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Chapter Text

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of Number Four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. Unfortunately, it just so happened to be the case that not holding with any nonsense was not a sound strategy for preventing strange or mysterious things from holding with you. Mrs. Dursley had forgotten that.

The abrupt and unwelcome arrival of Mrs. Dursley’s niece, the daughter of her late sister, was only the beginning. It was a very inauspicious one, however, because Mrs. Dursley had spent the last few years pretending that she didn’t have a sister. The girl, however unwelcome, had to be taken in though, and so Mrs. Dursley, being a very petty and unsympathetic women, immediately set to taking out old childhood resentments that should have long ago been put away on the unfortunate child.

Iolanthe Potter, for that was her name, was sent to live in the cupboard beneath the stairs, though the recently purchased house had two bedrooms that she could have slept in. And her aunt, uncle, and cousin took care to make sure that her life was as unpleasant as their narrow minds could contemplate. And so it was that nine long years passed before anything else significantly strange and mysterious disturbed the comfortable, ordered lives of the Dursley family.

Iolanthe grew up to be an exceedingly pretty young girl, just like her mother before her. She had a finely boned face, a fair complexion, wild dark hair, and lovely green eyes. The only blemish on her beauty was an unfortunate scar on her forehead, and eventually her aunt decided that its strangeness was worth covering, no matter how it satisfied her to see some blemish on the girl, and so she wore a long fringe to cover it up. Under normal circumstances a sweet-looking thing like Iolanthe would be well-regarded by classmates and neighbours alike, humans being particularly fickle and susceptible to beauty, but Petunia Dursley had seen such unthinking admiration play out before and she took steps to prevent it from happening again.

Her deceased sister, Lily, and her husband, a young man by the name of James Potter, were derided as unsavoury types, implied to be alcoholics, and the strange scar on baby Iolanthe’s forehead was explained away as the only remnant from the car accident which had taken her parents’ lives. Iolanthe herself was described as a terror, a probable future criminal, and a waste of space. The residents of Privet Driver were not particularly critical thinkers, and so it never occurred to them to ask why a two year old should be so obviously irredeemable, and any future efforts the little girl would make to dispel their low opinion of her would be futile.

And so it happened that by the age of ten, Iolanthe was utterly alone, and utterly unloved.

This proved to be a very costly mistake for all involved. To illustrate;

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, as stormy as it ever got in the South of England anyway. Rain was lashing against the windows of the house and the wind was loud enough that Dudley Dursley, Iolanthe’s cousin, kept turning up the volume on his television program in order to better hear the cartoon hero’s grunts and cried, as he hacked at the villain of the week. Thea Potter was working in the kitchen to prepare the Dursley’s their dinner, while her aunt read a fashion magazine at the table and supervised. As she sliced the potatoes, her aunt looked at her sharply.

“Take care not to do them too thick,” she said, sniffing.

“Yes Aunt Petunia,” Thea said, turning back to her work. She was quite small for her age, and so she had to stand on a step stool when working at the kitchen counter.

“Did you preheat the oven?”

“Yes Aunt Petunia,” Thea said, turning to the oven to check. “Gas mark 4, like you said. Oh!” The dial had indeed been turned, but the light wasn’t on. She stepped down to get a closer look.

“What?” her aunt asked, standing.

“I think the light is out,” Thea said, “because it’s off but the gas is on.” She opened the oven and stood back a little. No heat came out.

“Oh,” she said again, frowning. “I think it might be broken.”

“What?” her aunt snapped, bustling into the kitchen. “No, that can’t be, you’ve done something wrong.” Thea stepped quickly out of the way as her aunt stuck her hand in the oven, her face pinched unpleasantly. Aunt Petunia turned the gas mark down to zero, waited a moment, and then turned it back on. Nothing happened. She turned on one of the burners, and nothing seemed to happen. The circle didn’t turn red and light up. Thea watched her as her face soured. Now they would probably have to order in food and a repairman for the stove, and, she thought gloomily, she probably wouldn’t get any dinner. Dudley and Vernon never seemed to leave any when they got carry-out.

“This is your fault,” her aunt snapped.

“What?” Thea said, shocked. Her relatives blamed all kinds of thing on her, but they were usually smaller. Dudley’s mess, her aunt’s headache, that sort of thing.

“Yes,” her aunt said, clearly warming to the idea. Thea took a step back.

“Don’t you walk away from you little brat, you’ve broken my oven! Do you have any idea how expensive these are?”

“No I didn’t,” Thea cried, “you know I didn’t!”

“Don’t lie to me you little brat!” her aunt snapped.

“I’m not lying!” Thea protested. Her aunt made to give her a slap but she took a step back and dodged.

“Yes you did!”

“No I didn’t!” Thea said, dodging another swing. Two pink spots had appeared in her aunt’s cheeks but at least she wasn’t screaming yet.

Then she picked up a frying pan.

“If you don’t hold still,” she hissed, “and put your hands out, I’m going to let Vernon deal with you.” Vernon hit much harder.

“But that’s not fair,” Thea cried, the unfairness of it so obvious that she somehow believed against reason that her aunt would see reason.

“Don’t argue,” her aunt snapped. “Give me your hands!”

From beneath her fringe, Thea’s eyes glowed in anger. She felt something blooming inside her, a hot, furious thing and because it was preferable to sorrow and hurt, she fed it further. Her hands began to shake and in an absent sort of way, she realized that she recognized the blooming sensation. She had felt it before. And when she had – things had happened. Strange things. Things that she had gotten in trouble for, like appearing on the roof of her school, or turning her teacher’s hair blue. Bet never before had she cared less about the consequence of her actions.

And in a voice that she hardly recognized, she said “Why don’t you take that pan and hit yourself in the face with it!”

And so she did. Blood spurted from her now-misshaped nose and Aunt Petunia dropped the pan and screamed in pain. Thea felt righteously satisfied. It was a little gross, but seeing her aunt in such pain seemed only fair after all the smacks and cruel words she had been given over the years. However, after a split second, fear infused her again. Because Aunt Petunia was still screaming and crying and so the thundering on the stairs must have meant that her uncle had realized it wasn’t Iolanthe who was doing the screaming. And then she turned and his bulk was looming menacingly in the doorway. He roared and made a swipe at her and she held her hands out and pushed and he flew against the wall.

Her heart leapt in her throat. Her uncle was much scarier than her aunt, and was the one whose blows hurt more, even if his casual dismissals and insults didn’t cut the same. She was dizzyingly, blindingly gleeful. All her feelings of powerlessness, of worthlessness were pushed aside. She turned once again as Dudley waddled into sight (apparently even he couldn’t miss the sound of his father hitting the wall, nor the small but noticeable shake that it had caused). Apparently, the sight of his mother bleeding and his father slumped against the wall was too out of the ordinary for him to comprehend, because he only stood there, dumbfounded. Thea waited for him to do something, but before he could, Uncle Vernon stood again bracing himself against the wall with one hand while the other pointed shakily at her.

“You!” he snarled. “You FREAK, how DARE YOU, AFTER ALL WE HAVE DONE FOR YOU-” his voice shook, his rage rendering him incoherent.

“Shut up,” Thea said, and enjoyed another wave of satisfaction as he did, chocking on his own words.

“Dad, what’s happening?” Dudley asked, still looking vaguely stunned. Vernon’s face was so red that it looked as though he might explode. He stumbled over to the cutting bored where the potatoes were set out innocuously and grabbed the knife she just been using.

“Stop” she said, and he froze, whatever power her voice held holding him still. “You be quiet too,” she added, turning to her aunt, and she was.

“Hey, what’s going on,” Dudley said, panic colouring his voice for the first time.

“Revenge” Thea said, “or justice.” It sounded satisfyingly right.

“You, you stop it,” he said, turning pink. “Or else!”

“No,” Thea said. It was a nice feeling, being able to say no. His face screwed up and she wondered if he was going to cry – really cry, because Dudley faked it a lot.

“Sit down and don’t make any sounds,” she said, and exhaled once it became apparent that she could control him too. Seeing his fat face, screwed up in frustration brought out some cruel instinct that she hadn’t known she had.

“Actually, why don’t you go bang your head against the wall?” she said, and watched with satisfaction as he went and did that, the gleeful delight she had been feeling, missed in with the fading terror and relief soon subsided a little, and she realized with horror that she couldn’t keep this going on forever. Someone would come and look for them – and she was beginning to feel a little tired, and thought that whatever energy, or powers she had, probably wouldn’t last forever. Even Dudley’s superheroes had limits. She glanced back at her aunt and uncle and found that while her uncle mostly looked furious, her aunt also looked scared, like she might, Thea thought, have some inkling of what was going on.

Was this why they hated her? Did they know what she could do?

“Do you know what I’m doing, Aunt Petunia?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from sounding like she cared or was afraid. Her aunt said nothing, only continued to glare at her and clutch her face.

“Answer me!” she demanded, and her aunt did.

“You’re using magic,” her aunt hissed, looking horrified that she had said those words. The ‘M’ word had long been banned at the Dursley’s house.

“Magic, is that what I have?” Thea said, “I have magic?”

“Of course you do, you little monster,” her aunt hissed, angrier and more frightened then Thea had ever seen her. “How could you not, my perfect sister being what she was!”

It was like a bolt of thunder to the heart – her mother had been magic!

“And my father?” she demanded.

“Him too,” her aunt snapped back, “but worse, because he had been born one of them.”

“One of them,” Thea said, her head spinning with all this new information. Dimly, she realized Dudley was no longer hitting his head against the wall.

“Witches,” Petunia said, like the word was a curse. I, thought Thea, am a witch. I am a witch. It filled her with delight, and she suddenly felt more powerful than ever. She whirled, her hair whipping around her face, and smiled unpleasantly at Dudley, who wasn’t a witch.

“Sit down and be perfectly quiet,” she compelled him. Turning back to her aunt, she smiled in a way that she had never smiled before.

“Tell me everything you know,” she demanded.

Something had changed that night, because Thea found that thereafter, it was much easier to feel the kind of ballooning sensation that had allowed her to control her relatives, and she soon found out that she was able to do lots of other things too. She could make things float to her if she concentrated, and she found out that with much practice she could set things on fire, and she could unlock doors without a key, as the Dursleys had found out after they had tried to lock her into her room. She could still control people, but it was easier if she wanted them to do small things, or if they seemed stupid. She felt a little guilty at the thought, but it was true.

She had made her aunt and uncle give her Dudley’s second bedroom, and made her Aunt Petunia take her shopping and buy her some new clothes, so that she didn’t have to wear Dudley’s old rags anymore. And best of all she had made it so they couldn’t tell anyone what she had done – whenever they tried they only looked like they were furious (and she didn’t doubt that they were, mostly because their own mouths wouldn’t obey them). She was a lot happier, even if she still didn’t have any friends at school, but the teachers seemed to like her better now that she had nice clothes and that her Aunt and Uncle and Dudley couldn’t say mean things about her anymore. And luckily, no one had noticed that all three of them seemed to be scared of her, or that they hated her more than ever.

She knew now that there was a place full of people like her, people with magic, and she only had to wait a year before she would be gone. Gone to a school in a castle! Her aunt hadn’t known all that much about it, and had seemingly avoided ever hearing about it from her sister, who she was still horribly jealous of (and wasn’t that a balm for her heart! Her mother had been wonderful!) but everything that she did remember, she had told Thea, and it had all sounded wonderful to her, the prospect of another world made up of people like her. She could hardly wait.

Chapter Text

As her eleventh birthday approached, Thea considered making her aunt buy her a present – a doll or something. Though she supposed that she was old enough now that she wouldn’t want one. And she could get all the books she wanted from the library anyway. Now that she had proper clothes and enough food and no chores (aside from those she gave herself, like keeping her room clean) she didn’t really want anything – except for her birthday to hurry up and come. She wanted a cake, she decided, one that she could eat all by herself, just to spite Dudley, but that was all she could think of.

She also began to grow nervous. What if everyone did turn out to hate her once she found the rest of the witches? What if her letter never came at all? She wanted the chance to be liked and admired, to be accepted by people who were like her, and who understood her. What if they thought she was stupid because she hadn’t known about the world until she was ten – and wouldn’t go there until she was eleven? Her heart clenched painfully at the thought.

Even if that were the case, Thea decided, she would still go. Anything would be better than the Dursleys, and maybe she could make them see that she wasn’t the waste of space her relatives had so often called her. She knew from her aunt that her mother hadn’t been able to do some of the things that she could do now – or at least, if she did, her aunt hadn’t known about it. Her mother, Lily, had made flowers bloom and flown off of swings, though she did float things like Thea did before she got her wand. (Thea was going to get a wand!) Nearly immediately upon hearing about the kinds of things her mother could do, Thea went out to practice until she could do them too. The only other magic person her aunt had known before they got their wand seemed to also be able to do things without it. Apparently, he was a nasty little boy named Snape (Thea took this description with a grain of salt – her aunt was a liar) and he had once nearly made a branch fall on her, a tale Thea had listened to with no small amount of spiteful delight. The fact that she could do everything that they had been able to, and more, made her hopeful that even if people didn’t want her at first, she could prove to them that she belonged there, in the other world.

From her aunt she knew that the letters would come sometime in the latter half of July and so without fail, the first thing she would do upon waking up each morning would be to rush downstairs and see if the post had arrived yet. After weeks of disappointment, her heart nearly burst when she found a letter addressed in lovely script to

Miss I. Potter,

The Smallest Bedroom

4, Privet Drive,

Little Whinging,

Surrey

She was excited enough to scream, but there wasn’t anyone she could share her excitement with, so she pattered up the stairs as quietly as she could to open her letter. She shut her door quickly and carefully popped open a dark red wax seal with a crest that had four animals on it. Out came the parchment, trembling slightly with her fingers.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Ms. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

She spun twice in quick succession, clutching her letter to her chest. And then something occurred to her.

“We await your owl?” she mouthed, worried. She cast her eyes about her room as though an owl would somehow materialize, and felt dread settle into her stomach. She quickly skimmed over the next page, in case there would be more relevant information there. It read:

UNIFORM

First-year students will require:

1. Three sets of plain work robes (black)

2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear

3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)

4. One winter cloak (black, with silver fastenings)

Please note that all pupil's clothes should carry name tags.

COURSE BOOKS

All students should have a copy of each of the following:

The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)

by Miranda Goshawk

A History of Magic

by Bathilda Bagshot

Magical Theory

by Adalbert Waffling

A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration

by Emeric Switch

One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi

by Phyllida Spore

Magical Drafts and Potions

by Arsenius Jigger

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

by Newt Scamander

The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection

by Quentin Trimble

OTHER EQUIPMENT

1 wand

1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)

1 set glass or crystal phials

1 telescope

1 set brass scales

Students may also bring, if they desire, an owl OR a cat OR a toad.

PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS

ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICK

Well that was no help at all, she thought, dismayed. She tried to distract herself momentarily with excitement about the equipment, but it was no use – she couldn’t help think the worst – that they would indeed await her owl, and once it never arrived, they would shrug and write her off before she even arrived.

And then suddenly she remembered! Aunt Petunia said that a witch had appeared on their doorstep, shortly after the letter, to explain it all to her mother and her mother’s parents. Surely one would come, wouldn’t they? She bit her lip and peered out her window, never mind that it looked out to the back garden. It was a clear summer’s day – bright blue sky, a slight breeze. Ordinarily, she might have gone to the park but now she worried that whoever was coming might miss her. She glanced over to the small desk that had been purchased for Dudley and then almost immediately discarded once he complained that it took up space he wanted for his action figures. There were a three library books waiting for her there, and one of them seemed rather good. Ever since her aunt and uncle had become afraid of her, there was nothing to stop her from reading all of the books about magic that she could find, even if they were only made-up stories. Matilda had become something of a favorite.

Thea supposed she could try and write the Deputy Headmistress back using the normal post – except that the letter had very specifically said owl. A tapping sound at the window startled her and she turned to see an owl keeping itself aloft with great swooshes of its wings just outside. She breathed a sigh in relief and jumped over quickly to open the window. She wrenched it up, but was left with the issue of the screen. After a moment she discovered that she could pop it off by maneuvering the little white bits of plastic that held it in place. Doing so, she set the screen just below the window and then stood back. The owl, large and brown and imperious looking, hovered a moment and then flew inside.

As it did, she saw Mrs. Cameron from the house behind them looking out her own window in astonishment. Thea gave her a wave and a smile, which grew wider as she moved away quickly from the window, presumably embarrassed to be caught watching the neighbors, as if they all weren’t spying on each other. The owl perched on the foot of her bed and ruffled its feathers as she stared at it. We await your owl, she thought.

“Are you here for me?” she whispered, and was surprised when the owl gave her a look that seemed to suggest she was an idiot. Blushing, Thea scrambled for a pencil and a bit of paper. Unable to find any, she grabbed an old paperback of Dudley’s that she was unlikely to read and painstakingly tore out the endpaper.

“Okay,” she muttered to herself, “okay, er- ” How to start the letter?

Dear Deputy Headmistress McGonagall, she wrote. Thank you for the letter. That seemed an alright start, but now she was stumped. She needed someone to take her to the wizarding world, preferably someone who didn’t hate her. I want to come to Hogwarts, she continued, but I don’t know how to get there, or where I can get the school supplies. Would it be presumptuous to ask them to send someone for her? Would it make her seem stupid? Or weak? Thea chewed on her lip. They had practiced writing letters only the year before in school, why was she doing so dismally now? The owl gave a soft hoot and she looked at it in alarm.

“I’m trying,” she said, and immediately felt foolish. She turned back to her letter, pressing the pencil to the soft, pulpy paper as she thought. Would it be better to be upfront about how her relatives hated her? And then she thought of those wizard prison guards her aunt had mentioned – the dementors they had been called. They sounded terrible. Would she get in trouble for what she had done? Would they throw her in the prison? A fissure of cold went down her spine.

Maybe it would be better if no one met the Dursleys, she thought. She put the pencil back to paper. Could you please send some advice – no, she rubbed out that word – instructions about how I should get the things I need, and where I need to go? She glanced as the owl, and it stared back at her.

Sincerely, Thea Potter, she finished. There. She glanced around, but there wasn’t anything that she could use as an envelope and she hesitated to leave the owl to get one, in case it left. Well, there was one envelope she could use, she thought, frowning. It was silly, but this was tangible proof that there were others like her – she was hesitant to give any bit of it up, even the envelope. She examined it carefully, running her fingers over the heavy paper, looking closely at the seal on the back. She grabbed the paperback she had abused earlier and slid the edge of it under the seal, wiggling it carefully, and breathed a small sigh of relief when it came off mostly intact. She folded her piece of endpaper in three and inserted into the envelope, and looked around dubiously for a means to seal it. She didn’t have anything sticky – perhaps she could tie it shut? A long piece of hair ribbon might do the trick. She fished a simple black one out of the little cup she kept them in and turned back to the envelope.

Thea hesitated. Should she readdress it? There wasn’t really room, but at least they would know she had read it. The whole thing was going to look a bit stupid no matter what she did, she thought, her heart sinking. With a small sigh she drew a pencil line through her name and address – and then paused again.

It was odd, she thought, that they had addressed it to Ms. I Potter, and not Ms. T Potter. Had they made a mistake? Before she could let another bout of fear and indecision take her, she quickly penciled in Minerva McGonagall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and tied the envelope with the ribbon like a present. It looked as silly as she had feared, and she nearly burned with shame as she held it out to the owl. It was clearly intelligent, because as soon as she had, it held out a leg, and jerked its head, as if to say, you there, give me that thing, and so she did.

Gripping it, the owl took off with two great flaps of its wings and was out into the air. Thea ran to the windowsill and clutched at it as she watched it fade into the distance, becoming an ever smaller speck. She stood by the window for a few moments even after it had left, and then turned back to her room. The alarm clock by her bed told her that it was only half past eight, but she felt like she had already done something momentous.

The next few days, Thea waited anxiously as nothing happened. Her relatives avoided her as much as ever, but Thea thought that her aunt in particular seemed to be watching her warily. After she had discovered how to control her powers, her magic, there had been one or two occasions when her aunt or uncle or Dudley had forgotten what she could do – or perhaps they had underestimated the extent of her abilities. Thea herself didn’t have any real understanding of them, just that if she concentrated hard enough she would make the world around her, and some of the people in it, bend to her will. When the Dursleys had tried to belittle her, or to hurt her, she had made them hurt instead, and it had proven increasingly satisfying each time. They had all eventually settled into a kind of uneasy truce, but she was secretly relieved that seeing her on edge was enough to frighten her relatives a little. It probably meant that they thought she would carry out the threats she had made the last time Vernon had tried to hit her – and they had so little imagination that she thought that perhaps they were right. She was still learning what she was capable of.

One dark and rainy Thursday morning, Thea was yawning as she stumbled downstairs to make her cup of tea. The night before she had been plagued by odd dreams that she could only half remember now, and so she had woken up a little later than usual. She ignored her aunt and uncle as she entered the kitchen, and her aunt ignored her though her uncle couldn’t help glaring as he glanced over his morning paper. He was stuffed into one of his hideous suits and would be out the door and on the way to his office before too long, so she took her cup of tea into the sitting room. She contemplated turning on the television to distract herself as she sipped at it slowly, but before she could move to do so, the doorbell rang. Her heart began to thump. It could just be a salesman, she told herself, it could just be a neighbor. She held her breath as she listened to the tap of her aunt’s shoes as she went to see who it was. Petunia shrieked.

Thea skidded down the hallway and caught herself on the molding around the cupboard that used to be hers. A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair. He was wearing a large sort of dark overcoat covered in pockets, and carrying a very odd looking pink umbrella. When he caught sight of her, he beamed, and suddenly became significantly less imposing.

“An' here's Iolanthe!” he said, continuing to smile at her. “Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," said the giant. “Yeh look a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yer mom's eyes.”

“You knew my parents?” Thea asked, her heart continuing to flutter. She had a million questions that needed answering.

“O course! Head boy an' girl at Hogwarts in their day! Nicer people yeh couldn’t find,” the giant declared.

“Now see here!” Uncle Vernon declared, puffing himself up to his not inconsiderable size (an effect that was lessened by the fact that he appeared to be afraid to get any closer than the end of the hallway). “Who in God’s name are you and what on earth do you think you’re doing here!”

“Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune,” the giant snorted. Thea repressed a grin at the insult. “I’m ‘ere to take Iolanthe to do her Hogwarts shopping.” Her relatives seemed to grow paler, if such a thing were possible.

“But a cup o’ tea might be nice first,” he said, and Thea thought she could see a bit of humour twinkling in his beetly eyes.

“Right this way,” she said, in the sweetest tone she could manage.

Soon they were settled in the living room, with the Dursleys lurking in the hallway as she peppered him with millions of questions. His name was Hagrid, and he was the ‘Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts’.

“You said you had seen me as baby,” Thea said, more slowly. Hagrid nodded, his eyes clouding over.

“Dark times they were, dark times,” he said, looking down at his cup of tea, which looked comically small in his hands. She waited.

“Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore's orders. Brought yeh ter this lot...” Her heart was thumping oddly. This Dumbledore – the headmaster? Why had he been the one to send her to the Dursleys. Hesitating a moment, she voiced the thought.

“Er – Mr. Hagrid,” she asked, worrying the hem of her shirt with her fingers, “why did the Headmaster of Hogwarts have me sent here?”

He looked at her in astonishment, blinking for a few moments.

“Well, because of the war,” she blinked twice. This, she had not been told.

“War?” she asked, her voice very small. He looked at her with obvious concern and her heart began to thump. Her aunt had told her that her parents had been ‘blown up’ but she had said nothing about a war. When she glanced to the doorway, she saw Petunia’s blond head disappearing and heard her hurrying up the stairs. She wasn’t sure if her aunt was afraid of her, of Hagrid, or of what she would hear if she was going to stay.

"I never expected this," he said, in a low, worried voice. "I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin' hold of yeh, how much yeh didn't know. Iolanthe, I don' know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh -- but someone’s gotta -- yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin’.”

And so he told her about her parents, her brave and wonderful parents who had battled against a Dark Lord, and frightened him so much that one October night he had come to their house and murdered them. And tried to murder her. And somehow, miraculously, inexplicably, failed.

There were other things to consider, too. The headmaster of Hogwarts had apparently led the fight against Voldemort – for that was his name, her parents’ murderer. A man who was, according to Hagrid, perhaps still alive, in some fashion. A man who had not been human enough to die.

They said nothing for a few minutes, as Hagrid pulled out a very dirty, spotted handkerchief and blew his nose with a sound like a foghorn and Thea tried to make sense of this new and terrifying revelation.

“But why do they think I defeated him?” she asked, “if they don’t know how? Couldn’t it have been something one of my parents had done?” Hagrid gave her a look so baffled that it was clear that he had never considered this possibility.

“I think Dumbledore recons it was just too much – too evil,” Hagrid said “and you was only a baby, Iolanthe, something to do with old magic.” They were silent again. Something about this sounded totally improbable to Thea, unbelievable in a way that she didn’t want to consider. But there was another matter that was bothering her.

“Er – I’m sorry,” Thea said, “but why do you keep calling me that?” Hagrid looked confused. “Iolanthe, I mean,” she clarified, pronouncing the name carefully. It rolled off of her tongue like a sweet, or a spell.

“Why, it’s your name!” he said, cheeks reddening. “Unless I’m pronouncin’ it wrong – yeh look jus’ like your parents yeh know,” he added suddenly, sniffing, “jus’ like.” Thea felt hot and cold and mixed up all at once. Her name – had they Dursley’s gotten it wrong on purpose? She turned to glare at her aunt – who was now absent. Her hands were shaking.

“They lied to me about my name?” she asked, her voice soft and dangerous. Hagrid face rapidly made a transition from bewildered, to angry, to furious.

“Dursley!” he roared, standing suddenly, looking larger than ever. Not a sound was made upstairs. Thea continued to sit, struck dumb with shock and hurt. Her face must have looked something terrible, because when he looked at her, Hagrid stopped.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, seeming anxious. “Those ruddy muggles – I can’ believe it.” Thea swallowed and with great effort prevented herself from crying. It would do no good now.

“My parents,” she said, suddenly fearful, “their last name was Potter?”

“Yes – old family the Potters,” Hagrid said anxiously, still watching her as though she might fall to bits at any moment. “And good people. Yer’ named for one of them, yer mum and dad said.”

Thea nodded, though what she was agreeing to, she didn’t know. And then another thought occurred to her, and she frowned suddenly, glancing at Hagrid.

“How am I going to pay for everything?” she asked, trying to think ahead, to think of anything but her parents. She could probably force the Dursley’s to give some money to her – it was hardly theft really, she told herself, because now they employed someone to do some of the chores they had made her do for free. But before she could wander further down that path, Hagrid gave a weak chuckle and slapped his knee.

“Don't worry about that,” said Hagrid, “D'yeh think yer parents didn't leave yeh anything?” Thea glowed.

“But where?” she asked, imagining safes and trunks full of old clothes and books, and magic stuff.

“Why, Gringotts o course,” Hagrid said, “It’ll be the first stop fer us – it’s the Wizards' bank” Hagrid added hastily, seeing the confusion on her face.

“Wizards and witches have banks?” she asked, trying to imagine it, her face feeling a little more mobile.

“Just the one. Gringotts. Run by goblins.”

“Goblins?” she asked, genuinely astonished.

“Yeah -- so yeh'd be mad ter try an' rob it, I'll tell yeh that. Never mess with goblins, Iolanthe. Gringotts is the safest place in the world fer anything yeh want ter keep safe -- 'cept maybe Hogwarts. As a matter o' fact, I gotta visit Gringotts anyway. Fer Dumbledore. Hogwarts business.” Hagrid drew himself up proudly. “He usually gets me ter do important stuff fer him. Fetchin' you gettin' things from Gringotts -- knows he can trust me, see.” Thea made a mental note of that.

“Well,” Hagrid said, “no use in hanging about. D’yeh have everything you need?” She bit her lip.

“One minute,” she said, and bolted up the stairs and into her room, grabbing her rain jacket and the little wallet she now owned. Running back down, she the open the closet nearest to the front door and pulled on a pair of wellies.

“Okay!” she called. And ducking beneath the entryway to the sitting room, Hagrid appeared, and made his way through the hallway to meet her. He seemed even larger up close. As the emerged from the house, Thea frowned, and pulled up her hood. It was still pouring. And out parked by the curb was a motorbike, which Hagrid quickly sat on, making it look like a child’s toy. She stared.

“Well, come on, now,” he called. There was a sidecar that she supposed she was meant to sit in and she certainly wasn’t going to back down when all she’d wished for over the past year was to get away from the Dursleys. She stepped into it gingerly, and discovered to her delight that it was completely dry.

“It’s not wet!” she exclaimed, looking to Hagrid for an explanation. He beamed at her in response.

“Some very clever enchantments on this,” he said, rapping his massive fist against the handlebars. He revved the engine, and they were off. At first they drove slowly, but once on a main road it felt like they were flying.

“Not afraid of heights, are yeh?” he shouted. She shook her head, and then realizing he couldn’t see her shouted back.

“No!” As she watched, Hagrid pressed a button on the bike and it faded out of sight. Thea gasped. He pressed another, and then they began to rise off of the motorway and up near the clouds. They were really flying! She was astonished.

But quickly her thoughts turned to another matter, something that had been bubbling in the back of her mind ever since she had heard it – the matter of her name. She felt a kind of helpless fury at the thought that after everything else they had refused her, Petunia and Vernon hadn’t even called her by the name her parents had given her – and it was a magical name. Iolanthe sounded like the name of someone powerful, someone important. Someone who was not perpetually overlooked by everyone around her, like little Thea Potter. Iolanthe, Iolanthe, she repeated mentally. It sounded like an incantation. It sounded like the kind of witch that she wanted to be – the kind that she resolved to be. Iolanthe would be brave, and clever, and people would admire her. She would be the kind of person who didn’t need to raise her voice to have everyone hanging on it. And with the wind making a mess of her hair and the cold seeping into her bones Iolanthe Potter began to dream.

Though she knew that it took around an hour or two to get to London, depending on the traffic, it seemed that they arrived in half the time. And Hagrid soon landed and parked the motorbike on a relatively quiet commercial street.

“Alright,” he said, “close enough I suppose.” Absently, she realized that it had stopped raining as she scrambled out of the sidecar.

“This way,” Hagrid said, and she followed as he led them onto a bustling road lined with shops. Hagrid was so huge that he parted the crowd easily; all Iolanthe had to do was keep close behind him. They passed book shops and music stores, hamburger restaurants and cinemas, but nowhere that looked as if it could sell you a magic wand. This was just an ordinary street full of ordinary people and she felt her heart clench at the thought that this was all there was.

“Hagrid?” she called. He stopped and turned around to glance at her.

“Yeah?”

“Where are we going?” she asked. He chuckled.

“To Diagon Alley of course. We can get everything yeh need there,” he said, and it was with some relief that she saw the street they were on was certainly not called Diagon Alley.

“This is it,” said Hagrid, coming to a halt, “the Leaky Cauldron. It's a famous place.”

It was a tiny, grubby-looking pub. If Hagrid hadn't pointed it out, she probably wouldn’t have noticed it. Though funnily enough, no one else on the street seemed to either. The street was full of people hurrying by, but they hardly glanced at it, though now she saw that it looked rather out of place on the road. There was a big modern bookshop on one side and a record store on the other, but it almost looked as though people’s eyes slid from one store to the other as if they couldn’t even see the Leaky Cauldron – like Hagrid’s bike. Before she could decide if she should ask him about it (did they have ways of making things that only they could see?) Hagrid put a massive hand on her shoulder (she tried not to flinch) and he steered her towards the door. She only had the chance to take a deep breath, and then they were inside.

Chapter Text

Her immediate impression of the Leaky Cauldron was that it was awfully cosy for such a large pub. It had lots of dark wood, and a slightly smoky atmosphere, and it was a bit shabby.

A few old women were sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them was smoking a long pipe. A little man in a top hat was talking to the old bartender, who was quite bald and looked like a toothless walnut. The low buzz of chatter stopped when they walked in. Everyone seemed to know Hagrid; they waved and smiled at him, and the bartender reached for a glass, saying, “The usual, Hagrid?”

“Can't, Tom, I'm on Hogwarts business,” said Hagrid, clapping his great hand on her shoulder, causing her knees to buckle.

"Good Lord," said the bartender, peering at Iolanthe, "is this -- can this be --?" The Leaky Cauldron had suddenly gone completely still and silent.

Things went downhill from there – they were mobbed by a crowd of excited well-wishers, all of whom seemed incapable of reading what she thought must have been very clear ‘don’t touch me, stay away’ expression, and insisted on shaking her hand. There was a funny old man who had once bowed to her in a shop (that had earned her a box in the ears from her uncle once they were out of sight) and an old woman who insisted on touching her twice, which was ridiculous, and Hagrid merely beamed on the whole time as though this were normal before introducing her to a rather pathetic looking man in a turban who was, apparently, to be her professor.

He finally pushed his way through the crowd with her, insisting that they needed to get on with their shopping, but Iolanthe thought (uncharitably, she could admit) that he had liked the attention.

‘He usually gets me ter do important stuff fer him. Fetchin' you gettin' things from Gringotts -- knows he can trust me, see’ she remembered him saying, with a look of pride on his face. Perhaps this was like that. But she had hated it, had felt utterly overwhelmed by all the people in the pub trying to touch her, to thank her – for defeating someone who didn’t sound like he was actually dead. She shivered as the stood before a brick wall in the small courtyard behind the pub.

“Yeh cold?” Hagrid asked, looking at her with concern.

“No,” she said.

“Three up... two across” he muttered. “Right, stand back, Iolanthe.”

He tapped the wall three times with the point of his umbrella.

The brick he had touched quivered -- it wriggled -- in the middle, a small hole appeared -- it grew wider and wider -- a second later they were facing an archway large enough even for Hagrid, an archway onto a cobbled street that twisted and turned out of sight.

“Welcome," he said, “to Diagon Alley,” grinning at her amazement. Annoyed, she smoothed out her face, but she couldn’t repress the wonder and delight she felt at seeing the place – another world. Her world.

But she abandoned her attempt at stoicism quickly; there was so much to see! She wished she had about eight more eyes and turned her head in every direction, hardly paying attention to Hagrid’s attempt to steer her to whatever their first stop would be – and then they were standing before an imposing façade and she couldn’t take her eyes off of it. It was snowy white and towered over the other little shops, and a pair of massive, burnished bronze doors ensured that your eyes would travel up high enough to see more intricate carving near the roof that stood so far above its neighbours. And standing in front of them, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was –

“Yeah, that's a goblin,” said Hagrid quietly as they walked up the white stone steps toward him. The goblin was about a head shorter than Iolanthe, which was very small indeed. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, she noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as they walked inside.

Once there, she was surprised to discover that Hagrid had been in possession of the key to her vault. When she asked him about it, he told her that Professor Dumbledore had been in possession of it, and reminded her that he had been a friend of her parents. She supposed that made a kind of sense, but it was still odd to her that she had never met the man, if he had been so close to her parents that they would have given him a key to their bank vault. She did not voice this thought to Hagrid.

Soon they were taking rattling carts that hurtled through a maze of twisting passages deep underground to her vault, and to vault 713 to fetch ‘you-know-what’. Iolanthe thought it was a little funny that Hagrid was conducting secret business in front of her, but she also decided not to share this thought with him, which was probably for the best as he was looking rather green by the time they arrived at her vault and would probably not have been able to respond, anyway.

She was distracted by the gleam of the piles of precious metals that nearly blinded her as they opened the door to her vault after the green smoke that came billowing out cleared. Her gasp made Hagrid smile, though Griphook, the goblin, remained impassive.

“All yours,” smiled Hagrid. All Iolanthe’s -- it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much she cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to her, buried deep under London.

“How much will I need?” she asked. And then – “And how much is there?” School fees, equipment, clothing, probably more miscellaneous expenses once she was a little older – she tried to tally it all up mentally.

“Plenty, don’t worry about that,” Hagrid said. “They were an old family, the Potters, and yer parents left you enough to get you through school.”

“Yes but how much?” she asked again, looking to the goblin, whose lips curled into something that might be called a smile, by someone who had never seen what they were supposed to look like.

“The equivalent of one hundred sixty two thousand eight hundred eighty nine galleons, fifteen sickles and three knuts” said Griphook. Her jaw dropped, but she closed it quickly, trying to make sense of the sum. Hagrid had been confused about the exchange rate even if Galleons were worth only a pound, which seeing as they were made of gold, seemed impossible, she thought, even if they were only worth around five pounds…..

“So I can probably take out a little more to buy more books…” Iolanthe said, her voice trailing off suggestively. Hagrid looked flustered.

“Er,” he said, casting his gaze around, as though someone would appear to tell him what response to give.

“Withdrawals from your trust account are limited to ten thousand Galleons per annum,” Griphook said, examining his long, pointed fingernails. Iolanthe smiled and filled the money pouch she had been given with fistfuls of gold. Hagrid looked uneasy, but said nothing, and she felt a spark off irritation at his concern – it wasn’t as though she was going to run off and spend it all at once.

Next they stopped by vault 713 to fetch a small mysterious package, which Hagrid placed in one of the many pockets on his coat. Iolanthe longed to ask what it was but she knew that Hagrid wasn’t going to tell her outright. If she wanted to find out then it would have to be by other means.

One wild cart ride later they stood blinking in the sunlight outside Gringotts. Iolanthe didn't know where to run first now that she had a bag full of money.

“Might as well get yer uniform,” said Hagrid, nodding toward Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. “Listen, Iolanthe, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts.” Eager to escape her chaperonage, if only briefly, she quickly agreed. And entered Madam Malkin's shop alone, feeling nervous.

Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.

“Hogwarts, clear?” she said, when Iolanthe opened her mouth to speak. “Got the lot here -- another young man being fitted up just now, in fact.”

Iolanthe followed her to the back of the shop where a boy about her age face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Iolanthe on a stool next to him, and told her to raise her arms over head so that she could slip a long robe over her and begin to pin it to the right length.

After a moment of silence she looked at him curiously. He was very blonde, with a pale, pointed-face that managed to be nice looking, rather than ratty, like Piers’ had been. He was looking at her with similar interest, and she resisted the urge to smooth down her fringe.

"Hello," said the boy, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said Iolanthe.

"My father's next door buying my books, and Mother's up the street looking at wands. Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I think I'll bully father into getting me one, and I'll smuggle it in somehow. Have you got your own broom?"

He seemed a bit arrogant, with his bored, drawling voice, but as she scrutinized him Iolanthe supposed that he might only be a bit nervous and trying to hide it. She was.

"No," said Iolanthe, “not yet.”

“Play Quidditch at all?”

"No," Iolanthe said again, wishing she knew what he was talking about but unsure if she should let on that she didn’t.

“I do. Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. I'll need that new broom, though. I've got a Comet Two-Sixty right now, top of the line, but it's not a racing broom like Nimbus or even Cleansweep by any means. I don't see why first years aren't allowed brooms. It's just not fair.”

Iolanthe nodded and hummed, not really knowing enough to disagree.

“Know what house you'll be in yet?”

“No,” said Iolanthe, “though the man who collected me seemed to think that I’d be in the same as my parents.”

The boy looked at her sharply.

“Really?” he asked, “and where were they?”

“Gryffindor, he said” she told him. He looked as nonplussed as she felt.

“But didn’t they tell you?” he asked.

“They’re dead,” she replied, looking away. There was a long moment of silence during which neither the boy, Iolanthe, nor Madam Malkin, nor her assistant knew what to say.

“I’m sorry,” the boy said, and when she turned to face him he seemed to mean it. “I guess at our age, with the war – I mean – ” he broke off again. Slowly, she nodded. He seemed to mean it.

“What about you?” she said quietly. “Where do you think you’ll be?” He looked relieved, and a little grateful at the change in subject.

“Well, no one really knows until they get there,” he said, “But I know I'll be in Slytherin; all our family have been. Oh, I’m Draco, by the way, Draco Malfoy.”

“Nice to meet you, Draco,” she said, offering him a smile. “I’m Iolanthe Potter.” There was another beat of silence during which it became evidence that both Draco and Madam Malkin knew exactly who she was, just like all those horrid people in the pub, and it was with panic that Iolanthe saw Madam Malkin’s open mouth and excited eyes, before Draco picked up the thread of conversation, as though they hadn’t all been stunned by her name.

“It’s very nice to meet you too,” he said hurriedly, adding, “may I call you Iolanthe?” a little slower. She smiled at him, grateful that he was pretending that nothing was wrong.

“Of course,” she said. He grinned back at her, and she saw that he actually looked quite nice when he smiled.

“Oh my goodness, me,” Madam Malkin began, before Draco cut her off again.

“Anyway, you ought to consider Slytherin, it’s the best house,” he told her eagerly, and seemed inordinately pleased when she smiled and said that she would. He was actually a bit full of himself, as it turned out, and was happily chatting to her about his family’s mansion in Wiltshire, which only required her to nod and smile occasionally when his eyes widened and he broke off suddenly.

“I say, look at that man!” he said, nodding to the window. Hagrid loomed there, cheerfully waving and pointing at the ice creams he held to indicate that he couldn’t come in. Iolanthe felt guiltily for wishing him gone – he was really quite nice even if he was sometimes a bit – frustrating.

“His name is Hagrid,” she said, “and he’s the one who collected me from my Aunt and Uncle’s.”

“Oh, is that where you live?” Draco asked. Iolanthe nodded, her expressing souring. Draco seemed to understand because he changed the subject again.

“I think I’ve heard about him,” Draco said, “Isn’t he a servant of some kind?”

“I suppose so,” Iolanthe said, “he said he kept the keys and grounds.”

“Why do you suppose they sent him to collect you?” Draco asked, sounding puzzled. “Surely a professor would have been better.” Iolanthe was wondering the same thing – unless they were all like Quirrel, in which case she supposed they would have probably been worse.

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “Is that what they normally do?”

“Oh yes,” Madam Malkin said, “usually Minerva McGonagall takes in the muggleborns, I see her quite often in my shop, bringing them in for their first pair of robes.” She seemed pleased to have contributed. Draco’s face screwed up like he had smelled something foul.

“Well, you’re not a muggleborn,” he said to Iolanthe, as though that were a point in her favor.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a muggleborn, young man,” Madame Malkin said, her voice rather frosty. Draco rolled his eyes; he obviously disagreed.

“What’s a muggleborn?” Iolanthe asked, a little nervous. Draco looked appalled, but seemed to check himself.

“Someone whose parents aren’t – er, our sort, you know?” he said, eyeing her carefully. That did sound rather unpleasant Iolanthe conceded.

“I suppose that would be pretty awful,” she said, frowning, “I mean, my aunt and uncle are pretty unpleasant, but at least they aren’t my parents!”

“You live with muggles!” Draco said, appalled. She nodded. This seemed a perfectly appropriate response to her, but Madam Malkin shot him a look that clearly indicated that she disagreed. Draco seemed simultaneously fascinated and horrified.

“What – what are they like?” he asked, his eyes wide. She made a face, unsure of how to respond.

“It’s disgraceful that you live with them,” he said, clearly outraged at the thought. That was interesting – was there some sort of rule against it?

“I don’t think I have any other living relatives,” she said, “or at least – none I’ve ever met.”

“You must!” he insisted, gesticulating wildly. The assistant who had been pinning up his robes tugged at their hem in a fruitless attempt to get him to stand still – she hadn’t gotten any work done since Iolanthe had begun her conversation with the boy. He was a bit dramatic, she supposed.

But before she could answer, Madam Malkin said, "That's you done, my dear," and Iolanthe sighed and hopped down from the footstool.

“Um,” she said, glancing at Hagrid again, “I guess I’ll see you at school?”

“Yes,” Draco said eagerly, and then cleared his throat. “I’ll look for you at the station,” he added, in a slightly different, deeper voice.

The ice cream that Hagrid had brought her was delicious, and she devoured it quickly as they went to buy quills and parchment – she was going to need to practice writing again, she realized, rather gloomily. Then they bought her school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. She managed to buy a few extra books when Hagrid was distracted talking to a cheerful looking redhead he called Charlie about dragons, of all things, including the book of curses he had told her she wasn’t allowed to get. She had also purchased a book called Hogwarts, a History which she was hoping would explain everything she’d need to know to fit in with the other students, the ones who hadn’t lived with Muggles.

It was a funny word, Muggles. Funny, and yet oddly appropriate.

After stopping at the Apothecary, they went to a shop that sold magical luggage to get her a trunk. This time there was no way to buy the trunk she wanted without Hagrid noticing, but she was able to convince him that she should be able to get the more expensive one because of the superior featherlight charm on it. The salesman was happy to do the majority of the browbeating but she was still annoyed at having to justify her purchase to a groundskeeper at her school – as though he were some kind of authority on how she spent the money her parents had left her.

And soon, all that was left was to buy her wand – the thing she had been anticipating the most. She could hear her heart thudding as Hagrid directed them toward Ollivanders, which was apparently the best place for wands, according to Hagrid.

The shop, like the Leaky Cauldron, was rather shabby, but it had an additional layer of dust that the pub had lacked. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single, spindly chair that Hagrid sat on to wait. She felt strangely as though he had entered a very strict library, and with great effort, swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to her and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling. The back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.

“Good afternoon,” said a soft voice, and Iolanthe jumped. Hagrid must have jumped, too, because there was a loud crunching noise and he got quickly off the spindly chair.

An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.

"Good afternoon," she parroted back, eyeing him with uncertainty.

“Ah yes," said the man. "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Iolanthe Potter.” It wasn't a question. “You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work.”

Mr. Ollivander moved closer to Iolanthe and she met his eyes determinedly, though she found him a bit creepy.

“Your father, on the other hand, favoured a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favoured it -- it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course.”

Things only became more portentous from there. She found out that Mr. Ollivander had sold the wand that had killed her parents – and had nearly killed her. And worse, after discarding what must have been hundreds of boxes, the one that had felt so deliciously right in her hands,the beautiful holly and phoenix feather wand was a brother to the wand that had belonged to the Dark Lord – to Voldemort.

“Yes,” Ollivander said, fixing her with those silver eyes. She shivered. “… thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember.... I think we must expect great things from you, Miss. Potter.... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things – terrible, yes, but great.”

Great and terrible, she thought, storing the words away for future contemplation. Mr. Ollivander had turned away to box up her wand, and when he turned back to hand it to her she made sure her face was composed.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No need to thank me, Miss Potter. The wand always finds its witch or wizard. That will be seven Galleons.” She handed them over, and walked out of the shop with Hagrid. She was reassured by his unflappability in the face of whatever it was that had happened in the wand shop.

He mentioned they had time to have dinner before he would put her on the train back to the Dursley’s, a prospect she was dreading now that she had been told, if only in passing, that she wasn’t supposed to use magic outside of school most of the time – though that was vague enough, she thought, tilting her head slightly, that she might be able to act as though she hadn’t understood the rules. Hagrid had only mentioned it in a passing conversation, after all.

As they neared the Leaky Cauldron, another thought occurred to her. She stopped suddenly.

“Hagrid?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“My letter said I could have a pet,” she said, her eyes very wide and hopeful. He chuckled.

“Aye, that yeh can,” he said, stroking his beard. “Blimey! I had forgotten. Yeh should get an owl,” he told her. “They’re dead useful – carry yer mail and everything. Don’t get a toad, toads went outta fashion years ago, yeh'd be laughed at - an' I don' like cats, they make me sneeze.” She didn’t much like cats either, when it came down to it. Not after having to see Mrs. Figg’s for all those years.

She was still smiling when he helped her on to the train that would take her back to the Dursleys, and couldn’t stop glancing at her beautiful snowy owl, who was attracting a lot of odd stares. She ignored them all, and smiled at Hagrid to say goodbye. He handed her an envelope with her ticket for Hogwarts, and soon she was waving goodbye as her train pulled out and even his massive frame faded into the distance. She realized that her nose, pressed up against the glass, had gone cold; it was raining again.

Chapter Text

Iolanthe woke up at the crack of dawn on September 1st. She scrambled out of bed, grinning so widely it hurt. The trunk she had purchased was mostly packed and as she got ready for the day she quickly stuffed the last of the things she would need inside of it, admiring its glossy surface as she buckled it closed.

She had asked Hagrid if people wore their robes to the train, and after looking perplexed for a moment he had answered that they had to blend in with the muggles - they would change on the train. With that in mind, she had decided to wear her favorite dress to the station, with a cardigan in case it was cold, and she brushed her hair extra carefully, hoping to get it to behave, before giving up and tying it back. She looked at herself in the mirror. She didn't look particularly impressive, or anything like the heroine everyone apparently thought she was, but she did look nice. Pretty even.

She had debated about making the Dursleys take her to the station but had decided that she didn't want to be seen with them. Her trunk had been charmed light enough that she thought she could manage it.

She dragged it down the stairs with a little difficulty (it was very light, no doubt thanks to magic, but still quite large) and left it by the door. She was just in the middle of eating the breakfast she had made for herself when her aunt entered the kitchen. She had a funny expression on her face - one Iolanthe couldn't quite make out.

"So you're leaving, then," she said.

"Yes," Iolanthe replied, taking another bite of toast.

"How are you getting there?" Her aunt was meeting her eyes for the first time in ages.

"The train to London," she replied.

"And how are you getting there?" Petunia asked.

"I can walk to the bus. I've mapped it all out," she said, pleased. It had taken a little while to find all the necessary information and time tables but she had done it.

Her aunt sniffed.

"The neighbors will think it’s funny," her aunt said. "I'll drive you."

"To London?" Iolanthe asked, surprised.

"To the Whinging station," her aunt said. "If we leave now we'll get there before Vernon might need the car." Iolanthe glanced at her breakfast. She was almost finished.

"All right then," she said. "Er, thank you?"

Her aunt merely sniffed and went to make herself a cup of tea.

The car ride to the station was conducted in awkward silence, but fortunately it was only ten minutes long. Her aunt helped her get her trunk out of the car and take it to the station platform. There weren't a great many people around, but Petunia looked at them nervously, as though they might recognize her and reprimand her for putting her eleven year old niece on a train to London alone.

"Do you have a ticket?" she asked suddenly, her hand fluttering up to her chest.

"Yes, I went and bought one yesterday," Iolanthe said, looking at her sideways. She didn't quite know what to make of this behavior from Petunia.

"Fine," she said, staring resolutely ahead. They stood in awkward silence for a few minutes until a voice over the speakers announced the train would be arriving shortly.

"Will you be coming home for the holidays?" she asked suddenly. Iolanthe was surprised for a moment.

"Do I have a choice?" she asked.

"Yes," her aunt said, glancing down at her suddenly with a frown on her face. "One year - yes, they let you stay for the holidays if you want to," she rushed out.

"When then I will, probably," Iolanthe said. They heard the sound of the train approaching and watched it pull in.

"London, Kings Cross!" a conductor called.

"Right then, er, goodbye" Iolanthe said. This might have been the most civil conversation she could remember having with her aunt in recent memory - and one of the only ones she hadn't initiated.

"Need help with that trunk, Miss?" the conductor asked.

"Yes please," Iolanthe said, and followed it aboard. As she did, she glanced back at her aunt. Petunia was looking at her, but her mind seemed very far away.

"Is your mum not coming?" the conductor asked, and she felt a wave of irritation.

"That's not my mother," she said. "I'm meeting my mother in London, at the station."

"All right then!" the conductor said, and she took a seat, and then they were off.

Wrestling her trunk down from the train herself wasn't easy, but with the help of another passenger she managed, and she got rid of them with another fib, about meeting her school friend's family by track nine. The woman who had helped her shot her a dubious look, but clearly was in too much of a hurry to make a fuss, because she ran off in the direction of a last call for York.

It was nearly ten, and the train left at eleven, but the strangeness of her ticket (Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, it said) meant that she was feeling a little unsure of her ability to find it. She fetched a cart and managed to get all of her baggage onto it, and set off in the direction of Platform Nine. She reached it. There was no sign of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. She walked on to Platform Ten and looked around. Nothing.

At this point, she began to feel rather anxious, and took a deep breath to try and calm herself. She had time, she told herself. And she supposed she could always try and ask a conductor, but she sort of doubted they would be able to help her. Turning her cart around, she began to walk slowly back in the direction of Platform Nine.

It was then that she spotted the vulture. The bird was, as a matter of fact, dead, and presumably stuffed. And it was attached to the hat of an imposing looking woman wearing a stiff dress that had probably been fashionable about a century ago, by her estimation. She had one hand clenched on the shoulder of a nervous looking blonde boy with round cheeks and a toad, clutched in one hand.

Iolanthe smiled. She watched as they walked approached Platform Ten rapidly, the boy tripping over his feet, and then they walked directly up to a large brick pillar and vanished. She blinked. From her vantage point, she supposed they could just be standing quite close to it, and she resigned herself to asking the for help, but when she pushed her cart the few yards between them and turned it around she found that no one was there.

“I’m sorry, but are you going to go?” a voice came from behind her. She turned to see a young boy about her age with curly blond hair and two smartly dressed adults behind him.

“Are you Hogwarts too?” she asked, addressing the boy, rather than his father, and ruthlessly suppressing her urge to apologize, or hide.

“Yes,” he said, tone polite. “Justin Finch-Fletchley.”

“I’m Iolanthe,” she said, hesitating half a second before asking, “Do you know how to get through, then?”

The boy looked mildly surprised, but replied.

“Yes, Professor McGonagall explained it all when she visited.” Iolanthe grimaced.

“I haven’t met her, unfortunately,” she said. “Um, would you mind….?” The boy, who she had perhaps judged prematurely based on his father’s slightly snooty tone, gave her a cautiously friendly smile and told her

“You just walk through the pillar, apparently. Frightfully odd, I thought, but quite clever really, in its own way.”

“Well, thank you,” she told him, giving a polite smile of her own and pushing her cart through the barrier, before following it through.

A scarlet steam engine was waiting next to a platform packed with people and she took in the sight with amazement. It seemed much more old-fashioned than the neon-painted one at platform ten, like something out of an old children’s book, and all around people were wearing clothes that definitely would have stood out on the platform. As she looked around, she grinned a little to see a sign overhead said Hogwarts Express, Eleven O'clock, and when she turned back to see Justin and his parents enter the platform, she saw that from this side there was a wrought-iron archway where the barrier had been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it.

The noise was incredible, she thought, listening to the noise from the engine, the chattering crowd, and observing the chaos as cats of every colour wound here and there between their legs and owls hooted to one another in a disgruntled sort of way over the babble and the scraping of heavy trunks.

It looked like she had estimated correctly that she would be on the earlier side of things, because though there were plenty of people around, quite a few of them were just milling and chatting rather than making any effort to board the scarlet train. She decided she had better start moving before it became obvious that she had come alone, and began pushing her cart towards the front of the train, where she could see a few faces peering out of the windows.

She passed the blonde boy with the toad and the old woman in the vulture hat, who seemed to be in the middle of giving a speech to him – something about upholding the family reputation. He didn’t seem to be happy to hear it, judging from the expression on his face. She felt irritatingly shy when she saw groups of older teens, chatting eagerly in groups, and was painfully reminded that she had never had friends before.

After being helped with her luggage by a kind faced girl with long curly hair who was already in her school uniform, Iolanthe faced the unpleasant prospect of finding a seat.

The train was divided up into fairly roomy compartments, plenty of which were nearly empty at this stage, and she decided to be a coward and take one of those, rather than having to ask other students if she could sit with them. Choosing one close to the middle, she lifted her owl, now named Hedwig after a witch from her History of Magic book, up onto the rack. Hedwig hooted in disapproval from within her cage. She did not appreciate traveling. Or at least, not by train.

Then Iolanthe looked doubtfully at her trunk. It wasn’t that heavy, but it was awfully big. She was quite worried that she would simply fall over if she tried to get it onto the rack while standing on the seat. Not for the first time, she wished she were taller.

A nice looking boy in a mustardy sweater stuck his head in, and looked startled to see her.

“Oh, sorry, I thought this one was empty,” he said, making to close the door. Then he paused, looking a little sheepish. “First year at Hogwarts?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, looking directly at him. From her vantage point on the seat she was a little taller than he was, which was a depressing reflection on their respective heights.

“Well, welcome!” he said, “I’m Cedric Diggory, from Hufflepuff. Best house, really,” he added with a wink. The corners of her mouth turned up a little, and he smiled back at her. “Do you want some help with that?” he asked, nodding to her trunk, which was currently on the seat beside her. She didn’t want help, but she did probably need it, she thought, and the next person who came along might not be so helpful. Or tall.

“Yes, please,” she said, and stepped down from the seat. He managed to get it up on the rack without too much trouble and stepped down, brushing his hands on his trousers as he grinned at her.

“So what’s your name?” he asked.

“Um. Iolanthe. Iolanthe Potter,” she said, her chin dipping slightly. He looked surprised.

“Merlin, really?” he said, looking embarrassed. “Sorry, that was rude of me.” He looked as though he wanted to ask her more questions.

“Well, anyway, enjoy the ride!” he said instead, adding, “I met some of my best friends on my first trip to Hogwarts. Good luck!” She had to smile at him – he was really just too nice, and even though she didn’t think she wanted to end up in Hufflepuff it certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if everyone was like him.

The next person to stick their head in her compartment was Draco, and with him were two other boys, one of whom was rather large.

“Hello!” Draco said, looking very pleased with himself as he stood with one hand on the door to the compartment.

“Hi,” she said, looking at the boys behind him. He walked in, dragging his trunk with him, and the larger boy followed, while the other one, who was a bit stringy looking, hovered in the doorway.

“This is Vincent Crabbe,” Draco said, jerking his chin at the large boy, “and that’s Theo Nott.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if it was. As Vincent and Draco got Draco’s trunk up on the luggage rack opposite to her, Theo slunk in and muttered something that sounded like

“Wing gardium Leviousa” and his trunk shakily floated up. Draco looked slightly envious, opened his mouth, but said nothing as he took the seat opposite to her.

“So, how was the rest of your summer?” he asked.

The four of them sat together for the rest of the train ride, though a number of people popped their heads in during the ride, including a girl named Pansy who had joined them, and seemed just as fond of talking about herself as Draco did, and even more interested in what Draco had to say than Draco was. Crabbe, from what Iolanthe could tell, wasn’t very interesting, or very intelligent. And Theo seemed kind of uninterested in talking with any of them, only occasionally looking up from the book that he had produced as soon as the train started moving. The trip didn’t seem that long, though the light had faded by the time a voice echoed through the train.

“We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately,” it said. They had previously taken off their jackets or cardigans and put their robes on over them and so they all crowded to the window to watch the scenery slowing as they pulled into the station. As they pushed their way out onto the platform Iolanthe heard a familiar voice.

“Firs' years! Firs' years over here!” Hagrid’s big hairy face was easily visible above the crowd of students.

“C'mon, follow me -- any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me.”

They all stumbled down a steep narrow path as they followed Hagrid in the dark through the trees. It was rather cold, and Iolanthe begin to shiver slightly. Nobody spoke much. And then the narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black take. Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers. There were gasps as it came into sight, but she was too spellbound to make any sound at all.

“No more'n four to a boat!” Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. Their cabin had gotten separated in all of the bustle, and only Draco had remained with her but he eagerly claimed a boat and helped her into it, in a slightly weird and old fashioned way, before taking his own seat, he was craning his neck, looking for his other friends, she supposed, when two boys approached their boat. One of them was Justin, from the station.

“Mind if we join you?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said, before Draco could offend somebody else. He’d managed very well to irritate at least four students on the train.

“Thank you,” said the other boy, and she cringed when his reaction to her name as they introduced himself. Apparently, the other boy, Ernie Macmillan, was from an old wizarding family, and Draco was happy enough to imply with the little subtlety as he was capable of that Ernie was a disgrace to wizarding kind and should go drown himself in the lake because he was gawping like a peasant.

It did make their boat ride uncomfortably quiet, but on the plus side, she suspected Ernie (and Justin, for that matter) wouldn’t be asking her about if she remembered any details about her parents’ murder.

Draco was still attached to her side when they entered the side chamber where they had been told to wait until the same Professor McGonagall who hadn’t visited her would lead them into the Great Hall, and as he was happily insulting the boys from their boat in an undertone she evaluated him quietly. He had been rather rude to a ginger boy who had stuck his head into their compartment, as well as a bushy haired girl who had been helping someone called Neville look for a toad, and she wasn’t quite as thrilled at the prospect of being friends with him has she had been when she had first met him. His habit of being nasty to anyone who asked her uncomfortable questions was sort of endearing, but she hoped it wasn’t indicative of how he treated everyone, always, because if so, she suspected it was only a matter of time before he was calling her names.

Before she could think about it more, Professor McGonagall returned.

“Now, form a line,” Professor McGonagall told the first years, “and follow me.”

Her heart pounding in her ears, Iolanthe got into line behind Draco, managing to end up next to the bushy haired girl from the train, who seemed infinitely preferable to Crabbe – or the other large boy who had been accompanying him when Draco had spotted him and waved him over. They all walked out of the chamber, back across the grand entrance, and into the Great Hall.

It was more magnificent than she could have imagined, even with the few sketches and ample descriptions in Hogwarts, A History. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Iolanthe looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars.

The girl behind her whispered “It’s bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.” Iolanthe turned to smile at her, still dazzled.

“But it’s so much realer!” she whispered. Indeed, it was hard to believe there was a ceiling there at all, and that the Great Hall didn't simply open on to the heavens. The few whispers and murmurs from the first-years and the other students quieted immediately as Professor McGonagall placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard's hat – the Sorting Hat. From Draco’s description she had expected it to look a little more impressive! For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then the hat twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth -- and the hat began to sing.

She listened carefully as it did, her mind racing. All of the Houses clearly had something to recommend them, despite what people had said about Hufflepuff, but she couldn’t imagine which one she belonged in. She knew she was smart enough, and had gotten good marks in school once the Dursley’s had lost control over her, but she didn’t think she was unusually studious, or concerned all that much with wit and learning. She wasn’t swot even if some of the students at her primary had called her one. Hufflepuffs did seem nice, she thought, as Susan Bones joined Hannah Abbott there – she thought she could see the boy who had helped her with her trunk on the train at their table. But she didn’t think she belonged with a group of people who were all patient.

Justin Finch-Fletchley went to Hufflepuff.

Sometimes, she noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but at others it took a little while to decide. “Finnigan, Seamus,” a sandy-haired boy who had run up exuberantly to the hat, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.

“Granger, Hermione!” was called and the girl behind her walked up eagerly and jammed the hat on her head. Iolanthe liked her name – Gryffindor was for people with daring, nobility, and chivalry, or something like it, she thought. Those were impressive qualities, she supposed, and she had always wanted to be brave. But was she?

“GRYFFINDOR” the hat called, after another long pause, and Hermione Granger trotted happily off to her new house.

Draco, not exactly the most unbiased person she had met, seemed set on Slytherin – did she really want to spend seven years with him, or with people like him? She supposed she was sort of cunning, in a way – she was a good liar, she thought. But that didn’t seem like the kind of quality encouraged by school systems, not matter how magical.

When his name was called, he swaggered up to the hat, which barely touched his head before it called out “SLYTHERIN” and Theo Nott soon joined him.

Sally-Anne Perks went to Hufflepuff, and then her name was called.

“Potter, Iolanthe!”

Iolanthe walked up to the sorting hat with a strange sort of calm. She heard the whispers that had broken out all around the room as soon as her name had been mentioned, but hardly knew what to feel about them. She could hear her heart clearly, and its beat was almost steady. Almost. The brim of the hat slid over her eyes and she found focusing on its interior darkness sort of soothing, in a way.

“Hmm,” said a small voice in her ear. “Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There's talent, oh my goodness, yes -- and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting.... So where shall I put you?” So she was difficult then – she thought. She had repeatedly considered her own self, but couldn’t really come up with a clear picture of what she was like – she had hardly had the chance to figure that out yet. And then she remembered Ollivander’s dim and dusty shop, and his speculative gaze when her wand had chosen her. “You could be great, you know,” the hat told her, evidently seeing her thoughts, “it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that – and so, if that’s what you want… then you had better go to SLYTHERIN!”

As soon as the hat called its last word aloud, a great hush came over the hall, before cheers and claps came from the green and silver table. A quick glance told her that everyone was shocked, as though they had already known were she would go (Gryffindor probably, she assumed) and were unhappy with the result. Too bad, she thought. The thought of being surrounded by those who were full of ‘daring, nerve, and chivalry’ paled in comparison with the promise of greatness, and real friends. She placed the hat back on the stool and walked calmly to the table under the green and silver hangings. As she drew nearer, she saw Draco grinning widely at her. He shoved one of the boys next to him aside to make room for her and she took the place he had made.

"Good shout, Potter," he said, "I knew you belonged with us." It was hard not to appreciate such obvious pleasure at her company and she found herself smiling back at him.

"You might have been the only one," she said quietly, as Thomas, Dean went to Gryffindor.

"We Malfoys are rarely wrong," he said, and she stifled a laugh.

Pansy Parkinson, a girl with a face a bit like a pug, was eyeing her with more dislike than curiosity, and Iolanthe resolved to do something about it. People like that were hard to shake off once they thought you were a victim, and she had enough of being picked on to last a lifetime.

The other girls seemed to be more cautious, and were friendly enough, particularly a very pretty blonde girl named Daphne Greengrass, who kept up a light conversation going throughout their walk back down to their dormitories. Draco and Theo seemed alright, but it would be nice if she liked some of the girls in her house.

The feast had been delicious, but after it finished, Professor Dumbledore made some very strange, enigmatic comments, during which he had once looked, very briefly, directly at her, and they sang the school song, which seemed to be more of a joke than anything else (particularly as two identical redheaded Gryffindors had taken the opportunity to show off their talent for funeral dirges. Then it had come time for them to be led to their dormitories, which Malfoy assured her were the best in the castle, though he’d never actually seen any of them, as Theo forced him to admit.

The Slytherin dorms were located in the dungeons (Iolanthe was beginning to regret her decision) but she changed her mind immediately upon seeing the Common Room. It was a massive, long room with a low ceiling made of the same rough stone as the walls, and the whole place was bathed in a green light that she found strangely familiar. A fire was crackling under an elaborately carved mantelpiece ahead of them, and several Slytherins were silhouetted around it in carved chairs. They were under the Great Lake, she realized suddenly, as a shoal of fish moved past a series of oddly coloured windows.

They were given a slightly long-winded and blatantly biased speech about how great Slytherin was, and also some of the house rules and policies they needed to follow, and then they were finally told to go up to bed. Their trunks had already been placed at the feet of one of six massive, four-poster beds with green silk hangings and the six girls quickly changed into their pajamas and collapsed into them with great relief. The last thing Iolanthe could remember feeling was a faint sense of surprise – she had never known she’d liked the color green so much.

Chapter Text

The first week of school seemed to go by in a blur – there was so much to take in, so many halls and passageways to memorize, so many names to remember, so many lessons to learn.

Hogwarts was strange. She supposed some part of that came from being added to and changed over nine long centuries - but there were secret passageways, trick stairs, doors that opened to walls, walls that were hiding doors, portraits that talked (some of them helpful, some of them horrid), the castle ghosts (including the Bloody Baron, who was the Slytherin ghost, and who everyone was more of less terrified of). She had never considered herself particularly good with directions, and she wasn’t, not really, but Tracey Davis turned out to be, and so she had quickly decided to encourage the other girl to join her and Daphne on their explorations of the castle.

Her invitation had the added benefit of leaving sour-faced Pansy with only the largely noncommunicative Millicent Bulstrode for company, as the only other Slytherin first year, Anabel Runcorn, was best friends with a second year girl and only socialized with the first years when her friend Ursula wasn’t available. It had become obvious to Iolanthe that Pansy was jealous of her fame, and Draco’s interest in her. Daphne, who Pansy didn’t seem to like very much either, had told her that Pansy’s mother was a social climber who had probably already told her daughter that marrying Draco Malfoy, who was apparently fantastically rich, should be a goal.

She, Iolanthe, thought this seemed rather stupid, but it was becoming apparent that Hogwarts had a number of students who were the equivalent of magical aristocracy and from her few forays into fiction and Aunt Petunia’s interest in the gossip pages of newspapers, she guessed that some of the rules were probably the same. Luckily, it appeared that Daphne at least, was definitely a member of the upper-crust, and Iolanthe only needed to imitate her manners in order to appear that she had never lived among muggles herself, a set of circumstances made easier by the fact that though Tracey’s mother was a witch, her father was a muggle, and so she hadn’t mixed much with wizarding society either.

“Mother’s family weren’t very happy about the marriage,” she confided to Iolanthe during one of their after-dinner wanderings. “So we don’t mix with them much anymore.” Based on her own experiences with muggles, Iolanthe thought she could imagine why, but said nothing, in the interest of tact.

It soon became apparent that most of their teacher had not expected them to read their course books over the summer, like Iolanthe had. It also became apparent that most of them didn’t expect very much success from their first attempts at spellcasting, and so Iolanthe had earned Slytherin House seven points by the time that their final class of the week arrived, in the addition to the admiration or envy of some of her classmates.

…

Professor Severus Snape, their head of house, was nearly universally loathed by all those who didn’t wear silver and green, and while he had seemed rather forbidding in his brief initial address to the first years, Iolanthe didn’t entirely understand why until they had their first potions class.

It was held in the dungeons, so Iolanthe and Daphne and a girl named Tracey Davis hadn’t bothered carrying their books with them to Defense Against the Dark Arts, which they’d had in the morning. The whole thing had been incredibly disappointing for Iolanthe because she’d been really looking forward to the class, and had already practiced a few mild hexes and had looked up the incantation for the shield charm, even if it was though it proved to be totally beyond her abilities at that point in time. But Professor Quirrell had been a joke. He stuttered over his every word, did nothing more than deliver a vague and uninteresting lecture on how they all ought to be on guard for the Dark Forces that Lurked Everywhere. She had a terrible headache by the time the class was done.

Considering that Iolanthe was beginning to suspect that about a third of her house had at least one relation who could probably counted among those ‘Dark Forces’, she wasn’t surprised to find that she wasn’t the only one who thought him pathetic.

“What a joke, honestly,” was Daphne’s assessment after they were out of earshot. “I think my sister’s more frightening than he is.”

“My father says standards at Hogwarts have been slipping for years,” Draco had interjected, startling the girls, who hadn’t realized he’d caught up with them. Draco talked about his father a lot. The fact that nobody in Slytherin, not even the upper years, ever called him out on it told Iolanthe that Draco was probably not far off in his assessment of his father’s importance.

She didn’t really mind him, she supposed, but he’d acquired a second large, dim lackey in the shape of one Gregory Goyle, and she didn’t much like him or Vincent Crabbe, when it came down to it. When she and the other girls entered the dungeon where Potions class was held, she almost groaned.

“I’d forgotten we had it with the Gryffindors,” she muttered to Daphne instead, and the other girl snickered. She had gotten the impression that there was a more than healthy rivalry between the two houses – though whether it had been running since Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor’s falling out centuries ago she was not sure. Nevertheless, during her admittedly brief exposure to the Gryffindor students it had become apparent that some of the students already held resentments for the other house.

As she, Daphne, and Tracey walked uncertainly further into the dark potions classroom, there was a brief moment of awkwardness when the three of them realized that it was two to a table.

“Are you going to move?” a blonde Gryffindor asked from behind them. She had the good grace to blush when Iolanthe shot her an unimpressed look.

“Eventually,” Daphne said, before turning around again.

“Potter!”

She sighed internally at the sound of his voice.

“Let Greengrass and Davis sit together and you can share my table,” Draco said, already pushing Crabbe out of the seat he’d taken. After exchanging a quick look with the other girls, she moved to do so. When Pansy, Millicent, and Anabel Runcorn walked in a minute later, Pansy shot her a nasty look but said nothing. She would definitely need to do something about her soon, Iolanthe thought. She didn’t want Pansy thinking that she was some kind of doormat. She turned her attention back to Draco, who was keeping up a monologue on the injustice of keeping first years from playing on the house teams.

Dean Thomas and the redheaded boy Draco hated, Weasley, staggered in just before class was due to start, along with another boy she didn’t know, and then they all were seated. Professor Snape had yet to appear. And then it became apparent that his absence was because he had been waiting to make a dramatic entrance, which he did in due fashion, striding in from what she assumed was his office and shutting the door to it with a snap of his wand.

“Vincent Crabbe,” he intoned. A beat.

“Ugh, here?” Crabbe said, looking momentarily confused. He took role, like Flitwick, but unlike in Flitwick’s class, they sat in total silence as he did so. He did not pause over her name but she thought he rushed, ever so slightly, onto the next one. As soon as he had finished, he banished the roll to some drawer in the desk he stood behind and paused.

“You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking,” Professor Snape began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word. “As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses.... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even stopper death -- if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.”

Well, that was certainly an interesting sort of introduction.

“Who,” he asked suddenly, “can tell me what I would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” The Draught of Living Death, she thought. A girl with lots of bushy hair – it was Hermione, she realized – shot her hand into the air with a speed that seemed more than natural.

Snape ignored her entirely, making a show of looking about the room, lingering on their faces.

“Miss Potter?” he asked. As their eyes met, she felt as though he was judging her on more than her answer.

“The Draught of Living Death, Sir” she responded quietly. It had been in the (admittedly, long and slightly boring) introduction to Magical Drafts and Potions. He raised a single eyebrow.

“Correct. One point to Slytherin,” he said, changing directions with a swoop of his cloak. “Who can tell me where I ought to look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

The Gryffindor girl still had her hand up in the air.

“….Mr. Finnegan,” he said, softly.

Professor Snape seemed to have a knack for knowing who to call on (or not to call on) because each Slytherin he called on got their question correct, and the two Gryffindor’s he called (neither of them the overeager Hermione) did not. They were then placed into pairs and Snape set them to mixing up a simple potion to cure boils, while sweeping around and criticizing almost every pair, with the exception of Draco and Iolanthe.

He was just telling everyone to look at the perfect way Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs when clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing filled the dungeon. The round-faced boy with the toad, who was called Neville, had somehow managed to melt Seamus's cauldron into a twisted blob, and their potion was seeping across the stone floor, burning holes in people's shoes. Within seconds, the whole class was standing on their stools while Neville, who had been drenched in the potion when the cauldron collapsed, moaned in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.

“Idiot boy!” snarled Snape, clearing the spilled potion away with one wave of his wand. “I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?” Neville whimpered as boils started to pop up all over his nose but Snape showed not an ounce of sympathy for his obviously agonized student.

“Take him up to the hospital wing,” Snape spat at one of the Gryffindors.

She and Draco earned five points for Slytherin for their perfect potion. Snape hardly looked at her as he awarded them. She filed that away mentally and resolved to think on it later. After all, the weekend was approaching.

…

Hogwarts didn’t instantly become home, like she had secretly hoped it would. For one thing, the constant stares and whispers that followed her everywhere for the first few weeks made her deeply uncomfortable, a fact that Draco seemed incapable of understanding, and perhaps even slightly envious of.

“I don’t see why it bothers you so much,” he said one night in the Common Room, where the first years were gathered around one of the fireplaces. She merely shrugged in response, and then, seeing that it hadn’t stopped him from looking mildly sulky, responded.

“It’s distracting,” she said, adding “and it makes it difficult to even get to class on time.” And it was true that having the halls lined with students draining their necks to get a better look at her was something of a struggle, though it was by no means her biggest complaint with all the attention. Pansy sniffed, but said nothing.

“You would think that people would have gotten used to the idea,” said Daphne, giving her a sympathetic smile. Tracey nodded from the armchair she had commandeered, halfheartedly trying to get a head start on their Charms homework.

“Anyway,” said Blaise Zabini, a tall dark boy who was capable of looking even haughtier than Draco on occasion, “did you all hear about what happened to Higgs? Got himself landed in the Hospital Wing after drinking a bottle of Firewhiskey on a bet!”

Things did begin to calm down, by the time October rolled around, the forbidden forest taking on a slightly fiery tinge. She discovered that she adored flying, and was wondering if she ought to try out for the Slytherin Quidditch team in her second year, after she had displayed apparently prodigious skill during her flying lessons. She continued to excel in her classes and had accepted Daphne and Tracey as acceptable friends, and was even beginning to trust them, slowly. Draco continued to vacillate between envying her, and adoring her, and the few upper years who had accosted her over her presence in Slytherin had found themselves alone in the odd hallways of the dungeons where had chosen to confront her in a great deal of pain and with no memory of how they had gotten there.

She continued to marvel how easy a spell ‘Oblivate’ was – apparently, it had been designed so that even a weak adult wizard could modify the memory of a muggle who had seen some magical occurrence by a team of Ministry-sponsored researchers in the decades after the Statute of Secrecy had been introduced – it’s relative easiness to perform was something complicated to do with the branch of magic known as Arithmancy that students wouldn’t even begin to learn about until their third year.

So Hogwarts wasn’t exactly safe, or cozy, but she found herself more than up to the task of adapting. She still wasn’t sure what to do about her fame, and the constant attention which never entirely waned as the first weeks of school past, but she had found people who seemed to be more or less on her side and as far as she could tell, none of the Professors or Prefects seemed to wish her harm, which was something of a relief after her time with the Dursleys.

Her biggest problem as the first term rushed by was that there didn’t seem to be enough time. She found her classwork relatively easy, and continued to impress her professors (aside from Snape, but there was no impressing him unless your last name was Malfoy) but she was impatient to learn more – more spells and enchantments and curses. The theory wasn’t particularly interesting to her and she found some of the essays they were assigned to write about the history of the basic transfigurations and charms they were learning a waste of time – time that could be better spent trying to learn more about the wizarding world, if not more spells.

Because the thing was, Iolanthe was increasingly sure that her continued wellbeing depended on learning more about it as quickly as possible. Hagrid had told her that Voldemort was dead, but she was sure that he was not forgotten, because why else would she continue to receive so much attention. Since no one spoke his name, it was clear that everyone was still afraid of him, a fact that was thrown into sharp relief one October night when she, Daphne, and Tracey had gone up to bed early to get some privacy from the other girls and boys, because conversations carried out in whispers in Slytherin were anything but safe unless you were old enough to manage a privacy ward.

Instead, Iolanthe had performed a basic trip jinx on the stairs leading directly to the first year girls’ dormitory landing. The infamous Weasley twins had started something of a fashion among students, to the dismay of the professors and school nurse alike.

“One of them might know they counter,” Tracey warned, biting her lip as Iolanthe closed the door. Daphne nodded, silky blonde hair swishing in a way that made Iolanthe envious of her obviously tamable hair.

“Anabel’s father was,” she began, before breaking off and looking unsure if she should continue.

“Anabel’s father was what?” Iolanthe asked, making her eyes big and innocent. Daphne glanced between Iolanthe and Tracey, who was making no effort not to look curious.

“Come on, Daphne” the other girl whined. “We can keep a secret, can’t we E?” Iolanthe nodded, ignoring the new pet name. ‘Thea’ was out of the question, even if Theo Nott hadn’t already laid claim to the masculine form, and she wasn’t about to go by ‘Io’ when so many people already mispronounced her name to begin with. And anyway, she wasn’t a cow. Daphne hesitated.

“You need to keep this a secret, alright?” she said in hushed tones, “I only know because my mother was worried after I was sorted into Slytherin – she and Daddy were both in Ravenclaw and I guess they thought I would be too – but Anabel’s father was supposedly one of You-Know-Who’s followers.”

Iolanthe and Tracey exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“He was never accused of anything,” she added in a rush, “and I’m sure Anabel is – I mean, he wasn’t caught doing anything and some of his supporters, You-Know-Who’s I mean, didn’t hurt anybody, they just wanted him to win, I mean…” she trailed off.

“I know that Draco’s father was accused,” Iolanthe said. “And his father is friends with Vince’s too, right?”

“He was imperiussed,” Daphne said after a moment of silence, but the excuse sounded weak.

“Draco happy to talk about how much he hates muggleborns though, doesn’t he?” Tracey said. It was something of a point of contention for her – it wasn’t, Iolanthe gathered, exactly prudent to talk about how much you hated one quarter of the school’s population (barring the Gryffindors) around the Slytherin common rooms, but she guessed that you wouldn’t be making any friends by saying how great you thought muggles were either. Tracey’s father was a muggle, and she seemed to love him a lot – she even talked about missing him, along with her mother and brother.

Daphne was beginning to look more uncomfortable.

“I don’t really know,” she said.

“You don’t need to,” Iolanthe said, glancing at the door. “He’s happy enough to whine about Hermione and that blood-traitor Weasel or whatever he calls him whenever we have class with them.”

Daphne made a face. “Yes, but you don’t actually like them, do you? I mean, I don’t have anything against them or anything but Granger’s annoying.”

She could be, but Iolanthe still sort of admired her, for at least not being stupid and lazy, and she made Iolanthe look good by comparison. All the other first years seemed happy enough when she got them House Points, just because she was less obviously eager than the other girl.

“Nobody else talks like he does,” Tracey grumbled, picking at the cuff of her pyjamas. Daphne looked nervous.

“Actually, I think they do,” she said. Tracey looked at her in disbelief.

“Theo’s quiet,” Daphne said, “but my parents used to know his, back before the war got bad. And I think his Dad was a big supporter of Dark Lord as well. And some of the older students have relatives in Azkaban – or relatives who didn’t go.”

Tracey looked even more alarmed.

“But I thought all that was over? Mum said that his supporters were all rounded up,” she said.

Iolanthe remained quiet, thinking. Daphne glanced at the door again and lowered her voice even more.

“Well she was wrong.” She was speaking much faster than she normally did, and looked a little paler. “Lots of people died, and people haven’t forgotten about them – on both sides. And our class is one of the smallest in ages – you’ve seen all those empty classrooms, right? Loads of people left the country once things started getting bad – and my parents say,” and her voice got even quieter, “my parents say it looked like he was going to win – the Ministry couldn’t stop him.” She looked at Iolanthe then, briefly.

“They say if he hadn’t attacked the Potters…”

Tracey looked pale and quiet too, and Iolanthe thought of a high pitched laugh, and a flash of green light. It was funny how many people had good reason to be happy her parents had died, she thought, half-hysterically. It was funny how many people who probably wanted her dead wish Voldemort had never attacked them – or that he had succeeded in whatever he meant to do.

They were very quiet for the rest of that night, and when she woke the next morning, Iolanthe wished that she had a harder time remembering her dreams.

Chapter Text

One of the cultural peculiarities that no one had yet managed to explain to Iolanthe, was why the wizarding community, who as far as she could tell, didn’t believe in gods of any kind, celebrated the same holidays as the muggles. Her primary school had, during her time there, made the switch from referring to the weeks the children had off in December and January, as ‘Winter Break’, much to Uncle Vernon’s loud and repeated outrage.

So she was rather curious as to why at Hogwarts they had Christmas and Easter Hols, and found it only marginally less strange that they were going to have a massive feast in honor of Halloween. When she had asked Daphne about it, quietly, when word had begun to trickle down, the other girl only shrugged and looked a bit uncomfortable.

“They haven’t always, I don’t think,” was her answer.

Tracey was able to be a bit more blunt.

“I asked my mother about it,” she said quietly to Iolanthe as they made their way to Charms class. “She said that Dumbledore took over as Headmaster from someone else when she was a second year, and that there wasn’t really a proper feast before that.” Interesting, she thought. Dumbledore did seem to like feasts and festivities…and excuses for crazily patterned robes.

“That makes sense, I guess,” she said aloud.

Tracey glanced around the corridor again, but they had lagged behind the rest of the Slytherins.

“Also,” she added, “they used to celebrate other feasts – old ones – way back before Dumbledore was a teacher here, I think. And my mother said that some of the older families, and you know, they Slytherins were angry when they started celebrating muggle holidays.” That was even more interesting.

She was only just beginning to understand the size and history of whatever it was that make people like Draco Malfoy hate people like Hermione Granger, and other children whose parents were muggles. She could understand why wizards would think they were better than muggles – they could do so much more – but it was harder for her to understand why the Dracos and Pansys of the world hated the Hermoines and…Justins of the world so much.

Yes, their parents were muggles, but it seemed unreasonable to hold it against them. And besides, from what she had learned, most of the purebloods didn’t know very much at all about the muggles, which was even stranger when you thought about it. The wizarding community was very small, so how could they not know about the majority of the other residents of Britain? She had yet to voice these thoughts to anybody, because it was apparent that questions about blood and muggles and muggleborns were something of a touchy topic throughout Hogwarts, and society in general, she was guessing. And of all the houses in Hogwarts, it was Slytherin that had the reputation for having lots of ‘blood-purists’ and ex-Voldemort supporters.

It was why, she had learned, so many people had been surprised when she was sorted there, and not just because her parents, who she had never known, had been Gryffindors. It was because at some point Gryffindor had become known for producing heroes, and Slytherin villains, which seemed more that a bit unfair considering that bravery and ambition were both useful qualities to have and also not obviously ones that all heroes or villains necessarily possessed.

If, instead, Hufflepuffs had been considered the place for aspiring do-gooders to go…

But she was never able to finish her thoughts on the unusual goodness of Hufflepuff because they had arrived at class just in time for Flitwick to take roll.

After demonstrating her mastery of the hovering charm, she watched Tracey work at it silently, while thinking again about Halloween. She hadn’t known until purchasing Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century in an attempt to familiarize herself with her new world that her parents had died on October 31^st, and she felt a little queasy thinking about enjoying a feast on the anniversary of their deaths. It was not as though Halloween held any particularly great memories for her anyway – she was just locked in her cupboard, as usual, while Dudley stuffed his face with even more candy and taunted her about it for the next week. She had tried dressing up after she’d gained control over the Dursleys, but it hadn’t even very fun – everyone had looked at her with the same suspicion and distrust they always had and she had known, on some level, that nothing would ever really change at Privet Drive.

She didn’t think that attendance at dinner was mandatory or anything – it wasn’t in any of the rules that she could remember hearing. People tended not to get sick at Hogwarts – though injuries were fairly common, but she supposed she could always say she was too tired. The more she thought about it, the more she supposed that no one would really have any reason to be suspicious. People paid too much attention to her, but her classmates were mostly used to her. She didn’t think that her absence at one feast would be commented on.

Greatly cheered, she returned to watching everyone attempt to make a feather hover while contemplating the best time to slip away after class and before dinner. She thought it might be easiest to just tell Tracey and Daphne what that she didn’t want to go – but would they keep her secret? She glanced at Tracey.

“I know I’m saying it right,” she grumbled, looking imploringly at Iolanthe.

“Wingardium Leviosa,” Tracey muttered again, swishing and flicking with precision, but her feather did nothing more than twitch.

In front of them, Daphne managed to levitate hers and earned another point for Slytherin. Padma Patil, her friend from Ravenclaw, glanced between the two of them and asked

“Why weren’t you in Ravenclaw?” As though they had the monopoly on talent, or cleverness.

“Blue’s not really my color,” she joked, smiling anyway, and feeling pleased when the other girls laughed. She would tell Daphne and Tracey, she decided. If they didn’t keep her secret, it would be better to know sooner rather than later.

On their way up to the Great Hall for the feast, Tracey and Daphne lingered with her before they entered the hall, looking a little awkward.

“Are you sure you, um, don’t feel well?” Daphne asked, her pale blue eyes glancing at the hall. Tracey was biting her lip.

“Yes – you know – stomachache,” Iolanthe said, her heart beating a little quickly. They were forced to move off to the side as some upper years pushed past them as they made their way into the hall.

“Well, not eating sweets is probably smart – and, and we’ll see you after the feast, okay?” Tracey said. Iolanthe gave them a smile that was at least better than the grimace she’d managed earlier.

“Okay.”

The problem with faking sick, she reflected, as she slipped behind a tapestry that hid stairs leading to the fourth floor and began to climb, was that you had to at least look like you weren’t immediately skipping back to the dorms. She hadn’t realized it earlier, but lots of the upper-years turned up late to feasts and she didn’t fancy trying to go against the tide back on her way to the dormitories.

Reaching the fourth floor, she listened for any sound for a few moments, and then opened the door disguised as part of the wall. A portrait of an austere looking witch with an unusually high hairline raised one ridiculous eyebrow at her.

“Shouldn’t you be going to the feast, girl?” it said. She was sorely tempted to say something rude, but portraits were terrible gossips, so instead she smiled and said

“I’m not feeling up to it.” And then, her mind working to elaborate she added, innocently “do you think I should bother Madam Pomfrey or just lay down for a bit?”

“The infirmary is on the fifth floor,” was all she said, but it was enough for Iolanthe to make her way down the hallway to another set of stairs, before descending and making her way down the third-floor corridor. While there, she paused a moment.

Hadn’t Dumbledore said something about painful death in relation to this floor? She looked around. There weren’t any portraits in their frames, or any ghosts around, which seemed a little odd, though she supposed that the lower floors on this wing of the castle were mostly empty classrooms.

She was dimly aware that Hogwarts had once had many more students than they had now. Hadn’t Hogwarts, A History said that admissions had peaked sometime before the 20^th century? In the 1880s or 90s?

There was a grandfather clock a little ways down, and when she went to look at it, it shot some gears at her, which she dodged quickly, retreating a little to the right.

It was just 6:30; the feast would be beginning, and she only needed to wait ten minutes or so until she could sneak back down to her dormitory. She wandered a little further down the hall before her gaze was drawn, inevitably, to the door with the big metal doorknob on the right hand side. It was a very empty patch of hallway.

She drifted a little closer to the door and tapped one fingernail against the metal part of the door. It was old and sort of ornate-looking and her hand slowly, almost against her will crept up to the handle. It was cold, and so big she fingers just barely met around it. She looked contemplatively at the keyhole below it – it looked as though maybe, it might be, possibly, big enough to see through.

With bated breath, she bent down and tried to peer into the room. All she saw was darkness.

The sudden sound of angry voiced made her jump.

“-not my FAULT, Richard,” someone was shouting, and growing close by the sound of it. Her heart was rabbit-quick and painful, and her head whipped from side to side but the hallway was long and barren and she would look like she was sneaking about and probably be expelled and be sent back to the Durlseys and her hand jumped back to the doorknob and she turned it, frantically, to no avail and then angrily, and it heated up and turned for her and quick as a knife she slipped inside and swung it almost shut, grabbed it from the inside and quietly, carefully, eased it the rest of the way closed, her hand still keeping the knob from turning again, in case it made any noise.

It was round, she thought, it wouldn’t matter. A man, or boy’s voice, also loud and angry echoed just loud enough to be heard and she tried to breathe very quietly, as she listened carefully and it was then she heard the slight wheeze and she turned her head slowly, to look at the room and saw the dog.

It was as big as a city bus, with a chain thicker than any she’d ever seen before around its neck – or a part of its neck. The part where there was only one. It was asleep, she told herself, and certainly, its eyes were closed, all six of them, invisible behind brown furred eyelids the size of beach balls in faces that she might have called adorable, if she had liked dogs.

Her heart was the loudest thing in the room, but she wondered that she couldn’t hear it breathing from outside the door, those three giant head wheezing in unison. It was a Cerberus, Dumbledore’s certain death, creature from Hades’ underworld. Were there Titans, hidden elsewhere? A river of fire, winged harpies, and a kidnapped queen? Her thought verged on hysteria, but gradually fixed on the concrete fact of the chain, the end of which was just barely visible behind the mountain of dog at the other side of the room. She was just by the door, she reasoned, feeling very unreasonable and very afraid. Someone had to come feed the thing and so if she was just by the door, then it probably couldn’t reach her, right?

The left head snuffled a bit before yawning, without opening its eyes, and settling again. She looked down at the floor. It was made of old wood, thick and reassuringly sturdy, but not the carpet-covered stone of the hallway. Something must be beneath it, she realized, because when the Cerberus’ head had lifted, briefly, she was almost certain she had just seen the edge of a trapdoor.

Only a few minutes must have passed, but she so badly wanted to leave. Surely the yelling people, who must have been students, were gone? She took a deep breath, as quietly as she could, and opened the door just a hair, relieved that there was no sound. She opened it a fraction more, and flinched at the tiny squeak it made, but the Cerberus remained quiet, and so she opened it further, stepped out into the hall, and looking around wildly, shut it behind her with a decisive snap.

No one was there, and so she exhaled quickly, and took a moment to put both hands on her chest and thank her inexplicable good fortune that she had not just been eaten. When the moment passed, a very clear, immediate thought occurred to her – she needed to get out of there.

Iolanthe walked quickly and quietly until she reached the Hall of Stairs, and then, seeing no one around, proceeded to run all the way back to the Slytherin Common Room.

***

They were all tired the next morning, as they trudged to breakfast – apparently the rest of the school had experienced their own brush with danger shortly after she had made it back to her dorm. She was doubly glad that she had missed the feast now.

“Did you hear what happened?” Blaise said, joining them at the Breakfast table only twenty minutes before there Herbology class was supposed to start. The rest of the first years turned to look at him, as Theo also took a seat and looked appraisingly at the food on the platters.

“What?” Daphne asked, dutifully, her head propped on her palm. For some reason Blaise always had the best gossip.

“Granger was off crying in the loo during the feast last night (probably because nobody wanted to see her ugly face),” he added almost nonchalantly, “When Longbottom and Weasley went looking for her and got attacked by the troll!”

Iolanthe dropped her toast as people gasped in astonishment.

“I thought that Professor Quirrell might have imagined the whole thing,” Tracey whispered, looking with wide eyes at the Gryffindor table, probably trying to spot the absence of Hermione’s conspicuous bushy mane.

“Did she die?” Draco asked, leaning in eagerly. Iolanthe found herself giving him a disgusted look, which he missed entirely.

“No,” Blaise said. “Some professors found them but apparently they’d already knocked out the troll.” Iolanthe blinked in surprise.

“That’s actually kind of impressive,” Daphne said, voicing the same awe that Iolanthe felt.

“Why, do you want to be friends with them?” Pansy sneered. The taunt might have been more effective if the other girl hadn’t been seated with Millicent with a small but noticeable gap that separated them from the group of first years Iolanthe sat with.

“You’re so funny Pansy,” Daphne said, glaring at the other girl. She probably would have used a different word, Iolanthe thought, turning back to her toast, if she hadn’t been so well bred.

“It was probably luck,” Draco muttered.

“Maybe,” Blaise said, shrugging. “Merlin knows Weasley and Longbottom aren’t exactly impressive.”

“Do you think Professor Snape was there?” Iolanthe asked. “He’s limping.” The others turned to look up at the Head Table, where Snape was indeed favoring one of his legs and looking even more irritated than usual.

“Maybe” Blaise said again, turning away hastily from the glare Snape was sending to anyone who looked his way. “The person I heard it from didn’t mention him.”

That might have been one of the reasons Blaise was always seemed to know what was going on before anyone else – he never said who he got the information from, even when it didn’t matter. Apparently, his mother had six different husbands, who had all died under mysterious circumstances. Maybe he had learned his discretion from her.

Iolanthe looked back at the Head Table, briefly. Professor Quirrell was absent. Perhaps he was still scared from the night before – she was, she thought. And apparently he had fainted. Still, she had supposed someone would have gotten him a calming draught or something. Professor Snape was glaring at his empty seat. No, she decided, suspicion welling up inside her, his absence was odd.

Chapter Text

As they entered November, the weather turned very cold, which was a disappointment to Iolanthe, who had never much liked winter, even after she had been able to make the Dursleys get her proper clothes. However, it did bring with it some compensations; the Quidditch season had begun.

The first match of the season would be Slytherin vs Gryffindor, and the all of the first years were very excited to witness what was sure to be a spectacular defeat of their hated rival. (Except for Theo Nott, who wasn’t excited about anything, from what Iolanthe could tell).

“We’ve got the best team in school,” Draco could be heard boasting loudly in the presence of any class they shared with the Gryffindors, “and we’re going to flatten them.”

He was also quick to brag that he was going to try out the next year, and be seeker. Seeing as Terence Higgs, their current seeker, was good, but not brilliant, and had twice been sent to the hospital wing for recovery from alcohol related incidents followed by a truly monumental number of detentions with Professor Snape, Iolanthe could easily see Higgs being replaced.

She, however, had already made up her mind that she was going to try for the team herself – and seeker was the position that she was most interested in. She neglected to mention this to Draco.

The morning of the match was clear and cold, and she and her friends cheerfully braided silver and green into their hair before going down to the Quidditch pitch. By eleven o'clock the whole school seemed to be out in the stands, many of them carrying binoculars. The seats might be raised high in the air, but it was still difficult to see what was going on sometimes. Iolanthe had excellent eyesight though, so she was hoping that her lack of binoculars wouldn’t stop her from seeing what was going on.

The game was thrilling. It was one thing to listen to professional Quidditch matches on the wireless, as they occasionally did, but seeing the game played live was wonderful.

Slytherin, however, wasn’t quite as wonderful as Draco had predicted, and Gryffindor eked out an early lead in the score – their chasers (all girls, Iolanthe noted, glancing at the all-male Slytherin team with concern) were really good, she had to admit. It didn’t help that Lee Jordan, the boy doing the commentating, had a clear and obnoxious pro-Gryffindor bias, though it was funny to see Professor McGonagall reprimanding him every five seconds.

About halfway through the match, something very odd happened.

One of their beaters, Bole, had just whacked a bludger that looked as though it was going to go straight for one of the Gryffindor chasers, possibly blocking their play, when it veered directions sharply, and looked as though it were going to go straight for the stands.

There were spells, she knew, to keep the bludgers and snitch within the pitch. Obviously, something had gone wrong, because she had only the impression of the metal ball speeding alarmingly close before some defensive instinct in her cause an outpouring of fear-fuelled power that rocketed the bludger sharply away from her outstretched hands.

Her vision flickered. Breathe, she reminded herself, and then noticed the screaming, the shrill whistle, and then she found she had drawn her wand and held it aloft, watching for the bludger as it sped back in her direction. A knockabout jinx did nothing, and she was prepared again to die except that the ball exploded and she was thrown back into a pile of students by its force.

Everything was very sharp and bright, she half observed, as her heart pounded so fiercely it made her ears hurt. And there was still screaming. She felt cold as she stood and had to restrain herself from lashing out at Tracey, when the other girl bumped into her as they tried to untangle themselves from the pile they’d fallen into.

One of their Chasers took advantage of the chaos to score, but Madam Hooch was blowing her whistle and waved her wand and the match was paused.

Bruised and shaken, the group of younger students who had been affected by the blast were taken to the hospital wing to be observed by Madam Pomfrey, and the whole affair was written off as a freak accident.

Snape, they found out later, huddled together more for security than warmth as they waited to be examined, was the one who had the presence of mind to dispose of the bludger.

“But you did something the first time, didn’t you?” Daphne asked quietly, almost awed. Iolanthe looked at her sharply, but said nothing, only hugging her knees in closer to her chest on the hospital bed she was waiting on. Her wrist was weak and pained, and her head felt funny.

She did something that wasn’t accidental magic, which was what it had been written off as. For although she had been frightened, she had, on some level, known what she was doing. It had become clear to her that most of her classmates did not have similar childhood experiences as she did. She was unsure if she was disappointed or pleased. Some slightly guilty part of her still wanted to be special – not as the Girl-Who-Lived – she seemed to be too many things to people who she had never met – but as someone who was, in some way, as special as the Dursley’s had supposed Dudley to be. She liked knowing that she was still different – that she still had something that the others couldn’t do, even if they didn’t know it. Or maybe especially because they didn’t know it.

She was quiet that night and Daphne had not brought up whatever she had done in the stands again, though the unexpected near-maiming of a few Slytherins had been all anybody at Hogwarts had talked about for the week following the match.  

Perhaps the fact that the bludger had been speeding directly towards her was a coincidence, as most seemed to assume. But Iolanthe couldn’t quite bring herself to think so. It was a subject that she never broached with Daphne or Tracey, or any of the others, but it was something that kept her mind occupied, all the same, as November passed. It occurred to her that perhaps she was more hated than she had known. For despite the muttering in the week after the match, she did not think that it had been the work of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, showing they were not so much nobler than their rivals when it came down to it. It was astonishing, on some level, how easily they had forgotten that Gryffindor had been up by 20 anyway.

Distractions came in the form of new Quidditch matches, as Slytherin beat Gryffindor in the rematch, and Hufflepuff beat Ravenclaw. One of the Ravenclaw prefects lost their position for some offense which had been so well hushed up that even Blaise hadn’t been able to find out what it was about. Millicent Bulstrode had received multiple detentions for failing to turn in assignments for class and Iolanthe had finally had her confrontation with Pansy, safely away from prying eyes.

*

Before she knew it, Christmas was coming. One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow. The lake froze solid and the Weasley twins were punished for bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban. Despite Draco’s odd and insistent grudge against the family (inherited, apparently, from his father), Iolanthe was quietly pleased and only wished they had managed to hit him harder. Quirrell’s stuttering never failed to give her a splitting headache.

No one could wait for the holidays to start. While the Slytherin common room and dormitories and even the Great Hall had roaring fires, the drafty corridors had become icy and a bitter wind rattled the windows in the classrooms. And though Iolanthe had never had any particular fondness for Christmas, she couldn’t deny that Hogwarts was beginning to look pretty magical – in a way that had nothing to do with its undeniable oddness and history, and everything to do with the massive amounts of evergreen and tinsel that was appearing everywhere. It reminded her of the kind of Christmas that existed in television advertisements and in shop windows – but it was all the better because no one was trying to sell her anything.

Well, almost no one.

As soon as Professor Snape had come around to take a list of students who would be staying for the holidays, she had signed up without hesitation. He had given her one of his odd, half-glances before staring fixedly at something above her head, but she had just chalked it up to his usual oddness. Professor Snape, as it turned out, had been accused of being one of the Dark Lord’s followers, but had somehow ended up at Hogwarts instead, and Iolanthe had begun to suspect that his strange attitude toward her had something to do with this fact. She couldn’t forget, either, that he had apparently saved her life, or at least, her head, and had somehow turned up mysteriously injured after the Hogwarts’ Halloween Troll Adventure.

However, before she had much chance to think about it, she found herself distracted by Draco Malfoy, who had immediately expressed his approval of her decision not to go see her muggles, and had insisted on inviting her home with him, eager to sell her on the many merits of his Wiltshire manor and his own company. She had been surprised. She and Draco were friendly, true, but she spent more time with Daphne and Tracey, and he spent more time with his little minions, Crabbe and Goyle, and occasionally Theo, who was something of a loner in Slytherin.

“Hardly anyone’s going to be here,” he said, looking at her eagerly, “and my family’s manor has more than enough room – and I’m sure that you’d enjoy seeing it.” She was sure that he would enjoy her seeing it.

“Students need their guardians’ permission to leave the school,” Professor Snape said, interjecting. His face was quite blank, and both Draco and Iolanthe looked at him in surprise. She hadn’t realized he had even been listening.

“You would need a signed letter from your guardians delivered to me no later than December 20^th,” Snape added, glancing between the two. It was the 18^th, Iolanthe realized, so that was next to impossible.

“Oh, okay then,” she said, for a lack of anything else to say. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to visit with Draco, who was decent enough to her but could be fairly annoying on occasion. But it seemed kind of strange, all the same, that Snape had intervened to prevent her from going, even if it had something to do with the school rules.

Draco, for his part, looked crestfallen, and slightly betrayed as he looked at Professor Snape. But Snape just swept off in his usually imperious manner, looking something like a great bat as students parted way for him to leave their common room.

“Thanks anyway,” she said, feeling awkward. “It was really decent of you.” She should probably get him a Christmas gift, she realized, and resolved to ask Daphne about it. The blonde was so much better at knowing what was and was not appropriate or appreciated by other people than she was. She would probably have a good idea.

“Sorry you’ll be stuck here alone,” Draco muttered.

She didn't feel sorry for herself at all; this would probably be the best Christmas she’d ever had, she reflected. And she didn’t mind at all that it would be quiet, or that hardly anyone else was staying (at least from Slytherin). Until Hogwarts, she had never had any friends or people who wanted to talk to her, and spending so much time with other people could be exhausting; she was looking forward to mostly being on her own for a bit.

The last day before break she waved her friends and acquaintances goodbye as they ran around trying to get their trunks in order at the last minute and then suddenly the whirlwind had passed, and the Slytherin Common Room was practically empty.

Theo Nott was the only other student she knew that was staying for the holidays and by mutual agreement they spent the hours after their classmates left in near total silence. He had been looking a little pale and drawn as of late, but by the time they realized it was time to head up for lunch he seemed to have been feeling a little better, because he was a little more chatty than he normally was.

They paused in the entrance to the hall, noting in surprise how the four long house tables were nowhere to be seen, and had instead been replaced by one smaller one which was parallel to the high table where the Professors sat.

There was a section occupied by four bright ginger heads, which could only be the Weasleys.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I guess we’re going to have some Christmas togetherness.”

Theo snorted.

The only other Slytherins who they had seen were some upper years that Iolanthe didn’t know the names of but who she assumed were probably fifth or seventh years staying for study-related reasons so they made their way over to the table and sat near one of the ends, across from each other, helping themselves to sandwiches in silence.

“Well well well, if it isn’t a couple of firsties?’ said one of the twins, nudging the other.

“Aren’t you supposed to be funny?” Iolanthe replied, cocking her head and looking at them with affected curiosity.  

One of them laughed, while the other placed his hand dramatically over his heart, as though wounded.

“Such cutting wit!” the one who hadn’t spoken earlier said. Ronald was blushing and stabbing one of his legs of chicken with more force than was probably needed. She smiled, a retort on the tip of her tongue.

“Only if you’re very dull!” she said, grinning at them. They grinned back.

“You’re not so bad, Potter,” one said, “you know, for a snake.”

She rolled her eyes, but felt a little hurt, and a little angry inside. She was sick of being judged evil so often – or not evil, exactly, but as though everyone around her was and so therefore she would probably end up that way too.

What was so wrong with Slytherin?

She and Theo ate their lunches quickly before making their way back to the common room.

“Do you know the actual origin of why Malfoys and the Weasleys seem to hate each other so much?” she asked, looking curiously at Theo. He just shrugged.

“The Weasleys are the biggest bunch of blood traitors you could find,” he said, not looking at her.  She eyed him and saw his eyes widen slightly, as he remembered who her parents were – the Potters had been on the opposite side of Voldemort, who as far as she could tell, was against the blood traitors. What they had done to earn such a name was still a matter of confusion for her. But she was going to find out.

“I,” Theo began, glancing at her, and apparently not liking what he saw, “I meant that they had gotten in some fight a while back – before the current family members were even born I think – and it had something to do with some muggles.”

“Hmm,” she said, in acknowledgement. They walked silently to the common room after that and Theo left her to go up to his dorm room. She took a seat in front of the fire and bent to rest her chin on her folded hands, thinking of nothing in particular.

The library, she thought. It was partially why she had been eager to stay.

It wasn’t as though she actually liked research very much, she reflected, trailing a hand along the books once she arrived. It was just that there seemed to be so much that she wanted, needed to know now and no one who she could ask of it.

She was increasingly aware that there were some things in Slytherin that just weren’t talked about, which was really irritating to someone who hadn’t grown up with a family in the know. Iolanthe had not forgotten what Hagrid had told her about the Dark Lord, as most of her classmates called him, but she was more and more certain that this was an incomplete view. She had a morbid desire to know more about the man who had tried to kill her but she couldn’t exactly go around asking people about him – particularly as they all seemed to assume that she knew more than they did – as though one botched murder attempt that she couldn’t remember had made her an expert.

The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts stood out in the modern history section, seeming to taunt her. She flicked a finger against it – useless. Practically useless anyway. She had been angry to find out how little anyone had actually known about what happened to her parents –or why Voldemort had tried to kill them specifically, except to say that they had been fighting against him (but in what capacity, remained unclear).

None of the books she had read yet had very much to say about the Dark Lord himself. Just that he was bad and scary and very evil and killed lots of people. She pulled out a chunk of books and began placing them back, one by one. She paused as she reached a slim but relatively new looking volume, one that she hadn’t found during her first trip to Flourish and Blotts titled Judging the Unjust: Trials, Turbulence, and the Restoration of Order in 1981-1982.

Well, that looked promising.

*

Later that evening, Theo asked Iolanthe if she wanted to play wizard chess with her. She agreed, but warned him that she had only played once or twice. In fact, she’d never actually played, but Theo and Daphne occasionally had a game and so she at least had some idea of how it differed from muggle chess – mostly that the figures were alive.

She enjoyed playing though, in spite of her reservations. Directing her pieces made it feel a lot like directing troops in battle. Theo was a talented player and beat her handily both times they played but she thought that she was getting the hang of it.

When Iolanthe woke to an empty dorm on Christmas morning, she was looking forward, in a sort of abstract sense, to the next day, but when she saw a small pile of presents at the food of her bed she couldn’t help but grinning. It was the first time she had received proper presents. Suddenly, her chest seized up and she found that she felt almost like crying.

It was ridiculous, but she took several gulps of air and turned over to bury her face into her pillow. She was very glad that no one was there to see her.

She’d received tokens from her friends in Slytherin – sweets, a scarf from Tracey, little silvery bracelet made of slim loops with a snake charm, and an ‘I’ from Daphne, as well as a note promising to take her to get her ears pierces this summer, if she liked, and perhaps most surprisingly, a beautiful enameled hand mirror from Draco. She turned it over this way and that to admire the glossy blues and green of the peacock on it and laughed as it preened itself. She wondered if his mother had helped him pick it out – Mrs. Malfoy was apparently an important and fashionable witch.

She was glad that she had gotten him something after all even if it wasn’t as nice. The Flourish and Blotts catalog that she had sent to her every month had an expanded section for Christmas and she had chosen a handsome set of black quills that would have his name engraved on them – since he was so particular about people touching his things.

There was one parcel wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. There was nothing written on it, nor a tag attached. She picked it up and pressed it – it felt a lot like clothing. As she unwrapped it, something fluid and silvery gray went slithering to the floor where it lay in gleaming folds.

She looked at it curiously and picked it up, setting the paper aside. As she did, a small note fluttered to the ground and she tossed the fabric over her arm and dipped to pick it up. And noticed her arm was missing.

She gasped, and with her heart beating in her ears, shook it off her arm where is slid to the floor again, looking curiously beautiful for something lying in a pile.

With trembling fingers, she opened the note – only a scrap of parchment – and read it.

Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it well.

A Very Merry Christmas to you.

There was no signature.

*

That evening the few professors and students who remained at school, numbering no more than twenty five, were treated to a Christmas dinner that seemed big enough to feed a hundred. And even Theo had to smile. There were mountains of food, tureens of warm and spicy cider, and piles of wizard crackers, which were far better than their feeble muggle counterparts.

When Iolanthe pulled one that Fred, one of the Weasley twins had offered her, it went off with a blast like a cannon and engulfed them all in a cloud of blue smoke, while from the inside exploded a rear admiral's hat and several live, white mice. Up at the High Table, Dumbledore had swapped his pointed wizard's hat for a flowered bonnet, and was chuckling merrily at a joke Professor Flitwick had just read him. Flaming Christmas puddings followed the turkey. And the students had the discomfiting experience of witnessing an increasingly red-face Hagrid kissing Professor McGonagall on the cheek.

When she and Theo finally left the table, they were both laden down with a stack of things out of the crackers, including a pack of nonexplodable, luminous balloons, a Grow-Your-Own-Warts kit, and her own new wizard chess set.

“Now I can lose with my own board,” she joked, which prompted a smile from Theo. The mice had disappeared and she could only guess at what would happen to them. On their way out they were intercepted by the Weasleys who were organizing a snowball fight with all the students, and Iolanthe was surprised at how much fun it was, even though Theo hadn’t come and the Gryffindors (aside from the priggish prefect) were all blatant and unapologetic cheaters.

Wet, cold, and exhausted, she returned to the Slytherin common room thinking that they weren’t so bad after all. The rest of her evening was spent quietly, until she climbed into bed and began to consider her newly acquired invisibility cloak – and who could have possibly had sent it.

She had hidden it under her bed and now she leaned over the side of it to pull the cloak out. Feeling it’s silvery weight, heavy, she thought, for fabric, she considered that this had once been her father’s. He had worn it once. It was the only item that belonged to her parents that she had and she was suddenly furious about it, but strangely warm at the same time. More than ever, she longed to know what they would have been like as she tried to picture them in her head. She looked like them, she had been told. With dark hair, like her father, and green eyes, like her mother. But that was far too little information to be going off of - they had only been sketched in the history books she had that mentioned them and even all her poking around hadn’t won her very much information.

Moments later, wiping her eyes, she slid out of bed, clad in her pyjamas, and wrapped it around her. Use it well, the note had said. She decided to try it, now.

Suddenly, Iolanthe felt wide-awake. The whole of Hogwarts was open to her in this cloak. Excitement flooded through her as she stood there in the dark and silence. The Restricted Section, she thought. That was where she would go.

It took her a long time to creep there, and she was relieved to see that though she passed several ghosts, none of them gave any indication that they had seen her.

The library was pitch-black and very eerie, and so she lit a lamp to see his way along the rows of books. The Restricted Section was right at the back of the library and her heart quickened as she made her way there, opened the gate and set down her lamp. Unease trickled down the back of her neck – these books felt dangerous, and unwelcoming. Their faded gold lettering was difficult to read, and as she made her way to the History section, she eyed them carefully. There, she thought, pausing.

The Muggle Scourge one title read, next to some that seemed like Latin, or another foreign language. Slipping a less provocatively titled history book out from near it, she opened it carefully and began flipping to the index.

*

Heart racing, Iolanthe shuddered in the classroom she had hidden in. One that was far from the third floor – that much she had been careful about.

She had chosen a book unwisely and had nearly been caught by Filch and Snape! And all because of some alarm that she hadn’t known how to dispel. Stupid, she chastised herself. She couldn’t even imagine how many detentions she would have been set – or what else might have happened if they caught her.

Iolanthe looked around the empty classroom carefully, still making sure she was entirely covered by the Cloak – she could have sworn it was larger when she had put in on earlier. The dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket -- but propped against the wall facing him was something that didn't look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to keep it out of the way. Almost against her will, she approached it.

It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

She moved nearer and lowered her hood. To her astonishment, no face appeared and she stepped closer still with a sense of trepidation before clapping her hands to her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

She saw herself now, not as she was, pyjama-clad and with only her head visible, but wearing casual robes and beaming up at a beautiful woman with dark red hair and almond-shaped green eyes – the same eyes. Beside her stood a tall, thin man with untidy black hair, a crooked grin, and fierce warmth in his eyes, visible even from behind his spectacles. He had one arm around the woman’s shoulders and another hand to rest upon one of hers, squeezing without sensation. Her parents, she thought. They must be.

She looked behind her, hoping against hope but the classroom was empty. Her heart clenched and she turned back to the mirror. Her own face, reflected, looked as sad and lost as she did now, and against her will, she began to cry. Alone, she watched as her ghostly parents comforted her mirror-self as she had never been comforted in her life.

She remained there until morning, filled with a deep and terrible longing.