Huntress Mage Chronicles

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Chapter 2

While holding off the giant tail blade with just one hand on the barrel of the sniper-scythe, Emerald pulls a second sniper-scythe from the pocket dimension with her other hand and pulls the trigger sending a projectile through the window. Even as the other occupants of the compartment turn to see what she shot, the head of the tail blade's owner explodes as Emerald starts singing Jeff Williams' 'This Will be The Day' as she converts the second sniper-scythe from its rifle form into its scythe form and cuts the blade off the tail with a single swipe. All three of the unnamed boys faint at the sight of the creature's blood dissolving the floor of the compartment.

As she sings the chorus of the song, Emerald converts the weapon she had been using to hold back the tail blade into its scythe form before using it to smash the tail blade into a Kainda Amedha drone that was leaping towards the compartment window. Verse two of the song comes as Emerald leaps out the window into a swarm of Kainda Amedha while a second Queen stops the express by destroying the engine. Over the next half hour, Emerald turns the land around the express into a morgue with a deadly dance of blades and gunfire. In areas she can't reach, Emerald notices Bloody Death and other Yautja warriors fighting under stealth. The bloodbath ends with the final lines of 'Nothing's Wrong With Me' from the muggle movie Pixel Perfect as Emerald leaps off the second Queen's head while in animal form and returns to human form to cut the Queen's head in three with her dual sniper-scythes.

As she baths in the rain of acid blood, Emerald notices the fainter approaching with a group of adult Witches and Wizards in uniform robes that suggest law enforcement or perhaps military. "That slut is the one who attacked me. She probably lead the creatures to the train somehow," the rude boy says as he points Emerald out to the adults.

"It's virgin bitch actually, and I believe the red headed young lady behind you has some witness testimony regarding the claimed attack on you." Emerald says while thinking of her animal form.

"I'm Susan Bones. I saw from the corridor when Draco here insulted everyone in the compartment. Emerald then gave a little advice moments before one of the large creatures tore into the compartment with its tail. Moody would be proud of her reaction speed as she appeared to either have seer potential or follow his mantra of constant vigilance," the red headed young lady says when the leader of the adults turns to her.

"I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Madame Bones, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Please identify yourself for the record and tell us what you know about these creatures that attacked the Hogwarts Express." the woman says to Emerald while the other adults inspect the Kainda Amedha.

"You can call me Emerald. Any more than that can wait for the sorting at Hogwarts. As for the creatures that attacked the express, the Yautja who raised me for the last four years call them Kainda Amedha and usually keep them contained to testing grounds in isolated areas. It appears someone breached containment at the Antarctic testing grounds since the last Chiva." Emerald says as she flicks both sniper-scythes to get the acid off before storing them inside the same pocket dimension she pulled them from half an hour ago.

"Okay, couple questions for you. First, do you intend to register your animal form with the ministry as required of British citizens. Next, what is your animal form. And last, what is a Chiva." Madam Bones says after a moments thought.

"Do you have the registration forms on you? My animal form is a canine known as a yaut hound and is native to the Yautja home world. The Chiva is a rite of passage that shows a Yautja is a proper warrior and an adult in their society." Emerald says as she inspects the full damage to the Hogwarts Express.

"Here's the animagus registration. Now I just need to figure out the best method of getting a few hundred children ages 11 to 18 from here to Hogsmeade or Hogwarts before midnight."

"If you're willing to trust me, I'm fairly sure I can create a portal that will get my fellow students to the station at the time they would have arrived if the train had not been attacked. I'll just need an adult who knows the time and place to pass through the portal first." At Madam Bones' nod of permission, Emerald creates a visible portal with a destination of 'wherever the first person to enter wants to go'.

On the other side of the portal, Emerald and her fellow students find a dark platform with carriages waiting nearby. Before she can walk towards the skeletal winged horse led carriages, Emerald hears Hagrid call for the firs' years to gather around before following him. Easily using her upbringing to move through the darkness after Hagrid's lamp, Emerald notices many of the slipping and stumbling first years are still in the clothes they had used while traveling in the muggle world. As the other first years gasp at the first sight of Hogwarts castle when they reach a large lake, Emerald quietly fills out most of the animagus registration form.

At Hagrid's instruction of no mor'n four to a boat, Emerald starts to join Hermione, Neville and Ron until she sees Susan looking in her direction. "You can have the boat Susan, I'll just swim beside," she says just before Hagrid triggers the enchantment on the boats to make the entire fleet move across the lake. Before Susan can protest, Emerald gently tosses her into the boat with Hermione, Neville and Ron while walking on the water beside the boat.

"Heads down!" yells Hagrid as the first boats reach the cliff Hogwarts sits upon; everyone but Emerald bends their heads and the boats carry them through a curtain of ivy that hides a wide opening in the cliff face. Emerald just drops into the water and swims beside her new friends. The dark tunnel seems to take the children right under the castle, until they reach a kind of underground harbor, where they clamber out onto rocks and pebbles.

After Hagrid gives Emerald an odd look because of the water dripping off her bare body, the groundskeeper leads everyone up a passageway in the rock that eventually comes out onto smooth, damp grass right in the shadow of the castle. They walk up a flight of stone steps and crowd around the huge, oak front door.

"Everyone here?"

Hagrid raises a gigantic fist and knocks three times on the castle door.

The door swings open at once. A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes that Emerald recognizes as Professor McGonagall stands there. She has a very stern face that suggests she should not be crossed.

"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," says Hagrid.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take it from here."

She pulls the door wide. The entrance hall is so big you could fit a decent size house in it. The stone walls are lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, the ceiling is too high to make out, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them leads to the upper floors.

They follow Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Emerald can hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right – the rest of the school must already be here – but Professor McGonagall shows the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowd in, standing rather closer than they would usually do, peering about nervously.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," says Professor McGonagall. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room."

"The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours."

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."

Her eyes linger for a moment on Neville's cloak, which is fastened under his left ear, and on Ron's smudged nose. Emerald hadn't even noticed either issue until Professor McGonagall drew attention to them with her gaze.

"I shall return when we are ready for you," says Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly."

She leaves the chamber.

"How exactly do they sort us into Houses?" Emerald asks Ron.

"Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."

Emerald's heart begins racing with excitement. A painful test? Perhaps they have to subdue a troll or other magical creature with whatever skills they have. She looks around and sees that everyone looks terrified. No one is talking much except Hermione Granger, who is whispering very fast about all the spells she'd learned and wondering which one she'll need. Emerald rolls her eyes but listens for any effects she hasn't produced while hunting. Any second now, Professor McGonagall will come back and lead her to her fortune.

Then several people behind her scream.

"What the -?"

The people around her gasp. About twenty ghosts have just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glide across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing at the first years. They seem to be arguing. What looks like a fat little monk is saying: "Forgive and forget I say, we ought to give him a second chance-"

"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost – I say, what are you all doing here?"

A ghost wearing a ruff and tights suddenly notices the first years.

"Waiting to be Sorted as you should well know." Emerald says as she starts thinking of ways to hunt the ghosts.

"Move along now," says a sharp voice. "The Sorting Ceremony's about to start."

Professor McGonagall has returned. One by one, the ghosts float away through the opposite wall.

"Now, form a line," Professor McGonagall tells the first years, "and follow me."

Emerald gets into line behind a boy with sandy hair, with her new friends strung behind her, and they walk out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.

Emerald has rarely imagined such a strange place. It is lit by thousands and thousands of candles that are floating in midair over five long tables, four of which are filled with the rest of the students. All five tables are laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall is another long table where the teachers are sitting. Professor McGonagall leads the first years up here, so that they come to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them look like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shine misty silver. Sensing the pattern of magic above, Emerald looks and sees the velvety black sky held back by a charm of some sort. She hears Hermione whisper, "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts: A History."

"I wouldn't trust that the book is accurate. The structure and related charms may have changed since the book was last updated."

Emerald quickly looks down again as Professor McGonagall silently places a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she puts a pointed wizards hat. This hat is patched and frayed and extremely dirty. Noble Blade wouldn't have let it on the ship or in the house.

We probably won't be fighting the hat. Or fighting at all, Emerald thinks with disappointment – noticing that everyone in the hall is now staring at the hat, she stares at it, too. For a few seconds, there is complete silence. Then the hat twitches. A rip near the brim opens wide like a mouth – and the hat sings about itself and how it will sort the first years into the five Houses of Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Justice.

After a quick discussion between Dumbledore, recognizable from the chocolate frog card, and the hat, a ghost named Myrtle becomes head of house for the fifth House pending the results of the Sorting.

"So we've just got to try on the hat!" Ron whispers to Emerald. "I'll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll."

"I'd have preferred the excitement of the troll," Emerald chuckles back at Ron.

Professor McGonagall now steps forward holding a long roll of parchment.

"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she says. "Abbott, Hannah!"

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbles out of line, puts on the hat, which falls right down over her eyes, and sits down. A moment's pause –

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouts the hat.

The table on the right cheers and claps as Hannah goes to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Emerald sees the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.

"Bones, Susan!"

"JUSTICE!" shouts the hat, and Susan scuttles off to the empty table.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

The second table from the left claps this time; several Ravenclaws stand up to shake hands with Terry as he joins them.

"Brocklehurst, Mandy" goes to Ravenclaw too, but "Brown, Lavender" becomes the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left explodes with cheers; Emerald can see Ron's twin brothers catcalling.

"Bulstrode, Millicent" then becomes a Slytherin. Emerald's first impression is that they are an unpleasant lot.

"Death-Potter, Emerald!"

"JUSTICE! KEEP HER AWAY FROM ME UNTIL SHE MASTERS OCCLUMENCY AND PUT HER IN JUSTICE!" the hat screams as Emerald starts to walk towards it. As she turns to see what the professors want her to do, a professor with greasy black hair locks eyes with her for a split second before falling to the floor catatonic. A quick conversation with Professor Dumbledore reveals the catatonic professor had used magic to look inside Emerald's mind much like the hat does, but couldn't handle what he saw. After the school nurse takes the mind viewing professor to the infirmary, the Sorting continues.

"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Sometimes, Emerald notices, the hat shouts out the House at once, but at others it takes a little while to decide. "Finnigan, Seamus," the sandy-haired boy who had been next to Emerald in line, sits on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declares him a Gryffindor.

"Granger, Hermione!"

Hermione almost runs to the stool and jams the hat eagerly on her head.

"JUSTICE!" shouts the hat.

When Neville Longbottom is called, he falls over on his way to the stool. The hat takes a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouts, "JUSTICE," Neville runs off still wearing it, and has to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to "MacDougal, Morag."

Draco swaggers forward when his name is called and gets his wish at once: the hat has barely touched his head when it screams, "SLYTHERIN!"

Draco goes to join the two boys who had been with him on the train, looking pleased with himself.

There aren't many people left now.

"Moon"…, "Nott"…, "Parkinson"…, then a pair of twin girls, "Patil" and "Patil" both sorted into Justice…, then "Perks, Sally-Anne"…, and finally the students turn to Emerald realizing the last Potter was sorted earlier.

And now only Emerald and the professors notice the Sorting of the last four students. "Thomas, Dean," a tall black boy, joins Emerald at the Justice table. "Turpin, Lisa," becomes a Ravenclaw and then it is Ron's turn. He is pale green by now. Emerald crosses her fingers under the table and a second later the hat has shouted, "JUSTICE!"

Emerald claps loudly with the rest as Ron collapses into the chair next to her.

"Well done, Ron, excellent," says a girl named Daphne Greengrass across Emerald as "Zabini, Blaise," is made a Slytherin. Professor McGonagall rolls up her scroll and takes the Sorting Hat away.

Albus Dumbledore gets to his feet. He is beaming at the students, his arms open wide, as if nothing can please him more than to see them all here.

"Welcome!" he says. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

He sits back down. Everybody claps and cheers. Emerald laughs as she finishes filling out the animagus registration form.

Looking up from the form, Emerald notices the golden dishes have filled with a wide variety of food: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs are all recognizable from Emeralds Earth study lessons.

"Anyone know what kind of meat this is next to the watermelon sized mangos?" a girl named Tracy Davis asks.

"One of the house elves must have contacted my adoptive father. The meat is dried Kainda Amedha while the fruit is actually naxa fruit from the Yautja home world." Emerald says as she fills her plate with the two foods she is most familiar with.

"Isn't Kainda Amedha what you called the acid blooded creatures that attacked the express," Susan asks in clear surprise.

"It's perfectly safe once dried. It is usually only served to warriors who have passed their Chiva, but as clan head, my adoptive father seems to have waved the restriction."

When everyone has eaten as much as they can, the remains of the food fade from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the desserts appear. Blocks of ice cream in every flavor you can think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding…

As Emerald helps herself to a treacle tart, the talk turns more toward their families.

"I'm half-and-half," says Tracy Davis. "I'm so glad I didn't end up in Slytherin."

"What about you Neville?" says Ron.

"Well, my gran brought me up and she's a witch," says Neville, "but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me – he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned – but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced – all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy. And you should have seen their faces when I got in here – they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great Uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad."

"Make sure my adoptive family and I never meet your Great Auntie or Great Uncle," Emerald says.

On her other side, Daphne Greengrass and Hermione are talking about lessons ("I do hope they start right away, there's so much to learn, I'm particularly interested in Transfiguration, you know, turning something into something else, of course, it's supposed to be very difficult –"; "We'll probably be starting small, just matches into needles and that sort of thing –").

Emerald looks up at the High Table again. Hagrid is drinking deeply from his goblet. Professor McGonagall is talking to Professor Dumbledore. A Professor in an absurd turban is talking to a teacher who looks at least half goblin.

At last, the desserts too disappear, and Professor Dumbledore gets to his feet again. The hall falls silent.

"Ahem – just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you.

First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well."

Dumbledore's twinkling eyes flash in the direction of the Weasley twins.

"I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.

Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of term. Anyone interested in playing for their House teams should contact Madam Hooch.

And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

Emerald laughs, but she is one of the few who do.

"Can't you use high level security spells if something dangerous is being kept in the school? My adoptive family will probably be Hunting in the forest as well," she says when everyone looks at her.

"We'll discuss it later after we iron out the details of Justice House. For now, let us sing the school song!" cries Dumbledore. Emerald notices the other teachers' smiles have become rather fixed.

Dumbledore gives his wand a little flick, as if he is trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flies out of it, which rises high above the tables and twists itself, snakelike, into words.

"Everyone pick their favorite tune," says Dumbledore, "and off we go!"

And the school bellows an awful set of lyrics to a hundred different tunes. Everyone finishes the song at different times. At last, only the Weasley twins are left singing along to a very slow funeral march. Dumbledore conducts their last few lines with his wand and when they have finished, he is one of those who claps loudest.

"Ah, music," he says, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot! Justice House remain seated."

Once the other four Houses have left the hall, a short conversation is held during which it is arranged for Justice House to use Emerald's rooms aboard the Hunter's Spear as a dormitory. Before leading her House mates to their quarters, Emerald completes the animagus registration form and hands it to Madam Bones for filing at the ministry. Using a strong sense of spacial awareness, Emerald navigates endless staircases, sliding panels and hanging tapestries until she sees a bundle of walking sticks floating in midair. As she steps closer to figure out the magic involved they start throwing themselves at her and she counters with a compact rifle mode sniper-scythe.

"Do I have the pleasure of meeting Peeves? It's no wonder you are barred from attending the feast," Emerald says.

There is a pop, and a little man with wicked, dark eyes and a wide mouth appears, floating cross-legged in the air, clutching the walking sticks.

"Just having a bit of fun!" he says with an evil cackle. After swooping over them, causing most of the young Justices to duck, he vanishes and rattles the coats of armor as he flies away.

At the top of a final set of stairs, they see a pair of Yautja guarding a gap in the parapet of the tower. At Emeralds prompting, Hermione is the first to walk through the gap and into the stealthed Hunter's Spear.

After a brief discussion of Justice House rules, everyone piles into the same bedroom, except Dean, and strips naked to sleep on blankets spread on the floor despite a considerable amount of blushing from everyone except Emerald.

AN: Thanks for reading and please review.