Chapter Text
The train whistle cut a sharp note through the soft, distant warble of Celestina Warbeck’s “only you,” and a pair of slate gray eyes opened on the Hogwarts Express. All in all, the young lady pulled from her nap didn’t fit the regular look of a Hogwarts student; the right age to be certain, but she was covered in muggle artifacts. The headphones and attached CD player looked decidedly out of place, although there was no disk and no batteries and the music was enchanted into the device. The backpack, designed in a style favored by American no-maj teenagers, was festooned with haphazardly stitched on patches that mixed muggle bands with quidditch iconography.
The girl herself didn’t seem terribly out of place, if nothing else the silvery white of her hair wasn’t seen often outside of the wizarding world, at least on teenagers. She hastily fixed her ponytail as she sat up and pulled the headphones down, and gathered her few belongings before exiting the train alongside what felt like an endless stream of unusually tall adults. The platform was nice and open, and Kyriel Kestrele took her first deep breath of Scotland’s air. It tasted like distant snow, a whiff of butterbeer, and old moss. She liked it.
An absurdly large gentleman with an expression reminiscent of a child’s innocence nested in the most impressive of beards suddenly waved at her, and Kyrr felt her lips tugged into a smile despite herself. That had to be Hagrid.
+++
Hagrid’s first impression of the girl was surprise. Dumbledore had been ever so specific about what to expect, and he’d been braced for sharp edges and defiance. Instead, the girl that exited the train had a dreamy quality about her, like the essence of her hadn’t yet been realized. Her smile was charming, and invited him to smile as well. She walked towards him without hesitation; as she did she pulled a small device from her pocket and fitted it into her left ear. Silvery and sharp, it had the shape of a dragon peering over the cuff of her ear, a dull ruby eye staring forward. She made a quick flicking gesture with her fingers and the dragon’s wing extended upward, its tiny eye turning emerald. Hagrid couldn’t keep himself from being impressed.
“Neat bit of kit, that. You must be Kyriel. Er, doesn’t that affect your hearing?”
“Call me Kyrr.” She grinned and offered a trusting hand to shake. “And yes, that’s kind of the point.” Her American accent had a lilt, but her voice was unusually low for a sixteen year old girl, something odd and compelling in it. Confident, Dumbledore had mentioned. Hagrid was fairly certain he didn’t know the half of it.
“Hagrid.” He shook her hand, careful not to squeeze too hard. “Well then. Wait-“ He paused and looked at the dragon again, and her expression that seemed to invite him into a private joke. The pieces of the puzzle, simple as it might be, fell into place and he felt pleased with himself. “You’re deaf, arent’cha?”
She laughed and nodded, enjoying the way he preened at figuring it out on his own. “Mostly. This evens things up a bit. So.” She rubbed her hands together. “Where to?”
“Oh! Right, to the castle. Shame you came in October, you missed the ride in with your year, sixth, right? Anyway, it’s a short walk. And at least you get to be sorted in private.” Hagrid looked around, and frowned. “No luggage?”
“Backpack. It’s like a TARDIS. Bigger on the inside.” Kyrr laughed at his expression. “Sorry, no-maj thing.”
Hagrid led her up the path towards the school, still intrigued by the mix of maturity and goofy innocence that warred in the American teenager. When they came in view of the castle she stopped and did a full circle in place before dropping her backpack. “I need to take a picture. Can I? For my dad?” She pulled out a camera before he could even respond.
“Err. Sure? Ilvermorny isn’t as impressive, I expect?”
“Ilvermorny is a school.” Kyriel grinned at him, a trace of wicked delight that had nothing to do with cruelty in it. “This is a fuckin castle.”
Hagrid visibly winced at the casual profanity, and cast his eyes about for some topic to move on from it. “Your dad’s a muggle, yeah?”
“Squib actually.” She took a quick picture with an odd camera designed to show immediate results, and tucked it and the picture back into her pack.
“Squib. Really? We’ve got one on staff, you know. He’s not very nice, though.” Hagrid cringed. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay. Dad mostly lives as a no-maj, so he’s happy. I imagine it would be a lot harder if he had to be around magic all the time.” Kyrr set the backpack on her shoulders again, and grinned up at the half giant. “Anyway, take me to your leader?”
“That would be Dumbledore. He’s the first stop.” He didn’t know why she giggled, but there didn’t seem to be any malice in it.
+++
“So that’s why ironwood really is the best choice for that kind of broom handle. The bristles on the other hand,” Rowan was halfway through her thoughts on brooms, based on her family’s farm and extensive research. Several seats down, Murphy shot back an excited reply based on the latest Which Broom Weekly, Orion casually leaning back as he was talked across. The breakfast conversation had been going on for almost fifteen minutes. Ophelia, the school’s resident curse breaker, had more or less started to tune it out.
Skye interjected now and again to argue with whatever McNully said, less out of knowledge on the topic and more to be contrary. Most people would have ignored her, but the teenaged commentator and statistics buff kept refuting her with a seemingly endless series of facts and numbers. Parkin looked as though she might strangle him if no one intervened soon.
“How long have they been at it?” Penny plopped down next to Ophelia with her own breakfast, the usual easygoing smile on her face.
“Long enough that I’m glad my breakfast was cold to start with.” Ophelia smiled back, and brushed her platinum hair back from her face. “Got plans today?”
“Yes!” Penny exploded a bit, delighted to have someone to share her news with. “Dumbledore asked me to give a new transfer student the tour of Hogwarts. I’ll meet her in a little bit.”
“Transfer student?” Rowan perked up. “Where from?”
“It’s a ‘her’? Beauxbaton maybe? Not Durmstrung at least.” Skye dropped her argument with McNully fast enough that the Irish boy had to shake his head to follow the shift.
“French, then?” Murphy grinned, and Orion raised an eyebrow before giving him a sidelong look.
“Into French girls, McNully?”
“The language at least.”
“You speak French?” Ophelia’s brows both lifted.
“Oui, et couramment.” Murphy grinned. “Though I’ve been told my accent spoils the effect a bit.”
“How many languages do you speak?” Rowan, a fellow academic at heart despite them both being sorted into Slytherin, was intrigued.
“Five currently. I’m a polyglot.” He was clearly pleased with the fact. “I’m learning Mandarin next. At its core, being a commentator isn’t just about knowing Quidditch backwards, forwards, and sideways… which I do…. It’s also about communication. Ergo, languages.”
“Why bother? You can just use a translation charm.” Skye made a face. “Honestly, McNully, you should have been a Ravenclaw.”
“I disagree.” Ophelia shook her head. “Ravenclaws learn for the joy of learning. Murphy might love learning-”
“-correct,” he interjected.
“-but mostly he learns as a means to achieve a goal. That ambition is pure Slytherin.”
“Here here! Thanks Coach.” He grinned at her and gave Skye a slightly smug look, which made her roll her eyes.
“As I was saying,” Penny spoke up, too polite to be annoyed by how the conversation had shifted away, “she’s a transfer from the United States. She’s from Ilvermorny.”
“That’s… far.” Rowen blinked in surprise.
“Sure is! But I have family over there, so Dumbledore thought I’d be a good fit to give her the tour.”
“Well, that and you’re the friendliest face in the school.” Ophelia smiled supportively at her friend, who blushed a little.
“Whelp, that’s all the bloody breakfast talk I can stand,” Skye muttered as she stood up. “Come on, McNerdy, Orion. We need to get ready to take the pitch when Hufflepuff finishes their drills.”
“She’s right, Ravenclaw has it booked for the late afternoon. Everyone is getting antsy before the first official games of the year.” McNully pointedly ignored Skye’s jab with the ease of long practice. “Sure you won’t be joining us, Coach?”
Ophelia smiled a little sadly. “Its getting harder and harder to make time for it, especially with the final vault ahead of me. But I’ll be watching from the stands, and I’m always here if you need someone to fill in for a friendly match.”
“Suit yourself.” Skye sighed. “Can we get on with it!”
+++
The walk down to the pitch took the Quidditch trio past the entrance to the school. McNully continued to chatter about their odds for the season without the Curse Breaker’s help, which he classified as dismal, while Orion gently deflected the negativity with his usual Zen calm. As they passed the doors, Hagrid entered the school, at his side an unfamiliar young woman.
There were very, very few things in the world that had the power to pull Murphy McNully’s entire and prodigious attention into one place. As it turned out, she was one of them. His fingers went slack on his wheels as he looked across the short distance, captivated. At first glance she could have been Ophelia’s cousin, but apart from a shared colour palate, the girls didn’t have that much in common. The Ilvermorny transfer was probably one of the tallest girls he’d ever seen, on par with Erica Rath. Her jean jacket and hooded sweatshirt were open in front, and the old tattered Ilvermorny tee shirt under it stopped just above her, apparently pierced, navel. Her loose, flowy skirt hung lower on her hips than was properly appropriate, and the few scandalous inches of bare skin between the garments showed athletic tone and a small silver ring.
The Irish commentator stared despite his best efforts, trying to pull his thoughts back into some semblance of order. He turned his chair to watch as she and Hagrid passed by. They were already fairly distant, but one didn’t become a quidditch commentator without sharp eyes and quick thinking. Several of the patches on her pack were unfamiliar, but a few he recognized, including a vintage patch from the last time Ireland had taken the World Cup. He stared until she vanished into the school.
“-Nully!” Skye’s voice caused him to jump and look over in confusion. “Bloody hell, you were miles away. We looked back and realized you stopped talking.” She glanced at the entrance where the girl had vanished, and shook her black and blue hair. “Don’t even think about it, she’s way out of your league.”
“A boy can dream.” His reply startled both of them. “Hunh. I guess I do like girls.”
“I can’t believe you’re almost seventeen and still hadn’t figured that out yet.” Skye snorted and started walking towards the quidditch stadium again.
“Look, I usually have a lot of other things on my mind!” He followed after, still thinking about the girl. He wondered what her name was.
+++
“Kyriel Kestrele.” She leaned forward across the desk and shook Dumbledore’s hand, a gesture that brought a smile to his lips. She was quintessentially American, right down to the casual disregard for personal space. He nudged aside the folder he had been looking through, clearly whatever had exasperated her professors at Ilvermorny had coloured their descriptions of her in an unflattering way.
“It is very nice to meet you, Miss Kestrele. What do you think of the school so far?” His calm, breathy voice invited honesty in a grandfatherly way.
“Well, it’s huge. I mean Ilvermorny isn’t small or anything but this is like, medieval. I kinda love it.” She laughed and scratched at her neck below the hearing aid.
“Good. Good. Now, let’s get you sorted.”
Unlike the crowded, noisy, and very public sorting that first years underwent, Kyrr had only Dumbledore and his phoenix Fawkes as witnesses. The crusty brown hat slithered into her thoughts as it was set on her head, and she found it’s grumpy old man voice amusing.
Hmmm. Yessss. I do enjoy sorting older students. Minds and personalities further developed. Makes things easy. This one, smart like a Ravenclaw but a bit crackerbox in that department. Odd lineage, pure as it gets but with a hiccup in the middle there. Self reliant but loyal to a fault. Cunning and crafty. A good mix of all the house traits, but that ambition and drive means only one thing. “Slytherin,” it added out loud.
“Perhaps the reports I’ve read weren’t entirely incorrect,” Dumbledore mused as he put the hat away. “I’ve been warned you have a penchant for rule breaking and defiance.”
“Ah. Yeah. I got into a lot of scraps. The whole no-maj vs pure-blood thing isn’t as big a deal in the states, but when you have a squib for a dad and a well connected bastard for an uncle they can make your life hell. Dueling illegally can get you banned from competitions, so a lot of students tried to provoke me.” Her voice was light, but Dumbledore didn’t overlook the fact that both her fists were clenched tight as she spoke.
“Well if you can, try not to break any noses in your first week.” He pushed warmth into his tone, and watched the building tension drain away as she sheepishly avoided his eyes.
“I’ll do my best.”
“You don’t have to disclose your father’s condition, you know.”
“I don’t care. I’m not ashamed of him. He’s the best.” Her chin came up, and the elderly headmaster’s smile grew. He couldn’t help it, potential problem child or not, he liked this one. She reminded him of….
“Very well.” He pushed his thoughts aside. “Miss Haywood will be here in a moment to escort you to Slytherin house to settle in, then give you the tour. Welcome to Hogwarts, Kyriel. Or should I say, welcome home.”