Untitled Ravenclaw Story

(c)2005 by Josh Cohen. May not be reprinted except for personal use. JK Rowling owns the Potterverse; I\'m just playing around in it.

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YEAR 3: SUMMER, AND START-OF-TERM

Da Apparated in the front room with a gentle *pop* -- truly talented wizards and witches can do it without the loud *crack* novices always seem to make – and sagged in place, grabbing hold of the banister. I saw this as I looked up from the latest issue of Sandman; I was reading it, curled up on one of the living room couches, when he appeared.

My mother bustled in from the kitchen and pulled him upright and into a hug. I could only make out a bit of what he said – just “it’s done, Meli. It’s done.”

It was obvious that I shouldn’t have been paying attention, so I made it appear as though I hadn’t. Da’s footfalls placed him upstairs and – I listened more intently – in his study. Mum went back into the kitchen, where she was doing the washing-up. I had offered to help, but my cleaning charms weren’t quite refined enough, and Mum was quite tired of casting Reparo on the plates and glasses (and the occasional chair) that I destroyed.

It wasn’t until many months later that I understood just what it was that Da had done.

The summer between second and third year was an awkward one for me. The smallest change was that I was now as tall as Mum – she was five-eight – but without the grace she showed. I was actually becoming somewhat clumsy, and it was annoying me to no end. Da assured me I would grow into my height, and probably a few inches taller as well, within a couple of years. I suppose that was somewhat reassuring, but I still hated falling over everything.

I also spent far less time at Da’s office. I was at the point where I was becoming too inquisitive about what exactly he was getting up to, and brewing simple potions and running errands was now a job for the intern he’d employed – a lithe witch named Kana Davolos – leaving me with little to do. Mum worked three days a week at the local bookshop, so at least I had plenty to read, but even on the days she was off, I was at that age where hanging out with my mother was less than ideal.

More often than not, I found myself in Ron Weasley’s backyard, tossing a quaffle or keeping the single ring Ron’s brother Charlie had set up years ago. I wasn’t much for Quidditch, but at least it was something to do, and it kept me out of the house. Sometimes, Ron’s sister Ginny would join us, and once, we even had a spirited two-on-two match that Hermione Granger and I lost to Ron and Ginny, mostly because Hermione isn’t all that great at broom-riding. On other days, Luna and I might walk into the village for lunch, or work on summertime homework assignments. Luna was very bright, but sometimes she would get lost on a tangent; since I’d done these assignments before, I was able to provide a little assistance here and there.

This summer, Terry came to visit at my house as well, although that was the week the Weasleys won a Daily Prophet prize, so we weren’t able to get together and “make trouble,” as Ron’s mum was fond of saying. Although it was usually Ginny who made the most trouble – the girl could hex like nobody’s business.

But there was one day where things were actually exciting. Terry and I had wandered into the village around three, to pick up a new pack of Exploding Snap cards, and we’d run into Donald Sargent, an acquaintance from primary school. He introduced us to a peculiar muggle game called “paintball”; the object was to use a modified muggle projectile gun to fire sachets of paint at each other. Donald brought us onto his team – our color, aptly, was blue – and we faced off against a green team and a yellow team inside a huge warehouse on the far side of town.

We didn’t win – Terry and I were very careful to avoid using magic – but it was enjoyable to limit ourselves and try to win like muggles.

But all summers must come to an end, and so it was that Da and I Flooed to Terry’s house, where we met up with Lisa, Padma, and Parvati. Terry’s Mum walked us to the Tube station, and from there we rode to the train station, where Lavender Brown and her parents waited for us. Lavender and Parvati – who Padma assured me had been driving her mad all summer with their incessant twittering – fell into each other’s arms, laughing about something that the rest of us ignored, and Lavender’s parents walked us all to the platform and through the portal.

I noticed Percy and Penelope in conversation near the Prefects’ end of the train. Naturally, they were both Heads. Figured. I was sure Pen would be the same person she always was, but even from more than one hundred feet away, I could feel Percy’s self-importance and ego.

Terry, Padma, Lisa, and I separated from Lavender and Parvati and stowed our things in the luggage compartment, and then milled around on the platform a bit, looking for other folks we knew. Robert Towns, now the most-senior Ravenclaw Prefect, gave me a slow nod, and I returned it. “What’s that about, then?” Terry asked me as Lisa and Padma joined Mandy and Sally-Anne, who were still a little stunned after passing through the portal – the two of them came from muggle families, although we’d found out last year that Mandy was adopted after her parents were killed in a magical accident when she was five.

“What, Robert?” Terry nodded. “Last year, Leonard Scott – you remember him?” Another nod, this one incredulous – Leonard Scott had been the epitome of coolness in Ravenclaw; the fact that I had actually talked to him impressed the hell out of Terry. “Well, I did Leonard a favor, and Robert was in on it. I guess Robert remembers that, and was reminding me that he remembered it.” I paused. “Did that make any sense?”

“Enough.” Terry waved to Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe, both now in fourth year. Marietta waved back, but Cho flushed a little and turned away. “Wonder what that was all about?”

“Hello?” I tapped the back of Terry’s head, but only jokingly. “Remember what happened last December?”

“And she’s not over that?”

“Who knows?” I said, shrugging. “I don’t understand girls. Not yet, anyway.”

“Join the club.”

“David?”

“Yes, Terry?”

“I’m going to ask you something, because you usually know what the hell’s going on around here.”

“All right.”

“I want you to give me a straight answer.”

“All right, Terry.”

His blue eyes were silver in the dim light coming through the window of our cabin.

“Why are there fucking Dementors on the Hogwarts Express?”

We all found out later, at the feast, when Professor Dumbledore – who had evidently been the subject of some Age-Reducing Magic over the break, if the changes in his face were any indication – informed us that Dementors would be posted as guards around Hogwarts, and that we should give them a wide berth.

“It’s because of Stubby Boardman, you know,” Luna said conversationally as Terry picked at a slice of roasted turkey. “Everyone seems to think he’s some sort of criminal, but there’s this nice lady who keeps writing to Dad’s paper, and she keeps saying she knows he’s perfectly safe.”

“Stubby Boardman?” Terry’s brow wrinkled.

“Sirius Black,” I said, pushing the carafe of pumpkin juice out of the way to reach the water pitcher. “You really ought to read The Quibbler more often, Terry.”

Luna seemed surprised that I would say such a thing. I just shrugged.

But Terry was more than a little fazed by this, and the clatter of his fork hitting his plate, while mostly lost in the sound of hundreds of other Hogwarts students eating a good meal, was still audible to me, and to Luna, and to Padma, who was across the table, next to Luna.

“Terry?”

His voice was very quiet; we had to strain to hear him. “Sirius Black. Escaped. From bloody Azkaban?”

“It was in the papers, Terry. There were wanted posters in Diagon Alley. I’m sure it was on the Wizarding Wireless, although ever since they publicly came out supporting Fudge in his last re-election bid, my parents refuse to turn it on.” This wasn’t helping. Terry’s eyes were wide in his face, and I could see his hand shaking even as he clamped his fingers onto the edge of the table. “Terry, what’s wrong?”

The three of us waited, but there was nothing to be said. Terry simply got up from the table and went to the exit. One of the Prefects seated at that end of the table – I think it may have been Sonya Santos, who was a scholarship student from Brazil – asked if he was all right, but he just brushed right past her.

“Well, that was peculiar,” Padma said.

“He’ll tell us when he’s ready.”

But we didn’t have to wait. Mandy Brocklehurst, who had been sitting on Terry’s other side, scooted over. “I can tell you why he’s so upset, if you like.”

We were, understandably, all ears.

Mandy, who seemed to love being the center of attention – and who had brought me back from America a cool brown vintage t-shirt bearing the phrase “Tijuana: City of Tomorrow” – flipped her straight blond hair over one shoulder and lowered her head. Padma, Luna, and I all leaned in to listen.

“You all know I’m adopted, right?”

“What does that have to do with Terry?” I asked.

“Well, my birth father was killed in the war against He Who Must Not Be Named. My birth mother survived, but after He was defeated, she was one of the Aurors assigned to bring in Sirius Black.

“Well…” She said this an awful lot; I blame her American relatives, who lived in southern California. “Terry’s grandfather led that group.”

And we all understood, in that instant, why Terry was so upset.

I figured it would be better not to dance around the subject. Kev and Stephen and Anthony were all in the common room – I gather that Kev was trying to make time with Sally-Anne, and I hoped for her sake that she hadn’t left her wand in her room; Kev had started going after girls last year, and Sally-Anne was the last of the ones in our year that he hadn’t tried – but Terry was sitting on the edge of his bed, a framed photograph in his hands.

“Everything all right, Terry?”

He looked up. He didn’t appear to have been crying, but I could tell that he was quite upset. “No. Not really.”

I sat down on the edge of Kev’s bed, across from Terry. “Who’s that?”

He passed over the photo. I could clearly tell that the boy in the picture was a young Terry, waving and smiling as he was held by a younger version of his mother. There was also a tall, slender wizard in the photo, holding up his arms as if he was going to cast the mother of all hexes on the both of them. He was laughing, too. “It’s my granddad, Corvus Boot.”

“When was this? About ten years ago?”

He nodded. “About that. It was the last time I saw Granddad.”

I passed the picture back to him, and he set it on his bedside, next to a picture of his folks, who appeared to be reading on a sofa in the Boots’ living room.

“So, are you going to grill me now?”

I had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. “Actually, Mandy kind of told us what happened?”

“Oh.”

“Don’t be upset with her,” I said. “I don’t think she knew how much it would affect you.”

“It ought to affect her too!” he snapped, banging his fist on his nightstand and startling the picture of his parents. His mother gave him a stern look, which he ignored. “Her mum was killed by Black too!”

“Yes, so she said. So were friends of my father, who also fought He Who Must Not Be Named.” I shrugged. “There are bad things that happen in wars, and it sucks that your granddad didn’t make it, but at least you knew him. All of my grandparents were gone before I was born.”

Terry met my eyes. There was a mania to them that I hadn’t expected. “It’s not just that he escaped.”

“And I’d meant to ask you, Terry. Why didn’t you know?”

He let out a slow breath. “We all went on a trip to Majorca after I got home from your house. Now that I think about it, Mum and Dad were very careful about limiting my access to current events.”

“Weird.”

“Quite.” As Terry regained more of his wits, the mania in his eyes grew brighter and stronger. “But it isn’t just Black, either. It’s those Dementors. Have you ever seen one, up close?” I shook my head; Da had shown me pictures, but the closest I’d gotten to a real, live Dementor was about ten miles, give or take – at least until that one glided its way through the hallway of the Express. “I have. I’ve been very close to a Dementor.”

Silver lines began swirling outward from Terry’s pupils, turning his eyes a brilliant glowing white.

“It is not somewhere you want to be.”

We stared at each other for a long moment.

“Terry?”

The magic in the room evaporated. Terry’s eyes shifted back to normal. “Sorry.”

“No, really, it’s quite all right.”

Just then, the clock chimed nine, and Stephen and Anthony came through the door, laughing – which was a surprise in itself, because Stephen was the least-demonstrative person my age that I had ever met. “You guys should’ve been down there,” Anthony said, snorting back another chuckle. “Kev got his nads handed to him!”

“Excuse me?”

Anthony didn’t have time to explain; Kevin came limping in at that moment, cupping himself, stumbling toward his bed. I watched him take careful aim at it and fall onto his side, then flop onto his back. “Guys,” he said, his voice strangled and about half-an-octave too high, “do not, under any bloody circumstances, hit on Sally-Anne Perks.”

“Kev, I’ve made it a personal policy to not hit on any girl who I’ve seen take out Crabbe and Goyle at the same time.”

Kevin eyed me sharply. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“More fun to watch you find out for yourself.”

That even got Terry to laugh.

We fell back into our usual patterns, although Terry did seem a bit jumpier than he should have been, especially when we would see a Dementor float by through the castle windows. We still had Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts with the Hufflepuffs, Transfiguration and History of Magic with Gryffindor, and Herbology and Astronomy with Slytherin. There had been so many people signed up to take Muggle Studies that two classes for third-years were formed; Hermione was in the other one. She was, however, in my Arithmancy class – the only other Ravenclaw from my year that had even tried it was Stephen, and after the first week, he transferred out – so we ended up spending more time together than the previous year.

Professor Vector was a very interesting individual. On the surface, he actually reminded me a little of Professor Snape – tall, pale, dressed all in black – but where Snape was snide and sharp-tongued, Vector was thoughtful and relaxed. He was willing to take the entire class on tangents when it suited his fancy, which made for some interesting discussions.

But more interesting than Vector was Professor Lupin. He seemed so worn-down for someone only about as old as my parents, but lessons were truly interesting. In the first two weeks of classes, I learned more from Lupin than I had from Lockhart in an entire year. We faced down a boggart – for me, it became Minister Fudge snapping my wand in half, but Professor Lupin stopped it after I cast Riddikulus, because I had a distinct feeling that the wand was going to lodge itself firmly in a very uncomfortable place on Fudge\'s tubby form. Padma and Terry, who knew my parents’ opinion of Fudge, had a pretty good idea of where I’d gotten that bright idea.

Our Muggle Studies professor, for the first week, was Professor Grubbly-Plank, a no-nonsense woman who said she was substituting while our regular teacher finished an assignment. But on September 27 – a bit more than a week after Hermione’s thirteenth birthday, for which I had procured her a t-shirt reading “witch” in more than 200 languages – a very familiar-looking woman was sitting at the desk. She had on the very same t-shirt I’d given Hermione.

Her name was Natalie Stein. She was my aunt.

“Aunt Natalie!” Muggle Studies was the last period of my Monday schedule, and after everyone had left, I’d moved quickly to her desk. “What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, David? I’m teaching.” She had a thought. “And don’t call me ‘Aunt’ anything. If you have to call me something, call me Professor Stein when everyone else is around.”

“Does anyone else know we’re related?”

“Doubt it. Although there was a girl in my Thursday morning class – somebody Granger – who I think has a pretty good idea.”

I sighed. “If anyone’s going to figure out, it’ll be Hermione Granger. But don’t worry; she won’t tell anyone.” And then I addressed the greater question: “What are you doing here? You’re not a witch?”

“Aren’t I?” From her pocket, she pulled a long, slender wand and changed her t-shirt from the word “witch” to the word “wizard” – all 200-plus instances of it. “Just because I didn’t tell you doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.”

“But… but…” I was at a complete loss of words. Aunt Natalie – Mum’s sister – had never, ever shown even the slightest hint of magical inclination about her. From what I knew, shortly after school – Mum had told me she’d gone to a private academy in America – Aunt Natalie had done some college work at Oxford, but returned to America after two years to marry a man I’d never met. They’d divorced a couple of years later, and Aunt Natalie had chosen to live in Melbourne – Florida, not Australia. I saw her once a year, if that, but I know that during school Mum would sometimes catch an aeroplane to America to see her. Aunt Natalie was the elder – Mum was born in 1960, Da in 1959, and Natalie in 1952.

“It doesn’t make sense, is that what you’re going to say?” Aunt Natalie, like Mum, had straight brown hair, but while Mum’s was long and usually in a ponytail, Aunt Natalie’s was only just brushing her shoulders. They both had the same dark-green eyes, and the same willowy figure. “Why would your dear Natalie, who brings you all the best t-shirts, want to keep you from finding out she’s a witch?”

“Something like that.” I hopped up onto the desk in the front row of the classroom.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“It’s a bit after four o’clock now. Dinner’s not served until five. We have plenty of time.”

“Actually, we don’t, I’m afraid.” Aunt Natalie collected her things in a bright blue backpack and slung it across her back. “I have a meeting with Professor Dumbledore in fifteen minutes, and I probably shouldn’t be late.”

She started walking down the aisle between the desks; I followed her, grabbing my own bag from my desk in the center of the room – I shared it with Justin Finch-Fletchley from Hufflepuff, who didn’t seem to be all bad; I was one of only two Ravenclaws in this section of the class, but the other was Kev, and I really didn’t want to spend an hour and a half stuck next to him.

But where I turned left to head to Ravenclaw, she turned right, toward the main corridor and Dumbledore’s office. “You’ll have to tell me sometime!”

“Whatever.” She waved without looking, transfiguring her shirt so it said “no” in those same 200-plus languages, and turned around the corner.

“Whatever.” I did my best to imitate her American accent – Natalie was as British as I was, but more than twenty years in America had made her sound just like the rest of them.

Instead of going back to Ravenclaw, I took a detour and stopped in the Library. In front of the main stacks was a rack of magazines and catalogs; I picked up Magical Education Monthly and paged through it, but to no avail. “Can I help you find something?” Madam Pince asked.

I jumped a little – for someone as tall and no-nonsense as Madam Pince, the Hogwarts Librarian certainly could sneak up on us students. “Do you have anything that could help me get information about wizarding schools in other countries?”

“Not on the racks,” she said. I set the magazine back in its place. “But there’s this new thing I’ve got for information retrieval, if you’d like to try that.”

“Certainly.”

I followed Madam Pince to her office. One might expect it to be neat, but while it was definitely clean, books and journals were piled on every flat surface. “Just shove those off onto the floor,” she said, pointing to a settee in front of her fireplace. I gently pushed the journals – L-Space Research Quarterly – out of the way and sat down. Madam Pince pulled a black dropcloth off something attached to the mantle. “Do you know what this is?”

“Not really,” I said. “I know more about potions than anything else.”

She nodded, and cast a complex-looking and complex-sounding spell on the object. Then she sat down on the settee next to me and we watched the fireplace start to glow blue.

“What’s going on?”

“Just watch.”

So I waited. From the box on the mantle there came a soft chord, as if 5000 people had just expressed relief after drinking a glass of ice-water on a summer day, and the fireplace burst into life with a soft blue flame.

A word formed out of the fire.

QUERY.

“What?” I was completely confused.

Madam Pince smiled. “Go ahead. Ask it your question.”

“O-kay.” I turned back to the fire and raised my voice slightly. “Um. Where can I find a list of wizarding schools in other countries besides Britain?”

QUERY morphed seamlessly into SEARCHING.

“Just wait a moment,” Madam Pince assured me.

We both watched as SEARCHING morphed into 285 RESULTS FOUND. DISPLAYING FIRST TEN RESULTS. The words shrunk and shifted to the top of the fireplace, and more words appeared below.

“Any of those look helpful?”

I scanned the options; the fifth one down read LIST OF AMERICAN WIZARDING SCHOOLS. “How do I pick one?”

“Say the result number.”

I cleared my throat slightly. “Five, please.”

The words faded away, to be replaced by SEARCHING. “It doesn’t go too quickly yet; this might take a moment.”

“What is it?”

Madam Pince thought about that. “Have you ever read about people who play chess over long distances, mailing their moves to each other by owl?”

“I guess so?”

“Well,” she said, “a couple of wizards I know at the Ministry decided to try and combine the Wizarding Wireless, the Floo Network, and the National Wizarding Library at Ministry Headquarters. This is the result.”

\"This exists for chess-playing?\"

\"It did at first. But now...\"

SEARCHING faded out of the fire and was replaced by a list of locations. Next to each of them, the name of a wizarding school. “Wicked,” I said. “Can I stay here a moment and write this down?”

“No need.” Madam Pince stood up and pressed a button on the device on the mantle; parchment, from a roll held above the device, something I’d been wondering about, started issuing forth from a slot at the front. After a minute, it stopped, as did a clattering noise I’d become subliminally aware of, and Madam Pince tore off the parchment and handed it to me. “There you go.”

The lettering was plain block print, but it was easy to read. I folded the parchment and slipped it into my bag. “Thank you.”

“One thing,” Madam Pince said after she waved her wand at the device – I watched the fire die down and the blue glow disappear. “I’m really not supposed to have this yet, and it’s not fully finished – every piece of information in the NWL has to be input by hand, at least for now – so could you not tell anyone?”

“Of course not,” I told her. “But why show it to me?”

Madam Pince had to be at least sixty, but for a moment, she looked like a teenager. “I simply had to share it with someone. You treat the books here well; I know you’ll understand what I mean when I say it needs to remain between us.”

“Ah. I’ll keep it a secret, then.”

“Thank you.”

Madam Pince showed me out of the office, and I checked my watch. The wizarding hand was perilously close to Dinner, so I decided it would be best to go down to the Great Hall and eat something.

As I walked, I pondered the implications. A device that can search through libraries. With magic. From anywhere. If the muggles ever had something like this, I could only imagine what they would get up to.

Of course, I had Muggle Studies again on Thursday afternoon, and that was when Aunt Natalie – Professor Stein, as it were – told us about a new muggle invention called the Internet.

I wonder if Madam Pince knew about it.

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Astute Discworld fans will recognize the concept of L-Space.

The \"Tijuana: City of Tomorrow\" shirt really does exist. My friend Joey has one.

Yes, googling around to look for something was the inspiration for Madam Pince\'s new device.

Oh, and by the way, I\'m sure everyone knows exactly what it was that Mr. Goldman did at the start of this chapter.

This is going to be a heavy year -- there\'s a lot of time in PoA where nothing much happens for the Golden Trio. I have plans for that time. So, until then...