saxcuL. the all-knowing: Tonks actually ISN'T in Hogwarts at this time. The earliest she could have graduated was at the end of the 90-91 school year, i.e. a few months before Hazel starts. We know this from canon because Auror training is 3 years long and she trained under Moody, but Moody was retired before the start of Harry's fourth year. Therefore she would have had to start her training before Harry started Hogwarts.
GingerFury: Hazel did not go to Paimponte Forest, nor do I have any plans for her to do so. Partly because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me for Merlin, an Anglo-Saxon mythological figure, to be buried in France; partly because she already found an effigy and tribute to Merlin within Britain, which satisfied her curiosity on that matter.
"How is Hazel supposed to get into her common room if the security measure is voice activated?": Come now, do you really think I would be so dastardly as to lock Hazel out of her own common room if she's by herself? Even if every other other house's security is voice activated and Hogwarts has never had a mute student before?
…On second thought, don't answer that question. ;-)
Chapter 33
The World of Humans
Noise came from in front of Hazel, and she blinked her eyes open as the gurgling sound cut through the haze of sleep. She looked around the room she sat in and staggered to her feet before her memory caught up with her waking mind. Right, she was in the Hufflepuff common room. In Hogwarts.
She shook her head, tossing out the last of the cobwebs and rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She had always been a light sleeper, first because the Dursleys hated 'laziness' if it was she who was getting any sleep and afterwards when she was on her own because sleeping deeply was a quick recipe to be caught unawares. Her neck cracked as she rolled her head around on her shoulders, disturbing Morgan out of his own rest on her shoulder where he had cuddled too close to her neck for her to move it without pushing him back. He twittered unhappily at her, and even if she could not see him she could still feel him fluff up into a grumpy puffball.
Don't give me that attitude, she told him. We both know you're going to go straight back to sleep like you always do. Ignoring the pinch of his tiny claws as he tightened his grip on her shirt, she finished her stretching and glanced down at the wrinkles that were already forming in her clothing. She could not help but scrunch her nose in displeasure at the sight. She normally slept in her clothes, had for years now, but none of them looked as rumpled after only one night as these did. She had not even worn them a full day yet!
Maybe this was the real reason the supply list had called for three changes of robes? Because nobody could wear them for even a single day without them looking like they had been crumpled up and neglected?
Wizards don't make any sense, she told her friend with a shake of her head. Who in their right mind would want clothing this delicate? All her other clothing was sturdier, and she silently lamented the fact that from what Sally-Anne understood, they were required to wear robes any day they had classes. That meant probably five days out of the week she had to were these uncomfortable, fragile clothes. They were just awful!
Still, at least she had a solution to one of her problems. Stretching her fingers over her clothing, she let the blue ripples of her cleaning spell wash over the fabric. Small spots of oil stains from dinner the previous night shrank into nothing, and the wrinkles pulled themselves tight. The entire robe stretched a little farther towards the floor as a result. She pushed deeper, sending the magic down through the robes to scour her body clean as well before redirecting it into her socks and her boots. The socks tingled and twitched against the soles of her feet, and only when that ticklish sensation ended did she cut off the spell.
There! No one could tell that she had looked like a crumpled sheet of paper just thirty seconds before.
She was not quite ready to call it enough just yet, though. She had one more spell to use. Sticking two fingers down her throat, she called up a variant of her cleaning spell to sweep out all the gunk in her mouth. This was not something she had worried about when she started her travels, but while she was trekking across Yugoslavia she had developed a recurrent toothache that eventually became so painful she was tempted to start robbing druggists' stores for pain medicine. It took her a week of using her healing spell on herself on a near hourly basis before the pain and the lump that had formed under one of her bottom canine teeth went away, and once that was accomplished she made sure she came up with a spell that would keep her teeth clean so she would not have to put up with it again.
The cleaning magic she had released pushed past her lips with the sound of rushing wind, and she rubbed her tongue around the inside of her cheeks to get rid of the weird dryness that the spell always seemed to leave behind. She huffed into the palm of her hand and nodded after giving it a sniff. Her breath might not smell like grapes or mint like toothpaste had when she still lived with her aunt and uncle, but it did not smell bad. It did not smell like much of anything, really.
She stood a step away from the wall for another ten seconds or so waiting for any more sounds or movement before huffing to herself. Had she been woken by nothing more than pipes gurgling or something of the like? She hoped not, if only so she did not have several more hours to wait before anything of note happened. With nothing else to do, she gave the overstuffed armchairs and sofas a suspicious and unsure look before walking up to a couch and tentatively seating herself on the cushion.
Just like the bed had last night, it immediately tried to gobble her up, but at least the couch could only suck in so much of her butt before there was nowhere else for her to go. Propping her staff against the arm on her side of the couch, she dug into her satchel and pulled out a pen and the copy of 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi she had taken from Flourish and Blotts. She was already familiar with the idea of plants having mystical properties as that information was present throughout folklore, so finding so many plants she had already heard of within the pages was not too much of a shock, but what was really surprising was that wizards attributed completely different properties to some of those plants than what she had read previously. It was quite strange how much ideas could shift in the span of centuries.
Gradually more sounds came from the hallways to the dorms, convincing her that the sound she thought she heard when she woke was indeed real, and eventually a few older teens entered the common room and headed to other armchairs and couches scattered throughout the room. They then waved their wands and uttered the same incantation, and one after another little desks with legs and feet like those of fancy tables or bathtubs ran over to them and jumped up onto their laps. Parchment and ink came from their own bags, and soon they were finishing up homework or writing letters home or, in the case of one girl with bright yellow and purple hair, drafting what sounded from her thoughts like a chapter in an embarrassingly lurid romance novel.
A soft wind chime-like sound tinkled throughout the room perhaps thirty minutes later, which seemed like the signal for several of the students to pack their work up with various mental grumbling and dismiss the lap desks to go back to the basket from whence they came. They then got up and moved to the door out of the common room to depart.
The two-toned hair girl, on the other hand, looked around the room after putting her writings away and walked over to Hazel. "Morning. You're one of the firsties, right? Surprised she's up so early, especially on her first day. An early bird, I guess? Hopefully she isn't one of the annoyingly chipper ones."
'Yes. I'm Hazel. Good morning to you, too.'
That got the girl blinking as thoughts ran through her head at lightning speed. "Hazel? As in Hazel Potter? She looks so much weirder than I thought she was going to. Nice to meet you. I'm Sidonia, one of the prefects for Hufflepuff. I'm glad I was up early this morning to catch you before you left and missed the tour. What are you reading?"
An easy fifteen minutes passed while Hazel and Sidonia waited for the rest of the first years to arrive, most of them filled by Sidonia relaying all sorts of information about various plants they would work with throughout the years of school. The older girl was, by her own admission, near the top of her year in the Herbology class and had earned an 'O' in her Herbology OWL – which led to a quick side conversation about the standardized tests witches were expected to take and how grades worked in wizard school – and that in turn meant she had a wealth of knowledge she was willing to share. Once other people started showing up, starting with Sally-Anne and a couple of the other girls who shared the dorm Hazel had been assigned, the conversation with the older girl moved to asking them about themselves. Throughout it all, Sidonia remained legitimately interested, her thoughts reflecting her words and tone as she started cataloging all the information the other girls and eventually the boys voiced to her.
Once everyone had shown up and at least had a chance to introduce themselves, the older girl raised her hands above her head and made a 'quiet down' motion. "Well, it's nice to meet you all. Like I told several of you, I'm Sidonia Smith, and I'm the sixth-year girl prefect for our house. It's tradition that different prefects will guide you around on the first week to and from the Great Hall when we can. As long as you can make your way back there if you get lost, it will be easier for you to get wherever you actually wanted to go. I'll guide you there for breakfast, and then Devin will take over and give you a quick tour of the castle. But there's no reason to worry about that until we get some food in our bellies. Let's get moving!"
A dismissive sound came from a blond boy standing in the middle of the crowd of first-years. "Of course she would want to guide us around. Always has to be the perfect prefect. We don't need to be led around like little kids. We can get to breakfast just fine on our own."
His declaration prompted doubtful and worried looks across the rest of the kids Hazel's age and an exasperated eye roll from Sidonia. "Is he really being a little shite before he even starts his first day? If you think you are too good for Hufflepuff's traditions, Zacharias, you are more than welcome to bring it up with Devin and the rest of the prefects. Or go off and wander around all on your own," she told him in a voice as sweet as poisoned honey. "Honestly, how he avoided being a Gryffindor I haven't a clue. Maybe if Mum and Dad had walloped him more when he was growing up he wouldn't be such a pain in the arse. For anyone who wants some help getting around, go ahead and follow me."
Unsurprisingly, everyone followed the prefect out of the common room, even Zacharias although not without substantial internal grumbling. The hallway she led them down was the exact one they had walked the night previously, although without a gluttony-induced stupor it was far easier for Hazel to pay attention to the various twisting turns they needed to take in order to make it to the massive and elaborate staircase that Sidonia told them was their best bet to get around the castle. Other staircases existed, but this one was the largest and also the 'least temperamental', whatever that was supposed to mean.
The word itself, Hazel understood, but how would that possibly apply to a set of stairs?
The Great Hall appeared even larger at first glance than it had the previous night, and it took Hazel until they were all sitting at the designated Hufflepuff table to realize that it was due to the simple fact that the entire school was not packed to the brim within it. Only a couple of teachers were seated at the staff table at the back of the hall, and she estimated less than half the student body was present at the moment as well. Food was already spread out over the length of the table, but it was thankfully in a less nauseating quantity than the excessive feast they had previously been impressed by.
A feast that was still weighing down her gut as if she had swallowed a bowling ball. Turning away from the plates of pancakes and bowls of baked beans, she reached instead for a pot of tea sitting just at the edge of her arm's reach and poured herself a cup. The tea was strong and dark, hitting her with smells she had not experienced since she left Privet Drive. She had never been allowed a cuppa, of course, but Uncle Vernon—
She shook her head. No, that was going to stop. The Dursleys had been part of her life for long enough. She had left them physically years ago; it was time to move on internally as well. Vernon had always liked a cup of tea in the morning, and it felt like that was one of the few kitchen chores that her aunt had not foisted upon her. Mostly because the few times she had made him tea he complained that it did not taste right despite it literally being nothing more than leaves in hot water.
Pulling in a deep breath of the steam, she took a sip of the still very hot liquid. The heat burned the inside of her mouth and then her throat when she tried to swallow it quickly to get it out of her mouth. Coughs racked her chest for several seconds before it finally abated. Morgan chirped in concern, and she shook her head. I'm starting to worry about eating around here, Morgan. This is the second time in less than a day that I've choked on something or other. At this rate, I won't make it through a week.
"Are you okay, Hazel?" asked Sally-Anne, who was looking over at her worriedly. "That was a really nasty cough. She isn't getting sick with something, is she?"
'Tea was too hot.'
"Oh, that's good. Not that it's good that she burned herself, but good that it wasn't anything worse. Maybe have something else while that cools? Hannah says they have pumpkin juice?" She shook the goblet in her hand, the motion setting the liquid inside to sloshing.
Hazel looked at her for several long seconds in incomprehension, causing the other girl to fidget. 'What?' she finally wrote.
"I-I know, it sounds weird t-to me, too. I didn't know pumpkins had juice. I think m-m-maybe it's a wizard thing?"
It would have to be. The werewolves certainly did not drink it, nor did the hags. That certainly made it sound like it was a wizard oddity, but she could not rule out the possibility that it was a uniquely British thing and that was the reason why her friends on the Continent did not partake. More importantly… 'Is it any good?'
There was a pause that filled Hazel with a kind of dread. "I don't know," Sally-Anne said after a moment to think. "It's not normal… different? K-Kind of like orange juice b-but sweeter and not as sour?"
Sweetened orange juice? Hazel wrinkled her nose and waved away the offer. The tea might be too hot, but at least it was bland and soothed the lingering ache in her belly. Something sweet like that would probably make her hurl. 'Thank you, but I'm good with just my tea.'
"That's a wicked trick," another girl with her blonde hair in two high ponytails asked. "I wish I had been closer when I saw you doing it last night, but I didn't get a chance to ask. Who taught you how to do it? It's so much better than passing notes around in class. Or it would be if you can write it small enough to hide it under your desk where the teachers can't see."
'A man I met named Marcel. He was expelled from wizard school when he was turned into a werewolf, but he still knows a lot of useful things.'
Anything else she would have added was cut off when she saw how so many people nearby jerked backwards in shock, their fear slamming into her like the slap of the spirit in the scoured clearing. Everyone's eyes were wide and fixed on her. 'What?' she asked when no one said a word.
"A… a werewolf?" repeated a redheaded girl sitting next to the blonde, her face turning pale enough that a smattering of freckles on her cheeks became visible. "I thought they weren't allowed to have wands. When you're expelled, your wand is supposed to get snapped. You're sure he was a werewolf? And he didn't bite you?"
Hazel frowned at the girl, then her eyes roamed over the rest of the knot of kids around her now listening intently even if they had ignored her before. She knew werewolves were feared in France, and this seemed to be answering her questions from the previous night about whether that attitude was likewise present here in Britain. Still, the question the redhead asked was strange and concerning in its own right. The only werewolf who had ever thought about biting people when he was in his human form was Fenrir, and even Jean Luc had responded to that attitude with shock and horror.
Then again, Fenrir also thought lycanthropy was a good thing, a blessing rather than a curse, so while the idea of him biting and changing her had frightened her at the time she knew he had made the suggestion in good faith and not cruelty. Even if it was an offer she had no intention of accepting.
'Of course he didn't bite me. How could he have taught me anything if he was furry at the time?'
"That still doesn't explain how she could be this calm about talking to a werewolf?! Even for the Girl-Who-Lived, that's too much. Not even Gryffindors are that brave!" The blonde with the pigtails visibly took a breath, and when she next spoke her voice was mostly calm with only a mild quaver to it. If Hazel did not know the depths of her fear, she might have even missed it. "Can you teach us how to do the spell, though? Like the incantation and stuff? Oh Merlin, but if she learned it from a werewolf, doesn't that make it dark magic?! O-O-Only if it's not a bad spell or something!"
'I actually don't remember the incantation,' she admitted after racking her memory. She was sure Marcel had mentioned it. He used wizard magic, after all, and he had demonstrated the spell with his wand. She just could not recall what he had said the words and motion were, and she knew herself well enough to suspect that she had not paid them any attention in the first place. By that point she already knew her magic was different from the wizards', and such things – while of vital importance to them – meant less than nothing to her.
"Sure you don't," said Zacharias in a sarcastic voice that was clearly intended to be heard by the entire group. "Who would remember how to cast the spell they learned from a friendly werewolf? Who does she think she's trying to fool here? Is being the precious Girl-Who-Lived not good enough for her that she has to make things up too?" He shared a look with another boy at the table and mouthed something, getting an answering nod. "Good. The girls might be too stupid to know she's lying, but hopefully the other guys will be able to see through her."
Contrary to his thoughts, his words seemed like they struck a chord with the girls, and both the blonde and the redhead frowned. "Could he be right? How can she say she doesn't know the spell when she's using it?" the blonde thought. She shared a glance with the redhead, who had also turned to look at her. "Susan looks doubtful, too. But she's Hazel Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived! Why would she lie about this?"
"I think he's right," was what Hazel heard from the now-named Susan. "There is no way someone who was expelled and became a werewolf would keep their wand. Even if Professor Dumbledore didn't snap it, the Ministry would. Aunty always says you can tell if someone is lying by figuring out what they would get out of it. What does Potter get out of this?"
In the ensuing silence, a young man stood up from farther down the Hufflepuff table and walked towards them. He held a stack of papers in one hand, and as he got closer he pulled the top one off the stack with his other hand. "Good morning," he told them, his eyes flicking around at each one of them. "I wonder what has them all in a tizzy. Is it because they have a celebrity in their midst? I am Devin Fredrickson, and I'm one of your seventh-year prefects. I have here your schedules for the year. Can you pass them out?" he asked one of the boys. Keeping the top sheet for himself, he handed the rest of the stack to the boy. "Once you are all finished with breakfast, we are going on a quick tour of the castle so you can see where some of your classrooms are and the fastest ways to get there. The professors don't like it when you're late to their classes, and some of them, namely McGonagall and Snape, won't care that it's your first week in the castle."
The boy handed Hazel and Sally-Anne their schedules, and she took a look at it. If she was reading it right, there was only a single section of the calendar that had any writing under the Monday column, namely Charms followed immediately by lunch. 'Is this right?' she asked. 'We only have one class today?'
"That's right. Looks like you have light Mondays and Fridays. You go to each class twice a week with breaks in between. Those breaks are important because the professors' essays normally aren't about stuff you can just copy out of the textbooks. You need to go digging in other books if you want a good grade. The library stays open after dinner for an hour or so, but it closes well before curfew, and that means those between-class breaks are best used to work on your homework. If you're really fast about it, not that any of you firsties will be, I've seen people finish off their homework during their breaks and have the whole rest of the night after dinner to goof around and have fun.
"But we can talk more about the classes themselves during the tour," he continued hastily when he saw several people raise their hands. "For now, focus on finishing your breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day, and while Mondays don't look so bad for you, you can be sure you will have days that will wear you down if you don't eat in between."
He gave Sidonia a nod, prompting her to push away her empty plate. "Which on that note, I should get a move on. My year has Charms first today, so I'll see all of your smiling faces right after. Ta ta!"
Hazel was one of the few people who gave her a wave as she departed, and then she leaned back slightly on the bench seat and watched as the rest of her fellow new students piled food on their plates and dug in. A sickened feeling came over her as she watched. She knew she had eaten less than they had last night; how could they still be hungry?
"Aren't you hungry?" Sally-Anne asked, looking up from the pancakes stacked on her plate. "You aren't eating anything. Something has to look good to her. There's just so much food, stuff I've never even seen before!"
She waved her hand dismissively. 'I ate too much at dinner last night. I still don't have any room.'
"Ate too much? I don't remember her eating that much stuff. And I don't think I saw her eating any dessert at all. O-Okay. If you say so." Sally-Anne shot her a disbelieving glance before returning to her own breakfast.
Those brown eyes popped up over the next several minutes to glance at her some more, a vague sense of suspicion lurking behind them.
"…And here we are back at the Charms classroom. Just in time, too," Devin told them as he waved towards the door of the classroom on the fifth floor of the castle with a flourish.
Hazel looked back the way they had come and blew her breath out in a puff. She now understood why the prefects wanted to give them a tour, and also why Sidonia had described the stairs the way she had. After nearly two years living out on her own in the world, she had become very familiar with getting herself lost and subsequently un-lost. It was a necessary skill if she wanted to get anywhere.
But this castle? She could already tell this castle was going to push that ability to the limit. Staircases that moved themselves up and down between different landings like crazy elevators. People in paintings that would talk and leave their frames to go chat with the subjects of other paintings. Doors that sometimes were doors but sometimes weren't doors or maybe were doors only if she did a particular thing on a particular day. Secret passages that would move them from one floor to another floor without ever sloping up or down, or worse, would slant downhill only to arrive on a floor higher than the one where she started!
She was used to navigating off the stars or with minimal landmarks, but this blasted building was going out of its way to make sure she had no stable landmarks from which to orient herself! She had never run into living objects before yesterday, but now she was surrounded by them, and all of them had attitudes.
"The class that's in there should get out in just a few minutes," he continued, "so I'll leave you guys here. Professor Flitwick doesn't mind people showing up for class early, and honestly that's probably why it's always the first-years' first class. Another prefect will swing by at the end of class to pick you up and make sure you get down to the Great Hall for lunch. Have a good time in class!"
Soon enough the door opened, and they all moved closer to the wall on either side to let the older students pass without getting trampled. Sure enough, Sidonia was among them, and she gave them a friendly wave as she passed before turning back to her conversation with another girl, although this one had blue on her tie and robes instead of the yellow Hazel and all the rest of the new Hufflepuffs wore. Only once the room appeared empty did they move forwards to slip inside.
Appearances turned out to be deceiving, however. After about half the group had entered, a sound came from behind the podium and a man's head poked up above it. "Who is— Ah! Yes, of course. You must be the first-year Hufflepuffs. I always forget that they come in so early the first day of the year. I am Professor Flitwick. Go ahead and choose your seats, two at a table. I need to put these papers in my office, but I'll be right back out in a few minutes."
The professor walked fully into view, and Hazel blinked in surprise as it became obvious how he had be so easily hidden by his podium. The man was shorter even than she was, wearing what had to be carefully tailored robes so he would not look like he was wearing a child's clothing. Had she ever seen an adult who was that short?
Not one who was human, but now that she looked at his hands and the last glimpse she had of his nose before he turned away from them to walk through the door in the back of the room, she thought she might have seen people who looked similar. Not identical, no, but similar.
He looks a little bit like the goblins, doesn't he, she asked Morgan as she seated herself at one table and promptly was joined by Sally-Anne. He did not have the green skin or the yellow eyes, but his body structure definitely bore a resemblance. Not that she had seen much of the goblins for all that they ran the bank on Diagon Alley. Tom, the bartender for the Leaky Cauldron pub, had been the person who told her about them, had even recommended she convert her normal money into gold and silver to make it easier for her to buy things. The one time she walked close to the massive marble building, however, she had been able to hear very clearly just how the guards in front of the building viewed humans. Her especially, as despite no one else noticing a thing when she took the blond man's money earlier that day they were immediately able to peg her as a thief. The following thoughts that painted a lurid picture of what they did to thieves had been enough to send her elsewhere as quickly as she could go.
She had no desire to see what her own insides looked like, thank you very much.
More people trickled in while the professor was within his office. These people all had green ties, but Hazel was not immediately sure what house they represented until she spotted the broad shape of Millicent, the girl who crossed the lake in the same boat as herself and Sally-Anne. It was one of the only people whose Sorting she paid attention to, mostly because it was one of the three people she recognized, which meant these must be the first-year Slytherins joining them for class.
Was this class special, she wondered, or were all their classes going to be with at least one other house of students?
Professor Flitwick returned to the classroom, a little surprised but mostly pleased that his whole class was present so early, and immediately jumped into calling out names from a scroll of parchment on the podium. Hazel quickly saw an opportunity of her own and paid attention as best she could to who responded to what name. Hearing thoughts was all well and good, but almost nobody thought their own name where she could hear it.
"Welcome to Charms class," the professor said as he rolled up the scroll of names. "Charms is the branch of magic that you will find yourself turning to the most often throughout your lives. While Transfiguration concerns itself with changing one object into another and Defense Against the Dark Arts is essential should you find yourself in danger, all other magic you could wish to use to affect the world around you falls under the immense umbrella of charms.
"Because the breadth of this class is so great, our first month of class will be dedicated to giving you a reasonable grounding in the fundamental ideas of magic and how to use your wands. Despite what some of you may think," he added in a sharper voice when several people groaned, "there is more to magic than swinging your wand around like a toy. Every motion of the wand, every syllable of an incantation, affects what you do when you cast a spell. There is a well-known tale, even if it is probably just a teaching fable, of a wizard named Baruffio who mispronounced a single letter while trying to hang a painting on his wall and conjured a buffalo upon his own chest! I cannot force you to pay attention and use your magic with caution, but I can make sure that if you wind up blowing yourselves up that it will be your own damn fault."
The ending of that short story sent a frisson of fear through the class, and never before was Hazel so glad that she did not require incantations for her own abilities. Not once had she ever had a spell backfire or do something as different from her desires as this story depicted. Not work at all, absolutely; that had been the case with conjuring fire for the span of many months before she finally figured out her spark-snap. Be helpful even, such as when she first teleported and when she tried to heal the sapling she broke in Shervage Wood? Yes. But not twist itself into something else.
Did it have to do with where she drew her powers from compared to wizards? Druids, as best as she could determine from folklore and her own experience, derived their magical powers from nature. It was part of why her magic worked better on living things and how she had turned a simple tree branch into a living staff using nothing but meditation. It was also how she was able to communicate with wild spirits, like when she bargained for her fairy lens and when she asked for help tracking the magic boar alongside Grégoire.
But if her magic ultimately came from a connection to nature, where did a wizard's power come from?
As Professor Flitwick started describing and comparing how the motion of a wand directed the 'flow' of a spell, she could not help but mull that over in light of her question. Was the reason wizard spells could be so unpredictable be due to the wands themselves, perhaps? She could not help but recall that Mr. Ollivander had made it clear that wands had their own thoughts and made their own choices. Was that the difference, that there were in essence two minds of a sort involved in any spell a wizard wanted to cast?
Might it be that a wizard's power came from a wand or other magical item, and that was why they were so dependent on wands to the point that they couldn't cast spells without one? It sounded like a simple enough explanation, but the books she had read mentioned that underage witches typically had uncontrolled bursts of magic before they were given a wand. That meant it could not be magic pulled from an object.
Hazel frowned and tapped the page of her notebook with her pen. When something was not working or was not making sense, she had learned that the best way forward was to go backwards instead and look at where she might have made a mistake. Maybe it was not that the druids' power originated from nature but instead were directed or channeled through it? When she meditated, she was giving some of her magic to the world and taking some of its magic in return. Her own spells, then, was not purely hers. It was hers and nature's combined.
Wizards, on the other hand, did not need to meditate, and none of the books she read in Flourish and Blotts so much as mentioned it. They relied only on themselves and their wands. Could it be that her connection to nature was a stabilizing force they lacked?
She shook her head. All she had was questions, and the more she tried to draw a coherent conclusion the more grey areas she ran into. This, she reminded herself, was the main reason she had agreed to come to Hogwarts in the first place. The library Devin had showed them during the tour was far larger than the bookstore. She had a far better chance of getting the answers she wanted from here than anywhere else.
By the time the bell that signaled the end of the class period tolled, Hazel was past the point of antsy and was feeling nearly claustrophobic. She remembered what primary school had been like back in Little Whinging, albeit with the memories themselves getting fuzzy over time, but no matter how hard she thought back she could not remember enduring this much stress from just sitting at a desk and listening to teachers lecture.
Once she was done with her own ponderings and puzzlings, the only other thing she had been able to do was write down stuff about wands that she would never and could never use. Ten minutes of that later, she developed an urge to just get up and go somewhere, and that urge continued to build and build to the point that it was nearly overwhelming. If the bell had not rung when it did, she would have undoubtedly lasted only another couple of minutes before she threw caution to the wind, wrapped herself in her ignore-me smoke, and wandered off in search of something to do.
Was it because it was information that was useless to her? Unlike potions or the Making or even hunting, this was stuff that she – once again – could never use. This was all stuff she needed to memorize for exams, and after that it would never once be relevant. Looking over her notes, she shrugged to herself. Maybe it was, and that would make sense. If it was not, if it was something else, she was sure she would figure it out. After she took an hour or so to stretch her legs and look at something other than the walls of this single room.
Everyone else started shoving their rolls of parchment and quill pens and bottles of ink into backpacks and satchels, and once more Hazel gave the supplies other people had a strange look. It was not just the wizard-born; even Nés-Moldus like Sally-Anne were using quills instead of a ballpoint pen like she had. Was that something she was supposed to purchase? Shoving her hand into her satchel, she called her school letter into her grasp and checked the attached supply list. No, quills and ink and parchment were not listed at all.
Perhaps it was left to people's preference? If that were the case, her own preference would be to stick with her notebooks. They looked to be much more tidy than wrangling multiple rolls of parchment.
While everyone else had by now stood and started walking towards the door, she remained standing at the side of her desk. She waved Sally-Anne to go on without her and instead walked to the front of the room where Professor Flitwick still stood at his lectern rearranging his notes. From this closer perspective, she could see that he was actually standing on a stool behind that lectern so he would be able to see over it. He glanced up at the sound of her staff tapping on the stone floor and gave her a smile. "How odd. Normally it is only my Ravenclaws who want to talk after class, particularly on the first day. Did you have a question, Miss Potter?"
She gave him a nod. 'A few, actually. If you have time to talk.'
"I wouldn't be much of a teach if I didn't make time for my students," he said with a chuckle, although his thoughts took a bit of a darker turn. "I see Minerva was not joking when she said that Miss Potter is mute. That is going to cause some problems, no matter what she thinks. It is almost as if she doesn't realize how many sixth-years have trouble with nonverbal casting."
'Well, the first thing is about something you said. You said wand motions give structure to spells.' She left the question floating in the air until he gave a nod. 'Is that the only way to give structure to spells, or are there others? And if that is enough, why do you need incantations in the first place?'
She knew already that there were other ways to work with magic. Potions and the Making and her own mental tools did that just fine. This was a question that had come to mind as the litany of different wand motions went on and on. If only a wand motion could structure a wizard spell, would that mean that her tools would follow completely different rules than a spell? Or, more bluntly, was there anything that wizard classes could teach her that would be relevant at all or would she be entirely on her own?
"Why am I not surprised that her first question would be about incantations?" he thought to himself. "To answer the first part, yes, there are a few other ways to structure spells. Runes are the method that immediately comes to mind, and it is possible to turn a given spell into an arrangement of runes and repeatedly cast it that way. It is a very inflexible means of doing so as the spell cannot be altered from how the rune script was written and not all or even most spells can be converted in such a way, but it is possible.
"Now, regarding incantations, which I suspect is the more important question of the two for you—" Professor Flitwick cut himself off and turned his head to look fully at the door. "Ah, Mr. Andersen. If you wanted to attend the NEWT course, I'm afraid that was first period."
Hazel turned around to find an older boy had stepped inside while she and the professor were talking. He gave the professor an anemic smile. "Two more years of charms class? That sounds like torture to me. No, Professor. I was just going to collect Potter before I took the Hufflepuffs back to the Great Hall for lunch."
"Ah. Hufflepuff solidarity, of course. That's quite all right, Mr. Andersen. I can escort Miss Potter down to the Great Hall in a few minutes. Unless that were your only two questions?" She shook her head, leading the professor to wave the prefect away.
Once the door was closed, Professor Flitwick turned back to her. "Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Incantations. As best as magical theorists have been able to determine, an incantation does not give structure to the spell necessarily, but it instead gives force. Potency. Most wizards will note that when they cast spells without speaking, they are harder to get working and have weaker effects, but when they become excited and shout their spells are more potent. There is some degree of debate about this point, of course, primarily about whether that has more to do with the mindset of the caster at the time and whether people casting spells silently expect them to be weaker while people who are more stimulated subconsciously put more effort behind the casting, but overall whichever side of this debate is correct has limited practical impact."
Huh. That fit with what she had read in various books, but his answer put a different spin on it and raised another question. 'Does that mean that spells a wizard casts silently will always be weaker, or is that something that can be trained?'
"That is a complicated matter. People are able to be train themselves to cast silent spells at the same strength as a spoken spell, yes, but everyone I have spoken to on the subject has noticed that it only impacts individual spells rather than all the spells they know. Duelists, for example, typically lean harder on a small selection of spells, and some of those will become more potent over time even when cast nonverbally. Spells they do not routinely use, however, are unaffected."
'I think I understand. It isn't that wizards can learn how to cast silently better. They only master a certain spell well enough that it doesn't matter how they cast it.' He nodded in agreement, so she continued, 'Another question. Reading several books in the bookstore on Diagon Alley, I noticed that most history books only talked about how magic has developed since the Roman Empire. Some of them even claim that the Romans were the first people to study magic, which I know to be wrong. Do you know of any books that would talk about how magic was used and taught earlier than that? Especially anything that was about the origin of magic in the first place?'
"Now that is an interesting question," Professor Flitwick said as he looked away and inwards. It was as if he was talking only partly to her and partly instead to himself. "I really don't know. I don't thing anyone has ever asked me that. Or if I have ever thought about it, either. I know that a lot of magical history has been lost to the mists of time, and this is likely among that. We only have the history we do possess because the Romans were such excellent chroniclers of the world around them and the people they encountered. It is something I wish we could ask Cuthbert to weigh in on. If only he were more interactive with people."
That was… unfortunate. The hags' memory was longer, as evidenced by the fact that they maintained a story about the very dawn of their species, but it was also something they kept to themselves. If any other oral histories from before the Roman Empire existed, they might also be protected from outsiders and only taught to other members of that species or culture. Again, just like the hags.
Hazel had been lucky that Elfriede misinterpreted her abilities as signs that she had a hag ancestry. Well, misinterpreted as far as she knew. It was not as if she had a family tree for her mum's side of the family.
And speaking of learning what the hags had to teach…
'Just one more question. Do any other peoples besides humans teach their magic here?'
That question caught Professor Flitwick by surprise. "Other peoples? Besides humans? Are you asking if nonhumans teach at Hogwarts?" She nodded, and that caused him to frown. "Why do you ask? That is not something I would have expected her to ask me. Is she anti-nonhuman?"
Anti-nonhuman? Her? She was not sure whether to laugh or cry; that was not an assumption about herself she had ever thought would be the case. Still, laughing would not answer the professor's questions. 'Because they have different perspectives and different abilities. They might know things we don't and vice versa.'
"It's not as bad as I was thinking. That's good. I would hate to imagine Lily's daughter holding such blind hatred in her heart. No, I cannot say that they do. Everyone here at Hogwarts is human, or mostly at least. I cannot say that a nonhuman has ever taught here, in fact. There has never been any interest in having such lessons. Not that any other being would want to hand humans whatever abilities they could teach when humans refuse to do the same. And no," he added with a sideways glance and smile, "one person would not be enough interest to change that.
Tucking his roll of papers under his arm, he hopped off the stool on which he stood. "Come along, Miss Potter. It does you no good to skip lunch worrying about things no one has the power to change. If I let you wander off and get lost on your very first day, Professor Sprout would have my head!"
She followed the short teacher out of the room, her thoughts in a whirl from the information she had just obtained. Even if much of it had been things she did not like hearing.
I suppose it doesn't change our plans at all, does it, she told Morgan. It's sad that we won't be able to ask other species about their histories like I did the hags, but that just closes off some paths to knowledge. We'll find other ways to learn.
And speaking of learning and knowledge, I shouldn't forget that we have the rest of the day to ourselves after lunch. Which I'm still not hungry enough to eat. You? Morgan tilted his head and chirped in a manner she had grown to connect with 'no'. What do you say we take a walk around the lake for a bit, then, and afterwards visit the library Devin showed us? If we won't get any help looking for information, we might as well start our search as soon as we can.
I waffled back and forth on how I wanted to handle the revelations of Hazel's backstory to the typical wizard kid. Eventually and after talking it over with my partner, I felt that the most realistic reaction would probably be rejection. Harry very easily got a bad rap in the early books with people thinking he was lying and seeking attention, so if I extrapolate that attitude to Hazel everyone would assume that she is telling stories to make herself look more awesome than she is.
Meanwhile, she is confused why people think she's exaggerating or making things up when she hasn't even mentioned the wild stuff yet!
Silently Watches out.
