The following morning when FitzSimmons awoke, the common room was still and quiet.

The early morning light softly lit up the room, though the sun itself hadn't yet quite yet peeked up over the mountains surrounding Hogwarts. The Shield couple shared a languid kiss, enjoying not being in a rush to save the world from one catastrophe or another that it wasn't aware even existed.

But eventually Fitz pulled back and sighed, "So…robes."

Simmons looked down at him for a second before smirking mischievously. "You know...technically still no one's told us we have to wear them. Yes, it was fairly heavily implied, but never actually outright stated. So until it is — at which point I say we either ignore it, or explain why robes are terrible clothes to wear and then ignore them because they clearly aren't going to listen to us — I say we just continue wearing our normal work clothes. They are business appropriate after all, and pretty high level at that since we've always dressed up more than generally necessary, so they really don't have much to complain about."

"Special Advisor to the Director, Doctor Jemma Anne Simmons suggesting we flagrantly disobey the rules!?" Fitz gasped in mock astonishment. "Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?"

Simmons very Special Advisor-like stuck her tongue out at her husband, before saying, "As far as rules go, the only three we've heard are don't go into the forest, Hansel and Gretel and the Big Bad Wolf live in there or something; no magic in the hallways between classes, which a blind man can see isn't going to be obeyed and there aren't anywhere near enough adults here to even begin to try to enforce it, especially as they'll all be in their own classrooms most of the time getting ready for their next class, not out in the hallways to even see any of the magic illegally being performed mostly to bully with; and finally, no third floor corridor on that one side. Now, maybe Professor McGonagall told the first years more of the rules after the boat ride that we weren't on last night, but that's their fault for not having any responsible adults at the train station to make sure that all of the first years went to the boats like they were supposed to, and the book and supply list Hermione has doesn't have a rule sheet with it, either. So literally nothing has told us that we actually have to wear the robes we were told to buy, yet."

"I'm more than happy to go with that," Fitz replied. "Robes are stupid. But speaking of books, how are we going to do that? We have no idea what classes we're taking today, and Harry has eight books."

"We each carry four, and hope someone gives us a class schedule at breakfast," Simmons answered, leaning over to grab Hermione's booklist that she had put in her backpack the night before when grabbing clothes. "Now let's go shower quickly, you throw Standard Book of Spells, History of Magic, Magical Theory, and Transfiguration in your backpack, I'll grab the other four, and hope we can get back by here to get any supplies we need before the classes we need them in."

So they both quickly stood up and snuck upstairs to their assigned dorms, slipping in, showering real quick and grabbing their books and note-taking supplies, before returning downstairs dressed in their normal nice attire that they wore in the Shield lab every day. Once both back downstairs fresh and ready for the day, they exited the portrait hole and started down towards the Great Hall, retracing their steps from when Percy had led them up the night before.

Only the path no longer existed.

Several of the staircases that they knew they had taken the night before were no longer there, and hidden doors that they had easily walked through the night before resolutely refused to open. If they weren't both geniuses with impeccable memories, they would have thought that they simply hadn't remembered the tricky path correctly — but they were, so they knew that it had to be the castle itself changing on them.

"Maybe this is why there's no map," Fitz said as they tried a secret corridor that looked like it was going downwards in the direction that they needed. "The castle's constantly changing."

"Yeah, but no one from first year is going to get to any of their classes, meals, or probably even back to their common rooms unless their parents already taught them the secrets of navigating this castle, if the professors don't give them some kind of directions, which we haven't received yet," Simmons answered. "Also, we need to start drawing all of this out as soon as we make it down to breakfast, as I have the feeling even we're not going to be able to remember all of this to start with."

Eventually they managed to make their way down to the Great Hall again, arriving fifteen minutes before seven. Just to find its doors firmly locked.

"Guess breakfast hasn't started yet," Fitz commented, stating the obvious.

"Probably seven," Simmons replied. "But in the meantime we can start our exploration of the castle from here, and start mapping our way outwards from the central point of the entrance hall, Great Hall, and main door outside that hopefully are all static points."

So for the next fifteen minutes they slowly explored a little way down each hallway, staircase, and doorway leading off of the entrance hall, memorizing how everything was at the moment so that they could begin drawing a map as soon as breakfast did open.

At 0700 they returned to the Great Hall doors, and saw the shortest of the professors whom they had seen up at the staff table the night before walking towards them.

"Well, you two are up bright and early for the first day of classes," he greeted them cheerfully. "Always glad to see students so eager to learn."

"That's definitely us. So when will we get our schedules, Sir?" Simmons asked the professor as he unlocked the door.

"Just call me Professor Flitwick," Professor Flitwick said as he opened the door to let them in. "And your Head of House will come by with your class schedules later during breakfast, so that will be Professor McGonagall for you two."

"Thank you, Professor Flitwick," Simmons said, before she and Fitz walked over to their back corner seats of Gryffindor Table.

As soon as they sat down food appeared in the serving dishes on the table in front of them, and they began eating and drawing out the best maps that they could for Sunday night and Monday morning given their limited knowledge. Over the next thirty minutes students slowly began trickling in, almost all of them noticeably staring at FitzSimmons, and many pointing they were pretty sure at Fitz and whispering behind their hands to each other.

"Harry Potter is clearly famous or infamous for something," Fitz muttered under his breath to Simmons after the tenth time this happened. "Malfoy came looking for him on the train, his sorting seemed to be a much bigger deal than anyone else's last night, and now everyone's pointing and whispering."

"Could it have to do with his parents' murder?" Simmons suggested. "It seemed to be important to Malfoy — that, or it could just be that he's an arsehole and happens to know about it, so he was just trying to use what would be a sore subject for most people in that situation to drive a knife into Harry's side."

"He certainly seemed like the type of bully who would do that," Fitz replied. "Also, we still need to figure out who that 'You-Know-Who' fellow Ronald mentioned last night is."

"We can ask the librarian when we go look for old books about this castle," Simmons said.

Shortly after that Professor McGonagall walked in and up to the staff table, so FitzSimmons, having finished eating and drawing as much of their map as they could for the time being, hurried up to ask her for their class schedule.

"Excuse me, Professor McGonagall, but could we go ahead and receive our class schedules now?" Simmons asked politely. "We would like to go by the library before our first class this morning. Also, where is the library?"

But McGonagall wasn't listening to a word Simmons was saying.

"Where are your robes?!" she shrieked at them instead.

"No one ever told us we had to wear them," Simmons answered honestly.

"I told you last night!" McGonagall shrieked back, all of the modest number of heads in the Great Hall staring at the scene that she was making by this point.

"No, you told us to go get robes and put them on before we pointed out that there was no way we could, but that is all you told us, Ma'am," Simmons answered, knowing that as a female McGonagall would treat her nicer and be more reasonable than if it was Fitz doing the talking, since he was male. "You never said that we have to wear robes while we're in this castle, and like we said last night, no one ever told us before we came here that we have to wear robes while we're here." Deciding to take a calculated risk, she added, "We are muggleborns, remember."

She didn't actually know for sure if they were muggleborns or not, or even what muggleborns were and what the alternatives were, but Malfoy had accused her of being one, and if Malfoy was as much of a bully as they suspected, it seemed like it just might be a 'get out of jail free' card.

And it looked to have been a worthwhile risk to take, as McGonagall's ire seemed to temper if just slightly, and her voice was merely stern and no longer a shout or shriek as she replied, "Well, robes are required at this school, so go put them on and come back down to breakfast."

"Ah, yes, well you see, here we run across one of those conundrums of the unstoppable force, immovable object variety," Fitz said, knowing that no matter how much of a female Simmons was (and boy was she, as he had the pleasure of experiencing every night), it wasn't going to help them in this case.

As McGonagall looked at him in confusion, Simmons refrained from rolling her eyes at her husband as she explained to the witch, "What Harry means to say is, now that we know they are required, we run into the problem that we're not wearing them because not only are they stupid, they're actually quite dangerous. You see, robes greatly hamper movement in emergency situations — shit hit the fan scenarios, if you prefer the common name. They are like high heels, except without any possibility of attractiveness — quite the opposite, in fact, if I may be so blunt and not hurt your fragile ego. But what we're saying is, we aren't going to wear robes because they would inhibit our ability to run or fight should our lives ever depend on it — which while seemingly an unlikely occurrence at a school, we were trained by the best to prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and usually get something in between, so that is exactly what we're going to do. And while these business casual clothes aren't exactly the best for emergency or combat situations either, they're sure as bloody hell a lot better than robes you're more likely to trip over so that your assailant can casually shoot you in the back while you're lying face-first flat on the floor, than anything else. And quite honestly, if I may be blunt again, I'm a little worried that your brains would simply explode if you ever saw a woman wearing a catsuit in public. If robes are your normal, a tank top and spandex would probably give you an aneurysm, and I straight up dread to think what a curve-hugging leather catsuit and high-heel leather boots would do to you."

At least the 'we're not going to wear robes' part of this McGonagall understood (though probably not much else as that is what she focused exclusively on), as she quickly snapped back, "You will wear your robes and hat like you're supposed to, young woman! And the same with you, Potter!"

Seeing no reason to continue arguing a moot point, favoring waiting on it to simply come to head again the next time she saw them still not wearing the robes that they were never going to wear, Simmons decided that it was time to repeat her initial question, any friendliness gone from her voice.

"Can we have our class schedules? We are going to the library before class starts, and we need to know where to go once the bell does ring. And on that note, where is the library?"

McGonagall's expression shifted to surprise for a second, before disappearing as she replied dismissively, "I'll pass out the class schedules after the owl post, right before the bell rings for you to head to class."

So Fitz decided that it was time to lay things out bluntly on this issue like Simmons just had on the clothes issue. "We won't be here when that happens, because we're going to find the library on our own right now. So if you want us to make it to class, you're going to have to give us our schedules now or we won't have a clue where to go."

"How dare you talk to me like that, Potter!" McGonagall shouted back. "That's ten points from Gryffindor!"

Having no clue what points were, or why they mattered and seriously doubting that they actually did, FitzSimmons turned as one and Simmons threw over her shoulder as they walked away, "Bye then — maybe you'll change your mind at lunch."

If McGonagall had been expecting them to submissively walk back to their seats at Gryffindor table and that is why she didn't try to stop them, or if she really didn't care that they were going to miss their first few classes FitzSimmons didn't know, but the woman didn't yell anything at their retreating backs and soon they were out in the entrance hall, looking around to see where they thought they should go.

At that moment a group of older students walked by on their way to their own breakfast, so Simmons quickly asked them, "Excuse me, but where is the library?"

The group looked at the two of them oddly for a second, probably wondering what two first-years wanted to go to the library for on the first morning before any classes had even started yet, but one of the girls finally pointed down one of the hallways leading away from the entrance hall and said, "Down that corridor, can't miss it."

"Thank you."

As the group continued on into the Great Hall after giving the two of them one last strange look, FitzSimmons set off in the direction that the girl had pointed in. It didn't take long walking down the hallway and around a few corners to find the library that they were searching for. No one seemed to be around, though that was of little surprise with it being before 0800 on the first day of classes. But they had only been wandering through the towering rows of shelves for a little bit trying to figure out the organizational scheme of the books, when a thin, irritable-looking woman bearing a striking resemblance to an underfed vulture appeared beside them almost as if out of thin air.

"Excuse me, Ma'am, but what is the oldest copy of a book you have about this castle?" Simmons asked her.

The woman just stared suspiciously at them for several seconds, before finally answering, "That would probably be the first edition copy of Hogwarts: A History. I keep it in the Restricted Section so students won't mess it up with their grimy little fingers, but I can go get it for you so long as you promise not to damage it — it is very old and valuable."

"Of course, Ma'am," Simmons replied with a polite nod.

So as the librarian hurried away to get the book, FitzSimmons headed towards the nearest table and sat down to wait.

A few minutes later the librarian returned, setting an ancient-looking tome down in front of them with a glare and the strict warning, "I had better not see a single mark or smudge on this book when you turn it back in, and it can't leave this table!"

As she turned around to disappear back off to wherever her nest was, Simmons quickly said, "One more quick question, please, Ma'am. Who is this You-Know-Who and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named person we've heard mentioned a few times since arriving? When we asked the person we heard it from he wouldn't tell us what he was talking about, and just stared at us like we were idiots. But we're just muggleborns, Ma'am."

The librarian looked at them in shock for several seconds at not knowing who You-Know-Who was, before looking at Fitz with a look of suspicion and going, "But you're Harry Potter! You know who You-Know-Who is! You're the one who defeated him!"

Storing away that gargantuan piece of information to the puzzle that they were trying to navigate their way through, Fitz replied, "I haven't told her anything, it's awkward talking about myself. So can you please humor her questions? Also, what's your name, if I may ask?"

"Pince," Madam Pince answered shortly, before shaking her head slightly and saying irritably, "Wait here."

Once she had disappeared off into the rows of books, Fitz whispered to Simmons, "So what exactly is 'muggleborn' to make it the magic word around here? Because Malfoy was using it as an insult against Hermione, but it works wonders on adults as an excuse for why we don't know anything."

"I don't know, but Malfoy said it after asking what kind of blood I was, so we guessed that it had something to do with family and lineage," Simmons answered. "Maybe 'muggleborn' is someone with no magical family to teach them the rules of the school and wizarding society at large or something, so we're being given a free pass by saying that we don't know anything and shouldn't be expected to yet. We can try looking that up after dorm rooms and We-Have-No-Clue-Who — we have all morning after all, since we don't know what classes we're supposed to be in."

A few minutes later Madam Pince returned and set The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts down on the table in front of them next to Hogwarts: A History.

"This should answer most of your questions," she said before disappearing away and leaving them alone to read.

" 'Who-Has-A-Clue?' later, let's find us somewhere to live first," Simmons said, pulling Hogwarts: A History towards her.

She carefully flipped through it for several minutes, until finally finding the section on Gryffindor House.

"Okay, so Godric Gryffindor was one of the four founders of this school, each of whom had their own House," she read aloud as she skimmed through the chapter. "Let's see, let's see…ah, here we go — Gryffindor Tower. Common room in the middle accessed from the seventh floor of the castle, with dorm rooms above and below it. And to access them…ah! This is it! You know how the one wall in each of our staircases has the hidden door leading to the common room bathrooms? Well, the other wall is where the staircase continues downward from the common room, instead of up like the staircases we can see and use today. This of course doesn't say how to open them now that they're closed, since they were still open when this book was written, but it does prove the existence of what we're looking for."

"You know, I saw a section of books on hidden and secret doors and passageways before Madam Pince swooped down on us," Fitz said, standing up. "I can go get a few of those and we can write down all the possible ways it could be hidden to try when we get back, or once classes start so we know we'll be alone."

Returning a few minutes later he set four books down on the table in front of them, and they each grabbed one to skim through and take down notes.

Reaching the end of her second book, Simmons said, "So it mostly seems to be hidden latches or doorknobs like we've ran across on hidden doors throughout the castle and the bathrooms in the common room; some kind of unlocking or revealing spell, of which we know none; or you just magically walk through a seemingly solid barrier, like what separates the muggle — I assume that means nonmagical — platforms from the magical platform at Kings Cross Station, London where the train we arrived on came from."

"Yay, trial and error," Fitz grumbled, setting down his second book. "But yeah, that about sums it up."

"Then while you go put these back, I'll try to find the section in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts we're supposed to be looking at."

Just as Fitz returned from putting away the books on secret doors and was sitting down again, they heard a bell ring from seemingly everywhere at once throughout the entire castle, and possibly even grounds.

Looking down at her watch that read 0850, Simmons said, "Looks like classes start at nine, though only giving everyone ten minutes to get to class in a school this big and complex seems a bit optimistic of the professors."

"Especially all of the first years who if are anything like us, have absolutely no clue how to get through the castle," Fitz nodded in agreement. "Although now that we mention it, I wonder if Hogwarts: A History has a map or anything in it."

"I skimmed through the rest of it while you were getting the secret door books, and didn't see anything," Simmons answered. "But I found the chapter in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts literally titled 'You-Know-Who'. Right after the chapter titled 'Grindelwald', who looks to be the main tyrant of the wizarding world prior to the one we're trying to figure out."

In the very first paragraph of the chapter they found the most important piece of information that they were looking for — You-Know-Who/He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named's real (-ish, but they were years away from finding that out) name was Voldemort, sometimes with the title 'Lord' placed in front of it.

Reading on, and oftentimes between the lines, they discovered that Voldemort was a tyrant/terrorist who had tried taking over wizarding England presumably on his way to taking over the whole world like only every tyrant ever, but on his way when he had tried going to Harry Potter's parents' house to murder them all, after successfully murdering Harry's parents the spell that he had used to try to murder Harry had apparently rebounded somehow and hit him instead, and he hadn't been seen or heard from since and was presumed either dead or in some non-human spirit-ish form, while only giving Harry Potter a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead that everyone knew about. But like their drastically incorrect ages, apparently no one could tell that Fitz no longer had such a scar.

"So that's why Harry's so famous," Simmons said when they had finished reading the chapter. "He survived and 'defeated' a psychopathic tyrant when no one else had, and as a baby at that."

"Looks like," Fitz replied. "Well, at least we kind of know what the hell's going on now — or at least as much as anyone else probably knows, since they presumably learned about it all from the same sources as wherever this book got its information. So now let's just figure out what muggleborns are and what non-muggleborns are, and we might almost be able to actually live in this world without raising suspicions."

"Shame there's no Introduction to the World of Magic for People Who Aren't From Wizarding Families book, that really should be required reading for all applicable wizards before they start attending," Simmons sighed. "I guess we should try books about families, or the social structure of the wizarding world — right after we give Hogwarts: A History back to Madam Pince."

But seemingly as soon as they stood up and lifted Hogwarts: A History up off of the table, Madam Pince swooped down on them and made that part of their job easy, taking the book from them while looking over it with an eagle-eye, looking for the tiniest blemish. But apparently satisfied that they hadn't desecrated her sacred book, and snatching The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts away from them as well, she stalked off, allowing FitzSimmons to go perusing the shelves in search of anything that looked useful. Eventually Fitz waved Simmons over to a book that he had just spotted.

"Malfoy used the word 'blood', didn't he?" Fitz said, pointing at a book titled Purebloods: Wizard's Natural Leaders.

"Worth a shot," Simmons replied, pulling the book down off of the shelf and opening it up.

Within the first few sentences of the preface they had their answer: 'The superiority of Purebloods over halfbloods (the descendants of purebloods who forsook their noble heritage and calling, and married muggles) is clearly evident, and muggleborns should not even be mentioned in the same sentence as purebloods, and yet far too many purebloods have given up their rightful place in the wizarding hierarchy over the halfbloods and muggleborns.'

"So purebloods have been all wizards for a long time and halfbloods are a mix of magical and normal, which means muggleborns must be from entirely normal families," Simmons said.

"And a bunch of purebloods are bigots who think they deserve to rule the world simply because their families have been magical the longest," Fitz added. "How much you want to bet Malfoy's a pureblood, and not one of those who have 'forsaken their noble heritage and calling'?"

"He did say that some wizarding families are better than others, and heavily implied that his own was one of those better ones," Simmons nodded as she returned the book to its spot on the shelf. "So I'd say it's about the same likelihood as Aida being a psychopathic robot, or Enoch annoying everyone. But blood that isn't red and still inside us aside, I think it's time we get up to Gryffindor Tower to try to get into the lower half of the dorms while everyone else is in class."

It was another journey of trial and error to get back to up Gryffindor Tower as they intentionally tried finding a new path from the library up to Gryffindor Tower without going through the entrance hall in order to expand their knowledge of the castle, but eventually they found themselves outside of the portrait hole. After giving the painting of a fat woman the password and entering, they walked over to the two doors that led to the dorms.

"I think we should try the guys' dorms, as even though we'll really only ever be going through the door and not into the actual current dorms or even stairwell, it's much more likely that a girl will get upset about you going through our door than a guy getting upset about me going into your staircase," Simmons said, before opening the door to the guys' staircase.

She began feeling up the wall that they knew the staircase had to be through, Fitz hanging back and watching as there really wasn't room in the stairwell for both of them to search, and they needed to find the way through not snog until people started returning to the common room after class.

But after a while Simmons stepped back and said, "I don't think there's any physical doorknob we're going to be able to find. It's either hidden with spells we don't know, or there is no door to begin with. Which leaves us pretty much only with the hope of just being able to walk through it, else we're going to have to start asking for help from older students, which I really wanted to avoid."

"So, what? Just step through it like the book said students have to do in order to get onto the train platform in London?" Fitz asked. "But why didn't your hand ever go through the wall while looking for a door today or last night, and why does no student ever just accidentally walk through it with as many students brush past that wall every year?"

"Just a thought here, but, we factually know there's a staircase there — which is more than can be said for any other student who hasn't had that information passed down through their families," Simmons answered. "So if we assume that kind of magic can block you if you're not trying to get through it, then that covers why no one accidentally walks through it. As for why my arm didn't go through it — maybe exactly the same thing. I wasn't trying to get through it, I was trying to find a handle. It's sketchy, but so is our knowledge of magic to begin with. And that book did have a lot of different types of hidden and protected doors that we didn't read thoroughly through."

"Then I guess I'm diving through a hole in the universe again," Fitz sighed, looking at the door. "I really don't want to walk face first into a stone wall."

"My husband, the hero," Simmons replied teasingly, batting her eyelashes at him.

"And the doctor promises to nurse my broken nose if I just splat into a solid stone wall?"

"With lots and lots of kisses," Simmons smirked right back, before saying seriously, "Just concentrate on the fact you know there's a staircase there. And step down, because it will presumably start immediately, and I really don't want you falling down an entire flight of steps."

"Oh — didn't think about that. Great, now I have to worry about falling down stairs in addition to hitting a stone wall," Fitz grumbled. "In that case, I should start on the actual stairs, so it's more like just continuing down stairs."

He walked up the first few steps of the spiral staircase upwards, before turning and facing the stone wall that he was going to have to walk through like it didn't exist.

"Since 'Clara' isn't exactly applicable in this situation, I guess it's 'geronimo'."

And with that Doctor Who joke, he started walking down the stairs. Down five steps, a stride across the flat landing, and —

He disappeared through the wall from Simmons' point of view.

"Fitz? Can you hear me?" she asked hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

"I can hear you perfectly," her husband's voice came floating through the stone wall. "And I'm fine. It's exactly the same as the staircase up, only going down. Also, I can see you — I'm assuming you still can't see me?"

"No. All I see is the stone wall," Simmons answered.

"Well, from this direction it's like there's no stone wall there at all — I can see everything the same as you can coming down the stairs, with the obvious exception that there's no stone wall on the upward side so I can see straight up the stairs you can see."

"I suppose that's good thing, really," Simmons said. "It'll probably be best not to pop through the solid stone wall when anyone's around to see it. Best to keep this all a secret, and not scare the hell out of them or make them think we're ghosts."

"Oh — never thought of that. Yeah, that's probably a good idea," Fitz replied. "Now get down here. I can't very well go exploring without you by my side."

"Right — and the stairs start immediately, I presume?" Simmons asked.

"Yep — exactly what you'd expect. Just step through the wall and down."

Simmons took a deep breath, before concentrating on her husband just below her, and stepped though the wall. Two strong arms caught her as she teetered slightly on the steps, before letting her go again so that she could look around her.

"Cool. This is awesome," she said with a bright smile. "Now let's go find us a room."

And with that she set off down the stairs with a bounce. The lower half of the tower mirrored the upper half, only it kept going down below just seven floors. At ten they ran into another stone wall, and while they had their suspicions that it was the same as the one above them and not really real, they had no interest in living that far down, and so they hurried back up to the door only one floor below the common room, so that they would only have to climb one flight of steps to get from their dorm to the common room and the rest of the castle each day. Entering it, they found a mirror image of the first year dorm rooms that they were supposed to be in eight floors above them.

"Well, this is definitely our home for however long we're here," Simmons pronounced as she looked around. "Now let's go get our trunks and move them down here while no one's around, and we'll never have to go back up there ever again."

~FS~

When they heard the bell ring a few hours later, FitzSimmons assumed based on the time on their watches that it was the lunch bell, and so headed back down to the Great Hall to eat and hopefully get a class schedule.

Like when they had been in the Great Hall eating breakfast that morning, everywhere they went, every corridor they walked down that had other people on it, a large portion of those people pointed and whispered amongst themselves as they stared at FitzSimmons going by. But having experienced years of that as the two youngest ever enrolled at Shield Academy and then the youngest at Sci-Ops nearly their entire time there, they payed little attention to any of this, knowing that Fitz wasn't the one to have even done any of the things that everyone thought he had, and knowing that it would be a short lived fame when 'Harry Potter' turned out to be no different than any other first year student there and didn't end the reign of a new tyrant each year that he was at Hogwarts — the fickleness of fame, and all that.

Entering the Great Hall, they took their normal seats in the back corner of the Gryffindor table and began eating. But just a couple of minutes in, two people approached them at the same time. One was Ronald Weasley, moving from the spot where he had been sitting near the middle of the table next to some of the other Gryffindor first years. The other was Professor McGonagall, stalking towards them with a look of barely contained fury. Professor McGonagall was expected and to a certain degree even desired, as she had their class schedule that they wanted. Ronald was not.

But Professor McGonagall was the first to speak, and for a few minutes they entirely forgot that Ronald had even sat down across from them.

"I told you this morning to put on robes, Potter and Granger!" she vociferated with a passion.

"And we patiently explained to you this morning why we're not risking our life and limb to wear what you've decided is required clothing for this castle, for seemingly no other purpose than to reinforce the negative stereotypes normal people have about witches," Simmons answered politely, but firmly. "But the abridged summary of this morning is, we're not wearing them, so stop telling us to."

McGonagall stared at them for several seconds in shock at having a student tell her no, before finally snapping, "That's twenty additional points, and ten more every day from here on until you start wearing your robes! And where were you when I gave out the class schedules this morning?!"

"Once again, in the library like we told you we were going to be when we asked you for our schedule this morning and you refused to give it to us," Fitz answered. And then before she could snap anything back he continued on, "So are you going to give it to us now so we don't have to miss any more classes?"

For a second McGonagall looked like her head might explode right where it sat on her shoulders, but instead she ground out, "Twenty more points for skipping class this morning, and if you keep behaving like this, I must remind you that I have the power to expel you from this school!", before viciously holding out two sheets of parchment which Simmons calmly took from her, unperturbed by the professor's outbursts. Then McGonagall turned on her heels and stalked back up to the staff table, finally leaving FitzSimmons in peace.

But such peace was to be short lived, for as soon as they started looking over their schedule Ronald demanded, "Where were you at breakfast this morning?! And classes?! And Harry, why didn't you come up to bed with the rest of us last night?! And how could you have lost us forty points on the first day?!"

FitzSimmons looked up at him, having entirely forgotten that he was there.

"Fifty, I think," Fitz replied indifferently. "And what are points for, anyway? No one ever told us."

"They're how we win the House Cup, and finally take it back from the stinking Slytherins after years and years of them stealing the Cup from us!" Ronald exclaimed, all aghast.

"And the point of winning that is?" Fitz asked, highly doubting that there was any. "Is there money involved? College scholarships? Job placement when we graduate?"

"It's a great honor!" Ronald exclaimed. "It's right on par with the Quidditch Cup!"

"So it's worthless," Simmons said, nodding her head in understanding. "I had a feeling, those kinds of things usually are. It's a way to keep students in line before they're old enough to understand the true importance of school on their lives, and before there can be any real rewards for good grades like getting into the best colleges and graduate programs. Okay enough if used correctly, but at the end of the day entirely meaningless."

"And as for where we were this morning," Fitz picked up, not wanting to give Ronald time to reply to their lack of caring about the House Cup when he clearly did care deeply, "we ate breakfast as soon as it opened, and then McGonagall refused to give us our class schedule before we left so we were in the library studying on our own."

"But—!"

Ronald stared at them in shock, though whether at eating breakfast early, not hanging around to get their schedules, studying in the library when they could have been not studying, or still stuck on the whole House Cup thing, FitzSimmons didn't know. Nor did they care, as Simmons pulled out the book for their class that afternoon and propped it up in front of them to read as they ate.

But Ronald apparently wasn't content to let them read in peace, as a few minutes later he asked, "Harry, have you ever played wizards chess?"

Never having heard of it, but wondering if it was anything like 3D chess from Star Trek or the 4D+ chess that Fury, Nat, and Coulson played against all of their enemies, Fitz mumbled, "Nope," as he kept on reading the textbook.

Like with quidditch the night before, Ronald went off on a long-winded ramble about wizards chess while Fitz and Simmons read and just occasionally nodded or mumbled 'Uh-huh' when it seemed appropriate. He was still explaining the finer points of the game when FitzSimmons finished eating and stood up to head to the library to read in peace for the remainder of lunch before class.

As they started walking away, Ronald realized that Harry Potter was leaving in the middle of his informing the Boy-Who-Lived something about the wizarding world that the Boy-Who-Lived didn't know, and exclaimed, "Hey! Where are you going?!"

"Library to study," Simmons answered. "You're welcome to come if you'll read and study quietly for this afternoon's class."

"But it's lunchtime!" Ronald exclaimed, like the idea of going to the library to study during lunchtime was completely preposterous.

"Do whatever you like — this is what we're doing," Simmons replied, before turning and starting towards the door again.

"Harry—!" Ronald exclaimed, like he thought Fitz might give him a different answer.

"What Hermione said," Fitz answered over his shoulder, not bothering to stop this time as it was clear that Ronald wasn't going to be forsaking his lunch to join them studying, and probably wouldn't just study and would try talking about non-school-related stuff if he did come.

Ronald did however make one last ditch effort to make Fitz stay that sealed his spot on FitzSimmons' start-avoiding-as best-as-possible list, right next to Malfoy and his bodyguards. "You don't have to do what she tells you to, you know!"

Fitz was really tempted to stride back to Ronald and give the redhead a piece of his mind for insulting his wife, or just grab Jemma and spin her around so that Ronald could clearly see them and snog her senseless in front of him, but instead Fitz chose to simply ignore the git and continue following his wife out of the Great Hall, as the first would probably get Professor McGonagall on his tail again and he knew that Simmons didn't care what some random kid said about her, and the second could stir up more trouble than he wanted to deal with at the moment since everyone in the school thought that they were eleven year olds, who shouldn't be sticking their tongues down each other's throats. So he did neither, and continued on out of the Great Hall and into the entrance hall, and onward from there to the library.

And a few minutes later they were back in the library for the second time that day, only with their own books instead of borrowing any of the library's this time. Lunch break wasn't nearly enough time to read through the entire Herbology textbook before they had to be outside at the greenhouses for class, but they figured that it was highly unlikely that their professor would cover too much beyond the first couple of chapters (if even past the first chapter at all — this was a class designed around the scholastic habits of eleven year olds, not multiple doctorates), and that much they could speed read and remember in the limited time that they did have.

But as it turned out when they actually got to the greenhouses and their first class in the magical school, they needn't have read at all as their professor never even had them open their books, instead merely lecturing and mostly on plant safety, as apparently magical plants were much more dangerous and sentient than normal plants. But for two people, genius adults though they may have been, who knew literally nothing about the world of magic other than what they had heard and read in their less than twenty-four hours that they had so far been in this world, it was actually a relief, at least until they could read enough books to have a solid grasp of what was going on.

Despite their earlier dismissal of him at lunch, Ronald came to stand right next to them in the greenhouse, but at least refrained from trying to talk to Fitz while Professor Sprout was actively talking, and so Fitz didn't have blatantly ignore him or else tell him to shut the fuck up.

But as soon as class was over and everyone started walking out of the greenhouse, free for the afternoon, Ronald did say to Fitz, "Want to come play wizards chess with me in the common room?"

"We're going to the library to start reading for tomorrow's classes," Fitz said, not bothering to try to be polite any more after Ronald's insult of Simmons at lunch, or Ronald's nonstop attempts to make Fitz do something with him.

"But it's the first week of classes! You don't need to read anything, and we don't have any homework due until next week!" Ronald exclaimed.

"We like being prepared, and learning," Simmons replied crisply, before picking up her pace and striding towards the great oak doors into the castle, Fitz right behind her.

Thankfully Ronald didn't try running after them on his shorter, eleven year old legs, and they soon arrived in the library where they could begin the process of reading enough to know what was going on. They started with the Charms book from their booklist, as that was their first class the following morning. Almost as soon as they started reading they knew that they were going to love this class once they got good at it, not that they probably weren't going to love all of their classes, loving learning and school in general as much as they did. But Charms seemed exceptionally fun from the spells that they were reading about.

By the time their stomachs started reminding them that eating was a generally recommended activity they had finished the entire Charms book, and after supper would be ready to start on the next book on their list.

~FS~

That evening after Madam Pince kicked them out of the library because it was late and curfew was looming in deadly proximity, FitzSimmons head back up to Gryffindor Tower.

They had successfully avoided Ronald at supper, sitting next to several seventh years who looked at them slightly oddly but said nothing, but as soon as they entered the Gryffindor common room he assaulted Fitz again.

"Want to play a game of wizards chess yet, Harry?" he asked.

"Hermione and I are going to study," Fitz answered, figuring it probably best not to mention that this time their studying was going to be more anatomical than literary — each other's bodies to be precise, and completely naked.

As he had at lunch, and probably after herbology though they hadn't ever actually looked at his face to see, Ronald stared at them in shock. "There's more to school than studying! Come play chess and have fun!"

"I have fun learning new things," Fitz replied calmly. "And it is school. We are here to learn, not goof off. Anyway, doesn't learning how to do magic intrigue you? Don't you want to be able to do everything in our books, and then years' more worth? There's a whole world of magic here for us to learn, an entire library filled to the brim with spells we can do — but only by studying hard and applying ourselves. But doesn't that seem worth more in the long run than playing games and getting by with as little effort as possible?"

He really had no idea what Ronald's studying habits were like, a couple instances of him not wanting to study on the first day not being enough evidence to convict him of being lazy and just trying to get by instead of trying hard, but if he could show Ronald the value of studying hard through his short speech and turn Ronald into a hard worker, he was happy to try. On the other hand, if Ronald was lazy, as hinted by the few interactions that they'd had with him so far, maybe calling him out on it would whip his arse into shape, and he would start putting more effort into his schoolwork by realizing that there really was something that he wanted to obtain that could only be achieved through working hard for it. Either way, Fitz and Simmons certainly wanted to learn, and to know what was going on before they went to class, so they were going to continue studying the same as they had forever, even before meeting each other as achingly shy sixteen year old geniuses at Shield Academy.

So before the redhead could reply, they resumed walking over to the door leading to the boys' dorms and slipped inside, closing the door back behind them so that no one in the common room could see them disappearing through a solid stone wall. After quickly glancing up the stairs to make sure that no one was coming down who could see them disappear, FitzSimmons stepped through the wall and headed down to their private dorm to spend some time to themselves before going to bed.

~FS~

The rest of the week they quickly fell into a routine.

Every morning at breakfast when she saw them, McGonagall stormed up to them and took ten more points away for still not wearing robes. Every time Ronald saw Fitz he came up and sat down next to Fitz and tried to engage Fitz in conversation that never had anything to do with schoolwork or magic, and Fitz increasingly ignored him to try to get him to get the message that he wasn't interested. In classes, the redhead always tried to get a seat right next to Fitz, but as FitzSimmons took the front two corner seats in every classroom, with Fitz on the very edge against the wall and Simmons in the seat that bordered against the rest of the seats, Ronald had to choose between sitting next to Simmons, separated from Harry Potter by her, or sitting behind Fitz where Fitz couldn't see him and could very easily ignore any whispering that Ronald dared try to do sitting so close to the teacher, a choice that he constantly went back and forth between until Thursday afternoon, when he roughly pushed past them to claim the seat that Simmons normally sat in in an attempt to force Harry to have to sit next to him instead of that bossy Granger girl whom he was always with. But FitzSimmons merely took the two end seats of the front row on the side closest to the door, Fitz on the outside and Simmons on the inside towards the rest of the seats like normal. The normal occupants of said two seats glared at them, but didn't say anything and moved on to find other seats.

"Persistent bugger," Fitz whispered into Simmons' ear before class started, about Ronald's continued attempts to sit next to him.

"I'd report him to McGonagall for stalking, but he's only eleven, I doubt his motives are stalkerish. I think he just wants to say he's friends with a celebrity," Simmons whispered back.

What FitzSimmons didn't know and couldn't have known, was that Ronald's mother had told him to befriend Harry Potter so that Ronald's younger sister, Ginny Weasley, would have an easy in with the Boy-Who-Lived when she started at Hogwarts the next year, and so that Ronald's mother would have an excuse to bring the Boy-Who-Lived to her house during the summer. Had they known any of this, FitzSimmons would have reported it to Professor McGonagall and demanded that Ronald not be allowed to sit within several chairs of Fitz anywhere in the castle, that they didn't want to be friends with the redhead and he was refusing to leave them alone. But they didn't know this, so they didn't report it, and merely tried their best to avoid Ronald and ignore him when they couldn't avoid him. They knew that they were soon going to have to just tell him flat out to leave them alone and stop following them around, but they just hadn't got around to actually doing it yet, preferring to just tune him out and stay away from him as best as they could.

They also had yet to engage in enough of a conversation with him to find out that he actually went by Ron and not Ronald, as they had yet to actually say his name to him in the entire week that he had been following them around.