Chapter Thirteen

The last weeks of the summer holidays were tense. If Dahlia had tried to avoid most of Weasleys before, then she was practically sleeping outside now.

Percy and Mr. Weasley were the only ones she could stand. Percy because contrary to when they were at Hogwarts and he was acting as the Perfect Prefect, at the Burrow, he remained holed up in his room doing whatever and she saw him only at mealtimes. Mr. Weasley because he was gone for most of the day too, working at the Ministry.

She might have been able to stand Ginny if it hadn't been for the way she was spending so much time scribbling in her new diary. Personality-wise, the little girl hadn't yet grown into the spitfire Harry would fall in love with in the future. She was shy and kept to herself. She was polite. It was just that unceasing scribbling in the cursed damned Horcrux that acted on Dahlia's nerves. She kept itching to get it away from the youngest Weasley, but she currently had no way of getting rid of it, unless she wanted to risk Fiendfyre. Which she didn't because she'd surely lose control of the notoriously uncontrollable fire, burn down the entire building, and be sent to Azkaban for using Dark magic. Stealing it wouldn't work either, because she had nowhere to store it where it wouldn't be found when Ginny inevitably complained about having her new best friend stolen. Unfortunately, as a Slytherin, Dahlia would have been the prime suspect after the twins.

Mrs. Weasley, regardless of all of Dahlia's insistence that she had not been the one to spread the rumors about the twins fucking each other – she invented it, Avery did the rest of the work, there's a difference – cooled considerably towards her. On the bright side, there was no more motherly fussing. On the other, the twins weren't scolded as harshly as she would have preferred when they were caught trying to break into her trunk yet again.

And the twins… oh, the twins… how she wanted to turn them into mice and set a cat on them. The temporary truce was most definitely over. They were back to waging constant war on her and they had a massive advantage in the form of their prank items. They also knew the area better than her. Diggory was a life saver who happily welcomed her into his house where she was temporarily safe.

Harry tried not to get involved. She didn't blame him. He was already starting to see the Weasleys as his surrogate family and their relationship has only just begun repairing. Other than their shared blood, he had no reason to stick with her. He did get Ron to stay on the sidelines so that was something, thought the redhead did nothing to disguise the fact he disliked her. There were a lot of disgruntled glares thrown at her over the kitchen table.

Dahlia wasn't certain where Ron's dislike for her came from. It could have been the Quidditch incident from the previous year. Or it could have been simply because she was a Slytherin and had picked up some pureblood-esque mannerism from her Housemates over the years. Harry could have also told him something he hadn't liked about her. He did seem to puff up protectively when she was around her little brother. She didn't mind. It was nice to see Harry had such excellent friends. They'll keep him safe when she couldn't.

August 31th couldn't come quickly enough for her. That evening, Mrs. Weasley cooks up an enormous farewell feast that included all of Harry's favorite things and ended with a treacle pudding. It was good. Very British, but good.

She missed butter tarts. And panna cotta. And macarons. And curry. And gazpachos. And –

She's tired of British food, okay?

Dahlia tries to console herself over a plate with a noticeably smaller portion of pudding than Harry's – Mrs. Weasley was not subtle when disliking someone; Easter chocolate eggs anyone? – with the fact that she'd be back at Hogwarts the next day. And with Hogwarts came a whole host of house-elves willing to do her every bidding. Including cooking her the most delicious of meals.

Souring further, Dahlia despondently pokes at her pudding with her spoon. Truthfully, she saw the use of house-elves as slavery. There always was a small ball of guilt swirling inside her stomach whenever she visited the kitchens at Hogwarts and asked the house-elves to prepare food exclusively for her. She never asked for more than she needed and she attempted to repay them in her own way by bringing them cookbooks as gifts, but she continued to feel as if she was taking advantage of them.

She had plans for Hermione's future S. . aka the Society for Promotion of Elvish Welfare. The intentions were good. Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal Status? Dahlia was all for that. Unfortunately, Hermione had gone about it all wrong. Badgering people into joining her organization, having them pay for it, and alienating the entirety of the Hogwarts house-elf population by leaving her self-knitted hats and socks to be picked up by some unsuspecting elf who didn't want to be freed while cleaning the room? It was never going to work, honey.

And well, the girl was being dangerously condescending too. She had essentially decided that she herself knew what was best for them. She had seen a sentient people who was being enslaved and abused and didn't see that they honestly were happiest when they worked. She tried to trick them into freeing themselves when they saw freedom as the worst thing that could ever occur to them.

Before offering them freedom, the elves had to want it. What canon Hermione should have done was focus on those that were being neglected and ill-treated and abandoned like Dobby and Winky. She should also have started by getting elves to be treated humanely by their families. Only after they had sick leave and pay, could take vacations and retire with a pension and all that, should have Hermione even begun seriously talking about their freedom.

It would take years, yes. Years and years of hard work. Hermione would have to figure out what the house-elves would do after they were freed and were permitted to leave their former families. She'd have to find them other jobs and places to live and god knows what else. Having said that, if there was anyone who could get it done in spite of all the hardships and obstacles they would face, Dahlia was certain Hermione was the person who had the potential to become Britain's second muggle-born Minister of Magic.

On the 1st of September, Mrs. Weasley wakes them at dawn. Dahlia falls back asleep in the living room waiting for everyone else while the rest of the household rushes about like headless chickens because no one had bothered acting sensibly and had left everything for the morning off. In her last life, whenever she went on vacation, Dahlia had started the process of packing her bags up to a week or two before leaving and finished the night before. That habit had carried on into this life, and as a result, she rarely forgot anything.

By the time nine people and seven large trunks, plus two normal owls and a man in the form of a rat pile into the deceptively small-looking from the outside Ford Angelica, the sun is high in the sky.

Technically, the law prohibited the enchantment of a muggle item with the intent to use it for purposes other than for what it was designed, so the difficult expansion charm Mr. Weasley had managed to cast on the car without his wife noticing it was probably border-line legal if he took it off right after, but the charms that allowed the Ford to fly definitely weren't. You'd think the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office would know better.

Dahlia sits down by the door and has Harry sit on the other side of her to separate her from the Weasleys. Mrs. Weasley settles down on the park bench big passenger seat with Ginny and glances back at them. "Muggles do know more than we give them credit for, don't they?" She says. "I mean, you'd never know it was this roomy from the outside, would you?"

There was a lot Dahlia could stay to that comment, beginning with Mrs. Weasley admitting to thinking muggles were stupid and still considering herself not a bigot, but she stays quiet. She didn't have the energy to argue about this, this early in the morning. But really. Muggle knows more than wizards give them credit for? Wizards don't even know basic science! Wizards who didn't take Arithmancy in school rarely knew anything beyond the simplest math operations. As in, addition and subtraction. She knew several older Slytherins who could barely multiply or divide.

And their history! God, their history! She had once spent several evenings explaining to Kyle the Big Bang, and Pangea, and the Cambrian explosion, and the theory of evolution, and the dinosaurs, and the Ice Age… It was a painful talk. She had shattered Kyle's reality into tiny, irreparable pieces. Nowadays, she was his personal supplier of muggle educational books and he had made it his business to properly educate the rest of his House. Muggle-born Ravenclaws had been very amused.

So yes, muggles know more than wizards give them credit for.

Actually, let her rephrase that; muggles know more than wizards, period. If it's anyone who's stupid, it's the ones who are stuck living as if the Middle Ages hadn't ended centuries ago. Thank fuck wizards at the very least didn't think the Earth was flat nor the center of the universe. That was something.

The engine starts up and they begin moving. Harry stares longingly back at the Burrow. Two seconds after leaving the yard, they were back again – George had left his box of Filibuster fireworks behind. Seven minutes after that, Fred ran back into the house for his broomstick. They reach the highway… and Ginny gasps about her forgotten diary. Dahlia grimaces at her reflection and wonders how the hell she was going to resist the urge to meddle with the plot for another six years when already she could barely prevent herself from ripping the Horcrux to shreds and throwing the scraps out the window to be scattered by the wind.

They reach King Cross at a quarter to eleven. They were extremely late.

Mr. Weasley runs across the road to get trolleys for their trunks and they all hurried to the station through the crowd of other, muggle, commuters who were looking with askance at their brooms and caged owls. They approach the magical barrier dividing platforms nine and ten, and Mrs. Weasley sends Percy through it first, nervously eyeing the clock overhead. They had five more minutes until the Hogwarts Express left.

Mr. Weasley went next, followed by the twins. Mrs. Weasley went with Ginny and Dahlia waves at the two remaining boys to go before her. They wheel their trolleys to face the barrier, bend low over the handles and take off at full speed.

Dahlia leans on her trolley's handle on crossed arms and watches with slight amusement as just as she expected, the solid-looking brick wall becomes truly impassable and the male two-thirds of the Golden Trio bounce back with a loud crash.

"What in the blazes d'you think you're doing?" A nearby guard yells.

"Lost control of the trolley!" Harry calls back, clutching at his ribs, while Ron runs to pick up Hedwig's fallen over cage. The poor owl was shrieking up a storm and several watching commuters mutter to their companions about animal abuse.

Dahlia straitens and wheels over to the barrier. She raps on it with the back of her knuckles. Solid stone. Excellent job, Dobby. "Strange. This never happened before."

"What are we going to do?" Ron despairs. "We're going to miss the train."

Dahlia shrugs. "We already did."

It was a minute after eleven. The train had just left the platform.

"Oh." Harry whispers, defeated.

"What if Mum and Dad can't get through?" Ron frets.

"They'll Apparate," Dahlia tells him evenly. "Calm down, we'll wait for them by the car."

"The car!" Ron exclaims, eyes gleaming.

And this was where he gets the brilliant idea of flying to school. Great.

"What about it?" Harry asks.

"We're stuck, right?" Ran says. "And we've got to get to school, haven't we? Underage wizards are allowed to use magic if it's a real emergency, section nineteen or something of the Restriction of Thingy –"

"But your mum and dad…" Harry worries, still pushing against the barrier in the vain hope they'll pass through it. "How will they get home?"

"Your sister's right," Ron explains impatiently. "they can Apparate! That means they can just vanish and reappear at home! They only bother with Floo powder and the car because we're all underage and we're not allowed to Apparate yet."

Dahlia watches as Harry's look of panic melts away to be replaced by excitement. "Can you fly it?"

"No problem," Ron says, already wheeling his trolley around to face the exit. "C'mon, let's go. If we hurry we'll be able to follow the Hogwarts Express –"

"Yeah, no. Absolutely not." Dahlia ruthlessly cuts through their animated chatter.

"What?" Harry exclaims.

"Why not?" Ron complains. "We need to get to Hogwarts, don't we?"

"And we will." Don't roll your eyes, Dahlia. "You didn't really think the Hogwarts Express is the only way to get there, did you?" Judging by their expressions, they did. "Students living in Scotland aren't going to go all the way to London, only to immediately return." She says, exasperated. "Especially not the muggle-born with muggle parents who can't instantaneously travel from one place to another. The Hogwarts Express is traditional but hardly mandatory."

She leads them back to the car where she has Ron unlock the trunk with a series of taps from his wand and heaves their luggage inside. Then, she has them climb inside.

The frazzled adult Weasleys find her fifteen minutes later, leaning against the Ford Angela, arms and legs crossed, head tipped back, watching the cloudy sky. The boys had long since settled but kept shooting her unhappy glances.

"Dahlia, dear!" Mrs. Weasley cries, hurrying towards her. "What happened?"

"The barrier malfunctioned." She tells her. "We couldn't get through."

"That's never happened before." Mr. Weasley protests.
"Well, it did. And your son thought it would be a brilliant idea to steal the car and fly to Hogwarts, instead of waiting for you." She shamelessly tattletales. Maybe if she's lucky, those two lion idiots will learn how to think before acting. Didn't Harry fall out of the car in the movie while they were flying? They definitely got almost clobbered by the Whomping Willow, that she remembered clearly. It's a wonder they didn't get themselves killed in canon with the type of reckless stuff they regularly pulled. She's going to go grey from worry and stress before she hits her twenties for the second time.

"Ronald!" Behind the window's glass, Ron's face pales.

Mrs. Weasley lectures the boys the entire drive back to the Burrow.

All You Need to Know About Using Runes was difficult. It would take her years to go through it and understand what she was reading. The language was outdated and the subject complex. Each runic language had its own rules and what worked for one might not work for another. There was a lot of math involved in practically every single step. At Dahlia's level, even the simplest runic single-layer sequence might take her hours to complete.

Damn was it interesting.

Unlike normal spells that degraded and weakened with time, correctly written down runes could last indefinitely. That is why the most powerful and ancient of wards were runic based. Runes could also be used to enchant devices. They are what make Pensieves work, for example. Just reading about it, Dahlia had so many ideas. Imagine the possibilities! A protective amulet against mindreading or against the Imperius. A compass that pointed not north, but at her heart's desire… Mental note, look into the history of the Caribbean next summer. Disney and Amber Heard may have ruined everyone's chances at seeing Johnny Depp in more Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but Dahlia was certain they would have eventually seen the legendary pirate succeeding in his goal and becoming immortal had he not been fired. Captain Jack Sparrow could very well be running around in this day and age hale and hearty, and Dahlia was interested in seeing what one of her most favorite characters ever would be like in real life.

Maybe Harry surviving the Killing Curse was the result of a runic ward. Dahlia had never really believed that love hogwash Dumbledore had tried to sell. Lily could hardly be the first witch to sacrifice her life for her baby. How many of those babies still died, despite their mothers' deaths? A runic ward powered by a willingly given life made much more sense. Lily had supposedly been smart. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility for her to concoct a backup plan in case the Fidelius failed.

Oh!

What an incredible idea!

It would take time. A lot of time. And it would be difficult with many failed attempts. But if Dahlia managed to do it… Where could she get a golden ring?

"Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be gold." She mutters to herself. "Gold doesn't suit me anyway. As long as it is a simple band it'll do. Even if any other metal isn't true to the text."

Letting the book fall forward on her chest, Dahlia closes her eyes with a small, contented smile spreading across her face. Humming a half-forgotten song that wouldn't be written for a few more years yet, she lounges in the soft grass, bare feet dipped in clear water.

Because the teachers at Hogwarts didn't want students running around the school before the Welcoming Feast, anyone who preferred to floo in rather than take the Hogwarts Express was asked to arrive in the evening. Ergo, Dahlia had to spend one additional very much unwanted day at the Burrow, and though for once the place was unusually quiet and peaceful being almost entirely emptied of people, she had all the same decided to go to that little creek she had discovered earlier in the summer.

Slowly, the pleasant weather lulls her into a nearly dozing state. Birds chirp songs in the branches of the surrounding trees. Leaves softly rustle in the breeze. The creek gently gurgles and warm sun rays dance across her skin.

Heaven.

This was heaven.

"Hello."

Dahlia's eyes snap open and she scowls at the clear sky. There went the mood.

"You look comfortable." The dreamy-sounding voice continues, oblivious.

Dahlia turns her head to observe the interrupter of her peace. Young, with long, disheveled, dirty blond hair and large silvery eyes. She was dressed in overly bright pink robes and no shoes. On her head precariously perched a crown of weeds.

"Shouldn't you be on the train?" Dahlia asks tiredly. "Firsties are usually expected to take it rather than floo in. Something about making friends before House colors and prejudice came into play."
Luna Lovegood smiles, gaze hazy. "I was going to, but then the Grookles told me I should visit the creek after lunch."

"The Grookles, sure." Dahlia agrees, deadpan.

"I'm Luna Lovegood. I live nearby with my daddy. He's the editor of The Quibbler magazine." Luna introduces herself.
Dahlia sighs and pushes herself up. "I've heard of it."

Luna approaches and sits down beside her, also dipping her feet into the water. "You're Dahlia Potter, Harry Potter's sister, aren't you?"

"I am. If you want to meet Harry he's at the Burrow. I can introduce you."

"Thank you, but the Grookles say it isn't time for us to meet yet."

Dahlia meticulously groomed eyebrow ticks up. "And do you often listen to the Grookles?"

The other girl cheerfully nods, distracted by a pretty butterfly. "Always. They're never wrong."

"Ah." Dahlia non-committedly says. Man, this girl was loony. "What if they told you to jump off a bridge?"

Luna shrugs. "I'd do it because they'd have a good reason for it. They're my friends, they wouldn't tell me to do anything that would hurt me for no reason."

How naïve, Dahlia thinks with a mental scoff.

"What are you reading?"

"A book on Runes." Dahlia answers, tilting the book to show Luna the scuffed leather cover with its cursive, faded golden lettering.

"Is it interesting?"

"Very," Dahlia tells her seriously.

Luna turns her head to stare at a bare patch of grass. "The Grookles say you should keep the book with you always. They say it is important you don't leave it behind when the wardrobe malfunctions."

A beat. "What wardrobe."

In a flash of green light, Dahlia steps out of the fireplace and into the cobblestone road of Hogsmeade. Harry and Ron were already there, having their trunks unshrunk by Professor Flitwick.

This was an isolated plaza of the picturesque wizarding village of cottages and shops located within walking distance from Hogwarts. Built around it in a circle were several imposing fireplaces from which more students appeared every few minutes in great swirls of flame.

"Potter!" A girl calls out, a light Italian accent coloring her words. "Unusual to see you here. Don't you take the train?"

"There was a change of plans." Dahlia smiles back at Zabini.

The two of them place their trunks by the pile of others to be later collected by house-elves and quietly chatting, they climb into a carriage waiting at the edge of the village. Ron and Harry join them, along with Blaise, Zabini's cousin and a Slytherin in Harry's and Ron's year. The two Gryffindors sit awkwardly in silence as the creepy as ever Thestrals takes the carriage up the bumpy road to Hogwarts while Zabini the Younger lounges in the corner cat-like and eyes them amusedly.

Zabini was sharing summer news when she hesitates. Dahlia is instantly suspicious. "Correctly me if I'm wrong, but there was this new rumor I heard from Avery and she said you were there… Did Arthur Weasley attack Lucius Malfoy with his bare hands like a muggle in the middle of Flourish and Blotts?"

She scowls at the mere memory. "He did. I've never been so embarrassed in my life."

"Malfoy insulted Dad first!" Ron interrupts hotly.

"And your father is a grown adult." Dahlia turns towards the boys. "Grown adults don't react to insults by slugging people in the face. They calmly walk away. Your father was behaving himself like a child."

Ron reddens in anger and starts sulking. Harry looks even more awkward. Zabini the Younger snickers.

It was darkening. In the distance a train whistle sounded; the Express.

Hogwarts comes in to view as impressive as ever and not quite a thousand years old. Castles didn't get to Scotland until the 1100s after the Normans had invaded England in 1066. They were also modest stone keeps with wooden fences at the time. The school, as described in the books or shown in the movies or as Dahlia was seeing it now, couldn't have existed until, at the minimum, the end of the thirteenth century. That's a couple of hundred years after Hogwarts was presumably established. While it was possible the Founders had copied designs from the Continent, it is far more probable they had begun with a small building and maybe a dozen students if that. As tales of their school spread and more students came, they would have gradually expanded, but Hogwarts wouldn't have reached its current scale for many more decades. During their time, it was far more common for parents to teach their children, or for masters to take apprentices. Most Muggle-born were left to fend for themselves, and frankly, Dahlia somewhat agreed with Salazar Slytherin's alleged views that muggle-borns had no place at Hogwarts at the time.

Consider this. You grow up believing magic is the working of the Devil and magic users were his servants who were routinely hunted down to be burned at the stake, hanged, or drowned. You discover you can use magic; how do you react?

With great horror, Dahlia would imagine.

If you manage to not be found out by your family/friends/neighbours/whoever and be killed for consorting with demons, you are taken by some other damned magic-user to an entire school filled to the brim by heretic pagans! To make matters worse, you may now no longer be able to return home because a) you disappeared without trace, b) you staged your death, or c) you explained to your family of proper God-fearing peasants why you were being taken away to be given an education of all things. Everyone knows only nobles and the very rich get educations. What does a poor farmer need for an education? How would he pay for it?

With your family either thinking you are dead or looking for ways to cleanse your immortal soul of the foul touch of the Devil even if it meant your death if they don't outright try to murder you, the teachers at this school begin endeavoring to convince you magic is good. They might tell you God isn't real and attempt converting you to their paganism. Do you believe them? Of course not! Those were obviously lies invented by Satan and you will not fall for the trap. There must be a way for you to save yourself. You must show God you are still His faithful servant. And if you by some perchance find yourself a friend… you start thinking how you can them too.

Dahlia had been appalled doing her summer holiday History of Magic homework before her Third Year on witch-hunts. The title of the assigned essay had been Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless. She had to write about accounts of witches resisting burning by using the Flame-Freezing Charm and Wendelin the Weird who was famous for being burnt at the stake no less than forty-seven times in various disguises. Imagine that! Forty-seven times! What fun she must have had. The textbook Dahlia was using as a reference, Bathilda Bagshot's A History of Magic, largely considered the authority on the subject, made no mention of the thousands of innocent muggle women who were accused of being witches and had no handy dandy magical escape plan. Nor did she mention the magical children who could not escape for they had no wand. Neither were there mentions of the muggle-born who lead mobs of torch-carrying muggles to the doorsteps of true magic-users in their attempt to seek forgiveness from God for using magic. Before the Muggle-Repelling Charm was added to the wards, the teachers had resorted to having their muggle-born students swear magical vows to never reveal Hogwarts location to anyone in an effort to prevent such an incident from happening to them. Hogwarts and Hogsmeade were still besieged multiple times and in the school itself, students were being murdered by fanatic muggle-born as lately as 1892. On that particular occasion, the muggle-born in question had thought he had been saving his lover from an eternity in Hell.

"Potter?"

"Oh, sorry." Dahlia turns towards Zabini. "Got lost in thoughts." She steps out of the stopped carriage and hurries after the boys into the castle.

They are among the first in the Great Hall, but the students who took the train weren't far behind and soon the massive room was being filled with noise.

James arrives in the company of the part of the Slytherin Quidditch gang that was in their year; Pucey, Warrington, Bletchley, and Montague. Burke was a step behind them, deep in conversation with big-chested Moon.

Her best friend had grown taller over the summer and towered an inch or two over everyone else. His skin was no longer English pasty white, and his riot of dark auburn curls were sun-bleached and pulled into a small tail. There was a new scar cutting through his right eyebrow. "Where have you been?" He exclaims, collapsing on the bench beside her. "Weren't we supposed to meet on the platform?"

"There was an incident." She says. "I had to use the Floo. How was Congo?"

"It was great! I got to work with Erumpets. I want to go back next summer hols." James' forcibly jolly tone changes. "Give it up, what happened?"

Dahlia sighs, but explains, suppressing a fond smile. "I think it's the work of this one house-elf." She finishes with. "He spent the summer stealing Harry's mail in an attempt to keep him from coming back to Hogwarts."

"Why?" Warrington bemusedly asks, having been listening in.

"Apparently, there will be a great danger here this year, so do try to be careful all of you." Dahlia rolls her eyes as if mocking Dobby.

"Danger? What kind of danger?" Pansy Parkinson passing by behind them overhears. "If it's another teacher possessed by some Dark spirit, my parents will be campaigning to have Dumbledore sacked for endangering students. It's a wonder he hadn't been yet, what with the Acromantulas and the Cerberus the Gryffindors were saying he was keeping on the third-floor last year."

"Dark spirit? I thought – OW!"

Dahlia removes her heel from James' toes with a significant glance. The official story was that Quirrell had been possessed by a random Dark spirit. Other than the teachers, only she, James, Ava, and Kyle knew otherwise because when she had told them she'd been a little high on potions and a little loose-lipped.

James winces but nods discreetly in understanding.

The Sorting begins.

"Is it just me, or is this truly taking longer than usual?" Pucey wonders a few minutes later.

"It's the post-war baby boom," Dahlia says clapping politely as a branch family Gamp sits down at their table. At this rate, Slytherin might actually get enough new snakelets to actually fill two dorm rooms per gender instead of the one.

"The what?" Montague asks.

"War tends to have people delay marriage and having children." She explains. "I'll bet a lot of those half-blood and pure-blood firsties were born after the Dark Lord was defeated. Muggles call that sudden surge in population a baby boom. Also, Death Eaters went around killing not just muggles, you know? For all his talk about preserving magical blood, the Dark Lord spilled a whole lot of it. Early in the war, it was just individual people disappearing. Later on? Entire families. It's why there's so few of us in our and other upper years."

"Death Eaters killed babies?" Moon whispers, large brown eyes filled with dismay.

"Oh, yes." Zabini delightedly confirms. Her family were neutrals, and she had no qualms speaking against either of the other sides. "And of those families they exterminated? Quite a few pure-blood. Of the Prewetts, for example, remains but Molly Weasley. Unless a son of hers claims the Lordship, that's the end of a Sacred Twenty-Eight family."

Dahlia spots Kyle at the Ravenclaw table and wiggles her fingers at him. He gravely inclines his head in response. Luna takes a seat opposite him and strikes up a conversation. Dahlia hides a giggle behind a raised hand at Kyle's slowly growing disbelief. His confused face was hilarious. She felt him. The other girl had refused to expand on her comment on the wardrobe, and hours later Dahlia remained perplexed. For some weird reason, her brain refused to forget the remark, despite it likely being complete nonsense.

"I've never realized… I mean, I knew they killed… but I never actually realize what it means…" Bletchley looks sick. "They might have been blood-traitors…"

"It's magical blood, no matter their beliefs." James shakes his head. "There's little enough of it as it is."

"The children at least might have still been taught, even if it was too late for their parents." Moon murmurs.

"There are magical orphanages?" Dahlia asks, surprised. Somehow, she'd been under the impression there weren't any. "Or are you talking about fostering? Not adoption surely." Death Eaters adopting the children of blood-traitors! What a laugh. Especially if the purity of their blood had already been tainted a generation or two ago.

"Fostering, I suppose?" Moon answers. "Orphanages are for the poor without family willing to take them in. I hear they're dreadful places with squib caretakers. They can't be learning anything substantial there."

"I've been to the one in Cornwall. It was one of Mother's charity fancies." Montague recalls. "You're not wrong, Moon. Only muggles must be living in worse hovels. There was this one caretaker who I'm rather certain was part hag –"

"No!" Several exclaim in shock.

"Yes, yes, a hag!" Montague confirms. "And several of the children were werewolves!"

"I don't believe it!" Pucey says. "The Ministry would never let werewolves near defenceless children."

"Don't worry, the werewolves were locked away in another part of the orphanage. Mother had the same worries, she was assured they were let out only on the full moons to be escorted by a team of Aurors to a safer place to spend the night. The rest of the time they wear masks and have their nails cut short to prevent them from infecting anyone when they are in human form and not as uncontrollable."

Dahlia sits back to listen with a growing sense of horror as Montague continues to describe the living conditions of magical orphans who weren't lucky enough to have anyone take them in. She can't believe she was actually starting to feel grateful for the Dursleys!

Anything you recognize is not mine.