It was one horrible hour later. Filch sat, rocking backward and forward, torn between fury and intense anxiety over his cat. Lockhart was bragging about his alleged proficiency at hex-breaking and Arbutus was eyeballing him through his spectacles (nobody could eyeball quite like Professor Arbutus, with his beetling black eyebrows and piercing dark eyes magnified to truly gigantic proportions by his wire-rim glasses).

"Professor Sprout has recently managed to procure some Mandrakes," Dumbledore was saying as Professor McGonagall continued to inspect the cat through her own spectacles.

Harry, miserable and distracted as he was, couldn't help but notice what a very strong presence of general bespectacledness there was in the room. There were Professors Arbutus and McGonagall, who seemed to use theirs as a sort of focus lens for their wrath or displeasure; there was Professor Dumbledore in his twinkly gold half-glasses, which framed his twinkly blue eyes, and often seemed a mere extension of his general benevolence; and there was Professor Potter, whose rectangular glasses seemed (to Harry) quite as much of an affectation as the carefully rumpled hair and the disorderly robes. He smelled a bit like alcohol, Harry thought. The way he had last Halloween, when he'd come tearing in with his leg all gnawed up to look at the troll Harry, Ron, and Hermione had knocked out. Was it something about Halloween, Harry wondered, that made him drink so heavily?

"I'll just whip that up, must have done it a hundred times…" Lockhart was saying, as they discussed Mandrake potion for the petrified cat.

"Excuse me," said Professor Arbutus sternly, but Harry thought he caught a glimmer of a smile around the corners of his mouth (who could smile at Professor Lockhart? How could any intelligent person not wish to simply bash him over the head with his own oh so glinty teeth?!). "I believe I am the Potions Master at this school."

There was an awkward pause, and Professor Dumbledore turned to the four students who sat in a group, awaiting judgement.

"You may go," he said, and Draco shot to his feet and fled. Ron followed suit, though a little slower for the sake of his dignity. Hermione thanked the Professor and left, calling to Ron to slow down and not run in the corridors, and Harry followed her example.

"So Filchy thinks you did it?" guffawed Draco as Harry caught up to him. "As if you could! As if you would dare! Not when…" And here he glanced quickly at Hermione, and then laughed again.

"I don't get the joke," said Harry. "So I saw some papers in Filch's office…what is a Squib, anyway?"

"Mutation," said Draco casually. "Really kind of sickening. Wizard parents whose progeny…that's kids, in case you didn't know, Weasley…have no magical ability. Like the opposite of a Mu—ggle-born."

"It's not a mutation, Malfoy, it's just a thing that happens, it's no one's fault. And many of them go on to live perfectly normal lives in the Muggle world, or even in the wizard world." Then Ron snickered in spite of himself. "It's not funny, of course, but as it's Filch…"

Hermione looked deeply disapproving. "Can you imagine?" she said softly. She turned to Draco. "Malfoy, you've lived your whole life in the wizarding world, surrounded by wizards, loved and petted and adored by wizards, you've always known that someday you'd go to Hogwarts and be brilliant and clever and universally adored…can you imagine if you'd been born like that, without any magic? Seeing it but never being a part of it? Ron, think how you'd feel, you've got five wizard brothers and a witch sister and two magical parents, imagine if you had to look at them every day of your life and see them doing all these wonderful magical things and you could never, ever…"

"All right, all right," said Ron hastily. His face had sobered considerably. "I get it."

But Malfoy sneered. "That's just it, Granger. We weren't. We were born better than they, with our talents all intact. Even you're better than a Squib, you know."

"No one's born any better than anyone else, Draco," she said severely. "It's just what we make of ourselves. There have been great Muggles as well as great wizards, and you know what, I bet there have been great Squibs."

"Not what I would call great," said Draco.

"But you would refuse to call them great simply because they were Squibs," Hermione pointed out. "I could bring you a Squib who had cured cancer or something," ("What's cancer?" Ron and Draco asked together) "and you would dismiss him out of hand because he was a Squib. Every time Professor Arbutus mentions a Potioneer of the past who wasn't a pure pureblood, you lose interest. Isn't it a person's accomplishments and not their birth that makes them great?"

"That's absolute bosh," said Draco. "No, think about it. What about you, yourself? You were just born smarter than, say, Longbottom. More arrogant and insufferable, sure, but smarter. And that makes you better than him, from a certain point of view. That wasn't anything to do with your education or anything, that's just how you were born. But he was born pureblood. Why shouldn't that make him better than you, the same way how smart you were born makes you better than him? Some people are just idiots, and some people are just Muggle-borns."

"But why should it make her any worse?" Ron demanded. "What does it do, what's the difference? If she can do better magic, why should who her parents were make any difference?"

"Because she doesn't understand. You heard her just now…both of them. They don't even know what a Squib is. They don't know any of the important things, about our society, about the way we live. They're handicapped, just like Longbottom in his brain."

"I must just say that Longbottom is not handicapped, he can be quite clever," said Hermione.

"Longbottom? Neville Longbottom? Sludge-for-brains Longbottom? What world were you born in, Granger, that thinks of Longbottom as clever?! You must be the most brilliant person ever to come from there!"

"Must you be reminded that he came before you in Herbology?" said Ron.

Draco made an "oh, well, Herbology," gesture with his hands.

"But what I was about to say is, if we are handicapped, it's not because of our birth, it's because of our upbringing," went on Hermione. "And that can be changed. After all, what is this school for?"

Harry quietly ignored the fact that they had missed Draco's turn to his dungeon, and he whispered the password to the Fat Lady when they arrived at the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room. He was enjoying this discussion, and had no intention of letting it end prematurely. Sure enough, Draco followed them through the portrait hole, so engaged in his rebuttal of one of Ron's points that he barely noticed what he was doing.

"What the hell's he doing here?" demanded Angelina Johnson, who was standing with Fred and George and Lee Jordan in front of the fire.

Draco stopped in his tracks just as the portrait hole swung closed behind him and realised where he was. He backed up and was just about to push it open again when Hermione and Harry simultaneously grabbed a sleeve of his robe.

"He's my guest," said Harry. "Our guest."

"It's not allowed," said Angelina. "Did he hear the password?"

Harry glanced at Draco. "I don't think so, but knowing him, he probably already knows it," he said. "Besides, when have we ever cared about what's allowed?" he asked, eying Fred and George's packets of Fillibuster Fireworks, which they had taken apart and had been examining with large magnifying glasses perilously close to the fire.

"But Harry," said Angelina in a slow voice, like one talking to a baby (everyone else was staring at Draco in a kind of dumb horror), "he's a Slytherin."

"He's not here to spy on the team or anything," said Ron, to Harry's surprise.

"That's not what I meant…" said Angelina, but Oliver Wood, who was polishing his broom again, broke in, "So what is he here for?"

"He's having a bit of difficulty with the idea that blood-purity doesn't bestow upon its possessor all the gifts and privileges of the gods," said Hermione.

"He's what now?"

"He's being a git about Muggle-borns," said Ron. "Says they're not as good as purebloods."

"I…" said Draco.

But that was the end of it.

Harry had never seen an entire House assemble the way Gryffindor did at these words. Several people who had been sitting down stood up, and one or two who had been standing sat down. Fred and George actually crossed the room to where Draco was still struggling to get out of the portrait hole; each took one of his arms and steered him into a chair (not taking particular care that his feet avoided obstacles on the floor, Harry noticed).

And they all began to talk.

Harry had thought he enjoyed Hermione and Ron arguing with Draco. This was something else. It seemed like everyone had something to say.

Percy Weasley, his back to the fire, his Prefect's badge glinting prominently, launched into a speech about the importance of cooperation between magical and non-magical peoples (it was half word-for-word recitation of his Muggle Studies textbook and half one of his father's earnest tirades).

Angelina Johnson, flanked by Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell, started talking about all the damage that kind of pureblood supremacy had done to friendships and families in their immediate acquaintance. Alicia, whose uncle was a Squib, talked about how much she had loved him as a child, and then her parents had taken her aside one day and explained why none of her friends would talk to him. She said it had pretty much broken her heart.

Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas pointed out what Ron had already mentioned—that Hermione was a better witch than anyone in the year, most of whom were either half-bloods or purebloods. They also brought to Draco's attention the fact that Dean had no idea whether his biological father was a Muggle, Squib, pureblood, half-blood, or anything, so what were purebloods supposed to think of him? Were they just supposed to reserve judgement? What if it turned out his father had been a Malfoy or something (Dean shuddered when Seamus suggested this)? Would they respect him more, when absolutely nothing had changed about Dean himself?

Ron himself perched on the arm of the sofa and began telling Malfoy about all of the brilliant things Muggles had done—the sort of things that would appeal to Draco, like lock-picking and semi-automatic guns. Fred and George produced a Muggle firecracker and various other contraptions and devices that Harry was fairly certain their parents didn't know they had.

Hermione perched on the other arm of Ron's chair (Harry watched in fascination as they rocked backward and forward with their speech, but never once fell off or into each other, it was like a balancing act, like they had choreographed it) and began trying to offset the Weasley brothers' enthusiastic defence with facts of her own: Muggles had written incredible music, made incredible pictures, written incredible plays, all without magic.

Colin Creevey stood in the corner snapping photographs and occasionally adding something cool that he had discovered about the wizarding world, and saying that if there weren't any Muggle-borns allowed at Hogwarts he wouldn't be able to learn any of it. That didn't seem particularly helpful to Harry until Colin started into a story about how he had once accidentally hurt his little brother Dennis with magic when he didn't know what he was doing, and how glad he was that they were teaching him not to hurt people at Hogwarts.

Fay Dunbar, a shy half-blood Harry had never had much to do with, though she was in his year, took a more factual approach. She started talking about all of the parts of a wizard life that wouldn't have been possible without Muggles. Apparently her father, a Muggle, and her mother, a witch, talked about that kind of thing a lot (Seamus added his voice to her, too). Her friend Alice, a Muggle-born, took the opposite viewpoint, one not too different from Colin's: she said that wizards ought to help Muggles, the way Muggles had supported and helped wizards in the past, not because they were better, but because they were all human and ought to take care of one another. She agreed with Draco on one point: she said that having magic was like having an extra talent, an extra skill. But she said it didn't make them better than anyone else, because Muggles could do a lot of things that wizards couldn't, like drive cars. Fred suggested that she meant that Muggle-borns were the best of all, because they could do magic and drive cars, and everyone laughed, including Draco.

There were a lot of other little arguments made, not all of them vocal. The way they interacted with each other—the way they interacted with Draco—seemed to say a lot.

Draco, of course, argued fiercely against every point put to him. Harry could almost see him thinking, most of the time, "This is just a lot of Mudbloods and blood-traitors, who cares what they think, anyway?"

He dismissed almost everything the Weasleys said right away, on the basis that they'd been raised by a Muggle-loving father around flying cars and spark plugs. Hermione said that this was Bulverism, and had to explain to Draco and the entirety of an interested Gryffindor House what exactly that meant, which entailed explaining the concept of formal logic, and what a fallacy was. Arbutus, Harry thought, would have been proud.

Draco thought that Alicia's family should have cut the Squib off as soon as they found out what he was, and spared her the pain of having to associate with someone as vile as that. Alicia burst into tears at that, and Neville piped up for the first time all evening and asked when they were supposed to decide that, since he hadn't shown any magical capability until he was eight. Somebody muttered that he hadn't shown any yet. Someone else, one of the girls, told a story about her great-great something or other, who according to family legend hadn't done anything remarkable or magical until his thirty-ninth birthday, when he had suddenly leapt off a cliff in a suicide attempt and skimmed down the face of the cliff, across the water at the bottom, and all the way to the other side of the lake, ending up in a tree with a new appreciation for life and a pet squirrel that brought him messages, like an owl. Draco said that was rubbish and the girl said excuse her, she knew her great-great whatever and he had told her that story himself, and even if it was an exaggeration the part about not doing any magic until his thirty-ninth birthday was true, and the girl herself had seen him charm a dog to speak Swahili, so there.

He said that something would have changed about Dean, just the way something would change if you found out his father had been a murderer, or a king of somewhere. It was all about what was in his blood, and blood would out at some time or other. But Dean said he'd still be the same person he was all along, and treating someone different because of who their parents were was silly, even if everyone did it.

He said that Muggle-borns notoriously didn't have control of their magic, and that some people said they should be imprisoned or restrained, to keep them from hurting people. This was shouted down almost immediately, as the case of Hermione Granger, Muggle-born and witch extraordinaire, was again brought to the fore. Percy and Hermione elaborated a little on a recent magical theory that children who had the least control of their magic earliest in life often became the most powerful wizards, and the others asked incredulously if Draco really thought that people like Colin—tiny little Colin, with his enormous eyes and curly mouse-coloured hair and ever-ready camera—should go to prison, even if he was a little annoying? (Harry muttered this in an aside so Colin wouldn't hear).

He said that Muggles hadn't done half so much for wizards as wizards had done for themselves, and that having an extra talent did make you better, in the objective sense of the word better. (They argued over definitions for half an hour). He also said that doing things for wizards was where Muggles belonged—serving their betters. Then Hermione asked if he wasn't giving Muggles a little too much credit…if Muggles could serve wizards, didn't that mean that there were some things they could do that wizards couldn't do for themselves? Or wouldn't, Draco pointed out. But didn't that make Muggles stronger than wizards, if they would do things that wizards wouldn't? Or stupider, said Draco. Hermione this time brought forward her own parents, who were dentists, and asked Draco point-blank if he knew what a bicuspid was. Draco said that didn't make him stupid, it just meant he didn't know something, and Angelina crowed that that was what they had been saying all along, and that point was won.

Around three in the morning, somebody looked at a clock for the first time, and Draco leapt to his feet as if electrocuted and bolted for the portrait hole. Hermione ran after him with the last of the Invisibility potion she had been saving from last year, and told him not to get in trouble, and then he was gone.

Everyone looked at each other a little awkwardly and cleared their throats. In true Gryffindor style, they had each forgotten everything else in the thrill of a fight, and now they realised that they had just spent the better part of six hours shouting at a twelve-year-old boy about his ancestral beliefs.

"Well, if one sheep goes astray, doesn't the shepherd go after him?" asked Seamus after an embarrassed pause.

"Sheep?" said Ron, furrowing his brow. "That's one of those metaphor things, isn't it?"

"Everyone, lights out!" bellowed Percy. He began flapping his arms like an angry bird and shooing them all out of the room toward their various dormitories. "And you," he said to Ron, who was still perched on his sofa arm and talking to Hermione.

"Get stuffed," said Ron cheerfully.

Percy looked almost apoplectic, but he calmed himself down and turned to Harry.

"Really a very brave move, bringing a Slytherin here," said Percy. "Unorthodox, and certainly against the rules, but very brave. I hope it may do him some good."

"I hope so, too," said Harry. "I'd love to see one of us in the Slytherin common room, though. What'd they make of us, I wonder?"

"Mincemeat, probably, said Ron, standing up at last and causing the chair to overbalance and Hermione to fall.