Chapter 3: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

Angelina's copy of the profile on Aunt Hermione comes in the post on Tuesday morning, which is super convenient because I usually sleep through breakfast on Sunday and Monday—Sunday because I don't believe in getting out of bed in the A.M. unless absolutely necessary and Monday because nope. Tuesdays go better because I always pass out at eight or nine on Monday nights and it's like this nice hard reset on my sleep debt. Also, this term, I have Muggle Studies and Potions both on Tuesday mornings. Muggle Studies is just about the only class you could stick immediately after breakfast to motivate me not to skive off, and then even though Potions is Potions, Slughorn's a sweetie. I get why everybody else thinks he's kind of skeezy and plays favorites, and I'm not even going to waste my time trying to deny the favoritism part, but he gives me career advice and doesn't like my sister, and I'm all in favor of anybody who doesn't like Molly.

Anyway, it's actually really cool, the stuff in Witch Weekly about Aunt Hermione. I mean, a lot of the stuff I knew already—that she's Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement over at the Ministry, that she did a bunch of stuff with elf rights before that, and then obviously everything with Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron in the Second War—but I don't know, it's a lot different reading about it. I knew she was important, but she doesn't act all hoity-toity about it when it's Christmas dinner and she's bitching about red tape at the Ministry with spinach caught in her teeth.

I've just hit the part about why she transferred out of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures when McLaggen parks himself on the bench next to me and peers at the magazine over my shoulder. "Witch Weekly, Weasley, really? I wouldn't have pegged you as the manicures and Celestina Warbeck type, but okay."

"Shut up, it's about my aunt," I say. I feel myself tensing up and scoot a couple centimeters away from him down the bench.

We haven't actually talked about the thing since we did the thing. You know. I'd done stuff before, but not with him—well, I'd done stuff with McLaggen, but only if you define "stuff" as that time we were trying to jinx the toilet in the Hogwarts Express loo and he kissed me. Okay, seriously, though, it wasn't as nasty as I know that sounds. We were kind of pressed up together in there because nobody had had the good sense to put an Undetectable Extension Charm on the bathroom, and we were dicking around joking about whatever, and then the train like lurched around a sharp corner or whatever, I don't even know, and he kind of fell on top of me and we got all smushed up on top of each other against the wall, and I made some dumb joke, and there was this big pause where he wouldn't stop looking at me and I felt kind of jittery noticing how red his lips were and then I noticed them getting all close to mine and yeah.

This was third year on the train either before or after Christmas break, I don't remember, but I think it must have been after because I'd probably have been stressing out about that the whole time at the Burrow if it'd been before and I don't remember having any anxiety last Christmas, or at least any anxiety beyond the usual bout of it I always get from having to share a bedroom with Molly and Vic and Dom. I like Dom, but that's just too many people in one former closet, I'm sorry.

And then he never brought the kissing up again, and I never brought the kissing up again, and then I got a girlfriend and that was a thing for the rest of third year until I found out Chandni had been cheating on me with that asshat Jessica Vane from my house but a year up. So I ditched the bastard—newt eyes were thrown and Jelly-Legs Jinxes were involved—and then didn't get laid all summer until McLaggen took me out of that particular misery last week.

Or he tried to do, anyway. I don't ask whether he gets up to any extracurricular action, but he's never had an S.O., and it showed. I told him hands only because herp, and I think he must be feeling really humiliated now that he's sat through Vector's sex ed classes because he clearly did not know what any of his options wre when we were in that cupboard. To be fair, I was probably bad, too, but I think I should be exonerated by virtue of the lesbianism of my only ever relationship.

Anyway, he seemed really embarrassed about it right after and kept rubbing his arms and asking if I was okay and stuff. I told him I needed to pee and that I'd meet him downstairs for dinner after, except I didn't. I kept using more and more toilet paper like I thought I could wipe it all off or something, even though it was making the chafing from earlier worse, until the TP caught specks of red in it and I flushed and went down to the Great Hall and bothered Al instead. The next time I saw McLaggen was in class the next morning, and he was acting like it hadn't happened, so I did too.

I've been feeling kind of edgy about it, I guess, but it hasn't been like a problem or anything I can't handle. It's just uncomfortable when he sits too close to me or anything because then I feel funny and I'd rather avoid that. Like now. Hence the scooching away.

McLaggen doesn't seem to notice, which is either convenient or inconvenient depending how you look at it, and tries to make some dumbass small talk about his bigoted grandmother and her house-elves that I am just having none of right now. Like, clearly somebody in this conversation could benefit from reading this article, and it's not me. I'm just here for kicks. It's not anything Aunt Hermione wouldn't tell me about if I asked her, anyway.

I shake him off when breakfast's done, seeing as McLaggen's got Ancient Runes and I've got Muggle Studies, which as always turns out to be a grand old time. Prof Ingram passes back our last papers—I got an Acceptable; looks like she wasn't too impressed with my mad 3 A.M. critical thinking skills—but our homework from last time was to read this whacked-out Muggle sci-fi novel, so of course discussion eventually lands on everyone's favorite debate.

In the eloquent words of the Gryffindor bloke who brings it up: "I don't understand why they can't figure out a way so we can watch Muggle television at Hogwarts. I'm sick of reading books based on T.V. shows. What even is that, come on?"

Pursing her lips, Ingram says, "You know full well that is not a conscious decision on the parts of the staff, Stebbins. Around too much magic, electricity—"

"—Should work just fine," continues Stebbins. "Isn't that the whole point of Transfiguration theory? How magic and physics are the same thing?"

"They're not the same thing. Magic—think of magic like a workaround to natural physics. Muggle inventions like electricity draw on energy like magic does, but in competition with it. So in a place like Hogwarts, with as many wizards as Hogwarts has, magic uses up all those resources—think how first years' cell phones fry up within a few hours of entering the castle."

Another girl chimes in, "But magic uses 'unusable' energy sources, right? Like, the stuff after an engine's been applied. So why would that have any effect on electricity when it's two different sources?"

"It's not the same source, Watkins, but the processes are similar enough that—"

"But that doesn't make sense," entreats Watkins.

Nodding, Stebbins adds, "It's got to be on purpose. Electricity is such a specific thing, out of all the things that use up energy, come on—"

"Okay, so say it's on purpose," I say, tilting my chair onto its back legs. "What about the Ministry? Electronics don't work there, either. I can sort of see them rocking a pureblood conspiracy type deal—you know, pre-Second War ending, if all the higher-ups didn't want their offices tarnished with Muggle shit—but the Ministry was the first wizarding building to install modern plumbing, too, and they took that from Muggle-land."

"It's true," says Ellington from the back of the classroom. "Muggles did plumbing in their loos first. And my sister's phone literally burned up and got its screen all cracked after like an hour in the Ministry when she was there for her disciplinary hearing last summer; Reparo didn't work when she got home, our parents had to buy her a new one."

"What did your sister have to go get disciplined for?" asks Stebbins.

"Underage Apparition—plus she tried taking our little brother Side-Along and got him Splinched pretty badly—but that's not the point—"

"No," says Prof Ingram, "it isn't. I'm sorry, but now is neither the time nor the place to be tossing out conspiracies about pureblood subjugation. This is Muggle Studies."

"Because those aren't related at all," Hakim mutters.

Not appearing to hear her, Ingram adds, "And the only Muggle technology I'm interested in hearing about today is in the context of Doctor Who novelizations. So let's get on with it, shall we?"

x

I finish the article on Aunt Hermione at the beginning of Potions while Slughorn's blathering on about the magical properties of caterpillars and their function in Shrinking Solutions. Potions is shaping up to be a little awkward this year, since the Rapey Snapey revision of Magical Drafts and Potions came out this past summer and Slughorn seems weird about giving him credit for much of anything, let alone beating him at his own craft. I know they were at Hogwarts together for the last year or two of the Second War, and that was when everybody thought he was the ultimate worst and yadda yadda before Uncle Harry busted up that whole perception, so maybe he's just got some trouble letting that go. Dunno.

I'll say one thing for old Snape: his changes to the recipes have been making the whole student body eons better at potioneering. I guess his copy of the N.E.W.T.-level textbook got lost in the Req Room back when that was still a functioning thing, which is too damn bad, since it would've made my future life a hell of a lot easier. But some kid a couple years back got his whole trunk Vanished in a cleaning charm gone wrong and had to borrow textbooks from all the profs till his parents could owl over new ones, and when he bitched to Slughorn about wanting a nice, clean copy of Drafts instead of the janky one he'd wound up with, Slughorn put two and two together and contacted the publisher. Wish this edition had been around three years ago, but merp, better late than never.

I go say hi to Slughorn when class is over to ask if he's got some time to kill—I haven't really properly sat down with him since third year, and I could use some decompression with the whole McLaggen business going on and being cooped up with Mol and the ancestors the last two months before school and just all of it. "Certainly, m'lady!" he says with a big belly laugh, and that's how I wind up plunked in a fat armchair in his office, nursing a butterbeer and venting about the ancestors.

"Oh, my dear girl," tuts Slughorn, gulping down the last of his mead and reaching behind him to pour another glass. "You'll push through it as long as you keep your chin up. You're a true Slytherin, Lucy, and I don't say that lightly! You're an ambitious witch, and I assure you you're going to go far with it and not feel so pent up for much longer."

"I dunno, Professor," I say. "Am I, do you think? Do you really? Because it's great here, because I don't have to put any airs on and I've got you—" Slughorn beams at me "—but I've never given enough shits—whoops, I mean—never cared to bother much with classes or anything, and just there's so much I want to do that I wish I could handle with spelling and everything, and if I can't live up to that, then what's the point of going green, you know? What was the point of becoming that Weasley in the family when I could have just…"

He kicks his feet up onto a footstool and shakes his head at me with a small smile. "Oho, but that's everything. You've got your cousin Potter now to keep you company, isn't that right? Timid thing—can't say I quite understand how quickly the Hat Sorted the boy—but no matter…"

"But I had a choice. I could have been like my dad-ancestor, you know, I could have not made things so screwy for myself."

"And what you chose was to carve your own ground out. Aspiration isn't always about striving for Outstanding marks, Miss Weasley! It's about striving for what fulfills you, even if that amounts to ignoring what you're told to value. You don't need a N.E.W.T. in Transfiguration to write the spells you want to write—though, like I've always said, I'm sure you'll be up to that task if you choose it—or anyone's approval, not even that of your family."

"They're just… hard."

Slughorn nods. "I hear that, my girl, I hear it, but these things work themselves out in time. Your father reconciled with his family when it was his time, didn't you say so? And though I never taught him to be able to vouch for him—your mother I had for a year, the poor, battered thing. She never did have a talent for Potions—stopped after scraping an Acceptable O.W.L.—and dropped out of Hogwarts entirely a few months into her seventh year. Couldn't recover from the year before, I suppose. I remember seeing her in a corridor once cleaning up some nasty cuts on a first year—but no one could hide that kind of rebellion from the Carrows for long… She was a good witch. That ought to count for something—and with her daughter, no less."

Battered's a good word for the mum-ancestor, I can tell you that. I think she makes herself small in some big effort to get people not to stare at the scars and stuff—like that makes her so unusual when they're not half as deep as the ones on Uncle Bill's face, like the rest of the world's going to slow down to pay her any attention just because she can't keep up. She'll be sitting there at tea trying to hunch her shoulders over as much as possible and flinching a little anytime anybody tries to talk to her, even though it's usually just Aunt Ginny trying to be nice or the dad-ancestor asking if she can pass the biscuits. I hate her, except I don't, except really I do.

I wonder if sometimes battered's a good word for me, too—only in ways I don't think Slughorn's ever going to see.