Felix Fortuna (Worm/HP)

[Ridiculously Average Guy]

ngl, I'd be very flattered if someone was offering to take over the world for me.

That being said, if you can do something trivially, and it would make the world a better place, do it, especially in the confines of fanfiction, where unintended consequences are intended.

Click to shrink...

Not unless you'd feel fullfilled by it. Since otherwise you'll end up a burnt out mess who hates what they're doing and comes to despise the world.

Gotta take care of yourself before anyone, or you're useless to everyone.

 

[lucabibble]

Not unless you'd feel fullfilled by it. Since otherwise you'll end up a burnt out mess who hates what they're doing and comes to despise the world.

Gotta take care of yourself before anyone, or you're useless to everyone.

Click to shrink...

That's... certainly a way of looking at things, but one I'm not going to argue against to avoid a derail so I'll just say I disagree strenuously on every level and leave it at that.

 

[Chartic]

As Fortuna rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, she got her bearings. It was nearly four, still two hours before curfew ended, and a man—Professor Lupin—was shaking her, demanding she wake up.

His words came out in sharp bursts and gasps. Obviously winded, he looked even more out of sorts than usual.

"Miss Floris! Glad you're safe. Is Miss de Luce in here with you? We've searched everywhere and—"

Flavia, who had been deep asleep and did not have a superpower to orient herself, muzzily emerged from her cocoon of stolen blankets and gaped.

"There you are," he wheezed, massaging his chest. He clearly needed to run laps around the castle more often. He turned to a red-headed boy who was standing slightly behind him. "Mr. Weasley, can you tell Minerva that Miss de Luce is safe in the hospital wing?"

"Yes, sir," the boy said, and ran back out the door. The professor turned back to the two of them.

"Safe?" Flavia asked. Then her eyes sharpened. "From what?"

Fortuna had a suspicion and didn't ask her power.

Professor Lupin grimaced. "There was a break-in at Gryffindor Tower. We took roll call and when you weren't anywhere to be found, I remembered that your friend was staying the night here."

"A break-in? Why? Who?"

Professor Lupin's face darkened. "Sirius Black."

The jolt of excitement that shot through Flavia at that announcement was palpable. She didn't quite manage to tamp it down before their professor noticed.

"Which," he said, speaking rapidly so as to preempt whatever Flavia was about to say, "Is precisely why you cannot be out past curfew. It is dangerous."

A pause, as Flavia considered her options. "I'm sorry, sir," she said in a small, pathetic voice, drooping her head and looking like penitence itself. "I was worried about Fortuna—"

Fortuna made her decision. "The boggart scared me," she interjected.

"And I just couldn't help but go looking for her," Flavia continued.

"I asked her to stay. I didn't want to be alone."

"I didn't mean to cause any trouble."

"I didn't think anyone would notice she was missing. Please, sir, it's my fault."

They were laying it on a bit thick, and Professor Lupin was only partially mollified. "I won't take house points away," he said. "But rules exist for a reason. You, Miss de Luce, could have been seriously hurt—or worse. And you, Miss Floris, should not have encouraged her. Detention for the both of you."

Flavia let out a sharp little huff, but didn't argue, and Fortuna accepted his judgment. She hadn't wanted this at all, but the alternative had been abandoning Flavia.

"There's something else I need to tell you, Miss Floris. Miss de Luce, if you would please return to your house? The head girl has been kind enough to agree to walk you back."

Head girl? Fortuna blinked, then looked behind Professor Lupin. A girl—woman—had been standing in the room this entire time, quiet and still enough to escape all notice by its bleary-eyed occupants.

She was beautiful, and she clearly knew it and she just as clearly cultivated it. Nobody, not even the sort of woman crowned queen by adoring masses and carried around on golden pedestals for all to bow before, woke up in the dead of night and looked that presentable. She'd obviously put effort into selecting her robes and arranging her hair, even at three in the morning during an emergency.

Ophelia de Luce ran a pale hand through her long hair and tucked a curl behind her ear, before responding. "Of course, Professor. I would like the opportunity to speak with my sister anyway."

Flavia tensed up like a frightened porcupine, but there was no room for escape. She wormed her way out of the covers and plopped onto the floor before trudging towards her sister like a man set to be hanged. Fortuna was a little surprised; there had been hints of animosity between Flavia and her sisters, but it seemed she'd downplayed its severity.

Flavia left without saying goodbye.

Which left Fortuna alone with Professor Lupin, who was still half-supporting himself on the bed's railing.

She watched him as he continued to catch his breath. However acute his mind was, not even being a werewolf had kept him in shape.

"Headmaster Dumbledore would like to have a word with you, whenever you believe you are ready," Professor Lupin said at last.

"Yes, sir," Fortuna replied, dread pooling in the pit of her stomach. Between the fact her power hadn't been able to anticipate everything magic threw her way and the choices she'd made to intervene instead of staying quiet, too many notable things had happened to her. She hadn't even made it a month before catching the Headmaster's eye.

She would have to manage the meeting very carefully, then aggressively control future events to prevent things from getting out of control. She was reluctant to start looking ahead very far, as she'd never been particularly interested in forming longer-term plans. Considering more than one specific question at a time would make it too easy to get lost in her power, too easy to start living in the future at the cost of the present.

Still. Doing damage control after the fact was getting to be irritating.

As was staring at Professor Lupin, who was trying to figure out how to ask her how she'd known he was a werewolf without using those exact words.

No.

"Professor," she said, "would you mind if I catch up with Flavia? I'm doing better and I'd feel safer back in the Gryffindor common room."

"Oh," he said, floundering a little. "Well, yes, I suppose, but hurry! I don't want you running around the halls alone."

The "yes" was all Fortuna needed to hear. She was out of her bed and dashing towards the door before Professor Lupin had finished speaking. She made quick work of the two corridors between her and the de Luces, only slowing when she could see them.

"Sneaking around the castle at night, skulking about—Daphne and I never did anything like this. Eight combined years at Hogwarts and not a single house point lost, not a single detention, not a single complaint from a single teacher. You odious, heedless, tapioca-brained beast!"

"Quit talking to yourself in public, Feely," Flavia drawled. "You'll make your suitors fear for the stability of your genes."

"Why should you care? It's not like we're related." Ophelia paused, decided that her point wasn't explicit enough, and continued. "Our genes are completely different."

A switch flipped. Suddenly Flavia was furious, fists balled and face knotted up. "No they aren't! Take that back!"

"Just you wait," Ophelia went on, voice sickly sweet. It had been funnier coming from the Boggart. "When I tell Father what you've done, he'll realize what a terrible mistake he made and have you shipped back to the Muggle orphanage you came from. Ha, then you'll be sorry you caused so much trouble."

"You take that back! Father wouldn't do that. Harriet wouldn't have done that! Say you're lying! Say I'm your sister, you pinch-faced bandicoot!"

Fortuna had never heard Flavia respond like that before. She was used to hearing her friend speak with confidence—perhaps with more confidence than was always warranted—but now she floundered like a child. Fortuna could almost swear she was holding back tears.

She wasn't sure how Ophelia's words had wounded Flavia so deeply, but she was going to rectify this situation.

"I'm an orphan."

The argument came to an abrupt end as both wheeled to face Fortuna, standing a few meters away down the hall.

"I've had to live in a foster home ever since my parents were murdered. Three and a half years. It's not the best, but it's safe and warm and I don't have anywhere else. It isn't right to mock children for having to live that way."

Flavia seemed to regain her bearings, but Ophelia was too chagrined to muster an immediate reply. She stammered a bit as she tried to come up with an apology that would be adequate but not give an inch to her little sister.

Fortuna chose to offer her no help.

"I apologize," Ophelia said at last. "That was insensitive of me, and I shouldn't have said it. Please follow me back to your common room, since you are now both breaking curfew."

Their footsteps echoed through the empty halls as they progressed through the longest ten minutes of silence the three of them had ever experienced. With Ophelia chastised, Flavia cooling off, and Fortuna determined to be anodyne, nobody advanced a topic for conversation. When the Gryffindor common room finally came into sight, it was like discovering a waterhole in the desert.

"Your password has been changed to 'bulrush,'" Opehlia informed them, and the Fat Lady's portrait opened at the word. "And I will be writing to Father about your behavior."

Fortuna hustled a nearly vibrating Flavia into the common room. Her friend's flare of temper had passed she was rearing to investigate the hallway for any signs of Black, but that couldn't be done in front of Ophelia.

"Did you hear!" Flavia erupted as soon as the portrait hole had closed. "Sirius Black has attacked our own common room! Our quarry stood in this very spot less than an hour ago, and we weren't here to see it. It just had to happen on the day that we weren't here."

Flavia began to pace around the room in a huff, going in circles around the couches. "Damn," she exclaimed. "Double damn. Oh, of all the days to leave. If we'd gone to the Shrieking Shack tonight, we might have run into him on our way back."

"I don't think so," Fortuna said. "We typically come back before one on school nights, and Black must have arrived here at around three-thirty."

"That's assuming he got caught as soon as he came in. Maybe he came here earlier but had trouble getting into the common room, or maybe he was here for a while before somebody noticed."

Flavia's eyes began darting around the room as she made her case, desperately searching for anything that appeared out of place. She was convinced that there was something that the teachers had missed, and accordingly she pushed tables around and rummaged under couches, looking for any clues.

"The Fat Lady's Portrait wasn't harmed, which means he must have found another way in," Fortuna said.

"Or he had the password," Flavia said, tiptoeing around an end table and inspecting every scuff mark across it as though looking for fingerprints. "We'll have to ask her, once the coast is clear. Maybe during dinner."

While Flavia made her rounds, bending and twisting to try and look at the room from every angle, Fortuna decided to stand by the door. If Black had entered via the portrait, what would he have seen?

A tidy enough room—assuming he'd arrived after the house elves would have cleaned around two—and nothing else save the staircases leading up to the dorms. He had gotten past the Dementors, the teachers, the ghosts, and the Fat Lady. There was nothing to slow him down; it should have been a straight shot from the entrance to the boys' dorms. Perhaps the Boy-Who Lived's room was splattered with blood, but somehow Fortuna doubted it.

"My question," Fortuna said, "is why he did not immediately go to the boys' bedrooms and attack Harry Potter."

Flavia straightened up to see what Fortuna was looking at. She saw—or rather, she understood what she wasn't seeing, to wit: a reason Sirius Black shouldn't have butchered Harry Potter in his sleep—and frowned.

"Someone must have seen him," Fortuna said, "And he ran. But why? Why would someone who can kill a dozen people with a word have considered a house elf or an underage student to be so threatening he had to abandon his mission?"

"House elves have their own kinds of magic. And even students have wands. He might have had to run."

"If he has the connections to escape from Azkaban and get the password to our common room, he surely has the connections to get a wand."

Fortuna considered that thought as Flavia dug her way into the space behind two plush armchairs. An accomplice made the most sense, but who? There was only one obvious answer that came to mind: a professor. Who else would have that level of access and knowledge about Hogwarts? It was difficult to imagine any of the strange characters that found their employment at Hogwarts allowing a convicted criminal in to kill a child, but if not them, then who?

"Aha!" Flavia yelled with unbridled glee. She leapt to her feet and brandished a small little ball of fuzz at Fortuna.

"It's dust," Fortuna said, a little peeved her thoughts had been disrupted for a clump of detritus.

Flavia thrust her closed fist into the air. "It's hair," she proclaimed.

Fortuna gave the dust bunny another disdainful look.

"It's hair," Flavia went on, "But it's not human hair. There has to be something here that would give away something. Perhaps Black is sleeping with horses or hiding with rats, or—"

"How do you know Black left it?"

"Because everything else is clean, obviously."

This was obvious, and Fortuna kicked herself.

"We'll have to interview the house elves, too, to help us pinpoint the time of entry."

"But who could be helping him?"

"Whoever it is," Flavia responded with a smile, "I'm sure we're going to find out."

***​

Fortuna's power led her through the rest of the morning, and she was only half-aware as her teachers and classmates came and went like so much white noise. The threat presented by the meeting with Headmaster Dumbeldore occupied much of her attention.

For one thing, there was who she was. A pale-faced, black-haired, and scrupulously polite and neat orphan would rub him the wrong way, and he would be left with a vague sense that something was not quite right about her.

This was annoying. It was not her fault that her actual personality aligned with the false one presented by a megalomaniac fifty years ago.

There was also the ornate instrument with a lot of fiddly bits that would react when she came near it. When she asked herself why, she learned that the device detected unusual things. Something unusual would spark the Headmaster's curiosity—she wouldn't be a priority, but he'd start to keep a mental file on her, and anything she did that at Hogwarts for the next seven years would be catalogued in it.

All because a convoluted and wholly unnecessary contraption was going to make a phweee noise at her. It would have to go.

And she would lie, of course, adopt a false persona to get her through the meeting. She'd go with something that would make her seem harmless, a little endearing, and ultimately below consideration. Not just forgettable, but dismissible.

Transfiguration was immediately before lunch, and Professor McGonagall once again asked her to stay back. She followed up on Professor Lupin's lecture regarding rule-breaking and danger, then advised Fortuna on how to get to Headmaster Dumbledore's office.

Fortuna yes professored her way through the conversation, and stopped off at a bathroom near her destination to prepare the impression she wanted to give her interrogator. She undid her tie and redid it sloppily. Then she released her hair from its ponytail and teased it until it was a tangled nest.

Not unlike Angelique or Hermione, she thought, as she rearranged her neatly packed bookbag into a disaster. She half-zipped it, leaving parchment, quills, and books sticking out at odd angles, then slung it over her shoulder and examined the effect in the mirror. A harried, scatter-brained child stared anxiously back at her.

Perfect.

"Mars Bar," she told the gargoyle. It stepped aside and she followed a spiral staircase up a storey, where she faced a closed door. She gave it a calculatedly tentative tap, just loud enough for the office's occupant to hear.

"Come in," he said.

She pushed the door slightly open and peeked around its edge, as though she were terrified of what she might find on the other side.

"Welcome, Miss Floris."

She shoved the door fully open, and came face to face with the headmaster.

He was difficult to see through the busy chaos of his office. Gadgets moved, people came and went from portraits, and a live bird examined her closely. She could hardly focus; the twirling, twinkling, whirling, and feathered clutter drew her eyes from one oddity to another until she was disoriented, confused, and (in spite of herself) just a little bit excited. If there were any method to the madness, Fortuna would have to ask her power. She wouldn't be surprised if it came up empty.

As for the Headmaster, he was an imposing man, though not in a way that made her feel unsafe—not that anything made her feel unsafe. No, he was more like a grandfather, someone who commanded respect with his very presence, but kindly and benign. It was calculated; familiar as she was with how much body language and nonverbal signals could convey, she could recognize a master.

She was impressed.

"Ah, Miss Floris," Professor Dumbledore said. "Please have a seat."

As Fortuna made her way towards his desk, she tripped on some aggressive lint, and crashed into the assortment of noisy oddments on his desk.

Her bookbag exploded. Stacks of parchment collapsed. The bird squawked as it took flight and fluttered about the office. Her target—the instrument that would have detected "something unusual" about her—was smashed to bits as it fell to the floor.

Fortuna stammered a dozen different apologies, but the Headmaster graciously waved them all aside, saying that he would repair it once their meeting was completed.

He was lying to spare what he imagined to be her feelings; the witch who had invented it was long dead and had only made the one. It was irreplaceable, unless Fortuna herself wished to use her power to repair it, and she did not.

Good riddance.

She hastily crammed everything back into her bag and collapsed into one of the plush chairs Professor Dumbledore had arranged in front of his desk. From this angle, she was only able to see the man through a trench of parchment on one side and agitated (but intact) accoutrements on the other.

"Now," he said, reorganizing the scattered papers with his wand. "I would like to apologize myself. I heard you were injured but I didn't ask how you were doing. I'm glad you have recovered so quickly and admirably."

"Uh," Fortuna said. "Erm. Yes, er, sir."

She marveled at the idiocy coming out of her mouth. Her power had never led her down such an insufferable path before.

Too bad. If she hadn't wanted this, she should have exercised more caution and thought her way around the fog.

"How are you finding Hogwarts?" he asked pleasantly.

"Amazing, sir." She made her eyes wide and bright. "I never imagined anything like this before."

"I know the transition from a non-magical world to, well, all of this—" He gestured at his office, whose decor was still spinning and emitting puffs of smoke. "—can be bewildering."

The casual statement was in fact a probing question. There were many different answers that could be provided to such a simple observation, and he'd draw conclusions from whatever she offered.

"It still is, sir. But I'm adjusting quickly, or at least I hope so. A lot of my classmates are working together to make sure we all understand our lessons, and the things we're learning are just incredible."

"Marvelous. Nothing warms an old professor's heart more." The Headmaster beamed at her. "Professor McGonagall informs me you are proving to be quite adept at Transfiguration."

"I love it," she gushed. "It's so fascinating! Er, it's so fascinating, sir."

His blue eyes twinkled, and surely that was a magical effect generated by his spectacles. "I'm partial to the subject myself," he went on. "I taught it for many years before I took this position. In fact, Professor McGonagall was one of my students, and she says you are a natural."

"O-oh. She wrung her hands. "Oh, that can't be right, sir. My classmates are all so talented, and they've been helping me ever so much."

"I'm glad you're adapting so quickly," he said. He leaned forward onto his desk, and his smile grew still more tender. "You grew up with a Muggle foster family, I understand."

"Yessir." Then she looked up at him fearfully, like she'd just answered a test question and was afraid she'd gotten it wrong. When she received nothing but calm attentiveness in return, she went on. "My parents died when I was eight."

"And—ah—perhaps they were not as kind as they could have been."

A vile untruth, she was sure. The two or three surviving shreds of her memory were happy, and she now knew her parents had died defending her. She had been loved.

I'm sorry, she thought, as her body language lied. Hunched shoulders, downward glance, no verbal answer. All to indicate his guesses about her homelife—and the identity of her Boggart—were accurate.

I'm so sorry.

"Unhappy familial arrangements are common, as your classmates largely demonstrated yesterday."

At least her power spared her from having to answer that.

"But Professor Lupin told me that a classmate quite literally leapt to your defense. One of the greatest triumphs of the human spirit is that we are not alone in our fears. There will always be another ready to stand behind us."

Fortuna rubbed at the wrist she had broken, while nodding along with the headmaster's words. "I'm so happy that everyone here is so friendly."

"True friendship is the most precious gift in this world. I'm glad you could find it at such a young age." The Headmaster's smile faded from his lips, and he lowered his voice. "Now, Miss Floris, I do have to ask something of you. You aren't in any trouble so please do not worry—this will not be going onto any record. I must ask for the sake of a friend."

Fortuna nodded.

"Remus also told me that your Boggart called him a werewolf."

Here it was, the true reason he'd called her in. He wanted to know how his professor's secret had gotten out.

"It said—it said a lot of horrible things. And it all happened so fast."

"Do you have any idea how the Boggart came to identify Professor Lupin as a werewolf?"

"Because it was scary? Werewolves aren't real. She just said whatever sounded awful."

"It," he said. "Not she. Identifying and naming your fears is the first step to conquering them."

Not it. Me.

"I know," she said.

Professor Dumbledore leaned back into his armchair, pondering. A Boggart successfully focusing on two targets was unheard of, so he would have to reconcile what had happened with what he saw in front of him.

And what he saw in front of him was a girl who—poor child—was utterly and indiscriminately terrified by authority figures. Someone who likely believed that a cruel parent would know every possible secret, and use that knowledge to undermine, silence, injure. The boggart had simply shown her what she'd expected.

This was not a case of someone deducing the truth about the Defense professor so early in the year (and Fortuna made a mental note to ask herself about that phrasing and the assumptions behind it later), but instead a case of a monster run amok.

"Werewolves do exist in our world," he said, once he had arrived at his conclusion. "It is a terrible, incurable affliction, and one that is often misunderstood. There are those who wish to exclude wizards who are werewolves, just as there are those who wish to exclude witches who were born to Muggle parents."

She saw the threads of manipulation. They were less threads than they were ropes; he did not think she was very clever, which was both insulting and precisely what she'd meant him to think. He was equating her teacher's condition to her being Muggleborn, drawing an alliance between the two, ensuring she would not speak.

He needn't have bothered. She wouldn't ever use someone's wounds against them. She wasn't that woman.

Professor Dumbledore continued. "I have complete faith and trust in Professor Lupin, but there are those who would use his—call it an illness—as a pretext to ostracize him. I would ask you keep the secret, as it is not rightfully yours to share."

She nodded so vigorously she was nearly worried her power might snap her head off to better sell the ruse. "Of course, sir."

The Headmaster smiled. "Then thank you for your time. I know it can be hard to make the trek up here, but it is good to see a new face every now and then. Seeing new students gives these old bones some life."

Fortuna giggled vapidly, bobbling her head. He dismissed her, and she practically scampered out of his office.

Once she was safely out of range, she dropped the smile and readjusted her robes. She reclaimed herself before she reached the bottom of the spiral staircase.

Except for her hair. She still needed to brush it.

Then she would solve a mystery.

 

[Blaflaix]

Ophelia was too chagrined to muster an immediate reply. She stammered a bit as she tried to come up with an apology that would be adequate but not give an inch to her little sister.

Click to shrink...

Gee, almost like being a bitch isn't a great social tactic...

She wouldn't ever use someone's wounds against them. She wasn't that woman.

Click to shrink...

No, she'd just tell her power to attack someone, and it would use their wounds against them.
Completely different!

 

[serra2]

Once she was safely out of range, she dropped the smile and readjusted her robes. She reclaimed herself before she reached the bottom of the spiral staircase.

Except for her hair. She still needed to brush it.

Then she would solve a mystery.

Click to shrink...

Ah yes, the classic Keyser Soze post-interrogation walk.

 

[torac]

Aww, how could she. Destroying priceless artifacts for personal convenience is so mean…

I wonder whether this will come back up if Fortuna's secret is ever revealed.

and anything she did that at Hogwarts for the next seven years would be catalogued in it

Click to shrink...

remove "that"

 

[Shaseyu]

A harried, scatter-brained child stared anxiously back at her.

Click to shrink...

That's nice disguise, but one day Dumbledore may look up from his plate at breakfast and notice Fortune looks neat and tidy, or some professor may mention how she's so accurate and precise. And then Dumbledore will think "Wait, I had very different impression of her!"

 

[Abao]

I hesitate to think that the extreme discrepancy between Smoltuna's normal persona and the one she presented to dumblydoor would hold under scrutiny, and chances are it will be outed. She isn't normal by any means, and she knows that.

"Path to not being caught out in the next ten minutes" is going to backfire so hard lol.

Edit: ninja'd

 

[Firedon]

That's nice disguise, but one day Dumbledore may look up from his plate at breakfast and notice Fortune looks neat and tidy, or some professor may mention how she's so accurate and precise. And then Dumbledore will think "Wait, I had very different impression of her!"

Click to shrink...

Hm, but she did also present herself as a girl terrified by authority figures. In the classes she's surrounded by friendly people that help her a lot as per her description and she's fascinated by the magic she's learning, which might help to counteract the fear of the authority figure speaking to her. Whereas here, she's singled out and there's not really any distractions from meeting the highest authority figure in the castle after she'd been confronted with and unable to overcome her fear just the day before. So the less than neat appearance might be led back to frazzled nerves stopping her from properly tidying herself up.

 

[Jarrik32]

Indeed is there's anything that Fortuna is a example of is the vital importance of wisdom not just intelligence. As even if her power wasn't subtly manipulating her and the paths it gives (a big if given what other powers get up to) her; the fact that it has no human judgment means that you have to be very careful what you ask for. You just might get it.

 

[Pericardium]

​

 

[Shade666]

"O-oh. She wrung her hands

Click to shrink...

you forgot a quotation.

 

[Chartic]

"Eureka!"

Startled, Fortuna nearly pitched forward into the grand piano she was perched on.

Flavia was framed in the doorway to the stairwell of the Shrieking Shack, holding a beaker of electric blue liquid aloft in both hands.

"Eureka," she said again, reverently lowering the container. "What are you doing?"

"Tuning the piano without—" She caught herself. "Magic. With a wrench."

"But nothing to tell you what pitch you're hitting?"

Fortuna looked down at the piano's insides, at the parchment jammed between two of the strings that were responsible for middle C. She'd been at it for twenty minutes. "I'm starting to think I may be tone deaf," she said reflectively.

"I'll ask Feely for a spell that will keep it tuned," Flavia said. "She won't tell me willingly, so I'll poison her and hold the antidote hostage. Do you play?"

"No, but I'd be good at it if I learned, so we should make sure it works." Fortuna gestured at the beaker. "What did you find?"

Flavia raised her discovery once more. "The substance we discovered in the Gryffindor common room on Tuesday morning is dog hair. Since students may only have an owl or a rat or a cat or a toad, we can deduce it wasn't left by a student. Who was in the common room that wasn't a student? Sirius Black."

"But what can it mean, Holmes?"

"It means, Watson, that Sirius Black—" Flavia consciously paused for dramatic effect. "Has a dog."

"We have a dog," Fortuna said.

Behind her, the sound of Alexander devouring his fourth steak and kidney pie of the evening stopped.

The two girls looked at him. Noticing their stares, he started wagging his tail.

But even canine antics couldn't distract Flavia from the disappointment. She groaned. "We do have a dog, and this is just his hair."

Fortuna sympathized. It had been too much to hope that everything was going to fall into place with the simple application of a few gray cells, but their complete lack of progress was dispiriting. Four days had elapsed since Sirius Black's brief appearance, and their only real clue had just proved to be a red herring. She'd known better than to actually believe they would find secret passages hidden within every cupboard, that leggy dames who knew too much would walk into their office, or that a priceless treasure hidden in an ordinary statue would fall into her lap, but she had expected a little bit of progress by now.

"We could make a list of suspects," Fortuna suggested.

"Using what evidence?" Flavia asked, sounding morose.

"Well, we know it's someone at Hogwarts because the Fat Lady confirmed that he knew the password," Fortuna said. "That narrows the suspect pool down from 'anyone in Wizarding Britain.'"

Flavia agreed, and they went upstairs to their lab. Fortuna suggested they brainstorm and transfigured part of a wall into a chalkboard.

The first name Flavia wrote was that of Professor Binns.

"The obvious suspect," she declared.

Fortuna arched her eyebrows. "There's no evidence to say that he did it."

"Precisely," Flavia returned. "As a ghost, he leaves no evidence anywhere at all."

"That's logically unsound," Fortuna said.

"Well, perhaps, but we can't rule him out. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, at least not when the absence is the evidence. Besides, it's never the obvious suspect."

Fortuna doubted this was logically sound, either, but didn't feel like untangling it. It wasn't as though she knew enough to truly rule anyone out. Still, surely there were more likely suspects?

"Remus Lupin," she suggested. If he was concealing something that the majority of people thought should get him fired, what else might he be capable of hiding?

She had spoken without thinking, and found herself wondering how she could justify her suggestion without breaking her promise not to reveal that he was a werewolf.

But Flavia didn't even hesitate. "Excellent," she said. "The Defense Against the Dark Arts position is supposedly cursed, so people who aren't desperate or stupid or evil don't take the job. One of them was actually You-Know-Who in disguise, or something like that. It was Daffy's first year and the rumors were hard to sort out."

"Cursed?" Fortuna asked. "And nobody's broken the curse?"

"It wouldn't be a cursed position if someone had broken the curse."

Unlike her analysis of their History of Magic professor's guilt, this was logically sound. "Has anyone tried to break the curse, then?"

"Well, I suppose someone must have tried before. The Board wouldn't just let a teaching position be cursed for years if they could help it. And Dumbledore is a very powerful magician in his own right—if he could have fixed it, I'm sure he would have by now."

Idly, Fortuna wondered what the headmaster had missed.

A cursed object, hidden by You-Know-Who in a room accessible only to those who were desperate to hide evidence. A shabby tiara, openly placed among tens of thousands of abandoned things, exposed only on occasion to people in a hurry to get rid of something and get away.

Hiding in plain sight.

Fortuna thought about her strategy with the study group.

Dumbledore wouldn't find out, and he'd continue to lose defense professors to scandal, injury, illness, and death. It was possible for her to stop it, though she felt annoyed with herself for even considering the possibility. It was his job, not hers.

But what about the people affected? Did Professor Lupin deserve to suffer a possibly deadly mishap because he'd taken the only job he could get? Did Angelique deserve to grow up without someone to teach her how to fend off basic magical household pests? Did she want to deal with the disruption to her plans for her classmates that the inconsistency of teaching quality would cause?

There was only one answer.

"Well, in that case, we'll have to keep a closer eye on him," she said, mentally resolving to break the curse when she got back to the castle. If they made it back by four, she'd have enough time.

"And Minverva McGonagall," Flavia added. "Nobody would question her presence in Gryffindor Tower, and she was the first teacher on the scene."

Severus Snape naturally followed. It was easy to cast the slick-haired professor as a villain, as he was exactly the kind of dodgy person who would cavort with cloaked individuals in shady bars. The mere mention of his name roused Alexander's hackles, another sure sign their professor was somehow involved.

Flavia rounded out the first column with "Another Professor." A bit generic, but it captured the fact that every professor had the means to assist a serial killer breaking into Hogwarts.

She hesitated a moment, then wrote down the names of Ophelia and Daphne de Luce.

Fortuna folded her arms.

"What? You saw how Feely was that night! They're both menaces. You don't know them like I do. They're like crazed badgers."

Fortuna allowed her friend's rant to wear itself out before she got back to the list, adding Filch and Hermione Granger.

"Not Filch. He's the butler, can't have done it. That cat of his, though…" Flavia trailed off. "Who's Hermione Granger?"

"Aside from the fact she's a Gryffindor and is therefore the only student on our list who could have let Black in, she's one of Harry Potter's friends and could provide access to him."

Flavia considered this argument, then wrote Candidus Craven beneath Hermione's name.

Fortuna agreed. If anyone in their friend group harbored traitorous intentions, it was definitely Candidus.

Schmuck.

The last names were the Weasley twins and the Fat Lady, based on the fact they were the only witnesses—the only real witnesses. Gryffindor Tower was filled to the brim with students who were eagerly boasting about their brush with death, but cursory interrogation revealed that none of them had even been aware of Black's arrival until the deputy headmistress was rallying them for a headcount.

The Fat Lady played up her adventure as well. Evidently, spending one's existence glued to a wall did not make for entertaining fare, and she milked the tale for all it was worth. This proved not to be much; though able to perform her job out of instinct, she had been sleeping off a bottle of merlot she'd shared with a knight from the fifth floor.

Only Fred and George Weasley had managed to see the man, though they hadn't even realized who he was before he was gone. They had been working on an invention when he entered, and he'd bolted immediately on seeing them. The most they could say was that they were pretty sure he'd been wandless.

There was nothing really to go off of there, so their best bet was to tackle their list of suspects. Gather more evidence, perhaps do a little bit of stalking, ransack their rooms for clues, and figure out a plan of attack.

But not tonight, she thought, sitting down on a corner of the bed and kicking her shoes off. She was exhausted after all the detentions with Filch, an exercise in gruntwork and wasted time she hoped she would never experience again. They'd scrupulously followed the detentions with nightly trips to the Shrieking Shack, lest the Veritaserum go neglected or Alexander starve, so she hadn't gotten more than four hours of sleep a night.

Flavia had already started to drift over to her potions table, and Fortuna settled into the blankets. It was already almost one, and she'd need a nap if she wanted to destroy the tiara before Dumbledore woke up and be able to make it through their Saturday study group meeting.

It felt like she'd been walking for hours. She was back in the hospital, walking past white rooms through white hallways under white lights. Everything bright, sterile, painful to look at.

Finally she stopped at the foot of a girl's bed. Skin sagged off her body and the pallor of death lay over her like a blanket. The girl's lips moved but there was no sound. Her lips slowed and her body stilled aside from labored breathing, assisted along by two tubes running up her nose. She reached forward and reached forward and—

The girl's face split open in a dozen different places, and bark sprang up between the cracks and spread, replacing her flesh. The transformation spread down her body and one of her arms lengthened. It slithered, vine-like, around her thighs and fused to her legs. Her other hand merged with her cheek, leaving her face half-covered.

There was no way to dislodge that hand, nothing for her to do but scream.

Fortuna opened her eyes.

Alexander was looking at her with an expression she could only call concerned. She saw that her arm was dangling off the bed, and that he was nudging her hand. Waking her up.

She slid out of bed and wrapped her arms around him, resting her cheek against his shoulder. His fur smelled like daffodils and nightshade, courtesy of the anti-flea shampoo she and Flavia had concocted.

The attack on her parents, the extinction of her native language, her memory loss: she'd subconsciously been assuming they were the result of a magical accident. If she could figure out how magic worked, she could figure out how it had happened.

She'd been wrong.

Someone did this on purpose.

She tried to remember details from her dream, any faces or words that could give her a place to start, but all that remained was the conviction that someone had deliberately created the monsters in a controlled environment. If Alexander hadn't woken her up mid-nightmare, she wouldn't even have that.

No. No need to frame it like that. Progress was progress. Three weeks ago, she'd known nothing. Now she had a starting point and a number of clues, each pointing to something bigger and more sinister than the last. A malevolent intelligence seemed to be at work, and she would need to approach that with patience and caution.

She could do that. She could do anything.

"Thank you," she told Alexander.

"Hm?" Flavia asked. She was bent over a cauldron.

"Nothing." Fortuna got up and went over to see what her friend was doing. "What are you working on? I thought we didn't have to do anything else for the Veritaserum."

"Poison," Flavia said, drawing out the word with relish. "For Ophelia, of course."

"Of course," Fortuna said automatically. "We should be getting back. It's past three."

Flavia rolled up her sleeve and looked at her wrist. Then she looked at Fortuna. "How do you tell time without a watch?"

"By the position of the sun," Fortuna said, preparing to take point. They'd need to avoid a prefect, Professor Burbage, two seventh-years, Mrs. Norris, Peeves, and an entire congress of ghosts to make it back without getting caught. "Come on. Maybe Black is back in our common room."

It turned out that Black was nowhere to be seen, but Flavia was tired enough she wasn't disappointed. Fortuna watched her go up the stairs to their dorm and continued to watch the stairs after she'd disappeared, waiting.

Two minutes later, Harbinger appeared. He'd come to associate Flavia's nocturnal return with hers, and he had deduced her presence down here from her absence up there.

She grinned as he trotted down to greet her, tail and head held high. He was so smart, she thought as she picked him up and ran a fingernail along his vibrating throat. He was the smartest cat in Hogwarts—

Hermione's cat was smarter. Annoyed, she prodded her power for a better, more correct answer. After a few moments, she was able to console herself with the fact that this Crookshanks was only half a cat.

And Harbinger was a whole cat, a complete cat, a perfect cat. He was undeniably the handsomest—

Most people would agree that Kenneth Towler's calico Artemis Loudmouth was the most attractive of the Hogwarts feline population. Then there were Farfallele, a tuxedo cat who sported a white bowtie-shaped mustache, and Catacadabra, a long-haired, squash-faced Persian that people inexplicably admired despite the fact that she was a long-haired, squash-faced Persian.

As Fortuna went down the list of purebreds, tabbies, and tortoiseshells, she realized that only she had the appropriate respect and regard for sleek gray cats. In a Hogwarts beauty pageant, Harbinger would come in forty-nine of sixty-one, and he was only that high because he was still a kitten and that boosted his perceived cuteness. As an adult, he would rank fifty-three.

Deeply offended, she took her hypothetically slighted cat to a couch and contemplated the wisdom of not asking questions. He wriggled out of her arms and started sharpening his claws on the cushion next to her, indifferent to the benighted rabble that surrounded him. Fortuna commended him on his nobility and magnanimity, then rooted through a bag a second-year had left in front of the fire for a quill and piece of parchment.

Harbinger batted at the quill and she teased him for a few minutes.

She was dithering.

She triple-checked that nobody else was around and finally brought herself to write a single sentence.

My name is Fortuna Floris and I have a superpower.

She put the quill down, folded the parchment into a little square, and tucked it in her pocket.

Now she had something that needed to be hidden.

Step two was to go to the seventh floor.

 

[Blaflaix]

mentally resolving to break the curse when she got back to the castle. If they made it back by four, she'd have enough time.

Click to shrink...

This is potentially one of the biggest butterflies that could be set loose.

They break the curse somehow, and suddenly reasonably competent person without any horrible problems decides to apply for the DADA position.
Everything changes.

In a Hogwarts beauty pageant, Harbinger would come in forty-nine of sixty-one,

Click to shrink...

This is by far the best use of PtV I've ever seen in a fic.

 

[Aeselon]

I love the tragic irony that the villain she's searching for is herself. There's poetry in that.

Also, PtV is wrong about something, as Harbinger is clearly Best Cat.

 

[Firedon]

Sirius Black hiding as Alexander continues to be amazing.

 

[Datakim]

This is potentially one of the biggest butterflies that could be set loose.

They break the curse somehow, and suddenly reasonably competent person without any horrible problems decides to apply for the DADA position.
Everything changes.

Click to shrink...

It might also expose Voldemort. I mean the anchor for the curse is obviously the horcrux. Odds are that nearly any question Fortuna asks about it will reveal its true nature.

Assuming the thing won't manage to possess her anyway.

 

[Unseelie]

I love the tragic irony that the villain she's searching for is herself. There's poetry in that.

Click to shrink...

Even better that she's searching for two villains: Herself and her dog.

 

[Raphael]

I love the tragic irony that the villain she's searching for is herself. There's poetry in that.

Also, PtV is wrong about something, as Harbinger is clearly Best Cat.

Click to shrink...

It seems to be doing its best to create an objective answer to a seemingly subjective question by creating a hypothetical democratic contest and seeing who would win.

 

[Blaflaix]

Also, PtV is wrong about something, as Harbinger is clearly Best Cat.

Click to shrink...

You misunderstand.

PtV has always hated Harbinger and had it out for him since the very first time Fortuna saw him.
I think it's jealousy.
PtV wants ear-scritches.

 

[ScottotheUnwise]

And she would have got away with it, if it weren't for those meddling kids and their dog... (her, Flavia and Alexander)

 

[JBcristal]

Idly, Fortuna wondered what the headmaster had missed.

A cursed object, hidden by You-Know-Who in a room accessible only to those who were desperate to hide evidence. A shabby tiara, openly placed among tens of thousands of abandoned things, exposed only on occasion to people in a hurry to get rid of something and get away.

Hiding in plain sight.

Click to shrink...

...I think it's the first time I see the tiara as the cornerstone of the DADA curse. I'm surprised it has taken me this long, because in retrospect it sounds incredibly sensible.

 

[Tzardok]

...I think it's the first time I see the tiara as the cornerstone of the DADA curse. I'm surprised it has taken me this long, because in retrospect it sounds incredibly sensible.

Click to shrink...

It's a very common trope over on FF.net. On the other hand, HP has so many fanfics that everything has been done in some way before.

 

[Chartic]

The seventh floor was hardly ever occupied, as it found itself in the awkward space below the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw common rooms as well as the Astronomy Tower, but above the classrooms that were actually used. Truthfully, so much of the castle was packed with assorted wonderments that the odd empty classroom or boring hallway tended to be overlooked. It almost had Fortuna wondering how many other seemingly useless areas were containing some secret or hitherto unknown purpose, but that was an investigation for a different day.

She stopped in front of a neoclassical rendering of an awkward and ineffectual ballet lesson and began to pace, focusing on the opposite wall and clutching the note in her pocket like it was a grenade she'd pulled the pin out of but couldn't throw. Eventually the solid stone parted, forming a door, and she pushed it open.

Inside was a complete madhouse. Stacks of books towered towards the cathedral-high ceiling, and they seemed to be so haphazardly arranged that they threatened to fall. Furniture, discarded and broken, had been thrown into piles that stretched up at least four times Fortuna's own height. Unwashed cauldrons caked with hardened, unidentifiable grime stood in rows one after the other. Strange contraptions, amalgamations of 14th century technology and magic, wheeled or fluttered about as they pleased.

The closest frame of reference she had for comparison was the Simmonses' house. Furniture heaped together, generations of children's toys all over, the accoutrements of last year's hobbies packed away and forgotten. The room here was considerably larger and more packed, but the similarities were there. This place was for discarded things.

She stared at the secret written on parchment for a moment, then let it go. A flick of her wand, an uttered word, and the paper burst into flames. It was ash before it hit the ground.

Once she'd vanished the ashes, she padded her way between piles of odds and ends, letting her power act as a sherpa. She was only briefly distracted by a particularly dapper hat that had been thrown onto a bedpost of a bed broken down the middle. (She pressed onward because it had been bewitched to clamp down on the eyes and ears of the wearer when in sunlight.)

At one point, a pile of empty sherry bottles blocked access to a narrow path between desks that looked like they'd gotten in the way of a duel. A swift kick to one of the load-bearing bottles opened the walkway. A storm of glass crashed down around Fortuna as she walked through the middle of the crumbling monument to alcoholism to her destination.

The source of the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position sat nestled amid a dirty pile of old textbooks. The crown was dull gray, like tarnished silverware, and almost disappointing for a work of evil that had disrupted magical education for decades. When Fortuna got closer she saw that an inscription, clear and bright, shone through its grubbiness.

Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

Stupid. She knew, or could know, everything there was to know, and all that did was cause problems.

She ransacked a nearby cabinet for linen and, careful not to touch the thing itself, wrapped it up, and placed it in the pocket of her robes. Her quarry secured, she made her escape, stopping only to grab a vial of malevolently frothing liquid she was sure Flavia would appreciate. Filch would come down the hallway in eight seconds, but both she and the door would already have vanished.

The unwelcome appearance of Sirius Black had set the school itself on edge, and she had to dodge patrolling suits of armor and the watchful eyes of portraits. As she allowed her power to guide her, flowing around obstacles and weaving between pairs of prefects, she was keenly aware of how uncomfortably the diadem weighed her pocket down.

Even wrapped in old pillow cases, it felt too close to her skin, reminding her that this was dangerous. Of course she'd worded her question to ensure that the curse on the crown wouldn't hurt her or anyone else as she destroyed it, but hadn't her power failed her before? Could she really be sure of it?

This wasn't sensible, and it also wasn't what she wanted. She shouldn't be doing this—interfering, letting her foreknowledge dictate her actions to the point where she betrayed her own intentions. She had told herself before that she would never use her power like this, meddling just because she could.

She'd vowed never to let it become the thing that guided her, subsumed her—but even now, as she hopped down a flight of stairs to take a round-about path to avoid the wandering divination teacher, she felt like a passenger in her own body.

The affairs of the greater Wizarding World didn't have to be her problem. It wasn't her place, it was Dumbledore's. Couldn't she just tell him and let him take care of it?

No, that was out of the question. The Headmaster would only want to know how she'd known. But there had to be another solution, one that didn't involve her taking responsibility for everyone else. She just couldn't think of it, but if this thing really could grant wisdom, perhaps she could use it. Use it to come up with a way to solve the problem without destroying yet another priceless artifact, perhaps by combining its powers with hers—

What?

No. These weren't her thoughts.

The curse was trying to protect itself. It sensed her intentions and it didn't want to be broken. Unfortunately for it, all it had to offer her was the vague promise of power, which she had more than enough of. As for the destruction of magical gizmos, freeing Hogwarts from a curse should count as suitable repayment. She and Professor Dumbledore would be more than even.

All her apprehension was washed away like chalk in a rainstorm, and she resumed walking with fresh determination. Helping her friends, especially in a way nobody ever had to know about, could take precedence just this once.

Fortuna had to duck behind a statue of Lorenzo the Forgetful Knight, a statue having long ago misplaced its original apparel and now clothed itself in students' old clothes while wielding a large ladle instead of a lance, in order to avoid all four heads of house.

Deep in the early morning, each and every one looked utterly exhausted. Perhaps it was a trick of the torchlight, but she could swear dark circles rimmed every pair of eyes and the normally well-kempt appearance of all was slipping. Even Professor Snape looked worse than he usually did, which was surely an achievement.

"Good work the dementors did! And Fudge wants to send in more and Auror teams to boot. Aurors! You'd think he views the school as a warzone."

"A child could have died, Pomona," said Professor McGonagall, "and not just any child. I understand Minister Fudge's concern, though I don't agree with the methods."

"Perhaps if your common room had been better guarded, then Potter wouldn't have been in any danger at all," Snape said.

McGonagall fumed, but Flitwick intervened before she could retort. "Severus, we could enchant all the quills in the castle to come flying at the first sight of Black, but it wouldn't do any good once he decides to blow the common room apart. If he feels threatened, he's that much more likely to do something rash. I believe that—"

The rest of their conversation was lost as they passed by, and Fortuna rushed forward to give the gargoyle statue the password and hurry up the staircase.

The office was empty, which in and of itself made clear how seriously Professor Dumbledore took Black's incursion into his school. The Headmaster was gone, attending an early morning meeting with Minister Fudge, and had instructed the portraits and his phoenix to patrol the castle in his absence.

Here Fortuna had a choice. She could get the sword by breaking its case with a reductor curse or she could get it out of the Sorting Hat.

Fewer steps to use the curse, but...

She strode across the office over to the Hat and jammed it down around her ears.

Don't give me the sword yet, she thought. I have a block on my memory. Can you look past it?

The Hat's voice, which she hadn't gotten to hear during her Sorting, seemed to speak in her ear. "I cannot."

Frustration simmered within her, but she pushed further.

What about my power? Can you see it?

"I cannot."

Well, is there anything you can see?

"I can see I was spot-on as always," the Hat said, and now it sounded tired and annoyed, like she might if someone tried to make her list the kings and queens of England in order and explain why they were supposedly relevant to anything. "Sneaking out of school to have adventures, bypassing the government to catch a murder, and burglarizing the Headmaster's office to break curses, all within the first month of school… I should request a raise from Albus."

Fortuna felt vaguely offended. I don't think I'm chivalrous or bold, but you put me in Gryffindor. That means you understand parts of me that I don't. It was perfectly logical to suppose that you might know something more, but I see you think I'm just a troublemaker.

"If you don't think you're chivalrous or bold or even a troublemaker, what do you think you are?"

Fortuna's mind went blank for several seconds.

I don't know.

"I'm a thinking cap, but I won't think for you."

So she thought more.

Not a vessel for her power.

A witch. A child. An orphan.

Lately, a detective and a lab assistant and a friend and a tutor.

Nothing much.

"Is that so? Why am I back on your head?"

To get the sword.

"No," the Hat said cheerily. "You aren't a Gryffindor in need, and I see that you know you could just get the sword by smashing up that case. Why are you really here?"

You just accused me of being tailor-made for Gryffindor, she mentally snapped.

"In need," the Hat repeated. "You want the sword but you don't need the sword. You don't think there's anything truly at stake, no need to call on your House's virtues."

I'm here to protect my friends from an evil curse. That's not Gryffindor enough?

"It might be if you were truly here for your friends."

Huh?

"Not a Ravenclaw, are we?"

I'm smarter than you are, she thought; then, when the Hat started to laugh, she realized that had been a stupid thing to say. Except she hadn't said it, the Hat was simply reading her mind. Which was cheating.

"I don't mean to prick your pride, little lioness. What were you thinking when I sorted you?"

She cast her mind back.

The Dementors? No, the Sorting had taken place before Dumbledore had given her the idea to go after them. But she'd been dead on her feet, propelling herself forward because of them… No. Because of what she'd found out because of them.

My parents. I remembered how they'd died. I was upset.

"Yet you weren't most preoccupied by shock or grief. You were ashamed because of your inaction, convinced you should have saved them all. That is what you were thinking when you put me on, and that is how you think of it still. Failure to be the hero."

And why wasn't I? Why didn't I do anything? Tell me what I was thinking. Tell me why I let something terrible happen to my parents but won't let something inconvenient happen to my friends.

"You have the only answer I can give, Gryffindor."

The pommel of the sword slammed into her head. She yelped and yanked the hat off, sending the sword clattering to the ground.

She snatched it up and hurried over to the desk. She didn't have time to waste. The Hat's unwillingness to give direct, to-the-point answers had eaten into the time she had to get away.

She placed the diadem in the middle of the headmaster's desk, planted her feet just so, lifted the sword above her head, and swung.

The diadem screamed as it sheared in twain, which was needlessly melodramatic, and far too noisy. The commotion would bring the portraits running and she needed to be well shot of the office before they arrived, so she left the sword embedded a good way into the desk.

As she ran, she reached into the minds of her friends and tore through their memories of their sortings. Flavia had gotten a choice between every house but Hufflepuff, and she'd chosen Gryffindor to be like her mother. Jessica had been offered Hufflepuff, but she'd craved the challenge of being Muggleborn in Slytherin. Candidus could have gotten into Slytherin if he'd really cared.

Even Angelique, who hadn't had any choice at all, had been chosen because she was something. Kind and caring and warm and persistent.

And what did she have? A shred of a memory and the conviction she'd failed.

She'd assumed that she'd gotten into Gryffindor because of something positive inside of her, not some, some—process of elimination. Not that she wasn't good enough for the other three but still had to be shoved somewhere. Wasn't that what Candidus had said? Too stupid for Ravenclaw, too vicious for Hufflepuff, too lost for Slytherin?

Granted she wasn't ambitious, but wasn't she at least cunning? Hadn't she outmaneuvered Dumbledore and wasn't her entire year dancing to a tune of her choosing?

No, that was her power, which she needed to conceal—which needed to be concealed. Its needs superseded hers. And what were her needs? What did she really want? To sit in a clubhouse reading and eating? To live a life unbothered by others?

Fortuna knew she didn't just lack ambition, she was its antithesis. Everything either came easily to her or was impossibly out of reach, and there hadn't been anything but a dull sense of obligation pushing her towards action.

The Hat had laughed at the idea she might be fit for Ravenclaw, but that wasn't fair, was it? Without her power...well, she'd nearly fail history of magic and get only "Acceptables" in herbology and astronomy, but she was still clever enough, and her power had nothing to do with her success in transfiguration. That was all her, and shouldn't that count?

But she knew it wouldn't, not by the Sorting Hat's measures, because she wasn't interested in learning things as such—not in hoarding facts like Candidus did or in synthesizing snatches of knowledge to create more like Flavia hoped to. She wasn't curious, didn't value knowledge for its own sake. Even her exercise with the mystery books was simply to relieve boredom. In fact, she got annoyed when she deduced the solution before the detective could reveal the killer's identity.

Wit beyond measure was not her greatest treasure.

Neither was anything that distinguished Hufflepuffs, who were by definition undistinguished. At their most remarkable, they demonstrated persistence and hard work—two things she'd never needed in her life. In their most usual state, they were simply warm and friendly, and she…wasn't.

The whole concept of even having friends was new to her; Hogwarts could have been another foster home—she could have been thrown into the first (only) group that would have accepted her, thrust into the social dynamics of a gang of unsupervised children, lost in a system that only cared so much whether she even existed, let alone what she did.

She was taking steps to prevent that, but she was forced to admit she couldn't fit into a group that was based on whatever fueled Angelique. She enjoyed her classmates and enjoyed spending time with them, but on her own terms, in her own ways. She didn't really connect with them, didn't like hugging or joking around, and either dominated or drifted through most conversations.

In the end, caring for them with the means she had at her disposal meant protecting them.

When she got back to Gryffindor Tower, she conjured an ice pack to hold against the bump that was rising from where the sword had hit her.

***​

Madam Pince threw them out of the library, ostensibly because they were wilder than a herd of centaurs, but actually (according to Fortuna's power) because the sight of so many children getting their grubby little hands all over her nice books had been about to give her an aneurysm.

They spilled out into the hallway, grumbling about whose fault it was. It wasn't anyone's but Madam Pince's, but Fortuna couldn't exactly share that, and her classmates bickered around her.

"You shouldn't have raised your voice," Astoria told Candidus.

"Angelique shouldn't have written her essay on the wrong goblin rebellion," he sniffed.

"Well, they're all pretty much the same. The wizards treated the goblins like toadstools and the goblins rebelled and the wizards fought them. What else is there to it?"

"What else is there to it! Why, I would hope that you would know the difference between the 1309 rebellions over illegal galleon creation and the 1682 rebellion over the legitimacy of the goblin nation in Wizengamot law. Not to even speak of the heroic acts that you'd read about, like the works of the wizard Gerith who managed to defeat an entire rebellion with a cleverly planned rockslide or the bureaucratic wunderkind Richard Knobbledon who miraculously stopped a war through swift political plays and incomprehensibly tough to understand treatises!"

Everybody had stopped paying attention less than halfway through this, but he went on, caught up in the wave of his own enthusiasm. "The goblin nation had been ready to attack on an act of technicality, but wisely Richard leaped into action and went through the entire treatise set between goblins and humans. At the first war meeting, Richard brought along a little known sub-section which prohibited the use of thrice smelted metal into certain districts due to the proliferation of substandard and shoddy equipment. Now of course the goblins weren't using any, but the action meant that they were the ones in violation and had to pay a—"

"Oh never mind," Jessica decided, "Just leave the thing as it is, Angelique, that bloody ghost won't be able to tell the difference anyway. I've been copying outta the book for three weeks and he marked the whole thing as fine."

"Is that how you managed to make your paper so concise?" Candidus said, clearly unsure whether to be more offended by the cheating or the abrupt dismissal of his lecture.

"We need an alternative to the library," Fortuna cut in.

"There are loads of abandoned classrooms," Flavia said, taking a cue from Fortuna's subject change. "We could take one for ourselves."

The proposal enthused Jessica nearly as much as goblin rebellions had enthused Candidus. "Yeah," she exclaimed, jabbing her wand in the air. "If we didn't have that vulture breathing down our necks, we could get into combat practice! Dueling! Yuh!"

"There is no combat practice on the curriculum," one of Angelique's hangers-on from Hufflepuff pointed out.

"And I don't think I'm ready for it," Angelique said meekly.

"All the more reason to practice," Astoria said. "And it will mean we'll be ahead of everyone else when we do start learning."

Everyone else seemed to like the idea of dueling, and they immediately started squabbling over where they should start. The seventh floor had the most abandoned classrooms, but it was too far away from the Hufflepuff and Slytherin common rooms to be fair. They eventually settled on the third floor.

"This is like herding cats," Flavia muttered.

"No," Fortuna said. "Cats are cute and don't talk back."

"Cats don't need to talk back," Flavia said, then raised her voice. "Right, everyone, I'm assigning duties."

She briskly paired their classmates up and sent them off down different hallways, until only she and Fortuna remained.

"Well, that gives us plenty of time to wait," Flavia said before sitting down on the floor and taking out a potions textbook.

"Did you really need to trick them all to do that?"

"Of course not! I was never intending to trick anyone. I was quite serious, I'm not intending to stay here all afternoon bouncing from classroom to classroom until the group falls apart out of sheer boredom. We are going to get this done as quickly as possible."

For a moment, Fortuna considered using her power to search for a suitable location. But no, their little groups could find it easily enough. She sat down next to Flavia, opened her own backpack, and started writing letters.

"What are you doing?" Flavia asked.

"The same thing you just did," Fortuna said. "I'm tricking a bunch of people into doing my work for me." She then explained her desire to learn how to get past memory charms, and how she thought putting them in touch with each other might yield results.

"How'd you get their names?" Flavia asked.

"Uh," Fortuna said. She hadn't been expecting the question, which was her own fault.

"Uh?"

"I asked an older student," she said, deliberately evasive while she consulted her power for a way to escape. "I asked Hermione and she helped me find an old casebook. I went through and sent an owl to everyone who's still alive."

"Hermione?" Flavia considered the bait, then took it. "The Hermione from our suspect list? Why not ask a teacher?"

"The teachers are also on our suspect list," Fortuna countered. "And if Hermione thinks I'm getting too close to the truth, she can't make me go to the hospital wing and get bumped off by Madam Pomfrey."

Flavia nodded sagely. "I take it you've been reading American mystery novels?"

Fortuna reached into her bag and pulled out The Dain Curse. "Well-deduced, milord."

"It was elementary, Bunter." Flavia basked in her own cleverness and forgot about Fortuna's slipup.

Still. Careless.

She'd finished a quarter of her letters when an echoing "Ooo!" from Angelique bounced its way down the halls.

She and Flavia packed up and hurried to the source of the sound, where they were soon joined by the other groups of explorers.

"It looks perfect!"

And it did. Fortuna's power told her the classroom Angelique had claimed had once been used for the dueling club. It was large enough to fit not only their existing group, but any other people who might want to join in the future. Chairs, targets, as well as the occasional knick knacks that may have come into play for experienced duelists lined the walls, but left plenty of room in the middle.

The study group threw bags into chairs as they piled in and searched around the room.

"Told you we'd find something," Jessica said with a smirk.

Angelique found a box of old Quidditch supplies, including robes, in a cupboard. She emptied them onto the floor at once. "Let's make a banner with our club name!"

"We have a name?" Derek or Zachary asked.

"Sure, if we think of one," Zachary or Derek answered. "What about the First Years' Study Club?"

Astoria disagreed. "The name should reflect our values."

"Our values?"

"Superiority," Astoria said, as though it was obvious.

"Academic superiority," Fortuna said quickly. "Achieved through hard work and friendship."

"Superiority," Jessica said. "We should be a duelling club, too. We can be Hogwarts United."

"United against what?" Astoria asked.

Jessica shook her head disapprovingly. Then she scoffed and shook her head some more.

"How about the Hogwarts United Study Club?" Angelique said, focusing everyone back on task.

"Rubbish," Jessica said.

"Why can't we just call ourselves The Club?" asked Astoria. "Anyone worthy of knowing what it meant would know what it meant."

"Perhaps a literal name isn't ideal," Candidus said. "We should be going for something with a bit more thought put into it. How about Witches' Cauldron?"

Fortuna felt annoyance lance through her. "Absolutely not," she said, more harshly than she would have if she'd considered before speaking.

When she noticed everyone staring at her, she quickly asked her power to provide her the name that would best defuse arguments.

"Toil and Trouble?" she offered.

"Oh, like from the Scottish play!" Angelique squealed, clapping her hands together.

"You're familiar with the Bard?" Candidus asked, his surprise a little too evident.

"Are you familiar with my fists?" Jessica demanded, as Fortuna kicked him in the shin.

Abusing him wasn't necessary to keep their group together or advance any of her other agendas, but she thought it would do him some good.

Missing the insult to her intelligence and the others' intervention, Angelique merely answered him. "My mum's an actress. Lady Scottish Play is her favorite role, but I like Juliet better."

"Ah," Candidus said. "You know you can say her na—"

"We know," Jessica said, cutting him off. "Now look over our herbology essays."

He did, and Fortuna and Angelique worked on the banner while Candidus evaluated everyone's attempts at describing shrivelfig. On the whole, he felt they were insufficiently laudatory.

Angelique and Fortuna finished the banner at around the same time Candidus wrapped up his comments on each of their essays, and he and Jessica collaborated to hoist the banner over the blackboard at the front of the classroom.

The name had been done in large block lettering, with sparking wands and steaming cauldrons running across the bottom and along the sides. Perhaps it was a little silly, but Angelique was quite obviously a skilled artist and it did tie the room together.

"It's stupid," Flavia whispered into her ear.

"It's charming," Fortuna whispered back.

"Right," Flavia said. "Your theory that school is about frivolous clubs and childish antics."

"I've tested the hypothesis by experimentation and I haven't falsified it."

Flavia wasn't going to give in so easily. "The Shrieking Shack is still a much better secret spot for working."

"Of course," Fortuna agreed. "But it's just for us."

"And I'm still not entirely sold on this group in practice."

"Of course," Fortuna agreed. "But look, Zachary-or-Derek wants help on his potions essay."

"It's Derek," Flavia said with a sigh, and sallied forth.

Fortuna checked. Either it was Zachary, or even her power didn't care.

She looked at the students working; the Hufflepuffs discussing Potions with Flavia, Candidus stuffing his giant herbology books into his bag, Astoria and Jessica menacing a target dummy. If Fortuna hadn't known any better, she'd say it looked like a functional study group—a group of students whose study and understanding of threats in their world would no longer be annually disrupted.

And that meant her intervention had been worth it, didn't it?

 

[Blaflaix]

(She pressed onward because it had been bewitched to clamp down on the eyes and ears of the wearer when in sunlight.)

Click to shrink...

I could imagine this as a prank.
I could also imagine it as a comfortable charm that got too enthusiastic.

'You want shade and quiet, sure!'

The diadem screamed as it sheared in twain, which was needlessly melodramatic, and far too noisy. The commotion would bring the portraits running and she needed to be well shot of the office before they arrived, so she left the sword embedded a good way into the desk.

Click to shrink...

So Dumbledore is going to return to his office and find Ravenclaw's Diadem, stabbed by Griffindor's Sword, in the Headmaster's Desk?
That's a hell of a threat to Hogwarts.