18th June 1978

"I think I've seen you more often throughout this school year than half of my professors." An exaggeration, but a playful one. If we hadn't had met under these circumstances, I thought I could've liked him.

Usually he put effort into holding small talk for a few minutes, but that night he got straight to the point.

"Portia, what happened tonight?" Mr. Doyle asked me, a crease between his eyebrows. He looked about as tired as I felt.

"Karma." I replied, a vague truth, not what he was expecting to hear. "Punishment for our sins." Another truth that I knew he wouldn't understand.

"Are you going to elaborate on that?" he questioned me, as he took his seat in front of me.

We sat opposite each other at a table in the Astronomy Tower. It felt a little mocking that I could see the whomping willow from here, but Doyle wasn't doing it on purpose, I was sure. It was simply one of the few places where we were undisturbed, where there were no students.

The Ministry officials and Dumbledore had separated our group, and even though there were only five of us now, they were still struggling to find unobserved corners to keep us in.

Before I could answer his question, not that he would've liked my answer, the door opened again and Dumbledore and Professor Flitwick walked in.

"Professors." Doyle greeted them with a bow of his head.

I couldn't find it in myself to greet them. I just didn't care. All I wanted was to be back with my friends.

"Miss Capulet," my favorite Professor said gently, "we found the letters. You need to tell us the truth."

But did I? Hadn't we been through enough already? What would it change now?

I shrugged these thoughts off, cast one last glance at the whomping willow and finally turned back to the three men, who were staring at me expectantly.

"Well, if you truly want to understand tonight's events you need to understand everything that lead up to it and to what happened in November."

"We are keen to hear your story, Portia." Dumbledore said softly, but the usual friendly twinkle in his eyes had diminished.

"Can I see my friends first? I want to know how they are doing." I wondered, despite knowing how unlikely it was that they'd allow me to see them.

"Shaken, like yourself. Tired, I assume. Most have gone to bed already," Dumbledore replied, shaking his head, "I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to see them yet."

"They've gone to bed?" I couldn't help but repeat.

"We inter, uh, viewed them already." I took note of Doyle's mistake, how he stumbled over the word 'interviewed', since it was so clear that he was going to say 'interrogated'.

"I'm the last on your list." I concluded quietly, more to myself than to them, but Flitwick nodded anyway.

"They look up to you," he said, "You have become their leader."

This thought alone caused a wave of nausea to wash over me.

"This is where things started to escalate," I muttered, pushing down the bile that rose in my throat, "The roles had shifted, but the tensions had been growing since July."

I didn't pay attention to the three men for a few seconds, thinking back to that fateful day when everything had changed. The day that I met Junia.

"Portia, go on, please." Doyle broke the silence after a while, impatience slipping into his words.

I wondered for a moment how much this case must've haunted him. A middle-aged wizard with two children a couple of years younger than us. Was he scared that they'd meet people like us? Maybe he was scared that they'd turn out like us.

"With all due respect, Sir, another one of my friends just died today," I reminded him somberly, "I need a few minutes to collect my thoughts."