Violet spent a bigger part of Herbology watching Hermione than was really polite. She was giving her a funny feeling.

Wednesday morning they had the same classes as on Monday morning. Instead of brewing a thing, Potions was a long lecture about a bunch of safety stuff, and things to do to prevent contamination, with lots of warnings about not playing around — potions accidents could be very dangerous, like blow up half the classroom dangerous, so. Herbology today was mostly just talk about plants, the different kinds there were, and how magic could do different things with them. Some plants just were magic, like animals could just be magic, others reacted in different ways to magic, or could have effects on magic, like in potions and stuff. Other plants would take in magic around and do stuff with, so it was kind of like they ate magic! that was cool! And there was a lot of talk about how plants grew, with like seeds and stuff, and the things they needed to be happy, you know, all kinds of basic plant stuff.

She'd had a funny feeling about Hermione pretty much from the beginning, but it was getting stronger now. Like right away, she noticed that Hermione didn't really look at people she was talking to, up and to the side, or at their chest, obviously too low to be looking at their face. That was pretty familiar, Violet recognised it right away — she did the same kind of thing, when she was emotional about something, or kept stammering and getting self-conscious about it. And she noticed that Hermione kind of talked funny, too fast and with big, adult-sounding words, and something about the feel of it felt funny, like, the...the volume or the stress or something? Violet wasn't actually sure — she was bad about that kind of thing a lot too, and honestly she couldn't put her finger on why Hermione sounded different than everyone else, just that she did. Also, her posture was weird, awkward and slouching, her weight seeming to sway from foot to foot — subtle, Violet wouldn't notice if their uniform robes weren't so long and baggy, she could see the hem moving — and she didn't seem to want to touch anything.

And then she got in an argument with Professor Sprout about fungi. Professor Sprout said that mushrooms and moulds and stuff were a special kind of plant that ate things in a different way than other plants, and then Hermione interrupted, blurting out that mushrooms and moulds and stuff weren't plants, they were fungi. Professor Sprout said that was a Latin word for mushrooms, yes, and sometimes all similar kinds of plants were also called fungi — their textbook did that, for example — and Hermione insisted no, fungi were not plants, they were a totally different thing. You had animals, which were one category of living thing, and then you had plants, which were another category, and then fungi, which were a completely different category — and fungi were actually more closely-related to animals than they were to plants, the best data they had now suggested that, way back over a billion years when life was just little single cells floating around in the water, the lineage that would become plants split off to do their own thing, and then fungi and animals split up, probably hundreds of millions of years later, it just didn't seem like it because what we saw of most fungi were just the fruiting bodies, which made them look like plants, but, er, there was more, but Violet was so lost at this point.

Most of that was over her head, but it was kind of reminding her of when she went babbling off at people about...well, anything she was excited about, she couldn't help it sometimes. And it was giving Violet a very funny feeling.

Was Hermione autistic? Because Violet was really starting to feel like she might be.

Professor Sprout ended the argument by just saying muggle science was neat! and Herbology dealt with both plants and fungi, so they weren't really different things for the purposes of this class. Hermione started saying that lots of the things they were talking about weren't herbaceous plants, actually (whatever those were), but then bit her lip, squeezing her eyes shut and her hands into fists, obviously trying to get herself to stop talking. It was kind of cute, actually, Violet had to try really hard not to laugh at her.

(It was probably rude to walk up to a girl she barely knew and ask her if she was autistic.)

After lunch they had History. The classroom was pretty cool! There were the normal desks making a grid, she was used to that by now, and there were bookshelves all around the room, the wood a nice rich shiny reddish-brown colour and the books with colourful leather covers, and there were a few tall stained glass windows along one side! Pieced together with colourful little segments of glass in a rainbow of colour, shining and glittering in the light, it was super pretty! All of them were, like, symbolic portraits of people, but Violet didn't know who they were supposed to be. One of them was probably a Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot — he was holding a staff covered in blooming white-pink flowers, she thought that was supposed to be the Staff of Merlin, which the Chief Warlock used to always carry (they stopped using it centuries ago, for some reason) — but other than that she couldn't guess.

It was nice and colourful and pretty in here! if maybe a little dusty. For a little bit, Violet kind of forgot what she was told about the class before, happily humming and kicking her feet under her desk. And then as the class period started — a ghost passed through the blackboard, floated up to the podium, and started lecturing about druids, half the class scrambling to get their notebooks out — and Violet suddenly remembered the warnings Dora (and Bennie) had given about Professor Binns.

Oh my god, this was so boring!

Professor Binns droned, like, his voice low and slow and flat, and, Violet tried to pay attention, she was even taking notes! Or, some notes, anyway — not only was Professor Binns's voice very much not interesting, hard to pay attention, but she also kind of knew this already? He was talking about the Celtic tribes in Britain that were here before the Romans, and what they were like, which was something she learned about back in craft school. Not quite the same thing, she guessed, since he was mostly talking about the kingdoms and sanctuaries in the south of Britain, and at an Ollscoil they talked more about Ireland and the north, but it wasn't that different, and they at least mentioned British stuff, most of the names were still familiar. And he was slow, and Violet's thoughts wandered, she ended up randomly doodling in the margins or playing around adding decorative little curls or flowers and things to the letters she already wrote...

And this was a double period — there was no way she'd actually be able to concentrate through the whole lecture.

...

Would anyone care if she brought embroidery work to class? She got practice stitching and listening to the radio at the same time, so, if she had something to keep herself busy she'd probably actually hear more of Professor Binns's lecture, instead of being so bored she could barely even focus on the words burbling in her ears...

After what felt like forever — most of the class had stopped paying attention ages ago, chatting with each other or even falling asleep at their desks, the professor didn't even seem to notice — Professor Binns finally folded up his (see-through) notes and drifted away from the podium, and the lecture was over. Violet started packing away her things, but then noticed Professor Binns was floating straight toward the back wall, sprang up to her feet. She rushed over toward the front of the class, but she hadn't even gotten past the rows of desks before Professor Binns disappeared back through the blackboard.

...Oh well. She'd meant to ask if she could bring her embroidery work to class, but she could just try to catch him next time.

There was another lecture in Transfiguration straight after that — Professor McGonagall might not be as fun of a teacher as Professor Flitwick, but at least she wasn't as boring as Professor Binns, not even close. At dinner, Sophie nudged her with an elbow to get her attention, Fay had come over to find her but Violet didn't notice because of her noise amulet. Some of the kids were putting together a iomáint game! Yeah, Violet wanted to play! She quickly finished eating, ran down to Hufflepuff to change quick, met back up with Fay and Áirneas at the main entrance. There were some more people from their year with them, like half of Hufflepuff and most of the muggleborns, but only Violet and Fay and Áirneas and Megan were playing.

They were playing out on the quidditch pitch, it turned out. It was a bit smaller than for the serious leagues, but Violet thought it was bigger than the ones the youth teams played in, somewhere between the two. The stands were kind of huge, though, wooden risers elevated up into the air all the way around the oval, decorated with banners coloured for all four houses. There were also people playing quidditch in here, but since quidditch was in the air and iomáint was on the ground they could play in the same place at the same time and not bother each other.

(Well, sometimes a bludger went for one of the iomáint players, but that just made it more interesting! Kept you on your toes, like.)

It wasn't just first-years playing, they had older kids too — second through fourth year, maybe? The game was a little slow to get started, partly because not everyone had their own cámain, and partly because some of the older kids were curious about Violet. There were a bunch of questions, some of them kind of rude — she was mostly sure that one of the boys asking her to prove she was really a girl (by taking off her pants and showing them) was supposed to be a joke — but eventually they split up into teams and got started.

Violet called it quits after a couple hours (she wasn't keeping track exactly), waving to get her team's attention to tell them she was leaving, dropping her borrowed cámain with the others at the side of the field. Apparently the school had a bunch for people, but they were already out when she got here, she didn't know where they were supposed to go? Anyway, most of them were still playing — the sky was starting to turn colours, but there would still be enough light to play for a little while. Some of the older kids joked about her getting beat up too much — she did get tackled pretty rough a few times, a little bruised up — but the actual reason she was going back inside was because she was dirty, and she didn't want to show up to Astronomy class looking a mess.

All the first-years went back to the Castle at around the same time, but only Hannah came with her to have a bath. Lily was really shy, and the muggleborns wouldn't be used to this kind of thing, so. There were some older girls already in the bath by the time they got there, and like almost everyone else they wanted to talk to Violet. At least their questions were a lot less rude? A little bit of cooing over the Dursleys being bad and getting out, and some questions about Muime and Mum, and like talking about the things she could do with metamorphy and some art stuff, at one point going off about a radio show a bunch of them were listening to, one of the girls super excited about it, her cousin was in it! that was so cool!

Some of the older girls knew enough about transfiguration to know what it meant that some of her joints were schematised — staring at her wide-eyed, one girl's mouth even dropping open. Yes, obviously her joints still worked! How? Violet didn't know...magic, she guessed? To prove it she let a couple of the girls poke at her foot (which tickled!), if you know what you were looking for you could actually feel there weren't bones in there, just...stuff. There were a few parts of her body that were weird if you looked close enough, her ankles were just the most obvious. Um, no, actually her healer gave her potions now and then to make sure her organs kept working like they were supposed to...

They were in the bath a lot longer than they really needed to be, hanging around and talking, but they did have somewhere to be tonight, Violet and Hannah left eventually. By ten-thirty, all of the Hufflepuff first-years were gathered in their little common room space — Sally-Anne and Wayne and Leanne looked like they might have fallen asleep, but they were all here at least. Right around ten-forty, the outside door clicked open, and one of the prefects looked in the room. Not Dora or Bennie, this was actually Lauren Clarke, the fifth-year girl prefect, she'd be leading them up to class.

Astronomy class was a little silly, because it didn't start until literally eleven at night. How long they stayed there depended on what the professor had them doing at the time — they might be out at midnight, they might not be let out of class until after one in the morning. This wasn't such a big deal for the Hufflepuffs (and Slytherins), they didn't have class again until after lunch tomorrow so they could sleep in, but Violet thought the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors did have class in the morning? Dora and Bennie during their tour, and again Lauren just now, advised them to try to get a nap in between dinner and Astronomy, if they could...except they probably didn't have to worry about it, but, it would be good practice for future years anyway.

Curfew was actually at ten, so they weren't technically supposed to be outside of their dorms at this time of the night, but there was an exception for people who were going to and from Astronomy class. Lauren was showing them the way tonight anyway, because the lights went out at curfew, so it was really dark in the Castle. It was kind of spooky, with all the heavy shadows everywhere, noises off in the dark you couldn't see where they were coming from, some of the kids seeming kind of twitchy and nervous, the girls kind of clinging onto each other's arms, Lily almost vibrating. Violet wasn't really scared — she went out at night too much for it to bother her — but the Castle did seem very different at night, she would have gotten lost without Lauren here.

When they were halfway up a set of stairs, and Justin said something from behind (and below) her, Violet froze for a second, suddenly aware that she forgot to put pants on when she was getting dressed after their bath. Oh well, the school robes were long enough nobody would see anything, even on the stairs, it was fine.

The Ravenclaws were getting to the Astronomy Tower just a little bit ahead of them — they were also being escorted by one of their prefects — and when they arrived the Slytherins were already there. Olivie skipped over right away to grab Violet and Susan in a big hug — the Slytherins got led up by a prefect too, but they started early, because their dorms were so far away, they'd just gotten here a couple minutes before the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Since there were five years of Astronomy, but only six class days in the week, this one wasn't split in two like the other classes but had their whole year at once. So, they had to wait for the Gryffindors to get started, but there were still some time left, they weren't late yet.

...They only had to wait for most of the Gryffindors — Hermione was already here, her head tipped back, staring wide-eyed up at the big dome ceiling.

Astronomy class was at the top of the tallest tower in the Castle. The door at the top of the stairs had led them into a big circular room, arching up in a dome over their heads. The walls weren't solid, big sections of it cut out, a walkway a few metres wide looping around the outside of the dome. It didn't look like there was any ceiling over there, that was outside — Violet guessed the Valley would be past the low wall there and spread out all around them, but she couldn't see from this angle...and also it was dark, there probably wasn't much to see?

There was a big model of the solar system floating under the dome — this one looked like the one in Dumbledore's office, balls made out of rings of metal (bronze, looked like), little designs and pictures and words carved into them. Past the model, the ceiling of the dome was painted with what Violet recognised to be all the stars in the night sky, little labels next to them in curling cursive, some of the orbits of moving things marked off, fainter lines connecting the stars of constellations together. Fainter, because all the stars and the labels and stuff were glowing, shining white and red and blue and yellow — not super bright, subtle, only a little brighter and clearer than the stars themselves would be.

She got why Hermione was staring, it was super pretty!

It was only like five minutes after the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws arrived that the Gryffindors showed up, and they could start the class. Professor Sinistra was a woman with long curly dark hair, her face very very pale, almost glowing in the dark Astronomy Tower, like she never got outside at all — or maybe she just never went out during the day — wearing plain brownish trousers and greenish tunic under a black cloak, a white headband holding her hair out of her face, beads in the cloth faintly glimmering in the light. While they were waiting for everyone to show up, she'd been quietly sitting on a stool near some of the equipment stacked against the wall over there, but when the whole class got here she got their attention and started talking, some magic carrying her voice to fill the dome, loud enough to easily hear but still soft and slithery.

After saying hello, giving them some basics about how the class would work and what they would do, Professor Sinistra reached over to a nearby turntable — quiet, slow piano music started, carried along by the same magic she was using to talk to them all. She told a story going way way back, before cities were even a thing, ancient people keeping track of the way the sun and the moon moved through the year, making observations they could use to predict the seasons, know when to plant and to predict the behaviour of animals. As people learned how to write they kept notes, and started noticing more complex patterns, charting out things like the 19-year Metonic cycle, or even bigger things like the fourteen hundred -year Sothic cycle, and finding the planets, predicting how they would move through the sky. The classical planets were known for thousands of years, all the way back to ancient Babylon and Egypt — Mars and Jupiter and Saturn and Mercury, Venus first as two separate objects, Morning Star and Evening Star, and as they invented the maths to better map its path through the sky realising the two "stars" were only one — their ancient knowledge passed to Greece, and then to Rome, more observations made and better maths invented as time went on...

And, like the sun and the moon were important to people long long ago, the stars and the planets were too. People came up with all kinds of stories, superstitions about the influence the heavens had here on earth, worked into religious beliefs that were often much older than the astronomical knowledge itself, connections used in ritual magic. But they knew, now, that all that was only superstition — understandable superstition, with the night sky being big and pretty and fascinating, shapes and patterns slowly turning overhead, but superstition all the same. The objects above directed fate no more than the gears of a clock made time happen, cycles within cycles within cycles going on with mathematical precision, but simple matter, nothing mystical about them. There was a reason modern magical theory didn't take such ideas seriously anymore.

Violet was a little surprised that a lot of the other kids seemed surprised about that, some of them even a little annoyed. A couple even tried to argue with Professor Sinistra — but she just smiled at them. "What is Jupiter?"

There was silence for a moment, kids glancing at each other. Someone said, "A planet?" sounding more like a question than an answer.

"Yes, but what is it made of?" Violet noticed Hermione's hand shoot up into the air — it almost looked like she was shaking, excited to answer. Professor Sinistra saw it too, apparently, giving Hermione a little smile. "Yes, Miss Granger?"

"Jupiter is a gas giant, composed primarily of hydrogen and helium in approximately solar proportions, with traces of nitrogen and carbon compounds, such as ammonia or methane. It is believed there may be a core at the centre of the planet composed of heavier elements, but there is only indirect evidence for its existence in the form of the planet's strong magnetic field — the density of the atmosphere renders direct observation impossible."

Violet basically knew what that all meant, from looking into space stuff, but she could tell by the looks on people's faces and the muttering that basically none of the other kids did. (Even the muggleborns seemed kind of lost.) But Professor Sinistra smiled at her some more with a little nod. "Very good, Miss Granger, take five points for Gryffindor. Jupiter is assumed to have a rocky core, made out of similar stuff as the Earth, but surrounded by a very large, very dense atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. These are gasses discovered by the muggles in the generations since Secrecy, our own alchemists have borrowed their names for them — they also exist on Earth, but in much smaller amounts."

There some muttering from some of the kids, someone said, "Gas? You mean Jupiter is made out of air? But it glows!"

"Ah ha, but it doesn't glow — or at least, not by its own power. What you see when you look at Jupiter is a reflection of the light of the sun, shining on the yellow and orange clouds covering its sky. Here, I'll show you..."

Professor Sinistra waved her wand up at the model overhead, the big metal ball that stood in for Jupiter floating down closer to the floor. There were some gasps as she did...something with it — Violet saw a few sparkles of magic, but that was it. Professor Sinistra said this was a picture of Jupiter, taken from way up in space, pointing out the different bands of clouds and the Great Red Spot. And then this was another picture taken by the same muggle spaceship, from after it passed by the planet — and as you can see, it's making a crescent, almost like the moon, because it is only the dayside that glows, reflecting the sun, the nightside in shadow, no light of its own...

Violet pouted. Professor Sinistra was probably using pictures from Voyager (either one), which she knew were super pretty, especially after mages got their hands on them and did special magic to blow them up and fill in some more details. But that model thing must be showing the pictures as a glamour, Violet couldn't see them — that was disappointing.

After talking about Jupiter for a little bit, Professor Sinistra floated the model back up there, and then asked what Venus was. Violet and Hermione both raised their hands, Professor Sinistra called on her this time. Venus was neat! It was a rocky planet, made out of the same stuff as Earth, they were pretty sure? except it didn't have a magnetic field like Earth — well, it had one, but a super weak one — which meant there might be less iron in it? Or maybe there was some other reason, they weren't sure. But, you couldn't see the rocky ground, because it had a super super thick atmosphere — like, it had almost a hundred times as much air around it as Earth? Something like that. (Violet thought it might be closer to ninety, actually.) It wasn't anything like Earth's atmosphere, though, mostly carbon dioxide with small amounts of other stuff, the bright yellowish-white glow of Venus was from the sun bouncing off of clouds of sulfuric acid covering the whole planet. (Acid clouds, because space.) Also, carbon dioxide trapped heat, so, down at ground level it was a bit under five hundred degrees, which was crazy. The Soviets landed a spaceship on Venus, but it could only take pictures for like ten minutes or something before it started melting.

And it spun backwards! All the other planets spun the same way, with their orbits, so the sun rose in the east and set in the west, but Venus spun opposite from its orbit, so the sun rose in the west and set in the east — it was the only thing in the solar system that did that, nobody was sure why. Wasn't that cool? She thought that was cool, Venus was cool. Or, super hot, she guessed, but you knew what she meant...

(Violet did stammer a bit, but nobody stopped her — and Professor Sinistra just smiled encouragingly at her the whole time, so.)

Professor Sinistra talked a little more about how, as glass-making and stuff got better, they started getting better and better views of stuff out there, and as muggles did science they learned more and more about how stuff worked. Mages had kind of been following a couple steps behind the muggles — proper telescopes were new when Secrecy happened, and the mess the magical world was left in meant they didn't have the attention for it, started catching up later — and these days magical astronomers were mostly working on finding magical ways to improve on the stuff muggle astronomers already had, like making better telescopes and using divination to fill in and clean up data. The most important things they knew now were that space wasn't some mystical thing, it was made out of the same stuff that they had here on Earth, and that it didn't have some magical effect on things here, just people finding patterns in stuff and putting meaning on top of them. Stuff in space, especially like phases of the moon and the position of planets and stuff, could have effects on witchcraft, but that was just because the person doing it believed it did — the only power these things had was what people gave them.

Some of the magic-raised kids seemed confused, or annoyed, or disappointed, but Violet didn't get that. That was cool! That space, all this big pretty stuff, was made out of the same stuff as everything down here — that Earth and everything on it was part of space, technically! She thought that was cool...

Anyway, the school had extra special powerful magical telescopes, already set up along the wall blocking them off from the drop down to the Castle below. For the rest of the class, they were going to learn how to use them. All of the planets were below the horizon at the moment — except Saturn, but it was low enough in the sky that only the telescopes on that side would be able to see it — so Professor Sinistra was going to show them some galaxies. Oh cool, Violet had seen pictures of galaxies before, but just in muggle-made stuff, they were probably really pretty in these magic telescopes! Violet ended up at one of the telescopes with Olivie and Sophie and Blaise, they followed Professor Sinistra's directions to aim the telescope at the exact right place, and focus the magic parts correctly. Almost vibrating with excitement, she zipped over to the eyepiece to take her turn first, looked into it and...

It was just a smear of white and blue and yellow light. Frowning, she stepped back, let Olivie take her turn. She let out a long oooohh — she could see it, like a colourful spiral, a bright ball at the middle and curved arms spinning out.

...It must be using glamours and illusions or something to focus and clean it up for the human eye. Since that kind of magic worked weird with her, she wasn't going to be able to use these special telescopes.

Violet pouted — well, that sucked.

They'd ended up at the telescope right next to Hermione's, who was kind of talking her groups' ears off. She wasn't listening the whole time, but she thought the magic-raised kids with her (Megan and Neville) didn't really believe that that thing up there was made out of millions and millions of stars just like the sun, and Hermione went on a ramble about how stars worked. It was super detailed, actually, talking about stellar nucleosynthesis, and how helium was made from hydrogen through the proton–proton chain, and then later the helium was turned into carbon, which later 'burned' into heavier elements, releasing crazy amounts of heat and light all the while...

Using big, adult, science words the whole time, of course. Violet kind of doubted the other kids had any idea what she was talking about — she did, mostly, but she was kind of getting the feeling she'd read some of the same books Hermione had. She'd skipped a lot of the super advanced physics stuff herself, but she'd skimmed over it, so she kind of followed what Hermione was saying. Sounded like she'd all but memorised the difficult sciency parts.

Someone asked a question about other stars having planets, so then Hermione explained that we assume they did, because science, but other stars were so impossibly far away that we couldn't actually look. And then she was talking about how planets were formed around a star in the first place, because of course. Professor Sinistra was giving them instructions to look at other galaxies and nebulae and stuff, but of course Violet wouldn't be able to see any of them, so she skipped a little closer to Hermione's group. "Hey, d-d-did you see the Voyager Neptune pictures?"

She kind of interrupted Hermione in mid-sentence, for a couple seconds she just blinked back at Violet. Well, blinked near her, anyway — her eyes were pointed at Violet's left elbow. "Yes?"

"The colour on Tr-rr-t-tch-tr—"

"Triton?"

"Yeah! Sorry. The colours are neat! Like, like, like, the rainbow smears you see on oil, kind of like? b-but subtle like, desaturated. Maybe im-im-impurities in the ice, or something? like salts and stuff?"

For a couple seconds, Hermione just stared at her arm some more, frowning a little. "...Maybe? It could be an effect of refraction?"

"Whatever it is, it's super pretty! I always thought the-the-the ice moons are neat. Like Europa! Ooh, and the rr-r-rrrings, of Saturn! Those are ice, so they count too. Did you know it rains diamonds on the g-geh-g-gas g-dzh-d-zh– the big ones? Sorry, stammer."

"Um."

Violet kept babbling on about how pretty the ice moons were, and how cool it was that they might have big oceans under there, and the clouds over Neptune, and how Triton was probably captured from further out in the solar system, where comets and stuff came from, and was probably made out of the same stuff as Pluto? but Pluto was too far away to look, so that was just a guess, but it made sense, and ooh ooh, she had a book with pictures of galaxies and nebulae and stuff, and the Crab Nebula! The little colourful threads you got in, like, supernova and planetary nebulae were really neat! Well, yeah, she got that the colours were exaggerated, not really visible light a lot of the time but like infrared and ultraviolet and stuff, but she didn't care they were still pretty!

Despite that Hermione was babbling before, now this was mostly Violet babbling, the other girl only talking now and then...mostly correcting Violet when she thought she got something wrong. Which was weird, was...was she talking too much? She didn't think she was talking too much, and, space was cool! and it seemed like Hermione got that too. But, she got the feeling she was making Hermione uncomfortable, but she didn't really know why.

Worrying that she was doing something wrong slowly sapped the energy out of her, and Violet stopped babbling about cool space stuff. Eventually she just went back to Olivie and Sophie and Blaise, and stood to the side with her arm crossed, pouting up at the sky.

She couldn't even see through the telescopes, and the only person here who seemed as excited about space as she was didn't want to talk about stuff with her. Professor Sinistra seemed nice so far, but her first Astronomy class still turned out disappointing...