Today, though, she was lost in her thoughts. Sandwiched between Professor Flitwick - who had been interesting to meet; he was one of the rare individuals that were shorter than she was - and Professor Longbottom, she was pondering something that had been troubling her ever since her arrival at Hogwarts the previous Sunday. Viola had dealt with a variety of students over the course of the week - of every size, shape, and disposition imaginable - but she found that they were invariably all the same regarding one particular factor.
Even for a Muggle-born, Viola had an uncommon knowledge of Muggle literature. Raised in a circle of scholars, she had had Shakespeare drummed into her at an early age; now thirty-one years old and an accomplished witch, she was still every bit as passionate about the playwright as she had been back then. Yet, in the world in which she lived, there was seemingly no one else who shared her enthusiasm.
She needed a plan - something to motivate her students, something that would teach them that Muggle culture was far from unnecessary or pointless…
Inspiration suddenly struck her with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
“Professor Flitwick?”
The tiny man started, dropping his chocolate croissant into his lap.
“Oh, goodness - and do call me Filius, dear -” He chuckled wearily as he Vanished the crumbs left on his robes. “I’m still half asleep, honestly! What was it you wanted?”
“I was just wondering,” Viola said, a smile slowly unfolding across her face, “how one would go about starting a student organization.”
Down at the Gryffindor table, Rose Weasley was shovelling forkfuls of scrambled eggs into her mouth when her friend Drew plonked himself beside her, beaming.
“It’s Friday,” he announced, pulling a stack of toast towards him and buttering it merrily.
Rose swallowed her eggs and turned a page of her book. “So it is.”
“I love Fridays.”
The two of them went through this routine every week, and it seemed that the tradition had not been broken over the summer holidays.
“And why is that?” Rose asked, without looking up.
“Because it means that tomorrow” - Drew threw an arm around her shoulders - “is Saturday.”
When Rose didn’t reply, he sighed, removing his arm and plucking the book that she was reading out of her grasp.
“What are you reading, anyway?” he asked, studying the faded dust jacket. “Wuthering Heights? Cheery stuff.”
“It happens to be a classic.” Rose shot him a disdainful look and continued to eat her breakfast.
“And you happen to be a witch, so why are you bothering with ancient Muggle books?”
She scoffed, setting down her pumpkin juice. “It’s hardly ancient. Besides, I think that it’s good to broaden your horizons, especially when your mother was raised by Muggles.”
Drew shrugged and bit into his toast. Rose took the opportunity to snatch the book back from him, rifling through the pages fervently.
“Oh, Drew, you made me lose my page! I was just getting to a good bit, too…”
She scowled at him and shoved the book into her bag, withdrawing her timetable as she did so. Sunshine suddenly flooded the Great Hall, picking out every golden thread in Drew’s hair; he looked ironically angelic in the haze of light.
“You know, your hair looks really red in this light, Rose,” Drew remarked thoughtfully, tugging on an auburn curl.
“Yours looks blonde,” she replied, still glaring at him. “Blonder, anyway.”
“I got highlights over the summer, actually.” Drew grinned, and Rose smiled back before she could stop herself. “Aren’t they dashing?”
He didn’t always act it, but Drew Fitzgerald was truly fabulously gay. Rose wasn’t bothered by this, of course, though, sometimes, she did find it amusing.
Now, she agreed that the highlights were indeed incredibly dashing, and glanced down at her timetable as students around them started to leave for their first lessons.
“Bad news, Drew,” she said, swinging her bag onto her shoulder. “Muggle Studies first.”
As in almost every other class, Rose was excellent at Muggle Studies, probably in part because she had been brought up by a Muggle-born mother. Drew, however - despite being Muggle-born himself - was awful at the subject. He claimed that he found it nearly impossible to concentrate in the lessons, and even he couldn’t be sure why he had taken it in the first place.
“I can safely say that my good mood has just evaporated,” he said miserably, trailing after Rose like a tall, blonde, bad-tempered duckling behind its mother. He kept up a steady string of complaints about the nature of Muggle Studies as the pair walked to their third floor classroom, but fell silent when they reached the door, as if afraid that the teacher might hear him.
“Don’t we have a new professor this year?” Rose remembered a tiny witch in magenta robes that the Headmistress had introduced on their first evening back.
“Yeah… Professor Caprio or something.”
“Cassio.”
“What?”
Rose shrugged. “Her name is Professor Cassio. I just remembered.”
“Oh.” Drew made a face. “Let’s hope she’s better than Professor Khan, at least.”
No sooner had Rose recalled the dull, unhealthy-looking professor of their previous year than the door of the classroom flew open with a bang, revealing an entirely different-looking woman of around thirty with a sheaf of black hair pulled tightly back from her face. She looked Italian, Rose thought, with a Hispanic complexion and angular features, though her eyes were a piercing, icy blue. Her head reached up to about Rose’s chin.
“Good morning, fourth-years,” she said, her voice brisk and untainted by an accent. “My name is Viola Cassio; you will refer to me by ‘Professor’ or ‘Professor Cassio’ only, however. Welcome to Muggle Studies.”
With that, Professor Cassio turned on her heel and strode back into her classroom, leaving Rose feeling as though she had been plunged into freezing water. Drew gave her a gentle push, and she hastily shuffled after their new professor.
“Not very friendly, is she?” Drew muttered as they found a desk near the front of the room. Rose grimaced in agreement. Looking around the room, she found that it was filled with a myriad of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs with a sparse few Ravenclaws and Slytherins. She recognised Jack Thomas, a quiet Gryffindor boy in her year whose parents were friendly with hers, and smiled at him, indicating the seat in front of her. He grinned back shyly and made his way over.
“That woman scares me,” Jack said in a low voice when he reached them, setting up his quill and parchment meticulously on the desk. He was a slight, fine-boned boy with skin the colour of brown sugar and a thick cap of dark curls, and he might have been considered handsome if everyone who saw him didn’t get the impression they could knock him down with a feather.
“Jack,” Rose replied, amused, “she’s about half your size.”
Jack just looked at her darkly from beneath his eyelashes. His gaze fell on Drew, who was staring morosely into space, and his face broke into a smile.
“Hey,” Jack asked, with mild interest, “did you get highlights?”
Before Drew or Rose could comment on this bizarre turn of conversation, however, Professor Cassio materialised in front of the class. A number of lethal-looking leather-bound volumes were hovering in the air before her. Rose could just about make out the titles embossed on the covers: Romeo and Juliet. The name rang a distinct bell within her mind. She had a feeling that her mother had mentioned it before.
“We will be studying Muggle literature this term,” declared Professor Cassio, in a toneless voice that made Rose suspect she had said the same words many times before. “Specifically the works of Shakespeare.”
Drew’s head snapped up at this, and Rose remembered where she had seen the title on the volumes before. It resided on the spine of one of the many books her mother kept in their study at home. And Shakespeare - wasn’t he an Elizabethan writer? Rose knew that Hermione had definitely brought up the name in conversation.
“Now, can anyone tell me what they know about William Shakespeare?”
Drew raised a tentative hand. “He’s a Muggle playwright, isn’t he?”
Professor Cassio gave him an approving nod, and he sat back, looking distinctly pleased with himself. Rose hid a smile.
“In the Muggle world, Shakespeare is, even today, a household name,” Professor Cassio continued. She stared down at the blank faces of her pupils with a pained expression. “I realise that most of you have grown up knowing only of writers in the wizarding world. However, I have taken it upon myself to educate you in the teachings of Muggle literature, which I hope you will find as engaging as I do. ” There was a pause, as if daring the class to disagree. “I trust that none of you would be sitting here if you didn’t find the Muggle world at least marginally interesting...”
Then, with a flick of her wand, Professor Cassio sent the books in front of her flying across the room in a series of graceful arcs. The one that thudded onto the desk in front of Rose was particularly dog-eared, with furry corners and a fraying spine. The gold lettering on the cover was faded. Drew, whose copy was near-perfect, smirked maddeningly.
Professor Cassio clapped her hands once, bringing the attention of the class back from the shower of books to her. “Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona, Italy, in the year 1303. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet are two teenagers from conflicting families. They fall in love, even though the relationship is obviously doomed; at the end of the play, both take their own lives so as to be together in death. It is one of Shakespeare’s best known tragedies and one of my personal favourites.”
Her eyes roamed over the students assembled in front of her before finally settling on Rose. The latter could almost see her professor making the connections in her mind - red hair plus freckles equals…
“Miss Weasley,” Professor Cassio said finally, a thin smile tugging at her lips. “Would you care to read the prologue for us?”
With a barely audible sigh, Rose opened the book in front of her and began to read.
“‘Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s death, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.’”
Rose leaned back in her seat, a pleasant sense of anticipation building inside her. This was her kind of story. She looked up to find Professor Cassio watching her with an intent expression.
“Thank you, Miss Weasley,” she said, without removing her gaze from Rose’s face. Picking up her own copy of the play “ which, Rose noticed, was in a considerably better condition than those of her class - the professor produced a pair of square-rimmed reading glasses. She perched them on the bridge of her nose and dragged her eyes away from Rose in order to scan the rest of her pupils.
“Did you all understand what Miss Weasley just read out?” Professor Cassio’s expression didn’t even flicker when she was answered only by a few half-hearted mutterings. “In short, it meant that in taking their lives, Romeo and Juliet managed to reconcile their families - but, to use the common phrase, it was too little, too late. The end of the passage is a piece of advice, of sorts; saying that we should learn from the mistakes of the Capulets and the Montagues. Are we clear?” This time, the class gave a much more enthusiastic assent. Professor Cassio smiled tightly. “Excellent. Please pay close attention as I read.”
Without even glancing down at the page in front of her, Professor Cassio began to speak in a clear, melodious voice. “‘Act 1, Scene 1. Verona. A public place. Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, of the house of Capulet, armed with swords and bucklers…’”
Later, Rose found herself enjoying the play to an almost obsessive degree, and couldn’t resist curling up in the common room that evening to pore over her tattered copy. It was there that Drew found her, coiled like a cat in an armchair by the fire.
“Hey,” he said, settling into the chair beside hers. Rose didn’t look up, and he sighed, loudly and pointedly. “What happened to Wuthering Heights?”
“In my bag,” she replied tonelessly, expertly flipping a worn page. In the next moment, her book had been yanked from her hands for the second time that day.
“Cathy and Heathcliff will be feeling neglected,” he told her firmly, then seemingly thought better of it. “Not that you should go and get them, either,” he amended.
Rose rolled her eyes and stretched, enjoying the warmth of the fire on her slippered feet. A chilly autumn was fast approaching, and draughts had already started sneaking through the corridors.
“So, what’s happening to our dear friends Romeo and Juliet?” Drew asked absently, twisting at the threads poking out of his armchair. Rose opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off as her cousin Lily came bounding over. Lily had hair the colour of firewhisky and a temper to match, but this was all but buried by her bubbly personality.
“Rosie!” she squealed by way of greeting, hurling herself onto the arm of Rose’s chair. “And Drew! You’ll never guess what’s happened!”
With a sense of foreboding deep in the pit of her stomach, Rose turned towards her cousin. Anything that made Lily this excited would inevitably be something worrying.
“What?” asked Drew, happily oblivious to Rose’s discomfort.
“You know that new Muggle Studies lady? Well...” - Lily was practically squirming with excitement - “she’s starting a drama club! How cool is that?”
Rose, who hated anything that entailed getting up and performing in front of people, inwardly thought that this was a terrible idea, but she pasted a smile on her face anyway. Drew, on the other hand, looked genuinely intrigued.
“Really, now?” he mused, scratching his chin thoughtfully.
“Yep!” Lily bounced up and down slightly. “She’s offering extra credit in Muggle Studies for it, too.”
“Is she?” Drew cocked an eyebrow and alarm bells started going off in Rose’s head.
“Yeah, but I don’t even do Muggle Studies, so…” Shrugging her bony shoulders, Lily slid off of her perch on Rose’s chair and grinned at both of them. “It’s on tomorrow at four o’ clock! See you there, hip cats!”
Drew shook his head as she melted into the throng of Gryffindors.
“That girl is mad,” he said, though there was an admiring tone to his voice. “Anyway...a drama club? How about it, Rose?”
Her answer was to stare, horrified, at him.
“Oh, come on. It’ll be a laugh! And, anyway,” - he stuck out his bottom lip - “I could really use the extra credit.”
“Sounds like bribery to me,” Rose muttered, but she could feel her resolve breaking.
“Pretty please?”
Rose mentally chided herself for being such a pushover. “Fine. One meeting, and if I don’t like it, I never have to go again.” She paused, narrowing her eyes at Drew. “Deal?”
Drew grinned victoriously. “Deal.”