I'm five minutes late to Runes, and Graham rolls his eyes at me as he shoves his stuff over to make room. "Sorry, Professor Babbling," I murmur, settling down as quietly as I can.

She eyes me sternly, and then continues. "As I was saying, we'll be continuing our in-depth study of ehwaz this lesson. I'd like you to share your research of the role of partnership in ancient pre-wand spellcasting with your neighbour, and in five minutes we'll feed back."

"What did you find out?" Graham asks politely.

"I didn't do it," I admit, ignoring his groan, "but I do remember reading about it last year I think, in some book I got out of the library. Doing spells with a partner used to be a useful way of channelling magic before wands were invented, right? And it generally worked best if you and your partner had some kind of connection? And as far as I remember, not only did being sexually involved make a strong magical connection, but also doing magic as a pair was often an aphrodisiac, so if a couple of people were performing magic as partners the likelihood that they had had sex at least somewhere along the way was-"

"All right, all right," Graham interrupts, looking reluctantly impressed. "How do you remember all that, if you read it a year ago?"

I shrug. "Just do, I suppose."

"Right. Well, do you remember what they used to do with ehwaz to strengthen the spells?"

"I'm not sure that was actually in the book I read," I confess, and Graham looks smug. To wipe the smile off his face I say accusatorily, "And speaking of partners, I hear you went and told Abi about me being in the Willow again? You're the one who's supposed to be all up on psychology- couldn't you resist her for even one day?"

"It's not about psychology," he says, smiling gently. "I love her. I'm going to marry her. I tell her stuff."

"You're such a sap."

"You're such a child."

The five minutes up, Babbling asks us about the history of partnership, and Keli from Ravenclaw shares everything I just told Graham, with a bit more besides. When Babbling asks about the use of the rune itself, Graham raises his hand with another smug look in my direction.

"Since the addition of runes changes the pronunciation of the spell, partners would say the spell slightly differently with the introduction of the ehwaz rune, which strengthened the spell."

"For example?" prompts Babbling.

"Um… Alohomora is a general unlocking spell, and while more advanced locking spells than colloportus generally need specialised unlocking, a partnered ehwaz Alohomora can unlock most locking spells better than a lone incantation, even with a wand."

"And do you know how an ehwaz Alohomora is pronounced?" Babbling asks.

Graham screws up his face in concentration. "Ah-lo-hom-or-a?" he hazards.

"Excellent! Twenty five points to Hufflepuff, Mr Shaw. I can tell you've done your research."

"Allo Hommera?" I repeat in a whisper as she moves on. "Really?"

"Yeah- pretty cool, right?" Graham still seems immensely pleased with himself. "Only works if you do it as a pair though. Magic is wild."

"You tried it out with Abi yet then? I noticed the two of you were getting a bit –" I'm cut off by his elbow in my ribs, and have to gasp silently for breath.


I don't bump into Potter – James – for a few days, and I have almost forgotten about our encounters (except that I often use the kitchens instead of going to meals) when, bizarrely enough, Fred Weasley catches me after Arithmancy, instead of heading straight to lunch. Abi and Graham don't notice, and continue down the corridor, deep in conversation.

"Hey, you're Sue Barnthorpe, right?"

"Who wants to know?" I ask suspiciously, but he brushes that off.

"Listen, James told me what you did for him, and I just want to say thanks, and if you ever need anything… you've got a friend in Fred Weasley, anyway."

"Thanks, I guess," I respond, mildly alarmed at this. "I'm surprised you know, actually- I thought James didn't want to tell people about it."

"Babe?" Sadie Langton has appeared, and is looking questioningly at her boyfriend.

"Look, gotta go- I mean it though! Anything at all." He grins, and is gone. Shaking my head, I make my way downstairs and out into the unconvincing April sunshine. I decide to sit on the grass, having eaten in my free period earlier, and get out my Runes textbook, some parchment and the best of intentions. By the time Abi and Graham join me, however, I am lying on my front, doodling.

"Doesn't look much like fehu to me," Graham comments, coming up beside me unexpectedly. We had moved on from ehwaz the previous lesson.

"Well, I'm not exactly having much 'luck' with this assignment," I remark, and he laughs appreciatively.

"You Ancient Rune scholars and your exclusive Rune jokes," says Abi crossly. She sits down next to me, and spreads some leaflets on the grass on front of her.

"What are those, Abs?" I abandon my doodles, and sit up.

"Professor Macmillan gave them to me," she replies eagerly, black mood blown away in an instant. "They're career leaflets."

"Eurgh!" cries Graham dramatically, dropping the one he had picked up as though it had burned him.

"Still trying not to think about the future, eh Gray?" I ask with a smirk. "Dragon Training? Really, Abi?"

"I think I'd quite like to join the DMLE," Abi says thoughtfully, ignoring us. "I couldn't be an auror with only four NEWTs, but I like the idea of dealing with the day to day criminals- bringing justice to the people, y'know."

"What do they want you to have, grade-wise?" Graham inquires.

"At least an E in defence, and 3 other NEWTs. And hey, listen to this-" she reads aloud: "'Although not compulsory, Muggle Studies is welcomed and often aids applications to the training program'!"

"Sounds perfect for you!" exclaims Graham, excited for her.

"Definitely go for it, if that's what you want," I add.

"My girlfriend, the Magical Law Enforcer." Graham sounds speculative, as though trying it out. "It'll be great fun to introduce you at parties, especially if people have already started smoking gillyweed."

"What do you want to do, Sue?" Abi asks, smacking him.

"I guess I'll probably join a Herbology company, if any will have me. It'd be cool to be supplying ingredients for a top potions lab, I suppose. Or…" I trail off.

"Or what?" Graham looks up, interested.

"Well…it's kind of silly really."

"I'm sure it's not," Abi encourages. "Go on, tell us."

"Okay." The temptation to share a previously entirely secret ambition gets the better of me. "Well, I'd really like to be a Figure-Flyer." Taking in their shocked expressions, I add hastily, "But I'd never be good enough to support myself on it. All the best Flyers have been trained professionally, and I'm just self-trained. And I could never afford Figure School, so…"

"Hang on," interjects Graham, "is this Figure Flying like figure skating? Doing tricks on a broom, basically?"

"Yeahhh." I meet their eyes, embarrassed. "It's just a silly dream, really."

"I didn't know you were into flying!" declares Abi, half indignant, half enthused. "You'll have to show us some time!"

"Ah, I don't know…"

"Hang on, is this what your drawing is about?" Graham holds up my discarded parchment questioningly. My doodle, which I had animated with a tap of my wand, shows a stick figure whizzing across the page on a broom, standing up on it, and then plummeting downwards. The broom does not follow the figure as in The Suicide, however, and the figure disappears off the page before the doodle resets. I snatch the parchment back.

"Is there a scholarship?" Abi asks. "For the Figure School, I mean?"

"Yeah, but I'd never get it. You have to be an absolute genius on a broom."

"You should go for it anyway," urges Abi. "You never know if you don't try."

"Sue!" It's James Potter. Again. What is it with this guy? "I've been looking for you," he pants as he jogs up. Graham's eyebrows shoot up, and out of the corner of my eye I see Abi's mouth drop slightly open.

"Hey P –James," I respond, going for casual.

"Look, Fred's turning seventeen this weekend, and we're throwing him a surprise party on Saturday. Want to come?"

I gape at him. "I- er- huh?"

"Don't worry about it being all Gryffindors," he assures me. "My brother's in your house, and we've got a couple of other changelings scattered about, so there should be a bit of a mix. We're all inviting people we trust not to, uh, be a dick about it- Fred's pretty much a 'the more the merrier' sort of dude- so I thought…"

"Um…"

"Oh, and you needn't worry about it being overcrowded, either- where we're having it, that shouldn't be an issue." He shoots me a sly grin. "You can bring your friends too," he adds, and turns to Abi and Graham for the first time, who quickly shut off their gormless expressions. "Abigail Brown and Graham Shaw, right? From Defence?" They nod their affirmation of this, and he looks back to me. "Let me know, anyway."

"Yeah, sure," I answer, a little hoarsely, a voice inside my brain going what the hell, what the hell, what the hell.

He heads off, but then looks back before he's out of earshot. "By the way, Sue, I guess I owe you an apology."

"Huh?"

"Looks like you do have some friends, after all." And with that he prances away, off on some other errand. I look apprehensively at Graham and Abi.

"Explain," is all Abi says.


"Absolutely we are going to this party!" declares Abi, and apparently that settles it. "I've heard the Potter-Weasley's give the best parties- they know all the secrets of the castle, apparently, so they can get away with loads more than most people. And now you're evidently in with their crowd, we are not passing up this opportunity."

"I'm not – 'in with their crowd'," I splutter uncomfortably. Abi had not responded well to the vagueness of my explanation for my friendship with James; "I just did him a favour, that's all," had not satisfied her curiosity, and as soon as she managed to get rid of Graham she had asked, entirely seriously, whether I meant a sexual favour.

("GROSS! NO!"

"Well, I had to ask."

"No Abigail, you did not."

"Tell me what it was, then."

"I can't Abi, he asked me not to. I guess he found it embarrassing or something."

"And it definitely wasn't sexual?"

"NO.")

Anyhow, Abi tells both Graham and me unequivocally that we are going, and so, having informed James, I find myself in Abi's room at nine o'clock on Saturday night.

"Are you sure you won't let me put any more makeup on you?"

"I've put on mascara, eyeliner and lipstick- what more do you want from me?"

"Well…" she says slowly, but I cut her off.

"Rhetorical question, Abs."

"I just envisioned a bit more dressing up," she says reluctantly. "Girly time, you know. Doing each other's hair. Doing the zips of each other's dresses up. It's our first proper party really- quidditch after-parties don't count because that's just a lot of smashed quidditch players going over the game play by play, and the music's always shite."

"I don't own any nice dresses," I say, again.

"I know, I know." She sighs.

"Are you birds done up there?" demands Graham from downstairs.

"Don't be sexist," snaps back Abi instantly. "You done, Sue?"

"For the last half hour," I patiently remind her.

We make our way to the seventh floor. Our instructions are to wait by the portrait of Dobby the Daring, where we will be called for. After about three minutes of shifting anxiously from foot to foot, James appears from the gloom, and I silently sigh with relief. His face breaks into a wide smile when he sees me, and he murmurs, "You came!" He leads us further down the corridor until we reach a tapestry of what seems, at a cursory glance, to be of a bunch of trolls in tutus. James paces up and down, muttering, and Graham has just turned to me as if to ask what is going on (as if I know) when a door appears in the wall opposite. "Excellent!" James beams, and leads the way.

If it wasn't wild enough that there is a secret room that I've never come across before, the room itself is incredible. It's huge and spacious, with large (if admittedly rather gaudy) red and gold Gryffindor hangings, clusters of low comfy sofas and a proper dance floor at the far end, and drinks tables at regular intervals around the edge. There must be twenty or thirty people occupying it already, but it's certainly not crowded. There even seems to be a door opening to the outside, with a wide balcony beyond it, unlikely though it might seem.

"Welcome," says James grandly, "to the Room of Requirement." While we are absorbing this, he turns to me and adds gently, "Don't feel like you have to stay if it gets too much. There's plenty of space, but nobody will mind if you just want to be alone and have to slip away. Can you do a disillusionment charm?" This last is addressed to all three of us.

"Yeah," we chorus.

"Great. If you could do that before you leave, or else find one of my family to do it for you, that would be helpful for the whole 'staying hidden' thing." Turning to me again, he continues, "See you later, yeah? Some more people are arriving. We're fetching Fred at 9:30."

"See you later," I echo, wonder how he knows people are arriving. He smiles at me, and heads off. I catch Graham and Abi exchanging a mysterious glance, but decide to ignore it. "Alcohol," I tell them firmly, and they laugh at me.

It is an evening of strange conversations, which I have to sort through the next morning, hazed as they are in my memory by the alcohol. First is Abi, who sends Graham off for refills of our drinks and grabs me.

"Do you like Potter?" she wants to know gravely.

"Who, James?" I'm taken aback. "You mean, like, fancy him?"

"Yeah."

"No, I- it's not like that," I explain, avoiding her eye and highly embarrassed by the subject of conversation. "I barely know the guy, to be honest. I did him a favour, and he seems to be blowing it way out of proportion."

"And you're not just saying that to get me off your back?" she asks, eyes narrowed.

"I'm really not," I promise.

"You need to watch it, then," she says unexpectedly. "I'm not saying he fancies you, but there's a good chance he does or will soon, from what I've observed."

I gape at her. "I don't think he dates," I eventually manage weakly.

"He hasn't dated. That doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't, if he found the right person. Sure, he might be aromantic or gay or whatever, but you can't just assume that if there's a chance of someone getting hurt."

Graham's arrival with the drinks forestalls any comment, but it leaves me with plenty to think about.

The second conversation is with Albus Potter. It perhaps only twenty minutes after Fred's arrival, and inexplicably I am standing with Fred and Albus while Abi and Graham are on the dance floor. "This is Sue!" Fred exclaims boisterously to Albus. "Have you met Sue? Sue's great!" Then he bounds away, leaving me alone with Albus.

"You're Sue Barnthorpe?" he slurs- he's a slight fifteen year old and evidently has trouble holding his liquor. "Listen, I heard what you did for my brother, and I've gotta thank you." He blinks, and nods emphatically. "You can count on me, or any of us really, if you need anything."

"I can, can I?" I ask a little sharply. He seems to notice, and backs away mumbling something about "...Rose."

Rose Weasley is the next on my list. She's less open about it, but when she hears my name she beams, and (a little sloppily) hugs me. Clearly she has heard what I "did for James" too. I decide it's time to confront James about it- after all, it's pretty hypocritical of him to swear me to secrecy and then go spouting off to everyone he bumps into. On my search I encounter Dominique Weasley, who foils my efforts to avoid her (she still scares me) and marches up to me.

"You've got allies in all the Potter-Weasley's, myself included," she tells me abruptly. "As long as you stay quiet, anyway." She gives me a hard look.

"Yeah, sure. Look, do you know where James is?" She points me, a little reluctantly, in James' direction; I can't tell if she's taken in by my false bravado. He's standing at one of the drinks tables, chatting to some seventh years I know only by sight.

"I need to talk to you," I announce grimly, taking his elbow and towing him away from the table, the firewhiskey I've drunk making me more bold than usual. The seventh years whistle at us and one makes a lewd remark, but James hexes him casually before turning to me.

"What's up, Sue?" he asks, concerned.

"What's up," I say angrily, "is that you told me not to tell anyone about your little broomstick excursion, and yet everyone in your family seems to know about it! How's that for hypocrisy?"

He doesn't rise to it, but just regards me thoughtfully for a moment. "They already know that I can't fly," he explains, lowering his voice. "They had to- most of them are on their various quidditch teams, or at least play in the holidays. There was no way I could keep it from them."

"Then who the hell am I keeping it a secret from, if half the school knows?" I demand.

"Half the school doesn't know," he responds, his tone rising. "Only my family. They…understand about secrecy."

"And why does it have to be a secret?" I ask snidely. "As if anyone cares whether you can ride a broom."

"Someone might," he returns quietly. "My dad has a lot of enemies. There have been three attempts on his life just since I started school. Someone tried to get to him through me before I was one year old." He shakes his head, and suddenly looks far older than seventeen. "If it got out that Harry Potter's eldest can't fly- well, that's a major weakness, Sue. Key information to have when planning a kidnapping. Being able to fly is a vital safety requirement for someone in my position, because it's much harder to make an area imperturbable to brooms than it is to raise some quick anti-apparition wards."

"Oh." I feel foolish and very young.

"My family all knows because we help to keep each other safe- Albus, Lily and I are the main targets, closely followed by Rose and Hugo, so the others have to know what not to say in front of other people to avoid revealing our weaknesses to the wrong person."

"Look James, I'm really sorry…"

He steps closer, but not intimidatingly; it seems tipsy James just doesn't have a great grasp of personal space. "So you see, it really is important that you don't tell anyone," he concludes.

"I- I won't," I stammer. "I haven't. I swear, James –"

"I know," he says, smiling. "I knew I could trust you." He envelops me suddenly in a hug, and after a moment of astonishment I hug him back. We stand there for a while, just holding each other, as I try to take in this new information.

Eventually I pull back. "I should find Abi and Graham," I saw awkwardly, although honestly they'd probably prefer to be alone together.

"Sure. See you later?"

"Yeah."


The final strange conversation is not one I have, but one I overhear. I'm sat beneath a drinks table for a breather (too many kissing couples on the balcony), hidden by the tablecloth, when I hear James' voice, along with a female voice that could potentially be Dominique.

"You're not into her, are you Jamie?" the girl sounds concerned.

"No, of course not. I just met her."

"That doesn't mean anything," the girl replies sharply.

"Well, I'm not into her yet, then. Happy?" I don't hear a response. "And if I was, what of it?" James sounds defensive.

"It's just, well, she is a Slytherin after all. Are you really sure we can trust her?"

"Oh- for the love of Merlin, you're not still on the house prejudice train are you? Look, she's my friend and I care about her. And honestly, I worry a little bit about her. We can trust her. I'm sure of it."

The voices drift away, and I sit frozen under the table. She's my friend and I care about her. The words ring inside my head swimming head (definitely too much firewhiskey) and I can't repress a smile. But, much as I try to focus on that, I can't help remembering that yet.