Ivy Ballantine arrives at Ballynahattin – September 1st, 2001.
The golden summer sun that washed Ireland in a pleasant warmth had started to set by the time Ivy Ballantine, her round almost-twelve years old cheeks wind chapped from too much time outside, arrived at Ballynahattin. The proper name for the school was Ballynahattin Academy for the Magical Youth of the Republic of Ireland, Greater Europe, and Beyond, but no one called it that. The locals called it "the Academy" and the students called it "Bally" or "Ballynahattin" at best.
Those who attended the school were Ballynahattins. Ivy was the second generation of Ballantines to ever attend the school, even though it was estimated that the academy, hidden in a stone circle similar to that of England's Stonehenge, was at least five hundred years older than Hogwarts, and the Ballantine family had arguably the purest and oldest Irish blood in existence.
Not that anyone cared about her family history, when she was the fifth child of a miserably poor, socially scorned fisherman who somehow managed to marry the beloved, popular, beautiful Viveca Graham and impregnate her eight times. Ivy could climb to the top of the observatory, take off all her clothes, declare she was the queen of France, and pull galleons out of her arse for charitable contributions to the poor, but that still wouldn't make her a better target of scorn for the conventional pureblood Irish students. No matter how crazy and mean, or nice and quiet, or smart and talented, or pure and Irish she was, she was still a Ballantine at heart. An Irish speaking, hand-me-down wearing, reeking-of-fish Ballantine.
It would take Ivy approximately fifteen minutes before she realized that what her older siblings had told her about their family was true. They were different. Deeply, deeply different.
First a tall fifth year Crionna, bearing the blue right hand of the claddagh ring on her navy robes, stepped on the hem of Ivy's hand-me-down dress and ripped a three inch hole in the overworn fabric.
"Oh, I'm sorry, all the firsts are so short I can hardly see them," said the girl in a distracted Dubliner accent, pushing her trunk to the side and kneeling down to correct the tear with her wand. She paused as she knelt, examining the fabric in her hand.
"I don't care. I don't like this dress," replied Ivy.
"It looks familiar. Hey, are you Derry and Bernie's sister?"
She nodded with enthusiasm.
"Oh." The girl's tone changed, and she waved her wand at the fabric. "That explains it."
"What? Explains what?" she demanded. An instinctual part of her didn't like the sudden change that came over the older student.
"Well, it explains the way you look." She laughed and patted her on the already tousled head, a gesture Ivy did not appreciate. Then the tall older girl paused, exclaimed "Oh!" and looked back at Ivy. "Of course! You're the one that nearly drowned Felicity's beau! Isn't that right, you stole Fee's wand and cast the paralyzing jinx on Sheehy as he was taking a swim?"
Ivy's demeanor changed and she stood taller. "Yeah, that was me! My granda said it was bloody good magic, that he hadn't seen that sort of arse whipping from a spot o' trouble like me since he was a lad, and that was really long time ago because he's old compared to me so that means that I'm the best he's seen in a really long time and he thinks that I really take after him, that I'm going to be a hell o' a Garda after I've been through school, he's predicting that I get into Misneach like Felicity and Derry and Bernie- "
She would have continued blathering on like this, but the older girl's friends had arrived and they were laughing at her.
"Goodness, I think her tongue's been jinxed," said the Crionna. "Was that Irish or English? Her accent is so thick I can hardly tell. Where are you parents? Shouldn't they be watching you? Or are they trying to find the rest of their herd?"
"They had to apologize to one of Jessie's professors because she had plans to raise a jarvey farm in the spare Crionna bedroom."
"Oh. Oh!" They burst into peals of laughter again. "Of course. Well, send my sympathies to Miss Graham." And with another sympathetic pat the girls left her.
A few moments later Ivy's parents retrieved her from the main entrance, where groups of students and their families were appearing by portkey.
Her father, simply referred to as "da," was tall even for the Irish, fair colored and windswept, with sandy hair and pale blue eyes. His face was ruddy from too much time out at sea. He was noticeable for his long striding walk as he approached his daughter and the way he stood like a stern rock amidst the sea of students, arms crossed in front of him. There was his smile too, of course, if he ever deigned to show it; the devastating Ballantine smile that transformed his average face into that of a more handsome, genteel man. Today there was no trace of a smile. His littlest, most beloved daughter was leaving home for school.
Her mother, Ma, fluttered around her husband and children with a quick smile and hummingbird movements, touching a child's head here, straightening a sleeve there, standing up on tip-toe to count them all up. She was quick and graceful, exuding a charm that was at its best in crowds. In other circumstances she might have seemed nervous, liked a jittery horse with the way she tossed her auburn hair out of her face, but here she was delightfully engaged.
"Ivy gra, you haven't injured yourself or anyone else while we've been gone, have you?" asked ma in a strained tone of voice. "No broken bones? Jarveys hidden in the trunk? Inappropriate use of magic and or undergarments? Anything?"
"She's been good," said da. "I promised her a good beating if she moved from this spot."
"Don't be a heathen Conn." Ma laughed and swatted Ivy's strawberry blonde head—she ducked—and da frowned at his wife. They exchanged a terse look. Silent words were spoken, before ma laughed again and looked away. "Where did our eldest son go?"
"He's probably snogging the face off his newest bird," piped up nine year old Harry, who was as excitable as ma but more prone to da's serious view of the world. "She probably has diseases too."
"Harold Carroll," was all da said, his tone threatening, but it was enough to silence the boy.
As it happened, Dermot Aaron, or as his baby sister fondly referred to him, "DerryAar," had just found out he would be Quidditch captain and Aingingein captain and dueling club captain for Misneach that year. The honors were bestowed upon him by his fellow athletes, who had voted on the choices in secret a few hours earlier. The previous year he foolishly commented that if he was ever eejit enough to captain all the athletic organizations at once, like his famous grandfather (everybody knew about Cursin' Kenny) had, he would kiss Bally's ancient Headmaster full on the lips as penitence for his title-grabbing idiocy.
Derry approached his family with a sheepish expression on his face and ran a hand through his dark curly hair.
"Ah. Ma. Ye haven't seen the Headmaster anywhere, have you?"
Behind him was the entirety of Misneach house.
"…No…" said ma. Apprehension and curiosity lit up her dark eyes. The sight of all those ruby red claddagh crowns perched jauntily on teenage heads was enough to scare any mother.
"He's coming out of Breá Bord now!" cried a voice in the back, and the mass of red pushed Derry past his family and into the dining hall. The Ballantines followed after. Ivy moved to go with her family—her brother! Captain to everything!—but a hand reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. The hand was wearing a green glove.
Within the next few minutes Ivy would truly discover the meaning to her heritage.
"Look! Another one! They're sprouting out of the ground faster than you can say 'Screw my dirty Graham arse!'"
The voice laughed and gave her wrist a squeeze. As she looked up she saw that she was being confronted by a Seirbhe girl, probably in her seventh year. The girl had a full set of lips that were painted in grass green swirls that were charmed to move around. It looked like she had snakes coming out of her mouth.
"That's your older brother, isn't it? Derry Ballantine?"
"Yeah, now let go of me!" She was indignant…she didn't quite understand what the girl had said, but she knew it was bad. She tried to yank her arm away but the girl's grip was strong.
"Wait a moment. Could you give your brother a message? Tell him that I'm really pleased for him. Really I am. I want him to know that I congratulate him, and that he should be really proud – you know that while he's attention mongering with the redheaded lemmings his mother is screwing a fish man and making a few more babbies for the clan – "
Ivy kicked the girl and shouted. At the same moment though, there was a roar of noise from the dining hall, and no one saw the kick, or the Seirbhe girl's reactionary slap.
No one saw, that is, except for a blonde haired foreign girl that had just portkeyed into the hall alone.
The young Ballantine began swearing like a sailor as the Seirbhe girl laughed and jeered at her, still holding onto her wrist, making up increasingly creative slurs about the Ballantine brood. The school's attention was still focused on the Headmaster, who had just received a heartfelt kiss from Misneach's charming Captain to Everything, and they didn't notice the drama unfolding in the entrance hall.
Holly Vlammende-Schoen frowned at the scene. Ivy really was putting up an impressive fight, it was just that the older girl was so much larger than her. She couldn't make her arms long enough to scratch at the girl's eyes or kick her properly in the knees.
"Hey!" snapped Holly, "Stop that!"
Ivy's response was "^&%! $%^*~! You &#%^! Throw a %^ shoe at her *^%$! ugly face!"
Without delay, Holly pulled off her shoe. And without thinking about it she frowned at the shoe, it burst into flames, and she threw it neatly at the Seirbhe girl's face.
"Aaaaagh!"
The Seirbhe dropped Ivy's arm and began clawing at her hair. The shoe made contact long enough to catch fire to the paper flowers folded into her hair. In a few moments her hair caught fire too. Ivy looked between the flaming Seirbhe, the shoe-throwing girl, and back at the Seirbhe. "Mother of Maeve, that was bloody brilliant!" she exclaimed.
"PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!" cried the seventh year frantically. People began turning around. They saw the girl and a cry of alarm went up. Ivy ducked just in time to avoid the sprays of water that came from several parental wands at once.
In the ensuing chaos, Holly and Ivy were introduced to each other properly. Holly's parents were arriving later so a professor kept a hold of her shoulders, while Ivy's father had a vice-like grip on his daughter's own shoulder.
"Two minutes. We were away for two minutes!" exclaimed ma.
"I'm Holly Vlammende-Schoen," said Holly politely, extending a hand. Underneath her shoe was a polka dot sock. For some reason that fact would stick with Ivy for the rest of her life.
"I'm Ivy Ballantine," replied Ivy, shaking her hand with an almost masculine grip. "You don't sound like you're Irish. Are you English? No, you don't look English, I think you're from further away. Vlammene-whatsit isn't English anyways, I bet you're Baltic or American or something. Are you a first year? I'm a first year. They haven't sorted me yet but I think I'll get into Misneach. My brother's Captain of Everything. Do you have any siblings that go here?"
"My family comes from Sweden. We invented the wooden shoe and my mother owns a fireworks company."
"My da's a fisherman, ma takes care of my brothers and sisters and I. You really are a foreigner I guess though your accent isn't that bad. I'm starting to think I'm a foreigner too." She laughed. She wasn't used to all these different sorts of people, and the attention, and she certainly wasn't used to flaming shoes. It made her natural chattiness incomprehensible. "I think da's going to take me back home and whip me now, but it was grand meeting you, it really was, and the whole lighting the shoe on fire thing was really bloody genius. You don't happen to have any fireworks do you? Me ma won't let me have any."
"NO fireworks" said da's voice from above. "NO fireworks, NO fire, NOTHING until this is sorted out. Now stop your talking and wait for the headmaster to arrive."
Ivy remained silent for approximately thirty seconds.
"Well what's taking him so long?"
Her father squeezed her shoulders.
"Ivy. Silent. Now."
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NEXT: Life at Ballynahattin Academy
I hope you enjoyed! Please R&R. Thanks to Rowling for letting us borrow her world.
~Carmen