Sorry for the delay. I got dreadfully sick (not COVID), lost track of the days, and then tore the chapter apart and had to spend some time piecing it back together. The next chapter hasn't been affected by any of this, so it's still on schedule for being posted on the 17th.
Disclaimer: I am J. K. Rowling, and so can you.
Chapter 3: A Fine Line
There is a fine line between stubbornness and stupidity as well as intensity and insanity.
Brittany Burgunder
The trip to Hogwarts wasn't going to be just a quick jaunt.
Hermione still wasn't old enough to apparate, but even if she were, the distances involved would have been too enormous. Even Madame Maxime, whose mere position as Headmistress of Beauxbatons was evidence of her skills, could never have spanned two thousand kilometers in a single act of apparition, let alone across the English Channel and into a country she'd never visited before. To attempt that feat with students, even if the trip were divided into many smaller steps, would more than likely end with a dozen
Beauxbatonards splinched up and down the countryside before any of them made it through Yorkshire—if they were lucky.
Other methods of more-or-less instantaneous travel carried their own problems. The British Floo Network, for example, had still not been rejoined to the Continental Network (which probably wouldn't change for some time to come, given how negotiations were stalling out over issues of travel authorization and monitoring). An international portkey could have done the trick, but Riddle refused to lift the Anti-Portkey Jinx that protected the grounds at Hogwarts, so they probably would have been thrown all the way to the Atlantic if something deadlier didn't befall them.
The solution was to take one of the Beauxbatons carriages, which, properly extended and outfitted, would more than suffice for their every need. However, this carried its own downside: winged horses did not travel anywhere close to "instantaneously," so the delegation would have to depart significantly earlier than six-o'clock, when they were expected to arrive at Hogwarts.
This, then, was why Hermione had gotten very little sleep the night before she was due to leave. Anticipation was surely involved, but more pressing was the fact that, to arrive in Scotland by six, they would have to leave France by the
other, more inconvenient and groggy-eyed six in the morning, and it would be a trip in itself to get to their point of departure.
Hermione's parents were good sports about waking up so early, better than they would have been if they knew where she was ultimately going. Miranda was up, too, but five-year-olds do not need to be compelled into early morning adventures so much as they simply have to be given the opportunity, so it was a little different for her. At a quarter past two, everyone went out the door, filed into the family's sharp blue Peugeot 505, and set out for Calais once more.
Magic was forbidden during the school break, but pre-enchanted objects were fair game, so Hermione kept her sister entertained with moving picture books and a spinning top that spun upside-down on the roof of the car. The atmosphere was easy, but matters would have been different had Mr. and Mrs. Granger known that Hermione was not simply going on an extended school trip to Norway, but headed back into Britain itself. For once, Hermione was pleased with how Wizarding France overlooked muggles, or at least could find a silver lining in the lack of communication between her parents and the school. She was quite sure her parents would have forbidden her from going, even if her own government believed she would be safe.
The rendezvous point was Fort Nieulay, one of those abandoned castles which Beauxbatons seemed to like so much. The walls were low—to the ground, in some cases—and the grounds were overgrown, but all of that, more than an hour before the sun was due to rise, only added to the place's ethereal beauty. The ghosts did that as well, but neither her parents nor her sister could see Jacques des Lumières or the Searching Grandfather, so that wasn't an experience that they could share.
Hermione's family stayed with her, but not for too long. There was still the drive back, and even sleeping in shifts hadn't been enough to catch up on all the sleep her parents had lost on the way up. They said their final goodbyes, Hermione gave everyone one last hug and promised interesting souvenirs for Miranda, and then they were gone.
It would be a very long time before they would see each other again. Hermione was not alone for so long, however. Samara Anel arrived just a few minutes later, and they acknowledged each other before they settled down on a broken stone stairway, each to their own books. Hermione rarely said much to her, but two library rats couldn't share the Anglesite's best reading couch for three years and not develop some kind of companionable regard in their mutual silence.
Next was a tall, sturdy boy named Vicente Arechaveleta. He was studying to be a Healer and probably knew more curses than anybody, even Idalia Mezzasalma, who said she was going to join the argents in Hispanapule after she graduated, and kill dark wizards for a living. She arrived soon after, and coming in tow was Lino Vela, who was a muggle-born,
not a veela, as he'd needed to explain on more than one occasion. Rumor had it that he was going to disappear back into the muggle world after he graduated, and no one was quite sure why he had decided to attend the Tournament, but Madame Maxime had obviously decided that he was qualified.
Fleur was almost the last of the students to arrive, followed only after a straggler who appeared at almost the last second. The Beauxbatons carriage came into view just moments later, first a twinkling in the sky and then audible by the stormy beating of twelve pairs of wings. It needed no driver, but Madame Maxime sat at the front anyway. She enjoyed having the open space, for obvious reasons, and she liked to watch the horses as they flew, and she was, for reasons everyone knew but scarcely discussed, quite unbothered to the cold.
Hermione and the others stood at attention as soon as the carriage was close enough for them to distinguish Madame Maxime, and waited to relax until she had completed the descent and both her feet were on the ground. "De Cloet, Marchegiano," she said, speaking to a couple of students who had arrived after Idalia and Lino, "get whiskey for the horses. There will be barrels in the third room on the left. Vicente and Lino, change the harnesses. Idalia, Fleur, Hermione: check the wheels and shaft. Everyone else, follow me inside. It will be a long journey and our time is short."
It took nine minutes for everyone to complete their tasks, and then the carriage was ready, inside and out. The shaft was secure, the wheels were rolling with their enchantments, and the carriage was sparkling inside and out. Really, the longest part was feeding the horses, as large and hungry as they were, but fifty gallons of whiskey went quickly when it was divided by twelve working animals, each the size of an elephant.
After the carriage took off, there were flaky almond croissants for breakfast, and then most everyone fell asleep, retiring to sleeper sofas or pull-down beds or just nodding off in their seats. "Most," in this case, was a category which excluded just two individuals: Madame Maxime, who—according to student rumor—had once hiked up Pico de Aneto in a single day and then returned before sleeping, and Hermione, who was rather distracted by how Fleur's head had slipped from the back of the bench to Hermione's shoulder.
"So," Hermione began, before she realized she had made the classic tactical blunder of starting a conversation without knowing what to put in it. "Euh… Do you think the horses will like Scottish whiskey? They're really very picky, aren't they?"
When Madame Maxime sighed, it was like a furnace bellows. "I would turn the carriage around in an instant, if you asked me to, and no one would judge you. The niceties of a timely arrival would mean nothing in this situation."
"I would judge myself," Hermione said.
Madame Maxime nodded unhappily. "You would. You're already doing it, and that isn't healthy. It won't lead you to a good place."
"I may not be able to see Britain ever again. This time, you'll be there, and Durmstrang's headmaster will be there, and representatives from France and Hispanapule and Norway-Denmark and other countries will be there, judging or monitoring or just sitting in the audience. If Riddle tried to do something to me, people would find out. There's too much attention on Hogwarts and Britain for him to try anything."
"Yes. Laurent Octobre told me the same thing, but you are not coming because he convinced me. You are coming because I was given an ultimatum: I could let you come with us, or Beauxbatons could be sanctioned."
Hermione blinked. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't…" The Palace of Beauxbatons was not just anybody's palace. It had been built centuries ago by order of the House of Capet, the oldest of Europe's great dynasties, and in all the years since, it had never ceased to be royal property. Sanctioning would mean displacement. As an institution, Beauxbatons was international and independent, and it could surely find somewhere to relocate, but displacement would still sever the school from a thousand years of its history, and from countless treasures that were integral to the Palace or the grounds thereof: the curative waters of Flamel Fountain, the nail in the door of Abramelin the Seer, and of course the many enchantments that had been laid down and strengthened over many generations, and which would have to be made anew.
"That isn't your doing, but I want you to think about what that threat means," Madame Maxime said softly. "I do not know what Octobre intends, but this was not an act of charity."
For the barest moment, Hermione faltered, and Madame Maxime's face lightened, but then Hermione rallied herself and renewed her resolve. "If he's willing to do that then he might be mad if you talked me out of this. And besides, there's still too much attention for Riddle to do anything. He can't make the whole world mad, now can he? Or half of Europe? I don't know what Mr. Octobre is thinking, but he can't be intending for me to die, right?"
Madame Maxime nodded resignedly, "I cannot force you to decide differently, but I can give you this." She rose from her seat, more quietly than her size would have suggested was possible, and retrieved something from an inner pocket of her robe: a small and beautiful beetle pin, made of blue cobalt glass and adorned with gold foil. With surprising finesse, she affixed the beetle on the inside of Hermione's collar and then touched her own collar. "That beetle came in a pair, and I have its twin. If you tell it to depart, or if it ever determines that you are in danger, then it will tell me. If it cannot signal me through my own pin, then it will disapparate, and if it cannot do that then it will fly or crawl away until it is capable of faster travel, and
then it will contact me."
Hermione nodded. "Th-Thank you."
"There are different degrees of safety. You have chosen to take on some risk, but be careful about when and how you choose to take on more," Madame Maxime advised, and after Hermione nodded again, she withdrew from the room and Hermione was left alone.
Most of the students woke up well before lunch. Some, like Hermione and Samara, read. Others worked on arithmantic problems
, or practiced their Mermish (thankfully in another room, behind a closed door), or simply lounged. Lino mostly looked out a window and let an arm dangle in the clouds. In rotations that would continue long into the afternoon, everyone ended up playing Scrabble at some point.
Lunch was simple, but far from tasteless: pickled onions, roast apples, truffle fries… Hermione saved the strawberries for last. They had to be peeled, because all fruit had to be peeled, just as surely as she had to sit straight and keep her wrists above her plate at all times, and peeling required care on such a small fruit.
The conversation turned pretty quickly to the Sorting Ceremony. That was enough to rouse even Idalia, who had dozed through almost all of lunch and was beginning to eye the pillows again even before the candied chestnuts had come out.
"Let me make sure I've got this right," said Vicente. "There's Ravenclaw for the smart kids, and Slytherin for the other kind of smart kids, and Hufflepuff for the kids who work hard, and then Gryffindor for the bad kids?"
Samara frowned, then made a few strokes with her wand, and a flowing white script appeared on her writing slate: "I don't think the idea is 'bad kids.' Courage, nerve, that sort of thing." She tapped her wand against the slate, and the words vanished.
"You can write it how you want, but Gryffindor seems to be the Hitting People House to me. And they did—" Vicente paused, glanced around, and hushed his voice. "They
did make the worst dark wizard since Grindelwald, didn't they?"
Samara gestured with her wand again: "That could have been any of them. Hogwarts is a thousand years old, right? Or a little bit older? Every house is going to turn out some bad eggs eventually."
"This was Riddle's social environment for seven years," Vicente insisted. "Don't tell me that didn't influence him. If he'd been one of these Ravenclaws then he would have sat under a mountain of books until they toppled and crushed him, I guarantee you."
"Albus Dumbledore was a Gryffindor," Hermione said.
"Fifty years before—and he took his time fighting Grindelwald, anyway. He was a Gryffindor
reject, if you ask me."
Hermione didn't want to just let that go—McGonagall, at least, had done all she could to impart a favorable impression of the man—but if she fought that, she'd probably fight it out with most of the people here. Dumbledore had a fairly mixed reputation at Beauxbatons. Before she could figure out what to say, Lino entered the conversation and turned it away from Dumbledore altogether.
"The houses don't matter.
Tom Riddle doesn't matter," Lino said. "There were a lot of goblin rebellions. There was blood purism. There was Fenrir Greyback, even," he continued, and Idalia shuddered and reached for the coffee. "What I'm saying is, things were tense, and someone would have done something, sooner or later. You can't say that if Riddle hadn't been born, that if Gryffindor hadn't existed, then nobody would have had a problem."
"I heard they have to pick stones out of a hat," Idalia interjected, and everyone turned to face her. "Sorry. I
was paying attention. But then I was thinking… Anyway. You stick your hand in, grab any stone that doesn't hurt to touch, and pull it out. If it's...the banded jasper, I think, you go to Slytherin."
"There's just one stone," Samara wrote. "You stick your face in the hat and the stone glows red, blue, green, or yellow."
"There are four hats, and no stones," Vicente said. "You can try on any hat, but if, say, you aren't smart enough for the Slytherin hat then it'll enlarge itself and go all the way over your head. Because you can't fill the requirements, see?"
"That sounds unlikely," Fleur replied. "There is only one hat—as you should know, if you had read any book at all about Hogwarts—and you must fight it."
"Nobody's gotten any lessons, Fleur. It's literally their first night at school. How are they going to fight the hat?" Vicente asked, but Fleur doubled down.
"It judges you by the nature of your accidental magic," she said. "If you studied ahead, however, then you go to Ravenclaw automatically."
"If you throw away your wand and punch it," suggested Idalia, "then you're probably a Gryffindor."
"Well, obviously," said Vicente.
"What if you don't fit into any of the houses? Some people are lazy and also stupid and also cowardly and so on," Lino said.
"You go to Squib House," Idalia said.
"There's no such thing."
"Squib House," Idalia insisted, and Vicente nodded in agreement, but the effect was a little ruined by how hard they were struggling to keep their faces straight.
"But if you try to drown the hat," Hermione began, before she switched to English, "
then you go to Squid House." Unfortunately, English wasn't anyone else's first language, so only half of them got the pun.
Before anyone could propose further Sorting rituals, Vicente said, "Did you know that Hogwarts actually has a Giant Squid in its lake?" His interest in magical creatures was more than passing, so of course he would have found out about something like that. "It's probably the biggest Giant Squid outside of the Greenland Sea."
Hogwarts and even its Giant Squid were quickly forgotten as the conversation turned to other magical cephalopods. Most lived the abyssal regions of polar seas, but there were notable exceptions, like the tree octopus of Cascadia, which was the cleverest of a very clever class of creatures, and colossal cloud squids, which sometimes ate, but were more often eaten
by, dragons.
After twelve long hours, the stony walls and high towers of Hogwarts came into view at last, and the carriage began its final descent through a curtain of rain. Standing out in the wet were two men, one of whom was probably three times as tall as the other, and a big black dog. The carriage landed at least twenty feet away from the men, since the horses liked to bite, but Madame Maxime cleared the distance in just a few steps.
One by one, Hermione and the others filed out of the carriage into the uninviting Scottish air. "Morgana's frozen tits," Hermione muttered. "It's cold. I don't remember Britain being
cold." Maybe a little chilly, but… Nostalgia clouded the mind like dirigible wine, it seemed. Stepping back under the cover of the carriage's overhang, she cast Hot-Air and Water-Repelling Charms over her uniform. "And it's raining like a pissing cow."
Samara held her slate up in front of Hermione. "Happy to be back in Britain yet?"
Hermione applied another Water-Repelling Charm to her shoes, just for good measure. She might as well have been walking in the Black Lake, for all her feet knew. "Of course, but if I didn't know better, I'd think Britain wasn't happy to see me. Who's in charge of the welcoming committee—Noah?"
Idalia slunk out of the carriage next, more alert than her dozing would have suggested just five minutes earlier, but that was just like her. Cats slept most of the day, too, and still managed to be prolific little serial killers. Sometimes, Hermione wondered whether she was just pretending to sleep.
The delegation stood there for another few minutes, while the castle loomed above them, until Madame Maxime was finally satisfied with the groundskeeper's ability to oversee the Abraxans, and the tiny little man and his large black dog led them up the path to Hogwarts. At the front were two enormous oak doors—the Oaks, Hermione immediately thought, though they surely weren't called that—and beyond those was an enormous entrance hall.
On the other side of the hall was a marble stairway. It must have been broken at some point in the past, but the fragments had been cemented together with black iron. The little man and his dog took a right, and everyone followed them into an even larger room with five long tables and a ceiling that reflected the sky. It was a dark and stormy ceiling, rather like the mythical vault of Heaven, Hermione though, complete with Too Much Water on the other side.
Four of the tables lay parallel to each other, and were filled with students. Beyond them, on the far end of the room, lay the High Table. Most of the faces were unrecognizable, but Hermione could pick out a few: Professors Sinistra and Sprout hadn't changed much from the photographs McGonagall had shared, for example. Kettleburn was obvious by his scars and number of limbs, but the red-headed young man sitting beside him must have been a relatively recent graduate. Further along was
probably Lucius Malfoy, if McGonagall's description of him was accurate.
Sitting in the very middle was Tom Riddle, Headmaster of Hogwarts. His robes were black, and beyond this it was difficult to say anything else about them, because they were the sort of black that betrayed no details, no depth, as though the cloth had been cut out from a patch of midnight darkness. Against that backdrop there gleamed a golden, lion-headed torc, bright and beautiful like the sun rising from behind a mountain, but where his face ought to have been there was a white and featureless mask. Moving at a leisurely pace, the black dog walked between two tables and under the High Table, then laid down at Riddle's feet. The little man led Madame Maxime to the High Table, where she took an empty seat to Riddle's left, then quickly exited again.
Madame Maxime nodded, and the remainder of the delegation, Hermione included, walked down to the third table, where their yellow ties marked them as Hufflepuffs, and took their seats. Hermione ended up at one end of the table, next to the Hogwarts students, sandwiched between Fleur and a boy with some sort of purplish rash on his face.
The boy smiled and extended a hand. "Neville Longbottom," he said. They shook hands, and he continued, pointing to a pale boy to his right, "And this smug popinjay is Draco Malfoy."
"I'm Hermione Granger," said Hermione Granger, "and this is Fleur Delacour."
"Delighted to make your acquaintance," said Draco, who sounded more distracted than delighted. "When's Durmstrang going to get here? They're delaying the Sorting," he complained to Longbottom.
"Be a little patient, won't you?"
"It's cold out there, Longbottom. The firsties are going to freeze."
"It
is cold out there," Hermione admitted, who was glad she could say so without insulting her hosts.
"Your English is really good," Longbottom said. "I can barely detect any accent."
Hermione smiled. "My parents moved from England when I was little. I'm a muggle-born," she added quickly, and Longbottom nodded. It was only one case (or two cases, if Malfoy was actually paying attention), but Longbottom didn't
seem bothered by what Hermione had implied.
She was prevented from saying anything more when the little man—Flitwick, Longbottom informed her—returned again with a troop of students in furs, led by a tall, thin man with short white hair. Walking so close behind him that they were almost side-by-side was a sharp-looking boy, almost like a knife, and behind
him was another boy who moved with the kind of sozzly swagger which Hermione had thought to be Idalia's trademark. "Hello, I am Dmitry
Poliakoff," she heard him say as the Durmstrang students sat down with the Slytherins. "
Hello, I am Dmitry Poliakoff." It wasn't clear whether he was practicing his English or just very drunk.
By the time the first boy helped him into his seat, Flitwick had departed and returned once more, this time with a crowd of small not-yet-students and the scraggle-faced, muscular groundskeeper. Flitwick walked over to a wooden stool, small but nearly as tall as he was, and put a hat on top of it.
"They will fight against the hat!" Idalia stage-whispered. It wasn't bad English, but Hermione wished it was, anyway.
"
You are going to embarrass us all," Fleur said, being sure to keep their infighting to French, but Idalia only grinned.
While they played at arguing, the hat moved up and down a bit, and an opening above its brim flapped around as though it were pretending to talk, but finally it stopped. Flitwick tapped it with his wand, then unfurled a roll of parchment that was nearly as long as he was tall. "Students will come to the Sorting Hat when they are called, and put it on in order to be Sorted."
For the space of three or four seconds, there was only the sound of rain, pattering heavily on the windows.
"Ackerley, Stewart!" called Flitwick, and the first of the firsties stepped forward, an anxious, twitching boy. It seemed to Hermione that he didn't walk so much as stumble-topple in a sort of vertical fashion that happened too quickly for him to quite go horizontal. He didn't sit down, he collapsed, and when the Sorting Hat was placed on Ackerley's head, he actually flinched.
Nothing happened, and Hermione wondered what was going on, but a glance at Longbottom and Malfoy told her that everything must be okay. After a minute or two, though, even they seemed curious. Beneath the Sorting Hat, Ackerley's legs swayed back and forth, not quite kicking in the air but too fast to be an idle motion, until finally the Sorting Hat announced, "Gryffindor!"
"They're going to eat him alive," Malfoy said, and Hermione couldn't tell whether that was amusement or pity in his voice.
"Baddock, Malcolm!" was next, and his placement in Slytherin was almost immediately greeted with cheers from the Slytherin table. "We've got Baddock! We've got Baddock!"
"Who's Baddock?" Hermione asked Longbottom.
"No idea, and the Weasley Twins probably don't have one, either," Longbottom replied.
("Indira, Birch!" | "Ravenclaw!")
"They're just very enthusiastic. It's a tradition now."
("Branstone, Eleanor!" | "Gryffindor!")
"They've done that every year for as long as I've been here," he explained.
"Crabcatch, Dennis!" Flitwick called.
"I know that one, though. He's Colin Crabcatch's brother," Longbottom said. "Both muggle-borns."
"Like you," Malfoy said idly, but he didn't seem to actually be looking at Dennis. At first, Hermione thought he was staring at Fleur, and they were going to have Words, but then she traced the line of his gaze and no, it was definitely the incoming students that he was looking at.
"Thank you for making sure I recognized the similarity," Hermione said, not sure whether she was more grumpy or perplexed.
"Sure, my…my pleasure," Malfoy said, leaning back a little to try to get a better view past the rest of the bench.
"Ravenclaw!" the Sorting Hat said.
"And both Ravenclaws, it turns out. Draco, hey—Draco! He was a Ravenclaw," Longbottom said, and he elbowed Malfoy lightly while Flitwick called for "Dobbs, Emma!"
Malfoy reached inside his robes, and with a flash of bronze and a little silver, money exchanged hands. "
Draco thought Dennis would go to the lion's den, you see."
"How would you know at all?" asked Hermione.
Longbottom glanced to his right, but Malfoy was still distracted. "We both know them a little. Just a little. Draco's father," and Longbottom's voice dropped to a whisper, "used to be friends with one of
their fathers. And my mother pushed for the Crabcatches to be able to adopt Dennis in the first place. Most families don't get to adopt two muggle-borns."
"But most muggle-borns don't have magical siblings," Hermione said, making the connection quickly.
"That's just what my mother said. They got special permission. The headmaster himself pushed for it, and, well, after that, it all fell into place, didn't it? It almost always does when he gets involved."
"I thought Dennis would be grateful to the headmaster," Malfoy said absently, still looking at the new students.
"And
I thought that Mr. Crabcatch—Kingsley Crabcatch, I mean, I guess that could be confusing, there being two Misters Crabcatch and all—might dissuade the kid from going into his old house." Longbottom smiled. "And I was right."
"Slytherin!" the Hat declared, to the ensuing chorus of "We've got Dobbs! We've got Dobbs!"
That's how it went for a little while, while Flitwick worked his way through Fawley (Hufflepuff) and Gifford (Slytherin) and Greengrass (Ravenclaw) and so forth, till he reached "Madly, Laura." Malfoy was sitting straight again before Flitwick had even finished reading her name, fingers tapping the table as if he had been possessed by the anxious spirit of little Stewart Ackerley. He noticed Hermione's attention a few seconds later and drew his hands away from the table as fast as if it had been a stovetop.
It didn't matter much, because the Sorting Hat declared her place in "Gryffindor" only a moment later, and then Draco was all fidgets and fiddles again.
"Malfoy-Black, Columba!"
"That's Draco's sister—" was all Longbottom was able to say before Malfoy shushed him.
"I want to hear the Sorting," Malfoy hissed, as if deaf corpses couldn't hear it all the way down in Cornwall. That was a good moment to interrupt Longbottom, though, because the hat had barely touched her head when it screamed, "Hufflepuff!" and a girl with pale, pointed features bounded away excitedly.
Malfoy stretched an arm into the air, reaching several times. "Columba! Over here!" he called, and he brushed and pushed at Longbottom. "Make room, make room, Longbottom!" he insisted, and Longbottom laughed and shrugged apologetically while Hermione and Fleur and Lino shuffled down the bench so that Longbottom could do the same.
It wasn't just Hermione's first Sorting, but her first opportunity to see how family members responded, so she glanced down to the High Table to catch what she could of Professor Malfoy's reaction. He wasn't looking in their direction at all; his attention seemed fixed on the headmaster. If there was information to be gleaned, there, however, then it wasn't visible to Hermione, not behind that mask. Maybe the professor could tell something from his body language—or perhaps not, because, when he finally turned away, Professor Malfoy didn't look any more or less anxious.
"Marvin, Gwyar!"
The next girl to come up was so pale that she made Malfoy look positively vibrant by comparison. "
C'est un vampire," Fleur murmured, and she leaned forward, her eyes wide with interest. As the Sorting Hat continued to rest silently on her head, Longbottom and Malfoy, and many other students, grew more attentive as well. Every so often, Gwyar seemed to say something, but she was too far away for Hermione to hear, and after several minutes, it finally declared, "Gryffindor!" and Gwyar marched off to her table with a fierce expression.
"We call that a 'hatstall,'" said Longbottom. "I wonder what her other choice was."
"Mellarius, Matilda!" was next, but Hermione paid hardly any attention to that one. She was still thinking about Gwyar. There were no vampires at Beauxbatons. To her knowledge, there were no vampires at any school of magic in all of Europe. There were no goblins, either, but part of Hermione wanted to protest that it was completely different in their case, that goblins were oppressed and vampires were… They were Dark creatures, is what they were, they
ate people, and in the back of her brain was a voice that said that they were why humans were afraid of the dark.
But some veela ate people too, Hermione reminded herself. People ate people, when one got down to it, because it wasn't as if only humans were people, and for that matter, humans used to eat other humans, too, and there were places where they had eaten elves or goblins once upon a time. What people used to do didn't matter, just what they were doing now. And Gwyar Marvin was
an eleven-year-old girl, and Hermione felt ashamed, because she knew that, where Hermione had seen a predator in the making, Fleur had been looking at someone who wouldn't have cared who her grandmother was.
After the last of the newly-Sorted children ("Wolpert, Nigel!") went off to join his fellow Ravenclaws, the headmaster rose from his seat like a long shadow. The Hogwarts students shifted in their seats, and every conversation seemed to die away at once.
"Welcome," Riddle said. From behind the mask, his voice was like a cloud of flies. "Welcome, to our guests from abroad, and to our students, the newest link in a chain that is more than one thousand years old. When I was young, just as young as some of you today, I dreamed of a country whose people were strong and united to each other. Many people think that this dream has already been achieved. There are goblins in the Wizengamot. Muggle-borns and pure-bloods are equals before the law. No one has to bear the indignity of being called 'part-human' as though it were a slur. Nevertheless, this is only the beginning."
On its face, that didn't sound terrible, and Hermione found herself wishing, not for the first time but certainly more strongly than ever, that somebody else had championed Riddle's ideas before Riddle himself came along. Hermione could see goblins sitting among the Ravenclaws, and a lean, worn-looking Gryffindor girl whose smile had betrayed a mouth full of inhuman teeth, and scattered throughout all five tables was a handful of other vampires like Gwyar. It was like nothing Hermione had seen before, and she had to wonder: At Hogwarts, would Fleur have had to prove herself so hard? At Hogwarts, would Madame Maxime have been forced to cling to an obvious lie and reject half of her background? But Riddle had stolen children from their parents, too, and she couldn't think that Riddle was right to do so.
"What we have achieved so far is only a varnish of paint over a long history of injustice. If we are inattentive in our duty then the river which we have diverted will return to its previous course. The Britain that you see outside these walls is a false Britain, because it is a fleeting thing. But there is another Britain, a Britain that is yet to come, and which is, from the future, calling us forward. That is the true Britain, and it is being born here, in these halls, and every one of you are its architects and its builders. When you have built it, you will see that it has built you in turn."
Without further ado, Riddle sat back down, and suddenly the tables were full of food. The dinner spread at Beauxbatons was always vast and extravagant, but in some ways it couldn't hold a candle to the sheer variety offered by Hogwarts. There was bouillabaisse, and lamprey à la Bordelaise, and creamy saumon à l'oseille, and other dishes which Hermione surmised were just as familiar to the Durmstrang students, lutefisk and mashed potato balls and more, so some of the diversity must have been a matter of hospitality, to make sure that the delegations were comfortable.
Even so, there was so much more than Hermione had expected, and beyond the dark black pudding and crisp beef Wellington and shepherd's pie, there were roasted cattails, and fried beetles, and sautéd eyeballs. There were things she couldn't begin to identify: An oily condiment whose aroma lay somewhere between biscuits and nuts. Wrinkled strips of what almost looked like parchment, tan-brown in the middle and black on the ends. Little pearls, a lot like caviar in appearance and texture, but woody and earthy to the smell, and tasting like baked asparagus, like no caviar Hermione had ever had before.
Hermione threw a questioning glance in Fleur's direction, but she seemed just as lost, so Hermione set the matter aside. It wouldn't do to inadvertently offend their hosts, and Hermione worried that, between the beetles and the pitcher of what was definitely blood (with...a dash of cinnamon, apparently, unless Lino was only joking), any inquiries might come off as scandalized. Anyway, none of it was going to be poisonous, and nobody was forcing her to eat anything she might not be able to stomach, so it didn't matter, really, what anything was.
"It's hard to believe that's really the headmaster of a school up there," Hermione admitted. "Why is he wearing a mask?"
"Well, it's
probably him," Longbottom replied.
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Probably?"
Longbottom dipped his bread into the nutty-biscuit oil as he replied. "Other people wear it, too. There's this whole—well, this group, they're called Death Eaters."
"Right. I've read about those." Hermione remembered what McGonagall had told her about the war, and glanced warily back up at Riddle. She hadn't expected to see him wearing the uniform at Hogwarts.
"Cousin Dora's a Death Eater!" Columba offered while she filled her plate with spaghetti Bolognese. Her tone was chipper and undisturbed by the admission.
Malfoy's eyes flitted toward the High Table. "Sometimes," he added.
"Sometimes?" asked Hermione.
"Only when she wears the mask. It's something you become, she says, not something you are all the time."
"Anyway, sometimes it's the headmaster, and sometimes it isn't," Longbottom said. "If you think it's someone else then you can say so, and you'll get points if you're right, but you'll lose a lot more if you're wrong."
"That is…" Fleur rested a finger against her neck, the way she always did when she searched for a word in English. "Impaired?" She glanced at Hermione, who shook her head. "
Non,
non. Bizarre," Fleur corrected.
"Dora says that the point is to test the Death Eaters. They aren't supposed to be identifiable," Malfoy explained.
It wasn't long before dinner was replaced by dessert, and where there had been stews and pies there were now toffee puddings and gingersnaps and honeycomb topped with real bees. Hermione served herself some custard—it looked a bit odd, brown-going-on-black, but it was
custard, so it had to be alright—and regretted her decision almost immediately. The not-quite-chocolatiness wasn't bad, but it was so cloyingly sweet that she could almost feel her teeth rot.
"Take some of this," said a redheaded girl on the opposite side of the table, who passed a plate of apple pie over to Hermione. "The apples are really tart, so it'll balance out the blood custard."
Hermione took the offered slice, then looked down at the custard. "
Blood custard? But it's so… I mean…"
"And a pound of sugar or something like that. Vampires taste things differently."
Hermione glanced over at Longbottom. "But he's got a bowl." She raised an eyebrow. "Are you a vampire?"
"Neville just has a sweet tooth," said the redhead. "But he still should have warned you," she added, with an admonishing tone. "Anyway, I want to say hello to Charlie before the feast is over, so… It was nice meeting you. Ginny Weasley. You're Hermione, right?"
"Yes. It was nice meeting you," Hermione replied. Ginny's departure made it easier to see the trio of goblins that were sitting at the Ravenclaws' table, which got her thinking again. Hermione took another look around the Great Hall, but no matter where she turned, she couldn't see any other goblins.
"Forgive me if I'm being rude," she started, "but I read that goblins attended Hogwarts, but… Are there not very many? Goblin children, I mean."
"I don't know, I was told that the student body at Hogwarts would almost double if all the goblins came here, but I don't know for sure," Longbottom answered, "but anyway, that isn't why. They still don't trust wizards completely—they're very suspicious of us, you know—so they run their own school down wherever it is that goblins live, and just send a few students up here to learn wand-magic."
"Father's met with the graduates a couple of times," added Malfoy. "He says that they're all teachers, that they come up here to stay current with wizarding spellwork and then they go back down so that they can teach the rest."
Hermione looked back at the goblins, and considered the way they hunched together, as thick as thie… Wait, no, that sounded sort of racist, applied to goblins. Like peas in a pod? No, that was about similarity. Well, they looked very close, at any rate, and it was rather familiar. "They always sit together, don't they? So that they can look after each other."
"I never thought about it that way, but yes, they always get Sorted into Ravenclaw. I think it has to do with Flitwick, too. He favors them, you know, and he's their head of house."
Again, the platters and bowls vanished, and Headmaster Riddle rose from his seat for the second time. "There are a few start-of-term announcements before we all head off to bed. First of all, it greatly pleases me to announce the resurrection of an age-old tradition, the Triwizard Tournament. Starting tomorrow night, students from all three schools will have a week to deposit their names in the Goblet of Fire, which will then select a champion for each school. Though the Tournament has—regrettably—been made less dangerous than it used to be, that does not mean that you should take the matter lightly. I can assure you that, while death is unlikely, lingering and even permanent injuries are not out of the question. If you think that you might quail in the face of danger, then do not enter your name, because if you are chosen, you will not be permitted to withdraw."
That didn't sound too terrible. Hermione doubted that would be an issue for anyone from Beauxbatons. Even Lino wouldn't put his name if he didn't intend to follow through.
"In order to ring in the new school year, we will observe an Opening Duel tomorrow morning, as performed by last year's champions, Peregrine Derrick and Beatrice Haywood." There was scattered applause at that, and someone on the other end of the Hufflepuff shouted out Haywood's name. Riddle lifted a hand, and silence immediately returned to the Great Hall before he continued. "Tomorrow's breakfast will be longer than usual, and end at eight-o'clock. The Opening Duel will then be held in the Quidditch Field at half past eight. Attendance is mandatory for Hogwarts students, but optional for our guests from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. The remainder of the morning will be a free period, and I recommend preparing for your afternoon classes."
Opening Duels were very much not in Hermione's edition of
Hogwarts, A History, but it made sense with what she knew of Riddle's past. Flitwick had been a dueling champion too, hadn't he? And now he was a professor here.
"There are a few prohibitions which all students should keep in mind: The Forbidden Forest is forbidden, and the Restricted Section of the Library is restricted. The girls' lavatory on the second floor is likewise out of bounds to anyone who does not wish to meet Europe's oldest basilisk—snakes do not have eyelids, so there will be very little that the old girl can do to spare you if she is caught unawares. It would also be in your interest to avoid the Black Lake at night, even if you otherwise have reason to be out, lest you catch her hunting in the waters."
The Hogwarts students seemed fairly unsurprised by this announcement, though the first-years looked pale. Or paler, in Columba's case. The professors, Hermione noticed, were not looking directly at Riddle, as though
he was the basilisk.
"Lastly, as most of you should know by now, our old discipline master, Mr. Soot, has departed from us. He bids you all farewell, and hopes to see at least a couple of you again in the future." Neville shuddered at that. "I ask that you put away your sorrows, however, for in his place we have received the eminent Mr. Sable, who looks forward to becoming acquainted with as many of you as he can over the coming year. Though he cannot, of course, be present among us tonight, I hope that you will all extend the warmest of welcomes to him in your hearts."
Riddle's tone became hard very suddenly, as though a hidden switch had been flipped. "Our first years and foreign visitors should heed this counsel: Do not seek out Mr. Sable of your own accord. The discipline master's office in Room Negative-Forty-Six is
strictly forbidden to anyone who is not accompanied by a member of the staff, and any attempt to gain access will be punished without restraint. On this matter, even our guests from abroad should not try their luck."
Ominouser and ominouser, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll.
After Riddle sat down, Hermione turned to Longbottom. "Who's Mr. Sable?" she asked, but he frowned and shook his head.
"Please," he protested. "I just ate."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. You didn't… It was just a question." Longbottom shrugged and smiled. "I don't know if you're going to attend the duel, I might not, if it were up to me, but, well, I'm kind of…"
"Soft," Malfoy supplied, and Longbottom shrugged again.
"Right," Longbottom said. "Anyway, if you come, you can sit with us if you'd like. We'll be in the Hufflepuff stands, of course."
"I… Sure," Hermione said, and she looked back at her fellow delegates. "Fleur and I would love to." She wasn't actually that enthralled with the idea, but Fleur would like it, that much was true, and it really wouldn't be good to skip out on things so early. Madame Maxime might think she was getting cold feet. "And I'm sure that Idalia will be going, so that's at least three," she added, and Longbottom nodded.
It was going to be okay. This first night had gone alright, and that was going to set the tone for the rest of the year, Hermione was sure. She just had to stay attentive, keep out of trouble, and maybe not talk about politics. Easy enough.
