Okay, everyone. Because of worldbuilding reasons I was nerdy enough to think of, but that would take too long to explain, the in-universe orthography used by magical people is somewhat different than our English. Specifically, they have two extra letters in their alphabet — Þ þ ("thorn") and Ð ð ("eth"). They're both basically a "th" sound. There is a difference but most native English speakers can't really distinguish them. I'll only be using them in directly quoted text — say, in letters — or in narration and dialog only for words that aren't part of normal English speech. With the exception of Slytherin (which would be "Slyðerin") because you're all used to that word already.

If it's just too hard to read, tell me and I'll edit it out and not use it in future. I'll be totally honest and say I have no idea what would be easy for other people to read. I'm enough of a nerd I hardly even notice.

Charissa ended up being put in a room with Granger. She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about this.

The Ravenclaw dorm rooms weren't set up the same way as the Gryffindor ones — which she only knew because her parents and uncles must have described the Gryffindor side of things to her a billion times. They were in a similar tower, one year on each floor, but instead of one big circular room, the Ravenclaw girls were instead divided between two rooms. She immediately noticed the room was too large and the wrong shape for the tower—she was sure these wide, hexagonal walls would never, ever fit in the space available — but architecture did that sometimes. The room was done in soft blues, blacks, and whites, occasional bronze accents here and there. Furniture sat flush against the walls, alternating wall to wall — a bed flanked by dressers on either side, a wide desk with a cushioned chair at the next, another bed and pair of dressers at the next, then a desk, then a bed, then a desk. By the time they arrived, Augí was already curled up on one of the beds, his light fur a sharp contrast against the black sheets, so she guessed that one was hers.

The three of them — herself, Granger, and the MacDougal girl — decided they should go deasil. That is, standing facing their bed, their desk would be to their right. A glance around at where the other two girls were organising their things, she immediately noticed they were arranged alphabetically going deasil too. She wondered if they'd done that on purpose.

And the reason she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about Granger being her roommate was because, well, Granger still hadn't seemed to run out of steam. She was still talking and talking and talking. The girl had looked really shaken after her experience with the Hat — which Charissa suspected had somehow made her hair even more ridiculously frizzy — and had hardly said two words back in the Great Hall. Well, she seemed to be over that. Wow, could she talk. Charissa hadn't ever seen such a natural talent for aimless rambling. This girl had Dora topped.

Before she was simply too sleepy to write, she settled at her desk. She should really send off a letter to her parents as soon as possible. She wasn't entirely sure why, it just felt like something she should be doing. But now that she thought about it, sending a letter to her parents was a bit...complicated. Mum was still in Magyarland. Not only was that something of a trip for an owl, she wasn't entirely sure owls could even reach her at the moment. Mum was probably warded, wherever she was. Oh, well. She could tell Dad anyway. Not that he'd be extremely pleased about her being in Ravenclaw, but there wasn't a lot she could do about that.

Stupid floppy piece of trash.

She had no idea how to word this letter. No idea at all. After some minutes stumbling through the thing, she read it back to herself, and realised she sounded a bit...defensive. Not too extremely so, but it was obvious. But she didn't really know what to do about that. Partially because, well, she did expect Dad to take it badly, if only in jest. And this wasn't really something she wanted him to make fun of her for. She still had the headache, for one thing — apparently she'd been sitting there even longer than Granger, even though it hadn't really felt like it, long enough she'd had a nosebleed when the Hat finally released her — so she wasn't exactly in a mood to be amused by the whole thing. And, well. At least she wasn't in Slytherin. Despite the Hat implying it hadn't at all been considering it, she had a nasty suspicion that that had been the whole point. She was a Hatstall not because she was between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, but Slytherin and Ravenclaw.

No, she wasn't sure how to feel about that either.

So, if she sounded a bit defensive, and maybe even a bit confrontational, that was just too bad for Dad, wasn't it? She'd had quite enough of this Sorting business today, thank you very much. She really just wanted to go to sleep and forget about it. Granger had the decency to stop rambling when they all got changed for bed — though she seemed more interested in reading some book she'd pulled out of her trunk than actually sleeping, but close enough.

But even in the near silence, it still took Charissa what felt like hours to fall asleep.

Charissa very quickly decided she was glad she'd gotten a bit of a head start. It made the first few weeks of class far easier than they could have been. The first time they brewed anything in Potions, Professor Bourne, supposedly a descendant of the more famous Phineas Bourne, absolutely gushed over her cauldron — the magically-neutral slop wasn't supposed to actually do anything, just turn a certain color and consistency if done correctly, which was apparently difficult to do. A couple other Ravenclaws had done roughly as well as she had, so she wasn't sure what Professor Bourne was being so silly about. Charms class, where they'd only learned a few simple spells so far — the wand sparks she could already do, and a couple variations on illūcē — was equally easy. Unfortunately, they were put in Charms class with the Gryffindors, which included Ronald. He insisted on sitting next to her pretty much every class. His Ravenclaw jokes weren't any better than she anticipated Dad's to be, just making him more annoying than usual.

To be completely honest, if there was one advantage to not being in Gryffindor, it would be not having to deal with Ron Weasley nearly as much.

But since she had two classes that she was starting out a little bit ahead in, that meant she could more comfortably settle into the routine, get her bearings a little better in the other subjects. Defence and History and Theory were all reading, at least for the moment, so she quickly read forward until she had a comfortable buffer. Brīþwn was similar in that it didn't require doing actual magic, but it did require her sitting with a couple of the Ravenclaws for hours echoing the unfamiliar vowels back and forth until they could actually make the sounds correctly every time. Unlike some of her classmates she could get the y and w right pretty consistently from the start, but the ī and ē were a pain. The only class that required any magic so far that she hadn't learned any of was Transfiguration. Even simple transfigurations could go dangerously wrong, so Uncle Remus hadn't taught her any. So, unsurprisingly, Transfiguration held the only practical lessons the first weeks in which someone consistently accomplished the given task quicker and better than herself.

That someone was universally Hermione Granger. The muggleborn girl was rapidly eating away at her advantage in Potions and Charms as well, and she'd started miles ahead in the theory-based classes.

Not that Charissa particularly cared so much. She didn't need to be the best in the class — simply near the top was just fine. As long as she was getting Os she didn't really see how it mattered if Granger was beating her in every single class. She could have it.

Charissa had other things to worry about anyway.

Just a couple days into the first week, she got a reply from her father to her letter she'd sent about getting in Ravenclaw. It didn't exactly surprise her. The whole thing was Dad going on and on about how disappointed he was that she was in Ravenclaw, but he would somehow soldier on past this blow to his fatherly pride. He was joking, of course — he didn't actually care that she wasn't in Gryffindor. Okay, he might care some, but he was definitely exaggerating how much he cared just for, she didn't know, some misplaced sense of ironic humour. She knew that perfectly well.

But that didn't mean his response didn't make her annoyed.

For long seconds, sitting at the table for breakfast, she stared at the letter, trying to decide exactly how to respond to it. She finally decided she wasn't going to respond to it at all. She turned around on the bench, accidentally kicking Morag in the side as she went, a wave and tap with her wand over and against the letter with a muttered, 'Altum levētur.' A few gentle upward flicks brought the parchment floating between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. She glanced both ways quick to make sure no one was coming or going. With thoughts of heat and light, her wrist twitching in a fluttering jab she found oddly intuitive, she snarled, 'Īnflammet.'

The letter was consumed in a flash of orange flame.

Charissa spun back around and focused on her breakfast, ignoring the slew of curious looks turned her way.

She got an apology from Dad a couple days later. That one she actually responded to. Didn't want him to feel all bad about it for too long, now that he actually did. Besides, she wasn't angry anymore by then.

But that wasn't even close to the worst thing that happened the first two weeks.

Thursday of the second week, she got a note early in the evening telling her to come to Professor Flitwick's office. For a few seconds, she just stared at the slip of parchment, trying to remember if she'd done anything worthy of getting in trouble. Burning Dad's letter was notable, but that had been a week ago now, and she hadn't done anything too indicative of pyromania since. Well, okay, yesterday in Defence she'd set on fire a simple golem Uncle Remus had conjured that she was supposed to be practicing a basic stinging jinx on, but the thing was kinda scary, and she'd panicked. She didn't think that counted. Far as she knew, she hadn't done much of anything that would justify this being a disciplinary meeting. An academic one didn't make sense either, since they were only almost two weeks in, and while they hadn't had very many marked assignments yet, everything they'd done so far she'd gotten Os in.

Hmm.

But at the appointed time, she slipped out of the Ravenclaw common room, and headed over toward Flitwick's office, which was really only a few metres down the hall. She was a little surprised to see the door was propped halfway open. Should she just walk in? She peeked around the door, looking inside. 'Professor?'

Oh, wow, fun room. There was the usual long desk important people tended to have, three puffy-looking chairs arranged around, surrounded by thoroughly occupied bookshelves covering nearly every spare segment of wall — all of it, save the two chairs on her side of the desk, shrunk in proportion to the owner's height. But the ceiling wasn't flat as it was in most rooms she'd seen of the castle, but rose above her in a dome. The entire surface glowed with a deep blue light, lines of silver sketching out what Charissa instantly recognised as runes, lines gathering for a time into words only to disperse, and gather into different words somewhere else. Sumerian, she thought, though she wasn't sure. She couldn't read a word of it, after all. But even if it was meaningless to her, it was very pretty.

'Ah,' came the high voice of her Charms Professor, 'yes, Miss Potter. Come on in.'

Charissa always felt a little odd around Professor Flitwick. Not necessarily in a bad way — though she did know he was once an international duelling champion, so he could probably turn her into paste before she could blink, that wasn't really so different from most of the adults in her life. No, she just wasn't used to being taller than the adults around her. Professor Flitwick wasn't exactly old. Only, what, fifty? Somewhere around there? Old enough that he could be a respected Master of Charms, but young enough his hair was still dark, face mostly unlined. But that was definitely older than herself, and older than her parents, too. But he was just so tiny. He barely came up to her shoulder. It was weird.

But he probably could turn her to paste before she could blink, so she did her best not to notice.

Somewhat to her surprise, Flitwick actually came around the desk, sitting at one of the chairs on this side — he transfigured it a couple inches lower for himself — so they were sitting without the desk between them, their knees only a couple inches apart. There was a rather intense look in his dark eyes, a somewhat stern set about his lips. 'Now, first, Miss Potter,' he started, his voice low and soft. 'I want to start by assuring you there is nothing to fear. Everything is being worked out, and it's all going to be fine.'

Okay, now she was getting a little worried.

'You know your mother was sent to Magyarland, right?'

Okay, now she was getting a lot worried. She didn't quite trust her voice at the moment, her throat already tight with dread, so she just nodded.

'You were told what she was doing there?'

She forced herself to swallow. 'Fighting dark wizards.'

'Yes, a Dark Lord named Éjbevissza and his followers. I was told that early this morning they managed to corner Éjbevissza and the last of his lieutenants. Your mother engaged in what was apparently a lengthy duel with Éjbevissza himself.'

Oh, no. She'd known this was going to happen. She had. She hadn't wanted to think about it, but she'd known. Her fingers tangled up in her robes to stop her hands from shaking, she had to try a few times before she could get the words out. 'Is she— Is she okay?'

Professor Flitwick gave her what she thought was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile. She couldn't see very well at the moment, so she wasn't entirely sure. 'After Éjbevissza fell, she was taken to Saint Mungo's.'

'Oh, no—'

'No, no.' Flitwick's hand was suddenly on her knee, clenched tightly enough she could feel his pointy fingernails through the cloth. 'It's alright, Miss Potter. She's fine. I was told that, in the instant before she ended the duel, she was hit with a curse of some kind—' Charissa completely failed to stop the whimper from leaving her throat. '—but, the Healers called in an expert on dark magic. The master alchemist Severus Snape, who I believe you know. He did some sort of healing ritual, I don't know exactly what. Probably illegal,' he added in an undertone, 'not that anyone cares under the circumstances. But it worked, and she'll be fine. The Healers said they'll probably be releasing her in two or three days.'

She was fine. She was fine. Charissa forced in a long breath, trying to make it as smooth and even as possible, which really didn't go all that well. She'd gotten pretty close to crying there, and her breath was trying to reduce to shudders. She took a few more breaths, each calmer than the last, bit by bit. Still staring at her hands, she said, 'Can I go see her?' Hadn't done quite too good a job of forcing herself back to normal, she guessed — her voice was a bit wavery, but at least it was understandable.

'I don't think so.' Flitwick cut her off before she could argue with, 'I was told by the Healers that she'll need to be kept in isolation for the next twelve hours or so. Something about the healing magic Master Snape used — being exposed to other sources of magic for a while afterward can do peculiar things. That, and your father said you should stay here.'

Charissa's immediate response to that was a sudden flash of tight anger deep in her chest, which Flitwick must have noticed. 'You can't see her right now anyway, and once you can she's going to be out of hospital just a day or two later. Your father anticipates her dropping by Hogsmeade sometime next week, and you'll see her then. But until that day, her post isn't being redirected anymore, so I suggest you take a moment to write to her.'

But—

Well...

Well, fine. If Dad wanted her to stay here, fine, she would. Not like she could actually see Mum right now anyway. Fine. She would just...do that. Write a letter. Okay. 'I'll just—' Charissa cleared her throat — her voice was still refusing to cooperate, which was really just annoying. 'I'll go write that letter.'

'Alright. If you need anything, Miss Potter, my door is always open.'

She mumbled out a thank you of some kind, picked up her bag, and made her escape.

At first, she intended to go back to the common room, but she hesitated halfway there. No, she didn't really feel like going there at the moment. There was that whole Sorting business that she was honestly still kind of annoyed about, and in her letter she'd probably be telling Mum about that, and doing that in Ravenclaw territory would probably just make her more annoyed. Besides, she suspected she probably looked like she'd just been crying, if only a little bit, and if she went there, people would probably bother her about why. Which she didn't feel like dealing with at the moment. Which meant she needed to go somewhere with surfaces convenient for writing and where she wouldn't be bothered.

To the library, then.

Hogwarts had a very impressive library, she had to hand them that. Tall, arched ceilings, angled sunlight leaking in through stained glass, shelf after shelf after shelf, each crammed to capacity and stretching far above her head, interspersed with tables and chairs here and there. Mum had said before there were few collections of knowledge in the world greater than the library at Hogwarts — the libraries in Raẖqācit and Agad immediately came to mind. Of course, not all that knowledge is open for students to just paw around in whenever they want. The Ministry had something of a habit of giving tomes describing magic of questionable legality to Hogwarts, to be stored safely in the Restricted Section. She personally thought it was a little odd calling it a section. It had to be nearly half the volume of the entire library by now.

Charissa was going to find herself a table in a quiet corner, sit alone to write, but she got a little distracted by something. Well, someone. Granger, sitting by herself at a table. At least, Charissa was pretty sure it was Granger. She seemed to be asleep, the corner of a book barely peeking out of the mass of brown fuzz covering a portion of the table. Charissa hesitated for a moment, considering her options.

Oh, well. Granger shouldn't really be sleeping right now anyway. Especially not in the library. Especially not using a book for a pillow. If Madam Pince saw that she'd probably disembowel her.

The first thing Hermione heard when she started awake was a sharp, noisy snort. Hopefully no one had been too close by — since she'd felt it as well as heard it, that had been her snorting like that. Blech.

Hermione didn't have to look up to know where she was. She always remembered every moment up to the one she'd fallen asleep, so she always knew exactly where she'd been when she'd fallen asleep — unless one of her parents moved her, anyway. She'd fallen asleep in the library, reading The Decline of Pagan Magic. She'd have to flip back a page or two to make sure she remembered everything — when this happened, her short term memory never made it to long term, so she just had to reread the last little bit. A glance at the page number in a corner, a comparison in her head with the last thing she could remember, scanning the page, and she realised she had only lost a page or so this time. That wasn't too big of a deal, she could just—

Oh, wait. She'd been woken up by someone. There was a bag of silky black cloth, the sort the more wealthy magical people used, sitting on the desk that hadn't been there before. Now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure she had been woken up by a noise of some sort. Someone must have dropped that hard enough to wake her up. A glance up suggested that person had been Charissa Potter.

Honestly, Charissa made her a little uncomfortable. Well, okay, most witches and wizards made her a little uncomfortable, but Charissa a little more than average. There was the fact that she was nobility — speaking of which, Hermione still wasn't sure just how relevant or not that was in this country — but she'd mostly decided to ignore that. That wasn't it. Charissa had an unpleasant habit of just...staring at people. Thinking it brought forth dozens of memories of Charissa just sitting or standing somewhere and just watching people. It was weird. She didn't talk very much, or at least not as much as the other Ravenclaw girls, so Hermione didn't really know anything about her. Not that she really knew any of the other girls very well, that wasn't the point. She didn't know what the point was. It was just weird, okay, that was all.

And there Charissa was, standing at the side of the table. Just staring at her, with that level gaze she always used when watching people. Trying not to think about how Charissa had just heard her make that very undignified snort a couple seconds ago, she said, 'Yes?'

'Just thought I'd wake you up,' Charissa said with an easy shrug. 'Better having to deal with me than Madam Pince should she find you drooling all over one of her books.'

She had an absurd impulse to cross her arms and pout, but she managed to stop herself. 'I wasn't drooling all over a book.'

Charissa, halfway through pulling out the next chair over to sit down, froze. A single brow rose a little, and her eyes dropped down to The Decline of Pagan Magic.

Oh. Following her gaze, Hermione found a bit of a damp spot toward the bottom left of the page. Whoops. As Charissa sat and started pulling things out of her bag, Hermione sorted through her library of spells in her head, wand motions flicking past one by one before her eyes, her ears filled with incantations. She was positive she would have looked for a spell exactly for this pur— Ah, there it was. A quick check to remember where her wand was, then two taps against the page, and a muttered, 'Na marathí.' In an instant, the rather embarrassing little puddle of drool was gone, the page good as new.

Sometimes she thought it was a little odd how quickly she'd gotten used to doing magic. Accidentally get her book wet? Oh well, just pull out her magic wand and casually violate the laws of physics.

'That's handy,' said Charissa from less than a metre away.

Wow, Hermione must not have been paying attention at all. She'd almost forgotten Charissa was there. But then, she had been forgetting things recently — a novel experience for her she couldn't say she enjoyed so much. Not just little things, either. Sometimes her eyes would just get especially heavy, and she'd lose a few seconds here and there she couldn't remember at all. She had a nasty suspicion she'd started having microsleep episodes, but obviously there was no way to really be sure of that. 'Oh, yes, I suppose it is.'

'Tap twice, na marathí?'

'Yes.'

Charissa pulled a notebook out of her bag, one of those wads of sewn-together parchment magical people used. She opened it up to a page, and Hermione saw it was filled with spells — curving lines and figures she recognised as the standard code she'd memorised for wand movements followed by incantations, some but not all followed by additional notes. Charissa sketched twice the symbol for physically tapping the object to be charmed, then wrote what looked like namaraþi, followed by dry (water?). Hermione ignored the familiar pang of jealousy she got whenever she observed someone much more familiar with ink and quill than she was. Or the one she got whenever someone used a thorn, as magical people did, without having to think about it twice — she still forgot most of the time, it was too automatic. Then Charissa closed the notebook and returned it to her bag. 'Thanks.'

'It only works on clear liquids.' She hadn't meant to say it. It just came out.

'Yeah, I figured something like that.' Instead of her little spell notebook, now Charissa had a loose roll of parchment before her, flattened with the splayed fingers of one hand. She wrote what looked like a couple words at the top corner, then stopped, staring not at the page but through it, clearly thinking through her wording in her head.

Which meant she was probably writing a letter to someone. Okay. Rather random for someone to come sit next to her just to ignore her in favor of writing a letter. In her experience, when other kids came to sit next to her it was because they wanted help with their schoolwork. Sure, that'd happened more frequently back in primary school than it'd been happening here, but they'd just barely started — she expected it to happen more when the classes picked up. But even then, she honestly wouldn't expect Charissa to be one of the people angling for help. She'd been paying attention to how the other kids were doing — some people were too embarrassed to ask for help, especially boys, but usually took it fine if she offered first — and Charissa was mostly doing just as well as she was. Better, in Potions and Charms. And she acknowledged even in her own head that it might sound a bit pathetic, but helping other kids with schoolwork was more or less the breadth and depth of her social experience with people her own age. Honestly, she probably got along better with teachers and her parents' friends than schoolmates. So she didn't know what was going on here. That Charissa seemed completely uninterested in talking to her was just making her more confused.

Maybe she should just...go back to reading? Charissa was already ignoring her, so it couldn't be too mean to just ignore her back, could it?

'You can just ask, you know.'

Hermione blinked to herself for a second, trying to make sense of that statement. Ask about what? Why Charissa had come to sit by her? Well, she'd already said she'd decided to wake her up so Madam Pince didn't get at her first, and beyond that, Hermione didn't think it was exactly typical for people to be that...direct about this sort of thing? She didn't know, honestly. Other kids were weird. She should just ask what she would be asking about. If that made any sense at all. 'Erm, ask what?'

It belatedly occurred to her that Charissa had thought Hermione had been considering asking her something because she'd kind of been staring at her. Whoops. She forced her eyes back down to her book, shaking her head a little to herself.

'Why I was crying.'

Hermione glanced back to Charissa and noticed that, well, yes, her eyes were a bit red, she guessed she probably had been crying. She hadn't really been paying attention to that. Though by the slightly amused look on Charissa's face, she thought Charissa might have figured out she hadn't noticed — even if Hermione couldn't see what was so funny about that. But anyway, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to ask Charissa what she'd been crying about. For one thing, she hardly knew her, and she was pretty sure this would be personal, and intruding on personal things just led to awkwardness all around. And, well, asking what she'd been crying about might lead to some conversational context where Hermione was expected to give advice or something, and she was completely horrible at that. If whatever the problem was didn't have a solution that was immediately obvious to her — and the sorts of problems most other kids had usually didn't — then she'd just be completely lost.

But, unfortunately, now she was curious, and there was really only one thing to be done about curiosity. 'You can tell me if you want, I guess.' Oh, damn. Did that sound too reluctant? Like she didn't really care, and felt all put out and obligated or whatever? She should apologise somehow, make sure Charissa didn't think—

Her thoughts were interrupted by how the corners of Charissa's lips were twitching, resisting a smile of some kind. What? What'd been so funny about that? 'Just found out my mother's in hospital, is all.'

'Oh, I'm sorry.' Hermione quickly referenced every conversation she'd ever heard or taken part in on similar subject matter — from how calm Charissa seemed, and how privately amused, Hermione was pretty sure whatever it was wasn't too big of a disaster. She hesitated for just a second before asking, 'She'll be okay?'

'Yeah, she'll be out in a couple days. Scary, is all.'

Hermione could see how that could be. On the train here, Charissa had mentioned at one point that her mother was an Auror, so Hermione'd taken a moment to look up exactly what that meant sometime during the first week. The impression she'd come away with was an odd combination of a police detective, an MI5 agent, and an SAS soldier. So, not exactly the easiest nor safest of jobs. If Charissa's mother was in hospital that probably meant she'd gotten in a fight with someone rather dangerous, and gotten hit with a curse of some kind. And most dark curses left damage that couldn't be completely healed ever. Which meant her mother was probably now permanently—

'I just wanted to write her a letter somewhere people wouldn't bother me about what's going on. So you don't have to make an effort to talk to me if you don't want.' Charissa was smiling at her just a little, the semi-amused expression with an oddly knowing cast to it.

Well. Charissa didn't want to talk about it. That was just fine — Hermione honestly didn't want to ask about it either. Talking about other people's mothers in hospitals was quite honestly far outside of her comfort zone. Especially when those mothers were basically special forces dark wizard fighters. Nope, had no idea how to handle that. Something of a relief, actually, that Charissa didn't want to talk to her about it. So that was more than fine.

But that wasn't the part of that that was sticking her head. It was partially what she'd said — make an effort to talk. It was partially the tone — all light and falsely casual. It was partially her expression — that strange, shrewd set to her face, like she knew more than she was saying. It all kept bouncing in Hermione's head as she pretended to read. For some seconds she sat there, thinking about all that instead of reading. Not really thinking, to be perfectly accurate, just sitting in something of a dazed stupor, the words echoing in her ears, Charissa's expression as she'd said them floating before her eyes. It had been getting harder to concentrate the last few days, and moments like this, when a past moment distracted her from the present moment and she couldn't devote the attention necessary to either, were growing more and more common. But it just kept bothering her and bothering her, dozens of remembered looks on Charissa's face, all vaguely similar, obscuring the words on the page just inches away.

Oh. Charissa watched people. She knew. That's what was going on.

At some point, Charissa must have put together that small talk was not exactly a skill of Hermione's. That if there wasn't some sort of framing academic context, she would hardly know what to say half the time. More than half the time, really. Charissa had figured it out, so had told her not to worry about it, just go back to reading. Why would Charissa do that? It didn't fit with her admittedly faulty model of how other people interacted. Was she missing something?

Was she really that obvious?

Well. If Charissa really had been trying to be considerate in telling her not to bother, it hadn't worked. Now she just had all new distractions to agonise over.

The reply came two days later.

I'm fine, Sweetheart. I could stand to go anoðer few rounds if your faðer and Peter would just quit hovering. I'd have to use my left hand, and I guess I'd be way more stationary þan usual, but þat'd really be enough for most people.

Vissie did manage to get me wið one curse I couldn't just shrug off, in þe right shoulder. Ububul-namtarak, it's called — þis really nasty-looking black lightning. Sev took care of it, I don't even have scars from it, but he said I'd probably be stiff for about a monþ or so. It's noþing to worry about. You didn't þink some upstart Magyar brat was going to get þe better of me, did you?

You guessed right — Flitwick was probably avoiding saying it. I did kill Éjbevissza. We'd been dueling for what felt like forever, and þe arse had just hit me wið a somewhat nasty curse, you know. I wasn't happy wið him. I know oðer people would tell me not to be quite þis honest about it wið you, þat I should shield you from þe more unsavory facts of reality. I know your faðer won't like it. But stopping bad guys is what I do, and I'm good at it, and I refuse to be ashamed of it. I suggest you do þe same, should anyone at school give you a hard time about it when þe news gets out. Not þat I þink þey will — far as I've seen, magicals are a bit less squeamish about þis sort of þing þan muggles are.

I was going to say someþing þere, but I forgot what it was. I þink þe pain potions Sev gave me, and your faðer has been making me take, are making me a little silly. Sorry about þat.

Sounds like þe Hat had a bit of fun wið you, didn't it? Feels like centuries ago I was sitting on þat dinky little stool, but I still remember it's not þe nicest sapient article of cloðing in þe world. Or is it? Can't be þat many sapient articles of cloðing out þere, I would þink. I had absolutely no clue what was going on under þere. Þing was whispering in my head þese nonsense words. Ravenclaw, Slyðerin, Gryffindor — silliest-sounding words I'd ever heard. Þey were really all þe same to me. None of þem meant anyþing. Þis would probably make your faðer's head explode, but at þe time, I kind of wanted it to put me in Slyðerin. Sev was þe only person I knew in þe whole civilisation, you see, and he'd told me he was quite nearly positive he would be in Slyðerin. I was honestly a little disappointed when þe þing said it wouldn't be þe best idea. For þe obvious reason.

Because, see, I didn't have þe pre-prepared notions all þese oðer people do. I didn't have ancestors going back who knows how many generations in þis house or þat house. I didn't have þe centuries of accumulated associations influencing me from þe moment of my birþ. I didn't have practically any knowledge about what þe houses were like at all.

Þe reason I'm saying þis is it doesn't matter to me þe tiniest fraction of a whit which house you're in. Ravenclaw, Slyðerin, Hufflepuff, I don't care. If you're happy, and as long as you're not skiving off on your work, I'm happy. You could make me even more happy by beating my NEWT scores — I only got an E in Ariþmancy, so it's possible, if only barely. Ignore your faðer whenever he brings þe subject up. Þat's what I've been doing þe past couple days. He'll get over it before too long. Just focus on your classes and making friends. Everyþing else will settle.

I sent a letter to Flitwick telling him I might be sneaking you out of þe castle next week. I'm not supposed to apparate until Þursday, so þat day and after are fine wið me. I don't know what your schedule is like, but if you're not too embarrassed to be seen wið your moðer, I'll bust you out and we can find someþing to do for a couple hours. If you suggest anyþing þat involves drinking healing potions or lying in bed I will cancel on you.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I was teasing wið þe embarrassed bit. I can do it too.

I þink I've stolen enough of your time wið my maternal rambling. Write me wið a time to pick you up, and don't forget to have fun.

Maybe those potions were making Mum a little silly, but it didn't really seem that different from Mum in one of her more relaxed moods. She could be pretty weird sometimes. Charissa didn't know if she had any relatives she could claim with complete honesty weren't a little weird.

Despite some of the more worrying things she'd said — that she'd been hit with a comparatively nasty curse, that she was on a potion regiment, that she wasn't allowed to apparate, that Dad and Uncle Peter were "hovering" — Charissa found the letter reassuring. Maybe the reason why she found it reassuring would seem odd to most people, but she still did. Her mother knew enough dark magic that it was honestly a little scary to think about sometimes — it was hard to counter dark magic without knowing any, after all. From the sound of it, she was already starting to go a little crazy from everyone babying her during her recovery, and it'd only been a couple days. That implied to Charissa that Mum thought everyone was overreacting — and Mum would know what level of caution was appropriate way better than, say, Dad, who knew hardly anything about dark magic and curses and such. Mum was fine.

Charissa suddenly felt warmer and lighter than she had in over a month. As though she'd been carrying a cold weight on her shoulders she hadn't even noticed was there, suddenly lifted.

'Hey, Charissa?'

She blinked, turned to Morag to her right. She'd been in the Great Hall just starting on breakfast when Mum's letter had arrived. At the time the room had been more empty than usual, since most people started late on weekends — though the difference was much less pronounced at the Ravenclaw table. Morag hadn't been here when she'd started reading, but she must have shown up at some point, politely waiting for her to finish before getting her attention. That was nice of her. 'Yeah?'

'Can I ask you what might seem like a weird question?'

She'd always thought it was silly when people said things like that. What was she going to do, say no? 'Sure.'

'Have you ever seen Granger sleep?'

'Oh.' Frowning down at her toast, Charissa thought for a few seconds. Granger was always propped up with a book at her desk or in bed when Charissa was settling in to sleep — when she was in their room at all, that is. By the time Charissa woke up she was always already gone. Either in the common room or, she guessed, the library. Speaking of the library, 'Other than a couple days ago when I found her conked out on some history text in the library, no. Why?'

'Because I don't think she's sleeping. At least not enough.'

Charissa peaked through the red curliness framing Morag's face to see she looked completely serious. So she'd noticed it too, then. Granger had been getting gradually more frazzled as the days went by. Hair somehow even messier, dark circles under red eyes. The last couple days, she'd even started snapping at people who bothered her while she was reading. Now, Charissa hadn't met Granger all that long ago, and didn't really know her very well at all, but that still seemed out of character. She was pretty sure Granger was starting to lose it. 'Alright. What do we do about it, then?'

With an uncomfortable grimace on her face, Morag shrugged. 'I don't know. I tried talking to her about it, but she just insisted she was fine, and told me to just leave her alone.'

'When was that?'

'Tuesday, I think.'

'Hmm.' Charissa scratched at her cheek for a second. 'I don't know, if she doesn't think it's a problem, I don't think there's a lot we can do to—' She was interrupted by a voice from immediately behind her and to her right, a rude shout in a bouncing, teasing voice. Even though the texture of the voice itself wasn't entirely familiar, the tone was as identifiable as a face. She muttered an apology to Morag while she still had time.

'Hey, you, scoot it for my baby cousin.'

'What are we doing?' That voice was just as identifiable — that was Neville. 'Let's just go back to our table, okay? You don't want to—'

'No, I so want to.' A couple seconds later, Dora had forced off the fifth year who'd been a little ways to Charissa's left, then plopped down next to her, a somewhat embarrassed-looking Neville at her other side. 'Hello there, Little Miss Potter.'

Dora had a huge, reckless grin on her face — the one Charissa thought of as her "official" face, how she looked when they were in public or something and she was supposed to be herself. If that made sense. Which mostly seemed to be an imitation of Dora's mother, but that wasn't so important right now. Charissa felt her own lips curling quite against her will — there was just something about Dora that made it almost impossible not to smile back at her. But before she could say anything, a sixth year girl across and a few seats down snarled over at them. 'Come on, Tonks, I thought we settled this last year.'

Dora glanced over at her. 'Last year my baby cousin wasn't in Ravenclaw.'

The girl hesitated, her eyes flashing at some of the older students around her, then turned to Charissa. 'Tonks is your cousin?'

Charissa shrugged.

'You have my eternal sympathies.'

'Ignore her,' Dora said, flipping a hand at the sixth-year dismissively. 'She's just annoyed with me because she caught Timmy snogging me out on the grounds last year.'

The girl's face shifted quite suddenly into a cold sort of glare. 'Toby. His name is Toby.'

'Is it?' Dora shrugged. 'I don't think I actually asked.'

'He was my boyfriend, you—'

'How is that my problem? Not my fault he never said he was seeing anyone. Sounds to me like he's the one you should be being all snitty at.'

For long seconds, the sixth-year just glared at Dora. Finally, she let out a long sigh and, shaking her head to herself in obvious exasperation, returned to her breakfast.

'Anyway,' Dora said, smooth and light as though there'd been no awkward interruption at all, 'I wanted to show you two this.' She pulled a rolled up copy of the Prophet from her robes.

'I didn't know you got the Prophet,' Neville said.

'I don't. Borrowed it from a Gryffindor.' Charissa couldn't help wondering if the Gryffindor in question had been informed before Dora had borrowed it. 'But look, this is great. Right on the front page, saw it as I was walking by.'

Charissa first guess what it could possibly be turned out to be right — the huge, bolded title at the top read ICW FORCE DEFEATS ÉJBEVISSZA, a subtitle just beneath Six Aurors to be Awarded Order of Myrðin, Foreign Honours. Under that was a photograph, five of the eight Charissa recognised instantly. Mum and Aunt Alice along with Sir Dawlish, Sir Scrimgeour and Dame Bones. She assumed the other three were Aurors too, but she didn't know them by sight. According to the caption under the photo, it'd been taken hardly an hour before the six had been sent off to Magyarland by portkey. 'Yeah,' Charissa said with a shrug, 'I knew about that already.'

'Yeah, Mum wrote me about it.' Charissa couldn't see Neville around Dora at the moment, but by his tone of voice she was certain he had mirrored her shrug.

Dora made a noise deep in her throat, a sound of exasperation, of disbelief. 'You two, seriously. Both of your mothers are being given Orders of Myrðin and all kinds of other shite from Magyarland and the ICW for being two of the most kick-ass witches in the entirety of Europe, for saving who knows how many thousands of people from some Dark Prick through their sheer amazingness, and you don't care at all, do you?'

Yeah. Dora could be this way sometimes. It really seemed like she had an unhealthy degree of adoration for figures she saw as heroic — whether historical, fictional, or even people in real life she'd actually met. That probably had something to do with her aspiration to become an Auror. She had such intense regard for all these people that she wanted to be one, that, as far as Charissa could tell, anything else a person could be somehow represented a moral failing. In Dora's head, if someone were skilled enough to be an Auror, why wouldn't they? What else could possibly be worth their effort? So it didn't surprise Charissa at all that she was so excited about the fall of Éjebevissza, so proud of Mum and Aunt Alice being recognised — this was the kind of thing she valued, the only sort of thing that mattered in her little world.

But Charissa didn't really care about that part at all. 'Excuse me, but I'm mostly just relieved my mother didn't die.'

'I wasn't really worried about that,' Neville said, 'but I don't really see how the other stuff matters so much.'

Charissa leaned around Dora to look at Neville, her eyebrow unconsciously raised. 'You weren't worried?'

He shifted in his seat a little, a slightly embarrassed cast falling over his face. 'Well, no. Mum told me before she left she would be fine. She said as long as she's with your mum and Sir Dawlish nothing would happen to her.'

Hmm. Interesting. That wasn't so surprising of a thing for Aunt Alice to say — or even believe, she guessed — but, 'Are you saying you weren't actually worried, or you'd been told you shouldn't worry?'

'Er, the second one, I guess.'

Yeah, that's what she'd thought.

'I dunno,' Dora was saying, her voice pitched a little annoyed, 'I don't get you two. If I were you I'd be running around telling everyone how I have the most completely awesome mother in the world.'

Somehow, Charissa had absolutely no trouble believing that. Neville spoke before she could, saying almost the exact same thing she'd been about to. 'If you really want to run around telling people how great they are, I'm not going to stop you.'

'Yeah, go nuts,' she added.

For some seconds, Dora just sat there, glancing between the two of them with a scandalised expression on her face that Charissa was pretty sure was insincere. With a huff, she picked up the Prophet, and was gone.

Shaking her head, Charissa said, 'Sometimes I wonder about her.'

Neville shrugged, his lips tilted into a vague sort of smile.

illūcē — Did I just change a canon incantation? I think I did. It's just lumos, but, honestly I tried to copy the bad fake Latin but it was physically painful, and my fingers wouldn't let me. Probs do that with most incantations, honestly. It's the second person imperative for "to illuminate" (second person because you're talking to your wand, if that makes sense). Most people will just say lūcē, if they even bother saying the incantation at all.

Brīþwn vowels — The y, w, ī and ē, in IPA, would be [ɨ] [ʉ] [y] and [ø]. Look them up if you care (on the vowel chart for the International Phonetic Alphabet wiki page), don't if you don't. That only applies in Brīþwn of course — ī and ē are just long vowels in Latin.

altum levētur — I will make no excuses for changing the canon incantation for the levitation charm. It's just...so, so ridiculous. Means something like "be raised high"

īnflammet — I did it again. The canon incendio is the ablative of the noun for fire which just seems...really weird to me? I really just think incantations should be verbs. I almost used incendat before changing to īnflammet for reasons I won't bother explaining.

Raẖqācit — The native Egyptian name for the city of Alexandria. That transliteration is just a random attempt I made. Egyptian isn't really intended to be written in the Roman alphabet. The older name, the one I transliterated, is pretty much unpronounceable for native English speakers, but Rakote is the same name in Coptic, a far more modern variant of the Egyptian language, and is just something like "rah-koh-tuh."

Agad — The ancient Mesopotamian city of Akkad. I messed with the pronunciation, because, well, it's been thousands of years. It really wouldn't really be pronounced anything like that anymore anyway. Fun fact: archaeologists have never been able to find the actual site of the city, even though we know from contemporary cuneiform writings it must exist, and even the general area it must exist in. Isn't that interesting?

na marathí (να μαραθεί) — This is supposed to be the subjunctive form of "to whither" (μαραινομαί) in modern Greek, but I'll be the first to admit my Greek isn't very good. Romanized to reflect pronunciation, not necessarily spelling (which will be how I handle any later Greek too). And Charissa wrote the theta with a thorn — if this were her POV, the spoken incantation would have been done with it too, but Hermione isn't used to using thorn and eth yet.

Myrðin (roughly "mer-thin") — Yeah, there is absolutely no good reason magical British people would say it "Merlin," there just isn't. The Welsh name is spelled Myrddin, which Geoffrey of Monmouth Latinised as Merlinus, presumably because a French person just reading "Myrddin" without knowing how it's supposed to be pronounced would say something nearly identical in pronunciation to merde. Whoops. Due to cultural fuckery, the Frenchified name ended up being preserved in English culture. That just didn't happen among magical people at all, since Geoffrey is not the source their legend is derived from. And since I'm actually using thorn and eth, it becomes Myrðin instead of Myrddin.

Morgen (roughly "more-gain") — Might as well put this here too, as it will come up eventually. Much as "Merlin" is a corruption of the original name, Morgen's name has seen all kinds of fuckery. The commonly seen "Morgan le Fay" is obviously French — and gets additional giggle points because "Morgan" in Welsh is a masculine name — and Morgana is Italian, so no. Some people, including Charissa, will use the Goidelic (Irish/Scottish) version of the name — Muirgein or Muirgen, they're pronounced roughly identically — but they refer to the same person. But, yeah, it'll mostly be Morgen or Muirgen characters use. Hermione might say Morgan le Fay or such at some point, but she's muggleborn, so.

Yes, I know, I'm such a language geek, and have a problem with rambling. I can't help it.