Chapter 12

Star Parties

Charity returned to Hogwarts the following school year with a renewed energy. She and her parents had spent the last month of their summer holiday in Egypt. Mr. Weasley had spoken so glowingly of a trip there with his family a few years ago, that she decided to convince her parents to make the trip. While in Egypt, Charity had been amazed by what the Muggles had accomplished in building the pyramids so many thousands of years ago. Of course, it was generally accepted in the wizarding community that an ancient magical people were responsible for the structures. Charity, however, did not subscribe to that theory, even after noticing the magical curses that had clearly been placed on many of the tombs. In fact, she planned to add an entire unit on ancient Egypt to her Muggle Studies curriculum.

It had been nice to escape the gloom that had set upon England after the sighting of Voldemort and the re-organization of the Death Eaters. The only negative for Charity and her parents had been returning to find their home and all of its contents turned a dull shade of orange. It was the result of a faulty Protection Powder that Mr. Burbage had purchased and sprinkled around the perimeter of the house to keep it safe from intruders while they were away. Bnickel still carried an orangish tinge around his nose and the pads of his feet. It was more evidence that the wizards of Highbury Street had been wise to maintain the charms that protected the avenue from Muggle view. The charms weren't foolproof, and occasionally a Muggle child would chase a stray ball onto the street or a dog would lead his Muggle up their sidewalk, but on the whole, orange houses generally escaped Muggle cognizance.

At the beginning-of-the-year staff meeting, Charity presented the professors with a donation made in each of their names to a fund for the restoration of Egyptian pyramids, a Muggle foundation. Dumbledore then gave the surprising news that Snape was taking on the perennially vacated position in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Potions would now be taught by Professor Slughorn, a portly, bald man who was an old colleague of Dumbledore's. Dumbledore went on to explain that, although Hogwarts had always maintained superior levels of security, there would be some new procedures this year. The Ministry of Magic had produced a missive outlining special safety precautions; some of which had already been in place at the school. The Ministry was now under the leadership of Rufus Scrimgeour; Cornelius Fudge had been summarily sacked once the wizarding world had opened their eyes to his obsession with self preservation and decided that he was clearly not the man to lead them during these troubled times. Scrimgeour was a lion of man and a much stronger leader. It was his administration that put out the following regulations:

--ISSUED ON BEHALF OF--

The Ministry of Magic

PROTECTING SCHOOL, STUDENTS AND FACULTY AGAINST DARK FORCES

The Wizarding community is currently under threat from an organization calling itself the Death Eaters. Observing the following simple security guidelines will help protect you, fellow students, faculty and the school from attack.

Students are not permitted to leave the castle without express permission of a teacher and must be accompanied by an adult staff member when they do.

Staff members are advised not to leave the castle alone.

Students are to remain in their house dorms after dark and in their beds after hours.

Staff members are advised to remain indoors after dark.

Agree on security questions with house mates (for students) and fellow faculty members (for staff) so as to detect anyone who might want to masquerade as others by use of the Polyjuice Potion.

Should you feel that a fellow student, faculty member, or other staff member is acting in a strange manner, notify your head of house (unless that is the faculty member acting strangely, in which case you should go directly to the headmaster).

Should the Dark Mark appear on the grounds or anywhere visible from the grounds, report it to your head of house or the head master immediately.

Dumbledore also reviewed new protections that had been placed on Hogwarts over the summer, including several anti-intruder jinxes. What Dumbledore didn't address was his right hand, which appeared to be seriously injured. It was completely black and hung limply at Dumbledore's side, as if no longer of use. When Professor Sprout finally asked him about it, Dumbledore only said, "It's no secret that I'm getting on in years, and well, these things will happen."

After the meeting, both Charity and Snape lingered in the staff lounge as the others cleared out. Charity busied herself with making a cup of tea in one of the stained lounge mugs, while Snape sat back in a shabby chair looking through some papers. He didn't realize that he'd just won Charity a few gold galleons simply by being at Hogwarts – her father had bet his money that Snape would be "out running around with his old boss You-Know-Who."

"Easy money," Charity had told him; her father didn't know Snape the way she did. When the door shut behind the last to depart, Charity strolled towards Snape and said, "Congratulations on D.A.D.A. I hope this means the curse has ended." Every year since anyone could remember the professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts would either resign, become disabled, or die under the most bizarre circumstances. Snape did look paler than usual.

"Remains to be seen," he answered, looking up from his papers. There was nothing in the words themselves; it was the tone of his deep voice and the fact that his eyes stayed on her and didn't stray back to his papers that encouraged her.

"So, how was your summer?" she asked.

"Eventful," he answered. The long pause that followed clearly indicated that he would not be providing any details on the events that had made the summer so eventful. "A bit lonely though," he finally added with a meaningful look that made Charity's face light up. They stood looking silently at each other in this way when Dumbledore re-entered the room. Charity nearly spilled her tea as she abruptly turned around, and Snape busied himself with his papers again.

With a quick, "Nice to be back!" to Dumbledore, Charity exited the room.

The first weeks of school were very busy for Charity. Dumbledore had upheld Umbridge's Muggle Studies requirement for all third years, thus increasing her class load significantly. Along with the additional work, Charity faced two other new adjustments. One adjustment was having equal representation of the four houses of Hogwarts in her classes. Prior to this year, her class was attended primarily by Hufflepuffs with a sprinkling of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors. Never had a Slytherin voluntarily signed up for Muggle Studies. Her new schedule accommodated two third year sections – one attended by Ravenclaws and Gryffindors and the other by Hufflepuffs and Slytherins. It only took a few sessions for Charity to note each house's overriding characteristics, and she began to think that the old, decrepit Sorting Hat might actually know what it was doing.

Any honest teacher will tell you that, despite their best efforts, they can't help but have favorites among their students. Probably it was because they had always dominated her classes, but whatever the reason, Charity had a definite affinity toward the Hufflepuffs. They were good natured, hard working, and always very respectful. She felt certain she would have been sorted into Hufflepuff had she attended Hogwarts; therefore, she took it personally every time a Slytherin teased a Hufflepuff or stuck a flobberworm down one of their shirts.

The other adjustment for Charity was having so many Muggle-borns in her classes. This posed a bit of a challenge because most of them tended to think it was a waste of time for them to be there. She soon learned to involve these students more in the classroom and discovered what an asset Muggle-borns could be. For example, one day she brought in a PlayStation to demonstrate what Muggle children did in their spare time. She'd had to use magic to actually start the thing, and Professor Flitwick needed to cast several charms around it to keep the controls from going berserk amongst all the magical interference in the castle. Charity wasn't sure Flitwick's charms had entirely worked when she started playing a game against her opponent, Stewart Ackerley, a Muggle-born Ravenclaw.

"Why does my player keep jumping? I can't make him go forward!" she'd shouted in frustration as she randomly pressed buttons and shook her controller.

Meanwhile, Ackerley's player was positively pummeling hers. He exclaimed, "Yes!" every time he scored a point, which was about every five seconds. Apparently his controls were in fine working order.

"Stewart," she said, giving him a sideways glance. "Do you think you'd be able to explain to the rest of the class how to do what you're doing?"

"Sure," he said, shrugging his shoulders and scoring again. Then he expertly shared with the class what each button did and even divulged a bit of strategy. Eventually even the students who grew up in wizard homes became quite adept with the controller and seemed enthralled with this everyday Muggle game. It was a rare opportunity for Muggle-borns to introduce wizard kids to something amazing.

By the end of the month, an overworked Charity was very much looking forward to Professor Sinstra's and Firenze's celestial party. Inspired by the success of the meteor shower viewing last spring, Sinistra and Firenze had decided to continue with a monthly gathering to observe the heavens. Although a little odd, Firenze was one of the bravest creatures Charity knew. He'd already been ostracized by the other Centaurs because of his association with wizards, and here he was trying to pull the two species even closer together by sharing the Centaurian secrets of the celestial heavens.

In light of the new security regulations, the professors gathered at the top of the Astronomy tower rather than on school grounds on the last Saturday of September. Tonight they were expecting a lunar eclipse. One of the reasons Charity was looking so forward to the party was because she often thought of her progress with Snape at the meteor shower, and was anxious to keep moving in the same direction. Perhaps they could linger behind the others or sneak down the tower's stairs for a private conversation. The possibilities swirled in Charity's head as she happily packed a basket of ingredients for a new 'Muggle Potion' she'd discovered over the summer, but she was disappointed when Snape never appeared on the tower that night. Nevertheless, she and the attending teachers had a good time. Flitwick turned out to be a master of impersonations – he did a killer Filch – and Madam Hooch kept them all in stitches with her stories of student mishaps during the first weeks of flying lessons. By the time the eclipse rolled around, it was almost like an afterthought (to all but Firenze, of course).

The next day Charity caught Snape in the hallway after dinner. "We missed you last night," she said to him brightly. Snape looked down his prominent nose at her without comprehension. "At the celestial party – we missed you. It was very fun--" she started to explain.

"Professor Burbage," Snape cut her off coolly, "I've other things to occupy me now, and I won't have time for the silliness of last year."

This icy response was completely unexpected by Charity. She immediately felt the impact of his insult and reacted without thinking. "Oh, silliness was it?" she snapped at him. "Well, I'll give you silliness!" she shouted, turned, and promptly - and completely unintentionally – forcibly knocked into one of the torches lining the wall. The flame tipped sideways and lit the shoulder of Charity's cape on fire. She squeaked and drenched the flames with a water charm (a little something she'd picked up from Fleur during her dragon fight). She then quickly composed herself and carried her dripping body down the hall with her scarlet red face resolutely pointed straight ahead and away from Snape.

Charity was shocked by Snape's rudeness. I seemed as if all the progress she'd made with him last year had slipped away over the long summer months he'd had to harden himself back up. But what about the teacher's lounge? Had she just imagined that he'd meant her when he'd described his summer as lonely? Shaking it off, she figured that she'd brought him around before and could certainly do it again. Once she'd cooled down, she regretted reacting so hotly towards him in the hallway. That was certainly no way to win him back.

Over the next few weeks, Charity took what opportunities she could to revive her relationship with Snape. All efforts failed. Playful looks went unreturned and invitations went unanswered. She started to consider that perhaps most of her prior relationship with Snape had only existed in her imagination and reluctantly gave up the pursuit as a bad job for the time being. Fortunately, Charity didn't have much time to dwell on Snape's new attitude, because she was knee deep in three different units of study with her classes.

The monthly star parties took on a more somber tone as the year progressed. The increasingly odd happenings in the wizarding world were hitting closer to home. One of Charity's former students, Hannah Abbot, had been taken from school because her mother had been found dead under bizarre circumstances, almost certainly the work of Death Eaters. And an older student, Katie Bell, had been cursed on her way back from Hogsmeade on a student visiting day to the village.

"Why would they want to target Katie Bell?" Madam Hooch wondered aloud at the top of the Astronomy tower in October.

"McGonagall reckons she wasn't the target. She'd been Imperiused and didn't know what she was doing. She was merely carrying the cursed item back with her and touched it quite by accident," Professor Flitwick informed them.

"Would the item have made it past Mr. Filch's detectors?" Charity asked.

"Who knows," was the general consensus. Either way, it certainly seemed as if someone had made a deliberate effort to harm Hogwarts students.

Each month, the professors' conversation inevitably turned toward speculation regarding Dumbledore's injured hand. This speculation never developed into much, however, since Snape and McGonagall, the two professors most likely to know anything, never attended the parties. Snape was back to his old anti-social self, and McGonagall was much too busy filling in as headmistress since Dumbledore was away from the castle more and more often these days (yet another topic for speculation). When the professors gathered in November to view the comets Hale-Bopp and Tabur, they dragged Madame Pomfrey up from the infirmary to interrogate her.

"Don't know anything more about it than you do. He's never brought the matter to my attention," Pomfrey sniffed.

"Well, surely you've seen similar cases…" Professor Vector led her.

Pomfrey hesitated for a few minutes, then answered, "I've never seen the like with students, mind, but I studied plenty at the healer academy…" They all waited, holding their collective breath for her diagnosis. "Deadening of certain limbs has been known to occur with wizards who reach very old ages. Dumbledore is old, but not really old enough for us to expect his limbs to start falling off…although he's certainly experienced enough for five hundred years, so maybe. Animal bites are another possibility. I'm just not aware of any that will turn black like that…dragons' are usually green…unicorns, when they do bite, usually leave a lovely rainbow…" Once Madame Pomfrey got rolling, it became clear that she had already put quite a bit of thought into the matter. Her face clouded over when she reached the final possibility. "Curses will kill off any part of the body immediately and there's no cure for them," she said gravely.

"But who could curse Dumbledore?" asked a panicked Professor Sprout.

"You-know- who!" answered Professor Sinistra, a note of panic in her voice as well.

"Could they have done battle this summer and we wouldn't have heard about it?" asked Charity.

"I don't see how it could be a curse, though," continued Madam Pomfrey, who didn't appear to have heard anything they'd said. "Usually, when a curse kills of a part of the body, it kills the rest of the body along with it. Maybe not right away with a powerful wizard like Dumbledore, but it's been months now. Surely he'd be dead by now if it was a curse." A palpable wave of relief cascaded over the professors at these reassuring words, but they were still no closer to having any idea what exactly had happened to Dumbledore's hand.

1 Regulations are adapted from text in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling, pp. 42-43