AN: This chapter, I believe, is not my finest work. I feel like it's short but I feel like it drags. (edit: this chapter is actually slightly longer than the last chapter, I had to check) There's a lot of explaining in the first section and not a whole lot of anything very interesting in the second section, but it's there for a reason I swear. So please enjoy despite it not being very entertaining. Or maybe it is. Who knows.

Shoutout to 911weasleytwins for texting me "NEW CHAPTER YEET YEET YEET" and "IM SO HYPEF TO READ IT" as soon as my last chapter went up, what a sweetheart honestly, she also leaves the most supportive reviews and I am very grateful for her input. Also I literally just finished Parks & Rec the day I finished and uploaded this chapter and let me tell you I am very emotional about it. (Maybe that's why this isn't fantastic whoops) Also also you guys would not even believe how much extra stuff I have half-written for this story already and I haven't even finished planning out all of the main story. Whenever this ends, be prepared for sequels and prequels is all I'm gonna say lol

"One package of licorice wands, two chocolate frogs, a box of Every Flavor Beans, and…what did you want, Mina?"

"Cauldron cake."

"And one cauldron cake please," Quincy finished.

The trolley witch smiled and began gathering the sweets. "That'll be three galleons, four sickles, dear," she said, handing the stack of packages to Quincy and taking four galleons from Gideon, who'd been standing by with the coins. Quincy began distributing the snacks as the trolley witch counted out a number of sickles. "And thirteen sickles is your change."

After they'd slid the compartment door shut again and everyone had gotten what they'd wanted, the attention turned back to Marina. Gideon let one of the licorice wands hang from the side of his mouth in preparation to sort out Bertie Bott's beans, and took the liberty to start the discussion. "So hold on—I'm sure I can't be the only one here who doesn't know all the backstory. I know you were curious about your parents, but what's all the fuss about it?"

"I never really questioned it until last summer when my mum and papa told be they finally got engaged, and then I realized they'd never told me very much at all. I knew a little about my papa's parents, because I've met them, but they live in France and grandpapa's sick often so we don't see each other often. I do know that my grandpapa's a wizard and my grandmama's a muggle. No idea about if my grandpapa's muggleborn, whatever," Marina began, lifting the cauldron cake out of its box.

"Why is this relevant, exactly? Blood status, I mean?" Gideon asked.

"Just hush, Gideon," Annie said. "She'll explain. She's very good at explaining but you have to be patient."

Marina rolled her eyes. "I do not take forever to explain something!"

"You do a bit," Quincy said, shrugging. "Just go on."

"Fine, I'll try to be more brief. Anyway, I knew my papa was basically a halfblood, he went to Beauxbatons, was an only child, all that. My mum didn't say much other than that her family were stuffy purebloods and she didn't speak to them anymore. There was some drama, obviously, but I didn't question it because my mum hated talking about her family and never did for more than a sentence or two at a time."

"The Stewarts aren't on the Sacred Twenty-Eight, though, are they?" Annie asked.

"They're not," Gideon answered.

"I'll get to that," Marina said. She took a bite of her cauldron cake and tried to hold it out of Maia's reach. "So I started wondering, when they told me they were engaged, why they hadn't gotten married long before. Like, before they had me. I kept meaning to ask but I always ended up distracted by someone else." Here she shot Quincy a dirty, but jokingly so, look. He had the decency to smile sheepishly back. "Then, you know, Sirius Black was sorted into Gryffindor, and Artemis and Lark explained all about pureblood prejudice insanity, because even though both my parents are magical, I've never heard of that before. I suppose I was sheltered from it or something. And then that got me thinking about my mum's family, who were purebloods. So then I thought maybe my mum, who I know isn't prejudiced against muggleborns at all, was kicked out of her family for maybe having me with my papa, who isn't a pureblood."

"Well that's a good theory, I'd say," Gideon commented, trying to discourage Maia, who had abandoned Marina as a food source, from batting at his licorice. She meowed at him in response.

"I was sort of hoping that maybe some of my mum's old friends might shed some light on it at my parents' wedding, but she only invited her friends from work, I guess. All the family there was from my papa's side, and they'd never known my mum before she met Papa. I thought the whole investigation would turn out to be a flop and I'd have to just ask Papa what he knew about it, but then my mum's sister showed up at the reception all of a sudden, uninvited as far as I know."

"And this is where I no longer know anything about what happened because you refused to tell me anything," Quincy announced, scowling at Marina.

Marina flapped her hand at him and rolled her eyes. "Oh hush, I only wanted to have to explain once. So my aunt, who introduced herself as Bertie but my mum called her Gigi and I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to call her so I just avoided using her name the entire time she was there, and my mum and papa all sat down and just talked and talked, catching up and whatever, for hours. Apparently my mum hasn't seen her sister since about a year before I was born. And I got impatient after a while and asked what had even happened that made them fall out of contact. You know me. But hours-long story short, my maternal grandparents were not pureblood fanatics, per se, but they were very conservative on the issue of blood. So, casual pureblood supremacists, I suppose. That's why we're not on the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Even back when the list was written, my family weren't truly pureblooded; they throw their lot in with the purebloods more because they're in power than because they strongly believe in it, although they do have some prejudice, my mum said. But my grandparents didn't raise my mum and aunt to be like that, really, or at leas that's the vibe I got from them. My mum was disowned—"

Quincy's jaw dropped. "Wait, your mum was fully disowned? I thought she and her family just dropped contact!"

Marina shook her head. "Oh no, she was disowned alright. Had she married my papa then she probably wouldn't have been disowned and my grandparents would probably only have dropped all contact and my aunt would've still talked to my mum over the years. But no, she was disowned. Basically my mum met my papa on Christmas holiday in France in her seventh year, they fell in love, wrote letters when school started again, all that, and my aunt encouraged my mum in all this. And then my mum met up with my papa again over Easter holiday, and I guess by graduation my mum knew she was pregnant with me, and that's why she was disowned. From there my mum lived with friends for a while before she saved up enough to get her own flat, and the rest is history." Marina shrugged. "I probably would've figured out the gist of it earlier if I had bothered to check the math on how old my mum was when I was born, but oh well."

"So you were the reason your mum was disowned?" Quincy whistled, long and low. "I would feel terrible if I knew I'd wrecked my mum's relationship with her family."

"Shut it, Quin. 'S not Mina's fault," Gideon said, elbowing Quincy in the side. "That's insensitive, you dolt."

"No, it's fine. I guess you could look at it that way, but I don't feel guilty. It was my parents' choice to do what they did when I'm sure they knew the consequences. If there's one thing my mum has never been, it's reckless, and my papa would never have pressured her to do something she didn't want to do. That just isn't who they are. I'm not responsible for what they did, and I'm actually thankful, because if I hadn't been born when I was, I wouldn't be who I am now, and I probably wouldn't be friends with any of you. And anyway, my aunt feels terrible about supporting my mum and then suddenly cutting off contact when my grandparents told her to, so now my mum and aunt are at rebuilding their relationship, which is nice. Oh, did I tell you my aunt's married to Harold Minchum?"

Annie cocked her head, unopened chocolate frog box still in her lap. "Who's Harold Minchum?"

Marina shrugged. "Not sure, but my aunt says he's got a pretty powerful position in the Ministry. Her fabulous clothes would agree, I suppose."

Quincy and Gideon laughed, and Annie gave them a confused look, the sort of face you'd see on a puppy, before it dawned on her. "Oh, so your aunt married for money? That's kind of sad, isn't it?"

The rest of the train ride consisted of taste testing Every Flavor Beans while Gideon watched and laughed at their disgusted faces (he'd sorted them and was extremely familiar with each flavor). After a particularly nasty vomit bean, Annie broke down and had to open her chocolate frog to cleanse her palate, only the enchanted sweet hopped away before she could catch it. Their bean adventure had to be set aside for a moment to prevent Maia from catching and eating the frog, as chocolate should never be consumed by cats. Marina finally grabbed her out from under the bench seats just as she was about to scramble out and jump up at the window, where Annie's frog had come to rest. That would have been disastrous in more ways than one, and it was lucky the chase stopped there before any cats or students got hurt. Annie elected to sit the rest of the bean game out to pay extra careful attention to her chocolate frog. She'd gotten Eugenia Jenks, the current Minister for Magic, on her card.

When the train finally pulled into Hogsmeade Station, Annie looked about ready to fall asleep, but Gideon and Quincy were positively bouncing. Literally. They were nearly skipping as the group walked. Marina gave the boys an odd look as they made their way to the mysterious horseless carriages. "What's got you both so excited to be back?" she asked.

"Well, Quidditch, that's what!" Quincy answered. "The first two games of the year are over, all the teams have played once," he continued, voice animated and dramatic. "Now the real competition begins."

Gideon picked up the explanation, feeding off of Quincy's enthusiasm—or was Quincy feeding off of Gideon's? "Each team has had their chance to showcase their strengths and hide their weaknesses, and by Merlin's pants, they're going to be studying and strategizing their arses off! The next game's in February, Ravenclaw versus Slytherin, you know. The Gryffindors will all be rooting for Ravenclaw, of course, but most importantly, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor will watch the plays like hawks to prepare for their next games. Especially my brother! Fabian's one of the Gryffindor Beaters."

"It's the most exciting thing you can imagine!" Quincy exclaimed.

Marina simply shook her head, smiled, and adjusted Maia in her arms and Annie's head on her shoulder.

—

Just like last year, the professors started talking about exams the first day back from holiday. And, just like last year, the students tended to ignore the exam talk. It was still January, after all. Exams wouldn't happen until May—five whole months from now! Lark pointed out, one day, when Quincy was eating lunch with the Ravenclaws and poked a bit of harmless fun at the studying schedule she was putting together, that first of all, her schedule didn't include any studying until late March, and second of all, that from the day they started classes again, they actually had about four and a half months, considering the time taken for the last bit of Christmas holiday and the week off for Easter holiday. Still, no student was really in the habit of studying for exams starting in January, even the Ravenclaws. Truth be told, Ravenclaws were known to be rather bad at studying before the last minute. Other things were much more interesting than studying.

Marina too, elected to ignore exams altogether until the middle of April at the earliest, and even then she probably would ignore them still longer until the beginning of May. This plan was going pretty well: Marina attended all her classes, and even stayed awake through Tuesday evening Astronomy, without a hitch, tuning out the professors and their lectures on studying early rather than later and tuning back in when Annie made her listen to whatever homework was being assigned. She took decently diligent notes during Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration lectures (because she did not teach with the same philosophy Flitwick did), she did her best to pay attention to Professor Sprout while wearing gigantic earmuffs to repot mandrakes, and she even managed to keep her eye-rolling to a minimum whenever Professor Slughorn got stuck in one of his reveries. She paid attention except for when she didn't need to, just like always, except she paid a little closer attention than she felt she really wanted to so she made up for the post-Christmas slacking she fell victim to last year.

It actually seemed to be paying off, the extra attention-paying, especially in Transfiguration. She still wasn't great at it, but she finally started to get a better grasp on the practical aspect. In mid-February, Marina was able to nearly completely transfigure her rabbit into a pair of slippers. Despite their residual ears and tails and toes, McGonagall actually complimented her while she was making her rounds on practical day.

"Excellent improvement, Miss Stewart-Lautrec," the severe-looking woman said as she passed Marina's desk. Marina beamed for a straight hour after that.

The only problem with ignoring exams was that she couldn't. Nope. This was Professor Flitwick's fault, of course. Only, he didn't ask her to stay after class this time around, like he had in October. No, on one rather lovely day in early March, just a couple days before the Gryffindor Hufflepuff match that Quincy and Gideon were so nervous about that if Marina didn't know better she would think they'd bet a significant sum of money on the game, the tiny man actually walked down the length of the Ravenclaw table to speak to Marina during dinner.

"Miss Stewart-Lautrec," he said, as a mode of getting her attention and also in greeting.

She turned around awkwardly on the bench, sandwiched as she was between Annie and a third year. "Professor," she said. "Hello."

"Have you been having a fine dinner?"

"Um, yes, I have." This was highly unusual and Marina wasn't sure what she was supposed to be expecting here.

Flitwick shifted on his feet. Clearly, he was not cut out for smalltalk. She could relate. "How have you been finding your tutoring sessions with Mr. Pettigrew? Agreeable, I hope?"

Marina nodded and wished she could return to eating her steak.

"Very good, very good. Would you consider taking on another student? Another first year, you see. Nice girl, but she doesn't, ah, test well, you know. You had so much success with Mr. Pettigrew and his reading I wondered if you might try your hand with Miss Maxwell." Flitwick took off his glasses to polish them, letting Marina think without his expectant eyes trained on her.

She certainly had time to tutor another student, especially because she and Peter only met once a month—hm, although with exams coming up soon, she should probably ask they go back to once a week. Peter, Marina thought, probably would benefit from studying sooner rather than later for his exams. But could she help another student? Peter's problem was relatively easy to fix. She wasn't sure how well she could teach someone else exam-taking skills, especially when testing skills came sort of naturally to Marina herself. It would be a challenge though, a challenge which could prove interesting… So Marina mentally shrugged. She might as well see if she could help this poor first year girl.

"Alright, why not? I'll see what I can do for her."

Flitwick looked up, smiling behind his mustache. "Oh, wonderful! I'll let Professor Sprout know right away. Pomona and I had such hope you'd be willing to give it a go with Miss Maxwell. Is there a day of the week you would prefer?"

She saw Peter Mondays, so any other day would be alright, Marina figured. Then a thought occurred to her: maybe Peter and this Maxwell girl could benefit from studying together? Hm, no, she should actually meet the girl first and see what she had to work with before she went and put her in a potentially uncomfortable position with someone else. Knowing her penchant for absent-mindedness, though, perhaps Marina should go with Thursday. Monday and Thursday, her Herbology days. Finish Herbology, head to tutoring in the library. Yes, that would be smart.

"Thursday, after classes end?"

"3:00 on Thursday in the library, then. Perfect," Flitwick nodded. "Have a good evening, Marina. Oh, and thank you again!"

Once he'd left, Marina quickly explained all of what had just happened to her dorm mates, at least two of whom were curious. She spent the rest of the meal already churning over how she could impart some exam-taking wisdom on the first year probably-Hufflepuff.

It turned out Miss Maxwell was, in fact, a Hufflepuff, and also her name was Rachel. Marina met Rachel outside the library doors and didn't even realize it. They arrived at the same time, a couple minutes before three, and Marina didn't know that the Hufflepuff girl she had held the door open for was her tutoree until Marina sat down at a table and the girl walked over after standing amidst the other partially-populated tables for a few moments.

"Do you know where Marina Stewart-Lowtrec is?" the girl asked.

So this was Miss Maxwell, Marina thought. "It's Lautrec," she corrected. "That's me. You must be the first year I'm supposed to help out?" Peter seemed to shy away from the word "tutor," so Marina thought she might try a different phrase.

The girl nodded, making her honey curls bounce. "Yes, I'm Rachel. Nice to meet you." She smiled shyly and sat down across from Marina. An unconventional introduction. Alright. This was going well so far.

"So Rachel, I don't know if you want to get right to it or if you want to get to know each other a little bit first or what, but I have nothing prepared for you today. I tried going in with a plan last time and I had to start from scratch anyway. What do you want to talk about?" Marina assumed this would probably be a good thing to do.

Rachel blanched, eyes wide. "Oh, um…I'm—I'm not sure, actually. I thought you would tell me what to do," she said.

Well then. Okay, alright, Marina could work with this. "Well, how about we just spend a little time getting to know each other, and then we can talk about your schoolwork, okay?" Rachel nodded. "Great. So you're a first year and you're a Hufflepuff. What's your favorite class?"

Rachel's eyebrows pulled up in the center. "Um, I don't know. Hm. I don't know if I have a favorite class. They're all rather difficult, aren't they? But I suppose I like Herbology a lot. I like that Professor Sprout teaches it. And…and, well, I like Astronomy, with all the stargazing, and I like making up the star charts." Rachel finished with a small smile, and Marina tried to sigh very inconspicuously. This could get boring. She was going to be boring.

"Personally," Marina said, "I like Potions a lot, and I like Charms a lot. Mostly because I'm good at Charms and Potions, and I think they're useful. Hm, and I do have fun in Defense, but I'm not the best at it. Oh, and I think Transfig is really interesting, but I'm terrible at it. I can barely transfigure to save my life." She laughed a little, trying to break up the awkwardness she felt. "Um, is there anything you want to know about me?"

The Hufflepuff thought for a tad too long, in Marina's opinion, but did eventually come up with a question: "What's your favorite book?" she asked. "I like The Secret Garden. It's a muggle book, so maybe you haven't heard of it, but I really love it."

As it happened, yes, she had heard of the book, but when she'd tried to read it a couple years ago she gave up. It just wasn't very exciting, and she got bored. But she did have a favorite book that Rachel might know too, since it was also a muggle book. "I would have to say my favorite book isn't just one book, it's a bunch of books. The Sherlock Holmes stories. I like that there are words I don't know and I like that they always make sense in the end. My mum used to read them to me when I was growing up, and I still read them sometimes."

"Oh, you like muggle books? I didn't know if you would know any," Rachel said, her eyes all bright and happy. "It seems like there's a lot of people who've never heard of any muggle books at all, but some people know loads. Have you noticed? I sometimes wonder why some people here don't know about any muggle books."

Marina was shocked. Did this girl not know about muggleborns and purebloods and halfbloods? Maybe she could explain this later; it was very off-topic right now, and Rachel didn't seem like she expected a real answer anyway. Hufflepuffs. Always wondering but rarely looking for the answer, or at least in Marina's experience. They tended not to ask many questions in class, but she sometimes heard them talking about actually very good questions amongst themselves later. Anyway.

"Well, yes, I do know some muggle books. But hey, what about classes again? Are there any you need help with?" Marina asked, trying to steer the conversation back to a productive topic.

Rachel's eyebrows pulled up again. "Is this a getting-to-know-you question or a question about the, um, tutoring?" she asked, looking a little scared.

"Both," Marina said quickly. If Rachel was more comfortable with chatting, they could just keep chatting…but about tutoring. "I have to get to know you so I can help you out, right?"

"Yeah, that makes sense I guess. Okay, well, um…Professor Sprout said she was worried about the grades I'm getting on my quizzes and essays."

"In all of your classes? Or Herbology? Or any other specific class?"

"Almost all of them, I suppose. I'm afraid I'm just not very good at classwork, or that's what Professor Sprout said anyway."

Marina and Rachel ended up sitting in the library longer than originally planned. They were there long enough, in fact, that the older years, who had an extra class at the end of the day during the free period the first and second years got to enjoy, started flooding the library. Marina could see Rachel getting more and more jumpy as more and more older students sat down around them, and she knew they'd have to part ways until next week very soon. Finally they did, once Marina got Rachel to decide for herself if Thursday after classes was a good day for her or not. Once Rachel left the library, Marina sat at the table for an extra ten minutes, her head in her hands and her elbows on the table, thinking.

Talking to Rachel was like pulling teeth, to use an expression she'd learned from Annie last year. The girl was so impartial about absolutely everything. Marina couldn't tell if she really just did not care one wit or if she cared so much that she couldn't make any decision at all. And she did not seem to think for herself all that much. Half of what she told Marina had been told to her by Sprout. So this would be challenging, but not in an interesting way. It would be challenging because it would be so tedious. Marina saw now that Peter's troubles were actually ridiculously easy to solve. Rachel's troubles might actually require a full personality change to truly solve, but Marina didn't want to force her into that. The working theory right now was that Rachel was so bad at taking quizzes and writing essays because she was indecisive and had no critical thinking ability. She could repeat what she'd been told, but she wasn't good at understanding and reapplying what she'd been told, possibly because she just couldn't make her mind up about what to do with the information she'd been given. Ugh. How in Merlin's pants could she even approach this as a problem?

She thought about it over the course of the week and consulted with Annie and Quincy and Gideon and even Lark and Artemis. Lark just went on and on about how much she would hate to be in Marina's position, Artemis didn't say anything much because they were eating dinner and Lark was talking, Quincy shrugged and jokingly suggested Marina toughen up and give Rachel the what-for about her habits, and none of that was at all helpful. But Annie was sort of helpful, and Gideon was sort of helpful.

Gideon thought for a minute and said, "Well, you could try to point out to her what her problem is, gently, of course. Maybe if she's aware of it she'll work on fixing it. Oh, and Molly says that the way she avoids being indecisive is she throws out the options she can't pick until she only has one left and then she goes with that one."

Annie had a tip for the thinking problem. "Start with something she's already comfortable with, and show her how she can apply it to other stuff. Like how you can use Herbology in Potions. Hopefully she'll pick up on how that works, but Hufflepuffs can be kind of stupid, so maybe she won't. And what do you mean you don't think she knows that there's a completely separate wizarding world? I'm a muggleborn, and I even I understood that by my first week here."

So Marina took what they said and tried relating it back to her meetings with Rachel, and it seemed to help. There wasn't much else Marina could think to do. She did think of one thing though, and she thought it was decently effective. Marina and Rachel would spend the last half-hour of their meetings going over assignments Rachel wanted help with. Marina just refused to give Rachel the answer. Of course she helped her, but she forced Rachel to make the final decision or come up with the final thought by herself, and Marina noticed it got a little easier for her each week.

By the first week of May, Marina was happy enough with Rachel's progress. She was still slow to come to an answer, but she was much better about coming to the right answer. Essays were iffy if Rachel was doing them by herself, but she was less iffy than she had been in March. She was confident in Peter's abilities, too. The boy was doing just fine by himself, and Marina hadn't thought he really needed to go back to weekly meetings, even when it came to studying. It seemed that so long as she was still checking in every once in a while and holding him to a standard, he would pretty much follow that standard. And, of course, it helped that Remus was fully supportive of helping Peter study and had managed to wrangle James into studying, too. Sirius still though he was too cool for it, or something. So all in all, she thought her tutoring adventures this year were pretty successful.

There was one small problem, though: Marina had pushed off her own studying in her efforts to help Rachel and Peter study. The week before exams, she panicked.

"I'm going to fail my Transfig exam, Annie, I swear," she wailed. "And I'll probably fail History, too, now that I think about it. I've barely been paying attention and I've fallen so far behind in actually reading the textbook—"

"You won't fail Transfiguration because you've actually improved considerably this year, and you didn't fail last year. You know the theory, and you're a lot better at the practice. You won't fail History of Magic, either, because Artemis took notes that cut out the long-windedness of the textbook like she always does and you can just read them instead," Annie answered from where she was finishing their most recent Potions essay on her bed.

"Alright, that's fair. But what about Astronomy and Herbology? You know I'm not great at recalling straight facts. And what about Defense? I'm sure I only did so well last year because we hadn't introduced dueling last year, but now we have to worry about dueling, and I'm rubbish at dueling! I can't focus enough to duel, I get distracted too easily!"

"Mina, you'll be fine. You didn't fail any of those classes last year, and you won't this year," Annie soothed. "And besides, if you're so worried, you could start studying right now. You're not doing anything else."

Marina rolled from her back onto her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. "No," she said, "I'm not in the mood."

"You haven't done Slughorn's essay yet, either."

Marina scrunched her face up. "I know."

"It's due tomorrow."

"I know."

"You should really work on it before it gets much later."

"Why does he feel the need to cram everything in at the end of the year? I'm sure this could have been avoided with proper planning on his part." Marina flopped off her elbows. Maia slunk out from under the bed and hopped up onto the mattress, kneaded on the duvet, turned four circles, and curled up with her head propped on the back of Marina's thigh.

Annie gave no response. The scratching of her quill on parchment was the only sound heard from her corner of the dorm—metaphorically speaking, of course. Their dorm was circular. There were no corners.

The next morning saw Marina rushing to finish the Potions essay at breakfast. She finished it, of course, and vowed to never again allow herself to put off her work so late.