So far, the Dark Arts Club had done little but practice a few elementary curses on each other. And aside from Malfoy having spent most of a Monday in the hospital wing after Goyle accidentally erased his face entirely blank, sealing his eyes, mouth and nose so that he could not breathe, there was little progress to report. 

Like Ginny, Colin, and the other fifth-years, Jane was rapidly coming to realize just what the O.W.L.s meant in terms of studies and homework. Harry could certainly sympathize, remembering all too well what it had been like. At least Jane, Ginny, Colin and the others weren't further hampered and stressed by what had gone on during the days of Dolores Umbridge.

Which wasn't to say that Harry's own days weren't filled. He had a new appreciation for Oliver Wood and Angelina Johnson, and had never previously comprehended how much work went into being Quidditch captain. It was his job to arrange times for practices that didn't conflict with the other teams, report regularly to Madame Hooch on the health and well-being of his players, read up on descriptions of past games, observe as many of the other teams in action as possible to get a better idea of their maneuvers and strategies and conduct equipment inspections. And he was personally responsible for maintaining the Gryffindor uniforms. In this, Tonks' Tailoring Charms came in handier than he ever would have thought. 

Not only that, but he was busy with planning for the D.A. and performing his various duties for Professor Golden. These included grading papers and exams, collecting reference materials from the library and assisting in a few practical exercises. On one occasion, when Arcturus fell and split his chin and Winky appeared in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom wringing her hands and wailing hysterically, Professor Golden hurried with the distraught house-elf off to the hospital wing and left Harry in charge of a class of first-years. 

Last but by no means least, he had his own homework. 

Snape was not thrilled to have Harry and Neville in his Advanced Potions class, and made sure that they knew it by assigning them increasingly challenging research projects. 

"You'll find," he told the class, "that this course is not for the faint-hearted, clumsy, or reckless. You may have all scraped by with the necessary O.W.L qualifications and Head-of-House recommendations to force your way in here …" at this, he spared Harry a brief but cold look, "… but none of that matters once these dungeon doors close."

Malfoy, his features restored to their usual sneer, regained a little of his swagger, and seemed to enjoy acting as Snape's Student Apprentice. He strolled around the room, peering into cauldrons and judging the preparation of ingredients with either a dismissive snort or a grudging nod.

Harry kept his ears open for any public mention of their Dark Arts club, though he doubted they would come right out and call it that. If the club had an official name, it was probably posted on the notice board in the Slytherin common room, which he had only seen once when in Polyjuice disguise. All he ever saw were even more than usual pointed looks from various Slytherins toward members of his D.A.

In Care of Magical Creatures, Hagrid presented each student with one of the wooden cups and began teaching them how to care for the spiderlings. This did not go over as well as he obviously had hoped, as many people took one look, shrieked, and slammed the lids back on, refusing to open them again.

Transfigurations had become much more interesting when Professor McGonagall announced that they were finally ready to begin transforming people into animals instead of animals into other things. This was not the full Animagus spell; they could alter their form but not their mass, and so could not become anything much larger or smaller than themselves. They began with extremities – foot into hoof, hand into claw, arm into tentacle – and would not progress to whole-body alterations until after the holidays. 

Harry, Ron and Hermione left their Transfiguration lesson one Wednesday with Ron still trying to shake the sensation back into his hand after accidentally transforming it into a solid lump of gristle and Harry limping because Hermione, prancing with her perfect cloven deer hooves, had trodden on his foot. 

"I'm really sorry," she said for the third time. "I didn't know you were trying for flippers."

"I didn't expect it would work," he said. "I wouldn't try it again, either. Too much like the time Lockhart removed all the bones from my arm."

"Don't think I like this shape-shifting very much," Ron said, wincing as he massaged feeling back into his hand. "Did you hear what she said about head transformations?"

"Well, you did visit Egypt," Hermione said sensibly. "Do you believe that the entire pantheon of Egyptian gods were really just wizards who got stuck with animal heads? She was only trying to caution us."

They fell in behind a group of exhausted-looking fifth-year Slytherins who had just left the Charms classroom, and Harry found himself walking not four paces in back of Jane.

"Sixty pages by Monday?" said one of them, a striking girl with long hair in dramatic streaks of black and white. "Who does he think he is, giving us sixty pages to read? And with Quidditch practice tonight."

"You don't play," replied a chunky boy with lower canines that jutted up like boar's tusks. 

"I can still watch, can't I? What about you, Jane? Going to watch the session?"

"No," Jane said. "I have too much to do, and there's that test tomorrow in Ancient Runes –"

Tiberius Flint made a scornful noise. "Pff. Get a cheat-sheet."

"I think I'll just head up to the fourth floor right after dinner and find a spot in one of those study carrels."

"Oh, all right, be boring," the girl with the dramatic hair said. "But you'll give Slytherin House a bad name if you pass all your tests honestly."

"Who said I was?" Jane said with that hard-edged smile. "I just don't get caught."

The Slytherins turned down the steps to their dungeon, and Hermione looked scandalized. "'Get a cheat-sheet,'" she mimicked. "I ought to report him."

"Yeah, he'd be thrown off the team at least," Ron said. 

"Come on," Harry said. "If they got thrown off just for cheating on tests, there wouldn't be a single player left on their team."

"Ruddy unfair," Ron said. "One of us tried that, and McGonagall would have our heads. But Snape just looks the other way. For all we know, he's the one providing the cheat-sheets. There's got to be some reason why all these Slytherins keep passing."

"They aren't all stupid, Ron," Hermione said. "Some of them are clever. Those are the dangerous ones."

They went up to Gryffindor tower to drop off their books before dinner. On the way to the Great Hall, Hermione asked Harry if he thought that Jane meant what she'd said about cheating. 

"Why? Going to report her, too?"

"No, I … I just wonder, that's all."

Ron snickered. "I bet if you wanted, she could hook you up with an Ancient Runes cheat-sheet."

"That isn't funny," she said, elbowing him. "Besides, I don't need one."

"Oh, rub it in, you're brilliant, how could we forget?"

"Jane's all right," Harry said. "She does what she has to do in order to get by, that's all. If you were basically honest but still in Slytherin, you'd probably pretend to cheat, too."

True to her word, Jane got up right after dinner and went upstairs, while many of her fellow Slytherins headed out to the Quidditch field to watch the practice session by twilight. The next upcoming match was Slytherin versus Ravenclaw, so it was no surprise when Harry saw Cho and a couple other members of the Ravenclaw team going out to watch the practice. 

He should, too … Gryffindor would be playing Slytherin after their match with Hufflepuff … but …

He went up to the fourth floor, instead. 

The study carrels were in a long room with high, narrow windows and a ceiling crisscrossed with creaky wooden rafters that looked ready to collapse at a loud noise. But there were no loud noises in here; each carrel was contained within its own Silencing Charm, which acted like a soundproof bubble. That way, students could read aloud or speak incantations without disturbing their neighbors. The only painting on the wall in here was a life-sized one of a mime, who walked against the wind, played tug-of-war with nobody, and pretended to be trapped inside a shrinking invisible box. 

Harry walked up and down the rows of carrels. Many were empty, just desk tops surrounded on three sides by wooden dividers. There was a shelf above for books, an inkwell, and a drawer in each desk. A fan-shaped wedge of magical light, hanging from a chain that stretched up to the creaky rafters, illuminated each desk. The few students up here were mostly fifth or seventh-years, bent over their books and utterly oblivious as Harry went by. Some hadn't even been down to dinner, judging by the glasses of pumpkin juice and half-eaten packages of crisps. 

He passed behind a couple of older Gryffindors, one of whom was waving his wand in a complicated series of flicks and jabs, the other of whom had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on a book titled Muggle Physics: A Magical Explanation of Quantum Theory.

Jane was in one of the far corner carrels, a scroll of runes and their meanings magically affixed to the divider and a book he recognized as one of the ones Hermione had been lugging around all last year propped open in front of her. He could see the tip of a raven-feather quill twitching back and forth as she scribbled on a roll of parchment. 

And something that gleamed darkly was sitting on top of a stack of books. The mirror. 

Grinning, Harry walked on without interrupting her and found a vacant carrel. He set up his Transfiguration book with the pages open to Partial-Body Shapeshifting to make it look like he was studying, then took his mirror out of his pocket, held it in front of him, and said, "Jane Kirkallen."

The glass clouded over even darker than before, and cleared to reveal a view of the study hall ceiling. He hadn't been sure it would work; in addition to the Silencing Charms, each carrel was enveloped in a Containing Ward to make sure that no spell effects spilled out to interfere with anyone else's work.

"Jane?" he called softly. Though he knew no one else could hear him, he had to fight an impulse to glance guiltily over his shoulder. 

A hand appeared in the mirror, grasped it, and then the view swung around to show him Jane's face. 

"I thought that was you behind us in the hall," she said. "I wondered if you'd hear me."

"I heard. Did you really need to study for Ancient Runes?"

"No, I have a cheat-sheet," she said. 

"Um … oh."

She laughed. "Harry!"

"What? Ah! Okay."

"I don't cheat," she said in sudden seriousness. "I may do other things that aren't strictly nice, but I don't cheat."

"I didn't say –"

"I'm not angry. I only … well, I wanted to say it to somebody. So that … if anything ever happens … there will be at least one person who might … who might think I wasn't totally bad after all."

"What are you talking about? What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Look, Jane," Harry said, "I may be a real dunce when it comes to girls, but I do know enough to know that any time a girl says 'nothing' when you ask her what's wrong, it's never 'nothing.'"

"I don't think you're a dunce."

"About girls, I said."

"Are you?"

"Yeah. And I think this is what's called changing the subject."

"See, you're no dunce."

"All right, all right. Hey, thank you for letting me listen in on the train, and the reports. It's good to know what Malfoy's up to."

"Isn't that why you gave me this mirror? To spy on the Slytherins?"

"That wasn't the only reason," he said. "I did it so I could talk to you. I mean, it's not like we can strike up a conversation without people thinking it's weird."

"It is weird," she said. 

"So what? I like you."

"Careful, Harry," she warned, raising an eyebrow. "Girls get ideas when boys say things like that."

He hadn't meant it in that way, had meant that he liked her as a friend, the way he liked Hermione, or Ginny. 

Except, as he opened his mouth to say so, he looked again at her dark, steady gaze and the way her ponytail curved around her pale neck. She wasn't as pretty as Cho, but there was something … a shadow, a depth … something that a lot of the girls he knew didn't have. 

Or maybe it was just that he saw an echo of his own lifelong misery in her eyes. They both knew what it was like to be brought up in the Muggle world, to be feared and unloved by Muggles who hated all things magical.

"Don't play games," he said. "You know what I meant."

"I know."

"We're kind of stuck. It's not like I could ask you to go to Hogsmeade with me."

"I said I know."

"Gryffindor and Slytherin –"

"I know, Harry!"

"But if I did, would you?"

"If … what?" she asked. 

"If I did ask you, would you go? To Hogsmeade?" He felt like he sometimes did on his Firebolt, when he was diving after the Snitch with the ground rushing up at him and the wind whipping through his hair, trembling on the very edge of being completely out of control, knowing that if he couldn't pull up in time he would splatter himself all over the ground. 

"Didn't you just say we shouldn't play games?" Jane asked somberly.

"I'm not."

"If things were different, then, yes. I'd go. But they're not, and they won't be, so what's the use of wondering?"

"Things can change."

"You're still Gryffindor. I'm still Slytherin."

Still, that wild feeling of out-of-control plunge. "Hogwarts isn't the whole world."

"What, then? Would you want to date me on summer holidays?" She shook her head and laughed ruefully. "If the vicar would let me out of the house, that is, and your aunt and uncle let you out. And your bodyguards didn't find out. Because I have to say, Harry, I don't fancy the idea of having Aurors burst in and threaten me again."

"I'm sorry about that. But, Jane, that's not the whole world either. I won't be going back to Privet Drive forever."

"You're starting to scare me," she said. "Wouldn't you rather talk about the Dark Arts Club some more?"

"That isn't the only reason I wanted to talk to you."

"Harry … Harry, don't, all right?"

He stopped. "Okay. But, Jane –"

"I said I would if I could. Isn't that answer enough?"

"I guess it has to be."

"The first meeting wasn't much of anything," she said in a rush. "All of Slytherin House turned up and nobody else; they might as well have just held it in our common room. Professor Snape was there, brooding in the corner like a big black crow, but he didn't say much. It was all Pansy Parkinson's show."

"Not Malfoy's?"

Jane's mouth tightened. "He hasn't been the same since Vincent died."

"Vincent? Oh … Crabbe."

"It hit him hard. Goyle, too. They've always been inseparable."

"Because of their fathers," Harry said.

She cocked her head and looked at him, evaluating. "Did it ever strike you as odd that four students at Hogwarts whose fathers are Death Eaters were all the same age?"

"I hadn't thought about it," he said.

"There's a reason," Jane said. "An ugly one."

"What?" he asked. 

"You have to understand that this is just stuff I've picked up here and there, around the common room and such. But apparently, seventeen years ago, someone made a prophecy involving You-Know-Who."

"I know about that one," Harry said, his hands curling into fists. "Believe me, Jane … I know all about it. A baby born in July to people who'd defied him. Either me or Neville, though it turns out it was me. Lucky me."

"But he knew about it."

"About it. Not all of it."

"Well, what I heard was that, after learning about this prophecy, the Dark Lord got his most faithful Death Eaters together and told them that he wanted to plan for the future. For the next generation. He wanted an ongoing supply of loyal followers. So, several of his Death Eaters decided it was time to … to start families."

"What are you telling me?" Harry's voice rose, and he threw another guilty look around despite the Silencing Charm. "That the whole reason Malfoy and the others even exist is because of that damned prophecy?"

"That's about the size of it," Jane said. "Maybe the Dark Lord wanted to be sure that even if he couldn't deal with this person of prophecy … with you … there would be other, younger Death Eaters around who could. So, devoted ones like the Malfoys, the Crabbes, the Goyles and the Notts provided him with a fine crop of babies to be raised in their evil tradition."

"Her and her big mouth," Harry muttered, thinking of Professor Trelawney, who had chosen the Hog's Head for her big interview with Dumbledore and then gone into her first-ever genuine Seer trance. "But it all fits, doesn't it? Somebody like Narcissa Malfoy probably hadn't even wanted a child yet, probably was afraid it'd spoil her figure, but when Voldemort said so, what could they do but obey?"

"Not all of them had wives, or even willing mistresses," Jane said. "Or else you might've been up to your ears in junior Death Eaters."

"Wonder how the Sorting Hat would have handled it? That'd be a lot of Slytherins."

"Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is because it came up at the last meeting."

"The prophecy and everything?"

"The prophecy and everything," Jane said. "And about how it's our duty to oppose you. Now, there are quite a few in Slytherin who come from families that weren't into the Dark Arts – no Muggle-borns, though … a few half-bloods and the occasional oddball like me – and not everyone was wild about the idea of openly aligning themselves with the Dark Lord. More because they're afraid of Dumbledore than you, though. No offense."

"None taken," Harry said. "What amazes me is that Dumbledore approved of the formation of such a group in the first place."

"Maybe he felt that if he didn't allow it, we'd just sneak off to some secret room and meet clandestinely," Jane said, a hint of her smile finally returning. "I don't know where he'd get such a radical notion, do you?"

"Nary a clue."

"Snape stepped in at that point, and reminded us once more that the purpose of the group was to study, to increase knowledge and practical skills, not to be political."

"Does he ever tell you stories about the good old days when he was a Death Eater?"

Jane went very still. "Professor Snape was a Death Eater?"

"Dark Mark on his arm and everything."

"But … but …"

"Oh, he's not anymore," Harry said offhandedly. "So he says, and Dumbledore believes him, so I guess that's supposed to be good enough for the rest of us. Jane, what is it? You look sick."

"I … I didn't know …" she whispered. "I didn't know he was one. You didn't list him in your interview."

"I only told Rita Skeeter about the ones who were at the graveyard that night," Harry said. "Snape wasn't one of them. Neither was Karkaroff, the teacher from Durmstrang."

"Him, too? And you're sure? Sure about Professor Snape?"

"Oh, hey!" Harry said, finally seeing where she was going with this. "He quit a long time ago. He couldn't have had anything to do with what happened to your mother."

"How do you know that?"

"Dumbledore said so, and he wouldn't have hired Snape if Snape was still on Voldemort's side."

He saw tears welling in Jane's dark eyes, but she quickly turned the mirror away so that all he could see was a sheet of runes. He heard a hitching of breath and what might have been a muffled sob, and was on the verge of getting up and going around the carrels to her, onlookers and eavesdroppers be damned, when she turned the mirror back. Her eyes were reddened, a little wet, but she was composed. 

"I'm sorry," she said. 

"No, I am. I thought you knew. I wouldn't have sprung it on you like that. I didn't think."

"I knew he was interested in the Dark Arts," Jane said. "Everyone knows that, and how he's always wanted the job of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher but they keep passing him over."

"So he's probably happy to have this group, is he?"

"Actually, he doesn't seem all that happy."

"Extra work without the prestige?"

"Now I understand a little better why you hate him so much."

"That started before I had any idea he used to be a Death Eater," Harry said. "And, really, he hated me first. Because of my dad. They were enemies when they were students here, and Snape sort of … takes it out on me. I look just like my dad, so he figured I must be just like him, too."

"Are you?"

"I used to hope so, used to want to be," Harry said. "Until I found out what he was really like. But that's not important now."

Jane nodded. "All right. The meetings, then. I'm not sure how it is with other Houses, but in Slytherin, it's hard to have a sensible, decisive discussion about anything because almost every single person feels the need to have his or her say. Even when they all agree, they have to make a big deal out of it. The whole 'pride, ambition and cunning' thing, which might as well be the motto of Slytherin House, carved over the fireplace in letters ten inches deep."

"Must've been fun." Harry privately thought that if he had to sit through all the braggarts in Slytherin House making speeches and tooting their own horns, his head might well have exploded.

Jane grinned. "You should have heard us debating whether or not to practice defensive spells. No one is about to come right out and say that you and your friends had dished up one humiliating defeat after another, so we'd certainly better learn them, but everyone was thinking it. Then Nadine Zellis suggested that we nominate officers, and that was when the meeting nearly turned into a brawl."

"Really? Malfoy wasn't automatically put in charge?"

"That was what Pansy wanted, but Richard Montague got up and said that Draco had gone soft since his father had been arrested, and then Gregory put his fist in Richard's eye, and Richard's friend Nigel jumped on Gregory, and Devonna jinxed Nigel, and that was when Professor Snape broke it up."

"Sounds like Goyle is getting back to his old self," Harry said. "I'd almost been feeling sorry for him. Um … how … how is everyone in Slytherin taking it? About Nott, and Crabbe?"

"Shocked," Jane said. "I don't know if I'd go so far as to say sad, really, except for Gregory, who was Vincent's best friend. Theodore wasn't close to anybody. A loner. He didn't even chum around much with Draco, though they were both from old, rich  pureblood families, until after your interview."

"They don't still think I had anything to do with it, do they?"

Jane rubbed her hand across her mouth, and bit at her knuckle. Her gaze shifted away from his. 

"Do they?" pressed Harry. 

"More like, it was a pretty big coincidence, both of them dying on the same day. Both of them killing themselves. Maybe Theodore was the suicidal type; his family had taken some hard hits in the wake of his father's arrest. But Vincent … I don't think anybody ever would have expected him to kill himself."

"Not his style," Harry said. 

"Required too much initiative," Jane said. "Vincent was never much of a one to act on his own. And Gregory swears that Vincent hated baths, had a fear of water."

"You don't think I was involved, do you?" he asked. 

"No. But you being there, you finding him …"

"Colin Creevey found him," Harry said. "What about Snape? What has he said?"

"Not much about that night," Jane said. "They questioned the portrait figure, a mermaid, but she slept through the whole thing. None of the other portraits or ghosts saw anything suspicious, not that I know of. So, ultimately, we have to accept that it's coincidence after all. It's certainly preferable to thinking that someone murdered him and got away with it."

She looked haunted by the prospect, and Harry thought back to how it had been when the whole school went around in terror of the dangerous lunatic, Sirius Black. Or the times when they went around in terror of the other dangerous lunatic, Harry Potter. 

"Hogwarts is well-defended," he said. "Now more than ever. I don't think some stranger could get in here and hurt anybody."

"I'm sure you're right."

"Besides," he said in an effort to lighten her mood, "with all of us so busy learning jinxes, hexes and countercurses, woe to anyone who did come around Hogwarts looking for trouble."

"It's more likely that our two groups will start a war," Jane said. "That's the problem with learning all these neat spells … we'll all want to try them out on each other."

"Bit of a lopsided war, really. Three Houses against one?"

"That's nothing new. We Slytherins have always been shunned and hated."

They talked about classes for a while, Harry sharing his own experiences on the staggering amount of fifth-year homework and the stress of the O.W.L.s. They talked about Quidditch, which Jane followed avidly enough but didn't play – "Can you imagine the vicar letting me buy a broomstick? Once, I saw he'd left his Bible open on his desk and the bit about how 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' was underlined. That gave me a turn, I can tell you … I was twelve, and I didn't sleep for a week." – and he told her all about the World Cup two years ago, and what Viktor Krum was really like. 

It came as a complete surprise to him when the hanging lights dimmed, brightened, and dimmed again, the signal that it was quarter to nine. They'd been sitting and chatting through the mirrors for better than two hours, and neither of them had gotten any homework done. 

He apologized, but Jane waved him off with a smile. "Ancient Runes is one of my best subjects," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Guess we'd better go, then."

"Good night, Harry." She ran her fingers down the glass. 

Harry ran his down the glass as well, and in the instant before both mirrors clouded into darkness, it was as if their hands touched. He sat for a few moments longer, looking at his reflection. 

"You're mad if you think what I think you're thinking," he said. 

His own green eyes looked back at him steadily. Then he put the mirror away, collected his Transfiguration notes, and got up. 

As he emerged from the magical bubble around the study carrel, the normal night-sounds of Hogwarts rushed in upon him. It normally was never loud at this hour, but after the perfect hush of the Silencing Charm, it was noisy as a train station. Footsteps and low voices and swishing robes filled the halls. The moving staircases groaned and gritted as they swung into new positions. Drafts whistled around windowpanes. Somewhere up on the fifth or sixth floor came the heavy crash of Peeves knocking over a piece of statuary on some unwary passer-by. 

There seemed to be more people about than was usual for this time of night, when most should already have been back in their dormitories. Harry didn't pay much attention. His thoughts were elsewhere. 

Hogwarts wasn't the whole world, he had said. 

They wouldn't be Gryffindor and Slytherin forever.

It was only a few more years. Not that long to wait, really. He'd be out of school in two years, Jane in three. And it wouldn't matter then if they …

"Password?" inquired the Fat Lady as he reached the entrance to Gryffindor tower. 

"Castorpolluxia," Harry said, and she swung forward.

Ginny Weasley grabbed him by the arm as soon as he stepped through. "Harry! There you are! Where have you been?"

"Studying," he said, holding up his books. "Why?"

The common room was crowded, and full of a loud babble of conversation. Ginny nearly dragged him over to a corner where his friends were sitting. Ron was plastered from chin to hairline and ear to ear with olive-green muck that had dried to a cracked, flaky consistency. 

"What happened to you?" Harry asked. "You look like a troll sneezed in your face."

"Mam Pomfee gay ih tuh mee," Ron said, doing his best to speak without moving his jaw or lips at all. Even so, flecks of the olive-green stuff sifted down into his lap. "Iss for theef damn pimmles."

Neville was not sitting with the others but pacing around behind Hermione, breathing fast and continually curling and flexing his fingers. Hectic red blotches colored his round cheeks. "We've got to do something," he said vehemently. 

"Hang on, what'd I miss?" Harry asked. 

Now it struck him how anxious the people he'd passed in the halls had seemed … and the raised, nervous voices here in the common room …

Hermione had been bent over what he first assumed was homework. Now she held up the piece of paper, and turned it so he could see. 

It was a single sheet of newsprint, with the Daily Prophet's banner across the top. But instead of the usual headlines, columns, and photographs, there were only a few stark lines of text, the letters large, the ink a glaring, urgent red.

EXTRA!! EXTRA!!
Minister of Magic Murdered!
You-Know-Who Strikes!
Dark Mark at Scene of Crime!
Dementors, Escaped Death-Eaters Behind Attack!
A Full Report in Tomorrow's Edition!

**

Continued in Chapter Sixteen -- Ministry Requiem.