Chapter Text
in which two is company, but three is a crowd
Catherine Harris
Dear Miss Harris,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as a fifth-year student.
Term begins on September the first.
Preliminary supplies have been collected for you and will accompany you on your way to the castle.
As you may be aware, the decree for the reasonable restriction of underage sorcery prohibits the use of magic by those under age seventeen outside school. However, due to your unique circumstances, the ministry has graciously allowed Professor Eleazar Fig to help you hone your spell-casting before escorting you from London to the castle for the start-of-term feast and the sorting ceremony.
Yours Sincerely,
Professor M. Weasley
Deputy Headmistress
I’ve read my letter a thousand times by now, and the page is all crinkled up. A new thought strikes me every time. Yesterday I wondered if Professor M. Weasley is related at all to Mr. Augustus Weasley, whose family I lived with when I was six or seven, until I was nine. They were very kind, but ultimately could not afford to keep me.
Today I wonder what Professor Eleazar Fig could look like and how he will arrive, and by what method he will escort me to Hogwarts Castle. It is early in the morning on September first, and I have never been more excited- or more nervous.
“Catherine, come away from the window, please. Standing there will not make the professor arrive any sooner, and you are making my poor nerves quite awful.”
“Yes, Mrs. Bagshot,” I sigh, moving to sit by my trunk, wiggling my leg anxiously. I wasn’t terribly fond of the woman, but her daughter, Bathilda, was quite kind. She was about ten years older than me, and she worked at a bookshop most days. Yesterday, though, she baked biscuits to celebrate me going to Hogwarts. For a long time I thought I didn’t have enough magic to go, but it turns out to be a misunderstanding. I have never known my real parents, and since I lived with muggles for the first five years of my life, I was never signed up for Hogwarts. But now I am going.
“You might be the first person to ever start in their fifth year,” Bathilda had told me, when I first got my letter on my birthday back in May. “Dear old Hogwarts. I don’t miss Professor Binns, though. His curriculum is dreadfully dull. Someday I will write a better history book, so students can understand how exciting our history is.”
I do not care as much for history. I am simply excited to learn to use a wand- to get my own wand. Professor Eleazar Fig, apparently, is bringing one for me to borrow until I can get my own. Mrs. Bagshot says that your magic is more powerful when you have your own wand, and I need to be as powerful as I can, since I’m starting so late.
Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. “He is here!” I cry, leaping to my feet.
“Very well, then, child, don’t keep him waiting! Oh, you do make such a fuss,” Mrs. Bagshot complains. I dash to the door and open it.
A very kind-looking old man is waiting outside with a red carriage. It must be pulled by thestrals, because I cannot see anything tied to it, though there is a driver holding a set of reins. “Hello,” he says warmly, “I am Professor Fig. You must be our new fifth-year student, Miss Catherine Harris?”
“I prefer Kitty, actually,” I say, suddenly feeling shy. “Give me a moment to get my things.”
“No rush,” he chuckles, his face wrinkling with a smile. But I do rush. Leaving somewhere is not out of the ordinary for me at all. I have lived with no less than eleven different families, and not one of their houses felt like home. Perhaps Hogwarts will!
“Er- do you need a moment to say goodbye to your family?” Professor Fig asks, raising an eyebrow as I march out the door with my trunk.
“Oh, Mrs. Bagshot isn’t my family. I haven’t got a family,” I say.
Professor Fig looks a little surprised by my nonchalance, but he shrugs. “Very well then. Oh! I almost forgot.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a rather plain wand. “Here- this is to be yours until you can get a new one. Go on, give it a wave.”
I take it and wave it eagerly, trying not to be too disappointed when nothing happens. Professor Fig chuckles. “Let me show you how to do a basic cast- just a quick flick of the wrist. Watch this.” He pulls out his own wand and gives it a flick. A jet of red light shoots from it and hits a fat pumpkin on the street corner, making it explode into pieces. “Now you try it.”
I focus on the pumpkin next to it, imitate the flicking motion, and to my delight, a weak jet of light hits the pumpkin, though it only makes it rock back and forth. I try a few more times, and on my fifth try, I finally get it.
“Brilliant!” says Professor Fig. “Now, we’ve got to get going, or we shall be late.”
I nod, grabbing one end of my trunk. He grabs the other end and we hoist it onto the back of the carriage. I take a step back and he waves his wand to magically secure it in place.
“Aha! It appears we are almost ready to depart,” he says, turning to face me. “It’s a pity we didn’t have more time to work on spell-casting, though I’m quite sure I’ve never seen anyone take so quickly to a second-hand wand. You’ll be a force to be reckoned with when you get your own.”
I grin. “Thank you, Professor Fig. I appreciate you working with me before the term begi-”
A sudden noise startles me. I turn just in time to see a man apparate into the alleyway. It’s quite an effort to stop myself from wrinkling my nose at his appearance. His nose is enormous, and his mustache is hideous! The man turns and chuckles, saying, “Oh! Eleazar!”
“George!” Professor Fig replies, sounding delighted. “Glad my rather cryptic description of our location did not thwart you from finding us.”
“I’ve apparated to more vaguely defined destinations than this,” George boasts, chuckling. “Though I confess I may have miscalculated slightly on my first try. Gave quite the fright to some theatre-goers in the West End.”
He seems to think this is quite funny. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. There is nothing funny about scaring muggles. I do hope he wiped the poor people’s memories of it, at least.
“It’s been much too long,” Professor Fig says politely. “When I received your owl, I must say-”
“Uh! Best not speak here, Eleazar, hm?”
“Of course. Why don’t we speak en route to Hogwarts? We have a start of term feast and a Sorting Ceremony to get to.”
“Wonderful idea! As long as your young charge here doesn’t mind me tagging along.”
I do, in fact, mind. I tend to make up my mind about people rather quickly, and I have made up my mind that this man is quite obnoxious. However, it would be very rude to say so, so instead I put on a false smile and politely say, “Not at all, sir.”
“After you,” says Professor Fig, pleased. Holding back a sigh, I turn and step into the carriage. Behind me, I hear George say, “Ages since I’ve been to the castle. Would be good to see the old pile of rocks.” He pauses for a moment, looking down the alleyway as if he’s seen something, then shrugs and gets in. Professor Fig sits down next to me, and his friend sits across from us. I look out the window, not even feeling a little sorry to be leaving Godric’s Hollow, and after a moment, the carriage takes off into the air. It must indeed be pulled by thestrals, then.
We fly up into the clouds where we won’t be spotted by muggles below, then George says, “Glad I caught you before you left for Scotland.”
“Just barely.”
“And who is your traveling companion?”
“A new student,” Professor Fig says, smiling warmly at me.
“New?”
“Yes sir, I’m starting school as a fifth year,” I say, trying very hard to be polite.
“How extraordinary.”
“It is, indeed. None of the faculty has ever heard of anyone being admitted to Hogwarts so late,” Professor Fig reveals.
“Nor have I.”
“Of course, as the other fifth-years will have been honing their magical skills for four years now, the Headmaster asked if I could get Miss Kitty up to speed a bit before term begins.”
“Well, you couldn’t have asked for a better mentor,” George tells me, with an air of great pomposity. “Professor Fig is not only an exceptional teacher, he is also a remarkably intuitive and gifted wizard.”
“Mr Osric is prone to flattery,” Professor Fig replies mildly. “I daresay it’s one of the reasons he has risen so far at the ministry.”
Now that makes me chuckle. I lived with a wizard who worked for the Ministry of Magic for a few months after I turned twelve, a man called Chester Fudge, and he was exceedingly susceptible to flattery. I am not surprised that the ministry is comprised of more wizards akin to him.
“Have you seen this?” Mr. George Osric says, suddenly grave. He pulls out the latest copy of the Daily Prophet. It was a picture of a sinister-looking goblin, titled Ranrok’s goblin rebellion: Truth or ‘gobbledegook?’ I had, in fact, seen it. Just two days ago I saw a copy of it at our neighbor Mrs. Dumbledore’s house while I was watching her three children for her.
“I have,” Professor Fig replies. “Opinions differ as to how great a threat Ranrok really is.”
“Although I have yet to convince my colleagues at the ministry, I believe he is a significant threat,” Osric says, leaning forward. “And it was your wife, Eleazar, who alerted me to his activities months ago.”
“Miriam?” Professor Fig looks startled. “How?”
Osric sighs. “She wrote to me about Ranrok before she died- wondering what the ministry knew of his activities. Before I could respond, I received this. It was the last thing she ever sent me, Eleazar.” He pulls out a small, silver canister with a strange symbol on it. I squint at it as he continues, “It came via her owl- but with no correspondence. I can only assume-”
“That she had to get rid of it quickly,” Professor Fig finishes grimly, taking the canister. “To keep it safe.”
“Presumably from Ranrok. I cannot open it. Whatever magic protects this is powerful indeed.”
“It looks like Goblin metal,” Professor Fig observes, showing me.
I lean in curiously, and he starts to say, “That symbol-” but I interrupt, asking, “What’s that glow?”
“I don’t see a glow,” Professor Fig says, turning it over in his hands, puzzled.
“Nor do I,” Osric says, looking at me curiously.
I glance at them uneasily. How can they not see that the strange symbol on the canister is glowing? Professor Fig offers it to me. I take it, gasping as the glow glints very bright, and then the container opens, revealing a small silver key.
“Merlin’s beard!” Osric exclaims. “How did you-”
I am about to grab the key when Professor Fig takes the canister, saying, “Wait! We do not know what-”
Suddenly I find myself clinging onto my seat for dear life, a scream lost in my throat. I blink, heart pounding in terror, as a dragon’s roar filled the air, realizing that just a moment ago it took a large bite out of our carriage, the entire back half was gone: all my luggage and the seat where Mr. Osric had been sitting moments ago. I see the dragon spit out enormous pieces of wood, and, turning around, I see the four black thestrals pulling our carriage. I just witnessed- Poor Mr. Osric was that dragon’s lunch!
The dragon opens its maw, sparks leaping, and Professor Fig shoves me forward out of the carriage just as a burst of flame destroys what remains of it. We plummet toward the ground many kilometers below, my scream lost in the wind as my arms go in windmills, around and around and around.
“THE KEY!” Professor Fig shouts, as the dragon snarls, diving toward us. “Give me your hand!”
I reach out and he grabs my arm. I am about to die, I think dizzily, as the dragon’s hot breath hits my back. Then Professor Fig’s fingers touch the silver key, I feel a jerking sensation in my belly, and the world dissolves in a whirl of color.