Chapter 3
12 August, 1939 Galbraith Street, Poplar, London
Dorcas Clerey loitered in the record store as long as she dared without buying anything. She often came into this shop to thumb through the sheet music and, if a listening booth opened up, sample the records. She had just been listening to some of her favorite Bach adagios while following them on the musical score that she now placed neatly back in the bin under the sign marked Classical.
She waved a goodbye to the clerk, Bobby. He was tall and skinny, with shiny black hair that he fussed with too much.
"Bye, D!" he called absently after her, bagging purchases for a middle-aged woman at the register.
He was Dorcas's definition of hip. He didn't seem to care too much if she wanted to come in and look around, so long as she replaced anything she took from the shelves. He was usually tasked with straightening those shelves at the end of the night and didn't like when this task kept him from his girlfriends. He always had girlfriends pop into the shop. That, or he was always asking Mr. Bell for evenings off to go on dates with girlfriends.
Dorcas watched the girls coming and going with an intellectual curiosity; a sociology study. She hoped one day to observe the interactions of two girls coming into the store at the same time to visit Bobby. What a showdown that would be, she imagined. If this had happened yet she had, sadly, not been present to witness it.
Mrs. Bell was the one that Dorcas watched out for. On more than one occasion, Mrs. Bell had pushed her toward the door when it became apparent that browsing would not lead to purchasing. A large woman in a flowery apron and unfashionable shoes, Mrs. Bell was always surveying the store under the pretense of dusting something. And her eyes always found Dorcas. Her instincts were sharper when Dorcas was low on pocket money. Mrs. Bell seemed to have a sense about this, turning her about and ushering her back onto the pavement the moment the bell tinkled to announce her entry.
Today she had been lucky. With empty pockets, Dorcas looked through the window and almost skipped with excitement at finding Mrs. Bell absent. Bobby was assisting a young couple with a radio, back turned to the entrance. She was able to make a quick selection (classical was her mood today) and snag a booth. Her tastes did not alway run in this direction. She would listen to, and liked, almost anything she heard.
Back onto the pavement with the sound of violins and cellos still in her ears, she floated in the direction of home on a wave of melody.
Rounding the corner, Dorcas was jolted from her musical daydream by two boys with sticks. She hadn't noticed them at first. The thought that burst through her pleasant reverie was what drew her attention to them.
Dorcas had always been able to push down the sensation that she could see flashes of other people's thoughts. She never summoned these thoughts, never sought to breach another's consciousness. She mostly jostled them to the back of her thoughts and focused on her own mind's picture. She had never voiced this ability to anyone. She had always accepted teachers' and neighbors' explanations that she was just intuitive and sensitive.
It was harder to shunt the image that she saw in her mind's eye to the background now. The cruelty smacked her in the face. She turned her attention to the two boys with sticks. They had a kitten cornered behind a couple of rubbish bins. She could not see the kitten with her own eyes, just through the nearest of the two boys' minds.
Dorcas ran over to the pair, shouting, "Cut it out! What do you want to hurt that little thing for?"
The boys were not as tall as she was. They could have been two or even three years younger than her. They were from the flat on the ground floor of her building and were always the source of some trouble. They had only moved in two weeks ago. Dorcas didn't even know their names.
"Well it's just a stray," explained the boy that was nearest to Dorcas.
"That doesn't matter any," Dorcas raged, tearing his stick from his hand and prodding him hard in the ribs with it. "How d'you like that?"
The two boys were backing away from her, but she threw the stick hard at their retreating forms for good measure.
With the threat abated, Dorcas's demeanor became gentler and her voice softer. She slid one of the bins aside and saw a small and cowering black and white ball wedged against the wall and the other bin.
"It's ok," Dorcas coaxed. "You can come out now. They're not coming back."
She held out a hand for the kitten to sniff. Bolstered by the fact that the kitten didn't try to flee, Dorcas scooped the small bundle into her hand and wrapped it up in her cardigan.
Pondering names for her new friend, Dorcas took the stairs to her second floor flat two at a time. The building was shabby, wallpaper yellowing in spots. But the tiny flat on the second floor held the two people dearest to Dorcas: her mother and her Uncle Morty. For this reason, the shabby four-floor building in the heart of London's East End was the most wonderful place in the world.
Dorcas paused mid-climb and mid-brainstorm when she heard an intimidating but not unfamiliar voice coming from the door that she had nearly reached.
She debated for a moment.
Should she beat a retreat to the small garden to the rear of the building? Go back the way she came and out onto the street?
Before she had settled on a plan of action, her Uncle Lysander pulled open the door to her family rooms and stepped into the hall. He placed his black hat onto his head and turned to go. Dorcas's mother was right behind her older brother handing him his coat and umbrella. He had the dark but handsome features of a Hollywood villain, or a gangster.
His dark eyes flicked toward her for only a moment. Dorcas was relieved. He was not planning to speak to her. She could see the impression of his mind: he had said what he had needed to say to his sister, Mary-Ellen, and there was no need to say more, even in greeting to his niece.
Dorcas saw her Uncle Lysander on only a few occasions in her life. The most recent of these meetings had been four years ago at her grandfather, Titus Rackharrow's funeral. It had been a somber and raining occasion, full of itchy black wool, dour looks, too many cloying lilies, and very few tears. Dorcas's mother was uneasy and fidgety throughout the eulogies, as if at the slightest provocation, she would flee the scene. Dorcas had accompanied her mother, along with her Uncle Morty. He was a striking contrast in mood and appearance to all of the other funeral goers. He had insisted on wearing yellow Wellington boots. Morty was a creature of habit and rules: it was raining, the appropriate footwear was Wellingtons. Keen to avoid a scene before even setting out for the gravesite, Mary-Ellen had capitulated. And he had a vacant smile plastered to his face. This was not because he was particularly happy to see anyone there. Besides his siblings and niece, Dorcas knew her uncle didn't know anyone else there. No, Morty loved being in nature. Nevermind that this was a cemetery and it was raining.
Uncle Morty was not the only one to stand out at the funeral. Everyone in attendance was wearing black, ankle-length robes, the sort that you would find college students wearing at academic ceremonies. Men and women alike dressed in this curious fashion. Mary-Ellen, Morty, and Dorcas alone had worn dresses and trousers and jackets. The three of them held the customary black utilitarian umbrellas that were the habit of most Londoners. Those in robes held wands that made a misty, almost shiny imprint of an umbrella, only outlined by the water they were meant to repel. Dorcas had stared unabashed at these. It was not often that she came this close to magic. She experienced very little of it in her own home.
"Muggle relations," Dorcas had heard an older woman say to a companion while looking in their direction. It was such a curious phrase that Dorcas had remembered it years later.
"It's all arranged. Please don't be difficult, Mary-Ellen," Lysander appealed one final time. With umbrella and coat in hand, he swept past Dorcas and down the stairs.
Dorcas looked at her mother in question.
Mary-Ellen's only reply was, "Wash your hands, darling. Dinner in ten minutes." She held the door open for Dorcas to enter before her.
Passing the threshold, Dorcas knew something was different about the combination parlor-dining-room-kitchen that comprised the main space of the house. It felt instantly smaller. This was due to a very large piano that now took up most of the space dedicated to the parlor area. Her father's chair had been squeezed right alongside the couch in order to accommodate the instrument. It was really too large for the small space, but it captivated Dorcas immediately.
Dorcas went over to the piano, running a finger across the glossy black surface. Her nameless kitten squirmed inside of her cardigan. Placing the small bundle on the bench beside her, Dorcas began to leaf through music that was propped against the stand above the keys.
Her mind asked a question and reached for an answer. She found the mental response in her mother's mind: her Uncle Lysander miraculously produced the instrument in this very room from the inside pocket of his coat. As bizarre as this image seemed, Dorcas knew that magic happened elsewhere in London, even if it only happened rarely in her own home.
Her Uncle Morty had sliced his finger badly when he was putting a knife away during chores just last week. Dorcas's mother had calmly and expertly bound the skin together by taking a wand from her apron pocket and saying some words over the wound. It was as if the knife had never slashed her uncle at all. Mary-Ellen had never pulled a piano from her pocket, though.
"Your Uncle Lysander has given it to you," her mother said. There was a complicated ring in her voice.
There were always complicated feelings surrounding her Uncle Lysander and the rest of the Rackharrows. Dorcas had cobbled together bits of the saga over her nearly twelve years on the earth. Though she never asked her mother why her uncle and aunt and cousins never came to visit, she knew that their estrangement all centered around her other uncle, Morty.
After a particularly upsetting conversation with her older brother-an argument, really, Dorcas had found her mother standing over the stove, stirring something that simmered there with a glazed look on her face. She had met her uncle on the stairs as he was leaving and she was entering, much like they had met today.
"Mama?" she had asked tentatively as she opened the door.
Her mother stirred the saucepan absently and did not turn to answer her daughter. Dorcas could tell by the story replaying itself in her mind that she had not heard her enter the flat. The brother and sister had quarrelled over money. Lysander had offered to pay for a better home, nearer to his own family. Mary-Ellen had been offended and accused her brother of trying to buy forgiveness.
This particular argument had happened nearly three years ago.
Dorcas had not known at the time why her mother was angry at her older sibling. She knew that her mother usually harbored hard feelings for her Uncle Lysander, but had never known why. She had always been too timid to ask.
The answer came nearly a year and a half later after a notably fierce fit from her Uncle Morty. Mary-Ellen had seen Morty's caretaker out moments before, having just come home from a double shift at the hospital that she worked at. Dorcas was supposed to have been asleep hours ago, but had been lying awake in the dark. She was tense and ready. She knew the warning signs that signaled that Morty was due for a bout of seizures. She felt this like a coming rainstorm, one that you could smell on the horizon.
A crash and grunt.
She threw back the covers and felt for the pull of the lamp on her bedside table. Shuffling out of her room, eyes adjusting to the light, she grabbed a towel from the washroom on her way to Morty's room. Her mother was already there, on the floor next to the table and lamp that had been toppled when Morty had fallen from his bed.
Mary-Ellen was still in uniform: lace-up black shoes, stockings, and black nurse's dress, though her lime green St. Mungo's robes and her handbag had been hastily discarded in the doorway of Morty's room.
Her mother sat cross legged on the floor beside the upended table and lamp, her little brother's head cradled in her lap. She cushioned his head and whispered calming words to him, brushing his dark hair back from his sweaty brow. Morty thrashed violently in her arms for several minutes more. His hand beat the floor as he seized, picking up shards from the broken lamp. There was a cut on Mary-Ellen's knee from hastily kneeling on the broken pieces as well.
Dorcas had been through this scene enough in her years of living with her Uncle Morty. There was nothing to do except wait for the thrashing to stop. She stood by like a surgical assistant waiting for the doctor to call for the required tools, which she was poised and ready to supply.
Mary-Ellen leaned her head back against the wall, eyes closed, tears leaking down her face. Tired was too small of a word to explain what was etched on Mary-Ellen's face. Weary was the word that came to Dorcas's mind. Her mother was a weary woman with too much burden to shoulder.
Images came to Dorcas in quick succession: a sterile corridor, a healer in light blue robes, wand raised, a patient writhing beneath it, strapped to a hospital bed, fighting restraints. Dorcas did not search her mother for these images, they came to her from her mother's careworn consciousness on their own. A feeling of rage and of betrayal accompanied the images. Dorcas could not make the images connect into a narrative that made any sense to her, but she knew that these images told a story about why her uncle suffered the way he did.
And together with her earlier cache of images from her mother's argument with her Uncle Lysander, she knew that Mary-Ellen held him somehow responsible for the way Morty was.
The tremors lessened and Morty relaxed against his sister. His bladder had let loose, as Dorcas knew it would. She bent down next to her mother and muttered comforting words; words to soothe both of them. She wiped the blood from her uncle's hand and then mopped the expanding puddle around them.
"That belonged to your grandmother, Leisel," Mary-Ellen explained nodding at the large piano, pulling Dorcas back to the present.
Scratching her kitten behind the ear, eyes scanning the page of music in her other hand, Dorcas asked, "Why has he given it to me?"
"His children are not fond of music apparently, and your Aunt Eden is redecorating Rackharrow Hall," Mary-Ellen explained, the last bit in a disdainful tone. "Who's that there?" she added, gesturing to the kitten with a dinner plate as she laid three places for dinner.
Dorcas turned her attention to the little black and white creature again, considering. It looked at her with pale blue eyes. She pictured a Bing Crosby poster hanging outside of the listening booths at S. Bell's Music.
"Bing," Dorcas replied.
"Give Bing a bath before putting him in your bed tonight. He probably has fleas," her mother instructed. "Morty, dinner," she called as Dorcas crossed to the kitchen, opening the fridge and taking out the milk.
She grabbed a saucer from the drainboard, filled it with milk and placed it and the kitten on the floor beside the coat rack.
Taking her seat and placing the milk bottle on the table, Dorcas noticed an envelope at her place beside her plate. It was addressed to Miss Dorcas Clerey, Number 19 Strattondale, London.
"Hi, D," said Morty in passing as he went to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.
A moment later he whooped in surprise and shot to the floor by the coat rack. "A kitten!" he exclaimed, sprawling beside Bing and examining the kitten as it lapped up milk. He was wearing goggles and had the look of a mad scientist to Dorcas.
She looked back at the envelope.
Her mother took her plate and filled it.
"Hands, Dorcas," Mary-Ellen reminded. "It's from Hogwarts," she added, gesturing at the letter. Dorcas placed the letter by her plate as an after dinner treat. She pushed her chair back and walked to the sink.
Dorcas was filled with excitement as she picked up the soap. A kitten, a piano, and her Hogwarts letter! It was the best birthday she had ever had. And it was a month early to boot!
:::
1 September, 1939 King's Cross Station, London
Dorcas had been excited when her Hogwarts letter had arrived two and a half weeks ago. She had even been dazzled by her first trip into Diagon Alley three days ago. Staring at the gleaming red Hogwarts Express had also produced elation the likes of which Dorcas had never experienced in her life.
Clutching Bing in one gloved hand, Dorcas stepped onto the train with an immediate doubt in her mind: had she made a mistake? Was a wizarding education what she wanted; what she needed? Would she even know how to perform magic? What if she had non-magical genes, like her Uncle Morty. It would be a humiliation to travel all the way to Hogwarts only to find out on the first day of lessons that there had been a mistake and she could not, after all, cast a single spell.
Then, she supposed, she would not have been selected by a wand at Olivander's. In fact, a lovely, beautifully springy ten and a half inch acacia and unicorn hair core had chosen her. Mr. Olivander had been surprised that a wand from among his small store of acacia wood wands had prompted him. He had gone years, he explained to Dorcas in an awed whisper, without pulling a single one of the five wands in stock from the shelves. "An acacia wand does not pick a witch or wizard often. In fact, I have only placed a wand of this wood type into the hands of five or six others."
That had to confirm that she had some predisposition to magic, right? A wand had selected her, found something magical and noteworthy about her?
But then, there was also the financial concern. Scanning the list in front of her at dinner on the evening before her very first trip to Diagon Alley, she timidly voiced this doubt to her mother.
"I could continue in the community school," Dorcas had said, feeling her excitement sink at the prospect of so many books, and robes, and potion ingredients. Was Hogwarts a private school that would cost a fortune to attend? Her mother did not have a fortune. Nothing even close to one.
Mary-Ellen had leveled a penetrating gaze at Dorcas with her water glass suspended in mid air. "Is that what you want? To continue schooling here?" It was a matter of fact question. Dorcas was free to choose her own path.
"Hogwarts sounds great. I'm excited," Dorcas hedged.
"But what?" her mother prompted, sipping water.
Dorcas shrugged, pushing food around her plate, not meeting her mother's eyes.
Dorcas was grateful for everything she had. Though it wasn't much, she had a safe and comfortable home, food on the plate in front of her, and two people she loved very much. She looked to her right at Morty instead. He was folding paper cranes in what seemed to be a mental contest against himself. She knew he would spend all night stringing these across the mantle, on her piano, on the light fixtures.
"Are you worried about Morty," Mary-Ellen probed.
Morty answered his name with a quick smile at Mary-Ellen and returned to his cranes.
Dorcas felt worse. She should have felt bad about leaving her uncle. He would not do well with her absence. He did not cope with a change in his routine or atmosphere. This had not occurred to her in all of her anticipation.
"I just wonder if we can afford for me to go there," Dorcas finally admitted.
"I cannot," Mary-Ellen replied, a little downcast as she stood to remove empty dinner things to the drainboard. "But your Uncle Lysander has offered to pay for your tuition and supplies," she added with her back turned. Dorcas could hear that familiar tension in her mother's voice at the mention of her older sibling. "That's why he was here. The piano and the school funds."
"What should I do, Mama?" Dorcas asked after a long pause. Considering the unease that had fallen on the small room. Morty folding paper was the only sound.
"I can't tell you, Dorcas," her mother said, turning toward her with a chocolate cake on a plate in her hands. She placed it on the table in front of her and, with a quick "Incendio" lit the twelve candles stuck into it with her wand.
It was not Dorcas's birthday until September 12. She would be at school then, so they would celebrate early.
"I want you to choose the school that you want to go to. I don't want you to worry about me, or Morty, or money." Mary-Ellen came to stand beside her daughter and placed a kiss on the top of her head.
"Happy Birthday, darling," Mary-Ellen proclaimed as Morty clapped his hands, paper cranes forgotten all around him.
Dorcas moved into a compartment that was empty in the center of the train. She placed Bing on a tweedy seat and pulled her trunk into the space behind her. She surveyed the overhead rack and the enormous trunk beside her dubiously. She gave it up as a bad job and sat next to Bing with a shrug.
Opening the Photoplay magazine that her mother had given her as an early birthday present, Dorcas tried to calm her nerves by flipping through page after page of glamorous Hollywood film stars. When she had exhausted this source of distraction, she opened the trunk that sat beside her and reached for Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1.
"Hello there," said a cheerful voice as Dorcas heard the compartment door slide open.
Dorcas lowered her book and saw a girl standing in the cabin's entrance. Her face was wide and sunny, her auburn hair framing it beautifully in soft curls.
"Hello," Dorcas returned, setting her book in her lap.
"Is there room in here for me and my new friend, Anneliese?" the sunny-faced girls asked.
"Yes, it's just me," Dorcas said, secretly relieved that she would not be making the journey to Hogwarts alone.
"You and this darling," the girl corrected, forgetting all else: her trunk and her friend and crossing the compartment to lift Bing into the air.
The girl called Anneliese lingered in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed. There was a trunk in her way and she seemed unsure if she should try to shift it or try to traverse it in a skirt and appear unladylike. She had golden hair that was bobbed at her shoulders and curled fetchingly toward her delicate jawline. She had striking emerald eyes that immediately made Dorcas think of the beautiful girls that constantly entered the record shop in pursuit of Bobby.
"What's his name?" The cheery redhead asked. Her friendly face was freckled with deep brown and expressive eyes. "Mine is Cherry," she added, extending the gloved hand that was not currently holding a kitten toward Dorcas. "Cherry Weasley."
Dorcas took her hand and was about to answer, when Cherry cut her off once more. "This is Anneliese Epping," she said, sitting next to Dorcas with her feet resting on Dorcas's trunk.
Anneliese looked up in embarrassment, for in that very moment she had decided to risk summiting the discarded trunks to enter the compartment, her slip showing a little at the hem of her sage colored traveling suit. She stood, straightening her matching hat and flushed.
"Hello," she stammered, taking Dorcas's outstretched hand before settling in a seat opposite Cherry and Dorcas.
"Anneliese is a Muggle-born," Cherry said, stroking Bing absently. "Isn't that fascinating?"
Dorcas was about to reply, looking between the two of them. She was cut off again.
"Merlin!" Cherry exclaimed, causing Anneliese to jump slightly. "Are you a Muggle-born too?" She held up the Photoplay as if providing a helpful visual aid.
Feeling dimwitted, Dorcas answered in a low voice, "I don't know what a Muggle-born is."
"Then you have to be!" Cherry pronounced jubilantly. "Oh it's not an insult," she added. Dorcas must have looked crestfallen. Cherry hastened to explain. "A Muggle is someone who is non-magical."
Dorcas thought for a moment. "My mother is a witch and I suppose my father was magical too. But my uncle is not magical, though my grandparents were" Dorcas responded with a shrug.
Cherry nodded from behind the open magazine, flipping from page to page. "So he's a Squib," she said. It was not a question. She said it more like a teacher introducing new vocabulary to a student. Bing curled up on Cherry's wool skirt and licked his paw contentedly.
Anneliese seized the momentary pause that the magazine had inspired in Cherry to address Dorcas. "As Cherry has already told you, I am Anneliese and I am Muggle-born." She smiled. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"I'm Dorcas Clerey. This is Bing," she said gesturing to the purring kitten.
"I love Muggle fashion," Cherry said with a sigh. "Mother is going to take me to Marks and Spencers for my birthday." She said this as if she were speaking of a holiday on the French Riviera instead of a department store.
But Dorcas could understand. She loved those rare Sundays when her mother did not have to work and they would take an afternoon and go to the posh part of town to walk through the department stores and dream of a different life.
"I'm telling you it all adds up," came an impassioned voice from the corridor. "The ink's not even dry on that agreement with the Russians and now there's all these lies about Polish aggression. Hitler's got his sights on Poland. He's going to invade," the owner of the voice came into view, framed in the open doorway to Dorcas's compartment. He was gesturing to a newspaper he held up, while calling back to others behind him. His foot hit the discarded trunks belonging to Cherry and Anneliese, causing him to stumble.
He recovered quickly, sweeping blond curls from his forehead and looking into the cabin. He was a handsome boy with wide, expressive blue eyes. They were made even brighter by the conviction with which he had just been speaking.
Tucking his newspaper under one arm he hauled one trunk into the compartment.
"Come on fellas, let's help the ladies with their bags," he said with a smile that crinkled his eyes.
Dorcas felt her cheeks heat when he looked at her.
The "fellas" of whom this blond boy had been speaking appeared on either side of him. As he grappled with Cherry's trunk, one of the others began stacking two hat boxes while the other tugged at Anneliese's trunk.
"Ladies," the blond boy greeted them, securing Cherry's trunk in the overhead rack. "Caleb Meadowes at your service." He glanced once more at Dorcas with a wink. She knew that her cheeks were scarlet and the thought made her blush even more with embarrassment.
"Is this one yours, Miss Clerey?" he said, bending close to her to pull her trunk from the floor as well, pointing to the stenciled name on the side next to the handle.
She was suddenly the stupidest girl in the world, casting around frantically in her mind for the correct answer to the question he had just posed as if this were a complicated riddle.
"Yes, and she's most obliged, Caleb," Cherry answered for her. "This is Dorcas Clerey," Cherry continued confidently. "And behind you, Anneliese Epping." She tossed her hair over her shoulder and introduced herself with a flourish. Dorcas was awed and jealous of the ease with which Cherry seemed to say anything to anyone without stammering or blushing.
"Hi" Caleb heaved Dorcas's trunk to rest beside Cherry's on the rack.
"Britain will give in like they have before. That's what my dad says," replied the boy carrying Anneliese's hat boxes. He was so preoccupied with their discussion from the corridor that he did not look up from the load he was carrying to notice the three girls. "The Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland," he rattled off in argument to Caleb's previous point.
They had clearly been in the middle of an intense debate about current affairs.
Caleb made no counter argument at that moment, but turned to address his friends, "Gentlemen, may I present Cherry Weasley, Anneliese Epping, and Dorcas Clerey."
"Pleasure," replied the distracted boy with the hat boxes. He leaned over the seat that Anneliese was sitting in so that he could put the boxes on the rack above her. She moved her knees primly to one side in order to avoid brushing his.
He seemed to look away from his task only after completing it, with a stunned expression on his face to see the seat over which he had been leaning occupied. Stepping back to allow Anneliese her personal space, he introduced himself.
"I'm Beau," he stammered at Anneliese, smoothing his light brown hair self consciously. "Beau Haywood."
He turned quickly, a rose tinge to his cheek that Dorcas found comforting. She was not the only one with this dreadful personality flaw, she thought, relieved.
Beau helped the third boy to stow Anneliese's trunk and the three of them took seats in the compartment, Beau and Caleb next to Anneliese and the boy who had not been introduced next to Cherry.
"And you are?" Cherry asked, batting eyelashes and flashing a winning smile. She turned to the boy sitting next to her.
"Darren Barton," the boy replied, looking nervously at his two friends for assistance. Dorcas imagined a poor fly caught in a web.
"Darren," Cherry said airily. "What a handsome name."
Beau cut in, moved to act by his friend's pleading look. "France and Great Britain will give in like they always do. Hitler's been allowed to rearm his whole military and no one has stopped him."
"A few well-placed Aurors would take care of Hitler for good," Caleb added.
Aurors. Squib. Muggle. Dorcas was feeling as if she needed a dictionary handy. She resolved to find the library at Hogwarts as soon as she could and educate herself.
Darren finally found his voice, though he was inching away from Cherry as she shifted closer to him. "You don't expect that wizarding communities will get involved do you?"
"Why not?" asked Beau, baffled by his friend's statement.
"Because it's not our fight," Darren said hotly.
Dorcas realized what topic the debate had been circling at that moment. It was not really about what France, or Great Britain, or what any other country would do next, really. It was about whose fight it was: non-magical alone, or non-magical and magical together.
She had heard many disembodied voices on the radio over the past few months, debating intricacies and nuances of this move by Hitler, or that move by Stalin. What would Mussolini do next, or would Franco join an alliance. It all came down to one thing really, Dorcas had decided: Everyone looked to someone else to act first.
"But there's only one world, right?"
All eyes were on Dorcas. She had not spoken since the boys had entered the compartment.
She glazed around uncertainly. Five pairs of eyes looked directly back at her.
She continued cautiously, feeling like an idiot for opening her mouth and butting in. "I mean, there's no magical world and non-magical world. We all live in the same country, don't we? If Hitler threatens the Muggle way of life," she paused, trying out the new word "muggle" and hoping she didn't blunder. "Doesn't he threaten all ways of life? It seems to me that the wizarding world has as much to lose if the Nazis threaten our country as the Muggles do?"
No one replied for a moment. She looked at her hands in her lap, feeling for all the world like a prize moron.
"I agree."
Dorcas lifted her eyes from her lap and looked at Caleb, hoping the color didn't rise in her cheeks again. He was staring at her with a look of admiration, the smile on his face crinkling the corners of his eyes.
Bolstered by this affirmation, Dorcas entered more confidently into the discussion with Caleb and his friends. Anneliese interrupted every once in a while to ask a question. Cherry broke in to compliment Darren's points every so often.
They passed the remainder of the train ride discussing and debating all manner of subjects.
When all students and luggage had been deposited on the Hogsmeade platform, Cherry, Anneliese, and Dorcas left the boys to join the other first years at the edge of the lake where they would soon venture across the water to Hogwarts. From there they would be sorted into houses and welcomed to the wizarding school.
On that day, Dorcas had made a cadre of faithful friends and found lively and stimulating conversation. As they chugged northward on the Hogwarts Express and debated the future prospects of war, they were all unaware that tanks and planes in their thousands had barraged the Polish border breaking its defenses and swarmed toward the capital, Warsaw.
A/N: Reviews are welcome and appreciated.
