the word go. Whether that was really in the girl's best interests - well, we'll see. It's certainly an open secret that Pride-Lander has had a troubled adolescence."

I turn back to Crighton's firstborn child for a moment and ask Meter what he thinks of the relationship that she and her mother had.

"Oh, no doubt it was a loving one," says Meter, "but still, there's something about it that seems rather off to me. Yes, Sian - Crighton's firstborn - is a lot like her mother, and yes, it makes sense that Crighton would spend a lot of time with her, but did she ever spend time with any of her other children? Did she even love them? Sian would deny that it was emotional neglect, but I beg to differ. And why was Crighton spending a lot of time with Sian for, anyway? If you ask me, there's something big there, something that needs to be uncovered, which even I, good journalist that I am, could not get to the bottom of - well, not yet, anyway."

Turning my attention back to Kiara Pride-Lander, I ask Meter whether he is still in touch with her, whom he so famously interviewed last year: a breakthrough piece in which Pride-Lander spoke exclusively of her conviction that She-You-Know had returned.

"Oh, yes, we've developed a close bond," says Meter. "Poor Pride-Lander has a few real friends, and we met at one of the most testing moments of her life - the Triwizard Tournament. I am probably one of the only people alive who can say that they know the real Kiara Pride-Lander."

Which leads us to the many rumours still circulating about Crighton's final hours. Does Meter believe that Pride-Lander was there when Crighton died?

"Well, I don't want to say too much - it's all in the book - but eye witnesses inside Dragon Mort Castle saw Pride-Lander running away from the scene moments after Crighton fell, jumped or was pushed. Pride-Lander later gave evidence against Tiana Triphorm, a woman against whom she has a notorious grudge. Is everything as it seems? That is for the wizarding community to decide - once they've read my book."

On that intriguing note I take my leave. There can be no doubt that Meter has quilled an instant bestseller. Crighton's legions of admirers, meanwhile, may well be trembling at what is soon to emerge about their hero.

I reached the bottom of the article, but continued to stare blankly at the page, as revulsion and fury rose inside me like vomit at what I had just read; I balled up the newspaper and threw it, with all my force, at the wall, where it joined the rest of the rubbish heaped around my overflowing bin.

I began to stride blindly around the room, opening empty drawers and picking up books only to replace them on the same piles, as random phrases from Peter's article echoed in my head: an entire chapter to the whole Pride-Lander - Crighton relationship ... it's been called unhealthy, even sinister ... she dabbled in the Dark Arts herself in her youth ... I've had access to a source most journalists would swap their wands for ...

"Lies!" I bellowed, as I sat down hard on the bed. The broken bit of mirror danced away from me; I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers, thinking of Crighton and the lies with which Peter Meter was defaming her ...

A flash of emerald green. I froze, my cut finger slipping on the jagged edge of the mirror again. I had imagined it, I must have done. I glanced over my shoulder, but the wall was painted with flowers and various bright colours that I had done as a child: there was nothing emerald green there for the mirror to reflect. I peered into the mirror fragment again, and saw nothing but my own dark amber eye looking back at me.

I had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it, because I had been thinking of my dead Headmistress. If anything was certain, it was that the bright, emerald green eyes of Susan Crighton would never pierce my own again.