The Christmas spirit was sorely lacking at the Circle that year. The finality of Xenophilius's death left a yawning chasm that was blown wider open when Albus Dumbledore was poisoned two days after Christmas. Draco was home at Malfoy Manor with his parents and an ironclad alibi, should the need ever arise. Luna shuddered to think how he managed to pull that off; she knew he would never reveal the plot to another living soul, at least not anyone who was capable of doing anything to stop him or get him caught. The list of Ministry employees who had been subjected to the Imperius Curse drifted unbidden into her mind, proof that a person could be placed under the Imperius Curse for weeks or months. Certainly long enough to unstopper a bottle of poison.

Dumbledore survived, but it was a close thing. If the papers were to be believed, Draco played a dangerous game in trying to make the poisoning look as genuine as possible. He had either made a mistake or disregarded her advice about dosage. And with whispers about the Dark Lord's return on the rise, Dumbledore's ordeal shook the wizarding world to its core. Many believed Hogwarts itself had been compromised, and according to Professor McGonagall's impassioned rants, Dolores Umbridge was taking advantage of the chaos to tighten her grip on the school. What's more, in the first week of 1996, ten of the most notorious Death Eaters broke out of Azkaban, disappearing into the gray mist never to be seen again, as if they had vanished into thin air.

Among the fugitives was Bellatrix Lestrange, Cressida's sister and Luna's aunt. The others were careful to keep the wanted posters away from Cressida. One day when Luna was in London to meet with Gwenog, though, she saw one. Luna recoiled and nearly cried out, for the woman sneering at her in the photograph looked so freakishly like her Aunt Andie, down to the tangle of dark hair, hooded eyes, and sharp chin. She hoped she would never cross paths with Bellatrix. Her life had already been so turned upside down by one long-lost aunt careening into her life that she was sure she couldn't cope with another.

They were living in dark times, and people old enough to remember the First Wizarding War said it felt like it had last time. Luna could sense the fear and anxiety, but it felt firmly in the realm of something happening to other people. Everything else felt like mere glancing blows in comparison to the all-consuming, monumental trauma of her grief. It consumed her, making her body feel heavy and her mind feel fuzzy. What was a Dark Lord compared to the loss of a father?

She and her mother had sunk back into their old tenuous truce after Luna's secrets had crept into the foundations and destabilized what they had been building. They rarely talked about Xeno or the Deathly Hallows, and they certainly never talked about Narcissa. They still continued planning the upcoming protest together. Sometimes it felt like all they had left.

The day of the protest dawned clear and cool. Luna didn't believe in omens, but if she did she would have thought it was a good one. She clutched her owl mask so tightly during the Floo ride and walk through London that it started to shed feathers. The masks had become a sort of hallmark of their movement. They served dual purposes: protecting the protestors and representing what they stood for. Owls carried messages. They symbolized wisdom. Owls could soar.

Several of the Squibs were already there when they arrived. Some of them were dressed in wizarding robes, but most wore Muggle attire. They huddled together, shying away from the protestors who approached them to say hello. Luna knew it had taken Mrs. Figg weeks to convince some of them to even step foot in Diagon Alley. She couldn't imagine how it must feel to be in a place suffused with such extravagant displays of magic you were barred from enjoying: to see the marvelous wands in the window of Ollivander's and know you could never use one, to walk past Madam Malkin's knowing you would never need a set of Hogwarts school robes, to peer in the windows of Quality Quidditch Supplies at all the brooms you could never fly.

Ginny, Lavender, Padma, Parvati, Rania, and the others prepared the podium, flyers, posters, and barricades while Luna, Cressida, and Gwenog distributed phoenix masks to the Squibs. It was a deliberate choice, for they were both creatures that rose, small and broken, from the ashes. Luna saw Mrs. Figg's fingers tremble as she fastened hers into place.

The wizards and witches arrived in a steady trickle. The organizers in the owl masks marshaled everyone into some semblance of order and passed out signs. Gwenog paced and studied the notes for her speech, peering through the narrow slits of her dragon mask. Despite Cressida's efforts to engineer more stage time for her daughter, Luna was quite happy to let someone else be the public face (or mask, as it were) of the movement. Besides, Gwenog was much more charismatic and comfortable with this sort of thing. Luna admired her athlete's gait and confidence as she tucked her notes in her pocket and ascended the podium like it was nothing at all, just another Harpies press conference.

"For a long time, wizarding society has been built on a hierarchy. Purebloods above half-bloods, half-bloods above Muggleborns. Wizards above witches. Wizards and witches alike above beings, and beings in turn above beasts. But because we are at our core, a magical society, there is an even more foundational prejudice. To most of us, to be born without magic is an unthinkable curse. To be a Squib is to be neither Muggle nor witch nor creature. And yet any of us could have been born a Squib."

There was an uncomfortable shifting among the protestors at that. Even the more enlightened and blood-progressive families shivered at the thought of a Squib being born into the family, much less being born a Squib themselves. It was not easy to overcome decades of prejudice.

"Yes, it's true! And it is often the habit of witches and wizards to speak on behalf of Squibs, as if they were incapable of speaking for themselves. We have invited many of our Squib brothers and sisters here today, to speak for themselves!"

A small, slouched figure in an oatmeal-colored cardigan and a phoenix mask stepped shakily to the podium. Luna knew it was Mrs. Figg. She took the magical microphone from Gwenog and shuffled her notes. When she spoke, her voice was magically distorted beyond recognition, but Luna could still hear the tremor in her voice.

"Er, thank you. My...my fellow Squibs have asked me to be their representative today. They did not feel comfortable, er, speaking, and to be quite honest I don't either, which I suppose just goes to show...but anyway, when I speak today, I speak for all of us. And I come here to say that there is room in your world, the wizarding world, for Squibs. We are your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, your mothers and fathers. We are you!"

The crowd rippled, hoisting their signs in the air and making low rumblings of approval. The Squibs huddled together at the edge of the crowd, as if afraid the protestors were going to attack them. When they realized that it was quite the opposite, they started clapping and looking around in some bewilderment. Mrs. Figg seemed to have hit her stride; she was still reading from the page without looking up at her audience, but she stopped stammering.

"There is no shame in living without magic. Why should we not be educated with your other children? Why should our births not be recorded by the Ministry of Magic,, as if we don't matter? Why should we be denied the same basic rights and dignities as anyone else? We may not have magic, but we can participate in magical society. We can use Floo Powder. We can mix potions, grow magical plants, breed Kneazles. Many of us watch Quidditch and listen to the wireless just like you! We await the day when we can be treated as equals and welcomed back as brothers and sisters once more. Thank you."

She tucked her notes into the pocket of her cardigan and dipped her head at the roars of applause as she stepped to the side and Gwenog took the stage again.

"The first step in reckoning with the injustice the Squibs have endured is accepting that, as our sister says, there is no shame in living without magic!"

"No shame!" repeated the crowd.

"The day of the Squibs will come!"'

"The day of the Squibs will come!"

"And until then, we humble ourselves and acknowledge that it is not magic that makes us human . Here, today, we surrender our magical power in solidarity with the Squibs." Gwenog kneeled before Mrs. Figg and offered up her wand, handle out, as if she were a medieval knight surrendering his sword to a foe. Luna saw tears streaming out from under the brilliant scarlet feathers of Mrs. Figg's mask as she took it.

One by one, the protestors sank to their knees and surrendered their wands, and the Squibs wove through the crowd and collected them. Luna was surprised by how vulnerable she felt without her wand. She knew that she often chose to do magic without her wand, but it still felt strange. Like she was naked.

Then the organizers in owl masks made the rounds distributing good old-fashioned non-magical chores for the protestors to complete. Brooms, mops, feather dusters, and baskets of laundry soon littered the street. The witches and wizards stayed on their knees as they set about their tasks in solemn silence. Luna knew it was symbolic, but she found it oddly comforting to know that she could scrub a floor just as well without magic. Magic helped her, but it did not define her. She could exist without it. In Gwenog's words, it was not what made her human.

After nearly an hour of demonstrating, Gwenog spoke again.

"Magical supremacy has deprived our Squib brothers and sisters of the chance to be seen, heard, and loved as full members of our society. But it also has deprived us of them, their wonderful brilliance and talent and kindness. Think how much richer we would all be if we all knew a Squib, a free house elf, a goblin. Even centaurs and merpeople might have a larger role to play if we treated them as they ought to be treated. If they could all live among us as equals."

Luna mouthed the words as Gwenog spoke them, because this section of the speech had been her pet project for weeks. She and Cresida had debated for hours how to make this protest strike exactly the right note. There was not the immediacy that had spurred the last protest in the aftermath of the Triwizard Tournament, but there could be something else. Thoughtfulness, planning, a call for action instead of a call for answers.

"But in the end, a symbolic demonstration like this one is just that: symbolic. We implore you to examine yourself and consider how you can effect change here, now, today. Sign our petition asking the Ministry to reverse their decision to cut funding for Squib support programs, and asking them to create a Squib Liaison Office. Make a donation to the Squibs United Mutual Aid Fund. Is there a Squib who has been abandoned by your family? Can you reach out to them? If you have children, have they ever met a Squib? We urge you to act with the urgency you would feel if you yourself were a Squib. They have waited long enough. This is the end of today's protest, but let it be only the beginning of our work."

Their gamble paid off, and crowds of onlookers and journalists descended on them like moths drawn to a flame. Most of them wanted to talk to Gwenog, so Luna and the other organizers got to work cleaning up. Even after being reunited with her new silver lime wand, Luna left it in her pocket and stooped to pick up litter that had been left on the cobblestone by hand.

"They mentioned goblins," a squeaky voice came from behind her.

"Pardon me?" Luna turned and saw a group of goblins wearing Gringotts uniforms. They must have used their break to come observe the protest.

"We weren't talking to you, girl," one of the goblins sneered. But another, a younger looking one with neat brown hair, took a step closer to Luna.

"They mentioned goblins," he repeated, "Nobody usually mentions us."

"Oh, yes! We're really trying to build a coalition of everyone, from every walk of life. A real circle, you know, everyone on equal footing, no one above anyone else," Luna formed the shape of a circle with her hands as she spoke, pleased with the metaphor.

The young goblin nodded but said nothing. The others shuffled their feet and gathered their briefcases and hats, making ready to return to the bank.

"You know, if you wanted, I could show you some fliers…."

"Oh, I don't know about that," he took a step back.

"I'm so sorry! Where are my manners? I'm Luna. Luna Lovegood. I helped plan the protest," she took off her owl mask and tried to flash him a friendly smile.

"Urgnok, we need to be getting back," one of the other goblins tugged on the sleeve of the younger goblin.

"Will you come to our next protest? Oh, do come. We haven't planned it yet, and we'd love to have more goblins involved. We're already working on wand rights for house elves, too. I assume wand rights would be your number one priority, but you could tell us what you wanted to focus on, of course."

"I, we...have to go," Urgnok said, allowing his friends to drag him away down the alley.

"Right, of course. Well if you ever change your mind…"

They scurried away without another word. Perhaps she had bungled it, or perhaps the goblins weren't ready yet, or perhaps they were simply uninterested. But Luna got the sense that a door was opening, just a crack, when it had been firmly closed before.

The letter was brought by an owl Luna had never seen before. It was brief and written in small, neat handwriting.

The Shack. 10 o'clock Saturday.

Luna frowned. There had never been a written summons before. It felt too vulnerable, too easily traceable. But then again, the last time Narcissa had dropped in unannounced, there had been that unpleasant confrontation with Cressida. Perhaps she had decided to trade one vulnerability for another. Luna resolved to go, but be careful. She burned the letter.

The village was swarmed with Hogwarts students as it always was during the school's Hogsmeade weekends. Luna's eyes scanned the crowds for anything amiss, but she couldn't sense anyone following her. She took a looping path through the outskirts of town so she could sneak around the side of the Shrieking Shack and enter through the back door. She crept as quietly as she could on the creaking floorboards to the parlor, half-expecting an ambush. But she only found Draco sitting on a dusty sofa, his head in his hands.

"Oh, it's you."

"You came," Draco said, looking up. His face was haggard, and there were heavy dark circles beneath his eyes. She saw the shadow of a bruise on his neck, oddly mottled. It looked like he had attempted to cover it with makeup or magic.

"Good goddess, you look awful."

"Thanks," he snapped.

"Look, I didn't mean it like that. I guess I just meant...are you okay?"

"Of course I'm fine," he winced, raising a hand to his neck, "The Dark Lord doesn't react kindly when his followers fail. What did you expect would happen to me?"

"Fine," she said, stepping back and holding her hands up defensively in front of her, "Not all of us are intimately familiar with the Dark Lord's methods, you know."

"If only I were so lucky," he said, so quietly that she couldn't tell if she was meant to have heard.

"So why did you ask me here? Where's your mum?"

He waved away the second question, but deigned to answer the first, "I'll need to make another attempt soon, a more convincing one."

"Draco, I read about what you did with the dosage. That wasn't safe. And besides, I can't possibly go through all that again, after…"

"If I can't convince him I'm really trying, he's going to kill me. Or worse. He...he punished me when the poison didn't work. Now I need to plan something real."

"I told you, I'm not going to help you kill him for real. You're lucky I'm helping you fake it at all, especially after that crap you pulled with the dosage. You could have actually killed him, you know."

"You're not listening! That's exactly the problem. I came so close to killing Dumbledore for real, but even that wasn't enough for him. The Dark Lord already suspects Mother is helping me. I think he knows that I wasn't really trying last time. The only way to really, truly fool him is to plan something for real. Something that will take a lot of time and planning. An attack on Hogwarts, something big. He'll like that. Maybe if I time it with the end of the year feast at Hogwarts, that will give me enough time so then…"

Luna waited for him to finish his sentence. He raised an eyebrow, like she was supposed to know what he was inferring.

"So then…?" she prompted.

"Do I really have to spell it out for you, Lovegood?" There was that classic withering, almost caustic disdain. Luna was beginning to suspect it ran in the Black blood like the gift of prophecy and the curse of madness seemed to.

"I guess you do, because I have no idea what you're on about. You want to plot a real attempt on Dumbledore's life, to stall, it seems, but for what? The Dark Lord's going to come calling eventually. Or are you hoping he'll just drop dead in the meantime?"

"Not just hoping! You said Dumbledore is going after horcruxes, and now he's asked you to help. He's going to fall, it's just a matter of time."

"That's it? That's your master plan?" Luna had to grip the moldy chintz curtains to prevent herself from slapping him.

"Yes, don't you see? I don't need to kill Dumbledore, I just need an exit strategy," He looked awfully pleased with himself.

"That has got to be the stupidest, most selfish thing I've ever heard."

"What?" His voice dropped nearly a full octave and he sounded much more like his usual surly self.

"Your brilliant plan is to wait for other people to do all the hard work so you can escape any consequences for your actions. How dare you!" Luna gesticulated so wildly that she tore the curtain with a magnificent rip.

"No consequences for my actions? Are you bloody mental ? I've faced consequences for choices my parents made before I was born . Or was being born to my mother instead of yours my fault too?"

But Luna kept talking over him, her voice rising in volume and pitch.

"You think you can just have your cake and eat it too? Traipse along with the Death Eaters when it suits you, make Muggle children fucking eat dirt , and then jump ship when it suits you? You think you and your family can just save face, backpedal, without doing any real work?"

"You little…" Draco's voice quivered, and Luna could not tell whether he was about to attack her or burst into tears. But he held up a warning hand, turned away from Luna, and took several steadying breaths. She wondered whether he was meditating like Narcissa had taught them in Occlumency training. When he turned back to face her, she could see a vein throbbing in his forehead.

"Listen. I can tell you what I know about horcruxes, okay? Would that appease your highness? Would I pass your little morality test then?"

"You'd only be doing it to save your own skin," she said. Luna's voice was still dripping with accusation but she managed to restrain herself from shouting.

"And so what? Everyone has their own reasons. We want the same thing, why does it matter why?"

"Do we, though?"

"Ah, I see what the problem is. You don't realize just how bad things are."

"What? Of course I do."

"But you haven't seen what he can do, not really. Sure, you saw the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, but you have no idea what he's capable of. If you did, you'd be jumping at the chance to take him down, by any means necessary. Yet here you are, dithering because you don't like me," he sneered, his lips curling around the last two words.

"That...that's just not true!"

"These bruises are nothing. Do you want to see what my real punishment was?" He pulled up his sleeve and revealed a stain of black ink on his forearm in the shape of a snake uncoiling itself from the mouth of a skull. A Dark Mark. It looked fresh, the skin around it red and puffy.

"He made my own parents hold me down while he branded me. I screamed. I begged. I'm fifteen years old, I haven't even passed my OWLs yet. But do you think he cares about that?"

Luna gaped at the Dark Mark, too shocked to speak.

"No, of course he doesn't. He doesn't care about children, or his own followers who have been loyal to him for nearly twenty years. He doesn't care about anyone but himself." Draco pulled his sleeve back down. He grimaced and inhaled sharply as the fabric of his robes bristled over the tender skin.

"Look, I'm sorry that happened to you. You're right, you're just a kid. But I mean, no offense, but your parents are Death Eaters. They sort of...signed up for it, didn't they? You're all in the blast radius of a madman, of course you're going to get the brunt of it."

"You think I deserve what happened to me? You think he wouldn't do this to you, or to some Muggle kid? I suppose it's easier for you to believe that. But you don't remember the Triwizard Tournament, do you?"

"What? Of course I remember," Luna snapped, too quickly. He smirked.

"Everything's a bit fuzzy whenever you think about it too hard, isn't it? The Dark Lord was there. He killed Bagman, and he was going to kill Potter and Dumbledore, but things got...out of hand. That's why I've been told to kill Dumbledore, to punish Father for his failure. It was a massacre. And he wasn't killing Death Eaters, he was killing everyone. People who didn't sign up for it , as you said. I can still hear the screams." He closed his eyes.

"You're lying."

"Why do you think no one ever saw the bodies? Why do you think they were falling over themselves in the rush to execute Crouch? The Ministry knew. They knew, and they Obliviated everyone. That's why you don't remember. But if you'd rather sit there and pretend that all the bad wizards are going to kill each other in blood feuds until we die out and all the good people can live happily ever after, you have another thing coming."

The words from the report at the Department of Mysteries flashed through Luna's mind: large multi-Obliviation events like the third task of the Triwizard Tournament. Her legs were trembling as she slowly lowered herself onto the window seat.

"This is too much. I need time to think about it."

"There's no time. Mother will be here any minute now. She wants you to come back, you know, but she's too stubborn to ask."

"You little weasel! You planned this, both of you, to ambush me."

"Duh," he said, as if she should have expected this turn of events, "That'll be her now." He got up at the sound of the back door opening with barely a whisper.

Luna was clearly the only one surprised by the meeting, for Narcissa came to the parlor straight away without greeting her son and her niece. She cast a battery of muffling and anti-eavesdropping charms before lowering herself into the least filthy chair in the room and folding her hands expectantly.

"Tell me what you know and I'll tell you what I know. Quickly, mind, my mother will be wondering where I am," Luna said. It was partially true, because she had already been in Hogsmeade for much longer than she had planned. But she also didn't have the patience for the delicate dance of veiled conversation and negotiations only half-spoken.

"Auntie Bella has one. I don't know what it is," Draco said, cutting a glance sideways at his mother.

"And you will never know, so stop looking at me like that. It's a delicate thing, but I will see what I can do. And there's one more. I don't know what it is, or where it is. But I know the Dark Lord gave another horcrux to my cousin Regulus shortly before he died. It's not much to go on, but it's something," Narcissa said, speaking quickly and quietly as if she still feared they would be overheard.

"Hmm," Luna had never heard of anyone called Regulus before. She would have to ask Tonks or Aunt Andie.

"What did Dumbledore tell you?" Draco pressed.

"He was a bit vague. He says he knows about three or four, but he didn't say what they were. He said Riddle went after antiquities, things owned by the founders of Hogwarts."

"Okay, so Ravenclaw's diadem, obviously," Draco said.

"And the Sorting Hat is said to have belonged to Godric Gryffindor. We can look into that, I'm sure. Draco is at Hogwarts, after all," Narcissa added.

"Oh, right, of course. Yes, that would be good," Luna said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. She was so completely removed from the mythos of Hogwarts that it felt odd seeing her aunt and cousin batting these facts about so casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"So with the diary that's four. He can't have any more than that, can he?" Draco said with some satisfaction, gripping his forearm through his sleeve.

"Well, but didn't you say he only tells his followers what you need to know? The only reason you know about those three is because of how bloody inbred you purebloods are, so he gave three to people in the same family. There could be more and we'd be none the wiser."

"And the alternative is to do nothing? Or do you have another suggestion?" Narcissa waited, but it was purely for dramatic effect. She knew she had Luna cornered.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Luna finally agreed. But she knew there must be another way; she just had to find it before they found the other horcruxes. Draco had devised a waiting game, but he didn't realize that for Luna it was a race.