CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-SIX
Despite Jane's lack of friends on her trip, Pendle Hill Academy was outstanding. She'd had tours of the grounds and gardens. She'd attended multiple seminars by different witches and wizards. She'd even attended a Potions session and did rather well in her opinion.
The most entertaining part to Jane was meal times. And while she sat near Helen, who mostly complained to Cassie and Alicia about having to share a room with a Slytherin, Jane liked to block her out and observe everyone else in the room. She liked to listen to all the different conversations filling the room, spoken in all kinds of languages. She hardly understood any of them, as she could only speak English, but she enjoyed listening all the same.
As for the food, the school had been very accommodating. Different dishes from all around the world adorned the tables. Jane liked to try all of it. She especially liked what she'd had for lunch the previous day: some sort of Japanese or Chinese noodles with a side of some kind of fried dumplings.
It was now the fourth day of her trip, and despite what a great time she was having, Jane missed her friends back at Hogwarts. She often wondered what they were up to, to which she usually concluded that James, Sirius, and Peter were probably getting themselves into some sort of trouble while Remus and Lily studied for the N.E.W.T.s.
It was now a quarter till two in the afternoon, and Jane was making her way to the Academy's southern courtyard. She had decided that instead of lying about in her room, reading, she'd go for a hike up Pendle Hill with whoever else wanted to go. It was one of the few things on her itinerary that was optional. Mostly, she just wanted to get her mind off how alone she was feeling.
When she got to the courtyard, she raked through the group of people with her eyes, noticing that Parker and Alicia were the only other students from Hogwarts that had decided to go. Parker still gave Jane wary looks that seemed a bit remorseful. It was as if on the one hand, he wanted to apologise for snapping at her back in November, but on the other hand, he looked at her as though she might try and recruit him or Alicia to Dumbledore's society, and he couldn't have that. Jane didn't particularly blame him; he was scared. However, she wanted to tell him that he didn't have to worry about her recruiting anybody. She didn't want to be responsible for anyone's death.
Jane ducked away before the two Hufflepuffs could spot her. She stood behind a group of American witches who were talking about one of their classmates, a girl named Candice who apparently annoyed them severely.
Jane waited for their guides to get there with the portkeys. They were to start their hike from Downham, a small town somewhere to the north of the school. Jane rocked back and forth on her heels and toes with her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. As she rocked back, her backpack that she'd filled with snacks and water had bumped into someone. Jane turned on her heel to find a group of students from Mahoutokoro.
"I'm so sorry," she immediately said to the boy she'd bumped into.
He only looked down at her before one of his classmates, a girl who had her dark hair pulled back into a wrap bun with her wand stuck through it, said something to him in Japanese. A look of comprehension spread across his face, and he said something to Jane that she didn't understand, and then, he turned to talk to a boy beside him.
The girl smiled a bit at Jane.
"I am sorry. Toma does not speak English," the girl said. "My name is Keiko."
Jane smiled at the girl.
"I'm Jane. It's nice to meet you."
"You go to Hogwarts?" Keiko asked, and Jane nodded.
"And you go to…Mahto—" Jane sort of broke off, not really remembering the name of the school or how to pronounce it.
Keiko chuckled a little under her breath.
"Mahoutokoro," she said.
"How are you liking England?" Jane asked.
"It's nice," Keiko said. "I really like this school. I hope to go here."
"Me too," Jane said. "It's beautiful, and the teachers here are wonderful."
"My mother wants me to go to Wandouigaku; it's the healing school in Tokyo. But I really like it here," Keiko told Jane.
Keiko looked at the watch on her wrist, which Jane noticed had moving, funny looking symbols instead of numbers and no clock hands. Keiko then took out a map and unfolded it.
"Have you ever been to this place?" Keiko asked, pointing to Downham on the map that they'd all been given earlier in the day; it had their hiking route marked on it.
"No," Jane said, pulling out her own map to look at the route again.
Keiko and Jane talked for a while longer before they finally took their Portkey to Downham and started their hike to the summit of Pendle Hill.
"What is Hogwarts like?" Keiko asked as they walked and took in the scenic views.
"Well, it's up in Scotland. It's a gorgeous castle, and it's on a cliff overlooking a lake. The rest of it's surrounded by trees. And the students are split into four houses named after the witches and wizards who founded the school. And we have a willow tree that can kill you," Jane said, causing Keiko to laugh a bit.
"Is it pretty there?"
"Beautiful," Jane said. "There's rolling green hills, and the way the lake shimmers is magnificent.
"What about your school?" Jane asked. "What's it like?"
Keiko smiled.
"Mahoutokoro is hidden in the mountains. It's made up of several imperial pagodas that are connected by bridges. Every year, we have Hanami, where we look at the sakura and admire their flowers. The older students wave their wands, and the trees dance in the sunlight. It is very beautiful to watch.
"The school was founded in the seventh century by Taira no Chiyoko; she was a very powerful witch, a kitsunetoka—"
"What's that?"
"A fox talker," Keiko said. "That is why the symbol of our school is a fox; they are considered very magical creatures."
"Like snakes," Jane said, remembering the tales of how Salazar Slytherin could speak to snakes.
"Yes," Keiko said. "It is a very rare gift to talk to either; it is a mark of some of the most powerful witches and wizards."
"My Patronus is a fox," Jane stated in a matter-of-fact sort of voice, happy to keep the conversation with this girl going.
\"Your Patoron? Your light protector?" Keiko asked; Jane nodded.
"Well, we had been working on them in class, and I could only make a full body one once for, like, five seconds, but it was definitely a fox," Jane said.
"It is a very difficult spell to get correct," Keiko said.
Jane laughed a bit.
"Try telling that to my friends. Then again, James and Sirius have always excelled at everything, but mostly Transfiguration. Remus can do it too, but Defence Against the Dark Arts has always been his best subject. My friend, Peter, and I are still working on it. Have you gotten it down yet?" she asked Keiko.
The girl shook her head.
"Not a whole one, not yet," she said. "Toma has though. He can do it without even saying the incantation; he's that good."
Just then, she called over the boy who Jane had bumped into earlier. Keiko said something to him in Japanese, and Jane was suddenly jealous of Keiko being bilingual. Maybe Jane should try to learn a different language.
Toma had smiled at whatever Keiko had said, and he held up his hand to make them stop walking. Jane and Keiko and another Mahoutokoro boy stopped, and they waited for the group to get far ahead of them, as they were sure that magic wasn't allowed on this little excursion.
Toma stepped back from them, giving himself room. Raking his black hair away from his mischievous looking face as his eyes flashed towards Keiko, he reminded Jane remarkably of James whenever he was trying to impress Lily. This made Jane grin a bit.
The boy waved his wand with such little effort that it would have made James and Sirius jealous. Out of the end of his cherry wood wand sprang the silvery form of a Tanuki, a sort of raccoon dog that Jane assumed must have been native to Japan because she'd never seen one before.
The Patronus scampered around Keiko playfully, causing her to giggle a bit. Jane reached down and touched the Patronus on its nose. She'd done this with Sirius' Patronus once, but it still surprised her how warm the little silvery creature was. It wasn't exactly solid, but it wasn't exactly not solid either. And the best thing about it: it seemed to fill her with a tremendous joy that she couldn't explain.
"I can't do a non-verbal spell at the best of times," Jane said, half impressed, half jealous, "let alone something as complicated as the Patronus Charm. James and Sirius can't even do that yet!"
Although Toma couldn't speak English, the look of awe on Jane's face seemed to communicate perfectly that she was paying him a compliment. He stood a bit taller and said something in Japanese that made Keiko roll her eyes, though she smiled nonetheless.
"Arrogance knows no language barriers," she told Jane, causing her to laugh.
"Oy!"
Jane, Toma, Keiko, and the other boy jumped. Toma's Patronus faded away as the leader of their group yelled back at them from quite a distance ahead.
"What are you four doing? Stop lagging about!"
The four of them looked at the ground and then at each other out of the corner of their eyes. They were all wearing identical little grins as they broke into a jog to get back to the hiking group.
As they ran along the green grass, Jane couldn't help but feel like she was eleven or twelve again, messing about with her friends and having just been reprimanded for it. And considering how much she was missing her friends, it was one of the best feelings in the world right then.
By the time they had finished their hike, and Jane had taken tons of pictures, she felt quite fond of the three Mahoutokoro students, even if Toma couldn't speak English, and his friend, Masaki, could only understand a little of what she said. Keiko ended up translating quite a bit between them all.
Jane spent the rest of the day with the three, and she secretly lamented the fact that she hadn't gotten to know them a lot sooner during the trip because the next day, she'd be on her way back to Hogwarts, and they'd be gone to Japan. Keiko was especially kind to her; she reminded Jane of Mary or Marlene. She even showed Jane how to fix her hair in a wrap bun like hers, and how to pin it in place using nothing but her wand (magically and physically), and Jane would adore the hairstyle enough to wear it for a week like that after she'd gotten back to Hogwarts; her wand sticking elegantly out of her hair as Keiko's did hers.
That night as Jane got back to her assigned room, she was greeted by silence as Helen and Sadie still hadn't warmed up to each other much. And honestly, Jane thought that had more to do with Helen and her prejudice against Slytherins more than Sadie. Though, who was Jane to judge? Hadn't she treated all Slytherins as the scum of Hogwarts for the past seven years? She tried not to think on it too much, as most people usually do when they're close to admitting they are in the wrong.
Helen was reading a rather large book, and Sadie was flipping through Witch Weekly, every now and then, glancing over at a teapot that hung in mid-air just above her bed. The tea she was making smelled delightful; Earl Grey probably, which happened to be Jane's favourite.
Jane watched a few minutes later as Sadie removed the teabags from the pot and conjured up a teacup. Sadie, who to had a sort of sixth sense that seemed to exist solely for the purpose of knowing when Jane Hensworth was watching her, snapped her eyes up towards her. Jane suddenly became quite interested in the pattern of her bed spread and looked away at once.
Sadie seemed to be debating on whether or not to say something. And finally, she opened her mouth.
"Would you like some tea?"
It seemed so out of place for a Slytherin to be asking a Gryffindor this without so much as a hint of patronising sarcasm in their voice. And for a moment, Jane was a bit stunned because this was the first time Sadie Selwyn had ever actually spoken to her directly. Helen's eyes peered nosily over the top of her book. Sadie cut her eyes to the girl.
"You can have some too, you know," she said, in what seemed a slightly colder voice, as though she didn't quite like Helen as much. "I promise I didn't poison it."
Helen made a disparaging noise under her breath, and once again disappeared behind her book. Jane saw Sadie roll her eyes ever so slightly when Helen stated:
"No."
Jane, on the other hand, who really had no good reason not to like Sadie other than the fact that she was a Slytherin and a touch intimidating in Jane's opinion, nodded a bit.
"I wouldn't mind a cuppa," she said finally, and Sadie quite swiftly conjured up another teacup, filled it up with tea, and sent it floating towards Jane.
Jane took the cup and sipped on the tea as Helen, once again, peered over her book as though she were wondering if maybe the tea really was poisoned. However, Jane didn't drop dead; in fact, with the first sip, a sort of warmth spread through her that made her snuggle back into her pillows cosily.
"Thanks, Selwyn," Jane said, a small smile barely gracing her lips.
Sadie nodded back respectfully as she sipped on her own cup of tea.
"Don't mention it, Hensworth."