“Hey Amvatroz,” Ginny asked as she thought about his riddle, “Do you have anything to do with Umbridge not being able to get into the headmistress’ office?”
“Of course,” Amvatroz said, “That rude woman insulted me after I refused to give her entry. Seems that McGonagall neglected to hand control of the wards over to her when she left. Until then I’m free to deny her entry as much as I like. She’ll never get into that office so long as I have something to say about it. Hogwarts was already upset that McGonagall was transitioned over so quickly. She won't likely accept another so soon.”
“Oh, that’s good. Umbridge’s been furious, and had to take over one of the abandoned classrooms as her office instead,” Ginny said, “Actually, wait. You always talk about Hogwarts like it’s a woman and like she has feelings. I thought it was just an expression, like how people always say that sailing ships are all women.”
“Oh, Hogwarts is nothing as aware as people like you and me. She is like a… child or a machine of sorts. The founders gave her certain rules to follow, which she does to a fault. But besides that over the centuries she’s developed her little quirks and preferences for the gaps between those ironclad rules and throws her little tantrums if people don’t indulge her.”
“Like what?” Ginny asked.
“Well, for example your very own headmistress. Hogwarts wants the person who’s her headmaster to be competent and skilled. It’s been tradition for a long while that the Headmaster would at least spend a year or two mentoring the next in line in their full duties. Dumbledore did not do this, causing Hogwarts to pout and only reluctantly give McGonagall access to the castle wards until she fully proved herself. Umbridge on the other hand was barely able to teach her own class, let alone know anything about being the headmistress. Hogwarts would only accept her as headmistress kicking and screaming the whole way.”
“Kicking and screaming? What does that look like for a whole castle?”
“Just the little things, but they add up,” Amvatroz said, “If Umbridge took the position then she’d find doors suddenly slam shut into her face just as she was about to walk through them. Cobblestones would come loose and trip her at every opportunity. The wards will do whatever she does not wish them to do just to spite her. A multitude of tiny things adding up when all put together and targeting one person. I’ve only witnessed it twice in my time and the illegitimate headmasters barely lasted a month at most before giving it up and finding someone more competent to take their place. Right now Umbridge doesn’t have the position, so Hogwarts is just grumbling a bit about having the position empty. But she hasn’t turned her ire onto Umbridge just yet.”
“What other things does Hogwarts like or dislike? Can she talk to us?”
“No, she doesn’t talk through speech, but impressions and swells of emotion. And she doesn’t think of us as individuals truly. More like… Hogwarts is like she’s half awake and only gets faint impressions of us through lidded eyes and judges us from there. I’ve never heard of a case of her ever attempting to directly communicate with anyone. Even me. I’m only so aware of her because Rowena wouldn’t stop talking about her when the first four founders first built her. You can feel Hogwarts’ emotions in the wards threaded through the castle. That’s where she lives, in the wards. They pulse and swirl with her feelings and moods. I can only tell the differences because I’ve been here for so long. As for other things, let’s see… she always wants plenty of students here happy and learning of course. She enjoys people finding all of her secret rooms and passages as well. She shifts their method of access around occasionally to mix things up.”
“There are secret passages in the castle?”
“Yes, there are many. As well as many secret rooms that can only be accessed in very specific ways. But enough of that. What of my riddle? Do you have an answer?”
Ginny thought about it for another few seconds.
“Essence of Dittany?” She said, slightly uncertain, “Is that it?”
“That is incorrect,” Amvatroz said, “Remember the interactions with…”
Over the course of the next few minutes Amvatroz provided hints as Ginny puzzled through the problem and tried to find the right answer.
Ginny looked up as she saw Preston and his goons walking up the stairs of the Ravenclaw tower.
“Weasley, taking some time for your riddle? Struggling?” The unpleasant boy in the Prefect uniform said.
“It’s supposed to be hard, Preston,” Ginny said absently, “I’m pretty close. Just give me a minute. Is it boomslang venom, Amvatroz?”
“It is indeed. Can you explain why?”
Ginny did so and Amvatroz accepted her answer and swung open the door. Ginny went to walk in and Preston and his goons followed behind. She turned around.
“What? Aren’t you going to solve your riddles first?” she asked in confusion.
Preston sneered and dismissed her with a single look.
“Such a waste of time. We just wait for someone to come out and then go through without having to break our brains with whatever nonsense Eagle throws at us. Even if we’re stuck we can just say that ‘open in the name of love and friendship’ crap and Eagle is forced to open even without a riddle.”
Ginny gave them a wary look.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Well, don’t drag me into it,” Ginny said, “By the time you actually have to solve a riddle it’ll probably be something that even Dumbledore wouldn’t be able to understand if you’re provoking Amvatroz so much.”
“You and your friendship with a bloody statue,” Preston scoffed, “Like it cares what any of us do.”
Ginny eyed him. There was plenty of evidence showing that clearly Amvatroz was aware and very much did care about how they treated him, “Well, sneak in behind someone else next time. I don’t want you using my riddles to sneak past him.”
“I’m the prefect,” Preston said, “I’ll do what I want. Does that hurt your feelings? Just go back to snogging your new boyfriend in the corner if it hurts oh so much. I’m sure he’ll make you feel better. Just keep it down, will you? Some of us out here are actually trying to study.”
Ginny felt herself blushing, but quickly turned away and walked over to the out of the way reading nook where she’d agreed to meet Jack earlier. She hadn’t thought that they’d been that obvious…
Despite herself, she did end up taking Preston’s advice. It did make her feel much better after she and Jack were done and they actually started studying for real. Ginny wondered if Alexa had had her first kiss with her own boyfriend yet. He had seemed nice enough when they met him, even if he had only come to meet them the one time and never again.
But he and Alexa were still together and they had been going off to do things together. Dates. So things must be going well between them, right? Ginny wasn’t sure. Alexa hadn’t talked too much about it. She should spend some time just with Alexa. Have some girl talk. Maybe Ginny was spending a bit too much time with Jack recently now that their relationship had moved to the next level. She didn’t want to push away Alexa like she almost had before the cocoon incident with Eric.
— — —
“You want to hang out? Just us without Jack?” Alexa said, confused.
“Well, yeah,” Ginny said, “I just realized I’ve been hanging out with Jack and everything a lot recently. But I almost never just hang out with just the two of us. Me and you with no one else joining us. We should go around, have some girl talk with just the two of us. No boys to hold us back, even Jack.”
“Oh! Okay,” Alexa said, “That sounds fun. It’ll be like when you came over to my house over the summer.”
“Yes, just like that,” Ginny said in relief, “Want to do something tomorrow? I can tell Jack about it if you want.”
“Yeah, okay. Meet you at the great hall after class?”
“Sure, see you there!”
— — —
“So… How’s your new boyfriend?” Ginny asked as the two of them wandered the Hogwarts halls. They’d been talking about classes and other basic things for the last few minutes since leaving the great hall, “What’s he like? I hardly even know anything about him.”
“Sean? I guess I haven’t told you guys much, huh? Well he’s in Gryffindor, you both know that. He’s from Ireland, he actually herded sheep growing up with his parents. He had a dog that he used to help group them up, he said. The dog just barks at them while running in circles and keeps them in one big clump so the people can guide the sheep all around as a herd.”
“So, how’d you meet? What made you interested in him?”
“I dunno. It's just… I was talking to him after class one day and he asked me if I would want to go out with him. I kinda only said yes out of surprise, but it's been interesting so far. I’m glad I didn’t freak out and do something weird when he asked me and just said yes in surprise instead.”
“What did you two do together? You never said what you did on your dates.”
“Yeah, we uhm. There’s a secret room that he found. We were exploring in there, it was pretty cool. It had huge stacks of stuff inside. Like stacks of chairs and furniture thirty feet tall or more. The room’s absolutely huge. It has some interesting magical objects in there too.”
“Secret room? Where is it?”
“I can’t say, he made me promise to keep it secret. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you guys about it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s disappointing. But it was fun? That’s way cooler than anything Jack or I did together.”
“Yeah, it was pretty fun. We even…”
Alexa lowered her voice and leaned in as if saying something scandalous, “Well I even had my first kiss in there a week ago. That was nice…”
“How’d it go?” Ginny asked in a more normal tone, “Mine with Jack was pretty horrible.”
Alexa looked at her in surprise, “What? Really? But you still seemed pretty happy the next day?”
“Well yeah. We did more than one and it made up for it. But for the first one I went for it so fast that we hit our teeth together. Me and Jack. It made my teeth tingle.” Ginny reached up and rubbed her lip.
“Oh my god,” Alexa said as she started to laugh, “Really? You hit your teeth together? That’s hilarious!”
“C’mon, it’s not that bad!” Ginny protested as Alexa started mercilessly teasing her, “Your first couldn’t have been that much better!”
Alexa smirked, “Oh yes, it definitely was. I mean, it wasn’t what I was expecting it to be like. But nothing like that happened. Things went very smoothly for us.”
“Well, aren’t you so special,” Ginny said, “You practice on your pillow beforehand or something?”
“No!” Alexa yelped, “I mean… No. I did not do that.”
“Oh, no. You did! Alexaaaaa…”
Alexa tensed for some reason and started blushing slightly.
“Why didn’t I think of that first?” Ginny said, “That makes so much sense, I would have done so much better if I’d practiced on a pillow first! I would have totally impressed Jack instead of messing things up so much.”
Alexa blinked and relaxed again.
“Ginny, you are so strange sometimes,” Alexa said.
“Aw, you too Alexa,” Ginny said with a light punch to Alexa’s shoulder, “That’s what makes us friends right? We can be all strange and silly around each other and not worry about what the other thinks.”
“Uh huh,” Alexa said, her slight blush beginning to fade away, “That’s right. Sorry I didn’t talk to you about Sean at all. I just thought it would be awkward with you and Jack being together and all.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” Ginny said, “We’re best friends Alexa. We can just talk about things, you don’t have to hide things from us because I’ll suddenly turn on you or something.”
“Huh,” Alexa said, sounding like Ginny had just dispensed some sagely wisdom from the top of the mountain.
“I guess I was being silly about it again,” Alexa said eventually, “This is fun. We should hang out with just the two of us more often.”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
They kept talking, the conversation flowing much easier than before. And the two of them discussing dating things together no longer seemed to bother Alexa as much anymore whenever it came up. It seems that now the initial barrier was down it was something safe for the two of them to talk about freely without any boys around.