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Hogwarts, November 1975
“Miss Blackridge!” Jenni called again. The younger girl had missed her Charms class, and Professor Flitwick had asked Jenni to look for her. She wasn’t in the common room or her dorm. If she wasn’t in the bathroom, either, Jenni didn’t know what she would do. “Miss Blackridge! Sylvia!”
“Go away.” The voice was very small, coming from the farthest toilet stall in the room.
Jenni sagged in relief. “There you are!” The main door swung heavily shut behind her as she went in.
“I said go away!”
“What’s the matter?” Jenni stopped by the next-to-last stall. “Do you need to go to the Hospital Wing?”
“No!” Sylvia’s voice shrilled. “I can’t. I—oh, please just go away!” She sounded as though she were in pain.
“I won’t,” said Jenni, heart in her throat. “I’m here to help. Whatever’s wrong, you can tell me.”
“No, I can’t,” Sylvia whimpered. “It’s private.”
Various horrible thoughts went through Jenni’s mind. She shook her head to get rid of them. “Sylvia... whatever it is, if it’s hurting you, then you need to tell me. I’m a prefect. It’s all right.” She was very careful to make the last two statements separately. The first was true on its own. She wasn’t so sure about the second.
For a few moments, there was no sound except Sylvia sniffing back tears. Jenni waited. If there was one good thing she’d learned from Customs and Etiquette’s unit on conversation, it was that silence was a honey that attracted knowledge.
Finally, in the same tiny voice she’d used before, Sylvia spoke. “I think I’m dying. It hurts. Is it supposed to hurt?”
“Oh, sweetie. What hurts? Can’t you tell—” Suddenly, the pieces lined up. “Sylvia? Is it your monthlies?”
“My what?”
Jenni’s mouth hung open for a moment. “You know... your menses? Period?” No response. In desperation, Jenni tried, “Moon blood?”
“That!” Sylvia’s momentary triumph of understanding slipped right back into despair. “Or... I don’t know. It’s supposed to be a special time, not horrible and—” Her voice hitched in a sob. “Disgusting.”
“Who told you that? Your mum?” Jenni had seen a woman she’d assumed was Sylvia’s mother on Platform 9¾ at the start of term. Missus Blackridge had looked like a severe sort, not someone Jenni would have expected to speak of a menstrual period in fanciful terms, if at all.
Again, Sylvia didn’t answer. Silence, Jenni was starting to realise, was likely the problem.
Respectable witches did not speak of these things, as she’d been told harshly when she’d made the mistake of mentioning it to her dorm mates when she’d gotten her first monthly near the end of second year. What with all the fuss the Pureblood girls made about eventually coming of age, getting Bonded, and having families, Jenni had naïvely assumed that menarche, as a crucial step on the path to reproductive maturity, would be a subject of interest to them. Well, first of all, they didn’t even know that word, and once Jenni had explained it, they were appalled that she would be so shameless, so indecent, as to discuss the subject. So she’d shut up, and she’d felt quite miserable and alone.
But at least her mum had prepared her so she’d understood what was happening. And she didn’t get bad cramps like she guessed Sylvia was having, and she’d been older, too—thirteen, whereas Sylvia was a young twelve.
Jenni silently wrote off the rest of her Charms lesson today.
“Sylvia?” She spoke gently, despite feeling angry enough to spit nails. “You’re not disgusting. This happens to all of us, and it’s not pretty, but it’s perfectly natural, and it doesn’t have to hurt. Madam Pomfrey has potions that can help.”
Some of the girls got “headaches” or “stomachaches” or “a touch of flu” and went to see her for them on the regular—or the irregular, as the case might be. Some even took days off class, their magic too erratic to be safely used until their hormones settled out. Jenni kept dutifully quiet about her observations, but she knew when to slip a bar of Honeydukes’ best through certain people’s bed curtains.
“Will you let me take you to the Hospital Wing, sweetie?”
“No! I can’t come out,” Sylvia said. “My nightgown... my... it’s such an awful mess.”
Jenni smiled in spite of everything. “Well, that’s easily remedied. I’ll just get you some nice, hot water with a towel and a change, all right?”
She got Sylvia to tell her which bed was hers. While she was putting together a set of fresh clothes from Sylvia’s trunk, a helpful house-elf popped in to ask if she needed anything, and brought up the nicest little porcelain basin one could want for an emergency sponge bath. The elf didn’t even bat an ear when Jenni asked her for a handful of clean rags, too.
“And some extra laundry to be done for the young Miss?” When Jenni blinked, the elf added sagely, “We is seeing everything before, Lady. If Nilly may say so, it is very good of the Lady to be helping poor young Miss. Not many does.”
“Thank you, Nilly.” Jenni’s heart felt warm and tight at such praise, both unexpected and, in a better world, unnecessary. “May I leave a cup of honey-milk for you later?” It was what her father did for their house-elf Caper at holidays, or just to show appreciation for a job well done. He made a point of finding an excuse at least once a month.
Nilly did bat an ear at that—both of them, in fact—and wrung her hands and beamed. “The Lady is too kind, and so mannerly to remember the old customs, too, if Nilly may be saying so—but Nilly would not wish to insult Headmaster Dumbledore by implying that she is not well cared-for by her master! No, no. The other elves would talk. No, no, no.”
Jenni sighed. “I suppose every species has its gossips.” They left it at that.
Getting Sylvia and her things cleaned up was a breeze with Nilly helping. Sylvia’s hair proved more of a challenge. Jenni was neither a family member nor a Pureblood, so strictly speaking she was not allowed to help the girl brush and pin her long and wavy black tresses, but Sylvia was in no condition to do it herself, so she gave Jenni permission anyway. Jenni had never worked with anyone’s hair besides her own—well, apart from putting Jacques’ shaggy mop into little braidlets to amuse herself on lazy summer days, and that was hardly comparable. Sylvia had a lot of hair. Jenni’s fingers were aching by the time she got it all braided and wrapped into a coil at the back of the girl’s head. Anyone looking closely would see it was a hack job, but at least Sylvia could go out of the dorm without instantly being pegged as a disgrace.
“I hope it doesn’t pull too much,” Jenni fretted. The girl was in enough pain already, though as she’d calmed down her occasional moans had subsided into near inaudibility.
Sylvia shook her head, slowly and deliberately. Then, to Jenni’s surprise, she caught her in a fierce hug. “You’re my sister,” she professed. “I don’t have one, but you’re doing what I think a sister should do, so you can be mine. Do you want to?”
Jenni hugged her back. “Yeah. I don’t have one, either. All right, I’d like that.”
They stopped and grinned at each other, until Sylvia grimaced at another cramp. Jenni kept an arm around her as they walked to the Hospital Wing.
Madam Pomfrey fixed her right up and gave her enough cramp-ease potion to last a week. She also gave firm instructions that Sylvia was to come see her right away when her next monthly came, even if it was in less or more than a month.
“That can happen?” Sylvia was aghast. “So I won’t know when they’re coming?”
“It’s possible,” Madam Pomfrey emphasised. “Especially since you’re just starting; it can take some time for your body to settle into a rhythm. Some girls never do, and when the pains are as bad as yours, that’s something we watch out for. Try not to be anxious,” she added kindly. “There’s every chance next time will be better. And I suspect Prefect Robinson will be on hand to help again.” She gave Jenni a strange, considering look, like one would give a creature that might bite if you touched it.
“I will,” Jenni said. “Is there a book or something you can give her to read, too?”
Madam Pomfrey kept giving Jenni that look. “Such materials are considered inappropriate. The Board of Governors feels that education in these matters is best left to a child’s family.”
“But her mum didn’t tell her anything.” They had talked while Jenni had worked on Sylvia’s hair. Missus Blackridge simply shut herself away in her private rooms for a few days every month, and all she would say about it was that it was a woman’s special time and Sylvia would understand when she was older.
The healer shook her head, and there was calcified regret in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I am not permitted to meddle in matters beyond the scope of my duties.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Jenni turned away in a huff. To Sylvia, she said, “I can get my mum to send a pamphlet for you. They hand them out at the women’s health clinic in my village every Tuesday; I used to go help Mum serve tea and biscuits to the ladies while they waited.”
Not that all the ladies had been happy to accept the pamphlets. Jenni remembered one time a woman had made a big scene about the “filth” and how it would corrupt innocent young girls and make them wanton.
Jenni knew most of her peers considered her quite wanton, and maybe she was. So it didn’t surprise her when Madam Pomfrey spoke again, sternly: “Prefect Robinson. I trust you will be... discreet?”
Jenni blinked up at her. “Of course.”
The healer smiled. “Then, just between us—and of course anything said in this room is completely confidential—may I suggest you send for extras?”
And that was just what Jenni did.