Distant voices filtered through a haze of sleep, and Hazel blinked her eyes open. Everything was blurry for a moment until she finally pushed through the last vestiges of her tiredness. She sat in the corner of a small storeroom, nestled between burlap sacks of corn and wheat, with boxes and barrels blocking her line of sight of the door that led to the hallway. It was a room not far from the Hufflepuff common room on the way towards the Great Hall. A room she could actually enter without the power of speech.
She pushed herself up to her feet and stretched, Morgan rustling in the divot she had made on the top of a bag. It was not the most comfortable place she had ever slept, but she had put up with worse. Including the actual bed she was supposed to sleep in.
Magic scoured her body and clothes clean, and now presentable she clambered over the wooden containers that had served as a convenient curtain from anyone who might have thought to open the door. Cracking that same door open, she peeked out and nodded to herself when she saw the empty hallway. It was hard to say for sure what time it was outside, not down here in the tunnels of stone that made up the castle's 'dungeons', but she suspected the voices she heard were from other people waking up and making their way to the Great Hall. That was the best place for her to go and wait for the rest of her yearmates, and it had been her first idea for where she should sleep overnight. Unfortunately, when she tested the door she had found them closed and locked. Even worse, the doors were protected by magic that prevented her skeleton key spell from affecting them.
Magic similar to what was over the common room, she had discovered. After trying and failing to break into the Great Hall, she had returned to the row of barrels. The hope in her heart had been that while the key did not work on the Great Hall, it
might do some good in bypassing the barrels. Sadly, that hope had been washed by yet another torrent of vinegar. Nor could she jump into the common room proper, or anywhere else in the castle for that matter. The entire building possessed the same anti-teleportation spells as were found over Diagon Alley.
Once the burst of panic at having her jumping totally negated – at being trapped in this building like an animal in a cage, like a little girl shoved into a cupboard – had settled down, she had been left with questions with no answers. Namely, just what the purpose of this spell actually was. She had previously assumed that it was a means to keep spirits away, as that was how it was used at de Rais's tower, but if the sheer number of ghosts and spirits within the castle were any indication, then either it had failed terribly or the wizards
wanted ghosts here for some reason. Or, as she had continued to ponder late into the night, perhaps the magic's ability to block her jumping was not a side effect but the entire purpose. If the typical wizard held no fear of spirits, they would not consider protection a priority. Security and keeping strange people from teleporting into places they were not wanted, though? That would still be a concern.
It did not explain how the spirits of de Rais's tower were kept under lock and key, but she could not rule out the possibility that that was a different spell in the first place. For it, the prevention of teleportation might truly be a side effect. Or maybe there was not one piece of magic upon the tower but two, one to keep humans out and the other to keep hungry ghosts
in.
Still, there had been a couple of unexpected benefits of being locked out of the common room. It gave her a reason to find a private place, and that room was also a great opportunity to try something she really should have thought to do earlier than this. Namely, make another attempt at transfiguration but using her staff. She did not know what her staff could do beside leading her back to a safe place, and maybe this was it.
The answer was no, no it wasn't. Repeating all the same steps she had been shown in class just with a staff instead of a wand got her no closer to success. When other people had tried and mostly failed, there had still been a change in the shape of the matchstick, but she had not even that. The feeling of waving her staff around was no different from trying to cast a spell with the wrong mental tool. There was a lack of depth, of resonance with the world, that a proper spell should have. Not to mention, it was just annoying to wave around a multiple-foot-long staff in such intricate movements.
The other benefit had been the search for a matchstick to practice on. She had vaguely remembered that she had a box of matches in her satchel, the result of using up her last lighter before she had figured out how to snap her fingers to create a spark, and rather than just summon it from her satchel she took the time to take everything out and reorganize it. The sheer amount of trash she had stuffed into her bag to throw away later but then forgot about was shocking and more than a little embarrassing. Empty food cans, wrappers, bags, plus some metal scraps and plastic bits and bobs that she honestly could not recall where or when she picked up in the first place. She now had another reason to find a way out of the castle, if only so she could properly throw all this stuff away.
Her feet carried her to the Great Hall, where she found the doors open and a handful of students already seated in front of the large platters of food. Pulling a few slices of toast and a sausage towards her, she started cutting up her food before removing her potions textbook from her satchel and settling herself for a relatively lazy meal.
Several minutes of light munching later, her reading was interrupted by thoughts of her. Thoughts that preceded the appearance of her fellow first-year Hufflepuffs. The other fifth-year prefect, a boy by the name of Greg, was in front and sighed in relief when he spotted her at the table already. "
Thank Merlin. I hoped she had just left early. Now I just need to calm down one of the other firsties," he thought as he tapped Sally-Anne on the shoulder and pointed Hazel out.
The other girl nearly ran to join her, followed by the rest of the house as they grabbed spots on the benches and filled their plates with more food than Hazel had dared to eat. Several of them gave her flat glares before focusing exclusively on each other and their own plates. Greg slid down onto the seat next to her, a displeased frown on his face. "I can understand being excited for breakfast,
and clearly she knows how to get here, but you're really supposed to stick with the rest of your year. Next week we won't care as much if you strike out on your own, but for now you need to stay with the rest of the group instead of leaving early.
It will also keep us from spending ten minutes looking around for you."
Next to her, Sally-Anne's hands tightened on her right arm, and the other girl's thoughts were in full agreement with the prefect's warning.
The other first years' reactions did not mean this was a misconception she needed to leave standing. Exactly the opposite, even.
'I didn't leave early,' she wrote back.
'Not early this morning, anyway. I stepped out to look for the potions classroom last night and couldn't get back into the common room. I even made sure I was back before curfew.'
Greg blinked at her in confusion. "Couldn't get back into the common room?
That would explain why she wasn't in the dorm, but did she really spend the night just out in the halls? Someone would have seen her, right? …Although now that I think about it, I don't think any of us from Hufflepuff were patrolling last night, so it's entirely possible that no one would have come down the hallway to see her. Then where did you spend the night?"
'I found a place,' she replied after a moment's hesitation. Now that she was thinking on it again, she was not actually sure if she was allowed to sleep in whatever storeroom she had found. That it was against the rules was not the issue; after being forced to steal if she wanted to survive, a few broken rules was of little concern. She just did not want them locking that storeroom with whatever magic they used on the Great Hall, which would force her to find somewhere else to sleep the next time she was locked out of the common room.
'It was nice enough for the night.'
"
Nice enough. If she actually spent the night in the hallways, I don't know where she could have stayed that I would consider 'nice enough', but to each their own. If she spent the night. What are the chances she actually was locked out?" He eyed her up and down, or as well as he could do when they were both sitting at the table, before his forming frown turned more thoughtful. "
But… Even if she is making up a story now, which I don't know is the case – I can't prove that she was or wasn't in the dorms last night – what I do know is that the situation is one that could happen. And if she is telling the truth, what sort of cad would I be if I ignored her and guaranteed she was stuck in the hallway any time she was outside the house on her own?
"This is something I need to bring up with Professor Sprout," he told her after a moment. "If you physically can't get into the common room on your own, I don't know how even to start fixing that." He sighed and grabbed a piece of toast and two strips of bacon, mentally bemoaning the lost chance for a full breakfast. "Go ahead and finish breakfast. You deserve it after a hard night."
'It wasn't that hard—' She let the rest of her response fizzle out as he walked away, ignoring her attempt at a response completely. Well, that was rude.
Something tugged at her sleeve, and she looked over to find Sally-Anne looking at her and nibbling on her lip. "
This doesn't make any sense. Y-you really weren't in the d-dorms last night?" Hazel shook her head, which only caused the unease in Sally-Anne's mind to swirl faster. "Th-th-then why would you say it wasn't hard?
Where did she sleep if not in bed? That couldn't have been nice, but she said it was. I don't think the other girls are right; Hazel doesn't seem like a liar. But this…"
What kind of life, Hazel wondered, must Sally-Anne have lived to think that sleeping outside a bedroom was a hardship? Not that she could recall Dudley ever having to do so either. Had any of his friends? She did not know, but maybe it was not as surprising as she had first assumed that someone would only ever sleep somewhere not in a bed. It just did not feel strange to her because even before she left the Dursleys', her place of rest had been a hard mattress on a harder floor. Her childhood was nothing normal, and that was something she had always known.
Somehow, though, she did not think giving Sally-Anne all the details would make the other girl worry less. Instead she kept her reply more succinct.
'I found somewhere comfortable enough for the night. It isn't the first time I couldn't sleep in a proper bed, and I doubt it will be the last.' Sally-Anne still did not look convinced, so she asked,
'Have you ever been camping?'
"Camping?" repeated Sally-Anne, her nose crinkling in distaste. "Like in the woods? With bugs and nature?
I know some people do that, but why? Mum and Dad would never go out to spend the night in dirt."
Hazel nodded even as her eyebrows rose internally. She had not expected Sally-Anne to be quite so… metropolitan. Clearly revealing the truth of how she had spent the last year and a half would break the blonde's brain.
'Just so. Compared to sleeping on the bare ground in the rain, where I bunked last night was perfectly decent.'
Sally-Anne shivered and turned her eyes back to the plate in front of her. "If you say so," the other girl muttered. For all her obvious distaste, however, the lingering worries quickly fell away and were forgotten like mist in the morning sun.
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eventually Greg returned, his mind filled to the brim with concern and confusion, but Hazel had no time to ask him for details before he was calling for the first years to follow him into the dungeons. He took them down the hallway she had come up as she escaped Professor Snape's panicked anger from their mind-meld and dropped them off at the door before scurrying off, clearly worried about being seen by the professor. Hazel could only wonder why. Sure, the man had been angry when she discovered that he could read minds in the same way she could, but she could not understand why that would make
Greg afraid. It was not as if he had been present for the interaction.
The room within looked much as it had the previous night, though more brightly lit than it had previously now that the green torches along the walls were burning fully. Replaced, she wondered, or was it a purely magical flame similar to her campfire sphere that would not consume the torches? Regardless, they produced enough light in enough directions that she expected few shadows, which was important when each solid table only had the space for two or three people to work around any individual cauldron. Just like she had seen previously, cauldrons stood ready on the tables, waiting for them to get started.
Unlike Charms and Transfiguration, this class looked like it would be a practical one. Excellent.
No one waited in the room when they walked in, neither professor nor other students, so the Hufflepuffs milled around in the hallway for a few seconds before moving to take seats around the tables on the opposite side of the room. Hazel and Sally-Anne claimed a desk near the front, but as Hazel pulled out her notebook and her copy of
Magical Drafts and Potions she had to wonder at the dread permeating the classroom. Dread that only seemed to intensify as the Ravenclaw first years started tricking into the room as well.
Tapping Sally-Anne on the shoulder, she asked,
'Did I miss something? Why is everyone so miserable?'
Sally-Anne shot her a disbelieving glance. "
How do you not know already? All the older students say Professor Snape is mean and t-terrible. He's always t-taking points for n-n-nonsense, and he never gives any for an-nything."
She succeeded in suppressing a sigh, but only just.
'Everyone is always talking about points. What do they even do?'
The disbelief on the other girl's face deepened, mixed with a sort of shock as if Hazel had just grown a second head. "Whichever house has the most points wins the House Cup for the year. They get their banners in the Great Hall at the feast."
A pause, then,
'Okay, and? What else?'
"That's it, I think.
That's all the other students and the book said."
Now it was Hazel's face that bore disbelief. She already thought little of the house points idea when they were being awarded to the house for her successes in
her education, but now to hear that they were not even worth anything? Maybe if they had some meaningful benefit or penalty, like whatever house had the fewest points went hungry or something, that would be worth putting in effort for the group's benefit, but as it was…
'That's dumb. Can we just refuse to take part in the whole thing?'
"…I don't think so."
Any further conversation was cut off when another door on the opposite side of the room from the entrance flew open with a bang. A man dressed all in black stormed into the room, a single flick of his wand causing both doors to slam shut. "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he said in a soft voice, nearly a whisper but one that was still readily audible in the silence that followed in the wake of his entrance. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even put a stopper in death…"
He trailed off, black eyes sweeping over the room. If he was searching for something, she did not know what it was. Just as when she first encountered him, his voice was flat and his mind was quiet. The longer he watched them in silence, the more restlessness poured out from the rest of the class and threatened to pull Hazel beneath its tide. Finally, before she could drown, a sneer swept over his features. "That is, if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
His sharp accusation still echoing among the students, he plucked a roll of parchment off his desk and started calling out the names on the roll. He did not look up from the list, did not acknowledge any response except to move onto the next name. In fact, the only time he looked up was when he reached her own. "Ah, yes. Hazel Potter." Those dark eyes met hers, and while she could no longer hear his thoughts she could nonetheless see anger burning behind them. "Our new…
celebrity."
When the last name on the list, a Ravenclaw named Lisa Turpin, voiced her presence, Professor Snape all but stalked over to Hazel and Sally-Anne's table. The blonde shrank back under his gaze, desperate to avoid his attention. As far as Hazel could tell, that was wasted effort. The professor only seemed to have eyes for her.
"Potter," he drawled once he was no more than a meter away from her. "Let us see what the value of fame and
special treatment is, shall we? What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Asphodel and wormwood? Her eyes dropped away from Professor Snape's as she tried to recall what she knew about those plants. Wormwood, she knew thanks to Gertrud's lessons, was a useful medicine against parasitic worms and possibly nausea, although that second part she was less sure of. Asphodel she knew nothing about, however, and to make matters worse, many potions had strange synergies where ingredients would gain properties that they normally did not possess when mixed with something else. It made guessing at any combination of reagents a fool's errand, but guessing was nevertheless the only option available to her.
'A medicine to treat parasites?'
Professor Snape's nostrils flared. "Is that a question or a statement, Potter?"
She gave him a bewildered look, alternating between his face and her words, before pointing one finger at the question mark at the end of her response.
That answer had Professor Snape's lips curling into a sneer. "Were you truly so spoiled that no one even taught you how to answer a simple question? Let's try again. Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
This one she knew, thankfully. It had actually been stressed by both Elise and Gertrud, to the point that she kept a couple of them in her satchel just in case she ever ran into a poisonous animal or completely botched a potion she made. Gathering them was a disgusting process.
'Inside a goat's hairball.'
The professor's mouth opened, but then he closed it as his face twisted into a grimace. He just watched her for several seconds before huffing. "What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
A smile appeared on her lips. This one she had only recently discovered, a flaw that she could only chalk up to how her mind reading interpreted other languages. Elise and Amorette both called the plant 'aconit', and Gertrud used the term 'Eisenhut'. Hazel just had not known that aconite had multiple names in English until she read the listing in the
1000 Herbs and Fungi book required for Herbology.
'They are different words for the same plant,' she wrote out.
If she was hoping for a smile or praise, she would have been disappointed by the man's steady glare. "For your information," he said in a quiet voice, "asphodel and wormwood together create a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. If you are not going to read your textbooks, you might as well skip this class and spare us your ignorance."
Hazel glared at the man's back while he walked towards the front of the classroom and waved his wand again, this time causing writing to appear on the blackboard as he told the class to put away their textbooks. If she knew everything already, then what would be the point of this class? She had hoped Snape would be a teacher she might actually connect with, another mind-reader with an interest in potions who could at least somewhat understand some of her perspective. Instead he treated her like something he scraped off his shoe, and as far as she could tell for little to no reason.
Was he truly that upset that she knew he could read minds? Or, maybe, he was being so mean because she could do it too? For her part, discovering that there was someone else like her had been a joy, but she could not assume that he saw it that way. Her aunt and uncle always got upset when someone else on the street had a nicer car or a prettier lawn than they did. Snape might be the same way, upset because he no longer was the only mind-reader in the castle.
And if that was his problem, then it was one she was not going to deal with. Getting jealous about every little thing someone else had had never made her aunt and uncle happy, and it would not make Snape happy either. Wasting her time trying to appease him would not make her happy, either.
Pushing those thoughts away, she turned her attention to the blackboard and found herself surprised. The recipe that had appeared was one she recognized, a cure for minor boils that was actually one of the first potions she had ever learned. Elise and Amorette had taught her how to make it during her time with the colony, although as she looked closer she realized that some of the proportions and timing were a little different. Different ways to achieve the same thing, perhaps? Or was this a reflection of what Gertrud had taught her about how she could make adjustments to a base recipe to account for the quality of the ingredients? The werewolves had to use what they could find or buy for cheap, but clearly the wizards did not have that same restriction.
Sally-Anne was happy letting Hazel divvy out the tasks needed to brew, a situation that after the last couple of days was no surprise, and soon they were pushing ingredients back and forth as they organized everything in the order they would be needed. Elise had insisted that all ingredients be prepared before anything entered the cauldron and laid out to make it easier to know what next to throw in, and while Gertrud was a little more chaotic in how she arranged her workspace the hag had agreed that it was a good rule of thumb, especially for anyone who was still a beginner in the art of the Brewing.
"
What in the world is that?" Hazel glanced over at the table next to them to find Justin Finch-Fletchey looking at her instead of at his own poorly chopped daisy roots. He saw her looking back at him and pointed at her hand. "Where'd you get a caveman knife like that?"
His whisper was still loud that Sally-Anne and Megan Jones, his own partner, could hear him, and both girls looked over to see what they were talking about. Hazel lifted her stone knife so they could see it better. Compared to the steel knives the others were using, she supposed the flint knife she had made under the guidance of the hags was more than a little unusual, but it had become a habit to pull it out whenever she needed to cut anything. Gertrud and Elfriede encouraged its use when she was preparing ingredients, and despite using it for potions and basic cooking and even when she just needed to cut sticks for a fire, she had never needed to sharpen it nor had any part of it ever chipped off. It was still as sharp and intact as it had ever been.
Justin was still looking at her and waiting for an answer, so she shrugged and told the truth.
'I made it. A couple of hags taught me how, and it's worked great.'
Her words immediately made Megan panic, but Justin just frowned. "
That was rude. There is no reason to call a bunch of old women that. If they were nice enough to teach you how to make something like that, you should be more respectful."
Beside him Megan sighed. "
Of course. She's just talking about old witches. But with her claims to have encountered werewolves, you can never be too sure."
"Five points from Hufflepuff," barked Snape from the front of the room. "Focus on your potions, or you will all get zeros for the day."
Grumbling from the rest of the class, both mental and voiced, killed the conversation, and Hazel waved for Sally-Anne to add the first ingredient to the cauldron while she started chopping the last. The words 'nasty git' flitted through the class's psychic space, and she found herself nodding in agreement.
It was a good thing she already enjoyed brewing potions. Otherwise this class would be a massive trial.
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Later that night, Hazel stumbled back into the Hufflepuff alongside the rest of the first years. She followed the other girls to their group dorm, and while they were getting changed and ready for bed she summoned her ghost hand to close all the curtains and sat at the head of the bed with her back to the wall. All the pillows had to go to the middle of the bed to make room, but it was a little more comfortable now that she had something solid against her back instead of drowning in fluff.
Beside her on the bedside table, Morgan opened one eye to look at her with sleepy curiosity. Then he chirped a little when she picked him up and held him to her chest, but after a moment he calmed back down aside from an inquisitive peep.
Tonight was terrible, she told him frankly. Potions had started the day off in a poor place, and her other classes had done little to fix her impression. After turning in their completed vial of boil-curing potion, they immediately moved from the potions classroom to History of Magic.
The discovery that the history teacher was a ghost had been disturbing when he first floated through the blackboard, but after a little thinking she had come to see a benefit in it. This was someone who had not just read about history but potentially
lived some of it. Keeping Professor Binns around would be a boon in that regard, so long as he was able to keep abreast of more modern events.
Sadly, the truth was somewhat less rosy. Professor Binns had ignored the roll call and instead immediately started lecturing on the early days of the Ministry of Magic. His monotone voice and the soft drone that built as he continued to speak without the need to draw breath soon had the rest of the class nodding off and closing their eyes. Hazel was not immune to the effect, either, although she startled awake when her chin bonked into her chest. Upon looking down at her notebook and realizing she had written essentially nothing, she had raised her hand to try to get the professor to slow down.
That was when the unintended consequence of having a ghost as a teacher reared its head. Professor Binns may not need to breath or blink, he also paid little to attention to the class as a whole. Which, considering the entire class was more or less asleep, was obvious in retrospect. She finally lowered her hand when a full five minutes passed without him acknowledging her, a decision made in the meantime. If he would not answer a question, she would have to look through the history book more thoroughly.
Which was also when she discovered that the ghost was repeating what the book said nearly verbatim. There were a few paragraphs that were larger or smaller than what he recited, and some that he never spoke, but overall it seemed the book held all the information that Professor Binns was relating. Even better, while dry it was not nap-inducing. At which point she had to wonder what the point of coming back to this class was if the book on its own was a better resource than the teacher.
The break for Herbology was nice, but Wednesday was also the day that first-years had Astronomy class. This, much like Potions, was a class that Hazel had been very interested in when she first arrived at the castle. Gertrud and Elfriede taught her some of how the constellations and the moon had effects on potions and magical plants during her time in Germany, but at least in this first class nothing had been mentioned about those relationships. Professor Sinistra had treated the class as one that was solely concerned about facts and details of the stars and planets and their movements. Not one mention of the
magical significance had been spoken or even thought.
It was still possible that Astronomy class would dovetail into real magic once they had learned the basics, but considering how this week had gone so far, Hazel had to wonder whether she was giving the wizards too much credit.
She continued to brush her fingers over Morgan's feathers as she sighed lightly.
For all that this is supposed to be a school of magic, there's a lot that doesn't seem geared towards learning magic. Either because the teachers are horrid or because the classes don't do what they claim. And that's if you have a wand!
Her mother – both her parents, actually – had gone to this school and learned their magic here. She had decided that she would do her best to follow in her mother's footsteps, and the school was fulfilling its promise so far of offering her food and shelter and access to a massive library. But if this was the situation that faced her, if half the classes at this school were unable to teach her anything of value…
She had to wonder if staying here was the right choice after all.
