Chapter Text
By June, the charms on Dorcas’ robes have worn down, inky black fading to an uninspiring dark grey, like the wet sludge that builds up on the sides of roads when it snows. There’s a hole forming in the left elbow of the robes. The threads are thin under her fingers. She spends History of Magic picking at it, tugging threads gently over the hole. She ought to be revising.
Robes peppered with holes and the silky green ribbon. Aleria Crabbe will start sneering when she passes Dorcas in the corridor or in the crowded common room. Dorcas’ classmate’s eyes will swivel towards her, burn without a hint of admiration.
Three hours later, Dorcas slips out of the common room with her spare set of robes over her shoulder. They’re in an even sorrier state than the ones she wears as she walks through the dungeons. She checks her collar in the dim and spotted reflection of a lonely suit of armour. There’s moss growing around its feet, glowing an eerie green. It smells like rain. Water drips from above its head. Dorcas straightens her collar. The armour salutes her as she passes.
Colour changing charm, and a simple repairing spell. The librarian had refused to lend Dorcas the necessary advanced Transfiguration textbooks, given that Dorcas had barely demonstrated any skill in the subject so far.
Bolingbroke isn’t Head of Slytherin house, but Professor Rosier has a permanent scowl and nostrils that must spend more time flaring in displeasure than breathing. Once, Aster Parkinson had arrived late to Herbology and spilled an ink bottle over a pot of Devil’s Snare. Rosier had fixed it in about two seconds, but Aster had been scolded for at least five minutes in front of them all and hadn’t said a word for the rest of the period.
Dorcas knocks on Professor Bolingbroke’s office door. The gargoyle above the door yawns with a horrible grinding of stone. It rubs its eyes, looks Dorcas up and down.
“Jane.” It yells, sounding as if it’s got a head-cold. “Slytherin at the door.”
The gargoyle bangs the wall with a stony fist. Pebbles crumble off and land atop a growing pile of dust. It casts an eye back over Dorcas.
“She’ll be just a minute.” It hammers on the wall again. Dorcas gathers her spare robes in her arms.
There’s the sound of bolts sliding. The door opens. Professor Bolingbroke is draped in robes of deep blue trimmed with fur.
“Thank you Molyre.” Bolingbroke addresses the gargoyle in a dry tone, who sits up like the drooling bull terrier owned by the butcher back home. It’s looking down its squashed little nose at Dorcas as she steps over the threshold. Bolingbroke’s hat is almost brushing the top of the doorway.
“Potions trouble?” Bolingbroke asks over her shoulder as she turns back to her desk.
Dorcas perches on the chair. Her ears heat as she speaks.
“Well… Professor…” Her finger finds the hole in her sleeve. The words are stuck in her throat. “I was… well… if it’s not trouble… Could you fix my robes?”
The words tumble out stiffly. Dorcas stares at the robes in her lap so she doesn’t have to see Bolingbroke’s face. The clock on the wall behind Bolingbroke’s head ticks. Dorcas’ ears burn.
“Let’s see them, then.” Bolingbroke raps the desk. Dorcas glances up. The tightness in her throat eases.
She stretches the robes out on the desk. Bolingbroke runs her hands over the fabric. Her false eye shines, sending out a beam of light like a lamp. The light darts up and down the fabric.
“Secondhand?” She asks Dorcas. Dorcas nods. “I had secondhand robes myself.”
“Barely anyone does in Slytherin.” Dorcas says. Her finger has found its way back to the hole in her sleeve. She stares firmly at the clock. There are tiny planets circling the hands.
“Hufflepuff was more forgiving.” Bolingbroke says. “But it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Dorcas purses her lips. Hufflepuff might forgive shabbiness. Slytherin will lift her out of it. But she nods in reply anyway.
Bolingbroke waves her wand. The holes close up; the threads thicken and link together. A second later and the colour is shifting, the grey deepening to a shade that must be almost as dark as Sirius’ robes. Dorcas holds back a smile. Bolingbroke hands her robes back to her. Another flick of the wand and the robes Dorcas wears are weaving back together. The hole over her elbow closes and they settle with new weight like wings curling around her. The fabric is thicker, warmer, darker.
“Thank you.” Dorcas says. They feel new, like they’re made of good fine wool. She runs her hands through the robes.
Bolingbroke waves a hand in her direction.
“You can handle yourself quite well, Miss Meadowes.” Bolingbroke grins. Dorcas hoards the compliment inside her chest, another jewel for her collection. “Tea?”
“Yes, please.” Dorcas says. Bolingbroke jabs her wand at a tarnished brass kettle, which hums to life.
“You ought to show them, if anyone gives you trouble.” Bolingbroke says as she sets two cups down on the table. “None of them know their way around a cauldron half as well as you do.”
“My mother brews potions.” Dorcas says. If Dorcas is being honest, it’s the reason why she’s any good at potions. Bolingbroke tips her head. “But I’m no good at spells.”
Not like Blanche Greengrass. No matter how much she copies Blanche’s movements, she can never get it quite right.
Bolingbroke frowns.
“Most of their parents don’t work for a living. Live off inheritance, get paid to lounge around the Ministry all day. You ever seen those manors in the countryside?” Bolingbroke’s eye shines.
Dorcas nods. On occasion, her mother will get a big order from outside London, and she’ll have to pack her vials in several cases and take Dorcas on the rattling trains to houses which are larger than Dorcas’ whole block.
“They’ll have grown up with tutors coming in and out.” Bolingbroke says. “They’re not better than you because they’re pureblood. They’ve had years more practice.”
Dorcas runs her fingers over the robes in her lap.
“How do you catch up?” She asks. Bolingbroke smiles.
“They get cocky. They’ll slack off.” Bolingbroke says. “You’ll put the work in, they won’t. Sometimes that’s enough.”
Sometimes isn’t good enough for Dorcas, but she nods anyway. The kettle whistles.
The tea keeps her warm all the way back to the common room. Or perhaps it’s the robes, thick as if brand new. Bolingbroke’s charms feel stronger than her mother’s, clinging to her like gleaming armour.
“Revise for potions.” The gargoyle yells after Dorcas, before returning to kneading its paws in the stone like a cat making its bed.
***
“Standard Book of Spells?” Theodore asks. Dorcas tosses the relevant textbook across the table. They’re in the library on a Wednesday night, the week before their exams.
“Spongify… Spongify…” Theodore flicks to the page, brandishing his wand in his other hand. “I can never get it to work.”
“At the least Charms are named after what they do.” Carole Anne says, opening The Wanderer’s Guide: Dark Creatures of the British Isles. “How should I ever remember what a gytrash is?”
Dorcas stays silent. Privately, she can’t see why Charms or Defence is much more difficult than Herbology or Transfiguration. It’d taken her weeks of staring at a matchstick she was just about ready to snap, to turn the flimsy wooden thing into a proper needle. Half the class had already turned snails to thimbles by the time Dorcas was handed a snail of her own.
There are simply too many laws involved with Transfiguration - hold your wand just so, press your magic evenly all through the match, like trying to do arithmetic in a thunderstorm. And Herbology’s not much better - it’s barely magic at all, buried up to your elbows in filth with nothing to show for it but pots full of squirming plants and Professor Rosier glaring over your shoulder.
Dorcas’ Herbology notes are foul, covered in bits of dragon dung fertiliser and the tacky dried sap of Devil’s Snare. Violetta Bulstrode is the best in their house at Herbology. Dorcas glances at her own essays, rolls of parchment crammed into her bag. A large spiked D stares up at her in scarlet ink.
Dorcas winds a finger around the green ribbon in her hair. Violetta owes her from Potions.
But if she goes to Bulstrode for help, soon enough she’ll be sitting in the middle of the common room again, with Sirius clipping out the cartoon strips from the Daily Prophet, newsprint muggles cowering on all fours. Dorcas clenches her fingers on her quill and underlines Puffapod with such ferocity the parchment tears.
She’ll beat Sirius in Herbology. Pristine notes or not. It ought to prove something to them. What, Dorcas doesn’t quite know. That Dorcas Meadowes can be worth more to Slytherin House than the ridiculously inbred Blacks. That Professor Black will have to sign off on a half-blood’s marks higher than his own son’s.
What’s the point of having magic, if it’s not going to make her exceptional?
“You ought to, really.” Carole Anne says, when Dorcas mutters her plan to her across the table. “And I’ll be sure to beat him in Transfiguration.”
Dorcas grins.
***
They pin the exam results up on the wall the Friday before the Leaving Feast. Dorcas is barely awake when a shriek goes up from the stairwell like a banshee.
As it turns out, it’s not a banshee. Dorcas pulls on her dressing gown (standard issue, Slytherin green), over her nightgown and sprints into the stairwell, leaving her covers rumpled.
It's Violetta Bulstrode at the top of the staircase, pointing a shaking finger at the papers tacked to the wall. First Year Examination Results - Transfiguration.
Dorcas locks eyes with Violetta, who’s already beginning to shake. Within seconds, they've dashed back up to the dormitory, where Violetta pounces on Aleria Crabbe (still asleep, pillow over her head), while Dorcas seizes her folded pinafore off the top of her trunk. She changes faster than she's ever changed in her life, as Carole Anne stirs in the bed next to hers and Aleria squawks like a disgruntled owl. Dorcas’ stomach is lurching as she steadies her hands to tie the ribbon into her hair.
Five minutes later, Dorcas is down the stairs again, ribbon firmly tied, pockets crinkling with spare parchment and quill in hand. She's got to note her scores down. The board has already been swarmed by first years in various states of dress - Ajax Eibon’s tie isn’t even done up and Evanora Nott’s shoelaces are unspooling all over the floor.
Dorcas elbows her way through to one of the lists. Sirius is staring intently at Potions with a rather delightful frown on his face.
"Alright, Dorcas?" He asks, without taking his eyes off the list. The names are listed from highest to lowest. Dorcas starts from the Acceptables and glances upwards.
And there, near the top of the list, Dorcas finds her own name. She’s gotten an O. Not quite top of the list, but she’s only a few places down. And Sirius is sitting dead in Acceptable territory.
It feels like being draped in silk and velvet and gleaming pearls. Dorcas can barely suppress the grin. It’s not her mother’s world anymore. Dorcas belongs to it, really belongs to it, billowing robes and pointed hats and cauldrons. Her uniform is as neat and crisp as any other Slytherin’s.
She shuffles over to the next board. If she accidentally elbows Sirius in the shoulder on the way, there's no proof of it.
Potions turns out to be her best class. As expected, she makes the bottom half of Transfiguration. A Poor, but at the least, Dorcas has beaten Aster Parkinson, who actually groans when he sees his Dreadful. She buries the disappointment. Herbology she’s scraped an A, in Astronomy and Charms she’s solidly average and Defence and History of Magic get her an E. She scribbles her grades down.
All in all, Dorcas feels she's done fairly well. But the highlight of the day, the moment she’ll choose to remember, is seeing Sirius reach the Herbology list and watching his eyes fall down, down, further down the page than Dorcas while his expression sours. Twenty names apart, in fact. He’s gotten a Poor. Dorcas grins and turns to glance at Carole Anne, who’s just stepping off the last stair with her hair still tangled in the back.
She squeezes out of the crowd just as Carole Anne starts to shuffle her way through.
“You beat Sirius in Transfiguration, you should see his face.” Dorcas tells her. Carole Anne’s eyes brighten as she hurries off to the boards, where Aleria Crabbe is supporting a faint Aster Parkinson by the shoulders.
"My Pa's going to kill me." Aster whines. Aleria pats his shoulder. Sirius emerges from the huddle.
“Your father’s a Ministry desk worker. He can’t have done much better than you.” Sirius snaps. Aster shrinks back into himself. “Mine’s the Headmaster.”
Aleria glares at him as she deposits Aster onto a sofa. Sirius collapses into an armchair with a loud sigh. A fifth year sitting nearby glares at him over her stack of Charms textbooks.
“I got a P.” Sirius sighs again. “Merlin, I’m going to end up in Muggle Studies with Fitzgerald and Vance.”
Dorcas sits beside Aster and fights the urge to slap Sirius around the face. She can feel the pressure building in her throat when she looks down to see the P beside Transfiguration.
“How’d you go?” Aster asks Dorcas, rather glumly. He looks so much like a kicked puppy that Dorcas considers showing him her Transfiguration grade. But the thought of them knowing, of Sirius or Violetta or Blanche or any of the ones who laugh when the sixth-years taunt muggle-borns, feels like stepping into rooms of velvet drapes and gleaming walnut tables in nothing but her faded robes. Coming apart at the seams.
“Outstanding in Potions.” She says with a smile. Aster’s face falls a little further. “But only Acceptables in Herbology and Charms.”
“Of course.” Sirius rolls his eyes. He screws up his face in a sullen expression.
“Careful.” Dorcas tells him. “If the wind changes, you’ll get stuck like that.”
Aster smothers a smile behind his hand.