Petrified Muggle-Born and Ghost (Five)

Now all forty of his chickens—the chickens he had raised since they hatched—were dead. Their heads had been crushed. Those enormous, rough hands, covered in calluses and scars, would probably shake so badly as they picked up the stiff, cold, headless little bodies that they could not hold on to a single feather.

The next day, potions and amulets of dubious effectiveness sold even faster at the market.

The Owlery was never quiet, from morning till night. Gray, brown, and white owls poured out of the tower windows and returned from the horizon like bees to a hive. The packages tied to their legs grew bigger and heavier. Some came back panting, their wings beating several strokes faster than usual, and took ages to recover after landing on their perches.

The post office in Hogsmeade had probably never been so busy. The owner of Dervish and Banges must have been laughing in his sleep. The "Anti-Petrifying-Gaze Goggles" priced at fifteen Galleons sold out. The owner rushed in more stock from Diagon Alley, raised the price of the second batch to twenty Galleons, and still sold every pair.

The "Egyptian Scarab Amulets" went even faster at twelve Galleons apiece, because the seller said this was the last batch. Only so many had survived from the age of the pharaohs; once they were gone, they were gone. Nobody asked why an ancient pharaonic legacy had turned up at a temporary stall in Hogsmeade, or where the older student selling the amulets had found these "heirlooms."

They simply paid, then clutched the tiny, cold metal charms engraved with hieroglyphs they could not read, as though holding on to their last hope of staying alive.

The corridors grew more absurd by the day. More Pure-blood students appeared in oddly shaped glasses with strangely tinted