Septimus at Hogwarts

Weasley Cottage/Hogwarts 1926

Septimus woke long before the sun on the first of August after his tenth birthday. Today was the day his mom and dad had promised to take him shopping for his Hogwarts gear. He spent the extra hour or so he had to himself wondering what Hogwarts would be like. Oh, he'd heard all his parents' tales about their own school days of course but hearing about it was different from living it, he was sure.

Eventually, his brothers started waking up. As had become habit since he was seven, Septimus headed over to help Victor and Felix, now seven and five respectively, get ready for the day. Three years ago, he'd added another brother, Bilius, to that list.

Septimus was old and big enough now that he didn't need his mother's help to wrestle Bilius and Felix, who liked to dress themselves, into appropriate clothes for the day. Especially not when he had Victor helping him, now. Victor had also started learning Septimus' chores in anticipation of Septimus being gone most of the year as of September.

As a result, both boys headed outside to hunt for eggs and feed the chickens. That done, they trooped inside to help set the table. After breakfast, Victor, Felix and Bilius were sent to their grandparents' house for the day. Victor was old enough to go to Diagon Alley without causing problems but since this was a Hogwarts related trip and not general shopping, he was being left behind.

The change in Diagon from its usual quiet startled Septimus. There were kids and parents everywhere, most of whom Septimus didn't recognize, which marked them as Muggles and their Muggleborn children. Septimus also noticed more than a few pureblood families in the mix who looked as if they had smelled something rather foul. He shook his head. Bullies and idiots, the lot of them.

Their first stop was to Gringotts of course. It was no small matter of pride to Septimus that he now had almost ten galleons in his parents' vault. Every knut of it had been earned helping elderly muggles in the nearby village over the last five years. His father had begun to teach him about investment in the last year. Septimus planned to continue hoarding and adding to that tiny nest egg until he was grown. It wasn't much, but it was at least a start, and Dad said it showed that Septimus had a lot of promise as the future Head of the Family.

Their first, most important and most expensive stop was Ollivander's. This, Septimus had looked forward to since he was old enough to understand what a wand was. The sheer array of wands he was introduced to in the next twenty minutes boggled his mind. Ollivander had stuck to wands similar to what had been matched to his family in the past – the Weasleys were remarkably consistent in their familial temperaments and personalities, so what worked for one tended to work for others. It was only after the most obvious choices of wands hadn't responded that Ollivander had begun pulling out other options. Eventually, Ollivander proffered a blackthorn wand. The rush of magic that resulted the moment the wand touched Septimus' hand blew everyone's robes tight against their legs. Septimus was slightly disappointed that there wasn't a shower of color, which seemed to be a frequent result of a match, but the slightly wide-eyed look on his parents' faces made up for that lack.

The rest of the trip went more smoothly, as the three of them went from store to store, carefully choosing the best of the secondhand items available. Unlike most of the rest of the purebloods, Septimus' father did not disdain giving the Muggles and their children assistance in making sense of where to go and what to buy. As a result, Septimus ended up spending far more time in Flourish and Blotts than they'd had any right to expect, as they'd gone to that shop about the same time as a group of Muggleborns and their families. One of them had asked about books about the wizarding world, and Septimus and his father both had ended up helping not just that particular Muggleborn but most of the rest in the shop at the time to find the best books to explain things and supplement the school books. Septimus found their interest in and curiosity about the magical world charming. Several of the Muggleborns tagged along behind Septimus and his parents to the other shops after that, so Septimus ended up talking to them quite a bit.

Hogwarts, it turned out, was everything his parents had claimed it to be, and so much more. Seeing it for the first time on the boat ride across the lake left Septimus as much in awe as the other kids in his boat, all of whom were Muggleborns he'd decided to sit with on the train.

While he knew that the Sorting was not dangerous or painful, Septimus was still anxious about it. He didn't want to disappoint his parents and umpity generations of Weasleys by becoming the first one to be Sorted somewhere other than Gryffindor. That would be embarrassing to say the least, and cause no end of comment. Though the reaction wouldn't be too bad for Hufflepuff, he didn't think. Most people who knew him knew he had a strong work ethic, so Hufflepuff wouldn't be a horribly unsuitable second choice if there had to be one. Just as long as he didn't get a reputation for being a bookworm or worse, a *dark wizard*. He shuddered in horror at the probable reaction if a Weasley ever got sorted Slytherin.

They were met by the Transfiguration teacher and Gryffindor Head of House, Professor Dumbledore. He seemed to be a genial, easy-going man, which relieved some of Septimus' anxiety. Fortunately for the rest of it, when it was finally his turn to be Sorted, the Hat was fairly quick to decide on Gryffindor, though it speculated briefly on Hufflepuff – and made a comment about him having more cunning than expected. That comment had scared nearly a year's growth off of Septimus, and made him yell at the hat. Fortunately, not aloud. He was reasonably sure that he'd had the nerve to yell at the hat had been the deciding factor, though he never admitted that to anyone.

He soon discovered that for all he'd been learning Latin and magical theory since he was five, he didn't have much of a head start on the Muggleborns. He was, however, irritated to discover that many of the Slytherin purebloods had what seemed like entire libraries of spells they could cast from the first day, indicating their parents had been giving them tutelage they shouldn't have been getting yet.

There was a reason that serious magical education didn't start until kids were eleven. Until then the vast majority of childrens' magical cores weren't developed enough to handle the strain put on them by serious, concentrated training. Only the kids who would eventually become very powerful adults were really ready prior to that point. It was entirely possible to do damage to your magical core if you weren't very careful. Granted, Septimus was betting the parents of the Slytherins probably only had their kids memorize the pronunciation and wand movement prior to that last year before Hogwarts and not casting magic, but still. They were taking awful chances even at that.

He worked hard all year, and it paid off. He came away with E's and O's in every class, though managing the E in History of Magic had been an unexpected trial. Binns could put anyone to sleep, which made it difficult to know what assignment he'd set. To be honest, Septimus wasn't entirely sure Binns *graded* their assignments. Ghosts couldn't affect the living world aside from making the temperature drop if enough of them were gathered in one place, or giving someone the shivers if they accidentally put part of themselves through a ghost. He supposed that someone else must grade Binns' assignments, though who that could be he couldn't guess.

He'd made a number of good friends. There were eight boys in his year in Gryffindor, evenly split between Muggleborns and Purebloods. The purebloods were himself, the Potter heir, the Longbottom heir and a Prewitt scion. He made friends with all his roommates, though he got along with Potter and Longbottom the best of the lot. He also made friends with all of the second-year Gryffindor boys (there were seven of them), some of the first and second year Hufflepuff boys, and a single Ravenclaw who had proven to not be an anti-social bookworm. He was, not incidentally, one of the Muggleborns that Septimus and his family had assisted in Diagon Alley. The only House not represented, even tangentially, was Slytherin. That was more the fault of the individual kids in that House than to House rivalries or prejudices, as the Hufflepuffs didn't have anywhere near the antagonistic relationship with that House that Gryffindor did, and were thus more likely to befriend the more tolerable Slytherins.

At the end of the year, they all promised to stay in touch. The Muggleborns had even taught the Purebloods in the group how to send Muggle mail, since owls flying about would get noticed sooner rather than later in the Muggle world.

Summer was almost a relief for Septimus. Oh, he'd spent Christmas and Easter with his family of course, but a week or so wasn't near enough. He'd missed them all terribly. He probably spoiled his brothers more than he really ought to have, playing with them and indulging their more harmless whims. It resulted in a number of sleepovers in his room the first few weeks after he got back, but he didn't mind.

He invited the friends he'd made over. The Muggleborns all seemed thrilled to be inside their first ever magical house. Hogwarts, while magical, didn't count in that regard, an opinion expressed by several of Septimus' Muggleborn friends, so he decided to take their word for it. The Ravenclaw in the bunch asked his parents a bunch of questions that Septimus hadn't been able to answer during the year. He took some small measure of comfort from the fact that the questions seemed to startle and/or stymie his parents. It made him feel less of a dunce when they were caught out like that.

The Muggleborns reciprocated the invitation, which Septimus was only too happy to accept. He was sad, however, to discover that he was the only pureblood in their group comfortable with mucking about in the Muggle world. The others, while willing to try it, had looked like kneazles in a crup farm. Which is to say highly uncomfortable and very out of place. That said, they did their best to learn to blend in, and had made significant inroads towards that goal by summer's end.

Second year proved to be both easier and more difficult than first year. Easier in that he was used to being away from home, now, and had some idea of what the teachers expected from him both scholastically and behaviorally. Not that he'd deliberately caused trouble his first year, but there'd been a few close calls and some lost points along the way.

He'd been tempted, briefly, to try out for the Quidditch team. But after some thought, he decided that while he loved the game, it would take up too much of his time. If he was going to have any chance of making something of himself, of turning the Weasley Family's fortunes around, he needed to concentrate on his classes, not on Quidditch plays and practice.

Classes were harder in that they were, of course, delving into more difficult subjects than they'd faced in First Year. Septimus discovered that he seemed to have a talent for Defense Against the Dark Arts. The subject matter made sense to him, and he tended to pick up the counters to hexes, jinxes, and curses that were the year's subject pretty quickly.

There was a bit of a dustup, Septimus' second year, between some of the older Slytherins and Gryffindors. Septimus never did learn what it had all been about, but it had to have been pretty bad. It had resulted in drawn wands and more than one curse fired in the heat of the moment. It had also resulted in a month-long siege between the two Houses, carefully disguised as 'pranks'. The older students were fine, but the Firsties and his year caught the worst of it. There were a lot of bruises, strains, and broken bones from unexpected tumbles, ruined school supplies, ruined or missing homework, and rather vicious 'prank' hexes. Septimus frequently found himself chasing off Slytherins from the Gryffindor Firsties, and as such was a frequent victim of Slytherin excesses and visitor to the Infirmary.

He mostly took those lumps with pride. He couldn't just stand aside and let them terrorize little kids who didn't know any magic to fight back with. All he had to do was imagine Victor, Felix, or Bilius in the Firsties' places and he had no problem blacking a few eyes in the name of justice.