Minerva's Song

It was early morning, still dark outside and nowhere near time to get up. Jamaica and Jessel slept soundly, tired out after the festivities of the night before. Minerva was awake, and lying very still. She had woken up, suddenly, a few minutes ago. She had heard a noise, a thud downstairs. It was probably Kosey playing, or one of her parents going to the kitchen to fetch a drink. Still she felt uneasy, and strained to listen out for other noises, breathing slowly through her nose.

There was a creak. That was the bottom stair. Her parents knew it was there and usually avoided it because of the noise it made. Perhaps they had forgotten. Minerva reached out and took her wand from her bedside table. She knew she wasn't supposed to use it in the holidays, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Not that anything was the matter, of course. Everything was fine. Probably.

There were footsteps now, on the stairs. Whoever it was was trying to be very quiet, but Minerva had very good ears. It sounded as though they were wearing shoes. Who would be wearing shoes in the middle of the night? Her father had a pair of slippers for the house and her mother never wore shoes indoors.

Now the thudding of her heart was threatening to drown out the footsteps as they reached the landing. Minerva took a deep breath. What should she do? Should she call out for her parents? Should she go and see?

The footsteps approached the bedroom door and Minerva stifled a sudden sob, sitting up and wrapping her arms around her knees.

Suddenly, the door swung open and all Minerva saw was a tall, dark figure, and a voice said:

'Petrificus...'

But Minerva aimed her wand squarely at the figure and cried: 'Expelliarmus!' just like they had been taught in Defence Against the Dark Arts class, so loudly that her voice rang in her own ears.

The stranger thudded backwards against the door frame and they must have dropped their wand because they bent down, and Minerva screamed again to wake her parents, whose room was down the corridor. Jamaica and Jessel were awake and they began to scream too. Minerva dragged Jessel from her bed and hurriedly pushed her under it as the stranger got up again, muttering another incantation.

'Expell...' Minerva managed, but the stranger must have finished his spell, because she and Jamaica were both thrown to the floor.

Minerva tried to raise her wand again, but she couldn't move, not even her eyes. She heard a loud crack, but she was unable to see where it had come from. All she could see was the ceiling and a swooping shadow...

'Stupefy!'

And suddenly Minerva's father was there and the light came on and her mother was there too, asking her if she could move, and her father performed a counter-curse and suddenly she could sit up, and Jamaica was sitting up too.

There was a man lying on the floor, stunned. A long, sharp sword lay on one side of him, and his wand on the other.

Jessel crawled out from under the bed and into her mother's arms, Jamaica and Minerva scrambled to be included and Sarah hugged the three of them close as Domnall levitated the unconscious intruder out of the room.

* * *

A large dollop of time seemed to pass by without Minerva realising it, because the next thing she knew, she, Jamaica and Jessel were sitting on the sofa, wrapped in blankets with mugs of cocoa, while a dozen or more Ministry officials wandered the house. Minerva's mother seemed at a loss for what to do, as she darted between the kitchen and the sitting room every few moments.

One of the Ministry people, a plump, smiling lady with a notebook in one hand and a quill stuck behind her ear, came and sat down in the armchair opposite the three girls.

'Hello, dears,' she smiled. 'My name is Dinah, and I was just wondering if I might ask you a few questions? Is that alright?'

The three of them nodded.

'Well, then, first of all, may I have your names? I believe you must be Minerva and you must be Jessel, but who might you be, young lady?'

'I'm Jamaica Jordan.'

'She's my best friend,' Minerva explained. 'She's staying with us for Hogmanay.'

Dinah nodded and smiled and wrote this down.

'Now, Minerva,' she continued, 'I hear that you're the hero of the hour, so I'm just going to ask you a few questions about your intruder. If you feel upset at any point we can just stop and do something else for a while, alright?'

'Alright.'

'Good girl. First of all, could you describe to me what happened in your own words?'

Minerva did so, being careful not to leave anything out. Dinah asked her a few questions, then asked Jessel and Jamaica a few questions too.

'Thank you girls, that was very helpful,' Dinah said once she had finished. 'You're all very brave.'

'Luker?' called a voice from the kitchen.

'Oops, that's me,' said Dinah. 'I'll see you young ladies later, I hope.'

As she hurried away, the three girls looked at one another.

'I still don't understand,' said Jamaica. 'Who is that man? Why did he come to your house?'

'He wanted to kill us!' said Jessel. 'Didn't you see the size of that sword? He was going to chop us up into tiny bits!'

'But why?' asked Jamaica.

Jessel shrugged. Minerva shrugged off her blanket and padded across to the kitchen door. She opened it and entered.

Her parents and several Ministry officials were standing around the kitchen table, on which were laid the sword and the wand. The wand was vibrating slightly, and glowing with a faint orange light.

'We'll need to do a few more charms to be sure, but it seems that...' one of the men said.

Sarah noticed her presence, and let out a cry of alarm.

'Min! You shouldn't be in here!'

She hurried to her daughter and put her arms around her.

'But Mama, I want to know what's happening! Nobody will tell me!'

'Because you don't need to know, young lady,' said Domnall.

'But I do!' Minerva protested. 'I want to know who that man was! Why he was in our house!'

'Min, darling, we don't want you to be scared...' Sarah began.

'I am scared! A stranger came into our house with a sword! I just want to know why!'

She stopped, surprised at herself for the outburst.

'She did manage to disarm him,' pointed out Dinah, from the other end of the kitchen. 'Perhaps she ought to know, Domnall?'

'I'll find out anyway,' said Minerva.

'I daresay you will,' Domnall sighed. 'Alright then, Dinah, would you please explain to Minerva what's going on?'

'Certainly,' said Dinah, winking at Minerva. 'Let's go into the living room to talk.'

So they did. Jamaica and Jessel had not moved from where they sat, and Minerva and Dinah resumed their seats.

'What do you think is going on?' Dinah asked.

'Was the man who came into our room the same man that killed Minister Pevensie?' Jamaica asked.

Minerva's stared at her friend. That had not even occurred to her.

'Jamaica, we think you may be right,' said Dinah. 'The man who broke in is called Wolfram Jesper. We found this out by tracing his wand. Minerva, what we were doing in the kitchen just now, was trying to find out what other spells his wand has performed recently. We're expecting to find that he used it to break into the Minister's house, among other things.'

'What about the sword?' Minerva asked.

'We don't know,' said Dinah. 'We have been unable to determine anything about it so far. Experts from the Ministry will be checking it out.'

'But why would he come here?' asked Jessel, bewildered.

'Father's name was in the paper...' Minerva realised.

'That's right,' said Dinah. 'Your father has been the public face of the investigation into the murders - it's very possible that he was targeted for this reason.'

Minerva shivered. It was horrible to think that they might all have been killed, might all be lying dead right now if she hadn't happened to be awake. She pictured the people who were in the kitchen now investigating a murder instead of just an intruder, examining the lifeless bodies of the McGonagalls and Jamaica, trying to find out who had murdered them, instead of drinking cups of coffee and talking quite normally about the intruder's wand.

A little later, some men came to take away Wolfram Jesper. People were still milling about the house, but with the intruder gone, it was easier to remember that it was still not really morning, and Minerva was still very tired. Jessel's eyes were already closing, and Minerva tucked the blanket around her sister's little shoulders and wrapped an arm around her. Jamaica shuffled across the sofa, closer to Minerva, and the three girls fell asleep in a huddle under the blankets.

* * *

Nobody seemed particularly anxious to let Minerva and Jamaica know exactly what had happened that night, and so when they returned to Hogwarts for the new term several days later, they were ill-equipped for the barrage of questions that greeted them.

'Minerva, we saw you in the paper!'

'Jamaica, is it true?'

'Did you catch that man?'

'Did you get murdered?'

'Is he the same man who killed the Minister?'

'What's going to happen to him now?'

'Were you very frightened?'

Minerva and Jamaica, who had barely even stepped into the Great Hall before the explosion of curiosity, stood helplessly, surrounded by eager pupils clamouring for details they did not have. They were grateful when the Headmaster called for order, and they went to sit down at their House tables. Helena, Alison and Mildred continued to whisper questions at Minerva as Professor Dippet made the start-of-term announcements.

'Min, are you alright?' Alison asked. 'We heard the most dreadful stories...'

'What stories?' asked Helena, who was Muggle-born and whose parents didn't take the Daily Prophet.

'About the murderer in Min's house!' cried Mildred. Several teachers shushed her. She shrugged, and carried on a little more quietly. 'Didn't you hear, Helena? A man came to Min's house to murder her!'

'And Jamaica was there too!' added Alison.

But Professor Dippet was glaring at them, and so they were forced to be quiet for the time being.

The questioning began again as the girls got ready for bed that evening.

'So, what really happened, Min?' asked Alison, buttoning up her nightdress.

'I'm still not entirely sure,' said Minerva honestly, but Alison, Mildred and Helena gathered on her bed to hear as much of the story as she knew, gasping and exclaiming at all the exciting bits.

It was a new feeling for Minerva, being the centre of attention like this, and to her surprise she rather enjoyed it, adding dramatic sound effects to the tale as well as dialogue.

'Why can't she pipe down?' muttered Gail to Lucy, quite audibly from her bed at the other end of the dormitory.

'I'm sorry, Gail, were you trying to sleep?' called Minerva. 'It looked to me as though you were reading, but if you'd like to sleep I can stop.'

'Don't stop on her account, Min!' Alison cried. 'We want to hear the end!'

'Yes, ignore her, Min, do go on!' said Helena.

But Minerva felt Gail's glare on her back, and she summarised the rest of the tale in

two sentences before crawling under the covers. The other girls, sighing, went back to their own beds and did the same.

* * *

It was early the next morning when Minerva saw Cerrig for the first time since before Christmas. She had woken early, and gone down to breakfast quickly in order to avoid a fresh barrage of questions. Sure enough, the Great Hall was almost empty, and the people who were studious enough to get up this early were not the types to hound her with questions.

Cerrig was the only person at the Gryffindor table. She sat opposite him and helped herself to some cereal.

'I hear you had an adventure,' he said, nonchalantly.

She shrugged. 'I'd rather not talk about it. How was your Christmas?'

He beamed at her. 'It was marvellous, thank you! We did all sorts of things, all the

family came to stay, my Mam cooked all the best food and we sang all the best songs. Nothing quite like a Welsh Christmas, Min.'

'I'm sure there isn't!' she laughed.

'So when am I taking you flying again?' he asked, once he had finished regaling her with tales of his holidays.

'Oh, Cerrig, would you really?'

'Of course I would - you showed a lot of promise that last time I took you out. It would be a shame to waste your talent. I can see you joining the Quidditch team in a year or two!'

'My father doesn't approve of Quidditch...' she said.

'And what does that have to do with anything? Does he need to know? Anyway, you can't even try for the team until next year, so no point worrying too much about it just yet.'

Minerva grinned delightedly at him.

'So, maybe Wednesday evening?'

'Sounds excellent!' she said, scooping up her cereal with a flourish.

Suddenly, she remember what she had been going to ask him.

'Cerrig, why did you send me a spoon for Christmas?'

It looked as though Cerrig blushed, but he was always so rosy-cheeked anyway that she couldn't be certain.

'It's just a Welsh tradition. For good luck. Well, anyway, I have to go. See you later, Min bach!'

He grinned at her and dashed out of the Great Hall.

Min helped herself to some more cereal, and eventually the others drifted down to breakfast. Helena, always sleepy, arrived just as the post owls were descending en masse towards the tables, and had to run ducking underneath the flurry of feathers to get to her seat. Alison's mother had taken out a subscription to the Daily Prophet for her over Christmas, and she took it from the owl with a dignified air. She unfolded it and spread it out on the table to read the front page.

'Minerva, look!'

Minerva jumped to see the paper, and sure enough, there was a picture of her family. It was beside a much larger picture of the man who had broken into their house - Wolfram Jesper.

'Read it to us, Alison!' said Mildred.

Alison cleared her throat. 'The trial by Wizengamot of Wolfram Jesper, accused of the murders of Jeremy Sherwin, Minister for Magic Sholto Pevensie and Mrs Desiderata Pevensie, was no closer to a conclusion yesterday. Mr Jesper also stood accused of grievously injuring Malva Pevensie and attempting the murder of Ministry Public Liaison Domnall McGonagall and his family, and he was apprehended in the McGonagall family home several days ago. The Wizengamot has as yet been unable to reach a verdict, due to the confusing nature of the crimes.'

Alison paused for breath.

'Keep going, keep going!' cried Helena.

'The weapon used in all three murders appears now to be the fabled Sword of Tenir. Previously believed to be a legend, the deadly Sword was cursed by Helga Hufflepuff so that no man could wield it. Ministry experts have determined that the curse remains, and so it is not possible that Mr Jesper could have used it to commit the murders, although it was found in the McGonagall residence. He certainly performed the Body-Bind Curse on members of the McGonagall family, but did he commit the murders? Turn to page nine for a detailed analysis.'

Alison stopped, turned to page nine, then shrugged and put down the paper.

'That's all?' asked Mildred. 'Isn't there any more?'

'Lots more,' said Alison, 'but it doesn't look as though anyone has any more idea of what's going on than we do, at present.'

'But, why use the Sword of Tenir when a curse would do just as well?' Minerva asked.

'And who could have been the one to use it?' said Helena.

'And why kill those people in the first place?' asked Alison.

And, although they debated the question all the way through breakfast and right through the day, they still knew no more than the Daily Prophet.