Halfway through dinner that night, Rowan sat at the Slytherin table, in the empty seat next to Grace. The Slytherins nearest to her gave her surprised looks. Normally, students stayed at their own house tables.
"Rowan? Why are you here?" Grace voiced the question on everyone's mind. Hastily, she added, "I mean, I'm happy to see you, of course, but..." She trailed off with an awkward shrug.
Rowan looked down at the table. "I just wanted some time away from the other Ravenclaws," she said quietly.
Merula gave her a smug look. "I know why you're really here, Khanna," she said.
Rowan glanced up quickly before returning her focus to the table. "I'm just sitting with Grace," she mumbled, almost inaudibly.
"Are you?" Merula raised an eyebrow. "Or are you here because the Ravenclaws don't want you now that you're friends with one of us?"
Grace couldn't stand seeing her friend so upset. "Leave her alone," she snapped at Merula.
"You're the one who needs to leave her alone, Prickle," Merula said. "I warned you that you would ruin her life. Now you have."
Grace looked at Rowan, who had stiffened at Merula's accusation. "Is that true?" she asked. "Do the Ravenclaws hate you because of me?"
"Not all of them do," Rowan said quickly. "It's just, the ones that do are very... vocal."
"Tell me who they are," Grace demanded.
Rowan eyed her. "Mostly it's older students. They don't care about us, specifically, but I can only listen to so many people telling me that Slytherins are all horrible people and should be avoided at all costs."
Grace thought of what Felix had said, that there was too much bad blood between the houses for Slytherin to ever be forgiven. That wouldn't be true if she could help it. "Are the first-years as bad as the older students?" she asked.
"No," Rowan said. "There's still a general mistrust of Slytherins, but most of them seem willing to believe that you're nice."
"Then we'll start by convincing them," Grace decided. "Who's the most accepting of Slytherins?"
"Wait, start what?" Rowan asked.
"Repairing Slytherin's reputation, of course," Grace said.
Merula snorted. "That's impossible."
Grace glared at her. "If you think like that it is."
She looked at the other first-years, who had paused in their conversations to watch what was happening. "We've got to try to fix things. Do you really want to go through all seven years with the rest of the school thinking we can't be trusted?"
Barnaby looked thoughtful. "We should give everyone a Puffskein. Everyone loves Puffskeins," he suggested.
"Where would we get hundreds of Puffskeins from?" Merula snapped.
"I propose that we each try to befriend a different student," Ethan interjected. "Rowan will tell us what Ravenclaws are most open to the idea."
"I will?" Rowan looked confused. "Um, sure, I will."
Everyone looked expectantly at her, except for Merula, who slammed her fork down onto her plate with a clatter. "This is ridiculous. You're all just wasting your time, you know that? Slytherins will never be accepted." Abruptly, she left the table and stormed off.
There was silence for a moment, before Ismelda also stood up. "I agree with Merula. Slytherins don't need anyone except themselves, and you're fools for thinking otherwise." She moved farther down the table, sitting in an empty seat beside a pair of third-year boys. There was a lot of empty space at the table; as Grace had noted before, Slytherin was the smallest of the houses.
That left five Slytherins and Rowan. "Um, maybe one of you could try to befriend Badeea," Rowan said with a pensive look. "She isn't openly anti-Slytherin, but she's very quiet, so I don't think she'd like multiple people coming up to her."
Grace looked at Liz and Sam, figuring the quietest of the Slytherin first-years would be a good match for the quiet Ravenclaw. The others seemed to understand what Grace was thinking and looked at the two as well. Sam didn't seem to notice. He was staring down at his plate, and Grace wasn't sure he'd actually been paying attention to the conversation.
"I'll talk to her, then," Liz said. "Where can I find her?"
"She likes to paint in the courtyard," Rowan said. She frowned and tapped a finger against her chin. "Now for the rest of you..."
After a few minutes of deep concentration, she sighed. "I don't know who else would be a good choice," she admitted. "I guess you should just try to befriend everyone."
She laughed at the faces of the Slytherins. "I don't literally mean everyone. I meant that you should try to befriend everyone you can. Oh, but not Evelyn Hayes."
Evelyn was a Ravenclaw girl with short brown hair, pointy features, and a perpetually disgusted look, as if she'd just smelled something rotten. She openly sneered at the Slytherins during lessons, and once she'd knocked Grace's inkpot over during Transfiguration, ruining her notes. Grace didn't need to be told to steer clear of her.
The first class the Slytherins had that morning was Transfiguration. Their professor, a young witch named Professor Jordan, set them their newest task, which was turning pieces of string into sticks. Grace didn't understand the point of the exercise. She pointed her wand at a piece of white string, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn't get more than a small patch of dark color to appear. Jealously, she looked at Rowan's string, which was completely covered in bark pattern, though it had yet to gain the rigidity it was supposed to.
Several of the students around Grace were having conversations. Professor Jordan tried to get them to focus on their work, but no one ever listened to her. She was nice, but she lacked authority.
Grace didn't bother trying to start a conversation with Rowan. Rowan always refused to talk until both of them had finished with their Transfiguration.
Rowan finished first, as she almost always did. Once she had a small stick lying on her desk, she tried to help Grace. Rowan insisted that her skill with Transfiguration was due to her greater knowledge of the theory. She'd tried several times to get Grace to read more of the textbook, but she always refused, insisting that the textbook was too boring.
Today, Rowan tried a different strategy. By the time she finished with the day's task, Grace had succeeded in turning the string brown. Rowan spent the rest of the class explaining the theory of how Transfiguration worked, as well as various techniques that she'd read about. The lecture seemed to help, and by the end of the class both of them had sticks instead of the pieces of string they'd been handed.
After classes ended for the day, Grace returned to the Slytherin common room. The other first-years were already there, crowded around the bulletin board. Grace strained to see what they were looking at.
"Flying classes start on Friday!" Ethan yelled. Several of the older students turned to look at him.
"Who are we with?" Grace asked. She still couldn't see the announcement.
"The Gryffindors," Ethan answered.
Grace had hoped that they would be with the Ravenclaws. She wondered when Rowan would start her Flying lessons.
The morning of their first flying lesson, the Slytherins were joined at their table by not just Rowan, but Ben.
Merula rolled her eyes. "You've adopted another stray, Prickle? At this rate, the Slytherins will be outnumbered at our own table."
She sneered at Ben. "Come on, Ismelda . Let's get away from these freaks."
The two girls moved further down the table. Grace couldn't say that she was sorry to see them leave. She turned to Rowan. "Ben and I get to learn to fly before you. A whole day before you. Are you jealous?" Grace teased.
"Very," Rowan said with a laugh. "One of the school brooms was made from wood from our farm. I wonder if any of us will find it."
"I thought your family grew wood for wands?" Grace asked.
"That's mostly what the wood is used for, but some of it is used for brooms too," Rowan explained. "Brooms have to be made from magical wood so that enchantments can be placed on them, and there aren't a lot of tree farms, so all of them grow wood for both wands and brooms, though most use more wood for one than the other."
"How will I know which broom to look for?" Grace asked, cutting Rowan off before she could launch into a lecture about the different tree farms and the woods they grew. Normally she enjoyed listening to her friend's lectures, but she didn't want to be late to her first Flying lesson, and she definitely would be if Rowan's knowledge started pouring out uncontrollably.
"You can't," Rowan said sadly. "The brooms aren't marked in any way by the farms."
"Then I'll tell you what broom I get so you can pick the same one, and we'll pretend that one came from your farm," Grace decided.
Rowan was happy with the plan. She walked with Grace and Ben until they reached the field where Flying lessons took place. Grace promised to tell her everything that happened before waving to her as she ran back to the castle.
"Stand beside a broom," Madam Hooch ordered the remaining first-years.
Grace looked around. Lined up on the ground were several old, warped brooms. She found one that was still in half-decent condition and stood beside it.
Once everyone was standing next to a broom, Madam Hooch gave her next instruction. "Hold your left hand over a broom and say "UP!""
"UP!" Grace shouted. Her broom half-rose off the ground, straining towards her, before flopping back to the ground. Grace imagined it panting like a dog.
She looked around. It seemed most people hadn't had any more luck than she had, though Ethan and a Ravenclaw boy named Andre Egwu were holding their brooms in their hands and looking quite pleased with themselves.
She tried summoning her broom a few times. On her fifth try, the broom finally succeeded in reaching her hand and she gripped it proudly.
Next to her, Merula was struggling. No matter how insistently she yelled, "UP!", the broom refused to do more than roll over. "This broom is obviously deaf," she hissed.
Finally, most of the students had summoned their brooms. Madam Hooch showed them how to hold their brooms, and then walked up and down the line, correcting their grips.
"Move your hands up a bit farther, Miss Prickle," Madam Hooch instructed. Grace adjusted her grip.
At long last, the moment had arrived for them to take off. Under Madam Hooch's watchful eye, the students practiced lifting off and hovering in the air before returning to the ground.
It took a few repetitions before the excitement wore off and Grace noticed that Ben wasn't moving. She touched down next to him. "Don't worry. There are so many safety charms on these old brooms that you couldn't fall off if you wanted to," she assured him.
Ben's expression relaxed slightly. "I don't know..."
"Come on. You'll be fine," Grace encouraged. "Push off gently, and just go up a little. I'll be right next to you."
Ben hopped, allowing the broom to support him in the air. Grace mimicked his little jump, hovering next to him a foot off the ground.
Ben's face turned to one of amazement. "I did it!"
"I told you it would be fine. Try going higher next time," Grace said, ignoring Merula's snort of "Barely" on her other side.
Grace ached to fly higher, but she forced herself to stick by Ben's side as he slowly flew higher and higher. The rest of the class moved on to circling in the air above their heads.
Grace stared longingly at the other first-years as they flew in a slow circle. When she turned back to Ben, her frustration must have shown on her face. "Join them," he said, pointing at the sky. "I'll keep practicing."
Feeling only slightly guilty, Grace joined the circle of students, leaving Ben to lift off by himself. She gripped her broom and leaned forwards to pick up speed. Madam Hooch made them circle slowly even though all Grace wanted to do was fly as fast as possible.
All too soon, it was time to land. Grace touched down with a wide smile on her face. She'd made up her mind about something.
"I'm going to try out for the Quidditch team next year," she told Ben as they walked back to the castle.
Ben shuddered. "That sounds terrifying. Aren't you afraid of the Bludgers?"
"Not really. Look, Ben, the worst injury you could get from flying is a broken bone. Maybe that's a serious injury in the Muggle world, but Madam Pomfrey can fix something like that in seconds," Grace assured him. "How was flying? Was it less scary than you expected?"
"It was actually kind of fun," Ben said in surprise. "I think I'm going to go higher next time."