Rain pitter-patted through the iron bars and onto the chilly glass window pane, alerting the occupants in the small flat of the coming storm. Storms in the middle of August, such as this one, were not uncommon. People had trouble explaining the intense and spontaneous torrents. Unable to connect them with the ocean, sun or planets, they just decided that the only possible explanation of the strange weather they had been experiencing for the past fifty years was magic.

The room was divided into two sections. On the left hand side, there was a rickety sign that read “Witches” and on the right, an equally as old sign read “Wizards.” She followed the other girls in front of her to the left side of the room, and started looking through the clothes. None of the clothes had patterns or writing on the front. Lottie picked a black and a red top, two pairs of faded jeans, and a green sweater. Everything looked as though it had been worn before.

“As this school is based on fighting the darkest of all evils, this will be the most important class you will take.” Lottie noticed that most of the professors so far had gone through great lengths to explain why their class was the most important. “It is important, especially in our situation to move quickly, and cover everything in depth. Nightly reading is vital, since I will not explain that information, assuming that you have the knowledge to build off of it.”

Lottie dropped her bag where it was and ran down the stairs to her dormitory. The dorm was empty, and she collapsed onto her bed. She hadn’t expected any of it to be like this. She was magic, but she couldn’t even unlock a door without a hair pin, while the rest of her class had mastered it two weeks before. She still hadn’t made a friend, and her parents never wrote back.

“I was trying to get past all of you! It’s not my fault if that’s nearly impossible!” Lottie pushed Colm, sending him to the ground.

“Whoa, first years!” the Maelioric prefect ran up to Lottie who was still glowering at Colm on the ground. “Take it easy.”

Ignoring the prefect, Colm whipped out his wand and shouted, “Phelantio!”

The camp was different now. Or maybe Lottie just never noticed what she was living in. It was no longer just a rough place for a child to grow up, but a real prison.

She peeked out from behind the tapestry. The suit of armor had moved. It held its hand out, as though waiting for somebody to put something in its palm. Lottie pulled out her key. The suit opened its hands wider.

Maelioric stood in the middle of the hall, patiently waiting for the students’ babble to die away. “Thank you all for cooperating so early in the morning,” he said to the students. “I assure you this shouldn’t take long. We’ll have you to your classes in no time. We are just going to perform a simple spell on each of you in turn. The easier you make this for us, the easier it will be for you. After that we will either tell you to sit down and enjoy your breakfast quietly or follow one of the teachers to a chamber a little ways down the corridor.”

“I think you’re in the wrong House,” Lottie chuckled. “You’re going to be horrible at disguises.”

“Not that you’re very good at much else,” called a voice from behind them.

Lottie didn’t need to turn around to guess who it was. Nobody else she knew made remarks that stupid.

The girl knew she wasn’t supposed to be out at this hour, but the owl she had received from her grandmother seemed more than urgent and the Three Broomsticks wasn’t very far away...

“I just hate it! I hate this entire war—it only hurts everybody. The only way I can help my family is by not seeing them and becoming completely detached from them. I don’t want to fight anymore. I just—just want to run away!”

Palmyitor laced her fingers on her desk. Her dark eyes pierced Lottie, sending pins and needles rocketing up the back of her neck. Tapping her long, painted fingernails against the desk, she carefully surveyed Lottie with raised eyebrows.

Lottie could feel her mind being pulled apart and rummaged through. Her stomach lurched as echoes from past conversations slowly grew in volume. Familiar voices shot through her head—Andrea’s, Colm Scrivener’s, her mother’s… Frantically, she

“He’s in a good mood, huh?" Andrea asked, perched in an alcove a few feet above the ground.

“I don’t understand his problem. Waterman too—she was cursing and swearing at me the entire time. Why is everyone so angry with me?”

It was easier this time to break through Andrea’s mind. The pinpoint of energy glided through the air toward her and a very different emotion filled Lottie. Inexplicable grief made her eyes water with pain. Horrible things were going to happen to her if she didn’t fall to her knees and pound the floor with misery. “Can’t you do something?” It was Andrea’s voice. Lottie head pounded with sadness. “Sometimes—” Stainthorpe this time “—we have to choose between what is right and what is easy.”

“It happened at Hogsmeade,” she said in a whisper. “We were taking a break to meet with some of our old professors to ask questions and—suddenly, Death Eaters surrounded us.”

She stuck it on the tiny table beside Andrea’s bed and tiptoed out of the dormitory. The castle had succumbed to silence. Lottie’s own breath was magnified. Her own pulse was deafening—it roared in her ears, but it couldn’t have been as loud as the thoughts careening through her head; all of the old, dark portraits along the wall were snoozing, leaning their heads against their frames.

Something in front of her exploded. Lottie froze in her tracks and spun around. “Watch it!” she shouted to two teenage boys dueling fiercely before her.

“Hey—Lottie?” Andrea called from the front of the Entrance Hall. “We’re about to go.”

Lottie pushed past François to join the others. He put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She sighed. “Goodbye.” She rushed to Andrea’s semi-invisible side. François did not follow her.

She stopped at the Palmyitor clock and clambered inside after setting the time. The common room was packed. Everywhere she turned, somebody was laughing or shouting across the room. Lottie felt sick to her stomach. Her vision was a blur of bodies and quills, the fire crackling hazily in the corner. She spun around, searching for an armchair, rubbing her forehead furiously.

Her heart pounded in her throat. She pulled her wand out and pushed the doors open to the Great Hall. What seemed like every student turned their head as she ran down the aisle between the Maelioric and the Palmyitor table. She could see Malfoy, with his stupid, manicured eyebrows arched in surprise.

The Hall was silent as Lottie pounded down to the staff table. “Sectumsempra!” she shouted.

A stranger sat, observing the students with a look of distaste. He talked to no one, and yet appeared to be the object of the professors’ undivided attention. Professor Dyer leaned over his plate and murmured something to Professor Seward, the Flying teacher, who shrugged and shot a quizzical glance at the intruder. His dark hair masked his face, but something about the man seemed oddly familiar to Lottie.

“Ever since that first class, Charlotte, your first duel with Edgar—ever since that day, I knew you were different—talented.”

“Erm—thanks,” Lottie croaked.

“You have a capability for cruelty far more evolved than any of your classmates. You know what you need to survive. You know and you are willing to execute it.”

Lottie sat proudly among the other fifth years. She joked loudly with Andrea about the underclassmen and recounted her younger days with a touch of superiority. Now that she was officially older than half of the school, she had earned that right. Andrea didn’t partake, but she did laugh heartily at all of Lottie’s comments. The only person who did not seem to be enjoying the feast was Hermione.

“Rowe?” It was Maelioric. He caught up to her in three long steps.

“Yes, Professor?” she asked, turning around to face him.

He crouched down so that he was eye to eye with her. The earnestness in his face reminded Lottie of the day he came to pick her up from the camps. “You’ve got a good friend, Rowe,” he said, smiling warmly. “Just remember that. Don’t throw her away.”

Hogwarts broke into view suddenly. Lottie wasn’t the only one who audibly gasped. If she had thought Alsemore was impressive, it was nothing compared to this. Hogwarts was a dark, brooding castle, but twice the size of Alsemore. It had towers sprouting out of each side, courtyards that sprawled across acres, and brown twisting paths set against bright green grass. The grounds were complete with forest, stretching on for about a mile.

Locked in a chamber with nowhere to go and nobody to help her, Lottie glanced at the Sorting Hat and slipped it on. Maybe it could help.

“About time,” groaned a voice from the Hat.

Lottie looked up and met his brown eyes. “You fought them for me?” As Colm nodded, Lottie mustered up her courage and placed her hand down on the table. Colm’s eyes grew wide and he reached out and laced his fingers with hers.

They passed the source of the smell and Lottie had to hold her hand to her nose to keep from retching. A pile of carcasses lay rotting in the corner. Every sort of creature imaginable lay there—pigs, horses, rats—Lottie thought she even saw a human arm. Colm nudged Lottie and pointed to the arm too. “Is that—”

“Yeah, it is,” Alcippe said coldly.

“No! I’m not!” Andrea shouted. The window behind her shattered. The frigid January wind blasted in with a shower of glass. “Colm is disgusting—he doesn’t care about anything.”

“He cares about me,” Lottie snarled.

“That’s what you think, but I wouldn’t trust him with anything. And I swear—you’ll pay if you put your trust in him.”

A haze overtook the cramped battle. The Death Eaters were strong, but Alsemore was putting up a good fight. Lottie could see why everybody praised Maelioiric’s dueling prowess. He was, without a doubt, the swiftest dueler she had ever seen. The three Death Eaters he had been fighting before lay at his feet, and he had taken on a fresh set of four.

Posy Rowe smiled, but no sense of warmth reached her eyes. She glanced at Nathaniel and at the three, brutish looking men before turning to Lottie in an apologetic way. Lottie understood exactly what they were doing—knew why the men were here and why everybody spoke in hushed voices.

“You can’t do this,” Lottie said, shaking her head. “You can’t—it’s suicide.”

“I have been away. After leaving Hogwarts, I went to America and went to spread the Dark Lord’s message.”

The Death Eater narrowed his eyes and straightened up, as if to examine her fully. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

Lottie etched a casual smirk into Shaula’s face. “Why would I lie?”

“Ah—our untraditional candidate has arrived,” Lucius said, examining the unconscious Muggle with a distasteful expression.

“Am I the first one?” Lottie asked.

Lucius looked up. “Always the competitive one, are we? Yes, you are the first one.”

Lottie wasn’t paying attention. She looked at the bed; it turned out to be nobody she recognized, but the scene was no less tragic. It was a young girl who lay in the bed. Lottie presumed it was a first year, though she looked much younger. Her eyes were shut—maybe she was sleeping—but the flinching look of agony in her face made Lottie think otherwise. Her skin was so pale that it was nearly translucent. Her hair was brown, but it was wispy, and in the light, almost looked white. It was like looking at an elderly woman in a child’s body.

They were in the center of a cavernous room. The walls had been almost completely knocked down, but there was a foundation where Lottie could see the ruins of several doors. They spun in a sort of half-hearted away, circling them lazily. Everybody else seemed too enraptured to speak. Almost all of the walls had been knocked down, so they could see everything from where they stood. Palmyitor began to walk and led them in the direction of what looked like a wall of glimmering light.

“Stop the whole Ministry!” Andrea shouted. “Take it down. They’re doing more harm than good these days. Half the people they’ve executed recently are on our side. We could just get rid of Barkesdale. It would be easy. We could free Lottie—”

“Rowe has gotten herself into this situation. It is not my responsibility to rescue her.”

He had spent half a century grieving. Fifty years of tears had passed, and fifty years worth of prayers might finally come true.

Lottie took only half a moment to catch her breath before slowly inching towards the doorway and peeking out. There was nobody there. She stood still for a moment among the corpses and inhaled slowly. She had been acting on instinct, not thinking, not feeling—just killing, but now everything was catching up to her. Her breath caught in her throat. Her stomach filled with boiling fear. She didn’t want to die—she couldn’t die—not like this.

There was stillness and there was silence. It was not the thick sort of silence that filled uncomfortable conversations or a sorrowful moment; it was just an absence of sound, simple and ever present. It was not dark, but it was not light either. Everything was neutral, or just complete nothingness.

They stepped outside. Over the bodies of friends and foes, they carefully walked and wrenched open the doors. The sun had risen at some point during the course of the battle and the light flew into the castle. Lottie drank it in greedily, like she had never seen the open sky before.