Chapter 11: Gryffindor?

Draco stood in the third floor bathroom of twelve Grimmauld Place, working systematically through all the edges and cavities of his wet body. The towel rubbed against him, his skin grew drier, but never whiter.

Every now and again, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of his reflection in the mirror. It was a large, full-length mirror with a heavy wrought-iron frame. He had been careful to avoid looking properly into it so far, but today... today was his last morning to enjoy the exclusive right to this spectacle. Tomorrow he would be sharing showers with a bunch of brutes whose only harmless habit was to call themselves Gryffindors, and if he wanted to know what it was he was going to show them, this was his last chance. Draco forced himself to turn and face his naked reflection.

As he had expected, it was disgusting. A stripe of hair started thin at his navel but rapidly grew broader and thicker as the hand moved down, ending in a wild jungle. A couple of shoots nested around the nipples, and the armpits were black as night.

Animal!

Draco let his palms glide from his thighs, over his abdomen, up to his chest. The sensation of skin on skin was stifled, as if there were two layers of school robes and a wetsuit in between. He touched his nipples. This used to send shivers down his spine, but these nipples, apparently, served a purely decorative purpose. He could feel nothing. At all. Rien. Nihil.

On the bright side, this body could take some rough treatment, Draco thought. Knowing himself, he would have squealed like a pig with his hand splinched off. The only possible explanation for the fact that he had managed to get through last week's contingency without making too much noise were Potter's screwed synapses. For the rest, the body seemed perfectly functional. The hand has happily reunited with the rest of it since, and was like new, as Tweezer had promised.

There was one part, though, whose functionality Draco had not had the guts to test yet. He gave the penis a few straight strokes. It swelled. At least that was connected to the nervous system, what a relief! But it was a far cry from pleasure. The thought that it was really Potter's dick he was holding in his hand was sickening.

When Draco entered the kitchen, Kreacher, who had beaten Potter in the race for the frying pan this time, was frying sausages. Potter was laying the table with a sombre face. He was still angry at him for slipping out last week and going as Potter to the Ministry's Archive.

But that foray had been absolutely worth it. Draco first studied the Malfoy records in the old acts of the Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, and found that Hyperion Malfoy had had two sisters—a younger one, Flavia (1796–1817), and an older one, Aurelia (1791–1817), who died on the same day, in the same hour, and in the same minute: 1817, September 19, 5:13 p.m. And no, they had not been hit by a tsunami or buried under the debris of a collapsed building while sharing a high tea. Aurelia had died in Azkaban of tuberculosis. Draco would bet that she had earned her burned hole in the tapestry by merely contracting a non-magical disease. Flavia had died in London of unknown causes. An Unforgivable Curse had been suspected but never confirmed.

Muggles might call it an unlikely coincidence, religious Muggles might call it a miracle, but it was obvious that it was magic, and even Potter agreed that the remarkable timing of the deaths had all the makings of a side effect of an 'eternal bond'.

But that was not all. Before dying, Flavia had managed to get married to the son of a Muggle... earl? That, of course, both explained why they had disowned her and proved that they had not listened properly to Lucius the first. As for Aurelia, the enquiry into the old records of the Wizengamot revealed that she had been found guilty of murder of Julius Selwyn (What had old Selwyn done to upset her so badly?) and sentenced to life in Azkaban in 1814. If she was the Malfoy who had escaped that place with the help of the locket, then it must have been Flavia who took her place there and died of tuberculosis. Then it must have been Aurelia, disguised as Flavia, who married the Muggle-born.

"Now, Potter, you have to admit that my clandestine mission has brought more than all of our previous attempts taken together."

Potter turned his sulky face to the pan and helped himself to another sausage.

"Were there any other Malfoys who died simultaneously?"

"Not since seventeen fifty. Before that I didn't check." Draco could not check the entire history. At seven o'clock the caretaker had cheerfully kicked him out the Archive and invited him to come back the next day. But when Draco had told Potter about it, Potter had reimpounded his wand, which he had given him in a moment of weakness, and basically locked him inside the house. Five days! Five days, instead of investigating the Malfoys, he spent taking in the ruin of the 'Toujours pur' and thinking of his mother every time he entered his bedroom and the bowed heads of the sad daffodils greeted him from the painting. Potter would regret it.

"I could still do a quick run to the Ministry. Our train is only at eleven," Draco looked demonstratively at the clock, which showed five to ten.

Potter pursed his lips, then chewed faster.

Kreacher had already delivered their luggage to platform nine and three-quarters and they walked light to King's Cross. It was not a long walk, but long enough to appreciate the significance of the moment.

"Malfoy?"

"Yes?"

Potter strode forward, his eyes fixed on some invisible goal straight ahead.

"You'll have to forget one word, and you'll have to learn one."

Draco was ready to bet a hundred Galleons on the word he was supposed to forget.

"The word you must forget is mudblood. Just drop it from your vocabulary. There is no such word."

"Mudblood? What's mudblood? Never heard of it." What a shame he hadn't bet!

When Draco had been in custody, Knox jinxed him to feel a distinct shock of pain every time he pronounced that word. Nothing life-threatening, but not unlike a sting of a seasoned wasp, and enough to make you careful with your choice of words. "Want them to treat you as a human, speak their language," Knox used to say. In the meantime, the jinx had worn off, but the habit stayed.

"Good. Keep it that way." Potter stopped at a red light and turned to Draco. "And the word you must learn is Voldemort."

Pain of a very different kind shocked Draco from somewhere deep inside. Not as bad as usual, bless Potter's inferior neural connectivity, but bad enough to make Draco struggle not to wince.

"You still call him that? I thought Riddle was more on trend."

"I don't follow every trend. I fought Voldemort. You want to be a plausible Harry Potter? Embrace it!" The streetlight turned green, but Potter didn't move until Draco gave him a nudge. "Feel free to skip Lord. We don't want to upset Lucius the first."

Draco took a deep breath.

"Voldemort," he said and fought down another shock.

"Good! Keep practising. If you do it five times in the morning and five times in the evening, by Hallowe'en you'll be ripe to be resorted into Gryffindor."

"Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort." Draco wondered what he was actually trying to prove and to whom, and decided to avoid talking about that individual altogether.

When occasional weirdoes wearing unlikely combinations of Muggle garments started to appear in the swarm of hurrying figures, Draco finally got the wand back and they parted ways. Draco felt Potter's eyes on his back until he turned the corner. As he crossed the square, the realization hit him like a lukewarm shower and goose bumps gushed down his neck. And when he entered platform number nine and three-quarters, it hit him for real. Now he was the Hero of Hogwarts, the Chosen One, he who defeated V— never mind, and pushing through a gasping and cheering crowd and a thicket of outstretched hands. Draco stifled a laugh and just about managed to make it look like a broad sincere smile.

"Hi mate!" A heavy clap landed on his shoulder and Weasley's face appeared on his right side. A hug and a kiss came from his left. From? Of course. Granger.

Weasley was already busy playing bodyguard and holding the unrelenting crowd at bay, and Granger navigated them towards a clearing, where Draco found himself overwhelmed by the dazzling red of five Weasleys. They kept rotating around him, until he finally faced the scariest of them all. She stared at him tensely.

"Hi."

"Hi."

But the train gave its liberating whistle. Draco was dragged by Granger to the nearest door, pushed by Weasley up the steps and eventually ushered into an empty compartment. There followed some frantic waving and air-kissing, until the train started gaining pace and finally broke out of the infuriating mess of nine and three-quarters.

Draco took a deep breath and immediately exhaled a question.

"How are you?" Asking questions was safer than telling stories.

"How are you?" replied Granger and Weasley in unison, looking intently, as if they expected to hear something special.

"I asked first. How was your trip?"

"Great!"

"Fantastic!"

Draco had to listen to a couple of anecdotes about broomstick accidents, embarrassing misunderstandings with the locals and food poisoning. But then both of them lowered their voices.

"You won't believe what we saw."

"We went on one of those guided tours. To where You-know—"

"—Voldemort stayed before his return four years ago," Granger finished.

Draco's brilliant plan to avoid the subject failed in the most unexpected way. Ask a Gryffindor about their summer holiday...

"They stayed in a ghost village," Weasley said. "The Muggles made a picture."

"They? Ghosts? Muggles?" Draco was getting confused.

"Let me tell it, Ron!" Granger said. Weasley shut up temporarily. "They showed us a Muggle newspaper from the time. The locals got suspicious because they spotted a young girl living in an abandoned Muggle village, with a baby!"

"The baby was not a baby, of course, but our dear You-kn— Voldemort, hatched from a Horcrux." Weasley put in.

Oh, please, you don't hatch from a Horcrux!

"Anyway, in that newspaper there was a picture of the girl with 'baby Voldemort' on her lap. And guess who that girl was?" Granger was so excited, it was embarrassing.

"Well, we don't really know who she was, but Merlin's pants! She looked like that stinky witness in Narcissa Malfoy's trial!"

"Oh?" To Draco, this indeed was a surprise. Not the girl, he was fairly sure who the girl was. And not her association with Him, considering the time when she had first appeared on their premises. What was surprising, and disconcerting, and, in all honesty, outrageous, was that Weasley and Granger were sticking their noses into his mother's private life.

"Of course, it couldn't be the witness," continued Granger. "She was maybe ten or twelve? So she would be at most sixteen by now."

"And that witch, the witness, was old, right? Sixty?" Weasley looked questioningly at Granger.

"But they could be related! Mother, grandmother, aunt, perhaps?" Granger had that ridiculously triumphant look, as if she was going to earn ten extra points for logical thinking instead of looking it up in a book.

Of course, they could be related! That was the first thing Draco had thought when he had seen that witness in the courtroom. But that was still none of their bloody business!

"Why are you so interested in her?"

Weasley looked nonplussed. "I thought you wanted to know."

"Are you all right, Harry?" Granger gave him a concerned look.

But at that moment, the door of the compartment slid open and Draco was presented with a most tangible reason not to be all right. Ginevra Weasley entered without a word, and dropped on the bench next to the other two, crammed in the corner, ignoring the vast empty space on the bench next to Draco.

"Want anything from the trolley?" Weasley asked standing up.

His sudden fit of hunger must have been contagious, because Granger followed him out of the compartment like chocolate frogs was all she'd been craving for since before the war. Ginevra stayed. Each looked at the other from their corner of the compartment, until she shifted and took a more dignified position in the middle of the opposite bench.

"I'm sorry, Harry."

"Sorry for what?" Draco wished Potter had given him even a minimal briefing. Now he only hoped she had something big to be sorry for. If she had got involved with another bloke, that would be really top!

"Sorry that I left, and"—she blinked rapidly—"that I didn't talk to you. I just—"

Aha. She had left him. That was promising.

"Did you meet someone else?" Draco kept his fingers crossed for a 'yes', but her face fell and her eyes went round like a pair of Galleons.

"Oh, no! Did you think that? I'm sorry! No!"

Pity.

"Why then?" There was still a chance she had left him permanently for some other reason.

"I just— If I had stayed and talked to you, you would have come up with a hundred great reasons why we should keep trying, and I wouldn't be able to say no. To the hero, you know?" She held her breath. "I needed a break."

"A break?"

"Yes." That 'yes' sounded resolute. "I still need it."

Draco was ready to accept it unconditionally, but Ginevra felt she had to explain.

"You were my hero." She gave an embarrassed shrug. "And then, what with the war and everything... and now you are the Hero of Hogwarts. I saw too much of a hero in you, I suppose."

Draco could not quite see how that was a problem.

"But you aren't. I mean, you are, of course, I mean, you've saved the world! But..." She sank her fingernails into the padding of her seat, like a hawk, "it would be too much to ask of you, I guess, um, to continue the battle under the blankets."

Aha. Potter was no hero under the blankets. On second thought, that was hardly a surprise. How could one have any sex at all in that hairy wetsuit?

"Are you disappointed?" he asked, hoping that she was.

"Erm, no. I don't know. I'm intrigued!" Ginevra leaned forward and looked into his eyes. "You're not what I thought, but you're something else. What are you, Harry?"

Oh no, wrong question. But while he was panicking, she continued:

"Don't answer. We'll figure it out eventually. But first I want your heroic halo to wear off a little in my brain. That's why, um..." Ginevra held on to her seat like she was afraid a hurricane would blow her off it. "You're really not angry at me?"

"No, not at all. I understand. Take your time," Draco tried to sound serious, but not too relieved. "If you need it..." 'Take as much time as you need,' he thought, seeing her white knuckles turn pink again.

"Thank you." Now, she sounded relieved. In an instant, she got back to her feet and was gone.

Draco's first thought was, he'd better keep doing heroic things, for the halo not to wear off too soon, if that was what would keep the Weasley monster at a distance. He stood up and stretched, but his solitude was soon interrupted again. The compartment door slid open and a dark head stuck in.

"Hi, Harry!" That was Patil. She burst in with her arms outstretched and grabbed the whole of him. While she was laughing and sobbing on his shoulder, and babbling away about how she couldn't believe they had done it, and that they were going back, and that life was wonderful, Draco was struggling to figure out her first name. There was a Parvati, and there was a Padma. And one of them was in Gryffindor and the other was in Ravenclaw. But which one was which, and which one was in his arms, was truly beyond him. He tried not to forget to pat her on her back every now and again, and put in things like "Yeah!" and "Me too!" until she finally let go of him, and crashed onto the spot just vacated by Ginevra.

"You are the only one who's not asking me what the hell I'm doing here."

"Oh!" They must have known something he didn't, but playing nice and stupid was probably his best bet. "I'm glad you're here. Why are they asking you that?"

"See, I'm actually done with my N.E.W.T.s," she said with a note of superiority in her voice. "All but one! And I'm so excited for that one, because—"

The door slid open again, and Ron Weasley hung over the scene, visibly puzzled to see the wrong girl.

"Parvati? What are you doing here?"

Parvati (Parvati!) rolled her eyes.

Weasley came in and sat next to Draco, his place in the door frame taken by Granger, who was not in a hurry to enter. She was throwing concerned glances over her shoulder.

"Don't you think we should—?" she pressed her lips, and looked at Draco. "There is a—"

"C'mon. It's the prefects' job, and we aren't any more," said Weasley.

"There aren't any prefects in sight." She peered into the aisle.

"Hermione! It's not a house-elf. It's Malfoy. Let his Slytherin buddies deal with him their way. Serves him well!"

"Yeah, but—" and she looked at Draco again with a silent question to which there was no answer in a book.

Draco did not need to be asked twice. Potter was already getting him into trouble, and this could be, in fact, his chance to do something mildly heroic.

"Where?"

Granger led him to the next carriage, where the first thing he saw was the back of Potter standing in the aisle, facing two figures at a respectable duelling distance. One of them was a chunky brown-haired boy with broad rebellious cheekbones and childishly long eyelashes, Slytherin chaser Rick Vaisey. Behind his right shoulder stood good old Goyle. Puzzled and frightened faces of young Ravenclaws were peeping out of the compartments.

Draco pushed forward and stood at Potter's side. Now he could see their wands pointing at his chest. Two dots of green light were dancing on Potter's robes indicating the exact spot where the curse would hit. Cool idea. Beautifully harmless and psychologically powerful.

Potter's hands were down and empty. He wasn't even thinking of defending himself.

"What did I miss?" Draco murmured, keeping his eyes on the opponents.

"Nothing. We've just had a nice round of bickering. Just like us in the old days."

"And why are you here?"

"They've just thrown me out of the Slytherin carriage."

"Whatever for?"

"No idea. I said something and he propelled me all the way to the Ravenclaws."

"Wow! What did you say?"

"I don't know. Something fairly harmless. That it was weird that his—"

"Strange? Did you say 'strange'?"

Before Potter could answer, his satchel came swirling through the air, fell half-way between the opposing parties and spilled some of its contents on the floor.

"Vaisey! Are you still practising Wingardium Leviosa?" Draco said loudly, above the rattle of the train.

"Sorry, Potter, to interrupt your cosy heart-to-heart, but if you want to keep him as a souvenir, be quick! Take him somewhere where we can't smell him. Otherwise he goes straight down the toilet, and we'll flush him off the train."

"True. He is my dearest memory of the war," replied Draco. "But as with most antiques I own, I don't hide them in my attic. In fact, the Headmistress, the Board of Governors, and the Sorting Hat agree that the place for this particular exhibit," Draco patted Harry's shoulder, "is in the House of Slytherin."

"Nuh-huh. Not my house-mates' taste in furniture," Vaisey countered. "How about the spire of the Gryffindor tower?" And he demonstrated the idea by pointing his wand up and through his half-closed fist. "Come, Goyle! If Potter wants to collect our waste, he's very welcome to." And they marched out of the carriage.

Potter summoned the satchel and was repacking it with brisk movements.

"Why did you come?" He said without looking, as Draco picked up a few rolls of parchment that fell out. "I was doing fine."

"Gr—" Draco glanced warily over his shoulder. Granger was still waiting at the beginning of the aisle and staring with bewilderment at the scene. "Hermione insisted." Hermione, Hermione, Hermione, Hermione, Hermione. That's what he should practise five times in the morning and in the evening. "I was so touched, I couldn't say no," he added in an almost whisper. "Should I take you back to the Slytherins?"

"No, thanks!"

Draco glanced over his shoulder again, but Gr— Hermione was gone.

"What are you going to do? Stand here and block the way?"

Potter turned on Draco, fuming:

"Exhibit? Antique? If you talk to me or of me in this dehumanising way again, I'm calling this whole show off!"

"If anything, it's my own face I'm damaging."

"But it's my feelings you're hurting!" Potter blurted out. "I'm not an exhibit, and I'm not antique!"

Draco wondered whether it was one of those spots where he was expected to say sorry.

"And you're not an exhibit, or antique either, for that matter."

A birch grove flashed past behind the window, the trees flickered in rapid succession in the sunlight until the train dived into the darkness of a tunnel for a few seconds, to reemerge to the sight of a river running in a deep valley.

"Anyway, since you're here, can you explain to me what it was all about? Strange?"

"That's Vaisey's nickname. He is Rodolphus Lestrange's bastard. He's actually quite proud of it. He'd only seen a few weeks of his father between Azkaban and Azkaban, but they got along really well, or so I'm told. But only his closest friends are allowed to call him 'Strange'."

"And now he's bitter because— wait. You didn't testify against Rodolphus."

"Oh no, there was no need to! It's his mother and half-brother that I helped lock up. His brother tortured a few Muggle-borns in our cellar just for fun."

"And his mother?"

"You were in her hearing, weren't you?"

"Can't remember."

Of course, Potter couldn't remember. She was together with a dozen others, who cares about names. Draco wondered when he himself would finally start forgetting all those names.

"She killed an Auror in a chase. She actually only stunned him, but he fell into the Thames and was done for. And I actually didn't witness that, but heard talk, and then your people did some legilimency and some memory work and pressed her to confess. She got seven years, I think."

Potter frowned.

"I know what you're thinking. That's what my mother would have got, if she hadn't had such a star for a witness."

"No, that's not it," Potter's frown tightened. "I can't put a finger on it, but it doesn't sound right. That memory work."

"Those are the new methods introduced by your colleagues from Mysteries, and damn effective they are! How many of our people do you know who managed to wriggle out by claiming they were under an Imperius, like the last time?"

"There were three or four..."

"Those were under an Imperius!"

Potter kept frowning.

"Don't look at me like that. I testified where I could testify, and otherwise tipped them off for minds to dig into. I wouldn't be standing here if I hadn't. And naturally, Vaisey and others like him are not amused."

Draco left Harry standing in the aisle. He tried to stay as long as he could out of Gryffindors' way, shaking hands with lesser Ravenclaws and random Hufflepuffs. But the currents inevitably brought him back into the midst of the Gryffindor crowd, and Granger's questioning look haunted him throughout the rest of their journey, until he zoned out.

The Goyles, the Notts, the Vaiseys, the Mulcibers, the Selwyns—the angry and scared faces of the fathers and occasional mothers flashed through Draco's mind, as the train pulled into Hogsmeade. How many of their offspring were here this year to take revenge on him? Theo Nott had left the country to live with his uncle, who had managed to enrol him in the last year at Durmstrang. The Selwyn children were out of Hogwarts, and the little Mulcibers were only just out of nappies. But Goyle and Vaisey were bound to be fun.

When Draco became aware of his surroundings again, he was in the Great Hall. Was his brain playing a trick on him, or had the hall grown longer? It was filling rapidly with students though, and none of the extra space seemed too much. The remedials like him and Potter easily made up a half of a regular year. Draco suppressed the impulse to move to the Slytherin table. As Granger and Weasley were pulling him along, he skimmed quickly through the rows of Hufflepuffs for one particular face but could not see it.

It wasn't more than an old habit. As they walked along the red and gold banners, Draco created a compartment in his mind, tightly separated from his entire personal history, and was ready to start furnishing it like a living room for his new Gryffindor friends to dwell in. The place was still rather empty, but it was filling with every whiff of the Gryffindor spirit he was able to take in through his pores, and with every little bit of gossip he could gather from the chit-chat around him.

When they finally sat, with Weasley on one side and Parvati on the other, Granger stopped staring at him like she was trying to catch up with forgotten homework in legilimency, and all the attention, gossip included, turned to the staff table. While the first-years were being sorted, Draco counted four new faces.

On McGonagall's immediate right sat a young blonde witch, who looked like she had a bet with McGonagall on whose bun was tighter. She seemed to be trying desperately to maintain a severe expression on her face, but could not help an occasional giggle. The new teacher who sat next to her on the other side was chatting her up.

That teacher was a handsome man, in his late thirties, Draco reckoned, with curly brown hair and a short boxed full beard. His light sand-coloured wizard's robes were swung carelessly over an immaculate white shirt.

"I bet that guy is Char— Shar— Charnay, whatever." Weasley gave it up. "French. Used to be an assistant teacher or something, at Beauxbatons," he added, to the sound of thin applause that was supposed to welcome the new first year Slytherin who had just been sorted.

"What is he teaching?" Draco asked.

"Defence," Weasley made a peevish face. "Fleur was so excited about the news that Bill accidentally turned the newspaper into a burnt pizza. Accidental magic in adults, you know?" He winked suggestively.

"Hope his English is better than Madame Maxime's," put in Patil under the roar of cheers for a new Ravenclaw.

"If it isn't, we'll have to learn some French, I suppose," said Granger. "All those who can duel and speak English have been recruited by the Auror Office. We're lucky to get anyone at all."

The Sorting Hat announced a Gryffindor and the table exploded in applause and shrieking cheers. Draco clapped along, but his attention wandered to the witch sitting to McGonagall's left. Her greying minimalistic ponytail and the oversized blazer with padded shoulders gave her the look of a vulture, but her face was that of a cornered rattlesnake.

Next to her was the empty seat of Professor Sprout, who was now leading the sorting ceremony. Between Sprout's chair and Hagrid, who sat at the end of the row, Draco could see the fourth unfamiliar face. The witch had black hair, almond-shaped eyes, and an expression of stony calm on her face, like a sphinx guarding a secret treasure.

A deafening cheer marked the end of sorting, and McGonagall rose from her throne.

"Dear new students, welcome to Hogwarts! Dear old students, welcome back! I shall save most of the announcements for later, but I must say a few words before we begin our banquet." She emphasised the word 'must'.

"I hardly need to tell you that the changes that have taken place in wizarding Britain since the end of the last school year are unprecedented, and this school is no exception. Only four months ago a war was fought in this castle, in this hall."

Draco could immediately notice one change. Unlike Dumbledore (rather like Snape though) McGonagall seemed to believe that hungry children should be able to take more than three sentences of an opening speech. She went on to commemorate the victims, followed by an obligatory one minute's silence, broken now and then by growling stomachs. Then she thanked those who fought and those who rebuilt the school. She didn't drop names, but heads turned to the remedial segment of the Gryffindor table, and a thunder of applause made the empty plates tremble.

"The war has left many of us heartbroken, but it is over! The war is over, and I cannot emphasise it often enough. There is only one thing we should fight now—the temptation to continue fighting," she gave the rightmost and the leftmost table a long stern look, and Draco wondered if the news of the Malfoy-Potter-Vaisey confrontation had already reached her ears.

"This year we shall all be learning to live in peace!" She paused for the meaning to sink in. The Hufflepuffs beamed, the Slytherins and the Gryffindors clenched their jaws, and the Ravenclaws looked intrigued. "And let the meal we share tonight mark the end of all our past skirmishes and the beginning of new—"

There was something about peace and friendship, but the food appeared on the tables and McGonagall's last words sank in a round of premature clapping mingled with the clank of forks and plates. Draco helped himself to a herring and an assortment of pickled vegetables. Granger gave him another one of those bewildered looks. He must have been doing something very wrong, but no one mentioned it until the dessert. When treacle tart appeared on the table, he passed, and Granger cracked finally:

"Are you on a diet, Harry? Are you all right?" she said, staring in disbelief at his unused dessert fork. "The treacle tart, Harry!"

Draco had just taken a big sip of water, to put off the need to reply at least for a few seconds. Patil took over:

"And all those pickles, Harry! Are you pregnant?"

The heads of a few sixth-years sitting around them turned.

"Stop it!" Weasley came to rescue. "Nothing wrong with those pickles. I like pickles, too. Why don't you ask me if I'm pregnant?"

"Oh, should I?"

"No. And Harry neither!" Weasley said with finality, but a wave of murmurs and giggles had already spread in both directions along the table and Draco felt Ginevra's eyes fixed on him from a distance of five treacle tarts.

"Believe it or not, but wizards cannot get pregnant," Weasley continued. "Hermione, you should lend Parvati your book."

Granger blushed, but was pressed to explain, and soon the conversation around them turned to a certain book, procreation, and sex. Granger regained her composure and started lecturing the surrounding sixth-years. When the girls were fully absorbed by the issue of contraceptive charms, Weasley put an arm around Draco's shoulder and spoke into his ear:

"But blimey, mate, you are a bit gloomy today. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," replied Draco in a way that he hoped would clearly show that he wasn't.

"Was Ginny mean to you? Should I talk to her?"

"Absolutely not! This is between her and me."

"All right, all right," Ron took away his arm. "You can always talk to me, you know."

All was not too bad though. Now Draco only needed a steady rumour that Potter had a problem in his relationship, and he might be able to stick to an incongruous diet for some time without raising too many questions.

The treacle tart was almost finished without his help, and Draco perceived some stirring at the staff table. McGonagall rose again and tapped her glass with a teaspoon.

"As I already announced, this year will be anything but usual." The teaspoon elongated and retook the shape of a wand. "First and foremost, we are pleased to welcome four new members of staff."

The hall fell silent.

"Professor Clementine Pye will take over the subject I used to teach for so many years. She is your new teacher of transfiguration!" The young blond witch stood up and smiled broadly, as if she could not help it, but quickly braced herself and forced her face into an expression of solemn sternness. Now that they stood next to each other, they looked really quite alike.

"Professor Pye was not only one of my best students back in the days, but also a much feared beater of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Don't get in her bludger's way!" McGonagall added and the Gryffindor table clapped enthusiastically.

"Five Galleons she is our new head of house," said Patil.

"I dunno," replied Weasley. "Hagrid is a Gryffindor, too."

"Hagrid?!" exclaimed all the sixth-years in earshot and Patil.

"What? I was just saying that he would qualify, being a Gryffindor."

But McGonagall was already introducing the Frenchman. He was standing, his chin high up, Charnay the Conqueror. Draco had missed his first name.

"Please welcome your new Master of Defence against the Dark Arts!"

The round of applause on his account was not too bad. He thanked the Headmistress, and his English was decent. The faces of the neighbouring girls, Granger not excluded, darkened with what Draco guessed was a silent regret that the new Defence teacher would not qualify to be Gryffindor head of house.

"Let me now introduce the professor who, after all that has happened in the past few years, will take on the great responsibility of teaching you Muggle Studies."

The vulture woman rose and looked menacingly at the four tables of wizarding kids.

"Professor Grizelda Kazlauskas graduated from the Swansea College of Art at University of Wales Trinity Saint David in nineteen seventy-five and after many years of publishing and exhibiting internationally," McGonagall was glancing down at something on the table in front of her, "she turned to Muggle politics and has been an active member of the Scottish Council of the Labour Party since nineteen eighty-eight."

Kazlauskas interrupted:

"Thank you for your kind introduction, Professor, but it will be easier for everyone here present, if I set one thing straight right from the start," she gave the audience a forbidding look. "I am not a witch. I'm a squib."

She offered the audience a generous pause to digest the provocation.

"I'm a squib, and I'm proud to be one."

The following silence was pierced by a short vigorous meow of Mrs Norris. Filch the caretaker was standing at the entrance and looked a head taller than usual.

"You will notice that my classes will be different from what you are used to."

"And you will appreciate this unique opportunity," McGonagall continued, "to learn from a firsthand source." She gave the audience a copy of Kazlauskas's menacing look.

The Great Hall clapped obediently.

"Finally," McGonagall announced with a change in her voice, "I am honoured to introduce Professor Rebecca Benveniste."

Benveniste? Draco's attention darted to the sphinx woman, as she rose tall with measured grace. Sitting next to Hagrid she had looked tiny, but now she stood above them, like an elegant dark pillar, as if she had stood there for centuries. Benveniste?! The Benveniste?!

"Professor Benveniste was born in Canada and graduated with honours from the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in nineteen seventy-eight. At the height of the First Wizarding War in nineteen eighty she came to Britain and joined the resistance. She was employed by the Department of Mysteries since and now looks back to twenty years of research in magical forensics. During Voldemort's second rise, Rebecca Benveniste was the force behind the splitting of the Department and led its underground section, hiding Muggle-born witches and wizards from the atrocities of the Death Eaters. As you will know, hundreds of Muggle-born lives were saved by her courage and hard work."

"Oh, yeah, they locked them up in the Love Room," Weasley giggled softly. "Dad said there was an incident with the Amortentia fountain. They had to remove it after some kind of orgy." But Parvati hushed him silent.

"—that the Minister of Magic offered her the post of Head of the Mysteries Department, which she turned down, to accept the position of Professor of Magical Theory and Divination at our school. Welcome to Hogwarts, Professor!"

There was a solid thunder of applause and Parvati's cheering yelp

"Divination? What a waste."

"Waste? Waste?! Come again, Weasley!" Parvati raised her wand. Draco leaned out of her line of attack.

"Hey, Parvati," Granger said. "It's a shame we'll have nothing with her. We don't take Divination, and Magical Theory is for first and second years. You're lucky!" And she sighed like she wished she could start Hogwarts all over again.

McGonagall continued with a series of announcements that concerned accommodating the remedial students. There followed a bunch of usual Filch-inspired prohibitions. She finally announced the Quidditch try-outs to take place next week, and asked volunteers to give their names to their respective Heads of House. This caused unrest at the Gryffindor table.

"Why, of course, almost forgotten," McGonagall said in a tired voice. "As the new Headmistress, I also have to step down as Head of House. The new Head of the House of Gryffindor will be Professor Benveniste."

Everyone could hear Parvati's 'Yuhoo!' over a confused silence, followed by an insecure round of applause and incredulous murmur.

"Is that allowed?"

"She is not a Gryffindor."

"She's not from Hogwarts!" whispered Weasley, and he was not the only one.

"Shut up! You've just been complaining that you don't get a chance to properly meet her, now you get the chance and you still complain?" Parvati said and set down her wand with a tap against the table.

"Yeah, but—" Granger uttered. The situation was clearly not one of those mentioned in 'Hogwarts: A History'.

The Sorting Hat, which was still sitting on its stool in the middle of the hall, gave the Headmistress a displeased frown. Benveniste leaned in.

"Dear Headmistress, dear colleagues, dear students, as a newcomer I feel greatly honoured to be offered the opportunity to lead the house of Gryffindor, but I also feel uncomfortable bypassing the judgement of such a highly respected member of the Hogwarts community as the Sorting Hat. Professor," she addressed McGonagall, "would you allow me to take part in this beautiful tradition and be sorted, by way of confirmation?"

Judging by the look McGonagall gave her, this stunt had not been agreed upon in advance.

"It is the first time we are sorting a teacher," McGonagall said with a defeated shrug, "but there is a first time for everything, I suppose. Please, Professor."

Benveniste descended silently from the podium. Her black robes waved as she walked up to the Sorting Hat and gave it a barely discernible smile.

"If I may..." She lifted the hat and placed it gently on her head.

There was a long silence. The hat was making faces but did not say anything. Professor Benveniste just stood there with her elusive smile and a lowered gaze.

Draco wished he could hear what the hat was thinking. Was it studying her entire CV, which presumably was much longer than that of an eleven-year-old? Were they negotiating? One thing was clear, the woman had guts, but the old hat was playing difficult. Seconds were ticking away, everyone was holding their breath. Even Charnay stopped flirting with Pye and was looking spell-bound at Benveniste. After what seemed like an eternity, the hat cleared its throat. It sounded surprised but confident:

"Gryffindor!"