November 1991

The week after Hallowe'en, all the first-year Hufflepuffs were called to a meeting with Professor Sprout.

It'd been a couple months now, so Violet was starting to learn how Hufflepuff worked. The prefects had some power to decide things, yeah, if people were having a disagreement or something, but big disputes that were becoming a problem were handled by the house, kind of democratically? Like, every once in a while there were big house meetings, in the arena-shaped room right at the entrance they said hello in their first night here, but there were also meetings of everyone in the year. Normally how it went was, if a prefect made a decision that someone didn't like, they could ask their yearmates to review it — if they decided differently than the prefect, they said as much to Professor Sprout, who would overrule the prefect. If that decision didn't go how they liked, they could bring it to the next house meeting — you could stand up and bring an issue at the big house meeting, but often if you didn't talk about it with your year first then the prefects would just tell you to do that instead — and if that didn't work your way, your last chance was to talk to Professor Sprout about it, privately.

Violet kind of got why Hufflepuff worked this way on a practical level. Professor Sprout was the only Herbology teacher, so she had to deal with all the classes of all seven years, and she was also responsible for growing a lot of the ingredients that Professor Snape used to brew potions that Madam Pomfrey then used in the Hospital Wing. (Some of the things she grew were also food for the kitchens, but the potions stuff was more important.) Managing a whole house full of kids on top of all that was a lot of work. Professor Sprout had meetings with all the first-years, to make sure they were settling in okay — Violet had had two so far, sitting in Professor Sprout's office nibbling on biscuits and babbling about hiding her fairy magic and the other children being kind of confusing sometimes — and then meetings with the second-years to help them pick their OWL classes, and meetings with the third-years about health stuff — Dora said it was a sex talk, in case anyone wasn't getting that from their parents — and meetings with the fifth-years to help them plan their NEWT classes, and then meetings with the seventh-years to help them figure out what they were doing after leaving school. Put all that together, and she really didn't have time to help with the little disagreements that came up just from having so many people living together all the time, so, the house was set up for them to deal with it themselves. Most problems were solved at one of the levels before it actually got to Professor Sprout, so people weren't constantly bothering her with little things while she was busy.

Mum said another reason Hufflepuff was set up this way was probably to help people figure out how to deal with their own problems, and learn to get along with people they had disagreements with — Slytherin did something similar in her time, though the rules weren't quite the same. Slytherin now worked a little different though. Like fifteen years after Mum finished school, someone called Slughorn took over as head of Slytherin, and Aunt Andi said that the little internal government they used to have kind of slowly fell apart under him. He didn't keep as close of any eye on it, didn't make sure it kept running the way it was supposed to, so people started breaking the rules and there was no one to stop them, and he would also play favourites, openly breaking the rules himself to benefit students he liked. Dora said her Slytherin friends said it was fixed now, Professor Snape had come in and put the old way of doing things back in place since Aunt Andi finished school, even more tight and organised than it was in Mum's time, but that kind of proved that who was head of house mattered — some people worked hard to make sure that these little governments worked for everyone, and some people didn't at all, letting them fall apart.

Hufflepuff and Slytherin were actually the good houses for this, Violet heard. Ravenclaw had a sort of council, where the prefects could make decisions about things, but there weren't as many ways for non-prefects to do much about it if they didn't like the way they were handling things — they could go to Professor Flitwick, but he was busy with, well, a lot of the same things Professor Sprout was busy with, so he didn't always have time to look too closely into it. Ravenclaw at least kind of worked, most of the time, just not as smoothly as Hufflepuff and Slytherin.

Gryffindor was kind of a joke? apparently? Dora said that it was known by everyone in the Castle that Gryffindor just wasn't managed at all — Professor McGonagall had some of the same meetings with her students, though fewer than they did in Hufflepuff and Slytherin and even Ravenclaw, and while they did have prefects, they were kind of useless? In Hufflepuff and Slytherin, they had their little internal government to help the prefects actually run things, and Professor Flitwick would at least back his prefects up, so they had to be listened to, but Professor McGonagall kind of just...left her prefects to it, and expected them to handle it on their own. Prefect Lauren said that Gryffindor prefects didn't get the support from Professor McGonagall they needed to do their jobs, unlike in the other houses, so, it was super common for Gryffindors to just not listen to their prefects at all.

What were they going to do, take points away from their own housemates? That was just going to make them annoyed with their prefects, which wasn't really helping things, was it?

Mum said that it hadn't always been like that, but it wasn't really Professor McGonagall's fault either. It was kind of Albus's fault, actually? He was the head of Gryffindor before Professor McGonagall, and he'd kind of been halfway between Professor Sprout and that Slughorn person — he was super nice to his students and had a lot of meetings to try to help them with personal and career stuff, but he also picked favourites, going around the house's little government when he really shouldn't. Professor McGonagall took that over, but less biassed than he'd been, so it worked okay for a while...but then she got super busy. She taught a primary subject, so had to do teacher stuff a lot...and she was also Deputy Headmistress, which came with a lot of work...and Albus was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and also Supreme Chancellor of the ICW Senate, so to keep up with those jobs he'd been foisting some of the Headmaster's duties onto Professor McGonagall as well. Put together all of that stuff, and she barely had time to deal with disciplinary stuff and a few career meetings with the Gryffindors, she simply didn't have the attention to run the house day to day.

The letter Violet wrote back to Mum after telling her about that — though, Mum got this stuff from other people, Aunt Andi or Dora or whoever, but she was who told Violet, anyway — had pointed out that maybe that was too many jobs? that maybe Albus should quit one or two of them so he could do the one or two he kept properly. She was a little surprised when Mum just agreed, yeah, that would probably be the smart thing to do — she'd kind of expected Mum to explain the thing she was missing.

But then, when she thought about it, maybe she shouldn't be surprised that Albus wasn't doing his job very well. It'd been his job to make sure she was being taken care of in the first place, before Mum found her.

Anyway, Violet hadn't actually seen much of the little house government working yet. There were the big house meetings, of course, she went to those with everyone else, but those never had anything to do with her, and she didn't even pay that much attention most of the time? In the first couple of months, their year had only asked for help with an issue once — there'd been an argument about...some religion-related thing, Violet didn't know exactly. It involved something that went on in the boys' side of the dorm, which didn't affect the girls, so they'd just agreed to go along with asking the prefects to make a decision for them. She hadn't followed what the problem was, but she did get that Zach was being stupid about Áirneas wanting to have a thing in his part of the room, which was silly, so she hadn't had a problem with playing along to get Áirneas help. She didn't really understand why Zach was being so weird about it...

Normally how it worked was one of the years could meet and talk out a thing and ask for something from the prefects and/or Professor Sprout, but sometimes it could go the other way — if the prefects or Professor Sprout thought there was a problem that needed to be dealt with, they could set up a meeting with one of the years, or a combination of years, depending. Mostly this happened when they were getting complaints from students or professors in other houses, but sometimes they noticed there was fighting going on or something, whatever. That was more rare, but it did happen.

So everyone in first year getting a little card that told them when and where to be popping in next to their plates at dinner was kind of a surprise. They hadn't had a meeting like this before, and they didn't happen very often at all. Most of dinner was spent with everyone wondering what the meeting was about — though Violet only heard some of it, blocked by her anti-noise amulet.

And they were extra surprised when they showed up to the meeting room to find Professor Sprout and all six Hufflepuff prefects in here. This must be a big deal.

"Good evening, everyone!" Professor Sprout chirped as they walked into the room, giving them her usual warm toothy smile. "Go ahead and pick seats and we'll get started."

The room they used for these year meeting things wasn't technically its own separate room — the Hufflepuff commons had a lot of blobs, where the walls only came in partway, making different sections that were kind of their own thing but still open to the blobs on each side. The blob they used for these meetings was just off the big meeting room at the entrance, and was connected to nothing else, more on its own than most places in the common room(s). There was a curtain you were supposed to drag across the opening when it was in use, Wayne did that for them this time. Sophie sat on one of the sofas, Violet plopping down next to her, Hannah then squeezing in after her — it was technically only a two-seat sofa, but they were little kids and still tiny, so there was enough room — the rest of the first-years finding spots here or there.

Once they were all sitting down, Professor Sprout said, "As long as I'm here, did any of you have anything else you wanted to talk to me about?" There was a short pause, some of them shaking their heads or muttering that they didn't. "Good, good. Let's get straight to the issue for tonight, hmm? Tonks?"

"Yeah, Poms." Dora swung up to her feet, waltzed over to stand closer to the first-years. She was about the age she was supposed to be, still in her uniform from classes, but she didn't look quite normal for her either — she was looking a bit boyish today, with less roundness in her cheeks and her jaw more obvious, her hair short and spiky and blue. So, maybe Violet should be thinking of her as a boy at the moment? She knew Dora could be a boy when she wanted to — she took a sex-change potion a few times back in her second year specifically so she could figure it out — and did do it sometimes, but Violet couldn't really tell under the school robes. Her voice sounded pretty neutral, so.

She couldn't really ask right now, though, because she thought that might be a weird thing to do? Like, drawing attention to something about someone in front of other people, in a way that was rude. She wasn't sure about that, but...maybe she should ask later if asking was okay...

Violet was distracted enough with that thought that she kind of missed the start of the conversation — not more than a few seconds, she thought, Dora just reassuring them that they weren't in trouble. "We got tipped off by Airy — that's Eirian Smethwyck, Slytherin prefect — that there's something going on with you lot. Something to do with the Gryffindors?"

Oh, it's about that. Suddenly feeling weirdly embarrassed, Violet felt herself sink further into the sofa. Sophie noticed, shuffled closer and hooked her arm.

"You didn't hear about it from the Gryffindor prefects," Hannah not-asked, sounding a little snappish.

Giving her a raised eyebrow and a crooked smirk, Dora drawled, "Of course I didn't, the Gryffindor prefects are flat useless. I'd be shocked if they noticed their common room was on fire."

"Weasley would notice," said prefect Dafydd, "but only because the noise and the smoke would interrupt his revising time."

Her voice wavering a little with a giggle she wasn't quite holding in, prefect Lauren said, "That's mean, Dafydd."

"But accurate. Four years and he's never once managed to get that stick out of his arse, almost feel sorry for the poor baby Gryffindors."

"Anyway," Dora said, interrupting prefect Charis only a couple syllables into something. "I didn't get much detail, and of course we couldn't ask the Gryffindor prefects, so. What's going on with you lot and the Gryffindors?"

"They're angry at Violet, over what happened with Hermione," Sophie said, her arm tightening a little around Violet's.

Dora blinked at her for a couple seconds, before her eyes flicked over to Violet — they were a deep purplish-blue today, very pretty. "That's the autistic girl with the big hair you were telling me about earlier."

Humming in agreement, Violet nodded, staring down at her knees.

"What happened with Hermione?"

The first-years explained the story of what happened on Hallowe'en, with the Gryffindors being mean to Hermione, her hiding in the bathroom, and then Violet bringing her down here to spend the night, jumping back and forth between different people as they thought to say different things about it. Professor Sprout and the prefects already knew some of this — since there'd been a troll in the Castle (apparently?), they'd taken a headcount of everyone once they got back to their dorms, so they'd had to send someone to tell the Gryffindors that Hermione was safe down in Hufflepuff before they freaked out about it. (Dora, actually, since she had that Auror internship over the summer, so was the most prepared to deal with a troll if she ran into one, though it had been taken care of by then anyway.) They didn't really know why, though — except Professor Sprout, who Violet told enough to convince her to let Hermione stay — so some of that was going to be new.

"Okay, it was good of you lot to help this Hermione girl when she needed it," prefect Kenrick said. "But why are the Gryffindor firsties angry with you about it, exactly?"

Violet was barely looking, but she could still feel most of the other kids turn and look at her. Sinking deeper into the sofa — she was in the middle, kind of oozing into the gap between the cushions — she muttered, "Shoved him."

"Didn't hear that, baby cousin."

"I shoved him," Violet said, trying to make her voice louder — it wasn't very easy, feeling all warm and squirmy and thick, but she managed it. "When they c-came down the stairs, I saw Rrr-rwrr..." She groaned, stupid Rs...

"Ron Weasley," Áirneas said for her, "one of the Gryffindor boys. He was the one who set Hermione off, remember, and..." He hesitated, Violet was pretty sure he was glancing at her right now.

"Shoved him."

"Yes, ah, Violet walked over and shoved him and, mm, yelled at him, a little."

Or she tried to yell at him, anyway — her voice hadn't cooperated very well, and she kept getting caught on words and stammering until her breath ran out. Her voice refusing to work was so frustrating sometimes...

"Weasley deserved it, if you ask me," Justin said. "Hermione might be a bit peculiar, but that's no reason to treat her like that. And the way he spoke to Violet was uncalled for too."

Dora turned to Justin, her eyes narrowing a little. It was hard to tell through the robes, but it looked like she stiffened, her shoulders rising a little. "What did he say?"

"Oh, it was, er... Well, it was very crude." Despite that she was practically melting into the sofa, Violet had to smile a little at that — Justin was so proper, it was cute.

Before anyone could ask, Sally-Anne said, "They were making fun of her stammer, and then Ron called her— Well, he called Hermione a spaz, but he kind of meant both of them, you know? And then he called Violet an invert, whatever that is." Violet was a little surprised when there were a few gasps from Professor Sprout and the prefects, little flickers of bright red and green even crawling up into Dora's hair (which looked really nice and flashy against the blue). "Is that bad? People here say 'spaz' all the time — in primary school, that was something you got in big trouble for calling someone, that's why Justin didn't want to say it — but I don't think I ever heard the other one before."

"Is that true?" prefect Dafydd said, turning to prefect Claire, the only muggleborn in the group. "That 'spaz' is that severe of an insult, I mean. It's just a word here for some people, including Violet — it reads as a description to me, and not offensive at all."

Prefect Claire nodded. "Yeah, that would be very rude on the muggle side. I still wince on the inside every time I hear someone call Violet spastic, honestly."

"Oh, I didn't know that..."

"And where I'm from 'invert' is one of those words that's dated in an almost funny way, I didn't get it was a big deal here at first."

"Yeah, what does that mean?" Hannah asked. "I just know it's very rude."

A few of the prefects glanced at each other, but Dora was clearly thinking, frowning blankly off at the wall behind them. Eventually she said, "It's an old way to talk about some kinds of people who are different, and the speaker thinks need to be fixed."

"Um, different how?"

"And what do you mean fixed?" Wayne asked, with a weird tone on his voice Violet couldn't figure out.

After another short pause, Dora said, "If a boy likes to kiss other boys, there's magic that can be done to change him, so he doesn't want to do it anymore. Different like that, and fixed like that. Changing that sort of thing takes blood magic, which is illegal in this country now — but it does still happen, in certain old families, sometimes. If someone calls a person an 'invert', they're saying someone should fix them, like that."

Most of the other first-years were either still a little confused or very creeped out by that — and prefect Claire was gaping at the back of Dora's head, looking kind of...scared? maybe? (not the right word) — Hannah even latching onto Violet's arm like Sophie already had. Which was fair! This kind of stuff was very creepy. Mum actually explained some of it to her ages ago, when... Well, a little bit came up forever ago, when Violet walked in on her and Rufus together and Mum explained about sex and whatever, and about what blood alchemy was she heard now and then over the years and in her lessons with Lord Arcturus, and then this kind of thing specifically was talked about more recently, when Mum was warning her that some people were going to be stupid about Mum and Muime getting married. (It was still very confusing to her that people cared whether a girl wanted to do sex things with other girls, or a boy with other boys, she didn't understand it at all? like, what the problem was?) And yeah, it was kind of scary, but it didn't happen very often anymore and Mum was super scary, so nobody would be able to do that kind of thing to any of them, Violet had mostly just not worried about it that much.

She did remember the word, and yeah, it was a very mean thing to call someone, but being called names didn't really bother her that much? People called her enough bad things when she was a little kid (even her family at home, all the time), so, her ability to be hurt by that kind of thing had worn out a long time ago. Or, she wasn't sure if being called names had ever bothered her, it was so long ago she couldn't remember — maybe never, and this was just something she was autistic about? Whatever. But it wasn't the thing that'd actually bothered her. "He was saying someone should take me away."

"Baby cousin?"

Raising her voice — she'd been mumbling, not surprised Dora didn't hear — Violet said, "He d-d-din't finish — I had an axe, axe, a–" Breath. "I ch-changed, um, he stopped. But, but, he was saying someone should t-take me away, to p-p-prr...shield them," nodding around at the other first-years. "What he meant."

Sophie and Hannah on both sides hugged closer, for a few seconds Dora just stared at her. Then she said, "Fuck that kid."

"Tonks..." one of the prefects groaned, Violet didn't see who.

"Don't Tooo-oonks me, that kid can fuck off." Turning back to Violet, "If he keeps being an arse and starts, I don't know, jinxing you or some shite, tell me about it and he and I will have a little chat."

Áirneas didn't say anything, not exactly, but he did let out an obvious ummm sound.

"What's that? Why am I getting the feeling I need to go, I don't know, dangle the littlest Weasley off the Astronomy Tower by his toes or something?"

Professor Sprout cleared her throat. "I assume you're speaking in hyperbole of course, Mister Tonks." Oh! Apparently Dora was supposed to be a boy at the moment, okay.

Dora turned to look at Professor Sprout over his shoulder, from this angle Violet could still see the big, sunny grin on his face. "Of course, Poms, I obviously would never do anything so awful as actually hang a firstie upside down off the top of the Astronomy Tower. Especially when the same effect can be accomplished much more safely using illusion spells."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Professor Sprout said — Violet must be imagining it, because she was pretty sure she heard the grown-up's voice wiggling like she was trying not to giggle. "If Minerva asks, I know nothing about it."

"You know how much Minnie hates me, clearly she's just making up stories now."

"Mhmm."

After a little bit more teasing about that — Dora wasn't actually going to do that, was he? — the other Hufflepuffs explained what had been going on since Hallowe'en. The Gryffindors were being even worse to Hermione now, because apparently staying over in Hufflepuff was like a betrayal or something? Which, they hadn't liked Hermione to begin with, so that made no sense to Violet, but other children often didn't make sense to her, so whatever. Hermione seemed...mostly okay? Maybe a little quieter, Sùjuān said she'd hardly ever said anything in their last Transfiguration and Charms classes. She still talked to Violet like normal, between classes and in the library and stuff, though she seemed a little tired? and she did say like half the Gryffindors were being awful, so.

And the Gryffindors were being mean to Violet basically whenever they had the opportunity, when they were in the same place at the same time. Hissing bad names at her, or little taunts and stuff, mostly things that she didn't really care about. There'd been a little bit of shoving, "accidentally" bumping into her in passing — on or near the stairs, Violet noticed, trying to make her fall — and even a few jinxes, mostly from Lavender, who Violet thought was the only one who'd had a wand before school. Well, Neville had a wand before too, but he never played along with any of this stuff — in fact, Violet noticed he was starting to sit with Hermione more? She didn't see them actually talk much, but Neville was super quiet, so. That was good! Hermione should have friends in Gryffindor, and Neville always had so much trouble with other children...

They were pretty sure some of the spells aimed at her had been from older students too, but they didn't see who. The worst Violet got hit with was a couple stinging jinxes, nothing serious — and those just in the first couple days after Hallowe'en, once they noticed the other first-years made a point of making a bubble around her, so nobody could get a clear angle on her anymore. There was a lot of name-calling and arguing whenever the first-year Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors were in the same place at the same time, though Violet wasn't really sure what all was in there at this point. After the first time it made her skin go all crawly (she really didn't like raised voices), she'd started pulling out her anti-noise amulet whenever she saw the Gryffindors coming up, so.

It wasn't really that bad, it wasn't like anyone had actually gotten hurt. It was annoying though. And, Violet didn't want to make trouble for people! All her friends were getting pulled into it, it was becoming this whole big thing, and, she kind of felt bad about her friends having to deal with it, but she didn't know what she could do to make it not happen anymore...

(She couldn't just point out to Ron and Lavender that they were being mean — she thought being mean was the point? It was very confusing.)

Once they got through the whole explanation of everything, Professor Sprout actually...gave them points? Violet kind of expected to be in trouble? Like, she was making a big mess of things, and dragging people into it, and she'd even kind of started a fight, walking up to Ron and shoving him and trying to yell at him and all. She hadn't really meant to, if she'd been thinking straight at the time she wouldn't have, she's just been so angry, and she hated feeling angry, and she didn't— And she'd lost control of her magic, doing a change on accident, and one that had even scared people a bit, and part of her still kind of expected to get in trouble for that? Not from Mum, no — she'd been scared of that at first, but Mum hugged her out of it pretty quick — but Professor Sprout and everyone else were, you know, not metamorphs, so might not think about it in the same way? so she might get in trouble for not being a person correctly.

But no, she wasn't getting in trouble for starting this whole mess, and instead the whole first year were being given twenty points for sticking together and helping each other and stuff, even when it's hard. (Violet didn't think Zach should be included, since he was never part of the blob or anything, and was just sitting over there scowling, but whatever.) Twenty points wasn't a lot a lot, only two points for each of the ten of them, but getting them all once made it feel like kind of a lot, especially when Violet wasn't really convinced she shouldn't be in trouble.

Maybe this wasn't a surprise though, and she'd just...kind of misunderstood Professor Sprout. Like, a bit ago with Dora joking about hanging Ron off the Astronomy Tower by his toes, she'd just played along with the joke (it had to be a joke), even though that would be kind of an awful thing to do? Professor Sprout seemed so nice and friendly and mumsy all the time, but Violet was suddenly getting the feeling that the mumsiness might be more like, well, Mum — sure, super nice and warm and thoughtful and stuff, but if you hurt the people she cared about then she got very very scary.

Violet remembered their older housemates said that Helga Hufflepuff had been a magical viking who'd already been famous before bringing her entire clan to Hogwarts, because she once killed a fully-grown dragon all by herself, when she'd been fourteen, with a sword. Maybe that kind of mumsiness was actually a very normal Hufflepuff thing, she didn't know.

Anyway, Professor Sprout said that they should come to the prefects or to herself if it started getting scary, like if the Gryffindors started bringing in older students to mess with them. But that was it, though, unless anyone had questions or anything — they didn't, the meeting broke up pretty much immediately, Zach and Leanne and Lily and Justin and the prefects moving toward the exit. There was homework she should be doing tonight, so Violet should get up too.

She'd kind of melted into the sofa, though, so standing up was difficult.

Violet got up on her feet, but she didn't get very far before Dora was coming up to her and Sophie and Hannah. "Hey, Violet, can I talk to you for a minute?" The little glances to the other two girls said that he meant alone.

"Yeah okay. I'll c-catch up," she said to the other girls. The meeting room had mostly emptied out, leaving them not-quite alone when the rest of Violet's year-mates left, sending glances back over shoulders — there was only Professor Sprout and prefect Kenrick left behind, muttering about something over there. Wrapping his arm around Violet's shoulders, Dora directed her toward the other side of the room, tucked behind one of the sofas over here. Once they were about as far away as they could get from both Professor Sprout and the other seventh-year prefect and the exit into the rest of the common room, Dora stopped, his wand dropping into his hand, cast some kind of spell with a little swirl. There was a faint shimmer in the air, like they were standing in the middle of a big soap bubble, but it quickly faded away again after a couple seconds — some kind of privacy spell, Violet thought, so they couldn't be overheard.

Moving around to stand in front of her, Dora crouched down a little, his hands braced on his knees, putting his eyes more or less level with Violet's. That blue-purple colour really was very pretty, especially with the tiny little flecks of orange in there she hadn't noticed from a distance — Dora always did fun things with colour, even when he was trying to be mostly normal, just did it more subtle like. "I thought it was better to talk about this without your little friends hanging around. I want to teach you some defence spells, just in case."

Oh, well, Violet probably should have guessed that's what this was about. But the problem was, "I d-d-don't want to."

"I know you don't want to hurt anyone, you little fluffball," he said, one hand coming up to tousle Violet's hair — she couldn't help smiling a little at being called a fluffball, it was silly. "But sometimes you need to hurt someone, to protect yourself. And I'm going to worry, now that there are people taking shots at you. If you're just worried about your funny magic messing with the spells, that's part of why I wanted to talk to you alone. We can be careful to test things first, so we'll know how they'll affect actual people."

...How much did Dora know about her fairy magic, exactly? Violet had never told him, she didn't think, but he wasn't stupid, he probably picked up on stuff at some point. Or maybe Mum told him? She should maybe ask who knew what, so she didn't accidentally say something she shouldn't. "Um, I 'unno. I think, the eh- the eh- the intent will be...hard? Especially if I'm aiming it at someone. I w-will wwworry, that I'll hurt them, but, but, I might not be able to d-do it, at all."

Dora's face scrunched up a bit — not annoyed with Violet, she didn't think, just annoyed in general. "I didn't think of that. The spells I'm thinking of will be hard enough for someone your age, if you really don't want to use them on anyone, that'll just make it more difficult. I would still want to try, but..."

"Maybe we can just do, like, shields? and c-c-c-kkhhh...counter-spells?"

His head tilting a little, Dora frowned off to Violet's right for a few seconds, thinking. "...Yeah. Yeah, that might work. Shield spells can be complicated, and they have seriously high power requirements sometimes — I wasn't planning to focus on them much for that reason, most younger people find them difficult to cast. I didn't manage a proper full shield spell until...well, until Aunt Cassie helped me with it, actually." So he would have been a few years older than Violet was now, she didn't remember exactly when those lessons started. "But you're powerful for your age — metamorphs tend to be, we're cheaters like that — and you might find the intent required far easier.

"And now that I'm thinking about it, maybe we should consider hex deflexion? The spells aren't that difficult, and I've seen you play beater, you might be pretty good at that. That's when you take your wand and just go pow!" he said, with a flick of his wrist like he was slapping something out of the air, "and send it flying over out of the way. I'm sure you've seen your mum do that plenty of times. Sound like a good idea to you?"

"Yeah! Mum does that all the time, at events, it's so cool!"

Grinning back at her, Dora agreed, "It is! It's riskier than just shielding something, because if you mess up the timing you'll get hit, but it's much more impressive — enough that if you whip that out, most people are likely to just give up and run away before you start hexing them back. And it's really fun, Aunt Cassie taught it to me in our lessons a couple years ago now, when I figured it out I felt like such a badass."

Violet giggled, mostly because the big crooked smirk Dora gave her. "You're silly. C-c-can I do that one? I mean, I'm only a first year."

"I don't see why not — it doesn't take much power, and the spells aren't that complicated. You need to do them silently, but that's not a problem for you. The problem is going to be learning which deflexion you need for which spells, and getting the speed and timing down. I'm probably going to need to hit you with a bunch of stinging jinxes and shite until you figure it out."

"That's okay! I can, can, can mmelt away the bruises." Melt away was probably not quite the right way to say it, just the first thing that came to her. She might be worried about someone else flinging spells at her over and over, but it was just Dora — Violet knew he wouldn't hurt her, not really.

"Good, we can try it then. Shields, deflexion, counter-spells. Maybe some healing too, while we're at it." Violet didn't know enough about healing to know if that was a good idea, with her weird fairy magic, but she could deal with that when they got that far. "I'll find a spot to practise, and talk to your mum about it, to make sure there aren't going to be any issues with what I'm thinking of teaching you. Once I have everything figured out I'll come find you, and we can talk about scheduling. Okay?"

Violet nodded. "Okay." She was actually a little excited about it, her fingers all twitchy and not quite bouncing on her toes. Just, the magic she was learning in classes was mostly all stuff she'd learned already, or just really easy, and, with her friends making a blob around her, they were kind of standing in the way to shield her, but she didn't want them to get hit either! So if she learned shield charms, she could protect them instead, which sounded great! And also, she had seen Mum do hex deflexion before, and it looked very cool, and learning how to undo bad spells was obviously a good idea. This was all going to be magic meant for older students, so it was probably going to be hard, but she still thought it sounded fun.

And it was an excuse to spend more time with Dora! and Dora was great! Now that he agreed she didn't have to learn attacking 'defence' spells she was actually looking forward to it, enough it was kind of hard to stand still.

Not wiggling was made a little easier for her when Dora sank down further, his arms wrapping around her — Violet hugged him back, smooshing her face into his shoulder. (Definitely a boy at the moment, pressed up like this she could tell he didn't have any breasts at all.) Speaking into her hair, his voice tickling along the side of her head a little, Dora said, "I love you, you silly little muffin. Take care of yourself for me, okay?"

"I– Okay." She avoided making a promise at the last second — not that she thought that was a bad promise to make, it was just habit now. "I lll-llove you too. Oh! Um, what should I call you when you're b-b-being a boy? 'Dora' is a g-g-g-g– feminine name."

Dora chuckled, gave Violet a last tight squeeze (she made a little squeak as air escaped) before letting go of her, tipped back onto his heels. "You're adorable," he said, fluffing up Violet's hair again, "but don't worry about it. I'm still me, even when I've got boy bits."

"...Um, okay." That seemed somehow off to Violet, but she'd admit that she still didn't really understand this stuff sometimes. She felt really weird if people were calling her Harry, like some people had a few times after they found out who she was, but she didn't know if that was because it was a boy name, or if it was because she was Violet now, she hadn't been Harry for years, and it was just kind of weird? She didn't know, gender was hard.

He laughed at her again — it didn't feel like a mean laugh, more like you're being adorable right now. "Go on then, catch up with your friends. I'll talk to you later."

Still a little distracted by the name stuff, Violet tried to shake it off. "Right. Bye, Dora, see you later." She dipped back in for a last quick hug, before turning around and skipping off.

Behind her, Dora said, "Tell me if Ron's still bothering you next week, so I'll know if hanging him from the Tower worked or not."

...He was joking about that, right? right?

(It should probably bother her more that she wasn't sure, but at this point Violet was used to the idea of people she loved being kind of scary.)

Chapter delayed by a day due to FFN being stupid.