Muggle Week
"Flipendo!" Hermione incanted, jabbing her wand at the combined Quirrell-Voldemort.
"Aaargh!" The two dark wizards' screams joined Harry's as he jumped on them and fire
shot through their bodies. Squinting through the pain, Harry gasped when he saw the face of Voldemort glaring at him, rather than Quirrell. His screaming increased in volume as Harry realized that it was his hands and arms which were turning to ash while Volde-Quirrell began laughing.
"Your mudblood bitch and coussssin will be nexsssst, Potter." The dark wizard taunted right before Harry's sight went dark.
"Harry! Wake up!" Harry jerked awake and into a sitting position, knocking down Neville who was leaning over him and calling out. Harry's eyes darted all over the room, taking in that Justin and Ernie MacMillan were staring at him about the same moment he realized that Neville was getting up off the floor.
"Are you alright, Harry?" Ernie Macmillan asked from his bed, "We were about to go get an adult…"
"Just a nightmare," Harry hastily explained while getting his rapid breathing and heartbeat under control, "sorry guys."
The two Hufflepuffs accepted that answer with frowns and rolled over to go back to sleep, but Neville was awake for a long while afterwards. Harry had suffered nightmares more than once while they were at Privet Drive, and Neville was starting to get worried about his friend.
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"It's so nice that your father agreed to let you stay, Angelina." Luna said as they got ready for bed, "I was worried that the Wrackspurts would keep him from understanding how much muggle math is found in spellcrafting. Arithmancy is a whole class starting in third year, after all."
Ginny, the third occupant of the room, wasn't sure how nice it was. She knew that Gina was a Goyle, and before the past year she would have worried because of that; her father was always complaining about the Goyle Family in the same breath as the Malfoys and Notts. That being said, she was relatively used to Luna's odd mannerisms; so when Gina looked askance at her, she just shrugged and mouthed to 'go with it.'
"Ye," Gina answered, letting the forced formal speech her father had drilled into her over the last couple weeks fall away a little, "he an' mum had a serious row that night. Mum never talks at father like that."
"He probably feared he would be lonely if you and your brother were both gone." Luna said, dreamily staring out of the window of their room at the city of Muggle London. The view was especially pretty to the young witches, like fairy lights in the dark, "I think he should use this opportunity to get used to it before school starts."
"I think my daddy actually said that to mum to get her to agree, since all of my brothers that are still at home are at the wandless magic thing." Ginny added, "Are you sure that learning muggle things are going to help us learn magic too, Luna?"
"Oh yes," she replied, turning her silver-blue eyes on the redhead, "my mother's notes have numbers and math all in them. I cannot read much of it, though; it is far too advanced for me."
"Well I got a serious 'I told you so' from my mum that night about cooking." Ginny groused as she flopped onto the bed she and Luna were sharing, "She made me help her prepare every meal both days we were back home, with no magic except for cleaning the dishes afterwards."
"I've never done anything like that." Gina said, "I hope I don' mess it up. Gonny does all the cooking at home."
The next morning, the three girls met with Mrs. Entwhislte outside their room before taking the lift down for breakfast. The muggle woman, their guide and minder for the week, was the mother of a first year Ravenclaw named Kevin and had introduced herself to the girls as a school teacher; though when asked about her students the young witches under her supervision were shocked to learn that the entire class was barely half the age needed to enter Hogwarts. They knew that muggles started schooling earlier than magical people, but basic classes beginning at five or six was still a culture shock for them.
The 'continental breakfast' served in the hotel's dining hall was another culture shock for them. All the magical children present, both witch and wizard, knew that there was no way all the food they saw was secretly being prepared by magic. The 'buffet tables' were laden with enough to feed an army, despite the relatively empty hall.
"It is hard to believe, isn't it?" Arthur Weasley, the only adult magical attending the muggle seminars and classes this week, much to his only daughter's embarrassment, asked her and Luna, "They have thought of everything. There are even those contraptions that keep the eggs and bacon warm!"
"Now I understand what she meant." Gina heard Mrs. Entwhistle mutter, "How is that man an expert on us?"
"Ma'am?" Gina Goyle asked curiously.
"Oh, it's nothing. Ms. Acacia warned me that Mister Weasley would need instruction as much as you girls and Mister Oakes, I was just surprised."
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"Do you think a lightsaber could deflect spells like it can those blaster-things?" Ron asked Dudley while they took a break from the math problems the camp officials had assigned.
"I dunno, probably." Dudley answered quietly while still puzzling over the word problem they were working on when they stopped, "Spell-swatting is a thing, Daphne and Tracey can do it."
"So what did you guys think?" Dudley asked the three Slytherins, "For all the magic in Hogwarts, wizards don't have hardly any real fantasy stories like that. The only story books I've seen were meant for kids, like that dumb series on my cousin."
"It was really exciting." Ron answered, "Even if I didn't understand all of it. All the scenes that were, what was it… in space? Yeah, those were hard to understand."
"Han Solo was cool." Greg quietly added to the conversation.
"Yeah, he was always my favorite character when I was growing up." Dudley agreed.
"I'm not sure what the point of it was." Draco said, "Only a few days before, the muggles showed us that film of people walking on the moon; but you tell me that this Star War never really happened? How can muggles tell the difference between your 'fantasy' and reality?"
"Well, it can be a problem." Dudley admitted, "There are plenty of non magicals who think the moon landing is a big conspiracy. Generally, things that aren't real have to say they aren't. At the end of Star Wars there was all that scrolling text that no one stayed for, remember? Those were credits for all the people that helped make the film. News doesn't need that, since it's real and none of it was 'made.'"
Draco didn't press further. He already understood through the Daily Prophet how easily people could be tricked into believing ridiculous things. If only he could simply dismiss all ridiculous things as easily. The content of Star Wars hadn't seemed at all interesting or followable when he read the introduction on the screen at the beginning; but the moment that Darth Vader had stepped on screen, he was enthralled.
How was it that muggles could know what a Dark Lord was meant to be? The idea that this could be a wrong representation didn't even cross his mind, Vader was everything like his father had said that The Dark Lord was. Powerful, ruthless, right; how crazy did muggles have to be to paint someone like that as the villain? It was even obvious from some of the snippets of conversation he heard that Lord Vader was the favorite character of many mudblood students, too.
"At least it was more interesting than that stupid game." Draco muttered under his breath, ignoring Dudley's offended scoff. There had been an attempt to get enough people interested in the muggle football game, but after an hour of sweating and panting and falling into each other most of the purebloods in attendance backed away. Oddly, Weasley played the whole time, and seemed to actually be pretty good as Keeper. There ended up being enough people left to play, but Draco had no illusions that the game would catch on.
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Ginny Weasley was confident that after a week of this she would be ready to personally strangle her father after he interrupted the lesson to ask yet another question. She wasn't the only one getting annoyed, either. The other adults that were supposed to be teaching them were clearly frustrated too, rolling their eyes when he asked about something to do with 'automatic doors.' Even Ginny could tell that they were about to do so already, since they were talking about electricity and explaining a few things they had seen in the hotel, so she had no idea why her father thought they needed to be asked directly…
"Mister Lupin is going to come up with something different starting tomorrow, dear." Mrs. Entwhistle whispered in her ear when she caught the girl glaring at her father, "I don't think anyone was ready for that."
"I'm so embarrassed." Ginny admitted quietly. She had been similarly impressed by the things she saw in the muggle world, especially when they went to the park on the first day, but her father's exuberance was enough for all the actual kids there boxed up in one person.
Mercifully, she didn't have to spend all day trying to glare her father's hand down. Mrs. Entwhistle passed out a maths quiz to Ginny and the others and Arthur Weasley accepted the offer to continue asking questions about technology in another room. The quiz wasn't too hard, 'a warm-up' as Mrs. Entwhistle called it, but the one that came after it was much more so. Especially when the muggle teacher put a timer on the desk in the front of the room after giving out the last one. Looking around after the timer rang, Ginny came to the conclusion that the only one to complete the timed quiz was her friend, Luna.
"I know how to add and subtract, but what was that other thing we were supposed to be doing?" Gina asked Luna as their answers were being checked.
"Multiplication?" She returned, "The 'x'?"
"Huh? What is that?" Ginny's eyes widened, she had meant the one with the line and dots, "That didn't mean subtraction, too?"
"The lines are subtraction." Wesley chimed in, "Sorry, I had no idea what the x meant either. I assumed it was a lopsided plus sign."
"I just thought it was a different symbol for the same thing, like 'x means cut this out,' or something." Ginny huffed, "I guess that's why sometimes the second number was too big."
"Well…" Mrs. Entwhistle said when she finished, "there are some holes in your mathematics skills that we will work on this week. Afterwards, there will be homework that you will be asked to do between the last day of our classes and the day you all get your wands." The children, except Luna, were all about to groan at the mention of homework until the sentence ended with a reminder of getting their own, new, wands.
"Next I would like to quiz you all on your reading comprehension and writing skills. I understand that magical education is a bit different in that regard, so I'm sorry but I will be distributing quills, ink, and parchment for this part." She fought away a smirk when all four of them spoke over each other to try and use pens instead, they had taken less than five minutes to decide the muggle way of writing was superior, "We have already confirmed that you must use a quill and parchment at Hogwarts, at least for any assignments you must turn in, so you need to get used to it as well."
"Will we get to read a muggle story?" Luna asked after she raised her hand and was called on.
"Not this time," the teacher answered, "I've taken what I was told is a less-popular story of Beedle the Bard, so you are less likely to have heard it enough to tire of it, and written a few questions to test how well you understand what you read. I felt that it would be a more honest assessment without a culture gap."
"I hope we get the Wizard and the Hopping Pot." Gina said, too quietly to be heard by anyone but Ginny. Remembering how the story was about an enchanted pot that ate angry muggles, the youngest Weasley had a strong suspicion that that wasn't going to be the story they read today, either.
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Wham, Dudley slammed into the mat again, getting the wind knocked out of him as his arm twisted into a hold. He'd gone down three times now without getting anywhere, and could hear sniggering from some of his friends. They all knew that Su Li's family practiced real martial arts, right? So why were they so surprised when he lost?
"I think that's enough bruises." Dudley muttered good naturedly as he got back up and faced the Ravenclaw, "Thank you for the matches." He said while bowing slightly to match her traditional response to the bout being complete.
"You as well." she said afterward, "I would not mind another challenge at the end of the camp, after you have had some time to practice again."
"Thanks." Dudley replied, happy to take the offered excuse of being out of practice as they stepped off the mats and rejoined their respective friend groups. He imagined she wasn't entirely joking; most of the students attending the camp were in the latter half of the year groups, so there weren't many people their age to spar against.
"You want to see if the center will let you come back for the few weeks between the camp and start of term?" Harry asked once they were away from the crowd. The next few days were dedicated to various forms of exercise, particularly agility and endurance; Dudley had been looking forward to showing their pureblood friends some stuff, but ended up being more out of practice than he thought he was.
"Center?" Draco asked, the only one of the group of guys besides Harry that hadn't found anything amusing in Dudley getting tossed around by a girl half his size. The cousins assumed he had at least a passing familiarity with martial arts since they were still practiced by purebloods in the Far East.
"The youth center near our house," Dudley answered, "Before getting my Hogwarts letter I took karate lessons there. Harry did some too, but not as much. My dad still made him work out though, 'specially in the winter."
"Got a real telling off for not keeping up at Hogwarts, too." Harry grumbled, he and Hermione had both been scolded for not keeping properly in shape at school back during Christmas.
"Muggle nonsense." Draco muttered, "It has nothing to do with the power of my magic, so why should this matter?"
"I'm glad you asked," Harry said, turning around with a grin on his face, "because now it's my turn to show you something."
Dudley had, obviously, been the one to suggest showing the group the martial arts exposition. It was a good idea, and many pureblood students watching were more interested after Su Li explained thoroughly that it was a common practice of her Family. Now though, Harry had led them to where several bicycles were available to ride around the dirt roads of the cabin camp. Most of the other muggleborn were still trying to get their friends into some sport or another, so the cycles were available without a wait yet.
"That is the vehicle you said you trained for a broom on?" The Malfoy scion wondered quietly. Harry heard him and nodded, it didn't seem like the man unchaining the cycles caught the slip so they took them and were soon moving along.
Silently, he would never say it out loud, Harry Potter wondered whether the blonde boy could even walk and chew gum at once. He constantly forgot to pedal, and when he realized he was slowing down and losing balance he would focus so hard on attaining speed that he swerved around dangerously. Greg Goyle was taking to the conveyance fairly easily, but he got tired faster than either Harry or Dudley had expected. Though he was more comfortable on the ground than in the air on a broom, Neville still wobbled on the cycle, unable to trust it to stay up without putting in effort.
But at least everyone in their group liked it well enough. Ron was actually just as good on the cycle as he was on a broom; even if he didn't think it was as fun without the great view being in the air gave you. Greg would be fine with a little practice too, but they needed to get him doing something to get his stamina up. Dudley saw him as the kind of person he'd have been if something like the threat of Death Eaters hadn't spurred him to want to be stronger, and wanted to help him if he could. Vincent too if the more-surly Slytherin would let him. Probably the most surprising part of their ride was that no one actually fell. Not even Neville, despite his many near-misses.
It was pretty surreal, watching Draco Malfoy attempt to discreetly ask Greg Goyle why he was so good at riding a bicycle; almost as surreal as knowing that the Malfoy heir was actually looking forward to seeing the Star Wars sequel. At the end of the first film, the adult supervisors announced that they would either continue the Star Wars series or move to a different one for the next movie night in a few days based on the audience request; The Empire Strikes Back won with a torrential shouting of approval from virtually everyone in attendance before anything formal could be set up.
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Arthur Weasley's head was spinning from taking in all the amazing inventions of muggles that he had never even heard of before. It ashamed him that most of them were new because his utter lack of real knowledge meant he didn't even recognize things he was looking at for the marvels of ingenuity that they were. He had already worked out in his own head a basic Rune sequence that would make doors automatically open and close in the presence of people; but he'd never heard of anyone in the Magical World doing something like it, which surprised him to no end.
He was finally starting to truly understand the changes and things in the Muggle Protection Act that had been a little hazy to him; Merlin bless Ms. Acacia, he dearly wanted to meet the woman in person to thank her for all her help. Today, adding to his excitement, a chance encounter in a costume shop had inspired an excellent idea for giving some of the more hardline conservative Families on the Wizengamot, the type that normally would never allow for any kind of relaxation of Secrecy on sheer principle, even if it was giving them more protection, enough reason to pause and actually think.
The Weasley patriarch wondered whether he could convince Petunia Dursley to help him with presenting it to the Wizengamot. Normally it would be unheard-of for a muggle to speak in the Chamber, but it would just prove the point they wanted to make about advances in Muggle technology that much more clearly so long as he kept her involvement entirely constrained to this particular facet. Absently, he mused to himself that he thought he remembered that Mrs. Dursley had told him she was actually a squib back when they first met; but everyone knew that Lily Potter, born Lily Evans, had a sister that was a muggle, not a squib. He shrugged the confusion off as the woman not wanting to risk potential prejudice. Squibs were still more generally accepted in magical circles than muggles were, after all.
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Five days of learning muggle stuff left the soon-to-be Hogwarts students tired every night despite not doing much to burn energy. Most had been annoyed at being taught maths but Luna reminded the group that things like spellcrafting, a rather high paying job, required arithmancy, which was math, and they grudgingly listened to Mrs. Entwhistle explain multiplication and division. By the last day, even the least math inclined could do the two digit multiplication speed test in time. The reading and writing lessons were more fun, muggles had many more stories than the magical world; and they were much longer too.
Luna Lovegood was the only one that wanted to return to Beedle the Bard, but Mrs. Entwhistle told her that The Tale of Three Brothers had a bit too much for children so young and instead had them reading from The Hobbit. She didn't tell them that, being a muggle, she wasn't sure exactly how much of that particular tale from Beedle was explicitly parable; she had a similar issue with a story titled The Warlock's Hairy Heart, which smacked of Dorian Grey but with just enough differences that she didn't really want to broach it with preteens who might not consider the story entirely fictitious.
The four children had spent five days in classes, with closely supervised outings to various places in muggle London each day as well, but this weekend they were going to experience different things muggles did for fun, besides sports. They were all taught a different muggle exercise each day and advised to pick one or two they found most fun to try and keep doing 'for their health'. Wesley Oakes was used to a bit of manual labor, growing up on his Family's farm, and had enjoyed everything he was shown concerning physical games and activities, but the others hadn't found anything they truly liked besides bicycles.
Luna liked exercise the least of all the students, but she perked up as soon as they arrived at their destination for the first half of the day, much to the humour of the others: The London Zoo. The adults in charge of them had dropped hints about the Zoo, and the cinema, for the last few days; getting the children excited for something interesting and outside as well as the promise of meeting the other side of the Wolfstar Foundation's scholarship, the muggleborn students. With only one exception, the primarily magically raised children had been worried about being able to get along with other kids who were effectively from another culture; but Tina Polkiss had been there on the first day and was friendly with everyone, which kept the students from being too nervous.
What tension they couldn't quell, coupled with the wonder brought on by seeing so many muggles crammed into such a small place, caused Gina to shriek when a bright flash almost blinded them.
"Collin!" A man admonished him.
"Sorry dad."
"If you do that again I'm going to hold onto the camera." He warned the boy.
Collin Creevey, Bill Slater, and Frank Bird joined Tina Polkiss on the list of yearmates they would know before starting Hogwarts as the groups merged and the two sets of adults made plans for the afternoon. The first thing the group did together was get lunch while Tina introduced the groups of kids to each other. The magically-raised children had wondered why Tina Polkiss had been present for their first meeting at the park and then the first seminars in the hotel; but now, having her here was a blessing for them.
The four pureblooded children had not appreciated how 'magical' Tina acted around them, and the other muggleborn were decidedly more alien to the group. The camera Collin Creevey used was so startling for them in part because the device around his neck seemed too small to be a camera; and the culture shock kept going with Bill and Frank each trying to convince their new acquaintances of the merits of their respective football teams. Though none of the magically raised kids were familiar with non magical sports teams, Ginny could at least appreciate their enthusiasm. The pair reminded her of her brother, Ron, though she hoped that these boy's teams were better at their game than the Chudley Cannons were at Quidditch.
In addition, they were introduced to the teachers who had been educating the muggleborns receiving the scholarship on magic; Professor McGonagall and Andromeda Tonks. Though the nuance was lost on the children, the choices of official instructors had been carefully made: a squib and a muggle parent of a muggleborn on one side, and a pureblood from a purely magical household along with one who married a muggleborn and lives muggle on the other; and both groups included a licensed educator. As far as any of the adults involved could tell, they had managed to keep anyone in the Wizengamot from raising a stink about it.
After lunch they tried to split up based on boys and girls, since they liked very different kinds of animals, but the fact that there was only one girl among the muggleborn and only one boy among the purebloods kept that from happening. Instead, they moved as a large unit from exhibit to exhibit with the small group of parents and teachers keeping watch. While they walked together the magically raised began surreptitiously asking questions of their peers about what they had been doing for the past week.
"What is Harry Potter like?" Ginny asked Tina the first chance she got, catching the other girl to the side of the group while they were in the reptile house. The redhead did her best to not shudder at the collection of snakes behind the glass.
"He's been my best friend since we were little." Tina answered, Ginny thought she managed to keep her frown off her face at that reply. Tina hadn't mentioned that she knew Harry Potter last time until they were already in the car, and Mrs. Figg told them it would have been rude to pester her with questions about him then, so she'd been bursting with questions about her hero only to find out that this girl was actually her biggest rival!
"Harry was always nice to me," Tina continued, ignorant of the conflict going on inside her conversation partner, "even when my brother and Dudley didn't want to hang out with girls."
Ginny giggled at that despite herself, "My brothers are the same way. They always leave me with mum, especially when they go play Quidditch in the backyard. Ron was that way too until he came home from school at Christmas."
"I guess Slytherin really is good for him." Tina joked, "At least there'll be a group of us already when we go to school; and we're all supposed to join Harry's study group, too. Harry was one of the top students for his year."
"My brother said that Harry Potter was the best flyer that Gryffindor had ever seen," Ginny returned, ignoring how weird the idea of Slytherin being good for someone felt, "how does he have time to study that much?" She expected the Harry Potter to be smart, but still.
"He can't become a Healer with bad grades, can he?" Tina asked back, "Tell you what; I'll tell you about Harry if you tell me what your brother told you about Slytherin. Mrs. Tonks and Professor McGonagall don't actually know much about it on the inside like they do the other Houses."
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Dudley woke with a cry and a gasp of air as he felt a heavy weight keep him down on his bed.
"You okay?" Greg asked him, one of his meaty arms holding Dudley down, "You were loud, I thought you would fall off."
"Thanks," Dudley answered, breathing rapidly, "it was just a bad dream."
"Some dream." Greg retorted, taking his hand off Dudley's chest and massaging his other arm. In the early daylight coming through the window it looked like he had a bruise forming.
"Sorry…" Dudley answered quietly, only to repeat himself when he realized that Greg wouldn't have been able to hear him over Ron Weasley's snoring, "Sorry I hit you."
"Are you okay?" Greg asked him, "S'not the first time… Malfoy and Weasley don't wake up for it; but I do sometimes."
"It's about what happened at the end of the year." Dudley confessed, sitting up.
"Wanna talk?" The large Slytherin asked, "'m awake already, and it's almost six."
"Sure," Dudley let out a halfhearted chuckle, "but I doubt you'll believe it."
Sitting on chairs in the kitchenette area to avoid the astronomically improbable chance of waking one of the other boys, Greg asked, "Why do you think I wouldn't believe?"
"I punched Voldemort." Dudley answered succinctly. Greg actually had the decency to look ashamed after he got his strangled laughter back under control. He'd practically choked trying to laugh and flinch at the name at the same time, "No really."
"How?" Greg asked. His muted sense of curiosity peaked now that he understood Dudley really wasn't just kidding to lighten the mood, "My father always said the Dark Lord would come back but-" he slapped his hand over his mouth, looking at Dudley in shock. He wasn't supposed to say stuff like that!
"It wasn't anything like that," Dudley responded, unaware of the reason for the other boy's trepidation and making up something that sounded alright with what the Headmaster had said at the Leaving Feast, "when stuff went nuts that night the Professor was… possessed or something. I guess there was some curse in the artefact he was messing with that Voldemort left behind."
"So you punched Professor Quirrell 'cause you thought he was possessed by the Dark Lord?" Greg asked, eyes wide, "How are you not a Gryff?"
"I did it because he hurt my friend." Dudley answered while keeping perfect eye contact with the Slytherin, "I don't let people hurt my friends."
Draco and Ron began stirring almost an hour later, during which time Dudley and Greg talked about whatever they were thinking about. Draco's loud yawn upon waking interrupted Dudley trying to explain Doctor Who, much to Greg's hidden relief, and the two boys went back to the room to get ready for the day. Before Greg started opening the bedroom door, though, Dudley stopped him.
"Thanks for listening earlier." He told the bigger boy, "I talked to a mind healer when I got home, and I've talked with my parents about what happened a lot. I didn't want to hit Harry or Hermione with it, 'cause they were there too but… I don't know... it feels a lot better talking to someone my age."
Greg didn't really know how to respond to that, so he just nodded and hoped his confusion wasn't written on his face. Dudley smiled and clapped him on the shoulder and that was that. As he got dressed, he silently wondered whether there was anyone he could think of that he would punch the Dark Lord for. When he came to the realization that the only person he could think of was his sister Gina; he decided to add Dudley Dursley to that list.