Chapter Two: Another Brick in the Wall
Lucy got up early the next morning, far earlier than she needed to be to make it to breakfast. As soon as she was washed and dressed she left Gryffindor tower and struck out on a rather bizarre route, down branching corridors, slipping through hidden halls accessed only by lifting tapestries or pushing stones, until she found herself in a little used hallway, standing under a positively mournful looking tapestry that ran along near the ceiling. It didn't look like it had been moved in the past three months, but she wanted to make sure. So, using the hovering ability she had been trained to develop since childhood, she raised herself about seven feet above the floor, and gingerly pulled the fabric aside. The entrance was there. She maneuvered herself into a tall, narrow, coffin like space and stepped onto the floor. Behind her a stone slid back into place, blocking her exit. She hovered about half an inch off the floor, and in front of her another panel slid open, and Lucy found her way into a room that no one else in the castle, with the probable exception of Dumbledore, knew about.
This had been the workroom of Don Asriel, the only other Espiritu to ever come to Hogwarts, but who had been dead for over a hundred years.
She didn't have time for more than a quick perusal, but it seemed that what had been a secret for so long had remained a secret, which was all that she cared about. She had a bad feeling that the people who destroyed her home and those of so many others last year would do far worse to get their hands on what was in that room.
She reset the guards and made her way down to breakfast, throwing a wink at Marguerite and Parker. They may have been in two different houses, but the Ravenclaw table was next to the Hufflepuff's, and the two first years had positioned themselves on the innermost set of benches, so they were still able to carry on multiple conversations with their house mates and each other.
She slid into a spot between Dean and Seamus, opposite Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Ron looked awful, and his food was untouched.
"He sick or somfin?" She gestured with her fork toward Ron, her mouth full of toast.
Hermione rolled her eyes and grimaced. "Quidditch tryouts this afternoon."
"So soon?"
Harry shook his head. "Slytherin has the field booked almost all week for practice, this is the only time we could get if we wanted to be able to train enough. We lost almost half the team with last years graduating class."
Lucy and Ron were not what you would exactly call friends, but she had gone through a try out of sorts herself last year, to advance out of intermediate status in the eastern Circle, and she knew what nerves the poor guy was going through.
"You ought to eat. If you do get sick then you'll be dry heaving, pop a blood vessel in your eye, then you'll really look scary."
Seamus made a face and put down the bite of eggs he was about to enjoy. "Oh, thanks Lucy. I really, really wanted to hear that. Now I'm likely to get just as sick as him!"
Ron turned green. Lucy turned to Seamus. "You?"
Seamus grinned. "Are you kidding? With all those spaces open? Between Fred, George, Katie and Angelina graduating, and with Lux's family moving back her and her brother back to Sydney, there's never been better odds."
Lavender and Parvati, who were on the other side of Seamus, looked at each other and groaned. "We are never going to have another breakfast conversation that doesn't involve Quidditch ever again."
Hermione grumbled, "Like we get much of anything else now."
Lucy chose to each her melon, the boys just gave each other the, 'Girls just don't understand,' look, and turned back to their meals. Well, all except Ron that is.
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Lucy's first class of the day was Ancient Runes. But, as was a general rule, first classes of the year really didn't count, unless you were in Transfiguration or Potions, and all Professor Nostrad did was review the areas studied last year and briefly describe what was going to be covered in the next. Which was a good thing, since Lucy was in such knots over what she had to do next that she couldn't focus on much of anything.
It had come that summer, along with the traditional Hogwarts letter detailing the supplies and books she would need for the next year; not that that was a large help seeing as she was home in New Mexico at the time, fortunately she had bought most of what she would need earlier in the summer before returning home.
It had been a letter within the letter, from some obscure department within the Ministry that handled her work scholarship that had made her so nervous. Something about her contract being open, and a necessary meeting with the headmaster scheduled today, right after Ancient Runes, as a note on her schedule reminded her.
She reluctantly got to her feet and told Dean, the only other Gryffindor sixth year in the class, that she would see him at lunch, then made her way reluctantly toward Dumbledore's office.
She had spent WAY too much time there last year, and for pretty much all the wrong reasons. Except for the time she almost killed the Potions Master, then the tirade, as well as the punishment of being forced into Sixth Year Potions, with Sixth Year Slytherins and Gryffindors, had been well worth it.
Albus Dumbledore didn't look any different than he had at the beginning of the summer, still incredibly ancient. He was sitting at his desk and motioned for her to take a seat. Lucy would much rather have stood, or not have been there at all, but she did as she was told; it was the first day after all.
"Have a good summer, Miss Montero?"
Lucy nodded, not sure what to say.
Dumbledore nodded, "Good, good. The reason you need to see me today Lucy is that the Ministry has a request. Now, they have actually made it of me, but I thought you might want to here it."
Lucy waited for him to go on.
"They have requested that any student found to posses any… western capabilities be trained in them as soon as possible."
Lucy almost choked on her gum.
"They want what?"
"Just what I said Lucy. After the event of last year, with those servants of the Dark Lord reaching so close to Hogwarts, they have decided it would be wise if we also began to develop any potential… resources we might need."
Resources, Lucy thought to herself, sure, they aren't gifts or abilities, but wild freakish resources that will be looked down on whenever this thing is over. Over… that's when she remembered.
She looked Dumbledore straight in the eye. "I wasn't aware you were practicing."
"I'm not."
"So who is going to teach these students, if there are any."
"I was hoping you might."
Lucy had been expecting it. "What do I get?"
Dumbledore looked a but taken aback. "I beg your pardon?"
"What do I get, for teaching a bunch of Hogwarts kids whose parents probably won't want it made public what they are doing anyway, because its just barbarian magic in the first place. What do I get?"
"Well, naturally you will get some independent course study credit."
"A contract."
"What?"
"I want a contract signed, here and now that promises that any information, I don't care how tiny, that might, possibly affect the people of my Circle, gets passed on to them. Immediately, and without question or censure."
"Lucy, that isn't possible. You have to understand what is at stake."
"Frankly, headmaster, I couldn't care less. Unless you can come up with a better arrangement, or get yourself a different teacher, the only way western magic is being taught in this school is if the people of THIS world start treating us like human beings. And that starts with letting us defend our homes."
The headmaster's eyes, normally warm and soft, were heated and sharp.
"Lucy, I fully understand your feelings on this matter. But I will not jeopardize the life of a valued colleague and friend, his position is too important; you have to see that. Your people have protections of their own."
"Oh yes, and they worked so well against attacks from a world we don't fully comprehend. Listen, even if I wanted to, I'm sure that after last year, and what happened sixteen years ago, the Circle won't be too eager to start collaborating with the eastern world any time soon. And I won't jeopardize my standing with them, they are the only people I can trust anymore, and they never break their word."
"The Ministry of Magic has never broken its word to Espiritu or any other of the schools in the Circle."
"Who killed Paulo?"
"What?"
"Which were the Death Eaters that caused the plane carrying Ministry Workers and two Espiritu Adepts to crash into the ocean, killing everyone, including the pilots."
"I don't know."
"The Ministry promised to investigate, and they never did. For all I know the guilty parties are still roaming about free. And since I have a bit of a personal stake in that little event, I think I have cause to be a little angry at the Ministry for not keeping its word."
"And you think that justifies not helping in a project that could lead to the end of all this and finally bring those accountable to justice?"
"Judging from what happened the last time people from around here got their hands on eastern magic, let me think, yes!"
"That's enough Lucy."
She stared back at the headmaster, who stared right back at her.
"I thought you would be enlightened enough to see past your own interests toward the greater good."
And I thought, she mused, that you would finally understand that I am not in this for the greater good, or for some stupid battle that maybe you think I'm destined to fight. I don't believe in that, any of it. I believe in me and Diego and the rock that Espiritu is made of, and to hell with the rest of it. They don't matter.
She hadn't spoken yet, and the headmaster turned back to his parchment and waved her away with his hand.
"You may go now, Lucy."
She set her jaw, grabbed her satchel from the floor, and left.
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It didn't help that Potions was her afternoon class that day.
Professor Snape gave her the same sneer he seemed to reserve for all Gryffindors, and Lucy sat under it unflinching. It was because of Snape's currant position as a spy among the servants of the Dark Lord that Lucy was alive; he had warned Dumbledore at the moment of the attack that Lucy might feel some 'residual effects.' Those effects had nearly killed her. What she had not learned until later was that Snape had known of the attack on her school for over two weeks, and no one had bothered to warn Espiritu. She had lost her entire family, and Dumbledore and the rest of his spies still did not plan to inform any other Western schools if they were about to come under attack. Lucy blamed Snape for the loss of her family and the deaths of the twelve fresh additions to the Espiritu graveyard she had found when she came home over the summer. She would hate him for the rest of her life, and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
She had, however, not to bait a bear in its den, so to speak. The last time she had acted up in Snape's class she'd been forced to take a double load of potions, and she didn't intent to repeat the experience. She slipped calmly into her seat next to Lavender and Parvati, in front of Dean and Seamus, and across from Draco Malfoy and Vincent Crabbe. The silvery blond boy gave her a sneer and pretended to sniff.
"Ouff? What smells? Do you smell something Crabbe? What is that unpleasant aroma?"
Crabbe grinned and joined in, at which Lucy stuck out her chin, leaned her head on her hand, and began to sing softly. "Born in the USA, I was, born in the USA… Born in the USA"
Crabbe's ears turned a bright shade of pink, and anyone who had been there to witness the spectacle at King's Cross last year couldn't help but start giggling, even the Slytherins.
Which was when Snape slammed his textbook down, gave Lucy a stare that would have withered flowers, and began his lecture.
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"You actually said no?"
"Shouted no would be closer to the truth."
"At the headmaster?"
"Oh, don't scold me Seamus. I know I should have kept my temper but every time I think of that slimy, scaly, piss poor excuse for a human being…."
"Tell me you're talking about Snape, because if you're talking about Dumbledore…"
"I thought Dumbledore would understand!"
"He didn't?"
"He was asking more than was possible."
"Was he?"
Lucy stopped her pacing around the common room and stared at the tall boy where he sat in a chair, trimming errant twigs from his broomstick. Tryouts were in half an hour.
"You think I should have said yes too, don't you? Hermione gave me the same look…"
Seamus got to his feet, setting the broom gently down before crossing towards her quickly.
"Don't get up on your high horse with me Montero. I just think that you aren't looking at this straight. I mean, Dumbledore, he offered you what you wanted, didn't he? You wanted eastern and western magic to be less distant. Well, here's your chance. You tell them the truth about what your world is like, it's the first step."
Lucy didn't answer him. She was in a mood to be sullen and angry, not a mood to be reasonable and cooperative. But, she sighed, that wasn't Seamus's fault. She turned and looked out the window, people with brooms slung over their shoulders were starting to make their way back towards the castle.
"The Hufflepuff tryouts are over, you'd better get out there, you wanted to get a good warm up, remember?"
She heard him sigh behind her, and she swore she could hear him nervously running his fingers through his hair. She mentally kicked herself, she had forgotten he was bound to be tied up in knots as it was.
Relenting she turned around and forced a smile, he knew it was forced, but that didn't bother him. She walked over and stood on a coffee table to give him a big hug, then turned him by the shoulders and shoved him towards the door.
"Go on, knock 'em dead."
Seamus shuddered, "Lucy, for future reference, when someone is going out to a field full of Bludgers and clubs, don't ever use that phrase again."
She shrugged, "I didn't mean YOU."
He shook his head, grabbed his broom, and headed out the portrait hole.
Lucy said a quick prayer for the sixth years trying out, and for Harry. He had renounced his privilege as co-captain to make the final decision as regarded new team members, citing that too many of his close friends were perspectives this year to make him as impartial as he should be. Ron hadn't understood that at first, but Hermione had made good and sure he did and that he supported Harry in it, Lucy had heard them from the other end of the table at lunch that afternoon. The decision was now passed on to a vote by senior team members.
She didn't want to watch, not really. She knew with Seamus up there she'd be terribly nervous. He'd already told her she didn't have to come, but something in the way he had said it made her feel certain that he wanted her there anyway. So she sighed, shoved her wand in her pocket, and headed out the portrait hole.
Marguerite was standing outside.
"Marguerite? What are you doing here, are you all right?"
The tiny girl nodded.
"How did you find this place?"
She shrugged, "I just followed the Gryfindors. I didn't hear the password though, I just figured you'd all come out for the Quidditch trials, and waited here."
Lucy nodded, noting at the same time how the girl kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
"Is something wrong chica? You look nervous."
Marguerite nodded.
"Well…."
"It's not me, its Che- Parker."
"What's wrong with him?"
She shrugged. "I don't know, but something is up. He said he'd meet me and we'd go watch the Hufflepuff's tryout together, but he never showed up. And I know we all just met but that-"
"Doesn't seem like Parker, you're right." She was an observant kid, Lucy thought. And standing a new friend up, especially when that new friend was the first friend he had made at Hogwarts, was decidedly unlike the little boy who had refused to get into a boat until Marguerite was found.
Marguerite was looking up at her, waiting for her to tell her what to do.
"Well," Lucy sighed, "I guess the only thing to do is to go find him, huh?"
"How are we going to do that?"
"I suppose we ought to start with the common room. Have you been there yet?'
Marguerite shook her head. "No one to follow, they were all out at the pitch."
"Right. Well, there should be plenty to follow now, so lead the way."
And so she followed the pixie like blond child, who headed towards the more heavily trafficked hallways, until she spied a stream of students with brooms and Hufflepuff badges on their robes. They casually made their way into the river of bustling adolescents and followed them on a winding course through the halls and up staircases. They were ona stairway lined with old portraits when the whole mess of students turned to the left, toward the wall, pushing aside a tapestry and going through. Lucy and Marguerite followed, and emerged in the middle of a long, wide corridor Lucy had never been in. There were no doors off of it, just lots of paintings, and an enormous fireplace in the opposite wall. As Lucy watched, the first of the students approached the fireplace and said something Lucy couldn't make out. At that moment the physically moved aside, and one by one students disappeared into the space behind it. As the two Gryfindors approached, they could see that a stone had swung back in the back wall of the fireplace, and you could see through it into a warm and well lit common room. Marguerite made to go in, but Lucy held her back, instead approaching a girl who looked to be a year or so younger than herself who was about to go in.
"Excuse me."
The girl looked up, then looked at both of them carefully, her eyes not missing the Gryfindor badges.
"Oh, hello. Waiting for someone are you?"
"Not exactly, um, you don't by any chance know a boy named Parker- er Chester P. Parker?"
The girl rolled her eyes. "The first year? Yeah, I know him, everyone does, been crying all afternoon. My friend, he's a prefect, missed half the trials trying to calm him down. Does he know you're here?"
Lucy shook her head. "Do you know where he is?"
The girl nodded, "Unless, by some miracle, he's stopped, he'll be on the roof."
"The roof?" Squeaked Marguerite, speaking for the first time.
The Hufflepuff grinned. "You've never been up there? Come on, I'll take you, we'll sure as hell never get him to come out here at any rate."
Lucy looked at Marguerite, who shrugged, and the girls walked through the fireplace and into the common room, the stone sliding back after them, and Lucy could hear the flames return to their previous position.
The Hufflepuff common room looked a lot like the Gryffindor common room, in that it was full of students and chairs, sofas and tables, although she did notice that there were an unusual amount of fireplaces. Their new friend steered them toward a small, tight, circle staircase made of stone in the middle of the room. There were sofas all around the bottom of it, it seemed a popular spot. They followed her up through a hole in the ceiling.
And emerged on the roof. Well, basically the roof, there was a glass ceiling above them, through which Lucy could make out the grounds on the that side of the castle, and the Quidditch pitch off in the distance. The place was full of gardens, like a giant greenhouse, but also covered in benches, with blankets stacked near them, a number of them shielded from view by groupings of trellises covered in flowers and ivy.
Marguerite could not keep herself from walking with her head thrown back to look at the sky.
The Hufflepuff girl laughed. "It's one way glass. From the outside, it looks just like any other part of the roof, powerful strong, too, gets plenty of snow on it. Every winter, it's the first years job to go clean the snow off of it, gets downright eerie out here when its all covered. Very neat in the rain."
"You send them out on the real roof?"
"Oh don't look at me like that! It's great, I volunteered for snow duty my second year so I could do it again. Hufflepuff has a set of old brooms, really awful for Quidditch, terribly old, but good enough to send the first years out to either do a melting spell, or sweep the snow off with longer brooms. I prefer sweeping, its lots more fun. You can actually climb about out there normally, this is a pretty flat part of the castle roof, although towards the end the eaves drop off pretty steep. See there,"
She pointed to a set of steps that led right up to the glass.
"Door's right there. First years aren't supposed to climb alone though, not till after the first half of term. We gave them all a tour of the safer routes last night. Don't think Chester'll be out there though, didn't seem too keen on it."
"It's Parker." Marguerite added pointedly.
"Of course. Anyways, that's the Hufflepuff roof. You two must not know too many of us, we love showing it off, never met someone hanging around the entrance that hadn't."
At that point the girl perked her head up and crossed the roof, in between two small garden plots, one of flowers, the other of some strange plant that seemed to be humming, and towards the far corner. Now that they were closer Lucy and Marguerite heard it too, sniffling, coming from behind a thick wall of ivy that seemed to pull off the wall of its own accord and drape like a tent.
"Yup, " clucked the girl, "He's at Helga's."
"What?"
"Helga, Helga Hufflepuff, that's her bench in there. Cushion stone, if I remember correctly, awful soft. Almost all the first years end up crying in there eventually, I did twice. Good luck."
With that she clapped Lucy on the back and made her way back towards the hole in the roof that lead to the common room.
Lucy sighed and pulled the ivy curtain aside, revealing Chester P. Parker, eyes red rimmed and puffy, sitting on a semi-circular stone bench, his knees drawn up to his chin. He looked up at them in surprise.
"Wha—hicup--- what are you doing h-h-here?"
"Looking for you chico, can we join you?"
"Sure," he roughly wiped his eyes with his arm and put his legs down as Lucy and Marguerite took seats on either side of him.
"Nice place you got here," Lucy looked around at the ivy that surrounded them. The only light was what was able to flicker through the curtain. It was like being in an ivy teepee full of holes.
Parker nodded.
Marguerite handed him a handkerchief, with which he blew his nose loudly.
"I waited for you to go watch the Quidditch."
He nodded, "I'm sorry, I meant to come, but then…"
"What happened?"
The mop of black curls shook violently.
"No? Come on, it might make you feel better."
Another shake.
Marguerite sighed.
"Fine, don't tell us, but will you at least come down from here? The girl said you'd been up here all afternoon."
Parker nodded.
They managed to get his face cleaned up, and Lucy led the way as Marguerite helped Parker down the staircase and back to the common room.
"You gonna be ok?" Lucy squatted down to look the youngster in the eye. Chester nodded. Marguerite took a seat next to him.
"Go ahead Lucy, I'm gonna stick around anyway."
Lucy nodded.
"I'll see you two tomorrow."
She made her way back to the fireplace and headed for the quidditch pitch as fast as she could.
Lucy got up early the next morning, far earlier than she needed to be to make it to breakfast. As soon as she was washed and dressed she left Gryffindor tower and struck out on a rather bizarre route, down branching corridors, slipping through hidden halls accessed only by lifting tapestries or pushing stones, until she found herself in a little used hallway, standing under a positively mournful looking tapestry that ran along near the ceiling. It didn't look like it had been moved in the past three months, but she wanted to make sure. So, using the hovering ability she had been trained to develop since childhood, she raised herself about seven feet above the floor, and gingerly pulled the fabric aside. The entrance was there. She maneuvered herself into a tall, narrow, coffin like space and stepped onto the floor. Behind her a stone slid back into place, blocking her exit. She hovered about half an inch off the floor, and in front of her another panel slid open, and Lucy found her way into a room that no one else in the castle, with the probable exception of Dumbledore, knew about.
This had been the workroom of Don Asriel, the only other Espiritu to ever come to Hogwarts, but who had been dead for over a hundred years.
She didn't have time for more than a quick perusal, but it seemed that what had been a secret for so long had remained a secret, which was all that she cared about. She had a bad feeling that the people who destroyed her home and those of so many others last year would do far worse to get their hands on what was in that room.
She reset the guards and made her way down to breakfast, throwing a wink at Marguerite and Parker. They may have been in two different houses, but the Ravenclaw table was next to the Hufflepuff's, and the two first years had positioned themselves on the innermost set of benches, so they were still able to carry on multiple conversations with their house mates and each other.
She slid into a spot between Dean and Seamus, opposite Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Ron looked awful, and his food was untouched.
"He sick or somfin?" She gestured with her fork toward Ron, her mouth full of toast.
Hermione rolled her eyes and grimaced. "Quidditch tryouts this afternoon."
"So soon?"
Harry shook his head. "Slytherin has the field booked almost all week for practice, this is the only time we could get if we wanted to be able to train enough. We lost almost half the team with last years graduating class."
Lucy and Ron were not what you would exactly call friends, but she had gone through a try out of sorts herself last year, to advance out of intermediate status in the eastern Circle, and she knew what nerves the poor guy was going through.
"You ought to eat. If you do get sick then you'll be dry heaving, pop a blood vessel in your eye, then you'll really look scary."
Seamus made a face and put down the bite of eggs he was about to enjoy. "Oh, thanks Lucy. I really, really wanted to hear that. Now I'm likely to get just as sick as him!"
Ron turned green. Lucy turned to Seamus. "You?"
Seamus grinned. "Are you kidding? With all those spaces open? Between Fred, George, Katie and Angelina graduating, and with Lux's family moving back her and her brother back to Sydney, there's never been better odds."
Lavender and Parvati, who were on the other side of Seamus, looked at each other and groaned. "We are never going to have another breakfast conversation that doesn't involve Quidditch ever again."
Hermione grumbled, "Like we get much of anything else now."
Lucy chose to each her melon, the boys just gave each other the, 'Girls just don't understand,' look, and turned back to their meals. Well, all except Ron that is.
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Lucy's first class of the day was Ancient Runes. But, as was a general rule, first classes of the year really didn't count, unless you were in Transfiguration or Potions, and all Professor Nostrad did was review the areas studied last year and briefly describe what was going to be covered in the next. Which was a good thing, since Lucy was in such knots over what she had to do next that she couldn't focus on much of anything.
It had come that summer, along with the traditional Hogwarts letter detailing the supplies and books she would need for the next year; not that that was a large help seeing as she was home in New Mexico at the time, fortunately she had bought most of what she would need earlier in the summer before returning home.
It had been a letter within the letter, from some obscure department within the Ministry that handled her work scholarship that had made her so nervous. Something about her contract being open, and a necessary meeting with the headmaster scheduled today, right after Ancient Runes, as a note on her schedule reminded her.
She reluctantly got to her feet and told Dean, the only other Gryffindor sixth year in the class, that she would see him at lunch, then made her way reluctantly toward Dumbledore's office.
She had spent WAY too much time there last year, and for pretty much all the wrong reasons. Except for the time she almost killed the Potions Master, then the tirade, as well as the punishment of being forced into Sixth Year Potions, with Sixth Year Slytherins and Gryffindors, had been well worth it.
Albus Dumbledore didn't look any different than he had at the beginning of the summer, still incredibly ancient. He was sitting at his desk and motioned for her to take a seat. Lucy would much rather have stood, or not have been there at all, but she did as she was told; it was the first day after all.
"Have a good summer, Miss Montero?"
Lucy nodded, not sure what to say.
Dumbledore nodded, "Good, good. The reason you need to see me today Lucy is that the Ministry has a request. Now, they have actually made it of me, but I thought you might want to here it."
Lucy waited for him to go on.
"They have requested that any student found to posses any… western capabilities be trained in them as soon as possible."
Lucy almost choked on her gum.
"They want what?"
"Just what I said Lucy. After the event of last year, with those servants of the Dark Lord reaching so close to Hogwarts, they have decided it would be wise if we also began to develop any potential… resources we might need."
Resources, Lucy thought to herself, sure, they aren't gifts or abilities, but wild freakish resources that will be looked down on whenever this thing is over. Over… that's when she remembered.
She looked Dumbledore straight in the eye. "I wasn't aware you were practicing."
"I'm not."
"So who is going to teach these students, if there are any."
"I was hoping you might."
Lucy had been expecting it. "What do I get?"
Dumbledore looked a but taken aback. "I beg your pardon?"
"What do I get, for teaching a bunch of Hogwarts kids whose parents probably won't want it made public what they are doing anyway, because its just barbarian magic in the first place. What do I get?"
"Well, naturally you will get some independent course study credit."
"A contract."
"What?"
"I want a contract signed, here and now that promises that any information, I don't care how tiny, that might, possibly affect the people of my Circle, gets passed on to them. Immediately, and without question or censure."
"Lucy, that isn't possible. You have to understand what is at stake."
"Frankly, headmaster, I couldn't care less. Unless you can come up with a better arrangement, or get yourself a different teacher, the only way western magic is being taught in this school is if the people of THIS world start treating us like human beings. And that starts with letting us defend our homes."
The headmaster's eyes, normally warm and soft, were heated and sharp.
"Lucy, I fully understand your feelings on this matter. But I will not jeopardize the life of a valued colleague and friend, his position is too important; you have to see that. Your people have protections of their own."
"Oh yes, and they worked so well against attacks from a world we don't fully comprehend. Listen, even if I wanted to, I'm sure that after last year, and what happened sixteen years ago, the Circle won't be too eager to start collaborating with the eastern world any time soon. And I won't jeopardize my standing with them, they are the only people I can trust anymore, and they never break their word."
"The Ministry of Magic has never broken its word to Espiritu or any other of the schools in the Circle."
"Who killed Paulo?"
"What?"
"Which were the Death Eaters that caused the plane carrying Ministry Workers and two Espiritu Adepts to crash into the ocean, killing everyone, including the pilots."
"I don't know."
"The Ministry promised to investigate, and they never did. For all I know the guilty parties are still roaming about free. And since I have a bit of a personal stake in that little event, I think I have cause to be a little angry at the Ministry for not keeping its word."
"And you think that justifies not helping in a project that could lead to the end of all this and finally bring those accountable to justice?"
"Judging from what happened the last time people from around here got their hands on eastern magic, let me think, yes!"
"That's enough Lucy."
She stared back at the headmaster, who stared right back at her.
"I thought you would be enlightened enough to see past your own interests toward the greater good."
And I thought, she mused, that you would finally understand that I am not in this for the greater good, or for some stupid battle that maybe you think I'm destined to fight. I don't believe in that, any of it. I believe in me and Diego and the rock that Espiritu is made of, and to hell with the rest of it. They don't matter.
She hadn't spoken yet, and the headmaster turned back to his parchment and waved her away with his hand.
"You may go now, Lucy."
She set her jaw, grabbed her satchel from the floor, and left.
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It didn't help that Potions was her afternoon class that day.
Professor Snape gave her the same sneer he seemed to reserve for all Gryffindors, and Lucy sat under it unflinching. It was because of Snape's currant position as a spy among the servants of the Dark Lord that Lucy was alive; he had warned Dumbledore at the moment of the attack that Lucy might feel some 'residual effects.' Those effects had nearly killed her. What she had not learned until later was that Snape had known of the attack on her school for over two weeks, and no one had bothered to warn Espiritu. She had lost her entire family, and Dumbledore and the rest of his spies still did not plan to inform any other Western schools if they were about to come under attack. Lucy blamed Snape for the loss of her family and the deaths of the twelve fresh additions to the Espiritu graveyard she had found when she came home over the summer. She would hate him for the rest of her life, and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
She had, however, not to bait a bear in its den, so to speak. The last time she had acted up in Snape's class she'd been forced to take a double load of potions, and she didn't intent to repeat the experience. She slipped calmly into her seat next to Lavender and Parvati, in front of Dean and Seamus, and across from Draco Malfoy and Vincent Crabbe. The silvery blond boy gave her a sneer and pretended to sniff.
"Ouff? What smells? Do you smell something Crabbe? What is that unpleasant aroma?"
Crabbe grinned and joined in, at which Lucy stuck out her chin, leaned her head on her hand, and began to sing softly. "Born in the USA, I was, born in the USA… Born in the USA"
Crabbe's ears turned a bright shade of pink, and anyone who had been there to witness the spectacle at King's Cross last year couldn't help but start giggling, even the Slytherins.
Which was when Snape slammed his textbook down, gave Lucy a stare that would have withered flowers, and began his lecture.
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"You actually said no?"
"Shouted no would be closer to the truth."
"At the headmaster?"
"Oh, don't scold me Seamus. I know I should have kept my temper but every time I think of that slimy, scaly, piss poor excuse for a human being…."
"Tell me you're talking about Snape, because if you're talking about Dumbledore…"
"I thought Dumbledore would understand!"
"He didn't?"
"He was asking more than was possible."
"Was he?"
Lucy stopped her pacing around the common room and stared at the tall boy where he sat in a chair, trimming errant twigs from his broomstick. Tryouts were in half an hour.
"You think I should have said yes too, don't you? Hermione gave me the same look…"
Seamus got to his feet, setting the broom gently down before crossing towards her quickly.
"Don't get up on your high horse with me Montero. I just think that you aren't looking at this straight. I mean, Dumbledore, he offered you what you wanted, didn't he? You wanted eastern and western magic to be less distant. Well, here's your chance. You tell them the truth about what your world is like, it's the first step."
Lucy didn't answer him. She was in a mood to be sullen and angry, not a mood to be reasonable and cooperative. But, she sighed, that wasn't Seamus's fault. She turned and looked out the window, people with brooms slung over their shoulders were starting to make their way back towards the castle.
"The Hufflepuff tryouts are over, you'd better get out there, you wanted to get a good warm up, remember?"
She heard him sigh behind her, and she swore she could hear him nervously running his fingers through his hair. She mentally kicked herself, she had forgotten he was bound to be tied up in knots as it was.
Relenting she turned around and forced a smile, he knew it was forced, but that didn't bother him. She walked over and stood on a coffee table to give him a big hug, then turned him by the shoulders and shoved him towards the door.
"Go on, knock 'em dead."
Seamus shuddered, "Lucy, for future reference, when someone is going out to a field full of Bludgers and clubs, don't ever use that phrase again."
She shrugged, "I didn't mean YOU."
He shook his head, grabbed his broom, and headed out the portrait hole.
Lucy said a quick prayer for the sixth years trying out, and for Harry. He had renounced his privilege as co-captain to make the final decision as regarded new team members, citing that too many of his close friends were perspectives this year to make him as impartial as he should be. Ron hadn't understood that at first, but Hermione had made good and sure he did and that he supported Harry in it, Lucy had heard them from the other end of the table at lunch that afternoon. The decision was now passed on to a vote by senior team members.
She didn't want to watch, not really. She knew with Seamus up there she'd be terribly nervous. He'd already told her she didn't have to come, but something in the way he had said it made her feel certain that he wanted her there anyway. So she sighed, shoved her wand in her pocket, and headed out the portrait hole.
Marguerite was standing outside.
"Marguerite? What are you doing here, are you all right?"
The tiny girl nodded.
"How did you find this place?"
She shrugged, "I just followed the Gryfindors. I didn't hear the password though, I just figured you'd all come out for the Quidditch trials, and waited here."
Lucy nodded, noting at the same time how the girl kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
"Is something wrong chica? You look nervous."
Marguerite nodded.
"Well…."
"It's not me, its Che- Parker."
"What's wrong with him?"
She shrugged. "I don't know, but something is up. He said he'd meet me and we'd go watch the Hufflepuff's tryout together, but he never showed up. And I know we all just met but that-"
"Doesn't seem like Parker, you're right." She was an observant kid, Lucy thought. And standing a new friend up, especially when that new friend was the first friend he had made at Hogwarts, was decidedly unlike the little boy who had refused to get into a boat until Marguerite was found.
Marguerite was looking up at her, waiting for her to tell her what to do.
"Well," Lucy sighed, "I guess the only thing to do is to go find him, huh?"
"How are we going to do that?"
"I suppose we ought to start with the common room. Have you been there yet?'
Marguerite shook her head. "No one to follow, they were all out at the pitch."
"Right. Well, there should be plenty to follow now, so lead the way."
And so she followed the pixie like blond child, who headed towards the more heavily trafficked hallways, until she spied a stream of students with brooms and Hufflepuff badges on their robes. They casually made their way into the river of bustling adolescents and followed them on a winding course through the halls and up staircases. They were ona stairway lined with old portraits when the whole mess of students turned to the left, toward the wall, pushing aside a tapestry and going through. Lucy and Marguerite followed, and emerged in the middle of a long, wide corridor Lucy had never been in. There were no doors off of it, just lots of paintings, and an enormous fireplace in the opposite wall. As Lucy watched, the first of the students approached the fireplace and said something Lucy couldn't make out. At that moment the physically moved aside, and one by one students disappeared into the space behind it. As the two Gryfindors approached, they could see that a stone had swung back in the back wall of the fireplace, and you could see through it into a warm and well lit common room. Marguerite made to go in, but Lucy held her back, instead approaching a girl who looked to be a year or so younger than herself who was about to go in.
"Excuse me."
The girl looked up, then looked at both of them carefully, her eyes not missing the Gryfindor badges.
"Oh, hello. Waiting for someone are you?"
"Not exactly, um, you don't by any chance know a boy named Parker- er Chester P. Parker?"
The girl rolled her eyes. "The first year? Yeah, I know him, everyone does, been crying all afternoon. My friend, he's a prefect, missed half the trials trying to calm him down. Does he know you're here?"
Lucy shook her head. "Do you know where he is?"
The girl nodded, "Unless, by some miracle, he's stopped, he'll be on the roof."
"The roof?" Squeaked Marguerite, speaking for the first time.
The Hufflepuff grinned. "You've never been up there? Come on, I'll take you, we'll sure as hell never get him to come out here at any rate."
Lucy looked at Marguerite, who shrugged, and the girls walked through the fireplace and into the common room, the stone sliding back after them, and Lucy could hear the flames return to their previous position.
The Hufflepuff common room looked a lot like the Gryffindor common room, in that it was full of students and chairs, sofas and tables, although she did notice that there were an unusual amount of fireplaces. Their new friend steered them toward a small, tight, circle staircase made of stone in the middle of the room. There were sofas all around the bottom of it, it seemed a popular spot. They followed her up through a hole in the ceiling.
And emerged on the roof. Well, basically the roof, there was a glass ceiling above them, through which Lucy could make out the grounds on the that side of the castle, and the Quidditch pitch off in the distance. The place was full of gardens, like a giant greenhouse, but also covered in benches, with blankets stacked near them, a number of them shielded from view by groupings of trellises covered in flowers and ivy.
Marguerite could not keep herself from walking with her head thrown back to look at the sky.
The Hufflepuff girl laughed. "It's one way glass. From the outside, it looks just like any other part of the roof, powerful strong, too, gets plenty of snow on it. Every winter, it's the first years job to go clean the snow off of it, gets downright eerie out here when its all covered. Very neat in the rain."
"You send them out on the real roof?"
"Oh don't look at me like that! It's great, I volunteered for snow duty my second year so I could do it again. Hufflepuff has a set of old brooms, really awful for Quidditch, terribly old, but good enough to send the first years out to either do a melting spell, or sweep the snow off with longer brooms. I prefer sweeping, its lots more fun. You can actually climb about out there normally, this is a pretty flat part of the castle roof, although towards the end the eaves drop off pretty steep. See there,"
She pointed to a set of steps that led right up to the glass.
"Door's right there. First years aren't supposed to climb alone though, not till after the first half of term. We gave them all a tour of the safer routes last night. Don't think Chester'll be out there though, didn't seem too keen on it."
"It's Parker." Marguerite added pointedly.
"Of course. Anyways, that's the Hufflepuff roof. You two must not know too many of us, we love showing it off, never met someone hanging around the entrance that hadn't."
At that point the girl perked her head up and crossed the roof, in between two small garden plots, one of flowers, the other of some strange plant that seemed to be humming, and towards the far corner. Now that they were closer Lucy and Marguerite heard it too, sniffling, coming from behind a thick wall of ivy that seemed to pull off the wall of its own accord and drape like a tent.
"Yup, " clucked the girl, "He's at Helga's."
"What?"
"Helga, Helga Hufflepuff, that's her bench in there. Cushion stone, if I remember correctly, awful soft. Almost all the first years end up crying in there eventually, I did twice. Good luck."
With that she clapped Lucy on the back and made her way back towards the hole in the roof that lead to the common room.
Lucy sighed and pulled the ivy curtain aside, revealing Chester P. Parker, eyes red rimmed and puffy, sitting on a semi-circular stone bench, his knees drawn up to his chin. He looked up at them in surprise.
"Wha—hicup--- what are you doing h-h-here?"
"Looking for you chico, can we join you?"
"Sure," he roughly wiped his eyes with his arm and put his legs down as Lucy and Marguerite took seats on either side of him.
"Nice place you got here," Lucy looked around at the ivy that surrounded them. The only light was what was able to flicker through the curtain. It was like being in an ivy teepee full of holes.
Parker nodded.
Marguerite handed him a handkerchief, with which he blew his nose loudly.
"I waited for you to go watch the Quidditch."
He nodded, "I'm sorry, I meant to come, but then…"
"What happened?"
The mop of black curls shook violently.
"No? Come on, it might make you feel better."
Another shake.
Marguerite sighed.
"Fine, don't tell us, but will you at least come down from here? The girl said you'd been up here all afternoon."
Parker nodded.
They managed to get his face cleaned up, and Lucy led the way as Marguerite helped Parker down the staircase and back to the common room.
"You gonna be ok?" Lucy squatted down to look the youngster in the eye. Chester nodded. Marguerite took a seat next to him.
"Go ahead Lucy, I'm gonna stick around anyway."
Lucy nodded.
"I'll see you two tomorrow."
She made her way back to the fireplace and headed for the quidditch pitch as fast as she could.