JKR owns HP

With thanks to (a different) Achos Laazov for Yehuda's letter.

Blessed are you, the Lord our God, ruler of the world, who crowns Yisrael with glory (Morning blessings)

As soon as he walked through the doors, the fear hit him like a wave. Professor Flitwick moved around slowly like a deflated ball; McGonagall's face was more pinched than ever. Only Lockhart was the same as always, enthusing about the wonders of Sleekeazy's for keeping your hair shiny and curled in long-winded tangents that they all dully ignored. The fear tasted coppery in his mouth. No one bounced running through the corridors, or even strolled about. They walked quickly between classes, in groups, talking in low voices.

Colin and Justin had not gone home for the holidays. They were still lying stiff and Petrified on some bed in the hospital wing. And now Hermione Granger was in there, too, having been picked off by some attacker while they were all away.

"They're going to cure them with Mandrakes, Professor Sprout said they're almost ready," Michael told them over his toast. "I bet we'll be checking on them again today. Is there a way to make them grow faster?"

"Oh, no," Kevin said. "Do we have Herbology first? I don't have my books or anything—" He stood up.

"I'm coming with you," Michael said immediately. "Terry, you'll walk with Yehuda, won't you?" He followed Kevin out.

Yehuda looked at Terry. "You don't have to, you know."

"It's all right. You and Kevin shouldn't be wandering around alone, or any of the…anyone who might get hurt. It's not safe."

It was difficult to sneak away under Michael's watchful eye, but eventually he managed to get back to the library. Back in the 1940's, Tom Riddle and Léonie Bonaccord had been named Head Boy and Head Girl. Riddle, could Riddle be a Jewish name? It wasn't one of the pure-blood families, and he'd heard of people called Riedel. Anyway Tom Riddle had received an award for special services to the school, the article said, and Léonie Bonaccord had founded the Bible study club, congratulations to the both of them on their well-deserved honors. There was that Bible study club again. He added "Riddle" to his shortlist and turned the page again.

Articles about Hogwarts happenings were few and far between. His eyes caught the word "Quidditch," which was what they played here, but it was just about how the Quidditch World Cup had been canceled due to political unrest. The next week's edition had a picture of five boys all in Slytherin crests, helpfully labeled in the caption as Lestrange, Salem, Avery, Pendle, and Belvoir, but it wasn't anything to do with Hogwarts, only that they had been held in Azkaban overnight for Muggle-baiting. Week after week of old news went by, serious politics mashed right up alongside small-town gossip. There was something about the Ministry establishing a registry of all werewolves, which was protested by some as stigmatizing but hailed as a great move for public safety, right above a photo of the Hogwarts Gobstones club captain. Then a banner headline proclaimed that Wilhelmina Tuft had been elected minister of magic, and right underneath it were marriage announcements, one for Olive Hornby (Ravenclaw'47) and then another for Orion Black (Slytherin '47), before a "continued on page 27." He was amused to read a book review of A History of Magic describing it as an "innovative approach," and that a man called Lyall Lupin had received a grant from the Fiendfyre Research Society to study non-human spiritous apparitions. He remembered the name from the book he had read in the empty school last year. Apparently the research had been successful.

"There you are!"

He shut the book. Michael flopped into the seat beside him. "What are you in here reading all the time?"

"Just—some old newspapers." He cast about for an excuse Michael might want to believe. It was snowing hard now outside the library windows. "I still don't really understand wizards. Being Muggle-born and all."

"Sure," Michael said skeptically. "Whatever you say. But you don't have to tell me about your secret project if you don't want to. C'mon, let's go back to the common room, you don't know what might happen out here."

"Michael, nothing is going to attack me in the library," he protested, but followed him out anyway.

It kept snowing, all month long. Hermione Granger was still in the hospital wing, but she must have been all right, because they were bringing her schoolwork. Between classes, Yehuda found himself washing his hands in the bathroom next to Ron Weasley, but when he asked, Ron only shrugged and said vaguely, "She didn't come to class."

Michael followed Harry and Ron one day, but to no avail: he reported that he could hear her talking, but there were curtains drawn around her bed.

"No, she can't have been Petrified," he told a first-year at breakfast in exasperation, "haven't you been listening, Petrified people can't talk. It must have been someone else that attacked her."

"Yehuda?"

He looked up from his scrambled eggs. Benjamin Boot. Automatically, he looked for Terry, but Benjamin stopped him. "He's not down yet. My parents sent a birthday cake, I've got it over at the Slytherin table. If I bring it over, will you all sing 'Happy Birthday'?"

He had vaguely noted the small pile of gifts at the foot of Terry's bed that morning, but it hadn't occurred to him that there was a reason.

"Oh," Michael said with interest, "is he finally older than you again?"

Benjamin flushed. "Don't go on about that, he doesn't like it. But you'll sing, won't you? He'll be down in a few minutes."

Terry arrived, the cake was brought over, and the table of Ravenclaws duly burst out in a chorus of Happy Birthday. Plates were passed around to everyone but Yehuda. Benjamin gave Terry a hug and went down to Potions with the other Slytherin first-years, while the second-years cleared their things for class, the other Ravenclaws passing their congratulations to Terry over their shoulders as they went.

"I'm just glad we're not the same age anymore," Terry said as they went out of the Great Hall and up the big staircase, past Filch, who was mopping giant puddles all across the corridor. "But thirteen—isn't that a big one for you?"

He nodded, not saying anything. On their first day back, he had waited for Terry to go into the shower and even for Michael to turn his back before taking the velvet tefillin case out of his bag and placing it carefully on the top shelf of his wardrobe—above his clothing, above his textbooks. It went above everything.

It all looked so complicated, in the little diagrams in the book: the box slipped onto one arm, balancing it there while you pulled the strap tight; the pattern of winding it around your palm and fingers. He'd dutifully answered the questions on each chapter and sent them home to his father, but the twenty-ninth of Shevat was fast approaching, and when he thought about it he wanted to throw up. What if someone asked what they were, while he was wearing them for the first time? What if he dropped them?

Dear Rabbi Zeller, he wrote, on the bed in the dormitory that night, Am I allowed to turn my tefillin invisible before I daven?

A loud clap made the pen jerk in his hand. "We need to clean up!" Michael announced. He scooped an armful of towels off the floor and tossed them onto his bed.

"Why?" Stephen asked. There were piles of discarded clothing spilling off his nightstand. "It's all right, everyone knows where their stuff is."

"Well, my father is coming next week, and he's going to say it's a mess," Michael said. "So clean up your things, or I'll do it for you."

"Why's your father coming?" Benjamin Boot asked from the doorway.

"He's a Ministry Obliviator," Michael explained. "We've been studying Memory Charms. I wanted to have a demonstration like we do with everything else, but Flitwick said it wasn't ethical unless you're properly trained and all. So I got someone who's properly trained."

"You want your father to Obliviate you?"

"Ethically," Michael said, "sure."

It was another week before they walked into the Charms classroom to find a tall man in official-looking robes conversing with Flitwick at the front of the room. Yehuda went on toward the desks, but Michael bounded over. "Dad!"

It was the same man he had met in Diagon Alley all those weeks ago, who had tried to shake Mummy's hand. Yehuda busied himself at the desk, keeping his face down in case Michael's father remembered him too.

"Find your seat, Mr. Corner, find your seat," Flitwick said, strolling back and forth across his desktop. Michael flopped into the seat beside Yehuda. "Leave your books where they are. Thanks to persistent pestering of your curious classmates, and the efforts of young Mr. Corner, we are fortunate to have a Ministry Obliviator here for a demonstration today. Memory modification is a very serious business, and if any of you are ever forced to perform one, let's hope you remember how it felt today. Now, let's review the ethical regulations of the spell—Mr. Goldstein?"

He startled to attention. "Lack of alternative," he said automatically. "Explain if possible. Practice within capabilities, don't implant. No personal gain. And…" He couldn't remember the wording of the last principle, although he could picture his handwriting in the notes he'd copied from Michael. "Leave the person normal when you're done," he finished lamely.

"Restoration," Flitwick corrected. "Well done, five points to Ravenclaw. Over to you, Angulus?"

He sank back into his seat and stared through Michael's father. Breathe, just breathe. There was a round seal over his chest, a big M with a wand through the center. "Good morning," he said. "My name is Angulus Corner, and I am a Ministry Obliviator, charged with protecting the Statute of Secrecy. Professor Flitwick has asked me here to demonstrate what happens when a Muggle sees something they shouldn't. Now, this is a classroom and not a field situation; none of you are Muggles who've seen something they shouldn't. So I'm going to create a minor, unimportant memory for the purposes of modification." He gestured to the board behind him. "Is there anything written here?"

The room buzzed with confused murmurs. Michael's father looked pleased. "No, there isn't. You can all see that. In just a moment, I am going to turn around and write the numbers one through ten on this board, and then perform the modification. You'll all see the numbers up here, but you won't remember me writing them. Do you all understand?"

There was a quick chorus of yeses, much too quickly for something so big. Yehuda looked at his hands on the desk. They were shaking. He felt faintly nauseous—what if more than that got erased? But it was very quiet in the classroom, nothing happened, then—

"Owwww," Michael moaned. Yehuda winced too, screwing up his face through a blinding headache. It felt like a drill was boring through his skull, and the numbers one through ten were written on the board.

Hermione Granger returned to class at the beginning of February. She looked completely healthy and not at all like a Petrified statue. The snow had tapered off and there were days that were all sunny. Professor Sprout said that the Mandrakes would be ready soon. It was easy to be hopeful. Michael even left the dormitory one morning before Yehuda and Kevin, allowing them to walk to breakfast alone. The hallways were bustling, and Peeves swooped ahead of them in the entrance hall, hollering at the top of his lungs.

"Oh Potter, you rotter, oh what have you done,

You're killing off students, you think it's good fun.

Oh Potter, you rotter, oh when will it end,

He won't stop the murdering till we're all dead—"

"Can't someone shut him up?" Kevin said. "Is it really Harry Potter attacking people?"

"Can't be," Yehuda said, "he wouldn't go after Hermione Gra—" He stopped short, speechless. The walls of the Great Hall were festooned with enormous pink flowers, and raining from the ceiling were tiny pink confetti hearts. Another holiday, but for what? Girls?

"Happy Valentine's Day!" Lockhart shouted from the front of the room. He was wearing robes pinker than any boy had a right to. "And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards!"

What cards? Another thing he didn't know. He turned to Terry to ask, but before he could, the doors to the Great Hall flung open and a parade of tiny ugly men marched in like a swarm of rats across the floor, each brandishing a plastic golden harp.

"My friendly card-carrying cupids!" Lockhart announced. "They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn't stop there! I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion!"

"The spirit of what occasion?" Yehuda asked, turning from Terry to Kevin in vain. "What is he talking about?"

"Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a love potion!" Lockhart shouted over the ensuing chaos.

Michael made a face. "Eugh—love potions. Orange juice, Yehuda?"

He slid into a seat and touched his wand to his plate, calling up his scrambled eggs from the kitchen. "Why is it all pink today? What's going on?"

"You don't know what Valentine's Day is?" Kevin asked.

"Of course he doesn't," Michael said, "he won't even sit next to a girl. It's for—you know—couples. At home my mum and dad'll go out for dinner and my grandmother comes over to watch me. But we can have fun with this." He leaned over and snapped his fingers at one of the creatures. "Oi—I have a valentine for you to deliver. Tell Terry Boot 'Roses are red, violets are blue. Valentines are dumb, but not as dumb as you.' He's the skinny one over there, at the end of the table."

Terry looked up. He shook his head in disbelief and moved away. The card-carrying cupid marched off after him, but a mob of Gryffindor girls chose that moment to pile into the aisle, and it had to fight through a thicket of legs as Terry dodged, made a break for it, and shut the door to the Great Hall in its face.

Michael watched, smirking. "Come on. We're going to be late."

"We're not late."

"I know. I just want to open the door."

It was frightening enough to remember that there was a monster somewhere on the loose, but the dwarves made it worse. They were underfoot all day, ambushing students in the hallways and startling them in bathrooms and barging through doors to interrupt classes. Terry's took until Transfiguration to find him. "I've got a musical valentine to deliver to Theodore Boot!" it shouted as McGonagall glared. It stalked over to the second row and swung up onto the desktop, planting its feet in front of an increasingly red-faced Terry. "Right, here is your valentine: Roses are red, violets are blue. Valentines are dumb, but not as dumb as you."

Michael laughed until he fell off his chair.

Terry's face was redder than the roses of the verse. "Valentine's Day is pagan, anyway."

It was a lot more than pagan, which as far as Yehuda could tell meant apikorsus but for Christians—it was what his parents would have called "not appropriate." He tried to avoid all that, but there were little pink hearts and poems everywhere. Even in the common room there was lots of girls and boys sitting too close. He fled to the dormitory, where it was at least only boys, and shut the door behind him as if that could block it all out.

"Oi—is that you, Yehuda? You have a letter from your rabbi! C'mere, Ferric, want a treat?"

Michael tossed the envelope at him. He ripped it open eagerly, scanning for an answer.

Dear Yehuda,

The permissibility of turning one's tefillin invisible would depend on whether the invisibility causes a change in the tefillin themselves, or merely in one's perception of them. The deeper issue to address is why one would want to do so.

Why do we wear tefillin, Yehuda? Why put parchment into leather boxes and strap them to your forehead and arm? Why draw such attention to yourself by acting so strangely? As Jews, our natural instinct often tell us to lie low and hope no one notices us—but such efforts are usually in vain. See Devarim 28:10—the Gemara says that this refers to the tefillin shel rosh, which are clearly visible on our foreheads every time we wear them, more so than the tefillin shel yad, which can be covered by clothing.

What is more conspicuous, Yehuda—the way we serve Hashem, or Hashem's relationship with us? A Jew who does not wear tefillin, who does not keep kosher, who does not show on the outside that he is Jewish—is still a Jew in the eyes of the world. There is no way to overlook us, and no way to ignore the miracle of our nation's survival. We are different, and everyone knows it. It is Jews, more than Judaism, who attract the attention of the world.

Yehuda, you asked if it is permissible to turn one's tefillin invisible. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I would need more details to answer that question. But you must know that Jews will never be invisible, no matter how we try to blend in.

Mazel tov, Yehuda—I wish I could celebrate with you. May you use all the strengths Hashem has given you for the betterment of the Jewish people and the world.

Thirty days before his bar mitzvah was February 21st. Well, technically that was thirty-one days, but the thirtieth day was Shabbos, and you didn't put on tefillin then. He'd circled the adjacent Sunday on the calendar.

The night before, after a quiet Havdalah in the dormitory, he went downstairs and stood in the doorway of the common room, his gaze passing over the clusters of Ravenclaws to imagine it empty at dawn tomorrow. He could stand at the far end of the bookcase, so the light from the window would fall over his siddur but you wouldn't see him right away when you walked in. He would quietly rest the velvet bag on the windowsill while he grappled with the straps and boxes, copying the diagram propped up against the glass.

Tomorrow.

He blinked, and the room was full again. Near the fireplace Michael dragged an armchair to sit face-to-face with Mandy, and Padma paced with a textbook in hand. Time to go to bed, before he might have to talk to anyone. He was so excited his stomach hurt.

He dreamed he was back in Charms class, sitting at the big desks. He was vaguely of lying on his stomach, his eyelashes fluttering against the pillowcase, but in the dream his breathing was ragged and everyone was staring. "Mr. Goldstein," Professor Flitwick asked, "If your friend pays you to watch his wand, and then Slytherin's monster attacks, are you responsible to pay for it?"

His mouth opened, but nothing came out. He couldn't speak, he knew nothing, he could only stare. He looked around frantically in the hopes of a friendly lifeline, but the desks were full of people he knew—Sholom and Danziger and his grandmother and the rabbi—people who all knew if Slytherin's monster was considered an armed robber or a regular thief, and they watched him, murmuring at his ignorance. Can you believe it, he used to be the best in the class, they were saying, his mother was whispering sadly, that's what happens when you go to a goyish school, don't be like him, don't be like Yehuda…

"Yehuda?"

That was wrong. It couldn't be his mother, she wasn't here. He was at Hogwarts. His eyelids fluttered and he squinted in the bluish predawn light across Terry's sleeping form. Sherwood leaned in uncertainly. "You're wanted in Professor Flitwick's office," he whispered. "I've been told you should, ah, bring anything you need for prayer?"

He sat bolt upright, his gaze flying to the wardrobe opposite. His tefillin! Today, he was going to put on tefillin right now. Why did they have to want him now? How dare they—

Wait. They only called him to Flitwick's office when he was going to the Chabad house! Anything he needed for prayer…they must have known what today was, but how?

In the doorway, Sherwood was still watching him curiously.

"Thanks for waking me," he whispered. "I'll be there in a few minutes."

The door clicked closed, and he got out of bed very quietly. As long as the others stayed sleeping, this would be perfect: at the Chabad house there would be no frightening questions, there would be other Jews to show him what to do for his first time. He buttoned his shirt, paused at the sweater and decided to leave it behind. It would be just another sleeve to roll up before he could place the tefillin above his elbow, and a real yeshiva boy wore just a white shirt. Today he was a real yeshiva boy.

He slipped out of the common room, hugging the velvet bag to his chest. His shoes squeaked on the floor and echoed down the empty stairwells, all the way down to the second floor. He peered cautiously around the doorway of Flitwick's office. Snape stood in a corner, looking bored. Professor Flitwick was wearing a bathrobe. He looked up and their eyes met.

"Good morning, Mr. Goldstein!" Flitwick said. "On advice from an outside authority, I have decided to release you to Dufftown for the morning hours."

"From who?" he blurted.

"Never you mind," Flitwick said. "Professor Snape? If you would—" He gestured to the rusty trowel on the desk. Yehuda had just enough time to squeeze his fingers around the velvet bag as they whipped into nothingness—don't let go, don't let go—and then he was sprawled on his elbows in the gravel, just managing to keep the tefillin out of the dirt.

The thought occurred to him suddenly as they stood before the stone house. "Professor Snape?" he asked. "Why is it always you who brings me to Dufftown? Why not Professor Flitwick?"

Snape barely glanced at him. "I suppose it is because of my excellent bedside manner," he said sourly. "Well, Goldstein? Are you going to knock?"

Then the door swung open and Snape vanished and he forgot everything. His muscles went slack and he grabbed his tefillin at the last second before they fell; his eyes could not compute what they were seeing, because there was no way his father was here in the middle of Scotland, in the doorway in Dufftown, the open fields behind him—his father?

"Totty?" he sputtered.

His father froze, and in that instant he understood that his father did not either know what to say. But he was beaming and his arms were wrapped around him, and it was enough. "Mazel tov, Yehuda! Mazel tov, mazel tov!"

They were all smiling, the Chabad rabbi and the mashgichim from in town—Gavriel twisting his tzitzis strings, Eitan in his knitted yarmulke, and all the others. He could see siddurim stacked on table, the trays of cake behind them, just like they did in shul at home for all the boys' hanachas tefillin.

He tried to make himself small in a corner, unzipping the bag and decanting the tefillin from their boxes, setting them gently on the velvet. You put your tefillin on first thing, before davening even started, that's what the book said. The men all shook out their talleisim and draped themselves in white, like a roomful of ghosts except for him and Gavriel. He rolled up his sleeve, past his elbow to what felt like almost his shoulder, and picked up the shel yad, slipping his arm through the loop. The box wobbled on his bicep as he let go to tighten the strap, but his father was there to steady him, to tenderly pull the knot through and turn the cube toward his heart.

It felt like a dream, but the leather on his arm was real. He fumbled for the strap and it felt like he was standing proud in a spotlight as he wound the strap around his pale skinny arm—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—all the way down to his palm, to his finger.

And I will betroth you to me with faith, and you will know God.

Glossary

Tefillin. Phylacteries.

Daven. Pray.

Apikorsus. Heresy.

Devarim. Deuteronomy.

Gemara. The Talmud.

Tefillin shel rosh. Phylacteries of the head.

Tefillin shel yad. Phylacteries of the arm.

Havdalah. Saturday night ceremony to end the Sabbath.

Goyish. Non-Jewish.

Mazel tov. Congratulations.

Mashgichim. Supervisors of kosher food production.

Tzitzis. Fringed ritual undergarment.

Hanachas tefillin. Small ceremony to mark the first time a boy puts on tefillin (see above).

Talleisim. Prayer shawls.