Hogwarts, Rachel Campbell had decided (sometime between getting off the train and taking her seat at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall), was splendid. She literally could not think of anything else that word should be used for if not Hogwarts.

Granted, she hadn't seen that much of it, yet, but from the outside it looked like something out of a fairy tale — an ancient castle looming over the lake, its dozens of towers making it look kind of gothic and absolutely dwarfing the trees behind it, the whole thing glittering with lights, even though the sun hadn't been quite down yet. They were kind of in a valley, with the castle a little way up one side, so most of it was already pretty dark, but the tallest of the towers still caught the light, grey stone turned to gold by the sunset. The inside reminded her of a cathedral, too, with all the arches, but one with a lot of paintings in gilded frames (moving, talking paintings, whispering amongst themselves and calling greetings to the new students).

The stone walls were hung with tapestries between the paintings, and there were nooks set into them with all sorts of sculptures and suits of armour and things on display. The stone floors were polished until they shone, at least where they weren't covered by carpets of the Arabian Nights variety. (Which was to say, she wouldn't be at all surprised if someone told her the enormous Persian rug in the hall where they'd been waiting before they were sorted could fly.) Every room was lit with floating silver and gold and crystal chandeliers or wall sconces or even just balls of light, and the Great Hall didn't have a ceiling! (Or, well, it did, but it was enchanted to show the sky outside, like a giant skylight.) It just felt rich in a way like nowhere she'd ever been before.

Even the air was more, like in Mister Ollivander's shop, as though she could feel the magic all around her, warm and welcoming. If she'd had any doubts, on the train, about whether she really should be here — at a magic school, studying magic — just being here made her forget all about them. In fact, she wasn't sure she'd ever felt so much like she belonged anywhere, ever. She'd only been in the castle for about twelve hours, and it already felt like home.

She was starting to think that deciding to be a Slytherin might have been a bad idea, though. Yes, she'd kind of been thinking that it sounded like the House she was best suited for before she'd gotten on the train, and then she'd run into that older girl, Lyra Black, when she got so annoyed with the jerks in her first compartment that she'd just left, and she'd made it sound like the best House if she really wanted to become part of Magical Britain (which she did, the real world had never done her any favours), and then the Hat had said something about her being as good for the House as it would be for her (it had thought it was funny that Black had thought it might have any objection to sending her there), but...

She'd have to be a complete idiot to not have noticed how everyone had been staring at her, all through dinner, whispering to their friends behind their hands and sniggering ominously. It had taken all of two minutes after the Sorting ended for the older students on either side of her to start giving her the third degree about her family and whether she was related to any other witches or wizards. She wasn't, but she'd decided as soon as her mother had dropped her off at King's Cross that she was going to pretend that her mother and her series of terrible boyfriends and her father and stepmother and the baby sister they considered better than her in every possible way didn't exist for the next ten months, so she'd said she was an orphan and didn't know a damn thing about her family. Which, well...

It was true that Professor McGonagall had mentioned that some people could be "a bit prejudiced" against magical kids who were born to non-magical parents, but it hadn't taken much time at all for Rachel to realise she'd undersold it. The muttering and staring had only grown more interested and vaguely threatening after she told the boy next to her that she'd grown up with normal people, even if she claimed she didn't know who her parents were and they could have been magical — she could only imagine how much worse it would be if they knew she was muggleborn.

And she hadn't missed how all the other kids already seemed to know each other, forming little cliques on the walk down to the Common Room and clumping together, leaving her alone on the outskirts of the mob. No one had sat next to her either, when they'd taken seats to listen to their Head of House, Professor Snape — not Professor Snake, which was what she'd heard the first time it was said, she'd thought someone was having her on since that was their house mascot, too — lecture them on the House Rules. And then she'd found out that Lyra Black wasn't even a Slytherin, she'd just convinced Rachel to try to get into the snake House because she knew it was going to– to make people pick on her, not even because she wanted Rachel to suffer, just...to make trouble! For everyone. She just didn't care that Rachel was going to spend the next seven years surrounded by people who hated her, just because she wasn't raised by wizards!

"She didn't lie to you, though," Black's friend said, out of nowhere. Or at least, Rachel assumed the tall, graceful boy with the startlingly golden-brown eyes was a friend of hers. She guessed he could just be some random bloke she'd dragged along to help keep an eye on them all — he'd been assigned to go last, make sure no one wandered off. Black herself was halfway down the corridor, skipping and chattering away at the other first-years, who were following her to the Great Hall for breakfast. (Apparently, the duties of the fourth-year prefect, which wasn't even a thing, included getting up early to make sure the new kids didn't get too lost on the way to breakfast. And anything else the actual prefects didn't want to do, probably.) Rachel had been excluded from all the little cliques of kids who clearly already knew each other this morning too — which was not a surprise, given that Black had announced that she was going to use Rachel to somehow fuck up Slytherin House — so she'd kind of fallen to the back of the mob, with Mister Éanna — one of Professor Snape's apprentices, even though he didn't look like he was old enough to be out of school yet — and this bloke Black had introduced as the fourth-year boys' prefect (which still wasn't a thing).

"It's Zabini," he added, again, out of nowhere. "Blaise, if you like."

"Are you reading my mind?" she asked. Could wizards read minds? She couldn't (she didn't think), but she didn't have a better explanation for what was going on right now. That could have been a lucky guess, him giving his name just as she was wondering what it was (possibly), but it seemed a little unlikely that he'd just guessed that she was thinking about Black tricking her a second ago, too.

"No, that would be unethical," he said, in a tone that suggested he didn't much care, a little bored and a little amused. "You're just thinking really loudly."

That... "How do you think loudly? Or quietly, for that matter? Isn't... That doesn't make sense."

"You just do?" He shrugged, then yawned. "You have more immediate concerns than learning occlumency, and I'm not awake enough to explain it right now, so I'm going to go with don't worry about it."

There was a sort of tingling at the back of her mind when he said not to worry, not quite like the way all the air around her seemed to vanish whenever Black looked at her, but... "Did you just do something?"

"Again, that would be unethical." That wasn't a no... "Anyway, I was going to say, Lyra was right — if you can make it in Slytherin, you can make it anywhere, and if you're serious about proving you're just as good as any of those bitches, this is where you want to be. Besides, are you telling me you didn't think you belonged here, even before you met her?" Well, no, but... "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"I think you really are reading my mind."

"Just your body language, that time." He gave her a dazzling smile, only to have it broken by another yawn.

"That sounded an awful lot like admitting you weren't just reading my body language last time."

"Well, I did tell you that you were thinking too loudly, so..."

"Ugh, whatever." She pouted at him for a brief moment before very deliberately turning to talk to someone else instead. Of course, the only other person around to talk to was Mister Éanna. (She still thought that was weird, she'd thought Éanna was his first name...) "So... You're going to be teaching my potions class?"

Mister Éanna, who seemed to be even more out of it than Zabini the Sleepy Mindreader, his eyes wandering over the portraits and decorations on the wall on his other side, didn't answer.

"Éanna."

"What?" the older boy asked, obviously rather startled. He turned in their direction, though Rachel didn't think he was quite looking directly at either of them. She'd noticed last night that he was all fidgety and shy, like he felt out of place at the front of the room, which didn't seem like a good thing, for a teacher. Maybe it was different, teaching things, as opposed to everyone complaining about him being Professor Snape's apprentice almost before he was introduced? Though she'd gotten the impression from some of the things Professor Snape had said when he was shutting down the complaining that Mister Éanna had mostly been homeschooled, or something, so maybe he just wasn't used to being around that many people, period. Rachel certainly wasn't. There had to have been over a hundred people jammed into the common room for the introductions, before the Head of the House had sent everyone but the new students and the prefects away.

"Miss Campbell was talking to you."

"Oh, um..."

Well, crap. She hadn't really had anything specific to say, she'd just been looking to make small talk with him because she didn't want to talk to psychic boy over there, and Mister Éanna didn't seem to have much more idea what to say to fill the silence than she did. She finally came up with, "I was just wondering if you've been teaching long? I mean, you don't look like you're that old, so..."

Actually, now that she was thinking about it, that actually was a good question. Maybe wizards aged slower or something and he was really in his twenties, because she definitely wouldn't have thought Black was three years older than her. Her friend, though, looked about the same age as Mister Éanna — fourteen or fifteen — and they were supposedly in the same year, so...

"Ah...no. I've never taught before. I've never even been in a potions classroom, as in, with other people, before."

Great. That sounded like exactly the kind of teacher she wanted for a subject she never even knew existed before last month. Not! "So...why are you teaching us, then?"

Mister Éanna muttered something under his breath that might have been Irish. He did sound kind of Irish, like the British wizards sounded kind of British. (Their accent wasn't quite like any she'd ever heard before, but she would still have guessed they were British, not say, Australian, or something.) "It wasn't my idea, I thought I was just going to do marking and that sort of thing. I, I don't know what Master Severus was thinking. Well, I do, he told me, but I don't— It's a terrible idea, almost as bad as telling me to befriend Lyra Black!"

Zabini grinned. "Yeah, but not as bad as him teaching the first-years. I'm not entirely convinced he understands that some people find introductory potions difficult, and not just tedious busy work. He told you to befriend Lyra?"

Mister Éanna nodded. "Yes, and in case you haven't noticed, that girl is terrifying. Have you felt her magic? And even if she wasn't, I don't know how to do friends! I think he might actually be trying to force me to give up and leave. At least there's a good reason for me to practice talking about potions in front of people, but— I cannot overstate how terrible an idea this is!"

Zabini looked very much as though he was trying not to laugh. "It's really not. And he's not trying to force you out. In fact, if I had to guess, he wants you to keep an eye on her and tell him if she's planning to potion the entire school again or, I don't know, starts summoning demons or something." Summoning demons?! "Though I would probably tell him if she started summoning demons, eldritch abominations are above my pay grade." Was he actually serious about that? HEY! Psychic boy! Are you serious about that?! "And, again, if I had to guess, I'd say he wants her to make sure everyone else doesn't make your life a living hell. Even the slowest dunderheads among the student body are less likely to harass you for being socially awkward if you have terrifying friends."

"...Oh." He lapsed into silence for a few steps before asking, almost hesitantly, "What did she dose the school with?"

"Some babbling potion she combined with something to give us all cold symptoms to screw with the old Divs professor's head. See, Trelawney made a fake prophecy about the whole school getting a cold in February, and Lyra decided to make it come true, but the only way to get a potion to everyone is to get the kitchen elves to help, so she needed to make it look like she was just doing something silly and mostly harmless to get them to play along. You know, as opposed to trying to make everyone ill. Also, she thought it was fucking hilarious that no one in the school could speak the same languge all day."

"Are you serious?" There were so many things he'd just mentioned so casually, Rachel didn't even know where to start. Even ignoring the summoning demons thing, there was still, you could give people colds with magic? And make them not be able to speak the same language? Elves were real? Okay, maybe that shouldn't be a surprise, goblins were apparently real, but they worked in the kitchens? There was a class about making prophecies? Like, what, full marks on your final exam if whatever you see in your crystal ball actually happens?

(This whole magical world thing was so cool!)

"That's..."

"That's completely ridiculous, is what it is!" Rachel exclaimed. She realised it was rude, cutting off a teacher, even if he was only a student-teacher, but she couldn't help herself, it was.

"Actually...I'm not surprised," Mister Éanna said, followed by, "Where did she get the blood of an omniglot?"

Zabini rolled his eyes. "You two will get along fine."

Mister Éanna suddenly looked much more uncomfortable again. "Um, no. I'm bad at people. Like really bad. I can't even talk to normal people and she's like...more of a normal person than normal people, and—"

"And that might be the funniest thing I've heard in weeks."

"What's the funniest thing you've heard in weeks?" the girl in question asked, bouncing back to them as they entered the Great Hall, which — shite! Rachel hadn't been paying attention to the last couple of corridors and turns they'd taken to get here!

"Éanna thinks you're a normal person." Black laughed. "And stop panicking, Campbell, you can pretty much always follow someone to the Commons and back, we do all eat in the same place at the same time."

Oh. Right. That...did make sense, Rachel guessed, trying not to look too embarrassed about asking a stupid... Wait, she hadn't even said anything aloud! Again! "Stop reading my mind! It's creepy!"

"I wasn't. You just have a terrible poker face. Though, yes, I was serious about summoning demons. That's a thing."

Zabini, on the other hand, had a really good poker face, she still couldn't tell if he was lying or not, smirking at her all amused like he knew she couldn't tell. (Throwing in that demon comment to confuse her wasn't fair.) After a second she just gave up. "Why is that funny?" she asked Black, who was still giggling.

She took a deep breath before answering, obviously trying to calm herself enough to speak. "If I'm a normal person, Éanna and I must have very different definitions of normal. I mean—"

"Lyra!" A tall girl with bushy brown hair scraped back into a fluffy pony-tail and a book bag that looked like she was planning on going to about ten lessons today (when there weren't any at all until tomorrow), was stalking toward them from the direction of the Gryffindor table. "Where— You didn't come back to the room last night."

"Very observant of you, Maïa. I didn't go back to the tower at all, actually. Good morning to you, too."

The newcomer ignored the slightly sarcastic greeting. "Why? I wanted to ask you what Professor McGonagall wanted to— You're not avoiding me, are you?"

"Er, no? Why would I be avoiding you? I was kind of avoiding the rest of the Gryffindors — in case you didn't notice, they were being more annoying than usual at me about Harry not being dead. Which, while I might have made Dumbledore think that, and I'll even admit that that does sound like the sort of thing I would do, I wasn't the one who went and announced it to the whole bloody country, was I? I distinctly recall telling people I was obliviated and didn't remember anything about Harry leaving. And there's only so much whinging I can listen to before I start wanting to throttle people, and if I did that, I'd never hear the end of it from Sirius, so I crashed the Slytherin orientation meeting after Minnie finally stopped her whinging — nothing important to report there, just, you know, if she thinks I'm trying to drive another professor insane she'll be forced to expel me, because she doesn't have the power to inflict real consequences on me. Also, she wouldn't let me have my time table last night because she's a petty bitch like that.

"Then I figured you and Gin would already be sleeping, so I started working on a map of the Castle — I'm the girls' prefect for our year now, I've been assigned to teach the new Snakelings how to find their way around — and then I found Missus Norris trapped in a suit of armour, which got me thinking, what if I made a suit of armour for Missus Norris, and then the image of an armoured, human-sized Missus Norris going on a rampage popped into my head, so I spent most of the night looking at feline anatomy and different potential materials, trying to find something I could just conjure in the right shapes — metal-shaping charms are a crapshoot — that could be enchanted for longevity, and so it wouldn't hinder the flexibility of a cat while still providing protection from anyone who might try to shrink her or stun her or whatever, and then whether I should make the armour human-sized to start, which would be easier for the joints, but I'd have to try to put armour on a giant cat, which sounds...difficult, even if I knocked her out first, or make it small and enlarge both the cat and the armour together, which would stop her just getting stuck in the human-sized cat armour when she reverted, but would also limit the range of potential materials, and I'd have to find a way to ensure that—"

"So, what I'm hearing here is you didn't finish the map?" Zabini interrupted. "And tone down the magic, you're making Éanna uncomfortable and suffocating your new pet."

Black turned to Rachel, blinking in what could have been confusion, the fascination that had been growing as she spoke, to the point that Rachel found herself just staring at the witch, watching her talk, briefly intensifying to that same overwhelming, what happened to the air level it did every other time Black focused on her. After a moment, though, it fell away almost completely, leaving Rachel wondering when, exactly, they'd sat down, and how, exactly, she'd managed to acquire a plate of eggs and pancakes. "Better?"

"You mean you were doing that on purpose?" Because if she was — and it kind of seemed like it, since she'd managed to stop — that put her convincing Rachel to go to Slytherin in a very different, deliberate sort of light. And given that everyone there was apparently going to have it out for her, that was just mean.

"No. I can stop doing it on purpose, though. If I think about it. Just hit me with a stinging jinx or something if it starts bothering you." ...Because Rachel definitely knew how to hit someone with a stinging jinx, and she would definitely think to do it while just staring at Black like an idiot. "Where were we? Right! Map! I got the basic layout down, but no, I didn't finish it. I ended up going home and arguing with Sirius for three hours over whether I could use Crookshanks as a model and-or-slash testing kneazle for cat armour. He said no." She pouted down at her own plate for a second, spearing a bit of pineapple covered in whipped cream before adding, "Stubborn, selfish bastard. It's not like it was an unreasonable request!"

Zabini pointed at Black, raising an eyebrow at Rachel. "That's why Lyra being normal is the funniest thing I've heard in weeks."

The other girl — Rachel hadn't caught her name — sighed. "I'm never getting my cat back, am I? I can't believe that arse stole my familiar!"

"Have you met Crookshanks? I'm not sure Sirius had any say in the matter whatsoever. And no. Also, speaking of meeting people, this—" She pointed at Rachel with her fork. "—is the muggleborn Slytherin I decided to sponsor on the train, and the tall, awkward guy is one of Sev's apprentices. Sev made a very convincing argument for me helping him get his bearings here and I didn't have any other plans today, so I'm giving him a tour of the school after breakfast, if you want to come. Campbell, you should come, too, since I haven't finished that map, yet."

"Um...hi? When did you decide to— Really, Lyra, that was the worst introduction. I'm Hermione. And you are...?" she asked, her eyes flicking between Rachel and Mister Éanna.

Zabini sighed. "Maïa, meet Éanna Ó Caoimhe, Professor Snape's apprentice — call him Éanna or Mister Éanna, using surnames sounds weird to Gaels. And this is Rachel Campbell, one of our new snakes. Éanna, Campbell, this is Hermione Granger."

Black snorted. "Full marks for propriety, five out of ten for usefulness. Maïa's my muggleborn girlfriend, Rachel."

"Do you have some other girlfriend I should know about?" Granger asked pointedly, which...

Girlfriend? At first she'd thought Black just meant girl-who-is-a-friend, but the way Granger said it... Was that normal, here, for two girls to be...girlfriend girlfriends? Like, boyfriend–girlfriend girlfriends? That was...weird. Maybe not as weird as talking paintings, or maybe not in the same way, but it still kind of stood out, one of those things that made her realise she wasn't in the real world anymore, and not just in a moving-staircases kind of way.

"No?"

"In that case, you do know it sounds a bit racist to introduce me as your muggleborn girlfriend?"

She shrugged. "Sorry? Is that the sort of thing I should apologise for?" Psychic boy nodded. "Do I need dead things and/or American candies?" ...Did she mean flowers and chocolates? Weird. Whatever, Psychic Boy shook his head, very seriously, even though everyone else seemed like they were trying not to laugh, even Black's (apparently not very) offended girlfriend. (Rachel thought she must be used to Black being — probably? — unintentionally rude, if she was always like this.) "Oh, good. Can I apologise in advance? Because I have no idea what sort of things muggleborns think are weird and need explaining about Magical Britain, so I wanted Campbell to know she should ask you about things like that." Oh. Good to know, she guessed. "Or Blaise, I guess—"

"Sterling recommendation, Black," Zabini interjected.

"—but I'm totally going to keep doing it, just to annoy everyone who cares about that kind of shite."

Rachel snorted, biting her lip as she tried not to laugh. It wasn't really funny, just, the way she said it... "The pureblood twats you wanted an excuse to pick a fight with, you mean?"

"Yep!"

"Lyra! It's the first day back!"

Black giggled at her girlfriend's outrage. "Yes, and? My dear cousins have had the whole summer to prepare for the next round."

"Er...cousins?" Rachel repeated. "Which ones are you related to?"

"Well, in Slytherin? Pretty much all of them. Definitely all the nobility, though most of them aren't even second cousins."

"Wait, you're nobility?" Rachel would not have guessed that. Not that she'd ever met a noble anything, but weren't they supposed to be, she didn't know...dignified?

Zabini answered before Black could stop laughing long enough to form actual words. "Yeah, the House of Black was one of the seventeen founding families of the Wizengamot. Nobility in Magical Britain just means your family has a seat in...basically our parliament. I can explain the government later, if you like."

"Better you than me. I've been informed that my priorities are wildly inappropriate for teaching anyone anything, but especially how politics work. Which is weird, because I'm pretty sure everyone else considers collecting bits of interesting information to serve as leverage over various individuals and Houses to be a top priority, too, but." She shrugged. "Social things are not my forté."

Granger snorted at that. "Human things aren't your forté, you mean."

"Well, yeah, but she's not trying to join the wilderfolk or the house elves, so that's hardly relevant."

"That's not what she meant," Zabini informed her. "And you really need to explain how things are supposed to work before explaining how they actually work."

"I maintain that that's both boring and unnecessary since it's highly inaccurate and useless for day-to-day politicking. I mean, does it really matter how many votes you need to pass a motion if you don't know who to bribe to get it on the docket in the first place?" Black rolled her eyes. "But whatever, you can teach Harry and Meda can teach Emma, and I will happily not teach anyone anything, because I have more exciting things to do. Such as, literally anything."

"You know, teaching is supposed to be one of the best ways to learn a subject fully — ensuring that you understand it well enough to explain it to someone else," Granger pointed out, giving her girlfriend a teasing smirk.

"I'm pretty sure success in actually participating in politics is a better measure of one's understanding of the subject than whether one can explain it to someone who doesn't know the Chief Warlock from a hole in the ground. That's really more a measure of how well one understands and can communicate with normal people, which I've already admitted I'm pants at. That's why I have Blaise. Speaking of which, Éanna? Orientation tip number one: ask Blaise to explain why people are being stupid and confusing. He's very good at explaining things that are supposedly obvious to people who just don't get it."

"And here I thought you kept me around for my pretty face," Zabini said. His tone was very dry, but he was obviously trying not to smile.

"Oh, that, too. But you're not a fourth-year prefect because you're pretty."

"Fourth-year prefect?" Granger repeated, sounding as though she couldn't decide whether to be outraged or amused, her face twisting into an equally confused expression. Apparently she'd missed Black mentioning that, earlier. "You can't just declare Blaise to be a prefect, Lyra."

"Well, obviously I can't just declare Blaise to be a prefect — everyone knows prefects come in pairs. I declared myself to be one last night."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"And you know it's not official. I can't take away points or assign detentions, or whatever, and I don't actually have responsibilities which I would inevitably neglect if I were to get bored with them. Well, more when than if, I suppose. I mean, I know I would be a terrible prefect, really. No idea what Slughorn was thinking... Anyway, I'm not sure what your point is? Aside from generally being annoyed with me for no obvious— Wait. This isn't still about the World Cup, is it? Because I didn't kill anyone who wasn't an acceptable target—"

Okay, hold the phone — Black had killed people?! And all the others just carried on eating as though this was a perfectly normal thing to say, too! What the hell?! For one thing, Black was obviously kind of scary — Rachel hadn't really seen her do anything scary (other than the thing with the being fascinating and the staring, maybe), but the way everyone else acted around her (including a student-teacher saying she was terrifying, in front of his students) made it obvious that she was — but she was only fourteen! Kids couldn't be expected to just go around killing people here, could they? She refused to think that was normal, even in the insane magical world. Two girls dating, yes, fine. Fourteen-year-olds killing people on their summer hols, not fine! And for another, she was just talking about it, in the open, like it wasn't a big deal at all — were there no laws in this country?! Even if Black's friends were okay with her apparently killing people...

Zabini smirked at her across the table, his eyes sparkling with amusement — he was definitely reading her mind, creepy psychic! And apparently he thought it was funny that she thought this was a problem! And, okay, maybe she was overreacting a little, there had to be laws, she knew about the Statute of Secrecy, so if they were talking about it openly — even if it was vaguely horrifying that no one thought it was terrible that Black had had to kill someone — she must have done it in self-defense, or something. But still!

"—and I didn't die, so—"

"No, but you could have! And you didn't tell me!"

"Why would I? What would be the point of telling you after the fact that I could have died? I mean, yeah, if I told you before, I guess you could try to talk me out of it, but the thing about life-or-death situations is by the time they reach that point there's not exactly time to send your girlfriend an owl about them."

"You could, oh, I don't know, avoid putting yourself in situations that are likely to devolve into life-or-death conflicts, maybe?"

"I really can't. See, that's why I said you could try to talk me out of it. And it's really better not even to try, you can ask Harry how well it went for— Ouch! What the—" The girl whirled around to see who had just hit her from behind with a bright orange spell. She smirked when she saw a pale, dark-haired boy dressed in not-school robes stalking toward her. Black, Zabini, and Granger were all wearing normal clothes (or more normal, at least — Black kind of looked like she was wearing pyjamas of some sort), though there were a few other kids around in school robes or nicer, more colourful ones like this bloke's. "Oh, morning Theo."

"Have you lost your bloody mind, Black? I can't marry you because someone's almost certainly going to kill you before you leave school. It might be me."

"What?" Rachel wasn't sure she'd ever seen anyone look as shocked as Granger did right now.

"Being a little mad isn't at all the same thing as actually losing it, and my reason was better. Also, you know you love me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go annoy my Head of House until she gives me my fucking time table. Maïa, do you want me to get yours, too?"

"What? No, I want you to explain why you and Theo are talking about getting married!"

"A, we were talking about why we aren't getting married—"

"If you call barging into a bloke's warded bedroom at half six and informing him that you can't get married talking..." Theo grumbled, dropping onto the bench between Zabini and a much older girl, she had to be a seventh-year, picking at a bowl of oatmeal and reading a heavy-looking book that she'd propped up against a milk jug. The table (not Slytherin's, maybe...Ravenclaw's?) had actually become much more crowded while Rachel wasn't paying attention. It had been almost empty when they'd gotten there.

"—and B, Blaise can explain. Or Theo. Probably. I'll be back." She skipped away before her girlfriend could stop her, headed toward the very stern Deputy Headmistress, who was just taking a seat at the mostly-vacant head table. Apparently breakfast wasn't nearly as formal a meal as supper had been last night.

Granger glared at Zabini, who began to explain with an exasperated eye-roll. "She was annoying Sirius about his marriage prospects, and he pointed out that she's just as eligible as he is. She told him she'd ask Theo if he was spoken for yet because he's the only suitable candidate she actually knows, and he doesn't want to get married either." That really didn't explain why a couple of fourteen-year-olds were seriously discussing the prospect of marrying each other. (And the way Granger had reacted had implied that they were serious.) Not at all. "You really should consider it, though, Theo. Being in negotiations with the Blacks would keep everyone else off your arse, and Sirius won't break off negotiations without Lyra's approval. You could probably keep it going for decades."

"That's..." Theo began, apparently about to object, dismiss the idea as completely ridiculous — which, Rachel kind of thought the whole thing was ridiculous. She still didn't know why they were even talking about marriages in the first place, she just couldn't get a word in edgewise to ask. "Actually, that doesn't sound like a terrible idea, even though I'm absolutely certain that it is. I'm sure I'll be able to come up with a reasonable objection after coffee. Also, where's the post?"

"Running late, appa—" Zabini cut himself off, looking up toward a large window over the head table. An owl had just fluttered through it, winging its way over to the Hufflepuff table, with what looked like a rolled up newspaper clutched in its claws. "Never mind."

That first owl was followed by about a hundred more, streaming in and seeking out their targets, dropping letters and papers onto plates and laps before attacking plates of sausage and bacon and generally making a mess of things. The one that delivered Theo's paper — the Northern Herald — tried to steal some of Rachel's eggs. Well, actually did steal some — she wasn't about to try waving it off, those beaks and talons looked awfully sharp, and owls were much bigger than she'd thought up close. When it finally launched itself back into the air, she turned to Hermione. "Is it always like this? You know, with everything just being so...?"

The older girl grinned, actually looking happy for the first time since she'd joined them. "Well, you do get used to the superficial details, the owls and the talking portraits and moving staircases, and the bloody nobles getting engaged at fifteen and such, but...yes. I've been here for three years, now, and I still have days where I just look around and think, my God, this is just amazing."

Rachel nodded absently, watching the last of the birds flutter back out the window, her fingers playing with a loose feather the egg thief had left behind. All weirdness aside, she could probably be here for thirty years and still think that everything about this place was absolutely magical.

Just...splendid.

So, we're going to try to do this posting one scene every other day or so instead of a single massive chapter every week or two. This is the first quarter of a stupidly long Welcome to Hogwarts chapter. —Leigha

Seriously, it's like 35k words. What the hell is wrong with us... —Lysandra

In case it was unclear, yes, Blaise was using legilimency to nudge Rachel into being more comfortable with certain things, like him reading her mind and Lyra killing people.

Also, cat armour amuses me way too much. —Leigha