Song rec: "Oom Sha La La" by Haley Heynderickx

May, 1993 - June, 1994

That day turned out to be a most eventful day that Hestia had the pleasure of not being involved with. A Weasley girl had been dragged down to the Chamber of Secrets by a confirmed basilisk, which was now dead, courtesy of Harry Potter. With the child-killing monster obliterated, there was no reason to close the school. The Hospital Wing doors, though, remained closed. A group of Slytherins had decided to stand outside it and chant "Mudblood" since it was already obvious they weren't going to win House Cup. Madam Pomfrey came flying out like a gale force wind, shooting coloured "X"s on all the Slytherins who weren't fast enough to get away — marking them for detention with Filch and his resuscitated cat. Everyone who was Petrified, the ghost included, was cured and discharged. But Rhiannon Clarke was still in her bandaged prison.

"Hestia, right?" Rhiannon asked when Hestia came to see her.

"Yeah, I'm Hestia."

"I got it right! Ha! Where's Flora at?"

"She's er… not coming."

Flora had been buried in her blankets, crying periodically, much to the concern of their roommates.

"Would you, er, like a game of tic-tac-toads?" Hestia asked shyly.

"Would I! It's boring as hell in here!" Rhiannon said with delight.

Rhiannon drew beautifully ugly toads with her left hand. She beat Hestia two-out-of-three.

"How's er… how's your arm gonna be?" Hestia asked. "It really was basilisk venom after all… that stuff can kill a person in minutes."

Rhiannon shrugged, "Yeah, so can heroin, but it hasn't taken me mum yet."

Hestia blinked, having no idea what heroin was. Rhiannon looked like she had said something she shouldn't.

"Does your mum know what happened…?" Hestia asked.

Rhiannon looked at the floor.

"Well, no. All she knows is that I'm a witch. And, er, she's kinda the 'burn the witch' type of person, if ya know what I mean."

Hestia was aghast. She thought that witch burnings had ended, and that was why Muggles and wizards had been intermarrying.

"You mean she tried to burn you?" Hestia asked in horror.

"No, no!" Rhiannon exclaimed. "I mean, she just as well may have with as much as she beats me, but no, not literally. Sorry to dump this on ya, but my home situation ain't good. When they said they was closin' the school, I… I almost wished they hadn't saved me from the bite, yanno? I hate it at home."

Hestia's heart sunk as she tried to take in the gravity of Rhiannon's words.

"I hate it at my place, too," she said, though Rhiannon's mum was making Amycus and Alecto sound tame.

During the next couple of days, Hestia and Rhiannon opened up a bit to each other. Just a tiny, tiny bit, of course, because the subjects were too touchy and the acquaintanceship was too new. Hestia found she had some similarities with Rhiannon even though their blood status couldn't have been more dissimilar. They were both poor, for example. The difference was the Carrows were poor and had things. Lots of things, actually. That was part of the reason why the Carrow vaults were chronically empty. But Rhiannon was the kind of poor that had nothing, nothing at all. Hestia had watched Rhiannon put on weight throughout the year, but she had arrived looking underfed.

Neither of them wanted to talk about their home life, which ended up being something else in common. There seemed to be something understood between them. And after the eighteenth tic-tac-toad and the fifth game of hangman, maybe Hestia had even been promoted as "friend."

When Rhiannon was released from the Hospital Wing that Tuesday, she was met with an onslaught of hatred. Hestia couldn't always be there to stick up for her due to the sheer amount of bullying that went on. The teachers tried to cull what they could see, but there were so many little things that went unnoticed.

The Mudblood Slytherin. Everyone knew.

Draco Malfoy and Vincent Crabbe came to one of the last dinners with a scheming look on their faces. By the time Hestia had figured out they were going to throw a Dungbomb in Rhiannon's food, it was too late. The bomb went flying past her nose smelling something awful—

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

The Dungbomb was caught in mid-air and suspended, much like the Petrified ghost had been. And the caster was none other than Flora. Hestia could have jumped up for joy, but Malfoy had already jumped up, running away from the Dungbomb Flora was now chasing him with. Rhiannon got a good laugh out of it, and her happiness was a potion Hestia wished she could brew.

On the train ride home, Hestia thought long and hard about herself. She didn't really like Muggles. She knew that. She also knew that she had been taught that. But like her Dad, she never had anything against Muggle-borns. They were wizards. Disadvantaged wizards, it seemed. She knew that in two years, she could take Muggle Studies. Maybe she should.

In becoming more in tune with herself, Hestia became more in tune with the world around her. Most of the couples she saw on the train were boys and girls together. But there were also some boys with boys and girls with girls.

That seems more like it, Hestia thought. What I feel.

It wasn't all there yet, of course, because she definitely thought there was something gross happening between the two girls she'd been peeking at. But maybe someday what was gross and funny would be something she would like to do with a girl. Certainly not a boy. Hestia blushed as she counted all the pretty girls she saw on the train.

(It ended up being every girl she saw except Pansy Parkinson and Rhiannon's nasty roommates).

And Rhiannon was the prettiest girl of all.

Hestia and Flora were delighted to have Dad pick them up again, but they had to go straight home. As if Alecto could sense Hestia's new crush on a Muggle-born, she subjected both girls to a full-body scrubbing before they could enter the house. The water was hot and abrading. The home was an unhappy one.

Hestia and Flora underwent rigorous training for entering the Dark trade over the next month. Then the day came for them to really do it. Amycus and Alecto Transfigured the younger twins to look like old ladies. They handed them baskets of talismans and venoms, saying "no less than 10 Galleons for each amulet and no less than 15 for the venoms." It turned out that that was their profit price. Amycus and Alecto had a trick up their sleeves: they were going to work down the south side of Knockturn with dramatically inflated prices, so that everyone would rush up to buy similar products from the "two old ladies." They were still getting ripped off, just not as much. And the Carrows made enough money to prepare even better potions for next week. They changed their technique: all five members of the household sold aggressively.

After about a month of the trade, Hestia started pocketing a portion of her earnings. She impulsively spent her first Knockturn money on a beat-up, out-of-tune guitar from a second-hand music shop in Diagon Alley. Amycus had been so furious with her for using the money without permission (read: for using the money she had earned instead of handing it over to him) that he smashed her guitar to pieces. Hestia made crocodile tears to fool him. That guitar was specifically made for smashing and reintegrated itself as soon as Amycus left the room. Hestia asked her father to soundproof their bedroom so she could tune the junky thing and learn to play. Girls like boys who play guitar, she knew. Maybe girls could like a girl who played guitar, too. It kept her busy. So did Knockturn.

Hestia lost count of how many crushes she got on the Dark witches who became her regular customers that summer. It was dreadfully difficult to feel so strongly towards twenty-year-old women when you were a twelve-year-old girl with an eighty-year-old's face.

Hestia spent more of her earnings on books: Everything You Need to Know About Playing Guitar, A Guide to Muggle Pop Culture, and Jay Carrageenan's Complete Collection of Crude Jokes. She hid the books with her life, but when her earnings didn't match her inventory, Alecto pulled her aside. Hestia was certain she was going to get smacked, but Alecto drew Flora over, too.

"Here's what you have to do," Alecto said.

She then Duplicated an empty glass phial, conjured water into it, added salt, and changed the colour.

"Now you have snake oil," she said. "Sell it for the same price to make up for what you spend."

Flora and Hestia could hardly believe it. They started adding all kinds of flavours and colours to water and selling it to younger, newer Dark users or elderly, clueless ones. It wasn't exactly the right thing to do, but then again, neither was buying this stuff. Hestia started using Knockturn as a place to try out experimental formulas she had made in her sink. Flora started pirating priceless grimoires using copy-quills in cheap, blank journals. It wasn't like anybody was going to stop them.

As the summer waned to a close, the dark and gloomy Knockturn came alive with more activity. At every corner, people were talking of Sirius Black escaping Azkaban. Some were very excited at the idea of Azkaban's security being weakened, where others cautioned that Sirius was sure to be Kissed by dementors any day now. But he was still at large by the time the first of September rolled around, so to "protect" the students, dementors lined the outside of the castle.

Daphne Greengrass gave a large sigh during the Opening Feast, waiting for attention. Hestia had been hoping the Greengrasses would stay home due to the criminal on the loose, but obviously they needed their education. Daphne and Pansy Parkinson chatted at annoying volume throughout the Sorting Ceremony.

"No, my sister couldn't come after all…" Daphne said. "We thought there might be a sliver of hope for her, but she just wasn't Hogwarts material…"

"Is she some kind of a Squib?" asked Blaise Zabini with his nose up.

"Good heavens, no," Daphne said. "It's just that her magic is so unpredictable. Compared to me, she's pitiful, really…"

"She can't be as pitiful as you are in Potions," Draco Malfoy drawled.

Daphne didn't bring up her underperforming sister to her plethora of friends again. Hestia and Flora continued to feel misplaced and asocial. All the people who would, in theory, be friends with them were completely repulsive personalities. All of the people who they wanted as friends were too put off by their last name and their social awkwardness. Hestia felt that she and Rhiannon could get closer now that Rhiannon's roommates were shunning her, but it didn't turn out that way. Rhiannon spent practically all of her free time with Montel Davis, his older sister Tracey, and the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, Remus Lupin.

The dejection really set in then. Hestia would never be as charismatic (or as male) as Montel. She would never be as pretty and funny as Tracey. And she would never be able to ward off Rhiannon's bullies the way Professor Lupin could.

Hestia wasn't popular. Hestia wasn't a teacher. Hestia was just a girl who sold belladonna in Knockturn Alley and strummed a beat-up guitar when her roommates weren't there to tell her she was a rubbish player. Her self-hatred, unfortunately, prevented her from noticing and taking advantage of the times Rhiannon Clarke was truly alone. They talked in class sometimes, but that was it.

Hestia earned more attention from boys, which was not the plan, due to the makeup that made her look older and her dirty sense of humour. In the spring, Sebastian Daley, who had got his moustache rather early, invited her to a Quidditch game. It was the mantra "make friends" that led her to accept his invitation, though when he tried to hold her hand, she said "I'm into girls."

Sebastian's eyes went wide, and then he said, "Well, so am I."

"It's very difficult," Hestia commented. "I can't figure them out."

"I guess I can't either," said Sebastian.

Slytherin lost the game, but Hestia felt an odd relief. It was as though saying she fancied girls aloud solidified a part of her that she actually liked. That was good, considering that she wasn't especially fond of herself. She liked girls, and she liked liking girls. It was just too bad girls didn't like her. As Hestia came down from the stands, she spotted something she shouldn't have, as if the gods had heard her sapphic cry and were giving her an early harvest. Asenath Greengrass, a silver-spooned Gryffindor, was kneeling under the stands with a raven-haired Hufflepuff.

As people moved around and Hestia stayed still, she decided she'd best slip behind one of the decorative Quidditch team banners if she was going to stare. Asenath was only one year above Hestia, but she seemed to be about ten years ahead of her in what she was doing. Asenath's hands were under the girl's shirt — all the way under. Hestia blinked stars out of her eyes and ran away into the crowd.

Won't they get caught? Hestia wondered. Don't they care?

It was a new, icky sort of feeling that she couldn't exactly sort out. It didn't come back to her until Rhiannon Clarke partnered up with her in Potions during the last week of May.

Rhiannon had gained a lot of weight now that she was in school and her sweet tooth had come in. And with a lot of weight came a lot of curves. Hestia felt like a Bowtruckle next to Rhiannon. She envied her breasts, but she also wanted to touch them. It was all so strange!

"I heard you're top of the class in Potions, Hestia," Rhiannon said, "so why ya mixin' up the ingredients in the first step?"

Hestia looked down. Her hands were full of perilla when she should have grabbed prunella.

"Good catch," Hestia squeaked.

When she was getting ready to strain the potion to test the consistency, all she could see was Rhiannon's reflection in the cauldron below her. Rhiannon had a stray curl on her face (and a stray Carrow trying not to beg for attention).

"Don't let the Mudblood breathe on your Potion, or it'll curdle," sneered Olivia Shardlow from the next table over.

"Go eat a dick, Olivia!" Hestia responded instantly, it being the worst insult she could fathom.

She ended up with five points from Slytherin and an appointment in Snape's office. He sank into his chair and cleared his throat.

"Now, Miss Carrow, where did you learn to speak that wa—" Snape asked, and when Hestia opened her mouth, he said, "Nevermind."

Hestia squirmed in her chair.

"Why did you have that outburst, Miss Carrow? You are my best student."

Hestia exhaled and poured it all out:-

"Shardlow called Rhiannon a Mudblood. She said she was gonna make the Potion curdle. I just said what came to mind. I'm angry, y'know? People have been calling her names all year."

Snape raised his eyebrows.

"Where does this occur?"

"Oh, when there's no teachers round, of course!" said Hestia frustratedly. "It's her roommates, mostly, and older boys… all because of that stupid basilisk. Rhiannon came in lying about being half-blood, and it didn't even work out! Everyone knows and they bully her for it!"

"I see."

Snape certainly didn't act like he was going to do anything about it, but for some reason, Rhiannon's roommates got a lot quieter during exam week. That was enough to make Hestia happy. She was so happy, in fact, that she had enough energy to make fake Brain Potions and sell them to the fifth years, who were taking their O.W.L.s. But despite the decrease in bullying, Rhiannon walked round the school with tears constantly in her eyes. Hestia couldn't guess what was wrong for the life of her, until word got round that Professor Lupin had resigned.

The circumstances of his departure? He was a werewolf.

"This is a strange school," Flora remarked on the train home. "No wonder Amycus and Alecto are always talking about Durmstrang."

"Professor Lupin was the best teacher we've had yet, Flora," Hestia said.

"He was," Flora agreed. "That doesn't mean things aren't strange."

"I guess you're right," Hestia said.

And she braced herself to go back to her strange little corner of the world for the summer.