Summary: In an account of personal growth and very deep friendships, a young girl manages to grow up at Hogwarts in the shadow of her extraordinary friends during the first rise of Lord Voldemort.
Sliding down in the faded train seat, with her feet stretched in front of her, Phedra stared at the ceiling and put into practice one of her absolute favorite activities…eavesdropping.
Categories: Marauder Era Characters: None
Warnings: None
Challenges: Series: None
Chapters: 11
Completed: No
Word count: 22388
Read: 35103
Published: 01/14/06
Updated: 03/22/07
1. Prologue by notabanana
2. Musical Chairs by notabanana
3. The Most Contrived Prank by notabanana
4. Put On Your Anxious Face by notabanana
5. Hurry Up and Wait by notabanana
6. Over the River and Through the Woods by notabanana
7. Two Letters by notabanana
8. Home for Holidays by notabanana
9. Something to Talk About by notabanana
10. Astrology and Astronomy by notabanana
11. Slippers and Slytherins by notabanana
Prologue
December third 1980 was, if you asked the residents of Chestnut Street (ironically devoid of chestnuts) in Clairsville, Ohio, a very cold and blustery day. Most of the people who lived in the small, neat homes that lined the road were tucked away indoors, writing Christmas cards or watching television. The only people outside were the few men who felt that it was simply not masculine enough to put up their family’s outdoor Christmas decorations in weather that was anything but cold and blustery. Standing on wobbly ladders in the gathering darkness and hanging up strings of colored lights, these men seemed completely dedicated to their daunting tasks.
Had they not been so attentive to their cedar roping and light-hanging activities then they might have noticed the very young woman in a black wool coat and dark red hat who was dragging a very large and overstuffed brown trunk down the cracked sidewalk. If their wives hadn’t been so busy writing Christmas cards to every person they had ever known, they might have looked out their front windows and noticed that, pausing every now and then to yank her heavy load out of piles of dead leaves, the woman was slowly making her way to the yard (marked with a “SOLD” sign) that led to the slightly shabby green front door of number twenty-three.
Heading up the yard and locating a brass key deep within her coat pocket, the woman yanked open the storm door and pushed the key into its hole with a determined gloved hand. After a good amount of jiggling (of both key and doorknob), the door swung silently open. The very young woman (girl, one might actually say) slid inside the house with some banging and scraping of her weighty luggage, and shut the door tightly behind her.
“Lumos!”
A soft glow revealed a small room with plain stucco walls and a simple wooden writing desk. The girl pointed a glowing wand tip towards the trunk that she had deposited on the dusty hardwood floor and that the name “P. A. Bagley” was revealed to have been neatly stamped in brass across one end.
“Alohomora!”
A lock in the trunk clicked very softly. She pulled off her gloves and flung them unceremoniously on the ground before slowly lifting the lid of the trunk with a sort of reverence. Soon, object after object was being carefully taken from the dark confines that had held them during their bumpy ride down the leaf-strewn sidewalks of Chestnut Street. A book with a blank cover, an empty bag labeled “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans” in curly script, a lonely pink bed-slipper, and a small globe, styled after the moon and covered in rather cramped handwriting, emerged from the suitcase.
Sitting in the dusty room, surrounded by her odd collection, she leaned against the desk and held the pink bed-slipper tightly in her hands as though it might grow legs and try to escape. The pale glow from her wand tip was certainly not flattering, but it revealed a face with a deeply sad, almost tragic, look to it. Dark eyes seemed to glaze over as the girl stared at the slipper and remembered….
Musical Chairs by notabanana
Musical Chairs
If you had to pin an exact date on it, Phedra Anne Bagley could figure that she had first recognized that she was really truly different on the first day at her new school in a new country. Before, back in Ohio, she had always (rather unjustly) blamed feelings of isolation on her name. It was certainly unusual, and she had often wondered at it, for she was fairly dark complexioned for someone whose name means “bright one.” A name so strange coming from parents named Mark and Susan is certainly even more puzzling. Her younger sister’s name was equally odd, but Maeve had never been taunted like Phedra was. Maeve was simply lucky like that.
“What’s your name?” a kid would ask.
“Phedra,” she would say, very quietly.
“WHAT?”
“Phedra. It’s Greek.”
“You’re from Greece?”
“No. I’m Italian and English and Portuguese and French.”
Then the poor confused child would pull a face and walk away, leaving Phedra to wander along the chain link fence and watch everyone else.
***
To a nine year old, Britain was more or less the at the ends of the earth. Phedra had heard mysterious stories about strange people who ate “biscuits” with tea (a strange beverage that she had avoided ever since she had burned her tongue at age six). So when Mark and Susan tried to gently break it to their two daughters that Mark’s job was transferring the family to London, Phedra was less than pleased.
“But, Mommy, I don’t LIKE tea! They’ll make me drink it everyday and I’ll burn my tongue right off! I won’t be able to taste anymore!” Phedra began to writhe around dramatically on the shag carpet of the living room.
“You won’t have to drink any tea, baby. Don’t roll around like that. Maeve doesn’t mind very much, do you Maeve?”
Five-year-old Maeve only wanted to know if Mister Poogums, her stuffed cat, could come too. Susan consented, and Maeve smiled cheerfully. Phedra, however, was far from satisfied.
***
Phedra’s mouth was rather dry as she walked into her new classroom. Granted, London hadn’t been that bad thus far. It was certainly much larger than her old hometown of Clairsville, but at least no one had offered her any tea yet. Nonetheless, she was still far beyond nervous as she walked as quickly as possible to a randomly selected desk in the classroom, crossed her legs at the ankle, and looked tentatively around the room.
The classroom didn’t seem much different than the ones she had been in back home. Her seat was wooden, securely screwed onto metal legs. The desk matched. Phedra stowed her pencil case inside the desk and shyly began to poke at her nails as the rest of the class straggled into the room.
“Pardon me.”
The words were polite but the tone was not. Phedra looked up from her cuticles to see a curly haired girl in a skirt standing with her hands on her hips. Two other girls stood behind her.
“Huh?” Phedra said, thrown off guard.
“YOU are sitting in MY seat,” said the girl, inserting as much attitude into her words as possible.
“Um…”
“Do you mind?” the girl sneered, squinting up her eyes at Phedra who got out of the seat as quickly as possible and hurried to the other side of the room. She plopped down at a different desk and stared pointedly at a point on the chalkboard, imagining that she was completely invisible. Her red-faced reverie was broken by giggling from the scene of her “crime”. She dared a glance out of the corner of her eye. The curly haired girl had pulled Phedra’s pencil case out of the desk and dropped it onto the floor.
Shaking with suppressed fury and embarrassment, Phedra walked as calmly as possible over to pick up her pencil case. As she approached the case, the girl sat down with a flourish in the desk she had won.
“EEEEEEEEP!”
The wooden seat flew off of the metal legs and hit the floor with a tremendous crash. A confused mass of curls and skirt and splintered wood was at Phedra’s feet, wailing its head off. Phedra was filled with a sort of vindictive pleasure for a few glorious moments until she found her upper arm firmly grasped by the hand of an adult, steered out of the classroom and towards the direction of the Head’s office.
***
About forty-five minutes later, Phedra found herself walking home from school, trying to keep up with her incensed mother.
“She was really mean to me, Mommy.”
“That is ABSOLUTELY not an excuse, Phedra. How on earth did you manage to pull a seat out from under that little girl? You could have broken her tailbone! And then what? We would probably be rushing to the E.R. right now!”
“I didn’t pull the chair out. I didn’t really do anything,” muttered Phedra sullenly.
“ANYTHING?” Susan stopped walking, “Then why was Rosy sitting on the floor crying her eyes out? The chair moved on its own free will?”
“Um,” Phedra mumbled. She herself wasn’t sure what had happened. She hadn’t really touched the chair, but she didn’t think that the chair had moved on its own free will either.”
“You’d better explain yourself young lady!”
“I can’t.”
“Did you or did you not cause little Rosy’s seat to come out from under her?” sighed Susan, trying to maintain control of her tone.
Phedra didn’t know what to say, but decided that it would probably be in her better interests to appease her mother. After a deep breath she replied, “Yeah,” wondering if she would ever be able to look a student from that school in the eye again, and if what had happened would mark her as different for the rest of her now-British life.
The Most Contrived Prank by notabanana
The Most Contrived Prank
Phedra was awoken early one Sunday morning by Maeve, who, while digging around under Phedra’s bed, was loudly announcing to what seemed like the entire world that she couldn’t find Mister Poogums. Not entirely unused to Maeve’s early-morning intrusions, Phedra frowned and rolled over so she could see the calendar on the wall to the left of her bed. It was the eighth of July, 1971. Her frown at Maeve’s antic behavior eased up a little. The next day, July ninth, was her eleventh birthday. Although eleven was not quite as exciting as ten or seventeen, it still meant chocolate cake and presents. One couldn’t go wrong.
“Poogums wouldn’t be under my bed, Maeve,” said Phedra, slightly distracted from the situation in her room by the promise of the next days festivities, “Look in the kitchen.”
Maeve, despite her seeming distress over the loss of Mister Poogums, did not seem ready to leave anytime soon. She sat down in Phedra’s desk chair and wiggled around, tucking one foot underneath herself.
“Tomorrow’s your birthday! You don’t know what I’m getting you!” Maeve declared gleefully.
“I know it is.” Phedra briefly struggled with the idea of coaxing the gift information out of her sister (she knew that Maeve was all too eager to tell her) but decided to be the “mature” almost-eleven-year-old; “…and don’t tell me what I’m getting. I want to be surprised.”
“Are you sure? It’s REALLY cool!” Maeve stretched out the word “really” for a good five seconds.
“I’m sure.”
Detecting defeat in this topic, Maeve decided to switch subjects…somewhat.
“Why aren’t you having a party?”
“Mom’s making cake, remember?”
“You aren’t inviting anyone!”
“Yeah…so what?” Phedra bristled.
“So it’s not a party!”
“It’ll be fun,” Phedra argued defensively.
“Can’t I bring some friends…since you aren’t?” Maeve tucked a strand of her dark, curly hair behind one ear and scratched her nose.
“NO! It’s MY birthday! Get out of my room!”
“You’re just crabby because you don’t have any friends to invite!”
Phedra had whizzed past angry on her way from annoyed to incensed. Maeve’s comment, said out of hurt at her apparent rejection, had hit far too close to home. She sat straight up in bed and smacked her hand (rather painfully) on the bedside table.
“GET OUT OF THE ROOM, MAEVE! NOW!”
“Okay, okay…I’m going…geez.” Maeve walked as slowly as possible out of the room, humming tunelessly so that her exit was as it could possibly be. Phedra got out of bed and slammed the door shut behind her sister. She spent the next five minutes getting dressed before heading downstairs in a horrid temper. It wasn’t the fight that bothered her (she and Maeve rowed all the time and then would forget that they were mad at each other within a few hours). No, Phedra was angry because of the truth in her seven-year-old sister’s words. Her family loved her, but at school Phedra was more-or-less entirely alone. Since the chair-smashing incident two years ago, nearly all the students avoided her like she had the plague. She had gotten used to it, but would still rather be outgoing and popular like little Maeve, who always was building forts and playing dress-up with friends from school and the neighbourhood.
Phedra entered the kitchen and poured herself a glass of orange juice. She could hear her mother fiddling around with face creams in the bathroom down the hall, and the newspaper was spread out over the table. Phedra glanced over the front page. There had been a freak hurricane on the coast a couple of weeks ago, and the paper was still carrying news about the survivors. Her father usually liked to keep up with the news, but today Mark was looking thoughtfully at the grain in the kitchen table, his brow furrowed. He gave a little start when Phedra accidentally dropped the apple she had pulled out of the fridge (further adding to her less-than-cheerful mood), and looked up at her.
“There’s a letter for you,” he said.
“Post doesn’t come on Sundays, Dad,” Phedra replied bluntly.
“Then what’s this?” he queried. Mark held up a large, square letter that, Phedra could see, had her name on it. She set down her bruised apple and headed over to his side of the kitchen. He handed the letter to her. Then envelope was made of an odd sort of material that was rather yellowish, and it had no stamp. There was just an address, clearly hers.
“Did some neighbourhood kid drop it off?” Mark asked, clearly referring to the letter’s lack of postage stamp. Phedra snorted sceptically. What neighbourhood kid would write her a letter and drop it off early on a Sunday morning? But there was the letter, looking rather enticing. She turned it over. There was a great purple seal with a crest…four animals encircling a capital “H”. An air of mystery was filling up the room, and Phedra’s bad mood was moving out of the way to make room for puzzlement.
“I suppose I’d better open it up,” she said.
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Mark, looking over her shoulder.
Phedra broke the lovely seal, pulled the letter (made of the same odd material) out of the envelope, unfolded it, and read it aloud to Mark.
“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
Dear Miss Bagley,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress”
Phedra looked up at her father.
“That has to be the most contrived prank I have ever seen,” he said. Phedra said nothing. The letter had given her an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. She realised that her mother had entered the kitchen and was standing next to Mark. Susan seemed to be every bit as perplexed as Phedra and her father. All three of them took turns looking confusedly at each other, until Mark pulled the letter gently out of Phedra’s hand.
“Should we throw this out?” he asked Susan. Susan just stared at Phedra. Before anyone could act, doorbell rang. They all jumped, but no one moved towards the door.
“I’LL GET IT!” Maeve dashed down the stairs, running so quickly in her socks that she had trouble stopping on the linoleum once she reached her destination. Phedra and her parents heard her hit the door with a loud SMACK, stagger backwards, and then continue in opening up the door.
“Hello, young lady. Are Phedra Bagley and her parents home?” a male voice questioned politely.
“MOM! DAD! PHEDRA! SOMEONE’S HERE FOR YOU!” Maeve hollered. Phedra gave herself a little shake and headed for the door, followed by her parents. A man was standing in the entryway, wearing basketball shorts and a sweater vest over a puffy shirt. Phedra expected her father to immediately send the strange man away, but he didn’t.
“Hello, Phedra.” The man smiled kindly down at her. “My name is Martin Magoon. I was wondering if I might have a word with you about the letter you received. May I have a seat?”
Rather dumbstruck, Phedra turned to look at her father, who turned to look at her mother, and everyone went back to staring at each other in a manner similar to the way they had done in the kitchen a few minutes earlier. Martin Magoon cleared his throat politely, and Mark came to his senses, gesturing for their guest to have a seat in the living room. Susan rushed off to fetch some orange juice, and Phedra just followed Mr. Magoon into the living room, taking a seat in a chair opposite the couch upon which he was sitting. Once her parents had taken seats (and Maeve had secretly stationed herself to listen at the doorway, Phedra could see a bit of her hair) Martin Magoon cleared his throat again.
“Ah-hem. Yes. Thank you for the lovely orange juice, Mrs. Bagley. Now, Mr. Bagley, do you have the letter? Ah, thank you,” he said, accepting Phedra’s letter from Mark. “Now then, what did each of you think when you read this?”
Phedra looked at her parents. She expected her father to be immediately suspicious of the man, since he was the one who had been first to denounce the letter, but instead, Mark looked thoughtful.
“Its impossible, really, but it almost makes sense. Most of me knows that magic is rubbish and doesn’t exist, but then there is just this little nagging feeling that if it did exist, well, then I guess Phedra would have it.” Phedra’s father looked at her. “I guess that the letter just sounded more right than it should, if that makes any sense.”
Martin Magoon nodded wisely. “Phedra certainly does have it. She is a witch with magical abilities and-”
“She’s done odd stuff before, like-” Susan interjected.
“-The chair, in school. I broke a chair, but I didn’t actually touch it. Was that magic?” Phedra cut in over her mother’s interruption and then turned red, embarrassed that she had just spoken up over the adults. Her heart was racing.
“Probably. Hogwarts is a boarding school for children with your abilities. You will learn to use and control your magic. It really is a wonderful place, too,” Martin Magoon said before turning to Mark and Susan and continuing, “I can assure you that if your daughter attended, she would be in good hands. The new headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is a great wizard.”
Excitement had been bubbling up in Phedra throughout the conversation. She had magic! She could learn to use it in a school that would be full of people like her! She could get away from all the unfriendly people in her town! She could make new friends! Thoughts were whirling around in Phedra’s head like the snow in the glass globe her mother put out during Christmas. It all made sense! Were her parents thinking the same way? Phedra looked at her father.
“Dad? It’s all perfect! Wonderful! I can go, right? Please? Yes?” Phedra honestly did not know if her father would let her or not. She bounced up and down in her chair, her eyes darting from Susan to Mark to Mr. Magoon (who was smiling serenely at her excitement). Her exhilaration surprised even herself; she normally wasn’t so outspoken in front of strangers like Mr. Magoon.
“Well, I suppose it would be the right thing to do, but I’ll need more information,” smiled Mark.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Phedra let out a long squeal of joy. Susan winced at the noise, but it was not loud enough to cover the less-than-joyful scream that was coming from just outside the door.
Put On Your Anxious Face by notabanana
Chapter 3: Put On Your Anxious Face
Phedra scowled up at the sky and shuffled her feet. This day, the first of September, was supposed to be the most incredible day of her entire life thus far. It simply wasn’t allowed to rain on her first day of Hogwarts; she had announced this only yesterday. Apparently the sky had not paid the slightest bit of attention to her, seeing as rain was pouring down in sheets and turning the gutters of the house into her family’s own personal Niagara Falls. Phedra was confined to the front porch as she impatiently waited for her father to bring her trunk out to the car.
As it were, not only was the sky not cooperating, but Maeve absolutely refused to accept that her older sister was more-or-less moving out for most of the next seven years (an incredible stretch of time from almost any perspective, especially that of someone whose entire lifespan so far has been seven years). At the moment, Maeve was sitting on the opposite end of the porch from Phedra. While Phedra was bouncing on the balls of her feet and drumming her freshly-painted fingernails on the not-so-freshly-painted porch railing, the usually bubbly Maeve was sitting sullenly in a wicker rocking chair, her toes not quite reaching the cement below.
Phedra adjusted her skirt and craned her neck to see through the front window of the house. There was her father, heading for the door. He was effortlessly pulling along her brand-new (and very heavy) brown trunk, upon which he had paid extra to have her name, P. A. Bagley, stamped in brass upon one end. Phedra ran to help him. She was rather proud of her new trunk - it was far more interesting than a suitcase - and wanted it to have as little rain-exposure as possible.
Phedra pulled open the door for her father and then grabbed the other end of the trunk so it wouldn’t drag on the rain-drenched ground. Together, they barely made it out to their old brown car before Phedra’s arms gave out on her. Mark opened the boot of the car and attempted to stuff Phedra’s trunk inside. It didn’t quite work, and Mark ended up having to tie the back down with some rope from the garage, muttering crossly to himself as he tied slippery knots in the still-pouring rain. Susan hovered nearby, looking anxious - an expression that she had rarely removed since the family’s day at Diagon Alley over a month ago.
***
To be specific, this anxious look was originally expressed by Susan Bagley when she first laid eyes on the Leaky Cauldron in London. About a week after he first appeared at the Bagley home, Martin Magoon showed up again, this time wearing gauchos with his sweater vest and puffy shirt. He was there to escort Phedra and her family on their first trip to buy school supplies, something which Phedra couldn’t be more excited about. Mr. Magoon treated the trip with a benign air, although it was clear that she was most likely the fifth or sixth child he had to take shopping this summer. Most of the Bagleys were prepared for a good time.
Maeve had flat-out refused to come along, her persistent protests becoming some of the first words she had voluntarily spoken since the extreme outburst she issued the first time that Mr. Magoon had visited. When Mark and Susan had agreed to send Phedra to Hogwarts, Maeve had run screaming into the living room, insisting that Hogwarts couldn’t exist and that Phedra couldn’t go there without her anyway. Since then she had sulked more-or-less constantly and even avoided playing with her neighbourhood friends. Her refusal to go to Diagon Alley was not unexpected.
Unable to talk sense into their youngest child, Mark and Susan grudgingly called up the Wilbert family who lived down the street. After it was all decided that Maeve would stay with the Wilberts and their daughter Karen for the day, the rest of the Bagley family were whisked out the door by Mr. Magoon.
They drove into London.
“I’ll sit in the front seat, if you don’t mind,” Martin Magoon said, trying to open the appropriate car door. “I get a little sick when I sit in the back.”
No one argued. Even if they hadn’t been threatened with the thought of a strange wizard vomiting in the back of their car, Phedra’s parents wouldn’t have said anything. The atmosphere was tense. Susan was worried about Maeve. Phedra was simply upset that Maeve was raining on her parade. It took about thirty minutes to find the correct street, with quite a few traffic jams, a packed car park, and a broken pedestrian crossing adding to the strained environment. Magoon walked purposefully at a brisk pace down the street with the rest of the party struggling to keep up, and then stopped so suddenly that Mark, Susan, and Phedra all bumped into each other.
“Here we are, my friends!” Magoon gestured professionally at a decrypt little building crammed between a Gap and a restaurant, “The Leaky Cauldron, a famous place in the wizarding world! Now if you could just follow me…”
Phedra was confused. Such a famous place should consider cleaning up once in a while. Mark and Susan looked confused as well, but not for quite the same reason.
“Er…excuse me, Mr. Magoon? I don’t see any leaking cauldrons of any sort,” Susan said hesitantly. Phedra looked around at her.
“He means that building, Mom, it says ‘The Leaky Cauldron’ on it.”
“What building?” Susan looked around, still puzzled. Mark followed suit. Phedra was now a little worried and a bit angry as well. As decrepit as the Leaky Cauldron might be, it wasn’t impossible to spot. Especially if one was standing right in front of it, which they definitely were.
“That building right-’’
“Ah, don’t worry about it, please,” Magoon cut in, “please, Mr. Bagley, Mrs. Bagley. ‘The Leaky Cauldron’ is the name of a pub. Look for it between that clothing store and the restaurant.”
They did. Susan gave a little jump.
“Oh! I swear that wasn’t there before!” she insisted. Then the aforementioned anxious look came over her. “This is the famous place we drove downtown for? I thought we were buying school supplies! Mr. Magoon, exactly what is going on here?” She sounded more confused than angry, running a hand through her dark hair and massaging her temples. Mark put his hand on her shoulder. Phedra looked up at Magoon. She was beginning to feel anxious herself. Magoon simply gave Susan a kindly pat on the back and guided the family into the pub.
It was dark and smoky inside. Phedra, who had been hoping that the place would be nicer on the inside than it looked on the outside, squinted around for a few minutes and was sorely disappointed. A glance at her father, who hadn’t said much the duration of the trip, confirmed that he had been thinking the same thing. Magoon led them straight through the pub, weaving around mismatched tables and chairs until the group emerged into an equally dingy courtyard.
“Miss Bagley, if you could pay close attention. This will be your job the next time you and your parents visit here.” Magoon pulled a long strip of mahogany-coloured wood out of his pocket. Phedra gasped.
“Is that a magical wand?”
Magoon smiled and nodded benevolently down at her.
“Yes, it is. Now if you could please pay attention to what I do with this wand.”
He showed her an odd-looking brick in the wall of the courtyard.
“Now I count three bricks up and two across. Tap the brick three times, and here we go,” said Magoon. The brick that he had tapped began to wiggle. A tiny hole appeared and grew larger and larger until there was a lovely large archway in the brick wall. Through it was a beautiful, bustling cobbled street. Magoon walked right through, Phedra at his heels.
The rest of the shopping trip passed in a blur of excitement. Phedra really couldn’t remember much afterwards, something that she was rather disappointed about. However, her anxious feeling from the pub was replaced with one of excitement nearly immediately upon seeing that wonderful street. Everything about it just felt right. And although Mark and (especially) Susan walked through Diagon Alley with perplexed expressions, Phedra’s jaw was aching from all the smiling she did. After shopping was over, Magoon handed her an envelope, saying that it contained a train ticket and written instructions. As Phedra and her parents headed back towards the car with her parents she looked back to wave, but Magoon had vanished.
***
Sitting in the car next to Maeve (who was determinedly staring out the window at the rain), riding to King’s Cross Station, Phedra reached inside her pocket. There was her wand. Ten-and-a-half inches of rowan wood with a unicorn-hair core. She was going to Hogwarts, and she was going to be happy. Phedra sighed, blowing off some of the tension she had been feeling on the front porch. The pouring rain trickled off and stopped. A ray of sunlight broke through the heavy cloud cover.
Hurry Up and Wait by notabanana
Chapter 4: Hurry Up and Wait
The car puttered into the car park and pulled into a space, thirty minutes ahead of schedule. Phedra’s stomach lurched; excitement was forced to share the stage with nerves inside of her. Mark turned the key out of the ignition and prepared to get out. Susan had other plans.
"Phedra, before we get out of the car," she started, twisting in her seat to look at her daughter, her voice slightly louder than usual, "check the instructions in that envelope Mr. Magoon gave you."
Susan had to be prepared for everything, even if it meant going to excessive lengths to make sure nothing was done at the last minute (or last two minutes, or twenty). Phedra was not a spur-of-the-moment girl herself, she preferred to be in control of her own situation, but she didn’t micro-manage as much as her mother did.
"I gave it to you, Mom."
"Oh, right. It’s in here somewhere."
Susan rummaged through her handbag, and pulled out the plain white envelope. Phedra took it and ripped the top open.
"Platform nine and three-quarters," she read from a purple ticket. "They have fractions of a platform? I hate fractions!"
"Something isn’t right here, let me see that," demanded Susan, still anxious. She reached around into the back seat and tried to pull the ticket out of Phedra’s hand.
"Susan!"
Mark put out his hand to stop her reaching arm.
"There’s instructions, too. Phedra, read the directions," Mark said firmly.
Phedra picked up the white sheet of paper that had been nestled in the envelope with the purple ticket. “‘ Carry your belongings with you. Walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don’t stop. Don’t hesitate. Run if you need to.’ That’s all it says."
"What if it only lets you through? Who knows what’s on the other side? I bet it doesn’t let us through. That’s not a very good system. Who thought this up?" Susan agonised.
"I’m sure-" Mark heaved a sigh, "-that it’s fine. Look, it’s probably like the Leaky Cauldron. You can only get in if you know what you’re looking for. We’ll just have to try, won’t we?"
He got out of the car into the sunlight that had been streaming down since the rain stopped. Susan checked her face in the fold-down mirror that hung over the windscreen and followed him, as did Phedra. Maeve, still silent, stayed where she was.
Phedra helped her father unlace the ropes from the back of the car and unload her trunk while Susan fetched a trolley to put it on. They were all set to head out when they realized that Maeve was still inside the car.
"Maeve, get out now! I can’t leave you in there! Its too hot outside, you’d bake!" Susan was tense, and it showed in her voice. Maeve was determined; it showed in her stony expression that they all could see through the window.
"NOW, Maeve!" bellowed Phedra. She was sick of Maeve sulking. This was her day. Eventually Maeve did get out of the car, moving as slowly as she could. Susan grabbed her hand and tugged her along. Phedra struggled to push the trolley. Mark locked the car doors and the family made its way into King’s Cross Station at a brisk pace, weaving between puddles of rainwater on the asphalt, still with over twenty minutes to spare.
Susan led the way through crowds of tourists and swarms of men and women on their lunch breaks, sandwiches in hand. Their pace was so steep that little Maeve accidentally crashed into one a woman with a large set of matched luggage. The woman screeched angrily but the family was already gone, Phedra’s trolley parting the crowd.
Phedra panted as she pushed the cart, doing her best to keep up with Susan and Maeve. People rushed by, pressing in from all sides and then jumping out of the way as she mercilessly ran feet over. She became so caught up in following her mother-on-a-mission that she thought she might have left her nerves behind her, somewhere back where the woman with matched luggage had been.
Abruptly, the whole party came to a grinding halt; Susan had found the barrier. Phedra’s nerves caught back up with her in no time at all, returning to her stomach with another unpleasant lurch.
"This is it, isn’t it? Mark? Check that paper. The barrier between nine and ten?"
"Sure is."
"All right, maybe you should go first, Mark, and wait for Phedra on the other side. Then we’ll see if it will let us through, too. Or maybe Phedra should go first. Ah, I wish I knew how this works!"
The situation had been gradually slipping out of Susan’s hands and she was not pleased. With Phedra’s nerves and Maeve’s sullenness, Mark was the only relaxed person in the group.
Phedra stared around, hoping to spot another family that was headed towards the solid barrier. She spotted no one who seemed to be intentionally nearby, except for a teenage girl in a plain blue skirt and brown loafers who seemed nearly as sulky as Maeve. Blonde hair and a horse-like face framed pale blue eyes that were covertly sneaking glances at the family, until they realised that Phedra was watching them.
"All of you can go through, if you actually want to," the girl said to Susan, rolling her eyes at the barrier. "My parents did, and they’re just normal too. Well, relatively speaking."
"Oh, you’re sure?" Mark spoke up hesitantly.
"Why would I lie?"
"Ah, well, thank you!" Phedra’s father was slightly taken aback by the bite in the teen’s voice, but shook it off. "You can go first, then, Phedra. Go ahead!"
Susan looked like she was about to interfere, but instead bit back any nervous intervention she had been about to put forth and squeezed Maeve’s hand so that her slim fingers turned white.
Impatient, Phedra steered her cart around so it was facing the barrier and prayed that Magoon and the plain girl had not been lying to her. The barrier looked so darn solid. She backed up a few steps and squinted so that the edges of the wall were blurred. A little less solid, much better. She trotted as quickly as possible towards the barrier, hoping that she didn’t look too ridiculous. The barrier approached at a rapid pace and Phedra’s shoulders tensed, but she kept going, squinting even harder. The barrier was two feet away…half a foot…an inch, and then...it wasn’t. The barrier was gone.
When Phedra dared to open her eyes, the first thing she spotted was a lovely archway with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters wrought into it. All around her were children with trunks, just like hers. Some had owls in cages, something that Magoon had explained to her back at Diagon Alley. Cats slunk around between children’s trainers and their mothers’ high heels. Everyone was chattering loudly, grouped around the most magnificent scarlet steam engine that Phedra had ever laid eyes on, the Hogwarts Express. Her eyes slid over the crowd, taking it all in, and landed on the cluster of people closest to her.
A short, richly-dressed woman with streaks of grey in her hair bent over her son, who looked to be about Phedra’s age. She was struggling to part and flatten his unruly black hair with a comb. The boy fidgeted impatiently and made faces at another black-haired boy, who was standing near his own mother. This woman was barely taller than the first, but appeared to be much more so. Phedra wondered if it was because of how high she held her dainty nose. She also had another little boy with her, most likely her younger son. It was odd, how different this family looked from hers. These people were decked in expensive-looking clothing that flowed just like the school robes that Phedra had bought in Diagon Alley. These people clearly were full of magic.
“Phedra!”
She spun around. There was her father, looking a little unsettled at having just walked through an apparently solid wall. Susan and Maeve were there as well, Maeve working very hard to conceal her interest in the people around her…until a cat rubbed up against her legs. She leaned over and petted its head. The youngest boy from the nearby group turned around to watch Maeve with a rather curious expression until his mother, who had turned around to follow his gaze, tugged him back around. Phedra thought she heard the woman tell him to, “not look at the Muggles.”
Phedra shook her head and checked her watch, one of the many new items her parents had bought for her to use during her time away.
“Maybe I should put my stuff on the train, Mom,” she mused, more to herself than to Susan.
“Put your stuff on the”” Susan looked startled. “Oh, yes, that would be a good idea. Mark, help her, will you? And come back out here so you can say goodbye!”
“I will.”
Randomly choosing a carriage, Phedra led the way for her father, who was dutifully following along with the beloved trunk. Just as they were about to climb aboard, they were stopped by a porter in a funny little red suit.
“No parents are allowed to board, sir,” he said, sticking his arm in front of Mark.
“Oh, sorry, I was just going to help my daughter with her trunk. I won’t be on long,” Mark told the guard politely.
“Rules are rules. You can’t be too careful these days. I’ll take the trunk.”
The porter heaved the trunk out of Mark’s hands with surprising strength and had started off down the train before Phedra or her father could wonder what could possibly be wrong with “these days”. Phedra had hesitated when the man took the trunk, but a small prod from her father sent her scurrying after the suited porter.
“Here we are,” the porter grunted as he shoved her trunk into a luggage rack in an empty compartment (most students were still milling around on the platform). “This is lovely. Have a nice trip.”
He hurried off as quickly as possible, perhaps to snatch a trunk from another other unsuspecting parental figure, and left Phedra entirely alone in the empty compartment. She looked around for a moment at the sunlight shining cheerfully through the rather dirty windows and at the wood panelling on the walls before power-walking back to her parents and checking her watch. It was nearly five to twelve.
“Sweetheart, your hair is coming out!” fussed Susan. “Let me fix that for you!”
She descended on Phedra’s head and snatched out the navy headband like an eagle stealing a fish out of the water. She finger-combed Phedra’s hair until the wispy brown strands were in place, and then snapped the headband back on as quickly as she had removed it.
“There, that’s better,” she muttered, as though it had been a tangible reality check, pulling Maeve closer to her with the hand that wasn’t smoothing her eldest daughter’s hair. “Now then, you’d best get on the train. Give me a hug.”
Phedra did so. Susan felt tense under her jacket.
So Phedra bade goodbye to her parents and her little sister and began to walk away. Maeve burst into tears.
“I want to go with you! Take me with you! I didn’t even get a hug!” she wailed, sobbing noisily. Several people turned around and shot irritated glances at the small commotion. The woman with her nose in the air sniffed disdainfully. Terrified of the spotlight Maeve was throwing onto her, Phedra hurried back and hugged her sister quickly and awkwardly.
“I’ll send you letters and tons of pictures, Maeve. Really, I will. And I have to go now. See you later,” she hissed in Maeve’s ear. A whistle blew. The sisters broke apart and Phedra rushed towards her compartment, glancing back to send a small wave to her sniffling sister. Then she climbed the steps and moved along the narrow corridor, her face flushed from the potential embarrassment, looking down at the carpet as she hurried to her seat and sat down.
Heaving a sigh and leaning back in her chair, Phedra was just about to calm down when she realised something that sent a huge jolt of panic to her already nerve-plagued stomach. There were four rather tall, older students sitting around her. Her head shot up and scanned them; they were all chatting loudly didn’t seem to have noticed her arrival. Maybe she could sneak back to her real seat before they spotted her. But no, there was her trunk. They were in her compartment, not the other way around. Not that it made her feel much better.
Phedra shifted her behind around in the faded but cushy seat to get comfortable, even though her face was still burning, and tried to look on the bright side of things. Perhaps they would befriend her and she would have an entire crowd of older friends to help her around in her first year. She hazarded another glance at the group, who still had not acknowledged her presence. Or perhaps not.
a/n: My dear reader…I was like you once, sad, lonely, reading fanfiction chapters, and turning away without reviewing. I was fearful. I was fearful of sounding boring, or of being rude. But then, one glorious day, I learned the way of the…er… well…I learned that no matter what your review says (unless, my dear reader, it contains obscenities or the likewise), the author still is glad to see it. I also discovered that leaving a review will frequently merit you a reply from the author, especially if the author is notabanana. And that, my friend, is how I came to discover inner-peace…or at least make lots of authors happy. I encourage each and every one of you to do the same in your life... *giggles*.
Over the River and Through the Woods by notabanana
Author's Notes:
Many thanks to the wonderfull J.K. Rowling, from whom I practically stole the middle-to-end-ish bit of this chapter.
Chapter 5: Over the River and Through the Woods
The Hogwarts Express rumbled around its twenty-third tight turn and Phedra began to feel more than a little bit queasy. Of course, it could have been her nerves and the anticipation of the new school that she had been riding towards for the last three hours. Still, the monotony of the ride had eased her fears a little, and as she had slipped into some sort of comatose state, despite the pack of chatty teens crammed inside the compartment with her. Sliding down in the faded train seat, with her feet stretched in front of her, Phedra stared at the ceiling and put into practice one of her absolute favourite activities…eavesdropping.
Eavesdropping had always been a favoured hobby of hers. When she was very young, back in Ohio, her natural shyness and the peculiar first impression she would make upon meeting people (attempting to explain her even more peculiar name) left her on the sidelines where she was, for the most part, blatantly ignored. So, out of lack of a better game to play, Phedra would imagine herself a detective in Sherlock Holmes-esque garb (except for the pipe), and she would listen. Billy Parson had lice? Phedra was the only one steering a clear path. Laci McElroy has a “super-secret” crush on him? She unknowingly let Phedra in on it. Few other people knew as much as Phedra did about her peers at Cardinal Lake Elementary. Sometimes she surprised herself by how easily she went unnoticed. The eavesdropping continued as she grew older, all the way across the pond to a different continent. And here Phedra was, listening in on a group of teens she didn’t even know. Considering all of this, Phedra felt a tiny twinge of guilt, albeit mixed with pride, about her habit for the first time ever. Still, she told herself, it was the best way to pass the time without a magazine at hand.
“Hey, what about those Muggle killings back in July?” a boy with dark blonde hair and a spattering of freckles asked his companions.
“With the giants? I’m so glad I wasn’t there,” a dark-skinned girl replied forcefully, “but no witches or wizards were killed, right? So it’s not that bad.”
Phedra’s ears perked up. She had read about giants in her textbooks, but had never realised that they went on rampages. She also felt a pang of confusion. Did non-wizards not matter?
“Yes, but they’re still people, Susan!” the boy exclaimed rather pompously. “Besides, it’s not like the giants did it entirely on their own. Someone must have led them. A wizard.”
“Or witch!” piped up a girl with short blonde hair.
“Or witch,” the boy consented half-heartedly, rolling his eyes at the ceiling and adding, “Thank you, Marlene, our very own personal feminist!” in a rather sarcastic tone.
The conversation wandered on to circle around Marlene’s habit of giving lengthy, violent lectures to any potentially sexist male at school. Phedra lost interest, choosing to peruse a textbook for the remainder of the journey, one ear on the teens, her mind on what she had heard.
There had been mass killings recently? A witch or wizard had helped kill Muggles? Phedra was upset; she wanted to know what was going on. She knew that her parents and sister were Muggles, Mr. Magoon had explained to her about how some people had magic and some did not. Still, she wondered if not all wizards cared about the Muggles. Phedra remembered the expression on the face of the snooty woman from the station. She had half a mind to ask the teens what they thought about non-magical folk, but knew she could never actually work up the nerve to do it. Heaving a sigh (as quietly as possible), Phedra attempted to set her questions on a back shelf in her head to re-immerse herself in A History of Magic.
No sooner had she flipped to a random chapter in the book than the words “Muggle Protection Act of 1688” popped out at her. Phedra’s questions leapt off of the shelf in the back of her head and clattered onto the surface of the open book before her as her curiosity was aroused.
“Delegates from thirteen wizarding nations attended the convention of 1688. After two weeks of heated debate turned violent, eventually leading to an outbreak of duels, the convention was taken into the hands of Octavious Marcellus, a delegate from England. Under Marcellus’s sage guidance, the convention was able to establish several basic principles upon which they based the Muggle Protection Act of 1688. This document contained twenty-seven clauses, the three most important of which have been documented here for the curious witch or wizard’s convenience.
- One who possesses magic (a witch or wizard) has been born superior to one who does not (commonly known as a Muggle).
- Magical creatures (being defined as non-humans with limited thought capacity who commonly exhibit magical prowess), though inferior to both man and the wizard, are superior to non-human creatures who do not posses magic.
- To maintain preservation of traditional wizarding ways and ensure tranquillity, the non-wizard (Muggle) shall be treated with benign avoidance.”
The rest of the section spewed information about the various delegates that, although interesting, was rather tight-lipped about the twenty-four other clauses. Phedra heaved another silent sigh and peered out the window. It was starting to get dark as the train crossed a bridge that spanned an inky river. Inside the compartment, a couple of the teens were taking out their school robes. Phedra felt it might be wise to follow suit. After a moment of rummaging around in her trunk she uncovered them, trotted to the nearest bathroom, and pulled them on.
Looking in the spotty mirror in the cramped restroom, Phedra grinned to herself and twirled in a tight circle so that her robes swirled and billowed around her as much as they could in the tiny space. When she had first purchased the robes, from Madam Malkin’s shop in Diagon Alley, she had done the exact same thing. Phedra could see exactly why wizards chose not to wear Muggle clothes. Robes were much more fun. Spinning in Madam Malkin’s had reminded her of swirling around the living room of her home in Ohio, her skirt ballooning out around her, before toppling over on her back and watching the ceiling spin.
“I should swirl my robes every day!” she advised her reflection solemnly. The Phedra in the spotty mirror looked solemnly back, with twin Phedras reflected on the surfaces of its dark brown eyes. Content with her resolution, she checked her nail polish, smoothed her robes and hair, and marched determinedly back to her compartment. Sliding between the teens (who had also donned robes, theirs with cobalt blue trim and lining) on her way to her seat by the window, Phedra wondered how in the world they managed not to notice her. She was short…but not that short.
Not long after Phedra’s return from the bathroom, a voice floated down the train informing them that their destination was within five minutes and that they were to leave their belongings on the train. The posse of teenagers became increasingly excited and the speed and volume of their gossip tripled. Phedra pressed her nose to the window. Night had now settled and it was nearly impossible to see through her reflection on the glass. She could feel the train slowing down. Her heart was pounding. She sincerely hoped that there would be someone kindly at the station to guide the first years to wherever they were supposed to go. She half-wished that Martin Magoon, in his odd little sweater vest, was there to explain everything once she got to the school.
The Hogwarts Express stopped with a jolt. Her fellow compartment members got up and clambered out of the carriage and onto the platform. Phedra followed suit, trying not to slip on the steps off of the train. In the dim light of an old-fashioned-looking street lamp, she could see hundreds of students pouring out of compartment after compartment, talking comfortably amongst themselves. Here and there she spotted the pale, anxious faces of what must be a fellow first year, looking fearfully at the darkness around them.
Then a bright yellow lantern bobbed up high above the heads of the students.
“Firs’ years! Firs’ years over ‘ere! Follow me!”
Phedra and the other pale faces hurried towards the bobbing lantern, and an enormous man loomed into view. The man was nearly twice as tall as her father, with large amounts of tangled black hair and beard, looming high above the tiny first years (many of whom were too afraid to get too close). Phedra, however, just wanted to be as close to the warm lantern-light as possible. He beamed down at her, and she was glad to see that it was a friendly smile. She hesitantly smiled back.
The enormous man led the group of shivering first-years down a path that wove between the black shadows of the tallest trees Phedra had ever seen. She wondered if everything at Hogwarts was so big.
“Here we are. Yer firs’ sigh’ o’ Hogwarts!” the large, bearded man announced proudly. A vast lake spread out before them, glimmering dully in the light that winked from a multitude of warm yellow windows in the castle on the other side of the lake. The castle stood black against the sky and the mountain it was perched upon. Eager to reach the warm yellow lights, the first-years scrambled into the rowing boats arranged at their edge of the lake. The boats took off on their own free will and sped off toward the large, dark castle with the warm glowing lights.
Phedra shivered slightly in the cold, damp breeze and cautiously eyed the other three first-years that had climbed in the boat with her. A ghostly-looking boy with dark brown hair and wide eyes sat next to a red-haired girl who was sitting up very straight on her wooden seat. Next to Phedra was a girl with blonde curls. All three of them stared up at the castle, the little winking lights reflected in their eyes.
The boats reached the other shore. Everyone climbed out and walked up a path to a set of large oak doors. The massive man knocked, and the doors opened promptly. Phedra half-expected the doors to have opened of their own accord, but there stood a woman, illuminated by the light that shone out of the castle and onto the scraggly group.
“Firs’ years, Professor McGonagall,” said the bearded man.
“Thank you, Hagrid,” said Professor McGonagall, who wore a tall pointed hat and a stern expression. She led the shivering group through the entryway (which confirmed Phedra’s suspicions that everything at Hogwarts was huge) and into a smaller room that was empty except for an unlit fireplace.
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” said Professor McGonagall. “Before you enter the Great Hall for the start-of-term feast, it is very important that you are sorted into your houses. There are four houses at Hogwarts, and they are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each is well respected within the wizarding world. I hope that each and every one of you will do your respective house proud.
“The Sorting Ceremony will take place very soon; I will be back in a few moments. It would be wise to straighten yourselves up while you wait.”
Phedra straightened her robes and finger-combed her hair with shaking fingers. The stern-faced Professor McGonagall returned to the group, and led them out of the little room and into the magnificent Great Hall.
The Great Hall was aptly named, for great it was. Unfortunately, Phedra was too terrified to pay much attention to the floating candles, the glittering golden plates and goblets, or the starry ceiling. The first-years lined up along the front of the hall, and all Phedra could see was a haze of faces watching her. She was so nervous that she barely startled when a grungy old pointed hat burst into song in front of the whole school. Trying to focus on the words to its song, terrified that there might be a quiz later (it did say something about Ravenclaws and learning…she was sure of it) Phedra took deep breaths and tried to suppress the nerves that seemed to have been especially active all day.
“When I call your name, you will come forward, sit down and put the Sorting Hat on your head,” said Professor McGonagall in a clear voice. “Abercrombie, Ailis!”
The blonde girl who had ridden in the same little boat as Phedra walked very quickly up to the stool and put the grimy hat carefully on her head. It sunk down over her eyes, and sat there for a moment or two before yelling “GRYFFINDOR!” so loudly that Ailis leapt nearly a foot off of the stool. The table on the far left burst into applause. Ailis went to join them.
“Bagley, Phedra!”
Cursing the practicality of organising children in alphabetical order, Phedra made her way to the Sorting Hat with quaking knees. Just as she was placing it on her head she had a brief, ridiculous thought. What if the Sorting Hat carried lice? Ailis didn’t seem like the lousy type, but one never knew…
“I would never sink to that level, thank you very much!” the Sorting Hat said indignantly in Phedra’s ear. Phedra gave a little start.
Oh shoot! I’m so sorry, thought Phedra, blushing.
“Well, that’s too bad. You’re going in Slytherin!”
Phedra, horrified by the unjust judgment, opened her mouth to argue.
“I’m only kidding! It’s a joke! Haha…oh, never mind!” the hat grumbled. “At least you didn’t take it lying down, like some kids do. So, where to put you? Pretty good mind, that’s for sure. Still…there’s something else here. Lets see…”
Phedra sat up a little straighter on the stool.
“I’ve got it,” the Sorting Hat said proudly. “You definitely have potential as a…”
Two Letters by notabanana
Chapter Six: Two Letters
“GRYFFINDOR!”
The Sorting Hat’s voice echoed through Phedra’s skull. Shaking with relief, she removed that hat, set it back on the stool, and walked towards the table on the far left, which was cheering enthusiastically. Halfway to the table she wondered if she should have told the hat, “thank you”.
The Gryffindors scooted to make room for her on the bench. Phedra had just swung one leg over when, through a haze of relief, the Hat was heard to say “GRYFFINDOR!” again…and the entire hall went silent. Nothing could be heard except the soft rustling of robes. It would have been an excellent opportunity for some troublemaker to drop a plate or burp loudly, but no one thought to. Phedra froze in her awkward position and craned her head to follow the gaze of the sea of robed students and professors back to the Sorting Hat. The black-haired boy with the imperious mother from the train station was taking it off his head. His face displayed a jumbled mix of emotions. Shooting a glance at the table far to the right, which looked every bit as incredulous as the rest of the school, he battled his way through the suffocating silence to Phedra’s table and sat down decisively. When the bench scraped against the stone floor to let him in, the sound ripped through the silence in a rather satisfying way.
Within moments, the hall began to buzz loudly and several Gryffindors leaned across the table to uncertainly shake the boy’s hand. Phedra didn’t know what to think. Professor McGonagall, who had also seemed surprised, adjusted her tall hat (as well as her expression) and returned to the list of first years. The Sorting continued.
By the end of the ceremony, Gryffindor had eight new students, conveniently divided into four boys and four girls, including the redheaded girl from Phedra’s boat (Evans, Lily!) and the other black-haired boy from the station (Potter, James!). After a short speech from the tall headmaster, Albus Dumbledore (Phedra thought he looked a little loony), and the miraculous appearance of an absolutely fantastic feast (out of thin air) Phedra stuck her fork into some roasted chicken and her attention into the conversations around her.
“How’d you manage it, Sirius?” James asked the boy, who seemed to already be a sort of miniature celebrity at the Gryffindor table. Phedra, who was highly interested in the story behind what had happened, leaned in a little. The rest of the table seemed to do the same.
“The Blacks have been in Slytherin for thirteen generations!” James continued.
“I guess it’s twelve now,” said Sirius confidently. “I mucked up this generation, didn’t I?”
The Gryffindors laughter was highly contagious, although Phedra still didn’t know what was going on. She had, however, grasped three things. One was that Sirius was just as peculiar a name as Phedra, if not more so, and two was that no one had questioned it. Thirdly, even though people had seemed uncertain about the Sorting, Sirius was accepted by all the older students within moments. Phedra wondered if she could ever pull a stunt like that, decided that she could not, and then promptly went back to being confused over the conversation. She shot a puzzled glance at the girl next to her, who happened to be redheaded Lily Evans. Lily looked confused as well but, unlike Phedra, was actually going to voice her uncertainty.
“What do you mean?” Lily asked Sirius, who gave her an odd look. A tall boy with a prefect badge jumped in to explain.
“You’re Muggle-born, aren’t you?” he said, but did not wait for a response. “Basically there are a few really old pure-blood families. The Blacks are one of them. No Muggles, Muggle-borns, or half-bloods allowed on their family tree, yes?”
This time he did wait for Lily to reply. Lily nodded with a sceptical look in her surprisingly bright green eyes. Thinking about her history book, Phedra supposed that pure-bloods probably were in all sorts of exclusive clubs. Did that help Sirius in his jump to acceptance? Or was he really just that cool? The prefect had started talking again.
“…and all of the Blacks have been in Slytherin for thirteen””
“Twelve!” corrected Sirius.
“Twelve generations. Look-” he pointed at what must have been the Slytherin table, where Sirius had looked on his way to Gryffindor, “-See the blonde girl next to the really tall guy?”
Lily did. So did Phedra, as well as all the other first-years listening in.
“A cousin. Narcissa,” piped up Sirius. “And she’s got sisters,” he added gravely.
“Dun dun duuuuuuuunnnnnnn!” joked James in a deep voice.
“No, really. Be glad that Bella isn’t here anymore,” said Sirius, his face closing up. No one pressed him further.
The conversation stayed in the general genre of family, although the prefect had lost interest in them. To Phedra’s great relief (she had been beginning to worry), Lily had Muggle parents as well and no one seemed to mind. Ailis, the blonde, was a half-blood (her dad was a Muggle) while the other new girl, Michelle Morgan, had a Muggle-born father. James was certain that his third cousin’s wife’s sister had a daughter who’d married a Muggle from Sweden, and was sure that “even Dumbledore has Muggle relatives!”
At the mention of Dumbledore, the prefect turned back from his friends to explain the “rather mad genius” that was Professor Albus Dumbledore. Phedra was beginning to think that this boy had some sort of agenda to give the first-years as much potentially useful information as possible on their first night. She also was beginning to wonder if it would be possible to ask his name without embarrassing him. Sirius and James had stopped paying attention and were talking to another first year boy with a pointed nose, whose name Phedra couldn’t remember.
“…and although he won’t seem like it to you, he really is a friendly man so don’t be afraid to””
“Frank, your prefect duties do not require you to psychoanalyse Dumbledore to anyone, let alone the first-years. You are boring everyone senseless, and I’m sure they don’t want to fall asleep before dessert is served up. I wouldn’t.”
A kindly-looking fourth-year girl with a round face had leaned down the table to lecture Frank (and relieve Phedra of the question of his name) before leaning even further to talk to the girls.
“Hi! I’m Alice. That’s Frank Longbottom, whom I give you permission to ignore…most of the time. He’s taking his job much too seriously. Now, what are your names again?”
They told her, meriting a handshake each. Ailis was welcomed with extra enthusiasm and told that “we’ve got to get a nickname for you, so there is no confusion between our names.”
Phedra wasn’t quite sure how to handle all the friendliness. She had been so excited to make a new start at Hogwarts. Now that she was there, she didn’t know where to begin. Looking pleasant seemed like a good option. Phedra tried to hitch a friendly look to rival Alice’s onto her face, but was hindered by the chocolate éclair in her mouth. If all of the Hogwarts food was this lovely, it was likely that she would be perfectly happy no matter what.
***
Monday morning shone in cheerfully on the four-poster beds of the girls’ dormitory, accompanied by the not-so-cheerful alarm clock going off somewhere to the right of Phedra’s head. The night before, after the first-year girls had been directed up to their dormitory by a very professional Frank, it had somehow been established that she would be the keeper of the “communal alarm clock” as Michelle had called it. Phedra opened her eyes and tightly shut them again. The sunlight was reflecting brilliantly off the red hair of roommate Lily Evans. She reminded herself to wake up facing the other direction tomorrow and to make sure the curtains on the windows were actually shut next time. She was surprised the light hadn’t woken her up earlier.
The alarm abruptly stopped ringing. Phedra dared to open her eyes again and saw that Lily was the only one to have gotten up. She supposed it was a good idea to follow suit.
The Gryffindor girls made it down to breakfast two hours later. The process of digging up everything for showers and actually finding the Great Hall (which was surprisingly difficult, considering its size) had fortunately been accounted for the night before when Michelle had set the alarm, but for some reason they still barely made it in time. As they settled down at Gryffindor table, a flock of owls swooped in from the opposite side and scattered amongst the students, most of whom did not even flinch. A grey owl dropped a letter in Ailis’s lap, but she was too busy staring down the table at Sirius to react.
“Oh, look,” she said faintly, tucking a lock of hair nervously behind one of her (quite protruding, Phedra noticed) ears. “Look who’s got a Howler.”
Everyone in the vicinity plugged their ears and ducked their heads away from Sirius, who was opening a smoking red envelope at arms length. It soon became apparent why.
“SIRIUS BLACK! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!” The letter exploded into a horribly long series of shrieks, most likely from Sirius’s mother, about how he had “BESPOILED THE FAMILY NAME!”, “WAS RAISED BETTER THAN THAT!” and at no time was he to associate with the other, less worthy students in his house because “THE BLACK FAMILY HONOR!” was worth more than anything he might have valued while sitting under the Sorting Hat - before closing with sincere hopes that “REGULUS WILL BE A LESS DISAPPOINTING SON!” and burning up into cinders before everyone’s eyes. Sirius gave the pile of ash on his toast a long, dark look before getting up, looking defiantly at the Slytherins, and walking along the table to a rather shell-shocked Phedra.
“Hi!” he said in an overly-bright voice, plopping down on the bench next to her. “My name is Sirius Black. Pleased to be…associating with you!” He extended his hand. Phedra felt uncomfortably hot in her long robes. The whole hall was watching them silently. Less worthy? The silence stretched. She gave him her hand. He shook it and went back to his original seat at the table while she hunched over her bacon, flushed, feeling rather used. The rest of the school also went back to its bacon, but without the red face.
A few minutes later, schedules were passed out and Phedra Bagley’s official education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry began.
Phedra swiftly sorted out which classes she did and did not like. Astronomy was vaguely interesting but not worth being awake at midnight for. Charms was not bad, and Frank the prefect had reassured everyone that it grew more fun once they actually began to learn spells. Phedra hoped Transfiguration did the same, because although the first lesson had sparked her interest, it had been mostly lectures and dull work ever since. Defence Against the Dark Arts was not nearly as exciting as the name suggested. Herbology and Potions were alright as long as she followed directions. History of Magic was downright awful. The teacher, Professor Binns, had bored himself to death years ago and was now attempting to do the same to his students.
Ailis, Michelle, Lily and Phedra became friends, of a sort. They needed each other to find their way to classes and didn’t really know anyone else. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws seemed friendly enough but preferred to stay with their own kind. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that Slytherins were to be avoided, so Phedra knew little of their likeability. However, if anything she had picked up from Sirius’s family was true, then she had no issue with complying.
The combination of classes, homework, and trying to be friendly all the time (something she had never needed to practice before) kept Phedra very busy during her first weeks at Hogwarts. On the twelfth of October, she was greeted at breakfast by an owl with a very early “Happy Halloween” card from Maeve, who must have been too enthusiastic to wait to send it. An orange construction paper jack-o-lantern grinned lopsidedly at her from the front. For the first time since she had arrived at Hogwarts, Phedra felt a very small pang of homesickness. She tucked the card into a pocket of her bag, a little embarrassed, deciding that she would read it when she wasn’t in the middle of the Great Hall. Did other students get Halloween cards from their families? She turned her attention back to the chatter surrounding her.
After breakfast, Phedra and company packed up and headed off to their first class of the day, Charms. Leaving the Great Hall amongst a throng of students, Phedra was jostled into a tall girl with a long sheet of pale blonde hair. Maeve’s card fell out of her bag and fluttered towards the floor, but a pale, thin hand snatched it from the air and held it up jokingly.
“Good reflexes, Cissy. Perhaps you should play Seeker this year. Merlin knows we need a better team!” Next to the blonde girl with Maeve’s card was a shorter one, whose matching pale skin and blue eyes suggested that the two were sisters. The blonde, “Cissy”, smirked.
“Let’s see what we have here, shall we? How quaint…” she opened up the card. “It’s handmade. ‘Dear Phedra, Happy Halloween!’ Oh dear, there’s nearly ten exclamation marks here. ‘I hope that you have a good Halloween because you are a witch. I hope you don’t do bad spells. I miss you a lot’ - except she made that one word. ‘Love/From Maeve.’ Well, isn’t that…sweet? Who is Phedra?”
“Cissy” looked around as though waiting for someone to raise their hand and say, “ME!” Phedra didn’t move; she was surprised that this aristocratic girl couldn’t pick her out by her burning red face.
“I really don’t want to carry around some Mudblood’s mail. If it’s yours, own up. Or perhaps they ran off to do some ‘bad spells’?”
The small crowd that had gathered went silent. Her sister’s face flashed anger for a second, if even.
“Narcissa, not in front of the first-years. Give me the card,” said the sister evenly, with all the air of someone whose patience was slightly fatigued and who simply wanted to get on with her day. Narcissa shot her a look that would have killed a first-year, but the sister didn’t flinch.
“Narcissa Black, I am a prefect and your older sister,” she said with a hint of sternness, and slipped the card out of Narcissa’s hand before giving the crowd a warning glance. The crowd promptly dispersed, and Phedra understood. These were Sirius’s cousins. No one messes with a Black.
Her face still red, Phedra attempted to slip away with her friends, but saw that everyone except Lily had left.
“Don’t you want it?” Lily whispered.
“I’ve heard it all now anyway.”
Lily sighed and they walked off. Phedra followed. Her face was still red, but now she was simply angry. Narcissa Black, who apparently thought she owned the wizarding world (although perhaps her parents actually did), had embarrassed her over something that should not have been embarrassing. It was not her fault that her seven-year-old sister didn’t know that “a lot” was two words. It was not her fault that her sister was a Muggle. What power did they have to make her embarrassed? Yet there she had stood, red as a beet and knowing that there was no way she could get back at the Black sisters, even if she knew how.
Immersed in her resentment, Phedra rounded a corner, following Lily, and suddenly felt something slip into her hand. She looked down at it. An orange construction paper jack-o’-lantern grinned lopsidedly up at her again. Phedra looked around just in time to see Narcissa’s older sister disappear around the corner with a wink.
Home for Holidays by notabanana
Home for Holidays
Christmas break arrived much faster than Phedra was prepared for. Nearly everyone was going home for the holidays, but there were a surprisingly large number of students who planned to stay at Hogwarts, or simply really wished that they were. Phedra herself had mixed feelings about seeing her family. She wondered what Susan had told the neighbors about her absence, and if things would be different since she left home for school.
School itself was going well. She was happy to admit that there were no further confrontations with Slytherins, thanks to her well-honed ability to slip into the crowd. The Gryffindor girls remained reasonably friendly with each other throughout the year, while the Gryffindor boys remained reasonably friendly with each other. When the groups were put together the situation was volatile, but manageably so.
This was, of course, with the exception of the time James Potter set Lily Evans’ hair on fire, an incident that nobody, students and staff alike, was about to forget anytime soon. Neither party had directly spoken to the other since the incident (which occurred in mid-November). Lily (and entourage) refused to speak to James out of the coals of bitterness that they enjoyed to stir up late on Saturday evenings over chocolate. James would not speak to Lily out of fear of another well-aimed Jelly Legs jinx (Lily was good with jinxes, and charms, and…). Little resentment was aimed at the other Gryffindor boys…mostly because Remus was far too nice, Peter too forgettable, and Sirius (the other topic of late night Saturday chocolate-fests) too attractive.
The entire train ride into London was spent with Peter scurrying back and forth carrying messages between the two groups, each of which had considered (for dramatic purposes) sitting on the opposite end of the train from the other. The temptation of a good dispute was simply too much for the girls, however, and they ended up sitting only one compartment down from the boys, who were becoming bored with the whole ordeal. Whenever the guys became too apathetic to send Peter back, Michelle would make her way over with a new comment to irk them.
The day went by pleasantly that way. The food trolley went around at noon and the girls piled up on Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans and Chocolate Frogs until they were all on quite a sugar-high. Around two, the sudden burst of energy was fading. Ailis and Michelle headed, giggling, up to the front of the train to see if the woman with the cart would sell them any more Cauldron Cakes, leaving Phedra and Lily in the compartment.
It was quiet. All Phedra could hear was the rumbling of the train, the shrieks of some students down on the other end, and the frantic hooting of an escaped owl a few cars down. It was very quiet…compared to the noise level when Michelle had been inside.
“Well, are you excited for Christmas?” Lily began. Phedra was very glad that Lily had initiated the conversation, because she wouldn’t have known how to begin. Lily was reliable like that.
“Yeah, well sort-of. My family is weird. They’re, well, your family is Muggles too, but my sister is crazy. Maeve, she’s seven.”
“Right. She sent the Halloween card. That doesn’t make her crazy, if that’s what you’re talking about,” said Lily reasonably. “She’s probably really excited to see you, right?”
“Yeah. My mom says so, anyways. In her letters,” Phedra added as an explanation. Indeed, according to Susan (and the Halloween card) Maeve was back to her usually bubbly self.
“So your mum’s excited to see you too. I know mine is. She’ll ask me a thousand questions.”
“Hmm.”
In reality, Susan sounded just as uncomfortable in the letters as she had on the platform back in September. Maybe she just wasn’t a good letter writer. They were quiet for a while as Phedra pondered this, and then Lily burst out.
“I don’t know what do say to Petunia!”
“What?”
“Petunia! She’s been an absolute horror ever since I got my letter in July! And I just know that she’s going to be horrible to me now and I don’t know what to say to her!”
Lily never had been opposed to speaking her mind before, but had been rather tight-lipped about her family. Phedra hadn’t exactly been a fountain of personal information either, and she didn’t pry, but she had picked up that Lily had a sister named Petunia. The last thing in the world she was expecting was an outburst from calm, collected, talented-in-every-class Lily, and she did not know what to say.
“Maybe,” she told Lily, “saying nothing would, um, be best.”
“I’ve already thought about that. I doubt it’ll work,” Lily sighed.
Phedra had told her not to worry too much, because Maeve had sort of been the same way, and was now very excited to see her.
“Petunia isn’t the same,” mused Lily, who had regained composure very quickly. “She’s a lot older than Maeve. Too old for a tantrum. Well, most of the time. Besides, Maeve’s a little sister. She looks up to you. That’s what little sisters do, even if they won’t admit it.”
“Do you look up to Petunia, then?”
“Are you kidding? No!” Lily snorted and shook her head vehemently.
***
When the train pulled into London, Maeve could be seen jumping up and down and waving. Although there were about twenty other young children there doing the exact same thing, Phedra felt as though the entire platform was staring at her and her family. She quickly wished Lily good luck with Petunia, looked around for Ailis and Michelle, didn’t see them, decided she didn’t want to wander around the train looking for them, and hurried off with her trunk to her family.
Susan was as eager to get off of the crowded platform as her eldest daughter was. While Maeve squealed, “PHEDRA!” and attached herself to her sister like an exceptionally large leach, her mother was already headed towards the Muggle part of the station with Phedra close behind and dragging Maeve along. Mark, who did not seem surprised at all over everyone’s behavior, followed along with the trunk.
The snow along the roadsides on the car ride home was gray and dirty, heaped in slushy piles. Hogwarts snow was clean and white. Phedra hoped her yard would be the same. It was, sort of.
“Look at the fort Karen and I built!” Maeve, who had been talking a mile-a-minute since she first saw her sister, tugged on Phedra’s sleeve. “And the snowmen, and snowwomen, and snow dogs, and snow caterpillars, and snow velociraptors, and-”
The yard looked like a rest home for albino animals. All the snow had been rolled into figures which were sitting motionless on dead grass avenues, as Muggle snow people tended to do.
“At school, we made a HUGE snowball that was higher than even your head!” Maeve went on. “D’you like the velociraptor? We learned all about them in school. It’s sometimes a hard word.”
“That’s cool Maeve.” Phedra was comforted a little by the yards of evergreen garland hung over the porch. There had been evergreen garlands last Christmas, and the Christmas before. Christmas this year would not be much different, which was a reassuring thought.
The sun was setting by this time. Maeve led Phedra up to her room, as though she didn’t know where it was, and showed off the new curtains that their mother had put up in there. Then it was downstairs for dinner.
“So, Phedra, how has school been?” started Susan after she had finished dishing up the broccoli and stopping Maeve from blowing bubbles in her milk. The overhead light shone yellow on the kitchen. Phedra ran her finger along the circle of perspiration that her glass had left on the wooden tabletop.
“It was good.”
There was a pause while everyone waited for more.
“We picked that up from your letters,” said Mark. “I think your mother is looking for a little more information than that. For example, what do you do for fun? How are classes? What are your friends like?”
“My friends are nice.”
“We sent you off to a school we know more-or-less nothing about Phedra, and I don’t like not knowing what is going on in my own daughter’s life!” Susan said as she went to refill Maeve’s glass.
“I wan’ ‘o know ‘oo!” said Maeve through a mouthful of pork.
“Um, well, I’ve got seven classes a week. Astronomy, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, History, Herbology,” Phedra counted them off on her fingers, “and Defense against the Dark Arts.”
“Dark Arts?” Mark looked concerned. “I’ll get it myself, dear,” he added as Susan, looking tense, tried to refill his plate. It was not difficult to note that the plate did not need topping off.
“Yeah, it’s like a self-defense class, but for wizards, because we attack people with wands instead of guns.”
Phedra really did not want to stress her mother out more, but it seemed too late for that.
“But…Dark Arts ? It sounds like it’s respected!” Susan exclaimed, setting down her fork. And she had just started to eat, too, Phedra noticed.
“Mom, don’t worry about it. I don’t think people actually use them a lot, and there hasn’t been a big dark wizard since Grindewald in the forties. I learned that in History of Magic. Magic isn’t bad. Charms is fun! We make stuff fly, like feathers and stuff,” said Phedra quickly. She really didn’t want her mother to panic and pull her from school, and the tone in Susan’s voice suggested that she just might. Feathers were harmless. Phedra went on, “It actually might be a safer place than normal school. Like, this one kid fell off of a broom””
“Like, a flying broomstick for witches?” asked Maeve.
“Yeah, and he broke his arm. If he broke his arm at a normal school then they’d have to send him to the hospital and all. At Hogwarts, there is a Hospital Wing run by Madam Pomfrey. She fixed his arm in a minute, I heard. Like, bam! All better! He was in classes the next day and writing with that arm and everything! Hogwarts is great, it really is.”
“Oh,” said Susan. It seemed that she really did not know what to say anymore. Maeve looked entirely nonplussed. Her brown eyes were as big as the olives her grandmother used to set out when they visited her in Chicago. Phedra didn’t remember anything about Chicago, except for those olives.
With a sudden craving for olives, Phedra returned to her food. She used to be relatively talkative at home, but her “Hogwarts is a wonderful place” speech was over for the moment, and she did not have anything to say to her family that they would be able to follow. If the arm story had thrown them, then she would hate to see how they would react to the tale of the re-growth of Lily’s burned hair. As Phedra silently chewed her broccoli, Susan pulled the conversation around to holiday plans. Susan’s mood relaxed as she decided what to make for Christmas dinner and recalled the good time that she had helping out at Maeve’s class Christmas party. Phedra faded out of the chatter.
There was a good view of the front yard from her seat at the kitchen table. Through the glare of yellow light against the window, she could see a snow wildebeest illuminated against the dark street by the houselights on the porch. It reminded her of the weird snow animals that some sixth years had transfigured alive only a few days ago. The misshapen beasts had run, bellowing, around the school grounds for a good hour until they were blasted apart by some overzealous prefects. It had been fun to watch, although Ailis had almost gotten trampled.
“…but I’m sure you know better anyways…Are you listening to me, Phedra?”
“Huh?”
Only a little annoyed that Phedra wasn’t listening, Susan got up and once again offered some more broccoli to Mark. He declined. She gave him some more anyways.
“I said we’re having some friends over for a Christmas dinner. I told them you went to some private preparatory school back home, Saint Agnes.”
“Back home?”
“Ohio.”
“Oh.”
“So just stick to that story, please. I’m pretty sure you know that you aren’t supposed to let strangers know that you go to Hogwarts. It might be a good idea to prepare some answers ahead of time.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll help you, Phedra. If you need it,” offered Maeve.
“Thanks Maeve. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
***
On Christmas morning, like she did every year, Maeve woke everyone up at seven to open presents. Yawning and putting back her hair, Phedra showed up in the living room a few minutes later. The family hadn’t had a lot of togetherness since that first night of break (Maeve had been at a lot of different friends’ houses, and Mark had to work late a few nights) and Phedra was really hoping that this Christmas morning would be like old times. It was.
They went through stockings first. Phedra was pleased to find candy. Pumpkin Pasties were great, but they could never match the perfection of a Milky Way bar. Then there were boxes and boxes under the tree. New clothes, mittens and a hat that her Grandma in Chicago had knitted, a desk lamp, and, best of all, a sketchbook from Maeve.
“Will you draw something for me that I can keep?”
“Sure.”
The rest of the morning, into the afternoon, was spent romping around the backyard and throwing snowballs at Maeve. The poor child took a rather large one in the face, and was about to burst into tears when suddenly she bounded back on her feet and waved at someone over Phedra’s shoulder.
“Karen! Come and help me! Phedra’s beating me but we could gang up on her!” Maeve yelled as she struggled through the snow towards a little girl in pink coat. Karen Wilbert lived down the street, and seemed to be one of Maeve’s best friends. She was also giving Phedra a very strange look, at the moment.
“I can’t! Mum wants me looking good for dinner!” Karen hollered back from the road where she had been standing.
“You’re having dinner at my house! I don’t care what you look like!” Maeve retorted.
“Well, Mum does!” Karen shot another look at Phedra, who wondered if she had something on her face. “I’ve gotta go! See you later!”
“Bye!”
Snow was melting into Phedra’s socks at this point, and she felt like it would be a good idea to go inside.
Six hours later, the Wilberts had arrived and everyone was sitting down to turkey. It was supposedly an informal affair; neither family had any relatives in the area so they decided to celebrate together. Still, Phedra felt distinctly uncomfortable. Karen was the only Wilbert child, and it seemed the two families had bonded quite well in Phedra’s absence. Not to mention that Karen and Mrs. Wilbert kept sending curious looks at Phedra, which was also unsettling. The adults were talking about a charity organization for survivors of the freak hurricane that had ravaged the coast in July. That hurricane had been a long time ago. Phedra thought for sure it would be old news by Christmas. There had been some sort of Wizarding disaster back in July as well, and although she had heard lot of people talking about it on the train and in the beginning of September, it had become forgotten to the students by Halloween. July must have been an unlucky month. She wondered if…
“Well, Phedra, you must be very proud!” said Mrs. Wilbert. Phedra came back to the table with a jerk.
“Who knew you had such special talents!” Mrs. Wilbert continued.
Phedra stared at Mrs. Wilbert, who was watching her curiously. Mrs. Wilbert knew about magic? It was probably best to play it safe.
“Erm, thank you.”
“How do you like…. What was the name of your new school again?”
“St. Agnes?”
“Oh, yes, that was the one. What’s it like?”
“It’s very difficult, but the teachers are nice,” Phedra fabricated. She was not a very good liar, and wished that she had spent more time preparing some answers.
“And do they use a weighted grading system there?” asked Mrs. Wilbert keenly.
“Nnn-yeah! Yes they do! Very weighted, actually!” Oh drat. What on earth had she gotten herself into?
“Would you like some more peas, Charlotte?” Mark intervened with a huge bowl, and Phedra relaxed.
“Oh, yes please! Phedra, I’d love to hear more about your school later, then!”
Phedra left the table for her bedroom as soon as she politely could. Much later, after the Wilberts had left, Maeve came up to see her.
“Mrs. Wilbert thinks you’re a delinquent.”
“Wow, thanks Maeve.”
“She thinks that Mom was lying about St. Agnes. I heard her tell Mr. Wilbert. She must be very smart, to figure that out on her own.”
“Not really.”
“What’s ‘delinquent’ anyway?”
“Go away, Maeve.”
Phedra sighed dramatically and flopped on her bed. Stupid Muggles.
Something to Talk About by notabanana
Chapter 8: Something to Talk About
If you were popular at Hogwarts, and if you weren’t too busy practicing Quidditch on the weekends, then chances were you would spend your free time hanging around the Whomping Willow. The huge, severely violent tree was a new addition to the school grounds, according to Alice, and it had become a sort of fad overnight. Older students had started the trend of darting between the tree’s thrashing branches in order to touch the trunk. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in the younger students wanting in on the fun as well. It made fantastically dangerous play for a society that seemed to embrace anything and everything perilous.
Phedra had started to notice how things of a bizarre, dangerous, and slightly humorous nature ran rampant at Hogwarts during her very first week, when someone had let off a packet of Dungbombs in a busy corridor. Now it was late May and, so far, the year’s events had served only to enforce her conviction in this. She had spent the Quidditch final (Slytherin verses Hufflepuff) on the edge of her seat, terrified that she might actually see someone die. A few rows down, James and Sirius cheered and screamed, interspersing both with complaints about first years not being allowed brooms of their own. Phedra had closed her eyes for a minute and massaged her temples like she often saw her mother do at home. The scene was almost overwhelming. She opened them just in time to see the Hufflepuff Chaser and the Slytherin Seeker collide violently into each other, and spiral rapidly to the ground.
“Lily! Look at the blood!” Phedra screamed to her friend over the roar of the crowd. The two players looked a mess, not that she was entirely surprised. Then, Phedra realized that one of the figures on the ground looked familiar-
“AND IT LOOKS LIKE ANDROMEDA BLACK HAS CALLED A TIME OUT DUE TO HER INJURY!” boomed the commentator about the Slytherin Seeker, just before the mentioned person collapsed in a dead faint.
That was it! Andromeda Black was the prefect who had rescued Phedra’s Halloween card; she was Sirius’s cousin. Phedra hoped she would be alright. Glancing at Sirius, she noticed that he looked worried, but considering his feelings regarding his family, his concern may have been directed at the other player “ Tonks, or whatever his name might have been.
The game had to be postponed due to the hospitalization of the Slytherin Seeker and the Hufflepuff Chaser. The crowd started emitting angry shouts. Phedra rolled her
***
Phedra found herself rolling her eyes in the exact same fashion as she sat in the shade of a beech tree and watched a gaggle of Hufflepuff first-years darting around the Whomping Willow. Spread out on her lap was her sketchbook, inside of which she was trying to draw a picture of the lake for Maeve. Lily sat nearby, working on her Potions homework. Phedra sighed as Lily wrote line after line of perfectly formed words about her perfectly formed potions; Phedra was good enough at Potions, but Lily was brilliant. It was possibly her best subject. Professor Slughorn, the Potions Master, simply fawned over her while he barely could remember Phedra’s name”Phedra, however, found this perfectly understandable. After all, here her name was not so unusual at all, and Lily was much more intelligent and funny. It probably didn’t hurt that she was much prettier as well. Phedra sometimes thought that she would have suspected Lily to be some sort of robot if she didn’t know about Petunia. Not that she knew a great deal about her friend’s older sister”Lily had said nothing about her family after they returned from Christmas, and Phedra had not asked.
"Do it Remus!"
“Remus! Remus!”
Phedra jumped at the sound of James and Sirius cheering loudly for their friend. The only thing was; Remus didn’t seem to be doing anything to inspire those cheers. In fact, he was backing away from the two of them, shaking his head.
“I don’t feel like getting my face ripped off, thanks,” he said over his shoulder as he walked past Phedra and Lily, away from the Whomping Willow.
“That’s a guy with sense,” Lily chuckled.
Phedra, however, had stopped watching Remus. A Hufflepuff she recognized from Potions, Davey Gudgeon, was cautiously approaching the tree now.
The sun was warm on Phedra’s hair as she watched Davey hop about in an unnecessarily dramatic manner. The Gryffindors were laughing, but most of the Hufflepuffs looked nervous. Then, the tree creaked and before Phedra realized what was happening a branch whipped out of absolutely nowhere and planted itself in Davey’s face. The boy flew backwards at least ten feet before hitting the ground hard.
Everyone just stood there for a moment, in shock, until Davey’s screams brought people into action. Lily looked up from her homework.
“Holy…” Lily jumped up and ran over to Davey with Phedra at her heels. James and Sirius were heaving the boy to his feet and pulling him farther from the tree while Peter hovered nearby, looking unsure of what to do. Davey’s face was bloody, and he was clutching his hands to it. Lily charged into the scene in an explosion of red hair.
“Hospital Wing!” she yelled at the boys, completely forgetting that she wasn’t talking to James. They obeyed.
“Should we tell a professor, or something?” Phedra asked hesitantly.
“Madam Pomfrey will know soon enough. Let’s grab our stuff first, then we’ll go see if he’s going to be okay."
Lily and Phedra never made it to the Hospital Wing, but James (rather relieved that Lily seemed to have forgotten that she was angry with him) was glad to fill them in.
“He nearly lost an eye, but Pomfrey patched him up alright.”
After that, students weren’t allowed near the Whomping Willow. Phedra did not mind.
Professor Slughorn put Lily in charge of taking Davey his Potions work. Every evening she dutifully trudged to the Hospital Wing, leaving Phedra, Ailis, and Michelle to puzzle over homework that had become increasingly difficult as the end-of-year exams drew nearer.
“I don’t see why he can’t get a Hufflepuff to bring him everything! The guy has a different person bringing him stuff from each class!” Lily exclaimed as she returned on the third day. She rummaged around in her bag for her assignment, planning to join her friends.
“Oh, this has to be a joke,” she sighed, pulling a long sheet of parchment out of her bag. “I forgot to give him the toadstool conversion ratio sheet.”
“I’ll take it,” said Phedra, without really thinking. “Anything to break up Astronomy for a little bit.”
“Would you really, Phedra?” Lily turned to her. “Curfew is in twenty minutes, it’s probably not worth the chance of getting caught.”
Lily looked so grateful that someone had offered, however, that Phedra really felt that she couldn’t turn back now.
“We both know he really needs the conversions. I’ll just be quick, I won’t stay and chat or anything.”
Phedra took the parchment from Lily and bustled towards the portrait hole that led out of the Gryffindor common room.
“I’ll come with, in case you get lost,” volunteered Ailis, who seemed equally eager to take a break. Phedra grinned at her. “We’re off on a mission!”
They made it to the hospital wing in record time, especially considering that they really weren’t sure of where they were going. After a rather intense interrogation, Madam Pomfrey let them in with a sniff of disproval. The Hospital Wing was still brightly lit and Davey was awake. The girls hurried over.
“Lily forgot this,” explained Ailis, pulling the sheet from Phedra’s hand and holding it out to Davey.
“Wow, thanks! What’s it for?” Davey asked. It turned out that the boy knew nothing about toadstool conversions, and Ailis did. The two bent over the homework, leaving Phedra to wander absentmindedly up and down the Hospital Wing. There was only one other occupant, the Slytherin Quidditch captain Andromeda Black. It seemed she was beckoning Phedra over! Surprised and more than a little scared, Phedra glanced over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t gesturing to someone else. There was no one else there, so she hurried over, wondering what on earth an aristocratic pureblood Slytherin seventh-year Quidditch captain would want from her. Did she even remember her from October?
“Hi. I’m bored. My fellow inmate-” she gave a dry chuckle, “-got released this morning. What do you want to talk about?” It was more of a command than a question, although the older girl sat up in her bed and tucked up her knees casually, as though she really had been asking a nonchalant question.
So that was it. Phedra had become some sort of entertainment. Well, there wasn’t really much she could do about it…Ailis was still chatting it up with Davy.
“Well, um, I saw the match. I’m sorry about the fall…but you look better.” Phedra sat down awkwardly in a nearby chair and hoped she didn’t sound too stupid.
“Thank you. I’m not too upset. I’ve always thought that things happen for a reason, don’t you?”
Phedra had never thought about it, but thought that it was best to agree.
“I guess so.”
“So, tell me about Muggles.”
Thrown by the sudden topic change, Phedra started. Andromeda must have noticed, because she spoke again with a hint of amusement in her voice.
“Oh, don’t think I don’t remember you. You’re the Muggleborn with the sister who can’t spell. Tell me about Muggles.”
“Um, my family isn’t very interesting, really.” It was mostly true, and she really didn’t know what else to say. What was going on?
“I just want to know normal stuff...” Andromeda leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “Is it true that Muggles don’t ever shower, so they get sick? I’ve heard that’s why they don’t live very long.” She looked completely serious.
“What? Of course we…they shower. And Muggles live a long time! My grandma is nearly eighty!”
“Eighty? That’s not old. My great-aunt was about a hundred and fifty when she died.”
Phedra decided not to press the matter. That had to be a joke”Andromeda must be trying to trick her.
“Anyways”so, Muggles are clean,” Andromeda continued. “But they don’t have Healers. They have crazy doctors who cut people up instead.”
“What? Nnnn-yeah, but not like…. What do you want to know all this for, anyway?” Phedra was starting to feel a touch indignant. Muggles were not total barbarians after all, with the possible exception of Mrs. Wilbert.
Andromeda gave her a piercing look, as if sizing her up.
“If…you don’t mind me asking, that is,” Phedra added, more meekly.
The older girl continued to look at her intently, while she sat uncomfortably in the visitor’s chair.
“My family is not… fond of Muggles,” Andromeda said slowly. “Or Muggleborns, or people that associate with them.”
Phedra thought of Sirius’s screaming letter at the beginning of the year.
“I don’t really understand it all,” Andromeda said, more to herself than Phedra. “Obviously wizards are better, but we shouldn’t have to…” she trailed off.
Phedra was rather puzzled.
“Well, either way,” the Slytherin mused, “I have to pick a side.” She looked at Phedra again. “I’m trying to make an informed decision, and there aren’t a lot of people to get this kind of information from,” she said to her. “There are some big things going on right now.”
There were Muggleborns all over Hogwarts. What did she mean? Phedra was about to say something when Ailis popped up next to her.
“Phedra! We’re gonna be late, we need to go!” Ailis tugged her sleeve impatiently.
“Well, I didn’t get much, but at least it was something. Thank you, Phedra,” Andromeda finished with a sigh.
Phedra and Ailis hurried out of the brightly lit Hospital Wing and into the dimly-lit corridors of Hogwarts.
“Sorry I took so long,” Ailis apologized. “Davey seemed really lonely. He started talking and talking about his friends and all his school problems and stuff. Y’know, sometimes I think people just need to talk about things. Do you know what I mean?”
Phedra thought of Andromeda, and of Lily on the Christmas train, and could not agree more.
***
a/n: Well, I apologise for taking so long to put this out. I've been working on this chapter since summer believe it or not. I'd also like to thank my wonderful new beta, Scabbyfish, for helping me out. *round of applause*
Astrology and Astronomy by notabanana
Chapter 9: Astrology and Astronomy
Dear Phedra,
I found these on sale while shopping with Maeve. She insisted that I buy them because your school “has cold floors” and she didn’t want your feet to be cold. Don’t forget to wear them! Study hard, and we will see you at Christmas!
Love,
Mum
The letter was written on floral stationary, and someone had accidentally put a stamp on the envelope, even though owl post didn’t use stamps. The accompanying package had not been delivered with the greatest accuracy on the owl’s part. Phedra picked it up out of Michelle’s toast.
“I had hoped that, now that we’re second-years, other people’s mail wouldn’t get dropped off on our plates anymore,” Michelle remarked as she reached for some new toast. Phedra had possessed similar hopes about returning to Hogwarts as a seasoned second-year, but it was now mid-September and everything was the same as it had been the year before. After an uneventful summer at home, even Hogwarts’ ghosts startled her all over again.
“Sorry,” she apologised to Michelle.
“No respect for twelve-year-olds, I’m afraid,” joked Frank. “NEWT students, however…”
“I have half a mind to mail a package directly to your cereal tomorrow,” replied Alice in a dry tone. Meanwhile, Phedra was carefully unwrapping her parcel. She was rather excited; she had never received a package at breakfast before. Her mum usually just handed over necessities at holidays, unfamiliar with owl post as she was.
“Can you actually mail something to ‘Frank’s cereal’? Would you write that on the address?” Ailis asked Lily.
“We’ve got to try that sometime!” said Sirius to his friends. “Mail Dungbombs directly to Snivellus’ bacon!”
“Don’t tell the world, idiot!” James hushed him.
The package contained a pair of pink slippers. Phedra pulled them out and looked at them.
“I bet teachers would trace the mail and catch you,” Ailis said, leaning across Lily to warn James.
“Is mail traceable?” Peter asked Remus in alarm.
Lily saw Phedra holding the slippers, and leaned across the table to look at the gift.
“Are those from your mum?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“They look too big,” she said, almost apologetically. And they were.
“Y’know, James, it just might be worth a shot,” said Sirius, shooting a glance at the Slytherin table.
“Will you all stop spilling on a potential surprise? Now we really will get caught!” yelled James.
“Bell’s about to ring,” commented Michelle.
***
The mail that Phedra received at breakfast the next day was considerably different. She came down to the Great Hall that morning at the back of a pack of Gryffindor girls, walking alongside Lily. They plopped down on a bench and had started dishing up eggs when the mail made its regular appearance. A brown owl dropped a newspaper on Michelle’s plate.
“Here, Phedra. It’s on my plate, so it must be for you.”
“But I don’t subscribe to the Daily Prophet.”
“Take it!”
Phedra grabbed the paper gingerly and shook it out, genuinely uninterested in reading anything informative.
“Do wizard papers have horoscopes?” she asked the table in general.
“Ha, I don’t know, let’s look!” Lily leaned over to get a better view of the paper. “I think I’m a Gemini.”
They skipped to the back, scanning for anything that looked promising.
“Here it is!” Lily cried. “Gemini, Gemini, where are you…here I am! ‘With the moon in your sign opposing the sun, you are likely to find someone making too many demands on your time.’ Probably McGonagall. I’ve never had so much homework in my life!” she joked. “ ‘This is likely to make you more hemmed-in than usual but by taking a humorous yet flexible approach, you’ll be able to make your point without upsetting the applecart.’ Uh, oh. I better start stretching or else we’re gonna have some very angry applecarts!”
Phedra chuckled appreciatively, but didn’t bother to inspect her own horoscope. The bell was about to ring, and she was still rather hungry.
First period that day was Charms, which Phedra usually enjoyed. Professor Flitwick was a reasonably good teacher, and funny in an endearing sort of way. Also, as Frank had predicted last year, it had come to be rather fun. That day, however, happened to be a lecture day, which was usually never any fun at all. Professor Flitwick went on and on, reading from his notes and interspersing the facts with his own little jokes (which only he found funny, but everyone indulged him) while the second-years furiously copied down everything they could. Phedra, who had never quite gotten used to writing with a quill, always had ink splattered on the end of her nose after class. Fortunately, that day’s lecture was not as long as usual, and the students had a few minutes to mill around after class. The Gryffindor girls stood together in a clump, hitching bags onto shoulders and fiddling with their hair.
“D’you know, I think that gamekeeper, Hagrid, is kind of crazy,” Michelle commented casually to the group. “I saw him wandering across the grounds carrying some dead animal by the tail…and singing! And he’s so big!” She laughed. “What if he just went bezerk-o on us one day?”
“Ha, I’m sure Dumbledore isn’t too worried,” Ailis responded wryly, freeing her blonde hair from the floppy bun that she had tied it into at the beginning of class, and trying to fluff it up enough to cover her protruding ears.
“Hey! Are you insulting Hagrid, Morgan?” Sirius butted into the conversation, raising an eyebrow at Michelle. “He’s the coolest guy alive! Who else do you know who carries a crossbow?”
James jumped in as well: “Wow, Evans, your friends are pretty judgemental.” Lily raised an eyebrow to rival Sirius’. Phedra would have raised an eyebrow if she could. She didn’t see what the conversation had to do with Lily.
“By the way, Bagley, you’ve got ink on your nose, or something. It looks kinda weird,” he paused, wrinkling his own nose, “Kinda like Evans’ face...”
“Woah… What?” Lily said in a dangerous voice, pulling her wand out of her pocket threateningly. Phedra shrunk back. Lily was a good friend, but she could take care of herself. Not to mention that Phedra had no intention of crossing James and his friends. They were very popular for second-years, and Phedra didn’t want them to think badly of her.
“Well I simply meant that…” James’ bravado knew no bounds.
“Watch it, Potter, I’m about to upset the applecart,” Lily threatened. Phedra barely contained her laughter, while James just looked confused.
“Wow! How about that weather?” Peter cut in nervously. Now, all the Gryffindors -except Remus, who was reading over his notes (he was a bit odd like that) - were involved.
“Perfect conditions for Astronomy tomorrow night, eh?” Peter continued. “As long as those clouds clear up!” Everyone rolled their eyes, except for Lily, who narrowed hers at a triumphant James before stowing her wand back in her pocket.
“Don’t even talk about Astronomy near me,” sighed Ailis gloomily. “That class is pure evil! Who wants to be up that late on a cold night to look at some bloody stars, anyway?”
“But there’s a full moon that night!” Sirius replied in an enticing tone of voice. “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore!” His attempt at a deep bass voice was rather weak, but funny nonetheless.
“There’s no amore here!” countered Ailis.
“Remus is excited, aren’t you, Remus?” Sirius asked his friend, who, Phedra suddenly realised, had put away his notes and joined the group quietly. “Remus is intellectual like that,” Sirius added sagely, clearly proud of using such a big word. This time everyone rolled their eyes, including Lily.
“I already told you I’m not gonna be there,” Remus muttered to Sirius. “My mum is ill, ‘member?”
“Oh, right.” Sirius shrugged his shoulders, but James was biting his lip, looking thoughtful. Phedra was thoughtful as well. Remus certainly visited his mom a lot. He visited her every month, actually.
The clouds that Peter had mentioned did not clear up. In fact, by that evening they had started releasing torrential sheets of rain, which continued on into the next day. Trudging to the greenhouses for Herbology was a miserably soggy experience, made worse by the fact that James, who now seemed to be trying to be nice to Lily, bobbed around the girls the whole way out there, trying to offer her an umbrella, which she refused to take. Ailis then tried to take the umbrella instead, “Since he clearly doesn’t want it”, and James’ refusal to give it to her led to further anger on Lily’s part and bickering all the way down to Professor Sprout’s class. Phedra, meanwhile, was trying not to become involved, although she did give James a sympathetic smile when he was “accidentally” bashed in the face with the umbrella handle.
After Herbology was Transfiguration. They were supposed to be transfiguring live sea slugs into Jelly Slugs, a process which Phedra found to be both soggy and disgusting. Her clothes were damp from the rain (Michelle had offered everyone a drying charm, but after blasting a burn-hole in Ailis’ sleeve, she didn’t get any more takers) and her desk was wet and slimy from the slug. To top things off, James and Sirius had transformed their slugs without trouble and were now, to nearly everyone’s disgust (and while Professor McGonagall had her back turned) eating the results. Peter was giggling in the seat behind them; Remus was not there.
Lily rolled her eyes as James tried to attract her attention with half of a lemon-flavored Slug hanging out of his mouth, but Phedra was fascinated, in a gruesome sort of way. Everything came so easy to James and Sirius. Transfiguration, flying, making friends, cracking jokes “ it all seemed quite natural to them. They also both came from fabulously wealthy, pure-blood families. Phedra wondered if that had something to do with it. After all, Lily was smart, but Phedra knew that she worked very hard to earn the grades that she got, unlike James and Sirius who rarely invested an extensive amount of effort. Maybe Muggle-borns just had it harder. Phedra’s musings were interrupted by the sound of McGonagall yelling at the boys for eating their slugs. James and Sirius were trying very hard to look guiltless. Slightly cheered by the fact that the two were to suffer the wrath of McGonagall, despite their exceptional talents, Phedra went back to poking her slug disconsolately with her wand.
That evening there was a notice in the common room, addressed to all the second years. The girls dumped their bags as close as they could get to the roaring common room fire, and, still soggy, walked over to read the notice. It was simply informing them that Astronomy had been cancelled due to the rain, and that they would have to shift their study of the properties of a full moon until the next month. Ailis gave a sigh of relief.
“Now we can get some proper rest tonight. I’m exhausted.”
“Awww…the amore will just have to be postponed,” said Sirius’ voice from behind, before bursting into another round of song.
“I thought you and James were being carted off to detention?” Michelle asked, turning to look at a grinning Sirius.
“Not anymore!” declared James triumphantly.
“We very simply convinced McGonagall that she didn’t really want to punish us today,” Sirius added.
Phedra sighed silently. Those two seemed to be exempt from the law on top of everything else!
“I’m gonna hit the sack early,” Ailis said to the girls after James and Sirius had sauntered off to greet a cheering Peter. They all thought that to be an excellent idea, and sprinted directly from the notice boards to hot showers, before falling into their warm beds.
***
Phedra woke up in pitch blackness, the only light in the room coming from a few glowing coals in the little stove in the middle of the dormitory. Rain was thundering on the roof and windowpanes. She rolled over onto her side and tried to fall back asleep. The rain kept thundering. Her eyes stayed open. She checked the clock on her bedside table. It was only 11:30. Phedra rolled over onto her other side and tried, unsuccessfully to fall back asleep. The rain kept thundering on the roof. She checked her clock again. Midnight.
Phedra sat up in bed and reached for her wand. If she was going to be awake, she might as well be doing something. Drawing would be relaxing, and quiet, but her sketchbook was in her bag, and she had left her bag in the common room. That was easily solved.
“Lumos,” she whispered and her want tip ignited faintly. She swung her feet to the floor and suppressed a squeak as its coldness shocked her poor toes. Socks would be nice. She swung her feet back onto the bed and climbed to the end so she could lean out over her trunk, which sat at the foot. Rummaging in the semidarkness for socks, Phedra grabbed something fluffy - the slippers. They were oversized, but they would do as long as she was careful not to trip over her own feet. She pulled them on and began her solitary trip down the steps to the common room. She shuffled to the book bag, grabbed the sketchbook and a drawing pencil in the light of the dying common room fire, and was shuffling back to the stairs when…thump!
Phedra froze as three figures tumbled through the portrait hole into the common room. Her heart was racing. One of the figures swore loudly.
“Bagley!”
It was Sirius…with James and Peter. Phedra took a moment to calm down, and noticed that all three boys were soaking wet.
“Were you outside after curfew?” she asked.
“That’s none of your business!”
“Sorry…just wondering.” There was an awkward pause as Phedra lingered at the foot of the steps and the boys stood near the portrait hole. “I’m going upstairs now,” Phedra continued, turning to leave, still a bit jittery.
“Thanks,” said James. “Hey, wait, Bagley!”
Phedra turned to look at him, expecting some sort of greater appreciation for not raising a fuss. But instead, James was squinting at her oddly and wiping rainwater off his glasses.
“What’s on your feet?”
Phedra looked down at her pink and fuzzy feet before replying, “They’re slippers.”
“They’re hideous!” said James. Peter and Sirius chuckled.
Glad they couldn’t see her red face in the dark, Phedra fled the scene with what she hoped was an air of silent dignity, although she almost tripped on her oversized footwear. Once back inside the girls’ dorm, she threw her sketchbook onto the nightstand and jumped into bed, but not before flinging the slippers violently into the very bottom of her trunk, where she wouldn’t have to look at them again.
The rain was still thundering.
***
a/n: The thank-yous continue! On top of being grateful to Scabbyfish, I would also like to send some love out to Bre, because I really can't submit anything without her reading it, both online and in school, because I probably would have died in Astronomy without her (Ailis and I are of similar opinion concerning that class), and because she's the bestest best friend ever! Huzzah!
Slippers and Slytherins by notabanana
Chapter 10: Slippers and Slytherins
Phedra’s anger at James and Sirius did not last long. Her upset over the slippers, however, did. Her whole Christmas vacation that year went rather badly, and she was quite sure that it was the slippers’ fault. Well, more like Susan’s fault. The poor slippers couldn’t help that they were big and ugly, but Susan hadn’t needed to buy them and send them off to Hogwarts. Looking at it that way, it was Maeve’s fault too, because it had been her idea in the first place. Either way, the whole Christmas would have been a lot less stressful if Susan hadn’t insisted on helping Phedra unpack and decide clothes needed to be washed. Phedra hadn’t wanted her to; she would much rather unpack the beloved trunk herself and not have her Muggle mother digging through her school possessions. Obviously this didn’t matter to Susan, and Phedra could not pull her mother away from her things no matter what she said.
It was pure frustration. Phedra spent all her time at school being polite and patient. She laughed at people’s jokes, she hung out with her group of Gryffindors constantly, she slunk out of the way of Slytherins, and she put everyone else first. She was tired of being patient and polite. She wanted her way. She wanted Susan to leave her alone. In fact, Phedra was about to throw a hairy screaming fit when Susan pulled something out of the very bottom corner of the huge brown trunk.
“Look, it’s the slippers I sent you!”
“Yes, I see. Put them down,” said Phedra, unable to control herself.
“They look pretty dirty. Did you get a lot of use out of them?”
The slippers were dirty because a bottle of ink had spilled in the trunk and Phedra had not done a proper job of cleaning up the mess (magic always helped, but ink stains were a chore to get out). Not to mention that the slippers had been squished underneath all of her other things for a few months.
“No, I didn’t.” She didn’t see “ or perhaps just refused to see “ the point in lying.
“Why not?” Susan demanded.
“They’re too big.”
“You couldn’t shrink them or something?”
Phedra bristled. “No,” she snapped. “Stop pretending you know about magic!”
“I’m not pretending-”
“Then at least stop going through my trunk, for the thirtieth time already! I don’t want your help getting out my clothes!”
“I heard you the first time,” Susan said as she continued to pull robes and jeans out of the trunk, “I’ll buy you a smaller size, okay?”
“No! Not okay! I really don’t want slippers!” Three months of being constantly agreeable must have gotten to Phedra, but at that moment there was no way she was letting her mother get her more slippers. Slippers were ugly and gross and served to get you laughed at in the middle of the night by errant boys.
“Don’t be silly, you need something for your feet! And stop with the abuse. I’m paying for your private magical education, I never see you except during the holidays, and I’m cleaning out your trunk for you! Stop being so rude, Phedra!”
“I just want to clean out my own trunk! Leave me alone!” Phedra practically wailed.
Then, surprisingly, Susan did. She stood right up and walked out of the room, leaving the laundry in a heap on the floor and calling back that she had to take Maeve to ballet lessons. Phedra flopped onto her bed with a whoosh and a sigh, bouncing a little on the mattress and listening to the garage door go up and the car pulling out of the driveway.
Matters didn’t improve over the course of the next week. Maeve would follow Phedra around like a second shadow, jumping around and running into Phedra’s room at inopportune moments. Phedra tried very hard to be interested in Maeve’s school stories and Susan’s prattling about luncheons. Her family tried very hard to understand Phedra as she burst into laughter in the middle of retelling the tale of Lily and the umbrella. In the end, she would end up falling silent at the dinner table and pushing food around on her plate, or staying home while Susan and Maeve went shopping. Susan never brought home any slippers.
***
Waiting to get on the train at King’s Cross station, Phedra shivered in the January air and scanned the crowd for any familiar faces. There was Sirius, practically skipping away from his older cousin, Narcissa (whom she had made a point of avoiding ever since the Halloween card incident the year before). Narcissa looked like she was about to explode with frustration at Sirius for a moment, but restored a cool look to her face as a tall young man leaned over to kiss her goodbye.
Phedra could hear Sirius laughing loudly behind her and turned to follow him onto the train. She had managed to convince her family that they did not need to come onto the platform with her anymore (“It’s so crowded anyways, Mom”) and was thankful that Mark and Susan had remained on the other side of the barrier where they belonged. Maeve was staying with a friend.
She and her family didn’t have much in common anymore, Phedra thought to herself as she boarded the train and wandered through the compartments. She kept an eye out for Lily’s telltale red hair, but didn’t see her. She shuffled along behind Sirius, who had found Peter and was moving at a leisurely pace, speaking earnestly to his friend.
“…I can’t even say how glad I am to be done with Christmas. My mother’s gone crazy or something. Ever since Andromeda ran off with that Muggle-born, she’s been trying to crack down on me. Thinks I might pull something like that.”
Phedra leaned forward a bit to hear better. Andromeda had married a Muggle-born, had she? No wonder she’d wanted to know all about Muggles! Was that what the whole deal about taking sides was about? Phedra wouldn’t have thought it was such a big deal if she hadn’t known the Blacks. Purity of blood meant nearly everything to them. In her interest, Phedra almost walked straight into Sirius and Peter, who had paused to allow some energetic third-years to race across the aisle. She was pretty sure that the boys hadn’t noticed she was there, and she preferred to keep it that way. Not that they really paid her much notice when they did know she was there, but still.
“Would you?” Peter asked, eyes as wide as if Sirius had told him that he was actually eloping with a Muggle the next day.
“What? Get married? Who cares? I certainly don’t plan on doing anything she wants of me, anyway. Making as much trouble for Slytherins as possible is the first thing on my list for this term.”
“You’ve got a list?”
“It’s an expression. Where’s James?”
“Dunno…oh! Right there!”
James was making a dignified exit from a nearby compartment. His exit was so dignified, in fact, that Phedra was able to safely assume that she had found Lily as well. She did her best to slide quietly past the boys so as not to be noticed (an impressive feat considering that the aisle was extraordinarily narrow and her trunk was very bulky, but somehow they never bothered to look at her as she muttered her pardons and staggered by). In her concern over slipping by, however, Phedra failed to spot the bulky Slytherin sixth-year just ahead of her until she had painfully collided with him.
“Idiot Mudblood,” he snarled, pushing past Phedra and sending her crashing into the nearest compartment. Blood pounding in her face, she scrambled backwards into the compartment, terrified he would jinx her, and several pairs of hands grabbed her and pulled her into a seat. There were Lily, Ailis, and Michelle, all on their feet, and all looking thunderous. Phedra flopped down, completely humiliated.
“Who does he think he is, calling Phedra that? What makes him so special? I swear, I’m going to go out there and…” Lily had jumped towards the compartment door and pulled her wand from the pocket of her Hogwarts robes (she was the only one to have already changed), her temper flaring up. Ailis and Michelle leaped to stop her.
“What are you thinking? What do you want to do, Lily? Duel with a sixth-year? I’d rather not have to carry your remains back in a dustpan, thankyouverymuch!” Ailis sounded slightly hysterical.
“It’s okay. It’s not that big a deal,” said Phedra. “It’s not like he was wrong. I’m not a pure-blood, am I? It must be really obvious.” She was still shaking a little from the encounter, but would rather not see Lily rush off to her doom in a fit of temper.
“Phedra! That kind of attitude is what lets people like that idiot get away with things! I’m not taking it from anybody, and neither should you! We’re better than that jerk…we have manners!”
“Do we?” Ailis said sarcastically, trying to calm down. “Attacking people isn’t usually considered polite.”
Lily rolled her eyes, but Phedra laughed. She was starting to relax a bit after two weeks of tension.
“Still,” Lily insisted, “it isn’t right. I mean, look at what’s been happening in the papers recently!”
They all looked at her blankly.
“D’you think we actually read newspapers over Christmas?” Michelle joked. “Heck, I don’t even read papers when we’re at school, either.”
“Says the girl I rely on for so much information,” sighed Lily, shaking her head. Michelle was the only girl in the group whose parents were both magical. She and Ailis provided Lily and Phedra with quite a bit of practical wizarding knowledge.
“Anyway,” continued Lily, “throughout history there have always been occasional bouts of anti-Muggle violence. Little uprisings by small groups of psychos””
“Slytherins,” interjected Michelle. The train took off with a rattle and a jerk. The girls swayed a bit in their seats but didn’t pay any heed.
“No! Well, yes, but that’s not the point. Every now and then, including over Christmas holidays, a bunch of pure-blooded pigs will get drunk and end up attacking some Muggles. Occasionally they even go after Muggle-borns. They get caught…they go to jail for a little while…but nothing ever changes. We just keep taking it. Muggle-borns like us hardly ever bother to stand up for the rights of their families! It’s despicable!” Lily’s face had flared up to match her hair. Phedra had never seen her friend so upset…with the exception of the usual “I’m going to wallop James Potter” episodes, Lily’s violent emotional outbursts weren’t particularly frequent.
“It sounds like you’ve been doing research or something,” Ailis said.
“As a matter of fact, I have…but just from my schoolbooks, and there’s hardly anything in them. There’ve been two attacks in the past eighteen months! That’s more than one a year!”
“So, you’re going to fight for a cause? Seriously, Lily, you are twelve years old!”
“No! But I don’t think Phedra should let people push her around like that!” She then turned her attention to Phedra, who shrank back a bit in her seat. “Seriously, Phedra, stand up for yourself. People’ll walk all over you, otherwise.”
“Mm-hmm.” Phedra nodded vigorously, which appeared to satisfy Lily. After a few moments, Michelle started gossiping about some gorgeous new third-year Chaser on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, and Lily’s anger over the sixth-year Slytherin was forgotten by all but Phedra. She sat quietly, half-listening to how the Chaser, Brendan Sullivan, had been taken on at the last minute as a replacement, and how now the Gryffindor team had doubled their number of practices. She didn’t even bother to question how Michelle had found all this out. The girl was a fountain of gossip-related information.
Phedra wondered if she was letting people walk all over her. She didn’t think so, and supposed that even if she was…well, it wasn’t working out badly. Deciding that she shouldn’t bother worrying, she brushed Lily’s words into the back corners of her mind and settled down to hear about Sullivan. After the holidays, it was nice to be involved in conversation with people who actually knew what a Quaffle was, and who didn’t think Hogwarts’ moving staircases were escalators.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.