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"Oi Potter!" I yelled. The great hall full to the brim with students, house elves, and the full contents of the greenhouses. Even Professor Hagrid's hut had been magicked inside. The ceiling was as ordinary as any other ornate ceiling, as the connection with the outdoors had been severed. All week we'd been confined to the insides of the Castle as the predicted magical storm could drop down with very, very little warning. We needed to all relocate to within the extra fortified walls of the great hall within minutes or risk mass casualties and death.
There were a few competing theories on what exactly the nature of said storm was. A popular one was that it was a loose Thunderbird smuggled from the Americas. The grimmer students expected it to be an obscurial, and a few other nonsense creatures which would not hope to do the kind of damage the faculty had warned us of.
For my own heritage and pride I posited it might be the dying curse of an elderly aggrieved Hag. I say elderly mostly because I think that a curse so general and directionless would have to have been dreamt up by a Hag with dementia--god bless her soul. Whoever did this would have to be powerful, and I can respect that, but there's something to be said for precision.
Precision is a bit harder when it comes to Hag magic though.
But that's pretty fair when you're comparing yourself to corporate shell out dime a dozen "witches" and "wizards" whose understanding of the arcane boils down to follow a recipe in every area of magical enquiry that they encounter, whose wands are practically programmed to spit out their zippy little spells.
It's magic in mass production and it's disgusting.
Unfortunately, I have to be here. The hag magic runs too thin in me, and I've got too much of this mass market shit. It'd almost be better to be a mundane. Having this pathetic excuse for magic is almost embarrassing around the Hag women I've been raised with.
Oh cute. You can fly when you use a special broom infused with so much flight magic it practically makes our eyes burn, Baba so and so can fly with literally any stick she puts her hands on.
Well Baba so and so probably had to do unspeakable things for her magic anyway.
Not that the "wizards" and "witches" around here don't do the same. The children are not paying the price upfront but I can read between the lines of "Unspeakable" as a job title thank you very much.
All magic has a price, and someone is paying. Someone is paying so much that they're giving it to kids who did not even kill and pray for it. Probably on purpose. Probably it's a cabal composed of the fucking PTA. Mommy can't stand the idea of her kids not being as magic as she is.
My thoughts are interrupted by Potter's angry glower.
The kid might be a dumbass but I can respect his vibe. And by vibe, I mean his aura because I can practically taste the way he's suffered. But we--and by we I mean I--don't--and by don't I mean should not--talk about how people's magic tastes in Hogwarts. I'm not here to get hate-crimed RIP to the outspoken children of the mundane who got petrified during that whole Chamber of Secrets Fiasco.
But as lovely as I find the flavor of his magic--real fairy tale shit building up in his mojo--he's distracting me from my customers and there's a reason I asked for his attention.
"I'm selling Slytherin Advice on Getting What You want. You need it so bad you're stinking up my readings on everybody in a 30 foot radius. Kindly shove off or sit down."
"I don't need advice from any slimy slytherin-!!" he exclaimed.
I interrupted him. "Listen up you little trust fund baby shit," I smacked my lips together, "You think you're different from me, better than me, because of the color of robes that I wear, but meanwhile we're all getting buggered by the system. You think we're split up by accident? You segregate kids by their strengths? It's not to protect you, I'll tell you that. It's to undermine threats to the status quo. Diversity in thoughts and experiences makes coalitions stronger as we bring our respective strengths to the table. Now take your abused orphan dime a dozen ass and shove off or sit down."
The boy paled. "Who told you that!" he whisper yelled.
'Extremely subtle' I thought whilst rolling my eyes.
"Sit down Potter," I commanded, beginning to deal out my Tarot deck and my irises and pupils bleeding color to whiteness. Trelawney eat your own heart out bitch.
Beneath my elbow length black satin gloves my fingernails extended further into claws, and I knew if they were not covered methodically by my neck to toe garb my warts would be visibly growing larger and more pronounced.
My face is blessedly clear of any such Hag-ish tells. It's not like my classmates don't know what I am. But with a "normal" face, they sometimes forget.
I smile viciously as the magic swirls more violently about me. Beauty is the easiest price to pay for magic.
My vision blurs between what is physical and what is metaphysical, what is real. I can't see the cards before me, but I can see what they mean. What they say.
I smile at Potter and I know it is predatory, the way Mother and Auntie look peddling in the gutters of wizarding alleys swirling with arcane magic. It produces a chill. Hags--we are not a species no matter how "witches" and "wizards" want to define us, are dangerous and the instinct to flee is strong, but what Mother and Auntie can provide for the mark is stronger. They know it. And I know it.
I point to the first card. "Your freedom is an illusion. Your cage moves with the seasons but you never could have escaped it. The ones who control you do not love you, and the ones who love you will never get control of you."
I flip the next card. "He will sacrifice you. He sacrifices you annually. You are an exercise in guilt. He will never do more than the bare minimum for you."
I flip the last card. "A harbinger of death. He will bring it like locusts upon the land. He will kill who he needs to to survive. He searches even now for a great darkness that will protect him."
I let the Hag magic bleed out from my eyes.
The cards in front of me are an advert for a Firebolt, the chocolate frog trading card for Albus Percival Wulfiric Brian Dumbledore, and a stylized rat drawing from the unit on the Black Death in muggle studies.
I know better than to doubt the magic.
I pick up the chocolate frog trading card. What absolute mass market shit. I'm frankly surprised it was anywhere near my stuff for the magic to pull on.
I level my gaze on Potter. "Ask me to help you," I say smoothly. "Tell me what you need," I say, my smile too wide. I could feel my gaze turning white and magical again, "I can work miracles."