Ellie glared at herself in the mirror, chest tight with frustration.
Sometimes, she thought she very well might have the worst hair ever. Petunia and Vernon had complained about it more than almost anything else — when it came to her appearance, she meant, obviously — and while she knew now they'd lied or been wrong about any number of things, she thought they had the right of it on this one. She didn't even care what she looked like, and she still hated it. Not because it looked bad, exactly (though it did), but because it was completely unmanageable.
It didn't get tangled very easily — or, at all, actually, she never had trouble getting a brush through it. (Petunia had actually accused her of not brushing her hair before, because when she did the brush stayed clean, few hairs left behind even over weeks.) It just got everywhere. A dull, matte black, it was stupid thick, and stupid wavy, and stupid big — she didn't look quite as tiny as she actually was, just because her hair was bloody huge — and it never stayed where she put it, at least not for very long. Tying it back didn't do any good, the ponytail would still be bloody huge and get everywhere. Putting it in a plait was also useless, it fell apart stupid quickly...assuming she could even get it to cooperate long enough to properly plait it, which she usually couldn't. Anything she could try to do would fail, she had no choice but to let it stay a big, poofy, intrusive, inconvenient mess.
Even cutting it didn't help! Okay, it did help, but it grew back stupid quickly. She'd cut it herself, less than a month ago — hacked at it with one of her potions knives, which had perhaps been a bad idea, it'd come out an uneven ugly mess, but it was always an uneven ugly mess, what difference did it make — down to about the bottom of her ears or so, but it was nearly at her elbows again!
Ellie was convinced her hair must be magic, because that simply wasn't natural.
Firmly gripping the brim of her uniform hat, black cloth soft and fuzzy, Ellie brought it over her head again, pressing against her hair; she pulled it down, hard, until the rim gripped around her head like it was supposed to. Her bangs were pushed over her face, partially hiding her own reflection behind a curtain of kinked and curving strands, but she could pull that out of the way later. The way her huge, stupid, sprawling hair was pushing against the brim, though, that was a problem. It looked kind of ridiculous like this, pressed tight against her skull where the hat was trying to hold on before zooming right out again, a hard angle that shouldn't be there and looked completely stupid, but there wasn't anything she could do about that. She could almost see it straining, forced into an unnatural shape, wanting to spring back out, and pushing...
She let go of the brim, and the hat instantly popped up an inch (or two, who's counting). It didn't fall all the way off, no, just...balanced there, perched on top of her hair instead of sitting on her head properly. Which was a very precarious place for it to be — a gentle breeze could carry the stupid thing away. Hell, if she moved too quickly it'd probably fall right off!
Ellie pouted, the expression barely visible through her hair. This wasn't going to work.
Surrendering with a harsh, angry sigh, she whipped the hat off, pulled her hair out of her face with a few haphazard swipes of her fingers. Carrying the stupid hat in her hand, she left the bathroom, making back for her compartment.
When the day finally came, Ellie had set out for King's Cross much earlier than she actually needed to — not necessarily out of a sense of excitement, but more one of doubt that McGonagall's explanation of how to get to the train was in any way reliable. By eight, Ellie had all her things packed up into her magically expanded trunk, had been out of the muggle hotel by nine — the staff cheerfully waved her off, conveniently failing to realise she'd stayed in a room for two weeks for free and that she was an obviously underage girl living on her own — and had been to the station by half-after. Ellie had given the barrier between platforms nine and ten a dubious frown, then a cautious poke, before stepping through with a put-upon sigh.
Why Nine and Three-Quarters, though? Why not Nine and a Half? Or, just take over one of the whole-number platforms, muggle-aversion charms would stop anyone from thinking it strange they skipped a number. Or just don't number it at all! Didn't they just need it for the train to Hogsmeade? Ellie didn't understand...
The train, when Ellie had found it, was very red and very empty. She'd dragged her trunk up — probably couldn't have managed that on her own if it weren't so thoroughly enchanted, she'd call that a good investment — picked a compartment at random, pulled out her robes to change into the uniform while she was at it. Of course, by then a slow trickle of people had started appearing on the platform, so Ellie had slipped into the toilet to do it in privacy.
Glancing out a window on her way back to the compartment, Ellie saw the trickle had become a flood — the place was packed, mages in an assortment of strange and colourful clothing by the dozens and dozens, squeezed so tight in the available space there hardly seemed to be enough room to move around in. Looks like she had the right idea, getting here early. She shook her head, faintly horrified, and stepped back into her compartment
To find it wasn't as empty as she'd left it — a few older girls had appeared in her absence, colourfully dressed and brightly chattering, giggling over some joke even as she stepped inside. They turned to her all at once, and for a second she could only stare wide-eyed back at them, like a deer in headlights.
(One of the girls was wearing a hat — not the uniform one, something red and gauzy and pretty, sitting firm on her head, cocked at a jaunty angle, her hair sleek and restrained and obediently suffering the imposition. Ellie was struck with a quick, nauseating flash of hatred.)
After a brief moment of awkward silence, one of the girls asked, "Hello?"
"Ah, hi. My trunk was..." Ellie held up the shirt in her hand. She did need to put this away, yes, but that little box was holding literally everything she owned in the entire bloody world...
"Oh, was that yours? We weren't sure, we just stuck it up on the rack with ours."
Ellie frowned up at the luggage racks above the seats, spotted the familiar dark leather and gold stitching of her trunk. There was no way she was reaching that high. (She was annoyingly bloody short.) Before she could say anything, one of the girls, dark-skinned with long tightly-plaited hair, popped up to her feet with a smile. "Did you want me to get that for you?"
"Sure, thanks." The girl whipped the shirt out of Ellie's hand, stood on the bench with one foot, easily reaching all the way up to the rack. "Er, while you're in there, there's a book at the top..."
Her hand stuck in Ellie's trunk, the girl paused — her shoulders went slightly tense, an odd shiver running through her head, something somewhere between confusion and amusement. Turning to glance at Ellie over her shoulder, "Er, Practical Self-Defence?"
Feeling the eyes of all three girls on her like ants, Ellie nodded.
The black girl let out a little, doubtful huff, but pulled the heavy book out, clicking the trunk closed before hopping down to the floor. "That's some pretty advanced stuff to be reading," the girl said, even as she handed the book over. "I mean, you are a first-year, aren't you?"
With a self-conscious shrug, Ellie sank into a seat, hugging close to the door and as far away from the older girls as possible. "I read a lot, it's not too hard." Reading was the only leisure she'd been allowed, when she'd been little, if she wasn't doing chores or at church or something she was pretty much always reading. She'd always been a better reader than other kids, but her comprehension had abruptly jumped far above that of anyone even close to her age — she assumed she'd picked up language skills from the mind-reading somehow.
"I don't mean advanced like that, it's just—"
"Angie." That was one of the other girls — not the one with the hat, the blonde one, staring at Ellie with a flat expression, feeling rather...solemn, all of a sudden. It was weird, and slightly unnerving. "Leave the kid be."
Ellie couldn't shake the feeling that the girl, somehow, had noticed something about Ellie, something that suggested she would have interest in reading books titled Practical Self-Defence. She realised this made her a huge fucking hypocrite, but that was a little unsettling.
She did like this book, though. She'd bought multiple books on defensive magic and curses and hexes and such — in addition to the only one required for Defence, which looked mostly useless, all dealing with magical creatures she'd likely never even see — but this one was probably her favourite. The author had formulated the whole thing working on the assumption that the reader would probably be at a disadvantage when it came to both power and knowledge, so was mostly concerned with getting across counters for certain common hexes and potions, explained using as little theory as possible, and a bunch of tricks and tips when it came to tactics, to escape a dangerous situation even when horribly outmatched. Some of it seemed bloody obvious to Ellie — like not eating or drinking or even touching something not from a trusted source, only trying to block a hit if it couldn't be dodged instead, or simply walking away from conflicts before a fight broke out if it all possible — but some of the other things were clever. Like, practising the really important spells hundreds and thousands of times until they were automatic (apparently knowing it really well even made it possible to get it off without a wand), or enchanting something to grow warm in the presence of harmful poisons and curses, or bouncing spells to get around shields (which only worked with certain spells off of certain surfaces, there was a huge bloody table), all kinds of fun stuff.
After her first time flipping through it nearly a month ago now — it was interesting, of course, she wouldn't have bought it otherwise, but the magic was mostly beyond her abilities for the moment — she'd returned to this book specifically for the entire section on dealing with mind-altering charms and potions. There were a whole bunch of things, but the big one that had caught Ellie's attention was a short list of shields (and potions, but they weren't intended for long-term use) that blocked various charms that targeted the mind, including the legilimency charm. Ellie wasn't screwing around, had started working on the most promising one instantly — it was the first proper magic spell she'd ever cast, in fact, shut up in her muggle hotel room with this book and her wand. It did work...she thought. Maybe. It was kind of shaky, and she sort of doubted it'd hold up against Dumbledore, but she was working on it, dammit.
Over the last eleven days, she'd cast it over fifteen hundred times. She was not screwing around.
(She realised it was kind of rich, being so serious about stopping someone from messing with her head when she messed with other people's heads on a daily basis. But she didn't care, she understood now why the Dursleys found her so fucking terrifying. She would have that damn charm mastered before she allowed Dumbledore to ever be in a room alone with her again, so help her.)
Ellie focused on her reading — the chapter on shield charms, comparing and contrasting their strengths and disadvantages (the largest being she doubted she could cast most of them) — throughout the entire train ride. Which might have been easier if she'd been saddled with less annoying companions. The girls alone weren't...that bad. They had tried to pull her into conversation, at first, asking her questions about who she was, and something about houses, but it hadn't taken long to convince them she didn't want to talk. (She hadn't even needed to use her mind-control superpowers.) They kept chattering among themselves, but they weren't too distracting, it was fine.
The slow trickle of people stopping by to say hello, catch up quick, that was a problem. She jumped more than once as the door was slammed open again and again, cursing under her breath, holding back the urge to compel everyone to go away. But, no matter how little reading she was getting done at points, she stubbornly stayed put — she doubted anywhere else in the train would be much better, she'd seen how many people there'd been out on the platform. The worst were two identical red-headed boys, loud and prodding. Not only was there much yelling and laughing and crashing, but they refused to leave her alone, repeatedly trying to get her attention, questions and jokes and even physically poking at her.
Eventually, she got fed up, and reached out for their heads...and froze for a moment, blinking to herself. They had one mind. They had two bodies, there were two of them, but they were just one mind, a big one, just...spread across both brains. Huh. Neat.
Whatever the hell was going on with their weird shared mind, the compulsion took as easily as it would on anyone else. And, thankfully, when the twins skipped out again, a quick check around her showed the older girls just took their abrupt about-face as Fred and George continuing to be quirky and unpredictable, not even worthy of comment.
The train kept rattling along, Ellie staying in her corner quiet and (mostly) unmolested.
፠
The unreasonably large man, with hair almost as impossible-looking as Ellie's, handed them off at the towering main doors of the castle — to, of all people, Minerva McGonagall.
Ellie couldn't quite help a scowl at the sight of the woman. It was her fault, she knew, that Dumbledore had decided to come find her at the Gryphon's Rest, that Ellie had had to drastically cut back on her trips into Charing to prevent rediscovery. If McGonagall just hadn't stuck her nose in, if she'd taken Ellie's insistence everything was fine at face value — and it was, she and the Dursleys were all happier far away from each other — if she'd just left her alone...
What business was it of hers, anyway? Ellie had never even met her before — where did she get off, prying into her business?
(She did know McGonagall had thought she was doing the right thing, but that didn't make it any less annoying.)
While Ellie tried to not look too suspiciously annoyed, the two professors had a brief, impatient exchange, and McGonagall lead her and the pack of other first-years into the entrance hall of the castle — which was absurd, polished granite floors and a huge vaulted ceiling, gold bloody filigree everywhere, and were those enormous gemstones packed into those cylindrical glass cases over there? — before quickly directing them into a smaller side chamber, this one much more plain, grey stone broken only with a couple faded tapestries in reds and greens. The room was smaller than Ellie would have liked, requiring them to pack in a bit, she edged herself toward a wall so she wouldn't get surrounded.
And McGonagall, stiff and tall and stern, gave a speech about Sortings and Houses and whatnot. This was mostly new to Ellie — it hadn't occurred to her to read up on Hogwarts (she was going to go there, could find out for herself), and in retrospect people had referenced this on the train but she hadn't known enough to recognise what they were talking about at the time. The whole thing seemed quite silly, really. Maybe there was more to it, because it just sounded like it was the dormitory they were staying in? People had been talking about it like it was a big deal, but...
By now, Ellie was used to the idea that the things normal people cared about were very silly and ultimately unimportant.
It was at the end, staring down her nose at them with dignified disapproval, that McGonagall finally broke out of what was clearly a pre-planned speech, twitching with surprise and giving Ellie a double-take. "Miss Potter, where is your hat?"
Ellie tried not to scowl. "It fell in the lake, ma'am," she said, raising the hand holding her hat by the point up so she could see the soggy thing. It had mostly stopped dripping by now, but it was still very, very wet. She'd been right, her hair was bloody impossible, wearing this thing just wasn't going to work — on the boats crossing the lake, a breeze had swept in and picked the thing right off her head, flopping limply into the water. Ellie had thought, for a few glorious minutes, that she was rid of the thing, but someone in one of the boats behind her had scooped it up, surprised Ellie with it once they were back on dry land.
McGonagall harshly hushed the giggles that swept through the room, before drawing her wand and firing off a spell of some kind — it was invisible, but Ellie could feel the tingling static of magic zipping toward her. Before she could do more than twitch, the magic hit...and her hat instantly dried, once again soft and fuzzy and a few pounds lighter. Oh, okay.
Wait, she'd be expected to wear the bloody thing again. Dammit.
The professor lingered another couple seconds — maybe expecting a thank you from Ellie, but she would not be offering one, she'd been happy with her excuse to not have to wear it — before she backed away, leaving the kids in the little room alone.
With Ellie. And they were all staring at her now, wide-eyed, because they'd just realised who she was, that the Girl Who Lived was in a (too-small) room with them.
Dammit.
"Er...hi?"
Apparently not picking up on how entirely not comfortable with this situation she was, half the kids burst into talking all at once. There were a lot of it's really her, and blimey, Ellie Potter, one girl with bushy brown hair nearly as bad as Ellie's rattling off about having read about her — before quickly breaking off and staring incredulously at everyone else going mad, Ellie liked that one — someone said something about being in her—
Fan club? She had a fan club? How did Ellie not know she had a fan club?
Also, why the ever-living fuck did she have a fan club? She was eleven years old, for Christ's sake! What the fuck was wrong with people?!
Before too long, the chaos was silenced, thanks to two over-large boys forcing their way through the crowd. (Big and broad and brutish, they did not look eleven, or even entirely human.) Or, not just them, actually, there was a very clean-looking boy with unnatural silvery-blond hair leading them — he was so much smaller than the other two boys, Ellie hadn't even noticed him at first. "Give the girl some breathing room, maybe?" the littler boy said, turning a look on the rest of the crowd Ellie couldn't see from this angle. "Crowding around her like madmen."
Ellie shot a suspicious glare at the back of his head. Boy was faking — the irritation on his voice didn't match the nervous excitement he was feeling. At least he was being nicer about it than the rest, she guessed, but he was definitely up to something.
She cleared her face again as he turned back. "Alright there, Potter?"
That was...odd. Had she been so uncomfortable it'd been obvious from the outside? Hmm. "Yeah, I'm fine."
The boy smiled, then started off on a speech, little of which Ellie actually heard — it sounded about as rehearsed as McGonagall's, she checked out the instant she realised how fake it was. But she didn't really need to listen, she knew what he was getting at without hardly hearing a word, it was obvious from the feel of his head and the way he'd interposed himself between her and her adoring fans (blech). So, instead of listening, Ellie thought about what her answer should be.
She looked at this Draco Malfoy kid — very clean as he was, his robes very shiny, obviously expensive — at the two massive bookends, the few other kids flanking them — most similarly richly-dressed, the rest of the room had taken a step back from them, some glaring, looking strangely uncomfortable. She dragged her fingers over the minds of everyone in the room, taking in the feel of the moment, the unspoken rift within the students obvious in a way it wasn't by eyes alone, and the particular character of it...
When he stuck his (very pale) hand out to her, Ellie took it without a second of hesitation, her decision already made before he got that far. "Sure, thanks." She let go as soon as she thought she'd met the bare minimum necessary to not come off like an arse, stepping back and trying not to look too uncomfortable. (She didn't like touching, okay, didn't sound like too much to ask.) "Not like I know anyone else here anyway, do I."
If Draco cared about or even noticed the less than polite implication, he didn't react. Well, he didn't react negatively, at least — he was smiling a bit, but the gleeful victory he was feeling was far more obvious in his head.
Not that there weren't negative feelings sparking off all around her, they just weren't coming from the pack of kids immediately around Draco. For an intense, uncomfortable moment, there was a storm of surprise and anger and confusion, and for a moment Ellie was convinced there was going to be a confrontation of some kind...for reasons she was ignorant of that were probably very stupid.
Thankfully, she was rescued by the couple dozen ghosts suddenly appearing over their heads. Good distraction, that.
Before anyone could work themselves up again, McGonagall was back, appearing to lead them into the entrance hall again. As they started streaming out — her retreat toward a wall had put her near the back of the pack, so she was still waiting — one of the kids near Draco said, "Hey, Potter." When Ellie glanced toward her, she tapped the brim of her hat.
Ellie scowled. "Dammit." She swept her hair back with her fingers, hopefully enough it'd be mostly out of the way, then pulled the damn thing down on her head. Once again, it instantly popped up when she let go, but at least it hadn't fallen right off. "I hate this thing, you know."
The girl's lips twitched with a badly-suppressed smirk, but at least she was polite enough to not say anything.
The dining hall was about as ridiculous, over-the-top fancy as the big entrance hall was, with the same shining stone and glittering gold accents, just with long tables in it — the tableware was glittering too, shiny and rich — but without a proper ceiling, instead open to... No, it wasn't open to the sky, it was just enchanted to look like it. Ellie didn't know why she was so confident about that, just looking at it... It just didn't quite look right, she didn't know. The point was, everything was gleaming and shiny and expensive-looking, Ellie felt uncomfortable just standing here, the familiar, tingling feeling — weaker from being ignored for a couple years now, but not faded entirely — that she was doing something she wasn't supposed to, that Vernon and Petunia wouldn't like.
And that was before people started staring and pointing and whispering, that just made it worse. (She could feel their eyes on her skin like wasps.) Ellie slipped between a few of the bigger rich kids, out of sight of most of the kids sitting along the tables.
Since she was surrounded by kids taller than her, she couldn't see what was going on. They were led through the room between a couple of the tables for a while, eventually coming to a stop near the opposite end from the door. There was another table up at the rear, set at an angle from the rest, must be where the teachers were sitting, judging by the one adult-looking person she managed to pick out from between shoulders and heads. There was an odd, tense silence, before someone started singing, badly.
Except, it wasn't a person exactly — even before it said it was a bloody hat (what the hell), Ellie could tell there was something wrong with it. It didn't sound off, it just...felt wrong. She couldn't even explain how, exactly, sparks on the air and tingles down her neck, she suspected this Sorting Hat was singing at them not through sound but through magic.
Which was weird, but it was a bloody hat (supposedly), Ellie tried not to think about it too hard.
And then McGonagall — Ellie couldn't see her, but she recognised her voice — started calling people up, one by one. The hat yelled out one of those silly house names, applause, the next one, the pool of first-years slowly dripping away. The bigger kids she was hiding behind were all toward the beginning of the alphabet, it didn't take long until her cover was gone. (She tried not to notice the kids at the tables all around her, she could feel their eyes on her like wasps, but don't think about it.) So she saw, yes, that was a bloody hat. Okay, then. While she waited for the Sorting to go on, she idly scanned the row of professors, the ones she could see now, all of them looking eccentric at best, pulled out of a bloody cartoon show or something, like that huge bloke right there, did that one have leaves in her hair, that bloke looked like a villain pulled out of a children's programme, that turban didn't match the rest of him at—
The mental attack came in a flash of stabbing fire.
Ellie twitched, eyes tipping down to glare at the floor on instinct, concentrated on pushing the assault away. Before it could really get anywhere, she slammed against it, keeping it out, forcing it back to—
It lifted away, as abruptly as it'd begun.
Feeling suddenly flushed and shaky, Ellie took a few long breaths, absently rubbing over her heart, her chest crawling with a cold, dull pain. Note to self: never look directly at turban-bloke, because he was a fucking arsehole.
"Potter, Elizabeth."
Ellie jerked at the call of her name — she'd missed a few kids, distracted by the attack. She picked through the maze of kids yet to be Sorted, went up to the stool, as she went avoided thinking about all the people watching her or looking anywhere near the turban-bloke. Whipping her stupid hat off — she wasn't putting it back on, she didn't care what anyone said — she sat down on the little stool, eyes tipping up at the ceiling rather than look out over the entire gathered student body, there had to be hundreds of them.
(She could feel their eyes on her skin like wasps.)
McGonagall set the magic hat on her head, the rim dropping over her eyes, Ellie bit down the urge to throw it off immediately — she didn't like being blinded, okay. Her fingers twitching, a shiver trying to work its way up her spine, what exactly was supposed to be happen—
Oh, my.
That thought, that voice in her head, that was not hers, but coming from outside...somehow. She hadn't felt a thing, still didn't, it'd just slipped right through and...
Never fear, Miss Potter, I am bound to the magics of the school. Even if I wanted to, I am simply incapable of hurting— Oh, my.
Er. What was going on?
I'm taking a peek inside your head to see where I should put you, and... Well, you have had a rough time of it, haven't you, Miss Potter?
Ellie had absolutely no idea what to do with that.
No, I imagine not. Oh dear, oh dear...
Right, well, could they get on with it then? She'd really like this silly business to be over with, she was just sitting up here being stared at...
Of course, Miss Potter. Good luck.
"SLYTHERIN!"
The Slytherin common room was rather nicer than Dorea Black had expected.
Not that she'd really known much of what to expect — the far wall all being glass, the lake on the other side a solid mass of greenish-black, that she'd been told about, and she knew they'd have their own rooms, but that was about it. Andi hadn't mentioned the soft, comfortable-looking chairs in greens and blacks, the warm light thrown from several hearths and dozens of little glistening silver lamps, but not so much light it got too bright, furniture and the occasional pillar here and there — raw, unpolished stone, dark and earthy — throwing dramatic but soft shadows over everything, the effect cutting down all that illumination to a moody half-light, bright enough to read comfortably but dark enough there wasn't any glaring anywhere. It was rather nice, she thought.
If only it weren't so cold — Dorea edged a little closer to the nearest hearth, arms wrapped tight around her. At least they were underground, it probably wouldn't be much colder in winter...
...if it weren't for the lake being right there. Damn it. Pretty, but damn it.
Still nice, though.
The other new kids finished trailing in behind her, the door out into the hall silently sliding closed again. There was a brief moment of silence, everybody waiting, Dorea and the rest of the first-years restlessly shifting under the attention of the gathered Slytherins — the room was full, most of the chairs and couches occupied and others standing around, the whole house it looked like — for long uncomfortable seconds before the only adult in the room finally spoke.
"I am Professor Snape, head of Slytherin House and Master of Potions here at Hogwarts." He was a tall, skeleton-thin man, a narrow pale face with dramatically-arched eyebrows, framed by long pitch-black hair. Dorea had been told a little bit about him — not a lot, basically just to be careful around him — and she already found herself doubting what little she had been told.
If nothing else, Andi had said Snape was an angry, troubled man, but he didn't sound angry, his voice low and soft and smooth.
They were bid to introduce themselves one at a time — with how she'd slipped closer to the hearth, Dorea could see most of the group from here, was able to put names to faces as they went. She didn't know any of them, obviously, but Andi had prepared her with the names of a few Death Eater families, again with the advice to be careful around them. Which was slightly silly, they were only eleven, what could they do, really...
Dorea jumped in somewhere around the middle. There was some more hissing and whispering at her name — not as badly as when it'd been said the first time, calling her up to be Sorted, but they still weren't over her existing yet, apparently. She'd been told to expect it, so she just gave the gathered Slytherins a shy smile until the next kid introduced themselves.
And the reaction to her name wasn't nearly as bad as what Elizabeth Potter got. (She didn't use Ellie, Dorea noticed, made a mental note of it.) The girl was absolutely tiny — she'd barely top Dorea's shoulder, thin enough the bones in her wrists were obvious from here, bright green eyes looking overlarge (because she was so thin and little?), pale enough Dorea doubted she saw much sun at all, hair an absolute mess of frizzy curls a dull black, the volume it took up almost obscenely huge compared to the rest of her. (She was carrying her hat, understandable, probably couldn't get it on over that chaos.) When she introduced herself, in a quiet but firm mutter, the room was taken over with such a thick wave of whispering and grumbling Snape had to get them to shut up so they could move on.
Dorea didn't know what to think of Potter yet. She just...wasn't what she'd expected. She was bloody tiny, for one thing, and so quiet — Dorea had pointedly made room for her next to her at the table, and Potter had taken the spot, but she'd barely said a word through dinner. Dorea hadn't pushed, she wasn't so great at small talk either — not to mention she hardly knew what to say to Potter in particular — but she seemed more quiet than awkward quiet, like, almost worryingly quiet.
It probably didn't make sense, but Dorea felt...oddly bad. Potter just seemed kind of sad, and...pathetic? Like, kicked puppy pathetic. And, she didn't know, she almost...
She almost felt guilty. Which was silly, she didn't have anything to feel guilty about. She hadn't done anything. Just because her father, who she hadn't even known existed until she'd been six, might (or might not?) have betrayed Potter's parents to this Dark Lord person didn't— Dorea wasn't responsible for that, she had nothing to feel bad about.
She hoped the feeling would go away, because if she had to talk to her about it, that would just be awkward.
Anyway, before too long everyone had introduced themselves, and Snape took over again. "Perfect." He muttered that to himself before raising his voice to go on, clearly not addressed to them, almost sounded sarcastic. "My office hours are, as ever, subject to change — an up-to-date schedule may always be found on the notice board. You might have noticed Charles Urquhart and Gemma Farley—" He nodded to the older boy and girl who'd led them down to the common room. "—are our new fifth-year prefects. We also have a new seventh-year prefect, Deirdre NicCormaic, stepping in for this year's Head Girl, Aemilia Scrimgeour."
There was a smattering of polite applause at that, and even a bit of hooting and whistling; a tall girl with fiery orange-red hair near the front of the crowd of Slytherins grinned and waved. This interruption Snape let go longer, long enough the new Head Girl started to get a little pink in the face, looking a mix of proud and embarrassed.
It could have been her imagination — his face was so blank and severe, he could be carved from stone — but Dorea almost thought Snape was smiling, just a little.
"You all," Snape said once the room had quieted, to the older students, "should be familiar with the rules by now. You know what I expect from you. You are dismissed — first-years, prefects, and Miss Scrimgeour, remain behind."
Once the older students had vanished into the shadowy passageways ringing the room, with the exception of the six prefects and the Head Girl, Snape started in on a short lecture on the virtues of Slytherin House (which mostly boiled down to adaptability and self-reliance), followed by a much longer one on the rules. Snape said the house had two unofficial, if important, rules that applied to almost everything, which Dorea thought were honestly kind of funny — the First Rule was what happens in Slytherin stays in Slytherin, and the Second Rule was don't get caught. Dorea wasn't the only one who had to choke back giggles when he said them, badly-hidden smiles on half their faces.
There might have been more, if Snape didn't sound so deathly serious about it. It was a little intimidating.
The official school rules could a lot of times be understood as an extension of the First Rule, or to have exceptions in the form of the Second Rule. Sometimes both — for not hexing people in the corridors, for example, disputes between Slytherins were to be dealt with inside Slytherin (First Rule), but if they really must do something so undignified as throwing prank spells at each other in public they should at the very least have the decency to not get caught (Second Rule). Dorea had to bite her lip to stop herself from giggling again, he just said it so flat and bluntly sarcastic, it was funny. The Second Rule was particularly important, because Snape wanted to win the House Cup for the seventh year in a row — he didn't expect them to actually behave themselves, but they could at least contain their wilder impulses enough to not ruin their streak for everyone else.
Scrimgeour jumped in at this point, telling them with a bloody grin that she had every intention of winning the Cup every year of her attendance, anyone of any year who lost too many points over something stupid would be answering to her. By the smirks and chuckles from the other prefects, it was pretty obvious answering to her wouldn't be pleasant.
Once that was done, Snape explained the rules about the common room and the dorm. They were not to give out the password to anyone not in Slytherin — there were privacy spells around the entrance, so they didn't have to worry about giving it away accidentally — but they could let friends into the common room if they wanted to, with the understanding that they might be kicked out at any time if enough Slytherins wanted them gone. Non-Slytherins were not to be let past the common room into the dorms without explicit permission from Snape himself. Anyone who purposefully broke this rule would be punished most severely.
They did all have their own rooms, Andi had been right about that part. They were all warded, and would keep out everyone except the seventh-year prefects, Scrimgeour, and Snape himself. There was a work-around where they could let friends into their rooms, if they held the person's hand while walking through the door, but it only worked if they were the same sex and in the same year, it would bounce anyone else. Starting in fourth year, they were given the choice to ward their rooms on their own — if they didn't want to do it themselves, they could ask Snape to put the old wards back on, but they should take the practice of doing it themselves anyway (especially if they ever wanted to let anyone into their rooms who wasn't one of the few exceptions).
By the way Snape said a few particular things, Dorea had the feeling he was talking about, like, older kids letting their boyfriends or girlfriends into their rooms, implying... They let kids do that here? Huh...
At this point, Snape talked about the Truce — Dorea had been told about this before, something dealing with the aftermath of the War a decade ago, but really not much more than the fact that it existed. Snape went into a lot more detail than Andi had. There were a number of basic rules that applied to them here at the school, which he apparently thought were important enough to explain once, summarise a second time, then quiz them on a third time, just to make sure they got it. The basic points were: don't talk about the Dark Lord; never speak of a specific event considered part of the War; children are not to be held responsible for the actions of their parents in any way; no one is to be assaulted, verbally, physically, or magically, over their family's allegiance in the War or their own perceived allegiance now, Light or Dark; no one is to do anything with the intent of getting revenge for anything that happened in the War; no one is to show open prejudice in any way toward muggleborns, students with mixed heritage, or "so-called" blood traitors. (Dorea wasn't sure what that last one even meant, but she did catch a hint of scorn on the "so-called" part.) Anyone who breaks any of these terms is no longer protected by the Truce and may be freely targeted — within the bounds of Slytherin and Hogwarts rules, of course.
Snape followed that up immediately with a bit on the house rules against hazing, and that any Slytherin student who felt they were being bullied should go to one of the prefects. (Dorea might have imagined Snape's eyes flicking to herself and Potter in particular here.) They could come straight to him if they preferred, if they weren't comfortable going to the prefects for any reason, though the first-years would also all have mandatory one-on-one meetings with him once a month. Anything they told him would be kept confidential — he wouldn't blab on them to other students, to their parents, even to Dumbledore himself, what was said in private would be kept private.
Minor disagreements between Slytherins were to be mediated by the prefects, but students could also make formal accusations against other students for more serious offences at any of the House Meetings — details on exactly how that process worked could be found in the student handbook, copies available in the library — but especially sensitive issues they didn't want to air out in public should be brought to Snape directly instead. If they did need a prefect, they were to go the sixth-years first, the others only if they were unavailable — the fifth- and seventh-years had exams to worry about, not burdening them if they didn't have to was only polite.
Then there was a rapid list of more minor rules — how to find their way around the castle, posting on the notice board, meal times, who to go to with questions about classes or professors, and so forth. He went on for a couple minutes, before his voice suddenly went a bit sharper. "Now then, we shall see whether you have been paying attention."
Most of the first-years looked startled, almost alarmed. It was late, and they had just eaten, she guessed they hadn't been focusing as closely as they probably should have been. Dorea noticed Potter just looked slightly irritated.
Dorea jumped when Snape's eyes abruptly turned to meet hers. "Miss Black, what is the Slytherin policy on hazing?"
She blinked. "No permanent damage, keep it in Slytherin, and bring it to the prefects or yourself if we feel it's crossing into bullying, sir."
Snape stared at her for another second, gaze cold and heavy, before moving on. (That was weird...) He continued to interrogate the class, shooting one question after another in quick succession, whether the student he asked got it correct or not. Dorea quickly noticed he was going down the list in alphabetical order, which was interesting — they were just Sorted this evening, so he wouldn't have had a class list, must have ordered them in his head.
Once the quiz was done, Snape reminded them they would get their schedules at breakfast in the morning — and that a prefect would be escorting them up at seven every morning for the first two weeks. And then, with very little fanfare, he left.
Into the disoriented silence he'd left behind him, Scrimgeour clapped her hands once, drawing attention to her. Dorea quickly noticed the longer sentences made her vaguely Scottish-sounding accent far more obvious. "Right then, now that Professor Killjoy—" The other prefects looked shocked or scandalised at the nickname, Scrimgeour still brightly grinning. "—is finished we can finally wrap up. Emily Scrimgeour, welcome to Slytherin, all that.
"Now, our dorms are something of a maze down here. You'll notice there are tunnels going off to the sides all about," she said, pointing around the rim of the room, the shadowed archways arrayed there. "Some of those, you'll find go down into the dorms, others let out all over the place up in the castle — they work as exits only, the one entrance is the one behind you. Experiment if you like, see if you can find yourself a good shortcut somewhere, but do try not to get lost. Many of the passages are unmarked, but you'll see this symbol..." Scrimgeour drew her wand, casting a glowing green and white shape into the air — it looked rather like a snake, curled into a circle to bite its own tail. It vanished after a couple seconds. "Any passage marked with an ouroboros will lead you back toward the common room, some quicker than others, but all make it eventually.
"The easy way to get down to the dorms are the shafts at the back," pointing toward the rear corners of the common room with her thumbs. "Girls to your right, boys to your left. You'll find seven doors in these shafts, each with a letter from the Greek alphabet inside a circle or a triangle — each letter corresponds to a year, in sequence from alpha to zeta; circle for girls and triangle for boys. It's not the only way to get there, but it is the most reliable. There will—"
"Er, Miss Scrimgeour?"
"Yes, Greengrass."
"Isn't zeta the sixth letter?"
"You're missing digamma — digamma is six, zeta is seven. As I was saying, a short distance down that passage you'll find a juncture, with a whole bunch of paths leading off, some of which have solid doors. The black doors are your rooms; the white is your bath. Your doors will be marked with the colours of your family as Hogwarts remembers them, or a name placard if you haven't any — you may remove it if you wish, but don't forget which room is yours. There are a number of enchantments, lights and air-freshening and so on, active in all the rooms down there. The most important key is igniat, which turns the lights on, but you'll find a full list on your desk. You'll also find the cleaning and laundry schedules there.
"There are two bathrooms for each year, one for each sex; they're warded nasty, Snape tweaked them himself, don't even think about going into baths meant for the opposite sex. In each one, you'll find two toilets, two sinks, two showers, two smaller baths, and one larger bath. The showers and the smaller baths are intended for use by one person at a time, though you probably could fit two or three if you really wanted to, and the stalls are closed with simple locks — please respect others' desire for privacy, you do not want prefects getting dragged into bathroom disputes. The larger bath dates from an older time, when communal bathing was the norm; you may use it if you want to, but it is certainly not required.
"It's not just dorm rooms and bathrooms in the maze, you'll find some more public spaces — a few smaller sitting rooms, a house library, a couple game rooms, a much larger open bath, a dueling arena. They're mostly near the common room, in the levels just under our feet, not difficult to find. The bath is open to both sexes — do observe basic decency if you plan on using it, if you're uncertain about proper conduct do ask someone — and the process for borrowing books from the library is posted somewhere easily visible, as are the house dueling rules, though the Second Rule always applies. I don't recommend trying to steal anything from the library — they're all enchanted with tracking charms, Snape will know and he will find you.
"Am I forgetting anything?" she said, turning to the prefects.
They all shook their heads, one of the girls — Deidre something, Dorea thought, the one who'd replaced Scrimgeour as the seventh-year prefect — saying, "I don't care if you did. It's late, I want to go to bed."
Scrimgeour's grin went a little crooked, and she said...something, it wasn't English. Irish, maybe? Whatever she'd said, one of the other prefects started chuckling, Deidre ignoring them both with a roll of her eyes. "Right, that's it then. Gemma and Charlie will show you lot down. Welcome to Slytherin, little snakelings."
There was a little bit of organised chaos, then, as the tangled-together group of new first-years split apart, the boys following the boy prefect, Dorea and the other girls trailing behind Gemma (Farley, was it?). They hadn't even left the common room yet, still slipping between the furniture scattered all about, when someone got Dorea's attention. A little shorter than Dorea, but more round-faced, black hair peeking out from under her hat, her eyes pale and sharp. "I didn't get to you at dinner. Pansy Parkinson."
She hadn't gotten to Dorea because Parkinson had sat herself next to Draco Malfoy, and spent most of the meal hissing insults at Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass. (She thought those names were right? She'd been paying attention during the introductions, but she might have mixed someone up.) But it probably wouldn't be polite to point that out. And she should be mindful of the mages' silly politeness rules, since she would be living with these people. So she carefully said, "Dorea Black. Nice to meet you, Miss Parkinson."
The girl smiled, just for a second. "Is that Black Black? I mean, the Noble and Most Ancient House, those Blacks."
Dorea tried not to roll her eyes — this was not the first time anyone had asked her that question. But a few of the other girls, even the prefect, were listening in, so she might as well get it out of the way. "Yes, those Blacks."
"I hadn't realised there were any left," said the very tall, very blonde, very pretty girl. "Daphne Greengrass, by the way."
Dorea wondered to herself why she'd bothered trying to be polite if nobody else was going to be. "It's just me and my great-aunt Cassiopeia, I think." Though she might not be around for very much longer — Cassiopeia had warned her that she'd been getting antsy for a while now, might disappear on short notice to go be someone new somewhere else, as metamorphs were like to do. "Oh, and Sirius, I guess."
"Is he your father?" By the intensity as she said it, Dorea knew that was the question Parkinson had really wanted to ask.
Too bad, Dorea wasn't answering it. Or, not directly answering it — Parkinson should realise what she was really saying, if she wasn't a bloody idiot. "I'm sorry, it's late, and I'm not in the mood to discuss such difficult things at the moment."
"Oh, of course, you're right." Parkinson just looked disappointed, so maybe she was a bloody idiot.
Greengrass, Davis, and Prefect Farley all shot her looks, so at least she wasn't surrounded by idiots.
At the back of the room was not a staircase, but a flat ramp descending in a spiral, a passage extending out here and there, in the centre of every arch a letter inside a circle. After descending past a few doors, they went under an arch marked with a lower-case alpha with a bar above it, the moodily-lit, roughly-hewn passage inside leading to a low-ceilinged circular room. It was bloody obvious this was the right place — inset into the black and silver tile floor was another barred alpha inside a circle in glittering green ceramic, hard to miss.
There were two other open passages leading away — one had a barred beta inside a circle, apparently leading to the second-year girls' rooms, the other was unmarked — one white door, and six black doors. Each of the black doors had a little plaque on it, most of them vaguely shield-shaped, a mix of colours and figures few of which Dorea could make out from here. After a bit of looking around, Dorea spotted one — silver black and red, three crows and a hand gripping a sword — that she knew belonged to the House of Black.
Their prefect guide was clearly tired, just told them to be back up in the common room by seven thirty before vanishing. The other girls had the same idea, Parkinson and Bulstrode immediately making for their rooms. Potter had already gone to her door, pulled off the plaque, flipping the red and white thing in her hand as she turned the handle.
Oh, crap! Dorea darted over before she could disappear. "Hey, Potter."
The shorter girl looked up, her vivid green eyes meeting Dorea's. And she just stared, flat and still and... Well, it was kind of unnerving, honestly. Which was a silly thing to think, really, but she couldn't help it, she felt inexplicably exposed, standing here in the dorms being stared at, which was silly, and she didn't know what was wrong with her...
"Er..." What had she wanted to say? She had wanted to say something, hadn't she? She'd thought she had, but she'd forgotten why she'd wanted to stop Potter while she still could... "Good night."
The girl's eyes narrowed slightly — in confusion, Dorea thought. "Good night." She pushed the door to her room open, quietly pulling it closed behind her again.
Right. That was weird. Shaking off the odd moment, Dorea went straight for her own room. The other girls had the right of it, it had been a long bloody day...
[silver black and red, three crows and a hand gripping a sword] — Just used the colours on the HP wiki page, because why not. I know fandom has decided the black birds are jackdaws, but that's not a thing in heraldry; a bird called "corvus" is, which could be a raven or a crow, and the jackdaw is also a corvid, so somewhat closely related anyway. Raven/crow is a better word for Celtic symbolism reasons. And Celtic symbolism is probably appropriate, because that hand gripping a sword on a red field looks a lot like the banner of the Dál gCais, a major Gaelic (i.e. Irish) tribe (it's very possible the Blacks intermarried with them at some point and took the symbol then). It's supposed to be the magic glowing sword of Nuada Silverhand, king of the Tuath Dé, the pre-Christian gods of the Gaels. So. There's that.
On a mostly unrelated note, did Paolini really jack "argetlam" from Nuada's epithet Airgetlám? Holy shit, dude, I thought your terrible conlang was supposed to be fantasy Norse. Pick a culture to rip off from and stick with it.
Many of the details about the Slytherin dorms and house rules, and the Truce, were borrowed with permission from LeighaGreene. By which I mean I turned to her, sitting on the couch next to me, and informed her I'm stealing them.
The addition of the character of Dorea Black was a totally random, spur-of-the-moment decision — like, as I was writing this chapter — but I quickly came up with a bunch of threads with her that I like, so. Should be fun.