When the junior Gryffindors clambered through the portrait hole after prep that afternoon, they were caught up short by the unusual sight of their Head of House standing awkwardly by the fire, whilst the small trembling form of Alice Diggle cowered in an armchair.
There was a moment of jostling in the silence as first years pushed their way to the front of the crowd, but Lily was the first to speak.
"What's wrong with Alice, Professor?"
Meta came to stand beside her. "Has something happened to her brother? In the Great Hall they were saying -"
She was cut off by a wave of her sister's hand, but Sirius Black was not similarly restrained.
"He's dead, isn't he? Her brother."
"Mr Black!" Professor McGonagall's voice cut through the murmurs and exclamations of the juniors. "Have you no sense of tact?"
Meta was astonished to see that Sirius was not intimidated by Minerva in the slightest. He returned glare for glare. "It's not a secret, Professor. Everyone was talking about it at tea -"
"Shut up, Sirius Black!" Alice shouted from the armchair where she'd huddled. Her face was still hidden, but Meta was surprised at how loud her voice was. "You always think you know everything 'cos you're a Black, but you don't -"
"It's nothing to do with my family!" Sirius returned furiously, his pale skin flushing, but Alice ignored both his reaction and that of everyone else in the room.
"Then why was my brother killed? You think I'm stupid, all of you, but my dad works in the Ministry. Both of my parents are half-bloods, and people are saying -"
"Miss Diggle, that is enough," Professor McGonagall put in. She moved to put a quelling hand on Alice's shoulder and shot a warning look at Sirius. Meta thought that she looked nearly as shocked as Alice herself did, and was confused. What was going on?
"What does blood have to do anything?" That was Lily.
Professor McGonagall sighed. "In a moment, Miss Evans. Miss Diggle, please go to the infirmary. Madam Pomfrey and your brother and parents will meet you there."
For a moment, Meta thought Alice would argue, but then all the fire and anger drained out of her and she looked tiny, even though she was one of the tallest of the first years. She swallowed, hard, and then turned and left the common room without meeting anyone's eyes.
There was a moment of silence as the portrait closed behind her. Lily's green eyes were fixed intently on their housemistress's face; so too was Sirius Black's.
"Sit down."
Not daring to do otherwise, the juniors sat - on chairs, sofas, the tables, even the floor, forming a tight circle with their Head of House in its centre.
Minerva sat herself, one hand drawing her emerald robes around her as if she was cold, even though she was in front of the fire. "As you all know, Professor Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in 1945."
Meta saw nearly everyone nod. Even the Muggleborns, like Lily and Peter and Rosemary Brown, who was Meta's room mate, had seen this snippet on the back of Dumbledore's chocolate frog card.
"Does anyone know why they were fighting?"
"Was it anything to do with the war, Miss? I mean, Professor?"
Professor McGonagall's dark brow contracted. "War, Miss Brown?"
Rosemary's bright blue eyes never wavered as she nodded confidently. "Yes, Professor. Was Grindelwald a Nazi?"
Meta saw her sister relax. "Ah. I suppose he was, in a sense, although I have no idea of how active he was in the Muggle side of the war. Certainly he agreed with the idea of racial purity, only he interpreted it as applying to the wizarding world."
"He was a pureblood, wasn't he?"
"Yes, Mr Potter. His family were the German equivalent of the Malfoys or Blacks here - pureblood for generations, and inordinately proud of that fact." Meta saw that McGonagall carefully did not look at their own resident Black.
Sirius scowled and hunkered down on the floor. Meta wondered why he disliked his family so much, and why he'd been Sorted Gryffindor in the first place. Minerva had described Gryffindors as being 'brave of heart and noble of soul' but so far Meta hadn't seen anything to make her see Sirius Black as either of those things... and yet, and yet, she remembered that he'd been the one to raise the alarm when Charles Diggle was being tortured, even though his own cousin was one of the torturers. Meta shook her head and tried not to think about it, especially as Minerva was still talking.
"...by 1945 the Allies had defeated Hitler, and whilst Europe was in disarray, Grindelwald was able to step up his reign of terror in both the wizarding and Muggle worlds. His aim was to reduce the Muggles to little more than servants, whilst promoting purity of wizarding blood. For the wizarding elite to work as a governing body, he said, they must have no contact with Muggles or Muggle culture."
"Not even if they needed to, to do their jobs?" Lily suggested timidly.
Professor McGongagall gave the girl a grim smile. "I don't believe he thought that far ahead, Miss Evans. In any case, it became unecessary. Professor Dumbledore had been receiving secret, urgent demands from help from wizard resistance groups all over Europe. He and Grindelwald had known each other as boys, you see, and Grindelwald knew that the Headmaster was his equal -"
"Wow," mumbled Lily, just as she had that first day on the stairs.
"Indeed, Miss Evans. Let me finish; I do not like being interrupted." Meta suppressed a grin when she saw Lily turn a shade of red that clashed with her dark copper hair, but she was as interested as anyone in hearing in the end of Minerva's story. "So, Professor Dumbledore and Grindelwald duelled and Dumbledore won."
"Where is Grindelwald now, Professor?" Mary MacDonald asked from her perch on the arm of one battered settee.
McGonagall's lips thinned. "He is in prison."
"What if he escapes?" Sirius asked. Meta saw that he looked worried.
"You need not fear that. He is so closely guarded that even Azkaban would seem poorly watched by comparison."
"So he's not behind all these people Disappearing then?"
Minerva looked startled, but she covered it up almost at once. "Why would you think that, Mr Potter?"
James Potter gave a careless shrug. "My dad says that Grindelwald's ideas about magic and blood were nearly more dangerous than his skill in the Dark Arts."
The room became very still, but James went on as if he didn't care. "Dad says that our worse nightmare would be a Dark Wizard who combined all his Dark skills with taking Grindy's ideas a step further."
"'Grindy', Mr Potter?" their Head of House repeated drily, and the tension in the room eased as they all tittered a little.
"What do you mean by a step further, James?" That was Sirius, asking what they all wanted to know.
James looked at Professor McGonagall, and a slight nod of her head indicated that he could continue. "Grindy – er, Grindelwald – wanted to us, wizards, that is, to rule over everyone, including the Muggles. Like Professor McGonagall said, he wanted to keep the wizarding world pure, but my dad says that was less important to him than the world domination bit. A new Dark Wizard might prefer to deliberately get rid of people in the wizarding world who don't fit his definition of pure."
"Like Muggleborns and half bloods, you mean," Mary MacDonald put in. In the flickering light of the fire she seemed glow, so pale was she.
James nodded.
"But the Diggles aren't Muggleborn," Meta said.
Her sister glanced at her. "No, but they're not old pureblood either, as the Blacks are, or the Malfoys – "
"Or the McGonagalls," Gideon Prewett said with a grin.
The juniors twisted and saw that the audience had expanded to include the sixth form, who had more freedom over their prep time than the lower school.
Meta, turning back, realised that Minerva's eyes were fixed on her rather than the sixth former, and she frowned a little. Minerva looked away, quickly, and Meta felt something knot and lie heavy in her stomach, like a Muggle boiled sweet swallowed whole.
She hardly heard the rest of their discussion, and hardly cared when Minerva rose to go. The common room filled with noise that Meta heard only as a dull background roar. Finally she realised that someone was shaking her, that someone was calling her name.
She blinked and looked into Lily's wide eyes. "Are you O.K.?"
Meta nodded and swallowed.
Lily dropped her hands and flipped her copper curls away from her face. "Your sister wants you."
"Why?"
Lily was looking at her strangely. "I don't know. She just said before she went that she wants you to go to her rooms tonight."
Meta blinked again. "Her rooms? Not her office?"
"Her rooms," Lily confirmed.
Meta nodded and pulled out her Charms exercise book. Calmly, she began to work her way through Professor Flitwick's prep for the next day. Everyone was staring at her, she knew. They expected her to jump because Minerva had said so, but she wouldn't. After hearing her sister's words, and James's, and Gideon's, she knew what Minerva wanted to say, wanted to warn her about.
But she didn't want to know. If she pretended it couldn't happen, it wouldn't.
She remembered her father. "Always remember, Meleta, that names and words have power, and it's a double-edged sword. To speak a thing could give you power over it – or it power over you. So remember, child, be careful of your words, lest that you speak comes to pass."
So Meleta McGonagall ignored her sister's summons, buried herself in her homework, and tried to believe that her world had not just experienced a seismic shift.