Spells in Silence (Harry Potter)

[Silently Watches]

Alternate title: The chapter wherein Sally-Anne decides she's actually a major character in this story and hasn't gotten enough screen-time.

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Saturday dawned just like every other day, but when the other students streamed into the common room they were filled with a sense of excitement that Hazel had yet to observe within Hufflepuff house. The middle years all had wild imaginings running through their heads while many of the older students' thoughts were filled with thoughts of romance. In fact, the only upper year girl who seemed uninterested in the idea of romantic dates and stolen kisses was Sidonia Smith, but then again that might be because her own imagination was far more lurid and explicit when she was preoccupied writing in the common room.

A thump next to her on the couch, and Hazel glanced over to watch Sally-Anne wipe sleep out of her eyes. "How is she always so awake? And she always gets up before anyone else, too. Is it just me, or did everyone get up really"—her question was interrupted by a long yawn—"early?"

'I keep hearing people talking about some Hogsmeade place,' she wrote out. The name was vaguely familiar, and she was sure it had been mentioned in one of the chapters of the history of magic textbook. That was the downside of skimming through the whole thing so quickly, she knew; sometimes the little details did not quite stick.

"I remember when I was confused about that same subject," she heard coming from behind them, and she craned her neck to find a dark-haired boy walking over with a small smile. It took her a moment to place him as one of the boys who had explained all the weird stuff that happened in Hogwarts on a yearly basis. "Hogsmeade is a little village just a short distance away from the school. Once you reach third year, you can go out on certain weekends through the year to visit. It's nice to get out of the castle and stretch your legs a little."

Sally-Anne looked glum at hearing that news, but Hazel was more surprised that other students also seemed to feel trapped within the stone walls all around them. "That doesn't seem fair. Why can't we go too?"

The boy – Cedric, that was his name! – shrugged his shoulders at Sally-Anne's question. "I don't really know. Maybe the teachers don't think most parents would go for signing the permission forms when you're eleven but are more open to it when you hit thirteen? Or it's a reward you get once you start taking extra classes beyond just the core seven? Can't really help you there."

When the house as a whole left for breakfast, a sight that was quite unusual on most days and happened today solely because so many people had gotten up early, it became obvious that the Hogsmeade fervor was not limited to Hufflepuff. Most of the students were planning their day spent in the village, either with small groups of friends or their significant others or just in their own heads. Few of their fellow first-years seemed to understand the reason for why the rest of the school was so upbeat, but as the meal went on it was explained to most everyone, sometimes with more detail and other times with minimal effort.

As the clocktower that Hazel still did not know the location of bonged out the hour, all the students who were going to the village stood and started streaming out of the Great Hall. Not all the eligible students were going, though, which Hazel thought was interesting; several of the Ravenclaw students who were in the years when they had to take their big exams hung behind, as well as a handful of students whose mental grumblings revealed that their permissions had actually been revoked by teachers for rule-breaking that required punishment beyond points and detentions.

A silent whine caught her attention, and she glanced over to find Sally-Anne staring after the departing students with a disappointed pout. "This is so not fair. I want to see this Hogsmeade place too."

Well then. Hazel held back a grin, though it still snuck out as a smirk. She did not have any true plans for today, and she had to admit that she was likewise curious.

Perhaps it was time for a spot of rule-breaking of their own?

She tapped Sally-Anne on the shoulder and waved for the girl to follow her. After they exited the Great Hall she took a sharp corner and glanced around to make sure none of the professors were in sight or earshot. Somehow she did not think Sally-Anne would enjoy getting detention just for scheming, and unlike her the blonde girl could actually learn things in their classes. Wiggling her left index finger, she made sparkling words appear that were small enough only Sally-Anne could readily read them. 'Do you want to sneak into Hogsmeade?'

Her question took Sally-Anne by surprise, and the girl looked back and forth between Hazel's face and her words. "Is she asking what I think she's asking? We aren't allowed. It's only for older students, even though I really really really want to go to."

'That's why we would need to sneak out. But I want to know if you want to go in the first place.'

"That's not even a fair question." Sally-Anne looked away and fiddled with her hands. "D-Do you want to?"

'Honestly? I don't particularly care one way or the other.' Any time she wanted to escape, she could. All she needed to do was head to the break in the wall out in the so-called Forbidden Forest, and she would be beyond the boundary of the protections against rogue spirits and teleportation. 'But I don't have anything else I need to do today, and you were disappointed that we can't go to the village. So let's go to the village.'

"Yes yes yes! …Okay," Sally-Anne replied, trying her best to hide her excitement and failing nonetheless. Even someone without the ability to read minds would have noticed. Hazel just shook her head and waved for the other girl to follow her.

Slipping out the front doors, it did not take them long to spot the stream of students pooling to the north of the castle and start to trail them. As they got closer, they quickly spotted McGonagall and Mr. Filch standing next to a set of golden gates, the former checking names against a long list in her hand and the latter looking just unhappy to be there. With the expression on his face, Hazel could start to see why so many other students believed him to be an unpleasant person; perhaps if her interactions with him had been different, she might have felt the same way.

"Oh no. It's Professor McGonagall and Mr. Filch. I guess it was a good idea," Sally-Anne said sadly, her expression falling, "but there's no way we're sneaking past them. And I was looking forward to this, too."

Hazel rolled her eyes and poked the other girl between her ribs, getting a quiet yelp out of her. While Sally-Anne looked at her in betrayal and rubbed her side, she simply wrote out, 'What makes you think we've even started sneaking around yet? I've gotten past much scarier things than them, and for much stupider reasons. Come on.'

"No!" Sally-Anne grabbed her hand as she was about to stand up. "We c-c-can't get in trouble. Mum and Dad would be so mad at me."

'We won't get in trouble.' Sally-Anne still did not look convinced, so Hazel planted her staff into the soft ground with a hearty stab and braced her right hand against her hip. 'Do you trust me?'

"I… don't not trust her. Even if Megan and Hannah think she's lying about not having a wand and skipping classes to get special attention. She did something to Peeves, and not even the prefects can do anything about him. Yes. I trust you because you haven't given me any reason not to trust you."

Not the most enthusiastic of agreements, but in her own way Hazel knew Sally-Anne wasn't wrong. Several of the students in their year, Hufflepuff or otherwise, refused to believe her explanations that she neither had nor needed no wand. It seemed like it was easier for them to believe things like the ring she used to make it easier for her to write out what she wanted to say were a few enchanted items she had purchased or been given rather than just tools to aid her own innate abilities. Not everyone felt that way, but even those who did not just had no explanation for how she did what she did or else just were not interested enough to look for one.

Ironically, she had realized she preferred the third opinion the most out of all of them.

She waved for Sally-Anne to come close enough to hold hands, then she grabbed her staff – noting with idle interest that it had left not a single mark upon the earth – and positioned it between them and closed her eyes. Not that she thought the closed eyes were necessary for this. It was just theatrics, something to reassure Sally-Anne that she was doing something magical even if the other girl could not see it. Taking a deep breath in, she slowly blew it out and opened her eyes to watch the grey smoke wrap around the pair of them and settle into place like a barely-there cloud.

Squeezing Sally-Anne's hand, she held up her right hand and made a shushing motion, being careful not to whack herself in the face with her own staff; as she could not speak, she had no idea whether talking would draw people's attention even through the spell, and she was in no mood to test the idea out. Sally-Anne nodded and mimed zipping her lips shut.

They started walking towards and beside the crowd of students, although as they got closer it turned more into Hazel pulling Sally-Anne along behind her. The blonde was increasingly nervous, especially when they finally got close enough that McGonagall and Mr. Filch would have been able to see them. The woman's eyes did rise to meet theirs, eliciting a quiet 'eep' from Sally-Anne, but despite that scare she did nothing at all to stop them from walking right out the gates.

"How did we do that? How did we do that?!" Sally-Anne tugged on Hazel's hand and pulled them off the hard-packed dirt path over to a nearby tree. "How did you do th-that?" she demanded in a whisper. "We walked past them, and it was like they didn't even see us!"

'That's because they didn't.' A small grin found its way onto Hazel's face. 'I don't know exactly how it works, whether they really can't see us at all or they just can't pay attention to us when they do, but it gets the job done.'

"That's one way to put it," thought Sally-Anne with a shake of her head. "Well, I guess we just follow everybody else to get to Hogsmeade?"

That was as good a plan as any, and Hazel regained a grip on Sally-Anne's hand before they continued down the path. Was holding her hand necessary? She did not know, but the last thing she wanted was for Sally-Anne to get far enough away that she was no longer hidden within the cloud of smoke.

The trail eventually bent around a corner, and beyond that the trees opened up to reveal the village they sought. Hazel's eyes trailed over the roofs made from thatched straw and the odd wooden ornamentation jutting out here and there and nodded in approval to herself.

Forget Diagon Alley; that had reminded her of nothing more than a modern mall that happened to have a coat of themed paint over it all. Hogsmeade, on the other hand, felt like a true fantasy village.

Now that their destination was in sight, she no longer had to worry about being the guide. Sally-Anne raced forwards and all but pulled Hazel after her in her excitement to get a closer look. Hazel let her gaze drift along the buildings as they went down the main street, seeing different names and the occasional logo carved into wooden signs that hung above the doors. Here, an apothecary; over there, a shop that sold parchment and ink; down the street, a clothing store. Behind the stores that lined the main street were more buildings, but those had neither signs nor wide windows displaying wares.

Homes, perhaps? Anyone who worked in the stores needed somewhere to live unless they all lived above the store proper. And even if these homes were not occupied by shopkeepers, between Floo powder and teleportation it was entirely possible for wizards to live here and work elsewhere.

Still, she could not help but feel a little disappointed. After all the talk and thoughts throughout the rest of the school, she had been hoping for something more interesting than what was looking more and more as though its primary function was an outdoor shopping center. Even if the aesthetic was much nicer than Diagon Alley. She chanced a glance at Sally-Anne, and she sighed to herself at the sight of the other girl's bright smile.

Or maybe it was just the excitement of getting out of the castle. Not everyone was as mobile as she was, nor had they gone exploring the grounds specifically looking for an exit point.

"Oh, look!" Sally-Anne whispered with great enthusiasm. "Honeyduke's Sweets! Let's check it out!"

Hazel's eyes grew wide as they crossed the threshold and entered the store proper. The inside of the store was filled from floor to ceiling with sweets and candies of all kinds, most of them things she had never heard of or even imagined. Nougats in the shapes of various animals; tiny devils made from black pepper and cinnamon; quills spun from sugar sitting in faux inkwells that floated above colorful skulls sculpted from the same material; cream bubbling away inside cakes carved to look like cauldrons. Probably the only thing she did recognize were the fudges on display beneath the main counter, and even they included flavors not seen in any non-magical sweet shop.

Staring at the sheer immensity of candy spread out before her, her mind and memory drifted almost of their own accord to Dudley. While he undoubtedly held a similar opinion of magic as Petunia and Vernon, he would probably be able to put it aside if it meant he could gorge himself on this bounty.

While she was caught in her rumination, Sally-Anne had let go of her hand and was bouncing around the place like… well, like a kid in a candy store. Not that she could bounce very far considering how quickly the store was filling up with other students equally insistent on getting their sugar fix. When she returned to Hazel's side, however, her excitement was significantly dampened. At Hazel's curious look, she blushed and looked down at her feet. "I forgot that I don't have any money on me," she admitted in a tiny voice. "Mum and Dad made sure I had a little bit of spending money just in case there was a school canteen or something, but it's in the dorms."

The corners of her mouth quirked upwards, and even though her laughter made no sound she still tried to hold it in. Silent or not, she did not think Sally-Anne would be able to handle her shaking in mirth. She almost suggested just taking what Sally-Anned had already grabbed, but she doubted the blonde would go for it. Most girls her age had not spent years stealing the bare essentials for survival. Which, honestly, did not include candies in any way, shape, or form.

She was a thief by necessity, but while her conscience had ceased piping up every time she took something, she did not want it to become her first impulse whenever she saw something interesting.

'I have a little bit of gold on me,' she wrote instead, reaching into her satchel and withdrawing G.L.'s obnoxiously lurid money pouch. A pouch that was sadly much lighter than it had been when she first stole it. 'It won't buy the whole store, but it should cover a couple of things. You can pay me back when we get back to the castle.'

A couple of minutes later, they were once again strolling down the street. Hazel sucked on the hindquarters of a freezing cold mouse treat – one which, thankfully, did not actually taste like mouse – while watching Sally-Anne turn her cauldron of cream this way and that in confusion. Rolling her eyes, she reached into her satchel once again and pulled out a very banged-up spoon before rapping it against Sally-Anne's shoulder. 'Just use this. You look like you're considering drinking the cream straight out of it.'

"That would be more convenient. Thank you," the blonde said with a smile as she finally scooped some of the cream out of the cauldron. The smile fell slightly, and she looked at Hazel as though she were a puzzle whose pieces were struggling to fit together. "Er, why do you have a spoon in your bag in the first place? That isn't a normal thing for people to keep on them all the time."

'I keep lots of different things on me. Just in case. You never know when you're going to need a roll of tape or an extra notebook. Or a spoon because you snuck out of an enchanted castle,' she wrote with a small grin and a pointed look. 'When you have a bag with unlimited space inside it, there's no reason not to carry everything and the kitchen sink.'

"Okay, I suppose that's fair. I might need to look into getting myself something like that too." A few meters farther down the road, another thought struck the blonde. "But, while we're talking about things she does differently… Hazel? C-can I, er, ask you a question? Why aren't you coming to some of our classes anymore? Because Professor McGonagall has been really angry the last c-couple of weeks."

She snorted softly. 'I'm not going to her class because she can't teach me. I won't say she has nothing to teach,' she allowed begrudgingly, 'but the only way she knows how to teach is to make sure you move a wand and speak the incantation in the right way. I can't use a wand and can't speak, and the one time I asked her for help she refused to believe the simple facts in front of her face.

'If I'm forced to choose between wasting my time in a class where I can't learn or spending time learning stuff I can learn, my choice is obvious.'

"Oh. That makes sense, I guess." Sally-Anne was silently for a moment as another question formed. "Although, how do I ask this? Why can't you use a wand?"

That was more than a fair question, but it was also one she needed to think about how to answer. As much as she liked and honestly trusted Sally-Anne, she did not want the other girl to accidentally let it slip to McGonagall that there was a way to force a wand upon her. 'Because I don't use the same kind of magic as wizards and witches. I use it more like I think the ancient druids did, by shaping my magic into tools that do what I need them to do. There are a couple of other things going on, but that is the most important one.'

"And that's why you can hurt Peeves and keep the professors from seeing us," Sally-Anne said in understanding. Then she frowned, confusion burbling around within her brain. "Wait. But you can do some of the same things everyone else here can, like make potions and take care of magical plants. So is it that your magic is different, or is it that you use it differently?"

Hazel raised one finger to answer, then she lowered it as she thought it over again. Since meeting the werewolves she had assumed that her magic just worked differently, that it was separate from wizard magic, but as she reviewed everything she knew she was forced to admit that assumption was probably wrong. Professor Flitwick had mentioned meeting wizards who had learned to use magic without their wands, and then there was the example of her own mother. Her mum had started off using magic without a wand the same way Hazel did, but she had also attended Hogwarts back in the day, and if she had not used a wand surely the professors would not be quite as discombobulated by Hazel's own abilities. So logically her mother also used a wand without it interfering with her wandless abilities.

Then again, she had no evidence from the staff at this school or from Petunia's memories that her mother had ever carried a staff, and that was the real reason Mr. Ollivander had been unable to find a wand that worked for her. But that was not something inherently different within her; rather it was a difference in how she had chosen when learning to wield her magical abilities. Admittedly it was a choice made without complete information, but even so she would not say it was the wrong choice.

'I use it differently,' she finally answered. 'It works for me, and it isn't like I have any other good alternatives anyway. Whether someone else could learn to use magic like I do?' She shrugged with a half-hearted grin, although the grin quickly became something honest as she gave Sally-Anne a speculative look. 'Unless you're willing to give it a try?'

"Oh, no no no," Sally-Anne hastily refused, her pigtails flapping with how quickly she shook her head. "Casting spells the wizard way is hard enough, and I can only imagine how much worse however she does it is. I'm already worried that I'm not good enough to keep up with the rest of the class as it is. If I tried learning from Hazel and it turned out that I'm a failure both as a witch and as a potential druid, then I wouldn't have anybody…"

Frowning at the other girl's self-doubt, Hazel bumped her shoulder to shoulder. 'Fine. You can focus on being a boring witch,' she teased. 'But the offer will still be open if you change your mind.'

"Thanks," whispered Sally-Anne, giving Hazel a small smile. "But maybe you can help me out with Potions in the meantime. Snape's always just horrible, I don't understand how you do so well in his class…"

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Hazel let the dinner conversation flow unimpeded around them as she picked at a fried leg of chicken and tapped her notebook with the butt of a pen. She still wanted to see some progress on the whole counter-curse spell, but the experiments she had performed so far in those empty hours where certain classes once belonged had proven less than fruitful. A few ideas still stood out as possibilities, but there had been enough failures that she had taken to writing them all out in detail so she wouldn't accidentally waste her time experimenting with things she had forgotten about attempting before.

Next to her, she heard Sally-Anne's quickly change tone. Her friend had been happily chatting along with Oliver Rivers about some boy band or other, but now there was an element of fear. "Oh no. Why are they walking this way? She looks so mad. Er, Hazel?"

She glanced up from her notebook and immediately spotted what had spooked Sally-Anne. McGonagall and Mr. Filch were striding their way, the latter's gaze sweeping over the Hufflepuff table with a glare while the former had Hazel firmly in her sights. She sighed to herself; she had hoped that between simply skipping the witch's class and hiding in her ignore-me smoke, she could avoid having to deal with this. Apparently McGonagall had decided a public confrontation was worth actually pinning her down in the middle of dinner.

"Miss Potter," McGonagall said sternly. "You're not getting away this time. Have you forgotten where my classroom is?"

'No. I just can't learn what you're teaching, so I saw no reason to waste both our time.' There, she was doing some of what Professor Sprout had advised her to do. She was not going to go back to class and she was not going to apologize, but if her head of house wanted her not to escalate things and specifically not tell McGonagall that Transfiguration was useless, this was the best compromise she could think of. Take the blame for why she wasn't capable of learning McGonagall's subject instead of putting it on the teacher, and maybe – just maybe – they could put this behind them and each go about on their merry way.

It was a trick she had used with the Dursleys from time to time. It did not work all the time, not even most of the time, but it had lessened her punishments once in a while.

While Mr. Filch's eyes moved to her in shock and surprise, McGonagall's nostrils flared, and even without being able to read minds Hazel could tell she had not succeeded in defusing the situation. "And you never will learn anything if you refuse to apply yourself. All the bravado with none of the charm. I hate to agree with Severus's accusations, but she does have some of James's worst character traits. Perhaps actually serving your detentions will teach you how to do that. You have detention with Mr. Filch tonight, cleaning up every inch of the trophy room, and it starts right now. Hop to it."

That pronouncement startled the rest of the table, and when Sally-Anne cringed away from the professor Oliver raised a tentative hand. "But, er, Professor McGonagall? Ahh, why is she glaring at me now?! It's only halfway through dinner. Couldn't Hazel finish—"

"Miss Potter's punishment is none of your concern, Mister Rivers. There are worse things then missing a meal." McGonagall turned her eyes back to Hazel. "Be glad I am not taking away additional points along with the detention."

Additional points? Hazel cocked her head, and her confusion was echoed by the thoughts around her until one older boy down the table a bit blurted out, "Wait, is that why our points have been lower than they should be? That's been going on for weeks!"

"Of course," McGonagall told the table at large. By now students from the neighboring Gryffindor table were enraptured at the show before them. "Normally I would have informed Miss Potter of just why she was losing points every time she skipped class, but since she made herself impossible to find except during dinner she wasn't around for me to tell her."

That announcement made the Gryffindors start laughing uproariously while the Hufflepuff table was caught somewhere between shock, anger at McGonagall, and anger at Hazel. The witch ignored that and stared at Hazel; her thoughts made it clear while she actually did not want Hazel to push back here in the middle of the other students, she was enraged enough that she was phrasing things inside her head just in case Hazel did so.

The idea of doing it nevertheless crossed her mind, but after a moment's pause Hazel shook her head slightly. Would it tweak McGonagall's nose? Yes. Would it help the situation? Probably not. Taking one last swig of water from her goblet, she stood up straightened her satchel against her hip. Satisfied with her compliance, at least for now, McGonagall spun on her heel and marched imperiously towards the door. Hazel raised her eyebrows at Mr. Filch, who merely looked back at her before jerking his head towards the door.

So she was to be flanked by the two adults. Honestly, it was exactly the kind of situation she did not want. If she had trailed behind both of them, it would have been no trouble at all to wrap herself in her ignore-me smoke and slip away without them noticing her absence until they had reached their destination. She did not know whether her spell would work with Mr. Filch right behind her watching her, though. Which was probably the exact reason they were doing what they were doing, she realized. While school-age wizards might or might not learn how to do something similar to her smoke, the chances she was the first student who had the idea of giving faculty the slip were slim to none.

Sighing, she started walking to catch up to McGonagall, pulling her staff out from her satchel in the process. On the one hand, she had better things to do than detention, even if those things so far had ended in dead ends. Once she was no longer being escorted around, vanishing as soon as no one's eyes were upon her. On the other, she found herself curious about what Mr. Filch had planned for a detention. Not to mention, the sound of his thoughts were starting to… concern her.

"There is no chance. That can't be. She called Hazel 'Miss Potter'. That would mean she's Hazel Potter. But she can't be! The Girl-Who-Lived is supposed to be some hoity-toity witch running around like she owns the place. Normally I'd take what Snape says with a grain of salt, but Minerva's been grumbling about her too." A hint of bitterness slipped into his thoughts. "The Girl-Who-Lived isn't supposed to be someone like me, like us. She's supposed to have somewhere she fits in, where she belongs. Someone we're able to be jealous of for having what was denied to us, not somebody who is just like us."

When they finally reached their destination, McGonagall stepped aside so Hazel and Mr. Filch could enter. The room was filled with trophies of various sizes and shapes, appropriate considering the name of the room. In the middle of the floor was a large bucket filled with soapy water and a pile of rags, both being guarded by a bored-looking Mrs. Norris. McGonagall had said her detention was to clean the entire room, and now that she saw the supplies being given…

'I presume the actual punishment is to clean the room and the trophies by hand, not with magic?' she wrote.

"Correct. I would normally tell you to hand your wand to Mr. Filch, but as you refuse to get one, you can get straight to the task at hand. Hopefully being forced to work the Muggle way will both make you appreciate the opportunity to learn magic and teach you the consequences of breaking the rules. Not to mention being so flippant about doing so." Satisfied that the world once again worked the way it was meant to, McGonagall stormed out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Hazel huffed. 'And she wonders why I don't like her,' she wrote, making her opinion explicit for Mr. Filch. She shook her head and turned to look at the man. 'Do you have a preferred order, or should I start at one end of the room and work my way around?'

Something furry brushed against her ankle, and Hazel looked down to find Mrs. Norris brushing twining herself around her legs. She could not help the small smile as she bent down to scratch the dusty cat behind ears and rake fingers through her hair. With a contented purr, Mrs. Norris flopped bonelessly onto the stone floor and rolled to present her belly for more rubs.

"Normally I'd make students go from tallest to shortest just to make sure they have to walk back and forth over the whole room a lot, but just start over there," Mr. Filch replied, waving his hand vaguely at the wall next to the door. After a moment, he sighed loudly. "Little numpty. Oi, Mrs. Norris. Hazel's supposed to be serving detention, not giving you scritches."

Mrs. Norris responded to her human's demand with a glare and a petulant mrrraah, but ultimately she rolled back onto her feet and stalked over to Mr. Filch's side.

Her smile remaining, Hazel pushed the butt of her staff against the floor and tentatively let go. As she hoped, it remained standing upright despite not having any support. She had thought about the implications of how when she visited Hogsmeade a few days ago with Sally-Anne, it had not left a mark in the ground, and she was pleased to discover that her guess was right. It was one of the more convenient, albeit still strange, abilities her staff possessed, even if it made her all the more curious what benefit if any it had in regards to casting spells.

There had to be a reason the one magical depiction of druids she had found, the standing stones within Shervage Wood, had them carrying staves as opposed to the wands of the wizards. At this point she would almost prefer that her staff had some kind of mind controlling it like the Sorting Hat did; at least then she could try convincing it to explain itself and what it wanted. Even a strange plant-mind like the one possessed by the maple tree she had received it from would be acceptable. Sadly, it had nothing like that.

She had already tried talking to it in a fit of desperation. No luck.

Still, she had a 'detention' to serve. She grabbed a rag from the pile and soaked it in the soapy water before wringing the excess out. The nearest trophy was less filthy and more dusty, although the inside of the cup of the trophy had black streaks of patina marring the otherwise pretty silver. Second place, European Islay Hangman Championship, 1931, the plaque read once she had wiped it clean. Looking back to Mr. Filch, she asked, 'What's Islay Hangman?'

"It's a card game. Uses the same deck as Exploding Snap but with different rules. Never played it myself, so I don't know much more than that," he explained with a shrug. "The school team mostly goes to other schools to compete. I hear it's because the protections over the castle make it difficult to give them visitor access since they belong to another school. The headmaster would have to personally let them each time, but the other schools don't have that same issue."

She nodded, scrubbing futilely at the stains upon the silver before sighing to herself. Wasn't patina made by water damage to silver? Shaking her head, she wiped off the rest of the trophy at the same time that she sent magical blue ripples over the trophy to peel apart the streaks and all the dust she had not yet wiped away. Soon satisfied by the results, she returned to the bucket to wash the dirt and dust out of the rag in order to move onto the next one.

"What is that?" She glanced over to find Mr. Filch looking at the trophy in confusion. "All she did was wipe it with a wet cloth. That would have gotten some of the dust off, but it shouldn't be this shiny already." He walked over to inspect it more closely, and his confusion only deepened. "Even the inside looks polished, except she didn't scrub nearly hard enough or with any cleaning stuff to…"

Understanding swept through him like a wave over the beach, and he looked at her with a squinting, reassessing expression. "You can clean things magically, can't you?"

'Not as far as McGonagall knows.' Which was not a no, and they both knew it. If it had been McGonagall, maybe even Professor Sprout, she probably would have just lied, but Mr. Filch had been nothing but kind to her, not to mention he had a sweet cat who adored him. A dog would stay beside a terrible person, but a cat? Cats were too independent for that nonsense; that was what Mrs. Figg had told her a few times growing up. 'Then again, if she considered that people without a wand might not be limited to 'parlor tricks' – her words, not mine – she would have checked on that before assuming I'm incapable.' The rag in her hands was surely wet enough now, so she wrung it out and walked over to the next trophy in line. Just to prove the point, though, she did not even bother pretending to use it. Laying her right hand upon the cool metal, she met Mr. Filch's eyes as her magic did all the heavy lifting. 'And we wouldn't be standing here in the middle of dinner.'

"You don't need to show off to convince me, lass," Mr. Filch said with a sigh and shake of his head. "I remember you whipping up the projections of the boys who attacked you. Honestly that was more impressive than this is; I just didn't expect it, that's all. It also means there is no point in this detention. She can just clean everything with magic, and there's nothing anyone can do about it." With a voice filled with resignation, he asked, "I don't suppose you'd agree to clean the trophies by hand anyway, would you?"

'Why should I? I didn't do anything wrong in the first place.'

Mr. Filch's eyebrows rose in surprise at that declaration. "She didn't do anything wrong? That's not what Minerva said. Or maybe she just doesn't think what she did was wrong. Professor McGonagall says you haven't been going to class for the last few weeks."

'I haven't gone to her class for the last few weeks,' she corrected with a raised finger. Or to Defense Against the Dark Arts or History, but technically one could say Professor Quirrell had excused her from class, and from Professor Sprout's surprise neither he nor Binns had brought her absences up so clearly neither had a problem with her behavior. It was only McGonagall who was making a big deal about it. 'That's all she's mad about, not about what I'm doing in my other classes.'

"Oof. Now Minerva's anger makes more sense, especially since Hazel isn't even part of her house. Got hit square in her pride, and then that blasted temper of hers took charge." Mr. Filch rubbed his stubbly chin. "She seems to like me, which is weird coming from a student at all, and definitely more than she does Minerva. Maybe I can talk her into going to class? It can't work any worse than taking points or giving her detention has. You still should be going to all your classes. That's the whole reason you're a student here."

Hazel whipped her head back and forth in furious negation, the motion dislodging Morgan in the process. He glided to the trophy she had just cleaned and chirped his displeasure. 'No, it's not. I'm not here to be a student. I'm here to learn, and that's a different thing. I haven't been going to McGonagall's class because I can't learn what she's teaching. If I can't learn, it's a waste of my time.'

"That's… huh. Professor McGonagall would help you if you went to her asking for help, although right now you might need to act a little shamefaced first. That's about the only way the Gryffindors can prove they've learned their lesson. All the professors have office hours just for that reason, you know."

'I asked her about it in class, and she wasn't helpful then. All she teaches is how to cast spells with a wand; I think that's all she honestly knows how to do. Do this, say that. If you don't succeed, it's your fault because you failed to follow the instructions properly.

'Back in the hospital wing, I said I don't have a wand, remember?' He nodded along. 'That's because I can't use one. Mr. Ollivander said so himself. How am I supposed to follow her directions when they weren't made with someone like me in mind?'

First Sally-Anne, now Mr. Filch. This was the second time in a week that she had to explain her wandless-ness. At this rate she might need to write all this out on a sheet of paper in one of her notebooks so she could show it to people and skip having the same conversation every time someone asked.

Her words hit Mr. Filch like a physical blow, and his eyes widened even as a mixture of camaraderie and sympathy swelled around her. "Merlin, I was right. I didn't even want to be right, not when she's so kind. But I guess that makes more sense than the alternative. She's two steps from being a Squib like me; however she's doing the weird stuff she does is the only thing separating her from us." He fidgeted, cleared his throat. "Did you tell Professor McGonagall any of this?"

'Literally the first class I had with her.'

"Huh. Well, not like I can ask more of her than that. You can't make wizards listen to things they don't want to hear." Sighing, he shook his head. "You did what you could, I guess. It's not right to punish someone for something they just can't do. We get enough of that from society at large; we don't need to do it to our own.

"Which also means we should just cut this short." Mr. Filch pulled a battered watch out of one pocket and glanced at its face. "There's still a little bit of time left before dinner ends. Professor McGonagall may have gone there to eat her own dinner, though, so going there might have her wondering why you're back so early."

'I can just go back to the dorms. I was mostly done anyway.'

"Nonsense." He closed the watch with a definitive click. "You're almost a teenager, which means you're a bottomless hole at the best of times. Not to mention you're so tiny. She's nearly a head shorter than most of the first-years, two if you put her next to Bulstrode. We need to get some food in you, and the kitchens are just the place. Besides, the kids always like finding somewhere hidden. Seeing it in person would be just the thing. Come with me."

How to tell Mr. Filch that she already knew where the kitchens were? Seeing his expression as he moved towards the door, Hazel met Morgan's gaze and shrugged. She really was not that hungry, but clearly Mr. Filch was of a different mind. If it made him feel better and it got her out of McGonagall's sight for the rest of the night, she was willing to make the small sacrifice of having the house-elves ply her with food.

They walked down the stairs to the dungeon levels where both the Hufflepuff dorms and the kitchens were located before stopping next to a portrait showing a bowl of fruit, the same portrait Tinky had shown her when the house-elf found her sleeping in the storeroom. Mr. Filch turned around and searched her face, his expression falling and turning grumpy. "Someone's shown you this before, haven't they? There goes the surprise. The Hufflepuffs do a good job when they show the new first-years around, but did they have to show her this place?"

Hazel shrugged and gave him a weak smile. 'Yes? One of the house elves found me locked out of the Hufflepuff common room and brought me here to see if anyone had a solution to the problem. Which they did, but it means I kind of know what to expect.'

"I guess I can't get too mad if it was one of the house-elves themselves who showed you," admitted Mr. Filch as his negative thoughts cleared away. "The kitchens are one of the few places that are truly their domain. They work all through the castle, but most of the time they're invisible. Here, though, it's easier to interact with them."

Turning the pear that had become a doorknob, Mr. Filch opened the door and stepped inside, holding the door open so she could follow him. When she had entered this enormous room, she had been escorted by Tinky the house-elf, and the other elves had looked her way but thereafter ignored her. This was not the case when she came in after Mr. Filch. Dozens of bulbous eyes turned in their direction, and with a surge of excitement they rushed forwards. The tide of emotion was enough that it felt like it was going to overwhelm her much as the Sorting ceremony had; the number of sources was smaller than during the Sorting, but the intensity of each source was far greater.

She would have thought that after cooking a meal for the entire school, the last thing they would want to see was a student wandering in wanting more. Clearly she was wrong.

"Master Argus! Miss!" several of them called out before one pushed her way forwards. "How cans we helps? Master Argus bes hungry?"

"Hazel missed part of dinner," Mr. Filch told them. "If you could provide her with something to eat?"

'Something light, please,' she quickly added.

Almost before she knew what was happening, a small table was set up in the corner of the room and she was seated with a steaming bowl of soup before her. Mr. Filch had declined anything to eat but instead was slumped against the back of his chair with a mug of tea in his hands. Mrs. Norris, not content to be ignored, lapped up cream from a saucer on the floor. As she was eating, she saw his half-closed eyes open fully. "Evening, Botchins."

Botchins? She turned around to see the elderly elf who had gifted her the ability to enter the Hufflepuff common room on her own, and when he met her eyes she gave him a smile and a wave. 'Good to see you again, Botchins.'

"And Miss as well. Miss bes a good Hufflypuffly. Master Argus," he said, turning to Mr. Filch with a pleasant smile. "Should elves still bes avoiding the trophying room?"

"No, no, go ahead and clean it," Mr. Filch said, pulling a little black book out of his coat pocket and flipping though it. "Preferably before Minerva notices that Hazel didn't clean it herself. But where should they ignore next? Maybe skip cleaning the salon, and preferably direct a little extra dirt and dust there. It's been a while since I've had students mop the floor, and the Weasley twins have been strangely quiet for the last couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll need to give them detention sooner than later.

"Anything we're running short on?" he continued after making a note and closing the book. "We don't need another instance of Whispy mixing up salt and sugar again."

"Botchins bes double-checking Whispy's work. Whispy not makes that mistake again. Those bags not bes labeled clearly, either," added the elf with a scolding finger.

"Fair enough," he replied, taking another sip of his tea. Once Botchins had departed, he glanced her way and smiled. "Sorry. I forgot we had an audience."

'That's not a problem,' she quickly wrote. 'But I am confused. I was told you were the caretaker. That didn't seem… caretaker-y.'

Mr. Filch waved his hand. "I am and I'm not. It's complicated, and Dumbledore seems content letting the school think that one man goes around keeping an entire castle by hand, which is ridiculous. I'm sure at least some of the little blighters intentionally track mud in after a storm because they think it makes more work for me personally. I'm in charge of supervising all the castle's elves, coordinating food purchases for the kitchens, and generally taking care of the few issues they cannot handle themselves.

"The position didn't always used to be called 'caretaker'," he continued thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair. "That's only been the case for the last couple of hundred years. The headmaster at the time thought 'seneschal' was too fancy-sounding."

Hazel stared at him, spoon frozen partway to her mouth. With all the research she had done during her months wandering around England and popping in and out of libraries, she had become familiar with some of the terminology of the medieval period. 'Those are two very different things.'

"I know. Officially, the reason for the name change was that Hogwarts did not employ any housekeeping staff, so there was no reason for a seneschal to manage staff that didn't exist. That's ignoring the hundred or so house-elves Hogwarts housed at the time and continues to do so to this day." He scoffed, his expression turning into an ugly sneer. "Wizards don't consider house-elves to be people. Of course, a lot of them don't want to consider us people, either. But that's the official reason. The actual reason, I think, is that the headmaster and seneschal of that time had butted heads a lot while the headmaster was still just the deputy, and this was an opportunity to get even."

'So how come you supervise detentions if you have your hands full with keeping the castle standing?' Having the caretaker dole out punishments was strange enough, but now that she realized how involved his job actually was, she had to wonder even more.

"The house-elves manage a lot of the day-to-day stuff on their own," he admitted with a shrug, "so that leaves me with time to spare. I offered to take over some of the detentions from the teachers because I don't have to worry about marking up homework and writing exams the way they do. And there's the other reason, which I don't know if I should admit to. It's strange having a student respect me, and I don't really want to lose that. But if she hears it from someone else… And the teachers know I like to make their detentions worse than they need to be, which has its upsides. Sometimes the threat of having detention with me is enough to scare a student straight. 'Course, a lot of the little bastards deserve more than just a night of hard labor, but that's as far as Dumbledore lets me go."

His thoughts had taken a decidedly dark turn, and Hazel hesitated before writing out, 'What would you do instead?'

"Bring back some of the old corporal punishments. Hanging them by their wrists overnight in the dungeons, maybe caning. Nothing that would leave any injuries," he quickly added when he saw Hazel's shocked expression. "But pain's a quick teacher."

'That's horrible,' she told him, mind awhirl. This was more like the horror stories she had overheard from the older Hufflepuffs about Mr. Filch, and even with him admitting to them she had trouble reconciling the awful and bitter words and this man who helped her, who listened to her, who seemed to understand her in ways the wand-wavers refused to do. 'It's so… so… pointlessly cruel.'

"Oh, this sweet sheltered child. She doesn't fully understand how we're treated. But I can't say I'm upset that she doesn't. If being the Girl-Who-Lived means she avoided the worst of how the wizards can be, I'm glad she is. Strange," he said instead of voicing his inner thoughts, "my father didn't think it so horrible when he was trying to force me to use some kind of magic. Any kind. The neighbors didn't say anything against his methods, neither. A few even gave him pointers!" Mr. Filch shook his head. "Thank Merlin for Gran. If she hadn't taken me in when I turned eleven, I don't know if they wouldn't have beaten me to death. I wouldn't go that far, but getting just a little taste of it might teach the kids here not to be such little shites. Probably wouldn't need to do it but once or twice, and their behavior would get a lot better when they had that threat hanging over their heads."

'It shouldn't be necessary to hurt anyone though.'

"Do you think being nice to Sanrich would have kept him from cursing you in the back?" he asked pointedly. "You didn't do anything to him, probably never even met him, and he cursed you just because he could. Hogwarts does a lot of good, don't misunderstand me, but it also turns out more than its fair share of bullies, and that's because they never get punished enough when they start acting out and targeting people. They grow up thinking they're untouchable because of who their daddy is. Unfortunately, the world doesn't prove them wrong after they leave school either.

"But it's not like it's ever going to happen anyway," he finished with a shrug. "Dumbledore was very clear on that. He thinks like you on that score. And maybe that's for the best," Mr. Filch added. "I know I'm a bitter old man. Maybe I'd take it too far so they get a taste for how they treat us. Maybe I wouldn't have the stomach for it if I could do it. Nobody knows, and he refuses to take the chance. Instead I give them chores to do and keep records of all the detentions they wind up doing, either with me or the professors. It's safer that way."

Records of detentions? Curiosity piqued and eager to change the subject, she asked, 'How long do you keep records for? I heard something about my mum setting fire to the Restricted Section, and I was wondering if you had more details about that.'

"Setting fire— Oh, right," he said as memories started clicking. "I think I do remember that. Not the details off-hand, but the event itself. Your mum was nowhere close to getting the most detentions during her time here – it was your da who was after that title – but whenever she did get one, it was always for the strangest reasons. Not unlike you, come to think of it." He nodded to himself. "They graduated… '77 or '78? Yeah, I should still have them in the filing cabinet." He gave her half-full bowl of soup a significant look. "We can have a look when you're done."

Hazel picked up the bowl and slurped up the rest of the soup in a few big gulps – it helped that the soup was more of a broth with shreds of meat and cabbage floating around – then stood up and picked up her staff from where she had leaned it against one wall. Mr. Filch laughed at her haste but nonetheless quaffed the rest of his tea. "All right, lass. Let's go take a look."

They climbed the stairs up to the second floor, then went down a few deserted hallways until they reached a nondescript door. Opening it revealed a tiny room mostly filled with filing cabinets and a desk pressed into one corner of the room. A single lantern hung from the ceiling, shedding a weak pool of light that did not seem to fully penetrate every corner of the room. 'This is your office?' she asked weakly.

Mr. Filch shrugged, clearly discomforted a little by her reaction. "I don't need a lot of space. This is mostly for records, anyway, and sometimes writing letters and making orders. I walk around the castle a lot, so I have the whole castle to myself. And as you saw, the elves never mind me popping over unannounced to check on things or when I get lonely and want some company. Anyway, the detentions are in these cabinets. They're organized by the year students started, so if her parents graduated in late seventies, they would have started in '70 or '71. Good to start there anyway."

He pulled open a drawer that came out a lot farther than it should have from the depth of the cabinet, and he started flipping through the file tabs while Hazel's eyes found and refused to pull away from a long set of chains hanging from the wall. The light from the lantern glinted off the polished steel, and she swallowed uncomfortably. I guess he wasn't kidding about the 'hanging students from their wrists' thing, she told Morgan.

The little bird scooted closer and chirped reassuringly.

"Ah, here we go!" said Mr. Filch triumphantly as he pulled out a single folder. "'Evans, Lily'. I told you your mum wasn't that much of a trouble-maker," he added, shaking it and making it flop around. "Not much in here at all. Now, let's see if we can find out what happened with that fire thing—

"What in the world?"

Whatever he saw seemed to shut his brain down, and after a few moments of silence Hazel snapped her fingers. 'Mr. Filch?' she asked when he looked up at her. 'What is it?'

"…I had forgotten how much of a bloody little—" He took a deep breath. "Careful, Argus. She likes me, but I doubt she'll take well if I start bad-mouthing her mother. …cheeky girl she was."

'I don't understand.'

In lieu of answering, he pulled out a single sheet of parchment and handed it to her. Just at a glance she could tell this was not an official form. It was formatted more like a letter. Actually reading it, she was unable to keep the smile off her face.

Dear Mr. Filch,

Since I am now a Hogwarts graduate rather than a mere student, I believe these are technically my property. Other people have little need to know the embarrassing details of these little incidents, wouldn't you say?

Have a good summer!

Love,
Lily Evans

Hazel drank in the sharp lines of her mother's signature, including a tiny heart over the 'i', and looked up to find Mr. Filch still stewing but at least no longer angry. Grumpy, yes, but if his job included keeping accurate records, that could be excused. 'When do you think she made the switch?'

"I have no idea," growled Mr. Filch. "I don't know if she came back to the castle after graduation, so either on a return visit or worse it was before she took the train for the last time. If you hadn't asked me about it, I wouldn't have had a reason to check."

Oh. She looked down at the letter again and then back to Mr. Filch. 'Would you mind terribly if I kept this?'

"With the way you're looking at it as if it's the first thing you've ever seen of your mother's? Nae, it's fine." He gave her a half-smile. "Certainly doesn't do me any good to keep it.

"Now, you had better get back to your common room." He turned to glare at the filing cabinet. "While I look to see if anyone else did a switcheroo on me without me knowing it."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

As Hazel and Sally-Anne walked through the hallways before the blonde had to split off for Transfiguration class, they were not the only ones in chipper moods. Halloween was upon them, and unlike the Dursleys who always hated all things weird and 'magical', the house-elves were going all out in their celebrations. Breakfast had started with platters of pumpkin pancakes – Hazel still thought the wizards' obsession with the orange gourd was a little much, but this one day she was willing to give them a pass and even had one herself – and by the time lunch rolled around, most of the suits of armor scattered throughout the castle had been covered up with costumes and their helmets replaced by eerily realistic masks. Within the Great Hall itself, the slew of candles that normally floated in the air had been replaced by jack-o'-lanterns made from both pumpkins and strangely enough gigantic turnips while bowls of burning hazelnuts sat spread out over the tables.

And with the way things were going, excitement was building throughout the school for what dinner would bring. Even Mr. Filch was in the spirit of the season, wearing black and orange striped trousers!

The classes, sadly, were not fitting themselves into the theme. Charms had been fine, and now that Professor Flitwick wanted them to learn how to levitate feathers Hazel could actually participate. Even if him giving Hufflepuff points for something she had been doing on her own for years was still strange to her. From what Sally-Anne told her about Defense Against the Dark Arts, they were officially learning the Leg-Locking Curse that the Slytherin boys had used on her. So now there were going to be more people who could cast spells on her she had no way to undo.

That had been an unwelcome reminder that forging her own path and making up her own spells had its limitations. After asking Professor Flitwick for an object she could experiment with un-ensorcelling – and being handed a block of wood charmed to be an ugly bile green color because the little professor thought he was funny – she had started thinking of different ways she might try breaking down the magic.

A bar of soap to wash the magic off. Sandpaper to scour it off. A file to grind it off. Even a chisel to crack the magic up so it would fall off on its own. None of the tools she imagined felt right, and none of them worked. In a strange way, despite Professor Flitwick casting the spell on the block of wood right in front of her, when she tried to remove the spell it did not act as if was on top of the wood. It instead behaved as though it had already seeped into the wood and become part of it. Removing the spell would therefore require her extracting it, and how to do that she still was not certain.

Maybe if she—

A whisper slipped across her mind, and she stopped short. Sally-Anne, who had been regaling her with the events of a class she had no interest in, walked for a couple more steps before realizing Hazel was no longer beside her. "Hazel? Why does she look like she's lost and confused?" asked Sally-Anne.

Hazel raised a single finger in a request for silence as she let her eyes half-close. She wanted quiet for this, both physical and if possible mental, so she had a better chance of catching it again—

"…suth guacyel seawrosse forpeve ilebtn ac…"

It was unintelligible, or at least not in English. Except no matter whose thoughts she listened to or what language they spoke with their mouths – from France all the way down to Greece – she never had a problem understanding people's thoughts. They were always in English, or at least a language she could understand. But not this.

What was going on?

Being very aware of Sally-Anne's curiosity, she wrote a question she knew would be denied. 'Did you hear that?'

"No…"

It was difficult to tell direction with nothing to go on but this strange mental whisper, but it felt ever so slightly as if it had come from their left. Except there was nothing on their left, no hidden passage or trap door. She closed her left eye, looking out only through her right eye and the fairy lens that sat over it, but still she saw nothing. All that was visible were two suits of armor, neither of them close by, and a faded tapestry depicting some magical farmers raising their crops. There was nowhere for the thoughts to be coming from.

And yet, the thoughts had to be coming from somewhere.

She reached out and patted the wall, proving with now two senses that there was nothing there. As her fingers skimmed the surface of the stone, though, a thought came to her. Fingers lifted up and settled on the surface of the tapestry, pushing gently. Here. There. And…

She grabbed the edge of the tapestry and lifted it up. Beneath the fabric sat more wall, but here the stonework was smeared and runny. Like paint that had not fully dried.

This was not like most passages in Hogwarts, a wall that could sometimes be a door. This was instead a doorway just pretending to be a wall. Just like the pathway to Merlin's statue beneath Tintagel or the entrance to Platform 9¾.

Something had been hidden here.

"What are you looking at?"

Hazel turned around to catch Sally-Anne's gaze, then without breaking eye contact she deliberately pushed one hand through the illusion and meeting no resistance in the process. Withdrawing her hand, she wrote, 'This is where whatever I heard came from.'

"Did we discover a new secret passage?" Sally-Anne wondered excitedly. "Where does it go? Do you think we have enough time to look at it before class starts? Professor McGonagall still isn't happy even after you had your detention, and I don't want her to get mad at me too."

'We'll get you to class in time. We aren't going to explore it top to bottom, just take a look around. Then we know if it's worth coming back for or not.'

Morgan let out a single loud chirp, and Sally-Anne and Hazel's eyes met just before their ears picked up the sound of approaching voices. They had deliberately left lunch early so they could have more time to wander around before Sally-Anne went to class and Hazel left to work on her own ideas, but now it sounded like some of the other Hufflepuffs were on their trail. Or worse, some of the Gryffindor students with whom the Hufflepuffs shared the Transfiguration class. They might not be as mean towards everyone else the way the Slytherin students were, but many of them seemed to have some kind of chip on their shoulder where Hazel was concerned. Their display when McGonagall had forced her into 'detention' with Mr. Filch was just one example.

"Oh no. If they see us, we won't get to explore it ourselves! Go, go, go," Sally-Anne hissed, almost diving past Hazel and through the illusion. Hazel was quick to follow herself.

The flapping of the tapestry back against the wall cut off all light that could have come into the otherwise pitch-black space. Reaching into her satchel, Hazel's fingers wrapped around a rough-hewn wooden sphere before pulling it out. A squeeze, and the sphere erupted into sullen flames that licked harmlessly around her fingers and filled the room with a blood-red light.

Not a room, she realized as their surroundings were finally illuminated. They were in a tunnel.

The tunnel in question had certainly seen better days. The stones were not set smooth and flush against their neighbors; instead they jutted out unevenly, giving the walls the look of belonging to an undiscovered ancient ruin rather than being a hidden passage within an inhabited castle.

"Wow," breathed Sally-Anne next to her. "Where are we? Is this even still part of Hogwarts?"

Hazel gave her an uncertain shrug before carefully following the tunnel down a shallow descent. Was this what all the secret passages in this school were like? If so, she might need to spend more time looking for them and exploring.

And if not, then what was this place?

The tunnel took a sharp left and then ended abruptly. Perhaps fifteen feet past the corner was a large pile of rock, as if the castle above this had collapsed onto itself. That was not to say the remaining passage was empty. The light of her campfire sphere glinted off the glass of a shattered mirror propped against one wall and lit up a dusty rucksack laying at the base of the opposite side. It was clear neither mirror nor bag had been touched in what must have been ages.

She squatted next to the bag and gently pulled it open. She was not sure what she was expecting, but a stack of papers and bottles with long-dried ink certainly would not have been her first guess. Those and a small coinpurse; she hesitated only for a second before grabbing the purse and slipping it into her own satchel. Now at least a few coins richer, she picked up one of the papers and started to skim it only for her reading to slow.

'These belonged to a student,' she wrote when she heard Sally-Anne turn around the corner. 'This is a potions essay, and these look like notes for Defense. They all have the same name on them, too: Titania Ogden.' Hazel glanced up. 'Have we met any Ogdens? Or any student called Titania? It sounds like a wizard name.'

Sally-Anne shook her head. "I don't know any. They aren't in our year, and we haven't met them in the common room. Why would she have left them here of all places? Is there anything else?"

'Just her bag and the mirror.' Pushing herself to her feet, Hazel turned around to examine the mirror in question. With all the cracks running through the glass, her gaze was met with dozens of copies of herself, some of them a little slower to react than the rest had been. The frame was strange, made of bronze and oval in shape but decorated with bizarre geometric patterns on the top and bottom edges. It possessed no legs, either, which made her very curious why it was here of all places.

"…nia hmas eht otogtn ac ewno sa er eht wonkuoy…" the mirror whispered to her again.

"Who would hide a mirror here?" wondered Sally-Anne, creeping closer. "It isn't even a pretty one."

Sally-Anne brushed the edge of the frame with her fingers, and as if by magic the view inside the mirror changed. No longer did the reflection show them; each shard of glass struggled to display a different locale. Some of them were other places within Hogwarts, but not all or even most.

Then the mirror exploded.

Razor sharp shards of glass flew everywhere, too fast for Hazel even to cover her face, only to curve impossibly after moving only a few feet, swooshing and colliding and breaking apart and reforming. Behind them, where the back of the frame should be, she was given brief, frightening glimpses of an ever-shifting void. Mirrors reflecting themselves endlessly with nothing to give them perspective. A gale sprang up out of nowhere and pressed against Hazel's back. She drove her staff against the ground as hard as she could, hoping against hope that it would be enough to keep her steady on her feet.

A scream distracted her, and she opened her squinting eyes a tiny bit wider in time to see the wind pull at Sally-Anne's clothes with enough force to overpower her grip in the mirror's frame. The blonde was swept off her feet and sucked hungrily through the sea of shards and into the void beyond. With no time to think, only to react, Hazel did the only thing she could.

Dive in headfirst after her.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Hazel Potter was never heard from again. The wizards mourned her loss and promptly forgot about her. Without the Girl-Who-Lived, Voldemort was able to conquer Britain and ultimately the world. Evil won, Good lost, and everything was awful forevermore.

The end.

…Okay, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to end the story here! But things are about to get a little… weird, and just be aware that the above probably would have happened were Hazel less experienced in the ways of Magic's oddities.

And many thanks to everyone who unintentionally gave me suggestions for Hazel's failed experiments in counterspelling wizard magic.

 

[Silently Watches]

The blonde was swept off her feet and sucked hungrily through the sea of shards and into the void beyond. With no time to think, only to react, Hazel did the only thing she could.

Dive in headfirst after her.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Hazel expected wind.

That was a reasonable expectation, she would think; any time she had ever fallen from any substantial height, she had felt the wind on her face and rushing over her short hair. Except this place, whatever and wherever it was, had no wind, maybe even no air to create wind. There were no features by which to judge her location, either. The only glimpse of anything she could see were flashes of something from the corners of her eyes, lit only by the blood-red light of her campfire sphere shining into the mirror some unknowable distance above her.

The longer she fell, though, the rarer those flashes became until she could almost imagine herself floating weightlessly in absolute darkness.

A sudden flash of bright light blinded her, and she went from floating to tumbling uncontrollably in the blink of an eye. Hard surfaces smashed into her feet and then her knees. She folded herself into a ball and let the impacts do as they would around her until they finally came to a stop.

Opening her eyes, Hazel watched as a stone wall in front of her shifted like a strange monochrome kaleidoscope, lines orienting themselves as the area of constant movement shrank smaller and smaller until what was left was perfectly still. She lay still for another minute, letting the aches from her crash landing fade from her awareness. What had she gotten herself into this time?

Aggravated chirping caught her attention, and she looked up to find Morgan circling above her head. You didn't have to come along, she told the bird as she pushed herself to her feet. His only response was a sharp, piercing tweet. Well, what was I supposed to do, she demanded, let Sally-Anne fall in and just not care?

Although I have to wonder how much I really needed to worry, she continued while looking at her surroundings. The plain stone walls looked very castle-y, and while she had not been in many castles, her mind immediately went to the most likely option: Hogwarts.

Was that mirror literally just a fancy secret passage within its own secret passage? If so, that would be the most disappointing discovery she had made since learning about this new world of magic.

Although that did not answer the question of the dusty abandoned rucksack, she reminded herself. If this was just a portal to another part of the castle, Titania Ogden would have swung back by to grab her stuff. Something had happened, and it was just a matter of what…

Hazel's eyes found a tapestry hanging on the wall down the corridor a short distance, and she frowned as she walked closer. She would not pretend to have made an inventory of every single tapestry throughout the whole castle, but over the last couple of months she had seen a decent number of them. There was no shared theming or consisted subject, but they had all had the same extremely basic structure: semi-realistic people depicted in realistic activities. Some depicted historical moments, others were essentially woven still lifes, but all of them were of people doing people things. This tapestry, however, was much more abstract, smears of faded color mingling together with neither rhyme nor reason.

Honestly, without any reference she would have guessed the weaver had seen a gallery of modern art and decided he could do it better.

You know, that mirror being a portal to a different castle is looking better and better as an explanation, she told Morgan. And now she was worried whether she had arrived at the same destination as Sally-Anne because she could see no sign of the blonde at all even though she had jumped into the mirror mere instants later. If that had been long enough for them to go different places, there was no way she would be able to find her friend—

"…enoge va hdl uoceh skn ihtuoyode rehw…"

Her head popped up as a strange voice, still just above a whisper, drifted all around her. This sounded different from the first voice she had heard, but she could not tell if it was because she was now within this castle instead of being separated by a pane of glass or if it was truly another voice entirely.

More importantly than anything, however, was the implication. If this was the same voice, simply no longer distorted by the mirror, then she was in the same place she had overheard before they fell through. Which meant that Sally-Anne had to be somewhere around here; it was just a question as to where. If she could speak, or even if she had any other means of making herself heard, she could call out to her friend. As it was, she had no way to do that.

Note to self, work on that next. This might honestly be more important to work on than the countercharm was. She could see it having more ready applications if nothing else.

Although, if all she needed was for someone to make some noise, who said it had to be her who did it? She reached out her hand waited for Morgan to flutter onto her wrist. Okay, I think I have a plan, she told him, but I'm going to need your help. Step one, sing as loud as you can. Step two, we both listen in case Sally-Anne responds. What do you think?

Morgan stared at her for several long seconds, but before she could start explaining the reasoning for her plan, he puffed up as he took a long breath. What then came out of him was really less of a song so much as it was a screech. Nevertheless, she thought as she tried to rub the high-pitched ringing out of her ears, it was definitely loud, and that was what she had asked of him.

She did not hear anything after that, which she could have attributed to either the ringing or there just not being anything to hear, but Morgan's senses were more finely attuned than her own were. He popped his head up and looked to her left, further down the hallway that intersected another corridor, then took wing yet again with a happy chirp. No other options at hand, she shrugged and followed after him.

Morgan took a left, then shortly thereafter took a sharp right down another intersecting hallway. This one was not straight like all the corridors she was used to from Hogwarts, instead curved gracefully, but thankfully following the curve not only kept Morgan in sight but eventually brought another much-appreciated view. Namely a blonde girl in a black robe looking around another corner.

"…suevi g'dluown rohgulse veile btna ci… ded netnie htah wenoyn alle t'cirdogdid… ned dihstie re hwe calpeh t-tatoof daptog…"

The voices – and it was definitely multiple voices, she had no doubts about that anymore – were more defined now, but the way they were talking over each other made it difficult to hear any of them clearly. Sally-Anne also was not turning around to look at her. Could she see the source of the voices? Was that what had her so distracted? Or was it something more malevolent?

Hazel's steps slowed the closer she got to Sally-Anne and the corner, and rather than risk getting her hand torn off when something awful like Sally-Anne being possessed inevitably happened she turned her staff horizontal and tentatively poked the other girl in the shoulder. That was enough to get the attention she desired, Sally-Anne spinning around with a terrified yelp before she could cover her mouth and strangle the sound coming forth. Her eyes met Hazel's, and she would not have needed to be a mind-reader to feel the relief coming from the blonde. "Hazel!" she whispered harshly. "Oh thank you, Jesus. I thought it was something coming to eat me. Don't do that!"

'Why are you whispering?'

"Because I don't want to attract their attention… Just look. I don't know where we are, but I want out of here please."

Those thought were anything but reassuring, and Hazel leaned around the edge with all due caution. What she saw made her eyes widen.

The hallway beyond was filled with spirits. They were not Hogwarts ghosts, but neither were they spirits in the same vein as the hungry ghosts in de Rais's tower or the scoured clearing. They had color, normal human coloration even, but even a short glance was proof that they had no solidity; their flesh and their black robes were transparent. Their movements were also unusual. Some of them walked normally, but others seemed to stutter, disappearing and reappearing a few feet away from where they had stood with no visible transition. A few were walking backwards even, slipping through other spirits who seemed not to notice their fellow entities phasing through them.

And perhaps strangest of all, they were not walking on the floor. They were all traversing the far wall as if gravity itself was sideways.

Hazel stepped back and pressed herself against the wall beside her. Despite several deep breaths, she could not calm her racing heart nor fully push away the memories of the multiple fae and spirits that had tried to eat her at some point or another. These are not the hungry ghosts, she reminded herself. They are just colorful ghosts, like the ghosts of Hogwarts but dyed. Or like Peeves; annoying but not a threat. You've fought more dangerous entities than these."

"Are you okay? She doesn't look okay. She looks terrified. What does that mean for me?"

She opened her eyes to find Sally-Anne looking at her fearfully, and that was finally enough to force her fears to return to their corners in the back of her mind. She had dealt with worse creatures, worse spirits, and she was not alone. Sally-Anne was not fragile per se, but she did not have experience in the bizarre and occult aspects of the magical world the way Hazel did. If she could not keep her head, neither of them were going to make it out of this place alive.

'I'm fine. Seeing ghosts of any kind bring back bad memories,' she explained with an embarrassed smile. 'It made the first few days of school less than fun. But that's all they are. Just bad memories.'

And that was all they really were, weren't they? The lessons she had learned those days were important to keep with her, but she could not let the emotions of those days rule her. Caution and fear were not the same thing.

Another deep breath, and she looked directly at Sally-Anne. 'I don't think we're in Hogwarts anymore.'

"I don't either," Sally-Anne agreed, "but don't they look like they're wearing Hogwarts robes?"

That was not… Were they? She pushed off the wall and looked around the corner again. Paying closer attention this time, she still was not sure. 'They might be,' she allowed, 'but they could also just be black robes. I have yet to see many wizards wearing normal, modern clothing. Nor do I remember any ghosts that looked like this in the castle.'

"That's true."

As placid as they were behaving, the existence of strange spirits was a sign they should be elsewhere. Just in case this place was more similar to de Rais's tower than it appeared at first glance. 'Take my hands and hold on. I'm going to try teleporting us back to the castle.'

As soon as Sally-Anne was squeezing both her hands tight, she bent all her focus onto the gap in the wall around Hogwarts. She needed to be there, and she needed to open the tunnel wide enough that both she and Sally-Anne could fit through it. Her legs grew taut as she prepared to jump into and out of the strange watery world she traversed whenever she teleported.

Her will was strong. Her destination was clear in her mind. And yet, the dark purple fog that leaked from nowhere during her teleportations refused to appear.

A silent huff, and she wiggled her arm in a signal for Sally-Anne to release her grip. "We're still here. Nothing happened."

'Unfortunately not.' She gave Sally-Anne a shrug. 'It's not the first time that's been stopped, and I doubt it will be the last. It's irritating how wizards put these protections everywhere.

'We aren't out of options, though. We just need to figure out where we are and how to get back to Hogwarts. That means we need to walk past them. Hopefully they'll leave us alone, but if they don't?' She rolled her shoulders, and then a flick of her right wrist created her star knife in her hand. 'I'll take care of it.'

Sally-Anne's eyes grew wide as she stared at Hazel's hand. "What is that? Is that what she used to hurt Peeves? She made that same motion before he ran away, but this never happened!"

Hazel in turn started in surprise before raising the golden throwing dagger that had once upon a time been nothing more than her ghost hand reshaped into something approximating a lawn dart. 'You can see this?'

"Yeah. Am I not supposed to?"

'No one else ever has.' Which only raised more questions about where they were. Pushing said questions to the side until they had more information with which to answer them, she shifted her grip on her staff so she could carry it and her star knife and still be able to write. 'Stay close.'

They stepped around the corner, and when none of the spirits reacted with so much as a glance in their direction they slowly started striding down the hallway. Sally-Anne was following closely, just as Hazel ordered, and in fact was so close that she kept bumping into Hazel's back. It was not the most comfortable way to walk, but it was better than her being far away and Hazel not being able to react if—

A spirit stuttered a few feet away and reappeared right next to them. Morgan chirped in shock. Sally-Anne screamed. Hazel swung her right arm so she could push Sally-Anne behind her while she took a step back.

And by swinging her arm, she also swung her star knife. A line of green and golden sparks shimmered in the path of the blade's motion, and those sparks spread through the spirit's substance like tiny flames engulfing a slip of paper. In the time it took Hazel's racing heart to beat three times, the spirit was completely consumed. Not a scrap of it remained to prove its previous existence.

She rapidly looked to both sides, but none of the other spirits were attacking them for killing their fellow. They did not act as if they had even noticed it.

"You weren't joking about taking care of us," Sally-Anne whispered in relief. "That looked just like what happened to Peeves, except he isn't gone gone. He came back a few weeks later. Do you think it's going to come back?"

With a shrug, Hazel answered, 'I have no idea. I don't exactly go hunting spirits. It's more a matter of hurting them enough they stop chasing me. But if it is coming back, I don't think it will be anytime soon.' Or, more likely, it was truly dead. Or re-dead. Whatever the proper term for dispersing strange almost-ghosts like this was.

"If it won't come back soon, let's get out of here."

She was in no mood to argue, and they hurried down the hallway leaning as far away from the spirits as they could. To their relief there was an open doorway at the end of this section of the corridor, and when they passed through it they were greeted with a complete lack of ghosts. Confused, Hazel turned around to verify that yes, the spirits they had seen still existed. They just were appearing on that side of the doorway and not coming from this side.

How odd.

Sally-Anne visible relaxed now that they were out of the ghosts' reach, and soon the only sound coming to Hazel's ears was the steady tapping of her staff and their feet on the stone floor. This section of the castle had clearly been constructed at a different time than the first one, although the sign was fairly subtle. Namely, the stones that made up the floor and walls were no longer rectangular but instead were semi-consistent hexagons. The floors being built in such a way she could understand, but the walls? She had never heard of walls that were designed like this.

Another doorway, closed this time, waited for them around another bend in the hall, and a silent nod passed between the two girls before Sally-Anne pushed it open and immediately jumped out of sight. Not that her caution was rewarded; the door opened into another intersection, with one hallway continuing on straight and another going to the right and ending in stairs headed downwards. Faded red carpets decorated the floor, and to the left was a large window framed in brass from which sunlight streamed in.

The window was the most welcome sight. 'Let's see where we are,' she told Sally-Anne. There was no guarantee either of them would recognize any landmarks, but if they could see a town or something, they would at least have a source of information. Although just getting out of this castle should be enough to let her jump them both back to Hogwarts. A faint film of moisture coated the glass, but that was quickly wiped away.

What was revealed stole Hazel's breath away.

There was no town outside the window. No forest, no pastures, no grassland or desert. There was nothing but cerulean sky. Instead of clouds, she could see great chunks of ground floating weightlessly, and every single one of those rocks had a building upon it. Some of them, much like the castle in which they stood, were stone buildings that looked remarkably like Hogwarts. Another was a Viking-style longhouse built from wood, and over to one side she could just barely make out a shimmering edifice of ice and glass that was less real place and more a child's imagining of a fairy castle. She could even see one building that was not a building so much as it was a squat tree that had branches twisted into rooms and bridges. The sight of it was both awe-inspiring and a source of irrational envy that they had not found themselves there instead.

"Where are we?" asked Sally-Anne. "You haven't looked away from the window for… Oh my goodness. Where are we?"

Hazel shook her head and turned to meet Sally-Anne's brown eyes. 'I don't know,' she admitted. Saying anything else would be an obvious lie. 'But I don't think we're in our world anymore.'

"If we aren't in our world," began Sally-Anne nervously, "what world are we in? No one has ever said anything about other worlds. Wouldn't this be something people are supposed to know so we can stay away from them?"

'There is no way to tell. I haven't seen them explained in any wizard books, but I've found mentions here and there about portals to other worlds. Like the realms of the fae. Not places people typically want to go.' This probably was not a fae world, not with so many versions of Hogwarts floating around, but since the portal to the Greenwild beneath Glastonbury Tor had been shut untold centuries ago and she had refused to interact with the one sitting at the peak of Elva Hill, she could not say anything for certain. The fae could stay in their worlds, and she would stay far far away. 'If the mirror we found is a portal to this place, there should be a second portal to get us home. We just have to find it.'

"A second portal. Do you think it will be another mirror?"

She tilted her head and considered that. It was not an unlikely possibility, and it was a better idea than any she had at the moment. 'Maybe. The only question is where it is. I don't think the mirror on our side was supposed to be in that passage we found, so searching for the passage itself probably won't help us much. Assuming we even could find it in the first place.'

Sally-Anne frowned in thought, both of them trying to work out where they might find a magic mirror portal. "The staircases," Sally-Anne finally said. "Remember how there are all those moving portraits on the walls? If anyone was going to put a magic mirror anywhere, that would make the most sense."

That was better than her guess. She had been wondering if it might be within the trophy room or else one of the bathrooms, but the mirror had been more ornate than anything she had seen in any lavatory within the real Hogwarts. 'That sounds like a good place to start.'

A bone-shaking noise came from outside the window, and they both looked through it to find a scene of devastation. Two of the chunks of earth had collided in the sky, and the force had been enough that they were no longer small planetoids but instead expanding clouds of rock and soil. The buildings upon them had likewise shattered, sending scraps of wood and glass and stone in every direction.

Staring at the destruction, a new worry entered Hazel's mind. Every castle outside had been on a floating piece of rock. Was it more likely that theirs was the exception or that it was just yet another of that number? And if they were also floating aimlessly around, what were the chances they were going to crash into something as well?

Their eyes met, and a second later they turned around and ran for the stairs behind them, taking them two at a time in their haste. Sally-Anne's imagination had clearly gone to the same place hers had. Neither of them wanted to bet on surviving such a collision. After several floors they ran out of stairs, but the landing had a door they shoved open to reveal another room filled with colorful ghosts.

A twinge of anxiety tried to fill her mind, but the knowledge that they were living on an unknown amount of borrowed time was too strong for that fear to find any purchase. They barreled through the crowd of spirits, ethereal essence parting before them like mist rather than anything substantial.

The hallways continued in an unbroken line for several more minutes, and by the time Sally-Anne was flagging and Hazel herself was starting to feel winded, the sight of a dead-end room was almost a relief. 'Almost' because they still needed to backtrack the entire length of the hallways they had just run through. Sally-Anne all but collapsed against the nearest wall – decorated with wooden panels now rather than the stone that had been present in the rest of the building – and shook her head. "I'm done," she panted. "I can't keep going. How is Hazel even standing straight right now? I didn't think I was out of shape, but compared to her I have to be."

'Go ahead and catch your breath.' If they attempted to hurry back the way they came with Sally-Anne in this state, Hazel knew she was going to wind up having to carry the other girl. She might have a greater endurance, one of the benefits of walking back and forth across multiple countries for the last couple of years, but she did not have the strength to carry another person for very long. While Sally-Anne slid to the ground, she took stock of the room they were in. It looked like it was supposed to be a study or personal library of sorts, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering two of the four walls and a window looking out onto that same disturbing sky on the nearest wall.

She wandered over to that window and looked outside, nodding to herself when she saw no planetoid currently hurtling towards them from this side. That did not guarantee their safety from the other side of the castle, but it was something. She also had a good angle of a slanted section of rooftop just below them, which had her staring for several seconds before she could put her finger on just what was bothering her about the scene.

Hogwarts did not have any rooftop like that on the side of the main building. It was only at the top of the building, and while the multitude of towers rose above the roof, they were not currently in a tower. So why would there be tiled rooftop right there?

And for that matter, why was there a personal study here? The common room and the library had no rooms like this, and Professor Sprout's office had not looked like it either. Perhaps Professor Flitwick's office might, but then where were the books?

Had this castle already exploded? It was hard to imagine it coming back together after suffering a collision as massive as the one they had witnessed, but it would explain why this room was wooden instead of stone like the rest of the castle, and even why there had been sections of castle that looked so different than their neighbors. A conglomeration of castle pieces would not be expected to match perfectly. Maybe it was even why spirits were clustered so oddly; they belonged to the rooms they were in, but the adjacent rooms were elsewhere.

She looked out the window again, focusing on the rooftop below her and the wall adjacent to it. Sure enough, the windows did not line up. She could even see a window that was right next to the edge of the visible roof.

…Within arm's reach of the edge, potentially. And that gave her an idea.

Raising her staff like a club, she slammed it against the window. The glass shattered with a surprisingly loud crash, which in turn startled a shriek out of Sally-Anne. "What are you doing?! Has she gone mad? Please don't be going crazy."

'The windows don't have a way to open them,' she quickly wrote out while scraping her staff along the insides of the window she had broken to knock out all the leftover sharp pieces of glass.

"Okay, but why do you need the windows open at all?"

Another swing shattered the other side of the window, leaving only a central support section of the frame with open air on either side. 'There's a window down there that we can use to get to a lower floor. We just need to walk on the roof below us.'

Sally-Anne got up from the floor and walked over to the broken window. "That's a long way down, Hazel," she said, pointing out the obvious. "How are we even supposed to get down there?"

Hazel had already shoved her arm into her satchel, and when she pulled it out she had a bundle of white rope in her hand. More than a year ago, back when she made her bottomless bag, she had cut off a length of this very rope to make the strap that was currently looped around her torso. When she left that little town, she had shoved the remaining length of rope into the bag just in case she needed it. She had then forgotten all about it until the prior month when she cleaned out all the empty food tins and other trash that had gathered inside the infinite space of her bag and did inventory of what was left.

And a good thing she had done that inventory because now it was coming in handy.

"What's that supposed— Oh, no no no no!"

'It will be fine,' she told her friend as she wrapped one end of the rope around the central support of the frame and tied it off tight. A few tugs, and she gave her work a nod. It felt like it would hold, and that was all that really mattered. She was not earning extra points for it being pretty. The other end of the rope was unraveling from being cut to make the satchel strap, but another quick knot had that fixed as well. Picking up the middle of the rope, she tossed the whole thing out the window.

The rope itself was thirty, maybe forty feet long, which meant it fell the entire height of the wall and probably half the width of the sloped roof as well. That should give them plenty of slack. Hazel turned her head to look at the still-panicking Sally-Anne. 'We'll be fine,' she wrote again. 'I'll go first, then you can come down. I'll be there to help you if you slip or get stuck. Here, hold my staff and drop it out the window when I give you the signal.'

Once Sally-Anne was holding her maple staff in a death grip, Hazel stuck her head and then her entire upper body out of the window. From how clear the sky was – ignoring the obvious exception of the floating castles – she had assumed that the air would equally still and calm. Instead a surprisingly fast wind smacked her in the face and blew her hair around as best it could.

The rope was looking better and better in retrospect, and she gripped it in one hand as she wiggled the rest of her body out of the window. A jaunty salute to Sally-Anne was the only warning she gave before pushing away from the stone wall and wrapping her legs around the rope.

Despite the speed of the winds, the slide down the rope was actually uneventful until she reached the rooftop itself. The black tiles were slick with moisture, and it was difficult to keep her footing. Looking up to the window, she found Sally-Anne poking her own head out of the window and trying desperately to hold her hair back out of her face. Hazel made a come-hither motion with her hand, hoping Sally-Anne would get the message.

The blonde head disappeared, and a moment later a long staff extended out of the window and fell.

Her hand was already outstretched, and it took no effort at all to call the staff to her. When she had woken up the morning after being attacked outside the library, she had wanted to slap herself for forgetting this ability of her staff. Without forgetting about it she would not have learned that her staff hated being parted from her as much as it did, but the panic at thinking her staff was potentially gone forever was not something she wanted to go through a second time. Thankfully between it coming to her when she called and the ability to just appear by her side, she would never experience such a fear again.

She crouched as low as she could to minimize the pull of the wind, then using the rope as a guide and her staff as a third leg she started sliding down the slope of the roof. Pulled taut, the rope was nearly long enough to make it all the way to the edge of the roof where there was a section of flat stone roughly a foot wide. She did not know if it was meant to serve as a walkway, but that was the purpose to which they would put it now. The only downside was that she did not know how well Sally-Anne would be able to descend with the rope at an angle like this, and even if she could hang on she would be going so fast that Hazel was unsure if she would be able to catch Sally-Anne without both of them going off the edge.

Hazel lightly pressed the butt of her staff against the stone 'walkway', then she let go and pressed against it with her forearm. The staff remained upright even with the entirety of her weight against it. She had not been sure that this would work, but it made sense; she already knew her staff could support its own weight when she intended it to stand up, so the only question was whether it could hold more than that. Apparently it could.

She let go of the rope and watched it retreat to lay flat against the wall, and with one arm wrapped around the staff she gestured with the other for Sally-Anne to join her.

She then proceeded to wait for what must have been three minutes until Sally-Anne had gathered enough courage to try crawling out of the window.

The other girl was clearly out of her depth when it came to climbing down a rope, which Hazel thought was odd. This was not something she had learned during her two years on the road; this was an exercise she had to do several times in physical education class while she still attended primary school in Little Whinging. The blonde was managing it, though, and at the end of the day that was what they needed.

Everything went fine until Sally-Anne tried to stand up at the base of the wall. Hazel already knew that the tiles were slick, and clearly Sally-Anne was discovering the same thing. The only difference was that Hazel had held onto the rope.

Sally-Anne took a step, slipped, and let go as she screamed.

The girl started sliding down the roof, her trajectory not pointed directly at Hazel but rather at a slight angle. Hazel spun around her staff and reached out with the arm not preoccupied holding herself still. If she could grab Sally-Anne, she should be able to stop her fall—

Their hands collided, except Sally-Anne's speed was too great just as Hazel had feared earlier. Instead of catching them both, Hazel's hand grabbed Sally-Anne's wrist a moment before her feet came off the walkway and her arm was yanked free of the staff.

And then they both were falling.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Pomona leaned back into the upholstered chair in the staffroom, a hot cup of tea warming her hands after the early chill suffusing the grounds and the greenhouses. She hated Thursdays; having both OWL classes on the same day was bad enough, and them being scheduled back to back just made it worse.

At least today's lesson was on self-fertilizing shrubs. Those were easy plants to care for due to their carnivorous natures, and whenever she brought them out she never had to worry about keeping the children's attention focused on the material at hand—

The door to the staffroom banged open, startling Pomona out of a near-doze, and she glanced over to find Minerva storming in with a glare as if the scattered chairs and the single sofa had done something to personally offend her. Then Minerva's seething eyes met her own, and she sighed. Why could whatever was going on not be the chairs' fault, again?

"What is it now?" she asked, knowing one of the few ways to get Minerva to calm down was to let her vent about whatever it was that had riled her up in the first place. The Scotswoman was a good deputy headmistress and a reliable friend most of the time, but whenever her anger had been stoked she was nearly intolerable. More than once Pomona had been tempted to spray the other woman with a blast of water just to see if that would be enough of a shock to derail her, but sadly it was equally likely that all it would do would be to make things worse.

"Potter," Minerva all but snarled. "She skipped class today. Again, and now she has Perks skiving off as well!"

"Oh, you mean detention didn't work?" Perhaps the snark was unnecessary, but Pomona could not help it. Finding out about Potter's latest detention at dinner a couple of nights ago had been a nasty surprise, and hearing afterwards from the prefects about the diatribe Minerva had gone on? That had just made her more upset. "Considering she has apparently spent almost a month avoiding you in general? I doubt trying to humiliate her in the middle of the Great Hall went over well, either."

"Not like you helped, Pomona."

"Because you didn't tell me about it until last week!" she snapped back. "I have had time to talk to her once about it. Once. I explained to her why she needed to go back to class; I even told her she needed to apologize. But she has a specific dislike for you on the level I've only ever seen aimed at Severus, for Merlin's sake.

"Do you remember Newton? Nine years back or so? Remember how he stopped going to Potions class because of Severus's attitude?"

The non sequitur derailed whatever response Minerva had prepared, and after thinking for a moment the dark-haired witch nodded. "Vaguely. He was a Ravenclaw, I think."

"He was. He decided he had had enough of being belittled twice a week, and no number of detentions or amount of points taken from Ravenclaw was going to change his mind. From what Filius told me, it was only by discussing the risks of him failing his Potions OWL that finally got him to go back at all, and then he dropped it before he even left on the Express at the end of the year."

Minerva huffed and crossed her arms. "What's your point?"

"My point is that once a student is willing to go so far as to just start skipping class and damn the consequences, blindly assigning them punishments will not rein them in. It took an entire term to change Newton's mind, and he was a fifth-year. Potter is eleven and already that stubborn." Which, considering the girl's circumstances, was understandable even if it did not excuse her resultant behavior. "If you had been patient for more than one bloody day, I could have talked her into returning to your class, but now she's just as likely to only dig in even more! And frankly," she added, "your attitude is not helping the situation."

"My attitude?!"

"Scolding her in front of both the Hufflepuffs and the Gryffindors? Assigning her detention with Filch without so much as a by-your-leave? Generally overstepping your bounds?" prodded Pomona.

"Overstepping?" Minerva puffed up like an angry cat. "This is my class she refuses to attend!"

"But she's in my house!" Frustration welling up, Pomona stood from her chair and started pacing, her eyes never leaving Minerva's. "That means you do not have the right to start handing out punishments willy-nilly without informing me—"

"Who is doing what willy-nilly?" Pomona and Minerva broke their staring contest so they could both glare at Filius. He, meanwhile, just raised one eyebrow before walking over to the diminutive set of steps placed in front of the bar along the wall so he could reach the kettle. "I don't know what you two are arguing about, but I could hear it coming down the hallway."

"Potter," they both said at once.

"Ah, I see. I agree, she's in an unfortunate situation," he said, his back facing them and therefore missing Minerva's narrowed eyes. "I applaud her determination. Most people would find it too hard to push against those same obstacles day after day."

Still seething, Minerva spat out, "She's decided she's too good for my class."

"Like Newton did with Severus," added Pomona.

"…Oh."

Sighing once more, though this time with a touch of humor despite herself, she turned back to Minerva. "Look, I understand to a degree. We all thought she would be like her parents and go into Gryffindor. But she didn't. She's a Badger, and I expect you to start treating her like you would any of my Hufflepuffs. That means not waiting for three weeks to tell me about this kind of behavior and not trying to punish her without telling me about it beforehand." Pomona raised her left hand and pointed at Minerva. "Especially since both of you are too angry at each other to make good choices. She at least is a child and is expected to make dumb decisions. You don't have that excuse."

Minerva opened her mouth to argue back with her, but with a grimace she closed both mouth and eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. Pomona could almost hear her counting to ten in Scots Gaelic. Finally she let out a long sigh and opened her eyes again. "I'm sorry for not telling you about Potter's behavior when it started. And that I gave her detention with Argus without informing you."

Pomona nodded her acceptance, but before she could say anything more Filius turned around with a cup of fresh tea in his hands and asked, "I assume this has to do with her lack of a wand?"

Wait. Potter had said she stopped going to Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts because they both required a wand. So did Charms, but the girl had not mentioned that class. Which would mean… "Is she still attending your lectures?"

"Of course. I did not know that she wasn't going to Minerva's."

She glanced over at Minerva, who looked equally confused. "That seems… odd, considering her stated reasons for not going to Transfiguration class." Unless the real reason was whatever dispute they had that made Potter personally dislike the other witch? If that were the case, they might have even more difficult of a fight on their hands.

"Perhaps, but perhaps not." Filius hopped down from his personal stepladder and sipped his tea as he continued, "As focusing on simply wand movements and incantations would be useless to her, I also started teaching what is known about the arithmantic properties of the spells, including what is hypothesized about how the spell functions. In essence, what the spell does to the world itself.

"To be fair, I do not know how useful that has actually been to Miss Potter, but she showcased substantial mastery of the Levitation Charm in my class this morning, including the ability to move objects in multiple directions. This normally requires a more advanced spell than simply levitation, and I will take that as a positive sign."

Minerva's frown had become something closer to a scowl during Filius's explanation. When it was clear he was finished, she replied, "The inner working of transfigurative magics is obtuse enough that it is still debated amongst experts in the field. You'll have to forgive me for refusing to bog down what is already a difficult subject in order to cater to one student's delusions."

"Delusions?" Pomona repeated in surprise. What in the world was Minerva talking about?

"Perhaps 'delusions' is a strong word, but I do not know what else to call her belief that she is incapable of using a wand."

"Except she isn't wrong about that. When you told me about what she said in class, I took her to Ollivander that next weekend," she reminded her colleague. "He confirmed what she said. He was unable to find a wand that would work for her."

All her statement earned was an unimpressed look. "Then you should have taken her to another wandmaker. Ollivander is the best, I won't deny it, but he is not the only one in the British Isles or even London. Just because he did not have the right wand for her means only that, not that the right wand does not exist." She crossed her arms. "I also wonder whether she couldn't use any of them or just couldn't use one to his satisfaction, but as I was not there I will assume it is the former."

"And I asked him about that same thing. It wasn't that he didn't have the right wand; it was that she could not be paired with one. He told me directly that going to anyone else would just get the same result."

"Imagine that, a shopkeeper didn't want you to take your business to his competitors. Color me shocked," replied Minerva sarcastically. "At the end of the day, there are only two possibilities: either Potter is a witch, in which case she needs a wand, or she truly cannot use a wand, in which case she should not be here. Hogwarts is a school for young witches and wizards, not Squibs."

"She's not a Squib." There was no room for doubt in Filius's voice. "I don't know what she is, but it's not that. I know wizards who claim to have learned magic without need for a wand, who spent years studying just such a thing in school. Miss Potter already puts all of them to shame, and she's only going to get better at it. Whether she's truly incapable of using a wand is another matter, but what she's doing is different enough from what is commonly accepted as even being possible that I wouldn't rule it out."

In all honesty, Pomona wished she had Filius's conviction on this topic. For the moment, though, she looked back at Minerva. "And what then? Let's assume for the sake of argument that you are right and we force her to start using a wand. How is someone who can't speak going to learn magic? Unless you think she's 'deluded' about that as well."

Both of Minerva's hands rose defensively. "That one I believe," she quickly denied. "A Killing Curse to the throat 'killing' her voice makes too much sense, and I have not heard her make a single sound. Not even involuntarily. But as for learning magic? We teach students how to cast spells silently, so there is no reason she could not start there."

"You mean other than how difficult it is for sixth-year students to do it? Or competent witches who have already graduated? I don't know about you, but trying to cast silently is still something I struggle with for everything except the most basic of spells, and you expect an eleven-year-old girl to learn magic that way from the very beginning? Girl-Who-Lived or not, that is too high of a bar.

"What would you do in this situation?" Pomona asked Filius. "You seem to be the only one of us who has connected to her at all. If she were in your house and Minerva told you she was skipping class, what would you tell her?"

"Er…" That was not reassuring. "I would… probably talk to her about how important it is to learn the information, even if it is not directly practical? Magical knowledge is interconnected, although several of those connections are murky or hotly debated—"

"Blasted Vanishing Charm," muttered Minerva.

Filius nodded. Pomona, on the other hand, merely rolled her eyes. They debated how that spell worked during the winter holidays every single year; did they really need to get into it now? "Regardless, by learning the theoretical underpinnings of Transfiguration, it would still advance her understanding of magic as a whole and may in turn help her with the kinds of magic she is capable of using."

"I'm sure the OWL examiners would love that explanation," muttered Minerva. "Let's not forget that it isn't just our classes she needs to pass. Do you think the Ministry will care about her excuses? Catering to her will only leave her unprepared for the OWLs and unable to do anything of worth if she makes it to graduation."

On that point, Pomona had nothing to say because Minerva was right. She might need to use Filius's argument the next time she talked to Potter about this – although she personally did not think it was much different from what she had already told the girl. Maybe she should have Filius tell her that himself in case she would be more open to hearing those arguments coming from someone she held in higher esteem? – but it would not change anything outside of the castle.

She had never taught a mute student nor one who could not use a wand, and both of those put together? To the best of her knowledge and Irma's research, no such child had attended Hogwarts in the couple hundred years and possibly ever. How was she, were any of them, supposed to know how best to help Potter?

Filius huffed to himself. "At least we don't have to worry about explaining any of this to her parents."

The wry comment put a reluctant smile on Pomona's face. That was not appropriate. True, and amusingly phrased, but not appropriate.

"No, we would just have to explain it to Albus," Minerva muttered bitterly.

"What does he even think of all this?"

The Transfiguration professor shook her head. "You know him. As long as it isn't going to get a student killed, he keeps his hands to himself. 'Experience is the best teacher, my dear,'" she quoted in an exaggerated old man wheeze, "'and we should encourage learning however it is found.' I tried to bring it up again the last time we spoke over the Floo, but his attention is focused entirely on whatever he is working on in Geneva. Some dispute between the Ministries of Greece and Turkey; he didn't go into details."

The three of them exchanged long-suffering looks. Not for the first, the tenth, or even the hundredth time Pomona wondered what Hogwarts would be like if Albus would focus his attention solely on Hogwarts instead of splitting his time between three different full-time positions in two different countries. She doubted anything about how he managed situations in the school would change, but having the headmaster be available at any given moment would be nice.

And it would probably improve Minerva's temper dramatically if she were not playing the roles of professor, deputy headmistress, and acting headmistress all at the same time.

"This situation does not end with Potter, however," Minerva continued. "As I said earlier, it was not just Potter who skipped class. Perks did not show up, either. This is the danger of letting her refusal to come to class go unanswered. If other students see her getting away with it, no matter the justification, they may start skipping classes they find too difficult or even simply uninteresting. What do you think would happen if we allowed our students to ignore necessary classes just because they don't want to go?"

"Severus's classes would be empty," Filius said over the rim of his teacup.

Minerva's lips were pressed into a thin line as she glared at the other professor, but his cheerful mood was unflappable. After several moments, she huffed through her nose. "Besides that, we also risk the majority of our students failing their OWLs and being incapable of qualifying for the careers they want.

"Hogwarts is considered the finest institute of magic in Britain, arguably in Europe itself, and we cannot risk the loss of that prestige in order to cater to a single student."

"Catering is a matter of perspective," Filius replied, "but there will be plenty of time to argue about that in the coming days and weeks, I'm sure. I think we're all hungry, and that shortens tempers. Let us head to the feast before we discuss anything else."

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Something wrapped around Hazel's own wrist, and she silently screamed when she felt both her arms try to pull out of their sockets at the same time. The pain did not diminish, which she supposed should be a good thing; it meant both arms were still attached.

Now she just needed to figure out how to get them to safely.

Her right arm was the first one she tried to move. Sally-Anne was heavy, no matter how weightless she looked dangling out in the cloudless sky, but with a near Herculean effort she finally managed to bring the other girl close enough to wrap her entire arm around her. That was half the problem solved.

She looked over to the left to discover who in this strange world had stopped her own fall, and her eyes widened in utter shock. There was no hand wrapped around her wrist; it was instead a tangle of vines. Vines that stretched several feet back to the head of her staff. She gripped the vines with her hand, pulling herself back to her staff and the castle, and the vines themselves seemed to respond to the motion and pull on her as well. In short order her toes touched the edge of the building, and then she lurched forwards to put both herself and Sally-Anne back onto solid stone.

While the blonde was busy clutching onto the stone and shaking in terror at the near-death experience she had just experienced, Hazel watched the vines retract from around her arm. They were pulled back into the staff, and the last few inches curled around the staff and appeared to merge with the wood. There was no readily obvious sign they had ever existed, no cracks or carvings, but now that she was paying attention she could almost see the outlines of individual vines in the grain of the wood.

That was new. Her staff had never done anything like that before.

Another blast of wind hit them, and her hand lashed out like a viper to grab the collar of Sally-Anne's robe. She did not want to chance them flying off the edge once again. A quick pull brought Sally-Anne upright, and then they had both grabbed the staff. For a moment the staff wobbled, sending a fresh shiver of fear down her spine, but then it held firm once more.

'Hold on tight,' she told Sally-Anne, and only when the blonde nodded did she reach out her hand. A waggle of her fingers conjured a ghostly hand that latched onto the knot at the end of the rope and pulled it towards them. A gap of a mere few feet separated them.

Waiting for the next gust of wind to die down as little as it was going to do, she lunged forwards and caught the knot. A relieved sigh escaped her; that was the hard part done. After adjusting her grip slightly to free her left hand, she wrote, 'Okay, take my hand.'

"What happens when I do?!" Sally-Anne shouted to be heard over the roaring winds. "Your staff is still stuck!"

'Let me worry about that.'

The toneless nature of her writing calmed the churning pit of worry within Sally-Anne's belly, and the other girl waited just as she had before reaching out to grab Hazel's outstretched hand at the wrist. Now that both of them were linked to the rope, the staff seemed to understand that it was no longer necessary. Sally-Anne staggered when it came free from the stone walkway.

Hazel gave her a smile and jerked her head towards the window that was their goal. Now that they both had the security of the rope, the winds were not so terrifying. The rooftop was still slick, and more than once one or the other slipped and fell to one knee, but soon they were close enough to their destination that they could see the wooden walls within. They were also close enough to realize they had a major issue: the rope that was their safety line to the castle at large was too short to let them walk all the way to the window.

"The rope is too short. How are we going to get over there?!"

Why did Sally-Anne have to be perceptive enough to see the same issue Hazel did? She bit her lower lip and tried to think. Could they use her staff as an anchor point and make a human chain to reach the window? She looked at the distance again before shaking her head. That would be a stretch, pun not intended, and the winds were too dangerous to act rashly. The idea to use the staff's vines crossed her mind but was immediately dismissed for the simple fact that she had no idea how the staff had done that in the first place; it had not been an act of her will, that much was sure. If she could just jump over there, that would make all this simplicity itself, but the castle still had those blasted protections over it—

Or did it?

Hazel cast her mind back to her previous attempt at teleportation. She had been trying to get from here to Hogwarts, and when that failed she assumed it was because of magic preventing just that. Of course, she had also assumed they were on Earth, and they most definitively were not. The only other time she had stepped foot in another plane of existence was during her fight with the spirit of the scoured clearing, and at that time she had also been unable to jump away.

Was jumping across realities impossible? That was all too easy to believe, and it would neatly explain everything she had seen thus far. It also meant her favorite option to handle problems was still open to her. And testing this possibility was also easy; after all, she could see the interior of the room beyond the window.

A deep breath to steady her own nerves as her legs tightened in preparation, and she let go of the rope. She pushed forwards with mind and body both—

—and she and Sally-Anne stumbled into a classroom that looked like it would be right at home within one of those recreated one-room schoolhouses from a couple of hundred years ago. She adjusted her robes from where they had been blown around by the winds and shrugged when Sally-Anne stared at her. 'That's how we are going to get over here.'

"I can't deal with any more of this. I just want the world to start making sense again. Can we leave now?" pleaded Sally-Anne.

The door opened into another hallway, this time once more made from stone, but luckily for them they could see what looked like a landing for stairs. Stairs, they realized looking down, were missing. The thoughts swirling within Sally-Anne's mind proved she was close to crying. "Can you do that teleport thing again?"

Taking Sally-Anne's hand, she did just that, moving them four flights of stairs down to reach the lowest floor. A floor that looked more than a little familiar, she realized glancing down the tall hallway that was revealed to them. 'Doesn't that look like the front doors of the castle?' she asked, pointing at the massive doors in question sitting in the distance. Because if those were the front doors, then the broken staircase they had just bypassed should have been the main staircase for the castle. The very place they had been searching for.

She glanced up to look at the walls of the staircase. No portraits to ask for directions, and definitely no mirrors.

"The front doors are just going to take us outside again, aren't they?"

'Probably,' she admitted. 'Let's go to the Great Hall and take a breather. We can figure out our next steps there.'

Sally-Anne gave her a weary nod, and they started the short walk to the doors of the Great Hall. Pushing the doors open, they cast their eyes about the space, and both of them were tempted to scream in some mixture of horror and frustration.

The enchanted ceiling did not show a cloudy sky. It did not even show the sky filled with crashing planetoids that surrounded them. Instead the entire ceiling had been replaced with pulsating grey-black fleshy material shot through with bloody red; it was as if the school was part cancerous tumor instead of stone and magic. None of the house tables were present, either, although there now were great gaping holes in the floor that neither of them wanted to fall into. As far as correlations to their Hogwarts went, this was the least inviting of them all.

Morgan chirped loudly in her ear, and she glanced over before following his gaze to the walls. Unlike the real world, here clearly portraits had been hung up along the walls of the Great Hall, and sure enough Morgan had spotted a mirror up in the corner with a blocky ugly frame that was a perfect match for their own. She nudged Sally-Anne in the side and pointed the mirror out, earning a sigh of relief from the other girl.

Now they just had to bring it down to the floor so they could see about activating it. Hazel could not remember using her ghost hand on anything that far away, but this was the perfect time to try. She sent the hand out while walking forward, intending to meet the mirror at the wall. Her spell succeeded in pulling the mirror off the wall, but it succeeded at something else as well.

The whole building seemed to shake, and disgusting slurping sounds came from the ceiling above them. The fleshy substance rippled and twisted, strands of material she could not even assign a name to pulling away to reveal a mouth with teeth poking out every which way. A mouth that then opened, revealing not a throat but an enormous yellow eye that rolled around examining the room before locking onto them with terrifying deliberateness.

"Hazel…"

'Run!' she wrote even as she pushed her feet to move faster than they had all day. Her ghost hand was still lowering the mirror, and she refused to let their avenue of escape vanish.

More wet sounds came from the ceiling followed by strands of tissue ending in chubby hands started descending from within the tumor, and Hazel had no intention of finding out what they would do to anyone they caught. The mirror was right there, and now that she was closer she could see that not only was it unbroken, but it showed a caved-in tunnel containing only a dusty rucksack and a wooden sphere glowing with red flames lying upon the ground. The sound of feet pounding on stone floor followed her, Sally-Anne still hot on her heels, so Hazel kept running. The instant the mirror touched the floor, she dismissed her ghost hand and leapt into the glass.

The transition from material world to lightless void was faster this time, as was the trip back out. Probably because she had moved into a solid, unbroken mirror this time. She tumbled out and crashed into a stone wall, Sally-Anne coming out less than a second later. The blonde lay on the ground, tears of relief pouring down her face, and muttered to no one, "No more adventures. No more. This was too much."

Hazel reached out to pat her on the head consolingly before climbing back to her feet. The mirror was still shattered on their end, which raised a number of questions. If someone touched it, would they be taken back to the same castle they had just escaped? A different one? Would they once again run into whatever that fleshy eye-mouth thing was—

One of the shards of glass turned jet black as a sulfurous yellow eye opened. Then another shard adjacent to it did the same. And a third. A fourth. A fifth.

Her star knife formed before she even had time to think about what she was doing and flew into the middle of the mirror. The pieces of glass next to the hole she had just created fell free, more following it in a shimmering, tinkling ripple. When the ripple hit the glass that showed that evil eye, they lost their darkness and reflected normal stone once again. Soon all that was left was an empty frame, which was still ominously creaking. The bottom of the frame lifted off the ground as the metal and wood collapsed onto itself with shrieks of tearing metal and the cracks of splintered wood. Everything crumpled smaller and smaller until it just vanished, not a sign left of the mirror except for the carpet of glass shards laying harmlessly on the floor.

Looking down at Sally-Anne's thousand-yard stare, Hazel shook her head. 'I think it's over now. I don't intend to stick around and find out.'

"Me neither." Sally-Anne stood and spent a moment trying to brush off the dust before giving up. "I don't care anymore. Professor McGonagall will just have to deal with me being dirty."

'You could always do like I do and skip,' teased Hazel, hoping the weak attempt at a joke would be enough to put a little life back into her friend. She reached down and grabbed the rucksack off the ground before slinging it over one shoulder. They still did not know what had happened to Titania Ogden, but considering the monster in the Great Hall? She doubted it had been anything fun or enjoyable. Or even survivable.

That, however, was not something Sally-Anne needed to hear right now. She would have better luck asking Professor Sprout or Professor Flitwick if they knew anything about a missing student from several years back.

Pushing the tapestry out of the way, Hazel frowned when she saw the torches set in the walls. Normally they burned quite brightly, but during her numerous episodes sneaking into the library she had learned that they automatically dimmed themselves whenever curfew arrived. The torches visible to her looked that same way right now, but how could that be? It had been mid-afternoon when they found the mirror, and surely they had not been running around that other Hogwarts for more than an hour. So why were the flames so dull now?

"Transfiguration is probably almost over by now, isn't it?" asked Sally-Anne, unaware of the direction of Hazel's thoughts. She stepped out of the tunnel as well and frowned. "Why is it so dark?"

'I think it might be later than we thought. Let's just go to the common room. Worst case scenario, we'll go to the Great Hall or something else afterwards.'

The dimmed lights were not limited to this section of hallway. As they continued to the main staircase and downwards towards the dungeons, every torch and lantern they passed were in the same state. A glance out of the nearest window revealed the answer why: while they were back in the real world, it was already late at night. Considering how many stories of time moving weirdly in the fae realms and other planes of existence, that much was not a surprise.

At this point Hazel just hoped it was still the same day and year!

A strange mixture of relief, anger, and lingering fear hit her when they were descending the stairs to the ground floor, and Hazel looked over at the source to find a familiar older girl with dyed yellow and purple hair running their way. Sidonia Smith looked both of them up and down when she came closer, her thoughts revealing just how worried she was on the inside. "Oh thank Merlin. They're walking under their own power, so they didn't get attacked. They had better have a damn good reason for being wherever they were! Potter! Perks! Where have you been?!"

Sally-Anne cringed backwards at the sharp tone of the prefect's voice, but Hazel honestly was too mentally exhausted to care. Rather than answer Sidonia's question directly, she asked, 'Have you ever heard of an enchanted mirror that sucks you into an alternate version of Hogwarts surrounded by a bunch of other Hogwartses floating in the sky? And occasionally they crash into each other and maybe come back together but with pieces of other castles replacing the ones they lost?'

"…What in the world is she talking about? Did they hit their heads and that's why they've been missing? There are lots of different types of enchanted mirrors, like the ones you can find in some of the bathrooms through the castle," Sidonia answered, latching onto the one thing Hazel had said that made any sense to her, "but I don't think I've ever heard of one that takes you to an alternate Hogwarts. That sounds all sorts of crazy, but so has nearly every other weird thing that's ever happened in this place. And most of the time they do start around Halloween. Dear Merlin, I really hope this year's 'mystery' isn't that we will have portals to who-knows-where popping up randomly all over the place. Even if it would explain the troll better than any other theory proposed so far. Ugh! The unmelting ice was bad enough!"

Hazel had not considered that, but the older students had told all of them about the strange things that happened on a yearly basis at this school. Was this what was going on now? And what did Sidonia mean about a troll? 'Well, if you run into one, I don't recommend touching it. It's not a fun place. I don't think we were the first ones to find it, either.' Curiosity rose within Sidonia's mind, and shrugging to herself Hazel offered up the only piece of evidence she had.

Sidonia caught the dusty rucksack and after a confused look at the pair started digging through the contents. Hazel could tell when she found the essays and notes because her interest sky-rocketed followed quickly by a swell of confusion. "This is homework. Not exactly the same as I had to do, but the topics are similar. But if it is real, how in the world would Hazel and Sally-Anne have gotten their hands on it? No first year would know these subjects were even taught. So it being fake makes no sense, and thus the only alternative is that it is, in fact, real." When Sidonia turned her gaze back to them, a sense of dawning realization and reluctant acceptance was building behind her eyes.

Deciding to give Sidonia a few minutes reprieve from the thoughts she did not want to think, Hazel asked, 'You looked really panicked when you saw us. What's going on?' The troll comment was a big hint that something strange had happened, something more concerning than the simple absence of a couple of first-year students.

"Oh, right. If they really disappeared inside some magic mirror, and I'm almost convinced they really did, they wouldn't know. A troll broke into the castle during the feast. Quirrell saw it and told us about it in the Great Hall. He's in the hospital wing last I heard, although whether he was injured or just fainted I don't know. What I wouldn't give to have a decent Defense professor more than one year out of three, I swear." Sidonia frowned. "I probably shouldn't tell them this, but if she's really wondering why I was so worried we already know of one girl who definitely was injured by the troll. She's at St. Mungo's now. Then we realized you two were missing, and here we are. I'll need to let Professor Sprout know she can call off the manhunt."

Sally-Anne had grabbed Hazel's hand during the explanation, and her grip had tightened to the point it was nearly painful. "What's St. M-M-Mungo's? I can't believe we were actually safer inside the mirror than we could have been out here."

"It's the magical hospital here in Britain. Madam Pomfrey is good, but she isn't a full Healer. I guess the girl's injuries were too bad to be fixed here. Oh no, she's looking very green right now. Please don't throw up. Last I heard, though, she was still breathing at the moment doing okay, so I'm sure they'll have her patched up and back to school in no time.

"But that's something for other people to worry about. You two sound like you had enough of an adventure all on your own. Let's get you back to the dorms so you can relax. And maybe clean yourselves up," she hinted.

A rumbling gurgle came from the direction of Sally-Anne's belly. Her thoughts and bright red blush revealed the depths of her embarrassment while Hazel just shook her head with a small smile. 'Mind if we pass by the kitchens first? We kind of missed dinner.'

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Whoof. It took more than one sleepless night to get this done in time to post it today, but here we are. I couldn't let the scariest day of the year pass by without throwing Hazel and Sally-Anne into a little mortal danger!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nap and not write anything until December at least.

 

[Silently Watches]

I told you the next chapter wouldn't be until December. I just didn't say when in December.

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Hazel sighed within her own head as she allowed Sally-Anne to pull her into the crowd. With how many people were all headed in the same direction, she was glad she had stuck her staff into her bag for this trip or else she undoubtedly would have knocked at least a couple of people in the head. She pulled against Sally-Anne's grip on her left arm and spun her index finger. 'Where are we going, exactly?'

Sally-Anne gave her a wide smile. "It's the first Quidditch game of the season! Oh, this feels just like going to Ivanhoe games with Mum and Dad. Everyone is so excited!"

She was glad Sally-Anne was so happy, but neither her words nor the thoughts of the other students around her gave much of an explanation. 'And Quidditch is… what, exactly?'

That earned her an unconcerned shrug from Sally-Anne, but her friend was not the only person to read her question. "You don't know what Quidditch is?" asked Hannah Abbott, looking askance at her as they continued following the crowd. "How can anybody call herself a witch and not know about Quidditch? The Muggleborns I understand, but for the Girl-Who-Lived? Inconceivable. It's a game played on broomsticks. There are four positions, and the best are the Chasers…"

The second blonde girl's explanation lasted them the rest of the way to the large stadium sitting to the north of the castle, just a short distance away from the field where the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had their flying classes a couple of weeks after starting lessons at this school and not far at all from the gates that led to Hogsmeade. Six wide towers formed the walls of the stadium, and they climbed the tall staircase set within the tower that was covered in black and yellow curtains. Emerging once more into the light, Hazel looked around at the wooden bleachers placed beneath an overhanging awning that should keep out the rain but did little for the bright sunlight pouring in.

Soon enough, what seemed like every single Hufflepuff had settled into a spot on the bench, although while Sally-Anne and Hannah chatted about player statistics Hazel could not help but be distracted. As more and more people piled in, the edges of the box flickered now and again; not something she could see with her ordinary vision, but it was obvious when viewed through her fairy lens. Each time the flicker happened, she could swear that there were more seats than had been there before. Were the bleachers growing wider to make sure there was always enough space for everyone?

It was a distinct possibility, she decided. After all, her satchel always had extra space to hold new things within, and would this not be a similar process?

A white-haired witch soon marched out to the center of the pitch and took to the air on a flying broomstick. A witch Hazel recognized as Madam Hooch, the very person who had instructed the assembled Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws during their two flying lessons. She had been fair but strict and stern during their lessons, her thoughts providing the explanation that she wanted no horseplay after dealing with the joint Gryffindor and Slytherin class, when one boy had injured himself and two others had gotten detentions for having an airborne quarrel of some kind or another.

It meant their own lessons had been uneventful but still entertaining. Flight was not something Hazel had spent much time considering, not even after learning there was an entire society built around magic, and despite never using a broomstick for anything other than sweeping the floor she felt she might naturally have a bit of a knack for it. It probably helped that this was finally something else the wizards did that she felt could be considered appropriately 'witchy'.

Sadly, flying on her own broomstick was not in the cards for her, or at least not for a very long time. She had asked Madam Hooch how much one might cost, and the rough estimate the woman had given her for even the most basic model was staggering. She was not sure exactly what the conversion rate for wizard galleons and British pounds, but she suspected that it was roughly the cost of a car! She could justify stealing a number of things she needed; neither a broom nor the quantities of gold she would need to buy one honestly counted.

Still, that would be something nice to have. We could go flying together, she thought to Morgan. Maybe we can look into how to make one ourselves after we finally find where the druids are hiding. Assuming they don't have their own version, that is.

Madam Hooch blew a whistle, and a boy in some other box started announcing the names of the players of both sides as they flew out of underground locker rooms. Followed by multiple descriptions, most of which had nothing to do with their skill at the game.

"Ugh, I hoped after last year they would have replaced that guy as the announcer," thought an older Hufflepuff girl from right behind them, the sentiments echoed by the mental grumbling of several other people in the box. "It's only the Gryffindors who even think he's funny. Which is probably the reason McGonagall lets him get away with it at all."

Once the players for both the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams were introduced and in the air, the game began. Several players flew towards a bright scarlet ball while two others flew off under their own power. Of the all-important fourth ball Hannah had mentioned, this one tiny and gold, there was no sign.

The scarlet ball was moved across the whole pitch, passed back and forth and being stolen by members of the opposite team, before being thrown towards the set of three hoops stuck into the ground like oversized bubble wands. After several minutes and two goals on each side, Hazel shrugged to herself. It was a decent game, she would give it that much credit, but at this moment she just could not find it in herself to be that interested. Perhaps if she were playing rather than watching, she would think differently, but as things were? She could not help the niggling feeling that her time would be better spent on any number of other topics.

Reaching into her satchel, she pulled out a dog-eared book and opened it to the page she had bookmarked many weeks ago. She had not completely given up hope on finding something, anything, relevant in the massive library here at Hogwarts, but that hope had been severely tempered by her complete lack of success thus far. It would not hurt to look elsewhere for answers; at this point, she would take whatever answers she could find no matter the source. She knew that probably meant she was desperate, but she just did not care anymore.

She really needed to thank Professor Flitwick for the talk they had on the subject of spell creation because it had jostled her memory. Back before she even came to school, she had found a secondhand shop tucked into one corner of Diagon Alley where she had purchased a couple of ratty books, including this one. An introductory text on the field of divination. She had not intended to use it to find the druids – had not intended to do anything with it, honestly – but while she had pushed it to the side in favor of scouring the library's wider selection, she would not hold that against herself. What mattered was that she had remembered in the end.

Now she just had to learn for herself whether the wizards' magic would be more helpful than their history books.

Hannah's disapproval the instant she saw Hazel reading instead of watching the game was obvious even through the general excitement emanating from the rest of the nearby Hufflepuffs. That said, one girl's disapproval, or even the entire house's, was not really her concern. She continued flipping through the pages, skimming the book as best she could in the hope that something would jump out to her.

Most of the book was concerned with looking into the future and predicting events that had yet to pass, and while Hazel could understand the allure of such knowledge, she had to wonder if it was worth the effort. If knowing the future meant being able to change it, that might be a useful talent to have, but her previous dives into folklore meant she had read abridged versions of the stories of Odysseus and Oedipus, and more importantly the prophecies given to them. Prophecies that came true despite, and in fact because of, man's attempts to interfere with destiny.

Her book had not yet stated whether wizard prophecy was mutable or not, but if it were the latter as the old tales told, all foreknowledge granted was anxiety about a future that could not be changed. From that perspective, in her opinion it was better not to know ahead of time. Which, she supposed, might have given her subconscious a reason to put the book to the side when there was a more pertinent and personal question before her.

Predicting the future was not the only use for divination, however. Professor Flitwick had mentioned that it was useful for making new wizard spells, and even in the sections she had read so far there were mentions here and there of using it to view people and places over long distances. Even gathering information about the past that had been lost to time. It was this last option she was most interested in, but that would be useless unless she could either use it on a topic with no other hints to go off of or—

Her rapid page-flipping came to an abrupt halt as she happened onto another chapter of the book. She had not been paying attention to the titles, but the phrase 'find the lost' had jumped out to her eyes. Moving back a couple of pages, she started reading with more focus.

This may be just what we're looking for, she told Morgan after several minutes. It says that stone-casting isn't just for general predictions about the future. It can also be used to find lost objects or even missing people. The first way is all about assigning meanings to each stone and then translating the proximity of specific stones into how those meanings interact, but using it to find things sounds a lot easier to use. You still need to give each stone its own meaning, but then those meanings become landmarks to guide you to the area where whatever you're looking for is.

The location of the druids' towns or villages is pretty lost, wouldn't you say?

The only complication she could see is that when the book talked about 'finding things', it was focused on specific individual objects. Would a place count as an object? She worried the answer was 'no' – after all, places were neither people nor things, and those were all the kinds of nouns she knew of – but she had neither confirmation nor denial from the text. The only option left to her was to try it and find out for herself.

And if it did work? She was going to give the druids a piece of her mind for how much trouble they caused her just to find them.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Seated on the bank of the large lake she had crossed along with the rest of her year on the night of the Sorting Ceremony, Hazel listened with her eyes closed to the splash of waves and the song of nearby birds and the squelch of lake mud between her bare toes. After spending three or so hours stuck in the middle of the rest of the school while they watched Quidditch, this would be a relaxing place to rest even if she did not have another purpose planned.

This was not the first time she had used meditation to clear her mind and aid her in learning new and strange magics, but it was the first time she had ever been instructed to do so. Assuming her divination book was accurate – and if it were not, she would be back at square one with no way forward, so she was going to trust what it said – all divination magics required that the witch using them had opened her 'Inner Eye'. A phrase that was familiar to her, although it took a while to remember where she had heard it.

And now she had to wonder if Madam Enigma, the fortune teller she had run into at the circus a year or more ago, had also been a witch or a Squib or if she was a normal person who had been taught the same phrase by sheer happenstance. It was a question that would likely never be answered.

Hazel had never been told or discovered that she had a third eye, physical or otherwise, and with her luck if she did it would have vision just as poor as her other eyes'. The greatest of seeresses and prophets supposedly had been born with their Inner Eyes fully open, but those individuals were few and far between, and thankfully divination was not limited to these lucky individuals. The book detailed several exercises people could use in order to learn how to open their Inner Eye, and while it would inevitably close, the time it was open was normally enough for the witch in question to perform her divinations.

Really, from the way this Inner Eye was described, it sounded less like a body part or an ability so much as a state of mind, especially since meditation was recommended as one technique to open the Inner Eye. Was it a similar state of mind to the one she had used to conceive several of her own spells? That much remained to be seen.

"You're going to catch a cold like that."

The voice coming out of nowhere caught her by surprise, and her eyes flew open while her feet pulled themselves off the muddy shore. Now that she could see again, it was a very short glance to find Professor Quirrell a couple of dozen feet away. He was looking at her, but it was not with a disapproving or angry expression. Instead he looked almost amused, though whether it was due to her position or her startled reaction was anyone's guess.

'Don't scare me like that!'

"If you don't want to be scared, you should pay better attention to your surroundings," he replied simply. "What are you doing out here, anyway?"

'Trying to teach myself how to use divination magic. It has a few steps you have to go through if you don't have the natural talent.' Professor Quirrell hummed in response, and when he said nothing else for a moment she added, 'You're looking a lot better after running into a troll than I was led to believe.'

Professor Quirrell shrugged with one shoulder. "Madam Pomfrey does good work. She was able to patch me up without any trouble. It helped that I did not stand and fight it by myself; my priority was letting the rest of the staff know. I got a minor concussion from the ordeal, but nothing more substantial than that. Certainly I was in a better state than that other girl."

Hazel grimaced both at the professor's casual tone as well as the memory of all she had heard about Hermione Granger's condition. From what many of the upper years had said, the fact that she had to be transferred to St. Mungo's, the primary wizard hospital in Britain, was a worrisome sign of how serious her injuries were. 'Is she really coming back next week? That's the rumor going around.'

"Possibly. I haven't heard anything about it, but that doesn't mean it's false. I just might not be in the loop. Wouldn't be the first time," he added with a nearly inaudible grumble. He shook his head and stepped closer to the water's edge, his gaze focused on the water. "Divination, you say? That's not a branch of magic I ever paid much attention to. It is too vague for my tastes."

'That certainly is the case for predicting the future from what I've read. That's honestly the least interesting part about it, though. I'm more interested in its ability to locate things and learn hidden knowledge that has been forgotten.' She finished her statement with a snap, getting the professor's attention so he would not miss what she had written.

"How fascinating. I do not think I've ever heard of people using divination for anything except looking into the future, but I must agree that the other uses seem far more practical. And of course it would be you who stumbles into a different way of applying magic. Then again—" He cut himself off as he stretched his hand out towards the water, and a flat stone flew out from beneath the surface as if she were watching it being dropped in reverse. Professor Quirrell's fingers closed around the stone, then he tossed it up and caught it once again while Hazel stared at him in shock. "—since you seem to approach everything magical from a unique angle, I suppose it is only appropriate."

'You can also use magic without a wand?!' she demanded. Professor Flitwick had mentioned that he knew people who learned how to do small things without the need for a wand – the very parlor tricks McGonagall seemed to believe were the limits of her capabilities – but all those were wizards who had trained overseas. Was Professor Quirrell one of them? He would have to have lived in Britain for most of his life after that, though, because she could not detect any foreign accent in his speech.

Or was there another school in Britain, one that perhaps was not as 'prestigious' as Hogwarts, that taught such things? If so and she had wasted the last two months here at Hogwarts, she was going to be so angry at herself.

Professor Quirrell flicked his eyes towards her question and allowed a small smirk to become visible. "Perhaps a little. The occasional spell here and there." He rolled the rock around in his fingers again before tossing it back into the water a short distance away. "Although calling them spells is not quite accurate. It is not as if wandless magic is as straightforward as speaking the incantation and waving a finger around in place of a wand. That is where weaker wizards who try it get it wrong, and when they fail they claim it an impossibility. If their tricks and shortcuts don't work, nothing will, they think.

"Except we know different. It is both so much simpler and so much harder than that. Isn't it, Hazel?" Now his eyes were boring into Hazel's own, dull green and bright green locked together, and his voice held a strength and a confidence she had never heard in his classroom. "Wandless magic is an expression of pure will. Imagine what you want to happen, and then force the world to accept that as its new reality. Every time we do, we prove that is we who have the power to change the world. Not our wands, not even lessons learned in stuffy classrooms. Our determination is all we need."

A long moment passed before Professor Quirrell broke the staring contest. Without him staring into the depths of her soul, Hazel felt herself take a near-desperate breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. That was… intense. The way he spoke of using wandless magic was so very close to her own methods, and it almost made her feel embarrassed that she had to rely on imagined tools to make her magic do what she wanted it to do.

Would this wizard, the first and so far only one truly to share this aspect of her magic, consider her tools to be another kind of trick or shortcut?

While she navigated the currents of her own sudden self-doubts, Professor Quirrell levitated another stone into his hand and gave it a nod. Cocking his arm to the side, he swung it in a wide arc and sent the stone skipping three, four times over the surface of the lake.

'How did you learn?'

The smirk was gone now, replaced by a full grin albeit one that lacked a certain warmth. "I suspect it was similar to the way you did. I realized while I was still a child that I could make the impossible happen, and I took hold of that ability with both hands. I pushed myself until I could do magic without a crutch." He blew out a loud huff through his nostrils. "Unfortunately, I did not have the restrictions that you do, and when I took to wand magic with ease, I did not keep up the effort I had in my youth. It took many years for me to regain my previous level of skill."

He was right about the similarities, especially when it was not the history she would have expected from a wizard. 'There really should be a school for people like us,' she wrote out with a scowl. 'Like the African school whose name I don't remember. Somewhere we wouldn't be stuck with the choice of magic with a wand or no magic at all.'

"Finding students would be the difficult part. It takes more effort than the typical European wizard wants to put into… well, most anything, frankly."

She found herself nodding along with his words. From her own experiences in France and Germany and Albania and all the way to Greece, people were people no matter where they were found. It made sense the same would be true of wizards more specifically. A thought crossed her mind then, and she blinked in confused realization. 'But now something doesn't make sense where it did before. You don't need a wand, and I don't need a wand… Then why when I asked you how to defend myself without a wand did you tell me that I should run? Why didn't you tell me then that you can also do it?'

"Two reasons." He raised his hand and lifted a single finger. "Unless you have a reason to stay and fight, a reason that is worth the risk of injury or death, getting away from the source of danger as quickly as possible is the only rational decision."

…He was not wrong there.

A second finger joined the first. "It is embarrassing to admit, but as do nearly all students here, I learned how to fight with a wand. When I resumed my wandless practice, it was with an eye more for ways to approach problems from a different angle or that just seemed obviously useful. Duplicating spells I could already cast with a wand just to do so was not worth my time.

"And for a third reason," he added thoughtfully, "to some degree I fell into the same trap as the other professors in treating you like a normal witch. For anyone dependent on a wand, having it be stolen or broken means escape is not just the best but the only feasible option. I must ask for your forgiveness for that lapse."

Hazel waved away his apology. 'I know I'm different from the rest of the students. It is the repeated ignorance of my needs that I find irritating, not the first time it happens.'

"Your graciousness is appreciated."

She grinned at the droll tone that comment was delivered in. 'I also want to thank you for not mentioning my absences from class to Professor Sprout. She found out when we were talking about me dropping Transfiguration, but that was a shock to her when it came out. It was nice to have someone respect my side of things for once.'

"I'm aware she is now aware. She wanted to make it an issue, but…" Professor Quirrell shrugged. "My class, my rules. You sitting there bored because I cannot teach you anything you can use would do nothing but waste both your time and mine. If I refuse to punish you for circumstances beyond your control, that is my prerogative."

'So far you're the only professor who thinks that way,' she wrote with a scowl. If Hogwarts had a wandless magic class with Professor Quirrell teaching it, she would sign up without a moment's hesitation. He was engaging, clever, quick-witted, and it was so much easier to talk to him this way when it was one-on-one and his stutter was not… acting… up…

…Wait.

Why was he siding with her way of thinking instead of that of the professors? Why did he not defend the utility of their classes the way they did for each other?

He silently raised one eyebrow in response to her probing stare, and that was the last clue she needed. 'You aren't Professor Quirrell.'

"You will have to explain what you mean by that."

Now that she was paying attention, she heard it. His speech had a kind of flatness to it, similar to what she experienced when Professor Snape talked to her while hiding his thoughts. It was subtle, far more than her previous experience and enough that if she were not looking for it she doubted she would catch it. Knew she would not catch it, actually; after all, this was now the second conversations where she hadn't.

And most importantly, she had always been able to hear Professor Quirrell's thoughts. This mental silence was not normal from him. She could not tell him that outright, not without having to explain many other things alongside it, but…

'You don't have Professor Quirrell's stutter, and you have a different mindset about how a professor should behave than all the other teachers here. Almost like you aren't one yourself. And you act differently, too; he comes off as very timid, but you are much more confident and eloquent. It's a nice change, but it isn't like Professor Quirrell.'

Except if this man wearing Professor Quirrell's face was not truly Professor Quirrell, it raised the question of just who was he? How did he look like and have the memories of Professor Quirrell? And then where was the real Professor Quirrell? When and how had he made the switch without anyone being the wiser? How was he able to emulate Professor Quirrell's mannerisms that day in class until it was just the two of them?

Memories from television shows came to mind, not the ones Dudley watched but instead the kind Petunia preferred to watch in the middle of the day. Stupid, sappy stories about people who would not know how to navigate their own friendships and love lives with a map and a personal advisor, admittedly, but even some of the wilder story beats had a grain of truth. And if she were right, it would tie up all her questions with a neat little bow.

Her suspicious frown bloomed into a relieved smile as she came to her realization. 'You have split personalities, don't you? That's how you can be so different but know the same things. You aren't the one teaching us. Although I kind of wish you were.'

Not-Professor-Quirrell watched her, the way he was rocking back and forth on his heels with his hands behind his back making it look like he was utterly unconcerned about everything she had just written. After a long moment, he hummed while the corners of his mouth curled just the tiniest bit. "Quirinus would be so upset to hear that. He has always wanted to be a teacher, even if I agree with you that he is not the best at it. He tries, though, and we should give him credit where it is due."

'That's fair, I guess.' No matter how much she stood with her previous statement. 'No one else knows about you and Professor Quirrell, do they? I expect split personalities aren't any more common in wizard society than they are among normal people. If you are trying to keep it private, I won't tell anyone.' She had already had one person she shared an unusual ability with decide he hated everything about her, and she would much rather not have a second Professor Snape in her life.

Tilting his head, Not-Professor-Quirrell looked her up and down almost as if he were judging her trustworthiness. "No one would believe you anyway."

That statement hurt, but she could not say he was wrong. Her encounters with werewolves and hags were much less unbelievable than this, and everyone bar Sally-Anne thought she was lying about those. 'You're probably right. But even if they would, I'm still willing to keep your secret. I just want one thing.'

A wave of one hand to get on with it was his only response.

'What do I call you specifically? I can't just call you both Professor Quirrell. That would get confusing right quick.'

The wizard snorted quietly before turning around and striding back towards the castle. "Good luck with your divination practice, although I would recommend you be more discreet should you discover any other secrets."

Crossing her arms, Hazel turned her head to look out over the lake. That… had not gone as poorly as her meeting with Professor Snape? Not that that was a high bar to clear. A long sigh escaped her and tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. Even more important than another mind-reader, she had completely on accident found someone else who knew what it was like not to need a wand, someone like her and her mother, and once again she blew it!

…Was it her who was the problem? Would she drive off the druids if and when she ever met them?

"Oh, and Hazel?" She whipped her head around to find Not-Professor-Quirrell standing still only a short distance from where he had stood while they spoke, no longer focused on the castle but instead looking at her over his shoulder. He gave her a quick wink, one she almost missed, before he started walking away from her again. "You can call me Marvolo."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

My streak of having the local Harry-analogue not be interested in Quidditch continues! Look, I'm just not a big sports person, okay? And that's definitely the most important event of this whole chapter, without question.

 

[Silently Watches]

Hazel felt eyes and thoughts on her as she sat at a small table in the common room alongside Sally-Anne, so it was not a terrible shock when she glanced up to find Sidonia Smith approaching them. "Hi, you two," the prefect said with a smile. "Good to see you down here for once. Perks I see every now and again, but Potter is like a bleeding ghost, I swear. What are you two working on?"

'Potions.'

"Hazel's trying to help me with Snape's assignment," elaborated Sally-Anne, "but I think I'm getting more confused. We're supposed to write 10 inches on the interaction between moonstone and elderberry sap in the Ebullient Emulsion, but I don't understand Hazel's explanation at all."

Sidonia frowned to herself and glanced above their heads. "I think I remember that essay, actually. Which is sad on all its own that it's stuck this long. That was one assignment I think everyone failed. It turns out there's a principle in potions that certain substances combined in certain ways can act like an entirely different substance. I don't remember exactly what that combination acts like—"

'Ratatoskr venom.'

Sidonia glanced at the words that appeared and snapped her mouth shut. "That… sounds right, actually. How in the world do you know that?"

'Because all three have essences that resonate with the moon, but we can't use ratatoskr venom both because it's exceptionally rare and because it is also associated with Venus. That would cause it to counteract the mint due to its own connection to Jupiter. Using moonstone and elderberry lets us get around that limitation.' Now Sidonia was staring at her with the same look of confusion and incomprehension that Sally-Anne had on her face, and Hazel glanced back and forth between them. 'What? One of the people who taught me potion theory before I came here told me essence resonance and diffusion were fundamental concepts. I'm surprised Snape hasn't given a lecture on it already.'

It was not quite the first thing Gertrude had taught her, not if she included their initial brewing session as a lesson, but by the third lesson that was definitely something the hag had taken to pounding into her head.

"I don't take NEWT Potions," Sidonia began slowly, "and wouldn't want another two years with that bastard even if I had gotten an O, but in the five years I was in class we were never taught anything like what you just said. I almost want to tell you to include that in your own essay, but I don't know if Snape knows what you're talking about either."

A pause, then Hazel wrote, 'I already finished. I thought that was what he wanted us to base our explanation on.'

Sidonia burst out in laughter a moment later, and while she forced it down with a shake of her head her shoulders still jerked in time with her giggles. "Don't worry about rewriting it, then," she managed to get out. "Dear Merlin, I wish I could see his face when he starts reading it. Since I haven't seen them having their tutoring sessions out here before, is this a new thing or…"

Sally-Anne shook her head. "Not really. She's been helping me for the last few weeks, but normally we're in the library."

"So what changed?"

"Granger," they both replied. Sally-Anne continued, "I mean, I don't mind her studying in the library too, that's what it's there for and everything, but she makes it all dreary and angry-feeling …uncomfortable."

Interesting. Hazel had felt similarly in Granger's vicinity, but she was also capable of hearing thoughts so that was just par for the course. Since Sally-Anne did not have the same ability so far as Hazel could tell, it was fascinating that she could still pick up on those emotional projections.

That said, the thoughts whirling around inside of Granger's head were a little more complicated than Sally-Anne could appreciate. The Gryffindor girl seemed to be feeling a low level of fear and insecurity all but constantly now, but any time anyone got near her Granger snapped at them with a surge of anger and something not-but-similar-to jealousy. Her behavior was perplexing, honestly, and Hazel would rather not have to deal with the surges of emotion elicited by someone else just walking past the other girl.

"You can study wherever you like," Sidonia said with a shrug. "Even the classrooms as long as there aren't classes going on at the time. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. Your classes are of course important, but just as important is spending time getting to know other students and maybe learning a few things that aren't in any class curriculum."

Hazel sighed to herself, suspecting she knew where this was going. She did not need someone else telling her she needed to come out of her shell and play nice with a bunch of other children who refused to believe her about the most basic facts of her own life, thank you very much.

"Have either of you given any thought to joining the Gardening Club?"

…Although credit where it was due, this was a different tactic than had been tried on her before.

Sally-Anne's expression and thoughts revealed her own reluctance, no surprise considering her distaste for Herbology as a subject, but Hazel found herself curious. 'What is this Gardening Club?'

Sidonia gave her a brilliant smile. "It's fairly unique. A few different classes here have their own 'clubs', like Transfiguration and Charms, although those classes are more like study hall to help younger students who have trouble getting the material down. Then you have things like the Divination Club, which is supposed to be dedicated to helping witches with the Inner Eye refine their abilities." The sixth-year girl glanced to both sides and then continued in a stage whisper, "Although it's mostly for a few addle-pated dummies to sit around giggling.

"The Gardening Club, on the other hand, isn't meant to review material taught in Herbology class. It actually focuses on the practical realities of dealing with magical plants and managing a garden filled with them. This means things like proper pest control, how to predict the results of cross-breeding, and even which plants are most likely to fight with each other. Useful stuff. If you have an interest in Herbology and Potions, and I remember you were positively overflowing with questions about both subjects on the first day of class, I think you'd find it very interesting."

That… hmm. Setting up her own herb garden was not something Hazel had considered before, in part because it was an expense she did not have the money for and in part because she was rarely in the same place long enough to set up any permanent foothold, and that was what a garden would turn into. Of course, just because the garden would be in a fixed location did not mean she would be stuck there as well. All she had to do was make sure it was somewhere she could get in and out of easily, and she would be able to check on it and then jump back to wherever she had come from.

And considering how many potions ingredients could grow out in the wild with little to no human intervention, as Elfriede's gathering components from the Black Forest could attest, a garden that was nearly wild itself would be a useful place to have in her back pocket.

"Why would anyone want to spend more time in the dirt?" she heard Sally-Anne wonder to herself. "I know Hazel enjoys Herbology, and it sounds like Sidonia does too, but I just don't understand how. It's so gross. Are there other c-clubs here? Besides th-the ones you mentioned already."

"That's a good question," praised the prefect. She twisted a lock of purple hair around one finger as she thought. "Let's hope I remember all of them. Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, and Divination are the only proper classes that have specific clubs that I remember. Potions used to have one, but that was disbanded when Snape took over the class. History, Astronomy, Defense, Runes, Arithmancy, Magical Creatures… No, I think that's it.

"There are some other clubs that aren't related to any class, though. If you're interested in games, there's the chess club and the Gobstones League and the Islay Hangman teams—"

'I've heard of that one,' Hazel cut in. Mr. Filch had explained it almost absentmindedly when McGonagall gave her detention with him. 'Islay Hangman. It's a card game, right? And the school team has to travel to other schools for competitions or something?'

A blink, then Sidonia gave her a satisfied nod. "Exactly right. The Gobstones club also has to Floo to other schools, as does the broom racing club. And speaking of brooms, there is a very unofficial Quidditch league that crosses house boundaries." She lowered her voice, tone more serious this time than had been the case when she was badmouthing the divination club. "The rumor is that they only play after curfew when no one is going to see them because Hooch won't let us set foot on the pitch because 'it's only for the real teams', but you don't know anything about that. Got it?"

They both nodded at the sudden seriousness in the older girl's voice, and she looked them in their eyes before leaning back. "Those are the big clubs— Ah. I guess there's also the… Oh, what is that word?…" She gnawed on her lip for a moment as she searched her memory. "The tekkomancy club, I think? It's a mostly Muggleborn club about mixing Muggle stuff and magic. I don't know any of the details. I think it's the only official club that doesn't have a real mentor, mostly because nobody outside the group understands a thing about it, but I think Flitwick pokes his head in every once in a while to make sure they haven't blown themselves up."

'He would be the best to do so. I've talked with him after class a few times. He's really bright when it comes to magical theory. He'd probably find their experiments interesting.'

"How come nobody told us about these clubs earlier?" Sally-Anne almost demanded. "Some of those sound interesting, but if they don't tell us about them how are we supposed to join?"

A shrug was the only answer Sidonia gave them. "I'm not involved in the other clubs barring one exception, so I can't speak for them. As far as the Gardening Club goes, most of the time there's no point inviting every first year when nobody – not even them – knows whether they have interest in Herbology in the first place. This year there are a few who immediately attracted attention, but that's the exception, not the rule."

While that was good information to know, it did not answer the underlying question at hand. Was joining this club worth the time it would eat up? On the one hand, she did find Herbology interesting, and this club sounded dedicated to practical knowledge, which was always useful to know. On the other, she had no idea how much time it would actually take from her, and with how unsuccessful her search for druidic history had been so far, she needed every minute she could get.

…Although. With how much time she had put into her search only to come up with nothing, perhaps she could use a regular diversion. And unlike a lot of other things these wizards did, it would be something that she could do both now and in the future.

'I guess I could go to a couple of meetings. Try it out before I commit. When and where?'

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Once more Hazel found herself sitting at the edge of a lake, although this time it was not the lake on Hogwarts's grounds. Instead it was the Mermaid Pool in Derbyshire, the same inland lake that was said to to house a mermaid who could grant immortality one day a year, that she chose. Did it make any real difference to what she was attempting where she did it? Probably not.

Nevertheless, for her first stone-casting she felt she deserved to be somewhere less wizard-y.

Before she performed the final, physical act of divination, she needed to finish the mental portion. Her eyes were closed, her staff laying across her lap and Morgan on her shoulder, but it was in her mind that she was working hard. Just as she always did when she wanted to commune with the natural world, she had imagined roots spreading out from her crossed legs. Unlike normal, however, from her arms and her hair she could almost feel leafy branches sprouting and reaching towards the sky. She was one with the world, with the wide-reaching magic of nature that wizards had so little consideration for.

She was not separate from the cycles of the seasons, of night and day, of life and death. Nobody was, no matter how the wizards and even normal people pretended themselves to be. She was one more living creature walking the earth, one more beating heart, one more leaf on the infinite World Tree.

Within her mind was stillness, and only now that she was totally and completely centered and accepting of both her importance and her insignificance did she breathe out and think of the question burning in her heart. The stones she had collected over the last couple of weeks, unpolished and imperfect but still exactly what she needed, prickled against her palms, all but demanding to fall and speak to her in silent voices.

Where can I find the druids I seek?

She spread her hands, feeling the stones fall away, and a few seconds later she finally opened her eyes. The stones she had thrown were scattered randomly, some of them landing on solid ground but others sunk halfway into the muddy shore. Most of the stones had some distinguishing mark, but only a couple of the dozen stones had those marks visible.

And none of them spelled out a clue or formed an arrow or showed any other sign of an answer.

Part of her felt disappointment welling up, but most of her mind was still in that strange crystalline calm that accompanied her meditations. Hazel reached down almost idly towards the nearest stone, unknowing whether to put them away or try again—

Her fingers touched lake muck—

Pinpricks of bright green moss poked out of the mud in the shadow of her hand and swept over the stones and the shoreline and the lake water. Behind the moss were tiny plants that sprouted as well, thin trunks and blackened branches rising only a short distance before stopping and staying stunted and puny. A thin ribbon of water snaked its way from the lake and through the sea of moss, defying gravity as it crept up the shoreline even as it flowed down hills that did not exist.

—and sank into the brown mud, unchanged from how it had appeared when she first arrived at the Mermaid Pool and probably for years before that.

She pulled her hand away from the shore before she glanced at the guilty appendage and then the stones she had thrown that were still sunk in the mud. That was not what the book had said a successful stone-casting would be like. It had described a vague sense of connection that would need to be pondered and interpreted, not a full-blown vision of all things!

With a shake of her head, she pulled all the stones out of the mud and cleaned them with the blue ripples of her magic. I really don't know what to make of that, she told Morgan, but at least I have a hint for where to continue my search. Even if it makes me feel like a dummy. Once she had risen to her feet, she wrapped herself in the deep purple fog of the spirit world and watched it fade away to reveal a familiar landscape of moss-covered stones and stunted oak trees.

Wistman's Wood was reputed to be the site of long-past druidic rituals and human sacrifices. She had been here before, not long after she ran away from Little Whinging. It was in fact one of the very first places she had visited in her search for hints of druid culture, and while she had encountered a surprisingly friendly – or at least tolerant – hellhound during her hours here, she had not found anything that was related to her quarry.

If her vision was to be believed, she had simply been looking in the wrong spots.

The boots on her feet splashed into the little stream she had arrived next to, the same stream where she first attempted her current method of meditation and had met the aforementioned hellhound, and she glanced around with a thoughtful frown on her face. Where do you think we should start? I don't know exactly how big this wood is, but I suspect it's big enough that blindly wandering around won't do us much good.

Morgan chirped and clacked his beak at her staff. Running her fingers over the wood, she mulled that suggestion over. He had a point that her staff had successfully guided her places before, but she could not remember it ever leading her someplace new. Back to somewhere she had already been, particularly somewhere she had stopped to rest and set up a basic camp? That it could absolutely do. But going somewhere when she did not even know where that somewhere was?

…On the other hand, did she have any better ideas?

Shrugging, she tapped the butt of her staff against the ground. Lead on, I guess. I hope you know more than I do.

The sun drifted across the sky, and several hours later Hazel scrambled up another rocky hill before wiping sweat off her brow. At least she had not heard the hissing of hidden snakes like she had half an hour or so before. These woods were said to be full of adders, and she was in no mood to test whether her healing spell was strong enough to purge venom from her blood. She would much rather have more of the splashes and rustling and snapping of twigs to her sides; that at least was probably just a few hellhounds stalking her through the bush.

Her brow furrowed as she reflected on that sentiment and frowned to herself. Loath as I am to give the average wizard credit, the other kids at Hogwarts might be right. Maybe there is something wrong with me. She shook her staff and gave it a glare. And you aren't any help either. You're lost just as much as I am.

More cracking came from the deepening shadows in front of her, and a creature stepped into view. It looked like a massive black dog, but only if dogs normally had glowing red eyes far too big for their faces and wisps of smoke drifting off there fur in places. The beast was holding itself low to the ground, and with its lips pulled back she could easily see yellowed fangs dripping with saliva.

Normally a massive hellhound prepared to pounce and rip out her throat would be a terrifying display. Hazel would not say she felt no fear at the sight, but she also remembered how another hound had stared quizzically at her before accepting a handful of trail mix. It was hard not to look at her creature in front of her the same way after that.

Raising the hand not holding her staff, she gave the hellhound a smile without showing any more of her teeth than she had to. She did not want to flee unless absolutely necessary to keep herself safe, but that did not mean she should take no precautions. Hello. I mean you no harm. I'm kind of lost, actually. Do you know if there are any druids nearby? Or anything related to them?

The massive canine relaxed its snarl a little and blinked at her, its strange horizontal pupils dilating. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? She was not sure. A moment later, the hound sniffed at her several times before it rose to its full height. Giving her a gruff chuffing bark, it turned its back on her and started walking deeper into the woods.

It also gave her some reassurance that she was not crazy. It was completely normal to prefer hellhounds to snakes considering the former could actually be reasoned with.

The hellhound quickened its steps once she had caught up, and although she lost sight of it a couple of times it was never hard to find afterwards. Several minutes into the walk, however, she started to wonder if she should be concerned after all. Not for her own sake, exactly, but more because the wisps of smoke had turned into flickers of actual flame that were spreading across its fur. It did not seem bothered by the process, though. Maybe it was something that regularly happened to hellhounds?

Or, she realized with embarrassment halfway to their destination, maybe she was not dealing with a hellhound at all.

The spirit, now a wolf standing taller at the shoulder than she did and composed entirely of flame that had yet to set even a single leaf or twig alight, came to a stop in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable clearing and turned around to face her for the first time. Hazel swept her gaze around, a frown forming as she tried and failed to see what the spirit wanted her to see. A few mounds and dips scattered around, but that was all.

I don't understand, she admitted after a moment.

A blink of its coal-black eyes, and the spirit took a step towards her, then another. She felt herself tense, images of any number of places far away from here flashing through her memories. She knew she historically had more luck with non-human spirits than those in human form, but she also knew she was making many assumptions from relatively few interactions. Would it be like the windy spirit who had given her her fairy lens and the butterfly spirit who guided her to the magical boar troubling her werewolf friends, or it would it lash out like the spirit of the scoured clearing?

Ever so gently – cautiously, even, if such a word was even appropriate for an entity such as this – it pressed a brilliant white nose against her forehead.

The spirit vanished without a trace, and then the sun streaked across the sky. Backwards. Everything was the black of deepest night before the sun reappeared and vanished again and reappeared and vanished and reappeared. The repeated nights and days merged into a pulsating purple sky, the very sight of which filled Hazel with an overwhelming nausea. She fell to her knees, her eyes squeezed together to block it all out.

When she opened them again, she found the dead waiting for her.

She fell backwards onto her butt with her instinctive flinch. A dozen skeletons lay on the ground in front of her, and with each pulse in the sky flesh crept farther up the bones like strangling vines. Once muscle and skin had fully formed, the sky finally stopped the sickening light show.

The mounds she had noticed had become piles of exposed rock sometime during all this, and now they burst into flame. Ashes became chunks of wood that in turn became branches and short logs, and the fires lifted them into place and sprouted stalks of hay or something like it that weaved themselves into thatched roofs.

Five men appeared from nowhere, each of them wearing robes of brown or black except for the one in the middle who was wearing instead a robe of deep plum. They raised their wands and siphoned away the flames from the now-intact homes. Several of the men walked backwards into those same homes and soon after ran back out with far more haste. The dead then stood as jets of light of all different color flew back to the wizards.

All but three, specifically the three closest to the middle of the clearing. A moment later, two of those rose up with staves in their hands, a crescent of purple flame ripping itself out of the man on the left while a beam of acidic green light did the same from the woman on the right. A woman who had tongues of lightning arcing between her empty hand and the head of her staff for a brief instant before she straightened into a wary stance. That was when the center figure fell upright to reveal an older man with hair nearly fully grey but somehow still possessing the muscular form of a man decades his junior. He wore neither shirt nor robe, but rather rough-spun trousers that reached just past his knees and an animal pelt across his bare chest.

Another beam of green left him, this one the first and only spell that returned to the wand of the wizard in the purple robe. That wizard had a snarl on his face as he shouted wordlessly at the older man, whose snarling expression showed him to be just as angry about whatever was being said. Another minute of shouting and violent gestures later from both leaders, the group of wizards vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

Her vision wavered, and a sluggish blink brought her back to the real world and the fiery spirit who still stood staring at her. She shook her head and glanced around the clearing with new and unsettling understanding.

Why? That was the question circling around and around in her head, a question with nary an answer to be had. Perhaps she would know better if she could have heard what the older druid and the wizard in the purple robe were screaming at each other, but she had not. Planting her staff into the ground, she pushed herself slowly to her feet and stumbled forwards.

It was only a few feet until she reached the spot where the leader of this tiny hamlet had fallen, and she knelt down and pressed her fingers into the soft dirt. I don't understand, she admitted to the spirit. I know what happened, the facts of it. But why? That is what I can't understand. What argument could possible be so bad that it was worth murdering an entire village over?

The wolf spirit padded closer and pawed repeatedly at the ground close to her hand. Confused, Hazel reached over to that same spot and felt around until she found something small and cold and hard beneath her fingers. Not a pebble; it was too regular to be that. Picking it out of the sparse grass, she turned the thin red rectangle around in her hand. It looked almost like rusty metal, but what was it and why would it be here?

Blue ripples surged once more from her skin and swept over the rectangle, peeling flecks of rust off a few at a time. When the spell ended, she was left with a piece of black iron with a hole through one end. The light from the setting sun glinted off the surface to reveal a crudely carved design, a single curved line that overlapped itself in multiple places to form a knotwork design.

A pendant, she realized. But the significance? That escaped her.

What does this mean? No answer came to her, and she looked up to ask the spirit her question once again.

Except there was no spirit waiting for her. She was all alone.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

"Hazel? What's that?"

Sally-Anne's question caught her friend off-guard, and the black-haired girl looked up from her half-eaten dinner and blinked at her. Sally-Anne lowered her gaze to indicate a dark metal pendant that hung from Hazel's neck on a strip of leather. She had never seen Hazel wear anything like it before.

It was most definitely not something Hazel was wearing when the other girl went off on her own after Herbology class.

Hazel reached up to toy with the pendant for a moment, a strange twisted almost-scowl on her face. Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she let go of her new necklace and twisted the index finger of her left hand in a tiny circle. Golden sparks flew off that finger and formed words in a display of magic that might have become familiar but still astonished Sally-Anne whenever she took the time to actually think about it.

'It's a reminder. Of the lost and the forgotten.'

Hazel broke eye contact and looked back down at the plate where she was not really eating but just playing with her food. Sally-Anne waited for another moment before reluctantly turning her attention back to her own dinner, appetite forgotten. She did not think Hazel meant to shut her out, not like her first friend in this strange new world did to most other people at Hogwarts, but it felt similar. She did not want to pry too hard, but she was more than willing to offer whatever support Hazel needed. If only Hazel would let her.

Golden light glinted in the corner of her eye, and she turned her head to find more writing waiting for her. 'Maybe I'll be willing to talk about it later. Just not now. I'm still figuring it out for myself.

'But thank you for caring.'

A smile touched her lips, and she reached for a dinner roll. Later was not as good as now, but it was much, much better than never.

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This is the problem I have making OCs. When I let myself go, I wind up having entirely too much fun with them.

I have a whole theory about Harry and divination that I won't go into now, but suffice it to say I don't consider this to be giving Hazel a new ability.

 

[Silently Watches]

"Is something bothering you?"

Filius's question caught Miss Potter by surprise, and the girl's eyes shot up to look at him instead of the feather in front of her. She raised her left hand and waggled her forefinger in a manner he had come to recognize, and words composed entirely from goldish-white sparks formed floating in the air. 'What do you mean?'

"I mean you are glaring at that feather as if it has personally offended you. When you asked with help with the Locomotion charm, this is not what I expected." Furthermore, the fact the Miss Potter would make such a request and then not experiment or ask questions was atypical for her. He had taught other students who were convinced that if they just sat in front of him in silence for a while he would magically fix whatever issue they had, but Miss Potter thankfully was not one of those. "You seem distracted, so I ask again. Is something wrong?"

The dark-haired girl frowned – scowled, more accurately, though not at him – and said nothing. Wrote nothing, either, for a minute or so. When she finally did reply, it was not what he expected. 'I expect I know the answer to this question, but I'll ask it anyway. Have you ever heard of the druids?'

He gave her his own frown as he read and reread her question. Nothing immediately came to mind, and while he did wrack his brain, further thought was just as unhelpful. Upon shaking his head, she snorted softly. 'Don't worry. I'm not surprised. It seems like nobody in this whole society has. They were the magical people of the Celts. Not just sorcerers or wizards, though, not like you are. They were both advisors and spiritual leaders of their communities. Regular people know about them, but I haven't found any mention—' The words vanished as quickly as they had appeared, and her eyes narrowed at him. 'Did I say something strange?'

Filius had been trying to keep his thoughts off his face, but clearly something had leaked out. He could not begin to guess whether it was true or how it would have come about, but it really did appear that the loss of her voice had caused her to become far more perceptive than she had any right to be. "I am just surprised at what you said. Wizards being spiritual advisors to Muggles; I have a hard time imagining it. We as a society keep ourselves separate from nonmagical people, have for centuries. Being as tightly intertwined as you describe…"

It was not just insane. It would be anathema to everything the wizarding world was founded upon.

'I noticed that wizards want nothing to do to regular people. A lot of you like to pretend they don't even exist.' Miss Potter cocked her head. 'Why is that, anyway?'

Why was it most of the conversations he had with this girl led into ugly topics? "Mostly it is for our own privacy and protection," he admitted. "It will be covered in History in the next couple of months, but there is a law called the Statute of Secrecy that requires us to stay separated from Muggles as best as possible. It came about during the European witch hunts, when certain segments of the Muggle population wanted to eradicate everyone they thought was a witch or wizard. Not that they were successful in catching any of us," he hastened to add before she could get the wrong idea, "but the fact that there were groups that wanted to exterminate us at all merely for existing was good motivation for us to ensure our own privacy."

'In hundreds of years, in witch hunts that spanned the entire continent, no wizards were caught? Not one?' Her ability to express emotion in the written word was impressive, even if that emotion was currently incredulity.

"It was less a matter that no one was caught so much as nobody was harmed," he replied. "A fair number of wizards were captured, but as I recall between flame-freezing charms and Disapparation, those who had the misfortune of being caught just pretended that they were burning and instead got out of the way once they felt they had put on a good enough show."

Miss Potter gave him an odd look before looking back at the feather. It was always fascinating to watch her attempt new magic, he thought to himself as she waggled her fingers at the feather for several minutes. It was nothing at all like the spells he had learned, either here at Hogwarts or during his time on the dueling circuit. The Ilvermorny-trained wizards he knew still used proper incantations the few times they displayed wandless magic, and while Trembull had gotten it down silently, she still needed utmost focus for her displays of summoning and banishing. But this? There was something almost primitive about the way Miss Potter worked, as if he were watching cave men playing with fire for the first time.

Which was more right than it wasn't. Not the fire aspect, but she was having to interact with magic in the most primal way possible.

'I don't know the best way to say this, so I'm just going to say it,' she said after a while. 'That may be how wizards remember history, but it's definitely not how the rest of the world does.'

"That isn't a surprise. I said—"

'I'm not talking about people being sure how the people at the stake were burned or not,' she cut in, deftly anticipating his next words. 'Or not entirely, anyway. It's more everything before that.

'I read a lot about magical traditions before I got my letter about Hogwarts. Fiction, folklore, history; anything I could get my hands on. I read a little about the witch hunts, too, and the chain of events you describe just didn't happen. If a mob or especially the church thought someone was a witch, it wasn't straight to tossing them onto a pyre. They wanted to prove to themselves that somebody was magical, and that meant tests. Including searching their homes and their pockets for anything witch-like. A long piece of wood?' She pointed at his wand lying on the desk next to a pile of half-marked essays. 'You don't think they would have found that suspicious? If you think someone is an evil sorcerer, you don't let them keep tools and weapons on them. I don't need a wand to use magic, but all the rest of you do. How would you protect yourselves from flames and blades without any way to cast spells?'

Filius frowned as he considered her question. It went against everything he recalled being taught about the witch burnings, and the temptation to dismiss her words as those of a first-year student who was just misinformed was certainly present, but… What she said made sense. If he were a Muggle and thought someone was a wizard, a search was a reasonable precaution to take. And while modern Muggles had a lot of wrong ideas about wizards, he knew they still associated witches with wands. There was no excuse for Muggles before the Statute who probably had been exposed to real magic not to make that same assumption.

And worse, he knew she was absolutely right about the wand issue. Without a wand, most wizards still would have been able to get themselves to safety – Apparation, like essentially all forms of magical transportation, was not reliant on wand work – but they would have had to do so immediately. No subterfuge would be possible.

Apparently noticing that he was mulling her words over, she continued writing. 'Not to mention, from what I understand many, even most, accusations of witchcraft were not handled the same day. The history books made it very clear that suspected witches were interrogated about other witches they might know. They were tortured until they confessed, to the point that supposedly a lot of so-called witch burnings were little more than cremating the person's body in front of the town. They died from the torture, not the flames.'

"That…" He wasn't even sure what to say to all that. It was one thing for Muggles to believe they had successfully burned a wizard who in fact had fled, but he didn't remember anything from the history books that was even remotely similar to Miss Potter's account. "You're sure this is what Muggles think happened?"

'I can bring the books for you to look at yourself. I just need to make a trip to Bristol first.' She gave him a lopsided grin, so similar to those her father had worn when he and his friends got caught in the middle of a prank and could not think of a way to talk themselves out of the situation. And yet, would James have worn such an smirk after discussing the morbid topic of the last few minutes? Filius doubted it, and the comparison cast Miss Potter's expression in a far eerier light. 'And we would need to make sure Madam Pince never found out I stole from a library.'

"No, no. Let us not invite her wrath upon us if we can avoid it."

The grin only widened for a moment before her expression sobered. 'I do not have proof, not exactly, but a few things I've read from the history books we were assigned make me think there are some glaring inaccuracies in what you are taught, and that is in the best case. In the worst?' She shrugged uncomfortably. 'They read more as what the authors wish the result to be, not necessarily what truly happened. If I'm right, I would have to wonder just what other people think of how wizards remember history. If one group's own history says there was one set of events and wizards believe it happened a completely different way?'

That… hit uncomfortably close to home. He knew it was not her intention – there was no way for her even to know about it, after all! – but he could not stop his mind from wandering to an argument he thought he had long forgotten and pushed aside. At the time he had been convinced he was right, but if Miss Potter's doubts were valid?

The girl in question tilted her head, the eye not covered by her strange eyepiece gleaming in curiosity, and he sighed. He must not have been as good at hiding his flinch as he thought he was. This was not something he would normally discuss with a student; he had not even discussed it with anyone on the staff for the simple reason that it was a personal issue and quite frankly none of their concern. Would she accept the same explanation?

Lily had never let anything lie, not when her curiosity was piqued, and Miss Potter was far too much like her mother for him to expect anything different.

"Long ago, back before your mother was born, I got into an argument with one of my cousins. As you might have guessed from my height"—he waved at the space between their heads, as he was probably the only person in the entire castle who was shorter than Miss Potter—"I have some goblin in my ancestry. Specifically, my grandmother fell in love with a human who was a fellow Cursebreaker employed by Gringotts and eventually married him. Most of her family shunned her for her choice – human-goblin relations have never been cordial, but a hundred years ago they were even worse than they are now — with the exception of her twin sister. Their children were likewise close, and the same held true to my generation." He sighed. "Held being the important word.

"My cousin and I got into a nasty argument about the history of the goblin-wizard wars over the last few centuries. The exact details are not relevant," he dismissed with a wave of his hand, "but in essence the core issue we were debating was who held the bulk of the responsibility. There is a reason wizarding history calls them 'rebellions' even though the goblin nations have never truly been conquered or ruled by wizard society; I have been taught and read that the aggressors were consistently the goblins." Which had made history class particularly painful for him, hearing about crimes members of some of his blood had committed against the other side of him.

"Aslaug, obviously, felt differently. She maintained that it was the wizards who had started several of the conflicts. Not all, but many." And now that he was reviewing this argument, that detail stood out starkly. He could not help but wonder what that must have looked like from her perspective; her saying that blame was held by both parties while he denied the wizards had ever done anything to start these conflicts? Even if Miss Potter turned out to be wrong about the witch burnings, he would still have doubts about the position he had taken all those years ago.

He shook his head as he realized his thoughts were drifting away from the conversation at hand. "It seems like such a strange position to argue considering the conversation you and I just had, but at the time Aslaug was part of a political group that wanted to use Gringotts' financial power as leverage to challenge the laws preventing goblins and other non-humans from purchasing and wielding wands. While the desire for wand-magic is not uncommon in goblin circles, the willingness to flirt with war yet again thankfully pushed her group to the fringe of society. At the time I was convinced what she was saying was a lie she had been told to justify the use of force to get what they wanted, and I told her that to her face. Which…"

'If she was right and you were the one who was lied to, that wouldn't have gone over well,' Miss Potter finished for him.

"Exactly." He looked down in shame and rubbed his fingers together, the long nails that came from his goblin heritage scraping against each other. "Since we were at her mother's home for a feast day, I stormed out in a huff. I, er, haven't spoken with her or the rest of that side of my family since."

Thirty… six years? It was shocking how long it had really been now that he stopped and thought about it.

A pale hand reached out to cover his own, and almost reluctantly he lifted his head to find Miss Potter watching him with sad eyes. Her other hand rose and wrote, 'You should reach out. She might feel just as bad about breaking your relationship as you do.'

"Perhaps, but I wouldn't count on it," he said with a mirthless laugh. "Aslaug has never been good at letting go of grudges. But you're right, I should try to talk to her. Even if she would not forgive me, I still owe her an apology regardless."

The winter holidays, he decided. He could let Minerva and Pomona know tonight that he was planning to be gone for a few days to take care of family business. He was sure one of them would be willing to keep an eye on his Ravenclaws while he was away.

Miss Potter gave him an uncertain smile and stepped back. 'You said the point of this Statute of Secrecy was to keep wizards separate from non-magical people? Was there opposition to this law? Or was everyone in agreement with it?'

"Before today I would have said that it was the global or near-global view of wizardkind at the time," he admitted. "Now? To the best of my knowledge it was not opposed, but I do not claim to be an expert in the subject. I should tell you to ask Professor Binns, but…"

She simply nodded, not needing him to finish the thought. Asking Cuthbert anything at all had become increasingly difficult over the last few years. That was the problem with ghosts, unfortunately; the more time that passed since their deaths, the more trapped they became in whatever routine they had developed. It was possible to knock them out of their set patterns, but never for long and the older one was, the harder creating such a diversion became.

'How long ago was the Statute created? You talk like it was a long time ago, but also that it was a global decision.'

He gave her a wan smile. Her surprise was not unreasonable; in fact, it was something that was fairly common among Muggleborn and those likewise raised in the Muggle world. Few would have believed that the Girl-Who-Lived of all people could grow up in complete ignorance of their world, but there was no other explanation for Miss Potter's perspective and the questions she asked. "The faster people can travel, the smaller the world becomes. Apparation makes the world very small indeed. Speaking with someone on the other side of the world is merely a question of whether you or someone you know has been there before. That and of course whether you and the person you want to speak with share a language," he added with a short chuckle. "So when the idea of hiding all presence of ourselves worldwide was proposed, it didn't take long for the conversation to reach everyone it might affect.

"The Statute of Secrecy was finally implemented in 1689, and while there have been instances that risked breaking it, it remains intact even now."

A nod was all the answer he received, Miss Potter obviously mulling over his words. He could tell when she decided to put that aside to think on later when she gestured at the feather and lifted her hand; just as when she had done so previously, the feather followed her movement into the air. On her other attempts, the feather fell as soon as she no longer pantomimed holding it aloft, but this time Miss Potter cocked her head in a manner not dissimilar to that of the little songbird perched on a nearby desk. Eyes narrowed in contemplation, she glanced between her hand and the feather before tapping all five fingertips together. A finger pointed at the feather then the stone floor.

This time, when Miss Potter let her arm fall, the feather stayed aloft.

"Bravo, Miss Potter," Filius praised, more than happy to have something other than world-shaking revelations to focus on. "You certainly seem to have figured it out. Now, will it remain in place when you leave, or will it follow you?"

When Miss Potter had described her 'levitation' spell to him, it had caught him by surprise that it was nothing so limited. Levitation, summoning, banishing, all combined and operating in all three dimensions at once? It was not as if such a thing was impossible, in fact he knew such a spell himself, but it was a far more advanced spell than he would expect to be within the capabilities of an eleven-year-old witch. And, he had to admit, it was considerably more involved than simply imagining a disembodied hand. He had needed to reread her statement a couple of times when she wrote that. Magic was many things, but it was not straightforward like that!

Now, Locomotor was a nifty and flexible little spell, one that could effectively 'lock' an object either exactly where it was or in a set position relative to something – typically someone – else. In some ways he was surprised Miss Potter had not figured it out before now, but he was not surprised she wanted to learn it now that she knew such a thing was possible. Since she was creating it from scratch, however, there was no telling whether it would work exactly the same.

'It should stay where I put it,' she replied as she took several steps back. Sure enough, the feather did not budge even an inch. She reached up and rubbed her lips with one finger, contemplative eyes fixed not on the feather per se but seemingly on something else only she could see. A scissoring motion of her left hand, and the feather bobbed closer to her and followed along when she made a few experimental paces. 'I hadn't thought to have it follow me. That's really wicked, Professor.'

"I try my best," he told her in a dry voice. Not that he could really take the credit, but if she wanted to give it to him nonetheless, well who was he to refuse? "What did you do to make it work, if I may ask?"

'I had to lift it with my hand like normal,' she began, raising her right hand to demonstrate, 'and this time I had the idea to change its shape into a ball or a cage. From there it wasn't much of a leap to making it a balloon instead since those float all on their own.' Her curled fingers bent together to touch fingertips again. 'Since it's a balloon and is going to float, if I want something inside it to stay and not float away, I added a ribbon and tied it to the ground. Or if I want it following me instead, I can tie the ribbon to myself instead.'

She had not explained the scissoring motion she made to order the feather – or more specifically, this imaginary balloon of hers – to follow her, but it was not that hard to continue the analogy. "And I suppose if you want to change where it stays, you have to cut the ribbon and tie it to something new?" he asked, getting a nod of confirmation. "I have to ask, is it possible for something to 'pop' the balloon? You do not want somebody cancelling your spell by accidentally interacting with it."

'It isn't a real balloon, Professor.'

…Well, all right, then.

Miss Potter gave the feather a sideways glance and a frown. Without warning, the feather started shrinking in size, changing from a foot in length to only a few inches, before reversing the process and growing longer than Filius was tall. 'But if I inflate it and deflate it, I can do something similar to the spell you told us about this morning.'

Filius blinked in astonishment, the emotion marred with a slight thread of nervousness. This was the most fascinating and, yes, unnerving aspect of Miss Potter's magical abilities. Weaving together different movement-related spells into a single function he could understand. There was no way he could ever emulate the process on his own, but there was still a logical connection there. The Locomotion charm had nothing in common with the Shrinking or Engorgement charms, though! How would a spell based on motion, or even the lack thereof, also affect something's physical size?!

And even more when despite her words, he had not taught them anything about the Shrinking charm's theory, wand motion, or incantation. All he had done was mention its existence, and nothing about its opposite! Miss Potter was far from stupid, in fact was clearly as clever as either of her parents if not more so, so deducing that enlarging an object was possible was no great leap. He just did not know how she went from knowing that it could be done straight to making it happen. Hers was a kind of intuition that was rare in the Wizarding World, only possessed by those brave and fool-hardy enough to dive blindly into the unknown depths of spell creation.

That alone was enough to make anyone nervous, especially knowing the disastrous ends many spellcrafters met. A particularity of her speech turned that nervousness into a creeping kind of dread. He had not missed that whenever she wrote about wizards and their world, she never once used the word 'we'. It was always 'you'.

Cleverness, personal drive, and social isolation were ingredients for an explosive potion, and the greater the traits the bigger the inevitable boom. He would never tell Miss Potter, and truthfully he did not think it that good a comparison in the first place, but while mostly she reminded him of Lily and sometimes of James, there were a few times he had looked at her and seen a young, more outspoken Augustus Rookwood.

And Augustus had made the consequences of turning clever wizards into derided outcasts very clear.

He gave Miss Potter's curious glance a small smile in reply. He had failed a lonely young man once upon a time; he was not going to do the same thing to the girl in front of him. How he would help her was another question entirely, and one he did not have a good answer for. The obvious solution would be to help her forge connections with students beyond Miss Perks, who was the definition of a wallflower if he had ever seen one and likewise Muggle-raised, but then he had to tackle another complication. How could one go about changing the opinions of an entire student body? Being a professor meant that in situations such as this one, his words carried less weight than those of another student, not more.

Well, this was thankfully not a problem that required a complete solution right this minute. He, both of them really, had time to think of the best way to help Miss Potter's relationship with her classmates before anything permanent came to pass.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Hazel's stride was determined as she left Professor Flitwick's classroom. She had not thought much of how her schedule overlapped with his, but now she was extremely glad that his office hours were during the last period today. It meant that she only had to wait a short time before talking to the other person in this castle who might be able to help her.

She arrived at her destination at the same time as the bells marking the end of period rang out, so all she had to wait for was the students inside the room to get out of her way. Quickly moving in, she smiled as she saw the familiar purple turban poking out from behind the desk.

Professor Quirrel looked up as the butt of her staff tapped against the stone floor. "Miss Potter? What are you doing here? She hasn't attended a single one of my classes in weeks. What could bring her back now?"

'Hi, Professor. I don't mean to be rude, but I was actually hoping to talk to Marvolo.'

"Wait, what—" The man's face twitched, and now that she knew what she was looking for she thought she could sense when the two personalities switched control. It was not truly a sound, but the best way she could describe it was that it was not too dissimilar from a curtain being drawn. If that curtain could somehow produce an echo and she was listening for that echo from several rooms away.

Hands straightened the robes he wore, and an expression that was more smirk than smile proved beyond a shadow of a doubt who was looking at her. "I was not expecting to see you again so soon, Hazel," Marvolo said in a soft voice. "This is not merely a social call, is it?"

'No, it's not. Do you remember how I said I was going to try my hand at divination?' Marvolo gave her the tiniest nod. 'I succeeded. I found the ruins of a druid village.'

"Druid?" Her stomach dropped at the puzzled tone of his voice, but he did not immediately continue. He blinked rapidly, and even unable to hear his thoughts she could see the wheels in his mind spinning. "…That name sounds familiar, but I can't place it."

If she were honest with herself, she had hoped for recognition, but frustration at not remembering was the the best informed reaction she had gotten from any wizard thus far when she brought up her search. 'Celtic sorcerers. They also served as spiritual leaders and advised the leaders of their clans.'

"Yes, right," he muttered almost to himself. "I must have come across the name when I was a child, before Hogwarts. I don't think I have ever heard them mentioned in the magical world."

'That doesn't surprise me. I think the wizards might have killed them all.' That got his attention, and he impatiently waved his hand for her to elaborate. 'I said I found ruins. I managed to get a vision while I was there, and that vision showed me a group of wizards arguing with them and attacking them. I don't know why, but considering the culture of the druids and the Celts, I think it might have been about how close they were to the nonmagical members of their clans.'

Hazel hoped she was wrong. She did not even know the words for how much she hoped she was wrong. Unfortunately for her peace of mind, the pieces just lined up too neatly. Wizards had killed druids once, and if it could happen one time it could happen more than that. The relationship between druids and their clans meant that them accepting the Statute of Secrecy was a near impossibility, and yet according to Professor Flitwick there was no recorded opposition to wizarding society going into hiding and talking all knowledge of magic with them. The only way that made sense was if the druids simply… were no longer in the picture.

Were they wiped out because of the Statute? Did it happen earlier, for some unrelated reason? She had no way of knowing, and honestly it did not change the most important aspect of this realization anyway.

What really mattered was that there was no one for her to find. No school she could attend or hidden clan who would accept her into the fold. Not even a lonely sage on a remote mountaintop who could give her guidance. She was alone.

…It also meant she was not a druid. Her mother was not a druid. She was just a crippled Muggle-raised witch who could not use a wand, who was stuck making things up as she went along. Whatever lessons her mother might have for her were lost to time. Marvolo had admitted to learning how to do magic without anything to help him when he was younger, but he also told her he still used a wand for most everything nowadays. She thought she was looking for a light to lead her out of the lonely darkness, but now she was having to face the disturbing possibility that any light that might have helped her had burned out a long time ago.

Marvolo's eyebrows rose nearly to the edge of his turban. "Truly? When did this happen?"

'I don't know. Before the Statute of Secrecy was finalized, I think, but beyond that I just don't know.'

"Was there anything distinctive about the wizards? Visible emblems? Was the cut of their robes unusual? Hairstyles? I do not claim to be an expert in wizarding fashion, but details like these might be able to give you a rough timeframe."

The idea of Marvolo reading books about hairstyles throughout the centuries made her want to giggle, but with a herculean effort of will Hazel limited herself to an amused grin. Strangely – perhaps because of the nature of the vision? – the mental image she had of the wizards was far clearer than it had any right to be. She took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips, air becoming glitter that gathered into a sparkly rendition of the wizards she had seen.

"That is a useful talent," he praised after a moment. Marvolo started walking around the images, humming to himself as he did so. "I thought the color was similar, but this makes it a certainty. Plum robes with a silver W on the breast? The leader of this little posse was a member of the Wizengamot."

'What's that?'

"The true leaders of magical Britain. Their membership is hereditary, much like the House of Lords. They are both a legislative and judiciary body; they draft the laws but also judge people who stand accused of breaking those laws." His smile lost any trace of humor it might have held. "Importantly, they are also the group who appoints and can remove the Minister of Magic, which means any Minister who wishes to keep his authority has to make sure he stays in their good graces. It gives them indirect control over the Ministry and therefore all aspects of government."

Oh. That… sounded like a lot.

Marvolo must have seen how overwhelmed she felt by the expression on her face, for he then laughed mirthlessly. "I doubt any of that means much to you now. Just know that they are the group that runs the country, for good or ill. Their decisions are ever made with the ulterior motive to give themselves more power, or at least to keep them from losing any. What is probably more important to you is the timing. Prior to the Wizengamot, governance of wizards in Britain was overseen by local lords who called themselves the Grand Patriarchs. Very unofficial and disorganized. These Patriarchs banded together into this august body back in… eleven…" He frowned and drummed his fingers against his thigh. "1190-something. I forget the exact year."

A member of the Wizengamot could not be running around before the creation of said institution, which meant— 'So they killed the druids sometime between 1190 and 1689, when the Statute was created. Because the druids never would have agreed with that law.'

He snorted. "Oh, I can do better than that. Do you see these pins?" He pointed to the bronze brooches holding the other mens' cloaks closed, each of which was shaped like a closed fist. "That is the insignia of the Fidentes, groups of wizards who served at the pleasure of the Grand Patriarchs and carried out whatever demands were placed upon them. Which typically involved dealing violently with anyone who earned their Patriarch's ire.

"It takes time for customs and traditions to change, for the old way of doing things to be supplanted by the new. These Fidentes were there with their Patriarch, but said leader was now a member of the Wizengamot rather than an independent lord. The practice of retaining enforcers like this was phased out during the second generation of Wizengamot members, primarily due to the expensive lifestyle the average Fidelis felt himself entitled to, which means we are most likely in the thirteen century when the Patriarchs still acted as they had in the preceding—"

Marvolo cut himself off, eyes locked onto one of the illusions she had created and narrowed in some unclear emotion. Hazel waited several seconds for him to continue his thought, but when he stayed lost in his own little world she walked around to search for what had caught his attention so thoroughly. Following his gaze, she noticed that one of the goons had a tattoo on his neck that was halfway peeking above the collar of his tunic, one depicting a rather stylized feather. Nothing that should deserve this much attention.

She gave Marvolo a forceful prod and showed him her question when he turned his glare onto her. 'What does the feather mean?'

Some thought crossed his mind, she could see it in his eyes, but rather than voice it he took a deep breath before letting it out through his nose. He looked back at the tattooed man and licked his lips slowly. "Nothing you need to concern yourself with," he finally replied.

'You spent a whole lot of time looking at it for it to be nothing.'

"That is not what I said," he countered with a smirk. "It is also irrelevant to the discussion at hand. You already have a mystery to occupy your time, and one that will be troublesome enough to solve all on its own."

'Troublesome?' That was an interesting word for him to choose. What more did he know that she was ignorant of?

His smirk widened into a mischievous grin. "Oh, yes. I am not unaware of how much time you have spent looking through the history books in the library, but I am afraid you have been looking in all the wrong places. You see, if you are right about wizards exterminating the druids, it would not be the first atrocity the Wizengamot was involved in, nor will it be the last. Men who lust for power do not enjoy having their actions criticized, so any books that might have been written about those times would not be in circulation for the casual student to come across."

That… lined up far too well with her other suspicions regarding how wizards interacted with history. 'Any book that mentioned them would have been destroyed, wouldn't it?'

"Not quite. Not here." He chuckled at her surprised expression. "It is an interesting aspect of the initial bylaws of Hogwarts. The Founders each had a hand in writing them, as well as the oath each headmaster must swear by before the castle will recognize them as having any legitimate authority. Part of the oath that was written by Rowena Ravenclaw was that the headmaster must ensure the 'accessibility of truth and wisdom' to the students. That includes destroying or permanently removing books added to the library or knowingly allowing anyone else to do so." He shrugged. "A clause that I'm certain more than one headmaster has railed against, but that is neither here nor there. Now, while our illustrious headmaster cannot destroy any knowledge, he is allowed to hide it out of sight. That is, after all, the point of the Restricted Section: to keep forbidden knowledge locked away where it can pose no threat to the powers that be."

After spending several months combing through the library, Hazel would have to be blind as well as mute to have missed the locked doors keeping students out of that wing of the library. 'Madam Pince told me that professors can give students permission to look at books inside,' she reminded him, following that up with her best attempt at adorable puppy dog eyes.

"Professors can give students in their NEWT classes permission," was his retort. "Because the expectation is that students in their last two years of schooling have learned how to fit into this society and not create waves should they uncover information they shouldn't know. They are already aware of the consequences. After all, it is always the nail that sticks up that gets hammered down." He raised one eyebrow as he looked down at her. "You know of what I speak. Girls who ask questions no one wants to answer, who have to be punished for not getting with the program, are not the students who get permission to read books out of the Restricted Section."

He waved for her to leave as he started erasing the blackboard behind him. "I wish you good luck. You're going to need it."

 

[Silently Watches]

Hazel plopped herself at an otherwise unremarkable table, a pile of books dropping onto the table right after her and landing next to a nearly filled notebook. It was, she supposed, in some ways a good thing she had found herself stuck in this school for as long as she had. Most of the classes were less useful than she would have expected from a school all about magic, but even so Professor Flitwick's willingness to be an experimental mentor was paying dividends. He had asked an interesting question at the end of her experimentation with her new balloon spell about the limits of her ghost hand; while she had used it many times to lift or move things, those had all been objects she could have lifted with her physical strength and mostly things she would have needed only one hand for anyway. Lifting multiple heavy tomes was a burden she would have struggled with, but surprisingly neither her ghost hand nor balloon had seemed to be affected by the extra weight.

Not that identifying her limits was why she was sitting in the library. No, she had two different reasons for that. First, and what she would divulge to all but one person who might ask, was reading what books were readily available about the Wizengamot and the overall government that ran the wizards' world. She was not expecting to find the answers to most desperate questions in these books, not after her conversation with Marvolo, but she could get lucky. She was about due a stroke of that, she felt.

And even if not? Marvolo's words and tone had implied more than a little animosity towards them, so if they posed a threat to her she would be well-served by learning about their traditions and methods ahead of time. Even if they were benign towards her, she still found herself curious for the reason behind Marvolo's own distrust.

Her second reason led to why she had chosen this table in particular. It was not as if it was a personal favorite of hers. In fact, it was one she tended to avoid considering its proximity to the one Granger had all but claimed as her own territory. But it made up for that poor neighbor by providing a clear line of sight to the Restricted Section.

Bereft of other clues, she needed to take Marvolo's word that unedited books about the true events of history lurked unknown and unread behind the gates to that wing of the library. She doubted entry was as simple as opening the door and walking in, not when a teacher's permission was required to read any books there. There were some means to prevent unauthorized entry, there had to be, and quite frankly Hazel was in no mood to explain herself to a well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful authority figure. Or McGonagall.

No, she needed to get an idea of what might be waiting for her, a surveillance of sorts. If she could watch Madam Pince letting another student in, she might be able to figure out how many obstacles she was contending with even if she would remain blind as to their nature.

Once more her thoughts drifted to the alter ego sharing Professor Quirrel's body. If he knew what those defenses were, he was keeping that information to himself. After giving her this hint, he had refused to answer any more questions and even pushed – allowed? Switched with? – Professor Quirrel to the fore so as to dodge her inquiry. He seemingly wanted her to figure this out on her own.

Why, though? What did he get out of this? She doubted it was the information itself; if he couldn't walk in and take any book he wanted, she would steal the most ostentatious hat she could find in the whole blasted country and eat it. By if he did not want the facts themselves, it had to be something about her.

Was he testing her on some fashion? If so, in preparation for what? Was he pushing her to remain self-sufficient? Of that he had little need to fear, but she left grasping for why he so concerned about it. Did he get some form of entertainment from her bumbling?

She hoped not. That would give their conversations a decidedly creepy bent, and she would rather not worry about unpalatable ulterior motives from the only person in this whole castle who seemed to understand her.

Pushing those questions refusing her most mysterious ally aside for the moment, she cracked open the topmost of her literary haul. She had no idea when the next NEWT-level student would need to screed the contents of the Restricted Section, and she had too little time to waste twiddling her thumbs. The title Leaves of Gold, A History of the Early Wizengamot, Fifth Edition looked back at her, and she narrowed her eyes at the edition number. Normally she would think nothing of it, but right now it raised any number of suspicions within her. Particularly since she had yet to see a publication year at the start of a single book so far.

Her thoughts halted as desperately needy discontent spiked nearby. Flicking her gaze over her left shoulder, she found a familiar head of bushy brown hair glaring at her over the top of a book easily three inches thick. Hazel shook her head and returned to her own book. Not her problem.

She did not want to sit here and deal with glares all day, but if ignoring Granger was the price of knowledge, she would gladly pay it.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

The soft crackling of the fire beneath the cauldron and the bubbles rising and popping were a soothing counterpoint to the stress coursing through Hazel. This was the problem brewing potions in the middle of the night; sometimes it was difficult noticing small details that turned out to be extremely important. In this case, she had completely misread her astrological chart and thought she was looking at a different row than she wanted. Now she had added more valerian root than she needed, and if she wanted to bring the potion back into balance she needed to work quickly.

As if to taunt her, off to the side she heard the door open with a bang that threatened to make her lose track of her stirring. One hand lifted while she hastily wrote, 'Silence, please. This stage is delicate.'

No words nor thoughts responded to that statement, which gave her a hint as to who might be waiting for her. It was almost certainly one of two people, and while one was more likely than the other, it was the second she was hoping she would see when she had a chance to look. Four, five, six stirs anticlockwise. One, two clockwise. One, two, three, four, five, and six. The flow of bubbles slowed to a gentle simmer, and she sighed in relief as the color of the potion lightened to what she knew in daylight would be a yellowy green but in the crimson light of her campfire sphere was just another shade of red. Finally looking up from her work, she felt her shoulders slump. She knew the chances of her visitor being Marvolo were slim, but he would be preferable to the alternative.

"It is long after curfew, Miss Potter," Snape drawled with a smirk that did not rise to his cold black eyes. "I hope you have a good explanation for this."

Oh, was that all he wanted? She had been worried he would immediately start snapping at her, but if he was giving her a chance to explain the situation, she would not turn it down. 'I needed to brew more Night Eye, but they don't exactly give us a lot of time between the end of dinner and the start of curfew. I would have done it during daylight hours when I'm not in class, except'—she waved around at the walls of the potions classroom—'the room is kind of occupied.'

His eyebrow rose as he read her response, then he scoffed. "There is no potion with that name."

'I don't know what to tell you, then.' She shrugged. 'Maybe it has a different name in English? The woman who taught it to me called it Elixier des Nachtauges, so Night Eye is my best translation. It helps me see in the dark.'

Hazel had thought long and hard over the last couple of weeks about how to deal with any questions about her journeys, ever since her conversation with Professor Flitwick about her suspicions of wizard history. Anyone to whom she had told anything approaching the unvarnished truth had immediately rejected what she had to say, as if it was just too unbelievable to be real.

There was nothing she could do about that, but would some conversations be easier if she held facts back to start? It was not as if she was ashamed of learning the Brewing from hags, but would only telling people the source of her knowledge if they asked make it easier for them to accept that her knowledge itself was accurate? Perhaps it would be worth a try.

Not that she thought it would help with Snape.

"See in the dark?" A sneer followed. "I shouldn't be surprised even a simple Lumos spell is beyond you. What a disappointment you would be to your father."

His eyes fell on the thin stack of papers on the table a couple of feet from her cauldron, and immediately she was worried. Snape had never been anything even close to decent to her, and she had gone through too much work to get these to let him do anything harmful to them. He raised his wand, and she flexed her fingers to create her ghost hand to grab the charts first—

The spectral hand unraveled into thick threads of pale blue light that in turn were sucked into a central point.

Hazel blinked. She had never seen something like that happen to her spells before, for it to be torn apart. Thankfully Snape appeared even more shocked, no doubt because he could not see what happened from her perspective and only knew that his own spell had failed. Curling her fingers again, this time she grabbed her charts and brought them to herself. A quick stack and tap against the desk straightened them out, the routine motion settling her nerves somewhat. 'I spent longer than I wanted to working on these, and I would rather nothing happen to them.'

"Notes on how to set yourself on fire?" he demanded. At least he put his wand away, apparently deciding that the window to do whatever he planned to do had closed.

'Do you remember a few months ago when I asked about a correction chart? And you didn't know what I was talking about? This is what I meant.' She held up the papers, each one divided into segments that had been carefully calculated and transcribed after several nights looking at the stars in the sky. Because Gertrud could not simply send her a list of corrections, oh no; if Hazel wanted to use reference material, she had to fill out all the details herself.

Admittedly, it meant she could have up-to-date corrections whenever she wanted without constantly bothering Gertrud every time, which she knew was the point of the hag's long-distance lesson, but she was allowed to want an easy solution once in a while!

Snape stared at the charts as if he could not comprehend anything she had just said. Strange, considering he was supposed to be an expert in this field. Strange and concerning. She tilted the sheets so he could see them better. 'It calculates the relationship between the planets and the constellations so I can alter the amount of ingredients and the individual steps to account for variability in the ingredients I'm using based on their celestial affinity.'

"What nonsense are you spewing?" demanded Snape, his expression becoming even more condescending if such a thing were possible. "Other idiot students may fall for your pretending, but no one who knows even a modicum about potions would claim something so stupid.

"Out of bounds after curfew, breaking into classrooms, and endangering yourself." He drew his wand again, but this time he only pointed it at the cauldron. Everything within vanished, leaving not a trace that it had ever contained a drop of liquid. "Normally I would give you several weeks of attention, but we both know you think you are too special to adhere to mere rules. Instead," he said with a cruel glitter in his black eyes, "I think taking away, oh, a hundred points from Hufflepuff would be appropriate. And if I find you throwing rubbish into a cauldron again, it will be double that. Now get out of my sight before I decide to have McGonagall escort you back to your dorm."

Hazel narrowed her eyes at him, but after a moment she shoved her charts into her satchel, grabbed both her satchel and her staff, and walked out the door. Morgan hopped onto her shoulder as she passed the shelf where he had perched himself and chirped reassuringly to her.

I think I have every reason to be upset, she told him. This place calls itself a school, but both Snape and McGonagall act like they want nothing more than to make my learning experience as difficult as it can possibly be. Sidonia said classrooms were available for students to use when classes weren't in session. I guess Snape never got that memo.

Fine, then. If he doesn't want me to use his precious classroom, I will find somewhere else to practice the Brewing. She huffed to herself before a sharp smile crossed her face. And I won't explain anything else to Snape in the first place.

First he gave me a fail on my essay on essence resonance, and now this? He can pretend I'm making things up and he's some unrecognized genius, but it's clear he doesn't know nearly as much about potion-making as the hags do.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Hazel pushed the doors of the library open as quietly as she could and glanced around. Her caution was probably unnecessary – she had yet to find Madam Pince lurking in the library even a minute after closing time, and in fact the librarian started ushering people out about ten minutes beforehand – but she would hate to attract attention with what she planned to do.

After watching the Restricted Section for a couple of weeks, she had not seen a single NEWT student enter that wing of the library. Madam Pince had gone in by herself a few times, typically holding a piece of parchment when she entered and returning with a book, but never a student specifically. Madam Pince's card catalog had some books listed with an 'R' as their location rather than a numbered bookshelf, which raised the possibility that students were never allowed in the Restricted Section by themselves. Did any student who wanted a restricted book have to get permission for each title specifically? It made sense, in a way; it would not be difficult for Madam Pince to make a list of which books were requested by which student, and that would allow teachers to review what those students were investigating. It also matched Marvolo's own warnings, because if someone was starting to look too deeply into topics best left undisturbed?

All it would take was one conversation with the librarian for that student to lose access to their research materials.

Scanning the room as she made her way to the gate revealed no one laying in wait, not that she was supremely worried about being seen. She had walked the entire way here under the effects of her ignore-me smoke and Night Eye, so if someone could spot her they basically deserved to catch her. And yet, looking at the gates again, she wanted more.

This was not the first night she had snuck into the Restricted Section, but what she was about to do was still new enough that she took several minutes to get herself in the right frame of mind. When she first created her smoke, she had filled herself with all the emotions she had ever felt being alone in a crowd. That was good, but now she wanted something even stronger. Being ignored by people would not hide her from whatever magic spell was in place to monitor unauthorized entry.

No, she needed to be ignored by everything.

The feeling of being alone fell away as she looked deeper. That was not the deepest isolation she had ever felt. Back when she lived with Petunia and Vernon, she had come to accept that she would never be seen – that no one would ever want to see her – and her anger and sorrow at her situation had faded. All that had been left was cold emptiness.

That same apathy filled her and overflowed, the grey smoke surrounding her thickening and darkening to the black of burning plastic. She stepped forwards, her movements sluggish as if she were moving through treacle. The handle of the gate taunted her, almost as if it knew that trapped in her spell this way she was unable to grab hold of it or push or pull it, but a slowed gesture called forth her ghost hand. That, thankfully, was still able to interact meaningfully with the world.

Only when she was ten feet past the gate, which she closed behind her, did she release her hold on that coldness and let her ignore-me smoke fade back to its usual color. She did not plan on letting the spell go completely, not when she had spotted Mr. Filch patrolling on her way to the library tonight, but at least this way she was able to open books.

Pulling her campfire sphere from her satchel, she ignited it as she walked back to the shelves where she had been reading from for the last several nights. She knew she was close. A few nights back, she had found a book about the rise of the Wizengamot as a formal organization and the early years following its creation; more importantly for her purposes, it also revealed that not everyone had been on board with this new governing body. That non-human peoples like the goblins and the British hag covens would resist being told what to do by a bunch of stuffy old wand-wavers was no surprise, but if this book were accurate there were other human people who likewise had disagreements with this new state of affairs.

Now, the book had not said all that the same way she viewed it; in its words, there were 'sects of nontraditional wizards' who had 'rebelled' against the Patriarchs-turned-Wizengamot members, but reading between the lines was not exactly hard. It would also explain the scene she had witnessed in Wistman's Wood, although that did not look like a rebellion per se. If she were right, the druids had wanted nothing to do with these new would-be overlords and told them so.

And the wizards had not taken rejection well.

Pulling her notebook from her satchel and the book from the stacks, she flipped through both of them to reach where she had left off the night before. If telling the wizards to go shove it had started a conflict between druids and wizards, and if there were no more druids, she could only predict one way this could end. Confirmation would be nice.

A solid timeline, and especially a time and place for said ending, would be even better.

And then she would have a destination for her next excursion.

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This is a great time to reveal (or maybe just confirm for some of you) that wizards don't know how to adjust the potency of potion ingredients directly the way hags do. They compensate in other ways. If we look back to book 3 for an example, specifically Neville's botched Shrinking Solution, we see this demonstrated clearly. Hermione helped him fix his potion by adding more ingredients to counteract what he had already done. Hazel, on the other hand, along with anyone else using the hags' Brewing method would deviate from the directions in amounts of ingredients to use and the actual stirring and timing steps. She would not tell him to add anything but would work with what he already had in his cauldron.

Now, ideally if a potions professor had a student who was claiming to be ALCHEMICALLY altering a recipe on the fly, he would advise her to talk to Dumbledore as literally the only person on staff who knows a single thing about alchemy, but… it's, you know, Snape.

 

[Silently Watches]

"I think we should have time on the evening of January nineteenth," Pomona said, looking over a calendar of the upcoming year with Miss Smith. "It's the full moon that weekend, and it would be interesting for the group to see what effect that has on Bursting Bellblossum bulbs and flowers. I believe I have a batch growing off-season in Greenhouse 15, but if not there are ways to get them to mature in time."

"Wouldn't that interfere with their magical properties, though? You taught us that a few years back."

She smiled at the young woman's question. "Indeed, but that is only an issue if we wanted to use the plants in potions or to ward off blood beetles. Since we don't need it for anything but a demonstration, using enriched soil and a quick-growth charm will not create any true consequences—"

The greenhouse door opening cut her off, and Pomona glanced up from the calendar. She had thought all the members of the Gardening Club were already present, so unless it was another staff member who wanted to speak with her or one of the club members, she could not think of anyone who might have a reason to be here.

Spotting a very familiar first-year with a staff was still a surprise.

"Oh good." She turned to look a Miss Smith, who brushed a lock of purple hair behind one ear. "Potter seemed to have an interest when I invited her, but I wasn't sure if she would come to a meeting before the end of term. I wasn't looking forward to tracking her down after the holidays."

"I think I know what you mean. She can be quite…" Pomona had to discard a few inappropriate terms before settling on, "elusive."

Ignoring her club leader's own choice of words – although in the privacy of her own mind, she agreed that 'bleeding ghost' was an apt description – Pomona had to admit she had no idea how Miss Potter accomplished it. She had wanted to have talk more with the girl to give her additional nudges to returning to her classes, but whenever she went looking or sent one of the prefects to find Miss Potter, the girl was absolutely nowhere to be found. At first she was sure it was just happenstance, but there was no way that could be the case.

The only way Miss Potter could be this hard to find was because she did not want to be found.

Not for the first time, she wondered why in the world the Sorting Hat had thought Miss Potter was a Hufflepuff at heart. Her work ethic was impeccable, had to be in order for her to accomplish what she had despite the handicap of not being able to cast proper magic, but friendliness? Loyalty? Pomona had seen no signs of these traits.

Not that it was entirely the girl's fault. Some of it, possibly most, was due to her own attitude, but Severus was not helping. She still did not understand how being out after curfew deserved having a full hundred points taken away from her house, and Severus refused to elaborate. She had complained to Minerva because he was being completely unreasonable, but if she were honest with herself she did not expect the punishment to be reverted. That was ultimately the headmaster's call, and Albus had not overturned Severus's punishments for a very long time.

In that light, with Hufflepuff house barely hiding their fury at a member who seemed unconcerned by their anger and possibly unaware of even why they were angry in the first place, to see her coming out of her shell at all and interacting with somebody besides Miss Perks was a relief.

"How did you find her and convince her to come to the meeting in the first place?" she finally asked Miss Smith.

The prefect gave her a shrug. "Finding her wasn't hard. I noticed her tutoring Perks in Potions and sat down with them. I didn't need to convince her to do anything, either, just made the offer and explained what the club was about."

Pomona's eyebrows rose. "Considering nobody else can even find her, that is more of an achievement than you realize."

"Not really. I'm almost certain she avoids the other prefects. That she hangs around when I'm nearby just means I haven't burned that bridge yet."

"You almost make it sound like her attitude is everyone else's fault." Her tone was not accusatory, necessarily, but she knew it was incredulous. As she had overheard some prefects saying a few years back, when one person acted like an arse, they were just an arse. When everyone was like that, it was more likely to be your own doing.

And Miss Potter certainly had a number of people turned against her.

Miss Smith frowned and looked at nothing for a moment. "From what I understand, she turned the rest of her year against her on the first day because she was 'telling stories'. Because she's the Girl-Who-Lived and wants to play it up? Because she wanted attention? Nobody knows for sure. That attitude then spread to several other years to varying degrees. Personally, I'm wondering how tall those tales really were." She looked up and met Pomona's eyes. "Nobody likes being called a liar, and it doesn't leave a good first impression."

That was more than a little ominous, and Pomona cleared her throat to start the meeting so she would not have to dwell too long on it.

She was even happier now that Albus was finally back from Geneva. Both because the world did not have to worry about Greece, Turkey, and Venice starting a three-way war over some unclear but undoubtedly small issue and because he could now be the one to deal with Miss Potter. She and Minerva still did not see eye to eye about how best to handle the girl, but if Albus Dumbledore of all people could not get a straight answer out of Miss Potter about what it would take for her to go back to Minerva's class, no one could.

The sooner that talk happened, the better as far as she was concerned, but Albus had insisted that it would only happen after the start of the new term so he could catch up on everything else that had happened during his absence. Perhaps he would have made time if Miss Potter had signed up to stay at the castle for the holidays, but instead she was headed back home to her family.

It was a massive relief, honestly. A peaceful holiday, and then next term everything should be back to normal.

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"Come on, Hazel! We don't want to be late!"

Hazel rolled her eyes with a smile as she followed Sally-Anne out the front doors of the castle. They might not have been the first ones out the door, but there were still many more students sitting around behind them. Some of them were staying at the castle for the holidays, but surely not all of them. They had plenty of time.

Not that she was going to bring that up. Sally-Anne had been excited since she awoke about going back home and seeing her parents for the first time since coming to the school, and Hazel had no reason to burst her bubble. Instead she simply walked along as her friend climbed into a white carriage hooked up to a black, nearly skeletal winged horse. The creature turned its head to stare at her with cold blue eyes before pulling its lips back to reveal a mouth full of sharp needle-like teeth.

Pleasant, she thought sarcastically to Morgan as she climbed into the carriage next to Sally-Anne. I will never understand wizards. You would assume they would think twice about using zombie horses to pull their carts, but nope, clearly not.

Sally-Anne rattled on for the entirety of the short ride from the castle down to the train station on the far side of the grounds about what plans her family had and the traditions she was looking forward to take part in, and the cheer was infectious enough Hazel could not help but smile along.

It sadly did not change the worry and slight dread in her heart at her own plans.

Arriving at the station, Hazel tapped Sally-Anne's shoulder and motioned for the blonde to come with her off to the side. 'I hope the holidays are everything you wish them to be,' she wrote honestly, 'and I'll look forward to hearing all about them when you get back.'

"Get back?" asked Sally-Anne. "What do you mean? W-Why are you talking like you're leaving now? We still have the train ride to London, except you aren't coming with me, are you?"

She shook her head in answer to the unvoiced question. 'I have my own things I need to take care of, and riding a train for eight hours would hinder that. Once I talk to a couple of people here, I'll head out my own way.'

"W-Where are you going?"

'France, then Ireland.' She felt it when Sally-Anne picked up on her frown, causing her to shake her head. 'I told myself a long time ago that I wasn't going to head to Ireland for a couple of reasons, but now I have to. I'm not looking forward to the journey, nor what I'm going to find there.'

"What is she talking about? If you already know what's there, then why…?"

'Because some things we have to see with our own eyes in order to accept them.' She waved off whatever words Sally-Anne had coming to mind, not interested in hearing them even should the other girl not say them out loud. 'It's something personal that I can't put off any longer.'

"…Does it have to do with your necklace?"

Hazel's hand rose to brush against the iron pendant she had picked up from the razed village in Wistman's Wood, surprise shooting through her. She had not expected her friend to pick up on that. Unsure what to write, she simply gave Sally-Anne a nod.

Sally-Anne frowned and looked away, fingers twining and untangling in turn. "When you come back, are you going to tell me what it's about? She has been tight-lipped about it ever since she got it, and it's starting to worry me. Something's wrong, but I don't know what or how to help."

She raised her hand to respond, but her fingers pulled back before she started writing anything. Discussing the details of what had happened to the druids was not something she planned on doing with the wizards surrounding her, but it was not as if Sally-Anne was truly a witch like most of their classmates. She had grown up in the wider world just like Hazel had. Sally-Anne, Mister Filch, Marvolo, even Professor Flitwick; those who were strange and outsiders in some way were the only people she thought she might be able to trust with these discoveries.

'I can,' she finally agreed.

"Okay. I'm still not sure about all this, but Hazel knows what she's doing. Be safe?"

'Didn't plan on doing anything else.'

Sally-Anne nodded a couple of times, then without warning she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Hazel in a tight hug. "I guess I'll see you when we get back, then. If you can, maybe ride the train back here so we can talk?"

A series of soft pats to the other girl's back was her response, and finally Sally-Anne let go of her and walked onto the train, though not without a few backwards glances. Alone again except for Morgan, Hazel sighed and breathed out a cloud of grey smoke.

That went better than I was afraid it would, she admitted to her feathered friend. She spun on one heel and started walking back towards the castle. Mipsy had been more than willing to pack a basket with as much food as it could magically be made to hold when she made the request the previous night, so now all she had to do was pick it up and make her way to the forest outside of Compiègne to share it with the commune. It had been a while since she had seen her friends living there, and she even made sure she asked for enough food to be packed to lay out a feast even if Fenrir and his people were visiting while on their rounds of helping out their fellow werewolves.

A day there, maybe two, then it would be time to resume her trek through the Emerald Isle.

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Wind rushed through Hazel's hair as she held on for dear life. This was not the first time she had hitched a ride on a train, but those she had ridden in France had been far smoother on their tracks than this one was. It almost made her regret choosing to ride on top of the train rather than between the cars, no matter how uncomfortable she knew traveling in such a way could be.

Thankfully, she did not have to live with her mistake for much longer. She could see the road she had marked on her map for the next leg of her journey. Pulling both her legs under her, she sprang from the top of the train car—

—and dropped into a roll as the ground appeared directly beneath her. Getting her clothes soaked through from the damp ground was not her first choice, but it was better than falling flat on her face. Whenever she jumped from on top of a vehicle, she did not continue moving at the same speed as whatever she had been riding, but the transition from moving to still could throw off her balance nonetheless. Pushing herself to her feet with the aid of her staff, she let her magic wring her clothes dry before she and Morgan continued down the gravel road.

For all her previous fears about encountering malicious creatures in Ireland, her trip had been surprisingly uneventful. So much so that she was forced to wonder about what all kinds of spirits and creatures had been included in the curse beneath Glastonbury Tor that locked away the road the 'Great Lords of the Fae' had used to travel to the mortal world. She had yet to encounter anything fae-esque, not even another redcap trying to bludgeon her to death!

The fog drifting around her diffused the already soft dawn light into something ethereal, appropriate for her destination she supposed. The entire reason she was here in Ireland in the first place was to visit Moycullen Bog. On the surface, it was nothing special; a marsh that lay a short distance west of Galway. She doubted there was much to find there, at least with her eyes.

Several centuries earlier, that would have been a different story.

She already knew that when the Grand Patriarchs had remade themselves into the Wizengamot, there was a scattering of other magic-users who did not want to go along with this plan of yoking themselves to a bunch of rich wizards. Wizards she could only guess were even bigger jerks than the not-fabulously-wealthy variety. This refusal to give the self-styled nobles the time of day was enough to be considered rebels against the wizards' new way of life, and conflict ensued.

And as far as she could tell from the very few books that even went mentioned the subject she had found in the Restricted Section, the final battle between the wizards and those who refused to follow along happened right here, in this very bog. While the Irish wizards revolted against their English overlords earlier than the rest of the country had, back in the thirteenth century it was still firmly under English rule, so it was not too terribly surprising that the English wizards had pursued the druids – and presumably anyone else who felt similarly to them – across the Irish Sea. Dissent towards their proclaimed right to rule could not be tolerated.

That was were the story ended. No further details were given, but at that point Hazel did not need much more information. The fact that this was the last conflict between the two groups said more or less everything there was to say.

Elfriede had mentioned how the hags overall despised wand-wavers, and Fenrir was just one of many werewolves who held a grudge against the wizards who had cast them out of society because of their curse. If the wizards of today treated them even a fraction as badly as those of the past had the druids, she could not blame anyone for hating the wizarding world and anyone associated with it.

She felt pretty angry herself.

The vast moor she found herself walking through looked not all that different from any other she had seen on her travels, and it was neither plaque nor tombstone nor even scars in the trees that told her she had arrived at her destination. It was a figure in the distance. A figure who at first blush looked like a cloaked wizard out on a walk in the early morning light, but no wizard she had seen thus far had clothing that melted away into the mist itself or was capable of fading out of sight and reappearing several feet away.

Hazel eyed the obvious spirit warily, but the fear that even earlier this year had filled her when she encountered humanoid spirits was weak and far away. Was it her experience with how threatening her star knife was to spirits? Was it the fact that despite trying to eat her on multiple occasions, she found them less dangerous than her fellow humans? Or was it the fatigue from spending the last few days pushing herself to get to Moycullen as soon as possible?

Honestly, it did not matter overmuch. So long as it did not try to harm her, she was willing to live and let exist.

After the spirit wandered out of sight, she continued for another hundred feet or so, then she crouched down and let her fingers sink into the marshy ground. Closing her eyes, she took several deep breathes before reaching out past the veil of banal reality. Show me what you are hiding, she demanded, anger and hope and desperation at finally seeing the truth overwhelming her good sense. Show me what happened here all those centuries ago!

Hazel opened her eyes, not sure what she would find. The world that greeted her was cloaked in fog, just as the real world was, but instead of a blue sky above she saw bloody red with a pitch black sun shining on the horizon. That black sun still burned away the fog near her, and as that fog cleared she finally saw them. Heavy wooden posts buried in the ground, horizontal lines carved into them spelling out names in unreadable runes. Dozens stood in front of her, each one erected in memory of someone who had died in this bog.

The fog continued rolling back, and as it retreated she saw more posts. Dozens became hundreds that became thousands. A field of the dead stretching out to the horizon and beyond. Genocide on a scale she had only read about before, and all of them her own people.

She threw herself back to run away from the vision that she had asked for so foolishly, and the motion pulled her out of the way as clawed fingers slashed through the air. The misty spirit from before stood in front of her, and while it had no face proper what stood for its eyes glared at her with long-buried fury. It reared back for another swipe, but before it could lash out again she met violence with violence. A swing of her staff slammed against the spirit in its chest, and the man made from fog was shoved several feet away.

Hazel shot to her feet before the spirit could recover from the blow, her star knife already glittering in her other hand. A flick of her wrist sent it flying into the shoulder of the entity. She was not expecting the subsequent explosion of air, as if the spirit was a massive blimp squeezed into the form of a man. It was enough to throw her off her feet and rolling her along the wet ground once more.

Furious twittering came from near the spirit, and still laying on her back she looked over to find Morgan hovering in the air and lashing out at where the spirit's face would be. The spirit was trying to ward her friend away, but strangely it seemed far less willing to hurt him than her.

She supposed that was not much of surprise. She would rather hurt a wizard than an animal defending their human, too.

Raising one hand to her mouth, she whistled between her fingers. It was a skill she had started working on not all that long after discovering a way out of Hogwarts, one that required only a few minutes' research but far more hours' worth of practice. It was not even something she intended to use to command Morgan, just something to call for help should something happen to her again. Like, say, a couple of bigoted wizards thinking they had the right to attack her on a staircase just because she was different.

Regardless of why she originally wanted to learn how to whistle, Morgan heard the signal and retreated from the spirit. Only as far as her shoulder, though, and once his perch was secure he hissed back at her attacker. Climbing back to her feet, she looked over her opponent. The shoulder she had attacked was gone, as was the arm it was connected to and a semicircle where most of the spirit's chest and a chunk of its abdomen had been. It was as if an enormous mouth had clamped on and taken a bite.

I was not the one looking for a fight, she warned the spirit, but that does not mean I can't or won't defend myself. We can keep going until one of us is dead, or you can walk away. Your choice.

Despite the fact that she had no voice and had never learned to talk, the way the fog man turned to her made her think she had been heard nonetheless. How was it that spirits and animals could understand her when no living being could? That was something she just could not explain, nor did she have much hope that anyone else could.

The spirit had no face, not really, but the two swirls of mist that sat where eyes would on a human face shifted as if looking her up and down. They then froze when they landed on her staff. Drifting upwards, it raised its remaining arm and pointed at the length of maple.

No words nor thoughts came to her, and yet she understood what it wanted. I crafted it myself. I found a tree that vibrated with magic and struck a bargain. A promise that I would take one of its seed pods and plant it in good soil far from that forest, and in return it would let me take one of its branches. I needed neither chisel nor wand to make it, only my will and the time to let it get to know me.

The fog man staggered towards her, the edges of the injury she had caused growing ragged as she watched, as if it was trying to heal and restore itself. She had no doubt the spirit could do so – her star knife had burned away a substantial portion of Peeves, but after several weeks he seemed to be back to normal if a little jumpier than he had been the first time she encountered him – but not quickly enough to achieve anything if she needed to end it right now. Another star knife appeared in her hand, but still she shifted her grip on the staff so she could stretch it out towards the spirit.

You can look, even touch if you want to, but no funny business.

If her suspicions were right, letting the spirit examine her staff might even let them achieve some measure of peace. This would not be the first spirit she had encountered that had been born from a mass grave, but unlike the scoured clearing this was not a variety of species who hated humanity as a whole. This fog man hated wizards specifically, and for a perfectly understandable reason.

Except she was no wizard.

The fog man ran its hand over the head of the staff and up and down the shaft, the motions gentle as if long-forgotten memories were bubbling to the surface. After several minutes it stepped back only to stare at her once again. This time, however, its thoughts were its own. She could not tell quite what it wanted.

Despite her concern, it did not appear to desire an explanation or a response to some unheard question. Instead it moved, not backwards nor to the sides but outwards until it had faded into the fog surrounding them. Alone again, Hazel sighed before turning to glance at the bird sitting on her shoulder. She expected Morgan to make some sound, but he was turning his own head back and forth to look all around them. Something still had him on edge, but despite looking around herself she saw nothing out of place.

What's wrong? The fog man is gone. It's just us here—

A gale sprang up from nowhere, the fog spinning like a tornado and wrapping around her until she could barely move. What are you doing, she demanded. We had an understanding!

The winds did not respond, but something shifted. She felt a pull on her neck, and a moment later the iron pendant she had found at the ruined village in the depths of Wistman's Wood was floating gently despite the roaring wind. A dim light ignited in the depths of the black metal, growing brighter until the pendant burning a brilliant red as if it had come straight from the forge.

As the glow reached its peak, Hazel felt a large pair of hands press against her shoulder blades. A deep voice started speaking, unintelligible words rising and falling in a regular cadence. Like a prayer, or an incantation.

She tried to jump away, but her feet could no longer feel the earth beneath her. Aiming at a pitch of ground she could barely see through the grass and dirt whipping in the wind, she tried pushing herself there, but no matter how her mind strained the winds refused to release her. Let me go!

Her mental scream went unheard or unheeded. The voice grew stronger, echoing in the winds that were nearly enough to deafen her. It was loud enough that her bones rattled with each word.

And then… it all stopped. The voice was silent. The winds vanished, dropping Hazel to the ground from where they had lifted her a foot or so into the air. Her staff was the only reason she did not collapse. Morgan flew frantically around her, his fear at what had happened warring with his fear for her safety.

And her skin tingled with some strange magic.

Morgan, I… I don't feel so good—

A spark flashed into existence and raced across her nerves, leaving only unbearable pain behind. Her legs gave out beneath her. The ground raced up towards her.

And day became night as she was engulfed in darkness.

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…Oh dear. I'll need to work on the next chapter a little faster than this one, won't I?