Monday morning found Harry back in knitting class. Today his ball of wool was a very tender shade of green, of which Harry wasn't aware until he heard the amused comments of his classmates. He found a spot on one of the benches that ran around the stone walls, not too far from the huge fireplace. Professor Carrow, despite her dark bent and smelly costume, had told the class that the best place to knit was next to a roaring fire; thus her classroom was equipped and it became the most popular side of the room.

Although he had supposedly taken an entire year of knitting at Durmstrang, Harry had not successfully progressed to purling yet, and so his rows of knitting had simple horizontal ridges from every row being a knit row. The edges wavered uncertainly as his tension varied from too tight to much too loose, but gradually the amount of knitted fabric lengthened and Harry began to feel a grudging pride in his work.

As the students worked, Professor Carrow lectured. "Throughout the book A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Defarge spends a great deal of time knitting, which includes stitching the names of intended guillotine victims into her patterns. As Madame Defarge knits, she records in code the names of each aristocrat she hopes will die. Her knitting also points to the Fates in ancient Greek mythology: three old women who spin, measure, and then cut wool, which symbolised the creating and ending of a person's lifespan.

In the book, with respect to Madame Defarge, the fate of many aristocrats, and even those related to them, were literally and symbolically thread in Madame Defarge's hands, much like fates of the ancient Greeks in the old woman's hands."

Harry shuddered. The French Revolution and the guillotine were parts of muggle history that many wizards wished to ignore; in fact, Grindelwald used such occurrences to support his assertion that muggles must be "managed" as if they were incapable of living humanely. Harry shook his head and fingered the 25 stitches on his completed row.

He thought about what Torie had told him about Flow and about knitting being the vehicle for that certain kind of special magic. Why hadn't Professor Carrow explained that? Or maybe she had and he wasn't paying attention.

I ought to ask Torie, he thought.

"Hey," he whispered to whomever was sitting next to him on the bench. "Do you see Torie anywhere?"

"Torie?" the girl answered, sounding confused.

"Torie… What was her name… Brocklehurst?" Harry asked.

"Brocklehurst is my name," said the girl, sounding startled. "I'm Mandy Brocklehurst."

"Oh, then she is your sister," Harry said. "Do you know where she is? I have a question for her."

"What are you talking about? I don't have a sister," said Mandy in a suspicious voice, and she got up from the bench and walked across the room away from Harry.

Harry could only stare after her, his mouth agape.

He counted the stitches on his bamboo needle again, absently, his mind on what had just happened.

Was someone pulling an elaborate prank? People seemed to be disappearing, not just from the school but from the memories of everyone who knew them.

Everyone but him.

And Cedric. Cedric had remembered.

Harry frowned.

Why did he and Cedric both remember Justin Finch-Fletchly, but nobody else seemed to?

Harry couldn't be absolutely sure that people weren't there; after all, he couldn't see any of the people in the room. Torie could be quite near him and he'd never know it. But Mandy's voice was so sincere. As Hannah's had been. And Professor Babbling. And teachers never went along with pranks.

Knitting class ended at last and Harry shoved his ball of wool and needles into his bag. To him, it still looked like a bland, misty gray, but someone near him giggled and commented on his "bright pink ball of wool." Harry smiled to himself.

In Charms class, Harry still hadn't managed to convince Professor Flitwick that he didn't need to sit by himself in the absolute front of the classroom. He envied Adrian's choice of hiding his disability so at least people didn't take away his dignity. Harry hated it. Perversely, though, he liked Professor Flitwick. It was hard not to.

He sat through Transfigurations and History of Magic, and then finally had a break. He hurried down to the kitchens in search of the Sett and Cedric.

When he knocked on the Badger Den door, someone he didn't know opened it.

"Cedric?" the boy, a first or second year Harry judged by the high voice, asked.

"Cedric Diggory? The Head Boy?" Harry asked, his heart coming into his mouth wondering if Cedric too had vanished.

"Hey! Aren't you Harry Potter?" the boy asked in awe.

"Oh, yes, I am," Harry replied in a flattish voice.

"I heard about what happened to you," the boy went on.

"I need to speak with Cedric," Harry reminded him.

"Oh, he isn't here. I think he is in the Head Boy office," the Hufflepuff boy said.

"Thank you," Harry said in relief and turned to leave. He wasn't sure where the Head Boy room was, but he wasn't about to ask his adoring fan.

Instead, he asked the first person he met coming out of the Great Hall. As luck would have it, that person turned out to be Draco Malfoy.

"What, Potter? Are you lost again?" Malfoy sneered.

"Oh sod it," Harry muttered. "Why can't you disappear, Malfoy?"

"Disappear? What are you talking about?" Malfoy asked suspiciously.

"Nothing," Harry said, and turned to ascend the Grand Staircase.

He went to the Library next where he found Hermione.

"Sure, I can show you where the Head Boy room is. Next to the Prefect's bathroom." She had a funny tone in her voice, which made Harry look sharply at her, which of course did him no good at all, and made him feel angry. She gathered her books and he followed her out of the library.

"What do you need Cedric for?" Hermione asked.

"Err…" Harry fumbled, at a loss for what to tell her. "I'm not sure you'd believe me."

"Try me," she pressed.

"I think people are disappearing," he said.

"Disappearing? Like who has disappeared?" she asked sceptically.

"Justin. Finch-Fletchly," he said.

"Who?" she asked in confusion.

"Oh no, not you, too," he groaned. "See? He was here and then he disappeared and nobody even knows who is his. It's like he never even existed."

"You're pulling my leg," she said.

"I told you that you wouldn't believe me," he retorted.

"Ok, that's fair," she acknowledged. "And if you're right, how would I know?"

"Right?!" Harry exclaimed. "But somehow I remember them. And so does Cedric."

"Cedric! Why him? Why you?" she asked.

Harry shrugged. "No idea."

"What do you two have in common that I don't?" she asked, as if to herself.

"I don't know. Boys?" Harry answered.

"Blimey, Harry, don't even go there," she snapped.

"Sorry," Harry said, not sure why she was upset. He honestly couldn't think of anything else and all the people who couldn't remember had been girls after all, including Professor Babbling.

"Who else is missing?" Hermione asked with the persistence of a bloodhound, and Harry began to regret he'd told her.

"Torie Brocklehurst."

Hermione was silent, likely shaking her head.

"She has a sister, Mandy," he tried, hopefully.

"Never heard of her either," Hermione said.

"The weird thing? Mandy had never heard of Torie. Her own sister!" Harry said. "Now maybe Mandy is gone, too."

"You aren't making this up," Hermione said, her voice small and scared.

"Wish I was," Harry said quietly.

"What if I disappear, too? What if no one remembers I ever existed?" Hermione said in the same small voice.

Harry hadn't thought of that.

"Here's the Head Boy room," Hermione announced. She knocked, then opened the door a bit. "Ced?"

Ced?

"Hey, you tossers!" Cedric's voice from inside the room sounded equal parts cheerful and tired as he put on a fake Cockney accent. Hermione pushed open the door and went in.

"Can we talk?" Harry asked without pleasantries.

"Sure. Close the door," Cedric said, not rising from where he sat behind a desk. Hermione subtly guided Harry to a chair and he sat. She sat beside him, as if they were subjects of a job interview.

"Sorry about the formal arrangement," Cedric said, as if noticing the barrier his desk presented. It was like Cedric, Harry thought, to notice that.

He came out from behind the desk where he'd been sitting in his wheelchair and asked them to move across the room to a sofa.

As Harry found his seat, he said abruptly, "Cedric, more people are missing."

"Who?" Cedric asked sharply.

"This Ravenclaw girl in one of my classes. Torie. And now maybe her sister too," Harry said.

"You're sure?" Cedric asked.

"Her own sister didn't remember her," Harry said defensively.

"Settle down," Cedric said. "Something even weirder: one of my prefects is gone. Anthony Goldstein. Ravenclaw." One day he was reporting as usual and the next day, Sam Selwyn came in his place. Said he'd been appointed prefect at the beginning of the year."

All three sat silently for a minute.

"Wait, does Hermione know?" Cedric asked suddenly.

"Yeah I told her, but she doesn't remember them," Harry said.

"You know what's even weirder?" Cedric asked rhetorically. "My paperwork only has Sam as the Ravenclaw prefect. For the whole year."

"What?!" Harry and Hermione exclaimed together.

"So we have no way to prove this is even happening," Cedric concluded.

Harry sat glumly on the sofa, not speaking. There was nothing he could say.

As Harry walked away from the Head Boy room toward Gryffindor Tower, his head swam. Hermione had opted to stay talking to Cedric. "Prefect stuff," she had explained but there was that funny tone in her voice again.

Harry wondered what he could do; whom could he tell? As he reached his dormitory, he had an idea.

Luck was with Harry because none of the other boys were there but Crookshanks was, curled in a squashy ball in a sunny patch on Harry's bed.

Harry closed the door and turned to the cat. "Feliss! We need to talk!"

The bed creaked and soon it was Feliss Eliot, the Auror, who sat calmly with his feet crossed in the centre of Harry's bed. Harry hadn't ever seen Feliss very clearly but he always pictured the genie from the Arabian Nights tales. He wondered how as a cat, Crookshanks didn't smell particularly distinct to Harry, but as a man, Feliss bore a pleasant aroma of scented oils. Harry shook his head to clear it.

"Feliss, I'm not sure whom to tell about this," Harry began.

"Tell me about what?" Feliss asked with a yawn. Evidently, he hadn't fully woken up from his nap.

"Why do cats sleep so much?" Harry asked irrelevantly.

"I work at night. That's what you wanted to tell me?"

"No, no! I just wondered," Harry said, realising he hadn't ever seen Crookshanks around at night and if he'd thought about it he could have figured it out. He frowned, trying to regain his former train of thought. "Oh! I meant to tell you… wait, can you put a silencing charm on us? Thanks. So, err, I think people are disappearing."

"Disappearing? How is that?" Feliss sounded incredulous.

Harry explained to him the whole unbelievable story, including the detail that Cedric's notes had changed. Feliss listened quietly, without interruption.

"What proof do you have of these people's existence?" he asked at last.

"That's the thing. There is no proof. But they were there! I talked to them! You can't just have people there one day and the next day they're wiped out of existence and nobody even cares!" Harry was nearly in tears.

"But what can we do with no proof and very few witnesses?" Feliss asked calmly.

"I knew you wouldn't believe me!" Harry stood and, without bothering to unfold his cane, slammed his way out of the dormitory and down the stairs.

"Blimey, mate!" Seamus Finnegan called as Harry shoulder-checked him without seeing him as he barreled through the common room.

"Sorry," muttered Harry but he didn't stop.

He shook his cane out straight as he went, aware even in his temper that he couldn't afford to miss the moving staircase again. The memory of his fall two years ago was nevertheless still vivid in his mind. He headed downstairs and through the front door toward the lake.

Once on the rocky path toward the lake, he slowed. He could hear footsteps following him, and he wasn't in the mood.

"Who is it," he asked wearily, turning around.

The person didn't answer but he could hear the light footsteps coming closer.

"Who is it?!" he demanded angrily. The footsteps stopped uncertainly and the person still made no answer.

"Stop with the games," Harry wanted to say, but the person facing him snapped their fingers and suddenly he knew who it was.

"Gemma," he said with relief. Someone who couldn't speak was so different from someone refusing to speak just to withhold their identity from him to torment him. And this someone was such a gentle, soothing presence, and such a good listener.

She walked timidly up to him and placed her small, soft hand under his.

"Sorry I startled you. I saw you come out. You looked upset," she signed under his hand.

"Sorry I got mad," he signed back. "I didn't know it was you. Thought someone was pranking me."

She made a special sign that didn't really have an English equivalent but that roughly meant, "you and I, we're ok now. Together."

He returned the sign and she took his hand as they walked toward the lake together. He knew she was looking at the wild Scottish beauty, and he was listening to the stillness, the unchangingness. A splash out in the lake told him a fish jumped.

Her hand slipped from his, and she signed "all right?" with the variation that both made it a question and signalled that it was about him.

He hesitated, his silence speaking for him. No, he was not all right. There were terrible things happening and he had no idea what to do about it. He really didn't want to tell the whole story again, either.

"You don't have to say," her quick double-word sign said.

He sighed and turned toward her. "Thank you," he said sincerely. At times like this, he loved BSL. A few quick signs, and everything that he felt was conveyed. He supposed it was more accurate to say he appreciated Gemma. Her quiet friendship and gentle tact were so soothing. He looked out toward the lake again. The twilight was growing dimmer. He tapped his glasses with his wand, removing the darkening effect so he could just look into the semi-darkness at the peaceful lake.

"Dinner?" Gemma signed with the variation that indicated that she was asking if he wanted some.

"Yes, let's," he replied and took her elbow to let her lead him up the hill, remembering to darken his glasses again before going into the brightly lit Great Hall.

After dinner, as Harry slowly followed the press of students out of the Great Hall, he heard the unmistakable sound of Cedric's crutches and metal shoes on the stone floor.

"Potter," he called, and Harry turned.

"Give me a second of your time?" Cedric asked politely.

"I'll catch up to you guys," Harry flung over his shoulder to his friends.

"Harry's in trooouble," Ron sniggered, and then cried out in mock pain as Hermione punched his arm.

"Everything all right?" he asked Cedric with concern.

"Oh! Right. I mean no, but nothing new about that," Cedric stumbled, and Harry grinned to himself to see Cedric, so upper crust and self-assured, trip over his words. "This isn't about that. This is… I'd like to start a… group."

"A group?" Harry asked.

"For kids… like… you know… like us," Cedric had lost his poise completely. Harry almost expected him to give up and hurry away, but he didn't.

"Like us? Disabled kids?" Harry asked.

"Yeah."

"Why?" Harry asked.

"I don't know," Cedric said. "I just…"

"I think maybe I know why," Harry said softly. "It feels awfully lonely sometimes."

"Yeah," Cedric said. "I mean I don't expect us to have a ton in common just because we all have…"

"At the same time, we all know," Harry finished when Cedric trailed off. The words didn't need to be spoken. The days of pain, the frustrations, the people giving weird looks and a wide berth, the awkward questions, and above all the desire to just be 'normal' and get on with life.

"All right," Harry said finally. "Let's do a group. Where and when?"

"Dumbledore gave me a room," Cedric said with enthusiasm. "The trophy room. To be a Hogwarts Common Room. Let's meet there. Some evening later this week. Thursday?"

"Brilliant," Harry agreed. "Since I know some people from the adaptation centre, how about I tell them?"

"That would be brilliant. Thanks!" Cedric said. "See you then."

Harry stood alone in the Great Hall, suddenly hit with the realisation that he had just volunteered to find people and let them know about Cedric's group. The problem was actually finding people. He sighed and headed toward Gryffindor Tower.