A Frontline Is Drawn

If Roy expected to learn from the Daily Prophet what he and his friends had to prepare themselves for, he was unmistakably taught. No sooner had the owls arrived with the morning mail than students from all houses crowded around those who had subscribed to the newspaper. The front page was headlined:

SCANDAL IN HOGWARTS!

Death Eater propaganda and violent riots after Minister's speech. Two injured.

Two photos – moving, as usual – dominated page 1: on the left, Hermione during her speech with the caption 'Minister for Magic Hermione Granger-Weasley giving her great programmatic speech, which was received with a standing ovation'; on the right, Gryffindors were seen jumping over rows of chairs to pounce on the Slytherins. The caption was: Slytherin students unleash brawl. Two Gryffindors injured.

Many sixth-years, including Roy and Julian, clustered around Patricia, who was reading from the newspaper:

At first, Hermione Granger-Weasley's long awaited speech is received with a standing ovation. Afterwards there are tumultuous scenes. Slytherin Prefect Roy MacAllister kicks off the riot with provocations, insults to the Minister and outright Death Eater slogans: Students of his house turn the Great Hall into a madhouse. As a result of the violent clashes, two Gryffindor students, including Prefect Ethelbert Parker, suffer serious head injuries. Security Aurors have to protect the minister with their wands drawn. Read more on page 2.

She turned the page.

Death Eater sympathisers riot at Hogwarts

First, the Minister for Magic had advocated limited and constructive cooperation with non-wizarding world in individual projects, which was received with great applause by the audience. In this context, she called for more openness, tolerance and respect towards non-wizards. She announced that the Ministry would declare 2 May, the day of victory over Voldemort, a National Holiday to commemorate the people who gave their lives for the freedom of the wizarding world.

Slytherin Prefect MacAllister seized control of the subsequent discussion to promote unconcealed Death Eater ideas. May 2, MacAllister pointed out, should not be celebrated because this would mean to "spit on the graves" of the Death Eaters. He countered the Minister's suggestion to learn from non-wizard states by denigrating these states as "most evil tyrannies" and propagating conspiracy theories according to which the Minister planned to hand over witches and wizards to a medieval witch-hunt. His tirade culminated in personal attacks on the Minister, whose non-wizard family background is well known. If the wizarding world were governed according to his, MacAllister's, principles, he said, there would be no place for a person like Hermione Granger-Weasley, and certainly not as Minister for Magic. In this context, MacAllister explicitly used the terms "blood traitor" and "mudblood".

(Read also Heribert Prantice's editorial on page 4, and our detailed report on the Minister's speech on the opposite page).

Patricia stared at the newspaper while her anger was reddening her face: "That's all a lie!" she exclaimed. "There's nothing true in it at all!"

"Oh yes, there is," Roy growled, "most of the individual statements are true. I really did say blood traitor and mudblood, though not with reference to Hermie, but to myself. There really were two Gryffindors injured, though they collided with each other when Ethelbert had to protect me from his housemate. I really did call Muggle states evil tyrannies, though not all of them, but only those that are considered as such among Muggles, and so on. They just left out a few crucial details, took the rest out of context to put it in a new context they invented themselves."

"No one will believe that! People know that the Daily Prophet is a lying rag," Patricia shouted into the increasing noise of dozens of heated discussions raging at all the house tables, including the staff table.

"They know it is and call it a lying rag," Roy shouted back, "but believe every single report!"

"Roy, please! Hundreds of students witnessed that it was different, and most families have at least one child at Hogwarts. They will find out what really happened!"

"Don't be naive, Patricia! Human memory is not a Mesopotamian clay tablet forever preserving anything that once was carved on it. Details are remembered, but contexts are constructed again and again, and that's what those smearers are counting on! You'll see, the Gryffindors will swear to high heaven that it was exactly as written in the Prophet! They will believe what they read in the newspaper rather than what they have witnessed themselves. If only because they want to believe it!"

"I could believe anything," Patricia shouted back, and it was gradually becoming difficult to understand her in the noise, "but not that. This time they've gone too far. They won't get away with that!"

"They are already getting away with it." Roy had to bow down to her ear to make himself understood. "Look!"

He pointed towards the Gryffindor table. There, too, students were crowding around each newspaper owner. If their looks could have killed, Slytherin would have ceased to exist at that moment, and the expressions of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs hardly appeared less menacing. The fine line that had long been separating Slytherin from the other houses was visibly turning into a front line.

"May I?" asked Roy, taking the newspaper out of the hand of Patricia, who was staring at the Gryffindors in dismay.

He skimmed the report on page 3, which, under the headline Granger-Weasley's Great Vision, summarised the Minister's speech in a broadly correct manner, but was brimming with the kind of servile adulation the Daily Prophet had become accustomed to in all reports about the Minister since Hermione's inauguration.

On page 4, Heribert Prantice opened fire:

A NIGHTMARE IS BACK

Next May we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Voldemort's and his Death Eaters' defeat. Such a man, such a regime, and such an ideology would never again get the chance to subjugate wizards and nonwizards alike – of that we were all confident.

Since yesterday we know: We were overconfident!

Yesterday's events have taught us that Death-eaterdom is still spreading like a cancer in the wizarding world, and not just anywhere, but in its most vulnerable place: Hogwarts!

Where future generations of witches and wizards are being educated, in the heart of our wizarding civilisation, the tumour has taken root. Where, as we all believed, tolerance and openness are learned as a matter of course, the evil spirit that was supposed to have been overcome is baring its odious face. Where young witches and wizards ought to look ahead with courage and confidence, inconvincible die-hards have taken control. Of Hogwarts? No, but at least of Slytherin.

With that Black Sunday, Slytherin has completely gambled away the credit that had been generously granted to them, regardless of the past. All those who had vouched for the new, the better Slytherin, to begin with the Headmistress, have since yesterday been embarrassed as naive, narrow-minded and sentimental simpletons who, out of misunderstood tolerance and respect for questionable traditions, have allowed Death-eaterdom to take root again in the most virginal soil, the innocent hearts of young boys and girls, stealthily poisoning them.

Professor McGonagall will have to face unpleasant questions: How is it possible that a person like Roy MacAllister could be appointed Prefect? How can it be that he is even tolerated at Hogwarts? And apart from him, how many other Death Eaters are pursuing their evil plans in Slytherin?

The answers to these questions cannot be educational trivialities. We want to see names! And deeds! Whatever merits Minerva McGonagall has undoubtedly earned in the past: If, in her old age, she is unable to see the writing on the wall and is not prepared to smoke out this snake pit, then more is at stake than just her position. The question then is instead whether the traditional autonomy of Hogwarts, under the protection of which the dark side of the wizarding world is once again striking a blow against the bright side, is still appropriate for our times.

For too long we have believed in a mirage, listened to siren sounds, overlooked the portents. Now reality is relentlessly teaching us that we were fools. After barely twenty years, is it really time to fight another war, a struggle of life and death?

Yes, it is.

"What a shame that such a talented writer has such a rotten character," Roy said to Julian, who had been reading along over his right shoulder. "Thank you, Patricia!" He handed the newspaper back to her.

"Do you know any talented writers who are different?", Orpheus called into his ear from the left.

"Yes," Roy replied. "You!"

He had no time to pay attention to Orpheus' flattered smile, for something caught his attention: The general noise almost inaudibly seemed to take on a rhythm. A three-syllable rhythm with an ugly hiss was increasingly growing clearer out of the babble of voices. Some people were chanting something. Roy turned back to the Gryffindors. The chanting seemed to start from two groups in the middle of their table, then spill over in both directions to new groups of students, all of whom stared over at the Slytherins with their faces distorted in rage. The more of them were joining the chant, the clearer it was understood:

"Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters ..."

Like a blaze, the chanting now spread to the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws:

"Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters ..."

The older Slytherins watched in disbelieving horror their schoolmates merging to a many-hundred-headed, barking monster, when suddenly Arabella screamed: "The kids!"

The younger, sitting at the other end of the table, without any warning and without understanding what was happening to them saw themselves suddenly flooded by ever new waves of hatred. They fearfully moved closer together. Some girls started crying and clung to each other. Albus took Jennifer's hand as if he could protect her that way. He felt reminded of the waves of cold hatred he had felt coming from Hermione, but this one, emanating from hundreds of people at once, was anything but cold, it felt hot and brutal.

"Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters! – Death-eaters ..."

Led by Arabella, some girls of the higher classes were the first to join the little ones, then all the older students followed and lined up to shield the younger.

"Keep your wands in!" roared Roy as several Slytherins grabbed into their robe pockets. Why didn't McGonagall intervene?

Roy saw her standing pale and stunned at the staff table. At last, she regained her usual presence of mind, bravely grabbed her wand and hurled thunder and lightning across the Hall. Following the deafening noise, the sudden silence had something unreal in it.

"One hundred points off for Gryffindor," she said in an icy voice, "and seventy-five off each Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. And don't expect me to explain this. You should be ashamed of yourself! Sit down!"

And everybody sat down. Only the Slytherins, crowded together around their youngest, did not.

At the Hufflepuff table, however, one stood up. A blond first-year who, hesitantly at first, then more and more determinedly, walked over to the table of the Slytherins, whose older students, puzzled, stepped aside to let him pass.

It was Bernard Wildfellow. Without saying a word, he sat down next to Albus.