Fourth Year Starts

Arabella's compartment was empty when she finally managed to reach it - not even a written note was left for her by her boyfriend and friends. In a grumpy mode, she ended up joining the carriage of some hitherto unknown sixth years. The group turned to be the last into the Great Hall and she hurriedly joined Cho and Marietta at the Ravenclaw table. And Marietta waited no time in telling her they had been waiting for her until the last minute.

After the sorting (There were so many of them!) Cho ended up lightening the mood by asking her what gossip she managed to get. It wasn't much, really, but little gossip beat no gossip at all, of that the three agreed to. The opening ceremony carried on as usual and Dumbledore made his regular announcements: the groundskeeper was now professor of Care of Magical Creatures and the professor Arabella met at the train was the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. And yes, the latter counted as a regular announcement: as far as anyone could remember, no Defense professor had lasted more than a year.

The surprise came when the headmaster announced that dementors - as in, many dementors - would be guarding the entrances in and out of Hogwarts. Arabella's gaze turned to Cormac without a second thought, who had turned around in his chair to look at her at the same time. He shrugged, quizzically, and Arabella shook her head. As far as she was concerned, they were not sneaking out of Hogwarts as long as dementors were watching the school's boundaries - or she found a way to go through them. And she was writing to her father at the first opportunity. Dementors may fall under the Department of Magical Law Enforcement rather than the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures but, nonetheless, they had no business around a school. Or anywhere, as far as she was concerned, but according to what little she knew of them, they were some sort of spirits and thus, could not be exterminated. She needed a trip to the library as well as one to the owlery.

Finally, as she contemplated the darkened grounds of Hogwarts from the window at the dormitories at the top of Ravenclaw Tower, the long day was over. She had just finished changing for the night and was trying to glimpse the soul sucking tools of war somewhere beneath the castle when Marietta's broken voice took her out of her revelry.

"I shouldn't have remembered that" she was saying, sitting in her bed and clutching at the sheets "What the dementor made me see… I was just a baby. I wasn't even two!"

"Mari?" approached her Cho.

Marietta, however, continued as if talking to herself "Mom, she had just heard of dad's death. He was visiting grandpa and… for some reason, the Dark Mark was at their house when mom went to check why he was talking so long. She… she didn't think I'd understand her, but I think I did. She badmouthed You-Know-Who, yes, but also my uncles, and my grandparents… and she was crying so much, and so was I" Arabella went to hug her and Marietta continued "How does a baby who can't talk process that? I could not speak! And how do I remember it? You shouldn't be able to fix memories at that age!" she insisted, grabbing and hitting at the bedsheets.

Cho was contemplating everything from her bed, just across Marietta's "Do you want some dreamless sleep potion?" she finally asked.

"Do you have some?" asked Marietta

"No, but we can go to the Hospital Wing" said Cho

"It's too late" insisted Marietta, still sobbing.

Arabella rose from the bed and went straight to her trunk "We can brew some. Go take a hot shower and Cho and I will prepare it" she announced, her past misgivings about the train journey forgotten.

Unlike freezing charms she hadn't practiced before, Arabella was confident in her potion skills and knew from working with Cho for three years that her roommate was just as good as she was. The two girls set up their potions kit in short order and quickly divided their workload - Arabella had long learned to respect Cho's ability to prepare ingredients, often deviating from the textbook with good results. In turn, Arabella was one of the top potions students of her year - a bit of a waste, as potions wasn't a skill typically demanded of a curse breaker and she hadn't been fooling around when she insisted about that to her father earlier that day. But useful or not for a future career, none could deny she was good at it.

They had the potion half-way by the time Marietta came out of the shower. It had the right shade of turquoise and all it needed was ten more minutes of stewing over the mildly warm fire - Arabella had accounted for the cold entering the dormitories through the now open window - they needed to ventilate away the fumes. With nothing else to do, she went to take a shower herself.

"She's sleeping like a baby" Told her Cho as Arabella exited the bathrooms a while later "We have lots of spare potion now"

"We can take it to Madam Pomfrey in the morning" said Arabella "It's not like Snape would give us less homework if we bring it to class"

"Or we can sell it to the lower years"

"Why would they pay for it? It's free in the hospital wing"

"Because many would be too ashamed to go asking for it" explained Cho

Arabella smiled as she tucked herself in bed "Good idea"

The next morning found Marietta in a perfectly good mood and Arabella waking up from some forgotten nightmare. Marietta agreed on them selling the remaining potion, but warned them about keeping some for friends.

"Or boyfriends" she insisted "Cormac must have had a rough night"

"What do you know?" Asked Arabella as they made their long way downstairs for breakfast.

Marietta didn't respond right away "Mum knows about it through Cormac's father. But it's not my story to tell" she finally said.

Arabella rumminiated more anger as she had her breakfast. Not only her boyfriend didn't want her around when he was suffering because of his mother's death. One of her best friends knew how it happened, and she didn't. Rationally, knew Marietta was taught, like her, to file such things under 'family matters you don't ask about'. Emotionally, she was even angrier than before. Whether she wanted to confront Cormac or not, she did not know.

They got their class schedules from professor Flitwick as they were finishing breakfast. She had all the electives that day, starting with Ancient Runes, then Arithmancy and, after lunch, double Care of Magical Creatures. That meant she didn't need to see Cormac until the afternoon, as the lazy sod had taken Divination for an easy OWL, so Care of Magical Creatures was the only elective they did together.

Ancient Runes was an easy class. Professor Babbling started the class by impressing on them the importance of the OWLs even though they were almost two years away. But then the class was just a revision of ancient futhark. Arithmancy, on the other hand, was the opposite of easy. Professor Vector gave them the same lecture about the OWLs and put them to work right away.

Vector handed each student an enchanted chess set, with the game already started, and the ELO rating of the enchantments playing the game for both sides. Their task was to use arithmantic matrices to predict not just the winner of the game, but the moves each side would play.

Everyone's predictions were off by the fifth move and even their probabilistic matrixs were becoming utterly useless. Frustrated, Arabella tapped her chess board with her wand, casting a couple of revealing charms.

"Bloody hell!" she exclaimed

"Language. Three points from Ravenclaw" said professor Vector, as if expecting an outburst.

"What? So soon? It's just the first day!" complained Arabella, biting another curse word. The rest of the class laughed and she felt tempted to join in the laughs.

Professor Vector stood up from her desk and walked towards Arabella "Yes, and if you keep complaining I'll assign you an essay on the numerologic probabilities that you'd lose points on your first day" said the professor and this time Arabella did join her classmate's laughs. "So, what's the problem Miss Diggory?"

"The enchantments in the pieces are affecting the charms of the imaginary players, thus changing the elo rankings and playstyles from those in the assignment. Which throws all predictions away" She explained, and with a few spells she pulled the runic chaining of the white side into an ethereal blue image in mid air. Another tap and the white imaginary player's enchantment showed up in the air, tugged around by each of the nine white pieces in the board "See? We'd need to calculate the effects of each piece on their respective player enchantment, the effect they also have on the opposite player and, as the predictions move on, how the removal of the pieces from the board re-affects the player's enchantments!"

"Well, of course you do. That's the point of the exercise" explained the professor and the entire class groaned. More curse words were uttered, more points were lost from all houses "You can all feel free to enlarge your desk to have more working space"

Groaning, but minding their language, the entire class set out to do just that, as what looked like a simple 'welcome back to school' exercise of matching two enchantments turned into a hellishly difficult arithmancy test well beyond anything they'd done in third year.

She didn't get to see Cormac by lunch. She was intercepted in the Great Hall by Sarah and ended up eating at the Slytherin table with her - a welcome distraction from how burnt out she was from the overly demanding arithmancy class. The two girls spent most of the dessert going through Sarah's muggle tattoos magazine and thus drawing weird looks from the rest of the Slytherin table, who didn't appreciate the static pictures.

The moment to finally meet Cormac came later, in the grounds, as they walked towards the Care of Magical Creatures class, which was to be held near the edge of the forest. Both Cormac and Arabella greeted each other coldly.

"We need to talk" finally said Arabella, only half distracted by the familiar smells coming from the forest. They were still during the last weeks of summer and the weather was magnificent for an outdoors class. She tried to discern what creature they'd be studying. In the distance, it looked like a foal inside a corral.

"We do" was Cormac's curt answer.

"After…. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" Exclaimed Arabella and joined all the girls into running towards the corral.

"Is that?" someone asked

"IT'S A UNICORN FOAL!" screamed Marietta and soon all the girls were in the first line around the corral. Arabella's cold, rational part of her mind knew it was just a golden foal, but it looked soooooo magically cute and gave her such a great opportunity to get away from Cormac that she soooooo stood pressed against the corral staring at the beautiful creature in daft fascination. And Cormac waited at the back because unicorns distrusted boys. Good for him.

The class went rather well, really, even if Professor Hagrid seemed distracted by something and all the girls in the class were distracted by the cute, little, pretty, amazingly beautiful baby unicorn. Arabella regretted not bringing the dicta-quills they've used for Binns' class. Hagrid knew a lot more about unicorns than what the books taught, no doubt due his years as a groundskeeper.

As the class ended Arabella was left wondering if Hagrid was really part human as she had always suspected or if he was a pure wizard who had grown too tall due an accident or something. She had professor Flitwick as an example of a part human who was both amazing and just as capable as any other wizard. But Flitwick was half goblin, and goblins were nearly as smart and powerful as wizardkind. Or at least, as much as a being could be without being a magical human. If Hagrid was only part human, the other part had to be giant…

Cormac took her out of her ruminations "I waited for you at the train. You've never showed up" he said, right after their classmates went their ways to give them space as they all marched back into the castle.

"And did you want to see me on the train?" she answered back, distracted.

"Yes?"

"And you are angry with me" she said, pointing at each other "because I didn't return in time, when you did not want to see me?"

"I never said that. Ritchie did. Are you angry at me for something Ritchie said?" inquired, puzzled, Cormac.

Arabella stopped walking towards the castle at once and wished she knew how to make a silencing charm so she'd be able to scream without, well, screaming. She was indeed angry about something Ritchie, not Cormac, had said. Which, unfortunately, didn't mean she had stopped being angry. "Are you angry at me for not returning to the compartment in less than twenty minutes?" she finally said, to divert the subject.

"Damn" admitted deflated Cormac, who was also angry for something of no fault of hers.

They were near the castle doors. Arabella grabbed his hand "Yeah. Damn. What do we do now?" she asked.

Cormac seemed to think for a moment "How about we go get some drinks at Hogsmeade? We have a few hours until dinner" he smiled.

Arabella, however, raised two fingers "No" she said, grabbing one finger "One: We'll take too long to go there and back without our brooms. Two: there are dementors around the boundaries"

"So? I reckon they don't know about the tunnel" insisted on Cormac.

"And what if they do? One at one end, another at the other. What do we do then?" Arabella walked him into the castle "Ghosts are a pain in the arse, but at least they don't suck your soul out. Then don't sell butterbeer, though. But besides, we need to find new abandoned places before all the firsties claim them!" She said, doing her best to feign enthusiasm. She really wanted to get out of the castle, but she wasn't risking coming face to face with dementors, especially after seeing the effect they had on Cormac. As she saw it, she had two choices: either figure out how to slip between all the twenty-one enchantments surrounding the school undetected while also not drawing attention from the dementors, or find out how to defeat dementors. Neither was easy and, worse, whatever good qualities Cormac may had, finding new pieces of magic wasn't one of them, so she'd had to figure it out on her own. Which sucked.

She went towards the stairs leading to the trophy room, around which they typically hung out when inside the castle, as it was equally distant from both the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor towers "There are so many of them. Firsties, I mean" said Cormac as they went, trying to get her attention.

They ended up breaking into an abandoned potions lab on the third floor. Arabella transfigured an old bench into a wide armchair - a bit rustic and not as finely finished as McGonnagal would have liked, but it would have merited an A anyway. As expected, they hadn't been in there for five minutes when a pair of ghosts glided through the walls and started arguing about some nonsense.

"Bloody hell" exclaimed Cormac.

"At least they aren't dangerous" tried to console both Arabella, deflated.

"Yeah" managed to say Cormac before withdrawing to his end of the armchair, sulking.

"I have some dreamless sleep potion" offered Arabella. It appeared just remembering the dementors put Cormac in a dark quiet mood very unlike him.

"Yes… I mean, let me try a few nights. It's just… Listen, I never really thanked you" said Cormac.

"What for?" inquired Arabella, surprised.

"For stopping me at the train" said Cormac, as if explaining the obvious "I just wanted to get away, and I would have ran straight at the dementor. So thanks, you've stopped me from doing something stupid."

"Your damsel in shiny armor!" she smiled, wondering for the first time how much Cormac had been hiding from her since the dementor attack. And how much she'd hide if she had suffered something as intense as Cormac had. Because it seemed clear the dementor must have made him relieve the death of his mother, or perhaps something even worse. Looking at the ghosts around them, she wondered how she'd act if she was the one going through such a loss.

"I'll stop you from doing something stupid when the chance comes to return the favor" said Cormac suddenly, bringing her back from her ruminations.

"Oh, you silly. You aren't supposed to stop me when I do something stupid. You're supposed to join me!" She laughed.

Cormac chuckled as Arabella proceeded to tickle him, but got withdrawn when she stopped "It's… I didn't remember what I saw. I shouldn't have been able to remember it, so I just wanted to run away"

"Marietta said the same. Not about running, about how she was too young to remember it, and she still did" offered Arabella, putting aside her feelings about how Marietta knew what Cormac had seen and she didn't.

"It's not that" Explained Cormac "I was old enough to remember. I was obliviated of it"

"Wait, obliviated?"

"The mind healers of St. Mungo recommended it. I was too young, so my father authorized it. I was told about what happened years ago. But…"

Arabella just hugged him. 'Fuck dementors' she thought, as she also wondered what exactly had hurt Cormac so much and what kind of magic the dementors wielded that was powerful enough to defeat a memory charm placed by the best mind healers in Britain.