PART ONE
"We know what we are but not who we may be." – William Shakespeare
chapter one
the introduction [or] why is the wizarding world so behind
LUCY often found that in her house there was never any noise. Of course, there were the quiet sounds of people shifting downstairs and the gentle rustle of fabric as the wind blew in through the open windows. There were small clicks as things like the kettle were pressed; doors opening, doors closing. But apart from that: silence.
It was for reasons like those that she tended to sleep in when at home. At Hogwarts, she was used to the noise of her dormmates on a morning. In the comfort of her own room she didn't have the nuisance.
Except it was a Saturday and Kit would kill her if she neglected to get up for his football match – especially considering she gave him a lift to and from every game.
It was with that thought in mind that she willed herself out of bed, practically having to throw her body off the edge in order to fulfil the task. Though she was fine getting up for school, when she didn't technically have to be up it was so, so much harder.
With the bedroom door propped open (and the house otherwise silent, mind), Lucy could unfortunately hear the droning tones of her sister downstairs in quiet conversation with their mother. Molly had moved out years ago, being significantly older than Lucy was, but yet she frequently found reasons to visit. It probably wasn't that uncommon in other families but she hated how whenever her sister did pop round it always resulted in long, winding conversations about how 'simply amazing' Molly was and how she 'single-handedly revolutionised the entire Ministry of Magic' and 'what department of the Ministry are you thinking about joining, Lucy?'
In truth Lucy wanted to be as far away from the Ministry as she could get. Her entire family worked there, more or less, and it was simply expected that after graduation she would follow in their footsteps. Even her mother worked for them – and she was a Muggle. Indeed, Audrey Weasley straddled the thin line between Muggle and Magical; working in tangent with the Ministry of Magic and British Government as a Wizard Liaison Officer.
Realising there was no escape from her mother and sister if she wanted to get to Kit's game on time (and open her Entry Level N.E.W.T scores as soon as they arrived, too), Lucy slipped on a plain pair of slippers and headed downstairs.
The pair were to be found in the kitchen, seated across from one another at the breakfast bar happily enjoying a snack of granola bars and cheese. They spoke merrily but quietly in a sophisticated fashion reserved only for the very most conceited. Truly, they were lovely women, but infuriatingly image-conscious too.
Something seemed off that morning though. Lucy couldn't quite place what.
"Good morning!" Her mother bubbled a greeting with the widest grin set upon her face, her eyes glinting like she alone knew the secrets to the universe and was eagerly anticipating spilling the beans. "Are you going to watch Kit play today?" she asked next.
Lucy begun to help herself to a bowl of cereal as she replied, nodding once before realising that Molly wouldn't see the interaction and adding, "yes, why?"
She took a seat between the two and begun to eat. Her mother seemed impassive to her question, the attention already focused back on Molly. She leant far across the table and clasped her eldest daughter's hands in hers.
"Oh Molly, can we tell her? I'm bursting at the seams already!"
"Tell me…what...?"
It was in that moment that Lucy realised there really was something odd brewing in the kitchen – and not just the anti-aging potions her mother would actively deny knowledge about should the subject be raised.
"No, no Mum we can't possibly - not before Lucy opens her exam results, at least!" Molly at least had the decency to look bashful.
"Oh yeah," Lucy muttered around a mouthful of cereal. It was then that she noticed the thick envelope in the middle of the table. "Gimme a minute then."
Audrey apparently couldn't sit quiet any longer though. She must have been ready to burst, as she began to visibly quiver in her seat. "Oh dear, please! Do hurry Lucy; your sister has some incredible news to share."
With a huff Lucy pushed the bowl away from her, acknowledging with a roll of her eyes that if she didn't open her results soon then Molly would overshadow even more of their mother's attention with what was probably another pointless educational thing, like the time she came bursting over in the midst of a storm to tell them all how she'd 'realised question 4. on the Ancient Runes O.W.L paper had been misprinted at the very last moment' and somehow saved the whole exam from crumbling to the ground. Like any of the students would have noticed and/or cared (Lucy did Ancient Runes. She could attest to the fact they would not care).
"I'm opening it, I'm opening it!" She waved the envelope around for good measure before ripping through the seal and unwinding the parchment, which felt horribly chaffing between her fingers after being so used to writing on paper.
ENTRY LEVEL N.E.W.T. RESULTS
LUCY ARTEMISIA WEASLEY HAS ACHIEVED:
Astronomy: E
Defence Against the Dark Arts: A
Divination: O
Study of Ancient Runes: A
Transfiguration: A
Please note that although Entry Level N.E.W.T.s may stand alone as their own qualifications, should you choose to continue your education and apply to sit your full N.E.W.T.s then your scores will be cumulated together to form an overall total grade which shall be received upon fulfilment and marking of all exams in the month August of year 2027.
Over the page it detailed more about individual unit grades and coursework marks but Lucy threw the letter down onto the table.
"I take it you knew my results already?" she asked with a quirk of her eyebrows and a straight line of a mouth.
Molly's smile faded. "I thought – I mean – you know I'm not allowed to mark your exam, Lucy, or any of the other family's for that matter, but of course I enquired about your grades. I wanted to know if my sister had done well."
"And then what, and then you told Mum? You know just because you're part of the Wizarding Examination Authority doesn't mean you actually have the authority to do stuff like that and snoop through private, official documents"
Her mother waved her hand in a dismissive way. "Oh stop being so moody, Lucy! Of course she's allowed to; otherwise they wouldn't have let her now would they. I was thrilled to found out you got an O in one of your subjects! Aren't you happy?"
Lucy rolled her eyes before making to get up but Molly pulled her back down by the wrist, a pitifully sad look adorned on her face. "I didn't get to tell you my news yet!"
"If it's even slightly related to your job I do not want to know."
"Don't be such a bore, Lucy. Listen. This affects you too!"
"Hardly."
She began to spoon more cereal into her mouth as her sister started to talk.
"I've been promoted to a senior member of the WEA now. I'm not just an examiner now, I'm in charge of revising the specs every year and, well, the Minister's put forward documents which suggest underperformance in –"
"As fascinating as I'm sure this is," Lucy cut across, biting down on the spoon momentarily to calm herself down, "I'm going to go get ready. It was nice seeing you again," she added at the last minute, stepping down from the chair and her breakfast before leaving the kitchen, a stale aftertaste residing in her mouth.
"So what, you think you're going to have to retake the Herbology theory to pass overall?"
"That or see if Longbottom will let me improve my coursework. Get it up to an E to balance out my apparently abysmal exam skills."
Lucy sighed on his behalf as they drove through his hometown, drumming her fingers against the wheel to calm her whirring mind.
"Exams are so stupid!" she cried out after a prolonged period of silence, startling Kit into spilling coffee all over his football kit. "– sorry. I just don't get it though. What type of person thinks exams are an accurate way to measure intelligence?!"
"People like your sister." Kit was still grumbling as he fished through the glove compartment for Lucy's wand, pulling it out after a moment with an aha! before siphoning the scalding liquid off.
"My sister can rot in Azkaban for all I care."
"Tough morning? Did she come over to covertly gloat about her straight Os again? Even I've heard that speech a time too many."
"Worse. She's been promoted – apparently that news couldn't wait until another day. Just oh so coincidentally on the morning she knew our results were being given, which, if I didn't already mention, she already knew! And she told my mother. I bet every fucker knew what grades I got before I did."
Kit let them stew in post-rant silence for a few minutes.
"I still can't believe you got an O," he said to break it.
"Divination. Doesn't count."
The road ahead began to shorten before them. There was a high school on the left, shut for the summer (and most likely the place Kit would have attended, if it wasn't for Hogwarts), and just after that a break in the pavement where there was an entrance to a car park, leading further down to the grassy fields where he played football for his local team each Saturday that he was home.
"Good practice for Quidditch," he would say, though it wasn't hard to decipher that he actually just missed his Muggle friends who had all gone to school without him, growing up and having fun together. Without him.
Sacrifice, Lucy thought as she pulled the car into an empty bay, was a funny thing.
"Oi, I called shotgun get the fuck out of my seat!"
"You're the shortest Orla, you have to sit in the back."
"It's definitely my week to go in the front, guys. C'monnn!"
"Fuck off Will!"
"– IF YOU DON'T GET IN AND SIT SOMEWHERE I'LL DRIVE OFF AND LEAVE ALL YOUR SORRY ARSES BEHIND!"
A buzzing sound followed the outburst, humming between the group in their silence. It was punctuated only by the other football players and their families and friends, all climbing into their own cars to head home after a devastating defeat. Kit had played his part as keeper well enough; the others just hadn't found place to score.
One by one, Lucy's friends began to filter into the car, subdued by her yelling but not without grumpy expressions. Particularly Orla, who as the slimmest and shortest of the five, had been forced into the middle seat of the back through tactical arrangement. It usually happened that way.
Rowen climbed in last, allowing Will to then slide the front seat into place again before climbing back in, arranging his lanky limbs into the fairly small, three-door car. He always complained that the ceiling was too short when he sat in the back. Rowen, Orla and Kit claimed bullshit; they managed just fine. Lucy was just glad that as the only driver amongst them – and being the owner of said driven car – she didn't have to worry about which seat she might find herself occupying that journey.
"Can I pick music today?" Will had already begun to riffle through the glove compartment.
"Find a radio station. I took all of the CDs out of the car on Monday and I forgot to put them back in this morning."
"Oh," he said and then shut the glove compartment with a snap.
They spent the rest of the journey singing loudly and particularly off-key to some blaring music on a station that was dedicated to only playing songs at least ten years old. The best kind, in Lucy's opinion. Being Muggle music, Rowen, Will and Orla tried to hold their own where possible but it was Lucy with her Muggle mother and Kit with complete Muggle heritage that kept the songbird afloat.
When they pulled into a new car park almost forty five minutes later, Will immediately raced off to fetch a trolley. He met the others by the entrance to the warehouse and strutted inside, the rest following in his wake.
As they veered straight into the first aisle in front of them, Lucy began riffling through her bag for the list of items they needed.
"What's the breakdown for this year's inventory, then?"
Will zigzagged beside her. The trolley swung hazardously side to side, each zig and each zag threateningly close to knocking one of the others over. Or worse: something from the high, towering shelves surrounding them.
She located the list, finally, in a white lined notebook covered in the scribbles of projects past. She flicked to the back where the finalised lists were hand printed every summer, hours on end spent analysing the demands of the students in the last annum via more spreadsheets and calculations than she ever cared to think about. It wasn't just looking at what had sold well last year but when it had peak sold, what kind of capacity they needed to buy it in and what the predicted unit sales might be for the upcoming year.
Lucy would miss Nox when the lot of them graduated that year, despite the work load. They all would.
It had started as something small, something whimsical based on a flyby comment made by – god, she couldn't even remember who. It had spiralled from there, though, with late night chats around the Hufflepuff hearth, spanning across their first and second years before they came back after a summer of hard preparation to their third year, brimming with anticipation.
Nox was an access business; the middle man between the Wizarding world and the Muggle one. For the first year they sold mainly products like a tuck shop: sweets, crisps, drinks and so forth. There were pens, too, and plain Muggle paper that the five of them low-level popularised by using so often.
The next year they expanded to encompass more things – a wider variety. When they boarded the train September 1st 2024, though, that was when things had really kicked off. They were fifteen and suddenly it wasn't so difficult to charm their IDs to say they were eighteen, altering their faces slightly to match. They were buying alcohol – vodka, whiskey, cheap alcopops – even firewhiskey and spiced mead from the suppliers of The Three Broomsticks; cigarettes and tobacco lie hidden under their school robes, too, and Orla and Rowen began developing potions to sell as well, aware of consumer needs extending beyond the realms of the Muggle things they had no access to.
Suddenly it had all become a proper business; a big, proper thing where they were all profiting. They had become infamous around the halls of Hogwarts. They were entrepreneurial.
On pure basis, Percy Weasley would probably be proud of his daughter. Except, Lucy figured maybe not so much if he ever found out she was running Hogwarts' Black Market with the four friends he'd always thought were abnormal at best.
What the man didn't know wouldn't harm him.
Aware that she'd been biting her lip for a prolonged time as she scanned the pre-written list, Lucy finally began reeling off the items and quantities to her companions.
Rowen and Orla nodded once. They were so used to memorising potion ingredient lists that any long, series of articles seemed to bypass their short term memory, instantly committed to a lifetime of recall.
"One at a time, one at a time!" Kit cried. "Have a little pity on the dyslexic, would you? You know it gets all jumbled when you go on and on and on."
Lucy muttered her apologies as she hauled a case of Coca-Cola cans from the shelf. Will dodged out of the way with the trolley, laughing as she swore blindly, her arms sinking lower as she struggled with the weight.
"Fucking – get over here you shit!"
Two hours later they had finished shopping for supplies with only a few minor incidents accountable in their name: a cloud of flour, coating Orla's part-Polynesian skin in a layer of unnatural contrast, had bloomed up half way through the warehouse, to which the remaining four of them had gathered around her in a protective circle so she could siphon the powder off with her wand and Will, inevitably, had been to blame, having rolled the trolley straight into a mountainous size pile of industrial-sized bags of flour whilst trying to do some form of trick.
On the plus side – they'd only had to perform two minor confundus charms on unsuspecting and (admittedly validly) angry staff. It was an improvement on last year at any rate.
a/n: hi, this is the first chapter of a novel idea I've been planning and plotting and thinking about for aBSOLUTELY AGES so it feels great to finally have it up haha. there had to be some sort of introduction, right, and this is it… just a nice easy slide into the characters and main-voice of lucy. just throwing it out there but the education system is slightly different to the usual one and that will be explained more over the next two chapters but if you're impatient or exceedingly curious then you can always send me a message and I'll explain some more :p it's important to the plot. incredibly so.
anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and future ones to come! I would appreciate any and all feedback on the characters, initial impressions etc thank you so much.
note: I don't own ed sheeran, coca-cola or the words of william shakespeare.
- Jess, xo