Welcome to Hogwarts

Chapter Two

Nym readjusted her hood and huddled closer under her cloak. It was dark out, and a chill was blowing down from the hills, made colder by the waves that rocked the little boat she huddled in. There was a little lantern at the bow end, but it shed only a small, half hearted globe of light that didn't even light halfway toward the stern. Around her, two of the other students huddled within their cloaks, one of them muttering. The third sat up straight, headless of the chill and stared around with an expression of awe that Nym could barely discern. What the boy was awed at she couldn't think, because there was nothing to see. The black sky was overcast and menacing. She could feel the electricity in the air that heralded a thunder shower. Under the little boat the unseen black waves tossed them back and forth, as the boat unerringly followed the pale glows that marked the other boats.

She thought longingly of Rick, her one friend in this alien place. He'd have some joke, or cheerful explanation, to make all this a little less scary. She'd lost him on the platform as they unloaded, just after he told her not to worry about taking her trunk with her. She'd looked for him as she'd followed the giant man who had bellowed for the first years to go with him, and again when they had loaded into the boats. He hadn't been among the crowd. Nor, now she thought of it, had anyone else who looked to be any older than she herself. It was just the first years.

What if something went wrong, she thought in alarm. There was no one here who could do magic. Well, except the giant man in the lead boat, but he couldn't even see the boats at the back. He wouldn't be able to help them if something went wrong. Something moved in the water to the side of the boat. Just a wave, she thought, trying to reassure herself. Except that it was moving against the waves. She bit back a shriek when a dip of the bow showed her that the thing was huge, and pink, and obviously attached to something even bigger and pinker. It wouldn't hurt her, she thought, it couldn't. She was in a wizard boat, wasn't she? She couldn't be hurt by something outside. There had to be protective spells or something. Her mother had mentioned those. She'd said Hogwarts had all sorts of them, said it was the safest place there was. So whatever it was couldn't get her. Could it?

At her cousin's wedding when she was five, Nym had tripped in her fancy party shoes and set fire to the table. When she was eight, she'd knocked over a twenty foot display of canned produce in the local grocery. Once again, Nym's natural clumsiness caused her trouble. The little boat crested a particularly large swell and went airborne for a second before crashing into the trough between the waves. In that critical second, Nym had been leaning over the side, trying to get a better look at the giant pink whatever. When the boat hit the water, she fell overboard with a cry, swallowing the black water as she pitched headfirst into the pitching waves.

She battled furiously with the waves, trying to swim back up to the air in her sodden robes. She was a strong swimmer, but the wet fabric dragged her down. Her head broke the surface and she coughed, gasping air just as another wave broke over her. Down she went again, fighting with all her strength to stay up. When she found air again she was on a swell, and could see for quite a distance around. There were lights a little overhead, so small that they must be a long way off. Not the boats, because these were brighter and stayed in one place while she moved. The castle, then. She couldn't see the boats anywhere.

She tried to swim towards the castle, determined that there, at least, there must be land, but as if sensing her thoughts the water began to drag her farther away. Each time she was washed under she would come up again, coughing and gasping and farther away than ever from the lights. A few times she tried screaming for help, but either no one could hear her over the waves, or there was no one to hear. She was going to die, she knew it. She hadn't even made it to Hogwarts, and already she was going to die.

Something grabbed her robes and pulled her down, under the surface of the lake. She fought, gasping air just as she was wrenched down under the throbbing waves. Please, she thought, let it not be the pink thing. She couldn't see anything in the black water. No, she could. There was something, something holding her… a person.

The person held up a dim lantern of sorts. There must have been something funny about it, because she could have sworn the person, a hard faced woman, had green skin. Her hair, what Nym could see of it, seemed a dark blue. "You're one of those students, aren't you?"

Nym was so shocked at being addressed, by some unknown woman underwater in the middle of a storm that she gasped, swallowing water as she did. She fought to hold her breath and nod, knowing she had almost no air left in her lungs. Almost no time left to live.

The woman grabbed the back of her robes and dragged her through the water at a terrifying speed, sometimes surfacing for a second so Nym could gasp a breath, inhaling what seemed gallons of lake water each time she did. The lights seemed to be getting bigger and brighter. That's it, Nym thought. I'm dead, and this woman's an angel taking me to Heaven. I guess Grandma was right, and there is a God. I'm really going to catch it now. What'll Mother say?

The angel heaved her up on a dry stone pier, where she coughed and wretched up the lake water. She couldn't see any lights anymore, but there was a sort of glow about the place, and the water was calmer. The little boats, which she had left what seemed a life time ago, were tied up a little way along the pier, their lights darkened. This can't be Heaven, Nym thought as she lay down on the pier, gulping the sweet air. You're supposed to feel good in Heaven, and there's supposed to be lots of light. Right now, I feel the worst I ever have, I think.

Thinking of Heaven reminded her of the angel, who was perhaps just a woman, who had saved her. She cast around wildly for a second, before her muscles took on the consistency of the water she had just escaped and she crumpled back onto the stone. In her frantic search she hadn't seen the woman anywhere. She hadn't seen anyone. She was alone in the dark, in a strange place. She wanted to cry, but her body couldn't manage the effort.

I want to go home, she thought miserably. Home is where I belong. Home is safe and warm and dry and I understand home. Not this place. This is cold and dark and scary and nobody talks to me.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she made out the outline of a large door, edged in shadow that wasn't quite as deep as the rest of the darkness around her. There was light on the other side of the door, she was sure. Light, and maybe warmth. If only she could stand, she could go to it.

She tried a few times, but she could hardly lift her head. She could just lie there. The stone floor wasn't so bad, really. It was getting more comfortable all the time, and a bit warmer, from her body and… no, she thought fiercely. I will get to that damn door.

The very word damn gave her the strength to sit up, where she promptly retched just to the side, over the edge of the pier into the water. She wasn't allowed to use it at home. Mother said it was a bad word, and that good girls shouldn't even know it. Daddy said it a lot though, when he was talking about work, and Nym had heard him use it. She also heard a lot of other words, which she didn't dare repeat in front of Mother.

She repeated them over and over in her head now, as she crawled along the stone floor to the door. By the time she reached the doors, leaning against them and leaning her head back, she wasn't scared anymore. Just very angry.

She could feel carvings in the wood behind her head. Gripping them in her frozen fingers, she pulled herself up to her feet, leaning heavily on the door. Which promptly swung inward, dumping her in a heap on the warm stone of inside, with a very bright light shining from somewhere overhead. She gasped a few of the words out loud.

She was in a very brightly lit space. Her eyes weren't adjusted, so she couldn't make out the details, but it seemed very large and very grand. There was a door a hundred paces off, a very big set of double doors that opened into what seemed an infinite space. She could hear noise from over there, like hundreds of people whispering, and a few shouting. Grabbing hold of a suit of armor next to her, she pulled herself to her feet, where she swayed. She didn't even notice when the metal figure put out its arm to steady her.

Through shear will she marched towards the big door and the noise. She wasn't sure why she was going there, instead of lying there on the nice warm stone. She staggered a few time, tripped a few more, but made herself keep her feet. Finally she reached the doors. She just wanted to lie down, go to sleep. When she woke up she'd be back home, and her mother would be calling her for breakfast.

Dreams don't hurt this bad, she thought bitterly. She leaned against the door, concentrating on not falling over. Once she fell down, she knew she wouldn't be able to get back up.

"There she is," someone yelled, at what seemed a great distance. Nym was so surprised to be able to understand the babble that she had just let wash over her that she forgot about staying upright. Her legs gave out under her and she sat down, hard.

There were people around her, fussing and talking. Someone wrapped her in a thick blanket. Someone else put a big mug to her lips. She sipped obediently, tasting something thick and warm that burned all the way down before settling like a little furnace in her stomach. The warmth spread along her arms and legs, restoring feeling and movement wherever it touched. She flexed her fingers, surprised to find how stiff they had become.

She looked up, seeing the people clearly. There was a woman with curly brown hair under a matron's cap and an apron, checking her pulse. A tiny man with a bushy white beard was adjusting the blanket around her. A tall, fierce looking woman was pushing back what seemed a tide of black. The water, she thought, it's come back to get me. It was cheated of me, and it wants me now. That was foolish, she realized a moment later, when she looked up and saw a sea of pale faces staring at her, jostling as the ones in the back tried to get a better look at her.

A very old man knelt beside her, looking at her with concern. He seemed a very nice man, if a very odd one. Much of his heavy plum robe was obscured, from her vantage, by a long white beard. Very young, cheerful blue eyes twinkled out at her from under half moon glasses.

"Ah, we seem to have found our errant pupil," he said quietly, and though Nym had the fleeting

impression that everyone heard him speak, it seemed he was making a little joke just for her benefit.

Nym looked at him, and at the matron woman, and the tiny man, and the stern woman, and the crowd of people trying to look at her.

"Wotcher, Hogwarts," she said, before her lunch of cheese sandwiches came up violently.