[1]

If there is one thing that throws Eleonor off, it's the handshaking.

It took her a while to realise, but for the past few days she had been on edge, like something was just a touch too uncomfortably close. She felt sick, a little shaken up, and it was only in her room that she felt relaxed. The common room was another hurdle to pass.

There's other culture shocks that range from unsettling to curious to hilarious. At first, the amount of students who were convinced that Australia didn't exist almost seemed insulting before she found herself laughing at them. Then the dissimilarities in magic; British wizards seemed to think fundamentally different, even when she compared them to the European descendants of Australia. It was very obvious that Eleonor thought of magic different from her peers, but she lacked experience and knowledge to put it in words.

And finally, and certainly the least wanted, was the lack of personal space each and every student shared. When standing in line, Eleonor found herself being jostled and nudged so much she felt overheated. In class, people leaned over her like she wasn't there. And when walking through traffic, Eleonor often found herself being barrelled over.

All these points seemed to collectively be represented by the handshake. The act is so innocent, just a movement considered by many as manners, but when Eleonor participates in this activity, she feels like she's being raided by sweaty shaky hands. When the other person pulls Eleonor in… well, it's just natural to step away, right?

Handshakes, for unknown reasons, shake her to the core. So she begins to ignore them, politely declining and moving on quickly.

This is how it begins.

[2]

On her second day of classes, third day at Hogwarts, Percy guides her to the library.

Libraries in Eleonor's mind, are shelves that reach maybe two metres. Brightly lit. Neatly organised by Dewy Decimal System. Shelves orderly packed. Hogwart's library is anything but. It seems like it's out of a fantasy, like castles. Shelves, tall enough to call for ladders twice as tall as Hagrid, are haphazardly shoved full of books. They're old, pages loose, covers falling off.

Everything carries the beautiful smell of old books. It's… calming.

Percy bounces beside her.

"How is it?" he asks, adjusting his own helping of borrowed books. "If you need any help finding a certain book, then Professor Pince can help you. Just make sure to treat the books kindly and turn them in before the due date, and she'll happily help you."

"I love it," she sighs, turning into the closest aisle and running her hand against the rough covers of books, eyes picking up on too many titles to focus.

"Alright then, I'll go and find help for my astronomy homework." He gives Eleonor a general guide for second year subjects, and disappears down other aisle. Eleonor finds the potions books first, pulling out a few guides and other titles that interested her, and moved onto find charms. The rows of bookshelves proved a difficult journey for light to navigate, so Eleonor called upon her fairy lights to guide her way.

She finds herself in the grouping of tables, a smattering of round tables and seats in front of a floor to ceiling window. The fairies aren't of use any more, so they fade away without a word. Eleonor dumps the books onto the table and slowly begins to work her way through the top potions book.

It's interesting, and reading the words tug at a memory, but she couldn't place it.

"Looking for the answers for potions' homework?"

The voice is… urbane. It carries a hint of Walsh accent, and when Eleonor looks up to meet the girl's eyes, her appearance matches her voice. Dirty blond hair slicked into a pin straight, a small star pin keeping her fringe locked away. A strong Welsh nose, sharp eyes and thin lips. Her uniform is crisp, clean and proper. Despite the lack of material to work with, she looks regal. Her robes signify she's Ravenclaw.

"Uh, yeah, I guess. I forgot we had potions homework, hahaha…" Eleonor shyly rubs the back of her head, the girl's words calling a memory from the day before to the front of her head. "It was about the moonstone, right?" The girl rolls her eyes but seems to straighten further.

"That's next week. Professor Snape wants a two foot essay on a potion that personally interests you. As a warm up after winter holidays." She slides into the seat opposite of Eleonor and reaches across the table to offer her hand. "Good afternoon, I'm Tiani Rhydderch." Eleonor considers ignoring the handshake but with it hovering over the table there's no way to avoid it. Reluctantly, she takes it.

"Eleonor. Nice t' meet cha."

"So Eleonor," Tiani elegantly props her head onto her arm, but it doesn't look as nearly as lazy when Eleonor does it. She's enamoured. "Does potions interest you?" she looks down at the book, recalling the few words she had read before.

"At the moment? Not really. It's really dry, and I'm not good at rote memorisation. I do love Care of Magical Creatures, I've already read up to fifth grade, and charms sounds fascinating, although currently I can do better than what we're learning in class." She lifts a charms textbook off the ground and into her hands with a though, the novel not wavering or faulting in its flight. The levitation charm still has those drawbacks.

Tiani follows the book, but when Eleonor meets her eyes, they aren't as sharp as before.

"Interesting," she says, flatly. Eleonor slumps. She had one chance of earning a friend and she blew it. What was wrong with Magical Creatures and Charms? "Eleonor, I need you to answer this question. My friends and I are extremely interested in the answer. Are you pureblood?"

Eleonor looks at Tiani, and she stares back. She suddenly gets very sadistic vibes; the sharp eyes turn into vulture eyes, the neat pin straight now a monstrous hairdo that takes an hour to prepare. Her graceful movements transform into rigid, uptight.

"What's a pureblood?"

In short, Tiani looks like a bitch.

[3]

This lesson began with the class finding their seating. Eleonor came in with the rest of the crowd this time, because the Gryffindors had just come from a Potions class with the Slytherins and the Hufflepuffs had come inside from Hibology with the Ravenclaws. Her previous places had already been taken, so she slid into a new spot, relatively close to the front. She began to wrestle with her backpack until her Charms textbook and exercise book was out before her. She slid her wand out from her sleeve, setting it neatly on the table.

A simple glance around the classroom showed no Mr Flitwick. It would've been a prime chance to whip out her phone but a few years of primary school calmed that want quite easy. While Mr Flitwick was a stranger to technology like her phone, any good teacher could spot a class distraction on sight.

Speaking of class distractions, Eleonor swung her focus around to the twins she met on the train. Fred and George. She could see her little anchor earring stud swinging madly as Fred twisted his head this way and that, looking for two spare seats. The twins were the late comers, always one of the last few students that dragged their sorry arses to class. In classes with more lenient teachers, they came after the bell had rung, overloading on sweetness to avoid consequences.

Mr Flitwick announced his presence as usual, striding out of his office with a stack of papers in his hand. In the other he held his wand, controlling the many more that floated behind him.

"Alright class!" he squeaked, turning up the volume as the class burst into energy, the twins now rushing to find their place and other students ripped through their bags to find rolled up parchment and their textbooks. Along the way quills and ink pots appeared on their desks, withdrawn as they're discovered. "Mr and Mr Weasley, please sit down."

Eleonor only noticed that her partner seat was free just as one of the twins slid into the seat. Oh damn, the twins broke up. Furthermore, the ear with the illusion was on the other side. It could be George sitting next to her for all she knew.

"Hey," she greeted, pulling out the pristine sheets of paper she typed up her homework on. Parchment was too weird for Eleonor so her parents delivered a printer after a few days of arriving at Hogwarts. The twin's head turned at the greeting, and she caught sight of something silver on his ear. "Fred, right?"

"No, George." He cheekily grinned. Eleonor shot a confused look over to where the other twin was sitting. From this angle she could clearly the ear the earring was supposed to be. A light laugh brought her back to Fred. "I'm joking. Yeah, I'm Fred."

Eleonor gave him what she hoped was a slightly annoyed but otherwise fine face, returning back to Mr Flitwick as he began to give a run over the homework he had received. It was on the last spell the rest of her classmates had done before the holidays, a comprehensive history of the height adjustment spell.

Eleonor learnt it several weeks before her classmates did, by her estimation, and found it fun to use when people tried to compare her height to theirs. All it did was stretch out the body comfortably to allow about 5cm extra height. Other than a party trick, it had a rather interesting roll in the history of witch hunts.

This homework was her first assignment so Eleonor went all out. She included a background of the spell, from history to mindset to the person who created the spell. Along her crawl through the library she found some records the creator had written (he also created other spells so his research was highly valued and looked after) and included them into her research. Finally, she began to discuss the spell itself, analysing the words to the movement of the wand. Both paragraphs required some heavy spell theory books that Percy had given her. The essay was concluded with a bibliography.

The result was a decent three pages with another for the bibliography, but her font was relatively smaller than the average size her classmates wrote. Mr Flitwick's comments ranged from 'very neat handwriting!' to more detailed notes on her analysation of her reasoning behind the wand movement. An 'O' was proudly printed on the first page, Mr Flitwick's signature underneath.

This was a very good start. Eleonor wondered if he was going easy because she was the new student or if he was grading her like another student. She also wondered how assignment requirements were like in higher grades. Luckily enough, she was going to meet Percy later on.

"Wow, Yindi, your handwriting is insane." Beside her, Fred's assignment was spread haphazardly across their joined desk, mixed in with his writing utensils and textbook. Eleonor couldn't help herself from catching sight of the 'E' and several more comments swarming his writing.

"Yindi? Uh, Eleonor, please." Britain had a strange habit of everyone calling each other by their last name. Even the teachers called students by their last name, tacking on a 'Miss' and 'Mr.' "And I didn't write this; I typed it up."

"Typed?" Fred rolled the word around on his tongue like it came straight from her native language. "Like, a computer?" Oh, right, the twins and Percy shared a dad. The same dad that was apparently obsessed with 'muggle' technology. She nodded and placed her homework in the little box Mr Flitwick was levitating around the classroom. Most of the pieces inside were rolled up, but she caught a piece of paper that was no longer than the distance from her wrist to the tip of her middle finger. She winced.

"Today I would like to give a little throwback to an older lesson. Everyone remember the light spell?" Mr Flitwick's wrist elegantly does a full turn, his wand completing a circle to point upright, a bright bulb of light gently connected to the tip. Eleonor activates the spell with a small lumos muttered under her breath. The British light spell was extremely restricted to the fairies Eleonor could summon in a second, and she didn't use it outside of class.

"In a later lesson I will be showing you how to change colours, but to get the principle, we need to learn how to change the colour of this light." His light begins to fade into a more yellow colour, slowly marching towards orange, then red, then pink. It was memorising, but Eleonor could do that since she was eight.

Mr Flitwick explains the mind trick to changing colours, and set them to changing the colour. Eleonor gets the trick easy, able to switch between colours in snap, but she wanted to do that smooth gradient change that Mr Flitwick had exhibited at the beginning.

"Say, Yindi, can your fairies do that?" Fred nudges her, knocking her concentration out from her wand. She gives him a look, distinguishing her light with a light nox.

"My what? My lights? How do you know about them?"

"I've seen you around – with them trailing behind you. How did you tame fairies like that? I thought they hated humans." Fred is sitting back in his seat, angled towards her. His back is in one corner and his arm is slung over the edge of the chair. His other hand holds his wand lazily, wriggling it absentmindedly. A small red bulb of light sits at the end of his wand. Eleonor felt like he was missing the bubble gum.

"It isn't real fairies. It's my magic. And yeah, I can change their colour." She answered. Fred was still looking at her, asking for a demonstration. She looked around nervously; Mr Flitwick was chatting lightly with some students about the spell, the other twin was laughing loudly with his partner, and bringing Aboriginal magic into a British classroom was just too weird. Nevertheless, she called forth her magic, little beads of light appearing in the air, growing wings, legs and a head. The little fairies danced across her desk, each of them flickering through the rainbow.

Fred leads forward and touches them, his hands going through the light source. His curious face was highlighted by the fairies before him.

"You can do non-verbal, wandless?" he asked, shocked.

"No, its Aboriginal magic. I can – uh – change their form." Eleonor felt strange, bragging over the flexibility of indigenous magic. It wasn't really fair; this was only a second year class. Surely they would learn much complex spells in the future. The fairies changed into soft glowing balls, then into a halo like her parent's favourite shape. She was just switching them into several bars of light when Mr Flitwick's voice broke over her concentration.

"Miss Yindi," his amused voice contrasted his stern stance, hands on his hips as he surveyed Eleonor's magic. He didn't even twitch when she changed them back into fairies, dancing across her desk, strobing like any good disco light. "Your Indigenous magic is fascinating, but unfortunately nobody else here has seen it before." The fairies changed to bright red, reflecting the burning feeling on her cheeks. A quick glance around showed that everyone near her was looking at the blissfully unaware fairies on her desk. Thankfully, not every student in the class was watching.

"Sorry, sir." She mumbles and extinguishes the fairies with a little wave. Please call me Eleonor, she almost said, but being in the limelight of her peers was already too much. Calling into their cultural differences would be crossing the line.

"Mr Flitwick," she calls, sitting back up when a question enters her mind. "Is their anyway to detach the light from your wand?"

He returns to the front of her desk and begins to demonstrate an additional and more complex spell. True to his word, the light did detach from his wand, and he could send it places, but it still required his wand and he couldn't change the shape of it like Eleonor could do with her own magic.

At the end of the lesson, Eleonor swept out of the classroom, her belongings neatly returned to her backpack. She slid her earphones into her ears and squeezed the play/pause button, increasing the volume slightly as the corridors began to fill with rowdy, chatty students. She slipped between people, careful of not touching anyone, mind quickly running through the things she wanted to do at the library. Find one more book for potions. Begin the transfiguration homework. Perhaps she could look at the light spell? She also wanted to look at some history –

Percy broke through her thoughts with a polite wave and smile, Eleonor greeting him as she pulled out one of the earbuds.

"Howdy," she greets, matching his stride to the library. "What would you like to do before dinner?" the library was located on the sixth floor, so as they travelled the amount of Slytherins and Hufflepuffs around them dropped away as everyone went their own path back to the houses. Percy was chatting about his recent Ancient Runes class right until they come to their customary spot, a relatively small round table below a breathtakingly large window, panes stretching from the ceiling to the roof. Today it lacked any colour, allowing the weaker Scottish sunlight to fall brilliantly across the library.

Percy and Eleonor placed their bags at the desk, claiming it, before they separated to walk between the shelves. Eleonor found all the books she needed and after strolling around the history section for a few more minutes she returned to the table, to see not only Percy already getting out his writing utensils, but the twins taking her seat. Their backs were to her, so she walked closer to hear what they were saying.

"-she's got this really cool magic! I thought she was showing off until Professor Flitwick-"

"-also she calls him Mista Flitwick? And asks to be called by her first name off the bat?"

"-Professor Flitwick mentions Indigenous magic? Have you heard of it Percy?"

"Yes, Eleonor has showed me her magic." He answers primly, flicking his eyes up to catch hers. "Although its best to ask her yourself." He dips his head in acknowledgement. The twins turn in union, eyes widening and their ears burning when they see her.

"What would you like to know? I can't answer all your questions, a lot of it is very secretive." They shuffle over, sliding around the table on the curved seats. She retrieves her stuff from her backpack, sliding out her laptop and bigger headphones. The bag disappears under the desk, along with some of the history books she didn't need immediately.

The twins don't ask that many questions other than the basic; they watch her ear piercing like hawks as she performs a few simple spells, like a heating cloak or an anti-gravity spell. It remains inconspicuous, no flashing lights, no heating up. Even the bigger ones like Jenny's dragon had no weight. They were all intentionally made to fade into the background. Jenny even used a forget-me-not spell for those with no knowledge of a Billywig.

Once their burning questions about her magic were answered, the twins fell silent. Sensing to what they were gearing up to ask, she begins to spill on all her findings on the difference between Australia and the UK.

"In Australia, almost nobody calls people by their last name. I address my classmates by their first names from the get go. We introduce ourselves by our first names. My teachers call me by my first name. I call my teachers by their last name, but I don't use Professor. My year 7 teacher's name was Sam Balengetti, right? Her co-workers would call her Sam; I'd call her by Mrs Balengetti. Professor is for university." She drops her eyes down to her laptop, already unlocked and still open on the word doc she had left it on last night. It was the potions assignment. "Being called Yindi is just really weird."

"Oh that's very interesting," Percy comments from across the table. "I've always introduced myself with my full name, and when you just said Eleonor it was a very strange feeling. I almost convinced myself you were some secret heir to an important family." His crooked grin grew as Eleonor gave a light laugh.

"I've tried to explain this to the teachers but they still call me Miss Yindi. And they wonder why I don't respond." Eleonor slides the top three textbooks off the stack next to her, catching them with her magic and placing them next to her on the seat. The potions textbook found itself on the table between the laptop and her, and she leafed through the pages as she talked.

"Well, it seems like the perfect time to disappear." Fred commented, standing up and sliding out between the table and the seats.

"See you later Percy… Eleonor." She waved at George, farewell falling out of her mouth without a thought. She focused on switching her earphones for her headphones and focused on potions. Supposedly the textbook before her could answer her burning questions. The assignment on moonstones was already done and dusted, and now she was researching two essential potion ingredients; not only by themselves but the relationship between the two.

Despite the quiet library atmosphere, chill music flowing through her headphones and Percy hardly stirring up any breeze at the table, Eleonor constantly found her eyes drawn elsewhere when she contemplated the next sentence; sometimes it was the window, sometimes it was the scenery through the window. Not far from where they sat a group of Ravenclaws, about fifth year, had claimed a table and she found herself watching them with great interest.

The way they sat in silence, gigantic feathers shifting as they wrote line by line, eyes focused on the parchment before them…

Eleonor sighed and reached down to her bag to get her camera. They looked pretty focused, so Eleonor should be able to freely take some snaps. The contrast between their colourful feathers and dark uniform was magical, and the sunlight thrown across the group made for a picture perfect moment. Now, if she could only take the picture she was seeing.

Throughout the afternoon she crawled through the library taking mediocre pictures of people and fantastic moments of the books and the bookshelves. She even experimented with the big window – Percy was just a silhouette before the glass.

She settled down after she had taken as much photos as possible, but Eleonor could still feel the itch to take pictures long after she finished the potions essay and began on the transfiguration piece. She picked up her camera several times to flick through the photos. There were decent ones, yes, and she could've made them greater if she knew how to manipulate photos. But nevertheless she was happy with what she took, and could wait to take more.

Percy began to pack up ten minutes to dinner, carefully lining his equipment up to insert neatly into his satchel.

"Oh, why did you wait for me." He sighed, noticing all her stuff was away, books returned to their rightful place. "You could've gone to dinner already!" a small smile graced his face, almost contradicting his words. Eleonor simply shrugged and waved the camera in front of his face.

"Wanna have a look at some photos?"

Howdy its da author amy

The thing about Australians calling each other by their first name? its true. When I read hp the first thing I really noticed was 'why is harry calling draco by his last name? so weird.' Every time they'd be (not only in the books but also fanfiction) doing the Potter! Malfoy! thing it was just…. Really funny to me. Also America does it? So its like, Australian TM (because there's no other English countries, apparently. Nz? Who? Australia already struggles to be included in American and british stuff)