Spy

Chapter 13: 2 December 11:00 AM -- 20 December 5:00 PM – Spy

Plunk.

I looked at Shan standing by the lake, a melancholy Shan throwing rocks in the water.

Plunk.

I winced. That had been a perfectly good skipping stone.

"It's cold out here," said Shan.

I offered to walk back through the greenhouse in an effort to cheer her up, but she declined, saying we were already late for lunch. She was moody during lunch, perhaps because Draco and I were planning to spend the rest of the day in the lab. I kept wishing that I knew what was bothering Shan.

"Meet me for dinner?" she asked as I left.

I agreed. A moody Shan was better than no Shan.

"Be careful," she said.

"It's only Potions," I said. "We're not herding dragons."

I could not understand Shan's anxiety. Potions and Arithmancy are the perfect subjects for competent, but cowardly, wizards – no dangerous plants, no rampaging beasts, no wonky transfigurations – although both subjects could be potent. We had learned a lot from the mundane chemists, and the German wizards had potions that could eliminate a small city. Arithmancy, using advanced math, could produce spells that were earth shaking, and they were used in construction. Durmstrang students believed the German Wizard War Department was studying both. The ingredients and procedures at Hogwarts, however, would not support such potent efforts. I had checked.

After Potions lab with Draco, I had dinner with Shan, and we went to the Ravenclaw common room. Shan was much more welcome among the Ravenclaws than I was among the Hufflepuffs. I did Arithmancy first since the derivations required that I be alert, and then I stayed up late to write the essay for Charms. Shan had written her essay for Charms while I worked on Arithmancy and then returned to the Hufflepuff dorm. Shan, however, left me all the references for the essay with the relevant passages bookmarked. I felt like a parasite since the hard part of the essay was the reference work. Besides, by doing the reference work for me, Shan was supporting my spending lots of time in the lab. Shan was helping me do something she disapproved of. I wondered about the lady.

* * *

Inevitably, Hermione talked about her adventures with her two friends. After hearing and thinking about the first two adventures, I had a thought for Hermione.

"You're missing a Slytherin," I told her.

"What!"

"Harry's obviously a brave Gryffindor; Ron's a loyal Hufflepuff; and you're a smart Ravenclaw. You're missing cunning and power."

"What?"

Lost in analysis, I missed the storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

"Your big problem in the first adventure was not being taken seriously," I said. "Neither you nor Harry have relatives or family friends who are influential at the Ministry. Ron's father is at the Ministry, but he's not influential."

"You're looking disdainful," I told Hermione. "You think using influence is unfair. But a powerful family is something you're born with, like intelligence. A Slytherin using influence is no more unfair than you using your intelligence."

"For your first adventure, a friend at the Ministry might have kept the Headmaster at Hogwarts when he was needed or found out who was responsible for the diversion."

Lost in analysis, I didn't notice the nearby tables clearing as the cold front moved rapidly towards us.

"For your second adventure, influence at the Ministry would have kept the gamekeeper from going to prison without a trial," I said. "Visiting the spiders without him almost got your friends killed."

"Harry fighting the monster was braver than I want to be," I added, "but a Slytherin might have sent out for some roosters and practiced a make-them-crow spell."

"If you had a Slytherin accomplice you wouldn't have needed the Polyjuice Potion," I said. "You could have avoided the danger and the hairballs. A Slytherin witch would have been ideal. She would have wormed the information out of the boys with no effort."

"Besides, don't you think a Slytherin witch would balance the team nicely?"

Lightning struck, thunder clapped, and Hermione Granger stormed out of the room.

* * *

Shan wanted to know if anything exciting happened to me at Durmstrang. I told her about being chased by a Red Demon Oryx my third year.

"Omigosh," said Shan, turning pale. "How did you survive?"

I told her I had thrown my cloak in the air to distract him and then clambered up a tree.

"Didn't it destroy your cloak?" asked Shan. "They're ferocious."

I told her he trampled my cloak and then glared at me while he ate it. The worst part was that the cloak had my mid-term essay for Mundane Social Studies ... an historical study of Martin Luther.

"Martin Luther?" said Shan, puzzled.

"Oh, I remember," she said brightly. "He nailed a church door shut."

"That's him."

"Didn't he become the Patron Saint of Locksmiths?" asked Shan. "But what happened to your cloak?"

The Oryx shredded the right sleeve of my cloak, devoured it along with the Table of Contents for the essay, and then given me a satisfied smirk. He ripped the left sleeve to pieces and chomped it down with the Methodology Chapter as a garnish. The Oryx then gave me a suspicious look and burped.

"Omigosh," said Shan.

The beast was determined to despoil my goods. He munched the tails of the cloak along with the Summary Chapter ... a chapter containing the most solid, well-reasoned conclusions in the history of Mundane Social Studies.

"And then?" she asked.

The Oryx gave me an accusing look, developed a case of terminal diarrhea, stumbled behind a thorn bush, and went hoofs up. The school investigated, but the committee was headed by the Chair of the Social Studies Department who declared the Oryx to have died of natural, academic causes.

* * *

True to form, Hermione appeared for our next study session in Transfiguration. She wasn't going to neglect her schoolwork just because I was a blithering idiot pretending to be a friend, a bloody awful prat who couldn't appreciate how brave Harry was, a foreign ignoramus who didn't understand the situation, a fancy ponce who had never done anything in his life, a user who took advantage of people, and a twit who didn't know enough to pronounce judgments on anything.

"Honestly!" I said to myself. It was a wonder that I could exist.

The telling retort that Hermione had for me, that she delivered after we had dutifully finished our Transfiguration homework, was that I should see if I could do any better. I told her I wasn't a Slytherin. I told her I wasn't powerful. I told her I wasn't cunning. She continued to glare at me. I suggested Hermione go through the stories again in detail. Perhaps we could discern some method of operation.

The first adventure, as Hermione was retelling it, had arrived at the climax: the stone, the confrontation scene in front of some mirror, and the final rescue of Harry by the Headmaster. I was confused and had a number of questions.

"Let me get this straight," I said. "The stone could only be obtained by someone who wanted to find the stone but not to use it. But Harry didn't want to find the stone. Didn't he want the stone to remain hidden? Then how did Harry get the stone?"

"He wanted to keep it away from Voldemort," she said. "Harry didn't know about the Headmaster's special spell."

What a mess, I thought. The other barriers could be overcome by a powerful wizard, and there were plenty of those around. The final barrier could only be overcome by an innocent, an innocent who arrived because the adult wizards weren't paying attention to his warnings that the initial barriers were vulnerable.

It was obvious that the stone would have been safe if Harry and his friends hadn't interfered, but I knew better than to say this to Hermione. Instead I remarked that Harry and his friends were missing information and that they needed someone with cunning and power on their side.

I realized, too late, that Hermione would take this as repeating the suggestion that they needed a Slytherin witch.

I was too lost in thought to notice the return of Thunderstorm Hermione.

"Why didn't the Headmaster kill or capture Voldemort?" I asked. "That seemed an opportune moment. Can't the Headmaster kill or capture Voldemort? If he can't do it, then perhaps he could organize an arrest team."

"It was to show that Harry could stand up to Voldemort," screeched Hermione.

Thunderstorm Hermione rumbled through the room and out the door in a mighty gust.

Stand up to Voldemort? Was this some series of trials the hero had to undergo before the final culmination? Was Brit wizard kind trying to live some ancient legend? I only knew one Brit legend. There was Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Who was King Arthur, who was Lancelot, and who was Guinevere? I had a conjecture about which of the three might be Guinevere, but I, the twit, didn't know enough to pronounce a judgment, and my Celtic Princess of Facts had left in a huff.

How much of this story should I believe? An artifact gives eternal life, and no one is interested in it except Voldemort. Wars have been fought over less. Hermione would have me believe that Harry Potter was not interested in it, not even to help his friends.

Poor cover story, Hermione Granger, I thought. Perhaps eleven-year-olds would accept that no conflict was raging over such a powerful stone, but I couldn't imagine anyone else accepting the tale. Why was Hermione trying to feed me this nonsense? Had someone altered Hermione's memory? Was that why she was not able to analyze past events? I decided to step lightly here. I would keep Hermione at some distance and not get too involved. Naturally, human perversity intervened, and I felt the urge to do something for her. But, once again, I decided it was best to leave her to her friends.

I had really, really bungled the attempt to discern some method of operation for the Death Eaters by talking to Hermione, but there was one small consolation. A Great Hall half full of people had witnessed her screeching at me. Actually, screeching at me again. It was inconceivable that I would be cooperating with her.

'All warfare is based on deception.'

Good acting, Hermione. You even had me fooled.

Had Hermione transmitted any real information to me before her analytical capacity was saturated? As I understood it, the second campaign by the Death Eaters was subtle. Blame the daughter of a Muggle-Lover for the deaths of Muggle-born to stop the enactment of regulations protecting Muggles. The scheme was succeeding. The English Ministry was in a state of panic. They had sent one innocent person to prison without a trial, and they had removed their most powerful wizard from the scene of action. In the middle of the campaign, however, one of the participants had changed the objective to eliminating Harry Potter. This person then made a kidnap victim out of the student originally selected to receive the blame. The plan collapsed.

Note to self: Tom Riddle is not a team player.

Hermione had not told me with what they were currently contending. In her current state, I didn't think she would tell me if she knew, but I also had the impression that she didn't know. Now that, I realized, was an area for contribution. What were the Death Eaters' current schemes? It was time for information gathering, commonly called spying.

I was the worst choice in all of England for spying on the Death Eaters. I was able immediately to think of eight show stoppers. First, I was a student confined to Hogwarts. Second, I was an overloaded student with no time for surveillance. Third, I had observant peers. Hermione and her friends easily had slipped by their fellow Gryffindors. In their second year, their peers hadn't even noticed that Harry wasn't calling forth the snake or that Ginny was killing chickens. I had to contend with Draco, Barbara, Shelly, Luna, Su, and Shan ... a different group of peers. Fourth, I had no special powers of movement. Some of what Hermione had told me didn't make sense unless she and her friends could move unobserved through secret passages. Fifth, I had no real friends at Hogwarts except Draco, who was possibly a Death Eater. Sixth, I didn't have a special relationship with any faculty member. It had been important that Harry and his friends did. Seventh, I had no family or friends in the outside world of English wizards. Eighth, I was not connected to any private source of information.

I was ready to spy on the Death Eaters. How hard could it be for an intelligent young man?

* * *

After the next study session in Transfiguration with Hermione, I mentioned that I might be able to help, but that I would have to be able to leave Hogwarts for secret overnight trips.

"That's never been done before," she said. "And why should we trust you? Who are you going to meet?"

I knew from her last two questions that it was possible. There were secret ways out of Hogwarts. If her first reply was honest, then she and her friends had never accomplished an overnighter. I refrained from pointing out that if it had been successfully accomplished, then she wouldn't have heard about it. I was learning to be diplomatic with Hermione. After all, I was now a clever and subtle spy.

I left Hermione to wrestle with her conscience and her friends over revealing a secret passage to me. I prepared the ground for being gone all night with no one noticing. It was accomplished by falling asleep from exhaustion in the Slytherin common room and having to spend the night there because of the curfew. I even fell asleep from exhaustion several times in the lab. Its unbreakable seals meant that no one discovered my whereabouts until morning. After a while, no one was particularly concerned by my vanishing for the night. At least, that's what I thought.

At the same time, I contacted the German Ministry telling them I needed a reliable contact and information on spy craft. They were obviously worried about me, but even more obviously worried about their lack of information. They warned me many times to be careful. They advised me to attend the next social outlet.

I needed a cover. With the casualness of debonair spies everywhere, I told Luna I was going to Hogsmeade on Saturday and I would love to have her company. Her response was enthusiastic enough that it took a while for me to regain my debonair casualness. Luna insisted that we invite Shan too.

"She should come with us," she said. "Shan thinks you're a good friend."

The more the merrier. Let's test the mettle of the German secret wizards. Shan said she would love to go, but she had scheduled this Saturday to complete an essay for Charms. Shan was either a good actress or sincerely sorry not to go. I suggested that we both complete our essays and then go to Hogsmeade. It was cold in the morning anyway. Let the German secret wizards cope with that. They did. Shan and I finished the essay at eleven with Luna waiting patiently. We had a late tea, took a leisurely broom ride to Hogsmeade, and had a late lunch. Because we had a late lunch, the three of us were the only ones at a large table when two recent graduates from Sweden asked if they could join us. Sweden! Yes, they had heard of the animals Luna asked about, but no, they hadn't seen them themselves. The couple was taking some time off to tour England. The witch chatted with Luna and Shan. The wizard was a good-natured poet who insisted I take a copy of his recent works. The couple wished us a merry goodbye and went off to see more of famous Hogsmeade. Late that night, back at the dorm, I read the slip of paper in the book of poems. An incantation and a thumb print would turn it into the German Wizards' spy manual plus a list of my contacts. Another incantation would wipe it clean ... except for the awful poems.

* * *

Hermione gave me the information about the Whomping Willow and Shrieking Shack connection. I arranged a meeting in Hogsmeade. Since there was no way to meet without being observed, I decided to be overwhelming enough that no one would recognize a Hogwarts' student. I gave myself a mustache, grey hair, large glasses, a bigger nose, and a deadly swagger stick with a wand in it. I was, after all, a NEWT candidate in Charms. To top it off, I wore my maroon Durmstrang cloak with its hood up. I made the interesting trip past the homicidal tree, through a dark, treacherous tunnel, and out of a creepy, dangerous house. At the outskirts of Hogsmeade, I finally stopped shaking from terror. I'm going to get you for this, Hermione! I strolled into the tavern like the person I was pretending to be. I spotted the tart in the corner and walked over to her. Several lowlifes, who had been eyeing the tart, moved away fast. I had incorporated some Malfoy into my persona. I sat down at her table. She paid the barkeep for her drinks and some Floo powder. I would obviously reimburse her later. We arrived at a good hotel in London, went to the room she had rented, performed the spells for secrecy, and looked at each other. We had not yet spoken a word. It hadn't been safe until now.

"Well, well, Patricia Clearwater, fancy meeting you here."

"Oh, Hermann."

She rushed me, knocking me off my feet onto the bed. She was kissing me deliriously. My most important question had been answered. She didn't want to claw my eyes out. I could trust Patricia Clearwater.

She told me the spy business could wait. We had other things to do first.

Afterwards, I explained that the spy business was very dull, very laborious, and very dangerous. All organizations and operations, including the Death Eaters, needed money, and the Ministry of Magic was the largest dispenser of funds in the English wizard community. I was fairly certain, but not absolutely certain, that some of these funds were going to disguised Death Eater enterprises.

"That's where I work, the Finance Office, comes in," said Patricia. "We have a record of all the transactions."

Patricia thought a bit. "The trick is identifying which funds are going to Death Eaters. That's going to be hard."

"Very hard," I agreed. "If they have been clever, it may not be possible to identify their funds."

"You've already figured out how tedious and frustrating this is going to be," I said.

Patricia nodded.

"It's also very dangerous," I said. "If we discover their funding routes, we can hurt them. If you decide to do this, you will be their worst enemy. If the Death Eaters discover you are spying for us, they will kill you. They will probably kill your family, too. You don't have to do this."

"I thought Harry Potter was their worst enemy," said Patricia.

"Harry Potter is the worst enemy of their current charismatic leader," I said. "There's always hate and fear. Any group with funds can live on the hate and fear. We need you to locate those funds."

Patricia nodded.

"Remember, you're our most valuable specialist," I said. "Don't put yourself at risk by doing commonplace spy stuff."

Patricia looked puzzled.

"All the things you normally think about when you think about spying" ... Patricia nodded ... "don't do them," I said. "No listening to conversations, no peeking into rooms, no stealing papers, no rummaging through files or wastebaskets. We already have people doing that."

"Caretakers can do that," said Patricia. "That's their job."

"Exactly," I said. "No following people either. We have specialists for that."

"There is a part of this that might bother you," I said. "I'm working with the German Ministry because I can trust them. All your information will be seen by the German Ministry. We are trying to find reliable English Ministry people, but we're strangers in a strange land. You might prefer to wait until this is a purely British operation."

Patricia didn't want to wait.

"This is very dangerous. You don't have to do this. It would be smart not to do this."

"You don't understand, Hermann," she said. "For most of my life, I've watched the Death Eaters hurt and kill people I know and love."

Patricia paused, recalling bad memories. "I couldn't do anything. I could only watch. Now I can do something."

I gave Patricia her incantation-protected book containing general instructions, advice, codes, safe places, and emergency contacts.

"I'm the only person who knows you're spying for us," I said. "If you arrive at a safe place or make an emergency contact, then they will know you are one of ours, but otherwise they do not know that you exist."

"Can I tell Penelope? She has her own flat now, but we're still close."

I thought awhile and said, "It would be a good idea to tell Penelope, otherwise she might make revealing comments about your activities."

"When you talk to Penelope," I said, "tell her that I fear for your life."

Patricia gave me a quizzical look.

"Promise me that you'll do this," I said. "If you talk to Penelope, then she's involved, too. I want her to know how serious this is."

"Promise me," I said.

Patricia promised.

Patricia told me that she knew Penelope would want to help. I told Patricia that I could be in London over the Winter Holidays, and I could talk to Penelope. "Don't let Penelope do anything until I've talked to her."

I had to hurry back. I embraced Patricia and held her for quite a while.

"Be careful," I said.

"You keep saying that," she said.

I returned to Hogsmeade just after the tavern had closed. I tossed the owner several Galleons and a Malfoy look. That would keep him quiet. I made my way to the fixer-upper to await the end of the Hogwarts curfew.

While waiting, I reflected that I hadn't been completely honest with Patricia. I didn't know if we had any caretakers or trackers. I didn't care. I didn't want Patricia taking unnecessary risks. Left to her own inclinations, Patricia would try to be an entire spy brigade.

I entertained myself in the tunnel by imagining dropping the creepies I saw down Hermione's robe.

Halfway through the tunnel, I thought of the perfect Winter Solstice Gifts to give everyone on my list. That had been bothering me for quite some time.

I peeked out from the roots of the angry tree.

"There he is," cried Luna.

"You're not wearing your Hogwarts robe," said Shan.

What was happening? I ducked back into the tunnel to exchange the Durmstrang cloak for my Hogwarts robe and to return my face to its normal, upright position.

"There's nothing like a sunrise stroll to begin the day," said Luna, as I joined the two girls.

"Yes, it was such a good idea to invite us along, but we should get back inside before we all freeze," said Shan in a tone of voice that would freeze dragon fire.

They took me to the Prefect's Bath, leaving me with instructions. "Go soak your bloody fool head in the bloody hot tub, you bloody fool."

They went to raid the boys' dorm for clean garments. It would be a perfect complement to the morning's fiasco if they found my sister's valentine gift, a pair of white silk boxer shorts with lots of little pink hearts.

Later, in the Great Hall, pouring hot tea into me, they said, "You could be expelled."

They asked, "What were you doing? What were you thinking?"

I told them that I had gone Durmstrang crazy and had spent the night away from Hogwarts. "How did you know where to find me?"

They said they had noticed that I was preparing to do something and then that I wasn't in the Ravenclaw or Slytherin common rooms. They knew I had been talking to Hermione, and they wondered if she and her adventurous mates knew what I might be doing. Since I had disappeared, it must be a secret passage. They got Hermione out of bed and told Hermione they would tell everyone that Hermione knew about secret passages unless Hermione told them what I had done. They had waited until curfew ended and were about to come after me when I appeared.

I said, "You two are brilliant."

They didn't respond to that.

"Were you meeting a girl?" asked Shan quietly.

"No," I said. "That would be really dumb. Everyone in Hogsmeade would notice a Hogwarts student meeting a girl late at night."

"There are lots of girls at Hogwarts, Hermann," said Shan, still speaking quietly.

"I wasn't meeting a girl," I said.

"Yes, Hermann," said Luna. "There are lots of nice girls at Hogwarts."

"Maybe he wasn't looking for a nice girl," said Shan, still speaking quietly.

"I was just going crazy. I wasn't doing anything stupid like meeting a girl." That didn't come out quite right, I thought.

"You weren't chasing Death Eaters, were you?" said Luna in alarm.

"That's dumber than chasing a girl," I said.

"Why would Hermione tell you about a secret passage if you weren't going to help chase Death Eaters?" said Luna.

Why did I have to meet all these intelligent women? I was on thin ice here. "She was telling me about her adventures with Harry and Ron. I guessed there must be some secret passages."

"So you had to use one of them and get yourself expelled," said Shan.

"I'm sorry I went crazy. I'm not expelled yet."

"Speaking of being expelled," I said, "did you tell Hermione to keep quiet about everything?"

"Oh, no," they both said, running off to find Hermione.

I lamented that I had once again made Luna and Shan angry with me, but there wasn't any help for it. I had to have a face-to-face meeting to establish and verify a bond of trust. In the murky world of espionage, a bond of trust was essential. I hoped I would never have to do such a thing again. The overnighter was crazier than I wanted to be. I wished Luna and Shan hadn't appeared. They had seen me in the maroon Durmstrang cloak, which could connect me to the visitor in the tavern.

This was discouraging. It was my first effort as a master spy, and I had been completely outclassed by two schoolgirls. I felt a twinge of sympathy for Voldemort. Meddling kids. The terrifying thought was that if two schoolgirls had discovered everything that I had done, then certainly the Death Eaters had discovered, or would soon discover, what I had done. I had placed lives in danger. There was the even more terrifying thought that the fuss raised by Luna and Shan had drawn the Death Eaters' attention to me. I became angry with them. Then I became suspicious of them. Were they death-symps? Why were death-symps watching a transfer student? Was it because I was talking to Hermione? Were there so many death-symps that they could watch everyone? I hadn't asked them about their sympathies, and now it was too late.

* * *

"Did you catch a Death Eater?" hissed Hermione, as she sat down beside me in Transfiguration.

"It was a practice run," I said.

"Well, it didn't go very well, did it. You obviously need more practice," she continued to hiss. "Maybe you should take Shan and Luna with you."

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "You're scaring me."

* * *

Several days later, Luna and Shan had insisted I meet them for afternoon tea in the Ravenclaw common room. I wondered if this was the first of a series of sanity checks. I needed a sanity check, although not for the reasons that Luna and Shan thought. My suspecting them of being in league with the Death Eaters was crazy. I felt like a nit. Two powerful witches were wasting their time taking care of crazy Hermann.

A few minutes before tea time, I was taking a break and looking out a Ravenclaw Tower window when Luna joined me.

"Do you live in a tower at home, Hermann?" she asked.

"No."

"You should," she said. "You like looking over the countryside. Maybe you should be a bird. What kind of bird would you be?"

I thought about my recent behavior. Was a 'mean spirited pecker' a bird?

"You're the one who's a bird," I said.

"No, silly," she said, "that's English slang for a girl. I wonder why they call us birds?"

"Birds are pretty. Birds sound nice. We like to watch birds. We like to be around birds. Maybe that's why," I said. "I meant a real bird."

When I thought of Shan, I thought eagle. Luna was harder to place.

"You would be a magical bird," I said, giving Luna's hand a friendly squeeze and releasing it.

Luna reached over and held my hand.

You would be a magical bird who looked after other birds, I thought. I didn't tell Luna that because it sounded soppy and fluffy.

"It would be nice to be a bird that watched over other birds," said Luna. "I think Shan would be an eagle. We would be friends."

Be friends with an eagle and watch over other birds. Only Luna could manage that.

I wondered if abstracted Luna had a soft and fluffy place. I wondered the same about ice and steel Shan. I supposed they did for some lucky wizard.

Shan arrived from the Prefect's meeting. There hadn't been any whispers or rumors whatsoever about a Hogwarts student out all night. I had accomplished a successful overnighter. Luna and Shan were very proud of me.

* * *

A few days after the overnighter, the espionage was producing information. The English Ministry financial records showed that the Hogwarts gamekeeper was the head of an animal-rescue-and-care unit that was receiving 2,000 Galleons a month. No one believed this. The money was going elsewhere, and the German trackers were watching the goblin bank. Acting on a hunch, a sweep was made for other charitable organizations receiving 2,000 Galleons a month. Ten others were found, and they didn't sound plausible either.

* * *

Shan was complaining about my hair.

We were almost the only people in the Great Hall on an early Sunday morning. I thought she had wanted to practice Charms and then kata, but she started fussing about how my hair was cut and insisted on trimming it for me. Now she was disgusted by how 'gunky' it was and said I didn't have to have bad hair just because I was a Potions master. She was certain I needed the shampoos available in the Prefects' bath. She would get her swimming costume; I would get mine; and then she would use the right soaps on me. I told her that, being from Durmstrang, bringing a swimming costume to school had never occurred to me.

"You'll have to improvise," Shan told me.

A little later, I was in a sudsy tub with Shan using one soapy compound after another in her attempt to salvage my manly locks. Shan was giving me a final rinse when she said, "Can I ask you something?"

After I nodded, she said, "Why are you playing with psycho-active potions?"

At last, I thought. Let's get it out, girl. I gave my answer some thought.

"There are three reasons," I said. "First, a new type has been discovered with the Hogwarts Potion master being one of the discoverers. Second, they're beneficial. The stress and strain of being a wizard puts as many people in the mental wards as accidents put people in the physical wards. Third, there's the selfish reason. The initial patents will be worth a lot of money."

"Draco doesn't need money," she said.

"He might," I said. "I can use the money."

"Do I get to ask you something?" I said. She nodded yes.

"Why do the psycho-active potions upset you?" I said.

"I thought you and Draco were being brave," she said.

"You thought we were doing it just to be brave, to impress the girls?" I asked

"Yes," she said.

"It's the challenge, benefits, and money," I replied.

After the salvage effort on my hair, we were in the Hufflepuff common room having tea. "They're not going to kill you," Shan had told me as she dragged me there.

I was sitting on a rug watching the fireplace – dreaming the fire, as the Africans say. Shan was stretched out on a couch, running her fingers through my hair. Admiring her handiwork, I suppose.

"My parents were brave," said Shan.

I gave her a 'tell me more' look.

"They thought the Dark Lord was dead. Wizards and Muggles could live in peace. They had a nursery outside Birmingham where they grew both kinds of plants."

She watched the fire for a while.

"The nursery did well because the two of them could grow anything. In Birmingham, they each owned a store. My father's store sold Muggle plants, and my mother's store sold wizard plants. My mother's store was hidden from the Muggles, of course."

I nodded for her to continue.

"My mother, sister, and I were visiting my aunt and uncle, my mother's sister and her husband. They're witches, actually they're a witch and wizard. When we returned home, we discovered the Death Eaters had killed my father. They had burned down the nursery and the two stores. I was eight years old."

"That's terrible," I said, lamely.

"We lived with my aunt and uncle. Mother never recovered: She died eight years later when I was sixteen."

I had the impression there was more to this sad story, but it could wait. Shan was busy 'styling' my hair.

"It's a forlorn hope," I said. "It's never going to look good."

Shan continued the brushing and combing.

"I feel like one of the plants in your greenhouse," I told her.

She started naming plants. None of the names sounded very good. I was on the losing end of this exchange.

"None of those plants sound very good," I said.

Shan sat down beside me on the rug. It was totally inappropriate, but I noticed what lovely legs she had.

"They're all plants with bad hair and a worse attitude," she said, smiling at me in a triumphant manner.

"Plants have hair?" I asked.

"Bad hair," she replied.

"Would you like to take a walk?" she asked. "Let's go see the lake."

We didn't make it to the lake. Shan walked a different direction until she found a sunny spot out of the wind. She was talking about her aunt and uncle. While Shan and her sister were living with them, her aunt and uncle had constantly told Shan and Su that they were half-bloods who couldn't be witches. It was one of the best days of Shan's life when her letter from Hogwarts arrived. During her first holiday, Shan taught Su a spell in order to show Su that she was a witch, too. Shan was in a lot of trouble for that, but she said it was worth it. Shan was a wild witch her first year.

I said it hadn't been that traumatic for me. I was helping with potions when I was nine years old. It was better than a chemistry set. If I hadn't been accepted at Durmstrang, there was mundane chemistry. I told Shan my sister had shown obvious talent at an early age – too early. My sister was a problem child because she had abilities she didn't know how to control or even know she should control. Shan said she was almost two years older than her sister, but she was born in October and Su in August, which put them one year apart at school.

Shan's mother had died in January of Shan's fifth year. Shan had been stoical about it, determined to maintain her achievement record. She did outstanding work for all her OWLs. Her sixth year she had been haunted by guilt over her mother's death and the feeling that nothing was really worthwhile. Now she was once again determined to do well. Ice and steel Shan was back.

Most inappropriately, and strictly to myself, I wondered if she would like to take a little time off for affection. I knew a wizard who liked her. None of my fellow Ravenclaws were saying anything about Shan Li except the occasional comment that she was a brilliant witch, and they thought she belonged in Ravenclaw. I heard the same about Hermione along with speculation about her and her two male friends. I never heard any speculation about Shan Li, and I never asked. I had heard a few remarks about getting bashed up by the ice and steel lady when Shan started fencing, but I had shrugged them off at the time.

Did I have some understanding of Shan now? I had some conjectures. She thought 'bravery' had killed her parents, and she was upset when she thought Draco and I were flaunting 'bravery' in Potions. She had confused her housemates by being a wild witch her first year and a swot the next four years. They had called her 'cold' when she almost ignored her mother's death. They had taunted her during her sixth year when her performance fell. She said some of them told her that she should give up her Prefect's badge. This would account for the slight distance I felt between Shan and the other Hufflepuffs. Shan was accepted by the Ravenclaws who were used to behavior swings. To put it bluntly, we weren't the balanced personalities the Hufflepuffs were.