Marian looked around Dumbledore's office, listening to the drone of the wizards many gadgets. She remembered the small hovering creations that seemed to cover almost every available surface on her last visit, and it seemed that the number had increased. They bobbed and glittered as they moved, the brighter ones throwing rainbows across the room.
Unlike the first time she'd been in the office, all the paintings seemed to be in their proper place, and almost all of those were snoring happily. A few were reading books or studying what she was doing, but those were few and far between.
In the two weeks since Marian had arrived at Hogwarts she'd more or less adjusted to the sight of objects floating in random classrooms or the odd singed student. She attended her classes dutifully, and even turned in the assignments on time. The first-year books weren't particularly difficult in her opinion, they were simply poorly written. For the first time since she earned her masters in English she thanked her professors for making her suffer through both James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, since the wizarding books she was currently dealing with were written in the same convoluted, wandering manner. Her prior experience helped.
A lot.
She remembered the dour look on Snape's face when he handed her back her first assignments on preparing potion ingredients. Her paper had been free of the large red comments that marked those of her classmates. She guessed that he'd looked forward to seeing what she was made of, and had apparently thought her less than what she was capable of. The fact that she'd smiled at him only seemed to increase his bad mood.
"Hello," she muttered as she spied a tall, battered hat sitting in a corner. The poor thing looked like someone had rescued it from the bottom of a garbage pile. It was a dirty, spotted brown, with what looked like a poorly repaired slash across it.
"Wonder what they use you for," she said to herself, turning the hat around slowly. Despite its appearance it looked like someone had at least attempted to repair it. Thankfully, it didn't smell. Smiling to herself, she placed the hat on her head. It was heavier than she would have expected.
Here now, you're a new one aren't you?
The voice, old and gravely, was coming from inside her head.
Don't worry, I don't bite. Now let's see…
It felt like someone was rummaging around in her mind, looking at some things and discarding others.
Intelligent, that's for sure. Loyal, that's always a good sign. Hmmm, scheming? No no no, that's not it. You don't scheme. Survive, yes, that's it. You're a survivor. Brave…perhaps, but only when you need to be. A lot of false bravado here… misdirection…ambitious, yes and no… but where should you go?
Dumbledore said I wouldn't be sorted.
Oh, he did, did he? And yet here you are. Where would you find your friends…
Friends?
Haven't had many of those I see. Well, well, perhaps you don't belong anywhere at all…
Whoever was talking to her sounded confused, and she sighed in relief when the hat was removed.
"Very seldom has the hat failed to sort someone into a house. I believe the last time was when I was a student, and that was some years ago."
Dumbledore gently placed the hat back on its stand, and turned back to her. "The professors say that you are adjusting especially well to your new life here, Marian. Hagrid seems rather taken with you, and your talent with animals."
Marian blushed. Talent her butt. Not that the horses weren't beautiful, but they would have done back flips for anyone if they had sugar cubes. "They just wanted more treats," she muttered.
Dumbledore raised one snowy eyebrow. "Even Professor Snape has gone as far as to suggest that you be allowed to advance to the next level."
She blinked. Snape? Give praise? And his tongue hadn't fallen out?
"What do you think, my dear?"
That snapped her out of the semi-daze she'd gone into. "I don't know. Mostly I think I've been cheating."
"Cheating?"
"I took Latin at college, and most of those spells are Latin." She frowned. " At least they look like it. It's just pronunciation and knowing how to fling a piece of wood around. And as for potions, I've lived alone for a long time, and if I didn't know how to follow a recipe I'd probably have died of food poisoning by now."
For his part the old wizard didn't look the least chagrined. "And yet you seem to have an amazing capacity to learn and understand."
She tapped the side of her head. "Photographic memory, medically tested and approved. Show me anything and it's stuck in here. Thankfully, it starts to fade if I don't use it."
"You seem to be in a hurry to disprove your own talents, Marian."
Marian deflated somewhat, unsure of how to answer. "Well, it's the truth," she finally muttered, floating over to a bookcase nestled in the corner. Magical Mistakes, (Un)Forgettable Blunders in Wizarding History caught her attention, and she picked it up. The tome was huge, almost the size of her torso and at least forty pounds. She sat it on a nearby stand and carefully opened the crackling pages.
"The case of Egagora Bottlebeak, the lost Mugwump," she read aloud. "That's a real name?"
Dumbledore stepped forward. "Yes, a rather interesting woman who served as Supreme Mugwump of the Wizard Gamont. She attempted to make an eternal youth potion, but managed to do something quite different."
Marian scanned the table of contents. The story of Egagora went on for almost seventy five pages. "What happened to her?"
The headmaster sighed. " No one knows. When the smoke cleared all that was found were her clothes and shoes," he reported sadly, despite his twinkling eyes. "It was a shame, she was quite the eccentric, I understand. It was rumored that her lover was a centaur."
Dumbledore flipped a few pages until he came to a large sketch of a woman standing next to a unicorn. As she watched the image bowed, and smiling, jumped onto the animals back before disappearing into the nearby foliage.
"Needless to say, this drawing was done when she was much younger. What else does the book contain?"
"Galloping Gallflies - the Infestation of Hogwarts 1609, Inter-dimensional Crossfire: The Two Snortingtons, Love Potions Amuck – Higgelby Huggins Attempt at Spreading Good Will…" Marian rattled off. "Told you, what I see, I remember."
"Most impressive." Dumbledore placed the tome back on the shelf. "The reason I asked you here is because I would like for you to start taking second-year courses. Your tutors all agree that it would be best to continue challenging you. That is, if you agree."
"Ms. Elvbow! Ms. Elvbow!"
Marian stopped and turned around. Harry was running as fast as he could down the crowded hallway. She marveled again at how much he'd grown since she last saw him. The skinny little boy has definitely filled out considerably since the sixth grade.
"Hey!" Marian gathered Harry into a tight hug, feeling odd that now her head barely came to his chin. "How's it going?"
"Fine." Harry pulled out of the hug. "How've you been?"
Marian started walking down the hall again. "Good. Dumbledore's decided to move me up to second-year. More books, more tutoring… the usual. You?"
"Class," he answered. "Quidditch, more class." He smiled.
"Quidditch?"
Harry's smile widened, and he grabbed her hand. "Come on, practice starts in fifteen minutes. You've enough time to grab a cloak and head out."
Quidditch was something Marian would never have imagined. At first she'd taken out her new potions text and began studying while Harry and his teammates studied several large diagrams.
Then they mounted their brooms.
She couldn't believe that they were allowed to fly dozens of feet in the air on brooms with nothing securing them, let alone with those bludger things chasing after them half the time, ready to brain anyone who was unaware. After the first half hour she'd grown used enough to the sight of the players doing death-defying dives that she no longer found herself cringing every minute and actually began enjoying herself.
Go Harry! She thought to herself as Harry pulled up just short of crashing into one of the tall towers, holding the snitch above his head.
Marian rubbed her hands together furiously, cursing the cold. She'd barely gotten used to the weather in London, now she was dealing with a place substantially colder. She checked her watch, and cursed. It was nearly five-thirty, which meant that if she didn't hurry she'd be late for her study session with Snape.
"Harry! Harry!, Oh, crap." Marian started waving her arms furiously. After a few seconds her frantic movements caught his attention and he flew over. "Gotta go," she said breathlessly as she gathered the books and papers that were spread across the bench. "I'm gonna be late!"
"Late?"
"Snape… tutoring… almost time…" He caught the words and she twisted and turned, shoving things into her bag.
She ran down the steep steps of the Quidditch towers and across the lawn at a dead sprint, hitching her skirt up above her knees and slinging her bag across her shoulders. If she hurried she could make it, she knew it.
________
"I don't appreciate waiting, Ms. Elvbow."
Severus took in Marian's wild hair and red cheeks with distaste. He didn't know what she'd been doing to work herself into such as state, but whatever it was, it wasn't what they were supposed to be doing.
"It's just five minutes," the woman said as she swung her bag onto an empty table and began unpacking her supplies.
Snape sneered. "Five minutes that could have been better spent doing something other than waiting for you to appear so we could begin. My time is very precious, Ms. Elvbow."
"I'm sure it is," Marian muttered under her breath. "Students to fail, small animals to torture…"
"If you're quite done with your ineffectual comeback," Snape interrupted, righting her cauldron, which was currently resting on its side. "We have already wasted nearly ten minutes. As this session is only an hour long, that leaves you with fifty minutes to prepare the required potion."
Severus watched as the woman bit her tongue and kept her next comment to herself, though it was clear through the slamming of several different objects that she was upset by his remarks. He flicked his wand at the board, which was immediately covered with his sprawling script. "The method and ingredients are on the board, Ms. Elvbow. Despite the late start, you should be able to finish your potion in time, and copy the additional notes." With that he went back to his desk and started correcting the most recent failed attempts of his students to write proper essays.
Twenty minutes later a loud pop and a menacing fizzle interrupted his thoughts. He looked up and saw Marian's cauldron overflowing with yellow smoke that smelled like licorice.
"Don't breathe anything in!" he said, rushing over with wand at the ready. Before he could do anything she'd ran to the students cabinet and pulled out a vial full of powder.
"Don't-!" he shouted, then paused. She tossed the powder into the cauldron and backed away, the sleeve of her robes covering mouth and nose. Immediately, the smoking stopped.
Snape walked over and looked into the cauldron. The potion was now the proper color, though it was swirling quickly, a movement that began to slow as he watched. "What did you use?"
"Powdered nettle," Marian answered, the words muffled by her sleeve. "It has neutralizing properties, works best with crushed stinger beetles."
"You didn't inhale anything, did you?"
Marian shook her head. "I don't think so."
Before she could protest Snape sat her in a chair and began feeling her throat.
"Hey, what the-"
"You added the yew too soon," he said absently. "The heat was too high. Instead of a soothing balm you made a poison. If inhaled it will swell the lymph nodes and you'll choke to death."
That effectively stopped whatever she was about to say. He pressed harder and she winced. There was some swelling then, but nothing to be worried about.
Snape rose and walked to a cabinet, pulling out a vial almost without looking. "Here," he said. "It's an anti-inflammatory. It should help with the tenderness."
"Now," he said after she'd taken the potion. "What had your attention so rapt that you missed the most important step in this particular potion."
"Noneya."
Severus raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"Noneya," Marian repeated.
"And what does that cute Muggle phrase-"
"It means None of ya business!"
"Can you do anything other than yell like a five year old?" Severus smiled when Marian seemed to collapse in on herself and looked away guiltily. "It's nothing," she said quietly. "Just stupidity."
"I'm glad we agree," Snape turned and headed back to his desk. "Now, if you will, you have a potion to finish."
Thank you guys so much for reading this! Special cherry pie thanks goes out to LadyCrow1313, popples, ditdot777, Dawnie, and readerw for their reviews J Extra special thanks goes to missy42 for beta-ing. THANKS!!!!
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PS. If you noticed I updated the first five chapters to get rid of some blatant spelling mistakes and other problems. For those of you who reviewed those chapters, my thanks still stands J