Title: Sparks At My Fingertips
Category: Books » Harry Potter
Author: Drel Murn
Language: English, Rating: Rated: T
Genre: Adventure/General
Published: 01-14-17, Updated: 03-05-18
Chapters: 8, Words: 10,413
Chapter 1: I'm Nothing More
It was never, ever about the power for me. It was about the world that I lived in.
How do I explain this . . . I was the very last of a long line of very inbred purebloods, but whether or not we could actually be called magical at this point wouldn't exactly be a hard debate. I've seen muggles walk past our windows with more power in their bones than all of the power of my sibling parents and myself combined. None of my family have been invited to Hogwarts in at least ten generations, and even the lesser schools hidden in Knockturn Alley and Diurn Alley have been closed to us for the past five generations. We lost the right to even be called squibs really, but my family kept clinging to the Wizarding world.
You see, that's what I mean. I have no power, but I have a world. I won't give up a world with so much magic, so much wonder.
That's the train of thought that got me into this mess.
Hi. Briar Moore here. If you've gotten this far, I hope you're ready for the rest. I didn't have magic - I've told you this, but not all magic comes from a person. I learned when I was small to always hide lighters under up my sleeves. I didn't have any siblings, just having me had nearly killed my mother, but there were orphan children running free through the alley. People assume that all wizarding families are ancient, but in truth, they aren't. The ministry doesn't bother placing a child if they aren't.
I ran with them when I wasn't learning, when I wasn't plotting my way into Hogwarts. The older children looked at me and they saw my determination. These were the children in Slytherin, in Hufflepuff, in Ravenclaw, in Gryffindor, and these were the children that gave me Albus Dumbledore's letters to them with sly smiles and understanding nods. These are the children who work all summer to get another of the orphan children into Hogwarts with them. These are also the children that attend the furtive schools - the illegal schools - all hidden in the alley because they didn't make the cut. These are the Hogwarts students that always come back, time and time again, because the alleys are their home, no matter where they go.
I learned the magic behind potions, each step precise. I learned the magic in runes, and how to tear paper to active spells that work best without a wand.
For years, I learned to make power for myself. I wrote letters back to heads of houses when the orphan children of the alleyways got in trouble because I had the best hand writing. I was, after all, the last of my line, and my parents made sure I could write well. I knew the writing of the schools quill after years of seeing it on acceptance letters to the children of the alley way, and when my eleventh birthday approached, I knew I wouldn't be getting a letter from Hogwarts because I didn't have magic in my bones.
Then, Romulus whispered to me in the dead on the day, with the sun up high above and words of false reprimand under my fingers as I stood to hug the children coming back from Hogwarts, to hug the children coming back home. He said that having magic in my bones didn't matter, if I had sparks at my fingertips and spells at my belt. So I did what I always did. I wrote. It took me three days to pen my acceptance letter, every dot, every line perfectly the same as the waiver of the Hogwarts quill. It took me two more days to sign with Albus Dumbledore's signature, and every line was perfect.
I had to run to get it to Romulus before he fell asleep, and he looked over it with wide eyes before he started laughing. He took out his wax and helped me forge the Hogwarts seal as well, then promised to send it to me in the morning.
My parents were surprised when the letter came in the morning, they knew that magic did not lay in my bones, but they didn't say anything. They only smiled, and presented me with my many times great grandmother's wand. It was nine inches of a nice reddish wood from the redwoods in America that she'd loved and unicorn hair, and the only reason it sparked under my touch was the rune in my other sleeve that I'd rigged to work when I folded it.
It wasn't my parents that mailed the ministry, but a concerned mother of one of the orphan children, and with Pallas's help, I intercepted owls in mid air and forged replies between them ministry and the school board, insisting to each that I was on their list of children to go that year until they gave up and my name was put on the roster.
It was that self same concerned mother who took me to Platform 9 and ¾, with apologies falling from her lips even as the tight darkness of apparition took us. Romulus met us there, and he showed me gallantly onto the train, Pallas laughing and swatting at him as he tried to take her suitcase from her.
He left me in an empty compartment at the back of the train with parchment spread in front of me and an inkwell balanced precariously on the window sill, held only by a sticking rune. I looked up when a crossed the door, and I gently welcomed the (obviously muggleborn from her clothes) girl into the car because she whispered that that compartment she'd been in was too noisy.
Her name was Alicia Smith. We became friends over my parchment as I showed her how to move her wand for the spell she'd be curious about, and she showed me a muggle trick with a coin, making it roll over and around her fingers. Then suddenly I was across the lake I'd only heard of, done gasping at Hogwarts for the first time, done waiting, and my legs felt wobbly as I carefully sat myself on the chair just as wobbly as I was and the hat dropped over my eyes.
Well, what do we have here?
I have forged letters between the school board and the ministry, the approval of parents who know what it's like to grap a world that doesn't need them, the hopes of a hundred street rat children. I have forged parent's letters for orphans, I have runes drawn on paper up my sleeves and drawn on my clothes, and I have ten different arguments, four frantic pleas, and a single threat smothered under my tongue as I wait because I have sent so many children here, but I'm the first squib.
I have a lighter on my belt next to potion after potion and a wand hanging next to them that will only ever produce sparks for me.
Well, the hat said, sounding positively gleeful. Better be Slytherin.
The hat is lifted from my eyes, and I find people from all four houses clapping for me. I am not an orphan like they are, but I am what got them here, and there are grins all over and I practically float over to the Slytherin table. Romulus catches my eye for a moment as I move to sit down, and he nods to the staff table behind me. I glance over at them as I sit down, to see the staff looking dumbfound at my family.
The name of the boy that I sat down next to was Tom Riddle, and he looks small, huddled in his over large school robes as he was, but I don't let that stop me. He snaps back, the chill of early winter in his words, but I forge on because early winter is nothing next to the permafrost that Romulus can call upon when he's mad. Early winter is nothing next to the knives in the dark that I use to defend the orphans I've helped here, and by the end of dinner, I'd worn him down enough to get him to admit that he was an orphan.
"Is that all?" I ask. Is that all, because no one can be described with only one word. I'm a squib, but that does not define me. I'm the last of my family's line, but neither does that. None of the orphans I know are ever just that. They are sharp and bright and strong and brave and gentle and loving and every trait that can be used to describe a person.
"Oh, leave him alone Moore. Riddle isn't a pureblood name, so he's probably nothing. At least you come from a long line, even if your ilk haven't produced any good magic in generations."
"Shut up, Black," I snap at the boy across from me, because not all of my orphans are pure or even half so. There are muggleborns who have wandered to us and never left. "What else are you, Riddle?"
Riddle stares at me, a visibly surprised look on his face. That night, when all of the haughty purebloods are asleep, I write letters under his watchful eyes, and sneak out to mail them too.
Chapter 2: Than Who I Choose To Be
When a letter comes from him the next morning - dropped on top of Tom's tea cup right after mine lands on my toast, his eyes are wide with surprise again as he glances over at me. Mercury, high above, delivers letters to all of my family before he finally settled in front of Romulus to let him take his letter, and Tom watches him the whole way with narrowed eyes before he bothers to open the letter I wrote to him.
It's only a simple congratulations, I don't really know much about him after all, but from the way he goes still as he reads it - like a cat that might scramble away any moment, like one of the muggleborn children who wandered into the maze of alleys I called home and looked at the homes that the orphans used for the first time - it's the first time he's ever received anything like it. There's a small postscript that welcomes him into the family, and when he's done reading, Tom Riddle looks over at me, then very deliberately folds the letter and slides it into a pocket of his robes.
Wednesday the second, is the first day of school, and I find myself watching the Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws we have classes with when I can, but my attention keeps being pulled away from them and back to Tom, who would have been alone if I hadn't stuck to his side like a burr. A week passed in a blur, Alicia and I talking when we can, and suddenly I find myself having to quickly catch a satchel from Mercury before it can drop onto my toast and crush it. I'd always gotten my letters by way of a satchel before, but I'd forgotten that they came at breakfast. I glance inside at the jumble of letters in its magically expanded interior and smile.
I have to leave the dorm to do my pacing during the second week of school because of the incessant chatter of the girls in the center of the room. The boys had left already, gone off to socialize somewhere, I find myself pacing the hallways, back and forth, sometimes changing hallways as I think I want I want to help everyone, I need I need a way to fool everyone into thinking my wand works, I will make sure this works.
The third time I walked past the tapestry of some wizard and a bunch of trolls in pink ballet tutus and shoes, a door ground open, and I leaped backwards with my back against the wall and my heart in my mouth. The door doesn't stop grinding open, and by the time it's finally ground to a halt, I can see a library beyond the door, and in the far back, there's a potions cauldron suspended over a cold fireplace.
I walk carefully into the room and over to the books to see their titles. There are books on rones, on potions, on chemicals, on muggle magic tricks, and I pull some down to see more, and delight at their contents. I glance up when footsteps sound outside the door, and I see Tom Riddle standing there, watching me.
"Hello Tom. Was there something you wanted to say to me?"
"You missed dinner." He glanced around the room once. "It's almost time for curfew."
I don't have to bribe Tom to help me in Charms or in Transfiguration or in Defence. The first time we have a practical class, close to Halloween, I panic. I haven't figured out a good way to use runes to manipulate my feather yet, and the potion of psychokinesis is so far above my level that it's not even funny. I haven't even figured out a way to get my feather to twitch like even the most beginner witch or wizard could do with ten minutes of practice, but just as the professor reached me, Alicia letting her feather drop with a satisfied smile, Tom stepped up close to me and wrapped his ice cold fingers around my hand.
"It's more of a flick, Briar, not a jab," he told me, moving my hand in the same way I had been moving it. "Now say it with me, Wingardium Leviosa."
"Wingardium Leviosa," I repeat, and suddenly there's magic rushing through my hand in the same way it does whenever I apply a healing balm, and the feather in front of me twitches once, then gently floats. I watch it curiously, Tom's hand still directing mine with gentle movements, and Professor Longbottom claps her hands with a happy smile.
"There you go, Briar, wonderful job. Ten points to Slytherin!"
Transfiguration goes almost the same, with either Tom or Alicia (after she'd sharply demanded that Tom teach her) helping me as I frantically try to figure out the runes. They can't help me all the time though, and so sometimes I have to stand there with red cheeks as either Professor Mackenzie or Professor Dumbledore criticize my wand work before moving on to the next student. Defence is easier to fake, propulsion spells are indelicate and I have already learned how to throw little breakable capsules that have the same effect as I flick my useless wand.
I figure out more about Tom as he helps me. He doesn't really understand rules, and from what I can tell, it's because he was never truly punished before. There were too many children in the orphanage for the matron to really focus on him at all, and he'd always been circumspect enough that he was never caught, and never punished. One night, he comes over to me instead of just watching and sits down next to me. "How are you writing these?"
I show him the lists of different handwritings I've made, two for each child, and the books of letters I've kept - one book for everyone I've helped. Then I hand him one of the books and close the lid on the rest of them. "I haven't finished hers yet."
Chapter 3: I Will Stand Tall
David Prewitt cornered me in the library after I'd told Alicia I was looking for a book. It wasn't entirely a lie, I had intended to just get the book, but the back of the library was a quiet place, and for a moment, looking at the titles of many books that were useless to me, I sit and let myself cry.
"Are you a squib?" he asks me in a rather dreamy voice. And I look up with my heart in my mouth because anyone who knows and follows the rules or saying that in the presence of people who follow the rules or hate squibs can get me expelled - "I put up an anti listening charm. No one can hear us."
I look up at him, and I didn't mean to spill everything, but he was just standing there and watching me with those eyes. My control breaks and snap and I pour out my whole story as I pace back and forth in front of him in the niche created by three bookshelves. I tell him what it's like to be denied by everyone who considered themselves proper members of society, just because I'm different. I tell him the hopelessness, the years of watching muggleborns and their parents and siblings walk past, all of them with more magic in their bones.
David listen to my whole story quietly, and when I'm done, by back to the corner, my voice rough and tears itching my cheeks, he knees down in front of me and sets a book down next to me. "I believe this is the book you were looking for."
I let myself look up, my chest still heaving with the sods that come with tears, to read the title of the book. An Introduction to Runic Transfiguration.
"You should have been in Ravenclaw," I say bitterly as I reach for the book, and when I look up, he staring at me with a gaze so disappointed that I look down. "Sorry."
The next day in Defence, David drops his bag in front of the third chair of the desk in the back of the Slytherin's side of the classroom, next to me, and he gives a sort of dreamy smile to Tom. "Fancy seeing you again. Is this seat taken?"
I had expected him to go to a teacher to tell them. Davis Prewitt is a pureblood, and he knows the rules, he has most likely been told over and over again that squibs are bad, that they taint magical blood with their disease. He's not like Tom, who regards rules as quaint things that don't really matter. He's not like Alicia, whose family doesn't have magic, who doesn't care that I don't have magic in my bones because I have kind words for her at my lips and a sharp tongue to defend her. He sits next to us week after week, in all of the classes we share, and I come to know him.
Transfiguration, at least, becomes simple once I've finally figured out how to use runes to do it. There's only one transfiguration matrix for everything. It's very much so magic, requiring a mind reading component to see what the user wants, and it's by far the most complicated thing I've done yet. I trace the pattern, looking proudly at the runes arrayed on the paper before me.
I tell Romulus in the Slytherin common room with privacy charms ten deep, and he nods, knowing the plan I'd detailed to him over the summer. He'll bring me back home for the weekend, and to one of the tattoo masters in the tangle of alleys to get the matrix imprinted on my skin so I can use it over and over again. And this is the first time Tom reads my mind. He grabs my wrist as the privacy enchantments fall, and he tells Romulus quite frankly that I won't be going anywhere without him, even though there was no way for him to have heard us.
We sneak out of Hogwarts, and a quick disapparation from just outside the wards later, we're in Knockturn Alley. Tom clutches at my robes until I grab his hand, and he holds that instead. I ignore the gloom air of the alley however, and make my way through the alley to the man I know does tatoos well. I've known him since I was a child, and he knows how to make true tattoos that will stay on your skin for the rest of your life, unlike the rest of the tattoo artists in the wizarding world, who only make ones that last for a month at best.
I come back to Hogwarts hours later, with the matrix on my sore shoulder, and a demiguise below it that has already slid down my arm to peek out of my sleeve from my wrist. When I step into the Great Hall for dinner, I'm practically tackled back into Tom's arms by a worried Alicia, who only lets go of me when David pulls her back. I glance beyond her into the Hall, and right now, I'm just so tired -
"Come on," Alicia said, grabbing my arm and pulling me away from the Great Hall. "Let's go somewhere more private."
I want to protest - to eat something after my long and painful day - but Alicia is pulling me before I can open my mouth, and in the end, it's easier just to give in. Alicia brings us to a set of stairs leading downwards, and before I can protest, Tom sweeps me off my feet and starts down the stairs. I think about struggling because I'm not weak, not even now, but I decide to just relax against Tom. Before I close my eyes, I see David's gaze narrow.
I wake up from the haze I'd fallen into when Tom set me down on a wooden chair, and I accept the foor Alicia is holding out for me gratefully. When I'm done scarfing that down, I look up to see my friends watching me. I hold out my arm and pull my sleeve up so they can see first the demiguise, who blinks at them sleepily on my arm, then the matrix in black ink under my skin.
"I wondered how you were going to do that efficiently," David murmured as he looked over my arm. Alicia's attention was more on the demiguise climbing up my arm than on the runes on my shoulder.
"He's beautiful," she murmured, tracing fingers over his head, and laughing as he leaned into her hand.
"He's a demiguise," I reply, accepting a cup of tea from Tom with my other hand. "They turn invisible, and have precognitive abilities. I got him half because I've always rather wanted a demiguise tattoo, and half because he'll be able to hide the tattoo if I ever need him too."
Alicia looked up at me, and her smile faded somewhat at whatever it was she saw on my face. "You really are tired."
She pulled back, letting me drop my arm. "Alright. Do you want help back to your dormitory?"
"I'll be fine."
I stumble out of the kitchen and after a glance around myself, I start on my way to the Slytherin Common Room. As I take the winding corridors, it doesn't escape my notice that I'm being followed. I don't say anything though, simply letting Tom follow me. I brush a hand over the stone wall of the entrance - much better hidden than the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw entrances - and I sigh the password out just loud enough for it to register.
I stumble through the common room and collapse onto my bed.
Chapter 4: I Will Be Free
I wake up in the morning to see Tom watching me. I'm still exhausted from last night, from the many nights before it took to keep up my letter writing network, and from the thrice cursed Wednesday night Astronomy lessons. I can hear the others in the dorm breathing, but I can't go back to sleep because my mind is already racing with what I have to do today.
"You need more help," Tom echoes my thoughts, and that might have been the second time he read my mind. "You were doing fine before, but there's not enough time not that you have school and disguises as well, even with my help."
I don't bother replying. Tom sighs. For a minute, we both listen to our room mates breathing. Then I shake my head and roll out of my bed.
"I'm going to change and go up for breakfast," I call softly as I shuffle over to my trunk.
When the pair of us emerge into the Great Hall, there's no one else there. Despite that, food is already arrayed along the tables. Tom and I settle down at ur usual spots, and dig in.
"So. Any plans?" Tom asks once we're both finished eating.
"Yes. I have noticed how much I've been falling behind. I was thinking about setting up something like a pen pal system. I'm just not entirely sure how to go about it."
"Are you talking about that orphan help network you've got set up?" someone asks from the entrance to the Great Hall, and I startle, my heart beating hard in my chest for a moment before I have the courage to see who had overheard us.
It's Filius Flitwick, a Ravenclaw from our year that I've already heard about from some of the orphans I take care of. The short boy jumps up onto our table, ignoring the Ravenclaw table behind us and pulling a plate of pancakes over to pile some onto his plate. When neither of us reply, he glances up. "Oh, don't worry, it wasn't blindingly obvious, I'm sure that no one else has figured it out. I just happen to be particularly good at analysing people's writing style."
"That may be, but you're not the only one able to analyse writing styles," I tell him. "What do you want?"
"Nothing." Flitwick takes a bit of the pancakes he'd put on his plate. "Or at least nothing more than keeping Markus Shacklebolt and Gawain Lanceson at Hogwarts. They are by far, some of the most interesting people I've met so far, and very good duelists for their age, as well."
He glances up from his pancakes. "So, what do you need?"
()
We moved out of the hall when another Ravenclaw wandered in, her book propped up against a bread bowl as she absently reached for something.
With Flitwick's help, we work out the basis of a system. By the time Alicia and David wander into the room I'd found while pacing, I had my books on each person spread out as I searched for people who write in a way similar to one of the handwritings I'd used. Tom, to my right, is using a printing press that had appeared in the room this time to make copies of the letter I wrote out; one for every person in the network.
"Tom? Briar? What on Earth are you two doing?" Alicia asks as the door slides shut behind David, glancing around at the piles of books I have open around me. She kneels down to pick up one of the books as I glance up. "Briar, this is a letter from Jerry. And this is from his parents! Where'd you get these?"
"For one, I wrote that one," I say, absently glancing at the page she was on. Then I pause, and glance back at it. "Oh! That's perfect!"
"Briar!" Alicia cried as I snatched the book out of her hand and compared it to the one that had been sitting on the desk in front of me. "What do you mean, you wrote it?"
"Jerry Red is an orphan, just like everyone else I've got a book on in here," I explain absently as I compare the handwriting in the two books. Jerry's handwriting looked nothing like the handwriting I had used for Tomas Oakley, but Jerry was an artist and he could probably do something close enough.
"You did know about the support network, didn't you?" Tom asks with an almost malicious smile. "Briar found out I was an orphan on the first day and gave me an invitation to join."
Alicia gaped at Tom, but David only sighed.
"I rather wondered why there were more and more people at Hogwarts despite the war. Usually, the opposite happens." He shook his head, then picked his way around my piles of books to stand next to me. "So, what do you need help with?"
()
Tom didn't quite note David's comment on war until we had done all we were going to be able to for the day - the remains of lunch and dinner piled in the corner of the room, and the books of letters and handwriting examples behind us as we read lazily on a couch in front of a fire.
"David. You said something about a war earlier. What exactly did you mean by that?" Tom asks slowly, looking up from the book he was reading.
"I meant that there's currently a war going on the wizarding world."
"I didn't know that," Alicia says quietly. I glance up from my book. The war . . . isn't something I think on much. Grindelwald's end goal is widely known, and the morality of it is much debated upon. Neither muggleborns nor purebloods are in full agreement with him, the muggleborns objecting to his desire to subjugate muggles, but admitting that it would be nice to have the playing field between them and the purebloods leveled, while the purebloods liked and disliked him for the exact opposite reasons. I slowly set my book aside.
"This is . . . the second time the same wizard has gone to war recently. His name is Gellert Grindelwald," I start.
Chapter 5: But It's Hard
With Filius by my side (and a complete house set. People had been muttering back when I was just friends with Alicia, and with every new close friend I gain from a different house, the muttering grew worse. Now, I swear it's outright pandemonium!), I see a whole new side of the wizarding world.
Yes, I grew up on dark streets full of squalor, but apparently even my parents had some of the stupid pureblood standards I had been fighting all my life, because I hadn't really known how half-creatures were treated. I'm with Fil for but a moment before I hear the whispers, the slander. And the half-goblin doesn't even seem to notice, the words rolling off him like water off a duck's back.
When I ask him about it, he simply smiles at me.
"I'm used to it."
Flames that had been simmering quietly under a load of letter for the orphans at Hogwarts (a load now gone due to the system I'd spent days setting up) and homework (a load that has not gotten lighter, but more manageable now that I only have to write to one person) flare to life with the new fuel.
"Well, not any more," I say direly, and Tom, who had stuck to me like glue before he learned about the war and now acted like the white to my rice, looks up. The whispers are bitterly familiar, and while Fil seems to truly not mind them, I have no doubt that out there, there is someone who they hurt, someone who will break under the impact one day.
(I try not to think of the many wizards and squibs who live on the streets. For all that I do, I can never do enough. For every one orphan I have managed to save so far, there are five - ten - fifty that I simply didn't have enough money to help. (I try not to think of the broken spirits, about the people who broke after one comment to many. About the boys and the girls and the grown men and woman I'm held at nights as they fell apart sobbing.))
Fil is under my wing now, and while I hadn't done anything at first, as exhausted as I was, I no have the time, and the inclination to protect has never left me. I leave Hogwarts over winter break, and I come back to the twisting and winding alleyways I call home like a storm, with Tom and Alicia and Fil and David by my side.
I spend the first days blazing through the warren of streets in search of the homeless half-creatures I hadn't know about (hadn't cared about because no one had brought it to my attention, because I had so much on my hands that I didn't have time to look for anyone more who needed my help, because excuses, because excuses, Briar, I thought you were better than this). They were homeless. Helpless. And I had (no more excuses) ignored them.
I rally the Slytherins who have stayed in the alley without options, followed by the stain of a favorite teacher's caution. I write letters to the far off Ravenclaws, out searching the world for a place to belong, for music to play, for books to read and write. I floo the Hufflepuffs who have settled down and found homes, found families. I talk to the Gryffindors, walk between offices in the ministry, in St. Mungo's, with portkeys when I need them.
And as I wander the streets with more and more people behind me, I find others. There are the werewolves, the vampires, the dying fairies and spirits around every corner, so many people that I had never seen before, and this time, it was not just ignorance.
I have lived in this warren of alleyways my whole life, and yet I find that I suddenly do not know them like the back of my hand.
( It's magic , my parents explain when I finally get around to asking them. You can only see what you're ready to see.
And I want to protest, to say that I am ready, but every time I have a new group settled in, I turn a new corner and find more people.)
David comes over a couple of times over the break, and each time, he leads me to another group of people. After the first week, all of the houses I have access to are full, expanding charms stretched to their largest safe capacity, and still there are more people out there that I need to help. I can't even feed everyone I have right now.
I sit at the desk, desperately trying to rework the figures in my logbook to squeeze just a bit more out of what I have. The others have long since left by the me I finally give up and slam the logbook shut, then rest my arms on its cover and bury my face in them.
"You need more help," Tom says, echoing his words from months ago.
"There's no money for it."
"So figure it out," Tom says. I want to laugh, because he's right, and there's still not a damn thing I can do about it. We can keep duplicating food until the world is covered in them, but each duplication loses some of what makes food, and for all of the muggle chemistry, I haven't got the faintest clue as to why!
"We need food," I say out loud, repeating the thought that had been running through my mind for the past hours. "We need space."
"You need a farm," Tom says, and I blink at him.
"A farm?"
"Lots of land to expand on, and you can grow your own food." He shrugs. "It's not like you'll be at a loss for labour."
()
I don't know why Tom sticks with me. He doesn't care for people, doesn't care about them, and in the end, he doesn't really care about me. I can see it in his eyes. And yet he stays by my side through the long night and dark shadows.
("Who are your parents?" I ask one day, eyes closed. We're in my bedroom, trying to sleep with the shades closed. "Do you know anything about them?"
He's silent for a moment. "I know that my father's name was Tom Riddle."
"Do you want to find him?"
"I did." There's the sound of sheet moving and the bed creaking. I open my eyes to see him staring at me. "I don't anymore."
(I give him the slip next day and make my way through London with Pallas. She uses her wand to help us find Tom's orphanage, and we make small talk with the matron for a couple of minutes before I bluntly tell her that I'm adopting Tom.
She laughs.
I don't.
"You're what, ten?" the matron asks me. "Besides, the trouble maker's off at boarding school right now. We have no authority over him until he comes back."
I nod to Pallas, not taking my eyes off the matron, and she pulls out the papers I had forged.
"I have approval from his school already, and as you can see my family has been inspected and proclaimed to be a good fit." I smile at her. I don't know if it's a good smile. She's paying more attention now that she knows that there isn't much left. "All I need is your signature.")
(Christmas is a muggle thing, and all my family really celebrates over winter break is the solstice, the coming of longer days. I'm not really used to giving things like this as a consequence, and it takes a quick phone call to Alicia to make sure that I've everything correct.
I leave the wrapped adoption certificate on his bed at the end of the day.
Considering the giftwrapped lighter I found at the foot of the bed in the morning, I think I was a bit late.))
Chapter 6: To Stand Just Me
I arrive back to Hogwarts and I start to network in earnest. Now that I'm thinking about halflings, I can't stop thinking about other groups that must be disadvantaged. I make up lists in my head, in the margins of my notes when no one's looking. I have a notebook where I plot out ways to contact them, to see what they want, and if they even want help, and to ways to start quietly advocating for them, and I work on it when I can't sleep, when I've done everything I possibly can for the project I have open, but I can't stand to do nothing.
I've found that I have something that must be a rather chronic case of insomnia, because even though I'm not forcing myself to stay up writing letters all night long, I can't get to sleep any earlier than I once did. Sometimes I wander the castle, and sometimes I sit in the common room, watching the mermaids and grindylows swim by. (Another name in the notebook.) Almost every single night I'm wandering outside of the common room, one of my friends manages to find me, and to wander with me.
Alicia takes me on grand tours of the dungeons and the ground floor, showing me secret passages and nooks and crannies that she'd found. She always takes me to the kitchens first, to get ourselves never ending cups of warm apple cider from the house elves. Sometimes, she takes me into her common room, and we talk with the founder of her house. (That's always interesting. It's at times fun and tiring to talk with her because there's so much misinformation that she corrects. There's so much that wizards have forgotten or gotten wrong or straight out ignored in order to fit stereotypes to their view of the world. ("From the talk in the common room, I have no doubt that they're starting to demonize the Slytherins. Don't listen to them. Honestly, if we'd known this was what the houses would come to, we wouldn't have made this system."))
David takes me through the hidden passageways to the furthest corners of the castle and around the outside. He introduces me to portraits and tells their stories. I learn more from him about wizarding history in fifteen minutes that I've learned from Binns all year.
He shows me great battles between the Slytherin Blair Hawk against the Hufflepuff Anise Rojas, where the participants of the portrait have long resigned themselves to being portraits, and only returned when someone was looking at their battlefield. I watch in fascination as their argument escalates, and their forces gather behind them until the first spell was thrown, and madness reigned until Hawk managed to subdue Rojas, and Rojas's forces surrendered.
He shows me the legendary duel between Gryffindor Noé Segal and Ravenclaw Edur Ochoa. Many occupants of other portraits crowd the stands behind them as Segal throws curses, and Ochoa responds but transfiguring him into a small kitten, bit by bit.
And on the third floor, he shows me a landscape painting of Hufflepuff Kai Nykvist fighting Ravenclaw Rhianu Maddox where the occupants haven't yet made peace, and spells fly between them as insults are shouted. Nykvist manages to get the upperhand every once in a while, and hold Maddox under a petrification hex or tie her up or stun her for a couple of hours, but she always manages to get free in the end.
Fil tells me the original uses of the rooms we pass through - a dueling room here, a ballroom there, an indoors observatory where you can still pull the stars down to surround you. (We find the star room as we're wandering before we have to go to Astronomy class, and I ask him why he thinks they make us get up in the middle of the night to go to class when there are rooms like this. In fact, why do we have Astronomy class at all?) But sometimes I don't feel like talking, sometimes I just want to run and jump and throw spells in bottles at him and be as free as I possibly can be because I'm in Hogwarts, and that's something I did.
In the day times, when I'm not writing and rewriting lists of people who might need my help, I'm thinking about how to rearrange things, how to stretch the money I have because two weeks of supporting the half creatures, and the savings I'd had before were almost gone. I can't buy the farm like Tom suggest because I don't have the money, but he'd reminded me that most of the half-creatures I'd found were adults. If the wizarding world, won't take them, there's room in the Muggle world.
I write letters back to the men and women and others that I'd put in charge, and I tell them to start looking for jobs. Some write back telling me that they need past recommendations, and I recruit Tom, with his knowledge of the muggle world to write up letters for each of the half creatures. I wrote letters for waiters and janitors, for musicians and carpenters, for stagehands and divers and nurses and haircutters, for clerks and accountants and cashiers until I was dizzy, and Tom looked the other way as Alicia stole a pair of Slytherin robes and snuck into the common room behind him to drag me out of there and into the snow. (I don't doubt that Romulus and Pallas had something to do with that as well, because the Slytherin robes Alicia stole were fitter exactly to her, better than her Gryffindor robes had been the last time i saw her.)
When I stumble back into the empty common room and back up to the bedroom to change, I find the rest of the letters done in various neat hands, a pack for each house tied together with twine, and Tom staring at some things in an open box as he sit on his bed.
I change into a different pair of robes quickly, check the splash stun and the impact shield bubbling away by my bed quietly before I walk over to sit next to him. Inside the box there are pieces of paper and vials and tins, and I recognise them as I glance over them. The first letter I wrote to him. The adoption papers. A bottle of splash stun I'd given him at some point, glowing faintly red in the green light of the lake window in its breakable glass. A tin of healing balm for bruises and scrapes. The paper with the runic matrix for transfiguration that I'd given him once it was tattooed on my shoulder.
"What's this?"
"Trophies."
I glance over them and note a couple of other things. One of Alicia's earrings - she'd lost the other, and had given the remaining one to Tom when he asked. A metal quill nib from David - he'd given Tom a pair and a lesson when he noticed Tom struggling. And there's a scrap of cloth - one of the half-creature girls had given it to Tom, when you unfold it, it looks like a gingerbread man.
"You want to walk with me?" I ask, because he shouldn't sit here moping with nothing to do. "David showed me some pretty wizard portraits of wizards fighting, and he told me how those wars happened."
Tom looks up at me, then nods. "Sure."
Chapter 7: It'll Be Okay Though
I absently catch the satchel that Mercury drops and let it rest in my lap.
"Another satchel, Moore? Are you running the black market or something?" Alphard Black asks derisively from across the table.
"Yeah Moore, your family's been squibs for generations, there' no way you've got that many contacts in proper society," Katina Carrow adds, pushing a perfect curl behind her shoulder.
"Wouldn't you like to know," I reply blandly as Mercury circles back around and lands heavily on my arm. I bring him down and slide my plate in Tom's direction so that I can set Mercury on the table.
"Hello, beautiful," I tell Mercury as I offer him a piece of back, and tie the satchel I'd brought with me to his leg. I wait until he's done with the piece of bacon before I urge him back onto my arm, and throw him up so he can take flight. Once that's done, I take my plate back from Tom and quickly finish off my muffin.
"You all done?" I ask him as I swing the strap satchel that Mercury had brought over my shoulder.
"Close enough," he replies, swinging a leg over the bench as I do the same. I catch Professor Dumbledore's eyes lingering on Tom, and I bite back a scowl as I turn and make for the doors. That's the sixth time I've seen him watching Tom, and it's only been two weeks since we got back from Winter Break.
"Tom, Dumbledore hasn't done anything to you, has he?" I ask as familiar footsteps fall in around us.
"That's the eighth time he's stared at you this week," Alicia says, grabbing Tom's hand and swinging it slightly as we walk towards a quick route to the seventh floor., and the Changing Room I'd found there.
"He's been staring at me all year," Tom says. "And no, I don't know why. I don't really care either. He made me think that he had burned just about everything I owned when I asked him to prove that he was a wizard - I think he's bloody creepy."
"That's no way to introduce someone to magic," David says, and I glance back to see him frowning.
"Never mind Dumbledore," Fil says hastily as we turn right at the painting of several witches brewing a potion in a bright and sunny field, "Briar, have you opened the satchel yet?"
"Of course not, we need to get somewhere safe first, you know that," I reply as we turn another corner and start down an oddly bare hall. The others stop as we reach the tapestry of trolls in pale pink tulle and ballet shoes, and I pace back and forth concentrating on somewhere safe, somewhere I can spread out to my heart's content, somewhere we can talk about everything in the letters from this morning and before.
A door grows out of the wall as I turn, stone becoming wood and metal as lifts itself from the wall, and I don't hesitate to pull the door open.
I glance around quickly at the room - it's different every time, even if I request the same thing. This time, there's a large table with plenty of room to spread papers on and enough chairs for the five of us, shoved up against a bank of large windows looking out the side of the castle and over the snow-covered grounds. On the wall opposite the windows, there's a fireplace with a roaring fire, and several chair gathered close
I set the satchel down on the table, take my seat, and immediately start to pull letters out. I open the first one and scan it quickly biting a lip as I focus on the pertinent information before I pass it over to Tom. The next couple letters are along the same vein as the first one, all of them proclaiming successes in finding jobs for the half-creatures, and giving numbers of those who have jobs, who are likely to have a job soon, and those who are still looking. The numbers are good across the board, with a fair amount of the half-creatures working.
I frown as I pick up the next letter. It's from Tatius, another of the wizards that helps me make sure orphans and new Hogwarts graduates have a place to live. He doesn't normally contact me - his house was already full when I went searching for half creatures, and I'd made sure that he had enough money to keep helping. I open the letter and scan it, quickly at first, then slower and slower as I get through more of it. The letter's not long - Tatius isn't one for small talk or platitudes - and for once I almost wish he was, wish there was something I could distract myself with.
"Briar?" Tom asks as I set the letter down in fnt of me. I consider it carefully, the white of the re-used muggle newspaper glaring at me against the warm wood f the desk that the room had provided.
"Let's finish the rest of these letters," I say finally, pushing the letter towards the window and grabbing the lext from the satchel.
The next several letters are much the same as the first bunch had been, and lulled into complacency, I almost miss the words of warning when they come. I put the letter on top of the one from Tatius with shaking hands, and ignore the look that Tom and the rest are giving me as I reach for the next. The rest of the letters are easy enough, and Fil, at the end of the table has them stacked neatly so that I can tally up the numbers and update me books.
"Now will you tell us what's wrong?" Alice asks softly, leaning forwards around Tom to put a hand over one of mine.
I push the papers towards Tom, dislodging Alicia's hand in the process, and learn forwards to rest my head on my arms so that I don't have to watch his reaction. From the way the others respond, it must be something terrible, and I can't help but move my head so that I'm looking at him as David gently takes the letters and scans them. Tom's pale, paler than I've ever seen him, paler than I think is healthy, and I can't very well blame him.
"Oh, my," David says softly. He passes the letters over to Fil as he stands then he moves over to Tom and gently starts working o pry his hand open. "Tom, you need to relax. Take a deep breath."
Fil dumps the papers in front of me, and wanders over to the fireplace to collapse into one of the arm chairs.
I sit up properly to tidy the papers up, and I read over them once again.
Moore,
My Silanus says we need to get out of London before next year. I'll be moving to the country with a bit of money I've got saved up, and selling the house. I'll still host the brats of yours, but be careful. Tell the others.
Yours,
Tatius Lightnight
And the second one, less of a warning, but almost more disturbing for it.
Briar,
One of the kids you rescued was part Korrigan, and apparently she's got enough in her to see the future, because last night she woke up in a terrible fuss. It took me hours to calm her down, and what seemed like a dozen cups of warm milk, and the whole time she kept telling me I had to warn you. She said that boy of yours - the magbob one - all covered in blood and surrounded by a destroyed building. She said something about seeing Diagon on fire, and part of my apartment collapsed, but apparently yur boy was the only one she saw who was hurt. This isn't the first time she's shown the Sight, so be careful.
I'm thinking of buying a place in Hogsmeade and getting away from Diagon . I don't know if I'll be able to find the money, but if I do, I'll take the kids with me, and more if I can fit them. I know this might be silly, but see if you can get some of the others to leave as well.
Yours,
Silvia Lastoak
Chapter 8: Interlude:Skal Greyback
Skal Greyback
I try ignore the sensation eyes on my back as I hurry down Vertic Alley. There's only one or two people watching me, but even those cursory glances make the skin between my shoulderblades crawl. It's hard to stop myself from sighing in relief as I step off of the cobblestones and into the deep doorway.
I knock briskly on the oak door, blackened by time, and glance back at the street with darting eyes, trying to huddle closer to the door as a wizard walks past in a swirl of robes and smoke. It's unnatural to be around so many wizards, and the strange magic of this whole place sets my nerves on end. The acrid smell of Candlebright and other wizarding drugs make my nose tingle unpleasantly, and I cough into my sleeve.
The door I'm waiting in front of swings open abruptly to reveal a tall witch in an ancient set of forest green robes, with thick glasses that slide down her nose as she sizes me up.
"Yes?"
"Silvia Lastoak?" I ask the witch, pulling my cloak closer and flinching automatically when someone starts yelling across the street.
"That's me," she replies after a long moment, drawing my attention back abruptly. "And who might you be?"
"I'm Skal Greyback, ma'am. You told me to come to you if I had any questions . . ." I trail off, hopeful that this will be enough for her to let me in, but it doesn't seem to be ringing any bells. "You worked on my case as an Auror - kept them from throwing me in Azkaban for turning that sick child."
"Oh!" the witch says, recognition transforming her face into a much kinder visage as she smiles at me. "Yes I remember you!"
She quickly pulls the door open the rest of the way, revealing a hallway painted in a neutral shade of cream and box upon box stacked against one wall, and steps to the side so that I can come in. "It's a good thing you came today dear, a couple days later and I'd be gone!"
"Gone?" I ask as I step past her and turn to watch her close and lock the door.
"Yes, gone," Lastoak replies cheerfully as she leads me down the hallway and into a room that looks to be a combination of a sitting room and a kitchen, which is totally overrun with people. A thrill goes through me at the sight of them, my eyes immediately catching signs that most - if not all of them - were decidedly not entirely wizard, if they were part wizard at all.
A couple of adults look up as we come in, but most of them quickly go back to whatever they were doing as Lastoak leads me through the crowded room to a door on the far wall. She shuts the door behind us, and I glance around the new room - an office, littered with piles of paper and various instruments meant to help one distinguish friend from foe.
"I'll be moving to the countryside," Lastoak says as she settles herself behind the desk and moves a couple of piles of paper to the side so that the center was clear. "Come, sit down dear, and we can talk."
I seat myself on the edge of the chair, and watch as she folds her hands in front of herself and looks at me. "Alright. What it is you came to ask?"
"Is it true?" The question spills from my lips before I can stop it. "Back there, I saw - is it true that some one's helping - that someone's organizing jobs and food and shelter for half-creatures?"
Lastoak stares at me over the desk. Her eyes are as serious as they had been when she first caught me after I turned littler Fenrir, and a slight frown grows as she stares at me. If it's true - magic, if it's true - then whoever it is might be willing to support others. There are so many things in the wizarding world that could make a werewolf pack run smoother, so many things that we can't access because of the laws placed upon us that drag every opportunity to do anything out from under our feet. Most of us already have a working system for food and shelter and jobs in the muggle world, we won't be needing that kind of help, but there are some diseases that eve a werewolf's metabolism and magic can't defeat, and there are littler comforts that I could give to those of us who are still as much wizard as wolf, and -
And all we want - all I want - is of the opportunities that the Wizarding World denies us. I want representation in the government, I want to be able to walk the warren of alleyways here without being wary of every crowd that can turn into a mob. I want those of my people who grew up here to be able to live in the world they grew up in without being cursed for saving their own lives.
A clock ticks somewhere in the room, loud in the silence as Lastoak leans back against her chair. "It's true."
"Can you tell me who's behind it?" I demand.
"I can't."
The words bring me crashing down, and I stare at the witch.
"Why not?"
Maybe she doesn't know. God, that has to be it - the person has helped so many others -
"Greyback, you have to understand. The person behind this? They have no idea what they're doing. They're doing all of this because they hate seeing people in need, because they hate insults." The witch pauses, tapping her fingers on the desk. "Do you know why it is that wizards stay here in the middle of a muggle city, where they could be so easily discovered?"
I blink as her words, but nod cautiously. "There's some odd warp to the magic around the alleys - they only ever show you what you're ready to see."
The witch before me nods. "The one who organized this is still eleven. They only just discovered and started to help half-creatures over Winter Break. They're nowhere ready to even think about all of the other creature out there, when they're still discovering halfies every day they come back."
"Eleven," I repeat numbly.
Lastoak doesn't say anything. She just watches me with the same expression she'd watched me with when she was briefing me before me trial, when she hadn't expected me to walk free.
"Do you want to stay for tea dear? Rest a bit before you head out? I know you bunch are sensitive to Candlebright, and it's been rather popular in the alley lately," she finally asks.
"No," I murmur, then shake myself, and focus on Laskoak.
"No," I say again, this time sounding firmer. "But thank you. I should be going. If I may - why are you leaving?"
"Haven't you been paying attention to the news? I would have thought that you would know more than I do, since your lot all have jobs out there. It looks like the muggles might go to war. I don't trust that Hitler fellow, and several of my seers have seen flames, so I decided it was rather tiem to retire to the countryside."
"Right. I should be going," I repeat, standing as my mind races. "Thank you."
