September 1991
The next morning started a bit slow and sleepy. It hadn't been that late by the time everyone got to bed — it'd just seemed later than it actually was, because it'd been a busy day — so Violet wasn't so surprised when she woke up a little before seven in the morning. Professor Sprout said that Dora would come by to bring them up to breakfast at eight, so she had a little bit of time to waste. The other girls were still asleep...except Leanne, maybe? There was a little bit of a glow around the top and bottom of her curtains, like her lamp was on, maybe she was reading in there. Anyway, Violet didn't want to bother the other girls, so she quietly opened up her trunk, and fished out one of her embroidering projects, and baited the kittens out into the study room with their treats.
She barely remembered to stop and pull on a dress first — the study room was shared with the boys, so.
When she turned the lights on, they were a little bright, but her eyes adjusted pretty quickly. She was only in here for a minute when there was a little pop! and two little bowls of some kind of mashed-up meat stuff appeared on a desk nearby. Oh, that was the kittens' food! She wasn't sure if the elf who sent it up was still listening — sometimes Nola could hear her when she said things, but sometimes he couldn't — but she went ahead and said thank you anyway, just to be polite. While the little cuties munched away, Violet picked a spot on the floor, leaning against the front of a sofa, looked over her work for a moment, reminding herself of what she was doing, and started stitching.
The kittens had gotten over a little bit of their nervousness from the move. Once they were done eating, they came over to Violet, crawling over her, oh hi, scritches. Sparks stayed nearby at first, but pretty soon she started exploring, wandering around the room and sniffing at things. Diana didn't, though, she just settled in Violet's lap instead, kind of drooping over her thigh. Most of the time, Diana didn't actually like Violet as much as Sparks did, but she guessed that Violet was the only familiar thing around at the moment (besides Sparks), so on her was the safe place. She'd pause every few stitches to scratch at Diana's ears, little paws kneading at her stomach, purring quiet enough she could feel it better than she could hear it.
And then Diana batted at her thread — ah stop, nooo. Violet distracted Diana with scritches, to get the thread away from her, the silly little kitten flipping onto her back and gnawing at her knuckles...and then her back paws started kicking at her arm, ow, that hurt, sweetie...
Diana wasn't really letting Violet work on her thing, so Violet quick dipped back into the bedroom to get out some kitten toys. They were pretty good at entertaining themselves with the things, bats of their paws sending the balls flying in random directions and chasing after them. Sometimes one of the kittens (mostly Sparks) would trot up with one of the balls held in her mouth, like she was playing fetch! Violet didn't know cats played fetch, that was cute. Sometimes they didn't have a ball though, coming up just for scritches before going and playing some more. She was getting some work done, but not really that quickly, the kittens were distracting — she didn't really mind, though, they were such cuties!
She was at it for a little while when Áirneas and, um...Justin! That one was Justin, the posh muggleborn boy. They were both dressed already, Áirneas in one of the normal trousers and tunic sets he always wore to school, and Justin in nice slacks and a dress shirt — which was maybe a little silly, they were only eleven! But she guessed she'd worn way more fancy things than that to just go have tea, so, whatever.
"Hello, boys," she said, waving over at them. Maybe better to say good morning, but that had a stupid G in it! It was easier in Gaelic — she also stuck on Ms sometimes, but they were better than Gs — but Justin was very English, and speaking in a language someone in the conversation couldn't understand was rude.
"Ah, good morning, Violet. What are you working on there?"
"A shirt — I thought it could use some stuff are, around the c-collar. See?" She held it up over her head, spreading it out with her hands so you could actually see the curly pattern she was stitching around the collar.
While Áirneas was walking closer, to get a better look, Justin let out a little sound of surprise. "Hey, what... Is that your cat?"
"Yep! That one is Sparks, um... D-D-Diana's hiding, I think." Violet hadn't noticed, but she probably went and ducked under one of the desks or sofas when the door opened to let the boys in.
"...I thought you could only have one pet."
"Sparks is mine, Diana's my cousin's."
Áirneas gave her a crooked little smirk — he definitely didn't believe that Diana was really Dora's, but as long as Professor Sprout played along it was fine — before reaching over to run his fingers over the collar of her shirt. "Did you really do that? That's pretty good." They'd never been in the same class at an Ollscoil, just the Hogwarts kids club, so Áirneas would never have seen her poking around before.
"Mhmm! I did this too," she said, plucking up the skirt of her dress a little. This one she'd put in flowery designs along the hem, twining vines curling up the side of the skirt. There'd already been edging along the hems of the sleeves and the collar, she'd just thought the skirt part was a little plain. "I g- I g- I g-g- pff. I practise, lots, listening to the r-rradio. Bleh."
Switching to Gaelic, he said, "So what, you spend your afternoons sitting around listening to radio programmes and sewing? You're definitely a girl."
...Violet was pretty sure he was saying that in a teasing way, not, you know, mean. "This is embroidering, not sewing."
"Girl."
She wasn't sure what to say now — she still didn't really get the difference between boy things and girl things — so she just stuck her tongue out at him instead.
"Is it okay if I pet Sparks?" Justin asked.
"Sure! She mmmight scratch you, but, but, there are balls around, she'll play..."
After a little while playing with the kittens, and talking with Áirneas and Justin, and occasionally getting a few stitches of her embroidering done, it was getting a bit later in the morning. Dora and Bennie would be coming before too much longer, Violet should use the toilet and dress properly and stuff. And make sure Sophie was awake! She left the boys — and Leanne, who showed up at some point — playing with the kittens, and went back into the girls' room.
The curtains around Sophie's bed were down, um...Violet was pretty sure they hadn't been before? She might be changing. Violet went by the toilets, quick checked how she looked in the mirror — the rainbow flecks she put in her hair were smearing a little, which looked neat! but it was getting a little frizzy, and all lopsided from sleeping on it, so she fixed that. They didn't need to start wearing their school robes until the first day of classes — besides, the elves hadn't finished adding the Hufflepuff bits yet — so Violet pulled on a cardigan quick, in case it got cold, plopped down onto her bed to put on socks. Oh! They'd be going up and down a lot of stairs, so pants were probably a good idea, she slipped on a pair of those and then put on her shoes, there we go. A couple of her beaded bracelets, and her anti- mind magic ring, her anti-noise amulet stuck in her cardigan pocket, and she was ready.
Sophie's curtains had been pulled back again, and she wasn't in here anymore, so she must have gotten up by herself, good. Violet went back into the study room to find most of the class was here already — they were just missing, um...Wayne? she thought that was the last boy's name. Wayne and Lily weren't here yet, but everyone else was, so.
Like half of the Hufflepuffs were playing with the kittens, tossing the balls around, Sparks even letting Sophie and Lily give her scritches. Yes, they were adorable!
Only a couple minutes after Violet got back the door out was being thrown open, and Dora came swishing into the room — and it was Dora, Violet could tell right away, even though she'd shrunk herself down to their size. The spiky bubblegum-pink hair and the big sparkly grin and the prefect badge on her robes kind of gave it away. "Good morning, littles! Ooh, kittens..."
The other kids were a little confused by Dora suddenly being eleven, but most of them got over it pretty quickly. Playing with the kittens was more interesting than making a big deal about metamorphs being weird, so.
A few minutes after that, the door opened again — it was Bennie, and he didn't look very good. Tired, Violet guessed, his hair all tousled and his eyes red and squinty. He grimaced a little walking into the room, looked around. "Hey, you lot." He cringed slightly when some of them said hello back, like their voices hurt. "Ugh... Has Tonks showed up yet?"
Dora was teasing Diana with a length of rope she'd conjured, waved her free hand over her head. "Right here."
Bennie blinked at her for a couple seconds, then rubbed at his forehead with one hand. "I'm too hungover for this shite... Let's just get this started already."
Before leaving, Violet quick made sure the treat tin was tucked away somewhere the kittens wouldn't get to it. She did a circle of the bedroom to make sure there weren't any, like, little bits of jewellery or anything sitting out...and then closed Sophie's wardrobe, so they wouldn't go scratching up her clothes. Right, that looked good enough. Dora and Bennie started leading them up through the Hufflepuff dorms explaining about how the daily routine here normally worked. It seemed like Bennie had drank too much at the party last night, and still wasn't feeling well, so Dora did most of the talking, Bennie only adding a thing here and there, or grumbling about Dora being too damn cheerful this early in the morning.
The schedule on the weekdays was normally more rigid, because they had classes and everything — including Saturday, though most people had a lighter schedule that day — things more loose and lazy on Sundays. On the weekdays (and Saturday), there would be breakfast on the table from about six thirty to eight thirty — the food didn't disappear at eight thirty, but the elves did stop replacing things, since everyone had to be in class at nine anyway. Lunch started at eleven, but morning class didn't get out until eleven thirty or twelve (depending on whether you had a double-length class or not), so most people didn't get down to lunch until around noon. Lunch was normally when the Great Hall was the most full, because pretty much everyone was going to be eating between noon and half after, there was very little differences in people's schedules there. Like breakfast, dinner was also spread over a wider window, available from like five to eight in the evening, because some classes got out later and then some people had evening classes during the latter half of dinner, you got bits and pieces of the students coming and going over those hours.
It worked a little bit different on Sundays. The elves got breakfast up a little later, normally ready a bit after seven, and breakfast things would keep being served for longer, as late as quarter to ten. Then there was a time where there would be snacks and stuff, and tea or coffee, for people who just wanted to hang out in the Great Hall talking or reading the paper or whatever else — this slow lazy morning tea thing ran right into lunch, starting around noon and running until two in the afternoon. Sunday dinner tended to be nicer than the other meals, and also started at precisely six. You weren't going to be in trouble if you didn't show up or anything, but almost everyone did, and sometimes there were announcements and things, and they had ice cream and stuff on Sundays! so there was that.
Things tended to be especially lazy the mornings after people had a big party, because people would be in bed late or dealing with a hangover or whatever — Dora said that part loudly, Bennie let out a little groan. The Hufflepuff dorms were pretty empty and quiet at the moment, there were a few people dotted here and there but not really very many. That was normal for the morning after a party, apparently, there'd be more people hanging out here later.
Getting back up to the Entrance Hall from the dorms was super easy! Just take a right, and keep going into the room that the stairs emptied out into — the one with the big, heavy doors crackling with magic, Violet asked what that was and Dora said the wardstones were down there somewhere — and then turn whichever way to loop around the Grand Staircase and you're there! They were the closest house to the Great Hall, it was very difficult to get lost. The Great Hall was also much emptier than it was last night — there were people scattered around the tables, but not that many. Few enough that it wasn't so loud for Violet to think she needed her noise amulet.
Violet had better luck with breakfast than with dinner last night. There was a lot of, like, porridge and stuff, which she didn't really like — it was gloopy, and bleh (and also kind of reminded her of Privet Drive). But there were also multiple kinds of bread, and lots of jams and stuff! one of them was strawberry! And there was hot stuff too, bacon and sausages and eggs and beans and mushrooms, and also, like, white and black pudding, and also a couple unexpected things, like cockles and... Violet thought that was leftover from last night, um, chicken? maybe duck? shredded apart and fried with some vegetables and stuff, didn't know what that was, exactly. With all the basic English breakfast stuff around, she was a little surprised when she didn't see tomatoes, and also the mushrooms were cooked down into a thick gravy instead of fried, and none of the bread seemed to be fried? There were triangles of soda bread that had been pressed on a griddle, which was sort of close to the same idea, but. Mages did eat different things, though, so she guessed that wasn't a big surprise.
Since there were so many options, she played around putting different kinds of jam on different kinds of bread, kind of having fun with it. She couldn't even tell what some of them were, so it was like an experiment. The tea was also pretty good! Not great, sure, but she'd had a lot worse. And the bacon was good, and the mushrooms and beans looked good, but she didn't want to get the gravy all over any of her bread! So yeah, she liked breakfast better than dinner last night, which was maybe a little odd, but Violet was odd sometimes, so.
Breakfast was filled with more basic getting to know new people talk, this time with a lot about what they did for school before, and also Dora and Bennie answering more questions about Hogwarts stuff. Áirneas and Hannah and Violet all went to an Ollscoil before, and Leanne and Wayne went to the school in Oxford Violet only knew a little bit about, but the muggleborns thought it was really weird that Lily and Zach just didn't go to school before at all. Or, Lily did go to school, sort of — there was a little schoolhouse down in Hogsmeade that the kids there could go to learn to read and stuff, but they didn't really do much, she'd done a lot of homeschooling too. Justin pointed out that they were legally supposed to go to school, so Dora had to explain that the laws were completely different on the magical side. They actually didn't have free primary school for everyone, and every school charged tuition (except the little local things like the one in Hogsmeade) — if your parents couldn't afford to send you to school, you didn't go.
Sally-Anne pointed out that Hogwarts was free, though! so that couldn't be right. Except, no, Hogwarts was only free for muggleborns — as part of their charter with the Ministry, Hogwarts had to take all the muggleborns in the country no matter what, and the Ministry made up for it with some extra grants and stuff. But everybody else did have to pay to go to Hogwarts. It wasn't cheap either, lots of people couldn't afford it. Leanne and Hannah and Wayne were all from wealthy (non-noble) families, and Lily's tuition was being paid by a rich great-aunt or something. A lot of people couldn't even afford a wand, so they definitely couldn't go to academy, getting to go to Hogwarts was actually special.
(Sophie and Sally-Anne both looked really uncomfortable, for some reason, but they didn't say whatever the problem was.)
Anyway, eventually breakfast was done, and Dora and Bennie were going to show them how to get around. The professors weren't actually finished working out the schedule — they'd be getting their timetables at breakfast tomorrow — but they did know what the first-years' were going to look like, so they could be shown exactly where to go in what order. The Castle was very big, and it could be confusing, with doors that only opened when they felt like it or were actually just walls pretending, and stairs that went different places on different days of the week, or if the moon was new or Mercury was in retrograde or something, or hallways that would bring you to a completely different place if you backtracked. It was very very easy to get lost.
Dora and Bennie would show them the exact path to get to places, and it was safest to stay on that path. As they got more familiar with the Castle, they could explore, and find shortcuts and new places and stuff, but until they got used to finding their way around it was best to stay on the paths. It wasn't dangerous to go other directions, though! The Castle was perfectly safe, just, they didn't want to get lost and accidentally be late to class. If they did get lost, they could just ask a portrait which way they were supposed to go, or call for an elf or something, but you didn't want to miss class right when you were starting out, so, stick to the paths for now, that made sense.
Their first class was going to be Potions, and that was super easy to get to. Dora skipped ahead of the group, leading the way, Bennie lagging behind still not looking so good (if a little better than he had before breakfast). They went back the way they came, down the stairs — in the room with the crackling doors that apparently led down to the wards, they took a left instead, the opposite direction as the dorms. After a little bit of walking, they took the first left, and then they were in the Potions Department. Yeah, that was easy, actually. The prefects pointed out the classroom, and the storeroom, and a big potions lab students were allowed to brew things in — if you wanted to try brewing something it was a good idea to do it here, because you could use the school's supplies for free (within reason) and there would be a grown-up around to keep an eye on you in case something went wrong — and also Professor Snape's personal lab, where he could often be found if he wasn't in class or in his office.
Dora and Bennie talked a little bit about potions, what they were in general for the muggleborns and also the class specifically, and about Professor Snape. They would be tested on laboratory procedures on the first day, so they would be brewing right away — make sure you had your cutting and stirring and measuring stuff, but you could borrow everything else. Starting off brewing things right away was a little scary, but it wasn't a super complicated one, just read the instructions very carefully and clean off your knives and cutting board between uses and you'll be fine! On partner brewing days (which tomorrow wouldn't be), it might be smart to pair up people who'd done brewing before with people who hadn't, so they could help each other, you'll have time to figure that out before the first partner brewing day.
The prefects admitted that Professor Snape was a bit creepy, and could be cold and mean sometimes, but he was one of the better staff people to go to if you had a problem. Only if it was a serious problem, mind — he'll get annoyed with you if it's a little silly thing but, like, if you're being bullied by Slytherins, or if you have a medical problem and you're too embarrassed to talk about it, he's the best person to go to for those kinds of things. Professor Snape was a healer too, so, if there was an accident and someone was hurt, you should go to the Hospital Wing or wherever Professor Snape happened to be at the moment, whichever was closer.
Mum had told Violet to go to Professor Snape if she really needed help, so, yeah. Actually, she remembered Mum said it was Professor Snape who set her up with everything she needed to get Violet in to see Shannon, she should probably find a way to thank him for that...
Then next they had Herbology — the prefects led them back the way they'd come, and then on past the entrance to the dorms and Professor Sprout's office. There was a bit of walking, a couple turns, and then a narrow spiralling staircase, and the door right next to the top of the stairs led them straight outside, in the middle of the greenhouses. This was the same route Professor Sprout used to get back and forth between the greenhouses and her office, but you could also just go out the front doors and take a left around the Castle. Coming out in back like this was faster if you were around Slytherin or Hufflepuff, but if you had to go through the Entrance Hall anyway you might as well use the front door. Their first class Professor Sprout would just be showing them around, where all the supplies were and stuff, and also some of the safety rules and things — they probably wouldn't be doing anything, but it was a good idea to bring their gloves along anyway, just in case.
Herbology was basically just gardening (also with some witchcraft stuff in later years), which used to be a super important thing for mages to know, but had gotten less important as more people lived in towns and cities, and you could just buy anything you'd need at apothecaries. Bennie admitted that Herbology didn't really need to be on the curriculum anymore, and had just stuck around out of tradition — Dora gasped, pointed an accusing finger at him and yelled traitor! — but Professor Sprout tried to keep class interesting, at least, so. Shouldn't worry about their marks in this one too much, Bennie guessed was what he was saying, not really a class you had to take seriously.
Once the Herbology talk was done, the prefects led them back around the outside of the Castle and to the front doors — they had lunch straight after Herbology, so it was actually faster to go this way. After lunch they would have Defence, which was way up on the third floor...er, sort of. The first floor was above the ceiling of the Entrance and Great Halls, which was really high, there was actually a floor in the middle, at the level of the first landing on the Grand Staircase, where it kind of split in two and looped back around. This was called the gallery level, because there used to be access to upper-level seating for, like, the duelling hall and a theatre space that didn't exist anymore, things like that, those had been removed at some point but the name stuck. Because of the way the halls and the different wings were built, the gallery level wasn't all connected to itself, you had to take stairs to get to different sections up from the ground floor or down from the first floor. So, the level they called the first floor was actually the second floor, technically, because sometimes magical buildings were confusing.
So, Defence was way up on the third (fourth) floor, but they wouldn't be taking the Grand Staircase all the way up. The Grand Staircase moved around, a lot — the different flights would sometimes even move over to connect somewhere new while you were on them — so it was best to avoid them as much as possible, until you got better at finding your way around. They followed the Grand Staircase only up to the first (second) floor, and then turned off, took a couple turns down hallways to a staircase — there were windows here overlooking a courtyard between the different wings of the Castle, it was kind of pretty! They went up a couple levels before getting off the stairs again, and the Defence classroom was only a few doors down, that wasn't so hard.
Dora and Bennie didn't really have anything to say about Defence — they didn't know how it would go with Professor Quirrell, since he'd never taught Defence before, and neither of them had taken Muggle Studies. At least if he was bad at it, they wouldn't have to deal with him for very long. There were rumours going around that the Defence position was cursed, they'd had a new professor every year for decades now. Dora personally didn't believe it was actually cursed, but by this point people believed it was cursed, so it was hard to get good people to take the job, which just made it more likely that there was something wrong with whoever they did get, so they didn't stay very long. Violet guessed that made sense, but literally every single year for decades in a row seemed like a huge coincidence...
After that short talk, they went back down the stairs to the second (third) floor, walked a bit closer to the Grand Staircase in the middle, where they found the Transfiguration classroom. Professor McGonagall was known for being really strict and humourless, which was fair enough, because transfiguration was dangerous magic to play around with — pay attention in class and you'll be fine, just when Professor McGonagall tells you not to do something bloody well listen. They would be expected to at least try to do magic in their very first class, just checking who already had basic ability with transfiguration so McGonagall knew where to start, so don't forget to bring your wand to class, and some stuff for taking notes too.
Dora warned Violet that she wasn't going to like Transfiguration class. Metamorphs had a talent for transfiguration magic of all kinds, and Professor McGonagall was very bad at dealing with Dora not doing magic like everyone else. Maybe having Dora first would have helped get the stick out of her arse about it, but Dora wouldn't count on it. Violet expected she would actually have extra problems, because of the fairy magic, Professor McGonagall was going to hate her magic even more than Dora's.
And that was it for Monday, they didn't have an evening class that day. Tuesday and Thursday were going to be their easy days — they only had two classes those days, and they didn't have any classes at all until after lunch, so they could sleep in if they wanted. Bennie said that first and second and then sixth and seventh year were the ones with the lightest schedules, for most people, because electives didn't come in until third year, which filled up your timetable more, and then for NEWTs people focussed more on the classes they wanted to take, so almost everyone dropped a few. (Though NEWT students had to do a lot more reading and big projects and stuff, so most ended up doing more work anyway.) On Tuesday and Thursday, they just had Charms in the afternoon and Cambrian in the evening, and they also had most of Friday afternoon off, so, enjoy your free hours, because you were only getting them this year and the next.
The Charms classroom was also on the third (fourth) floor, but across the Grand Staircase from Defence. The prefects led them back over to the Defence classroom, and then the staircase they took to get up here, and from there across this wing of the Castle to the Charms classroom — it was easier to keep track of how to get to these classes from this same staircase, so you didn't get lost. Charms was fun! It was almost everyone's favourite class, because Professor Flitwick was very cheerful and nice and helpful, and tried to make class interesting, with a lot of jokes and funny stories from his duelling career, and a lot of practical lessons, coming up with games to 'practise' the spells they were learning. At their very first Charms class Professor Flitwick would be teaching them how to actually use their wands, so make sure you had them on you for that.
Sophie asked if it wasn't backwards, being asked to do their first magic in Transfiguration class before being taught how in their first Charms class — and yeah, Bennie said, it was backwards. The other half of their year did have those classes the other way around, so don't feel bad if it sounds like they had a lot more people who got their assignment right in Transfiguration. It's always harder for any class who got Transfiguration first.
So, on Tuesday and Thursday, they had Charms in the afternoon and then Cambrian in the evening, after dinner — Dora and Bennie led them all the way back downstairs, to the Great Hall, and then onto the Grand Staircase. The Cambrian classroom was on the gallery level, but it wasn't on a hall you could get to from the first landing here. You had to go up to the first (second) floor, and then through here into this big open hall — nothing really here, just a double-wide hallway with a long planter down the middle full of rosebushes, for some reason (they were indoors!) — and then through this door here, just next to the portrait of an old-fashioned wizard fiddling with a telescope in a library (mmm, 16th Century, Violet thought). Follow this hallway for a while, and eventually they came to a solarium — the wall was all glass, and there were some chairs around for people to hang out, the view looking out over the cliffs and the lake below and the tree-covered hills out there, it was pretty! Anyway, take a right, and then the classroom was right over here.
Dora told the first-years that Cambrian was just Welsh. Looking a little annoyed, Bennie said it wasn't just Welsh, that they were different but related languages thanks to the different history they went through, and different borrowings and stuff and also Cambrian grammar was more conservative, and stuff — listening to him go on, Dora smirked, and then said it was fancy Welsh. (Some of the first-years giggled, Bennie rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh.) But seriously, they were required to take Cambrian, because it used to be the language of the magical government, and a lot of older history and literature and stuff were written in Cambrian. Like, some laws were actually still written in Cambrian, so, important to know. You only had to take it through second year, but Dora recommended they stay in it, because a lot of pureblood mages still spoke Cambrian as a first language, it was super common.
Hannah and Zach actually wouldn't be in Cambrian with them, because they already spoke it decently well — Leanne and Wayne knew some too, but not enough to get out of taking the class. Violet could say, like, a few sentences? She knew some words here and there, but she couldn't really speak it at all. Her Gaelic was great though, so there. There weren't any other language classes, no, there used to be some but as the number of students shrunk they'd cancelled a lot of classes. There was a language club, where you could learn other things, but they weren't supposed to join clubs at all until second year.
And that was Tuesday! On Wednesday, their morning classes were the same as on Monday, Potions and then Herbology. In the afternoon, their first class was History, which was up on the fourth floor — the prefects led them back to the Grand Staircase, and then to the stairs with the view of the courtyard they took to Defence and Transfiguration earlier, and then all the way up to the fourth (fifth) floor, a short walk from there took them to the right door. History was mostly pointless, because the professor was a ghost and wouldn't remember people's names, but you could just do homework during lectures instead. Bennie recommended having one person in their class actually pay attention and take notes so they can share with everyone else, and take turns so no one had to do it all the time, and everyone else could just get other work done, it'd be fine.
Zach asked why they should bother going to class at all, but apparently Professor Binns did say things that weren't in the textbook during their lectures. It was still worth learning whatever he was talking about it, he just wasn't very interesting to listen to, and wouldn't notice if they weren't paying attention. History sounded like it'd be an awful class to Violet, but...
(Ghosts couldn't even learn things — they weren't real people, kind of just magic echoes of them. How long had Professor Binns been dead, exactly?)
And then after History they had Transfiguration again, not hard to get to from here. Wednesday evening, all of the first-years together had Astronomy — that was held late at night, way up in the Astronomy Tower. It was kind of a long walk, so the prefects would be showing them that later.
Anyway, that was all their classes! Thursday was the same as Tuesday, and then on Friday they had double Defence in the morning, and then a single hour of Transfiguration in the afternoon, and that was it; and on Saturday, they had double Potions in the morning, and then double History in the afternoon, and then Cambrian in the evening, no new classes they hadn't gone to yet. There were other places they might want to be able to find their way to, but the prefects were going to show them in the afternoon. For now, they were going to play a little game: the prefects told them which class they had to go to, and the first-years had to find their way there. The prefects wouldn't give them directions, you had to get there by yourself!
It was super easy for them, actually — Violet and Sally-Anne and Wayne had remembered all of the paths the prefects had showed them, and Hannah and Sophie and Lily and Zach and Justin remembered most of them. After wandering around the Castle for a while, going from classroom to classroom, Dora said they'd be fine. Stick together the first couple weeks, to help out the people who didn't remember the directions as well, and you can always ask for help if you get lost! The portraits can point you places, and an elf should pop up and show you the way if you ask, don't be embarrassed if you need it.
By that point, they'd been walking around the Castle for hours, some of the first-years looking a little tired — there were a lot of stairs — and they'd been at it for long enough by now that it was actually lunchtime already. Bennie told them to go ahead and figure out the way to the Great Hall from here, but they were only at the Potions classroom, so that wasn't hard at all. There were more people at lunch than there had been at breakfast, though it still wasn't as full as dinner last night. Violet still fished out her noise amulet, though — the prefects had them sit down somewhere more toward the middle of the table, she didn't want to feel surrounded and start freaking out.
Lunch wasn't anything super impressive, mostly just sandwiches, some vegetables. Which was fine enough...though Violet had to disassemble the sandwiches to make sure there was nothing gross on them. Sitting nearby, Leanne and Wayne obviously thought that was weird behaviour, but nobody said anything. Or, nothing about Violet being weird, anyway — Sophie asked if she was going to eat those pickles, and nooo, she could have the bread and the slice of cheese that had been touching them too, the juices would be on them...
Oh no, there were raw onions on this sandwich, whhyyyyy...
Violet was still dissecting sandwiches when the mail arrived. The prefects explained that things would normally be delivered during breakfast, and sometimes during dinner — if you didn't show up and missed the delivery, it'd be kept in the mail room for you, they'd be shown that later. There were special spells on Hogwarts that made owls only deliver things at the Great Hall and at certain times, so they didn't disrupt classes and stuff. Sunday was the exception, the mail normally came during lunch on Sundays. This was actually more mail than you saw on a normal day, dozens and dozens of owls flying around in spirals overhead, but it was the first day, a lot of those packages were probably families sending along things people had forgotten at home, and there were a magazines and journals that came out on Sundays, so.
One magazine that came out on Sunday, Violet knew, was Witch Weekly. The article about her should be in this one.
Violet didn't actually expect to get any mail — Mum did special magic to get all the mail sent to her (no matter if it was sent to Violet Black, Harry Potter, or Violet Potter) redirected to Ancient House to be sorted, for safety reasons. Mail only came straight to her if the sender was on the list of exceptions Mum set up. So she was a little startled when an owl fluttered down in front of her, a thick tube attached to one leg. Violet scrambled to free the poor bird of the thing, and then fed it a bit of chicken she'd taken off a sandwich (it was too dry!), and then the owl was flying away again.
She'd kind of guessed this was going to be today's issue of Witch Weekly, so she wasn't surprised when she unrolled the magazine and spotted the title. She was a little surprised to find a note from Rita in it — really short, just thanking her for helping her with the article, and kind of jokingly suggesting she could send any rumours she might hear off to Rita. Mum put Rita on the list of exceptions, when Violet wanted to send that drawing to her, but she knew that Rita technically wasn't supposed to talk to Violet without asking Mum first. Either she had permission, or she assumed Violet wouldn't tell. Though, Rita kind of cheating and sending her her copy of Witch Weekly directly meant she got it sooner — it would have to get sorted at Ancient House and then sent up otherwise, might not have gotten it until tomorrow — so Violet wasn't going to tell, but still.
Sophie leaned closer, pressing against Violet's shoulder a little — she thought Sophie maybe asked what she had, but she hadn't been paying attention, her noise amulet caught it. She was paying attention in time to catch Dora answering the question. "That's Witch Weekly, it's a girly magazine. The only one in magical Britain, really, there are fewer mages than muggles, so there's not enough people to be much room for this sort of thing. Violet gets it, because she likes the pictures of clothes and hairstyles, and she thinks the knitting patterns are interesting."
"Sometimes the stories are fun!"
Dora rolled her eyes, exaggerating the motion with a swirl of her head to make it super obvious. "Mhmm, sure."
"Oh whatever, I know you g-g-get mmuggle magazines. And, I should be in this one." Propping it up against the edge of the table, she flipped the cover over to the list of contents, started looking over it. There were regular features and columns and stuff, which were at the front or the back, depending on which kind, the special stuff should be in the middle somewhere...
She'd found the right page and was flipping up to it when Sophie tapped on her shoulder, making her jump a little. When she looked up, Sophie said, "Sally-Anne asked you a question."
"What? Oh! Sorry, I d-d-didn't hear you," she said, tugging at the amulet hanging around her neck. She had explained what it did to the other Hufflepuffs before putting it on — they didn't seem to understand what the problem she was talking about was, and Zach gave her a very funny look, but none of them made a big deal about it.
"It's okay," Sally-Anne said, "I was going to ask why you're in a magazine, but then I remembered you're famous, and people didn't know you're a girl."
"Yep! It is about that, me and Mum and Muime did an interview, and there were p-pictures and... Here it is, this is the thing." Most of the first-years wanted to see the thing, which was a little hard to figure out, since there were ten of them (twelve with Dora and Bennie), but only one maga– no, they had two, Leanne got a copy too. They moved some of the things on the table around so they could lay the magazines out between them, Sophie and Sally-Anne and Hannah and Justin reading from hers, and Dora and Áirneas and Lily and Wayne reading from Leanne's. Bennie actually read along with an older girl over there, it looked like Zach was the only one who didn't care to look at all.
Witch Weekly was made out of highly processed, glossy paper — it looked a lot like nice magazines on the muggle side, but Violet knew this stuff was actually treated with potions — and unlike even the Sunday newspapers was printed in full colour, with a lot of pretty design and stuff, and big animated photos. It was probably the nicest-looking magazine Violet ever saw in magical Britain, but it took kind of a crazy amount of work to put out something like this every week, and it was a little expensive for normal people because of it. The interviews and stories they did tended to have a lot of pictures, but the text of the article wouldn't be super short either, with the pictures they sometimes went going for like a dozen pages — Dora made fun of it earlier, and the magazine didn't have a great reputation, but the writing wasn't bad, actually! Um, some of the regular things weren't so good, and the gossipy stuff was very silly, but the special interviews and stories were normally pretty interesting.
(And the pictures were pretty, Violet didn't care what Dora said.)
The page that their thing started on, the title and the start of the article was on the left side, written over one of the older illustrated poems Violet did — she meant she did the calligraphy and the drawings, obviously she didn't write the poem itself. One of the ones they read in school, she assumed, the blocks of the article introduction was hiding enough of it she couldn't really tell which one it was. Mostly just the colourful geometric mosaic pattern she'd put in around the border of the page came through, some parts of the drawings here and there when the article didn't hide them. The page on the right was mostly taken up with a big picture of Violet and Muime squeezed together in the armchair in the sitting room — flipping through one of her sketchbooks, occasionally holding it up to show something to Rita (peeking in and out of the frame, sitting on the sofa just over there) — Mum leaning against the back of the chair watching over their heads.
She noticed right away that the caption under the picture spelled Muime's name Siomha Sheridan, which was wrong, but oh well. Right away, she pointed out for everyone which was Mum and which was Muime (correcting Muime's name while she was at it), and then payed attention to the actual article part. Rita had titled it Violet Potter / The Girl Who Lived, which Violet knew was a reference to the Daily Prophet article from back in early November of '81 that first explained what happened that Hallowe'en. The first few paragraphs were Rita talking about arriving at the house, and her first impressions and stuff, like it was any other interview and nothing out of the ordinary were happening. She didn't actually go back and explain what was going on until the next page.
Violet had read the article before, a preview of the plain text that Mum was sent for approval, so she kind of skimmed over it while the other kids read it proper, spending more time looking over the pictures and picking at her sandwich parts. It wasn't just about Violet, but kind of their whole family? Like, after the introduction it skipped back to talking about Mum — not in a lot of super specific detail or anything, just going over that she went to Hogwarts and then went into the Aurors, had a long career and was basically the most senior person there when she eventually quit, blah blah. Most of her family went unmentioned, but Rita did bring up her baby sister Dorea, younger enough than Mum that she was still little by the time she finished Hogwarts, how she used to stay at home to help out a bit and stuff. Why she spent time on Dorea became obvious when her marriage with Charlus Potter came up, and yeah, those were Violet's grandparents, so there was that. Mum's stuff got a little more detailed as they got to the war, bits about working with the Order of the Phoenix, some descriptions of fights and big proper battles she was in, and specific Death Eaters she helped arrest or kill. (The second list was longer than the first one, because Mum could be scary when she wanted to be.) This whole thing went over the next two pages, but not solid text, there were a lot of pictures — old ones Mum gave them copies to use, some newspaper clippings. The photos from when Mum was younger were even in black and white, because she was old.
After that, and a very quick review of that Hallowe'en and Albus being entrusted with Potter stuff, and they went right into talking about Mum being called in about an incident with a muggle-raised metamorph, only learning after she showed up who it was. There was kind of a lot of uncomfortable, embarrassing stuff here, which Violet wasn't really happy about? They had talked about what they would tell Rita before meeting her — Mum thought it was a good idea to be open about this stuff, so people would better get why things were the way they were, and hopefully be less weird about it. Violet agreed that was fine, she guessed, but she didn't want to talk with a stranger about that stuff, so Mum had done it for her instead. There was also some quoting from Amelia and Albus, Rita had had a few questions for them about their side of it too. Violet mostly skipped over reading that stuff, paying more attention to the pictures, photos from those first few months after Mum found her — not a lot, though, Mum didn't have a camera, mostly taken by Julie when she was around or a couple by the neighbours — and some of her early drawings and stuff. They actually still looked like kiddie drawings back then, because that was forever ago.
Then pretty quickly it went into talking about Muime, using Mum starting her duelling career to show Violet around the magical world as a way to bring her in. Though there was kind of less to say about Muime, since she wasn't so old as Mum, and was, you know, from a poor family that most of the readers wouldn't care about. Going through it pretty quick, through growing up and going to an Ollscoil and then into an Alchemy Mastery — finishing it early, because Muime was super smart! Rita did mention that Muime had still been kind of young when she and Mum met, which Violet knew some people would feel funny about, but she didn't mention the other sex friends Mum had had at the time and until only a couple years ago, which Violet knew was politic.
There weren't pictures from when Muime was younger — cameras were kind of expensive — the oldest one was from her Confirmation, when she would only have been a few years older than Violet, like thirteen or fourteen. She only kind of looked like Muime in that one — Violet could tell it was her, but she wasn't a grown-up yet, and her hair was long, longer than Violet ever saw it before, with flowers plaited into it, and she was in a white dress with lots of lacework and stuff. She was really pretty! but it was also weird, like, Muime didn't dress like that! The resemblance with her sister Aoife was way more obvious than normal, barely looked like Muime at all. The next oldest one Violet thought was from when she finished academy at an Ollscoil, and then there started being more pictures, at the house she was living in with a few of her friends before moving in with Mum and Violet, one at some duelling match somewhere. There was a funny one with Muime (still young-looking, probably years before Violet first met her) squishing herself up against Mum and awkwardly holding up the camera to try to take the picture, Mum giving her a baffled sort of look, Violet couldn't help giggling a little bit, kicking her feet under the table.
While she waited for the other kids to finish reading, picking at her sandwich parts, her eyes kept going back to that picture, smiling to herself. They were so cute!
And then the article just kept talking about the last few years, following duelling events all over the world and Violet starting school and stuff. There were so many photos! Violet knew Muime had a camera, and took pictures sometimes, but she didn't pay that much attention, and it's not like she was counting? She didn't really think about it, she guessed. While the article went on about stuff — including that Violet could be sensitive to things sometimes, and could find people confusing, and stammered a bit (talking was hard!) — there were pictures of Violet working on a puzzle, or sitting on a bench somewhere sunny eating some kind of pastry thing, or playing iomáint, or walking along some rough mountain path somewhere, holding Mum's hand so she didn't fall, or planting things in the garden, or curled up asleep in Muime's lap on a boat somewhere (that was from the China trip, she thought). Violet could tell which were the older pictures, not just from her being smaller but also seeming more shy and stiff and awkward, and she didn't start putting the rainbow flecks in her hair until later. There was a lot of talking in the article part about her hobbies and stuff, she remembered Rita had spent a pretty big part of the interview asking her those things.
And then toward the end it talked for a bit about her apprenticeship with Master Walter, a picture of Violet showing Rita around the art room, and some pictures of some of her drawings and paintings and stuff. They didn't look quite right, a photo of a painting got things a bit off. It was making her feel a little embarrassed, honestly, it got the colours wrong, and the flash made funny shadows on the textured parts, and kind of glistened off of some of the paints, it made them look noticeably worse...to her anyway, she had no idea if people who didn't do art things would be able to tell? She remembered what they were supposed to look like, so. She asked Sophie if they looked bad in the photos and she was mostly just shocked that Violet had actually painted those — well, yeah, she had been learning seriously for like a couple years now, no, it took days to make a proper painting like that, but she did have homework for Master Walter, she could show people what she was doing if they were curious...
The article was super nice though! Like, Rita didn't hide some of the bad things, like Violet being weird sometimes, but she kept talking about how sweet and sunny Violet seemed, so. It was being super nice to her and Mum and Muime in general, she thought, like, there was nothing Rita did in here to really get angry at. She still thought it was maybe a little...much? Violet realised she was famous for silly reasons, but this kind of seemed like a lot — but then, she guessed people would be curious about her, because she was famous for silly reasons, so they might as well answer everyone's questions all at once? Really the only things they hadn't told Rita about were Shannon and the fairy magic. (Mum broke the law telling Shannon about magic, and they were going to try to keep the fairy magic secret for as long as possible.) Violet didn't think she was interesting enough for all this fuss, but...
When she thought about it, having the article she could point people at was probably a good thing? So if they were bothering her with questions about things and being overwhelming she could say it's in the article and escape. Especially since if she was feeling put on the spot it might make the stammering way worse, so, there was that too. She thought the whole thing was a little silly, still, but it wasn't a bad idea, she didn't think. Especially since Rita wrote it all nice to them.
And the pictures were pretty! Kind of a lot of them, yeah, and the ones of her paintings annoyed her for not looking right, but still. She didn't dislike the article, she thought it was mostly nice, she just thought making this big of a thing about her was silly and embarrassing, so.
Sophie tapped at her arm again, Violet looked up. Oh! There were other people standing around their part of the table, she hadn't noticed. Mostly older students, actually. For a couple seconds, she just looked around at them. "Um...hi?"
"We were just wondering how much of this is true," one girl said. Making it obvious what she meant, she held up a copy of Witch Weekly — it was folded open to the unpleasant part, the Dursleys and Mum finding her, and how not okay she'd been back then.
"...All of it?"
"Really? Even the bits about, er..." She (a different girl from the first one) didn't finish her sentence, just trailing off and looking uncomfortable.
"I d-d-don't know what– you mean, but it, it...doesn't matter? We didn't mmmake any of it up."
"Yeah, I actually knew about a lot of this already," Dora said. "The little Bones was in the know too, she's actually known Violet longer than I have." Leaning back in the bench a bit, she called, "Susan! What do you think?"
"What? Think about what?"
Snatching a copy from a nearby girl so she could hold it up for Susan ("Hey!"), she asked, "This thing, you knew about all this before, right?"
"I didn't know about the cupboard, but yeah, the rest of it, mostly."
"Well, there you go, then." Sitting back normal on the bench, Dora handed the magazine back to the girl she stole it from. "Unless you think all three of us are lying, I guess."
"Tonks!" one girl snapped, her face going rather pink. "You knew about this the whole time?!"
"Sure did. Since third year, anyway."
"You told me you heard the Boy-Who-Lived was in Sicily!"
"It was a secret! Also, she was in Sicily — I think that was the year they visited Syracuse, so I did, in fact, hear that she was in Sicily."
"Aach, you're bloody impossible..."
There were a few questions from the kids who'd come over to their table — mostly older girls, but there were a few boys or students her age from the other houses — about all kinds of things. Most of the questions were just asking about this or that thing in the article, which was kind of silly? They were in the article, and Violet did just say that everything in the article was true. It was really easy to start being a girl, actually! she just stopped trying to be a boy, and it worked out. Petunia used to randomly pull down her pants to check if she was the right one, and once she stopped being nervous someone was going to do that and she'd get in trouble for being wrong, then it wasn't really a big deal — it didn't click to Violet that that was maybe a bad thing to admit until there was a lot of gasping and people giving her really funny looks, oops...
She really did make all those paintings and drawings and stuff, it was fun! Yeah, Mum and Muime were great! and they're adorable sometimes, Violet picked up her copy and flipped back to that one with Muime awkwardly trying to take a picture of the two of them herself, see, they're so cute!
(The way some people said those muggles was making her uncomfortable, but Violet couldn't put her finger on why.)
People trickled away pretty quickly, it maybe helped that her answer to a lot of questions was just that's in the article — also, lunch was ending, they had more tour stuff! While they were standing up to start out again, Violet sidled over to the Ravenclaw table, leaned over to hug Susan from behind. "Hi! How's Rrah-Ravenclaw?"
Since Violet was behind her, Susan couldn't hug her back properly, kind of just folding her arms over Violet's. "It's good so far. Liking Hufflepuff?"
"Yep!" Tilting her face in close to the side of Susan's head, she whispered, "Other people can c-come in Hufflepuff, there's p-places we can hide, to do food."
Susan's hands squeezed on Violet's arms a little. "I'm okay for now, I'll tell you if I need help. Thanks."
Didn't need to thank her — Violet still kind of felt like Susan having to deal with Seer stuff was her fault anyway — but she guessed that was just being polite. "You're welcome." She quick kissed Susan on the cheek (since it was right there anyway) before standing straight again and skipping off after the rest of her group.
When she caught up, Dora wormed her way between a few first-years to latch onto Violet's arm. "So that was a little intense. How are you feeling?"
...Was it intense? Violet didn't really notice, people had seemed...mostly nice about it? Maybe Dora just meant that some of the things in the article weren't very nice, and there had been people crowding around the table...or maybe it was one of those tone things that Violet completely missed. Oh well. "I'm okay." With the hand that wasn't being taken over by Dora, she pulled off her noise amulet, didn't need that anymore.
"If you need a break, I can show you around later."
...Did Dora know she couldn't lie? She didn't actually remember. "I'm fine, honest. What are we d-doing next?"
"Right!" Dora let go of her arm, skipped up to the front of the group with Bennie. "So! There are a few other places you're going to need to be able to get to. The library, the hospital wing, the lost and found, um..."
Bennie added, "The owlery, the professors' offices, and the other three dorms."
"Yeah! For parties!"
"So you can find your friends in other houses if you want to," Bennie said, rolling his eyes.
"Exactly — find them, and then party."
Some of the kids giggled, Bennie rolled his eyes. "Still don't know what Poms was thinking, you're a horrible influence on the poor impressionable children. Anyway, the longest walk is the owlery, so let's head up that way first, and hit everything on our way back..."
While the prefects started leading them up the stairs, Sophie sidled over to Violet's side...and grabbed Violet's hand. Not sure why they were holding hands now, but okay? "Hey! Me and Sally-Anne were talking, and, you did this stuff, right?" she asked, pointing at Violet's skirt.
"Yeah? I added stuff to a b-bunch of my things."
"Can you teach us sometime? My nan taught me some super basic sewing, but nothing like that, and Sally-Anne doesn't know any."
"Oh sure! We can d-d-d— Hannah!" She waved over at Hannah with her free hand until she got her attention. "The English side at school had the emer– ebroi– erp– stitching l-lessons, yeah?"
"Mhmm, I'm not as good at it as you, though."
"Wanna help me t-teach Sophie and Sally-Anne? We can, you know, hang around and l-listen to rrradio things..."
"Oh! Yeah, okay, why not. I didn't bring my things..."
"That's okay, we'll need some for them anyway, I can ask my mum..."
