If Platform 9 ¾ was a hostile, barren wasteland, where even the steam billowing around the station was clotted with fear, inside the Hogwarts Express looked almost the opposite. Oh, the fear was still there, as it was everywhere; it permeated the walls and curtains, laid heavily on the dust in the air. But even so, the halls were more crowded than Ginny had ever seen them; students were zig-zagging in and out of compartments in a frenzy, and the fifty-something voices whispering at once reminded her of ghosts, in a way. In two ways; their haunting echo, and their overwhelming sense of foreboding.

While she once could have submitted a request to the popularity gods to be qualified as a Compartment Hopper (and by “once,” she meant during the three-year span in which she’d replaced excessive self-loathing for excessive forced-turned-natural-confidence), she hoped to fly under the radar today, or at least avoid the gossips (especially one in particular, whose name rhymed with Schmomilda Schmane) and the questions she was sure to be asked. Questions about Harry, with his stupid wiry frame and his ridiculous glasses and his annoying sense of humor and his horrible smile…. 

Whatever. 

She’d tried to arrive early enough (with only her mother to say goodbye to, as her brothers and father were at work keeping up appearances) to duck into the train, grab an empty compartment at the back and shut herself in it until someone she trusted appeared. But she had been running late this morning as usual, and the only person to blame for landing in this situation was herself. If the busy corridors weren’t enough, the haunted whispers rose to a crescendo the moment she stepped through the door, her peers scrambling to discuss the arrival of such a spectacle: 

“Oh shite, look, it's Ginny.” 

“Is Potter with her? What about Granger and Weasley?”

“Is she by herself? I don't think I've ever actually seen her without another ginger. Blimey, I guess they really aren't coming back.” 

“Good riddance. We don’t need any more of their trouble here.”

“What d’you reckon happened between her and him? They looked upset at the funeral. You think they broke up?”

“…They were at a funeral. D’you think maybe that’s the reason they looked upset?”

“–probably ran into some relationship problems. You know, seeing as he’s a fugitive." 

“Think I've got a chance in hell?” 

“Shut up, you arsehole.” 

“What? She’s still fit.”

“–bet she's got some inside information, you know, about the resistance. Her family’s got to be deep in it.”

“You think Ron and Hermione are with him? Or did they just finally sod off and get hitched?”

She’d forgotten how long the Hogwarts Express was.

But she was used to being the spectacle; she’d been one since the age of 12, for reasons that spanned the entire spectrum of good and bad. She’d heard most of it before. (Though, as any spectacle knew, acclimation did not equal indifference.) What was worse was what else she heard:

“–can’t believe Snape is Headmaster, for fuck’s sake. There goes my plan to call McGonagall Headmeowstress.”

“Well thank Merlin for Snape then, because that’s terrible.”

“What’re the odds that Potter shows his face?” 

“Dunno, but I hope he does. If they capture him, this’ll all be over”

“You read who they put in as minister after Scrimgeour resigned?”

“Yeah, Pius Thicknesse. Me dad used to work with him. Says he makes Fudge look like a well-adjusted, natural-born leader.”

“And you know that Umbitch has got to be running the show from behind the curtain. She and You-Know-Who.” 

“The whole establishment is going down with them. Dad says they’ve already rolled back amendments that require Muggle-borns and werewolves be provided with legal counsel.”

“…Everything’s falling to shite.”

“Did you hear about Ollie Rivers? They rounded up his whole family last week.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Morag MacDougal told me she got a scribbled letter from him that said he was being taken into custody by Aurors and when she wrote back, he never responded.” 

“But… why’d they go after him?”

 “Dunno. I know that his mum’s a Muggle-born that got high up in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and his dad’s a Muggle. Maybe that’s why they did it. Political rivals and the like.”

“Or it could be because they’re going after all the Muggle-borns, idiots.” 

“Well then why did Ned Jenkins walk down the corridor a minute ago?”

“But… they’re not actually going after all Muggle-borns, just political opponents like Potter. Right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The ones that are against him. The other ones should be fine. Yeah.”

“My brother says that he hasn’t seen either of the Singhs yet. D’you reckon they’ve been taken?” 

“Taken? You’re so dramatic, Des.” 

“I heard Priya talking to Ian Fleming at the funeral about what was gonna go down. And neither of them are here. I bet that they’re on the run.” 

“Merlin, ‘on the run’. It’s like a bad pulp fiction novel.”

“But everything’s going to be okay, right? It’ll be okay?”

The more she heard, the more it was clear that crowded was not the right description. It may have been hectic and rowdy, but the gaps in circles of friends were nearly as emotionally evident as they were physically. At each compartment window, she tallied all the empty seats, all the spaces on the luggage shelves left open. Hogwarts was big, but it wasn’t that big. She knew exactly which person was missing from each place.

She was so busy glaring at the gaping holes in the Hogwarts canvas and mulling over everything she’d heard (why Ollie Rivers? He was nice, like really nice. His nose was crooked from when he broke it during a particularly competitive game of chess in his third year, and even though it actually made him even cuter, he never passed up the opportunity to joke about the “obvious” resemblance between him and Snape. He was the kind of person that said “Opa!” whenever anyone dropped anything…) that she almost didn’t notice the head of bright blonde hair and the unmistakable sounds of a toad croaking in the compartment she was passing.

 Ginny skidded to a stop so aggressively she nearly tripped over her bags and launched herself through the door, grabbing Luna and an unsuspecting Neville into a haphazard group hug. 

“Whoa, h– hey,” Neville said in a jumble, flushed and smiling with tight lips, clearly both surprised and pleased at her enthusiastic greeting. One of his arms awkwardly hovered over her shoulder as the other desperately tried to squirm away from any of her and Luna’s controversial body parts. Ginny swallowed down a laugh.

“I honestly don’t know if I’m happy or scared to see you both here,” Ginny said gleefully, pulling back and beaming at each of them.

“Why wouldn’t we be here?” Luna asked, pale eyes bearing into hers under scrunched translucent eyebrows. She gave Ginny an odd pat on the ear. “It’s not us they’re after. Not yet.”

“Ooh, love that optimism,” Ginny said brightly. Neville scratched his chin nervously.

“So, um,” he said quietly, leaning forward, and Ginny was ready for this question, had a carefully crafted face for it in her back pocket. But she wouldn’t do that to Neville. Instead, she gave him another kind of Look.

“Isn’t it awful that Ron can’t be here for his last year, coming down with such a nasty case of Spattergroit so fast?” she said steadily, not once breaking eye contact. “Such a shame.”

A current of understanding flickered between them. “…Yeah. Yeah, I heard,” he replied, mouth pulled down into a heavy frown. “Such a shame.”

“That is a shame,” Luna said absentmindedly, picking some dirt from beneath her fingernail. “There are some simple remedies to Spattergroit that I could have shown him. Any gallbladder would do, assuming he’s still a virgin. Although he probably would never take any advice from me." 

Thank Merlin for Luna. Ginny grinned at her friend, and she was trying to come up with something even weirder to say so she could play her favorite game– who could make Neville more bewildered (Luna was the reigning champion, and she wasn’t even aware the game was being played)– when the compartment door slid open, and Vicky Frobisher, one of Ginny’s dorm mates, flitted in. 

“Vicky! Alright?” Ginny asked, cataloguing Vicky’s cheeky new bob and wide, pink lip-glossed grin under, “half-bloods-that-will-probably-be-okay, ” in her new internal filing system.

“Yes, hello,” Vicky responded nonchalantly, but the way she pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows meant she had something to spill. “It’s good to see that you’re all still alive! I can’t wait to hear about all of your summers,” she gestured at all of them. “Well, not all, no offense, but, you know...” she trailed off, now only looking at Ginny. Ginny had to clamp down on the urge to roll her eyes; in her excitement at seeing another unmarred familiar face, she’d momentarily forgotten how bloody nosy Vicky could be. Not destructive nosy like Romilda, but still… nosy.

“Anyway,” Vicky continued briskly. She reached back through the sliding door and caught hold of someone’s arm, “I wanted to let you know who’s here, despite the lecture you gave her last term. On the bright side, I thought it was very effective.”

She pulled the arm through the door, and Vicky had been right to have that expression on her face, because the arm came with a person attached, and that person, unfortunately for Ginny, was Mel, stumbling, grumbling and blowing stray dark strands of hair out of her face with all the grace of a person being dragged against their will.

Mel yanked her arm from Vicky’s grip, glaring. “Jesus, Vicky,” she spat, before turning to the compartment with a guilty smile. “Hiya,” she said awkwardly, then shifted her attention solely to Ginny and pretended as if she’d just noticed she was there. “Oh hey, Ginx. All right? I like that shirt.” 

“Bloody hell, Mel,” Ginny groaned, and even as her stomach plummeted, she automatically rolled her eyes at the ridiculously punny nickname (of a nickname!) that her friend had adamantly called her since the time she’d accidentally jinxed her toes together in second year.

(Second year when, two weeks in, Mel had plopped down next to a perpetually-sulking Ginny in their dormitory and said, in the child version of her thick Mancunian accent, “People think you’re scary now, but I don’t think that’s true. Everyone thinks I’m stupid because I don’t know anything about the wizarding world, but they’re the ones that don’t know about the whole universe around them. They don’t even know who Whitney Houston is or anything! Wait, do you not know who she is either? Oh my gosh, come here, she’ll make you feel things you never thought you could!”)

Ginny tried her best to remain calm. “What are you doing here?”

Mel glared at her, huffing out a deep, dramatic sigh. “Do we have to do this now?” She rubbed her temples dramatically. “I am not in the right headspace for this. Actually, I’m not in the right headspace for anything. The world’s a dumpster fire, and I’m so cut up about Princess Di…” 

“Why, did you know her?” Vicky asked eagerly, ignoring all the logic in the world for a juicy scoop.

Mel scrunched her face at Vicky in disbelief. “What? No, Vicky– what? No! It’s just really bloody sad! And it makes you think, you know? I mean– back to your original question,” she pointed at Ginny, comically widening her eyes, “what are any of us doing here, really? People live their whole lives not knowing the answer. But in the end, aren’t we all just itty bitty little ants, walking along a fragile piece of string? I think I read that somewhere–”

“Nope,” Ginny interrupted angrily. “I didn’t get a ticket for this show. Answer the bloody question.”

“But I’m seri–”

“Nope!”

Mel dropped the act and gave her a flat look. “What does it look like? I’m going to school,” she said, gesturing to the train. Ginny and Vicky exchanged exasperated looks. 

“I don’t think that’s what she means, Mel,” Luna pitched in from her seat by the window. “Ginny wants to know why you’re on the way to Hogwarts. Because you are a Muggle-born. And since You-Know-Who took over the Ministry– which I still think was only made possible from dirty dealings with the Eastern European vampire clans– it is likely that things will be much more difficult than usual for Muggle-borns this year.”

Mel bit back a grin. “Thanks, Luna.”

“Happy to help,” Luna smiled sweetly.

“Right,” Vicky clicked her tongue decisively. “I hope you sort things out, but I also don’t really care. I’m off to find Owen, bye!” She finished, with an irreverence that was extraordinarily inappropriate for the circumstances but incredibly her. She wiggled her fingers at them and traipsed off down the corridor.

Mel sighed at the air Vicky had occupied. “She looks like Pansy Parkinson with that haircut. I told her so and that’s how I ended up here,” she said, turning to trade an eye roll with Ginny. But she didn’t find the shared sentiment she was searching for, just a stone-cold impression of her mother’s best disappointed stare. It was marginally successful, in that it put Mel off enough that she switched tactics.

“Look,” she said defensively, “I know what we talked about, but I can’t just drop out of school! Also,” she gave Ginny an odd look and shrugged, “I think there’s a chance you’re overreacting.”

“Overreacti ng?” Ginny repeated in disbelief. She swung around to face Neville. “Overreacting, she says to me!”

Neville didn’t have any response besides a flustered shrug, so she growled and turned back to Mel. “I know you know that Scrimgeour didn’t ‘resign’. I know you know that Professor Burbage didn’t leave to ‘spend more time in the country’. I know you know these things!”

“Of course I know, Ginny, I’m not delusional,” Mel said, stung at the implication, dropping the nickname like she always did when rubbed the wrong way. “But my parents don’t understand what’s happening in the magical world, and even if they did, they would never let me leave school, not when I only have two years left. I can't sacrifice my education just because something might happen.”

“But–" 

“Actually, since you seem to have all the answers, tell me,” she raised her eyebrows at Ginny, turning her hands up in askance, “what’s going to happen?” She snorted sarcastically, “What, will Priscilla Rosier glare extra hard at me now? Are Malfoy and his little skinhead groupies going to shout ‘Mudblood’ louder than usual or, god forbid, get creative with their insults? Lord knows Snape’s already scraping the barrel of intolerance, but maybe he can sink even lower, who knows? Really, what do you think is going to happen?” She wielded her questions like a friendly dagger, razor-sharp but pulling its jabs, demanding an answer that neither Ginny nor anyone else was equipped to give. 

Ginny sighed heavily, accepting her role in this part of the conversation. “I don’t know,” she said.

There was something hard in Mel’s expression, but then it melted into a small, resigned smile. “I know you don’t. Nobody knows which way is the wrong way to run.” She shrugged and almost succeeded in looking indifferent. “Look, I’m not new to this game– in fact, I am fucking ancient to it. I know all the tricks. I haven’t let them get to me before and I’m not going to let them now because they have… Darth Vader on their side.” 

What–? Ginny looked at Neville quizzically, and mouthed, Darth Vader? He shrugged. 

Mel snorted. “Never mind, that didn’t really make sense. He’s probably more like… the Sith Lord, I guess. Or what’s-his-face, the old guy–” she cut her own ramble off and shook her head. “Anyway, that letter also made it seem like–” 

“What letter?” Neville interrupted. “From who? When did you get it?” He turned towards Ginny. “I didn’t get a letter, did you get a letter?”

That was a lot of questions to throw at a single person all at once. She drew back, gave him a look, and said, “No, Neville, but if you wait a second, I think we’re about to find out the answers to all of those questions.” 

Neville flushed. “Right, yeah– sorry. Right.” 

Mel reached into her jacket pocket and struggled to free an over-folded wad of parchment from the tight jean material. Ginny raised her eyebrows at her, and Mel rolled her eyes. 

“No, I haven’t been carrying it around with me everywhere; I just know how to prepare for a fight with… you– dammit! Why do they make these pockets so tight? Who can put anything in here? Ugh– finally, here,” she said, wrenching it out and handing it over to Neville.

“Do we have a copy of this letter?” Klein interrupted, the first of the judges to speak. Her voice was throaty and rich, with a broad accent that Ginny knew was from New York even though she had only heard it before through Anthony’s imitation of his father. 

“The prosecution enters into evidence one of the letters received by all Muggle-born students in the week prior to the start of the school year,” Hestia announced, as she passed up a creased, worn piece of parchment to the stand. 

Ivanova gave their little witness box a lingering gaze as she passed the letter to Kingsley. “And to whom did this letter belong?” she asked, her deep, dark tone drawn tight by the friction of her accent. “Your friend…” she led, waiting for them to fill in the gap, but there was no use putting bait on a hook if the lake was frozen over. 

“Like I said,” Ginny gave each word room to spare, “my friend handed Neville the letter.” 

Ivanova pushed the two stray strands of her honey hair behind her ear as if it'd help her get a better look at Ginny. But then Kingsley cleared his throat and smoothed out the brittle parchment, preparing to read it aloud, and Ginny didn’t even try to uphold staring contest customs. She didn’t need to hear the letter again; it had burned a blotchy scar into her memory the moment she saw it that day in the compartment, her and Luna reading over Neville’s shoulder.

By order of the Ministry of Magic

Muggle-Born Registration Commission

To whom it may concern,

The Ministry of Magic has mandated that all muggle-borns register with the newly founded Muggle-Born Registration Commission immediately upon notice. This registration process will be done as a preventative measure to keep the British magical community safe from harmful infiltrators and is to ensure that every wielder of magic possesses it by true birthright, rather than by obtaining it through malicious and criminal acts. The Ministry of Magic will investigate all who originate from muggle families, but Muggle-borns are encouraged to present evidence of innocence by proving blood linkages to magical relatives.

However, this mandate does not apply to muggle-borns aged 17 or younger, and therefore will  not  require Hogwarts-aged muggle-borns to attend registration at the Ministry of Magic. The commission has ruled that the education of all magical persons in the arts of witchcraft and wizardry is of greater importance to the longevity of the British magical community and its core values than investigating blood statuses, insofar as those under suspicion prove their loyalty. As attendance at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will be mandatory for students of all blood statuses this year to reinforce the value of a proper magical education, we kindly require all Muggle-born students to arrive to Platform 9 ¾ on the first of September as usual, to board the Hogwarts Express before its departure at 11 o’clock. The Ministry of Magic is counting on young muggle-borns like you to represent a generation that will serve as a valuable contribution to our society.

Cordially,

Jacinda Edgecombe
Executive Assistant
Office of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission
Ministry of Magic

Neville looked back up at Mel like she was crazy.

“You actually believe this?” he asked incredulously. 

“No. I don’t know,” she backtracked, but then she leaned forward, her eyes glimmering like they did whenever she thought she’d found a diamond in a coal mine. “But it doesn't matter if I believe what’s written. What matters  is  what’s written.” 

“I'm sorry,” Ginny said, squeezing her eyes shut, “did we read the same letter?” 

“Listen,” Mel said, and for the first time since she’d walked through the compartment door, Ginny heard the desperation in her voice, “this is a  legal document. Regardless of what these Death Eaters are going to do– take our wands away, or segregate us from everyone else, or whatever– what’s written here matters. If they violate what it says, I can use this against them, bring it to international attention!”

A minute ago, Ginny had been alight with outrage and fear, but now… She gnawed at her lip anxiously. 

“Oh man,” Mel popped in to fill the silence, “the thinking face.” She leaned towards Neville and cupped her hand over her mouth, pretending to divulge a secret. “Makes her look like the plucky young detective in a bad BBC crime show that gets canceled after one series.”   

Laughter bubbled up in her chest, nearly reaching the surface. But at the last moment, the energy took a wrong turn, diverting to the crushing uncertainty weighing on her shoulders. Ginny shook her head. 

“Mel, I don’t think…” 

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t think…’?” Mel snapped, suddenly irritated. “This can work!” 

Ginny looked from Neville to Luna. “Is there any way this letter could be real?”

Neville rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I mean… I don’t– we can’t trust them, but why would they send it? What’s the point?” 

“I dunno.” Ginny’s eyes went mad in their sockets, sorting through the possibilities in her mind. “Maybe– could they be serious? Merlin knows they’re arrogant enough to think everyone will just cut their losses and follow the bloody leader.” 

“Yeah, but… this is almost like mercy.” Neville shook his head, and a history of rage-washed despair lined the creases between his furrowed brows. “They don’t do mercy.”

Luna took the parchment from Neville’s hands and squinted as she skimmed the letter, running her forefinger along the inky words. “There are too many conditionals. Fake promises between each line. Anything with this many lies shouldn’t be trusted.”

“Okay,” Ginny said briskly. “Okay… if we can’t trust it, can we use it like she says?” 

Luna tapped her chin pensively. “It’s like a goblin deal when you think about it, because there’s barely a chance for an upper hand. Well, I suppose the difference is that goblins probably have more humanity than Death Eaters,” she amended bluntly. 

“But if  she’s  already here, and there are more Muggle-borns than they anticipated…” 

“Do you honestly think they’ll hold to it, even if there’s some sort of… international interference?” Neville asked skeptically. “I– I’m not even sure what that would  look  like, and even if she gets people on her side–” 

“How about you all stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Mel’s defiant voice slashed through their conversation.  

The three of them turned their heads in unison and found her standing with one hand on the door handle, the other on her hip, her gold hoop earrings glinting in the sunlight that streamed through the compartment window. But no matter how stubborn she appeared or how cool she looked (she always looked so cool, Ginny had long lamented, comparing her second-hand everything to Mel’s ever-changing hairstyles and her careful compilation of ‘70s florals, jeans, and black velvet), her masks had never been as good as Ginny’s. The one she was wearing betrayed what was really going on underneath: fear, unlike anything she’d ever experienced. 

“Mel–” Ginny started, but Mel cut her off.

“Look, I've seen enough of this…,” she waved her finger between the three of them, searching for the right word, “ strategic planning between you three firsthand to know that you really want to save me. But I shouldn't need ‘saving’ in the first place! I am not a criminal. I– I am not a thief. This isn't like– Eastern Europe or Iran or some– whatever! This is all so  fucked !” She emphasised her last word by banging her fist on the door. Her voice had steadily grown throatier throughout her tirade, and now tears were starting to well in the corners of her eyes. Mel had always been quick to cry. “But I have as much a right to be here as anyone else and I'll bloody well go down with it if I have to.” 

And with that, she turned the handle and walked out of the compartment, leaving a distressed Ginny in her wake.

She felt Neville’s corner-eye stare cutting into her cheek, but she wouldn’t give in and meet his gaze. Not then. They would love it if she did, would love to catch two broken people colliding distress signals. But she'd never been in the business of giving people what they want.

“Every muggle-born you spoke to had received this letter? And believed it to be true?” Esnaider was all charming rolled r’s and slanted vowels, but it was the polite disbelief in his voice that got her to look up from her lap.  Hindsight’s 20/20, arsehole, she thought angrily.

“Yes, everyone had the letter” Ginny reluctantly answered for them all, when no one else spoke up. “But no one knew what to believe. It's not like any of us are well trained in sniffing out government lies, even with the excessive previous exposure.” The last part came out both viciously and by accident, and the impact it had on the crowd could be summed up by the fact that she heard Percy suck in a scandalised breath from all the way in the back. 

“It was complicated,” Anthony jumped in to fill the thorny silence. “I mean… if I claimed a band of…  pirate goblins were about to burst through those doors and kill all of us, are you telling me you wouldn’t take a moment to think, ‘huh, is he sure? ’” Ginny turned her entire upper body towards him, open-mouthed in disbelief. 

But Esnaider merely chuckled. “No, Mr. Goldstein. That is not what I am telling you.”

Hestia cleared her throat meaningfully. “Walk us through what happened next,” she said, moving past Anthony’s nonsense swiftly and methodically.

“Nothing happened, not for a while,” Seamus said. “But then the Death Eaters stopped the train.” 

“And why did they stop the train? To look for Harry Potter?” 

“To look for Harry, yeah.” Seamus flipped his hand over in a gesture that very clearly meant ‘obviously’. “But that wasn’t the only reason.”

The train started down the tracks again with a screeching jolt; the Death Eaters had disappeared in a rolling storm of black smoke. Ginny helped Neville collapse back onto his seat, her fingers locked so tightly with his that her knuckles were stark white. His other hand clutched at his left eye, where a purple bruise was beginning to blossom. 

“Why,” Ginny said in the steady voice she’d been known to adopt when trying to keep herself from going spare. Neville seemed to notice it, and he let go of her hand to flap his at her, as if trying to wave her off. 

“Why,” she repeated, looming over him, “did you have to provoke them like that?” He didn’t answer immediately, instead opting to be even more of an idiot and poke at his eye twice, as if to check if he was actually hurt. Luna made a disapproving click sound and conjured up a cold compress, yanking his arm away from his face and placing the bag carefully on the swelling skin. Ginny growled and swept towards the compartment door, pulling aside the drape and glaring out the window at the corridor for any sign of activity. 

“Oh come off it, Ginny,” Neville said, sounding as exasperated as he ever did. “Like you weren’t about to say the same thing to them before I beat you to the punch. And don’t even argue,” he added, when she swung around and opened her mouth to protest.

She brought her jaw back up slowly, taking a moment to climb down from the searing temper that had risen like a tsunami the moment those Death Eaters– some of whom she’d definitely recognised from school events, or the Quidditch World Cup, or somewhere more nefarious– barged into their compartment. She shouldn’t have been directing it at Neville anyway; he was the one who they’d attacked. 

“Maybe I was,” she admitted finally, moving closer and aiming a light kick at his shin. “But we both know I’m better at bobbing and weaving than you.” 

“Can’t argue with that,” he said through a laugh, but it came out more like a painful wheeze. Ginny scowled at him in concern. 

“After what we just saw, I think we all might have to get better at– what did you say, bobbing and weaving?– this year.” Luna didn’t look up from searching for split ends in her hair and holding the cold compress to deliver this ominous prediction. Neville and Ginny glanced at her then turned back to one another. 

“D’you reckon they just came for Harry?” Neville asked.

“I dunno.” Ginny turned back towards the compartment door window. “I hate saying that.” A few students were popping their heads out of their compartments now. Someone ran past with a pack of bandages in hand. “If they did, they’re even stupider than I thought. I mean, labeling him with a catchy little title like ‘undesirable number one’,” she paused to roll her eyes, “was probably not the greatest strategy if they were going to trap him here, while he was catching up with his friends about their summers. They had to have known Harry wouldn’t be here, Hermione neither. Their faces are on posters everywhere you look.” 

“And Ron’s got Spattergroit,” Luna reminded her firmly. 

“Yes, so of course he’s not here.” Ginny lowered her voice, and muttered, “honestly, can you imagine if they actually did show up? It would be suicide. Even in Hermione’s punchiest ‘I love learning’ mood, she wouldn’t risk it.” 

“No,” Neville agreed-winced. He sat up higher in his seat, taking the compress from Luna. “But then what else were they here for?” 

Ginny sighed. “We should probably go see what’s going on.” After the disastrous conversation with Mel, she’d been enjoying the hours of seclusion and delusion, but those bastard Death Eaters had to ruin it for her. Still, her curiosity outweighed her urge to barricade the doors, and wasn’t that always the case? 

She rolled her eyes, opened the door, and instantly came into contact with an opposing force who, once she gathered herself, turned out to be Seamus Finnigan. 

“Blimey, what are you in such a hurry for?” he asked her with a bemused grin, but it slid off his face at the sight of Neville’s eye. “Merlin, mate, how have you already found a way to look like a baboon’s arse?” 

“Hi Seamus, nice to see you too,” Neville grumbled, pushing himself off of his seat. “Where’ve you been?”

“Oh, you know, drowning in self-pity,” he said with superficial swagger, and he tried for a laugh, but it sputtered and died like a scratched record on a tarnished turntable. Ginny frowned at him, the urge to investigate biting at her ankles, but she folded any curiosity into a box for later.

“You know what's happening?” Ginny asked instead. 

“Do I ever? Don’t answer that,” he added sternly, as she opened her mouth to deliver an– admittedly– cheeky response. “But,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “I came to find you lot to present my single piece of valuable input:  something  is happening down that way.” He pointed to the front of the train, where– now that Ginny concentrated– she heard muffled, raised voices. 

“Right, well, lead the way then,” she said to Seamus, ushering him further down the corridor so Neville and Luna could edge past her.  

“Bossy,” Seamus groused, but he did what she said. They shuffled down the corridor in a single-file line, Ginny bringing up the back, their muffled footsteps on the emerald green carpet and the shouting ahead the only sounds in a sea of thick, tense silence. Heads were no longer popping out of doors, but eyes peeked between the pinstripe curtains on compartment windows. As soon as she looked through each one, their curtains swiftly drew together.

“Everyone seems rather scared,” Luna noted. “The Death Eaters’ strategy is quite effective so far.” 

“Alright, Luna, it’s not honesty hour. Jesus,” Seamus grumbled, shaking his head. 

They were coming closer to the shouting– two doors down now– and though they were close enough to know that the racket was actually one impressively loud voice, Ginny still couldn’t place who it was. 

Luna apparently could. “Oh, yes, alright,” she said plainly, nodding. “He’s very predictable.”

“Who?” Neville asked. But then the compartment door valiantly muffling the racket inside slammed open and Sue Li, a Ravenclaw seventh year, hopped out. She firmly shut the door and leaned against it, eyes closed, blowing out a tired breath and okay, now Ginny knew what was going on. 

Sue opened one eye to look at the four of them, who were unabashedly staring at her. 

“Fair warning, if you’re going in there– I left in the middle of his rant,” she said in her quick posh cadence, without preamble, opening her other eye and tilting her head against the glass of the door window. “But since it was primarily about me, I reckon I made the right choice.” She pushed off the door and readjusted the placement of the white headband in her sleek black hair. “Come find me when he can see reason again, okay? I’ll be wherever Padma is, please and thanks.” 

“Sue,” Neville said quickly, before she could take off, “what if this time is different?” 

 “Oh come on, now” she replied smoothly, lips turned up in a vague half-smile. Her eyes scanned from Neville to Ginny and the others to the hallway behind them and back to Neville– so fast that it gave Ginny the spins. “Even if that were true, you know better than to think that I don’t have everything in order.” Ginny didn’t know Sue well, but she had only ever seen her like this; a particularly Ravenclaw brand of confident and inexplicably busy. She shrugged, almost apologetically, and said, “Sorry Neville, but I won’t accept any distractions. I have too much to do.” And with that, pivoted on her heel and headed in the opposite direction. 

Once she was far enough down the corridor, the four of them traded looks. “Blimey,” Seamus huffed, shaking his head.  

Neville scratched the back of his head, forehead wrinkling. “Ginny, I– maybe Mel’s right.” 

Ginny gaped at him, betrayed. “Mel has  never  been righ–“

“I’m just saying, maybe we shouldn’t be telling people to get to safety when we don’t know where safety is, or even if Hogwarts is the worst option.”

She looked to Luna, who shrugged. Ginny– ugh– Ginny didn’t know.  She hoped that wasn’t becoming a pattern. She heaved a heavy sigh and pulled open the compartment door. 

What they found inside was exactly what she had expected, a picture taken right out of her head. An enraged Anthony Goldstein madly paced in what little room the compartment had, as Terry Boot, who was already in his uniform, watched him cautiously. At the sound of the door sliding open, Anthony whipped around.

“Oh, so you d– oh,” he started, then faltered, as he saw who was there, and who wasn’t. 

“Huh,” Ginny mused after a full beat of awkward silence, her tone only emphasised by Seamus roughly shutting the door behind them in his usual casual aggression. “I can honestly say that wasn’t the worst way a man has ever greeted me. But wow, is it up there.” 

“Oh,” Anthony said again breathlessly, his shoulders slumping. “Hey.” He jerkily went to sit next to Terry, miscalculated his trajectory, and had to grab the wall on his way down. 

“Wow,” Luna commented as she took a seat on Terry’s other side. “He is not taking things very well at all.” 

“This is nothing compared to two minutes ago,” Terry said gravely.

“Well spotted, all of you,” Anthony grumbled, though his sarcasm was muffled by the hands covering his face. “Real astute observation, that.” 

Ginny rolled her eyes. The last time she had a full conversation with Anthony was before she and Michael had split up (even though she liked him, really liked him, enough that she had planned to propose a joint custody agreement to Michael in the divvying up of assets, before she’d gotten too busy to fill out the proverbial paperwork). But even from the focal point of a year-and-a-half ago and two seats down the library table, she knew what he looked like before he went into a full, dystopian, history-crossing monologue. If Anthony weren’t so bloody smart, she’d bet all the galleons in the world that he’d be one of those end-of-days people with the sandwich boards on street corners. 

“Anthony, since we’re short on time, do you mind if we skip the intro section of your thesis?” she asked lightly, as she took the seat across from his. “That’ll do away with, what, the first fifty pages, right?” 

“That’s funny. You’re funny,” he grumbled, picking his head up from his hands to glare at her. “Please forgive me for not being able to laugh when a quarter of the people on here are about to die.” 

“Die?” Neville laughed incredulously, nervously scratching his ear. “C– come on. Don’t you think that’s a bit…” he stopped, searching for the right word. Anthony didn’t let him find it. 

“However you’re going to finish that sentence, the answer is no. No. No, no, no,” Anthony groaned, shaking his head emphatically. “Dammit. Every time, every time. We all forget what a reckoning looks like until we’re standing in front of a firing squad.” He was full-on monologue-ing now, his sandwich board firmly set upon his shoulders. It was really starting to freak Ginny out. Terry gave her a sideways glance; I told you so. 

“Alright,” she said at an oddly high pitch, offering a calming hand. “We all saw the letter. But honestly, we won’t know what to expect until we get to Hogwarts. We can figure it out then.” 

Anthony sat up in his seat, glaring at her in confusion. “What are you talking about? There’s no waiting! If we wait until Hogwarts, it’ll be too late! Why are you so ca–” he faltered, and the bewilderment etched on his face was slapped away by a sudden understanding. 

“You saw the letter, but– didn’t you wonder why they were here? Didn’t you see what they handed out before they left?” When his question was met with silence, he said, “They stopped at every compartment, I don’t understa– how did you miss this?” He threw that right at Ginny. 

“Well sorry, Anthony,” Ginny snapped, stung. “They must have forgotten to check us off their mailing list while they were slugging Neville in the eye.” She jerked her thumb at Neville’s swollen face.  

Anthony winced at Neville. “Cheers mate,” he said, sounding much more like himself. But then his expression darkened. He stood, drew his wand and pointed it at a pile of shredded bits of parchment next to his left foot. They began to meld together. “I got carried away,” he explained unnecessarily. Terry rolled his eyes. Once the parchment was mended, he picked it up and thrust it at Ginny. She yanked it from his grip with a mock glare. 

It was a half-sheet, much shorter than the letter Mel had shown them, but with the same garish insignia adorning the top. She skimmed it impatiently, jumping past the absurdly polite introduction to where “for Muggle-borns only” was printed in neat lettering, with three separate blocks of sentences laid out below, each marked with the fanciest bullet point she’d ever seen.  

Three instructions. 

She wordlessly passed the parchment to Neville.  Merlin – knowledge, knowing, was heavier than it had any right to be– and then another chipped piece jammed itself into the picture, because Ollie Rivers’s muggle-born mother wasn’t in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, she was in the International Confederation of Wizards. His father was the diplomatic envoy from the British government for wizard-Muggle relations. Not just political rivals.

“I state for the record that the bodies of Stacey, Mark and Oliver Rivers were found in Swansea on September 24th, 1997,” Hestia threw over her shoulder, a low-lobbed ball that rolled back and forth where it landed, never slowing. The scratching of the quill was white noise, a hum in the frozen air.

She flicked her eyes back up at Anthony, dread meeting dread. He raised his eyebrows, the way McGonagall always did when she was waiting for students to get to the answer spelled out right in front of them, and for a moment, Ginny let herself be irritated with him. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t arrived at this conclusion every time there’d been a lull in conversation or a quiet moment in the past month– there was a reason she was so frightened about Mel. But there was no middle ground here, no safe way to navigate something like this; you were paranoid if you did and in denial if you didn’t. 

“This isn’t  that  bad.” The brashness of Seamus’s voice severed her and Anthony’s silent exchange. He had the parchment now, and he squinted as he scrutinised the neat black lettering. “A wand inspection and an interview proving their abilities and ties to the magical community? It’s basically what they asked all of us to do– we all went to the Ministry to do it! If you ask me, I’d  rather  have it done at Hogwarts.”

“Yeah, but that’s the problem, Seamus.” Anthony had fully come down from his hysteria, but the grim, calm foreboding that had replaced it was no better. “We got called to the Ministry because they knew we would come running, us purebloods and half-bloods. But Hogwarts is home, for all of us. Much harder to resist.” 

Seamus started to protest. “But–”

“Tell me what you think this is,” Ginny demanded. She needed to hear him say it; she needed to hear someone say it. Anthony nodded, his jaw working with the weight of his next words.

“It was a trap,” Anthony said.

He swung his entire body towards the window with the daintiness of a drunk, staring blankly at the Northern English countryside as it zoomed past. He huffed out a humorless laugh. “And we’re even on a train… You can’t make this shite up. It’s almost poetic.”