"You see what power is—holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them." —Amy Tan

CHAPTER IX
An Enemy of My Enemy

By the time Jessie arrived in the common room she was teeming with irritation and clutching the strap of her backpack so tightly her hand throbbed. She knew Potter was a real prat sometimes, but she had assumed after all that time in the spotlight he would have learned a bit of tact. Obviously, she told herself angrily, she'd overestimated his abilities.

"Hey, just in time!" Aurelia called from one of the armchairs near the fireplace. In her hand was a bottle of nail polish held very gingerly so as not to smudge the color. "Fancy a manicure before dinner?"

Jessie ripped off her cardigan as she crossed the room. "I'm going for a run," she said in a clipped voice.

"Come on," Daphne urged, popping up from her spot in front of the sofa. "We deserve this after dealing with those damn Gryffindors. Look!" She held up her hands to show off a shimmery pink polish with a wide smile.

"Next time, maybe."

"Jess, it's pouring outside."

"I don't care."

Aurelia raised her eyebrows. "Was the study session that bad?" she asked.

Jessie paused at the foot of the staircase. "It's not that."

"Go on then. We'll catch up with you before Astronomy."

Ten minutes later Jessie was changed into an old tee shirt, running shorts, and athletic trainers. She cast a water repelling charm on her jacket to keep it dry and hurried out onto the grounds. The rain had worsened over the course of the day and was now coming down in torrential sheets. Even though it was only the afternoon, charcoal-colored clouds loomed low overhead and occasionally illuminated briefly as lightning shot through them.

Jessie splashed her way through mud and puddles, jogging past the greenhouses and dark classroom windows. Overhead she heard thunder rumbling. She had always liked thunderstorms; it was a trait she shared with her father. She used to sit on the front stoop of their house with him during the summer and watch for lightning bolts as rain muddied their front yard and thunder cracked in the sky. Lately she had enjoyed the rain more than she had enjoyed nice weather. Maybe it was because whenever it rained, all the buzzing activity that was present during sunny weather ceased. Or maybe it was because if she was outside when it rained, everyone else was inside and it gave her a chance to have some time to herself.

She continued over the uneven terrain until she was running alongside the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Even though she only believed half of what she heard about it, just being in close proximity to it was enough to make her somewhat jumpy. She risked a glance into the trees anyway, despite the warning in the pit of her stomach that told her not to. If she had thought the sky overhead was dark, the tangled mass of dark shapes within the Forest certainly put that to shame. A jittery bubble in her stomach burst as she thought she saw something move between the trees and she quickened her pace, changing course to head down the sloping grounds toward the lake.


"She's the bloody devil, I'm telling you!" Harry said that night at dinner. "She couldn't wait to tear into me about Dark Arts class!" He angrily stabbed at a large piece of chicken on his plate and shoved it into his mouth.

"Well, it probably wasn't the best idea to start the year off debating her brother's death," Hermione said bluntly.

Harry glared at her but didn't say anything as he chewed.

"Just think about how she feels," Hermione continued. "Her brother was killed a few months ago, and her first day back at school someone brings it up in the middle of class. You'd be pretty upset too—don't try to tell me you wouldn't!" she added, seeing that Harry had opened his mouth to protest.

Harry looked to Ron for his opinion, and he groaned when his friend shrugged. "Look, I know where you're coming from, and I'm with you all the way," Ron defended, waving his fork around. A bit of mashed potato flew off the fork and landed next to Hermione's hand. "But she's got a point. Even if it's somebody you don't like, you can't exactly go waving dead family members about in their faces, you know?" He swallowed the forkful of potato and then added, "Unless it's Malfoy. Then you can do whatever the hell you want."

Harry swallowed his food and grumbled to himself. "Still, she was a real bitch about it. 'Saint Potter the Golden Boy'," he mimicked grumpily. "All the Slytherins think I'm Dumbledore's puppet." He moved his food around his plate with his fork, suddenly not interested in eating anymore.

"Saint Potter?" Ron echoed thoughtfully. "We should put that on a plaque. Hang it in the common room."

"Harry, she's a Slytherin," Hermione reminded, and the bitterness in her voice wasn't lost on the two boys seated across from her. "Of course she doesn't like you. Gryffindors and Slytherins have been rivals since the school first opened—"

"But I don't get how she could be that nasty," Harry said. "I'm not chummy with them at all, but I at least made an effort. Her brother was so... nice, you know?"

Ron shrugged. "Maybe she inherited all the bad traits," he suggested around a mouthful of bread. "Cedric was the poster boy for morality and kindness and all that, wasn't he? Maybe she sucked all the evil out of him or something. You know, like a Dementor. Just in a small, fifteen-year-old package."

Harry had the sudden image of Jessie dressed like a Dementor, hovering over her sleeping brother at night like a snotty bat.

Movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he looked over as the "bat" in question strode over to the Slytherin table and sat down with her friends. She was soaked to the bone: her hair was slicked to her head and her shorts were plastered to her legs and dripping water. As she walked across the stone floor Harry could hear her trainers squeak over the din of the students.

"Speak of the devil," he said, nodding toward her. Hermione and Ron turned to watch her, too.

Ron turned and watched as Jessie sat down between her friends. "She doesn't seem so horrible, mate," he said finally. One of the girls made a joke about her appearance, pointing to her hair, and Jessie wrung her hair out and flung water droplets at her.

"How she was in class today was just the tip of the iceberg," Harry muttered.

"Yeah?"

"She shoved a chair at me while I was walking."

And to his chagrin, Ron snorted.

"What the hell is so funny?" Harry snapped.

"She's fifteen; of course she's going to throw a nutty sometimes. Remember how Hermione gets around exam time?" At this Hermione glared at him icily. Ron simply shrugged. "Better yet, hang around the house when Mum and Ginny square off. Gin's voice gets so high-pitched only bats can hear her."

Obviously having heard this, Ginny leaned around several people to fling mashed potatoes at Ron, who ducked behind Hermione. The potatoes instead hit Fred, who turned and gazed at his sister blankly through glazed-over eyes. He looked gaunt and pale, especially in the candlelight of the Hall. Ginny quickly muttered an apology, but Fred didn't seem to have heard her; he simply went back to his dinner silently, hunched over his plate.


At the Slytherin table, several of the upper-year boys were deeply engaged in a heated debate over which professional Quidditch team had the best defensive strategies, while the girls periodically interjected with what little information they knew.

"No way! The Finches have the best Keeper in the American league!" Blaise said vehemently, balking at Draco's speculation about the Falmouth Falcons winning that year's Quidditch World Cup.

"Who cares? That just means they're the best in the States," Draco argued. "They don't stand a chance against the Falcons' beaters."

Aurelia nudged Jessie in the side. "Watch this," she whispered. "What about the Stormers?" she loudly asked the boys seated across from her. They stopped their bickering mid-sentence and looked over at her as if she had just announced she was part goblin.

"What?!"

"You've got to be f—"

"Do you know anything about Quidditch??"

Aurelia suppressed a grin and went back to her dinner as the boys angrily and uniformly denied that the Stormers had any chance of winning a tournament that year. Jessie shook her head and glanced around the Hall idly. Despite the weather, no one's moods seemed to be dampened very much. Well, at least most people's weren't. At the Gryffindor table Harry seemed to be arguing with his friends about something; he'd speak to them and they'd reply, and as they did he would cross his arms or wave his fork around angrily.

"The Cannons are about as useful as Longbottom," Draco was saying dismissively, waving toward the Gryffindor table with his knife before cutting into the chicken on his plate.

Blaise grinned. "What'd you do to him, anyway? He never showed up to Divination."

This caught Jessie's attention. She swiveled back to look at Draco suspiciously, noting that he seemed especially pleased with something. He just smirked at Blaise and continued to eat his dinner silently.

Jessie craned her neck to see over students' heads to the Gryffindor table. Harry was there, flanked by Hermione and Ron like usual, and in the general group around them were several more redheads that clearly belonged to the Weasley clan. Neville Longbottom, however, was not.

"Where's Longbottom?" she asked, swiveling back to look at Draco.

He looked up at her, eyeing her as if she were nutty. "What are you on about?" he asked disdainfully.

"Your Transfiguration partner," Jessie pressed, waving toward the table accented with scarlet and gold. "He's missing."

"Well, that's a shame."

"What did you do to him?"

Draco sighed dramatically. "Who are you, the safety fairy? Didn't think you cared about Gryffindors, Diggory." He took a sip of his pumpkin juice and his eyes flickered over to the Gryffindor table briefly.

"I don't. But what's the point in torturing him?"

"To prove a point, actually," Draco replied casually. "I told him not to speak to me. He did anyway."

"And?"

"He's in perfect health. Maybe."

Jessie rolled her eyes. "Where?"

Draco flashed her a wide grin. "Outside," he said ambiguously.

Jessie looked at Aurelia, who only shrugged.

"And what about you?" Draco swirled the contents of his goblet around lazily, leaning in toward Jessie a little. "How was your date with Potter?"

"Horrible." Jessie reached around Aurelia to grab the bowl of sweet potatoes. "No better than I thought it'd be." She paused, the serving spoon held suspended over her plate. The orange goop made a wet squelching sound as it hit her plate. "Why?" she asked suspiciously.

A knowing grin crossed Draco's features. "You were pretty upset in class today," he pointed out. Pansy ran her finger along the collar of his oxford and he ducked away from her, waving her away and scratching his neck.

"Not particularly," Jessie lied, turning to ask Daphne for the plate of roast beef down the table.

"You were. Whenever you're angry you freeze up."

Pansy, who had had her arm draped across Draco's shoulders until he swatted her away, now turned her attention to his conversation with Jessie. Her probing and suspicious brown eyes darted back and forth between the two, listening intently.

Jessie sighed and bit the corner of her mouth as she always did when she was irritated. "What's your point?" she asked brusquely.

Draco looked smug as his gray eyes met her bluer ones. "If I know you at all—and trust me, I do—you went off on him about your brother the second you got a chance. Some would call it... punishment?" He raised his eyebrows questioningly, as if daring her to argue with him.

"Again, what of it?" Jessie snapped. "You really need to learn to speed these sorts of things up, you know." She took a bite of roast beef and washed it down with her pumpkin juice, watching as Draco's eyes followed her every move. She couldn't stand it when he did that, and he knew it. Maybe that was the reason he had been doing it so much lately.

"You punished Potter for something you didn't appreciate him doing," Draco shrugged. "I punished Longbottom for something I didn't appreciate him doing. Not much of a difference, is there?"

Jessie watched him contemplatively for a moment and noted he looked especially smug, thinking he had the last word. "Alright, you think you know me?" she said. "Guess what happens next, then."

"Wh—"

Jessie swung her foot and kicked him sharply under the table. Draco yelped in pain and drew his wand from his pocket angrily. Aurelia snorted and shook her head, turning her attention back to her dinner.

In the next moment the doors to the Great Hall burst open and a string of flapping wings and screeches wound its way over students' heads. Dozens of owls clutching newspapers in their talons dispersed once inside the hall, ducking and swooping around one another to find their respective recipients. The papers were dropped rather unceremoniously at each of the tables, splashing in food bowls and whacking students in the head.

"Special edition?" Jessie suggested, indicating to the owls.

Aurelia just shrugged as her screech owl dropped a newspaper onto her roast beef with a squelchy plop. Jessie looked around for any sight of her own owl but caught no sight of Mephistopheles among the now dispersing birds overhead. "Figures," she muttered.

"Merlin... look at this," Aurelia said. She unrolled the paper and pointed to the headline:

DEATH EATER ATTACK LEAVES FOUR DEAD, MANY MORE INJURED

"Another one?" Jessie asked in a hushed tone, scooting closer to Aurelia to see the paper. As she began to read she heard many gasps and hushed conversations hissing like snakes all throughout the Hall. A first-year Hufflepuff began to cry and across the table Draco rolled his eyes, shooting the girl a wilting look.

Merely an hour ago, Muggle London was alight with curses as several Death Eaters flew over the River Thames, attacking Muggles and Wizards alike and apparently at random. One Wizard eyewitness, who wishes to remain anonymous, indentified the attackers as Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, and Thorfinn Rowle.

"I saw them!" he claimed. "They were shooting curses—Unforgivable Curses, no less!—left and right, up and down. They didn't care who they hit, and when people started panicking and screaming, they were laughing. Laughing, the bunch of terrors were!"

The attackers destroyed several prominent buildings, including the Muggle Ministry building and several nearby hotels and restaurants. Members of the magical community Walthus Pennichuck, Ariela Danbury, Viktoryia Finch, and Lurdon McDonnell were killed in the attack, along with at least a dozen Muggles, Ministry officials said. Many others were injured and were taken to St. Mungo's or other Muggle hospitals to be treated for injuries sustained in the attacks.

Jessie finished reading the article and looked up at her best friend. Aurelia had a habit of twining strands of her silky black hair around her fingers when she was worried, and that was exactly what she was doing then. She met Jessie's concerned gaze with arched eyebrows.

"This is bad," she said quietly.

Jessie nodded. "They don't even care about being seen," she murmured. Her eyes flickered across the table to Draco, who was browsing through the finance section of the paper now with a small smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth as if nothing unusual had happened.

The wave of anxiety and noise grew until it was flooding the Hall and crashing against the walls as students' voices became louder and more worried. Many were looking toward the Head table, waiting for Dumbledore to step forward and say something to comfort like he always did whenever something terrible has happened. But he wasn't there. His high-backed gilded chair was empty, flanked by teachers with expressions that were just as anxious as the students'. A very serious white line had formed where Professor McGonagall's mouth was. Professor Sprout had buried her face in her hands, and her shaking shoulders were covered by the arm of Professor Trelawney, who looked as though she were at a loss for something to say. Not surprisingly, the only professor who didn't seem concerned was Snape, whose calm expression never wavered as he read the article handed to him by Hagrid. The chair to Snape's left, normally occupied by Umbridge, was also empty.

"What's Sprout's problem?" Blaise asked, jerking his head toward the front of the Hall.

Aurelia rolled up the newspaper and tossed it aside, tipping over a bowl of cranberries. "Pennichuck was her maiden name, I think," she said.

Blaise's gaze fell to his plate and he shoved a spoonful of peas into his mouth silently.

"Everyone, quiet!"

At once the din was quelled as heads turned to the Head table, where Professor McGonagall was standing with her hands folded tightly in front of her. As they watched she took a visibly deep breath and looked around at everyone. "What has happened in London is a terrible tragedy," she began. "To any of you who knew the victims, we are truly sorry." The few conversations and whispers that could still be heard fell silent, and despite the warm glow of the candles overhead the Hall felt cold and unwelcoming. "While we have no control over what happens outside the grounds of Hogwarts, I shall remind you that we are continually providing extra security measures to keep all of you safe from anything—or anyone—that may try to harm you. If any of you need to speak to someone, the doors of our offices are always open. While you are within these walls we are not just your professors—we are your family as well." She paused to take another deep breath. "Now, I suggest you all head off to bed. Classes start bright and early tomorrow morning, don't forget."

With one final sweeping glance at the faces turned toward her Professor McGonagall strode past the Head table and exited through the side door of the Hall. Plates, bowls, and goblets disappeared and with nothing else to keep them occupied in the Great Hall, students began to leave in groups, muttering amongst themselves and brandishing copies of the Prophet at each other.

Harry stood up to leave with Ron and Hermione, who were now bickering about the etiquette of using people as shields during food fights. As he reached down to grab his backpack his eyes wandered over to the other side of the Hall where most of the Slytherins were exiting through a side door that would lead them down to the dungeons. His eyes came to rest on Jessie and he was surprised to see she was looking right back at him. The expression on her face was strange, perhaps the tiniest bit of worry showing through, but before he could decide what it was she had turned away from him and was ushered through the door by the Slytherin prefect, Prewett Maidor.

Ron nudged Harry's shoulder and jerked his head toward the entrance hall. Harry followed him out the door and bade Hermione goodnight at the staircase when she announced she was going to find Professor McGonagall. Neville hadn't been seen since that afternoon, she pointed out, and she was worried Malfoy might have done something to him after their Transfiguration class.


Several hours later Neville burst into the common room, reeking of fish and covered in what looked like seaweed. He ran for the showers in the boys' dormitories, claiming Malfoy had Transfigured him into a minnow and tossed him in the lake, and that he'd spent the whole evening trying to avoid being eaten by the giant squid.

Later that night, Harry would find himself pondering the obnoxious Slytherin girl's expression and Dumbledore's absence, long after everyone else had drifted off to sleep with a slight stench of fish in their noses.