Dawn Rivera

Magic is Might

Danny calls from halfway down the stairs to the kitchen, "We've got news, and you won't like it."

The kitchen is almost unrecognisable. Every surface now shines: copper pots and pans have been burnished to a rosy glow, the wooden table top gleams, the goblets and plates already laid for dinner glint in the light from a merrily blazing fire, on which a cauldron is simmering. Nothing in the room, however, is more dramatically different than the house-elf who now comes hurrying towards Harry and Danny, dressed in a snowy-white towel, his hair as clean and fluffy as cotton wool, Regulus's locket bouncing on his thin chest.

"Shoes off, if you please, Master Harry and Master Dathaniel, and hands washed before dinner," croaks Kreacher, seizing the Invisibility Cloak and slouching off to hang it on a hook on the wall, beside a number of old-fashioned robes that have been freshly laundered.

"What's happened?" Ron asks apprehensively. He, Hermione and I have been poring over a sheaf of scribbled notes and hand-drawn maps that litter the end of the long kitchen table, but now we watch Harry and Danny as they stride towards us and throw down the newspaper on top of our scattered parchment.

A large picture of a familiar, hook-nosed, black-haired main stares up at us all, beneath a familiar headline that reads:

SEVERUS SNAPE CONFIRMED
AS HOGWARTS HEADMASTER

"No!" say Ron and I loudly.

Hermione and I are quickest; we snatch up the newspaper and begin to read the accompanying story out loud.

"'Severus Snape, long-standing Potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was today appointed Headmaster in the most important of several staffing changes at the ancient school,'" reads Hermione. "'Following the resignation of the previous Muggle Studies teacher, Alecto Carrow will take over the post while her brother, Amycus, fills the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.'"

"'"I welcome the opportunity to uphold our finest wizarding traditions and values - '" Like committing murder and cutting off people's ears, I suppose! Snape, Headmaster! Snape in Dumbledore's study - Merlin's pants!" I shriek, making Harry, Danny and Ron jump. I leap up from the table and hurtle from the room, shouting as I go, "We'll be back in a minute!"

*

"I do that every time. Oh, here they are," Ron adds, craning round in his seat to watch Hermione and I re-entering the kitchen. "And what in the name of Merlin's most baggy Y-fronts was that about?"

"We remembered this," Hermione pants.

We are carrying a large, framed picture, which we now lower to the floor before seizing our small, beaded bags from the kitchen dresser. Opening one of them, we proceed to force the painting inside, and despite the fact that it is patently too large to fit inside the tiny bag, within a few seconds it has vanished, like so much else, into the bag's capacious depths.

"Phineas Nigellus," I explain as I throw the bag on to the kitchen table with the usual sonorous, clanking crash.

"Sorry?" says Ron, but Harry and Danny look as if they understand. The painted image of Phineas Nigellus Black is able to flit between his portrait in Grimmauld Place and the one that hangs in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts: the circular tower-top room where Snape is no doubt sitting right now, in triumphant possession of Dumbledore's collection of delicate, silver magical instruments, the stone Pensieve, the Sorting Hat and, unless it has been moved elsewhere, the sword of Gryffindor.