–Where’s Justin?†Zacharias Smith asked as he threw himself into an open seat in the train carriage. It seemed like every year it got harder and harder to find a good seat on the Hogwarts Express, especially as he grew taller and taller, while the rest of the train’s occupants seemed to grow smaller, if anything. Ernie Macmillan gave him a light shove, but said nothing. Across the carriage, Hannah Abbott just stared at him as though he had three heads. –What? Don’t tell me he’s missed the train.â€
–Yeah,†Ernie huffed, his pale face going beet red beneath his dark blond hair. –He has.†He crossed his arms so violently that Zacharias had to laugh. Ernie had always been emotional, to say nothing of overly sensitive, and there was almost nothing funnier than annoying him to the brink of real anger.
–Oh shut up!†Hannah barked, lobbing a book at him. It missed his head only narrowly, banging into the wall of the compartment and falling open on the seat.
–Oi! What’s that about, eh?†Zacharias snapped, suddenly realizing that this was more than today’s game of –get a rise out of Ernie.†For a furious moment he considered whipping it back from whence it came with his strong Chaser’s arm, and he might’ve done had it been Ernie who threw it.
Something seemed to loosen within Ernie, and his round face twisted into a look of confusion that would have been amusing if it weren’t for the narrowly avoided head trauma. –You really don’t know, do you?â€
–I hate when people answer questions with more questions,†Zacharias said. Hannah looked like she wanted to throw something else at him, but had nothing to hand that she was willing to lose.
–You are a true bloody idiot,†Ernie blustered. –What is it like to not pay any attention at all to the world around you? Really, I must know!†He waited a moment and when no recognition dawned on Zacharias face, he sighed dramatically, as was his way, –Justin isn’t going to be at Hogwarts this year.â€
–He’s what?†Zacharias asked. –Did he flunk out? He wasn’t the bubblingest cauldron on the fire, I grant you…â€
–He’s Muggle-born,†Hannah said, and suddenly she was sobbing into her hands. –They won’t let him come to school this year because his parents are Muggles.â€
–Who won’t?!†Zacharias felt his face get very warm at the sight of Hannah’s tears, and of Ernie’s obvious concern for her as he swapped seats to sit next to her and placed one of his large, thick hands gently on her shoulder, gripping it reassuringly.
–The Ministry, their commission or whatever it’s called,†Hannah wailed. –He can’t come to school and he said he was going to have to go to a trial. He said there are dementors keeping his house under guard.â€
–Dementors?†Zacharias flashed back to third year, when a group of dementors had made their way onto the Quidditch pitch during a match and caused Harry Potter to lose consciousness and fall from his broom. It had been Zacharias’ first year as a Chaser for the team. Harry had fallen so fast and so close to where he’d been sitting on his broom, soaked to the bone by the driving rain in his heavy Quidditch yellows, that he’d felt the wind as Harry’s limp form passed him before being caught by a spell from Professor Dumbledore.
At his repetition of the word, Hannah launched into a fresh fit of sobbing, her pigtails falling over her shoulders and wobbling in a way that, in a different situation, Zacharias might have joked about.
–He’s going to be brought before a tribunal at the Ministry to prove he didn’t steal his magic. You believe that?†Ernie asked, chomping and gnashing at the air as he spoke, his righteous anger rising again.
–You can’t steal magic,†Zacharias said. –You can do it or you can’t. Right?â€
–Well, of course,†Ernie said. –But what does the truth matter when V…Voldemort†he had whispered the name but was clearly proud of himself for having used it –is running the whole show?â€
–Why didn’t I know about any of this? Zacharias asked. –I mean, I knew he was back but…how did you both know about Justin?â€
–He sent us letters,†Hannah said. Zacharias suddenly saw in his mind the image of an envelope, a plain white rectangle unlike the sort of stationary favored by wizards, that had been flown through his bedroom window by a large barn owl back in June. The letter had been addressed to him in Justin’s haphazard scrawl, but he had set it aside for later. He couldn’t remember if he had ever gone back to open it. The train pelted along a bend in its track for a moment as the three Hufflepuffs sat in awkward silence.
–Mine must’ve got lost,†he lied.
–Well it’s bloody bad and…,†Ernie was cut off midstream as a cadre of black-clothed adults wafted past the compartment. Their heads never moved in the slightest as they went, but the feeling that they saw everything nevertheless was inescapable. Hannah shivered where she sat as they passed, and Ernie’s eyes glinted with fire and steel. Zacharias was caught somewhere between the two and simply froze in place, neither looking directly at them or away from them. One, a black-haired woman, curled her upper lip in a nasty sneer as she passed, apparently noting the yellow and black Hufflepuff badges on Ernie and Hannah’s prefect’s robes.
–Death Eaters,†Ernie growled when they had gone by.
–What are they doing on the train?†Zacharias asked.
–Oh I’m sure they’ve got some official post from the Ministry, checking up on discipline, making sure no Muggle-borns got this far. But make no mistake. They’re Death Eaters alright. Going to be at the school too,†Ernie said, causing Hannah to experience a fresh bout of shaking. He patted her shoulder distractedly. –They’re saying Harry, Ron, and Hermione aren’t on the train. Won’t be at school. It’s going to be up to us to do something about all this. To keep everyone safe.â€
–Us?†Zacharias asked.
–The D.A. You, me, Hannah, all the others. Or whoever’s left at any rate,†Ernie said in low tones, though the Death Eaters were well past by then.
–I know what I’m going to do,†Zacharias said.
–Oh?†Ernie asked.
–I’m just going to stay in the common room all year.â€
If Ernie got the joke, he didn’t find it very funny. –You know what, Zacharias?†Ernie sighed, casting his eyes out the window over the misty, rolling landscape. –I believe that you would.â€
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That year’s Sorting Ceremony was one of the dourest events Zacharias could ever remember. The Great Hall had been stripped of any decoration, the professors all looked as though they had swallowed something horrible, and it seemed as though every other person, Muggle-born or otherwise, had elected not to come to school. It was hard to blame them; sharp-eyed men and women dressed all in black marched up and down the tables, looming even over the Slytherins as they went. Hardly anyone spoke, and every small noise echoed thunderously in the silence.
The actual Sorting, usually a source of great fun, served only to make things worse. For one thing, the hat didn’t have a song, or if it did it wasn’t allowed to sing it. For another, only the Slytherins cheered when a first-year was added to their ranks, and most of them were. The Ravenclaws, always so concerned about the prestige of their own house even in times of trouble, at least engaged in some polite clapping whenever they managed to get someone new. Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, as per usual, were kind to the young people who found themselves among them, but there was no cheering from either table. Zacharias found that he could count the number of first years sorted into both houses combined on his fingers alone.
The food that followed was spartan by Hogwarts standards, but the arrival of food meant that enough noise would be reverberating around the walls that one could speak at a reasonable volume without having to worry about being overheard.
–Three,†Ernie muttered to his mashed potatoes. –Can you believe that? Three first-year Hufflepuffs.â€
–Well, you had to know that if Slytherin-types were taking the place over we’d be the first to go,†Zacharias said coolly. –Honestly, loyalty, and fairness aren’t exactly what they’re known for.â€
–First to go? What sort of attitude is that?†Ernie sputtered. Susan Bones, who had lost so much weight over the summer that she looked like a red-headed skeleton, hushed him by gripping his arm until her knuckles went white.
–A realistic one. It’s not my fault you don’t see that,†Zacharias said, stopping himself from saying more with a mouthful of roast beef.
–Right, the one who didn’t know until the train that the school was in trouble is going to lecture me now. Is that it?†Ernie’s face was going beet red again, and he looked as though he might throw off Susan’s grip entirely in an effort to get across the table to Zacharias.
–I think you both need to shut it!†Hannah hissed from next to Zacharias, fully recovered from her brief episode on the train. She quieted as a Death Eater passed behind her. Had he stopped for a moment? Had he heard her? That and worse careened through Zacharias' head, distracting him so much that he nearly forgot to swallow his food. When they were well gone, Hannah reached into the folds of her robes, withdrew something from one of its many hidden pockets, and slammed it onto the table with an open palm. When she withdrew her hand a single coin was revealed. A golden Galleon.
–Is that what I think it is?†Zacharias backed away from it slightly as though it were infected with some kind of airborne disease.
–You have yours, right?†Hannah asked. Ernie was grinning madly from across the table.
–Of course I do, but…,†Zacharias said.
–But nothing,†Ernie said. Contrary to popular belief, he was smart enough not to take out his own coin. –What’s the plan?â€
–Meeting. Tonight. Whoever can make it,†Hannah whispered. She looked off into the middle distance toward the Gryffindor table. Zacharias followed her gaze and caught sight of Neville Longbottom, who appeared to be talking to someone sitting next to him, but who had eyes only for Hannah. Sharper than he looked, that one, Zacharias thought, noting that there was no furtive wink, no shallow nod of the head to indicate that anything was passing between them.
What remained of the feast passed largely in silence. Ernie and Hannah did their duty as prefects, leading the Hufflepuffs to the common room, but there was none of the usual joy in it, the furtive cheerfulness that always accompanied the teaching of house secrets to younger students. Hannah got most of the way through the entry ritual, tapping out the syllabic rhythm of –Helga Hufflepuff†on the correct barrel in the kitchen corridor, before she realized she hadn’t explained what she was actually doing. If there was one thing worse than first-years, Zacharias thought, it was first-years who had been doused in vinegar because they didn’t know the proper way to get into the common room, and he was relieved when Hannah quickly caught and corrected her omissions.
Once everyone had piled in, Zacharias could think of nothing so much as crawling into bed and sleeping through the meeting. His friends wouldn’t like it, but was that his fault? All he wanted was to finish this year unscathed so he could begin his internship at St. Mungo’s. Getting oneself killed might’ve seemed romantic to a knockoff Cedric Diggory with delusions of becoming an Auror like Ernie, but Zacharias Smith was going to be a doctor, and a living one at that. If they did manage to shame him into going to the meeting that night, he resolved as he pulled the mustard yellow covers of his bed up to his chin, he would only stay long enough to tell them that he would not be attending any further meetings. Someone else could have his coin. Someone with less to lose.
People would call him disloyal, they would say he belonged in Slytherin, not Hufflepuff. But he had heard that before. But there was more than loyalty and kindness involved in being a Hufflepuff. Fairness, a sense of justice, those were just as important, and wasn’t it fair, wasn’t it just that he be allowed to make his own life and death decisions? The thought kept sleep at bay, and before he knew what he was doing, Zacharias had thrown off the covers, left the dormitory that he shared with Ernie and the others in his year, and planted himself in front of the common room fire with the house copy of The Tales of Beadle the Bard, a leatherbound book so old and yellowed Zacharias thought it might fall apart if he just looked at it too hard.
He fell asleep in his armchair without realizing it, somewhere in the middle of the tale of the three brothers, and woke to find the fire burned to embers, and two shadowy figures looming over him.
–It’s time,†the larger of the two said in a Glaswegian accent. It was Ernie. Bleary eyed and with a splitting headache, Zacharias rose quickly dressed himself, and left the common room behind the others.