Chapter 1
The thing about the summer of 1995, Fred Weasley would later reflect, was that it had been entirely too educational.
Not in any way Hogwarts would recognise. Not the kind of education you got from textbooks or the kind you got from his and George's ongoing experiments with Portable Swamps (promising) and Puking Pastilles (very promising, if you didn't mind the puking). No — this was the other sort of education. The sort you didn't ask for and couldn't give back.
It had started at the end of last June, in a graveyard, where a boy called Cassius Warrington had been killed by Voldemort — and Fred was going to write that name out in full because he'd decided over the summer that not saying it was exactly the kind of thing Voldemort probably wanted people to keep doing, and Fred Weasley had a long-standing policy of not giving Dark Lords what they wanted — and Harry Potter had come back holding a dead body and a story that the Ministry of Magic had spent July very loudly not believing.
Fred believed it. So did George. So did Mum, who had gone very quiet and started hugging everyone at odd moments, which was alarming in its own right. So did Dad, who had stopped pretending to be mystified by the television remote and had that look he sometimes got — the look that meant he was thinking about things he wasn't saying in front of the children, as though Fred and George were still eleven and couldn't be trusted with information about their own world ending.
Fred had not pointed out that he was seventeen, perfectly capable of handling information, and had spent the better part of summer holidays developing a product line specifically designed to assist with hasty evacuations. He had just noted the look and filed it.
He had a lot of files now. It was a new and somewhat uncomfortable development.
Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was its usual self on September the first: chaotic, warm, smelling of steam and treacle tart and someone's owl who had very strong opinions about the whole enterprise.
The Weasley family had arrived, as ever, approximately four minutes before the train left. This was a family tradition, like Christmas and arguing about who had borrowed whose broom polish. Mum had hugged each of them twice — Ron and Ginny three times, which was new and which Fred understood immediately and which made something sit heavy and unnameable in his chest — and then the twins had hauled their trunks aboard and found their usual compartment at the far end of the train, because the far end of the train was less supervised, which was a professional necessity.
"Right," said George, dropping into his seat with the composure of someone who had never experienced a rushed morning and did not intend to start. He put his feet up. He produced a Cauldron Cake from somewhere. Fred had genuinely no idea where George kept these. He had stopped asking. "Seventh year."
"Seventh year," Fred agreed, pulling his trunk into the overhead rack by sheer force of will and the kind of upper-body strength that came from years of Quidditch and also from once losing a bet with George that involved carrying Percy up a flight of stairs. "Last year."
"Last chance," George said, mouth full.
"Last opportunity," Fred said, "to fulfil our educational potential."
George looked at him. Fred looked back. They had been having versions of this conversation since second year, when they had agreed, over breakfast and a piece of parchment covered in prototype Canary Cream calculations, that their educational potential was roughly equivalent to a creative writing exercise and should be treated accordingly.
"The swamp," George said, "is achievable this year."
"The swamp," Fred confirmed, "is achievable this year." He paused. "Also the catalogue needs at least twelve new products before we can open."
"Thirteen," George said. "We said thirteen."
"We said twelve."
"Fred, I have it written down."
"That's the one with George's Wildly Optimistic Product Count at the top, you can't cite that one —"
The compartment door slid open and Lee Jordan fell in, closely followed by someone's hat and the news that the trolley was already sold out of Pumpkin Pasties, which was frankly an indictment of the entire Hogwarts Express catering operation and they should write a strongly worded letter.
The journey settled, as journeys on the Hogwarts Express always did, into its own specific rhythm. Lee talked. George planned. Fred talked and planned and also kept one eye on the window, which was new, and which he was not going to examine too carefully.
Outside, England went past. Very green. Very quiet. Very much not a graveyard in Little Hangleton, which was a thing Fred was apparently going to keep reminding himself it wasn't, all the way to Scotland.
He'd never done that before. Last year the train had just been the train.
He saw her on the platform at Hogsmeade.
The train had pulled in and everyone was doing the usual thing — falling over trunks, arguing about whose owl had been sick on whose robes, performing the traditional scramble for the carriages — and Fred was doing none of these things because he was very briefly and without entirely meaning to be completely still.
He knew who she was. He would have known who she was even without the summer's context, because Cassius Warrington had been a Slytherin prefect who played Quidditch and dated someone for three years running, and that sort of thing was generally known, the way a lot of things at Hogwarts were known without anyone needing to announce them. But the summer had given him a name — Faith — and standing on the platform at Hogsmeade, Fred Weasley looked at Faith for the first time properly.
She was standing apart from the rest of the Slytherin group. Not dramatically apart — not the kind of apart that announced itself — just slightly to the left of the main cluster, bag on her shoulder, looking at the castle. Her hair was pulled into two puffs high on her head, the kind of natural hair that took up space with complete unapologetic intention, and there were patches of lighter skin at her jaw and her left wrist and the back of her hand — the vitiligo that Fred and George had made exactly one joke about, back in fourth year, before Cassius Warrington had turned from his spot three desks ahead in Potions and said, with the quiet authority of someone who had decided this was the last time he was going to say it: "Don't."
They hadn't. Fred had thought at the time that Cassius was being a bit precious about it. He thought now, standing on the platform at Hogsmeade at seventeen, that Cassius had simply been right before Fred was old enough to understand why.
Because the patches were — he could see it now, even from twenty feet away on a crowded platform — they were actually striking. The contrast of them against dark skin, the white that ran up from her wrist, the single strand in her hair that had gone completely pale against the black. And her face, even at this distance, was the kind of face that would have been very pretty without any of it, and was something more specific and memorable with it. One eye catching the September light darker than the other — one brown, nearly black, one a clear and startling blue.
Fred had not noticed any of this when Cassius was alive, for the obvious reason that when Cassius was alive, you did not look at his girlfriend like that.
He noticed it now, and then he noticed that he was noticing it, and the thought about pretty dissolved into something considerably less comfortable.
She was not looking at Hogwarts the way people looked at Hogwarts. Not the way the first-years looked at it, like a promise. Not the way the returning students looked at it, with the warm tired fondness of somewhere you belong. She was looking at it the way you looked at something you weren't sure you still wanted. Like she was running the numbers. Like the answer wasn't obvious and she was going to stand on this platform in the cold until it was.
"Don't," said George, from directly behind him.
"I wasn't going to do anything," Fred said.
"I know your face," George said.
Fred opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he looked at George, who was looking back at him with the expression he used when he was being very patient about something Fred hadn't said out loud yet.
"I wasn't going to do anything," Fred said again, on principle.
"Good," said George. "Carriage. Come on."
Fred went. He did not look back at the platform.
He had looked twice, which was already once more than he'd intended.
The Great Hall was the Great Hall. It was always the Great Hall — enchanted ceiling doing its thing, candles, long tables, the particular smell of roast chicken that Hogwarts deployed on first nights like a tactical manoeuvre. Fred had eaten this exact meal six times before. He could have described it in his sleep.
He was not, therefore, sure why he was paying such close attention.
First-years sorted, McGonagall with her list, the Hat doing its song — new verse this year, which Fred filed under notable without quite knowing why, except that the Hat's songs had a tendency to be about things and this one had been about things in a way that made the hall go rather quiet. Then Dumbledore, standing at the staff table with the expression of a man who had a great deal to say and was going to say it at his own pace, thank you very much, and Fred was just settling in for the usual welcome-back-eat-your-dinner-mind-the-Forbidden-Forest address when he registered the staff table properly for the first time.
There was someone new.
She was short and rather wide, wearing robes of a particularly aggressive shade of pink, and she was sitting in the Defence Against the Dark Arts chair — which was itself not surprising, given the chair's established habit of being empty by June — but it was the way she was sitting in it. Upright. Hands folded. Smiling. The smile of someone who had been told to smile and was doing it with great commitment and no warmth whatsoever.
Oh, he thought. Oh, that's interesting.
Dumbledore introduced her. Professor Umbridge. The Ministry's new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. She stood to speak — which was apparently a thing she had decided to do, despite the tradition of new professors doing absolutely nothing on the first night except existing — and she said, in a voice like a primary school teacher who'd have preferred a different class:
"Thank you, Headmaster, for those kind words of welcome."
Fred glanced at George. George was watching the woman with the expression he used when he was doing rapid calculations. Lee Jordan had put down his napkin.
She talked about progress. She talked about a new era. She talked about the Ministry's commitment to a standardised, Ministry-approved curriculum in a way that made the word standardised sound like something you should feel reassured by rather than something that should make you sit very straight in your chair.
Fred sat very straight in his chair.
The key skill, he had found, to understanding anything anyone official ever said, was to translate it. His father had taught him this without meaning to, through years of Dad reading Ministry memos at the kitchen table and saying things like "they've phrased it very carefully" in a tone that meant they're lying, but they've done it legally. So Fred translated now, in real time, as Professor Umbridge smiled at the hall.
Standardised meant: we decide what you learn.
Ministry-approved meant: we decide what you know.
New era meant: the last era produced a problem we are currently pretending doesn't exist, and we are going to manage the people in this room very carefully until we can be sure they aren't going to create difficulties.
Our new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, Fred thought, is not here to teach us Defence Against the Dark Arts.
He looked at Dumbledore, who was sitting with a very specific quality of stillness, which was the stillness of a man who had just had his school handed a Ministry minder and was going to respond to this by being extremely, almost aggressively polite.
Fred thought: Voldemort is back. The Ministry is pretending he isn't. So the Ministry has sent someone to make sure the Headmaster who keeps saying he is gets appropriately managed, and that someone is currently standing at the front of the Great Hall wearing the most offensive shade of pink Fred had ever seen.
He thought: I am seventeen years old and I run a business and I know exactly what this is.
He thought, with a clarity that surprised him slightly: this is going to be a problem for everyone in this room, and some of us are going to do something about it and some of us aren't, and I know which one I am.
The feast arrived. Professor Umbridge sat back down. Lee Jordan looked at Fred. Fred looked at George. George was already eating, with the air of someone who had completed his assessment and moved on to logistics.
"Well," George said, reaching across for the bread, "that's going to be fun."
Fred said: "Mm."
He picked up his fork. Across the hall, at the Slytherin table, a girl with two puffs of dark hair and a single pale strand sat between two friends and ate her food and did not look up at the enchanted ceiling once.
Fred Weasley noted this, and turned back to his plate, and told himself it didn't mean anything.
He was seventeen. He hadn't learned yet that noting things was how it started.
