-1
Someone had once told Rowena Ravenclaw that she was a "cold-hearted wench." He went on to become a family man who raised many little tadpoles. Tragically, he and his family died when she had spilled a nasty little potion in his pond.
She thought this was rather Salazar-like of her, but reflecting on it, that was nothing compared to what she did to the man whom cursed her Roland. That man had taken from her any chance she might have had to have children (of course, she could have had a child with another man, but she could not betray her Roland that way) and had almost taken her Roland from her while he was at it. Now her husband was trapped, caged in his own ebon-feathered body, and she had never had an heir.
Not that this was a problem. She just would have liked to raise a child, just once. Rowena could not give two hippogriffs about having an heir or not. In fact, she looked down on Godric and Salazar for obsessing over their family line--what did it matter where a little bit of your blood, diluted almost beyond detection, flowed? Of course, she had an extensive knowledge about heirs, because she could not bear to nothave an extensive knowledge about anything , really. Heirs were some of the only people whose lives ghosts (for that was what she was, now) could interfere with, yet Godric and Salazar never did.
Well, Godric didn't. He was all rules and regulations and honor and code. "Do not interfere!" he had reminded them, over and over ( although Rowena always turned bitter when she was reminded that she could not, even if she so wished). "It is best to let them live their own lives! We must not help them!" And of course he never did interfere, however she knew for a fact Salazar meddled with his descendant's lives. It didn't bother her. After all, what did the matters of the living concern her?
Well, they never did, before. But on that day, sometime in the 1900's (the centuries had all started to run together about a half-millennia ago), Gretchen Gryffindor had floated to her in a huff, as out of breath as a dead person could possibly look.
"Rowena! The boy needs help! I've asked Godric over and over again to do something, but he won't budge! Please, Rowena! You were always the brightest one, you have to do something!"
She, of course, knew who the "boy" was--Harry James Potter, child to James Harold Potter, who was child to John Henry Potter, who was child to Henry John Potter, and so on and so on. The Potters were notoriously uncreative, even though this did not stop them from reproducing.
Rowena at first had refused, to her credit. She had seen horrible things happen to the living. Horrible, awful things, that she had done nothing about.
But Gretchen was a close personal friend of hers. She was not...practical, for lack of better words, but she was reliable, dependable, and a good person at heart. Rowena often mused that Helga would have picked her to teach. At least, if Helga wasn't such a bitch.
So when Gretchen had come to her, asking for a personal favor from friend to friend, the least Rowena could do was take a look.
She had frowned at what she saw. The Boy was locked into a cupboard under a stairway with a group of nonmagical people (Not Muggles. She and Helga had had a falling out when Helga coined the term. Not long after, Rowena had inadvertently begun the non-magical tradition of picturing witches with green skin and warts.) whom abused him on a regular basis. The boy's parents had been killed by Salazar's heir, and now he was trapped with those awful people.
Of course, that was not the scene that had convinced her to step in. Another scene, later, had done that.
Harry had been out in a park for the first time he could ever remember. He was of course hiding from older and phenomenally large cousin, Dudley. He wondered if maybe he hid well enough that his Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would forget about him and go home without him. He highly doubted that fate would be so kind as to dish out a favor like that, but it has often been said that nothing can stop a child from dreaming.
Harry had thought the best way to hide was so that Dudley could not see him, but he could see Dudley. So he was crouched behind a dead, barren tree, sticking his neck out from the side of it as he had often seen his aunt do. It was, perhaps, unhealthy how easily Harry could hide. He was shorter than he should have been at his age, and he was as thin as the discarded twigs scattered around his hiding-tree. His biggest obstacle was not his own body, but the large, bag-like clothing he was in. His gray sweater (in the middle of summer, no less!) hung off of him like drapes, and his hole-riddled jeans (before such a style was fashionable) threatened to fall off of him with every step. He was constantly holding on to the waistband in an effort to avoid humility.
He saw a little girl in a plain pink t-shirt and a light blue skirt sitting on a blue and black checkered blanket, intensely reading a book about something or other. Of course, the little brown, bushy-haired girl's day was about to be ruined when his unmistakably large cousin walked up to her, wrenching the book from her hands, and proceeded to hold it above her head as he ripped out the pages for little other reason than he could. Rowena frowned at the large boy's lack of respect for knowledge. She was no stranger to book theft, as she had often been the perpetrator, but vandalism!
The little girl had, understandably, started to cry, and Harry immediately knew what he had to do. He could not allow his cousin to bully another person to tears, even if it meant that he would have to reveal his hiding spot and have to go home with him. Harry Potter, a skinny, malnourished little boy with messy black hair and glasses bull-rushed his elephantine cousin and slammed into him, forcing him to drop the coveted tome.
Dudley, shocked at this turn of events, punched Harry in the gut, sending him reeling, at which point, he promptly kneed Harry square in the face. Seeing that his fun had been had, and that the bushy haired girl's parents were starting to come over, he wandered off towards the swing set to push some smaller children off the swings and maybe give them scabs on their knees, if he was lucky.
Harry had picked up the book and gathered up all the pages, and presented them to the girl on the blanket who treated them with all the care she would have had it been an injured child.
"Maybe you can put the pages back in with tape," he had said with a weary half-smile. The girl nodded and looked up with all the admiration of someone star-struck. This boy--this skinny little boy had come to the defense of her, defeating the evil monster that killed her book. He was a brave knight of a far-away kingdom, come to rescue the damsel in distress from the monster.
"Oh!" she suddenly exclaimed. And rightly so, as in her hands, the pages flew into their respective positions and re-attached themselves, and soon it was like nothing had happened to the book at all.
"You're weird, too!" Harry exclaimed, shocked at this turn of events. "You can make weird stuff happen like me!"
The girl only nodded, and held out her hand in an offering of a handshake.
"I'm Hermione Granger, what's your name?"
The boy did not take her hand, for he was unsure what to do about it. He only replied with his own name and explained that the large boy was his cousin, and that he was very sorry that Dudley had bothered her.
The girl told him that it was quite alright, and not to worry about what his cousin had done because it seemed that all the damage had been fixed anyway.
Seeing that that particular issue had been resolved for now, Rowena halted her spying (for that was what it was, despite what certain other spirits may have called it) and turned, once again, to Gretchen.
"So, you want me to help your heir, is that it?"
Gretchen, understandably startled by this sudden accusation, yet knowing full well that she could never lie to Rowena (it was one of the witch's more frustrating qualities), replied, "Well, yes. You know very well that I can't do it, if I interfere with his life, Ricky is sure to catch me! You know all sorts of things and ways to get around things, surely you can help me!" Gretchen had taken to calling her husband "Ricky" ever since she had seen a nonmagical television program featuring a red-headed woman who could not stay out of trouble. Her resemblance to Gretchen was striking.
Exasperated, Rowena responded that she would see what she could do. Of course, she knew very well that "what she could do" was absolutely nothing. It was one of the Fundamental Rules: A ghost could not interfere with another ghost's heir. The magic just absolutely refused to work. But she would at least continue to watch the boy. A little spying could not hurt, after all. Gretchen blew an ethereal kiss to Rowena and floated off, probably to try to find some way around Godric's watch.
The boy was home, or at least in a house he slept in. His relatives had seen him speaking with someone in public and as a result his uncle was forced to teach him a lesson.
A very painful lesson.
With a belt.
Rowena found herself furious, enraged that someone with so littleintelligence could possibly overpower someone who went to such great lengths to defend a thirst for knowledge. Harry, who had valiantly come to the aid of a damsel in distress, was getting physically punished for it! Secret love of romance novels aside, this just did not sit well with Rowena Ravenclaw. One scream, two...she just could not watch anymore, but more than that, she could not look away.
At that moment, another weird thing happened to Harry Potter. Well, not so much Harry Potter, but Hermione Granger. She was sitting at home, reading her broken-and-then-repaired book about some wild subject that would be much too old for other children. And then she wasn't. Not reading, of course--not at home. Rather, she had been whisked away many miles to the living room of Number Four, Privet Drive. And again, not just any place in Number Four, Privet Drive, rather the living room, to the left of the television, but to the right of the couch, and behind a man but in front of a boy.
It was in this exact and very specific place that Hermione Granger sat, stunned, watching a black leather belt with a gold-plated buckle come down upon her. She screamed.
The Wisest Founder, at that moment, decided that whatever Godric Gryffindor said about not meddling and being impartial was a sizable load of hippogriff dung. As the purple-faced, whale of a man raised the belt again in a blind fury, unnoticing that his target had changed, Rowena Ravenclaw screamed the one thing she never thought she would say.
"I DECLARE HERMIONE GRANGER AS MY HEIR."
Author's Notes: Well, this is chapter one, obviously. It's only two thousand words, but I've always had a problem with my brevity, and I really, really, wanted to end on Rowena's line.
When I write, I tend to get stuck on one phrase (like "of course") and use it over and over again, so please tell me if I am doing that. I am terrible at detail (something about trying to convey an image in my head to people who don't share my brain is impossible to me) so PLEASE, PLEASE give me some advice on that! I'll try to write ahead first, because I take FOREVER to write ANYTHING, so maintaining a schedule is the bane of my existence.
Love and Kisses,
Your Author.
P.S. Flame away. Espescially that 4th-to-last paragraph, ugh.
