Upon arrival at Hogwarts, it was still raining, and Hermione sighed as she queued up for a horseless carriage with the others. Theo stuck to her side, watching her oddly, and Blaise seemed to sense this, staying close to her as well, and giving Theo suspicious looks.
Once they were finally all in a carriage, Theo explained.
"I was curious if you'd be able to see thestrals," he said. "From what happened on the solstice."
Hermione blinked. "Thestrals?"
"They draw the carriages," Theo told her. "You had one for your Patronus the other day – great skeletal horses with bat wings. You can only see them if you've seen death."
"Oh." Hermione blinked. "I guess Dementors don't count."
The carriages bumped along, and everyone hurried out of them through the rain to crowd into the Entrance Hall. Hermione was relieved to get indoors and out of the storm where she could relax. The Sorting was always a fun spectacle to behold.
Peeves, however, was hassling people outside the Great Hall, throwing water balloons. An utter waste, honestly, Hermione thought – why use water balloons when everyone was already soaked? – but once everyone was inside the Great Hall, prefects went about casting drying charms on the younger years of their houses while everyone else cast it on themselves.
The Great Hall was decorated as it was for every Welcome feast, bright and cheery with hundreds of candles hanging. Hermione scanned the head table. Snape nodded to her curtly when their eyes met, but there was no one there who Hermione didn't recognize.
"Where's the new Defense teacher?" Tracey asked, scanning the teachers. "I don't see anyone new."
Daphne blinked. "You're right. There's no one new."
Draco brightened. "Maybe Snape finally got it."
"Yeah, but then we'd have a new Potions professor," Pansy pointed out. "There's no new faces at all."
Professor McGonagall led the new first years into the room, and everyone quieted, then the Sorting Hat burst into song.
The Sorting Hat was rather biased, Hermione thought, listening to its song. It was bold Gryffindor, fair Ravenclaw, sweet Hufflepuff, and shrewd Slytherin – the only adjective that wasn't positive, in Hermione's opinion. And then its lyrics about their desired virtues, too – "By Gryffindor, the bravest were prized far beyond the rest; for Ravenclaw, the cleverest would always be the best" seemed rather slanted. Hufflepuff got "hard-workers", but it was "power-hungry Slytherin" who "loved those of great ambition", when none of the other founders got a descriptor themselves.
Not for the first time, Hermione wondered about the legacy of the founders. They'd lived a thousand years ago, and they were still known about and venerated at Hogwarts. Legends and stories about them had survived the centuries, passed down as long as their school stood. If she wanted to have a legacy like that, would she need to found a school too?
"Adams, Damian!"
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
The Granger School of Ritual Magic, she mused to herself a moment, before dismissing it. She didn't really want to found a school, not really. Teaching wasn't her passion – research and creation was.
"Burke, Yasmin!"
"SLYTHERIN!"
Hermione watched as a young dark-skinned girl scampered over to the Slytherin table, grinning widely. Her unabashed eagerness surprised Hermione somewhat; Burke was a Sacred 28 name, and she'd assumed all of the Sacred 28 drilled their kids in restraint and decorum.
As the Sorting proceeded, Hermione kept an ear out for any other names she recognized. Jade's warning was in her ears, and she kept an eye on the new fifth-year prefects down the table a bit, a new shiny badge pinned proudly on Alexia Rosier's chest. That was a situation Hermione was going to have to deal with sooner or later, whether she wanted to or not.
At least she could make a thing of it, Hermione mused. She'd never paid Rosier back for the welcome she'd given her during her first year.
"Greengrass, Astoria!" was also sorted into Slytherin. The young blonde girl slid in next to Yasmin on the bench, and the two girls immediately began talking in hushed voices. Hermione saw Daphne relax in relief, and Hermione shot her a smile that Daphne returned, pleased.
After the Sorting was over, the platters on the tables magically filled, and conversation broke out over the tables. Behind her, Hermione could hear the Ravenclaws discussing the Dark Mark at the World Cup, but at the Slytherin table, discussion pointedly avoided that topic, instead discussing the game itself.
"That catch was amazing," Tracey gushed. "Krum was so effortless on his broom!"
"Made Lynch look a bit crap," Blaise said, grinning. "He got flattened twice."
"Hermione talked to him," Draco chimed in. "When they all came up to the Top Box, at the end – Krum was on the far end behind Hermione's chair, and she got to talk to him."
All eyes went to Hermione, who flushed a dull red.
"I asked him about the team mascots," she said lightly, as if it was no big deal to talk to a Quidditch superstar every day. "I was curious if they'd planned to be weaponized or not."
"The Veela?" Theo asked, surprised. "…were they?"
Hermione grinned. "They rehearsed collective dive-bombing together while the players practiced."
"I'm surprised he could speak English," Pansy said, her tone a bit haughty.
"It's a work in progress," Hermione admitted, amused. "It's his fourth language, I think? He already knows Bulgarian, Russian, and German."
"How long did you talk for?" Blaise wanted to know, and her cheeks reddened further.
"That's an interesting point, though, for the tournament," Theo said thoughtfully. "Beauxbatons is in France. Durmstrang is from – well, not here, at any rate. Who's to say we'll be able to communicate at all?"
"So we speak French," Draco said, as if this was a ridiculous question. "Or they speak English."
"Not everyone had a French tutor—" Theo snapped.
"Or language lessons at all," Tracey muttered.
"—and it's likely you only did because of your extended family," Theo finished, giving Draco a disgusted look. "You can't presume your experience to be universal."
"Oh, did you learn Russian then?" Draco's smile was poisonous. "You know, for your extended family?"
Theo snarled, and Hermione's eyes widened in surprise as the two boys faced off, suddenly and unexpectedly venomous.
"Your family's from Russia?" Hermione asked, trying to diffuse the situation. "I never knew."
"His Mum's maiden name is Parshukova," Draco said. His tone was triumphant, as if he'd just revealed a big secret, but it fell flat with Hermione, who didn't recognize the name at all.
"Yeah, and?" Theo challenged, eyes flashing. "What of it?"
Draco shrugged, careless. "Just saying. If anyone was—"
"If anyone was what, a Bolshevik loyalist?" Theo said pointedly. "You realize no one cares, right, Malfoy? Not everyone is obsessed with their ancestry."
Draco sneered back, but the high points of red on his cheeks betrayed that Theo's barb had landed. Daphne looked like she was thinking very hard.
"Parshukova, Parshukova," she said, muttering. "Where do I know that name…"
Theo sighed, breaking away from his glare.
"Probably from Anna Parshukova," he told her. "Mother of Rasputin."
Hermione, Daphne, and Pansy gasped. Blaise looked mildly approving, and Draco looked highly annoyed that this confrontation was not going the way he'd thought it would.
"You're related to Rasputin?" Hermione demanded. "I didn't even know he was a wizard!"
Theo gave her a strange look. "How else do you think he survived as long as he did?"
"No wonder your family has such a Dark reputation," Pansy said, her lip curling. "Rasputin… with his legacy…"
"My mother would be jealous," Blaise quipped, smirking. "Know any secret family poisons, Nott?"
Theo snorted, but the tension was broken, and conversation went back to the Triwizard tournament. Crabbe and Goyle seemed disappointed to learn from Draco that you'd need to be of age to enter, which boggled Hermione's mind.
"You would enter if you could?" she demanded. "You're not very good at magic!"
Goyle shrugged. "So?"
"How would you compete? How would you survive?"
Crabbe shrugged. "We'd figure it out."
Hermione wondered if they realized that a champion was one (1) person, and they couldn't both compete together.
When the feast was over, Dumbledore called for silence, beaming out over them all, wearing resplendent green robes embroidered with stars and moons. He reminded them of Filch's forbidden objects before telling everyone that the Quidditch Cup would not take place this year, to the collective horror of many, judging by the gasps and groans.
"This is due to an event that will be starting in October, and continuing throughout the school year, taking up much of the teachers' time and energy," Dumbledore went on. "But I am sure you will all enjoy it immensely. I have great pleasure in announcing that this year at Hogwarts—"
He was cut off as the doors of the Great Hall banged open, and everyone turned to look.
A man stood in the doorway, leaning on a long staff and shrouded in a black traveling cloak. A fork of lightning flashed across the ceiling, brightly illuminating him for a moment as he lowered his hood and shook out a long mane of grizzled, dark gray hair, before he began to walk up toward the teachers' table.
A dull clunk echoed through the hall on his every other step. Another flash of lightning threw his face into sharp relief. It looked as though his face had been carved out of weathered wood by someone who had only the vaguest idea of what human faces were supposed to look like. Every inch of skin was scarred, the mouth was a diagonal gash, and a large chunk of the nose was missing. One of the man's eyes was small, dark, and beady, but the other was large and round as a coin, and it was a vivid, electric blue.
"Moody," Hermione gasped under her breath.
Blaise turned to her sharply. "Who?"
"His name's Alastor Moody," Hermione whispered, as the man walked up to Dumbledore. "He's an Auror. He testified at Rookwood's trial. He was called in that day – the day Rhamnaceae—"
"Oh, wow," Tracey breathed. "We have an actual Auror as a teacher?"
"Brilliant," Draco said, disgusted.
"May I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" said Dumbledore brightly into the silence. "Professor Moody."
There was no applause that greeted this statement. Everyone was too transfixed by his bizarre appearance to do more than stare at him, which didn't bother Moody in the slightest. He walked down the table to the empty seat at the end, pulled a hip flask from his cloak, and drank from it deeply.
Dumbledore cleared his throat.
"As I was saying," he said, smiling, "We are to have the honor of hosting a very exciting event—"
When he finally announced the Triwizard Tournament, Hermione was grateful for the brief history he provided afterwards. It had been established 700 years ago and was considered an excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities until the death toll mounted so high that the tournament was discontinued. People had attempted to reinstate the tournament several times over the centuries, with little success, but this year, another attempt was being made. Dumbledore assured them that the Department of International Magical Cooperation and the Department of Magical Games and Sports had worked tirelessly over the summer to ensure that no champion would find themself in mortal danger.
Hermione thought back to the Wizengamot meetings, to how preoccupied Ludo Bagman had been with the World Cup and how he'd lost his assistant, and mentally added a disclaimer to Dumbledore's assurance of safety.
"The heads of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving with their contenders in October, and the selection of the three champions will take place at Halloween. An impartial judge will decide which students are most worthy to compete for the Triwizard Cup, the glory of their school, and a thousand Galleons personal prize money."
Murmurs broke out at this, and as Dumbledore went on about the details of how only students who were of age could compete, Hermione found her attention wandering. If this was a chance to make ties to young people of other countries, she'd need to capitalize on the opportunity as best she could. She had a little over a month and a half to brush up on her French and at least learn a few phrases in Russian and Bulgarian, like Viktor had told her. She'd need enough to show them she genuinely wanted to make acquaintances in earnest, but she knew her skill level with foreign languages – she'd have to hope they were better at English than she was at French or Russian…
She carefully kept the thoughts of one newly-of-age French witch out of her mind, as well as the memory of a crooked grin given on an accidental date in the woods.