xii. not slytherin
King's Cross buzzed with noise like an active beehive, people hustling in every direction, calling out to loved ones and checking watches or timetables, mothers holding the hands of fussy children while harried travelers ran by. The noise pressed upon Harriet as she stood halfway between Platform Nine and Platform Ten, glaring at a bit of wall.
There was some kind of invisible bubble surrounding the area because the Muggles going about their business avoided the space, turning their heads and bodies away without noticing—which was all well and good, as wizards were not the most subtle of people. Harriet had seen a whole gaggle of red-headed witches and wizards go by pushing trolleys loaded with magical things, and though she had wanted to ask the mother for help, Harriet had hung back, anxious and perspiring, until it was too late.
She'd observed several people slip through the bloody wall now and she guessed it was where the Platform was—but what if it was more difficult than it appeared? What if there was a password or some kind of secret phrase or look or spell? Harriet thought she might literally sink into a puddle of her own embarrassment if she cracked her head on the bricks by running full on at a wall.
Well, she thought as she gave Livi's head a gentle rub through the fabric of her shirt. The serpent had wrapped himself about her torso, comfortable as could be, and was disinclined to leave. Harriet's blouse was loose enough to accommodate him and he stayed invisible while in public at her request. She simply appeared a tad lumpier. I haven't come this far to fail now. Here goes nothing.
Tightening her grip on the handle of her trunk, Harriet set a brisk pace and aimed for the wall. She came closer, ten steps away, eight, five—she shut her eyes and threw out a hand, almost certain it'd collide with bricks—but Harriet felt nothing. She just kept walking, and walking, until she did collide with something, though it was much softer than a wall.
"Watch yourself!" the wizard said in gentle reprimand as he gripped Harriet's shoulder to steady her. Harriet blinked at him—then whipped about to face the barrier behind her. It stood brazen and solid as ever, which meant not very solid at all, apparently. I did it! There was nothing to worry about!
A scarlet steam engine puffed plumes of white as it idled on the tracks. Families crowded the platform, parents with their arms wrapped around their children, children desperately trying to escape their cooing ministrations. Owls shrieked in their cages, cats tried to evade their owners, and one boy with dreadlocks had a box with a tarantula hidden inside, and spectators gathered to stare and squeal. Not being overfond of spiders after a childhood stuck in the dark with them, Harriet gave the boy and his pet a wide berth.
Some students struggled to boost their heavy trunks that final step from the platform to the train itself, so Harriet paused to help one of those red-heads she'd seen earlier heft his luggage up onto the steps, then went off to find a seat. Harriet's dithering in the station meant most of the compartments had already filled and many students had thrown their Hogwarts robes on over their Muggle attire. She felt a mite too shy to intrude where the older kids were already happily chatting away, so Harriet continued along the train in hopes of finding an empty compartment, or one with other first years like herself.
Luckily, she stumbled upon the person she'd been looking forward to seeing again.
"Elara!" Harriet chirped, surprising the taller girl out of her reading. She was looking over a journal, and not one very well-written if her squinting was anything to go by. Next to her on the seat rested a covered owl cage, but the compartment was otherwise empty. "Is—is that bench taken?"
"Hello, Harriet," Elara said with half a smile. "No, it's free. Go on."
"Thanks." She pulled her trunk over the threshold and let the door slide shut on its own. Elara set the journal aside to help Harriet heft her trunk into the rack overhead, not because it was heavy, but because the bloody thing was almost the same size as Harriet herself and levering it over her head could be tricky. "Thanks," she muttered again. They settled in their seats.
The crowd began to thin on the station as students got on the train and some parents went on their way. Harriet saw that red-headed family again, or at least the mother and the daughter, the latter clinging tearfully to her mother's skirts as she waved at her brothers. Harriet thought that was nice—well, not the crying, but that the girl would miss her siblings, that she hated to see them go. The closest Harriet had to a sibling was Dudley, and he'd sooner throw Harriet onto the tracks than wish her well.
By unlucky chance, Harriet glanced toward the far end of the platform and saw a group revolving around a trio crossing toward the train. She recognized Neville Longbottom and fought against a grimace. He followed his dad—a taller wizard with prominent ears and an argyle sweater under his maroon robes—and a blond witch who had her arm linked through Mr Longbottom's. Harriet remembered reading that Neville's mum had been killed, so she guessed Mr Longbottom eventually remarried.
That ugly feeling in Harriet's middle twisted itself into painful knots as the blond witch smoothed Neville's already tidy hair and he shooed her away, grinning. The crowd cheered when he stepped off the platform.
Harriet ground her teeth.
Elara kept reading and didn't appear up for conversation. Where were her parents? She'd mentioned a "guardian," Harriet recalled, at the Menagerie. Maybe her family had died in the war, too. The Wizarding world had an awful lot of orphans.
The train set on its journey, releasing a final mournful whistle that echoed into the distance as the wheels turned and the station faded. Those opalescent distortions Harriet had first noted at the Leaky Cauldron happened here, too, where the mundane and magical collided, pushing back the Muggle world to let just a thin sliver of the magical one exist, hiding the tracks and the steam engine from Muggle eyes. Staring out the window, Harriet felt like they were traveling through a great soap bubble, one that didn't burst until they were well away from the city proper.
Harriet fiddled with her sleeves and with her glasses and with the snake napping under her clothes, then pulled out her own book from the satchel looped about her neck. She didn't really want to read, so she just pretended to thumb through the pages of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, pausing whenever one of the sketched images caught her attention.
London disappeared soon enough, dwindling as if it'd never been, and Harriet couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from the shifting scenery as her heart flip-flopped in her chest. The Dursleys never took her anywhere, not even to London, so Harriet couldn't recall a time when she'd ever been this far away from home. Of course, Harriet also didn't have a home now. She was on her way to school, and when summer rolled about again in ten months, she would have to figure out where to go from there.
The compartment door slid open and a bushy-haired girl slipped inside. She slammed the door closed again as she ducked down on the floor, alarming Harriet and earning a raised brow from her silent companion. Harriet met the girl's brown eyes and a jolt of recognition went through her; this was Hermione Granger, who she met briefly in Madam Malkin's.
Hermione lifted a finger to her lips in a universal plea for silence.
A minute later, a familiar blond boy went sauntering by with two larger counterparts far too reminiscent of Dudley. Draco, as she remembered his name, glanced inside their compartment and missed Hermione sitting crouched below the window, so he simply sneered at Harriet before moving on.
"Thank goodness," Hermione breathed, standing. She straightened the hem of her skirt and pulled on the shade's cord, bringing it down to hide the outer corridor from view. She'd already changed into her school robes. "I'm terribly sorry for barging in like that—oh but you're Harriet! We met at Diagon Alley!" Hermione's relief became more genuine as she sat on the seat next to Harriet and extended her hand. "I'm Hermione Granger, if you don't recall."
"Hi, Hermione. It's nice to see you." They shook hands. Harriet was pleased to meet her again, as Hermione seemed far more enthusiastic about her presence than Elara did. "Was that your, er, brother?"
Hermione glanced at the door over her shoulder before shaking her head. "No, definitely not. I'm just being fostered by his family."
"Doesn't—doesn't that make him your foster brother, then?" Harriet asked, confused. She'd known a few foster children in primary and they'd been almost as bullied as Harriet had been.
"Don't be silly. I'm Muggle-born." Hermione gave Harriet a funny look. "I thought you were Muggle-born too?"
Harriet didn't know what being Muggle-born had to do with fostering, though after a month of listening to conversations in the Wizarding quarter, she knew she wasn't Muggle-born herself, even if Lily had been a Muggle like her Aunt Petunia. "Uh," Harriet said, trying to change the conversation. "This—this is Elara! Elara, this is Hermione."
Thankfully, Elara lowered the journal to grant Hermione a small smile and a nod. "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise."
Hermione turned her gaze back to Harriet, obviously expecting an answer to her question. Harriet cursed in her head. "Well, my dad was a wizard," she said slowly. "But I was raised with relatives who didn't like him all that much, so I never learned a lot about him or my mum. What about you? Did…did something happen to your parents? You don't have to talk about it if it did. I'm just being nosy."
"No, my parents are perfectly fine." A furrow appeared between Hermione's brow as she bit her lower lip. "There's a law, you see. The Muggle-born Protection Act of 1982, or the 'MPA'. I didn't realize there were witches or wizards who didn't know about it."
"What's the law do?"
"It—well, in simple terms, it says Muggle-borns who accept a place at Hogwarts must leave the Muggle world and be fostered by a proper Wizarding family."
Harriet blinked, then gawked when the full implication of Hermione's words bowled her over. "D'you mean they took you away from your parents?!"
"No! No, of course not," Hermione said with a harried huff. "I chose to leave—and I get to spend time with them over the winter holidays, so that's…something. Really, the MPA is a good thing. It was contested when it first came out, the war having just ended, but tensions with the Muggle-world were high in the wake of You-Know-Who's atrocities, and the Ministry decided that children who presented with magical abilities would be safer among their own—own kind, and statistically speaking there's been a fifty-three percent reduction in Muggle-on-wizard violence since the last report in the seventies—."
Hermione went on in this vein for a time, and though she had all kinds of information to back up the 'efficacy'—a word Harriet knew she'd have to look up later—of the MPA law, she sounded as if she were trying to convince herself as well as Harriet. Harriet was uncertain. It seemed horrifying, being taken away from one's parents, but what the bloody hell did she know about parents? What if there were mums and dads out there who treated their magical kids like Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon treated Harriet? Didn't they deserve a chance to escape that?
It didn't sit right with her. Harriet thought of her own mum and dad and longed to know what they would have said, what they were like.
Hermione and Harriet chatted together until a witch pushing a trolley of food stopped by and they bought lunch, the conversation lulling. Hermione took one look at the display of sweets and stuck up her nose, muttering about her parents being dentists, while Harriet got some of everything and Elara took two Cauldron Cakes after giving the treats a dubious stare.
Truly, Harriet was again reminded of how splendid magic was when she ripped open a Chocolate Frog package only for the frog to leap free. Elara caught the escapee with little effort, proving she wasn't quite as distant as she appeared. They both sampled a few beans from the box of Bertie Bott's —until they bit into something foul and promptly shoved the box aside. Harriet entertained herself with the sugary trove while Hermione unfurled a copy of the Daily Prophet and read. The occasional rustle of a turning page broke the silence.
"Hmm…they still haven't found that rare Horned Serpent that went missing from the Magical Menagerie."
Harriet choked on a frog's leg and started coughing. On the other bench, Elara glanced up from the journal and gave Harriet a curious look.
"That's, ah, interesting." Beneath her shirt, the snake in question shifted in his sleep. "Hermione—speaking of Diagon, what were you talking about with Draco at Madam Malkin's? If you don't mind me asking?"
Hermione wrinkled her nose at the mention of the pale blond. "The Hogwarts Houses," she replied, tone crisp. "Did you ever learn more about them?"
"I did! I read 'Hogwarts: A History' like you said—or, at least some of it." The book contained an equal measure of fascinating information and tedious facts. Really, there was only so much Harriet wanted to know about sediment analyses or plumbing updates throughout the centuries.
A bright smile broke over Hermione's face. "Isn't it just so interesting? I've read it cover to cover twice now—but never mind that. You said you read about the Houses. Which do you think you'll be in?"
"I'm not sure," Harriet admitted. "The book talked a lot about being ambitious or witty or courageous or hardworking, and I don't think I'm any of those, really."
Hermione nodded along in thought. "Well, no one knows for certain where they'll be until they arrive. There's a ceremony that Sorts incoming students, but I couldn't find any information on how the Sorting occurs exactly. I've been told it's 'meant to be a surprise.'"
Nervous, Harriet prayed there wasn't a test waiting for her the moment she stepped foot into the school. She'd tried to read her textbooks, but the sheer flood of information Harriet had been forced to assimilate was mind-numbing. What if they asked her to do magic? Would she be able to?
"I think Ravenclaw would be excellent," Hermione said. "Or Gryffindor. Both are my top choices—but as I was telling Draco, none of the Houses are truly superior to any other. Ravenclaws are known for being bookish, and I know I'm a bit bookish myself—." Hermione's cheek colored. "—so that's where I'll most likely end up, even though I'd love to be a Gryffindor. Being a Hufflepuff would be nice, too." She paused. "But not Slytherin. No, not Slytherin."
Harriet frowned as she tried to remember all that she'd read about the Houses. "What's wrong with Slytherin?"
"Nothing," Hermione said in a voice that meant everything. "Nothing at all. It's a perfectly respectable House. I just…the Malfoys have all been Slytherins since they first started attending the school, and Draco will most certainly follow his family's legacy. I don't think I could stand having to stay in the same dormitories as him."
"That's a bit silly," Elara commented. Having been quiet for most of the journey, her sudden input startled Hermione. "Allowing one person to sully an entire House for you."
"It's not that alone," Hermione replied, red darkening her face again. "It's—I don't believe I would be a good fit for Slytherin, that's all!"
Unimpressed, Elara replied with a simple "Hmm," and lowered her attention to the journal again. Hermione opened her mouth to argue—when a voice echoed through the train compartments.
"We will be arriving at the Hogsmeade Station within a half hour. Students are reminded to leave their pets and luggage on board, and to change into their uniforms before disembarking."
Harriet let out a relieved breath and stood, shuffling through her satchel to find the robes she'd stashed in there. She and Elara both changed while Hermione disappeared behind the newspaper again, grumbling. Nervous excitement bubbled in Harriet's chest once she sat and looked out the window at the darkening horizon. How many hours had passed? A half dozen, at least. Across from her, Elara finally tucked her reading away. She pulled on her sleeves until they mostly covered her hands.
The train slowed until it stopped, brakes squealing, white plumes drifting by the window, and sound in the outer corridor doubled. Harriet gave her middle a pat to make certain Livi remained in place as she rose and tucked her satchel with her trunk. Hermione lifted the window's shade, peeking into the corridor. A group of older students with robes trimmed in blue passed, and Hermione shoved the door open. "Let's hurry, shall we?"
Hermione obviously wished to avoid Draco, so Harriet went along with her. She glanced behind her to see Elara following with the same impassive expression she'd worn all afternoon, though she didn't let a boisterous boy trimmed in red cut between her and Harriet when he came charging out of his own compartment. Harriet heard the whispers again, Longbottom's name caught on every tongue, people standing on tip top and craning their necks to look about.
No one gave three random girls a second glance.
Outside, the dark closed about them, thick as lamb's wool, and Harriet gazed at the sky bursting with stars overhead. The vastness of the revealed universe reminded Harriet how very small she was, how truly insignificant. While some despaired at being so negligible, Harriet thought it freeing. She was but one leaf on a towering tree where a thousand leaves had grown before, and no matter how alone she felt, others had been in her shoes before, staring at that sky, and someone always would be.
Hermione jostled Harriet's arm to hurry her along.
"Firs' years! Firs' years! This way, Firs' years!"
A giant of a man loomed above the milling students with a lit lantern in his massive hand. At his side stood another adult, a sour-faced, bespectacled wizard with broad shoulders and hair so light it appeared transparent. "Be swift, now. Allow the incoming first years passage—yes that means you, Mr Leovitch. Out of the way—."
Harriet started to fidget again, patting Livi or her wand tucked into the new leather brace on her wrist. The breeze sighed through the eerie wood surrounding the station, and Harriet swore she saw the gleam of eyes watching them. The older students hurried to the platform's end where a line of carriages drawn by skeletal horses waited.
"That all o' you lot?" the giant boomed as he swung his lantern about and almost clipped his companion in the head. "Alright then. This way!"
They started along a steep path into the woods, stumbling in the dark on the narrow slip of gravel and stone, their tremulous voices vibrating with excitement and trepidation. At the path's end rested the shore of a great, still lake—and on the cliff's edge across the water waited an ancient castle comprised of Saxon turrets and Gothic spires, a sleeping dragon with stone spines sprawled upon the hill, waiting for them to come nearer. Harriet wasn't the only one to gasp.
Hogwarts. I'm really here. It's real.
"Only four to a boat, lest you want to capsize before you even get to the school!" the older wizard called. Harriet hadn't noticed the small fleet of boats resting on the shore at first. Harriet clamored in after Hermione and Elara—and they were swiftly joined by Draco, who almost shoved Harriet headfirst into the lake when he jumped into the boat as well.
"Granger," he said, snide. "Have a nice train ride with your Mudblood pals?"
Hermione glowered at the boy and didn't answer.
The boats jerked into motion. Harriet held on with both hands and Livi tightened his coils, stirring beneath the rippling cover her robes, his voice rising in a hiss barely audible above the smooth lapping of the lake's water against the bow.
"We are almossst there?"
"Soon," Harriet replied into her collar, earning a bewildered look from Elara. It always sounded like English to Harriet, but she knew from experiences with Dudley creeping up on her that her conversations with snakes came out in odd, rasping hisses.
They docked at a small harbor carved through the solid rock of the cliff's face, where the shifting water echoed and the smell of algae thickened in their noses. The shorter wizard urged them out of the boats and up a flight of stone steps illuminated by torchlight. The stairs led their whispering group up to the hill's crest, then across a lawn speckled in evening dew, the castle glittering overhead as it watched the first years approach.
This is home now, Harriet thought. She was caught in the wonder and mystique, gliding with the others by touch alone, unable to look away. This is going to be my home for the next seven years.
Ahead waited the great black doors leading into the castle proper. The bespectacled wizard lifted a hand and knocked.
A/N: Someone mentioned not liking the main pairing (Snape / Harriet), which I can understand. I just wanted to mention this fic is mostly Gen / Friendship / Mentor oriented with a heavy emphasis on plot, and absolutely nothing occurs with any underage students. No inappropriate shenanigans. The pairing is a very distant thing that doesn't come up until the end. So, really, the story is about the adventure (and the absolutely wild plot twists I have planned, *wink, wink*).
