hey! quick note just to clear things up — I added a new character to the original list (Ziv) whose form got sent in a little later, so make sure you go check that out in case you feel confused about their sudden appearance here! We also had to change Zia's name to Vera, but she's still the same character. That being said — hope you enjoy the very first chapter of our story!

jumping up and down the floor
my head is an animal
and once there was an animal
it had a son that mowed the lawn
the sun was an ok guy
it had a pet dragonfly
the dragonfly it ran away
but it came back with a story to say

dirty paws — of monsters and men

Chione had always hated going to Cairo.

Granted, she loved visiting the National Museum, and there was something about the city's dusty streets that fascinated her to no end when the sun went down and nearly everyone went home, allowing her to roam the unpaved streets like a tourist would. But Cairo was the biggest labyrinth that she had ever found herself stuck in, and she hated feeling trapped or lost in the middle of its never-ending crowds whenever she visited the city with her mother.

And yet, she couldn't help but grin when she saw the Pyramids from afar, her dad's magic carpet slowing down as they approached the archaeological complex.

"I think Ziv got here earlier in the morning, baba," she explained excitedly. "They told me they had a huge journey ahead of them. They're from Haifa, you know? That's . . . well, really far away from here."

"I know, habibi," her father replied in a kind tone. Even though he still couldn't quite understand why his daughter kept referring to her schoolmate as a "they", he tried not to question it too much. "Should we park somewhere over there?" He signaled towards a clearer area, and smiled when his daughter nodded enthusiastically. He knew how ecstatic Chione felt about going abroad — Ghadi knew that she hadn't stopped skipping around their house back in Aswan ever since she got her acceptance letter from her home school, Sahar Almadrasa. But he still couldn't quite wrap his head around the idea of his little girl being away for an entire year — sure, she boarded at Sahar Almadrasa during the school year, but the madrasa was only a few miles away from their town and Chione usually came home every other weekend. She was only fifteen, for Zoroaster's sake! What was she going to do all alone for an entire year?

"Baba, that's Mudaris Hadjal!" exclaimed Chione, which made her father lose his train of thought. She grinned and waved at her Transfiguration teacher, who was to escort them to London through the portkey that had been sent to them by the Egyptian Ministry of Magic. "Marhaban!" Once the two of them reached the ground, Chione offered her teacher a big smile and went off to greet him while her father stayed behind and rolled up their magic carpet.

"Marhaban, alsyd Arafa," the teacher said politely before kissing each of Chione's father's cheeks as they shook hands, once Jafaar walked up to his daughter and her teacher. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Chione is one of our brightest students."

"She really is something, isn't she?" Jaafan replied, a half-smile on his lips. When his daughter complained about how they were just being downright unrealistic, he just laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, why shouldn't I be proud of my little girl? It's never a bad moment to remind you of it — especially when you're going to be away for so long."

"That is very true," Mudaris Hadjal agreed. "Ziv should be here anytime, they forgot — "

"Mudaris Hadjal! I found it! I found it!"

Chione laughed when she recognized her classmate's voice as they made their way towards the three of them. They were in the year above her, but Sahar Almadrasa was a small school and actively encouraged their students to get to know the student body even if they were older or younger than them.

"Hey, Chione!" Ziv said brightly once they had trotted up to the rest of the group, and enveloped her in a warm hug — they weren't even that close, but Chione was aware of how physically affectionate Ziv could be sometimes. "How are you? I've been here since dawn, which feels like forever, honestly. My mums brought me here earlier and then went to visit Cairo — they've never been here, you know? Which is insane, actually, because Miriam's always worked for a Mundane travelling company . . . oh, and you must be alsyd Arafa! How very nice to meet you." Ziv grinned up at Chione's father, who pushed up his glasses and shook their hand and kissed their cheeks with an amused smile on his face.

Once they sauntered off to tell Mudaris Hadjal all about the t-shirt that they thought they'd forgotten at home, Jafaar leaned towards his daughter and whispered, "Is she always this . . . talkative?"

"They are a very nice person to be around, baba," Chione replied, stressing her schoolmate's pronoun.

"All right, all right, I'm just saying she's — they're — a bit . . . overenthusiastic?"

"Why shouldn't they be? I've never been abroad before, and I don't think they have either," Chione grinned brightly at the sole idea of leaving her country for the first time in her life. "It's going to be plenty of fun!"

"I'm sure it will, habibi," her father nodded and pressed a kiss to her head. He then placed his hands on the girl's shoulders, a more serious tone in his voice as he spoke again, "But listen, I want you to be really careful. You're going to an entirely new country, and people . . . well, people can be a little mean sometimes when you're not like them. Just — be careful, all right, habibi? I want you to have plenty of fun and to get to know people from all around the world, yes, but I also want to have you back as soon as possible."

"All right, baba," Chione nodded, a soft smile on her lips. The girl stood on her tiptoes and hugged her father by the neck, which caught Jafaar by surprise. "I'm really going to miss you and mama."

"Oh, we'll miss you too, habibi," he whispered, hugging her in return. "We love you, all right? We really do."

"I know, baba."

"Chione! Are you ready?" Ziv asked as they trotted up to their classmate and her father. "Mudaris Hadjal says everything's ready, and that we'd better get going if we want to see some of London before going to Hogwarts."

"Yes, I'm coming!" Chione replied, and grinned one last time at her dad before picking up her bags. "See you in a bit, all right?"

"See you in a bit, Chi."

His father smiled one last time before the girl joined her teacher and Ziv by the portkey, and even felt a little pang of sadness when the three of them disappeared in front of him, a brownish cloud of dust flying around the place where his only daughter had last stood.

"This is so dull I think I might die."

Henri's eyes glanced up from the book that he was currently reading, but he just sighed and went back to it when he saw that Ramona had lied down on the floor of the carriage and was making all sorts of dying whale noises as she moved around. "T'es vraiement comme une fille petite, Mona."

"Gilipollas," Ramona snapped, which made Henri scrunch his nose at her. They didn't share a first language — Henri's was French, Ramona's was Spanish — but they had both grown accustomed to hearing random words in both languages at school, so they were perfectly aware of what the other was saying at all times. Ramona sat up and eyed the carriage curiously before adding, "I can't believe we're travelling in a pink and purple carriage. No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're all stuck-up and snobby."

"It honestly isn't that bad," Henri replied, putting his book down for once. An Advanced Study of the Scottish Skies, by the English astronomer Cornelius Bigglewater. "It's just a couple of hours until we get there, Mona."

"But I want to get there now," the girl pleaded, placing her hands on her own cheeks in a rather dramatic way. "I need to get there and jump off this carriage and run around the forest and see all the cute English girls who are going to be there and eat tons of roast beef and — "

"Okay, okay, I get it," Henri said, rolling his eyes ever so lightly. Ramona exasperated him to a certain degree, but he was used to her antics — they had been Housemates back at Beauxbatons for the past six years and they shared a lot of common friends, after all. "Weren't you dating Camille, though?"

"Camille? You've got to be joking," Ramona rolled her eyes as though he had just said the stupidest thing in the world. "Camille and I . . . we hooked up, but she claimed to be, and I quote, 'going through a phase'."

"Merlin, that's the absolute worst," Henri agreed, shaking his head a little. "That's what happened to me with that Maarten guy, remember? The one in the year above us from Utrecht?"

"Whoa, I didn't know that Maarten was into guys? And that you'd hooked up with him?" Ramona immediately took a seat next to him, her eyebrows rising in curiosity.

"And he isn't. Or at least he claims that he isn't," Henri chuckled. "Although he did look quite pleased with himself back in that broom closet."

"I can't believe it," Ramona had to cover her mouth with her hand to stifle a laugh. "You shagged Maarten Jensen, who's just about the straightest guy at school. I salute you, my friend."

"Yeah, I guess I did," Henri chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. He didn't quite know how he managed to attract nearly every single handsome young man that he ever felt even remotely interested in into his orbit, but he ended up earning their attention more often than not. Even Ramona, who was fully into girls, couldn't help but think that her classmate was perfectly irresistible, and understood how both girls and boys would easily fall for his black curls and big green eyes. She wasn't bad herself, though — slightly tanned, tall and with chocolate brown hair, and somewhat known for being a bit of a flirt, although it didn't come quite as naturally to her as it did to Henri — she had to make an effort, whereas he had grown accustomed to having whatever he wanted without having to do so much as open his mouth to request it. The result of a pampered childhood, she supposed.

"I'm sure you'll find yourself a nice English gentleman this year," the girl winked at him suggestively, trying not to erupt into laughter yet again.

"Who knows," Henri chuckled, shaking his head. "I think I'd rather just help you find a nice English young lady for yourself, Mona."

"Ah, but I don't need your help, monsieur Henri," she replied, an amused tone to her voice. "I can take care of my own conquers."

"All right, then. I'll just eat crumpets and gaze at the sky and complain about how absolutely horrid their cooking is."

"Sounds like something you'd do, yes."

They both chuckled softly, and with that Ramona returned to the floor and started complaining yet again, and Henri picked up his book and resumed his reading. And both of them thought, with amused smiles on their faces, that their year at Hogwarts was bound to be interesting if they had each other by their side.

The Durmstrang ship usually carried between thirty and fifty students within its walls whenever it sailed, but on September 1st, 2019, only two of them could be found aboard the school's official ship. And they both, coincidentally, happened to be huddled in two separate couches — one fully engrossed in a book about Grindelwald, and the other one crouched over a table and working on what looked like a translation. Milo and Johan had met up with their Headmaster near Helsinki, where they had boarded the school ship on their own — it had been charmed to automatically take them to Hogwarts, and they had spent two full days at sea already without exchanging much information with each other. After all, neither of them was exactly talkative, and they felt comfortable enough that way.

"How's the reading going?" Milo asked, his Swedish accent intertwining with the words when he spoke them out loud. The school's official language was German, which came to Milo nearly as easily as his native Swedish, but he still struggled with the accent sometimes.

"Good," Johan replied, perhaps a bit too curtly. When his schoolmate pursed his lips, he awkwardly added, "It's interesting. I mean, the fellow did manage to start a whole political movement within the Wizarding world."

"Yeah, I guess," Milo shrugged, unsure of what to say. Sweden had remained neutral during the two Wizarding Wars, and he wasn't exactly fond of Grindelwald from what they had learned at school. The fact that their History of Magic Lehrer was a bit of a blood elitist and seemed to agree with most of Grindelwald's predicaments didn't really help, either.

Johan's eyebrows rose ever so lightly. Durmstrang students tended to be fairly conservative, so he had never found himself in the need of questioning the legitimacy in reading a book on a powerful wizard, whichever his political orientation may have been. He had never hung out with Milo before — he was in the year above him — but he had always respected him for his academic performance and the way their Ancient Runes Lehrerin would always talk wonders about him. Still, it surprised him to hear something like that coming out of a clever student's mouth.

"What're you translating?" He asked finally, in a more conversational tone.

Milo glanced at him before crouching over his piece of parchment yet again. "Uh, a fifteenth-century Runic novel. It's actually a fairly new discovery — they thought all the manuscript copies had been lost in a fire back in 1702, but apparently they found one near Malmö back in June . . . it's just for fun, you know, but it's still interesting."

Johan nodded. "Ja. We've got a lot of manuscripts back in Weirnigerode, and I love it when my Väter allows me to take a look at them." A faint gleam of pride crossed his eyes when he thought of his family's work at the city's Wizarding library. "It's . . . it's just fascinating, honestly. Makes you feel aware of how nimious and small we are in the greater scheme of things."

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on," mused Milo distractedly, with a heavy Swedish accent that appeared whenever he spoke English.

"Shakespeare, right?" Johan did a half-smile when his schoolmate's eyebrows rose in surprise. "I may be a Pureblood, but I've read my Muggle authors. His concept of magic and wizardry is pretty fascinating, to be honest."

"Yeah, it is," Milo replied softly, a small smile on his lips. "I used to be obsessed with his plays when I was a little younger. I went to a nejmagi school before Durmstrang, you know."

Johan's eyebrows rose. "I thought your parents were both magical? Someone told me they worked at the Ministry back in Sweden."

"Yeah, they do," Milo shrugged, even though he knew that a magical child with magical parents attending a Nejmagi school wasn't exactly common, much less amongst those who latter attended Durmstrang. "They just thought we should get to know their world before plunging ourselves into ours, because we're no better or worse than them." He could sense the light surprise in Johan's eyes, so he just smiled coyly and added, "I don't know, I've never regretted it. I got to learn a bit of Nejmagi literature and a few languages and my basic Math, so it's all right."

"That's . . . interesting." Johan nodded finally. If there was something that defined him, that was the way he valued knowledge — and Nejmagi knowledge, regardless of how alien it was to him, was still knowledge nevertheless, he reckoned. "It's got to be good if it introduced you to Shakespeare, then." He ran an awkward hand through his strawberry-blond hair, still looking a little pensive.

Milo, on the other hand, did a half-smile and shrugged before lowering his gaze, focusing on his translation yet again. Out of all the people from their school that he could have been stuck with for an entire year, he thought quietly, Johan wasn't all that bad.

Rhona could have sworn that she gaped the first time that she stepped into Hogwarts.

She wasn't easy to impress, mind you. She usually went about her day feeling mostly indifferent about what surrounded her — there might have been certain things here and there that sparked her curiosity, but she was known for being a rather stoic person. What her classmates called a 'resting-bitch-face' was the mask that she usually wore around strangers; seldom did she feel comfortable enough not to act relentlessly unbothered by her surroundings. That was why she rolled her eyes ever so lightly at the excited smile on Callie's lips, in spite of the feeling of anticipation that rushed over her as soon as the silhouette of the woman who now took care of the British Wizarding school appeared through the corridor.

"Is that — that's Professor McGonagall!" Callie murmured excitedly. A much softer girl than Rhona, she couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed — in a very positive way, of course — by the walls of the castle that now surrounded them. "She fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, you know. I've read that she's been her for over a century."

"Sure," Rhona said, shrugging her shoulders. Her eyes darted around the corridor, struggling not to marvel at the antiquities that hung from its walls. Ilvermorny, after all, was a relatively new school compared to Hogwarts — it was founded in 1627, whereas Hogwarts went back to 990 CE, which didn't even feel like a real date to begin with.

"Well, if it isn't our first guests to arrive," McGonagall offered them both a small, yet kind smile once the two girls had gotten up to her. Her gaze was just as mysterious as it looked like when she had looked her up in the Wizarding Encyclopedia, Rhona thought bemusedly. "It's such a pleasure to meet you. I am Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, and will from now on be in charge of your well-being for as long as you remain with us at Hogwarts."

"Nice to meet you, Professor," Callie said, an enthusiastic edge to her voice. Rhona, a little taken aback by how warm their new Headmistress was being to them, simply nodded and shrugged her shoulders, mumbling a rushed 'pleasure' as she shuffled to pick up her backpack.

"I hear that your dormitories aren't quite ready yet," McGonagall explained, an apologetical expression on her face. "We weren't expecting you until later tonight — our students haven't arrived yet, you see, and our house elves are still getting everything ready. But one of them will show you up to your common room, which you will share with the rest of our exchange students, and you may stay there and have some tea and biscuits until the rest of the group arrives."

"We didn't mean to arrive this early, Professor," Callie explained. "We . . . well, our Headmaster thought it'd be best if we used a keyport, but we . . . well, we didn't keep time zones in mind, I'm afraid."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all, miss . . . " McGonagall's eyebrows rose ever so lightly, as though inviting the girls to tell her their names.

"LeRoux! Calista LeRoux, that's me."

When the Headmistress's eyes fell on her, Rhona said in a quiet tone, "I'm Rhona Murphys, ma'am."

McGonagall nodded, and then tilted her head towards a little house elf who was now making its way towards the girls' luggage. "Bubblie will take you to your common room now, if that's all right. If you'll excuse me . . . "

"Absolutely!" Callie said quickly. "Pleasure to meet you, Headmistress."

Rhona couldn't help but roll her eyes yet again when her classmate beamed at their new Headmistress before she disappeared down the corridor. It wasn't like she knew Callie that well — they had been classmates for six years at Ilvermorny, but they'd never shared a common group of friends, and they hardly had anything to do with each other aside from the fact that they were two of the smartest students in their Year. Rhona admired those who could fend for themselves and who were clever enough to make it through school with nearly impeccable grades, but she also felt somewhat irritated by the sickly sweet kind of girl that Callie looked like every now and then. All smiles and enthusiasm, combining combat boots with flowery tops and a uniform-like skirt. Who did that, anyway?

"It's so weird that they don't have pukwudgies here!" Callie commented, a friendly tone in her voice as they both followed the house elf down the corridor. "I mean, it's funny how they just use house elves instead — "

"Yeah, so much for enslavement! Woohoo!" Rhona retorted. When Callie's brow furrowed, she just shrugged and added, "I mean, I've never really gotten how y'all act so progressive then just force non-human creatures into doing all the shitty stuff that you don't want to do. No-Majs can live without slaves or magic, so I guess we could at least spare them from all the working? For free?"

Now it was Callie's turn to roll her eyes. "Don't look at me, I've never owned a pukwudgie. My Dad's a No-Maj, so."

Rhona's eyebrows rose. The American Wizarding society had changed a lot in the past century, but mixed marriages were still somewhat frowned upon by certain families, so she wasn't really used to hanging out with people who had a No-Maj parent like she did.

"My Dad's a No-Maj too," she said, in a much softer tone that undoubtedly caught Callie offguard. Rhona was, after all, their year's 'shrew to be tamed', as a No-Maj-born classmate of theirs had once put it. "I . . . he lives down in Memphis, that's where I was born."

"Oh," Callie even seemed to smile at that. "That's funny. My Dad lives in New Orleans, and I really do miss him a lot."

"Yeah, school can really suck in that sense." Rhona refrained herself from letting her classmate know about how she got to see her mother on a daily basis because she had in fact become their Potions teacher right after her parents got divorced, and instead did a small smile as she fiddled with her backpack strap. "It's good to know that we've stuff in common, you know."

"Yeah," Callie agreed, a faint smile on her face. "Good to know."

And it would be, after all.

All right, so! I originally planned for all fourteen students to be introduced in the first chapter, but the fragments were just way too lengthy so I decided to split them into two chapters just so we could delve a little more into each school before actually getting the story started. The second chapter's gonna include all the students from Koldovstoretz, Makutu, Castelobruxo, and Mahoutokoro, plus a brief general perspective including our three Hogwarts mentors! Two of them were also in my first SYOC (A Twist In Time), but I'm fairly sure you don't need to read that one to get what's going on with them. But anyway! Hope you've enjoyed the first chapter, and I also hope I've portrayed your characters correctly — please do let me know how you feel about it. :D