there's also the Head Boy and Girl
Though the authority these 26 students have is questionable
We know at least 4 ghosts have roles, but seemingly no actual jobs as far as we tell
And only one painting seems to be doing an actual job
Spells in Silence (Harry Potter)
- Thread starter Silently Watches
- Start date
Though the authority these 26 students have is questionable
We know at least 4 ghosts have roles, but seemingly no actual jobs as far as we tell
And only one painting seems to be doing an actual job
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chosen from a male and female prefect in 7th year. They are part of the 24 prefects.
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
Quidditch Captains apparently can also be made Head Boy/Girl. We know James was Head Boy even though Remus was the prefect for his year.
Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
Who in their right mind would make James Head Boy?
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
.....Dumbledore?
At what point was Dumbledore ever in his right mind?
Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
Damn, my man got held back alot/jk
- Location
- Tromso, Norway.
Mobile keyboard at work.
Ch. 45, Forgotten Tragedies
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
yacov
Lurking and sometimes blurting
- Location
- Clogging a drain
When someone is doing things differently than you are teaching, and is referencing things in a different language, it might behoove you to ask for sources just in case.
Then again speaking in a different language was Hazel's mistake as the Wizarding World of Britain has proven. Obviously the Wizards on this one island know all the magical knowledge worth knowing in the world.
Then again speaking in a different language was Hazel's mistake as the Wizarding World of Britain has proven. Obviously the Wizards on this one island know all the magical knowledge worth knowing in the world.
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FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Snape didn't even check the potion, and essentially destroyed a student's private property. That man is just so detestable in every conceivable way!
This will probably have more adverse reactions on her relationship with her House. Frankly at this rate I hope Sprout snaps at Snape for nuking her attempts to get Hazel included with the Hufflepuffs. He may find his plant based potion supply suddenly cut off or a lot more... lively than usual.
Funny enough, I think what Hazel is doing with the ingredients makes potion making even more like cooking, turns it more into an art form than a science.
Can Hazel pass through walls now if she tried!? 👀
This will probably have more adverse reactions on her relationship with her House. Frankly at this rate I hope Sprout snaps at Snape for nuking her attempts to get Hazel included with the Hufflepuffs. He may find his plant based potion supply suddenly cut off or a lot more... lively than usual.
Funny enough, I think what Hazel is doing with the ingredients makes potion making even more like cooking, turns it more into an art form than a science.
Can Hazel pass through walls now if she tried!? 👀
I know that in universe only a few days have passed but out of universe after 14 chapters and 2 years I'm just so ready for Hazel to pack up and leave the Wizards to Voldemort. She has no connection to them aside from Sally-Anne and no reason to want to protect them.
I was excited in the beginning to see what she could do with synthesizing new methods of magic but almost every chapter since the sorting hat is just Wizards bashing on Hazel (sans Flitwick and of all people Voldemort).
There's more interesting magic to learn out there with Hags, Centaurs, possibly Vampires and Goblins if she can find some amenable to what she does. Also other magical cultures might have a more open minded view of what she does, such as the magical traditions of the Native Americans, Africa, India, or China.
I was excited in the beginning to see what she could do with synthesizing new methods of magic but almost every chapter since the sorting hat is just Wizards bashing on Hazel (sans Flitwick and of all people Voldemort).
There's more interesting magic to learn out there with Hags, Centaurs, possibly Vampires and Goblins if she can find some amenable to what she does. Also other magical cultures might have a more open minded view of what she does, such as the magical traditions of the Native Americans, Africa, India, or China.
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- Location
- Tromso, Norway.
Given the troll attack has happened this is some amount of time after Halloween.
That honestly just makes my point that much worse. I know that this is one of the hang ups of serial writing and that Dumbledore is very much hands off but having both the students and teachers bashing on her for a month or two just isn't very fun to read. Especially since it's been two irl years of it. It's very good writing and SW is a talented writer. But it's just very demoralizing reading it.
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Speak for yourself. I enjoy seeing Hazel find ways to outmaneuver the bigoted humanocentrists.
I am speaking for myself. I in no way speak for anyone else but myself. The issue for me is that as far as I can see there's not been much outmaneuvering. I would love to see Hazel outmaneuver Snape and McGonagel but nothing has been done to the former and avoiding the latter doesn't feel much like outmaneuvering.
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Yeah, snape was very himself here. Hazel admires she wasn't taught English potions, and gave the original name she translated from. Astronomy is taught in hogwarts for a reason, and this student was explicitly using it to work with non-standard potions. At the bare minimum he should have asked if she had some from previous batches, to see if it was a thing. I'm not sure how the hufflepuffs would react to this. While the loss of points will hurt, proving the potion is real would make her the victim here and buy her some good will.
Cecylene
Eternal Idea Engine
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- He/They
If ever there was a year for the Philosopher's Stone to be relevant, this would be it. Because this is like the one year when Hazel has a decent chance of actually learning that Wizards do have an Alchemy practice.
0th Law
The Promethean Rose
- Location
- 5 Minutes into the Future
- Pronouns
- They/Them
On the bright side, Snape did at the very least wait until Hazel had finished doing her thing. Which does make sense, as he is a potions master, despite... waves hand at Snape's Snape-ness.
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Then he lost any points that gave him by vanishing something he didn't even examine and wasn't a class project. I doubt he'll give her that courtesy next time and just skip straight to the destruction of property.
He might have had a leg here if he confiscated it for being past curfew, but he didn't.
Thanks for the chapter!
feauxen
I know everything and nothing. I'm very confused.
- Location
- Yes.
- Pronouns
- Human/Person/Thing
So he's not exactly incorrect to say that punishing her for several weeks would be "giving her attention," but I'm pretty sure he actually meant to say "detention" and then had a weird slip of the tongue.
Wow. This one threw me for a loop. My initial thought was that the trio was up to their canon shenanigans and Hermione was desperately trying to research the Philosopher's Stone in that book she checked out "weeks ago for a bit of light reading." Then I remembered that Hazel is fem!Harry not some AU character so there is no trio to do canon shenanigans, but since Hermione checked it out in canon for light reading in what seems to have been a move completely unrelated to the Flamel thing this is probably just her actually enjoying (or trying to enjoy) said "light reading."
I wasn't getting that feeling from the spell, given that the fact she couldn't physically open the gate was still a problem she had to overcome with her ghost hand. There's also the fact that the intent behind this spell is being ignored, unseen, unnoticed. Phasing through solid matter is kind of conceptually unrelated to that unless you're some kind of metagaming scientist of munchkinnery who can convince yourself that being ignored hard enough means that not even the laws of physics are paying attention to you. And Hazel's good, but that just isn't how she rolls.
iirc Silently mentioned shortly after Hazel arrived, or maybe even when she resolved to go to Hogwarts but just leave if she didn't like it, that Hazel Potter wanting to just up and leave Hogwarts might run into some unexpected problems. And here we enter my speculation on the subject, but those problems could easily be something like Dumbledore not wanting to lose track of her again and freaking the fuck out just a little bit, not to mention that he's probably by now devised at least one method of more reliably keeping track of her over international distances by now so she's unlikely to be able to just pop back to Germany and have done with it.
Hazel wandering around outside of the grounds outside of class hours in such a fashion that no one tends to actually notice she's gone missing is one thing. Hazel just suddenly going missing would be quite another.
And all of that's failing to mention that her lessons with Flitwick are quite productive and she is still learning plenty. Sure, some of the teachers are horrible, but Hazel's not the sort to let a thing like that stop her from figuring out more about how to work her magic.
The unfortunate thing about being thought a liar is that no one will be inclined to believe her side of the story, even if she's got proof. It'd be an uphill battle even if she hadn't just lost them 100 points and thus didn't look like she was making up excuses and/or stealing someone else's work and passing it off as her own. But with that wrinkle? There's not a chance. And even that best-case scenario where she was explaining herself to someone other than the two people in her house that actually pay attention to a single word she spell-writes is unlikely for the simple reason that she's by now resolved to just not bother with them and their incredibly rude opinions of her.
Honestly, this whole "Hazel is being honest and damn near everyone hasn't noticed" is reminding me of a quote from Altered Carbon: "When everybody lies, telling the truth isn't just rebellion. It's an act of revolution." She's telling everyone a truth that they just aren't ready to hear because they're so inundated in their societally-enforced lies that most people have forgotten were actually lies in the first place, and is thus being treated much like revolutionaries are often treated: ostracized at best and treated as the herald of a violent and bloody revolution at worst. She's honestly lucky at this point that most people just think she's full of beans, because if the wrong sort start to notice that she's actually kind of onto something...well it's not for nothing that Voldemort himself is personally interested in her line of inquiry.
Yeah, that would mean a bit more if he didn't then slap on his "it's a Potter" blinders (basically just a Snape-shaped idiot ball he balances on his head, honestly) and accused her of being a dangerous potioneer who has no clue what she's doing and is frequently in danger of setting herself on fire. It's enough to make me wonder why on Earth he didn't just vanish her potion sight-unseen and have done with it, because the viciousness and utter lack of respect he displayed in the rest of the conversation implied that he probably wanted to do exactly that. The only potential reason I can come up with why he didn't is that he was caught off-guard enough by her presence and warning that he forgot to abandon all common sense, decency, and basic fucking courtesy because Hazel Potter was the last person he expected to find in his classroom after curfew.
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I feel like that would have the benifit of him actually paying attention to her. I feel like SW mentioned that he is well intentioned he just isn't paying attention to her at all. Once he does then I think we'll start to see progress as I'm hoping he isn't so stuck in how magic is to be done as McGonigel and doesn't have a hate boner for her like Snape.