As the train pulled to a stop, I breathed a sigh of relief. I wouldn't have thought it was possible for someone to talk for eight hours straight, but Hermione Granger had proven me wrong.
I now knew more about her family than I had about the families of any of my Protectorate team members. I'd learned about her expectations for the future, her hopes, her dreams.... and even her tastes in music.
The horrifying thing was that she reminded me of myself at that age; a naïve, socially maladjusted chatterbox who had only had one friend. The fact that she was bright wasn't going to help her either; she'd already been bullied in her grade school, and she was hoping to make a new start at the new one.
Most of the time I hadn't even said anything. I'd closed my eyes and pretended to nape while she and Neville had played some sort of Wizarding card game involving small explosions.
I'd need to find out how those cards were made; it might be possible to use a lot of them to deliver something more than a joke effect by either altering the spell, or simply rigging a lot of them to explode at once.
As I listened in to conversations all over the train, I also heard Neville starting to haltingly talk. He talked about Wizarding entertainments and some basic Wizarding news. He even brought out a Wizarding newspaper, which I did open my eyes for to look over.
There was nothing about the muggle murders; either the Ministry was concealing things or they hadn't made the connection yet. Neither prospect reflected favorably on them. People needed to know they were in danger, and one of my tasks was going to be to get the world out to muggleborn families.
The fact that the pictures moved was less of a surprise after a week at Hogwarts, but it was still a little creepy. I made a mental note of the appearances of some of the people whose pictures were inside; the Minister for Magic, Malfoy, some of the other governors of the school.
Gringotts was celebrating its five hundredth and seventeenth year without a single robbery. I probably needed to set up an account there, once I got more money. I had a few ideas about ways to make money during the summer. That repair spell seemed like a good start; I'd work extra hard on it.
"I overheard my grandmother talking about the Trace," Neville was saying.
"The Trace?" I asked.
"It's a charm that lets the Ministry know if children under seventeen perform magic," Hermione said. "It's forbidden to use magic when you aren't at school."
"What?" I asked flatly.
"I heard her say that the Trace gets applied the first time a student gets on the train," Neville said. "Before that, the Ministry has no idea of whether we do magic or not... or at least not any more than they do for adults. They've got a lot of people watching for violations of the Statute of Secrecy."
My fists tightened against my pants and forced myself to stay calm. That was why Snape and Dumbledore had insisted that I come here and waste time riding all this way... and I'd completely bought it!
It took time for me to get my anger under control; apparently younger brain chemistry was different enough that it was a struggle.
Maybe it was because I'd thought I had a handle on Snape. He'd lied to me, and I hadn't known it. Of course, given that he was a double agent, lying had to be a particular skill of his, but still.
Mostly, the Trace was something I was going to have to find my way around. There hadn't been anything in the library that I'd seen about it, but they'd probably limited the information so that clever students couldn't find their way around it.
Even Legilimency and Occlumency had only had passing references. I hadn't found anything about how to actually do either of them, and only the bit about avoiding people's eyes had been remotely useful.
I suspected that censors had periodically purged the library of anything that the people in power considered to be dangerous; it was possible that they'd simply been moved to the restricted section, but I suspected that even that information had probably been purged.
To get the good stuff I was probably going to have to go to Knockturn Alley.
I stewed and fumed about it for much of the rest of the trip, especially when I learned that the Ministry didn't care about magic performed around other wizards; it was supposedly done in the interests of secrecy, but it effectively meant that muggleborns had a disadvantage at school.
Snape probably hadn't warned me because he'd figured I wouldn't have gotten on the train. He'd been right, of course. If I'd had to ride on the outside of the train to avoid the Trace I would have. I wouldn't have enjoyed eight hours in the wind, and it would have been dangerous, but it would have been worth it.
The problem with being a child was that other people always thought they had the right to make decisions for you.
By the time the train reached its destination I'd managed to calm down, although I still planned to let Snape know about my displeasure.
"We'd better change," Hermione said. "We're supposed to be wearing our robes by the time we get to the station."
I scowled.
Wearing robes really wasn't any worse than some of the outfits Glenn Chambers had tried to set me up with over the years, although truthfully I'd refused to wear most of those too. Still, there was no point in sticking out any more than I already had.
I started pulling my sweat jacket off, only to notice that Neville was blushing a bright red.
"What?"
"Maybe Neville should step out of the room," Hermione said.
"It goes over our clothes," I said incredulously. "Who cares?"
Despite my protestations, Neville insisted that we turn our backs when he changed. I kept some bug eyes on him of course, because getting stabbed in the back by an eleven year old would be embarrassing.
"How did you get your robes in that bum bag without wrinkling them?" Hermione asked.
Bum Bag... right.
"Magic," I said. I stuffed my hoodie into the bag.
The look Hermione gave my bag was avaricious; she was probably wondering how many books she could stuff in one of them. The answer of course was about six hundred.
The train slowed to a stop, and I used a spell to lower my trunk. Neville and Hermione's trunks were in a forward compartment; apparently they'd been forced out by upper years but hadn't been forced to take their trunks with them.
Hermione's trunk was incredibly heavy. I suspected that she'd filled it with books, and while I could understand the urge, she hadn't seen the Hogwarts library yet. We were told to leave it, that our trunks would be taken care of. If my trunk wasn't empty I would have been suspicious and upset.
We emerged onto a tiny, dark platform. It was dark and cold. I still hadn't figured out where in England we were; like many Americans my sense of geography was limited to the western Hemisphere.
A bellowing voice called out for first years.
The man who was waiting for us was huge; in my home reality I'd have called him a Case 53. No ordinary person was over nine feet tall and as wide as he was, he had to weigh over a thousand pounds. He'd probably be slow simply because of all that mass, but just carrying that weight meant that he had to be incredibly strong. I'd have to treat him with all the caution that any Brute received.
"Mind yer step," the man was saying. "Firs years! Follow me!"
We followed him down a dark trail; I could see the other students stumbling in the dark, but I could sense the area around us through my bugs. Hermione grabbed my hand, and I didn't pull away. Despite the fact that she was a chatterbox, she was bright, and might be useful over the next few years.
It was a steep, dark path, with trees on either side.
We came around the corner, and I could hear the other students gasping at the sight of Hogwarts. It did look pretty amazing in the moonlight, and part of me still wanted to squee in delight.
I crushed that part and threw it in a lockbox.
We were at the edge of the lake now. In the dark, its surface was black, the moonlight reflecting off its surface.
"I've heard that the giant squid likes to eat mu....muggleborns," Malfoy said. He was talking to a redhead and a black haired kid in glasses. He glanced at me. "But I'm sure it would make an exception for blood traitors like you."
They were on the other side of the group, and Malfoy probably thought I couldn't hear him.
"No more than four to a boat!" the man yelled, and dutifully, we began to fill the boats that were arrayed in front of us.
I ended up in a boat with Hermione and Neville, and one other kid I didn't know, another heavyset girl who looked miserable in her robes. I'd listened in on her compartment on the train, and apparently some of the pureblood girls had been making fun of her for the entire trip not for being fat or ugly, but because she was apparently a half-blood.
We reached a cliff and a curtain of ivy that I'd never seen before, and the large man told us to keep our heads down. We found ourselves in a tunnel, and moments later, the man was knocking on a large door.
"Don't forget your toad," I told Neville absently as we stepped out of the boat. He'd left it in the boat, and he gathered it up gratefully.
We entered the entrance hall. I'd seen it before, of course; it was larger than the house I'd grown up in. However, it looked a lot more impressive by torchlight than it did during the light of day. We were led into a small, empty chamber across from the hall.
"The firs years, Professor McGonagall," the man said.
Professor McGonagall looked us all over. Her eyes narrowed as she saw me, and I suspected that Snape had been telling tales.
She was a severe looking woman, and she launched into a speech about the four houses and how once we were sorted, it would be our family.
Wasn't that the spiel that every gang gave? That they were going to be your replacement family? I suppose that creating school sanctioned gangs probably cut down on unofficial, outside gangs like we'd had in Winslow, but it seemed like a good way to get people to fighting.
Maybe the British were just a little too genteel for that sort of thing, although that wasn't the impression I'd gotten from Snape.
She suggested that we clean ourselves up before the sorting, and then she left with one last glance at me. I smiled at her.
About twenty ghosts appeared and there were screams from some of the children. I watched them curiously. As far as I'd read, they weren't able to hurt us, but they'd make great spies and messengers with their ability to float through walls.
One ghost with a ruff turned toward us. They greeted us as a class, and made some sort of inane invitation to Hufflepuff.
I noticed several of the ghosts watching me closely as they left, and I wondered if they'd been watching me since I'd gotten here. It would be just like Snape to warn everybody against me.
"Were they staring at you?" Neville asked in a low voice.
I shrugged.
A moment later we were led out into the great hall. There were gasps as the other students looked up, and despite myself, I was impressed too. I hadn't seen the Hall during the evening, and seeing the night sky above us was particularly impressive, as was all the floating candles.
I'd have gone with Chinese Lanterns were it me, mostly because I always thought they were cool, but it was impressive enough. Seeing the hundreds of faces staring at us, I had to wonder if any of them were already part of their parents group. Had some of them already committed atrocities, and were they getting ready to do the same to me?
Or were they just genuinely bored and curious and distracted and all the other emotions I saw on their faces?
"It's bewitched to look like the sky outside," Hermione said. "I read about it in Hogwarts a history."
I saw several of the other children looking at her, visibly irritated by the tone in her voice. Had I been like that when I was younger? Oblivious to the effect that I was having on people?
Was I still like that?
"I know," Neville whispered back. "My Nan came here and she told me all about it."
That was another advantage that the purebloods had over the muggleborn; they knew what to expect when they got here. I did hear the redhead wonder where the troll we were supposed to fight was.
Professor McGonagall put an incredibly dirty wizard's hat on a stool. I'd worn cleaner clothes when I was homeless and literally living in a hole. The thing looked terrible.
When it started to sing, I had to fight to keep my face stoic. The thing was creeping me out... it had a mouth on the front of the brim, were we putting our heads up its butt? Maybe just up its neck hole? I couldn't imagine any scenario where putting a dirty sentient hat on our heads was going to be a good thing.
"The hat's a thousand years old," Neville whispered. "It's been worn by every student that ever went to Hogworts."
Absently, I checked the hat for lice and other nasty critters. I didn't detect any, thankfully, although I wouldn't be able to detect birds or mice unless they too were infested.
Apparently Neville was right, and we had to put on the hat.
Malfoy looked like he was anticipating it, but a lot of the other students looked worried. I kept my face stoic. I didn't yet have a large enough of a swarm to push my emotional responses into the insects, but at the rate I was going it wouldn't be long.
The one thing I couldn't do was to show fear. Children were little monsters, and while Emma, Sophia and Madison had been outliers, I'd seen a lot of casual bullying in my days as well. There had been a lot of kids who had laughed when I'd been shoved in the locker, and a much larger group that had stood by and done nothing.
Kids tended to pile on when someone went down, and they were vicious. They hadn't yet developed the ability to empathize with people, and their idea of morality was "don't get caught."
The fact that even most of the eleven year olds were a little larger than I was did not help anything. I found myself thinking of them as being older than they were simply because they were the same size as me. I still felt like I was the same size as I was before, when I'd been awkwardly tall and a full adult. It was simply that the rest of the world felt like it was outsized.
Kid after kid was called to the front and the hat was plopped on their heads. It was obvious that the hat made a decision quickly with most of them. With a few the hat took a little longer.
They were going in alphabetical order, which meant I would be in the middle of the pack. Occasionally I would see McGonagall reach a point in her list where she would hesitate, and then clear her throat awkwardly.
All the murdered children must have been scratched out; she had the grace to look somewhat upset about it, even if she didn't warn the children about the danger.
"GRANGER, HERMIONE," McGonagall called out.
Hermione was staring at me as the hat was put on her head. The hat seemed to debate with her for a short time, and finally it called out, "RAVENCLAW!"
Hmm... she'd been talking about wanting to be in that other house. I hadn't bothered to do a lot of research on the houses, because really, who cared what bedroom I slept in?
I knew that Slytherin was the house where most of the racists stayed, and looking over at their table, I could see unfriendly looks directed in my direction.
Soon enough I found myself next on the list. I forced myself to look cool and confident, even if underneath I was feeling anxious.
A mind reading hat seemed like an awfully convenient thing to have around if you were a Dark Lord. Simply have everyone wear the hat, and then have the hat narc on anyone who was planning to stab you in the back.
Using it on eleven year olds was confusing. What could they possibly be thinking that was of interest to anyone?
Was the hat collecting blackmail information for the administration?
Using children to spy on their parents might not be the worst idea, especially if they didn't know they were doing it.
I'd simply have to let the hat know what would happen if it didn't keep my secrets to itself. Certain species of moths would lay a hundred eggs in clothes each, and each larvae would hungrily devour cloth. An entire swarm of them would make for an entirely different sorting ceremony next year.
"HERBERT, TAYLOR!" McGonagall called out.
"It's Hebert," I said quietly as I reached the stool.
I took a deep breath, and then I climbed up on the stool, looking out at the sea of expectant faces. Then I set the hat on my head.
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"Reveal what I am and I will end you," I muttered in my mind. I sent an image of bugs munching away at the felt of the hat, destroying it even as I was dragged away screaming. I wasn't about to let a piece of magical tinkertech force me into whatever Wizards used for a prison.
After all, I was essentially in the position of being the monster is every movie about a possessed child; was it possible for the Wizards to exorcise me, and if they did, what would happen to me?
"A vicious little thing, aren't you?" the hat said cheerfully. "If it makes you feel any better, I do not read memories; I only read personality and desires."
"You're reading my mind right now!"
"Your surface thoughts only," the hat assured me. "It was decided to limit me this way a long time ago, lest Wizards try to steal me to learn the secrets held in the minds of their enemies' children."
"I... don't understand."
"Children see things," the hat said. "Often things their parents do not want known. Placing all of those secrets in the mind of a hat would create an incentive for blackmail. At the very least if would give the Headmaster power that he was never meant to have."
"So you only read my personality," I said. I wasn't sure I believed it, but I'd listen in on the Headmaster's office to see if it had been lying later. If it was, I'd follow through with my threat.
"I can tell that you are an adult in the body of a child," the hat said. "Interesting... this is only the third such case that I've seen in over a thousand years."
"There have been others?" I asked, suddenly interested. Knowing what had happened to them might give me a clue as to what might possibly happen to me.
"One I had arrested," the hat said. "He was a predator attempting to harm the children of this school. One was Merlin himself, born again after being several hundred years old. The third I will not speak about."
"How did it happen?" I asked. "Was it an accident, or was it something that was deliberately done?"
"We are here for your sorting," the hat said. "There are people waiting. This is a discussion to be had at a later time. I can see that you are quite resourceful, so I am sure that you will eventually find me again."
"You won't out me to the staff?"
"I sense no intention to harm any of the students, although you are quite pragmatic about what you are willing to do. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."
"So the sorting?"
"Hmmm....very difficult. Children are easier to sort than adults. Their minds are unfinished, and still developing. They think that they are sorted into the houses based on qualities that they have, but that's not the case at all."
"Oh?"
"Children are sorted based on qualities they wish to have. Some children wish to be seen as brave... some as intelligent. Some wish to think of themselves as loyal, and some wish to believe that they are cunning and ambitious. The truth is that elements of all houses exist in everyone, although some have very little of some and rather a lot of others."
"And me?"
"You are very bright," the hat said. "And you'd do well in the house of the Ravens. Yet you don't value knowledge for itself, but as a means to an end. You don't care whether you are seen as intelligent or not."
"People who are bright don't have to advertise," I said. It was something my mother had told me when I was young.
"You are very loyal, yet you have betrayed your closest friends," the hat said.
"I thought you couldn't read my memories."
"It is close to the surface," the hat said. "I see flashes here and there, because those are the memories you associate with loyalty. You don't give trust easily."
"If you could see my memories you'd know why," I said.
"You are brave, but you don't care about glory," the hat said. "Being seen as brave means nothing to you."
"Getting the job done is the important thing," I said. "Brave or not brave, results are what matters. I'd rather supervise a group of smart cowards as brave idiots, as long as they were brave enough to do what had to be done."
I'd given that speech to some of my recruits in the Wards. Bravery meant nothing if you were dead and you failed. Sometimes you might have to sacrifice yourself, but only if the reward was worth your life.
Things like destroying the Slaughterhouse or stopping Scion had been worth that, and so from a certain point of view I'd been brave. Other than my first night with Lung, and a few other missteps, I'd never been stupid.
"Strangely enough, the best fit for you is the house that you will fit in the very least. The house of the serpent is filled with people who are much like you."
"Don't compare me to that group of blithering racists," I snapped.
"Not all of them are," the hat said. "Some just lack the cleverness to be in Ravenclaw, the bravery to be in Gryffindor, or the loyalty to be in Hufflepuff."
"You said it was desire, not character that mattered," I said.
"How they see themselves is what matters," the hat said. "A child can be clever without seeing himself as being that way, or desiring to be seen that way. He can lie to himself, and wish to join a house he is ill suited for."
"And what happens then?"
"I try to dissuade them," the hat said. "But unless it is completely inappropriate I give in to their wishes."
"All right," I said. "Put me in Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff."
What little I knew suggested that the Gryffindors were essentially the jocks, and the Slytherins were the people who were trying to kill me. I could probably have the Hufflepuffs following around by the end of the first year, and the Ravenclaws might take a little longer, but I'd get them too.
"That, Miss Hebert is why I can't place you in either," the hat said, in an admonishing tone. "I have a duty to this school. I am willing to allow you to remain as an adult because I can sense that you are not here by choice, and because you have nowhere else to go. I am not obligated to make it easy for you."
"Now wait," I said.
"You would have been a perfect fit for Hufflepuff when you were younger," the hat said. "But life has forged you into something else entirely now."
"I'm not ambitious," I said.
"Aren't you?" the hat asked. "You rose to the top of your former profession.... whatever that was... in a remarkably short time."
It sounded more and more like the hat was lying about the mind reading thing.
"I did what I had to do,' I muttered. "I just fell into being a villain, and then into being a hero. Aren't the Hufflepuffs supposed to be hard workers?"
I'd heard Neville blithering on about how he thought he'd end up as a Hufflepuff during the eight hours on the train.
"Any house can have hard workers, but you will never just be one of the rest," the hat said. "You will always stand out."
"Slytherins are known for determination, for resourcefulness, and cleverness," the hat said. "Can you really say that those are not defining characteristics of your personality?"
"I'll have to kill someone if you put me there," I said. "You said you have to think about what's best for the student body."
"I haven't sorted a muggleborn to this house in twenty years," the hat said. "Because I suspected that none of them would survive. You, though are like a cockroach... you thrive in conditions where others would fail."
I sent an image to the hat of thousands of cockroaches eating away at it. I could probably only manage a hundred, but they could probably do enough damage in eight hours that he wouldn't be usable any more by the next morning.
"I'm incapable of fear," the hat said pleasantly. "I think it has to do with not having glands. I'm a thousand years old, and if it's my time to go, I'm perfectly willing."
"A bribe, maybe?" I asked.
What might a hat want? Could it actually want anything?
"I'm a hat, Miss Hebert. I don't eat or drink or spend money. All I want is to perform my duty, have an occasional good conversation, and sleep."
Was the hat suicidal? A thousand years of having to root through the minds of eleven year olds would have driven almost anyone crazy.
"I can't very well perform my duty if I am destroyed," the hat said. "But I can say that I'm sending you to SLYTHERIN."
Damn it.
It had said the last part out loud, and I could see hundreds of faces staring at me. McGonagall plucked the hat from my head and gave me a gentle push to get off the stool.
I stalked over toward the Slytherin table, sitting down next to Millicent Bulstrode. The hat knew I was bluffing when I talked about destroying it; I needed to know what it knew about the body jumpers in the past, and I could hardly destroy the only being old enough to remember what had happened.
There were strange looks coming from some of the older students; presumably they'd heard something of the nonsense Malfoy had been spouting.
Malfoy was sorted into Slytherin shortly later; I noticed that he very carefully sat as far away from me as possible, leaning over to whisper to the boy sitting next to him. I could have tried to listen to him, but I was trying to control my own anger.
The hat had figuratively dropped me into a nest of vipers.
The Potter kid was sorted into Gryffindor; I'd read some kind of nonsense about him killing the Dark Lord as a baby. He didn't look that dangerous; of course, Bonesaw hadn't looked particularly dangerous either.
Neville went Gryffindor. Apparently he still very much wanted to be brave.
I didn't really care about any of the rest of them. I caught Hermione looking over at me from the Ravenclaw table; apparently she'd been sure I was going to be sorted there, and she'd thought she'd have a ready made friend.
Thoughts of simply stealing the hat and leaving the school flashed through my mind, but it was still possible that I was in more danger outside than in.
Food appeared on the table; it was a feast like I hadn't seen in a while. The food I'd been served in my room had been simple, but filling. This was a smorgasbord; multiple types of meat, multiple types of potatoes, vegetables... if they fed these children like this every day, it was a wonder that all of them weren't fatter than they were tall.
The Slytherins at the table closest to me were staring.
"I don't think I'd heard the name Hebert," one of the older students said. "Are you a half blood?"
"Mudblood," I said, stuffing my face with a pork chop.
At the look of shock on her face, I said. "What? I'm a mudblood. Who gives a damn?"
Now all of them were looking at me. One of them said slowly. "Are you a Yank?"
That's what she was going with? I suppose I could have tried lying and claiming to be a half-blood from America, but Malfoy had a big mouth and would quickly set everyone straight.
"Red white and blue."
The girl looked like she wanted to ask how I'd ended up being at Hogwarts, but her companion nudged her into silence. I spent the rest of the mean in silence.
The meal ended as quickly as it began.
Dumbledore was speaking suddenly.
"-the Forbidden forest is forbidden for a reason. I would also like to introduce our new Defense against the Dark arts professor, Professor Theodore Travers."
A distinguished looking slender man stood up and gave us all a small nod.
"The third floor corridor is currently under reconstruction after the... unpleasantness last year. In related news, the Weasely twins are banned from Hogsmeade for the rest of the term."
I heard loud groans from a couple of redheads on the Gryffindor table.
"And now the school song," he said.
I quickly learned that Wizards had not mastered the art of carrying a tune.
"And now it's time for bed."
"First years," a dark haired witch called out. "To me."
We gathered around her.
"My name is Gemma Farley. I am a prefect. Michael here is the boy's prefect. If you have a problem, you come to us. However, I think it's best you not have any problems. I will now take you down to your quarters."
The other first years were staring at me as we made our way downstairs.
"The entrance is guarded and requires a password,' Gemma said. "It changes every two weeks. It will be posted on the notice board inside the common room. You will not allow anyone from another house inside, and you will not let them know the password."
She turned to us.
"Our house does not have a good reputation, and there are members of the other houses who would love to hurt us. The entrance to the common room is our first line of defense, and you will not let that be breached, or the entire house will turn against you."
"The password for this two weeks is Purity," she said.
The Slytherin common room was done up in green, with greenish lamps and chairs. The decorative skulls probably wouldn't have done their reputation any good.
The window out to the bottom of the lake was spectacular though.
"There is one important rule in this house," Michael said. "And that is that whatever you do, don't embarrass the house. Do what you have to do, but don't get caught. If you do get caught, we will not help you. Professor Snape realizes that there is bias against us by the other houses, so he prefers not to punish us in front of them. However, if you disappoint him, there will be consequences."
He was looking at me with undisguised loathing.
"Girls, with me," Gemma said.
I found myself in a room with two other girls. From the Gryffindor rooms I'd expected there to be more.
"Hi," I said. "I'm Taylor Hebert."
"The mudblood," the girl I did not know said. "I remember. Tracey Davis."
Millicent Bulstrode was staring at the both of us, looking like she wanted to cry. "They stuck all of us together."
"What?"
"We're half-bloods," she said. "And you're a mudblood. They didn't want to have to room with us. Didn't want to dirty themselves by having to stay in the same room with a halfblood."
"The first years weren't given a choice," I said. "It was a decision made by... whoever makes the decision. It's actually better for us; did you really want to have to sleep in a room with four other people?"
I'd prefer to sleep with no one else, but that would have been racism too blatant even for this place. I had a feeling the purebloods would prefer to have separate water fountains, if this place even had those.
I sighed and checked my bed. It was the one with the trunk, and it was the closest to the door. There weren't any obvious traps.
Sitting down on the bed, I closed my eyes.
"We've got to teach her a lesson," Michael the prefect was saying. "I can get around the stairs, and with any luck, she'll be out of this school by tomorrow morning."
I could hear mutters of agreement from two of the other boys.
I sighed, and I pulled a sock out of my fanny pack. I began filling it with galleons. The other two girls were staring at me.
"What are you doing?" Millicent asked.
"Nothing important," I said. "Have you girls ever played a game called marbles? It's a muggle game they play in America."
"Is is like exploding snap?" Millicent asked. "Because I don't like that."
"No," I said. "Come over here by the door."
I quickly showed them how to play, although neither of them seemed very interested. I heard Gemma calling out that it was time for lights out.
"Aren't you going to clean those up?" Tracey asked.
"I'll take care of it in the morning," I said.
The girls went to bed. I laid down, but I didn't take off my clothes. I sat in the dark and I waited.
Last edited: Mar 24, 2019
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View contentShayneTMar 26, 2019
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For the next hour I lay in the dark and listened to their whispered plans about what they wanted to do with me. There were three or four others who were egging them on, but who were not planning to join in. I took careful note of their names and faces.
To their credit, most of the other Slytherins didn't seem to know much about it; they went to bed and stayed there. I had to suppose that even if a moderately racist Slytherin was annoyed by having a mudblood in the house, first years weren't that important to most upperclassmen.
They were planning to catch me while I was asleep. Some of the things they planned to do to me were sickening, but they did not plan to kill me. They simply wanted to make my life in Hogwarts so terrible that I'd drop out on my own.
That meant that lethal measures were likely off the table, and that made my job a lot harder.
Hits to the head with a weapon could always kill; hit someone hard enough to knock them out, and you risked permanent brain damage or death.
Yet many of my ordinary strategies would have to be changed. Even without the threat posed by their wands, their sheer size was a huge problem. They had a major advantage in reach on me, and I simply didn't have the strength or mass to manage a leg sweep on them.
There wouldn't be any comparison at all between their level of strength and mine. They were each likely four times as strong as I was, and there were three of them.
Furthermore, although my improvised blackjack was going to be painful, I didn't have any idea how many hits I was going to make before the sock split and the whole thing broke down. I'd used six pairs of socks, one inside the other, hoping to get more use out of it before it broke, but I still wasn't certain. I would have used more, but six pair were all I owned.
I'd have to treat them like I was treating brutes, and I wouldn't be able to limit the damage I did as much as I would have liked because if I didn't do enough then they'd get hold of me. Surprise, skill and the environment were my only advantages.
If I'd had my extendable baton, I'd be less worried about this fight. As it was... well...
Sighing, I got out of bed. It was time.
"What's going on?" Millicent asked sleepily.
I'd have to watch out for that; apparently she was a light sleeper.
"Nothing," I said. "Go back to sleep."
Walking over the door, I stood by the side of it. I already had bugs standing on top of the marbles; I'd experimented earlier and they were too small to trigger the tripping spells on the marbles. They were moving them into place.
I had bugs on the boys, especially on their arms. They'd be like gunmen, aiming a weapon except that they wouldn't have to use two hands.
I could hear the boys whispering now with my own ears. It was a sign that they weren't professionals; if they had been, I wouldn't have heard a thing until they were using the blankets of my bed to hold me down.
Carefully I pulled the Peruvian darkness powder out of my pocket and I prepared to throw it down with my left hand. I'd spent a lot of time working with a Cape whose power involved darkness, and so I was experienced in working in the dark. While I hadn't been with the Undersiders for years, I'd kept up my practice in fighting in the dark, or sometimes when simply surrounded by swarms of so many insects that no one could see anything.
This was my element.
The door opened, and my sap went down, smashing his wand.
The entire world went black as the powder hit the floor and billowed out. A moment later I had brought my blackjack around again, smashing him in the knee. He gave a muffled scream and went down, sliding backward as the first of the marbles went out from under his feet, pushed by my insects.
One body slid back against the far wall, struck by the first, and the third muttered something that sounded like Lumnos. It didn't help.
With bugs moving the marbles out of my way, I stepped out onto the landing. The bugs still weren't as precise as I would have liked, but all I needed was for the marbles to move in and out of a general area.
I ducked as a spell lashed out where I had been; apparently I wasn't as quiet as I had thought.
A hit to the wrist and I heard a crack; it sounded like the third boy's wrist was broken. I heard a scream, and then I leaped aside as the second boy grabbed for my foot. He was flailing around, shoving his friend off of him.
I brought my sap down on his elbow, and I heard something else snap. The sap was slower than I would like; after every attack I had to spend precious seconds trying to bring it around to get it into position to attack again.
I kicked the second boy in the head again and again. Normally I wouldn't have done that, but I was small and weak enough that it probably wouldn't do that much damage. Using the sap would have been lethal.
With wrists and elbows broken, I doubted that the boys could attack with their wands; it was possible that they could use their off hands, though, and so I already had insects carrying their wands back into the room.
"You bitch!" I heard the third one mutter. He was already getting to his feet.
"You can give up now and we'll end this," I said. I moved as I did so, as all three boys lunged for where they heard my voice.
I'd already moved, skipping up the stairs as they slammed into each other. I brought my sap down again and again, hitting them in the shoulderblades, the clavicles and the knees.
Finally, I felt my socks give way, splitting and the galleons tinkling against the stone floor.
My bugs moved the marbles to where they needed to be, and I heard a scream as the boys went flying backwards and down the stairs. This was the most dangerous part, as it was possible that they could break their necks on the way down. As they were mostly prone, I doubted that they would suffer that much damage.
The remaining marbles moved out of my way, pushed by insects, and I stepped down the stairs and into the dim light of the common room.
All three boys were bloody and I saw Draco Malfoy standing at the foot of the boy's stairs staring at us with his mouth open. I had my wand drawn.
"Get Snape," I said. "The boys here had an accident."
He stood there motionless.
"NOW!" I snapped.
Malfoy was out the entrance in a flash, and I could hear him screaming bloody murder.
All three boys were trying to rise to their feet, and I snapped out a Diffindo spell, cutting the arm of Michael's robe. The hem fluttered to the floor and all three of them froze.
I pointed the wand out of them.
"I could have cut your throats," I said. "It would have been easier, and less trouble for me really. This is me being merciful. I won't be again."
I let that sink in. I could see color draining from their faces at the realization that I was telling the truth, although it might also be from their injuries.
Snape was suddenly in the room.
He hadn't changed out of his robes; he'd struck me as the kind to keep late hours, or maybe he'd expected something like this.
"Put the wand down, Miss Hebert," He said. He had his wand out, but carefully not aimed at me. I had no doubt that he'd be able to snap it into place before I got a spell off. Unlike these two boys, he didn't strike me as an amateur.
Professor McGonagall was there a moment later, holding a squirming Draco.
"What's the meaning of this?" she asked.
"These three boys need medical attention," I said coolly. "They were trying to get up the girls' stairs and suffered a fall."
"And I am to assume that the marbles I see on the floor didn't have anything to do with it?" Snape asked dryly.
"I was playing marbles with my roommates by the door," I admitted. "I was going to clean it up in the morning. I didn't leave them out in the stairwell."
My bugs were already pushing them back into the room, so it wasn't even a lie.
"And the billowing clouds of darkness behind you?" Snape asked.
"I must have dropped my Peruvian Darkness powder when I got up to help them," I said.
There was already a crowd of boys gathered by the stairs, staring out at us.
"Your wand, Miss Hebert," Snape demanded. I handed it over, stepping carefully around the boys, although I doubted that they would do anything in front of two teachers. If they would, things were far worse here than I thought.
"Sevarus?" McGonegall asked.
"Priori incantato," Snape muttered. "Hmm...cutting spell, wingardium, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting...."
"I did not cut these boys," I said. "You can check. I've just been...practicing."
I said this as much for the benefit of my audience as for Snape. One of the most important things about becoming a warlord was developing a reputation. I couldn't afford to have any of the Slytherins watching to be able to lie to themselves and think it was an accident.
At the same time I couldn't simply admit that I had beaten the boys with a sock full of galleons.
Some of the boys peering out of the hallway were now staring at me, and I could almost see them connecting the dots in their minds.
"Why have you been practicing the cutting spell so diligently, Miss Hebert?" Snape asked.
"You wouldn't let me have a knife," I said, shrugging. "How else was I going to cut... things."
"She's an eleven year old girl," McGonagall said, shocked. "How did they bypass the defense on the stairs?"
The fact that they were standing around discussing this instead of giving the boys immediate medical attention actually boded well for me. The looks McGonagall was giving the boys were not friendly at all.
"Mr. McCutchin was a prefect," Snape said. The tone of his voice suggested that the past tense was intentional.
"I see," McGonagall said disapprovingly. "We'd best get them to Poppy, and then we'll wake the Headmaster."
I held my hand out, and Snape reluctantly handed me back my wand.
"I will need their wands as well, Miss Hebert," Snape said. "For the investigation."
I nodded, and as I made my way up the stairs in the blackness, I gathered up the galleons that had spilled out on the stairs. I was impressed that the Peruvian Darkness powder still hadn't dissipated; maybe I'd gotten my money's worth after all.
Two of the wands were still intact, and one was broken.
"Go back to bed," Snape snapped at the waiting boys in the hall as I returned. He gestured, and Draco quickly ran to the stairs to join the staring crowd. "I will speak with all of you in the morning before breakfast... except for you, Miss Hebert. I will need you to come with me to speak with the Headmaster, and I suspect that we are going to have a long night."
A moment later, all three of the boys were levitated into the air, and we were walking through the nighttime halls.
"I expected more discretion from you, Miss Hebert," Snape said in a low voice. McGonagall was walking in front of us.
"What else could I do?" I asked. "You knew that something like this was going to happen or you wouldn't have been dressed and ready. Aren't you supposed to protect students?"
"It's generally best to let things...sort themselves out," Snape said.
"How did that work out for you?" I asked.
Looking at him, with greasy hair and teeth the way they were, I could only imagine how it would have been for him when he was younger.
The look he gave me was cold, and I immediately lifted my hands.
"I'm just saying that if you stopped people from hurting each other you might do a better job of turning people into productive citizens."
"The Wizarding world isn't like the muggle world," Snape said. "There aren't as many... protections here as there are there. Those who don't learn to protect themselves will be in trouble."
There was a stiffness in the way he held himself that said it might be personal for him. I probably wouldn't have noticed except that I suspected that I knew how he felt. An ordinary child probably wouldn't have noticed because they tended to barely see their teachers as human.
I remembered being shocked as a child the first time I'd seen a teacher at a grocery store. It had never occurred to me that they had personal lives outside of school. It was like I'd thought they were wheeled into a closet and plugged in to recharge.
Snape wasn't even that old; in his early or mid-thirties, he was younger than my Dad. He'd had a life before he'd gotten into the double agent business; most likely he'd gone to this school. He'd probably been bullied.
How he couldn't understand that bullying had to be stamped out I couldn't understand.
I'd done some research on the subject when I'd worked at the Protectorate, during my minuscule amounts of free time, and I'd been surprised to learn that bullying was worse in rural areas than in urban areas. In the cities, you could be anonymous. You could float from one neighborhood to another, and get away from the bullying that way.
You could change schools. It hadn't worked for me, but a lot of kids did.
In a rural environment, there often wasn't another school for a hundred miles, and everyone knew everyone else. You couldn't change schools and you were trapped. Your reputation as a victim or a bully followed you, and it was hard to change.
That was essentially the problem here. This was the only Wizarding School in Britain, and the nearest one spoke French, which I did not speak.
I could try to go to school in America, but I suspected that the authorities there would be a lot more diligent about tracking down my non-existent parents. They'd likely discover that I was a British child named Millie Scrivener, and they'd send me back.
Or they'd discover that I was possessing her dead body and they'd do something worse to me.
For better or worse I was stuck here, and while I could ignore certain kinds of abuse, I did not want to spend the next seven years dodging attacks around every corner. The only way to stop that was to slap down anyone who attacked me hard and with prejudice.
"It's only going to get worse," I said. "If they keep attacking me. If you don't stop them I will."
"Don't make threats, Miss Hebert," Snape said. "I've given you more latitude than I would another student in light of your... unique circumstances.
"I think you know that I don't make threats," I said.
It was a lie, of course. I make threats all of the time. The difference was that I was perfectly willing to follow up on them.
"Have you heard about Azkaban?" he asked.
"Not much."
"It's the prison our kind use to contain our criminals. We have no other prisons. It is guarded by creatures that drain every bit of joy from the prisoners, leaving nothing but agony and pain. Should they try to escape, the creatures devour their souls, denying them any hope of an afterlife."
"They call that the Kiss, and it is the highest penalty Wizardkind has."
Snape looked absolutely serious.
"I fear that you are on your way to sharing a cell with some of the Dark Lord's worst," he said. "And prolonged exposure to the Dementors will, as their name suggests leave you mad."
"What if you don't have any?" I asked.
"Any what?" Snape glanced at me.
"Any joy for them to devour?"
"Then they will dig deeper. They will steal memories of your father, of your mother. Happiness with friends, first loves, all of it will drain away leaving nothing behind but dust and bitterness."
"Well... that would be bad," I said.
Would I be better off not remembering Mom or Dad? Would it hurt less, and would I miss them less, or would the joy be gone but the pain remain? From the way Snape was talking, I suspected that it was the latter.
"Were you any other student, I'd demand that you tell the truth," Snape said.
"What... you want me to say that I overheard what they were planning, so I waited in my room with a sock filled with galleons, Peruvian darkness powder, and marbles enspelled with a tripping jinx? Who would believe a story like that? I'm eleven years old."
He stared at me.
"The story I'm going to tell is that they were trying to break into my room, they tripped over my marbles, and they hurt themselves on the way down the stairs. Nobody would believe that a girl my size would defeat three upperclassmen without any magic."
"If you don't consider Peruvian Darkness powder and tripping marbles magic, what do you consider magic?"
"Being able to blast them in the face with fire," I said. "Or turn them into frogs. You can do things with frogs."
He stared at me, and then he didn't say anything else as we headed for the Headmaster's office.
Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
2128ShayneTMar 26, 2019View discussion
Threadmarks Meetings
View contentShayneTMar 28, 2019
#4,519
"The injuries were not caused by a fall," Madam Pomfrey said. "These boys were repeatedly beaten with a heavy object before they fell. I have written out a list of all of the injuries."
"Would a sock filled with galleons cause these kinds of injuries?" Snape asked.
Pomfrey frowned. "It would . I'd hardly think that an eleven year old girl would have had the skill to do this much damage. The damage that was done to the joints was carefully targeted to cause pain and incapacitation without being lethal. If the boys were stuck with muggle healers it is likely that they would be permanently damaged."
"You did tell her that Wizards could regrow bones," Snape said.
"Are you sure that she isn't protecting someone?" Madam Pomfrey asked. "Someone larger and stronger, perhaps?"
"A muggleborn in Slytherin?" Snape asked. "Who could she have possibly found that would be willing to go that far in protecting her? She hasn't had any contact with the Wizarding world as far as we can tell."
I wasn't in the room; I was sitting against the wall outside the Headmaster's office back in my usual position, my eyes closed as I eavesdropped. They'd already called in my roommates for testimony and sent them back to their rooms. Millicent had essentially hidden under her covers, and Tracey had slept through the whole thing.
"Miss Hebert has proven herself to be quite resourceful," Dumbledore said. "Apparently she as much as admitted to Severus what she had done before she told us the story she chose to tell."
"Why would she lie?" McGonagall asked.
"Because the story she told is much more damaging," Snape said. "First, it makes them all look like incompetent fools. Second is that she left their motives for entering her room suspect."
"What?" McGonagall asked.
"Entering her room to teach a muggleborn who thought overly much of herself a lesson would make them a hero to the other Slytherins. But this way she has suggested that they were entering for other reasons. It casts doubt that will turn the entire female population against them."
"She's eleven years old!" McGonagall said. "There's no way she should know enough to even suggest..."
"She's an American," Snape said. "Some parts of their muggle culture are less protected than ours."
I grimaced. Was he basically saying that Americans were sluts? My list of grievances against him was growing. I hadn't forgotten about the Trace.
"It will damage their reputation in a way that a simple hazing would not," Snape continued. "And will almost be more painful to them than the beating they were given."
"I thought you were exaggerating when you suggested that there might be trouble," McGonagall said. "I didn't think it was going to be this bad."
"I didn't think the fools would try to directly attack her this soon," Snape admitted."I expected them to insult her, and possibly for her to kick them in painful locations."
He probably thought that because he'd taken my knife.
"If that was all you expected, I doubt you'd have asked me to be there," McGonagall said.
"I've learned to expect the unexpected with Miss Hebert," Snape admitted. "And your presence would quiet any complaints about favoritism toward the muggleborn.
If some of the students were children of Death Eaters, they'd undoubtedly complain to their parents about me. Having McGonagall there would give him cover to be more fair than he otherwise would have been. He'd be able to blame her for giving out punishments.
"My question is how she was able to move around in the darkness that well?" McGonagall asked. "Even transformed into a cat, my vision isn't good enough to pierce that darkness."
"It wouldn't surprise me if she forgot to mention that she'd somehow acquired a Hand of Glory," Snape said.
"That's Dark magic," McGonagall said. "Where could she have possibly found it?"
"She was able to find Diagon Alley without being told about it. It may be that she was able to shop in Knockturn Alley without being snatched up."
"I think Miss Hebert should not be allowed to keep those marbles any longer," Dumbledore said after a moments' silence. "Considering the potential for accidents in a school with as many stairs as we have."
"And what penalty should we assign her?" Snape asked.
"For defending herself? If she was a Gryffindor I'd be giving her points," McGonagall said.
"We'd all be better off if she transferred to Ilvermorny or Beauxbatons," Snape said.
"As an American, I doubt she knows any other languages," Dumbledore said. "Which would leave her ill prepared for Beauxbatons. And she has no one back home."
"She has no one here," Snape said.
"Perhaps having a close encounter with a driven, spirited muggleborn will do your charges some good," Dumbledore said.
Snape didn't say anything. He just stared at Dumbledore.
"Sometimes I think that the house system has done more harm than good," Dumbledore continued. "Because it is easy to think the worst of someone you have no contact with."
He said this like it was a revelation. At least at Winslow the gangs had sprung up on their own. The school hadn't assigned people to gangs.
"So you are saying this girl is an experiment?" Snape asked. "You don't think that sooner or later this is going to happen again?"
I couldn't tell if Snape was trying to defend me, or to defend the other Slytherins from me. Maybe he was doing both. No matter what happened, my situation put him in an awkward position, and it jeopardized his work as a double agent.
There was a strange edge to his voice, along with what sounded like old anger. Had this happened before?
I'd been a double agent before, and I understood that it meant that he could not be seen as being sympathetic toward me.
"With Tom on the rise, I think it's important that the young people hear other voices. Otherwise, it will be all too easy for them to fall into the vices of their elders."
I could almost feel Snape's frustration from where I was sitting.
"We have an opening for prefect that I will fill tomorrow," Snape said finally, giving in. What else could he do when Dumbledore was the one in power.
I couldn't get a read on Dumbledore. He wasn't actively against me like Blackwell had been, but he certainly wasn't doing a lot to help me either.
"That might be wise," Dumbledore said. "Limiting their access to her, at least at night might reduce problems overall. After what happened last year, the last thing we can afford is more strife."
"I've been telling you for years that separating the Slytherins and Gryffindors would make for a more harmonious teaching experience."
"And this year I finally agreed with you," Dumbledore admitted. "We shall see how that experiment goes. I hope you choose your next prefect more wisely."
"I will endeavor to choose someone who will be less...prone to temptation."
Dumbledore said. "Perhaps a half-blood?"
"What shall we do with the boys?" McGonagall asked. "Expulsion shouldn't be out of the question."
"I fear that their families would not be understanding," Dumbledore said. "And might in fact attempt to charge Miss Hebert with assault. As traumatized as she undoubtedly is, I suspect she would not do well in Azkaban."
"They wouldn't put an eleven year old in Azkaban," McGonagall said, sounding shocked.
"I can think of three cases where it was done," Dumbledore said. "Never for longer than three weeks, but that was all it took to ruin those children for life. Children are not meant to deal with that kind of torture."
"Perhaps suspension for two weeks," Snape said. "Which would give everyone time to regain their composure. Considering what I know of their child rearing practices, I suspect that their families will punish them much harder than we can during that time."
"Making them hate her even more," McGonagall said.
"That will happen regardless," Dumbledore said. "If we expel them, they will simply join Voldemort's ranks all the sooner, which may lead to even more grief."
Voldemort? Was that Tom's cape name?
"Suspension it will be, then," Snape said. "Followed by enough detentions that I can make them understand the folly of their ways. Will you contact their parents?"
Dumbledore nodded.
"Then I shall take Miss Hebert back to her room. I dare say that going without sleep won't make her any easier to deal with."
They all rose, and a moment later the door beside me was opening.
"Come along Miss Hebert."
I rose to my feet and followed him. I noticed that he kept his hand on his wand, and he was careful to keep me beside him instead of behind him.
We walked for a couple of minutes before he said "I am surprised that you are not curious about the outcome of our meeting."
"You'd tell me if I was in trouble," I said. "And if they aren't I guess I'll know about it tomorrow."
"Very practical."
"Professor," I said.
He stopped, and turned to face me.
"Could you fix my socks? I seem to have damaged them."
Considering that I only owned six pair, it wasn't a terrible request to make.
He stared at me.
"Leave them out by the foot of your bed, and the house elves will repair them by morning," he said.
"Do they have to inform staff if they find blood on clothes?" I asked. "After all, I'm sure that people have accidents when cutting ingredients from potions."
"Then you will be sent to the infirmary," Snape said. "I would consider it a favor if you tried to keep the blood to a minimum."
"Keep them off of me and I won't bother anyone," I said seriously. "But if they keep coming after me while I'm trying to sleep, I won't have any choice but to make sure that they won't want to."
"You should not have any trouble tonight," Snape said. "I will be placing additional charms on the entrance to the girl's stairwell so that should any of the male students attempt this again, I will be alerted."
I nodded. "And the female students?"
"For the most part, I think you will find their methods to be less physical."
He was saying that the girl Slytherins tended to be more like Emma and Madison than Sophia. I could work with that.
"So they'll be spreading rumors about me and trying to hurt my feelings."
"Assuming that you have any they can hurt," he said. "but we both know you are quite resilient."
"They'll never love me," I said. "But if they leave me alone, I'll be happy to simply focus on my studies."
The only way I was going to be able to live in this world was if the Dark Lord and his followers were dead, or at least incarcerated. But without skills at magic, I wasn't going to be able to make that happen. Even with those skills, I wasn't going to be able to do it alone. I needed to make allies, and I couldn't afford to alienate anyone who wasn't already inclined to be against me.
"I will hold you to that," he said. "You will have a difficult time in the coming days, but if anyone can survive it, I suspect that you can."
I nodded.
By the time I got back to my room, the girls were all asleep.
It seemed as though my head had just hit the bed when I woke to the sounds of movement downstairs. Snape had summoned the entire class of Slytherins to a meeting, and I hadn't been invited.
"Last night, there was an incident," Snape said. "I've heard you talking about it, and it is true. As of last night, three of your male classmates decided to invade the Girl's dorms, abusing a prefect's privileges to do so."
"They were going for the mudblood's room," I heard one of the boys mutter. He'd been one of those who'd been egging the others on.
"As of today, they are having bones regrown," Snape said. "Miss Hebert had no injuries."
The crowd was deathly silent.
"Sometimes I wonder what has happened to this house," Snape said. "It was once the house of the ambitious, the cunning, and the clever."
He stared down at the boy who had spoken. "How cunning was it to charge up to the room of a muggleborn less than an hour after she arrived? What would it have gained them if they had succeeded in somehow terrorizing an eleven year old girl? They acted like Gryffindors, and they paid the price for that."
"The mudblood would be gone," the boy muttered.
"And is she?" Snape asked. "She's sleeping in her room contentedly while three fifth years are in the infirmary with injuries that would have permanently debilitated a muggle."
"She got lucky," the boy said.
"Did she?" Snape asked. "How lucky would she have had to be to come out of encounter like that undamaged? Three boys with wands went up, and three broken bodies came down, and she did not use her wand."
There was a sullen expression on the faces of several of the people in the crowd, but others looked more thoughtful.
Snape shook his head. "If they'd managed to beat her, then they would have accomplished nothing. Now, not only are they suspended, but everyone knows that they are incompetent fools. The stench of that will never wear off."
"The Headmaster and Deputy Headmistress are both aware of this incident, and they will be keeping an eye on the situation. After the events of the last school year, they have sworn to be less tolerant of outright assaults. I think that this incident will make them more tolerant of whatever horrors she decides to perpetrate."
"Because she's a mudblood?"
"And because they still think she's a child," Snape said. "And regardless of the truth, they will believe that she is defending herself."
I could hear angry muttering from the crowd.
"Fighting her is ultimately pointless," Snape said. "Should you win, you will be painted as a bully who picked on an innocent child.... lose, and you will suffer whatever fate she decides to give you, while she will walk away quite free."
"So we just have to accept her?"
"She will never be one of you," Snape said. "And no one can force you to interact with her outside of class. Should you be stupid enough to try to harm her, I am sure that the situation will resolve itself without my intervention."
"So you won't do anything?" A stupid looking boy asked.
I saw several people around him grimace at the question. Apparently they were quicker on the uptake than he was.
"I dislike attending funerals," Snape said. "I won't come to yours."
A moment later he was gone, and the murmuring in the room grew louder. I heard several people shouting at several other people.
"She told me that I'd wake up one night with her standing over my bed," I heard Draco saying. "And there's no ward on the boy's stairs either."
I got up from bed and prepared for my day while listening in the discussions and arguments that followed. I was starting to get an idea of just who fell into what camp; not all of the Slytherins were vocal blood purists, although some apparently were.
The ones who were quiet, who looked uncomfortable when others started spouting racists nonsense; those were the people that I might be able to reach, even though most of them likely would be never brave enough to support me openly.
Still, Snape had done what he promised, and at least tried to keep them from attacking me. If there were some who were too dumb to follow his instructions, then I'd have to do what I could to enlighten them.
Last edited: Mar 29, 2019
1920ShayneTMar 28, 2019View discussion
Threadmarks Classes
View contentShayneTMar 31, 2019
#5,033
Because the girl's prefect was late getting my class schedule to me, I was one of the last people to slip into transfiguration class. I saw an empty seat at the front of the class, and I saw Hermione Granger waving enthusiastically for me to sit beside her.
There was another seat at the back of the room; it would have felt better to sit with my back to the ball, but I didn't want anyone thinking I was anxious or afraid about anything.
I slipped into the seat beside Hermione.
There was a cat sitting on the teacher's desk; I'd heard that McGonagall could turn into a cat, and the cat even seemed to have markings on her face like spectacles.
"How was your night?" she asked. "I've heard some disturbing rumors."
"I'm fine," I said. "Some other people aren't. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson. Has out professor always been a cat?"
"What?" she asked.
"That cat is clearly the professor," I said.
Hermione stared at the professor, who chose that moment to step off the desk and become a human. It was the fastest, and smoothest transformation that I'd ever seen, and I'd seen a lot of Changers back in my homeworld.
The entire classroom gasped.
"Transfiguration is some of the most dangerous magic you will learn here in Hogwarts," she said. "As such, anyone who chooses to engage in horseplay will be asked to leave and will not come back."
How did that even work? Would the student have to make up the work on their own time, or would they simply have an entire branch of magic that they didn't learn by the time they were an adult. The reading I'd done seemed to indicate that transfiguration was one of the fundamental things required to be a wizard.
Presumably almost everything learned in the early years would be of use; it was a little like normal school; the basics learned in elementary school would be used by everyone, while classes learned in high school would be hit or miss. I knew people who hadn't done algebra in twenty years, and I knew people who used it all the time.
McGonagall turned and with a wave of her wand transformed her desk into a pig. It snorted and stared at us, and I found my mind racing. Had she actually given an inanimate object a form of sentience, even if only a low form?
Could the pig be eaten, or would it revert to normal, creating splinters in the stomach that would be fatal..or even splinters in the bloodstream?
Would that be a perfect form of assassination?
I knew better than to ask any of those questions. While I enjoyed prodding Snape, I couldn't afford to alienate McGonagall or any of the other teachers.
"Transfiguration is a branch of magic that focuses on the alteration of the form or appearance of an object, down to it's smallest fundamental parts," McGonagall began once she'd reverted the desk. "You should pull out you paper and quills and begin to take notes."
I grimaced. I'd tried writing with a quill in the past, and I had a tendency to blot the paper with ink. You had to re-dip the quill every three to six words, and I found myself balking at the inefficiency of it.
I watched Hermione, who seemed to somehow have already picked up the trick, and I tried to imitate her. I found that I'd been holding the quill too far upright, which made my lines too thick to make for legible words. She held hers at a forty five degree angle. How in the hell had she already learned to write with these things?
"Transfiguration is very hard work," McGonagall continued. "And it requires a mind that is much more focused than some of the other branches of magic. Sloppiness results in failure. It is important to make firm and decisive wand movements; failure to do so will result in failure."
"There are factors to be considered with transfiguration. First is weight; smaller objects are easier to transfigure than larger. The task grows more difficult the larger the object, until some objects are simply too big to transfigure."
I wanted to ask what the upper limits were, but I figured I'd be able to find it somewhere in the library.
"Wand power is also a factor," McGonagall continued. "Some wands are better suited to this kind of work than others. That does not mean that any of you have substandard wands; wands are simply a tool, and some tools are better for some tasks than others."
"Concentration is the third factor. Allow your concentration to lapse, lose your hold on the mental image of what you are trying to achieve, and the transfiguration will either fail of be incomplete. For that reason, those who are better able to imagine the things they can create often have an easier time."
"Viciousness is a factor with living transfigurations," she continued. "A highly vicious creature is much more difficult to force out of his form, and also to create."
"The fifth factor is more complicated," she said. "And it requires some mastery of mathematics to understand."
I glanced around at the people around me. They all seemed to be engrossed in the lesson, even Malfoy. It made sense. The Ravenclaws liked to be seen as intelligent, at least according to the hat, and the Slytherins liked to see themselves as being sly.
I did catch some of them glancing up at me from time to time, only to hastily drop their gaze when they caught me looking at them.
McGonagall spent the first half of the session laying out the theory behind transfiguration. I found it fascinating. I could see all kinds of possibilities to transfiguration, even given the limitations that had been laid out.
The fact that food couldn't be created from nothing wasn't a surprise. The fact that it could be successfully duplicated was. What was the difference? If I had one hamburger and I made a second one, hadn't that second one come from nothing?
Money couldn't be transfigured, but although McGonagall acted as though it was a law of nature, that didn't make much sense to me. What made more sense to me was that Wizarding money was enspelled not to be copiable. I'd have to try to see if muggle money could be copied, not that I had any intention of becoming a counterfeiter. Even if it was possible, it was undoubtedly against the law, as it would endanger the whole Secrecy the Wizarding world depended on.
It was apparently impossible to bring someone back from the dead. Even if you tried to transfigure a corpse into someone who was alive, the best you'd get was a zombie. No surprise there.
Curse wounds couldn't be healed, even by transfiguration.
The second half of the hour was to be dedicated to the practical portion of the course. Our first task was to change matchsticks into needle.
This wasn't something that I'd done before, and so I watched carefully as McGonagall went through the wand motions.
It was complex, and I could feel the frustration of the children around me as they struggled with the spell. It was the first real spell we were being taught, and apparently even the purebloods weren't doing a lot better.
I saw that Hermione's matchstick was shimmering, and I focused my attention on the match in front of me.
They'd started with matchsticks because they were close in form to the needle. The changes she was asking us to make weren't that difficult; we needed to change the matchstick from metal to wood, and we needed to make it sharp.
I found myself sweating as I forced myself to focus on what a needle was. Over and over I moved my wand; McGonagall corrected my wand movements a couple of times, and she moved around the room doing the same for the other students.
Finally I felt my needle beginning to change. I looked over, and Hermione was doing the same. She was looking at me with an expression of triumph, before looking disappointed when she saw my needle.
Her needle was silvery and somewhat pointed.
Mine was of a dull metal, but it was sharp; I drew blood when I touched the tip of it. I felt a sense of satisfaction. I wondered if I would be allowed to get a supply of matches from the Deputy Headmistress to continue practicing.
Not only would that let me get control over this ability, but there were things that could be done with a large supply of needles.
"Congratulations Ms. Hebert, Miss Granger," McGonagall said. She took our needles from us, and held them up to the class.
"You can see the difference that concentration and focus and sometimes point of view can make in a transfiguration. Neither got the transfiguration completely right, and it is obvious that they focused on different things. Miss Granger focused on changing the metal, while Miss Hebert focused on the sharpness."
I could see that it was true. My needle still had the pattern of the wood on it, while Hermione's was more purely metal. Her needle was blunt, but mine was more functional.
"It's impressive that you both managed to accomplish it on the first day. Five points to Ravenclaw and Slytherin."
As far as I was concerned, Hermione was more impressive. She was actually eleven, and her mind hadn't matured yet, and she was keeping up with me, and she'd already figured out how to use a quill.
Hermione beamed, although she kept glancing at me.
As we rose to leave class, she followed me outside. "Is it true that a whole crowd of your classmates attacked you, and now two of them are dead?"
"Not that I know of," I said. "Unless they died in the middle of the night. I'm sure Professor Snape would have said something."
"So you were attacked," she said, looking scandalized. "What did you do?"
I glanced around. Several of the other students were looking away, but they were obviously listening to our conversation.
"Who says I had to do anything?" I asked. "Aren't the girls stairs guarded in your dorms?"
"They are," she said. "But I overheard Draco Malfoy saying that it was a prefect."
I sighed, and I pulled Hermione into a bathroom. My bugs had already told me that no one was inside.
"As a hypothetical," I said. "If a first year really did put three fifty year students in the hospital wing, would she admit to doing it?"
Hermione stared at me.
"You've been to public school before," I said. She'd mentioned it once of twice during the interminable train ride on the way to school. "What would happen if popular kids with a lot of friends get hurt by a kid they were bullying? What would the school do? Would they pat the kid on the head and tell him it was a good job?"
"No?"
"They'd punish the kid and apologize to the parents of the bully, because their poor little babies got hurt," I said. "A kid who fights back isn't a hero, he's a problem."
"Is that what it was like in America?"
"Is it any different here?" I asked. "Or are schools more interested in protecting themselves than their students?"
She stared at me for a moment, then her gaze dropped to her feet. I figured that someone like her would have some experience with bullying; she would have been too annoying to her peers not to have been. As an adult, she was somewhat less annoying to me, but that was only because I had a different perspective.
"So when that kid says that someone had an accident, you don't question them," I said.
She looked up at me.
"It's really that bad?" she asked
I nodded. "It's that bad. I'm handling it, but it could very easily go bad for me. I need for you to support me in this, and in return I'll help you."
Doing this alone was probably more than I could handle. I needed allies, and even if Hermione was only eleven, she was another set of hands. Two wands could do a lot more than one, and if I could get her combat capable, maybe two could do a lot more than one.
Her lips tightened. "It's not right what they are doing. I've had some of the girls look down on me in Ravenclaw... I think because I'm a muggleborn, but they mostly ignore me."
They probably looked down on her because of her personality, but I could work with this. It would increase her sense of solidarity with me, and it would make her more loyal.
"Better to be ignored," I said. "Until you are ready to do something about it. Don't brag about how smart you are; them seeing it will be all the proof they need that their superiority complexes aren't real."
"We've got Defense against the Dark Arts class next," Hermione said. "I've got Herbology with the Gryffindors later."
"Let's go," I said.
We found the Defense classroom without issue, and found seats. Already the class was dividing itself up by house; the Slytherins sitting on one side and the Ravenclaws on the other. How much worse would it have been with Gryffindors, given the hatred I'd overheard from some of the Slytherins last night?
Professor Travers slipped into the room.
"I am Professor Travers," he said when everyone had settled down. "And this is Defense against the Dark arts. Does anyone know what that is?"
The room was silent, with not even Hermione lifting her hands.
"In this class we will be teaching the magic you need to learn in order to not die," he said. "That's what it breaks down to. There are all sorts of magics that can be used to kill you, and if I do my job right, they may not kill you as quickly as they otherwise might."
Everyone was staring at him.
"I say that because there is no such thing as a perfect defense. Sometimes spells are designed that are superior to the ones commonly in use, but it's only a matter of time before someone designs a better offensive attack spell to get around that defense. Attack and defense are in a race, you see, and they challenge wizardly ingenuity."
"That is why you can never simply depend on one defense to protect you from everything. There are general defenses that will be generally useful, but those can be overcome. To survive you have to be flexible, and able to roll with the punches."
"Today," he said. "We will begin with how to defend yourself against one of the most dangerous threats that face all wizards... muggles."
"What?" I heard Hermione ask under her breath.
"Some of you may look at muggles as harmless. They have no magic, so how could they possibly hurt you?"
He shook his head. "It's surprising how many Wizards are killed every year by muggles. Their vehicles alone are a large cause of Wizarding deaths; a shield charm has proven ineffective against a car striking at high rates of speed. Worse, most adult wizards aren't even capable of casting a good shield charm."
Hermione raised her hand.
"Yes, Miss..."
"Granger," Hermione said. "How can you claim that muggles are the most dangerous threat to Wizards. Isn't that racist?"
Internally I sighed.
"Does anyone have an answer to that?" he asked.
Reluctantly I raised my hands.
"Yes, Miss..."
"Hebert," I said. "It's a matter of numbers. Would you think a shark is more dangerous than a cow?"
Hermione stared at me, then nodded.
"But lots more people are killed every year by cows than sharks. The reason is that not very many people are around sharks, but a lot of people are around cows."
The professor nodded approvingly. "Five points to Slytherin. It's much the same with Wizards. A dragon is much more dangerous than a muggle, but outside the preserves, how likely is a normal wizard to see one? You will always have to deal with muggles, though. Even purebloods are unable to completely isolate themselves, as much as they would like to pretend to. Sooner or later you will have to interact with them."
He paused and looked around at us. "This class is not muggle studies. If you want to know about muggle culture, there is a class for that. What we are focused on today is how to defend yourself in the unlikely, but still possible event that you come face to face with a hostile muggle."
He continued., "Not all muggles are dangerous. Most of them are completely harmless. The problem is that there are so many of them that inevitably some of them are. Often it's difficult to tell the difference, although there are some possible tells."
"Today we will be going over those signs. Again, not all muggles who display these signs are bad. It's simply that the odds are increased when they show these signs. Once we discuss that we will discuss some counterstrategies that can be used."
Hermione calmed down, although her face was still a little flushed.
We both began to take notes.