Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: So I took a throwaway line about a throwaway character and ran with it. So enjoy a Choctaw Proud Kendra Dumbledore, because if I'm gonna write a Native character, I might as well use my own tribe and of course she's gonna love herself enough to keep the connection to the People.

Things of Interest (Quick & Dirty): In Choctaw culture, orange is the color of struggle and endurance. It means this in a lot of Indigenous cultures, actually, which is part of the reason that it was chosen to be the color to symbolize remembrance of the losses involved with the mission schools. I gloss over the details for rating purposes, but Ilvermorny is blatantly run like a mission school in this. Timikʋchi is a Choctaw word that roughly translates to "life beat/flow" in the way of a heartbeat or drum. I'm not certain if the ʋ is going to transfer well, so it's subbed out the way that the culture center people suggest for standard keyboards. Timikʋchi is also the concept of loving one's whole self, found in the unification of mind, body, and spirit that reflects the same in the tribe as a whole through faith, family, and culture.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Quidditch League (S11); Hogwarts 2.0 (T02); RAVEN (2024); MC4A (Sp-Yr7)
Individual Challenges: Hogwarts MC; Other School MC (Y); Magical MC [x2]; Sandbox; Cinematic; Reader; Small Fry; Tiny Terror; Dreamers; Professor MC; Ethnic & Present; Rian-Russo Inversion; Short Jog (Y); Bucket Listing; Eating Cake; Outer Limit (Y); Salt Wrench; Setting Sail; Castle Time; Buzzy Era (Y); Hold the Mayo; Rainbow Connection
Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw
Assignment: Term 02-05
Subject [Task (Prompt)]: Citizenship [Task#1 (fic set over a long period of time)]
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Gather [Paladin 4 (Devotion)](Love at First Sight); Case [Demiguise](Love at First Sight/Spool of Thread)
QL Round: Season 11 - Round 02
QL Team (Position): Magpies (Chaser 3) CAT-1 RESERVE
QL Prompt(s): [Main] Orange; Self-Love; [Optional] (word) Disbelief; (action) Cursing Someone; (plot point) Changing One's Mind
RAVEN Challenges: A&B [07](Burning); CT&E [73](Rage); Colors [87](Sky); Items [88](Thread); Set [51](Kidnapping)
Other MC4A Challenges: Ship (Percival Dumbledore/Kendra Dumbledore)[4C (Love at First Sight)]; Chim [Onyx](Pumpkin; "Bonfire Hearts" - James Blunt; Race Bent); Hunt [Sp WD (Native/Indigenous; Pagan; Woman); Sp Set (Captivity; Hopeful)]
Representation(s): Choctaw Kendra Dumbledore/Percival Dumbledore; Getting Together; Character Study; Native Cultural Arts; Mission School; Chim Song Prompt
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still; White Dress; Odd Feathers; Pear-Shaped; Pocky Pockets
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: Once (Moses Supposes; Under the Sea; Santa Fe)
Space Address (Prompt): SpB [4A (Union/Covenant)]; TrB [4B (The Healer)]
Word Count: 1568 words

(^^)
Timikvchi (Ride the Wind)
(^^)

Kendra had never intended to leave her homeland. Looking back on things as an adult, she supposed that none of them ever had a choice in the matter. All of them were just leaves torn from the tree of their birth and riding the storm of life. All they could ever do was keep on riding that wild wind.

She had been born with magic, just like her mother had been and many generations before that. It was just another fact of living, just as reliably present as the sun and the moon. It flowed through her just like the river flowed through marsh or the wind through the trees. She was magic as much as she was Choctaw. Both were in her blood and in her soul. Later, she would hear other wixen talk of how it could never be that easy, that there must be some kind of struggle to reconcile the truth of what existed within them. Kendra didn't bother to address their disbelief. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Why waste the time and energy to even try?

Some of her earliest memories were of her mother cupping her hands to guide her through the motions necessary to use the magic within her. It was well-known among their people that it was easier for the young to learn how to channel the energy than to wait until they were older to start the process. It was also better for preventing accidental outbursts. Learning how to balance the energy flowing between herself and the world was vital, even if it would be many more years before it was revealed which path her medicine would take her down.

So to prevent randomly making things throw themselves, she learned how to make reeds and vines twist upon themselves make baskets and rugs. She learned how to make seeds awaken more quickly and to grow with stronger stems than they would have normally. She learned how to mix ingredients together so that they could cure diseases and ease suffering. She learned how to start embers and keep flames alive. She learned how to meet and greet the storm brewing within her heart. Eventually, she would have likely learned how to become one with that storm, just like her grandmother could. She would have served the People as both defender and nurturer, fulfilling the legacy of her clan.

Then came the day that the School People came. They were dressed in strange clothing similar to the clothing of the white people who traded with the tribe. They waved carved sticks which shot out beams of light out of the ends. Every time the light touched a person or animal, they would fall right where they were, no longer responding to the chaos happening. Kendra had been able to only spare the smallest moment to hope they were only sleeping. Desperate to protect her people, she had tried to fight back with her medicine.

In the end, the orange sparks she had been able to produce hadn't been enough to fend the strangers off. She had been made to sleep as well, and when she had awoken, she had been at their stone fort far away in the northern mountains. They called their fort Ilvermorny and claimed that it was a school.

Ilvermorny was just as terrible as she had always heard that the white people's schools were. The first thing they did was cut her hair short enough that it could barely brush her neck. That was bad enough, but they just threw away the braids like they were trash, not even burning them. They took away what she had been wearing when she was stolen, not even allowing her to keep the rosette that her grandmother had made to help her spirit stay attached to her body, and forced her to wear the same formless blue robes as everyone else.

While they kept her at the school, refusing to allow her to even visit her actual home, she was only allowed to speak English. Over the years of her captivity, she kept the beautiful syllables alive in her memory by whispering prayers to the spirits whenever she could gain a few moments alone. It was hard, but she eventually managed to get some cedar and mullein to make offerings with, even if the only cloth she could manage was a burnt orange instead of the traditional crimson, though she did manage to get an entire spool of cranberry thread.

Perhaps the hardest thing to endure was the insistence that she only do magic with the wand they had forced upon her. She wasn't allowed do any magic without it unless it was brewing potions (using their recipes). If she used magic to bolster a plant in Herbology, she was punished. If she altered the recipe of a potion, she was punished. If she didn't use her wand to transfigure her pincushion, she was punished.

As limited as she was, Kendra still fought back against her jailers in every way that she could get away with, just like the warriors that were her ancestors. She would stitch the diamondback pattern into the cranberry trim of the robes they forced her to wear. The cranberry stitches were near impossible to see on the cranberry fabric, but she was still carrying the symbol of her tribe with her, marked as Choctaw as much as her light tan skin marked her as different from the colonizers at the school. It was a warning of the storm she carried within her, with all of the secrecy of the rattlesnake who carried the same symbol.

Kendra would break into the kitchens to steal crates of food to share with the other students who had been stolen from their tribes like she had. Seeing them holding oranges in their hands soothed the part of her that longed for the embrace of her mother. On those nights, none of them went to bed with growling bellies and broken hearts. They were all trapped, but they would continue riding out the storm surrounding them. They might be from different tribes, but they were all of the People.

Whenever any of the stolen students were punished for speaking the tongues of their people, she would break into the office of the punishing teacher and burn the symbol of her clan wherever it would be seen immediately. Watching her orange flames carving three rivers meeting warmed the part of her that was always reaching for the fires of her family's lodge. She showed them that they could take the girl away from the river's side, but they could not stop the river from flowing through the girl.

She was Kendra, daughter of Sakti, born of the Bokushi Clan. She was magic and inevitable. She was the storm, impossible to tame. She was the snake, graceful and deadly. Her heart beat for her people, and it would take more than seven years in a stone cage to change that.

Then Percival Dumbledore came to Ilvermorny like a winter storm. He was to teach non-magical combat to the students in their last year at the school. His classes quickly grew to include most of the school, especially the stolen students, because it was obvious that he knew what he was doing and he didn't have the same hesitations as the white professors about teaching the female students.

He was very handsome. His hair and beard were orange like the fire Kendra could create. His eyes were the same crisp blue as the summer sky. He was very clever and brave almost to the point of reckless. He was kind and protective, often physically intervening when the other professors would have punished the stolen students for the scraps of their culture they had managed to keep alive. He was everything her grandmother had always said were signs of a true warrior.

At the end of the school year, Kendra was finally free to leave the school. Likewise, Percival's teaching contract was over. The headmaster was visibly relieved to see the backs of both of them. Leaving was all that Kendra had dreamed about since she had been stolen away from her home. Now it was breaking her heart, because it meant never seeing Percival again.

Then Percival offered to escort her back to her people. He stayed by her side as she reunited with her grandmother. He held her as she grieved for her mother who had gotten sick and died while Kendra had been kept away.

And he had asked in halting and thickly accented Choctaw for her grandmother's permission to marry her. He even endured the way her grandmother had laughed in disbelief that he would even think to ask. No one truly controlled Choctaw women any more than they controlled the storms that rolled over land. That was a battle destined to be lost.

All anyone could do was chase the storm and hope it allowed itself to be caught.

Kendra made to sure to wear orange ribbons in her hair when she let Percival catch her.

Just like she wore a maternity dress of pumpkin orange when they left to go to the island of Percival's birth so that their first child could be born in England.

Kendra may have never intended to leave her homeland, but she would still ride the wild wind wherever it may take her.