JKR owns HP

With thanks to Daf Yomi Limerick and Kira Sharp for their corrections.

Both these and these are the words of the living God (Talmud Eruvin 13b)

Chanukah overlapped with X-mas, but in Golders Green, people didn't put sparkles in their pine trees or hang garlands of red poinsettias from the rafters. On most of the blocks, when it got dark, there were only the humble little flames in the windows, lighting up the street with one more every night. The girls' school, as well as Eliyohu and Yosef's day care, had vacation starting from early in the week, but Sholom wasn't off until Thursday, and this meant that Yehuda had his father all to himself.

On the first morning, his father davened the later Shacharis with him, and then when the shul had cleared out, found them a place to sit. He was nervous—it was like his father was the teacher giving an exam, and he had to prove that he had learned something. There were so many folders he had, so many worksheets to send back and forth. Today it was his leining.

"Let me hear what you've been up to," his father said, opening his tikkun.

He swallowed, and launched into the first aliyah: "Vayikra-a el Moshe vayedaber Hashem eila-av mei'ohel moed, leimor: Dab-e-e-er el bnei Yisrael v'amarta-a aleihem, ada-a-am ki yakriv mik-e-e-em korban laHashem min habeheima-a-a-a min habakar u'min hatzon takrivu es korbanchem…"

When he was done, his father nodded approvingly. He had passed. "Let's start with Levi. You've got the beginning down pat, and there's still quite some time until the bar mitzvah."

Three months. Not quite thirteen weeks. It would be enough. Quite a lot could happen between then and now—they still didn't know if Saba Reuven was even going to come. He was out of the hospital, Savta said on the phone, but not really well enough to fly, so if it came down to it he might stay with Orit for a few days while she came to England. It was a shame. He wasn't Mummy's real father, that they all knew, but what bar mitzvah didn't have all your grandparents there?

(What bar mitzvah boy didn't go to yeshiva?)

"Nu, Levi?" his father prompted. He looked down and found the place again, reminding himself to stretch out the up-and-down in the first word. "Ve'i-i-i-i-im ha'o-o-of olah korbano laHashem…" Surreptitiously he turned the corners of the pages until he found the end of the parsha. It was so far away! Had it been this tiresome in the dormitory?

Shlishi, revi'i, chamishi…verse after verse, the letters almost blurring in front of him. By shishi he was yawning. Mercifully, his father looked at him, glanced up at the clock, and noted that Mummy was expecting them for lunch at twelve-thirty.

He felt instantly awake as they stepped outside into the cold. His neighbors' menorahs were all cooling in the windows, Hogwarts was somewhere at the other end of a train ride, and his father was right next to him, telling him how proud he was of his leining and all the practice he must be doing. "I'm surprised the tape recorder's still working. Hasn't it run out of batteries yet?"

"Oh, it doesn't need batteries," he said, unthinking.

His father looked suspicious. "What do you mean?"

"Well, one of the other boys brought a tape recorder and it exploded." He didn't want to say Kevin; Michael was a name that could at least be mistaken for Jewish. "It's got something to do with all the magic in the air, it messes with electricity. My professor showed me how to make it run with accidental magic, but once I get control it'll stop working."

"Interesting," his father murmured, but his voice sounded flat.

"What's interesting?"

His father would say no more, he just put his hand in his coat pocket to fish out the house keys. In his head, Yehuda was preparing to cut open a roll and fill it with tuna fish, or something equally plain, but he'd forgotten that all the banks were closed and Mummy was on holiday too. When the door opened, he smelled waves of something sweet and heard the oil crackling. Cheese latkes? That was a lot of effort to go to. Did she think it was tomorrow and the girls were off already?

"It's only us," he reminded her, just in case. "You don't have to make a big lunch."

Mummy flipped one of the latkes onto a plate, patting out the oil. "Can't I make some cheese latkes for my son who I see twice a year for ten days at a time?"

Oh. The special lunch was for him.

When they were finished eating, Mummy went to pick up Eliyohu and Yosef. He thought of going too, but there were Transfiguration equations to work out, and he wouldn't be able to do that with Esti and Sholom and Adina home. He brought the textbook out and copied the formulas on the dining room table, his father pointedly averting his eyes. Last year he'd just ridden his bike and looked at family pictures, he didn't have a bar mitzvah to prepare for, didn't have his father hovering over him making sure he was spending enough time on Jewish things, too. He had scarcely blown on the ink to make it dry faster (Penelope had taught them that) and rolled up the parchment when his father stood up. "Well, shall we review the Gemara?"

No, he thought. "All right," he said. They walked back to shul together.

The few stragglers who had stayed behind after Shacharis were all gone now, and the shul was almost empty; there were two men leaning on the bimah having a chavrusa, and a familiar face—Abulafia sat toward the back, Gemara propped open, across from a man in a blue shirt that Yehuda assumed was his father. He waved, and Abulafia grinned and waved back.

"Who is that?" his father asked, opening his Gemara.

"Menashe Abulafia, he was in my class in Torah Temima—"

"Abulafia?" His father's forehead creased. "Why are they here? There's a Sephardic shul on Golders Green Road."

"Yes, but he lives right here on Hampstead," Yehuda explained. "Where should we start?"

"I thought we'd review what you've covered since the beginning of the year, so I can hear how you've been getting along—"

He gulped; that was a full three and a half blatt and after all the leining earlier that morning, his throat had begun to hurt. It felt a bit like he was erasing his almost four months of learning on his own, as they went right back to the beginning where one person asks you to watch his animals or containers for free, and if they got lost or stolen you could just swear that it wasn't your fault. Or you could pay for the things and not have to swear, and then if the thief got caught, the double payment went to you. So why did the Mishnah have to say that it could be either animals or containers, why wasn't one example enough? They were just getting to not being allowed to sell the rights to something that didn't exist yet when the shul door flew open so hard it banged against the adjacent wall.

"Mazal tov," Snapir shouted. "I'm an uncle!"

Abulafia sprang to his feet. "Mazal tov! Your sister-in-law's had the baby?"

"Yeah, just this morning!" He was panting. "I went over to your house straight away but your mum said you'd be here—"

"Aval hacha, but here the right to the double payment is part of the agreement…" His father was still talking, but he kept looking over to the far table, where Abulafia's father was shaking Snapir's hand. Yehuda looked back, and his father gave an indulgent nod. He stood up to join his former classmates. "Mazel tov, Rafi. D'you know what they're going to name him?"

"Oh, probably Yosef after my father," Snapir said easily.

"Your father?" Yehuda gasped, but Abulafia laughed: "Now you've done it, Raf, he thinks you're an orphan."

Snapir laughed, too. "Sephardim name after people who're still alive, Goldstein—my father's named after his grandfather too. It's a big kavod. My great-uncle did it, and he's not even religious. But at the brit we're all going to act like it's a big surprise."

"Really?" It seemed such a strange thing. Every time his mother had had a baby, he, Esti and Sholom had made lists of all the recently-deceased relatives, trying to predict what their parents would choose. That was what you did: you named after a great-grandparent or sometimes a great-aunt, maybe a gadol if you didn't have anyone else.

But his father was waiting. He wished Snapir mazel tov again and said ah freilichen Chanukah, then went back to the Gemara and the ownership of the hypothetical double payment. His father compared his answers to the sheets he had sent back over the term, and nodded more often than he shook his head and jumped in to correct him. He took this as a good sign.

The shul filled up again for Mincha, and by the time they got home, the others were coming back, too. Yesterday when he'd held Yosef, the baby had screamed and wailed and stretched out his arms for Esti. Now he allowed Mummy to hand him over, looking up at Yehuda with wide eyes. He had four teeth already.

"Eliyohu, who's that? Can you say hello?" Mummy coaxed, but his other little brother was still shy. He peered at Yehuda from around the kitchen doorway, his thumb in his mouth.

"I have to set up my menorah!" Sholom called out, slamming the door behind him. "Oh, hello, Yehuda. Mummy, do we have a menorah for Yehuda?"

Of course they did, he thought resentfully, had Sholom forgotten that up until last year he had lived here too? They went into the living room just like they always had, Yehuda pouring olive oil into little glass cups as Sholom threaded wicks beside him. The table had already been moved across the room to the window, ready for the lighting.

"Who's ready for Chanukah licht?"

He had once done this every year: his father asking "What night of Chanukah is it tonight?" and Brochie shouting "Four!" and the lighting, together in front of the street miles away from the stone lancet windows at school, singing Maoz Tzur and his parents distributing Chanukah gelt—money for Sholom and Esti, chocolate coins for the under-twelve-and-thirteens—but then his mother changed the script.

"We have a very special Chanukah present for Yehuda," she said. She shot his father a meaningful look, and he went into the other room and came back, his hands behind his back. "Since you're going to start laying tefillin before the next time we see you, we've got something for you to take back with you."

That was right: you started putting on tefillin a month before your bar mitzvah, as practice. He would take them to Hogwarts now, in December, so that he could wind the straps around his arm in February on Rosh Chodesh Adar. His throat was unexpectedly tight. Tefillin were a grownup thing; he hadn't realized he would get them so soon.

His father took his hands out from behind his back. The gift was a small pouch, dark blue velvet, two Hebrew letters embroidered in gold on the front: yud, gimmel, for Yehuda Goldstein. He drew back the zipper and removed a black leather cube that fit perfectly into his palm, the leather straps wound around the slightly larger flat base. He set down the pouch and took out the second box, turning them over and over. The tefillin were heavy in his hands.

"Oh," Adina breathed.

His head jerked up. He had forgotten they were all standing there, watching him in front of the menorahs. He wished he was alone in his room to meet his tefillin in private. His father looked a bit teary-eyed, and even Sholom was smiling proudly. He remembered the picture Sholom carried in his tefillin bag, how their grandfathers on both sides had put on tefillin just like these in the war and before that. You could have it hard like they did, or easy like Sholom, or—something in between, like him. But they would all wear tefillin. That much was the same, always.

Unlike Sholom, though, his tefillin bag did not come with a picture of his namesake tucked inside. He was named for Zeidy's father, who had died in the camps, and they didn't have any pictures of him. After dinner they went to Maariv, and at the door of the shul a familiar voice rang out behind him. "Yehuda Goldstein—ah freilichen Chanukah! Where have you sprung from?"

The rabbi's smile was the first thing he noticed. He smiled back and stuck out his hand to shake Rabbi Zeller's. "Ah freilichen Chanukah! I just got in last night."

"Haven't got too much work over the holiday, then? Tell me about your teachers, are they treating you all right?"

"Just a bit. I got some done this afternoon. The teachers are mostly strict, but it's only so we can learn. There's one this year that doesn't know anything at all, though, and he's got a hard time keeping the class quiet because no one listens to him." He was talking too much, but it was the first time anyone had really asked him anything about Hogwarts.

"And the food, how has that been? Are you doing your own cooking, or do the…"

He looked over his shoulder; his father and Sholom were already at their row. "The house-elves? Well, they do most of it, but I learned a few things. I can make scrambled eggs and toast, and bake a potato. I'm going to bring some recipes back with me."

The rabbi nodded, looking lost in thought. "You've made the best of it, I see. Ah, there's Mordechai Danziger, I must go say mazel tov."

One of their big girls must have gotten engaged, not a new baby, because Danziger was the youngest in his family, and that reminded him of a question he'd had earlier in the day. "You're supposed to name a baby after a relative who's died, aren't you?"

"It's customary, yes," the rabbi said quizzically. "Did that come up somewhere?"

"My friend's nephew is being named after his father." It felt strange to say "my friend" when they weren't, but he wasn't sure how else to describe Snapir now that he could no longer use the word "classmate." "Rafi Snapir, from Torah Temima. He said they always do it."

"Ah, well, that's another story," the rabbi said. "Many Sephardim do have a custom to name after living relatives. I'm sorry, I should have been more specific."

"But—" It had gone from you always had to name after someone who had died, to customary, to exactly the opposite. Was it a Jewish thing to do, or wasn't it? But— "Sephardim are a kind of Jewish, aren't they? No, no, I know they're Jewish. But that means there's two different kinds of Yiddishkeit!"

The rabbi laughed. "I suppose you could say that," he said, and went across the room to shake hands with Danziger's father.

He mulled this over all through Mincha, trying to make sense of it. You couldn't choose to be Ashkenazi or Sephardic, that went after your father, like gebrokts. So that was all right. But if everything went after your father, and then his father and his father, there had to be a time when two Jews looked at each other and did two different things, and their children did what their fathers did, and today both of them were both Jewish. It was probably in the time of the Gemara, he decided, back when people argued for real, without an answer waiting for them at the end, and then made up their own practices. They were on a much higher level, so they could do that.

Chanukah ended, and he was still in Golders Green. Sholom admired his safrus and asked where he had gotten the parchment and ink. Bubby and Zeidy came over for dinner, and he lied cheerfully about America and his class there. One night they all scrubbed up and put on Shabbos clothing and went to the shul basement for Danziger's sister's vort, and he ate cake and wished Danziger mazel tov and allowed himself to be introduced to the new brother-in-law. His siblings went back to school and his mother back to work.

The last night home was strange. They had a big dinner ahead of the fast the next day, then Esti ran a bath for Yosef while Mummy said Shema with Eliyohu. Ordinarily he wouldn't have gone to bed at the same time as Eliyohu, who was two and a half, but he would have to go to the early minyan with Totty tomorrow morning in order to make the train. He was just finished getting into pyjamas when the door of his room opened, letting in a crack of light. His father came in and sat on the end of his bed. He whispered so as not to wake up Eliyohu: "You've got quite a trip ahead of you tomorrow, haven't you? How long is it?"

He nodded. "It's hours and hours. By the time we get there it's already getting dark, and that's in September when shkiyah's quite late."

"And how far is it from there to the Chabad House where you go…what was the name of the town, again?"

"Dufftown?" he said, puzzled. "I don't know how far it is, they take me there with magic."

"Dufftown," his father repeated. "The school is in the Scottish highlands, so the Chabad House must be as well…what is there nearby? Is it very far from anything?"

"No, the Chabad House is just outside the town," he said. "There's a lot of places near there that make schnapps, and a college…I think it's called Moray?"

"Mmm, all right," his father said. He kissed him good night, and left.

He stared at the ceiling. What was that all about? He wasn't going to the Chabad House again until March. Five days to visit, Professor Flitwick had said, and he had made his decision: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Parshas Zachor, Purim. Tomorrow morning he would fast for the siege of Yerushalayim, and by nightfall he would be watching Terry cross himself before bed. They'd all have been reviewing their course work, and he'd tried, but with his siblings around it was hard, and anyway his parents might rather he was learning. He leaned over the edge of his bed and found his wand in the bag he'd shoved underneath, rolling it between his palms. With any luck he wouldn't be too far behind.

"Yehuda?"

He shoved his wand under the pillow. In the doorway, Esti's eyes followed the movement. His face burned, like he had been caught doing something shameful. "What," he asked.

She tapped her foot on the carpet and opened and closed her mouth, then spoke all in a rush. "I…well, I've always sort of felt like I was responsible for you lot, being the oldest and all, and I can't do that with you being so far away, but if you ever have something you want to say, and you can't tell Mummy or Totty, you know you can always tell me, right?"

What? But before he could tell her to shove off, the attacks flashed through his mind—the Petrified Justin and the Gryffindor ghost, Colin Creevey, Filch's cat. He couldn't tell, he wasn't allowed to tell Muggles, it was a giant secret, Mummy and Totty would bring him straight home and he'd go back to yeshiva, never to touch his wand again. Suddenly he wanted to cry.

"Thanks," he whispered. He pulled his feet into bed, putting his head down on the pillow to weigh it down over the wand. He looked up and lied: "Everything is fine."

Adina had wanted to come to the airport to see him off, but his father had said "No," very tightly, and "it's a school night; you have a test tomorrow." Now they were in the train station. They'd had to loiter inconspicuously on platform ten for a good twenty minutes, there were so many Hogwarts people strolling through with robes and owls. You'd think they'd know better, he thought.

Platform nine and three quarters was crowded, his overnight bag crushed against his stomach as he struggled closer to the train. His father stayed close behind him. He was hot and sweaty, already hungry, and there were hours and hours to go until he could eat.

His father spoke directly into his ear. "Are you ready to go? Do you see any…any of your friends?"

"No," he said, not looking around because he'd have recognized Michael or Terry even from the back, from far away.

"What?"

"No!" he said, loud enough to be heard over the chatter of the crowd. "No, they're probably on the train already!"

His father looked taken aback—had he been too forceful? As he had done before each trip, he put his hands on Yehuda's head and whispered: "Yesimcha Elokim k'Efrayim uk'Menashe. Yevarechecha Hashem v'yishmerecha…"

The train horn sounded, long and loud.

"Have a safe trip, " his father said, kissing the top of his head as he scrambled aboard, a prefect leaning over him toward the door handle. "Remember to break your fast; there's no reason to stay hungry past tzeis. Learn well. I'll see you!"

The prefect shut the door, and he stumbled as the train lurched into movement. He put his hand on the wall for stability and tried to wave out the tiny window to his father as they moved away.

Once the station had completely gone, replacing his father with a green countryside, he headed up the train. Now to find Michael—it felt almost strange to be there without him. There was no way to do it but to check each compartment, sliding back doors just enough to see who was inside, until finally after what felt like a thousand awkward apologies he opened a door to see Michael and Terry sitting opposite each other in silence.

"Yehuda!" Michael leapt up from his seat. "Didn't see you on the platform. Saved you a seat just in case. Did you come late?"

"There were a lot of other wizards in the station," he said. "We didn't want to be noticed."

Michael laughed. "It's King's Cross, everyone's trying to catch their train. They don't care about yours." He swept a stack of chocolate and candy wrappers off the bench and motioned for Yehuda to sit.

"I've got grapes," Terry offered, "you can eat those, right?"

"Not today," he said. Terry kept his face composed, but he could hear the curiosity. "It's a fast day."

"Oh. Michael, do you want any?"

"Aren't those Benjamin's?" Michael asked.

"He doesn't mind. Besides, he's gone to find Mercy and the other Slytherins, they've got their own—"

The door was abruptly flung open by Marietta Edgecombe. "Oh, sorry!" she said. "Try the next one, Cho—Yehuda and Michael and Terry are in here." She nodded and shut the door.

Yehuda and Michael and Terry, that's what they were. Terry opened one of the Lockhart books and Michael did an imitation of Lockhart batting off pixies with the Gryffindors and he laughed, but something still bothered him. He looked out the window, frowning, as the train chugged on through the rolling green hills.

I'll see you, his father had said. What did that mean?

Glossary

Shacharis. Morning prayers.

Shul. Synagogue.

Leining. Torah reading.

Tikkun, short for tikkun korim, literally "guide for readers." A study guide for preparing to chant the Torah, with one column's text featuring vowel and cantillation marks, and the other the same words as they appear in the Torah scroll.

Aliyah. Subdivisions of the Torah portion.

Vayikra el Moshe vayedaber Hashem eilav mei'ohel moed, leimor: Daber el bnei Yisrael v'amarta aleihem, adam ki yakriv mikem korban laHashem min habeheima min habakar u'min hatzon takrivu es korbanchem (Leviticus 1:1-2). He called to Moshe—God, speaking to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying, "Speak to the children of Yisrael, saying 'When a person from among you brings an offering to God, from animal, cattle, and sheep shall you bring your offering.'"

Levi. The second subdivision of the Torah portion, called "Levi" because the honor of its reading is typically offered to a Levite, if one is present.

Ve'im ha'of olah korbano laHashem (Leviticus 1:14). And if his burnt offering to God is a bird.

Shlishi, revi'i, chamishi, shishi. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth.

Cheese latkes. Boy are you missing out.

Bimah. Elevated platform for Torah reading.

Chavrusa. Study partner, or session with said partner.

Blatt. Pages.

Kavod. Honor.

Brit, alt. bris. Circumcision ceremony.

Gadol. Exceptionally great person.

Mazel tov, alt. mazal tov. Congratulations.

Ah freilichen Chanukah. Happy Chanukah.

Licht. Light or lights.

Maoz Tzur, literally "Stronghold, Rock." A Chanukah song. See Chapter 10.

Tefillin. Phylacteries.

Rosh Chodesh Adar. The first of the Jewish month of Adar, 29 days before Yehuda's bar mitzvah. In some traditions, boys don tefillin for the first time 30 days before their bar mitzvahs; however, for Yehuda that day is Shabbos, when tefillin are not worn.

Shabbos. Saturday.

Yud, gimmel. Hebrew letters more-or-less corresponding to Y.G.

Maariv. Evening prayers.

Yiddishkeit. Judaism.

Gebrokts. Matzah that has come into contact with liquid.

Safrus. Ritual script.

Bubby and Zeidy. Grandma and Grandpa.

Vort. Engagement party.

Minyan. Prayer group of ten adult Jewish men.

Shkiyah. Sunset.

Note: For a fun perspective on what Michael and Terry did over vacation, see "December Dilemma," in Kira Sharp's "Shanah Bet."