The express was forty minutes outside of London when the mobile signal cut out.
"Dammit." Brigitte lowered her phone, glared at the screen, and then switched it off.
"Language, Birgi." Finn said, not looking up from his own mobile. "And you should have got e-books like I did. Honestly, I warned you. Hogwarts isn't like the mound. Not a drop of wi-fi and-"
"I get it." Finn's canine ears flicked with annoyance, and Brigitte gave him a mocking thumbs-up. "If I wanted a lecture I would have invited Mam."
He finally turned his attention away from his novel. "That," he said softly, pulling a face, "is a terrifying idea."
"Can you imagine how many dead people I'd have to clean up?"
"Not that many, because I'd get stuck with most of the work?"
She flashed him another, even less polite hand-gesture, one which made Finn scowl.
"Language, Birgi."
It was tempting to retort again, but he was no fun at all if he was just going to snap back into 'Older Brother Mode' like that. Brigitte just shrugged and pulled out her sketchbook.
XXX
The next interruption came about an hour later. A round-faced woman opened the compartment, and, to her credit, didn't even blink at the two of them.
"Care for anything off the trolley, dears?"
"No gifts, thanks," Brigitte said, holding up her hands in an 'X.'
Finn rolled his eyes at her. "She's selling them, airhead. No one's trying to give you anything." He turned to the trolley lady. "One of those cream-filled cauldron cakes, if you've got them. And uh- Birgi?"
"Really? I don't eat, Finn," she said acidly.
"We've got magazines as well," the trolley witch interjected. "And playing cards, if you're bored."
"Oh." She rubbed her arm, the skin growing warm with embarrassment. So worried about obligations that she'd looked like an idiot. "You have the latest 'Canterbury Curses Monthly?'"
The witch did.
Brigitte traded her two sickles for the periodical, and then Finn made his purchase. She lifted the magazine high enough that she didn't have to see his smug expression.
XXX
The main article in her magazine was pretty shoddy, actually. Some puff piece they'd only included because the author was a hot-shot cursebreaker. Graverobber, more like. Talking themselves up and telling tall-tales of their exploits in Egypt. It was all stuff that sounded like something out of Indiana Jones.
CCM hadn't printed any of her letters in a while, but she was definitely sending them one for this. Wasting valuable space on a graverobbing scumbag, when just last week a Turkish magi had invented a working countercurse for the Piercing Petrifaction spell. That was front-page news.
"That bad?" Finn said, looking up from his e-book.
Brigitte lowered the magazine. "How can you tell?"
"You're smoking."
Sure enough, the normally sedate haze of black smog that surrounded her was gushing forth, and the ceiling of the compartment was lost in the miasma.
"Whoops."
It took an effort of will to force the fumes under control. An effort that lasted until her attention returned to the page.
Finn sighed and fished in his bag before withdrawing a folded paper. "I've got today's 'Prophet.' You wanna read the obits?"
She tossed CCM away like the dreck it was. "Gimme gimme gimme!"
XXX
Two hours in was enough for Finn to have gotten tired of reading, and Brigitte had long since finished poring over the wizarding death records, gone back to sketching dress-forms, and then gotten bored of that.
Her brother stood, stretching the kinks out of his back.
"I've got some summer homework to get done. I did half, and Jasper did the other, and we're gonna swap. You can come along and meet him if you want. He's got a brother your age, I think."
Brigitte hefted her bag for a moment, debating going for another activity, before deciding against.
"Go ahead. Think I'll explore the train in a bit."
Finn shrugged, turning back to his bag and beginning to unload his work. "Stay out of trouble."
"Hypocrite." She adjusted her speaking skull on its chain, slid out of the seat, and grabbed her jumper. Using it to protect her hand, she seized the door latch.
"It's not cold iron," he muttered.
"Better safe than sorry," she shot back. "Take your stupid nap already."
Honestly, what was he so casual about? It was an entire train made of steel. There could very well be cold iron somewhere in there.
Accidents happened, and life was cheap. They both knew that.
She pushed the door open carefully with her covered hand.
And immediately stopped.
There were two kids standing on the other side. An older girl and boy, maybe middle-teens, the former with his hand raised to knock.
"Hi, we're going down the train to gauge interest in-" The girl looked up from her handful of leaflets. "Bwahh!"
She staggered backward and collided with the far wall of the car. The boy was not far behind, raising a wand protectively in front of him as he backed away.
Brigitte waved. "G'morning."
"What kind of spell is that?" the girl breathed. She seemed to have bounced back, high color in her cheeks as she stared unabashedly. "Scared the hell out of me. Maybe one of those Weasley invisibility hats modified. Maybe-"
"Nat, it's rude to stare," the boy said. He turned back to Brigitte, lowering his wand. "Sorry. You- uh, just, you know, you surprised me?"
She shut the door behind her, cutting off Finn's stare on her back. "No problem. Happens all the time. What were you pamphletting for?"
"Nat was thinking of starting a cooking club." The boy paused, pocketed his wand, then held out a hand. "Lucan Campbell. That's Nat Ramsey."
Brigitte shook his hand, then Ramsey's. He was muscular, though a bit short, his skin a warm brown. The girl was built more like Finn, tall, a dancer's form, her hair a doxy-nest of blond curls. Both wore blue ties.
"Brigitte. And- a cooking club, you said?" She tapped a nail against her skull. "Not really my cup of tea."
Ramsey shrugged. "'S'all right. We've started up like a dozen others. Tell me how you managed that- that's an illusion, isn't it? But you've done it so perfectly. It's hardly first-year material. You've got to tell-"
Campbell's hand over her mouth cut off the rest of Ramsey's ramblings. He wore an expression of long-suffering exasperation so keen that Brigitte wondered if he'd learned it from Finn.
"First of all," he said. "It's clearly a potion-based transformation. Secondly, we do have other clubs. Most are just Ravenclaw study groups, but a lot of people came to our book club last year. Is there anything you're into?"
Brigitte gestured to one of the pamphlets. "Let's make a deal. You stop asking about my head, and I'll take a look at your list."
Ramsey, mouth still covered, groaned, but slapped a paper into her hand all the same.
"Thank you."
The club-listing ran down the front of the brochure and carried on down the next two folds, with the final taken up by the Hogwart's crest. Brigitte read quickly, her stare quickly growing incredulous, her smoke billowing with surprise and excitement.
They had all of these?
"Well then."
Ramsey snickered behind Campbell's hand.
XXX
By the time Campbell and Ramsey had pamphletted their way down the remaining cars in the train, Brigitte had joined the book club, poker night, the Enchanter's Expo, Hexes For All Sexes, junior cartographer's club, the Non-Human Alliance, and debate club.
When they parted ways, the duo going to meet up with friends, Brigitte was giddy with anticipation. Sure, she'd probably have to drop a few clubs once classes got into full-swing, but there were just so many opportunities. She'd never been in a club before.
Humming to herself, she turned to amble up the train.
What other adventures could she find?
XXX
She meandered up the train, glancing in compartments. Hers and Finn's was third from the front car, and while she was ostensibly headed back there, she was in no hurry.
The first couple rooms were uninteresting. Just groups of students sitting and talking, a couple playing cards in the first compartment.
Out the door, passing through the liminal space between cars. The wind and rumble of the engine were muted, quieter than they should be, some aspect of the train's magic softening them.
And then in.
A small knot of students lingered in the corridor ahead. They were old enough not to react with more than a nod and a wave when she passed by, and she returned the wave in kind.
A bit further on, one of the compartment doors was open, the raucous sound of boys' laughter leaking into the car.
Brigitte peered in cautiously, ready to recoil if they were fooling around with magic. Four years of collateral hexes from her elder relatives had been four years too many.
To her surprise, the boys, a few Finn's age, a few closer to hers, were all perched on their seats. Two others were in the middle of the floor, a messy pile of limbs and hands, shirts and robes discarded. The crowd shouted, rooting for this and that as the two wrestled.
Ugh. Boys.
A flash of ochre eyes from the boy on the bottom as he locked the other boy's arms behind his back had her amend the thought. The scent of salt and olive wood was unmistakable, once you got past the palpable wave of testosterone.
Urgh. Demigods.
Fair was fair, letting in all the races meant all of them, but did they really have to invite the lousy Greeks? It was like having all the nuisance of elves, with none of the protections of word or obligation.
She turned on her heel and moved on.
The exit to the next car wasn't far ahead, and Brigitte sped up, trying to put distance between herself and the demis. One of them had definitely called out as she walked away.
She was just reaching the door when it slid open before her. The trolley witch stood on the platform outside, leaning on the handle of her cart.
"Scuse me, dear."
Brigitte stepped aside to let the witch in.
She was grandmotherly, and up-close, smelled like pumpkin bread. If she didn't know better, she'd wonder if this woman wasn't more of a Hansel and Gretel witch than the ordinary kind.
Actually… now that she looked, the trolley witch was a bit wispy around the edges. She hadn't been paying attention earlier, but maybe that had been more induced than carelessness. There was a distinct indistinctness around the woman. A minor glamour, maybe. Or a notice-me-not?
"Hold up."
"Want something for the road?" The witch beamed at her.
Brigitte leaned closer, staring, smoke beginning to curl around the both of them. "Are you… are you a spirit?"
The woman chuckled. "I am. You must have quite the keen third eye to sense that."
Right. Brigitte hefted her skull and squared her shoulders. Duty was duty. She let her magic rise. Not the focused chill of wizard casting, but the raw frost of her mantle. The windows fogged, and the bottles of butterbeer on the cart froze solid.
She spoke, and white smoke plumed from her skull's jaws. "I, Brigitte O'Ciardha, child of Unseel, ask of you this- Answer honestly, spirit: are you bound, compelled, geassed, sealed, warded, or- uhm-"
"I believe you forgot 'contracted,'" the witch said, smiling. "And I am none of the above."
"Oh." Brigitte sagged, her rhythm broken, before she restarted. "Are you uh- if no one's forcing you, then do you have any unfinished business tying you to this world?"
"Oh no. You misunderstand, dear." The witch patted the wall of the train. "I'm not a human spirit. What I am, is a genius loci. The spirit of the Hogwarts Express, essentially."
"Really?"
"Really. I've heard that the castle itself has a spirit, though they are rather more illusive than I am."
"Huh." Brigitte let her mantle fade, waving her free hand to disperse the chill. "Well, it's nice to meet you, all the same."
Genius loci. That was fascinating, actually. It was nothing strange for the oaks and brooks to have their own spirits or nymphs, but if even an artificial space like a train or castle could as well… could a city? Was it possible for the mound to have its own spirit?
"Do you know of any others? Like, is there a spirit of Dublin?"
The witch-spirit smiled. "Walk with me?"
XXX
As it turned out, the trolley witch didn't know if there was a spirit of Dublin or London or any others. Her knowledge was largely limited to the train and its surroundings.
"Don't see much use, do we," the witch said, leaning over to knock on a compartment door. "Couple trips a year, and most of the rest we usually put our feet up."
"Sounds…" 'Dull' was impolite. "Quiet."
"I get enough excitement during the year." The compartment door opened, the boisterous chatter of a lot of boys spilling out. "Anything for you, dears?"
The older boy inside greeted the witch with the casual grin of familiarity. "Morning, Miss Sweetley. Couple of those red ones, two of that, three chocolate frogs, a fizzing whizzbee, and-" He called over his shoulder, "Terry, you want anything?"
"Butterbeer."
"Make that… three, four- six butterbeers."
The witch- Miss Sweetley, Brigitte supposed, parceled out the various items for the boy. There were enough that she glanced over at Brigitte. "Would you mind, lass?"
"Huh? Oh, sure." It was the least she could do in exchange for the information Sweetley was giving her.
Brigitte began taking the numerous treats and snacks the witch handed to her, sorting them in a small, cardboard tray. The butterbeer, which she had definitely had frozen a few minutes ago, had somehow thawed in the interval, and the boy didn't so much as glance at it when she gave him the tray.
"Thanks. You're a first-year?" he said, passing the tray in to another of the boys.
Brigitte held up a hand in lieu of a nod. "O'Ciardha, nice to meet you."
The boy smiled. "Greengrass, it's a pleasure. I'll keep an eye out for you if you make it into Ravenclaw. Seems like you've got a good head on your shoulders."
Brigitte made a very rude hand gesture at him, keeping it out of sight of Miss Sweetley.
Punny bastard. Like she hadn't heard that one a million and five times.
Greengrass smirked, then tossed a coin to her. "Keep the change."
She had just enough time to catch the flash of gold in midair, but she was already reaching for it.
The galleon stung her palm where it touched, and Brigitte yowled with pain. She flung her hand aside, hurling the galleon away from her. Sweetley caught it before it spun out the window, but only just.
"Bastun, plá ar do theach!" Brigitte shook her hand, hissing other, choicer swears under her breath. A welt was already forming on her palm. Raised and red, like she'd grabbed the coin fresh from the minter.
"Alright there, dear?"
"Hurts." Brigitte pointed to one of the bottles of butterbeer. "Do you mind if I hold that a sec?"
"Course." Sweetley made to pop the cap off it before stopping herself. "I should have remembered the fae don't care for metals."
The glass was achingly cool against her tender skin, the relief instant.
Brigitte sighed. "Much better. You're the best."
"You want to take a mulligan at it? Not all of them are like that." The witch smiled once more, revealing broad, even teeth. "Spose I can think up a few more stories about the train for you on the way. Why, I remember one about Mister Greengrass' father you might find amusing."
"Yeah," she murmured, shaking her hand out once more, before she returned the bottle to the cart. The burn was still there, but no worse than a sunburn. "I think I'd like to hear that."
XXX
They actually passed by the compartment where Finn and Brigitte had been, now deserted. Sweetley, to her credit, kept her promise and regaled her with stories of the express as they walked and worked. Most were nice little anecdotes or misadventures, gathered over a century of transporting students.
What Brigitte found most interesting though, was something more personal.
"Sometimes, if the weather's nice," Sweetley said, "I like to walk my tracks."
"Oh yeah?" Brigitte shuffled a few boxes of Bertie Botts Beans from the storage space under the cart to the serving station atop it.
"Oh yes. The train isn't the limit of my domain. I've over 700 kilometers of tracks between Hogwarts and London. Nothing stopping me from walking them during the off-season. I check the ties and rails, just to make sure everything's in order.
"And on the way..." Sweetley smiled fondly. "I sight-see. The countryside is lovely."
"It is."
They both stopped, gazing out the windows at the greenery rushing by, turned orange-red by sunset.
"I love to see how the lands grow and change, little by little, with every journey I make," Sweetley said. "This part here has been farmland for decades. We passed the last muggle town about ten minutes ago."
Were she able, Brigitte would have frowned. "That close to Hogwarts?"
"About forty kilometers. And it's only a little hamlet."
"For now. Muggle cities always grow."
Sweetley arched an eyebrow at her. "I hadn't pegged you as the type to worry about muggles. You and your brother both have mobiles."
"They're fascinating," Brigitte said softly. "And all the tech is neat. I just worry about the muggles spreading. Finn and I are from a faerie mound. In our mam's time, it was in the middle of nowhere, but now we have to stick loads of charms on it to keep the muggles away because they built a retail park right down the road. It's..." She trailed off with a shrug, her words faltering.
It sounded sort of stupid when said aloud. Wizarding Britain had been hiding for centuries, and they did alright, but the fae were just… more sensitive.
"There's only so much space, you know?"
The trolley-witch mirrored her shrug. "True. But if not for muggle technology, I wouldn't exist at all. I understand your concerns, but I try to look on the bright side. Perhaps by the time that space runs out, we'll have learned to coexist with them."
Brigitte didn't really have an answer to that. A world of cities of glass and steel and stone. A world that was getting smaller by the day. How were they supposed to coexist when everything the muggles built was so antithetical to the fae?
"Besides," Sweetley nudged her gently, "I've been round the block a fair shake, dear, and what we have now is a far sight better than the Industrial Revolution. Things are getting better, bit by bit."
A lull. The two of them observing. Gentle farmland had given way to forest and hill.
"You'll want to be getting back. We're almost there." The older woman held out a handful of sweets. "For your brother and your friends."
Brigitte stepped back. "I can't accept gifts."
That earned her a smile, and a flash of something behind Sweetley's eyes- a glint of an existence that had seen two-hundred years of students come and go, all of them novel.
"Of course not. Consider them payment for a nice conversation. I can't say I've ever had anyone try to exorcise me."
Sweetley gave a coarse snort of laughter at that, and Brigitte, after shifting on her heels for a moment, reached out and took the candy.
XXX
A short time later, she was leaning into a compartment near the front of the train.
Finn, ears flicking, eyebrows squinched together, held a handful of playing cards. The four other students around the car, three boys and a girl, were looking at him like cats to canaries.
"We're nearly to the castle," Brigitte said.
Finn waved his free hand at her. "Not now, Birgi. I've got two-weeks of homework riding on this one."
"Last round. Let's see 'em," a yellow-tied boy said, laying down his hand. "Agrippa. Beat it."
"Kirke."
"Dumbledore."
"Abigail Williams."
They all turned to Finn, who was now fidgeting in his seat.
Brigitte tapped a nail on her skull impatiently. "Any day now, Finn."
The other girl was grinning at him. "Play your card, O'Ciardha. And make sure to write my essays legibly."
Finn sighed heavily, and then slapped his card down. The other four leaned in to look.
"Mab?" the Hufflepuff boy read.
The girl scowled. "Mab's not a witch!"
The cu sith shrugged, an infuriatingly smug smile blooming on his face. "If she's not a witch, then why do I have a trading card for her? Also, I'm not about to tell Mab what she can and can't be. It's a bad idea."
He stood, still smirking. "Make sure to write my essays legibly."
The group had just begin to argue when Brigitte finally pulled Finn out of the car by his collar.
XXX
They changed quickly, the train just beginning to slow down.
"I didn't know there was a Mab wizarding card," Brigitte said, her skull speaking from where she'd put it aside to pull her robes over her head.
"There's not." Finn held up the card in question.
A wave, and the card's face shimmered. Something like heat-haze fell away, revealing the bland expression of "Leonard Lispen, Inventor of the Flobberworm Fritter."
"You cheat."
He chuckled, flicking the card into his bag. "Just a bit of applied glamour. No harm done."
Brigitte folded her arms. "I doubt your friends would be happy to find out what you did."
"Upset that I'm fleecing humans, Birgi?"
"No. That's faerie tradition. However..." She paused, letting him look at her before she continued. "I'm not above blackmailing you to learn that glamour."
Finn's ears wilted, but whatever he said was lost in a blast of noise as the train sounded its whistle, and the Hogwarts Express came to a slow, lumbering stop.
XXX
"Early this year. Must have made good time," Finn said. He adjusted his tie and robes, ran his fingers through his hair, and became, frustrating as always, perfectly presentable.
One of his ears swiveled, radaring something.
"Sounds like everyone else got caught by surprise too. Let's hurry up so we can beat the scrum."
Brigitte stuffed her jumper and magazine into her trunk, and did a last-minute check of her seat to make sure she wasn't forgetting anything. Her skull, secure on its chain around her throat, as always. Her wand, all dark, gleaming wood, got pocketed.
She was just beginning her second, final check when Finn grabbed her.
"Cmon, cmon. I want to get a good seat at the feast, and you gotta catch a boat."
He rushed her out the door like a tempest, even as Brigitte did her best to elbow him in the ribs.
They were first out the gate, hustling onto the platform with black-robed students streaming forth behind them like a flight of bats. Night had fallen, and the sky above was blissfully clear, reminiscent of the starry vault above the mound, and so, so much better than the smoggy, light-polluted sky of London.
Though, it could be much worse, she was forced to admit, waving to a silhouette in a train window that had to be the sweets-seller.
She stopped, catching a deep breath of Hogwart's air for the first time. Thick with steam from the train, but also tinged with the scent of wild pine and raw stone. There had been death here, as well.
The imprints of the Battle of Hogwarts still lingered, vague phantoms and splotches of phantasmal blood scattered about. They'd lost most of their clarity in the two decades since the war, but as battlefields went, that wasn't long.
As Finn dragged her by the weeping, silently yelling echo of a young man, Brigitte reached out. Her touch was enough. The shade turned, his eternal repetitions broken. His eyes fell on her. He mouthed words.
And then he was gone.
Not a spirit or sluagh, thankfully. Just a lingering impression. Harmless, even if they were unpleasant, and minor enough that even Finn couldn't see them. The spiritual malaise they exuded would be vaguely uncomfortable to anyone normal who hung around it too long.
She'd have to find time to come back down and help the rest of them.
The flow of students reached a crossroads. New students like herself were diverging, headed down toward the lake, and an enormous man holding a lantern. The older students went straight ahead, to a line of carriages.
Carriages that were drawn by-
"Thestrals!" Brigitte squealed.
Finn had told her they would be here, but it had slipped her mind. And oh, they were lovely. Whoever took care of them was doing a fantastic job. Fine, glossy coats, the musculature overlying their skeletal forms lean and strong. Well-groomed hooves and fangs. Even their auras were healthy, dark, tempered with cloying death, but also serene, like a well-maintained cemetery.
"Who's a pretty boy?" she said, rubbing the closest thestral's snout. He pushed against her, red eyes closing as she patted him. "Such a good boy."
"Birgi, you need to catch a boat. Come on. Oh, for the love of… girls and ponies."
Finn grabbed her round the midsection and lifted her bodily away from the horses. She squirmed, but her brother had four years and half a meter on her. He lifted her like a grain sack and carried her down the path until they reached the giant man with the lantern.
"Professor Hagrid, sir," Finn called. "My sis is starting this year."
Hagrid bent double to peer down at her, beard like a white waterfall. "Ello there," he rumbled. "An' well met, O'Ciardha. Hogwarts'll be lucky to have another one of yer."
Brigitte fidgeted under Finn's arm. "Lemme down, Finn," she hissed. He was embarrassing her. "And- well met to you as well, Son of Stone." It was impossible to curtsy, but she tried to manage a dignified wave for the teacher at least.
"Aye. Down ter the boats with yer," Hagrid said.
Finn plunked her down while Hagrid stomped off to direct more first-years.
"Son of Stone?" he repeated incredulously. "You sounded like such a dork. There's other fae here, and you better not let them hear you talking like that. I've got a reputation to up-hold. You start in with the thees and thous and I'll show everyone your baby pictures."
Brigitte put her hands on her hips. "I'll tell Mam you're being a bad brother."
He squinted at her, tawny eyes glinting in the moonlight. "The other fae here are seelie."
"Oh."
"Yeah." Finn reached out and squeezed her shoulder once. "Go on before you miss the boats."
XXX
Brigitte slid into one of the last, unoccupied boats, holding tight to her skull so it didn't somehow fall in the water. She only had a few moments to stare around at the dark, moon-mirrored surface of the lake before someone clunked in behind her.
"You- erk!" A boy had stopped with one foot in, balancing precariously, his face white. "Where's your-"
Brigitte waved. "I'm a fae."
He glanced around frantically, eyeing the other boats, but most were full-up.
"I don't mind if you ride with me?" she ventured.
The boy, somehow, went whiter. "I'll catch another one. Sorry for bugging you."
He stumbled off, and Brigitte did her best to ignore the sounds of him joining another boat, as well as the rapid whispers that sprang up in his wake.
Something hard and unpleasant settled in her chest.
Grumbling under her breath, Brigitte settled back and began tracing the lines in her speaking skull.
The bone was old, gone yellow like aged ivory, and carved with a fine filigree of woven, interlocking lines and whorls. Her fingertips followed lines until they branched, and she picked a path without thought. The designs had no beginning or end. She could trace them as long as she needed, the act meditative.
It helped her ignore the sounds of more students diverting from her boat, the gasps, the whispers.
The only spot of variance was the copper plate set into the skull's forehead. Worn just as smooth as the rest of the skull, the etching was only barely visible.
Her index followed the letters, one by one.
V-A-L-E-R-I-E
Why her mother had felt the need to give her a saint's relic as a speaking skull, Brigitte still didn't know. Probably some kind of irony or morbid joke. But honestly… a Christian saint. It wasn't even her culture.
The skull was useful, but it was wrong. It wasn't hers, nor would it ever be hers.
It took a frustratingly long couple minutes before Hagrid called out, and the boats began to slide 's was near the end of the pack, and she was just beginning to brace for movement when her boat shuddered.
Someone got it.
She turned, heart pounding rapidly.
Another girl, staring at her with concern. "Y-you don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all," Brigitte said warmly, injecting all her cheer into the words.
Her boat-mate was a pale, white-haired slip, her heart-shaped face currently wrinkled in concern. The air around her was just a tad warmer, the edge taken off the night, and her silver eyes caught the light in an odd way. She was so… frankly fae that Brigitte was trying to place if she'd seen this girl at the last ring dance.
She tapped a thoughtful finger on her skull, but just as she was about to ask what this girl was, the boat lurched into motion, and she stayed silent.
The girl made a few, abortive motions as though she was about to speak, and Brigitte found herself uncharacteristically tongue-tied. They made it as far as introductions – the girl was named Perrine – but any more talk died altogether when they rounded a bend and saw Hogwarts for the first time.
XXX
She was still dazed when the boats came to a halt. Their port was inside an ivy-shrouded cave, each boat lining up neatly beside a dock. Students disembarked, knotting up around the foot of the stairs leading away from the dock.
Brigitte stood, knees a bit weak, and followed along behind them. Most of the first-years were as silent as her, though some were talking excitedly to their fellows.
No wonder Finn had always insisted "she'd have to see it for herself."
Hogwarts was a place with history.
Not an abandoned, barely preserved relic like most of the castles left around Britain, but a functioning, living being with over a millenia of history, steeped so deeply in magic it was almost like approaching the seat of a seated faerie lord.
A teacher approached from the top of the steps, working with Hagrid to get everyone lined up, but Brigitte was still lost in thought.
What would Hogwarts' genius loci look like?
Or, perhaps more dauntingly, how much spiritual baggage had the castle accrued over a thousand years? It was well-known that it had a massive population of ghosts, and being the center of a war hadn't helped it any. It-
One of the passing students bumped her, and she stumbled, broken out of her thoughts.
"Sorry," they both said at once.
Brigitte turned, only to freeze.
Oh, this must be some cosmic joke.
A girl glowered at her. Tan skinned, with a short, boyish cut of berry colored hair, and matching lips. Eyes like stained glass, not quite green or blue, but some bastard child of the two with all the best of both worlds. Topped off with delicate, spidersilk wings trailing from her shoulders.
Brigitte embedded all the contempt she could muster into a single word. "Summer."
The girl's lip curled. "Winter."
Any further snarling would have to wait though, because Hagrid came by, motioning at everyone to "line up there, cmon, budge up."
Brigitte got stuck with the pixie queued behind her, though she stayed half-turned to better watch the seelie.
And then the person in front of Brigitte turned round, and she found something else to be annoyed at.
"So- erm, you two know each other? I'm Langdon."
It was the boy from the boat. He was, to all appearances, utterly mundane. Boy-shaped. Kind of gawky. Taller than she was even minus her handicap. Brown-hair, gray eyes, and a dizzy, curious expression that had her pegging him as muggleborn right out.
Finn would call him an easy mark. With his reaction to her condition, she called him a waste of space.
"She said your name was Winter, right?"
And he was still talking. If she answered, maybe he'd go away sooner.
She sighed. "It's Brigitte. Winter is the court of faerie I belong to. The rainbow-colored idiot behind me is from Summer."
The pixie stepped forward, skirting Brigitte, and offered her hand to Langdon. "Nora. And don't mind Winter there, she's probably just nervous. I know I am. It's really daunting, you know?"
The boy nodded back, giving her a watery smile. "It is! All this magic stuff. Didn't even know it was real until..."
Brigitte stepped back, letting the Nora take her place in line, and tuned the two of them out.
How could she have forgotten Nora was going to be coming to Hogwarts too? They'd talked about it so often as kids.
She stared at the roof of the cave, mosaiced with shiny stones probably pulled from the lake, until the lines began to trundle forward.
XXX
They were staring at her.
Any enjoyment she was getting from the Great Hall (and oh, did it earn its name), was being chipped away by the many, many eyes currently on her.
There were other blatantly magical or inhuman students in line. She just had the misfortune to be exceptional in that regard.
She could see Finn at least, rubbing elbows with a couple boys his age at the Ravenclaw table. He waved, and she waved back, though the motion was jerky and subdued.
Honestly, they should know better. There were plenty of non-muggleborns here. She might be the first of her kind to attend, but the fae as a whole had been coming since the turn of the century, and they were well-integrated with wizarding Britain.
A door behind the teacher's table opened, and a man emerged, carrying a small stool and a grubby, much-patched hat.
Everyone fell silent.
The man placed the hat on the stool, and as he straightened, Brigitte gasped.
Black hair. Green eyes. A faded scar on his brow.
Harry. James. Potter.
The Master of Death.
What was he doing here?!
His appearance kicked the bustle of talk and noise back into full-gear. Everyone in the hall seemed to be as taken-aback as she was.
He rummaged in his robes, withdrawing not a wand, as she expected, but a scroll. Potter let it unfurl, then leaned in, squinting through his glasses. He read a moment, then looked up, eyeing the first-years.
"Right." The hall went silent again, as though someone had just cranked down the volume on eight-hundred people. "We're going in alphabetical order. When I call your name, you come up and put the hat on. It'll tell you which house you get sorted into." A pause, and then Potter smiled. "It's been doing this for a while, so it's pretty sharp. But don't be afraid to talk your options over with it."
More murmuring.
"Ainley, Nora!"
The pixie pranced forward, seaglass eyes wide and fearful. She put on the hat with quivering hands.
Silence. Ainley fidgeted on the stool, mouthing words.
"Hufflepuff!"
Fanatical applause from the yellow table shattered the silence. Brigitte found herself stroking her skull, running her fingers along its grooves to quell her own worries.
"Borowitz, George!"
She hadn't really put much thought into her house. The only distinction that really mattered for her was her court, but it was certainly feeling like a much, much bigger deal than she'd made it out to be. Finn… Finn might have been right to say she should take this seriously.
"Depaul, Alexandra!"
"Gupta, Samuel!"
"Hayashi, Fumiko!"
"Malfoy, Scorpius!"
"Nelson-Sanders, Harlow!"
Her fingers locked into the eye sockets on her skull. Nearly time now. Then those eyes would be on her, and-
Wait.
A sudden, gaping problem had leapt out at her.
"O'Ciardha, Brigitte!"
Legs like frozen trees carried her forward.
She stood before the stool. And there was whispering. And talking. And a murmur that had to be greater than anyone else's so far.
Brigitte looked at the hat. Then up at Harry Potter.
He was blinking at her, looking a bit out-of-sorts.
She got to be humiliated in front of the entire school, and her hero. Wonderful.
"So," he said. "...yeah. Any ideas, hat?"
The hat stirred, the rip by the brim curving into a pensive frown. It was, somehow, sans eyes, eyeing her.
"Don't think I've sorted one of your kind before, young lady," it said.
Brigitte found herself shrugging. She lifted one hand to pat the stump of her neck. The black smoke that poured perpetually from it trailed behind her fingers, an after-image.
"I've got nowhere to put a hat."
Hogwart's first Dullahan stood there a moment longer, cursed under her breath, and then jammed the sorting hat onto her neck.
XXX
"Hufflepuff!"
XXX
XXX
If you're wondering, did Ziel just write 6200 words just to build up to that joke, the answer is yes, resoundingly.
It began as literally just that concept - how does the sorting hat sort someone with no head, and I worked backwards.
This is a oneshot, and I have no real intention to continue it. It's a bit... average. Nothing super amazing, but not terrible. It's what I try to imagine as slice of life for Hogwarts. Someone attending who's not a main character, who's mostly only remarkable because of her lack of head.
Brigitte is fun. She got a personality swap late in the writing process. She went from someone cool and collected, who takes herself too seriously and is a little pompous, to more of... sort of a perky goth. She researches curses, she draws dresses she'd like to make, and joins every club offered her because it's fun. But she also helps spirits pass on.
That whole bit was... extrapolated from Irish myth. Dullahans are more a death-omen in myth, so this was an extension of how that might work out.
The speaking skull bit comes from the namesake of this fic. Cephalophores. Head-carriers. Typically Christian Saints who were decapitated, and wandered, holding their own heads, to work miracles and stuff. So Brigitte's mother got her a skull to speak through as a way of thumbing her nose at Christianity. Brigitte needs the thing to be able to speak- it's a medium through which she communicates.
Why does Brigitte not just wear a glamour for a head, or use someone's head to replace what she doesn't have? Because it's not hers. Were I to continue this, Brigitte's main struggle as a person would be finding that head that would make her complete. Something that matches the way she thinks she should look on the inside. Just slapping any random head on there would be jarring and upsetting, and would be downright taboo in dullahan culture.
I'm not 100% thrilled with the final results here. It's a bit flat, and I don't think it conveys the typical emotions usually associated with slice of life. It's more just the Going to Hogwarts sequence, explored through new characters. Part of the issue was dancing around the headless thing to build to the joke, with the end result that Brigitte's central conflict with others (she doesn't like being judged or looked at like a freak) was ill-defined.
If I do continue this, it'd likely be another oneshot about Brigitte being a gigantic Harry Potter fangirl. Because ohmigods, he's the Master of Death, the man who held the mantle of Death in his hands and put it down, knowing it was not for mortals. That's seriously heavy, for a psychopomp like Brigitte.