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.