Chapter Text
It was a cold and dreary day in Massachusetts on September first, 2024. The sky was white with clouds and in the distance a storm was brewing. The end of summer had arrived and the chill of fall had begun to set in. All around the bus stop people walked down the sidewalk dressed in sweatshirts, jeans, and light jackets.
Edessa Alice Parker stood next to her brother as their father Zenith pulled away from the curb. He had given them both hugs goodbye but couldn’t stay to see them off as he needed to get to his auror job at the ministry. They sat at the bus stop surrounded by their luggage.
They were taking up the entire bench beneath the awning with all of their suitcases and animal carriers but neither of the siblings paid any attention to the muggles milling about who were looking jealously at the seats taken up by luggage. Atlas’s screech owl Papyrus and Edessa’s black cat Salem eyed each other distrustfully from their separate carriers.
Though they were siblings with the same mother and father, Edessa and Atlas did not look alike at all. Atlas had inherited their mother’s Veela looks- curly blonde hair and clear, sky-blue eyes. Their father also had blonde hair. Edessa, while still possessing Veela blood, had sleek, straight black hair and dark eyes. She was somewhat of an anomaly for someone who was part Veela, but Edessa had never minded much, if anything it made her powers more subtle since people didn’t expect that she had them and allowed her to use them sometimes without people knowing or noticing.
When the bus pulled up the siblings hauled their things up into it, Atlas muttering about how much easier it would be if they could just use magic and getting a swift kick to the shins from his sister for it.
Muggles eyed them as they sat, some with distrust, some with confusion, many with thinly veiled judgment in their eyes. There were a few other Ilvermorny students on the bus- Edessa didn’t know any of them personally and didn’t care to- who were getting the same looks. Edessa ignored the stares and turned to her brother. “Are you ready for the school year?”
“It’s not my first year,” Atlas said, pouting a little. He spoke quietly so the muggles wouldn’t hear him. “I’m a second year now, I know how this works, I’ve done this before.”
Even if he hadn’t been a bad liar, Edessa knew her brother well enough to know that he was anxious. “Still,” she replied. “It’s normal to be nervous about going back to school. With mom’s political campaigning and dad’s auror work it’s stressful to not know what’s going on at home.”
Atlas nodded but added: “I’m not stressed at all.” Edessa was about to press him further, to try to find out what specifically was making her younger brother anxious, but the bus reached their stop before she could and she was getting to her feet and hauling her belongings off the bus with the other students.
At the sound of a woman huffing indignantly at the group Edessa looked back as she stepped out of the bus and said, gesturing to the group of students: “It’s a live action role playing thing.”
The bus door closed behind her but Edessa could make out the looks of confusion on several faces as it pulled away.
The group of students- Edessa the fifth year Wampus, Atlas the second year Wampus, two Horned Serpent students in their second and seventh years, and a pair of fifth year Pukwudgie and Thunderbird twins- started the next part of their journey to school.
The bus had deposited them on the edge of a beach. It was probably part of the reason they’d gotten so many looks from the muggles- it was not a nice day for the beach. The cold wind blew salty air into their faces, throwing their hair in every direction. As they walked and got further away from the boardwalk, slowly collecting sand in their shoes, the beach grew less and less maintained. Rocks and seaweed took over most of the ground now and what few muggles had ventured out to the beach that day did not stray near this area.
Salem meowed discontentedly from his carrier.
The group of students gathered around an old beam from a ship with rusty nails sticking up from its surface. Edessa had heard a rumor it was a piece from the Mayflower but she didn’t know for sure. All she knew was that she wanted to take her new Cobra 180 instead.
Edessa had gotten a new broom as a gift from her parents over the summer, the newest and fastest model on the market. She hadn’t gotten the chance to test it out yet but she was itching to. The fact that she had to take an ugly portkey and a bus to school when she could be riding there on a sleek, classy broom was frustrating. When she had explained this to her parents, however, they had reminded her that Atlas was not a strong enough flier to make the journey. When she had argued that he could take the portkey and she could fly they had reminded her of how awkward and embarrassing it would look to fly with all of her luggage hanging beneath her broom and she had swiftly stopped proposing the idea.
The seventh year Horned Serpent student took out a watch. It was 10:59. Everyone quickly gathered their stuff around them and took hold of the piece of wood, being careful to avoid the nails.
When the time changed to 11:00 the piece of driftwood, which was the portkey, pulled them forcibly from the beach and into the wizarding town of Bellowing Falls at the bottom of the Western Massachusetts mountain Mount Greylock. There the original poppet of Elizabeth Proctor, propped up in a little stone alcove, looked down at them as they tried to get their bearings.
While there had been no one around at the beach, Bellowing Falls was bustling with students and the sounds of toads croaking, cats hissing, and owls hooting joined the sounds of chatter that filled the air. The Greyhound buses were lined up, seven buses for the seven grades of Ilvermorny, and people were queuing up to get on board.
Atlas immediately disappeared to go meet up with some of his second year friends, any trace of his earlier nerves hidden from view.
Edessa looked around for her own friends, but she didn’t need to look very far. Molly and Aramus emerged from the crowd and ran up to her excitedly. The two other Wampus chasers were her best friends at Ilvermorny. Edessa smiled and gave them both quick hugs. The three immediately started gossiping.
“Did you hear Victor got kicked from the quidditch team?” Molly asked, a proud smirk on her face. She had long red hair in a low ponytail and fair skin with a spattering of freckles across her cheeks. She was tall and slender and looked down at Edessa as she stood beside her.
“Ugh,” Aramus groaned. He was a stocky boy with brown hair and the beginnings of a mustache he really ought to shave. “It only took us complaining to coach for months .”
“I can’t believe he actually asked out every girl on the team!” Edessa exclaimed incredulously, remembering her own rejection of the ex-keeper last spring. “How desperate do you have to be? You would have thought he’d give up after the first one or two, but no, he asked out all four of us!”
Molly flicked her long red hair over her shoulder. “Good riddance!”
“Thank Merlin!” Edessa exclaimed. “I can’t believe he stayed on for as long as he did!”
“If you’re going to be that much of a creep you could at least have the athletic skill to make up for it,” Aramus said.
Edessa laughed. “So true, do you remember the time he literally crashed into the opponents hoops? How did that happen? He's the keeper! How did he get across the field?”
Aramus joins in her laughter. “I had completely forgotten about that, thanks for reminding me.”
Molly laughed too but then looked pensive. “The team is going to be so much better without him, the only issue is that we need to find a replacement.”
“Well, we can’t have a simple start to a year, now can we?” the boy replied.
“Never,” said Edessa.
The group piled onto the Greyhound bus for their year, the buses were separated by year and it was always the same one that took the same group from their first to their seventh year. Passing the two pukwudgie drivers, one manning the wheel and the other taking the pedals, Aramus, Molly, and Edessa walked down the bus to their usual seats in the back, saying hi to all their friends on the way.
Edessa stopped halfway down and slid into an empty row of seats. She turned her Veela energy all the way up and leaned on the back of the seat and looked down into the surprised face of Cole Min, a fifth year Korean Thunderbird boy. Edessa smirked at him and she could feel the traces of Veela in her blood pulling on his senses as his expression turned into a similar smirk.
“Hey Cole,” she said.
“Hey Edessa,” he replied. “How are you?”
“Better now,” she said. The boy raised an eyebrow. “That I’m back, I mean.”
Cole smiled and shook his head. To their right Aramus loudly cleared his throat but Cole didn’t even seem to notice, not taking his transfixed eyes off of Edessa. “Of course. Me too.”
Edessa winked at him and stood up. “See you at the castle.” She followed her friends down to where they had now taken seats at the back of the bus, but she could feel his eyes watching her leave. His eyes and many more.
“God, Edessa, turn it down!” Molly exclaimed, hitting Edessa’s arm as she sat down in their usual row of seats.
“What?” Edessa asked innocently.
Molly fixed her with a pointed look and when Edessa looked up at the rest of the bus she had the eyes of more than half the boys and several of the girls on her.
“Okay, okay,” Edessa sighed and when the humming in her blood grew quieter and eyes left her place on the bus, conversation started up again around them. The Veela energy was something that she always possessed, she would always be naturally gravitating to people who were attracted to women, but she could really turn it up if she wanted to. She did it probably more often than she should, but who could blame her, it was fun.
If Edessa had been a full Veela she would be able to do more. There were historical cases of Veelas hypnotizing men and keeping them in relationships for years, or making them throw themselves off cliffs. Not that she would do either of those things. In the back of her mind Edessa sometimes worried that boys just liked her because of the Veela in her blood, but she knew that she didn’t have enough of it in her to get someone to like her unless they had some underlying emotions for her already.
“You always mess with him,” Aramus said, rolling his eyes. “I mean, I know he’s hot, but why?”
“Cause it’s fun,” Edessa said. “Besides, it’s not like I’m leading him on, I’d totally go out with him if he asked me.”
Molly made an ‘ah’ sound. “So that’s it, then? You’re teasing him until he finally gets up the courage to go out with you? He probably won’t do it, you know. You’re pretty intimidating and you basically flirt with everyone.”
“We’ll see, hopefully I’ll wear him down eventually.”
“You could just ask him out yourself,” Aramus pointed out.
Edessa shrugged. “But where’s the fun in that?”
The Greyhound started to drive and the trio settled in for the ride. The hour long drive up the mountain is noisy, with friends filling each other in on their summers and the pukwudgies relaying road information to each other.
-
Asphodelia Quintylia Ambrose Anselm drummed their fingers nervously on the passenger side door of the car as they and their father sat in bumper to bumper traffic on the way to Kings Cross Station. They had just dropped their twin sister Belladonna off at the Durmstrang ship and needed to make up for some lost time.
The fifth year Ravenclaw disliked many things including being late, or being almost late, or being potentially late, and they could feel the minutes ticking away as they inched their way through London. Their father, Everett, beeped at the car in front of them who was not taking their green light.
On the ride Everett took a call from Poinsettia, Asphodelia’s mother, who was not adept at using a cell phone. Everett had to keep reminding her that she didn’t have to yell into it for him to hear her. The woman, who worked as a divination professor at Ilvermorny, and Asphodelia’s other sister Anelace, had just portkeyed off to Ilvermorny. It was just Asphodelia left to deliver as Wisteria was still too young for school and Ivy had left Hogwarts a few years back and was now working at Gringotts.
Belladonna was their parent’s main concern this year, Asphodelia knew. Their twin was only a fifth year but she was already captain of Durmstrang quidditch team and there were rumors that she had already been recruited to play for Bulgaria after she graduated. The rumors weren’t true, Asphodelia knew, but they certainly weren’t far fetched, their sister was brilliant at quidditch.
Asphodelia had less going on for their parents to focus on. They were good at school, very booksmart, but they lacked the social life and sportiness of their twin and some of their other siblings. They didn’t mind very much, sometimes less attention was a good thing.
As they thought this, Asphodelia let their hair, which had turned a sickly yellow color from their anxiety without them realizing it, shift into a neutral brown. They pulled down the passenger side mirror and checked to make sure their eyes were a neutral blue. Metamorphmagus powers were nice when you wanted to blend in around muggles. Though, they were sure they would stick out anyway with all their luggage and their raven, Onyx.
There was about twenty minutes left in their ride at this rate and, checking their watch, they could see they needed to be there in 20. They probably weren’t going to make it.
“Is there any way we can get around this?” they asked Everett.
The muggle man shook his head. There was nothing he could do. Asphodelia glared at the stubborn red light that was keeping them from their destination. They closed their eyes, their fists clenched. Please turn green, please turn green, they muttered to themself.
“Finally,” their dad said, breathing a sigh of relief, and they opened their eyes to see the light was green. Asphodelia wasn’t sure if it was their magic that had made the light change, but they didn’t hit another red light for the next ten blocks.
The sun was shining out in London as the car pulled into the lot outside Kings Cross. Asphodelia and their father got out and began pulling their things onto a trolley. A warm breeze ran through their hair when they finally got everything together. The weather was growing colder but here, outside Kings Cross in the sun, it was beautiful.
Asphodelia and their father hurried into the station and through the throngs of muggles towards platform 9 ¾.
They didn’t mind the odd looks, from elderly people who had lost their shame or from children who didn’t have any shame to begin with, they were far more preoccupied with getting to the train on time. And the platform- Asphodelia had heard it locked if you got there too late.
As they worked their way through the crowds a child stuck his finger into Onyx’s cage as Asphodelia was adjusting a suitcase that had fallen over. He shrieked when he got bit.
“Shouldn’t have put your finger in there,” Asphodelia told him. The kid scowls at them, holding his finger, and scurries away. Asphodelia pushed onward, they didn’t have time to worry about it.
The pair reached the platform and made the journey through the wall at a run, thankfully passing straight through to the other side. There the scarlet Hogwarts Express sat. It was as gleaming and beautiful as it always was, wreathed in thick clouds of hot steam the instantly made Asphodelia begin to sweat under their robes. “Wow,” Everett breathed. Although he’d seen his fair share of magic in his years with his wife and children, it was still breathtaking to behold.
Shadows and voices faded in and out of the mist. The platform, because it was so late, was almost empty of people. Many parents had already left, their children safely tucked away in compartments on the train. The ones who remained were clustered around train windows, giving last teary goodbyes through the glass or to children who were hanging precariously out of the windows.
The whistle blew, shaking Asphodelia and Everett out of their trances. Hurriedly they pushed the trolley to the train and hauled their trunks and animal cage on.
“Have a good year at school, alright?”
“Of course, dad,” Asphodelia replied, giving their dad a hug before the train started to pull away.
Luckily the door was right next to a compartment. Miraculously, that compartment happened to be empty, probably because it was one of the less nice ones on the train. The paint on the walls was peeling and one of the seats looked broken. Asphodelia didn’t care, the solitude was perfect for them.
They dragged their luggage inside and collapsed into a seat next to the window. The train starting jolts the suitcases and one topples over. Onyx caws indignantly at the commotion but Asphodelia is too relieved that they made it to really pay it much mind, he was not one of the objects that fell, having been positioned securely on the seat beside them, but he was displeased nonetheless.
They watched as the platform passed by and their eyes followed a father as he ran alongside the train to wave goodbye to his child, slowly falling further and further behind as the train picked up speed.
Asphodelia would miss their family. They were happy that they could always send them letters. They hoped their dad could get out of the platform okay. He could never see it and always had to be guided through with someone else’s help, but he always said he could make it out okay.
It occurred to them for the first time the he could be lying about that and thought of their father back on the platform having to ask some random wizard parent for help getting back through. The thought made them sad so they pushed it out of their mind. If he said he could get out okay they wanted to believe him.
Another reason this compartment had probably been empty, was the smell. The compartment smelled dreadful, like rotten cabbage. Asphodelia dug around in one of their bags and pulled out a small bottle of mayflower scented spray. Instantly the smell in the room began to improve.
“Thanks, mayflower,” Asphodelia said to the spray before tucking it away again.
Asphodelia fished a book out of their trunk and began to read. The one they’d grabbed happened to be a history of magic textbook. It was interesting stuff, Asphodelia thought. History, especially magical history, had always been something that was nice but not particularly interesting to them until they had arrived at Hogwarts. When it was taught in a magical setting where the past literally smiled down at you in the form of portraits and ghosts, history became a fascinating subject.
The part of the book they were currently reading was talking about a pain extraction spell invented by Isadora Morganacht throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. The incantation was lost to time. Asphodelia wondered if there was a way to uncover it somehow. They were fascinated.
They read peacefully for about an hour of the train ride. They admired the misty green countryside passing by. Sometimes students would walk past the compartment window, but they weren’t bulling them now, just avoiding, and no one came in. They relaxed until they heard the sound of the trolley witch making her way down the aisle of compartments.
Asphodelia got up and made their way to the door. They opened it and leaned out, turning in the trolley witch’s direction, and looked directly at Briar B. Birch, who was standing in the aisle.
Asphodelia had the wrenching sensation of their stomach falling out of their body- somehow the girl looked even more beautiful than she had the year before- clear light brown skin and brown dreads dyed a sunset orange and interspersed with metal ringlets.
Briar was one of the only people at Hogwarts that Asphodelia really considered something like a friend. The two were acquaintances at best, but Briar was one of the only people who had never made a rude remark or looked at them like they were scary or carried some sort of disease. They had other acquaintances, but Briar was the closest. Asphodelia couldn’t stop the way their heart always raced when they saw them, but they tried not to let it show.
The reason Briar was standing in the aisle was because her compartment was next to Asphodelia’s and their compartment was next in line for the trolley cart. A glance over showed that the compartment was filled with some of the other quiet and studious students that Asphodelia considered themself to be acquaintances with.
“Hey Briar,” Asphodelia said tentatively, half hoping their words hadn’t been heard over all the noise in the train car.
The girl had heard and turned towards their voice. “Oh, hey, Asphodelia,” Briar greeted with a kind smile. “How was your summer?”
“It was nice,” they replied. “How was yours?”
“It was good,” she said but before she could continue the trolley witch had reached her compartment and she turned back to Asphodelia with a sympathetic smile. “I have to go. I would offer for you to come sit with us but we don’t have any extra room, sorry.”
Asphodelia shook their head. “That’s alright, no worries.”
Briar looked a little relieved and turned her attention to giving the trolley witch her group's order. Though she had always been the kindest to Asphodelia, she had never really made much of an effort to get to know them either. Asphodelia waited their turn and got some pumpkin pasties and cauldron cakes from the witch before returning to the solitude of their compartment.
When they had closed the door and were alone they sighed. It was hard knowing that even if that compartment had room, Asphodelia wouldn’t have really wanted to sit in it. The thought of making small talk with a bunch of people they really didn’t know that well for the rest of the train ride was not a nice one, even if Briar would be there. Besides, just because Briar might have offered, didn’t mean the rest of the people would have wanted Asphodelia there.
Asphodelia had something of a… reputation around Hogwarts.
In the muggle world Asphodelia got teased for their name. Asphodel and Asphodelia weren’t common and they had heard their share of ass jokes because of it. Those were bad, but the wizarding world was different. Here people had their share of weird names and making fun of someone for that wasn’t the norm. However, growing up in the wizarding world also meant that people had associations with certain things, for example: plants.
Asphodel was a flowering plant the Greeks said was grown in the fields of the underworld. It represented mourning, death, and the underworld, summarized with the statement: ‘my regrets follow you to the grave.’
In the wizarding world, that was a bad omen. It didn’t help that Asphodelia was as quiet and withdrawn as they were, or that they were as, admittedly, odd as they were. But the nail in the proverbial coffin was that their mother was a master of divination.
There were many in the wizarding world who didn’t believe in divination or prophecies, but even if they didn’t there was an air of mystery and danger around the topic. Those who did believe in them generally had a lot of respect and fear. It was all fun and games to be able to see what someone would have for breakfast, or who was going to fall and break their wrist, but to see when someone would die? To predict the biggest tragedies of the world and watch helplessly as, even with their warning, the events happen anyway without anyone being able to do anything about them… It was spooky.
So Asphodelia was different, even by wizarding standards. Generally they didn’t mind so much. They weren’t bullied, per say, just sort of… shunned and ignored. And people made comments sometimes, but Asphodelia tried to brush them off. It wasn’t like they could help any of the things about them that made them a social outcast.
Asphodelia dug into their sweets and opened their book back up. They were ready for a nice, uneventful train ride.
-
On the Greyhound the Ilvermorny students were getting ready for their own meal service. They were given a list that dropped down and hung above them and they had to check off an item to order. Unlike the extensive arrangement of sweets that Hogwarts sported, Ilvermorny served its students pie.
There was key-lime pie which turned your face green, chicken pot pie that temporarily makes you grow a chicken crest, shepherd’s pie flavored pie, doctor repelling apple pie, lemon meringue pie, and pecan pie. Edessa selected the cranberry pie, awkwardly pressing the sheet of parchment against her hand to check off that order.
Then she put down the bus’s tray table in front of her. Molly and Aramus both gave resigned sighs. “You do this every year,” Molly laughed.
The tray tables would open up with people’s orders on them when the pies were ready. Edessa had discovered in their first year that if a person tried to order pie when they were open, or if students had put stuff on the trays, the trays would shake and rattle in displeasure. It was hilarious. She had resolved to do it every year.
Because she always sat in the same seat and on the same bus, Edessa was pretty sure the bus was sentient enough to know her because when the orders had been taken and the food began to arrive the tray rattled extra hard at her before slamming shut and popping open again with her pie.
Aramus had made the misguided decision of ordering the key-lime pie- “what? I’m from Florida, I have to!”- and his face slowly turned green as he dug in.
The buses finally arrived a few hours later and the students disembarked and made their way to the castle. The sorting ceremony passed in a blur, Edessa didn’t know anyone joining and nothing particularly interesting happened so she zoned most of it out.
She zoned back in when the headmistress, Professor Weetamoo, began her speech. Professor Weetamoo, a member of the Wampanoag tribe was nine feet tall, being that she was a descendant of the famous hero, the Narragansett giant Weetucks, who guided her people in the early days.
Her robes are cranberry red and have detailed beadwork patterns over them in colors like baby pink, grass green, black, white, and bright yellow. Her hair is pulled into a single braid that rests over her spine. It’s mostly gray now but matterings of the original dark brown remain. Porcupine quill earrings adorn her ears.
Edessa was of the personal opinion that Professor Weetamoo was a little silly. She was known for her quick wit and humor. The woman was certainly not as… serious as she thought a headmistress of a school should be. Additionally the woman and Edessa’s politician mother, Europa, had views so different they were essentially complete opposites.
Europa was a big voice in holding the wizarding world in its conservative values. Keeping big family bloodlines alive and maintaining a thick wall between the wizarding world and the muggle world were some of her biggest political talking points. Edessa wouldn’t say her mother, and by extension, the rest of her family, were too conservative. They wouldn’t be considered Voldemort apologists but they wanted things to stay as they were. They had no issues with muggle borns and would be fine with Edessa even marrying a muggle (as long as he was a powerful one). However they were undeniably very different from Professor Weetamoo, who was far more liberal in her approaches.
Edessa didn’t mind people having different views, though she did believe her family’s were the correct ones, and she found Weetamoo both a little silly and a little naive. She was quite fond of her overall, but sometimes when the woman spoke about bucking tradition, she couldn’t help but feel scornfully superior in her own politics.
When Professor Weetamoo started talking a hush fell over the hall. “Welcome back students,” she began. “It is so wonderful to see you all here. Before I get into some housekeeping things I would like to make a special announcement.”
All eyes were on Professor Weetamoo, who was wearing a broad smile and seemed so excited that the energy buzzed around the hall. Any people who hadn’t been paying full attention certainly were now. “This year, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has been tasked with hosting the Uagadou School of Magic and Ilvermorny for the Triwizard Tournament!”
Whispers began to spread rapidly over the four house tables. Older students were explaining the concept of the tournament to younger or muggle born students.
“I heard someone died last time,” Edessa heard an older boy whisper. Her heart was racing but she knew she shouldn’t get worked up. You had to be seventeen to enter the tournament.
“This year the council has agreed to a special new change in the rules,” Professor Weetamoo continued, and the students quieted down again, trying to hold their excitement in check.
In Professor Weetamoo’s dramatic pause, Edessa scanned her eyes down the professor’s table, seeing their reactions. They had undoubtedly been informed of this already, and, indeed, she saw they had a mix of happiness and apprehension on their faces. She was sure it was hard to watch their students compete in such a dangerous tournament.
Edessa suddenly wondered if her parents, being involved in the American Ministry of Magic, had known about this. She realized they would have had to have known but before she could feel betrayed about this, though they would have wanted it to be a surprise or else just forgot to mention it, her eyes locked with those of a teacher.
Edessa had been looking down the professor’s table but most of the teachers were looking around, not at any specific student. This woman’s eyes were locked on hers. Edessa felt a strange twist in her stomach. She didn’t know the professor by name, but she knew it was one of the divination teachers.
Then Professor Weetamoo said: “the age allowed for the tournament has been lowered from seventeen to fifteen,” and the dinning hall exploded into pandemonium. Edessa forgot all about the professor as shouts and excitement filled her ears and a confident smile fell onto her face. The fact that the age had been lowered to how old she was felt like fate.
She could feel the Veela in her blood humming through her veins, brought out by her change in energy without her realizing it. She looked to her friends sitting on either side of her and said into the din of ecstatic chatter: “I’m going to be the champion.”
-
In the Hogwarts Great Hall, Asphodelia was listening to the Hogwarts headmaster, Professor Leoneous Potstein, give his start of term speech. He was an astute man with no hair at all, tweed brown robes and a tweed brown wizards hat with extremely round glasses. He spoke in a peculiar fashion that was slow and purposeful and was frequently the butt of many student jokes.
Still, he was undeniably one of the finest living wizards fit to run Hogwarts. He often had the air of being quite conservative, but when listening to the things he said it was clear he was quite liberal. He had been instated by the ministry after the death of Dumbledore and had been headmaster ever since.
Asphodelia was quite fond of Professor Potstein and thought of the man very highly. The professor had a background in magical orchestra, and while he didn’t perform it anymore, he was particularly fond of the frog choir, the club for which had expanded significantly under his encouragement.
Asphodelia appreciated the music and the work the man had put in. They had read some of his papers on magical music and found them interesting. Still they didn’t think too much about the man on a daily basis.
They listened as Potstein began his speech.
“Now that we’re all settled and sorted, I’d like to make an announcement.” The Great Hall fell silent as attention turned to the headmaster. “This castle will not only be your home this year, but home to some very special guests as well. You see, Hogwarts and two other wizarding schools have been chosen to host a legendary event.”
At this some murmurs arise from the crowds of tables because there’s only so many evens this could be that involve three schools. Excitement starts rising early and when Potstein says “the triwizard tournament” the Great Hall erupted into chatter and glee.
Asphodelia also found themself excited. Not to enter the competition, obviously, (whoever entered that death trap was an idiot in their opinion) but to see it. They had heard about the triwizard tournament and read about past ones. Having the opportunity to see one while they were at school was a once in a lifetime opportunity!
Potstein raised his hands up silently and squits his eyes shut until the noise falls back down. “For those of you who don’t know,” he continued, though the only people who wouldn’t know were muggleborns, “the triwizard tournament brings together three schools for a series of magical contests which as you may be away was previously strictly between Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. Around 2000, 2001, the rules changed as per the ministry of magic of varying countries of the world to include all wizarding schools.
“The participating schools of which were to be chosen randomly this year. I am proud to announce that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will be hosting this event. The other two schools will be Ilvermorny School of Spellcraft and Sorcery, and Uagadu School of Magic and Marvels.
“From each school a single contestant is selected to compete. Now, let me be clear, if you are chosen you stand alone. There is no backing out, there is no running away, there is no magical means that can save you from your fate. You will be chosen by the legendary Goblet of Fire which is being transported here from the Japanese School of Magic, Mahokotoro. The Goblet will arrive at the end of October so you have time to mull over whether or not you wish to compete.
“If you chose to submit your name and are chosen you will be the sole representative of Hogwarts School. You will compete in three tasks which are not to be trifled with. They are deadly, they are dangerous, and they are grueling. They will test your mind, body, and soul. Of course, if you win, glory awaits you.
“Now this year an amendment was made,” Potstein continues. At this there is murmuring and whispering. The man continues to speak and the noise dies again. “In previous years, only students seventeen and older could compete. This year the decision has been made to lower that age to fifteen. Rest assured we have your complete safety in mind but the contract with the Goblet of Fire are binding, so use your own discretion when choosing to enter. Of course, you have until the end of October to mull it over in your mind for the Goblet is not here yet and until then our school year has begun.”
He waved his hand and food appeared out of thin air across the tables.
Asphodelia found themself smiling along with the other students and, though they didn’t engage in any of the chatter going on around them, found that they were in a very good mood as they ate the feast.
The good mood lasted until they trooped up to the astronomy tower with the rest of the Ravenclaws after dinner and were stopped, as everyone always was, by the riddle to enter their common room.
The large group of Ravenclaw students who had arrived at the tower at the same time as them listened as the voice asked: “How many seconds are there in one year?”
There was a pause as the students mulled it over, murmuring to themselves. Some of the first years were looking around bewildered. It came to Asphodelia in a moment or two and they stepped confidently out of the crowd.
“Twelve,” they said, “Every month has a 2nd.” The common room door opened. It did not escape their notice that when they had stepped forward they’d gotten a few looks, but no one complained when the door opened and they walked into the common room unscathed. Or so they thought.
“Hey, hey,” a voice was trying to get their attention. Asphodelia heaved an internal sigh and looked around for whoever was trying to bother them this time. To their surprise though it was a first year who looked starstruck as she tugged on Asphodelia’s robe.
“Excuse me,” she said. “How often are you-” she stumbles over her words and starts over. “Sorry, sorry, do you do the riddles a lot? Are you the riddler? The answerer of the riddles?”
“Uh,” Asphodelia said, at sort of a loss for words. “I feel like everyone does the riddles.”
“Oh! Is it a turn thing?”
“No, no, you have to do a riddle if you get to the dorm without anyone else,” they tried to explain.
The first year looked slightly horrified. “You get kicked out if you never answer a riddle?”
“No, you just… won’t be able to get into the dorm.”
The girl thought about this for a second but clearly still didn’t understand. “What if you’re always with other people and then they answer for you? Does the painting figure out that you’re not answering?”
Asphodelia paused and gave this a second of thought. “I don’t know. I’ve never actually thought about that.” Asphodelia really wanted to leave but thought they should be nice to the young first year on their first day. They remembered when that was them.
“Do you like the wizard trading cards?” the girl asked.
And that was enough niceness for one day, Asphodelia thought, having no desire whatsoever to engage in a conversation about chocolate frogs. They faked a yawn. “You know, I’m really tired, it was a long trip here, I think I’m going to go to bed.”
“Alright!” the first year agrees enthusiastically. “Sweet dreams! Don’t let the bed bugs bite! Wait, are there bed bugs here?”
Asphodelia is already gone.
As they entered their dorm room and shut the door behind them, Asphodelia breathed a sigh of relief. The only thing worse than bullying was first years.
They performed a cleaning spell that sent all of the clothes from their trunks into the dresser and the books from their bags onto the bookshelf but the spell didn’t organize anything so Asphodelia had to sort through it all until it was organized to their standards.
Briar B. Birch had the bed next to Asphodelia’s, a fact that they tried to forget about whenever possible.
When they had finished organizing their things they climbed into their bed with a book and closed the curtains around them.
-
The Wampus house trooped up to their common room after the feast. The conversation was, of course, all about the tournament. Edessa was going to enter and Molly said she was also planning on it. A few of the other Wampus quidditch players- the two beaters and a backup chaser- also seemed interested. Their seeker wasn’t interested and Aramus thought they were all crazy for even thinking about it.
A few other people they were walking with who weren’t on the team were also thinking about it, but mostly the people who, although they didn’t play quidditch, were also fairly athletic. You’d have to be insane to sign up without any athletic ability, even if a lot of the tasks relied on wit and knowledge.
The Wampus common room was in a weirdly shaped tower affectionately nicknamed the Cat Tree. The stairs around it could turn into ramps and at the top stood a statue of a Wampus cat named Tim.
To enter the Wampus common room a person needed to stare into its eyes and be hypnotized by the statue, a power Wampus cats possess, and untangle a ball of yarn. Edessa got to the top of the stars first and so she took on this mental challenge herself.
She looked into the stone cat’s eyes and felt the outlines of things in her peripheral vision go hazy. It was sort of like being drunk. She could feel the mental invasion of the cat and overlaid on top of the real world she saw a knotted ball of yarn.
The swamp cat looks at Edessa expectantly and she began detangling. As she worked she glanced up at the feline. “You always add more tangles when I do it,” she muttered. She thought the cat looked amused.
When she was done she presented the statue with the detangled wad of string. She knew some people rolled the string back up for the cat but she didn’t have the time or patience to be re-rolling a ball of imaginary yarn.
She felt that if the statue could move it would have raised an eyebrow, but it opened the door nevertheless.
Edessa, like Asphodelia, was also followed into her common room by a first year. The boy looks quite impressed and asks what she did “because from my perspective you just stared at a cat statue for five minutes then the door opened. What did you do?”
The girl looks down at him for a moment and doesn’t feel a single pull of desire to explain anything. “Yeah, the prefect will explain all that to you,” she told him.
“The- the what?” the boy asked but Edessa was already walking away.
She entered their room, which was shared also by Molly and Aramus and a few other students. Originally the bed next to Edessa’s had originally been occupied by another student, but the group had… asked nicely… until the other student had agreed to swap so they could sleep next to her.
Edessa waved her wand and put her stuff away, not particularly caring what went where- she would organize it better over time. Then she started her intensive ten step skincare routine which included a headband to keep back her hair that she’d gotten from Springfield Alley, the Diagon Alley of the States. It had little wampus ears on it.
Her skincare routine also included a facemask and a serum called pixie serum which, when she opened it, released two little pixies that came out of the bottle, patted the stuff on her cheeks, and disappeared.
When she had almost finished her routine, Aramus emerged from the bathroom. He had finally finished scrubbing all the green off of his face from the key lime pie he’d eaten earlier.
Edessa snorted when she saw he still had a little splash of green on the side of his nose. “You know, you could have avoided all this. You knew that was going to happen.”
The boy pulled the covers up over himself. “But key lime tastes so good! I’m from Florida, I need to represent!”
Edessa and Molly laughed and then settled down to go to sleep.
-
The next morning, September 2nd, the students received their school schedules and picked their electives. Edessa had her core classes of transfiguration, charms, potions, history of magic, defense against the dark arts, astronomy, herbology. She had chosen her two electives: care of magical creatures, because she thought it would be easy, and arithmancy, because while she was interested in divination she had the feeling she possessed no third eye whatsoever, so studying arithmancy seemed like the next best thing.
She went to catch breakfast with the Wampus quidditch team as she usually did. They were a pretty tight group and usually ended up eating a lot of their meals together, especially breakfast since many of the other students didn’t wake up early enough before their classes to eat it. The team had to wake up early for practices though, and athletes needed food. Practice hadn’t officially started yet, their first meeting was the next day, but the group had wanted to get back into the routine of things to be prepared.
Looking over at the other tables Edessa could see the Horned Serpent and Thunderbird teams were also up and getting breakfast. Thunderbird was Wampus’s biggest quidditch rival, and the two teams sent occasional glares or stuck out their tongues back and forth. It was all in good fun though, Edessa could see Cole Min, a chaser for Thunderbird, laugh when she flipped their table off.
The Pukwudgie team was nowhere to be seen, of course. They never got up early and practiced in the afternoon instead. The rest of the teams were of the opinion they were lazy, but sometimes, when she was particularly tired, Edessa thought they were onto something. Still, for her the afternoons were for homework and hanging out with friends, and she wouldn’t want to give that up.
Her first class of the day was charms.
Charms was one of Edessa’s favorite classes. She excelled at practical magic and thrived when she was able to do things. Classes that were more book based, such as history of magic, were far more challenging for her.
The charms classroom was one of the more normal classrooms. It was on the ground floor with large windows that let the morning sunshine pour in. Vines crawled in over the windowsills from outside There were also openings in the wall on the other side that were open to the hallway.
The teacher of the class stepped in
Professor Incundia was a severe looking woman with very pale skin and very dark hair. Edessa knew her because she and the professor actually looked a bit alike. Edessa’s skin was not quite so pale, and her hair was not quite so dark, but the resemblance was present enough that there had been a rumor their first or second year that Edessa was somehow the woman’s daughter. It was a stupid rumor and nothing ever came of it but it made Edessa roll her eyes thinking about it now.
Still, despite the rumor Edessa had never actually met the woman and had never had her as a teacher before.
“Today,” Professor Incundia began when they were all seated. “I’m going to start us off by having you do something a little… unconventional. As we may know, one of the best ways to learn is through teaching. Knowing this I am going to have you, fifth year Wampus students, teach some second year Thunderbird students a very simple set of charms. You all know them by now, the wand lighting and extinguishing charms lumos and knox.”
She clapped her hands and a door leading to an adjoining classroom swung open to reveal a very anxious looking crowd of second years and their professor.
“Oh Merlin,” Aramus muttered. He, Molly, and Edessa shared ‘are you kidding me?’ looks as they were each assigned a second year student. Edessa was paired with a blond Thunderbird boy named Cricket and the two professors milled around the room as the teaching began.
Edessa decided that she hated Cricket instantly. It wasn’t anything personal, it was the principle of the thing. She was in this class, one of her favorite classes after defense against the dark arts, to learn! She wasn’t here to teach little kids.
Still, she thought Professor Incundia must know what she was talking about so she tried to not let too much of her annoyance show on her face as she offered the boy a smile. The task couldn’t be that hard anyway, she knew the spell and its counter-spell like the back of her hand. Teaching him should be easy.
“Hey, I’m Edessa. You might know my brother, Atlas? He’s in Wampus.”
Cricket’s face lights up with recognition.
“Okay so for this spell, it’s pretty simple, honestly- do you know it already?” she asked.
“Uh… Locks and numos?” the boy tried.
Edessa breathed an internal sigh that was full of every ounce of her annoyance and self control. “...No,” she replied. The boy looked a bit crestfallen and she realized she needed to be more encouraging. “It’s lumos and knox, I mean, like, you almost had it.”
“Oh sorry,” Cricket said. He rubbed the back of his head. “I was thinking about locks. Do you know what locks is?”
She stared at him for a moment. “Locks? Like the food?”
Yeah,” he says. “I had a lot of it today at the breakfast table.”
Edessa thinks she feels her eye twitch. “Okay. Well, lumos and knoxs.” She explains the spell and the wand movement, demonstrating it a few times. It was a spell she’d done many times when she snuck out after hours for parties or for late night adventures with her friends. She knew lumos maxima too, but felt no need to show off to the second year.
Cricket nods a few times and holds his wand out when she tells him to give it a try. She had to bite her lips to keep her jaw from falling open when he held out his wand with both hands, more akin to how you would hold a baseball bat than anything else. The boy seemed to sense her stare and took one hand off, still gripping it like a fork but, Edessa tried to reason with herself, at least he’s only using one hand.
He hesitantly made the cast. Cricket said the spell correctly and waved his wand the right way, but magic relies heavily on many different factors, an important one of which is confidence.
Not only did the boy’s wand not light up, it produced no effect in terms of light or shadow at all, but instead began to make cricket noises very loudly.
Edessa’s mouth really did fall open this time and she gaped at him. “Oh… oh no, that not…” She thought back to when she was a second year and had done it perfectly the first time.
“Look, I’m sure the first time I did it was like that too. Um, it happens to everyone. Listen, we’re going to try again and this time you really have to, like, think about the light coming out of the tip of your wand. I have a muggleborn friend who says that there’s a thing called manifestation. I don’t know if you’re muggleborn, but it’s a concept where if you think about something happening- and they’re muggles so it doesn’t actually happen- but if you think about a thing you can manifest it and make it happen. So that’s what you’re going to do. Just envision a light coming out of your want and focus that intention and try again.”
Again Cricket nods, there was an embarrassed blush on his cheeks but he listens and tries again. Before he does he turns back to Edessa. “I am muggleborn. Does your muggleborn friend know about yugio?”
Edessa blinked at him for a moment. “I’ve never heard of that in my life.”
Cricket shook his head. “Never mind.” When he casts lumos again his wand flickers a couple times, then the wand lights up. Cricket beams and laughs.
“Nice job!” Edessa exclaimed, genuinely pleased.
“Wait,” Cricket said when the laughter died down. “How do I turn it off?”
Edessa gave him another demonstration of knoxs and the boy gets it immediately. Satisfied with her teaching, Edessa sets the second year free to practice while she watches him.
The boy began using the spell to flash his wand on and off. It took Edessa a moment to realize that he was trying to use morse code to spell out words. In an instant her entire view of Cricket changed.
She quickly looked to Molly and Aramus to see if they had caught on to the genius that lumos and knox could be used to send messages to each other. Molly, on the other side of the classroom grins, catching on, and Aramus leans back in his chair, resigning himself to having to learn a code to keep up with the two girls.
“You did great,” she says to Cricket, overjoyed about the schemes she was already cooking up in her head.
He beamed. “Oh, thanks!”
“No problem,” she replies.
The period ends and the first class of term is officially over. Edessa joins up with Molly and Aramus as the three grab their stuff and leave the classroom to head to their next class. “I really hope we never have to do that again,” Aramus gripes. “I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher.”
“I agree,” Edessa said. “If we have to do that again I’m going to end up fighting a child and no one wants that.”
-
September 2nd at Hogwarts began with Asphodelia waking up right before class. They made their way at a slightly more brisk pace than they wanted to so they wouldn’t be late, and stopped in the Great Hall to grab something to eat on the way.
On top of their core classes they had chosen to take care of magical creatures and ancient runes because they found both subjects interesting. They were sure their mother, as an Ilvermorny divinations professor, would be disappointed they weren’t taking divination, but they weren’t feeling too stressed about it.
They were thinking about their classes as they snagged a pastry from a basket and were walking away when they heard a voice from behind them whisper to someone else. Two first year Ravenclaws were sitting by the basket they’d just taken their food from.
“Stop! Don’t eat from there!”
“What?” the other one asked, also in a whisper. “Why not? It looks good.”
“I don’t know, but I heard that person is full of death magic. If you eat something they touched you could die!”
Asphodelia’s mood soured instantly. They had hoped it would take more time for the rumors about them to reach the new students, but apparently that had been too much to ask for. Still, them being poisonous was a new one, something that first year had undoubtedly come up with themselves after hearing that Asphodelia was known for being connected with death.
It was nothing new though, and they tried to brush it off, quickly checking a strand of their hair to be sure they hadn’t accidentally turned it red from their anger. They had nearly put it out of their mind completely by the time they stepped through the door of their first class of the day, history of magic, and popped the last bite of their pastry into their mouth.
They had gotten there a minute before class started and sat at the only remaining empty table in the room in the back. Every seat was taken except for the one beside them and when Briar, entering a minute late, scans the room, she has no choice but to sit next to them.
She gives Asphodelia a smile as she puts her books down, it’s a corporate polite kind of greeting but their heart still skips a beat. Asphodelia raises their hand in a minor wave then jerkily puts it back down, cursing themself inwardly the instant they do it, then they pull out their own books and stare straight ahead.
History of magic is a simple lecture this time. The professor, Professor Praeteritus, replaced the previous one, the ghost Professor Bins, when he had finally grown satisfied with teaching and had chosen to pass on. The new Professor was an eclectic looking man wearing a deathly hallows necklace who passed directly over the syllabus, “you’re fifth years, you know the drill,” and into his spiel.
He begins by, somewhat apologetically admitting that proper prehistory is extremely unknown, and rattles off a statistic the ministry gave a couple years ago that muggles know more about their origins than wizards do theirs. “Many are finally putting in the work to try to amend that, but that is the nature of magic- its early manifestations are so incredibly vague and unknown it is almost funny. But it’s not because the unknown is scary. That being said, there are places we can start. We know from the 10th century to now decently well.”
So he starts there. He does bounce around a little bit, he’s not frazzled so much as he is passionate about the ways in which everything influences everything else, and he makes frequent use of the blackboards.
Asphodelia is very engaged, Praeteritus has a way of making the class, which had so much potential to be boring, extremely interesting.
Most of the class is spent with him explaining the rise and fall of European witch hunts. He says that they truly began to pick up steam in the 14th century but were ineffective and largely viewed as a non-threat because witches and wizards could easily evade being burned at the stake.
“There was one wizard though,” he adds with a laugh, “who actually burned at the stake no less than twenty three times, if I’m not mistaken, it might have been more, because he thought it was funny. I think he’s a little weird but… to each their own, I suppose.”
Asphodelia snorted from their place in the back of the classroom. They had read much of this history already from the textbook, but Praeteritus was going far more in depth than the book ever did. In their peripheral vision they could see Briar was smiling too.
“The muggle witch hunts in Europe in the 14th century were largely viewed as a non-threat. However, muggle ingenuity is often underestimated, and one thing they’re very good at is innovating. They invented more creative ways to… shall we say, ways to rid their communities of supposed witches.
“Now they were a real threat and wizard-muggle relations were at their worst in the 17th century. You all probably know of the Salm witch trials in 1692? It’s no coincidence that it was that same year that the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was established. That was a very big year for our world because it was the year we cut ourselves off from the muggle world. The Salem witch trials were not by any means the worst of the witch hunts, but they were the final straw.”
The lecture continued in much this way for the rest of class. Asphodelia didn’t look over at Briar, but they could feel her presence beside them like a tangible weight. Asphodelia got lost in their note taking.
They found the subject very interesting, but, as someone with a wizard and muggle family, they found the concept of separating from the muggle world to not really be accurate. The wizarding world was still deeply connected with the muggle one. They found themselves wondering how many muggles really do know about wizardry anyway because they either have wizard children or their siblings are wizards, or they marry a wizard, or somehow befriend someone who ends up being a wizard and when they turn 11 just disappear.
Asphodelia went along that mental thread for a while. Their own father might have never believed that magic existed until he married their mom, but the two worlds were tied so closely together.
At the end of class Professor Praeteritus assigned them all a foot of parchment elaborating on their personal opinions on the witch hunts of the 14th to 17th centuries. “And you’re not graded by how much I agree with your opinion,” the man added. “You’re graded on effort.”
Asphodelia made a note of that and gathered up their things, being careful not to accidentally bump into Briar as they stepped behind them and out of the classroom into the bustling hallway.
-
The rest of the first week is relatively uneventful for Asphodelia and Edessa. The two both settled quickly into their old routines.
Quidditch practice had started up again and Edessa, who had already made up her mind to compete in the triwizard tournament, put it out of her mind in favor of focusing on her training.
When she did think about it she was excited. The thought of how dangerous the tournament was was thrilling more than anything. All for our family, All for our glory was the Parker family motto, inscribed on the signet rings her mother and father wore, and the triwizard tournament was perfect for that.
She wasn’t scared of dying in the tournament. Sure, she knew logically that people did die in it, but she truly believed in her capabilities. I’m a top athlete, she told herself, and I’m pretty damn good at magic, I’m as safe as I can be to do this. Besides, the other deaths were a long time ago, or because of Voldemort and Voldemort is dead. She would be fine.
Edessa sent a letter to her parents telling them about her first week and informing them of her plans to enter the tournament. They seemed pleased in their reply but not surprised, already having known about the tournament from their government jobs and no doubt predicting their daughter would want to enter.
Mail times were always fun at Ilvermorny. People got gifts and presents from home and the Daily Oracle, the US’s version of the Daily Prophet, delivered news from the outside world.
Edessa received a Howler one morning from Atlas, who had learned what Howlers were. There was uproarious laughter from the Wampus table and a mix of laughter and annoyance from the surrounding ones. Edessa was laughing too but that didn’t stop her from hexing her brother with a full body bind and sending a flock of birds to pester his frozen body.
When she looked up at the teachers table she thought she saw the headmistress laugh into her breakfast.
Asphodelia, who had already made up their mind to stay as far away from the tournament as possible, was focusing on their studies. Still, it was definitely on their mind and they went to the library several times throughout the week to read more about previous tournaments and their challenges.
It truly was a deadly tournament. Their views on it were mixed. “Why do they keep holding this tournament?” they asked themselves, flipping a page in the chapter they were reading about a girl who had been killed by a unicorn in a task about a hundred years ago. Still they was looking forward to seeing it, in a morbid way. They thought about it sort of like the muggle Olympics, where historically some people had also died.
They had also grown up seeing the brutality of wizarding sports like quidditch. Their sister had had many injuries over the years.
In their letters to their parents Asphodelia made sure to tell them they were not planning on going anywhere near the tournament. Their mother, who Asphodelia had noticed had been acting a little oddly the past few weeks but had chalked it up to a change in the planets or something divinationy like that, was a little vague in her reply. That wasn’t exactly unusual though, again, divinationy stuff came over her sometimes. She did mention that she would be coming over with the Ilvermorny school to begin the tournament and for the tasks, which Asphodelia was looking forward to. Their mother had signed their letter off with hugs and kisses and a bunch of runes and symbols that mean love.
They asked Belladonna how quidditch was going. They were sure their twin was jealous about the tournament, it was totally up their alley.
All in all it was a standard week at Hogwarts and Ilvermorny. Neither student knew what fate was rushing towards them as they settled back into their school routines. And perhaps that was for the best. After all, sometimes knowing the future causes more harm than good.