Leaving -- Luna's Sixth Year
Why did the DA decide to reform without Harry Potter during the year that Hogwarts was under Voldemort's control? Did you really think that you were fighting Voldemort? You were just children. Wouldn't it have been easier and safer for everyone to keep your heads down and wait for everything to be worked out?
Easier? If by easier you mean would it have been less trouble to put ourselves first than to care about what was going on around us, then yes. Would it have been easier to give our approval by silence of the lies that were being taught by the Carrows? Would it have been easier to sit and do nothing while little first years were chained up in the dungeon for asking questions? Would it have been easier to pretend that since we were "just children," we didn't bear any responsibility for what happened around us? Would it have been easier to live with ourselves afterwards knowing that we had done nothing to fight the tide? I suppose that it depends on what you consider easier.
We had no illusions about taking on Voldemort. We were not ignorant children suffering from delusions of grandeur. We knew what was going on in the world outside of Hogwarts, and we knew what the potential consequences of taking a stand were. Most of us had seen them first hand by that point in time. Hogwarts was our corner of the world, and it was being corrupted. We were there. We knew what was happening. If we weren't willing to fight for it ourselves, why should we expect anyone else to be willing to come charging in to save the day. The darkness had come to us, and we could either try to push it back or choose to let it have our ground. The trouble with trying to ignore darkness is that that option just lets darkness win by default. All it has to do is wait for the light to go out, and it has won. We didn't want to be safe in the dark. Only ignorant children would have thought that such a thing was possible. We decided we would rather take our chances trying to keep the light alive.
[more]
The scene this time was the Hogwarts' Express. It looked very different from the train rides of Sadie's own Hogwarts' years. It was quiet - eerily so. There was no laughter echoing up and down the train, there were no shouted hellos to friends who had been missed over the summer, and the students who were speaking did so in hushed voices. Luna was making her way into a compartment already occupied by Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom. Their conversation abruptly ceased the instant they heard the click of the door opening, and both of them visibly relaxed when they saw that it was Luna joining them. She carefully closed the door behind her and looked expectantly at Ginny.
"They've gone then?" Luna asked softly.
Ginny nodded in the affirmative. "It's not like two of them could have come back anyway. Mum's not taking it well, but we rather expected that."
Neville again glanced at the closed compartment door before joining the conversation. "Look. None of us know exactly what we're walking into today. We could make some guesses based on how the Prophet (Luna rolled her eyes at the mention of that paper.) is reporting things, but I think we can all agree that it's going to be bad. Right?"
Ginny's voice sounded rather angry to Sadie as she responded to Neville's question. "What's your point? Yes, it's going to be bad. It's going to be colossally unpleasant. Our education is going to be directed by the murderer of our previous headmaster, and he'll be being overseen by evil incarnate. Half our friends are being hunted down by the puppet stringed ministry, and we're not allowed to do anything to try and help them. Was that the recap you were looking to get, Neville? Because I think we're all clear on the gravity of the situation. We're stuck playing good children at the dark side indoctrination camp until some stupid, noble people figure out a way to save the world." Ginny ended her statement with a dramatic flop back into the seat cushions. Neville's features clearly conveyed shock as he stared at her from across the compartment. Luna, on the other hand, was observing Ginny with a vaguely amused air.
"Rough summer then?" She asked Ginny while raising one eyebrow at her.
"You could say that," Ginny replied while the scowl began to clear from her face.
"Quite finished with that display?" Luna responded through a growing smile.
"For now," Ginny answered with a reciprocal grin. "Sorry about that. What were you saying?" She asked looking toward Neville whose look of shock had been replaced with one of confusion and what might have been a little bit of fear (not that Sadie could really blame him).
After continuing to stare at Ginny for a moment, he shook his head and muttered "Girls are downright mental." Seeing that both Luna and Ginny were staring at him expectantly now, he cleared his throat and tried to finish his previous thought. "I was just thinking that maybe that part about not being able to help isn't right. Maybe we can't help them with whatever it is they've gone off to do, but that doesn't mean that we have to sit around twiddling our thumbs, does it?" Neville's voice had gradually gained confidence throughout his statement. By the time he had finished, all traces of nervousness had gone. Those weren't the tones of a follower or a hanger on. That was the tone of voice of someone who was ready to lead - whether he knew it yet or not. Sadie was impressed. She had known Professor Longbottom for seven years of school. She had never heard that tone of command in his voice before. Maybe all the war stories weren't really exaggerations. Maybe he had been every bit in the thick of things as those dismissed out of hand stories had made him sound. It was Ginny's turn to appear shocked. She was obviously trying to process the thought of Neville in what was an apparently unusual role. Luna didn't seem surprised at all (she was actually looking rather proud), so it fell to her to continue the conversation.
"Did you have something in particular in mind?"
"I was thinking about Umbridge. Remember how badly she thought she wanted control of the school until she actually got it? I seem to recall a whole series of events that made the experience less than pleasant for her."
"Are you suggesting what I think that you're suggesting?" Ginny had recovered enough to join the conversation, but there was an almost awe-struck quality to her voice when she spoke.
"If you think that I'm suggesting that Umbridge was a hack, and we're dealing with the real thing now so we need to step things up a notch, then yes."
The memory faded out to be replaced by an image of Luna squatting in a dark alcove peering at something laying in her palm. It took a minute for Sadie's eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, she realized the something in Luna's hand was in fact a gold galleon - a DA coin. It was night, and the hallway appeared to be deserted. Sadie looked around trying to determine what it was that Luna was doing. That she was waiting for something appeared to be the only logical answer. The question was for what was she waiting? And why did it require her to hide in the dark? Footsteps began to echo down the hallway, and Sadie and Luna both turned their heads to watch. A sloped shouldered figure was making its way toward them with wand tip lit. As it got closer, Sadie recognized that the figure was a woman who seemed to be muttering to herself as she walked.
"High and mighty, that one. Ordering me about like I'm a regular old teacher. He himself put me in my place here. Reckon that makes me a step up o'er the others. Night patrols indeed. Shouldn't have to. Let the others do it. Ickle twits are too scared to be out of their beds, anyway."
As the figure shuffled further down the hall, Luna touched her wand to the galleon in her hand. Sadie watched in the slight glow from Luna's wand as the words around the edge shifted to read "Heading toward Ginny."
Luna continued to stand very still in her spot for what seemed to be an exceedingly long time. Finally, something made her look down at the coin in her hand, and she relit her wand tip. "We're done. She's in the charms' corridor" the coin now read. Luna nodded as if the words had been spoken aloud, and she was acknowledging her comprehension. She stepped out from behind the statue and began to make her was toward Ravenclaw tower.
The next memory opened in what Sadie recognized as Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Luna and Ginny were seated on the floor against the far wall talking in low voices.
"It isn't Neville's fault, did you tell him that?" Luna was saying. Her voice, despite the almost whispered volume, managed to convey a hefty amount of concern.
"I tried, but he isn't really listening to me." Ginny replied sounding almost desperate. "I'm afraid he's going to go and do something stupid."
"Like get caught sneaking priceless artifacts out of the Headmaster's office?" Luna inquired with a small grin. (Who knew Luna had had a sense of humor? No one Sadie had ever talked to on the subject had ever given any such indication. Few people had probably known her well enough to notice Sadie found herself thinking.)
"He thinks he shouldn't have gotten us involved in all this." Ginny said rolling her eyes at what she obviously thought was Neville's obtuseness.
"We all involved ourselves," Luna stated. "He knows that. He's just feeling responsible for everyone."
"Talk to him for me?" Ginny asked a note of pleading in her voice. "Pretend you're asking for Herbology help or something. I'm worried about him. He's doing too much. He's going to get caught."
Luna merely nodded and stood up readying to go. She stopped when she reached the doorway and looked back at Ginny who was still sitting on the floor. "You know," she began. "He said the exact same thing and asked me to talk to you." Luna gave her a smile and started to open the door.
"Luna?" Ginny's voice made her pause and turn back around.
"Yes, Ginny?"
"We both said the same thing about you as well." Ginny was shaking her head at the apparent absurdity of the situation.
Luna shrugged her shoulders. "I guess we'll all have to be careful then because we're not going to stop."
"No," Ginny said her voice sounding more sure as she stood. "We're not."
The memory ended, and Sadie let herself sit in front of what she realized was still a blank wall. She really had to do something about that. It was all wrong. Everything that she had thought about Neville (funny how he had changed from being Professor Longbottom in her thoughts into simply being Neville) during her school years was wrong. It had to be. The boy in these memories wasn't some sit on the sidelines and talk instead of do ninny like they all had thought.
Why had they all thought that? Was it because he had been so ready to talk about things that the other adults around them had never been willing to mention? That made no sense. Hadn't they always complained that no one would talk to them? Why had they laughed behind Neville's back when he actually gave them what they said they wanted to hear? Had they thought that he was making a lot of it up? Yes, they had that. It had all seemed such utter nonsense. How could sweet but klutzy and utterly plant life obsessed Professor Longbottom have led the student defenders of Hogwarts? Let alone gotten himself close enough to Voldemort to kill the giant snake they had all heard so much about?
They had misjudged him because he didn't fit into their idea of what the hero was supposed to be like. She and all of her friends had been exactly like the kids at Hogwarts who had never given Luna Lovegood a chance. They had never bothered to look past the surface to see who he was underneath. It was humbling to realize that. All that righteous indignation she had felt toward Luna's memories of her schoolmates should have been turned against herself.
Another thought struck her and Sadie rushed to look back at how she had originally phrased her question to Luna. It was practically dripping with disdain. Why had Luna even bothered answering her? She, herself, would have been insulted at being asked questions framed in such a manner. She was no longer surprised that Luna had taken longer than usual to answer her. She was surprised that Luna had bothered with answering her at all. Why had she been listening to Constance? It was obvious that it was her tone of voice that was creeping into her questions. She meant well and all (Didn't she?), but she was rather accusing in the way she talked about things. She was also wrong about so many things. The DA hadn't been a joke. They hadn't been children playing a game. They hadn't been Harry Potter's puppets. The Weasleys she had seen in these memories hadn't been conniving individuals worried about nothing but improving the family fortunes. Luna was not crazy. Hermione was not a "nasty piece of work." What had Constance grown up hearing from her parents? Why did they seem to be so bitter about everything and everyone? There had to be something more going on there. First things first, however, she needed to send off an apology to Luna. She seemed to be doing that quite often of late.
Two hours later, Sadie found herself still staring at a mostly blank parchment. Why was this so hard? She was a writer, was she not? It hadn't been this hard to come up with apologies for Adrienne or Dray. What was so different about Luna? She realized with a start that she couldn't explain to Luna why she had been feeling so accusing when she wrote that question. That would mean going into Constance's commentary. She also couldn't explain what it was that had knocked her back into her senses. That would mean explaining about the memories that Luna didn't know she was seeing. This would have been so much simpler if Luna had just asked questions at the start. Wait, it wasn't fair to blame Luna for this. It was her responsibility as a writer to have handled making the explanations. If it weren't for Constance's interference . . . That wasn't fair either. Constance had hardly forced her to agree. It was her own fault. The simple fact of the matter was that she had been scared after the initial reaction from the Potters and Weasleys that no one was going to participate in her project. Hers. The one that was going to revitalize the world of historical magical education. The one that was going to make her name on a level with Bathilda Bagshot when people discussed great magical historians. The project that was going to answer all the questions that she and her friends had never had the answers to about what had really happened. Deep down she had been relieved when Constance told her not to push the issue with Luna, and she had run with it. She had no one to blame but herself. And all those little asides that Constance had been feeding her? She had been willing to listen to her. Why? She wasn't really sure. Maybe she had been excited about finding pieces of the story that no one had ever told before? Maybe she had been miffed at them all for turning her down? (Oh no, maybe she was becoming Rita Skeeter.) Maybe because so much of what she did know made no sense, and she was grasping at any scrap of information that might bring some clarity? There were so many things that none of them had ever understood. Why had Adrienne's father gone off to the United States and never come back, but insisted that Adrienne attend Hogwarts? Why had her own father attended Beauxbatons when Colin was at Hogwarts? Why hadn't Colin gone there when the culling of the muggle borns started under Voldemort? Why did Drake's father (normally the most even-tempered of men) always yell at them when they were making fun of Professor Longbottom's war stories but refuse to tell them his own? There had been so many questions for so long. And the only answers they had ever gotten had been ones that they didn't really believe.
The only line written on Sadie's parchment suddenly attracted her attention - 29 January 2038. Three days until her draft of Luna's sixth year was due. Remembering Luna's initial answers to her owls, Sadie decided that simple was best and composed a letter the body of which contained only two words - "I'm sorry." There weren't really any explanations to give. The questions were badly done, and she couldn't take them back. She could only be better from now forward. She sent the letter off with the small, gray owl that had responded to her summons and broke the seal on the next parchment.
What was Hogwarts like under Snape and the Carrows?
I think that what you have asked is actually two questions with somewhat different answers. The Carrows were school hallway bullies who never cottoned on to the fact that they weren't nearly as important as they thought they were. They did not strike me as the brightest of individuals, and they never displayed an abundance of talent (unless the frightening of 11 year olds or the ability to speak and hit something simultaneously have recently been designated as talents). If you ask me (which no one ever has before), they were sent to Hogwarts to keep them from messing up any important projects on the outside. Do not mistake my meaning. They injured a fair number of students during their tenure, but they were both incapable of accomplishing what anyone who thought through the subject logically would have to conclude was the point of seizing control of a school. It was unpleasant, and it was somewhat hazardous to your physical well-being. All in all, however, we were still at the school because who we were was still valued enough to provide us with a certain measure of safety. We were being given time to come around.
We did not often see Professor Snape around the school. We were often so focused on combating whatever new rubbish the Carrows were spreading around that we forgot about his presence. When we did think about it, we supposed that he was overseeing things from his stolen office, formulating ways to convert all of us to the mind set of the Death Eaters. We only knew that he was failing miserably at that task. I only saw him up close on one occasion that year - the time that we (Ginny, Neville, and I) broke into the Headmaster's office to steal the sword of Godric Gryffindor. He was then not much different in manner than he had been in his classes.
What you need to understand, I think, is that Hogwarts is comprised of the people within her. It doesn't matter so much what Hogwarts was under the leadership of that year. What matters is who the people within her walls became as they encountered it. All stories are about the choices that we make, dear. Circumstances and obstacles and changes in the world may provide a backdrop, but the story is always written by the choices that the individuals involved made. Hogwarts was then what it had always been before and what it will always be in the years to come - exactly what her inhabitants make her. For those of us who made the choice to resurrect the DA, Hogwarts was a proving ground. It was a daily example of the lies our world was being fed. It was our opportunity to stop them from spreading. It was our hope that whether the war was won or not, Voldemort could never truly win - because in order to do that he would have to break those of us who knew the truth. That year at Hogwarts was our place to find out that truth cannot be broken. It was our place to learn that we could not be broken either.
The first memory opened in a classroom whose decorations (or lack thereof) gave Sadie no indication of what subject was being taught. It was very austere. While the decorating of classrooms at Hogwarts was never ostentatious, you could usually garner some information about the professor by what he or she chose to display. There was nothing on display in this room. There were no books, no words upon the board, even the desks had been stowed against the wall to create a large, empty space in the middle of the room. The teacher's desk was in its proper location, but it was devoid of any object. Papers, reference books, materials for the lesson - there were none. The walls were bare, and the windows were shuttered. The bookshelves were empty, and the cabinet doors hung open displaying equally empty shelves. It felt wrong - as if you had stumbled into the school during a cleaning session in the summer holidays and should leave at once. Only the standing, huddled students gave any indication that an actual lesson was about to commence. However, there was something very wrong with them as well. They were silent. Despite the lack of adult supervision, there were no exchanges between the students. One side of the room was crowded with Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and Gryffindors. The Slytherins stood together on the opposite side. Most of them were attempting to look nonchalant about the situation, but you could read it in their features that they also were nervous. They all seemed to be waiting for something, and if the demeanor of the room were any indication, that something was not going to be good.
It was so unnaturally quiet, that Sadie actually heard the door swing open on its hinges. She hadn't realized that the classroom doors at Hogwarts actually made noise - her years of schooling had never had a moment of such intense quiet in them. The person who must be the anxiously awaited professor entered, and one thought flowed through Sadie's brain - minion. She had thought that only her grandparents' muggle movies had such typecasting, but apparently it could occur in real life as well. The man standing in front of the children looked destined from birth to be a sycophantic follower. "Toady," her grandmother had always called them when watching her American, depression era gangster movies. The description definitely applied here. She found herself wondering if people were actually born with that persona, or if it came after years of choosing to follow. This had to be Amycus Carrow. Suddenly, Luna's description of school hall bully made perfect sense, and Sadie found herself wondering if Luna wasn't correct in her assumptions about why the Carrows had been placed at Hogwarts in the first place. Surely, no sensible person would entrust anything of importance to someone whose very presence sent out an aura of incapability of independent thought. But had Voldemort ever actually wanted followers who thought independently? Wouldn't that have caused his half-blood self problems? Sadie thought back to Charity Burbage - thinking on the part of his followers had probably been one of Voldemort's biggest liabilities.
The man (Sadie couldn't, even only in her head grant him the title of professor) pulled a list from his pocket and read off three names. Ginny Weasley marched resolutely to the center of the room and stood tossing her hair back over her shoulder. She crossed her arms and stared Carrow in the eyes which seemed to make him angry. Angry enough, that he momentarily didn't notice that the other two students named hadn't come forward.
"Think you're special, doncha?" The man taunted in a voice more becoming a small child on a playground than a grown man in a position of authority. "Blood traitor trash. That's what chu are. We'll see how high and mighty chu are after lessons, we will."
Ginny continued to stare for a moment before opening her mouth to say something in response. Luna, who was standing unobtrusively off to the side, caught her eye and shook her head very slightly. Ginny rolled her eyes but closed her mouth and continued to stare. The expression on Carrow's face lost its angry expression which was replaced with something that made him looked very pleased with himself. There was a glint in his eyes that Sadie would only be able to call feral.
"Lovegood!" The man bellowed. He turned to find her in her spot and looked at her expectantly. Luna didn't move. Her eyes had moved from Ginny and were dreamily fixed on the ceiling above her as if she were unconcerned by the proceedings. "I said, Lovegood!" Carrow yelled again.
Luna's eyes flicked downwards to rest on the man's face, and she raised one eyebrow in an expression of mild curiosity. Whether it was the fact that Luna hadn't responded verbally or that he had expected her to jump to the center of the room, Sadie didn't know, but the response Luna was giving was clearly not the one that the man intended to receive. He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed a hunk of Luna's long hair. He yanked on it pulling Luna into the room's cleared center space. Just as suddenly he yelped and let go of Luna his hands flying backwards to cover his rear. Sadie caught sight of movement from Ginny's direction in the corner of her eye and turned just in time to see her wand sliding back up her sleeve. Carrow's reflexes weren't as good. By the time he managed to spin himself around, the only sight to be seen was Ginny standing with her arms crossed still glaring in his direction. "Think stinging hexes are cute? We'll see how cute you are when you're writhing on the floor. Lovegood, Cruciatis, now."
Luna was staring at the ceiling again and her voice when she responded seemed to come from far away. "Blue would be nice, don't you think?"
"I prefer red." It was Ginny's voice.
Carrow's head was jerking between the two so quickly that Sadie thought it might pop off at any moment (not that that would necessarily be a bad thing). "Lovegood, I gave you an order!" Wasn't the man capable of speaking in a tone of voice that didn't need a variation of the word yell as a descriptor?
Luna continued as if she hadn't heard. "Perhaps purple then?"
A Hufflepuff girl actually giggled before almost eating her fist in an effort to contain the sound. She needn't have worried - Carrow was too focused on the blond and red-head in front of him to pay her any mind.
"Are you refusing an order, Lovegood? Trying to make me look bad in front of the class? Huh?" Again he was bellowing.
Ginny actually snorted before muttering "Like you need the help." Snickers could be heard coming from the group of Gryffindors. The longer Ginny and Luna kept up their passive aggressive routine; the more the tension in the room seemed to ease. Carrow had obviously had enough, and he shoved Luna so that she and Ginny were standing side by side.
"Looks like you're joining the detention group." It apparently occurred to him then that the rest of the "detention group" had never stepped forward. He grabbed a Hufflepuff girl whose house mates seemed to have been attempting to shield her from view during the Ginny/Luna interchange and pulled her to stand next to the other girls. The other student called had been a Slytherin. His house mates weren't displaying the same level of loyalty as the Hufflepuffs had. Carrow didn't have to make a grab for him - the students on either side shoved him to the center. It made for an interesting quartet. The Slytherin boy stood trying to appear unconcerned by the whole situation, but not succeeding nearly as well as Luna who was once again staring at the ceiling as if there were a code etched and waiting to be deciphered there. Ginny was looking as if the whole ordeal was boring her out of her mind, and the Hufflepuff girl was hugging herself and sniffling. Carrow decided that this would be a good time to deliver a lecture about the importance of punishment for those who disobeyed authority. Sadie wasn't listening however. She was too busy watching the change that was slowly taking place in the stance of the Hufflepuff girl. She had been looking back and forth between Ginny and Luna during the whole of Carrow's long-winded blathering. Clearly, the man enjoyed dwelling on the particulars of the pain that he had the power to inflict. Sadie didn't think that the girl was listening. She glanced a few times over at the house mates who had been shielding her from view, and she even looked once over at the Slytherins who had been so willing to put their housemate forward. The sniffles died away, and the expression on her face became contemplative instead of apprehensive. Her shoulders straightened, her head came up, and she crossed her arms in a posture that was copying Ginny. Her eyes focused on Carrow as the man finished his spiel - he hadn't noticed the change that his time consumption had allowed to take place. As he called a beady-eyed boy forward, the memory faded out.
Sadie wasn't sure whether to be happy about that or not. They used the Cruciatus curse in place of detention? Hadn't Luna described the Carrows' tenure as "somewhat dangerous?" That wasn't somewhat dangerous. That was . . . She was at a loss for words, and a sick feeling crept into the pit of her stomach as she realized the implications of what she had just seen. Luna had made it sound like the students didn't really have it that badly. Hadn't she? Or had she just meant that there were other people who had it worse? What was worse than being tortured by your teachers? Or, apparently, your classmates? Azkaban? That would have been back when it was guarded by those things that made you feel sad. Surely, that would have been a picnic by comparison. She wanted to know if the boy Carrow had called on had gone through with it. You had to really mean the dark arts to make them work, isn't that what they always said? Sixteen year olds wouldn't really have been able to do that, would they? The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach wasn't getting any better. What if they had? She thought of the ease with which the Slytherin students had been prepared to turn one of their own over. What if they had all turned on each other? Luna had implied the obvious use of taking over a school being to convert the young to Voldemort's ideology, but what if that wasn't the point? What if the point was to bring out the worst in all of the students? What if the point was to make the students so used to looking toward their own self preservation that they wouldn't think twice about selling anyone else out in order to do it? What if that was what Voldemort wanted? Would he even need to turn them into believers if he could rule them through fear and the removal of anyone in their lives that they could truly trust?
"You disappoint me, Longbottom." A voice was saying, and Sadie realized with a start that the second memory had begun to play. Luna, Ginny, and Neville stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the desk in what Sadie recognized as the headmaster's office. A sword lay across the desk - rubies glittering in its hilt. The man speaking must be Severus Snape. His voice was laden with disdain and a touch of what might have been resigned tiredness. "I had cherished a hope that your ineptness was confined to the brewing of potions and your inability to walk without falling. I see now that you are even more pathetic than I had previously believed. Pity. Did the three of you honestly believe that you could run rampant in the halls in the middle of the night and not be noticed? Did you give no thought to the fact that the headmaster's office would be charmed to give notice of intruders? Or are all three of you incapable of intelligent thought? It will take much more than the unplanned, uncoordinated, dim-wittedly pathetic endeavors of a trio of unqualified students to interfere with the order in this school."
Sadie hadn't noticed Carrow standing in the background until he spoke. "Thieving. We'll be sure to get the point across." He gestured to the woman standing next to him - obviously his sister. "There won't be any more thieving after we get through wit em."
Snape made a dismissing gesture with his hand as he began to speak. "There will be no need for that Carrow. I'll be handling their punishment." The woman started to protest, but Snape cut her off with a look that would have frozen water in a desert. "These students have declared a predilection for entering places that are forbidden. I shall be indulging their taste. They may serve time in the Forbidden Forest assisting Hagrid with his duties." This clearly placated the Carrows because they both grinned (which was in itself not a pleasant sight). It was also odd, Sadie thought, because she was almost positive that she had seen a flicker of relief pass across the faces of both Ginny and Neville.
Sadie was confused. She had witnessed what Amycus Carrow believed to be an appropriate detention punishment. Stealing from the headmaster's office must rank higher than trouble in the hallways, so he and his sister must believe that going into the Forest was worse. Ginny and Neville must not share their opinion. Was Snape protecting them then? What had that lecture on unplanned, pathetic endeavors been about? Had he been warning them that they needed to watch their steps? Why had the three of them even wanted to steal the sword anyway? If Neville's stories were true (and Sadie was beginning to believe that they were), he would eventually use that sword to kill the giant snake. But he couldn't know that yet, could he? And why would they need to steal it? Wasn't it just supposed to appear to "worthy Gryffindors" in their time of need, or something like that?
The next memory took place in a room that hadn't yet made an appearance in Luna's memories. It was one that Sadie knew quite well - she had spent seven years inhabiting it. It was the Ravenclaw common room. Luna was sitting near the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw. A boy that seemed familiar to Sadie was seated next to her with another girl seated on the other side of him. This new girl looked nearly panicked. As Sadie watched, she hopped up from her chair and with a parting "It's not your fight" she rushed toward the dormitories. The boy sighed and turned to look at Luna. It finally clicked in Sadie's head that this boy was actually Drake's dad. He looked so young.
"It's not that Mandy doesn't care," he was saying in a pleading tone of voice to Luna. "It's just that it hasn't really hit her yet what's happening."
Luna didn't respond to his statement. Instead she appeared to be distracted by something and shoved her hand into her pocket. She pulled out the DA coin and read the message printed on it. Drake's dad had pulled out one as well. "We aren't pretending that we can't get caught." Luna was saying, "We will all understand if . . ." She was cut off in mid sentence.
"I'm not quitting. It is my fight. There's not going to be any middle ground, and I'm not going to pretend that there is. Fence sitting is a luxury that no one is going to have much longer. They'll all realize that soon. Mandy will come around, and if she doesn't . . . She'll come around."
The memory faded, and Sadie found that there were dozens of questions floating around in her brain. Luna had stressed that the important part of that year at Hogwarts hadn't been the outside influences at all - it had been how they all reacted to it. Why would her mind pull up these particular memories in response to that question? The encounter with Snape made perfect sense. But why that given day of detention with Carrow? It couldn't be because of the way she and Ginny had resisted, or the memory would have ended earlier. Was the real reason Luna thought of that moment because of the way the Hufflepuff girl had lost her fear of the situation? Her house mates had tried to shield her. Ginny and Luna had demonstrated courage under fire. She had obviously been disgusted by the Slytherin's lack of loyalty for their own. Had that girl made a choice then that Carrow was nothing to fear because he couldn't break through the things that really mattered - friendship, their sense of right and wrong, etc? Had the DA gained a convert that day? Was that why Luna remembered that moment? Then, there was the scene with Drake's dad. Why had Luna remembered that conversation? The fact that he could have walked away, caved to pressure to stay out of it and mind his own business, and he didn't. Or was it about the girl? How could anyone have seen what was going on at Hogwarts and think that it was okay to pretend that is wasn't her problem? Sadie almost choked when the gravity of what she had just thought in contrast with her previous thoughts about the DA (not to mention the phrasing of her original question to Luna on that subject) occurred to her. That was what she had thought, wasn't it? That they were just kids who probably should have let the adults handle everything. But, she thought in her own defense, that was before she had actually seen what was happening. That girl had lived it. But was it fair of Sadie to hold those thoughts she was expressing against that girl when she had thought the same things herself? She was suddenly curious about who that girl was. Mandy. Sadie hadn't seen her in any of the memories of Luna's classes, so she was probably not in Luna's year. Drake's dad hadn't been in Luna's year either. He was a year older - in Harry Potter's class. This Mandy girl looked to be about the same age. She and Drake's dad seemed . . . close. It was nothing overt. Just a certain something in their posture and the emotion of the conversation that seemed to imply that their relationship wasn't casual. What had happened to her? Had she come around as Terry had hoped? Or had she tried to continue "fence sitting" as he had called it? And out of all the people that Luna must have talked to over that year why had that been the one she had called to mind? Well, at least she should be able to find an answer to a few of those questions. It was time to owl Adrienne again.
30 January 2008
Adrienne,
Could you find out what you can about a Ravenclaw named Mandy who would have been in the 1998 graduating year?
Thank you much,
Sadie
With her deadline luming, Sadie decided to wait to open her last parchment from Luna. She had enough information for a rough draft on that year at Hogwarts, and that question about Neville was probably more personal curiosity than professional source material anyway. Just like whatever it was that had Adrienne so excited about the DA list, it could wait until later.
Next
Easier? If by easier you mean would it have been less trouble to put ourselves first than to care about what was going on around us, then yes. Would it have been easier to give our approval by silence of the lies that were being taught by the Carrows? Would it have been easier to sit and do nothing while little first years were chained up in the dungeon for asking questions? Would it have been easier to pretend that since we were "just children," we didn't bear any responsibility for what happened around us? Would it have been easier to live with ourselves afterwards knowing that we had done nothing to fight the tide? I suppose that it depends on what you consider easier.
We had no illusions about taking on Voldemort. We were not ignorant children suffering from delusions of grandeur. We knew what was going on in the world outside of Hogwarts, and we knew what the potential consequences of taking a stand were. Most of us had seen them first hand by that point in time. Hogwarts was our corner of the world, and it was being corrupted. We were there. We knew what was happening. If we weren't willing to fight for it ourselves, why should we expect anyone else to be willing to come charging in to save the day. The darkness had come to us, and we could either try to push it back or choose to let it have our ground. The trouble with trying to ignore darkness is that that option just lets darkness win by default. All it has to do is wait for the light to go out, and it has won. We didn't want to be safe in the dark. Only ignorant children would have thought that such a thing was possible. We decided we would rather take our chances trying to keep the light alive.
[more]
The scene this time was the Hogwarts' Express. It looked very different from the train rides of Sadie's own Hogwarts' years. It was quiet - eerily so. There was no laughter echoing up and down the train, there were no shouted hellos to friends who had been missed over the summer, and the students who were speaking did so in hushed voices. Luna was making her way into a compartment already occupied by Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom. Their conversation abruptly ceased the instant they heard the click of the door opening, and both of them visibly relaxed when they saw that it was Luna joining them. She carefully closed the door behind her and looked expectantly at Ginny.
"They've gone then?" Luna asked softly.
Ginny nodded in the affirmative. "It's not like two of them could have come back anyway. Mum's not taking it well, but we rather expected that."
Neville again glanced at the closed compartment door before joining the conversation. "Look. None of us know exactly what we're walking into today. We could make some guesses based on how the Prophet (Luna rolled her eyes at the mention of that paper.) is reporting things, but I think we can all agree that it's going to be bad. Right?"
Ginny's voice sounded rather angry to Sadie as she responded to Neville's question. "What's your point? Yes, it's going to be bad. It's going to be colossally unpleasant. Our education is going to be directed by the murderer of our previous headmaster, and he'll be being overseen by evil incarnate. Half our friends are being hunted down by the puppet stringed ministry, and we're not allowed to do anything to try and help them. Was that the recap you were looking to get, Neville? Because I think we're all clear on the gravity of the situation. We're stuck playing good children at the dark side indoctrination camp until some stupid, noble people figure out a way to save the world." Ginny ended her statement with a dramatic flop back into the seat cushions. Neville's features clearly conveyed shock as he stared at her from across the compartment. Luna, on the other hand, was observing Ginny with a vaguely amused air.
"Rough summer then?" She asked Ginny while raising one eyebrow at her.
"You could say that," Ginny replied while the scowl began to clear from her face.
"Quite finished with that display?" Luna responded through a growing smile.
"For now," Ginny answered with a reciprocal grin. "Sorry about that. What were you saying?" She asked looking toward Neville whose look of shock had been replaced with one of confusion and what might have been a little bit of fear (not that Sadie could really blame him).
After continuing to stare at Ginny for a moment, he shook his head and muttered "Girls are downright mental." Seeing that both Luna and Ginny were staring at him expectantly now, he cleared his throat and tried to finish his previous thought. "I was just thinking that maybe that part about not being able to help isn't right. Maybe we can't help them with whatever it is they've gone off to do, but that doesn't mean that we have to sit around twiddling our thumbs, does it?" Neville's voice had gradually gained confidence throughout his statement. By the time he had finished, all traces of nervousness had gone. Those weren't the tones of a follower or a hanger on. That was the tone of voice of someone who was ready to lead - whether he knew it yet or not. Sadie was impressed. She had known Professor Longbottom for seven years of school. She had never heard that tone of command in his voice before. Maybe all the war stories weren't really exaggerations. Maybe he had been every bit in the thick of things as those dismissed out of hand stories had made him sound. It was Ginny's turn to appear shocked. She was obviously trying to process the thought of Neville in what was an apparently unusual role. Luna didn't seem surprised at all (she was actually looking rather proud), so it fell to her to continue the conversation.
"Did you have something in particular in mind?"
"I was thinking about Umbridge. Remember how badly she thought she wanted control of the school until she actually got it? I seem to recall a whole series of events that made the experience less than pleasant for her."
"Are you suggesting what I think that you're suggesting?" Ginny had recovered enough to join the conversation, but there was an almost awe-struck quality to her voice when she spoke.
"If you think that I'm suggesting that Umbridge was a hack, and we're dealing with the real thing now so we need to step things up a notch, then yes."
The memory faded out to be replaced by an image of Luna squatting in a dark alcove peering at something laying in her palm. It took a minute for Sadie's eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, she realized the something in Luna's hand was in fact a gold galleon - a DA coin. It was night, and the hallway appeared to be deserted. Sadie looked around trying to determine what it was that Luna was doing. That she was waiting for something appeared to be the only logical answer. The question was for what was she waiting? And why did it require her to hide in the dark? Footsteps began to echo down the hallway, and Sadie and Luna both turned their heads to watch. A sloped shouldered figure was making its way toward them with wand tip lit. As it got closer, Sadie recognized that the figure was a woman who seemed to be muttering to herself as she walked.
"High and mighty, that one. Ordering me about like I'm a regular old teacher. He himself put me in my place here. Reckon that makes me a step up o'er the others. Night patrols indeed. Shouldn't have to. Let the others do it. Ickle twits are too scared to be out of their beds, anyway."
As the figure shuffled further down the hall, Luna touched her wand to the galleon in her hand. Sadie watched in the slight glow from Luna's wand as the words around the edge shifted to read "Heading toward Ginny."
Luna continued to stand very still in her spot for what seemed to be an exceedingly long time. Finally, something made her look down at the coin in her hand, and she relit her wand tip. "We're done. She's in the charms' corridor" the coin now read. Luna nodded as if the words had been spoken aloud, and she was acknowledging her comprehension. She stepped out from behind the statue and began to make her was toward Ravenclaw tower.
The next memory opened in what Sadie recognized as Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Luna and Ginny were seated on the floor against the far wall talking in low voices.
"It isn't Neville's fault, did you tell him that?" Luna was saying. Her voice, despite the almost whispered volume, managed to convey a hefty amount of concern.
"I tried, but he isn't really listening to me." Ginny replied sounding almost desperate. "I'm afraid he's going to go and do something stupid."
"Like get caught sneaking priceless artifacts out of the Headmaster's office?" Luna inquired with a small grin. (Who knew Luna had had a sense of humor? No one Sadie had ever talked to on the subject had ever given any such indication. Few people had probably known her well enough to notice Sadie found herself thinking.)
"He thinks he shouldn't have gotten us involved in all this." Ginny said rolling her eyes at what she obviously thought was Neville's obtuseness.
"We all involved ourselves," Luna stated. "He knows that. He's just feeling responsible for everyone."
"Talk to him for me?" Ginny asked a note of pleading in her voice. "Pretend you're asking for Herbology help or something. I'm worried about him. He's doing too much. He's going to get caught."
Luna merely nodded and stood up readying to go. She stopped when she reached the doorway and looked back at Ginny who was still sitting on the floor. "You know," she began. "He said the exact same thing and asked me to talk to you." Luna gave her a smile and started to open the door.
"Luna?" Ginny's voice made her pause and turn back around.
"Yes, Ginny?"
"We both said the same thing about you as well." Ginny was shaking her head at the apparent absurdity of the situation.
Luna shrugged her shoulders. "I guess we'll all have to be careful then because we're not going to stop."
"No," Ginny said her voice sounding more sure as she stood. "We're not."
The memory ended, and Sadie let herself sit in front of what she realized was still a blank wall. She really had to do something about that. It was all wrong. Everything that she had thought about Neville (funny how he had changed from being Professor Longbottom in her thoughts into simply being Neville) during her school years was wrong. It had to be. The boy in these memories wasn't some sit on the sidelines and talk instead of do ninny like they all had thought.
Why had they all thought that? Was it because he had been so ready to talk about things that the other adults around them had never been willing to mention? That made no sense. Hadn't they always complained that no one would talk to them? Why had they laughed behind Neville's back when he actually gave them what they said they wanted to hear? Had they thought that he was making a lot of it up? Yes, they had that. It had all seemed such utter nonsense. How could sweet but klutzy and utterly plant life obsessed Professor Longbottom have led the student defenders of Hogwarts? Let alone gotten himself close enough to Voldemort to kill the giant snake they had all heard so much about?
They had misjudged him because he didn't fit into their idea of what the hero was supposed to be like. She and all of her friends had been exactly like the kids at Hogwarts who had never given Luna Lovegood a chance. They had never bothered to look past the surface to see who he was underneath. It was humbling to realize that. All that righteous indignation she had felt toward Luna's memories of her schoolmates should have been turned against herself.
Another thought struck her and Sadie rushed to look back at how she had originally phrased her question to Luna. It was practically dripping with disdain. Why had Luna even bothered answering her? She, herself, would have been insulted at being asked questions framed in such a manner. She was no longer surprised that Luna had taken longer than usual to answer her. She was surprised that Luna had bothered with answering her at all. Why had she been listening to Constance? It was obvious that it was her tone of voice that was creeping into her questions. She meant well and all (Didn't she?), but she was rather accusing in the way she talked about things. She was also wrong about so many things. The DA hadn't been a joke. They hadn't been children playing a game. They hadn't been Harry Potter's puppets. The Weasleys she had seen in these memories hadn't been conniving individuals worried about nothing but improving the family fortunes. Luna was not crazy. Hermione was not a "nasty piece of work." What had Constance grown up hearing from her parents? Why did they seem to be so bitter about everything and everyone? There had to be something more going on there. First things first, however, she needed to send off an apology to Luna. She seemed to be doing that quite often of late.
Two hours later, Sadie found herself still staring at a mostly blank parchment. Why was this so hard? She was a writer, was she not? It hadn't been this hard to come up with apologies for Adrienne or Dray. What was so different about Luna? She realized with a start that she couldn't explain to Luna why she had been feeling so accusing when she wrote that question. That would mean going into Constance's commentary. She also couldn't explain what it was that had knocked her back into her senses. That would mean explaining about the memories that Luna didn't know she was seeing. This would have been so much simpler if Luna had just asked questions at the start. Wait, it wasn't fair to blame Luna for this. It was her responsibility as a writer to have handled making the explanations. If it weren't for Constance's interference . . . That wasn't fair either. Constance had hardly forced her to agree. It was her own fault. The simple fact of the matter was that she had been scared after the initial reaction from the Potters and Weasleys that no one was going to participate in her project. Hers. The one that was going to revitalize the world of historical magical education. The one that was going to make her name on a level with Bathilda Bagshot when people discussed great magical historians. The project that was going to answer all the questions that she and her friends had never had the answers to about what had really happened. Deep down she had been relieved when Constance told her not to push the issue with Luna, and she had run with it. She had no one to blame but herself. And all those little asides that Constance had been feeding her? She had been willing to listen to her. Why? She wasn't really sure. Maybe she had been excited about finding pieces of the story that no one had ever told before? Maybe she had been miffed at them all for turning her down? (Oh no, maybe she was becoming Rita Skeeter.) Maybe because so much of what she did know made no sense, and she was grasping at any scrap of information that might bring some clarity? There were so many things that none of them had ever understood. Why had Adrienne's father gone off to the United States and never come back, but insisted that Adrienne attend Hogwarts? Why had her own father attended Beauxbatons when Colin was at Hogwarts? Why hadn't Colin gone there when the culling of the muggle borns started under Voldemort? Why did Drake's father (normally the most even-tempered of men) always yell at them when they were making fun of Professor Longbottom's war stories but refuse to tell them his own? There had been so many questions for so long. And the only answers they had ever gotten had been ones that they didn't really believe.
The only line written on Sadie's parchment suddenly attracted her attention - 29 January 2038. Three days until her draft of Luna's sixth year was due. Remembering Luna's initial answers to her owls, Sadie decided that simple was best and composed a letter the body of which contained only two words - "I'm sorry." There weren't really any explanations to give. The questions were badly done, and she couldn't take them back. She could only be better from now forward. She sent the letter off with the small, gray owl that had responded to her summons and broke the seal on the next parchment.
What was Hogwarts like under Snape and the Carrows?
I think that what you have asked is actually two questions with somewhat different answers. The Carrows were school hallway bullies who never cottoned on to the fact that they weren't nearly as important as they thought they were. They did not strike me as the brightest of individuals, and they never displayed an abundance of talent (unless the frightening of 11 year olds or the ability to speak and hit something simultaneously have recently been designated as talents). If you ask me (which no one ever has before), they were sent to Hogwarts to keep them from messing up any important projects on the outside. Do not mistake my meaning. They injured a fair number of students during their tenure, but they were both incapable of accomplishing what anyone who thought through the subject logically would have to conclude was the point of seizing control of a school. It was unpleasant, and it was somewhat hazardous to your physical well-being. All in all, however, we were still at the school because who we were was still valued enough to provide us with a certain measure of safety. We were being given time to come around.
We did not often see Professor Snape around the school. We were often so focused on combating whatever new rubbish the Carrows were spreading around that we forgot about his presence. When we did think about it, we supposed that he was overseeing things from his stolen office, formulating ways to convert all of us to the mind set of the Death Eaters. We only knew that he was failing miserably at that task. I only saw him up close on one occasion that year - the time that we (Ginny, Neville, and I) broke into the Headmaster's office to steal the sword of Godric Gryffindor. He was then not much different in manner than he had been in his classes.
What you need to understand, I think, is that Hogwarts is comprised of the people within her. It doesn't matter so much what Hogwarts was under the leadership of that year. What matters is who the people within her walls became as they encountered it. All stories are about the choices that we make, dear. Circumstances and obstacles and changes in the world may provide a backdrop, but the story is always written by the choices that the individuals involved made. Hogwarts was then what it had always been before and what it will always be in the years to come - exactly what her inhabitants make her. For those of us who made the choice to resurrect the DA, Hogwarts was a proving ground. It was a daily example of the lies our world was being fed. It was our opportunity to stop them from spreading. It was our hope that whether the war was won or not, Voldemort could never truly win - because in order to do that he would have to break those of us who knew the truth. That year at Hogwarts was our place to find out that truth cannot be broken. It was our place to learn that we could not be broken either.
The first memory opened in a classroom whose decorations (or lack thereof) gave Sadie no indication of what subject was being taught. It was very austere. While the decorating of classrooms at Hogwarts was never ostentatious, you could usually garner some information about the professor by what he or she chose to display. There was nothing on display in this room. There were no books, no words upon the board, even the desks had been stowed against the wall to create a large, empty space in the middle of the room. The teacher's desk was in its proper location, but it was devoid of any object. Papers, reference books, materials for the lesson - there were none. The walls were bare, and the windows were shuttered. The bookshelves were empty, and the cabinet doors hung open displaying equally empty shelves. It felt wrong - as if you had stumbled into the school during a cleaning session in the summer holidays and should leave at once. Only the standing, huddled students gave any indication that an actual lesson was about to commence. However, there was something very wrong with them as well. They were silent. Despite the lack of adult supervision, there were no exchanges between the students. One side of the room was crowded with Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and Gryffindors. The Slytherins stood together on the opposite side. Most of them were attempting to look nonchalant about the situation, but you could read it in their features that they also were nervous. They all seemed to be waiting for something, and if the demeanor of the room were any indication, that something was not going to be good.
It was so unnaturally quiet, that Sadie actually heard the door swing open on its hinges. She hadn't realized that the classroom doors at Hogwarts actually made noise - her years of schooling had never had a moment of such intense quiet in them. The person who must be the anxiously awaited professor entered, and one thought flowed through Sadie's brain - minion. She had thought that only her grandparents' muggle movies had such typecasting, but apparently it could occur in real life as well. The man standing in front of the children looked destined from birth to be a sycophantic follower. "Toady," her grandmother had always called them when watching her American, depression era gangster movies. The description definitely applied here. She found herself wondering if people were actually born with that persona, or if it came after years of choosing to follow. This had to be Amycus Carrow. Suddenly, Luna's description of school hall bully made perfect sense, and Sadie found herself wondering if Luna wasn't correct in her assumptions about why the Carrows had been placed at Hogwarts in the first place. Surely, no sensible person would entrust anything of importance to someone whose very presence sent out an aura of incapability of independent thought. But had Voldemort ever actually wanted followers who thought independently? Wouldn't that have caused his half-blood self problems? Sadie thought back to Charity Burbage - thinking on the part of his followers had probably been one of Voldemort's biggest liabilities.
The man (Sadie couldn't, even only in her head grant him the title of professor) pulled a list from his pocket and read off three names. Ginny Weasley marched resolutely to the center of the room and stood tossing her hair back over her shoulder. She crossed her arms and stared Carrow in the eyes which seemed to make him angry. Angry enough, that he momentarily didn't notice that the other two students named hadn't come forward.
"Think you're special, doncha?" The man taunted in a voice more becoming a small child on a playground than a grown man in a position of authority. "Blood traitor trash. That's what chu are. We'll see how high and mighty chu are after lessons, we will."
Ginny continued to stare for a moment before opening her mouth to say something in response. Luna, who was standing unobtrusively off to the side, caught her eye and shook her head very slightly. Ginny rolled her eyes but closed her mouth and continued to stare. The expression on Carrow's face lost its angry expression which was replaced with something that made him looked very pleased with himself. There was a glint in his eyes that Sadie would only be able to call feral.
"Lovegood!" The man bellowed. He turned to find her in her spot and looked at her expectantly. Luna didn't move. Her eyes had moved from Ginny and were dreamily fixed on the ceiling above her as if she were unconcerned by the proceedings. "I said, Lovegood!" Carrow yelled again.
Luna's eyes flicked downwards to rest on the man's face, and she raised one eyebrow in an expression of mild curiosity. Whether it was the fact that Luna hadn't responded verbally or that he had expected her to jump to the center of the room, Sadie didn't know, but the response Luna was giving was clearly not the one that the man intended to receive. He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed a hunk of Luna's long hair. He yanked on it pulling Luna into the room's cleared center space. Just as suddenly he yelped and let go of Luna his hands flying backwards to cover his rear. Sadie caught sight of movement from Ginny's direction in the corner of her eye and turned just in time to see her wand sliding back up her sleeve. Carrow's reflexes weren't as good. By the time he managed to spin himself around, the only sight to be seen was Ginny standing with her arms crossed still glaring in his direction. "Think stinging hexes are cute? We'll see how cute you are when you're writhing on the floor. Lovegood, Cruciatis, now."
Luna was staring at the ceiling again and her voice when she responded seemed to come from far away. "Blue would be nice, don't you think?"
"I prefer red." It was Ginny's voice.
Carrow's head was jerking between the two so quickly that Sadie thought it might pop off at any moment (not that that would necessarily be a bad thing). "Lovegood, I gave you an order!" Wasn't the man capable of speaking in a tone of voice that didn't need a variation of the word yell as a descriptor?
Luna continued as if she hadn't heard. "Perhaps purple then?"
A Hufflepuff girl actually giggled before almost eating her fist in an effort to contain the sound. She needn't have worried - Carrow was too focused on the blond and red-head in front of him to pay her any mind.
"Are you refusing an order, Lovegood? Trying to make me look bad in front of the class? Huh?" Again he was bellowing.
Ginny actually snorted before muttering "Like you need the help." Snickers could be heard coming from the group of Gryffindors. The longer Ginny and Luna kept up their passive aggressive routine; the more the tension in the room seemed to ease. Carrow had obviously had enough, and he shoved Luna so that she and Ginny were standing side by side.
"Looks like you're joining the detention group." It apparently occurred to him then that the rest of the "detention group" had never stepped forward. He grabbed a Hufflepuff girl whose house mates seemed to have been attempting to shield her from view during the Ginny/Luna interchange and pulled her to stand next to the other girls. The other student called had been a Slytherin. His house mates weren't displaying the same level of loyalty as the Hufflepuffs had. Carrow didn't have to make a grab for him - the students on either side shoved him to the center. It made for an interesting quartet. The Slytherin boy stood trying to appear unconcerned by the whole situation, but not succeeding nearly as well as Luna who was once again staring at the ceiling as if there were a code etched and waiting to be deciphered there. Ginny was looking as if the whole ordeal was boring her out of her mind, and the Hufflepuff girl was hugging herself and sniffling. Carrow decided that this would be a good time to deliver a lecture about the importance of punishment for those who disobeyed authority. Sadie wasn't listening however. She was too busy watching the change that was slowly taking place in the stance of the Hufflepuff girl. She had been looking back and forth between Ginny and Luna during the whole of Carrow's long-winded blathering. Clearly, the man enjoyed dwelling on the particulars of the pain that he had the power to inflict. Sadie didn't think that the girl was listening. She glanced a few times over at the house mates who had been shielding her from view, and she even looked once over at the Slytherins who had been so willing to put their housemate forward. The sniffles died away, and the expression on her face became contemplative instead of apprehensive. Her shoulders straightened, her head came up, and she crossed her arms in a posture that was copying Ginny. Her eyes focused on Carrow as the man finished his spiel - he hadn't noticed the change that his time consumption had allowed to take place. As he called a beady-eyed boy forward, the memory faded out.
Sadie wasn't sure whether to be happy about that or not. They used the Cruciatus curse in place of detention? Hadn't Luna described the Carrows' tenure as "somewhat dangerous?" That wasn't somewhat dangerous. That was . . . She was at a loss for words, and a sick feeling crept into the pit of her stomach as she realized the implications of what she had just seen. Luna had made it sound like the students didn't really have it that badly. Hadn't she? Or had she just meant that there were other people who had it worse? What was worse than being tortured by your teachers? Or, apparently, your classmates? Azkaban? That would have been back when it was guarded by those things that made you feel sad. Surely, that would have been a picnic by comparison. She wanted to know if the boy Carrow had called on had gone through with it. You had to really mean the dark arts to make them work, isn't that what they always said? Sixteen year olds wouldn't really have been able to do that, would they? The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach wasn't getting any better. What if they had? She thought of the ease with which the Slytherin students had been prepared to turn one of their own over. What if they had all turned on each other? Luna had implied the obvious use of taking over a school being to convert the young to Voldemort's ideology, but what if that wasn't the point? What if the point was to bring out the worst in all of the students? What if the point was to make the students so used to looking toward their own self preservation that they wouldn't think twice about selling anyone else out in order to do it? What if that was what Voldemort wanted? Would he even need to turn them into believers if he could rule them through fear and the removal of anyone in their lives that they could truly trust?
"You disappoint me, Longbottom." A voice was saying, and Sadie realized with a start that the second memory had begun to play. Luna, Ginny, and Neville stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the desk in what Sadie recognized as the headmaster's office. A sword lay across the desk - rubies glittering in its hilt. The man speaking must be Severus Snape. His voice was laden with disdain and a touch of what might have been resigned tiredness. "I had cherished a hope that your ineptness was confined to the brewing of potions and your inability to walk without falling. I see now that you are even more pathetic than I had previously believed. Pity. Did the three of you honestly believe that you could run rampant in the halls in the middle of the night and not be noticed? Did you give no thought to the fact that the headmaster's office would be charmed to give notice of intruders? Or are all three of you incapable of intelligent thought? It will take much more than the unplanned, uncoordinated, dim-wittedly pathetic endeavors of a trio of unqualified students to interfere with the order in this school."
Sadie hadn't noticed Carrow standing in the background until he spoke. "Thieving. We'll be sure to get the point across." He gestured to the woman standing next to him - obviously his sister. "There won't be any more thieving after we get through wit em."
Snape made a dismissing gesture with his hand as he began to speak. "There will be no need for that Carrow. I'll be handling their punishment." The woman started to protest, but Snape cut her off with a look that would have frozen water in a desert. "These students have declared a predilection for entering places that are forbidden. I shall be indulging their taste. They may serve time in the Forbidden Forest assisting Hagrid with his duties." This clearly placated the Carrows because they both grinned (which was in itself not a pleasant sight). It was also odd, Sadie thought, because she was almost positive that she had seen a flicker of relief pass across the faces of both Ginny and Neville.
Sadie was confused. She had witnessed what Amycus Carrow believed to be an appropriate detention punishment. Stealing from the headmaster's office must rank higher than trouble in the hallways, so he and his sister must believe that going into the Forest was worse. Ginny and Neville must not share their opinion. Was Snape protecting them then? What had that lecture on unplanned, pathetic endeavors been about? Had he been warning them that they needed to watch their steps? Why had the three of them even wanted to steal the sword anyway? If Neville's stories were true (and Sadie was beginning to believe that they were), he would eventually use that sword to kill the giant snake. But he couldn't know that yet, could he? And why would they need to steal it? Wasn't it just supposed to appear to "worthy Gryffindors" in their time of need, or something like that?
The next memory took place in a room that hadn't yet made an appearance in Luna's memories. It was one that Sadie knew quite well - she had spent seven years inhabiting it. It was the Ravenclaw common room. Luna was sitting near the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw. A boy that seemed familiar to Sadie was seated next to her with another girl seated on the other side of him. This new girl looked nearly panicked. As Sadie watched, she hopped up from her chair and with a parting "It's not your fight" she rushed toward the dormitories. The boy sighed and turned to look at Luna. It finally clicked in Sadie's head that this boy was actually Drake's dad. He looked so young.
"It's not that Mandy doesn't care," he was saying in a pleading tone of voice to Luna. "It's just that it hasn't really hit her yet what's happening."
Luna didn't respond to his statement. Instead she appeared to be distracted by something and shoved her hand into her pocket. She pulled out the DA coin and read the message printed on it. Drake's dad had pulled out one as well. "We aren't pretending that we can't get caught." Luna was saying, "We will all understand if . . ." She was cut off in mid sentence.
"I'm not quitting. It is my fight. There's not going to be any middle ground, and I'm not going to pretend that there is. Fence sitting is a luxury that no one is going to have much longer. They'll all realize that soon. Mandy will come around, and if she doesn't . . . She'll come around."
The memory faded, and Sadie found that there were dozens of questions floating around in her brain. Luna had stressed that the important part of that year at Hogwarts hadn't been the outside influences at all - it had been how they all reacted to it. Why would her mind pull up these particular memories in response to that question? The encounter with Snape made perfect sense. But why that given day of detention with Carrow? It couldn't be because of the way she and Ginny had resisted, or the memory would have ended earlier. Was the real reason Luna thought of that moment because of the way the Hufflepuff girl had lost her fear of the situation? Her house mates had tried to shield her. Ginny and Luna had demonstrated courage under fire. She had obviously been disgusted by the Slytherin's lack of loyalty for their own. Had that girl made a choice then that Carrow was nothing to fear because he couldn't break through the things that really mattered - friendship, their sense of right and wrong, etc? Had the DA gained a convert that day? Was that why Luna remembered that moment? Then, there was the scene with Drake's dad. Why had Luna remembered that conversation? The fact that he could have walked away, caved to pressure to stay out of it and mind his own business, and he didn't. Or was it about the girl? How could anyone have seen what was going on at Hogwarts and think that it was okay to pretend that is wasn't her problem? Sadie almost choked when the gravity of what she had just thought in contrast with her previous thoughts about the DA (not to mention the phrasing of her original question to Luna on that subject) occurred to her. That was what she had thought, wasn't it? That they were just kids who probably should have let the adults handle everything. But, she thought in her own defense, that was before she had actually seen what was happening. That girl had lived it. But was it fair of Sadie to hold those thoughts she was expressing against that girl when she had thought the same things herself? She was suddenly curious about who that girl was. Mandy. Sadie hadn't seen her in any of the memories of Luna's classes, so she was probably not in Luna's year. Drake's dad hadn't been in Luna's year either. He was a year older - in Harry Potter's class. This Mandy girl looked to be about the same age. She and Drake's dad seemed . . . close. It was nothing overt. Just a certain something in their posture and the emotion of the conversation that seemed to imply that their relationship wasn't casual. What had happened to her? Had she come around as Terry had hoped? Or had she tried to continue "fence sitting" as he had called it? And out of all the people that Luna must have talked to over that year why had that been the one she had called to mind? Well, at least she should be able to find an answer to a few of those questions. It was time to owl Adrienne again.
30 January 2008
Adrienne,
Could you find out what you can about a Ravenclaw named Mandy who would have been in the 1998 graduating year?
Thank you much,
Sadie
With her deadline luming, Sadie decided to wait to open her last parchment from Luna. She had enough information for a rough draft on that year at Hogwarts, and that question about Neville was probably more personal curiosity than professional source material anyway. Just like whatever it was that had Adrienne so excited about the DA list, it could wait until later.
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