I learned some good news later that day: while barging down the fifth floor stairs swearing at the top of his lungs and threatening painful hexes against an unspecified ‘Mudblood’ Daniel Rosier had walked right into a conversation between Professors McGonagall and Sprout. They quickly informed Professor Snape, and to his credit, Snape slapped Rosier with an indefinite suspension. I suspected it was more to save face than it was out of any genuine desire to punish the git.
Grant told me I could still be targeted by people wanting revenge for his suspension, so I stuck close to him whenever possible. We spent the next several days getting to know each other. I’m not sure I can say that we became friends, because for the most part Grant’s interactions with me consisted of me divulging details about my life and interests and Grant proceeding to nitpick every aspect until I wondered if Grant himself was not a curse someone had cast on me.
0000
“You call this a drawing?” he said, grabbing the pencil from my hand and putting the rubber end to the paper. “Look, your perspective’s all wrong. Her ears are lopsided and this eye is smaller than the other one.”
“Hey, I need that to see with!” Copi protested as Grant erased one eye. Nothing but a smudge remained.
Grant handed me the sketch book. “There, fix it.”
“What, you aren’t going to give her a new one?” I took the sketch book and tried to retrace what I could still see of the old lines.
“I’m terrible at drawing,” Grant said. “That’s why I don’t do it.”
“Well some of us like to have fun once in a while,” I
hissed.
“We have fun, don’t we?”
I looked at Grant, somewhat stunned, but did not detect the slightest hint of sarcasm in his face.
0000
“Why do you wear that shirt?” he demanded as we entered the Great Hall for dinner. I glanced at my watch; we were a bit early and the food hadn’t appeared on the tables yet. “It lets everyone know you’re a Muggleborn. You’ve already been attacked once.”
“Twice,” I corrected. “And I like this shirt.” I glanced down at the faded image of Mario riding atop Yoshi’s back, the ink of the plumber’s enthusiastic grin cracked a bit from repeated washings.
“An obese cartoon workman riding an
undersized wingless dragon. Only Muggles.”
Grant gave a halfhearted smirk and took his seat at the end of the table. I sat
down between him and Terrance, on the end of the Slytherin table with the
students who didn’t put on airs of caring about all the Blood Purity bollocks.
I toyed with a spoon waiting for dinner and silently marveled at the fact I no
longer considered food appearing from nowhere the weirdest part of my life.
“You’d love Mario too if you played his games,” I told Grant, searching for a
bit of normality in words that I couldn’t find in the circumstances. “He’s the
best.”
“What sort of games are these? Something like chess?” Grant
asked as the food appeared. He stabbed a pork chop with his fork and moved it
onto his plate.
“Er,” I said, staring for a moment. I still didn’t
know how to explain video games to someone who didn’t understand the concept of
video.
0000
Though it only reinforced my confusion and anxiety about being trained as a witch, I continued to study my Bible every morning when I got up. Perhaps because I’m just stubborn, and perhaps because I was raised with the implicit, often explicit, notion that studying the Bible daily was simply something good people did, like holding open doors for old ladies. As much as I would like to say it gave me guidance, it didn’t. I kept returning to the passages condemning witchcraft and looking for some sort of loophole, some softening of the blow; other than my aunt’s words, I found none.
After the incident in the common room, I usually confined
the readings to the dormitory, though. There, the greatest danger was snide
commentary from the increasingly-hostile Sypha. To my dismay, she was quickly
pulling Emma into her orbit, and was in turn being pulled into the orbit of
older girls, a clique which included Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode.
“Why do you even bother with that?” Sypha said. “You look like you’re on the
verge of throwing up every time you read it.”
I stammered for an explanation for a moment and finally told her the reason.
“I’m supposed to,” I said, looking away.
“Daddy always said Muggleborns were mad,” Sypha said, her voice hovering somewhere between gloating and pity. “I guess he knew what he was talking about.”
Josie gave me a sympathetic smile and then turned to Sypha. “Michelle has to find her own way,” she said. “I don’t believe God would give us these gifts if we weren’t supposed to use them.”
“By that logic,” Emma said, “why the devil did the Lord give us pigs if we aren’t supposed t’eat them?”
I winced. Josie had made a point of avoiding the pork chops the other day, and that was the first time I realized I wasn’t the only religious student in my year. I closed up my Bible and put it back in my bag, then pulled on a robe and headed down to breakfast.
As usual I sat by Grant; Artemis McFly joined me on the other side. For reasons that amused only myself, I had taken to calling her Arty.
“I heard they’re makin’ treacle tarts as a side dish this marnin’,” Arty said.
“Great Scott!” I said. I was pretty fond of treacle tarts, but I couldn’t help think my movie reference had a hint of unintended mockery. Fortunately, it only drew confused stares from everyone else at the table”aside from Terrance, who snickered and shook his head at me.
I shrank back into my seat and waited for breakfast to appear; when it did, it indeed included treacle tarts.
But that minor delight was quickly overshadowed when the windows opened and dozens of owls rushed in carrying the morning mail. I had been hoping for a letter for the past few days, and finally my hopes were answered when a tiny grey owl dropped a reply from Amanda on the table in front of me. I pushed my juice aside and greedily opened the tube. Only a small roll of copy paper was inside, so I immediately began reading it.
Dear Michelle
Sweetie, I’m so sorry
to hear about what happened, and on your first day, too. I hope you don’t hate
me now. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about it at the moment. I
certainly can’t come in person. The reason it’s taken me so long to reply…
well, brace yourself. I’m in jail. Your parents are
apparently fickle folk, because no sooner had I got back to my house then they
sent police, claiming I’d kidnapped you and sent you off to join a cult.
Naturally without any Muggle documentation I couldn’t prove I’d sent you to a
boarding school. Writing’s been difficult. My rather nosy cellmate has been
watching me like a proverbial hawk and if you’re reading this I can only assume
I found a moment to attach a response to the owl you sent. I hope you’re well
now, and know that you’ll be in my thoughts and prayers.
And don’t worry about me. I’m sure the Ministry or Dumbledore will get around
to securing my release eventually. It’s just the tedium of waiting I can’t
stand.
Be strong. Love,
Amanda
PS: Snape is totally a git,
isn’t he? But remember, he’s one of the good guys, good being a relative term
in his case. If worst comes to worst, he won’t let you come to harm.
I stared at the letter for a good thirty seconds, my face
twisting from shock to near-panic. Grant noticed first and leaned in.
“Michelle, what’s wrong?”
“It’s my aunt,” I said quietly. “She was arrested for”for
helping me come to Hogwarts.”
“What!” Granted blurted. “Why?”
“You know what I said about my parents, how they think witches and wizards are evil? They think Amanda is trying to make me evil, too. Like she’s trying to drag me down with them.”
I felt a sob coming on and forced it down. My eyes began to moisten. “They threw me out of the house, but now I guess they’ve changed their minds. Or maybe they just want to punish Amanda.”
Grant’s eyes darkened, and I saw something in them
buried deep, something that terrified me.
He stood up. “We have to go do something. She was trying to help you. My gawd, you Muggles and your ridiculous superstitions.”
“It’s not superst”” I tried to
correct him.
But Grant ignored me, and was already up and heading across the room towards
the table where the professors sat, aiming for the middle with Dumbledore. I
muttered some words nobody would have expected from me of all people and
followed him, reaching the table as he was rambling through the explanation to
the Headmaster. Dumbledore immediately put an end to his conversation with
Professor Lockhart and began listening to Grant with one ear while trying to
keep Lockhart from bloviating in the other.
“”and that was how I managed to thwart the Queen Vampire’s plot to enslave the children of Budapest””
“”her aunt was put in jail because she was trying to help Michelle””
“”Grant, I appreciate this and all but I can fight my own battles and so can Aman””
Just then a howler went off at one of the tables behind us, adding to the noise. On cue, Lockhart and Grant both tried to speak over it, while I crossed my arms and contented myself with being drowned out.
But Dumbledore rolled his eyes behind his half-moon glasses, and flicked his wand. Immediately everything in the room fell silent except for Grant, who finished his explanation with a deep breath. I looked all over the Great Hall; everyone was still talking, miming excitedly, but none of the noise was reaching us.
“I think,” Dumbledore said, “that this conversation would be better moved to a more private location.”
0000
Moments later, we stood before the desk in Dumbledore’s office, gawking at the unusual wonders hidden therein”the sword of Gryffindor mounted on the wall, the Sorting Hat on its perch, and dozens of strange magical instruments that I didn’t know the names or functions of cluttering the headmaster’s desk. In the corner sat a cage where a magnificent gold-and-red bird stared at Grant and me, eyes shining with curiosity.
“Is that a Phoenix?” Grant asked, staring at the bird.
“It is indeed,” Dumbledore said, smiling faintly. “A truly
wonderful companion, a phoenix is. But on to the matter at hand.”
Dumbledore reached into his desk and pulled out a letter on a short strip of
parchment, then a much longer letter with an official-looking seal and an
elaborate letterhead.
“Mr. Danesti has brought it to my attention that your aunt
was arrested by Muggle authorities for the supposed crime of kidnapping. Of
course, I knew this already, as the Ministry has kept me informed of the issue
from the start.”
I blinked. He already knew? Then why
hadn’t he told me?
“To answer the question you’ve left unspoken,” Dumbledore continued, “I felt it
would be best to allow Amanda to inform you herself.”
“You have to get her out!” Grant blurted. “This is a complete miscarriage of
justice! Imagine, a witch being forced to stay in a Muggle prison. We should
storm the building and hurl curses at them until they let her go. And as for
Michelle’s parents””
“Grant,” Dumbledore warned. “Your concern is admirable, but you’re letting your
own experiences cloud your judgment. Any violence over this would be a vast
overreaction. First, let me assure you that both I and the ministry have been
working on a solution. The Ministry is consulting goblin experts to draft
Muggle-proof documentation for Michelle’s attendance here, and Amanda, for her
part, is being treated well. She could have easily used a dozen spells to have
prevented her arrest or affected her escape. She is there by her own choice.”
“Oh.” Grant blinked, then grabbed the Sorting Hat off its stool, put it on his head, and tipped it towards Dumbledore. “Good show, then.”
“If you thought I’d sort you somewhere else, you can forget it,” the Hat said. “I don’t make mistakes.”
I grimaced at Grant, and he averted his red eyes. It was, at that point, the nearest thing I’d gotten to an apology from him.
“I had hoped to deal with this at a more convenient time,”
Dumbledore said, “but there is another matter that I must discuss with you,
Michelle. It’s an issue involving your parents.”
My guts suddenly felt hollow.
“Because of their decision to turn Amanda over to the
authorities, there are voices in the ministry that are pushing to have their
memories altered. It’s unusual to Obliviate the legal guardians
of a Hogwarts student, but given their actions, the Ministry feels that
it would be best.”
“What do you think, Headmaster?” I stared at my toes, half obscured by the
strap of my neon-pink sandals.
“Hm…” Dumbledore stroked his
beard. When he spoke again, his voice was full of reservation. “It would
certainly ease your relations with your parents to remove their memories of the
school and of your aunt’s magical heritage. However, it would
be wise to remember that the easiest path is often wrought with complications
of its own”be they moral or logistical.”
“So you can stop them?”
Dumbledore smiled. “No, I cannot. But if you and Amanda agreed, you could
petition the Ministry to leave their memories as they are. Your safety, after
all, is the Ministry’s utmost concern in this matter.” He spoke the last
sentence with a twinkle in his eye and a small hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“What do you think, Grant?” I asked.
He had walked over to Fawkes’ cage and was stroking the
phoenix’s wings through the bars.
“Obliviate the tossers,” he said absently.
“Grant! Hello? My parents.”
He shrugged. “From the information given? Still tossers.”
“Language, please,” Dumbledore said quietly.
I closed my eyes and pictured my mum and dad’s faces. I remembered what it was like when they smiled at me. If I let them have their memories erased, I could see that again. I could still live at home in the summer; I wouldn’t be forbidden from visiting Amanda; I could sleep easy at night. But. (There’s always a but.) I’d have to lie constantly. I’d have to make up stories and pretend I wasn’t different. It would be suffocating and, I realized, wrong. If I had to erase their memories to gain their acceptance, then their renewed approval would never be genuine.
Most importantly, while the past few days had not cleared up the moral issue for me in the slightest, they had given me an insatiable desire to know how deep the magic in me ran. I was hooked. If the Bible itself wasn’t going to scare me away, nothing would. And I couldn’t be honest with myself while continuing to lie to my parents. Irony, I thought: it wouldn’t be Christian.
I looked up at the headmaster and shook my head. “No, write
them and tell them I don’t want them Oviporated. I’ll
write to Amanda and tell her too. I’m not going to spend the next seven years
lying to my mum and dad. If I’m going to hell anyway it’s going to be for
something I want to do.”
Dumbledore nodded, assured me I probably wasn’t going to hell, and pulled out a
blank piece of parchment and began to write.
“You’re mad,” Grant hissed.“But I guess that’s why we’re friends.”
Dumbledore dismissed us from his office, and we started back towards the Great Hall, where we had left our books. Silently, I prayed that they hadn’t been stolen or defaced by Malfoy and his slimy cohorts.
“We’re friends?” I asked as we checked our belongings for stink pellets.
“Yeah, I suppose we are,” Grant said.
0000
The following Monday I received an owl with a note that Amanda had been released. My parents were mad as hell about it, but the documentation the goblins created said they had signed off on sending me to an exclusive private boarding school in Scotland. Of course, they hadn’t, but the British government didn’t know that.
With that burden off
my chest, I began to focus on my studies. I had Herbology
three times a week, and though my brief lessons with Amanda gave me a bit of a
jump start on the other students, it quickly became one of my least favorite
subjects. Plants that could move on their own constantly wriggled free from my
grasp, and I usually ended up giving them too much water or not enough plant
food.
I fared better in Astronomy, at least by comparison. When most of the students
were falling asleep during the midnight studies of the skies, I shrugged and
kept plotting stars. The many late-night Mega Man sessions Rupert and I had
been through made me battle hardened against sleep. I looked across the Astronomy
Tower at Grant in the early morning before our first flying lesson; he sat
alone, staring up into the sky with his telescope, his pale skin like a ward
that repelled other students. Those that bought into blood purity the
most”Sypha, Emma, Artemis’ twin brother Apollo, and Othello Harper”seemed to be
the ones most put off by him. I didn’t understand why at the time.
The one student that remained an enigma to everyone, though, was the American boy, Jacinto Neithercut. He rarely spoke, and when he did, it was always in an incredibly calm, measured voice, as though nothing could phase him. He used his telescope to map the stars, rarely glancing at his textbook star chart, while the others who managed to stay awake took surreptitious glances at him, wondering to each other how he got so smart.
At our first Flying lesson the next day, I was bored. I already knew the basics from using my Roc at Amanda’s house, so while many of the other students were still trying to get their brooms to jump off the ground, I was whirling through the air and, frankly, acting like a ridiculous show-off.
To my annoyance, Harper blazed by me in the air.
“You’re pretty good at this,” he said, his voice managing to come across more as a taunt than a compliment. “If you weren’t a Muggleborn, you could be on the Quidditch team.”
“Mind your own business,” I told him, swooping down to get
away. Harper followed me.
“I’m serious. You should try out. I’d love to be proven wrong by one of your
kind. I doubt you’ll make it though, since you’ve already ruffled Snape’s feathers by getting Rosier expelled.”
Harper swooped in close, uncomfortably so, even as Madame Hooch began shouting at us to quit showing off and land.
“What? Are you a coward? Afraid of heights? I hear you Muggles don’t have anything that can fly like a broom. You need machines the size of busses with wings like birds to get you off the ground.”
“What of it?” I spat; Harper got even closer, until he was
practically leaning over me.
“You think you’re so much better with your manned flights to the moon and all
that rubbish, but you can’t do basic things wizards have been doing for a
thousand years.”
I dipped down and tried to escape him, but he kept dogging me. I growled in
frustration and reached into my robes, pulling out my wand.
“Flipendo!” I shouted; the
Knockback Jinx blasted Harper away, his broom spinning wildly until he managed
to slam on the braking charm. Unfortunately, my perennial inability to maintain
control of a broom with one hand caught up with me and I tumbled into a barrel
roll, twisting end-over-end until I fell from the broom. I reached up and
grabbed it tightly with both hands, dropping my wand in the process. My eyes
followed it as it fell to the ground, blurring as they shifted focus. I finally
realized how high up I was and why Madame Hooch had been shouting at us. I was
easily thirty metres in the air and dangling, held up
my admittedly-limited upper body strength. My broom was heading downward, but
there was no way I could hold on until it reached the ground.
I tried to pull the broom down to me, but the charms on the
old school brooms being antiquated as they were, the
effect was more like trying to pull myself up.
Finally the pain in my wrists and fingers got the better of me, and one hand
slipped, then the other. I began to fall, the organs inside me protesting and
wanting to go up, wanting more than anything not to slam into the ground. With
said ground fast approaching, I extended my hands and shouted the Knockback
Charm incantation again; instead of a controlled blast, however, my fingers
tingled and numbed, and produced an explosive burst that blasted me back up,
another ten meters. The impact rattled me and I may have blacked out for a
second; the next thing I remember was looking up toward the sky, feeling myself
falling away from it.
I heard Madame Hooch swooping towards me on a broom, but her voice seemed so
far away. I didn’t think she’d make it.
Then I heard the other Slytherins screaming, gasping. And a voice.
“SPONGIFY!”
I slammed into something soft, like a massive stunt cushion
for a film shoot, bouncing up out of an impression. I landed again on the soft
surface, and opened my eyes, which I realized I’d forced tightly shut.
The cushion was, to my astonishment, just the grass.
I rolled over and saw Jacinto putting his wand back in his robes. He tossed a
polite smile my way and then walked back towards the other Slytherins, acting
as nonchalant as I’d ever seen him.
Othello Harper and Madam Hooch soon landed, the latter berating the former for antagonizing me.
“Coplin!” she shouted, glancing at Jacinto, at whom all the
other Slytherins were staring. “Coplin, are you okay?”
“I’m, I’m fine,” I said. “Jacinto made the ground all spongy.”
“Clever boy,” said Madame Hooch quietly, to herself. “More
than I could say about some
students.” She grabbed Harper by the arm and jerked him close to her. She
grabbed my arm as well and pulled me to my feet.
“Let go of me,” Harper whined. I felt like saying the same thing, but bit my
tongue.
“You two are both getting a detention,” she said. “And I should think yours
will be worse, Coplin.” Her gaze was severe. “You should know better than to
use a jinx like that on a student riding a broom no matter how annoying he is.
That was reckless and it could have gotten the both of you killed.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, glancing away.
“You can tell Professor Snape that when you see him.”
0000
“Arrogant taunting,” Snape droned, walking back and forth in front of his blackboard. He looked like he was trying to make his cloak billow, but it kept getting caught on protruding knobs and handles, ruining the intended effect. “Showing-off preternatural broom skills. Inappropriate use of defensive spells. All these are behaviors I would expect from a Gryffindor.” He hissed the last word with the force of years of bitterness. I wondered if the spirit of Godric had kicked his favorite puppy as a child.
“Professor, I didn’t use a spell on her,” Harper protested.
“Silence,” said Snape. “You will speak when I ask you
a question, not until then. Now, seeing as I have a stack of essays that I must
subject myself to in a mostly-futile effort to assign an objective measure to
their alarming paucity of merit, I’ve elected to allow Mister Filch to handle
your punishment.”
Behind us, the hideous and unpleasant caretaker limped into the room sneering,
his equally mean cat rubbing against his legs.
“You’ll be cleaning the suits of armour on the second floor,” Filch said, his bulgy eyes scanning me and Harper. “No magic, neither.”
We quickly reached the second floor and got to work, Filch staring over our shoulders the whole time. We were given a solution that polished the suits right up, and I suspect that it was alchemy rather than chemistry that gave the liquid its potency. After a tedious hour, we were almost finished.
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Filch said. “Mrs.
Norris, watch them and make sure they keep at it.”
The cat gave us a spiteful hiss while Filch ducked into the nearby men’s
lavatory. We continued cleaning the armour under the watchful eye of the cat
from hell, Harper muttering swears the whole time. I
just wanted to get it over with, but his sloppy cleaning abilities meant I had
to go back over the statues he’d already ‘finished’ to make sure he didn’t miss
anything.
“Thank you so much,” the suit I was currently working on said. “That boy
clearly has no idea how to properly apply Shining Solution.”
Just about the time I was wondering what Filch could possibly doing in lou for so long, I heard footsteps down the corridor and turned to see a tiny figure walking out of the girl’s lavatory, hood pulled tightly over the head. I thought, from the way the figure walked that it was one of the smaller Gryffindor boys being cheeky, but I soon saw a few strands of long red hair dangling from inside the hood. I recognized the girl as Ron Weasley’s sister.
What was her name, I thought. Holly? Ginger? Guinea? “No, Ginevra, that was it. Ginny.”
“What are you muttering about?” Harper said, glancing up from his cleaning.
I motioned my head towards Ginny Weasley. “She’s pretty far away from her dorm this late.”
“What of it?”
I threw my cloth down and walked over to her.
“Ginny? Ginny, hey.”
She looked up with a start.
“Oh,” she said in a strangely polite voice. “I didn’t notice
you.”
“What are you doing outside the Gryffindor Tower this late?” I glanced back at
Harper and Mrs. Norris, the latter hissing and snarling at me. Stupid cat.
I looked back at Ginny. “You could get in trouble, Filch
just went into that lou
there.”
“Yes,” Ginny said. “I should get back to my common room. But what concern is it
of yours if a Gryffindor gets in trouble?”
“You seem nice. Filch isn’t,” I said. Mrs. Norris made an especially nasty noise.
Ginny Weasley gave me the creepiest smile, then indicated Harper. “Who is that?”
“Othello Harper. We got into a fight in Flying and we’re doing a detention.”
“Harper?” Ginny said. “His father was a Slytherin was
he not?”
I shrugged. “I guess. We’re Slytherins too, Ginny. We have Potions together,
remember?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I just forgot. Silly
me. I was just surprised that they let a Muggleborn witch into
Slytherin.”
My eyes widened, and I looked away. “You’re all alike,” I spat. “Ruddy purebloods.”
“Tell me,” Ginny said. “If you ever encountered You-Know-Who, how would you react?”
“Isn’t he dead?” I asked.
“Well, so they say.” Ginny gave the creepy smile again. “But Harry Potter
supposedly faced him last year. What if he returns? What if he comes back? What
would you do then?”
I looked down at my feet again. “I’d probably run,” I admitted.
“Smart move,” Ginny said. “But… hopefully that will never
happen.”
She moved past me and eventually vanished up a flight of stairs. I finally paid
heed to Mrs. Norris’ insistent yowling and went back to work cleaning a suit of
armor, shortly before Filch came back out of the bathroom.
“That was strange,” I said to Harper.
“What’s strange about it?”
“I just thought Ginny Weasley was different, that she didn’t buy into all this blood purity rubbish.”
“Well I guess statistically at least one of the Weasleys would wise-up,” Harper crowed.
“Quit yer gabbin’ and finish up,” Filch spat. Mrs. Norris made a growl that sounded like the word yeah!
As I went back over a stain that Harper missed, I ‘accidentally’ stuck a knuckle into his ribs and didn’t bother apologizing.