Previously: Professor McGonagall had a chat with Freyja Morrigan and took a stroll down memory lane. She also got to know Kali Black a little better during her first class with the Slytherin third-years.
Chapter Six:
Moving Staircases and Hippogriffs
Kali wasn't sure what had gone through Rowena Ravenclaw's head when she had decided to make the school staircases move.
Hogwarts was huge—far bigger than Kali had expected—and it didn't make any bloody sense. Nothing was ever where it ought to be and never in the same place twice. The people in the portraits kept leaving to visit one another. Suits of armour wandered off when no one was looking. Storage closets appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast. Staircases vanished into thin air. There were doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending, and classrooms that sometimes decided to be on the third floor and sometimes on the fourth.
It was a nightmare to navigate, made all the worse by the fact that none of it was random. The castle was semi-sentient, not just because of its suits of armour and its paintings and its immobility. The building had a mind of its own, and that mind worked in mysterious and inconvenient ways.
Remus had once told her that the castle took you to where you needed to be rather than where you wanted to be. For instance: Kali wanted to get to the Charms classroom, but Hogwarts apparently thought that she needed to be somewhere in the North Wing, possibly on the second floor.
"You're lost," Pan drawled from where he lounged in a patch of sunlight in the Arithmancy classroom, listening to Professor Vector teach her sixth-year class.
Kali hurried through the empty, unfamiliar part of the castle, her footsteps echoing off the stone floor and her panting reverberating off the stone walls. "No kidding."
"Maybe you should turn back?"
"Can't. The staircase moved, remember?" Before coming to Hogwarts, Kali had never imagined that staircases could be such a nuisance.
"We wouldn't be having this problem if we'd stayed at San Francisco," he said as she glanced around, hoping for a signpost or a convenient arrow pointing her in the right direction.
"Are you really still on that?"
He gave a mental shrug. "Just pointing it out."
She turned a corner and nearly knocked into someone.
The man's black robes drowned his thin frame and brought out the sallowness of his skin. His large nose hooked over a thin mouth, and his black hair framed his face in greasy curtains. His glare could have curdled milk.
"Sorry, Professor," she said, taking a step back.
His features did not soften. He carried a crate of glass vials that tinkled against each other whenever he moved. "What are you doing here, Miss Black?"
"I'm trying to get to the Charms classroom." She shouldn't have told Daphne to go on ahead without her.
Professor McGonagall had let them out of class early enough that Kali and Daphne had gone to their dormitory to drop off their morning books. They'd been halfway to Professor Flitwick's classroom when Kali's hand had brushed her pocket and found it wandless. She had told Daphne not to wait for her and had run back to the dorm without knowing that the bloody stairs would have moved by the time she got back.
"The Charms classrooms are on the other side of the castle, Miss Black." The professor sneered, showing his uneven, yellow teeth. "If you're going to lie, try to do so more convincingly."
"I'm not lying, sir." Remus would have her head if she got into an argument with a teacher on her first day. "I'm not familiar with the layout of the castle yet."
His dark eyes narrowed. "I suggest you gain familiarity with it quickly. You are not a first-year, Miss Black. We teachers expect punctuality from our older students."
"He does realise it's your first day, right?" said Pan. Irritation seeped from him, and she had to focus on not letting it wash over her.
Before she could think up a careful reply, Remus strolled up to them from the same direction the Slytherin Head of House had come. The tension fell from Kali's shoulders.
"Don't you have a class starting soon, Miss Black?"
"I got lost on the way to Charms, sir."
Remus smiled down at Snape, and Snape scowled up at him. "I can take it from here, Severus."
The corner of Professor Snape's mouth twitched like the spasm of a dying frog's leg. The more Remus's eyes shone, the more Professor Snape's hardened until they became chunks of coal. He jerked his head into a nod and left with a tinkling of vials and a billowing of his robes, stalking down the corridor like a substandard bogeyman.
"He's unpleasant," Kali said when he turned a corner.
Remus sighed but did not contradict her. "He's your teacher."
"One does not negate the other."
He shook his head but again didn't correct her assessment. "How have your classes been so far?" he asked as he herded her toward the elusive Charms corridor.
"Good." Her step recovered its bounce, and any panic over being late for class disappeared. "Herbology seems fun, and Professor McGonagall's nice. How about yours?"
"Unfortunately, Hogwarts hasn't had much luck in ways of continuity in the Defence Against the Dark Arts curriculum—too many different teachers teaching too many different things. But the students are eager to learn."
They stopped in front of a tapestry of a woman picking flowers, and Remus pushed it aside, revealing a narrow spiral staircase.
"Go up one floor, and then go through the secret passageway behind the Runespoor statue. It will lead you straight to your Charms classroom."
Kali made a mental note to start checking behind all the tapestries and statues in the school. "I really wish you hadn't lost that map you made while you were a student here."
"I'm hoping that with an entire castle to explore, you won't get bored and start causing trouble."
"When have I ever caused any trouble?"
"I have a list," he said, with a twist of his lips that was meant to be reprimanding but couldn't hide his smile. "It's a good six feet long, and I whip it out whenever someone tells me how delightful you are."
"But I am delightful," she said, throwing him her best 'delightful person' smile.
He scoffed. "When you want to be. Now get going, or you're going to be late."
She got to the Charms corridor just as Professor Flitwick waved her classmates in. Running the last few metres, she joined the back of the line.
Inside the classroom, three rows of desks stood of raised daises. At the front of the room, two blackboards flanked the teacher's desk and a set of arched windows let in the grey morning light, brightening the room more than the torches, which hung from the walls.
When Kali slipped into the seat beside Daphne's, Daphne whispered, "I worried you'd got lost."
"I did," Kali said, still catching her breath.
Professor Flitwick sat in a large chair behind the teacher's desk. "We shall start the year with some revision as a warm-up after the summer break," he said. "We'll begin with the Levitation Charm and the Mending Charm, and then we'll see who still remembers the Disarming Charm."
Within minutes, objects flew overhead, some levitated, others thrown. Students dropped inkwells, mended them, and dropped them again, sprinkling desks and tiles with black raindrops. Professor Flitwick walked through the rows, whistling a tune and dodging projectiles, followed by a collection of tap-dancing teacups. Kali's eyebrows climbed up her forehead with every successive bang or clatter, but Professor Flitwick's jovial smile never wavered.
With a shake of her head, she closed her ears and focused on her pens, making each float from their case and balance one on top of the other in mid-air.
"You're good at that," said Daphne as her quill fluttered and dropped back to the desk.
Kali's temple throbbed. The topmost pen wobbled, swaying from side to side like an upside-down pendulum. She narrowed her eyes, furrowed her brow, and got it back under control. "It takes practice."
"Could you tutor me?" A tremor crept into Daphne's voice. "I'm not very good at Charms."
From the seat behind Daphne's, Pansy sniggered and leaned forwards. "That suggests that you're good at anything at all."
Pansy's friends tittered, and Daphne's face flushed red.
Biting her lip, Kali lowered her pens one by one in a controlled descent rather than an outright fall. When they all rested on the table, she said, "Leave her alone, Pansy."
"Why would I do that?" She flipped her short hair out of her face and raised her chin to look down her nose at Kali and Daphne.
Kali turned in her seat. Pansy, Tracy, and Millicent wore matching smug smiles, and Pansy quirked a satisfied eyebrow at how outnumbered Kali once again found herself.
"If she and I are so beneath you, why bother to acknowledge us?" asked Kali.
"We've got to get some use out of you," said Millicent. Sparks flew from her wand as she prodded it in Kali's direction, leaving scorch marks on her desk.
Relieved as Kali was to see that Millicent had recovered from the incident on the train, she had hoped that a lesson might have been learnt from the event. Evidently, it hadn't.
"Theo tells us that 'kali' means black in some old language," Pansy said. "Your name is Black Black. Did you know that?"
"Yes." The old language was Sanskrit, and the word also meant time, death, and doomsday. Her father had chosen it, keeping with her mother's family tradition of naming daughters after goddesses and adding a touch of humour.
Pansy frowned. "Does that not bother you?"
"No."
"It should," she hissed loud enough to attract the professor's attention.
"Now, now, ladies," he said from across the room. "You must focus. This may only be a revision, but that does not make it any less important."
Kali spared the three girls one last dark look before turning to Daphne. "You should loosen your grip on your wand. Squeeze it too tight, and it's bound to be uncooperative. Like this."
Kali showed Daphne how to hold her wand and tried to ignore the taunts and laughter behind her. By the time the bell rang for lunch, her shoulders and jaw ached and her grip on her wand had turned her knuckles white. Pansy and Millicent shoved past on their way out, knocking Kali into her desk. The twinge in her hip made her hand twitch for her wand, but she gritted her teeth and settled on a glare.
"At what point does rising above it become the same thing as taking it?" Pan asked. He'd found his way to the Great Hall and sat at the Slytherin table, a baboon struggling to cut his kidney pie because Gran wouldn't let him sit at the table unless he used cutlery.
"They're looking for a reaction." Kali shouldered her bag and yanked her hair from beneath the strap, wincing at the sting. "If I don't give them one, they'll get bored."
Pan gave up on the knife and fork, took a serving spoon, and shovelled the pie into his mouth. "But you are giving them one."
"I'm working on it."
Professor Flitwick jumped from his chair and raised his wand to erase the chalkboards, the top of his head level with the top of his desk. Kali's pace slowed, and she stopped halfway to the door as a memory darted through her brain.
Pan tsked. "That's racist."
"I know. Shut up." She bit her lip and changed course. "Professor?"
He turned and lowered his wand, bushy eyebrows rising and then falling. The curve of his smile hid beneath his beard, but the crows' feet deepened around his eyes. "Yes, Miss Black?"
"Could I ask you a question"—she licked her lip and shifted her weight to her left foot—"about Hobgoblins?"
Her chest tightened, but the professor's smile didn't falter. "Of course."
She had prepared for a different reaction, affront or indignation. Running her thumb over the strap of her bag, she asked, "The ones who offer people information, how do they know the things they claim to know?"
He chuckled and put his hand over his belly, tapping his fingers against it. "You've heard of the expression 'the walls have ears'? Hobgoblins live in attics and basements and in the spaces behind walls. People rarely know they're there and don't censor themselves when they think they're alone."
"Do they ever lie?"
"Some do. They're like people, all different."
A breath trapped in Kali's lungs escaped, but it didn't ease the weight on her chest. She stared at the chalkless blackboard and worried her lip. Hob could have been lying. No one else had tried to help her since she'd arrived in the UK, why would he? What information could he have learnt about her father in the Leaky Cauldron other than rumours? The chances were that he had only wanted to trick her, yet the uncertainty of 'what if' tore at her from within.
"What's on your mind, Miss Black?"
She pulled her face into a smile and shook her head. "Nothing."
With a wave of his wand, the classroom returned to order. A broom swept shards of glass into the bin, and a mop and bucket followed behind it to wash out the ink stains. Pillows and feathers drifted overhead and came to rest in the wardrobe in neat towers and rows. Everything swayed to a melody that Professor Flitwick tapped against his thigh. Kali's lips parted. He had yet to break a sweat, had yet to gain any tension between his eyebrows.
When everything had returned to its place, he set his wand on his desk and rubbed his beard. "You guessed that I'm part Goblin."
Her mouth fell open, an apology on her tongue, but his eyes softened and he raised his hands.
"It isn't a secret. I don't mention the fact when I introduce myself because I know what people will think, but neither do I hide it. I learnt a long time ago that our families do not define us." His eyes twinkled. "Do you understand?"
She didn't. She had thought that she did, but a month had passed since she had held that belief with any certainty.
Trained professionals had broken into her home and accused her of harbouring a fugitive because of who her family was. Strangers on the street pointed at her and muttered slurs because of who her family was. Schoolmates glared and changed direction in the corridor when they saw her coming because of who her family was. The Sorting Hat had put her into Slytherin because of who her family was.
She stopped her thoughts in their tracks.
She wouldn't be upset about the sorting. Slytherin was a fine House; Aunt Andromeda's House. Kali had friends in it, and the dungeon common room held a private library and a view of the lake. She would not be upset.
"I understand," she said.
Professor Flitwick beamed and patted her hand before sending her on her way. Daphne waited for her in the hallway. Kali would not be upset.
Manure and blood stung Kali's nose. Her skin tingled every time she looked into the Forbidden Forest, but Pan hissed whenever her attention left the paddock.
"You worry too much," she said.
"And you don't worry enough," he bit back, sending her reinforced images of steel-coloured beaks and half a foot long talons.
His yellow fur peeked through the branches above her head, his cat gaze fixed on the Hippogriffs whose orange eyes blazed and whose talons dug grooves through the dirt at their feet. Their coats gleamed, changing halfway down their bodies from feathers to hair. Every beat of their wings sent a breeze through Kali's hair.
"You're not risking your life because you think they're pretty," he said.
Her textbook growled, and she reached beneath it to tickle its spine.
It had taken several hours to figure out how The Monster Book of Monsters ticked. Pan had shouted his recommendations from the top of her bedroom wardrobe, his most recurring thought being to chuck the ill-tempered tome out the window and be rid of it, but Kali had refused to be bested by a book, even if it did have teeth. Pan had eventually suggested a gentler approach, which had worked better than stomping on it and threatening to burn it or drown it.
Harsh whispers drew Kali's eyes over her shoulder.
Neither Daphne nor Blaise took Care of Magical Creatures, but all of the housemates whom Kali had managed to piss off on the train yesterday did.
They huddled outside the paddock, heads bent and eyes darting between Kali, a group of Gryffindors, and the Hippogriffs. Their fever-bright gazes reeked of prayers to gods of chaos and injury, aligning with Pan's muttered repetition of words like 'evisceration' and 'spinal fracture'.
"The Hippogriffs aren't what I'm most worried about," Kali said.
She tried to ignore them. Sitting on the paddock fence, she took notes and sketched the Hippogriff she'd bowed to earlier. The muscles in its back rolled with every lazy flap of its wings, the sunlight playing over fur and feathers, dancing between gold and black. Despite Pan and her housemates, she wanted to feel those muscles beneath her. Riding a Hippogriff wouldn't be anything like riding a horse, but Harry Potter had seemed to enjoy it.
Professor Hagrid, the big man who had led Kali and the first-years to the boats last night, whispered advice and encouragements to the chubby Gryffindor boy who kept running away from Kali's black Hippogriff. The beast no longer seemed to want to bend its knees.
A couple of metres away, the Gryffindor girl who had whispered something nonsensical about tea leaves when Harry had volunteered to go first cooed over Buckbeak. The Hippogriff accepted the baby talk with only a sigh, but it tracked Draco's movements as he Vincent, and Gregory climbed the fence.
"Off with you, Brown," Draco said. "You've had your turn."
The girl and her friends huffed but walked away. Kali closed her notebook and slid from the fence.
Draco bowed like someone taught to do so from birth and Buckbeak returned it within seconds. Pansy clapped from the other side of the fence, and Draco scoffed.
"This is very easy. I knew it must have been if Potter could do it. I bet you're not dangerous at all, are you?" He gave Buckbeak's beak a disdainful pat. "Are you, you great ugly brute?"
Talons flashed. Draco screamed, and Kali threw herself against him.
She knocked him out of the way and spread her arms, making herself as big as possible to block Buckbeak as he lunged for a second attack. Her heart galloped, but she made her voice soft and spoke words of praise. Calling him a beautiful boy did the trick. He settled for glaring at Draco, and Hagrid rushed forward to slip his collar back on.
Draco lay curled in the grass, blood blossoming over his robes. "I'm dying!" he yelled as the class panicked. "I'm dying, look at me! It's killed me!"
A tear in his sleeve showed a long gash, but no blood spurted from the wound or splattered the grass. "You're not dying," Kali said. "Get up."
"I can't," Draco moaned.
Kali grabbed the front of his robes and heaved him up none too gently. "What is wrong with you?"
Draco stumbled back when she shoved him. Anger flared over his face like fire, and he pointed at Buckbeak. "That beast attacked me."
"You were told not to insult a Hippogriff." Her words shook, but her glare didn't waver. "Your teacher warned you that it was dangerous."
"Some teacher he is, bringing a thing like that to our first class!"
"You're the only one bleeding! Evidently, you're the only one lacking the brains and maturity to be allowed in this class."
A rush of blood turned his face red. His nostrils flared and his grey eyes bulged. Like a bonbon set to explode, he simmered, one lapse of control away from setting off sparks. The swell of rapids in Kali's veins drowned out sounds and set her skin on fire. Her fists shook, and her nails dug into her palms, adding a dull pain that competed with the hammering against her breastbone.
"Right, I think tha'll be all for today," said Hagrid, breaking in before Kali could call Draco some unflattering had gone white, and his big hands trembled with every breath. "Off yeh go now."
Draco threw one last glare at the teacher and marched off. The rest of the students followed, Kali's housemates all shouting about Hagrid.
"They should fire him straight away!" said Pansy, with tears streaming down her face.
"It was Malfoy's fault!" said a dark-skinned Gryffindor boy.
Vincent and Gregory flexed their muscles, but they wouldn't do anything without Draco's say-so, and he wasn't paying attention to the conversation. They all climbed the stone steps into the deserted entrance hall.
"You should go see the school nurse, Draco," Kali said when he started heading toward the common room.
He wheeled on her and shouted, "You can't tell me what to do!"
Eyes narrowing, she clenched and unclenched her hands. "Fine, go ahead and bleed out then."
They glared at each other, but Draco turned away first, stomping off to the hospital wing.
"I'm going to see if he's okay," said Pansy. She gave Kali a nasty look and ran up the marble staircase after him.
The rest of the Slytherins headed to the common room, so Kali stomped off in the opposite direction, her eyes stinging and her stomach hurting.
A/N: The end of this chapter was a gratuitous excuse to indulge the urge I occasionally had while reading the first HP books to shake and shout at Draco Malfoy. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and if you feel like leaving a comment, know that it makes me very happy!