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Disclaimers: Chapter contains a somewhat irreverent discussion of the Holocaust. Opinions expressed are those of the characters.

Do not fear sudden terror, nor the darkness of the wicked when it comes (Proverbs 3:25)

"C'mon," Michael said urgently, "let's get back to the dormitory."

The spell that had seemed to be cast over the crowd broke, eerie silence dissipating into muttering and whispers. Terry's nails still dug into Yehuda's arm. The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware. In pairs and clusters, people splashed away down the stone corridor; no one left alone. The five of them stayed huddled together as they climbed the stairs.

"That Malfoy, what a—" Michael muttered something under his breath. He kicked open the door of their room. "Can't believe I thought he was all right."

"But what's a Mudblood?"

He seemed to have said something terrible, because Stephen, Michael, and Terry all winced. Stephen looked faintly nauseous. He sat on the edge of Terry's bed. "Yehuda, that's an awful thing to say."

"He can say it if he wants, he's Muggle-born," Michael argued.

"Still—" Stephen shuddered. He turned to Yehuda. "It's a really foul thing to call someone whose parents are Muggles—a wizard who's not from a magical family. Like you, or Kevin. People like that, they use it to make themselves better than everyone else."

"Is there something wrong with that?" Kevin asked uncertainly. "I mean, I'm all right with Transfiguration, but I'm no good with Charms—is it because I'm Muggle-born?"

"No!" Michael said violently. "Anyone can be good or bad at anything and it has nothing to do with being from any kind of family, all right? Don't say things like that; it's just a lot of nonsense. Pure-bloods wouldn't count me, even though both of my parents are wizards, because I have grandparents that are Muggles."

"And my mum's pure-blood too, but she married my dad, and he's Muggle, so." Terry shrugged. "It doesn't make you different. It doesn't mean anything."

But it did mean something: each of them could reel off their magical lineage as easily as Yehuda could the parshiyos, it was something they had heard repeated, that they had been taught, that they knew. He saw his own unease etched across Kevin's furrowed brows. "Why do they care so much who marries who?"

"They think Muggles are…different," Terry said. "Like they don't belong in the country, almost. Honestly some of them don't seem to think they're quite human. Some of my grandparents' friends acted like my mum had married a toad."

"I dunno," Stephen said. "They probably just didn't know what to say. I mean, Muggles don't know anything about magic." He glanced sideways at Terry. "Your father's probably a lovely person. But it's just so different."

"Different's not a bad thing," Michael said. "Right, Yehuda?"

Four heads turned in his direction.

"Yehuda?"

He had stood silently since Terry had said Muggles weren't quite human, and now he felt himself move backward until the bedframe hit the back of his thighs. He sat.

"Yehuda, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he heard himself say, dully. He shook his head, coming back to himself. "It's just—you sound like you're talking about the Holocaust, that's all."

"The what?" Michael said.

Kevin looked shocked, and Terry whirled on Michael. "You don't know what the Holocaust is?"

"What is that?" Stephen asked, frowning. "Holo, caust—was something all burned?"

"Yes," Yehuda said. "Everything." He couldn't think of another way to explain it.

"Oh!" Terry clapped a hand to his mouth. "You're Jewish, Yehuda, that was your—"

His what, he didn't know—his people? His concentration camps? They didn't belong to him, except that they sort of did. He nodded, wordless, letting Terry try to explain that the Muggles had had a Grindelwald of their own who'd found out where the Jews lived and locked them all up in camps and killed them.

"Not all of them, though!" Michael sounded horrified. "Or he wouldn't be here. Right? Did they Apparate?"

"They couldn't, they're Muggles," Stephen said. He looked cautiously at Yehuda, as though afraid he had said something terribly offensive. "They must have got out a different way."

Yehuda nodded. "My father's parents got out before it got bad, but they lost all their money and almost their whole families. My grandmother was the only one in her family left alive; she had eight brothers and sisters and they all got shot, into a giant pit—" He felt terribly flustered. At Torah Temima everyone had a story like this, and they would one-up each other in the numbers of their dead great-aunts and uncles until it ended with Hillman bragging that his grandfather had shot a Nazi and escaped on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Japan. Here it only made him sound helpless and doomed, as sad as the rain hammering the dormitory windows. He cast about for a lighter topic. "My grandparents got married, after. In Feldafing, in a D.P. camp—that's for displaced persons, for all the people who didn't have anywhere to go anymore. That's where they met. My grandmother always jokes that Hitler was their sh…that Hitler introduced them."

The four of them sat on Terry's bed, and he alone on his, and he felt every centimeter of the space between them as they gaped at him.

"And…and they're all right now?" Michael asked.

"Well, my grandfather's dead." It ought to hurt, to say it so brutally, and he felt guilty that it didn't, but he'd never known Saba Sholom at all. "He was in the army, in Israel. My mother was just a baby. My grandmother came here after that, but she got remarried a few years ago, and now she lives in Israel, in their old apartment."

Michael looked lost. "But why did they want to kill them?"

Sholom, Sholom-his-brother, carried a picture of Saba Sholom in his tefillin bag, a young man squinting in the sun, sleeve pulled up to show the camera the numbers tattooed on his forearm. Yehuda felt very old, as though the boy sitting now on the bed in the dormitory was both himself and his grandfather at once. "I don't know," he said quietly. Halacha hi b'yadua, he thought, that Eisav hates Yaakov.

"How come no one ever tells us this stuff?" Michael said indignantly. "We should learn it in History of Magic!"

"But it's not the history of magic," Stephen said. "Besides, we're still in the medieval era, and this was just now, almost."

"The medieval era!" Kevin gasped. "Binns's essay—I've only got two feet five inches. Did any of you find anything in The Decline of Pagan Magic?"

Stephen had, Terry had based his entire essay off it with only supporting information from A History of Magic, and Michael had never heard of the book. Of course they could be distracted by something else, Yehuda thought resentfully, it wasn't them they had been talking about. They could just go right into arguing about whether or not the International Warlock Convention of 1289 counted as "medieval Europe," even with silver words daubed on the wall downstairs.

The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.

But over the next few days, it was all anyone could talk about. Yehuda averted his eyes every time he walked through the second-floor corridor. The cat had not been seen since Halloween, no one knew anything, and there was no one reporting back to them. Professor McGonagall briskly told them that it was a matter for the school administration and not to worry, Professor Flitwick chided them for straying off subject, and no one ever dared to raise anything with Professor Snape.

"Lockhart'll have to tell us," Michael said with determination. "It's not off subject. This is his subject. It's Defense, isn't it?"

It seemed that everyone else had the same thought, for when Lockhart entered the room, the class exploded.

"What happened to Mrs. Norris?" Mandy shouted. "Is she dead?"

"Certainly not," Lockhart said, looking shocked. "She has merely been cursed. Professor Dumbledore and I were able to see to her condition, and with any luck she'll be good as new in a few days. It was certainly lucky that I was there, as I have had extensive experience with powerful enchantments."

"What curse was it, sir?" Stephen asked.

"She has been Petrified," Lockhart said. "A highly complex piece of Dark magic, which I previously encountered in Tarragona, where an entire village had not slept in two weeks for fear of haunting by a Grim…"

Michael looked over at him and smirked, but Terry was hunched over his parchment, taking copious notes. A good teacher, Yehuda thought, would have told them what a Grim was, or what being Petrified was, but Lockhart drifted into a longwinded story about how the villagers had offered to crown him as their new leader, something Yehuda very much doubted. He set aside his notes, which consisted of the same blank roll of parchment headed "Defense Against the Dark Arts" that he had brought to class on the first day, and practiced his calligraphy instead. His alef-beis was quite good, but surely they would be doing English at the club, and that alphabet was much harder—more square, and shyer about taking up space on the page. He bit his lip as he tried to connect the top part of the Y to the bottom.

Lockhart's story finally ended with his being escorted to his Portkey by the entire population of the town along with a symphonic orchestra, ten minutes before class was supposed to finish. Immediately Terry bounced out of his seat. "Professor? You mentioned Tarragona; could I ask you a question about Catalan wizarding culture…"

"C'mon," Michael said. "Let him stay and lick Lockhart's boots. I want to go back to that hallway."

It was quiet in the corridor; most of the classes were still in session. All the water had been mopped up. Filch had been scrubbing at it for days, but the words were still there, looming over them like a threat.

"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened," Michael read. "Enemies of the heir, beware. Heir of who, d'you reckon?"

"Hogwarts?" Yehuda guessed. "One of the founders? If there was a secret chamber somewhere in the castle, they'd be the only ones to know, wouldn't they?"

"But they've got enemies. Who would hate the heir of the founders?"

A harsh, hoarse cough sounded behind them. "St—students in the corridors!"

They stepped backward involuntarily. Filch always looked ragged, but today he was the sort of person you would cross the street to avoid—unshaven, still in yesterday's clothes, his eyes rimmed red. He was carrying a completely dry mop that bobbed against the stone floors with every step. "Students disrupting class! Making noise in the hallways! Deten—"

"How is Mrs. Norris, sir?" Yehuda asked timidly. He didn't have time to sit a detention, he was a week behind in his mishnayos worksheets.

Filch wiped his nose on his already filthy sleeve. "Shut up about my cat, you little brats. She's the only thing that makes this place worth anything, and now she's…" He hiccupped. "And now she's d-dead."

"She's only Petrified," Michael said. Yehuda wanted to kick him. He knew how to calm a crying baby, but never a grownup. Nonetheless he was sure this was the wrong thing to say.

Filch's face twisted. "You—"

"Argus?"

Professor Flitwick had emerged from his classroom. He surveyed the scene, then patted Filch comfortingly on the hip, which was as high as he could reach. "You won't have to do the detention," he said to them in an undertone. To Filch, he said, "Leave the broom, Argus. Come have some tea. I was just thinking about Mrs. Norris. Do you remember when Minerva's mice had escaped, and she herded them all into a classroom? Truly a remarkable animal…" And they shuffled down the hallway to his office, Filch sniffling, Professor Flitwick whistling an incongruously cheery tune. The door clicked shut behind them.

"What's the Chamber of Secrets?" Yehuda asked. He'd read a lot about the magical world, and although he felt quite natural at Hogwarts—more natural than the first years, at any rate—

"Dunno, I've never heard of it." Michael looked at him. "Library?"

Kevin's band club practiced on Shabbos mornings, in one of the Potions dungeons ("so no one can hear if you go out of tune," Kevin said). The group that was studying for the G.C.S.E. exams, which Michael still called "Muggle O.W.L.s," met on Shabbos, too. But the first meeting of the calligraphy club was on Sunday, in his Charms classroom, and it was the only club that met on Sundays.

Coincidentally, it was also the only club that he had signed up for.

He pushed open the door. The vaulted ceiling of the classroom was even taller with so few people under it. Penelope stood at Professor Flitwick's desk, setting out rolls of vellum, jars of India ink and iron gall. There were a few others perched on desks or standing around—mostly girls, but there Dean Thomas from Gryffindor, and there was the pale little girl from Flourish and Blott's, her back very straight.

"Mark graduated, so I'm the head of the calligraphy club now. Cough up your Sickles, people, the supplies don't come from nowhere. Now, we've got some new faces, so let's all go around and introduce ourselves—I'm Penelope Clearwater, and I'd never seen a quill before I got to Hogwarts, but it's now my favorite way to write. How about you? You're a Gryffindor, right?"

Not him. He listened carefully to Dean's introduction so he could understand how it was done. "My name's Dean Thomas, and I dunno if I like calligraphy, but I guess I'll try it. And, yeah." He shrugged.

They were all looking at him now. All right, that wasn't too hard. "Um, I'm Yehuda Goldstein. Or Anthony," he added quickly. "I also never wrote with a quill before I came here and I think it's lovely."

"I'm Leanne, and I'm trying calligraphy on a dare…"

His heartbeat slowly returned to normal. The pale little girl opposite gave a small smile as the room's eyes fell on her. "Good afternoon, I'm Mercy Montgomery. I've joined the calligraphy club because my mother says that every lady should have a beautiful skill."

He startled. "My mother," not "my mum"? That was different, that was kibbud av v'eim—almost like home.

They broke into groups next: the ones who had been there last year gathered around Penelope as she demonstrated a swirly copperplate style, and another girl, a Hufflepuff Yehuda didn't recognize, showed them how to lean in close and perform a Severing Charm on the tip of the quill on an angle, making the strokes much more precise. He'd been doing all right with his safrus, but this was much easier.

He found himself across from Mercy Montgomery, watching her squint at the parchment, inking overturn strokes into the letter M, over and over. Was he allowed to listen to her hum?

"Do you have a relative called Dove?" he blurted.

She dipped her quill into the inkwell, sparing him a single glance upward. "Yes, of course. My great-aunt. Have you met her?"

Wait, what? "Your great-aunt?"

"Yes." She tilted her head. "Is Dove a boys' name for Muggles? I didn't know that."

"I don't know," he said awkwardly. He should know about what Muggles did, but she probably meant real Muggles, goyim. The rest of the world. "In Hebrew it's a boys' name. I found a Dove Montgomery in an old Daily Prophet, so I just hoped…"

"Oh, I don't know," she said doubtfully. "Religions are a Muggle tradition, really. There were the Thorncrowns and the Bonaccords, of course, but they aren't pure-blood anymore, and they've gone extinct-in-the-male-line." She said the last bit like it was one long word. "And the Daily Prophet announcements are almost all pure-bloods."

He frowned. Now he remembered; yonah was a dove in English, a sort of bird. So Dove was a girl's name, after all—another Hogwarts thing he had been wrong about.

Between finding quiet places to practice his parsha and analyzing the interaction of nettles and bat spleen in Swelling Solutions, he plugged through the papery layers of months and years. St. Mungo's had purchased a new building in London from a Muggle department store, and the facility was expected to open in 1945. There was that mysterious Black family, again; one of the daughters had married a man called Ignatius Prewett. The summer of 1943 was a bad one; a girl called Myrtle Warren died of a fatal poisoning by an Acromantula (at Hogwarts! He certainly wasn't going to tell that to his parents), then the Wizengamot sentenced a man named Morfin Gaunt to Azkaban for Muggle-killing.

The bell rang. He stood up, cracking his back, and went to find Madam Pince. If he was going to have to sort out the pure-bloods from everyone else, he would need a list of them. Nott repudiates Sacred 28—there were certainly books of the sort somewhere in the library.

Winter crept on, and sunset was coming earlier and earlier. As second years, their day was longer, and the Friday before the first Quidditch match, Shabbos was so early he had to go up to Flitwick at the beginning of double Charms and quietly ask for permission to leave before the end of class. Walking between the desks was like that History of Magic class all over again; he could feel all the stares, but this time they seemed to pass after a glance. Oh, it's Goldstein again, they seemed to say. Just another one of those things.

In the time before the others were dismissed, he managed to shower, dress for Shabbos, daven Mincha, and fetch his Friday night meal from the kitchen. The others came in as he was lighting the candles, and they stood in respectful silence until he was done. Good Shabbos, he thought. The unspoken greeting hovered in the air; he could not say it, but he could think of nothing else.

Terry broke the silence, turning to Michael. "I can't believe you asked Flitwick to Obliviate you."

Yehuda exhaled.

"Yeah, well, it's all theory until you actually do it," Michael explained animatedly. He flung open the doors of his wardrobe and began dumping its contents onto his bed. "And since I don't want to mess with my own head it's better if Flitwick does it, isn't it? D'you think this is red enough to wear for Gryffindor?"

Terry watched him with amusement. "What are you doing? You've got no skin in the game."

"Well, I've got to root for someone," Michael said. "Aren't you going to put on green, for your brother?"

He was joking: nothing on earth could have induced Terry to don Slytherin colors. In the morning, when Yehuda walked them down to the entrance hall, they met Benjamin, who was indeed bundled up in a green scarf, hat, and gloves. He laughed when he saw Michael. "We look like Christmas!"

Yehuda winced.

Through the open windows of the common room, he could hear the distant cheers, and the low whoosh of a crowd all gasping together. He looked back at the Chumash propped open on his lap. Was he missing out, not going to the games just because they were on Shabbos? It wasn't like there was anything specifically assur about it, it just didn't feel right. He supposed if there was an emergency, or if Michael one day made the team and wanted him to watch, it would be all right for him to go, but otherwise it was just a confusing mess of dives and too many balls. Besides, if he went to the game, he would take away from Michael the chance to run back up to the common room and rush over the words and retell it to him as though he was seeing it play out in front of him again, and he could tell how much Michael liked that.

This time, they all tumbled into the room in a race to say what had happened. "There was a Bludger attacking Harry Potter!"

"Slytherin had Nimbus-Two-Thousand-and-Ones—"

"It smashed his arm and he still got the Snitch!"

"He'll only have to be in the hospital wing overnight," Terry said. "Lockhart did something to fix it."

Michael sniggered. "Not exactly. He removed all his bones and then said 'Well, that happens sometimes.'"

"Well, it worked," Terry said righteously. "The arm wasn't broken anymore."

"Because there was no bones left!" Michael said. "Benjamin, is he always this stupid?"

Benjamin looked alarmed. "He's, er, entitled to his own opinion, I suppose?"

"You sound like Mum," Terry said.

Havdalah was early, too, this time of year—he could do it quickly in the dormitory and then go and have dinner with everyone else in the Great Hall. There was time to catch up on Charms after a whole day of Hebrew—he hadn't missed much in the last quarter of the class, only the beginnings of Finite Incantatem and Michael's argument about Memory Charms. By the time Penelope sent everyone to bed, he was all caught up.

Well, all caught up on Hogwarts things, at any rate. He pretended to go to bed with the rest of them, turned away as Terry said his prayers, and when they had all gone quiet he got out of bed again. If he wanted to finish his Mishnayos on time, he was supposed to be up to perek gimmel by now. He gathered up his worksheets and crept back downstairs.

The common room was empty now, just a few torches lit, and he sat in the pool of light and opened to Yuma, perek beis.

Ayil karav b'achad asar…a ram is offered up by eleven kohanim—five for the meat, and two each for the guts, the flour, and the wine. He bit his lip thoughtfully, trying to decide what his father meant with the question "How many kohanim brought up the animal itself?" Did he mean the guts, too? Because that would be seven. Seven it was.

Par karav b'esrim v'arba'a…a cow is offered up by twenty-four kohanim. He squinted; this one was long and complicated and his father wanted him to draw a diagram of a cow with the correct number of kohanim standing by each of the body parts. His quill went scritch-scratch along the parchment, that and his breathing the only sound.

No, there was another sound. Were those footsteps?

He got to his feet. Yes, they were. Someone was outside, on the landing. He heard the click of the knocker, and a clear voice ringing like windchimes: "What would happen if a dementor was consumed by Fiendfyre?"

There was a low murmuring answer, he couldn't tell who, and the hinges creaked open. They were coming, someone was here, someone was inside the common room. He pointed his wand at the door and—

For a second he and Professor Flitwick stood there, wands drawn upon each other.

He lowered his arm sheepishly. "Sorry."

Professor Flitwick did, too. "I didn't expect there to be anyone awake."

"I was catching up on work." He shut the Mishnayos and moved his folder on top of it so Professor Flitwick wouldn't see. "I'm sorry. I'll go to bed now."

In his rush to not be alone with a professor, he was halfway to the stairs before it dawned on him—he had stayed up late so many times before, and Professor Flitwick had never come into the common room. Even the prefects stopped making rounds by this hour. He swallowed hard. "Something's happened, hasn't it?"

"Nothing for you to be worried about," Professor Flitwick said.

But something the Heads of Houses needed to be worried about, something that would send them all to their houses to see that everyone was all right. "There's been another…another Petrifying, hasn't there? A person this time."

With his back to the professor, all he could see was the doorway to the boys' dormitory, but the silence stretched on so long that he knew the answer was yes. "It's not Harry Potter, is it?"

"No, no, no, no," Professor Flitwick said quickly. "Well, it's young Mr. Creevey, and it'll be all over the school by tomorrow. He'll be all right, just as Mrs. Norris will be. Now go on to bed, Mr. Goldstein, and do try to avoid sowing panic in the ranks."

The staircase loomed ahead of him in the dark. He walked up as quickly as he could, pushed open the door, wincing at the squeak, and padded across the carpet to his bed as quietly as he could. He set his books down. Behind him, bedsheets rustled. He yanked out his wand. "Lumos."

The light fell upon Kevin, sitting up in bed and squinting at him dazedly. "Anth…Yehuda? What time is it?"

"It's midnight," he whispered, relaxing. He should have said Go back to sleep, or nothing at all, but the information sat heavily in his gut, and it had to vomit out or he would be sick. "Professor Flitwick came in. There's been another attack—someone else Petrified. Colin Creevey, from Gryffindor."

Kevin went very still in the thin beam of light, his face wide-eyed and pale with dread. "He's Muggle-born, too."

On Monday morning, the door creaked when Yehuda opened it. Michael sat up groggily. "Where are you going?"

"To the kitchen, to check on the house-elves, make breakfast. Why?"

Michael reached for his dressing gown. "Not by yourself you're not."

Yehuda stared at him. "It's been a cat, and a Gryffindor boy who takes pictures of everyone. Nothing's going to come after me between here and the kitchen. You aren't taking Draco Malfoy seriously, are you?"

But it soon became apparent that the entire school had taken Draco Malfoy's outburst as fact. According to Mandy, who'd heard it from Hannah who'd heard it from Lavender, Hermione Granger had asked Professor Binns what the Chamber of Secrets was, and there was an old, old story that Slytherin (the first Slytherin) had put something in there to attack Muggle-born students. Yehuda had read in Hogwarts, A History that Slytherin hadn't trusted Muggle-borns, but surely someone who set out to attack them wouldn't continue to have a House named after them. There had to be more to it than that.

Back in the common room, one of the first-years rushed over to him, a bedraggled-looking girl with too-long hair and a string of buttons dangling over one ear, and thrust at him what appeared to be a very large onion with dangling legs, telling him loudly and earnestly that dried Freshwater Plimpies were excellent for warding off Dark magic, and all the Muggle-borns should have one. This, to him, sounded like a blatant violation of lo sinachashu, and he told her so. From what Professor Quirrell had taught them last year (because goodness knows they hadn't learned anything from Lockhart), he didn't think Dark magic was something that could be warded off, exactly, and certainly not with walking onions. You had to take the time to learn the defensive spells, there were no shortcuts.

"No, thank you," he said politely. "I'm not superstitious."

At this, several people looked up from around the room. Marietta Edgecombe was giggling, maybe at him, maybe at the first-year. Was he wrong? He was at Hogwarts, after all, and there was so much he didn't know. He went upstairs to the dormitory. "What's a Freshwater Plimpy?"

Michael looked up from his comic book and laughed. "Did Loony Lovegood get you?"

"I told her I wasn't superstitious."

"Good, that's the right answer. She got Kevin just before. Poor sap, he didn't know what to say. A Freshwater Plimpy's just a kind of fish, nothing to do with Dark Magic. My mum used to make it when my dad was on a diet. Smelled something awful."

She'd got Kevin, too. That reminded him of the question that had been itching at him for years, from even before he had the words to ask it, and he hesitated before plunging ahead. May as well strike while Michael was in a sharing information mood. "Michael, how do Muggle-borns even get magic in the first place?"

Michael shrugged. "Why shouldn't they?"

"No, I mean—" He yanked open his nightstand drawer and fished for the family photograph there. "Look. My father has dark brown hair, my mother's is almost blond. Me and my brothers and sisters—all of us have either dark hair or light hair, but none of us have red hair, because we don't have anyone to get it from. If neither of my parents is a wizard, where did I get that from?"

"Huh," Michael said, his brow furrowed. "Muggle-borns just happen. It doesn't have to come from somewhere, that's how magic is."

"But everything comes from something." Except Hashem, he added automatically in his head.

"Fine, then." Michael flopped backward onto his pillows. "Are you sure they're not wizards?"

He tried to picture Mummy or Totty at one of the double desks in the vaulted stone classrooms, and had to stifle a laugh. "Very."

"But they wrote Flitwick that letter at the beginning of the year, remember?"

"Ye-es," he said slowly. "But it was just about letting me go home for my bar mitzvah."

Michael shook his head impatiently. "It doesn't matter what it was about; it's that they knew what to write so that Hogwarts would let you go. Muggles wouldn't know that. You should ask them about it."

"I can't," he said. "Professor Flitwick put the letter in his cabinet. He said it didn't seem like they meant me to read it."

"Then sneak into the office and get it back."

"No!" he said, horrified. "Steal it? No."

Michael laughed. "It's not stealing; it's yours."

He squirmed. He wanted to end the conversation, but he didn't know why. Avoiding Michael's eyes, he stood up. "I've got to go to the library," he said.

But Michael got to his feet too. "You shouldn't go alone."

"It's all right." He left quickly, and shut the door behind him.

In the library, he gathered up the next volume of Daily Prophets and his notes, and found a quiet seat in the chilly sunlight a few tables down from Hermione Granger, feeling oddly lonely after the almost-falling-out with Michael. It hadn't been a real fight, but if he had stayed in the room he thought it might have become one.

In an article about the great variety of extracurricular clubs at Hogwarts, the reporter quoted a boy named Asher Thorncrown (Hufflepuff '47) who said that the Bible study club had been a great resource even for students who weren't Christian. Here he paused, quill hovering over parchment—Mercy had said the Thorncrowns were a religious pure-blood family. Asher was Hebrew, yes, and this Asher had studied the Bible, but who called it the Bible? Besides, Thorncrown was too English to be a Jewish name. He glossed over Alphard Black, Elaine Garlott named Head Boy & Girl, having read that the Black family was ancient, inbred, and all but extinct; and "Garlott" didn't sound Jewish at all.

He turned the page. Tables and tables of international Quidditch scores, and analyses of each team's chances of making the World Cup. He couldn't help but scan for a magen David, for the Israeli team, but there wasn't one—of course not, he chided himself, Israel hadn't declared its independence yet. There were teams for places like Québec and Transylvania, though, so perhaps it didn't matter.

Next were the society pages, and it took a few seconds for his eyes to register what he was seeing: a marriage announcement for Nicanor Greengrass and Ella Rosier, Slytherin '35 and '42. Nicanor—Shaar Nicanor, that was in the Gemara. He had ordered giant brass doors from Alexandria and one of them had been thrown overboard in a storm and washed up at the dock in Eretz Yisrael, it was a nes…or however the story went. They'd put the doors at the top of the stairs to the Ezras Yisrael, and when Mashiach came and he was all grown up, he would stand in front of them, with the other Levi'im, and sing.

And Greengrass? Was that Jewish? He had heard the name before—someone patting him on the back, Michael smiling across a table, McGonagall's voice. That's right, there was a girl Greengrass in his year, in his Herbology class. Nicanor Greengrass, he wrote with finality, and rolled the parchment closed.

Enough investigating for one day: he had Mishnayos to do. Who was the mimuneh, his father wanted to know, and what was the disagreement between the Tanna Kama and Matisyahu ben Shmuel? What was the root of the word barkai?

Greengrass, though. It sounded Jewish, it really did. He'd ask her in the morning.

Ask her, what a strange phrase. At home, there were two kinds of girls: mothers, which included Esti because she was allowed to tell him to take a bath and go to bed; and little sisters, who tugged your shirt to show you things you didn't care about. Here, there were girls for classmates, the same as him, neither in charge nor taken charge of, and it was quite unsettling.

It would be odd if she turned out to be Jewish in the end. Maybe she would light Shabbos candles for him; the mitzvah belonged to the lady of the house, that's what Totty said. Well, she wore trousers, so she couldn't be terribly frum. Maybe he could make a kiddush Hashem, and then she would start. He felt a little glow of pride at the thought.

Part of him wondered whether there could be Jewish Slytherins at all, but he tried to push that away. He couldn't count on Michael and Terry to tell him what to like and what not. For heaven's sake, Terry thought Lockhart was a good teacher, and Michael wanted to steal his letter from Professor Flitwick. They could be wrong about Slytherin, too. Benjamin was all right. Mercy was all right. There was no reason to write off the Greengrass girl.

The next day at Herbology they were working with dragonhide gloves, carefully transferring Puffapod seeds from water to pots. This was very delicate work, because when you dropped the pods they exploded into flowers, which were pretty in a violently pink way, but completely useless for potions. He was concentrating so hard on trying to avoid Michael's elbow that he almost missed the shriek from the Slytherin girl with the pageboy: "Be careful, Daphne!"

Daphne! "Greengrass, Daphne," that had been what McGonagall said. He whipped his head around, trying to keep track of where she was. It would be embarrassing to have to ask Blaise or Draco which one was Greengrass. They might think…he didn't know what they might think. When all the Puffapods had been safely repotted, they went back to their desks for the lecture part of the lesson. He kept his eyes fixed on the back of her head.

When they were finally dismissed, she and the girl with the pageboy got up to leave. He hurried after them, ignoring Michael's curious stare, and caught up just behind the greenhouse. "Excuse me?"

The two girls turned as one to stare at him.

"Um, Daphne."

"Yes?" She had an oddly sharp face, like it had been carved by someone who only knew how to draw straight lines.

The pageboy girl took a few steps away, as though to let them talk in private, so there was nothing to do but say it. "I've been reading some old Daily Prophets, and I found your surname mentioned. Are you related to Nicanor Greengrass?"

"My father," she said, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. "Why do you ask?"

"Because Nicanor's a Jewish name, and I was wondering—"

The instant he said it he knew it was wrong. She actually took a step backward, her eyes narrowing. "What? No, we're not…Jewish." The word was so carefully enunciated and so untried that he knew she was telling the truth. "We're not like Muggles. We're pure-blood."

And she flounced away, leaving him standing open-mouthed and more alone than ever.

Glossary

Parshiyos, singular parsha. Torah portions.

Halacha hi b'yadua. It is a known law. (See Rashi's commentary to Genesis 33:4.)

Alef-beis. The Hebrew alphabet.

Mishnayos. The Mishna.

Kibbud av v'eim. Honoring one's father and mother.

Safrus. Ritual script.

Goyim. Non-Jews.

Daven. Pray.

Mincha. Afternoon prayers.

Assur. Forbidden by Jewish law.

Perek gimmel. Chapter 3.

Perek beis. Chapter 2.

Kohanim. Priests.

Lo sinachashu. The prohibition against superstition (Leviticus 19:26).

Magen David. The six-pointed Star of David.

Shaar Nicanor. Nicanor's gate.

Nes. Miracle.

Ezras Yisrael. The Israelite courtyard in the Temple.

Mashiach. The Messiah, who will be a human being like the rest of us, in his first and only coming, thank you very much.

Levi'im. Levites.

Mimuneh. Priestly administrator.

Barkai. Dawn.

Frum. Religious.

Kiddush Hashem, literally "making holy the name [of God]." Cause for admiration of God and the Jewish people.