Chapter Three: Home Truths

Remus had a rather less disturbed night than he had the one before, but he still woke up very early - this time because a Sirius shaped lump had just crawled into bed with him.

'Wha's happenin'?' He yawned.

'I was awake, so I came to talk to you.'

'That was… thoughtful,' he closed his eyes again.

'I'm always thinking of you, Moony. How are you?'

'Tired.'

'No - I mean - how are you? After what happened at The Leaky Cauldron.'

Remus opened his eyes and frowned. 'I'm alright.'

'It must have been terrifying.'

'Yeah… I suppose. I just… hid, you know? My dad told me to hide and I stayed under the bed, listening to the fighting. I think… I think, maybe if you had asked me before it happened, I would have thought I'd do something more useful. But I just kept hidden.'

'There's nothing wrong with that. They were Death Eaters, they meant serious business. And you're only fifteen. It would have been mental for you to try and fight them yourself.'

' You would have tried to do something.'

'And I would have died trying! Honestly though, I know I'm dashing and brave and amazing and handsome and all but we don't actually know what I'd be like in a real battle. It's not happened to me. If an adult told me to hide I'd've probably…'

'Gone running out with your wand between your teeth and thumped a Death Eater in the nose.'

'Well, I'm a nutter, aren't I? - Everyone says that.'

'I don't think that.'

Sirius smiled. 'I'm glad you're not dead,' he said, sounding suddenly very sincere. '...But I'm not sure how I feel about you being a prefect.'

'You'll get used to it.'

'If you say so.'

…

The enchanted ceiling was a light blue, that first morning back, with wispy white clouds scudding across; though few people were looking upwards, as they were all too busy perusing their new timetables and comparing classes with their friends.

'Not a bad day for me,' Remus said, pleasantly surprised. 'I've got two lots of prep. I've only got three real classes all day.'

'Still Potions with the Slytherins,' Sirius said gloomily. 'I don't think we're ever going to escape that.'

They finished up their toast and marmalade and then Sirius, James and Peter shouldered their bags and headed out to the lawn for their first Care of Magical Creatures lesson of the year and Remus went up to the second floor for prep. As he had no homework to be getting on with (it being the first day back and the very first lesson) he built a little tower out of his textbooks and then put his head on the desk, where Madam Pince would not see, and enjoyed a nap.

It was to be his only respite of the day. The other three returned inside when the bell went, complaining loudly about the sheer amount of homework they had been given and they all headed down to the dungeons for Potions.

Once everyone was seated and the door closed, Professor Slughorn surveyed them all very seriously and said, 'This year is going to prove to be a very important year for you, your OWL year…'

(At the back of the room, Sirius groaned. 'This is exactly what Professor Kettleburn said,' he whispered to Remus.)

'At the end of this year you will take exams which will decide your very future, and the paths you will be able to take as you pursue your magical careers,' Slughorn continued, as if he had not heard Sirius (and perhaps he had not). 'And though there will be some in this room whose very last thought will be aiming for a future in Potion brewing…' (Remus thought Slughorn's eyes lingered on him for a moment) 'a decent OWL in Potions can prove necessary in any number of jobs, as well as setting you up in good stead for running your own households.'

He shifted in his chair, looking not unlike a walrus floundering on a rock. 'You can expect the difficulty of the work you must attempt to increase this year, and you will find the going an uphill struggle, but such trials are necessary in order to ensure you are perfectly prepared for your examinations. Now, we will start off with attempting to brew a Draught of Peace, a potion to soothe nerves and calm agitation, and which often comes up at Ordinary Wizarding level. But, be warned! If you are too heavy handed with the ingredients you can put the drinker into a deep and sometimes irreversible sleep, so pay attention! The ingredients and method are here…' he flicked his wand and the recipe appeared on the board, 'You will find all you need in the cupboard. You have one hour.'

Remus groaned, as he read the instructions on the board. There could not be a more fiddly and difficult potion for them to have started with, and Remus was always a catastrophe with a cauldron even on the simplest of solutions.

'Don't worry about it,' Sirius told him, collecting enough hellebore and powdered moonstone for them all and slamming them down on the desk. 'Who cares if you pass Potions? You know you'll get Outstanding in Defence.'

A few rows in front of them, Lily had taken the cauldron next to Severus and was blithely chatting to him as she measured her ingredients, shredded her boomslang skin and then stirred her mixture with precision. Standing beside her, Snape appeared to be in an agony of discomfort. Lily was smiling and laughing and occasionally even reaching out and touching his arm, and he looked flushed with pleasure just to be in her presence. But then his eyes would flick to Mulciber and Avery and his flush would become an ugly mottled red, and his eyes would flash and he would look like he was biting his tongue, unable to work out if he should answer Lily or tell her to leave him alone.

Lily appeared, for all the world, to be totally unaware of the dilemma he was in.

'What's she even doing?' James asked, stirring his mixture clockwise when he should be stirring anti-clockwise, as he was too distracted with Lily to concentrate. 'Is she flirting ? No - no, she can't be flirting. Not with Sniv. So what's she talking to him like that for? Great, greasy Death Eater that he is… Honestly, what is wrong with girls that they can't even tell when a bloke is evil?'

'Don't sweat it,' Sirius told him. 'She can't fancy him No one could fancy him.'

'Maybe if you like men…' James said doubtfully.

'No. Not even then. I know for a fact… You need to stop stirring and add the powdered unicorn horn, you berk, or you'll kill someone with this potion,' he said hastily - as James shot him a swift and searching glance.

'A light vapour should now be rising from your cauldrons,' Slughorn called out, when there was ten minutes to go. Remus glared at his own cauldron, which was belching out black smoke at an alarming rate. His face was smudged with soot and his hair was all wild from where he had been tugging on it in frantic desperation. 'Something's gone wrong!' he hissed at Pete. But Pete's cauldron was emitting green sparks, by now, and so he had his own problems to contend with.

James' potion was the correct colour and did not seem to be in any danger of explosion, but his distraction over Lily meant he did not have the clouds of silvery vapour which were rising from Sirius's own brew.

Up near the front, both Lily and Severus had crafted the perfect concoction. The vapour rose in shimmering spirals and the potion itself was a rich turquoise. 'Splendid, m'dear!' Slughorn cried in delight, when he ladled up some of Lily's potion and let it splash back into her cauldron. 'Excellent consistency. Just what I would have expected from you. And Severus - top notch as always.'

He bustled around the room. 'Oh dear,' he said when he caught sight of Remus choking in the thick smoke which surrounded him, his cauldron, and a radius of about three feet in every direction. 'Yes, well… only to be expected. Though not bad, Mr. Black, not bad at all.'

Sirius scowled.

Slughorn clapped his hands. 'Alright, everyone, fill one flagon with a sample of your potion and bring it up to my desk for testing. Homework is twelve inches of parchment on the properties and uses of moonstone, due in next Tuesday.'

'We already have twelve inches of parchment on the proper care and handling of unicorns,' Sirius told Remus. 'We're only two lessons in and drowning in homework. It better not be like this all year.'

Up at the front, Lily was asking Severus if he would like to work with her on their Potions homework in prep on Thursday. 'And we can meet at the library tomorrow night to find the books we'll need,' she said. 'It'll be fun!'

Severus glanced towards his Slytherin friends. 'I'll - er - I'll think about it.' He started to walk away.

'See you in Charms,' she called after him.

' See you in Charms, ' James mimicked her (but quietly, so she would not hear). 'Honestly, do you think If I stopped washing my hair I'd stand a better chance with her? Or - better yet - Sirius, quick, engorgio my nose.'

'I'll engorgio your head.'

'Don't do that,' Remus told him. 'It's big enough already.'

…

As they headed off to break, they saw a notice stuck up on the noticeboard which said:

Due to the exciting international event taking place this year, Madam Pince has ordered a number of books detailing the histories of the schools of our foreign friends. Despite her better judgement, these have been placed in the common rooms for your perusal. Please take this opportunity to learn all you can.

And beside that a notice which caused James much more excitement:

Those hoping to be considered for the Hogwarts Quidditch Team please give your names to your Head of House no later than Tuesday 9th September. Tryouts Wednesday 17th.

'Brilliant,' he grinned 'We've got Big Macca next, I'll tell her right away. I wonder who the captain is? I'm surprised it isn't me…'

(Sirius and Remus cast an amused glance at each other over his head.)

'It must be one of the older students from the other houses, everyone else from the Gryffindor team has left except me and Petra.'

They headed outside to enjoy a bit of early September sunshine while it lasted and took up residence beneath the Beech tree. James was still considering the eternal glory of being on the all-school international team. 'I mean… she'll have to notice me then, don't you think?' he said hopefully.

'I'm pretty sure she's already noticed you,' Sirius told him, 'she just doesn't like you.'

'Yeah but… when I've won the cup for Gryffindor…'

'Hogwarts,' Remus corrected.

'Whatever - then she'll see. She'll have to be impressed then.'

'Will she really?' Sirius asked doubtfully.

'I think you'll be amazing, James,' Peter said.

'Thanks, Pete.'

'Sycophant.'

'Sod off , Sirius!'

'Boy, boys - don't squabble over my brilliance - It's a forgone conclusion. I just wish I was the captain… But I suppose they wanted someone older and with more experience.'

Sirius, however, who had little interest in Quidditch, had already allowed his mind to wander, and now he asked rather darkly: 'What are the chances of Big Macca not starting her lesson with a lecture on OWLs and finishing it with setting twelve inches of parchment for homework?'

'Worse than zero,' Remus told him. He wrinkled his nose up. 'Though I suppose there is an outside chance she'll give us eighteen inches of parchment.'

Sirius groaned. And he groaned once again, once he was proven right and - upon taking the register - McGonagall fixed them with her most hawk-like stare and launched into a speech about the importance of their OWL year before starting them off learning vanishing spells.

'These are easier than conjuring spells, which you will not normally attempt until NEWT level,' she told them, as they sighed and grunted and waved their wands while nothing happened. 'However they are still among some of the most difficult magic you will learn for your OWLs.'

There was a loud bang as Peter accidentally vanished the leg of his stool and he crashed to the floor.

It was Big Macca who sighed now. 'Often people have more success with them by accident than they do on purpose,' she said, restoring the leg with a wave of her wand.

They had been given a slug each to try and vanish (McGonagall saying they would move onto snails but they were not yet ready to tackle the shell) but by the end of the lesson, all Remus had achieved was to give his slug plenty of exercise as he prodded it with his wand and it squelched away. By the time the bell rang for lunch there were oozing slime trails crisscrossing the tables but still the same number of slugs as there were students. Big Macca cleaned the slime with a wave of her wand and ordered James and Petra to collect in the slugs. Petra did this with her nose wrinkled in disgust, but James did this cheerfully enough until they had both done and returned their tins of slugs to McGonagall's desk.

That was when things took a turn for the sour.

James popped his tin down, glanced at Petra and then frowned when he noticed something gold and shiny pinned to her chest. 'What's that?' he asked, pointing at the badge rather suspiciously.

Petra glanced down. 'It's my Quidditch Captain's badge,' she said.

James turned red. 'What do you mean "your" Quidditch Captain's badge?'

It was Petra's turn to flush. 'I got it over the summer,' she said defensively.

'Why did you get sent the captain's badge?… Does this mean you're going to be the captain in the tournament?'

'Yes.'

'But you're not good enough!' He said this rather loudly, and the whole class, who had been chatting among themselves waiting to be dismissed, fell silent.

Petra flushed even deeper, looking furious and mortified at the same time. 'I didn't ask to be chosen!'

'Well you shouldn't have been. I'm the better player. I'm…'

'Mr. Potter, enough .' McGonagall cut through his diatribe crisply. 'Class dismissed, Potter - a word.'

Everyone else filed out, Sirius and the others casting awkward glances back at James, Lily seething at the arrogance of the loathsome Potter. ('Don't listen to him, Petra! You were chosen for a reason.')

The door closed behind the last of the students and James was left alone with Professor McGonagall.

'Professor - I don't understand. I'm the best player. I'm the one who-'

'No one doubts your skill, Mr. Potter,' Professor McGonagall interrupted him. 'Even Petra herself freely admits you are the better chaser. You are technically brilliant. A prodigy even, and goodness knows it would be good to see you pursue Quidditch as a career and turn professional, knowing Gryffindor was where you earned your stripes. However what you are not is a responsible pair of hands.'

James gaped at her.

She sighed and looked at him pityingly. 'I know you are a leader among your little group of friends, and I know you are dedicated to Quidditch. But you are immature, trouble prone and far too partisan to be an effective leader of a team. In short, though you undoubtedly have what it takes to win a Quidditch tournament through your skill, you do not have what it takes to be the person who leads that team to glory. You want too much glory for yourself. And I cannot trust you to play nicely with the Slytherins.'

'Why would I have to play nicely with the Slytherins?'

'It is an all-Hogwarts team, Mr. Potter, that means every Hogwarts house must be represented.'

'Well that's stupid.' He folded his arms and glowered.

'You prove my point for me. Mr. Potter you are not captain material. Not yet. Perhaps one day you will grow up enough to be a true leader, to be able to bring people together and inspire them to work as one. Perhaps one day you will be able to follow the rules. Today is not that day. Petra does not have your technical brilliance but she is a level head and a capable pair of hands. She will captain the team well and not make this entire tournament all about herself.'

'I wouldn't -'

Professor McGonagall raised an eyebrow and James fell silent.

'Now, as I have said, you are one of the school's best players by far. I hope you will still put your name forward for consideration for the team. I hope you will at least be mature enough to get over your disappointment and work under Petra to bring about a Hogwarts victory. If you cannot do this, however, then it is only further proof that you do not have what it takes to ever be in a position of responsibility or authority. Dismissed.'

Not needing to be told twice, James grabbed his bag and fled the classroom.

…

'What do you think Big Macca's saying to him?' Remus asked, digging into his shepherd's pie. The three of them had gone to lunch but were still nervously awaiting James' reappearance.

'She's probably telling him he's too much of an arrogant tosser to be captain,' Sirius said. He shrugged. 'Which is fair enough-'

'That's not true, Sirius,' Peter said, though he shut up when Sirius scowled at him.

'Here's the thing, they didn't make him prefect either. Moony got the badge. If I'd thought about it - which I hadn't - I think I would have thought James would be prefect. Not me, I'm too much trouble, pushing suits of armour on people and feeding my brother to a manticore and what not. But James… he does mad stuff, but not like me. He's the top of every class, taking more OWLS than most people, on the Quidditch team. He's just … more visible than Remus. No offence, Remus.'

'I don't want to be visible.'

'Well, you are now - because you're a prefect. But the point is, James should have been a shoo in. But he didn't get it. That means Big Macca and Dumbledore must think there's some reason he's not prefect material… and that will be the reason he's not Quidditch Captain material either.'

'I just hope he doesn't take this too hard,' Remus said. 'It doesn't really matter if he's captain or not, as long as he's on the team. He'll probably have more fun without the added stress of responsibility.'

'Ah -' Sirius clapped a hand to his heart. 'Those are the words of a man with bitter experience. What's the trouble, Moony? The pressure of prefecting getting to you already? So many rule breakers and so little time. You know - I think I see a few grey hairs starting to show.'

'Sod off.' And Remus flicked his mashed potato in Sirius's face and took five points from Gryffindor

'You're using your powers for evil, you are,' Sirius said.

'Get used to it... Peter, your table manners are impeccable. Five points to Gryffindor.' And, with the number of rubies in the Gryffindor hourglass restored, they finished their shepherd's pie and moved onto pudding.

James did not appear at lunch, and - when Sirius caught up with him in Arithmancy - he looked a little red about the eyes. Not sure what to say about it, Sirius pretended not to notice.

…

James remained quiet and subdued for the rest of the day and did not tell his friends what Professor McGonagall had said to him. Meanwhile every class seemed to follow the same pattern as the first few - starting with a lecture on the importance of OWLs and finishing with a boat load of homework. By the time the final bell rang, Remus had a twelve inch essay on the properties of moonstones to write, a chapter on vanishing spells to read and summarise and the Locomotion Charm to practise ready for his next lesson with Professor Flitwick, the very next day. On top of that, the other three also had a unicorn essay to write and James and Sirius had been given some calculations to do for Arithmancy.

'It's inhuman, this level of work,' Sirius said, dumping his bag down next to his favourite chair beside the common room fire and scowling deeply. 'The OWLs are still months off. What are they doing, working us to death on the very first day back?'

With so much to be getting on with and the sneaking suspicion that just as much work would be piled on them tomorrow and the day after that, the four of them all sat down and made a start on their Transfiguration homework. Across the common room, the girls were doing exactly the same and looking just as strained as the boys were.

Eventually Sirius put down his quill, yawned, stretched and declared he was not doing any more homework that night. 'I don't care if I fail my OWLs, I'm not working this hard every night for a year.'

It seemed that Lily had, likewise, had the same idea, because she had put down her text books and had instead picked up one of Madam Pince's new books about the foreign schools they would soon be playing host to. James saw what she was looking at, seemed to remember Big Macca's words to him, flushed bright red, glared at Petra and then made his excuses and headed up to the dorm.

Lily ignored him, lost as she was in the founding story of the Australian wizarding school: Yeperenye School of Sorcery.

The land of Australia was largely ignored by European muggles for several thousand years (it being rather far away), however, in the 1700s, Britain - which was overwhelmed with criminal activity at the time - decided to rid themselves of their undesirable element by transporting them to this distant continent and establishing penal colonies in what became known as "Botany Bay".

Among the 188 female prisoners who first arrived was one witch - Joanna Jamieson (convicted, not for witchcraft, as she would have been a century earlier, but because the muggles refused to believe she was a witch and arrested her for fraud and deception when she briefly vanished her neighbour's cow). After her release, rather than risk the long return journey home, she headed deeper into Australia, fashioning herself a new wand out of wattlewood and the heartstring of a burrunjor before she left this last outpost of British civilisation (or lack thereof).

On her travels she met another ex-convict wizard (himself a muggleborn) and his daughter. They teamed up and pushed further and further in-land in an attempt to explore this vast land mass which was now their home.

Apparating in stages, they were in the deserts near Mparntwe when Joanna dreamed of an enormous caterpillar-like creature burrowing through a cliff face.

The next day she happened across a cliff just like the one from her dream, with a narrow opening. Inside she found a wonderland; carved out in the wiggling shape of the path of a caterpillar, was a series of caves and underground pools. Offering protection from the heat and the cold of the desert, Joanna and her companions settled there and gradually built a school of magic in the caverns, both very similar to and extremely different from Hogwarts - where Joanna and the muggleborn had both been educated…

Lily frowned as she tried to imagine what a school built out of caves would look like. Her mind conjured up images of caverns and underground lakes and stalactites… but she could not quite picture where the kitchens, dormitories or bathrooms would be. After skimming through some of the chapters on the aforementioned similarities and differences to her own school (and discovering that plenty of dorms did have stalactites hanging from the ceiling, but none had underground lakes as these would prove dangerous to sleepwalkers), she flipped to the back of the book to a chapter title which read:

The Aboriginal Controversy

Not knowing what to expect, she began to read with more attention than she had paid to the descriptions of the cavernous classrooms, and her brow furrowed the further down the page she went.

Having never been consulted for an opinion on the International Statute of Secrecy and thus having no idea that witchcraft was now supposed to be a secret, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia had always raised their magicals along with their muggles and remained one society.

Although Aboriginal children were always welcome to study at Yeperenye, for the most part they chose to remain in their own communities and within their own families. Relations between the settled magicals and the native magicals were mostly cordial, far more so than their muggle counterparts, but they still remained largely separate.

Matters came to the business end of the wand though at the start of the Twentieth Century when the muggle Australian Government embarked on a policy of removing Aboriginal children from their mothers and putting them into institutions.

As magical and muggle Aboriginal people lived as one, what this meant in practice was the casting of magical children into the muggle world.

Fearing the risk this posed to the Statute of Secrecy, the Australian Ministry for Magic quietly arranged for magical Aboriginal children living in muggle institutional homes to be removed safely to Yeperenye when they turned eleven, to protect the wizarding world from exposure via accidental magic and untrained adolescent wizards, and thus the number of Aboriginal students at the school increased massively over the current century.

Since the muggles abandoned this policy and recognised the wickedness of taking children from their parents, however, the Australian Magical Community now finds itself complicit in the stealing of generations of Aboriginal children from their communities. The impact of this on magical society, and how reparations can be made to those who suffered under the scheme, is currently a very hot topic in Australian politics, to which there is no easy answer.

Lily frowned, and put the book down, picking up instead a history of Koldovstoretz, the Russian school. 'Have you read any of these, Petra?' she asked, after a while.

Petra looked up from where she had been drawing diagrams of the Porskoff Ploy on a bit of parchment. She looked a little bit harried, like captaining an all-school Quidditch Team and studying for OWLs was a bit more than she was ready to handle. 'What's that?'

'These books about the schools, have you read any of them?'

'I don't have time - you'll have to summarise them for me before they get here.'

'They're interesting. There's stuff… There's stuff I want to talk to Sev about. I think it might help him.'

Petra rolled her eyes and went back to her tactical drawings.

…

Although James was as quiet for most of Wednesday as he had been the day before, the final lesson of the day was flying - and that brought all his enthusiasm back and, though perhaps he was not quite over the disappointment of not being the captain, he started to talk much more cheerfully about being on the team again.

That night he picked up the book on The Yeperenye School of Sorcery and read it rather ostentatiously, in the hope that Lily would notice and stop and talk to him about it. She ignored him, however, and left the common room shortly afterwards to meet up with Severus at the library in order to research the properties of moonstone, just as they had planned the day before.

James threw the book down in despair. 'What's a man got to do?' he demanded.

…

The next day was Thursday, and this meant their first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson of the year with their new teacher, Professor Carnarvon. The boys entered her classroom that morning with interest; not just because Defence Against the Dark Arts was one of the branches of magic they valued most highly, but because their last Defence teacher, Professor Malidictus, had been a werewolf hating zealot who had attempted to stab Remus through the heart with a silver knife… So they wanted to see what exactly they were getting this year.

Another lecture on the importance of OWLS seemed to be the start of it. Professor Carnarvon was sitting behind her desk when the class filed in. She wore a bright blue sequined headscarf over her dark curls today, matched with deep green robes. She had very striking steel grey eyes, and these roved across the students as she took the register.

Then came the obligatory OWL chat (Peter had taken to using these as a chance to catch up on an extra forty winks - arguing he knew what was going to be said anyway as it was all the same) and then she told them they would be largely concentrating on curses, with regards to the Dark Arts that year.

'I worked for Gringotts before Dumbledore offered me this job,' she told them. 'I was a curse breaker and worked in Egypt, testing and making safe all the enchanted treasures of the Ancient Pharaohs.'

The boys looked mildly impressed by this. Being a Gringotts curse breaker was certainly better than being the Head of The Werewolf Capture Unit, which Malidcitus had done before he was a teacher (though they didn't think it was quite as good as being a vampire hunter, which had been Professor Tenebris's job, in her youth).

'As such,' Professor Carnarvon was saying, 'I am an expert in detecting and disarming dangerous curses, and these are the skills I will be passing on to you over the next year.'

Ellis Stebbins of Ravenclaw put his hand in the air. 'What about casting the curses, professor?' he asked.

She gave him a withering look (which made the Gryffindor boys feel much more warmly towards her, as Stebbins was a werewolf hating berk). 'This is Defence Against the Dark Arts, Mr. Stebbins,' she said. 'I will not be teaching you how to perform them, but how to defend yourself from them. The clue is very much in the name of the course.'

She shook her head slightly. Stebbins blushed. 'Now,' she continued, 'please turn to page twelve of your textbooks: Cushioning Curses: How to Deflect the Worst of the Dark Arts . We are starting at the very top today, with the so-called Unforgivable Curses. Who can tell me why they are so named?'

Quite a few hands went up. 'Because the use of any one of them will earn you a lifetime in Azkaban,' Mary McDonald said.

('Not if you use one on a werewolf,' Remus muttered bitterly to his friends. Malidictus had used the Imperius curse on him and walked away scot free.)

'Quite correct,' Professor Carnarvon said, 'five points to Gryffindor. Now, there are three unforgivable curses: The Imperius Curse - which puts another person under the caster's will and allows them to control them entirely; The Cruciatus Curse - Which you may notice shares a root with words such as "crucify" and is literally a curse which casts unspeakable torture upon its victim; and finally The Killing Curse - whose name is rather self explanatory, but carries a weightier sentence than other fatal curses as it cannot be cast successfully by accident, and there is no way it can be blocked or survived. It leaves no marks on its victims.'

Lily felt a shiver go down her spine, as if someone had just walked over her grave. She put her hand in the air. 'Professor Carnarvon, a few months back I read about some muggles who had died unexpectedly and who appeared to have no cause of death that the coroner could find. I thought at the time this looked like Death Eater activity. Is… You Know Who using the killing curse?'

It was Professor Carnarvon's turn to look impressed. 'Very good, Miss Evans. Yes. Currently, any death where there is no apparent cause has almost certainly been perpetrated by He Who Must Not be Named and his followers. And we must of course consider the possibility that, where he is using one unforgivable, he may also be using the others… Certainly witnesses of The Night of The Glass Shards say "Crucio" was used on the muggleborn victims… And you may remember a couple of years ago now, the Rock and Roll band "The Kneazles" were killed in their home…'

The expression of every girl in the class became one of intense mourning.

'Band member Roger Smith showed signs of having been tortured by the Cruciatus Curse before he was killed.'

Mary McDonald - who had always had a very big crush on Roger - sniffed rather loudly. Lily stuck her hand in the air again. 'But Bobby wasn't tortured before he died, was he, Professor? Bobby Darrow?'

(Despite the seriousness of the conversation, James - sitting at the back - rolled his eyes and pretended to vomit.)

'There was no evidence of it,' Carnarvon said. 'Potter - stop that . Five points from Gryffindor.'

Sirius stuck his hand in the air.'Professor, if Lord Voldemort is using Unforgivable Curses…' (most of the class shuddered as he said the name, even Carnarvon did not look too happy about it) 'why don't the Ministry just arrest him and stick him in Azkaban?'

'You assume, Mr. Black, that the Ministry knows where You Know Who is. It is touching that you have such faith in your government but it is a faith which is, perhaps, misguided.'

'I don't have faith in the Ministry. I know what a load of tossers they are.'

'There's no need for that sort of language in the classroom. Five points from Gryffndor. However, if we cannot trust the government to keep us safe we must learn to do so ourselves. To that end - Unforgivable Curses… let us start with The Imperius Curse…'

And they spent the rest of the lesson reading about, taking notes and having a discussion on the first of the Unforgivables.

…

The rest of the week continued in a haze of lectures and homework and, by the time the weekend rolled around, the fifth years did not have time to go outside and enjoy the sunshine as they were already snowed under with essays which needed writing, and obscure spells which needed researching.

'I can't live like this,' Sirius said more than once. Peter was pale and sweaty almost all of the time and Remus had one weather eye on the encroaching full moon and was wondering how on earth he would manage to stay on top of his workload once he was spending time in the Infirmary recovering from his transformation.

If they ever got a moment, they would pick up a book about one of the foreign schools which would be visiting soon enough and flick through its pages - which was a welcome relief from the nose to the grindstone of their OWL subjects - and they had soon learned that the Japanese students of Mahoutokoro flew to school on the backs of a flock of giant storm petrels and that their robes changed colour the more they learned (starting with a pale pink and turning gold as they mastered wizardry - 'I think mine would be pink forever', Peter groaned, as he considered the complete disaster that was his attempt at his Transfiguration homework. 'Better pink than white, though, Pete,' James told him. 'Look - if they practise the Dark Arts their robes turn pure white - and everyone can see.')

They learned that Castelobruxo, in Brazil, looked like an ancient temple and was surrounded by mischievous spirit-beings called the caipora, which gave Peeves the poltergeist a run for his money in being pains in the neck. They read that the Zarr Sagal Sahir Madrese (the Golden Jackal Wizard School) was the only school which taught students past the age of 18, and had the largest magical library in the world, and that the students of Uagadou in Uganda all learned to be animagi as a matter of course. ('Maybe they can give us some pointers,' Sirius said. The three of them still had their mandrake leaves under their tongues and were hopeful this would prove to be the last time they went through this month-long ordeal.)

But mostly, they learned that OWL year was going to be one hard slog, with little time for fun and which left their brains feeling like a wrung out sponge.

Listening to the wireless or attempting to do the crossword in the paper was not the welcome relief it should be, either, as these days there was almost constant news of disappearances and attacks and mysterious, yet unsettling goings on. The war (or "current emergency situation" as it was still being dubbed) outside the castle walls was getting fiercer and, any time the boys surfaced from their heavy workload, it was only to be met with the doom and gloom currently being wreaked by Lord Voldemort and his merry band of Death Eaters.

It was still less than a week since the attack on the Leaky Cauldron, but there had already been another sighting of the Dark Mark above a home in Tinworth, in Cornwall. As always, Harold Minchum came on the wireless and said reassuring things, and Barty Crouch - the new Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement - spoke fire and brimstone words in The Daily Prophet, but no arrests were made, people were more fearful than ever and another wizarding family was dead in their home.

By the time the boys headed to their first lesson on Monday morning, it was with the heavy hearted feeling that this year might not be going to be their year.

…

True to her word, Lily had met up with Sev in the library on Wednesday and spent the evening researching the properties of moonstone with him, as well as trying to connect with him on anything she could think of (they spent a good few minutes roundly abusing the odious Potter, as he was a safe subject they could both agree upon). Sev seemed happy to be with her, when they were hidden out of the way, and he stared at her with an intensity which made her blush, but she couldn't help noticing that his eyes would often rove around the room - as if he was checking none of his Slytherin friends could see him in the company of a muggleborn. (She refused to entertain the thought he might think of her as a "mudblood" although she had a sneaking suspicion, after his near slip up in the summer, that he might use that word in the privacy of the Slytherin common room.)

Although conversation was not always free flowing (unless it was about how much they both hated Potter) Lily considered any moment she could keep Sev away from the mini Death Eaters a successful use of her time and, throughout that first week, if she was not inviting him to the library, then she was sitting next to him in every lesson they shared and trying to keep his attention by writing him silly little notes about how awful the four Gryffindor boys were.

She was delighted when, towards the end of the second week, she found another way she could spend time with her oldest friend. After brewing the perfect Pepper Up Potion in Slughorn's lesson on Tuesday, they both received a little scroll tied in a black ribbon that evening.

This turned out to be an invitation to something called "The Slug Club" and they had been asked to attend a small supper party, along with a few other select students, in Slughorn's office that Friday.

'I've heard of it before,' Severus told Lily, when they compared invitations. 'He only invites those of unusual talent…' his face twisted for a moment, 'or of unusually good birth. He picks students who he thinks are going places and gives them a head start in their careers.'

'And he chose us!' Lily said, beaming.

'I think it will be really good for Sev,' she told the other girls that night in her dorms. 'He's always been a bit bitter about not being from one of the old Wizarding families. To be chosen for his skill rather than his birth should be a good ego boost for him and - frankly - he needs one. But I also think it's good I've been asked; it shows Sev that someone like Slughorn thinks I can go far, even though I'm muggleborn. He isn't a bad person you know… He's just all mixed up because his dad is so awful and his friends are all Death Eaters. But maybe, with Slughorn's help, I can make him see sense.'

Mandy, Mary and Petra all rolled their eyes at each other, but they didn't say anything to discourage Lily, and they even went so far as to wish her luck on Friday evening.

…

James, however, was far less gracious about Lily spending a cosy evening with Sev and Sluggy, and he made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, as he watched her leave the common room, before flouncing off to his dorm in a snit. 'I don't get it,' he complained to his friends, when they found him up there sulking. 'I'm a Quidditch playing prodigy whose dad invented Sleakeazy's Hair Potion - how am I not on the list for The Slug Club?'

'You should be,' Peter said at once.

Sirius punched him on the arm. 'Maybe Slughorn just thought putting you and Snivellus in a room together wasn't a good idea?' he suggested to James.

'Maybe he thought putting you and Evans in a room together wasn't a good idea,' Remus said.

James threw his pillow at him.

'You don't really want to be there,' Sirius told him. 'You just want to have a chance to flirt with Evans. Let Sniv have his moment. You don't need Slughorn to help you get ahead in the world, maybe Evans and Snivellus do.'

…

Down in the dungeons, Slughorn had put a record on his old Victrola Gramophone ('Marvellous muggle inventions,' he told his gathered students as he cranked the handle to get it playing, 'I've had this since I was at Hogwarts m'self - all the rage back then, they were.') and then eased himself into a large and squashy armchair, his legs stretched out so his feet rested on a little, red footstool. The students themselves were sitting on pouffes and were being served canapes by a House Elf.

Slughorn closed his eyes as the music washed over him. 'Stirring stuff,' he murmured (Lily thought it sounded unusually martial and was not quite sure she liked it). ' The March Of Mad Meg… it's an old Belgian folklore, about a witch who led an army of women into hell itself - and my own old student, Aubade Allegro- Jones, wrote an entire opera about it. His "Lament of the Lost Souls" aria frequently moves people to tears - you will hear it later and judge for yourselves. '

He took a crab puff from a passing House Elf and beamed at the students. 'He started out in The Slug Club, you know - just like all of you.' He wagged a pudgy finger at them, 'And - if you play your cards right - you can all expect to go as far as dear Aubade. So - for all our newbies - let's do introductions. Rosier, m' dear boy, let's start with you… '

…

The boys were now lying on their respective beds, talking about the upcoming Quidditch tournament and who they thought would be on the team. 'I'm a shoo in,' James said confidently, his face darkened and screwed up into a scowl, 'and Petra of course.'

'What about that Hufflepuff girl - the beater… What's her name… Jones?' Peter said.

James looked scornful. 'Gwenog Jones? She's only in third year.'

'But Hufflepuff ran away with the cup last year, and a lot of it was down to her - her and her older brother.'

'Well - we'll need good beaters,' Remus said, looking up from the book he was reading about the Vimoksha School of Magic, 'the Indian beaters play with cricket bats instead of beaters' bats. Probably gives them a bit of an unfair advantage to be honest.'

'Let's see,' and the other boys crowded onto his bed and peered at the page, where there was indeed a diagram of a Quidditch player wielding a muggle cricket bat.

Empire and Enchantment

They read.

Before the Indian subcontinent was taken over by a tea company with delusions of grandeur, wizarding traditions had varied by region, though with an emphasis on spell casting through mantras (the practitioners of such being called "mantricks") and magical children had been trained by local masters. With the introduction of the Statute of Secrecy these myriad magical vidyalaya were forced underground, but other than being hidden from muggles they continued much as before.

When the muggle British Government assumed all administrative rights over India from the East India Company in 1858, both magical and muggle India underwent a process of enforced "Britishification" in customs and culture, and this included the education system of the subcontinent.

One of the major upheavals was a movement away from local mantricks as educators and the establishment of the Vimoksha School of Magic, hidden deep in the Spiti Valley. Based heavily on Hogwarts in structure, Vimoksha remains to this day a curious mixture of Eastern mysticism and the British Raj. The school itself resembles a Buddhist Temple but is divided into four houses, each with prefects and house masters. Yoga is performed at sunrise, and Tiffin is taken at four. Parseltongue is learned as a modern foreign language, while the traditional wizard's hat is eschewed in favour of the pith helmet (optional for yoga, but must be worn to Tiffin) and the beaters on their Quidditch teams play with cricket bats rather than the more traditional narrower beaters' ones…

'That's surely cheating,' Peter said.

Sirius frowned. 'That's nothing - the Russian players play on tree trunks rather than broomsticks.'

'Won't that slow them down? - Sounds more like a handicap to me…'

'You wouldn't be saying that if an angry Russian riding an oak tree came flying straight at you.'

'Why would they be angry?'

'Because manoeuvring an oak tree in the air must be pissing irritating, you soft sod, why do you think? But the psychological effect on their opponents must be massive.'

It was James who was now frowning, as a sudden thought occurred to him. 'Do you think the foreign schools are all doing the same - swotting up on us before they get here? Do you think - somewhere in Uganda - there's a fifteen year old bloke in his bedroom with a copy of Hogwarts: A History reading…' He picked up a copy of that very book, flipped to a random page and read aloud:

The Forbidden Forest, which stretches from the end of the Hogwarts lawn for many miles beyond the village of Hogsmeade, is home to a variety of indigenous magical creatures, as well as being a safe haven for more exotic ones, and is filled with almost as many secrets as the castle itself. It contains many hidden paths: some which lead to nowhere; some which flip upside down as you tread them, and some which can only be found by the light of the full moon…

He stopped reading, and all the boys considered this for a moment. 'It's weird to think of foreigners learning about us as if we're interesting,' Remus said after a bit.

'Yeah,' Sirius agreed. 'We're not interesting, we're just normal.'

…

Meanwhile, the conversation at The Slug Club had also turned to the impending Quidditch tournament. 'Such an event hasn't been held in years,' Slughorn was telling them all. 'But our Head of Department for Magical Games and Sport seemed to think the time was ripe to reach out the hand of friendship to our foreign wizarding brothers. Jacob Scrabble, that is, knew him when he was a boy. Ex Slug Club - always knew he'd go far. Shame Beauxbatons won't be joining us but still - ten teams are easier to play a tournament with than eleven, eh? Of course it used to be twelve…' He shook his head sadly, looking rather like a large bull elephant swatting flies. 'Terrible what happened to the Imperial Sorcerers' School in China… terrible, terrible… stuff of nightmares.'

'What I've learned from reading all those books,' Lily said, going slightly pink as she addressed the entire room and everyone turned to look at her, 'is how much wizarding history is shaped by what is going on in the muggle world. We don't get that from Professor Binns's lessons on goblin revolts and giant wars, but so many of the big schools have evolved the way they have because of muggle politics: from Hogwarts itself being built up here to avoid the vikings, to Yeperenye being established by transported magical convicts, to Mahoutokoro following the same isolationist policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate…' (she stumbled a bit over these unfamiliar words). 'I think it just goes to show how silly a lot of wizarding attitudes towards muggles are. I understand why we have the Statute of Secrecy, but for wizards to think that we're really that different from them or we're really that separate is shown up for a lie when you look at how we change our lives and develop our societies based on what they're getting up to. Even tonight - we've listened to a recording of a magical opera which couldn't exist without muggle technology. We're all the same where it really matters. We need them.'

'An admirable sentiment, Miss Evans,' Slughorn said.

But, in the corner, Evan Rosier was eyeing her with extreme dislike and even Severus was shaking his head at her words.

'Need them? You mean we need to avoid them. Our world is shaped by having to hide from them,' he said harshly. 'Zarr Sagal: formed during the crusades, Durmstrang: founded by a Bulgarian witch who was kidnapped by muggle vikings… Just ask the Chinese school if muggle politics has been instrumental in shaping their development. Instrumental in wiping them out, more like - and look at Koldovstoretz, squatting in the Ural mountains because they took one look at what happened to the Imperial Sorcerers' School and fled their palace in St. Petersburg when revolution came to Russia. What these books teach us is that we need to stay as far away from muggles as possible!'

'Or come out of hiding and rule over them all with an iron wand,' Rosier said, slyly.

'Now now, there's no excuse for talk like that, Evan,' Slughorn said, while Lily's eyes blazed angrily. ''Pon my word, but we're safe enough here and should wish no harm on anyone. Talk of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy is Death Eater talk, and Dumbledore won't tolerate that in the castle.'

'Apologies, Professor Slughorn,' Rosier said, smiling insincerely. 'I merely got carried away by Snape's examples. Of course I did not mean anything by it.'

'I should hope not, I should hope not… All forgiven, all forgotten, no damage done.' But perhaps Slughorn did not really mean that, as he decided to call it a night, shortly afterwards, and sent everyone back to their dorms.

Once they were out in the gloom of the corridor, Lily grabbed hold of Sev's sleeve, stopping him from leaving. 'You don't really believe that, do you, Sev? All that stuff about muggles damaging our world. You don't agree with Rosier that we should overthrow the Statute? You don't really believe we should really rule over the muggles?'

Severus stared down at her, her eyes were hopeful now - entreating him to agree. 'No I don't believe it,' he said to her, and she looked relieved and walked away. 'I know it,' he said to himself softly, once she was out of sight.