CW: Dysphoria. Also, please remember this is taking place in 1993.

Cedric's lesson about compatible magic left Hermione wondering. Not so much about compatibility, but about magic itself.

She remembered over the summer, her difficulty with wandless magic lay within her magic having a strong identity as hers, and when she'd meditated on it, it had felt more like her magic was her than just part of her – like without her magic, she wouldn't be a person at all.

It made Hermione wonder. What was magic?

She remembered that horrible book she'd read the previous year, the biography of Herpo the Foul. He'd classified four types of energy a thing could have – life, spirit, soul, and magic – and Hermione wondered if anyone who was not a notoriously Dark wizard had also done any research on the subject.

Most resources the library had only focused on magic, and a person's magical capacity and ability. There were theories about what caused squibs, and the difference between squibs and muggles, but Hermione only scanned them, frowning. She was looking more for information on the soul, and how it connected to magic.

Cedric's explanation of compatible magic had Hermione comparing it to concepts she already knew and grown up with – like soul mates. She didn't believe in soul mates, obviously, but… compatible magic would provide a good explanation for why the concept had come into being, if magic was somehow attached to the soul.

She was relatively sure that a person's magic wasn't the same thing as the soul – how would muggles have souls, then? – but the two seemed connected somehow. Her soul was her identity of who she was as a person, and she'd felt from inside her magic that her power was very similar.

Hogwarts had no books on magical religion, and very few about ghosts, to her immense frustration. A couple history books made mention of old rituals for specific days, but it was clear that rituals were magical, not religious. With the obvious existence of ghosts, Hermione found herself wondering how people weren't more concerned with the afterlife or possibility of one. Was it because the existence of ghosts proved there was one of some sort, so it was a non-issue? Or did a person's magic try and shield them from exploring that possibility?

Confused, Hermione eventually decided to ask the one person she thought might have the most information on it – the Fat Friar, the House Hufflepuff ghost.

The Fat Friar was a very old ghost, but a very cheerful and kind one. When Hermione tracked him down, he was happy to answer her questions, unbothered by their invasive nature.

"You lose a lot of embarrassment, being dead," he told her, chuckling. "Not much point in being self-conscious about what I did when I was alive when I'm dead now, is there?"

To her surprise, the Fat Friar had gone to Hogwarts as a student. He'd been sorted into Hufflepuff and had been taught by Helga Hufflepuff directly for the seven years afterward, which was somewhat incredible. Afterward, he'd gone out into the world and joined the clergy as a part of a mendicant religious order.

"It was mostly begging in the name of charity," the Fat Friar explained. "We helped serve the people directly, that sort of thing."

"But why?" Hermione asked. "Did they teach religion in Hogwarts back then? Were you devout?"

The Fat Friar laughed loudly.

"Merlin, no!" he chuckled. His eyes sparkled. "No, no. I didn't worry myself with all that – though there was rather a lot of the religious stuff…"

"Then why join as a monk?" Hermione wanted to know. "It doesn't make sense."

"Well… it does if you look at it from my angle," the Fat Friar said, patting his robes over his ample belly. "It was during a time when muggles and magicals lived together, and the muggles wanted to put the magicals to death. The only real way to use magic to help people was to do it in the name of religion – it was all attributed to 'miracles' and 'the power of prayer', then."

Hermione was starting to understand. "So that's what you did?"

"I did." The Friar nodded, then grew solemn. "It was not a good time. People died so easily in those days… I did what I could to help them survive."

"How did you die?" Hermione asked. "You look like you died rather young."

The Friar gave her a wry smile.

"The senior churchmen grew suspicious of me," he said. "They'd heard I could cure the pox by poking peasants with a stick."

"Your wand?" Hermione guessed, and the Friar shrugged, grinning.

"They weren't much of wands, back in those days," he said. "It was just a bent bit of alder with a few unicorn tail hairs and ivy wrapped around it, but it helped, so I used it." He paused. "Might've had something to do with pulling the rabbits out of the communion cups, too."

Hermione couldn't help but laugh. "You did what?"

"Well, I enjoyed my wine, back then, and when I got a bit tipsy…" He shrugged, grinning. "It was funny to shock the other monks, conjuring rabbits out of the communion cups. I should've known better, really, but some of them were just so serious all the time, and I wanted to get them to loosen up and laugh."

"And they had you killed?"

"They did." The ghost shrugged with a sigh. "Can't blame them, really. They thought I was a danger to the community – servant of the devil or some such threat."

"But you came back as a ghost," Hermione said. She looked up at the Friar. "After you died… what happened?"

The Friar shrugged. "I died. That was pretty much that."

"But you came back as a ghost," Hermione pressed. "Do you remember how that happened?"

"Well…" The Fat Friar looked thoughtful. "I remember there was a choice, of some sort. I don't remember what it was or how it was explained, but I remember I chose to come back."

Hermione frowned. "Do you remember why?"

"Well! I wanted to keep helping people, naturally!" he exclaimed, laughing. "I didn't quite realize I wouldn't be able to use magic the same, but I've been able to help out the students of Hufflepuff over the years quite a lot nonetheless."

The Friar still seemed jolly despite her interrogation, so Hermione pressed a little harder.

"So you can't cast magic anymore," she said. "But you're still here. Do you think your ghost is your soul?"

The Friar paused.

"I'm a ghost," he said, after a moment.

"Yes," Hermione said patiently, "but which part of you became your ghost?"

The Friar looked thoughtful.

"Muggles can't come back as ghosts, so I always thought it was my magic that pulled me back through to let me become a ghost," the Friar said. "But I can't cast magic now, so I'm not my magic… maybe I am just a soul." He shrugged, unbothered. "They preached that a lot, back then – the death of the body and eternal life of the soul."

"You seem almost dismissive of it," Hermione commented.

"Well, it's just a bunch of muggles making things up to make themselves feel better, isn't it?" the Friar said. He shook his head. "Not that I can blame them. Without magic helping you feel the life and magic of the world, or seeing ghosts yourself, you've got no clue what's going to happen when you die."

"And wizards do?" Hermione prompted.

The Friar gave her a grin. "Well… we have more of one, at least."

She thanked him for answering her questions, and he sent her off with a jolly wave.

Hermione mused on the information he'd given her. If a person's magic was what allowed them to become a ghost by pulling their soul back, essentially, into the world of the living… that would mean magic was necessarily connected to the soul, wasn't it? Maybe magic tethered the soul to the body? Only no, that wouldn't work – muggles had souls in their bodies too…

It was all very confusing and frustrating to her. Muggles had dozens of different religions and approaches toward the soul and the afterlife. How was it that the magical community didn't even seem to have one?

October started the beginning of Quidditch practice season. As if aware of this, the weather began to worsen, to the frustration of all the houses. Tromping across the muddied grounds was obnoxious enough for Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures – Hermione couldn't imagine the mess that playing Quidditch in the rain would be.

The weather only looked to worsen. Marcus Flint, captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, loudly complained that it was utterly unfair that Slytherin was matched up against Gryffindor for the first match of the season and was expected to play in such ghastly weather. His constant fury at the weather irritated Hermione to the point where she said something.

"If it's such a bad idea to play in weather like this," she snapped, "why don't you do something about it?"

"What? Like, stop the rain?" Marcus snorted. "Merlin himself couldn't stop storms like these."

"No." Hermione rolled her eyes. "Postpone having to play."

"They won't postpone because of the weather," Marcus sneered. "Never have, never will."

"I didn't say get the game postponed, did I?" Hermione shot back. "I said postpone having to play."

Marcus looked at her for a long moment, confused and suspicious. Hermione sighed.

"Think about what you can affect things within your control, yeah?" She glanced over at Draco Malfoy, who was loudly complaining about Care of Magical Creatures on the other side of the common room. "Maybe talk to your Seeker for some ideas."

She flounced off, but Marcus looked thoughtful as she left him behind.

Shortly thereafter, Hermione heard that Slytherin Keeper Miles Bletchley had been severely injured in a freak accident with a Fire Crab in Hagrid's class, resulting in burns up and down his arms and covering his hands. Though Madame Pomfrey was able to patch him up fairly well and stop the pain, he had been instructed to be careful and leave the bandages on for at least a month, changing out the ointment every couple days – Fire Crab burns could have nasty and lingering side-effects, unlike normal burns.

Harry was furious when he heard that the Slytherins had swapped matches with Hufflepuff in order for their Keeper to recover and heal enough in order to play.

"They just don't want to play in this weather!" he fumed. "That's not fair."

"The rules for the league say that injuries sustained in classes are a sufficient reason to change the order of the matches," Hermione said mildly. "Are you saying you think the Keeper got himself burned in Hagrid's class on purpose?"

From Harry's grim look, that was exactly what he thought, but he wasn't about to make that accusation in front of Hermione.

With the colder weather descending, Hermione found herself spending more time in the Ravenclaw tower quietly studying, curled up in their study nooks. It was warmer in Ravenclaw than in Slytherin, and certainly much quieter – whatever Quidditch strategizing the Ravenclaw house did, it didn't take place in the middle of the Common Room, loudly.

Luna often joined Hermione to study, asking her questions about her own classes when she had them during homework, and sometimes Terry Boot and Anthony Goldstein came over for a question-and-answer study session. Oftentimes, though, it was just Hermione snuggled up with a book until just before curfew, reading away the time while Luna studied nearby.

Over time, Hermione noticed a few things about the dynamic in Ravenclaw that she hadn't noticed before.

First, it was clear that something was bothering Michael Corner – he never seemed not moody these days, stomping around everywhere and glowering at people, and everyone except Anthony seemed to have silently agreed it was best to give him a wide berth and leave him alone.

Second was that Luna was treated kindly and with respect by her housemates now, and the girls who had bullied her the previous year steered clear of her entirely, to Hermione's satisfaction.

And third, one of the Ravenclaw first years, Amanda Barrows, was being ostracized and bullied by her classmates.

It was a subtle thing, to be sure. And it was hard to detect at first, for Hermione – Amanda seemed to study with her classmates well enough, and she always did her homework fine. But there were glances and whispers from the girls in her class as they went up to their dormitory, and there was a sadness and pain lurking in Amanda's eyes that made Hermione's heart clench.

It wasn't until Hermione stumbled across a trunk, shoved deep into an alcove behind one of the wall hangings in the Ravenclaw Tower, that Hermione realized things were worse than she thought.

"Is she living in the common room?" Hermione demanded of Luna, when Luna came over to see why she was upset. "Are the other girls not allowing Amanda into their dormitory?"

Luna tilted her head at Hermione.

"Your hair is sparking," she observed.

Hermione wanted to scream.

"Why hasn't Flitwick done anything about this?!" she wanted to know. "We're in mid-October! Has this been going on for weeks?"

Luna shrugged.

"Flitwick doesn't seem to care very much about bullying," she said. Her voice was flat, neutral. "Besides, Hermione – I'm not sure he knows. I don't think Amanda has told anyone."

Hermione paused at that. "Why not?"

Luna looked uneasy.

"It's… not as simple as a bullying issue," she said. She looked away. "If it's bothering you this much, maybe you should talk to Amanda directly."

"Fine." Hermione tossed her hair, resolving to do just that.

Amanda didn't return from the library until around seven that evening, carrying many books with her in her bag. She looked exhausted and overloaded, and Hermione's heart went out to the small girl as she settled onto the sofa she often seemed to haunt. Now, Hermione wondered if it was where she slept.

"Introduce me?" Hermione asked Luna, looking sideways at the smaller girl.

With a sigh, Luna closed her book and stood.

Up close, Amanda seemed even smaller, practically drowning in her robes. Her mousey brown hair was tied back furiously into a tight braid, and she looked up with wariness as Hermione and Luna approached.

"Amanda, may I present Hermione Granger, New Blood and first of her House?" Luna said, gesturing to Hermione. "Hermione, may I present Amanda Barrows, eldest daughter of the Barrows family?"

Hermione swept Amanda her best curtsy. "Pleased to meet you, Amanda." She offered her a smile. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

Amanda looked highly alarmed by the idea of someone sitting with her on the couch, but Hermione sat down anyway.

"New Blood?" Amanda asked, her eyes darting to Luna. "What's that?"

"It means Magic talks to me in a way other people can't always listen for," Hermione said. She looked at Amanda, who looked very uneasy. "Amanda," she said gently, "can you tell me why you're sleeping in the Ravenclaw common room and not in your dorm?"

Amanda visibly wilted before her, her shoulders sagging.

"I don't have a dorm," she said dully.

Hermione looked at her oddly. "What do you mean?"

Amanda shot Luna a look, who shrugged helplessly. Amanda sighed and got off the couch.

"It's easier if I just show you," she muttered. "C'mon."

Hermione followed Amanda to the staircase on the left that she'd seen Luna vanish up before. Amanda gave Hermione a square, pointed look, before she began to climb the stairs.

She'd only gone maybe five stairs or so before the staircase smoothed out into a slide, sending Amanda shooting back down to the bottom and skidding across the ground, to the titter of onlookers. Amanda shot them a glare as the slide evened out back into stairs.

Hermione blinked, her eyes wide. "You can't climb the stairs?"

"No." Amanda said succinctly. "I don't even have a bed in the girls' dorm. The others told me."

"You don't have a bed?" Hermione was aghast. "What, did the other girls destroy it?"

"No," Amanda said dully. "Hogwarts just never made one for me."

Hermione was appalled.

"The first years are the first floor?" Hermione gave Luna a look, who looked at her helplessly but nodded. "Then I'll be right back."

Hermione went up to the first floor, pushing the door open and looking around. Sure enough, every blue and bronze bed was already taken, trunks open and scattered around, all the sets of bookshelves full. Biting her lip, Hermione went back down the stairs, where Amanda and Luna were dutifully waiting.

"Why haven't you talked to Flitwick about this?" Hermione asked Amanda. "Surely he could help figure out what's going on with the Tower."

"I can't." Amanda's voice was pained, broken. "It's obvious – I'm not really supposed to be in Ravenclaw. If I was, the tower would have made room for me like all the others. I'm supposed to be in Hufflepuff."

Hermione gave Amanda a quizzical look. "Why Hufflepuff?"

"I'm not sure," Amanda said. She sighed. "It's just what the others say."

"The Tower door lets you in, though." Hermione was looking at Amanda sideways, considering. Something was bothering her. "Has it ever refused?"

"The Tower door lets everyone in if you answer the riddle," Amanda pointed out, but Hermione held up a hand.

"Has it let you in after curfew?" she asked. "If you forgot to watch the time in the library, perhaps? Or has it shut you out?"

Amanda thought back.

"Yeah, a couple times," she admitted. "Before I learned how all the staircases moved. But the knocker's always let me in."

Hermione stood. "It wouldn't let in a non-Ravenclaw after curfew, I don't think," she said. "I'll be right back, if you want to take a seat again."

Something didn't quite fit, for Hermione, as she walked across the common room. It made no sense that Hogwarts wouldn't accommodate for one of its students. Hogwarts had some of the most sentient, reactive magic Hermione had ever read of – and if a student wasn't supposed to be in a particular House or a student at all, she was sure Hogwarts would have made its will strenuously known.

There was something odd about it. The stairs to the girl's dormitories… they'd learned that they reacted and smoothed out as a defense against boys. That the stairs would react to Amanda that way… maybe someone had jinxed her somehow?

On the right side of the Ravenclaw common room was another tower, this one leading to the boys' dorms, and without pausing, Hermione marched right up.

Despite her gender, the stairs did not smooth out into a slide, which Hermione found incredibly sexist, but it benefited her at the moment. When she came to the first landing, she knocked smartly on the closed door, and a moment later, a small boy came to the door, his eyes going wide at the sight of her.

"Hello," she said. "I wonder if I might come in?"

The boy goggled at her. "You're a girl."

"Yes," Hermione said. She fixed him with a look. "So?"

"Girls aren't supposed to be up here," he told her.

"If I wasn't allowed up here," Hermione said patiently, "do you think I'd have been able to climb up?"

This seemed to puzzle the small boy, and, wordlessly, he opened the door all the way.

The boys' dorm was a sight messier than the girls'. There were heaps of dirty robes by bedsides and desks cluttered with textbooks and homework scrolls. There were considerably fewer hairbrushes and the like, but significantly more games.

Four boys looked up at her from their place on a bed where they appeared to be playing Exploding Snap. The fifth lingered by the door, eventually closing it after her, as Hermione looked around, her eyes scanning everything.

"Is this everyone?" she asked. "Is this your entire class?"

"Err," one of the boys said. "All the boys, yeah."

Hermione looked around again, counting.

"There are five of you," she observed.

The boys glanced at each other. "Yeah…"

Hermione gestured. "Then why are there six beds?"

There were, in fact, six beds. The one the boys were playing cards on was clean, with an empty bookcase and desk near it. The boys looked at each other.

"We dunno," one boy said, shrugging. "We figured we just had fewer kids this year than last year."

"It's good for overflow space," another boy added helpfully. "That's why we didn't ask Flitwick to take it out. We like it being here."

Hermione fixed the boys with a look, but she could detect no deceit, no guile. With a sigh, she nodded.

"Thank you," she said finally. "I'll let you get back to your game."

The boys watched her wordlessly as she left, closing the door behind her. She pinched the bridge of her nose tightly, thinking, a frustrated sigh escaping her as she climbed back down.

Amanda and Luna were sitting on the sofa when Hermione returned, Luna explaining something about Potions to Amanda.

"—don't have the same magical energy resonance as nettles," she was saying. "That's why they fight and the cauldron explodes, you see?"

Hermione summoned a chair from across the room, settling down in front of the sofa to look at Amanda. Amanda's eyes were wide, and Hermione sighed, rubbing at her eyes.

The only explanation she could think of was a muggle one. And an unusual one at that.

"There is no good way to ask this," Hermione said, pinching the bridge of her nose. She sighed. "Amanda… are you a girl?"

Immediately the girl grew defensive and angry.

"Of course I am," she snapped. "What kind of question is that?"

Hermione's parents had told her once that some people were born into the wrong bodies, sometimes, making a girl into a boy or a boy into a girl. It was a very personal, private thing, and they had impressed on Hermione that it was not appropriate to talk about, but… if the soul was connected to a person's magic, and Amanda's soul was in the wrong body… was it possible her magic was registering as male to the Hogwarts wards?

"An honest one," Hermione said. She gave Amanda a look. "There's an extra bed for a boy in your year in the boys' dorm, did you know?"

Amanda's eyes grew wide, and for a moment, she faltered.

"…there is?" she asked. Her voice was faint. "Wait, really? They just… have an extra?"

"They do," Hermione confirmed. "It never occurred to them that they might be missing a classmate – merely that there was one left over from last year."

It was interesting, to watch Amanda's face. Excitement and nervousness flickered over her features, quickly followed by despair and hopelessness.

"Did Hogwarts get it wrong, then?" she asked, dread in her voice. "It just mixed it up for me?"

Hermione tilted her head, looking at Amanda carefully, taking in her shapeless robes, how her hair was tightly pulled back, defiantly out of the way.

"Either that," Hermione said neutrally, "or, for some reason, Hogwarts thinks you're a boy."

Amanda's eyes widened.

"W-Why would it think that?"

Hermione gentled her voice. "You tell me, Amanda," she encouraged. "Why would Hogwarts think that?"

Amanda's teeth worried at her lip, anxious, her eyes filling with tears.

"I—I'm not very good at being a girl," she admitted. "I'm bad at it. I never seem to get things like the other girls do, and I hate it. I hate having to wear dresses and skirts sometimes. And I hate having to have long hair." Her words were coming faster now, more rapidly, her despair bursting out of her all at once. "And some of the other girls are getting their cycles and developing, and I keep desperately hoping that I won't somehow, or a potion will explode and burn off my breasts so no one would blame me for not being a girl anymore, and I just—"

She broke off, panting, and rubbed at her teary eyes. and Hermione bit her lip very hard.

"You're… pureblood?" she asked.

"Halfblood," Amanda said, her voice uneven. "Dad's pure. My mum's a Muggleborn."

Luna moved to comfort the distressed girl on the couch, wrapping an arm around her, while Hermione thought very hard.

Even though she had heard of this sort of thing before, she barely knew anything about it. Her aunt had a friend, she knew, who had been born a boy, but had changed into a woman at some point along the way. Hermione had been left with the impression it was something very taboo and not openly discussed in polite society, though, so she didn't know any of the details or anything more.

That's what this sounded like, to Hermione – like Amanda was supposed to have been born a boy, but for some reason, she hadn't been. It sounded like her magic was somehow registering as 'male' to Hogwarts, even if she was in the body of a girl.

But if this sort of thing wasn't discussed openly in muggle society, how did the magical world discuss such things? Did they even, really? Or did people just determinedly ignore it, and some people just grew up miserable in the wrong bodies their entire lives?

Hermione was fairly sure that in the muggle world, to switch bodies, there was some kind of surgery involved. She wondered if things were easier in the magical world – maybe there was a potion to make a girl grow a penis or make a boy's penis fall off. Maybe there was a test they could do – a test to see if a person's magic registered as male or female. If it registered as a mismatch with a person's body, it'd be likely they were a soul trapped in the wrong body then, right?

"Get up," Hermione said finally. "We're going to go see Professor Snape."

"Snape?" Amanda looked terrified. "Why? He hates me."

"He doesn't hate you," Hermione assured her. "He just hates teaching. Come on. He'll be able to help."