1st September 1989 – Hogsmeade station.
“First years with me! First years with me!” came the booming shouts of Rubeus Hagrid in his unmistakable accent. He towered over all the students on the platform, which made me wonder just how big a full-blooded giant would be if Hagrid was so massive. His thick hair and beard covered most of his round and friendly face, and along with his scruffy dark attire, it was everything I had expected him to be.
Rebecca and I joined the growing crowd of first years that were milling before the half-giant. My companion was looking up at Hagrid with amazement.
Shortly after, he was leading us down a dark path towards the lake. The first years huddled closely together in the darkness, the air was thick with anticipation and more than a little fear. Rebecca stuck close to my arm, though thankfully didn’t feel the need to grab me. I saw her eyes try to pierce the night around us, no doubt her mind conjuring up all sorts of unpleasant images after my unconsidered revelations, and I saw her gripping her wand tightly in her hands.
When the time came for us to clamber in the small, and frankly unsafe in my opinion, boats she clambered in the same one as I and before we knew it we were moving. Hogwarts castle, shrouded in shadow yet illuminated by the moon and the countless lights that found their way through its many windows. The night was cold, and even underneath the Hogwarts robes that we had since donned one could still feel the bite of the chilly lake breeze. Yet it seemed to bother not one of us, as we all stared up in utter awe at our home for the next year.
The pages of a book hadn’t quite gotten across the immense scale of the ancient and magical castle, but finally witnessing it in person made me feel tiny in a way that was almost comforting. Indomitable was a descriptor that came to mind. The castle looked as though It could weather a thousand storms and come out unfazed, and thinking about it, it probably had.
But it had its own dangers within those walls. Chambers of nigh-indestructible monsters, cursed artefacts in hidden vaults, not to mention the hundreds of young children with a potentially deadly weapon at their disposal. Thinking about it, the latter scared me more than the former. I shuddered when I thought back to all the gun safety lectures I had attended and imagined that each and every one of these kids held the equivalent of a loaded pistol in their robes with absolutely no idea how to use it properly.
I resolved to avoid any wands pointed in my general direction for the foreseeable future, though I imagined that would be easier said than done. If magical healing wasn’t so miraculous I imagined there would be more than a few fatalities every year.
The boat ride passed mostly in silence and we soon arrived at the boathouse. As we slowly filtered out and began climbing the steps up to the great hall it began to rain, a slow cold drizzle that jolted the first years out of their reverie and heralded a stampede of eleven-year-olds up the stairs. Hagrid, as ever, was somewhat ineffective at imposing any sort of order.
Not terribly keen on getting my new robes wet either, I reluctantly kept up with the crowd. The stampede continued until we got out of the rain and were stopped by a stern-faced Minerva McGonagall.
“In a hurry, are we?” she asked reproachfully. She exuded an air of authority and confidence that returned a semblance of order to the group. And once everyone had calmed down.
“Welcome to Hogwarts…” She began the same speech she had given to Harry Potter and his classmates at the start of their year about the houses and how they worked, though this time with no Neville to interrupt her. “… follow me.” She finished.
With that, she led us into the great hall of Hogwarts and there was a flutter in my heart as I laid eyes on it for the first time. The tables were full of students from all years, each of them now turned to regard the new arrivals. Divine-smelling food covered almost every inch of the tables as flickering candles levitated by magic illuminated the hall overhead, the roof obscured by the illusion of a starry sky. Ghosts, some of which I recognised and some I didn’t, roamed freely about the hall, appearing from under tables and floating with the candles.
McGonagall led us to the front of the hall before the professors and Dumbledore himself. I recognised some, Flitwick and Snape were hard to miss, and others I either could not place a name to their face for certain or just plain didn’t know. She handed the stage over to the Headmaster for his announcements.
“Before we begin I have a couple of announcements to make. Firstly, I would like to welcome Professor Damien Revan, our new professor of defence against the dark arts. Next, It is with regret that I must inform you all of a new rule that, for the foreseeable future, students must not leave the school grounds without express permission from one of the teaching staff, for your own safety. Thank you. Professor McGonagall.” He said in a booming and wizened voice.
The defence against the dark arts professor was not one I recognised, though that wasn’t surprising. Voldemort’s curse on the position would no doubt ensure Professor Revan’s resignation, firing or death by the end of the year. I found myself fascinated by how it would end in a macabre way.
Next, the sorting hat sang its rather peculiar song. Dumbledore appeared as the only professor not rolling their eyes, but the students loved it and clapped uproariously at its conclusion.
“When I call your name, you will come forth, I will place the sorting hat on your head, and you will be sorted into your house,” McGonagall told us all, the sorting hat sitting on a seat beside her twitching grumpily.
The first girl to be called up, last name Aarland, was sorted into Slytherin without much delay. Several names were called before I recognised one of them.
“Cedric Diggory!” the professor proclaimed, and a nervous dark-haired boy stepped up to the chair.
“Hufflepuff,” I muttered under my breath, causing Rebecca, who was standing next to me, to give me an odd glance.
“HUFFLEPUFF!” proclaimed the sorting hat only a moment later, and the ill-fated boy ran to his cheering house with a wide smile on his face.
“How did you know that?” she whispered to me, and I cursed myself for letting it slip from my lips rather than just in my head. I was too busy being excited that I’d lost control of my traitorous mouth.
“Good guess,” I whispered back, attempting to play it off. She didn’t look convinced.
Soon enough, it was Rebecca’s turn. “Good luck,” I whispered as McGonagall called her name.
She walked with trepidation over to the chair, running her hands through her uncommonly long her as she did so. As she turned, I saw the look of determination on her face, however. The professor raised the hat to place it on her head, but before it even touched her hair it had its answer.
“GRYFFINDOR!” said the sorting hat, just as quickly as it had sorted Malfoy in Harry’s year.
Rebecca’s eyes lit up and found me in the crowd. I gave her a warm smile and a nod and she ran off to join the cheering Gryffindors. The girl had been right after all.
It was quite the wait as all the students with last names between K and T before it was my turn, which was the vast majority of the hundred or so students in the year that were left. There were some last names that might have rang a bell but otherwise, I did my best to remember them just in case.
Then, finally, Professor McGonagall called “Victor Thorneheart!”
My heart thumping in my ears drowned out all other sounds as I walked up to the chair. As I turned and sat down, I witnessed the entire population of Hogwarts staring at me. My eyes flicked over to where Rebecca was sitting and found her watching expectantly with a smile on her face.
I felt as McGonagall placed the unexpectedly weighty hat on my head.
“Hmmm. What do we have here?” it said in its cantankerous voice in my ear.
“Hard-working, humble, you would make a fine Hufflepuff. But no, that’s not it. Too ambitious. Slytherin perhaps? Cunning and ruthless, you could climb high indeed. No. No, no, no. Not it at all, too honest. Hmmm. You are a tricky one indeed.” The hat deliberated slowly and the minutes passed as everyone looked on in silence, barring the occasional whispering.
“Gryffindor then? Undeniable courage and such single-minded determination! You would be a lion amongst lions, and with them, you could right all the wrongs you seek. Hmmm. All the qualities are there, a little too self-serving perhaps but so are we all. Hmmm. But there is something else. Your heart is elsewhere, beyond loyalty, beyond cunning and beyond courage, there is a greater pull on your soul. A yearning, yes! For knowledge and learning, power even, but for no other reason than its own sake. Wisdom beyond your years and a soul-deep obsession. I see where to put you now.” It spoke to itself.
“RAVENCLAW!” it pronounced loudly after three minutes of stalling. I was a little surprised, but by no means disappointed. I hadn’t really considered it, but the studious Ravenclaws did match my academic ambitions better than any of the others.
I glanced over to the Gryffindor table as I made my way over to the clapping Ravenclaws and saw a disappointed Rebecca. I imagined she was hoping we would share a house and become friends, but thankfully it wasn’t to be, I didn’t want that kind of responsibility on my shoulders. Hopefully, she would make plenty of new friends and forget about me, as it should be. I would make a terrible friend to an eleven-year-old, or anyone really, I was self-aware enough to realise that at least.
The sorting ended with the Weasley twins being placed in Gryffindor as expected, and then Dumbledore began the feast. The food was, as anticipated, glorious. The Hogwarts house-elves were more than a match for Paff’s cooking. I exchanged some words and introductions with my fellow Ravenclaws but I’d learnt my lesson with Rebecca and made a point to appear unapproachable and aloof, which worked as far as I could tell.
I did spend the feast with a lingering sense of melancholy knowing that I had just shrugged off the chance for the type of friendships I would have killed for as a boy in my past life, but none of these kids deserved to be let down by someone who didn’t, who couldn’t, return their friendship in any meaningful way.
After the feast, we were led to the Ravenclaw tower entrance on the fifth floor by one of the prefects, a short sixth-year with shoulder-length blonde hair. The riddle asked by the bronze eagle knocker for today was “What is the only thing you can keep after giving it away?”
“Your word.” Answered the prefect after a moment of thinking, and the door opened to reveal the expansive Ravenclaw common room. Large windows under stone arches graced one side of the room that I knew would give a great view of the mountains come the morning. Blue and silver tapestries lined the walls, with the domed roof painted in the image of a clear night sky. As I looked, I saw a star shoot across the not-so-static painting.
The prefect pointed us towards our sleeping quarters, separating the boys and girls, and left us to get settled. Our things were already by our beds as we entered, and whereas the other boys spent some time getting to know one another I spent the time before going to bed with my nose in my NOT-book, reviewing the content I expected to be going over on the morrow. I fell asleep long after the other exhausted children and dreamed of nothing at all.
-
Waking up in Hogwarts left me believing I was still in a dream, at least until I bit my tongue just to check and was relieved to find it was my reality.
It was still dark outside the windows and all the other boys were sleeping. One I recalled named Derek was snoring loudly, such that I was surprised it hadn’t woken the others. I’d long since learned to sleep through anything, the lads that didn’t were the ones that got too tired to think and then got themselves killed or discharged.
I was surprised that I still thought about such times even after so long, especially considering where I was. A world and years away from the middle eastern conflicts, yet they still clung to my awareness like unwanted tumours, sapping my mood and constantly reminding me that they existed and that they weren’t going anywhere. I’d yet to break my habit of waking up before dawn, not that I particularly wanted to, mind, but it left me in the awkward position with hours to kill but little to do it with.
Dressing silently, I made my way down to the empty common room. The grey lady, otherwise known as Helena Ravenclaw, was present minding her own business so I paid her no mind, but otherwise, I had it all to myself. Lighting up my wand with a whispered “Lumos”, I took the time to peruse the shelves of the Ravenclaw library.
It was… unimpressive. Full of basic magical textbooks that I had mostly seen before and then the vast majority were just biographies, autobiographies and accounts of the lives and accomplishments of various Ravenclaw graduates. I chuckled to myself when I saw the Gilderoy Lockhart collection, though it froze in my throat when I recalled their contents described the heroic actions of witches and wizards now rotting in some nameless hospitals with no idea who they are. Memory spells, mind control and other such magics left a sour taste in my mouth. Killing someone I could live with, even if it were for selfish reasons, but there are fates worse than death and causing undue suffering was abhorrent no matter the circumstances, even for someone like me.
Putting them away, I lost my appetite for reading. Instead, I moved over and sat on one of the windowsills, the cushions already placed there letting me know it was not an original idea. I cancelled my spell with an utterance of “nox” and looked out into the darkness as the sky slowly but surely began to lighten. The sun was rising but yet remained hidden behind the mountains that formed the valley where Hogwarts was situated.
I idly twirled my wand about between my fingers as I began to think. I’d thought that going to Hogwarts would somehow magically make me feel all happy and fuzzy inside. And it had, during the boat ride and the sorting ceremony I experienced more genuine happiness than I had in my entire previous life. But now it was over, and I was here to stay, I felt… normal.
I was still excited about my first lessons of course, but I already knew their contents and doubted anything would surprise me. And I knew that excitement would fade quickly as well, everything that might once have been new and rousing inevitably becomes mundane and routine with time and repetition.
Routine and complacency, these things were the death of ambition. Though I doubted I would ever lose my love for magic, even after eleven years it still amazed me, I could certainly lose sight of my goal. Become distracted, bogged down with the day-to-day at the expense of pushing the boundaries.
Avoiding that would take constant vigilance, persistence and experimentation. If the flames were not fed they would eventually fade to embers, but on the flip side so could they be fanned into an inferno. That is what I wanted, no, needed. To throw kindling on the fire until it was all I could think about, until those bloody memories were consumed in the firestorm and I could be free of them at last. I just hoped that, in doing so, I wouldn’t end up burning anyone I cared about by accident.
Perhaps I should have taken up Mr Mudoil on his offer, then again I wouldn’t even know how to begin broaching the topic of what it was that troubled me.
Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I broke from my unhelpful introspection and turned my mind to more constructive things.
My to-do list, at least in the short term, was close to completion. The number of first-year spells left to learn I could count on one hand, and I would go searching for the room of requirement this evening. Once that had been done I would need to set myself some new goals.
I decided that after the first year, learning spells by year was an inherently flawed plan and an inefficient use of my time. I would be attending lessons that taught me said spells anyway, so in my free time I should be practising and researching what I hadn’t been doing during the day. Of course, that assumed I was competent enough to keep up with both. I decided I would at least try it, and if it proved too difficult then I would revise my position on the matter.
Until that day came, however, I would prioritize specific spells that I knew would come in useful in the future. The disarming charm came to mind, a potent duelling spell that, according to my memories, had been capable of intercepting the killing curse, at least in the hands of Harry Potter. Two other possible instances with Dumbledore and Arthur Weasley came to mind from the films.
It was a tricky one to figure out. On the one hand, Mad Eyed Moody had proclaimed it unable to be blocked by any magic and Harry had been duelling against his twin wand and then eventually the Elder wand, which he had mastery over at the time which could explain the effect. On the other hand, Moody at the time had really been Barty Crouch Jr and of course he would tell them it couldn’t be blocked by magic, even if it could be, and then of course Dumbledore had done something similar against Voldemort, at least in the movies, intercepting the killing curse before it could strike him with what was likely the disarming charm.
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It would require lots of research and very careful experimentation, that was for sure. There was no way I would be trusting either the books or the films as a source for how magic worked when my life was on the line. Quite how I would test the interaction without killing anyone or getting killed I still hadn’t thought of, but I still had plenty of time before it became a pressing issue.
Until then I would content myself with learning the disarming charm and using it for its intended purpose.
Next on my list after that would be the summoning charm, which I had a special interest in learning to do wandless should I ever find myself disarmed and in need of quickly re-acquiring my wand. I expected it would be incredibly difficult to perform in a manner, but I was nothing if not hungering for a challenge.
Beyond that was still to be decided, but it was enough to be getting on with for the foreseeable future.
The sun finally poked above the mountains, illuminating the Black Lake with rays of light that flickered and danced across the ripples. The sky was cast in shades of red and orange, colouring Hogwarts castle in a picturesque manner along with the rolling clouds above. It was a beautiful sight that banished what remained of my peculiar mood. In both worlds, with and without magic, dawn always held a special place in my heart. It was a time when, for just half an hour of every day, anything felt possible.
With it, so too had my housemates begun filtering into the common room. Not much longer after that it was time for breakfast, and we first years were once again escorted by a prefect, albeit a different one this time. I appreciated for the first time just how frustrating the moving staircases could be because, whilst undeniably amazing feats of magical engineering, they were somehow less effective at their job than just normal stairs and more often than not just left you waiting.
Though I sat amongst my housemates for the first meal of the day, I remained apart from their conversations. One boy who sat next to me, a lanky lad by the name of Uriel Wayne, tried to strike up conversation, his black cat familiar watching me from under the table with its tail swishing. He seemed particularly charismatic for an eleven-year-old, but my curt one-word answers fended off any attempt at becoming acquainted and he eventually got the message.
My first lesson would be potions with Professor Snape, which would prove to be interesting if nothing else. Despite being quite strongly versed in first-year potion theory I lacked any practical experience, so I was eager to try my hand at it. Then again, I doubted we’d be brewing anything on the first day.
I took my time getting to the lesson, Hogwarts was a big place and we had each been given a map to get around, albeit a confusing one. Breakfast had not completely finished before I left, which left me with time to take in the castle. I got some glances from older students about their business, but no one accosted me or attempted to make conversation, which was precisely how I liked it. I was not on anyone’s radar and I wanted it to stay that way.
It was just my luck then when, as I turned one of the last corners to get to the potions classroom, I ran into one Rebecca Keene, literally in fact. I hadn’t noted it before now, but the girl was actually considerably taller than me, at least for the time being. I was, I’m a little ashamed to say, sent flying to the floor as a book held to her chest collided with my forehead.
Fortunately, I still had the sense of mind to spin as much as I could in the air such that when my head impacted the solid stone floor it was at the side rather than the back. It stung as my skull thudded on the stone and rattled my brain in its container, but not half as much as it would have done if I wasn’t barely five foot tall.
Rebecca, to her credit, remained on her feet. “Oh! Victor! Oh shi… I’m so, so, sorry.” She said, somewhat flustered.
Propping myself up on my arms I shook my head and tried to determine if I had a concussion. My eyes focused properly when I looked from my nose to the other side of the hall and I could think the alphabet backwards in my head so it couldn’t have been too bad.
“Don’t worry about it.” I said from the ground looking up at her, “but instead of an apology I’d appreciate a hand up.”
“Sorry.” She repeated, ignoring my words as she held out her hand and brought me to my feet.
A slight wave of dizziness made me stagger but it passed just as quickly as it arrived. “For future reference, we tend to say, ‘Merlin’s beard’ or other such exclamations rather than muggle curses,” I told her as I brushed myself off and picked up the potions book I had been carrying.
She at least had the decency to look sheepish. “Right, thanks. Sorry again, are you alright?”
I blamed the head trauma for what I said next. “No, I’m Victor.”
She furrowed her brow as she looked confused for a moment then rolled her eyes with a smirk. “I’ll take that as a yes. Come on, we’re going to be late for our first class!”
To my surprise, she grabbed me by the arm and all but dragged me to the potions classroom whilst I was not in the state of mind to put up any resistance. We at least weren’t late, but I didn’t make a particularly good first impression on Professor Snape as we waltzed into his classroom looking so dishevelled.
“Mrs Keene, it is a pleasure to see you again.” He said in his signature dry and deadpan tone. “And who might you be?” he asked, looking me directly in the eye.
Clearing my throat, I straightened out my robes and returned his look. “Victor Thorneheart, Professor,” I replied, and though his words had been somewhat antagonistic it hadn’t stopped the note of awed respect that found itself into my words. I imagined one would be similarly unamused at a bunch of first years in his position, especially considering his life as a death eater double agent.
The potions teacher’s attention shifted from us as another group of first years wandered in and before he could respond, if he was even going to. Rebecca dragged us away to two empty desks next to one another at the back of the room. Fighting her felt more trouble than it was worth so I just went along with it and sat down.
“Sleep well? What’s the Ravenclaw common room like?” she asked as I was rubbing my throbbing head.
“Not particularly, and it has a nice view,” I replied curtly as the last of the first-year students wandered in.
“The Gryffindor one was so cool! We had to give a password to this lady on a painting, and there were ghosts and…” she began telling me excitedly before being interrupted.
“Silence! There will be no silly wand-waving or incantations in this class. However, for those select few who possess the predisposition, I can teach you how to ensnare the senses and bewitch the mind, I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory and even put a stopper in death.” He said, repeating much the same thing he said to Harry in his first year.
I expected it was a speech he gave every year. Snape gave off the air of being eternally irritated with his students, which could well be true, but one couldn’t deny he had a certain flair for the dramatic and I suspected that, deep down, he did enjoy his role as a teacher.
I sat and I listened through the lesson attentively, paying more attention to Snape himself than the contents of his teaching, which was, as anticipated, purely theory. My companion, however, was trying her best not to fall asleep. Knowing Snape's proclivity for punishing Gryffindors particularly harshly, I decided to help her out and gave her shin a nudge every now and then to wake her up.
She managed to get through the admittedly dry lesson without much more than a stern glance, though it was blatantly clear she wasn’t the academic sort. I suppose that was one of the reasons the sorting hat had such an easy time of it.
“I didn’t expect magic to be so… boring.” She told me with a disappointed look on her face as Snape called the class to a close. We’d gotten a rather beefy homework assignment on the ingredients of and method of producing a forgetfulness potion, much to my annoyance. Just an inane task to distract me from something worthwhile. I added ‘automate homework’ to my to-do list.
I shrugged, “magical history is next, I expect that will be worst.” She seemed to deflate at that, and once again I found myself taking pity.
“But we’ve got charms and defence against the dark arts tomorrow. That’s where we learn the exciting stuff.” I told her, and she visibly perked up.
“You mean, like, shooting fire out our wands and stuff? Oh! Do we learn how to fight other witches and wizards? What does that even look like?” she asked wide-eyed.
We’d left the classroom and, as we had a free period before lunch, I began leading us towards the library. Rebecca didn’t pay much attention to where we were going, she was quite literally walking backwards in front of me, too focused on our conversation and utterly uncaring of anyone she might run into.
“We will learn the fire-making charm at some point this year. But I believe for now the focus is on the levitation charm. And no, defence against the dark arts will not teach you to duel, it is more about the dangerous aspects of the wizarding world and how to deal with, or avoid, them. As for what a duel looks like, I’ll have to show you some of my father’s recordings. He used to be an auror for the ministry but is now a professional duellist. Suffice to say they’re usually over in a flash unless one has the chance to take cover.” I explained patiently.
“Cool. Levitation, does that mean we can fly?” she asked with a gasp.
I shook my head. “Unassisted flight is impossible even with magic, that’s why we have brooms. The charm is for objects.” That wasn’t entirely true, Voldemort had achieved it and then taught it to Snape, though it wasn’t entirely clear if that was actually the case. Either way, that was knowledge I had no right knowing at this point in time.
“That’s a bummer, but brooms are cool too. What an auror?” Came yet another question.
“A magical police officer slash soldier. They hunt down dark wizards and witches and send them to Azkaban, a magical prison somewhere in the north sea. Trust me, you don’t ever want to be sent to Azkaban, its guards are easily the most terrifying monsters in the world.” I said that last bit with all the grim seriousness I could muster. I had yet to meet a dementor, and though I couldn’t help but be curious about what made them tick, I didn’t fancy getting my soul sucked out.
She continued to quiz me on various trivia about the wizarding world until she finally noticed we’d arrived at the library.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
“I am looking for some more advanced books about magical theory. I imagine this is your chance to find some answers to the rest of your questions, or maybe just get ahead of your homework.” I responded dryly.
All I really needed to finish mastering most of the first-year spells was revision, practice and repetition, which could come later. At this moment I was more interested in the methods wizards used to cast more complicated spells to compare to my experiences with the general counter-spell, as I had my doubts that it should have taken me so long to get the hang of. My family’s library had been rather limited in that area, most of our books had either been incredibly basic or required a full Hogwarts education to understand.
And here I was with one of the most comprehensive collections of magical knowledge at my fingertips, and I was being distracted by an eleven-year-old girl.
“But it is easier just to ask you, you seem to know it all anyway.” She complained, drawing a glare from Madam Pince. Like a lion in its cage, we weren’t actually through the door into the library yet so all she did was stare.
I stopped and turned to Rebecca, looking her in the eye. “Not to sound rude Rebecca, but you don’t have to come into the library with me. Are there no other things you could be doing? Getting to know your housemates? Exploring the castle?”
She scowled at me, an expression I found myself becoming uncomfortably familiar with. “Fine, I’ll do the bearding homework.” She said with a grumpy tone.
I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at her turn of phrase, deciding to shake my head instead of correcting her. She had the spirit of it if nothing else.
Together we entered the library, enduring Madam Pince’s glare as we found a secluded table down one of the isles to sit down. Rebecca opened her mouth to talk but I stopped her with a finger at my lips.
“Whisper, or we’ll get in trouble,” I whispered to her.
She nodded. “There are so many books. Where do you even start?”
That… was a good question. I scratched my head as I looked at the shelves. I knew there were sections in the library, but they were particularly vague. I could see that the books were in alphabetical order of their titles, but that didn’t help me when I didn’t know precisely what it was I was looking for.
I turned back to Rebecca and shrugged. “Looks like I don’t know everything after all.”
What followed was a long and mostly fruitless search on my part. I noted down the name of some books to look into in the future but I couldn’t find what it was I was looking for, so I eventually just sat down with Rebecca to do Snape’s homework. All it required was the standard textbook we had been required to purchase at Diagon alley so we didn’t need to go looking.
By the time our stomachs were rumbling for lunch Rebecca had done all three pages whereas I’d only done one. We made our way to the great hall to have lunch together.
I found it odd that the girl would choose to spend time with me and not any of the other Gryffindors, and she had yet to offer up an explanation. Nevertheless, despite myself, I found her pleasant company. I stood by my initial intention of trying to avoid making friends, but I couldn’t find it in myself to push her away too harshly and she was too insistent to take my more subtle attempts, so I found myself at an impasse.
“You said your dad was a duellist, but what does your mother do?” she asked with a mouthful of sandwich as I sipped a goblet of pumpkin juice for the first time and instantly regretted it, my face twisting into one of disgust that drew a laugh from the girl opposite.
Regaining my composure and pushing the foul concoction away from me, I answered her question. “Deals with family matters and teaches my sister mostly. What time she has left she spends researching her own magic.”
“What kind of magic does she research?” came another question.
“Mostly defensive charms,” I replied, feeling a little uncomfortable discussing the topic, so I decided to change it. “What about you? Which area of magic draws your attention?”
Rebecca paused and a thoughtful look overcame her face. “I’m… not sure. Becoming an auror sounds cool, what kind of magic do they do?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Believe it or not, they practice most of what would be considered dark magic. Fighting fire with fire as it were. They were even permitted to use the unforgivables in the fight against you-know-who.”
“Unforgivables?” I expected it the moment I mentioned them, and I once more cursed my mouth for letting such things slip.
I sighed, I wasn’t going to lie to her and I felt she was the type of person to keep nagging me if I didn’t tell her, so I relented. “The three unforgivable curses, extremely powerful dark spells whose use on another person will land you straight in Azkaban. Named as such because whoever uses them are said to be unforgivable. There is the Imperius curse, which places the victim entirely under the caster's influence. The Cruciatus curse, which inflicts excruciating pain. And the Killing curse, the touch of which causes instant death, of which only one person has ever survived.”
“Harry Potter?” she guessed after a moment, surprising me somewhat.
I nodded in confirmation. “There’s a reason he’s so famous. I imagine he’ll be attending Hogwarts in a couple of years come to think of it.”
“How do you know all this? Do all magic families teach their kids this stuff?” she asked with a note of disbelief.
Ah, she got me there. Not able to offer a truthful answer, I deflected. “I’ve read ahead in defence against the dark arts. As should you, if you ever want to be an auror, they require some of the highest grades.”
“Well, what about you? What do you want to do when you’re older?”
That was another good question, and what I had yet to think about. Being an auror just felt like what I did in my last life but with magic, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Everything else, however, like joining the unspeakables, just felt boring or constrictive.
So, I simply shrugged and answered honestly. “I don’t know. I plan on uncovering all the secrets magic has to offer, but where that might lead me I have no idea. Finding out will be half of the fun.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could I interrupted her by standing up, my lunch finished. “I’m heading back to the library before history starts.”
Her face fell a little. “I guess I’ll find something to do in the meantime.”
I hesitated, almost asking her if she wanted to come with me, but stopped myself. “See you then.”
With that I walked off, shaking my head at my own actions. It was a good thing that I was free of her and could finally get my head down and do something useful. So why did I feel so guilty?
Scoffing at myself, I made my way double-time to the seventh floor. Climbing the castle, the halls became progressively less bustling, and it was mostly older students that could be seen. It rankled me to know I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I practised the well-trodden technique of looking like I knew exactly where I was going and had every right to be going there, so no one paid me any mind.
Only the divination and arithmancy classrooms were on the seventh floor, along with Professor Flitwick’s office, so it was almost entirely empty at this time of day.
I spent ten minutes just walking about trying to find whereabouts the door would open. Supposedly there had been a tapestry opposite the hidden entrance, but either it hadn’t been put up yet or I was misremembering.
Either way, I changed tack. I wandered about holding the desire in my mind for a private place to practice, often pacing back and forth over a wall I felt particularly promising.
It took a while, and more than once a passing sixth or seventh year gave me an odd glance, but the room of requirement did eventually make itself known to me after pacing back and forth thrice before a seemingly empty wall, much to my relief. Watching as a large door appeared from solid stone was mesmerizing, and before I entered I found myself caressing the wood to just check it was real.
Finally opening the door, the room that appeared before me wasn’t terribly dissimilar to the one in the movies. What stuck out to me was how tall it was, its roof far higher than the corridors had been, with pillars and arches of stone reaching all the way to the top.
Within was a large oak desk, full of ink, quills and blank parchment, and a comfy-looking chair sitting next to it that practically begged me to sit down.
Elsewhere there were target dummies holding false wands and even a huge mirror that took up an entire wall such that I could watch myself practice.
It was perfect, and now I knew how to gain access I could definitely see myself coming here often. There was something about being entirely alone with one's own thoughts that calmed my mind, making it feel as though I could truly just breathe for the first time since arriving at Hogwarts. Perhaps it was the fact that nobody was watching me and expecting to see an eleven-year-old doing eleven-year-old things.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of time left before I had to be making my way to my second class of the day, though I was grateful that first years had such open schedules to begin with.
Rather than try anything new, I decided to relieve some stress and fire off a barrage of spells against the dummies. There was just something about using my wand in such a manner that was so exhilarating, to attack rather than just experiment, so I riled up my anger to infuse more power into the spells as I let loose and shouted “Flipendo!”
To my surprise, it ripped the dummy from the stand that attached it to the floor, sending it crashing into the mirror behind it. The sound of glass shattering snapped me from my revelry and I got a grip of myself once more.
Nevertheless, a little destruction was good for the soul and I felt in far better cheer than I had been when I entered. With that, it was time for me to leave, though with the intention of returning that evening.
I found Rebecca had arrived in the history classroom before me, and she beckoned me over to sit with her before I had the chance to slink to the other side of the classroom.
Rather unsurprisingly, it was an exceptionally dry lesson. Though it did me the favour of reminding me that I wasn’t all-knowing just because I had read through the first-year textbooks a few times. Many of the questions our professor asked the other students I could only have half answered. I considered my memory rather excellent, in both lives, but there was a difference between reading something and really taking it in, the latter of which was difficult when one was forcing themselves to read a long and boring history book. I resolved to take steps to remedy such problems in the future, like taking breaks, though I doubted it would ever cease to be an issue. One could not make such a dry subject more interesting just by wishing it to be the case.
Not that I felt the urge to raise my hand to answer the questions at any rate, even the ones I did know. I would rather not stick out, either to my classmates or my professor, so I only answered when directly called upon, or when I whispered the answer to Rebecca the time she had been picked on.
When the class ended, the last class of the day, I managed to slip away from Rebecca in the rush out of the door and scarpered back to the room of requirement, which had fixed itself in my absence. With several hours before dinner was due to begin and nought to cause distraction in between, it was time for me to finally get my head down and do some magic. First things first, the severing charm.