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Book 1: Sophie Roper and the House of the Serpent

Chapter 1: The Hangman’s Daughter

Not far from the churchyard in a small village in the West Country, located midway between Taunton and Frome, was the public house known as Hangman’s Hall. Originally the shop and residence of a family of rope-makers, the building had been a pub since the late seventeenth century. The only remaining traces of the original function were the highly detailed ropes braided on the gallows sign, and the name of the family who lived across from the pub, the Ropers.

Although the Ropers had been involved in rope-making for the Royal navy when they settled in the village, they were now by long association confused with the noose and gibbet, and the eldest Mr. Roper was always known around the village as The Hangman, and he had certain mostly honorary duties during various festivals common throughout the year in small villages of this type. The current Hangman was a Mr. David Alison Roper, a youngish forty or so years of age, who lived across from Hangman’s Hall in a large but not opulent house which had been in his family for a very long time indeed.

Mr. Roper was married to a somewhat plain-looking, but exceedingly hard-working and warmhearted woman named Karen Selwyn Roper. The Ropers, with the younger of their two sons and their daughter, led a peaceful and largely uneventful life, enjoying the gentle rhythms of life in the village of Godric’s Hollow. Their older son had gone into government service and was employed in trade regulations in Ireland. The younger son, Bryce, worked at the Hangman's Hall and had unsubtle intentions toward the pub's current owner’s daughter, with eyes towards a match that would keep them both in the village for the rest of their lives.

If there was one soul in the family who seemed in any way to chafe at life in the genteel environs of the family estate and local community, it was the Hangman’s daughter, Sophie Roper. For unlike her parents and her brothers, who been away to school and had their adventures in the world, Sophie, soon to turn eleven years old, had never been anywhere, and yearned for the day that she would leave the dust of the village behind, first for boarding school, and then for a life of adventure and purpose.

The adventure and purpose she knew should have to discover for herself, but the boarding school was a certainty. As her birthday approached, Sophie had taken to sitting on the fence rail which separated the Ropers’ back garden from the graveyard, which along with the village common formed the eastern edge of the village. It was from this spot that young Sophie kept her vigil every morning and evening, constantly on the lookout for owls.

For Sophie Roper, truth be told, was a witch like her mother before her, and her mother, and so on, and her brothers and father, too. Wizards, obviously, for the boys, not witches. But for a century or more on both sides, the Ropers and the Selwyns (her mother’s people) had all been magical folk, and she knew in her bones that her letter would soon come, inviting her to attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Life in the quiet village, which had rather a large number of magical families, considering its modest population, had not agreed with Sophie. She felt, quite strongly from a very early age, that she was destined for something great, some higher purpose beyond the village into which she had been born. The fact that, should she climb the hill on the far side of the common, she would just about see the entirety of Godric’s Hollow was simply intolerable to her. She was clever, and had quickly outstripped the other students at the village primary school, to which she had been sent to learn her letters, music, arts, and maths, but most importantly where she had learned how to blend in with Muggles.

For it was the Muggles, the non-magical people, who currently ran much of Godric’s Hollow, and the West Country, and Britain, for that matter. She supposed, when she stopped to consider it, that Muggles must more or less run the world, and witches like herself were bound by strict statutes of secrecy to never divulge the existence of magic. Many a time she had wanted to hex or jinx one of the slower students in her school, dullard Muggles that were holding her back, though there were other wizarding children in the village who she felt compelled to outstrip as well. Whatever her final calling, whatever it was that was waiting for her in the great wider world, Sophie was fairly certain that it would not wait for Agnes Dowling to at long last master the finer points of multiplication and division.

Still, having not any formal training in magic other than what she observed at home, Sophie could not have jinxed poor Agnes no matter how sincerely she wished to do so. So today, her birthday, as yesterday, the Hangman’s daughter sat on the fence rail and watched for owls.

“Hullo, there,” her father’s voice came from the house, but she kept to her vigil, watching over the graveyard, keenly looking for the sight of an owl winging its way from across the common. “So, how’s our Sophie today, then?”

Her father was a successful and educated wizard, and she knew that he could have worked in London, in Diagon Alley, in the Ministry of Magic, maybe even with the Goblins at Gringotts bank. Instead, he’d finished school, spent an extra year studying potions after his N.E.W.T. exam with a recommendation from his housemaster, Professor Snape, and then rushed right back to Godric’s Hollow with his new bride in hand, as if he’d never left. Now he brewed rare and unusual potions by special commission and occasionally trafficked in especially hard to find ingredients for his trade.

“Not an owl in sight,” she sighed bitterly. Her father’s arms surrounded her, and he lifted her up and off the rail with ease. Her father was a big man, a bit softer in the middle now than in the pictures from his school days, but easily capable of hefting Sophie over one shoulder and twirling her about, a habit she had recently pretended to find annoying but that she secretly feared she would miss terribly when she went away to school.

“Come in and get your supper, child,” her father said, spinning her about, “Your mother’s made it special, your stargazy pie.”

She squealed, totally without dignity, and fairly flew into the house, where she apparently spent insufficient time washing up to satisfy her mum and was forced to walk slowly back to do it again. By the time she reached the table, her brother was on his way out the door for his shift at the pub. 

“Bye now, Sophie,” Bryce called over his shoulder. You enjoy ‘un. And happy birthday!”

He scooped a pasty wrapped in a tea towel under his arm on the way out the door. The Hangman’s House had a fair kitchen, but Karen Roper made the best meat or fish pies in the county and had won the ribbons to prove it. What’s more, she could make them completely without magic, Muggle fashion, when called upon so as to not claim an unfair advantage in a contest. Sophie thought that giving up any advantage in a contest was a foolish way to lose rather than a great sign of nobility, but this was forgotten when her mother set the warm stargazy pie in front of her.

Her favorite food in the whole world, the stargazy pie was so named because, from inside the golden, flaky crust filled with hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, bacon, and mustard-flavored custard, whole sardines poked their heads through the top crust, appearing to gaze at the stars. The sardines were not placed this way just for whimsy, but so their oil was distributed down and kept the piecrust tender and delicious.

Her eyes opened wide as saucers, and she took a moment to consider the special effort that her mother made, making the complex dish just for her birthday celebration. Sophie Roper was very much loved, and despite her desire to seem mature and aloof, she could not contain her smiles as she dished up servings of the stargazy pie, first to her mother, then her father, and finally to herself. She may have taken a rather large portion for herself, but neither parent said a thing as they indulged their only daughter on her eleventh birthday.

“Mother, can we go shopping for my school things soon?” Sophie said around a mouthful of hard-boiled egg and custard. She swallowed mightily, and said more clearly, “We haven’t been to the city together in ages, just ages .”

“Well, I don’t know,” her mother said, eyeing her husband slyly, “We might want to wait until you get your owl, you know.”

Her father added seriously, “That’s true, Mother. Wouldn’t want to have to make another trip to return a bunch of unneeded school things, if’n her letter doesn’t come.”

Sophie dropped her fork with a clatter, the last bites of pie forgotten. She looked with huge, frightened eyes, from her father to her mother and back again. Her voice was quivering, and she was white as a sheet, her pixie-cut brown hair suddenly dark against her pale face. “Doesn’t... doesn't come?”

“Well, it happens, they say. Even pureblood families, every so often, will get a squib,” her father went on sagely, referring to the rare non-magical child that sometimes showed up even in established wizarding families. Neither the Ropers nor the Selwyns had produced a squib in more generations than they had records, but Sophie could not have known this as it was not the sort of thing politely discussed in wizarding families of a certain heritage.

Sophie suddenly jumped to her feet and ran crying from the room.

“Oh, David, now look! You always take it too far, trying to tease her like you do the boys.” They could hear muffled sobbing coming from Sophie’s room upstairs.

Her father threw his napkin down and sighed. “You're right, as usual, Mother. Let me go see if’n I can mend the poor girl’s heart.”

Mr. Roper knocked softly, then opened the door before Sophie could tell him to go away. She was buried face down on her bed, her small body wracked with sobs. He sat beside her, and slowly stroked her hair, letting the tears come before he tried to console her.

“Now, pet, you know your mother was just having a go, don’t you? Why I bet you’re going to be the best witch this family has seen in a century. More, even.”

She sniffled, a long wet sound, and regarded him through her bangs and her tears. She looked as if she didn’t dare hope, and he realized that his teasing must have accidentally touched on the girl’s deepest, private fears. 

“Honestly?” Her voice was heartbreaking.

“Honest,” he said solemnly. “I never should have teased you, pet. You’ve just been so grown up and serious this week, and tonight it hit home that you’ll be going off to Hogwarts soon. I know you want more than the village can offer you, and I’m just not ready to say goodbye just yet.”

Now it was his turn to brush unaccustomed tears from his eyes. “Bryce will probably marry Clara, just a matter of time. Might never move farther away than across the lane, that one. But you, you have your eye on something a great deal farther away than the Hangman’s House, that’s for sure. I’m going to miss you, pet.”

She hugged him, suddenly and savagely. “I may move away, but I’ll always be the Hangman’s daughter, papa.” They sat together, until she began to nod, eyes heavy. He helped her get ready for the night and tucked her into her bed with her stuffed niffler, Goldie.

He was careful to head back down to his wife quietly, but Sophie was asleep before he even closed her door.

You Have Been Warned: https://www.tasteatlas.com/stargazy-pie

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: The Not-Birthday

The following morning, Sophie awoke to find that somehow in the night, she had wriggled and turned until her stockinged feet were on her pillow, and she and Goldie were burrowed deep under her blanket. It was hot and dark and close, but also oddly comforting. They were in their own private world. Still, it was her not-birthday, so she supposed she best see about presents and breakfast, in that order.

Sophie had been born right at the stroke of midnight eleven years previously, and there was a good deal of debate as to whether or not she had been born on 31 July or 1 August, with half the family holding to one date and half to the other. By long-established compromise, her birthday dinner was in July, but her “not birthday” parties, cakes, presents and suchlike were in August. Today being the first day of August, she emerged from her bed to find a small pile of not-birthday presents.

From her older brother, Byron, there was a charmed pot of “Leprechaun Gold,” heavy yellow galleons which vanished seconds after you removed them, only to reappear in the pot. She laughed and set the pot with Goldie, imagining the frustration the niffler would have with an inexhaustible supply of unstealable gold.

A plain brown paper-wrapped parcel from Bryce, which she expected to contain socks or something else equally practical, instead held a bookbag with a strengthening charm, guaranteed to not tear or spill no matter how many textbooks she piled into it. It must have cost him a good many weeks’ wages, and she had to brush away tears when she saw his enclosed note, “Good luck taking over the world. Hogwarts never seen anything like our Sophie!”

From her father, there was a small case, which when opened proved to be a very complete potions kit, filled with tiny vials of rare ingredients, a professional-grade mortar and pestle, and a handwritten list of helpful ways to rescue beginner’s potions gone wrong. It was beautiful, a match for the kit he himself still used every day in his work, and it made her feel very much a part of the long line of Roper potion masters.

From her mother, she did not find anything, until clearing away the wrappings she spotted an envelope. Inside, in addition to a train ticket, was a note from her mother.

“Dear Sophie,

Happiest of not-birthdays. It seems like only yesterday you were red-faced and crying, hanging on your mother and father. Wait, that was yesterday! Seriously, though, I am terribly proud of you and of the young witch you’re becoming. I would like for you to take the enclosed ticket as a sign of our grudging acknowledgment that you are indeed growing up. 

I have arranged for you to spend a week with our friends in London, the Greengrasses, prior to our shopping trip for your school things. You shall ride the train with your Father, who has business in the city and stay for a week with the Greengrass girls, who I am sure you remember from last summer at the seaside. I will collect you after, and we’ll do your school shopping and ride home together. I hate to miss even one more day with you before you leave for school, but you are growing up, and you deserve a little adventure before school begins.

With love, always,

Mother”

Sophie came downstairs, her short hair all higglety-pigglety and her face mock-serious.

“Good morning, Mother. Good morning, Father. I say, is there any coffee?”

Her parents managed a good fifteen or twenty seconds before dissolving into laughter, and Sophie made it perhaps ten seconds more before giggling and smiling broadly.

“Well, if’n our Sophie isn’t grown up, now,” her father managed at last. “She’ll be off to her job running the country, next, Mother.”

“Well, someone had a not-birthday this morning, surely,” her mother agreed, wiping a tear away with the corner of her apron. She laid Sophie’s breakfast on the table, and sat down, using her wand to hotten up her tea casually before relaxing at the table. “Presents met your satisfaction, then?”

“Yes, mum,” Sophie said around an entire rasher of bacon. “Lovely. Thank you so much.”

“You be sure to say something to your brother before he goes over to pub later,” her father said seriously. “He won’t say, but he put in a lot of hours for that bookbag, sent off for it special.”

“Yes, I will.” Sophie paused, a fork full of egg and tomato scramble halfway to her mouth. “It really has been a most excellent morning. I think after breakfast I’ll wash up and take a walk across the common if that’s okay?”

While there were places in Britain where a young girl like Sophie might not be safe walking around alone on a summer morning, Godric’s Hollow was not that sort of place. Other than a famous, scandalous but entirely out of place attack a decade prior, there had not been a serious crime in the Hollow in decades. Plus, the wizarding folk were especially vigilant, watching out not only for their own children but for the Muggles in the village as well. One of the reasons that Mr. Roper had been so keen to return to the village after school, and take up his role as the Hangman from his own father, was the quiet, peaceful life of the village. You still had to go to Castle Cary or Bruton even to catch the London trains, and the motorway had not reached the village either, leaving the lanes largely safe for children, old age pensioners out on a walkabout, or the good many bicyclists around the village.

Still, Sophie was their youngest, and their daughter and part of a parent’s job is to worry. The Hangman considered a moment but then smiled indulgently. “You go do your wandering, but be back a’fore your tea, mind. And don’t forget about your brother.”

“Yes, I shan’t.” She hurriedly shoveled the remaining eggs and bacon between two pieces of toast and wrapped them with her napkin. “Supplies. For later.”

And like a shot, she was off. Her mother and father sat for a moment, enjoying their tea, and trying to adjust to the quiet that soon would be their everyday lot.

Mr. Roper put down his cup and dabbed his lips with a napkin. “That were lovely, my dearest.”

As he went down the stairs to start his workday in his potions lab in the cellar, his wife smiled. She took pen to parchment and began planning out everything she would need for Sophie to pack for her upcoming trip. While they enjoyed the quiet and peace of Godric’s Hollow, both the Ropers had been excellent and successful students, with their pick of magical careers after school. It was by her conscious choice that Karen Selwyn had married Brian Roper and settled down into motherhood, not any lack of magical ability.

With a negligent flick of her wand, the breakfast dishes proceeded into the sink and began scrubbing themselves, while another cup of tea poured itself for her as she diligently filled in her daughter’s list. Sophie went flying past into the back garden, with a shouted farewell and a slammed door, soon after.

Sophie briefly surveyed the horizon for owls, then she climbed over the stile in the back fence, taking her usual shortcut through the graveyard of the old village church. She had grown up with the graveyard, so she never had found it spooky or offputting as some children might have done, nor did she credit the local myth that the grounds were haunted. In fact, she found the graves of the many wizarding families among the many stones comforting, as they showed that her people had lived in the village alongside their non-magical kin for centuries, more or less peacefully.

She noted the names as she passed, from memory more than sight, of the wizards and witches resting there. Ropers, of course, and a couple of Dumbledores, a great old wizard name that meant “bumblebee.” She always buzz-buzzed to herself as she passed those two. A whole slew of Bagshots, down one row to the west. The Potters, with their cryptic epitaph, and a few ancient, weathered stones of the Peverells. Her favorite, just before the gate, was a small white stone, over a century old, for poor Jefferey Fawley. On it, his birth and death dates—five scant years apart—and the unexplained words, “Damn you, Selkie!” in silver across the bottom.

Sophie passed through the gate and turned onto the common. Old Mrs. Bagshot’s goat Daniel was nosing among some weeds by his tie post. A young Muggle family was struggling to get a kite into the air, the red-faced father puffing as he ran back and forth with his golden-haired son on his shoulders holding a string. The usually reliable breeze over the hill was wavering in the warm summer air, and the kite would quickly fall each time it cleared the child’s shoulders.

Still, the boy’s mother was urging them on, and the father was gamely jogging back and forth while his son laughed in a high, clear voice that reached Sophie clearly across the common. She took a moment to watch them, and for a moment wondered if, when she got her wand, she would send a friendly puff of wind their way to save the father from his labors. Probably not, she decided. There were very strict rules about the kind of magic one was allowed to do around Muggles, even in Godric’s Hollow.

Sophie edged around the hill, with no particular destination in mind but not wishing to intrude on the Muggles with their kite. She remembered one evening after her brothers had come home from school; she could not have been more than four or five. Byron had brought her and Bryce to the common with some old family broomsticks. With a few protective concealing charms in place, the boys had tried to teach her the basics of flying, but she’d not been much use. Byron had spent a lot of the evening with one hand reaching back to the end of her broomstick, dragging her around the common six or seven feet off the ground, while she had madly shouted that the was flying, “REALLY flying!” She thought about that day as she watched the Muggle father, lifting his hands from his knees, standing straight again and running, running with his son across the hill while the little red kite trailed behind them.

She was reaching The Neck, her own name for a spot where the brook on the far side of the hill had been partially blocked by a fallen tree, and an occasional pond now formed every spring. Despite the heat today, it had been a wet spring and a cool summer, so there was still a small pond in the depression near the book, and she had planned on making leaf boats to sail on it.

Instead, she slowed as she approached The Neck, hearing someone else in what she thought of privately as her special spot. She looked through the brush and saw Agnes Dowling of all people sitting on the fallen log. Her shoes were off, but her legs were too short for her feet to reach the water left in the shallow pond from her perch. Just as Sophie was about to say something cross in the hopes of making Agnes go away, she saw that the girl was crying. Her black hair was a mess, one ponytail almost falling loose while the other was uneven. Her face was red, and she was wiping her nose against the short sleeve of her t-shirt miserably.

Sophie was turning to go, wanting to give the Muggle girl her privacy when she stepped on a briar thorn and cursed softly as it poked her foot through her trainer.

“Who’s there?” Agnes called, belligerently. “I see you! Who is that?”

While this situation was already awkward and embarrassing enough, Sophie would not want to be caught running and be called a spy. She stepped out where Agnes could see her.

“Sorry. Just me.” Sophie tried to avoid meeting the crying girl’s eyes. “I was just going to float some leaves. Didn’t mean to intrude.”

Agnes glared at her, but then her face fell and her shoulders slumped.

“No, it’s not your fault. I suppose everyone will know soon enough, the way I can’t stop blubbering. Might as well come out.”

Sophie stepped down to the edge of the pond, noting a few small frogs hiding among the grasses at the water’s edge. She glanced at Agnes, sideways, and mumbled something conciliatory sounding.

Agnes just sat, still slumped. “Just as well we’re changing schools. Sure you’ll do fine, wherever it is you’re off to.” Sophie had vaguely mentioned going away to school in reply to questions about her plans after the Hollow’s Primary. “Now I’ll be called the crying one as well as the stupid one.”

“You’re not stupid,” Sophie said automatically, forgetting that just the day before she had been cursing slow Agnes Dowling for holding her back. “You were fine in school, mostly.”

“This year, it’s just all gone to shit,” Agnes said, shocking Sophie, who rarely used profanity, certainly not casually with a school acquaintance. “I just couldn’t keep on my lessons, not after… Well, it was just hard, wasn’t it?”

She had a sort of quiet pleading in her voice that Sophie picked up on, and she made a decision that leaf boats would wait for another day. She approached the log, removed her shoes and socks, and then sat down, a short distance from the other girl, but close enough for a private conversation.

“Want to talk about it?” She asked hesitantly.

“No!” Agnes snapped, then immediately lunged across the log, and wrapped her arms around Sophie’s waist before the poor witch could think to move. “I’m sorry, it’s not your fault, I’m sorry!”

Sophie awkwardly patted Agnes on the head, and let her cry noisily for a bit, then gently helped the girl disentangle herself from Sophie and sit up. She sat, in awkward silence, her naturally kind and curious nature at war with her proper British desire to avoid any topic of personal conversation, especially emotional conversation.

“It’s my dad,” Agnes said at last, her voice so small that Sophie almost missed it.

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said, wondering how long it would be before she could gracefully excuse herself and go literally anywhere else. Would thirty seconds be courteous enough? Twenty?

“He’s got the cancer,” the other girl said, the word coming out like an Unforgiveable Curse.

“That sounds bad,” Sophie said. She was not actually sure what the cancer was, but Agnes’s tone left no doubt about how terrible she considered it to be. “Is there anything they can do?”

Sophie had decided that the words “anything” and “they” in this sentence were safely vague enough.

“It doesn’t look like,” Agnes said. “He might have six months, as much as a year if’n he takes the treatments, he says.”

Sophie’s eyes grew wide and round, and she turned to face Agnes squarely. 

“Your father… your father is going to die ?” 

The thought was astonishing. She knew that Muggles often didn’t live as long as wizards and witches, but the idea that someone her age, that she herself, might have someone in her family just die was beyond her experience.

Agnes, admirably, did not dissolve into tears or flee in terror as Sophie would have done but instead nodded resolutely. This must have been on her mind for some time, Sophie realized, and she had just caught the girl in a moment of particular weakness.

“How long have you known?” Sophie didn’t want to pry, but she felt a horrid fascination, unable to resist finding out more.

“He found out before Christmas. Didn’t let me know until after, of course. Didn’t want it spoiled, did he?” The matter-of-fact way that Agnes related this information was as horrific to Sophie as the idea itself. She imagined her own father, who she had just seen earlier at breakfast, working away down in his brew shop, never letting Sophie see his tears. Her mother, stoically preparing stargazy pie and egg breakfasts, waiting until Sophie went off about her own business before she cried into her apron. She imagined throwing open the door to the cellar and finding it dark, empty.

She suddenly found herself with Agnes Dowling in her arms, her tears falling into the girl’s longish black hair.

“I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!”

Now it was time for Agnes to awkwardly pat at Sophie, and after a time, the two sat quietly, staring into the shallow pond.

“Well, look at me, ruining things for you and your boats.” Agnes heaved herself heavily to her feet and walked barefoot along the log towards the grass. As she let Agnes pass, Sophie suddenly called out.

“Would you like to stay? We can float leaf boats together if you like. I know that sounds stupid.”

Agnes smiled, ever so slightly. “Really? With you? That would be nice, yeah. Change is as good as a rest, as my dad… as folks say.”

They created an armada of tiny boats, each made of a leaf folded so that one end became a sail. They chased frogs, but then released them. They washed their hands and feet in the brook, and Sophie shared her provisions of egg scramble and bacon. When the sun rose too high and became oppressive, they burrowed back into the cool leaves by the brook, where they shared complex stories of pirates and adventures.

Agnes learned that Sophie’s older brother lived in Ireland. Agnes's mother was from there, but she had no recollection of the woman. It had just been Agnes and her dad so long as she could remember. Sophie learned that Agnes was self-conscious about her struggles at school, and had started falling behind as she took over more and more chores for her father, who still worked long hours. He worked in the next village in a shop that sold expensive cheeses, mostly to tourists and buyers for restaurants in the surrounding area,

Many of the cheeses he made and sold went far around the world by post, and in the drawing-room of their cottage, he’d placed a big map on the wall. On it, he and Agnes placed pins for every place her father had sent his cheeses, and they called it the Adventure Map, and they joked that one day they would go to each place, and they would ask after their cheeses and hear their stories. Agnes said this with a red face, but Sophie thought it was amazing and encouraged her to go on. It was only after Agnes had grown very quiet that Sophie realized that they both knew now that Agnes and her father would never take their cheese adventure. The two girls sat in the quiet, cool leaves until Agnes sat up suddenly.

“It isn’t half late!” She peered out at the sky. “I have to be getting home!”

“I do as well,” Sophie said. “But we can see each other again soon?”

“You think?” Agnes paused from where she was tying her trainers. “You’d want to?”

“More than anything,” Sophie answered at once. “Tomorrow afternoon, by the graveyard gate? I’ll bring sandwiches.”

“Thanks, Sophie.” Agnes blushed as she stood and dusted herself off. “To be honest, I didn’ think you much cared for me. Been a surprising day, this.”

“I’m sorry that it took so long for me to get to know you,” Sophie admitted. “See you tomorrow!”

The two girls ran off in the early evening summer sun, towards their respective homes.

When Sophie arrived and barrelled through the door, her mother was clearly about to comment on her tardiness. Before she could say a word, Sophie ran to her and threw her arms around her mother, squeezing her tightly and kissing against her side as she held on.

Sophie pulled back and searched the room quickly with her eyes. “Where’s Papa?”

“He just went to wash up. What’s got into you?” But her mother was talking to an empty kitchen as Sophie had raced out looking for her father.

A moment later, the Hangman entered the kitchen, the Hangman’s daughter swinging like a pendulum on his chest, her arms around his neck.

“So, what’s all this about?” he asked his wife.

“No idea, Brian,” she said. “But see if you can peel her loose and we’ll see about getting food on the table.”

Sophie craned her neck so she could plead with her mother while still holding onto her father’s neck. “Please Mum, please? Can we go to Hangman’s House, and say hello to Bryce and Clara? We can have dinner there, and you and father can have cider, and I’ll have a shandy, and we’ll all be together? Please?”

She looked to her husband, who shrugged. They usually went about every fortnight or so to the pub, just to check in with the neighbors and stay connected to the goings-on in the village. They didn’t usually go on the spur of the moment, but there was no reason they couldn’t.

Her mother nodded and moved to go past them. “Just let me put on something decent if we’re out to the pub.”

Suddenly, Sophie had an arm around each of her parents and was very nearly spun around in the air. “I love you both. I love you so much, I never say it enough.”

The couple looked at one another in amused confusion, and Brian grabbed Sophie and disconnected her from her mother, setting her down on her feet.

“Now, you go take a proper wash, and then you pop over and let Clara know we’re coming by shortly. And no shandy, mind. You get a lemonade for yourself, hear?”

“Yes, papa,” she said, already heading to wash up. The Hangman shook his head and prepared happily for what qualified in his world as an unexpected family evening out.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Friends and Families

Bryce Roper was more than surprised to find himself yawning, still half asleep, with his sister bouncing impatiently on the side of his bed. He’d worked until late, well after his family’s surprise visit to Hangman’s Hall had ended the previous evening. He rubbed at his eyes, and groggily grunted a greeting to Sophie.

“Morning, little monkey,” he grumbled. “What’s got you all excited then?”

Now that she was certain her brother was awake, Sophie was suddenly almost still, and said in a serious voice, “I was so busy yesterday, I forgot to thank you for my not-birthday present. It really is wonderful and means ever so much.”

He grinned, and ran an appraising hand over the very, very fine stubble on his chin which he had been cultivating for the last week. “Is that all? You’re welcome, but weren’t nothing.”

He yawned again and stretched. 

“Could have waited until I’ve had my coffee, I’m sure,” he said. Now that he was a working man, and late nights as well, he had insisted on switching from tea to coffee, which he took with four sugars and quite a bit of milk as he had not actually adjusted to the bitter flavour yet.

“Oh, yes,” said Sophie, indicating his bedside table. On it was a large mug of pale, milky coffee and a few pieces of toast slathered in butter and jam. “I brought you some breakfast.”

He eyed her suspiciously as he sat up and swung his legs out of bed, taking a large but from a piece of toast. Satisfied that she was not trying some sort of prank, he took a sip of his coffee. Light, and extra sweet.

“All right, monkey,” he said at last, “what is it that you want? I’m sure you’re not here buttering up your brother for no particular reason.”

Her look was so perfectly innocent and artless that he was certain it was faked.

“Can’t a sister just show her brother some gratitude? Must everything have an ulterior motive?”

He raised an eyebrow and took another bite of toast. She faltered under his suspicion.

“Okay, you win. I have some questions for you. But I honestly did mean to thank you for the bookbag. I promised Papa I would, and then the day got away from me.”

He relented and offered her a piece of toast, which she accepted.

“You’re welcome, again. Now as to these questions, I’ll do my best. Fire away.”

She nibbled nervously at the corner of her toast, something which he could not recall seeing before. Sophie did not let worries interfere with food. After a minute or so, she finally burst out with several questions at once.

“Why did you come back to the Hollow? Why did Byron leave? And what is it like to live at Hogwarts, and how do you get sorted into the right house? Why don’t Muggles live as long as we do? And what—”

He held up a hand. “Hey, slow down there!”

She folded her hands together as if physically holding back more questions.

“It sounds,” Bryce told her, “like you have a good many questions today. Why don’t we both get dressed, and see if Mum needs anything from the shops? We’ll go for a walk ‘round the village and see if we can’t get some of your answers. All right?”

“Thank you!” She unfolded her coltish legs and bounced to her feet with the energy possessed only by an excited eleven-year-old. “You’re the best brother!”

As she was dashing out to get dressed, he called after her, “I’ll be telling Byron you said that!”

As they prepared to go into the local P.O., the Post Office store, Bryce handed Sophie a 20p coin in Muggle money. She turned it over in her fingers, noting the curious shape. She had been taught the basics of Muggle currency, of course, but had rarely handled anything but the odd 10p coin for milk money.

“That’s for sweets,” Bryce said, “so pick careful.”

While Bryce collected some things for their mother, Sophie looked at the assortment of candies, chocolates, and biscuits available. She found a smallish packet of chocolate biscuits, 10p apiece, and presented her coin for two of them. Bryce pointed out a larger packet, but Sophie declined, saying she’d rather have two packets. He laughed and they began walking home.

In fact, she had decided that she would bring Agnes Dowling her own packet of biscuits, rather than offering to share. It seemed more dignified. Sophie got the impression that Agnes did not often get treats, given her situation.

“Bryce,” Sophie asked hesitantly as they walked along the lane towards home, “can you answer something for me?”

“I can try, sure’n,” he said, eating a crisp from the small bag he had purchased. He had promised his mother that he would never waste his money on crisps over at the pub, so he was forced to sneak them from time to time on trips to the P.O.

“What is—” Sophie lowered her voice as Mrs. Anderson crossed their path with a murmured ‘good day’ and a wave. “What exactly is the cancer ?”

“Where did you hear about that?” he asked, surprised. “You been reading the Muggle paper again?”

“Something like that,” Sophie said. She felt bad lying to Bryce, especially when asking for his help, but she didn’t feel that Agnes’s story was hers to tell. “Do you know?”

“Well,  I’m not up on all the details, mind,” Bryce said, “but I’ve heard of it. Cancer’s a kind of Muggle disease. It doesn’t spread like a cold, or the dragon pox, or nothing, it seems as though some Muggles just get poorly with it. Oh, and there’s all different sorts. They can get it in their skin, the brains or lungs, even in their blood. Sometimes they get better with some kind of Muggle medicine, sometimes they don’t.”

“And if they don’t… they can die?” She tried to keep the horror from her voice, but Bryce reached over and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly.

“Don’t you worry none, now,” he said. “Never heard of any wizard catching the cancer. You just let yer Mugglefolk worry about that.”

Sophie finished their walk in thoughtful silence.

“Mum, I’m meeting a friend for a picnic today. May I take the straw basket?”

Mrs. Roper looked up from her ledger. She spent one day per week updating her husband’s accounts. Her eyes were large behind the magical magnifying spectacles she wore to enlarge and clarify her husband’s handwriting in his receipt book. How anyone ever read the scrawlings of a healer to a potions master without such help was beyond her understanding.

“A picnic? Well, I suppose. It’s a nice enough day. But next time, ask before you arrange to see a friend. Is it Tilda Crooks?”

Sophie made a face, imagining the wheedling, simpering girl from the year below her at school. Her older siblings were okay sorts, but Tilda was a damp rag all through. 

Her mother chuckled and asked, “Oh, must be that Caleb Kettles, then? He is a pretty lad.”

Caleb Kettles was in her year, and the oldest son of a respectable wizarding family. He was also the color of oatmeal with not enough cream, and whistled through the prominent gap in his front teeth whenever he breathed.

“Ew! Mother!” Sophie laughed through her outrage. “It’s just a girl from my year, we talked yesterday, and I’d like to see her today, is all. May I use the basket, please?”

“You may, and have a good lunch. There’s corned beef in the icebox, and a loaf fresh yesterday in the breadbox. Don’t take all my apples, mind, I want some of those for the pork roast tonight.”

“Yes, Mum, thank you.”

Sophie made a stack of sandwiches, some with and some without mustard as she did not know how Agnes preferred them. A small jar of sweet pickles, two apples, and a few peeled carrots joined the sandwiches in the basket. After peeking in to see that her mother was still bent over the accounts, Sophie added the charmed jug of milk that would stay good and cold for at least the afternoon.

Covering the lunch with an old blanket they could use, she hefted the basket in both arms and made for the back garden. As she carefully lowered the basket over the fence into the graveyard before following after it herself, a very large, tawny owl swept silently overhead, unnoticed, towards her house.

She hurried through the graveyard, a bit concerned that she was late. Just as she arrived at the gatepost, she saw Agnes coming over the hill. Sophie set down the basket, and she waved as the other girl approached.

“Hello, Agnes,” she said warmly.

“Hi, Sophie,” Agnes said, breathing heavily. “Sorry if’n I’m late. Chores took longer than I thought.”

“Not at all,” Sophie replied. “I just got here myself. Are you thinking we should eat on the common? Or will it be too hot?”

“What about over by the pond, like yesterday? It stayed pretty cool under the trees.”

“Over by the Neck, that’s a great idea.” Agnes looked at her in confusion. “The Neck is what I call that little bend in the creek, just my own name for it.”

“I like that. The Neck. Never had a name, just thought of it as a nice spot. Makes it sound like a real place.”

Agnes reached out and grabbed one handle of the basket without being asked, and they carried it much more easily across the hill towards the Neck. Agnes did not have a basket, but she carried a school bag slung over one shoulder which bulged with unknown contents. Being slightly broader in the shoulders and more solid in the legs than Sophie, Agnes seemed to have no problem carrying both her bag and her share of the weight of the basket. Sophie noticed that her pigtails, once again, were uneven, though not so bad as yesterday.

They arrived at their selected spot, and Sophie began spreading out the blanket and unpacking the sandwiches, milk, and fruit she had brought. She saw Agnes looking sheepishly at all the food, and Sophie said casually, “I hope you don’t mind, but since I promised to bring sandwiches, I went ahead and brought food for us both.” She added the carrots and the pickles.

Anges nodded and sat across from Sophie, her red knees poking to the sides as she folder her legs under her. She was wearing her somewhat threadbare uniform skirt from the recent school year, as she had yesterday, and another t-shirt. This one was robins-egg blue and seemed to fit better than yesterday’s had done. She folded her hands in her lap, and she spoke politely.

“Very kind of you, Sophie. You don’t have to feed us both, I brought summat.” She opened her bag, and a banana, a thin butter and cucumber sandwich, and several paper-wrapped parcels of odd sizes and shapes tumbled out.

“That’s lovely,” Sophie said, while privately noting that Agnes’s meal seemed very meager, certainly not what her own mother would have considered sufficient for a growing girl.

“Why don’t we do splits?” Sophie asked. “I’ve got two apples, that’s easy. I have corned beef my mum made, with or without mustard…”

Agnes’s eyes lit up. “I do fancy mustard if you can spare it.”

“Well, you best take these then. I can have the ones without, thank you.” Sophie immediately pushed two sandwiches across to Agnes. Sophie very much liked mustard on her sandwiches, but she liked the idea of her new friend not spending the day hungry rather more.

“Well, this is just cucumber and butter, but you’re welcome to it if you like.” Agnes nudged her sandwich towards Sophie. Sophie promptly tore it in half and gave the slightly larger half back.

“I shall save my half for after the corned beef,” she said. “Sort of like a break before the sweets.”

“Sweets?” Agnes bit her lip and looked somewhat forlornly in her school bag as if it might suddenly produce a handful of toffees or a pair of chocolate bars.

“Oh, yes. My brother gave me some pocket money at the P.O.” Sophie reached into her pocket and pulled out the packets of biscuits.

“I hope you don’t mind, I got one for each of us, since they were small.”

Agnes folded her arms across her chest.

“What are you at, Roper?” Her voice was hard and suspicious. “We were never friendly until yesterday, and now you’re bringing a huge food basket, special sweets. This is because of my dad, innit? You told your mum, and now she’s all on you to do charity?”

Agnes grabbed at her banana and started stuffing things back into her bag.

“Agnes, please!” Sophie reached for her, but Agnes pulled away angrily. “Please! I promise, I didn’t tell my mum anything, just that I’d made a friend. I wouldn’t do that to you, tell someone what you told me like that.”

“Well, what about all this?” Agnes said, waving her hand at the food scattered over the blanket.

Sophie cast her eyes down. “I did get you extra biscuits, just to be sure you got some. But the food, if I was making a lunch, this is what I’d do. Honest, I just didn’t want you to feel badly, or to be hungry, when I had all I need.”

Agnes frowned. “You’re a real odd duck, Roper.”

Sophie nodded. “Not the first time I’ve been told that, or worse. I have two brothers, remember.”

Agnes settled back down. “Sorry, ‘bout before. Been a bit touchy, lately. I didn’t mean to accuse you of nothing.”

“I should have just told you, or asked. I don’t have very many friends, really. Always working on my studies or my plans for after school. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“ Pax ?” Agnes put her hand over her heart.

“ Pax ,” Sophie agreed, hand likewise passing over her heart. “Now, about those bloody sandwiches…”

Agnes laughed at Sophie’s forced attempt at cursing. They divided the food, including the small paper packages Agnes had brought which turned out to be odd ends and bits of cheeses her father had brought home from his store.

They ate, and talked about nothing, assignments at school they had liked or hated, boys who were dreamy (hardly any) or horrific (almost all), and so on. Some of the cheeses were very odd, with bits of mushroom or chard or such in them, but a few were excellent. Sophie fell in love with a cranberry Wensleydale, which Agnes generously refused to share with her so that Sophie ate the entire piece, along with bites from her apple.

Pretty soon, surrounded by apple cores, a banana peel, and a few cheese rinds, the two girls were lying, heads together and feet extending in opposite directions off the blanket. They were failing utterly to suppress a series of cheesy burps, some with mustard, some without, as they stared up at the trees arching over their heads.

After they had been quiet for some time, Agnes asked abruptly, “If you could do magic, or a genie’s wish, like, what would you do?”

Sophie’s eyes darted around, trying to figure out what to say. Had she been discovered? Was this the end of her magical life? Would her parents’ wands be broken, and the whole family obliviated, or shipped off to Azkaban? She tried to take a deep breath, but somehow she couldn’t make her lungs work, and she only managed a little squeaking sound.

“I just wonder, you know,” Agnes continued casually, “on account of my dad. We were talking last night, about everything. I told him I was wishing on every star, you know, and looking for a lucky penny. He got in a right huff. Told me my wishes for my own dreams, and not his. I let him win, but inside, you know, in my heart, I don’t think he’s looking at it right. Why can’t him being around until I’m good’n grown be my own wish? Doesn’t seem fair.”

Sophie calmed herself. She reached up over her head, and patted at Agnes’s shoulder, very nearly poking her in the eye by accident. “It surely doesn’t seem fair to me, either.”

“Tell you what,” Agnes said after a while. “Make you a deal. I’m going to wish for you, nothing but good things, success at that school of yours, all that. And if you find that you have a wish to spare for me sometime, you could use it for my dad. Would that be alright? I’d not be wishing anything for him direct, that way.”

“I promise you, Agnes. If I get a wish… or some kind of, of magic,” she crossed her fingers against the Statute of Secrecy, “I promise you I’ll do anything I can for your dad.”

“That’s settled then.” Agnes sounded drowsy, the warm day, the full stomachs, and the cool breeze under the trees making them both very sleepy.

I promise, on my name of Sophie, on my family as a Roper, on my blood as a witch, if I can help Mr. Dowling, I will. So mote it be. Sophie drifted off herself, her vow still echoing in her heart.

When Sophie came back home, empty basket and leaf-covered blanket in hand, her mother was standing, hands on her hips, in the back garden, looking out over the fence. The late evening summer sun was setting over the house, casting long shadows across the graveyard. Sophie and Agnes had spent another long afternoon daydreaming, telling stories, and spending idle summer hours unsupervised in the way of eleven-year-olds out of school. Sophie had braided Agnes’s pigtails, finally getting them even, and Agnes had taught Sophie how to skip a flat rock across the small pond, sending small frogs diving for cover from the long grass.

“Sorry, Mum,” Sophie said with a chagrined smile. “Agnes and I were playing on the common, and I didn’t mean to be late.”

“Well, I’d like you to think about what would have happened if I had to send your father out looking for you in the dark, young missy.”

Sophie nodded. “It won’t happen again. I promise to be more careful.”

“You go wash up for supper, and while you’re about it, your father left something for you. On your bed.”

“Yes, Mum.” Sophie put the basket back under the counter in the kitchen, and even shook out the blanket and added it to the pile of laundry before going up to wash and see what her father had left for her.

Still drying her hands on her skirt, she entered her room to see, propped on her pillows next to Goldie and his Leprechaun gold, a large envelope with a golden seal, addressed in green ink to “Ms. Sophie Roper, the Hangman’s Daughter, 13 Peverall Place, Godric’s Hollow, Somerset.”

With trembling hands, she carefully opened the seal, and read the first page of the enclosed letter, written in the same emerald ink on warm, golden parchment:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,

Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Ms. Roper,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

The term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 5 August.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

“MUM!” Sophie called, turning to see both her parents standing in her bedroom doorway, their faces alight.

“Our Sophie sounds excited,” her father said dispassionately.

“My word,” her mother replied. “She must have gotten too much sun today. Perhaps she needs her bed early tonight.”

Sophie looked from one of them to the other sputtering. “Bed? Bed?! They need my reply owl in three days! I haven’t shopped, or packed, or—”

“Calm down, pet,” her father said indulgently. “I think yer mum and I can recognize those letters by now. We replied this afternoon, right after the fella brought you this. Amazed he slipped in past your patrol. Owl the size of an albatross, he was. You’ll have to work on that.”

I’m a real witch, Sophie thought fiercely. I truly am. I’m going to help Agnes, and be the greatest witch the family has ever seen. And I won’t let anything stand in my way!

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: The Grass is Always Greener

Sophie sat on the blue fabric seat, looking intensely out the window as the Muggle world of southwestern Britain slid by. Her father sat next to her, reading the Guardian and making occasional “tut-tut” sounds, part of his “Muggle disguise” for rail journeys. They had been on the Great Western Railway train since it had left Castle Cary an hour ago, and they still had another hour before they arrived at London’s Paddington Station.

“Papa, tell me about your first trip to school,” Sophie said, not for the first time. “Did you ride the train to London as well?”

“I did, though not so quick in my day,” he said, not looking up from his paper. “Seemed to take hours and hours, it did. Mind, I hadn’t been able to sleep, so I was pretty tired.”

“I can imagine,” Sophie said, watching the countryside roll by. “Have we any lemon squash left?” 

He folded the paper down and looked at her over the page.

“What did I say, last time?”

She lowered her eyes. “If I drank all that squash, I’d have to run to the toilets again.”

“And what happened?”

“I drank the squash.”

“And?”

“Oh, fine,” she said and went back to looking out the window. She wished that she had brought Goldie along. Not that she still needed a stuffed animal. Sophie was eleven now and a proper witch, about to go to Hogwarts, and she did not need a stuffed animal. Still, riding the train with her father, staying by herself with the Greengrass sisters, and meeting her mother in a week for shopping in Diagon Alley was quite a series of adventures. It was just a shame that Goldie would miss it, she rationalized.

She sat back and tried again to remember everything she could about the Greengrass sisters, Daphne and Astoria, who she had met during a seaside holiday the previous summer. While Sophie had been nearly ten, Daphne had been ten since the end of the school term and had made something of a show of being the oldest. Despite this, she and Sohpie had gotten along well. They had made castles of sand and stones on the beach, had splashed cheerfully in the cool water, and had rather enjoyed being older than Astoria, who had not yet turned eight and would not do so until after school started again. Astoria, for her part, was a quiet and well-behaved girl who didn’t go in for all the blubbering and wheedling that is sometimes expected of the younger sister. Sophie, being a younger sister herself appreciated this and had formed a sort of camaraderie with young Astoria.

Both of the sisters were fair, with delicate features, pretty blonde hair which was constantly being brushed out straight by their mother, the rather imposing Mrs. Greengrass. Neither seemed to favor their father, who was rather darker, short, and somewhat thick in the middle, and who had spent most of the trip talking politics with Sophie’s father, something her father had pretended to enjoy primarily for his wife’s sake. Sophie’s mother had enjoyed the company of the Greengrasses very much, as apparently the Selwyns and Greengrasses had been united by marriage, business, and politics for a very long time.

The only thing that had made a strong impression about Mr. Greengrass was the way he had scowled when a pair of young Muggle boys had come along, splashing along the edge of the sea. He had continued to make a sour puss until the boys had moved on, followed by an elderly gran trudging along patiently behind them.

With the rattle of the train car on the rails and the warm comfort of her father beside her, Sophie drifted off somewhat, only to jolt awake when her father stood up. She realized they had passed through the edges of the city, and stopped inside Paddington Station, and it was time to leave the train. She hurriedly gathered her things, as her father hefted her case under one strong arm.

“Come on, pet,” he said, “Don’t want to keep your friends waiting, do we?”

Sophie was surprised to see that the Greengrasses were waiting with their mother at the end of the platform. She somehow found the elegant, formal Mrs. Greengrass wildly out of place, in her fancy robes, among all the Muggles and bustle of a rail platform. As she and her father approached them, however, Sophie saw that the witches waiting for them were standing in the middle of the platform, while the Muggles around them split like a river around a rock, not acknowledging their presence at all. They must be using a Notice-Me-Not or something similar, she realized.

“David,” Mrs. Greengrass said warmly, nodding to her father. “Lovely to see you.”

Her tone was pleasant, but she made no move to embrace, or even gesture. She was very tall and regal, standing there as the crowd parted around her. Sophie remembered her manners as her mother had instructed.

“Thank you for coming to meet us, Mrs. Greengrass. I’m very happy to be invited to stay with you.”

The two Greengrass girls looked at Sophie a bit oddly, as if apprehensive for some reason, but they relaxed markedly when their mother spoke to Sophie, who wasn’t sure it was not her own nerves that made her imagine it.

“Of course.” Mrs. Greengrass looked at her, and then smiled a momentary smile which faded as quickly as it had arrived. “Well, let us get back to Garden Hall, and see if we can get you changed into something more… suitable.” 

Sophie’s smile faltered a bit, and she cast a quick glance at her father. She was wearing leather shoes with ankle socks, a navy skirt that passed her knees, and a white blouse with a navy jumper. She had thought she looked quite smart and had even spent time making sure her hair was brushed, her nails were clean, and that she had her hands and face scrubbed pink. By no means a fussy girl, this was the height of presentable for Sophie.

Her father said nothing, but his hand on her shoulder gave a reassuring little squeeze.

“It’s lovely that you’ve come,” Daphne spoke, at last, leaning forward to give Sophie a quick embrace. “We’re ever so excited to have you.”

“Ever so,” Astoria added. Sophie realized that both girls were wearing dressy robes like their mother, not Muggle-type clothing. Perhaps that was what their mother meant by suitable.

“Thank you both,” Sophie said, feeling much more comfortable speaking to the girls.

“Will you be joining us for tea, before you must go and leave the girl with us, David?” Mrs. Greengrass seemed perfectly content speaking over Sophie’s head as though she wasn’t there. This sort of thing usually rankled the admittedly precocious Sophie, but she was happy to ignore it for now.

“I’m afraid I have other demands today, Alora.” He leaned down to give Sophie a quick hug, and she squeezed him tightly. The idea of a week with the Greengrasses had quickly gone from an exciting possibility to a somewhat daunting reality. Fortunately, she was saved by the timely intervention of the girls.

“We have an elf to take care of your trunk if you’d like,” Daphne said, gesturing to a small, hooded figure standing just behind Mrs. Greengrass. What had appeared to be a small child with a hood proved to be a house-elf with a scrap of cloth wrapped around her, much like an Arabian princess in her silks.

“Oh,” Sophie said, feeling very provincial and obvious even as the sound escaped her lips. “Thank you.”

Her father set down the trunk, and Sophie gave him a hug and a kiss on his cheek.

“You be a good girl, mind, and do as your told.” His voice was gruff but she saw a twinkle in his eye that might have been a tear. “Your mother’s arranged to pick you up on Friday, so I’ll see you on the weekend. Bye now.”

“Bye, Papa.” With a brief nod to Mrs. Greengrass and her girls, her father was gone, walking along the platform and blending in reasonably well with the Muggles.

“How do we get to your home from here?” Sophie asked Daphne, looking around at the cavernous Muggle train station.

“Our elf will take all your things, and there’s a floo connection just across the way,” Daphne said with the sophistication of a city-dweller. “We have to hurry, now. Once Pollyberry takes your trunk, the Notice-Me-Not won’t last in this crowd.”

Daphne took her arm and leaned in to share a confidence in Sophie’s ear. “Mother hates dealing with Muggles, so we really should go.”

Without discussion, Daphne’s mother turned and strode from the platform towards a small alcove inside the station proper. Behind them, Sophie could hear the sharp crack of the apparating house-elf. Inside the alcove, Alora Greengrass tapped a small cupboard door with her wand smartly, and they entered, to find a magically roaring fire, with a large urn of floo powder placed conveniently to either side.

“Go along, Astoria, and Daphne, right behind.”

“Yes, mother,” the girls chorused, each taking a pinch of powder. They threw them into the grate, which reared up with gouts of green flame. 

“Garden Hall,” each girl said clearly before vanishing into the flames.

Sophie went to take her pinch of powder, only to find her arm in the tight grip of the girls’ mother, who was bent forward to look at her intensely.

“Now, Sophie, I’m not sure about the customs in the country,” she said, making it sound like she was talking about some distant foreign land, and not a two-hour train journey across southern England, “but in Garden Hall, one addresses the lady of the family as Lady Greengrass, but as we are such old friends with your mother, you should call me Lady Alora, unless there is formal company. Do you understand?”

Sophie blinked rapidly. “Yes, of course, Lady G–, Lady Alora. Please excuse my mistake.”

The woman smiled, and released Sophie’s arm, but not without a slight twist, perhaps accidental, that pinched the softest part of her arm through her jumper.

“Garden Hall,” she said, trying not to let her voice waiver as she stepped into the grate. With a roar of flame and a spinning, spiraling twist, she stepped out of the grate in the main room of Garden Hall, to find both girls waiting for her with expectant smiles. She quickly stepped aside and went to brush the inevitable spark or soot from her clothes, but before she could do so, a different house-elf, a little male elf with a wrinkled head like a turnip and huge amber eyes, was whisking at her with a small broom, tut-tutting and fussing over her.

“Oh, hello,” said Sophie politely. He said nothing, jumping into place instead when Lady Alora emerged from the floo, impatiently tapping her foot while the little elf whisked and brushed at her immaculate gown.

“Come along, Sophie,” Astoria said before her older sister could beat her to the punch. “Let me show you where you’ll be staying! We’ve been ever so anxious, waiting.”

Daphne grabbed one of her hands and Astoria the other, and they practically carried her up a large, carpeted stair with dark polished oak handrails and little brass rods that kept the ornate rug snugly against the risers. Their home was large, high-ceilinged, and decorated everywhere with portraits of snoozing ancestors and enormous vases of improbably large flowers. They brought her up two flights of stairs, and there was a further flight to go, she saw.

The girls occupied matching rooms which opened onto a playroom, formerly the nursery, which had a number of large toys, small tables with books and games, and a set of wizard chess that was almost life-sized to Astoria. The chessmen were arrayed on a marble tile floor nearly twenty feet across, and a few of the pawns saluted hopefully as Sophie and Daphne passed them by. On the far side of the room, a bed had been made up, with a gossamer canopy, a bedside table to either side, her bag already unpacked into a trunk at the bed’s foot, and even a small bookshelf, filled with what appeared to be a variety of romantic novels targeted at the young adult witch.

It was all rather a lot to take in. Sophie was almost afraid to sit on the fine bed linens until Astoria lept and flopped on her belly onto the bed. Daphne tutted at her sister, and sat at the end, gesturing for Sophie to join her. The bed was soft, the linens very fine. The blanket appeared to be a woven magical tapestry, with small golden dragons circling lazily over broad green fields, occasionally spouting a wisp of golden-threaded fire.

“I hope this is alright,” Daphne said anxiously. “I don’t know what you may be used to, and we’ve never been allowed a guest our age to stay over before. Do you like it?”

“Like it?” Sophie nodded. “It’s lovely. This blanket? It’s wonderful, thank you.”

“I picked the blanket,” Astoria asserted quickly. “It’s all her books and whatnot, but the blanket was totally my idea.”

“Well, it’s smashing, thank you.” 

Sophie saw Daphne give a bit of an eye roll at her sister’s desire to be involved. They actually got along quite well, considering that they were sisters often alone together in a large house. Sophie’s visit was a welcome diversion from their summer routine.

“I love your chess set,” Sophie said. “Do you think later we can play?”

Daphne nodded but was honest enough to gesture to her sister. “You probably want Astoria, actually. She can usually beat me.”

“Oh, no,” Astoria said shrewdly. “I want to see her beat you first so I know what I’m up against. Let’s go, come on.”

It seemed that Daphne was not being modest, but instead had been pretty accurate in her assessment. While it took Sophie a few moves to adjust to shouting out her orders and letting the pieces march to their destinations, rather than moving them by hand, it was clear that Daphne was a very tactical player. She seemed unable to see more than a move ahead, played defensively, and was defeated by a fairly common gambit. Sophie was feeling a bit regretful for dispatching her friend so quickly, but she need not have fretted. Daphne shrugged off the loss with grace and smiled.

“Now you’ve done it,” Daphne said with an almost gleeful tone. “She’s seen you can actually play, and she won’t hold back.”

The chessmen were reset, the magical pieces collecting their fallen comrades and marching back to their starting squares. Sophie imagined that the pieces on her side wore looks of grim determination, while Astoria’s pieces seemed almost casual, leaning on their swords and chatting quietly amongst themselves.

After five minutes, Sophie realized that she should pay closer attention, as Astoria had offered an obvious trap, and while Sophie had recognized it and moved to counter, Astoria had then shifted the entire focus of her attack, and Sophie was forced to react, move after move, slowly ceding stronger positions to save her pieces. Down two pawns and a knight, she thought she saw a predictable pattern in Astoria’s attacks and tried to lure her into a trap by exposing her queen.

Astoria actually yawned, and then called out her move. Her rook took Sophie’s bishop and collapsed the trap, putting Sophie into check.

Sophie looked at the board, trying to see her way out. She hung her head.

“Good game, Astoria. You have me in three.”

“Well, yes, but it’s more fun if you don’t see it coming.” Astoria tipped over Sophie’s king with a little sharp shove. “Again?”

They played chess, and talked about books, and swapped stories and had a generally lovely time until they were interrupted by a long, low gong sound.

“Okay, time to dress for dinner,” Daphne said, shooing Astoria off towards her room. “Sophie, you can change in here, alright?”

Sophie looked towards her unpacked bag and the trunk which contained all of her things. 

“How exactly am I to dress?” Sophie thought her skirt and jumper were very smart and other than some more casual clothes and night things, she wasn’t sure what else she might have to wear that would meet with Lady Alora’s approval.

Daphne looked at her, up and down, and said, “Well, Mother and Father prefer formal dinners, but for the rest of the time what you have on now should be fine.”

Daphne closed Astoria’s door behind her and came over to Sophie.

“Will dress robes be a problem?”

Sophie nodded, her face scarlet. “At home, we’re much more casual, I guess. I didn’t think to bring my best clothes. I’m so sorry.”

Daphne waved it away. “Please, I’m sure that we can fix this. Come with me.”

Entering Daphne’s room, Sophie noticed right away that it was very grown-up in its colours of green and grey, with pewter pulls on the drawers and luxurious carpets on the hardwood floors, prominently featuring the symbol of Slytherin House. Of the four houses at Hogwarts, Sophie knew that Slytherin most valued family history, ambition, and achievement. Her mother had been in Slytherin as well, though her father had been in Ravenclaw, noted for their insight and scholarship. Daphne led Sophie to a wardrobe along one wall by the windows, and pulled on the large pewter handle in the figure of a serpent, revealing a magically extended space that went back a dozen feet or more. Clothes of all styles and for all seasons stretched away on long racks.

“Boxbrown!” Daphne called out, and immediately a house-elf appeared. Sophie had never seen a household with more than one elf before, much less the three she had met so far at Garden Hall.

The short, fat elf, with enormously long fingers and toes, and a little pug nose that stuck up in the air, bowed deeply to Daphne. His little towel toga appeared to be fastened at the back with an old hat pin. A crown of white hair circled his head but left the top shining brown, the colour of an old apple core.

“Yes, Mistress?” He intoned in the deepest voice Sophie had ever heard from an elf. It was almost as low as a human child’s voice, she thought.

“This is Mistress Roper, Boxbrown. She will be joining us for dinner. Find her something suitable, and mind that it fits her properly. Mother and Father will be dining with us tonight.”

“Of course, Mistress.” Boxbrown turned and rapidly had Sophie stripped to her underthings, standing apprehensive in front of the wardrobe. Daphne paid no mind, simply lifting her clothes up over her head to reveal that she was stark naked underneath. While Daphne slipped into an emerald silk shift and took her own dress robs out, Boxbrown made a series of stretching, reaching gestures, which Sophie eventually understood to be for measurements.

A few moments after disappearing into the wardrobe’s dimmer recesses, the elf emerged with a set of dress robes in black, trimmed with bits of emerald. After considering Sophie for just a moment, Boxbrown made use of the domestic magic of house-elves to make the robes somewhat shorter, and to change the Greengrass emerald to a more neutral pale gold.

One Sophie was dressed, the elderly elf insisted on standing her before a full-length mirror, where he made a number of adjustments invisible to Sophie but apparently critical to his understanding of the word “suitable.”

Daphne and Astoria were both ready as well, and Astoria said pleasantly, “Shall we go down?”

Sophie followed along, having failed to thank Boxbrown for his hard work before he could quickly and discreetly apparate away. He had vanished with a soft popping sound just as Sophie had opened her mouth to thank him. The girls led her downstairs and along a high-ceilinged corridor which opened into a formal dining room. Seeing the table, the silver and linens, and the numerous chandeliers magically affixed in the air overhead, Sophie was very glad she had dressed.

The dinner was a very strange affair to Sophie, compared to the friendly and she now realized very informal dinners at home. Everyone sat, wearing their very fine clothes, and they were served by Pollyberry and yet another house-elf, a much younger looking elf who wore what appeared to be a pasteboard chocolates box as a sort of cap, and who never spoke. His name was Blackburn, which struck Sophie as rather odd as he was very pale white, with a large, long red nose in the shape of an aubergine.

The elves were never acknowledged, but rather simply commanded by Lady Alora. After Sophie thanked Blackburn for providing her with a large glass of milk, his eyes opened comically wide, and he hurried from her side, posting himself on the opposite side of the table by Astoria. Sophie realized that no one thanked the elves, nor could she remember them doing so since her arrival. She wondered if this was a sign of her unsophisticated country manners or something to do with the character of the Greengrass household at Garden Hall.

She had worried about being able to contribute something meaningful to the conversation around the table. Lady Alora spoke only to the house-elves, giving commands as to the dinner service, and to her husband. Mr. Greengrass was apparently to be addressed as Lord Alvertus, which Sophie had not even known was his name, or simply “Sir.”

It turned out that she needn’t have worried. While her hosts spoke across the long table to one another, discussing something about “the Twenty Eight” and how terrible it was that Weasley was still included, while a conscientious and right-thinking witch, like Dolores Umbridge, had to toil away as an obscure backbencher because she was only distantly a Selwyn. Sophie had perked up at this, and said, “I’m a Selwyn, on my mother’s side.”

Lady Alora had simply looked at her, silently, with no visible reaction. Lord Alvertus looked at Sophie as if noticing her for the first time. He nodded after a moment. Then he took a bite of his halibut and a drink of wine.

After a long minute of silence, Lady Alora asked her husband if there had been any news about efforts to improve “the situation” at the Ministry, to which he made some non-committal and very obscure replies. Sophie, Daphne, and Astoria finished the meal in silence. Sophie finished her fish, and carefully set her silverware down on her plate as Daphne had done.

The food was fancy, with lots of very complex sauces and interesting plating across a number of courses, but Sophie thought she’d trade it all for a slice of stargazy pie. Or corned beef and mustard sandwiches, on a blanket under the trees with a good friend.

Later that night, as she tucked herself into her beautiful bed with its fine bedclothes, Sophie was glad that Daphne and Astoria had warmed up again once they had all returned upstairs. If the whole week was going to be like that dinner, she thought, she might very well try to find her way back to the railway station on her own. She fell asleep, dearly wishing that she had brought Goldie along after all.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Diagon Alley

Sophie, Daphne, and Astoria enjoyed their days at Garden Hall together, spending much of their time playing games like wizard chess, exploding snap, and even hide and seek. Hide and seek was particularly challenging for Sophie, being new to the estate, but she did have the advantage of not having played with the girls before, so they were not sure how she thought. Then, on her last afternoon, before her mother was to pick her up, the incident with the dumbwaiter occurred.

In a house staffed with house-elves, free to use their domestic magic for all manner of chores, and occupied by wizards, who likewise had magical solutions to most common challenges, there were features of Garden Hall which had long lain disused. There was no gas feeding the lamps in each room, for example, but the sconces and pipes still existed. The kitchens were still regularly used, but the much-reduced staff left large areas of servant quarters empty, and the staff stairs were rarely used.

Sophie discovered the prize feature, the dumbwaiter, a long-neglected shaft connecting the kitchens to the dining room and the upstairs study. Looking for somewhere to hide that had not been exploited by one or the other of the sisters was proving challenging until Sophie noticed the small sliding door in the dining room wall. Carefully sliding it open, she discovered the dumbwaiter, along with the pull rope and pulley system used to move it among floors. Despite its age and disuse, the system itself was spotlessly clean and maintained, as the house-elves scrupulously serviced every part of Garden Hall, whether Lady Alora inspected it personally or not.

Hearing Daphne coming down the hall, opening doors and cupboards, Sophie clambered into the dumbwaiter, sliding the door shut from within. She was immediately cast into darkness. Many children would have been uncomfortable, confined in a small space, in the dark, far from home, but Sophie had always had a habit of burrowing her way into small spaces, what her mother called “nesting.” She tried to avoid making any sound as she waited for Daphne to pass by.

As she waited in the dark, her eyes began to adjust, and she was surprised to see a sliver of light above her head in the dark shaft. She dimly heard the sounds of an elf at work in the kitchen below. He heard Daphne in the dining room, moving chairs as she searched under the table and around the large room.

Sophie had an intuition that the Greengrasses, living as they did so separated from the Muggle world and accustomed to magic in every aspect of their daily lives, would not have carefully investigated the remaining Muggle features of their estate. Thus, even if Daphne knew of the dumbwaiter’s existence, it might not be the kind of place to occur to her to search looking for an eleven-year-old witch. 

Just in case, however, Sophie began to gently pull on the rope, hoping to lower herself down to the kitchen before being discovered. To her relief, the elevator moved silently, a credit to the magic of house-elves and the craftsmanship of a long-dead Muggle tradesman. Having a choice of two ropes to pull, Sophie had blindly selected a rope to move the elevator, and she began to rise. Deciding that moving silently in either direction was preferable to discovery at the dining room level, she continued to pull her way up.

As the dumbwaiter rose to the upper floor study, the sliver of light was revealed to be a small gap where the dumbwaiter door had not closed completely, perhaps as the house had settled over the years. Hearing voices from the room beyond, and being by nature a curious girl, Sophie put an eye to the gap.

Looking into the study, she could see Lord Alvertus from behind as he pulled on a pipe and sent wisps of blue-grey smoke towards the visitor sitting in an armchair across from him by the fireplace. His visitor was a tall, patrician wizard with flowing platinum hair and an aristocratic bearing. Sophie’s first reaction was that the striking man in the richly embroidered black robe, trimmed with green and silver, was much more fitting the title of “Lord” than the bulldog-like Alvertus. The man was rather handsome, she decided and had a smooth, drawling way of talking that made her inch closer to hear him. She found herself eavesdropping shamelessly, wondering what the man might be discussing with such a severe face.

“I am not saying that I disagree with your policy ideas, Alvertus,” the man intoned carefully. “I am saying that as ever, we must be cautious. The old fool still controls too many votes in the Wizengamot, too many sympathisers ready to prove their loyalty to the new order by keeping us down.”

“What would our Master say to that? To caution? To kissing the rings of blood traitors and Muggle-lovers?” Alvertus was scornful, and even from behind, his body language was contemptuous. “How will he reward us when he returns, Lucius?”

“I have no more desire to see these policies come to fruition than you, my dear fellow.” Lucius, for that, she had discovered, was the blond man’s name, was patient but not willing to concede his point. “If—though I urge the day with all my heart, it remains an ‘if’ and not a ‘when,’—our Dark Lord returns, he will know our hearts. Mine is constant.”

“Our Dark Lord.” They couldn’t be talking about You Know Who, openly talking about his return, could they? Sophie shuddered. Living in Godric’s Hollow, she had seen the scars of the last wizarding war when Lord Voldemort had brought murder and madness to her small village. He’d murdered the Potters, just a short way across the graveyard from her own house, murdered them with Dark Magic, and tried to murder their infant son, only to have it go wrong some way she never understood. Were Lucius and Lord Alvertus really praying for He Who Must Not Be Named to return?

“No, the trick in these trying times is to allow the measures to proceed, while we make sure that the ministry bureaucrats and local magistrates are always still our people so that implementing these policies compounds disaster upon disaster.” Lucius smiled, and his smile changed Sophie’s mind at once. He was not attractive at all. “When the Ministry of Magic is rotten to its core, then one timely push will topple it in the direction of our choosing, whether our Dark Lord returns or not.”

The movement of the dumbwaiter must have disturbed some dust along its rails, as Sophie suddenly found her nose unbearably itchy. The desire to sneeze was overwhelming, and she began to quickly pull the other rope, dropping the elevator back down, away from the meeting in the study. Past the dining hall, all the way down to the kitchens where, at last, she sneezed. Daphne, who was investigating the kitchens and pantries, promptly discovered her. Despite being found, Sophie was relieved to be out of the dumbwaiter at last.

She went on to play several games of wizard chess, very poorly, before begging off further games. She claimed that she needed rest before her last dinner with the Greengrasses, as her mother was meeting her to go shopping for her school things in the wizarding shopping area, Diagon Alley, in the morning.

As she lay on her bed, surrounded by the finery of Garden Hall, her mind was working quickly. 

“What kind of wizards support the return of Lord Voldemort?” Sophie wondered. “And how are they friends with my parents?”

Dinner that night had proved uneventful, other than Lady Alora proving oddly conversational, drawing Sophie into several discussions of her time at Garden Hall, the games they had played, the stories she had enjoyed, and so on. After several days of “seen but not heard,” it was an off-putting experience, as though Sophie were being interrogated and her story checked for inconsistencies. Daphne and Astoria said little and only when directly asked by their mother. After dinner, the girls went up to prepare for bed, and it was a subdued final evening they spent together.

The following morning, Sophie woke early, and despite the availability of house-elves and her own disdain for chores, she made up her bed and packed her bag. When the Greengrass girls came to get her up, they found her dressed, sitting on the end of her bed next to her bags, ready to go. 

“Fancy a game of chess before breakfast?” Astoria asked casually.

“Don’t do it,” Daphne cautioned. “She’ll be smug the rest of the morning.”

“You know, why not?” Sophie moved to the board. “But since you always win, I’ll choose: I’ll play white.”

Astoria, who loved to play black, tried to hide her excitement at another chance to beat Sophie. They settled down to play while Daphne sighed and sat down behind Sophie, hoping for a quick game so she might have time to cheer up Sophie before breakfast and the arrival of Mrs Roper to take her to Diagon Alley. 

“Pawn e4,” Sophie said, opening her game. “Your mother certainly seemed talkative last night.”

“Pawn e6,” Astoria said clearly. “Was she?”

“Pawn d4, yes. I think she talked to me more last night than she has the entire visit.”

“Pawn d5,” Astoria said, trying not to sound bored. “She’s always like that when someone comes over. We’ve never had someone stay over with us like this, so it was just more, I guess.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” Sophie wondered. “Knight c3.” The animated chessman galloped into position on his rearing charger.

“Bishop b4. I dunno. What do you think, Daphne?” Astoria was concentrating on the board, not making eye contact with either of the other girls.

“Don’t say ‘dunno,” Astoria,” Daphne said peevishly. “It’s ‘I don’t know,’ unless you want Mother after you. And I dun—I don’t know—either.”

“Bishop d3.” Sophie stretched and, while stretching, looked obliquely over her shoulder at Daphne.

“Bishop c3, check.” Astoria looked up, grinning. Then, she enunciated precisely, “Fine. I don’t know.”

“Pawn c2.” Sophie watched the pawn take Astoria’s bishop, advancing behind his shield. “I thought it might have something to do with your father’s guest or something.”

“Uh, Pawn h6.” Astoria looked from Sophie to Daphne. “What guest? What did I miss?”

“I assumed you knew he had someone here. Bishop a3. Maybe I was mistaken.”

“Did you see someone?” Daphne was leaning closer, paying more attention to Sophie now, but her voice was very casual.

“Knight d7,” Astoria said loudly, trying to get everyone’s attention back on the game.

“Queen to e2,” Sophie said distractedly. She turned to face Daphne. “There was a wizard here to see your father. I saw him during hide-and-seek. Very tall, with long silver-blond hair.”

“Pawn to e4. Pay attention, Sophie.” Astoria was pouting, watching her pawn viciously take Sophie’s pawn. Her pout worsened when Sophie continued to talk to Daphne.

Daphne tilted her head to one side. “Lucius Malfoy was here? Really?”

“Is that who it was?” Sophie asked casually, carefully confirming the name she had overheard. “Are they friends?”

“Sophie!” Astoria said impatiently. “It’s your move.”

“Oh, yes. Uh, Bishop to e4.” Her bishop avenged her lost pawn.

“I wouldn’t say they were friends, exactly. But the Malfoys are a powerful family with a long tradition in Slytherin House. They have a boy our age, Draco. I think there’s some idea they might introduce us formally when I’m a bit older.”

“King’s knight to f6,” Astoria groused.

“Bishop to d3,” Sophie said after a glance at the board, a safe defensive move. Astoria was getting impatient for Sophie to return her attention to the game. She had been much more focused in their previous games.

“Pawn to b6.” Astoria grinned inside as she mentally set up her next attack.

“What do you mean, formally? Queen to e6.” Sophie didn’t even watch as her queen stormed across the board, taking a pawn. “Check.”

“As if,” Astoria grumbled at the offending Queen. “Pawn to e6. Goodbye, your Royal Highness.

“Well, you know, in the Sacred Twenty-Eight, marriages are often arranged. There aren’t that many established houses with boys our age, you know. So I’ve rather grown accustomed to the idea of looking for someone older, or perhaps even to the Continent. It’s not like I’d settle for the Longbottom boy or one of those Weasleys.”

“I see,” Sophie said. “Well, I’m afraid out in Godric’s Hollow, we’re below such weighty considerations. My younger brother will probably marry the girl he works with at the pub.”

“Your brother works—? At a public house?” Daphne’s eyes were wide, and her mouth hung ever so slightly open. “Are there…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Are there Muggles there?”

“It’s a wizarding pub, but there are plenty of Muggles in the village. In fact,” Sophie looked Daphne right in the eyes and casually proclaimed, “my best friend, Agnes, is a Muggle. Her father sells cheese. Bishop to g6, Checkmate.”

“Wait…” Astoria rocked back, eyes flicking rapidly across the board.

Daphne huffed in surprise, sitting back with a hand clutched dramatically to her chest. Astoria stood up quickly and stomped off in the direction of her room, failing to offer her traditional congratulations on a well-played game.

“Miss Sophie,” squeaked a high-pitched elf voice from the doorway, “Breakfast is being served, and Lady Roper shall arrive soon.”

“Thank you, Pollyberry. We’ll be right down.” Sophie offered Daphne a hand, and the two girls walked past the chess set, where Sophie’s bishop had sat upon Astoria’s king and refused to let him up. Sophie made as if to reset the chessmen, but Daphne put her hand upon Sophie’s arm.

“Leave them,” Daphne said quietly, “for Astoria. It’ll be good for her.”

Just as the clocks were striking 9:00, Sophie found herself standing by the fire grate. Daphne and Astoria stood opposite, with Astoria wearing a freshly burnished smile after her mother had corrected her for pouting. Lady Alora was standing behind Sophie, with one hand firmly on her shoulder. Then, with a roar of flame, the fire disgorged Sophie’s mother, and she stepped nimbly into the room. Before anyone could speak, a house-elf, the little amber-eyed fellow who Sophie had only seen upon her arrival, was there, whisking minute ashes from her mother’s robes.

“Oh, hello, everyone,” Mrs Roper said with a smile. “My, girls, don’t you all look smart?”

“Thank you, Ma’am,” the Greengrass girls said in unison with matching, bobbing curtsies.

“And hello, my Sophie!” Her mother turned and bent slightly, holding out her arms to her daughter. “Did you have a lovely time?”

Sophie went to embrace her mother, but Lady Alora’s hand maintained a casually, cruelly hard grip on her shoulder. Sophie tried not to flinch and looked back at the woman standing behind her before answering cheerfully.

“Yes, Mum. Lady Alora was a smashing hostess, and the girls and I had ever so much fun.”

The hand released her shoulder, and she took a quick step into her mother’s embrace. Her mother was solid and comforting and smelled of baking and home.

“Now, Sophie,” said Alora Greengrass chidingly, “haven’t I told you often enough, you are a friend of the family, not merely a guest. You really must call me Alora, dear.”

Sophie said nothing and just held on to her mother comfortingly.

“I’m so sorry, Alora,” her mother said smoothly, turning slightly to reach for her hand while at the same time putting her body somewhat between Alora and Sophie. “I had planned on a nice visit, but I’m afraid we have a short schedule today for Sophie’s things. Would it be too much trouble to ask that we make time another day? I’m sure once Daphne and Sophie are off to school, there will be plenty of time for a visit, or maybe we could take Astoria out for tea?”

“Something can be arranged, of course.” Both women had warm, polished voices, but there was an undercurrent Sophie had not noticed previously, a careful battle of inference and position. 

Maybe Sophie had tipped her hand too strongly, beating Astoria at chess. Perhaps Daphne or Astoria had asked their mother about Lucius Malfoy’s visit. On the other hand, maybe the calculation and gamesmanship was just a Slytherin thing, and the two women were falling back into patterns from school. Regardless, Sophie was very glad when her mother held her by the arm and took two pinches of floo powder from the elaborate urn by the fire.

“I’ll send an elf along with your bags to the station, shall I, Karen?” Alora smiled, not at Mrs Roper but at Sophie. Sophie eyed her calmly, taking strength from her mother’s proximity.

“That would be lovely, thank you,” Karen Roper returned the smile and waved to the two Greengrass girls in their delicate gowns and robes. “Goodbye, dears!”

“Goodbye,” they chorused.

Sophie and her mother stepped into the fire, each saying clearly, “The Leaky Cauldron.”

Lady Greengrass regarded the flames for a moment, then turned to her children.

“Each of you is to go and get a drink of water and wash your hands and faces. Then you will report to me in my sitting room, and we’ll discuss the visit.”

“Yes, Mother,” the two said in carefully correct unison. The worst part of having visitors was always giving Mother her notes afterwards.

Standing at the fire grate of the Leaky Cauldron, Karen Roper briskly straightened her robes, reached into her cavernously deep pocketbook to her elbow, and brought forth a list. Then, stepping past a trio of old witches drinking sherry, she moved away from the floo and handed the list to her daughter.

“Very good now. Let’s see, what do you need, love, and we’ll see about where to go first.”

Sophie read the list with carefully measured excitement. She didn’t wish to appear unsophisticated in front of other wizards, and her time with the Greengrasses had tweaked her confidence somewhat.

“Three sets of robes; plain, black.”

“Malkin’s for those. Measurements first, and pick them up on the way back,” her mother noted.

“Pointed hat; black.” Sophie wrinkled her nose.

Her mother chuckled. “Really? Are they still putting those on the list? No one wears them, except maybe as a joke on the first-years. We’ll skip that. If anyone gives you any trouble, say you left it home, and that you’ll send for it. Bet you never hear about it again.”

“Protective gloves, dragon-hide.”

“They must think we’re made of money and no sense to manage it,” her mother clucked. “Impervious shark leather for those. Much easier on your hands as well.”

“Winter cloak, black and silver.”

“Nothing wrong with that. First sensible thing since the robes,” Sophie’s mother opined. “The usual books, I suppose?”

“Erm, there’s a list,” Sophie said, pointing to the page.

“We’ll get those last a’fore your robes,” her mother said, nodding. Sophie noticed that when she talked about spending money, her mother lapsed easily into her father’s accent. “And old Master Llewellyn will send your cauldron direct to the school if we tell him you’re the Hangman’s Daughter. He was found of your father when he was still teaching, he was.”

Sophie began to see the advantages of shopping with her mother’s experience of outfitting two boys already and her father being a respected, practising potions master.

“Erm, my wand?” Sophie asked, hopefully. “May we get that first, please, Mum? We can do everything else in the order you want, and I won’t even ask for an owl, I promise.”

“Can’t wait to get it in your hands, eh?” Her mother sighed, then grinned, flashing a cheeky smile at her daughter and winking. “I couldn’t either when it was my time. Ollivanders, then Madam Malkin’s it is.”

Before Sophie could express her excitement, the outside door opened, but no light came in from outside, so prominent was the figure filling the doorway. A vast, shambling mountain of a man, all coat and beard and boots, came in, almost filling the room with his oversize presence. The old, bald barman smiled a toothless smile and called out to him.

“Well, ‘ullo! The usual, Hagrid?”

Sophie barely noticed a small boy, maybe a year or two younger than her, following along behind the huge man, eyes darting around, trying to take everything in. Sophie immediately drew herself up and put a serious look on her face. No reason for her to appear like a country rube in front of a young wizard.

“Can’t, Tom,” the man called Hagrid called out with a booming voice. “I’m on Hogwarts business.” He said this importantly, and heads started to turn.

However, her mother moved her along past a thin man in a turban and out the back door. They found themselves in a small courtyard.

“Mum, who was—?”

“Come on now,” her mother said seriously, walking up to a blank brick wall. “I’m sure you’ll meet everyone from school soon enough.”

She drew her wand and unhesitatingly tapped the bricks thrice in a pattern with her wand tip. Then, quickly, the bricks began to turn and fold back on themselves, revealing Diagon Alley. Sophie had seen it briefly when Bryce had gone to school, but now that it was her turn, it all seemed brand new and exciting all over again.

That evening, Sophie leaned against her mother on the train home, feeling very different than she had when coming into the city with her father the week before. Then, she had been a wide-eyed innocent, over-filled with questions and lemon squash.

Now, she was a young and recognised—though as yet unlicensed and underage—witch. She reached her left hand very carefully into her coat pocket for the twentieth or thirtieth time in the last two hours and felt the smooth finish of her wand. Seven and a half inches of supple yew, with a core of thestral tail hair, a good wand for jinxes and counter-curses, Mr Ollivander had said. She’d felt a shiver in her spine when her mother had been counting her change, when the old man had leaned down to Sophie and added, “Of course, counter-curses and curses, two sides of the coin, are they not?”

She had been pondering this ominous comment when, following her mother, she had almost crashed into Lucius Malfoy in Diagon Alley. He was accompanied by a lovely beautiful woman with striking hair and a young wizard about her age, complaining about carrying his own books. He was short but fit and rather pretty. She quickly realised this must be the much-speculated-upon Draco, and she could not decide if she felt sorry for Daphne or not. She put the encounter out of her mind and gone back to contemplating her wand. She’d never heard of a thestral tail hair core, though Ollivander assured her that many healers had favoured them in the past, as well as certain Unspeakables whom he could not name.

Still, it was her wand now. It had chosen her, with clear, bright green sparks and a silvery aura springing from its tip at the slightest motion of her hand. It was her wand, and she was a real witch. 

She reached out with her toe and felt the large parcel by her feet. Inside, in a bronze box charmed to stay cool and dark, rested her second-favourite purchase after her wand. Rather than an owl or a toad, her mother had presented her with a special gift— just from mother to daughter. He was a young Opheodrys aestivus, a North American rough green snake, and he was just about the most beautiful thing in the whole world. He would be going with her to Hogwarts. His name was Edmund.

She smiled again and fell asleep, one arm around her mother’s arm, one hand in her pocket against her wand, and her toe touching the box containing Edmund and his travel carrier. The train rattled on towards the West Country, Castle Cary station, and home.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Sisterhood and Secrets

Sophie practically flew out of the back door, her breakfast eggs folded into toast and wrapped in a napkin and a flask of cold milk thumping against her hip with each stride. Since her return from her stay with the Greengrass girls and shopping in the city, Sophie had spent almost every free minute out by the common, spending time with her new friend, Agnes. Her mother made sure the door had latched behind her and watched with a smile as her daughter slipped over the back garden fence, through the graveyard, and towards the commons.

It had become a routine in the last weeks of summer, as natural and comforting as a cup of tea after supper. If Sophie wasn’t helping to bottle rose-hip syrup or label potion jars in her father’s workshop, she was away to the common with a basket, a blanket, or simply her imagination—and always, always with Agnes Dowling.

Agnes had begun to wear her hair in a single braid now, slightly off-centre, but neat. Sophie had done it the first time, and Agnes had stubbornly kept practicing until she could manage it herself, even if it meant her arms got tired from holding them up so long. Sophie, in turn, had let Agnes show her how to mend a torn hem by hand, and though her stitches were crooked and wobbly, she refused to use magic, at least while Agnes was watching.

The girls were a strange and wonderful pair. To the few villagers who happened across them curled beneath the alder at the Neck or sprawled across the hill with pencils and scrap paper in hand, they seemed like any other children making the most of summer’s end. But beneath the laughter and teasing, there was a quiet depth growing in their friendship, as if they had both glimpsed something the other carried, invisible and heavy.

And they had.

Sophie had not spoken aloud the word “magic.” Not once. But she had come perilously close.

Once, when Agnes spoke of her father’s latest treatment—how he had come home pale and sweating and pretending he wasn’t tired—Sophie had nearly reached for her wand. It was tucked safely in the false bottom of her satchel, out of sight but not out of mind.

“If I could do anything,” Sophie had whispered, “anything at all… I would.”

“I know,” Agnes had said, squeezing her hand.

And that was enough.

But the temptation lingered. Each time Agnes described another dizzy spell her father suffered, or another round of medicine that left him too sick to eat, Sophie burned with a helpless fury. What good is magic, she thought once, if it can’t save the people who need it most?

But she also knew what it would mean to try. The Statute of Secrecy was not a suggestion, and there were no footnotes for good intentions. She remembered, with cold clarity, the pamphlets handed out from the Ministry after school and the stern warnings from her mother. Never in front of Muggles. Not for love. Not for loss.

Still, some promises lived outside rules.

That afternoon, by the pond’s edge, Sophie lay back on the blanket while Agnes tossed pebbles into the water, one by one, like wishes she couldn’t quite bring herself to make.

“If we were sisters,” Sophie said, eyes half-shut against the dappled sunlight, “real sisters, I mean—I think I’d tell you everything.”

Agnes didn’t pause in her tossing. “I already know everything important.”

Sophie sat up, startled. “Do you?”

Agnes grinned. “I know you’re clever and brave, and you’re going to be someone. Someone who matters. That’s all I need.”

“But not everything,” Sophie said. Her voice was small, like she was testing its weight. “Not the hard parts. Not the secrets.”

“I’ve got secrets too,” Agnes said, her voice softer now as well. “But I don’t think real sisters have to tell everything. I think they just have to stay.”

Sophie felt tears threaten to rise—she was still getting used to how easily they came these days—and quickly blinked them away. Instead, she reached into her pocket and drew out two copper buttons, greenish with age, from the sewing jar her mother kept by the fireplace.

“Then let’s swear it,” she said. “Let’s be sisters. For always.”

Agnes looked at her, unsure, until Sophie pressed a button into her palm.

“Blood and breath,” Sophie whispered, “truth and trust. From this day on, we’re bound.”

Agnes closed her fingers around the button. “Heart and hope. Laugh and sorrow. From now until always.”

They pressed the buttons into the soft mud at the pond’s edge, marking their place like the pirates or queens they’d pretended to be all summer.

It wasn’t real magic,  of course. But then again, it was.

That evening, as they lay on the blanket staring at the sky, Sophie said, “Do you remember, I told you that if I had a wish, I’d use it for your dad? I’d fix him.”

Agnes was quiet a long moment. Then she said, “I remember. I’ll use my wishes for you, and you for me dad. If’n you ever get a wish—just one—you use it for him. And then we’ll be even.”

Sophie whispered. “I swear it. On my name. On my magic.”

It was the first time she’d said the word aloud near Agnes. The girl didn’t flinch.

Instead, she smiled, and held out her pinky.

They sealed the vow the way all eleven-year-old girls know how. It felt right.

When Sophie returned home, grass-stained and starlit, her mother was waiting at the back door. But this time, there was no scolding, no hands on hips.

Just a towel for Sophie’s muddy feet, and a quiet kiss to her forehead.

“Tea’s on,” her mother said.

Sophie set the empty milk flask on the table, tucked her buttonless hand into her pocket, and whispered to herself, So mote it be.

The wind had risen after supper. It rattled the climbing roses along the side of the house and made the old windows sigh in their frames. The hearth had gone low, but the fire still glowed enough to light the workbench where Brian Roper sat with his sleeves rolled up, grinding dried asphodel root with slow, measured circles.

Sophie lingered at the cellar door. She was supposed to be brushing her teeth.

“Come on down, pet,” her father called without turning. “I can feel you hoverin’ like a ghost.”

She crept down the stairs in her slippers, wrapped in a flannel dressing gown, Goldie tucked under one arm more from habit than need. Her eyes flicked across the neat rows of labelled jars, each filled with dried roots, curled pods, glimmering scales. The scent in the room was strong—peppermint and smoke and something earthy beneath it all, like rain on dust.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “That old villain, Insomnia. Shall I put the kettle on?”

She shook her head and moved to perch on the low stool near his workbench. Her knees bumped together as she sat, suddenly unsure how to begin.

Her father scraped the powdered root into a small bowl. “Something on your mind, Sophie-girl?”

“Yes,” she said. Then, when that proved insufficient, she tried again. “It’s just… Muggles get sick, right? Really sick, sometimes. But there’s no magic for them.”

Brian Roper’s movements didn’t pause, but they did slow. He looked carefully at the scale he was using, made an adjustment, and then looked at her—fully and seriously.

“It is. Why do you ask?”

Sophie fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve. “No reason. Only… it seems unfair, doesn’t it? That someone could be very ill, and we’d have all this”—she gestured vaguely at the rows of jars, the half-ground herbs, the potion bubbling gently in the copper cauldron—“and still not be able to help.”

“Unfair,” he echoed. “Aye. That it is.”

He leaned forward, hands folded loosely. “Sophie, is someone you know ill?”

She hesitated. “Not in the family.”

“Still, someone you care about.”

She nodded.

He sighed. A long breath, not weary, but heavy with understanding.

“Let me tell you something, pet,” he said gently. “We live in two worlds. Always have, always will. Wizards and witches—we walk that line like a tightrope, walking between what we are and what they see. Not always easy. Especially when you want to do right.”

Sophie looked up, her eyes wide. “But what if you could help? What if no one would even know?”

“That’s the hardest part,” he said, reaching for a cloth to wipe his hands. “Because sometimes you could. Sometimes there’s a spell, or a draught, or a charm that might buy a bit of time or comfort. But it comes with a cost.”

He stood and walked to the cupboard, pulled out a flask, and poured a little into a tiny, thimble-like teacup—something thick and dark and softly steaming. He brought it over and held it out.

“For sleeping,” he said.

Sophie took the cup, holding it close but not sipping yet.

“Papa,” she said, voice small. “It’s just—if you could see someone hurting, and you didn’t do anything, doesn’t that make you bad?”

He watched silently, until she drained the draught from the little cup. He knelt before her then, taking the cup and setting it on the floor beside them.

“No,” he said, brushing her hair from her forehead. “It makes you good. Because the hurt matters to you. But what makes you wise is knowing which hurts you’re allowed to carry… and which ones would break more than they mend.”

She pressed her lips together tightly. “But it still feels wrong.”

“Aye,” he said again, simply. “That’s how you know you’ve got a heart worth listening to.”

They were quiet a long time.

Finally, he tapped her knee gently. “Alright, now. Off to bed with you.”

Sophie looked up at her father again.

“If I ever do learn a cure… really learn one… I’ll help.”

Brian smiled, tired and proud all at once.

“That,” he said, “is a promise I’ll not stand in the way of. Just make sure it’s the right time, and the right way.”

Sophie nodded, her fingers curled tightly around the warm cup. “Yes, Papa.”

As she padded back upstairs, her feet silent on the worn steps, Brian Roper watched the potion on his bench turn a gentle shade of gold.

He didn’t need to ask who it was, or what illness lingered. He had seen enough, in his time, to know the look of a healer being born.

The rain came down in silver threads, soft but steady, turning the long grass slick and brushing the pond’s surface into ripples. There were no more leaf boats, the leaves beginning to turn and becoming too brittle to fold into sails. The alder tree at the Neck offered just enough cover to stay mostly dry, though the tips of the girls’ shoes were damp and their hair clung in wisps to their cheeks.

Sophie and Agnes sat huddled together beneath the low branches, wrapped in an old blanket Sophie had brought, the corners tucked around their knees like a shared secret.

“It always smells like something ancient when it rains,” Agnes said, nose turned to the leaves. “Like stone and green things. Like the Hollow remembers something.”

Sophie smiled faintly. “Maybe it does.”

They had spent the day building a fort of branches and stones, weaving in tall grasses to make curtains. It had collapsed twice, and neither of them minded. They’d eaten thick slices of bread with berry jam and argued companionably over whether the frogs by the water were part of the fort’s army or enemies lurking in disguise.

Now, wrapped in stillness and drizzle, Sophie could feel the weight of the coming days pressing forward. Soon, the summer would break. Her trunks were packed, her robes folded, her wand polished and tucked in its case. Her snake, Edmund, had learned to tolerate his travel bag. She had maps of the castle in her dreams now—at least, what she imagined it would be like.

And she had Agnes, a solid presence beside her, the sister she had not looked for and the friend she’d not expected.

The memory of her father’s warning echoed in her mind: Some hurts break more than they mend. And she had nearly—nearly—crossed a line. The words had been on her tongue more than once.

But she hadn’t said them. And now, she wouldn’t.

She closed her eyes, felt the damp earth under her, and made a quiet vow.

I won’t tell. Not because it isn’t worth telling… but because she is. Because Agnes deserves the truth when it can be real, and not before. And I’ll find a way. Somehow, I’ll help her without breaking what keeps our world safe. I’ll be the witch she needs me to be.

The rain thinned, softening from a patter to a whisper. Agnes leaned her head on Sophie’s shoulder.

“D’you think we’ll always be friends?” Agnes asked suddenly. “Even when you’re off to that school of yours?”

“Don’t you think so,” Sophie asked, her eyes still closed.

Agnes sat up a little straighter. “More’n that. We’re sisters. We swore on the buttons.”

“That’s right. No fingers crossed. No breaking it without turning into a toad.”

“Can I be a frog instead? I’d rather be a frog.” Agnes sounded almost herself for a moment.

Sophie laughed, and the sound rang like bells under the alder. “Deal.”

They looked at each other. Neither smiled just then. It was too serious for that. But something passed between them—weighty and warm and binding.

“Even if it takes years,” Sophie whispered, “I’ll find a way to help.”

“I believe you,” Agnes replied.

And they sat like that, beneath the whispering leaves, as the rain stopped and the frogs resumed their songs and the world, very quietly, began again.

⸻

That night, Sophie lay in bed staring at the ceiling, Goldie tucked tightly under her arm, her Hogwarts letter folded neatly on the bedside table beside her wand.

She thought of the four houses, the ones she’d read about in her books and heard tales of from her brothers. Gryffindors, brave and reckless. Slytherins, clever and ambitious. Ravenclaws, always asking why. And Hufflepuffs, steady and kind, the ones who stayed behind and helped others carry the weight.

Her mother had been a Ravenclaw, her father a Slytherin, though the soft edges of his ambition had been dulled by love and the quiet work of potioneering. Sophie wondered what the Sorting Hat would say to her—what part of her it would see.

Hufflepuff… they say that’s where the healers go, she thought. But then, Ravenclaws look for answers. They don’t wait for cures to arrive—they make them.

She didn’t know what house she belonged in.

She only knew what she had to do.

Two days before she was to leave for Hogwarts, Mr. Dowling passed away in his sleep.

The news came in the early morning, brought in hushed tones by Mrs. Abernathy from the end of the lane. Her apron was still dusted with flour, and her eyes were wet. Sophie’s mother took the message at the back door and pressed the woman’s hands before slipping inside to find her daughter.

Sophie was in the sitting room, trying to charm her trunk shut with minimal success. Her wand sputtered at the latch as her mother entered.

Sophie turned, wand still in hand. “Did I get it? I think it’s—”

But one look at her mother’s face told her everything.

She dropped the wand.

She didn’t cry, not at first. She simply stood, very still, while the air turned cold around her.

Agnes didn’t come by the Neck that day. Or the next.

Sophie went to the cottage very early, before she left to catch her train, with a bundle of blackberry scones wrapped in a clean cloth. She knocked softly. It was Agnes who opened the door. Some adult, someone unknown to Sophie and dressed all in black, was making tea, heating the kettle only Mr. Dowling had used until recently.

Agnes was a sight. Her eyes were swollen and tired, her hair uneven again. But she hugged Sophie tightly, held her like something about to be lost, and whispered, “I knew you’d come.”

They sat together in silence. No stories. No leaf boats. No cheese adventures. Just hands clasped between them on the old kitchen table.

“I could stay,” Sophie said finally. Her voice shook. “I don’t have to go to school. Not now. I could stay with you.”

Agnes shook her head. “No. That would be worse.”

“But—”

“No,” Agnes said again, this time more firmly. “You go. You find your answers. You do everything you said you would.”

Sophie bit her lip. “But if I leave and I miss something—if you need me—”

“I’ll still need you,” Agnes whispered. “But I’d rather need you from far away than lose you for staying.”

They didn’t cry. Not then. Not until Sophie stood and Agnes pressed something into her hand. It was a stone from the pond at the Neck, cleaned and polished bright.

“For you,” Agnes said. “So’n you don’t forget.”

Sophie’s voice was thick. “As if I could.”

They hugged once more, long and trembling, and then Sophie turned and walked away from the cottage, through the quiet village, and up the lane to meet her parents for the journey to London.

Later, as her father lifted her trunk onto a stone bench near the edge of town and her mother fussed about her collar, Sophie glanced just once, back. Back to the graveyard silhouetted against the early morning sky.

“I’ll be back with answers,” she whispered to no one. There was a clattering racket as their ride arrived, the Knight Bus.

And then, Sophie Roper, the Hangman’s daughter, climbed aboard the Knight Bus to meet the train that would take her to Hogwarts.

She did not look back again.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: The Hogwarts Express

The Knight Bus came to a screeching, lurching halt in a narrow, grimy side lane off Euston Road, so close to the wall that Sophie was sure the windows must have scraped brick. There was a jarring CLANG as one of the overhead lanterns swung wildly and then broke, raining sparks onto the cobblestones. The doors flung themselves open with a shuddering SLAM, and the conductor barked, “King’s Cross. Mind the slugs.”

The air outside was thick with the sharp tang of city exhaust. A few Muggles glanced up briefly from their papers or takeaway coffee as the ropers and a few others left the bus step with rattling and the dulls thumps of school trunks. Thanks to a broad Notice-Me-Not, they just as quickly lost themselves in their papers and coffees. Sophie’s boots hit the pavement with a slap that echoed off the stone, and she very nearly tripped over the hem of her cloak. The bronze box holding Edmund was slung across her chest, its charm keeping the serpent docile and comfortable inside, and her other hand clutched the small, worn button Agnes had given her. She kept her fingers curled tight around it as if it were a talisman against the dizzying mess of the world she had entered.

The bus clattered away with a final BANG that rattled the curb and left behind a suspicious puddle of something violet and steaming.

Her mother gave a small, quiet sigh and adjusted Sophie’s collar while brushing soot from her shoulder. Her father, ever composed, reached for the trunk without comment and hoisted it up with one arm. His free hand gave Sophie’s elbow a gentle nudge, the sort that said go on, now.

The looming bulk of King’s Cross Station rose before them, its Victorian archways stained with age and fringed by overhead wires. Morning had already set the station into full roar—waves of people in every direction, porters and pigeons and announcements blaring incomprehensibly from somewhere above. Everything smelled faintly of iron and dust and fried onions. Trolleys clattered over uneven pavement, and the rush of Muggle travellers seemed a tidal force, threatening to sweep Sophie up and drown her in anonymity.

She drew a long, steady breath.

She had imagined this moment—stepping into the world, becoming herself—as something smooth and radiant. Instead, it felt chaotic, grimy, and unceremonious. But she wouldn’t let it show. Her boots were polished. Her hair was newly trimmed, washed, and brushed to a shine. Her wand, holstered and hidden in the inner seam of her cloak, pressed reassuringly against her ribs.

Don’t look lost, she reminded herself. Don’t look like a village girl who doesn’t belong.

Her mother leaned in close as they passed through the glass doors and murmured, “You may not be comfortable, but you should never look lost.”

Sophie gave a brisk nod. That was all the advice she got, but it was enough.

They weaved through the bustling station, past kiosks advertising crisps and discount novels, until they reached the main platforms. Her father walked with the same quiet determination he brought to every task, pausing only to nod politely at station staff who glanced at them as they passed. No one stopped them. Most didn’t look twice.

They passed platforms eight and nine—both mundane and dull, full of shrieking children and heavy suitcases—and approached the spot where two sturdy metal signs jutted out of an iron pillar like watchful sentries. Between them was nothing but a wrought-iron archway, curved and unremarkable, positioned directly between platforms nine and ten.

Sophie slowed. The archway shimmered—not visually, but in feeling. She could almost sense the magic of it, a deep hum just under the skin, like a plucked string or a held breath. Her pulse flickered in her ears.

She knew this was it.

She turned to her parents again. Her mother gave her a brief but warm kiss on the cheek. Her father nodded approvingly.

“Straight through, now, and no hesitation. Like you belong.”

Sophie swallowed, nodded, then turned toward the arch.

She straightened her coat, lifted her chin, and walked forward with purpose—her wand hidden, Edmund still, and the button pressed close against her heart. The archway rippled around her like heat off stone. For the briefest second, the iron arch shimmered around her, the sound of the station dipping into a hush—and then she was through.

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters burst into life around Sophie like a hidden world exhaling. The moment she stepped through the archway, she was wrapped in sound and colour and motion: clouds of warm steam rose from the train like dragon’s breath, and a dozen voices competed at once—calls of farewell, laughter, last-minute reminders shouted over the clatter of trunks and the hoot of owls in brass cages.

The Hogwarts Express stretched along the platform in a dazzling streak of red and gold, polished so fine that it gleamed in the grey morning light. Its engine hissed with anticipation, already hungry for the journey north. The station’s magical lighting flickered just enough to make the edges of everything shimmer faintly, as though someone had cast a mild glamour across the whole platform to make it feel more like a painting and less like a goodbye.

Families crowded the platform in clusters: elegant witches waving handkerchiefs with graceful fingers, fathers giving stern instructions to sons who had clearly stopped listening, and younger siblings pressed to the rails, noses flattened against glass, gawking at the carriages.

Sophie stood still for a moment, letting it all wash over her—the smells of polished wood and parchment, the faint ozone tang of spell residue in the air, the murmured crackle of magic beneath it all. This was real. She was really here.

A warm hand touched her elbow. She turned to find her parents had come through behind her, looking a little windswept but otherwise unbothered. Her mother was smiling in earnest now, eyes shining in the steam, while her father had already taken possession of the nearest trolley and was lifting her trunk onto it like he’d done this every year.

Her heart pulled, hard.

“I’ll write,” Sophie said quickly, the words spilling out before the lump in her throat could catch them.

Her mother reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, then pressed a quick kiss to the crown of her head. “And I’ll write back. With cake enclosed. No beetroot this time, promise.”

Sophie gave a watery laugh.

Her father fished in the pocket of his coat and produced a small tin of peppermint pastilles, old and familiar, the label half rubbed away. “For the journey,” he said, placing it in her hand. “And the nerves. And any sharp-tongued companions you can’t hex yet.”

Sophie clutched the tin tight and looked at them both. Her mother’s scarf was crooked. Her father’s boots were still smudged from the garden. And suddenly, she didn’t want to go. She wanted one more day at the Neck. One more game of leaf-boats. One more evening watching the sun dip behind the fields.

Instead, she hugged them—fiercely, like she could pack everything that mattered into the space of one long breath.

Her parents held on just as tightly.

Then her father stepped back, cleared his throat, and said in a voice that was almost steady, “Go on, then. Find your future, Sophie-girl.”

She wiped her eyes, straightened her shoulders, and turned toward the train.

⸻

Daphne Greengrass stood with aristocratic precision near the centre of the train, one gloved hand resting lightly on her trunk and the other curled around the handle of a velvet satchel embroidered with her initials in silver thread. Her traveling cloak was emerald green trimmed with black piping, clasped with a pewter serpent brooch that gleamed in the morning light. A silver hairband caught the sun as it held back her sleek, lustrous blonde hair, which had been brushed to a mirror polish.

“There you are,” she said the moment Sophie emerged from the crowd. Her tone was dry, amused. “Thought the Knight Bus might’ve dropped you in Aberdeen or the bottom of Loch Ness.”

Sophie gave a short laugh and tried to catch her breath. “Nearly did. The driver thought he’d be clever and drive straight through a flower market.”

“You look windblown,” Daphne said, eyeing Sophie’s slightly rumpled coat and flushed cheeks. “But you’ve survived. That counts.”

“You look… very fancy,” Sophie replied, half teasing, half admiring.

Daphne rolled her eyes. “Mother’s doing. She says presentation is half of spellcraft, and that first impressions are curses that take years to break. Father just nodded like he agreed, but I think he was pretending to listen.”

“Didn’t they stay to see you off?”

“No,” Daphne said, lips pursing. “They Apparated away five minutes ago. Busy day, I suppose. And Astoria’s waiting at home. Apparently, we’re to board on our own.”

Sophie didn’t ask if that bothered her.

They hefted their trunks together—Daphne’s charmed to float an inch off the floor, Sophie’s bumping behind with a low thud—and climbed up into the train carriage. The corridor was already swarming with activity. Second- and third-years leaned out of compartments, calling to friends. Owls hooted irritably from within cages slotted under seats. A boy dropped an entire bag of Bertie Bott’s Beans and shouted in dismay as sweets scattered like marbles underfoot.

The smell of wool, ink, sweets, and nervousness hung in the air like perfume.

Daphne led the way, her heels clicking with efficient poise. “Let’s find somewhere with decent lighting and without gum under the seats.”

They passed a tall boy cradling a massive tarantula, its legs curled sleepily in the warmth of his jumper. Across from him, two girls in matching burgundy cloaks were locked in a fierce debate about whether Kneazles could interbreed with Siamese cats. Another compartment buzzed with second-years already swapping Chocolate Frog cards.

Daphne wrinkled her nose. “Too loud. Keep going.”

Finally, near the middle of the train, they found a compartment with only three other students inside. A slim, elegant boy sat with one leg folded neatly over the other, chin resting in his palm as he gazed out the window with theatrical disinterest. His school robes were uncreased. His tie had already been tied. He radiated cultivated aloofness.

Next to him sat a pale girl with dark, glossy hair pinned back so tightly it stretched the corners of her eyes upward. Her nose turned slightly up at the sight of them, but she said nothing.

On the opposite bench, a broad-faced boy with a pleasant if awkward expression glanced up from a cauldron cake he was slowly unwrapping, crumbs already dusting the knees of his robes.

Daphne knocked gently on the glass. “Mind if we join?”

The elegant boy turned lazily, appraising them as if from a great distance.

“Not at all,” he said with a faint smile.

“I’m Daphne Greengrass,” she said, sliding the door open. “And this is Sophie Roper.”

“Blaise Zabini,” the boy said, inclining his head. “Pansy Parkinson. The quiet one there is Wayne Hopkins.”

“Hi,” Wayne said, nearly spilling a satchel from his lap onto the floor.

Sophie offered a nod and a polite smile as she slid into the seat opposite him. The cushion sighed beneath her, and she tucked the bronze box containing Edmund discreetly under her feet. The charm held, keeping him still. Beside her, Daphne settled in beside Blaise without hesitation, smoothing her robes with one hand and crossing her ankles with the other.

The train gave a groaning shudder. A whistle blew somewhere overhead—once, twice—and then the compartment jolted forward.

Sophie turned quickly toward the window, pressing her palm lightly against the glass.

The platform was already sliding past, faces flickering by like ghosts in the steam. She caught one last glimpse of her parents standing close together, her mother still waving, her father with his hands deep in his coat pockets, nodding slowly like he’d never really expected this moment to come but had always known it would.

She raised her hand in return.

Then they were gone, swallowed by mist and motion.

Sophie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Behind her, Blaise said, “Bit sentimental, isn’t it?”

Daphne didn’t even glance his way. “It’s her first time leaving home. Let her have the moment.”

Sophie said nothing.

She kept her eyes on the window a moment longer, watching the last of the city give way to trees and sky.

⸻

A sharp knock rattled the glass of the compartment door. Before anyone could respond, it slid open with brisk efficiency, revealing a girl already in full school robes.

She was a bit bushy-haired, a bit too serious for her age, and very obviously trying to make a good first impression on the entire world, all at once. Her curly brown hair seemed to puff with determination around her face, and her wand was clutched like a conductor’s baton in one hand, while a folded checklist fluttered in the other.

“Hello,” she said, breathless and bright, revealing rather prominent front teeth. “Sorry to interrupt, but has anyone here seen a toad? A boys lost one—Trevor, his name is—the toad, I mean. The boy’s name is Neville, and I told him I’d help look. He’s quite distraught.”

She looked around eagerly, scanning under benches and behind knees without waiting for permission.

Sophie blinked, a little caught off guard by the sheer force of the girl’s presence. “Er—no, sorry. Haven’t seen a toad.”

Wayne sat up a bit straighter and looked under his own seat as if one might materialise just because someone asked. “Um… no, not here. But we’ll keep an eye out, shall we?”

Hermione gave him a polite but distracted smile. “Thank you.”

Blaise didn’t look up from the copy of Great Wizarding Families of the Eighteenth Century he’d flipped open at some point. “Try the luggage racks,” he said dryly, not moving. “Or the roof. Foggy up there, and amphibians like damp places.”

Pansy gave a small, disdainful sniff. “You’d think he’d keep better hold of his pet if it mattered that much.”

Hermione stiffened slightly, her eyes narrowing—but she didn’t rise to the bait. “Right, well. If you do see Trevor, please let someone know. I’ll be checking the forward carriages.”

She turned on her heel with crisp efficiency, muttering “Trevor! Trevor?” down the corridor before vanishing into the bustle.

As the door slid shut behind her, the compartment felt quieter than before—like a small storm had passed through.

“Overachiever,” Blaise said lazily.

“Likely Gryffindor,” muttered Pansy, as if the word were mildly infectious. “And did you see those teeth?”

Wayne shifted uncomfortably, then glanced at Sophie. “I thought she seemed… nice?”

“She did,” Sophie said. “A bit much, but nice enough.”

No one disagreed out loud, but the conversation turned to other things—what house they thought they’d end up in, whether the Sorting Hat could see inside your dreams, and whether you could ask it politely not to put you in Hufflepuff.

Wayne looked slightly hurt at that, but only laughed along. Sophie didn’t join in the teasing.

Instead, she stared out the window again, watching the city shrink and the fields roll in, and thought about how people sorted themselves—sometimes before they were even given the chance.

She fingered the button in her pocket once more and decided, quietly, that whatever house she ended up in, she’d make her own place in it.

———

The sun had dipped below the trees by the time the train gave its final shudder and slid to a halt.

Outside the windows, twilight had settled over the countryside, and the platform was little more than a long stretch of gravel shadowed by dark trees and rolling hills. A soft fog hung just beyond the lanterns, and the air carried the scent of damp earth, pine, and something old and wild.

A booming voice called through the corridor, so loud it seemed to vibrate in Sophie’s ribs.

“Firs’ years! Firs’ years this way! Come along now! No dawdlin’!”

Wayne perked up immediately. “That must be Hagrid!”

They gathered their things quickly—Daphne with her usual grace, Sophie with a bit more fumbling, Blaise taking his time as though late arrival were a sign of pedigree. Wayne held the door for Sophie, for which she was thankful. The corridor thrummed with footsteps and nervous chatter as they filed out into the open.

The platform wasn’t much to look at, just a strip of stone and dirt lined by pine trees, but beyond it, holding a lantern and standing head and shoulders taller than any man Sophie had ever seen, stood Hagrid. His beard was thick and wind-tangled, his coat vast and lumpy, and his voice boomed like a war drum.

Sophie froze for a moment, startled to recognise him. It was the same man she’d glimpsed in Diagon Alley that summer—the one who’d been speaking to a small, black-haired boy with broken glasses. That boy was here too, now standing a few feet ahead of them, listening to Hagrid with quiet intensity.

He looked younger than she had previously thought. Thin and wiry, hair sticking up in the back like a bird’s nest. His glasses caught the lantern light in sharp flashes.

“That boy again,” Sophie muttered to herself as they moved forward.

Daphne’s voice was soft, more thoughtful than scornful. “Who? Oh, Harry Potter. He’s been in the Prophet.”

“Oh?” Sophie asked, blinking. “I saw him before. In the Leaky Cauldron.” She peered with interest at the most famous person born in Godric’s Hollow in a century or more.

“He seems… small,” Blaise opined as he fell into step beside them. “Unimpressive. You think the legendary child who defeated You-Know-Who would be a great strapping hero with broader shoulders. Or at least a jawline.”

Daphne didn’t answer, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

They reached the lake, where dozens of small boats bobbed in place, tied to the dock. The water stretched dark and still beneath the rising cliffs, glittering like coins scattered across a pane of crystal. And high above it all, Hogwarts Castle loomed—its towers etched in silhouette against the heavy sky, windows glowing amber like the eyes of a watchful beast.

“Four to a boat!” Hagrid called. “No pushin’!”

Sophie and Daphne paused at the nearest one, only for Wayne to hurry forward and clamber in beside them before anyone could protest. He nearly tipped the boat with his enthusiasm, sending it rocking wildly until he found his balance.

“Sorry—is this taken?”

“No,” Sophie said quickly.

Blaise arrived a beat later and stepped aboard with cool indifference, dusting an invisible speck from his cloak. He stood theatrically for a moment, strikingly tall like a Venetian gondolier, and then lowered himself into the remaining seat.

Behind them, Pansy Parkinson stopped short at the sight of the boat already full.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve got to be joking.”

Wayne looked up, oblivious. “Oh—did you want this one? I wasn’t sure who—”

But it was too late. The boat had already begun to shift, reacting to the completed set of four. Pansy made a huffing sound, her mouth tight with irritation, and turned sharply to scan for another.

She ended up wedged between a freckled boy who sneezed twice into his sleeve and a moon-faced redheaded girl who was nervously chewing on her braid.

Sophie looked back at Pansy and felt a small, guilty flicker of amusement. Wayne, for all his blunders, had at least given them a smoother path.

The boats began to glide, slow at first, then gaining speed as they slipped across the lake. There were no oars, no sails—just quiet, steady movement, like being drawn forward by the will of the castle itself.

The water around them was glassy, disturbed only by the soft ripple of their passage. Overhead, stars began to prick through the sky, and the moon hung low and pale above the trees. Sophie could hear the faint lapping of water, the creak of wood, and the occasional startled squeak from another boat behind them.

“Romantic,” Blaise murmured, his tone dry as the boats entered a natural cave tunnel, carved out to form a dock near the castle gates. They slipped beneath a rocky overhang where the only light came from enchanted moss and the glow of lanterns reflected on damp stone. The chill deepened, and the boats echoed softly with the sounds of their passage. “Nothing says prestigious education like sailing through an abandoned sewer.”

“It’s not abandoned,” Wayne said, visibly eager to contribute. “It’s enchanted. The lake’s full of magical creatures. There’s a giant squid—”

“Delightful,” Blaise cut in. “Perhaps we’ll be eaten before we’re sorted. Saves the Sorting Hat the trouble. Or we could eat the creature, I suppose. Calamari in stile Hogwarts, just as Mother used to make. ”

Daphne said nothing but glanced out across the lake, her expression unreadable.

Sophie leaned forward slightly, watching the castle grow closer. Its towers were vast and pointed, its windows golden with light. Smoke curled from a high chimney. The sight made something ache in her chest—wonder, fear, hope, and something like mourning for the girl who had ever doubted this could be happening.

Wayne sneezed.

Sophie rubbed her fingers against the button in her pocket, grounding herself.

When they emerged again, the boats curved into a small cove where a dock waited below the cliff. Hagrid was already there, lantern held high, pulling ropes to guide them in.

“Watch yer step, now!” he called. “An’ mind yer footing for toads ad such.”

“Still searching for Trevor?” Sophie mused quietly.

“Some say the toad is the first test,” Blaise intoned solemnly. “Only the worthy may return him.”

Wayne eyed him suspiciously, but carefully watched his step as he left the boat.

They disembarked one by one. The stone underfoot was slick and ancient, carved with grooves worn smooth by centuries of first-year footsteps. A narrow path of stairs wound upward through the cliffside, disappearing into shadow.

At the top, framed by iron-bound gates and towering oaks, stood Hogwarts—waiting.

Hagrid stepped forward and raised a fist the size of a pumpkin.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

He knocked three times, and the echo rolled out into the valley.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: The Sorting Hat

The great oak doors creaked open on ancient hinges, and torchlight flared along the flagstone floor. A tall witch stood framed in the doorway, her expression so stern and composed it could’ve frozen fire.

She had iron-grey hair tucked into a high bun, her emerald-green robes crisp and sweeping behind her like a cloak of moss. Her Scottish burr was sharp and commanding as she addressed the towering figure behind them.

“Hello, Hagrid.”

“The first years, Professor McGonagall,” said Hagrid.

“Thank you. I will take them from here.”

Sophie swallowed and stepped forward with the rest, into the vast entrance hall of Hogwarts. It was magnificent. Vaulted and shadowy, the stone ceiling soared so high above their heads it seemed to vanish into darkness, larger than the chapel back in Somerset, larger than any building Sophie had ever stepped inside. Flame-lit torches flickered along the stone walls. Directly ahead, a marble staircase stretched upward, wide enough to march a battalion. To the right, muffled voices filtered through another set of heavy doors.

The Great Hall. The rest of the school was already inside.

They were waiting.

Professor McGonagall led them briskly across the stone floor and into a chamber off the main hall. The door shut behind them with a solid, echoing thump.

Sophie blinked as her eyes adjusted. The room was colder than the corridor and oddly large—far too large, she thought, for the handful of first-years now standing within it. The walls were bare, and the ceiling was high. There were no banners, no furnishings, only ancient stone and the lingering echo of footsteps. A forgotten room built for more students than it now held.

She stood near the front, with Harry Potter just beside her.

Harry.

She knew him—well, not knew, but she’d recognised him immediately. She had glimpsed him in Diagon Alley over the summer, standing outside Flourish and Blotts with Hagrid. Everyone had stared, whispering. And then again on the platform at King’s Cross, with that red-haired family. Sophie had watched from a short distance, hand gripping her mum’s, eyes drawn to the effusive, motherly woman bustling her brood along. The youngest boy, with the secondhand robes and gangly limbs, had hovered just behind Harry, uncertain and awkward.

That same boy now stood behind them in line, his wand poking out of a neatly mended but worn sleeve that was just too short for his wrists. The wand’s tip looked chipped.

Harry turned to him now, fidgeting nervously.

“How exactly do they sort us into houses?” he asked in a low voice.

The red-haired boy shrugged. “Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot—but I think he was joking.”

A test?

Sophie’s stomach dropped like a stone. That hadn’t been in the books her mother read aloud—not in Hogwarts, A History, not in A Welcome Guide to Magical Education. She clenched her fists. Her magic was… uncertain, sometimes. She was good at memorising things, sure. But what if they asked her to cast something? What if she failed?

Hermione Granger—bushy-haired, intense-eyed—was whispering feverishly to herself. “I’ve tried Alohomora, Lumos, and the Hover Charm, of course, though I can’t always get it on the first try, but maybe they’ll want something trickier, or maybe there’ll be a duelling component—”

Pansy Parkinson, a few steps behind, let out an audible huff. “Wish the know-it-all would be quiet. Some of us real witches are trying to think.”

Sophie didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to draw attention. But part of her agreed. Not about Hermione not being a real witch—what nonsense—but about the noise. Her mind was already buzzing.

Blaise Zabini leaned lazily against a stone pillar, half-lidded eyes scanning the group. “At this rate, she’ll summon the Sorting Hat through sheer willpower and recite every enchantment since Merlin.”

Wayne Hopkins, standing stiffly near the back, looked like he was barely holding himself together. His chin wobbled once, but he bit it back. His arms were rigid at his sides, fingers curled tight against his robes. Sophie watched him take a deep breath—his lips moved slightly, as if repeating something silently to himself.

Then the boy beside him—a small, pale thing with wide, fearful eyes—gave a hiccupping gasp that sounded perilously close to tears.

Without hesitation, Wayne reached out and gently put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine,” he said in a voice that tried—and mostly failed—to be calm. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

Sophie felt something shift in her chest. Wayne was terrified. She could see it in the way his fingers trembled and his jaw clenched—but he was still trying to comfort someone else. She felt better at his words despite his obvious nervousness.

Sophie glanced at Daphne. Calm as ever. Arms loose at her sides, her chin slightly lifted, her eyes tracking every movement in the room. If she was nervous, she hid it perfectly. Sophie tried to emulate her example, even if only on the surface.

Suddenly, the air turned colder. Sophie’s skin prickled just before she saw the reason—ghosts.

They swept through the back wall without warning, a dozen or so of them, translucent and glowing. They drifted across the chamber like whispers on water. Their voices echoed faintly.

“Forgive and forget, I say,” said a fat little monk in cheerful tones. “We ought to give him another chance—”

“My dear Friar,” replied a lean ghost in a ruff and tights, “haven’t we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He’s not even a proper ghost—he’s a menace—”

Then the Friar noticed the students.

“New students!” he beamed, floating closer. “About to be Sorted, I suppose? How exciting!”

No one responded.

“Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!” he added with a wink. “My old house.”

Then Blaise, his voice heavy laced with dry sarcasm, said under his breath, “Nothing says ‘prestige’ like being endorsed by a dead man with rope for a belt.”

The Friar didn’t hear—or didn’t care. He floated off with a swirl of robes.

Then the door creaked open again. Professor McGonagall stood there, expression unchanged.

“Now, form a line,” she said. “We are ready for you.”

Her voice was clipped and proper, revealing nothing of what was to come. Her eyes swept the line of students like someone taking silent measure of their worth.

Sophie’s legs moved on instinct. Her heart pounded.

They filed out of the chamber, back across the gleaming flagstones, and toward the towering double doors of the Great Hall.

The moment the doors opened, the world bloomed around her.

Hundreds of candles floated in the air, their flames flickering against the vaulted ceiling—bewitched to look like the night sky. Stars twinkled down on them from a stretch of velvet darkness. The four long house tables shimmered with golden plates and goblets, and a thousand students turned to look at the line of first-years.

Sophie kept her gaze up. The ceiling, she thought. It really does look like the sky.

She heard Hermione’s breathless whisper: “It’s bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.”

Sophie murmured, “Me too.”

They walked the length of the hall, feet echoing on stone, until they reached the far end where the teachers sat at an elevated table. McGonagall gestured for them to stop and face the school.

Sophie could feel hundreds of eyes on her. It made her skin prickle.

McGonagall stepped forward and placed a small, worn stool in the centre of the space. On top of it, she set a hat.

But not just any hat.

It was a pointed wizard’s hat, the colours of clay and ash and badly faded. It looked as though it had been crushed and repaired too many times to count. Patches of threadbare velvet showed along the brim, and a long, fraying seam split near the base like an old wound—stitched, but barely. Sophie stared at that seam.

Then the hat twitched.

The frayed seam stretched, widened—and then opened. A mouth.

Sophie stiffened.

And then, impossibly, it sang.

"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,

But don't judge on what you see,

I'll eat myself if you can find

A smarter hat than me.

You can keep your bowlers black,

Your top hats, sleek and tall,

For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat

And I can cap them all.

There's nothing hidden in your head

The Sorting Hat can't see,

So try me on and I will tell you

Where you ought to be.

You might belong in Gryffindor,

Where dwell the brave at heart,

Their daring, nerve, and chivalry

Set Gryffindors apart;

You might belong in Hufflepuff,

Where they are just and loyal,

Those patient Hufflepuffs are true

And unafraid of toil;

Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind,

Where those of wit and learning,

Will always find their kind;

Or perhaps in Slytherin

You'll make your real friends,

Those cunning folk use any means

To achieve their ends.

So put me on! Don't be afraid! And don't get in a flap!

You're in safe hands (though I have none)

For I'm a Thinking Cap!”

The hat’s final note rang out, then faded into silence. The whole hall burst into applause as the patched and battered Sorting Hat bowed grandly to each of the four house tables, then sagged motionlessly on its stool once more.

Sophie’s breath caught. So that was the Sorting Hat. She had imagined some kind of ceremony—rituals, wands, maybe a charm—but not this. A talking hat that sang. And now, it would speak to her.

Professor McGonagall, back at the front of the hall, stepped forward with a long scroll of parchment that unfurled nearly to the floor.

“When I call your name,” she said, “you will come forward, place the hat on your head, and sit on the stool to be sorted.”

The first name called was “Abbott, Hannah!”

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line. The hat fell right over her eyes.

After only a moment: “HUFFLEPUFF!”

Applause rose from the table on the right. Sophie saw the Fat Friar waving cheerfully from his place near the students.

“Bones, Susan!” became another Hufflepuff.

“Boot, Terry!” was sent to Ravenclaw, followed shortly by “Brocklehurst, Mandy.”

“Brown, Lavender!” was the first Gryffindor, to a raucous cheer from the table on the far left. Sophie caught sight of the redheaded twins whooping like they were at a Quidditch match.

Millicent Bulstrode stomped her way to the stool and became the first new Slytherin. The table second from the right clapped dutifully, if not enthusiastically.

More names were called.

Some decisions were instant—“Finch-Fletchley, Justin,” the small boy Wayne had comforted, was barely seated before the hat cried “HUFFLEPUFF!”—while others took longer, like “Finnigan, Seamus,” who sat squirming beneath the hat for a full minute before it shouted “GRYFFINDOR!”

“Granger, Hermione!” nearly jogged to the stool. The hat had barely touched her curls before it shouted, “GRYFFINDOR!”

Pansy Parkinson, a few places ahead of Sophie, didn’t so much walk to the stool as sashay. She placed the hat on her head with a smug smirk. It took a little longer with her, but eventually: “SLYTHERIN!”

Sophie watched Pansy strut off toward the Slytherin table, her robes swinging.

The line grew shorter.

“Patil, Parvati!” — Gryffindor. “Patil, Padma!” — Ravenclaw. Twins, but different Houses? Interesting. “Perks, Sally-Anne!” — Hufflepuff.

Then—

“Roper, Sophie!”

She inhaled through her nose and stepped forward.

The walk to the stool felt longer than it was. The whole hall stared. She didn’t look at them. She focused on the stool. On the hat.

Sit. Hat on. Sit. Hat on.

The stool was slightly higher than she expected. The hat was heavy—dusty, too—and it smelled of mothballs and candle soot. She could feel the worn fabric press against her brow, the rough hem near her temple.

Then—

“Well now,” said a voice inside her head. It was dry and curious. “What have we here?”

Sophie froze.

“Plenty of cleverness. You enjoy solving things, don’t you? Riddles, questions, knots. A mind that wants to know.”

She did. That was true.

“Ravenclaw would do very nicely… books, debates, ancient logic, wandlore…”

A flicker of something warm stirred in her chest.

“…but wait.”

The voice changed slightly. Not harsher, exactly—keener.

“There’s ambition here. But not the noisy kind. Yours is a steady burn. Not fame. Not glory. Something deeper.”

Sophie’s throat tightened.

“You want power, but not for yourself. You want… healing. You want the tools to go further than anyone else has. To solve something others have given up on.”

Her mind flashed to Agnes’s description of Muggle hospital beds. Machines that beeped. The way Agnes would say, “No news today, Sophie,” and turn away so Sophie wouldn’t see her crying.

And then Agnes’s voice, fragile but fierce: “Promise me. If you ever get to learn magic… real magic…”

“You’d use any spell, break any rule, challenge any tradition if it meant keeping that promise,” the hat murmured. “Even if others said it was impossible. Even if it meant walking alone.”

Sophie felt her heart beating so hard she could barely breathe.

“You could be great, you know. Not just clever. Not just good. Great. And greatness,” the hat whispered, “requires means. So where shall I put you…?”

Sophie didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

The hat gave a small, cryptic sigh.

“SLYTHERIN!”

The word rang out through the hall.

She took the hat off with careful hands and stood. The Slytherin table was applauding—some politely, some enthusiastically. Daphne Greengrass gave a slight nod as Sophie approached. Pansy looked mildly pleased.

Sophie slid into the empty space beside Daphne. Her legs felt like ice. Her chest was a little hollow.

But as she looked around—at the flickering candles, the enchanted sky above, the staff table looming in the distance—something shifted inside her.

The Sorting finished with Blaise joining her and the others in Slytherin. He raised one eyebrow and bowed with a little theatrical flourish before sitting across from Sophie and Daphne.

The Sorting was over. Sophie sat at the Slytherin table, her new robes blending in with the forest-green and silver around her. The candlelight made the silverware gleam like polished bones, and the banners overhead stirred in a breeze Sophie couldn’t feel. Somewhere above, the ceiling reflected a starlit sky.

Dumbledore stood. A hush fell over the hall.

His long, silver beard gleamed like moonlight, and his deep blue robes shimmered faintly as he raised his arms, his smile as wide as the castle itself.

“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”

Then, with no further explanation, he sat down.

Scattered applause followed. At the Gryffindor table, several students laughed.

Pansy Parkinson gave a theatrical sigh. “He’s completely off his broom.”

“Don’t be childish,” Daphne said quietly, without looking up from her goblet.

“Insane,” Pansy insisted. “All that power and he uses it to say… tweak?”

Blaise Zabini, resting his chin on one hand, replied with a faint smirk, “Or perhaps he plays the fool so his opponents let their guard down. It’s a useful strategy—projecting harmlessness while holding all the cards.”

Pansy snorted. “Please. You think You-Know-Who underestimated Dumbledore because of a few silly words? That man’s been headmaster since before our grandparents graduated.”

“Exactly,” drawled Draco Malfoy from further down the table. “He’s been here forever and still clinging to his post like an old ghoul in a rocking chair. Father says the school needs new blood—someone who won’t coddle Muggle-borns and Halfbloods like precious artefacts.”

Sophie glanced at him sideways. Draco Malfoy. She knew the name—everyone did. The Malfoys were one of the oldest wizarding families in Britain. Ancient, wealthy, and well-connected. His father, Lucius Malfoy, was often mentioned in The Daily Prophet and in the more conservative wizarding papers her mother had read, always with at least a veneer of deference.

Draco spoke with the confidence of someone certain of his place in the world. But Sophie noticed something else—he repeated his father’s opinions word for word. So far, Draco Malfoy hadn’t said anything that wasn’t prefaced by “Father says.” She wondered if he ever thought for himself.

The food appeared all at once, silencing the table with collective awe.

Sophie’s plate filled with roast lamb, rosemary potatoes, and a delicate stream of gravy. Comfort dishes she had often had from her Mum. She blinked down at the table, then served herself a modest helping, careful to move like she belonged.

Daphne, as always, was precise: just enough of everything, and nothing too rich.  Single lamb chop and lots of simply-prepared vegetables. Pansy went straight for the sausages and mash. Blaise, predictably, passed over most of it with a skeptical glance, nibbling at a carrot stick  and gesturing with it like a Frenchman nursing his Gauloises cigaret.

As the students tucked in, Sophie became aware of the figure looming silently a few seats down the bench—tall, ghostly, and strangely menacing.

The Bloody Baron.

His translucent form shimmered with spectral pallor, and his robes bore the unmistakable stain of silver blood. The candlelight made the wet-looking patches gleam like moonlight through water. His eyes were blank and staring. Unlike the other ghosts, the Baron didn’t float or chat or make dramatic gestures. He simply watched.

“Don’t stare,” whispered a second-year girl beside Sophie. “He doesn’t like it.”

Sophie looked quickly away.

“He’s even creepier up close,” Pansy murmured.

“Not a word of his story is in the history books,” Blaise noted. “Makes you wonder what he did to get stuck haunting us.”

Draco scoffed. “Whatever it was, I’m sure it was effective. There’s apparently a filthy little poltergeist here, Peeves. The Baron’s the only one Peeves fears. That’s all I care about.”

They fell into silence as the meal continued. Around them, the rest of the school was alive with chatter and clinking cutlery. The Gryffindors were loudest—of course—but the other tables had their own rhythms.

Sophie tried to absorb it all without being obvious. That was how Daphne did it—quiet, calm, watching everything.

When desserts appeared—treacle tarts, iced strawberries, chocolate eclairs—Sophie selected a modest spoonful of trifle and nibbled at the fruit.

It wasn’t until the plates had cleared and the hall fell silent again that Dumbledore rose once more.

“Ahem—just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered,” he said. “I have a few start-of-term notices to give you.”

Pansy leaned forward archly. “Here comes the real lecture.”

“First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils,” Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling. “And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well.”

He glanced pointedly toward the Gryffindor table. The twins looked up with matching grins.

“I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, our caretaker, to remind you that no magic is to be used between classes in the corridors.”

“Good luck enforcing that,” Blaise scoffed.

“And finally,” Dumbledore continued, “I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to anyone who does not wish to die a very painful death.”

A beat of silence followed.

Then faint, uncertain laughter.

“Ridiculous,” Draco muttered. “He might as well have put a blinking Enter Here sign above it.”

“I wonder what’s really there,” Sophie mused.

Blaise gave her a sideways glance, seeming pleased that she’d spoken. “Something worth protecting, obviously. No one guards an empty corridor with dramatic warnings.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Or maybe he’s finally lost it. Maybe next he’ll declare the north stairwell infested with fire-breathing mallards.”

Daphne said nothing. She calmly reached for her goblet and took a sip of water.

Sophie followed her example. She hadn’t said much, and she didn’t plan to. At least not yet. But she was listening—closely.

The feast had ended, the last golden crumbs of dessert vanishing from the platters as if whisked away by invisible house-elves. The air in the Great Hall now felt heavier with fullness and fatigue. Students slumped slightly in their seats. The candlelight flickered lower, like flames preparing to sleep.

Sophie sat still among the Slytherins, her new housemates chatting in low tones around her. Her body was warm, her stomach content, but her mind was not.

She tried to focus on the prefect’s voice as he stood and called the first-years to follow, but the Sorting Hat’s words echoed louder than anything in her ears:

Greatness… requires means.

They were led out of the hall and into the shadows of the dungeons. The torches grew dimmer as they descended—warmer light replaced by greenish flickers. The air grew colder but not unpleasantly so; it carried a damp chill, like the breath of underground rivers.

Sophie walked quietly, somewhere in the middle of the pack. Daphne walked ahead, composed and self-contained. Pansy and Millicent whispered behind her. Blaise strolled in the rear, as if none of it particularly concerned him.

They stopped before a blank stretch of wall, smooth and featureless.

“Here we are,” said the prefect. “Remember this spot.”

He turned to the wall and said, “Salazar.”

The stone melted away. The entrance opened into a long corridor lit with gently pulsing green orbs. As they stepped through the archway, Sophie caught her first glimpse of the Slytherin common room. It was unlike anything she’d imagined.

The ceiling was low and arched like a stone cathedral turned inward. Columns lined the room, carved with serpents coiled in mid-strike. The light filtered in from tall, narrow windows—green-tinged from the lake beyond. The lake. She could see strands of kelp swaying outside. Once, the shadow of something long and tentacled drifted by.

There were no communal study tables as she’d expected. Instead, the walls were lined with individual desks tucked into alcoves, each one separated by dark wood partitions like little study cells in a library. Sophie counted at least a dozen. One even had a brass lockplate.

The furniture matched: velvet armchairs and high-backed settees in hunter green, dark oak side tables polished to a high sheen. Bookshelves lined the walls, and silver sconces hissed gently as they burned with enchanted flame.

It was all very elegant. Secretive. Private. Solitary.

Sophie’s feet carried her to one of the tall windows. She touched the glass. Cold. A soft ripple of current passed through the lake beyond. She wondered what would happen if she pressed her ear to the pane. Could she hear the water? The giant squid?

The female prefect led them down a side corridor and up a narrow spiral staircase to a first-year girls' dormitory. Their room was circular, with four four-poster beds hung with green-and-silver curtains. Each bed had a small, silver-embroidered snake at the headboard. At the foot of each bed, a polished trunk with a brass nameplate waited. Sophie found hers easily.

Pansy threw herself backward onto the bed beside hers and groaned. “My legs are going to fall off. I hate stairs.”

Millicent had already kicked off her shoes and was pawing through her trunk for pyjamas. “That meal nearly put me to sleep.”

Daphne, ever graceful, was already brushing her hair with slow, practiced movements. She hadn’t said much all evening, but she radiated something that felt like quiet control.

Sophie opened her trunk and pulled out her night things without speaking. She didn’t want to say something that would sound uncertain. Not here.

She lay back on her bed and stared at the canopy above, green velvet just a shade too dark to be welcoming. Her fingers fiddled with the embroidered silver snake coiled above her head.

She was in Slytherin. She had wanted Ravenclaw, hadn’t she? Hadn’t that made more sense? She had always loved questions. Solving problems. Chasing after things that didn’t yet have answers. Her mother had told her once, “You always want to know why something is the way it is—and how to change it.” That had felt right.

But the Sorting Hat had seen something else. Ambition. Purpose. Resolve. A willingness to go further than others would. A drive rooted not in ego, but in need. She thought again of Agnes and her promise.

The Hat had understood what she hadn’t yet said aloud. And Slytherin, it seemed, would give her the tools to pursue that kind of knowledge—the kind that changed the world, not just understood it.

Still…

She glanced around at the room. Pansy had curled up under her blankets already, her curtains gaping open. Millicent was snoring faintly. Daphne’s curtains were drawn, but there was the faint sound of a page turning.

Sophie liked people. She liked talking, questioning, teasing out thoughts in conversation. She wasn’t used to the idea of studying behind partitions, in secret, with your back to everyone.

Would this place make her secretive, too? Would it teach her to keep her thoughts behind walls, or would she struggle to adapt?

She turned onto her side and closed her eyes. The water outside shifted gently, casting slow, writhing shadows across the stone.

Maybe it didn’t matter yet. Maybe she didn’t have to know everything on the first night.

Her hand reached out instinctively for the traveling box next to her bed. The small, hinged case had gone unopened through the feast, but she’d checked it earlier and found Edmund safe, coiled comfortably in the shredded parchment lining.

She lifted the lid carefully and smiled.

The little snake uncurled and flicked his tongue as if tasting the air of the new room. His smooth, dark body shimmered faintly in the greenish light. Sophie reached for him and let him coil slowly around her fingers, then up her wrist.

He’d never spoken to her—he was just an ordinary snake, as far as she knew—but he was quiet and still and alive. A cool, slithering weight she could hold.

She pulled back her bed curtains, slipped beneath the covers, and let Edmund settle across her collarbone, his tiny head resting under her ear.

His skin was cool, but he was familiar. The tickle of his scales against her neck reminded her of mossy stones by the Neck near her house in Godric’s Hollow. Of damp grass and late sunsets and sitting cross-legged in her mother’s garden, reading out loud to something too small to answer back.

Edmund didn’t move much. He didn’t need to. He was just… there. She would be like Edmund: quietly, profoundly present.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight: First Lessons

Sophie woke with a start, the sound of rustling curtains and the low murmur of girls’ voices tugging her from dreams that were already slipping away. Dim green light filtered through the enchanted windows of the Slytherin dormitory, throwing watery ripples across the stone walls. The chill of the dungeons clung to the air, a reminder that, even underground, mornings could be brisk.

She pulled her curtains back and sat up in bed, smoothing her hair and reaching instinctively for Goldie, the small stuffed Niffler her mother had given her when she was very young. Goldie’s little felt paws and stitched snout were worn smooth from years of nighttime adventures and whispered secrets. Sophie hugged him briefly, out of habit rather than need, and felt a pang of longing for Somerset, for her mother’s kitchen and the faint smell of woodsmoke in the mornings.

The spell broke when Pansy’s voice, cutting and amused, sliced through the sleepy quiet.

“Oh, look at that,” Pansy drawled, perched cross‑legged on her bed and already dressed in her neatly pressed uniform. “Little Sophie Roper can’t sleep without her teddy‑weddy. How precious.”

Sophie froze, fingers still resting on Goldie’s soft back. Heat rushed to her cheeks. She wanted to snap back, but her tongue felt heavy.

Pansy, despite her sometimes cruel expression and slightly pug, upturned nose, was irritatingly beautiful and perfectly put together for someone who had woken in a strange dormitory for the very first time. Her dark chestnut hair gleamed even under the sickly green lake light that did no one any favours, and her complexion was nearly as fair as Daphne’s. She looked like she belonged here in a way Sophie wasn’t sure she ever would.

“Don’t be sour, Pansy,” Millicent muttered from the next bed over, her voice rough with sleep. “Not before breakfast.”

Millicent rarely spoke unless spoken to, and was herself often sour, so the defence came as a surprise. Pansy blinked, caught off guard.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Millicent said without lifting her head from her pillow. “Shut it.”

Sophie blinked, stunned. Pansy looked affronted, as though she’d been slapped, then sniffed and swung her legs over the side of the bed, clearly deciding the argument wasn’t worth it.

As Sophie slid out of bed and reached for her robe, her eyes caught on Millicent’s pillow. Half hidden beneath it was a ragged, old stuffed dragon, its wings frayed and one button eye missing. Sophie didn’t comment, but filed the fact away, tucking it somewhere safe in her mind.

The showers were cool, turning cold rather than hot as they ran, the kind of shower that woke you up in seconds, whether you wanted to be awake or not. Sophie shivered beneath the stream, letting it clear the fog of sleep. She dressed quickly afterward, tugging on her green‑and‑silver tie and shrugging into her robes, and joined the others heading to the Great Hall.

Breakfast was bustling, the long tables crowded with yawning first‑years and older students alike. Platters of eggs, rashers of bacon, and golden toast stacked high filled the air with a warm, savoury haze. Sophie took a seat beside Blaise, who already had his plate neatly arranged.

Across the table, Daphne was stirring her pumpkin juice with a distracted expression, cool and composed as ever—until she dropped a cube of sugar into the goblet and then, without looking, added a dollop of cream. The juice curdled instantly, threads of pale orange swirling through it. Sophie bit back a smile. So Daphne could slip.

Blaise noticed, too. His eyebrows lifted, but his face remained perfectly impassive. “Creative,” he murmured.

Daphne glanced down, blinked, then wordlessly pushed the cup away and reached for a fresh drink.

Pansy, still a little prickly from earlier, looked as though she might have commented, but Blaise’s air of unshaken calm seemed to smooth over any sharp remarks. He ate like someone with no concept of urgency, his every movement deliberate. Watching him, Sophie felt a strange reassurance. Nothing seemed to ruffle him.

When the first bell chimed, they gathered their bags and joined the stream of students descending toward the dungeons for Potions. Sophie’s stomach fluttered; she expected much from Snape, for her father had often spoken very highly of his potions knowledge. He had called Snape “an artist among dabblers,” words that now echoed in her head as they approached the heavy wooden door.

The classroom was deep in the heart of the dungeons, and stepping inside felt like entering a cavern that had been claimed by dark magic. The air was cool and damp, tinged with the sharp scents of herbs and the acrid bite of ingredients long steeped in brine. Shelves lined every wall, crammed with jars of grotesque specimens—shrivelled roots, pale worms suspended in viscous fluid, glistening eyes that seemed to follow her movement. Candlelight flickered from iron sconces, casting shadows that danced across the stone floor and made the preserved creatures seem to twitch. Brass implements of varying kinds hung from hooks or sat stacked in neat, intimidating rows, their blackened patinas testimony to years of intense heat. Now and then a cauldron let out a lazy puff of bluish steam from some lingering residue, and the mingled smells of mint, sulphur, and something metallic curled thickly in the air, making Sophie’s eyes prickle.

The students took their places at the scarred wooden benches, each fitted with a narrow shelf for knives and scales. Sophie laid out her ingredients carefully, trying not to let her gaze linger on a jar containing something with too many limbs.

The lesson was shared with Gryffindor, and Sophie’s eyes drifted to the already familiar black hair of Harry Potter as he took a seat near Hermione Granger. Hermione had a quill already poised, eyes bright with readiness.

Snape swept into the room like a billow of black smoke, his robes flaring behind him. His voice was low, dangerous, each word clipped with disdain. He didn’t so much teach as interrogate, prowling among the benches, and Sophie felt her shoulders stiffen under his gaze.

“Mr. Potter,” Snape purred, “our new celebrity.” The sarcasm dripped like acid. Harry squirmed under the attention. Sophie felt a pang of secondhand embarrassment but kept her eyes on her notes. She could answer only a few of the questions Snape spat at Harry, and she was a Master Potioner’s daughter.

Granger, by contrast, answered every question eagerly, citing exact ingredients and effects. Sophie couldn’t help but be impressed, even as Pansy leaned over and whispered, “What a little know‑it‑all. Muggleborns always try so hard.”

Blaise, beside Sophie, tilted his head in thought. “Still,” he murmured softly enough that only Sophie heard, “she’s sharp. No denying that.”

Sophie didn’t trust herself to speak. A moment later, Draco Malfoy laughed aloud when Snape sharply dressed down Hermione for trying to answer a question he’d put to Harry and added a cutting remark. As Draco turned to his friends, Sophie caught the word Mudblood, casual as breath. Her blood ran cold. She kept her head down, but her quill wavered mid‑stroke. That word—she’d read it, yes, but hearing it spat so lightly in a classroom made something twist in her chest. She forced her focus back to the cauldron simmering before her, willing herself not to look up, not to react. Hogwarts was very different from home in Godric’s Hollow.

Once she allowed herself to concentrate, the world narrowed to the dance of flame and liquid, the precise rhythm of slicing ingredients. Time slipped by unnoticed until Snape’s voice cut through again, dismissing them. Sophie exhaled, feeling oddly drained but exhilarated, too.

History of Magic followed, a stark contrast in every possible way. The ghostly Professor Binns drifted through his lecture in a monotone, recounting goblin rebellions with all the excitement of reading a shopping list. Sophie tried—she really did—to follow along, quill scratching dutiful notes. But soon her mind wandered, images of potions bubbling and healing draughts forming in her imagination. She doodled tiny cauldrons in the margins before catching herself.

By lunchtime, she was ravenous. The Great Hall felt brighter now, sunlight pouring through the enchanted ceiling. Sophie took her place at the Slytherin table again, grateful for the clatter of plates and the comfort of mashed potatoes and roasted chicken. The food was hot and plentiful, far more than she ever saw on a table at home, but as she chewed, she felt a pang of homesickness. Her mother’s stews and breads always tasted of something more—some kind of flair, or love, that Hogwarts’ broad platters lacked.

Millicent sat across from her, methodically carving roast beef into large pieces and dispatching them in short order. Sophie hesitated, then leaned forward slightly. “Thank you,” she said quietly, “for earlier. With Pansy.”

Millicent’s fork paused mid‑air. She looked at Sophie as if weighing something, then gave a slight shrug. “Whatever,” she muttered, returning to her plate.

Sophie lowered her gaze, cheeks warming again. In Somerset, a thank‑you earned a smile or a soft word. Here, it was a tally, a mark on some invisible scorecard she didn’t yet understand.

Across the table, Blaise was recounting some clever observation about Snape’s brewing method, while Pansy smirked at something Draco had said two seats down. Daphne, ever composed, was leafing through her timetable with delicate precision, as though already planning a strategy for the week.

Sophie ate quietly, listening, absorbing, her mind already turning to the classes still to come.

⸻

After lunch, Sophie followed the flow of green‑trimmed robes out of the Great Hall and up through the castle. The air grew warmer as they climbed, the smell of stone and damp moss giving way to sun‑baked dust and waxed wood. The Transfiguration classroom was on the first floor, its windows flung wide to the afternoon, letting in light that glanced off tall bookcases and rows of neat desks.

The Hufflepuffs were already arriving, and Sophie caught sight of Wayne Hopkins, his fair hair falling into his eyes as he carried a battered satchel. He looked up and broke into a grin when he saw her. That grin—open, guileless—was like a sip of cool water after the subtle manoeuvrings of her own House.

“Morning,” he whispered as she slid into the desk beside him.

“Afternoon,” Sophie corrected softly, unable to help the smile tugging at her own mouth.

Professor McGonagall strode in with brisk efficiency, her iron‑grey hair caught in a tight bun and her tartan robes sweeping behind her. Her Scottish accent lent a rhythmic snap to every word as she called them to attention.

“Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,” she announced, her eyes narrowing slightly as they swept the class. “Anyone messing about in my class may very well leave and not return. Understood?”

A ripple of nervous agreement murmured through the students. Sophie straightened, quill ready, feeling the weight of expectation settle over her shoulders. McGonagall tapped the desk with her wand, and the wooden matches atop each student’s table gleamed faintly as if catching a hidden spark.

“Your goal today,” McGonagall continued, “is to transform this match into a needle. Small steps. Precision. Concentration.”

Sophie watched her wand movements carefully, tracing the clean arcs and subtle flicks in her mind. When it was her turn, she lifted her own wand, whispered the incantation, and felt the pulse of magic travel down her arm. The match quivered but remained stubbornly wooden.

Around her, first‑years muttered spells under their breath, frustration crackling in the air. Wayne managed a partial success—his match glinted silver at one end while the other still bore a charred tip. His face lit with triumph.

“Not bad for a first attempt,” Sophie said, her voice low.

He beamed, brushing hair from his eyes. “Bit of luck, I reckon.”

“Luck is skill,” she quoted her father, “and skill rewards practice.”

Her own match remained unchanged.

She tried again. The green of Slytherin ties and badges and the gold and black of Hufflepuff House around her seemed to fade; the room shrank to match, wand, and breath. She drew the spell into her mind, imagined the grain of wood hardening, sharpening, stretching to a glinting point. There was a soft sound, like a sigh, and suddenly her match shimmered. The head vanished, the wood flashed to silver. A needle lay where a match had been.

Sophie let out a delighted gasp. A few seats away, Pansy gave an exaggerated yawn.

McGonagall appeared silently at her elbow, eyes glinting behind her spectacles. “Well done, Miss Roper,” she said briskly, though the corners of her mouth softened almost imperceptibly.

Sophie glowed at the praise, tucking the transformed needle carefully into her sleeve. A tiny, silly triumph perhaps, but hers nonetheless.

“Now,” McGonagall said, sweeping to the front, “what you’ve just achieved is the most basic level of object transformation. With study, you will progress to complex transfiguration of objects into other objects, and eventually, the transfiguration of living beings.” Her eyes narrowed just slightly, as though she could feel the surge of curiosity and apprehension ripple through the room.

Sophie felt her breath catch. Living beings?

McGonagall’s gaze flicked toward her, sharp and knowing, almost as if she’d heard the thought aloud. “Many young witches and wizards have romantic notions about human transformation—” she gave a soft sniff, “—and, in particular, the lore surrounding Animagi. You will do well to forget most of it. Animagi are not wild, free spirits roaming fields at midnight—indeed not! They are registered, regulated, and bound by rigorous magical law. The process is perilous and demands precision beyond what most manage even in adulthood.”

Sophie flushed, startled, the old stories her mother used to tell scattering like startled birds. McGonagall seemed to register her expression and allowed the briefest quirk of her lips.

“When you have mastered object transformation,” McGonagall finished, “you may begin to consider the possibilities. Until then, theory and discipline.”

She flicked her hand towards the doors. “Class dismissed.”

Chairs scraped back. Sophie gathered her things, still chewing on the professor’s words, when a soft gasp went around the room. McGonagall, serene as if it were nothing at all, had blurred into movement. Where she had stood, a tabby cat now sat neatly on the front table, tail curled around its paws, bright eyes glinting as she serenely watched them file out.

Sophie hesitated in the doorway, eyes wide. Then Wayne’s voice called softly behind her—“See you at dinner!”—and she moved on, heart beating fast, the image of the cat burned into her thoughts.

⸻

The Charms classroom felt utterly different—lighter, somehow, as if the air itself held a sparkle of magic. Sunlight slanted through high windows, catching on floating motes of dust that drifted like drowsy pixies. Desks were arranged in tidy rows, each with a well‑used cushion for kneeling practice, and the faint scent of ink and old books mingled with something floral.

Professor Flitwick was already there, perched on a stack of books so he could see over the lectern. His dark hair was sleekly combed back from his lively face, and his bright eyes twinkled as he clapped his hands for attention.

“Welcome, welcome!” he piped in his high, clear voice. “Today, we begin with a simple levitation charm. Wands ready, feathers at the ready, minds sharp as knives!”

Feathers had been set out at each desk—soft white quills that trembled as though they, too, were anticipating flight. Sophie’s fingers smoothed the vane of hers, marvelling at the delicate barbs, before setting it down carefully.

Flitwick demonstrated the wand movement—swish and flick—along with the incantation. His enthusiasm was infectious, and Sophie found herself smiling despite herself.

“Remember!” he piped. “It’s not ‘swoosh-and-flick,’ but swish! and flick! Feel the release in your wrist, and say the words clearly: Wingardium Leviosa!”

All around her, students began to practice. A few feathers wobbled; one from a Hufflepuff boy spun helplessly in circles. Sophie frowned in concentration, her grip on the wand light but steady. She imagined the feather lightening, air swirling beneath it like cupped hands.

“Wingardium Leviosa,” she intoned softly, shaping the wand movement precisely.

The feather trembled, lifted half an inch, then flopped back down. Sophie bit her lip, adjusted her wrist, and tried again. This time it rose steadily, hovering inches above the desk. Her heart gave a little leap.

Beside her, Blaise gave a satisfied hum as his feather darted a good foot into the air and dipped neatly to one side before settling gracefully back down. For once, his expression cracked—a faint curve of pride in his otherwise composed face.

“You’ve got a knack,” Sophie said softly.

“Proper magic,” Blaise agreed, eyes still on his feather. The faint pride remained in his voice, and Sophie caught herself thinking that his bored detachment was only a mask—something he wore to keep others guessing.

“You make it look easy,” she said.

He gave a small shrug, that glint of pride still warming his voice. “Coordination, intent. Charms aren’t about brute force. They’re about understanding how to guide magic, not wrestle it. That’s real power, matching intent to outcome.”

Sophie nodded, repeating the spell, coaxing her feather higher. A shadow fell across her desk and she looked up to find Flitwick beaming at the two Slytherins.

“Well done, you two! Such focus—yes, yes, very good indeed!” He clapped his tiny hands, and Sophie flushed with pride.

As the class practiced, Blaise leaned closer, his voice pitched low so only she could hear. “Before he came to Hogwarts, you know, Flitwick was a duelling champion. Best in Europe for a time.”

Sophie’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Oh yes,” Blaise said with the faintest of smiles. “They say he retired after some scandal, though no one knows the details. But don’t be fooled—he might look harmless, but he’s dangerous in a duel.”

Sophie looked back at the small professor, now correcting a Hufflepuff’s wrist angle, and tried to imagine him in the heat of battle. It was oddly difficult, yet Blaise’s tone held the weight of truth. “A duelling champion,” she repeated softly. “He doesn’t seem the type.”

“Exactly,” Blaise said. “Complex little man. And a beautiful singing voice, too.”

She scoffed and quickly covered her mouth, looking around to see if anyone had noticed.

“Just wait,” Blaise went on. “You’ll see not everything I say is in jest.”

Laughter broke out suddenly as one Hufflepuff’s feather shot up and darted into Daphne’s nose, making her sneeze explosively then glare coldly at her partner. Flitwick merely chuckled, quick as a whip in correcting him. “Control, Mr. Davies! Grace, not chaos!”

The look Daphne shot the young Hufflepuff might be considered a new Unforgivable.

The lesson ended with feathers floating gently down to the desks, like snowfall settling after a storm. Sophie flexed her fingers, exhilaration buzzing through her. Charms had felt alive in a way she hadn’t expected, a magic that responded to careful intent.

Blaise tucked his wand into his robe with a languid air. “Only one more class to go,” he said, tone almost reluctant. “Astronomy. Then we can call it a day.”

Sophie couldn’t help a small laugh, slinging her satchel over her shoulder as they joined the trickle of students heading up the staircases.

As they climbed, Sophie flexed her fingers, feeling the soft ache of first spells well cast, and wondered if the rest of her education would always feel like this—equal parts exhaustion and wonder. The afternoon light was fading now, and the castle’s stone corridors seemed to glow softly as they climbed. Ahead of them, the spindly tower of the Astronomy classroom rose toward the sky, promising yet another view into a world Sophie had only begun to discover.

––––

The long climb to the Astronomy Tower stretched Sophie’s legs, the staircases narrowing and winding as they rose higher through the castle. A cool evening breeze met them when they stepped out onto the open platform, carrying the faint, mineral scent of stone and lakewater from far below.

The sun was slipping low on the horizon, streaks of molten red and gold melting quickly into shadow. In these northern latitudes, autumn twilight did not linger—it rushed in, shadows racing ahead of night. The blue overhead deepened by the moment, the wind sharpening, the first pricks of starlight appearing as if someone had drawn them out with a quill.

The tower itself was alive with quiet magic. Brass telescopes, tall and polished, stood in a careful ring along the outer edge. Their fittings gleamed faintly in the dying light. Wooden tables were set with parchment, quills, and compasses, everything in neat stacks as though awaiting an initiation. Ravenclaw and Slytherin students had already gathered, murmuring in low, focused tones as they organised their charts.

Professor Sinistra stood in the centre of it all, and for a moment, Sophie forgot the chill. Sinistra was striking, her deep midnight‑blue robes traced with silver constellations that shimmered like falling stars with each movement. Her dark curls, pinned with combs shaped like crescents, framed a face of serene beauty—high cheekbones catching the last sunlight, dark eyes calm and knowing. There was an elegance about her, a stillness and intellect that made Sophie feel small, awed, and drawn in all at once.

“Good evening,” Sinistra said, her voice carrying across the platform with unhurried confidence. “Astronomy begins with theory. Before you so much as touch a telescope, you must learn to see the sky with your mind.”

She gestured to the tables, and the students bent over their parchment. Sophie followed suit, copying Sinistra’s precise diagrams, tracing the lines of Cassiopeia, Draco, and Ursa Minor under the professor’s careful instruction. The wind picked up, sharper now, and Sophie shivered as the last glow of the sun sank away.

“Mark the fixed points,” Sinistra murmured, moving among them, glancing over shoulders, her presence steady and deliberate. “Mark them again. If you cannot find them on the page, you will not find them in the sky.”

Time seemed to quicken. The light bled out of the world in what felt like moments, the royal blue of evening deepening into indigo, and then into night. Torches flared to life in sconces around the platform, their flames bowing in the wind.

Only when their notes were finished did Sinistra sweep an arm toward the telescopes. “Now,” she said, “a glimpse. The sky does not wait, and tonight she hurries.”

Sophie stepped up to a telescope, careful not to jar the brass fittings. She bent to the eyepiece, breath catching as the cold lens brought the stars into sudden, shocking clarity. Patterns emerged—clusters, arcs, the silvery blaze of distant suns.

“Cassiopeia,” Sinistra said behind her, soft as a secret, her long fingers pointing to the W-shaped constellation above. “Always circling the Pole Star, never wandering far. Remember her. She will guide you when all else seems lost.”

Sophie felt a pang in her chest, a tug stronger than she’d expected. I could spend my life learning this…

She shut her eyes for a moment, shook herself. No. Healing magic first. That’s why I’m here. That’s what matters.

Sinistra moved on, her robes whispering against the stone, her profile etched against a night sky that seemed to bloom with stars now that true dark had fallen.

“And you will return,” she said as the students packed away their charts, “on Wednesday night, at midnight, for a proper viewing. Dress warmly. The night sky gives her secrets only to those willing to meet her on her own terms.”

A thrill raced through Sophie in spite of herself. Midnight on the tower under a sky like this—it felt like something stolen from a dream. She lingered just long enough to watch Sinistra pause at the outer rail, her figure serene against the glittering canopy above, before following the others back down the winding stairs.

⸻

The bell for supper echoed through the corridors as Sophie descended with the rest of the first-years. The Great Hall glowed with the light of hundreds of candles, the enchanted ceiling overhead reflecting the same rush of stars she had just seen from the tower. The long tables were already filling, the clatter of plates and low murmur of voices carrying through the warm air.

Dinner mirrored lunch in its abundance: golden roasts and heaps of vegetables, thick bread still warm from the ovens, pitchers of pumpkin juice and goblets of water beading with condensation. But tonight, the full staff was present at the high table, lending the hall a certain hush even amid the chatter. Dumbledore sat serenely at the centre, McGonagall speaking in low tones to Flitwick, and Sinistra a little further along, composed and elegant, a faint smile playing at her lips as she watched the students with quiet interest.

Draco Malfoy, meanwhile, was in his element. He lounged back on the bench, a self‑satisfied smile curving his mouth as he held forth to Crabbe and Goyle and a few others who leaned in with eager faces. His gestures were expansive, his tone theatrical; whatever he was recounting earned a burst of laughter from Pansy, who looked at him as though he were a prince among schoolboys.

Daphne Greengrass sat further down the table, her posture relaxed but deliberate. She spoke in a low, measured tone to two other Slytherin first-years, offering calm observations about their lessons, the common room, and little details that seemed insignificant. Yet Sophie, listening quietly as she spooned vegetables onto her plate, noticed the way Daphne’s gaze flitted from one face to another, how she waited for each reply with an attentive tilt of her head. It was like watching someone place chess pieces in positions no one else yet recognised as important.

Sophie ate steadily, content to observe, but every so often her eyes strayed back to the high table where Sinistra sat in her midnight robes, a calm presence amid the bustle. Sophie caught herself staring and ducked back to her plate, cheeks warming. Healing magic first, she reminded herself fiercely. Always first.

⸻

After dinner, the Slytherins returned to the cool depths of their common room. The fire burned low, and emerald light rippled over the walls from the lake beyond. The air hummed with the sound of quills scratching parchment as students set to reviewing their notes.

But whispers stirred in every corner, carrying the same story.

“They say Draco’s challenged Potter to a duel,” a second-year whispered, eyes wide.

“It’s true,” Pansy said, leaning forward eagerly. “Potter’s going to be humiliated. Everyone will see.”

Daphne, seated nearby with her timetable open on her lap, said only, “It seems unnecessary,” her tone neutral, almost languid.

Blaise Zabini, lounging in an armchair, finally spoke. His voice was soft, yet it carried, and the nearby conversations fell silent. “It’s not the duel itself that bothers me,” he said. “It’s the lack of strategy. A scion of an old House should know better. A challenge like this—it’s clumsy, theatrical. It shows nothing but the urge to be seen.”

Pansy turned to him sharply. “You’d rather he let Potter get away with everything?”

Blaise tilted his head, dark eyes calm. “I’d rather he played the game properly. We’re Slytherins. There are subtler ways to win than brandishing your name like a cudgel.”

He didn’t speak of Potter himself—his tone suggested indifference to the boy, as though Harry was merely a catalyst for revealing Malfoy’s shortcomings. Blaise’s disappointment seemed almost personal, a judgment on Draco as a Malfoy and a Slytherin, not on the duel itself.

The common room murmured with speculation. It was said Draco had left early for the dormitory with Crabbe and Goyle, a move that only inflamed the whispers. Everyone assumed he would slip out later to meet Potter under cover of darkness.

Sophie kept her head down, pretending to review her Astronomy notes. She thought of Potter again, awkward under Snape’s questions earlier, and nothing about him had seemed arrogant or entitled. But here, she knew better than to voice that observation.

⸻

When curfew approached, Sophie climbed the stone steps to the first-year girls’ dormitory. The green glow of the lake shimmered faintly through the enchanted windows, painting restless shadows across the walls.

Daphne was already methodically arranging her books for the morning. Pansy sat cross‑legged on her bed, brushing her hair in long, deliberate strokes while muttering about how Potter would finally be taken down a peg. Millicent was already in bed, turned toward the wall, her worn stuffed dragon tucked under one arm.

Sophie changed quickly, slid under her own blankets, and reached for Goldie, brushing a thumb over the little stuffed Niffler’s snout. The day unfurled behind her closed eyes: the shimmer of a match turning silver, a feather rising gracefully into the air, the breathtaking clarity of the stars as Sinistra’s calm voice wove their names into memory.

The ache of yearning fluttered in her chest, but she pressed it down. Healing magic first. Always healing first.

Beyond the walls, the lake whispered softly, and somewhere in the castle, footsteps echoed, fading into the night. Sophie closed her eyes, equal parts exhaustion and wonder washing over her, and drifted into sleep.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: Lessons

The morning sun hadn’t yet burned off the dew clinging to the grass when the Slytherin and Gryffindor first-years were marched out across the grounds for their first flying lesson. A soft breeze skimmed over the rolling lawn, ruffling robes and carrying with it the scent of wet earth and distant lake water. Sophie’s boots squelched faintly with each step, soaking up moisture through the worn seams. She kept her head high despite the damp creeping into her socks. This was the first real physical challenge at Hogwarts—no wands, no parchment, no obscure magical theory—just bodies, balance, and instinct. For once, being small and quick might work to her advantage.

The brooms lay in three tidy rows on the grass, each one looking worse for wear. Their twigs were uneven, and many had handles darkened with age and oil from dozens of nervous hands. Madame Hooch stood before them like a sentinel, hands on her hips. She had piercing hawk-yellow eyes and short, iron-grey hair. Her presence alone seemed to still the morning air.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she barked, her voice slicing through their chatter like a blade. “Everyone, stand by a broomstick—come on, quickly now!”

Sophie moved toward the second row and stopped beside one that looked only slightly less crooked than the others. Its bristles were bent at odd angles, and the wood was chipped where someone’s initials had once been carved and since scratched out. Still, she could feel something faint humming from it—magic, tired but stubborn.

She stole a glance at the others as they shuffled into place. Pansy was inspecting her fingernails with theatrical boredom. Blaise looked mildly entertained, like he’d turned up for a spectacle. Draco Malfoy held his broom like a trophy, already half-smirking as though the lesson were merely a formality. Sophie bit the inside of her cheek and adjusted her stance. Confidence mattered even when it wasn’t real.

“Stick out your right hand over the broom and say, ‘Up!’” Madame Hooch snapped.

“Up!” the class chorused.

Sophie’s broom gave a reluctant shudder, rolled once, and flopped to the side like a sleepy dog. Nearby, Harry Potter’s shot straight into his hand with a snap. Hermione’s barely wobbled. Ron’s smacked him in the face, drawing a muffled laugh from behind Sophie. She ignored it.

“Up,” she tried again, more firmly this time.

Her broom rose a few inches, then slapped into her open palm. She clenched her jaw and forced her grip to relax. No one needed to see how tightly she was holding on. In Slytherin, she reminded herself, flying isn’t about fun. It’s about status. Precision. Poise. Daphne’s voice echoed in her mind: Learn the game behind the rules, and learn it quickly.

Madame Hooch had barely begun explaining how to mount properly when it happened.

Neville Longbottom’s broom jerked violently upward. For one breathless second, he hovered a metre off the ground, limbs flailing in panic. Then he tumbled down with a sickening thud. The sound of bone striking earth silenced everything.

Madame Hooch dashed forward and crouched beside him. “Broken wrist,” she muttered. “Up you get, Longbottom.”

Neville sniffled as she guided him away, cradling his arm. Before vanishing over the slope, Madame Hooch turned and fixed the rest of them with a glare sharp enough to pin them in place.

“Not a single toe off the ground,” she growled, “or you’ll be out of Hogwarts before you can say ‘Quidditch.’”

Then she was gone, leaving behind twenty-nine students, thirty broomsticks, and a sudden, shimmering silence broken only by the whisper of wind in the grass.

––––

Malfoy wasted no time.

The moment Madame Hooch vanished over the rise, her robes whipping behind her like a banner of final authority, he stepped forward with a theatrical sigh and bent down to snatch something glinting from the grass—Neville’s dropped Remembrall. The little orb glowed faintly in the sunlight, a swirling puff of red smoke churning lazily inside.

“Look what we’ve got here,” Malfoy said, voice dripping with mockery. He tossed it from hand to hand with practiced carelessness, holding it just high enough to catch the light and the attention of everyone still rooted to the ground. “Little baby Longbottom’s toy.”

The Remembrall was a palm-sized glass sphere that filled with red smoke whenever the owner had forgotten something. Given Neville’s scattered manner and near-constant fretfulness, Sophie thought grimly, he probably needed it just to get through breakfast.

Pansy cackled immediately. “You’d think he’d remember not to fall off his broom,” she said, eyes sweeping the crowd for approval.

Sophie didn’t join in. Her eyes narrowed.

Blaise leaned in beside her, voice quiet but sharp. “Gryffindors do love a dramatic exit.”

He didn’t sound particularly amused, more like he was cataloguing the scene for later analysis. Sophie was doing much the same. Malfoy was now juggling the Remembrall in increasingly wide arcs, letting it spin just above his fingertips before snatching it back at the last second. A showman’s move—taunting not just Neville but the entire crowd. He was playing to the audience.

And it was working. All around the field, students stood frozen. Some looked scandalised. Others grinned. Sophie simply watched.

Blaise tilted his head, almost to himself. “He’s trying to centre everything around himself again. Typical. First-year or not, Draco wants to be the sun our little House orbits.”

Sophie could see it. Malfoy’s posture had shifted—chest puffed slightly, chin high. He wasn’t just showing off. He was performing status. Establishing dominance. Making it look effortless.

Then Harry Potter stepped forward.

“Give it here, Malfoy,” he said, voice low and clear.

A ripple of breath moved through the students nearby. The way Potter spoke—steady, direct—seemed to puncture the bubble of performance.

Malfoy, to his credit, didn’t flinch. He raised an eyebrow. “Come and get it, then,” he said, and without another word, he mounted his broom and shot into the air.

The gasp that followed was collective.

But Harry was faster.

No warning. No build-up. Just a sudden, clean launch—he was in the air before most realised he’d moved. Sophie’s breath caught in her throat. He wasn’t wobbling or flailing like Neville had. He was balanced. Fluid. Intent.

It was jarring—on the ground, Harry had seemed awkward and ill-fitting in his too-big clothes, hesitant in conversation, more likely to observe than to act. But in the air? He belonged. It was as though gravity itself had changed its terms for him.

Malfoy hurled the Remembrall high and wide toward the edge of the lawn. It arced dangerously toward the hedge at the field’s boundary, glinting like a falling star.

Harry went after it.

His dive was sharp, his body parallel with the earth as he streaked downward. Sophie’s heart thudded. For one awful second, she thought he would crash. But then he pulled up hard, just inches from the grass, arm outstretched—

—and caught the ball cleanly.

He landed on one knee, windblown and triumphant, the Remembrall clenched in his fist.

Silence.

Daphne, standing two rows over, tilted her head ever so slightly. Her expression didn’t change, but Sophie could almost feel the click of her internal scales weighing something new. She was watching him appraisingly now, not as a nuisance or a Gryffindor, but as a variable.

Blaise’s voice cut through the stunned quiet. “Recklessness rewarded,” he murmured. “Interesting.”

Sophie’s fingers tightened around her broom. She didn’t trust the moment—not because it was false, but because it was true. No one had stopped him. No punishment. No lecture. Just admiration. Applause, even.

She filed it away carefully. Rules are only rules… until someone makes them optional.

––––

The sudden sound of approaching footsteps sliced through the stunned hush like a whip-crack.

Professor McGonagall was striding toward them across the lawn, her robes billowing behind her, her face set in a line of iron resolve. Even from a distance, her expression made Sophie straighten instinctively, as if caught doing something she couldn’t yet explain.

The professor’s gaze flicked once—sharply—to Harry, who still knelt in the grass, Remembrall in hand. Her lips thinned.

“Potter,” she said crisply. “Come with me.”

It wasn’t shouted, but it carried. The words rang out like a sentence.

The hush that followed rippled outward, student to student, like a stone dropped into still water. Sophie watched it happen—the way Ron’s face turned a shade paler, how Hermione gripped her broom handle like a shield. The Gryffindors looked horrified. Appalled. Half of them seemed poised to plead for clemency on Harry’s behalf; the other half looked like they were waiting for lightning to strike.

Among the Slytherins, however, the air felt very different.

“She’s going to have him expelled,” Pansy whispered gleefully, her voice pitched high with excitement. “Straight away. No ceremony.”

But Blaise didn’t move. His arms remained loosely folded, his eyes narrowed slightly as if trying to see not just what was happening, but what it meant.

He pursed his lips and said quietly. “Or promoted.”

Sophie turned to him, frowning. “What?”

“McGonagall doesn’t waste time,” he murmured. “If she’s dragged him off in front of two Houses, it’s for a reason. Either he’s out… or he’s in.”

“In?” Sophie repeated softly. “Into what?”

Blaise just tilted his head. “That’s what we’re about to find out.”

Sophie’s brow furrowed. The idea had caught hold of her, wriggling in her thoughts like a thread she hadn’t known was loose. What if this wasn’t discipline at all? What if this was something else entirely?

She watched McGonagall retreat, her hand firm on Harry’s shoulder. The archway swallowed them both, leaving behind only questions.

Sophie looked down at the broom still clutched in her hand, its straw twigs bent and patched with dew. How many things at Hogwarts look like punishment but are actually rewards? How many rules are challenges? How many lectures are just masks for invitations?

She didn’t know, but she was going to find out.

––––

By the time Sophie returned to the dungeons, the whispers were already flying faster than broomsticks.

“—took him straight from the Quidditch pitch—”

“—she marched him across the courtyard, said not a word—”

“—introducing him to their team captain, I heard it myself—”

“—never seen a first-year fly like that—absolutely mad—”

The Slytherin common room was aglow with flickering green firelight, shadows dancing along the stone walls as students leaned into each other, voices hushed but urgent. Sophie slipped in quietly, but no one noticed her arrival. The centre of gravity had shifted. Every conversation orbited the same name: Potter.

Draco Malfoy sulked near the hearth, arms crossed so tightly his shoulders hunched forward. His face was pinched and pale, his mouth twisted with a sour expression. Crabbe and Goyle flanked him like mismatched bookends, their usual blankness now laced with nervous uncertainty—unsure whether to look menacing or melt into the furniture.

Blaise sprawled on a settee near the back, a book open in his lap, though his eyes hadn’t moved in minutes. His expression was one of careful boredom—too still to be genuine. Across from him, Daphne sat with her legs crossed, her posture pristine, fingers toying absently with the edge of her sleeve.

“They’re turning him into a hero,” someone muttered nearby.

Daphne’s gaze lifted. “Gryffindors mistake glory for power,” she said softly, her voice cutting clean through the room. “It shines brighter, but it burns faster.”

Sophie tucked the phrase away immediately. Her notebook would get the full entry later.

She drifted toward the far corner, where Millicent Bulstrode sat cleaning a smudge off her wand with the hem of her sleeve. Millicent glanced up, snorted faintly, and muttered, “Give it a day. The same lot singing Potter’s praises will be calling him reckless by breakfast.”

Sophie nodded once, thoughtful. From her shoulder bag, she felt Edmund stir—his small, coiled form pressing gently against the side of her arm. She slipped a hand inside to settle him. His presence grounded her. Cool. Silent. Watching.

Malfoy, cheeks flushed and eyes hard, suddenly stood and declared, “I’ve challenged Potter to a wizard’s duel. Midnight. Trophy Room. Let’s see if he’s as brave as they all say.”

Pansy clapped with glee. “Finally! Someone to knock that smug look off his face.”

Sophie said nothing. But her eyes lingered on Malfoy’s rigid stance, at odds with his smirking smile, on Blaise’s deepening smirk, on Daphne’s long, measured sigh.

So much could shift in a day. And at Hogwarts, it often did.

––––

That night, Sophie woke to the hush of movement—careful footsteps across stone, followed by the soft snick of the dormitory door closing. The underwater green of the Slytherin dorm was still and cold, but the silence felt disrupted. Someone had slipped out.

She sat up slowly, listening. No further sounds came. Whoever it was had already gone.

By breakfast, the rumours had begun their usual bloom.

“Potter and Weasley snuck out last night,” someone murmured over a half-eaten scone. “They were meant to duel Malfoy.”

“But he didn’t show,” Tracey said with a slight frown. “Is he afraid to face the Boy Who Lived and all that?”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Hardly. Draco sent Filch after them. That’s the point. They got caught. He didn’t. Honestly, do keep up.”

“They were chased to the third floor,” Millicent added, voice low. “The forbidden corridor.”

“And behind the door—”

“—a dog,” someone whispered.

“With three heads.”

Sophie raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She’d learned quickly that in Slytherin, repeating a rumour was less about truth and more about choosing which version to amplify—and why.

Blaise Zabini, lazily butting one side of a crumpet, offered only a dry smile. “Rumours are like portraits,” he said. “The subject might be nonsense, but the brushwork tells you everything. I never believe the content—but I always study the speaker.”

That line stayed with Sophie long after the conversation faded.

That evening, she sat curled in her usual spot in the common room, the green flames reflecting off the surface of her inkpot. Edmund was coiled nearby, his body cool against the stone, save for the faintest warmth on the side facing the hearth. Occasionally, he shifted slightly toward the heat, then stilled again.

Sophie opened her notebook and wrote across the top of the page:

Guarding?

Below it, she scribbled:

What else hides behind rules? What do we accept because we’ve been told to? Who decides what’s safe to ask?

Her parents had once walked these same halls. Her mother—a Ravenclaw—had approached magic like a puzzle, one she could eventually solve. Her father, a Slytherin through and through, never offered much detail about school. He’d once told her, “It teaches you how people behave. Not always what they mean.”

Both her brothers—Byron and Bryce—had been Slytherins too. Byron had loved it, or at least chose to love it. He wrote home often, full of Quidditch stats and stories about enchanted staircases and lively debates in the common room. Bryce barely wrote at all. He came home quiet, and when pressed, only said, “It’s done. That’s what matters.” He’d returned to Godric’s Hollow and never looked back.

Sophie hadn’t known what to make of that contrast before. Now she was beginning to.

She turned to her second notebook, the one she’d brought for Agnes. The one she hadn’t touched in weeks. Her fingers lingered over the cover, then opened it.

Agnes would be back in school now—or trying to be. But it wasn’t home anymore. Not really. She was living with some cousin of her late father’s, a woman she’d barely met before the funeral. No friends nearby. No parent to anchor her. Just strange furniture, strange expectations, and a silence that was likely thicker than grief itself.

Sophie imagined her curled in an unfamiliar chair, too polite to cry, too proud to ask for anything.

“I miss you,” she whispered, though there was no one to hear it.

She’d thought Hogwarts would help. That magic could be wielded like a scalpel, cutting out sickness and sorrow. That there’d be a path—a class, a branch of theory, a spell tucked in the back of some dusty volume. But so far, Hogwarts had taught her how to observe, how to calculate risk, how to answer one question while quietly asking another.

“I’m trying,” she said aloud.

Edmund shifted slightly. Not in understanding—but in response.

She looked down at her parchment and added one more line beneath her notes:

What does any of this have to do with curing the cancer?

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: Troll in the Dungeons

The mornings in the dungeons had taken on a quiet rhythm, like the hum of an old clock whose tick was buried under layers of stone. Sophie rose early now, not out of ambition, but for the silence—the few minutes before the rustle of robes and the low clatter of shoes on stone filled the air. The cold helped her think. The torches, still dim and blue from the night’s spellwork, flickered uncertainly as she wrapped herself in her cloak and sat at the desk by her bed, wand in hand, journal open.

Encrypting her notes had become second nature, transfiguring specific glyphs into mirror script and weaving protective charms into the margins. Even if someone pried, all they’d find were inscrutable diagrams and footnotes—wand movements for mid-level charms, musings on magical law. The real entries were layered underneath, masked behind intent-based sigils that blurred unless she read them aloud in her mind. In these pages, she catalogued not just spells, but gaps—holes in her knowledge where answers should have been. Every week, she returned to the same frustrating conclusion: true healing magic was not a spell or a potion, but a discipline with rules she didn’t yet know how to read. It required anatomy, intention, magical history, a grasp of alchemical balances, and emotional clarity that felt impossibly distant. Her wand hand was steadier than it had been at the start of term, but Sophie knew precision wasn’t the same as power.

Daphne Greengrass had taken to reviewing Sophie’s essays occasionally—not the journal, of course, but her assigned coursework. She never asked permission. She lifted a parchment, scanned it with a critical eye, and made her judgments with a jewel cutter’s precision. “Your margins are too narrow,” she said one evening by the fire, smoothing a curled corner flat with her fingers. “And you misattributed the wandlore excerpt. Ollivander’s conclusions aren’t universally accepted, but at least cite him properly.”

There was no malice in her corrections. Only clarity. Sophie revised without complaint. She appreciated the feedback, and she liked that Daphne never offered false praise. But there were moments—rare and quiet—when the girl who seemed carved from glass would glance toward Sophie’s journal with something more complicated in her eyes.

“Do you ever study for pleasure?” Sophie asked once, when they found themselves alone in the common room late, the hour drifting toward curfew, and Edmund half-curled inside Sophie’s open satchel, tongue flicking as though reading the air.

Daphne was seated in her usual way—back straight, knees together, an ancient tome open across her lap. She didn’t look up. “I study to protect what I can,” she said, voice soft and low. “Some of us don’t get to choose who we become.”

Sophie didn’t answer right away. She sensed—without knowing how—that she had wandered close to something private. Daphne turned a page delicately and added, almost absently, “There are advantages to being underestimated. No one expects you to outthink them.”

The moment passed like a skipped stone vanishing beneath a pond. When Blaise arrived, his presence changed the temperature of the room. He dropped onto the opposite settee with a tired exhale and a carelessly elegant sprawl that looked more studied than usual. His eyes, usually cool and unreadable, carried the shadow of something taut—tension, maybe, or the beginnings of exhaustion.

“Are the seventh-years already panicking?” Sophie asked gently, not mocking.

Blaise gave a short laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “They are. But the fifth-years are worse. You’d think O.W.L.s were trials by combat.” He ran a hand over his face, pausing to rub at one temple. “Even Professor Sinistra’s losing patience. I didn’t think that was possible.”

Sophie closed her journal quietly. “You don’t usually let it show.”

He shrugged, but the motion lacked his usual indifference. “Some of us had the bad sense to let people think we’re brilliant. It sets unfortunate expectations.”

She didn’t press. She just nodded and shifted Edmund gently into her lap. The snake gave no sign of protest—just curled a little deeper into the warm space above her knees. Blaise’s gaze lingered on the serpent for a second, then flicked away again.

Across the room, Pansy Parkinson’s voice carried like perfume, sweet and sharp. “I suppose this means Gryffindors can break the rules if they’re special enough,” she said, flipping a glossy page of Witch Weekly with theatrical disdain. “Potter gets a Nimbus Two Thousand—first year, mind you. It’s practically criminal.”

Sophie looked up. The common room had thinned, but the few students still awake leaned in subtly. It was old news by now, but still stung in the retelling.

“Maybe if we throw a tantrum during lessons,” Pansy continued, “McGonagall will buy us racing brooms too.”

Blaise didn’t even bother looking at her. “Power always finds a way around the rules,” he murmured, eyes on the ceiling.

Sophie heard it for what it was—a philosophy, not just an observation. She copied it into her journal that night, long after the others had gone to bed. The phrase glowed faintly in the torchlight before the ink dried. She didn’t know yet what kind of power she wanted, but she was learning how to recognise it when it passed her by.

––––

The corridor outside Charms was choked with students, laughter and chatter echoing off the stone walls as they passed one another in the upper halls. Sophie kept to the edges, clutching her notes against her chest, eyes scanning for a clear path. She wasn’t looking for anyone in particular when the sound of Ron Weasley’s voice cut through the noise.

“She’s a nightmare, honestly,” he said, loudly enough for half the corridor to hear. “No wonder she hasn’t got any friends.”

Sophie froze.

Hermione Granger had stopped just ahead, her back stiff, knuckles white around the strap of her bookbag. For a breathless moment, she stood as if trying to decide whether to turn or vanish into the stone. Then she pivoted sharply and disappeared into the crowd, pushing past a group of Ravenclaws with her head down.

The laughter that followed was careless and unkind—quick, brittle, the kind that died down just as fast. Ron looked uncomfortable, but said nothing more. Harry Potter didn’t laugh at all.

Sophie stepped back, pressing herself flat against the cool wall until the corridor thinned. The taste in her mouth was bitter.

She didn’t know Hermione well—just her voice in class, sharp and bright like a whetted blade, always a few steps ahead of the rest—but that didn’t matter. She knew what it was like to be marked as too much, to care too visibly, or to be left standing alone with your cleverness turning to heat behind your eyes.

She made a quiet note in her journal that night, between runes and diagrams: There’s no spell to make people kinder. But isolation is a wound, too. Maybe I’ll learn how to mend that one someday, as well.

––––

Halloween arrived in a rush of chill air and charmed decorations. The Great Hall glittered with floating pumpkins and swooping bats, their wings casting jagged shadows across the tables. Platters of roast meats and steaming puddings crowded every surface. Sophie sat between Daphne and Millicent, making polite conversation while eyeing a treacle tart she was too full to reach for. Even the ghosts seemed livelier than usual—Sir Nicholas humming some baroque melody as he drifted past, his nearly severed head bobbing.

It was, Sophie thought, one of the few moments where Hogwarts felt purely magical, untouched by house rivalries or private ambitions. The room buzzed with uncomplicated delight.

Until it didn’t.

The doors banged open with a sound like thunder, and Professor Quirrell stumbled in, pale and wild-eyed, clutching the edge of the nearest table.

“Troll—in the dungeons!” he gasped, voice high and shaking. “Thought you ought to know—”

He collapsed in a heap.

For a moment, the entire hall seemed frozen in a held breath. Then chaos surged like a flood.

Students screamed. Plates clattered to the floor. The prefects leapt into motion, shouting orders and waving their arms, trying to herd their Houses into something resembling a formation. Sophie was jostled sideways as Millicent grabbed her arm with one hand and her pudding with the other.

“Come on,” Millicent muttered. “This way!”

Sophie’s heart pounded, but her eyes went straight to Daphne. The other girl had risen smoothly, already straightening her robes, her expression unreadable.

“Single file,” Daphne instructed a knot of first- and second-years who’d frozen in place. “We move when the upper-years do. Don’t shriek.”

It was such a simple thing—Daphne’s voice, calm and clipped, in the middle of the stampede. Sophie felt the tight band in her chest ease, just a little, and followed her through the milling crowd, ducking falling bat decorations and the echo of distant footsteps overhead.

That night, back in the common room, the rumours hit like sparks in dry grass.

“Potter and Weasley went after it,” someone said.

“With Granger, wasn’t it?”

“She was in the girls’ loo—alone—”

“—and they fought it off themselves—”

Blaise sat with one leg thrown over the arm of a chair, arms crossed, an unreadable expression carved into his face. He listened, stone still, until the latest re-telling ended in breathless admiration for Gryffindor bravery. Then he exhaled like someone who had expected the punchline to land elsewhere.

“A troll,” he said flatly. “Two boys who barely know which end of a wand to hold. And they win. Of course they do. This school must be cursed.”

No one contradicted him.

Later, in bed, Sophie lay curled on her side, her curtain drawn and Edmund warm beneath her palm. She could still hear voices murmuring in the dormitory—speculation, incredulity, envy disguised as mockery. Her mind ran over the story again and again: the troll, the danger, the impossible triumph. She pictured Potter’s face—annoyingly noble, terribly sincere—and Weasley’s freckled smirk, and felt a sharp, tight coil of something she didn’t want to name.

It wasn’t that she disliked them. Not really. But it seemed unfair how some people blundered their way into legend while others fought to master the basics. She studied for hours, tried to understand the roots of magic, bent herself around every expectation—yet who would remember her?

Edmund shifted against her wrist, scales rasping faintly in protest. Sophie paused, startled, then exhaled. “Sorry,” she whispered. “That wasn’t kind.”

The snake didn’t answer, but he stilled again, tongue flicking once before retreating beneath the blanket’s edge. Sophie closed her eyes, ashamed of the bitterness in her throat.

She was here to learn. That was all that mattered. Wasn’t it?

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: Snitches and Secrets

Sophie bent low over her parchment, ink-stained fingers smudging the margin where she had tried to diagram a potion matrix. Her notes were beginning to resemble an argument with herself—some lines hopeful, others frustrated, the whole thing starting to slope sideways. The hearth in the Slytherin common room crackled softly, but she barely registered the warmth. Her candle had burned down to a stub. Around her, the other first-years murmured about the upcoming Quidditch match, but Sophie was chasing something more elusive than a Snitch.

Mandrake essence stabilises blood magic. But how? Why does magic work on the body?

She chewed the end of her quill, flipping through a thick volume that pushed the limits of her understanding, titled Foundational Healing Practices (Revised Edition). Her eyes snagged on a line near the bottom of the page:

Some magical conditions have no counter-charm, only long-term management through potion cycles and restorative charms.

She sat back slowly. There it was again—that word. Management. Not cures.

Even among magical folk, some things couldn’t be undone. Curse scars. Blood maledictions. Cognitive tangles. They could be soothed, slowed, shielded—but never quite erased. And Muggle illnesses? Magic wasn’t even designed to touch those. A curse didn’t cause cancer. It didn’t glow with dark energy or respond to banishing spells. It grew, without malice, without logic. Just cells dividing where they shouldn’t.

Her stomach clenched. She could feel herself tilting toward despair, and she didn’t want to fall.

Edmund shifted against the collar of her robes, a comforting pressure. His small, scaled body had grown longer since arriving at Hogwarts, and he now favoured coiling up around her arm or on one shoulder. He flicked his tongue once, then again, brushing the air near the open book.

“You smell my worry, don’t you?” she murmured. “Or the ink. Maybe both.”

He blinked slowly, unbothered.

Sophie picked up her quill again and added a new line beneath the others.

This isn’t a puzzle. It’s a war of attrition.

She paused, then underlined it twice.

It was tempting to believe that Hogwarts had all the answers if she just asked the right questions. But the more she read, the more she realised how vast the unknowns truly were. Magic wasn’t a shortcut. It was another kind of language. And some things couldn’t be translated.

Still, she kept writing.

If there were a way to change the story—to reach back across that uncrossable line where Agnes’s father had fallen—it would be built from fragments like these.

⸻

Most of the school had already made its way toward the Quidditch pitch, leaving the castle eerily still. Sophie moved quickly through the west wing corridor, clutching a small parcel of herbs wrapped in parchment and twine. Her father had sent them earlier in the week—dried meadowsweet and powdered hellebore, both rarer in Scotland than in the marshy edges of Somerset—and she’d volunteered to bring them to Professor Sprout before the match began. It wasn’t entirely altruistic; Sprout had hinted that students who showed initiative might be allowed to help in the greenhouses later in the term.

As she passed through a side stairwell near the path to the herbology greenhouses, a flicker of movement caught her attention. Professor Snape swept across the junction ahead, robes trailing behind him in dramatic coils. At first, nothing seemed unusual—but then she noticed a falter in his stride. Every few steps, his left foot struck the ground with a faintly irregular beat, like a stutter in a piece of music. Not obvious, but clearly a limp. She froze in place, letting the moment pass as he disappeared down a narrow flight of steps with deliberate speed.

It wasn’t the limp itself that unnerved her, but the memory it stirred. Snape had been absent during the Halloween chaos—now he was injured, or at least moving like someone who had been. No explanations had ever been offered, and no one seemed inclined to ask. But the pattern lodged itself in Sophie’s mind like a loose thread begging to be tugged.

By the time she reached the Quidditch stands, the energy had shifted. The sky stretched wide and pale blue overhead, wind tugging at scarves and sleeves, and the pitch below gleamed in the midday sun. Sophie squeezed in between Blaise and Millicent as the Slytherin stands swelled with noise. Across the pitch, the Gryffindor section blazed crimson and gold.

“Oh, this’ll be good,” Pansy crowed from just ahead. “Let’s see how Potter handles a real broom this time—not some baby training model.” She laughed as the teams marched onto the field, but Sophie was less interested in the bravado than in the strange dynamics at play.

She watched the Gryffindors with narrowed eyes. They moved like performers stepping onto a stage—confident, yes, but also coordinated, theatrical. There was something oddly compelling in their ease. She turned slightly to Blaise. The Slytherins, by comparison, seemed a gaggle of individuals who happened to share a uniform.

“Why do we hate them so much?” she asked. “Is it just because they’re noisy?”

Blaise didn’t take his eyes off the players. “They’re reckless,” he replied. “Too quick to act, too slow to think. It makes them dangerous.”

Sophie considered this. “That makes them irritating. Not worthless. Wouldn’t a proper Slytherin use them, if it suited their purpose?”

That earned her a sideways look. His tone didn’t shift, but there was a trace of interest behind it. “Careful, Roper. That kind of thinking could make you dangerous, too.”

The match began in a flurry of movement. Brooms shot into the air, players spiralling high above the stands as the crowd roared. Sophie tried to follow the quaffle, the beaters, the rhythm of the game—but then the atmosphere turned. Harry Potter’s broom had begun to jerk and buck violently, throwing him into a lurching, desperate arc that bore no resemblance to sport.

Laughter rippled through the Slytherin section as students shouted and pointed. “He can’t fly! Look at him—flailing like a pixie with no wings!” someone shouted.

Sophie didn’t join in. Her hands clenched the edge of the bench. “He’s not doing that on purpose,” she said quietly.

Beside her, Blaise sat very still. “I agree. Watch Snape,” he murmured.

She scanned the staff stand. Snape was on his feet, gaze locked on Potter, lips moving in a whispering rhythm that didn’t match the cheers around him. His hands were hidden in his sleeves, but the intensity of his focus set her teeth on edge.

“It’s too clean,” Blaise added, more to himself than to her. “This isn’t chance.”

Moments later, Harry plunged into a dive that looked more like a fall. The stands gasped. A second passed, then another—and then he levelled off, toes scraping the grass. He came to a stop, straightened up, arm outstretched, the golden Snitch caught tightly in his fist.

The Gryffindor side erupted. Red flags waved, voices thundered with triumph, and even some professors leapt to their feet.

In the Slytherin section, silence hung like the leaden sky before a storm. Crabbe swore. Goyle looked baffled. Pansy sputtered indignantly. Blaise remained unreadable, arms crossed, mouth a thin line.

And Sophie, watching the boy encircled by jubilant teammates, felt a thread of unease pull tight beneath her skin. That hadn’t been luck, or skill, or spectacle. That had been survival, and someone had wanted him to fall.

⸻

The Slytherin common room seethed with quiet rage. The emerald-tinted light from the lake windows had gone murky, casting long shadows across the cold stone walls. The fire hissed and snapped, but the warmth didn’t reach far. Tension clung to every surface like a thin layer of condensation.

Pansy sat with her arms crossed and her mouth twisted, muttering about biased referees and Gryffindor favouritism. “They’ll probably name a corridor after him,” she spat. “One stupid dive and he’s a hero.”

Crabbe and Goyle had taken to abusing a velvet cushion with their fists. Millicent, returning from the girls’ dormitory, threw a quill hard enough to lodge it into a tapestry embroidered with serpents. No one applauded the aim.

Blaise didn’t look up from his lap, where a book lay unopened, his fingers lightly resting on the cover. “Even a fool can find glory once,” he said, his voice quiet but cutting. “But what will he do with it?”

The remark hung in the air for a moment, sharp enough to still even Pansy’s muttering. Crabbe grunted and resumed his assault on the unfortunate cushion. Goyle stared into the fire as if it might explain things to him. No one answered Blaise, but no one challenged him either. The only sound was the low hiss of burning logs and the occasional creak of shifting stone overhead.

Sophie sat in the far corner, the worn edge of the table pressing into her knees. She kept her face blank, her hands folded neatly on her lap, though her thoughts moved in slow, uneasy circles. She should have been angry—should have shared in the outrage that clung to the room like smoke. But instead, what she felt was something far less welcome. A quiet flicker of respect. Not for Gryffindor’s win, but for Harry Potter’s nerve. What he’d done hadn’t been brave—it had been almost suicidal. And yet somehow, he’d turned free-fall into triumph.

The thought made her uneasy. It was dangerous, in Slytherin, to admire the wrong things. Especially if they wore scarlet robes and won games they were supposed to lose.

She shifted slightly, letting Edmund’s small, coiled body settle around her wrist. His presence was grounding. While the others stewed in their bitterness, Sophie slipped her notebook from her sleeve and turned to a fresh page. Hiding the movement beneath the table, she wrote in careful, narrow lines:

What we cheer for and what we respect are not always the same.

After a pause, she added:

Belonging doesn’t come from honesty. It comes from knowing when to keep quiet.

The fire cracked again, sending a spray of sparks against the back of the hearth. Sophie looked up just long enough to catch Daphne watching her from across the room. Their eyes met for the briefest moment. Then Daphne turned back toward the fire, face unreadable.

Around them, the common room continued to simmer, not with noise but with something colder—something more challenging to shake. It wasn’t just that Slytherin had lost. It was the realisation that someone like Harry Potter had survived something he shouldn’t have, and in this house, survival was everything.

⸻

The corridor outside the Potions classroom buzzed with low voices, too quiet to draw a professor’s notice but too intense to be casual. Sophie slowed her pace as she approached, careful not to look too interested, though her ears were sharp.

A cluster of fourth-year Slytherins stood in a loose huddle near the archway, robes casually rumpled and expressions taut with curiosity. One of them leaned in, voice pitched just above a whisper. “Snape was muttering during the match. I saw it. Looked like he was cursing Potter.”

A scoff from another. “Don’t be thick. It was a counter-curse. He was trying to stop whatever was cursing him.”

“So you think someone else did it?”

“Obviously. Do you think he’d hex a student in plain sight?”

“Depends on the student.”

A ripple of dark amusement passed through the group, followed by a thoughtful silence. No one seemed frightened by the idea—if anything, they were intrigued. There was something about Snape that invited speculation. He was the head of their House, yes, but also something more dangerous, more deliberate. A man who might hex a student or save one, depending on the angle of the wind.

Sophie lingered at the edge of the conversation, letting the threads tangle in her mind. She hadn’t imagined the muttering. Blaise had seen it too. But what had it meant?

A familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Snape is loyal,” Daphne said quietly, stepping past with a stack of books balanced in her arms. She didn’t break stride. “But that doesn’t always mean what people think.”

Sophie watched her go, then turned toward the Potions door, brow furrowed.

Loyal to whom? Or what?

She made a mental note for her journal that night—just one word, written below all the others:

Allegiances.

⸻

The castle had settled into its usual post-curfew hush. Shadows curled between the torch sconces, and the Slytherin dormitory breathed in slow, sleepy rhythm. But Sophie sat upright at her desk, quill in hand, candle guttering low. Her robes were rumpled, her tea had gone cold, and Edmund—curled half in and half out of her book satchel—watched her with his lidless, flickering gaze.

The parchment before her was already cluttered with hasty notes and ink-smudged arrows, each one circling back toward a single question that had begun to gnaw at her hours earlier. She hadn’t meant to start a full investigation, just a bit of idle curiosity after hearing two third-years whispering near the common room fire. But then they’d mentioned a name—Fluffy—and the puzzle had snapped into place.

“Fluffy” was not just a ridiculous nickname. It was the creature she, Draco, and the others had nearly stumbled into on the forbidden corridor weeks ago. Three heads. Teeth like swords. A dog, only in the most generous interpretation.

Sophie frowned at the name again, written in bold letters near the top of the page. Beside it, she had scrawled:

Fluffy = Cerberus? Greek? Guard dog of the Underworld. Guarding what?

The story didn’t stop there. According to the whispers, Hagrid had been overheard at the edge of the Forest saying something about the beast being “mine” and that it was “guarding it for Dumbledore.” Guarding what for Dumbledore? And why place it in the school at all?

She turned to her second journal—the private one—and began cross-referencing names. Nothing under “Fluffy,” of course. No mention of Cerberus in Magical Creatures for First-Years, though she did find a brief allusion in her Greek glossary. She paused, then underlined one passage again:

Cerberus, guardian of thresholds. Entrance to something dangerous. Or sacred.

A soft sound from her satchel made her glance down. Edmund had emerged fully now, tongue flicking thoughtfully at the air. His body formed a lazy coil along the edge of her desk. Sophie reached out and stroked the smooth curve of his head.

“I’m not just imagining it, right?” she murmured. “There’s something buried here. Something no one’s saying.”

She turned back to her notes. Below the section on Fluffy, she had added two more questions:

Dumbledore… guarding what?

Nicolas Flamel – who?

That name had come up just once, mentioned offhand in a different overheard conversation about a “famous alchemist.” No context. No explanation. But the way the older students had reacted—half impressed, half uneasy—had been enough to catch Sophie’s attention. She’d combed through her Potions text, her Charms workbook, even Hogwarts: A History—nothing. Flamel was either absent or buried so deeply that first-years weren’t expected to find him.

Which, of course, made her more determined to try.

She flipped to a fresh page and began drawing connecting lines between everything she knew—or thought she knew. The three-headed dog. The forbidden corridor. Dumbledore’s involvement. Hagrid’s protective language. The mysterious name that didn’t appear in any sanctioned book.

How many secrets were layered into this castle? How many protections are hidden in plain sight? It was like working a jigsaw puzzle where most of the pieces were deliberately missing, and the ones she had were carved to mislead. But Sophie had always loved puzzles.

Still, the picture was starting to form—faintly, but unmistakably.

She titled the page at the top in clean, deliberate strokes:

Things They Don’t Teach Us

Her quill hovered for a moment. Then, in smaller script just beneath it, she added:

Yet.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13: Shadows and Reflections

The castle had emptied like a drained goblet, leaving behind a hollow echo where laughter used to be. Winter pressed in from all sides, muffling the stone corridors in layers of stillness and shadow. Snow piled in gentle drifts outside the enchanted windows, frosting the edges of glass and throwing silvery light into the Slytherin common room. Its usual murmur had faded to near silence. Only a handful remained: a couple of fifth-years who kept to themselves, Blaise Zabini perpetually lounging with the aloof grace of someone far older than he was, and Daphne Greengrass, who sat reading by the hearth as though she had never considered doing anything else. And Sophie, who had claimed a corner by the fire, parchment and textbooks spread around her in a slowly encroaching tide of ink and frustration.

She had meant to use the quiet to get ahead. That was what she told herself. Without classes, without the swirl of voices and rivalry and pretence, she could focus. But the deeper she read, the more her notes began to resemble something unravelled—half-sentences, arrows pointing nowhere, potions annotated with question marks and apologies. She was supposed to be learning how magic could heal. Instead, she found herself underlining phrases like “long-term management,” “unpredictable degeneration,” and “no known countercharm.” Her quill hovered over the word terminal for a long time before she moved on, chest tight with something she hadn’t yet named.

The fire snapped, and she looked up as Edmund emerged from her satchel, blinking lazily. His smooth body coiled neatly beside her thigh, tongue flicking once toward the warmth. She reached out and let her fingers rest against the curve of his back, soothed by the steadiness of his presence. “Do you ever think,” she whispered, “that you’re chasing something you’ll never catch? Like there’s an answer, but it keeps moving just out of reach?”

Across from her, Daphne turned a page with a kind of practiced grace, though she hadn’t looked down in minutes. Her voice, when it came, was soft but edged. “You’re thinking too loudly.”

Sophie blinked, startled, then gave a small, helpless shrug. “It’s just—healing magic. It’s not what I thought. Even wizards live with things they can’t fix.”

Daphne set her book aside, folding her hands in her lap. “Ambition isn’t only about what you want,” she said after a long moment. “It’s about what you’re willing to give up.”

The firelight caught the line of her jaw, the unreadable glint in her eyes. Sophie didn’t respond. She returned to her notes, her thoughts louder than ever.

––––

The Slytherin dormitory was cloaked in half-light, the green-tinged glow from the lake casting wavering shadows on the stone walls. Sophie sat up slowly, blankets slipping from her shoulders, breath curling faintly in the chill air. Millicent had gone home days ago, and of the first-years, only she and Blaise Zabini remained. He slept in late, or pretended to, and offered little in the way of conversation. Not that she expected him to.

At the foot of her bed sat a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with a strand of green wool. Her fingers moved carefully, reverently, as she undid the knot and peeled back the paper. Inside was a scarf—thick, slightly lopsided, knit in a deep forest green with uneven silver stripes. She smiled without meaning to. Her mother had always knitted in bursts of optimism, the tension changing every time she paused to make tea or answer the phone. The scarf was full of those hesitations, each stitch a reminder of home.

Beneath it was a folded note in her mother’s hand.

Darling Sophie—

Thought you’d need something warm. We miss you more than you know. The house is quiet without you.

Love always, Mum.

The scent of lavender soap and hearth smoke clung to the wool. Sophie pressed it to her cheek, blinking hard. She thought, as she often did, of Agnes. Was she sitting by the kitchen window now, legs tucked under her, staring at the hills turning silver with frost? Or had she moved past all that—become braver in the silence?

Later, she passed Blaise in the corridor. He was leaning against the wall near the stairwell, inscrutable as ever.

“Not going home?” she asked, quietly.

He shrugged. “Not much reason to.”

She almost asked—but didn’t. Some questions, she was beginning to learn, were invitations to shut the door.

––––

The castle had settled into a deeper kind of silence now, one that seemed older than the stones themselves. With most of the students gone home for the holidays, the usual rhythms had fallen away—the footsteps, the gossip, the laughter echoing up the stairwells. What remained was the heartbeat of the building itself: the sighing of draughts through ancient corridors, the creak of timbers adjusting in their sleep, the distant groan of shifting staircases that moved with no urgency, as if stretching their limbs in the dark. Sophie wandered these corridors without purpose, wrapped in her new scarf, Edmund tucked securely in her robe pocket, his weight a small comfort against her ribs. Sleep had refused to come, and her mind was too full of fragments—her mother’s note, the way Agnes used to hum without realising it, the sense that time was moving on without her and taking pieces of home with it.

She paused at the landing where two passageways crossed—one leading back toward the library, the other winding into the older, dustier parts of the castle where portraits often slept through entire weeks. The torchlight here was weaker, shadows pooling like ink around the flagstones. She was just about to turn back when something changed in the air. A pressure, not quite a sound, not quite a breeze—more like a shift in atmosphere, as though the castle had inhaled and then held its breath. Sophie froze. Ahead of her, something flickered—a ripple in the space itself, as if a curtain of heat had passed through the stone. She didn’t see anyone, didn’t hear a step, but she knew she wasn’t alone.

Acting on instinct, she ducked into the nearest door and shut it with deliberate care, her hand still on the handle as her heart thudded in her chest. The room she had stumbled into was dark, lined with old wooden furniture and the faint smell of polish and mildew. Across the far wall, a row of large, freestanding mirrors stood at an angle, glass dulled by age and dust. She moved slowly toward them, her own reflection emerging like a ghost from the gloom. It looked like her—but not quite. Thinner. Blurred at the edges. She wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to be truly seen. What would she ask if the mirrors could answer? Her mother’s voice? Agnes’s laugh? Or something worse—something true?

She left before the silence could decide for her.

––––

The castle breathed again. Students filtered back in waves, their voices rising like birdsong returning after a long winter hush. Trunks thudded down staircases, owls wheeled overhead, and the halls filled once more with the scent of damp cloaks, overstuffed satchels, and the faint tingle of excited magic. Sophie watched the influx with a kind of distant curiosity, feeling both relieved and slightly resentful. For two weeks, Hogwarts had belonged only to the quiet ones—the ones who didn’t leave, who wandered its sleeping bones and learned how to hear the silence. Now, everything was louder again, full of jostling elbows and feigned stories and questions she didn’t want to answer.

She found herself that afternoon near the library, perched on a wide windowsill beside Daphne and Blaise. The glass behind them was fogged from the warmth of so many returning bodies, and outside, the snow had begun to crust and darken, losing its pristine sheen. Blaise flipped a card lazily between his fingers, some charm-imbued deck with silver etchings that shimmered when tilted. He looked bored, but Sophie had learned by now not to trust his expressions. Daphne sat with her legs crossed neatly at the ankle, her hair pinned in a new way—sleek, precise, and sharper somehow, as if even she had decided over the break to refine her edges.

“I heard Potter’s been sneaking out at night,” Blaise said, voice casual but calculated, as if he were tossing a thought into the air to see who would catch it. “McGonagall’s pretending not to notice. I suppose being the Boy-Who-Lived comes with certain privileges.”

Daphne didn’t look up. “He’s not exactly subtle. It’s almost like he wants someone to stop him.”

Sophie, feeling the last traces of the holiday’s quiet still humming through her, spoke before she could think. “If there were a spell—or an object—that could show you anything you wanted… anything at all… what would you look for?”

There was a pause. Blaise raised an eyebrow but answered easily, flippantly. “The end of the game, obviously. Why wait for the cards to fall when you can peek?”

But Daphne’s reply came more slowly. She stared through the fogged pane for a long moment before answering. “Nothing. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

And though the words were soft, Sophie felt them settle in her like a weight. She didn’t ask what Daphne meant. Some reflections, she suspected, were meant to stay dark.

––––

Night in the dungeons came not with darkness but with dimness, a slow silting of torchlight that pooled in corners and slipped under doorways like mist. The lake’s glow cast shifting patterns on the ceiling, greenish and indistinct, like light seen through eyelids. Sophie lay curled on her side in the narrow bed, the scarf from her mother still wrapped around her neck, its weight comforting in a way that made her throat ache. Edmund was coiled loosely beneath the covers, his small body pressed against her ribs, silent and alive and utterly unbothered by the chill that lingered in the stones. Her fingers rested gently along his back, tracing the curve of his spine in idle circles as she whispered softly, not expecting an answer.

“I miss her,” she murmured. “More than I should, maybe. More than I know what to do with.”

She wasn’t sure if she meant Agnes or her mother, or both at once. The longing tangled together too easily these days. Somerset felt impossibly far away—not just in distance, but in texture, in rhythm. She tried to picture Agnes in the kitchen, sunlight catching the curve of her cheek as she leaned against the counter, humming something tuneless while the kettle boiled. But the image wouldn’t hold. It blurred at the edges, as if her memory had begun to forget the details, or worse, as if they were no longer true.

Sometime after the last torch guttered and sleep finally began to tug at her, Sophie dreamed—not sharply, not vividly, but in the way memories resurface when the mind loosens its grip. Agnes stood ankle-deep in the waters of the Neck, the small stream that curled like a vein through the fields beyond the village. Her dress clung wetly to her legs, but she didn’t seem cold. She was laughing—not wildly, not in defiance, but gently, almost to herself. Her hair was longer than Sophie remembered, darker at the ends with damp. She turned toward Sophie and held something out in her hands—a tiny fish, glimmering like glass—but when Sophie reached for it, the fish slipped between them and vanished into the reeds.

Agnes didn’t speak. She only smiled, not sadly, but with something behind her eyes that Sophie couldn’t quite name. And then the dream shifted, broke apart, and Sophie woke to the soft rustle of Edmund shifting against her hip.

She lay still for a long time, staring at the stone ceiling, the scarf gathered under her chin like a tether. The ache in her chest hadn’t eased, but it had changed—less sharp now, more like a bruise she could press to remember where it had come from. She thought of the mirrors again. If one had shown her that dream, would she have believed it was a gift or a warning?

Her eyes drifted closed again. The dungeon ceiling swam out of focus, and Sophie slipped into sleep not with peace, but with something close to understanding.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14: What's Worth Knowing

The Slytherin common room was still heavy with the scent of candles and the warmth of dying embers when Sophie slipped out that morning, Edmund coiled loosely about her wrist beneath the long cuff of her jumper. He was slow to stir, tongue flicking only once as if sampling the draughty corridor air before settling again, a thin band of living comfort against her skin.

The corridors leading up toward the Great Hall hummed faintly with the castle’s waking heartbeat—distant clatter from the kitchens, the soft shuffle of first years half lost in the maze of stone. Sophie hugged her books to her chest and thought of Somerset mornings, of the smell of toast and woodsmoke, but here the air tasted faintly of damp rock and metal.

The Great Hall shimmered with pale spring light, the enchanted ceiling painted in drifting lavender clouds promising rain before noon. The four long tables were filling quickly. Sophie slipped into her usual place halfway down the Slytherin table, between Blaise Zabini—already unfolding the Daily Prophet like a bored aristocrat—and a second‑year who was painstakingly sorting through a plate of sausages to find the smallest ones.

Blaise didn’t look up as Sophie sat.

“Have you ever,” he said conversationally, as if they’d been mid‑discussion all along, “considered what might lie beyond the doors of the third‑floor corridor?”

Sophie reached for toast, trying to look indifferent. “Not particularly,” she said. “It’s forbidden, isn’t it?”

“That,” Blaise replied, eyes on his paper, “is precisely why one must consider it. If it were merely storage or old brooms or whatever else the caretakers forget, we’d not be warned away. No, something is interesting behind those doors.”

As he spoke, Sophie’s gaze drifted up the High Table. Professors were gathering, each more vivid than the last. Quirrell sat hunched over a bowl of porridge, pale and twitching, his turban slightly askew. He stirred listlessly, eyes darting now and again to the Gryffindor table as though expecting something dreadful to spring up among the toast racks. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for days.

A few seats away, Professor Snape cut a far more deliberate figure. He brooded over a cup of tea, fingers curled possessively around it, black eyes sweeping the hall in sharp, hawk‑like motions. Every so often, he turned slightly, speaking to no one, lost in his own dark calculations. Sophie felt a chill run through her despite the warmth of her tea.

Movement near the Slytherin end caught her attention. Draco Malfoy stood a little apart from the table’s press, speaking in low, self‑important tones. Crabbe and Goyle loomed like statues at his shoulders, Millicent Bulstrode and Pansy Parkinson leaning in to catch every syllable. Whatever he said was pitched carefully too low for others to hear, but the rhythm of his voice carried—measured, smug, full of conspiratorial gravity.

He cast a dramatic look over his shoulder, deliberately, toward the Gryffindor table where Potter and his red‑haired friend bent over their plates. Malfoy’s pale brows lifted just slightly, a little smirk curling his mouth. Then, with a flourish of his robes, he left his cluster of admirers and strode out of the hall, his cronies trailing in his wake like ducklings.

Pansy hesitated only a moment before she separated from them, veering back toward the Slytherin table. She dropped into the seat opposite Blaise, her hair immaculate, her robes without a crease, and poured herself a pumpkin juice with a sharp flick of her wrist.

“Draco says Potter and his little friends are up to something in the third‑floor corridor,” she announced in a low voice, leaning forward. “They’re always whispering. Potter has that look about him—constantly trying to be inconspicuous and failing.”

Blaise snorted, setting his paper aside. “Potter couldn’t be inconspicuous if he set himself on fire and hid in a coal scuttle. But that doesn’t mean he’s got the faintest idea what’s behind those doors either.”

Pansy glared, her spoon clinking against the rim of her goblet. “Draco knows things.”

“He knows rumours,” Blaise replied lazily. “And he repeats them until he half believes them himself. That doesn’t mean he knows the truth. The difference between us, Parkinson, is that I have no need to prove I’m cleverer than Potter. I merely wish to know what’s worth knowing.”

Sophie tore her toast in half, thinking. The corridor… it had been mentioned at the Start‑of‑Term Feast. Dumbledore himself had said the third‑floor corridor was off limits. Why bring it up so publicly if one didn’t want to attract attention? Was it a bluff, or bait, or a warning?

She found herself asking before she could stop:

“What do you think is there?”

Blaise’s eyes flicked to her, dark and amused. “Ah. A curious mind. That can be dangerous in Slytherin, you know. There are secrets in this house not for everyone’s ears.”

Pansy’s mouth twitched in something like approval or perhaps suspicion. “Draco says there’s a curse. Perhaps a monster.”

“Perhaps,” Blaise said, returning to his paper, “or perhaps it’s merely Professor Snape’s private collection of questionable hair tonics. The point, my dear Sophie, is not to go charging after secrets like a Gryffindor. We observe. We listen. And when someone else does the charging, we collect the spoils.”

Sophie folded her napkin, aware of Edmund’s slight movement under her sleeve. A flick of tongue, a coil tightening as though sensing her attention shift inward. She reached down to stroke him once, unseen, her fingers brushing smooth scales.

All around them, the hall was alive with the hum of voices and the scrape of cutlery. Over at the High Table, Quirrell coughed into his sleeve, shoulders jerking. Snape barely moved, but Sophie thought—just for a moment—that his eyes flicked not at Quirrell but at Potter.

Blaise reached for a slice of melon, unhurried, as though their whole conversation had been nothing more than idle chatter. Pansy, however, continued to watch the Gryffindors, her expression bright with a hunter’s curiosity.

They talked of other things—Quidditch standings, an upcoming Potions essay—but the image of the forbidden corridor lodged in Sophie’s mind like a burr. And as Edmund shifted again, warm against her wrist, she found herself wondering not only what secrets Hogwarts held… but which of them might be worth keeping.

⸻

Later, in the hour before supper, Sophie wandered back toward the Slytherin common room, her head full of fragments: Blaise’s idle speculations, Pansy’s gleeful certainty, the way Edmund had seemed to stir whenever she lingered too long on the thought of the forbidden corridor. Her mind felt restless, a flock of thoughts circling without landing.

The green‑lit corridor before the common room bent around a curve, torches guttering in the draught, when a voice rose out of the shadows.

“Walk with me,” said Daphne Greengrass softly.

She emerged from an archway dressed in her full uniform, but with her green‑and‑silver tie loosened at the throat, as though she had allowed herself a single breath of untidiness. Her posture, however, remained impeccable, the effortless poise of someone who had practised it since childhood.

Sophie obeyed without thinking, falling into step as Daphne turned away from the common room, down a side corridor lined with old portraits. Most of them dozed in the fading afternoon light, but one—a thin wizard in mustard‑coloured robes—watched them pass with half‑lidded eyes, murmuring something Sophie couldn’t catch.

Neither girl spoke until they reached a small alcove tucked behind a crumbling suit of armour. The shadows pooled here, softening the stone bench set beneath an arched window. Daphne stopped and leaned one shoulder against the wall, gaze travelling the length of the empty corridor as though confirming they were alone.

“You’ve been… lively,” she said at last, choosing the word with care. Her tone was mild, but there was steel beneath.

Sophie perched on the cool stone bench, feeling a ripple of unease. “Lively?”

“At breakfast. Leaning in when Blaise talks. Asking questions. You’ve been seen walking with Tracey. And now Pansy has noticed you’re taking an interest in house gossip.”

Sophie flushed. “Is that… bad?”

Daphne didn’t answer straightaway. Her expression softened, grew distant, and for a moment Sophie saw not the composed Slytherin of the dungeons but the girl she had met before the school year began, at the Greengrass estate.

Sophie remembered that afternoon with unexpected clarity—the gardens, wide and wild despite their careful grooming, the late summer light slanting through the greenhouse glass, Daphne leading her along a gravel path. At the same time, house‑elves scurried to prepare trunks and cloaks. Daphne had spoken then in a low voice about Hogwarts as though it were both a puzzle and a promise. She’d seemed… lighter somehow, a girl on the edge of something new.

“I keep thinking of that day,” Daphne murmured, half to herself. “The way you looked around the gardens as if you’d never seen anything like them. I thought then… you’d make a curious Slytherin.”

Sophie hesitated. “And now?”

“Now I see you learning your coursework very well—Professor Snape is as impressed as he can be, I think—but in the… subtler lessons of our House, you’re still lagging.” Daphne’s gaze returned to her, sharp once more. “Curiosity is valuable, Sophie. But only if you learn when to close your mouth and when to let others talk.”

Sophie opened her lips to protest, but Daphne lifted a hand. “It’s not a rebuke. You have a good head. You see more than you say—most of the time. But Blaise likes to talk. Pansy likes to collect. Draco—” her mouth twisted briefly “—wants to own the narrative. But you…” She shook her head lightly, a strand of pale hair slipping loose. “You’ve begun to wander into their little games without even knowing the stakes.”

Sophie shifted on the bench, feeling Edmund stir against her wrist, hidden beneath the wide sleeve of her robe. The familiar brush of scales steadied her.

“In Slytherin,” Daphne continued, her voice gentler now, almost wistful, “secrets are currency—the moment too many people know a thing, its value drops to nothing. If you ever find something real—something that matters—think very hard about who you tell. Because once you’ve given it away, you can never get it back.”

Sophie nodded slowly. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“I know.” Daphne’s interruption was soft. For a heartbeat, her expression warmed again, some unspoken memory flickering in her eyes. Then her gaze dropped, and she noticed a movement at Sophie’s sleeve when she raised a hand.

A small emerald head had poked out from the cuff, tongue flickering. Edmund regarded Daphne with bright, unblinking eyes.

Daphne actually smiled—startled and genuine, a rare break in her usual composure. “Oh. He’s beautiful,” she whispered, leaning closer before she caught herself and straightened, the smile fading into the familiar cool poise. “I didn’t think you’d dare bring him.”

“He helps me think,” Sophie said softly.

“A confidant, then.” Daphne’s lips curved again, but this time it was measured, her usual ice‑queen mask sliding back into place. “Very Slytherin of you.”

Sophie let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. Edmund retreated into the warmth of her sleeve, coils shifting against her wrist.

Daphne’s hand brushed Sophie’s sleeve briefly—a rare gesture of warmth, quick but sincere—before she stepped back. “See that you remember what I’ve said.”

“I will,” Sophie murmured.

“Good.” Daphne straightened fully, tying her loosened tie as though re‑armouring herself for the world. “Come on. We’ll miss supper if we dawdle.”

They walked back through the corridors in silence. Sophie’s mind was alight with Daphne’s words, with memories of the Greengrass gardens, with the steady reassurance of Edmund coiled close. For the first time, she saw her place in Slytherin not as a fixed point but as something she would have to build—brick by careful brick, word by guarded word.

⸻

That night, long after the dormitory had gone quiet and Pansy’s soft snores mingled with the distant drip of water in the dungeons, Sophie slid from her bed and reached for a small, battered notebook she’d brought from home. The dungeons always seemed to deepen in stillness at this hour; the air was cool, almost damp, the green glow from the enchanted windows reduced to the faintest shimmer.

She drew her curtains half‑closed to shield her from view, lit her wand to a silvery whisper of light, and curled cross‑legged on the coverlet. Edmund, sensing the shift in mood, emerged from her blankets, looping over her wrist and settling there as though he, too, wanted to see what she would write.

“Don’t laugh,” Sophie whispered to him, voice barely more than breath. “But I think I’m going to start keeping track of things. Just for me.”

Edmund flicked his tongue, the faintest hiss escaping him, and Sophie smiled. Was it understanding? Or just instinct? She never knew, and the uncertainty made him feel even more like a secret.

She opened to the first blank page. Instead of writing plainly, she began with a simple cipher—one her mother had taught her for fun on rainy days. Letters shifted places, vowels became numbers, a childish code that made her grin as she wrote:

Third‑floor corridor: why forbidden? Blaise speculates. Pansy suspects Potter. Must watch.

She tapped her quill, thinking, then added another line:

Daphne’s warning: secrets are currency. Observe more. Speak less.

The words looked different in cipher, secretive and sly, and Sophie felt a thrill run through her. It wasn’t just notes; it was something alive, something that belonged solely to her.

As the ink dried, other thoughts crowded in, fragments from her classes, tidbits overheard in the library, remarks dropped by professors when they thought students weren’t listening. She began jotting them down too, sometimes in full sentences, sometimes in quick sketches or runes.

Transfiguration limitations: cannot create food from nothing, only transform existing.

Potions reading on my own – Felix Felicis references: rare ingredients beyond reach? Maybe trade?

Professor Sprout’s aside on magical plants: some mimic Muggle diseases, none match them exactly.

And then, after a long pause, she wrote:

Muggle cancer… not a single thing but many, Mum said. Every case is different. Charms might slow one kind but not another. Potions could help with symptoms but not cure. Healers call it “cross‑disciplinary,” very advanced. Why so little written? Maybe too big, too hard.

She stared at that last entry, her hand hovering above the page. It was one thing to imagine Hogwarts as a place where answers would come quickly, like turning a key in a lock. But the more she learned—the more she read of magical limitations and the strange, stubborn intricacies of Muggle biology—the more she realised that her hope of finding a cure in honour of Agnes’s father was not going to be a single neat solution. It might not even be something she could manage while she was still a student.

Her quill trembled as she added in careful cipher:

This might take years. A lifetime. But I have to try.

Edmund shifted, coiling tighter, and Sophie reached down to stroke his scales with one fingertip. He made a soft, sibilant sound, comforting in the quiet.

“Wouldn’t it be something,” she whispered, “if I could finish Hogwarts with all the answers? But it’s never that simple, is it?”

Edmund’s tongue flicked once, catching the lamplight, and she felt a sudden swell of fierce affection for him. He didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, and yet she felt less alone.

Her notes sprawled across the page now in a web of secrets and hopes: speculation about corridors and classmates, warnings about currency and trust, the seeds of great questions she could hardly frame yet. She began experimenting with new layers of code—reversing words, substituting runes from her Charms textbook, even doodling small sketches of plants that might one day matter.

Moonstone: stabilises many potions. Can it be combined with dittany?

Magic and Muggle healing overlap? Need to research in the library—restricted section?

Ask Madam Pomfrey quietly if she’s heard of wizards helping Muggles with non‑magical illnesses. Don’t say too much.

She bit her lip, remembering Daphne’s warning. Secrets are currency. If anyone reads this book, they will learn more about her than she intended to share. So she added another layer, rearranging runes and scattering misdirections among the real entries—just enough to keep even a clever reader from grasping the whole picture.

Outside, the castle sighed in its sleep. Somewhere above, a door creaked, and the faint hum of magic vibrated through the stones like the heartbeat of a living thing. Down here in the dungeons, Sophie bent over her notebook, her quill scratching softly, Edmund a living bracelet against her wrist.

She felt the weight of what she was doing, the absurdity and the ambition, and yet she could not stop. Each word, each coded entry, was a brick in something she was building—a future, a promise, perhaps even a lifetime’s work.

For the first time since arriving at Hogwarts, she felt not just like a girl caught between worlds, but like someone shaping her own path, in secret, step by step, under the watchful eyes of her House and the gentle coil of a snake who would never betray her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15: A Trade of Favours

The dungeon was alive with sound and shadow, a place that seemed to breathe on its own. Low, rhythmic bubbling echoed from the ranks of cauldrons, mingling with the occasional hiss of escaping steam. The stone walls, slick with condensation, caught the torchlight in dull glimmers, so that the entire room seemed to shiver faintly in the gloom. A faint draught from some unseen vent carried the mingled scents of crushed herbs, charred root fragments, and the sharp tang of vinegar that had been used to scrub the benches after the previous lesson. It was the kind of air that clung to your robes and whispered of old secrets. Sophie slid onto her usual stool, smoothing her parchment and arranging her ink bottle, careful not to jostle her satchel. Edmund lay curled within, a small warm coil of scales that shifted ever so slightly against her palm as though reminding her of his presence.

Around her, Slytherins and Gryffindors jostled and muttered, the scrape of stools on stone and the rustle of robes filling the charged silence before the lesson began. Daphne Greengrass lowered herself elegantly onto the stool in front of Sophie, already aligning her quill and notes with characteristic precision. Blaise Zabini leaned back in his chair two rows behind, wearing an expression of lazy detachment as though this entire exercise were beneath him. Across the aisle, a knot of Gryffindors settled in: Potter with his untidy hair falling into his eyes, Hermione Granger already poised over her parchment with that look of bright hunger she always carried into class, and the redheaded boy—Ron Weasley, Sophie remembered—frowning as though the very air had wronged him.

Tracey Davis sat two benches to Sophie’s right, stiff‑backed, shoulders pulled high as she stared at the directions chalked in Snape’s crisp hand on the blackboard. Her bright brown eyes darted over the text, lips moving slightly as though rehearsing steps she could not quite fix in her mind. Sophie had noticed her before: clever enough, with an instinct for detail, but carrying a kind of anxious tension that made her seem always on the brink of calamity.

Professor Snape swept into their midst like a shadow given flesh, black robes whispering against the floor, his presence dragging the room into sharper focus. He paused near the front bench, allowing the silence to stretch before speaking in a tone like a knife sliding from its sheath. “Today’s exercise,” he said, enunciating each word as though carving them into the air, “requires more than a steady hand. Before you test your antidote, you will solve the logic problem on your parchment. Choose wrongly, and you may poison your brew. I shall not be fetching bezoars for the careless.” His black eyes glinted, daring someone to falter. A ripple of unease passed through the class, a shift in breathing, the shuffle of quills poised for battle.

Hermione bent immediately over her parchment, quill scratching with brisk certainty, lips moving as she murmured through the logic, already deep in her own world. Potter wrote more slowly, brows drawn together in patient concentration, his strokes deliberate. Weasley, by contrast, seemed adrift, ruffling his hair with one hand and chewing on the end of his quill, glancing sideways at Hermione’s neat script as though hoping it might reveal its secrets by osmosis. Sophie watched him with detached curiosity, then turned back to her own puzzle, letting the rhythm of her own notes soothe her.

Snape prowled between the tables, his footsteps making almost no sound on the cold stones. The smell of simmering liquids thickened, mixing with faint curls of steam rising from cauldrons as ingredients warmed. Sophie glanced up in time to catch Hermione’s small, triumphant smirk as she underlined her answer, the scratch of her quill a sure, confident movement. Across the aisle, Harry’s slower, methodical strokes gave him an air of quiet contentment, like someone building something sturdy brick by brick. Ron, meanwhile, shifted in his seat, fidgeting, knocking his inkwell so that a dark blot spread across the corner of his parchment. He swore under his breath, smearing the ink further with his sleeve.

Sophie felt a faint smile tug at her lips—until she noticed Tracey. The girl’s fingers clenched around her quill, her eyes flicking from the problem to her notes and back again with growing panic. Her parchment was already scarred with crossed‑out attempts, the corners crumpled where she had gripped too tightly. Her lips moved without sound, forming possibilities only to discard them. Sophie saw the quickened rise and fall of her chest, the way her shoulders had hunched as though she could disappear behind her own hair.

The tension in the dungeon tightened like a drawn bowstring as minutes passed. Quills scratched more fiercely, cauldrons hissed. Hermione’s hand shot up at last, her voice bright with barely restrained pride when Snape stalked over to glance at her work and gave a curt, approving nod. Harry, too, seemed to have something workable, his frown easing slightly as he double‑checked his steps. Ron, however, looked no closer to success, his ears reddening with frustration as he squinted at his parchment as if sheer anger might wrestle the answer from it.

Snape’s attention snapped to Ron like a hawk spotting prey. He swept down on the boy’s table, voice silky with venom. “Weasley,” he drawled, “if you stare at Miss Granger’s work any harder, you’ll sprain your feeble mind. And if you spill one more drop of ink on my tables, you can clean them without magic.” Ron stammered something incoherent, cheeks flaming, while Hermione bent her head to hide a small smile. Potter gave Ron a sympathetic shrug, as though accustomed to such explosions. The rest of the room held its breath, half amused, half terrified of drawing Snape’s gaze. Sophie felt the air itself vibrate with tension, and somewhere, in the corner of her satchel, Edmund shifted again as if sensing the storm.

Sophie’s gaze darted back to Tracey. The girl’s breathing had quickened, a shallow fluttering that barely seemed to draw enough air. Her quill hovered uselessly above the parchment, its tip leaving tiny dots where her hand trembled. The page was a battlefield of aborted logic—lines struck through, ink smeared, numbers looping back on themselves. Her eyes flitted across the puzzle without seeing it, lips moving silently, as though she were trying to cast a spell that refused to catch.

Something in Sophie’s chest clenched. She remembered her first week—the dizzying sense of being behind, the shame that came from not knowing how things worked, from watching others move through lessons like they’d been born to it. She had felt small then. She doubted Tracey felt any different now.

She could almost hear her mother’s voice now—low, firm, and practical, the kind of voice that could talk you through a bad storm: Help where you can, Sophie. Her fingers drummed softly on the desk as her mind worked. Edmund stirred faintly in her satchel, scales shifting against her palm as though he sensed her unease. She stroked his side absently with a thumb, gaze flicking back to the front. Snape was still occupied with Ron, his voice rising and falling in cold, precise syllables. The room breathed in time with his ire.

Sophie felt a flicker of courage—small and fast as a match—and leaned across her bench. She angled her parchment just so, her quill lifted near her lips like a question, and whispered, just loud enough for Tracey to hear: “Start from what don’t fit. Dragon’s blood’ll skew the brew—chuck them out first, then work back.”

Her voice carried the soft cadence of Somerset more clearly than she intended. Not clipped and polished like the others, but rooted, unapologetic. A slip—or maybe not. Let them hear it, she thought in a moment of reckless pride.

Tracey startled, head jerking up, eyes wide as though she’d been jolted from a bad dream. Sophie didn’t look at her, pretending to remain absorbed in her own notes. She saw from the corner of her eye how Tracey blinked rapidly, rereading the logic puzzle with a new intensity. The frantic movements of her quill steadied, became purposeful. A faint, relieved flush touched her cheeks as a line of reasoning unfolded beneath her hand, neat where before it had been a tangle.

Sophie exhaled softly, tension unwinding from her shoulders in a way she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. For a moment, she allowed herself the quiet satisfaction of having nudged someone back from the brink.

Snape turned away from Ron with a final, disdainful sneer, sweeping down the row like a hunting bird seeking another target. Sophie bent over her parchment, eyes on the simmering potion, counting out her stirring with careful, even strokes. Across the aisl,e Hermione was already cleaning her quill, satisfaction lighting her expression like a private sun. Harry leaned back, his brow unfurrowed now, a faint nod betraying his quiet confidence. Ron hunched miserably over his page, ink smudges on his hand, ears still flushed pink. Around them, the dungeon murmured with the subtle music of students finishing tasks, the bitter‑sweet tang of brewed ingredients thick in the air.

The oppressive atmosphere lightened slightly as Snape barked a clipped order to bottle samples and clear workspaces. A shuffling of benches followed, the squeak of glass vials against stone. Tracey moved with precision now, measuring, pouring, her shoulders no longer shaking. When their eyes met briefly as they packed up, she mouthed two words, Thank you, and Sophie returned the faintest of nods. The glow of that gratitude warmed her, but alongside it came a quieter thought, sliding like oil over water: Nothing for free, Roper. Nothing. Blaise’s voice, remembered from some earlier conversation, threaded through her mind. For a heartbeat, she almost resented it—hadn’t she helped simply because it felt right? Yet, already, somewhere deeper, a more practical calculation had taken root.

The classroom emptied slowly, students breaking into groups as they streamed into the corridor. Their chatter echoed off the stone walls—laughter, complaints, the shuffle of books. Sophie lingered near the doorframe, fingers fussing with her satchel strap, eyes on Tracey as the girl carefully gathered her notes. Hermione brushed past, her arms full of parchment, speaking rapidly to Harry about the nuances of the puzzle. Ron trudged alongside them, muttering darkly about how the puzzle “made no sense anyway,” and Harry’s low reply was lost in the hum of voices. Their footsteps faded down the stairwell, leaving the dungeon corridor quieter, the air a touch cooler against Sophie’s skin.

Sophie lingered near the door, watching Tracey fumble her books into a neat stack. She could still hear her mother’s voice in the back of her mind: Help where you can, Sophie—but Blaise’s warning tangled through it like a vine: Nothing for free.

She stepped forward before she could second-guess herself. “Tracey,” she said evenly.

The girl looked up, wary but expectant.

“You owe me one,” Sophie said. “I don’t know when I’ll need it, but I will.”

The words sat strangely on her tongue. Half warmth, half frost. She didn’t regret them, but they tasted different from what she’d expected.

Tracey blinked, then nodded quickly. “Oh… yes. Thank you, Sophie. I mean it. I… I won’t forget.”

Sophie watched her go, the click of her heels receding down the stone corridor. And then she stood alone, listening to the silence settle back in. That had felt like power. A little unsettling. A little satisfying. When she finally turned, she saw Daphne leaning against the far wall, arms folded, her expression unreadable. For an instant, Sophie feared a reprimand, but Daphne merely arched one brow, the corner of her mouth tilting in the faintest smile. Not approval exactly—more a quiet acknowledgment: You’re learning. Sophie felt a shiver pass through her, not an unpleasant one, and then a strange sense of belonging.

Later, the Slytherin common room glowed with emerald shadows, torchlight glinting off the damp stone. The ceiling shimmered with the reflections of the Black Lake, long wavering streaks of green and silver drifting across the flagstones. Students spoke in low voices, their pages rustling, as quills scratched. Sophie sat cross‑legged at her desk in a corner alcove, Edmund curled like a comma near the inkpot. Her notebook was cribbed in one hand, coded notes running in tidy lines along the page. Tracey Davis – clever, steadier than she thinks. Another note: Granger solves everything first. Potter steady, slow. Weasley flustered—Snape fixates on him, a useful distraction.

She stared at the last words, the ink still glistening faintly. Helping Tracey had felt good, pure even, and yet she had turned it into a bargain. Was that wrong, or was that survival? Kindness can be a coin, if you choose to spend it, she wrote, letting the phrase settle into her thoughts like a stone dropped into deep water.

Edmund shifted, tongue flicking as though tasting the air. Sophie touched his smooth scales lightly. “What would you have done?” she whispered. He blinked, ancient and inscrutable. Perhaps she was projecting, perhaps not. Either way, the question steadied her as she blew on the ink, folded the parchment, and tucked it into her satchel.

⸻

The Great Hall hummed with evening energy, candlelight floating high above in the enchanted ceiling, its flickering glow mirrored in goblets and silver dishes. The smell of roast meats, fresh bread, and spiced puddings wove through the air, warm and heady after the damp chill of the dungeons. Sophie slid onto the Slytherin bench, the cool gleam of green and silver all around her, and rested her hands on the table for a moment before reaching for food.

Across from her, Pansy Parkinson laughed lightly at something Millicent said, though the laughter carried a sharpness to it, more a signal than a sound. Blaise leaned in to make some quiet observation to Theodore Nott, who responded with a lazy smirk before helping himself to potatoes. Further down, Daphne was speaking softly to a second-year, her words measured, her posture perfect. Sophie watched them all with new eyes, as though the conversation itself were a tapestry she had never truly examined until now.

It struck her, almost viscerally, how every word and gesture around her seemed to carry weight beyond its surface. A compliment from Pansy was a gift with strings attached. A casual joke from Blaise might be planting an idea that would serve him later. Even the way Daphne broke a roll and offered half to the older student was not just kindness but a calculated gesture of favour. The entire table hummed with quiet, intricate trades, a shifting market of alliances, debts, and unspoken contracts.

Sophie found herself staring at her plate, fork poised above a slice of chicken, wondering why it had taken her this long to see it. The signs had always been there, in the corners of conversations, in the subtle exchanges of glances, and in the pauses that spoke louder than words. She had been too busy surviving—too busy learning potions, spells, keeping up—to notice the game being played all around her. And now, with a single whispered clue to Tracey, she had taken her first step onto the board.

As the conversation swelled and shifted around her, Sophie chewed slowly, thoughtfully. Blaise’s laughter curled like smoke, Pansy’s teasing jab slid into a promise of future help, and Daphne’s cool, steady gaze flicked her way for an instant, as if checking a move on a chessboard. She had taken a step. Just one, but it had moved something.

As the conversation at the table curled around her, teasing, trading, whispering, Sophie let the clarity settle in. The game had always been in play. Now she was playing, too, and she’d made her first move.

Chapter Text

16. Whispers in the Forest

The Slytherin common room was warm that evening, the fire casting flickering green and gold across the stone walls. Shadows from the Black Lake rippled overhead, distorting the ceiling as though the whole room floated underwater. Sophie sat curled in one of the alcove seats, her knees drawn up, parchment open but ignored. Edmund was coiled loosely along her forearm, his smooth, cool scales a counterpoint to the heat from the hearth.

She stroked him absently, feeling the steady ripple of his muscles as he shifted. His head was angled just so, unblinking eyes fixed on nothing—or perhaps on everything. Sophie sometimes thought he was listening as intently as she was.

The air buzzed with low conversation. First-years and upper-years alike leaned toward each other in small knots, their voices pitched low, their words carrying just enough to snag at the edge of hearing. Sophie caught fragments:

“…a teacher… in the Forest…”

“…blood… someone injured, badly…”

“…centaurs, I swear—”

Each phrase floated past like a breadcrumb, impossible to ignore. She tapped her quill against her knee, gaze flicking from one cluster to the next. The Forest was forbidden for a reason—Hagrid had said as much on their very first night. Whatever had happened there, it had involved staff, students, and enough drama to set the entire school humming.

Edmund shifted, tongue flicking once. Sophie glanced down at him. “You’re thinking something, aren’t you?” she murmured under her breath. He gave no sign—just that same steady stare.

Pansy passed behind her chair, chattering to Millicent. “Gryffindors again,” she said, her tone half-scorn, half-delight. “They trip over their own feet and somehow land in the middle of trouble.”

Sophie filed that away. Gryffindors in the Forest. Blood. A centaur.

She bent over her parchment at last, not to work, but to jot three quick words in her coded notes: Forest – danger – witness? Edmund’s head shifted slightly toward the inked letters, and she wondered—half teasing herself, half not—if he understood more than she ever dared to say aloud.

⸻

By the time they filed into the Great Hall for supper, the rumour had thickened into something with weight, like a fog that had settled over every table. Sophie slid onto the bench across from Daphne, setting her plate down but making no move for the serving dishes.

Tracey appeared moments later, taking the seat beside Daphne with an air of casual purpose. She leaned in, her voice pitched low enough that Sophie had to tilt forward to catch the words.

“I heard two Hufflepuffs talking in the corridor,” Tracey said. “One of them swore a centaur helped bring someone out of the Forest. Said they looked… half-dead.”

Daphne’s expression didn’t flicker, but her eyes narrowed just slightly. “There are things in that Forest that don’t fear the Dark,” she murmured. “But Draco had detention last night. I’m sure he’d waste no time telling us of his heroics if something happened to the students.”

Tracey shivered faintly. “They didn’t sound like they were making it up.”

From further down the table, Blaise spoke without looking up from buttering a roll. “If Gryffindors keep running into danger, they’ll be picked off sooner or later.” His tone was light, idle, but there was a flat reflexiveness to his words that made Sophie wonder just how much of his disdain for the other house was performative.

Sophie glanced at him, then back to Daphne. The older girl was watching Blaise with the faintest trace of acknowledgement—two players on opposite sides of a chessboard noting each other’s move.

She found herself leaning closer, not to whisper, but to join the space they’d left open between them. “Do we know which Gryffindors?”

Tracey nodded her head. “I heard Crabbe telling Pansy: Granger and Potter. Whatever it was, it happened last night.”

Daphne served herself bread and a slice of roasted parsnip, her movements unhurried. “If it’s true, it will spread. Best to wait until we know the source.”

Sophie nodded, but a small thrill curled through her. She wasn’t merely overhearing this exchange—she was part of it, the subtle current of information that flowed within Slytherin without ever rising to the surface.

As the platters passed, she reached for the chicken, listening more than she spoke. Tracey and Daphne murmured in a rhythm that left space for her questions, Blaise occasionally tossing in a barbed aside. No one told her to hush or looked at her as if she were an intruder.

She caught herself glancing across the hall toward the Gryffindors. Potter was there, speaking low to Granger, while Weasley gestured animatedly with his fork. None of them looked injured. That didn’t mean much—healers could fix most things faster than a blink—but the thought sat in her mind like a stone.

She looked back at Daphne and Tracey, the quiet hum of their voices enveloping her. The warmth of the fire in the common room had followed her here, and for the first time, she felt less like an observer and more like a piece on the board—small, yes, but moving all the same.

––––

The common room was quieter after supper, the earlier murmur of conversations thinning into the scratch of quills and the soft rustle of pages. Sophie settled into her desk in the corner alcove, Edmund draped across her forearm like a length of living ribbon. His slow, steady coiling grounded her as she added to a page in her journal.

She dipped her quill, the nib pausing above the page before she began in her cramped, coded hand:

Detention – Forest – Gryffindors + Draco. What did Hagrid see?

Injury – teacher? student? Dark magic, likely.

Centaur involved. Motivation? Research their interactions with Hogwarts

Dangerous creature. implied? Giant Squid, Fluffy, something new? Too many monsters.

She tapped the quill against her lip, considering. The centaur rumours and the talk of blood matched too closely to be a coincidence. And if Malfoy had been there—well, the details would find their way back to her soon enough, though likely polished for effect.

Her mind flicked to the first weeks of term, to the whispered story of a three-headed dog on a trapdoor on the third floor. Fluffy, they’d called it, though she’d never seen it herself. Could that and the Forest trouble be linked? The logic was thin, a thread more felt than seen, but it tugged at her all the same.

She leaned back, letting the quill rest in her fingers. It was one thing to remember facts, another to fit them into a pattern. Professor Snape had said once—though not to her—that brewing was all about seeing the whole recipe, not just the ingredients. The same might be true for… whatever this was.

Edmund shifted, his cool scales catching a ripple of firelight, and flicked his tongue toward the parchment. Sophie gave him a faint smile. “You’d probably be better at this than me,” she murmured.

She added one more note in the margin: Find better source. Not for now—she wasn’t reckless enough to go sniffing around the Forest—but for later, when the story had settled and people spoke more freely.

Her eyes travelled down the short list again. Not much to go on. But even a few points, arranged in the right order, could form a shape. And if there was a shape, there was a plan. She liked that thought. It felt less like drifting and more like steering, however slightly.

She folded the parchment along clean lines and slid it into her satchel. The ink was still fresh, and she caught the faint tang of it as she closed the flap. Across the room, the fire popped, and the lake shadows wavered against the ceiling.

Sophie rested her hand lightly over Edmund, feeling the slow shift of muscle beneath his scales. Somewhere beyond the stone walls of the dungeons, the Forest lay dark and dangerous. She would not go there, but she would know more about what had happened inside it.

––––

The morning air in the greenhouses was warm and damp, a soft mist curling from the rows of potted plants as the class filed in. The scent was rich—earthy, resinous, with a faint sweetness from the flowering dittany in the far corner. It tugged Sophie back to Somerset in an instant.

Her father’s potions lab had been in their basement, tucked under the kitchen, a narrow space lined with shelves of jars and stoppered bottles. It had none of the Slytherin dungeon’s chill; the air there was always pleasantly warm, carrying the comforting mingling of steeped herbs, drying roots, and boiling infusions. She’d sit on the steps while he worked, listening to the clink of glass against wood and the gentle burble of simmering brews. If the lab was his domain, the herb garden above was her mother’s, a square of soil bursting with green, where she learned the feel of a healthy leaf and the patience to wait for it to flourish.

Professor Sprout’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Gather round, everyone. We’ll be looking at the restorative properties of Sanguis salvia—Blood Sage. A useful plant, but only in the right hands.”

Sophie paired with Millicent, who was happy enough to heft the heavy terracotta pot but left Sophie to handle the finer work. The leaves were deep green with a coppery edge, and when Sophie crushed one gently between her fingers, the scent was sharp and metallic.

Across the table, Draco Malfoy was attacking his plant with a pair of secateurs as though it had personally insulted his father.

“Mr Malfoy,” Sprout chided, bustling over, “this isn’t a pig butcher’s—it’s a greenhouse. Coax, don’t hack.”

Draco straightened, flushing faintly, and adjusted his grip.

Sprout moved on, demonstrating how to trim and prepare the leaves so their magic wasn’t lost. “Like many healing plants, the magic is subtle. You don’t wring it out—you invite it,” she said, her hands deft as she set cuttings on a drying rack.

When she passed Sophie’s station, she paused, watching her arrange the cuttings in an even row. “You’ve a good touch—careful but not hesitant. That’ll take you far.”

Sophie felt the warmth rise in her cheeks. “Thank you, Professor.”

Sprout gave a slight nod. “Proper healers study for decades before they’re trusted with advanced restorative work. Patience and practice—no rushing.”

The words rooted themselves in Sophie’s mind, joining the memories of her parents’ care in their work. Decades sounded daunting, but in the greenhouse’s warm, living air, the idea felt more like a promise than a burden.

⸻

The Slytherin common room was calm again that evening, green-lit shadows sliding across the stone walls. Sophie sat in her usual alcove, Edmund draped cool and smooth across her lap. His weight was a steady presence, his scales like polished river stones under her fingers. Every so often, he shifted, the muscles beneath moving in a slow, liquid roll, and tilted his head toward her touch.

She let her hand rest lightly on him, mind turning over the day’s impressions. The Forest rumours were quieter now, replaced by new scraps of gossip, but the shape of them lingered: Gryffindors. Malfoy. Centaur. Blood. Dangerous creature. She imagined the dark under the trees, the things that might move there unseen. She wouldn’t go herself—but she would know more, and she would remember.

The greenhouse scene rose again in her mind: the metallic scent of Blood Sage, the soft clink of Sprout’s tools, the warmth of being noticed. She thought of her father’s basement lab, the steam wafting gently upward, and her mother brushing soil from her hands in the garden above. Both had shown her that tending—whether to plants, potions, or people—was a matter of patience and skill. That was how you built something that lasted.

The quick exchanges of Slytherin’s social game were useful, but they were small coins. The real gains would take longer to mint.

Edmund stirred, lifting his head and flicking his tongue toward her face. She smiled faintly. “That’s agreement, is it?”

He stayed there, his gaze steady, then shifted closer so the curve of his cool head rested against the back of her hand. She didn’t know if he understood or if she was only imagining it—but the effect was the same.

Her smile deepened, and her resolve tightened. She would keep learning, keep gathering, keep preparing. And when the right moment came, she’d be ready to act.

Edmund flicked his tongue again, almost like a nod.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17: Calculated Moves

The library smelled of waxed wood and parchment, the faint musk of ink lingering in the still air. Even the light seemed muted here, filtered through high, leaded windows into a cold, silvery wash that picked out the slow drift of dust motes. Sophie liked this light; it made everyone’s outlines softer, as though they were sketches waiting to be inked in.

She’d claimed a seat near the centre aisle, a place that allowed her to be visible enough to discourage casual interruption while close enough to the cross-currents of traffic to hear what she wanted. Edmund was looped comfortably along her forearm, the tip of his tail coiled loosely near her wrist, his head resting just beyond her cuff. Not flaunted—Slytherins didn’t flaunt—but not hidden either. Every so often, his tongue slid out, tasting the library air, then disappeared again with unhurried precision.

No one stared. Hogwarts had its owls, cats, and the occasional rat or toad. A snake was unusual, yes, but unusual here did not mean alarming. She could almost forget herself that she was carrying him until she felt the cool shift of muscle against her skin.

The library was quieter than the Slytherin common room but not silent. The whispers were low, urgent in a way that made Sophie lean ever so slightly toward them without looking up.

At the far end of her table, two Ravenclaws bent over a shared book, speaking into the narrow space between their heads. “…said the third floor was wide open last night,” one murmured, the thrill in his voice making him careless. His companion shushed him sharply, glancing around with the reflex of someone used to guarding information. A moment later, a Hufflepuff Sophie recognised from Herbology dropped into the chair opposite them and whispered her own contribution: a prefect spotted hurrying away from the main staircase, face pale, muttering about patrol duty.

The story was already mutating. Sophie kept her gaze on her parchment and let it wash over her. She’d learned the value of staying still—the way a well-placed silence drew more truth than a barrage of questions.

From behind the Potions section came a different timbre: Blaise Zabini’s voice, smooth and deliberate, carrying just enough to reach her without straining. “If someone’s charging up there at night, they’re either brave or stupid. Usually both.” His tone was almost indulgent, as though bravery and stupidity were the same childhood illness. The laugh that followed—male, older—belonged to someone Sophie didn’t know.

She marked the phrase in her mind. Blaise liked to drop truths dressed as throwaway comments. Sometimes they were worth keeping.

Across the room, movement drew her attention. Daphne Greengrass stood beside a group of older Slytherins, her stack of books balanced neatly in her arms. Sophie had seen her play the ice queen well—shoulders back, gaze level, speaking only when there was something worth hearing—but now she caught the faintest strain at the corners of her mouth. The older students were holding court with the kind of effortless authority that came from three or four years of refining one’s place in the House hierarchy. Daphne waited for a pause that never came, her line of conversation neatly cut away as the group shifted without her. It was so subtle Sophie might have missed it if she hadn’t been looking for such things.

Sophie’s quill moved absently over the page, but her mind lingered on the sight. Even Daphne had to navigate the pecking order. That was… oddly reassuring.

Edmund stirred, tongue flicking toward the central aisle. Sophie followed the movement just as Harry Potter appeared between the stacks, a book under one arm. He slowed when he saw the small triangular head peeking from her sleeve.

“That’s a beautiful snake,” he said, stopping at her table.

Before Sophie could decide how to respond, Edmund hissed—a low, drawn-out sound, the cadence so close to words that her mind tried to catch hold of it. Harry’s expression flickered, almost like he’d recognised something, then settled into a small, genuine smile.

“He says he likes you,” Harry added, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Sophie blinked at him. “Oh… thanks,” she said at last, the word slow and cautious.

Her housemates’ opinions of Gryffindors—especially Potter—crowded in. They’d painted him as arrogant, reckless, basking in attention he hadn’t earned. Yet here he was, paying her a compliment over Edmund without a trace of mockery. Was he teasing her? No… it hadn’t sounded like it.

Harry gave a small nod, as if that were the whole exchange, and continued toward the far tables. Sophie’s eyes followed him briefly before she dropped her gaze to Edmund, who had resumed his loose coil, tongue flicking once before stilling.

Another shift of motion caught her eye. Near the roped-off archway to the Restricted Section, Hermione Granger slipped out with the practised quiet of someone who thought she was being discreet. Her arms were folded across a thick book that was clearly too large to fit into her bag. She moved quickly toward the far tables where Harry had joined Ron Weasley. Granger’s posture was deceptively casual, but her eyes darted to track Madam Pince’s location. Sophie watched as she slid into a seat beside the boys, the three of them bending immediately over the book as though they’d been discussing it for hours.

It was almost funny, how much of the castle’s real business was conducted under the pretence of study. Sophie tapped her quill against her parchment, letting the rhythm match the quiet pulse of conversations around her.

The rest of the room fell into familiar patterns. Rumours repeated themselves with slight embellishments: names were floated, retracted, re-floated. Some details hardened into fact without proof; others dissolved when challenged. Sophie nodded when it was safe to, offered a polite hum now and then, but kept her contributions vague enough to blend.

A memory rose unbidden: Somerset mornings, her mother at the stove, neighbours crowded into the kitchen with cups of tea. The words they spoke were rarely as important as the ones they didn’t. She’d thought of it then as the peculiar art of village talk. Now she saw it for what it was—a survival skill, whether in a hamlet or a house of cunning children.

From behind the Potions section, Blaise’s voice floated back to her: “Those who get caught are the ones who think speed beats patience.” The sentence slipped neatly into her mental notebook without her even deciding to keep it. Patience was something she had in abundance.

Edmund shifted again, raising his head just far enough that the green-black gleam of his scales caught the watery light. She wondered—again—whether he could sense her sharpening focus, or if she was only imagining it. It didn’t matter. The thought steadied her all the same.

When she finally gathered her notes, the room had thinned. Madam Pince was making her final circuit, her hawkish eyes scanning for contraband in the open stacks. Sophie rose slowly, letting Edmund slide a little higher up her arm until his head rested against her collar. He flicked his tongue toward the doorway, then settled there as if it were his rightful perch.

She didn’t bother tucking him away. Outside of class or the watchful eyes of professors, there was no reason to. If anything, having him visible made her harder to overlook—and perhaps a little harder to read.

⸻

The Slytherin common room was unusually bright as the last afternoon sun struck a green glow from the waters of the lake—fire low, lamps turned down so the lake light did most of the work. Sophie sat in the narrow alcove near the bookcase of battered reference texts, a vantage point that let her watch without being watched. Edmund lay along her forearm, half visible, his head nestled just past her cuff, tongue flicking lazily in time with the room’s rhythm: the shuffle of cards, the clack of chess pieces, Pansy’s laugh pulled tight like a thread. 

Tracey Davis sat at her usual table, posture prim and tense as if braced against a gust no one else could feel. Sophie remembered that moment in Potions—the steam, the faint tang of burnt nettle, Tracey’s hand shaking over the wrong vial—how she had whispered a single line of logic and seen relief reassemble the girl’s face. I owe you, Tracey had breathed. At the time, it had felt like an instinctive kindness. Now it felt like a key. Sophie lingered with that thought, knowing that taking a favour changed you a little, but collecting one changed you more. Edmund’s cool shift against her pulse seemed to nudge her forward.

She crossed to Tracey’s table and rested two fingers lightly on the wood. “Have you a minute?” 

Tracey’s eyes darted up, then sideways, before she set her quill down with deliberate care. 

“I’m calling in that favour,” Sophie said evenly. The change in Tracey was small but precise: a swallow, a tiny lift of the chin, as if accepting an unpleasant dose. 

“All right.” 

Sophie asked for something Daphne had once mentioned—an older Transfiguration technique called Vera Mutatio, and a reference to chase. 

Tracey’s hands pressed flat to the parchment. “Daphne doesn’t like people pulling on her threads.” 

“That’s why I’m not pulling. You are. Quietly.” 

Tracey glanced toward the fire, the nearest chessboard, and the prefect by the door. “She’ll know it was me.” 

“Perhaps,” Sophie allowed. “But I was careful in Potions, and no one noticed me then. You be careful now.” She let the pause hang, gentle but unmistakable. “You said you owed me.” 

Tracey’s mouth compressed. Sophie could see the calculation—friendship with Daphne, the standing debt, the risk of mishandling both. At last: “If she gives me anything, I’ll get it to you.” 

“Thank you,” Sophie said, stepping back as if she had merely returned an ink pot. No witnesses, no noise. The words felt tidy in her head.

They joined the flow of students up to dinner, drifting in the usual slipstream of chatter. The Great Hall glowed with its early-evening warmth, ceiling veined with high clouds, candles floating like patient stars. Sophie took her place halfway down the Slytherin table, Edmund retreating deeper inside her sleeve at the sight of the staff table. She smoothed her cuff over him, a quiet shield. Around her, Blaise held forth lazily about House politics and the idiocy of applauding bravery out of context, his lackadaisical charisma slowly drawing a ring of admirers. Pansy tried to wheedle gossip from a third-year who clearly had none. Across the table, Daphne spoke easily with a pair of girls—whatever strain Sophie had seen earlier in the library was gone, the ice queen mask settled firmly back into place.

Tracey arrived late, hair neatly pinned, expression neutral. She didn’t look at Sophie at first, accepting mashed potatoes with grim ceremony, nodding at something Millicent said, eating exactly two bites as if meeting a quota. Then, with a move so simple it felt rehearsed, she reached into her satchel, withdrew a folded parchment softened at the edges, and set it down between the salt and the bread—close enough for a passing hand to brush. “Herbology notes,” she said to no one in particular. “Professor Sprout will have my head if I misplace them again.” 

Sophie reached for the bread, fingers grazing the parchment as she tore a piece free, sliding both toward her plate and tucking the folded sheet under her napkin without looking down. 

“Sprout will have Draco’s head first,” Millicent muttered, “if he hacks at her sanguis salvia again.” Tracey gave a small, brittle laugh, but Sophie saw the toll—the tightness at the corners of her eyes, the unnatural stillness of her shoulders, the posture of someone waiting for judgment. A good spy would hide it better. Tracey was just compliant with the moment.

Sophie ate the crust of bread, the ebb and flow of voices around her a comfortable cover. When pudding came and attention shifted to tart and weekend plans, she let the napkin drop into her lap, palmed the parchment beneath, and slid it into her sleeve alongside Edmund—a second silent passenger. She rose with the rest after the meal, smiling faintly at nothing. Tracey didn’t meet her eye, which was wise. In the cooler air of the corridor, Sophie felt her breath ease, the thin shirt of anxiety she’d worn all evening cooling at the edges before it was gone entirely. Efficient. Clean. Effective. The words stacked neatly in her mind, weightless in the hand, heavy in their use. This is how things get done here, she thought, and beneath the small seam of guilt, she felt the steadier thread of satisfaction.

⸻

The dormitory was quiet, save for the slow, even breathing of the other girls. Sophie sat cross-legged on her bed with the curtains drawn, her wand casting a faint pool of light over the tangle of sheets. Edmund was coiled loosely on one shoulder, his head angled toward the glow. In her lap lay the folded parchment from Tracey, its edges still faintly creased from her grip at dinner. Sophie smoothed it open, fingertips resting on the fibres as though the texture itself might give up more than the ink.

Daphne’s offhand mention had been rendered here in neat, careful script: the name Vera Mutatio, its complexity, a sly nod to a particular Restricted Section text. Sophie read it twice, letting the satisfaction spread. Daphne would not know—Sophie would never say—but if she ever made open use of this knowledge, the trail would be there. Daphne was too sharp not to see the path: Daphne to Tracey, Tracey to Sophie. A short chain, with few enough links for the right mind to easily close the circle if Sophie were careless. She had better not be careless.

The thought sat like a weight in her chest, almost a warning, but it didn’t slow her pulse for long. This was faster than circling Daphne directly—if that door would even open. Quicker than hoping to stumble across the right reference in the stacks. In a place where advantage was currency, she had found a way to make an exchange with no wasted motion. The guilt thinned, like ink in water, until only its outline remained.

She could already imagine testing it—seeing if Vera Mutatio’s principles could be bent toward the transformation of living tissue for healing purposes. Most standard works on the subject broke against the same wall: management, not cure. But if the structure of the magic could be altered—if she could find the right point of balance between matter and life—perhaps she could push past those limits. The vision of her father’s basement lab came to her in flashes: shelves lined with jars, the faint metallic warmth of brewing glass, and above all the quiet certainty that everything there had a purpose.

Edmund slid his head down to rest against her collarbone, cool and comforting. Sophie folded the parchment with deliberate care and tucked it deep into her satchel. The seam of guilt was still there, but now it lay flat, pressed between layers of resolve.

⸻

The Great Hall wore the subdued light of a morning after rain, the enchanted ceiling a pale wash of thinning clouds. Outside, the flagstones were still damp; the smell of wet earth drifted in each time the doors opened. Sophie took her place halfway down the Slytherin table, and Edmund perched almost brazenly on the wood beside her plate. Millicent had spotted a grasshopper in the corridor and, with a grin, set it next to Sophie’s tea saucer. Edmund had taken the gift without hesitation, coiling lazily around himself as he crunched through his meal. The yellowish scales on his belly caught the watery light, and he looked entirely content, his eyes dulled as he watched the morning routine unfold in the room.

At the staff table, the absence was immediate—Dumbledore’s chair sat empty, his tall hat nowhere in sight. Around her, last night’s rumours had condensed into something sharper—less about whether something had happened, more about who and why. Pansy drummed her fingers in irritation, demanding updates from anyone who might have them. Blaise, unusually quiet, seemed almost annoyed at the lack of a specific target for his wit; without a name or a face to dissect, he kept his gaze on his plate.

Further up the table, Daphne spoke easily with two girls from their dorm, the easy poise of her ice queen persona restored from the strain Sophie had glimpsed in the library. Mid-sentence, Daphne’s eyes found Sophie. The glance was brief, unreadable, but it landed with weight. If Daphne connected the right dots… Risk and reward, side by side. Sophie told herself she’d been careful, but care was only as strong as the other person’s inattention.

A movement in the aisle drew her attention. A Hufflepuff boy passed on his way to his table, offering a warm “Good morning” in passing. It took her a moment to place him—Wayne Hopkins. He had been one of the first to speak to her at Hogwarts, offering a seat in the carriage and a shy word of luck. She realised, with faint surprise, that she had barely thought of him since. The Sophie who had stepped off the train would have repaid his kindness with conversation. The Sophie at this table measured people by what they could offer her, and Wayne had offered nothing she needed.

She reached for toast, Edmund shifting to watch her hand move, the last trace of grasshopper still clinging to his jaw. It wasn’t bitterness she felt—just a cool acknowledgment. Friendliness without leverage was worth little here.

⸻

The evening found Sophie at her partitioned desk in the Slytherin common room, the glow of a single lamp pooling over her open notebook. Edmund lay draped along the edge, his head resting near her quill hand, following each movement with slow, unblinking interest. She wrote in her coded script—half a page on the Vera Mutatio notes from Tracey, half on her ongoing theories about healing magic. The codes were becoming second nature, each symbol a private lock against unwanted eyes.

A fresh sheet waited beside her for a different kind of planning. She sketched a small diagram of the library’s layout from memory, marking routes that passed closest to the Restricted Section without attracting attention. The gate would need the right pretext—or the right distraction. She tapped the quill against her lip, already thinking of plausible reasons to be seen nearby, of which professors might be least likely to question her presence.

Edmund stirred, flicking his tongue once toward the great lake windows, then turning toward the dark passages that led deeper into the castle. Sophie watched the small, deliberate motion and smiled faintly. “We’ll get there,” she murmured, unsure whether she meant the Restricted Section, her research goals, or something larger.

She added another line of code to her notes, the ink sinking dark into the parchment, then closed the book with a careful snap. Around her, the low hum of the common room went on—conversations pitched low, the faint scrape of quills, the occasional burst of laughter.

In this castle, she thought, power isn’t given—it’s taken. Her fingers brushed Edmund’s scales, cool and sure under her touch. She intended to keep taking.

Chapter Text

The Slytherin common room held its breath. Evening pressed against the black windows, the lake’s shifting currents throwing green shadows across the ceiling like smoke. The usual chatter had gone thin, voices low and uneven, carrying more unease than gossip.

Sophie sat near the hearth, Edmund looped across her forearm. He was a fixture here now—most of the House had grown used to the little snake slipping in and out of her sleeve or lying in lazy coils on the table while she read. Tonight, though, his body was taut, tongue flicking steadily as if tasting the air for things no one else could sense.

On the settee nearby, Tracey clutched her robes tight and leaned toward Daphne. “Professors were rushing past the library,” she whispered, words stumbling out too fast. “Three of them at least—faces white as parchment.”

Daphne’s reply was calm, but her hand lingered on Tracey’s shoulder longer than usual.

Millicent hunched with a book on her knees, eyes darting over the same page again and again. She turned it too quickly, nearly tearing the corner, then peered over the top at the others. Pretending to be absorbed in reading, though her lips pressed tight.

“No one has seen Professor Quirrell,” Tracey added, almost to herself. The words seemed to darken the firelight.

From the far table, Blaise tipped back in his chair, arms folded. His poise looked effortless, but Sophie caught the tension in his jaw. “The Headmaster hasn’t said a word,” he muttered. He stumbled slightly over the title before pressing on. “And he won’t. They never tell us the truth.”

His heel tapped once against the flagstone, a small, sharp sound.

Sophie’s gaze lingered on him. For months, she’d wondered if his composure was genuine, if he truly didn’t care who won the Cup or which student caught a professor’s eye. Tonight she saw the slip—his voice catching, the restless foot, the spark of anger he tried to drown under irony. He cared. Very much. His cynicism wasn’t apathy but armour.

Edmund slid higher on her arm, scales rasping against her sleeve. Sophie stroked him with her thumb, the cool weight steadying her. She bent her head, voice low enough that only he might hear.

“What d’you reckon, then? Truth’ll out?”

His tongue flicked across her skin. She let herself imagine an answer: Truth favours the hand that takes it, not the one that waits for crumbs.

The thought settled into her chest like a stone.

Tracey whispered again, Blaise gave a laugh that sounded nothing like amusement, and Sophie leaned back against the wall. She didn’t shiver at the draft through the chamber. What stirred her was the realisation that the words she imagined in Edmund’s silence were her own.

Teachers spun stories to keep order, but power was what decided outcomes. Sophie let her hand rest on Edmund’s smooth coils and fixed the truth in her mind: when the two came apart, it was power that lasted.

–––––

The next evening, the Great Hall was awash in green. Slytherin banners unfurled proudly from the rafters, their silver serpents gleaming in the candlelight. Emerald ribbons wove around the golden plates, and the enchanted ceiling shimmered with the bright, late-spring twilight outside. The Slytherin table pulsed with triumph. Goblets clinked together; laughter rose sharp and bright; the air itself seemed charged.

Sophie sat midway down the table between Tracey and Daphne, and Edmund looped around her arm like a bracelet wrought of living silver. He was calm for once, tongue flicking only occasionally, as though even he approved of the revelry. Sophie pressed her free hand lightly to his coils, feeling the steady weight of him against her skin. For the first time since she’d stepped into the castle, she felt completely, unreservedly at home.

Professor Dumbledore’s voice rolled over them, solemn but faintly amused, announcing the tallies. When the final numbers were spoken and Slytherin House declared the winner, the hall shook with the roar of their approval. Green banners rippled like living flame as the table erupted into cheers. Tracey gave a little cry of relief and squeezed Daphne’s hand so tightly their knuckles whitened. Millicent banged her goblet against the table, grinning as widely as Sophie had ever seen her.

Blaise, for once, didn’t bother with studied coolness. He leaned forward, eyes gleaming, and raised his goblet high. “To Slytherin,” he declared, voice rich with something dangerously close to joy. Others echoed him, cups clattering together, silver flashing.

Sophie felt her throat close, not with fear but with something fierce and bright. She blinked rapidly, and still her eyes stung with tears. Around her, the table surged with pride, and she belonged to it—not as a guest or an onlooker but as one of them. Tracey’s hand brushed hers in shared delight, Daphne offered her a rare, genuine smile, and Blaise gave a little nod across the table, as though acknowledging her in a way he never had before.

She lifted her goblet too, arm steady despite the tremor in her chest. “Proper, this is,” she whispered under her breath. The words came out in the round Somerset vowels she usually tucked away, softened to sound more like the others. She caught herself, flushed—and let it stand. Tonight, she didn’t care. Tonight, she could be both: the country girl and the Slytherin student, and no one could take it from her.

Edmund shifted higher up her forearm, resting his head just below her elbow like a coronet. His scales caught the light, glinting silver-green in rhythm with the banners overhead. Sophie imagined him approving, imagined his voice brushing through her thoughts: See, girl. Your nest. Yours at last.

Food appeared on the tables, mountains of roast beef, puddings heavy with cream, baskets of steaming rolls. Conversation surged around her—Malfoy boasting at the upper end of the table, Pansy laughing too loudly, second-years leaning across to toast with third-years they barely knew. The whole House, for a moment, moved as one body.

Sophie let herself sink into it. The warmth of the food, the sound of laughter, the press of Edmund against her sleeve—it was a belonging she hadn’t thought possible. In Somerset, she’d always been a little apart: the clever girl, the odd one with her nose in books, sailing her leaf boats alone while other children played their games. Here, in this dark, ambitious House, she wasn’t odd. She was unique, yet belonged.

She glanced up toward the staff table. Snape sat in his place at the far end, black robes stark against the glitter of the hall. He did not smile, but there was a weight in his posture, a satisfaction she recognised. He looked, she thought, like a man who could permit himself pride but never display it. His face gave nothing away. Sophie felt a faint tug in her chest, a reminder that she was too quick to show her feelings, too quick to let them blaze out across her features. She wanted to learn that control—to carry triumph without spilling it.

Tracey leaned into her shoulder, whispering in awe, “We’ve really done it. We’ve won.”

Sophie smiled faintly, tears still catching at the corners of her eyes. “Aye,” she said softly, voice thick with the old cadence she had stopped fighting. “We have.”

For a few minutes longer, she allowed herself to bask, to believe that triumph could last.

Dumbledore rose again with his goblet and that mild glint in his eyes, and the Great Hall ebbed toward quiet, triumph thinning to a ripple. “Yes,” he said, voice warm as a hearth, “yes, it is true that Slytherin House has won the House Cup…” A second wave of cheers, bright but cautious, rolled along the green‑draped table.

“…however,” he added, and the word dropped like iron.

Points, one after another, tipped the balance: to Weasley for chess, to Granger for logic, to Potter for nerve, to Longbottom for a quieter kind of courage. Numbers spun in gilt above their heads; green narrowed; and then, with a clean, cruel snap of magic, scarlet drowned the rafters. Lions burst forth where serpents had coiled. Gryffindor’s roar crashed over them—exultant, unembarrassed, a victory shout that landed like a taunt.

Faces around Sophie became small studies in hurt. Tracey’s mouth trembled before she could stop it, chin quivering as she stared up at the red flood. Millicent slammed her fist into the table—one heavy, helpless thud—then gripped the rim so hard her knuckles blanched. Pansy leaned in with a hissed verdict that might as well have been a curse: “Cheating dressed as chivalry.”

Sophie forced herself to look to the dais. Snape sat there like a blade in a sheath. His jaw was hardly tightened, eyes steady, hands folded with unnatural stillness upon the linen. Fury was there—she could feel it from across the hall—but it lived under glass. Nothing spilt. No twitch, no sneer, no thrown goblet. A lesson made flesh: wear the mask, choose the moment. She felt heat crawling into her face, the old tell‑tale flush she couldn’t quite govern, and she marked the failure with shame. She showed too much. She always had. Here—tonight—she filed away a discipline to practise.

Blaise’s composure snapped like a reed. “The anointed few,” he muttered, too loud for safety, too jagged for pretence. “The theatre of fairness.” His goblet scraped across the plate with a shriek. The mask he loved had slipped; beneath it he looked—just for a blink—nearly stricken, like a boy who had believed and wished he hadn’t.

Sophie turned towards him and found her breath, smoothing it until it moved quietly and level in her chest. She let her face settle the way Snape’s had: no flinch, no fire shown. When she spoke, her voice was lean, low, and calm. “No one gives you power, Blaise. If’n we can’t take what’s ours— we plan better.”

She heard the Somerset in it, round as a stone in the mouth, and did not correct herself. She was done with shaving off edges to pass for the room. Anonymity had been safe, but it had made her no one; she would not pay that price again.

Blaise blinked. The wildness in his gaze narrowed to a point; the bitterness arranged itself into purpose. He leaned back, drew a slow breath, and set the goblet down without screech or flourish. “Right,” he said, voice returning to silk, the cynicism back on rails. “Then we plan.”

Across the table, Daphne’s head tipped a fraction, eyes bright with something like amusement. “I wondered if the country girl was in there somewhere,” she said, dry and fond at once. The ghost of a smile touched her mouth and vanished, the cool returning as neatly as a glove.

Around them, the hall still seethed red, Gryffindors stamping and shouting Potter’s name, feet drumming triumph into oak. Tracey swiped at her eyes in quick, angry motions and edged closer to Sophie as though steadiness might be borrowed by contact. Millicent’s fist loosened; Pansy’s hiss dwindled into a hard little smile that promised new calculations. Edmund shifted against Sophie’s wrist, cool weight anchoring her to the chair, tongue tasting the charged air. She did not look at him; she kept her gaze forward and her features quiet, feeling the effort like a muscle pressed to hold.

Something in her stance clicked into place. The old ambivalence—part wonder, part doubt—tipped and settled. She had wanted fairness to be enough, wanting merit and effort, and clean rules to carry them through. But the hall dripping scarlet said otherwise. Slytherin’s disgust—raw, unpretty—sharpened her as surely as a whetstone. If fairness would not stand, then she would not stand on it alone. She would learn the mask and the moment. She would learn the plan that wins when the rules slide. She would keep her voice, old vowels and all, and use it not to plead but to set terms.

The cheering swelled again; the lions glowed brighter. Sophie sat very still and practised not giving anything away. Inside, she made a quiet, private note in the ledger she now recognised as her own: Next time is not won by being right. Next time is won by being ready.

–––––

The girls’ dormitory lay in dim hush, the only light the faint green glow of enchanted lamps and the liquid shimmer of the lake beyond the windows. The air smelled faintly of damp stone and cooling fires. Somewhere across the room, a muffled sob rose, caught, and died into the pillow—Tracey, Sophie guessed. The deep groan of water pressed against the castle walls, steady as a heartbeat.

Sophie lay on her side, blankets pulled to her chin, Edmund stretched out along the pillow beside her. His body was a cool line against her cheek, his head lifted just enough that their noses nearly touched. Each flick of his tongue cut the darkness like punctuation, as if marking her thoughts one by one. She stared at him, eyes wide in the low light, until the words spilled out in a whisper.

“Next time… we won’t let ’em take it.”

The sound trembled in her throat, but the certainty beneath it steadied her. Edmund’s tongue brushed the air between them again, and she let herself imagine agreement. She knew, deep down, that it was only her own voice reflected through his silence. But the illusion had its weight, and tonight she was content to lean against it—better a vow spoken to her snake than none at all.

Her chest ached with the unfairness of it—the banners gone scarlet, the roar of Gryffindors drowning their pride. Anger wanted to burn out of her, to etch itself on her face where anyone could read it. But she closed her eyes and drew a long breath through her nose, lowering it until her chest hardly moved. She pictured Snape at the feast, how not a line of him betrayed what he felt. His mask was discipline, and she wanted it for herself.

Again, she inhaled, held it, and released it slowly. She set her features blank in the dark, smoothing out the twitch of her mouth, the heat at her eyes. Lower the breath. Set the mouth, the eyes. Speak only when it serves.

Edmund’s scales shifted faintly under her fingertips, a reminder of what was hers to keep. She clung to the silence, rehearsing it like a lesson. Power was patience as much as it was strike, and tonight, patience was all she had.

–––––

The morning after the feast dawned grey and sodden, a thin rain streaking the castle windows. The Great Hall was subdued, trunks lined up in ragged queues and owl cages clattering against one another as students jostled through their last hurried breakfasts. No green banners, no victory—just the dull scrape of benches and the echo of laughter from the Gryffindor table, still buoyed on triumph.

Sophie kept her head down as she followed the tide of Slytherins out to the carriages. Edmund shifted under her sleeve, restless with the noise, his cool weight coiling higher as though he, too, disliked the crush. Tracey clutched her trunk with both hands, Daphne walked with impeccable poise despite the drizzle soaking her hair, and Blaise was already affecting a languid disinterest, hands in his pockets, gaze cast somewhere distant.

The train hissed on the tracks when they reached Hogsmeade Station, steam billowing in white clouds that blurred the students into faceless shapes. Prefects barked orders, owls hooted complaints, trunks banged against doorframes. Somehow, the four of them found themselves tumbling into the same compartment. Millicent and Pansy had peeled off in search of older years; Crabbe and Goyle had lumbered after Draco. For now, it was just Sophie, Daphne, Tracey, and Blaise.

Tracey shoved her trunk beneath the seat and collapsed across from Sophie, shoulders sagging as though she’d carried more than luggage. “Summer’ll be dull after all this,” she muttered, pressing her forehead against the window. “No spells, no sneaking, no… anything.” Her breath clouded the glass.

Daphne smoothed her skirts with meticulous care, eyes angled toward the corridor where students hurried past. “Dull might be a mercy,” she said lightly, though Sophie heard the weariness beneath it.

Blaise dropped into the seat opposite Daphne, tipping his head back against the cushion. His voice was smooth again, almost bored. “We’ll come back sharper. They’ve had their laugh. Next year’s ours.”

Sophie watched him carefully. She caught the too-fast blink, the tightening at the corner of his mouth. He was still stung—still raw under the silk. She remembered the scrape of his goblet against the plate, the way his mask had slipped. And she remembered the words she’d given him, steady as Snape’s stillness: If’n we can’t take what’s ours—we plan better.

She shifted Edmund onto her lap, stroking his coils as if she could draw patience from the rhythm. “Aye,” she said evenly, letting the dialect sit thick and uncorrected. “Next year.”

Daphne’s gaze flicked to her. A small smile ghosted across her lips. “Send Astoria an owl once you’re settled back home. She still talks about your visit.”

Sophie’s chest tightened at the reminder. She hadn’t forgotten those days at the Greengrass estate—the luxury and the quiet chill of it, the way Lord and Lady Greengrass drifted through their own halls with glacial courtesy, speaking in tones that made Sophie feel more guest than child. The house-elves had been kinder, soft-footed and quick, slipping her sweets or arranging cushions without a word.

And Astoria—sharp-eyed Astoria—had ruled the afternoons from her chessboard like a general. She played with ruthless delight, dismantling Sophie again and again with cold precision. Only once, on the final evening, had Sophie beaten her: an elaborate trap sprung just as Astoria’s confidence peaked, a victory that came more from calculation than from any real strength of play. The girl’s shock had been unmistakable—eyes wide, mouth tight—and instead of her usual crisp congratulations, she had pushed back her chair and stomped off, leaving the board in disarray.

That memory lingered longer than all the silver polish and fine halls. The Greengrass estate had been cold where Godric’s Hollow was warm—its marbled chambers and long dining tables a world apart from Agnes’s cottage with its woodsmoke and cheese rinds—but it was Astoria’s sharpness, and Sophie’s one cunning win, that stayed with her most of all.

“I will,” Sophie said softly.

Tracey turned from the window, eyes red-rimmed but hopeful. “We’ll all write, won’t we? Keep in touch. It’ll make the summer shorter.”

Blaise gave a low hum that might have been assent. He cracked one eye open, glancing at Sophie. “No more surprises next year. We plan better. Together.”

The words landed heavier than he meant them to, an echo of her own thrown back at her. For the first time, his cynicism seemed less like armour and more like recognition. He was acknowledging her—not as the country outsider who slipped into their games late, but as part of the House.

Sophie let her face remain calm, as Snape had taught her. Inside, though, something tightened and steadied at once. She had always wanted belonging. Now she wanted more.

The train lurched forward, pulling free of the station. Steam blurred the fields, then the countryside opened wide, green rolling into gold as they cut south. The compartment fell into a softer quiet, the thrum of wheels beneath their feet.

Sophie leaned back and let her eyes half-close as well. Edmund nosed along her wrist, head resting on her palm. She felt the pulse of his tongue flick like punctuation, as if urging her to finish the thought she hadn’t dared put into words.

At first—months ago—the dream had been simple. She had imagined using magic to cure Agnes’s father, to chase the illness out of his body the way a charm chased smoke from a chimney. That had been her secret vow: she would find a way to make the world Agnes lived in less cruel. But he had died before Sophie could learn even the simplest healing charm. And after the funeral, she had carried on with a thinner, vaguer oath—that Muggles like Agnes, like her whole family, should not have to suffer what wizards could prevent.

But where had that idealism gone? Over the year, it had frayed, thinned, perhaps soured. Flamel’s Stone, Snape’s riddles, Slytherin’s constant grind of favours—everything had taught her that magic was never simply mercy. Magic was leverage. It was transaction. Was she still chasing Agnes’s dream, or only her own? Was it compassion that drove her, or pride, or ambition to prove she could?

Her hand tightened on Edmund’s cool body. What will I tell her?

Agnes would ask, she knew, waiting in Somerset with questions about castles and books and what she was learning. She believed Sophie had been off at a posh boarding school, hidden away behind old gates and Latin mottos. The Statute of Secrecy kept it so; Sophie would never risk betraying that. But what truth could she give? That she was learning French verbs, perhaps, or playing at prefects and chapel hymns. Nothing that mattered.

And yet Agnes would look at her with those open, earnest eyes, wanting wonder. Could Sophie tell her instead that the world was larger and darker than either of them had guessed? That she no longer knew whether her vow had ever been more than a story she told herself?

The countryside blurred past, rain streaking the glass. Sophie smoothed her expression, practising Snape’s discipline, but the question lingered beneath: had she lost something essential in the pursuit of power, or had her idealism only ever been a mask she wore?

Edmund stirred, tongue flicking once, quick and sure. Sophie exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing on the horizon.

Tracey reached across, her hand brushing Sophie’s for a moment before retreating. “We’ll be all right,” she said, not very convincingly. “Next year’ll be better.”

Sophie let her face remain unreadable. Power was as much patience as it was a strike. She was learning both.

Outside, the fields blurred past. Somerset was waiting: the common where she’d walked barefoot in the grass, the churchyard where old stones leaned, the Hangman’s House looming on the hill, the narrow pass called the Neck where legends lingered. They would all be the same. Yet she felt sure they would look different now. Smaller, perhaps, or sharper. Shadows might seem honest there, after castle shadows that concealed more than they revealed.

She turned back to the window, Edmund’s head nestled in her palm, and whispered so quietly that even Tracey beside her could not hear. “We’ll not let ’em take it, next time.”

The train thundered on toward London, steam trailing behind like a veil. Sophie sat still, features smooth, and watched the world unspool—fields, hedgerows, towns—wondering not only what she would tell Agnes, but who she was becoming as she learned what stories power chose to tell, and which ones she would write for herself.